National Video Festival: Fast-Forward

Blue Remembered Hills, directed by Brian Gibson from Dennis Potter's script, casts adults as children playing childish games that turn evil, set against the background of WWII; Licking Hitler, also a WWII drama, was written and directed by David Hare, and features (guess who) Kate Nelligan as an upperclass twit exposed to a particularly unpleasant mad genius and propagandist; Made in Britain, Alan Clarke's study of a British skinhead, is stunningly acted by Tim Roth, one of England's best and most versatile young actors (The Hit, Meantime); and Walter, also directed by Stephen Frears, stars Ian McKelland as the mentally retarded title character, in a touching but not cloying performance. Individual screenings caught willy-nilly included Peter Greenaway's overworked, overwrought TV Dante, a 15-minute video version of "Canto V" that went right over my head; Greenaway's Interiors: 26 Bathrooms, which plays like turning the pages of a particularly British issue of House and Garden to find the occasional flash of bare bum; The Kitchen Presents, a tedious and unimaginative assemblage of tapings of the Kitchen's heavy hitters in performance (Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Molissa Fenley, David Byrne, that gang), staged especially for this video and mostly in front of Cindy Sherman photographs and Robert Longo paintings.