Brief Encounters 3 · Bristol
112 films from 16 countries are recorded in the archive for this edition.
The third Brief Encounters marked a significant step forward with a full-time team, a second venue at Arnolfini, and the inauguration of an annual conference on the short film — the topic being the National Lottery and its impact on short filmmaking. Cinematographer Jack Cardiff was celebrated in a special tribute. The festival introduced Ireland in Focus as a major strand, featuring films from both north and south of Ireland. Special guests included Tom Clarke MP (Minister for Film and Tourism), Brian Griffin, and Martin Parr. The festival closed with a Gas Giants live performance to films by Vigo and René Clair.
Read the 1997 Brief Encounters programme on the Internet Archive
Laurel & Hardy have a successful fish business… until Laurel has "a pretty smart thought" to cut out the middle man.
A woman listens to a radio as she prepares a meal but suddenly her life and the outside world seem to become strangely intertwined.
Quinn the dog takes his latest work to Cannes in a bid for stardom in this witty, fun and very shaggy satire.
Chained to his cot, wings confiscated at birth, 'Ike' is a creature of the kitchen, half baby, half duck; but with every deranged dribble he comes closer to becoming more like the swan on the matchbox of his desire. The latest film from Bristol-based bolexbrothers.
It's the biggest match of the season, Leeds vs. Manchester United, for 8-year-old Jason and his Dad. Fortune dictates however that they support Manchester United and live in Leeds and it's not easy when your Dad thinks you should wear your team's colours with pride in enemy territory.
Meeting your girlfriend's parents for the first time is always something of an ordeal, but when the family pet intervenes nothing goes as smoothly as planned. Skilful characterisation and a very sly sense of humour.
This is the story of Blue Beard's final conquest, a woman who is not quite what she seems. His murderous intentions are thwarted at every turn in a hilarious and intelligent look at a particularly bloody battle of the sexes.
A former dog juggling star of the music hall, made obsolete by the coming of cinema, has to face up to change and move on. In his way stands Arnold Hew, the talentless and manipulative star of the silver screen who has stolen his act and destroyed his confidence. Told in flash-back, the film charts the degradation of the Dog Juggler by the callous Hew and builds up to the night of their final confrontation on the stage of a crumbling music hall.
Winner of the Oscar for best animated short film. An ambitious eco-conscious animation which creates frighteningly abstract worlds. A sandman goes in search of dripping water. This quest leads him through worlds made of paper, stone and iron. A remarkable metaphorical film which creates an Escher-type sense of inescapability.
This year's Cannes award-winner. A stunningly original and idiosyncratic piece about a small girl's encounter with a bubble-gum sales rep. The film is narrated throughout by the little girl who runs through a list of all her preoccupations from her mum, to school, to her home, in a breathless, funny and assertive monologue.
Jury award-winner from the Clermont Ferrand short film festival. Mordecai and Margaret have recently arrived in London from Nigeria. When they are told that Mordecai's visa has not been extended, they try to carry on under the shadow of deportation, but their differing responses to pressure cause tension in the relationship. A beautifully filmed contemporary tale which shows real cinematic vision.
International jury prize at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival. A traveller with AIDS takes a journey, his last perhaps, and ends up at the Pensao Globo in Lisbon where he sets out on aimless excursions through the city. Matthias Mueller is one of the most original and exciting talents to have emerged in European film-making in recent years. His use of unconventional narrative strategies, combined with an entirely original and beautiful aesthetic, creates films which explore desire and destiny in the modern world.
Winner of the Post Office MacLaren Award at the Edinburgh Festival. The director of the award-winning MANIPULATION has completed an ambitious and dazzling new work using computer-generated effects which has added an additional dimension to his work. Things are looking a little flat for Matt until a cable fault flips him into a parallel universe of clichéd television formats.
Jack tells Josh and Jim the outrageous tale of how he got his black eye. Meanwhile Jack's kid sister has a more down to earth explanation. Everyone's telling stories.
A raw-edged fictional portrait based on the accounts of an ex-addict. A tough and touching film by this award-winning new director.
The moment of truth arrives for a young Glasgow man when his past as a boxer clashes with his new career as a loan shark. The world of high-rise and living on the edge is beautifully observed as is the brutality that poverty engenders.
It's Saturday night in London, the hippest city on Earth. Quant and Hawk, a young couple both agree on one thing – they want to go out. The only trouble is, that's all they agree on. Fast-paced, surreal and funny, LESS IS MORE takes a familiar contemporary anxiety and pushes it to its logical, absurd extreme.
"As far as Liverpool is concerned, Francis is the Son of God." The story of a young school leaver and his bizarre scheme to win his parents' approval, this is a comic look at the grand ambitions of youth and the dour wisdom of age.
Maggie, an aspiring singer/songwriter decides she's reached the right time in life to have a baby. She searches among her friends for a suitable man to father her child. A sharp, funny and well-executed comedy.
After Lorna's Mum disappears in mysterious circumstances, she grows up with a fascination for the unexplained, whilst her brother stops speaking and her father retreats into suburbia. Finally, enough is enough and she and her boyfriend Gordon go in search of the truth.
An animated comedy about a group of political subversives who try to bring down their oppressive overlords by committing acts of gross stupidity.
Chaos comes again to the domestic space in this witty and imaginative portrait of a man struggling to maintain order.
A year in the life of a small boy as he copes with school, peer pressure, Dr. Who, and the break-up of his parents' marriage.
A comedy of excess and desperate remedies. One raver's struggle with his own head. After a night of 'living large' he finds himself faced with the nightmare of trying to sleep when "still buzzin'".
Inspired gothic model animation about the life of the father of modern anatomy, a Renaissance man whose scientific drawings have lost none of their power over the centuries.
From the director of the 1996 Cannes award-winner SMALL DEATHS. A moving and poignant portrait of two little girls at Christmas who have to live with their father's difficult secret.
Drawing on the traditions of popular Hindi cinema for its soundtrack and visual style, this strange and haunting film offers an intriguing treatment of colonialism and desire.
Digital animation techniques were the inspiration for this film about childhood. A ghost-like little girl keeps tapping on a woman's consciousness, demanding attention, recalling traumatic childhood events and disrupting the present.
A painfully acute account of the troubled relationship between a father and son. When Francis was young everything was much simpler and he and his Dad explored the world together. Now he's grown-up they don't talk anymore, Dad's lost his job and spends more time with his butterfly collection than with anyone else.
A seven-year-old boy is obsessed with football, his Dad and a horror film monster. When his Dad dies suddenly he is devastated. However, he comes home from school to find his Dad apparently eating chips in his front parlour.
BOLT is an accomplished, pacy ride with an ingenious twist, and not for the squeamish. A young band are seeking a new musical direction in their search for success. A violent encounter with a hard man unexpectedly proves to be the catalyst which makes the difference.
An innocent passer-by answers a ringing public telephone out of curiosity and finds that he's being stalked by the caller from hell. A cautionary tale which is chillingly executed with an Orwellian sense of suffocation in a seemingly hostile but watchful city.
A young army recruit tries to keep his nose clean, but finally snaps under the constant provocation of the barrack's bully. This is a film about masculinity, about fathers and sons and about the burden of living up to something even when you're not quite sure what that something is.
Ardal O'Hanlon (from TV's Father Ted) stars as Eddie Johnny Manson, in a fun parody of the 1950s and all things hip, groovy and happening. Eddie is a Troubled Teen, desperate for his hick town to catch up with the rest of the world. Humiliated by the local toughs in a rumble over the new babe on the block, his chance to be a hero comes when the town is overrun by space mutants!
A black comedy with a serious body count about two teenage girls on the road and a night to remember.
When a poker bet goes wrong Colm must charm a snake called Celia to earn back his most treasured possession, a classic 1950s car entrusted to him by his grandfather. A hide and seek tale with remarkable consequences and an even more remarkable snake!
A priest faces some dangerous curves on the Antrim Coast Road after he picks up a hitchhiker on her way to a beauty contest.
A lyrical, visual poem set in Donegal in 1932, about a young girl's struggle against domestic brutality in a rural environment.
Twelve-year-old Kay and her Dad share a house, a universe and a love of MORSE code. In '70s Belfast their house is a cosy world of soldering irons, messages over the ether and faulty televisions. All is contentment until a rival for Dad's affections appears on the scene.
Featuring the voice of Radio 1's Mark Radcliffe as the smooth presenter, CIDERPUNKS is an animated 'mockumentary' which brings a humorous insight to the frantic, Belfast-based life of 17-year-old Becky Donduffin and her circle of friends, all of whom share a passion for nihilism, protesting, body piercing and army surplus clothing.
A tender and loving story of Lexie and his daughter Laura. Both are learning to cope with the death of his wife but it's Laura's dream of being a Riverdancer which finally transforms the loneliness that has been governing their lives.
Cast: Babe Kane, Elise Cavanna. After a golf match Fields returns to victimise at least one female patient in his dental surgery. This is the uncensored version – dentists beware!
Cast: Rychard Cramer, Rosemary Theby, George Chandler. Fields sings! As a Northwoods trapper he recounts (occasionally in tune) the sad tale of his son, lured to the big city and ruined by demon drink. A classic.
Cast: Grady Sutton, Babe Kane. Fields runs the village chemist and general store where his wife and daughters are the bane of his existence.
Cast: Elise Cavanna, Harry Watson, Dagmar Oakland. A day in the life of a village barbershop. Again Fields contends with unhelpful relatives, complaining customers (most have something to complain about) – and a bank robber.
Effectively a short, this is Field's sequence from the portmanteau feature – each segment with a different star. W.C. Field's 'road rage' revenge on roadhogs theme was easily the most memorable.
Laurel & Hardy go 'up in the high multitudes' for Hardy's health.
When greeting card salesmen Laurel & Hardy are engaged by Mae Busch to make her husband jealous, they succeed only too well. One of their best, and last shorts.
Often quoted as the film which first established the team of Laurel & Hardy. The story of a girl-crazy Scotsman visiting the USA for the first time – Hardy meets nephew Laurel off the ship and (like the rest of Los Angeles) wishes he hadn't. Supervised by Leo McCarey – most of the best early Laurel & Hardy's were.
One of Laurel & Hardy's best silents, plus one of the first appearances of Jean Harlow. Laurel & Hardy are sheriff's men who have to reclaim a radio from Edgar Kennedy, who's behind in his payments. Easy, huh?
Charley Chase was Hal Roach's top comedian until Laurel & Hardy came along. Badly in need of rediscovery, this is possibly his funniest two-reeler. Chase's life in movies was one long embarrassing moment. Here he proves it, ending up on the way to his wedding with a naked girl in the back of his car.
Cast: Snub Pollard. Snub Pollard is probably best known for this classic one reeler. Years ahead of his time, Pollard invents a gasoline substitute.
Cast: Will Rogers. Will Rogers spoof Rudolph Valentino, westerns, D. W. Griffith epics and other movies of the day.
Cast: Harold Lloyd. The film that led to SAFETY LAST – Harold Lloyd's most famous feature – and his lifetime reputation as a thrill comedian. Spurned in love (though he actually married the girl, Mildred Davis, in reality), Lloyd somehow ends up on top of a half-completed skyscraper.
A visual memory of a journey, based on sound and 8mm film, shot in India and Nepal.
A very pertinent comedy. A family need re-housing due to the wife's pregnancy and are taken by a council official to their new home – a skip on a wealthy housing estate.
Joe Foley, a new, young, thrusting comedian is taken by his manager to Weston-super-Mare to try out his new act away from the limelight. The seaside theatre is run by one of the old school comics (beautifully played by Brian Murphy) and the clash of their respective comic cultures has shattering repercussions for both of them.
A documentary about four youths from the inner-city of Bristol and their passion for BMX bikes. Produced as part of a training course for black and ethnic minority groups, Eazy Riders is an accomplished and engaging investigation into the lives of four young men, their vision of the past and their hopes for the future.
Baby is a tiny doll who lives in the perpetually dark 'Niteworld'. The only light place left is the theme-park 'Welcomeworld' – the hyperreal creation of Baby's long-lost father. Baby travels to see him and wreaks havoc with the help of her special powers, a supply of jelly beans and her mysterious friends. Can she destroy the ultra-powerful 'nice-guy-in-a-sweater'?
Kodak/SWMDA Award-Winner. A dream-like, poetic drama set in the Edwardian era about a woman confronting her own sexuality in a society bound by convention.
We see life through the eyes of a boy growing up in strange but original surroundings, where everything has become so completely mad that only an imaginary hero can help him out of the chaos and guide him through life.
Through the voice of a small boy we discover his relationship with his grandmother as she declines in the last years of her life, remembering her youth as a showgirl.
"When the lights go off down here you might as well be blind." In the blackness of a mine Morris reflects his life's labour, dead colleagues, war, family and the dog. This black and white film uses different animation media to explore Morris' physical and mental worlds, evoking memory, but always punctuating sentimentality with wit.
The film deals with an adolescent, Alan, growing up in a working class environment in the East End of London. It examines his relationships with both his single-parent mother and his best friend Gary. The film opens with the lads on their first day at a new school and follows their exploits as Gary manipulates Alan into bad ways which reflect his home life.
This short documentary offers rich visual coverage of the biography of Anthony Bloom, the 82-year-old Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church. But it departs from the conventions of the bio-pic by using interviews with the Archbishop in which he reflects and meditates exclusively on the subject of death. Thus the film confronts not the dignitary but the inner man. In reflecting on his encounters with death, Anthony conveys a sense of intense spiritual energy, and the viewer is offered a challenging insight into one man's way of dealing with a universal condition.
A boat passes and music plays.
A tale of deceit and desire, based on a short story by Roald Dahl.
Still unshown on British television, French playwright and author Jean Genet's only completed film is a lyrical evocation of homosexual passion and romance in a men's prison, with its attendant fantasies and frustrations. One of the most intensely physical films ever made.
From the director of PENSAO GLOBO, an early short which contains familiar motifs of sensualism and beauty. Fireworks explode against a dark night sky lighting up a single male body.
An innovative use of montage as the natural world is transformed into tantalisingly seductive and erotic images.
A fabulous and funny juxtaposition of baton-twirling, cosmonauts and sex. Dimitri, Soviet cosmonaut of Soyouz 27, likes majorettes. Catherine and Laurent like making love. Jean-Paul II likes airports and Vincent likes boys.
Man's need for structure and the structure of desire. Eikrem employs surrealist techniques and a great soundtrack to construct a hypnotic, lyrical blitz of sensual images.
Sarah takes her new boyfriend home to her highly critical middle-class family where he discovers that they indulge in some very unorthodox practices. A film to make Buñuel blush.
Dark satiric comedy about violence in a domestic setting as a house guest flips when his requests for refreshment orders are ignored.
This unconventional comedy explores women's sexuality through candid stories of sexual discoveries, fantasies and pleasures. The phone rings and the girl-talk begins: secrets emerge and confessions build as the audience is taken on an adventure of sensual humour.
The title is self-explanatory, the humour self-evident, this is a chance to see this infamous short which should not be missed.
This Spike and Mike produced short was recently voted the sickest cartoon ever at the World Animation Celebration. Lloyd shares with us some of his tips on personal hygiene.
Two bluebottle flies after a night on the amber nectar search for excitement in their local and discover the ultimate thrill.
A young and rather frisky pet dog shows his affection for all his masters' guests, who are not terribly flattered. Will he find the object of his desires? Produced by Spike and Mike.
Two episodes from the TV series that reveal the bizarre but genuine world of sexual behaviour in the animal kingdom.
With an exciting video clutched in his hand, a man rushes home oblivious to his near misses with death, and inserts the tape into his VCR.
Will Woody triumph over his arch rival Buzz Light-touch?
Nine animators from around the world interpret the same sleazy, squelchy and revolting sound track, with unique, erotic and hilarious results.
The 'duo' are now regular stars on Saturday Night Live in the USA. But what is it with Ace and Gary?
A rather unique view of a gun battle in the wild west.
Three senior citizen golfing pals discuss the best way to keep dry whilst out on the fairway, and they're not talking about the weather! Produced by Spike and Mike.
A bizarre night of outrageous and surreal sex between two grotesque lovers.
Two more episodes of the TV series.
Now seen as a classic in this genre. Isn't Bambi cute?
Sex for Old Age Pensioners as demonstrated by our imaginative and intrepid hosts. Watch as they fearlessly perform, without the aid of a safety net, or contraception.
Would you like to kick the evil weed? Take Bill's advice with any one of these handy tips, all guaranteed to cure that addiction.
Come and meet your friendly local butcher, but careful with that axe Lupo.
A used condom spouts off about being used and unappreciatively thrown away.
A quirky film with a great soundtrack about a man eager to get home.
A wolf, a sheep and a cabbage need to cross the river. How is it to be managed? A witty dissertation on rational solutions to difficult problems.
The biography of a humble man, his lemon tree, his chihuahua and his crumpets. This claymation animation is an exceptional first film which manages both to be incredibly droll and poignant.
Two women friends sit on the beach on a lazy summer day whilst their families play nearby. In the heat of the day confidences are exchanged which will change their lives forever.
An extraordinary one-take film based on Lucien Hervé's famous photograph, The Three Women, which reveals the bleak and uncompromising landscape in which they live.
Mats is thwarted in his picnic plans by his father's new girlfriend. The solution has to be a change in the weather but how can he make it rain?
A needle stuck in a spider's web is just one of the exquisite images from this Cocteauesque fairy tale, which has a surreal beauty all its own. Narrated by Quentin Crisp and starring Christina Ricci, it's a gripping, unruly story of playful sexuality, fantasy and scatological humour.
An animated tango which explores the dilemma of decorating oneself with the skin of a supposedly dead animal.
Beautifully drawn and constructed animation based on the ancient Greek legend of the boy who flew too near the sun.
An intoxicating montage of a city never seen before. Eikrem uses a variety of technical tricks and a hypnotic soundtrack to weave a compulsive visual tapestry.
Tony is a self-made, stone-age man and we see him at work and play in this animated, observational comedy.
Originally commissioned as a cinematic interlude for a ballet by Francis Picabia, ENTR'ACTE is considered one of the most interesting Dadaist films. Clair brought to the film his feeling for movement and rhythm, influenced in turn by the serials of Feuillade and Durand and by the comedies of Chaplin and Sennett. One of its distinguishing features is the arbitrariness that Andre Breton identified as the essential feature of the Surrealist image.
Vigo and his cameraman Boris Kaufman took aspects of the social documentary, the poetic form of a 'city symphony' and the polemic of a political propaganda film to create a 'surrealist city symphony', an irreverent representation of French society and its idle corrupt rich.
Norman McLaren was, along with Len Lye, one of the first animators to experiment with painting directly on to film and these three films are classic examples of that technique. McLaren drew fluid lines and brilliant colours down the piece of film, creating restless movement and shapes which converge, change, multiply and recede to accompaniment from jazz musicians of the day. They are fine examples of how abstract images can sustain the viewer and also of how an accident can be an asset, with McLaren using dust in the celluloid to form new textures.
Norman McLaren was, along with Len Lye, one of the first animators to experiment with painting directly on to film and these three films are classic examples of that technique. McLaren drew fluid lines and brilliant colours down the piece of film, creating restless movement and shapes which converge, change, multiply and recede to accompaniment from jazz musicians of the day. They are fine examples of how abstract images can sustain the viewer and also of how an accident can be an asset, with McLaren using dust in the celluloid to form new textures.
An anti-militarist parable inspired partly by McLaren's reaction to the American involvement in Korea. For the first time, McLaren used stop-frame animation or 'pixillation' for the filming of actors, thereby creating a type of violence and speed of tempo normally found only in cartoons, transforming human actors into robots or caricatures.
Originally made as a Post Office Savings propaganda film, this is an exceptional example of early experimental colour animation which combines a live action dance with animated colour fantasies.