Raindance seems like aeons ago, and I’ve still not got round to transcribing most of the interviews I conducted with our Japanese guests this year. Don’t worry, you’ll be getting a chance to read these in the not-too-distant future on Midnight Eye, but until then, you can make do with this interview with Sachi Hamano which has recently been put up on the website of Electric Sheep magazine. I covered Sachi Hamano in quite some detail in my book Behind the Pink Curtain. For those not familiar with her name, she’s not only the most prolific woman film director in Japan, but also one of the most (if not the most) prolific pink film directors, which probably makes her among the most prolific filmmakers in the world, male or female. It was a real honour to have her at Raindance this year as one of the people featured in the Japanese Woman Directors programme, where her non-pink comedy Lily Festival played to great aplomb, and I am delighted that Electric Sheep’s Virginie Sélavy recognised Sachi Hamano’s achievements in the industry and wanted to talk to her, as the interview makes for quite fascinating reading. As I’ve posted before, Electric Sheep also interviewed another Raindance guest, Momoko Ando, which went online last month. I should also point out that the photo of Hamano was taken during her stay in London by Fei Phoon, one of the whizz kids behind the design of this website.

On a sourer note, the latest print edition of Electric Sheep appears to be its last, at least in its current form, with the editors attributing the gloomy financial climate to its demise. Its very sad, because Electric Sheep plugged a valuable gap in the film media, giving intelligent coverage to films that weren’t necessarily getting covered elsewhere. The website will continue, as will the editors’ admirable attempts to broaden film culture with regular screenings in London of films that you rarely get a chance to see on the big screen nowadays. Anyway, you can pick up the Winter 2009 issue at a good magazine stockist, if you can find one – I was going to suggest Borders on Charing Cross Road, but it was just announced a couple of weeks ago that Borders UK has just filed for administration. One wonders if any of us in this country are going to get out of this recession in one piece!

Am now in Bristol in the midst of the Shohei Imamura retrospective down at the Arnolfini. First screening last night of Ballad of Narayama, a title I hadn’t seen for quite some time, and my, had I forgotten how good it was! This is arguably Imamura’s most perfect film, although perhaps I should hold off my judgement because, to my shame, I have never actually seen Profound Desire of the Gods, which gets a very rare UK screening on Sunday. For those interested who can’t make it to Bristol, the retro is travelling up to the ICA at the end of the month, then not long after up to Glasgow. Full day of lectures and discussions about Imamura tomorrow, with me delivering one such sermon trying to set Imamura’s body of work into some sort of context within the 1960s.

Anyway, even though I’ve now moved onto the next thing, I still hope to find time to piece together some of the fragments of thoughts about the various films that played at Raindance, before the whole festival disappears from my memory into a murky haze. The next film under the spotlight is the winner of this year’s Best UK Feature, Down Terrace, directed by Ben Wheatley. This is a film that has come out of absolutely nowhere this year. It received its international premiere at this year’s Fantastic Fest in Austin, where it won best screenplay and Next Wave best feature, so with only two festivals it’s already won three prizes – a pretty impressive track record, for sure. The film was produced by Mondo Macabro’s Andy Starke, and is a far cry indeed from his last project, the Pakistani zombie movie Hell’s Ground.

Nevertherless, it’s still a pretty eccentric mix of black comedy, realist drama and some particularly grisly murders – imagine The Sopranos directed in the style of Eastenders. If you’re into Brit humour and directors such as Shane Meadows, chances are you’ll love it. Director Ben Wheatley has an impressive background in TV comedy, and many of the cast will be familiar from such recent cult series as Spaced, Extras, The Office et al. Many of the others are non-professionals. One thing I never realized until the Q&A also, is that it was not only shot in the house where main actor Robin Hill grew up, but his father in the film, Bill, is actually played by his real-life father, Bob Hill, in a brilliant performance – his improvised reminiscences of the 1960s were hysterical. Sharp dialogue, tight pacing and a perfect balance of acerbic with and nihilism, this was indeed a worthy winner, and I’ve no doubt it’ll go on to even greater things. Anyway, here’s a snap I took after I popped out for a celebratory drink with director Ben Wheatley, main star Robin Hill and David Schaal (Uncle Eric in the film – you’ll recognize him as ‘Taffy’ from The Office) at The Blue Posts in Rupert Street.

For those who know nothing about the film, the trailer’s here.

Down Terrace trailer

The dust has settled, the guests have all departed, and here I am sitting home alone mulling over how it all went. Yes, Raindance Film Festival is over for another year, and after a reasonably slow start, exploded into one of the busiest I’ve ever attended. As I posted last week, virtually every single screening was sold out on the Wednesday. Amazing! And it didn’t really let up after that… And what with all the late night drinking, meaning not getting home till at least 3-4am on most nights after negotiating the labyrinthine night-bus routes trying to work out how to get to my new home from various different parts of the city, I’m physically and mentally shattered. But I’m in high spirits nonetheless, as I know that I and all the other guests from Japan will be returning to our respective routines having made new friends, nurtured new ideas about the future and emerged from that great chemistry of minds that always occurs when you have creative, talented people from so many different backgrounds assembled in one place for such a reasonably long but intense period. So anyway, over the next few days, before I head down to Bristol for the Shohei Imamura retrospective at the Arnolfini, I intend to make good my original promise and actually write a bit about the festival – only not while its actually happening, of course, but by way of a series of retroactive looks at the high points of the past week or so.

One person who should be returning from Raindance very happy is Tokachi Tsuchya, proud recipient of the Best Documentary Award for A Normal Life Please (the Japanese title, Futsu no shigoto o shitai translates more directly as ‘I’d like a proper job’, a sentiment I certainly share at times!). And a much-deserved win it was too, for sure, but still a really pleasant surprise for me, as foreign language documentaries generally have to try so much harder with English language audiences, and chances for most people to see them are rare. Tsuchiya’s work was literally born out of his own blood, sweat and tears – he was assaulted several times during the making of his film, his glasses broken, cigarettes stubbed out on his hands, his camera grabbed etc, most evident during the film’s stand-out sequence when the heavies hired by the employers of truck driver Kaikura’s arrive at his mother’s funeral to intimidate him to leave his worker’s union. (I loved it when Tsuchiya said he was terrified that when the film screened in Japan, his nemesis Kudo might turn up with his gang and wreak their revenge).

Tsuchiya seemed particularly moved when he received the award, saying that not only was it his first trip to England, but also it was the first time he’d ever received an award (handed out this time by our wonderful guest and jury member, Momoko Ando). As he explained in the very animated q&a after the screening, not only did the whole concept of labour unions originate in England, but also their dark flipside in the form of Thatcher’s deregulation policies of the 1980s, which have had a profound influence on Japanese government policy, hence the large number of people working themselves to death in Japan and freelancers like Kaikura busting his guts for a mind-boggling 300 hours a month for really only the most basic of wages – I think his monthly take home pay was less than the equivalent of around 1500 pounds. The film’s airing was particularly timely in the UK, in light of our current economic situation necessitating severe economic belt tightening all round, specifically in the public sector (though I can tell you from my own situation as a freelance writer, pay rates have dropped so low that I might as well be working at MacDonalds) and the recent contraversial announcement by the postal workers union that they’re about to go on strike. One really gets the impression that the whole free market system that’s been pushed so far over the past few decades, in which the number agencies, sub-contractors, consultancy firms, advisors etc involved in every industry has expanded so much and the people at the bottom of the pile actually doing the work pushed to ever longer hours in increasingly poor working conditions, is reaching breaking point, and one has to wonder where it’s all heading. Tsuchiya’s film provoked a lot of discussion while exposing a particularly ugly side of Japanese industry that is near unbelievable for one of the richest countries in the world. I really hope more people get a chance to see it. It’s about as vital a piece of filmmaking as it gets.

I should also say a big thanks at this juncture to Yuri Kubota and those kind folks at Nippon Connection for preparing a subtitled version of this for festival screenings. This is a film that really needs to be seen by as many people as possible. I grabbed a pretty interesting interview with Tsuchiya-san too, which will appear on Midnight Eye sometime in the not so distant future, while in the meantime Japanese readers might be interested in taking a look at the film’s homepage. For now however, keep your eye out for other posts here in the not so distant future about some of the other titles we screened.