Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 19/10/2017)

Returning to cinemas as part of BFI Southbank's Thriller season, North By Northwest takes its title from a line in William Shakespeare's Hamlet, which Hitch had hoped to make in modern dress with Cary Grant. Often credited as being a forerunner of the James Bond franchise, this spy yarn is actually an update of the kind of John Buchan adventure that had long fascinated Hitchcock. Having made The 39 Steps to considerable acclaim in 1935, he had tried without success to adapt Hungingtower, The Three Hostages and Greenmantle for the screen before teaming with screenwriter Ernest Lehman (who had no desire to do a studio-suggested adaptation of Hammond Innes's The Wreck of the Mary Deare) to produce a Buchaneering original. Borrowing elements from Buchan's novel, John Macnab, and Sapper's Bulldog Drummond adventure, The Final Count, Hitchcock and Lehman concocted a `wrong man' scenario that the writer later dubbed `the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures'.

As a podgy man (a cameoing Alfred Hitchcock) misses a bus on a New York street, Madison Avenue executive Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) dictates messages to his secretary Maggie (Doreen Land) in the back of a taxi en route to the Plaza Hotel. While chatting to his pals, Thornhill beckons over a bellboy, just as a colleague is trying to deliver a message to a man named George Kaplan. Mistaking Thornhill for Kaplan, two men carrying concealed weapons waylay him in the lobby and bundle him into a waiting car.

On arriving on an estate in Long Island, Thornhill is shown into the library, where he is interrogated by Philip Vandamm (James Mason), who has commandeered the mansion belonging to US diplomat Lester Townsend (Philip Ober). Exasperated by what he believes is a silly mistake, Thornhill tries to convince Vandamm and his secretary Leonard (Martin Landau) that he is not a federal agent and can prove it by meeting with his mother Clara (Jessie Royce Landis) at the Winter Garden theatre. But Vandamm is unimpressed and orders Leonard to force bourbon on their visitor so that he can be framed as the victim of a drink-driving accident. However, Thornhill is an accomplished tippler and manages to stay sober enough to fight off the henchman in the car and get himself arrested by a pursuing policeman after surviving a headlong hurtle down a steep mountain road. Under the watchful gaze of Glen Cove cop Emile Klinger (John Beradino), Thornhill tries to explain about his abduction and the accusation that he is a spy. However, a phone call to his mother only makes things worse, as does a return trip to the mansion, where Mrs. Townsend (Josephine Hutchinson) greets him as Kaplan and admonishes him for drinking too much at dinner. Dismissed by the police as a time-waster, Thornhill checks Kaplan's room at the Plaza and has an uncomfortable encounter in the lift with a trio of Vandamm's thugs before heading to the United Nations building, where Townsend is about to address the General Assembly. Looking nothing like Vandamm, Townsend comes to the concourse to meet Thornhill, who introduces himself as Kaplan in the hope of getting some answers. However, before they can exchange more than a few words, Townsend is killed by a knife thrown by one of Vandamm's men and he collapses into Thornhill's arms. A flash bulb pops as Thornhill removes the knife from the diplomat's back and he is forced to flee amidst screams that he is a murderer.

The photograph makes the front cover of the Evening Star, which lands on the desk of an intelligence chief code-named The Professor (Leo G. Carroll) at CIA Headquarters. He knows that Thornhill isn't Kaplan, as he is an invention to keep foreign agents like Vandamm off their guard. But, rather than rescuing him from his predicament, he feels that it might be beneficial to leave him exposed for a little while longer in the hope that he might lure their foes into making a mistake.

Crouching in a phone booth at Grand Central Station, Thornhill has no idea that Kaplan is a decoy and informs Clara that he is taking the Twentieth Century to Chicago in the hope that he can bump into Kaplan at the Ambassador Hotel and clear up the misunderstanding. Slinking on to the train, Thornhill bumps into Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) while laying low from the ticket inspector and later finds himself sitting opposite her in the dining car. She flirts with him and he appreciates the fact she is not an honest woman because they frighten him. He is also grateful when she hides him from the police in the closed upper bunk in her sleeping compartment. But, as they canoodle, Thornhill fails to see Eve slip a message to a porter, who delivers it to Vandamm and Leonard in a neighbouring sleeper.

The following morning, posing as a Red Cap porter, Thornhill takes Eve's luggage off the train. But, while he changes back into his own clothes in the washroom, Eve contacts Leonard by telephone and informs Thornhill that Kaplan has agreed to meet him at the Prairie bus stop on Highway 41. Taking a Greyhound to the crossroads, Thornhill waits for the rendezvous. He watches as a car deposits a stranger at the stop on the other side of the road. But, as he disappears on the next bus, Thornill notices a crop-dusting bi-plane that is spraying a barren field. Suddenly realising that the aircraft has turned and is hurtling towards him, Thornhill begins to run and throws himself down on the parched ground as a volley of bullets pings around him.

Failing to flag down a passing car, Thornhill takes cover in a cornfield, only for the plane to swoop down and unleash a poisonous cloud of pesticide. Rushing into the road, Thornhill beckons to an approaching oil tanker. But the plane dips too low and ploughs into the truck, giving Thornhill the chance to take advantage of the rubberneckers stopping to watch the fireball by stealing a vehicle and heading back to Chicago. On checking into the Ambassador, he is surprised to find that Kaplan left for Rapid City in South Dakota some two hours before Eve claimed to have spoken to him. When he spots her crossing the lobby in a red dress, Thornhill ignores the warning sign and follows her to her room, where she pleads ignorance to sending him into a trap.

Over drinks, Eve begs Thornhill to leave and forget all about her. But she agrees to a last supper and they tease each other while he prepares to take a shower while his grey suit is cleaned. However, she gives him the slip while he is whistling `Singin' in the Rain' and he has to rub a pencil over the telephone pad to discover that she has gone to an auction room on North Michigan Avenue. On entering, Thornhill is hardly surprised to see Eve with Leonard and Vandamm and he jokes about them resembling a creation by cartoonist Charles Addams.

As Vandamm bids on a piece of Pre-Columbian art, Thornhill wounds Eve with his cutting remarks about the lengths she is willing to go to get a job done. He fails to notice a tear in her eye and continues to bait Vandamm, who has criticised his espionage technique. But Vandamm is in no mood for small-talk and leaves the man he still thinks is Kaplan to his fate. However, with The Professor looking on, the resourceful Thornhill causes a ruckus by disrupting the auction and is led away by the cops who protect him from Vandamm's bemused oppos.

Deciding he will be safer in custody, Thornhill identifies himself as the UN killer. Instead, he is taken to Midway Airport, where The Professor explains that he needs him to keep up the Kaplan deception for a little longer in order to prevent Vandamm leaving the country with a microfilm of state secrets. He also reveals that Eve is an undercover agent and that her life will be endangered if Thornhill bails out. Suddenly aware of his feelings for Eve, Thornhill agrees to go meet Vandamm at the cafeteria beneath the presidential monument at Mount Rushmore.

Finally calling himself Kaplan, Thornhill informs Vandamm that he would be prepared to let him escape in return for Eve, as he wants her to get the punishment coming to her. But Vandamm refuses and Eve takes advantage of the stand-off to prove her loyalty to her lover by seeming to shoot Kaplan with a gun in her purse. Shocked and unwilling to get caught up in a killing, Vandamm and Leonard make themselves scarce, as Eve drives away at speed and The Professor has Thornhill carried away on a stretcher.

Luckily, the bullets were blanks and Thornhill and Eve are reunited in the woods, where they apologise for the secrecy and the sarcasm. But he loses patience with her again when she reveals that she has no option but to leave with Vandamm and keep providing inside information about his operation. Yet, when he is confined to a hospital room to perpetuate the fallacy that Eve shot him, Thornhill contrives to escape and heads for Vandamm's modernist lair atop Mount Rushmore.

As he eavesdrops on Vandamm and Leonard, he sees the latter fire Eve's gun to prove that she is a traitor and Vandamm determines to toss her from the plane when they make their getaway. Thornhill tosses down a monogrammed matchbook to warn Eve that her cover has been blown and they meet in her room when she goes to fetch some earrings. She insists that she has to retrieve the microfilm that has been hidden in the Pre-Colombian statue and accompanies Vandamm and Leonard on to the landing strip. Hoping to spring to her aid, Thornhill finds himself being held at gunpoint by Anna the housekeeper (Nora Marlowe). But she has picked up Eve's gun and fires blanks at Thornhill, who bolts away from her in time to collect Eve, who has exploited the commotion to steal the statue and get to the car that Thornhill is driving.

Unfortunately, the electronic gates are locked and the pair have no option but to climb down the monument. Scrambling between the faces of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Thornhill proposes marriage after admitting that his first two wives had divorced him for being dull. They are interrupted by a henchman with a knife (Adam Williams), who plunges to his death when Thornhill overpowers him. But Leonard approaches across Lincoln's visage and makes a grab for Eve, who falls. She manages to cling on to the rock and Thornhill reaches down to help her. But Leonard treads on his fingers and he is about to lose his grip when The Professor shoots Leonard from long range. As Thornhill pulls Eve to safety, the detained Vandamm sneers that the CIA chief has proved himself to be a poor sport in using real bullets.

Famously closing on a shot of the train carrying the newlyweds entering a tunnel, this endlessly and enduringly entertaining thriller reveals Hitchcock at his most playful between the psychological rigours of Vertigo (1958) and the slashing brutality of Psycho (1960). It's interesting to note that, before embarking on a screenplay he branded a `fantasy of the absurd', Hitchcock had failed to secure the rights to Graham Greene's Our Man In Havana, which also centres on an accidental spy (as had Hitch's own wartime story, Saboteur, 1942). But this is as much a Cold War satire as it is an espionage adventure, with the slickly superficial Thornhill representing an Eisenhowerian United States that needs to return to the principles of old. Yet, while his hollowness is betrayed by the fact that his middle initial stands for nothing, Hitck was also taking a potshot here at his onetime producing partner, David O. Selznick, whose own initial was nothing more than an affectation.

For all his charm, Thornhill is also a chauvinist and his attitude to his secretary, mother and lover certainly anticipates 007's misogyny. But, as his 1960s outings increasingly suggested, Hitchcock didn't really understand the modern age and, despite the sophisticated sexual frankness of much of the dialogue, this is much more the last hurrah of an old-school style of film-making than a foretaste of a brave new world. In the last of his four features for Hitchcock after Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946) and To Catch a Thief (1955), Cary Grant is at his darkly urbane best. But the crop-dusting and Mount Rushmore sequences also make him unusually vulnerable, in a manner one tends to associate with Hitchcock's collaborations with James Stewart.

Elsewhere, James Mason makes a typically hissable adversary and, while not everyone was convinced by Method actress Eva Marie Saint as the cool blonde, she gives as good as she gets in an way that both harks back to Ingrid Bergman in Notorious and Kim Novak in Vertigo and also anticipates the pugnacity of Bond girls like Ursula Andress and Honor Blackman. The technical aspects of what was Hitchcock's longest feature are also first rate from Saul Bass's eye-catching opening credits and Bernard Herrmann's fandango score to Robert Burks's crisp photography, Robert F. Boyle's sleek production design and George Tomasini's precision editing. So, while it may not be as intellectually or emotionally demanding as some of his other pictures from the 1950s, this teasingly self-referential outing muses on role play and reality, art and artifice, and duty and duplicity to amusing and deceptively thoughtful effect.

Although it might sound like a tame update of Don Siegel's Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), S Craig Zahler's Brawl in Cell Block 99 is a brutal addition to a genre that dates back to George W. Hill's The Big House (1930). As in his debut outing, the horror Western, Bone Tomahawk (2015), Zahler proves willing to put an arthouse gloss on grindhouse tropes. Moreover, in locating a previously unsuspected darkness and depth, he helps a time-serving Hollywood journeyman deliver the best performance of his career.

Having lost his job at a garage, recovering addict-cum-alcoholic Bradley Thomas (Vince Vaughn) drives home to find wife Lauren (Jennifer Carpenter) sitting in her car on the drive. Suspecting she's having an affair, Bradley (who is shaven headed and has a black crucifix tattooed on the back of his skull) demands to see her phone and sends her inside while he punches in the passenger window, rips off the bonnet and tears out the headlights. For good measure, he hurls the rear view mirror down the street before strutting inside to find out why Lauren has betrayed him. She explains that she has been sad since her miscarriage and felt neglected because Vaughn was always working. But she swears that the three-month liaison isn't serious and agrees that they should start afresh and try for another baby. She even consents to Bradley going back to work for drug dealer Gil (Marc Blucas) until they are back on their feet and can move out of their shabby neighbourhood.

Eighteen months later, Bradley is making good money and Lauren is pregnant. With only 98 days left before the birth of the baby they have nicknamed `the koala', Bradley fusses over her in their plush new home and carries her to bed because he considers chopping vegetables to be too taxing. However, he is called away because Gil wants to introduce him to Eleazar (Dion Mucciacito), a Mexican dealer with a cheap supply of crystal meth. Vaughn is wary of henchmen Roman (Gino Segers) and Pedro (Victor Almanzar), as he thinks the former is using and will be unreliable under pressure. But Gil order him to be a team player and, having tossed Roman's gun into the dock to prevent him from doing anything foolish, Bradley steers the boat to the offshore pick-up point so that Pedro can dive down and retrieve the trunk.

He retains a brusque silence throughout the trip. But his confederates ignore his suggestion that they should hide the cache and come back for it later and they promptly walk into a police ambush. Pedro is shot and killed, but Roman keeps blasting away from behind a car. Determined to tie up any loose ends, Bradley slips into the water and edges round behind Roman to incapacitate him before he is arrested. Detective Watkins (Carl Johnson) finds it hard to believe that Bradley is a patriot with two American flags on his property, but Bradley holds his own in an exchange about dealers getting longer sentences than sex offenders. Moreover, he protects his superiors by taking the fall, even though he knows his five-year stretch will prevent him from watching his little girl grow up.

Lauren is allowed a visit, but Bradley tells her to stay away from the courtroom and do the best by their child until he can rejoin them. She fights back the tears, but promises to be strong and faithful. Bradley allows himself a bitter smile when the judge gives him seven years and he keeps his dignity when processing officer Irving (Fred Melamed) taunts him about the cheapness of his wedding ring and makes him go back to the end of the line for forgetting his manners. Hobbling in shoes two sizes too small, Bradley is welcomes by old lag Leftie (Willie C. Carpenter), who advises him to keep his head down in showing him to his single cell. Corridor guard Andre (Mustafa Shakir) explains the rules applying to head counts and searches and tries to needle Bradley about his past experiences as a boxer. But he refuses to rise to the bait and remains impassive when Andre shines a torch into his eyes during a late-night count designed to demonstrate just how powerless Bradley is behind bars.

During the night, Lauren is abducted by intruders who shoot her with tranquiliser darts. But Bradley is initially informed by case worker Denise (Pooja Kumar) that she has had a rough night and that her doctor will visit Vaughn to explain the situation. When he comes to the glass window, however, he fails to recognise the quietly spoken German (Udo Kier) who represents Eleazar, who feels that Bradley owes him a favour after costing him $3 million in lost merchandise. The German shows Bradley a picture on his phone of a bound and blindfolded Lauren before revealing that Eleazar will subject her to a Korean abortionist (Tobee Paik) with the ability to remove limbs from a foetus unless Bradley gets himself transferred to the maximum security Red Leaf facility and disposes of a target in Cell Block 99.

Returning to the Fridge, Bradley turns on Andre when he tries to apologise for riling him. They fight in the corridor and Bradley snaps his arm before taking on three more officers while in handcuffs. Eventually, he is tasered and travels to Red Leaf with dark bruises around the tattoo on his head. He is greeted by the steely Warden Tuggs (Don Johnson), who warns Bradley that he practices a regime of `minimum freedom' and will have no qualms in making his life a misery. Ordering Officer Wilson (Tom Guiry) to conduct a full cavity search outside the gates, Tuggs kicks over Bradley's valuables and lights a cigaritto.

Tuggs billets Bradley in a cell with a blocked toilet and he has to tie his vest around his nose to combat the smell. He is allowed an hour in the exercise yard, however, where he promptly ignores the advice of Derrick (Philip Ettinger) - (who has told him that Block 99 is full of perverts and psychotics - and picks a fight with a group of Hispanic prisoners using the weights. Busting arms and noses, Bradley takes down several thugs and two more guards before Tuggs points a gun at his head and declares that he has lost his minimum freedom and will spend his time in Cell Block 99.

Now in chains, as well as neons, Bradley is hooded and taken through a secret passage behind a shelf unit to the hidden part of the jail. Tuggs has him pushed down the staircase leading to a room full of torture implements that he suspects would be frowned upon by Amnesty International. He has the guards fit Bradley with a belt that enables him to pass an electric current through his torso and he sneers that he has already amassed 25 punishment jolts that will be administered on his whim. As Bradley is bundled into his new cell, Tuggs shocks him again and he sinks to his knees on to the broken glass that litters the floor. Yet, for all the humiliation and pain, Bradley is where he needs to be and he begins to wonder how he can get at his quarry when no one in the block has ever heard of him.

As he picks shards of glass out of his legs, however, the German takes more photographs of Lauren, who is examined by the abortionist. Bradley is shown the pictures when Wilson collects him from his cell and takes him to an antechamber where Eleazar and Roman are waiting for him. Eleazar states that he intends showing Bradley no mercy because he not only lost his liberty, but also his brother-in-law in the botched drop. He uses the remote control to send shockwaves through Bradley, while Roman knocks him to the ground with a metal chair.

When he comes round back in his cell, Bradley tears the insoles from his shoes and stuffs them inside the belt to reduce the effect of the charges on his kidneys. He chats to another prisoner through the lunch slot in the door and he asks why the guards have got it in for him. Bradley tries to sleep, but he is woken by Wilson, who has come to collect him for another social call on Eleazar. However, he refuses to close his cell door behind him and overpowers Wilson when he tries to challenge him and he threatens to throttle him with his chains unless his assistant, Jeremy (Rob Morgan), hands over the keys. When Wilson tries to escape, Bradley crushes his skull in the cell door and hands the taser to one of the other prisoners, who jokes that it might come in handy.

Having removed the manacles and the stun belt, Bradley keeps his rendezvous with Eleazar. He crushes the skulls of two of his heavies (one of whom also has his eyes gouged) before snapping Roman's neck. When Eleazar calls the German and tells him to begin the procedure on Lauren. Bradley breaks his leg and pulls in back to the corridor and threatens to let the other prisoners finish him off unless he rescinds the order. With Lauren on her way to Gil for protection, Bradley informs Tuggs that he has Eleazar and Jeremy as hostages and will kill them if he tries anything stupid while he waits for Gil to confirm that Lauren is safe.

The German drives her to his base, with the Korean sitting beside Lauren in the backseat. He points a gun at Gil as he reverses down the drive. But, with Lauren sheltering behind him, Gil produces a rifle and kills the German and, when the abortionist tries to make a getaway, Lauren grabs the weapon and finishes him off herself. When Gil calls Bradley with the good news, Lauren sits under a tree to talk to him. He insists he is okay and tries not to cry when she asks if he would like to speak to the baby. Bradley apologises for not being there to help raise her, but knows she will grow up to be smart and Lauren swears their daughter moves when she hears her father's voice.

With the call over, Bradley returns to the cell to crush Eleazar's skull before using his boot to sever it from his neck. Tuggs delays long enough to let Bradley complete his task before ordering him to put his hands on his head. He produces a pistol and executes him with shots to the body and head and the sound of Bradley slumping to the floor can be heard as the screen goes black.

Although the related plot point is almost gratuitously sick, it's rather apt that the sinister abortionist is Korean, as this often feels like a Park Chan-wook variation on Fred Cavayé's prison breakout thriller, Anything For Her (2009). In truth, the scenario doesn't bear close scrutiny, as the action takes place in just over three weeks and makes excessive demands on the efficiency of the American justice system to get both Bradley and Eleazar in the same place in such a short space of time. But Zahler owns his contrivances with such conviction that the audience is consistently coerced into suspending disbelief as it is swept along on the grimly inevitable tide of events.

Walking slowly and bolt upright like someone who has been cavity searched in tight shoes, Vince Vaughn is unrecognisably excellent as the most devoted dad to be since Billy Bigelow in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Carousel. Indeed, he would surely be in line for major acting honour if it wasn't for the fact that pictures like this are so rarely taken seriously during awards season. Given that Vaughn has so often underachieved since making his mark in Doug Liman's Swingers (1996) and trying so hard to match Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Gus Van Sant's redundant remake of Psycho (1998), this goes a long way to erasing the memory of all those mediocre mid-career comedies - although it should never be forgotten that he did land MTV and Teen Choice nominations for David Dobkins's Wedding Crashers (2005) and Peyton Reed's The Break-Up (2006).

Udo Kier also registers as `the Placid Man', while Don Johnson enjoys himself as the sadistic warden. By contrast, Jennifer Carpenter is made to suffer in an underwritten, poorly integrated and decidedly dubious role that is not made any more acceptable by the fact she gets to exact pitiless revenge upon her potential tormentor. However, this and the suspense-free nocturnal boat trip are the only marked missteps in an otherwise compelling sophomore effort that is impeccably paced by Zahler and editor Greg D'Auria. Favouring long takes over the modish splice-and-dice technique, Zahler also pays due respect to Drew Leary's pulverising fight choreography. Production designer Freddy Waff also makes a major contribution with the Thomas houses and the Fridge and Block 99 cells, although the atmosphere they generate also owes much to cinematographer Benji Bakshi's lighting and a supremely unsettling score by Jeff Herriott, who also amuses himself in tandem with Zahler with the pastiche blaxploitation tunes on the soundtrack.

Fanboys rather than feminists are going to lap this up and, no doubt, someone will detect all manner of allegorical references as to why the `mad as hell' South voted for Donald Trump. But, while this is much more sophisticated than the average direct to disc or download title, what most sets it apart is the absence of knowing humour. This is an unflinching study of impotent rage and debased masculinity that is sure to send patrons into the night feeling shaken and dismayed.

Among Iceland's best-known crime and children's writers, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir made her name with six novels featuring investigative lawyer Þóra Guðmundsdóttir. But, in bringing Sigurðardóttir to the cinema screen for the first time, director Óskar Thór Axelsson has opted for the non-series bestseller, I Remember You, which introduces a supernatural element to a Nordic noir that slowly brings two seemingly unconnected storylines together.

During the opening credits, Halla (Júlía Hannam) vandalises the inside of a church before asking for forgiveness and hanging herself. Psychiatrist Freyr (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson) has just moved from Reykjavík to Ísafjörður in Iceland's West Fjords and he is called by cop Dagný (Sara Dögg Ásgeirsdóttir) to register the 71 year-old's suicide. He consoles the elderly man who found the body that hanging is a relatively painless way to die and thanks him for his kind words regarding the disappearance of his young son Benni (Guðni Geir Jóhannesson) three years earlier.

Meanwhile, Katrin (Anna Gunndís Guðmundsdóttir) and her husband Garðar (Thor Kristjansson) sail to the abandoned village Hesteyri with their friend Lif (Ágústa Eva Erlendsdóttir) in order to renovate a house named Last Sight that has been unoccupied for 60 years with the intention of opening a bed and breakfast. The couple are mourning the loss of their baby and Lif hugs Katrin as they explore the empty house, which is next door to the doctor's property where Lif had spent the previous summer.

Back in Ísafjörður, Freyr returns from a jog to discover that Dagný is a neighbour. He invites her in for coffee and tells her about Benni, the eight year-old diabetic son who went missing while playing hide and seek. As he could not survive for long without his insulin, Freyr is certain that the boy is dead and Dagný smiles in sympathy. In Hesteyri, however, Lif keeps her counsel, as she shares a room with Katrin and Garðar and listens to them making love for the first time since their bereavement.

The following morning, Katrin rises early and goes for a walk. She finds a small cemetery and rings the bell in a monument to those lost at sea. But, as she crouches beside an unmarked grave edged with white stones, she thinks she hears a child's voice whispering `mum', as she examines a small hole in the turf. Returning to Last Sight, she finds Garðar and Lif in the kitchen discussing the need for running water and the fact that they will have to use a bucket until they can get the toilet working. Lif teases Garðar for being a city boy and he jokes with Katrin that her friend is crazy.

Following a decorating montage, we cut to Freyr working late in the hospital. The power goes off and, as he goes to investigate, a shadowy figure scurries along a corridor and he thinks he sees a child before the lights are restored. He ventures into the morgue and pulls out Halla's body to find that it is scarred with crosses. He informs Dagný, who interviews the dead woman's husband, Bjarni (Theodór Júlíusson), who remembers seeing blood on her nightgown, but who vehemently denies abusing her.

Dagný believes him and asks Freyr to look over details of another case connected to the Ísafjörður church, which had been transferred from Hesteyri after the village was abandoned in 1956. As he looks at old movies with Dagný and her assistant Veigar (Þór Tulinius), Freyr spots the same `unclean' graffiti on the church wall that he had noticed when Halla was discovered. Dagný also shows him a class photograph, in which Halla's face has been scratched out with a cross, along with several other classmates of a boy named involving Bernódus, who had gone missing just five days after the relocated church had been vandalised.

Freyr withholds the fact that he thought he saw someone prowling and Katrin also keeps quiet after she falls down some steps after getting up in the night having earlier tumbled into the creek where they store their beer in order to escape from a presence she felt hovering behind her. Garðar and Lif are puzzled when she returns with the missing cross from the cemetery plot, which she was fishing out of the water when she felt fell. However, they are more concerned with fixing the generator, as they only have lanterns and torches to see their way around, and making contact with the town to get Katrin some treatment for her injured leg.

Back in Ísafjörður, Freyr does some research in the archive and discovers that Bernódus (Arnar Páll Harðarson) was the son of a drunken church warden from Hesteyri and a monochrome flashback suggests that he carved crosses on his son's back because he blamed him for the death of his mother, Bergdis (the name on the cross that Katrin found). Dagný reveals that six of the eight children whose faces have been crossed out on the class photo have died in accidents over the last three years and she is convinced that some sort of sinister pattern is developing.

Spooked by a young boy staring at him from the back row of a children's choir, Freyr goes home to look at video footage of Benni and he has paused on the last CCTV image of him at a petrol station when Dagný calls with autopsy pictures of the first women to die from the class photo. Her back is also covered in crosses and Dagný reveals that she has tried to contact two of the surviving classmates. But one is Ursula (Ragnheidur Steindórsdóttir), a schizophrenic in Freyr's care, while the other is a farmer who isn't answering his phone. The wonder whether they were all involved in some kind of religious cult, but also consider the fact that Bernódus might still be alive and is systematically killing everyone who had bullied him at school.

Waking up to find that Garðar and Lif have gone to get a phone signal, Katrin hears a noise downstairs and sees wet footprints on the floor. She thinks the sound is coming from beneath a trapdoor and she clambers into a small cellar space, only for the door to close on top of her. As she looks around the confined space, she sees the covered corpse of a child with a torn snapshot of its mother in its hand. She also finds an exercise book in a satchel and flicks through pages of drawings of an angry face and a class posing for a photograph. As she sees the word `unclean', however, she feels someone behind her and is screaming for help when Lif and Garðar return. The latter finds the body and they decide to move to the doctor's house because they no longer feel safe in their own property.

Meanwhile, Freyr and Dagný have gone to visit the farmer. Peering through the window, Freyr sees a body and, when the sheepdog rushes in and starts barking at the foot of the stairs, he goes to investigate and finds a room whose wall is covered with press cuttings relating to Benni's disappearance. He is still shaken when he goes to see Ursula in her care home. She stares into the distance, but he shows her the class photo and she whispers something about Benni being below and everything being green. Dagný has to calm him down when he shouts at Ursula to explain what she means, but she lapses back into silence.

Katrin also loses her cool in Hesteyri when she goes to make the beds in the doctor's house and finds the white wooden cross from the creek on the landing. She tosses it outside and accuses Garðar and Lif of playing cruel games with her. That night, she dreams of looking at the whole snapshot she found in the dead boy's hand, only to wake up and go for a glass of water. But this is also part of the dream, as she returns to the bedroom to see a skinny kid sitting on the bed and she wakes with a start as she drops her glass. She begs Garðar to get her home and she snaps at him when he says she is still stressed after the stillbirth of their son. Glaring at him, Katrin asks whether he had an affair with Lif while scouting Hesteyri the previous summer and he admits it happened without them meaning it to because he felt his marriage was over.

Freyr's own relationship had fallen apart during the search for Benni and he receives a frosty welcome from his ex-wife Sara (Elma Stefania Agustsdottir) when he returns to consult the files they have stored in Benni's room. He request a meeting with his son's friend Oli (Bjarni Kristbjörnsson), who had mentioned a green submarine in his testimony. However, he has learning difficulties and Freyr loses his temper when he refuses to answer his questions. He becomes even more frustrated when Sara introduces him to Elias (Sweinn Geirsson), a lawyer who explains that Benni has been in touch with him to reveal that he is trapped between two worlds. Aghast that Sara could believe such nonsense, Freyr scoffs at the notion that his son will become so angry at his body not being found that he will start to endanger those closest to him. He pauses momentarily when Elias mentions Bernódus before stalking out.

Katrin is also in a foul mood in Hesteyri and glowers at Lif when she comes down for breakfast. She can't believe that Garðar has admitted to their affair, but he says he was selective with his information and they kiss. As they do, a hooded figure throws a stone through the window and they chase him across the field to a disused factory. Much of the masonry is crumbling and Lif wanders inside and screams on running into their assailant. But, when Garðar rushes to her side, the chimney stack collapses on top of them and Katrin comes running to see if they are okay. Garðar is dead, but the bloodied Lif is still alive and Katrin takes her phone to call for help. She climbs to the highest point above the bay and reaches up for a signal. But she sees text messages between Garðar and Lif and, having discovered that they were expecting a baby, she leaves the phone on the ground to return to the factory to look down on the deceased Lif with grim satisfaction.

Unable to sleep, Freyr goes for a jog at 4am and sees a hooded figure on the rain-soaked street. He chases after him into a back alley and sees the shell of an old boat. Looking through the porthole, he is surprised to see Ursula and he breaks in to speak to her. Her back is covered in crosses and she mumbles that Bernódus isn't always so cruel to her. She also reveals that she saw him stowaway under a green tarpaulin on the ferry boat from Hesteyri and never told a soul that he had escaped his torment. Freyr asks about Benni and she laments that he had woken Bernódus up and that was when the trouble began.

Calling Dagný to bring an ambulance, Freyr breaks down when he tells her that he thinks Bernódus is trying to help him. He sobs on her shoulder, as he fears that he is going as mad as his patients. But Katrín is also suffering, as she left her coat covering Lif and she huddles in a blanket because she can't get the fire to light. She clambers down into the cellar and turns the pages of the exercise book before lying down next to the corpse. As she closes her eyes, she feels the boy reach over and brush the hair off her cheek and she feels comforted, as the grey-faced waif lies back down behind her.

Waking with a start, Freyr takes a call from Dagný, who has been sent a drawing of a green vessel by Oli's mother. Suddenly, she has a moment of inspiration and asks Freyr to see the CCTV footage of the petrol station again and spots Garðar, Katrín and Lif leaving the diner. They are driving a car with a trailer and Dagný looks through some photographs on her laptop and reaches the conclusion that Benni must have slipped into their trailer and been taken to the island. She explains that Lif and Garðar perished in an accident at the factory and that there was no sign of Katrín. When she shows Freyr a photo of the house they had gone to renovate, he sees a green sceptic tank standing outside.

As they cross by boat, Freyr holds back the dread that continues to gnaw at him as they traverse the field to the house. He watches as two men unscrew the lid and look inside and can barely bring himself to do the same. Needing to be alone, Freyr goes inside the house and thinks he hears a noise upstairs. There is no one there, but he feels a presence and is about to open the trapdoor to the cellar when Dagný enters and he jumps up and leaves. As the stretcher carrying the body is taken to the jetty, Benni stands in his blue coat and looks back at Katrín and Bernódus, as they watch from the window. He takes her hand and she stares impassively, as she has the child she wanted, albeit in an afterlife limbo.

Nicolas Roeg's adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's Don't Look Now (1973) casts a long shadow over this simmeringly unsettling saga. Those familiar with Yrsa Sigurðardóttir's book will know best whether Óskar Thór Axelsson and co-scenarist Ottó Geir Borg have done a good job in protecting the plot's secrets or have left more loose ends than the author intended. But we never quite get to the bottom of what Ursula actually saw back in 1956 and only Sara will know either why she bothered or why she waited so long to introduce Freyr to Elias and the idea that Benni has been trying to contact them from the other side. Moreover, we never find out who was responsible for the cross killings, which wind up becoming a teasingly grim MacGuffin if the body in the cellar does conclusively contradict Ursula's unreliable recollections.

Ambiguities aside, the slickest element of the picture is undoubtedly its structure and the artful manner in which editor Kristján Loðmfjörð conceals the fact that the narratives time frames are not concurrent. Jakob Ingimundarson's sombre views of the bleak landscape and Heimir Sverrisson's atmospheric interiors and the ominous groans of Frank Hall's score also reinforce the brooding sense of unease that permeates proceedings that move with a satisfying steadiness that regrettably makes the final revelations seem a tad rushed and ever so slightly anti-climactic.

As the short-fused shrink under unbearable strain, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson is admirably anti-heroic, while Sara Dögg Ásgeirsdóttir is splendidly discreet as the dogged cop. Yet, while Thor Kristjansson, Ágústa Eva Erlendsdóttir and Anna Gunndís Guðmundsdóttir do what's required of them, their characters are so sketchily delineated that it isn't always easy to empathise with their situation, even after the home truths start to emerge. But the expression on Guðmundsdóttir's face in the final close-up at the window will linger even with those sceptical about the efficacy of the supernatural aspects, regardless of how creepy they are.

African cinema hasn't really kicked on since it emerged in the 1970s and 80s. Profitable mainstream industries have sprung up in Nigeria (Nollywood) and Ghana (Ghallywood), but the handful of auteurs who have made an impression on the festival scene have tended to come from Francophone countries with strong post-colonial cultural connections. Moreover, dismayingly few women film-makers have followed the trail blazed by the likes of Sarah Maldoror, Safi Faye, Farida Benlyazid and Moufida Tlatli. Thus, the release of Zambian-born Welsh debutant Rungano Nyoni's I Am Not a Witch is to be celebrated, not only because this teasing satire invokes the spirit of Ousmane Sembène's Xala (1974), Souleymane Cissé's Yeelen (1987) and Djibril Diop Mambéty's Hyenas (1992), but also because it has so much to say about the problems hindering progress across the continent and the patronising attitude of foreign powers seeking to exploit Africa's traditions, weaknesses, resources and potential.

The picture opens with a busload of Western tourists visiting a witch camp in the Zambian bush. The tour guide (Victor Phiri) explains that the women (whose faces have been painted white) are attached by ribbons to large bobbins to prevent them from flying away and killing people in places as far away as the United Kingdom. On cue, Mama (Margaret Sipaneia), Florence (Mirriam Nata) and Mubango (Selita Zulu) begin pulling faces and screaming and the visitors take their photographs and leave.

In a remote village, a woman (Eunice Mapala) trips while carrying a bucket of water from the well and turns to see nine year-old orphan Shula (Margaret Mulubwa) staring at her. Even though the girl refills the bucket and leaves it on the doorstep, the woman informs Police Officer Josephine (Nellie Munamonga) that the child is a witch who is responsible for a spate of peculiar incidents. The crowd gathered outside the office window shout their agreement and one man (Chileshe Kalimamukwento) insists that Shula chopped off his arm with an axe before admitting that his testimony was merely a dream.

As Shula refuses to confirm or deny whether she is a witch, Josephine calls witch camp custodian Mr Banda (Henry B.J. Phiri), who is being bathed by his wife Charity (Nancy Murilo). He agrees to determine Shulas guilt and has a witch doctor (James Manaseh) perform a ritual involving a slaughtered chicken, a circle and a ceremonial dance. Convinced of her guilt, Banda takes Shula to the camp and introduces her to the local ruler and her fellow witches. Shula tries to run away, but she is recaptured and tied with a white ribbon that prevents a second attempt bid. When night falls, Banda has the witches sing a song, in which they declare that they are soldiers of the government.

He sends Shula to spend a night in a shack and tells her that she can cut her ribbon and be turned into a goat or accept that she is a witch and receive shelter in the camp. Unsurprisingly, the frightened girl opts for the latter and she has a tattoo etched on to her forehead by one of the witches, The following morning, she is driven with the other women attached to their reels on an orange flatbed truck so that they can work in Banda's fields. They are exhausted by their labours in the heat of the day and protest when Tembo the foreman (John Tembo) wakes them for another shift. During a break, they give Shula a blue gourd and tell her to place it against her ear so that she can hear what the teacher is saying in the nearby school. But her education is soon interrupted because Banda has plans for her.

An old man (Goodfellow Kayuni) claims to have had his dowry money stolen from his house and - when grandpa's phone finally stops ringing - Banda informs the court that Shula has special powers to identify thieves. She calls Mama for advice and she tells her to choose the man with the darkest skin. Others suggest that she looks at their eyes or works out which suspect seems the most nervous. On careful consideration, Shula accuses Nelson (John Ng'Ambi), who threatens to stone her as Banda and a cop conduct a search of his hut. However, they find the bag containing the cash and Nelson's neighbours try to beat him in the minibus before he is taken into custody.

Banda is pleased with Shula and is certain she has special powers that will impress the powerful and help make him rich. She enjoys being the centre of attention during a campfire celebration that night and smiles as she carries the basket of goodies that grandpa gave to Banda in return for retrieving his money. The next day, Banda takes Shula to his luxurious house and entrusts her to Cherry. Light skinned and with a blonde perm, she shows Shula her own ribbon and reel and explains that she was also treated as a witch before she gained respectability through obedience and marriage. She urges Shula to learn the lesson and allows her to hook her ribbon to the back of her designer blouse.

Shula enjoys her new status and picks out her next culprit without having to phone a friend. The witches are also delighted with her, as they are able to buy wigs on credit from Bwalya (Becky Ngoma) the travelling saleslady and still have enough left over to get drunk on gin. There are drawbacks, however, as one man sees Shula through the minibus window and tries to break in because his family fell victim to a witch and she is only saved in the nick of time by Banda threatening to have the fellow arrested for damaging government property. But she is equally scared when Cherry is accused of being a witch while running errands at night and she peers through the car window as young men taunt Cherry about her past.

Undaunted, Banda announces that Shula has the power to predict rainfall and takes her to see a white farmer (Travers Merrill). Huddling inside her ceremonial robes, Shula remains silent, even when Cherry drops on all fours to try and encourage her and Banda reprimands his wife for failing to teach Shula her spiel and threatens to send Cherry back to the camp unless she bucks her ideas up. He also takes Shula on to a daytime chat show, whose presenter (Innocent Kalaluka) ponders whether she is just a little girl rather than a witch when a hostile caller accuses Banda of exploiting her so that he can promote a new range of eggs designed to put life back into Zambian breakfasts.

Banda punishes Shula by sending her back to the camp and she is placed inside a large head statue. A tour party comes over to her and a white woman (Gloria Huwiler) asks why she is inside this grotesque object. But, instead of being outraged, she suggests that Shula poses for a photograph with her and promises to send her a copy. Restored to duty, Shula further annoys Banda by locking him out of the minibus while on a visit to an industrial plant and one of the workers has to climb through a window to unlock the door.

Rather than punishing her, however, Banda sends Shula to the local school for blind children and she smiles during a lesson on punctuation. Yet, during a game of Chinese whispers, she is pulled along the ground by her ribbon because Banda has been tasked by the ruler of the region (Brisky) to make it rain so that the farmers can save their crops. But, while Shula does her best by collecting maize husks and dancing in the dust, she is unable to end the drought and the other witches worry about how withdrawn and sullen she has become. In the darkness, she calls out that she wishes she had been turned into a goat, as they can roam free. However, the witches warn her that goats are eaten once they have ceased to be useful and they implore Shula to co-operate.

A cart carries a white shroud across the parched scrub and one of the passengers dumps it unceremoniously on the ground. Pulling their ribbons behind them, the witches rush over from the field and mourn the fact that Shula is dead. Back at the camp, they dress in red shawls and sing a lament for her. As they sit in a solemn circle, the heavens open and the screen whites out to show the ribbons fluttering in the breeze on the spindles attached to the frame on the back of the truck. On the soundtrack, the sound of goats bleating grows louder.

Inspired by Nyoni's own visit to a witch camp in Ghana, this is a potent feminist allegory whose stark message about the treatment of women extends far beyond Africa. Some may be confused by the odd elliptical shift and the more oblique symbolism. But the superstition and ignorance of the villagers, Banda's corrupt opportunism and the prejudice of the townsfolk picking on Shula and Cherry are readily apparent and highlight the extent to which ancient traditions and fears continue to impact upon modern life. But Nyoni doesn't reserve her ire solely for bigoted and misguided Africans, as she also criticises the condescending Western tourists whose dollars help perpetuate outdated beliefs and practices.

Capturing the rhythms of rural existence, Nyoni and cinematographer David Gallego make evocative contrasts between the hovel conditions in the wilderness and the luxury of Banda's home and the leisured lifestyles of the mostly female audience at the TV studio. She also draws a remarkable performance out of young Maggie Mulubwa, whose uncomprehending bemusement at what is befalling her makes her rebellion all the more poignant and her fate all the more tragic. Henry B.J. Phiri also impresses as the blowhard civil servant harbouring dreams of becoming a witchcraft entrepreneur, while Nancy Murilo reveals the vulnerability of a trophy wife who is incapable of escaping her cruel past. Her little sermon on respectability through subservience sounds all the more chilling with the debate about patriarchal exploitation continuing in the wake of the Weinstein scandal.

Having made a mark with shorts like the Bafta-nominated Mwansa the Great (2011), The Mass of Men (2012), Z1 (2013) and the award-winning Listen (2014), the Cardiff-based Nyoni cites Michael Haneke as a key influence (hence, perhaps, the presence of the white ribbons). But this is also a deeply personal project, as Shula is named after Nyoni's grandmother, who had defied village custom by insisting on her chieftan husband being monogamous. Apparently, her next venture will be set in Wales. But wherever she makes her films, it seems clear that Nyoni is going to be worth watching.

We rather take ongoing advances in medical science for granted. Thus, when a condition divides both the research and clinical communities, it raises more than the odd eyebrow. Some 17 million people worldwide (the majority of whom are women) suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) or, as it's better known to many, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME). Yet, despite patients being bedridden with a combination of exhaustion, acute joint and muscle pain, numbness, headaches, sensitivity to light and/or sound, and bouts of depression, a surprising number of physicians insist that ME is a psychological or even a psychosomatic illness.

Frustrated both by the failure of several specialists to identify her condition and by the fact that so many fellow sufferers are not being taken seriously, American academic Jennifer Brea decided to record her own debilitating episodes and compare them with those of friends she had met through self-help groups online. As she learnt more about ME, she began contacting some of those investigating its causes, symptoms and treatment and she has now collated her findings in Unrest, an advocatory documentary that should do much to heighten awareness of the syndrome among the laity, even though it lacks the scientific rigour to convince entrenched naysayers to think again.

Plunging into the heart of the matter, Brea opens with footage of her struggling on the floor of her home in the middle of an attack. Such is its impact on her body that she has to rely on husband Omar Wasow to take her to hospital. Having established the seriousness of the condition, Brea flashes back to home movies of her 1980s childhood and stills of her adventures as a student at Princeton and Harvard, where she met and married Wasow, a Kenya-born Internet analyst and social network pioneer, who now teaches politics at Princeton.

All seemed set for a life of intellectual achievement and personal fulfilment when, at the age of 28, Brea was struck down by a fever of 104.7°. As she recovered, she started having difficulty moving and filmed herself struggling to get up from a couch. She also began losing the power of speech for inexplicable periods and kept involuntarily making fists she couldn't release. Wasow filmed her crawling up the stairs on her hands and knees and joked about how ungallant he felt watching her struggle. Yet, even though Brea became increasingly sensitive to lights and sounds, an extensive range of medical tests failed to find an explanation for her ailment, although a vague consensus formed around the possibility that she was suppressing a past trauma or was experiencing exam-related stress.

Within two years, Brea had gone from being an intrepidly active young woman to being a bedridden recluse. However, she had not been idle and had used the Internet to learn about CFS/ME and the millions of others who were going through the same ordeal. A flurry of social media clips follow, as patients describe their symptoms and routines, while a news report reveals that a number of influential doctors continue to insist that they are suffering from a phantom syndrome. Brea's own GP informs her that there will be little chance of a cure after five years, but suggests she will reach a plateau of functionality that will make life bearable.

Over images of Brea looking shattered and disorientated, she claims in voiceover that it feels like she has died and has been forced to watch the world outside her window move on without her. She ponders the point of being born and, in a discomfiting close-up, fights back tears as she claims that avoiding suicide now feels like something of a triumph, as she battles the sense of grief she feels at all the things she will never get to do. Trying to avoid self-pity in recognising the gravity of her situation, she ends her video diary entry with shrugging resignation at the sadness she must now endure.

Aware she is not alone, Brea reaches out to Jessica Taylor in Kent, who agrees to be filmed celebrating her 22nd birthday with her parents with heroic good cheer. Taylor explains in voiceover how she got a virus at 14 and spent four years in a semi-coma with the medical staff despairing of her. Her mother helps her sip champagne before she has an injection, while her sister does her make-up.

Taylor explains that she stays sane by exploring the world in her mind and we are shown images of the reef where she would love to swim among the brightly coloured fish. She returns to the reality, however, by being strapped to a stretcher for a physio appointment to alleviate her chronic osteoporosis. Despite growing four inches since becoming bedridden, Taylor has never stood her full height and her father helps her up to put her feet on the floor for the first time in eight years. But, no sooner has she been forced to lie down again than she has a shaking fit that requires her father to hold her for her own protection.

Using her enforced leisure to explore the online coverage of the syndrome, Brea discovers that it is twice as prevalent as multiple sclerosis, which was itself regarded by sceptics as a hysterical condition before the invention of the CAT scanner. She also finds a snippet from a Ricky Gervais show in which he brands those with ME as lazy. Moreover, she makes contact with Dr Nancy Klimas, who recalls running immunology tests on a patient back in 1984, who had been prescribed a regime of pills for mental health problems. She found that the woman's killer cells were failing to defend her against threats and Klimas labelled her condition a form of acquired immuno-deficiency.

Looking back at the 70 or so epidemics that had hit humankind during the 20th century, Klimas discovered that related incidences had been described as new forms of polio or encephalomyelitis. But CFS was given its current name after Dr Paul Cheney noted the chronic fatigue and the cognitive problems linking over 200 cases connected to a girls' basketball team in Incline Village, Nevada. Yet, the Centres for Disease Control was not convinced by his findings and its head apportioned a similar cluster case in Lake Tahoe to hysteria.

According to Brea, specialists currently have no idea if the virus that causes ME hides in difficult to examine places like the brain or disappears after leaving carnage in its wake. Consequently, few people get to be examined and no advances are being made towards a cure. Her own doctor gives her a drug that has such a remarkable effect that Brea is able to start walking again. She attends the Princeton reunion parade and has a wonderful time right up to the moment she began to feel tired.

Wasow records her getting home to scream with pain in her wheelchair, while Brea's voiceover describes how she could feel everything in her head swelling and the sensation being unbearable. Her husband helps her on to the patio to lie down. But she can't speak and it takes some time before she is calm and strong enough to make it back to bed. Friends arrive for a party and they lament her absence and praise his fortitude. Wasow opines that their normal must seen weird to others judging them by their own standards and he wishes they would stop giving him their pity.

Brea is rightly proud of her husband, whose pioneering work in computing brought him to the attention of Oprah Winfrey. When they first met, she thought Wasow could change the world. But she is now worried that she is preventing him from realising his destiny. He admits to feeling trapped in a kind of amber while their friends have families. But he can cope with everyday setbacks because he knows how much worse they are for Brea, who sobs that she is the worst wife in the world and refuses to believe that she brings him joy.

Online friend Leeray Denton from Georgia knows exactly what Brea is going through, as she reveals that her husband Randy was so worn down by the disease that they divorced after 14 years, with his family pressuring him into believing that Leeray had a mental problem when doctors could find nothing obviously wrong with her. As friends also melted away, her three daughters remained devoted, with Jessica cleaning the house before going to school. But worse followed when Casie was also diagnosed with ME and she had to struggle to raise her own daughter. But her condition made Randy realise what had happened to Leeray and he returned to the fold in a bid to make amends and help in any way he could. Leeray tells Brea that she would make a great mother and we see her raising chicks from eggs. as she begins making inquiries about passing on the condition to her offspring. She is frustrated that so few people have answers and Klimas says it's because no one teaches or writes about it and suggests that the main reason for this is that 85% of sufferers are female. A crash course in medical attitudes to so-called `hysteria' follows, with the Egyptians blaming it on a misplaced womb, the Greeks on sexual deprivation and Freud on suppressed memories. It's now called functional or conversion disorder and Klimas says MS was called Hysterial Paralysis until CAT scanners found the physical evidence of white patches on the brain.

Brea laments the fact that many doctors find ways of demonising diseases they don't understand. In order to prove her point, she takes us to Holsterbro in Denmark to meet Ketty and Per Hansen, who reveal that they have been denied all contact with their ME-suffering daughter Karina in the year since four armed cops came forcibly to remove her to an asylum. Dr Stig Gerdes says the Danish health authorities refuse to recognise ME as a physical disease and Dr Per Fink persists in treating Karina as a psychological case, even though he is regularly subjected to protests by her family.

Brea posits that such medics claim that their patients have allowed themselves to believe that they are ill and have their ideas reinforced by over-indulgent parents. Consequently, removing them from their baleful influence is the only way to cure them. Per Hansen wants to draw attention to the fact that one opinion can decides his child's fate, but he is concerned that an overt protest will only convince the authorities that Fink was right to take Karina away in the first place.

Having once walked home in agony after being informed by a doctor that there was no physical cause to her illness, Brea can sympathise with the Hansens. She had collapsed on getting through the door and has never walked that far again since. But she has no intention of giving up and begins looking into non-medical ways of dealing with CFS/ME. She follows tips on diet and tries Kombucha Mother and some mysterious green gloop, as well as magnesium injections, bone marrow and a combination of hookworms and anti-hookworm whippet spray.

A piece on the toxicity of moulds persuades her to try spending some time in a drier climates and they hitch up a caravan and head into the desert. The impact is astonishing and Brea walks freely on the rocks. Thus, when she feels low again a week later, she decides to establish a mould-free environment by erecting a tent in the garden. She showers on the porch and puts on fresh clothes, but her enthusiasm is dampened when she has a rare spat with Wasow because he wasn't wearing mould-free clothing when he put up the tent.

Returning to the scientific sphere, Klimas explains that mitochondria are the machine that powers our cells. However, it has a problem getting the oxygen and glucose it needs to produce energy and Klimas has started researching why effort has such a negative effect on ME sufferers. She is also seeking to identify ways in which it would be possible to remain in an aerobic space without crashing. Brea hates feeling like a broken battery or a wound-down clock. But she also wants to know why scientists have shied away from exploring why more women get ME than men and why no one is close to a cure 30 years after the disease was first recognised.

She links up with Stanford geneticist Ron Davis, who regards CFS as the toughest disease he has ever worked on. His son Whitney Dafoe has ME and hasn't spoken in a year and lives in the dark with headphones to guard against painful noises. He was a photographer and mother Janet Dafoe and sister Ashley Davis feel helpless and fear that he will either die or commit suicide before the National Institutes of Health agrees to increase the tiny $5.6 million grant it has set aside for research.

Returning to Brea's online friends, we see musician Ren Gill crying in despair at having a non-life. She also shows us Internet memorials to ME suicide victims before stating that she doesn't fear illness or death, but hates the idea that she could disappear because the authorities don't understand and are using bad science to tell lies about her condition. She misses the life she had because she hadn't realised it was so fragile and didn't savour it enough. But she has fought for a new one and is determined to live it to the full and we see ME sufferers from across the world joining in a Skype conference chat.

Progress towards changing minds looks set to be slow, however. But, after Gardes is silenced during a hearing at the Danish parliament when Fink is permitted to speak unchallenged, the Millions Missing protest is launched to call attention to ME's invisible sufferers. Gill writes a song about the strength required to go on, while pairs of shoes are lined up in London as a physical manifestation of those who have been allowed to slip through the net. Brea makes it to her local rally and she feels energised at being able to do something positive.

It pains Wasow, however, that his wife gets so exhausted after doing something like this and she feels she is depriving him of a proper life. He reassures her that he is going nowhere, just as Randy returns to Leeray in the hope of atoning for making the wrong choice when he left in the mistaken belief she would snap out of her funk and recover. In Kent, Taylor also has better days and we see her floating in a swimming pool with her therapists before going for a wheelchair walk.

Brea notes that movies about illness always end with a cure or a breakthrough. But this won't happening in her film...yet. She watches footage of a glorious sunset and fights tears, as she discloses that she needs to keep in her head that, while the illness has robbed her of a life that she can no longer have, it has also taught her things that she is a better person for having learnt. A closing section shows family members caring for Taylor and Dafoe, Leeray and Rudy getting remarried and Karina being allowed home after three years of enforced incarceration. We also see Brea and Wasow dance before she collapses. But the strain is evident on his face in the final shot.

As someone who was accused by an eminent pain specialist of feigning the back condition that has subsequently restricted movement for 15 years, it's easy to empathise with Jennifer Brea and her bid to bring about a better understanding of ME/CFS and the divisions it continues to cause in medical circles. Her personal testimony is stark and courageous, as is her readiness to expose the effect that her condition is having on her marriage. She presents the other case studies with similar balance and restraint, although few will be in any doubt about her feelings for Dr Per Fink. Yet, while Karina Hansen's nightmare leaves a deep impression, it isn't particularly well integrated into a film that sometimes betrays Brea's film-making inexperience. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she is more comfortable discussing her own situation and the alternative therapies she has tried. She also tells the stories of her new friends with tact and affection. But the decision to downplay the scientific aspects while affording plenty of space to well-meaning public protests rather allows emotion to undermine objectivity. Nevertheless, this is a necessary, fearless and humbling insight that might just inspire someone to undertake the research that can lead to an overdue breakthrough.

No one can accuse New College alumna Lucy Walker of playing it safe. Her debut documentary, Devil's Playground (2002), explored the Amish rumspringa rite of passage, while Blindsight (2006) accompanied six blind Tibetan teenagers on an expedition to the north face of Mount Everest. In Waste Land (2010), she focused on the Rio de Janeiro rubbish dump where artist Vik Muniz finds materials and inspiration, while The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom (2001) took her to Japan in the wake of the Tohoku earthquake. Subsequently, she profiled snowboarder Kevin Pearce as he fought back from a brain trauma in The Crash Reel (2013) and, in The Lion's Mouth Opens (2014), she followed actress-director Marianna Palka (whose offbeat drama, Bitch, was reviewed last week) in her bid to discover whether she had inherited her father's Huntingdon's disease.

Now, Walker turns to music in Buena Vista Social Club: Adios, which revisits some of the veteran Cuban musicians who had featured in Wim Wenders's much-loved actuality, Buena Vista Social Club (1999). With the German exec producing, Walker is able to recycle plenty of footage from his intimate record of the concert tour that followed the release of the Grammy-winning 1997 album that had been produced by American musician, Ry Cooder. Some have dismissed Walker's sequel as a cynical cash-in that exploits performers now in their 80s and 90s. But many will have wondered what happened to the brilliant musicians whose careers were shaped by the 1959 Cuban Revolution and this affectionate catch-up fills in the odd gap while bringing admirers up to date.

Following a radio announcement of the death of Fidel Castro in November 2016, Walker cuts back two decades to show Cuban bandleader Juan de Marcos González returning to the Buena Vista Social Club and discovering that it has been refitted as a living space and a gymnasium. The old dance floor still exists in places, but a leap of imagination is required to envisage the venue in its heyday. However, the musicians who once graced the stage are now playing in New York and reflecting on the mixed blessing of becoming famous in their old age and the frustration of knowing that the cheering audience know so little about the historical and social realities they have endured back in Cuba.

A caption informs us that the indigenous Taíno people were famous for their music celebrations in pre-colonial times. But they were all but wiped out after Spain claimed Cuba in 1492 and slaves started to arrive from Africa. This pernicious practice continued unchallenged until 1844, which was known as `the year of the lash' because of the violent suppression of the abolition movement. However, slavery was finally eradicated in 1886, the same decade that saw European and Afro-Cuban music melded into the `son' form that has remained popular in the east of the country.

In 1895, poet José Martí launched a campaign for Cuban independence, which resulted in a break from Spain in 1899. In the 1900s, Afro-Cuban drums including the conga were banned. But, by 1922, Radio Cuba was spreading the son style across the nation and bandleader Arsenio Rodríguez succeeded in reintroducing congas into his music in the 1940s. The following decade saw the golden age of Cuban music. However, as the montage of vintage footage accompanying the credits ends, skirts the Castro years to hail the release of the bestselling revival album, Buena Vista Social Club.

Staying in 1998, we hear Marcos González and record label boss Nick Gold explaining how they had come to make the disc after learning that lots of musicians from the pre-revolutionary heyday were still alive and playing across Cuba. Among them was pianist Rubén González, who had accompanied Rodríguez as he created the salsa and mambo sounds that had become the bedrock of East Cuban music. González describes how termites had eaten his piano, while trumpet legend Guajiro Mirabal recalls how he became a master of the improvised `descarga' style.

One of six children, guitarist Eliades Ochoa grew up in Santiago de Cuba and earned a living playing in bars and brothels, where the hookers often had to help him out. Singer Pío Leyva was one of the great `soneros' of his day, yet he insists he merely sang from the heart because that's what people wanted to hear. As a boy, bassist Orlando `Cachaíto' López wanted to play the violin, but his grandfather reminded him that the double bass was a family tradition and 30 members of his family currently play the instrument. His mastery is matched by that of Barbarito Torres, who became such a virtuoso that he was dubbed `the Jimi Hendrix of the laúd' and it amuses him that, when Cooder gave him a cassette of a solo that he wanted him to copy, he realised that he was listening to himself.

Singer and trova guitarist Compay Segundo had started out in Los Compadres with Lorenzo Hierrezuelo in 1947. He was 90 when Cooder found him and he chats to locals about his secret of only taking small portions of chicken and love so that he doesn't get bored. Segundo also hailed from Santiago and had worked in a cigar factory in order to raise the money to travel to Havana, where he started to play in 1934. However, racism was so endemic during this period that clubs were segregated. But lighter skinned musicians were smuggled into `whites only' venues and Marcos González describes how his father had been forced to play exhausting shifts for a pittance, while González remembers being told that he looked too black to pass muster in the stricter clubs.

During the original sessions, Cooder had wanted a softer singing voice and he had been fortunate enough to find Ibrahim Ferrer, who had made his name performing with Los Bocucos. Having turned his back on music after many disappointments, Ferrer was cleaning shoes near the studio. But he had slipped straight back into his trademark soulful sweetness and Omara Portuondo recalls coming in from another studio to listen to him. She also came from a poor, but happy family and she revisits the house where her father had taught her so many songs to perform for the new occupants. Despite wanting to become a ballerina, she had been rejected because she was black and she had turned to singing because no one could stop her. Teaming with her sister Haydée in Cuarteto D'Aida, she was compared to Sarah Vaughan and she proudly remembers recording her theme tune, `Veinte Años', in a single take for Cooder's album.

In order to promote the disc, a number of the musicians (many of whom were elderly and retired) agreed to travel to play a gig at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London. They had to persuade Ferrer to be the frontman, as he was happy to stay at the back of the state. But he soon took to his new role and came to excel at improvisation, long before freestyle hip hop. Although well received, the London sessions were somewhat intimate and it was a concert at the Royal Theatre Carré in Amsterdam that ultimately raised the profile of the Buena Vista Social Club. Fortunately, Wenders was there to film it and his camera captures the backstage tension two days before the show, as Segundo refuses to accept that his guitar is out of tune on `Ay Candela' and Marcos Gonazález despairs of the combo being ready in time.

Declaring that he and Segundo went back a long way, Ochoa wistfully recalls what a privilege it had been to play with him again on `Chan Chan', a delightfully risqué song that Segundo reveals he had once performed for the Pope, who had thoroughly approved. Similarly, Portuondo had been delighted to see Ferrer again and she remembers encountering him for the first time some 50 years earlier when he had been a backing singer for Pacho Alonso, with whom she had appeared on TV with the Cuerteta D'Aida. Walker cuts to a grainy clip of them dancing together in the mid-1960s and contrasts this with poignant footage of them rehearsing all those years later.

Another Santiago native, Ferrer had lost his mother when he was 12 and he had been grateful to land a job hauling sugar sacks on the docks. The Revolution had also started in this eastern heartland and Castro had formed his own Quinteto Rebelde to put new socio-political lyrics to popular songs. Under the postwar Batista regime, black musicians had been much in demand in the clubs and casinos that had been opened by the Mafia. Indeed, singers like Cuerteta D'Aida were able to make good money singing in commercials for the likes of Winston cigarettes. But Portuondo insists that everyone had celebrated the Revolution because they hoped that Castro would eliminate racism. But, as Marcos González soberly states, it's easier to write about reform than introduce it.

Some were not happy with the change of government, however, as Haydée Portuondo had sent her daughter to Miami during Operation Peter Pan and she had missed her so much that she also left shortly afterwards. Hurt by what she felt at the time was a betrayal, Omara Portuondo had decided to go solo in 1967 and she retained her status under Castro. But Ferrer was reluctant to challenge Pacho Alonso and felt he had let everyone down when his attempt to leave Los Bocucos ended in comparative failure. But the evident pleasure he and Portuondo derive from rehearsing together is enchanting and there is a genuine warmth to the backstage banter.

Following their triumph in the Netherlands, the Buena Vista Social Club played Carnegie Hall to great acclaim in New York and a montage shows the elderly musicians touring the world and being feted like rock stars. Revelling in his new-found fame, Ferrer came into his own and we see him charming a crowd of 14,000 during an outdoor gig in Hyde Park the day after Elton John had only managed to attract an audience of 8000. As their adventure continued, the album earned a Grammy and Wenders received an Oscar nomination for his documentary. Yet Ferrer was denied a visa to attend the Grammys by the US authorities and he made sure that the world's media was in attendance when he posed with his awards.

When Segundo discovered Barbarito Torres in 1977, his mother had made him play even though he had buried his father the day before. During the making of Wenders's film, Segundo had returned to Santiago de Cuba to visit the grave of his grandmother, Ma Regina. She had died when he was seven, but he still recalls how she had always licked his legs when he returned late from an errand to check if he had been skiving in the sea. He had attended her funeral and had been told that she was being carried in a box to protect her from the sun while going to a party. Segundo remembers thinking that this was the proper way for a woman as important as his grandmother to travel and he had been given an heroic send-off after his own death in 2003. We see footage of his final performance, as he proudly boasts that he had fulfilled Marti's three conditions for a happy life, as he had fathered a child, planted a tree and written a book.

Despite suffering from memory lapses, Rubén González keeps playing and it's almost a miracle to see him struggle on to the stage and then play faultlessly for an adoring crowd. He jokes that the spirits of music must be protecting him, as we learn that he was awarded Cuba's highest cultural honour, the Order of Félix Varela, along with Ferrer and Portuondo, before his death in 2003. Ferrer also played to the end, drawing admiring gasps as he sashays on stage during a rendition of `Bruca Maningua', a song about black slaves demanding their freedom from the spirit-crushing white man. Looking back in his late 70s, Ferrer was pleased to get his last shot at success and singer Idania Valdés remembers his last performance at the Marciac Jazz Festival, when he was so ill that the organisers suggested cancelling. But Ferrer went on and sat down to sing, even though he needed oxygen after every other song. He died four days later in 2005 and, on his anniversary on 3 August, Portuondo sings his theme song `Dos Gardenias'.

She remains a trouper, although she looks to have slowed down in a shot of her walking across her home. But Ochoa keeps playing and attracts such a crowd at La Casa de Trova in Santiago de Cuba in 2016 that those who couldn't get into the hall danced in the street outside. A few months earlier, the new line-up had been invited to Washington by Barack Obama in a bid to cement improved relations with Cuba. Old stagers Portuondo, Ochoa and Torres had been joined by Valdés, pianist Rolando Luna and Mirabal's trumpeter grandson Guajirito and they had enjoyed the experience, despite having to dodge political questions from the press. They had also played their first gig in Miami in 2015 and trombonist Jesus `Aguaje' Ramos explains how important it was to reach out to the exiled community. Timbales player Filiberto Sanchez reminisces about playing there with Benny Moré in 1959, as his bandmates catch up with family members they had not seen in decades.

In March 2016, President Obama had flown to Havana to see Raúl Castro. He is shown braving the rain to meet ordinary Cubans and to attend a baseball game. But life goes on for the surviving members of the Buena Vista Social Club. We are introduced to tres player Papi Oviedo in a silent close-up, as a world tour concludes on home soil. Portuondo vows to keep singing until she draws her last breath, as not only does song make us human, but it also shows that the Spanish never managed to silence the slaves. A white-out montage pays a final tribute to González, Segundo, López (who died in 2009), Leyva (2006) and the previously unmentioned Manuel `Puntillita' Licea (2000) and Manuel Galbán (2011). And, fittingly, we close with the curtain coming down at the end of a Havana 2016 rendition of `Ay Candela' that has young and old alike dancing in the aisles.

Only the most curmudgeonly would deny the members of this wonderful collective its last hurrah. Walker may lean a little heavily on `found footage', but it's a genuine pleasure to renew acquaintance with the likes of Segundo, González and Ferrer, while getting to know more about Portuondo, Torres and Ochoa. As one would expect, the musicianship is impeccable and one is left hoping that the next generation is ready to assume the Buena Vista mantle. Some have sniffed at the inclusion of some farewell performances, but Ferrer's determination to sing when so clearly ailing is not only testament to the BVSC spirit, but also to that of Cuba itself, which keeps defying the odds and bouncing back from setbacks that sagacious external experts have confidently predicted will spell the end of the Castro era. But the last thing this fond and respectful documentary could ever be dubbed is exploitative, as is does more than its predecessor to put the music in a socio-historical context and to show its protagonists as the product of artistic and political struggle rather than just tenacious longevity.

We stay with music in The Ballad of Shirley Collins, in which Tim Plester and Rob Curry introduce us to another seasoned performer overcoming adversity to do what she knows and loves. Made over three years and following the efforts of one of Britain's most admired folk singers to conquer the vocal condition that had silenced her 30 years earlier, this follow-up to Way of the Morris (2010) - which centred on Adderbury's famed Morris dancing troupe - takes its cues from Shirley Collins's autobiography, America Over the Water. But this is anything but a straightforward film profile, as Curry and Plester strive to take the screen documentary in an intriguingly new direction.

Opening captions explain that Shirley Collins and her sister Dolly were at the forefront of the English folk revival in the 1960s and 70s. In 1980, however, a condition known as dysphonia caused Collins to lose her voice and she has since sought to make a different contribution to the cause of preserving old songs and the memory of the country folk who has passed them down through the ages. Over footage of the Lewes Bonfire that sees Pope Paul V rather than Guy Fawkes burned in effigy, we hear a radio recording of Collins singing before we see her performing `Calvary Hill' (collected from Henry Hill in Lodsworth, Sussex in 1889) in the days of black-and-white television.

Curry and Plester cross-cut the archive material with shots of lush, rolling countryside before whisking us off to the Troubadour coffee house in South Kensington, where Collins watches the footage with comedian Stewart Lee. He admits that his teenage self would hate him for being such a fan, but she reminds him that audiences in this period were young radicals and that there was something edgy about the scene. Her mother had warned her of the dangers of coffee shops and it was through her friendship with Ewan MacColl that she met the American ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, who had a profound impact on her life.

For a while, they lived with his ex-wife Elizabeth and her new partner (along with Lomax's 10 year-old daughter) in a flat in Highgate and we see grainy home-movie images of the young Collins and Lomax posing beside Karl Marx's grave. After a while, however, she accompanied him on a song-collecting expedition to the Deep South and she recalls having to lie to US Immigration that she had no connections with the Communist Party. Lee shows her the files that British Intelligence were keeping on MacColl and Lomax and she realises that her lover and mentor was being followed wherever he went.

Collins had always been keen to avoid interpreting the songs she sang and the trip to the States reinforced her conviction that her role was to present the music in a pure state so that the audience could derive their own meaning. We hear extracts from an interview she conducted on the trip with a woman who sings an unnamed English tune that her mother had taught her. The contrast between this pleasingly discordant rendition and Collins's tuneful take on `Sweet England' (collected from Miss Eliza Pace in Hayden County, Kentucky in 1917) is marked, but charming.

Over footage of hop farmers and beer brewers, the song is juxtaposed with Collins revealing how transported English convicts and indentured servants brought the songs to the Appalachian plantations and they had survived because of the isolation of the communities and the lack of alternative forms of entertainment. Indeed, she and Lomax were fortunate to make their trip when they did, as the combination of television, social mobility and Civil Rights transformed the South and the songs may well have been lost forever.

However, Collins grew up in a Hastings that retained many of its old traditions and she attends the Maytime Jack in the Greens Festival and recalls an old fisherman who used to keep a smoking fish amongst his wares on the sea wall. Pletser and Curry present jerkicam impressions of the frolics in the streets before settling into the pub for a sing-song, with Collins looking on approvingly, as she reunites with old friends and new fans. She returns to the home where her grandparents taught her and Dolly folk and music-hall songs and she recalls Lomax and Elizabeth coming to hear them sing with their mother.

A letter home (read by Hannah Arterton) reveals how scared Collins had been in Kentucky, as the people were primitive and still resorted to frontier methods of solving disputes. Over a tape recording of a good ol' boy breaking into song as he chatted, Collins confides how moonshine makes men wicked and how one man had been shot in an argument over a stray cow. Tensions were also rising in the mines and even Lomax confesses to being nervous in some of the more isolated communities. But they stuck to their task and Collins was proud to be cited as the assistant of a man she loved so much that she went to syringe his ears after signing off her missive.

American folk singer Sam Amidon comes to see her and listens to some of the field recordings gathered for the Songs of the South album. She is still touched by an entire rustic community booming out harmonies and she regales Amidon with examples of the bigotry she experienced in Kentucky and the warmth of the welcome they received from the dirt poor black people they met in the backwoods of northern Mississippi. A twanging guitar hints at the link between folk and the blues, as Amidon marvels at the quality of the recordings and the fact that the young Collins had embarked on such a potentially perilous mission with a man two decades her senior. As she listens to a playback of a woman singing a lullaby, Collins is amused by her remark, `I used to could sing,' as she had endured her own problems with her vocal chords. So, she meets with psychiatrist Dr John Tully in the Saxon church of St Andrew, Bishopstone and recalls how she lost her voice when second husband Ashley Hutchings (a founder member of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span) left her for another woman during one of The Albion Band's engagements at the National Theatre. She concedes that her humiliation might have contributed to the fact that her voice simply failed to work on some nights and she accepts that she should not have allowed her heartbreak to affect her so badly. But her rival did keep showing up at the venue wearing Hutchings's jumpers.

She sought help from various sources, but nothing seemed to work. Tully asks about her relationship with her father and she recalls him leaving when she was 11 because her mother refused to give up the bus conducting she had started during the war. As she reflects on getting her revenge by not seeing him again until she was 32, Collins reveals that people tend to leave her rather than the other way round. Tully asks about her jobs and she trots through being a charwoman in a country house, a secretary in a literary agency, a clerk at the British Museum bookshop, an assistant to a Cecil Sharp accountant and the placement at a job centre she took to retain her benefits and which saw her through to retirement at 60.

Without reaching any conclusions, this offbeat therapy session ends abruptly and an unidentified song plays over the early stages of a reunion with poet and musician David Tibet of Current 93. He has brought a stash of memorabilia, including coloured flexi bootlegs from Russia and Pete Seeger's book on playing the five-string banjo that contains a note from Alan Lomax about the quality of Collins's voice. She thanks him for always trying to encourage her to sing again and values his friendship above all others. Hence, she confides that she feels she has let her sister Dolly down by not doing enough to promote her achievement as a song arranger. Over old tapes of Dolly playing the piano, Collins recalls seeing her lying in the undertaker's with gardening dirt under her fingernails and she was glad she had been able to indulge her passion to the end.

Naturally, Collins's own passion is singing and (following an unmentioned guest slot at Tibet's behest in 2014) she teamed up with Stephen Thrower, Ian Kearey and Ossian Brown to record her first album for 38 years in her cottage in Lewes. She is unhappy with the first take, but is determined to give the songs the airing they deserve and she pays a visit to singer Elle Osborne in her caravan. They sip elderflower vodka and this reminds Collins of a blind man named Oscar from Arkansas, who had killed seven men and possibly blinded his wife Olive in one eye because he was `the fightingest man' around. But she was a wonderful singer and Collins has resurrected `Pretty Polly' for the sessions. She also recalls meeting Almeda Riddle, who had twice been swept away by Ozark typhoons and whose version of `The Merry Golden Tree' astonishes Collins because she had never seen the ocean in her life and yet sang about it with such insight.

Collins also looks up `The Rich Irish Lady', which Hubert Barker had sung for them in Chilhowie, Virginia. He struggles to remember the words, but is encouraged to tell the story of the last verses and Collins finds it under the title `The Brown Girl' in a compendium of songs she had bought from Foyle's in London and which Lomax had tried to appropriate when he returned to America. These items help bolster her confidence as the second week of recording commences. A passing train spoils one take and she explains that she is happy to be working from home, as she didn't want a studio engineer judging her. She calls the song's heroine Nancy and Polly instead of Sally in the next two takes and lets slip a curse before producing a strong performance that she decrees the best she will get it.

One of the tracks is `Washed Ashore' (which was Dolly's final song) and she visits a keyboard workshop to hear the half-pipe organ that her sister had once played and becomes tearful as the memories flood back. Back home, she cooks for the band, as she describes how the birds had been singing when they had recorded a bloody ballad entitled `Cruel Lincoln'. This sense of authenticity remains important to her and she reconciles herself to the fact that she is being true to the songs and the people who taught them to her even if her voice is no longer as crystal clear as it once was.

As she reports in a letter to her mother and sister towards the end of her travels with Lomax, Collins knew that she had to return to Sussex and her love of her homeland is readily evident in a live performance of `Awake, Awake' beside a blazing bonfire. The flying sparks almost send out a warning as ominous as the lyric, `repent, repent sweet England, for dreadful days draw near'. But, if folk lore, music and art teach us anything, it's that the people of this country manage to find a way to survive and thrive. So, maybe the end isn't quite nigh yet, no matter what the ongoing state of Brexit play might suggest.

Filling in some of the gaps left by Rogier Kappers's Lomax the Songhunter (2004) and evoking Jan Leman's Billy Connolly-led Bert Jansch tribute Acoustic Routes (1992), Samantha Peters's comeback study, Agnetha: ABBA and After (2013), and the meeting between Sheila Stewart and Aidan Moffat in Paul Fegan's Where You're Meant to Be (2016), this is a treat for folk aficionados and newcomers alike. Combining archive material with lyrical shots of the Sussex landscape, Curry and Plester go out of their way to avoid the `talking head' format and make adroit use of guest interviewers to guide the reminiscences. But, even though Collins is a plain-speaking raconteur, she is also somewhat evasive and we don't get to know a great deal about her personality or private life, as she keeps shifting the focus back on to the songs and their fascinating transatlantic journeys.

This is fine, as the recordings from the 1959 Buick tour of the southern states make for compelling listening and, together with Collins's correspondence and anecdotes, offer some sly insights into the kind of folks who threw their weight behind Donald Trump this time last year. Moreover, it's the music that has shaped Collins and the fact that she felt compelled to record again shows how much it means to her. But, despite what is says on the tea mug that she raises to celebrate the completion of the project, Collins is anything but a diva and this is a worthy tribute to her and the music she has dedicated her life to collecting and sharing.