Edinburgh Int'l Film Fest, Spry at 64

Details: Parent Category: Film Festivals; Category: Previews; Published on Saturday, 05 June 2010 12:44; Written by Laura Blum

At 64, the Edinburgh International Film Festival (June 16 to 27, 2010) brings off another program of discovery, classics and special events -- and every indication that its admirers will still need it and feed it. Birthday greetings, bottle of wine to the world's oldest continuously running festival.

There is also evidence that Artistic Director Hanna McGill has once again gone for something sentient but fun -- and for something that embodies the United Kingdom.

Edinburgh of the 1950s is the setting of The Illusionist/L'Illusionniste, which opens the Festival. Sylvain Chomet's (The Triplets of Belleville) animated film is about an aging vaudevillian taken for a real magician by a young woman on his performance circuit. That the main character is an avatar of French director and comedian Jacques Tati (Mon Oncle, Playtime) is traceable to the story's origins as a letter Tati addressed to his eldest daughter.

Jacques Tati toon in The Illusionist The Closing Night selection is Third Star. Hattie Dalton's directorial debut unfolds in West Wales as four friends embark on a coastal trek that ends badly, if comically. It's one of 22 world premieres at the 2010 Festival, along with Morag McKinnon's Donkeys, the second feature of the "Advance Party" trilogy from Scotland's Sigma and Denmark's Zentropa.

The EIFF docket carries further glints of British sense and sensibility in Ben Miller's Huge, a poke at making it in stand-up comedy, and in Mr. Nice, Bernard Rose's screen translation of the best-selling memoir by former drug smuggler, Oxford alum and spy Howard Marks.

For this year's retrospective, the Festival will present "After the Wave: Lost and Forgotten British Cinema 1967-1979." Rescued from cinema's hidden "closets" are such exemplars as Ken Russell's biopic of French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Savage Messiah; Michael Hodges' subversive crime thriller, Pulp; Stephen Frears' first feature, Gumshoe; and a spanking new print of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's last collaboration, The Boy Who Turned Yellow.

The coveted prize for Best New British Feature Film bears Powell's name. Sponsored by the UK Film Council, the award will be presented at the Festival's British Gala. Shakespearean-actor-turned-Star Trek-headliner Sir Patrick Stewart helms the jury, and will take the stage at the BAFTA in Scotland interview.

EIFF will draw additional sheen from the participation of L.A.-based producer Graham King (Oscar-awarded for The Departed) and actress and EIFF Patron Tilda Swinton (I Am Love/Lo sono l'amore) among other cinema luminaries. However, Edinburgh is not the natural habitat for hype; it's more about smoking out fresh and emerging British filmmakers -- and giving them a helpful push -- than it is about the care and feeding of celebrities on red carpets.

Not that much arm twisting will have been required to toast such longtime patrons as Sir Sean Connery on the occasion of his 80th birthday. John Huston’s classic The Man Who Would Be King will be screened in his honor -- it's his favorite film -- and the man who would be Bond will attend a Gala in his honor at the Festival Theatre (13-29 Nicolson Street).

Also hailing from Great Britain are several concentrated efforts to spook the audience: Paul Andrew William's (London to Brighton) urban thriller Cherry Tree Lane and – returning to Edinburgh as the backdrop -- Outcast, a horror flick from Colm McCarthy, and A Spanking In Paradise, Wayne Thallon's black comedy set in a brothel. Late-night screenings of the latter two stand to enhance their cult creepiness.

Michael Shannon in My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done Though by no means is EIFF limited to domestic productions. One of its most anticipated works comes from German grizzly man Werner Herzog. The title alone of his latest effort, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done tells you that the doyen of inspired whackdom has outdone himself, an impression only deepened by the producer credit given to David Lynch and the casting of Willem Dafoe, Udo Kier and Chloë Sevigny.

The film enlarges on the true story of Mark Yavorsky, a San Diego man who took the cue from Sophocles' Electra and stabbed his mother to death. Candidates for Madame Tussaud's, all.

Another buzzed-about Festival number is Steven Soderbergh's documentary And Everything Is Going Fine, which fashions a posthumous autobiography of monologist Spalding Gray using his archival performance and interview footage.

Films from beyond the U.K. receiving their world premiere can contend for the Projector.tv Best International Feature Award. Ryan Denmark's Chase the Slut, Rona Mark's The Crab and Zach Clark's Vacation! are but three entries that fit this bill.

The Festival began as a documentary showcase when it first bloomed in August of 1947 under the shade of the Edinburgh International Festival. (It moved to its current June slot in 2008.) EIFF's romance with true stories lingers with Superhero Me, Steve Sale's merry crusade to save L.A. from iniquity, and with Lucy Martens’ Out of the Ashes, among nearly 20 other non-fiction features.

All told, the 2010 Festival will screen 133 films from 34 countries, a simmering of 1,500 feature films and 2,500 short films that swelled its submissions box.

More about EIFF 2010 awaits you at http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk

Filmhouse (Festival HQ)
88 Lothian Road
Edinburgh EH3 9BZ

Edinburgh Festival Theatre
13-29 Nicolson Street
Edinburgh Midlothian EH8 9FT

Cameo
35 Home Street
Tollcross
Edinburgh EH3 9LZ

Cineworld
Fountain Park
130/3 Dundee Street
Edinburgh EH11 1AF

Collective Gallery
22-28 Cockburn Street
Edinburgh

Fruitmarket Gallery
45 Market Street
Edinburgh

EIFF +44-(0)-131-228-4051