I’ve got to say, I came to this festival a bit perplexed. What exactly is a film classified as ‘gay/lesbian/queer cinema’? Is it a film that contains a definitively gay relationship? One that explores taboos or Gender and Sexuality? Or focuses on transgender?

I look to the programme for answers: there are plenty of gay and lesbian shorts, films and even dance events listed. However, there are also films that have been included because they contain one of those elusive ‘gay icons’, a cross dressing element, or even, though lacking any substantial queer element, simply because they are directed by someone who has once made a ‘gay’ film.

Next question: who goes to a Lebian and Gay film festival anyway? On entering the British Film Institute (BFI), I’m immediately struck by just how unstriking the crowd is. Plenty of gay people, but also quite a few straight folk. Most are twenty- and thirty-somthings, but even children and the aged are visible. There’s evidently no rule of thumb for fans of Lesbian and Gay film, and as the day progresses, I find that the films the festival offers are as varied as their audience.

I first watch a series of ‘lesbian’ shorts, hailing from places as diverse as Norway and Brazil. The collator of this event, Anna Dunwoodie, tells is that she found it difficult finding a common idea under which to unite them, concluding with a loose idea of transition, driving, and first steps ‘Starting Out and Driving On’.

I’m as torn as she is when it comes to finding a single theme: not all are definitively lesbian. Some feature lesbian romances, some make reference to lesbian identity. But many deal simply with questions of female space, female creativity, or the struggle for personal identity in a heterosexual, male orientated society. One might be funny, one, experimental, and one a classic anecdotal short.

The friend who has come along with me to the event mentions Brokeback Mountain, and complains that Hollywood has not been inspired by Ang Lee to make more ‘gay’ movies. I beg to differ – gay culture has been there in mainstream movies for a while, especially when it comes to ‘romcoms’, from Four Weddings and a Funeral to Imagine Me and You. Hollywood will always argue, mainly to combat a homophobic reaction leading to a loss of sales, that the film is not about ‘gays’ or ‘lesbians’ but about two people falling in love. And perhaps in the end it all just comes down to labels, whether they are applied by society, audiences, or even the creators of the films themselves.

Perhaps queer cinema is really just about falling in love, be that with yourself, an identity, a boy, a girl, or a whole gang of people!

Colin Farrell as Ray

Two hitmen, Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrell), are sent by their boss to Bruges, a sleepy medieval city in Belgium, to cool their heels after a botched job. The men become reluctant tourists, but while Ray, haunted by the bloodshed, hates the city, Ken is happy to sightsee, keeping an eye on his companion. Waiting for a call from their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes), what starts as a typical sightseeing experience (complete with run-ins with American tourists) becomes increasingy surreal as they encounter a junkie dwarf, a one-eyed thief, Dutch prostitutes, and beautiful drug-dealer Chloë (Clémence Poésy). When the call from Harry comes, Ken and Ray’s vacation turns into a black-comedic fight for their lives, with shocking emotional consequences.

Filmed entirely on location, the city is introduced as another character, which we meet along with the assassins. Variously called ‘a shithole’ and ‘a fairytale’, Bruges provides an incongruously idyllic backdrop to Ken and Ray’s exploits. The two men play off each other perfectly in their reactions to the city, as Ray tries to explain to Ken: ‘If I grew up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me.’ Fiennes’ delayed entrance as cockney mob boss Harry provides the perfect villain, with a demeanor by turns terrifying and absurdly hilarious.

Although billed as a comedy with a simple odd-couple setup, and frequently being bruisingly funny, writer-director Martin McDonagh’s whip-smart dialogue is beset with tragedy and genuine emotion, and the characters abide by their own morality. When Ray speaks of his guilt, saying ‘That won’t ever go away… unless I maybe go away’, Colin Farrell is surprisingly undeniably exquisite. Gangster movies are usually all about ‘the job’, but In Bruges picks up where most finish, focusing on the emotional fallout for men finding a way to do what they do. A bizarrely balanced mix of buddy movie and gangster thriller, In Bruges is near perfect.

4 stars out of 5

Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis graphic novels have attracted something of a cult following, so this adaptation is guaranteed a ready-made audience. Dealing with the author’s childhood and adolescence in Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Persepolis raises issues that are obviously relevant in today’s political climate.

But despite its stretches of clunky politicised dialogue, during which some characters speak exclusively in slogans and soundbites, the film does not have much to say about broad political questions. It spends more time describing the mundane but nonetheless shocking indignities of living under an oppressive fundamentalist regime. Initially comic scenes about organising illegal parties and brewing illicit alcohol become more serious as they highlight the ever-present threat of government surveillance and arbitrary arrest.

However, the film’s main focus is on the character of Marjane herself. She is an appealing protagonist: clever, funny, opinionated and self-aware. There are lots of other characters in Persepolis, but they are pushed into the background as Marjane’s growing pains (hitting puberty, falling in love, struggling with depression) take centre stage.

This emphasis on the personal over the political means that Persepolis sometimes feels like any other coming-of-age film, especially since serious issues such as rape and suicide are too often lumped together with trite messages about being true to yourself and doing the right thing.

This is a shame, because all this is presented using striking animation that closely mimics the stark black-and-white drawings of the original books. At times the film’s style drifts dangerously close to cliché, such as the sequences that employ the lowering silhouettes of tanks and artillery to suggest the horrors of the Iran-Iraq war. Yet Satrapi and her co-director Vincent Paronnaud also use this style to create some arresting and memorable images; the political demonstrations that open the film, for example, fill the screen with a vast monochrome sea of human figures.

On a more intimate and personal level, a scene which depicts the sinuous, predatory forms of two chador-clad ‘social guardians’ looming over the young Marjane (who is clutching a bootleg Iron Maiden cassette and wearing a jacket with ‘punk is not ded’ emblazoned across it) manages to be both funny and disquieting at the same time. There are several other moments in the film that are equally impressive visually, and they are worth waiting for. These moments, and the enjoyment to be had from the central character, more than make up for an occasionally weak and unambitious script.

It’s strange to think, but a decade before you were born, home movies were three minutes, twenty seconds long. Video recorders were a long way from the technology you probably have inside your phone right now: you couldn’t edit or re-record them, and they had to be professionally processed and developed.

The rise of internet video has sparked a resurgence of interest in this dated Super 8 technology and resulted in a remarkable new short film competition. Amateur film-makers from all over the world, beginners and the experienced alike, have dug out old cameras and created short films for a competition called ‘Straight 8’.

The rules are simple. You shoot a film on a single three minute cartridge with no budget, send it in along with an original soundtrack, and Straight 8 develops and judges it. If its good enough, the film is premiered in a packed cinema at the Cannes film festival, and then uploaded onto the competition’s website for all to see. Last year there were over 240 entries.

This sounds deceptively easy, but the restrictions it places on participants produces some fascinating results. Without any of the editing capabilities available to other films, entries become exercises in pure creativity. Winning entries span a huge range of the weird and wonderful, from dance routines to mini documentaries, and from fantastically original use of shooting techniques to a single shot of a man in a pub sinking ten pints in three minutes.

What’s so refreshing is to see the sheer  variety film can contain, when Hollywood and commercial television have almost made us forget its even possible to deviate from established genres and plots. Its almost an unwritten law of films, for example, that the first major adversity comes after twenty one minutes, whether the film is a rom-com, action movie, comedy, or anything else. Films are supposed to show us something new and unfamiliar, but our generation often reacts with just a yawn to the latest techni-colour explosion.

Watching a three minute Super 8, however, even the familiar becomes fascinating. In one entry the camera zooms in on a woman from over a lake. It is a technique we have seen a thousand times before, except Super 8 cameras do not have a zoom function. To create this single half second of film required the cameraman to take a boat over the river, taking a single frame shot every few metres.

Another entry, depicting a man walking normally through London whilst the surrounding traffic and pedestrians move backwards as if the film was being rewound, has sparked an enthusiastic debate about how the film is even possible.
The other great thing about these films is that you know they’re real. When you see a car being driven off a cliff five times over, you know that five different cars have actually had to be driven off that cliff in order to produce what you see in front of you. The bloke who downs ten pints actually has drunk them all in the time it takes you to watch it: its a single scene, and therefore it is impossible for him to have made separate shots and edited them together later. We can only imagine what he felt like half-an-hour  later. The point is that the Super 8 format stops us from watching these films just as an entertaining way to pass three minutes that we then immediately forgot. We know what we have seen has happened, creating a far more interesting experience for the viewer.

Instead of idly browsing YouTube or watching another South Park episode, check out www.straight8.net and watch a couple of last year’s winners. Whatever you think, you’ll see something startlingly uncommon to most films today – originality. You may even be inspired to search out that old camera of your parents yourself.

Ben ‘Finn’ Finnegan (Matthew McConaughey) is a modern-day treasure hunter obsessed with finding the legendary ‘Queen’s Dowry’ – a priceless treasure lost at sea in 1714. Finn has sunk everything he has into his quest, including his marriage to Tess (Kate Hudson).

Just as Tess has begun to rebuild her life, working aboard a mega-yacht owned by billionaire Nigel Honeycutt (Donald Sutherland), Finn discovers a vital clue to the treasure’s whereabouts. Much to her consternation, Finn manoeuvres himself aboard Nigel’s yacht and, using his roguish charm, convinces the tycoon and his celebutante daughter, Gemma (Alexis Dziena), to join him in his pursuit.

But – and you can see where this is going – they’re not the only ones after the prize. Ruthless bad-guy Bigg Bunny (Kevin Hart) is intent on beating Finn to the trove.

Within its genre, this film is a gem. Rarely is film so easy on the eye. Predictable though the plot may be, Fool’s Gold is genuinely funny. Hudson and McConaughey’s bickering is brilliant. Throw in a bimbo, two comedy henchmen, and a leering Eastern European, and you have a plethora of amusing (if unoriginal) gag lines. This formula is bejewelled by the unexpectedly dark character of Bigg Bunny, whose malevolent nature leads to action sequences that left me on the edge of my seat.

Of course there were bad points too – as we must now expect of an action film, the music is strongly reminiscent of Gladiator/Pirates of the Caribbean. Worse, the legend of the ‘Queen’s Dowry’ was poorly explained, with each ‘twist’ greeted with more of a confused shrug than a gasp of surprise. These elements felt like missed opportunities, which was a great shame.

The ‘romantic action comedy’ genre is not to everyone’s taste, but if it floats your boat then you’d be a fool to miss this gold!

4 stars out of 5

 
While many students’ idea of extra curricular activities rarely stray past drinking copious amounts of alcohol or frantically hacking (possibly at the same time), some students take a less-travelled road.Chris Chan is Merton’s current organ scholar and leader of the Chapel Choir, although he does not limit himself to just the choir. In fact, he says ‘I also co-conduct the big band and orchestra in Merton, and am conductor of the Oxford String Ensemble.’ Clearly not someone who is content to rest on their laurels, then.
 
The chapel choir will also be keeping itself busy. Despite mentioning that Trinity is often quieter, due to finalists hitting the exam period, Chan describes a full line-up of events, from memorial services to concerts raising money for a tour in Vienna in June.On to the role of organ scholar. Chan describes it so: ‘You do have to take on responsibility – you are employed in representing the chapel.’ Being an organ scholar involves much more than playing the organ; as Chan puts it, ‘you become part of the college’s staff.’
 
In Michaelmas 2008, Merton will launch the Choral Foundation, offering scholarships to 15 students under the leadership of Peter Phillips. Chan says that one of the main reasons for the foundation were ‘our acoustics in Merton, which are known not just in Oxford but world wide as well’. Two years after the idea was first brought up, over £1,000,000 has been raised for the foundation.
 
Phillips, who directs the world famous Tallis Scholars, will be Director of Music at the chapel and will no doubt bring great expertise to the foundation.