The Oil Machine directed by Emma Davie will premiere at Sheffield DocFest 2022 on June 25th

From Screen Scotland:

​The Oil Machine explores our economic, historical and emotional entanglement with oil by looking at the conflicting imperatives around North Sea oil. This invisible machine at the core of our economy and society now is now up for question as activists and investors demand change. Is this the end of oil?   

The Oil Machine reveals the hidden infrastructure of oil from the offshore rigs and the buried pipelines to its flow through the stock markets of London. As the North Sea industry struggles to meet the need to cut carbon emissions, oil workers see their livelihoods under threat, and investors seek to protect their assets. Meanwhile a younger generation of climate activists are catalysed by the signs of impending chaos, and the very real threat of global sea level rises. The Oil Machine explores the complexities of transitioning away from oil and gas as a society and considers how quickly can we do it?

I was the assistant editor on The Oil Machine

The Oil Machine is a Sonja Henrici Creates Production for BBC Scotland and supported by The National Lottery through Screen Scotland.

Sheffield DocFest Screenings:

• Sat 25 June 15:30-17.27 + Conversation (Showroom – Bertha DocHouse Screen 3)
• Mon 27 June 20:00-21.42 (Odeon – Screen 1)
• Tues 28 June 10:15-11:57 (Showroom -Bertha DocHouse Screen 3)

The Hermit of Treig won the audience voting award at the 2022 Glasgow Film Festival, out of seven films nominated. 

​Director Lizzie MacKenzie said: “Wow wow wow! As if it wasn’t an honour enough as a Highland lassie to premier my first film at Glasgow Film Festival, winning the audience award is just magic.I’m so chuffed that Ken has charmed the audiences much like he charmed me during our first ever encounter that sparked his whole thing off. Now for the long hike into the woods to break the news over a glass of birch wine! From all Team Hermit, a massive thanks.”

The Hermit of Treig releases to cinemas on March 25th, and the broadcast version is available on BBC iPlayer. 

​I co-edited the film with Ling Lee. ​

Dan Deacon has released his stellar soundtrack for Time Trial with a limited edition vinyl, available here. It's a fantastic piece of work and I can vividly remember the excitement in the editing suite when we received the first tracks to hear everything come together so perfectly in tandem with the images. 

Relix describes it as "a study in expressing human fragility and fallibility with machines, like the best of Brian Eno’s ambient works". 

Accompanying the release, I edited a music video for the track 'The Breakaway', which was a blast to work on and an interesting way of reshaping footage I'd grown accustomed to into something new and exciting. It also happens to be the first music video I've ever worked on.

Very pleased to announce that Time Trial, the David Millar cycling documentary I edited, will premiere in competition at IDFA in November. It'll screen in the Royal Theatre Carré on Sunday, November 19th to an audience of 1,500.

Following the screening there will be a talk/Q&A with director Finlay Pretsell and David Millar himself, which will also feature the great Jørgen Leth (who has written a poem specifically for the occasion.)

Check it out and keep yourself updated at the IDFA website or @TimeTrialFilm on Twitter.

The trailer for the film will come out in about a week, featuring first on the Global Cycling Network before going wider.

​The adventurous Noizu fans who came to see crackpot noise-makers Hanatarashi (meaning snot-nosed) at Tokyo's Toritsu Kasei Super Loft on August 4th 1985 expected a raucous show. What they didn't expect was a ferocious performance of industrial-grade destruction with a back-hoe bulldozer as the lead instrument. Handed waivers upon arrival that relieved the band of any responsibility for injury, or worse, the audience watched as frontman and HDV operator Yamatsuka Eye burst through the doors of the hall atop the bulldozer.



With percussionist Ikuo Taketani somewhat safely tucked away in the corner, Eye tore through the stage and inflicted brutal punishment on everything nearby, including the literal kitchen sink, while screaming the band's trademark scatological and sexual non-sequitur lyrics. The beleaguered bulldozer held out until Eye put the hoe into the wall. The dozer tipped backwards and gave out, but after pulling off the dozer's cage to hurl across the stage and grabbing a circular saw, the destruction continued with the audience now nervously dodging Eye's fitful saw swings. Surrounded by bent metal, crumbled masonry and the squawking remains of Marshall stacks, with gasoline pouring from the ruined bulldozer, Eye produced, as his grand finale, a molotov cocktail that he'd prepared earlier. This was a touch too dangerous for even this daredevil audience and Eye, confessing later in an interview for Banana Fish Magazine that he got “too excited”, had to be violently subdued by several members of the crowd.

A lovely film I edited in 2016, And Violet, has won the Best Dramatic Feature award at the 2017 Arizona International Film Festival in Tucson - it's world premiere. Additionally, the lead actor, Hana Mackenzie, won the Special Jury Award for Best Performance. I suppose I'm biased, but that's well deserved as she gives a remarkable performance.

There's a good interview with the director Paul Gray here

Follow And Violet here for more information and future screenings.



Rob Burnett made his first break interning for David Letterman in 1985. Working his way up to head writer of Late Show with David Letterman in 1992, he eventually became executive producer. After more than twenty years in television comedy and multiple Emmys, he's on his way to the same success in film, writing and directing the charming and funny Sundance closing-night hit - and now Netflix Original film - The Fundamentals of Caring.


Based on the novel by Johnathan Evison, The Fundamentals of Caring stars Paul Rudd as Ben, a father grieving his tragically lost son, who, in desperation, dives into caregiving for Trevor, played by Craig Roberts, a teenager with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.
​


I sat down with Rob Burnett at the 70th Edinburgh International Film Festival, where the film had its European premiere, to ask him about working with Rudd and Roberts, making death and disability funny, and why he chose Netflix to distribute the film.




Read more at The 405 here

Name: John Lake. Profession: Doctor of Medicine. Destination: Some Laotian prison, maybe. Film: Jamie M Dagg's frantic thriller River | Arthouse head-trip History's Future tells the story of one man's brain-damage and capitalism's moral-damage
 
Morally complex mumble-chase and an enigmatic experimental trip inside a damaged mind in two films from my seventh day at EIFF 2016 [read more at The 405]