T - Raindance Film Festival

NEW TITLES FROM THE DOGWOOF KENNEL 

www.dogwoof.com

PROUD SPONSORS OF THE RAINDANCE FESTIVAL 

We are London’s only 

full service film 

laboratory. Based in the 

heart of Soho, we offer 

full film post and 

printing services and a 

multi-format rushes 

service to cater for you. 

WE, LIKE YOU, LOVE WHAT WE DO

OUR THANKS TO 

Julia Brown, Amy Gustin, Ian Powell and 

Pat Gale at Apollo Cinemas, Kattarina 

McGrath at Delta Air Lines, Sally Reid 

and all at Ascent Media, Nick Leese, 

Junior Foster, Alex Rowley Megan Han 

and all at Organic, Ian McNaught and 

all at Pearl and Dean, Barry Wilson 

and all at London Calling, Maurice 

and Tom at the Phoenix, Candi Perez 

and Olvido Salazar Alonso at Instituto 

Cervantes, Matteo Fazzi and all at the 

Italian Cultural Institute, Junko Takekawa 

at the Japan Foundation, Brad Day and 

everyone at New Day Pictures, Nick 

Agha at Don’t Panic, Virginie Guichard 

at Electric Sheep, Antony and all at the 

Vinyl Factory, everyone at Total Film, 

Neil McCartney and Marcia Degia at the 

IFT, Danny Miller at Little White Lies, 

Zara Ballantyne-Grove, André Burgess 

and all at Crucible Media, Johanna von 

Fischer, Tessa Collinson and Shell Coe at 

BIFA, Ken Loach and Rebecca O’Brien 

at Sixteen Films, Oli Harbottle and all at 

Dogwoof Pictures, Riz Ahmed, Armando 

Iannucci, Peter Bradshaw, Kerry Fox, 

Momoko Ando, Billy Childish, Christine 

Langan, Jon Ronson, Tom Waits, Jamie 

Graham, Andy Williams, Bill Martell, 

Kiyomi Nakazaki, Keiko Funato and all 

at Unijapan, all at Revolver, Vertigo Films, 

Aida LiPera at Visit Films, Deanne Sowter 

at E1 Enterntainment, Keiko Funato at 

U-Media, Keith Greenhalgh, Chris Auty, 

Will Stevenson, Dean Goldberg, Gee 

Vaucher, Penny Rimbaud, Jail Guitar 

Doors, Stephen Coates, Ronni Raygun 

Thomas, and all the volunteers who have 

helped us so much 

Raindance Patrons 

Nick Broomfield, Jonathan Caouette, 

Henrik Danstrup, Mike Figgis, Terry 

Gilliam, Ken Loach, Dave McKean, Martin 

Myers, Alan Parker, Jonathan Pryce, 

Marky Ramone, Vanessa Redgrave 

Benefactors 

Anastasia Atanesyan, Christopher 

Cameron, Simon Cameron, Matt 

Coughlan, Federico Forcolini, Sophie 

Galleymore Bird, Claude Green, Freddie 

Hair, Tiina-Annukka Heinomen, Helen 

Hoffman, Sam Holland, Hal Lever, Ann 

McTaggart, Fuad Omar, John Payten, 

Chris Perkins, Mariana Pimentel, Darren 

Priest, Cherry Read, Katharine Robinson, 

Janet Smith, Catherine Stanley, Adina 

Tarry, Lee Thomas, Roger Twohey, Stuart 

Wells, Tim Willrich 

In memory of 

Mark Shivas and 

Simon Channing-Williams 

PRINCIPAL SPONSOR 

MAJOR SPONSORS 

SUPPORTING PARTNERS 

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MEDIA PARTNERS 

SEVENTEENTH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 

3

VENUES & MAP 

APOLLO CINEMA 

19 Lower Regent Steet 

London SW1Y 4LR 

Ticket Prices 

Full price £12 / Concs £8 

Box Office 

0871 220 6000 

Special Offers 

Screening Pass £150/£125* 

Discovery Pass £20 

*discount for premium members of 

Raindance, WFTV, students, OAPs 

RAINDANCE FILM CAFÉ 

The Vinyl Factory (Phonica) 

51 Poland Street 

London W1F 7LZ 

PHOENIX ARTIST CLUB 

104–110 Charing Cross Road 

London WC2H 0JN 

Screenings take place at the Apollo, unless otherwise specified 

Passes can be purchased online or by phoning 020 7387 3833 

and collected at the Raindance Film Café. It hosts seminars, 

masterclasses, screenings and events throughout the festival 

The Phoenix Artist Club is a private members bar underneath 

the Phoenix Theatre on Charing Cross Road. Passholders will 

have access to this marvelous late-night drinking establishment 

for the duration of the festival 


5

WEDS 30 SEPT 

THURS 1 OCT 

FRI 2 OCT 

SAT 3 OCT 

SUN 4 OCT 

MON 5 OCT 

TUES 6 OCT 

WEDS 7 OCT 

THURS 8 OCT 

FRI 9 OCT 

SAT 10 OCT 

SUN 11 OCT 

APOLLO CINEMA A 

19:00 Humpday 

14:30 House of Numbers 

16:45 Planeat: How to Feed a Planet 

19:00 You Won’t Miss Me 

21:15 Modern Love Is Automatic 

14:30 You Won’t Miss Me 

16:45 Shorts Programme 2 

19:00 25 Carats 

21:15 Down Terrace 

12:30 Digital Democracy Seminar 


16:45 The Panda Candy 

19:15 Exam 

21:45 Colin 

13:30 Love Exposure 

18:30 Journey of the Childmen – The Mighty Boosh on Tour 

20:45 Storage 


17:15 Son of the Sunshine 

19:30 The Overbrook Brothers 

21:45 Locked Out 

15:00 Crying with Laughter 


19:30 In Your Name 

21:45 I Think We’re Alone Now 

13:45 Down Terrace 


18:15 Until the Light Takes Us 

20:45 They Call It Acid 



19:00 Desire 

21:15 Popatopolis 

14:15 A Piece of Our Life – Kakera 


18:30 The Cry of the Owl 

21:00 Deadline 

12:00 Exam 


16:30 A Normal Life Please 

18:30 My Suicide 

21:00 A Necessary Death 



19:00 The Girlfriend Experience 

6 SEVENTEENTH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 

APOLLO CINEMA B 


17:15 It Came from Kuchar 

19:15 Bomber 

21:30 Playing Columbine 

13:15 Bomber 

15:30 Peaches Film Festival Shorts 

17:45 The Narcotic Farm 

19:45 True Adolescents 

22:00 Easier with Practice 

13:15 My Big Break 

15:45 Vacation 

18:30 No One’s Son 

20:45 Redland 

12:15 Colin 

14:30 Chameleon 

17:00 Guts 

19:30 All the Years of Trying 

10:00 The Blair Witch Project 

15:15 No One’s Son 

17:30 At The Foot of a Tree 

19:45 Crying with Laughter 

22:00 The Longest Night 

13:45 Borges and I 


17:45 Mime-Mime 

20:00 Mackendrick Lecture + Of Time and City 

14:30 Mime-Mime 

16:45 In Your Name 

20:45 A Piece of Our Life – Kakera 

14:30 Resurrecting the Street Walker 

17:00 Carmo – Hit the Road 

19:30 Lily Festival 

22:00 Gogol Bordello – Non-Stop 

15:15 The Philosopher Kings 

17:15 The Investigator 

19:30 The Dinner Party 

22:00 Lalapipo 

12:00 Music & Film Panel 

14:15 Radar Video Panel 

19:00 The Twilight Dancing 

21:15 Stuck! 

11:45 SOS Love 

14:00 Ain’t No Tomorrows

APOLLO CINEMA C 

16:00 Hotaru 

18:15 The Slovenian Girl 

20:30 Instant Swamp 

16:00 Plymouth College of Arts: Short Films Screening 

18:15 Werner Herzog: La Soufrière + The White Diamond 

14:00 Robyn Hitchcock – I Often Dream of Trains 

16:30 I Need That Record! 

18:45 Believe 

12:00 Bill Martell Seminar – Your Idea Machine 


16:00 Day in the Life of My… + Hugh Metcalfe & Penny Rimbaud 

18:30 Borges and I 

13:45 25 Carats 

16:00 The Hand of Fatima 

18:30 Schemes of Affection 

13:45 Locked Out 

16:00 Breaking Rocks 

18:15 Moths 

13:45 Redland 

16:15 The Philosopher Kings 

18:15 Resurrecting the Street Walker 

14:15 The Longest Night 

16:30 The Director’s Cut 

18:45 EKV – As It Once Was 


16:30 Special When Lit 

19:00 Memory and Desire – Stephen Duffy and the Lilac Time 

21:15 Miles Away 

12:30 The Slovenian Girl 

14:45 The Cry of the Owl 

17:00 Llik Your Idols 

19:15 We Fun 

21:30 The Life and Death of a Porno Gang 

12:00 Deadline 

14:15 The Dinner Party 

PROUD GALLERIES, CAMDEN 

18:30 Breaking Rocks Screening + Gig 

RAINDANCE FILM CAFÉ 

18:00 Raindance Film Café Opening Night with Billy Childish 

22:00 Filmmakers Networking Drinks 

13:00 Bill Martell Seminar: Guerilla Marketing Your Script 

15:00 Low Budget Make-Up Workshop 

17:00 The Making of Colin: Panel + Q&A 

19:00 Chinese Night with New Pants 


15:00 Plug and Play 

19:00 Live!Ammunition! 

20:30 Live!Ammunition! Party 


13:00 Bill Martell Seminar: More Sex and Violence 

15:00 Plug and Play 

19:00 Japanese Party 


13:00 Bill Martell Seminar: Making a Scene 

18:00 Ctrl Alt Shift Party 


13:00 Bill Martell Seminar: Structural Freaks 

18:00 Meet The Sales Agents 


18:00 RFC Closing Night with The Ralfe Band 


SCREENING 

SCHEDULE 


7

devil in the blood: From Christic masochism 

to satanic cruelty: religious extremes on film. 

E 

Legendary British horror 

House House of Whipcord) Whipcord) 

directs this colourful, low budget 

homage to the gangster thriller. 

Also includes Pete Walker’s pulp 

electric sheep Devil in the Blood 

a deviant view of cinema 

electric 

sheep 

0 

a deviant view of cinema 

Devil in the Blood 

From Christic masochism to satanic 

cruelty: religious extremes on film 

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: 

The film magazine that explores the darkest corners of the cinematic basement 

AUTUMN 09 

£3.75 / €4.50 / $5.95 

White Lightnin’: a howling hillbilly hell trip 

Klaus Kinski as Jesus Christ Saviour 

The Imaginarium of Terry Gilliam 

Raindance 09 & Abandon Normal Devices 

www.electricsheepmagazine.com 

19/08/2009 09:02:55 

‘Ther’s tha devil movin’ in my blood’. The extraordinary White Lightnin’ explores the 

Old Testament world of demented mountain dancer Jesco White while Klaus Kinski 

disastrously reinterprets the New Testament in Jesus Christ Saviour – and subversives 

Alejandro Jodorowsky and Kenneth Anger dynamite divine myths. 

Plus: Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Raindance 09, Don 

Hertzfeldt, and louche mariachi rockabilly Dan Sartain picks his top films! 

Autumn issue on sale now.

Above 25 Carats, My Suicide, No One’s Son, Vacation, You Wont Miss Me 

Below Crying with Laughter, Desire, Down Terrace, Exam, Resurrecting the Street Walker 

FESTIVAL JURY PRIZES 

To recognize the outstanding achievements of the filmmakers showcased at the 17th Raindance 

Film Festival in 2009, a number of jury prizes will be awarded. The winners will be announced 

before the screening of the Closing Night Film The Girlfriend Experience at the Apollo Cinema 

on Sunday 11 October at 7pm. The nominees are: 

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE 

25 Carats [Spain] 

My Suicide [USA] 

No One’s Son [Croatia] 

Vacation [Japan] 

You Wont Miss Me [USA] 

BEST UK FEATURE 

Crying with Laughter 

Desire 

Down Terrace 

Exam 

Resurrecting the Streetwalker 

BEST DEBUT FEATURE 

The Dinner Party [Australia] 

The Longest Night [Germany] 

Mime-Mime [Japan] 

A Necessary Death [USA] 

Redland [USA] 

BEST MICRO BUDGET FEATURE 

All the Years of Trying [UK] 

Bomber [UK] 

Colin [UK] 

Locked Out [Japan] 

Memory and Desire[Canada] 

Son of the Sunshine [Canada] 

BEST DOCUMENTARY 

It Came from Kuchar [USA] 

My Big Break [USA] 

A Normal Life Please [Japan] 

The Philosopher Kings [USA] 

Special When Lit [UK] 

BEST UK SHORT 

SPONSORED BY DELTA AIR LINES 

Crazy Hands 

Infidel 

The Rules of the Game 

Screaming Skull 

The Taxidermist 

BEST INTERNATIONAL SHORT 

Hollywood Jerome [USA] 

The Mouse That Soared [USA] 

Of Best Intentions [Ireland] 

The Slow Game [Italy] 

Ten for Grandpa [Canada/USA] 

FILM OF THE FESTIVAL [SHORT] 

For the sixth consecutive year we are excited 

to present this award. Each year, the winner is 

offered the chance to film the following year’s 

trailer with the support of the Independent Film 

Trust who helps finance the production. 


9

THE FESTIVAL JURY 

Riz Ahmed is an award-winning actor and musician. His films include Michael 

Winterbottom’s The Road To Guantanamo, and Shifty, for which he was nominated 

for a BIFA. As Riz MC he has played the Glastonbury Festival and the BBC 

Electric Proms, and in 2008 opened the Meltdown Festival with Massive Attack 

at the Royal Festival Hall. 

Momoko Ando began her experiences on a film set as a member of a film 

crew while still a student. After studying in England, her professor recommended 

that she travel to New York to complete a short program at New York University 

majoring in directing. Returning to Japan, she started her career as an assistant 

director to Eiji Okuda who is her father as well as an internationally acclaimed 

film director. With this critically applauded first feature, she is being hailed as the 

Japanese Sophia Coppola. 

Peter Bradshaw has been the Guardian’s film critic since 1998. He wrote and 

acted in Baddiel’s Syndrome (2001) and contributes regularly to BBC Radio, The 

Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Observer. 

Julia Brown is the Apollo Cinemas Commercial Director. 

Billy Childish is an English artist, author, poet, film maker, musician and 

filmmaker. He is known for his prolific work-rate – he has published 40 books of 

poetry, produced 2500 pictures and released over 100 albums – and is admired by 

people such as Kurt Cobain, Robert Plant, PJ Harvey & Jack White. He has been 

described as ‘one of the most outstanding, and often misunderstood, figures on 

the British art scene.’ 

Kerry Fox is one of the world’s leading actresses. She received praise and a 

nomination from the Australian Film Institute Awards for her leading role in Country 

Life, starred in Danny Boyle’s breakout British hit Shallow Grave with Ewan 

McGregor, and was nominated for the Canadian Academy Award (Genie Award) 

for her supporting role in The Hanging Garden. In 2001 she won the Silver Bear 

for Best Actress in Intimacy at the Berlin Film Festival and is now starring in Jane 

Campion’s Bright Star, as well as a new West End play Speaking In Tongues. 

10 SEVENTEENTH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

Jamie Graham is the Deputy Editor of Total Film magazine. 

Armando Iannucci has written and produced numerous critically acclaimed 

television and radio comedy shows, notably On The Hour, which most famously 

spawned The Day Today and Alan Partridge. He has fronted his own satirical 

programmes for Radio 4 and written and directed The Thick of It, winner of Best 

New TV Comedy in 2005. His debut film, In the Loop, featuring Peter Capaldi and 

James Gandolfini, was a critical and commercial hit. 

Christine Langan is an English television and film producer. Her career began in 

the late 1980s when she worked for an advertising company, moving onto Granada 

Television where she produced three series of the comedy-drama Cold Feet. In 

2003 she produced the television play The Deal and later, in 2006, its theatrical 

follow-up The Queen. She joined BBC Films in 2006, and was appointed Creative 

Director this year. 

Jon Ronson is a journalist, author, documentary filmmaker and radio presenter. 

His journalism and columns have appeared in British publications including The 

Guardian newspaper and Time Out magazine. He has made several documentary 

films for television and two documentary series for Channel 4. He wrote The Men 

Who Stare At Goats featuring George Clooney and directed Stanley Kubrick’s 

Boxes (2008). 

Tom Waits is a renowned musician, actor, singer-songwriter and composer. He 

has worked as a composer for movies and musical plays and was nominated 

for an Academy Award for his soundtrack work on One From The Heart. He has 

recorded 20 albums, winning Grammy Awards for two, Bone Machine and Mule 

Variations. His acting career includes roles in Rumblefish, Short Cuts and Bram 

Stoker’s Dracula. He is shortly to be seen playing the devil in Terry Gilliam’s The 

Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus. 

Andy Williams is a BAFTA award winning television producer and writer who has 

produced work for the BBC, The Walt Disney Company, Channel Five and Turner 

Entertainment among many others. 


11

Opposite Alexander Mackendrick, © BFI/Artisan 

ALEXANDER MACKENDRICK WAS ONE OF EALING’S MOST TALENTED DIRECTORS. 

BUT, BY HIS OWN ADMISSION, HE FOUND HIMSELF ILL-EQUIPPED TO DEAL WITH 

HOLLYWOOD. FRED HOGGE LOOKS BACK AT THE CAREER OF A DIRECTOR WHOSE 

MEMORIAL LECTURES RETURN TO RAINDANCE THIS YEAR 

HERE’S A CURIOUS thought: had a nuclear war been declared, Alec 

Guinness may well have owned the last face to be shown on British television. 

The penultimate broadcast, before the pre-recorded voice of Peter Donaldson 

announced our imminent doom, would most likely have been an Ealing 

comedy. Oh, how thick the irony had it been The Man in the White Suit, 

Alexander Mackendrick’s satire about the bomb itself. 

Mackendrick is a director whose body of work has slowly-slowly re-established its reputation. 

Always well-reviewed in his day, he has never been revered like David Lean or Carol Reed, 

his direct contemporaries in British cinema. 

This may be because of his five film spell at Ealing Studios, the home of cosy English nostalgia. 

But Mackendrick was never cosy, and never nostalgic. His Ealing films are all deliciously ambiguous. 

If it’s cosiness you want, it’s there for you. But there too, with equal clarity, is a rage and wit 

of formidable acuity, pushing the very limits of the Ealing brand. 

It may be because his Hollywood career did not unfold so smoothly. While Sweet Smell 

of Success, which he made for Burt Lancaster’s production outfit HHL, now is recognised 


13

– 

– 

SHARE THE (FILM) LOVE, SUPPORT THE CAUSE… 

The Independent Film Trust was established to advance 

the cause of independent filmmaking 

The Independent Film Trust works with the British 

Independent Film Awards and the Raindance Film Festival 

with the aim of seeking out and showcasing the best in 

independent film, promoting innovation and celebrating 

the vitality and diversity of the sector 

The Independent Film Trust is proud to be the sponsor of: 

The Raindance Film of the Festival Award 

and the Raindance Film Festival trailer 

The Raindance Training Scholarships 

– 

The Raindance Film School in a Box programme 

Find out more at www.independentfilmtrust.org 

For further information contact Commercial Director 

Marcia Degia at marcia@independentfilmtrust.org 

And for regular updates please find our group on facebook 

Patrons 

Alan Parker / Michael Caton-Jones / Mike Leigh / Bill Forsyth / Tim Roth / Nick Broomfield / Samantha Morton / Faye Dunaway

‘ Mackendrick was never cosy, and 

never nostalgic. he did not present 

his work as art or himself as an 

auteur. Instead he was a craftsman’ 

as one of the high points of 1950s cinema, it wasn’t exactly a hit. Add to that his dismissal from 

HHL’s follow-up picture, The Devil’s Disciple, and then from The Guns of Navarone, not to mention 

MGM’s re-cutting of A High Wind in Jamaica: suddenly, compared to Lean and Reed, Mackendrick’s 

reputation seems diminished. 

Hollywood didn’t suit him. He said ‘At Ealing… I was tremendously spoiled with all the logistical 

and financial troubles lifted off my shoulders, even if I had to do the films they told me to do… When 

I arrived here… I found that in order to make movies in Hollywood, you have to be a great dealmaker… 

I have no talent for that… I realised I was in the wrong business and got out.’ 

Or it may be because he himself did not much like the so-called ‘cult of the director’. So he 

did not present his work as art or himself as an auteur. Instead he was a craftsman who, as a 

teacher, passed on his understanding of craft to his students. And it is largely through his book, 

On Filmmaking, edited by Paul Cronin, that his work has come to be re-appreciated by new 

audiences. Mackendrick, the consummate perfectionist, who wrote that ‘the great directors manage 

to disappear and dissolve into their work’, emerges inadvertently as an auteur, with preoccupations 

and thematic concerns running in rich veins throughout his work. Craft comes before art, and his 

dedication to craft allows us now, in retrospect, to appreciate the art of his work. 

Mackendrick left filmmaking to teach film direction at CalArts in Pasedena. There were precious 

few film schools at the time. Training back then was an on-the-job thing. The film schools, such 

as they were, were focused on appreciation, on criticism of film as an art. So Mackendrick was 

inventing a tradition for the teaching of directing and screenwriting from scratch. For that, 

we at Raindance and at film facilities everywhere, owe him a great debt. 

I wrote in the programme notes to the first Alexander Mackendrick lecture: ‘Where many can 

claim to have made films, few can say they made filmmakers. He could, and at Raindance that 

is something we respect beyond measure.’ So it’s with real pleasure that, this year, we restore 

the Alexander Mackendrick Memorial Lecture to the Raindance schedule. 

Fred Hogge interviews Terence Davies at the Alexander Mackendrick Memorial Lecture takes place at 8pm on Tuesday 

6 October at the Apollo Cinema, followed by a screening Of Time and the City 


15

IN OUR RETROSPECTIVE SCREENING THIS YEAR FRED HOGGE LOOKS BACK 

TO 1999’S OPENING NIGHT FILM AND TELLS THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW 

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT CAME TO RAINDANCE 

THERE ARE TWO things I remember,’ Ian George, former head of marketing 

at Pathé, tells me over the phone. ‘It was possibly the trendiest festival opening 

I’ve ever seen! Most of the music business were there: the Gallagher brothers, 

the Verve. And the second one was the plastic trees.’ 

I’d forgotten the plastic trees. 

‘They were spilling out onto the street; they were the only dressing there was!’ 

Speaking from Washington, Blair Witch co-director Eduardo Sanchez, says: ‘It was this huge, 

massive thing.’ 

Says Sandra Grant, then the Raindance head of PR: ‘I just remember all the paparazzi in the press 

pens screaming at me to be allowed into the screening. Even I didn’t get into the screening because 

I gave up my ticket to Claudia Schiffer.’ 

And as for Elliot – he says: ‘It was just insane.’ 

Ten years on, as Raindance gears up for its seventeenth opening night, the Blair Witch Project 

premiere remains fresh in the Festival’s collective memory. The film was a global phenomenon. 

But as with all these things, when it began, its ambitions were much more humble. 


Opposite Dave Stewart & Nicole Appleton, Raindance 1999

‘The main thing was to try and make a scary film,’ Ed recalls. ‘You know, in the early ’90s, when 

we came up with it, there weren’t many scary movies coming out. And Dan and I started talking 

about the movies that scared us as kids.’ 

Says Dan: ‘We had a common interest in a lot of the old ’70s mockumentaries like In Search 

of… and Ancient Astronauts. We found them to be very creepy, mainly due to the fact that they 

were portrayed as being real, or dramatisations of real events. So we thought it would be interesting 

to create our own fictional “real event”, and build a narrative film around it.’ 

Shooting began in early 1997, for a film which would feature the first-person footage of characters 

Heather, Mike and Josh, supported by archival footage and interviews. 

Ed: ‘That was the original idea for the film. But we realised that every time we cut away from 

the first-person footage, we lost a certain magic that the footage was creating. And in the end, right 

before we entered Sundance, we thought: “OK, let’s just go with the footage and forget about 

any of this other documentary stuff.”’ 

Dan: ‘It was this kind of creative evolutionary process: as we were going along, it ended up in 

a place we hadn’t necessarily pre-conceived when we started shooting.’ 

It was this evolutionary process which would begin to capture people’s imaginations. 

Ed: ‘About a year before Sundance, we had got some limited exposure on John Pierson’s show, 

Split Screen. And that particular episode, about the Blair Witch, blew up on their website. There 

were people discussing it, trying to get more information. So we were, like, we’ve gotta get our 

own website up.’ 

Dan: ‘That got the initial interest going, which built up momentum for our website, which in turn 

built up momentum going into Sundance.’ 

Ed: ‘When the site went up, we started getting a lot of traffic. And I started beginning to feel the 

heat, the kind of pitched interest in this thing. Heather Donahue kept a journal when she was in the 

woods. And it was a very cool, creepy journal. So I scanned all the pages, transcribed everything, and 

I would put up a new page every week or two. But I would hide the page. And people would scour 

the site, and if they found it too quick, I would change the URL. So I began to feel the momentum 

that the film was carrying. And I was thinking, “Man, if we could just get into Sundance and find 

an audience, I think this thing is going to be pretty huge for an indie film.”’ 

Dan: ‘Initial screenings with reviewers 

‘ I couldn’t get in because 

I had to give up my ticket 

for Claudia Schiffer’ 

were very positive. The film was really 

getting embraced early on, and once we 

were at Sundance, we were kind of the 

film to watch. And by the time we got to 

Cannes, that’s when it started dawning on 

us, I suppose, that we had something that was going to be bigger than your typical cult movie.” 

Ian George: ‘It was bought for us by Berenice Fugard. And the price, well it was so low that she 

didn’t even need approval from the higher ups. And then the US release happened. It exploded in 

the US. It was a phenomenon. They’d done a real grassroots thing, and it was a phenomenon.’ 

Even before that, the film was making waves in Cannes. 

Elliot: ‘That’s where I heard about it. So I hounded Pathé for it. Finally, I got through to Maj-Britt 

Kirchner, who was running Pathé at the time. And I kept bumping into her on the street. Well… 

I kinda got her schedule… Then, one day I got a call from Margaret, saying: “I think Raindance 

is the perfect place for Blair Witch.”’ 

Ian George: ‘You couldn’t have got a better platform for us. A lot of European territories had 

rushed it into release to capitalise on the US thing. But we felt we needed to replicate their 


19 

Opposite Noel Gallagher at the London premiere of The Blair Witch Project, Raindance 1999

Happy to be hosting 

The perfect location at which to 

host your Corporate Events, 

Product Launches, Press 

Shows, Conferences, 

Private Parties, Preview 

Screenings, Film 

Premieres and 

Presentations. 

For event information 

and booking contact 

amyg@apollocinemas.com 

For film info or to book tickets for Raindance or any other film 

0871 220 6000 or www.apollocinemas.com 

Apollo Piccadilly Circus, 19 Regent Street, London, SW1Y 4LR

campaign, to step up to the plate ourselves. We decided to go with Raindance and a Halloween 

release, and to keep it underground. We came up with the strategy and the strap-line: “Everything 

you’ve heard is true.” It gave us the chance to be playful.’ 

Elliot: ‘I announced Blair Witch. We sold the tickets. And then Ian calls me up. Can we have tickets 

for this person, and for that person. Suddenly, I have 400 tickets sold for a 200 seat cinema.’ 

Dan: ‘In our minds, everything was total chaos. It was all coming so fast, yet everything was 

getting done. It was really like being caught in a river of rapids, and you know you’re going to get to 

the other end of the river somehow, but you don’t know how or where the current’s gonna take you. 

And by the time we got to the UK, we were stunned. The response at Raindance…’ 

Ed: ‘It was totally frickin’ cool.’ 

Dan: ‘There was this kind of fervour and rock-star status we had, that I didn’t even contemplate 

when we were making the movie. Even to this day, it was quite surreal.’ 

Ian George: ‘We wanted lines around the block. We got absolute chaos, and it was fantastic.’ 

Elliot: ‘Blair Witch put us on the map, simple as that.’ 

Ten years on, the effects of the film can still be felt on the indie film scene. Its marketing strategy, 

conceived just as the internet went mainstream, changed the way that filmmakers try to reach and 

nurture their audiences. 

Says Ed: ‘I mean, look, we didn’t invent this. There were other movies that had come before that 

had used the same aesthetic. But for us, it was a kind of combination of using these things in the 

horror mode, and it was our only solution to make a cheap film. And it was like lightning in a bottle.’ 

Dan: ‘We started from an emotional standpoint, with “how do we scare ourselves”. And we built 

a movie around that. You can do that in all sorts of different styles and all sorts of different ways 

— every story has its own DNA, its own mythology. The trick is trying to make a good, solid film.’ 

The Blair Witch Project is certainly that, and a bona fide hit too, a genuine independent which 

caught a global imagination. We’re delighted to screen it again as this year’s retrospective. 

The Blair Witch Project screens at 10pm on Sunday 4 October at the Apollo Cinema 


21 

Eduardo Sanchez, Elliot Grove and Daniel Myrick at Raindance 1999


Opposite Momoko Ando 

JAPANESE WOMEN FILMMAKERS HAVE NEVER BEEN IN THE LIMELIGHT BUT THEIR 

INFLUENCE AND CONTRIBUTION TO CINEMA IN JAPAN IS UNDISPUTABLE. THIS YEAR 

RAINDANCE CELEBRATES THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS AND JASPER SHARP DISCUSSES 

JAPAN’S LEADING WOMEN FILMMAKERS 

IN AN ERA when young men are more likely to be holed away playing video games than 

queuing to catch the latest Michael Bay blockbuster, the huge revenues generated by 

Mama Mia, Sex and the City and Twilight last year emphasised a point that to many has 

been obvious all along: that a sizeable chunk of movie audiences worldwide are women. 

It’s estimated this market share is around the 75% mark in Japan, a fact those in the 

industry have long been party to. Back in the 1950s, Shiro Kido, the pragmatic president 

of Shochiku, explained his rationale for targeting this very demographic with his sentimental ‘Ofunaflavour’ 

melodramas, named after the studio where they were made: ‘Women never go to the cinema 

alone. They will always bring either a friend or a lover. Another thing is their voluntary promotional 

activity: she will convince acquaintances to go and see the film she has just seen.’ 

But ask someone to reel off a list of ten Japanese directors, and it’s doubtful you’ll hear a 

woman’s name amongst the roll call. They’ll most likely list such lofty auteurs as Akira Kurosawa 

or Nagisa Oshima, or cult directors like Takeshi Kitano or Takashi Miike. Even among those towering 

figures praised for their feminist (feminisuto) opuses back in the day, namely Kenji Mizoguchi 

and Mikio Naruse, or the contracted directors of Shochiku such as Yasujiro Ozu and Keisuke 


23

Kinoshita who made the studio’s classic romances or home dramas featuring iconic actresses such 

as Setsuko Hara or Hideko Takamine, you’d be hard pushed to pick out a single woman behind the 

camera. 

It would be unfair to level any accusations of chauvinism solely at Japan, as by and large the 

pattern was similar across the world. Even now it isn’t much better. While you’ll notice a strong 

female presence at the front-office end of the business – as promoters, interpreters, journalists, 

festival organisers – sadly this is not the case at its creative heart. According to global industry 

reports, only 6% of directors and 12% of screenwriters worldwide are women, a statistic that sees 

the Japanese industry in a pretty positive light. 

The rising tide of women filmmakers in Japan should rightly be regarded as among the most 

significant developments of the past decade, and is now virtually impossible to ignore, with the 

last twelve months seeing a spate of titles from names like Yuki Tanada, Naoko Ogigami, Satoko 

Yokohama, Tsuki Inoue, Miwa Nishikawa, Mari Asato and Shimako Sato, most of whom have at least 

a couple of features under their belts, in genres including comedy, drama, erotic, horror, action. It’s 

also worth remembering the other roles women play behind the camera too. Last year’s criticallygarlanded 

Tokyo Sonata not only boasted a female cinematographer, Atsuko Ashizawa, but the 

producer Yukie Kito, who effectively hired director Kiyoshi Kurosawa for the project. 

This phenomenon has already been identified as an important point of discussion in one overseas 

festival this year, Frankfurt’s Nippon Connection, and so it seems fitting that the 17th Raindance 

celebrates it too with a special focus featuring five features and one shorts programme all directed 

by Japanese women, and the world premiere of A Piece of Our Life – Kakera, the debut feature 

of Jury Member Momoko Ando (whose sister Sakura also appears in two of this year’s selection, 

Love Exposure and Ain’t No Tomorrows). 

To what should we attribute these changes? Before the 1980s, women directors in Japan virtually 

all came from an acting background. Tanaka Kinuyo has been seen as something of a pioneer 

in this respect, though the six films she made from her 1953 debut Love Letter to Love Under the 

Crucifix in 1962 were never as popular as her performances in the films of Kenji Mizoguchi. Sachiko 

Hidari directed and starred in The Far Road (1977), a social drama about the family of a railroad 

worker, while another, Midori Kurisaki made Love Suicides at Sonezaki (1981) as a live-action 

traditional Bunraku puppet film. Others like Sumiko Haneda and Toshie Tokieda worked in the 

field of documentary. The one major exception was Japan’s first woman director, Sakane Tazuko, 

a protegée of Mizoguchi who directed only one feature, First Figure (1936), based on Émile Zola’s 

Nana. The film is now lost, and even these other works are nigh on impossible to see. 

The hierarchical corporate structure of the major studios was the main bar to women entering 

the industry, and so it seems perversely fitting that the subversive sphere of the independent erotic 


Mime Mime

‘pink film’ should have provided an avenue for potential women helmers. Again, many came from 

a performing background, including Kyoko Ogimachi, the genre’s first female director with Yakuza 

Geisha in 1965, but it does seem ironic it was this softcore sex film sector that fostered the first 

women with any real power in the industry: the current president of Kokuei production company 

Keiko Sato, and Sachi Hamano, not only the first woman to forge a successful long-term career 

as a director, but with over 400 films under her belt, by far the most prolific. Alongside her numerous 

pink films, Hamano has directed indie films with more emphatically feminist themes, including Lily 

Festival (2001), part of this year’s focus at Raindance. 

But the most significant development has been in the opportunities provided within the 

burgeoning indie scene, bolstered through the support of the Pia Film Festival. Established in the 

late 1970s to provide an industry entry point to jishu eiga (amateur) filmmakers, PFF’s beneficiaries 

include Shiori Kazama, Naoko Ogigami, Noriko Shibutani (whose Bambi Bone played Raindance 

in 2006, along with Yuki Tanada’s Moon and Cherry) and this year’s Mime-Mime by Yukiko Sode. 

Though not a PFF alumni, Naomi Kawase also hails from this jishu eiga background. Following 

her series of 8mm confessional shorts, her first feature Suzaku won the Camera d’Or at Cannes 

in 1997, causing a media storm in Japan 

‘ It seems perversely fitting 

that the subversive sphere 

of the independent erotic 

“pink film” should have 

provided an avenue for 

potential women helmers’ 

and giving rise to a new genre of ‘films 

by women directors.’ The hubbub has 

died down to some extent now, and 

this new wave is no longer seen as 

something distinct from the norm, just 

another feature on the wide-ranging 

landscape of Japanese cinema. Many 

of the directors don’t see gender as 

having any bearing on the type of films 

they make, as Yuki Tanada told 

me, ‘I think if you had the same script and gave it to a different filmmaker, whether they were 

male or female, a different movie would come out.’ 

Perhaps Atsuko Ohno, producer of films including Takashi Shimizu’s horror Marebito: The 

Stranger from Afar (2004) and organiser of the annual Peaches Festival, which showcases up-andcoming 

female talent, best sums up the the sea change: ‘I wasn’t quite sure if there was a need for 

this festival, but I’m a woman, I have a lot of women drinking buddies and friends making films, so 

I just thought, “Why not?” I’m not any sort of woman’s lib-type person, or some sort of feminist, but 

I thought maybe it’s just a way of categorising the films.’ It’s a sentiment I hope is reflected in this 

year’s Raindance programme too. 


25 

Ain’t No Tomorrows

SHION SHON IS ONE OF JAPAN’S MOST NOTABLE AND ENIGMATIC DIRECTORS. 

JAPANESE FILM PROGRAMMER JASPER SHARP RETRACES HIS CAREER AND 

EXAMINES HIS LATEST FEATURE LOVE EXPOSURE 

THE WORD ‘MAVERICK’ gets bandied around too often in film circles nowadays, 

but if there’s ever a director who deserves the label, it’s Shion Sono. It’s difficult 

to think of a less commercial proposition than Love Exposure, which premiered 

last December at Tokyo Filmex. For starters, it’s around four hours long, an almost 

suicidal proposition in a commercial environment where venues need to cram 

as many films into their schedules as possible, and where certain countries’ 

censorship boards charge by the minute. And then there’s the content, taking onboard such heady 

subjects as child abuse, Catholic repression and murderous religious cults within its epic span. 

If all this sounds a less-than-tempting proposition, one should add that the results are not only 

rather moving, but incredibly good fun. The films of Todd Solondz provide a convenient point 

of reference in their irreverent treatments of the various societal taboos that might be best left 

to grittier socio-realist works by more serious directors, but rendered as a colourful pop-cultural 

fantasy, the theatre of the absurd that is Sono’s film is an altogether more exuberant affair. 

One hesitates to call Love Exposure a comedy, though there are certainly some funny moments. 

Switching dramatic registers and defying expectations at every turn, there’s enough material 


Opposite Shion Sono

for several films in the first half alone, and you’ve got to admire the balls of a director bold enough 

to put the film’s title credit an hour into proceedings. 

Shion Sono’s name may be unfamiliar, but he’s actually been around some time, with his previous 

film, Exte, a J-horror pastiche about killer hair extensions featuring Battle Royale / Kill Bill icon 

Chiaki Kuriyama released on DVD in the UK. Laying the two works side-to-side, it’s immediately 

apparent that this is not an easy filmmaker to pigeonhole. Sono’s debut, Bicycle Sighs (1989), a 

16mm indie feature about two no-hoper university chums who have deferred their final exams for 

the past three years, instead surviving by delivering newspapers while one strives to complete the 

super-8 masterpiece they began as adolescents, was one of the standout titles of the 1990 Pia Film 

Festival, also playing widely at numerous overseas festivals. This was followed by a number of more 

experimental titles, including Room (Heya, 1992), in which a murderer looks for a new apartment, 

his estate agent leading him across a Tokyo cityscape blighted by the collapse of Japan’s economy, 

and Keiko Desu Kedo (1997), about a lonely waitress who obsessively records every event in time 

following the death of her father to cancer, and several forays into the world of the erotic pink film, 

including one gay title, Dankon: The Man (1997). 

But it was the opening of his 2001 cult hit Suicide Circle, in which a phalanx of 54 uniformed 

schoolgirls leap in unison beneath an oncoming rush-hour train at Shinjuku station, that really got 

people talking. From then on, Sono has 

‘ For a start it’s around 

four hours long, an almost 

suicidal proposition’ 

continued to dazzle Japanese film fans 

with works including Noriko’s Dinner 

Table (2005), a more sober companion 

piece to this breakthrough film, and 

Strange Circus (2005), an erotic- 

grotesque work that takes place in, as the title suggests, a strange circus. This eccentric embrace 

of radically different subject matters and genres is reflected throughout the entirety of Love 

Exposure, but even as the film continues its trail picking up film festival prizes and plaudits across 

the world unabated, Sono is forging ahead into new and even odder territory. After already popping 

out another film, the surprisingly modest family drama Be Sure to Share, he’s currently shooting 

his first English-language feature Lords of Chaos, based on the early-90s Norwegian Black Metal 

scene detailed in Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell’s documentary Until the Light Takes Us, also 

playing at Raindance, with Jackson Rathbone (aka Jasper of the Twilight films) touted as playing 

the murderous Varg Vikernes. Now that is strange… 

Love Exposure screens at 1.30pm on Sunday 4 October at the Apollo Cinema 


Love Exposure

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Opposite Billy Bragg with Mick Jones 

BILLY BRAGG’S ATTEMPTS AT HELPING PRISON INMATES REHABILITATE TO THE OUTSIDE 

WORLD HAVE BEEN DOCUMENTED IN A FASCINATING DOCUMENTARY BY ALAN MILES. 

PAT GILBERT EXAMINES HOW IT ALL CAME ABOUT 

IN EARLY 2007, documentary filmmaker Alan Miles received a phone call from Billy 

Bragg with a remarkable proposition – he wanted Miles to shoot footage of a visit 

Billy was making to Guys Marsh prison in Dorset. The songwriter and man once dubbed 

a ‘one-man Clash’ was delivering the gift of some acoustic guitars to a prison worker 

called Malcolm Dudley, so inmates in his music class could practise the instrument 

between lessons. The visit marked the beginning of Bragg’s Jail Guitar Doors campaign, 

the extraordinary story of which is told in Miles’ gritty and uplifting new film, Breaking Rocks. 

For the filmmaker, that first trip into Guys Marsh opened his eyes to the reality of life behind bars, 

and the need for an emphasis on rehabilitation in the prison system. ‘People think prison is an easy 

ride,’ explains Alan Miles, who juggles filmmaking with his day-job as a firefighter. ‘But when you 

hear those keys rattling, the banging of doors, the constant process of locking and unlocking… it’s 

claustrophobic and scary. Inmates can be locked up for 20 hours a day, and when they’re let out 

to “associate” together it’s very tense. Getting them involved in music at least gives them an outlet.’ 

For Billy Bragg, the appeal from Malcolm Dudley – who died suddenly from a heart attack 

in 2008 – for help supplying instruments for his workshop struck an instant chord. ‘I understood 


33

how playing an instrument helps you transcend your surroundings, and how valuable that could be 

in a prison cell,’ says Billy. ‘Prison has to be about much more than just locking people up – we want 

people to be able to move on from their situation and reconnect with the outside world, and my 

hunch was that playing an instrument – particularly a guitar – could help that.’ 

The edgy subject matter of Breaking Rocks will come as no surprise to admirers of Alan Miles’ 

work – nor will the film’s emphasis on the redemptive power of music, with its apparent ability to 

heal social, political and spiritual rifts. Miles’ last film, 2005’s Who Shot The Sheriff?, focused on the 

story of the late ’70s Rock Against Racism movement and its legacy today in the Love Music, Hate 

Racism campaign. His cinematic debut, The Last Night London Burned, made three years earlier, 

documented the poignant events of 9 November 2002, when The Clash’s estranged songwriters 

Joe Strummer and Mick Jones shared a stage together for the first time in 19 years at a benefit 

gig in west London for striking firefighters. 

‘ People think prison is 

an easy ride but when 

you hear those keys 

rattling, the banging 

of doors, the constant 

locking and unlocking 

it’s claustrophobic 

and scary’ 

‘The Strummer and Jones thing was a sheer 

stroke of luck,’ smiles Alan, who studied parttime 

for his degree in Film & TV Production 

from Hertfordshire University. ‘The Fire Brigades 

Union heard I made films and invited me to travel 

around Britain to document the two-day firefighters’ 

strike in November 2002. When Mick 

got onstage with Joe that night I just ran and 

got my camera – I wasn’t filming the gig. Then 

when Joe died a few weeks later I felt moved 

to make sense of it all in a film.’ 

As the Jail Guitar Doors initiative – the 

campaign is named after a Clash B-side – 

gathered momentum throughout 2007 and 2008, Alan Miles was there with his camera to capture 

the drama. He was privileged, he says, to film interviews with The Clash’s Mick Jones and Topper 

Headon, and, to complete the set, once arrived in a fire engine outside the home of The Clash’s 

bassist Paul Simonon to secure his signature on a prison-bound acoustic guitar. 

The most compelling scenes in the film, however, almost inevitably centre around Bragg’s prison 

visits, to talk with prison workers, officials and see donated JGD instruments in use. Miles admits 

that filming this footage was his biggest challenge. ‘I’ve always been very careful,’ he explains. ‘There 

are some people in prison you can’t film for legal reasons but, also, you have to be aware that some 

of the inmates might be embarrassed to be inside, or perhaps someone in the audience 


35 

Left to right JGD graduates: Jonny Neesom, Leon Walker, Louise Wells and Theone Coloeman

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jennifer’s body 

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and

who doesn’t understand the bigger picture of what we’re trying to achieve may not want to see 

a particular inmate on the screen. 

‘In Dartmoor, within ten minutes of me filming, quite a crowd had gathered and were larking about 

in front of the camera. It brought home just how bored people get in there. Inmates were getting 

boisterous, screaming and shouting, so then you had to manage the situation and move on quickly.’ 

As Breaking Rocks pointedly shows, Jail Guitar Doors is already paying dividends, with several 

former inmates who were given access to guitars through the scheme now making waves as 

performers. Four of these graduates – Jonny Neesom, Leon Walker, Louise Wells and Theone 

Coleman – will be playing at the premiere of the film at the Proud Gallery in Camden Town on 

1 October. Billy Bragg admits he’s immensely proud of them, and says ‘they’ve got something to 

tell us that’s seldom heard – so often [prison life] is glamorised in music, rather than performers 

emphasising the scary reality.’ 

They will be joined onstage by Mick Jones, Get Cape Wear Cape Fly and Chris Shiflett of Foo 

Fighters, plus MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer, who is spearheading the initiative in the US. 

‘I took a whole gaggle of rock luminaries into the notorious Sing Sing prison in New York,’ says 

Wayne, who himself did time in the late ’70s for cocaine dealing and was eulogised in The Clash’s 

Jail Guitar Doors song. ‘It was a powerful experience, for both the inmates and the musicians. As 

a result of that, some of the guys in there have started a band – I just shipped out a couple of old 

amplifiers to them. I want to organise a prison tour of the whole country next, because if you reach 

out to just one person, that’s how it starts. 

‘Ninety-five per cent of people in prison are one day going to come out and live next door to 

someone,’ he continues. ‘Do you want them to have been locked up like animals, or rehabilitated? 

It’s our choice at the end of the day, we pay the taxes.’ 

Breaking Rocks screens at 6.30pm on Tuesday 6 October at the Proud Galleries, Camden and 4pm on Tuesday 6 October 

at the Apollo Cinema 


37 

Wayne Kramer at Sing Sing Prison, New York State, May 2009

OLY RALFE FIRST CAME TO RAINDANCE IN 2006 WHERE HIS DOC ‘THE BALLAD OF 

AJ WEBERMAN’, A PORTRAIT OF A CRAZED BOB DYLAN FANATIC, WENT ON TO WIN 

THE RAINDANCE AWARD AT THE BIFAS. SINCE THEN HE’S BEEN BUSY TOURING WITH 

THE RALFE BAND AND NOW RETURNS TO THE FESTIVAL WITH A FILM DOCUMENTING 

THE MIGHTY BOOSH ON TOUR. HE TALKS TO JAMES MERCHANT 

The Ballad of AJ Weberman resonated with audiences at the festival a few years back. 

Were you surprised at the response, and where did you go with it following Raindance? 

We were definitely both surprised and humbled. James (Bluemel, the film’s co-director) and 

I were really pleased that people seemed to find the same interest in this character as we did. 

As something of a Dylan fanatic I really wanted to make a film about him, and seeing that it was 

pretty much impossible to feature Dylan himself it made sense to try and seek out one of his 

most notorious stalkers. After Raindance and the BIFA win we were lucky enough to screen at 

Slamdance in the States, which runs alongside Sundance, so it was amazing going over there and 

seeing how they do it over the other side. It’s played at a number of festivals since then and we’re 

now thinking of putting it out in some way on DVD, as we’re constantly being asked where it can be 

seen. I think maybe we can sort something out through the website [www.balladofajweberman.com]. 

Or maybe sell it at your gigs? What have you been up to with your band? 

The band’s been great. We released our second album Attic Thieves in 2008 and went on a tour 

of Europe in support of that, playing at lots of festivals. 


Opposite Oly Ralfe by Ki Price

Including Glastonbury. What was it like playing to crowds of that size? 

It was amazing as you’d expect, but my favourite thing about festivals is always getting the chance 

to see other artists’ talents, whether at music or film festivals. No matter how huge an act or film 

may be everyone seems to judge it on its own merit, so it’s always exciting getting the opportunity 

to play at these kinds of events. Things can always get a bit crazy, with tour managers and other 

personnel filling you with wine to the point where you almost forget that you have to go on stage 

that night, but I suppose it’s all part of the experience. 

When you were growing up were music and film equal influences? 

I had a mutual passion for both music and film when I was younger, though of course it was easier 

back then to pick up a guitar or play the piano than to make a film. I think the first film to really 

inspire me creatively was Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975). It really stuck with me. 

Your new film about The Mighty Boosh tour is screening at this year’s festival. How did 

the experience of touring with them compare with your own? 

The scale, in a word. The size of their shows is just insane; everything is a thousand times bigger 

than what I’d seen before. And more goth teenage girls, I don’t think we get quite as many of those 

at our gigs. 

How did the project come about? 

I’d known the guys from the Boosh for about ten years; I was an early fan and used to see them 

at dingy old pubs where they would just show up and perform. It was incredible watching them rise 

to the point where they’re at now. 

We’d remained friends and I had been on the show a few times in a cameo role, so after they saw 

The Ballad of AJ Weberman and liked it, they asked me to shoot their tour as a documentary. It was 

something that was immediately appealing to me, as I really don’t think that there’s anything like 

them, someone that fuses comedy with music and a million other things. I really believe that there 

hasn’t been anything like this since Monty Python. 

You’ve also completed the musical score for Warp Films’ forthcoming drama Bunny 

and the Bull. How was it working as part of the creative team on a larger production? 

It was a real privilege to be asked. I had never done anything like this before, it’s a fully composed 

score, so it was really interesting being part of a larger creative team, With Weberman it was really 

just James, myself and then later a few other key crewmembers, but this was a much larger project. 

So even though your musical career is flourishing you are still keen to be involved with 

film at the same time? 

Very much so. I would love the opportunity to make a drama one day. 

And as your own profile is rising, do you think that having made a film that explored 

the psyche of a crazed fan you will be more sympathetic to those who may take their 

love of Oly Ralfe too far? 

Hahaha, I don’t think anyone has been through my bins just yet. I think that’s the point where you 

know you’ve really made it. 

Journey of The Childmen – The Mighty Boosh on Tour screens at 6.30pm on Sunday 4 October at the Apollo Cinema

T - Raindance Film Festival

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