Acclaimed director Davies to attend third isles film festival

Director Terence Davies is to attend Shetland’s third film festival, Screenplay, to discuss his work. His most recent film, Of Time and the City, a paean to his home city of Liverpool which has received high critical acclaim around the world, will close the 10-day event.

Davies first came to prominence in 1987 with Distant Voices, Still Lives, an autobiographical film about his violent upbringing. This was followed up in 1992 by The Long Day Closes. He went on to win plaudits in the United States for his adaptation in 2000 of the Edith Wharton novel The House of Mirth starring Gillian Anderson. Both the The Long Day Closes and House of Mirth will be shown at the Garrison Theatre.

Shetland Arts development manager Kathy Hubbard said: “We are honoured to have one of Britain’s greatest living film-makers … visiting the festival this year to talk about his films.”

Screenplay, to run from 28th August to 6th September, will be curated once again by film critic Mark Kermode and academic Linda Ruth Williams and will reach all parts of Shetland – including some very different venues.

Indeed one of the themes is “compass points”, with a series of films with a connection to north, south, east or west either in their titles, their content or the countries in which they were made.

There will be a free showing at the Garrison Theatre of Heima, the film that followed Icelandic group Sigur Rós as they played in a series of different settings around the island in 2006.

South, the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s two-year expedition to the Antarctic between 1914 and 1916, including the desperate 800-mile journey to South Georgia after the Endurance became trapped in the pack ice, was captured by Australian photographer, film maker and adventurer Frank Hurley. It will be shown in Fair Isle, Baltasound and at the museum.

Continuing the theme, this time moving east, will be animated films Howl’s Moving Castle, a love story directed by Japanese film maker Hayao Miyazaki with the voices of Christian Bale, Jean Simmons, Emily Mortimer and Lauren Bacall, and Waltz With Bashir, which has the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a backdrop.

Or go west with Seachd: The Inaccessible Pinnacle, which is about Sgrurr Dearg in the Cuillins of Skye and in Gaelic, and The Inheritance, a “Scottish road movie” directed by Charles-Henri Belleville.

Thanks to a partnership with Shetland Film Club, the festival will visit various venues around the isles, including some schools and care centres, in order, said Ms Hubbard, to make this an event that can be enjoyed by as many folk as possible.

Other film professionals coming to Screenplay include Simon Miller and Joanne Cockwell (the director and screenplay writer of Seachd), TV producers Foz Allan and Matthew Read, writer/producer Tim Barrow and Anne Mensah, who is responsible for commissioning drama UK wide for the BBC.

Screenplay will also promote movie classics such as East of Eden with James Dean, late night features, works by independent filmmakers, animation for all age groups (including some excellent short films from the National Film Board of Canada) and music video, plus the regular audience favourite – an evening of new short films made in Shetland.

There will also be a television strand, with a screening of an episode of the BBC’s Robin Hood directed by Douglas Mackinnon, followed by a panel discussion including Mark Greig (writer of Ashes to Ashes, The Bill, Life on Mars and Taggart) on adapting work for TV.

Special ticket offers are available for festival goers, and details of these and of all the screenings can be found at www.shetlandarts.org/events/screenplay while tickets are available from the Shetland Box Office on (01595) 745555. For further information call Kathy Hubbard at Shetland Arts on (01595) 743843 or email her at kathy.hubbard@shetlandarts.org