BFI London Film Festival highlights

 I say highlights, but they are simply a sampling of what I saw. Not much, but how wonderful to be able to go out to the cinema again! I am cautious--I mask and distance as much as I can, and hardly anyone else does, which is disconcerting. But I was thrilled to be able to sit in a cinema seat and watch a screen. 

Actually, Curzon Soho's cinema 2 worked out well for me, because I was in the back row and on the end, in what felt like was the usher's seat. Ample legroom and nobody near me. Hurrah!

The films. Well, I only saw two features, both by celebrated auteurs but with very different outcomes. I am embarrassed to say I had never seen anything by Aki Kaurismäki before, though I know him by reputation. His latest, Fallen Leaves, is a curiously slight piece of work, at heart a two hander of lonely man and woman pursuing each other. There are other minor characters and also a dog, but really it's just those two being awkward and laconic and not much happens. The Ukraine war is on the radio as a backdrop, but I am not sure of the significance. The humour is dry and the performances were good but I was left unmoved by the thing. 

Todd Haynes' May December is a different beast, an unsettling expose of human denial, betrayal and deceit. I was a bit shaken by it. Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman are excellent as subject and actress playing subject. Their dance of power is played out as a slow burn over the film's length, with excellent support from Charles Melton as Moore's husband. I will say no more. 

As usual for the last few years, I also watched the shorts available online and found a few of note. Khabur (dir Nafis Fathollahzadeh) explores the ethnographic studies Germans made of their excavations of a site in Syria in the early 20th century. The director repurposes these to expose the assumptions of superiority and exploitation behind the works. She then gives voice to one statue as it sits in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. I found the sound mix a bit iffy, but the film is strong. 

Essex Girls  (dir Yero Timi-Biu) is a contemporary story of a girl navigating different social groups and trying to find her place in among them. Well acted and features Corinna Brown (Tara in Heartstopper!) in a supporting role. 

The other one I really liked was an animation, Boat People (dir Thao Lam and Kjell Boersma), which is the director's remembrances of leaving Vietnam with her family as a very young child. What she knew then and understands now are of course quite different. 

I hoped to get to some of the art exhibits but did not. It was good to be back. 

Fringe! Queer Arts and Film Festival

 The festival finished last week but I have taken some time to finish watching films and gather my thoughts. 

Naturally, I spent a bit of time pondering my own film, Lactasia, which made its belated UK debut. The screening was socially distanced and relaxed and was somewhat masked. It certainly was a new experience for me to see people lying on bean bags at a festival screening. We were even offered gay masks! Well, rainbow ones. I have kept one as a souvenir. 

Here is a pic of the installation I put up at Rich Mix for my screening. 

But the other films I saw ranged from the high camp of Captain Faggotron to a whole programme of witchy experimental shorts. Captain Faggotron was great fun and a distant cousin to Lactasia in its B-movie values and humour. And it was set in Berlin, which is always a delight to see on film. 

I also saw a newly digitised version of Lesbian Avengers Eat Fire Too, which is an old favourite of mine. It looked great and it's always great to spend time with these amazing activists, now seen at a distance of 30 years. I think a lot of the youngers viewers were really impressed by what they saw and some women told me they wished they had been there. I had, of course, and was wearing my Lesbian Avengers T-shirt to prove it!

I viewed several shorts programmes, including the romance-themed Queer Summer Lovin'. The standout in this programme was definitely Youssou & Malek, which was very clever and beautifully shot. The two leads had great chemistry as a young couple faces being split up by life choices. 

The end of my attendance at the festival in a live capacity was the shorts programme Enchanted Visions, which featured an array of truly baffling and bewitching films, some more abstruse than others. I am not sure I truly understood any of them, in fact, but that may have been because I was utterly exhausted by that point. 

Suffice to say it was an exciting week for me, my first live festival in three years and a chance for people to see what I have been working on for eight years, too.