The U.K.’s Documentary Film Council (Dfc) is seeking funds to support the independent documentary sector, which is under “existential threat.”
The Dfc was formed in response to a three-year study on the U.K. feature-length documentary film industry and co-designed by several organizations in the field, including Doc Society, Sheffield DocFest, the Grierson Trust, The Whickers, Scottish Documentary Institute, Docs Ireland and BBC Storyville.
An open letter to the U.K. screen industries compiled by the Dfc states that the formation of the Dfc is “based on the recognition that independent documentary in the U.K. faces an existential threat and that there is urgent need for coordinated, long-term interventions across the sector.”
“Films at the independent end of the spectrum – creative, observational, character-led films, films that originate outside of a commissioner’s brief or which explore difficult-but-vital political or cultural questions – are increasingly hard to get made,” the letter adds.
The Dfc was formed in response to a three-year study on the U.K. feature-length documentary film industry and co-designed by several organizations in the field, including Doc Society, Sheffield DocFest, the Grierson Trust, The Whickers, Scottish Documentary Institute, Docs Ireland and BBC Storyville.
An open letter to the U.K. screen industries compiled by the Dfc states that the formation of the Dfc is “based on the recognition that independent documentary in the U.K. faces an existential threat and that there is urgent need for coordinated, long-term interventions across the sector.”
“Films at the independent end of the spectrum – creative, observational, character-led films, films that originate outside of a commissioner’s brief or which explore difficult-but-vital political or cultural questions – are increasingly hard to get made,” the letter adds.
- 10/20/2023
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
Signatories include Kim Longinotto, Sean McAllister, Orlando von Einsiedel, Jeanie Finlay, Jerry Rothwell, Andre Singer, Mark Cousins, Andrew Kötting, and Mike Lerner.
Leading figures from the UK documentary world have thrown their support behind an open letter from the Documentary Film Council (Dfc) raising the alarm about the predicament of the UK indie doc sector.
Despite rhetoric about this being a golden age of documentary, the letter claims the sector “faces an existential threat”. Production funding for indie docs has plummeted and chances of distribution and exhibition for many are “non-existent.” Broadcast slots are also dwindling as are deals with...
Leading figures from the UK documentary world have thrown their support behind an open letter from the Documentary Film Council (Dfc) raising the alarm about the predicament of the UK indie doc sector.
Despite rhetoric about this being a golden age of documentary, the letter claims the sector “faces an existential threat”. Production funding for indie docs has plummeted and chances of distribution and exhibition for many are “non-existent.” Broadcast slots are also dwindling as are deals with...
- 10/18/2023
- by Geoffrey Macnab
- ScreenDaily
Nominations have been unveiled for the 42nd London Critics’ Circle Film Awards. Check out the full list below.
Jane Campion’s The Power Of The Dog leads the field with nine nominations, followed by Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter which received 6 (a Netflix one-two). Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II, released by Picturehouse in the UK, followed with five.
This year’s contenders feature a notably healthy representation of female filmmakers, with the top three most nominated films all helmed by women directors.
More than 180 critics across print, online and broadcast media voted for this year’s noms, which were unveiled by British actors Joanna Vanderham and Gwilym Lee. The ceremony will take place on February 6, 2022, at London’s May Fair Hotel.
“Even though cinemas were closed for half of this year, our members were always watching films,” says Rich Cline, chair of the Critics’ Circle Film Section.
Jane Campion’s The Power Of The Dog leads the field with nine nominations, followed by Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter which received 6 (a Netflix one-two). Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II, released by Picturehouse in the UK, followed with five.
This year’s contenders feature a notably healthy representation of female filmmakers, with the top three most nominated films all helmed by women directors.
More than 180 critics across print, online and broadcast media voted for this year’s noms, which were unveiled by British actors Joanna Vanderham and Gwilym Lee. The ceremony will take place on February 6, 2022, at London’s May Fair Hotel.
“Even though cinemas were closed for half of this year, our members were always watching films,” says Rich Cline, chair of the Critics’ Circle Film Section.
- 12/16/2021
- by Tom Grater
- Deadline Film + TV
Stars: Andrew Kotting, Eden Kotting, MacGillivray, Iain Sinclair | Directed by Andrew Kotting
Andrew Kotting directs this curious experimental film with Anonymous Bosch (Edith Walks) working the cinematography. A reunion, too, between Iain Sinclair and Kotting, who have previously collaborated on the acclaimed Swandown, By Our Selves and Edith Walks. A work of artist, poet, dreamer, photographer, writer, filmmaker and, obviously, curator, The Whalebone Box isn’t something you’ve seen before, it’s… well… elsewhere.
The Whalebone Box introduces us to a box, made from whalebone and washed up on a beach, entangled in the nets of a fisherman. It’s said that the box has the ability to heal or change those who touch it. This curiosity begins a journey, with the box, which was given, over thirty years ago, to Iain Sinclair, a writer and filmmaker, is taken 800 miles from London to the Outer Hebrides, to be returned to sculptor Steve Dilworth,...
Andrew Kotting directs this curious experimental film with Anonymous Bosch (Edith Walks) working the cinematography. A reunion, too, between Iain Sinclair and Kotting, who have previously collaborated on the acclaimed Swandown, By Our Selves and Edith Walks. A work of artist, poet, dreamer, photographer, writer, filmmaker and, obviously, curator, The Whalebone Box isn’t something you’ve seen before, it’s… well… elsewhere.
The Whalebone Box introduces us to a box, made from whalebone and washed up on a beach, entangled in the nets of a fisherman. It’s said that the box has the ability to heal or change those who touch it. This curiosity begins a journey, with the box, which was given, over thirty years ago, to Iain Sinclair, a writer and filmmaker, is taken 800 miles from London to the Outer Hebrides, to be returned to sculptor Steve Dilworth,...
- 3/30/2020
- by Chris Cummings
- Nerdly
The Spirit of ’45 to oversee grants as Doc Society’s film fund executive.
Producer Lisa Marie Russo has been appointed by Doc Society (formerly Britdoc) to head up the newly-launched BFI Doc Society Fund.
The BFI selected Doc Society as the delivery partner for its £1m-per-year doc fund in December last year. The commitment, which runs through to 2022, is part of the BFI’s five-year strategy (BFI2022), which includes a promise to support the documentary medium and its emerging filmmakers.
Russo‘s credits include Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45, Terence Davies’ Of Time And The City, Gillian Wearing’s...
Producer Lisa Marie Russo has been appointed by Doc Society (formerly Britdoc) to head up the newly-launched BFI Doc Society Fund.
The BFI selected Doc Society as the delivery partner for its £1m-per-year doc fund in December last year. The commitment, which runs through to 2022, is part of the BFI’s five-year strategy (BFI2022), which includes a promise to support the documentary medium and its emerging filmmakers.
Russo‘s credits include Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45, Terence Davies’ Of Time And The City, Gillian Wearing’s...
- 3/12/2018
- by Tom Grater
- ScreenDaily
My Own Private HellThe titles for the 47th International Film Festival Rotterdam are being announced in anticipation of the event running January 24 - February 4, 2018. We will update the program as new films are revealed.SIGNATURESInsect (Jan Švankmajer)Asino (Anatoly Vasiliev)Lek and the Dogs (Andrew Kötting)The Bottomless Bag (Rustam Khamdamov)Mrs. Fang (Wang Bing)Readers (James Benning)The Wandering Soap Opera (Valeria Sarmiento, Raúl Ruiz)Lover for a Day (Philippe Garrel)Bright FUTUREThe Flower Shop (Ruben Desiere)Look Up (Fulvio Risoleo)My Friend the Polish Girl (Ewa Banaszkiewicz)Rabot (Christina Vandekerckhove)Respeto (Alberto Monteras II)The Return (Malene Choi Jensen)Windspiel (Peyman Ghalambor)All You Can Eat Buddha (Ian Lagarde)Azougue Nazareth (Tiago Melo)My Own Private Hell (Guto Parente)Ordinary Time (Susana Nobre)3/4 (Ilian Metev)Cocote (Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias)Drift (Helena Wittmann)The Wild Boys (Bertrand Mandico)Gutland (Govinda Van Maele)The Watchman (Alejandro Andújar...
- 12/15/2017
- MUBI
Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Andrew Kötting's Edith Walks (2017) is playing June 29 - July 29, 2017 on Mubi in the United Kingdom.The faster we walk, the more ground we lose.—Iain Sinclair, Lights Out for the TerritoryIf there's a single date in English history that most of the country's population would know, it's 1066: the Battle of Hastings. They would hazily recall from wooden modular classrooms, stifling on a warm summer's afternoon, as they gazed out at heat rising from the tarmac playground, the tale of King Harold II, his cross-country march to war, and the Norman Conquest of the Anglo-Saxon realm. Perhaps the image of Harold as depicted on the Bayeux tapestry, an arrow protruding from his eye, would emerge from the palimpsest of history and linger on the fringes of their memory. The memories are much more immediate and painful for Edith Swan-Neck,...
- 6/27/2017
- MUBI
Andrew Kötting explores the legacy of King Harold and his wife in this wonderfully eccentric film
There’s something uniquely wonderful about the unfettered pagan spirit of Andrew Kötting. His film-making has an anarchic lawlessness; a refreshing alternative to pictures that are pruned and shaped to fit into a preordained structure. For this project, Kötting and a band of merry troubadours (including writer Alan Moore and historian Iain Sinclair) embark on a journey by foot from Waltham Abbey to St Leonards-on-Sea. Along the way, they explore the mythic legacy of King Harold and his wife, Edith Swan-Neck (embodied for the pilgrimage by Claurdia Barton). The route is as the crow flies, but it’s embellished with glorious curlicues of eccentricity.
Continue reading...
There’s something uniquely wonderful about the unfettered pagan spirit of Andrew Kötting. His film-making has an anarchic lawlessness; a refreshing alternative to pictures that are pruned and shaped to fit into a preordained structure. For this project, Kötting and a band of merry troubadours (including writer Alan Moore and historian Iain Sinclair) embark on a journey by foot from Waltham Abbey to St Leonards-on-Sea. Along the way, they explore the mythic legacy of King Harold and his wife, Edith Swan-Neck (embodied for the pilgrimage by Claurdia Barton). The route is as the crow flies, but it’s embellished with glorious curlicues of eccentricity.
Continue reading...
- 6/25/2017
- by Wendy Ide
- The Guardian - Film News
Andrew Kötting’s psychogeographical journey from Waltham Abbey to Hastings – with contributions from Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair en route – is filled with a wayward integrity
Another eccentric, strange yet weirdly engaging journey along the leyline of Englishness by experimental film-maker Andrew Kötting, flying under the radar of conventional history and conventional production values. This zero-to-no-budget piece is something like a filmed moment of street theatre or Pythonesque subversion of the English past. It is a kind of occult dress-up pilgrimage, tracing in reverse an imaginary journey between Waltham Abbey and Hastings, conceptually reuniting King Harold with Edith Swan-Neck, his secular or “hand-fast” wife, who identified his body after the Battle of Hastings and secured him a Christian burial at Waltham Abbey. Kötting and his company make their journey in costume, pausing to consider and contemplate along the way, with ruminative contributions from Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore, who discuss the mythic relativeness of Edith’s identity and the psychogeographical implications of everything else. Moore comments gnomically: “You can always tell an authentic battlefield.” Well, only a pedant or a bore would insist on leading Mr Moore blindfold to three or four fields to test the truth of that. Like everything else in this piece, it has its own wayward integrity.
Continue reading...
Another eccentric, strange yet weirdly engaging journey along the leyline of Englishness by experimental film-maker Andrew Kötting, flying under the radar of conventional history and conventional production values. This zero-to-no-budget piece is something like a filmed moment of street theatre or Pythonesque subversion of the English past. It is a kind of occult dress-up pilgrimage, tracing in reverse an imaginary journey between Waltham Abbey and Hastings, conceptually reuniting King Harold with Edith Swan-Neck, his secular or “hand-fast” wife, who identified his body after the Battle of Hastings and secured him a Christian burial at Waltham Abbey. Kötting and his company make their journey in costume, pausing to consider and contemplate along the way, with ruminative contributions from Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore, who discuss the mythic relativeness of Edith’s identity and the psychogeographical implications of everything else. Moore comments gnomically: “You can always tell an authentic battlefield.” Well, only a pedant or a bore would insist on leading Mr Moore blindfold to three or four fields to test the truth of that. Like everything else in this piece, it has its own wayward integrity.
Continue reading...
- 6/22/2017
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Author: Linda Marric
Director Andrew Kötting’s latest Psycho-geographical feature offers up far more questions than it is likely to answer, and his many fans wouldn’t want to have it otherwise. Edith Walks is a brilliantly shambolic and wonderfully ramshackle adventure which reconciles it audiences with the weird and wonderful world of King Harold’s “handfast” wife Edith The Fair (Edith Swan Neck), who alone was able to identify his mutilated body as he lay dead after the battle of Hastings in 1066.
Featuring author Iain Sinclair and with a truly impressive performance from brilliantly eclectic singer Claudia Barton as Edith herself, the film is a pilgrimage of sorts which seeks to retrace Harold’s lover’s journey from Waltham Abbey in Essex via Battle Abbey to St Leonards-On-Sea to be reconnected with her dead king.
Accompanied by a merry band of weird and wonderful characters, Kötting uses a super...
Director Andrew Kötting’s latest Psycho-geographical feature offers up far more questions than it is likely to answer, and his many fans wouldn’t want to have it otherwise. Edith Walks is a brilliantly shambolic and wonderfully ramshackle adventure which reconciles it audiences with the weird and wonderful world of King Harold’s “handfast” wife Edith The Fair (Edith Swan Neck), who alone was able to identify his mutilated body as he lay dead after the battle of Hastings in 1066.
Featuring author Iain Sinclair and with a truly impressive performance from brilliantly eclectic singer Claudia Barton as Edith herself, the film is a pilgrimage of sorts which seeks to retrace Harold’s lover’s journey from Waltham Abbey in Essex via Battle Abbey to St Leonards-On-Sea to be reconnected with her dead king.
Accompanied by a merry band of weird and wonderful characters, Kötting uses a super...
- 6/20/2017
- by Linda Marric
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
An estranged young woman returns to her flooded Somerset home in this haunting family drama
The flat, flooded plains of Somerset provide fertile soil for writer/director Hope Dickson Leach in this remarkably powerful tale of blighted farms and fractured families. Fulfilling the promise of such acclaimed shorts as The Dawn Chorus and Morning Echo, her quietly overwhelming feature debut addresses grand upheavals (personal, regional, economic) in deceptively understated and fiercely truthful fashion. Focusing on an estranged daughter’s return to her low-lying Levels home in the wake of a family tragedy, Dickson Leach conjures a postdiluvian rural Britain in which secrets, like bodies, refuse to stay buried. The director may cite the Dardenne brothers, Bruno Dumont and Kelly Reichardt as key influences, but it’s the robust heft of Andrew Kötting’s This Filthy Earth that sprang to mind as I waded into this emotional field a second time,...
The flat, flooded plains of Somerset provide fertile soil for writer/director Hope Dickson Leach in this remarkably powerful tale of blighted farms and fractured families. Fulfilling the promise of such acclaimed shorts as The Dawn Chorus and Morning Echo, her quietly overwhelming feature debut addresses grand upheavals (personal, regional, economic) in deceptively understated and fiercely truthful fashion. Focusing on an estranged daughter’s return to her low-lying Levels home in the wake of a family tragedy, Dickson Leach conjures a postdiluvian rural Britain in which secrets, like bodies, refuse to stay buried. The director may cite the Dardenne brothers, Bruno Dumont and Kelly Reichardt as key influences, but it’s the robust heft of Andrew Kötting’s This Filthy Earth that sprang to mind as I waded into this emotional field a second time,...
- 5/14/2017
- by Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
- The Guardian - Film News
Exclusive: $13m project from Salon Pictures will chart story of soldier who suffered severe burns during the Falklands War; Embankment to sell.
The story of Simon Weston, the British army veteran who endured severe burns during the Falklands War, is to be told in an ambitious new film which has Jonathan Teplitzky (The Railway Man) attached to direct.
Salon Pictures is producing the feature.
Weston came back from the brink of death to rebuild his life. He wrote best-selling autobiographies, campaigned tirelessly for charity and is regarded by many as a symbol of Britain’s war in the Falklands.
During the Falklands War in 1982 Weston was a young soldier on the ship Rfa Sir Galahad when an Argentine Skyhawk dropped a 500lb bomb, killing most of his platoon. His fight for survival and recovery took him to a dark abyss.
Teplitzky will direct from a screenplay by Alex Von Tunzelmann (Churchill) with the picture due to shoot...
The story of Simon Weston, the British army veteran who endured severe burns during the Falklands War, is to be told in an ambitious new film which has Jonathan Teplitzky (The Railway Man) attached to direct.
Salon Pictures is producing the feature.
Weston came back from the brink of death to rebuild his life. He wrote best-selling autobiographies, campaigned tirelessly for charity and is regarded by many as a symbol of Britain’s war in the Falklands.
During the Falklands War in 1982 Weston was a young soldier on the ship Rfa Sir Galahad when an Argentine Skyhawk dropped a 500lb bomb, killing most of his platoon. His fight for survival and recovery took him to a dark abyss.
Teplitzky will direct from a screenplay by Alex Von Tunzelmann (Churchill) with the picture due to shoot...
- 9/28/2016
- by geoffrey@macnab.demon.co.uk (Geoffrey Macnab)
- ScreenDaily
The actor takes a role also played by his father, Freddie, for an occasionally exasperating drama-documentary
In 1970, Freddie Jones played the part of John Clare (“a minor nature poet who went mad… ”) in a BBC Omnibus broadcast. Forty five years later, his son Toby revisits the role, retreading Clare’s 80-mile walk from an asylum near Epping Forest to his Northborough home in search of lost love Mary Joyce. As Toby wanders, Freddie reads from a collection of Clare’s autobiographical writings, providing a quasi-commentary for this strange odyssey.
Part drama, part documentary, part enthralled (sh)amble, By Our Selves finds director Andrew Kötting and writer/collaborator Iain Sinclair indulging their passion for Clare without necessarily engaging ours. En route, we encounter celebrated graphic novelist Alan Moore, who describes the inescapable Northampton as “a cultural black hole with an incredible mass”, hear from Professor Simon Kövesi (dressed as a prizefighter,...
In 1970, Freddie Jones played the part of John Clare (“a minor nature poet who went mad… ”) in a BBC Omnibus broadcast. Forty five years later, his son Toby revisits the role, retreading Clare’s 80-mile walk from an asylum near Epping Forest to his Northborough home in search of lost love Mary Joyce. As Toby wanders, Freddie reads from a collection of Clare’s autobiographical writings, providing a quasi-commentary for this strange odyssey.
Part drama, part documentary, part enthralled (sh)amble, By Our Selves finds director Andrew Kötting and writer/collaborator Iain Sinclair indulging their passion for Clare without necessarily engaging ours. En route, we encounter celebrated graphic novelist Alan Moore, who describes the inescapable Northampton as “a cultural black hole with an incredible mass”, hear from Professor Simon Kövesi (dressed as a prizefighter,...
- 10/4/2015
- by Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
- The Guardian - Film News
Andrew Kötting recreates scenes of the fascinating and melancholy 90-mile walk undertaken in 1841 by the nature poet John Clare, in a bizarre documentary
Film-maker Andrew Kötting again takes inspiration from that great psycho-geographer Iain Sinclair – with whom he recorded an unclassifiably strange journey by pedalo in the 2012 film Swandown. Now he has been inspired by Sinclair’s book Edge of the Orison, about the fascinating and melancholy 90-mile walk undertaken in 1841 by the nature poet John Clare, from a mental asylum in Epping to Northampton, on a pilgrimage to find Mary Joyce, the woman with whom he believed himself to be in love.
Kötting has Toby Jones recreate the scenes of Clare’s great journey or ordeal, often amid bizarrely alienating and alienated scenes of modern life. Jones recites some of Clare’s work in voiceover, and Kötting also asks Jones’s father Freddie Jones to recreate his performance as Clare from a 1970 Omnibus documentary,...
Film-maker Andrew Kötting again takes inspiration from that great psycho-geographer Iain Sinclair – with whom he recorded an unclassifiably strange journey by pedalo in the 2012 film Swandown. Now he has been inspired by Sinclair’s book Edge of the Orison, about the fascinating and melancholy 90-mile walk undertaken in 1841 by the nature poet John Clare, from a mental asylum in Epping to Northampton, on a pilgrimage to find Mary Joyce, the woman with whom he believed himself to be in love.
Kötting has Toby Jones recreate the scenes of Clare’s great journey or ordeal, often amid bizarrely alienating and alienated scenes of modern life. Jones recites some of Clare’s work in voiceover, and Kötting also asks Jones’s father Freddie Jones to recreate his performance as Clare from a 1970 Omnibus documentary,...
- 10/1/2015
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
★★☆☆☆ "John Clare was a minor nature poet, who went mad," voices repeat as a challenging refrain throughout Andrew Kötting's By Our Selves (2015), a barmy reconstruction of a four-day walk/escapade that Clare took from the asylum near Epping Forest, where he was confined, heading for Helpston in Northamptonshire. Toby Jones has the thankless task of portraying the escapee, wandering about looking befuddled while a variety of voices recite poetry and letters, or mutter against a soundtrack that mixes ambient noise and electronic fluttering.
- 10/1/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
British film-maker Grant Gee has got together with Turkey’s Nobel prize-winning novelist, and the result is a mesmerising, original meditation on love and the city
Having cut his teeth on music videos (and then graduated to the cerebral Joy Division documentary, on which he collaborated with Jon Savage), Grant Gee has reinvented himself as a formidable force in the microgenre of literary travelogues, a space hitherto largely occupied by Patrick Keiller, Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair. Gee headed for Suffolk for Patience (After Sebald), a reconstruction and reinvestigation of Wg Sebald’s Rings of Saturn; now he has cast his net much further afield, to Istanbul, and a creative meeting of mind’s with Turkey’s Nobel-prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk.
As with his Sebald film, Gee has here carefully assembled a collage of textual fragments, painterly visuals and mysterious voiceovers. The major difference of course, is that Pamuk is...
Having cut his teeth on music videos (and then graduated to the cerebral Joy Division documentary, on which he collaborated with Jon Savage), Grant Gee has reinvented himself as a formidable force in the microgenre of literary travelogues, a space hitherto largely occupied by Patrick Keiller, Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair. Gee headed for Suffolk for Patience (After Sebald), a reconstruction and reinvestigation of Wg Sebald’s Rings of Saturn; now he has cast his net much further afield, to Istanbul, and a creative meeting of mind’s with Turkey’s Nobel-prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk.
As with his Sebald film, Gee has here carefully assembled a collage of textual fragments, painterly visuals and mysterious voiceovers. The major difference of course, is that Pamuk is...
- 9/10/2015
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
Exclusive: Sharon Horgan, Ron Scalpello, Rob Savage films among slate.
UK production outfit Salon Pictures is in Cannes talking to financiers about new Ron Scalpello (Offender) documentary Death or Glory, about the rivalries between successful boxers Michael Watson, Nigel Benn, Chris Eubank and Gerald McClellan.
Also new to Salon’s development slate is horror Seaholme from former Screen Star of Tomorrow writer-director Rob Savage.
The film centres on a group of high-school kids who get more than they bargained for when they adopt a powerful creature they find washed to shore in a small coastal New York town.
Sharon Horgan comedy Meet Me In Ten Years, from writer Frances Poletti, and biopics My Name is Lenny and Churchill are also on the slate.
Salon’s Andrew Kotting drama Ivan & the Dogs and documentaries Gascoigne and The Greatest Iron Man are currently in production.
UK production outfit Salon Pictures is in Cannes talking to financiers about new Ron Scalpello (Offender) documentary Death or Glory, about the rivalries between successful boxers Michael Watson, Nigel Benn, Chris Eubank and Gerald McClellan.
Also new to Salon’s development slate is horror Seaholme from former Screen Star of Tomorrow writer-director Rob Savage.
The film centres on a group of high-school kids who get more than they bargained for when they adopt a powerful creature they find washed to shore in a small coastal New York town.
Sharon Horgan comedy Meet Me In Ten Years, from writer Frances Poletti, and biopics My Name is Lenny and Churchill are also on the slate.
Salon’s Andrew Kotting drama Ivan & the Dogs and documentaries Gascoigne and The Greatest Iron Man are currently in production.
- 5/16/2015
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
New films on Screenbase this week include Salon Pictures’ true story about a feral child Ivan and the Dogs.
Salon Pictures’ Ivan and the Dogs
Andrew Kötting will direct this feature, now in pre-production, about a four-year-old who leaves his Moscow apartment and is adopted by a pack of wild dogs.
Shooting is due to begin in early 2015 in London, Moscow and Chile, and casting is now in progress. Funding comes from BFI and Seis Salon Workshop, and Soda Pictures will distribute in the UK.
Dad’s Army remake
Written by Hamish McColl and directed by Oliver Parker, Dad’s Army stars Bill Nighy (Sergeant Wilson), Catherine Zeta Jones (Rose Winters), Toby Jones (Captain Mainwaring), Tom Courtenay (Lance Corporal Jones) and Michael Gambon (Private Godfrey).
The film is in post-production, after seven weeks of filming in Yorkshire came to an end at the end of November. It is due for release on 5 February, 2016.
Sadie Frost’s Set the...
Salon Pictures’ Ivan and the Dogs
Andrew Kötting will direct this feature, now in pre-production, about a four-year-old who leaves his Moscow apartment and is adopted by a pack of wild dogs.
Shooting is due to begin in early 2015 in London, Moscow and Chile, and casting is now in progress. Funding comes from BFI and Seis Salon Workshop, and Soda Pictures will distribute in the UK.
Dad’s Army remake
Written by Hamish McColl and directed by Oliver Parker, Dad’s Army stars Bill Nighy (Sergeant Wilson), Catherine Zeta Jones (Rose Winters), Toby Jones (Captain Mainwaring), Tom Courtenay (Lance Corporal Jones) and Michael Gambon (Private Godfrey).
The film is in post-production, after seven weeks of filming in Yorkshire came to an end at the end of November. It is due for release on 5 February, 2016.
Sadie Frost’s Set the...
- 12/19/2014
- by Laurence.Bartleet@city.ac.uk (Larry Bartleet)
- ScreenDaily
Exclusive: UK deal in place for Andrew Kotting’s film from Salon Pictures.
UK production outfit Salon Pictures has entered pre-production on Andrew Kötting’s feature adaptation of Hattie Naylor’s stage play Ivan and the Dogs.
Written by Naylor and produced by Nick Taussig and Paul Van Carter of Salon, Soda Pictures has boarded UK distribution of the experimental film, which is based on the true story of Ivan Mishukov, who in 1996 walked out of his Moscow apartment at the age of four and spent two years living on the city streets where he was adopted by a pack of wild dogs.
The shoot is due to get underway in early 2015 and will take in London, Moscow and Chile with casting currently underway.
Funding comes from the BFI - who also gave development support - and Seis Salon Workshop.
Artist and filmmaker Kotting previously directed 2012 doc Swandown, which played at Cph: Dox, and 2009 drama...
UK production outfit Salon Pictures has entered pre-production on Andrew Kötting’s feature adaptation of Hattie Naylor’s stage play Ivan and the Dogs.
Written by Naylor and produced by Nick Taussig and Paul Van Carter of Salon, Soda Pictures has boarded UK distribution of the experimental film, which is based on the true story of Ivan Mishukov, who in 1996 walked out of his Moscow apartment at the age of four and spent two years living on the city streets where he was adopted by a pack of wild dogs.
The shoot is due to get underway in early 2015 and will take in London, Moscow and Chile with casting currently underway.
Funding comes from the BFI - who also gave development support - and Seis Salon Workshop.
Artist and filmmaker Kotting previously directed 2012 doc Swandown, which played at Cph: Dox, and 2009 drama...
- 12/11/2014
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
Exclusive: UK deal in place for Andrew Kotting’s adaptation of play.
UK production outfit Salon Pictures has entered pre-production on Andrew Kötting’s feature adaptation of Hattie Naylor’s stage play Ivan and the Dogs.
Written by Naylor and produced by Nick Taussig and Paul Van Carter of Salon, Soda Pictures has boarded UK distribution of the film, which is based on the true story of Ivan Mishukov, who in 1996 walked out of his Moscow apartment at the age of four and spent two years living on the city streets where he was adopted by a pack of wild dogs.
The shoot is due to get underway in early 2015 and will take in London, Moscow and Chile with casting currently underway.
Funding comes from the BFI - who also gave development support - and Seis Salon Workshop.
Artist and filmmaker Kotting previously directed 2012 doc Swandown, which played at Cph: Dox, and 2009 drama...
UK production outfit Salon Pictures has entered pre-production on Andrew Kötting’s feature adaptation of Hattie Naylor’s stage play Ivan and the Dogs.
Written by Naylor and produced by Nick Taussig and Paul Van Carter of Salon, Soda Pictures has boarded UK distribution of the film, which is based on the true story of Ivan Mishukov, who in 1996 walked out of his Moscow apartment at the age of four and spent two years living on the city streets where he was adopted by a pack of wild dogs.
The shoot is due to get underway in early 2015 and will take in London, Moscow and Chile with casting currently underway.
Funding comes from the BFI - who also gave development support - and Seis Salon Workshop.
Artist and filmmaker Kotting previously directed 2012 doc Swandown, which played at Cph: Dox, and 2009 drama...
- 12/11/2014
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
Ben Gibson, the departing Director of the London Film School, has been appointed to a new senior role at Aftrs, the Australian Film Television & Radio School, as Director, Degree Programs. He will start work in Sydney in September.
Gibson will play a key leadership role in ensuring the successful delivery and development of a new three-year Aftrs Bachelor of Arts (Screen) degree and Aftrs Screen and Screen Business Masters degrees, which are being restructured and relaunched for 2015.
“Ben is eminently qualified for this pivotal new role at Aftrs, and I’m thrilled that he could be persuaded to bring his considerable skills, experience and academic rigor to Australia. His 14 years as Director of the very successful London Film School are notable for his work in building up the school’s reputation in the UK and abroad and expanding and accrediting its prestigious postgraduate degrees. Ben has also been a very successful and original independent producer and production executive, and has previously worked in distribution and exhibition, so he comes with a deep knowledge of the international screen industry at all levels,” said Sandra Levy, CEO of the Aftrs.
Prior to joining the London Film School in 2001, Gibson worked as a film distributor and independent producer, and as Head of Production at the British Film Institute from 1988 to 1998. His production and executive production credits include Terence Davies' " The Long Day Closes," Derek Jarman's "Wittgenstein," John Maybury's "Love is the Devil," Carine Adler's "Under the Skin"and Jasmin Dizdar's "Beautiful People," as well as 20 other low budget features and many shorts by UK directors including Patrick Keiller, Gurinder Chadha, Lynne Ramsay, Richard Kwietniowski and Andrew Kotting. As a partner in distributors The Other Cinema/Metro Pictures he acquired and promoted films by Pedro Almodovar, Chris Marker, Chantal Akerman and Jean-Luc Godard as well as opening the West End’s Metro Cinema in 1986. He has also been a theater director, a repertory film programmer and a film critic and journalist. He leaves Lfs at the end of July.
Ben Gibson said: “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to Sandra Levy’s vision of Aftrs as a complete screen school -- and to get the chance to work in the Australian film industry, one I’ve hugely admired and followed -- so far from a great distance. Aftrs offers a special combination of good things: self-confidence, an extraordinary heritage, great creative ambition, exceptional resources, a wide educational scope and a central mission in a dynamic and productive screen industry. It’s rightly considered to be one of the great film schools of the world. I can’t wait to join the team and get started there.”
Gibson’s final year at Lfs has been attended by great creative success. The school won 35 festival prizes and mentions in 2013-14, including a BAFTA nomination. Ms Levy pointed out that this year’s Palme d'Or for Best Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival was won by Leidi, the Lfs graduation film of Simón Mesa Soto. Also at Cannes, amongst seven graduates featured in the 2014 selection, "The Salt of the Earth," co-directed by Lfs graduate Juliano Ribeiro Salgado with Wim Wenders, was awarded the Un Certain Regard’s Special Jury Prize.
Director Mike Leigh, Chair of Governors at the London Film School, in announcing Ben’s departure earlier this year, said: “Ben Gibson has led Lfs from strength to strength over his fourteen years of outstanding service, and we will be sad to see him go.”
Aftrs is Australia’s national screen arts and broadcasting school and has been named as one of the Top 20 film schools in the world by industry journal, The Hollywood Reporter. As an elite specialist institution, Aftrs provides excellence in education through its practice based model, and aspires to deliver a dynamic educational offering that prepares the most talented and creative students – novice, experienced, fully fledged professional specialists – to be platform agnostic, creative and resilient in an industry subject to constant changes in knowledge and technology. The new BA Screen is a 3-year program offering a strong base in the understanding of story and screen history alongside a comprehensive introduction to the skills of screen production.
Gibson will play a key leadership role in ensuring the successful delivery and development of a new three-year Aftrs Bachelor of Arts (Screen) degree and Aftrs Screen and Screen Business Masters degrees, which are being restructured and relaunched for 2015.
“Ben is eminently qualified for this pivotal new role at Aftrs, and I’m thrilled that he could be persuaded to bring his considerable skills, experience and academic rigor to Australia. His 14 years as Director of the very successful London Film School are notable for his work in building up the school’s reputation in the UK and abroad and expanding and accrediting its prestigious postgraduate degrees. Ben has also been a very successful and original independent producer and production executive, and has previously worked in distribution and exhibition, so he comes with a deep knowledge of the international screen industry at all levels,” said Sandra Levy, CEO of the Aftrs.
Prior to joining the London Film School in 2001, Gibson worked as a film distributor and independent producer, and as Head of Production at the British Film Institute from 1988 to 1998. His production and executive production credits include Terence Davies' " The Long Day Closes," Derek Jarman's "Wittgenstein," John Maybury's "Love is the Devil," Carine Adler's "Under the Skin"and Jasmin Dizdar's "Beautiful People," as well as 20 other low budget features and many shorts by UK directors including Patrick Keiller, Gurinder Chadha, Lynne Ramsay, Richard Kwietniowski and Andrew Kotting. As a partner in distributors The Other Cinema/Metro Pictures he acquired and promoted films by Pedro Almodovar, Chris Marker, Chantal Akerman and Jean-Luc Godard as well as opening the West End’s Metro Cinema in 1986. He has also been a theater director, a repertory film programmer and a film critic and journalist. He leaves Lfs at the end of July.
Ben Gibson said: “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to Sandra Levy’s vision of Aftrs as a complete screen school -- and to get the chance to work in the Australian film industry, one I’ve hugely admired and followed -- so far from a great distance. Aftrs offers a special combination of good things: self-confidence, an extraordinary heritage, great creative ambition, exceptional resources, a wide educational scope and a central mission in a dynamic and productive screen industry. It’s rightly considered to be one of the great film schools of the world. I can’t wait to join the team and get started there.”
Gibson’s final year at Lfs has been attended by great creative success. The school won 35 festival prizes and mentions in 2013-14, including a BAFTA nomination. Ms Levy pointed out that this year’s Palme d'Or for Best Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival was won by Leidi, the Lfs graduation film of Simón Mesa Soto. Also at Cannes, amongst seven graduates featured in the 2014 selection, "The Salt of the Earth," co-directed by Lfs graduate Juliano Ribeiro Salgado with Wim Wenders, was awarded the Un Certain Regard’s Special Jury Prize.
Director Mike Leigh, Chair of Governors at the London Film School, in announcing Ben’s departure earlier this year, said: “Ben Gibson has led Lfs from strength to strength over his fourteen years of outstanding service, and we will be sad to see him go.”
Aftrs is Australia’s national screen arts and broadcasting school and has been named as one of the Top 20 film schools in the world by industry journal, The Hollywood Reporter. As an elite specialist institution, Aftrs provides excellence in education through its practice based model, and aspires to deliver a dynamic educational offering that prepares the most talented and creative students – novice, experienced, fully fledged professional specialists – to be platform agnostic, creative and resilient in an industry subject to constant changes in knowledge and technology. The new BA Screen is a 3-year program offering a strong base in the understanding of story and screen history alongside a comprehensive introduction to the skills of screen production.
- 7/15/2014
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Outgoing director of the London Film School to join Australian Film School.
Ben Gibson, the departing director of the London Film School, has been appointed to a new senior role at Aftrs, the Australian Film Television & Radio School, as director, degree programs. He will start work in Sydney in September.
Gibson will play a key leadership role in ensuring the successful delivery and development of a new three-year Aftrs Bachelor of Arts (Screen) degree and Aftrs Screen and Screen Business Masters degrees, which are being restructured and relaunched for 2015.
Prior to joining the Lfs in 2001, Gibson worked as a film distributor and independent producer, and as head of production at the British Film Institute (BFI) from 1988 to 1998.
His production and executive production credits include Terence Davies’ The Long Day Closes, Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein, John Maybury’s Love is the Devil, Carine Adler’s Under the Skin and Jasmin Dizdar’s Beautiful People, as well as...
Ben Gibson, the departing director of the London Film School, has been appointed to a new senior role at Aftrs, the Australian Film Television & Radio School, as director, degree programs. He will start work in Sydney in September.
Gibson will play a key leadership role in ensuring the successful delivery and development of a new three-year Aftrs Bachelor of Arts (Screen) degree and Aftrs Screen and Screen Business Masters degrees, which are being restructured and relaunched for 2015.
Prior to joining the Lfs in 2001, Gibson worked as a film distributor and independent producer, and as head of production at the British Film Institute (BFI) from 1988 to 1998.
His production and executive production credits include Terence Davies’ The Long Day Closes, Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein, John Maybury’s Love is the Devil, Carine Adler’s Under the Skin and Jasmin Dizdar’s Beautiful People, as well as...
- 7/3/2014
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
Bath Film Festival | Nordic Film Festival | Assemble: A Survey Of Recent Artists' Film And Video In Britain 2008-2013 | Utopia
Bath Film Festival
As well as funding this festival, IMDb (the world's biggest movie site) is sponsoring some new awards, all of which hopefully means punters get a great selection of films. Sneak previews include Ralph Fiennes's Dickens movie The Invisible Woman, Robert Redford's All Is Lost and Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom. Plus a striking pair of religious screenings: The Last Temptation Of Christ in Wells Cathedral, and The Passion Of Joan Of Arc in Bath Abbey, with a live score by Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Will Gregory (Goldfrapp).
Various venues, Mon to 8 Dec
Nordic Film Festival, London, Edinburgh & Glasgow
Our Scandinavian neighbours are probably scratching their heads at our seemingly never-ending obsession with their TV detective shows. Why aren't we as fascinated with their movies as well?...
Bath Film Festival
As well as funding this festival, IMDb (the world's biggest movie site) is sponsoring some new awards, all of which hopefully means punters get a great selection of films. Sneak previews include Ralph Fiennes's Dickens movie The Invisible Woman, Robert Redford's All Is Lost and Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom. Plus a striking pair of religious screenings: The Last Temptation Of Christ in Wells Cathedral, and The Passion Of Joan Of Arc in Bath Abbey, with a live score by Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Will Gregory (Goldfrapp).
Various venues, Mon to 8 Dec
Nordic Film Festival, London, Edinburgh & Glasgow
Our Scandinavian neighbours are probably scratching their heads at our seemingly never-ending obsession with their TV detective shows. Why aren't we as fascinated with their movies as well?...
- 11/23/2013
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Experimental British filmmaker Andrew Kötting returned to select cinemas earlier this year with his latest outing Swandown (2012), a typically boundary-pushing blend of styles and tropes that challenges our own perception of 'Britishness' as the eyes of the world descended on the city of London for the 2012 Olympic Games. To celebrate the Dual Format release of Kötting's new film next Thursday, we've kindly been provided with Three copies of Swandown to give away to our loyal readership, courtesy of Cornerhouse. This is an exclusive competition for our Facebook and Twitter fans, so if you haven't already, 'Like' us at facebook.com/CineVueUK or follow us @CineVue before answering the question below.
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- 11/22/2012
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ British psycho-geographer Iain Sinclair was one of the more vocal opponents to the London 2012 Olympics because, to quote one of the contributors of Andrew Kötting's Swandown (2012), "he [Sinclair] doesn't think anything is allowed to happen in Hackney without his permission". At least that is the opinion put forward by comedian Stewart Lee in the gentle chiding he gives him during a brief stint in an avian pedalo in Kötting's latest visual oddity. The film, born partly of a desire to make an anti-Olympic statement, is a surreal and experimental travelogue through the waterways of southern Britain.
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- 11/19/2012
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
This documentary by quirky British film-maker Andrew Kötting and the eccentrically brilliant urban historian and social geographer Iain Sinclair traces a journey they made recently by sea, river and canal from Hastings on the Sussex coast to the site of the 2012 Olympics. Their vessel was a pedalo in the shape of a swan, Kötting wore a dark three-piece suit and Sinclair jeans and a battered baseball cap, and the aim was to draw attention to the antisocial, hubristic stupidity of the Games and their chosen location. Along the way the pair comment on the surrounding countryside and its history, using old newsreel film and quoting from Edward Lear, Conrad, James, Eliot, Edmund Spenser, Edith Sitwell, Pound, Brecht and Werner Herzog, and occasionally they let others do some pedalling.
Like a cross between Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat and Wg Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, this is a...
Like a cross between Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat and Wg Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, this is a...
- 7/21/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
The Dark Knight Rises (12A)
(Christopher Nolan, 2012, Us/UK) Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine. 164 mins
As big and dark and serious as The Avengers was big and light and fun, the climax to Nolan's Batman trilogy ticks most of the boxes it was demanded to – which is quite an achievement. There's an Occupy-style theme to baddy Bane's Gotham City lockdown, which forces Bruce Wayne to consider his 1% financial status and Batman to revive his punching and growling skills (prompted by Hathaway's slinky cat burglar). Some cheesy cliches (and questionable politics) are needed to tie it all together, but it's still the solid, epic finale you'd hoped for.
Something From Nothing: The Art Of Rap (15)
(Ice-t, Andy Baybutt, 2012, UK/Us) 111 mins
The well-connected director calls on the biggest names in rap (Eminem, Q-Tip, Melle Mel, Snoop Dogg, etc), asks them a...
(Christopher Nolan, 2012, Us/UK) Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine. 164 mins
As big and dark and serious as The Avengers was big and light and fun, the climax to Nolan's Batman trilogy ticks most of the boxes it was demanded to – which is quite an achievement. There's an Occupy-style theme to baddy Bane's Gotham City lockdown, which forces Bruce Wayne to consider his 1% financial status and Batman to revive his punching and growling skills (prompted by Hathaway's slinky cat burglar). Some cheesy cliches (and questionable politics) are needed to tie it all together, but it's still the solid, epic finale you'd hoped for.
Something From Nothing: The Art Of Rap (15)
(Ice-t, Andy Baybutt, 2012, UK/Us) 111 mins
The well-connected director calls on the biggest names in rap (Eminem, Q-Tip, Melle Mel, Snoop Dogg, etc), asks them a...
- 7/20/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Cocking a snook at the Olympic torch procession two men have plotted their own epic journey – along the waterways from Hastings to east London in a giant fibreglass swan
'Ahoy there!" shouts film-maker Andrew Kötting to a dredging vessel on the Lee Navigation canal, just outside London's Olympic Park. The man on the boat gives us a grudging wave. Kötting explains that the same man wouldn't let him pass any further up the canal yesterday. Nor would the Gurkhas who guard the Olympic site.
This could have something to do with our mode of transport. I am sitting beside Kötting in a two-person fibreglass pedalo in the shape of a giant swan. Or it could have something to do with my co-pilot: Kötting is wearing mirrored shades and a shabby, dark blue suit on top of a cardigan embroidered with swans. He hasn't washed the suit for the past month,...
'Ahoy there!" shouts film-maker Andrew Kötting to a dredging vessel on the Lee Navigation canal, just outside London's Olympic Park. The man on the boat gives us a grudging wave. Kötting explains that the same man wouldn't let him pass any further up the canal yesterday. Nor would the Gurkhas who guard the Olympic site.
This could have something to do with our mode of transport. I am sitting beside Kötting in a two-person fibreglass pedalo in the shape of a giant swan. Or it could have something to do with my co-pilot: Kötting is wearing mirrored shades and a shabby, dark blue suit on top of a cardigan embroidered with swans. He hasn't washed the suit for the past month,...
- 7/20/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
It’s perhaps not that surprising that Ice Age 4 shot straight back up to the top of the Box Office chart theatrical release this week, but the sheer volume by which it eclipsed The Amazing Spider Man is really quite something. Spidey took in a still respectable £4mllion but this was dwarfed by Ice Age’s epic £10 million haul. I guess one should never underestimate the all-round family appeal of these Ice Age movies, and it looks set to be one of the highest grossing movies of the year. If the figures keep looking this good, it won’t be much of a surprise when Ice Age 5 : The Neanderthal Strikes Back gets green lit in a few years’ time.
This week of course, that £10million take by Ice Age could appear like pocket change as The Dark Knight Rises finally arrives on the big screen. After months of trailers,...
This week of course, that £10million take by Ice Age could appear like pocket change as The Dark Knight Rises finally arrives on the big screen. After months of trailers,...
- 7/20/2012
- by Rob Keeling
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
★★★☆☆ Following hot on the heels of last year's French fancy This Our Still Life (2011), visual artist Andrew Kötting returns to selected cinema screens with Swandown (2012), a very British travelogue following the filmmaker and an assorted band of associates as they make their way from Hastings to Hackney, via the Olympic site, in a swan-shaped pedalo. Taking its cues from Kötting's 1997 piece Gallivant - where he toured Britain's coastlines with multiple generations of his family - this unique filmmaker manages to squeeze vital meaning out of the most bizarre of means.
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- 7/20/2012
- by CineVue
- CineVue
The writer, Iain Sinclair, spent last October crossing the waterways of Kent and east London in a swan-shaped pedalo, in what he refers to as a "relevant and absurd" protest against the Olympics. He teamed up with the artist and film-maker Andrew Kötting, who recorded their journey from Hastings, where they liberated the pedalo from its seaside berth, sailing it through to east London and ending, with a bump, against the site of the Olympics. Sinclair narrated, pedalled a lot and chatted with riverside walkers. In one scene a man by the docks warns the pair of the perils of trenchfoot and Weil's disease, offering to wash down, and then amputate, Sinclair's foot.
- 7/20/2012
- The Independent - Film
A psychogeographical jaunt in a swan pedalo entertains Peter Bradshaw
Psychogeography-lite is one way of describing this film by Andrew Kötting, the indulgent record of a gloriously daft journey the film-maker took in the company of author Iain Sinclair. They travel from Hastings beach to Hackney, round the coast and then north and east, via various circuitous waterways — in a pedalo shaped like a swan. They were perhaps inspired by the seagoing pedalo scene in Sylvain Chomet's Belleville Rendez-Vous (2003). Kötting never changes his suit and often climbs into the muddy water wearing it. Why? And where do they sleep when night falls? In a tent? Or do they seek out a nice little Premier Inn? Who knows?
Anyway, there they are, pedalling industriously away together. Part of their mission is to bring a defiant message of ambulatory freedom to the grim corporate compound that is the Olympic Park, and...
Psychogeography-lite is one way of describing this film by Andrew Kötting, the indulgent record of a gloriously daft journey the film-maker took in the company of author Iain Sinclair. They travel from Hastings beach to Hackney, round the coast and then north and east, via various circuitous waterways — in a pedalo shaped like a swan. They were perhaps inspired by the seagoing pedalo scene in Sylvain Chomet's Belleville Rendez-Vous (2003). Kötting never changes his suit and often climbs into the muddy water wearing it. Why? And where do they sleep when night falls? In a tent? Or do they seek out a nice little Premier Inn? Who knows?
Anyway, there they are, pedalling industriously away together. Part of their mission is to bring a defiant message of ambulatory freedom to the grim corporate compound that is the Olympic Park, and...
- 7/19/2012
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Swandown
Featuring: Andrew Kötting, Iain Sinclair, Alan Moore, Stewart Lee, Marcia Farquhar, Dudley Sutton | Written by Andrew Kötting & Iain Sinclair | Directed by Andrew Kötting
Two men stand waist deep in the ocean, trying to launch a swan-shaped pedalo – the kind you’d find at a local park – on a journey that will take them from Hastings to Hackney via rivers and canals, meeting people of varied experiences and philosophies, a journey that appears to be the very antithesis of the upcoming olympics their final destination – the still-being-built stadium – represents. It takes them more than a day to get the pedalo out there.
The two men are avant-garde filmmaker and performance artist Andrew Kötting and regular partner in crime, writer Iain Sinclair. The film is called Swandown, and the voyage is much more compelling than I just made it sound.
The film is hard to define, even to make a distinction...
Featuring: Andrew Kötting, Iain Sinclair, Alan Moore, Stewart Lee, Marcia Farquhar, Dudley Sutton | Written by Andrew Kötting & Iain Sinclair | Directed by Andrew Kötting
Two men stand waist deep in the ocean, trying to launch a swan-shaped pedalo – the kind you’d find at a local park – on a journey that will take them from Hastings to Hackney via rivers and canals, meeting people of varied experiences and philosophies, a journey that appears to be the very antithesis of the upcoming olympics their final destination – the still-being-built stadium – represents. It takes them more than a day to get the pedalo out there.
The two men are avant-garde filmmaker and performance artist Andrew Kötting and regular partner in crime, writer Iain Sinclair. The film is called Swandown, and the voyage is much more compelling than I just made it sound.
The film is hard to define, even to make a distinction...
- 7/19/2012
- by Mark Allen
- Nerdly
Magic Mike (15)
(Steven Soderbergh, 2012, Us) Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Cody Horn, Matthew McConaughey, Olivia Munn. 110 mins
The roles are reversed but the themes are familiar in this rise-and-fall tale of male strippers, making and losing their way in a (sort of) woman's world. It's like a cross between The Full Monty, Boogie Nights and Showgirls, sketching a landscape of exploitation and desperation – even as it participates in it by serving up the barely clad Tatum and other beef products.
Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World (15)
(Lorene Scafaria, 2012, Us) Steve Carell, Keira Knightley, Patton Oswalt. 101 mins
Do passion and the apocalypse mix? Or Carell and Knightley? This faltering effort tries anyway.
Detachment (15)
(Tony Kaye, 2011, Us) Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden. 98 mins
No provocation left behind in this scathing schoolroom drama with a starry cast.
Ice Age 4: Continental Drift (U)
(Steve Martino, Mark Thurmeier, 2012, Us) Ray Romano, Denis Leary.
(Steven Soderbergh, 2012, Us) Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Cody Horn, Matthew McConaughey, Olivia Munn. 110 mins
The roles are reversed but the themes are familiar in this rise-and-fall tale of male strippers, making and losing their way in a (sort of) woman's world. It's like a cross between The Full Monty, Boogie Nights and Showgirls, sketching a landscape of exploitation and desperation – even as it participates in it by serving up the barely clad Tatum and other beef products.
Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World (15)
(Lorene Scafaria, 2012, Us) Steve Carell, Keira Knightley, Patton Oswalt. 101 mins
Do passion and the apocalypse mix? Or Carell and Knightley? This faltering effort tries anyway.
Detachment (15)
(Tony Kaye, 2011, Us) Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden. 98 mins
No provocation left behind in this scathing schoolroom drama with a starry cast.
Ice Age 4: Continental Drift (U)
(Steve Martino, Mark Thurmeier, 2012, Us) Ray Romano, Denis Leary.
- 7/13/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
The Amazing Spider-Man (12A)
(Marc Webb, 2012, Us) James Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Martin Sheen, Sally Field, Denis Leary. 136 mins
New, improved-formula Spider-Man: does whatever last decade's Spider-Man couldn't! The world was hardly screaming out for a rejigged "origins" story, but this at least gives you less comic-book primary colour and more teen-drama shading. Plus better special effects, although the rooftop monster-battle climax feels same-old. Yes, it's a brazenly commercial exercise, but Garfield's limber geekiness tips the balance.
God Bless America (15)
(Bobcat Goldthwait, 2011, Us) Joel Murray, Tara Lynne Barr, Mackenzie Brooke Smith. 105 mins
American media idiocy literally comes under fire in this outlandish Falling Down-meets-Natural Born Killers shooting spree.
The Hunter (15)
(Daniel Nettheim, 2011, Aus) Willem Dafoe, Frances O'Connor, Sam Neill. 102 mins
Dafoe's craggy gravitas dominates this scenic tale of a hunt for the extinct (or is it?) Tasmanian Tiger.
Strawberry Fields (15)
(Frances Lea, 2012, UK) Anna Madeley, Christine Bottomley.
(Marc Webb, 2012, Us) James Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Martin Sheen, Sally Field, Denis Leary. 136 mins
New, improved-formula Spider-Man: does whatever last decade's Spider-Man couldn't! The world was hardly screaming out for a rejigged "origins" story, but this at least gives you less comic-book primary colour and more teen-drama shading. Plus better special effects, although the rooftop monster-battle climax feels same-old. Yes, it's a brazenly commercial exercise, but Garfield's limber geekiness tips the balance.
God Bless America (15)
(Bobcat Goldthwait, 2011, Us) Joel Murray, Tara Lynne Barr, Mackenzie Brooke Smith. 105 mins
American media idiocy literally comes under fire in this outlandish Falling Down-meets-Natural Born Killers shooting spree.
The Hunter (15)
(Daniel Nettheim, 2011, Aus) Willem Dafoe, Frances O'Connor, Sam Neill. 102 mins
Dafoe's craggy gravitas dominates this scenic tale of a hunt for the extinct (or is it?) Tasmanian Tiger.
Strawberry Fields (15)
(Frances Lea, 2012, UK) Anna Madeley, Christine Bottomley.
- 7/6/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Dark Horse (15)
(Todd Solondz, 2011, Us) Selma Blair, Jordan Gelber, Christopher Walken, Mia Farrow, Justin Bartha, Zachary Booth. 86 mins
Trust Todd Solondz to give us the flipside of movie man-childhood. There's nothing funny or adorable about 35-year-old Abe (Gelber), who lives with his parents, collects action figures and has no idea of his own uselessness. He meets his match (sort of) in the virtually comatose Blair, and what ensues is a romcom that's neither romantic nor comical, but beneath the misanthropy lurks some kind of compassion.
Killer Joe (18)
(William Friedkin, 2011, Us) Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple. 102 mins
Curdling Texan noir and melodrama in a bizarre, curiously fascinating thriller.
The King Of Devil's Island (12A)
(Marius Holst, 2010, Nor/Fra/Swe/Pol) Stellan Skarsgård, Benjamin Helstad. 116 mins
Prison thriller set on a 1950s Norwegian borstal island.
Storage 24 (15)
(Johannes Roberts, 2012, UK) Noel Clarke, Colin O'Donoghue. 87 mins
Minimal sci-fi thriller set in a London storage unit.
(Todd Solondz, 2011, Us) Selma Blair, Jordan Gelber, Christopher Walken, Mia Farrow, Justin Bartha, Zachary Booth. 86 mins
Trust Todd Solondz to give us the flipside of movie man-childhood. There's nothing funny or adorable about 35-year-old Abe (Gelber), who lives with his parents, collects action figures and has no idea of his own uselessness. He meets his match (sort of) in the virtually comatose Blair, and what ensues is a romcom that's neither romantic nor comical, but beneath the misanthropy lurks some kind of compassion.
Killer Joe (18)
(William Friedkin, 2011, Us) Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple. 102 mins
Curdling Texan noir and melodrama in a bizarre, curiously fascinating thriller.
The King Of Devil's Island (12A)
(Marius Holst, 2010, Nor/Fra/Swe/Pol) Stellan Skarsgård, Benjamin Helstad. 116 mins
Prison thriller set on a 1950s Norwegian borstal island.
Storage 24 (15)
(Johannes Roberts, 2012, UK) Noel Clarke, Colin O'Donoghue. 87 mins
Minimal sci-fi thriller set in a London storage unit.
- 6/29/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Silent Souls (15)
(Aleksei Fedorchenko, 2010, Rus) Igor Sergeev, Yuriy Tsurilo, Yuliya Aug. 78 mins
Even by Russian standards, this lyrical road movie is a strange world of its own. It's a journey back in time, as much as across a remote landscape, with a friend helping his boss to give his deceased wife her last rites, according to their ancient tribal ways. Along the drive, we're steeped in strange folklore involving vodka, rivers, small birds and ornamental pubic hair. Is it for real? Or an elaborate joke told with a very straight face? Does it matter?
The Five Year Engagement (15)
(Nicholas Stoller, 2012, Us) Emily Blunt, Jason Segel, Chris Pratt. 124 mins
The obstacle to true love is built into the title of this romcom, but it's at least smartly handled, as high-flyer Blunt keeps her fiance in perpetual limbo.
Where Do We Go Now? (12A)
(Nadine Labaki, 2011, Fra/Leb/Egy/Ita) Claude Baz Moussawbaa,...
(Aleksei Fedorchenko, 2010, Rus) Igor Sergeev, Yuriy Tsurilo, Yuliya Aug. 78 mins
Even by Russian standards, this lyrical road movie is a strange world of its own. It's a journey back in time, as much as across a remote landscape, with a friend helping his boss to give his deceased wife her last rites, according to their ancient tribal ways. Along the drive, we're steeped in strange folklore involving vodka, rivers, small birds and ornamental pubic hair. Is it for real? Or an elaborate joke told with a very straight face? Does it matter?
The Five Year Engagement (15)
(Nicholas Stoller, 2012, Us) Emily Blunt, Jason Segel, Chris Pratt. 124 mins
The obstacle to true love is built into the title of this romcom, but it's at least smartly handled, as high-flyer Blunt keeps her fiance in perpetual limbo.
Where Do We Go Now? (12A)
(Nadine Labaki, 2011, Fra/Leb/Egy/Ita) Claude Baz Moussawbaa,...
- 6/22/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Abandon Normal Devices, Manchester
Just as the Olympic torch passes through Manchester this week, so And offers a warm-up of its own before the full-blown festival coinciding with the Olympics proper. Two new films are the main draw. The first is Swandown, in which film-maker Andrew Kötting and urban psychogeographer and writer Iain Sinclair journey via inland waterways on a swan-shaped pedalo to – you guessed it – the Olympic site over in Stratford (Sinclair is not a fan, by the way). The other, a world premiere, is The Creator, a hallucinatory meditation on the second world war codebreaker and posthumously acclaimed artificial intelligence prophet Alan Turing, by the local duo Al and Al. Both films will be accompanied by their makers, and the And festival will then tour the north-west before returning to Manchester on 29 Aug.
Cornerhouse, Fri & 22 Jun
Open City Docs Fest, London
With 132 films packed into four days like commuters on the tube,...
Just as the Olympic torch passes through Manchester this week, so And offers a warm-up of its own before the full-blown festival coinciding with the Olympics proper. Two new films are the main draw. The first is Swandown, in which film-maker Andrew Kötting and urban psychogeographer and writer Iain Sinclair journey via inland waterways on a swan-shaped pedalo to – you guessed it – the Olympic site over in Stratford (Sinclair is not a fan, by the way). The other, a world premiere, is The Creator, a hallucinatory meditation on the second world war codebreaker and posthumously acclaimed artificial intelligence prophet Alan Turing, by the local duo Al and Al. Both films will be accompanied by their makers, and the And festival will then tour the north-west before returning to Manchester on 29 Aug.
Cornerhouse, Fri & 22 Jun
Open City Docs Fest, London
With 132 films packed into four days like commuters on the tube,...
- 6/15/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Acre After Acre, Mile After Mile, London
If you've had the feeling in recent years that British cinema has become a story of steadily eroding national identity, then here's where you need to be looking. The season's subtitle – Tradition, Memory & Journey In British Folk Cinema – tells you what you need to know: that there's a solid, albeit underfunded, core of film-makers still out there looking for the soul of Britain, and many of them crop up here. Like Chris Petit, who this Thursday accompanies his seminal late-70s road trip Radio On. Or Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair, who'll be previewing their pedalo-powered journey to the Olympics later. Or, fresh to their ranks, Ben Rivers, here with his Scottish wilderness film Two Years At Sea. Look out too for more commercial fare such as The Long Good Friday and The Elephant Man.
Sugar House Studios, E15, Thu to 28 Jun
Jean Gabin,...
If you've had the feeling in recent years that British cinema has become a story of steadily eroding national identity, then here's where you need to be looking. The season's subtitle – Tradition, Memory & Journey In British Folk Cinema – tells you what you need to know: that there's a solid, albeit underfunded, core of film-makers still out there looking for the soul of Britain, and many of them crop up here. Like Chris Petit, who this Thursday accompanies his seminal late-70s road trip Radio On. Or Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair, who'll be previewing their pedalo-powered journey to the Olympics later. Or, fresh to their ranks, Ben Rivers, here with his Scottish wilderness film Two Years At Sea. Look out too for more commercial fare such as The Long Good Friday and The Elephant Man.
Sugar House Studios, E15, Thu to 28 Jun
Jean Gabin,...
- 5/4/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
This study of the day-to-day life of an enigmatic Scottish hermit is intriguing and valuable
What a strange and intriguing film. In grainy, woozy monochrome, and all but wordless, it presents the day-to-day life of an old man who lives utterly alone in remote Scotland in a ramshackle house with a broken-down caravan in the grounds – his background is unexplained. Cutting wood, doing chores, fishing from an inflatable raft, sorting through old photos, he has the look of a hermit or bearded Russian patriarch. The title of this study of extreme solitude reminded me of Ted Hughes's poem Wind: "This house has been far out at sea all night." It is influenced by Andrew Kotting, who is thanked in the credits, and possibly the Argentinian film-maker Lisandro Alonso, although one surreal moment with the caravan reminded me of those weirdo/deadpan Guinness commercials Jonathan Glazer made before moving into feature films.
What a strange and intriguing film. In grainy, woozy monochrome, and all but wordless, it presents the day-to-day life of an old man who lives utterly alone in remote Scotland in a ramshackle house with a broken-down caravan in the grounds – his background is unexplained. Cutting wood, doing chores, fishing from an inflatable raft, sorting through old photos, he has the look of a hermit or bearded Russian patriarch. The title of this study of extreme solitude reminded me of Ted Hughes's poem Wind: "This house has been far out at sea all night." It is influenced by Andrew Kotting, who is thanked in the credits, and possibly the Argentinian film-maker Lisandro Alonso, although one surreal moment with the caravan reminded me of those weirdo/deadpan Guinness commercials Jonathan Glazer made before moving into feature films.
- 5/3/2012
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The Awakening; Take Shelter; Wuthering Heights; 50/50; Tower Heist; Puss in Boots; Happy Feet Two; The Thing
One unexpected side effect of the attritional gore war waged by seemingly endless Saw and Hostel sequels has been the rise of more subtle ghostly chillers whose old-fashioned charms are in stark contrast to the shrieking white noise of modern torture-porn tedium. With the 12-rated haunted-house throwback movie The Woman in Black still making a killing at the UK box office, Nick Murphy's similarly spirited The Awakening (2011, StudioCanal, 15) offers home viewers a few creepy tingles in the vein of (though not of the same calibre as) The Orphanage and The Others.
At the centre of its efficiently executed spell is Rebecca Hall, whose expertly nuanced performance raises this above the level of the humdrum. She plays Florence Cathcart, a sceptical investigator with a penchant for debunking claims of paranormal activity in the ghostly...
One unexpected side effect of the attritional gore war waged by seemingly endless Saw and Hostel sequels has been the rise of more subtle ghostly chillers whose old-fashioned charms are in stark contrast to the shrieking white noise of modern torture-porn tedium. With the 12-rated haunted-house throwback movie The Woman in Black still making a killing at the UK box office, Nick Murphy's similarly spirited The Awakening (2011, StudioCanal, 15) offers home viewers a few creepy tingles in the vein of (though not of the same calibre as) The Orphanage and The Others.
At the centre of its efficiently executed spell is Rebecca Hall, whose expertly nuanced performance raises this above the level of the humdrum. She plays Florence Cathcart, a sceptical investigator with a penchant for debunking claims of paranormal activity in the ghostly...
- 3/25/2012
- by Mark Kermode
- The Guardian - Film News
★★★☆☆ The latest release to come from the BFI's very own DVD label, Andrew Kötting's This Our Still Life (2011) is a deeply personal, lo-fi collage of the director's secluded Pyrenean farmhouse (named simply 'Louyre'), where he lives with his wife Leila and daughter Eden. Eden was born with a rare neurological disease, and thus the farmhouse proves the perfect habitat for Kötting to care for and play with the 23-year-old, free from the hustle-and-bustle of London life.
Read more »...
Read more »...
- 3/20/2012
- by CineVue
- CineVue
It’s the 50th anniversary of the Ann Arbor Film Festival and they’re preparing an all-out blowout on March 27 to April 1 to celebrate! The fest is crammed to the gills with the latest and greatest in experimental and avant-garde film, in addition to a celebration of classic work from Ann Arbors past.
Filmmaker Bruce Baillie was there at the first Aaff — and numerous times since. He’s back this year with a major retrospective of his entire career that spans three separate programs. Baillie, who’ll be in attendance of course, will present a brand-new restored version of his epic pseudo-Western Quick Billy, plus screenings of his classic short movies such as Castro Street, Yellow Horse, Quixote, To Parsifal and more.
There’s also a program dedicated to the films of the late Robert Nelson, including Bleu Shut and Special Warning, as well as sprinklings of underground classics throughout...
Filmmaker Bruce Baillie was there at the first Aaff — and numerous times since. He’s back this year with a major retrospective of his entire career that spans three separate programs. Baillie, who’ll be in attendance of course, will present a brand-new restored version of his epic pseudo-Western Quick Billy, plus screenings of his classic short movies such as Castro Street, Yellow Horse, Quixote, To Parsifal and more.
There’s also a program dedicated to the films of the late Robert Nelson, including Bleu Shut and Special Warning, as well as sprinklings of underground classics throughout...
- 3/7/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Andrew Kötting will be on hand for a Q&A this evening at the Curzon Renoir in London and he'll be taking his new film, This Our Still Life, to Manchester and Brighton over the coming days as well. The BFI has details. Kötting, notes Sukhdev Sandhu in a profile for the Guardian, "has carved out a singular career encompassing sound art, installation pieces, avant-garde theatre, short films, artists' books and full-length features whose cussedness and often unclassifiable nature has led him to be described as the heir to English dissidents such as Derek Jarman and Peter Greenaway."
Jason Wood for Little White Lies: "Evolving as a series of drawings — now collected in a beautiful book — This Our Still Life offers a beguiling and expansive portrait of 'Louyre,' the remote tumbledown Pyrenean hidey-hole that filmmaker Andrew Kötting shares with his partner Leila McMillan and their daughter Eden (the...
Jason Wood for Little White Lies: "Evolving as a series of drawings — now collected in a beautiful book — This Our Still Life offers a beguiling and expansive portrait of 'Louyre,' the remote tumbledown Pyrenean hidey-hole that filmmaker Andrew Kötting shares with his partner Leila McMillan and their daughter Eden (the...
- 11/21/2011
- MUBI
Fifty-one-year-old British painter, performance artist and film-maker Andrew Kötting is best known for an eccentric documentary, Gallivant (1996), about his trip around the coast of Britain with his elderly grandmother and his seven-year-old daughter Eden, a sufferer from Joubert syndrome, a rare condition that affects sight, movement and speech. He's also made This Filthy Earth (2001), a curious transposition of Zola's La Terre to northern England. His latest film, This Our Still Life, is a film poem, collage or meditation about the old remote farmhouse in the Pyrenees in which he and his family have lived off and on since 1989. It's a highly personal, often obscure picture, structured around the four seasons, with poignant images, speeches on the soundtrack and a superimposed, somewhat portentous text in caps. Eden, now 23, figures prominently and is an endearing presence. It's been chosen as the film of the month in December's Sight & Sound, where Iain Sinclair,...
- 11/20/2011
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
On the eve of the release of his most personal film to date, This Our Still Life, the avant garde director talks to Sukhdev Sandhu
"Central heating is my biggest enemy," declares the film-maker Andrew Kötting. "I'm not a big fan of double glazing. Or the Shopping Channel. Or sweet-smelling perfumes. Vanilla living is always something that makes me physically sick." He pauses for thought. "Actually, the biggest enemy is often myself. I get angry with the voices in my head: I want to shut them up."
Coming from any other director, these words could easily sound abrasive or disturbing. From Kötting, they're absolutely normal, almost reassuring. In 2001, he issued a Dogme 95-inspired manifesto entitled eArthouse Declaration of Spurious Intent that not only urged "All film-makers to have spent time with their arms or feet inside another sentient being, alive or dead", but also that "The film should show signs...
"Central heating is my biggest enemy," declares the film-maker Andrew Kötting. "I'm not a big fan of double glazing. Or the Shopping Channel. Or sweet-smelling perfumes. Vanilla living is always something that makes me physically sick." He pauses for thought. "Actually, the biggest enemy is often myself. I get angry with the voices in my head: I want to shut them up."
Coming from any other director, these words could easily sound abrasive or disturbing. From Kötting, they're absolutely normal, almost reassuring. In 2001, he issued a Dogme 95-inspired manifesto entitled eArthouse Declaration of Spurious Intent that not only urged "All film-makers to have spent time with their arms or feet inside another sentient being, alive or dead", but also that "The film should show signs...
- 11/19/2011
- by Sukhdev Sandhu
- The Guardian - Film News
Magic Trip (15)
(Alison Ellwood, Alex Gibney, 2011, Us) 107 mins
Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters' LSD-fuelled 1964 road trip is one of those seminal cultural moments you can't believe really happened, at least not like it did in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. But here it is, chaotically shot and narrated by the culprits themselves and painstakingly reassembled. That makes for a certain lack of perspective, and watching others having a great time isn't necessarily the same as having one, but the contrast between these turned-on teens and square 60s America is often hilarious.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (12A)
(Bill Condon, 2011, Us) Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner. 117 mins
At last, some consummation! Bella and Edward's wedding comes a few movies too late for neutral observers, but the supernatural saga is in no danger of coming to an abrupt end, thanks to the franchise's determination to vampirically milk fans dry.
(Alison Ellwood, Alex Gibney, 2011, Us) 107 mins
Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters' LSD-fuelled 1964 road trip is one of those seminal cultural moments you can't believe really happened, at least not like it did in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. But here it is, chaotically shot and narrated by the culprits themselves and painstakingly reassembled. That makes for a certain lack of perspective, and watching others having a great time isn't necessarily the same as having one, but the contrast between these turned-on teens and square 60s America is often hilarious.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (12A)
(Bill Condon, 2011, Us) Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner. 117 mins
At last, some consummation! Bella and Edward's wedding comes a few movies too late for neutral observers, but the supernatural saga is in no danger of coming to an abrupt end, thanks to the franchise's determination to vampirically milk fans dry.
- 11/19/2011
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
The latest docu-collage from artist Andrew Kotting, about his family life in the Pyrenees, is something of a frustration
There are interesting moments in this brief, stylised feature from British artist and film-maker Andrew Kötting: a collage of images and voices. But I confess to finding it often opaque and slightly frustrating. These are impressions of his life in the French Pyrenean farmhouse where he lives with his partner Leila and 22-year-old daughter Eden, who has learning difficulties due to being born with a genetic disorder. With a deep and obvious love, Kötting films the paintings that his daughter completes: these are her still life studies, and perhaps the whole family has a "still life" in this remote region. It looks idyllic and probably is. There is something bold in recording their lives in something other than the brow-furrowing language of a conventional documentary about disability. But I found...
There are interesting moments in this brief, stylised feature from British artist and film-maker Andrew Kötting: a collage of images and voices. But I confess to finding it often opaque and slightly frustrating. These are impressions of his life in the French Pyrenean farmhouse where he lives with his partner Leila and 22-year-old daughter Eden, who has learning difficulties due to being born with a genetic disorder. With a deep and obvious love, Kötting films the paintings that his daughter completes: these are her still life studies, and perhaps the whole family has a "still life" in this remote region. It looks idyllic and probably is. There is something bold in recording their lives in something other than the brow-furrowing language of a conventional documentary about disability. But I found...
- 11/18/2011
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
"After a period in which versions of Austen hogged our screens, the Brontës have fought back," writes Boyd Tonkin in a piece for the Independent that begins, by the way, with a brief but rousing history of Charlotte's detestation of Jane Austen. "Released today, Andrea Arnold's savagely uncompromising Wuthering Heights joins a line of adaptations of Emily's only surviving novel that began in 1920 (a lost work by Av Bramble) and went on to include renderings from directors as varied as William Wyler — with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon still the ranking Heathcliff and Cathy Earnshaw to many fans — and Yoshishige Yoshida, Luis Buñuel and Jacques Rivette. Earlier this year, Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre, with Mia Wasikowska as the uncowed governess and Michael Fassbender the sulphurous Mr Rochester, offered a rather smoother ride through another much-adapted book, albeit one that shares with Arnold — and the Brontës — a rapt attention...
- 11/13/2011
- MUBI
Encounters Short Film Festival, Bristol
The cinematic Trojan horse returns, smuggling short film-makers into the big league, even more so now it's a qualifying festival for the Oscars and Baftas. Admittedly, some of this year's entries hardly need a leg-up. Pitch Black Heist, for example, stars Michael Fassbender, while animation Bertie Crisp features the voices of Tamsin Greig and Kathy Burke. Notable first-timers this year include the Jesus And Mary Chain's Douglas Hart (Long Distance Information, starring Peter Mullan) and Matthew "Garth Marenghi" Holness (A Gun For George), but with 180 new live-action and animated films, there are plenty of new names to be made for sure.
Watershed & Arnolfini, Wed to 20 Nov
Soundtrack Film Festival, Cardiff
As the title suggests, music and cinema come together here, and not always in predictable ways. Ok, so Guillemots are playing an improvised score to Fw Murnau's 1926 silent classic Faust but how will Ivory Tower,...
The cinematic Trojan horse returns, smuggling short film-makers into the big league, even more so now it's a qualifying festival for the Oscars and Baftas. Admittedly, some of this year's entries hardly need a leg-up. Pitch Black Heist, for example, stars Michael Fassbender, while animation Bertie Crisp features the voices of Tamsin Greig and Kathy Burke. Notable first-timers this year include the Jesus And Mary Chain's Douglas Hart (Long Distance Information, starring Peter Mullan) and Matthew "Garth Marenghi" Holness (A Gun For George), but with 180 new live-action and animated films, there are plenty of new names to be made for sure.
Watershed & Arnolfini, Wed to 20 Nov
Soundtrack Film Festival, Cardiff
As the title suggests, music and cinema come together here, and not always in predictable ways. Ok, so Guillemots are playing an improvised score to Fw Murnau's 1926 silent classic Faust but how will Ivory Tower,...
- 11/12/2011
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
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