Anyone who went to last year's Raindance Festival in October had a hell of a fun time. The eclectic line up, including premieres of instant classic movies such as Old Boy, Dead Man's Shoes and Coffee & Cigarettes, put shame to the more pedestrian London Film Festival that followed.
We're already looking forward to Raindance 13 but in the meantime we are heading east...
The Raindance East Film Festival fosters local talent by providing a platform for aspiring filmmakers and now in its fourth year again brings a heady mix of new movies by both fresh and accomplished directors.
Kicking things off in style this year is Danny Boyle's Millions. The story of two kids who stumble across the money from a back robbery and then set out to spend it as fast as possible. Boyle, an East End resident, is this year's Festival Director in Residence and as well as opening the Festival on the 21st of April will also be on hand to introduce one of his earlier films on the 24th. The event will be followed by an in-depth interview and a Q&A session.
After checking out the full bill Londonist reckons you'd be mad to miss the following:
Todd Solondz seemed to misfire slightly with his last movie Storytelling, but he's still in our good books thanks to the early heights of Happiness and Welcome to the Dollhouse. With Palindromes Solondz is again testing his audience by telling the tale of one pregnant twelve year old with seven different actresses (and one actor!) of all ages playing Ellen Barkin's headstrong offspring. Jennifer Jason Leigh is also in the mix and that's all Londonist needs to know.
This is a worthy sequel to the original (much better than The Sixth Sense) ghost story. Again directed by the Pang brothers and full of creepy moments. This time the story revolves around pregnant Joey Cheng and her new found ability to see things the rest of us wouldn't want to. We saw this a while back, but will be looking forward to watching it on a big screen.
Londonist has always had a soft spot for anthology horror movies dating back to the first time we saw Roy Castle and Alan Freeman get the wrong train with Peter Cushing in Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. These days the anthology movie has fallen out of favour, but with Three Extremes we can see there's life in the old dog yet. Three segments directed by Takeshi Miike, Park Chan-wook and Fruit Chan, the directors responsible for such movies as Ichi the Killer, Old Boy and the bizarre Public Toilet respectively. Christopher Doyle handled the cinematography so you know it's going to look fantastic. We recently saw the extended Dumplings segment which is now a movie in it's own right and not only were we made deeply uncomfortable we haven't been able to eat an egg since. Seriously.
Top of the documentaries seems to be Born into Brothels, in which the children of prostitutes who work the Calcutta red light district are given cameras to document their lives.
And in the year that we lost Hunter S Thompson, Tony Grisoni will be on hand to talk about Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and other movies in one of the special events and workshops on offer.
The 4th Raindance East Film Festival runs April 21 -28. Full listings and ticket information are available on the Raindance East website.
