EIFF 2010

For almost two weeks every year Edinburgh becomes the centre of the film world as the industry’s elite descend upon our humble city.

EIFF is the world’s longest continually running film festival, and past premieres have run the gamut of classic cinema, from Dr Zhivago to Taxi Driver, Back to the Future to Pulp Fiction. Recent Oscar® heavy-weight, The Hurt Locker was launched at last year’s festival, and it’s a safe bet to assume that this year’s line-up will host a few future classics. In terms of variety, the 2010 EIFF is as diverse as any cinephile could hope for, and this year it’s in the rather unique position of having three animated features as its highest profile contenders.

The festival opened with The Illusionist, which is director Sylvain Chomet’s first full-length feature since 2003’s Les Triplettes de Belleville. Based on a script by the great French comic, Jacques Tati, The Illusionist, which has been in development for almost seven years,  is receiving rave reviews. Delicately drawn, this is by all accounts a sad, beautiful story that blinks blurry eyed at the modern world, depicting the travels of a magician and his young daughter, through rural Scotland of the late 1950s.

In stark contrast, we have Edward McHenry’s Jackboots on Whitehall in the line-up. Featuring a cast made up entirely of animatronic puppets, the film offers a satirical alternative history of WWII, in which Hitler’s Nazis have seized London, and Churchill and the British forces have banded together at the Scottish border. A camp, comical take on the patriotic propaganda of old English war movies; Britain’s answer to Team America features a stellar line-up of home-grown voice talent, including Ewan Macgregor, Rosamund Pike, and Timothy Spall. If, however, you fancy a bit of the real thing, you can catch the war-time classic, Went the Day Well? as part of the Special Screenings line-up. This film (based on a Graham Greene short story) also features a fictionalised ‘what if’ story of a Nazi invasion of Britain, and although told in a much more reverent and conventional style, for its time it is surprisingly violent and certainly well worth a viewing on the big screen.

The nostalgia of these features seems to run as a bit of a theme through parts of the festival. This year’s Retrospective line-up focuses on British films of the 1970s, that immediately followed the New Wave, and are deemed not to have received the acclaim they deserved at the time. And for any Western fans out there, the festival offers something of a horse-opera renaissance, with the premiere of Morris and Goscinny comic-strip adaptation Lucky Luke, as well as cowboy revenger, The Last Rites of Ransom Pride, and the modern Australian twist on the genre, Red Hill.

For those of us who enjoy films darker and scarier than a man with a horse and a gun; two of modern cinema’s greatest mavericks have come together for the intense psychological thriller My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?. Directed by Werner Herzog, and produced by David Lynch, the film pieces together the fragments of a murderer’s shattered psyche. The film is described by Herzog as ‘a horror film without the blood’ and it looks to be as haunting and bizarre as anything the two have, either of them, produced yet. For fans of the strange and unusual, this year’s festival has no short supply. There are cryogenically frozen mariachis and UFOs in Iyari Wertta’s Mexican film noir, The Black Panther; giant space octopi in Gareth Edward’s sci-fi/romance, Monsters; and a lobster-clawed, drug-addled misanthrope in Rona Mark’s anti-romance, The Crab. And for horror lovers, depending on which end of the spectrum you prefer, there is the manic schlock-horror zombie-fest, Evil in the Time of Heroes, or the nerve-wracking dread of Dutch thriler, Two Eyes Staring: the festival’s hottest contender for the ‘Let the Right One In’ Inevitable Crappy Hollywood Remake award.

For chill-seekers looking to try something different, the 2010 EIFF sees the premiere of the world’s first audio horror movie. H. P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror is a full-length feature, faithfully adapted from the writer’s work, which in the absence of pictures, relies solely on state-of-the-art Dolby Digital surround-sound to capture the imagination and hold the audience in fear. Whether or not it actually qualifies as a film is a subject for debate (it is listed in the festival brochure with events rather than films). The argument of Dunwich Horror’s producers at Bang Ltd. and sound company Savalas is that Hollywood, in its relentless pursuit of CGI and now 3D, has routinely ignored the opportunities that sound alone presents. It also raises questions about the role of the cinema itself, as a space for watching film, and how sound contributes to the work’s overall impression and atmosphere. Whatever your feelings, it’s a fascinating concept and sure to be one of the festival’s hot tickets.

The mention of Hollywood and 3D brings us swiftly to this year’s hugely anticipated Blockbuster entry, Toy Story 3. Tickets for the Gala Preview premiere sold out more than a week ago, and it’s not surprising considering what a draw this is for little kids and big kids alike. Another sequel to Pixar’s hugely successful franchise was always going to be a crowd-puller, but this one has the added bonus of being filmed in 3D. What that will mean for the finished product remains to be seen. Toy Story 3 could either be the first fully-realised major 3D release or just another in a long list of damp squibs. Even James Cameron’s mega-budget, Avatar, failed to live up to its promise; with little care taken in constructing scenes which might compliment 3D, the treatment seemed like an indulgent gimmick. The original Toy Story films were not made with the technology in mind, so last year’s 3D re-releases didn’t really work. Hopefully this one will. And if not, there will at least be a strong story and lovable characters to fall back upon.  For our 2D-cinema-bound-ancestors, that was almost considered enough.

Big budget filmmaking and its failings seems to have cast an influence over many of the documentaries at this year’s EIFF, which give a nod to independent spirit and share in the celebration of user-generated content. The People vs George Lucas is one such film. Exploring the fan community’s contribution to the world of Star Wars, through home-made films and animations, it exposes the great Hollywood conceit for what it is, by celebrating works made on a shoe-string budget, whose character and innovation far surpass anything to be found in Lucas’s much maligned prequels. As well as this, Superhero Me, taking its cue from Kick-Ass (another nod to the YouTube generation), follows the exploits of filmmaker Steve Sale on his journey to become a real-life superhero. This is not to be confused with Crimefighters, the British comedy which explores a similar theme and definitely has the best tagline of EIFF: ‘Gangs of … York?’. As well as providing a much needed comment on the genre, these films reflect the influence of the studios on the small-time filmmaker and embrace the notion that Hollywood can still inspire in others, the originality and invention it seems to have lost itself.

A special shout-out also to the Scottish films and those filmed in Scotland, in the festival’s main programme: Morag MacKinnon’s darkly humorous family drama, Donkeys;  Wayne Thallon’s  raucous tale of Edinburgh’s seedier side, A Spanking in Paradise; and superior scares with James Nesbitt, in Colin McCarthy’s intelligent horror, Outcast. Good to see that the home nation is well represented once again.

Remember, these are just a sprinkling of the sights that will be on offer to you for the remaining days. Get yourself a brochure if you haven’t already or visit www.edfilmfest.org.uk and make sure you take full advantage. Screenworks will be there. We are sending in two of our writers to share the experience, view the films, and interview the stars. So look out for retrospective interviews and EIFF inspired articles over the next few issues.

John Gibb and Laura Witz