Light Night at the Hyde Park Picture House

Tonight was Light Night in Leeds; the less said about that the better - although I must confess to being frankly mystified as to how my friends and I managed to completely fail at having a fun night, despite the presence of such mischievous fun as vintage tea parties and cardboard gramophones, Victorian Ghost Tours and a room filled with origami. (I can only assume we must be dead inside.)

However, despite our curious failure to glean a semi-fun evening from a scenario that seemed to provide bountiful joy to others, I did manage to pop along to the Light Night event at the Hyde Park Picture House. Thankfully, this turned out to be a little more forthcoming, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I retired in my plush red velvet cinema seat, armed with complementary tea and sticky ginger cake, safe in the knowledge that I have not yet been rendered incapable of finding fun on a Friday night.

Showing this evening were the four films shortlisted for the Jarman Award (if you're unfamiliar, Dazed and Confused do a nice run down here)and they certainly provided food for thought on a ....

1) First up is the excellently/ridiculously named Spartacus Chetwynd's A Walk to Dover, which is apparently based on a similar pilgrimage made by Dickens' David Copperfield. It's a satisfyingly sideways montage of clips froma trip made by Spartacus and 3 friends, with lots of sped up footage of them doing silly things in fields wearing big hats, and an old woman reading (what I assume to be) sections from the Dickens novel over the top in a distinctively old womany way. On the slightly more serious side, there are some pleasing contrasts between the urban and rural scenery, and there's also a message buried somewhere not-too-deep about poverty and the uncomfortable parallels between the issues of poverty in both our own and Dickens society. In one of life's more ominous coincidences, near the beginning of the film (which was made a few years ago, 2005 I believe) the following quote from a Dickens character was used:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

The reason why this caught my attention was because I had in fact read the same quote earlier this week, in a Guardian magazine article on Osbourne's ever-present looming cuts. It cannot be denied that the story of Dickens upbringing, and his experience of the shame of seeing his lower middle class family condemned to the debtors prison due to father's unwise spending habits, strikes a none-too-pleasant chord given the current economic situation (a none-too-pleasant chord, incidentally, that contrasted wonderfully with partchimp's rather pleasant discordant soundtrack, which erupts unexpectedly out of the silence of the film's opening).

Or maybe it can, but either way, this film is good irreverent fun.


2)Middle Sea by Zineb Sedira. Lots of shots of a man walking around or standing still (mostly standing still) on a boat. Some genuinely awe inspiring footage of waves shot from a moving boat, but other than that I struggled to find anything that struck resonance with this one. Not my cup of tea, sorry. (There are some nice thoughtful photographic shots of desolate places on his website, though.)


3) Ben Rivers' contribution is entitled A World Rattled of Habit. He describes it simply as "A day trip to Suffolk, to see my friend Ben and his dad Oleg..." It's a strange little film, with a dry sense of humour that I think would probably get lost in translation on a mainstream audience, but I don't think he's trying to appeal to the mainstream so that's ok. It's essentially a short film about a pretty fascinating old character; the kind of man who, when people hear about him and his latest escapade or bold pronouncement, people must just surely chuckle to themselves in a bemused fashion. You can imagine phrases like "He's one on his own, that one", or "nothing would surprise me", passing peoples lips on a regular basis, and exasperated daughters-in-law (or similar) throwing their hands up in the air in defeat over his refusal to conform to the laws of the household when he comes to visit. He's certainly an interesting old bloke with some pearls of wisdom to impart. What makes it work is the obvious affection the film maker has for the old man, which really comes through in the work and gives the whole piece a rather warming effect, despite a few unnerving shots (jerky footage of man smiling, eerily holding old painting of a girl, close ups of Oleg eating etc) which I suspect were thrown in there to satisfy the darker elements of the director's sense of humour. Generally nice.


4) Emily Wardill's The Diamond (Descartes Daughter)is a strange, jerky, mechanised, amusing little piece consisting primarily of shots of an imagined scene from a film that the narrator, having unsuccessfully attempted to track it down, has decided to recreate herself. What really makes this film is the story and ideas conveyed by the running monologue, delivered in a almost mechanical Swedish accent and toying with Marcusian ideas about the distance the machine puts between human and action. It is artfully constructed and self referential, with the mechanical voice occasionally experiencing glitches and blips, and with a good measure of stoic humour thrown in the mix too. I liked the fact that, beneath the mechanical quality, there was actually a great deal of emotion running somewhere close to the surface - present but obscured, rather like our own plight in a world of distant internet communication. It was a strange little film, and not a great deal actually happened, but it worked because it engaged you and not only asked questions but led you to formulate your own. Basically, no complaints here.This was probably my favourite of all the films shown, and apparently it won, so there we go.