Rory McGregor’s top five picks from Aesthetica Film Festival:
#5 Welcome to Leathermill
Welcome to Leathermill concerned a chap who is travelling through the English countryside when his GPS goes haywire and he crashes his car. He awakes in the stocks opposite a local villages’ pub, and then very bizarre events start occurring. Although one of the least visually arresting in my top five, Leathermill kept my attention throughout with an inventive and entertaining plot. It holds its place as it communicated itself smoothly and formed a story which I was fully involved in. The feeling of suspense which epitomised this piece was delivered by keeping the intricacies of the plot under wraps until the dying minutes. The lack of dialogue and the local’s refusal to talk to the man in the stocks reinforced his plight and, when someone finally decides to talk to him, makes their one word ever more impacting. And that word is: RUN.
#4 Scarecrow
James Arden’s film concerns a farmer who is haunted by his scarecrow, staring ominously at him from the fields afar. I was a little sceptical going in to watch this film as the scarecrow-keeps-coming-back plot has been done multiple times in various mediums, but Arden’s cinematography and soundtrack more than made up for it. Shot on a Canon 550D on a minimal budget, Scarecrow epitomised what film festivals like Aesthetica should be about: aspiring film-makers being given a chance to showcase their talent. The discordant, murmuring soundtrack created an eerie atmosphere, which was completed by interesting colour grading. The strong use of yellows and blues, coupled with lashings of symbolism, helped create a film with a very distinct style. At a film festival where quite a few shorts blend into one with a banal style, it was refreshing to watch a film made with a particular palette in mind. It definitely helped Scarecrow stand out and I can’t wait to see what Arden comes out with next.
#3 The Caretaker (Vaktmästaren)
The Caretaker, by Martin Ahlin, was effortlessly the best film I saw on the first day of the festival. The premise is simple yet effective: a caretaker looks after an apparently abandoned school and some paranormal activity begins to occur. While there isn’t much new here, the execution of the film was intense and nothing short of brilliant. The build-up of the thudding, powerful soundtrack, combined with the long, dark corridors is terrifying. As a Stanley Kubrick buff, I like my wide-angle lenses and long, panning corridor shots to induce unease and The Caretaker made effective use out of these, with a new, novel spin. I particularly liked the use of light in this film, the darkness increasing down the long winding halls, with the caretaker only illuminated in his own torch in many scenes. Great stuff.
#2 Glick’s Last Tour
This was the one film I saw which actually had a measurable emotional impact on the audience. It tells the story of a veteran ventriloquist who, after some years of success, has seen it dwindle to the point where his main source of income is doing ‘outside shows’. And by ‘outside shows’ I mean Ventrilo-busking to passers-by on piers in seaside towns. When inside gigs do come, they are in sparsely populated back rooms of pubs, to muted receptions. This set-up, coupled with realisation as the film goes on that the protagonist, Nathan Baldwin, is living in his car, constructs a plot which is easy to connect with and feel sympathy for. The director would hope, with the right execution that the film would come together and be expressively engaging.
Through a fantastic performance by the lead actor, Eric Colvin, and the mockumentary style filming, a realistic and poignant short film is realised. The script masterfully skirts around the potential pit-falls of forced tragedy through desperate cliché dialogue, which unfortunately many other short films at this festival fell into (especially dramas). My only personal issue was with the rather upbeat ending which felt at odds with the bleak mood of the short, but this is largely down to my (probable) over-appreciation of crushing nihilism in cinema. The ending provided a fitting catharsis for Barley and the audience, and the closing monologue where Barley analyses his career is beautifully poetic and a bridge many performers no doubt have to cross in their lifetime.
#1 Augenblicke
Martin Bargiel’s Augenblicke was, without reservation, the best made and most engaging film I saw at Aesthetica. It deservedly won the Best Thriller category and everyone I spoke to who saw it absolutely raved about it. The director was a pleasant fellow as well, which helps.
The film is a whirlwind ride of shifting consciousness and chronology, with audience expectation being played with at every corner. As the protagonist struggles to remember whether he committed the murder he is accused of, the spectators is with him every step of the way, trying to work out what’s narrative and what’s not. It was one of the best examples of unreliable narrator I’ve seen in cinema, mashed brilliantly together with some astounding cinematography. Realities are blurred as characters from the interrogation room appear in the memories of the protagonist and the dank browns and yellows of the crime scene apartment blend beautifully with the pristine but sharp blues and whites of the police station. Segues are effortless and imaginative, with dream and reality constantly played with, creating an anticipation but an uncertainty with what’s around every corner. Everything about this oozed professionalism, from the script and the acting to the shooting and the snappy editing. If you get a chance to see this, do – it’s easily one of the best short films I’ve ever seen, Bargiel should be very proud with his creation.
Tom Bonnington’s top five picks from Aesthetica Film Festival:
#5 Squared
Squared told the story of a lesbian couple who have a big argument about the fact that one of them never says anything nice except when she writes it on a post-it note and leaves it somewhere. What sounds like a comical concept was actually treated very seriously by the director. There is little self-awareness at the ridiculousness of such an argument occurring, which often makes the film drift into uneasy territory with the audience not knowing whether to laugh or not. I think it would have worked slightly better if it had been transformed into a dark comedy and poked fun at itself a little more.
Nevertheless, Squared makes it into my top five because of the great performances of the central couple and the brilliant end scene, which transforms pink post-it notes into deranged art. It succeeded where other films failed in combining great cinematography with an interesting story.
#4 Dylan’s Room
Dylan’s Room was one of the most acclaimed films of the festival, winning the award for best drama. It stars Joanna Scanlon, who plays a mother that smokes her dead son’s weed to feel connected with him. During the director, Layke Anderson’s acceptance speech, he said he had been in a very dark place when he wrote it and decided to spend a grand of spare money he had on making it. It was an impressive film to be made for a grand and was beautifully filmed. A couple of issues I had with it though, were that it was all a bit thrown into your face, the fact that her son wasn’t really on the bed smoking too. It would have been more haunting if the director had turned it into more of a puzzle and less of a tear-jerker.
It makes it to number four on my list because it was very well shot and was an excellent example of how to shoot a decent film on a shoestring budget although not all of us are lucky enough to be friends with Joanna Scanlon and use her acting for free.
#3 108.1 FM Radio
This was a very enjoyable film that had a lot of fun with its concept. It tells the story of a commuter picking up a hitchhiker and then hearing a story on the radio about a hitchhiker wanted for murder in the local area. The film’s strength was its dialogue and had the best of any film I had seen at the festival. What it had that many of the British films lacked was its sense of fun and the kinetic energy, which made the film seem more panicked than some of the less successful thrillers. While I have to admit the concept is unoriginal, the way the Cappasso brothers, the directors, deal with it gives it a sense of comedy without losing its potential thrills.
In terms of charm, this film has to be right up there as one of the most successful films of the festival and despite the poor ending, I look forward to the Cappasso brithers next efforts.
#2 Metachaos
Metachaos is an experimental film, although that doesn’t really begin to cover how weird it is. I would tell you what it was about if it had any sort of story whatsoever. And I would tell you why I liked it if I could possibly find the words to explain. What the viewer sees is bricks of different shape and size being tossed around in some sort of other world while human shaped figures that seem to be made of coal are hovering in the air or crawling across the floor. I’m not selling it very well but it is the sort of film you need to see once, as it is utterly breathtaking. I was very disappointed it didn’t win Best Experimental at the festival, as this was the most groundbreaking film I saw by quite some way when it came to using new techniques and cinematography to create an otherworldly experience.
#1 Augenblicke
Augenblicke was the best film I saw at the festival and, no offence to the others, by quite some way too. It is about a man who is unsure whether he is dreaming or if he is alive or whether he killed this woman or not. The film it most closely resembled in my opinion was David Lynch’s Eraserhead with its general weirdness and use of shadows to create a deeply unpleasant atmosphere. The director, Martin Bargiel’s use of this yellow tint gives a sickly feel to proceedings and manages to make it horrifying with his unusual filming techniques that give it a claustrophobic and tense atmosphere.
Bargiel won best thriller at the festival but, disappointingly, failed to win best film, being beaten by the elegiac simplicity of a film called The Sugar Bowl. However, it was comfortably the most professional film I saw and had no problems with its narrative whatsoever. I can’t wait to see what Bargiel does next.