Despite the shock­ing and inex­plic­a­ble deci­sion to omit Patrick Keiller’s Robin­son in Ruins from this year’s Film Fes­ti­val (a dis­as­ter applic­a­ble only to me I think) the actu­al line-up is as good as every­one says. At least I think it is from sur­vey­ing about 20 out of the 160+ titles in the pro­gramme — hard­ly a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple but when most of those 20 bring such joy and only a few land with a dull thud you have to think that the rest of the pro­gramme is sim­i­lar­ly pro­por­tioned.

Last year the big Cannes win­ner, Of Gods and Men, was missed by the Inter­na­tion­al Fes­ti­val, a sit­u­a­tion that was reme­died at Easter’s World Cin­e­ma Show­case. This year, of the big Cannes movies, only Godard’s Film Social­isme is miss­ing in action. The great Swiss icon­o­clast may well have pro­duced his most inter­est­ing work in years but it will take a trip to Ama­zon to find out for sure. Even the redoubtable Aro Video are unlike­ly to take a punt on it with­out the Festival’s impri­matur.

As usu­al, I asked the help­ful Fes­ti­val peo­ple to point me towards the less like­ly, the unher­ald­ed, the lit­tle bat­tlers, the kind of film that is eas­i­ly missed when skim­ming the 80 page pro­gramme. Any fool can tell you that The Tree of Life is going to be inter­est­ing. Cap­i­tal Times read­ers want more than that.

First­ly music: two doc­u­men­taries impressed me and they worked so well togeth­er I wish they were a dou­ble-fea­ture. Mer­le Hag­gard: Learn­ing to Live With Myself is a biog­ra­phy of the out­law coun­try star as he set­tles in to an uncom­fort­able old age. Actu­al­ly old age to Hag­gard is no less com­fort­able than every oth­er age — I can’t think of a great star less at ease in his own skin.

Com­pare that with Sing Your Song, the life sto­ry of the pop star, actor and activist Har­ry Bela­fonte. From a sim­i­lar gen­er­a­tion to Hag­gard, born with an equal lack of oppor­tu­ni­ty, Bela­fonte turned his tal­ent and fame into a relent­less dri­ve to improve the lives of the peo­ple around him while Hag­gard seems to think that he is unwor­thy of his.

As an exam­ple of their dif­fer­ing atti­tudes to life and fame, Hag­gard described his invi­ta­tion to per­form at Nixon’s White House as the proud­est day of his life. Bela­fonte once refused an invi­ta­tion to rep­re­sent the US at Nel­son Mandela’s inagu­ra­tion in protest at the sit­u­a­tion in Haiti.

Those two films are about musi­cians but not much about music. This is reme­died by crazy John Turturro’s por­trait of Napoli, Pas­sione. I think it was Noel Cow­ard who wrote of the “poten­cy of cheap pop music”, a poten­cy that is increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly when sung in a for­eign lan­guage. Filled with music video recre­ations of Neapoli­tan hits, old and new, Pas­sione is a delight from start to fin­ish.

The best doc­u­men­tary I saw in this pre­view peri­od was Aaron Schock’s Cir­co, a sad look at the dwin­dling for­tunes of a once proud Mex­i­can cir­cus, held togeth­er by ring­mas­ter “Tino” as the rest of his fam­i­ly slow­ly drifts away. A beau­ti­ful sound­track by Calex­i­co com­pletes the pic­ture. Anoth­er, more suc­ces­ful, side of the show­biz dream can be found in Being Elmo: a Bal­ti­more teenag­er watch­ing ear­ly morn­ing kids TV falls in love with pup­petry and dis­cov­ers a tal­ent that takes him all the way to Sesame Street. Joy­ous.

Every Fes­ti­val needs a great archi­tec­ture doco (last year’s I.M. Pei film, Learn­ing From Light wasn’t quite it) and this year we have How Much Does Your Build­ing Weigh, Mr Fos­ter? Over the last 30 years Sir Nor­man Fos­ter has built the biggest archi­tec­ture prac­tise in the world, work­ing on the biggest projects and build­ing the biggest build­ings. Cin­e­ma and archi­tec­ture can work so well togeth­er, the cam­era float­ing through a space, catch­ing the inter­play of light and shad­ow, pres­ence and absence. This film does all of that, tells an great sto­ry and illu­mi­nates Foster’s now influ­en­tial way of think­ing.

Sophie Fiennes (sis­ter of Ralph and Joseph) has pro­duced a doc­u­men­tary about Ger­man artist Anselm Kiefer that belongs in the “Slow Cin­e­ma” sec­tion of the pro­gramme — Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow and is all the bet­ter for it. Know­ing noth­ing about Kiefer at the begin­ning, I was drawn into his work first by Fiennes’ long del­i­cate track­ing shots and Ligeti sound­track. Then we get to see the man at work and he turns out to have a much lighter touch in the stu­dio than his dark and broody med­i­ta­tions on Euro­pean his­to­ry would have you believe. More films show­ing artists at work please — much more cin­e­mat­ic than star­ing at paint­ings.

The Mill and the Cross is an exceed­ing­ly cin­e­mat­ic way to look at a paint­ing: a recre­ation of the world that pro­duced Peter Bruegel’s mid-16th cen­tu­ry mas­ter­piece The Way to Cal­vary (and an extra­or­di­nary, dig­i­tal­ly-sup­port­ed live-action recre­ation of the paint­ing itself). A stun­ning tech­ni­cal achieve­ment but in des­per­ate need of a sense of humour.

This fes­ti­val seems to be full of con­fused teenage girls: in Tomboy a ten-year-old girl would rather be a boy so … choos­es to be one. A del­i­cate sub­ject deft­ly han­dled by direc­tor Céline Sci­amma, it could have gone very wrong. She Mon­keys, from Swe­den, isn’t near­ly as suc­cess­ful. A seem­ing­ly self-con­tained four­teen-year-old (this time) tries out for the local eques­tri­an vault­ing team (like syn­chro­nised swim­ming on horse­back) and falls under the spell of beau­ti­ful Cas­san­dra. Or does she? Mis­tak­ing opaque char­ac­ter moti­va­tions for a gen­er­al sense of ado­les­cent mys­tery is but one of its flaws and it’s described on its own web­site as a mod­ern West­ern. Yeah, nah.

Anoth­er teenag­er, strug­gling to come to terms with adult­hood and, more specif­i­cal­ly, sex­u­al­i­ty is stun­ning new­com­er Clara Augarde in Love Like Poi­son. Like all of the last three films, par­ent­ing (lack of) is the core of the prob­lem but this film states its man­i­festo right there in the title. Augarde reminds me of a young Isabelle Hup­pert and that’s quite a career to aspire to.

Talk­ing of going places, Lena Dun­ham has well and tru­ly announced her­self with Tiny Fur­ni­ture, a film that made me laugh out loud more than almost all of the com­mer­cial Hol­ly­wood “come­dies” I’ve sat though this year. And then she whoops you in the guts with some real emo­tion, too.

Talk­ing of com­er­cial cin­e­ma, there are a plen­ty of exam­ples of inter­na­tion­al hits to choose from: Point Blank is a French thriller about a hos­pi­tal nurs­es’ aid who is dragged into a police con­spir­a­cy and has to join forces with a bru­tal (and tac­ti­turn) safe crack­er in order to res­cue his kid­napped wife. It’s a rare thing — a film with action sequences you can actu­al­ly fol­low — so expect a less coher­ent Hol­ly­wood remake soon.

Brazil’s biggest hit in years was Elite Squad: The Ene­my With­in , the sequel to it’s pre­vi­ouys biggest hit Elite Squad. Fea­tur­ing even more police cor­rup­tion, this time plucked from the Rio head­lines, Elite Squad has plen­ty of action but not much sub­tle­ty — direc­tor José Padil­ha has def­i­nite­ly seen the final third of Scar­face, you can be cer­tain of that.

Medi­an­eras is a slight Argen­tin­ian roman­tic com­e­dy that was in love with its ele­gant struc­ture more than it’s char­ac­ters — two lone­ly-hearts take a year (and an entire film) to dis­cov­er that their soul­mate is actu­al­ly right across the hall. By about half way I want­ed to give them both a good slap.

For once, the Sports sec­tion of the pro­gramme isn’t dom­i­nat­ed by cycling. In fact there’s even a cou­ple of films about the sports that we watch rather than par­tic­i­pate in. With Sen­na, Asif Kapa­dia pro­vides an object les­son in doc­u­men­tary sto­ry­telling. Most of us know the arc of Brazil­ian leg­end Ayr­ton Senna’s life but Kapa­dia still man­ages to pro­duce sur­prise after sur­prise: grip­ping from begin­ning to end.

Fire in Baby­lon has less to work with in terms of archive footage but it sup­ple­ments it with a splen­did choice (and use) of still pho­tographs illus­trat­ing the 1970s bloom of West Indi­an crick­et and their 20 year suprema­cy. The the­sis is that the explo­sion of pride in Caribbean crick­et was a result of post-colo­nial inde­pen­dence and the case is well made. There are many plea­sures for a crick­et fan, not least see­ing the Mas­ter Blaster, Vivian Richards, still qui­et­ly dom­i­nat­ing every room he is in. What a play­er, what a man.

Two years ago in these pages, I rec­om­mend­ed a Kore­an film called Day­time Drink­ing only to be scold­ed for it by my own moth­er. So, I wouldn’t dream of sug­gest­ing the dead­pan Mon­go­lian “com­e­dy” Win­ter Vaca­tion which will dri­ve many audi­ences mad with frus­tra­tion but intrigued and delight­ed me.

Final­ly, the first half of A Use­ful Life might have been made for me and me alone. A fail­ing Mon­te­v­ideo cin­e­math­eque (imag­ine if the Film Soci­ety ran its own cin­e­ma — it would be a bit like this) strug­gles to pay the rent and keep the pro­jec­tors run­ning despite falling mem­ber­ship. Port­ly Jorge (Jorge Jellinek) has been keep­ing the place going for 25 years but when he final­ly has to ven­ture out in to the world his eyes are opened but sad­ly mine were closed. I’ll cher­ish the beau­ti­ful­ly observed and pho­tographed first half though.

A short­er ver­sion of this pre­view was print­ed in Welling­ton’s Cap­i­tal Times on Wednes­day 27 July, 2011. This ver­sion cross-post­ed from Funer­als & Snakes.

Feel free to add your own rec­om­men­da­tions in the com­ments. There’s a lot to see!