Brief Encounters 2 · Bristol
131 films from 15 countries are recorded in the archive for this edition.
The second Brief Encounters expanded to five programming strands: French cinema, cartoons and the movies, music and film, photography and the cinema, and international premieres. Guest of honour Terry Jones attended the launch. Highlights included a full retrospective of animator Joanna Quinn — including the premiere of Famous Fred — and the Score programme pairing avant-garde film classics with new electronic scores from artists including Blur and Wishmountain. The festival introduced The Briefing screenwriting workshop with Stephen Frears, and closed with a live Gas Giants performance.
Read the 1996 Brief Encounters programme on the Internet Archive
Beryl, a seemingly quiet and mousy Welsh Valleys housewife, develops a raucous and raunchy side to her at a night out with the girls, in a pub, with a male stripper.
A libidinous wolf enjoys a night out at the movies, which includes a black-and-white newsreel and a Warner's feature, 'Laurey Becool and Humphrey Gocart in TO HAVE TO HAVE TO HAVE...' He gets more than a little aroused by the Bacall caricature, which is very elaborately animated and rotoscoped from footage from the feature film TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT.
The fairy of the phone guides us through the operating intricacies of that new fangled appliance, the telephone, in a set of very camp vignettes, culminating in a dance extravaganza that recalls Hollywood musicals of the period. The script was based on page 6 of the 1936 telephone directory!
A higher being in a state of pious bliss endures the attentions of a meddling official in a tale of high altitude bureaucracy. The latest film from Bristol based animation studio bolexbrothers with music by The Insects.
Aardman Animation's latest epic, shot in split screen, a stirring tale of evil deeds and sibling confusion in medieval England.
Oscar-winning comedy, charting the desperate attempts of a commuter to escape the train he's on, having discovered the time-table has been changed. Can he overcome French bureaucracy, as well as the kindness of strangers?
The women in his life are driving him crazy, his 9-5 colleagues are animals and he's small for his age. Philip Maguire, aged 8, has problems. A stirring tale of how school bullies can be dealt with. Hilarious.
Exquisitely timed animation comedy in which a young caterpillar approaches coming of age with some trepidation.
Cheeky pup Bonzo was Britain's answer to Felix the Cat. Here, he tries to impress his Pekinese sweetheart by going to Hollywood and becoming Bon Chaney, a famous film star.
Hilarious spoof of gangster pictures, particularly those from the Warners studio in the 30s – remember ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES? Hero officer Flatfoot Flanagan chases after mobster Killer Diller as portrayed by Edward G Rob'emsome.
A playful evocation – and reinvention – of Buster Keaton's screen presence. 'Lyrical, painterly and very elegant' Time Out.
During the animator's lunchbreak, Daffy convinces Porky he's too good for cartoons and ought to break into features – as Bette Davies' leading man. Porky confronts the Warner Brothers studio head, who agrees to tear up his contract, leaving Porky to endure a harrowing series of misadventures in the Warner's live-action studio.
A satirical transformation of the fairytale for the passive-aggressive '90s. Snowie hits Hollywood hoping for the big-time, but agents Sorry, Creepy, Geeky, Later, Wimpy, Sleazy and I'll Call Ya make her wonder.
Spoofing both film noir and the old Hollywood cartoon film including femme fatale Tamara LaBoink and her porcine partner, Duckman faces double-dealing on all fronts.
Droopy stars in this western spoof packed with typical Tex Avery preoccupations: visual puns, libidinous wolves, sexual innuendo, and the tough-talking sex bomb cabaret singer Red (as in Red-Hot).
One of the best of the many WW2 propaganda films which were Hollywood's contribution to the war effort, the film is also a hilarious spoof on some of those very movies – war pics and espionage thrillers, with Daffy as the company woman-hater sent on a mission to get past the Nazi se-duck-tress 'Hata Mari'. Director Tashlin, better known for his subsequent live-action career, displays his characteristic take on the battle of the sexes (THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT).
Vuong uses computer animation for narrative purposes, rather than as demonstration of technique for its own sake. A knowledgeable and witty pastiche/homage of film noir, using computer animation to unusual effect. The Invisible Man (a short-sighted detective) prepares to propose to his new love, but first he has to find the ring.
Before inventing Betty Boop, and animating Popeye and Superman, Max & Dave Fleischer made a series of shorts combining live-action and animation that remain some of the most inventive
An ingenious combination of live-action and model animation, set in the future, which tells the story of a lost civilisation – ours – through cinema history: from slapstick comedy to German Expressionist drama, from Surrealism to Spielberg via Fellini.
Taking frame-stills from classic Hollywood crime movies and film noir, Toccafondo paints over them to form the basis of an exploration of criminal stereotypes and classic shoot-out scenarios.
An animated narrative commercial – a delightful spoof of the Western from a pioneer of model animation. Bet you didn't know that a cowboys' favourite tipple was Horlicks?
Duckman's partner discovers he left a son behind from his time in 'Nam, so he takes Duckman back with him in search of his long lost love. Along the way, a tour of Nam, movie-style.
Featuring an all-star cast of Warner Brothers' characters in a costume epic written by Daffy 'Dumas' Duck which he presents to his studio boss in preference to his usual typecasting in low comedy roles. Magnificent sets and action scenes, both homage and spoof of Errol Flynn style swashbuckling costume dramas.
Suffering from a blow on the head whilst reading his favourite comic book, Daffy dreams that he is none other than Duck Twacy, famous de-teck-it-ive, tracking down a criminal gang, composed of grotesques such as Double Headed Juke Box Jaw and Neon Noodle. Full of surreal visual puns on outlandish gangster names and underworld jargon.
A recent archival rediscovery, in which Charlie Chaplin visits a cinema showing one of his films and begins to ponder the significance of universal fame. Stunning design and sophisticated film-within-a-film make this a real revelation.
Mini film noir set in nighttime Los Angeles. The stylish sophistication of the scratched-on-film animation won the filmmaker a promo commission from David Bowie.
A surreal combination of live-action and animation as a toy dog is thrust into the Parisian underworld, peopled by louche gangsters straight out of the movies and a range of fantastical creatures that could only come from Starewicz's strange imagination. This stunning stop-motion animation was a major inspiration for Tim Burton when developing A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS.
Abner, Hickville Hotel bellhop, falls asleep waiting for Miss Glory and dreams that Hickville is New York and its populace a New Yorker cartoon choreographed by Busby Berkeley. Tex Avery's first colour film is a delightful Art Deco pastiche of Busby Berkeley's musical extravaganzas.
Elmer Fudd tries to catch Bugs to make fried rabbit in a swanky Hollywood night-spot for his important customers Bogart and Bacall. Other caricatures include Gregory Peck, Ray Milland, Sinatra, Sidney Greenstreet's stomach, and Bugs playing Groucho to Elmer's Harpo Marx.
Duck Dodgers is sent to Planet X to find a new source for the world's dwindling supply of Aludium q-36, the shaving cream atom, and brings his eager young space cadet Porky Pig with him. A personal favourite of George Lucas, creator of STAR WARS, who asked cinemas to play the cartoon as support on the first American release of his feature.
Typical Western hero Daffy and typical Western sidekick Porky ride into a typically lawless Western town and meet typically Western villain Nasty Canasta.
A boxing match between a brutish monster and a scrawny weakling, Tex Avery style.
A chase scene between two witches on their motorized brooms.
Dominique Pinon gives a brilliant performance in this sumptuously art-directed extravaganza. At a theatre performance of 'Macbeth' the elaborate stage-machinery seems to take on a life of its own. Meanwhile there are strange things going on backstage.
A sleepy marsh, the last haven of peace left in a war-ravaged landscape, but a young woman is in danger from violent pursuers. An ambitious historical-cum-sci-fi epic, with an unusual combination of live-action and clay animation.
Paul's gay lifestyle has estranged him from his father. When he learns his father is dying, he goes to see him, but his attempts at reconciliation cause a scandal. An imaginative and powerful drama.
Jean-Marc and Pamela reluctantly attend the premiere of a film directed by a friend. What are they going to say at the congratulatory dinner afterwards? A glorious satire on ego in the film world, and the pretensions of film criticism.
'Everything I like. Everything I don't like.' A man (Dominique Pinon) recounts a bizarre list of his likes and dislikes, illustrated by a montage of quirky images and a raucous soundtrack.
A short from a film project about safe sex, in which new and established feature directors were asked to choose, then direct, scenarios sent in by the public. Mathieu Kassowitz, who directed LA HAINE, is also an actor, and here plays the school tough who knows it all.
Subtle and original psycho-drama in which everyday domestic tensions between a mother and daughter evoke the fearful fantasies of childhood. The ambience conjured here recalls the early work of David Lynch, on whom Chion has recently published a book.
Playful homage to the early spirit of the Nouvelle Vague, a young American in Paris gives chase to, and in the process falls for, a Parisienne pickpocket.
Tour de force: powerful performances and a brilliant mise-en-scène characterise this psychological drama in which a lifetime of mutual resentment between mother and daughter explode as they meet after a decade of non-communication. Dupeyron is a multi-award winning short filmmaker whose features include DROLE D'ENDROIT POUR UNE RECONTRE
Florence Miailhe is fascinated by Western images of Oriental culture, and the female body. HAMMAM is set in what we know as a Turkish bath, and draws on the filmmaker's experiences of a North African bridal ritual. The freedom of animation as a medium, and her use of it, result in a powerful celebration of female sensuality.
A solitary young man's obsession with his collection of blue marbles conflicts with a dawning erotic fixation. The bravura style recalls the Beneix/Besson/Carax school of filmmaking.
A stag with sparkling eyes sits atop the sideboard. Tutu would like to play with it but at Granny's house you're not allowed to touch, otherwise you get locked in the cupboard.
Stylish dark comedy-thriller, which charts the unusual events of a day in the life of an eccentric photographer, forced by love or fear to influence the lives of his models.
75 mph on a mountain road. A car thief. A staggeringly beautiful woman. She thinks he's crazy. He is deeply sorry.
A delightful offbeat fiction, both funny and enigmatic. A young woman moves into the flat of a friend, who becomes more than a little perturbed at the contents of her suitcases. A film that won every award for which it was eligible. The director went on to make UN MONDE SANS PITIE.
From the director of THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA and CYCLO. A young Vietnamese mother awaits her husband's return from the war front. Every night she enacts a shadow play to make her son think his father has in fact returned. Emotionally resonant and visually stunning.
Twice a year, Carole is visited by her parents in Paris. A finely-nuanced and touching exploration of coming to terms, as an adult, with your parents.
Computer animation which achieves the rare feat of conveying emotion and sensuality in its imaginative rendering of the famous opera aria.
The need to make sense of experience, by creating art in impossible conditions is conveyed in this imaginative docu-fiction, based on the experiences of a young priest and artist, imprisoned for his work with the French Resistance.
A young boy is carried away by his imagination in his drawing class. Live action and animation interact in a film about the transforming power of imagination.
Computer generated animation and effects mix with live-action in a Borgesian tale of an extraordinary map that changes its form as it accompanies a traveller.
A suburban train journey, in which a typically loud American tourist involves surrounding passengers in his attempts to chat up the object of his desire. A very French view of a certain type of American.
Computer animation. A luxurious room, with an Arcimboldo painting on the wall, a table laid for dinner. A knife and fork stretch out and peer at their target – the peach in the picture.
Jeanne lives with her 12 year old daughter, Evelyne. The love of Evelyne's life is a white rabbit stolen from who knows where. Jeanne loves the neighbour. The neighbour is in love with his motorbike, and Jeanne, and possibly Evelyne who he watches on the sly. Jeanne doesn't like that at all.
Two young men take a holiday before embarking on their National Service. A quietly resonant coming of age drama.
A film which has dominated prize-lists at several international festivals. Antoine has only one friend, his camera. The son of a level-crossing keeper, he collects the passing trains on film. In the past, one of them took his mother away. Until the day when the eternal magic of cinema gives his mother back.
This animated film by painter Florence Miailhe is an unsurgated [sic – source reads 'unsurgated'; likely 'unexpurgated'] original version of a tale from 'A Thousand and One Nights' which celebrates the power of female sexuality.
A movie stuntman and a member of the French national fencing team meet in rather provocative circumstances and sparks fly. Fast-moving, witty and a lot of fun.
An animated, action packed feast of line, colour and movement, which gives visual life to the ancient Greek philosophical theory that nothing ever stays the same.
A student graduation film that has won 17 international festival awards. On the day the government encourages the public to achieve something worthwhile, three lonely men contemplate the imminent departure of their favourite barmaid. A visually arresting study of non-achievers that is both comic and poignant.
Playing around a rough Glasgow housing estate, a young child gets trapped inside a junked fridge. His only chance for survival lies with a homeless, alcoholic couple. Tough, powerful and moving.
Oscar nominated animated comedy of a cowardly dog who foils the plans of an alien chicken bent on taking over the world.
A surreal comedy-horror with such a bizarre story-line it could only exist in animation form. Hunger drives a man into a strange disguise to gain favours – and food – from an eccentric yet generous old lady. But is she as dotty and harmless as she seems?
Actor David Thewlis makes a confident directorial debut with this dead-pan social comedy. A nocturnal encounter between policeman (Bob Pugh) and artist (Kathy Burke) takes an unexpectedly comic and profound turn.
Weird and wonderful – trees can inspire the strangest feelings in the most unlikely people. Winner of the Silver Spire at the San Francisco Film Festival.
Winner of the Cannes Festival Short Film prize. Based on personal memories and experiences of childhood, set in and around a Glasgow housing scheme. A triptych of moments of reflection and loss in one girl's childhood and adolescence.
Long awaited new animation film from the maker of the taboo-breaking ASPARAGUS. The film's initial 1950s pulp fiction/noir visual style gives way to a lush celebration of the transforming power of the imagination. An evocation of nature's healing powers, and a tribute to the innocence and joy of classic Hollywood cartoons, with a haunting score by the Jazz Passengers' Roy Nathanson.
This poignant comedy won the BAFTA Award for Best Short Film. An Asian female cabbie is teased by her family for her passion for Tom Jones, then one day she's given a call sheet for none other than the man himself. Featuring Meera Syal, with appearances from John McArdle, Leslie Grantham and Suzanna Hamilton.
A Japanese tourist, with no English, decides to break away from her group to explore London by herself. She meets a Swiss au pair and, together, they get lost. With only a few English pop songs in common, they find a way to communicate. A film about mothers and daughters, the beauty of mistakes, and the importance of the right pair of shoes.
Following an Asian-run private taxi hire company in Bristol, this documentary is a revealing portrait of the lives and livelihoods of the owner and four drivers. As they circle the city, they tell us how they came to this country, what led them into this work, the racism they encounter, self-defence, the exclusion from the hackney work and the strong mutual support that keeps them going.
A Brothers Grimm-style story about a young man who acquires Death as his Godmother. She gives him the power to pull people back from the brink of dying, but only sometimes. It brings him success but ultimately leads him into a deep moral and personal jeopardy.
The world seen through the eyes of a pigeon.
Experimental animated dance inspired by trees.
Personal exploration of masculinity and the origins of gender.
The spiritual evolution of human kind evoked in animated sand paintings.
A young man visits his estranged father. Through a seamless use of flashback, which is incorporated into the present, the son comes to terms with his family history.
The filmmaker, who is an artist and print-maker, uses collage and animation to reveal the secret stories behind the colours in an artist's palette.
A personal view of the relationship between daughter and mother, set in a room poised on the threshold of birth or death. The film evolved from the combined dreams and memories of the filmmaker and her mother, and uses stop-motion animation based on old family snapshots.
A light-hearted documentary, concentrating on trivia, which combines live-action, animation and collage with a mildly sinister undercurrent: a must for shoe fetishists...
Time-lapsed drawings of one year's sunsets, rendered directly onto filmstock, the result is a dazzling expression of the visual music revealed by 365 setting suns.
Laurel & Hardy try to conceal their dog from an irate landlord.
A satire on a famous boxing match, and that cliché of silent comedies – the pie fight. Planned as 'the pie picture to end all pie pictures' the climactic final sequence became one of its finest examples.
The classic, Academy Award winning Laurel & Hardy short in which they take three reels of film not to deliver a piano up the longest flight of steps in LA.
Escaped convicts Laurel & Hardy somehow end up on top of a half completed skyscraper, wearing each other's trousers (don't ask why...).
Photographer Pucill applies photo-collage to film, with a witty and oblique angle on sexual stereotyping.
One of the top fashion photographers world-wide, Bruce Weber also makes occasional films, such as BROKEN NOSES, and the Cannes prize-winning portrait of Chet Baker, LET'S GET LOST. His latest film is 'an enchanting scrapbook of his childhood spent falling in love with movie icons and Newfoundland dogs and a sweet oblique discovery of sexuality.'
The classic sci-fi short which inspired Terry Gilliam's 12 MONKEYS. After the destruction of Paris in a nuclear World War 3, an underground bunch of survivors conduct experiments in time travel as a means of escape. Composed almost entirely of still photographs, the film's fluid montage and its mastery of a suspenseful narrative packs an extraordinary emotional charge.
A man becomes an obsessive voyeur of the young woman who hires the room next door to enact a strange bodily ritual. When he decides to intervene, the outcome makes him wonder if she is really of this world.
Award-winning story of a taxidermist's misadventures in the course of his professional practice.
Made in collaboration with writer Russell Hoban, the film takes metaphors of sexual potency and aggression into new territories, as Deadsy decides to change sex to achieve global domination.
A dark tale with intriguing erotic overtones. A disturbing domestic nightmare which begins, innocently enough, with its heroine fishing a stray hair from a blocked plug-hole. 'Mesmerising' – Time Out / 'a very female horror movie – David Lynch in high heels' – The Guardian
An early short from one of the most singular Spanish feature-film directors of recent years (VACAS, THE RED SQUIRREL). A young boy gives a present to a thirty-year old woman he has befriended, but it has unintended and alarming corporeal consequences.
This animated adaptation of an Edgar Allen Poe story resulted in a rare 'X' certificate from the British censors.
A girl lies in bed aware that she is surrounded by the mechanics of death. Will she wake to face her maker, or slumber on into a nightmare?
'Introduced as a true story, PEEL follows a drive in the country undertaken by a red-headed family of three. Their outing results in an intrigue of awesome belligerence. A stunningly simple tale terrifically acted, it reverberates with cycles of pathogenic behaviour, and with hurt and fury. It's also very funny.' – Village Voice
The sixties, Beatlemania and growing up. A complex tangle of family relationships, the film is a dense web spun around the highly charged poles of puberty, Catholic school and incest, and reveals a few secrets from those years when 'family is strange, adulthood lonely, innocence perverse' – Jane Campion.
Beryl, the Welsh Valleys housewife first encountered in GIRL'S NIGHT OUT, doesn't have a wasp waist, nor does she possess legs like a gazelle. She suffers the taunts of Vince, a preening male macho nerd because of her superfluous curves. So Beryl decides to go head to head, or body to body, in a body building contest at the factory works.
A satirical swipe at the British character and how in the pursuit of wealth and power it has robbed other nations of their pride and national wealth.
One of a series of films for which different animators were commissioned to 'interpret' a chosen painting by Toulouse Lautrec. Quinn's irreverent and lively take on Lautrec's painting of two filles de joie – relaxing after a hard day's work? – gives them an independence and energy characteristic of all Quinn's female characters.
Joanna Quinn's latest film is an animated adaptation of Posy Simmonds' book, Famous Fred. When Nick and Sophie's cat Fred dies, although they loved him dearly, they had to admit he was probably the laziest cat in the world. But the night of his funeral they're awakened by a loud meowing. Hundreds of Fred's feline mates have come to hold a requiem and reveal Fred's secret other life as the most famous rock star of the feline world EVER! They learn of his kittenhood, his early life crooning on the backwall, how he acquired a manager, roadies, a backing group, and ever increasing fame. And then what happened next.
Made as a humorous substitute for the usual slide asking ladies to doff their extravagant hats when inside the nickelodeon.
A typically fantastic journey from the pioneer of cinematic illusion.
A wild flight of fancy across the New York skyline in a surreal dream of the 'rarebit fiend'.
This delightful satire on the star system is considered to be amongst the first avant-garde films made and shows the strong influence of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI.
An irreverent Dadaist fantasy, exploiting the full gamut of camera experiment and trickery to allow hats, ties and coffee cups to rebel against the tyranny of men and physics.
Inspired by Epstein, Gance and the Soviet filmmakers, this film uses negative, jump-cuts and montage to turn a boxing-match into a metaphor for cinema itself.
A classic Laurel & Hardy silent. Oliver is the uncle, Stanley the Scottish nephew, newly arrived in America, whose kilt causes a sensation.
Queen Alexandria of Britain had a fully operational miniature Cadillac motor car made as a present for Prince Olaf of Norway. We see it following a full size model around the centre of London.
Dramatised advert for Osram lightbulbs. Extravagant Edwin, turned down by Angelina, dreams of how to prove himself worthy of her love and wonders if Osram light bulbs might be the answer.
The Post Office helps resolve a lover's tiff in this rarely seen live-action film from animator, Len Lye. It's fascinating to see the influence of European Surrealism in its style, combined with a 'terribly' British soundtrack.