I caught up with the director this afternoon in order to talk about his work and discuss these issues.

(Download the audio here.)

Image: Chris Harris

Director Nick Whitfield was the surprise winner of the Michael Powell award at Edinburgh International Film Festival this year. His low-budget film Skeletons tells the story of two travelling salesmen who visit people’s homes to perform a procedure to rid them of any ‘skeletons’ in their closets. The film received a fantastic reaction following its premiere at Edinburgh and since then has been touring the country. A campaign has even started on Facebook where people have championed to get the film shown in their local cinema. We grabbed director Nick Whitfield for a few minutes from his hectic schedule to find out what this whirlwind experience has been like.

What has the experience of winning the Michael Powell award at Edinburgh been like?

It’s a crazy dream come true and way beyond my expectations. The prize for me was making the film. This is absurdly flattering and weird.

How do you hope that will impact the film?

I hope it will make its audience bigger, pure and simple. The film doesn’t really exist unless someone’s watching it.

Skeletons has a very distinctive style, refreshingly different from most British film – what were you inspired by to create the film?

Events in my life played a huge part. And lots of work that I’ve done over the years, disparate influences – my old theatre teacher Philippe Gaulier, Pinter, Beckett, Eric and Ernie… films I’ve loved – Three Colours Blue, Unforgiven, Spinal Tap, Eternal Sunshine…, The Ipcress File. And much of the inspiration comes from the group of people you choose to work with in the end.

This is your first feature film, it must have been a huge learning curve – do you have any advice for budding filmmakers?

Well, I’m no expert but I’d say “Make the story that you HAVE TO. No faking it.”

What do you have lined up to work on next?

Oh, plans afoot, but if I told you, well, you know…

Visit the Skeletons profile on IMDB or the official website to find out more about the film.

“One of the most significant and challenging films of the post 9/11 era” is how I tweeted my reaction to The Oath. The winner of the Best Documentary at this year’s EIFF, it tells the story of two men.

The first is Abu Jandal, a former bodyguard for Osama Bin Laden who now works as a taxi driver in Yemen. The second is his brother-in-law Salim Hamdam, a driver for al-Qaeda who is locked up in Guantanamo Bay.

Through looking at the lives of these two men, the film explores many of the key issues following that most significant of days on September 11th 2001. It explores America’s changing attitude to torture and interrogation; the reaction of someone in Bin Laden’s inner circle to said event; and the differing views of a new generation of young Muslims to jihad, compared to that of the previous generation.

The film spends the majority of its time with Abu Jandal, who is a completely fascinating character. A charming individual with a wonderful animation to his speech and a captivating smile; he’s someone who seems impossible to pin down. Has he really given up on the idea of instigating violence against the West? If so, what made him do it: was it because his religious/political opinions changed, or out of commitment to his family and a need to be free? Is he so keen to appear on television to evangelise for his new set of beliefs or just because he enjoys the press?

Trying to figure him out for the length of this documentary had me completely captivated, as did the story of his brother-in-law. Someone who the US Senate had to invent a law for in 2006, in order to convict on terrorism charges. The story of Salim perfectly encapsulates the failure of the Bush administration to hold onto its most basic values of freedom and justice for all, in a time when those very values were being threatened by this new and dangerous enemy.

I don’t really want to reveal much more about The Oath and the story it tells since I want people to have the same dramatic experience I had watching it. When the film started and we met Abu Jandal for the first time in his taxi, I asked myself the question “Who is this man?” Ninety minutes later when the movie ended I left asking myself the same question. The journey in between asks a lot of questions of its Western viewer, forcing us to consider our own values and ask ourselves the same question: “Who are we?” or perhaps even “Who have we become?”

Monsters had its UK Premiere at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival where its director Gareth Edwards brought home the “Best New Director” Award. It tells the story of Kaulder and Sam who are in Mexico and want to return to America. The problem? Aliens have landed about six years earlier and their journey home forces them to go through “The Infected Zone”, where few people live now the monsters have taken over. You can read my full review of the movie here.

How many people were actually involved in making this movie?Well there were the two main actors who were in every scene, then I think about…another seven crew members. I actually counted at one point, we had more drivers than crew. So it gives you an idea how small a production it was.

What was the budget for the movie? I read Gareth got the money after winning a 48-hour film-making competition? How did the movie actually get made?

Yeah, Gareth won the sci-fi competition, then spoke to Vertigo and told them about his idea for Monsters, and how he could make it for next to nothing. They loved the idea and bankrolled it. I don’t know if you know much about Vertigo, but they normally get investors in to get movies made, so for them to just give Gareth the money was pretty good, especially since it was just this idea Gareth had had in his head for a while, and he hadn’t written a script or anything for the film.

As for the budget, you know if you read the right blog, they show how it could have been made for $15,000. I’m not sure on the exact figure, but what I think we had a shooting budget of around $500,000.

So when you started filming had you got a script?

No, just a plot outline. Well two actually. One was the basic plot points, the physical locations and so on they had to get to. The other was the emotional journey the two of them went on. When we meet Kaulder he’s quite difficult to like, but as the movie progresses he becomes someone we can really sympathise with. So Gareth had these two outlines and basically decided as filming went on how to mesh these two journeys together.

The actors didn’t have any lines or anything. We’d just drive along and Gareth would shout “Stop the car”. Then he’d tell the actors which scene this was supposed to be, how it fitted into the story and got them to ad lib the lines. He didn’t give them a great deal of direction in terms of that, most of what you see the actors made up. You know, the scene where Kaulder is drunk outside Sam’s room. Scoot just completely made that up himself. So yeah, they did a great job getting Gareth’s vision onto the screen.

And how did you manage to get all the other members of the cast to deliver their lines?

The majority of the extras were just people we’d met in the street. We’d just tell them a bit about the movie and then film their reactions to lines from the actors.

There’s a taxi driver in a scene at the start of the film- was she actually talking about aliens or something else?

Yeah, she was just talking about the hurricane that had hit recently [in real life]. So obviously we’ve edited it to make it seem like she’s talking about the monsters. There’s another scene round the campfire where the extra was just talking about his own experience seeing a UFO, and again we’ve made it look like he’s talking about the aliens in the film.

There’s also a scene when they get off the train, we actually filmed that backwards. Since in the film they knock on the door at night, but we started filming at the day, the member of our crew who spoke Spanish did a really great job of making that family comfortable and Whitney who plays Sam as well – since she really spoke Spanish. So between both of them, they steered conversation in the right direction so we had the right footage we needed to make that scene work.

Could it be? My face pulled up into a grin. I raced down Bread Street, feet hitting the pavement. There were more badge-holders now; I followed them like a trail of breadcrumbs, running up towards the familiar glass-fronted building. Storefront of dreams! Badge-holders, even the odd programme book tucked under an arm. Maybe I’d been mistaken; perhaps it wasn’t really over after all.

I pulled up to the Delegates’ Centre and, at once, my face fell again. Boxes. Folded-up signs. A team of people, badge-wearers all, packing it away, done with us for another year. Turncoats!

I rejoined my companion and, together, we sauntered off to the Best of the Fest: the last wheezing gasp of an emotional rollercoaster of a film festival.

Following its debut at the Göteborg International Film Festival earlier this year, Skeletons was this year’s winner of the Michael Powell award for Best New British Feature. (Powell, you will recall, was the legendary British director of The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death.) Will Adamsdale (fresh from The Boat That Rocked) and Andrew Buckley (Gobbler from Extras‘s sitcom-within-a-sitcom, When the Whistle Blows) are exorcists of a kind: they make a living by exhuming the skeletons from peoples’ closets.

Skeletons deftly defies expectations: it comes across, on paper and in its trailer, as a faintly low-key surrealist comedy, and that’s what you sit down expecting to be shown. Indeed, for the first half hour or so, it ably delivers some genuinely hilarious moments. It’s when we dive into our exorcists’ lives, however, that it comes into its own, eventually delivering an emotional wallop that it has no business being capable of.

It’s clear that the budget here is through the floor, but the production values are high. The supporting cast are surprising in themselves: Harry Potter‘s Jason Isaacs plays the exorcists’ boss, while Paprika Steen – Danish alumnus of Lars Von Trier films like Dancer in the Dark and The Idiots - is a woman who hires them to find her husband. Disparate as they are, the players pull together to create a seamlessly offbeat journey that’s hard to find fault with.

And so, Toy Story 3. Somehow this feels like a fitting end for my Edinburgh International Film Festival coverage: sure, it’s yet another film about loss, but it’s also one about moving on and fondly remembering what was so good about what we left behind.

Sequels are never a particularly attractive proposition, but Toy Story 2 defied expectations. It was a well-rounded, accomplished film that in many ways eclipsed the original. Ten years have passed since then, though, and fifteen since Toy Story. Back then, its position as the first ever full-length CG film was enough to blow us away; where do you go now that 3D animated toys are old hat?

There’s no need to worry: we’re in safe hands here. After all, Pixar’s films have always been more about heart than visuals; last year’s Up had me tearing up before the ten minute mark. Indeed, Ratatouille, The Incredibles and Finding Nemo all managed to pull off something new, and despite being the third part in a series that has endeared its way into popular culture, Toy Story 3 does the same.

From the opening reference to Indiana Jones, it feels like it’s been pitched a little bit older than the previous two. There’s a laugh-out-loud subtitled segment, some body horror courtesy of Mr Potato Head and a tortilla, and even a shared touchpoint with eighties cult horror flick The Devil’s Gift. That’s not to say that it’s not suitable for children – this is still very much a kids’ film – but Pixar aren’t afraid to push the envelope a little bit.

The new actors all hint at the tone. Michael Keaton – you know, from Batman, Beetlejuice and Pacific Heights – is Ken (as in Barbie’s boyfriend). Ned Beatty – Network - is Lotso, a southern bear who smells of strawberries but secretly rules his daycare centre home as a sick kind of prison. Meanwhile, less threateningly, Timothy Dalton has a hilarious turn as a luvvie hedgehog, and Kristen Schaal (familiar to regular Flight of the Conchords and Daily Show viewers) is a chatroom-obsessed triceratops.

Toy Story 3 is fun, exciting and emotive: in other words, everything you’d expect from a Pixar film. It’s out here in the UK in July, and I recommend you go seek it out – with or without children.

On a final note, I’d like you to open this song in another tab. It’s mood music; a little background atmospherics for what I want to say. I’ll wait.

Done? Okay, good.

I’d like to thank Central Station for giving me the opportunity to cover this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. It’s been fun, exhausting and extremely satisfying. I hope my pieces have given you a little hint of the atmosphere here, as well as an insight into the kinds of films we’ve been seeing. This is one of the world’s most interesting arts events, and while there’s been the odd hiccup behind the scenes here and there, this year’s programme has been educational, challenging, diverse, surprising and incredibly entertaining. I’ll miss covering it for you.

I’ll continue to pop up on Central Station from time to time, but this marks the end of my official engagement. If you’re interested in web technology, my regular home is over at benwerd.com – but I’ll also be writing more along these lines at Off Topic. (I’m also always interested in new places to write, so if you’ve liked what I’ve written here and would like some content over at your place, please get in touch with me here at Central Station or at ben [at] benwerd.com.) Finally, you can always find me on Twitter as @benwerd.

Thanks for reading; hopefully I’ll catch you soon.

Oh, and you can turn the Celine Dion off now.

The film is asymptotic to meaning: as the film progresses, it gets closer and closer to making an underlying point and hanging together as an overriding whole, but never quite arrives. Director Iyari Wertta flings bizarre ideas at the screen, never anchoring them in wit, plot or dynamism, while the slow pace and catastrophically low budget end up acting as obstacles in the way of any kind of engagement. The actors ham it up appropriately, in one case attempting a poor man’s Owen Wilson, but the expectation seems to be that ludicrous situations should be enough to keep us watching. With some brief exceptions – the hilarious arrival of the alien, for one – it isn’t.

Tragically, the last five minutes hint at a considerably more accomplished film, both poetic and human, with parallels in The Wizard of Oz (not to mention this year’s season finale of Doctor Who). If only Wertta had given this seed a little more room to grow.

Maybe it’s the sun, sea and cervezas, but apparently aliens can’t leave Mexico alone. Monsters imagines a world where Baja California has been overrun with giant otherworldly octopus creatures who tear down planes from the sky and destroy whole cities. Kaulder, a press photographer, needs to escort Sam, the daughter of his newspaper’s owner, back safely into the United States.

@GuyLodge: MONSTERS (B+): Surprise package of #EIFF for me. Resourceful, great-looking hybrid of romcom, tourist movie and creature thriller. It works! ~ June 25, 2010

Visually, this is everything anyone could want from a monster movie. We’re in the post-Cloverfield shakycam world, albeit from a third-person perspective, and director Gareth Edwards has made the most of his visual effects background. There are no gratuitous CG shots here: everything drives either atmosphere or tension. The octopus creatures are carefully thought out, and the moment where we discover just why they’ve been so destructive is both visually and conceptually breathtaking. At the same time, even the smallest environmental details impress: this is a well-rounded, fully-realized near-future world.

Indie movie fans might be interested to know that the film’s leads, Whitney Able and Scoot McNairy, are in a film called Everything Will Happen Before You Die, which just completed a round of funding on Kickstarter. Hopefully, they’ll fare better there – when it comes to acting and dialogue, Monsters unfortunately falls flat. Monster movies are never going to rival Shakespeare, but some of the Festival’s most wooden lines lurk within this film’s neat 90 minute package. It’s a real shame that the visual attention to detail wasn’t matched in character development or scriptwriting.

Nonetheless, if alien invasions, well-meaning B-movies or cephalopods are your thing, this is almost certainly worth a look.

In fact, during an illuminating team Q&A after the film, production team Savalas revealed that they had spent nine weeks on the sound design. The hard work paid off: some of the audio effects were genuinely threatening in themselves, even outside the context of H.P. Lovecraft’s unsettling short story.

Set in New England, The Dunwich Horror is one of the central tales in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythology. Wilbur Whatley is the son of an albino mother and something not quite of this world, and seeks to open a gateway for eldritch creatures called the Old Ones to return. In order to do so, he travels to the Miskatonic University in Arkham to find an unabridged copy of the Necronomicon, the Book the Dead. The librarian, Dr Henry Armitage, refuses to let him take it with him, and Wilbur decides to break in late at night to take it by force. The guard dogs kill him, but that’s only the beginning of the horror that unfolds …

Mercifully, the drama doesn’t take itself too seriously, although it’s careful to stay on the right side of campy. Furthermore, Lovecraft’s stories don’t lend themselves to visual adaptations, so the otherworldly creatures that populate this story are arguably far scarier than they could ever be in a traditional film. It’s just a shame about the voice work, which lets the production down by being inconsistent and of a far lower quality than the soundscape they inhabit.

The communal atmosphere of the packed-out Filmhouse added to the fun – there were laughs and simultaneous intakes of breath a-plenty – but I hope Savalas decide to release an audio download of the film. For me, the best possible auditorium would be a car, driving through the New England countryside in the dead of night.

Cameo 1It was probably the most surreal experience I’ve had at the Edinburgh International Film Festival so far.

Vworp. Vuh vuh vuh vwwwwooooorrrrrrrrp.

I stepped tentatively into the Cameo cinema’s main screen. I was five minutes early, but the noise seemed to suggest that the film had already started. Indeed, as I emerged into the screening room’s dark expanse, the audience of film critics and industry professionals sat transfixed. The film had started, but the sound was a bleak electronic tone, like a corrupted MP3 at the end of the universe. Could this really be what I had come to see? Was Romanian cinema more avant-garde than I had anticipated?

I contemplated leaving again. It was half past nine in the morning and I was pre-coffee, after all.

Vuhvuhvuhvuh vworrrrp.

The sound gave through to recognizable human sounds and all at once the picture vanished, the lights came on and someone hit the reset button. Saved; deus ex cinema.

@WeAreDN: If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle was a great start to my final morning. One more screening & then it’s home time. Shame. (@albaztks) #EIFF ~ June 23, 2010

If I want to Whistle, I Whistle came out of workshops with young offenders at actual Romanian prisons, and is based on Andreea Valean’s stage play of the same name. It’s bleak stuff, obviously rooted in reality, and the line is further blurred by the film’s documentary stylings. George Pistereanu pulls off an impressively naturalistic, nuanced performance as the film’s protagonist, Silviu, and the supporting cast does nothing to spoil the illusion.

The trouble is, it’s perhaps too bleak; there’s precious little hope or light here. After four years, Silviu is within days of release, but it soon becomes clear that it’s not going to be a painless ride. Indeed, for most of the film we’re forced to watch his slow emotional breakdown due to the reappearance of his negligent mother, who wants to regain custody of his little brother, who he’s raised since she left. At the same time, he develops a crush on Ada, a student training to be a social worker in the prison – and ultimately ends up holding her hostage when he unravels a step too far.

There’s a story to be told here, but while the acting is undoubtedly incredible, I found myself wishing there was more humanity on display. I’ve seen films this Festival about the tragic aftermath of bloody wars that had more light and hope. Romania has been part of the European Union since 2007; it’s jarring to think that somewhere as bleak as is portrayed here is in our political block.

Whereas Silviu is imprisoned against his will, Robert Duvall’s protagonist in Get Low has willfully sequestered himself away for forty years. Hiding away in the Tennessee woods, he’s become the stuff of legend – or rather, half-whispered stories passed on between children, and spun-out tales in the local bar. Did he kill someone? Why does he hide himself away? The inhabitants fear him, and he does nothing to dissuade them – until one day, he rides his mule and cart into town and asks for a funeral party. The catch: he wants to be alive to see it.

Incredibly, Get Low is based on a true story. Duvall’s character, Felix Bush, really did have a living funeral. In order to encourage people to come, he raffled off his land, and come they did: up to twelve thousand “mourners” in all. In the end, Felix wants to tell his story, and explain the real reason why he’s hidden himself away.

It should go without saying that Duvall is excellent, transforming completely into the reclusive, bitter hermit with one last story to tell. It’s director Aaron Schneider’s first film – he was cinematographer on the groundbreaking television legal drama Murder One - but he handles the direction, pace and tone expertly, sparsely punctuating the camerawork with the odd close-up that showcases his technical background.

The supporting players are equally perfectly cast: Bill Murray in particular continues his trend away from pure comedy, delivering a well-rounded performance as the town’s struggling funeral director that hints at a dark, sad backstory of his own (although he is still allotted his fair share of one-liners). Sissy Spacek and Lucas Black – as Felix’s love interest from long ago and the funeral assistant respectively – get less room to sparkle, but can’t be faulted.

The film lands on a satisfying – if tragic – conclusion that cleverly plays with expectations and turns Felix’s self-confinement on its head. It certainly left this reporter blubbing uncontrollably in his seat – a welcome catharsis from the loss and helplessness that we’ve seen so much of during the Festival.

Edited to add (June 28): Get Low was the recipient of the Standard Life Audience Award, and I think deservedly so. It was probably my pick of the festival too, and deserves to find a wide audience.

The day started by heading to Queen Street Station for half 8. For someone who has just introduced the concept of weekends back into her life after year and a half getting up early on a Sunday is not that strange. When in Edinburgh, Kaye (who is also part of team) and I found our way to Novotel beside ECA for our shift at Censta hub as part of Edinburgh International Film Festival. After setting up and making the table all lovely with posters, flyers and badges (my goodness, those posters didn’t want to stay up), our job was to introduce the site to people taking part in Digicult’s Red or Dead talks, answer any questions and encourage people to blog about their EIFF experience. All went well. People seem to be enjoying the talks and chatting to each other between the talks.

My shift finished around 2pm and I decided to visit Edinburgh College of Art and their degree show as I had some time to kill before getting ready for Sound : Image : Art and the afterparty. The work I managed to see was all of high standards including some very interesting pieces such as 3D fabrics, educational software about ‘making sex’ and gorgeous performance costumes. Oh, and a moustache on a stick. I liked that.

When entering the main building I bumped into a friend of mine Luke and I never viewed everything on offer as we ended up talking about his time in ECA, graduating and putting his exhibition together, cameras and photography and we made tentative plans for a joint exhibition. I find talking to others who create things very inspiring as it pushes me to do more and you can never beat catching up with someone who you haven’t seen for months (and talking about cats, holidays and music).

It was all too soon time for me to head back to the hub and Luke to pack up his photos and leave the college for the last time. Next couple of hours were a whirl of putting up posters, setting things up, and getting something to eat just in time for people to arrive to Inspace for Sound : Image : Art.

It was great to see the final fruits of a project I had been involved from almost from the start. As an intern I had been there to contact people and push the project in social media. The event was a combination of networking, finding out more about Central Station and hearing views of everyone involved in the Soundtrack project in the beautiful white surroundings of Inspace. There were drinks, there were smiley faces, there were members’ work projected on the walls. But all too soon I had to run off again, this time to man the door of the afterparty which was buzzing. All that remains to be said is that you should have been there, the dance moves during Don’t Stop Believing by Journey were something else.

Please check out all the other blogs posted for the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2010for more information and photos.

“I wish they wouldn’t have press screenings of troubling films at nine in the morning. It colours your whole day. The Runaways; The People vs George Lucas - those are morning films. You can sing and laugh and leave part of your brain soaking in your double-strength flat white. The Oath? Not so much.”

“Oh, grow up. It was thought provoking, intimate, intelligently made and non-judgmental. A well-considered movie for adults about a complicated topic. That’s the kind of material that gets your brain going in the morning. Exercises your moral core.”

“I don’t know about that. It left my moral core confused, if anything.”

“How so?”

“There are several aspects to the film. One is a careful portrayal of the cultural landscape that Abu Jandal came from and lives in. It’s completely different to ours; a world in which everything is in the eyes of God, and promises have a weight beyond even the law. The truth is a kind of absolute for them.”

“Right. Which is kind of admirable, isn’t it? Particularly against the backdrop of the trial of his brother in law, Salim Hamdan, who he recruited to al Qaeda and was captured and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for eight years. He was simply the driver, materially unconnected to terrorist activities, and eventually took his case to the Supreme Court and won, only for the US government to create a new law which enabled them to send him right back to prison. The film contrasted these two systems – the American moral relativism versus the hard-line Islamic set of rules, both literally and figuratively, though some very effective vignettes shot in Yemen and Guantanamo.”

“It did make that contrast, perhaps implicitly, but I’m not sure I agree with it. I’m an atheist; I don’t believe in any kind of God, although I accept that we probably don’t know everything about our universe. Those kinds of hard-line rules don’t sit well with me, and I found them actively disturbing. In fact, we see as the film progresses that Abu Jandal, despite once being a jihadist with no fear of bloodshed, has turned towards more considered, academic ways of thinking. But here’s the rub: should Salim Hamdan have been convicted for being an al Qaeda driver?”

“Well, no. He was innocent.”

“Was he? He wasn’t a terrorist, but he was part of the jihadi infrastructure.”

“I think that’s a discussion that could go on for a very long time. I certainly don’t think he deserved to sit in solitary confinement in Guantanamo Bay for eight years, and the film’s coverage of his wife and children really underlines that. It strongly suggests that these are normal people in a very different culture, thrown into very difficult circumstances.”

“Actually, I thought those portions of the film – following Abu Jandal while he drove his taxi around Yemen, and reluctantly letting his son watch Tom and Jerry – were some of the most interesting. Another great example of film showing us different contexts and situations in an illuminating way. But I feel like that’s almost a distraction from the issue: although it really helps paint a picture of the man’s character, I’m left wondering about the ethics of it all.”

“The whole thing was expertly made, for sure: low key, but in a way that allowed us to consider the situation, the people involved and the overarching facts without succumbing to hyperbole or propaganda. I’m still troubled by the moral issues it throws up though.”

“Of course! We all are. They affect all of us, whether we choose to acknowledge them or not. Abu Jandal, the jihadists he left behind and the young men who gather to listen to him talk every week all believe that our culture – the rich west – is an invading imperialist force, and are willing to fight back, whether with violence or ideology. They consider it a battle: that word is used over and over again, in the film, and not lightly. That’s something we’re going to have to come to terms with and address in a sensitive, productive way, and this film is a step in the right direction.”

“Okay, but who’s in the right here? The film pretty much shows both sides as being flawed, ideological and dangerous, sweeping innocent people up in a conflict about cultural integrity, resources, religion and politics.”

“Exactly. That’s where the film really succeeds: it forces you to make your own mind up.”