Kicking and Screening. The ‘Other’ London Film Festival.
Kicking and screening is a film festival taking place over the last week throughout London, the world’s first ever football film festival. Unfortunately for myself, university commitments (it’s best to not miss your first lectures of the year) have meant I haven’t been in London, and thus haven’t been able to get to as many of the films as I would have liked. Nearly every film on the line-up tempted me into purchasing a ticket, each with their own unique and interesting football story to tell. On one night you can gain an insight into the world champions, and on another an intimate portrait of an American plying his trade in England.
I chose to see “The Other Chelsea” by Jakob Preuss. The film brings you into Donetsk, the industrial capital of Ukraine, and home to Mircea Lucescu’s Shakhtar Donetsk. Over the course of one Shakhtar European campaign, we come to know a number of natives of Donetsk. We follow the opposing fortunes of Sasha, a 55 year old worker on the coal mines, for whom football is a welcome relief from a tough economic reality, and Kolya a 30 year old politician with ambition, drive and lots of money. The film explores how closely football and politics live together in Ukrainian society. Every victory for the orange of Shakhtar is a victory for the blue party in Ukraine, more popular in the East than the orange revolutionaries of Kyiv.
The film was successful in portraying how important a football club can be for a particular region. Whether it is local or national pride, the career of a politician or the passion of a fan; the results of Shakhtar have far-reaching consequences. At times though, I did feel that the film could have engaged more with the actual team. Players only briefly appear on screen with a fleeting photograph, and a quick glimpse of a name. The important work of Lucescu is not mentioned once. There is little mention of how this team achieves success, just that they do. We see fans bemoan the number of Brazilians in the team; “Fernandinho is good….but no more Brazilians!” However, we never know why this is, who these players really are, and what affect they have on the team. It would have been interesting to know more about why the fans felt this way, the mixed sense of pride they have for a team that wins, but does not contain many Ukrainians, or Russians, or Poles….
These may only be the grievances of an over-eager football fan however. The film still feels fresh, and certainly holds your attention throughout. Director Preuss manages to capture the banality and surrealistic nature of his subjects’ lives. At one point Kolya talks about the merits of cold porridge, before an appearance on national TV. If not for anything else, “The Other Chelsea” is worth seeking out for the vivid portraits it paints of its characters.
Each film at Kicking and Screening, however, is accompanied by a short film and an introduction from a guest speaker. For ten pounds, you are unlikely to find better value-for-money at any other cinema in London this week. “The Other Chelsea” was accompanied by a short called Sivian. The film is simply one very, very passionate Hapoel Tel Aviv fan. In five minutes we see one woman scream, cry, laugh, shout, sing, gasp and pray. Jonathan Wilson, author of Inverting the Pyramid and editor of The Blizzard, introduced the main event itself. I was particularly pleased about this as it was his writing on Shakhtar that got me interested in the film to begin with. The introduction set up the film nicely, and I could have probably listened Wilson talk about the merits of Shakhtar’s Brazilian recruitment and youth system for a while longer.
If you missed it, I would seriously suggest you seek out a film from the festival and look out for it next year. Football and film are beginning to occupy more and more of the same space, Kicking and Screening has highlighted this more clearly than ever before.