The Bradford International Film Festival 2014 Continues…

Here is some of the screenings showing this week including ‘Life time achievement award with Actor Brian Cox’

To see further details on films and events at the festival visit the BIFF website www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/bradfordinternationalfilmfestival

The Dodge Brothers and Neil Brand accompany – Thursday 3rd April 18:45

Screening with:

+ Hell’s Hinges (adv. U)

Hell’s Hinges tells of Reverend Bob Henley, a preacher who arrives at the lawless town of Hell’s Hinges with his sister. A barkeep senses trouble and dispatches gunslinger Blaze Tracey to Bob out of town. 80 years after it was released the U.S. journal Film Comment praised the film for its highly advanced storytelling techniques: “The camera placement here, the simple yet effective symbolism, and the flair for spectacle as in the brilliantly handled mob scenes where all of Inceville goes up in smoke, the real ‘feel’ of the old, dusty, unglamorised West, all should have earned Hart a reputation as one of the great directors.”

Dirs. Charles Swickard, William S. Hart USA 1916 b/w digital William S. Hart, Clara Williams, Jack Standing, Alfred Hollingsworth

Bequiffed dapper dans and festival favourites The Dodge Brothers (featuring Theremin bothering BBC and Observer film critic Mark Kermode) and Neil Brand (The Sound of Cinema) are back after the last two years’ sold out performances. They present the World Premiere of a new score for this terrific 1916 silent western Hell’s Hinges, starring the original screen cowboy William S Hart as gunslinger Blaze Tracy.

 

Everybody Street – Thursday 3rd April 18:00

Screening with:

+Flo (adv.18)

New York photographer Flo Fox now wheelchair bound with lung cancer and quickly losing her vision, still continues to document the everyday with a little help from the people around her.

Everybody Street is a vibrant tribute to New York City’s street photographers, creators of one of the most potent art forms to have emerged from that city. We follow thirteen photographers whose work has documented a changed and changing city, each hustling to capture great images: Serbian immigrant Boogie credits his ‘nonthreatening’ foreign accent for helping win the trust of his tough street gang subjects; Jill Freedman, a specialist in documenting the work of the city’s cops and firemen, takes no prisoners with her outspoken take on her city; while loquacious hip-hopper Ricky Powell talks of how he only got into this game to impress a girl that dissed him. All of these characters are fascinating talkers, whether they’re reminiscing on the various long-gone ‘golden ages’ of images available on New York’s streets, or making a living as the current gallery stars.

Tracks – Thursday 3rd April 20:45

Screening with:

+ Just say Hi (adv.U)

When a girl catches the eye of a boy at bus stop romance ensues.

“Robyn Davidson’s remarkable journey in 1977 across 1,700 miles of Australian desert to the Indian Ocean with four camels and a dog is given a richly sensorial screen treatment in John Curran’s Tracks. Alternately haunting, inspiring and dreamily meditative, this is a visually majestic film of transfixing moods and textures. Its stealth-like emotional charge is fuelled by unerring work from Mia Wasikowska, her affecting performance grounded in the fortitude and determination essential to such an undertaking, at the same time subtly keeping an open window to her character’s fragility.

First published in 1980, Davidson’s book became an instant modern classic of travel literature and a seminal nonfiction work for Australians in particular. It remains a terrific read not only for its immersive, warts-and-all account of an extraordinary experience, but also for the specificity of its time frame. The book documents a lone woman’s odyssey during the height of second wave feminism and before national attitudes toward the rights of indigenous Australians had fully begun to be reshaped.” – David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter.

Powerless – Thursday 3rd April 13:30

Screening with:

+ Lada

The Lada proves to be the unlikely protagonist in this idiosyncratic look at Russia from behind a dashboard.

Kanpur is a sprawling home to 2.5 million people in northern central India. It is often nicknamed “The Manchester of the East” for its former industrial might, and it is also renowned for corruption, political inertia and some seriously ineffectual public services. Plagued by electricity shortages that can last up to 15 hours, the ‘Katiyabaaz’ (electricity thieves), and lauded for their skills at hot-wiring the overloaded power lines and substations that crisscross the streets with a jungle of cables. Those with an interest in Health and Safety may wish to look away as skilled Katiyabaaz jerry rig megavolt substations with wire coat hangers, or chuck wet mud at electric fires.

This is more than mere shockumentary, with deeper stories to tell about people and politics. Master Katiyabaaz Loha is a Robin Hood-like figure who takes pride in re-routing the supplies of the better-off, Meanwhile Ritu, the first female head of the power company, is avowed to tackle the issue against impossible odds. She’s up against a self-serving young politician, who’s determined to make the most of Kanpur citizens’ rising fury at the daily blackouts.

Lifetime achievement award and Screen Talk: Brian Cox – Sunday 6 April 18:30

The latest recipient of BIFF’s Lifetime Achievement Award is a true titan of the acting world: Brian Cox has consistently excelled in every conceivable medium since entering the profession nearly 50 years ago. The Dundonian was the screen’s first Hannibal Lecter – in 1986’s classic Manhunter – and has since become a tirelessly busy, instantly recognisable Hollywood player – and a guaranteed mark of quality: Braveheart, X-Men 2, Bourne, Zodiac, Adaptation, Rushmore, and many more. Emmy-winning Cox is equally comfortable in multiplex and arthouse fare – not to mentionDoctor Who – and will look back on his remarkable career in conversation with BIFF co-director Neil Young.

 

Closing Night Film: Locke – Sunday 6 April 20:30

Tom Hardy’s status as an international movie star was cemented by his two collaborations with Christopher Nolan – inInception and in The Dark Knight Rises. But as anyone who caught Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson (2008) already knows, Hardy is much more than a pretty face. A genuine one-man tour de force, Locke strongly suggests he deserves to be ranked among the finest screen actors of his generation.

The eponymous Ivan Locke is a Welsh structural engineer in his mid-30s, who one evening finds himself painfully enmeshed in crises both personal and professional. That the film should dramatise this extreme situation in such a claustrophobic and simple manner is a masterstroke from writer-director Steven Knight: for almost the entire running-time we’re with Locke in his car, driving south down a motorway, as he conducts a series of increasingly fraught hands-free phone calls. Hardy’s bearded visage is pretty much the only face we see.

A Sorry, Wrong Number for the Bluetooth generation, Locke lives up to the high promise of Knight’s 2013 debutHummingbird. The Oscar-nominated writer of Eastern Promises has made a seamless transition to the director’s chair.