Archive for the ‘Festival Daily’ Category

Hammer: The Studio that Dripped Blood, after two decades of cranking out middle-of-the-road movies to fill the wrong half of double bills, finally hit upon a winning formula: reinventing the Hollywood horrors of the 1930s with grand guignols photographed in splashy, glorious Eastmancolor. Big campy slabs of genre entertainment, Hammer horrors have become synonymous with raw gaudiness and jerry-built special effects, all wrapped up in red velvet and crimson gore. Read the rest of this entry »

BBFC Censorship and Film event report by Tom Austin

Most people seem to have an opinion about film, DVD and video game classification. But how easy is it to get it right? A group of sixth form film studies students had the chance to find out during a lively and informative session run by British Board of Film Classification Education Officer John Dyer. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most controversial issues today, climate change, becomes even more emotive when we look at how children are implicated. Already this year, education secretary Alan Johnson decided to distribute DVDs of AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH to every secondary school in the UK; the Liberal Democrats warned against ExxonMobil using propaganda to confuse children about the issue; and initiatives are sprouting up everywhere, from primary school level up, to encourage the next generation of recyclers and activists to get involved. And it seems to be working, although not always in the most heartening way: a recent survey showed that half of kids aged seven to eleven claim to be losing sleep over global warming. Read the rest of this entry »

MICROCINEMA: CURRENT HISTORY by Loreta Gandolfi

Acclaimed artist and filmmaker Hannah Collins takes me straight into the genesis of her work: she was at the Rotterdam Film Festival presenting her previous film about a gypsy community in Barcelona, LA MINA, when Russian Romani writer Edouard Chiline approached her and proposed she went to film his family in central Russia. Collins and her troupe from Spain eventually found themselves in the village of Beshencevo, near Nizhny Novgorod. Read the rest of this entry »

Renowned composer and pianist Neil Brand was in Cambridge this year to accompany Antarctic documentary SOUTH and the Harold Lloyd silent comedies THE FRESHMAN and NEVER WEAKEN. Podcast producer Jan Gilbert interviewed him in the few short hours we allowed him between performances - see our podcast page for this and other interviews from this year’s Festival.

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