Doc/Fest Blog
Lots of photos, and another guest blog
By Charlie Phillips 12 November, 2008
So before I hand over to another guest blogger, a nudge on your shoulder to check our Flickr photostream which has a whole torrent of Doc/Fest photos, some of people looking serious and some of people looking silly. In the latter category, here's me, awarding a prize to the winner of one of the Cross-Platform pitching awards...
I love that suit. Anyway, here's the next guest blog, in a post-festival stylage, courtesy of Ian Francis from 7 inch Cinema, one of the greatest film organisations in the UK. It's a privilege to have him here. And he's totally right about Sleep Furiously, if not the smell of Doc/Fest. We smell like roses, right?
Towards the tail-end of film festivals you get a particular fetid, weary sort of hum. Entering the Showroom on Sunday morning I could feel (smell?) the accumulated hours of watching, drinking and blethering, but there was still a buzz about the place. My day return from Birmingham was repaid tenfold within an hour thanks to Sleep Furiously, Gideon Koppel’s beautifully deliberate portrait of a Welsh village. Minutiae of farming life (I always wondered how they wrapped up hay-bales), snatches of Aphex Twin (the editor’s friend) and a scene cutting between a choir-practice and some waves that had me blubbing like a fool.
Apart from that there was a panel discussion featuring various graphic novelists in person and on Skype, and a film about Burroughs cohort Brion Gysin and his scheme to create a drug-free high with the Dream-Machine. The presence of students eating nachos seemed a good sign that the balance between industry and punters was being maintained. Before running for my train I managed to have a chat with Lorenzo Fonda, whose film Megunica is also showing at our festival in March. Being a nice bloke as well as a really good filmmaker, he gave me a flipbook to take home; the ideal Mr Benn-like souvenir from a strangely unreal day.
Thank you Doc/Fest! Enjoy your sleep.
Ian Francis
7 Inch Cinema [www.7inch.org.uk]