Freetime Machos & The Arbor

I was very fortunate this week as part of Bath Film Festival to see the film Freetime Machos and The Arbor.

Freetime Machos is a documentary by Finnish director Mika Ronkainen (who was at the screening) about a Finnish Rugby team who happen to the most northernly and 3rd "most lousiest" team in the world! The coach was English and worked for Nokia, so it was probably two-thirds in Finnish with subtitles and about a third English. It is a hilarious documentary that I think would appeal to all (not just to male rugby fans!) which makes it unfortunate that it wasnt a sell out screening.
Having a question&answer session with director Ronkainen was interesting, and provided a great insight into professional documentary making. For the 90 min documentary, he shot 300 hours of footage! Though some was multi-camera (he used 5 cameras at a 90min rugby game so that brings it down a bit) it is still a hefty amount of footage filmed over around 8 months.

The Arbor is a British film funded by National Lottery and directed by Clio Barnard based on the life and relationships of playwright Andrea Dunbar who died in 1990 aged 29. The film uses actors lip-synching to interviews with Dunbar and her family, and concentrates on the strained relationship between Dunbar and her daughter Lorraine. It is the kind of thing I had neevr seen before and is a unique approach to film making.
The story spans over several years and features the audio lipsynched filmed in interview style, acted scenes from Dunbars play and also real archive news footage of the stories surrounding Dunbars life.