Archive for the ‘Film Page’ Category

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.

Visit the CFF Podcast Page

The Cambridge Film Festival has been screening a stimulating and enlightening range of films exploring the environment on film. Always open to new opportunities, the Festival director has now added an exciting new film to the Cinecology strand.

Screening on Sunday 15th July at 8.45pm, 11TH HOUR (Leila Conners Peterson & Nadia Conners, 2007) is a passionate expose of the state of the natural environment. Produced and narrated by Leonardo di Caprio, the film presents us with a veritable flood of striking images of environmental turbulence, whether meteorological phenomena such as hurricane Katrina or the devastation of human greed: deforestation, rush-hour traffic in downtown Los Angeles, huge trawlers leaching the oceans of their wildlife.

However the film refuses to wallow in its depressing data. Instead it offers creative solutions to ecological problems, including powerful suggestions for the integration of eco-friendly structures and renewable energy sources into buildings and cityscapes. In addition, the film is populated with an inspirational cast of talking heads, from Stephen Hawking to Mihail Gorbachev, taking in science reporters, architects and environmental experts along the way.

Leonardo uses his big box office eye-candy status here to do a truly good deed: he has worked with the talented first-time directors to produce a polished and multi-layered documentary with a strong and intelligent message.

Read more about 11th Hour, or book tickets for the screening on Sunday at 8.45pm.

Becky Hawketts profile of Youthmovies is a must-read from the Festival Daily, but we also managed to persuade some of the band to talk on camera…

Following the World Premiere of Sarah Turner’s ECOLOGY on Friday 13 July, this free experimental screening tests the theory that this feature film of three parts, three characters and three stories, can be screened in any order. The director has supplied us with the three other alternative screening orders, one of which will be picked at random and screened.

Why not come along and see the difference?

We live in a surveillance society, and Nino Leitner’s much-awaited documentary ‘Every Step You Take’, which has its UK premiere here at the Film Festival on July 12 at 1630, uncovers some worrying aspects of the plans to watch everyone in Britain. Jasmine Wingfield interviewed Nino: