SCOTTISH FILM
I llrambuie Edinburgh Film Festival: Local filmmakers are set to benefit from a Scottish Office grant of £50.000 to the [)EFF‘s New British Expo event. Scottish filmmakers and Scottish-based film students are being offered free delegate passes to the week-long (20-25 Aug) showcase/market for British film: fiction features and shorts (not documentaries) made between Aug 95 and Aug 96 can also be submitted free. Submissions tnust be received no later than Fri l9 Jul. and registration fortns are available from NBX. Filmhouse. 88 Lothian Road. Edinburgh. EH3 982 (please send a sac. and indicate submission or delegate).
I GFVW Lottery Will: The Glasgow Film and Video Workshop had a Lottery windfall recently when its capital grant application proved successful. The Albion Street workspace now has half the money required to upgrade and replace all its video facilities. and is awaiting the result of a matching fund application to the European Regional Development Fund. lfthis also gets the green light. the September AGM will be presented with a final shopping list.
I Casting call: MSc students at Napier University‘s Filth and Television Production course are currently looking for actors for a number of short films dtte to be shot in September and October. Local thespians with some experience of film and TV work should
SEQTTLSH FILM
send CVs and photos to Alex Neilsort. Film and Television Production Unit. Napier University. 6-7 Coates Place. Edinburgh. EH3 7AA.
I Cinema memories: To celebrate the centenary of cinema. the Edinburgh- based Film and Video Access Centre is seeking reminiscences frotn local people about the city's cinema-going past — visits by celebrities. anecdotes. the first Film Festival — for two five- minute films. Anyone who can provide a memory or two will later be invited along to a special screening of the finished works and some other classic pieces frotn the Scottish Film Archive's vattlts. Contact Rachel Sherratt on ()l3l 220 0220.
I Summer reading: The latest edition of Mlz'J. the tnagazinc of the Association for Media Education in Scotland (AMES) is now available and. taking the centenary of cinema in Scotland as its cue. it carries a broad range of well-written articles on film artd film education. Included in Issue twenty are an assessment of Alexander Mackendrick's post-directing career as professor at CalAtts in America. a look back at the lost feature films frotn Scotland's cinema past. an interview with Drambuie Edinburgh Film Festival director Mark Cousins and a history of radical Scottish film and theatre movements in the l93()s. For information on this and past issues. or on AMES membership. write to AMES. c/o the Scottish Film Council. 74 Victoria Crescent Road. Glasgow.
Gl29JN.
In a spin
It’s rare tor a tilm crew to complain about getting good weather, but the team behind short tilm The Whirlpool were hoping for something a bit greyer than the sunny turn that came to Scotland at the end of June. "We were looking tor Poland in autumn,’ says writer-director ltenny Clenann, ‘and what we got was Ibiza in August.’
Working on a low budget, you’ve got to make the best of what you’ve got, so Glenan’s happy enough that the sun-tilled shots will suit the more hopelul atmosphere of his film’s idealised flashbacks. llere the characters are the typical mother and child, mum spinning the boy around in the playground. But the game gets taster and slips out at control. Years later, she’s 40 and an alcoholic, he’s seventeen and has to bathe her and calm her after nightmares. ‘She’s now child-like in her behaviour,’ Clenaan explains. ‘lle’s the parent and she’s the child. They’re switching responsibilities.’
The director describes the story as that at ‘the carer and the addict. . . ordinary people in an extraordinary sltuation,’ seeing alcoholism as ‘a classless disease’. like Kieslowski, he tried to tind physical landscapes that mirrored the sense of destitution in the story, and so be filmed in Shotts and lanarkshire. ‘lt’s not poverty
Patricia floss as ltugh’s anxious mother in The Whirlpool
stricken,’ Clenaan adds, ‘it’s just bare and spartan. There’s no love or warmth in their relationship.’
The Whirlpool is now at the editing stage, and marks the third tilm project this year tor Glasgow theatre company
. Wiseguise, lollowing Ilard Nut - A
’ love Story tor the Prime Cuts scheme and Initiation, one of 1996’s Tartan Shorts. ‘I suppose we bring a kind of theatricality,’ reckons Clenann, whose theatre work includes A Place With The Pigs tor Communicado and loot tor the ltoyal lycetnn. ‘We’re all interested in working with actors; it’s not lust the visual picture. We’re all actors ourselves, so we’re interested in the truth ot the emotion, as it were.’ (Alan Morrison) The Whirlpool is due to screen at this year’s lirambuie Edinburgh Film
Festival.
RENTAL
I Showgirls ( 18) Take a 30s Broadway musical. sleaze it up for 90s Las Vegas. and you’ve got one of the tnost talked-about — attd worst — films of the year. Wannabe dancer Nomi (Elizabeth Berkley hits new lows in bimbo acting) leaves behind sordid lap-dancing for a tits-oot turn in a big fioorshow. bttt finds the saute level of back- stabbing at every level. A hags-to-bitches fairytale. bttt really it'sjust big budget porn. containing some atrocious lines from writer Joe liszterhas. (Fox Guild)
I Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace ( 12) An unintelligible plot is only one of the problems with this confused tale of a titan creating his own Virtual Reality domain and threatening the rest of the world. The design is interesting. bttt the blue screen effects are rubbish. ‘The material world will fade away attd only cyberspace will remain.’ claims the would-be god at one poittt — surely that would pull the plug on the whole shebang'.’ ()r so we hope. (First lndependettt) I The Plague ( 15) William Hurt. Raul Julia. Sandrinc Bonnaire and Robert I)uvall. together in a film based on Albert Catnus's wonderful novel. with music by Vangelis — how did this one lie on the shelves for four years before slipping out of quarantine onto video'.’ A French TV cameraman attd anchorwoman find themselves trapped in a city when it‘s closed off because of bubonic plague. witnessing how the epidemic brings the good artd bad in ordinary men and politicians to the surface. No classic. bttt worth checking ottt. (First Independent)
RETAIL
I living In Oblivion ( I5) Everything you wanted to know about independent filrnmaking. but were afraid to ask. Steve Buscemi plays a harassed director coping with technical malfunctions
Also out: Anthony llopklns tlnds solace as the president they love to hate ln lllxon (Entertainment In Video. rental)
VIDEOS
Also out: Dénzel Washington turns 403 LA investigator in Devil In A Blue Dress (Columbia Tristar. rental)
and thespian tantrums in Tom I)iCillo's brilliantly funny look behind the low-budget camera. The story's three sections play well against each other. and the subject can be enjoyed even by those who don't know their are lamps from their egos. (Entertainment i.‘ l 3.99)
I Dr Jekyll And Mr liyde (ll) Rouben Mamoulian's I932 version takes huge liberties with Stevenson's classic and contains some odd directorial quirks (pomt-ol-vtew camera shots. split screen edits and double exposures). btrt it certainly accentuates the strong sexual currents of the original. Fredric March won art ()scar for his devil/angel performance. the approach to the content is daring and some of the transformation techniques are still remarkable today. (Terror Vision £ l().99)
I Eastern lleroes Video Magazine 2 ( )8) Interviews and film clips. Hortg Kong style. iii the second volume of the enthusiastic and knowledgeable fanzine. Highlights this time include Philip Kao. Jet Lee. Chow Yun Fat iii the UK and. ehm. Jonathan Ross. while the feature film bonus is the delightfully titled. never- before-available K 1mg l-‘u — The Ht’tlt/ Crux/tar. (Eastern Heroes £ l 3.99) I Warlords 0t Atlantis (PG) With Doug McClure. discoverer of more lost-in-time civilisations than anyone in film history. on board. it's no surprise that a Victorian sea expedition stumbles upon the hidden city of Atlantis. But guess what? The underwater rulers are really from Mars and they want to steer 20th century history
to fascism attd nuclear power. A tnix ofJules Verne-style sci-fi. Greek myth and X-Iiilc Bermuda triangle disappearances. it also includes a line-up of rubber monsters that make Godzilla look like Laurence Olivier.
(Beyond Vision £9.99)
I The Famous Five (U ) Get ready for lashings of fun as Enid Blyton's adventuresome quartet — pltts dog — come to the small screen. Hidden treasure. smugglers. kidnappers and ghost trains prove no match for our heroes. seen as part of ITV‘s summer programming. There’s art old-fashioned. comic-strip feel to the stories and a bit of a 'golly gosh' atmosphere. but the concept of a group of kids solving problems and getting one up on adults as part of their holiday adventures will endure. (First lndepettdent £9.99 for two episodes)
I The Beastmaster ( I5) Tarzan goes all swords 'n' sorcery on tts as a bewitched kid grows up to become Marc Singer. a muscular hero who ltas a friendly command of the animal kingdom. An attack on his adopted village leaves him sole survivor attd. along with some tnates picked up en route. he heads off to depose an evil priest- rnagician with a penchant for child sacrifice. Cracking fun that allows full reign to its imagination. (Beyond Vision £9.99)
I tlouse 0t Whipcord (IS) A slightly dizzy French model is picked up by a dark stranger at a snazzy early 70s London party and taken to a private prison which claims to deal out 'proper' justice to those with lax moral codes. One misdemeanour and you're itr solitary: two. arid you're whipped: three. and you're executed. Against the odds. this is a surprisingly good thriller with a perverse undercurrent and. given the current drive for stricter corporal punishment crossed with the moral hypocrisy of the- powers-that-be. its themes are as relevant now as ever. (Redemption £l2.99)
The List 12-25 Jul I996 23