Daniel Nelson

Udita

Udita

Image by Udita

He also uses “bold”, “brave” and “challenging” and refers to a “punchy spirit” and “attacking big and meaty issues”.

So you get an idea of what to expect from the 85 feature-length films (almost one-third of them British) and many shorts packed into 12 days at the beginning of July.

For example: Berlin-based Israeli film-maker Noaz Deshe won last year’s “Best Feature” accolade for White Shadow, a thriller about a Tanzanian albino fighting for his life – and his body parts – and so this year gets to select a bunch of films that he calls The Deprogramme.

It’s a series of films and discussions that deals with “what it is about us that allows those in power to ruthlessly abuse and control us. From national myths to government mind control; and from brutal cults to extreme ideological violence; from news cycles to the emotional security that comes from filling up your fridge… Why do we accept systems of control? How do we deprogramme them? How do we regain our ability to make up our own minds?”

His chosen films include ex-cult members re-enacting their past in Moonchild, a vicious act of violence on the Japanese metro in the shocking documentary A, and a lone woman pursuing an act of jihad in Day Night, Day Night.

Of the African, Asian and Latin American films, Simpson points to Elephant’s Dream, “a brilliant film that shows the grinding reality of government in the Democratic Republic of Congo” and Udita, “a powerful first-hand account of the struggle of female garment workers for better working conditions in Bangladesh” – made by the Rainbow Collective, a group based in Whitechapel, East London.

Cartel Land takes a documentary look at vigilantes taking on drug cartels on the US and examines questions such as- what happens when the government is no longer in control, and whether it’s right to take up arms to fight violence with violence. Simpson’s judgement: “Quite special.”

In contrast, and illustrating the variety of films on show, are Chameleon, “an exploration of the work of Ghana’s most famous journalist”; Love, Theft and Other Entanglements, in which easy money beckons when a Palestinian spots an unattended Israeli vehicle in his refugee camp, only to discover there’s a world of misfortune locked inside; and Crumbs, with a background of spectacular post-apocalyptic Ethiopian landscapes, in which a diminutive superhero Gagano has had enough of collecting the valuable crumbs of decayed civilisation, the valuable high points of which are merchandise from Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan.

There are also several films about race in the US: 3½ minutes, Ten Bullets, which dissects the aftermath of an incident in which an unarmed 17-year-old African-American was slain because of loud music;  Welcome To Leith, about the attempted takeover of a tiny town by a notorious white supremacist; The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, revisits the story of disillusioned activists during the 1960s Civil Rights movement; and The Seventh Fire,  a haunting portrait of a Native American gang crisis.

With so many diverse films, plus Q&As and special sessions ("added value", says Simpson), the festival has come a long way since its foundation 14 years ago when it was a small, local platform for work produced in east London. "It's now an international festival," he says.

It's got bigger, but has it changed much?

"The quality of films we are seeing is better now than six years agio, when I started here," says Simpson. He suggests that one reason is the economic recession: "When things bite you see an improvement in the quality of work being made."

In addition - again, because of the "financial crash and other global developments - there's more of a spirit of questioning the economic and moral and political and social basis of neo-liberalism and Western ideas, and that's come into a lot of the films we are screening. There's a lot of questioning of ideas about how a country develops and arranges itself."

The East End Film Festival, 1-12 July. Info: http://www.eastendfilmfestival.com/ 

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