THE 28TH CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL
18-28 September 2008
Kicking off the Festival as an outdoor launch event, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey will be screened at the Institute of Astronomy, shown for the first time in the UK in stunning 70mm print. Kubrick fans will also be treated to a screening of the restored print of Dr Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, part of a continuing season at the Arts Picturehouse, the Festival’s host venue.
Another new outdoor screening event will be the Magdalene Street Screenings, where beautiful time-lapse photography, hilarious silent comedy and archive footage showing how Cambridge has changed over the years will be screened throughout the evening on Magdalene Street, Quayside and Magdalene College’s lawns.
Continuing to champion the great outdoors Cambridge-style, for four nights the Festival will be presenting a series of Riverside Screenings to be enjoyed at dusk, by punt on the river Cam, where participants will be able to enjoy four different programmes of atmospheric shorts and film excerpts at regular intervals in front of screens discreetly located along the riverbank.
The 2008 Cambridge Film Festival film will also present the latest features, documentaries and shorts from the UK and around the world and will open with the highly anticipated Cannes competition title Linha de Passe by Walter Salles. The 11 day festival will close with Werner Herzog’s visually stunning portrayal of life in Antarctica, Encounters at the End of the World. The Festival is also proud to host many UK premieres including, How To Lose Friends, Gomorrah and Julia amongst others.
This year’s highlights include homages to Austria’s revered director Ulrich Seidl and one of the UK’s most experimental and celebrated filmmakers Derek Jarman. Guest of honour Tilda Swinton will be at the Festival to discuss her experiences working with Jarman as well as presenting a vast range of her work; Béla Tarr’s The Man From London and Eric Zonca’s Julia in which she stars; documentaries Derek and Faceless which she has narrated and also her co-directing debut, one of The New Ten Commandments in collaboration with Mark Cousins amongst others.
Also featuring this year will be a short tribute to legendary horror thespian, Boris Karloff, and a selection of Warner Bros. classics will be screened to celebrate the 85th anniversary of the renowned studio. In addition there will be a focus on Polish cinema including Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn alongside his masterpiece Kanal.
The 2008 edition marks the first ever Machinima season with screenings and interactive workshops fusing animation, 3D film and real-time games technologies and represents a snapshot of their vibrant interplay in both mainstream and experimental film.