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Sofia
13th Sofia International Film Festival
Ron Holloway, Berlin, 10 May 2009
Dilys Powell (1901-1995), the venerated doyenne of British criticism, taught me a lesson I never forgot. One afternoon on the Croisette, some three decades ago, we interrupted our discussion on D.W. Griffith and John Ford, two of her favorite directors, whom she had t at length about in the Sunday Times and Punch.
I wanted to hear her discuss the pros and cons of what we had seen among the Cannes competition entries.
So, brashly, I reached into my shoulder bag and pulled out my freshly penned Variety report on the first half of the festival. It was loaded with pungent flowing commentary for a dozen Cannes entries, some of which appeared to me to be sure candidates for Palme laurels, others just trendsetters.
Dilys paged through my lengthy ledger of opinion snorting without raising an eyebrow. Then let me have it right between the eyes: “Ron, one film can make a festival!”
She was, of course, right. That year, we hadn’t seen anything very impressive up to then at the Palais press screenings. But the “Dilys scissors” wasn’t a lesson I could take to heart during the world’s most respected film festival.
So over the years to follow, I still kept to my shotgun approach to Cannes film criticism on the assumption that this is what our trade newspaper readers wanted to read. To say nothing of a hidden fear that I just might overlook the Golden Palme winner in my scribbling.
The case was different, however, when it came to the lesser film festivals. Here, as Dilys pointed out, one film could indeed make a festival memorable. My subsequent reports on these events were often written with the Dilys Powell scissors in my head.
And it paid dividends at the 13th Sofia International Film Festival (5-15 March 2009).
Sofia was packed with reruns from the major festivals, films that I had already seen and mostly written about. And although the directorial tributes to Jim Jarmusch and Wim Wenders were welcomed relief, still they were rather run-of-the mill for a conscientious critic.
The one film that caught my eye was Europolis: The Town on the Delta (Bulgaria/Austria), a documentary by Bulgarian filmmaker Kostadin Bonev. Those 80 minutes stayed with me for the rest of the week.
Europolis is based on a 1933 novel with the same title by Eugeniuu Botez, an engineer by profession, who was then serving as the commandant of the harbor town of Solina. Botez chose to tell Solina’s story under an anonymous pen name – Jean Bart – and with good reason.
At that time, his fictional “Europolis” (read: Solina) on the Danube Delta at the Bulgarian-Romanian border was a booming seaport with ships arriving daily from around the globe. Jean Bart, however, prophecized in no uncertain terms the slow death of Solina, although, back then, this lively town in the early 1930 was populated with a peaceful community of ethnic nationalities, mostly seamen, from across Europe as far away as the British Isles.
Jean Bart was soon proven right. Shortly after his controversial book appeared in print, the seaport did begin to die. First, from the aftermath of the World War One. Then, due to the approaching clouds of World War Two, a calamity that would eventually split Europe in two.
In Kostadin Bonev’s Europolis: The Town on the Delta the ruins of the seaport offer token evidence of what once was. A glance at the town’s cemetery reveals a population of Greek pirates, British sailors, French cooks, and Bulgarian coal workers hired to stoke the vessels’ boilers, and you name it.
A few oldtimers are still around to tell tall tales of times past – among them, a pegleg tailor, a gravedigger, and a former smuggler.
Their memories are the stuff of legends and adventure. The story of a lost Europolis before the European Union would fulfill its dream of destiny.
Europolis: The Town on the Delta was, indeed, the one film that made Sofia a festival for the books.
Kostadin Bonev, Europolis: The Town on the Delta
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Belgrade
37th FEST Belgrade
Ron Holloway, Berlin, 9 May 2009
Alone the fact that over 90,000 admission tickets were sold made the 37th Belgrade International Film Festival – FEST (20 February to 1 March 2009) one for the books. Thanks for a roving festival staff headed by Miroljub “Mica” Vukovic, top-quality entries were booked from Europe’s leading film festivals (Cannes, Venice, Locarno): Stephen Daldry’s opening film The Reader (USA/Germany), Clint Eastwood’s Changling (USA) Ron Howard’s Frost / Nixon (USA), Gus Van Sant’s Milk (USA), and Darren Arnofsky’s The Wrestler (USA).
The “Horizons” section also included choice European hits: Karen Shakhnazarov’s The Vanished Empire (Russia), Matteo Garrone’s Gomorra (Italy), Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo (Italy), Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Lorna’s Silence (Belgium/France/Italy/Germany), Tom Tykwer’s The International (USA/UK/Germany), and Laurent Cantet’s Entre les murs (The Class) (France).
With a lineup like that, no wonder 90,000 avid film fans vied with every means at their disposal to beg or trade a ticket for a top-drawer international screening. Thanks to the spacious capacity of the Sava Center venue, most did not go away disappointed.
Far more interesting for cineastes, however, were the entries in the “Europe Out of Europe” section. Here you could see the cream of Cent/East and East European productions selected from the Moscow International Film Festival, Sochi Open Russian Film Festival, St. Petersburg Festival of Festivals, and Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
Some of the productions seen here owed their existence to the benefice of cross-European film funding. Particularly impressive was Kazakh film director Rustem Abdrashev’s Podarok Staliu (A Gift for Stalin) (Russia/Kazakhstan/Israel/Poland). Set in the midst of the “dark age” turmoil of the postwar years, when the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear bomb, we experience through the eyes and memories of a child how, in 1949, enormous pain was inflicted upon minority ethnic groups as they were expelled from their homelands by order of the Stalinist government.
In A Gift for Stalin Shaska, a Jewish lad traveling on a train with his ailing grandfather, suddenly finds himself alone in the steppes of Kazakhstan, simply because the body of his deceased grandfather has to be dropped off at a village train stop. He survives only because of the sympathy and understanding of native villagers of different races, themselves outcasts for whichever reason. To his credit, Rustem Abdrashev chronicles both sides of the ethnic turmoil, although most of the blame is directed at callously corrupt officials who rape and plunder their way to their own eventual downfall.
Along the same lines,though in a contemporary context, Georgi Ovashvili’s Gagma Napiri (The Other Bank) (Georgia/Kazakhstan) narrates the poignant story of a 12-year-old boy (Tedo Bekhauri), who journeys alone and penniless across the expanse of Georgia to reach the Abchasian border in a futile search to find his father. He witnesses rape, robbery, poverty, and death as the ongoing ethnic conflict between Georgians and Abchasians surfaces at every turn in the road. With pennies in his pocket but determination in his heart to find his father in the devastated village of his birth, he does reach his destination, only to discover that his father has married again. How the young nonprofessional actor these challenges makes for rewarding viewing. Given a standing ovation at the screening I attended, Tedo Bekhauri was surrounded by fans seeking photos and autographs. It was the emotional highpoint of the festival.
A Gift for Stalin received the Eritrocite award for Best Film and The Other Bank was awarded with a Special Mention. Both well deserved.
Thanks to the foresight of programming director Slobodan Sijan, a roundtable on “SEE Women Film Directors” spotlighted Southeast European Women Directors from the Balkan countries and a bit beyond. The discussion, running over a four-hour stretch, covered a wide range of film production (features, documentaries, short films) by women directors from this region. In attendance were filmmakers, lecturers, artists, historians, and festival directors from the republics of former Yugoslavia and neighboring countries Some 60 relevant films of past and present were discussed, some analyzed in great depth. FEST is currently preparing a publication on the event.
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Budapest
40th Hungarian Film Week Budapest
27 January - 3 February 2009
by Ron Holloway, Berlin, 25 March 2009
Hardly a coincidence – just days before the opening of the 40th Hungarian Film Week in Budapest (27 January to 3 February 2009), the Hungarian Parliament voted to amend its film law and bring it in line with European Union regulations. Previously, the Hungarian film law had offered hefty tax rebates to international film productions. Now, state subsidies and tax allowances for films are limited to productions with “appropriate cultural content” – meaning that the focus should be on projects that reflect Hungarian and European customs and values. Preferences, however, are given to producers and directors who had won awards at international film festivals. Also, 20 % of the national film subsidies are open to filmmakers from other EU countries. How this will play out economically in the future was debated at a press conference held by the Motion Picture Public Foundation of Hungary (MMK) shortly after the festival opened.
Nevertheless, given the global crisis that has hit Hungary especially hard, Hungarian cinema does not seem to be suffering all that much. As listed in the festival’s 230-page catalogue, a total of 335 films were completed over the past 12 months: 26 features, 120 shorts, 152 documentaries, 28 scientific films, and 9 TV productions. Of these, 101 films were selected by committee vote to compete in the five respective categories. And the crowds turned out in record numbers. In a move that provided the festival with nearly twice as many seats as in previous years, the 40th anniversary edition relocated from the former Millennium Theatre and Palace Cinema multiplex in the Mammut mall to four new locations: the Budapest Congress and World Trade Centre (1500 seats), the Palace Cinemas (9 screens) in the Mom Park mall, the Urania National Film Palace, and the Bem arthouse cinema. Altogether, 32,000 tickets were sold. Furthermore, 13 of the 18 feature films selected to compete for the Golden Reel Award were world premieres, seven credited to first-time directors. “Perhaps this explains why there was such a heavy audience turnout,” noted festival director Eva Vezer.
The anniversary festival opened with Balint Kenyeres’s delightful 15-minute short, A repuls tortenete (The History of Aviation), based on a tale by New Zealand short story writer Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). Shot on the cliffs of Normandy, The History of Aviation is best described as a la belle époche impressionist painting that springs to life. Picture a French bourgeois family enjoying a picnic at the seaside in the summer of 1905. Suddenly a strange bird takes to the air from a nearby cliff. In tune with the movements of the “flying bird,” the camera takes off, too. Its rhythmic, graceful dips and turns are a cinematic homage to the birth of aviation. Balint Kenyeres is a talent to keep an eye on. His Prije zore (Before Dawn) (Hungary, 2005), a 13-minute fiction film without a cut about a foiled smuggling attempt to transport people illegally across a border, was awarded the 2005 European Prize for Best Short film. Shot in the middle of a waving wheat-field just before dawn, sweeping camera movements reveal a police-raid that ends with everyone arrested save for a bewildered child left behind and still hidden in the field.
The festival closed on another winsome note: Gergela Fonyo’s musical Made in Hungaria, programmed out-of-competition. As this story goes, American rock‘n’roll arrived in Hungary in 1963 thanks to a musically talented teenager returning home with his parents after four years in the States. Needless to say, Hungarian youth culture back then was longing to shed oppressive communist shackles on the dance floor – to say nothing of the still-fresh memories of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
Under jury president Marta Meszaros, the Golden Reel was awarded to a first feature: Aron Matyassy’s Ultolso idok (Lost Times), his diploma film at the Budapest Film Academy. Set in 1997 along the eastern Hungarian border, Lost Times offers a melodramatic portrait of post-communist times that also parallels conditions in Hungary today. Ivan, a car mechanic burdened with an autistic sister to take care, makes some extra money on the side smuggling diesel oil over the border from the Ukraine. When the sister is raped in the forest, she becomes mute – and Ivan seek vengeance.
The Gene Moskowitz Foreign Critics Prize was also awarded to a debut feature film: Viktor Oszkar Nagy’s Apafold (Father's Acre). A dark tale of patricide, Father’s Acre features veteran Hungarian actor Janos Derzsi (memorable as the station-master in Bela Tarr’s award-winning The Man from London, 2007) as the luckless father who return home from a 10-year prison term and tries in vain to right things with his teenaged son. An affair with his former wife’s sister doesn’t help matters much.
Overlooked for an award, György Palfi’s improvisational I’m Not Your Friend is nonetheless destined for a long life on the festival circuit. Best known for his multiple award-winning Hukkle (Hiccups) (2002) and Taxidermia (2006), both absurdist adventures into the Hungarian psyche, Palfi moves deftly from one experimental form of filmmaking to another. In this first part of I’m Not Your Friend, a planned trilogy with the working title Paradise – we follow nine kindergarten children (3 to 4-years-old) as they go through the rigors of first-time communication. Of course, it isn’t long before friendships in this play-pen environment run hot and cold – until one little rascal, who can’t get his way with the others any more, screws up his face, and blurts out in tears: “I want my mama!” In an interview Palfi confirmed that he had shot 120 minutes with a hand-held digital camera and a soundman, from which 55 minutes were then edited into the finished film. Next comes Purgatory, in which the kids are asked to speak plainly about themselves. Finally, for Hell, the planned closing film in the trilogy, an improvised fiction film will be created from the foregoing sketches.
Another Budapest premiere that should do well on the international festival circuit was Peter Sparrow’s mystery tale, simply titled 1. Adapted from Polish science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem’s novel One Human Minute, this is the story of a book deposited in a rare-book shop by a passing stranger. Suddenly the store is flooded with copies of „1”, an "almanac" without author or publisher that purports to describe the whole of humanity within the space of one minute! An engaging though mind-boggling tale of the implausible, Sparrow/Lem’s 1 was heaped with a bundle of festival awards: Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Visual Design.
Gabor Zsigmond’s Kemek a porfeszekben (Hick-Town Spy – Gabor Rimner’s Story), awarded a share of the Best Documentary Prize, is also one of those films that begs belief. Take documentarist Gabor Zsigmond at his word, then a certain Gabor Rimner was recruited by the CIA in 1973 to spy on his country. In Hick-Town Spy we follow the double-agent around his routes as he drops off secret information for his American employer. At the same time, Rimner reveals how he transported this secret information in assorted containers, somewhat like a professional magician giving away his secrets. A mockumentary? Maybe, save that both Zsigmond and Rimner take sheer delight in retelling the hick-town spy’s tales of quaint espionage. After all, hicks can be pretty resourceful people, as Mark Twain once put it.
By far, the most entertaining film seen at the 40th Hungarian Film Week was Livia Gyamathy’s Kishalak … nagyhalak (Big Fish … Little Fish). The “Little Fish” in this fiction documentary is an old pensioner whose illegal catch is confiscated by watchful game wardens. Meanwhile, further down the stream, bigtime poachers are dragging in bundles of fish from the same river, thanks to corrupt game wardens paid to look the other way. Meanwhile, the old pensioner suffers a further humiliation when his modest fishing tackle is thrown on a bonfire.
Awards
Main Prize “Golden Reel”
Ultolso idok (Lost Times), dir Aron Matyassy
Best Genre Film
Valami Amerika 2 (A Kind of America 2), dir Gabor Herendi
Best Director
Peter Gardos, Trefa (Prank)
Best Cinematography
Mate Toth Widamon, 1, dir Peter Sparrow
Best First Film – ex aequo
Intim fejloves (Intimate Headshot), dir Peter Szajkl
Papirrepulok (Paper Planes), dir Simon Szabo
Best Actress
Julia Ubrankovic, Majdnem szuz (Virtually a Virgin), dir Peter Basco
Best Actor
Andor Lukats, Prima Primavera, dir Janos Edelenyi, and Mazli (Fluke), dir Tamas Kemenyffy
Best Screenplay
Balint Hegedus Mazli (Fluke), dir Tamas Kemenyffy
Best Original Music
Albert Markos, Veronika Harcsa, Ultolso idok (Lost Times) dir Aron Matyassy
Best Producer
Attila Csaky, Papirrepulok (Paper Planes), dir Simon Szabo, and 1, dir Peter Sparrow
Best Visual Design
Fruzsina Lanyi, Peter Sparrow, Judit Varga, 1, dir Peter Sparrow
Best Editor
Wanda Kiss, 1, dir Peter Sparrow
Best Sound
Csaba Major, Mazli (Fluke), dir Tamas Kemenyffy, Valami Amerika 2 (A Kind of America 2), dir Gabor Herendi, and Pinprick, dir Daniel Young
Gene Moskowitz Foreign Critics Prize
Apafold (Father's Acre), dir Viktor Oszkar Nagy
People's Choice (via Internet)
Kameleon (Chameleon), dir Krisztina Goda
Best Short Film – ex-aequo
Alena utazasa (Alena's Journey), dir. Karoly Ujj Meszaros
Hideg berek (Cold Grove), dir. Mihaly Schwechtje
Best Documentary – ex-aequo
Csempelevel (Tile Mail), dir Gergo Somogyvari, Judit Feszt
Kemek a porfeszekben (Hick-Town Spy – Gabor Rimner’s Story), dir Gabor Zsigmond Papp
Master of Hungarian Motion Picture
Judit Elek, film director, scriptwriter
Life Achievement Awards
Peter Bacso, film director
Sandor G. Szonyi, film director, studio head
Istvan Szilagyi, actor
Tavadar Bertalan, art director
Fanny Kemenes, costume designer
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Ivanovo - Sochi - Moscow
A Trio of Russian Festivals
by Ron Holloway, Berlin, 30 June 2008
Care to piggyback a quartet of Russian film festivals? It’s much easier than you can imagine. These days, your odyssey on a Russian summer festival circuit begins at the Russian Pavilion in the Marché du Film at Cannes. Newly opened, and serving as an unofficial Russian film office (an official one is still in the talking stage), the Russian Pavilion is well worth the visit, particularly for those Russian film buffs badly in need of visa support for multi-entry festival visits. Located in the Cannes village on “pavilion row” just down the way from the American and beach-side oases, the Russian Pavilion can be easily reached at the end of that regal row, where a flight of stairs leads up to a eye-fetching view over the harbor. There, on most any day during this year’s Cannes festival, you could meet one or more of the kingpins of the four major Russian film festivals, to wit: Alexei Gorzinov, promoting the Zerkalo International Film Festival in Ivanovo (May 26 to June 1); Alexander Rodyansky, heralding the Sochi Open Russian Film Festival (June 7-15); Nikita Mikhalkov, proclaiming the Moscow International Film Festival (June 19-28); and Alexander Mamontov, plugging the St. Petersburg Festival of Festivals (June 23-29).
Among these festival politicos, Alexander Rodyansky was the key Russian personality on the Croisette. He met with Cannes festival director Thierry Frémaux to discuss the possibility of programming his multi-million-rubel production of The Inhabited Island, based on a popular science-fiction tale by the brothers Boris and Arkady Strugatzky and directed by Fyodor Bundarchuk. Budgeted at a reported $36 million, The Inhabited Island ranks as the most expensive production in Russian film history. Conceived as a two-part epic, with special effects along Matrix lines, it currently runs at over four hours in postproduction news releases. Whether Alexander Rodyansky will present the film at next year’s Cannes festival is another question altogether. Since he recently served as a jury member at the Berlinale, Dieter Kosslick put in an early bid for the film to premiere next February in Berlin.
Second Zerkalo International Film Festival in Ivanovo
This year, the drum was beaten pretty loudly at the Russian Pavilion for the new Zerkalo (read: Mirror) International Film Festival in Ivanovo. New to the festival landscape, Zerkalo is sometimes referred to as the “Andrei Tarkovsky Festival” – because the Russian director was born here, while its title refers to his autobiographical masterpiece, Zerkalo (Mirror) (USSR, 1976). Now in its second year, and running on the tailend of the Cannes film festival, journalists would have to have good connections at the Russian Foreign Ministry to wrangle a quick visa to attend Zerkalo. I know, because I tried – and fell flat on my face. However, according to Alexei Gorzinov, Zerkalo’s general director, Cannes visitors this year could catch a flight to Ivanovo via Moscow from Paris via Nice on the day after Cannes (May 13-24) closed. Ivanovo is a short 125-mile drive from Moscow to the northeast.
Last year, when the festival was initially launched, it proved to be such a success that 400 guests immediately applied for accreditation to this year’s event. Not surprising – for its president is actress Inna Churikova, the doyenne of Russian stage and screen. And a fully restored version of Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (USSR, 1969) was billed as one of the festival’s key attractions. But the real reason for the festival’s success is the splurge of multiplexes scattered across Russia. Ivanovo, together with neighboring Pilos and Yurievets, can boast of eight cinema halls, offering 100 screenings to circa 15,000 spectators. Altogether, 130 films were screened at the Second Ivanovo Film Festival – 67 features, 25 documentaries, 38 cartoons and shorts. Eleven films from nine countries competed for festival laurels. Among the 16 Russian features programmed by Sergei Lavrentiev in the Competition and the New Russian Films section were six Russian premieres. “The first Zerkalo festival inspired many directors to start making meaningful cinema,” said Alexei Gorzinov in a festival flyer. “It is now prestigious, especially for young filmmakers, to simply get a diploma as participant of the festival.” Apparently, he was referring to the dirge of shoddy film fare hitting the home screens of late.
The Grand Prix was awarded to Kurdish director Hiner Saleem’s Sous les toits de Paris (Under the Rooftops of Paris; above) (France, 2007). Starring Michel Piccoli in this offbeat comedy about a cranky old man who inherits a rundown flat atop the roofs of Paris, Under the Rooftops of Paris shifts into high gear when a younger roommate pushes the octogenarian’s patience to the limit during a sweltering hot summer. Awarded Best Director at Zerkalo, Dorota Kedzierzawska’s Jestem (I Am), her fourth feature film, is arguably her best. The story of a sensitive 11-year-old boy committed by his mother to an orphanage, he runs away to live on an abandoned river-barge somewhere in backwoods Poland and make his way by collecting and selling scrap-iron. I Am was inspired by a real-life news story. Two awards went deservedly to Csaba Bollok’s Iszka utazasa (Iska’s Journey) (Hungary, 2007): Best Actress to Maria Varga, plus the Prize of the Russian Critics Guild. The heart-rending story of a teenager forced to collect scrap-iron to pay for the drinking habits of her mother and stepfather, Iska’s Journey begins when the girl tries to run away and ends when she falls in the hands of a mafia band that specializes in child kidnapping and trans-border prostitution.
Citations for Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema were awarded to Dutch cult director Jos Stelling and Russian veteran actor Alexei Petrenko. Jos Stelling’s uproarious Duska (Netherlands, 2007), the story of an Amsterdam screenwriter and film critic imposed upon by an eastern European movie conman, whom he had once befriended at a backwoods Russian film festival, was a hit at Ivanovo. Alexei Petrenko is best known in Russian cinema for playing the monk Rasputin in Elem Klimov’s previously banned classic Agoniya (Agony) (USSR, 1981). Want to know more about Zerkalo? Then ask Faye Dunaway. She was a Guest of Honor in Ivanovo.
Ivanovo Awards
Main Prize
Sous les toits de Paris (Under the Rooftops of Paris) (France), dir Hiner Saleem
Best Director
Dorota Kedzierzawska, Jestem (I Am) (Poland)
Best Actor
Alessandro Morace, Anche libero va bene, (Along the Ridge) (Italy), dir Kim Rossi Stuart
Best Actress
Maria Varga, Iszka utazasa (Iska’s Journey) (Hungary), dir Csaba Bollok
Awards for Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema
Jos Stelling, director (Netherlands)
Alexei Petrenko, actor (Russia)
Award of Festival President
Elena Nikolaeva, actress (Russia)
Award of Russian Film Critics Guild
Iszka utazasa (Iska’s Journey) (Hungary), dir Csaba Bollok
Audience Award
Foreldrar (Parents) (Iceland), dir Ragnar Bragason
19th Sochi Open Russian Film Festival
Sochi, likened to Cannes with its palm trees and luxury hotels, is not just the principal showcase of new Russian cinema, but also the favored resort of Russian millionaires. Add to this the forthcoming Winter Olympics in 2014, and you have a city that’s rapidly changing its image almost daily. While attending this year’s 19th outing, the talk of the “new metropolis” reached science-fiction dimensions. A luxury hotel will be build on an island in the Black Sea. A double-tiered highway is planned to eliminate traffic jams on the current two-lane highway that takes an hour to reach downtown Sochi from the airport. And a brand international airport will host guests without a stopover in Moscow.
As usual, Sochi Kinotavr (as it’s also known) welcomed 1500 guests, mostly Russian. The competition, programmed by Sitora Alieva, featured 15 films, including one documentary. “It is a good year, considering the interest shown by several international festival directors,” she said in an interview. “But young producers and directors still have a lot to learn. Unfortunately, many aspire to get into Kinotavr in order to justify the capital investments of sponsors – a kind of self-PR.” Among the sidebars were New Russian Shorts, Summer Euphoria (programmed by critic Andrei Plakhov), Special Screenings, Cinema on the Square (commercial blockbusters), and the second half of the “50/50” Series (Best 50 Russian and Soviet Films and Directors). Sochi is also known for its lively Russian film market. This year, however, the market was just wrapping when international guests arrived. Still, a dozen glossy magazines proclaimed hot attractions booked by a hundred or more multiplexes recently built in all the major cities across Russia. One cover story and festival poster featured a new political actioner titled Hitler Kaput! in a James-Bond-like trailer format. And DVDs of new Russian films that were not selected for programming in the festival were handed out like cupcakes to international guests.
Sochi opened with Alexander Proshkin’s Zhivi i pomni (Live to Remember), a screen adaptation of popular writer Valentin Rasputin’s novel with the same title. Set in a Siberian village, it’s the story of a Russian soldier who deserted during the last days of the Second World War and now hides away in a shack near his native village. Only his forgiving wife knows about his whereabouts, which leads to a family tragedy and shame for the village. For this light-handed film fare, Alexander Proshkin was awarded Best Director. The best film of the festival, and a sure bet to make the rounds of the international film festivals, was Mikhail Kalatozishvili’s Dikoye polye (Wild Field), awarded the Best Screenplay (the late Pyotr Lutzik and Alexei Samoryadov), Best Film Music (Alexei Aigi), and the“White Elephant” Award of the Russian Critics. The scenario team of Lutzik and Samoryadov are best known for their masterful Okraina (Outskirts) (Russia, 1998), directed by Lutzik a year before he died. Leaning purposely on a prior tradition of socialist realism, Outskirts narrated in powerful images a modern-day uprising in the provinces against corruption and bureaucracy in the capital. By contrast, Wild Field comes across as an absurd, fantasy-packed drama about a young doctor who just opened his office at an outpost on the steppes of Central Asia. Crazy things happen almost daily – a drunken worker, a shepherd struck by lightning, a sick cow, a beauty of the steppes just stopping by for a visit – all under the sharp observed by a mysterious hermit who pops into view every now on then on the top of a nearby hill. A film of striking poetic visual images.
Bakur Bakuradze’s Schultes (name of the film’s lead role) was awarded Best Film. Previously screened at Cannes in the Directors Fortnight sidebar, the film has been nominated by FIPRESCI Critics for the European FIPRESCI Award. Set in a large Russian city (apparently Moscow), Schultes is a skillful pickpocket thief who, together with a boy assistant, works for a mafia-like organization on special assignments. More of a robot than a human, he cares for his ailing mother and occasionally visits his war-invalided brother in a clinic for stress-syndrome soldiers. Gradually,as his life style unfolds, we see just what had happened to bring this talented sportsman to this stage in his lost life.
Sochi Russian Awards
Best Film
Schultes, dir Bakur Bakuradze
Special Diploma
Novaya zemlya (Terra Nova), dir Alexander Melnik
Best Debut Film
Nirvana, dir Igor Voloshin
Best Actress
Ksenia Rappoport, Yuriev den (Yury’s Day), dir Kirill Serebrennikov
Best Actor
Jethro Skinner, Plyus odin (Plus One), dir Oksana Bychkova
Best Director
Alexander Proshkin, Zhivi i pomni (Live to Remember)
Best Screenplay (post mortem)
Peter Lutzik, Alexei Samoryadov, Dikoye polye (Wild Field), dir Mikhail Kalatozishvili
Best Cinematography
Ilya Demin, Novaya zemlya (Terra Nova), dir Alexander Melnik
Best Film Music (Tariverdiev Prize)
Alexei Aigi, Dikoye polye (Wild Field), dir Mikhail Kalatozishvili
Best Short Film
PAL/SECAM, dir Dmitry Povolorsky
Special Mentions
Rba (The Fish), dir Alexander Kott
Pyatnashki (Tag), dir Natalya Uglitskikh
Russian Critics “White Elephant” Award
Dikoye polye (Wild Field), dir Mikhail Kalatozishvili
Development of Cinema in Russia Award
Alexei Gherman, film director
Armin Medvedev, film fund administrator
30th Moscow International Film Festival
Viewed from the rosy side of its facilities, the 30th Moscow International Film Festival (19-28 June 2008) should rank high as a major event on the calendar. Seen from the professional side, however, this year’s MIFF still has a way to go before it catches up with other A-category competition festivals. That it lags so far behind Cannes, Venice, and Berlin – some festival veterans say even Karlovy Vary, Montreal, and San Sebastian – is a bit of a mystery. Simply because Moscow has everything a festival needs to prosper: a media headquarters in the 8-screen October Theater multiplex, an efficient press center in the functional Khudozhestvenny cinema, a backup venue for gala evenings in the plush Pushkinsky cinema, an informative 300-page catalogue,a glossy daily journal printed in Russian and English, and young volunteers whose English is their second language.
So what’s missing? The money, say informed festival insiders. For some reason, the budget for this year’sfestival was not approved by government officials until just two months before the opening night. Too late to select top quality films, to assure the presence of VIPs, and to organize a representative film market. Also, mosttrade journalists received only a four-day invitation. Despite that singular budget drawback, however, MIFF 30 did set some new in-house standards – if only because of the popularity of program director Kirsi Tykkylainen that enabled her to book competition entries on short notice, plus the fact that the anniversary sidebars programs had already been prepared well in advance.
The international jury, headed by Liv Ullman, awarded the Golden George (aka St. George Statue) to a worthy Iranian entry: Reza Mir Karimi’s Be hamin sadegi (As Simple As That; above), an intimate sketch of a day in the life of a devoted housewife. Similarly, the Silver George, Special Jury Prize, was awarded to Marion Laine’s Un coeur simple (A Simple Heart) (France), a screen adaptation of the Gustave Flaubert classic about a maid devoting herself unselfishly to others without receiving muchfor her painsin return. With just four days to play festival catch-up, I found myself drifting towards the archival discoveries in the Socialist Avant-Gardism sidebar. Here, in a small screening room at the October multiplex, you could see 18 previously shelved and recently restored Soviet films from the silent period through the “thaw” of the 1960s. The series included such legendary films as Kote Mikhaberidze’s Chemi bebia (My Grandmother) (USSR/Georgian Republic) (1929), an hilarious satire on Soviet bureaucracy, and Mikhail Kalatozov’s Gvozd v sapoge (Nail in the Boot) (USSR/Agitprop) (1931), a propaganda parable about a tribunal in which the accusers themselves are found guilty for having manufactured faulty bootsused duringwartime maneuvers.
Another gem was found in the Perspectives section: Igor Maiboroda’s documentary Rerberg i Tarkovsky – Obratnaya storona "Stalkera" (Rerberg and Tarkovsky – Reverse Side of "Stalker"). Running at 140 minutes, this insightful tribute to the talented Soviet painter-cinematographer Georg Ivanovich Rerberg (1937-1999) focuses on his disruptive collaboration with Andrei Tarkovsky during the making of the latter’s Stalker (USSR, 1979), based on a science-fiction, Chernobyl-like story by Boris and Arkady Stugatsky. As chronicled in Maiboroda’s documentary, Tarkovsky and Rerberg had an acrimoniousfalling-out during the shooting of Stalker – so much so that Rerberg refused laterto discuss the matter at all during his lifetime. For Tarkovsky had persuaded the Soviet authorities to let him shoot a new version of Stalker, this time with a new cinematographer, Alexander Knyazhinsky. In this “reverse side” version, Maiboroda offers documentation collected principally from eyewitnesses to tell a different and private story of offended honor and professional pride. Hereafter, film historians may be compelled to reassess the discarded first version of the Stalker masterpiece.
Moscow Awards
Main Competition
Golden St. George – BestFilm
Behamin sadegi (As Simple As That) (Iran), dir Reza Mir Karimi
Silver St. George – Special Jury Prize
Un coeur simple (A Simple Heart) (France), dir Marion Laine
Silver St. George – Best Director
Javor Gardev, Zift (Moth) (Bulgaria)
Silver St. George – Best Actor
Richard Jenkins, The Visitor (USA), dir Tom McCarthy
Silver St. George – Best Actress
Margherita Buy, Giorni e nuvole (Days and Clouds) (Italy/Switzerland), dir Silvio Soldini
Perspectives Competition
Cumbia callera (Cumbia Connection) (Mexico), dir Rene U. Villareal
Special Prize for Outstanding Contribution toWorld Cinema
Takeshi Kitano (Japan)
FIPRESCI (International Critics) Prize
Odnazhdyv provintsii (Once Upon a Time in the Provinces), (Russia), dir Katya Shagalova
Russian Critics Prizes
Main Competition
Be Hamin sadegi (As Simple As That) (Iran), dir Reza Mir Karimi
Perspectives Competition
Odin kadr (One shot) (Denmark), dir Linda Wendel
RussianFilm Clubs FederationPrizes
Main Competition
Zift (Moth) (Bulgaria), dir Javor Gardev
Russian Program
Ne dumay pro belykh obezian (Don’t Think About White Monkeys), dir Yury Mamin
Audience Award
For My Father (Israel), dir Dror Zahavi
Special Prize “I believe. Konstantin Stanislavsky” for Outstanding Acting Achievement in Career and Devotion to Principles of Stanislavsky’s School
Isabelle Huppert (France)
Diplomas for Support of Russian Cinema
Patting yourself on the back for getting an award is one of those win-lose propositions you would just as soon sidestep. Because, to be perfectly honest, I was just one of a half-dozen journalists singled out for a diploma “for Support of Russian Cinema” at the recent 30th Moscow International Film Festival. Others – some of whom deserved the award more than myself – included Kazuo Yamada of Japan, Derek Malcolm of Great Britain, Galina Kopanova of the Czech Republic, Klaus Eder and Hans-Joachim Schlegel of Germany. On the other hand, thanks to a stroke of good fortune, I have been visiting Russia and the former Soviet Union on a regular basis since 1976. A stretch of 30 years. This sprawling country and fabulous filmland had been the favored corner of my Eastern European playground as a roving reporter. Some cities I grew to know like the back of my hand: Moscow, St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), Sochi, Kiev, Tashkent, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Baku, Riga, Tallinn, Vilnius, Almaty, and elsewhere along the way. Often, I wrote feverishly just to keep up. Mostly about filmmakers I respected, many known personally. The list is long and incomplete: Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Parajanov, Elem Klimov and Larisa Shepitko, Alexei Gherman and Alexei Gherman Jr, Andrei Konchalovsky and Nikita Mikhalkov, Alexander Sokurov and Otar Yoseliani, Sergei Bodrov and Juris Podnieks, Gleb Panfilov and Nikolai Gubenko – to mention just a few directors whose films have enriched my life.
My first invitation to attend the Moscow International Film Festival came in 1976. Together with Variety’s Paris-based correspondent Gene Moskowitz, I became acquainted with nearly all of the important figures in that remarkable “Russian New Wave” movement. When I noticed that no one else was making straightforward documentaries about Parajanov and Klimov, then I picked up a camera and did it myself. (My documentaries on these legendary directors are available on DVD from Kino International.) Also, when I sensed the importance of Larisa Shepitko’s Ascent (USSR, 1977), I worked hard to get the film invited to Berlin – and then waited anxiously in the wings until it did, indeed, win the Golden Bear. Those years between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s were exciting, to say the very least. What’s more – they were almost exclusively mine as an American journalist for the “trades”:Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Moving Pictures. (When I first visited the Moscow festival, Gene Moskowitz handed on a piece of proverbial wisdom: “Don’t speak Russian even if you know how – your translator-guardian will willingly fill in the gaps, and you’ll learn a hell of a lot more!” Perhaps in deference to Gene, I have continued following that same rule of thumb up to the present day.)
The quest to find talent in the “new Russia” continued after Gorbachev’s rise to power. From the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, I have traveled the festival backroads to cities formerly envisioned onlyin wistful daydreams. At this juncture, I was helped immensely by several Moscow colleagues to keep up with the changing times under the yoke of my fragmented knowledge of Russian language and culture. Thank you, Andrei Plakhov and Sergei Lavrentiev, Raisa Fomina and Evgenia Tirdatova, Sitora Elieva and a score of others in my busted memory. When Andrei Plakhov handed me the tribute citation at MIFF 30, tears welded in my eyes. Blessings like this don’t come more than once in a lifetime.
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Istanbul
27th Istanbul International Film Festival
(5-20 April 2008)
Report by Ron Holloway, Berlin
Ask festival director Azize Tan why she was using every opportunity available to celebrate the current revival of Turkish cinema at the 27th Istanbul International Film Festival (5-20 April 2008), and she would tick off any number of reasons. Last year, for instance, Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, served on the international jury at Cannes. Further, the Palm for Best Screenplay was awarded to Turkey-born, Germany-based Fatih Akin’s Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven), a German-Turkish coproduction. Also, before this year’s IIFF even began, the city was alive with the rumor that Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Uc maymun (Three Monkeys) was likely headed for the Cannes competition – as, indeed, it was. Finally, at the close of the Istanbul festival, the international jury headed by German cinematographer Michael Ballhaus awarded the Golden Tulip to Semih Kaplanoglu’s Yumurta (Egg), a Turkish-Greek coproduction previously screened to critical praise in the Directors Fortnight at the 2007 Cannes festival. In fact, Semih Kaplanoglu, whose Egg had already won last October a bundle of national awards at the Antalya Golden Orange Festival, is currently being hailed as the third key figure in a trio of outstanding Turkish directorial talent, alongside Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Climates, 2006) and Zeki Demirkubuz (Fate, 2001).
The remarkable element about Egg is its reverse chronological position in Semih Kaplanoglu’s planned trilogy about a poet coming to terms with his past and present. In other words, viewed from this angle in the Yusuf Uclemesi (Yusuf Trilogy), the final chapter only hints of what the viewer might expect in the earlier portions of Yusuf’s life in the forthcoming films titled Sut (Milk) and Bal (Honey). In Egg, when the poet Yusuf returns to his native village for the death of his mother, he meets in the rundown family house the young and mysterious Ayla, an unknown cousin who had been caring for his mother for the past five years. When Ayla requests Yusuf to fulfill his mother’s dying wish to sacrifice a lamb at the shrine of a saint in her honor, the journey to the shrine at the edge of a crater lake in the mountains triggers painful memories of the past and feelings of guilt. The pair attend a wedding banquet before a blanket of snow cuts the pair off from the village and isolates them in the mountains.
Asked at Cannes why he was shooting the films in reverse order, Semih Kaplanoglu explained that the trilogy was conceived as “a longish cinematographic flashback. I hope in this way to narrate the burden and pain of passing time and invite everyone to remember and think about his own life.” Further, he underscored the poetic aspects of the trilogy as a whole. “We all have mothers, and it is highly possible that much is hidden during the time we spend with them and the time we are no longer able to be with them.” And he ended on this philosophical note: “I view time as the raw material of cinema.” Take Kaplanoglu at his word, and the Yusuf Trilogy bears a close resemblance to Satyajit Ray’s classic Apu Trilogy, the Indian masterpiece that embraces a struggling writer’s entire life from youth (Pather Panchali / The Song of the Road, 1955), Aparajito / The Unvanquished, 1956), and Apur Sansar / The World of Apu, 1959). Besides Satyajit Ray, Semih Kaplanoglu also admits to being strongly influenced by the “metaphysical cinema” of Ozu, Bresson, and Tarkovsky.
The runnerup Special Jury Prize in the international competition at Istanbul was awarded to Dennis Gansel’s Die Welle (The Wave) (Germany), a film dossier on how brainwashing works and destroys. A remake of Alexander Grasshoff’s telefeature The Wave (USA, 1981) – based in turn on a 1967 incident at an American high school that had inspired Morton Rhue’s popular novella (1981) with the same title – Gansel’s remake leans on the German translation (1984) of Rhue’s story to effectively review how a school experiment on brain-washing and Nazi dictatorship led by a charismatic leftist teacher (Jürgen Vogel) could run amok during the learning process. Die Welle benefits from its fast narrative pace and natural performances by young actors – particularly Frederick Lau in the role of an impressionable student who runs the full gamut of the brain-washing experiment to an unforeseen tragic end. (A few weeks after the close of the Istanbul festival, The Wave received two German Lola Awards: Bronze Lola for Production and Best Supporting Actor to Frederick Lau.)
In the Turkish Competition the Main Prize went to Seyfi Teoman’s Tatil kitabi (Summer Book), previously screened at the Berlinale in the International Forum of New Cinema. Set in a provincial seacoast town, Summer Book chronicles the languid summer days of a boy whose father has suffered a crippling brain hemorrhage while on a business trip and now burdens the family with unknown facts about his hidden life. The Best Actress Award was deservedly won by Anca Damgaci for her tragicomic performance in the surreal docu-drama Gitmek (My Marlon and Brando), codirected by herself and Hoseyin Karabey. Part fairy tale, part road movie, with several scenes enhanced by real-life documentary moments, My Marlon and Brando is the weird yet believable story of a Turkish girl in an independent theater troupe who falls in love with a Kurdish actor while a film is being shot just over the border in Iraq. Later, when the pair are separated by the American occupation of Iraq, they can only communicate by phone calls and an apparent exchange of videos. Frustrated by the increasing breakdowns in communication, Anca makes the decision to travel to Iraq from Turkey by way of Iran – while her beloved “Marlon and Brando” is trying to cross illegally from Iraq to Turkey. What happens along the way is funny, farcical, absurd – a homemade video enlivened by the stubborn temperament of a woman who won’t take no for an answer.
Last, but not least, was the launch of a new Human Rights Award as an integral part of the IIFF festival portfolio. The first FACE (Film Award of Council of Europe) Award was given to Li Yang’s Mang shan (Blind Mountain) (China), previously screened in the competition at the 2007 Cannes festival. In view of the coming Olympic Games in Beijing, to say nothing of Turkey’s own bid to enter the European Union, this FACE Award did not go unnoticed among press and public. Blind Mountain, the biting sociocritical story of a young woman kidnapped and “sold for marriage” to mountain villagers, can be viewed as a universal plea to recognize the rights of women in countries where archaic customs still prevail.
Awards
International Jury
Golden Tulip
Yumorta (Egg) (Turkey/Greece), dir Semih Kaplanoglu
Special Jury Prize
Die Welle (The Wave) (Germany), dir Dennis Gansel
National Competition
Best Turkish Film
Tatil kitabi (Summer Book), dir Seyfi Teoman
Best Director
Dervis Zaim, Notka (Dot)
Best Actress
Anca Damgaci, Gitmek (My Marlon and Brando), dir Hoseyin Karabey, Anca Damgaci
Best Actor
Serhat Tutumluer, Ara, dir Umit Unal
Special Jury Prize
Ara, dir Umit Unal
Human Rights FACE Award (Film Award of Council of Europe)
Mang shan (Blind Mountain) (China), dir Li Yang
FIPRESCI Awards
International Competition
Ben X (Belgium), dir Nic Balthazar
National Competition,
Tatil kitabi (Summer Book), dir Seyfi Teoman
People's Choice Awards
International Competition
Yumorta (Egg) (Turkey/Greece), dir Semih Kaplanoglu
National Competition
Ulak (The Messenger), dir Cagan Irmak
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Göteborg
Göteborg International Film Festival 2008
The Church of Sweden Film Award
The Danish film Go With Peace Jamil (Ma salama Jamil) by Omar Shargawi is awarded the Church of Sweden Film Award. The prize consists of 50.000 SEK. The motivation is: “In the middle of an outburst of revenge, a conversation is made about freedom and human dignity. Faced with predestinated violence, the film describes human beings as responsible for each other and God with a possibility of freedom and reconciliation.” This year’s jury consisted of Mikael Ringlander (Chair Man), Andja Arnebäck (director), Anne-Louise Eriksson (Swedish Church), Jes Nysten (clergyman and film critic).
>Film review by Neil Young
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(Extraits)
