Recently in Cambridge Film Festival 2003 Category

This was one of the films of the festival that really deserved its 18 certificate! Essentially the film was simple, it was a collection of pornographic films from the days before the ‘talkies’! Compiled by Michel Reilhac the films were apparently shown in the waiting rooms to brothels, more amusingly they were often made by off-duty filmmakers who had access to the necessary equipment (pun intended).

The cinema staff had taken the unusual step of placing signs warning of the content every few feet en route to the screen. To be perfectly honest I was pretty shocked, not so much by the content as I am fairly desensitised now, but more by the high turnout for the film. There were a few walk outs too, but I saw a lot of “Cambridge Characters” lurking around, which made me realise that there is probably a good market for this sort of film here… hmm.

Without going into too much detail the films were pretty simple and tended to reach their climaxes fairly quickly! They were quite funny, if you could get past the unsubtle eroticism, I almost fell off my chair laughing when the ‘stud’ – dressed as an older gentleman – nearly lost his moustache during a menage a trois! Other highlights included a small dog with a willing tongue, and an animated feature that was fairly surreal. One word to sum it all up, bizarre.

*** (out of 5)

This was the second collection of hand-picked shorts of the festival. This time there were nine films on offer:

This set of 7 short films, all by notable Japanese film directors, made for a very involving hour and fifty minutes. I noticed that one of the production companies was Sega, and the collection had a rather amazing computer generated intro. Here is the run down of them:

[typed up hastily in an internet cafe, edited for spelling back at nofear hq]

The final screening on friday night, was something entitled "The Audible Picture Show", part of the film festival's shortfusion short film series.

Really, the title for this set of films should have given it away, but I didn't really give it much thought until the lights went down in the auditorium, and we spent the next 75 minutes or so in a darkened cinema listening to a totally aural experience.

Due to the almost complete absence of light there was not much opportunity for note taking. Some of the selections I was a bit confused about which was which, so any director wondering why there are no comments, it is nothing personal, let me listen to your work again! Anyway, a few brief notes made in the bar afterwards:

I�d just seen "Goodbye Lenin!" prior to watching this film, both films used the Berlin Wall as their backdrop but that is where the similarity ended!

We decided that the (18) certificate was given to these collections of short films as they were unclassified films in the first place -- certainly there was nothing particularly shocking about anything presented.

The way this worked is that we were shown 10 short films by new or just relatively unknown (at least to me) filmmakers. We were also given a form so that we could vote on what we thought of each. Apparently the one with the highest score gets their film displayed at all the "City Screen" cinemas in the country. So here is the list:

This was the opening night film of the festival and was a UK premiere, we were treated to a brief introduction of the festival by the organisers during which we were shown how technology in filmmaking and projection had changed. Apparently they've installed a high-resolution digital projection system in the cinema so more on this when I've seen what it is like.

The main feature was then rolled; the audience was not disappointed by the inaugural film! Which was just as well considering the cinema was at capacity. I was not surprised that "Goodbye Lenin!" has become the most popular German production to date, but I must say however that the trailers did misportray the film slightly. I was sure I was about to see a comedy, but only a few minutes into the film I realised the whole affair was going to be very bittersweet.

We're having a short break from all the usual journal writing, and will concentrate solely on film reviews for the next 10 days.

Hope you enjoy reading our reviews, and perhaps it'll encourage you to go and see some of these films at your local independent cinema over the coming months.

We also have the first few pages of our new comic strip up, "The Contacts - Project 'O' ", which can be found at Nofear Comics.

Well, we at NOFEAR are now about four hundred pounds (That's about 1,000 dollars or 1,000,000 Euros to you) worse off. So, what do you think the things pictured are that are worth that much? We'll reveal all in two weeks!