35th Leeds International Film Festival, 3rd-18th November 2021

In the days and weeks leading up to this year's Leeds International Film Festival (LIFF) I was more concerned about falling ill (Covid or otherwise) than anything else. I had booked the time off work and my hopes for the festival were more modest than usual. The festival was moved to a VOD online player with a more limited programme in 2020 due to the government announcing another national lockdown a day before the festival started. Given the pre-vaccine situation at the time I wasn't planning on going to live screenings anyway and like with many other things last year had resigned myself to missing out.

There was a bad omen for this year's festival when it was announced on Facebook ahead of the preview event that the opening film would be Pablo Larrain's Spencer with Kristen Stewart. Great, more royalist propaganda for UK audiences. Needless to say it had me fearing the worst for the rest of the lineup of this year's event. To make matters worse, the programme launch on 13th October gave people in attendance a series of mediocre trailers. Trailers seem to be a dying artform these days and the ones that were shown certainly didn't do the featured films any favours. 

When I examined the contents of the programme given out at the preview event I was pleasantly surprised. Not a vintage year perhaps but it gave me plenty to deliberate over. After being denied a showing of Parasite at the 2019 festival, the inclusion this time of Titane bought back the LIFF tradition of featuring the Palme d'Or winner of the current year's Cannes Film Festival. Takashi Miike is a LIFF regular and this year we got The Great Yokai War: Guardians; a belated sequel to a film he made in 2005 which I haven't seen, but it worked perfectly well as a standalone offering. Other major filmmakers represented in the lineup included Jane Campion, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Paul Schrader, Andrea Arnold, Clio Barnard, Paolo Sorrentino, Jacques Audiard, Joanna Hogg, Celine Sciamma and Ryusuke Hamaguchi. 

I was unaware of a recent Japanese remake of the 1997 Canadian sci-fi/Horror flick Cube until I saw the programme. Although it got my curiousity, from what I gather it sticks closely to the original concept and story and early reviews of the film were hardly glowing. Perhaps it's a belated response to the vogue for Western remakes of Asian Horror films in the 2000s. Classic Horror was represented by showings of James Whale's The Old Dark House and Robert Wise's The Haunting, both chosen to launch a new subset in the 'Fanomenon' programme highlighting how the Horror genre has explored gender and sexuality. In terms of themed selections this may have been the best year yet for me. 'BFI Japan' was part of a nationwide programme that delves in to classic Japanese cinema and showcased masterworks like Tokyo Story, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood and Funeral Parade of Roses. To mark the centenary of the birth of Polish Science Fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, several adaptations of his work were shown including Pilot Pirx's Inquest, Andrzej Wadja's Roly Poly, the Quay Brothers' animated short film Maska and Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 classic Solaris. The selection of "Kafkaesque Cinema" was an inspired addition, The Shop on Main Street, The Witness, Xala and Invasion helped illustrate how the films that have come closest to capturing the essence of his work haven't always been direct adaptations.

First and foremost on my wishlist for this year's programme were Paul Verhoeven's Benedetta and Lucile Hadzihalilovic's Earwig, both of which had been at the London Film Festival in October but we weren't so lucky in Leeds. Hong Sang-soo has had two new films shown at international festivals this year - Introduction and In Front of Your Face - and I had hoped that at least one of them would be featured here but sadly neither were to be found at this year's lineup in Leeds. I had seen In Another Country and Claire's Camera at the festival in prior years so the inclusion of at least one of his most recent works didn't feel like too much of a longshot. Hong's films remain frustratingly difficult to see in the UK and the best chance to catch them is either at a film festival or via a release on mubi.com, as happened with last year's The Woman Who Ran.

This year the Town Hall was not used as a venue due to ongoing renovation work so the VUE at the Light in the city centre was the primary location for screenings. For a couple of weeks it was almost like a second home to me. I would have liked to have got to a showing at Cottage Road cinema in Headingley. It's the closest cinema to where I live and the only one in Leeds that is in walking distance for me. I've not been there since 2019 and would like to get there again soon. My choice of viewing though was based almost exclusively at the VUE. The one exception was the Howard Assembly Room where I saw The Parallel Street.  

It was a much scaled down selection compared to previous years. I chose to get the LIFF Explorer Pass for £50, which allows access to six films plus a discount ticket price of £5 for each subsequent title chosen. 

In terms of the overall experience this year I opted for quality over quantity and only saw seven films from

the lineup. I think my days of watching over twenty films in a busy fortnight on the big screen are over. By trying to cram in too many titles in the past, filmgoing fatigue has inevitably set in. While I could have chosen to watch more than I did, the experience of the 2019 festival, where A Hidden Life completely overshadowed everything else in the lineup, was still very much in mind. Despite choosing a variety of things to watch nothing could really hope to compete with Terrence Malick's latest film. There was at least half a dozen more films that I would liked to have seen this year but I chose to stick to no more than one screening per day. Generally I got a much better balance this time around and my decision to watch fewer films from the festival was partly influenced by the fact that there are several titles on general release right now that I wanted to see as well. No Time to Die, Last Night in Soho and Cry Macho also worked their way in to my schedule over the fortnight.

This year was the first time that I can recall not choosing to see an animated title, although Fortune Favours Lady Nikkuko, Summer Ghost and Sing a Bit of Harmony were all considered. While The Souvenir Part II is already one of the year's most acclaimed films and looks set to be a prime contender in end-of-year polls I had no interest in seeing a followup to one of the most tedious, vacuous and overrated films in recent memory. Likewise Petite Maman has received rave reviews but having thoroughly despised Portrait of a Lady on Fire at LIFF 2019 I chose to avoid the directors followup effort. I also skipped two films that I was interested in seeing (The Power of the Dog and The Hand of God) as both will be available on Netflix in December.

Here's a list of the titles that I've watched.

As it transpired the first film that I saw (The Card Counter) was, in my opinion, the best and the final film I caught (Titane) was by far the worst. Everything in between was more than worthwhile. Although I very much liked Memoria I may come to regret watching it. I do struggle to get through films that have later start times, in this case 8.15pm, as my body clock is so used to being up bright and early for work the next day and on this occasion I was getting very drowsy in the final half hour or so of the film. As it was the only showing of the film it meant that I had to miss a rare screening of King Vidor's 1928 silent classic The Crowd, which started 45 minutes earlier. It's a film I've wanted to see for many years but remains difficult to get hold of in the U.K. I also chose to watch Titane, knowing that it would likely prevent me from getting to an early evening showing of a 35mm archive print of The Man Who Stole the Sun at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford. It's highly regarded by Japanese critics but has rarely been shown internationally since it came out in 1979. Given its prize winning status and Body Horror/Cronenbergian concept I felt more compelled to see Titane, which in hindsight was perhaps a bad idea.

Missing out on the film festival last year was one of the many frustrations and unfortunate sacrifices that I and innumerable others had to endure in 2020. I seem to have got back in to the cinemagoing habit more quickly than I thought I would. Perhaps the longer than usual break from these things has made me appreciate them more. It's surprising how many different factors make up the overall experience of the film festival. From the early anticipation, the preview event, right and wrong predictions about what will be on the programme, titles featured that have carried over from other film festivals around the world, the time clashes, the tough decisions over what to watch and what to miss, the disappointments, the highlights, the errors and the regrets are somehow all part of the fun. This year I perhaps realised for the first time how lucky I am to have such an event so close to where I live. 

33rd Leeds International Film Festival, 6th-21st November 2019

I finished my run of films a couple of days early this year at the Leeds Film Festival. Two weeks of cold weather, unreliable buses, unhealthy snacks and constantly living in hope of making a major discovery. By the end it starts to feel a bit like a long haul flight. It's important to keep up levels of energy and enthusiasm so I've become more and more selective over the years. I try to limit the number of films I see to a reasonable amount so I'm not watching any more than two films on a given day. While I mostly enjoyed the experience I was fairly sure from the beginning that it wouldn't be a vintage year. The preview event in October didn't deliver as many anticipated titles as I'd hoped and to make matters worse I had a mild cough and cold during the first week which caused me to miss my first film (A Dog Called Money) on the opening day. In the end it wasn't a great loss as I was able to catch that film via streaming on mubi.com shortly afterwards. I also caught another featured title (Beanpole) via that website so I'm counting it as one of my viewings. It saved me a couple of trips.

It may say a lot about the year in film generally that there seem to be fewer "must-see" titles than usual as 2019 comes to an end. I had hoped Bong Joon-ho's Parasite would be featured, and was fairly confident it would be the closing film. For a while now, each year's Palme D'or winner at Cannes has been a common fixture on the LIFF programme. In the last seven years I've seen Shoplifters, (2018), The Square (2017), Winter Sleep (2014), Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013) and Amour (2012) at the festival. Unfortunately I have to wait until the UK general release in February 2020 to check out one of the most acclaimed films of this year. A new work by Takashi Miike featured at LIFF in 2017 and 2018 but alas, there was no sign of First Love in this year's mix.

Late additions were made after the initial unveiling of the programme with titles such as The Irishman, The Personal History of David Coppefield, Promare and Aquarela. I plan to see The Irishman on Netflix later in the month, primarily due to its 210 minute running time. Several other major titles featured, including A Marriage Story, I Lost My Body and Atlantics, will be on Netflix before the end of the year. Perhaps the biggest disappointment of all was that Jojo Rabbit was the closing film. As someone who finds Taika Waititi criminally unfunny the idea of ending the festival with his latest comedy didn't hold much appeal. In the end, it won the audience prize so despite my lack of interest it was obviously a sound choice.

When I noticed my most anticipated film of the year (Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life) was showing in the final week it more than made up for any shortcomings elsewhere. Due to the way that the films were spread out it felt like I was sitting through a fair selection of titles with the main attraction of the festival never far from my mind. It was the second to last film I saw, although at any stage it would have overshadowed the rest of the offerings. As a devout follower of Malick's work it meant that it wasn't really on a level playing field with the rest of my selections. It was entirely unexpected and I was more or less resigned to waiting until next year to see it on general release.

The new Explorer pass seemed to be controversial. Hardcore festivalgoers were used to having a pass that allowed them to go to as many screenings as possible for a fixed price. The Explorer pass allowed passholders to book individual tickets for a much smaller fee. For me, it worked out fine and I don't think I spent any more than I did in the previous year. I accepted a while back that it's unlikely I'll see everything that I would like to see and if I do somehow find a way then I'm too tired by the end to enjoy the films. I'm past a stage where I feel a need to see as much as possible so the change wasn't a big deal for me but I could understand the qualms of loyal and devoted festivalgoers. For those wanting to sample as many films as possible (I've heard of people going to more than 40 films over the two weeks) it was a much more pricey option than the Full pass available in the past. To their credit the festival organisers did respond to the complaints by later offering a full access Explorer Gold pass for £150.

Films I went to see:
Atlantics (Mati Diop)
Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov)
Children of the Sea (Ayumu Watanabe)
A Dog Called Money (Seamus Murphy)
Dogs Don't Wear Pants (Jukka-Pekka Valkeapaaa)
The Fading Village (Feifang Liu)
Five Million Dollar Life (Moon Sung-Ho)
The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil (Lee Won-tae)
A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick)
The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers)
Ordinary Love (Lisa Barros D'Sa & Glenn Leyburn)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Celine Sciamma)
Ride Your Wave (Masaaki Yuasa)
We Are Little Zombies (Makoto Nagahisa)
White Snake (Amp Wong & Ji Zhao)
The Wild Goose Lake (Diao Yi'nan)

Standouts: A Hidden Life, The Fading Village
Disappointments: A Dog Called Money, The Lighthouse

Films that I missed but would liked to have seen:
The Cordillera of Dreams (Patricio Guzman)
Darlin' (Pollyanna McIntosh)
Family Romance, LLC (Werner Herzog)
House of Hummingbird (Kim Bo-ra)
The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmo (Karim Ainouz)
Judy & Punch (Mirrah Foulkes)
Land of Ashes (Sofia Quiros)
The Juniper Tree (Nietzchka Keene)
Promare (Hiroyuki Imaishi)
The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu)
Zizotek (Vardis Marinakis)

The worst experience by far was The Lighthouse. Discomfort had set in and I was fidgeting about for most of the screening. The Town Hall acoustics made a lot of the dialogue difficult to decipher at times. I had a similar experience 3 years prior with Jim Jarmusch's film Paterson. Even without the audio issues I found the film to be a letdown. I thought Robert Eggers's debut feature The Witch showed promise but his followup seemed to almost build on the flawed aspects of the earlier film rather than learn from them.

Few films that I watched soared to the heights that I'd hoped for. Although both were worthwhile efforts, I'm still pondering the overall merits of Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Atlantics. I caught 3 of the 4 titles on the Animation Sunday (White Snake, Children of the Sea, Ride Your Wave). All were decent offerings but not a patch on some of those I've caught in the past (e.g. Garden of Words, A Silent Voice). With hindsight, I gravitated too much towards areas that usually pique my interest like crime thrillers, East Asian cinema and animation. For many of the featured works it is a rare opportunity to see them as there are no guarantees that they will receive a general release in the UK at a later date but I could have taken a few more risks with my choices. Oddly enough I've never been tempted to attend the two featured Horror marathons - 'Day of the Dead' and 'Night of the Dead' but that's something I may try next year. Regrettably I had to miss the two free screenings of silent films. Both were wonderful choices (Haxan and Man with a Movie Camera) that were no doubt spectacular experiences in the Town Hall setting with a live organ accompaniment.

The festival was effectively bookended by what were for me its two major highlights. The first and penultimate films that I saw more or less eclipsed the rest of my viewing choices. In recent times China has produced several exceptional works in the documentary field and The Fading Village was another scintillating look at a society, its traditions and the forces of "progress". I haven't been able to see a Terrence Malick film on the big screen since To the Wonder in 2013 as his subsequent work has had almost nonexistent theatrical runs in the UK so the presence of A Hidden Life in the lineup came as quite a shock. It was beyond a doubt the main event of this year for me as a filmgoer so I'm extremely grateful to the organisers for acquiring the film for an early showing.

In the city centre the decorations and German Christmas Market are also there to enjoy. Like Halloween and Christmas the film festival has become a beloved annual tradition of mine. This year there was a bit of a failure on my part to put in the necessary groundwork. After being disappointed by what was missing from the programme I should have done more research in to what was on offer. If ever there has been a year where one film dominated proceedings then this was it. Looking back, I could have been more adventurous. I had hoped that the festival would provide more contenders for my 'best films of 2019' blog in December. As things stand I still have a lot of viewing to do to build up a more satisfying list and have a bigger and clearer picture of the year in film.

32nd Leeds International Film Festival, 1st-15th November 2018

The 2018 Leeds International Film Festival has ended and for once I was still hungry for more. In previous years I've felt exhausted and drained by watching so much over such a short span of time and by the end I'm almost glad to be going back to work. This year's festival started out promisingly, contained several surprises along the way and ended on a triumphant note. It's probably the first year since I started going where my enthusiasm never waned.

My goal here, as always, is to see as many new titles as possible and trying to find films that may be talking points in my annual roundup in December. There were certain eagerly awaited films that I had hoped would be in the programme (Ash is Purest White, High Life and Transit to name a few) that weren't featured but given the general quality of what I did get to see that's ultimately a minor quibble.

One of the reasons I'd consider the festival to be a success was that this year saw by far my best planning and scheduling to date. There were fewer compromises than usual and I managed to avoid getting film fatigue. I watched 19 titles in total and over the years I have got a lot better at delineating between "essential" titles, impulse watches, slot fillers and curios.

Here's a link to a list of the films I watched:
https://letterboxd.com/willowybeing/list/2018-leeds-international-film-festival/

Major filmmakers whose new work was featured included Lee Chang-dong (Burning), Nuri Bilge Ceylan (The Wild Pear Tree), Peter Strickland (In Fabric), Luca Guadagino (Suspiria), Steve McQueen (Widows), Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazzaro) and David Lowery (The Old Man & The Gun).

The opening day of the festival had a screening of Peterloo with writer/director Mike Leigh in attendance for a Q&A after the film. Leigh's enthusiasm for his work in film and interest in the subject shone through and it was a real treat to see him there in person.

There was no animation Sunday this year but anime was well represented by two excellent titles (Mirai and Penguin Highway), then later on the Belgian stop motion piece This Magnificent Cake! was a genuinely eccentric offering.

Only one film in the lineup that I saw could be described as disappointing. Crisis Jung, an episodic adult animation, ran for 70 minutes but it felt like a bit of a slog. Perhaps seeing the episodes back to back didn't do it any favours. Its repetition of the same action sequences and the episode opening and closing credits got wearisome.

I dipped my toe in to the documentary selection with Island of the Hungry Ghosts but I skipped the short film selection, something that I may try and rectify next year.

The free silent film screening at the Town Hall (with a live organ accompaniment) was Blackmail - a key early Alfred Hitchcock film which I hadn't seen until now.

This yearly event has become one of the festival's major highlights for me. In previous years in this slot I've seen classic silents such as The Golem, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Nanook of the North, Faust and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. My dream screening would probably be F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, which I've wanted to see on the big screen for many years. Between this well attended event and the Yorkshire Silent Film Festival earlier in the year it's great to see that there's still an active interest in films from the silent era.

Speaking of film history, 2018 marks Ingmar Bergman's centenary and I would liked to have got to the showing of Wild Strawberries, but sadly was unable to attend. I have watched several Bergman films this year at home but it would have been great to have seen at least one in the cinema. Other older titles that I had to skip included Docks of New York, La Notte, Night Train, The Ear, Odd Man Out, Tampopo and The Chaplin Hour. Perhaps most enticing of all was a rare chance to see 1952 film The White Reindeer, for which Eureka has supposedly done a 4K restoration.

Of the new titles I would like to have got to see the Horror anthology Nightmare Cinema (just for the Joe Dante segment) but due to it being in the 'Night of the Dead' lineup it wasn't covered by my festival pass, while nature documentary Walden sounded interesting. A very late and very surprising addition to the programme was Alfonso Cuaron's much hyped Roma, which was being shown several miles away at the Harrogate Everyman cinema. I'll try and catch it on Netflix in December.

Not even the bonfires and firework displays could keep me away from seeing the new Jean-Luc Godard film, The Image Book. There are plans for a one day cinema release on 2nd December and for it to be available for streaming on mubi.com from 3rd December but this was too good an opportunity to miss. Nor did I want to miss Hirokazu Koreeda's Shoplifters, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and was a very satisfying closing film for the festival.

I was kinder than usual with the audience rating slips. Two weeks off work can do wonders for your generosity of spirit. Due to its subject, The Travelling Cat Chronicles was probably the easiest 5 star rating that I've ever given.

Leeds itself was well represented in the lineup with two prominent documentaries featured - Something Left Behind about local band The Wedding Present and Fighting for a City which tells the story of featherweight boxer Josh Warrington. Leeds born director Wash Westmoreland's new drama Colette got an early UK screening at City Varieties then later Hyde Park. There was added cause for celebration with the recent news of Channel 4 moving its national headquarters to Leeds.

31st Leeds International Film Festival, 1st-16th November 2017

As an active filmgoer the period between Halloween and Christmas is by far my busiest time of year. Seeking out contenders for the "year's best" I try to find possible highlights that have been mentioned in lists, journals, reviews, blogs and various websites. The deadline for my annual top 10 is roughly mid-December so it does feel a bit like a race at times. Sometimes I will extend this deadline for exceptional cases but the roundup inevitably loses a layer of interest by the time January comes around. Stuff I may have missed earlier in the year is usually available to rent or showing online by this stage. In addition there's usually a wealth of new releases from arthouse to blockbuster titles that are worth seeking out. Best of all though is the Leeds film festival which begins in early November. For roughly two weeks it gives me the chance to see advanced screenings of obscure and acclaimed new titles from all over the globe.

I first attended the festival in 2005 when I saw an early UK screening of Michael Haneke's Hidden and have got a single pass each year since 2013, which allows me to see as many titles as I can squeeze in to the time available. Occasionally this calls for tough decisions about what to see and what will have to be missed due to schedule clashes. Needless to say, having all this so close to home is a real godsend. Other parts of the UK are less fortunate.

Admittedly the festival preview in October - a 45 minute selection of trailers from highlighted films - didn't exactly fill me with excitement but that probably says more about the quality of trailers in contemporary cinema than anything else. Studying the programme over the coming days got my hopes up. Going through the contents and trying to come up with a workable timetable is all part of the fun. Now the festival is over I'm slightly reluctant to look again at the guide as it will no doubt reveal a plethora of enticing films that I managed to miss.

The Square

Several titles from this year's Cannes film festival were featured. Palme d'Or winner The Square was a prestigious opening film. New works by filmmakers such as Michael Haneke (Happy End), Hong Sang-soo (Claire's Camera), Todd Haynes (Wonderstruck) & Philippe Garrel (Lover for a Day) all appealed to my auteurist sensibilities. On a local level it was good to see Yorkshire represented by Dark River, which also had a Q&A with writer/director Clio Barnard and producer Tracy O'Riordan. The closing film was the much hyped Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which would go on to win the audience award.

 Lu Over the Wall

 Big Fish & Begonia

The animation Sunday (including Lu Over the Wall, Big Fish & Begonia & Mutafukaz) was a little underwhelming compared to previous years and the Horror selections that I saw (Thelma, The Mimic, Tokyo Ghoul & Veronica) were further signs of the exhaustion, boredom and repetition that I see in much of today's genre fare. However the Fanathon: Manga Movie Marathon on Sunday 12th was an inspired addition. It consisted of 4 live action Manga adaptations, 3 of which (The Mole Song, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure & Blade of the Immortal) were directed by the prolific Takashi Miike.

The retrospective selection was extremely impressive this year and it's unfortunate that I had to miss so many interesting films of yesteryear. There was a dazzling selection of 1960s and 1970s European political thrillers, including The Mattei Affair, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, Z, State of Siege, Seven Days in January, The Lost Honour of Katharine Blum, The Man on the Roof, The Flight, The Deputy and The Day of the Jackal. The works of Jan Nemec were featured, including Diamonds of the Night and Mother and Son. Alas I had to skip the silent films with live music accompaniments - Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger and F.W. Murnau's Tabu: A Story of the South Seas. It seems like every year I get a chance to see one of my all time favourites in the Town Hall and I have to pass up the chance. In 2016 it was Michael Mann's Heat, this year it was Perfect Blue. As I've already mentioned the focus for me is on new titles. However I allowed myself one major indulgence this year by seeing Michelangelo Antonioni's 1970 cult classic Zabriskie Point in the Town Hall. For all its flaws it really is a phenomenal experience when viewed on the big screen.

Zabriskie Point

There were a few casualties of timetable clashes and delineating between essential and secondary choices, as well as preferred venues. In terms of what I missed I don't have too many regrets. I would like to have found room for The Endless, primarily due to my inevitable interest in any film described as "Lovecraftian" or "Lovecraft-inspired". I saw Andrey Zvyagintsev's previous feature Leviathan at LiFF in 2014 and wasn't overly impressed so his new film Loveless was omitted from my choices due to fierce competition. Despite being in the lineup I decided to wait until after the festival ended to see The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Florida Project. Both of these will be showing at Hyde Park later in the month and so it seemed less crucial to see them at this point in time.

In total I saw 21 titles at the 2017 Leeds International Film Festival. The same number as 2016, although lower than prior years. I figure if I can see at least 3 or 4 standout titles over the course of the fortnight then it has been worthwhile. This year I'd say there were 6 that were exceptional. In previous years later films have suffered due to a fatigue factor but the second week offered a host of treats, some of which I will discuss in my yearly roundup in December. I was also able to add four more titles to my 52 films by women in 2017 project - The Breadwinner, Dark River, Oh Lucy! and You Were Never Really Here.

You Were Never Really Here

My one major qualm was that I didn't feel like I had a great "discovery" this year. The films I enjoyed most were all the ones that I was most excited about from the beginning, mostly by well established filmmakers and that I had known about well in advance from other festivals earlier in the year. In prior years there has always been at least a couple of films that I watched on impulse or to fill a gap that unexpectedly blew me away. For example Persistence of Vision (2012), Garden of Words (2013), Stations of the Cross (2014), The Case of Hana & Alice (2015), Harmonium (2016) and A Silent Voice (2016). Unfortunately 2017's selection wasn't so fortuitous. Even the excellent thriller Good Time had garnered a lot of buzz among members of the Letterboxd community and cannot be classed as a "find" in any real sense.

The festival seems to have grown considerably over the years. Seeing high turnouts for such obscure or specialist titles is really encouraging at a time when the need for more diverse and adventurous product in cinemas feels as urgent as ever. Its importance in my film calendar cannot be overstated. Prior to this year's film festival 2017 was looking to be an almost total washout as a filmgoer. This festival certainly gave me a renewed sense of hope.

30th Leeds International Film Festival, 3rd-17th November 2016

When it comes to planning and prioritising titles at film festivals I seem to be getting better every year. It's hard to comment on the overall quality of the festival when I've seen such a small fraction of what was on offer and only 3 of the 20 audience favourites. However I have fewer regrets than usual about what I missed and didn't have the same level of fatigue by the end of the festival that I had in previous years. At the start of the second week I was fighting off a cough and bad cold which meant I had to drop films such as Jim Jarmusch's documentary on The Stooges( Gimme Danger), controversial French cannibal pic Raw and The Noonday Witch from my schedule.

As it's November I'm determined to focus on newer titles. As the year draws to a close it's a perfect opportunity to find potential highlights of 2016. Sadly this means skipping an exciting opportunity to see classic titles such as Heat, The Matrix, Blue Velvet, Woman in the Dunes and Cleo from 5 to 7 on the big screen. For the first time in years I missed the silent film screening with the live organ accompaniment (Pal Fejos's 1928 feature Lonesome). Most regrettable was not seeing the screening of Abel Gance's legendary Napoleon at the Town Hall. Under any other circumstances this would be a must-see event but in the middle of a punishing festival schedule the prospect of a 5 and a half hour silent epic is just too daunting. Fortunately a simultaneous DVD/Blu-Ray release from the BFI eases my disappointment but I can't help feeling like I passed up the chance of a lifetime to see this monumental film in its ideal environment.

I did make a concession for a 30th anniversary screening of Aliens as it took place on one of the quieter days and the introduction talk about the pulse rifle by the Royal Armouries added a layer of interest.

I wonder if some titles in the classics/retrospectives selection may fare better outside of a festival climate. There are occasional cinephile events throughout the year in Leeds but the determination to cram the festival programme with a year's worth of treasures could be self defeating. Having such an emphasis on a 2 week feast of films in November feels a bit restrictive. The desire to please everyone seems to be working however as the organisers proudly announced that this is now the UK's second biggest film festival outside of (surprise, surprise) London. Alas there as no sign of my most eagerly anticipated film of 2016 - Paul Verhoeven's Elle, which found its way on the London film festival programme in October.

Another gripe was that I wasn't able to work the late additions to the programme - Moonlight, My Life as a Courgette and audience favourite Mindhorn - in to my timetable as they clashed with titles I already had my mind set on and they didn't get repeat showings. For similar reasons I sadly missed out on intriguing sounding documentaries such as S1 and Homo Sapiens.

The opening and closing titles were both smart choices. Jim Jarmusch's likable Paterson got things off to a flying start and critics favourite Toni Erdmann (which went down a storm at Cannes this year) was a highly anticipated finale to the festival. On the auteur front there were new offerings from Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Creepy), Park Chan-wook (The Handmaiden), Kelly Reichardt (Certain Women), Cristi Puiu (Sieranevada), Cristian Mungiu (Graduation), Spike Lee (Chi-Raq), Bertrand Tavernier (A Journey Through French Cinema) and Xavier Dolan (It's Only the End of the World). Titles such as Train to Busan and Under the Shadow reaffirmed my complete lack of interest in modern Horror films. I passed on the chance to see Nate Parker's much debated The Birth of a Nation and Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge as both should be on general release fairly soon. The most enjoyable day for me came early on with the Animation Day at the Town Hall. Last year I unwisely watched all of the day's films whereas this year I managed 3 (Kizumonogatari, The Red Turtle & A Silent Voice) out of 5.

I stuck mainly to official selection titles but there were curious assemblies of films under several banners including New Wave Women, Iconic Soundtracks, Norwegian Comedies, Music on Film and Underground Voices. Here's a link to a list of the films I watched at the festival over the past two weeks.

29th Leeds International Film Festival (5-19 November 2015)

Leeds Film Festival 2015

The 29^th Leeds International Film Festival (5-19 November 2015) ended last week and although draining at times there was much to be thankful for. I’ll talk about individual titles in more detail in my yearly roundup but there was certainly no shortage of highlights. In terms of variety it caters very well to cinephiles and more casual filmgoers. It’s hard to do justice to the programme of films on offer without going in to great detail but I’ll try to give a summary of what intrigued me.
 

The official selection included new works from filmmakers such as Hou Hsiao-hsien (The Assassin), Todd Haynes (Carol), Peter Greenaway (Eisenstein in Guanajuato), Hirokazu Koreeda (Our Little Sister), Paolo Sorrentino (Youth), Terence Davies (Sunset Song) and Jafar Panahi (Taxi Tehran). There were early UK Screenings of much hyped new titles like festival opener Brooklyn, Tangerine, Grandma, Son of Saul, Black Mass, Victoria, Room and The Club. As usual, Anime Sunday provided a showcase for contemporary Japanese animated fare, including the new Ghost in the Shell movie. Particularly impressive was the showings of such “lost” classics as Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1960 Siberian adventure film Letter Never Sent and 1919’s Nerves, considered by some to be the first German expressionist film, a restored version of Philip Ridley’s extraordinary 1990 oddity The Reflecting Skin and the 1981 Hungarian animated feature Feherlofia (aka Son of the White Mare).

Carrying on the tradition of screening silent films, both The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nanook of the North were shown to glorious effect in the town hall with a live organ accompaniment. The retrospective screenings also included a chance to see The Iron Giant, Blade Runner: The Final Cut, Rosemary’s Baby, La Silence de la Mer, The Big Blue and Leon on the big screen. To the programmer’s credit Apocalypse Now was shown twice and I was pleased to discover that on both occasions it was the original cut and not the cynical and redundant 2001 redux version, which barely warrants a footnote to Coppola’s original film. On the documentary front there were two very worthwhile pieces of film history in the form of Kent Jones’s Hitchcock/Truffaut and From Caligari to Hitler: German Cinema in the Age of the Masses. Directors in attendance included Pupi Avati (doing a Q & A to accompany The House with the Laughing Windows, which showed alongside his zombie flick Zeder) and Jerome Bonnell (All About Them).

It all sounds too good to be true and needless to say I couldn’t schedule in all these films over the two weeks of the festival as there were many clashes on the programme. I wish I could have got to the Brief Encounter event and regret missing such titles as The Measure of a Man (a showcase for the great French actor Vincent Lindon), Andrei Konchalovsky’s The Postman’s White Nights, Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog and Bone Tomahawk (a Kurt Russell Western that sounds much more intriguing than Tarantino’s forthcoming Hateful Eight). As I was back at work in the second week most of my screenings were crammed in to the first week. Enthusiasm can only go so far and there were a couple of times where I was watching my fourth film of the day at 10.30pm and fatigue took over. The Piotr Szulkin double bill of obscure, hard hitting science fiction (Golem and The War of the Worlds: Next Century) was an extremely challenging afternoon at a point when I probably needed a bit of escapism. 

Having purchased a festival pass I had almost unlimited access to the films on offer. I could have been more adventurous with my choices but with over 300 screenings across 15 days you have to be selective and prioritise to some degree. With the documentaries I played it fairly safe by sticking to subjects I’m well versed in (Hitchcock and Weimar cinema) as opposed to something outside my comfort zone. As usual I’ve ignored Horror titles completely, as the genre holds little appeal or interest for me these days. Much of what was showing looked to be dull, derivative and uninspired and I wasn’t willing to seek out obscure gems when time was so limited.

Sadly the damp squib of the festival was the filmed John  Carpenter Q & A that preceded the showing of The Thing. It was a pre-recorded rather than live interview which was hit by technical difficulties, while Carpenter himself seemed to have a notable lack of enthusiasm about the whole thing. His sardonic, don’t-give-a-sh*t attitude got a bit wearying at times but it was nice to hear him reminisce about the late, great Roddy Piper and I was thrilled to hear he will have another album out (plus live shows!) next year. While I hold out little hope for a new film, his recent music ventures have certainly been a cause for excitement. I also enjoyed the Carpenter poster exhibition at the North Bar, which was well worth seeing. The selection of Carpenter titles showing (The Fog, Escape from New York, The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China and They Live) was hard to argue with and if anyone needed to be reminded of Carpenter’s well earned legendary status there were 5 titles that fit the bill perfectly.

In all the years that I’ve been going to the festival I thought that this was the best lineup yet. Even though I’d done my research there were a few misjudgements and grievous errors in my choices, but that’s all part of the fun I suppose. There’s always an element of guesswork involved with these things but it was well worth the effort and I certainly found a lot of use for the festival pass that I bought. I'm already looking forward to next year's festival.