The usual suspects

Africa's top film festival opens

If you thought you'd seen Casablanca, think again! There's a new digitally remastered print out this week by Park Circus and TCM (Turner Classic Movies) and it's just bliss. Some may still prefer the scratchy prints and wonky sound from yesteryear, but if you love the cinematic image you've no choice but to go. Try this out on your plasma screen next week (25 Feb 3pm) but preferably find a cinema that has digital projection e.g. Curzon Soho in London. The lighting by Arthur Edelson is as detailed as the characters. What an experience it must have been on a miserable January evening in London in 1943 to see this on the big screen. The question for me has never been whether or not Bogart was a good actor. What fascinates about his characters is where have they been and where are they going something extending far beyond the script itself e.g. In a Lonely Place.

At last year's Times BFI London Film Festival, there was a contemporary Casablanca film What a Wonderful World by Faouzi Bensaidi that I wish I'd had time to see. And tomorrow, Africa on Screen shows A Letter from My Village. Bamako, directed by Abderrahmane Sissako, centres around a trial in Mali's Bamako against the World Bank and the IMF. African countries spend almost £10 billion annually on debt service. The preview audience seemed rapt in the proceedings, but it was all a bit too didactic for me. (I was tired and grumpy so make up your own mind).
IMF told to stay away from World Bank's turf
The trouble when Hollywood gets its hands on Africa is any failure in political representation is used as a stick with which to beat the left of Tinseltown. Blood Diamond about African diamonds funding war and repression is a case in point. The film's Ingrid Bergman, Jennifer Connelly, said in an interview with The Independent

"Africa made me feel like I really don't do enough. We tried to do what we could when we were there. I think just making the film there was a great thing. We all felt good about putting 40 or 50 million dollars into the economy. We created this fund which was then matched by the studio [Warner Brothers] to help the very local communities in which we worked. I called Amnesty when I got home and asked them to put me to work whenever they can. But you do leave there thinking, 'Gosh, I wish there was more I could do'. And I'm sure there is."


But the night scene where Connelly and Dicaprio reveal their life history back stories just doesn't have that Bogart wonder or ombra. DiCaprio is pretty impressive nonetheless, as he was in Scorsee's The Aviator and The Departed. You just wish Scorsese had got his hands on Blood Diamond or even Spielberg (don't shoot me dear readers!). Director Ed Zwick loves grand sweeping films (Legends of the Fall, The Last Samurai) and this film is no exception with fantastic cinematography by Eduardo Serra. Phillip Noyce's Catch a Fire, released in a few months, about ANC (African National Congress) fighter Patrick Chamusso fares better I think. An action film with lots of character subtlety. And if these films put political and social awareness into the multiplexes that can be no bad thing.

These thoughts from BBC Radio 4 on Conrad's Heart of Darkness are interesting too.