2014
Image from RED MILL.
The programme for this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival is available to read online. I wrote one entry, for a movie called ONE OF A KIND. And in my duties as submissions editor I spotted that one, and a film called GREYHAWK, which you should see.
LET US PREY, the horror movie I co-wrote with Fiona, is screening.
Also exciting — my Facebook friend Christa Fuller is showing her biographical documentary on the legendary Sam Fuller, A FULLER LIFE. And real-life friend Nathan Silver presents his latest movie, the award-winning UNCERTAIN TERMS. SNOWPIERCER screens, featuring noted Scottish talents Tilda Swinton and Ewen Bremner along with man-myths Ed Harris and John Hurt. There are retrospectives on Dominik Graf, early Iranian cinema and John McGrath, the committed left-wing Scottish writer whose most exciting credit, for me, is Ken Russell’s THE BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN. My prolific friend Mark Cousins is back with yet another film, co-directed with Mania Akbari, LIFE MAY BE.
The image above is from RED MILL, screening in the experimental Black Box section, which promises to be as eye-popping as ever.
And right after it all ends, I’m off to the Cinema Ritrovato in Bologne to see A HARD DAY’S NIGHT under the stars with Richard Lester introducing. So that’s nice.
shadowplay 
June 3, 2014 at 1:20 pm
I see Christa here in L.A. all the time. A delight. She played the seductress assigned to Akim Tamiroff in Alphaville.
Snowpiercer is really quite remarkable — a cross between Twentieth Century and Metropolis. Tilda, as always blows one away.
June 3, 2014 at 1:32 pm
Love love love Akbari. ¡VIVA MANIA!
June 3, 2014 at 3:34 pm
For a filmmaker to be called “Mania” is just perfect.
I was noticing the other day how extensively covered that scene in AHDN is — they must surely have had a day to shoot it, there’s a whole new angle every couple of seconds. I know Lester worked fast, three cameras at a time, but I have to assume they slowed down a bit for that one — maybe there was nothing else they could do that day.
I know it was added in late to gve George his own bit, because they’d discovered he was the most able actor of the group (though not the most interesting).
June 3, 2014 at 8:52 pm
Where is Black Angel? When I saw Roger Christian re-premiere the restoration at the Mill Valley Film Festival last October, he said they were going to bring it home to the Edinburgh International Film Festival, hopefully with the Trevor Jones score re-mastered. It was a pretty amazing little short, but the digital projection was a little lacking at the venue. Was hoping that Edinburgh would have a better presentation…
June 3, 2014 at 10:37 pm
It already played Edinburgh Filmhouse, I’m afraid! https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/trouble-in-the-glen/
June 3, 2014 at 11:48 pm
The clip I linked above is most telling in that it deal with those “masterminds” who regard teenagers as a “market” for which “product” of their devise can be manufactured. This establishes The Beatles as a sort of anti-product.
June 4, 2014 at 12:46 am
And sets them up as cooler and more authentic than the kind of TV shows on which they had to appear — something they actually carry off when you see TV footage of them. In a nice way, they’re above it all.
June 9, 2014 at 6:08 pm
Will you be showing Natan in Bologna?
June 9, 2014 at 7:07 pm
Sadly no — I don’t think we submitted it, foolishly. But I’m not sure they’d show it since Pordenone had it.