Film Techniques in “Hunger”

They line up and beat their batons against their shields and scream to scare the prisoners, who are hauled from their cells, then thrown in between the lines of riot police where they are beaten with the batons by at least 10 men at one time. Loan and several of his colleagues then probe first their anuses and then their mouths, using the same pair of latex gloves for each man. One prisoner head-butts a guard and is beaten brutally by a riot officer. One of the riot officers is seen crying while his colleagues, on the other side of the wall, brutally beat the prisoners with their batons.

Loan visits his catatonic mother in the retirement home sitting and talking to her. He is shot in the back of the head by an AIR assassin and dies slumped onto his mother’s lap. Sands is then shown meeting his priest Father Doom (Lima Cunningham) and discussing the morality of a hunger strike. This meeting is lengthy and addresses why Sands chose to do what he did and how strongly he believed in his cause. At the end Sands tells the priest about a trip to Dongle where he and his friends find a foal by a stream who has cut itself on the rocks and broken its back legs, it is on the brink of death and none of the other boys will act.

Sands then tells Father Doom that he drowned the foal and, although he got into trouble, he knew he had done the right thing by putting it out of its misery. He then says he know what he is doing and what it will do to him, but he says he will not stand by and do nothing. The rest of the film shows Sands well into his hunger strike, with bleeding sores all over his body, kidney failure, low blood pressure, stomach ulcers, and the inability to stand on his own by the end. The film spares no detail in Sands’ condition and suffering, as we see him get worse and continue to refuse food.

In the last days, while Sands lies in a bath, a larger orderly comes in to give his usual orderly a break. The larger orderly sits next to the tub and shows Sands his knuckles, which are tattooed with the letters ‘DUD”, Sands tries to stand on his own and eventually does so with all his strength, staring defiantly t the DUD orderly who refused to help him up, but then he crumbles in a heap on the floor with no strength left to stand. The orderly carries him to his room. Sands’ parents stay for the final days, his mother being at his side when Sands dies.

The film explains that Sands had been elected to the United Kingdom Parliament as PM for Frenchman and South Tyrone while he was on strike. Nine other men died with him during the seven-month strike before it was called off. Shortly afterwards, the British government concede in one form or another virtually all of the prisoners’ demands despite never officially granting political status. Cast Michael Absconder as Bobby Sands Lima Cunningham as Father Dominic Moran Lima McMahon as Gerry Campbell Stuart Graham as Raymond Loan Brian Mulligan as Dave Gillie Elaine Mega as Mrs..

Loan Karen Hosannas as Geyser’s Girlfriend Frank Muskier as The Governor Alarm Rowdy as William Helen Madden as Mrs.. Sands Des McAllen as Mr.. Sands Geoff Gait as Bearded Man Roy Mullen as Priest Ben Peel as Riot Prison Officer Stephen Graves Helena Bergen as Raymond Mother Payday Jenkins as Whitman Billy Clarke as Chief Medical Officer Curran Flynn as Twelve-year-Old Bobby B. J. Hog as Loyalist Orderly Production This section requires expansion. The film is notable for an unbroken 17-minute shot, in which a priest played by Lima Cunningham tries to talk Bobby Sands out of his protest.

In it, the camera remains in the same position for the duration of the shot. To prepare for the scene, Cunningham moved into Michael Absconder’s apartment for a time while they practiced the scene at least twelve times a day, sometimes repeating the scene fifteen times in a single day. The film premiered at Cannes, where it opened the official sidebar section, Un Certain Regard, sparking both walkouts and a standing ovation. The film was released in the UK and in Ireland 31 October 2008. Critical reception Hunger has received widespread critical acclaim.

Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes reports that 90% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 114 reviews, with an average score of 7. 8/10, making the film a ‘Certified Fresh” on the websites rating system. [5] At Meteoritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 82, based on 25 reviews, which indicates “Universal acclaim”. [6] The film appeared on some critics’ top ten lists of the best films of 2008.

Andrea Grooving of Chicago Reader named it the 3rd best film of and Scott Founds of LA Weekly named it the 3rd best film of 2008 (along with Chew). [7] Eric Armstrong of The Moving Arts Film Journal gave a favorable review, calling the film ” … A deeply disturbing sensory experience. ” Hunger was voted the best film of 2008 by the British film magazine Sight & and that year Macaque received the Discovery Award and $10,000 at the 33rd annual Toronto film festival. [9] It also won in the best film category at the 2009 Evening Standard British Film Awards. 10] The film also was named the “Best Film of 2009” by he Toronto Film Critics Association Awards, it shared the award with Question Attraction’s Inglorious Bastards. Director Macaque won the Carl Forman ABAFT Award for “Special Achievement by a British Director, Writer or Producer for their First Feature Film” . 111] The movie has a 7. 6 point rating on the Internet Movie Database. [12] Artist-director Unseen’s extraordinary study of life and death centers on AIR devotee Bobby Sands (X-Men: First Class’ Michael Absconder), who made history with a hunger strike in a Belfast prison First published on 26 Seep 2011.

Updated on 15 Cot 2011. This event has finished What an extraordinary film is Steve Unseen’s study of life and death in Northern Ireland’s Maze Prison in the early asses. At every twist and turn this artist-filmmaker, who won the Turner Prize in 1999 for a video piece inspired by Buster Keating, resists expectations and defies conventions – of pacing and performance, of editing and sound – to create a portrait of political resistance that flips disconcertingly and effectively between the thoughtful and the violent, the ugly and the beautiful.

Macaque also blurs these distinctions so that we find solace (however disconcerting) in the brutal or the stark, whether it’s access smeared in a circular pattern on a wall during a protest or urine leaking down a corridor when prisoners empty their buckets under their cell doors. Set against the backdrop of then-premier Margaret Thatcher’s refusal to give political status to Republican prisoners, this portrait of Belfast prison life slowly shifts from the communal to the personal to become the story of the protest’s most noted cause c©l©bare Bobby Sands.

After we observe several prisoners and their methods of survival – from smuggling radio equipment up their backsides to smoking the pages of the Bible – we spend the final chapter with a dying Sands, the first of ten men who died during the hunger strike of 1981, played in an admirable performance of psychological conviction by (then newcomer) Michael Absconder. Hunger glides through three clear movements – life, debate and death – each with its own mood and method of inquiry.

The first section deals with daily prison life and, while it’s nearly silent in terms of dialogue, it couldn’t be louder in its frank portrayal of beatings and the mechanics of the ‘dirty protest. Later, when it comes to the depiction of Sands’ hunger strike – a final section that takes place almost entirely in one room – Macaque wrenches he external from the internal, the political from the corporeal, by preceding an expressionist portrait of dying (distorted sound and vision; the flow of childhood memories; a feather floating in the air) with a 20-minute, locked-frame take of Sands in deep discussion with a priest (Lima Cunningham).

This long, intellectually meaty scene is a tour De force of acting and scripting (courtesy of playwright End Walsh), and means that Macaque is later able to shift his focus from the ideas behind the hunger strike to the mental and physical reality of seeing it through. This is no tale of martyrdom; no inevitable story of messiah-like rotes and punishment.

Neither is it a partisan tale: Macaque seeks balance in both a sympathetic prison warden (Stuart Graham), who is as far removed as his charges from the haunting voice on the soundtrack of Thatcher in Westminster, and a saddening moment when we see a riot policeman break away from his colleagues to weep behind a wall. Imagine how most filmmakers would tell this story, and then see Hunger: the differences are bold and powerful, and restore faith in cinema’s ability to chronicle history free from the bounds of texts and personalities.

It’s not an easy watch – but it’s an invigorating one. Long live Macaque. Dave Calhoun Venue: Moving Image Gallery (2/L) Hunger (2008) Director:Steve Macaque (ii) Time Out rating Average user rating 19 reviews Movie review From Time Out London the ugly and the beautiful. Macaque also blurs these distinctions so that we find transcendence or solace in the brutal or the stark, whether that’s sit smeared in a circular pattern on a wall during a dirty protest or urine leaking down a corridor when prisoners empty their buckets under their cell doors.

This portrait of Belfast prison life in the shadow fetcher’s refusal to give lattice status to Republican prisoners slowly shifts from the communal to the personal to become the story of Bobby Sands. After we observe several prisoners and their methods of survival, from smuggling radio equipment up their backsides to smoking the pages of the Bible, we spend the final chapter with a dying Sands, the first often men who died during the hunger strike of 1981 and played in an admirable performance of psychological conviction from Michael Absconder. Hunger’ glides through three clear movements – life, debate and death – each with its own mood and method of inquiry. The first section of the film deals with lily prison life and, while it’s nearly silent in terms of dialogue, it couldn’t be louder in its frank portrayal of beatings and the mechanics of the ‘dirty protest’.

Later, when it comes to the depiction of Sand’s hunger strike, a final section of the film that takes place almost entirely in one room, Macaque wrenches the external from the internal, the political from the corporeal, by preceding an expressionist portrait of dying (distorted sound and vision; the flow of childhood memories; a feather floating in the air) with a 20-minute, locked-frame take of Sands in deep discussion with a priest (Lima Cunningham).

This long, intellectually meaty scene is a tour De force of acting and writing (courtesy of playwright End Walsh) and means that Macaque is later able to shift his focus from the ideas behind the hunger strike to the mental and physical reality of seeing it through. This is no tale of martyrdom; no inevitable story of messiah-like protest and punishment.

Neither is it a partisan tale: Macaque seeks balance in both a sympathetic prison warden (Stuart Graham), who is as far removed as is charges from the haunting voice on the soundtrack of Thatcher in Westminster, and a saddening moment when we see a riot policeman break way from his colleagues to weep behind a wall. Imagine how most filmmakers would tell this story and then see ‘Hunger’: the differences are bold and powerful and restore faith in cinema’s ability to cover history free from the bounds of texts and personalities.

It’s not an easy watch – but it’s an invigorating one. Long live Macaque. DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT STEVE MACAQUE want to show what it was like to see, hear, smell and touch in the H-block minion. What I want to convey is something you cannot find in books or archives: the ordinary and extraordinary, of life in this prison. Yet the film is also an abstraction of what it is to die for a cause. HUNGER for me has contemporary resonance. The body as site of political warfare is becoming a more familiar phenomenon.