Posts Tagged ‘UK Film Council’
EIFF Awards 2009
Today, the award winners of the 63rd Edinburgh International Film Festival were announced in a public ceremony at the Filmhouse Cinema, by artistic directors Hannah McGill and Diane Henderson, alongside patrons Sir Sean Connery and Seamus McGarvey.
The big prize, the Michael Powell Award (Best New British Feature Film) was inaugurated in 1993, and is supported by the UK Film Council. It was adjudicated this year by an international jury comprising Joe Wright (director of Atonement), Claudia Puig (film critic), Sacha Horler (actress in My Year Without Sex), Janet Street-Porter (journalist, author) and finally, Frank Langella (most recently starring in Frost/Nixon). Edifyingly, they deigned to select Duncan Jones’s majestic first feature, Moon. The jury citation went as follows: “We award MOON for its singular vision and remarkably assured direction as well as for the inspired manner in which it transcends genre. The central performance by Sam Rockwell embodies the film’s emotional complexity and compelling philosophical perspective”.
UK Film Council Completion Fund Shorts ’09 **
The UKFC manages a fund to finance the completion of short films of outstanding potential which have hit a monetary brick wall – to the tune of £70,000 across two rounds each year. At the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2009, a collection of six were shown – the first batch for this year. Having made the schoolboy error of strolling into the wrong press screening, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the calibre of these shorts (if terribly confused by the absence of nuns).
Bale, by Al Mackay, tells the story of a disturbing encounter between young boys and their teenage peers, in a somnambulant and visually exquisite style. Over the brief running time, several interesting performances are packed in (including the reticent actor whose name I cannot recall, but who starred in Summer as the son of Daz [Steve Evets]), and several indelible images are burned.
Together, by Eicke Bettinga and Zorana Piggott, is based around the relationship of a young man and his emotionally crumpled father, struggling to come to terms with the loss of their brother and son. Another mesmeric film, and although it is built on one central moment (an absurd and tragic counterpoint to the usual reconciliatory schmaltz), the protagonist with his bizarre, handsome/hunchback charisma, is sufficiently compelling to carry the premise.
And The Hardest Part, by Oliver Refson, is a tragicomic limerick of a film, regarding the talent of a forgotten television actor in the face of obnoxious youth. Its parody of Guy Ritchie owes a slight debt to Nathan Barley, but this is no bad thing. And all together, it is a spiriting and genuinely funny short story.
