Tilda Swinton is odd. We know that. No, we mean odder than perennially looking like a dead-ringer for David Bowie circa “The Man Who Fell To Earth.”
We mean odd. For one she’s in a open-polyamorous relationship with both a young painter, and her live-in relationship with long-term love Scottish playwright John Byrne. She has his blessing, he’s totally aware, in fact, he’s got his own extra honey on the side too (Tilda’s boy toy has been around since 2004). In fact, they all hang out together, Byrne, the young 29-year-old artist and Swinton’s two twin boys…like a family! Weird, right? (The odd duck actress apparently also proudly sports hairy legs and “gnarled” feet when not parading around Oscar season or a movie set).
So there’s that. And now she’s starting what some we’re calling “Swinton’s Twee Film Festival” in Scotland. It’s actually just simply called “The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams,” and tickets to each movie cost a meager £3 or a tray of baked goods, and audiences will sit on beanbags to take in “films with highly coloured, dreamlike elements,” according to the Guardian/via IFC. The idea behind this hippie, fruitcake festival is apparently we should all be free man. Co-organiser Mark Cousins says:
“Money dictates the festival circuit too much, and fogs the pure, romantic obsession with film. There are too many film festivals all trying to do the same kind of thing – what is there if you pare away all the frocks and the fuss? It amuses me that Tilda Swinton, who has been up all the red carpets, wants to do this – there’s a degree of punk about it.”
Well, it sure as shit ain’t conventional, we’ll give you that. The festival runs August 15 through 23 and Joel Coen will be programming two nights. What’s playing at the festival? In keeping with the fete’s bizarre tone, the line-up is secret. Uhh… “They are as daft as a brush. If you went through 5,000 films, you would never guess them,” Cousins says.
Best of luck guys!
Isn’t that Wes Anderson?