I’ve never been to Bolton Film Festival. I shamefully didn’t realise it was a thing but was thrilled to discover it was. And what a thing it is.

Film festivals are such an indulgent treat and this one is no exception. I write in the present tense as after the ‘physical’ 5-day portion of the festival which concludes today, 8 October, we move onto the online affair (more on that later).

Bolton Film Festival is a BIFA and BAFTA accredited festival, and has been going for 7 years. And they’re all shorts. 300 short films, including 42 World premieres, 20 European premieres and 77 UK premieres.

Short films are like taking a shot. Instant gratification and happiness (but none of the hangover – and I took a hit of 16 yesterday, and a screenwriting masterclass chaser to boot!).

Ok enough of the tenuous and frankly already regrettable film/alcohol analogy.

Over the next few blog posts, I want to talk about some of the topics, subjects, genres, themes covered in some of the shorts I saw yesterday.

First off I want to talk about Bear.

Bear

Morgane Frund (Switzerland)

An amateur filmmaker who has filmed bears for years, contacts a film school looking for someone to edit his images into a film. A student comes forward. But when she digitises his archive, she discovers that the recordings are not only of bears. A discussion ensues about the power of a gaze and its voyeuristic violence.

I’ll admit that I was already shifting uncomfortably in my cinema seat when the first images of the bears emerged on screen. Not because I hate animals, or I’m scared of bears, or that there was a traumatic incident in my childhood involving Paddington, Winnie and Fozzie who’d formed a sleuth of mean-girl bears who refused to let me sit with them (welcome to my mind).

No, I love animals and have an innate fear of bearing witness to any tragedy unfolding in their little lives on screen. I can’t watch Supervet, I can’t watch Meerkat Manor or anything, ANYTHING, with the word Attenborough attached to it.

However, I quickly came to realise that the bears were safe in this documentary. There was a far greater discomfort to be had.

As the blurb describes, in this 20 minute documentary, the student, (writer and director) Morgane Frund, finds a little more than bears on the receiving end of the amateur filmmaker’s lens (I’ll call him Bear man from this moment forward). The images, moving and still, are women, girls, their consent to be filmed outstanding.

I don’t know what I’m more impressed by. Morgane’s strong, moral outlook and determination to right a found wrong, or her strong, creative choices in the direction of where she consequently took this project. I mean of course the former has to have the edge but both exist side by side.

We’re taken to the moment where Morgane broaches her discovery with Bear man. There is nervous laughter all round (including from Morgane which she airs her subsequent dislike of, in her voiceover).

There is a sense of embarrassment from Bear man, but no detection of shame. More of a ‘well yes, that’s what men do’. He does surprisingly volunteer almost immediately that consent was not received from any of the women on screen. However, this is pretty clear from the nature of the footage.

Constructive (well attempts at) conversations take place, in an attempt to take Bear man’s actions and use them as the basis to educate and explain the effect that the male gaze has on women. Most triggering is when Morgane explains how it feels to be watched and looked at. When challenged by Bear man that this could be in her imagination, this is immediately responded to in the edit, when the documentary cuts to a montage of Bear man’s ‘subjects’, clearly aware and uncomfortable at the realisation that they may be being watched.

Morgane repositions her documentary to make the original voyeur become the ‘voyee’, as we’re invited in to watch her take the topic of gaze and open up a discussion both with Bear man (poor bears, I’m regretting my decision to inadvertently affiliate them with this person), and in the wider sense, the viewer.

This not a confrontational piece. Well it is because Bear man is held to account by Morgane in an intelligent and strong manner. The scenes in the art gallery where she challenges Bear man to deduce whether depictions of women in paintings are the subject of the male or female gaze (and, consequently, the gender of the artist) and why this is, are wonderfully executed.

No, this is not a confrontational piece in the aggressive sense but it does what it sets out to do. Certainly in terms of identifying poor behaviour, calling it out and explaining why it is wrong.

Unfortunately, it is questionable as to whether Bear man is ready to take his lesson on board and apply it to the real world. The final scene in the documentary shows both parties take their cinema seats, ready to watch Morgane’s finished film. We watch as Bear man sits down next to her. We watch as Morgane shifts uncomfortably away from him in her seat, personal space invasion clearly at play.

End credits.

Stay tuned for further posts in this ‘short’ series.

In the meantime, visit Bolton Film Festival at https://www.boltonfilmfestival.com/ for more details, including how to access the online festival between 11-22 October.