East End Review

Category: FILM

Stutterer: film review – universal themes in modern East London

Reclusive: Matthew Needham is Greenwood in Stutterer

East London may with some justification be able to call itself a world leader when it comes to making short films these days.

That is because East London films have triumphed for two years running at the Oscars in the category of Best Live Action Short Film, arguably the most prestigious award a short film can receive.

This year 12-minute short Stutterer emerged victorious in the category, emulating the success of James Lucas’s The Phone Call the previous year.

Directed by Benjamin Cleary, the film is about a reclusive typographer with a severe speech impediment whose inability to communicate effectively in everyday situations severely hampers his self-esteem.

Greenwood, played by Ben Whishaw-lookalike Matthew Needham, is a young twenty-something East Londoner who can’t even phone his broadband provider without them assuming it’s a nuisance call and hanging up.

When someone asks him for directions, he feigns deafness by responding in sign language to avoid a potentially embarrassing situation.

Yet the voice inside his head is clear, articulate and witty. He makes up poetry, his bedroom is full of books.

The place where Greenwood can most be himself is on the internet, where he has been chatting with a girl for six months over Facebook. But when she decides to visit London and wants to meet up IRL, Greenwood is crippled by fear.

With funky patterned shirts buttoned all the way to the top, Greenwood looks every inch the modern East Londoner as he scouts Broadway Market, rehearsing what he’s going to say, leading to the final scene outside the Star By Hackney Downs pub, and a clever and unexpected plot twist.

Only the viewer is privy to Greenwood’s inner thoughts and wry observations, which we hear in a voiceover, often while Needham’s face, the picture of self-pity, gazes back at us.

But our sympathy is derived less from Greenwood’s condition than what it comes to represent: the struggle to bridge the gap between the ‘real’ person inside and the one the world sees – a universal theme no less, in this subtle and tender film.

May 24, 2016
Rio Cinema workers to strike over living wage and redundancies

Changing times: the Rio Cinema. Photograph: Chris Evans

Staff at the Rio Cinema in Dalston are to strike over low rates of pay and compulsory redundancies.

In a ballot that took place on Wednesday (11 May), cinema workers voted to take industrial action, with the walk out set to take place on 25 May.

Employees are seething over the cinema’s reluctance to pay the London Living Wage (LLW) – currently set at £9.40 an hour – a figure regarded as the basic cost of living in the capital.

Last month Rio Cinema announced a restructure that offers higher wages but which cuts hours and staff to pay for it.

The disgruntled workers have launched the SOS Rio campaign, and an online petition has attracted 2250 supporters, including the likes of Hackney director Asif Kapadia and the actor Zawe Ashton.

The Rio employs 30 members of staff, many of whom work on a part-time or casual basis.

Two thirds of the cinema’s staff are in BECTU, the media and entertainment trade union.

In the ballot on Wednesday, 13 employees voted in favour of strike action, with seventy per cent of BECTU members casting their vote.

The strikers’ demands include a pay rise for all staff and commitment to the LLW, the withdrawal of the cinema’s restructure and threat of compulsory redundancies, as well as a “detailed five-year plan from the Board on how they intend to grow the cinema as a community resource for low income families”.

“What started out as a simple pay dispute has turned into a passionate ideological battle over the soul of one of the last community cinemas in London,” said Sofie Mason, national official of BECTU.

“Staff want change but not change that rips the heart out of the Rio.”

Rio cinema Executive Director Oliver Meek said he was “at a loss” over the planned strike.

“I’m incredibly frustrated by this,” Mr Meek said. “I’ve already confirmed with staff that the vast majority would go from the minimum wage, which is currently £7.40, to 12.5 per cent above that to £8.10 an hour.

”It’s not the London Living Wage, and whilst I agree we should be paying the London Living Wage, we can’t do that when the cinema is not financial viable.

“The salary I’m proposing is more than many other independent cinemas pay, and this is really a first step.”

Mr Meek, who became the cinema’s Executive Director last year, has hatched a “regeneration plan” for the Rio, which would add a second screen and make the ailing business more sustainable.

“If we had a second screen we’d be able to pay the London Living Wage – which is what we should be doing,” he said.

“But effectively I’ve taken on a cinema that’s been failing for a decade so I’m not able to do so at this point,” he said.

Long-running dispute

The long-running dispute over pay dates back to 2013, when the Rio Board announced the cinema was close to going under.

Staff agreed a pay cut of 10 per cent over seven months, which along with public donations saved the cinema.

Then in October 2015 staff asked for a pay rise for all employees, as well as repayment of the 10 per cent wage cut from 2013.

But all the cinema bosses offered was a wage increase to £8.10 for the lowest paid, which led to the collapse of talks in March.

May 13, 2016
Green Film Festival screens a global selection of eco-cinema at the Barbican

A still from The Shore Break, one of the films to be screened at the Green Film Festival

Independent films that shine a light on global environmental issues are to be shown nationwide this month as part of the sixth annual UK Green Film Festival.

The Barbican is an official partner of the festival, and will be showing films throughout the first week of May that focus on “shifting the global narrative toward a sustainable future” and give insights into environmental problems in far-reaching corners of the globe.

This year’s selection includes Racing Extinction, an investigative documentary in which Oscar-winning director Louie Psihoyos infiltrates black markets to expose the hidden world of endangered species.

The Shore Break is the story of two cousins from South Africa’s Wild Coast who have differing plans to develop their land. While Nonhle wants to develop eco-tourism to protect the community’s traditional way of life, Madiba is planning a titanium mine and national tolled highway.

Also screening is the UK premiere of The Messenger, which chronicles the plight of songbirds worldwide to survive in turbulent environmental conditions brought about by humans.

Festival director Daniel Beck said: “The UK Green Film Festival has captivated and inspired ever increasing audiences and we are very pleased to witness that there’s a growing appetite for issue-based films.”

Green Film Festival
Until 8 May
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
barbican.org.uk

May 4, 2016
Feline romantic – Homerton filmmaker releases debut feature Dead Cat

Michael (Sebastian Armesto) and Kristen (Sophia Dawnay) share a moment in Dead Cat

There was a time when brash romantic comedies ruled the cinema screens. But now, with the likes of Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’s Diary more than a decade old, it is a genre in decline.

But Sam Bern is trying to restore the rom-com to its former heights.

The Homerton-based filmmaker has just released his debut feature Dead Cat, about two childhood sweethearts who chance upon each other at the start of their thirties.

“Romcoms are important films and I think are really underrated,” says 34-year-old Bern, who lives in Homerton.

“At their heart they’re about two people who at the moment aren’t happy or aren’t functioning and it’s finding a way for them to be complete or happy again.”

Dead Cat is the story of Michael and Kristen, who have taken very different paths in life since they last knew each other.

“She’s sort of gone off and done everything and he’s sort of gone off and done nothing,” explains Bern.

“She’s got married, had a career and a kid and is going through a divorce, and he’s tried to become a photographer but it hasn’t quite been working.

“They run into each other at speed dating night so it’s like he sits down at a table and realises the person opposite him is someone he was very close to when he was a teenager, and they sort of come back into each others lives.”

With only a bunch of dysfunctional friends as allies, Michael and Kristen seek to discover whether this second bite of the romantic cherry is anything more than mere nostalgia.

The dead cat of the title is originally Michael’s hapless excuse for following Kristen around.

Much of the film is shot around Shoreditch, where Bern and the production team used to work making corporate films and music videos until the financial crisis hit.

“We were losing a lot of work so, as a group of filmmakers who had collaborated a lot before, we decided to make a feature film with people that we knew.”

Since starting work on the film in 2009, some of the cast have already made names for themselves: Sebastian Armesto was the lead in Star Wars 7 and Tom Mison has made a name for himself in the Fox series Sleepy Hollow.

“We all trained together at drama school and that’s how we knew each other,” Bern says.

Romantic comedies at their best are life-affirming, and at their worst can feel formulaic and cliché-ridden. The idea of there being a person out there who is ‘the one’ is a tired trope, Bern insists.

“It’s not that they have to be together it’s that they would be good together,” he says, explaining that each of the main characters provides the spark missing in the life of the other.

“He needs more real world and she needs more escapism and they sort of begin to find it in each other.”

“It’s like a mini resurrection you get to see these people get a second chance and find something in themselves that maybe they didn’t realise was there before.”

deadcatfilm.com

April 18, 2016
Kinoteka Film Festival set to showcase best of Polish film history

Letting the side down: Polish film director Jerzy Skolimowski, whose films feature at this month’s Kinoteka Polish Film Festival

The Kinoteka Film Festival gets underway this month, with East London venues set to screen work by some of Poland’s most renowned filmmakers.

A retrospective of the films of Jerzy Skolimowski will be held at the Barbican.

Skolimowski is a maverick filmmaker who has worked as a director, writer and actor for over 50 years, and is regarded as one of Polish cinema’s most iconic figures.

For the opening gala on 7 April, Skolimowski will be there in person to introduce his new film 11 Minutes, which focuses on 11 minutes in the lives of a variety of characters whose paths cross as they race towards an unexpected finale.

The film, described as an “inventive metaphor for our modern hectic lives driven by blind chance”, will be followed by an onstage question and answer session with the director.

Over the month the Barbican will be showing more films from Skolimowski’s extensive back catalogue, including rarely screened titles such as 1960s psychological drama Barrier (with an introduction by Skolimowski), Deep End, a comedy-drama about obsession, and the 1982 film Moonlighting starring Jeremy Irons, which was awarded Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival.

The Shoreditch-based Close-Up Cinema will be hosting festival films too, as part of their Masters of Polish Cinema season. These include a screening of Skolimowski’s loose trilogy featuring his on-screen alter ego Andrzej Leszczyc: the films Identification Marks: None, Walkover and Hands Up!

The boutique cinema is also planning to show three early psychological thrillers by Roman Polanski: his Skolimowski-scripted debut Knife in the Water; the controversial, mind-bending exploration of psychosis, Repulsion; and the paranoiac ménage-à-trois Cul-de-sac.

Then later in the month the cinema will show Pawel Pawlikowski’s debut feature, Ida, the Oscar-winning film that delves through 20th century Polish history, scripted by East London resident Rebecca Lenkiewicz.

closeupfilmcentre.com
barbican.org.uk

April 7, 2016
Docs around the clock – Cheap Cuts Documentary Film Festival preview

Vera Hems Anderson and Natailia Garay, founders of the Cheap Cuts Documentary Film Festival. Photograph: Cheap Cuts

Hackney director Asif Kapadia may have won an Oscar for his film about Amy Winehouse, but budding documentary makers from East London and beyond continue to have a difficult time making work and getting it shown.

Documentary can be an unnecessarily inaccessible medium, according to filmmakers Vera Hems Anderson and Natalia Garay, which is why they together founded Cheap Cuts Documentary Film Festival.

The volunteer-run festival, which takes place over the weekend of 2–3 April at Hundred Years Gallery, is for films under 30 minutes long made without a huge budget or the backing of a production company.

Filmmakers submitted their work for free (which is increasingly rare these days) with a total of 1,400 submissions received for the fledgling festival.

“Our aim is to make documentary accessible to people for all walks of life. We think too many film screenings and festivals have become exclusive events and this is both unfair and unproductive,” Anderson says.

“Film can be an extremely inaccessible medium and financially the film industry is one of the most unforgiving around. Film schools remain out of reach for most young people, obtaining the latest equipment is not cheap and even cinema trips are now a luxury outing.”

The open doors submissions policy meant Cheap Cuts received a diverse range of documentaries, some by unknown filmmakers from countries such as Syria, Mexico and Iran, as well as home grown practitioners from East London and elsewhere in the UK.

“We strongly believe in content over form and are interested in the stories filmmakers have to tell and not the equipment or budget used to do so,” Anderson adds.

In keeping with the festival ethos of inclusivity, screenings are free to attend, with the weekend itinerary also including workshops and at least one masterclass with a renowned documentary maker.

Cheap Cuts Documentary Film Festival
2-3 April
Hundred Years Gallery, 13 Pearson Street, E2 8JD

March 30, 2016
Original Gravity: documenting London’s brewing ‘revolution’

Hops spring eternal: inside Beavertown Brewery

To talk about craft beer as a ‘revolution’ is surely a case of over-yeasting the hops, or over-sugaring the alcohol. At any rate – it has to be an exaggeration.

But consider this. In 2007, there were 10 London breweries, a number that has swollen eightfold in a mere nine years. Craft beer, brewed locally and with a far wider and more ambitious flavour palate, has stolen a considerable march on mass-produced global brand lagers, for whom the way back, in East London at least, is not altogether clear.

Original Gravity is a 30-minute documentary about London’s craft beer industry in which behemoths of the New Beer such as Peter Hills from Hackney Brewery and Logan Plant of Beavertown look back at how far the phenomenon has come.

Writer Pete Brown, sitting in a pub with pint in hand, tells us that beer is the “social glue” of civilisation, a statement indicative of the film’s concern with the ‘romance’ of beer over the complexities of its creation.

The new brewing we are told took off in the bowels of the 2008 recession as disgruntled (or maybe just redundant) office workers in their late twenties decided to swap the City for “something meaningful”.

Inspiration came from America, as Evin O’Riodian of The Kernel Brewery recalls the variety of IPAs and craft lagers available there, and how he would return from Stateside trips to the comparatively barren beer landscape of London.

Meantime, acquired by SAB Miller in May 2015, was the trailblazer we’re told, a brewery started by Alan Hook in 2000, based in a small lock-up in Greenwich, that went on to achieve ubiquity in London’s pubs.

The owner of Sambrooks Brewery recalls how difficult it was in 2008, traipsing around London pubs trying to convince them to take a chance on a local beer. Now the tables have turned and pubs are proactively enquiring after new brews.

Hackney Brewery claims to be the oldest in the borough, established in 2011, a decisive year apparently for the ‘revolution’ with Beavertown and London Fields Brewery also starting up.

Much is made of the collegiate nature of independent brewing, with brewers sharing knowledge and even equipment in times of crisis. “It’s not really you against other neighbourhood breweries, at the end of the day it’s all of us together against terrible beer,” says Doreen Barber of the Five Points Brewing Company.

Amid the banjo soundtrack and the talk of anti-corporate authenticity one could easily find reasons to be cynical.

Afterall, only last December Camden Town Brewery was bought up by drinks giant AB InBev in a deal thought to be worth £85 million. So much for a ‘neighbourhood brewery’.

Then there’s London Fields Brewery and its founder Jules Whiteway, the former leader of a drugs ring who was arrested in December 2014 on suspicion of tax evasion.

But while the self-mythologising, almost evangelical tone to Original Gravity may not be to everyone’s taste, there is no denying that – whether a revolution or not – the industry has breathed fresh air into London’s pubs, and that the bad old days of identikit lagers on draft are unlikely to return.

Watch Original Gravity at Hackney Brewery, 358 Laburnam Street, E2 8BB on 17 February.
bit.ly/1P2MiWf

February 16, 2016
Short film Cosmico takes a swipe at organised religion

Terry Gilliam-eque: The animation of polemical short film Cosmico

Director C.J. Lazaretti’s latest short film Cosmico sees a jaded aristocrat literally feed off the world’s major religions: crucifixes are set on fire and pages are torn from the Quran. Animated similarly to the rustic cutouts of Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python work, Lazaretti’s short takes swipes at Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism.

Needless to say, the film has polarised audiences, receiving an award and nominations at European animation festivals yet being booed at a screening in Bethnal Green, where the film was made, and where until recently director Lazaretti was living. Have people taken it too seriously?

Says Lazaretti: “We’ve gone beyond being easily offended. These days, people go out of their way to find offence in anything they see or hear.”

Talking about controversial film director Pier Paolo Pasolini, Lazaretti declares: “I agree with Pasolini when he says that to scandalise is a right, and that to be scandalised is a pleasure.”

Cosmico is funny and short, but not as offensive as audiences have claimed. Coming in at just over three minutes in length, it feels slight – not just in terms of running time, but in terms of content too. The animation and sound production is unique, but the film could have benefitted from being a few minutes longer to develop its ideas.

Lazaretti originally intended the film to be played on a loop. “Before I made Cosmico, I had a vague idea for a short film that could be played like a loop, inspired a bit by David Lynch’s Lost Highway,” he said. “I mulled it over for a while, simplifying the concept as much as I could.”

Cosmico is a promising short film, with great visuals, music and style, which the director would do well to expand on.

cjlazaretti.com/cosmico

January 29, 2016
London Short Film Festival: what’s on out East

Seeing double: Anamaria Marinca in Bootstrapped, a short film by Tony Grisoni playing at the ICA on 10 January as part of the London Short Film Festival

Films about peer pressure, relationships gone wrong and cats are to feature at the London Short Film Festival, returning this month for its 13th edition.

Hackney Picturehouse, the Ace Hotel Shoreditch and the Round Chapel in Lower Clapton are host venues for the festival, which aims to offer a snapshot of contemporary Britain in the most confrontational of terms.

Fucked Up Love (Hackney Picturehouse, 9 January) is a selection of shorts focusing on extra-marital affairs, sex games, prostitution and misread moments, from a story of a couple trying to take a picture they both agree on, told through the lens of a photo booth, to a short in which an act of animal cruelty creates a schism in a couple’s relationship.

There’s a focus on groups of people, with programmes about motherhood, lonely men and peer pressure amongst urban youth. And with the refugee crisis still very much in the spotlight, a programme of shorts entitled Movement: Refugee and Migrant examines perceptions of immigration and the grim realities many immigrants face.

One programme likely to pull in crowds has a feline focus. Cats&Cats&Cats is a celebration of the best in classic and contemporary cat cinema, to be held at the Round Chapel on 14 January. A live score by psychedelic three-piece Stealing Sheep will accompany some classic mog-centred shorts such as Private Life of a Cat (US, 1949), Cat’s Cradle (US, 1959), Jayne Parker’s The Cat and the Woman: a Cautionary Tale (UK, 1982), as well as three new cat films specially commissioned for the festival.

Films from around the world make up an unprecedented number of submissions – nearly 2,000 in total – with Bootstrapped, the latest short by award-winning screenwriter Tony Grisoni, the pick among the many offerings by local filmmakers.

London Short Film Festival
8–17 January 2016
http://shortfilms.org.uk

January 5, 2016
This is East London: short film Jacked has true grit

Charley Palmer Rothwell and Thomas Turgoose in Jacked

Jacked is a short by Dutch director Rene Pannevis which fits nicely into what one might call the grit-porn pantheon (his oeuvre also contains a film called Junkie XL and a documentary short of DJ Tiesto of all things).

It follows young car thieves Russell and Waylen, played by Charley Palmer Rothwell (Legend) and Thomas Turgoose (This is England) respectively, who find a stack of tapes made by a dying man addressed to his unborn daughter. Hilarity ensues.

It’s an interesting, thoughtful piece – if a little contrived – giving one enough to feel something of a stake in the lives of the two young protagonists, whilst capitalising on the brevity of the short form to retain a level of ambiguity. This is creditable considering the artistic treatment of such topics can all too easily err towards the proselytising, critical or, worst of all, glamourising.

The narrow, winding grey streets (it’s in colour, but barely) form a claustrophobic labyrinth in which our two protagonists work, with a short focus camera serving to isolate them from their background. It’s a well-worn technique, but in a story dealing with isolated yoof, the obvious reference is La Haine.

On speaking to Rothwell, he confirms Kassovitz’s 1995 work was in their minds whilst filming. He is more uncertain, however, about whether we can fairly call Jacked a film about East London, despite there being several clear signs that this is where the ‘action’ takes place.

“I think the director wanted to be ambiguous. I’m not too sure that the location needs to be relevant, it could be anywhere and it would still be as gritty,” he explains. It is indeed based, we are told, on the director’s own experiences in the Netherlands.

Why is it that we are so fascinated in an almost voyeuristic way by underclass life in film of late? “Because it’s real,” Rothwell says. “I’d not use the word underclass. Things like this aren’t as uncommon as people think. Very few people could relate to something like Riot Club. If it’s about things that are real, more people will watch. If you go north of London, it is very gritty, people are poor.”

Certainly, the question of the role and success of cinema (and of the arts in general) in addressing or mirroring an uneven society is an interesting one. It is unfair, perhaps, to narrow our discussion of this short to this question though, as it also touches on loss, friendship and loneliness, and can boast a minor triumph in the natural rapport between its two leads.

facebook.com/jackedthefilm

December 4, 2015