Made in Brighton Film Festival 2

The new website is now online and the main section of the programme is uploaded. Only the short film aspects are still to be finalised, partly because more requests to include films have been arriving almost daily.

Twelve feature films covering 60 years (albeit with a 40-year gap in the middle) are at the core of the festival. These include the world premiere of Heathen, which, although it has had a DVD release, has yet to be seen on the big screen. This is one of four recent feature-length independent productions, each of a noticeably higher quality than some of the older B-feature films.

This aspect of the resurgence of British film-making is largely ignored. With so many movie channels, not to mention digital channels that also show movies, it is astonishing—nay appalling—that such films never get even a television screening. They are much more a part of our national culture than the silly American high-school movies that are regularly screened, even though their quality leaves as much to be desired as their relevance. The fee for one such airing would probably cover the budget. It must be hoped that the development of an alternative content market in cinemas with digital projection facilities will also change the way British production is encouraged and stimulated.

Made in Brighton Film Festival

The latest project is a spin-off from the nearly-finished book, nay encyclopaedia, about film and cinema in Brighton & Hove since 1896. Planning actually began last autumn but has been picking up speed over the past couple of weeks. The best way to sum it up is to post the first press release, which has still to go out to the press, so you get to read it here first.

 

MADE IN BRIGHTON FILM FESTIVAL

A celebration of more than a century of local film-making

Brighton & Hove’s long association with film will be celebrated during this year’s Brighton Festival Fringe. Brighton was one of the first places in the world where films were made, starting in 1896, little more than a few weeks after the wonders of moving pictures were first witnessed by astonished audiences.

There have been numerous film festivals in the city before but none devoted to the many films made in Brighton & Hove. The Made in Brighton Film Festival, part of the Fringe at this year’s Brighton Festival will assemble around 50 films ranging from the very earliest silents (Scene on the West Pier from 1897), through archive documentaries to recent low-budget independent features and short films. The festival, to be held at the Old Courtroom in Church Street, Brighton (opposite The Dome), runs from 1-21 May.

Among the films lined up for the festival are several feature films from the 1950s and 1960s. Lady Godiva Rides Again (1951) is a comedy by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliatt about rigged beauty contests that stands comparison with the Ealing comedies of the period and includes scenes in the Regent ballroom, in Saltdean and up Albion Hill. Much British film-making was arguably not at its finest then but the selections are very much of their time. The Gelignite Gang (1954) is a crime story with scenes in Kemp Town and Hove. Interior scenes were shot at Brighton Film Studios in St Nicholas Road, as they were for The Battle of the V1 (1958), in which Shoreham beach, gasworks and airport are turned into the Nazi rocket site at Peenemunde; the resistance headquarters are in the Rothbury cinema in Portslade.

‘Part of the fun of watching these films is spotting the locations,’ says media historian David Fisher, the festival’s organiser. ‘A few of the places have disappeared but many are unchanged—some even more than a hundred years later.’ Locations from Shoreham to Rottingdean, from the West Pier to the downs will be seen on screen.

From the 1960s comes the underrated Smokescreen (1964), with a stunning opening sequence that leads into an intriguing story of insurance fraud. Be My Guest (1965) is a product of the swinging sixties, with David Hemmings and Steve Marriott (later of the Small Faces) playing the leads in a musical that features performances by the Nashville Teens, Jerry Lee Lewis and, yes, Slash Wildly and the Cutthroats. Another side of the swinging sixties is on show in the films of Brighton-born Pete Walker, such as Strip Poker (aka The Big Switch, 1969)—‘not sixties Georgy Girl,’ as he himself put it, ‘this was sixties naff.’ Nonetheless, the climax on a snowy West Pier is a classic B-feature moment.

If Brighton & Hove were used in those earlier times by visiting productions, in the new century the city has developed a thriving, if half-hidden film culture of its own. The festival will be screening four feature-length works by local film-makers, typically made for less money than the cost of the coffees on ‘major motion pictures’, although cheapness rarely shows now in the way it did 50 years ago.

Ross Shepherd’s Heathen (2009) is a stylish psychological mystery that uses local settings to great effect. In Ambleton Delight (2009) a town is divided over plans to build a motorway across the nearby downs. It won director Daniel Parkes the award for Best Feature Film at the British Independent Film Festival 2010. Mark Jay’s Dolphins (2007) is an action romance set among the boy racers and the local indie music scene. Richard III (2005) is indeed Shakespeare’s play but is excitingly transposed by director Maximilian Day from the Plantagenet court to the gang world of Brighton’s Whitehawk estate.

As well as these feature films the festival will include a wide variety of short films from the very earliest times to archive documentaries and recent independent short fiction films. The festival will also include talks and discussions about aspects of making films, featuring directors and actors, as well as experts in funding and distribution.

Watch for regular reports about the development of the festival.

TTFN

On demand

Books can now be produced almost as quickly as photographs.

More than 30 years ago, when watching Kind Hearts and Coronets for maybe the third of the dozen or more times I’ve seen it, I noticed in the small print of the credits that the film was based on a novel called Israel Rank by Roy Horniman. For more than 30 years I have checked periodically in second-hand bookshops and, since it became possible, online for the book. But never a hint of a copy. Even Amazon, which has a habit of listing any and every book that ever existed, didn’t seem to know of it.

Now I have a copy, courtesy of Faber Finds, the new publishing-on-demand imprint. The idea that it is possible to order a book that has yet to be printed and have it delivered three working days later is remarkable, almost as much as bringing such a long search to a successful conclusion. (The only downside is the astonishingly bad typography of the cover, especially as Faber is a publisher for whose design I have always had the highest regard.)

Of course, this acquisition has been done the easy way and an on-demand paperback is not the same as a dusty casebound original edition. On the other hand, I have spent all those years looking in secondhand bookshops and finding much else along the way. Sadly the serendipity of discovery in such circumstances has almost disappeared. In the 1970s I had a route through the centre of Brighton that took me past (actually in and out of) at least a dozen secondhand bookshops. All but two have gone, partially replaced by charity shops. Ironically, bookdealing has been in the forefront of online selling.

The news that Warner Bros is now offering the DVD equivalent—manufacturing on demand—raises expectations that have yet to be fulfilled. Not only is the website sufficiently obscure to make it difficult to find the titles on offer, when they are found they tend to be ones that are already available on DVD, often at budget prices. And pricing is an issue. Charging a premium price for a film that made its money years ago and now costs a few pennies to copy is out of tune with the times.

Maybe Warner Bros is not the best studio to launch the practice as it has been the most active in developing the video and DVD markets over the past 30 years (that same time-span again!) and has marketed its back catalogue in some depth. The idea still has some way to go.

TTFN