Issue 2: Autumn 2008: Spanish Avant-Garde Film

Darklight Film Festival 2008

Review Posted: 08 Oct 08

In the nine years since its inception, the Darklight Festival has become a unique fixture on Dublin's film calendar. Its evolution over the years has seen it embrace an eclectic and multi-disciplinary approach to the moving image that distinguishes it from almost every other film festival in the country. This year's programme followed in this tradition, featuring a range of workshops, discussions, exhibitions and short film screenings, as well as presentations and screenings by two actors-turned-auteurs: the charmingly insane Crispen Glover, and Paddy Considine, a regular collaborator of Shane Meadows. It also introduced a new project to Darklight: Dublin: the Movie was a feature anthology film shot on the first day of the festival by 30 different filmmakers, and premiered 4 days later on the festival's closing night.

Originally begun as a digital media festival, Darklight has since redefined itself more broadly as a festival for 'filmmakers, animators and artists whose work explores the convergence of art, film and technology'. Its workshops still tend to be preoccupied with new technologies, particularly in relation to production and distribution, and with a slant towards how these developments can be harnessed by independent filmmakers-but, increasingly, the festival has opened itself to include repertory screenings (such as Esperanza Collado and Maeve Connolly's experimental film programmes in last year's Darklight Symposium), and filmmakers such as Glover whose work is emphatically old school in its technology (Glover will not even allow digital copies to be made of his two uncanny 16mm features, What is it? [2005] and IT IS FINE. Everything is Fine [2007].)

If there is a central thread that Darklight still pursues, this year's subheading, 'State of the Art', seems to point towards it: the film aims to be a reflection of and a reflection on the state of the art both in technological and creative terms. The problem is that the depth of this reflection is sometimes superficial, and phrases such as 'cutting edge' and 'boundary pushing' occasionally seem like PR cover for an event that is beginning to feel the lack of a coherent remit; arguably a necessity if it is to continue to distinguish itself from all those festivals named after beers. Consequently, while the presence of the likes of an iconoclastic DIY filmmaker like Crispen Glover was a strong programming move, the showcasing of a new Irish Film Board internet short scheme (a collection of largely substandard punchline shorts that happened to feature new technology in their plots) was emphatically not. Nor was the hosting of a low-budget filmmaking workshop dominated by the aforementioned Film Board and WarpX, a British-based commercial studio.

Both guilty of using the innovative gloss of new technology to peddle age-old pap, these organisations already have their outlets. The niche which Darklight are flirting with but not yet fully committed to is showcasing, facilitating and inspiring independent filmmakers. This still allows for a programmatic eclecticism, but it should also force them to make stronger choices about what is and isn't their business to support. In this respect, Dublin: the Movie was an admirable feat; while a logical extension of the 24-hour short-film competitions that have become a standard gimmick at many film festivals, this project nonetheless forced local filmmakers out of their inertia and highlighted the (in Ireland) untapped potential of no-budget filmmaking. The result was inevitably rushed and uneven, but it was also a case of a festival genuinely opening up new possibilities. They should try it more often.

-Donal Foreman

Darklight: www.darklight.ie.

Dublin: the Movie can be watched at www.4daymovie.wordpress.com