FESTIVAL —
film/PREVIEW
HITLIST
I CATCllFlRE Interesting one this. Writer/director Dennis Hopper. who also scripted, had his name removed irom the crest when the production company retused to release his three-hour cut oi this comic pursuit story with Jodie Foster. As a resultthe ott-used pseudonym Alan Smithee is named as director in another chapter ot ilopper’s troubled career. Fllmhouse1, Fri 17 Aug, 11pm.
I THE GARDEN World premiere ol the latest Derek Jannan tllm. which uses super-8 and video techniques to draw the links between the theological condemnation oi homosexuality and the tenor oi the response to the current AIDS crisis. See ieature. Cameo, Mon 20 Aug, 8.45pm.
I NlKlTA Alter the French megahit The Big Blue, Luc Besson's newie stars his wife, Anne Parillaud, in a comedy thriller about an ex-iunkie cop-killerwho’s otiered a trash chance as a police intelligence oiiicer. Allegedly inspired bythe Elton John ditty. but don't let that put you oil. Filmhouse 1, Sun 19 Aug, 8.45pm.
'. 4 a: r‘ I THE REFLECTle SKIN Novelist. artist and screenwriter oi The Krays, Philip Rldley makes a predictably eyecatchlng directorial debut with this haunting rites-ol-passage tale set in 50s Idaho. whose disturbing atmosphere is already drawing comparison with the work oi . . . 0K, guess, butthe Initials are D.L. Thur 23 Aug, Filmhouse1,6.30pm. I THESE FDDLISIl THINGS Returning to the screen aiter an absence oi twelve years, Dirk Bogarde stars as an English retiree recovering lrom a heart attack and visited by his estranged Parisian daughter Jane Blrkln. Delicate. brilliantly-perlormed autumnal study irom the ever-reliable Tavemier, who will be present atthis screening. Bit oi an annoying clash with Nikita though. Cameo. Sun 19 Aug, 8.45pm.
DldLang Signs
Revisiting silent classics has become something ofan Edinburgh habit with Abel Gance’s Napoleon, the Erich Von Stroheim saga Greed and, last year. both F.W. Murnau‘s vampire tale Nosferatu and Chaplin‘s 1931 non-talkie City Llights, all getting the gala treatment. 1990 marks the centenary. ofGreat German director Fritz Lang‘s birth. so it‘s appropriate that EIFF director David Robinson, in putting together a special celebratory celluloid package. has secured a major screening of the film-maker‘s best known silent masterpiece. 1926‘s hugely influential sci-fi masterpiece Metropolis.
Inspired by the towering skyscrapers of New York, Lang and his wife Thea Von Harbou created a scenario set in a huge teeming city of the future, where the ruling class live in undreamt of luxury and the slave workers in unending toil, the mad doctor’s creation of a robot woman to replace the proletariat’s saintly female leader instrumental in escalating the
. «i l conflict. Lang ’s film, with its huge cast of extras and stunning! y imaginitive cityscape sets, still towers over the cinema ’3 visions of the future, to the extent that the design of Star Wars android C3 P0 quoted
- directly from Metropolis’s famous
metallic female figure.
The version screening in Edinburgh is (perhaps thankfully) not the tinted Giorgio Moroder-scored version of a few years back, but will feature Gottfried Huppertz’s original music transposed to the two pianos of live performers Frank Strobel and Pierre Oser. Joining Lang’s original in the Edinburgh festivities are two contemporary slants on his work:
Karpo Godina's Artificial Paradise (Thurs 16 Aug, Film/rouse l,
8. 45pm), which looks at his formative military duties in 1915 Slovenia; and Claude (‘habrol's eagerly awaited Doctor M, with Alan Bates and Jennifer Beals in a relocation of Lang '5 famous criminal megalomaniac Doctor Mabuse character ( renamed Marsfeldt) to the death-infested Berlin of the Nineties. ( Trevor Johnston)
I Metropolis screens at the Cameo cinema on Sat 18 Aug, 8.45pm. Doctor M also plays the Cameo on Fri 17 Aug, 2.15pm. See Film Festival listings for further details and ticket information.
:— Buddy
buddies
In 1985 the Edinburgh lntemationai Film Festival screened a modestly-budgeted New York independent ieature titled Parting Glances, which chronicled the break-up oi two homosexual lovers while a mutual iriend succumbed to the dreaded hand at the AIDS virus. The film’s director Bill Sherwood was himseli later to die irom AIDS, but his legacy, along with ArthurJ. Bressan Jnr's Buddies, a story oi a last iading patient and his counsellor, was to be among the iirst filmmakers to tackle the issue oi the epidemic in iictional iorm.
One oi the major events at the 1990 EIFF bears the banner headline 01 AIDS And The Media, and sets out, live years on irom Parting Glances, to locus attention on the attitudes oi film and television to the ongoing AIDS crisis. Combining a seminar with screenings oi a number oi current ieatures addressing the topic, the whole-day programme hopes to raise the debate as to how passive the media can remain when it accepts some oi the responsibility ior shaping social attitudes towards the problem.
The exhibition in Edinburgh oi twenty-iour12it x 12it sections oi the AIDS Memorial Duilt (see Art listings)
made up of a myriad oi individual coilin-sized pieces created by the surviving lover or relatives at the victims, puts the iilm-makers' eilorts into perspective, but it also handily coincides with the screening at Robert Epstein and Jeiirey Friedman’s moving documentary Common Threads: Stories From The Guilt. Awarded an Oscar this year, it centres on the lives oi iive very dilierent victims, including 11 year-old David Mandell, cutting through stereotypes to create a sympathetic portrayal at human courage in the lace oi insuperable odds.
Also screening is Norman Rene's drama Longtime Companion, another ailecting overview oi the losses incurred during the last decade by the gay community.
While Longtime Companion is something at an audience movie and could be set tor a wider crossover success, the Film Festival have also iound room for expressionist German film-maker Rosa Von Prauheim’s pieces Silence = Death and Positive (Filmhouse 2, Aug 22 & 23, 2.30pm), where the director lays aside his usual decadent excesses to alter an impassioned assessment of the true scale of the epidemic in the lace oi publicignorance.
Meanwhile at the AIDS And The Media seminar, those charged with informing the public will have their chance to reilect on the way the media has treated the whole tragedy, with the line-up oi speakers including journalists Adam Mars-Jones, Duncan Campbell and Ruth Wishart. The keynote address will be given by John Maddison whose book AIDS The Protean Scourge chronicles the disease's portrayal on television and in the press, while directors Robert Epstein and Norman Rene will also be present for what promises to be an aiternoon oi tough talking and which will be chaired by Derek Dgg oi SAM. (Trevor Johnston)
The AIDS And The Media Seminar is in Filmhouse1 on Wed 21 Aug, 4.15pm, the same venue hosting the screenings at Longtime Companion at 6.30pm and Common Threads: Stories F rom The Guilt at 8.45pm laterthat day.
The List 17—23 August 199067