Uneasy Worlds was a season of films taking place at Summerhall in April 2012 as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival. 

Details of the programme here: http://issuu.com/summerhall/docs/summerhallspring2012-flyer

Like taking out the recycling and doing your tax return, blogging is sadly one of those activities that keeps getting popped to the bottom of the to do list. I’m behind, for sure. 

So, to make amends, here’s a wee summary of all those blog posts that were fleetingly formed in my mind but never quite made it to the virtual world of Tumblr.

1. Edinburgh Fringe. I put on films, people came and watched, hurrah. Double hurrah for the awesome turn out for Daisies (pictured above), the 60s Czech surrealist masterpiece by Vera Chytilov. It’s always fun to screen films that rarely get shown, a big thanks if you came along and supported my wee fringe film experiment. Something bigger and better for next year? I hope so.

2. Over the last couple of months I’ve been involved in a few education events at the GFT. I was kindly asked to present two ‘screen salons’, which consisted of an extended introduction and a post-screening discussion. The first was on Ken Loach’s Glasgow-set films and the second on Paddy Considine’s Tyrannosaur and new British cinema. I also introduced Catherine Breillat’s A Ma Souer, showing as part of the GFT’s season on provocative cinema. I should be a pro at public speaking by now, I really should. Big thanks to the GFT’s education team for inviting me to take part.  

3. London Film Festival - a solid, rather than spectacular year. Lots I wanted to see but didn’t get a chance to. I was unexpectedly blown away by Elena (third feature from Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev). Sometimes it’s the films that you know little about that really make an impact.

4. Currently preparations are in full swing for Glasgow Film Festival and Glasgow Short Film Festival 2012. I can’t say much other than it’s all getting very exciting. Lots of action behind the scenes at the moment with the programme officially launched in January. As they say: watch this space.

5. Writing? Yes, I’ve been doing a bit of that too. Recent pieces for Dazed include interviews with Alexander Skarsgaard for Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia and Nicolas Winding Refn for Drive. And a couple of short pieces for The Independent - Aidan Moffat at Edinburgh Art Festival and the Bicycle Film Festival.

6. And something more recent: from last week, me on BBC Radio Scotland reviewing Machine Gun Preacher and Jack Goes Boating and discussing London Film Festival with presenter Janice Forsyth and fellow film journo Siobhan Synnot. I think I may have inadvertently made a sexual innuendo regarding Gerard Butler… oh dear. 

Not another festival blog you say? I’m afraid so. And this time, 2 in 1, as in June I was lucky enough to attend both Hamburg International Short Film Festival and, closer to home, Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Hamburg was brilliant, a very cool city and a really awesome festival. The main festival centre was housed in an abandoned factory which apparently used to make gun parts and spoons. I’m not quite sure how that worked but it was a fantastic space. All over the place clocks had stopped at different times, a wonderfully evocative image that seemed oddly appropriate for this celebration of a time-based medium. As well as a really strong competition I managed to make it along to some fun horror shorts held in the basement, a focus on Swedish cinema, an outdoor screening plus a harbour boat tour. All in all, an excellent 5 days that really got me enthused for next year’s Glasgow Short Film Festival.

After Hamburg it was straight into Edinburgh Film Festival. This year has been plagued with problems which have been well documented elsewhere so I won’t go into those now, suffice to say that the event was a quiet one. I was however completely enchanted by Bela Tarr’s Turin Horse (pictured), an utterly beautiful film, and was thrilled to get the chance to interview the man himself. Sadly, he confirmed that the film would indeed be his last. What a privilege it was to speak to him before he finally lays down his camera.

I did a couple of pieces for BBC Radio Scotland’s Movie Café on the EIFF – a live discussion on the highs and lows of the festival (with Paul Gallagher and Pasquale Iannone) and also a package on the new craze for cineconcerts, which you might still be able to catch on BBC iPlayer if you’re quick.

Image: Melancholia

My 3rd year at Cannes, I should be a pro by now but it still took me a good couple of days to get into the swing of things. Negotiating closed streets and exits (those bloody celebrities wreaking havoc with any attempt to make a shortcut) and the scheduling nightmare which comes from there being 3 film festivals taking place at the same time; it all leads to a lot of frantic running around.

However, things soon settled down and the festival turned out to be the best I’ve experienced. The line-up was truly phenomenal, in Competition were directors including Pedro Almodovar, Terence Malick, Lars Von Trier, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Aki Kaurismaki, the Dardenne Brothers… the list goes on. And for the most part, they didn’t disappoint. I won’t reveal all here as I no doubt will be writing about many of those films in the coming months when they reach the UK.

In the meantime here’s a round up of the press coverage I did during the festival. For Dazed Digital I interviewed Stellan Skarsgard (discussing Lars Von Trier’s controversial comments and his new film Melancholia), Nadine Labaki, Bruno Dumont and Naomi Kawase. And for BBC Radio Scotland I did a package on Scots in Cannes, looking at the wheeling and dealing that takes place in the film market, you can listen to that on iPlayer here.

Until next year, Cannes.  

This Bank Holiday weekend I was out and about exploring London’s East End Film Festival which in 2011 celebrates its tenth birthday.

First up I saw Mother Joan of the Angels, a black and white Polish film from 1961 about a convent of possessed nuns. Sparse, unsettling and full of beautiful shots (like the one above) the experience was made even more memorable by the venue: St John’s in Bethnal Green, it came with an authentic musty church smell - brilliant!

On the lookout for some exciting shorts (with Glasgow Short Film Festival in the back of my mind) I went along to 3 short film programmes. Highlights for me included Rita, an Italian film that has been picking up awards at festivals across the globe, and Andrew Kotting’s superb Sea Swallow’d - a film about the ocean, guts and urges (a mix which comes together perfectly in Kotting’s hands).

I also managed to see Under the Cranes, a heartfelt snapshot of an ever-changing Hackney made up of archive and modern day footage. It made me want to search out my own East End heritage (which stretches back numerous generations in Tower Hamlets I’ve been told!).

And last but not least I headed to 18 Hewett Street for an evening of discussion and short film by Rich Pickings. I really like what these guys are doing: smart, pertinent topics coupled with a selection of short films to spark debate. The theme of the evening was gamification and it touched on a range of topics from psychoanalysis, to education, to new approaches to filmmaking (someone mentioned interactive web documentary Prison Valley). I was also intrigued to hear about Hide & Seek’s The Sandpit - a very fun, creative games event that I immediately went away and googled.

All in all an excellent long weekend of film: stimulating, varied and exciting.

Eagle-eyed film fans may have spotted my article in Friday’s The Independent. Beyond the coverage of the royal wedding was a short interview I did with anthropologist and artist Lucien Castaing-Taylor whose documentary Sweetgrass, about the last modern day cowboys, is on selected release now. It’s worth checking out, especially for fans of pastoral documentaries La Vie Moderne and Sleep Furiously.

Read the piece here.

A quick update for April:

Several pieces I wrote for The List are now up online, including reviews for Heartbeats (pictured), Le Quattro Volte and Love Like Poison. They’re all out in May. Take a look here.

And here is an interview I did with Scottish actress Shirley Henderson for Dazed Digital where she discusses herding oxen (among other things) in Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff.

For a few more days you can listen to my interview with Angela Allan and Fiona Maxwell, for BBC Radio Scotland’s Movie Cafe, on the restoration of The African Queen. It’s on BBC iplayer here. Angela Allan was script supervisor on the film and Fiona Maxwell, from ITV, managed the restoration. The film is now back in cinemas 60 years after it was first made and is well worth watching, if just to see Humphrey Bogart’s hippo impression.