Sheffield Doc/Fest

Two weeks till Sheffield Doc/Fest and I will be attending, I will be seeing:

Dokkoi! Songs of the Bottom (1974) (intro & Q&A)

The ‘bottom’ of the title is that of society itself. Ogawa’s subject had shifted from Sanrizuka to Kotobukicho, an area of great social deprivation. Filming was tough and the budget was far too small. Once again the team lived in the place where they shot, in this case renting doss houses. Everywhere they looked, people were clinging to life with their fingernails. The film became a series of poetic portraits – songs – of those people, some of whom died during the production. Alert camerawork, inventive intertitles and, most of all, a complete immersion in the world of the story, contribute to Dokkoi’s unforgettable power.


Smoking With the Hawk (2008) + Japan: A Story of Love and Hate (2008)(with Q&A)

Smoking With the Hawk - Clyde is hard. Fucking hard. He's also a pool impresario whos got £8,000 riding on his boy against a young whippersnapper from Chesterfield. Meanwhile Clyde has to deal with a mild machete attack and train his hawk to be a killing machine.

Japan: A Story of Love and Hate - Naoki had it all in the boom days of the Japanese economy. Now he shares a one-room windowless flat with a girl who’s half his age. At fifty-six, he is one of thousands of Japanese who have fallen through the cracks to become a class of working poor. He grits his teeth to perform the obligatory morning calisthenics at the post office before earning his pittance. The twinkle of rebellion is still alight in his eye but this love story is bound by work, pride and necessity. The destructive push-pull cycle between Naoki and his lover is only broken when Naoki must finally meet her father, which wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t the same age. British documentary's sinner and saint, Sean McAllister, again offers extraordinary access and returns with an absorbing a portrait of inescapable contradictions, of life and the narrow lines love and hate share.


No Manifesto (2009) (Work In Progress with 30 min Q&A)

Manic Street Preachers fans unite! This is the doc you’ve been waiting for and its almost ready. The most colourful and contentious band South Wales ever produced face off with their equally colourful and contentious fans in a verité-multimedia-documentary-experiment-work-in-progress. Out-takes, raw and untamed touring footage and of course, the magic of the music will be screened for the first time in its embryonic stage. You can safely expect absolutely anything. With the director in attendance, the audience has the rarest of opportunities to have their input into the shape and feel of this long overdue rockin’ Manic’s doc.

Website: http://www.sheffdocfest.com/

At last! Laserdisc!

Well I got this a while back but I am posting this now. I've finally bought a Laserdisc player! As a film collector it a has long been my desire to buy one of these machines. Why? Well not only as a retro novelty but also because there are so many films that are still not available on DVD but were released on VHS and LD. Some examples; David Lynch's On The Air, Neil Young's Human Highway, Shohei Imamaura's Insect Woman etc... And also at times the LDs had extras not available on DVD, such as the Nightmare Before Christmas Boxset which featured an extended documentary and more short films (more on this later).

As for the visual quality: well going by the 14" TV screen I'm using the quality appears to be on par with DVD (though DVD still is higher) and is definitely better then both VHS and VCD. VCD I tend to find to be very flat and sometimes jerky due to the compression to mpeg.

For those who don't Laserdisc is a home video format introduced in the 80's and was successful in the US and Japan up till 1999 when DVD came in. LDs were released in the UK and many titles were available but it just didn't catch on in the general market. The discs themselves are 12" wide (the same as LPs) and are double sided holder 60 minutes per side in standard definition (CLV) and 30 in higher (CAV) meaner who would have to flip the disc or even change discs throughout the viewing, later machines could play both sides.

The machine itself cost initially 44 Pounds but unfortunately being second hand and over a decade old it seized up upon watching my first disc (the ever 'classic' Angel Enforcers), repairs at another 50 fixed the problems. I've bought a few titles so far, nothing too rare so far, discs seem to be around the 15 mark for semi rarities, fiver for the standard films and onwards and upwards for those in higher demand. So far i own: Angel 2, Angel Enforcers, My Crazy Life, Red Squirrel (I think these are all on DVD, i bought these just to test the machine), Talking Heads: Storytelling Giant and Nightmare Before Christmas Special Edition.