The Annual Bolton Film Festival has turned this year to the medium of online broadcasting, which, for films, is an easy leap to make, and it also makes it easier for the viewer, who has access to the films for a 48 hour period. There are about 200 films being shown this year as well as talks and seminars running online too. The films are categorised and bungled into managable packages of viewing between 60 - 100 minutes each time, all the films in these bundles being of the same genre. Here I saw films from the International Documentary classification.
1. Togrovere / Train Robbers - Norway - Dir: Martin Walther.
This bleak but realistic documentary from Norway uses reconstruction style footage with voiceover from the actual (now much older) gang member, as we learn about a group of youths from the town of Ranheim in 1993, who were notorious as they ransacked and terrorised the town with their no-rules behaviour. Basically anything was possible from harrassment to torching buildings. Ranheim was - and probably still is - a quiet backwater, and so, with nothing to stimulate these boys' interests, they easily turned to crime. The story tells of how they became train robbers... the trains that passed through the town usually made a stop before entering the station, and at this pojnt the youths would rush the wagons and steal as many crates of beer as they could before the train set off again. Each evening they would then party with the local girls and do the same thing all over again the day after. This went on for 2 years before a sting operation caught them all red-handed.
The young actors recreating this scenario looked right and were very believable. But the thing to shock perhaps more is that this kind of crime is prevalent in a country you wouldn't associate with such behaviour. Norway is a quiet, peaceful country, and one doesn't expect such things to happen there.
2. Far From Past - Switzerland - Dir: Nicole Foesterl.
'Eigentlich Vergangen' to give the film its original title, is a documentary from Nicole Foesterl who records her mother at her home in Switzerland, as we unravel piece by piece the story of how she came to live there. Originally Hungarian but was forced to leave Hungary when the Russians appeared, but was also hunted by the Nazis, and so she fled through Austria making a short stop in the north of the country, before finding her way to Switzerland.
The film is punctuated with archive Super 8 footage of Foesterl's childhood, and using a large map her mother records her history for posterity. It is a labour of love for Fosterl and is undoubtedly a wonderful keepsake for her, but for the casual viewer it offers precious little.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 16/10/20
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