First on this tape, a couple of entries in the Tartan Shorts season.
First, A Small Deposit written by Danny McCahon and directed by Eleanor Yule, about a community in Port Glasgow in 1946.
A young boy gets his football confiscated by the owner of the local chippy when he kicks his dirty ball against her shop window. In retaliation he tosses a dead rat into her fryer, an act that he will regret later.
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The plot of this short film revolves around the arrival of the Tic man, who sells luxury goods on ‘tic’ – a small deposit, then weekly payments.
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The whole community band together, and fashion a fake address and front door in an upstairs toilet in a block of flats, then make a big order of stuff from him, give him his deposit, and then, presumably, he can’t find them because the address doesn’t exist.
The young boy gets a brand new football, and has dreams of a cup final, until the chippy catches up with him and confiscates that ball too.
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The next short is Rain in which a local relief weather presenter has to take his son to work. Nice to see Jake D’Arcy from Gregory’s Girl and Tutti Frutti as a security guard.
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The last short here is Franz Kafka’s It’s A Wonderful Life, written and directed by none other than Peter Capaldi, and which provides us with the answer to the perfect pub quiz question: Which Doctor Who has won an Oscar? Capaldi won the Best Live Action Short Film Oscar in (I’m guessing) 1994 for this film.
It opens with a nice stylised miniature of a steep village.
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Franz Kafka is struggling with the first line of his book Metamorphosis. “As Gregor Samsa awoke, he found himself transformed into a gigantic… what?” Kafka is played by Richard E Grant.
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He casts around for what the transformation might produce. A Banana?
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His work is interrupted by Ken Stott, a knife sharpener looking for someone.
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And his downstairs neighbour, who’s having a party for young ladies, with music.
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Their modern dancing inspires another possible metamorphosis, a Kangaroo.
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Someone from the local joke shop misdelivers a bug costume.
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This is a very atmospheric and ultimately heartwarming, and silly, film.
BBC Genome: BBC Two – 3rd January 1994 – 22:30
After this recording switches and there’s a documentary from Jonathan Ross, Manga! Which looks at the (then fairly new) popularity of Japanese Manga (the comics) and Anime (the films and TV shows).
Jonathan Ross, a fan himself, presents the documentary, seeming from the Sega arcade on the South Bank. Check out those 1990s arcade games.
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It’s nice to see that, despite the title, Ross correctly identifies the movies as Anime and comics as Manga. Nothing winds a fan up more than using Manga for the movies.
It’s lovely to see a clip from Marine Boy, a very early anime that I used to love as a very small boy.
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Some Network 7 style explanatory graphics.
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Helen McCarthy was editor of Anime UK magazine.
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Manga explained.
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The creator and director of Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo
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Studio Ghibli’s greatest director, Hayao Miyazaki
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Gaikokujin is the term for a foreigner, in a discussion about foreign artists starting to work for the Japanese publishers.
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Another definition, for ‘Bishojo’.
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It’s sad to see even someone like Miyazaki advocating limits on time spent viewing stuff.
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BBC Genome: BBC Two – 7th January 1994 – 19:30
After this, there’s the first showing on British Television of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, one of the movies that helped propel Anime and Manga into the western consciousness. This is a subtitled presentation, which helps a lot. English dubs of Anime often sound strange, and subtitled films always seem just a little bit more intellectual than films in English, to me at least.
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I watched this a long time ago, and I have to say, its themes of biker gangs and scientifically enhanced telepaths didn’t really grab me. I find the breathless nature of the Anime style quite distancing. Cool bikes, though.
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BBC Genome: BBC Two – 8th January 1994 – 23:05
After this, a trailer for Sunday Night on BBC2.
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Then, recording continues with an episode of Later with Jools Holland, featuring Sounds of Blackness, PJ Harvey, Alice in Chains, Vince Gill and Maria McKee.
BBC Genome: BBC Two – 9th January 1994 – 01:05
There’s a trail for Radio 3’sw The Music Machine.
Then, BBC2 closes down, and Hamla Kozak (sp?) wishes us a very good night.
