A bald man with thick black glasses and a leather jacket walks passed me saying “it’s a dialogue about the failure to communicate”… yep, I must be at the NFT.

I’ve brought my cold and my mum down to the south bank for the screening of “Death Of The Revolution” as part of the London Calling programme of the London Film Festival. A few years ago my mum and I came here and saw the re-released print of the Conversation in NFT1 and I remember sitting there after it was over and thinking how nice it would be to screen something of our own here. So when I heard that this screening was happening a few months ago I knew that nothing short of all out international war would stop me coming.

I didn’t though think that much about it all, other than that our film would be on at NFT1, so I was quite surprised to find the place packed to the rafters and surprisingly glitzy. My mum and me are ushered through to a green room full of free drinks and some delightful familiar faces. Then we get summoned to the cinema and there’s speeches and applause and standing up and more applause and the brilliant Shaun Parkes and more speeches and more applause and bugger me I only asked mum to come because there was nothing on TV but Spooks and that makes her spit in fury.

Anyway, I’m glad she came because in the past she’s sat through some pretty ropey short film programmes but this was a real treat. (Spoilers ahead, if you are fool enough to imagine that knowing what happens in a film can spoil it for you, stop reading. Also, stop reading if you quite rightly don’t give a flying fuck about my opinions of films, though that is one of the main reasons why I write this blog so why are you here?).

“Cubs”, OK, not a good place to start, not least because the inherent violence against animals in a film about urban fox hunting meant that my mum watched the whole thing from behind her fingers. “Cubs” is a controversial film in the Blaine house. Line produced and script edited by two of our delightful execs from “Hallo Panda” it has also been nominated for the astoundingly prestigious Turner Classic Movie Prize, something that our own film, “Death Of The Revolution” has not been.

Consequently I don’t want to criticise it because I don’t want to hurt the feelings of my friends or appear to be bitter about what is clearly, for the judges of TCM, a better film than the one my brother and I made. Also there is a lot to like about it. Tom Harper’s direction is direct, instantly engaging and the story unfolds in a compelling and visceral way that grips from the first uneasy sense that all is not what it seems. With this topped off by Ashley Walters proving yet again that he is one of the brightest acting talents in the country I can well see why “Cubs” has attracted the plaudits it’s got.

All I can say is that it leaves me cold. I’ve only seen it the once but I can’t really see why Tom made it, what it’s for, not necessarily what it’s saying, I’m not asking for something as prosaic as a meaning, but I do want a reason. Why have I just been asked to watch a fox get killed? What does that tell me about those kids that I didn’t already know? Or could have reasonably guessed? May be it will grow on me as I watch it win award after award but from tonight’s showing it feels like the sort of apparently controversial film that is all sound and fury, signifying nothing. Still, good luck to ‘em.

“Tune In” by Esther Johnson is quite the other end of the spectrum. An unusual delight, shot on super8mm it is a poetic documentary about short wave radio fanatics that gradually builds into an elegiac portrait of a world that is fading away. Beautifully composed it is a study of a dying breed of enthusiasts and hobbyists who still cling to their cracked plastic transmitters and call out hopelessly across the airwaves for communication with like minded souls. They all try to justify their hobby as still having some important role to play in the modern world, however in the face of modern communication technology their stolid insistence is both hollow and strangely moving. The more I think about this film the more I love it and it well deserved to be fifteen minutes long, which few films do. My mum loved this.

“Bows And Arrows” by Stephen Irwin is, on the whole, not really my cup of tea. Visually I thought it utterly gorgeous and full of tiny quirks and grace notes (like the text in the speech bubbles being reversed when the camera angled changed) which always kept it an enjoyable watch. However like so much animation I found it fumbled the art of story telling and was too keen to be dark and twisted, invariably at the expense of interesting me. Perhaps though I’m just disappointed that the film turned out to be a serious and darkly angry story about death rather than the enjoyable romp about a bad giant robot attacking a city that it promised to be at the start. I like films about giant robots. Everyone dies. Not everyone gets to fight a giant robot. My mum hated this.

Heena Bukhari’s “Azan – A Call To Prayer” is probably going to get some reputation for being by a 19 year-old Asian girl. A shame because this brilliant film would be brilliant no matter how old the director was. I’m not entirely sure how much is documentary and how much is fiction, but I don’t entirely care. What I do know is that this portrait of a 15 year-old British Pakistani girl is witty, charming, passionate and compassionate. It never patronises, it never preaches and it makes you feel proud to be part of the same culture. No matter what age she is, I can’t wait to see what she makes next.

“Bowl Cut” by Dave Tucker also walks the line between drama and documentary. Focused around a thirty year-old educationally subnormal newspaper delivery boy it is a keenly observed evocation of suburban life. Whipping through the streets of semi-detached houses on his bike, a spark of Day-Glo orange in the early morning grey, Tucker almost always shoots his protagonist behind something. We see him through net curtains, frosted glass and letter boxes, we never see him clearly. However whilst the mutterings, the doubts and the tuts of the people he delivers to are whispered or distorted down phone lines, Bowl Cut’s own thoughts are loud and clear. It’s a simple but superbly effective device which enables Tucker to elegantly pull focus on the story which is comic, touching and tragic. Underplayed and subtle this is a little gem.

“Forest Murmurs” by Jonathan Hodges is a sort of documentary about Epping Forest, its dark past and dubious present. Of all the films shown it was clearly the least cinematic, feeling instead like a really like nice piece of TV. That said though, the beauty of some sections and the constant visual invention showed how poor TV is. Hodges’ witty, informative, and utterly delightful film is so restlessly imaginative in the way it explores the subject that it’s impossible not to enjoy it. There is such obvious love for both the subject and the process, if TV were half as good as this then neither me or my Mum would have left the house. Perhaps a firmer hand was needed toward the end where the story rather gets away from him in an overlong ending that pulls out all the stops but shows more a reluctance to walk away, but it’s all been so much fun you can understand his reluctance.

Lastly and, though such terms are facile, best, Corinna Faith’s “Care” sees Shaun Parkes and the great Peter Vaughn play off against each other as a care worker and his reluctant charge. It’s a simple film that offers no surprises, and needs none. In other hands the script is probably seem a little flat but the direction is finely balanced and the performances are sublime. It’s a simple but much ignored fact that if you put two amazing actors on a screen then you’ve got a good film. Peter Vaughn is, for my money, one of the finest and most often overlooked talents this country has produced. To find suddenly find him here, so old and fragile was both heart breaking and utterly delightful. Both he and Parkes are perfect, both expressing the complexity of their relationship and never letting it stoop to the simple or patronising conclusions so often reached when this subject is tackled.

There is strong support from the rest of the cast, whose names I can’t find on the internet and didn’t catch at the screening, sorry, most especially the octogenarian Asian whose childish refusal to take his medication is both comic and sad. This is a beautiful beautiful film and I’m delighted to have seen it.

At the start of the screening Shaun Parkes gave what at the time sounded like the usual speech about how good it is to support young talent and how this was the future of British film and that was really good. By the end I couldn’t help but agree with him, this really was a superb programme of films and I’m deeply flattered and immensely proud to have been included in it.