EUFF4

Went to the opening of the 4th EU Film Festival this evening. (Is it really a year since the last one?)  The usual format: a film from each EU country spread out over a fortnight in Beijing - followed by Chengdu and Shenzhen. In the spirit of Entente Dordiale, we've contributed Ken Loach's Looking for Eric which stars a hapless Mancunian and a suave Frenchman.

The organization of the Fest has been somewhat fraught, alluded to in the introduction by the visiting Ms Androulla Vasiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth: "I am told that Chinese people love European cinema, and yet only a handful of European films are shown in Chinese cinemas each year due to various constraints and restrctions".  Hmmm, say no more.

Anyway, post speeches, relaxed and watched the opening film: a mildly diverting Polish politics & prison caper called Trick. 

Thai flooding

Poor old Thailand... The worst flooding in decades. I remember our soi being ankle deep on occasion and those off Sukhumvit rising to the knee, but this rainy season is off the scale. Add to that continued political instability (will Yingluck Shinawatra usher in her brother?), the north-south and Bangkok-rural divides, insurrection in the south, disputes with Cambodia... and you have a fairly sad state of affairs. But we miss it!  Our friends, our old home, the general laid-backness, the less-frantic job (to be honest), the holiday breaks, the beaches, even the shops, and of course the weather... when it wasn't raining.

Shadows of Progress

Following the first box set of BFI documentary films from the years 1930-1950 (see June post), I've just finished the sequel, Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-war Britain 1951-1977 which comprises another 32 films ranging from 5 to 44 mins, sprawled over 4 DVDs and a book.

It's all riveting stuff, capturing the half-hearted boom of economic development in the 50s & first half of the 60s, and then the political & economic stagnation of the 70s. Like the earlier volume, they're all public information films, commissioned by local or national government, charities, the Post Office, a few commercial companies and so on. As far as I can make out, none of them made it onto TV.

There are films about the march of progress: steel industry (actually in the descendancy), the car industry (Ford Anglias rolling off the production lines)... there's even a doc about - yes, really - conveyor belts!  There are propagandist films extolling the wonders of new towns (Faces of Harlow [1964]) and another one on how Shetland bargained with the incoming North Sea oil compannies and won.

On the more earnest side, there are films about epilepsy (People Apart [1957]), polio (Four People: A Ballad Film [1962]), Down's Sydrome - 'though it's not mentioned by name (There was a Door [1957]), terrorism (Time of Terror [1975]) and a terribly sad one about what it is to be old and alone in a 60s tower block (I Think They Call Him John [1964]). Of course, they're insightful in their own right, but what makes them particularly interesting is how people viewed the issues 50 years ago. There are also two commissioned by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children whose briefs required the directors not to show cruelty to children.

Perhaps the most tellingly apposite in terms of mood and message are two films commissioned by oil companies. The brazenly confident Shellarama [1965] features gleaming pipelines snaking into and out of futuristic looking refineries and sports cars driving along the Riviera in a combined Technicolour cry of 'Progress!'. Its 14 minutes took two years to shoot. On the flipside, BP's The Shadow of Progress [1970] is hard-hittingly earnest about pollution and so downbeat that it almost got quashed by the Board. 

Amongst all the men are two women directors: Jill Craigie, who appropriately directed To Be a Woman [1951]; and Sarah Erulkar, who directed Birthright [1958] for the Family Planning Association and the gender-neutral Picture to Post (1969) about the process of designing commemorative stamps - a surprisingly diverting little film. The fact that Erulkar was also Indian makes for a refreshing inclusion.

Add in a few nostalgic and light-hearted films about the last tram journey in London (The Elephant Will Never Forget [1953]), the British love of cold, windswept, beach resorts with songs replacing any narrative (Sundays by the Sea [1953]), and a wonderful snapshot of East End life in Queenie [1964], and you have 27 years of Blighty covered in six hours.

Rome trip

Bad news this morning. Liz's mum fell and broke her hip. The added complication is that she's in Rome, on a special 80th birthday visit. Don't know the details, but she's in safe hands with not only Nick & Kate, but also Sister Margaret who's based in the St Cecilia convent there. She'll have to have a hip replacement op, and stay for a while to convalesce. What a shame. Could so easily have happened to mine when she visited Beijing...

10 Year Old iPod

The iPod is 10 years old today (a month after the guy who brought it to us, died). My first was a third generation 40GB model which I bought in Tokyo in 2004. It seemed very slim & cool at the time, now laughably  chunky & heavy. After a couple of years the battery gave up and I got the 80GB Classic which I still have. I now have around 11,000 songs on it. To be honest, I don't listen to it as much as I used to, except on the rare occasions I go to the gym. But what to listen to when you tread that mill? For me it's steady rhythmic electronica as opposed to earnest Alt Folk or trip-me-up tricky jazz in 5/16.

Jarre in China

It is exactly 30 years ago that Jean-Michel Jarre played his famous concerts in China, the first Western 'pop' musician to do so. I'm not a big fan, though he was 'interesting' in the 70s and Oxygene and Equinoxe were and remain guilty pleasures. He was one of the first users of a Fairlight, clumsily, like most people, and was also using a Laser Harp, though as much for visual effect as anything else (I saw it in inventor Bernard Szajner's studio in Paris at the time). And then, as the 80s progressed, his music took a back seat to overblown spectacle, as we all know.

Nevertheless, the concerts in China were major affairs, if not for the music, then certainly as a cultural event. Two years of preparation, endless red-tape, major technical problems, and all the major cultural differences you'd expect from a country that hadn't even seen a rock band, let alone an electronic one with lasers & all. Apparently it was the British Embassy (eh?) who gave Radio Beijing copies of Oxygene and Equinoxe which set the thing in motion. The concerts took place in Beijing and Shanghai between 21-28 October 1981. They must have made an exotic couple: the suave Jarre and his glam wife Charlotte Rampling.

A rather dull double album of the shows was released a few months later. Far more interesting, though, was a documentary made by British TV (Director Andrew Piddington who went on to make The Killing of John Lennon). It never got a DVD release but you can see it in 5 parts on YouTube here.

The Man with the Golden Gun

The capture and death of a once feared and all-powerful leader is a strange, almost surreal affair. Saddam Hussein in that hole near Tikrit, Osama Bin Laden in the house in Abbottabad, and now Muammar Gaddafi in a drainage pipe in Sirte. There was something unreal and yet totally understandable about Gadaffi's end - that he was in Sirte in the first place (but then why not?), that he was found where he was (but then what other place of refuge did we expect?) and the parading around of not only his wretched body but also his golden gun (which looked just like Christopher Lee's). Anyway, fingers crossed the new Libyan Government works out.