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Every year thousands of filmgoers like you get to see the very finest selection of international and independent cinema at the Cambridge Film Festival. Now we’re asking every one of you to donate £30 to celebrate our 30th birthday and help ensure that the 2010 Festival is the greatest yet.

Your gift will allow us to continue delivering a bold and imaginative line-up of screenings and events which enable people to learn about and be moved by film. We will acknowledge your gift in the 2010 Festival brochure and also on screen before selected Festival screenings at venues throughout Cambridge.

The Festival is operated by a registered charity, the Cambridge Film Trust (1120059), so if you gift aid your donation, we’ll receive more. If you are a higher-rate tax payer, it will even cost you less.

Download our donation form (PDF) and support the 30th Cambridge Film Festival!

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

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.

If the film is to get its message across, however, it will need to reach audiences countrywide, and this is the challenge that Akhurst and Oldham are now facing. Although the Picturehouse chain of cinemas will be screening MORRIS in the coming months, the film has yet to attract a commercial distributor. There have been many informal screenings via the Moviola company (in church halls and similar venues), not to mention a highly-successful outing at the Seattle Film Festival in May of this year, when it came fourth out of 248 in audience ratings. Akhurst and Oldham were upbeat when I spoke to them by phone on the morning following the London premiere of MORRIS. It’s clearly been a labour of love, and a very personal project, for Oldham (who also plays the male lead, a radical morrisman called Derecq Twist). He explained to me that he grew up with a family of morris-dancing-devotees, and the film closes with a tribute to the man who inspired the film.

The film is anything but self-indulgent, however, and all credit must go to director Lucy Akhurst, whose crisp editing keeps the narrative moving. The plot follows the way that Derecq Twist attracts the criticism of the Morris Circle (an elite council) for his innovative approach, and how this ultimately leads him to the States, where he finds love. Lucy explained that during shooting she had concentrated on drawing out carefully-nuanced performances from the actors, something which she understood, having come from an acting background herself. Careful technical preparation before shooting ensured that she could afford to lavish her attention on the dramatic side. Although making the transition to directing was not something Lucy had planned (apparently it came about almost by chance), she and husband Oldham do feel that they have hit on a winning formula in terms of the division of roles. Future projects are anticipated. Next up will be a film on ‘guerrilla gardening’ (the unofficial appropriation of public space for growing plants), a phenomenon sweeping the country. If MORRIS is anything to go by, this should be well worth looking out for.

Does MORRIS deserve wider distribution? Definitely. It’s the performances and the script that make the film. Derek Jacobi plays the slightly scary leader of the Morris Circle, while Harriet Walter plays a Cambridge academic specialising in the history of the dance. Greg Wise plays the American philanthropist who sponsors the Californian troupe Derecq joins, a zany individual whose philosophy of life combines a belief in UNIX-based operating systems with the healing power of dance. Hilarious! For me, the film was very reminiscent of A MIGHTY WIND, the 2003 mockumentary about folk singing. However, the term ‘mockumentary’ implies satire of a potentially cutting kind, and that is not really found in this affectionate film. MORRIS is more about celebrating eclecticism and eccentricity in the best British tradition.

MORRIS: A LIFE WITH BELLS ON was screened on Saturday 26 September

LUCY LEWIS

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.”

Based on true events, THE OTHER IRENE recounts what actually happened to one of Gruzsniczki’s friends. In the film we see a security guard, Aurel, whose wife goes to work in Cairo and never comes back from her trip – having allegedly committed suicide. Naturally Aurel wants to find the truth behind his wife’s death but his search is hindered on all possible fronts as he faces the harsh reality of bureaucracy and a total lack of understanding from everyone around.

“In the very beginning I wouldn’t dare to make a movie out of this story”, says Gruzsniczki. He then adds that after two years he went back to the subject and looked at it from a strictly documentary perspective – with proper distance. With time, he closed in upon the main character to portray the tragedy of “a lonely man, a poor guy who is trying to find out the truth and never discovers it”. As the director says, “in the beginning it’s a story about love, then it’s a story about finding a way to the truth… It’s a story of how much you know your other half, how you never really get to understand, really know the person next to you”. The “total indifference around [Aurel], the total lack of compassion, was the most important thing that finally made me decide to make this movie”, says Gruzsniczki.

The director talks about his interest in the subject of relations between people, especially between couples, and about issues connected with knowing and not knowing each other. When I call him “a director of human relations” he laughs and answers, “yes, at this point that’s who I am”.

But as Gruzsniczki points out, THE OTHER IRENE is also a picture of Romania today: emmigration for reasons of poverty and lack of opportunities, especially from the areas outside of big cities, is quite a common pattern; just like the bureaucratisation of social life.

Looking at the problem of relations between people in contemporary Romania from before the Revolution, Gruzsniczki comments that before the Revolution, in the communist era, “[the Romanians] were more human to each other, even if we didn’t have lots of things”. Now, with the emergence of the middle and upper classes, and a poor ‘base’ of the society, the models of family and human relations in general have changed.

Asked about his future projects, Gruzsniczki enthusiastically talks about his plans of putting onscreen a story of a separated couple who face various pressures in their relationship. The director promises that his own personal vision of love and life is not going to be as bitter and sceptical as that presented in THE OTHER IRENE.

THE OTHER IRENE was screened on Saturday 26 September

MARTA MACHALA

A powerfully redemptive and darkly comedic revenge thriller, CRYING WITH LAUGHTER is set against the vicious world of stand-up comedy. Watch the teaser trailer.

Starring Stephen McCole (Rushmore, Band of Brothers, The Crow Road, High Times), Malcolm Shields (Young Adam, The Lost World, Hallam Foe), Andrew Neil (Amazing Grace) and Jo Hartley (This is England).

Watch the trailer:

Find out more

Few filmmakers who have enjoyed the level of success of New Zealand’s Vincent Ward would consider returning to the subject of a documentary they made 27 years ago. However the focus of Ward’s IN SPRING ONE PLANTS ALONE, a film made when he was only 21, has proved to be an itch he has been unable to scratch. Until now.

A powerful and extremely brave piece of cinema vérité, Ward’s original documentary examined the life of Puhi, an elderly Maori woman and her paranoid schizophrenic son Niki. The experience had a profound effect on the young filmmaker although it was very nearly over before it started. Ward remembers, “It was very hard because within the first minute of filming she threw us out. She said there were ghosts in the camera and she screamed at us in Maori. Her son who had a wicked sense of humour had been telling her that the lights we had put up were explosive devices.” Despite this Ward continued to spend time with Puhi, driving her into town and repairing things around her house for her. As their relationship developed, she gradually lowered her defences and ultimately agreed to be filmed. “Initially I thought I’d film it in 2 weeks but it actually took me 18 months to finish. It was like filming rare birds; you have to be very respectful.”

The resulting film is a beautiful and touching portrait of a disappearing culture and the love of a mother for her son. Never is this more perfectly articulated than in a scene showing Puhi unwrapping an ice cream for Niki, of which Ward describes, “It’s the kind of scene you could never dream up if you’re writing.” IN SPRING ONE PLANTS ALONE however raised more questions for Ward than answering them and that is what drew him back to Puhi’s story. “There were a lot of questions about where she’d come from, who she was and how she’d become who she was, and it played on my mind and wouldn’t go away. I really wanted to put those thoughts to rest.”

Employing documentary footage and dramatised sequences, RAIN OF THE CHILDREN unlocks the secrets of a fascinating life marked by tragedy and a woman’s courage to survive against remarkable odds to protect her last remaining child. In making the film, Ward involved the local community both in documentary interviews and in dramatic reconstructions, with direct descendants of Puhi’s bloodline playing her at various stages in the film. Ward explains, “I really wanted it to become their film as well as my film, I wanted it to be our film and I worked very hard to achieve that.”

Adding to the wonderfully personal nature of the piece is Ward’s own presence in the film. Rather than detaching himself by being a mere voiceover he assumes a place within the heart of the story. “I was very reluctant to go there, but in the end I thought it was two stories intertwined and if I was going to expose her story then I had to some degree expose myself. I was invested in this personally.” The resulting culmination of these deeply personal investments from both Ward and Puhi’s Maori community provides a film of beauty and heartfelt emotion likely to induce prolonged spells of tears.

RAIN OF THE CHILDREN is screened on Sunday 27 September at 8.45pm

CHRISTOPHER PECK

We were lucky enough to get our hands on this hitherto unpublished exclusive interview with the director of SURPRISE FILM, known at the time of writing as “Horrible Bob”. Horrible Bob’s enigmatic masterpieces are never quite what they seem, many of them winning a loyal fanbase whose love of the film is completely misguided and misplaced.

I meet Horrible Bob in The Imperial Hotel, Vienna. Fans will be surprised to hear that Bob is drinking a pot of English tea, and I watch as he deposits seven sugars into the urn before drinking straight from the spout, tossing aside a dainty porcelain cup that smashes loudly on the floor beside us. The auteur’s black turtleneck is flecked with dandruff and cigarette ash – but it’s all in the eyes. I ask whither, following SURPRISE FILM, where could one possibly go having set such a standard?

“I’m done with films. I’ve been getting into transcendental meditation. I’ve also been creating works of art with found objects, old movie stock and mild irritants.” Horrible Bob, whether at home, on set or on a Caribbean beach, always carries copies of the entire Bob retrospective in a battered leather suitcase.  Bob shows me reels of material from student experimentation found in the parental attic, a brand new sound mix of CHOCOLATE SPRINKLES, SEX FACE, THE EFFLUENT WOMAN and deleted scenes from NEVER SAY NO. GREEK STREET – an exquisite triumph– was released just four years ago; since then Bob has wowed us with some shocking reverse shorts as well as a series of outré speculative documentaries. But it’s SURPRISE FILM that has really put Bob on the map. An uncut, six inch ode to penetrability that was shot on 8 1/2 mm but had no trouble, of course, finding a distributor.

In preparation for SURPRISE FILM, Bob took a set of photographs – mainly of scaffolding and the labourers who frequent them.  “The soft cleavage of a builder’s bum juxtaposed with the cold, indifferent steel girder. It’s all about the inevitable.” Bob also works with asbestos, fibreglass and “basically WD40”.  This masculine, dispassionate approach is not something one would automatically associate with the sensitive creator of GLADLY, MY CROSS-EYED BEAR. Usually thought to be a reclusive genius, Horrible Bob is laid bare with every artwork and is not shy about discussing each piece. So how does he apply this artistic sensitivity to filmmaking? “I like Magic Paintbooks. I like to infuse my brush with water and apply it to the page. The colours burst out. I never know what they will be – tangerine, moss, air-force blue.  But always dull, dull colour. So I throw away my paintbrush and use a finger moistened with saliva. I blur the colours.  I allow them to stain me. Metaphorically, of course.”
Bob’s reputation divides fans – closet lunatic or tired krypto-fascist? The plain fact is, Bob just doesn’t like SURPRISE MOVIE. But we hope that you do.

The SURPRISE FILM is screened on Sunday 27 September at 3.30pm

ROSY HUNT