Quick! This is great.

Yes it is. It’s like the night in 2002 before I went to the Cannes film festival. New Cross Gate, South London and a pokey basement flat. My then co-conspirator Mr Richard Allison of Trickshot films arrived early evening, we proceeded to put paid to several cans of lager, [next bit censored since someone else was there] , and was also up at 4.30 for the Stansted express, getting us to Toulon by around mid-day, and Cannes around 4pm I think , but I was so tired time stopped registering…

Anyway, it’s not Cannes tomorrow, it’s Salford. On Sunday is a screening and book launch all about the late great Cliff Twemlow and company, and Mr Ninnis and myself will be there to watch films and do interviews. I’ll also be trying to stream video from my mobile phone via this link , which I think should also show up on Facebook.

http://qik.com/beynond

Yes, if you know me from work, that would fail the QA, but Fuck It.

so anyway, here’s to it all. I’m taking a flip cam, a mini-dv, my phone and Sony alpha DSLR. John’s bringing the XL1. Plenty of scope there to get stuff for the doco. We might be speaking to -
Brett Hutchinson. Professor Chris Lee. Steve Powell. Uncle Tom Cobbly.

So I’d better carry on packing. up at 6am tomorrow, yawning already.
Should be a good un.

Things I learned the over the last week or so

You can get Fernet Branca in Pontcanna.

Not that I didn’t think so anyway, but my friends and family are the most important things.

The Wilco revival has begun with Summerteeth. Jayhawks expected soon. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot followed on from finding out about the Conet Project. And all that old radio spy-numbers stuff from when I was a kid. Don’t know what I mean?

Fay Weldon co-wrote Killer’s Moon and her brother, Alan Birkinshaw directed it.

[deleted], but I can’t really say that in public !

Fireworks over Roath, cool.

New Apple store in the big Cardiff shopping mall. So I don’t have to go and see the smug ba$tards at AT computers anymore. They give the mac a bad name. Shave the feckign beards off.

Roma 2 Fulham 1.

Got Martyrs lined up for tomorrow , French horror/art film with the most fearsome reputation since Irreversible. Merci.

There’s a Diabolik video game ??!! I’ve sent for the DS version, wow.

Buy it on Amazon

That documentary so far

So what’s been going on ? The total interviews so far for the doco now stands at a mighty 4 , each one around 2 hrs. Probably another 6 or 7 to get, followed by clips, stills,funding, music, funding, editing, maybe a bit of funding. But to be honest if we don’t get any, we’ll finish it under our own steam, proper guerrilla style. Propriety dissuades me from mentioning some of the names involved, and the fact that we want to surprise the hell out of you

What else? Inglorious Basterds was great, bit of a return to form I think. Already want to see it again. Work is up and down , but mostly up. Hard fucking work though, ‘owever I am happy enough because I know far too many people who have lost jobs recently – may it be for the shortest time possible. What else? Off out with either the dslr or more likely new mobile camera I think tonight , set it on b&w and take some good pics. U2 were pretty bloody great last week and catching up with Mr Hoggan also. Right, it’s a bank holiday weekend so I’m finishing this glass of Chianto (‘the drink you can’t spike) and am off owt. Expect a sea of pink cowboy hats in town since the Mardi Gras is going on today. And no, whilst it could be misconstrued, pink cowboy hats isn’t a euphanism … :0

Should I stay or should I go ?

Yes, it’s a good old Clash song. Applies to a few different things though really.

As someone once said, things are going to have to change in order that they stay the same.

The best band you never heard of – House of Freaks

Hardly anyone ever heard of House of Freaks, so this is a little bit of spreading the word.

They were a 2-man band from West Virginia around the late 80s, early 90s, long before the White Stripes made it cool. Guitarist /singer Bryan Harvey and Drummer Johnny Hott belted out a mix of rock, blues and southern-gothic style lyrics, bit Faulkner really.

They made a great racket for two guys, and made four albums, getting rare on amazon/ebay now but I’ll post links.

HoF also came very close to getting big. The producer of their 2nd album in 1989 was one John Leckie, who also produced the first album from a little-known band called the Stone Roses the same year.

They were managed by a John Silva, who was also handling an act called Nirvana, whatever happened to them …

But anyway, the Freaks came up with four albums which I love, the last of which was called ‘Invisible Jewel’, which is fitting. Hard to put it all into words but there was an authentic, ‘playing for the people’ feel to their stuff which invited everyone in, without resorting to some kind of bland mass-appeal.

They split around 96 if I remember rightly, and went on to various music projects, Harvey also opening up a hardware store in his native WV with his family.

Awful news. In 2006 two men broke into the family home, and as a result of the robbery and murder which took place, nobody survived out of Bryan, his wife Kathryn, and daughters Stella and Ruby.
So I’ll always spread the word and let people hear the music when I can. Not least because it’s great.
So, links.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_w_h_?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=house+of+freaks&x=21&y=26

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEoBmkuagbI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkfxAhzwlU8

Things I learned from the Swansea bay film festival

Yes, here we go, that’s the working title above, and I have about half an hour of flip footage and some stills that I’m going to turn into something.

One of the things I learned was that half the time, I just wanted to watch lots of films, and with people coming and going, it wasn’t the easiest thing to do any ad-hoc shooting.
Most of what I ended up with was intros and questions to people’s films, which was the interesting stuff anyway. Don’t know how it’s going to pan out visually or as a completed film, but in true guerrilla fashion, I’m going to do what I can with what I’ve got. . . Heading for vimeo once it’s done, since youtube apparently owns the rights to anything you publish to it (??!!)

So, the beginning of the post-production journey. Looks like trusty old premiere 6, so I have to convert all the flip clips before it will even look at it.

So, in super 640×480scope –

Soon on this Screen.

The film festival survival kit is coming

Festival going well, the weather is hot and sunny, the flip cam is doing a good job too. Got some good stuff so far, so there will be a documentary something like ‘the film festival survival kit’ I think, to take clips that might be a bit random and put a bit of structure on it.

Watch this space, in fact watch www.myspace.com/dbeefy

Swansea bay film festival May 29-June 8, here it comes

Cannes always reminds me that the next fest on the calendar is Swansea A week of independent movies of all genres, lengths, from all over the world.
For the third year running I’ll be there and will be reporting back on the festivities. Expect youtube updates from my Flip camera and trusty Macbook.

Maybe some live streaming experiments… but above all, films and filmmakers.

Cannon and Intervision, they’d come round and break your legs …

There’s a lot of good stuff happening on the research front. I’m looking into obscure British video movies of the 80s and trying to track the people down. Like Justin Lee Collins with a bit less hair …

So it might well be – “Bring Back Death Shock, Suffer Little Children and The Comic” to name but three.

Well I like a challenge … Mr Ninnis is hard at work on the Manchester end of things, if you know what I mean, and doing a cracking job. It’ll all stay a bit under wraps as the work continues , but when the time is right, all will be revealed, and if you’re reading this I might ask you to get involved also!

One word – Twemlow. You’ll be amazed.

More soon.

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