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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with WILLIAM HALL
Published: 19 April 2007

Pick of the Indies

FILM-SCHOOL favourites Dziga Vertov and Terence Davies both get a look-in this week. Davies, the auteur’s auteur, is currently the subject of a retrospective at the BFI Southbank (formerly the NFT) so he’s in conversation tomorrow night with BFI programmer Geoff Andrew.
A newly-digitalised copy of the film widely acknowledged as his masterpiece – Distant Voices Still Lives – also gets an outing. Despite the stunning cinematography and powerhouse performances, I have to confess to finding the film – which draws on Davies’ own childhood in 1940s Liverpool – interminably depressing when I first saw it many years ago. Judge for yourself if you get a chance this week.
Vertov’s 1929 film Man with a Movie Camera is another of those films that is usually preceded with the word seminal by film buffs. Vertov with his counterpart Sergei Eisenstein were key figures in the development of cinema with Vertov also drawing heavily on Marxist theory. Man with a Movie Camera is paired with Kinopravda 21 at the Curzon Mayfair on Sunday.
On a lighter note, The Ladykillers, perhaps the greatest of many great Ealing comedies, gets an outing at the Everyman in Hampstead on Sunday. Treat yourself to classic Alec Guinness.

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