FILM SCOTTISH
selected artist will receive a £ l .000 fee. plus substantial budget for production and equipment costs fora new piece of work to coincide with the 10th FFVF in February 1995. Artists are invited to submit detailed proposals. including equipment and budget requirements. by 20 October. Application forms are available from Sarah Munro. Director. The Collective Gallery. 22—28 Cockburn Street. Edinburgh. El-il lNY (03] 220 l260).
I Relax: Edinburgh-based filmmaker Hannah Robinson's debut Relax receives its television premiere at
l2. l 5am on the Wednesday 28 September as part of the First Frames series on Channel 4. The ten-minute drama charts the reactions of a packed train cam'age when two passengers decide to get a little over-passionate.
I Time Based Media Commission: The Collective Gallery and Edinburgh Shorts (formerly the Fringe Film and Video Festival) are again collaborating to commission an installation by an artist living or trained in Scotland (not students) and working in time based media (film. video. computer art. performance or any combination). The
_ W. "n9
1;. _. .. '- r. r ,1 I Bruce Morton (I) and Richard Banks star in Barony Film and Television Productions’ short film Wheels, which has just finished its one-week shoot in Tain. The drama debut of writer/ director Brian Ross, Wheels is set in a small Highland village in the early 80s and tells of a comical night out for a CB fanatic and her biker boyfriend. The film constitutes a big step up from school productions for its female star, 20-year-old Iona Carbarns, who is joined in the cast by Jimmy Chisholm, Radio 1 DJ Nicky Campbell (as a smoothie mobile disco DJ) and over a hundred local extras. Wheels was funded by Grampian Television and the Scottish Film Production Fund, and is due for completion mid-November. (AM)
_ Launch pad
While student film-making in Scotland is on the ascendant. opportunities for young. would-be filmmakers outside the educational establishments are still limited. Enter a new project from a group of Edinburgh-based filmmakers. Sketchbook Productions. Taking its lead from recent multi-sponsor ventures Wi” “9‘ S9 l" for the WP” 9f ""mlly “kc Chum-"g '17”. new: Sketchbouk is | financing which saw a cast of amateur looking [0 (jcvcjop its first project I, extras working on Chasing The Deer. ‘l Starts And lira/s Wit/1A Scream with 99'” mind if Silmwnc 99m“ “Will private Sponsorship The lemminulc who wants to be an extra in one of our drama. charting the breakdown of a Pl'f’lCCl-‘X‘ hb‘ “HEX ‘1‘“! 1"“ “0‘ gm”? [9 relationship. will be shot on Super VHS ’ 115k lhcm ‘9 PILV l9" il~ PC“PIC 51‘9"“ at a cost ofonly £350. 3 just give us sponsorship because they The Vida, will be a son of wakc-up believe in our ideas. We don't want a can“ Sayg Dylan Matthew of ‘ litter ofcrap actors in the background Sketchbook. who has just completed a ill-Si bCCilUSC lhcy'vc paid us £ l00.‘ pop video for Tinkerbell‘s Dope Ring. (Thom Dibdin) ‘1: is; it) my‘ “Hcy‘ [his is, something Contact Sketch/)th I’rmlttt'ttmts (1132 we've done. now give us some more St Stephen Street. [Edinburgh [fl/3 SAL.
'.
money to do something better!" £350 is not a lot of money to raise. and if should only take a week to shoot. Everything is ready logo. apart from the money.‘ ()nce the video is made. Sketchbook will move on to a [6mm film project. also a shott. with the substantially bigger budget of £l().()()(). Although the group is looking to finance all its projects using a large number of small sponsors. Matthew is adamant that it
l 18 The List 23 September—o ()ctober 1994
l l
JEZEBEL FILMS
As if we haven’t been depraved enough by the onslaught of sleazy cult horror films released on the Redemption sell-through video label, a (naughty little) sister label has now been launched to bring us the ‘best’ of European soft-core sex films of the
605, “Ills and 803.
Three of the first quartet to be released are tacky and, if truth be told, fairly tepid. Cruel Passion (18), starring a certain Koo Stark, has all the elements of a lusty historical bodice ripper as two girls leave their convent to further their education in a brothel in London. The perverse origins in the stories of de Sade creep through at times and, although the cold, unforgiving ending leaves us on a downer, it’s not badly acted. Monique (18) uses the archetypal fantasy of the foreign au pair as catalyst in a domestic ménage a trois with a bored suburban English couple. Cool It Carol (18) tries to be a satire on swinging 60s London, but its innocent approach and saucy seaside jokes are sexist, rascist and anti-gay rather than comically endearing.
The film that pulls the label back
from the credibility cliff-edge is I Am Curious - Yellow (18), an important film in its day which still retains much of its substance. Groundbreaking in terms of knocking back IIS censorship laws in the late Gus/early 70s, it’s more in the mould of European new wave - Godard and the like - than the sexploitation banner it comes under here. Political both in content and style, it uses full frontal nudity and direct political questioning to people in the street to challenge Sweden’s self-congratulatory class system. Genuinely subversive, it still manages to thrill on intellectual and physical levels. (Alan Morrison)
All titles are available on the Jezebel label, priced £12.99.
I Fortunes Of War (15) With less emphasis on the sweeping power of The Killing Fields and tnore on the double-crossing elements of an action thriller. Fortunes Of War uses the contemporary backdrop of 1994 Thailand and Cambodia to give a little extra energy to its punch. An American aid worker. along with
I Sunrise (U) Murnau‘s first US film is a magnificent example of storytelling by visual images. The bleak story of a rural couple's loss of innocence at the hands of
a devilish woman from the city. as well as the urban sets. has a dark.
liuropean feel — the
crowds in line for the fair
immediately recall the workers in .ilt't/‘u/m/ix.
lltnnan despair painted in
flickering light and shadow. this is a must. (Tartan i l 5.99)
I Wrong Movements ( l5.
Connoisseur £15.99)
There's plenty of
f litiropean philosophising
going on iii this early
Wenders pseudo-road
movie. and it's not
surprising to lind l’eter
llandke's name on the
screenplay. A despairing writer swaps domestic and intellectual confinement
fora trip that brings him
into contact with an odd
btmch. including a mute juggler played by Naslassja Kinski in her screen debut. Another rarely screened Wenders is now available iii the
' shape of 'Iitklvn-(Ia (U.
Academy £15.99). his odyssey eastwards to the
the jungle in exchange for gold. The playing off between mercy and mercenary is pertinent.
i but the plot has to become
increasingly unbelievable
to keep the tension
mounting. (20:20 Vision)
‘ I Roberto Benigni's a different face. but
otherwise the routine is
. land of the great Japanese 9 director Ozu. Although claiming the documentary i is ‘in no way a
5 pilgrimage‘. Wenders uses ’ his filmed diary to
interview Ozu
collaborators and assess the state of the land twenty years after the master’s final film.
I Hearts Of Darkness
( 15) Forget the limits of the ‘Making Of... ' genre: Eleanor Coppola's account of her husband's struggle with his own journey into the self during the mammoth 238- day shoot of Apocalypse Now! is in every way as fascinating as the feature. The location stories are legendary — Martin Sheen's drunken behaviour in the key opening scene and his subsequent heart attack. Dennis Hopper's stoned ramblings. Marlon Brando's gargantuan size and refusal to learn his lines. A masterpiece of its kind and a compelling account of an artist taken to the point of madness. here in a limited edition box set. To win a copy. see next issue. (Tartan
£ l9.99)
I Hitler: A Film From Germany ( l5) At around
' seven hours in length
5 Asian sidekick and French 5 depressingly the satne in : love interest. is persuaded . to take acargo of
. medicine to guerillas in
Son Of The Pink Panther
(PG. MGM/UA); Tom
| Hanks and Denzel
1 Washington are splendid
in bringing an important
- AIDS message to a wider
mainstream audience in Philadelphia (12. Columbia Tristar). and Beverly Hills 90210's Shannen Doherty makes
the most of her bad girl image in Blindfold: ACTS
A Of Obsession (PolyGram).
(presented here in a two- tape box set with book). this film was the centrepiece of the 1992 Edinburgh Film Festival's . Hans Jurgen Syberberg retrospective. Bringing together collages of archive photographs and spectacular theatrical stage sets and backdrops. the director takes us on a visually and philosophically idiosyncratic journey into the ‘German soul'. The ideas are heavy. the images stunning. A remarkable achievement. (Academy £34.99) I A fascinating study of androgyny and refusal to embrace the adult world. Andrew Birkin‘s The Cement Garden is now available in a widescreen transfer supervised by the director. accompanied by his short film. Shred/tar Vrux/tltu; Fellini's love for clowns and travelling entertainers is memorably. ifsentimentally. rendered in la Strada; La Rom/e is updated to contemporary America with a cult cast in Chain Of Desire ( I8. Mainline £12.99). and Jean-Jacques Beineix delivers a stylised noir with The Moon In The Gutter (l8. Artificial Eye l £i5.99).