Three Late Film Festival Additions!
Morris
Gonzo director Harvey Boyce returns with this heartwarming look at the misunderstood world of Morris dancing. Boyce traverses the globe uncovering pockets of Morris enthusiasts in England, Canada, Sweden and Hong Kong. He steps behind the glamour and uncovers some of Morris dancing’s great characters: Woolly, a German expatriate taught to Morris by the British soldier who shot his arm off in World War II; Alice (formerly Hassan), a post-op transsexual who had to leave her glittering Morris-dancing career behind to become a woman; and the Welsh Border Morris enthusiasts, a group that traditionally danced in blackface but who now find their favoured style under threat from an increasingly politically correct Britain.
Loveguts
Another controversial sensation at this year’s Cannes Festival, Foley Gould’s fetish epic invokes other sex-shockers such as Cronenberg’s Crash and Chéreau’s Intimacy. Ingenue Salome is drawn into an underground world of “navel-gazers”, a disturbed community obsessed with sexual umbilicoplasty. Hunted by the law and misunderstood by the world at large, the belly-bandits are forced into dangerous amateur surgical practices, culminating in the spectacular evisceration of Hugo: the hairy and obese tummy-gimp on whom their fragile world centres.
Preservar Mi Corazón (Preserve My Heart)
An evocative Spanish masterpiece that channels the visual effulgence of Almodóvar and the absurdist lyricism of Buñuel. When her grandmother dies, hard-as-nails city-girl Isabella inherits a Navarrese preservery in unremarkable Celigüeta. Isabella discovers spiritual reward amongst the pickles and jams of her ancestors, and when banderillero Javier returns home to Celigüeta in disgrace, love blossoms amongst the jars and demijohns of Isabella’s new home. As Javier’s attentions macerate Isabella’s toughened heart, the lovers find hope for a future together: if only they can outrun their encroaching pasts.