61st International Mannheim Heidelberg Film Festival: my take on it

 

Love (and food) in the times of (financial) cholera

The President of the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival stated from its opening night the matter of this year’s filmic trouvailles.

It was going to be all about the Zeitgeist!!!! As Dr. Kotz put it: …“Live Your Life! But How?“ we simply wrote on the poster in big fat letters, so big that nobody will any longer think that we had chosen the subject just for fun, or out of embarrassment. What is actually really important in life? How do you become happy? Is it important to have a good career, or do friends, a partner, your own children, and a family, mean a great deal more? Do we need nature, or do we need the city, with all it has to offer? Is loneliness worse than any bond that holds us back? How can you combine self-development with a sense of security? By what rules should we abide? ... And I have one more question: the model of society by which we live, at least here, would seem to thrive on the fact that everyone can shape their own destiny. But is this even possible? Can you really do this? Make your own happiness?”...

As a natural suite to this statement, at least two of the main basic ingredients for fulfilling a human’s soul were main subjects in the films presented at this year’s Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival main Competition: a lot of LOVE, and a lot of FOOD. Hazard of which kind?

Presented as the Festival’s official Opening, the Argentinean  “Tiempos menos Modernos” (Not so Modern Times) speaks about Oscar, a solitary Tehuelche living in the immensity of Patagonia, confronted inadvertedly to the modern technology. The man sees his simple house inhabited by many new and foreign to his culture images, such as the one of Charlie Chaplin in “The Great Dictator”.  The Director Simón Franco intended to make an X-Ray of a man who always felt left aside, such as his entire race. There are no intellectual coups-de-grace in this film, everything is presented in a smooth and simple evolution.

 

With a lavish photography by Mauricio Riccio and an adequate music by Luis Díaz Muñiz and Payaguala the protagonist, Tiempos menos modernos is a film about colonization. One that is less territorial than subjective.

 

This opera prima lingers in our memory for its warmth and its wit, for its elegant and wise  non-declamatorial manner of undergoing a lost battle. A battle against consumism, against alienation, against a sort of mercantilism that leads to idio(ssincra)cy.

 One film that intended to exploit this sort of pantheism, where humans live a tranquil life in an inherent environment, musing about the innequalities of society, is “Rustom ki dastaan” (Ballad of Rustom) by the indian filmmaker Ajita Suchitra Veera. The film uses the richness of the Indian countryside, turned into a dreamy land that is hard to identify with. Eight main characters tell the story of a young government servant, Rustom, with a passive imagination, and of his friend Kapil. One young man who is meandering through life, falls in love with a young painter and meets strangers while travelling. The film abounds with romanticized scenes of ‘life in the countryside’ and some touching echoes of Cehov’s provincial tales.  The film unfolds as a string of scenes that accord to the director’s fantastic vision of rural life, instead of a coherent narrative. It’s a place where people are fighting to get a landline telephone connection in their houses, or where the rich who come there for their week-ends, despaired by the cultural and moral degeneration, are preparing to move to Europe….

Ballad of Rustom makes use of some loud Parisian like music that just doesn’t blend with the look and feel of the film. The cinematography draws attention by playing with light and darkness. But there is too much talking in the film, on any possible subject that range from God to science, philosophy and post-modernism, turning it into a very pretentious, yet void movie.  

 In the Iranian film “ Final Whistle “ (Main Award of the Festival), the writer-director-main actress Niki Karimi delivers a strong story. It is filmed under emergency, with a lot of shoulder camera, like if clandestinely. The result is chaos and quite seldom at the border of the cheap TV melodrama. The film abounds with gros-plans of the main actress/director washing her gorgeous green eyes into rivers of tears, which no doubt are more in her nature than the sobriety of the story telling of a Ghobadi, for instance.  But ultimately the film is revealing that women find themselves (and not only in that particular world) facing situations where they have to solve alone their problems, in a suffocating space that does not allow much room for defense…

A very fresh and enscented filmic breeze came at Mannheim from a so called “cooking” movie from the US, by first time directors Jason Cortlund and Julia Halperin. “ Now, Forager : A Film about Love and Fungi” is telling about a couple who gather wild mushrooms and sell them to smart New York restaurants. With an unpretentious lifestyle and an unstable income, the man will not compromise, while the woman wants more stability. 

The film is dripping with fair pictures of cooking sessions, of gentle and graceful images of nature. The filmmakers juxtapose the fictional story about the growing distance between the two lovers with images of a hectic New York, or pictures of the seasons passing and fine close-ups of mushrooms in the wild (from the poisonous known as the Destroying Angel- Amanita Verna, to the delicious Porcino-Boletus Edulis).

The authors’ astute intention is evident and perfectly proficient here: speaking about the unspoken through these natural analogies.  The couple slides further apart with no turmoil or hysteria. We are here powerless and in dismay, saturated with a state of deep melancholia.

Hazard of the screening schedule, or clever manipulation of the Festival’s outstanding Prospero, Dr. Kotz? As the next film in Competition elongated the fungi area with an Estonian first film at the opposite Pole of human expression.  “Mushrooming” (Seenelkäik) is Director Hussar’s satire about the senselessness of contemporary discourse, where fame, even though transparent, is the only value of the general public. How this fame has been achieved, it does not, of course, matter.

 

 The plot is launched in a very shakespearian manner when an improbable trio of persons gets lost in the woods. One is a Politician (Aadu), another one is his absentminded wife, and the third is a bewildered rocker. Hussar aims here at the lack of interest and analysis capacity of our culture. As it appears that intelligent discussions have been widely abandoned in favor of clichéd, sentimental posturing.

Aadu the Politician is a kind of anxiety-ridden ordinary man, for whom any experience, with the sole exception of nesting in his own house, is a source of terror. Uncomfortable with the past, mortified by the present and terrified of the future, he's a subversive and funny emblem of a country (and a continent) undergoing tremendous change.

The first time director from Netherlands, Threes Anna, delivered an compliant tale about food and the clash of cultures.

 “Silent city” tells about Rosa, a young woman from Europe, who goes to Tokyo to learn from a famous Japanese fish master the art of preparing fish. For this purpose she simply needs to learn and understand what a fish is… The lavish cinematography and rhythm of the film states that living in the Japanese metropolis is like being submerged into water. Rosa can swim for a while, but she can also drown…

Debut feature writer/director Tomasz Wasilewski shoots with a good deal of style and control, and “W SYPIALNI”(“In A Bedroom”) is certainly very different in attitude and content to many other film emerging from nowadays cinema. I must agree it has been a cinematic cold shower to me eyes, ears and soul, this sort of very up-to-the-minute, breathless and sharp filmic language telling of an untamed story.

The ‘heroine’ of the film is 40 year-old Edyta (the very impressive Katarzyna Herman), who advertises on internet as in search of casual sex. She drives to the homes of various men, slips a knockout pill into their drink, and then sets about stealing from them. It is usually cash, but often she simply enjoys eating a bunch of saussages or having a nice bath. These scenes are impressively staged, and despite her dishonest behavior Edyta comes across as a rather sympathetic character. Even though sex lies at the core of her story, there is a look of real fear on her face when possibility of intimacy really appears.

 The film does change direction, though, when she meets artist Patryk (Tomek Tyndyk) and there begins an attempt of a relationship. It is initially based on suspicion, but gradually it develops, as she slowly opens up about the reasons for her behavior.

The film is at its superlative when tracking Edyta as she glides into nocturnal Warsaw and towards her various assignations, and rather slows up when she meets Patryk.

Wasilewski turns out to be a deeply skilled director in keeping his shooting style interesting, making the story gradually shifting towards climax.

 

In this enthralling character study, the author uses filmic minimalism to ensure that glances and gestures say more than words. His attainment is dazzling, as for having portrayed a solitary woman in both fragility and strength, using precise image composition.

One of the last films in the International Competition that appealed to the public is the Australian “Being Venice”, a sort of coming of age story of a woman called Venice, living in a brightly textured Sydney, the perfect backdrop to this idiosyncratic father-daughter tale. It seems they have been separated both physically and emotionally for many years, and the film starts with "Arthur" arriving from New Zealand to spend time staying with his daughter in her small bedsit.

Arthur, a former hippie who once told his daughter to hang on to her fantasies as no one can take them from her, has to Venice's disappointment turned into a "walking menu" who only thinks about food.

 

Venice (apparently a poet) is discarded by her boyfriend early in the movie, and spends the rest of it moving from one confusing episode to another, always writing on post-it notes observations such as "giant ant sandwich".

But father and daughter seem unable to communicate and at one point Arthur tells Venice, "Write about it Venice, get your failings down on paper".
Eventually in one scene towards the end there is a sort of coming together, as Arthur admits his fears and failures as a father, while telling Venice she had "turned out all right".
Actor Garry McDonald is fittingly awkward as her undemonstrative father in this touching and often humorous drama.

A film that, like most of its competitors, left a trace of unease, of melancholia and of oomph in our dehydrated souls.

 

 

 

 

giulia ghica dobre

Giulia Dobre is a visual anthropologist/ film critic for the Romanian National Radio and for several Romanian magazines. She trained as a BA, MA and PhD in French Literature, Cinema Studies and Visual Anthropology at the University of Bucharest, UNATC in Bucharest, San Francisco State and Berkeley University in the US.

 

NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR-Main Award of Mannheim-Heidelberg
SOOTE PAYAN (Final Whistle) Niki Karimi, Iran

RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER PRIZE
LYCKA TILL OCH TA HAND OM VARANDRA (Good Luck. and Take Care of Each Other)Jens Sjögren, Sweden

SPECIAL AWARD
Director SIMÓN FRANCO for the film "Tiempos Menos Modernos"
Argentina, Chile

Special Mention of the International Jury
WHEN YESTERDAY COMESHsiu-Chiung Chiang, Singing Chen, Wi-Ding Ho, Ko Shang Shen, Taiwan

AUDIENCE AWARD
NOW, FORAGER. A FILM ABOUT LOVE AND FUNGI
Jason Cortlund and Julia Halperin, USA, Poland

FIPRESCI-PRIZESEENELKÄIK (Mushrooming) Toomas Hussar, Estonia

ECUMENICAL FILM PRIZELE SAC DE FARINEKadija Leclere, Belgium, Morocco

SPECIAL MENTION of the Ecumenical JuryW SYPIALNITomasz Wasilewski, Poland

RECOMMENDATIONS OF CINEMA OWNERS
La Niña (The Girl)David Riker, USA/GB/Mexico

Now, Forager. A Film about Love and FungiJason Cortlund and Julia Halperin, USA/Poland

Silent CityThrees Anna, The Netherlands/Loxemburg/Belgium



joy, a greek film

Joy (2012)

Χαρά (original title)

Hara (title with latin characters)

Fiction, 80 min

With: Amalia Moutousi (Hara), Yorgos Symeonidis (lawyer),

Production country Greece Language Greek Director Elias Giannakakis Scriptwriter Elias Giannakakis Elias Giannakakis   As the film opens we watch the heroine, Hara (Joy), heading towards a most deviant behaviour. Hara is  45 or 47 years old. She steals a baby from a maternity clinic and walks away unnoticed.   It is an act of a total negation of motherhood, a "sensitive" notion across all societies.   Intuitively and almost dreamily, Hara decides that she is entitled to have a baby of her own, even if it is really someone else΄s child. She seems unaware of the harm this causes to the baby΄s real mother. Or perhaps she simply doesn΄t care.   Her gestures are precise and ellaborated, even though she is overcome by desire for love.   In her eyes there is no mother for this baby other than herself. She spends two days with the baby, charging her with enough emotions    to last a lifetime.   When she crosses paths with a criminal who attempts to steal and hurt the baby, she slays him brutally without thinking twice.     When, she finally gets arrested, she shows no interest in defending herself.   The  trial will oppose the two views on this matter. Society and the biological mother, on one side.   And on the other side stands Hara. Alone. Unwilling to take part in the procedures.   The emotions she experienced during her short time with the baby have made her life worth living, even if she has to spend the rest of it locked in  prison.   Her conviction, her absolute devotion, her dark untold past   make her such an extraordinary personality. And an  extraordinary film.

Zhit (Living) (2012)

 

Is life more than a predictable chain of aminoacids?
Is there such thing as fate? 

 

A person can feel, suffer, love and live out its destiny, even when this means losing what is for them the most precious item: their loved ones.

In “Living” we watch as fate takes their loved ones swiftly and brutally. Faith  removes any reason for them to live, or even the desire to stay alive.

The film is an existential portrait of people living in a remote  Russian province, during one harsh winter.

 

A mother wants to reunite with her twin daughters.

A young couple marry in church. Immediately after the ceremony, God or the Devil or  Fate  tests their love in the most brutal way.

 

A solitary boy wants to see his estranged father, despite his mother's violent protests.

 

 

Each of these characters lives through their own ordeal.

 

Among all the sorrows imaginable, Sigarev focuses on the most devastating: DEATH.

 

 

Without any pathetism, but with brutal sincerity, he achieved here a very personal and  crafted film on the complexity of LIVING.

“Living” stars Mr. Sigarev’s wife, Yana Troyanova, an actress who manages to be simultaneously repugnant and luminous.

 A prominent author of extremely truthful plays written in the tradition of 'new drama', Sigarev takes his art a few steps further by meticulously depicting the bleak routine of everyday life, while at the same time searching for something hidden beneath its surface.

  

He tackles here a fundamental question: Is there catharsis in life, and therefore in art?

If so, can our sorrows be healed?

And if not, how can one escape despair and go on living?

We have here a mystery that transforms this 'realistic' film into a universal parable, revealing for a miracle.

 

Sigarev was born in 1977, in Upper Salda, Sverdlovsk Oblast. He studied at the Nizhny Tagil Pedagogical Institute and graduated from the Yekaterinburg Theatre Institute.^[Sigarev has directed two films, Volchok, which was made in 2009 and which he adapted from his own play, and Zhit (Living) (2012). He also wrote the screenplay for Prodayotsya detektor lzhi (2005), which is based on his lays Detektor lzhi and Fantomnye boli.

 

Directed by
Vasili Sigarev

Sound Department
Ivo Heger	....	sound re-recording mixer

Production Companies

Koktebel Film Company

Distributors

Utopia Pictures (2012) (Russia) (all media)

Giulia D

My day two in Thessaloniki: the thrills of " Keyhole"

Keyhole , Directed by Guy Maddin, Written by George Toles and Guy Maddin, Starring Jason Patric, Isabella Rossellini and Udo Kier, Runtime: 93; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Jody Shapiro/Jean du Toit/Lindsay Hamel/Guy Maddin; Monterey Media; 2011-Canada.

Told in majestic monochrome , „Keyhole“  is a haunted house movie unlike any other.

It is a sorrowful waltz of grief.

Keyhole reunites the filmmaker with the divine Isabella Rossellini.
To this melancholic  encounter he added ghosts of the past
– Méliès, Cocteau, Deren and Buñuel –
taking the old,
and arranging it into a delightfully new.

It is a film splintered like a broken mirror.

Its story strands of family secrets,
buried bodies (at sea) and betrayals.

Keyhole begins with a criminal gang under siege.
They’re at the home of their leader Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric), the perfect anti-hero, straight out of a 40ies comic).

This first scene resembles a different “key” movie,
John Huston’s 1948 film noir, Key Largo,
in which gangsters and their hostages
are hold up together
during a violent storm.

In Keyhole,
the gangsters are in the kitchen,
the ghosts are in the hallways
and upstairs rooms.

It is a gangster drama built as a reverie,
as a Gothic fantasy
and as Greek mythology.

But what’s it about?

The question is like asking what a dream is about.

As this one could firstly be interpreted
as a fable about marital breakdown
and the fight for reconciliation with the past.

The movie surface is archetypal,
absurd
and delirious.
It is shot in crisp black and white
with digital cameras and,
a couple of times,
bursting into colourful life.

The unusual inhabitants of the house
include Ulysses’ wife Hyacinth (Rossellini), several of his children,
and Hyacinth’s father Calypso / Camille (Louis Negin)
who spends the film naked
and unhappily chained to his daughter’s bed, and who serves
as the movie’s occasional narrator, periodically intoning
“Remember, Ulysses.”

Ulysses is led by a blind, drowned girl Denny (Brooke Palsson)
as he searches for his dead wife,
to whom he speaks to through keyholes.
Could she be Danae,
the princess who was set at sea
with her infant in a wooden chest?...

And the ghosts-count rises as bodies fall.

Jason Patric, virile and confident,
is spitting out tough-guy lines like:
“This kind of weather stirs me up.
Man’s weather.”

Keyhole is jam-packed with an artistic delightfull absurd,
such as  a pit of fog where the gang dispose of the mounting corpses, 
the appearance of a bicycle-powered electric chair,
or the observation that a male member is gathering dust if penetrating a wall.

Keyhole is an enchantment of chiaroscuro compositions
which float across the screen like a dream.

It is a film that brings back in our souls pure cinema.

At some point Ulysses wants to count the casualties,
so he asks anyone who’s dead
to go and face the wall.
Several of the men oblige…

Perhaps then yes,
it is a Gothic phantasmagoria,
where Lynchian touches abound,
with ghosts and a courtyard
where things are buried.

The living, the long dead and the recently dead walk,
float
or are carried through the same corridors, and some of the living
don’t know they’re dead.

 Throughout it all,
Ulysses keeps trying to get up the stairs, through the rooms
filled with family memories,
turning back clocks
and trying to enter his wife’s bedroom door.

There are here echoes of James Joyce’s modern Ulysses,
a bit of Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast (anatomical parts as decoration)
and a whole lot of sexual-mechanical fascinations
that disrupt the gloom
with rude jokes.

This film is creepy, depraved and often funny!

On another level, this work, strangely commissioned

by the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University,
is conceptual.

It is an exercise 
of a repeatedly frustrated narrative,
which turns into a repeatedly intriguing, repeatedly frustrating,
exercise.

It is a mystery with no solution...

by giulia ghica dobre