Southend Film Festival 2010 and Bobby Jo's 50's diner

by Parsley on Fri, 2010/07/09 - 12:34pm Post to Twitter

PARSLEY’S COMMLOCK

Festival Review : Southend Film Festival April/May 2010
Not sure who reasoned that a seaside town with occasionally nice weather might be worth holding a film festival at, but they were on to something. The films were £2 a time, meaning you could have a full weekend of film for the same price as one night out in London. There was even a relaxed policy re. drinks from the bar. The best place to watch films was the old fashioned Palace Theatre stalls. Admittedly all the films were being shown using a DVD projector, which on 2 of the 5 occasions I was watching ran into difficulty, but even that could not spoil the good humour and genuine cinematic interest of the occasion.

The Colony was an attempt to convey in documentary the spirit of the The Colony club in Soho. This is quite a tall order for a large format cinema film as the ‘club’ was basically a small drinking room filled with characters. Only those recommended by existing club members could join. It became a little bit mind-numbing and ethereal to hear people talk about things that happened there, but somehow it did convey that it was a cool place that cut through celebrity pretensions. People without characters tended to get thrown out by the club’s owner. Celeb members included Joe Strummer and Lisa Stansfield.

Southend Rock was a short film cataloguing Southend’s legendary impact on the music world. I have to confess I was not aware of this important heritage, but after a whistle stop tour of Gary Brooker, the Kursaal Flyers, Doctor Feelgood, Alison Moyet and Mickey Jupp, I felt fully up to speed. The film was actually a bonus to the main feature of Oil City Confidential, a Julien Temple film telling the story of Doctor Feelgood, and featuring a significant contribution from the now smooth-pated Wilko Johnson. It was great, and I think someone should be obliged to make such a film for every important group, ever. It was encyclopaedic, entirely explaining every element of the band’s origins and story.

I’m not a renown Dr Feelgood fan, but I appreciated the care with which this was put together, and I think I liked them more after seeing it. I’m certainly ready to pick up their back catalogue now. I particularly warmed to their ‘drive-into-London-do-stonking-gig-drive-back-to-Essex’ approach. A lesson there for all of us. Wilko turned out to have been a major wandering hippy, who ‘blossomed’ after he got his hair cut, but withered under the pressure of being wacky/creative to order (a.k.a. The Spike Milligan story).

After Oil City Confidential, the following day saw ‘Up’, Disney’s bizarre story of a boy who wants to be an explorer, growing into an old man whose house they want to knock down, who then turns his house into an adventuring balloon (à la Monty Python’s ‘The Crimson Permanent Assurance’ short). It was good natured and enjoyable, and featured the voice of Ed Asner (of legendary seventies newspaper drama ‘Lou Grant’) in the lead ‘old man’ role. Christopher Plummer did an admirable job with the voice of extreme explorer Charles F. Muntz.

Later, upstairs in the more spartan ‘Dixon Studio’ cinema room, they showed Czech Dream. This was great. Allegedly an art project by some film students, this was effectively an expose of the marketing that has led to riots at the opening of IKEA stores and the like. The 2 guys got agencies to create the advertising (advert, billboards and flyers) for a new hypermarket (‘Czech Dream’) that didn’t actually exist. They created a fantastic jingle with singing along the lines of (‘borrow money and you can have the dream you want’). The flyers told people not to wait, and not to save their money for the opening. The real advertising agencies were queried about using their talents to ‘lie’, but they were at pains to say that they were doing a professional job for their clients.

In the hypermarket’s location they had installed an enormous banner, supported by scaffolding, with the words ‘Czech Dream’ on it, but absolutely nothing behind it. Came the opening day, and thousands of people turned up, running towards a banner in the middle of an empty field. The film’s unreal advertising paralleled that promoting the Czech republic’s entry into the EU. No one knew what they were voting for, but it seemed like a nice dream. The Czech government funded both. Eat your heart out Michael Moore and Mark Thomas - these new boys worked on an amazing scale.

Another powerful but more frightening contribution was provided by Mountain Patrol, a Chinese/Tibetan film dramatisation of the rag bag of eco-protectors trying to save the Tibetan antelope. This was an assignment worthy of the tactics of the animal liberation front, as the antelope population was being systematically wiped out for its pelts. Reporter Ga Yu joined the near-suicidal attempts to save the animals by a tiny group of men led by ex-policeman Ritai, and getting more desperate when members of their team were getting killed, fairly arbitrarily, for trying to stop the armed villains. Ritai went further and further to get the gangster-like animal-killers who were leading the cull, risking the lives of his team going deep into the freezing terrain. It was an extremely stressful journey, set against amazing panoramas of the Tibetan mountain landscape. Not for the squeamish.

The cinema venues were good natured and relaxed, and Southend itself was fun, cheap and welcoming. All in all this is an event well worth considering for the May Day holiday weekend.

Restaurant review : Bobby Jo’s 50’s diner (http://www.bobbyjosdiner.co.uk/)
Whilst in Southend I partook of the delights of newly refurbished fifties-style diner. This is deliciously styled in pink and blue, and much to my delight features a milkshake that is cleverly made half pink and half blue. Hot dogs and burgers were the order of the day and the staff were well kitted out for it. The music was of the time and the decor was fifties par excellence. If you’re riding a Triumph motorbike, and enjoying rock and roll music, then this is well worth a visit. Equally if you just want to enjoy someone with a vision for a restaurant realising their dream then this is a great place to see it.

parsley.L at virgin.net [http://freespace.virgin.net/alpha.moonbase/garden.records]