Today’s the day.

OldFest

#OldFest launches with its first film, North by Northwest, at the Sherborne in Gloucester. You really should go. Wonderful film, Bernard Herrmann‘s best score, Cary Grant (sumus Bristolienses), delightful private cinema, enthusiastic team of young people.

Information from The Committee for Public Safety: if you buy a coffee, make sure they stir it and that the milk isn’t off. (I’m sure that was just a blip.)

Here’s our trailer, put together by half the #OldFest team, ie, two young fellas with a lot of enthusiasm. Ben Gobey and John Bellingall. In Cheltenham and Bristol.

Good work.

It’s also on YouTube, which I loathe, and Vimeo, which I like. Vimeo has put an ugly picture of ugly me in the corner, but it is not my work. If you’d like to see that, I put my experimental video efforts here. I am quite pleased with my Godard attentat. I feel it’s what he would have wanted.

I could tell you more about #OldFest’s internal shenanigans of the last week, but I’m saving those for my memoirs, cruise-liner appearances, one-man show, graphic novel, therapist, grandchildren, care-home, hospital ward, custody cell later.

NewFest

Meanwhile, what of #NewFest? They really don’t want me passing on the snippets I’ve been able to garner. But we can all look at their website, just like I did in The Really Simple Internet Guide in 2000.

Pics (√). Flannel (√). Information (minimal). Consumer value (minimal). Topicality (Are you kidding?).

Star-rating: ••• 1/2.

However, by journalistic methods (asking people) I have had sight of their programme. Someone whose name I will not reveal sent me a link to their ticketing site. They are using TicketTaylor, which describes itself as ‘the world’s most-loved ticketing platform’, not the greatest boast given that all the others are loathed: indeed, several of them are under investigation for fraud.

The programme looks good. Interesting films straight down the pipe from well-heeled bureaucrats who want you to show their films. Even Sir Lord Leslie Montgomery Sheldon CBE OBE agrees that they’ve done well, meanwhile spluttering about how #NewFest has all the money, privilege, power and advantage. I kind of agree with him about that, but we reap what we sow, don’t we?

Anyway (do I overuse that word, I wonder), after showing it to me, they’ve removed the page. Good work NOT. So I can’t tell you anything much about their festival, which starts in… 31 days time.

I would say bookmark the site and keep using its search facility, looking for ‘Cheltenham Film Festival’. But it doesn’t have one. The site has nothing for consumers: just people selling stuff. How very 2025. How very Britain. How very Internet.

By negotiation, however, I have agreed that I will just mention the four films they are showing that ‘wowed Cannes’.

So here they are:

Nouvelle Vague

Sentimental Value

It Was Just an Accident

Die, My Love

A pig’s bladder on a stick would wow Cannes, but that’s all I’ve got, so that’s all you’re getting. I could do #NewFest’s work, but I’ve got my hands full doing Leslie’s work. (Why am I helping him? Because he asked.)

Other attractions

Early on, I said to Leslie, ‘We must make a calendar so we know what else is going on’. He said, ‘I haven’t got time for that. I’m running a FILM FESTIVAL.’ But today is ‘Respect for the Aged’ day in Japan, so I’ll say nothing.

Tonight, in Cheltenham (you’ve heard of it) Andrew Holt’s Eclectic Cinema is showing Jules Dassin’s NIght and the City I really want to see it, but tonight I would have to be in two places at once. . You probably would too. Maybe explain that to Leslie when he drops in? It stars Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney and Googie Withers. The mere mention of ‘Googie Withers’ would reduce my entire family to hysterical giggles. I can’t tell you why.

According to Wiki, ‘the plot revolves around an ambitious hustler who meets continual failures’.

Moving swiftly on.

Actually I’m going to stop. I have had a number of personal difficulties, which I shall continue to meet with a smile and a whistle, as required by sworn members of that sinister uniformed organisation, the Boy Scout Movement.

And finally… 

There is a Chinese cultural festival in King’s Square in Gloucester next Sunday. It’s free. I don’t agree with state-funded mono-cultural festivals in multi-cultural countries (if I wanted that I’d move to North Korea), but I do agree with peace though poetry. 

So I will, with a fair wind, be performing English versions of some Chinese poems about Autumn (It’s a mid-Autumn festival), read by my charming friend Dan Liu. For mutual understanding, I will also be reading poems in English, with a Gloucestershire connection. I have acquired a Chinese translation of Robert Frost and commissioned new ones of Edward Thomas and Ivor Gurney, from a Chinese lady in Malaysia. They are transcendently beautiful in performance. If I have got the technology to work, here’s a snippet.

Do come, listen, and say hello. The dancing ladies will be doing their stuff (see above), there will apparently be food, and everyone is welcome. At least, as far as I’m concerned.

Going now. I have to print some flyers and give them out. I am also going to get as many posters done as I can afford. Look hard and you might see them. They certainly won’t be on any lamp-posts or on metal boards obstructing the pavement.

Thought for the Day: ‘you can run, but you can’t hide‘ ‘No-one’s more important than the earthworm.’

Feel free to pass this email on to anyone who might find it useful or amusing. Please don’t pass it on to anyone who might find it threatening. Be Your Own Judge, as the Bristol sage David Penrice used to say.