The blurb in the GFF programme on this film sounded exciting: “Two Russian ghosts embark on a surreal, dreamlike journey… to the end of the world”! How could anyone pass up this surreal journey with striking imagery and some comedy thrown in there, just in case a film with no living humans is just a bit too hard to handle? The premise of the story is the journey of two Russian ghosts as they try to find the doorway to the human world to become alive again. I say premise, singular, because it’s the only one. We get no other background information, nothing to give the story weight. It all feels a little bit one-dimensional.

The story does however take off and the characters of the two ghosts develop quite well thoughout the film as they hike though beautiful scenery, meeting strange characters (a singing hippie, some deer, a creature from the underworld, a wise owl …)  and finding weird objects (a tree that screens videos from the 80’s, a rock that plays music, deer antlers sans deer…). Expecting humour in a film so obscure is usually too much to ask but Finisterrae delivers. Although crude at times it adds humanity to the characters and gives layers to the film without revealing too much, keeping the surreal and weird tag firmly attached.

Although the film utilises its small budget relatively well most of the time, using some great camera tricks for difficult scenes, it is spoiled when you realise the beautiful mountain scenery in front of you is actually a painting-a fact clearly established through a stationary waterfall shot. The visuals in general were somewhat disappointing, perhaps not but because of any choice or failure by the filmmaker: the picture was blurry, had a dead pixel and was being played from a DVD projected to ten times the size it should never be. If care and effort had been put in it to the projection it may have been a stunning film to watch on the big screen as the sweeping landscape was the main attraction throughout the picture. I wouldn’t have expected any less from Eduard Grau, the cinematographer responsible for A Single Man, but this was quite disappointing.

Finistarrae was not all unpleasant although a little too long, at times feeling a bit drawn out, with scenes fitted in seemingly because they may be pretty to look at (or at least  would have been if projected properly) rather than to advance the story or any point. This distracted from the narrative a little too much to ignore. I wouldn’t recommend this unless you’re especially into this kind of thing, but at least the film gave us a lot to chat about afterwards – which  is not at all a bad thing.

Lynn Shelton’s follow-up to her mumblecore hit Humpday retains both frequent collaborator Mark Duplass, and a focus on the types of dynamic you can find between a small group of people. In Your Sister’s Sister we meet Iris (Emily Blunt), Jack (Duplass), and Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt). At the heart of Humpday’s character exploration was a fairly high concept premise: two straight male friends decide to make a porn film together for an art project, testing their boundaries in the process. Your Sister’s Sister can’t be summed up quite as neatly, but by not relying on any farcical narrative developments alone, Shelton avoids any sitcom-like tendencies, instead opting to bolster the film with grounded, engaging characters who you can enjoy spending time with.

Duplass’ Jack is having trouble recovering from his brother’s death a year after the event. Iris, his best friend and a former girlfriend of his brother, offers him the opportunity to spend some time alone at her family’s secluded cabin, where he can try and clear his head. Upon arriving, he discovers Iris’ sister Hannah is actually there to clear her own head following her recent separation from a long-time partner. Despite having never met, the pair spend a night commiserating each other over heavy alcohol consumption that eventually leads to a brief bout of regrettable lovemaking. The next morning the two find themselves in a predicament when Iris turns up unannounced for a brief stay. They attempt to conceal their tryst to prevent any feelings getting hurt and stop relationships from potentially souring, but as the desires and longings to be found in each character are slowly revealed, this proves to be troublesome.

Your Sister’s Sister utilises a part-scripted part-improvised approach, resulting in naturalistic dialogue that balances genuine hilarity with sincere emotion, all skilfully communicated by a trio of highly effective actors. Duplass successfully manages to portray a man masking his insecurities with outer frivolity, and a luminous Blunt is wonderful as the charming, spirited Iris. Their interactions in their scenes alone together have an especially playful and tender brand of loveliness that doesn’t feel manufactured. DeWitt has perhaps the most complex role: full of love, but very different from her sister, she deftly alternates between amusing abrasiveness, graceful introspection and reckless immaturity.

The film loses its footing in the final act, in which certain revelations provoke disbanding and an eventual reconciliation that doesn’t necessarily feel as authentic as what we’ve seen thus far. Additionally, Shelton seems a bit lost as to what to do with Jack in this final stretch, having him wander off out of the main setting to mope around in a montage scored by bland acoustic guitar. There is, however, still some charm to be found in the conclusion – given its absorbing, well-embodied and honest feeling characters, it’s not hard to forgive its minor failings. Your Sister’s Sister is a frequently hilarious, warm comedy with some sober, dramatic exploration of an almost equal potency.

Your Sister’s Sister was the opening gala film of Glasgow Film Festival 2012, with director Lynn Shelton in attendance.

The prison documentary is a hard one to get right. As charming bumbler Louis Theroux demonstrated perfectly in his 2011 documentary Behind Bars, the incarcerated are among the easiest human subjects in the world to alienate. By merely appearing in the program, Theroux’s documentary immediately presents the prisoner as the other, and try as he might to fight their corner, the whole thing quickly becomes an affair centered on Theroux’s own problems, perceptions, and sentimentalism.

With this in mind, Michel Wenzer’s offering achieves something genuinely magnificent, breaking from the voyeuristic modes usually found in similar endeavors. There are long stretches of this movie where you forget you’re in New Folsom Prison at all, a truly incredible feat for a film where within ten minutes of sitting down you’ve already seen raw CCTV footage of a man getting stabbed to death, and been informed by security that should you be taken hostage whilst on your visit, the state will not exchange your life for an inmates freedom.

You won’t find the Swedish-born Wezner in any of the shots, nor will you hear him asking questions. With the exception of a brief phone call with inmate and poet ‘Spoon’, now over thirty years into a sentence, Wezner is completely absent from the dehumanized, de-centered microcosm he has created. The brutality of the institutional racism inherent in the prisons day-to-day operation, the violence between warring gangs, the moments of terror that perpetuate the boredom and isolation that defines a prisoner’s life, these are issues that speak all too well for themselves. Most heart wrenching of all is the film’s parting message, unveiling just one of the consequences of a global assault on funding for the arts – having spent time following the trials of a particular group of prisoners involved in the ‘Arts in Correction’ program, a group whose members take their life in their hands by merely belonging to it, it is revealed that due to the funding cuts the program has since been cancelled.

In a revealing Q&A session following the screening, Wenzer revealed that the prisoners themselves were yet to see the movie as the entire complex was now on lockdown, following a particularly violent riot which took place last November. It will remain this way until at least May, hindering Wenzer’s desire to find out what his subjects think of the film, and truly measure the success of his endeavor. Certainly from out here

Glasgow filmmaker Simon Arthur’s accomplished first feature was shot, in the long haul, between Fife and the US. The film initially began life as a short film (also Silver Tongues, 2006), which forms the central part of tonight’s feature. This short was used to successfully secure funding for his extremely watchable creation.

Arthur’s decision to turn to America has helped gain him some well deserved recognition in the Scottish film industry. If you’ve seen any of Arthur’s earlier efforts, such as Stramash (2001) which he directed under the name Simon Beal, you’d be forgiven for expecting a Glasgow-centric, car crash extravaganza, but Silver Tongues is entirely different. As a series of episodes exploring the falsity of the human face, it delves into the alternative persona we present in different circumstances. Arthur captures a sense of longing in each character and asks the question: what is deceit? He lets the subject hang, encouraging self reflection through the film’s sordid narratives.

In a move to abandon the Hollywood formula of the young couple getting married and facing immediate challenges to their fidelity, Arthur switches the focus from the young bubble-eyed pair to a more weathered middle aged partnership, who spice things up with intrigue and games. The film follows the older couple through a selection of set pieces in which their games become steadily more disturbing and potentially disruptive.

The pace pulls you in and never quite expels you, largely due to the skillful editing of the director himself, wearing a producer’s hat as well as both a writer and director’s already. It would seem that although it was a move to the US that may have secured the budget that went towards producing this excellent debut, his Scottish sense of frank exposition is still intact.

Screens is Glasgow University’s very own society for the appreciation of film, as well as the occasional bit of great television. Each Thursday afternoon sees the society present, on one rather big screen, a cinematic treat for your viewing pleasure. Dedicated to showing an eclectic selection, each semester has screenings of films from a wide variety of eras, styles, genres and countries of origin.

Screens’ line-up this academic year has so far included such diverse choices as Psycho, Submarine, Sunset Boulevard, The Double Life of Veronique and Peter Jackson’s Braindead. Each Thursday screening takes place in the Andrew Stewart cinema in the Gilmorehill Centre (aka the building for Theatre Studies and Film & TV across the street from the GUU) between 3 and 5pm and is absolutely free, as is society membership.

An enjoyable on-campus filmic distraction is not all the society provides on a regular basis. Every other Monday night tends to involve a Screens cinema trip to catch one of the latest big screen offerings. Members usually visit Cineworld on Renfrew Street where student tickets are currently £5.70 and sometimes head to The Flying Duck for film-based chat afterwards.

Every so often, Screens takes a more avant-garde route and sort out a Friday night group trip to the Glasgow Film Theatre for one of their ‘Late Night Classic’ events, where student tickets cost just £5. Past and upcoming screenings have included Halloween, Withnail & I, The Warriors, Akira, Alien, and The Big Lebowski. As a further incentive, your ticket will also grant you free entry to Nice n Sleazy for some guaranteed after-film mingling.

Outside of its weekly events, which also include regular Wednesday night pub quizzes, Screens hosts a few parties throughout the year, as well as having organised group outings during the Glasgow Film Festival in February. We’ve also, in the past, had chances to participate in TV show recordings and Q&A sessions at BBC Scotland.

The society is always looking for fresh blood and is populated by a friendly, welcoming and enthusiastic bunch; membership is open to any and all students of the university, not just those studying Film & TV. To sign up, e-mail your name and matriculation number to screens.gu@googlemail.com, and we’ll add you to our mailing list. Additionally, you can join our Facebook group: just search for ‘Screens (Glasgow Uni)’. Or come along to one of our weekly events; as membership and our private screenings are absolutely free.

Once upon a time, a filmmaker named John Carpenter directed a string of creative entries in the horror, sci-fi and action genres. Some of these proved to be highly influential (Halloween, The Thing, Assault on Precinct 13), while many have at least gained a notable cult status (Escape from New York, Big Trouble in Little China, They Live). Bar one film or two, Carpenter maintained a rather enviable streak of success until the 1990s, a decade in which he dabbled in ill-advised sequels (Escape from L.A.), terrible remakes (Village of the Damned), and a Chevy Chase romantic comedy about an invisible man. Excluding some TV work, The Ward marks Carpenter’s first foray into directing since 2001’s woeful Ghosts of Mars. While this new effort certainly isn’t near the quality of some of the lowest points of the man’s career, it’s unfortunately nothing close to a return to form.

The Ward’s biggest problem is that it’s completely devoid of tension.  The various twists and turns of the asylum-set story, as well as the various character traits on display, are over-familiar in horror cinema, but this would be forgivable if they were delivered in an exciting fashion. As it is, Carpenter’s trademark wit is missing, the film is dull from a visual standpoint, and the whole thing is over-reliant on ineffective jump-scares. Such a technique can be genuinely scary when the “jump” comes from an unexpected but plausible place: see the tunnel sequence in Alien, or the kitchen murder in Carpenter’s own Halloween. The Ward’s jump scares all involve cutting to reveal the film’s ghostly villain – whose rubbery face effects lend her the unfortunate look of a Scooby-Doo criminal – lurking behind one of the girls, seemingly just teleporting into rooms in some cases. You’re likely to jump out of sheer force, but the lingering effect is one of humour rather than terror.

One of the film’s few good aspects is the actually occasionally spooky score written by Carpenter himself, perhaps in an attempt to channel earlier films of his in which he did so, and the opening title sequence based around imagery of shattering glass has a unique beauty to it. There’s also a little fun to be had with character actor and recent Mad Men star Jared Harris’ performance as the girls’ doctor, in which he almost seems to be channelling Donald Pleasance’s iconic appearance in Halloween. It’s a shame more of these influences from Carpenter’s better films couldn’t find their way into this.

Darren Aronofsky’s latest offering deconstructs the classical conventions of fairy-tale into a dark, intoxicating battle between art and reality.
When New York’s Lincoln Center begin auditions for a modern re-telling of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, the theatre’s director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) looks for a girl who can encompass both the fearful fragility of the White Swan and the destructive sensuality of her evil twin, the Black Swan. Nina (Natalie Portman) gets the part for her virginal innocence and both she and Leroy doubt from the beginning her ability to abandon her sexual and technical insecurity in portraying the Black Swan. This insecurity swells and manifests itself as Lilly (Mila Kunis), a fellow dancer, irrepressible and less controlled, however as Leroy puts it, ‘she isn’t faking it.’

This is no simple story of back-stage bitch slapping however. The implicit grey area where Nina goes to in which she must face her deepest desires, like her both sexual and malignant feelings towards Lilly, to break free from her suffocating mother, her desire even to hurt herself, blur the borders of her mind and our own conception of what is real and what is not. Her surroundings, such as the narrow hallways of her mother’s small apartment, the monochrome theatre, the grey breezeblock changing rooms and mirrors on every surface intimate prison-like entrapment, and her image as inescapable.
As rehearsals commence, the confusion between the art of the ballet and the reality of the ballet catalyses a decent into a sort of artistic madness that is coupled with Shakespearean motifs of infection, disease, bubbling sores and the harrowing amplification of fingernail clipping. A homage to the sort of bloody theatricality of the Grand Guignol is here evident, whilst Aronofsky’s influence from several films cannot be ignored. In particular, Nina’s almost toxic paranoia and jealousy of her double echoes that of Bette Davis’ performance in All About Eve (1950), whilst Aronofsky has cited the films of Roman Polanski, notably Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Repulsion (1965) as great influences, both concentrating on the mental deterioration and insecurities within their leading women.

It is Powell and Pressburger’s 1948 masterpiece The Red Shoes however, that lends the greatest insight into Aronofsky’s film. Vicky Page (Moira Shearer) and Nina share a common goal; to give the perfect performance. Nina’s claustrophobic upbringing, her innate desire to please the beastly seductive Leroy and Lilly’s position as artistic and sexual competition constructs a dark parallel to the Swan Lake ballet itself. Similarly Vicky plays the part of a girl who when putting on a pair of magical ballet pumps controlled by an evil shoemaker who reflects her commanding director, is unable to stop dancing until she dies. Both she and Nina share a grim perfection because they bring their art into their reality and live out the fate of their on-stage personas. 

In a film industry that seems to be increasingly composed of base romantic comedies, action films and your standard group of factory-pumped-body-part-performers, this is a welcome departure. It will do well in the award season there is no doubt, but more than that, it really is unlike anything I’ve seen before despite its similar ideas and homages to other films. Aronofsky treads boldly on familiar grounds such as the psychological thriller as a genre, the cult of female destruction in slasher horror, themes of back-stage rivalry, art as spectacle and female objectification, creating something quite indefinable. A passionate, melodramatic production that leaves us questioning did Aronofsky, or Portman, or indeed any other member of the crew, experience a dwindled but similar conflict in their creation of a ‘perfect’ piece of original film-making.

“A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it”-Alfred Hitchcock 

Cinemas are changing. The actual physical place of exhibition underwent a revolution with the emergence of the multiplex in the 70s/80s. These mammoth, populist and faceless entities directly provided an alternative to the ‘good film’ experience that Mr. Hitchcock is referring to. Catch an earlier showing (no need for the babysitter), buy some nachos, maybe a hotdog and enjoy the latest iteration of the same story (now in 3D!). When was the last time you heard someone refer to Cineworld as a ‘theatre’? These are not the place to proper engage with the stunning aesthetics or narrative mastery that film can offer. A further threat to film appreciation comes from the proposed premium Video-On-Demand, which studios are looking at as a way of countering both the flailing DVD market and piracy. On 3 November, Time Warner announced that they wish to employ this tactic very soon, with ‘Variety’ speculating huge releases (‘The Hangover 2′ and ‘The Green Lantern’) are being used to ‘make a splash’ in this new marketplace. Viewers will never have to leave the indentation in their sofa or their well stocked refrigerator. Audiences who value film on a higher level, fans of the medium who find great joy within it, now have fewer places to appreciate the art. 

      A way of not only creating a community of film fans but also exploring films through a deeper experience is through more immersive film events. By making the practice of film exhibitionism more of a unique one it should make it not only special but more engaging. If the correct aspects of the film are explored hidden depths can be found, layers of meaning and (importantly) enjoyment that are certainly not evident in a home viewing and would be tough to find in a large faceless multiplex. This is obviously not a radical new idea and is built upon the immersion experiences already on offer in certain locations, set up by organizations such as Future Cinema’s ‘Secret Cinema’ or Jameson’s Cult Film Club (in their own words they are ‘staged to transport our members into the film’s universe’). We can take it even further back in history, right to the start of film exhibitionism; way back in 1906 ‘Hale’s Tours’ capitalized upon the escapism that film was discovering, the cinema’s stylized like train carriages and offering viewers the chance to see ‘the colonies or any part of the world (without luggage!)’. Although I am not proposing that we immediately create these substantial events, I think slight additions to the experience go a long way. Take, for instance the GFT’s ‘Late Night Cult Classics’, one of showings of classic films on a Friday night-that alone adds atmosphere. Or merging cinema with another event; the upcoming ‘Thunder Disco’ club event at the SWG3 gallery is putting on a screening of ‘The Warriors’ beforehand. By extending the experience beyond the simply passing time with a few flickering images we can strive to deepen our enjoyment, collate our opinions, elevate the works’ meaning and (in accordance to Hitchcock’s statement) make sure that the cost of it all is well worth it.

Studying a year of A Level French taught me many things. Firstly, that I do not speak French well, nor will I ever understand its grammar. Nevertheless, it did teach me to love French cinema. I won’t pretend to be an expert on the subject or know too much about the history (when googling it, many websites were in French and we already know the trouble I have there!) But I do know that the French know how to make good films.

In recent years, French cinema has been going from strength to strength in all aspects. Most notably, Amélie in 2001 became the highest grossing French language film in the United States box office and Marion Cottilard won the 2008 BAFTA for her performance in the Edith Piaf biopic La Vie En Rose.  

So why the sudden rise in popularity for French cinema? Partly, I think, it’s due to the recent influx of talented French actresses in Hollywood films: Marion Cottilard (Public Enemies); Juliette Binoche (The English Patient); Audrey Tautou (The Da Vinci Code); and Clémence Poésy (In Bruges). The versatility shown in acting in two different languages and cinematic styles is pretty impressive and I can see why, after watching In Bruges for example you’d be inclined to check out some of Poséy’s projects in her native language. However, I’d like to think it takes more than just one actress to make a film successful so what are the other pulls to French cinema?

For me, I can almost sum it up into one particular moment of genius in the first ever French film I watched aged thirteen- Belleville Rendezvous. A silent, animated film, it’s a good way for non-speakers to ease into the French cinema culture. But the moment that made the film for me was an almost irrelevant scene in a restaurant where the waiter was literally falling over backwards to help. This attention to detail is personally one of my favourite things about French cinema.

Of course, my tastes- and to some extent my language skills- have matured at least a little since then, which brings me to the wonderfully hilarious Bienvenue, Chez les Ch’tis, a comedy directed by and starring Dany Boon about a postal worker who accidentally gets transferred from the beautiful South of France to the cold far North with its incomprehensible dialect ‘Ch’tis’. Typical of any comedic film based on geography, he fears for his life and his sanity based on the disturbing things he has heard about the area but, unlike many a Hollywood blockbuster, the stereotypes are destroyed, rather than reinforced for more humour. This is what I enjoy the most about French film. We get to see the truth.

The same can be said about the French World War II film Days of Glory. It doesn’t instill a sense of brotherhood and compassion the way many Hollywood war films do. Instead, it shows us the awful conditions for the troops and how unjust the war could be. As a more dedicated French student and friend of mine Paul Simpson said: “It inspires thought, which is a statement I would definitely tie to the French cinema industry.”

So the next time you’re stuck and looking for a good film to watch, stop and give French cinema a thought. There’s something for everyone’s tastes and I promise they are excellently subtitled!

The history of Russian cinema mirrors closely the turbulent fate of the country
in the last century. Until the mid-1920s no one took it under account as a major
film producer. Destroyed by the lengthy Civil War, there was simply no money
for sets, equipment or film stock. This is why Battleship Potemkin (Sergei
Eisenstein, 1925) came to many like a bolt from the blue. Today best known for
its Odessa Steps sequence, it has become somewhat a cliché, but at the time it
was truly ground-breaking. Eisenstein, in his depiction of the mutiny of a Russian battleship against the Tsarist regime, has demonstrated the to the world that film editing can be as important in creating meaning for a motion picture as the plot itself.

Unfortunately, Bolshevik demagogues quickly picked up on the propaganda potential of Eisenstein’s technique, as well as movies in general. By the 1930s mass produced communist agitprop films were flooding Western cinemas. Over the next few decades, the more talented Russian directors were constrained to make films under such self-explanatory titles as Three Songs About Lenin (Dziga Vertov, 1934), Victory (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1938), or Liberation (Alexander Dovzhenko, 1940). While often innovative in terms of filming techniques and acting methods (see Vertov’s Man With A Movie Camera), they were mostly painfully simple stories praising social involvement, as understood by the Party line.

Only Stalin’s death in 1953, and the reformatory spirit of Khrushchev, brought
about a certain amount of independence to Russian filmmakers. Talents were
allowed to flourish in a less controlled environment, which culminated in the
maturing of auteurs such as Sergei Bondarchuk (War and Peace, 1967- known
as the most expensive film in history) Ivan Pyryev (The Brothers Karamazov,
1969) or Andrei Tarkovsky. The latter, possibly the most admired Russian
director of all time, was the precursor of metaphysical cinema. His masterpieces, Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979), both based on science-fiction novels, make the viewers feel as if they’re witnessing someone’s dream unreel in front of their eyes.
Regrettably, geopolitics again upset the evolution of Russian cinema. With the
fall of the USSR in the early 1990s, the arts funding system collapsed. Only well
established people could afford to make quality movies. Such was the case of
Nikita Mikhalkov, who with films such as Territory of Love (1991), and especially Burnt By The Sun (1994), the story of Russian Civil War hero who is betrayed by his comrades, is responsible for some of the most critically acclaimed works of modern Russian cinema. Nonetheless, outside his work mediocre action films abounded, inspired by 1980s Hollywood. The only notable director in this genre is Aleksei Balabanov, and his crime epics Brother (1997) and Brother 2 (2000) provide an insight to the problems of alienation and desensitisation to violence in post-Soviet Russia.

Fortunately for Russian cinema, the natural gas-based economic miracle of the
last decade turned the cards. Astounding amounts of money are being spent on
promoting young, talented filmmakers. The best ambassador for this success
story is Timur Bekmambetov, the man behind the multi-million dollar grossing
Night Watch (2004) and Day Watch (2006) fantasy movies (and, more recently,
Wanted with Angelina Jolie). Films in Russia today range from applauded
artistic personal drama (Andrey Zvyagintsev’s The Return), through high-budget Afghanistan war movies (Fyodor Bondarchuk’s The 9th Company), to successful experimental cinema (Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark presenting 300 years of the country’s history in a single, continuous 96-minute shot). With such wealth of material, talent, and style, the future is certainly looking bright for Russian film aficionados.