Chinstroking cineaste and film critic Tony McKibben sees a common theme running through this year’s movies at the EIFF.
One of the major avenues filmmakers have explored over the last five years has been abjection, Or transgression. We‘ve seen its presence in Seu/ Contre Tous. Romance and The Idiots. and y0u'II find it this year in two films especially, New Life and Dans Ma Peau. But it's also there in less ambitious works. like Blind Spot and The Hours of the Day.
But it IS in New Life and Dans Ma Peau in particular that y0u feel these directors are breaking new ground. They're pushing further into what the philosopher Martin Heidegger would have called ‘self-showing', where values can't be a38umed but are often perversely searched out. In New Life this takes the form of an animalistic sexuality in a no-man's land where desire and deterioration coalesce. ln Dans Ma Peau the issue is also the body. but this time it's not about the way characters collide with each other, but the way in which the central character. after injuring herself, becomes fascinated by doing further self-damage.
In Blind Spot and The Hours of the Day. the 'selt-showing' seems more straighthrward. Blind Spot looks at the lengths someone will go to be there for a heroin addict. The Hours of the Day shows how an alienated man can kill in cold blood. They are certainly 'abject‘. but are part of an older tradition of self- sacrifice and intense selfishness. In New Life and Dans Ma Peau the categories are collapsed and the meaning harder to ascertain.
I Tony McKibben will be getting really pretentious around foreign language films at this year's E/FF.
Celluloid dreams of Uta
MARK COUSINS imagines his film festival of Utopia in Edinburgh
I can’t be long before Iraq gets a film f‘estiyal. Together with a national anthem. an annual cinematic jamhorec is nationhood these days. While Scotland is lacking on the anthem front. it is punching aboye its weight as f'estiy'als go. No other country its si/e has one as long running or well regarded as lidinburgh‘s. .\'ot Denmark. which also has The million people. Not lingland. whose London Film l5estiyal is bigger. but younger and less focused. The world's :\—Iisl film gatherings — in (’annes. Venice. Berlin. Sundance and Toronto —- are supported by much bigger nations. In comparison. lidinburgh is doing rather well. The reasons for this are yarious. Scotland helped iny‘ent optics. the root of' photography and therefore cinematography: it cottoned on to the intellectual aspects of' cinema earlier than most places: it
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played a key role in the dey‘elopment ol
documentary: and the w eather's bad so people buy more tickets for indoor entertainment. And. more so than any other 20th century city. lidinburgh had the foresight to recreate itself‘ as a grand canyas onto which artisans of‘ the world could splatter their \VLITCS.
But before we get too smug here. a counter argument should be considered. Don’t film festivals exist precisely becatise film distribution is so
38 THE LIST FESTIVAL GUIDE 2:1“ Asa :1
a prerequisite of
DON'T FILM FESTIVALS
PRECISELY BECAUSE FILM DISTRIBUTION IS SO SHODDY?
shoddy'.’ If' international. daring and pionccring films played on Scottish screens all year round. surely there would be no need for an annual international showcase. Maybe audiences gorge on uncommon films in August simply because they are starycd of" them for the rest of the year. Wouldn't the sign that the film culture in this country is really Vibrant be the collapse of' the lill'l'"?
Put it another way: would a filtnic l'topia need a film f'cstiyal. and if' so. what sort of film f'cstiyal would it be'.’ The question sounds f‘ancif'ul but interrogates the modern liberal assumption that landmark arts cyents arc indiccs of cultural pride. If the l'(’l played Bill Douglas lillns in October. ll. Yasujiro ()zu pictures were shown at 9am in the l'(i('s. what would that leay’e the National l’illn l'cstiyal of' l'topia to do'.’
The answer appears at first to be not loads. liestiy'als are signs of the failure of. the system. If talented newcomers were guaranteed discoyery'. the lill‘l-"s 36 films in its 2003 greenhouse section. Row/2m]. would no longer need a special showcase. If the boundaries between mainstream and experimental cinema were not so rigid. its welcome new Black [for f‘ocUs on the ay‘ant garde would haye no garde to be ayant. lf‘ ey‘eryone knew their Jancsos from their (‘louzots. then the retrospectiyes