film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Author: Rosalynn Try-Hane

  • EEFF 2018: Brasilia Life After Design

    EEFF 2018: Brasilia Life After Design

    The one thing you never think about when living in a sprawling metropolis is how did it come to be. Looking at the buildings in London the way they are cheek by jowl, it doesn’t look as if a lot of planning went into it. Brasilia: Life After Design will change that point of view. There’s a lot of planning especially when creating a new (ahem) planned city, buildings aren’t the only consideration. The physical buildings have to be sturdy enough to accommodate not only people but the hopes of a nation, this idea is at the beating heart of Brasilia: Life After Design. This documentary will show you that design plays a significant impact on society and whether it succeeds or fails.

    Bart Simpson’s documentary takes a critical look at the reasons why Brasilia was created, the process of creating a city in the 1950s and also the hopes, some of them naive especially the idea that class wouldn’t matter. The film uses archive footage of the designer – not only of why the city was planned out in the way it was but his experiences whilst it was being built. However, the success of this documentary is to focus on four individuals living in the city now and their experiences. What is clear although never expressly stated is that there are always winners and losers and the sad irony is the losers in Brasilia are the very ones that architects Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemayer had set out to help.

    Brasilia: Life After Design is a fascinating documentary. The slow decline from idealism to realism and how people actually live in Brasilia today is is both fascinating and unsurprising.  You don’t need to be a design aficionado to watch this documentary, it is made for everyone and anyone who is fascinated by the impact design has on your life.

    Brasilia: Life After design will have its London Premiere at Rich Mix 26 April 6pm + panel discussion with Director & Hattie Hartman (The Architects’ Journal) as part of the East End Film Festival.

    The East End Film Festival 2018 runs from 11 – 29 April 2018.

  • The BRWC Review: Funny Cow

    The BRWC Review: Funny Cow

    Listen to a woman tell a joke and hear her entire life story. In short, that previous sentence sums up Funny Cow. Maxine Peake takes the title role of Funny Cow. The film charts the rise of a female comedian working the comedy circuit of working men’s clubs in Northern England through the use of flashbacks.

    Funny Cow starts in the present with the audience being introduced to Funny Cow as she does her stand up routine. We are then immediately plunged back through the use of flashback to Funny Cow’s brutal childhood and how telling jokes saved her both physically and mentally, sort of. In one memorable scene, her dad beats her with a belt and all she says in return is: “What’s up Dad, you seem angry”. Her jokes are her armour and these save her time and time again. The use of flashbacks largely works although sometimes it was hard to distinguish some of the peripheral characters in certain scenes especially the childhood scenes.

    Funny Cow is not a comedy, it contains comedy but it is more dramatic than comic. Jokes do feature heavily and the vast majority of the jokes are crude, sexist and racist which some may find shocking. However, this is what an accurate portrayal of a time and place is. Working men’s clubs as the name suggests were just that and these weren’t for those of a genteel disposition. The film needs those jokes and to take them away would be to sanitise the film. Funny Cow is a brutal and unfiltered look at how all comics have darkness in them that can either engulf or propel them to stardom. When Funny Cow is beaten to within an inch of her life and her husband breaks her nose she quite literally laughs through the blood and broken bones.

    Maxine Peake dominates every scene she is in. The film works because she doesn’t try hard to be funny she just is funny. She gives a powerful and honest portrayal of a working class woman who doesn’t want to be defined by anyone else but herself. The film has a very good supporting cast including; Christine Bottomley as Funny Calf Mum, Tony Pitts who not only wrote the script but plays Funny Cow’s abusive husband, Bob. Paddy Considine as her resolutely middle class, bookseller lover Angus and Stephen Graham as her brother Mike.

    Not only does Funny Cow show the brutal landscape of the comedy circuit it also deals with sexism as well as class issues of the 1970s and 1980s.  It is funny sometimes inadvertently so and sometimes you are forced to laugh because otherwise, you would cry. What’s striking about this film is that the central character of Funny Cow isn’t shown as weak. When she leaves her abusive husband she isn’t shown a quivering wreck but as a woman ahead of her time keeping her head held high. Throughout the film, the undertone that Funny Cow is a strong Northern woman is never deviated from. It is refreshing to see a woman shown in this way and we need more like this.

    Funny Cow opens in cinemas across the UK on Friday 20 April.

  • UK Film Premiere: Those Who Remain

    UK Film Premiere: Those Who Remain

    The fourth BBC Arab Festival will see the UK premiere of  Those Who Remain. This is a documentary from esteemed, Lebanese female documentary maker Eliane Raheb.  Those Who Remain tells the story of a Maronite Christian farmer, Haykal Mikhael, based in Akkar, Northern Lebanon, who struggles to build his family home whilst also dealing with sectarian Lebanese tensions and the constant threat of the war in Syria escalating and spreading to Lebanon.

    As with most of the programming of the BBC Arab Festival, we get to hear the voices of those who are living through the wars and conflicts, in their own words. Those Who Remain is all the more powerful because it allows us to see, hear and feel what Haykal experiences not just whilst he is being filmed but, through his words, we can imagine what his life was like before. Part of you cannot help but wonder whilst watching this documentary why a man clearly highly educated didn’t just leave Lebanon. However, the counter-argument is examined in Those Who Remain, why should he leave and give up everything. Although, arguably he has lost two of the most important things in his life already: his wife and children. His wife left because she didn’t share his resilience. He never seeks pity and neither is he verbose. Haykal is thoughtful, kind and solid and not only does he get to tell his story he also chooses the title.

    Eliane’s documentary style is sensitive but also investigative. She isn’t just happy to accept what she is told and so Those Who Remain takes on wider issues without engulfing or diverting from the central subject matter, Haykal. When she mentions the terrorists in Syria to the sister of the Muslim women who works in Haykal’s restaurant, she replies let’s talk about people that actually matter. It’s as if in speaking about the terrorists in Syria gives them undue importance.

    It is both a poignant and powerful documentary. Here is a man who laments for the past but is keenly aware of how he lives now. Haykal’s story, especially watching him carry rocks to build his house,  is also a metaphor of what Lebanon has become; sectarian disputes, minorities trying to survive in a hostile environment, people fighting over land that no one actually has a lawful claim over. Put simply, everything in modern day Lebanon is a struggle especially for the minorities that live there.

    This is a must-see documentary. We often wonder about those who remain and, now you will get to hear why and how they live.

    Those Who Remain’s UK premiere is on Monday 23 April, 7.30pm + Dir Q&A.

    The 4th BBC Arab Festival runs from Friday 20 April until Thursday 26 April and is free, apply for tickets.

  • The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society: Review

    The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society: Review

    The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is more than just a simple love story or that of two penpals in post war Britain. This film shines a light on a forgotten part of World War 2. We’ve had the bombastic storytelling with 2017’s Dunkirk, but 2018 is now shining a light on the intimate, personal experiences of this war first with The Darkest Hour. In Guernsey Potato Peel Pie we get to see how ordinary people turned into everyday heroes and their struggle for survival. After the tears and bloodshed are gone it’s the stories that remain and remind us of the courage of others.  You will be enthralled and amazed by the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

    The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is based on the adaptation of the novel by Mary Ann Shaffer finished by her niece Annie Barrows and brought to life by the director of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Mike Newell. So whilst the subject matter is rather serious there is a lightness of touch and it is told at such a cracking pace that keeps the action moving.

    The story is that of Juliet Ashton (Lily James), a writer living in Blitzed London who receives a commission from the Times to write a story about reading habits. At the same time, she receives a mysterious letter from Dawsey Adams (Michiel Huisman), a farmer from Guernsey enquiring about a book since he saw her name and address written in it. So begins their correspondence, followed by her visit to Guernsey and culminating in a most unexpected scoop.

    The film’s opening scene starts off in 1941 Nazi occupied Guernsey and we discover the origins of the rather inventive Potato Peel Pie. The Nazis took all their pigs from Guernsey and made the farmers grow potatoes as pig feed. When caught by Nazi soldiers after curfew, Elizabeth McKenna (Jessica Brown Findlay), the brightest and quickest thinking of the group saves them all by inventing this rather ludicrous sounding name and the postmaster and inventor of the pie, Eben Ramsey (Tom Courtenay), dutifully helps by vomiting up the said pie. They are then forced to breathe life into this made up book club and, it is the reading that does save them during their darkest hours.

    The action moves to London and we see Juliet with her editor about to embark on a book tour. The film engages as the action moves between London and Guernsey. It is only when it is fully focused on Guernsey that it starts to wane. However, Guernsey Literary Society never feels glib. Yes, the eccentricities of the characters are played up but there’s a real nostalgia and pride in watching how resilient those individuals were in the face of mortal danger. The supporting cast is a who’s who of British acting but they somehow manage to truly incorporate their characters and work as an ensemble. This feels very much like a Lily James film and she does very well in carrying the film and is luminous on screen. It is beautifully shot and for the most part engrossing, however, had 30 minutes been knocked off it would have been perfect. The ending when it did come was not a surprise but might well have been had the film been that tad bit shorter!

    It is an inventive mixture of courage, love and literature as inventive as Potato Peel Pie itself!

    The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society opens in cinemas across the UK on Friday 20 April.

  • TV EXCLUSIVE: Fear The Walking Dead S4

    TV EXCLUSIVE: Fear The Walking Dead S4

    Can’t wait for season 4 of Fear The Walking Dead? Well, only a couple of more weeks to go, but in the meantime here’s an extended trailer that AMC has released. We here at BRWC are super excited too as this season features the long awaited cross over event with The Walking Dead. Yes, our two favourite shows are going to meet one another – how exciting is that?

    In Season 4, we will see the world of Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) and her family through new eyes — the eyes of Morgan Jones (Lennie James), who is joining the story from the world of “The Walking Dead.” The characters’ immediate pasts mix with an uncertain present of struggle and discovery as they meet new friends, foes and threats. They fight for each other, against each other and against a legion of the dead to somehow build an existence against the crushing pressure of lives coming apart. There will be darkness and light; terror and grace; and the heroic, mercenary and craven, all crashing together toward a new reality for “Fear the Walking Dead.”

    Fear the Walking Dead is produced alongside executive producer by Scott M. Gimple, written by showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg, as well as Robert Kirkman, David Alpert, Gale Anne Hurd and Greg Nicotero. This season stars Kim Dickens, Frank Dillane, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Colman Domingo and Danay Garcia, along with new series regulars Garret Dillahunt, Jenna Elfman, Maggie Grace and Lennie James.

    Fear the Walking Dead Season 4, returns on Monday 23rd April at 9:00 pm exclusively to BT customers.