42 SEVENTEENTH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL AT THE END OF EVERY FESTIVAL A FILMMAKER IS GIVEN THE CHANCE TO DIRECT THE FOLLOWING YEAR’S RAINDANCE TRAILER. CHRIS PRESSWELL LOOKS AT THE CONTROVERSY SURROUNDING THE CURRENT ONE ‘FILMS TO DIE FOR’ NE OF THE key elements of the Raindance Film Festival every year is the trailer. Each year, the closing night ceremony awards one filmmaker, the winner of the Film Of The Festival Award, the opportunity, and a modest budget of £1000 to make the next year’s trailer with the support of a grant from the Independent Film Trust. To date we’ve seen an eclectic blend of ideas from around the world, from Ostylishly shot Japanese body-popping in Daughter by Kosai Sekine– which saw him win the Grand Prix and Best Non-EU Commercial at Cannes – to Lone Rider, by Australian based Edwin McGill and Kasimir Burgess, winners of the 2007 short Booth. Then last year, Tom Tagholm, after winning Raindance trailers 2006, 2007, 208 Raindance trailers 2006, 2007, for his short A Bout De Truffe, went on to direct Zombie Love featuring a quirky blossoming romance between a man and a zombie. And so, that’s where Agenda Collective found themselves this time last year having been awarded the prize for Red Sands, a gripping documentary on bullfighting and Spanish tradition. Given complete creative control over the project, they were told they could be as ambitious and audacious Opposite, from top as they liked. SEVENTEENTH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 43 Dexter Fletcher in the Raindance 2009 Fletcher trailer Dexter In search of a lead actor and with the shoot fast approaching, the role of casting was granted to Raindance’s Rory O’Donnell. For the most part, this took nearly as long as the pre-production, after weeks of phone calls, nearly 40 rejections, and only two days before the shoot he secured Dexter Fletcher, well known for his staunch support of independent film. Then, only weeks prior the festival, the Cinema Advertising Agency banned the trailer, describing it as having brought ‘advertising into disrepute’, that ‘the phrase “to die for” as an expression of praise and approbation is a verbal metaphor, but it has never been taken to convey the literal meaning: “something worth committing suicide over”’ and that the use of shocking (suicide) images were ‘merely to attract attention… reminiscent of the apocryphal snuff movie’. This came as a blow to all those who had offered numerous favours for the project. It’s the first time Raindance have had to deal with this kind of problem – despite having had the boundaries pushed in previous efforts. Tom Tagholm’s trailer included a shot of the love interest’s head falling off and squirting blood. There were no complaints. But everybody involved appears to have taken the ruling in his or her stride. ‘In the long run, they’ll [the crew] all get more exposure from it being banned.’ And just how far did that £1,000 prize money go? ‘It didn’t even cover the insurance,’ says the director David Procter. ‘If this project had been realised commercially, the budget would have been at least £100,00,’ he adds, before divulging that the day before the shoot, the crew still hadn’t confirmed a location, ‘It was like our own Lost in La Mancha, but with a happy ending.’ 44 SEVENTEENTH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL C M Y CM MY CY CMY K TRULY INSPIRATIONAL FIRST: COMING SOON... THE BESTSELLING THE BESTSELLING AUTOBIOGRAPHY AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MOVIE An ordinary man is completely incapacitated in a car crash. He has many injuries and even looses his speech. He is stigmatized and labelled a drunk, but refuses to accept the cruel hand he has been dealt - he fights back against a prejudiced society, and rebuilds his shattered life and, with amazing success, becomes a successful author and indie filmmaker. It is an inspiring account of a man’s refusal to be destroyed by an accident which shattered his body, distorted his sight, blanked his memory and all but obliterated his capacity for speech... It is also the story of a man’s self-belief and persistence in the face of constant misunderstanding, humiliation and even insult... David Evans University of Liverpool He has the strength and determination of ten men An incredible story Emma Thompson Esther Rantzen Buy or order the book at Buy the movie at... Borders Books stores Give me a chance to make it! It’s in pre-production! IN 1984, CULT SINGER-SONGWRITER AND FORMER SOFT BOYS FRONTMAN ROBYN HITCHCOCK RELEASED HIS SEMINAL ALBUM, I OFTEN DREAM OF TRAINS. CHRIS PRESSWELL CATCHES UP WITH HIM 25 YEARS LATER AS HE CELEBRATES THE ALBUM ON THE ROAD, DOCUMENTING THE PROCESS WITH A NEW CONCERT FILM How did the idea to revisit I Often Dream of Trains first emerge? It was my wife’s idea, actually. A lot of people do their old records, like Roger Waters did Dark Side of the Moon and Lou Reed does Berlin. If The Beatles were still around, they’d be doing Sgt Pepper. So Michelle said, ‘why don’t you do I Often Dream of Trains? That’s your…’ Well, not exactly concept album, but every so often people do a mood album. Things like Avalon by Roxy Music, maybe The Plastic Ono Band by John Lennon; they’re more than a collection of songs, they’re a state of mind – and my contribution to that is probably the Trains record. That seems to be the one that people pick up on, and it had just been re-released so I thought, ‘Why not? Let’s have a go.’ And how did the film come about? I met John Edginton when he did his Syd Barrett documentary. The Barrett story is told in many different ways – sometimes it sounds funny, but his version just seemed overwhelmingly sad. And then he made Sex, Food, Death and Insects about me – which he did a very simpatico job on – and we thought, ‘let’s film the Trains show.’ He’s always wanted to film me live and acoustic, so he was the natural choice. SEVENTEENTH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 49 You chose to alter the album’s track listing when performing it live. What inspired those changes, and how did the audience accept it? There were some songs that I didn’t really connect with anymore, but it also made sense to have my piano playing at the beginning. There’s not a lot of that virtuoso swapping stuff – we made it as simple as possible. But that’s an interesting point. If you have a huge audience, you mess with these things at your peril. But my audience are much more boutique. They tend to be quite forgiving about the way I mutate. The album favours nostalgia over the psychedelic and surrealist imagery that you’re known for. Why do you think that it’s resonated with people? It’s not that different. I was probably a bit too brutal when I was in the Soft Boys to produce anything with very much tenderness or introspection. It caught up with me when I was approaching 30, so I went straight into a kind of early menopause. All my leaves turned gold and began to fall off, and I think it was my kind of adolescence. I got it back to front. Recently you’ve been playing acoustic versions of some of the Soft Boys and Egyptians material, more in line with the sound on Trains. How do you choose what to revisit? Some of those songs were actually written in that period. Goodnight I Say was originally part of the Trains collection, but wasn’t recorded until The Egyptians got going with that very different approach. But I wrote it the same week I wrote Cathedral. In concept it’s part of that cycle. You recently appeared in Rachel Getting Married, which is perhaps what you’re most known for at the moment Jonathan [Demme, director] thinks a lot about how to incorporate music into soundtracks, and got me involved because he wanted all the music to be live. He got me to sing America after the wedding – again, a really different arrangement. I’m really pleased with that. That was all one take; I don’t think we even had a run through. Does your emotional wellbeing have an impact on the quality of your material? I think a certain amount of trauma is stimulating, but sometimes you might be going back to something from twenty years ago. It doesn’t have to be something that’s happened that day all around you; you can just go back to when it hurt, perhaps if you didn’t acknowledge it at the time. You don’t have to have a divorce every time you make a good record. You’re in the process of re-issuing your back catalogue. What’s next in the pipeline? The only thing we’ve got left to release is the Soft Boys box set, and that’s supposed to be happening sometime next year. It’s just a matter of corralling the tapes, and baking them in a kind of pizza oven. I’m also putting out another album with the Venus 3 called Propeller Time. As documented in John’s documentary, in fact. But I’m thinking it might be my last compact disc. I’d like to try having everything downloadable. Perhaps a single every few months, and occasionally put out vinyl anthologies. But I want to see who goes first, me or the CD [laughs].