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One Life Stand and Daybreak
Scottish filmmakers on new-tech cutting edge
Despite what you may have heard from George Lucas, digital filmmaking techniques are still in embryonic stage. Although technology reinvents and upgrades itself at an ever-increasing pace, it often takes pioneering attitudes or collective mini-revolutions for it to be embraced. Refreshing then that evidence of this isn't confined to the next two Star Wars episodes, but found locally. Mo Scottish digital features - One Life Stand and Daybreak - receive their world premieres at this year’s Film Festival. Other events, including the opening gala Dancer In The Dark, show not only that digital films can be made cheaper, but that the nature of digital can dictate innovative approaches to the kind of stories we see and the way they're told.
One Life Stand, the debut feature of pop promo and TV director May Miles Thomas, tells the story of a dysfunctional mother-son relationship. Set and made in Glasgow, it's hard to believe this micro-budget, well- crafted and moving story was shot on a Sony camcorder. Naturally, attracting funding for unconventional formats is a real non-starter. 'The decision to shoot a digital movie was informed by sheer pragmatism,’ Thomas says. 'My experience of trying to raise funding here was dismal, but not unusual. As a director with twelve years’ experience I found myself in a position where no one would take a
Forget George Lucas, pioneering attitudes towards new technologies can be found locally
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chance and allow me to cross the threshold into fiction. Then the technology became available to do it cheaply and independently. High quality 3-chip camcorders and desktop editing systems have liberated filmmaking. The advantage is creative and financial freedom, but with very few digital movies existing, there’s a resistance to its inevitable rise.’
Director Bernard Rudden had an equally tedious and time-consuming task raising finance for his debut, Daybreak, partly due to its innovative narrative qualities. Although it eschews some conventions for a more ‘New Wave' approach, shooting on digital allowed that style to be more fully explored. Described as a neo-noir for the clubbing generation, it follows the lives of three friends criss-crossing throughout the course of one night in Edinburgh. With a pumping techno and house soundtrack and atmospheric style, Daybreak is likely to tap into a cine-literate, music- loving hip youth audience willing to embrace its fresh approach and new medium.
Just as Thomas turned the ’limitations’ of digital to her advantage, so has Rudden. ’You have to push the medium to get the most out of it,’ he explains. 'We knew we could make this as cinematic as celluloid. There’s a look somewhere between 16 and 35mm film. I call it ‘Digital 27'.’
Perhaps the expression will catch on when more filmmakers realise there’s an alternative way to get their ideas out there. (Dylan Matthew)
II One Life Stand, Fi/mnouse 7, 27 Aug, 4 30pm, £7 (£4 50). Daybreak, Fi/mnOuse 7, 22 Aug, 70 75pm, Cameo 2, 27 Aug, 9.30pm, GFT 2, 26 Aug, 6. 75pm, £7 (£4.50).
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Max Ophuls Retrospective
European emigre maker of opulent films par excellence
Waltzes, wrnding staircases and carousels; recurring motifs in the work of this German-born, peripatetic emigre whose giddy, constantly- movmg camera (Cold, in Stanley Kubrick’s words, 'pass thrOugh walls'. And this sense of movement isn’t jUSI in the mise-en-scene and in the director’s visual flair it’s at the heart of the work: the way Ophuls
details the flightiness of
romantic love, the way relationships ineVitably
fail and partners move
on. For it's useful ~\
to see Ophuls’
work not as the study of love per se, more as an oeuvre that captures tne rapture of profotino joy, and the distressing realisatiOn the fee‘ing .s, in one or the other partner, transient.
In Letter From An Unknown Woman (*‘kttl, Joan Fontaine's brief fling with Lows Jordan's womanisrng pianist shows Ophuls filling the romantc moment With twenty minutes of idyllic screen time, \th Ie the rest of the fim devotes itself to her feewngs 0‘ loss: the f-lm is narrated by Fontaine, the t'Orgotten, ‘unknown' woman. In La Ronde
itattw, Anton WaibrOOk plays the Omnrscent narrator who passes from love story to ove st0ry illustrating the temporary nature of love. For all the lovers' proclamations, in the next oortinanteau tale Walbrook wryly observes them making love to someone else
And unere Ophuls rel eo on flashback and omn~sc:ence :n the aforementoned ‘itms, .n Le Plaisir l****‘ he settes ‘or three separate lvlauoassan: stories to suggest 'ove’s oasswg moment. In Madame De »*****T, the dtrector's sao irony becomes integral, as we watch a pair of emotionally loaded earrings pass from character to Character. This is Iusc:ot.s, yet personal filmmaking. (Tony MCKibbinl
3 Max Ophuls Retrospective, 74—26 Aug, Fi/mhouse, various times.
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The best of world cinema in a week
Billy Elliot
Crowd-pleasing drama in the Full Monty mould about a Yorkshire lad who finds an unlikely calling — ballet dancing — during the 805 miners’ strike. Billy Elliot, UGC, 20 Aug, 8.30pm, 24 Aug, 6.30pm, £7 (£4.50).
Chuck And Buck
Hilarious, bizarre homoerotic love story about two guys who have difficulties rekindling their Childhood friendship. See review. Chuck And Buck, Cameo 7, 78 & 20 Aug, 70.30pm, £7 (£4.50).
Code—Unknown (Code lnconnu)
Juliette Binoche stars in Michael Haneke's tales of life in modern- day Paris which challenges its audience to form connections between characters and events. See reView. Code Unknown, Fi/mhouse 7, 79Aug, 7pm," Lumiere, 27 Aug, 7pm, £7 (£4.50).
Keeping The Faith
Edward Norton stars and directs this Woody Allen-esque comedy about a love triangle between a Catholic priest, his rabbi pal and their gorgeous childhood friend. See feature, page 76. Keeping The Faith, ABC 7, 27 Aug, 6pm, £7 (£4.50).
Nurse Betty“
Renee Zellweger’s diner waitress Suffers an identity crisis, 'becomes’ a soap opera character and heads for Hollywood to find the doctor of her dreams in Neil LaBute’s riotous comedy. See feature, page 76. Nurse Betty, ABC 7, 77Aug, 9pm, £7 (£4.50).
0 Brother, Where Art Thou?
The Coen brothers re-write Homer's Odyssey as a screwball comedy set in America's Deep South during the 305 and starring George Clooney. See feature, page 16. 0 Brother, Where Art Thou.7, FllthUSG, 23 Aug, 9.30pm, £7 (£4.50).
Surprise lvlowe
Always a sell-out and nobody knows the film’s title until the curtains part on the night. PreviOus surprises have included: Pulp Fiction, LA. Confidential and My Name ls Joe. Surprise Movie, UGC, 22 Aug, 70pm, £7 (£4.50).
James Mason is caught in a love trist with Barbara Bel Geddes
l7—24 Aug 2000 THE HST FESTIVAL GUIDE 85