{"id":3469,"date":"2008-10-24T23:20:30","date_gmt":"2008-10-24T22:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=3469"},"modified":"2008-11-24T00:37:25","modified_gmt":"2008-11-23T23:37:25","slug":"lff-2008-day-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2008\/10\/24\/lff-2008-day-9\/","title":{"rendered":"LFF 2008: Day 9"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Today was another busy day in which I spoke to a couple of directors with films showing at the Festival and saw another film in the evening.<\/p>\n

A combination of a cold that simply will not go away and a sore neck (I somehow managed to strain it a couple of days ago) has made walking around town and even watching films a little painful.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But despite all this, it was an interesting day and the two directors were behind two excellent films with intriguing subjects.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In the morning I went up to a members club in Soho<\/a> where I met up with Mark Hartley<\/a><\/strong>, the director of Not Quite Hollywood<\/a><\/strong>, a documentary about the wave of Australian exploitation cinema that flourished in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

He was a very funny and engaging guy to talk to and made light of the numerous noises that plagued the drawing room we spoke in.<\/p>\n

Not only was there the ubiquitous police sirens that routinely plague Soho, but at one point there was a knocking on the walls and door so persistent that I though Jack Nicholson was going to burst in with an axe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His film is a real gem – a very energetic and engaging documentary that I think will get a great response at the festival and generate good word of mouth.<\/p>\n

It features a lot of hilarious footage from some films of the time – some of them which beggar belief – but also makes some interesting points about Aussie culture as well.<\/p>\n

At lunch time I went to one of my favourite bars in town to flick through the day’s papers, especially The Times which (as you might expect) was full of W.<\/a> <\/strong>coverage.<\/p>\n

You can listen to the full interview with Mark here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a><\/p>\n

The newspaper is the sponsor of the festival and last night’s premiere was also The Times gala screening (each big premiere at the festival has it’s own sponsor).\u00a0<\/p>\n

I liked the film although some of the people I have spoken to about it have been decidedly mixed in their reaction.<\/p>\n

Part of the problem is that Bush has been in everyone’s face for the last 8 years and I think there is a certain amount of fatigue over the 43rd US president.<\/p>\n

That said, it is interesting to note that since the US primaries<\/a> began in January he has effectively been a ghost figure overshadowed by the extraordinary presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

In fact, I wonder if in future Oliver Stone<\/a> would be tempted to make a film about these primaries as they have been filled with great characters, had a gripping narrative and also revealed much about America as a country.<\/p>\n

Maybe the problem the film has had in the US is that it can’t cover the almost unbelievably dramatic real\u00a0events of the last year, including the current financial meltdown<\/a>\u00a0– surely the final nail in the coffin of the Bush era.<\/p>\n

Despite all this I thought W. was a brave piece of film-making.<\/p>\n

Although it would have been easy to take cheap shots at Bush it explored his life through the lens of the build up to Iraq in a way that was both thoughtful and engaging.<\/p>\n

It charted at number four in the US box office last week (it appears more people were interested in seeing a talking dog) but I suspect it will do better in foreign territories.<\/p>\n

One of the massive advantages of bar I was in was that it has free and easy wifi<\/a>, which is surprisingly difficult to find in London.<\/p>\n

\"Laptop\"<\/p>\n

No horrible BT OpenZone<\/a> login nonsense or failed connections, just a popup window saying you’re online. Perfect.<\/p>\n

This is part of the reason I frequent this place so much and use it as my de facto office in town. Other establishments please note.<\/p>\n

I edited and uploaded my Mark Hartley interview on to my laptop before heading off down to a hotel in central London where a lot of the interviews for the festival are taking place.<\/p>\n

For some of the bigger films a PR company or the distributor will arrange a press junket where different media outlets go along and chat with the cast and\/or director for an allotted period of time.<\/p>\n

For some of the smaller films at the festival with a smaller PR budget the filmmakers hook up with journalists a designated spot at the bar of the hotel.<\/p>\n

It’s a bit like speed dating as you pick who you want to talk to and then move on to the next table.<\/p>\n

In the afternoon though I met up with the director Ari Folman<\/a><\/strong> who is the man behind Waltz With Bashir<\/a><\/strong>, one of the key gala screenings at this year’s festival.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The film is really quite something, a startling animated documentary dealing with Ari’s own struggle to remember his experiences as an Israeli soldier in Lebanon during September 1982.<\/p>\n

He was a very interesting man to speak to, not only because he directed the film but because it is actually about his own experiences.<\/p>\n

I asked him a bunch of questions about the style of the film and how he realised them on screen and also about how the film was received in Israel.<\/p>\n

Despite the fact that the film deals with some shocking subject matter – culminating in the Sabra and Shatila massacre<\/a> which saw thousands of Palistinean refugees slaughtered by Lebanese miltitia whilst Israeli troops turned a blind eye – he told me that the reception has been very good. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

The film is really quite unique in that it combines many disparate elements – history, politics, animation, music, interviews and the documentary form – to brilliant effect.<\/p>\n

I hope it gets a wider audience than just the arthouse circuit as the timely anti-war themes are \u00a0complemented beautifully by the groundbreaking animation.<\/p>\n

Later in the evening I went to a screening of The Baader Meinhoff Complex<\/a><\/strong> which details the terrorist movement that gripped West Germany in the late 60s and 1970s.<\/p>\n

It focuses on the Red Army Faction, the left-wing militant group formed by radicalised children of the Nazi generation, who fought an international terrorist campaign opposing American imperialism and the German establishment throughout the 1970s.<\/p>\n

At two and a half hours long it is a farily gruelling story, but given the current political and social turmoil of the present decade it makes for interesting viewing to say the least.<\/p>\n

I should be speaking with some of the cast and crew on Monday, so I’ll write more about it then, but it screens at the festival on Sunday and Tuesday.<\/p>\n

> Interview: Mark Hartley on Not Quite Hollywood<\/a>
\n>\u00a0Ari Folman<\/a>\u00a0at the IMDb
\n>\u00a0The Baader Meinhoff Complex<\/a>\u00a0at the LFF site<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was another busy day in which I spoke to a couple of directors with films showing at the Festival and saw another film in the evening. A combination of a cold that simply will not go away and a sore neck (I somehow managed to strain it a couple of days ago) has made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,38],"tags":[613,467,609,614],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3469"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}