words: MICHAEL MILLS
It’s 1 o’clock on a Saturday night and I’m sat in a cocktail bar that is usually a bookshop, flicking through a volume on how to grow fruit, while next to me a finely bearded gentleman plays the theme from {The Third Man}. This is Between the Shelves, the late night bar that runs in the world famous Booth Books during Hay-on-Wye’s annual festivals. It’s every bit as idiosyncratic, warm and just plain fun as the rest of the Festival of British Cinema.
There was a homespun feel to this small festival that you’d have had to have been pretty cold hearted not to be charmed by. Through the hard work of local volunteers, Hay’s Parish Hall, Community Centre and Booth Books were transformed from unassuming places into theatres of the cinematic. The current standard of multiplex cinema has been much discussed in the press of late – mostly due to film critic Mark Kermode plugging his new book – but when you’re sat next to the projectionist in a cosy parish hall, warmed by a couple of gas heaters, it’s a reminder of what a joy the experience of watching a film can be.
Shockingly, the festival is the only one in the world dedicated exclusively to British film – but it couldn’t have asked for a better champion. The programme – courtesy of film expert Jo Eliot and cinematographer Alan Trow – boasted a rich collection of the very best in UK flicks both past and present. There was a palpable sense of dedication to the cause: an understanding that this was not about herding the crowds in, sticking them in front of a flickering pacifier for 111 minutes and then shooing them out again. No, this was about the appreciation of the cinematic art form. Up ‘N’ Under was pulled from Sunday’s schedule because Trow – the film’s director of photography – was unhappy with the cropped ratio of the available print. It’s a care and dedication too little seen these days.
The highlight was Friday night’s showing of Richard Ayoade’s Submarine, a love story to the self-aggrandising disassociation so many of us constructed around ourselves in our mid-teens. It was a theme also visited – albeit in darker tones – in the real surprise of the festival, Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End (1970). Until recently thought lost, the film merges the two giants of late 60s/early 70s British cinema – the psychological horror film and the sex comedy – to simultaneously hilarious and horrifying effect. It’s also where I learnt that Jane Asher has a mole on her right bum cheek.
Though final figures are not yet available, the 2011 Hay-on-Wye Festival of British Cinema has already been deemed a success. With attendance up on last year, the event’s third year may yet be remembered as when it really found its feet. More than one attendee likened it to the early years of the town’s more famous literary festival. Put it in your diary for 2012, and you can still say you were there at the beginning.
