Beaufort (Bufor) Bavaria Film International Joseph Cedar / Israel / 2007 / 125 min Oshri Cohen, Itay Tiran, Eli Eltonyo, Ohad Knoller, Itay Turgeman, Arthur Faradjev, Itai Szor This film is based on a novel by Ron Leshem; but you wouldn’t notice that it is a fiction film as it seems so incredibly real. Set in 2000 in southern Lebanon, this is the story of the retreat by the last Israeli outpost on the historical Beaufort mountain and a character study of its commander Liraz. The narrative is very quiet and very slow, but tense and tight at the same time, mainly because of the unexpected interrupting explosions.

Children of Glory (Szabadság, Szerelem) Krisztina Goda / Hungary / 2006 / 123 min Kata Dobó, Iván Fenyo, Sándor Csányi, Károly Gesztesi What an amazing film! Absolutely brilliant, heartbreaking, historically informative and accurately enlightening! For me it is the best film of this year. The open end also works well, because somehow there is no end to history. Set during the Olympics in 1956, it narrates the history of the Hungarian uprising like no one has ever done before; with sound, colour, movement and acting like Hollywood, a masterpiece with wonderful continental and emotional depth and clever story-writing. It portrays the situation in the Soviet block, in Budapest and the rather accidental student uprising spreading out and about not only for more personal freedom, but also for the independence of the country from Russia.

British Piano Music Ian Farrington There is something beautiful about watching masters at work, what enjoyment they show when they tackle challenges and with what ease they perform the most difficult of tasks. What pride they have got in their work whilst thriving on the admiration of the ordinary laymen. Pianist, Organist and Composer Iain Farrington enjoys playing these modern, unmelodic, disharmonic, dramatic and nearly arbitrarily sounding notes. The artists painted the scenes with sounds and Ian Farrington explains the context of the music before each performance. Benjamin Britten’s Early Morning Bath was a revitalising, refreshing short piece; however, as impressive as the concert was, that type of classical music makes the majority of mankind try to escape from as quickly as possible.

Here is some 4min audio about some novelties at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. Filesize is circa 1 MB. Includes an interview with manager of Jekyll and Hyde about the Free Fringe and with the manager of Dare to be Digital video game competition. ullafringe.mp3 Unfortunately there wasn’t any more time, so I had to cut out some historical background information about the Fringe, the interview with a comedian, the interview with the Imam of the Edinburgh Mosque about the Islam festival and the other interviews which surrendered to some technical problems, such as the John Lewis shop window interview and the Book Fringe with Elaine from Word Power.

Acting and Creating a Character Sweet Entertainments The workshop started of with a one hour theory and finished with half an hour improvisation acting on stage for some selected few. The workshop was disappointingly lecture like; there actually was not much interactivity, improvisations, no group work and hardly any practical acting. Everybody noted down on paper the definitions of active and passive imagination, character, purpose, acting, environment and similar. Actor Julian Moore from Sweet Entertainments engaged the brains of the twenty participants and discussed the character of the nurse in Romeo and Juliet more in depth. But his approach to acting training was far from “refreshingly new” as promised in the Fringe programme, and creating a character just another term for in-depth background research.