EIFF
GOOD SHOUT Author Alan Warner has helped choose a series of films by the Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski for EIFF 2011. He explains how he made his picks
When it was announced that I was collaborating with the EIFF, people started throwing around that name ‘curator’, which gave the impression that Isabella Rossellini and I were ensconced together in a hotel in the south of
France devising programmes. Of course, the truth was that I met Mark Cousins in an Edinburgh pub for about 45 minutes. I’ve always been a big fan of Skolimowski, an unrecognised genius. I think what came first for me was a soundtrack album by Can, on the back of which it said, ‘from [Skolimowski’s feature] Deep End’. In the early 80s it was very difficult to see European movies, apart from whatever was on late on BBC2. The Adventures of Gerard was on one night, with Peter McEnery in it, and so I sat down with some cheese and a glass of milk. I was blown away. The film took these Arthur Conan Doyle stories and gave them a slight swinging 60s vibe. I was thoroughly entertained by it. 30 years have passed and I’ve not seen it again, not a glimpse. So when the Film Festival was going on about what to do, I just thought, ‘Jesus man, I wouldn’t mind seeing that again.’ It could be my own personal jukebox.
It was also years since I’d last seen Deep End. I first tracked it down at this bizarre cinema club showing in Hampstead in about 1984. It’s a very fantastic, strange and beautiful movie, starring Jane Asher. There’s a sequence where her wedding ring becomes lost in the snow, so they take all the snow in bags from the rough area where they lost the ring back to a swimming pool where they work and melt it in the bottom to find it.
And then there’s The Shout [pictured, above], which is a cracker as well – a really wild film with Alan Bates and John Hurt. It’s from a fantastic Robert Graves story, but the adaptation takes out all of the public school cricket stuff and twists it to cast the Hurt character as a composer of electronic music. It’s an effective concept that allowed them to use sound in a really creative way. It’s great to get these movies out to the Harry Potter generation who don’t know about The Shout or who Alan Bates was because he was dead before they were five. (As told to Brian Donaldson). ■ The Adventures of Gerard, Filmhouse 3, Sat 25 Jun, 3.30pm; Deep End, Filmhouse 2, Sun 26 Jun, 2.45pm; The Shout, Filmhouse 3, Sun 26 Jun, 1pm.
23 Jun–21 Jul 2011 THE LIST 25
‘ON THE FIRST DAY, ONE MARINE DIED, 12 HAD COLLAPSED IN THE HEAT, AND WE HAD ALL RUN OUT OF WATER’
captured him being this perfect warrior and leading his men, so he was very open to showing the rest of what it means to be a warrior; to come home from war and face these psychological and physical injuries.’ The real value of Hell And Back Again lies in the contrasts between the battle zone and a home front where Harris has no obvious connection with other people and no appetite for the daily complexities of paying bills, making choices and living a ‘normal’ life. As he faces an addiction to painkillers and displays a disturbing fondness for firearms, the film starts to carry echoes of landmark 1970s movies like Taxi Driver or The Deerhunter.
‘I have borrowed from the world of narrative cinema,’ Dennis readily concedes. ‘I’ve used a lot of cinematography techniques to try and capture the visual language of narrative film but also the narrative arc and the powerful emotional impact that usually comes with a narrative film. People almost forget that they are watching a documentary. When they do realise that it is real it hits them that much harder.’
True to his ambition of pushing the boundaries of documentary, Dennis is now a founder of Condition One, a mobile media technology company with big plans for the future. ‘Condition One is an evolution from what I have been doing as a journalist and filmmaker,’ he explains. ‘I’m trying to create these highly visceral, emotional and immersive experiences to better convey these indescribable experiences that we usually just see in a frame or on a piece of paper. What I am trying to create now is much more honest, truthful representations of these experiences to actually allow people to be there and experience it first hand.’ The reporting of modern warfare might never be the same again.
Hell And Back screens with Blood And Dust, George Square Theatre, Sun 26 Jun, 4pm.