Venue: Tyneside Cinema
Dates: Friday 26th March
Time: 4pm-6pm
World class programmer Philip Ilson (LSFF) selected some great films for you that tease out the themes of this festival. Philip will introduce the screening and tell you what he looks for in short films.
Crossing Boundaries’
Censorship, memory and crossing boundaries are all linked in some way, such as the crossing of personal and physical borders in stories of people trafficking where both physical (country) borders and personal borders are crossed. In these cases, it is the borders of how humans treat each other that are crossed, with people going to extreme lengths to survive. But also in stories of ‘outcasts’ in societies, similar personal borders are breached, with individuals stepping outside of what is acceptable in their society. This programme of short films crosses boundaries in these different ways; do we find the portrayal of cadavers acceptable in the stunningly visual DANSE MACABRE, made in collaboration with radical Canadian theatre designer Robert Lepage, or are we happy with the terrorist persona of the mid-west American pro-wrester in TEAM TALIBAN? All these films challenge our boundaries in multiple ways.
Films screening (listed here in alphabetical order):
CARGO (Leo Woodhead, New Zealand / Czech Republic, 12 mins)
While trafficking people across a border, the driver makes an unlikely friend and ally.
DANCE MACABRE (Pedro Pires, Canada, 9 min)
Based on a concept by Robert Lepage, Pedro Pires’s exquisitely photographed morbid ballet pushes the traditional dance film to new cinematic heights. In haunting deserted spaces, the choreographed erratic motions of a corpse evoke the final spasms of life and a last struggle with the emotional turns of the past.
HO! TERRIBLE EXTERIORS (Lior Shamriz, Israel, 28 min)
An attempt to combine two different types of movies. One is the poetic and erotic journey of an urban couple trying to reconnect with nature. The other is a shallow comedy about a love triangle in Tel Aviv.
TEAM TALIBAN (Benjamin Kegan, US, 12 min)
A documentary about Adeel Alam, an Arab-American trying to carve out a place in the semi-pro wrestling world. He does so by adopting a terrorist persona in the ring.
YOU’RE THE STRANGER HERE (Tom Geens, UK, 16 min)
You’re the Stranger Here is a story about a middle-aged woman with a crazy leg. She lives in a fascist regime where people with her condition get shot on the spot. Inspired by the courageous death of one of her fellow sufferers, she goes on an all or nothing quest to change the world, falling in love with her executor in the process.
Anonymous 
Heaven help us from LSFF
After experiencing the LSFF programmed short film selection I must express what a disappointment this event was. Aside from starting late, which, is a pet peeve of mine (why can’t this many people stay organized?!?), the billing slated for 4 in the afternoon on a Friday promised a series of films on the theme of borders being crossed. Sounds interesting right? No doubt, being programmed by Philip Illson who is billed as a “world class programmer” one could have some expectation of an interesting and thought provoking series of films. Sadly, this expectation was misled. What the program should have said was a jaded and depressed film reviewer selects a series of often incomprehensible and poorly made films about death and unhappiness (not necessarily in that order) with the attached warning label that “viewing these films on a pleasant Friday afternoon has been known to cause audiences to abandon all hope in the human condition”. The four films vary between the bittersweet to the woefully inadequate to the desperately seeking a polite exit variety.
Cargo Directed by Leo Woodhead this film kicks off what is to be two hours of short film splendor. The film is about a boy who is in the middle of being trafficked and the trafficker who tries to sell the boy to a pedophile, fails because of the horrendous scars the boy’s father had inflicted and then adopts him as his son. It is sort of sweet in a really really creepy way. It stays that way for about three minutes right up till the point when the boy decides to kill his cat and help the man continue to traffic in women. Then it offers perhaps one of the bleakest portrayal of humanity out of the four films shown. Welcome to happy hour.
Next up was Adeel Alam and his in the ring persona Team Taliban. The short is more a documentary of Adeel’s place as a Muslim in semi-pro wrestling and how the persona he is asked to perform plays out in the small US towns. Unfortunately the short is too short. Just when the story starts to get interesting and interrogate the connection between politics, militancy and persona the film ends. Director Benjamin Kegan’s decision to call cut at the 12 min mark was an unfortunate one. Team Taliban was decisively the high water mark for positive emotion during the festival due mostly to its bittersweet comedic moments. Honestly this was the most uplifting films in the festival. Honestly.
Next up was a disjointed narrative by Director Tom Geens titled You’re A Stranger Here. The short feels like a failed attempt to copy Brazil right down to the very British fascist regime. Unfortunately for Geen, the synopsis of the story online is more informative to the viewer then the actual film. The narrative is forced and this carries over to the acting. The director seems to be trying oh so hard to make an art house film and the results are more parody then genuine artifact. The film contains a near complete list of clichés including an ignored extra judicial killing in the middle of the street in the afternoon, family violence, incest, adultery, almost public sex and finally (relief!) the expected death of nearly everyone in the film. If you have seen this film and found yourself reaching for a bottle by the end you’d be in good company.
The second last film is unfortunately the longest one screened. Ho! Terrible Exteriors is a film to avoid. Where as You’re A Stranger Here’s online synopsis deciphers the disjointed content into something more understandable, this films the synopsis seems to be about an entirely different film. The film is honestly 20 minutes too long and director Lior Shamriz seems obsessed about length rather than quality that had the unfortunate effect of torturing the very audience whom he is trying to win over. I have one word for this film and its director: editing. Given that this train wreck is a whole half an hour in length one wonders why it was included at all as it was twice the length of the next longest film and feels longer still. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your disposition at this point) more than half of the main characters survive this film. The unfortunate part that ones that don’t make it get graphically killed at the end.
Finally we have the Canadian production Dance Macabra based on the ideas of Robert Lepage and filmed by Pedro Pire. Of all the films on offer this is the most beautifully filmed and visually gorgeous. Also unlike the other films this one begins with a scantily clad women hanging herself and thus we have the death at the start rather than the end. What follows next is a ballet like process of the corpse moving from having hanged herself to morticians table through to coffin and finally onto cremation. Influences of Circe de Soliel are ever present in this film. I will admit to a health laugh when this film stated screening as given the ending of the last film I was curious, perhaps you could say morbidly so, of what would come next. The eroticism of the “corpse” and the filmmakers choice to sexualize the body leads to some very disturbing overtones throughout the brief 9 minute film. Really my problem is not with the film itself but its position in the screening. Really this film becomes the last nail in the coffin of hope by the time the curtain falls.
By the end of this festival I am left with the impression that London is filled with sad people weary of life and without hope. Given the theme of border crossing is broad enough to encompass a whole range cinematic genera the reliance of Mr. Illson on just one thin thread for all four film was exceedingly disappointing. As was covered in the introduction at least one of the film (at this point I don’t know which one) was included because the director had crossed “personal boundaries” in making it. While I applaud this creativity in theme, the relative unknown stature of all the directors leads one to wonder whether some small joke is being had over on the audience. Instead I would ask that a more honest theme for this series be “things die horribly and thus there is no hope” opposed to the euphemisms of “boarders and their crossing”. All in all, not the happiest selection for a Friday afternoon.