How refreshing to see a major UK film festival resisting the easy temptation to stuff the programme with Hollywood blockbusters. There's not a single studio picture in the line-up for the 58th Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Consequently, America's independent directors have a glorious opportunity to make their mark and few will leave a better impression that Jem Cohen. Revealing a little-seen side of the States, Chain is a stunningly original montage movie, in which Cohen contrasts the fates of an ambitious Japanese businesswoman awaiting orders from head office and a world-weary video diarist, who drifts between various dead-end jobs, squats and motels. Visually and politically astute, this thoroughly deserves a theatrical release.
With the notable exception of Jim Jarmusch's Coffee And Cigarettes, nothing particularly stands out from the remainder of the indie selection, although horror fans might like to treat themselves to the midnight trio of Red Cockroaches, Skinned Deep and Hillside Strangler.
The profile of Latin American cinema has never been higher and Walter Salles's The Motorcycle Diaries (pictured above) is set to enhance its critical and commercial popularity, especially as Gael Garcia Bernal (who plays the young Che Guevara) has become such a pin-up. Lisandro Alonso adopts a more poetic approach to the road movie in Los Muertos, while the darker side of Argentinian film is exposed in Leonardo Di Cesare's flat-sharing comedy, Buena Vida Delivery.
Chile contributes a pair of rites-of-passage pictures, B-Happy and Machuca, while the emphasis remains on adolescence in Mexican newcomer Fernand Embcke's Duck Season, in which a couple of mischievous 15-year-olds have their Sunday interrupted by a stroppy pizza delivery man and a feisty neighbour who needs to borrow the oven to bake her hash cake. However, the most accomplished and potent South American feature on display is A Social Genocide, a typically uncompromising study of the socio-economic reasons for Argentina's current national emergency, from the godfather of the modern political documentary, Fernando E. Solanas.
Asian cinema continues to prove a festival crowdpleaser and the EIFF 2004 selection is wonderfully diverse. Yet again it's South Korea's film-makers who dominate proceedings, with Im Sang-soo's The Good Lawyer's Wife, Park Chan-wook's Old Boy and E J-yong's Untold Scandal (left) being joined by Min Byung-chun's melancholic cyber-romance, Natural City, and Hak-Soon Kim's Rewind, in which a dispirited video store clerk tries to work out which of his female customers is sending him love letters.
One of Asia's biggest names, Zhang Yimou (who helped revive Chinese cinema in the 1980s), previews his latest offering, the martial arts actioner, Hero. But equally intriguing are Hong Kong debutant Liu Fendou's quirky crime drama, The Green Hat; Satoshi Kon's Japanimation, Tokyo Godfathers; and Alex Yang's romantic drama, Taipei 21. Disappointingly, however, the subcontinent only has one film on view, and Sudhur Mishra's melodramatic A Thousand Dreams Such As These feels more like a Bollywood masala (albeit without songs) than a genuine piece of Parallel Cinema.
The pick of the international selection, however, is Quebecois Robert Lepage's Far Side of the Moon. Based on his acclaimed one-man show, this visually sumptuous exploration of sibling rivalry, identity and individuality, caprice and the cosmos brims over with challenging ideas, sly wit and (somewhat surprisingly for Lepage) warm humanism. The writer-director also excels in the dual role of the timid astronomy student (and part-time call-centre telephonist) and his smug, gay weatherman brother. One not to be missed.
The Edinburgh Film Festival runs from 18th-29th August.
