Tom Berkeley & Ross White’s The Golden West: Winner of the Best of Festival and Best Drama awards at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2023
TOM Berkeley & Ross White’s The Golden West has won the Best of Festival Award at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2023 in York.
Award winners in the 13th festival were announced in a ceremony on Sunday at the Yorkshire Museum, Museum Gardens, spotlighting outstanding storytelling across multiple genres.
Winner of the Best Drama Award too, The Golden West is set in November 1849, when two warring Irish sisters seek their fortune in the gold rush after fleeing the Great Famine. However, with winter fast approaching, their feud soon threatens to become deadly.
Other award winners were:
Best Advertising Award: RNIB/See Differently, directed by Jesse Lewis-Reece.
Best Animation Film: Letter To A Pig, directed by Tal Kantor.
Best Artists’ Film Award: The Song, directed by Bani Abidi.
Best Comedy Award: Festival Of Slap, directed by Abdou Cissé
Best Dance Award: Spicy Pink Tea, directed by Aqsa Arif.
Best Documentary Award: Nail Nai & Wai Po (Grandma & Grandpa), directed by Sean Wang.
Best Documentary Feature: After The Bridge, directed by Davide Rizzo & Marzia Toscano.
Best Experimental Film: Thieves, directed by Michelle Williams Gamaker.
Best Fashion Award: An Ode To Procrastination, directed by Aleksandra Kingo.
Best Family Friendly Award: I’m Not Afraid, directed by Marita Mayer.
Best Music Video Award: Debbie featuring Berwyn, Cousin’s Car, directed by Relta.
Best Narrative Feature: Black Moon, directed by Tonatiuh Garcia.
Best Thriller Award: Hide Your Crazy, directed by Austin Kase.
Best VR & 360 Award: From The Main Square, directed by Pedro Harres.
Best Game: Paper Trail, by Newfangled Games.
Best Cinematography Award: The Red Suitcase, directed by Cyrus Neshvad.
Best Director Award and Best Screenplay Award: Safe, directed by Debbie Howard.
Best Editing Award: Outlets, directed by Duncan Cowles.
All the films from the five-day festival can be streamed online at asff.co.uk until November 30, along with the 60 masterclasses.
La Bamba! stars Pasha Kovalev and Siva Kaneswaran with Ate O’Clock restaurant manager Emily Crampton, left, and Grand Opera House theatre director Laura McMillan celebrate the new partnership. La Bamba! played the Grand Opera House last week, moving on to the Grand Theatre, Blackpool, from tomorrow to Saturday
THE Grand Opera Houseand Ate O’clock are joining forces to “bring York’s theatregoers an entertaining night out”.
This new partnership combines the pre-show meal setting of the High Ousegate restaurant and bistro for food and drinks with a show afterwards at the Cumberland Street theatre.
Offers will be shared directly with Grand Opera House theatregoers, who are advised to keep their eyes peeled for the theatre’s pre-show emails and newsletters, sharing Ate O’Clock money-saving offers in the coming months.
Twelve months on since its refurbishment, Ate O’Clock has expanded its offering with new dishes on its a la carte and set menus, including steaks, burgers, and traditional dishes, all locally sourced. Cocktails are served up in Ate O’Clock’s new Social8 Lounge.
Emily Crampton, left, Laura McMillan, Siva Kaneswaran and Pasha Kovalev at Ate O’Clock
Laura McMillan, Grand Opera House theatre director, says: “We want to deliver memorable experiences for our guests, and by working with Ate O’Clock we are able to combine the best food in York with the best live entertainment in the city.”
Emily Crampton, Ate O’Clock and Social8 Lounge restaurant manager, says: “As theatre lovers ourselves, and given that we are only a stone’s throw away, partnering with the Grand Opera House is a great opportunity and one that we are so excited about.
“We cannot wait to do our bit in creating a fun and memorable evening out for all theatregoers, whether that be a pre-theatre meal or post-theatre drinks.”
Laura adds: “Whether you’re planning festive celebrations, a catch-up with your friends or a night out with your partner, we have you covered, giving you the chance to enjoy great food and fantastic shows. We have a packed programme of shows that you can attend after your exquisite pre-theatre dinner from Calendar Girls to Pretty Woman.”
Lara Stafford: Dying a death on stage…or not in White Rabbit, Red Rabbit on Wednesday
NO director. No rehearsal. No advance sight of the script. Only a brief list of instructions sent to the actor in a pdf by the producer 48 hours before the performance. Novel indeed.
“An actor’s nightmare,” suggested Black Treacle Theatre producer Jim Paterson, “but an audience’s dream.”That said, Maurice Crichton, Lara Stafford, Maggie Smales, Alan Park and today’s two performers, Sonia Di Lorenzo (matinee) and Sanna Jeppsson (evening), were intrigued to take on the one-off challenge of a 70-minute script, each for one solo performance, passing on the baton without a word to the next in line.
CharlesHutchPress had been expecting to see Maggie Smales on Thursday, but when he chanced upon Lara Stafford in Micklegate on Wednesday, after his plans to attend the Aesthetica Short Film Festival launch or Teenage Fanclub at Leeds Brudenell Social Club came to nought, the reviewer resolved to review her that night instead.
Both were in the dark about what would unfold. White Rabbit, Red Rabbit was written in 2011 by Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour, when he was forbidden to leave his native Iran, but the play was designed to travel the world in his place; words without end.
Enter Lara, to be handed an envelope by Jim Paterson. Let the journey into the unknown begin, and quickly it emerges that this will not be a solo performance, but an immersive one with plenty of audience involvement.
Both on stage and off, in the case of your reviewer, who ticked the box for having a notebook to hand, at the writer’s request, to take notes…and subsequently send him an email as evidence of the night’s performance.
Without giving too much away, the tone of the piece turns from jocular to darker, bleaker, graver, a gradual switch handled well by Stafford, whose performance elides from playful to no messing about, this is serious.
More experimental performance art than play, White Rabbit, Red Rabbit does not call on Stafford to develop a role, a character, but to be a mistress of ceremonies, a malleable conduit through which the script will pass in a series of tests.
Not only her comic skills come into play, but her prowess at orchestrating an audience, as she would do in her physics teaching career too.
Above all, White Rabbit, Red Rabbit testifies to the power of the unexpected in theatre, when actor and audience are equally surprised and on edge, each reliant on the other for what will happen next.
White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, Theatre@41, Monkgate, today at 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: https://tickets.41monkgate.co.uk. Tickets are £10 full price and any ticket buyers for one performance can see another one for £5 (plus booking fee). Running time is approximately 70 minutes.
Emma Louise Dickinson and Jonny Holbek in rehearsal with York Light Youth company members for School Of Rock The Musical
YORK Light Youth’s tenth anniversary show is the York premiere of The Next Generation Edition of School Of Rock, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Glenn Slater and a book by Julian Fellowes, of Downton Abbey fame.
This all-American celebration of music, friendship and the power of self-expression is described as “technically and musically challenging”. “Technically” because it features not one, but two bands, an adult one in the pit and a group of whippersnapper talents ready to knock rock into shape on stage.
“Musically” because Lloyd Webber’s rock songs do rock out, not to the level of screeching heavy metal pyrotechnics, but demanding muscular singing from Jonny Holbek’s lead character, substitute teacher Dewey Finn, especially in When I Climb To The Top Of Mt. Rock and Jack Black’s In The End Of Time.
“Any York production is always better for the presence of Jonny Holbek,” CharlesHutchPress opined when reviewing his scene-stealing Tobias Ragg in York Light Opera Company’s Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber Of Fleet Street in February.
That York Theatre Royal performance was marked by “humour and tragedy, light and darkness, hope and desperation, naivety and madness”. Move forward to School Of Rock, where Holbek brings buckets of humour and a dab of sadness, light and shade, hope and desperation, naivety and madcap mayhem to Dewey Finn.
A musician as well as an actor, here’s Jonny lapping up a well-deserved lead role, such fun to watch as he interacts brilliantly with the young company (aged ten to 17), the big kid among a bunch of them. Dewey is a cheeky chappie role he was born to play, and he is indeed the Finnished article here.
Based on Mike White’s storyline for the 2003 film, Holbek’s Dewey is a failed wannabe rock star, who passes himself off as teacher flatmate Ned Schneebly (Flynn Coultous) to raise the rent by becoming the substitute teacher to a class of prep school students.
What can he teach them? Not history but the history of rock and how to play, so they can take on his old band No Vacancy in the Battle Of The Bands. They learn, he learns, and there is something of the vibe and spirit of both John Godber’s Teechers and Willy Russell’s Our Day Out in looking outside the box to stimulate children’s minds and actions.
Prominent among the adults in the story is Emma Louise Dickinson’s headteacher, Rosalie Mullins, repressed and orderly until Dewey brings out the Stevie Nicks butterfly from her dowdy chrysalis. She sings as beautifully as ever, best in show once more.
Multiple performers delight among the young company: whether Flynn Coultous revelling in the bossed-about adult role of Ned Schneebly; Georgia Foster as the insufferable Patty Di Marco; Olivia Swales’s precocious, bossy Summer Hathaway or Iris Wragg’s reserved Tomika Spencer-Williams, brought out of her shell by Dewey to reveal her singing talent. Look out for Isaac Patterson’s fashion-obsessed Billy Sandford too.
You will love the talented young musicians: Sam Brophy’s keyboard wizard Lawrence Turner, a Rick Wakeman in the making; Bella Smith’s too-cool-for-school bass player Katie Travis; Ollie Lee’s putative guitar god and Finley Walters’ all-action drummer Freddie Hamilton.
The first half is too long, with so many songs to fit in, but Sue Hawksworth’s direction elicits the best from individual and ensemble performances alike; musical director Martin Lay and his band power the songs to the max, and David Pumfrey’s set design ensures quick scene changes.
York Light Youth’s exuberant production really does Stick It To The Man, right down to an in-joke putdown at Lloyd Webber’s expense when Holkbek’s Dewey disses his lordship’s ballad Memory.
York Light Youth in School Of Rock, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, 2.30pm and 7.30pm today. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Steve Gunn: “Dexterously employing delay and effects, he was able to inject variation and other sound dimensions into otherwise attractive acoustic composition”. Picture: Paul Rhodes
THIS wildly popular Acomb café proved the perfect setting for Steve Gunn and Brigid Mae Power to kick off a tour as part of Bluebird Bakery’s rapidly expanding Rise programme of evening concerts.
The intimate surroundings put everyone at ease, the abstract art by York artist Rosie Bramley providing the ideal backdrop for the performers to slowly weave their magic.
Steve Gunn is one of the most talented acoustic guitar players (as well as a serial collaborator and producer), so it is credit to Joe Coates at Please Please You for enticing the New Yorker to Acomb.
With jetlag tapping Gunn on the shoulder (as he put it), it took a while for him to work his way into his set. By dexterously employing delay and effects, Gunn was able to inject variation and other sound dimensions into otherwise attractive acoustic compositions. At one point during Way Out Weather he risked tinnitus for us, by crouching right down to his speaker to get the (challenging) sound he was seeking before bringing us back to the safety of the original refrain.
Gunn’s approach is subtle, songs take time to perform, and, in truth, time to work their charm on the audience. On The Way and Morning River, both from his 2021 solo album Other You, occupied the first 25 minutes of the set. More memorable was Wildwood, a number about a place on the New Jersey coast that holds a special connection to him and his family.
Brigid Mae Power: “At their best, her songs are heart stopping, emotive fragments seemingly ripped from a diary”. Picture: Paul Rhodes
Gunn is touring with Brigid Mae Power in support. This Irish singer is justly a critical favourite, known for her heartfelt songs and beautiful voice. “Singing around a cough”, she spluttered while tuning, but she still sounded in fine voice.
Without the imaginative studio backings, Power’s material seems simply constructed and varies little. At their best, however, they are heart stopping, emotive fragments seemingly ripped from a diary. Some Life You’ve Known was wonderful and perhaps the best song of the entire evening.
Running it close was Gunn’s cover of the late Michael Chapman’s Among The Trees. Chapman wrote this elegiac number before he was 30, and the melancholy for summer’s past was more universal than Gunn’s pieces. It was nevertheless a treat to see two talented performers up close and be able to hear and appreciate every note.
Review by Paul Rhodes, 1/11/2023
N.B. A launch Party for A Yorkshire Tribute To Michael Chapman, a compilation album curated by Henry Parker for release on the Tompkins Square label, will take place is at The Crescent on Friday, December 1. Taking part will be Andrew DR Abbott, Chris Brain, Holly Blackshaw, Bobby Lee, Dean McPhee, Henry Parker and Katie Spencer. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.
On the Rise stage: Steve Gunn performing against the backdrop of Rosie Bramley’s paintings at Bluebird Bakery, Acomb. Picture: Paul Rhodes
Bobby Lee and drummer Ian McCutcheon: “Guitar-driven instrumentals with an expansive, filmic quality”. Picture: Paul Rhodes
CUTTING a dash is rarely a bad move when it comes to performing music. While none at The Crescent did so much as bat an eye to the retro chic figure enjoying the support act, once on stage, Bobby Lee, from Sheffield but in every other respect American, looked like a man made for the limelight.
In appearance recalling Lee Hazlewood in his late 1960s’ pomp, Lee’s guitar-driven instrumentals have an expansive, filmic quality. The backdrop was video from the 1960s and 1970s, and promoters Ouroboros’s trademark floor lamp also added a certain period glow.
The three piece locked quickly into place, dispatching 15 songs in a little over an hour. That was enough, as the circular riffs were starting to turn in on themselves and blur.
Pascallion, alias York musician Jack Woods: “Dour, Elliot Smith-like nihilism contrasting with nimble, beautiful guitar playing”. Picture: Paul Rhodes
There were a number of peaks in the set, however. Reds For A Blue Planet, the opener from his best album to date, Endless Skyways, was confident, bold and melodic. Lee wisely leaves space for his music, resisting the urge to play lots of notes, or attempt jazz rock meanders. Closer in spirit perhaps to Link Wray, or Lee Hazlewood’s original charge, Duane Eddy.
His bandmates were able accomplices, drummer Ian McCutcheon in particular laying down inventive patterns without steeling any thunder. There was just enough variety and showmanship to keep the evening afloat, mixing more atmospheric numbers, such as Acid Flat Lands, with more riff-based tunes, such as Heavy Friends.
The world certainly seems to weigh down on Pascallion, the York-based opener. Information online is sparse about this musician (Jack Woods), but the set was wonderful – his dour, Elliot Smith-like nihilism contrasting with his nimble, beautiful guitar playing. If the John Martyn comparisons are hard to avoid, this was a set of songs deserving of a wider audience.
That both performers had in common.
Review by Paul Rhodes, 29/10/2023
Bobby Lee’s three piece locked quickly into place, dispatching 15 songs in a little over an hour. Picture: Paul Rhodes
THE Late Music concert series, aka Living Music, Live, has made a habit of inviting pianist Ian Pace over the years. It is easy to see why. He is a monarch of the keyboard, not least in repertory of the last two centuries.
He brought his full powers to bear on a programme that began and ended with Liszt transcriptions of Beethoven, with Gershwin and Kern transcriptions by Michael Finnissy and Steve Crowther’s Fourth Piano Sonata in between.
This was the opening concert in what is planned to be an annual series, The Beethoven Project, curated by Crowther and focused around all of Liszt’s transcriptions of Beethoven’s symphonies.
Liszt was an indefatigable transcriber of works by others, especially where they could be incorporated into his own virtuoso recitals. They also provided him with a more or less regular income.
His version of Beethoven’s Fifth is masterly, seemingly leaving nothing out and taxing the pianist to the very limit. But Pace was equal to his every demand. No-one could claim that this was a note-perfect account – how could it be? – but it was dazzling nonetheless.
He started with the three opening quavers so rapid that they were almost indistinguishable. The whole first movement, complete with repeat of the exposition, was adrenalin-fuelled, with the left hand in constant motion.
The Andante was richly voiced, with strong accents. All the statements of its rondo theme were insistent, although some of the diversions were taken more gently. Some of the humour of the third movement – effectively a scherzo and trio – was lost to heavy treatment, so that Beethoven’s subtle instrumentation in the fugato became too distant a memory.
But one could only gasp in admiration at the orchestral tone that Pace generated in the finale, with his left hand again moving at frightening speed. The work as a whole inevitably emerged more percussively than the original. But Liszt’s achievement was never in doubt.
Pace had opened with Liszt’s version of the first song-cycle in history, Beethoven’s An die Ferne Geliebte (To The Distant Beloved), six songs given without a break. Pace took great pains to highlight the vocal melodies, while opting for measured tempos larded with considerable rubato, probably more than a singer would countenance.
As the cycle progressed Pace made his upper register twinkle several times, not least with the trilling of birds in the unheard text.
Michael Finnissy’s ‘transcriptions’ from songs by Gershwin and Kern were much less literal than the Liszt and much more like arrangements, preferring to conjure atmosphere and doodle over harmonies.
In Love Is Here To Stay (from the 1938 film The Goldwyn Follies), the tune was held back until near the end, although in Embraceable You (from Girl Crazy) it was the jazz element that took control. Best of all was his version of Kern’s Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man (from Show Boat) where the melody was disguised but always detectable. Pace had them well organised.
So also in Steve Crowther’s Fourth Sonata, which sounded not unconnected with the Gershwin that preceded it, although sparer harmonically. Pace sustained excellent momentum and a staccato touch through the rapid opening movement, which was awash with syncopation and sounded like a rondo.
The slow movement was more ruminative, although tastily decorated with roulades. Decorations during the finale tended to occur in the right hand while the left carried the main theme. But both hands flitted lightly around the keyboard – and I swear I could hear traces of Kern here; perhaps they were just left over in my aural memory. But the work was never less than intriguing and often much more.
Pace had once again proved a mighty champion of the new and the little-known.
Galina Averina (third from left) as Magda and Elgan Llŷr Thomas (seated right) as Prunier in Opera North’s La Rondine. Picture: Tristram Kenton
IN a time of financial stringency, you would not automatically think of one of Puccini’s least-popular operas as compelling box office.
Unless of course you were willing to take the risks that Opera North has become famous for and could find a way to fit it into your Green Season, redeploying old sets and costumes and considering how to save the planet while also saving money.
Nor would La Rondine (The Swallow) spring easily to most minds as a parting gesture: it marks general director Richard Mantle’s farewell to the company he joined in 1994, the very year that Opera North staged its first production of the work (which also happens to be one of his ‘Top Ten’ operas). Nothing ventured, nothing gained has surely been Mantle’s motto – and it has worked out admirably.
Thus James Hurley’s new production has a dual task: first to convince that La Rondine needs to be seen in Leeds again and, if so, that it deserves to supplant Francesca Zambello’s successful 1994 effort, which enjoyed two revivals.
Leslie Travers’s set makes use of two multi-purpose steel fabrications on wheels, stretching over two storeys. Kept close together they serve to outline Magda’s salon; they are opened up to accommodate the festivities chez Bullier, with a gigantic vase of flowers between. The remaining atmosphere is left to the canny lighting of Paule Constable and Ben Pickersgill, notably in Act 3, where you can almost smell the Mediterranean beneath the blue sky.
Three of the five principals are making their company debuts, which adds to the fun. Galina Averina is one, an enigmatic Magda singing with considerable charm that is never quite matched by her appearance.
While one accepts that she needs to blend in with the crowd at Bullier’s, her homely dress makes her stand out for the wrong reason, nor does her 1920s’ wig do her any favours. You even have to wonder what it is that so allures Ruggero: how is it that someone so attractive in her biography image can have been made to look so ordinary?
Sébastien Guèze’s Ruggero is ideal as the provincial innocent, clearly out of his depth in matters amatory, but his tenor is too often less than magnetic. It is not tight so much as lacking that extra flair which more carefree resonance might provide. Ultimately one has to ask what they really see in each other.
The contrast with the secondary lovers is stark. Claire Lees is marvellously flighty as Lisette, the perfect soubrette, thoroughly enjoying herself in her coloratura and catching the eye on her every appearance. There is no mistaking the chemistry between her and Elgan Llŷr Thomas’s gallant bounder Prunier, whose tenor carries the necessary touch of steel.
Philip Smith makes the most of his acquiescent Rambaldo, to the point where one has to feel he is surely the better bet for Magda in the long run. Opera cannot work like that, of course.
Act 2 is the superb centrepiece of the evening. Here Hurley exercises total control over the comings and goings of the chorus, each with clearly defined roles. But none oversteps the mark, so that attention is never diverted from the principals, a tricky tightrope.
Gabrielle Dalton’s costumes come into their own here, but equally effective is Lauren Poulton’s buoyant choreography, which is further enlivened by a quartet of apache dancers.
Kerem Hasan’s orchestra is consistently persuasive, especially in the slower waltzes, keeping a creamy momentum through Puccini’s insistent tempo changes. It is a delight to be able to take refuge in the pit whenever the action above is less than convincing.
Should Zambello have been recycled? It is a close shave, but the overall achievement justifies this new approach.
In his natural habitat: Ross Noble looks forward to a Jibber Jabber Jamboree night of improvised comedy at the Grand Opera House, York, on Wednesday
FREEWHEELING Geordie comic Ross Noble will spin his web of nonsensical improvised comedy on his return to the Grand Opera House, York, on Wednesday (15/11/2023).
“It will be a playful experience for young and old,” he says. “Imagine watching someone create a magic carpet on an enchanted loom. Oh, hang on… magic carpets fly, that would smash the loom as it took flight. I haven’t thought that through…That’s what people can expect. Razor-sharp observations on things I haven’t thought through.”
Ross, who cut his teenage comedy teeth in York compering Comedy Shack gigs at the Bonding Warehouse, is settling into his 21st stand-up tour, talking genial Geordie gibberish on his Jibber Jabber Jamboree itinerary from October 25 to March 17 2024.
“I’ve got significantly better hotel accommodation,” says the Newcastle surrealist, reflecting on the contrast with his first tour. “That’s the main thing. Also, there are people coming to see me now who came with their parents when they were kids. That messes with your head a little bit.
“I still think of myself as being like 22 or 23 years old, and now I’ve got grown men going, ‘I saw you when I was 15. And now I’m a professional comedian’. Not even people going, ‘I want to be a comedian’ – like actual, established performers.”
Does that make Ross an elder statesman of comedy at 47? “I wouldn’t go that far! The people that get described as ‘elder statesman’…some of them are a little bit too confident in their opinions, you know? They start going: ‘Well, the thing about comedy…’. No! Shut up!”
Just as Bob Dylan sang “All I’ve got is a red guitar, three chords and the truth” in All Along The Watchtower, so Ross Noble once said his plans for a show ran to “about four words on a scrap of paper”. “That was actually taken slightly out of context,” he clarifies. “What I would do is go on and improvise, and then afterwards, I would write down things I could do again.
“I didn’t sit down to plan, think of four things and write them down. It’s the same today, really. Except I just don’t write them down – I feel like I should be able to remember four things!”
As ever, Ross will have no support (no, not even a chair) as he tucks into two hour-long sets on Wednesday. “The thing that gets me is comics who sit down,” he says. “Whenever I see a comic with a chair on stage, I just think ‘If you need that chair, do a shorter show! Get up and put some effort in’.”
How does Ross on stage contrast with Ross off stage? “The difference is that when I’m on stage I show my working out. As I’m talking, my brain is constantly interrupting itself, so I’ll be saying something and then that’ll spark another thing, and then something else will come in – and I explain all that as it happens,” he says.
What can people expect in Jibber Jabber Jamboree, Ross? “Razor-sharp observations on things I haven’t thought through,” he forewarns
“Those thoughts still happen when I’m off stage, but I don’t say them all out loud, so if you meet me in the street, I can seem kind of distracted. I’ll often get halfway through a sentence and just stop. It drives my wife up the wall.”
Come the interval on Wednesday, as is customary at a Noble gig, audience members will leave items on stage for Ross to weave into his wild imaginings in the second half.
“Somebody once left a pin from a ten-pin bowling alley and then a few nights later, somebody left another one. So, I tweeted about it, and over the course of the tour, I got all ten and we set up a bowling alley in the dressing room,” he recalls.
“Somebody did an oil painting of me as a centaur: full horse body, long flowing hair, rippling muscles like Fabio. Then above my head, there’s a Mr Kipling French Fancy with a rainbow coming out of it, and wings like a snitch from Harry Potter. That blew my mind.”
Before Wednesday, check out Ross’s YouTube channel, where he presents a spoof nature documentary series, The Unnatural History Show With Ross Noble, as a rather riskier retort to the Beeb’s Winterwatch.
“I love Winterwatch and Countryfile, but there’s a very British, very cosy way that people like Michaela Strachan and John Craven present,” he says. “It’s all people in jumpers and Berghaus jackets sitting around being very ‘Well, isn’t this marvellous seeing these mating chaffinches?’! I just thought: ‘This would be a lot better if some of these animals could kill you’.”
Back on stage, you may have seen Ross’s Igor in Mel Brooks’s musical Young Frankenstein on tour at Leeds Grand Theatre. What did he learn from his musical theatre experience that he could apply to stand-up? “Previously I thought the best thing about stand-up was that you didn’t have to deal with other people messing up what you want to do,” he says.
“But then you do something likeYoung Frankenstein, with the greatest comedy legend of all time, and the best Broadway director that’s working and you go: ‘Oh, no, it’s not that I don’t like working with other people. I just want to work with the absolute best people’.”
Now, solo once more, Ross will turn his stream-of-consciousnonsense tap on in York at 8pm on Wednesday. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Further Yorkshire dates on Ross Noble’s Jibber Jabber Jamboree tour in 2024: Sheffield City Hall, February 28, CAST, Doncaster, March 3; Leeds Grand Theatre, March 17. Box office: Sheffield, sheffieldcityhall.co.uk; Doncaster, 01302 303959 or castindoncaster.com; Leeds, 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritage theatres.com.
Ross Noble on the road in Yorkshire on his 21st solo stand-up tour: Already played Harrogate Royal Hallon October 26, now heading for York next week and Leeds, Doncaster and Sheffield next year
Elizabeth Boag: Co-director of Scarborough Film Festival
THE inaugural Scarborough Film Festival is running from today until Sunday.
“We’ve put together a really fantastic programme of films that includes feature films, both arthouse and mainstream, short films, documentaries, animation, locally made films and artist moving images,” says co-director Elizabeth Boag. “We hope there really is something for everyone.”
A familiar face to theatre audiences from her Stephen Joseph Theatre performances, not least in Alan Ayckbourn comedies, actress Elizabeth is joined in the directorial team by Martha Cattell, archivist at the Yorkshire & North East Film Archives.
Elizabeth had decided to move back to Yorkshire from London in April 2021, after the pandemic, with a new son to bring up as a Yorkshireman and teach to walk in the sea.
“Having worked at the SJT, where they still show films in the McCarthy auditorium in what was the old Odeon cinema building, I messaged the theatre about setting up a film festival, as I’d love one to be held in Scarborough,” she says.
“I’d done a scheme in London called Firehouse Films [“a film lab with a difference”], where the principle was to give fledgling filmmakers the chance to work with actors and crew at a South East London location, without having to pay to pay for any of those.
“Each director would have a month to make a short film, with Firehouse Films providing a database and crew, and the actors would work for free for two days. That was in January to March 2013, producing 12 films, before I ended up coming to the SJT to do Alan Ayckbourn’s Arrivals And Departures that summer.”
Elizabeth admits she “didn’t know short films were a thing until I started acting”, but the seed was duly planted in her head to establish a film festival to “show amazing films to the people of Scarborough”.
Roll the years forward, and serendipitously Martha Cattell also had approached SJT artistic director Paul Robinson over the possibility of launching a film festival at the East Coast resort.
“Paul asked if I knew her and said she had some very cool friends that I did know,” recalls Elizabeth. “We met and got on really well, and while we come from different angles and our areas of interest are quite different, our tastes are similar. I’m more in touch with the narrative side and Martha more with artist films and documentary films.”
Martha was working as the curator for Crescent Arts in Scarborough [October 2020 to December 2022] when they first met and is now the project delivery manager for the Yorkshire & North East Film Archives, exploring how the moving image can be used in environment and climate narratives.
Profiled on LinkedIn as a freelance film programmer and creative producer, she gained a PhD from the University of York in 2019 in the ethics of representing the whaling industry in art and film. Earlier, she had chaired the York Student Cinema on campus.
An artist too (who works with seaweed), Martha’s diverse career has taken in programming and coordinating the Gateway Film Festival in Peterborough, involvements with the Aesthetica Short Film Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest and Hebden Bridge Film Festival, and co-directing and programming Sea/Film, an organisation committed to bringing alternative film and cinema to Yorkshire, the Humber and the North East.
Pooling their skills, Elizabeth and Martha decided “we wanted to make a film festival that would be very accessible, make it something for everyone, something they may not have seen before but would speak to them”.
More than 30 years since York entered the modern age of cinema-going at Clifton Moor, Scarborough still awaits its first multiplex cinema, although multi-million-pound plans were approved in March for one to transform the Brunswick shopping centre. In the meantime, Scarborough cinephiles must head up the stairs at the SJT or to the Hollywood Plaza Cinema, in North Marine Road, home to a weekly programme of Hollywood blockbusters and newly released films.
“One of the reasons we were keen to partner with the SJT for the festival was to help it survive as an arthouse cinema, presenting a cross-section of films. The SJT was the obvious hub for the festival as I’d worked there so much that I had a natural ‘in’,” says Elizabeth.
“I grew up in Pickering, where there was the Pickering Castle cinema, but sadly it closed when I was in my teens [in 2006, later to be converted into apartments in 2013], but we loved going there. It was such a wonderful place to go.”
A love of cinema was born. “For young people growing up in Scarborough, I want to give them the chance to go to the cinema and enjoy it as I did and still do,” says Elizabeth.
To that end, she and Martha are encouraging children and school groups to partake in the festival, whether in a Q&A, workshop or family screening.
Film aficionados will note that the debut Scarborough Film Festival is running in the same week as the 13th Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York. “In our planning, we said, ‘we have to avoid our weekend clashing with Aesthetica’…but our festival has a very different remit, with a very different offering, and next year we will make sure we don’t clash.
“If people are going to Aesthetica and spot something that attracts them in our programme, then maybe they’ll come over here too.”
CharlesHutchPress’s guide to the Scarborough Film Festival programme
Ken Loach’s The Old Oak, screening on Friday with a Q&A with lead actor Dave Turner, pictured right
November 9, 5pm: Opening event, McCarthy Cinema, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Bait and The Tide, plus Q&A with local cast and crew of The Tide. A night of films exploring the tensions faced by coastal communities. Suitable for age 15 plus.
SHOT on a vintage 16mm camera using monochrome Kodak stock, Mark Jenkin’s timely, funny, poignant Bait goes to the heart of a Cornish community facing up to unwelcome change.
Made in Scarborough, with support from Film Hub North through the BFI Network Short Film Fund, Dan Hartley’s 2021 film The Tide charts the fate of a rusting trawler and its beleaguered crew as they struggle to eke out a living from the waters of the North Sea beyond Scarborough.
Producer and cast member Liam Thomas will lead the Q&A session. “This will be the first screening of The Tide in Scarborough, and we’re delighted that cast members and the crew will be attending,” says festival co-director Elizabeth Boag.
Fehinti Balogun in Complicité’s Can I Live?, Friday’s digital performance at Scarborough Film Festival. Picture: David Hewitt
November 9, 8pm, McCarthy Cinema, Stephen Joseph Theatre: Complicité presents Can I Live?,plus Q&A with Fehinti Balogun. Conceived, written and performed by Fehinti Balogun. Suitable for age 12 plus. Captioned screening.
WHY don’t we talk about it? Fehinti Balogun asks this urgent question and offers an invitation in Can I Live?, a new digital performance about the climate catastrophe, exploring his personal journey into the biggest challenge of our times.
Addressing themes of racism and classism as he weaves his story with spoken word, rap, theatre, animation and the scientific facts, Fehinti charts a course through the fundamental issues underpinning the emergency.
In doing so, he identifies the intimate relationship between the environmental crisis and the global struggle for social justice, and shares how, as a young Black British man, he has found his place in the climate movement.
In the face of a sense of helplessness about the climate catastrophe, Can I Live? is an outstretched hand, inviting audiences to recognise they are not alone – and that through understanding the issues and connecting with the many powerful activists around the globe driving change, we can find a sense of hope for the future.
Caribbean Stories: Film programme from Caribbean International Film Festival on Friday afternoon
November 10, 1.45pm, McCarthy Cinema, Stephen Joseph Theatre: Caribbean Stories short films programme, curated by Barbadian journalist turned filmmaker, programmer and exhibitor Denyce Blackman. Age: 18 plus
PRESENTED in partnership with the Caribbean International Film Festival, this collection of varied, stirring stories from around the Caribbean showcases the richness of culture, language and experiences in portraits from Bahamas, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Martinique.
November 10, 5.30pm, Woodend Gallery & Studios, The Crescent; Queer Shorts: Liquid Thoughts short films programme. Age:18 plus
A SERIES of short films exploring themes of water and queerness, showing in collaboration with SJT, Crescent Arts and Scarborough Museums and Galleries alongside their exhibitions Always Been Here; and Garth Gratrix: Cheeky Felicia.
“There’s a vibrant queer artistic community in Scarborough and we’re very keen to invite them into the festival,” says Elizabeth.
November 10, 8pm, McCarthy Cinema, Stephen Joseph Theatre: Ken Loach’s The Old Oak, plus Q&A with lead actor Dave Turner. Age: 18 plus
KEN Loach partners again with screenwriter Paul Laverty for what is reportedly his final film at 87. In a once thriving North East mining community, The Old Oak is the last pub standing, kept afloat by a few remaining locals who feel abandoned by the system.
When a group of Syrian refugees arrives to be placed in the former pit village’s cheap, vacant homes, tensions begin to rise, but an unlikely union forms between the pub’s affable landlord, TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner), and an aspiring young Syrian photographer, Yara (Ebla Mari).
Song Of The Sea: Family Film screening on Friday morning
November 11, 10am, McCarthy Cinema, Stephen Joseph Theatre: Family Film, Song Of The Sea (PG)
TOMM Moore’s enchanting Irish animation tells the story of Ben and his little sister Saoirse – the last Seal-child – who embark on a fantastic journey across a fading world of ancient legend and magic in an attempt to return to their home by the sea.
November 11, 11.45am to 1.30pm, Boden Room, Stephen Joseph Theatre: Animation Workshop. Age recommendation: perfect for families with children aged four plus.
CHILDREN’S author and self-taught animator Terenia Edwards leads an Introduction To Animation workshop. Learn the basic mechanics of animating and make your very own thaumatrope – a spinning toy that creates a visual illusion – inspired by Song Of The Sea. Free event but book to ensure a place.
November 11, 3pm, McCarthy Cinema, Stephen Joseph Theatre: Competition Selection, film programme of Yorkshire Shorts with presentation and Q&A
“INITIALLY, we did an international call-out asking for submissions on the themes of Coast, Community and Environment, but we had so many submissions – more than 2,000 – that we decided to narrow it down to Yorkshire films, either filmed in Yorkshire or made with Yorkshire talent in them,” says Elizabeth.
“Our selection panel watched them and then Martha and I made the final decision on the choice of films to be shown.”
The panel of industry judges for Saturday’s competition will be: BAFTA-winning TV drama director Jordan Hogg; broadsheet film critic, Tim Robey; Zoe Naylor, from the BFI Academy, and Scarborough Film Festival’s resident blogger, freelance journalist (and Elizabeth’s cousin to boot) Laurence Boag-Matthews.
A Q&A with attending filmmakers will follow the screening, whereupon the panel will announce the winner and runner-up.
Terenia Edwards: Leading an Introduction To Animation workshopat the SJT on Saturday morning
November 11, 5pm, Stephen Joseph Theatre bar: Gala Drinks Reception, Celebrating The Filmmakers
SCARBOROUGH Film Festival partners with Brass Castle to celebrate East Coast filmmakers and their work. Those purchasing a ticket for the Yorkshire Shorts film programme automatically will book a place at the drinks reception and receive a free Brass Castle beer when they show the ticket at the bar.
This is an opportunity for audience to meet the filmmakers and judges in an informal setting, for people to network and for plans for future collaborations to be hatched.
November 11, 7.45pm, McCarthy Cinema, Stephen Joseph Theatre: Revive, live performance
REVIVE combines live music and spoken word with a chance to see archive film through a new lens. Environmental archive film from Martha Cattell’s Nature Matters project for the Yorkshire and North East Film Archives will be given new music or spoken-word scores by five performers with links to Scarborough.
Step forward: musical comedian Charlotte Brooke, poet and actor Tanya-Loretta Dee, rap artist Charles Kirby, poet Charlotte Oliver and singer-songwriter Jon Plant. Book a ticket for the Yorkshire Shorts programme to attend this event.
Stories Of The Sea: a morning of artist moving image work at SeaGrown, Scarborough Harbour
November 12, 11am, SeaGrown, Scarborough Harbour: Stories Of The Sea: Artist Moving Image
STORIES Of The Sea explores the work of artists who have focused on communities living in or near the sea.
Julia Parks’s Seaweed Stories looks at the relationship between people, seaweed and landscape, in the past, present and future. Webb-Ellis’s For The First Baby Born In Space was filmed during the long, hot summer of 2018, recording teenagers from Whiby and elsewhere as their coming of age coincides with a time when so much else is in flux.
Both Julia Parks and Webb-Ellis will attend a Q&A after the screening. Please note: unfortunately the SeaGrown boat is accessible only via a series of steps, so this venue is not suitable for wheelchair users or people with mobility issues.
What is an “artist moving image”? “Not necessarily narrative or documentary, though there is a narrative to both these works but they are pieces of art on film that move,” says Elizabeth.
November 12, 4pm, Railway Club, next to Scarborough railway station: So Which Band Is Your Boyfriend In?, film exploring real-life experiences of non-male participants in the UK’s DIY/underground music scenes, plus Q&A with local musicians
THROUGH a series of interviews with members of the music community, this film looks at their experiences – both positive and negative – and investigates what can be done to make music more accessible to everyone, regardless of gender. Screened in collaboration with Record Revivals, the record store next to the SJT.
Franco Rosso’s filmBabylon: Screening at Railway Club, Scarborough, on Sunday
November 12, Railway Club, Scarborough, 7pm: screening of Babylon preceded by premiere of visual companion piece to The Hydrogen Trees’ debut album Secret Arcade and followed by Rebel Radics Sound System live set
IN Franco Rosso’s Babylon, a 1980 cult classic that pulsates with an irresistible dub soundtrack, a young Blue (Brinsley Forde) aims for success at a Reggae Sound System competition.
Presented in collaboration with Record Revivals, the screening will be followed by a live dub set by Dan from Scarborough’s very own Rebel Radics Sound System, who will give a brief introduction to the film and sound system culture. The film will be played through Rebel Radics sound system too.
BA Acting students from CU Scarborough presenting Vida at Scarborough Film Festival: right to left, Joshua Parker, Ellen Ramos, Guilherme Nogueira, Lawrence Scott Sanders, Chloe Thompson, Liam Farricker, Jamielee Squires and Heather Taylor
November 9 to 12, at Mandy Apple Artspace, 44, Newborough, Scarborough, Developing Filmmakers, Thursday, 10am to 2pm; Friday to Sunday, 10am to 4pm
IN response to Scarborough being home to vibrant young film-making talent, Scarborough Film Festival will showcase a selection of their films on a loop in Mandy Apple’s intimate lounge space throughout the four days.
Featured work includes: Vida, devised, shot and produced by BA Acting students from CU (Coventry University) Scarborough; Birds On The Edge, produced by Arcade, in partnership with North York Moors National Park Trust and Scarborough Pupil Referral Service; Written In The Waves, devised, shot and produced by CU Scarborough BA Acting students Chavez Idjerhe, Crystal Jackson, Selwyn Peterken and Luke Simpson; The Wait, written, directed and starring first-time filmmaker, Jessica Vautier.
This event is FREE and unticketed; feel free to drop in any time.
