Archive for 2009

The world-renowned Cambridge Film Festival will take place for the 30th time in September 2010, and we’d like you to help us make it the biggest and best ever by donating £30 to the Cambridge Film Trust, the registered charity that runs the Festival and other film events in Cambridge and across the UK. Read the rest of this entry »

The votes have been counted and we’re delighted to announce that our 2009 People’s Favourite Film is SÉRAPHINE by Martin Provost. A box office hit in its native France, the feature won no less than seven César awards, including Best Film and Best Actress for lead Yolande Moreau. If you missed SÉRAPHINE at the Festival, be sure to catch it when it comes out on general release in the UK at the end of November 2009.

Visit the official website to view the trailer

This year’s favourite films also included the Adam Elliot’s debut animation MARY AND MAX, two digitally restored classics (THE RED SHOES and THE GODFATHER), homegrown shorts by Project Trident as well as French titles WELCOME by Phlippe Lioret and THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE by Rémi Bezançon.  Here is the final Top Ten for 2009:

1: SÉRAPHINE
2: MARY AND MAX
3: THE RED SHOES
4: TRIDENTFEST
5: WELCOME
6: TONY
7: NOMAD’S LAND/THE STORM BIRD
8: THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE
9: TULPAN
10: THE GODFATHER

Bonus issue of the Cambridge Film Festival Daily newspaper, supported by TTP Group, is available online now. Read our interviews with the directors of THE OTHER IRENE, MORRIS: A LIFE WITH BELLS ON and BOOGIE WOOGIE, plus discover what the surprise film was & more.

Interview with Lucy Akhurst & Charles Thomas Oldham of MORRIS: A LIFE WITH BELLS ON

During my conversation with husband-and-wife team Lucy Akhurst and Charles Thomas Oldham (director and screenwriter / producer respectively of MORRIS: A LIFE WITH BELLS ON), it occurred to me that creating a film must have a lot in common with dancing as part of a morris troupe. An instinct for choreography – by which I mean, balancing different roles and pressures – must be essential to co-ordinate a project as multi-faceted as this. Maybe it’s even a little like marriage as well. Against the odds, however, the pair have pulled it off: they have assembled an impressive cast, captured the beauty of the English landscape, and updated the image of a rather under-appreciated English pastime. It is a film filled with gentle (and occasionally riotous) humour, that should – and hopefully will – do for morris dancing what STRICTLY BALLROOM did for another popularly-derided dance form.

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An interview with the director of THE OTHER IRENE, Andrei Gruzsniczki

As part of the Festival’s ‘Border Crossings’ season, audiences saw a Romanian production, THE OTHER IRENE directed by Andrei Gruzsniczki. Just before the screening of the film, I had an opportunity to talk to the director. Sipping his tea, Gruzsniczki tells me about “the story behind the story” of his movie, specifically “I didn’t choose the story. It chose me.”

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