Gypo (DVD)

Gypo (2005) (“One of the finest British films of the year” – Edinburgh Film Festival) After several months of trying to find Gypo either showing at a cinema, or on DVD, it finally came up on our Lovefilm.com DVD rental list. I was really pleased, and surprised, to find it there as it isn’t the usual type of film as it is registered as a Dogme95 film. My interest was initially from seeing Paul McGann being interviewed when the film was being released. There is something about Paul McGann that I find really intriguing. He is quite enigmatic, and is not often interviewed, and I think that this is what gave watching the film have more appeal for ...

Gypo is the first ever officially sanctioned British Dogme film. I say that as to actually find a Dogme film from anywhere outside Scandanavia is rare so to get their permission and get sanctioned is quite an achievement. It is a hard hitting look at the lives of two families in Margate, one British and the other Czech refugees. How their world changes when they meet and the affect that this has on all of them. Gypo is clearly filmed on hand held cameras and written with a sure hand and an ear for dialogue. The tagline for the film is “There are three sides to every story” and that is how Gypo works. It starts by concentrating on Helen (Pauline ...

Asylum and immigration is the emotive issue of the decade in the UK and the more the government ignores it the more problems we will have, be it that irrational bigotry, or crime, terrorism and a shortage of housing stick from the side of the coin. Only last week did we see how our irrational urge to take on the unfiltered sick, poor and the educated of the world can bite us in the ass. The angle explored in this nuts and bolts, wobbly camera drama on the growing UK squeeze centers on Kent’s costal town of Margate, the nearby Channel Tunnel the bottleneck, the main protagonists some Eastern European Roma who are trying to settle here to escape persecution, ...