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Reviews Cinema 16 - A DVD Collection of British Short Films
Review by James MacGregor Luke
Morris loves a good short film. Not only is he sold on the form, but he produced
a notable winner himself with the distinctively titled Je T’Aime John Wayne
. That’s the one shot in Paris, except that Paris turns out to be London -the
bits of it that look like Paris- and featuring a very macho-French hero, who
turns out not to be French at all but a Cockney francophile. Well, he would,
wouldn’t he? All power to your Gauloises, me old cock-sparrer. It
is undoubtedly satisfying to steer a wee screen gem through to acclaimed
success, but after the hoo-ha dies down, where does it go? If it is as good as
the experts say, how many people get to enjoy it? And what place does it have in
the short film hall of fame? Sadly, the answers to these three questions are;
nowhere; very few….and, there isn’t one. It
is, unfortunately, a great truth, that there is a very limited cinema market for
good short films – which is where they need to be seen – and after the
festival round and a limited theatrical screening, most of them will languish in
a film vault somewhere, with the occasional airing on twilight TV, sandwiched
between the porn and oddball channels. Not
a fit place for an emerging talent to be consigned to, Luke decided. There had
to be a way of giving good shorts an outing that would bring them to fresh
audience. Et voila! Cinema 16 was born. Sixteen
films, all good stories well executed, a broad range of genres and a good mix of
directors, including some well known today, but who were then, like the rest of
the collection, up and coming raw talent. The one thing they have in common is
something to say on screen, something which…. connects. You
have to watch. And this is a collection of stories you can watch time and time
again on DVD, as the mood takes you. But Luke planned to offer more than a
simple shorts fest on a disc, he wanted to revisit the films with their
originators and get their shooting stories properly told and this provides the
hidden bonus of the collection, of which more later. The films were all over the place. In TV companies, in dusty archives or back with the original filmmaker, filed in a bottom desk drawer. Rights acquisition to include them in the collection took 6 months or personal time, over and above his normal working week as a production executive for the UK Film Council’s Premiere Fund. Hard labour, if you like, but as the results undoubtedly show, a labour of love. “The
final two months of this process were by the worst, but also the best,”
according to Morris. “I finally tracked Chris Nolan
down in LA and while I was there talking to him, Ridley Scott agreed to
do his interview for me. I interviewed him during a meal break while he was
filming ‘Matchstick Men’ “, Morris explained.. Scott
senior was happy to take a retrospective look at kid brother Tony, now a
directing talent as sought after as his big brother, bowling around British West
Hartlepool on his bike. He was so engrossed in the process of commenting on this
first work of his, that the latest, an entire classic Hollywood filming
operation ground to a halt. They had to wait for the boss to return from his
extended lunch break. Now that is cool. “It
was a real thrill to find that he was prepared to see our interview through,”
Morris says, “despite the enormous pressure that he must have been under to
get back to the sound stage. It’s the mark of the man, that he meant what he
said when he offered his help.” Ridley
Scott says he’s always keen to help new filmmakers, pointing out that Boy
and Bicycle was made with almost no money and a borrowed camera, tracking
his brother pedalling along behind their dad’s car. According to Morris, Scott
says if the Cinema 16 collection helps kick start a first film he’s happy to
do his bit to get that talent under way. Slightly
more experienced hands can also get inspiration from Boy & Bicycle, normally
kept safe in the BFI’s film vaults, but a stunning example of what can be
achieved with a noisy clockwork camera and dubbed sound. He was a class act in
the making, young Ridley. His 27 minute black & white short simply proves
it. It gets a wonderful music boost from a John Barry orchestral
score of course, but how Scott persuaded Barry to help a student at the
Royal College of Art achieve that is yet another story to be uncovered. The
end result of Morris’s labours is an alternative film school on a disc, with
quality lectures giving essential background and insider lowdown on how these
shorts were made that double the value of the product. I would be prepared to
buy it for the commentaries alone, that truly enrich the images you see on your
screen. There are lots of surprises and lots pf atmosphere. It is nice to know
that Mike Leigh still gets a thrill from seeing his name on the opening credits,
fascinating to learn that in Asif Kapadia’s Sheep Thief, the mangoes
tied on trees in India needed to be shipped out from London. My
personal favourite is probably John Smith’s The Girl Chewing Gum. The
film is a celebration of the director’s power trip as he manipulates the
pieces of his drama before the camera, only the cast are unaware they are part
of this particular drama. Come to think of it, the cast are not the only people
being manipulated by this off-screen director. We the audience are as well, and
hugely enjoying the process. It may be 30 years old, but it is a fresh and
original today as it was in 1976. It creases me. Of course, so does Telling
Lies, a graphic portrayal of the subtexts that play beneath the main action
when people talk to each other. Or maybe it is Inside Out, which dwells
comedically on the subtexts when people can’t talk to each other. All very
subtle. Oh, dammit, they are all so good! Scotland is well represented, with a quarter of the collection having Scottish credentials. Luke Morris, the producer behind the Cinema 16 collection, says the films were selected purely on merit, so there was no bias in favour of any particular film. “The fact that Scotland is so well represented in the collection is probably a reflection of Scotland’s long tradition of independent filmmaking,” Morris says. “The work that Scottish Screen continues to do so well, encouraging and supporting new filmmaking talent, carries on that tradition. One of their predecessor bodies, the Scottish Film Production Fund supported some of these films. Scotland is a great breeding ground for film talent and it shows in this collection.” The director’s commentaries turn an anthology of good British shorts into a good film school on a disc, a series of quality lectures on how the films came to be made, mistakes and all. It is refreshing to hear an acclaimed filmmaker like Morag Mackinnon make a sharp intake of breath and admit where she “crossed the line” in Home. I wished for a similar confession from Lynne Ramsay for the railway track sequences in her third short Gasman. The distinctive rumble of the railway trolley she used as a camera dolly for a tracking shot always irritates me when I least need to hear it, but then, what do I know? The film went on to win not only a Scottish BAFTA but the Jury Prize at Cannes. Adrian McDowall’s exposition on Who’s My Favourite Girl? is illuminating. Struggling to find a subject to write about he followed the advice of a mentor and scripted what he knew about. At twenty, he felt qualified in childhood, puberty and adolescence, so that is what he scripted. The result as we know is a charmer of a tale, but so is the director’s commentary, as he recounts the struggles, the errors, the triumphs of making this, his film school graduation short. It cost him Ł3,000 to make, but it won the BAFTA 2000 award. Writer Director Jim Gillespie
and his producer Angus Lamont give a creditable explanation as to why their
short Joyride was persistently denied funding. It was “too commercial,” a
complete reversal of the current funding climate. They did get money from an
unexpected source – the BFI – in the end,
but this film was to be a calling card for greater things, so it had to travel
well. And every penny raised was put on the screen. They got a result and it did
travel well, especially in America. The result is that we now know what they did
next summer, in Hollywood, when they put all that newly acquired 35mm film
expertise to work for Hollywood making We Know What You Did Last Summer. This Cinema 16 collection is a must for DVD libraries. It is quite possible to name several films not in the collection that should be, but Luke Morris is at pains to point out that he plans to bring out another. His biggest problem at present is the booming sales of this first collection. The twelve month sales target was surpassed within one month. Short film fans everywhere need to strike fast before supplies run out. They will not regret it. Here
is the full talent line up: Stephen
Daldry’s Eight; Simon Ellis Telling Lies; Jim Gillespie Joyride;
Peter Greenaway Dear Phone; Tom
& Charles Guard Inside Out; Asif Kapadia The Sheep Thief;
Mike Leigh The Short & Curlies; Toby Macdonald Je T’Aime
John Wayne; Adrian McDowall Who’s My Favourite Girl?; Morag McKinnon Home;
Christopher Nolan Doodlebug; Martin Parr UK Images; Brian Percival
About A Girl ; Lynne Ramsay Gasman; Ridley Scott Boy &
Bicycle; John Smith The Girl Chewing Gum. What others have said about Cinema 16... "5 stars. The quality of
this collection is exceptionally high. It's
Buy
Cinema
16 from Sendit.com
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