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Brace yourself for the most powerful

cinema experience ever

Apollo Cinema Piccadilly Circus

Happy to host Raindance 2010

For event information and booking contact [email protected]

The perfect location at which to host your Corporate Events, Product Launches, Press Shows, Conferences, Private Parties, Preview Screenings, Film Premieres and Presentations.

0871 220 6000 or www.apollocinemas.comFor fi lm info or to book tickets for Raindance or any other fi lm

Now with in all screens and

Apollo_RaindanceAd_3.indd 1 09/08/2010 15:18

OUR THANKS TO

Our jurors: Charles Saatchi, Mark Herbert, Ernie Marsh, Dave McKean, Alison Owen, Derek Malcolm, Julian Barratt, Lemmy and Joe Bateman

Our sponsors: Amy Gustin, Ian Powell & all at the Apollo, Sumi Ghose and Asia House, Virginie Guichard & all at Electric Sheep, Neil McCartney, Marcia Degia & all at the IFT, Helen Cowley, Jo Underhill, Paul Greenwood & all at Lovefilm, Brad Day & NDP, Ian McNaught & Pearl & Dean, Maurice Hugget, Tom Walczak at The Phoenix, Oli Harbottle, Terry Stevens & all at Dogwoof, Zara Ballantyne-Grove, Keith Greenhalgh and all at Raindance.tv, James Mullighan & Helen Jack at Shooting People, everyone at Revolver, Wing Wang and Angela Liu at UK China Association, Candi Perez, Olvido Salazar Alonso and all at the Instituto de Cervantes, Danny Miller, Andy Woodward and all at Little White Lies, Tom Hunter, Charmaine Freeman and all at London Calling, Michael Sheppard and all at Grange Hotels, All at The May Fair Hotel, Rita Rowe, Connie Farr & Pete Lawton at Thinksync

Cat Crawford and Diesel, Ruth Elliott and all at Vitamin Water, Rinaldo Quacquarini and all at Moviescope. Georgina Marling, Libby Durdy, Andy Capper, Gee Vaucher, Julian Beavers, Tony Cooke, Ute Kromrey, Matt Adam, David Kapur & Ian Cartwright at 1155, Tessa Collinson & Johanna von Fischer, Fred Hogge, Pete Galli & The Airborne Toxic Event, Martin Myers, Julie Taylor-Butt & Sam Clark at Kodak, Will Stevenson, Dean Goldberg, all our volunteers and interns and everyone we’ve unforgivably, momentarily forgotten

Raindance PatronsNick Broomfield, Jonathan Caouette, Henrik Danstrup, Mike Figgis, Terry Gilliam, Ken Loach, Dave McKean, 0Martin Myers, Alan Parker, Jonathan Pryce, Marky Ramone, Vanessa Redgrave

BenefactorsFuad Omar, Darren Priest, Chris Cameron, Mariana Pimentel, Bilal Mannaa, Samantha Lay, Luc Toutoughi, Nigel Spence, Susan Douglas, Ardor Pictures & ABS Properties/Media – Los Angeles Raindance Film Festival 81 Berwick Street London W1F 8TW

Tel +44(0)20 7287 3833 www.raindance.org

PRINCIPAL SPONSOR

SUPPORTING PARTNERS

CULTURAL PARTNERS

MEDIA PARTNERS

LOVEFiLM COMPLETE LOGO – CMYK. RIO. 3-11-08

318TH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

APOLLO CINEMA19 Lower Regent SteetLondon SW1Y 4LR

Ticket PricesFull price £12 / Concs £8

Box Office0871 220 6000 Screenings take place at the Apollo, unless otherwise specified

The Phoenix Artist Club is a private members bar underneath the Phoenix Theatre on Charing Cross Road. Festival-goers will have access to this marvelous late-night drinking establishment for the duration of the festival simply by quoting ‘Raindance’ on the door

VENUES & MAPPHOENIX ARTIST CLUB 104–110 Charing Cross Road London WC2H 0JN


WEDS 29 SEPT

THURS 30 SEPT

FRI 1 OCT

SAT 2 OCT

SUN 3 OCT

MON 4 OCT

TUES 5 OCT

WEDS 6 OCT

THURS 7 OCT

FRI 8 OCT

SAT 9 OCT

SUN 10 OCT

APOLLO CINEMA A

19:00 Jackboots on Whitehall

17:30 The Sound of Mumbai: A Musical19:15 All I Ever Wanted21:45 Geidai Shorts

15:15 On Holiday17:15 Shorts: Nova Express19:30 Legacy21:45 L.A. Zombie

13:15 Lummox14:30 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind16:45 Robert Mitchum Is Dead18:45 Huge21:00 Symbol

13:30 Shorts: Relative States15:30 American Grindhouse18:00 Bo20:00 Vacation!

18:30 Live!Ammunition!20:30 The Woman with a Broken Nose

13:45 Lovers of Hate15:45 When the World Breaks18:00 Mackendrick Interview + Into the West21:00 The Lake Effect

13:45 The Lake Effect17:15 Lost and Found19:00 Five Daughters21:30 We Are the Mods

16:30 Shorts: Absent Sense18:45 Slackistan20:45 The Vice Guide to Liberia22:30 Iron Doors

15:45 Iron Doors19:30 Rebels without a Clue21:30 Autumn Adagio

11:00 Rebels without a Clue12:45 Yellow Kid15:00 Lights Out16:45 Stolen18:30 Do Elephants Pray?20:45 Donoma

12:15 Camp Victory, Afghanistan13:15 Do Elephants Pray?17:00 Raindance Awards19:00 Son of Babylon

APOLLO CINEMA B

16:00 Plymouth College of Arts Shorts18:30 On Holiday20:30 Ollie Keppler’s Expanding Purple World

14:30 All I Ever Wanted16:45 Superstonic Sound: The Rebel Dread18:15 This Way of Life20:15 Swansea Love Story22:00 Cannibal

12:00 Legacy14:00 Shorts: Risky Liaisons16:00 Days of Harvest17:45 Pure Asia20:00 Treasure of the Black Jaguar22:15 Too Much Pussy: Feminist Sluts in the Queer…

14:00 Look at What the Light Did Now15:45 Rouge Ciel17:45 There Once Was an Island20:15 Lost Girl

16:00 G-Star screening18:30 Armless20:30 Lovers of Hate

14:45 The Woman with a Broken Nose17:00 99 Minute Film Funding School19:30 Robin Hood Tax Screening21:30 Freight

15:45 The Story of My Space18:00 The Cutting Tradition: Insights into Female…19:15 Sounds Like a Revolution21:15 Helena from the Wedding

17:45 Lunar Child20:00 Macho21:45 Vampires

15:30 Vampires19:15 USB

11:45 The Toll14:00 99 Minute Animation School17:00 Hori Smoku Sailor Jerry: The Life and Times…18:45 Incredibly Small20:45 Yuriko’s Aroma22:15 Dirty Diaries

10:00 99 Minute Editing School12:00 99 Minute VFX School13:45 Hi! Otsuka Drugstore

6 18TH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

APOLLO CINEMA C

16:00 Night Runner18:15 Question in Details

14:30 Ollie Kepler’s Expanding Purple World16:30 Alive18:30 Boys on the Run

10:00 99 Minute Sound School12:00 99 Minute Film Scoring School14:00 99 Minute Directing School16:00 Kodak New Talent Screening18:15 Shorts: Best UK

10:00 99 Min DSLR Schl 12:00 99 Min Indie Survival School14:30 Kino Caravan16:30 I Believe in Angels18:30 32nd December

14:45 Symbol16:45 Shorts: Thriller Zone18:45 Straight 8 screening

15:15 Armless17:00 Shorts: Abstract Notions18:45 Flooding with Love for the Kid

16:45 Shorts: Raging Liberties18:45 My Flesh My Blood

17:00 Marieke, Marieke19:15 9:0622:45 Bedways

14:45 Shorts: Changing Lanes16:45 Shorts: Learning Curves22:45 A Serbian Film

10:00 99 Minute Casting School12:00 99 Minute Special FX School14:15 Shorts: Gone Astray16:30 Shorts: Best International19:00 Trash

10:30 Incredibly Small11:30 Shorts: Documentary Tones13:30 Shorts: Animation City15:45 My Neighbour Totoro

CINÉ LUMIERE

18:30 Lights Out

MAY FAIR HOTEL

19:00 Treasure of the Black Jaguar

SCREENING SCHEDULE


CINÉ LUMIÈRE 17 Queensberry Place London SW7 2D2

READ film reviews, in-depth articles and festival reports!

LISTEN to podcasts of interviews with the most exciting filmmakers!

CHECK OUT our monthly film club at the Prince Charles Cinema!

WATCH bizarre and beautiful trailers and short films!

SPIN the Film Roulette and win DVDs and cinema tickets!

Look out for The End, an Electric Sheep anthology of specially commissioned essays on transgressive film from David Lynch to Nollywood, including contributions by the Brothers Quay, Peter Whitehead, Jason Wood and Jack Sargeant, published by Strange Attractor Press in November 2010. A must-read for all film lovers and those who like to wander off the beaten cultural track.

Electric Sheep is the online magazine for lovers of offbeat, left-field and cult cinema.

It celebrates the celluloid dreams of the most outlandish, provocative and visionary

directors, the marginal and the transgressive, the poetic and the subversive.

www.electricsheepmagazine.com

FESTIVAL JURY PRIZESTo recognise the outstanding achievements of the filmmakers showcased at the 18th Raindance Film Festival in 2010, a number of jury prizes will be awarded. The winners will be announced at the Apollo Cinema on Sunday 10 October at 5pm. The nominees are:

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATUREDonoma [France]Son of Babylon [Iraq]Symbol [Japan] The Woman with a Broken Nose [Serbia]

BEST UK FEATUREFive DaughtersHugeJackboots on WhitehallLegacyRebels without a Clue

BEST DEBUT FEATUREArmless [USA]Cannibal [Belgium]Donoma [France]Huge [UK]Robert Mitchum Is Dead [France]The Story of My Space [Russia]

BEST MICRO BUDGET FEATUREArmless [USA]Flooding with Love for the Kid [USA]Incredibly Small [USA]Lovers of Hate [USA]Macho [Mexico]

BEST DOCUMENTARYCamp Victory, Afghanistan [USA]Stolen [Australia]Rouge Ciel [France]Sounds Like a Revolution [Canada]There Once Was an Island [USA/New Zealand]This Way of Life [New Zealand]

BEST UK SHORTDustThe Golden BoyNatural SelectionStanley Pickle StorageWatching

BEST INTERNATIONAL SHORTStill [Cyprus]Happiness Is Hate Therapy [Canada]I Am a Fat Cat [USA]LIN [UK]Fly [Germany/Poland]Moustachette [USA]

FILM OF THE FESTIVAL [SHORT]The winner is offered the chance to make next year’s trailer with the support of the IFT.


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Julian Barratt is an English comedian, musician, music producer and actor. He is best known for his role as Howard Moon in the highly acclaimed comedy series, The Mighty Boosh for which he also composes the music.

Joe Bateman is the director of the Rushes Soho Shorts festival and has over ten years experience in programming and film festivals. He has previously worked for City Screen and later as head of special programming at Curzon Cinemas.

Lemmy is the founding member, singer and bass player of Motorhead. Known for his rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, he has had an illustrious career and is the subject of a recent documentary which premiered at SXSW earlier this year.

Mark Herbert is the joint managing director for Warp Films, and is best known for his work as Shane Meadows’ producing partner since 2004. Other recent films that Mark has produced include Four Lions, Donkey Punch and Bunny and the Bull.

Derek Malcolm was a longstanding film critic at The Guardian until his retirement in 2000. His career there culminated in a two-year series of articles, The Century of Films. He is currently the president of the British Federation of Film Societies and the International Film Critics’ Circle.

Ernie Marsh is an optical sound mixer for feature films and trailers. Since starting his career whilst a schoolboy he has worked with Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. He continues to work at Warwick Studios, where he has been based for over 30 years.

Dave McKean is an artist, musician, graphic designer and filmmaker. He has worked for DC Comics, produced cover art for the acclaimed Sandman series, and gone on to create album artwork for the likes of Alice Cooper, Tori Amos and Michael Nyman. He made his directorial debut with 2005’s MirrorMask, from a script by Neil Gaiman.

Alison Owen is a British producer whose credits include Shaun of the Dead, The Men Who Stare at Goats and the recent Tamara Drewe. Alison won a BAFTA for Best British Film with the Oscar nominated Elizabeth.

Charles Saatchi is also on the jury.

THE FESTIVAL JURY

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good drama, lies a compassion for humanity and human frailty. Think of Al Pacino’s not-so-bright mobster in Donnie Brasco. Or Miranda Richardson’s Ruth Ellis in Dance with a Stranger, always refusing to wear her glasses as she heads blindly into the affair which will inevitably lead her to murder. It’s this care for the people, the characters of his films that makes Newell, as producer David Heyman says, one of the great directors of actors.

Like those other so-called eclectic directors, Sidney Lumet, Howard Hawks, Mackendrick himself, Newell works across genres. If that creates the impression that he’s not a specialist of some kind, it’s only because we’re not paying attention. Because Newell is a specialist in storytelling.

‘I naturally gravitate towards character drama and I naturally gravitate towards characters who get into the sort of trouble that everyday people will find. You don’t necessarily have to have kings and queens and angels and devils at the center of everything. It’s what makes Arthur Miller, Clifford Odets and Eugene O’Neil tick. It’s the drama of real people.’

It’s the sort of a statement that would have sat well with Mackendrick, a man whose films were also driven by characters, every day women and men stuck in increasingly bad jams.

WE ARE DELIGHTED TO WELCOME MIKE NEWELL TO RAINDANCE FOR THIS YEAR’S ALEXANDER MACKENDRICK MEMORIAL INTERVIEW WITH FRED HOGGE

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anIKE NEWELL’S CAREER has been nothing if not varied: ‘I hate doing the same thing twice.’ Nor has he, with a body of work which stretches from the cobbles of Coronation Street to the sands of Persia, with weddings and mobsters, not to mention wizards, along the way.

Varied it may be, but to Newell there’s a core theme through it all. Speaking of his 2007 film version of Love in the Time of Cholera, he

said: ‘The character is the way into the story… Whether it’s Harry Potter or Donnie Brasco or Four Weddings, you can always say that a way of describing the story is that it’s a story of a good man in a bad jam. This is a very, very complicated form of a good man in a bad jam story. So [my choices] seem to me to be consistent. They don’t to other people, but they do to me.’

If they don’t seem consistent to other people, it’s because they’re not looking hard enough. At the core of Newell’s work, beyond a commitment to narrative and character essential to the making of

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NEW TITLES FROM THE DOGWOOF KENNELNEW TITLES FROM THE DOGWOOF KENNEL

www.dogwoof.com

Raindance F-P 10 6/8/10 11:56 Page 1

Both Newell and Mackendrick are directors who, as outsiders, showed us facets of New York – that most photographed of cities – that we hadn’t seen before. Both of them handle drama and comedy with equal aplomb. And both realise instinctively that, in a feature length narrative, a comedy relies on proper dramatic underpinnings, on real story.

Speaking recently of Four Weddings and a Funeral, arguably the most famous film of Newell’s career, screenwriter Richard Curtis said: ‘I think I had a very lucky break when we asked Mike Newell to do it. Mike is a very serious, beautiful person, a wonderful director. What he succeeded in doing was to hide the fact that the original script read much more like a series of sketches.’

This is Newell’s gift, to look into a story and to see, absolutely, what it is — to see the drama in Four Weddings, the thriller in Harry Potter, the wildlife film in Donnie Brasco — and to deliver again and again, compelling, exciting, compassionate movies. And how does he do it? As he said in interview two years ago: ‘The greatest directors confuse style with content. But if you have to choose, choose content every time.’

Mike Newell will be in conversation with Fred Hogge on 5 October at 6pm followed by a screening of Into the West (dir Mike Newell, 1992) at 7pm. Please see p47

Selected Filmography

2010 Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time2007 Love in the Time of Cholera2005 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire2003 Mona Lisa Smile1999 Pushing Tin1997 Donnie Brasco1995 An Awfully Big Adventure1994 Four Weddings and a Funeral1992 Into the West1992 Enchanted April1988 Soursweet1987 Amazing Grace and Chuck1985 The Good Father1985 Dance with a Stranger1981 Bad Blood1980 The Awakening1976 The Man in the Iron Mask (TV)

Raindance has hosted The Alexander Mackendrick Memorial Interview since 2000.

Named after the famed British director, the event invites leading figures in international cinema to discuss their career and craft, and to screen one of their films.

Alexander Mackendrick’s directing career spanned more than 20 years in both Ealing and Hollywood, during which time he made such classics as Whisky Galore, The Ladykillers, The Man in the White Suit and Sweet Smell of Success. But his lasting legacy was as the Dean of the Film School at the California Institute of the Arts, where his teaching has influenced an entire generation of filmmakers, making him a true Raindance hero. He is also the author of On Filmmaking: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director, edited by Paul Cronin.

Previous Mackendrick interviewees include Stephen Frears, Nic Roeg, Vanessa Redgrave, Kristian Levering, Shekar Kapur, Tony Kaye, Terry Jones and Terence Davies.


OE ASKED IF I would write a piece about Gee Vaucher, who has created our poster image this year. But one thing is I’m not really sposed to be a writer and another is where would I find the time with all the procrastination I have yet to complete? The solution came in three parts: I could write a bit about the first time I had seen Gee’s work, then Gee could interview herself and the best bit would be if her life-long creative partner, Penny Rimbaud, could fill in some of the blanks. So here it is:

COLCHESTER, SO MUCH TO ANSWER FOR // DOMO ARIGÂTEAU

MY NANA WAS staying with us in the tiny Brookside-style semi-detached house where we lived, in a cul-de-sac (French: ‘arse-of-the-bag’), on a new-build shit-hole estate on the far edge of east-side Colchester. This would have been a Saturday morning, a grey summer’s day in 1981, I think. Everything was grey in those days, the weather, the grass, the news, our clothes, even super-8 was going through an extended grey period, the whole country was basically de-saturated. Anyway, for whatever reason, my mum had been shouting at me for hours – she had spent much of the 1970s honing her skills in this and the 1980s were an opportunity for her to show Olympian excellence in the field – so, after chewing a bit more of it than even the saints could have withstood, we took the bus into town, Na and me, and I persuaded her that we had to go to Parrot Records.

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There were two branches of Parrot in Colchester in the early 1980s. There was a large branch down in the main shopping precinct at the bottom of the high street, and there was a smaller, grungier, more recherché one hidden round the back of Headgate, where the stock was a little bit dustier and the staff were a little bit less friendly (but we’re talking increments here because, to be fair, they were sort of unfriendly in both). This was the branch au choix for local nogoodniks, beatniks, bohemians, students, subversives, gypsies, tramps, junkies, pimps and thieves.

I knew which record I wanted. It was Bloody Revolutions by Crass, a 7-inch single, pay no more than 70 pence, nice price, it had a sort of a military marching band punque roque-ish interpretation of the Marseillaise as grand opera via Benjamin Britten kind of a sound. But, more than that, it came with a wraparound fold-in poster. One side was covered with information about the Angry Brigade and anarchist stuff; it explained, too, what the state meant by the term ‘Persons Unknown’. The other was a large photo-realistic illustration by Gee of the Queen in a leather jacket and ripped jeans, the Pope in a Destroy T-shirt, Justice in an old pair of baseball boots, barely holding on to her scales and Thatcher in leather trousers clutching a glass of booze, all leaning against a wall as though they were the Sex Pistols. The record was great but the poster was funny, brilliant and absurdist.

TEXT BY DOMO ARIGÂTEAU AND PENNY RIMBAUD


I must have known what the song was like from an older kid at school but I asked the guy behind the counter to play it, as if I weren’t sure whether or not I really wanted to buy it. He was happy enough to do so, and my nana didn’t complain – it was, after all, really quite listenable. I paid for it and, on the bus home, opened up the sleeve to inspect the detail. Na was simultaneously confused and amused by it – she’d never seen anything like it and thought the illustration was a hoot. We came through the front door and, and by way of explanation, she told my mum: ‘He’s only gone and bought Bloody Revolutions!’ And, with those few well-chosen words, the foul atmosphere that had been lingering in the house since morning was diffused.

And that’s the true story of the first time I held a piece of artwork by Gee Vaucher in my hands.

IN WHICH GEE SELF-INTERVIEWS WHILE DOM GOES TO TAI-CHI

Dom First off, thanks so much for agreeing to self-interview, Joe in the office will be pleased.Gee You’re such a flake that I have to interview myself! Where do they dig these journos up from?

Dom Why don’t you sell your originals?Gee I couldn’t see them and neither could anyone else then.

Dom What are you working on at the moment?Gee A portrait of one of the hundreds of young women being raped and slaughtered in the city

of Juarez, Mexico. It will be part of a group show opening in the cellars of Shoreditch Town Hall in November.

Previous Self-portrait, 1963 Above Inner poster for Bloody Revolutions (Crass, 1980) Opposite Gee’s ‘Children’ in NYC


A MANGER FOR A BED // PENNY RIMBAUD

‘My subject is War, and the pity of War.The Poetry is in the pity’

Wilfred Owen

OUTSIDE THE OLD farm cottage that I share with Gee Vaucher and sundry others, there’s a cowshed where sad-eyed cattle chew the cud and attempt to ignore the cohabiting vermin. Like it or not, mice and rats are not a problem on farms, they’re a simple fact. Tucked up in the corner of the cowshed is a huge wooden box. It’s been there for a couple of years, long enough for it to look like a piece of agricultural architecture, and long enough for it to have become a home to the mice and rats. Every-so-often the cows use it as a back-rub, leaving an oily sheen across the slowly weathering wood: the polish of time.

Inside the box there are four of Gee’s paintings: exquisitely tender portraits of war-torn children (be that global war or that of the more personal nature of abuse). Gee has in the past referred to these paintings as her ‘children’.

The four paintings last saw the light of day in New York, at Gavin Brown’s magical, maverick, cutting-edge gallery. Gavin had shown the portraits as part of Gee’s solo show, very appropriately titled ‘Introspective’. Gavin had shown Gee’s work because he ‘believes’ in her.

Following the private view of ‘Introspective’, Gavin invited Gee and myself to dinner at a tastefully chic Italian restaurant whose sheer classiness allowed for our bohemian appearance and attitude


to go by unnoticed. Stepping outside into a drizzly New York evening for a much needed between course smoke, I was joined by Gavin who expressed bemusement at Gee’s attitudes. ‘What does she want?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know,’ I responded. ‘But you’ve known her for years,’ he interjected. ‘Yes, but she’s a very private person and, to be frank, I’m really surprised that’s she’s allowed this [the show] to happen at all.’ ‘But how can I help?’ asked Gavin despondently. ‘You can’t,’ I muttered, stubbing out my cigarette and heading back towards the awaiting crème caramels.

Having travelled across America to San Francisco and then on to Los Angeles, the show returned to New York where the four portraits were packed into a wooden box and shipped back to the UK.

That was two years ago, and the box has stood in the cowshed ever since, untouched by human hands, unseen by human eyes. Gee says that she thinks her ‘children’ are safe out there. I worry about the mice and rats: I’ve seen what they can do to discarded wooden cooking spoons, seen what they did to Gee’s oil pastels (they ate the lot, and that was inside the house, not outside).

If Gee had any interest at all in self-promotion or in the business-led interests of the art world, those four paintings would now be hanging in London’s Tate Modern or New York’s MOMA. That’s where I’d like them to be. These are important works, works of our time which should be seen because, rather than confirming the shabby, inconsequential interests of Saatchi and his likes, they challenge post-millennium complacency to its very core: ‘the Poetry is in the pity’. This might not be the sort of work that we want to see, but most certainly it is the type of work that we need to see and, indeed, ought to see. As it stands, these poignant expressions of love and its cultural betrayal (both of the paintings and of their artist) could well be hidden away in their wooden box long after Gee and myself have been assigned to wooden boxes of our own. The irony is almost unbearable.

Nonetheless, there’s something very touching about all this, in fact it seems to me to have an almost religious association. Indeed, I somehow feel that it’s as if Gee sees her four children as being safe out there in the cowshed, tucked-up comfortably in the dark interior of the huge wooden box, surrounded by the sweet smell of hay and bovine breath, hidden away from the horrific ravages of war that had in the first place made their portrayal possible and, sadly, so very necessary.

I have the greatest respect for Gee’s privacy as an artist, and feel that I understand the protectiveness she shows towards her work, but, all the same, I continue to be worried about the mice and rats. It’s autumn, and they’re coming in from the fields.

Left to right Gee’s ‘Liberty’, Raindance Film Magazine, 2002; Gee’s poster for the 15th Raindance Film Festival, 2007; Gee’s poster for the 18th Raindance Film Festival, 2010. All images in this article by Gee Vaucher and reprinted here with kind permission


N CHRISTMAS EVE this year, Ian Fraser Killmister will turn sixty-five years old. This not only means that he’s eligible for a bus pass, it also makes him the first heavy metal OAP. Like his wrinkled yet defiantly decadent contemporaries Iggy Pop and Keith Richards, Lemmy will forever remain a symbol of the rock and roll spirit, even as he reaches for his pipe and slippers. For a man whose track record of substance abuse trumps even the likes of Motley Crue, Ozzy and

Clapton, approaching the end of the road is never going to be a quiet affair. Emailing from his Los Angeles home, you get the impression that one aspect of rock fame that

possibly has outstayed its welcome is his commitment to press; his answers are mercilessly short, and it’s easy to admire his no-bullshit approach to direct questions. When asked, ‘What films were you interested in as a child?’ he answers, ‘Mickey Mouse smuggles drugs in Columbia’. To ‘Have any of your tracks been licensed to a film you ended up hating?’ he responds ‘I’m not in the habit of watching bad movies so I wouldn’t know.’

One answer that does offer an insight into a duality surrounding Lemmy is a question regarding his involvement in the Troma films and how his encounters with Lloyd Kaufmann led to appearances in Tromeo and Juliet, Terror Firmer and Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV, to which he explains

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‘He offered me money. That was basically it.’ Despite his status as a counterculture figure, his appearances for cash in both movies and adverts has been widely documented, with the famous mutton chops cropping up in everything from ads for Kit Kat and Walkers crisps to WWE wrestling events and the Guitar Hero video game. That said, his brief appearances in Richard Stanley’s Hardware and Michael Lehmann’s Airheads were nothing short of brilliant.

These day’s he’s starring in a film of his own, the boldly titled Lemmy: The Movie; a documentary following his life over a number of years by directors Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski. ‘Pretty hard to talk about a movie where “you” is the main person and when you are not involved in filmmaking,’ though he does offer the comforting knowledge that ‘it’s not too embarrassing, so go and see it.’

Having worked as a roadie for the Jimi Hendrix Experience while sharing a flat with bassist Noel Redding back in the late sixties, Lemmy is well aware that everyone starts somewhere. A man of his age and stature clearly made at least a few solid decisions in spite of his raucous persona, so when pushed for some hard advice for anyone starting out as an artist in the creative industries, he offers ‘read the small print and get an accountant before you get a manager.’

Lemmy: The Movie is set for release at the end of the year

TEXT BY JAMES MERCHANT

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