3 days at Hebden Bridge Film Festival, working as a projectionist and my (brief) thoughts on some films I saw while behind the tech desk!
Hebden Bridge Film Festival lasted from the 15th to the 17th of March this year. I was the projectionist for 8 films and a programme launch day on St. David’s Day for the smaller secondary venue of the Town Hall, after the primary venue the Picturehouse, a cinema equipped with DCP kit. I was hired by Louise Wadley, the fantastic festival director (and film director in her own right!), when previous technicians couldn’t make it – my details were on file after unsuccessfully applying to another job with HBFF.
I stayed with a friend of the festival committee as is customary for gigs like these (or so I’ve heard when they aren’t in walking distance of your flat), and despite having very little time to do any exploration of the surrounding countryside, ended up taking in a decent amount of fresh air, and taking some lovely photos of morning mist!
On a technical level, setting up the Town Hall to be a cinema seemed a simple enough rig – a PA system looped into a playback device and projector looked fairly easy to assemble on the surface. However the addition of Q&As in the programme which were hybrid appended some complications, and using a combination of audio interfaces and DI boxes for inputting and outputting to a large desk meant that we ran into some faults. This and the arrival of a larger screen, borrowed from the Picturehouse projectionist the morning of the first day, meant we ran into some minor issues along the way. To say I was stressed would be an understatement but I was consistently reassured – and rightfully so – by my colleagues that things would be ok. As is the nature of these things, by close of play, we had worked into a rhythm quite comfortably and the films were ticking along flawlessly.
As for the films themselves – the programme was a mixture of shorts and features, both narrative and documentary. Read below some short reviews and comments I wrote as I watched along!
Day 1:
Àma Gloria (2023)
Dir. Marie Amachoukeli – Cape Verde – Drama
A really delicately handled perspective, so many tight, short-lens shots to emphasise her myopia. Has a lot to say about not just grief but lack of control as well. Beautiful to see an intergenerational dynamic so powerful, although difficult to watch on a personal level because of that. It brings back the same tragic and sympathetic urges that films such as Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman (2021). Never going beyond the scope of what a child’s understanding would be in the same situation, it handles its written perspective as well as it keeps to its photographic perspective.
Bye Bye Tiberias (2023)
Dir. Lina Soualem – Palestine – Documentary
A well-handled and somehow refreshing take on how generational trauma can be coped with. Warms me to see Palestinians as they should be, laughing and having fun, but leaves me feeling so cold and hopeless at the lack of change in the last 75 years. In light of the most recent re-invasion and illegal occupation of Gaza by Israel and the spreading of its Zionist ideology, the film is another important recent testament to how living in Palestine prior to October 2023 was not peaceful, and trauma runs through each family the same as it does now. It remains somewhat optimistic in demonstrating that the dreams of the Palestinian people can reach beyond freedom from oppression and occupation. Deeply humanising and moving.
Private View (2023)
Dir. Sarah Myland – England- Documentary Short
Portrays non-binary identity slightly coldly for me, not quite othered, but still remains a spectacle. It’s odd that a lack of representation, artistic or otherwise, of, as the subject put it, surgically altered bodies, means that when we place them on this plinth they become as distorted as the wrongfully applied stereotypes and rumours about them. For me, occupying perhaps the polar opposite space to the subject, transfemme to transmasc, seeing my body in media often means fetishisation, and so maybe that’s why this film gives me some discomfort on behalf of the transmasc non-binary people I know in light of this film, and the glorification and championing of those bodies here feels a little shallow and glib.
Not Quite That (2023)
Dir. Ali Grant, Canada, Documentary, UK Premiere
Very complicated for anyone queer to watch. And as a trans lesbian I feel a particular compatriotism with butches and mascs, where I feel the total opposite to most while occupying the same labels. However it represents another tactful and personal approach to how we can process our bodies and how they relate to our identity, and how we can express ourselves. It isn’t easy, even if you’re a cis person! A very well handled work and held a careful perspective. I respect it.
Your Fat Friend (2023)
Dir. Jeanie Finlay – America – Documentary
A simple film on a complicated issue. Essentially a behind-the-scenes of a series of blog posts created over the course of 6 years, with little to no surprises or much in the way of a narrative thread. It does little to expand on the blog posts that the film is based on, from what I can glean. I do think the subject is in a fascinating and almost completely unique position, and the Western view on cellulite has been trapped in place for nigh-on a century now. It remains well captured – some footage of which is self-portraiture by the hands of Aubrey Gordon.
Day 2:
This Is Going to Be Big (2023)
Dir. Thomas Charles Hyland – Australia – Documentary
Charming! Truly charming. Brings you in close to a young neurodivergent person’s perspective in the West in a refreshingly positive and constructive light. Gives you so much hope about the generation I border. Leaves me a little bittersweet in that I never had the same encouragement as these teens and my shyness was enabled and reinforced, something I still struggle with nowadays. They have so much confidence – they aren’t told it’s in the face of adversity, because it isn’t. They’re just people, and this doc breathes so much humanity them.
Apolonia, Apolonia (2022)
Dir. Lea Glob – Denmark – Documentary
Wasn’t so sure what to make of this one. Api is such a complex character and one I can relate to very little. She seems to wear her heart on her sleeve, effervescent and the epitome of confidence, and then behind closed doors seems to be a turbulent mixture of belief and self-doubt. She seems to get high on performance, getting “naked in front of the butt plug [sculpture]”, but has body issues internally. The director captured her subject honestly and totally, the filmmaking process lasting more than 14 years, and yet the film seems directionless, no narrative, no consistency, too fluid and choppy for you to make sense of it. Importance is weighed on smaller issues and then large events are quickly fast-forwarded. The whole friendship between subject and filmmaker is not explored at all save for one vulnerable scene where Apolonia is completely naked, figuratively and literally, and she comments on the changes she has observed in director Lea Glob. Overall a very irregular and lop-sided effort if not an interesting catalogue of 15 years in the life of a modern female artist. Misguided nonetheless valuable.
Power Alley (2023)
Dir. Lillah Halla – Brazil – Drama
In a cursory assessment, lives close to Coutinho’s Playing (2007), which I saw the day before coming to the festival, which talks pretty holistically to the prospects of motherhood and sacrifice in Brazilian society, albeit 16 years earlier, almost as old as protagonist Sofia. But where the former is a philosophical meta-doc, the latter is a tense thriller with a constant rhythm which mirrors some of the same expressions as Baker’s Tangerine. This feels far more intimate and personal though. Portrayals of female friendship, female solidarity, the range of the feminine experience across genders and identities, and, most importantly to me, lesbianism, all with tenderness and subtlety, range and quantity I haven’t seen in many other lesbian films, linked together with delicate lingering gazes and stylised realism, and empowering eroticism and sexuality.
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And that’s everything!
I would like to extend my thanks again to Louise Wadley for looking after me in a fairly new environment. Thank you also to Tom Brown from Hebden Live for not getting sick of my constant company over 2 and a bit days, to Martha Bird for being so patient and helpful with all the false starts and problems, to Corrie from the Town Hall for her vital support, to Catharine for boarding me, and to Jay, Andrew, Will, and Kerry! I had a fabulous time and I hope to see them all again in the future.
The Mezzanine 