Finding Richard

'Finding Richard' is a little film that's big on story and charm from the production company of Hive Films. I enjoyed today's screening in a gilt-decorated, wood-panelled room at Leicester's Guildhall - the perfect setting. The film features a boy's quest to connect with history - or more importantly with his grandfather - and this take on 'Gulliver's Travels' leads from garden shed to a muddy field to an unexpected tryst. Grandad - aka 'The Professor' - is played by none other than Colin Baker. Appropriately enough for an ex-Time-Lord, he has a shed packed with gadgets and a passion for amateur archaeology. Baker lights up the screen with a gentle energy that draws his young co-star into its warmth. Director Rhys Davies wisely makes this relationship the heart of the film.


 'The Professor' directs a dig to be undertaken by his grandson 'Gull', winningly played by young comedian David Knight (12 years old from Britain's Got Talent). His quest is inspired by the news that Leicester University archaeologists have unearthed the bones of Richard III in a Leicester car-park. Soon Gull is busy with a spade and metal detector, like a one-boy Time Team, in a stretch of rain-soaked football field near Leicester's Tudor Road. He finds a few items of questionable 'provenance' - I'll say no more - but the final scene has a pay-off that knits together his granddad's past and Gull's future in a sweetly understated moment.

I feel sure this film will repay more than one viewing. My own favourite moments and images are Gull's 'tent' in the opening scene with its montage of gothic gargoyles and toy knights; his always off-screen mother shouting up 'Switch that light off Gulliver!', the best cameo by a beseeching dog and the rose china tea-cup granddad sets beside a framed photograph at the end. The upbeat original music matched the warmth of the film's colour palette but gave hints of an undertow of a poignancy as subtle as Baker's performance. Unsurprisingly, this film garnered positive reviews at Cannes Film Festival where it has just been premiered. And with the news that those hotly-contested bones are to be interred in Leicester cathedral, it is destined to find a permanent home in a new dedicated museum.

Personally I find it difficult to be moved by the plight of a feudal monarch. The ill-fated Richard will be accorded a final 'dignity' but I doubt there was much for the lowly tenants and 'men-of arms' who slogged through the slaughter of Bosworth's battlefield. However if it helps people including children to connect to history as Gull did, that's a good thing. And even better this tale - which is 'about a boy' rather than a king - showcases the talents of today's generation. I was delighted to hear from the film's co-writer Douglas Cubin that Leicester's home-grown film industry is burgeoning with several feature films and 10 more 'shorts' underway in the city this year. 'Finding Richard' will surely fly the flag for Leicester's rich cultural output, alongside that raft of musicians who have put the city on TV's map recently. It will delight tourists and locals alike, and its themes about finding your own place in the world through imagination and persistence will resonate with all ages.

FLTH - Guerillas in Love

'From Leicester to Hollywood' is a wry comedy about the urgent realities of independent film-making - and also a love story. In this Blue City we know about the power of stories. What with our king buried under the car park and our 'fairytale' football triumph in 2016. This film has also bided its time in post-production limbo. But with some nifty footwork by HIVE Films, it has come back stronger and with a special added ingredient. This mockumentary-with-charm now boasts a voice-over by Warwick Davis, a long-term fan of indie cinema. It's a perfect fit. A veteran of this genre, he brings exactly the faux-earnestness and genuine warmth needed.

Credit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2013/lifes-too-short-vid.html?lang=cy

This is a low-budget/ NO budget movie. Its story-within-a-story is an 'under-dog' narrative of guerrilla film-making. A down-at-heels director, (formerly a logistics manager) is persuaded by his charlatan producer to make a movie for the record-breaking low of £43 to get 'guaranteed PR'. In the real world, the support of Leicester's Phoenix cinema seems to have helped - the arts complex features often as a location in the movie - offering the right vibe for this 'from-the-ground-up' indie film. In places, it evokes fond memories of that bio-flick about the legendary B-movie director Ed Woods - such as inserting a snow scene into the film just because it happened to be snowing in Leicester that day - 'a backdrop' money couldn't buy' intones Davis' voice-over.



Credit: https://twitter.com/rodduncan

I enjoyed the pastiche/homage style of filming. The snow-scene is shot as a colour-tinted music video, camera circling our woolly-hatted heroine. Other episodes include an art-house love scene with heroine in red dress wading through a rape field ablaze with yellow. But the dominant style is that of shambling mockumentary realism, a little dog-eared and smoke-stained, shot in empty pub function-rooms and warehouse floors. Writer Rod Duncan has revealed that actors' improvisation was crucial to the film's naturalism. Sometimes his writerly bon mots needed to be cast aside in favour of a muttered-in-the-moment authenticity. But scenes always had their 'through-line' which the actors could hold onto when letting loose - as in the wonderfully expletive-strewn 'Not the Blue Ray' scene. So glad that scene makes it into the trailer.

The film-within-the-film is an 'epic romance' shot in Leicester's side streets and by-ways. Rhys Davies, the real RD, coaxed beautiful performances out of his actors. In the 'talking heads' documentary interviews, Olwyn Davies evinces a sweet fresh naturalism and James Murton totally nails a gently self-mocking portrait of an up-for-anything student actor who sheds clothes at the drop of a clapper-board. His performance is unself-conscious but deftly comic throughout, as understated as The Office's Tim. But a comedy needs its grotesques. Sylvana Maimone's Producer is deliberately stagey. A woman always performing herself, she could have stepped straight out of the PR-spun world of Twenty-Twelve. She also reminded me a tad of Frasier's agent Bibi, whose voracious amorality I always adored. A rather more tortured soul is the film's protagonist, the mock-Director played by Christopher J Herbert. He serves up the cringing realism of a character whose ambitions for his hand-crafted film are 'epic' but who cannot bear to be fixed by the camera's gaze himself, delivering his CU lines into his straggly face hair or faux-leather hat. Yet he carries the film by making the viewer care about his 'journey' from pitch to premiere.

Credit: http://hivemedia.co.uk/video-production-leicester-about/



Indeed the film has a lot of heart as well as hip indie wit. It conveys the underpaid, possibly never paid, passion of guerrilla film-making. And it even draws us into the fictional romance of the two 'leads', cast  because they have the vital 'chemistry' of  just-found-each-other lovers. In Duncan's clever script, their passion waxes and wanes in inverse order to the scripted romance. But the film creates a genuine lump-in-the-throat moment in a moving climactic scene between Olwyn Davies and James Murton. Although Duncan jokes about the script being mangled and tossed away in the editing room, in fact, the shaping of the story arc is one of the film's most satisfying elements. It is beautifully patterned, working through an elliptical orbit which perfectly counters the mockumentary's air of shambolic realism.



Can I also mention that this film was a 'crowd-funded' venture in which local people invest in home-grown film-makers and where the production calls in favours and conjures small-daily miracles to keep the cameras rolling? Suresh Dippy's suitably dour Editor literally eats, sleeps and lives on the mixing board in a 'borrowed' editing suite. It's a precarious business as this indie-comedy explores but HIVE productions have by now mastered their guerrilla art. FLTH more than re-pays the investment and offers a finely crafted indie gem that will tickle your funny bones and make you care not only about its lovers but the guerrillas behind the cameras. All we want to complete the story arc is a carpeted procession of director Rhys Davies, writer Rod Duncan and actor Warwick Davis to pick up the Oscar. What are the odds? 5000-1? Bring it on.