EIFF 2017: The Future is History by Niall Greig Fulton

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2017 The Future is History (A Retrospective Exploration of Identity in Three Parts) Conceived, curated and written by Niall Greig Fulton.

With contributions from Kim Knowles, Iain Gardner, Matt Johnson, Gerard Johnson, Lizzie Borden, David Greig, Tam Dean Burn, Tommy Smith, Liz Lochhead, Joyce McMillan and Kate Dickie.

Introduction “It is interesting sometimes to stop and think and wonder what the place you are currently at used to be like in times past, who walked there, who worked there and what the walls have seen.”

- Patrick Geddes On the evening of the 23rd of June last year, in screen one of Filmhouse, EIFF’s timely Cinema Du Look retrospective came to a suitably poignant close with a screening of Leos Carax’s magnificent fractured love story, Les Amants du Pont-Neuf. The following morning, Scotland awoke to find itself statistically at odds with a Great Britain that had chosen to relinquish its place as a member of the European Union. Surrounded, as we were at that moment, by our international guests, the shockwaves obviously reverberated through EIFF powerfully, the combination of circumstances and events resulting in a day that few of our team will ever forget. As the longest continually running film festival in the world and an internationally respected transmitter of European culture, it was important for EIFF to react. In fact, it is the clear responsibility of an organisation such as ours to reflect upon, and ultimately, respond to a situation such as this artistically. So we did.

Inspired by Britain’s decision to depart from the EU during our last edition, and touching on our film festival’s own rich history, EIFF turns the clock back to the 1970s/1980s to explore the vital question of identity in a world undergoing seismic political and cultural change.

The Future is History consists of three central strands, all featuring art from the same era, and each designed to focus thought on one of three identities, Great Britain, Scotland, and the western world of the future. These work in conjunction with each other to provide our retrospective strategy with its core. Around this we have added several smaller, artistically related strands and special events further exploring our chosen motif. In referencing EIFFs historical achievements throughout, The Future is History is also intended, in tandem with the construction of EIFF’s digital archive, to present a clear look at, and contribution to, the evolving identity of EIFF itself.

This publication is written to function as a more extensive guide to/record of this plan, whilst also providing further historical/cultural context, and, subsequently, a deeper insight into the lengthy programming journey undergone in its construction.

Welcome to the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2012, 2011, 2010...

Niall Greig Fulton “Well, at twenty minutes to five, we can say that the decision taken in 1975 by this country to join the common market has been reversed by this referendum to leave the EU. We are absolutely clear now that there is no way that the “remain” side can win. It looks as though the gap’s going to be something like fifty two to forty eight. A four point lead for leaving the EU. And that’s the result of this referendum, which has been preceded by weeks and months of argument and dispute and all the rest of it. The British people have spoken, and the answer is... We’re out.”

- David Dimbleby, EU Referendum Coverage, BBC One

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EIFF 2017: The Future is History “We do express our emotions, our reactions to events, breakups and infatuations, but the way we do that – the art of it – is in putting them into prescribed forms or squeezing them into new forms that perfectly fit some emerging context. That’s part of the creative process, and we do it instinctively; we internalise it, like birds do. And it’s a joy to sing, like the birds do.”

- David Byrne

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1st Identity: Great Britain “Contrary to what the politicians and religious leaders would like to have us believe, the world won’t be made safer by creating barriers between people.”

- Michael Palin

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HandMade in Britain: A Selection of HandMade Films from the 1980s Born against a backdrop of economic, political, and cultural change, with uncertainty ahead for the UK film industry, ex-Beatle George Harrison’s HandMade Films emerged from an era in British history with which comparisons to the current climate are unavoidable. With that relevance as its starting point, this retrospective has been curated not only to revisit many of the highlights of HandMade’s superb back catalogue, but to serve, on a second level, via the content, as a timely reflection on different eras in, and aspects of British culture past.

The Programme The Long Good Friday (John Mackenzie, 1980) screened at 34th EIFF 1980 Time Bandits (Terry Gilliam, 1981) features ex-EIFF Patron Sean Connery Scrubbers (Mai Zetterling, 1982) A Private Function (Malcolm Mowbray, 1984) Mona Lisa (Neil Jordan 1986) screened at 40th EIFF in 1986 Withnail & I (Bruce Robinson, 1987) screened at 41st EIFF 1987 Bellman and True (Richard Loncraine, 1987) How to Get Ahead in Advertising (Bruce Robinson, 1989) Special Screening A Sense of Freedom (John Mackenzie, 1979) screened at 63th EIFF 2009 Lecture Programme European Crime Cinema: From Melville to Mackenzie

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The Curation of HandMade in Britain Although it may seem odd to stage a HandMade Films retrospective and omit Life of Brian, the film that famously began it all, there is good reason. There are two sides to HandMade. Focus is regularly drawn to the light-hearted Monty Python associated material firmly established by Life of Brian.

However, as stated previously, our strand is tailored to a concept, and as such, it is almost as much about British culture as it is about HandMade Films. Presenting neglected gems such as Scrubbers and Bellman and True, this approach finds us leaning slightly more than is usual towards the other, darker side of the company’s back catalogue, and in doing so, it also allows our programme to begin with The Long Good Friday, a film with far more relevance to our core themes, a Scottish director, and an important place in EIFF history. There is still plenty of vintage “HandMade humour” on offer in the form of Time Bandits, A Private Function, Withnail & I, and How to Get Ahead in Advertising, but the overall effect of the final selection is that of a “magical history tour” of Great Britain.

The Curation of A Sense of Freedom In the late 1970s the rights to John Mackenzie’s A Sense of Freedom were acquired from STV by HandMade Films. The film was then re-cut and re-dubbed in the hope of a more universally popular theatrical release. The accents were softened, 7 minutes were lost, and the image was cropped.

Much to the dismay of the filmmakers, this alternative cut then became the only available version of the film, and this unfortunate situation remained the case until last year, when the Scottish Television original was finally unearthed. In 2017, EIFF will finally reclaim the original Scottish version of Mackenzie’s classic for a film festival audience.

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The Long Good Friday (John Mackenzie, 1980) “They say it’s the best British film ever made... I can’t object to that.”

- John Mackenzie on The Long Good Friday Defining the dawn of Thatcher-era Britain, and featuring absolutely outstanding performances from Bob Hoskins and Dame Helen Mirren, director John Mackenzie’s tense, violent gangland thriller is a classic. Informed by the evolution of London itself, and coloured by writer Barrie Keeffe’s childhood experiences in the east-end, The Long Good Friday was initially inspired by Keeffe’s urge to see a British gangster film with a protagonist in the mould of the American greats.

“We all loved the early Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney type movies. So he gave me this early script, one of the first of many rewrites that we actually eventually did, and I just thought the central idea was great, this capitalist thug going into big business and coming up against a politically oriented organisation.”

- John Mackenzie on Barrie Keeffe’s script for The Long Good Friday Bob Hoskins was quickly identified as first choice for the role. Taking a shine to the project, he enthusiastically accepted, and immediately set to work constructing his character. To acclimatise, he started socialising with connections from the London underworld, some of whom would end up on the shoot as “technical” advisors. Throughout this development period, Hoskins worked with Keeffe on the dialogue, whilst Mackenzie cleverly bolstered the involvement of the IRA in the story, bringing the “terrorism versus capitalism” angle into sharper focus.

“These sorts of themes, you know, the whole idea that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, were of great interest to me.”

- John Mackenzie on The Long Good Friday Shot in the docklands area of London in 1979, The Long Good Friday is undoubtedly Mackenzie’s masterpiece. Raising the bar on his peers with scenes such as the interrogation in an abattoir, or the boat party on the Thames, he expertly orchestrates the gripping drama and brutal action, whilst deftly framing it in powerful, iconic imagery. With this directorial prowess lifting the film into a completely different league, Mackenzie saves the best for last, ending in bold, truly haunting style with his central character’s unforgettable final journey.

“John’s first shot, the first shot he planned, was the last shot in the film. He said, “What I’m going to do Bob, is sit you in the back of that car. I’m going to hold a camera on you for five minutes, and all you’ve got to do is think your way through the film.” I said “You’ve got to be joking. What, I’m just going to sit there?” He said, “I promise you, the camera will see you think.”

- Bob Hoskins on John Mackenzie and The Long Good Friday Dominating the screen with his menacing unpredictability and physical confidence, whilst charting the underlying emotional journey with terrifying authenticity, Hoskins is incredible, his powerhouse performance providing Mackenzie’s film with its dark, urgently beating heart. Skilfully balancing herself against her leading man, Mirren completely discards the traditional rendition of the “gangster’s moll”, opting instead to play the role as a complex, capable queen to Hoskins’ savage

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king. Her brave, insightful portrayal adds a dimension to the film which has clearly proved crucial in helping it withstand the test of time.

“I wanted to make her intelligent. I wanted to make her a part of the story.”

- Dame Helen Mirren on her character in The Long Good Friday Surprisingly, The Long Good Friday did not have an easy path to the big screen. Originally made for Lew Grade, who threatened to cut it down to 80 minutes and sell it to television, the film was thankfully rescued by HandMade, (acquiring it on the advice of Monty Python’s Eric Idle), who gave it a proper theatrical release. Opening in February 1981, it proved to be a huge success with both critics and audiences alike, and has subsequently become recognised as one of the finest British films of all time.

The Long Good Friday: Programme Note John Mackenzie and EIFF Mackenzie, (affectionately nicknamed “Frenzy” by his colleagues due to his explosive temper), appears a number of times in EIFF history. In 1980, Artistic Director Lynda Myles screened his classic thriller The Long Good Friday and a retrospective of his earlier work. In 2009, we screened several of those titles again alongside the HandMade Films version of A Sense of Freedom, in a look at his exceptional collaborations with writer Peter McDougall. Finally, as part of our After the Wave retrospective in 2010, we screened Mackenzie’s controversial and rarely seen Made.

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Time Bandits (Terry Gilliam, 1981) After trying unsuccessfully to pitch a science fiction script to HandMade, Terry Gilliam put that idea on hold temporarily, and went back to the drawing board, determined to come up with a viable alternative. Marrying the idea of a film seen through the eyes of a child, with the concept of a criminal gang of time-travelling dwarves, he found inspiration, and a dark, outlandish children’s fairytale began to take shape in his mind.

“Out of frustration I said, well, let’s make a film for all the family, something that everybody would love. There was a weekend of kind of intense playing around and the idea of a group of guys who had, you know, worked for God, got bored with heaven, and decided to go on a crime spree through history seemed like a nice idea. “ - Terry Gilliam on Time Bandits Impressed with the project, and infected with Gilliam’s enthusiasm, HandMade agreed to back the film. Immediately enlisting the help of his old friend and colleague, Michael Palin to collaborate with him on the script, Gilliam set to work. As the two fleshed out the initial concept, the characters began to take proper shape, and one humorous breakdown in particular proved to be the catalyst for an amazing turn of fate.

“The Greek warrior removes his helmet, revealing himself to be none other than Sean Connery, or an actor of equal but cheaper stature.”

- Stage direction from the original script for Time Bandits Based on that light-hearted description, HandMade signed up Connery. Gilliam was astonished. With Connery already booked to star in Peter Hyams Outland, (screening in the Brave New World strand), the Time Bandits shoot had to be brought forward to accommodate his commitments, and this left Gilliam working against the clock. Casting newcomer Craig Warnock in the lead, and assembling the brilliant David Rappaport, Kenny Baker, Malcolm Dixon, Mike Edmonds, Jack Purvis and Tiny Ross to portray the bandits themselves, Gilliam had secured his central characters. He then proceeded to populate the rest of the key roles with the same ironic brilliance that dared to imagine Connery as King Agamemnon. With Palin and Shelley Duvall as star-crossed lovers Vincent and Pansy, John Cleese as Robin Hood, Ian Holm as Napoleon, David Warner as Evil, and Ralph Richardson as The Supreme Being, his choices were impeccable.

“Suddenly, out of the blue, getting people like Sean Connery and Ralph Richardson, just wonderful.

All these wonderful people I never thought I’d write anything for. It was quite a challenge to get things right for them...”

Michael Palin on the casting of Time Bandits Working his way skilfully through the tight shoot, creatively problem solving as he went, Gilliam emerged victorious, only to find himself immediately plunged into a series of arguments with HandMade over crucial post-production decisions. As a result, Gilliam would never work with them again. However, the reception to Time Bandits was to surpass everyone’s hopes and expectations, the film performing well in the UK and becoming a runaway hit in America. HandMade had another success on their books, and Gilliam had clearly learned how to successfully translate his unique visions to the big screen. Equipped with this knowledge, and armed with Time Bandits, he returned

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to the ambitious science fiction with which he had initially approached HandMade. A long gestating pet project entitled Brazil, (also screening in the Brave New World strand).

Time Bandits: Programme Note Terry Gilliam and EIFF Terry Gilliam has previously been a guest at EIFF, attending the premiere of his Hunter S. Thompson adaptation, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, at the 52nd EIFF in 1998.

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Scrubbers (Mai Zetterling, 1982) Having enjoyed a huge success with Alan Clarke’s Scum (screened at the 33rd EIFF in 1979), producer Don Boyd found himself facing the daunting prospect of delivering a sequel to the controversial prison drama. Although initially reluctant to do so, he eventually came up with a satisfactory compromise, a companion piece as opposed to a straight follow-up, another story set behind bars, but this time, told from a female perspective. The idea caught fire, and Boyd sought and secured the services of actress turned director, Mai Zetterling, who immediately began revising a provisional script.

“Mai had the sensitivity to deal with a woman’s issue in a sociological context. She also had an individual take on life and I felt the film needed that to separate it from Scum. It shouldn’t have been a female Scum, it had to be something that had its own identity.”

- Don Boyd on Mai Zetterling and Scrubbers Spending months painstakingly researching her subject matter, Zetterling worked hard to ensure the vital authenticity of the film. This informed her development of the script, and the casting process.

Skilfully assembling a suitable group of up and coming young actors, Zetterling’s inspired choices include such stars of the future as Kathy Burke, (her debut performance), Miriam Margoyles, Pam St Clement, and Scotland’s very own Robbie Coltrane.

“I was almost the only male in the cast, and the girls forgot I was there after a while and started talking like they were alone, which was quite an eye-opener. Mai wandered about with a bullwhip and was very funny, and, of course, I bored her to death asking her about all her films as an actress, which was fascinating. I also met Kathy Bates, she must have been a teenager then, and fearless. At times it felt like the real thing, a lot of the girls had done time and began treating me like a screw, so the dynamic was there. I was asked to be suggestive with a vacuum flask, if I remember right, so no change there.”

- Robbie Coltrane on Scrubbers Throughout an uncomfortable shoot and acrimonious post-production dispute with HandMade, Zetterling doggedly ensured that Scrubbers adhered to her brave vision and retained its gritty integrity. Awarded a AA certificate by the BBFC, on the grounds that it would be a good deterrent to young women considering breaking the law, the film’s release was heralded with an important artistic acknowledgement, when it was chosen, alongside Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtman’s Contract, Barney Platt Mills’ Hero, and Claude Whatham’s The Captain’s Doll, as one of four films to be presented on the opening night of the 26th London Film Festival in 1982. “…this year we thought we would mark the coming of age of the new British Cinema by spotlighting four separate strands of independent production on our gala opening night. Four outstanding new British films will open this 26th LFF…” – London Film Festival programme 1982

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A Private Function (Malcolm Mowbray, 1984) The history of A Private Function begins with director Malcolm Mowbray, whose notion of a story about the illegal meat trade in post-war 1940s Britain provided the original inspiration for the film.

Mowbray took his idea to esteemed playwright, Alan Bennett, who had previously declared his admiration for Mowbray’s work, and Bennett agreed to write the script.

“Malcolm wanted to do a film about a pig, and I wanted to do a film about a chiropodist, so that’s how the two elements came to be combined. And, of course, the period he was talking about, the Forties, was, as it were, a historical period for him, it wasn’t for me, that was part of my childhood.”

- Alan Bennett on writing A Private Function Before being asked to appear in the film, Michael Palin, a huge admirer of Bennett’s work, met with Mowbray and Bennett to discuss the project and brokered a deal on their behalf with HandMade.

Subsequently, Palin’s enthusiasm for the script and clear suitability for the job also resulted in him being offered the leading role. Reuniting Palin with Dame Maggie Smith, his co-star in HandMade’s The Missionary, and enlisting a star-studded supporting cast including Denholm Elliot, Richard Griffiths, Bill Paterson, Pete Postlethwaite, Alison Steadman and Liz Smith, Mowbray was almost ready to take his collaboration with Bennett from page to screen. There was just one last key character left to cast. Trained pigs were located for the shoot, and Mowbray, intent on the animal being integrated properly into the action, made every effort to prepare both cast and crew for this unpredictable on-set element. Unfortunately, the pigs still proved to be problematic, continually fouling the workspace and refusing to comply with instructions. However, various ingenious methods were devised to cope with this behaviour, and the filming continued uninterrupted, albeit with everyone holding their noses between takes.

“Before a scene, the cast would sit and wait, and, at the last moment, when everything was absolutely ready, the pig was brought in – Betty. There were three pigs in all, but only one that could act, so Betty was brought in. It was a bit like the arrival of some mega Hollywood star; you all had to be quiet, and then she’d come onto the set and immediately the clapper boy went “Whack!” for action the pig would panic, the way a lot of actors probably do as well but they’re better at controlling it. So we’d have to clear the set while the carpet was cleaned and shampooed rather rapidly and then we’d start again.”

- Michael Palin on filming A Private Function HandMade had put Mowbray’s film into production alongside Dick Clement’s Water, starring Michael Caine and Billy Connolly, and clearly deemed A Private Function to be the less likely of the two to succeed. In fact, Water was a disaster, the St Lucia shoot turning into a money pit and draining the company’s resources, only for the finished product to receive bad press and perform poorly at the box office. Luckily for HandMade, they had underestimated the brilliantly observed magic of A Private Function, which proved to be a huge commercial success, released to rapturous critical reception in both the UK and America. Hailed as one of the finest British comedies in years and compared to the Ealing greats, Mowbray’s economically made “little” film had dramatically softened the blow of Water’s expensive failure for HandMade, emerging as yet another timeless British cinema classic bearing their increasingly familiar banner, and winning three BAFTA awards in the process.

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Mona Lisa (Neil Jordan 1986) Having established a special working relationship on Company of Wolves in 1984, producer Stephen Woolley and director Neil Jordan were eager to re-unite on a new project. Inspired by an article in the newspaper and a documentary focusing on the changing face of Soho, Woolly gave Jordan an idea for a story, which he developed before taking it to acclaimed screenwriter, David Leland.

Unfortunately, Leland’s initial drafts failed to capture certain key aspects of Jordan’s burgeoning vision. Subsequently, Jordan became involved in the writing process too, collaborating with Leland on the finished screenplay.

“I had this conception of a romantic criminal story, a person imagining himself as a knight in shining armour trying to save these girls from perdition, this terribly naive point of view, mixed in with a London underworld story.”

- Neil Jordan on Mona Lisa After briefly considering Sean Connery, Jordan settled firmly on Bob Hoskins for the lead role.

Together, they further developed the character, tailoring it to a different, more sensitive side of Hoskins’ screen persona than the one seen in John Mackenzie’s The Long Good Friday.

Unfortunately, it was at this point that EMI, who were financing the project, suddenly withdrew their support. Wasting no time at all, Woolley, (who also produced Hyena, screening in the Gerard Johnson strand), immediately turned to HandMade and secured a deal that ensured the production’s future. However, it wasn’t all plain sailing. There were fierce arguments over key creative decisions, HandMade even attempting to weigh in on which actress should be cast opposite Hoskins. Refusing point-blank to consider the company’s off the wall suggestion of pop diva Grace Jones, Jordan and Woolley, convinced they had found the right person, stuck by their guns and screen newcomer Cathy Tyson got the part. As filming began in London, any concern over Tyson’s inexperience on camera was quickly put to rest when Hoskins took her under his wing.

“Mona Lisa was my first film and I was extremely nervous. Bob made me instantly feel at ease. He invited me around to dinner before we started shooting the movie and from the beginning he was a lovely, encouraging man. He always had a big wide smile on his face and you could talk to him about anything. He was the first male actor I saw cry and that encouraged me to show my own emotions more while acting. I learnt so much from him; not only when it came to acting and how to be in front of cameras but even how to talk to the press.”

- Cathy Tyson on Bob Hoskins and Mona Lisa Featuring a superb supporting cast, including Michael Caine, Robbie Coltrane, and future star of HBO classic The Wire, Clarke Peters, Mona Lisa is a masterpiece. Jordan and Woolley were right, Tyson is perfect. Her volatile chemistry with Hoskins, delivering one of the finest performances of his extraordinary career, lights up the emotional side of Jordan’s narrative allowing his dark thriller to blossom into a memorably moving experience.

Earning an Oscar nomination and winning “Best Actor” awards at the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, and in Cannes, (where he shared the prize with Michel Blanc for Evening Dress by Bertrand Blier), Hoskins was hot property after Mona lisa, and Hollywood beckoned. However, his association with HandMade Films was not yet over. In 1987, he appeared opposite Dame Maggie Smith in Jack Clayton’s The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, and the following year he co-wrote, directed and starred in The Raggedy Rawney, both productions backed by HandMade.

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Withnail & I (Bruce Robinson, 1987) “It’s like Ealing on acid.”

Stephen Woolley on the work of Bruce Robinson In the aftermath of their disastrous Madonna/Sean Penn vehicle Shanghai Surprise, HandMade green-lit a semi-autobiographical black comedy called Withnail & I. The exceptional script, developed over fifteen years by writer/director Bruce Robinson, was immediately dispatched to an actor he already had in mind for a central role, rising star Paul McGann. “...the first time I read it was on the tube. I was in hysterics, and that’s never happened before or since. People were trying to look over my shoulder at what I was reading because I was almost crying reading this thing.”

Paul McGann on Bruce Robinson’s script for Withnail & I Having cast McGann as “I”, (named in the original script as Marwood, but left anonymous in the film), Robinson then began searching for his Withnail. After auditioning a variety of actors for the part, including Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy and Edward Tenpole Tudor, he finally found the magic he was looking for in screen newcomer Richard E. Grant. However, having cast him, Robinson was alarmed to discover that Grant, playing an alcoholic, was in fact teetotal. To put Robinson’s mind at ease, Grant agreed to try some vodka to familiarise himself with the effects of alcohol. It was a brave decision, as it unsurprisingly had a profound effect on him, and although not entirely enjoyable, the experience clearly informed his inspired work in the finished film.

“It’s the best drunk performance I’ve ever seen.”

Paul McGann on Richard E. Grant in Withnail &I While McGann and Grant settled into their characters, Robinson brought his supporting cast together, enlisting old acquaintance Michael Elphick as Jake the Poacher, the brilliant Richard Griffiths as Uncle Monty, and lesser-known actor Ralph Brown as drugs connoisseur Danny. With all his characters accounted for, Robinson was finally ready to make his film, and as the camera started rolling on location in Penrith, the enthused cast and crew embraced the task at hand with a unique camaraderie.

“It was a really nice atmosphere. There was no tension. Everyone was helping each other out. I think we all felt that maybe that’s the way movies were. And, of course, we’ve all made lots of films each since then and they’re not all like that. It was a lovely honeymoon really.”

Ralph Brown on shooting Withnail & I With a disused property in Notting Hill doubling for the eponymous duo’s rundown Camden accommodation, the next stage of the shoot saw actor Ralph Brown coming into his own. Brown had made such an impression on Robinson with his barefoot, in-character audition, that he was awarded a degree of creative freedom with his character. The resulting performance is one of the most memorable in the film, and employs a prop that has become a cult in its own right, the enormous joint Danny assembles known as “The Camberwell Carrot”. To compliment the drugs there was also a taste of rock and roll, as this London location was the scene of a rare set visit by George Harrison, accompanied by his old Beatles band-mate, Ringo Starr.

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“Very low-key were they... very awestruck were we.”

Richard E. Grant on meeting George Harrison and Ringo Starr Once Withnail & I was complete, HandMade were unsure what to do with the film, and after initial negotiations with distributors proved unsuccessful, it began to look as if Robinson’s off the wall comedy might end up languishing in storage, unseen. Then, word of mouth from a highly successful premiere at EIFF helped to change the film’s fortune, and subsequently, distribution was secured.

Released first in America, and then in the UK, it was received well in both territories and did good business, but nobody could have foreseen its popularity growing as rampantly as it has over the years.

“Hand on heart, there isn’t a single day that goes by when I don’t have someone quoting a line from it to me...”

Richard E. Grant on Withnail & I Boasting a huge cult following, including important admirers such as Johnny Depp, (who persuaded Robinson to direct him in The Rum Diaries), and David Fincher, (in whose Alien 3 McGann and Brown both appear), Robinson’s timeless classic is enjoying a new lease of life in its 30th year, anniversary screenings now being viewed from new perspectives such as ours as Britain takes a long hard look at itself in the mirror. “...Withnail, for me, is as good as cinema gets. It has every aspect you want. It’s hysterically funny, immensely quotable and there’s a great gravity to it as well. It’s a very poetic film. For me, it’s in the top three of all time.”

Johnny Depp on Withnail & I Withnail & I: Programme Note Richard E. Grant and EIFF As well as attending the EIFF premiere of Withnail & I, Richard E. Grant’s directorial debut, Wah-Wah was chosen by Artistic Director Shane Danielsen as opening night at the 59th EIFF in 2005.

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Bellman and True (Richard Loncraine, 1987) Opening on a train arriving in ghostly slow-motion to an ominous piano soundtrack, it’s clear from the outset that director Richard Loncraine’s Bellman and True is no ordinary crime cinema. The story, of a father and son embroiled in a bank robbery, was adapted for Euston Films by Loncraine and Desmond Lowden from Lowden’s novel of the same name, (the title taken from folk song D’ye ken John Peel). When Euston suddenly dropped out, Loncraine took the screenplay to HandMade and they immediately put it into production.

Yes, I ken John Peel, Ruby too, Ranter and Ringwood and Bellman and True.

From a find to a check, from a check to a view, From a view to the death in the morning.

- Extract from 19th century Cumbrian folk song D’ye ken John Peel Having secured his place in British consciousness with his unforgettable performance in Alan Bleasdale’s The Boys from the Blackstuff, rising star Bernard Hill had already been cast as the lead in Loncraine’s film when the project changed hands. Unfortunately, having been involved in a dispute with HandMade over the ill-fated Shanghai Surprise, Hill considered dropping out at this stage and it was only due to Loncraine’s mediation that he stayed on board.

“He’s a very technical director, a bit like Jim Cameron in that he’ll look at the acting in as passionate way as he will the technical side. He does actually leave a lot of it to the trust of the actors.”

Bernard Hill on Richard Loncraine Hill is magnificent. Crafting a genuinely moving onscreen relationship with 14 year-old co-star Kevin O’Brien, he invests his flawed character with a profound humanity, staging a painfully authentic display of restrained emotions, faltering confidence and outright fear. Making the most of this extraordinary naturalism, Loncraine turns the British thriller inside-out. Employing a European style in the photography, (a Cinema du Look influence is visible), he focuses on the usually neglected emotional side of the formula, eschewing macho posturing and excess violence to deliver a tense, haunting drama with an off-beat sense of humour and flashes of a brutal edge.

“It was great fun. And working with Richard was a wonderful experience.”

- Bernard Hill on shooting Bellman and True Upon release, Bellman and True received mixed reviews and struggled at the box office.

Subsequently, it has further suffered from being one of the lesser screened titles in the HandMade back catalogue, eclipsed by the likes of Withnail & I and The Long Good Friday. However, although neglected, Loncraine’s HandMade heist curio has matured with age and now, in its 30th anniversary year, is clearly ripe for reappraisal.

Print courtesy of the BFI National Archive

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How to Get Ahead in Advertising (Bruce Robinson, 1989) “I don’t give a f**k about advertising. For me it was more like Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

- Bruce Robinson on How to Get Ahead in Advertising Partially inspired by a double exposed photograph he took of himself in New York Bruce Robinson’s barbed tale of an advertising executive who sprouts a second head was originally written in 1979 and lay dormant until he met Richard E. Grant on Withnail & I. Inspired to revisit and develop the material with Grant in mind, and still in favour with HandMade on the back of Withnail’s success, Robinson presented them with the new project and they agreed to back it. However, as production got underway, Grant, shooting Steve Miner’s fantasy adventure Warlock on location in Boston, was horrified to discover that he was about to be knocked out of the running for the lead by scheduling difficulties. With the continually changing dates of Robinson’s shoot threatening to clash with his filming commitments in America, heated negotiations took place across the Atlantic and by the time he wrapped on Miner’s film, a relieved Grant had been confirmed as Robinson’s star. Rehearsals began as soon as Grant was back in the UK, and various casts were taken of his head so that work could begin on his prosthetic co-star, The Boil, (voiced by Robinson).

“The Boil is the most greedy thing there is, and that was the absolute encapsulation of Margaret Thatcher’s politics: Greed.”

- Bruce Robinson on How to Get Ahead in Advertising When the budget was slashed at the last minute by HandMade, Robinson was faced with compromise from the off and this took a toll on his vision artistically. His plan to mirror the condition of Grant’s character in the photography, beginning in lavish style and gradually deteriorating throughout, was now too costly. As were the animated bluebirds that briefly appear in the finished product but were supposed to be a recurring theme. The schedule was cut back and further problems arose, much to Robinson’s irritation, when the shoot was repeatedly slowed down by the time required to apply The Boil and the technical issues involved in bringing it to life. With Grant wearing an awkward animatronics rig run by a large team of cleverly concealed technicians, certain complicated sequences took hours.

“If you made it now you’d do it digitally, but it was real Heath Robinson, hour after hour to try to make The Boil work.”

- Bruce Robinson on shooting How to Get Ahead in Advertising With Thatcher’s Britain set firmly in his sights, an outraged Robinson unleashes a rabid political satire that viciously attacks the capitalism of the era, taking a brutal sideswipe at the male ego as it does so. As the face of Robinson’s weapon of class destruction, Grant is unforgettable, skilfully negotiating the wild emotional extremes of his increasingly disturbed character, whilst sustaining an almost unbearably tense energy throughout. His relentless antagonist, The Boil, is also highly entertaining, Robinson having done a memorable job with both its grotesque voice and dialogue.

“That was good fun, being The Boil. I used to read The Boil in, and we were going to do it later with Richard’s voice, but I liked my Boil voice better than his, so I kept mine.”

- Bruce Robinson on How to Get Ahead in Advertising

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How to Get Ahead in Advertising may not have fared as well as Withnail & I critically, but in certain ways it was ahead of its time, elements of Robinson’s savage black comedy foreshadowing the taboo-breaking 90s satire wielded by the likes of Chris Morris and Armando Ianucci. More importantly, as a brand new Britain emerges from the decision to leave the EU, it looks like Robinson’s self-confessed “rant” is starting to make an awful lot of sense again.

“The real fear I have is that our whole political system is evolving into an optical illusion whose currency is fear. It’s a cliché, but it truly is becoming Orwellian.”

- Bruce Robinson Print courtesy of the BFI National Archive

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HandMade in Britain - Special Screening A Sense of Freedom (John Mackenzie, 1979) Bookending the strand with another example of director John Mackenzie’s remarkable work, the final stop on our HandMade tour of Britain is Scotland in the late 1970s, where we reunite with The Long Good Friday director for a second powerful and culturally significant piece of crime drama.

“Visceral is a very good word for it. Up until then, TV was fairly safe. Dixon of Dock Green, Z-Cars – it was very tame. Suddenly you have this 90-minute film about a supposed killer, stripped naked, covered in his own **** in a cage and railing against the authorities.”

- David Hayman on A Sense of Freedom Made for Scottish Television and subsequently released theatrically by HandMade, A Sense of Freedom, (based on the autobiography of the same name), tells the turbulent story of Jimmy Boyle (David Hayman) one of Scotland’s most notorious criminals. Once seen, never forgotten, this brutal, uncompromising film pulls absolutely no punches in its vivid depiction of Boyle’s life as a gangster on the streets of Glasgow, and his subsequent nightmarish journey through the prison system. In the tortured central role, Hayman, (recently seen in the BBC’s Taboo), is extraordinary; his character’s initially calm, chilling exterior slowly dissolving into uncontrollable rage and despair as his liberty and dignity are stripped away from him. Painfully true to its grim subject matter, Peter McDougall’s brilliantly stark script is a tormented primal scream, the echo of which, Mackenzie skilfully ensures will resonate indefinitely.

“I couldn’t walk the streets of Glasgow for two years. It was screened on the Monday and I walked into a pub on Maryhill Road to get a carry-out because I was going to watch it with my pals. I said to the barman, ‘Where the hell is everybody?’ And he said, ‘They’re home son – they’re all watching you.”

- David Hayman on A Sense of Freedom Featuring an evocative score by Rory Gallagher with vocals on the title track by Scottish rock hero Frankie Miller, and memorable cameo appearances from the legendary Fulton Mackay (Local Hero); and a young Alex Norton (Braveheart, Pirates of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest); McDougall and Mackenzie’s final collaboration is a harrowing Scottish masterpiece that easily ranks alongside the finest British thrillers of the 1970s and 80s.

“I am still recognised more for Jimmy Boyle than anything else I have done. It touched a nerve in many, many people.”

- David Hayman on A Sense of Freedom Material supplied by STV Footage Sales

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A Sense of Freedom: Programme Notes John Mackenzie and Peter McDougall Moving to London in the early 60s, Edinburgh born John Mackenzie began his career at the BBC, assisting Ken Loach on Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home, before making his directorial debut in 1967. Between 1969 and 1972, Mackenzie would direct three feature films, One Brief Summer, the brilliant Unman, Wittering and Zigo, and Made, before returning to the BBC to work on their groundbreaking Play for Today strand, for which he would be paired with new Scottish writer Peter McDougall.

Disillusioned with the bleak life cycle of working in the shipyards of Glasgow, McDougall too had left Scotland for London, where he worked as a painter and decorator. Employed in this capacity by acclaimed actor/screenwriter Colin Welland, McDougall’s casually told tales of his life in Scotland prompted a spellbound Welland to suggest that he write a script based upon them. That script would be the controversial, award winning Just another Saturday, the first of McDougall’s magnificent collaborations with Mackenzie.

McDougall’s powerhouse writing, coupled with Mackenzie’s assured cinematic direction, resulted in four unforgettable dramas, (Just another Saturday, The Elephant’s Graveyard, Just a Boy’s Game and A Sense of Freedom), each of which gave a clear, uncensored reflection of the real Scotland.

Originally made for television, but shot entirely on film, these atmospheric productions vividly evoke the place and time, and address the various taboo subjects involved absolutely fearlessly.

Following The Long Good Friday and A Sense of Freedom, Mackenzie would continue directing film and television up until his death in 2011, returning to Scotland in 1998 to helm the memorable BBC series Looking After Jo Jo, starring EIFF patron Robert Carlyle. McDougall has continued to write provocative and entertaining work such as the rarely seen Shoot for The Sun starring Jimmy Nail and Brian Cox; Down Among The Big Boys featuring Billy Connolly; Down Where The Buffalo Go with Harvey Keitel; and more recently, EIFF 2016’s closing night film, director Gilles MacKinnon’s Whiskey Galore.

Unmade HandMade: John Mackenzie, Peter McDougall and Travelling Men Described as part road movie, part comedy thriller, Mackenzie and McDougall also developed a project called Travelling Men for HandMade Films in the mid 80s. With the script revolving around two charismatic male characters, a bold plan was hatched to secure the services of Sean Connery and Michael Caine, re-uniting them for the first time since their unforgettable double act in John Huston’s 1975 classic, The Man Who Would Be King. Negotiations were underway with Connery, who liked the idea, but after a disagreement with HandMade over script changes, Mackenzie walked and the production fell apart. Taking into account Mackenzie’s outstanding artistic track record with McDougall, and the proven chemistry between Connery and Caine, one cannot help but imagine what rough, charming magic might have been. It’s a frustratingly tantalising thought.

A Sense of Freedom, The Hard Man and Tom McGrath McDougall and Mackenzie’s no holds barred re-creation of Boyle’s story was preceded by another crucially important piece of Scottish art derived from the same source, The Hard Man, a landmark play written with Boyle by influential Scottish playwright, Tom McGrath, (the focus of the third part of The Future is History programme).

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HandMade in Britain Lecture European Crime Cinema: From Melville to Mackenzie

By Dr Pasquale Iannone, University of Edinburgh The crime film has long been a staple of European cinema. Like all the best genre filmmaking, its framework offers an array of narrative and stylistic possibilities while also allowing directors to react to the socio-cultural realities of their time. With a focus on the 1970s and 80s, this richly illustrated lecture by Dr Pasquale Iannone (Teaching Fellow in Film Studies, University of Edinburgh) will take in works from acclaimed auteurs such as Jean-Pierre Melville as well as underappreciated figures like Edinburgh’s own John Mackenzie.

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Matt Johnson: Infected – The Movie & The Inertia Variations Corresponding directly with our central retrospective themes, EIFF is proud to present Infected – The Movie, the rarely screened, groundbreaking visual accompaniment to Matt Johnson’s seminal 1986 album of the same name, and The Inertia Variations, Johanna St Michaels’ brand new documentary focusing on Johnson’s life and work.

The Programme Infected – The Movie (Mark Romanek, Tim Pope, Alastair McIlwain, Peter Christopherson, 1987) The Inertia Variations (Johanna St Michaels, 2017) Installation/Exhibition Radio Cineola: The Inertia Variations EIFF will host this exhibition derived from St Michaels’ documentary.

The Curation In the context of our larger retrospective strategy, by screening Infected – The Movie and The Inertia Variations, we follow the same loop in time as the central strands, (1970/1980s-2017), and, with regards to the artistic content, both Johnson’s work and St Michaels’ documentary explore strong themes of identity, (political and personal), corresponding exactly with the philosophy behind the overall retrospective programme. From the reverse angle, having already staged a major interactive event around this film at The Gothenburg Film Festival, Johnson, St Michaels and their collaborators will now weave EIFF into their ongoing plan, allowing our festival the great privilege of reciprocating, and playing a role in their wider artistic strategy.

Matt Johnson: Programmes Notes Matt Johnson and EIFF Matt Johnson has a strong history with EIFF through his exceptional soundtrack work with/for his brother, director Gerard Johnson, who premiered his first two features, Tony and Hyena, both scored by Matt, at Edinburgh.

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Infected – The Movie (Mark Romanek, Tim Pope, Alastair McIlwain, Peter Christopherson, 1987) “It was very unusual. No-one at that point had actually done a full length video album. Beyonce recently did a long form video and claimed it was the first one ever, which of course it wasn’t. Before ‘Infected’, I suppose you could look at things like The Beatles’ ‘Magical Mystery Tour’...”

- Matt Johnson on Infected – The Movie Having released Burning Blue Soul under his own name in 1981 and the classic Soul Mining as The The in 1983, Matt Johnson returned in 1986 with a bold new album, Infected, a politically and sexually charged bombshell featuring the work of sixty two musicians and a symphony orchestra.

Spawning four outstanding singles: title track Infected, a dynamic pop-dance monster that many believe alludes to the HIV epidemic of the time; Heartland, an unforgettable alarm call to Thatcher’s Britain; Sweet Bird of Truth, a prophetic vision of an American fighter pilot involved in conflict in the Middle East; and Slow Train to Dawn, an urgent exchange between two lovers, (Johnson and Swedish singer-songwriter Neneh Cherry), exploring relationships and infidelity; the album also featured: sultry journey through a torrid night of passion, Out of the Blue (Into the Fire); tormented communiqué from humanity’s front line, Angels of Deception; soul searching reflection on identity, Twilight of a Champion; and final showdown with the Devil himself, The Mercy Beat. A benchmark in British pop music, Infected has easily withstood the test of time both lyrically and musically, Johnson’s superb songs proving to be just as relevant today as they were at the time of the album’s release. “...there are a lot of parallels between 1986 and 2016.”

- Matt Johnson Faced with the prospect of embarking on a world tour to promote the new album, Johnson decided that his time would be far better spent creating further art that would do the job for him. Conspiring with The The manager and founder of the Some Bizarre label, “Stevo” Pearce, Johnson hatched a plan to develop a “video album” from Infected as an alternative source of publicity to playing live.

Securing a sizable budget from CBS for the project, he then set off on an epic artistic adventure that would see him travel the globe in an attempt to create a worthy companion piece to his fresh musical accomplishment. He succeeded.

“We had only two promotional choices at the time: making videos or going on tour. It was also possible to do both but I knew I did not want to do the scene. The videos were obviously a fantastic way to get ideas out and we had a great opportunity with this film, thanks to the budget and the directors.”

- Matt Johnson on Infected – The Movie Released at the height of the MTV era, Johnson’s complete visual accompaniment to his stunning album of the same name is a vital piece of 1980s British art. Featuring the work of four different directors and locations including Peru, Bolivia and New York, the making of Infected – The Movie began at Greenwich Power Station, where the video for Heartland was shot under the direction of Peter Christopherson, prolific music video director and co-founder of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV. Next, Mark Romanek, (One Hour Photo, Static), tackled Sweet Bird of Truth in New York and then, with Johnson inspired by the work of Werner Herzog, he and Christopherson set off to film Infected and The Mercy Beat on location in South America. It was there, in the Amazon jungle, that the dark side of the shoot began to unfold.

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"We started in Iquitos, where Fitzcarraldo was shot. We got taken into the jungle by a former Peruvian army guide who was well-connected. There was a scene in “The Mercy Beat” where we came across a crazy communist rally, and I’m handling snakes and monkeys… I was out of it most of the time, hallucinating giant spiders on the hotel walls.”

- Matt Johnson on shooting Infected – The Movie The next stop for Johnson was Spanish Harlem, where he and Tim Pope, popular promo director famous for his work with The Cure, shot Out of the Blue (Into the Fire). However, filming in a rundown brothel next door to a lively crack house, this proved to be another extremely precarious experience.

“We were in this very dangerous place and the atmosphere was building up and up. The police, who were there to protect us, then said it’s getting too dangerous, we’re going to pull out of here. I just remember these burned out buildings and people watching us; all these eyes watching us. That added to the atmosphere, all the gangs moving in close to us, but it was one of the most edgy experiences I would say I ever had.”

- Matt Johnson on shooting Infected – The Movie Johnson and Pope also shot Twilight of a Champion in New York before returning to the UK to make Slow Train to Dawn with Neneh Cherry. Finally, the video for Angels of Deception, a striking monochrome animation employing the extraordinary work of Johnson’s late brother Andrew Johnson, alias artist Andy Dog, was directed by animator Alastair McIlwain, (Pink Floyd: The Wall, Heavy Metal).

“Andrew was involved in filming Angels of Deception. We gave life to his drawings through an animation, and on Mercy Beat, we took others to cover the car and some of the masks. We tried to insert his illustrations as much as possible in the videos.”

- Matt Johnson on Andrew Johnson and Infected – The Movie Although allowing all four directors a generous degree of creative control, Johnson ensured throughout the process that the overall project, when finally assembled, would have continuity.

Aside from recurring artistic details such as the various displays of his brother’s exceptional artwork, during the edit Johnson also created further coherence by adding the lyrics that appear onscreen in the interludes and intercutting shots from some videos into others. The effect was the desired one.

In keeping with the album, the film is as potent now as it was then. Yes, the graphic content that offended some at the time, such as the scene where Johnson puts a pistol in his mouth, (which earned the film an 18 certificate), now looks tame in comparison to contemporary screen provocation, but that’s not the film’s strength. Beyond the remarkable creativity involved, the enduring power of this almost hallucinogenic artistic experience lies in the intense, dangerous passion that Johnson invested in it at the time. You can still feel it and it’s magnetic.

“The individual videos themselves employ imaginative production techniques and strong imagery in presenting a disturbing picture of the world as observed by Johnson.”

- Jim Bessman on Infected – The Movie, Billboard

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Infected - The Movie premiered at the Electric Cinema in London and was broadcast on Channel 4, (who latterly aired it a second time), and MTV in late 1986. The MTV premiere found Johnson presenting a special edition of the channel’s popular alternative music show 120 Minutes, in which he frankly expressed his political opinions as a banner reading “The content of this segment does not necessarily reflect the position of MTV Networks” was scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

Johnson toured the world for a year screening Infected – The Movie in cinemas to promote the album, and although available at one time as a video or VCD, the uncut film is currently unavailable to the public in any form.

“I was very ambitious. I wanted it to be huge. You know, I was only 23-24 years old and I was aiming at the stars with this project. Infected was the product of a rather overflowing imagination and I wanted the result to be acoustically enormous, that it sounds cinematic and spectacular. The videos had to be visually up to the album. It was a collaborative project and a lot of great people were involved. Being the only permanent member of The The, I obviously chose the people I wanted to collaborate with, but alchemy does not necessarily take. It is necessary to have a clear vision and it has remained fairly constant throughout the project. It was unparalleled at the time and I am very proud of it.”

- Matt Johnson on Infected – The Movie

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The Inertia Variations (Johanna St Michaels, 2017) Taking its inspiration from the poem of the same name by John Tottenham, Johanna St Michaels’ The Inertia Variations is a deep, moving, and meaningful insight into the life and work of world famous musician Matt Johnson. It also forms part of a larger ongoing artistic strategy incorporating a variety of media, the first exhibition of which was recently staged at The Gothenburg Film Festival.

You would think by now that people would know better Than to ask me what I have been doing with my time.

- John Tottenham, from his poem The Inertia Variations Opening with images of an animated Johnson overseeing the rooftop installation of a striking illuminated sculpture, (an artistic representation of a radio mast), to symbolise the birth of his shortwave radio station Radio Cineola, The Inertia Variations begins in earnest three years earlier.

Turning the clock back to the outset of this project, we find Johnson gradually extracting himself from the clutches of creative inertia and embarking on his mission to harness a dying medium and hijack the airwaves. Preparing to communicate with the world once again, he muses on the highs and lows of the creative process, contemplating his prolonged silence as a singer/songwriter and revisiting his highly successful music career in the 80s/ 90s.

There was a time when I thought I might have done something by now; But that was long ago, and over the intervening Decades I have shifted from prodigy to late-bloomer To non-bloomer; I have passed my peak without having peaked Or even begun the ascent - John Tottenham, from his poem The Inertia Variations As the launch of Radio Cineola draws nearer, the pressure mounts to write and perform a new The The song for broadcast. Having not sung for over a decade, Johnson initially wrestles with the resurrection of his musical alter-ego, but time, life, and art eventually conspire to provide him with the perfect bittersweet inspiration. It’s a fraught and emotional creative journey, and when we finally reach its poignantly joyful resolution, St Michaels’ film blossoms, as we witness a powerful new The The rising majestically from the daunting memories of past glories, fuelled by love, loss, and Johnson’s deep spiritual obligation to his art.

I may as well face the fact That I am no longer capable Of doing what I once believed I was capable of doing.

Not that I had any reason to assume That I was capable of it.

It was just a feeling that I had.

And now I have a different feeling.

- John Tottenham, from his poem The Inertia Variations Captured at a pivotal point in his creative life, The Inertia Variations is an endearingly candid picture of this extraordinary British artist, and with the enigmatic Johnson valiantly exposing his heart on his

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sleeve, St Michaels has turned his hesitation at the artistic crossroads into a compelling work of conceptual art in its own right. “...I guess my aim was to see how is creativity, how does it work? Why are we doing this?”

- Johanna St Michaels on The Inertia Variations, CPH:DOX Q&A One other thing is certain. Whether it’s as cool ringmaster of Radio Cineola or as the mighty The The, Johnson’s own art is clearly now more resonant than ever, and judging by the state of the current political landscape, his return to the fray could not be more timely.

“There’s rain coming. Over there. You can see it.”

- Matt Johnson, The Inertia Variations

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Installation/Exhibition Radio Cineola: The Inertia Variations “The Inertia Variations is an Anglo-Swedish multi-media project, the documentary forms one part of it, but it involves dozens of collaborators and it features poetry, sculpture, politics, a conceptual radio station, as well as music.”

- Matt Johnson, Sputnik, RT With Edinburgh’s Summerhall as its venue, EIFF 2017 will host a unique version of the exhibition that is being presented around the world to compliment The Inertia Variations. The creative team behind this breathtaking installation is comprised of musician Matt Johnson, filmmaker Johanna St Michaels, prize-winning architect Jacob Salqvist, lighting designer Kate Wilkins, and poet John Tottenham.

Visitors will find themselves entering a dark inertia zone in which St Michaels’ film is conceptually transformed into a thought-provoking interactive multi-media experience with Johnson’s iconic Radio Cineola mast at its centre. “…and we have an installation of the Radio Cineola tower, which features heavily in the film. It’s interesting that I’m on Sputnik today because the inspiration behind the Radio Cineola tower is actually the Shukhov tower in Moscow, and the reason why I chose that as the symbol - our tower is only about 30 foot tall, so it’s a lot smaller than the Shukhov tower, which I think may be being designated as a world heritage site because it’s under threat at the moment of demolition - and the reason I chose that as a symbol was because it was the celebrations of twenty five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall a couple of years ago, and it struck me as supremely ironic that everybody was jumping up and down, the victors in the cold war, and yet, we are now the most spied upon country, the US and the UK are the most spied upon countries on the planet, and so I like that little ironic twist of using a Soviet symbol for my new radio station.”

- Matt Johnson, Sputnik, RT

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Gerard Johnson: Tony, Hyena & This Story of Yours As he prepares to start work on his new film, EIFF is delighted to welcome back director Gerard Johnson to revisit his cutting-edge thrillers Tony and Hyena. These two contemporary crime classics both premiered at Edinburgh and clearly mark Johnson out as an essential director to watch.

“I have seen the future of crime films and it screams Hyena” - Nicholas Winding Refn on Hyena The Programme Tony (Gerard Johnson, 2009) screened at 63rd EIFF in 2009 Hyena (Gerard Johnson, 2014) screened as opening night at 68th EIFF in 2014 Special Stage Event This Story of Yours (1968) Johnson will also direct a reading of John Hopkins’ controversial play This Story of Yours.

The Curation With the HandMade films revisiting the country’s past, Tony and Hyena provide this section of the programme with a powerful, uncompromising vision of the damaged Britain of today. Continuing his exploration of British law and order, the reading of This Story of Yours will be a unique expansion of that vision.

Gerard Johnson: Programme Notes Gerard Johnson and EIFF In 2009, Tony was chosen to be screened as part of the Under the Radar strand, and Johnson was presented with an EIFF Trailblazer award by Sir Sean Connery. In 2014, Hyena was Artistic Director Chris Fujiwara’s bold choice for opening night, with both Gerard and Matt Johnson attending.

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Tony (Gerard Johnson, 2009) “I wanted to make a film about someone who’s a lonely guy who just happens to kill people.”

Gerard Johnson on Tony Both starring his cousin, the brilliant Peter Ferdinando, (A Field in England, High-Rise), and scored by his brother, Matt Johnson of The The, writer/director Gerard Johnson’s filmmaking career began with two atmospheric shorts that clearly signalled the arrival of a daring new voice in British cinema.

Mug, a snapshot of a violent opportunist thief prowling the streets of central London, and Tony, a disturbing glimpse into the life of a serial killer. Inspired by the Dennis Nilsen case and featuring a remarkable central performance by an almost unrecognisable Ferdinando, this unnerving second short was then expanded into Johnson’s extraordinary debut feature of the same name.

“The Nilson case I remember as a child. The thought of him chatting to dead bodies in his flat stayed with me for years and I remembered that from my childhood, it gave me nightmares. I wanted to touch on a guy who under first appearances is not what he seems. You come across him and then you find out he keeps little friends in his cupboards locked up and tucked in bed with him.”

- Gerard Johnson on Tony Johnson’s short mix of social-realism and shocking horror opens out into a full-length masterpiece.

Undergoing an incredible transformation, Ferdinando develops his fascinating earlier sketch into an unforgettable fully-blown character. Losing a substantial amount of weight and moving into the claustrophobic flat that doubled as his character’s home, the result of his commitment to his art is apparent. Skilfully employing a set of melancholy piano motifs, Matt Johnson’s soundtrack enhances his brother’s film beautifully, capturing the strange and lonely essence of their cousin’s wonderful performance in haunting musical style.

“I don't see Tony as just a cold-blooded murderer, I see him as a victim, a victim of society, of his own circumstances and it's all stemmed from a child who's been starved of love, care, affection. His whole life, he's been ridiculed, abused and spent a lot of time by himself. And I think that's a recipe for disaster. So I sympathise with Tony and I had to, to play him. And I hope the audience will sympathise with him too...”

- Peter Ferdinando on Tony In a visually stunning final sequence, Tony disappears into the West End night-life, swallowed by the city as the ghostly piano melody fades out, and Johnson leaves us in poignant, subtly disconcerting style. It would be five long years before his next film appeared, but it would prove to be well worth the wait, as when he returned, with his brother and his cousin by his side once again, it was to unleash the mighty Hyena.

“I’m working on a London based film about a bent cop...”

- Gerard Johnson on Hyena

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Hyena (Gerard Johnson, 2014) “There have always a lot of ‘bad cop’ films, but I wanted to show something where it wasn’t just one, it was everybody who was corrupt.”

- Gerard Johnson on Hyena Inspired by the experiences of an old acquaintance, Johnson’s second feature Hyena went into development after a meeting to discuss the project was arranged with producers Joanna Laurie and Stephen Woolley in Dinard, where Tony was screening, and a deal was made. Johnson then embarked on four years of intensive research, turning his attention from a killer hiding outside society to criminals hidden within the police force.

“So the actual idea was born in France, which is quite apt really because it’s very influenced by French crime films.”

- Gerard Johnson on Hyena As Detective Sergeant Michael Logan, (Peter Ferdinando), and his threatening gang of colleagues become embroiled in an increasingly dangerous web of vice and corruption, events begin to spiral out of control and the fading lines between law and order disappear completely. Trapped in the imploding underworld of a morally-bankrupt metropolis, Logan must eventually risk everything in a last ditch attempt to save what he can from his rapidly disintegrating life and get out.

“You’re on a very murky, dark rollercoaster ride. It’s a very sweaty-palm kind of situation.”

- Peter Ferdinando on Hyena Perfectly underpinned by an eerie, hypnotic soundtrack courtesy of his brother Matt, Gerard Johnson’s state of the art crime story/character study follows in the great tradition of classic British thrillers such as The Long Good Friday by cleverly allowing both era and location to become far more than just a backdrop to the drama. With nerve-wracking suspense and cleverly-handled action end to end, Hyena sees Johnson expertly sculpting an imposing cinematic presence for contemporary London throughout.

“It’s also about London today, and how much of London goes on in an invisible world, that none of us really come into contact with or are aware of.”

- Stephen Woolley on Hyena With first class support from Boardwalk Empire’s Stephen Graham, (in a role written especially for him), and star of Ben Wheatley’s Kill List, Neil Maskell, Ferdinando delivers another absolutely extraordinary performance; Hyena verifying his position as one of the finest British screen actors of his generation and confirming that he and Johnson are a very special creative partnership indeed.

“Peter and I, we are cousins so we have a very close bond. There’s so much that we don’t need to say, rather than I need to explain a lot of stuff, you know, there’s a lot of stuff I only have to give him a look and he knows what I mean. So it’s great to have that bond, that closeness, especially if it’s the lead actor.”

- Gerard Johnson on Peter Ferdinando

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As Hyena comes to an end, the famous final scene of John Mackenzie’s aforementioned The Long Good Friday is brought to mind as we leave Ferdinando’s desperate Logan poised in his car, preparing to face his impending fate. Bringing proceedings to a close in appropriately bleak, thoughtprovoking fashion, this lack of an orthodox full stop is a bold artistic decision by Johnson, and serves as a powerful example of the daring, skilful and informed artistry that singles him out as one of the most exciting British directors of today.

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Gerard Johnson – Special Stage Event This Story of Yours (1968) “When Edinburgh asked me if I was directing a reading as part of my retrospective, I jumped at the chance of reviving This Story of Yours. It’s a continuation of the themes I’ve been working on since Hyena, the ferocious, chilling nature of this play roars across every page. I’m relishing the idea of putting it on at the Traverse.”

- Gerard Johnson on This Story of Yours Originally staged at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1968 with the help of Harold Pinter, John Hopkins’ This Story of Yours is a harrowing three act examination of Johnson, a policeman accused of murdering a suspected paedophile during questioning. Each of the three acts is Johnson one on one with a different character. Act one and two take place in the aftermath of the crime and find Johnson in exchanges with his wife and senior officer, and act three jumps back in time to reveal the actual interrogation of the suspect. “...the predicament that Johnson, the central character, dramatises is not solely a predicament that a policeman can find himself in; but, given that he is a policeman, the predicament then becomes tragic- no, tragic is a very strong word, like genius, that I’m loathe to use. Tragic is a word that people should say about you rather than about your own work. The fact that he is a policeman dramatises almost beyond bearing the flaw in his character, just as our need for policemen, our need for that kind of protection, and our need then socially to ostracise them if humanly possible, says a great deal more about us than it does about the police. When I came to write This Story of Yours, yes, I had always intended further to develop in non-adventure terms my reaction and feeling about the police. And this is it, the dilemma that Johnson finds himself in seemed to me the right means, and also the theatre, for me.”

- John Hopkins on This Story of Yours, Transatlantic Review #32 The original play was directed by the highly respected Christopher Morahan, (Clockwise, Paper Mask), who also handled Hopkins’ critically acclaimed four-part television drama Talking to a Stranger for the BBC in 1966. Having first met several years earlier on BBC classic Z Cars, Morahan and Hopkins became renowned during this period as a formidable artistic team.

“After Z Cars, John and I wanted to do something together, and he decided to write a play about a policeman who behaved badly, because he’d been very concerned, and touched, by the pressures the police were under.”

- Christopher Morahan on John Hopkins and This Story of Yours

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This Story of Yours: Programme Notes John Hopkins Beginning his career in radio with the BBC, writer John Hopkins first moved into television in the late 1950s with plays such as Break Up and After the Party for Granada Television. Returning to the BBC in 1959, he handed over a steady stream of quality work, and in 1962 he joined the team behind classic police drama Z Cars. Eventually becoming Story Editor on the show, Hopkins would write 57 episodes in all, including several that proved to be groundbreaking television. “...within Z-Cars there are sketches of most of the things I’ve written since, most of the people who’ve appeared. It’s like – I’m not making a comparison in terms of quality – the hundred odd sketches Picasso drew preparing to paint Guernica.”

- John Hopkins, Transatlantic Review #32 1964 proved to be a busy year for Hopkins, his output including The Moving Toyshop for the BBC’s Detective series, The Pretty English Girls for ABC’s Armchair Theatre, experimental ballet Houseparty for BBC 2, and the Parade’s End trilogy for the BBC’s Theatre 625, adapted with Ford Madox Ford from his original novels. In 1965, after earning a co-writer credit on Terence Young’s Thunderball, Hopkins made two entries in the BBC’s Wednesday Play strand, Fable, which imagined Apartheid in Britain, and Horror of Darkness, and paid a return visit to Armchair Theatre with I Took My Little World Away. Next, he would produce the innovative piece of work commonly regarded as his greatest achievement.

“The first authentic masterpiece written directly for television.”

- George Melly on Talking to a Stranger, The Observer A set of four plays, all recounting the same events but from four different perspectives, Hopkins’ Talking to a Stranger quartet was broadcast on BBC 2 in 1966 and was instantly recognised by critics and public alike as a classic. In the late 60s, after writing Dostoevsky adaptation The Gambler and Into the Sunrise for the BBC and the screenplay for John Dexter’s The Virgin Soldiers, Hopkins delivered probing stage play This Story of Yours, championed by Harold Pinter, which he would later adapt into the screenplay for director Sidney Lumet’s The Offence starring Sean Connery.

“He’s extraordinary. Unlike Kazantzakis, who keeps looking for what’s godlike about us, John keeps looking for what’s hellish about us.”

- Sidney Lumet on John Hopkins The 1970s once again saw Hopkins’ name in the credits of several interesting television productions, including Some Distant Shadow for ITV’s Saturday Night Theatre, That Quiet Earth for the BBC’s Thirty-Minute Theatre, BBC one-off Walk into the Dark, and Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor vehicle Divorce His; Divorce Hers, (their last film together). In the late 70s, Hopkins returned to the kind of cutting-edge drama for which he was best known with two memorable works for the BBC, Play for Today: A Story to Frighten the Children, and mini-series Fathers and Families. He then ended the decade with the screenplay for Bob Clarks’ memorable Sherlock Holmes meets Jack the Ripper adventure, Murder by Decree.

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“Mr. Hopkins's screenplay is funny without being condescending, more aware of history, perhaps, than Conan Doyle's mysteries ever were, but always appreciative of the strengths of the original characters and of the etiquette observed in the course of every hunt.”

- Vincent Canby on Murder by Decree, The New York Times In the 1980s Hopkins would embark on two big television projects, both collaborations. Teaming up with John Le Carré to adapt Smiley’s People, Le Carré’s sequel to the highly successful Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, for the BBC; and John Trenhaile to tackle ITV’s Codename Kyril, a British/Norwegian coproduction based on the novel by Trenhaile and starring Edward Woodward, Joss Ackland and Richard E. Grant. He also continued to work in film, with screenplays for John Frankenheimer’s The Holcroft Covenant and Michele Noble’s Runaway Dreams. In 1995 Hopkins’ returned to his writing duties for the final time, joining forces with writer Toshirô Ishidô for the critically acclaimed TV movie Hiroshima.

“The stories aren’t new; political sides have been examined and re-examined, and scrutinized in other dramatic forms (notably in the devastating 1981 BBC-PBS series “Oppenheimer”). But Hopkins and Ishidô work through a slender corridor of objectivity to tie up the tales, unearth surprising details and explore character assets and failings that lead to the ultimate payoff ; as produced here , it’s all a new game.”

- Tony Scott on Hiroshima, Variety John Hopkins, This Story of Yours, The Offence and Sean Connery Adapted for the big screen by Hopkins himself in 1973 and renamed The Offence, the film was directed by Sidney Lumet and executive produced by its star, former EIFF patron Sean Connery.

Having been captivated by Hopkins’ play at the Royal Court Theatre, Connery used his considerable influence with United Artists to get The Offence made. His performance in the finished product is widely regarded as one of the finest of his career.

“When you look at the Bond characterization, everybody says, ‘Oh, well he’s just charming.’ Well shit, that’s like saying Cary Grant was just charming. There is more acting skill in playing that kind of character. What he’s doing, stylistically, is playing high comedy. And that is extremely difficult to do, which is why there are so few of those actors, so few Cary Grants and Sean Connerys. But it’s acting, don’t kid yourself. And right away on The Hill, the very fact that I cast him in it meant something. And he was so thrilled to be taken that seriously for that kind of a drama. And when he got to produce a picture of his own, The Offence, a story he picked out, I was thrilled to be asked by him to direct."

- Sidney Lumet on Sean Connery and The Offence John Hopkins, This Story of Yours, The Offence and Gerard Johnson Lumet’s film was a source of inspiration for Johnson during the making of Hyena, and this led him to further investigate Hopkins’ artistic legacy. From that research, the idea of putting his directorial stamp on a reading of This Story of Yours was born.

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Matt and Gerard Johnson: Programme Notes Johnson Family Values "Growing up in an extremely fertile creative household I guess it made sense that I would follow my older brothers’ lead into the art-life. So, instead of art or music, film was my love but their influence is apparent. Matt has been a constant inspiration to me in my life and work and I'd be a fan of his even if we weren't related. Not only has his music added another layer to my own work, it's also his drive, determination and uncompromising belief in his vision that are qualities I've tried to put into practise in my own career as well" - Gerard Johnson on Matt Johnson "It’s been a pleasure watching Gerard slowly grow into the filmmaker he dreamt of being as a little boy. I could not even fathom a guess at the number of hours he spent glued in front of a video machine over the decades; watching and re-watching favourite films, obsessing over certain directors and figuring out how specific scenes were shot. Consequently he has earned himself an encyclopaedic knowledge of cinema and a growing reputation as an English film director of singular vision. His uncompromising approach to filmmaking has meant his career path has not been an easy one. But then what value is a career path where things come too easily?"

- Matt Johnson on Gerard Johnson “A Johnson honours his obligations. His word is good and he is a good man to do business with. A Johnson minds his own business. He is not a snoopy self-righteous trouble-making person. A Johnson will give help when needed.”

- William S. Burroughs

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Red, White and Blue: Animating the British Empire

By EIFF Animation Programmer Iain Gardner, curator of Red, White and Blue During the previous edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the United Kingdom went back to the polling booth and returned a vote to leave the EU. British politics have been in turmoil since, with even the existence of the United Kingdom being brought into question. The recent snap election further changes the political map. These events have left many questioning what sort of country the UK is, what Britishness means, and more importantly – what sort of society do we want to become? These ideas have been ruminating in the minds of British Animators for decades. This special retrospective programme offers a variety of perspectives on the identity of the United Kingdom as seen through the eyes of some of our finest animators.

The Programme Know Your Europeans: The United Kingdom (Bob Godfrey, 1994) Britannia (Joanna Quinn, 1993) Britain (Bexie Bush, 2011) My Dad (Marcus Armitage, 2014) Dad’s Dead (Chris Shepard, 2003) Polygamous Polonius Revisited (Bob Godfrey, 1985) The Emporer (Lizzie Hobbs, 2001) Charge of the Light Brigade (Gibraltar Sequence) (Richard Williams, 1968) Great (Bob Godfrey, 1975) Oscar for Best Animated Short Film at the 48th Academy Awards 1976

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Know Your Europeans: The United Kingdom (Bob Godfrey, 1994) The British are a nation of considerable antiquity, Who colonised the globe with quite remarkable ubiquity, They turn up everywhere from Abu Dabi to Nigeria, And quickly tell the natives what it is to be superior, The British are a multi-coloured polyglot society, Descended for invaders of most dubious variety, Their pedigree is Viking, Anglo-Saxon, Jute and Arian, With bits of Hun and Huguenot, but basically barbarian, The British are devoted to the arts and intellectual, At sports enthusiastic, but entirely ineffectual, They patented inventions of amazing ingenuity, Their efforts gastronomical are viewed with ambiguity, The British are a monarchy in love with ceremonial, Impressed by pomp and circumstance and palaces baronial, The royals all conduct themselves with dignified sobriety, And so the British tabloids always treat them with propriety...!?!

The British are eccentric, unreserved and unconventional, Stiff-upper lipped, and buttoned up, hidebound and condescentional, Permissive and profane and positively puritanical, Bohemian and Bloomsbury, bucolic and botanical.

- Colin Pearson’s lyrics from Bob Godfrey’s Know Your Europeans: The United Kingdom The last film from Halas & Batchelor, one of the largest and most influential producers of animation in the UK, established in 1940. This short was intended as part of a feature film celebrating the European Union with each country to be represented by a different production team. Sadly, due to budgetary constraints, the Irish and Portuguese shorts by Aidan Hickey and Abi Feijó were never completed, leaving only Christoph Simon representing Germany and Bob Godfrey flying the flag for the UK. Britannia (Joanna Quinn, 1993) “Not all the ideas for our films are personal films as some of my films, like Britannia, are commissioned. Commissions are really good because they take you out of your comfort zone and make you challenge yourself and explore ideas that normally you wouldn’t come up with. Ironically Britannia is probably my favourite film.”

- Joanna Quinn on Brtannia With her exceptional draughtsmanship, characterisation and fluid animation, Joanna Quinn is widely recognised as one of Britain’s most celebrated animators. Britannia represents some of her finest work, presenting a savage indictment of the development and demise of British Imperialism.

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Britain (Bexie Bush, 2011) Bexie Bush is amongst several talented animation directors to have recently graduated from the National Film and Television School. Prior to studying there, she completed her degree at Farnham in 2011 with Britain, an ingenious short based around recordings of an elderly British couple discussing the country’s politics. “...I used a microphone to record random snippets of natural chatter and asked permission to use the dialogue in my film later. I found this was a great way to capture uninhibited conversation. In Britain I decided to take a different approach. In order to focus on certain topics, I fashioned a set of questions that I put up on a wall for Lyn and my Grandad to discuss. These two were a good pair to put together as my Grandad loves to discuss ‘life’ and Lyn is a very positive, chirpy character.”

- Bexie Bush on Britain My Dad (Marcus Armitage, 2014) Nominated in 2015 for a BAFTA, Marcus Armitage’s 2014 Graduation film from the Royal College of Art is a beautifully drawn commentary on contemporary Britain examining the influence of a father’s prejudice on his son.

“My Dad is a film about inherited racism in modern Britain. How inherited opinions and judgements from this boy’s dad affect his life and his outlook on life around him. He lives in a multicultural London, as his opinions from his Dad intercept his life and these great opportunities fall away. It’s about how inherited racism can change your outlook on life as a kid.”

- Marcus Armitage on My Dad Dad's Dead (Chris Shepherd, 2003) “I suppose I am a bit warped, yeah. Terrifying? I think the audience needs a bit of a kick up the arse.

They need shaking up. When I made Dad’s Dead I wanted to make a film that everybody would hate.

I couldn’t care less, so I just went for it. And then it won loads of awards, which of course makes me a total loser.”

- Chris Shepherd on Dad’s Dead Listed amongst Skwigly’s 100 Greatest Animated Films, Chris Shepherd’s short is an amalgam of real stories and people from his own working class childhood in Liverpool and, as such, could be seen to follow the great tradition of “British Realism” in cinema. Shepherd revisits the characters from this Award winning film in his new short Johnno’s Dead which will compete for this year’s McLaren Award.

“When I started I remember I was a good storyteller, but my drawings weren’t so great. So I went around knocking on lots of people’s doors and basically people told me to get lost. They said I couldn’t draw like Walt Disney – this is about 1992 – so get lost. There were a few people like Bob Godfrey, he was great to me.”

- Chris Shepherd

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Polygamous Polonius Revisited (Bob Godfrey, 1985) Margaret Thatcher gives the audience a lecture whilst being wooed by a miner in Bob Godfrey’s remake of his classic earlier cartoon Polygamous Polonius (1959). The original version has the distinction of having been selected for the Royal Film Performance in 1960.

The Emperor (Lizzie Hobbs, 2001) “I never quite know what’s going to happen when I sit under the rostrum or start working with my materials, so the work unfolds in the making and there’s no compositing or alteration of the work after that, because I like the films to be a true reflection of what I tried to do with the materials. I work very fast, and at the moment I tend to make a little plan, see what happens, re-shoot, see what happened, re-shoot many times, make a rough edit, then re-shoot the whole lot. I hope that the films are as exciting to watch as they are to make.”

- Lizzie Hobbs Although this film doesn’t look inwardly at the UK, Lizzie Hobbs’s tale of the quest to free Napoleon Bonaparte from exile on the island of St Helena nonetheless sheds a fascinating light on the British attitude towards conflict and opponents.

The Charge of the Light Brigade (Gibraltar Sequence) (Richard Williams, 1968) “In Charge of the Light Brigade the animation said it all. I don’t know why we needed the live action!”

- Bob Godfrey on The Charge of the Light Brigade Tony Richardson’s 1963 feature The Charge of the Light Brigade depicts events around the Crimean War, with satirical animation bridging the action. This incredible sequence, from the studio of animation genius Richard Williams, features the British Navy’s advance on Constantinople via the strategic British base of Gibraltar.

“It was a live action film and we had to animate ten minutes of England at the end of the Crimean War, which we did in the style of 1850’s London news illustrations which are cross-hatched steel engravings. So we had to do all this tremendous cross-hatching, a horrendous amount of work. We were working crazy hours and one of the guys went three nights and three days, then collapsed and slept under his desk. I thought ‘nobody can do that’. As the pressure mounted, I ended up doing four days and four nights nonstop without any sleep.”

- Richard Williams on The Charge of the Light Brigade

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Great (Bob Godfrey, 1975) “The trouble with “Great” was it was so English; no-one understood it.”

- Bob Godfrey on Great A tongue-in-cheek look at the life and career of Victorian engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, highlighting his many achievements, as well as some of his failures. After four years in production, this bawdy musical biopic became the first British short animated film to win an Academy Award Oscar® in 1976.

“Yes I went and it was a wonderful experience really, I think it sort of – first of all it’s a sort of trance when the cameraman comes out of the camera room and says “Ere, you’ve been nominated!”, “Oh that’s good! Is that good?”! So I’ve been nominated and then I thought well that means I’ve got to go. And the guys from 20th Century Fox, or whatever it was, across in Wardour Street, who actually put up some money for the film, they actually wanted to go as well of course, they said “Oh don’t take time out of your busy schedule Bob, we’ll go and pick up anything that has to be picked up” and I thought bugger you – I’m gonna go! So I arranged to go and it was quite incredibly – you’re sort of sitting there and then suddenly this voice says “Great” and they’ve put you near the gate... so that a lot of people don’t have to get up and there’s this great sea of faces and you have to say something and you’re speechless really! You don’t know what to say. So it’s really a quite wonderful experience.

I’ve been nominated four times so four times I’ve had this ordeal! But fortunately three of the times I’ve been with Nick Park who’s almost certain to win! So I’m totally relaxed.”

- Bob Godfrey on attending the 48th Academy Awards 1976

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2nd Identity: The Western World of the Future I think time travel allows you to, if you go to the future, to look at ourselves. I think that it becomes a mirror in a strange way – you go to another time and you look at yourself in that time. Either the character goes and we see how foolish or how intelligent he is, or we see how we’ve messed it up, if we go to the future. I think that’s what it’s about – it’s a mirror.”

- Terry Gilliam

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Brave New World: New Directions in Science Fiction Cinema 1980-1985 On the back of big late seventies successes such as Star Wars and Alien, the early 1980s was a turning point for science fiction on film. With the advance of the technical side of the filmmaking process, the construction of believable sci-fi became easier, and the fascinating concept of man’s relationship with technology blossomed. With the genre being taken more seriously, it was now being explored in a deeper, more creative way, and taken in a variety of bold, original directions.

Brave new worlds were daringly imagined, and classic cinema was made. Providing food for thought in uncertain times, EIFF is proud to take you “back to the future” with this exciting retrospective strand featuring a selection of the most diverse and significant science fiction films from that golden era.

The Programme Death Watch (Bertrand Tavernier, 1980) screened at 34th EIFF 1980 Escape from New York (John Carpenter, 1981) screened as opening night at 35th EIFF 1981 Outland (Peter Hyams, 1981) stars ex-EIFF Patron Sean Connery Le Dernier Combat (Luc Besson, 1983) Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983) The Element of Crime (Lars Von Trier, 1984) Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984) screened at 38th EIFF 1984 The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984) The Brother from another Planet (John Sayles, 1984) Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985) The Quiet Earth (Geoffrey Murphy, 1985) Special Retrospective/Black Box Crossover Screening Born in Flames (Lizzie Borden, 1983) screened at 37th EIFF 1983 Lecture Programme Science Fiction Film: The Philosophy of the Future

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The Curation of Brave New World A retrospective look at the shape of things to come, this strand is designed to turn our attention to the future of the western world via the cinema of the past, and to continue our review of EIFF’s own history in the process.

The number of science fiction films made within the five year period in question is staggering.

Throughout the selection process, scores of titles were considered, the criterion defined by our intention to provoke thought and highlight the innovative and visionary. Avoiding new entries in important franchises that began in the late 70s, such as the Star Wars, Mad Max, and Star Trek films, and eliminating any titles in which the suspension of disbelief is now hopelessly handicapped by dated special effects, our final selection, several of which screened at Edinburgh, are all significant self-contained visions, marked out by displays of expertly crafted authenticity, ingeniously reflected social commentary and inspired futuristic imagination.

Unavailable for Content: Blade Runner “Much of what I envisage for the year 2019 is reflected in the look of the streets and the attitudes of the people in Blade Runner. The viewpoint speaks for itself. I thought about it very carefully. I presented a future world that I believe would come close to being a totalitarian society – if not quite Nineteen Eighty-Four, then one step from it.”

- Ridley Scott on Blade Runner Unfortunately, due to a complicated rights issue, we are unable to include Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic, Blade Runner, which screened at 36th EIFF 1982. Had it been available to us, it would have been an important entry in this strand.

The Curation of Born in Flames “...under the curatorial vision of Kim Knowles, Black Box, the experimental strand of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, is proving itself one of the most exciting places to see inventive new filmmaking and performance practices in the UK.” - Harriet Warman on Kim Knowles, Sight & Sound Following on from her highly successful retrospective screening of Borden’s 1976 debut feature Regrouping in 2016, The Future is History will see EIFF Black Box programmer Kim Knowles continue her dialogue with director Lizzie Borden. This year Knowles will focus on Borden’s most famous work, Born in Flames, which screened at 37th EIFF 1983.

“Current EIFF programmer Kim Knowles, curator of the experimental Black Box programme, astutely selected Borden’s film to lead her 40th-anniversary programme this year. Regrouping’s stunning use of avant-garde techniques to investigate and implement psychoanalysis prefigures the better-known feminist films Riddles of the Sphinx (1977) and Thriller (1979). Certainly, it’s hard to imagine a film further from classical Hollywood’s seamless strategies than Borden’s densely interwoven reflexive portrait of four artists in a women’s group.”

- Sophie Mayer on Lizzie Borden’s Regrouping at EIFF 2016, Sight & Sound

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Death Watch (Bertrand Tavernier, 1980) “The fact I did so many camera movements with the crane to describe the different nuances of green in the countryside and the stone of those great red and black buildings: you clearly see it’s a declaration of love. I was falling in love with Scotland – its landscapes, its sky.”

- Bertrand Tavernier on Death Watch A French/German co-production shot in Scotland, Bertrand Tavernier’s prophetic sci-fi film-noir ominously foreshadows the birth of contemporary reality television. The story, of a man with a TV camera hidden in his eye who secretly records a dying woman, is brought to life memorably by Harvey Keitel and Romy Schneider with able support from Max Von Sydow, Harry Dean Stanton and Robbie Coltrane. Cerebral science-fiction from a true master of cinema, Death Watch is a genre classic.

“When I made it, it was a kind of futuristic film, a science fiction film, but alas, everything which we exposed in the film has become now part of our life.”

- Bertrand Tavernier on Death Watch Escape from New York (John Carpenter, 1981) “I think there’s basically two kinds of films. One is utopian, where you have some bright happy future that we all want to have, and the other is the dark one. Escape from New York is extremely dark. It’s about a police state and the world’s biggest, most vicious prison.”

- John Carpenter on Escape from New York Featuring Kurt Russell in his most iconic role, eye-patch wearing super-thief of the future, Snake Plissken, John Carpenter’s seminal Escape from New York finds Manhattan Island turned into a maximum-security prison, from which Plissken must attempt to rescue a very important hostage.

With singer/songwriter Isaac Hayes as The Duke of New York, Harry Dean Stanton as Brain, Ernest Borgnine as Cabbie, and Donald Pleasance as the President of The Untied States of America, Carpenter’s cult sci-fi extravaganza is an unforgettable mission.

“Escape from New York was an action science-fiction picture, but basically, if I had to be really honest with you, it’s a western. It’s a western in every essence because it’s an odyssey; it’s a lone gunfighter who has to go up against both the figures of authority and the criminals.”

- John Carpenter on Escape from New York

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Outland (Peter Hyams, 1981) "I wanted to do a Western. Everybody said, 'You can’t do a Western; Westerns are dead; nobody will do a Western'. I remember thinking it was weird that this genre that had endured for so long was just gone. But then I woke up and came to the conclusion – obviously after other people – that it was actually alive and well, but in outer space. I wanted to make a film about the frontier. Not the wonder of it or the glamour of it: I wanted to do something about Dodge City and how hard life was.

I wrote it, and by great fortune Sean Connery wanted to do it. And how many chances do you get to work with Sean Connery?"

- Peter Hyams on Outland Starring former EIFF patron Sir Sean Connery as the Marshall of a troubled mining outpost on one of Jupiter’s moons, Peter Hyams’ Outland is best described as a science-fiction version of classic western High Noon, (1952). With Connery on top form, and memorable performances from Peter Boyle and Frances Sternhagen, this impressive depiction of the future is also set apart by its enduring sense of authenticity. It’s a quality Hyams would also bring to his next venture into outerspace, the epic 2010: The Year We Make Contact, (1984).

“Outland deals with the future as a location, not a subject.”

- Peter Hyams on Outland Le Dernier Combat (Luc Besson, 1983) “What really interested us was the behaviour of individuals after a cataclysm for which they, themselves, have no explanation. If a similar catastrophe actually occurred, there wouldn’t be a morning paper to explain what had happened. The catastrophe would just be there and we would have to deal with the results.”

- Luc Besson on Le Dernier Combat Essential to the curation of the Cinema du Look strand in 2016 were the three classic titles by director Luc Besson: Subway, (1985), Le Grande Bleu, (1988), and La Femme Nikita, (1990). In 2017, with Besson preparing for the worldwide release of his highly anticipated new sci-fi epic, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, (his first foray into the future since The Fifth Element), we revisit his stunning debut feature, also science-fiction, the mute, monochrome Le Dernier Combat, starring Cinema du Look mascot Jean Reno.

“My film is not a pessimistic film. I didn’t want to dramatise the situation, but to show it with derision; to smile about it at the same time. There is not very much we can do about such a situation, except take our individual responsibilities. The system is much too big for us to do anything. If a catastrophe happens, we might as well smile.”

- Luc Besson on Le Dernier Combat

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Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983) “Suppose, for example, that there were some sort of signal that could come through the television set that could make you out and kill your relatives. You know, just out of nowhere...”

- James Woods on Videodrome James Woods stars as the television executive for whom fantasy and reality start to merge, as he and his girlfriend, played by Deborah Harry, (of legendary pop group Blondie), are slowly drawn into the nightmarish world of Videodrome, a mysterious illegal broadcast of “snuff” pornography. Still regarded as one of his finest works, David Cronenberg’s mind-bending sci-fi thriller, featuring unforgettable body horror work by special-effects guru Rick Baker, is as provocative and disturbing today as it was thirty four years ago.

“It’s very hard for me to say what Videodrome is about in a sense, because I think it’s totally misleading to say that it’s a criticism of television, or that it’s, you know, an extension of Network or something like that. It really is exploring what I’ve been doing all along, which is to see what happens when people go to extremes in trying to alter their total environment to the point where it comes back and starts to alter their physical selves.”

- David Cronenberg on Videodrome Print courtesy of TIFF Film Reference Library The Element of Crime (Lars Von Trier, 1984) “The first synopsis we presented to the Film Institute included not only the ingredients for the film, but also some mystical things like a principle of nature and some blueprints... hypothetical blueprints and something about the pyramids in Egypt – on how you calculate the top angle of the pyramid by using some kind of square root... a very mathematical point of view.”

- Lars Von Trier on The Element of Crime The first instalment of his Europa trilogy, also including Epidemic, (1987), and Europa, (1991), Lars Von Trier’s atmospheric feature debut The Element of Crime follows an unconventional detective, played by British actor Michael Elphick, as he hunts a serial killer through a dystopian post-World War III Europe. Shot with sodium lighting creating a sepia-like tone, Von Trier’s dark, dream-like vision of the future is a hybrid of film-noir, psychological thriller and science-fiction, with influences including Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, (1982), and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, (1979).

“The title is linked to a book written by Osborne, one of the central characters in the film. The book is called The Element of Crime, and it proposes the thesis that crimes occur in a certain element, a locality that provides a sort of ‘centre of infection’ for crime, where, like a bacteria, it can grow and spread at a certain temperature and in a certain element – moisture, for instance. In the same way, crime can arise in a certain element, which is represented here by the environment of the film. ‘The element of crime’ is the force of nature that intrudes upon and somehow invades people’s morals.”

- Lars Von Trier on The Element of Crime Print courtesy of the BFI National Archive

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Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984) “It was definitely the science fiction angle that sold the script. The hook originally was a car that either had an atomic bomb in the boot or some nuclear waste. This changed somewhat during the production to something more metaphysical. People tend to assume that they are aliens but there is little evidence in the movie to substantiate that. All there is is some daffy girl and a photo of two condoms wearing grass skirts with fish eyes. Fantastic things do happen in the movie but they are all rooted in reality and my perception of Los Angeles being this fantasy world where a whole bunch of people are working at cross-purposes in a semi-industrial wasteland. L.A. is exactly that as far as I’m aware.”

- Alex Cox on Repo Man Executive produced by Michael Nesmith of Monkees fame, Alex Cox’s off-beat science-fiction/road movie/ comedy starring Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton tells the story of a young man who becomes involved in the risky repossession of a 1964 Chevy Malibu with something extraterrestrial in the boot. Featuring a classic punk soundtrack including a dynamic theme by Iggy Pop, Cox’s irreverent genre mash-up is one of the biggest cult films of the 1980s, exploring classic conspiracy theories and taking aim at politics, religion and consumerism in the USA. 35mm print courtesy of the Sundance Collection at UCLA Film & Television Archive The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984) “... Terminator speaks to the fact that though none of us may think much about the consequences our actions as individuals might have on the future, those actions do have consequences.”

- James Cameron on The Terminator James Cameron’s classic tale of a time-travelling cybernetic assassin sent back from the future to prevent a man from ever being born. With tremendous performances from Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn, Cameron’s action-packed science-fiction thriller is truly one of the all-time greats. As with Videodrome, the integral special-effects, here created by the late Stan Winston, are still both impressive and effective, the iconic steel skeleton of The Terminator cleverly designed, much like the film itself, to retain its grim authenticity forever.

“I mean, we are very close to creating thinking machines, and that kind of development could be perverted in the future into a machine like the terminator. Of course, the story is meant to entertain, but I also hope the audience will think about what we may be creating. All technological development has had unplanned for side-effects.”

- James Cameron on The Terminator The Terminator: Programme Note The Return of The Terminator At Cannes 2017, Arnold Schwarzenegger confirmed to Screen Daily that he will collaborate with James Cameron on a new Terminator project.

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The Brother from Another Planet (John Sayles, 1984) “...the Statue of Liberty is pretty impressive. You know, if you landed on another planet and there was a statue that big you'd be worried, "Oh my God, I hope the people aren't that big!"

- John Sayles on The Brother from Another Planet Revolving around a mute alien in the form of a black man who crash-lands in New York City, this allegorical science-fiction from John Sayles is a rarely seen gem. Touching on social issues such as immigration, racism and drug abuse, and featuring an absolutely outstanding central performance from Joe Morton, The Brother from Another Planet shares much in common with Nicholas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, (1976), both films cleverly using the context of extraterrestrial life to reflect questions of isolation and identity in terrestrial society. “...I had this short dream about a black guy in Harlem who wasn’t talking, actually couldn’t talk and get help. He was wandering around and nobody paid much attention to him. It was really, “How alienated can you get?” Not only are you out of a job and out of a home in New York City, and black, but you’re not even from the damn planet and you can’t tell anybody about it...”

- John Sayles on The Brother from Another Planet 35mm preservation print courtesy of UCLA Film & Television Archive Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985) “We were at this steel making town in Wales, on the beach at sunset. There were these great cays where the ships come in bringing the coal, and they’re transported by conveyor belt over the beach to the steel plant. The beach was covered with coal dust, so it’s a pitch black beach. The sun was going down out there on the sea, and I had the image of someone sitting with a portable radio picking up strange Latin American music in this desolate world – that’s where the movie started.

None of that is in the film, but that’s how it began - and we went from there.”

- Terry Gilliam on Brazil Following on from the lively fantasy of Time Bandits, (1981), (screening as part of HandMade in Britain), Terry Gilliam unveiled this dark Orwellian science-fiction starring Jonathan Pryce as a lonely dreamer trapped in a bureaucratic dystopia. With a star-studded cast at his disposal, including Robert De Niro, Bob Hoskins, Jim Broadbent, Katherine Helmond, Peter Vaughn and Michael Palin, Gilliam once again miraculously translates his unique vision into a seemingly authentic alternative universe, but this time the scale is absolutely breathtaking.

“It’s a strange thing, but the character Jonathan Pryce plays in Brazil is like the boy in Time Bandits fifteen years later. He has the same problems, he still dreams, but he’s a bit older and things have changed.”

- Terry Gilliam on Brazil and Time Bandits

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The Quiet Earth (Geoffrey Murphy, 1985) “At a certain level it's about science, how the ethics of the scientist right back to the ancient Greeks, right through to Isaac Newton and so on, that they dedicated their lives to driving back the frontiers of knowledge for the benefit of mankind. That's the scientist's basic ethic, isn't it?”

- Geoffrey Murphy on The Quiet Earth A man wakes up to find that a cosmic “event” has seemingly erased the rest of the human race.

Based the novel of the same name by Craig Harrison, Geoffrey Murphy’s The Quiet Earth was one of the first science-fiction feature films made in New Zealand. Featuring an outstanding performance from Bruno Lawrence, Murphy’s quirky sci-fi gem unfolds unpredictably and is graced throughout with striking genre imagery, the pièce de résistance of which is undoubtedly the otherworldly final shot.

“Generally speaking, I’ve been disappointed with science fiction movies. I never really thought they captured the spirit of science fiction. They sort of “Hollywoodized” it, or made it too brutal and superficial. To me, really good science fiction had something to say or underscored some social trend.

There have been a couple of notable exceptions: Ridley Scott’s Alien and Blade Runner. Even Star Wars, in its own way, was much more true to science fiction than many other films.”

- Geoffrey Murphy

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Brave New World – Special Retrospective/Black Box Crossover Screening Born in Flames (Lizzie Borden, 1983)

By EIFF Black Box Programmer Kim Knowles New York, sometime in the future, a new socialist order has been established following the ‘Social Democratic War of Liberation’. Despite this alternative political system, however, the position of women has changed very little, with exploitation, subordination, and harassment on the street still a daily occurrence. Pushed to breaking point, a Women’s Army rises up to fight repression and crush patriarchy through guerilla acts of anarchistic intervention and media infiltration. Frequently described as a science-fiction film, Born in Flames is perhaps more accurately a ‘what if?’ scenario, a futurist fantasy filled with both frustration and hope. The New York depicted in the film is not radically different to the time in which it was made, and it is this mixing of reality and fantasy that give it a unique flavor. Like Regrouping, Borden’s rare feature debut, which screened at EIFF last year, the style is raw, urgent and energetic, sliding between fiction and documentary modes.

One of the most influential feminist works ever to have been made, Borden’s classic of radical filmmaking ultimately explores beyond the female position. Broadcasting from Radio Ragazza, one of the two underground feminist radio stations in the film, the character of Isabel sums it up: “It is not only the story of women’s oppression, it is the story of sexism, racism, biogotry, nationalism, false religion and the blasphemy of the state controlled church, the story of environmental poisoning and nuclear warfare. Of the powerful over the powerless, for the sake of sick and depraved manipulations that abuse and corner the human soul like a rat in a cage. It is all of our responsibilities as individual and together to examine and to re-examine everything, leaving no stones unturned […] The scope and capabilities of human love are as wide and encompassing as this vast universe that we swirl in. One for all, and all for oneness.”

Little wonder, then, that Born in Flames still resonates with contemporary audiences.

“It feels strange that the film was restored by Anthology Film Archives in 2016, which happens to be the call letters of Radio Ragazza: 2016 on the dial. 2016 inaugurated the year of rage in the USA and around the world. It’s bizarre because I never intended for Born In Flames to be seen as ‘dystopian’. It looks like it is because New York has been cleaned up and the New York of the film is so gutted, so destroyed, bomb-destroyed, as if time-in-reverse. Seeing it now reawakens my rage – so little has changed! Speaking to women after screenings connects me to a younger generation, some of whom are politicized for the first time after a couple of generations of women who rejected the label of feminism. I am stunned that Born In Flames has this relevance and it is my turn to listen.“ - Lizzie Borden Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with restoration funding from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The Film Foundation

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Fantastic Planets: The Futuristic Art of René Laloux EIFF presents two rarely screened animated science-fiction cult classics by French director René Laloux. From his first surreal animations, on which he worked with the patients of a psychiatric hospital, through to his extraordinary collaborations with some of the most talented French artists of the day, Laloux’s avant-garde legacy is a treasure trove for both fans of animation and fantasy cinema alike.

The Programme La Planète Sauvage (René Laloux, 1973) Special Prize at 26th Cannes Film Festival 1973 Gandahar (René Laloux, 1988) Lecture Programme Science Fiction Film: The Philosophy of the Future The Curation of Fantastic Planets Consistently exploring themes of communication and identity, Laloux’s imaginative work is an ideal accompaniment to the Brave New World strand, and our original intention was to screen all three of his feature films. However...

Unavailable for Content: Les Maîtres du Temps Unfortunately, due to a complicated rights issue, we are unable to include Laloux’s 1982 feature, Les Maîtres du Temps. Had it been available to us, it would have been an important entry in this strand.

“Even although Time Masters was in no way as successful as Fantastic Planet, it was nevertheless a positive experience for me, in the same sense that, afterwards, I never lacked work. There are things I still love in that film, such as the two little gnomes, and the core story. But there are also many problems with it. The animation isn’t always what it should be, and the main female character is graphically atrocious. It all has to do with production compromises because of money. I wish I could put together a new version someday, and take out some of those things.”

- René Laloux on Les Maîtres du Temps

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René Laloux “If I have done many different things in my life, it is because I used to be poor. I kept on painting but I had a great deal of difficulty making a living from it. So, I chose jobs that would enable me to survive.

I don’t know if I learned much as a bank employee, for example, but my four years of work in a psychiatric hospital were an experience I consider very important. I learned a great deal about humanity.”

- René Laloux Born in Paris on 13th July 1929, René Laloux was an animator whose extraordinarily fertile imagination fuelled a small but unique body of work that still attracts the attention of science-fiction and animation cinema fans worldwide. Laloux’s first experiences with film came as a direct result of gaining employment at La Borde Psychiatric Clinic in Cour-Cheverney in the late fifties. This progressive clinic operated an open doors policy and the patients were actively encouraged to become involved in various the therapeutic pursuits on offer. One of these was a popular painting class run by Laloux in a converted greenhouse. Enthused by the success of the classes and Inspired by puppeteer Yves Joly, (with whom he once worked), Laloux introduced the group to shadow puppetry and sourced a 16mm film camera. The resulting short Tic-Tac (1957) is a haunting gem, made over the course of a year and scripted and edited by Laloux and the patients. Next, the group would experiment with colour film, using fragments of tinted glass and sheets of tracing paper to create the kaleidoscopic Les Achalunés, (1958). Meanwhile, Tic-Tac was bought and broadcast on primetime television and Laloux seized the opportunity to secure backing for another production.

Graduating to 35mm film, the group produced Les Dents du singe, (1960), a striking stop-motion animation using cut-out figures to tell the story of an evil dentist who steals teeth and the mysterious monkey magician who stops him. It was through the success of this film that Laloux would be introduced to well known writer, actor and artist Roland Topor, (who wrote the novel The Tenent on which Roman Polanski’s 1976 film was based, and appeared as Renfield in Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht in 1979).

“In my opinion, he’s the greatest illustrator in France, if not the world. He’s a poet.”

- René Laloux on Roland Topor Having left the clinic to pursue a career in animation, Laloux’s next project was Les Temps Mort, (1964), on which he would collaborate with Topor. Featuring documentary footage of subjects ranging from war to bull–fighting intercut with memorable heavy ink artwork by Topor, this short, powerful black and white statement on the dark side of humanity was the start of a of an artistic partnership between Laloux and Topor that would last for almost a decade. Together they would deliver the short Les Escargots (1965), the surreal tale of a struggling farmer whose tears of woe miraculously cure his failing crop, only for the outsize vegetables to create an army of giant marauding snails; and Laloux’s masterpiece, landmark science-fiction animation feature, La Planète Sauvage, (1973).

“It’s sort of a hymn to education. Above all it’s an epic – a surrealist western.”

- René Laloux on La Planète Sauvage The huge success of La Planète Sauvage led to Laloux opening up his own animation studio in Angers. There, he started developing a ten-part animated series with Jean-Pierre Dionnet, founder of famous French magazine Métal Hurlant, based on the writing of Stefan Wul, whose work had also

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provided the basis for La Planète Sauvage. La Piéges du futur, was intended to enable Laloux to work with a string of up and coming young Métal Hurlant talents, with each episode to feature a different designer chosen from their ranks. The first, Les Maîtres du Temps, (1985), saw him paired with none other than Jean Giraud, alias Moebius, the highly influential artist/designer whose work also graced several major live-action science-fiction films of the period.

“To collaborate with René was for me a great joy because he gave to me the chance to do something I’d been waiting for for so long, and allowed me to cross the wall separating comics and animation.”

- Jean Giraud on René Laloux In the early stages of production, a decision was taken to abandon the rest of the proposed television series and focus on turning Les Maîtres du Temps into a feature for theatrical release.

However, this meant that the once sufficient budget was now woefully inadequate. Corners were cut, and sadly, the animation suffered, leaving Laloux and Giraud dissatisfied with the finished product. However, their combined talents proved to be an attractive proposition to French audiences, and the film became an enormous domestic success.

“René is an artist outside of time. He’s neither modern nor old-fashioned, nor from the past, nor from the future. He’s an entity, a pixie, a nearly invisible magician who is able, if one says the magic word, to supply abundance and absolute beauty. René’s destiny is to evolve inside of the zones where miracles are possible.”

- Jean Giraud on René Laloux Returning to the shorter format for his next venture, Laloux enlisted the help of Phillippe Caza, another superb artist associated with Métal Hurlant. This was the start of an important artistic relationship for Laloux, he and Caza collaborating on several films, including Comment Wang-Fô fut sauvé, (1987), an adaptation of a short story set in medieval China by Marguerite Yourcenar; Laloux’s final feature, the magnificent Gandahar, (1988), and his last project of all, dream-like short La Prisonnière, (1988), a brief, beautiful tale of two children who travel to a city where silence is golden.

“René Laloux is... sort of a chef d’orchestre figuring out how to get the best out of his collaborators, in order to recast it into a work that is his own, that carries his print. The great miracle is, in any event, succeeding in creating that unity.”

- Philippe Caza on René Laloux

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La Planète Sauvage (René Laloux, 1973) “For sixty years, Silly Symphony-style creatures have dominated cartoons throughout the world. For me, there was no question of adding to that army of cats and mice, drawn in a style that has deteriorated considerably because of television. For my part, I try to approach the design of an animated picture in a completely different manner. There are in Europe, and especially in France, some graphic artists of great poetic talent. Whether they have come up by way of comics or illustration, they often share a taste for realistic fantasy. I would like to lead these artists to cross the frontier between their solitary work on static images and our teamwork on animated pictures.”

- René Laloux Winner of a special jury prize at the 26th Cannes in 1973, Laloux’s first feature was this unforgettable adaptation of Stefan Wul’s novel, Oms en Série, a fantastic allegorical tale of humans being kept as pets by a race of blue giants. With its astonishing imagery and captivating, innovative perspective, La Planète Sauvage is a milestone in the history of animated cinema.

Gandahar (René Laloux, 1988) “To me, this is a simple story. It’s about an old creature, an entity who is becoming senile and is very, very afraid of dying. So, because it doesn’t want to die, it returns to the past to steal the regenerating energy it needs from a happy planet inhabited by men called Gandahar. There’s a time paradox at the end, to the effect that we are, ourselves, creating the monsters that will one day destroy us. I like stories with time paradoxes...”

- René Laloux on Gandahar Based on a story by Jean Pierre-Andrevon, this gloriously inventive science-fiction epic was Laloux’s third and final feature. Exploring themes of ecology and identity, and visualised, once again, in absolutely unforgettable, outlandish style, Laloux considered Gandahar to be his masterpiece.

“It is definitely my best film to date, at least from a technical standpoint. I don’t know if the film will have the same amount of success as Fantastic Planet. That depends on whether it answers a need in the public, something that always remains unpredictable.”

- René Laloux on Gandahar Gandahar: Programme Note Light Years: René Laloux and Isaac Asimov Translated, much to Laloux’s delight, by Isaac Asimov, an English language version of Gandahar was released by Harvey Weinstein in America under the name Light Years. The cast included Glenn Close, Christopher Plummer, Bridget Fonda and Penn and Teller.

“I am absolutely delighted that Harvey got Isaac to do the job. I have an immense admiration for him. He is a wonderful writer.”

- René Laloux on Harvey Weinstein and Isaac Asimov

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Fantastic Planets: Programme Notes Moebius Goes to Hollywood: The Art of Jean Giraud in Science Fiction Cinema “You must understand that even today, for any artist in the world, Hindu, Guatemalan or European, being contacted by a Hollywood studio is something prestigious. Culturally, I was a victim of this desire to break away from European culture, and I had taken American culture as perspective, as a model. And being invited to Hollywood was like being invited to Olympus. A simple admirer who is suddenly chosen by the gods. It seems stupid, but that’s how I felt.”

- Jean Giraud on Hollywood The enigmatic designer of Laloux’s elusive Les Maîtres du Temps, Jean Giraud, more famously known as Moebius, was an important artistic contributor to the era of science fiction film we are exploring.

Already famous for his revolutionary work in French comic strip art, (including world famous western Blueberry, and his incredible contributions to groundbreaking fantasy comic Metal Hurlant), Giraud first became involved in cinema in 1975, when he was enlisted by none other than Alejandro Jodorowsky, famed Chilean director of psychedelic early 70s classics El Topo and The Holy Mountain, (which screened at the 27th EIFF in 1973), as designer/storyboard artist on his ambitious film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune.

“He is truly an explorer and a genius.”

- Alejandro Jodorowsky on Jean Giraud After two years of productive and exciting artistic development in Paris, Jodorowsky’s epic vision famously failed to come to fruition. However, his artistic relationship with Giraud would survive this disaster and continue beyond, the two collaborating again several years later on celebrated graphic novel The Incal, into which they reinvested elements of their stunning unused work from Dune. “...I don’t consider Dune a failure. For me it was a success because I left the project a richer man.”

- Jean Giraud on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune With regards to the curation of our Brave New World strand, aside from Giraud’s involvement, it’s worth taking a moment to contemplate this well documented “lost” project from another angle.

Given the artistic calibre and cultural currency of the “spiritual warriors” Jodorowsky had assembled to help realise his grand vision, including key sci-fi artists Giraud, H. R. Giger and Chris Foss, special effects wizard Dan O’Bannon, rock bands Pink Floyd and Magma, and a cast including Salvador Dali, Mick Jagger, David Carradine and Orson Welles; had Dune actually been made, all the evidence points to the fact that it may have changed the direction of science fiction cinema at the time, thus directly affecting the birth of the wave we are examining.

“If Alejandro’s Dune could have been made, it would have been... bigger than 2001.”

- Chris Foss on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune Having all bonded during their lengthy involvement with Jodorowsky, Giraud would reconvene with Giger and Foss in the aftermath of the collapse of Dune, to work on the film of a script that O’Bannon had written in the interim. It was a film that would bring Giger’s dark, nightmarish

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creations memorably to the fore, and change the face of science fiction cinema forever. Ridley Scott’s Alien.

“I was in contact with Moebius indirectly as he was designing the costumes for Alien. Those astronauts’ clothes and helmets just like Ridley Scott wanted them. They looked like ancient divers.

He did a fantastic job.”

- H. R. Giger on Jean Giraud and Alien Alien, (which screened at the 33rd EIFF in 1979 with Scott in attendance), would provide Giraud with his credentials in Hollywood, and lead to him lending his unique conceptual design to such films as Tron, The Abyss and The Fifth Element. Aside from the work he was actually commissioned to do, there are also clear echoes of Giraud’s pioneering art in several other highly influential sci-fi blockbusters of the time, most notably the “probe droid” in The Empire Strikes Back, and the futuristic cityscapes of Blade Runner.

“Yes, Mobius, I think, is marvellous - probably the best comic-strip artist in the world. We had him working a little bit on Alien, and I tried to get him involved in Blade Runner. I'd love to do a complete film with him, but I always catch him on the wrong foot. My concept of Blade Runner linked up to a comic strip I'd seen him do a long time ago; it was called "The Long Tomorrow," and I think Dan O'Bannon [author of the original Alien script] wrote it. His work on that was marvellous because he created a tangible future. If the future is one you can see and touch, it makes you a little uneasier because you feel it's just round the corner. And you always get in his work a sense of overload, of cities on overload.”

- Ridley Scott on Jean Giraud For a final fitting tribute to Giraud’s extraordinary talent, and the power of his art in the context of science fiction cinema, we turn, somewhat unexpectedly, to legendary Italian director, and passionate Moebius fan, Federico Fellini.

“To make a science fiction film is an old dream of mine. I have thought about it for many years now, way beyond the present vogue of these films. Undoubtedly, you would be the perfect collaborator; however I would never call upon you because you are too complete, your visionary strength is too formidable. What would there be left for me to do?”

- Federico Fellini in a letter to Jean Giraud, 1979

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Brave New World/Fantastic Planets Lecture Science Fiction Film: The Philosophy of the Future

By James Mooney, University of Edinburgh By imaginatively transporting us to fantastic planets and brave new worlds, films can act as a powerful tool for addressing the philosophical issues of the day, as well as providing a prescient insight into those of tomorrow.

In this illustrated lecture, James Mooney, (Centre for Open Learning, University of Edinburgh), will explore the relationship between philosophy and science fiction cinema and consider what the latter can teach us about metaphysics, morality and what it means to be human.

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3rd Identity: Scotland “The festival unit in Glasgow sent me to Berlin. I looked at the wall, and everything was changed for me. I realised then that it was so important to be in touch with Europe, and to understand the European experience, that’s been different from our own, and that we were going into something in the future where our experiences were going to merge.”

- Tom McGrath

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Electric Contact: The Visionary Worlds of Tom McGrath “...a man who – through his own work, and through his unique personal mix of creative energy and sheer human kindness – exercised a profound influence on a whole generation of Scottish writers and artists.”

- Joyce McMillan on Tom McGrath EIFF is proud to present a cross-arts journey into the worlds of visionary Scottish playwright, poet and jazz musician, Tom McGrath, whose extraordinary writing in and around the era in focus dared to explore both the harsh realities of the present, and the extraordinary possibilities of the future.

This diverse part of the programme has been designed to highlight EIFF’s Scottish roots, whilst also celebrating the glorious 70th anniversary of Edinburgh’s world famous festivals. “...always questioning, never predictable, endlessly encouraging of the creativity of others, and a passionate international citizen of the post-war world that made him, as well as of a small country that he helped to make less small, by the sheer breadth of his imagination.”

- Joyce McMillan on Tom McGrath The Programme: As is necessary to fully represent the eclectic legacy of such an astonishingly versatile artist, the content of this strand encompasses music, stage and screen. Events are programmed over three different venues.

Screen Programme Play for Tomorrow: The Nuclear Family (John Glenister, 1982) In Verse (Michael Grieve, 1988) Scotland 2000: Wealth or Wasteland (Adrian Herring, 1987) Off the Page: Tom McGrath (Erina Rayner, 1990) Wholly Communion (Peter Whitehead, 1965) The Connection (Shirley Clarke, 1961) screened at 62nd EIFF 2008 Stage Programme The Hard Man (1977) The Android Circuit (1978) Musical Programme Tommy Smith and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra: Electric Contact - A Jazz Tribute to Tom McGrath featuring Tam Dean Burn Lecture Programme Exploring the Explorer - Tom McGrath in the Sixties and Seventies What Else Can It Become? - Tom McGrath and Language

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The Curation of Electric Contact – The Visionary Worlds of Tom McGrath With McGrath’s rarely seen 1982 BBC Play for Tomorrow: The Nuclear Family, (a science-fiction set in Scotland), at its centre, our onscreen programme mixes interview, documentary and drama, embellishing our biographical picture of McGrath culturally, and firmly linking him artistically to EIFF history. Live stage readings of two of McGrath’s groundbreaking plays from the era in focus will also be staged, both directly reflecting our other retrospective content from a Scottish perspective. These will be directed by celebrated Scottish actor and performer Tam Dean Burn, (recently seen in SKY’s Fortitude), who will also feature in a high-profile jazz tribute to McGrath, exploring his musical influences and poetry. In addition to these special events, there will be a series of free academic lectures based on McGrath’s life and his work.

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Electric Contact – The Visionary Worlds of Tom McGrath: Programme Note Tam Dean Burn and EIFF From his starring roles in Angus Reid’s Scottish road movie Brotherly Love, (in which he appeared alongside his brother, musician Russell Burn), and Morag McKinnon’s dark Edinburgh based fantasy feature 3, (screened at the 48th and 49th EIFFs respectively), to his memorable appearance in Philip John’s Moon Dogs, (screened at the 70th EIFF), Tam Dean Burn has presented his screen work at the Edinburgh International Film Festival many times over the years. In 2017, Burn is a key part of The Future is History programme, bringing the weight of his vast artistic experience, informed vision and highly acclaimed acting skills to the development and presentation of the three unique live events in the Scotland strand.

Whilst attending the EIFF world premiere of Moon Dogs last year, (alongside director John, producer Kathy Spiers, stars Jack Parry Jones, Christy O’Donnell and Tara Lee, and world famous musician Anton Newcombe), Burn kindly took a moment to contribute to our EIFF Memories project. Here’s what he said...

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Tom McGrath Born in Rutherglen on October 3rd 1940, Tom McGrath had notions of artistic exploration from a very early age. Captivated by the likes of Charles Olsen, Gertrude Stein, Jack Kerouac and Charlie “Bird” Parker, the young McGrath shunned the oppressive Presbyterian atmosphere that surrounded him in Scotland, choosing instead to focus on the faraway wonders of American beat-culture. However, after reading Young Adam by notorious Glaswegian writer Alexander Trocchi, he realised that perhaps the artistic stimulation he sought could be found a little closer to home.

“Trocchi was dangerous, exciting, switched-on, international.”

- Tom McGrath on Alexander Trocchi McGrath’s early fascination with counterculture brought him into contact with its Scottish advocates such as Trocchi and R. D. Laing, with whom, inspired by Timothy Leary, he would become involved in Project Sigma, a blueprint for cultural revolution. This activity would lead to him being invited to read at the International Poetry Incarnation in the Albert Hall, a beat-poetry summit featuring a lineup including Trocchi and Allan Ginsberg, (this event is captured in Peter Whitehead’s Wholly Communion, screening as part of this strand). Becoming features editor of Peace News in 1965, and then co-founding and editing radical counterculture magazine The International Times in 1966/67, McGrath eventually returned to Scotland in 1968 and enrolled at Glasgow University to study English and Drama. In 1969 his work was featured in Michael Horovitz’s significant anthology Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain and in 1971, McGrath’s own The Buddah Poems was published. sitting with some dignity across from myself - Tom McGrath, 9. from The Buddah Poems McGrath first became involved with the Traverse Theatre in 1972, providing music for Tom Buchan’s Tell Charlie Thanks for the Truss. This connection would develop in 1973 with McGrath being brought in as Musical Director on Buchan’s The Great Northern Welly Boot Show starring Billy Connolly, Bill Paterson and Alex Norton, and featuring the designs of artist John Byrne, (including Connolly’s iconic banana boots). It was also during this era that McGrath brought several legendary jazz musicians across the Atlantic to play in Scotland, his astonishing guests including Miles Davis, (who informed McGrath that his suit was a nice one “for a white man”), Duke Ellington and The Mahavishnu Orchestra. In 1974, McGrath made the first of many absolutely crucial contributions to the Scottish arts when he founded, and became first Artistic Director of the Third Eye Centre in Glasgow, which would latterly become the Centre for Contemporary Arts.

“I’d been playing piano in The Great Northern Welly Boot Show and I’d watch how the actors would build their comic business. I’d talk a lot to Kenny [Ireland] about the relationship between comic business and jazz. Being on stage with Billy Connolly, you couldn’t help but notice they were so much into rhythms. I could tell from the way the actors were hitting the rhythms of the speech whether they were going to get a laugh or not - or how big the laugh was going to be."

- Tom McGrath

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1976 saw McGrath write the first of his many plays, the classic Laurel and Hardy for The Traverse.

The show, starring John Sheddon and Kenny Ireland, was a huge hit, transferring to the Mayfair Theatre in London, and it signalled the dawn of a golden era for McGrath as a playwright. Delivering an unbroken run of groundbreaking work that spanned the 1970s, his scripts from this era include The Hard Man in 1977 and The Android Circuit in 1978 for The Traverse (both being staged as part of this strand); Sisters in 1978 for the Theatre Royal, Stratford East; semi-autobiographical The Innocent in 1979 for the Royal Shakespeare Company; and Animal for the Traverse in 1979, (a mute play featuring fourteen apes and two men). McGrath then travelled to America to teach playwriting at the University of Iowa and upon his return to Scotland in 1980 he was appointed the Scottish Arts Council’s Writer in Residence at The Traverse.

“I think the theatre should reflect society, and if it does reflect a society, members of that society will come and see it.”

- Tom McGrath McGrath wrote 1-2-3 (Who Are You Anyway; Very Important Person; Moondog) for the Traverse in 1981. The show transferred to the ICA in London and Very Important Person and Moondog were broadcast on BBC Radio 3. The same year he would also play an important role in the foundation of the Tron Theatre Club, precursor to the Tron Theatre. In 1982, he contributed to the BBC’s Play for Tomorrow series with The Nuclear Family, (screening as part of this strand); adapted Neil Gunn’s novel The Silver Darlings for BBC Radio 4; and co-wrote soap-opera Kilbreck for BBC Radio Scotland.

Working with Borderline Theatre Company he provided music for their version of Aladdin, and in 1983 wrote The Phone Box for their touring company. Around this time, McGrath was interviewed in great depth for The Riverside Interviews 6. This book is still undoubtedly the primary source of information on his life and work, (and proved absolutely invaluable in the curation of this strand).

Throughout the rest of the decade, McGrath would continue to produce challenging and entertaining work such as Kora for the Traverse in 1986; Trivial Pursuits for The Royal Lyceum in 1988; and CITY for Tramway in 1989. A collection of his poetry, Sardines, was also published in the late eighties, (and republished in 2014), and McGrath was appointed as the Scottish Arts Council's Associate Literary Director, based at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.

What’s that?

It’s a fish.

A fish?

Aye, yae know thae things that poison yae.

- Tom McGrath, Fish from Sardines In 1990, after writing The Flitting for Cumbernauld Theatre, McGrath staged The Deviant Tradition at the Royal Lyceum. A series of readings featuring the work of German writers Heiner Muller and Tankred Dorst interspersed with material by Alexander Trocchi, this highly successful experiment would lead to an acclaimed two-part production of Dorst’s Merlin being staged, adapted by McGrath for the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company from a translation by Ella Wildridge.

“It’s set in a sliding time-zone, and it does really extraordinary things to your mind. You get the feeling that it’s not really about Arthurian legend at all but about something inside you.”

- Tom McGrath on Tankred Dorst’s Merlin

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As the nineties unfolded, the steady stream of memorable McGrath scripts continued, including Buchanan for the Traverse in 1993; a version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped for the Royal Lyceum in 1994; and a translation of Daniel Danis' Stones and Ashes for the Traverse in 1995, (featuring Tam Dean Burn). Before the decade was over, he would also revise Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for children’s theatre company Catherine Wheels; release poetry collection Birdcalls; write the Johann Sebastian Bach inspired The Dream Train for Magnetic North; script the short film Aboot the Hoose for the 1987 Housing Conditions Campaign; and oversee David Miller’s A Meeting with the Monster: The Life and Times of Alexander Trocchi for Merlin. Having adapted Electra for Theatre Babel in 2000 as part of their trilogy The Greeks, (also including Liz Lochhead’s Medea and David Greig’s Oedipus), McGrath would return to the public eye one last time in 2005 with his final script, the poignant My Old Man for Magnetic North.

"This latest play is about old age. It came from a notion I had about how old people were depicted on stage: they always seem to be the same thing and that annoyed me. But as I was writing it, it became something personal because I became a grandfather."

- Tom McGrath on My Old Man Tom McGrath

By David Greig, Artistic Director and joint Chief Executive of the Royal Lyceum Theatre Tom McGrath was a giant of Scottish contemporary culture. But which Tom McGrath are we talking about? Tom McGrath the playwright? The poet? The jazz musician? The editor? The maker of happenings? Tom McGrath who founded the Third Eye Centre & The Playwright’s studio?

As a man and an artist, Tom was so present, so prolific, so full of possibilities that, truly, he contained multitudes. He combined the intensely local with the spiritually global, he revelled in science and technology, he played with form, he documented the lives of the marginal… he wrote poetry, politics, plays, music, translations, live art wherever you look - Tom opened up the territory.

Over five, incredibly creative decades, he expanded the landscape of Scottish culture. The rest of us are just following behind.

My first contact with Tom was also my first contact with the world of Scottish Theatre. In 1991, in a typically Tom move, he decided to use some funds from his role as Literary Advisor to the Scottish Arts Council to bring three writers, three choreographers and three musicians together in a room for a week, ‘to just play, and see what happens!’

One of those writers was me. I was then a baby playwright with only a couple of fringe plays to my name. Suddenly I found myself in a room with people like David Harrower and Steve Kettley. Words put to music. Words put to dance. Dance forming words. Music inspiring characters.

I can trace no play in particular back to that week but I know it shaped me forever. To be welcomed into a community of artists, to meet Tom and learn about German playwrights and Scots language and Jazz and to play… Tom allowed us to play together for a week and what happened… nothing and everything.

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The Hard Man (1977) “The Hardman” is in fact a Glasgow expression. People will say of someone, “He fancies himself as a bit of a hardman.” Some people act as if they are hardmen, others are hardmen – individuals totally committed to violence as a way of life and identity.”

- Tom McGrath on The Hard Man Forty years old this year, McGrath’s famous examination of “the most violent man in Scotland” is a landmark in Scottish theatre. Originally staged at the Traverse in May 1977, under the direction of Assistant Director Peter Lichtenfels, (during the memorable tenure of Artistic Director Chris Parr), The Hard Man charts the rise and fall of Glaswegian gangster Johnnie Byrne, and is based on the life of notorious Scottish criminal Jimmy Boyle, (also the subject of John Mackenzie’s A Sense of Freedom), with whom McGrath collaborated on the script.

“I worked with Jimmy Boyle for several months in the Special Unit, Barlinnie Prison to produce The Hard man. We discussed his life in detail. Sometimes I would have parts of the developing script to read him, sometimes he would have scenes for me – pub and cell block conversations, rich in character and zany underworld language. How do you cut someone with a razor? He would demonstrate, showing me how he held his body, how he moved...”

- Tom McGrath on writing The Hard Man, Time Out In addition to his dialogue with Boyle, McGrath immersed himself in research. Visiting several Scottish prisons, he spoke with staff at various levels, toured the facilities and observed inmates involved in art therapy, all the time absorbing as much of the atmosphere of prison life as possible.

He also started to draw inspiration from other sources, including the poems of musician Lindsay Cooper, (whose work McGrath published), elements of which appear in the finished play.

“I was just finding things and dramatising their moment to moment reality.”

- Tom McGrath on writing The Hard Man Fascinated by the audience response to the comical physicality of his previous play, Laurel and Hardy, McGrath was inspired to tackle the savagery of The Hard Man by recasting slapstick, stripping the comedy away to present only the stylised violence. Prescribing rhythm and repetition in the dialogue, on-stage nudity and a live percussive score to bring a primal, ritualistic energy to the show, and deploying Boyle’s crucial input to add the terrifying authenticity, McGrath’s exploration of the archetypal Scottish “hardman” was a powerful, shocking experience for audiences of the time.

Nevertheless, it was universally embraced, transferring to the ICA, touring internationally and becoming one of the most successful Traverse shows ever.

“I can only report that I have experienced the most moving play of the year and that the entire production sets standards in this sort of social, realistic drama that I cannot imagine being matched in a long time.”

- Michael Coveney on The Hard Man, Financial Times

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The Hard Man: Programme Notes The Hard Woman Significantly, our presentation of this famously masculine play, a reading directed by Tam Dean Burn, will put a new spin on Scottish gender and identity as it will star a woman in the title role. At EIFF 2017, world famous Scottish actress Kate Dickie will be The Hard Man. “I can’t wait for this. xx” - Kate Dickie on playing The Hard Man, Twitter Kate Dickie on The Hard Man “I had read The Hard Man years ago and I remember it had a real impact on me. Niall gave me a copy and I read it and I was like, ‘Wow, this is so pertinent today’. It’s sad how pertinent it still is, of just how maligned the working class and the poor are, and how circumstances can, in a lot of ways, simply not help.” “...traditionally women are cast as the nurturers in society. They give birth and traditionally look after the family and tend to the house and all that. These kind of expectations about women still very much exist. We might be heading towards a more equal society, but there’s everyday sexism and misogyny that goes on, even in small expectations [of women]. Women are whole, rounded people, like men, and they have many different aspects and have different upbringings, violent upbringings, and hardships, and I just think we do women an injustice not to show these possibilities or these actual realities.”

“What interests me about characters is what makes them behave in the way they do. Johnny Byrne is the perpetrator of the gang in the play but the way I see it, the reason for what he does is to do with his father disappearing one day. Byrne looks out the window, his father’s car is gone. The family goes into the poorhouse: he gets mocked for being poor and wearing trampy clothes. For me, that’s the ‘click’ into him. He doesn’t have ambition outwith his life. He didn’t think, ‘I can get out of this’; he decides he’s going to be the best gangster, and he’s never going to be poor, or be mocked, again.”

“I also started researching girl gangs, and looking at women and violence...”

“Characters tend to fascinate me; why I say yes to roles, or have interest in roles, is their background, and what shaped them, and what makes them – why they’re unhappy or why they’re angry or why they’re happy. The retrospective programme is all about identity, after all.”

Thanks to Russell Leadbetter and the Sunday Herald Kate Dickie and EIFF Kate Dickie has an extensive history with EIFF through films such as Colm McCarthy’s Outcast, (64th EIFF 2010), Morag McKinnon’s Donkeys, (64th EIFF 2010), Paul Wright’s For Those in Peril, (67th EIFF 2013), and John McKay’s Not Another Happy Ending, (closing night of 67th EIFF 2013). At EIFF 2017, as well as taking the lead role in our presentation of Tom McGrath’s The Hard Man, Dickie will also appear onscreen, in the World Premiere of Mikey Murray’s powerful, thought-provoking short, Natalie.

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The Android Circuit (1978) “My first attempt to introduce science into the theatre was The Android Circuit, in which a cosmonaut makes love to a female android, merging human and machine. The set glittered with a rainbow film. Artificial birds twittered on the soundtrack.”

- Tom McGrath on The Android Circuit Inspired by the work of Isaac Asimov, Phillip K. Dick and Edwin Morgan, and breaking free of the trend for realism and masculinity in Scottish theatre at the time, (a fire obviously fuelled by his own previous play, The Hard Man), McGrath lightens the tone and steps into the science fiction arena with The Android Circuit, produced by The Traverse Theatre in 1978.

“I wanted to introduce bright colours again, make use of the synthesiser as an instrument in the theatre. It seemed that the theatre was lagging behind in its reflection of technology: the “contemporary” world it was portraying was dangerously out of date.”

- Tom McGrath on The Android Circuit Having fled a post- apocalyptic Earth, two men, Astro and his butler Sylvester, exist in comfortable isolation aboard a space capsule with a faltering power supply. Much to the dismay of Sylvester, their secluded routine, a continual loop in which they automatically perform a set of long-redundant rituals, is interrupted by the arrival of Ruby Pulse, a beautiful female android secretly requested by Astro.

“I had seen laser shows in London and had talked with artists about Holography. From somewhere I learned that the most powerful laser beam known to man was called “Ruby Pulse”. I knew that must be the name of the female character in my play.”

- Tom McGrath on The Android Circuit This exciting new presence threatens Sylvester, who harbours feelings for his master, and a dramatic triangle develops between the three, with Ruby declaring her intention to use Astro to “open up the Android Circuit”, an act that would fuse man with machine and save the human race, but can only be achieved through their sexual union.

“The Android Circuit showed how Tom was tapped into aspects of world culture, specifically here science fiction that no one else in Scottish theatre had the slightest idea about.”

- Tam Dean Burn on The Android Circuit Featuring a jaw-dropping twist in the third act, (a revelation strikingly similar to a pivotal moment in recent HBO series Westworld), The Android Circuit sees McGrath’s far-sighted intellect blossom in the science fiction genre, to which he would return in 1982 with The Nuclear Family. Playfully peppered with signature details, including recorded bird song and the last bottle of whisky in the universe, his informed, exploratory vision of the future successfully employs a myriad of fascinating influences on every creative level, ranging from the science of Leonardo da Vinci and the art of Robert Smithson, to the evolution of mankind’s relationship with technology and the horrors of the Vietnam War.

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“I didn’t need to invent a Philip K. Dick landscape. There was at least one which existed already.”

- Tom McGrath on The Android Circuit Reflecting the script’s motif of revolving in space, McGrath’s highly innovative play finally travels full circle, taking this biographical strand, and our Brave New World retrospective with it, and returning to a Traverse stage, on which it debuted an astonishing thirty nine years ago.

“The world of the future may have no clocks.”

- Tom McGrath

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Tommy Smith and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra: Electric Contact - A Jazz Tribute to Tom McGrath featuring Tam Dean Burn “I was into existentialism and jazz.”

- Tom McGrath Jazz was a huge influence on McGrath’s life and work. Aside from his own extensive skills as a jazz pianist, he was also responsible for bringing several jazz legends to Scotland in the 1970s, including Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and The Mahavishnu Orchestra.

“The writing has to be, the whole discovery has to be, in the present, and that ties up with jazz. Bill Evans, the jazz pianist who died a couple of months ago, compared improvisation to the Japanese brush stroke, in the sleeve note he did for the Miles Davis album “Kind of Blue” - Tom McGrath This event will see world famous Edinburgh-born jazz saxophonist Tommy Smith lead the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra in a musical tribute to Tom McGrath, featuring the music of Davis, Ellington, Freddie Redd and other Jazz greats. This special performance will be complimented by readings of McGrath’s poetry, (from his books The Buddah Poems and Sardines and his contributions to Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain); and extracts from his semi-autobiographical play The Innocent, (written for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1979), by another iconic Scottish talent, actor Tam Dean Burn, (Fortitude, War Horse, Local Hero).

“The celebration of Tom McGrath's poetry within a jazz orchestra setting is a unique moment in Scottish, and indeed, world culture. There's something that just so fits perfectly about three Scottish working class Thomases - a Tom, a Tommy and a Tam - coming together to make this celebration rooted in the music that Tom thrived in and was inspired by.”

- Tam Dean Burn

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Electric Contact- A Jazz Tribute to Tom McGrath: Programme Notes Tommy Smith: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sax (But Were Afraid to Ask) "Of the generation which emerged in the mid-80s, he might be the most outstandingly talented.”

- Richard Cook on Tommy Smith, Richard Cook’s Jazz Encyclopedia Born in Wester Hailes, Edinburgh in 1967, Tommy Smith is a phenomenon. One of the finest jazz musicians of his generation, Smith’s prolific career began with his first album, Giant Strides, (1983), when he was only sixteen. This recording earned him a scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston. There he formed the group Forward Motion with bassist Terje Gewelt, drummer Ian Froman and pianist Laszlo Gardony; and together they recorded two albums, The Berklee Tapes, (1985), and Progressions, (1988). Next, thanks to a recommendation by legendary jazz-fusion pianist Chick Corea, Smith was invited to join Berklee Vice-President Gary Burton’s band alongside pianist Makoto Ozone and bass guitarist Steve Swallow. As part of this quintet, Smith would tour the world for the first time and play on the album Whiz Kids, (1987).

“The key addition is Tommy Smith, who, if memory serves, is only the second saxophonist Gary Burton has employed in his twenty-odd years as a leader. Smith`s angular, Coltrane-like sound and his bristling lines contrast nicely with the smooth symmetrical shapes that typify Burton and Ozone`s solo work. And, equally important, Smith seems to have his own story to tell.”

- Larry Kart on the Gary Burton Quintet, Chicago Tribune In 1989, at the age of twenty-two, Smith signed to the world famous Blue Note Records. With John Scofield on guitar, Eddie Gómez on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums, and Gary Burton overseeing proceedings, Smith recorded his first of four albums for the label, Step by Step, (1989). This was followed by Peeping Tom, (1990), Standards, (1991), and Paris, (1992). During this era Smith would also record and tour with Scottish pop sensations Hue and Cry, vibraphonist Joe Locke and percussionist Trilok Gurtu; and present Jazz Types, a six-part BBC series featuring performances by some of the most important jazz musicians of the day. In addition to these engagements, Smith also began to study classical composition, leading to his first saxophone concerto, Unirsi in Matrimonio, (1990), and a suite for saxophone and strings, Un Écossais À Paris, (1991).

“The movements work as mood pictures, full of atmosphere and outbursts of drama”.

- Michael Tumelty on Tommy Smith’s Unirsi In Matrimonio, Glasgow Herald 1993 saw Smith sign up with Scottish label Linn Records, for whom he would record seven highly acclaimed albums: Reminiscence, (1993), with Gewelt and Froman from his old Berklee band Forward Motion; Misty Morning and No Time, (1994), inspired by the poems of Norman McCaig; Azure, (1995); Beasts of Scotland, (1996), inspired by the poems of Glasgow’s inaugural poet laureate and future Scots Makar, (national poet for Scotland), Edwin Morgan; The Sound Of Love – The Ballads of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn , (1998); Gymnopédie – The Classical Side of Tommy Smith, (1998), featuring Smith’s Sonatas No. 1: Hall of Mirrors and No. 2: Dreaming With Open Eyes; and Bluesmith, (1999). Smith also produced The Music of the Night for Linn in 1998, featuring his uncle, singer Jeff Leyton, (who sang the lead role of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables in London for fourteen years), and the City of London Philharmonic.

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“Smith's artful writing makes the ensemble sound like a petite Philharmonic."

- Neil Tesser on Tommy Smith’s Beasts of Scotland, Playboy Magazine In 1995, during his time on Linn, Smith established the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra. Initially receiving no institutional support, Smith single-handedly ensured the development of the venture until proper funding was finally secured.

“Since its birth in 1995, the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra has steadily matured into a big band fit to grace any stage in the world, regularly featuring international jazz stars as guests.”

- John Fordham, The Guardian Having first collaborated on Beasts of Scotland in 1996, 1997 saw Smith reconvene with the great Edwin Morgan for Planet Wave, a major project commissioned by the Cheltenham International Jazz Festival for which Smith brought music to a sequence of Morgan’s poems addressing the subject of time. In 1998, after premiering Hiroshima, his third Saxophone concerto, Smith would join forces with Morgan again, alongside Jeff Leyton and the Paragon Ensemble, for Monte Cristo, a musical based on the work of Alexander Dumas performed at the Traverse Theatre. Smith’s relationship with the Traverse would continue that same year with him writing the music for their production of David Harrower’s Kill the Old, Torture the Young, for which he would also teach actor Billy Boyd, (star of the Lord of the Rings trilogy), how to play guitar. Before the year was out, in recognition of his extraordinary artistic achievements, Smith would also become the youngest-ever recipient of an honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

As the nineties came to an end Smith made his first foray into the world of cinema, contributing soprano saxophone to the soundtrack of The Talented Mr Ripley, (1999), before the dawn of the new millennium saw him announced as one of the first fourteen recipients of the Scottish Arts Council’s Creative Scotland Awards. This award allowed Smith to fulfil his ambition to perform the atmospheric Alone at Last, a solo concert programme employing tenor and soprano saxophones, high-tech equipment, (harmonizer, loop machine and surround-sound), more of Morgan’s poetry, natural sounds and special effects. This innovative show was then toured around 48 venues over the USA, France, Germany, Sweden and the UK. Somehow, Smith also found the time and energy that year to premiere another large-scale composition at the Glasgow International Jazz Festival. Sons and Daughters of Alba was an imaginative blend of Scottish folk music and poetry, the text provided once again by Edwin Morgan, with whom, by then, Smith had developed a unique artistic relationship. Further impressive accomplishments in 2000 included becoming an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland; providing tenor saxophone excerpts for the screen adaptation of Iain Banks’ Complicity; establishing his own record label, Spartacus; and writing The Morning of the Imminent with Morgan for Dame Cleo Laine and Sir John Dankworth.

“I was commissioned to write a millennium suite for Cleo Laine. She wanted a ten minute piece for her concert at the Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts—a tribute to the millennium. She gave me some books of poetry to look over. I couldn’t find anything that I felt was appropriate. So I told her that I had a friend who was a great poet. I sent her some of Edwin’s poems and she wanted him to do it.”

- Tommy Smith on Dame Cleo Laine and Edwin Morgan In 2001, having released his first album, also called Spartacus, on his own imprint, Smith participated in a series of televised jazz concerts in Switzerland; presented his extended composition Beauty and

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the Beast, written for saxophonist David Liebman and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra; toured in a quintet with Liebman; and played as a solo saxophonist in Sally Beamish’s oratorio The Knotgrass Elegy, commissioned by the BBC Proms and performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus with Sir Andrew Davis.

“The saxophonist Tommy Smith, holding all together with his eloquent wizardry, brought the piece to a wistful close with a forlorn meditation.”

- Fiona Maddocks on Sally Beamish’s The Knotgrass Elegy, The Guardian Smith founded the Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra in 2002. This would provide not only a unique educational opportunity for the country’s best up-and-coming jazz musicians, but a direct source of talent from which the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra could recruit new members.

“Tommy Smith set up (and funded) this orchestra to encourage the cream of Scotland’s emerging jazz talent to flourish, and it is clearly working.”

- Kenny Mathieson on the Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra, The List Written for saxophone, bass, drums and a hundred-piece symphony orchestra, Smith premiered Edinburgh, his commission for the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra's 40th anniversary, in 2003. Recording and touring with Joe Locke & 4 Walls of Freedom the following year, he then formed a duo with bassist Arlid Andersen in 2005 that subsequently evolved into one of the finest jazz trios in Europe with the addition of drummer Paolo Vinaccia. 2006 saw the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra perform Smith’s expanded arrangement of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival, and 2008 marked the release of Smith, Andersen and Vinaccia’s critically acclaimed debut album, Live at Belleville. “...their superb Live at Belleville album – just out on ECM, and my jazz album of the year – only confirms that this is a must-see band.”

- Kenny Mathieson on Smith, Andersen and Vinaccia , The List Smith was awarded a second honorary doctorate by Glasgow Caledonian University in 2008 and in 2009 he was appointed as the inaugural head of the first ever full-time jazz course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. The Conservatoire also bestowed a professorship upon Smith in 2010 and three years later, in 2013, he received his third doctorate courtesy of Edinburgh University in the company of fellow recipients Lord Puttnam, rugby star Scott Hastings, founder of The Big Issue Scotland Mel Young, and Chair of CBI Scotland Nosheena Mobarik .

“I’m Spartacus!”

- Kirk Douglas in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus Since its inception, Spartacus Records has gone from strength to strength, creating a valuable catalogue of not only Smith’s extraordinary work, but that of his many talented protégés. Releases include Smith’s own projects: Into Silence, (2001), Alone At Last, (2002), Forbidden Fruit, (2003), Evolution, (2005), and Karma, (2011); his collaborations with pianist Brian Kellock: Bezique, (2003), Symbiosis, (2004), and Whispering of the Stars, (2014); the almost complete discography of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra: Miles Ahead, (2002), Rhapsody in Blue, (2009), Torah, (2010), In the Spirit of Duke, (2013), American Adventure, (2014), Culloden Moor Suite, (2014), Jeunehomme,

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(2015), and Beauty and the Beast, (2016); and three albums by the Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra: Exploration, (2008), Emergence, (2012), and Effervescence, (2017).

“Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith has turned his country's national jazz orchestra into a worldclass outfit...”

- John Fordham, The Guardian Having released Mira, his second album with Andersen and Vinaccia, in 2014, and his own Modern Jacobite featuring the BBC symphony orchestra in 2016, Smith shows no signs of slowing down.

Maintaining his ever-busy live schedule, and continuing to boldly experiment with the style and composition of his music, he also remains selflessly dedicated to the advancement of his art-form domestically. With the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra now regarded as Europe’s foremost contemporary big band, and the Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra flourishing, Smith, still artistic director of both, will clearly be recognised for generations to come as the boy from Wester Hailes with the saxophone who became the man that changed the face of jazz in Scotland forever.

Poetic Contact: Past, Future, and Present

By Tommy Smith The first time I encountered a poet, face-to-face, was Norman MacCaig; although, I had heard him read live at the St. Magnus Festival in 1990. On a damp day in 1994, at his house in Edinburgh, MacCaig asked for me to play him a tune on my saxophone, which I kindly agreed to. He thanked me afterwards, then quizzed me briefly, signed my collected poems, accepted my bottle of single malt, and sanctioned the setting of 14 of my favourite poems of his, which transformed itself into the recording Misty Morning & No Time. After attending MacCaig's funeral in 1995; albeit, the most exciting funeral I had ever attended, I did feel a slight superstitious burden of guilt, having just had the pleasure of his inimitable company a few months earlier. That brief experience with the wit and charm of Scotland's master poet gave me appetite for more, but hopefully, not at the expense of another poet's life force.

My next experience was with the geopoetic Kenneth White and long bearded artist, hand gliding specialist, and musician Alan Davie. We played an outrageous live concert together in Brighton, Alan accompanying me on free style piano, Kenneth White reading, while I interjected and dovetailed phrases here and there and here again. A surreal experience, which will never be repeated in this dimension. Alan also kindly gave me some of his paintings, which remind me of that outrageous outof-body experience.

In 1995, I asked Morvan Cameron, the lady who introduced me to MacCaig, if she knew any more poets that I could work with and she said, 'sure, have you heard of Edwin Morgan?' In a week, she had organised an afternoon tea, at her house in Glasgow; a neutral location. Eddie and I hit it off straightaway, over English tea and cakes. Our first project was a Bestiary called Beasts of Scotland, followed by Planet Wave [part 1], Monte Cristo, Song for Glasgow, The Millennium Suite, The Sons and Daughters of ALBA, and Planet Wave [part 2]. At Eddie's funeral, held in the austere surroundings of Glasgow University, I played next to his closed coffin, and read my favourite poems of his, howled like a wolf in front of the First Minister, and made the hairs stand on the backs of mourner’s necks. Eddie was working on my next project, it remains unfinished. We travelled the length and breadth of the UK together and presented many live concerts. There are 55 poems from our collaborations, mostly published and performed.

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During the Morgan-period I also commissioned newbie, Tom Pow, for a three-part poem called Edinburgh that would accompany my first major orchestral work. It toured Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Russia and Scotland.

In 2012 I struck up a friendship with singer, theologian and poet Kurt Elling and after touring our Syntopicon Suite, we are currently creating a Christmas Celebration, setting the poems of Jim Heynen, Rilke, MacCaig, St. Francis, Franz Wright, Robert Frost, Robert Bly, and Christine de Luca, who I recently collaborated with on Sea Treads, into an epic concert of music and poetry featuring the Shetlandic princess.

With all the rich history I've enjoyed with poetic minds and razor edged wits, I'm truly honoured to be given the opportunity to pay my respects and highlight a career of a visionary artist and one integral to the fabric of inspiring Scotland's Culture - Tom McGrath is that man, Tom McGrath is that poet, Tom McGrath is that playwright, Tom McGrath is that musician; he is past, future, and present; an omniscient muse that wove a tapestry of creative spirits that linger on the edge of tomorrow, performing today.

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Play for Tomorrow: The Nuclear Family (John Glenister, 1982) Originally broadcast during the Falklands conflict, this rarely screened science fiction television special written by McGrath for the BBC’s short lived Play for Tomorrow series is another perfect link to our Brave New World strand, and as one of the few filmed examples of McGrath’s dramatic work in existence, a neglected gem of immense cultural interest.

“I decided that you had to ask the question, “Whose future?”. You couldn’t just say “The future.” So I planned to do a projection about the future here, in the west of Scotland, in relationship to the working class.”

- Tom McGrath on The Nuclear Family Existing in high-rise isolation, and divided by the dawn of a technological age devoid of manual labour, McGrath’s dysfunctional “nuclear family” is in crisis. Unable to adjust to a seemingly effortless new world, tradition-bound parents Joe and Agnes Brown, (Jimmy Logan and Ann ScottJones), can no longer relate to their progressive offspring, Gary and Ann, (Gerard Kelly and Lizzie Radford), and as tempers begin to fray, the confined living situation threatens to become unmanageable. In a last-ditch attempt to build bridges with each other, they embark on a family holiday, descending in a Polaris submarine to “Sea Bed 6”, an underwater military facility run by the intimidating Commander Smellie, (a mesmerizing performance from the great Russell Hunter), where guests are treated to a regimented taste of old fashioned, hard working life. It turns out to be an excursion The Browns will never forget.

“Any writing about the future reflects the nature of the present. On that basis, I took the present and turned it into a kind of comic nightmare, which was the world of “The Nuclear Family”. I was taking trends in the present and exaggerating them, which is one possible technique in futurology.”

- Tom McGrath on The Nuclear Family Influenced by his fascination with the sea and concerns over the nuclear presence at Faslane, and informed by his experiences in America, where he had witnessed early computers used domestically as a matter of course, McGrath’s wry look at the trials and tribulations of the household of the future is a fascinating piece of Scottish television quite unlike any other. In addressing the details of “the shape of things to come”, his cleverly calculated predictions regarding the advance of technology and the social impact of the virtual world have long since proved to be predominantly accurate, confirming his visionary status, and further enhancing the significance of this highly entertaining production. With that in mind, it’s worth noting that McGrath cheerfully leaves us contemplating one other vital piece of information about the future... As long as we maintain the ability to make a good Scotch broth, everything will be fine.

“A convincing comedy, the most enjoyable play in the series so far...”

- Peter Ackroyd on The Nuclear Family, The Times A short interview with McGrath about The Nuclear Family, taken from a 1982 edition of BBC Radio Scotland arts show Prospect, will be played in the auditorium following the screening.

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In Verse: Tom McGrath (Michael Grieve, 1988) McGrath captured in performance, reading his poetry for an edition of In Verse, a short series of programmes on Scotland's greatest living poets made for Scottish Television.

Off the Page: Tom McGrath (Erina Rayner, 1990) Addressing subjects ranging from his early counterculture experiences to his informed thoughts on and important contributions to Scottish theatre, this fascinating STV interview with McGrath will provide our audience with a chance to experience the great man himself in conversation.

Material supplied by STV Footage Sales Scotland 2000: Wealth or Wasteland (Adrian Herring, 1987) A rare opportunity to see this 1987 BBC special in which McGrath outlines his personal views on the challenges and opportunities that faced the Scottish arts at the time, and speculates on the prospects for the future.

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Wholly Communion (Peter Whitehead, 1965) “This could well turn out to have been a very significant moment in the history of England, or at least in the history of English poetry.”

- Tom McGrath This fascinating documentary short capturing the famous “International Poetry Incarnation” staged at The Albert Hall on 11th June 1965 provides us with important artistic context. Although he does not actually appear in the film, McGrath performed at this iconic event as a young poet, (reading anti-war poem Benzedrine), alongside a selection of noted counterculture talents, including such pioneers as Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Harry Fainlight, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and provocative fellow Scot Alexander Trocchi.

“Ladies and gentlemen, hold on, hold on – this evening is an experiment and we’re finding out what happens when you put 5,000 people in a hall with a few poets trying to be natural.”

- Alexander Trocchi Wholly Communion: Programme Notes Peter Whitehead “... I was conscious of what I was doing, I’d seen a couple of American films. The Maysles brothers! I thought they were fantastic, they were so exciting, because you really were in with the action and that is what I wanted to do and that is what I did with Wholly Communion.”

- Peter Whitehead on Wholly Communion Famed for capturing the counterculture zeitgeist through his artful process, Director Peter Whitehead would memorably continue to do so throughout the late 60s, crafting several other valuable historical documents, and becoming a pioneer of the music promo in the process. His work includes such stylish delicacies as star-studded swinging 60s kaleidoscope Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London, immaculately timed Pink Floyd snapshot London ’66-’67, and the first ever Rolling Stones tour film, Charlie is My Darling.

Peter Whitehead and EIFF Whitehead also features in EIFF history, Charlie is My Darling and The Fall, the extraordinary examination of social unrest in America that he considers his masterpiece, having screened at the 23rd edition in 1969.

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The Connection (Shirley Clarke, 1961) Providing the pivotal “connection” between McGrath and EIFF, Director Shirley Clarke’s astonishing first feature is an electrifying adaptation of Jack Gelber’s controversial play The Connection, described by critic Kenneth Tynan at the time as “the most exciting new American play that offBroadway has produced since the war”.

“So one rainy night I went to see it. I just knew it was photogenic and that it would be a perfect vehicle for me to explore ideas I had about dramatic feature filmmaking.”

- Shirley Clarke on Jack Gelber’s play The Connection An enthusiastic young director films a group of junkies as they talk, bicker and improvise jazz whilst waiting for their “connection”. A deceptively simple premise behind which lies an absorbing exploration of desperate, literate characters, caught in limbo with nowhere to go except inwards.

The cast, mostly members of New York’s famous Living Theatre company, also includes Carl Lee, a charismatic black actor who would later prove crucial to the further development of Clarke’s career, and legendary Blue Note legends Jackie Mclean and Freddie Redd reprising their roles from the original stage version. “...she came by, and we all liked her. And we listened to her because we knew she was trying to do something really... really great, you know?”

- Freddie Redd on Shirley Clarke and The Connection Although appearing to casually provide the all-important soundtrack spontaneously, Redd and Mclean’s “improvised” jazz backdrop was actually developed during the run of the stage show. By the time Clarke embarked on the making of the film, their original musical sketches had grown into fully formed be-bop classics. Indeed, this deception mirrors one of the key factors in the evolution of The Connection. The play, supposedly improvised and featuring “real” junkies, becoming a film in which Clarke cleverly reworks the device via the additional dimension to comment on the “honesty” of her peers.

“It is really Shirley Clarke's film of Jack Gelber's The Connection, originally produced by the Living Theatre. That's the correct title. My input into it was to transform it, to translate it.”

- Shirley Clarke on The Connection Shirley Clarke’s razor-sharp, effortlessly “hip” debut feature was the beginning of a sparse but crucial feature career that would spawn a handful of truly incredible films, the cinematic value of which is undoubtedly beyond measure. The Connection is a milestone.

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The Connection: Programme Notes Shirley Clarke “Every day I set out to find a new barricade to die on.”

- Shirley Clarke From the counterculture cool of The Connection to the subculture heat of The Cool World, Shirley Clarke’s filmmaking career was vital to the development of American independent cinema in the 1960s. The film that many consider to be her masterpiece, Portrait of Jason, a candid feature-length interview with gay, black prostitute Jason Holliday, was described by Ingmar Bergman as “The most fascinating film I’ve ever seen”. However, to fully appreciate the scale of her achievements, one must first place Clarke firmly in the context of her time. Taking into account the acknowledged orientation of the industry historically and Clarke’s stubborn dedication to preserving the artistic integrity of her directorial vision, her accomplishments as a female filmmaker are truly astonishing.

“I think The Connection, The Cool World, and Portrait of Jason are all about alienation. As a woman in this world and a woman filmmaker, I know a lot about alienation.”

- Shirley Clarke In 1985, Clarke’s final innovative feature, Ornette: Made in America, an experimental study of avantgarde jazz musician Ornette Coleman, clearly demonstrated that her pioneering spirit and agile imagination had not diminished with age, but flourished. Inspirational to the last, Shirley Clarke was a unique talent whose groundbreaking cinematic legacy will continue to influence filmmakers for generations to come.

Tom McGrath, Shirley Clarke and EIFF In 1996, to mark the publication of his new book Birdcalls, and as part of that year’s Centenary of Cinema in Scotland celebrations, Filmhouse, in conjunction with The Shore Poets, invited McGrath to perform a reading of his work at a special screening of a film of his choice. That film was The Connection. With its theatrical origins cleverly exposed and utilised, and an integral jazz soundtrack delivered “live” onscreen, the film clearly reflects a key era in McGrath’s life, and helps us now to further illustrate the vast dimensions of his cultural experience and understanding.

In bringing The Connection to Edinburgh, McGrath also made a valuable artistic contribution to EIFF’s history. His memorable 1996 screening providing the inspiration for EIFF’s important 2008 retrospective of Clarke’s work, which subsequently screened again in 2013 at the American Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland with acknowledged EIFF assistance.

Tom McGrath, Alexander Trocchi, Shirley Clarke, EIFF and Me. “I first saw him standing beside me in Jim Haynes’ paperback bookshop in Edinburgh, looking along the shelves that housed the new novels. This was Alex Trocchi, writer and literary figure...”

- Tom McGrath In 1996 I was lucky enough to take centre stage at The Traverse in a theatre production detailing the colourful life and times of controversial Scottish beat writer and self-proclaimed “cosmonaut of the

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inner-space”, Alexander Trocchi. As I researched my complex role and submerged myself in the exciting world of 1960’s beat culture, I was fortunate enough to have Tom’s invaluable help. As a noted figure in the beat movement and close friends with Trocchi himself, Tom was kind enough to share with me his fascinating thoughts on, and precious memories of, my subject and his era.

Leading me through hours of improvisation at The Lyceum, and directing me to relevant reading material and evocative music and art of the era, Tom’s thoughtful, creatively provocative mentoring helped me to understand and master still the most complex character I’ve played to date. However, as I have come to fully understand through time, playing Alexander Trocchi was indeed an unforgettable, and in many ways life-changing experience, but paradoxically, it now pales into insignificance in comparison to having actually known Tom McGrath. Trocchi would have been amused by this notion.

“Suis-je un monster? I hope not.”

- Alexander Trocchi It was during this same period that Tom had The Connection screened at Filmhouse, and urged me to attend for research purposes. I was overwhelmed by the film. Of course, Tom was right; it is one of the definitive snapshots of true 60s beat culture, and as such, proved to be a significant reference point in the development of my show. It also began my enduring love affair with the cinema of director Shirley Clarke.

In 2008, inspired by Tom’s screening, and in my capacity as Senior Programmer at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, I proposed Clarke as a possible retrospective subject. With the blessing of then Artistic Director Hannah McGill, Programme Manager James Rice and I set to work. At that time, sources of information on Clarke and the availability of her work proved to be almost nonexistent, and as I painstakingly pieced together a comprehensive biographical picture, James miraculously managed to locate everything from elusive prints of Clarke’s earliest shorts, to home videos made by her neighbours in which she featured. It was an absolutely unforgettable journey, resulting in a popular and artistically significant strand of which we are all still very proud indeed.

Obviously, from my perspective, there will also always be a wonderful extra dimension to the story of Shirley Clarke at Edinburgh, courtesy of Tom, for whose guidance and influence I will be eternally grateful. Now, curating this tribute to him, I cannot help but feel that I have finally found a fitting end to the rare and beautiful artistic journey that we began 20 years ago. I’d like to think that would please him.

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Hello Niall, I am so glad you are doing all this work about the GREAT Tom McGrath.

Tom was a major force in Glasgow right from the time he returned from London. He was so kind and welcoming -- when he heard you were writing and if he liked anything you were doing with words (and it does AMAZE me that Tom liked what I was doing in 1968/69/70!) he included you into the community of writers INSTANTLY and welcomed you into his home.

You just had to meet the others in the West End of Glasgow who were writing, or playing jazz or experimenting in any of the arts really, and that basement kitchen in Bank Street was the place.

The McGrath's kitchen had kids and vegetarian food to share and welcome. It was there I met Alan Spence and Tom Leonard and Tom Buchan (who was very slightly older and incredibly handsome and cool and had a whole book called 'Dolphins at Cochin' which I had already borrowed from the library - a real book I'd read had actually been written by someone in Tom McGrath's kitchen! The two Tom's (B and McG), the grown-ups, had obviously a great rapport and respect for each other and were collaborating on things together.

Tom McGrath was all for us emerging writers making connections with each other and had so much generosity and time for us all. This is unusual in writers who are often (naturally) all tied up in their own work. With Tom McGrath it was never a competition, always a sharing. And seeing people connect was a huge part of his joy in life.

I can remember -- MUCH later it felt, though it might have been less than a decade, meeting Tom by chance on a train to Edinburgh. He had written 'Laurel and Hardy' for the Traverse and was over the moon to be working with the actors, but, typically, he wanted to tell me I should try this theatre thing too cos he somehow had a feeling I'd love it.

He started the Third Eye Centre! He brought Alan Ginsberg and Miles Davis to Glasgow! Tom McGrath, what a man!

All very best, Liz - Email from Liz Lochhead

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Electric Contact – The Visionary Worlds of Tom McGrath Lectures Exploring the Explorer - Tom McGrath in the Sixties and Seventies

By Dr Angela Bartie, University of Edinburgh Tom McGrath - jazz musician, poet, playwright, cultural polymath – was born in 1940, and was deeply influenced by the wider social and cultural changes of the sixties. From his deep interest in modern jazz to his love of beat culture, this talk explores some of McGrath’s early influences and experiences, both in Scotland and during his time in the London-based counter-culture, and reflects on how they helped to shape his own unique approach to the arts in seventies Scotland and beyond.

What Else Can It Become? - Tom McGrath and Language

By Dr Scott Hames, Stirling University For the Hard Man, ‘violence is an art form practiced in and for itself’. Language is part of this violence, but also shares in its freedom – to create as well as destroy. Indeed, McGrath described his use of dialect in the play as ‘sculptural’, as contrasted with the racy naturalism of John Byrne. What can vernacular language ‘become’, when we cease to view it as a copy of real (hard) life? McGrath’s poetry and drama offer a few possible answers.

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Sources Books Bertrand Tavernier: Interviews (Lynn A. Higgins, T. Jefferson Kline) Bertrand Tavernier: The Film-Maker of Lyon (Stephen Hay) Choreography of Cinema: An Interview with Shirley Clarke (Lauren Rabinovitz) Contemporary French Cinema (Guy Austin) Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie (David Laderman) Edinburgh Review #70 (Tom McGrath) Encyclopaedia of Television Directors (Jerry Roberts) International Times (Tom McGrath) John Sayles: Interviews (John Sayles) Lars Von Trier: Interviews (Jan Lumholdt) London Calling: A Countercultural History of London since 1945 (Barry Miles) Losing the Light: Terry Gilliam and the Munchausen Saga (Andrew Yule) Luc Besson (Susan Hayward) Minority Literatures and Modernism: Scots, Breton, and Occitan, 1920-1990 (William Calin) Naked Lens: Beat Cinema (2011) (Jack Sargeant) Ridley Scott: Interviews (Ridley Scott) Science Fiction Double Feature: The Science Fiction Film as Cult Text (J. Telotte, Gerald Duchovnay) Science Fiction Film Directors, 1895–1998 (Dennis Fischer) Scotland the Movie (David Bruce) Scottish Theatre: Diversity, Language, Continuity (Ian Brown) Screening Scotland (Duncan Petrie) Sean Connery: A Biography (Christopher Bray) Slightly Mad and Full of Dangers (Forsyth Hardy) Smoking in Bed: Conversations with Bruce Robinson (Alistair Owen) Such Strange Joy: Ten Years of the Shore Poets (Allan Crosbie) The Battle of Brazil (Jack Mathews) The Blade Runner Experience: The Legacy of a Science Fiction Classic (Will Brooker) The Cambridge Companion to Film Music (Mervyn Cooke, Fiona Ford) The Edinburgh Festivals: Culture and Society in Post-War Britain (Angela Bartie) The Fantastic Worlds of RenÊ Laloux (Fabrice Blin) The Midnight Letterbox: Selected Correspondence, 1950-2010 (Edwin Morgan) The Riverside Interviews: Tom McGrath (Gavin Selerie) The Scottish Sixties: Reading, Rebellion, Revolution (Eleanor Bell) The Traverse Theatre Story (Joyce McMillan) Theatre and Performance in Small Nations (Steven Blandford) This is Scotland: The First Fifty Years of Scottish Television (Jeff Holmes) Transatlantic Review #32 (Giles Gordon) Very Naughty Boys: The Amazing True Story of HandMade Films (Robert Sellers) With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E. Grant (Richard E. Grant) Withnail & I: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know (Thomas Hewitt-McManus)

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Videos Bloody Business (2006) (Perry Martin) Cast and Crew: The Long Good Friday (2005) (Don Coutts) Connecting with Freddie Redd (2014) (Immy Humes) In Search of Moebius: Jean Giraud (2007) (Hasko Baumann) Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013) (Frank Pavich) Rome is Burning: A Portrait of Shirley Clarke (1970) (Noël Burch, André S. Labarthe) The Making of Hyena (2014) (Jaime Hooper) The Peculiar Memories of Bruce Robinson (1999) (Adrian Sibley) Tommy Smith: The Beginning (1988) (Keith Alexander) Websites archive.list.co.uk archive.org/details/starlogmagazine bbc.co.uk bfi.org.uk chicagotribune.com closeupfilmcentre.com coffeetablenotes.blogspot.co.uk criterion.com dangerousminds.net frontrowreviews.co.uk heraldscotland.com ica.art internationaltimes.it money-into-light.com nytimes.com nzonscreen.com openculture.com rcs.ac.uk retroist.com scotsman.com screenanarchy.com screenonline.org.uk snjo.co.uk thecrackmagazine.com theguardian.com thestage.co.uk thethe.com variety.com viewlondon.co.uk youtube.com

© Niall Greig Fulton 2017

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