True/False Films

The Man Who Ate Badgers (and other tales from the British Isles)

In person: director Daniel Vernon.

Note: The Friday, Feb. 29 showing of this film has been moved to Macklanburg Cinema. Tickets will show the correct venue.

Sneak preview. You know those old TV nature shows where some crisp British anthropologist trots off into the wild Amazon jungle to "discover" an isolated tribe of real life "savages" and marvel at their bizarre traditions and cultural proclivities? They might as well have stayed home because director Daniel Vernon has discovered that the most isolated, wild-eyed primitives on Earth are roaming around a tiny hamlet right in soggy old England. Now, to answer your question: yes, The Man Who Ate Badgers does have a bit of badger eating in it, but friends, that's just the beginning. For one thing, the man doesn't stop there: he'll down a scavenged barn owl quicker than you can say, "bacterial infection." For another he is hardly the oddest person in town. That honor might go to the flashlight-wielding Panther hunter. If the queen of England ever decided to throw Crispin Glover a Nuit Blanche, every single character in this film would be on the guest list. The film is as good an argument you will ever see for the spread of technology because there has never been a group of men in more desperate need of an X-Box. Plays with City of Cranes (dir. Eva Weber, 2007, 15 min.) — The private thoughts of crane operators as they help erect the towers of London, with movements that feel like a choreographed ballet; The Truth about Tooth (dir. Hazel Baillie, 2007, 9 min.) — The inside scoop about the tooth fairy and the denture factory; Flora & Thieves (dir. Xanthe Hamilton, 2007, 3 min.) — Flora tends her plants and remembers an attempted burglary.(BH)