FILM REVIEW
I Celtic Film Festival: The 16th
International Celtic Film and Television
Festival returns to Scotland for its 1995 event. Fort William. itself a popular location for film shoots in recent years. will play host to over 300 professional delegates and an array of screenings that will provide a platform for the development and exploration of work by filmmakers from Scotland. lreland, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany.
Between Monday 3 and Thursday 6 April. 47 programmes will be screened from 222 submissions. On show from Scotland are such diverse pieces as Patrick Harkins’s Tartan Short Narance. Mike Alexander’s Gaelic language feature Mairi Mhor. BBC Scotland’s R.D. Laing documentary Just Another Sinner and TV dramas Takin' Over The Asylum and Doctor Finlay. Some of the other better known works include the features A Man You Don ’t Meet Everyday (lreland) and Branwen (Wales).
The Festival offers a unique opportunity for filmmakers to meet and discuss developments with their counterparts in other Celtic communities. To this end, the 1995 event will focus on new technologies and recent advances, while forums will examine the future challenges of Europe in a Celtic context. It is also hoped that a special advance screening of Michael Caton-Jones's Rob Roy will take place in the Cinemobile, Europe’s luxury mobile cinema installation.
I lleal To Reel: In response to the recent upsurge in the Scottish film scene. students from Cardonald College have launched a competition to provide a platform for the country's young
EQTIISLH FILM
filmmakers. Aimed at students. community groups and other filmmakers at the outset of their careers. Real To Reel will offer prizes of over £600 of video equipment. donated by Panasonic. and a £250 cash prize to the winners in each of the competition's categories. Winning films and a montage containing clips from every entry. will be shown at a special Festival at the Glasgow Film Theatre on 28 April. Further details are available from Cardonald College, 690 Mosspark Drive. Glasgow G52 3AY (0141883 6151).
I Scottish Workshops: As far as the Fringe Film and Video Festival is concerned. low-budget independent film and video production in Scotland simply wouldn't happen without the Scottish Workshops and Video Access Centres. This year's FFVF gets underway with a special event at 11.30am on Friday 24 February called Access — Yes. which will screen work by seven workshops and invite audience members to discuss the role of the workshop centre in the Scottish production arena. Admission is free. I Helen Baker: The Scottish Film Council has appointed Helen Baker. until recently General Manager of Edinburgh‘s Cameo Cinema. to the new post of Co-ordinator for the celebrations for the Centenary of Cinema in Scotland. This new position has been created to ensure that all of the country‘s cinemas. filmmakers. broadcasters, museums. art
organisations. local authorities and
audiences make the tnost of the rich heritage of film in Scotland. as well as looking forward to the future.
‘My aim is that the events talking place in the centenary year will have a lasting impression on all those involved in cinema. from the customer at the box office to the filmmaker.‘ says Baker. who takes up the post in April. ‘1 am very keen that every area of Scotland has a chance to play a part in these celebrations and would welcome any suggestions for the centenary from groups and individuals around the country.‘
HERBE— WHEELS
CB or not CB? That’s the question posed by teenager Janice to friends and airwave acquaintances in a small Highland town in the early 80$. Boyfriend Don is out on his car, as his attitude is ‘two wheels good, four wheels bad’ - and you can’t fit Janice’s massive rig in a motorbike sidecar. So while the rest of the town tries to relieve its boredom with boon, sex or Dexy’s Midnight Runners, she’s determined that size does matter, at least in terms of road transport. But first she’s got to keep out of the clutches of a sleazy DJ (1FM’s llicky Campbell - first hand knowledge, one wonders?). Writer-director Brian Boss plunges us back into a 1982 that’s perfectly realised down to the tacklest flashing light in the local disco and the thickest flick of blue eyeshadow on the laces of the guy-hungry girls. Shot
RICHARD [iASSON
Wheels: ‘funny, accessible, hugely likeable'
ln Taln with a professionalism that is very much to the credit of the young cast and crew, Wheels - produced by Navigator Films - represents everything that is good about short filmmaking in Scotland. With the charm of early Bill Forsyth, this is a funny, accessible, hugely likeable film that deserves wider exposure. (AM) Wheels was broadcast on Grampian Television on Wednesday 15 February.
VIDEOS
WEE!- wenmsn HERZOG
es ~ L - > _ Fitzcarraldo: ‘mad. obsessional genius’
It New German Cinema had its own eccentric, its own ‘romantic visionary’, then that man was Werner Herzog. His output may have been a bit quieter of late, but now Tartan Video are releasing his greatest moments in a definitive collection. Best known in the first batch is Fitzcarraldo (PG), which proves, ten years after Aguirre: The Wrath Of God, that there’s nothing Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski liked
EASTERN HEROES
The series of Chinese ghost stories on Channel 4 over the Christmas period brought the Fantasy Horror genre of Hong Kong cinema to a wider audience. These films, often blending poetic visuals with martial arts action, were kickstarted in the 805 by Encounters Of A Spooky Kind. How, on video, comes its sequel, Spooky Encounters (15), which re-teams the same stars for a fun romp amongst the good and bad in the supernatural realm. Lam Ching Ying also reprises his Mr Vampire role in Magic Cop (PG), as a traditional Taoist anti-vampire who uses his skills to put the undead in their place and teach his modern
I Menace 11 Society (18) Of all the videos recently held up through censorship problems. none are more worthy of attention than the Hughes br0thers' hard-edged take
£15.99)
musician and genius without the restrictions of traditional biography structures. (Electric
I Dracula, Prince Of Darkness ( )5) Dire warnings, English travellers. a driverless
better of a weekend than to go romping through a South American iungle. Wild-eyed and spiky haired, Kinski captures the mad, obsessional genius of a 19th century Irishman determined to bring opera and Caruso to the natives of Peru. A monument to dreamers, this film remains one of cinema’s true spectacles.
Herzog’s own obsession with misfits is best illustrated in The Enigma 0f Kaspar Hauser (PG), based on the true story of a man who mysteriously appeared in a German town in the 18203 after having been isolated from human contact all his life. Bruno 8., a schizophrenic who spent most of his life in institutions, provides a perfect clean slate on which this world makes its imprint. Bruno 8. also brings an unpredictability to Herzog’s dark take on America, Stroszek (15), in which an alcoholic, a prostitute and an old man move from Berlin to a Wisconsin trailer park in search of freedom, only to find a soulless environment. An intriguing, undervalued work that
gives a sense of dignity to those out of
step with the modern world. (AM) All films are released by Tartan Video at £15.99 each.
sidekicks some manners. Of a less innocent persuasion, Holy Virgin Vs The Evil Dead (18) uses the
leniancy of the Hong Kong Category III
certificate to throw in gratuitous violence, nudity and sorry exploitation. With its sub-Raimi tracking shots, it seems crap horror is the same the world over. Elsewhere,
girls just wanna have fun with guns, as
Yukari Oshima proves in Lethal Panther (18), taking on the triads with
gravity-defying moves. Hot as polished
as Woo, but the lightening-paced action sequences are among the best around. (Alan Morrison)
The four titles are released by Eastern Heroes at £13.99 each.
embark on a close friendship which spills over into a brazenly open affair. breathing freshness into their lives — and into a tired genre. Also worth noting is the release of the classic French thriller. Les Diaboliques ( 18). with its
on street violence. Other films in the ‘black urban' genre set up heroes who want to escape from the hood; Menace ll Soviet)“.
however. is unforgiving in 1
its stance. viewing life through the eyes of a group of young criminals. Tough. understanding. impossible to ignore. (First independent)
RETAIL
I 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould (U) One of The List’s top four films of 1994. this is a work of exceptional quality and formal daring. Each individual segment — complete with start. middle and end — creates a composite portrait of an eccentric. hypochondriac
carriage. a spooky castle. spilled blood . . . nope.
you can't keep a good ' vampire down.
Christopher Lee makes fora serpentine Count. all hisscs and fangs. up against an imposing Andrew Keir as a bawdy priest in what is probably
sustained psychological tension and stunner of an ending. (Arrow £15.99)
; I Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes (PG) Trying to
be to the ‘B' sci-fi movie
Airplane! was to disaster
the best Hammer Dracula. ;
Now available in widescreen format. in all its fortner g(l)ory. On the other hand. The Mummy’s Shroud (PG) — as plodding as its monster — should have been kept hidden in its dusty tomb. (Lumiere £12,.99/1L1099)
I Cousin Cousine (15) The French have always been good at seeing the funny side of mid-life crises and desperate affairs. Here two cousins
films. this dire exercise falls flat on its face. So bad it's really bad; so silly it's stupid. The title is funny: it's a pity no one told the makers you need somejokes in the script to go with it. (First independent £12.99)
I Ninja Scroll (18) A feature-length anime. with a full-bloodied ‘gorier than thou‘ attitude. Human ninjas take on demon ninjas in a feudal Japan filled with fantasy and a story that makes its rules up as it goes along. (Manga £12.99)
22 The List 24 Feb-9 Mar 1995