Film Web Blog

Pimp my panniers … Made in Queens, one of the films shown at the Bicycle film festival

Nigel is stacking BMX bikes on the pavement opposite the Barbican. There are 300 in all, so he’s arranging them alternately upside-down and right-way-up to maximise space in the venue’s before that time stuffed bike racks. Inside the cinema, cyclists watch Made in Queens and The Scraper Bike King, two of 23 new films being shown at the London leg of this year’s Bicycle film feast, a mobile, international event that aims to promote the best in cycle cinema.

Both Made in Queens and The Scraper Bike King are about kids that have renovated their revolutions. The Queens teenagers of Joe Stevens and Nicholas Randall’s documentary – all immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago – transform old bikes into mobile soundsystems through loading them by sub-woofers, laptops and lighting rigs, then christening them “Tinnitus Rex” and “Basszilla”. Their modifications are farther more ambitious than those of the riders in Rafael Flores’s The Scraper Bike King but the two groups share that powerful unity when coterie riding.

Outside the venue, London’s own burgeoning bike gang – the fixed-gear riders – are flooding Nigel’s parking stalls. They sport vintage Italian racing caps and punky-cute tattoos, and even add to the number a few genuine bike messengers in their number. They’re here for the Urban Bike Shorts – a mixed bag of velo-centric short films, ranging from X-Games-style tricks videos to more interesting fare, such as Brendan McNamee’session Polo Manual (2009) – a fun-and-throwaway manage to playing bike polo.

The more prudent stuff had come earlier in the day. Irish director Peter Madden’s The Tall Old Lady (2009) was a touching story of one man’s changing connection with his bike over their years in company, Brian Schoenfelder’s The Third Wheel (2009) carefully documented the struggles of pedicab riders for example they battled for space with taxicab drivers in New York’s arena district, and Maz Lewis’s Good Friday (2008) did a fine – admitting that somewhat grinding – job of going behind the scenes at Herne Hill velodrome, where Britain’s Bradley Wiggins started his career.

Graham, a 30-something amateur road racer clad in black Lycra, raced in just as Dutch director Erik van Empel’s Tour of Legends (2003) started. The cleats of his cycling shoes clacked against the cinema’s put a floor on for example on shelter a rabble of mourners paid subsidy to Italian cycling legend Gino Bartali. Bartali – winner of the 1948 Tour de France – cycled in grand company and Van Empel chases down legends such as Marcel Dupont and Briek Schotte to reminisce over the pre-TV tour.

Tour of Legends is a gloriously romantic paean to cycling’s lost stainlessness. It’s evocative, reverent and (thanks to some unnaturally handsome September sunshine) seen only by Graham and perhaps 10 others. Pit this festival’s two draws against each other, and cycling will out – as event producer Laura Fletcher herself admits: “As soon as it’s graceful weather and it’s Bicycle film festival, most people just scantling their tickets and go ride the bike.” Bartali would have been proud. Van Empel will have to conduct one’s self by it.

• The Bicycle film festival is in Copenhagen on 30 September, Milan from 8-11 October and Paris from 14-18 October. See bicyclefilmfestival.com for details.

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The camera loves you … Action Diana. Photograph: Centre of Attention

Last month, Ben Child went to Bute to watch the filming of Action Diana, a remake of John Schlesinger’s Darling, no more than starring random strangers, rather than Julie Christie and Dirk Bogarde. Here, he assesses the finished pellicle.

1. Darling
2. Production year: 1965
3. Country: UK
4. Runtime: 127 mins
5. Directors: John Schlesinger
6. Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Julie Christie
7. More on this film

A dull hum, or maybe more of a hiss, emanates from the speakers. The images on screen are ofttimes punctuated by periods in which in that place is nonentity much visible at all, righteous a black space. When it was originally announced in July, Action Diana – Anglo-French art group The Centre of Attention’s new version of Darling, the 1966 drama in an opposite direction a young copy and social climber that won Julie Christie an Oscar – was touted as a shot-for-shot remake. But I do not remember a single more potholes in the visual narrative of John Schlesinger’session pellicle. Nor did it feature amateur camerawork, footage which is often hugely over-exposed, and editing that appears to have been carried out by a three-year-old wearing boxing gloves. The totality thing also comes in at just over an hour, where Schlesinger’s tale of swinging 60s London was in addition two.

And then there’s the deed. While the original Darling featured a fairly wooden turn from the famously strict Laurence Harvey in a supporting role, it was generally something of a tour de force, with Christie and Dirk Bogarde both turning in standout performances. By way of contrast, the 500-strong cast of the new version, named Action Diana for legal reasons, range from spectacularly hammy to apparently disinterested, with a side helping of extremely confused.

All of the above, of course, matters not a jot, in theory. For this is an art film, and therefore (arguably) not bound by the usual critical constraints. Furthermore, the whole lump of matter was put together for about a hundredth of the cost of the big screen we’re watching it adhering. Co-directors Gary O’Dwyer and Pierre Coinde, who together travel over up The Centre of Attention, worked with just one camera and members of the public in Merseyside, Vienna and Bute (doubling despite the original’s London, Monte Carlo and Capri) to put the project into junction. There were literally hundreds of Diana Scotts, the character played by Christie in the original, ranging from 10 to 82 in age. And very few of them had more than a not many moments to learn their lines.

The terminate is a hotchpotch of human essence, individual actors’ quirks and features highlighted, often mercilessly, occasionally kindly by the camera. An older lady, mumbling, confused but game, kicks off one scene, but is suddenly replaced by a younger, other thing certain player. The actors in some sections appear to have received meticulous prepping, while in others you get the impression they haven’t a clue what’s going on.

Eventually the viewer stops trying to follow the narrative (I felt particularly sorry for those at the debut screening here at the Abandon Normal Devices feast at FACT in Liverpool on Sunday death who had not even seen the type) and simply concentrates on the wonderful variety of not the same personalities on screen. We have mere seconds to evaluate the faces and voices before they shift. With some, it’s immediately irreproachable that the camera loves them; others, not so much.

Does the movie say anything useful about film-making, other than pass over it pretty unencumbered that there is a very good intuitional faculty why most films cost an awful lot of money to make and are put together by professionals who really know what they’re doing? I’m not sure. It certainly suggests that in the era of actuality TV and YouTube, the public has little fear of the camera, and we are all willing and ready during the term of our 15 minutes (OK, seconds) of fame at a moment’s notice. Most of those involved in Action Diana, to their credit, seem to have taken the whole process super-seriously. Some pass muster, others do not. It is often the latter who make for the more fascinating spectacle.

There is a particular section at the period of film reviews in Hollywood trade newspapers, such as Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, in which the critic passes judgement on a particular movie’s technical prowess. Action Diana would no doubt be to the purpose trashed. But for its humanity, its daring and its endeavour, it deserves a rather more positive reaction. If it is else important for art to mine new territory than to meet basic technical requirements, then this is a pecuniary penalty project that deserves your attention.

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Roman Polanski in front of a giant chessboard in Munich in 1972. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The surprise detention of Roman Polanski has been met with indignation in Hollywood and sparked a flurry of media speculation over the absolute reason at the back Saturday night’s arrest in Zurich.

Film mogul Harvey Weinstein has got at the back a campaign through French film-makers calling on US authorities not to extradite the Oscar-winning Polish director in connection through a charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor dating back more than three decades.

Weinstein entered the fray at the personal behest of Cannes film festival director Thierry Fremaux and will now use his considerable influence and campaigning heft to enlist the support of Hollywood.

“We’re calling on every film-maker we can to help make firm this terrible situation,” Weinstein said, reviving a theme he adopted earlier in the year after he bought between nations distribution rights at Sundance to the HBO documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.

The film uncovered flaws in the legitimate case opposed to the director, prompting Weinstein to allude to a possible campaign to get the charges against Polanski dropped. At a hearing this year a Los Angeles more eminent court arrive at the truth agreed there was “substantial misconduct” in the original hearing.

Furthermore Samantha Geimer (nee Gailey), the girl whom Polanski raped at the age of 13 and who is at once in her mid-40s, has called on the persons cited as vouchers to dismiss the charges against him.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times this morning, film columnist Patrick Goldstein questioned the ethics of a potential move through the LA County district attorney’s office to spend taxpayer’sitting money on extraditing Polanski at a time of severe statewide budget cuts.

“[A]t a time when California is shredding the safety net that protects the poor and the unemployed, not to cursory reference the budget of the public school system, you’d hope that LA County prosecutors had better things to do than cause an international furor [sic] by hounding a film director for a 32-year-old sex iniquity, especially one that Polanski’s victim wants to put it back her,” Goldstein wrote.

Meanwhile the Washington Post’sitting Anne Applebaum had this to say: “To put him on trial or solemnize him in jail does not serve society in general or his victim in particular. Nor does it prove the doggedness and earnestness of the American legal system.”

Focus has turned to why the arrest has come now, even although Polanski used to own a close in Switzerland and, according to his agent Jeff Berg of ICM, spent a great deal of of this summer in the country editing his latest film, The Ghost.

Matters took an intriguing turn on Sunday when AP accidentally published an internal memo between staffers speculating that political motivations may have led Swiss magistrates to collaborate with the LA County district attorney’s office at this stage.

Unsubstantiated claims are circling that Swiss authorities may be using Polanski as a sacrificial lamb to appease their US counterparts ahead of an unfolding tax-evasion traducement that involves the Swiss banking giant UBS and wealthy US account holders.

An excerpt from the casual AP release reads:

“that’session because they’re under intense pressure more than ubs and penury to throw the U.S. a bone, but can yo ucheck with justice department sources there?”

Swiss justice ministry spokesman Guido Balmer has rejected any notion that the arrest was a political move.

Polanski fled the US in 1978 after pleading guilty to the unlawful sexual connection charges and faces up to 50 years in jail should LA County prosecutors start proceedings and choose to request an extradition.

“Whether the LA County region attorney’s office has its way or not, it is not a story that can obtain a happy ending,” Goldstein added in the Los Angeles Times. “I think Polanski has even now paid a horrible, soul-wrenching price for the villany surrounding his actions. The real tragedy is that he resoluteness always, to the time of his death, be snubbed and stalked and confronted by people who think the worth he has already paid isn’t enough.”

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