The lecture, titled Found Footage and Editing: Structural Film and History in the Films of Carlos Adriano, began with Ismail's presentation, who brought with him the film that would trigger the debate: SANTOSCÓPIO=DUMONTAGEM (2008). Ismail was Carlos Adriano's PhD thesis director at USP, Universidad de São Paulo (Brazil). Adriano's thesis included not only theoretical work; he also developed a practical and poetic task.
The Brazilian researcher began his presentation by pointing out the fact that film compilations have always been made, by for example Dziga Vertov, as a way of recovering materials and strking up conversations between history and the past. However, Ismail was interested in talking about the rescue of materials from another point of view, which had its origins in the United States of the 60s and 70s with filmmakers such as Ken Jacobs or Hollis Frampton. The movement was not only about reconquering images; it aimed at making them one's own by developing more poetic experiences, without looking for a story. The point was to incorporate the images; to re-edit them so as to put together another system that dealt with the device, its structure, with film itself. The reflection on its construction then became its actual content. This research on process was named structural film by P. Adams Sitney.
What do we see when we see a film? What does that film make visible? This was one of the aspects structural films dealt with, something modern art had already begun debating: the return to its own origins, to its operative origins. The introduction to structural film was fundamental so as to become familiar with the debate around Carlos Adriano's work, which we watched soon afterwards. Ismail then told the story that led to SANTOSCÓPIO=DUMONTAGEM. Carlos found, at a museum in São Paulo, a machine that not even the local museologists knew what it was about. It was a mutoscope, by which still images gained movement through the mecanic impulse of a handle.
Inside were a series of photos that resulted in a fxed shot of the meeting between Santos Dumont – considered by many as the inventor of the airplane; he flew around the Tour Eiffel with his prototype, years before the Wright Brothers’ machine – and Charles Stewart Rolls - future owner of Rolls Royce - during a trip to London.
Carlos Adriano transformed these 55-second long moving images into one incredible 15-minute short film, by working with different colors, with geometry, speed variations and by making use of two different constructive parameters: the loop and the flicker. The loop refers, firstly, to the loop in Dumont's wonderful invention. It also makes us think about the kinescope and about the circular movements of other pre-cinema devices. The flicker is another typical feature of photechemical cinema. Adriano also emphasizes Santos Dumont's fleeting look towards the camera, which takes us back to the early cinema of attractions. As for the audio treatment, it is inspired by machine sounds, evoking the industrial universe that was bubbling at the time.
Carlos Adriano incubates in his short film a myriad of ideas and make us think about yet another device such as the kaleidoscope, generator of optical illusions, and even about Georges Méliès special effects.
The researchers discussed how both principal constructive parameters in SANTOSCÓPIO=DUMONTAGEM are charcteristic of machines. And even though these have been developed in a computer, they create a dialogue between these two forms of creation as well as establish a reflection on history. Russo - who as a child had the chance to know a fully active mutoscope - observed that this is a form of cinema that looks to the past as well as the future. He also established a discussion about the relationship between interpretation and writing of this type of cinema which deals with found footage, and about the separation and the bringing together of spectator and author, of operator and administrator. La Ferla ended the lecture by comparing Carlos Adriano's experience with those of other filmmakers, such as the interpretations of Alfred Hitchcock's classics (Gus Van Sant’s PSYCHO, Douglas Gordon's 24 HOUR PSYCHO installation), Alain Fleischer's works (MORCEAUX DE CONVERSATIONS AVEC JEAN-LUC GODARD, 2007), as well as those by Woody Vasulka (ART OF MEMORY, 1987). The captivating subject did not leave enough time for the interesting screenings La Ferla had planned, so the Talents promised to watch the videos on YouTube and to continue dicussing the matter later.
(translated by Clara Picasso)
]]>HISTORY AND REPRESENTATION
There is this side of film as a source for historians, which was not very strong until recently, being it is only one century old. Historians have in documentary film, as well as in fiction, a source for future history: the way people dressed, what they ate, with how much enthusiasm they talked about a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder (in some Tarantino film, for example). When historians take that from film they create this small history that is neither found in newspapers nor in public documents, yet it is the center of social history. Most films (not those avant garde or experimental ones) condemn their representative role. Photography has an analogic force, a force so powerful that it is impossible for historians not to consider it when thinking about the past. That does not mean that cinema will tell all the truths about the past. I don’t know if PIZZA, BIRRA Y FASO will show the truth about what life was like in the 90s for young people in Buenos Aires, but it is an unavoidable source that shows the social pattern at the time. The aesthetic quality of that film does not matter as much as its documentary quality. And I’m not discussing whether it is a non-fiction film or not. I am talking about its documentary quality as it was shot in the streets of Buenos Aires. We see the people of Buenos Aires on their way out of the city’s nightclubs, and how they fight as they leave the nightclubs, etc. Literature has always had the power of arousing ideas and sources for historians. It is very difficult to study Argentina in the 20th century without reading Roberto Arlt or even Borges. But film carries an obvious documentary weight. No matter how much technically manipulated, the representative weight is much more evident. So much that I once knew a person who did not know Paris but had seen Godard’s work, and upon stepping into the French capital for the first time was able to recognize several street corners.
With miraculous virtuosity, film educated its audience in an almost instant manner. Despite the stories of people running off scared when watching the railway engine and the crowd leaving the factory (Lumière), these stories are one-second long in the history of the 20th century. It is due to a characteristic similarly found in television (I’m sorry to have to say it like this): one just has to watch films in order to become an audience of them. Though to be part of the audience for Straub films it is necessary to know certain things. Same thing happens in the case of UN CHIEN ANDALOU. But in order to become part of the audience of mainstream cinema it is only necessary to watch films. The skills needed to become part of that audience are granted at the very act of sitting in front of a screen. This blessing is not found in the other arts. First, because one must know how to read; that’s the first level. Then, on a second level, or even on a third, greater level, one has to learn, study. Yet one is able to learn about cinema without any formal education. This is neither a good nor a bad characteristic, it only marks a difference in the discourses, in the tools used to make that discourse work.
NORTH AMERICA
HOLOCAUST
Adorno writes the famous phrase about poetry after the Houlocaust being impossible. When mentioning poetry he is referring to any act of creation. It does not mean one cannot write about the Holocaust, it means that it is something impossible to show. If Adorno came back to life and watched SCHINDLER’S LIST he would die that very same moment. He wouldn’t think about the film as good or bad. He couldn’t conceive the idea of someone showing Jewish people about to die, naked and running around a concentration camp. And of someone shooting a scene with camera movement and a crane. From SCHINDLER’S LIST to the early (very close to the end of the war) and severe NUIT ET BROUILLARD, the discussion had already begun. Whether the images needed to be shown for that to be known or the other way round, for that to be known images where not necessary, except maybe on the press. That is, should the representative arts show those images. These discussions went through different phases. First in the post-war period, then in the 70s, where a group of German historians tried to explain –without justifying – the Holocaust. Meanwhile, Claude Lanzmann was preparing SHOA (9-hour long film about the Holocaust), and shot it while participating of this debate. He suscribed to what Adorno had said, and in his film there are no images of concentration camps.
(translated by Clara Picasso)
]]>In this film there is a return to the countryside, to the Flandres region. There is also a return to a crude violence, through long and silent shots, and to outsider characters. Yet, something of trascendental nature appears in HORS SATAN and is not shown in the same way as in HADEWIJCH, but in a rather evil and mysterious manner, in the shape of a girl with her eyes popping out of her head or of a woman frothing at the mouth.
The character played by David Dewaele (whom we saw in HADEWIJCH) will be in charge of expelling the devil in these women. At the same time, he will evolve into an extremely cruel and careless being, into some sort of prairie psycho.
Like in HADEWIJCH, where we only saw love (even though Dumont’s extremely powerful and violent scenes were not left aside), in HORS SATAN we only see hate and darkness. The only act of love appears at the end, when this outsider, who is now an exorcist, gives his lover her life back, in a memorable and moving Dreyer-like resurrection, maybe the only thing that’s moving in the film.
The extreme minimalism of the mise en scène reveals a mastery that is not surprising in Dumont and which is in tune with the film's inscrutability. The same happens with the scarce gestures of his actors/non actors, and with the perfectly photographed shots. However, the rarefied and harsh atmosphere creates a coldness and a distance which can be repaired neither with an appeal to "sensoriality" nor with one to the yet incomprehensible spirituality. No doubt, this is Dumont's most difficult film, and yet we choose to still be patient with him.
(Translated by Clara Picasso)
]]>Celina spent a year observing the Escuela Normal Superior José María Torres' daily schedule in the city of Paraná, the same school she attended. She felt intrigued: what would it be like to return to those huge corridors twenty years later, and to see them from a different perspective? "The country has changed a lot, and for a long time I had begun to feel interested in experiencing the changes that could have taken place in that institution", the entrerriana says.
Besides from the emotional bond that motivated her, Celina explains that there is something very strong in the history of that place, founded in 1871. This was the first normal school, which was created by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and whose aim was to train teachers who would in the future teach in other parts of the country. In a nation marked by immigration, Sarmiento believed in the need to standarize education so as to form an Argentinean citizen.
The filmmaker was developing the script for her third feature film, LA TERCERA ORILLA, when the INCAA (National Film Institute) announced it was looking for documentary film projects representing each province on the occasion of the celebration of Argentina's 200 years of independence. This announcement revived her wishes of spending some time in that school. Murga transformed 140 hours of material into two films: a 48 minute version to be shown in TV as part of of the series EL CAMINO DE LOS HÉROES, and the version screened an the Berlin and Cartagena Film Festivals – and the one we’ll be seeing today.
In your previous works, all fiction films, there is a strong proximity with the aesthetics of the observational documentary. ESCUELA NORMAL, your first documentary, is structured as if it were a fiction film. This dynamics in your work is very interesting. What could you say changed during your creative process while making a documentary?
On the one hand, I’ve always fantasized about shooting a documentary. On the other, there is also a narrative search in my fiction films that has to do with documenting, with the idea of recording situations free from their dramatic factor, which is, on the contrary, what defines fiction in its classic approach. The act of observation: be it characters or situations. I wanted to explore another form of production, that held me less tied up to a script and to situations determined within the production. At the beginning, it felt strange not to control 100% of what was happening in front of the camera. I think that control, in documentaries, is taken when editing and when deciding what to shoot. A fiction film director is used to the idea that what happens in front of the camera is what he/she expects to see. Many times, when shooting fiction, I wait for those moments that have not been planned to appear. There is something in that dyanmics that really attracts me: when reality reveals itself free from any manipulation and artifice. When shooting the documentary, that happened all the time! I really enjoyed just observing what happened; when directing fiction films what happens is much more related to my intervention.
How did you choose the characters and the situations potrayed by ESCUELA NORMAL?
This is very big school, starting from kindergarten up to high school; it has almost 1600 students. I knew I wanted to focus on the kids in the last two years. The aim was to talk about the passage from being a high-school student to being in the outside world. We did some sort of audition, preselecting some kids we wanted to follow inside each classroom. In the process, some of them began to grow and others to fade, dissolving into the group. When the shooting began, we had put together an organization chart: today we go to this class, tomorrow to this other. We weren't able to follow it because nowadays the school is much more unpredictable than when I used to attend it, which was a big surprise to me. All of a sudden there were no classes, the teacher was not going to come, or the kids went out to have hot cocoa, or the school was running elections. There are millions of situations that take place outside the classroom itself and that make the school much more dynamic. On the other hand, I couldn’t leave out the character of Machaca, the chief of hall monitors. I found her fascinating because of the way she dealed with that sort of chaos. The contest organized by INCAA that led to the realization of the project was called "El camino de los héroes" (The way of the heros). Machaca to me is a real heroine.
How did the elections end up gaining importance in the film?
We found out about the elections when we started shooting the film. We started following both slates and, all of a sudden, we had lots of situations that took on the narration, which were very interesting and revealing. When I chose to emphasize this, what really interested me was to show active young people, committed to their surroundings and eager to do and propose things. Those where the kids we chose to portray, trying to escape from that idea widely spread in the last years - as least as far as Argentina is concerned – of an apathetic youth.
In last year’s BAFICI, EL ESTUDIANTE, a film by Santiago Mitre, caused quite a sensation. Do you think there is a connection between the two films?
ESCUELA NORMAL was shot before I saw EL ESTUDIANTE. I thought it was funny because the young people in Mitre's film could have been the kids from ESCUELA NORMAL a few years later! What I like most about ESCUELA NORMAL is to see the kids rehearse or give their first steps as citizens, to choose, to occupy roles, to be able to do things… There’s this cliché of the teenager who is always complaining. I find it attractive to see them get out of that complaint zone and see what they would do in this or that situation, to see them propose a change. These questions came up all the time among the kids and they were present in their actions. In that sense, of course there is a relationship between both films: the idea of being able to do something through politics and everyday actions.
Lots of films set their eyes on the school environment. Was there any film in particular which participated in the development of ESCUELA NORMAL?
SER Y TENER (Nicholas Philibert, 2002) is a beautiful French documentary that was a lot in my mind. However, Philibert's film has a structure that is more related to the idea of the passing of the year, a perception focused more on the school year. Another film I was passionate about was HIGH SCHOOL (1968) by Frederick Wiseman, a documentary filmmaker I love. Like in many other of his films, it is amazing how in HIGH SCHOOL he achieves an insistent look and a sharp observation of how institutions work. I was sure I wanted to work on the institution, on what education is like in school nowadays. But I did not want to turn my documentary into a sociological analysis because I’m a fiction film director. And I'm interested in characters, in finding the human side. It was very clear from the beginning that the structure had to achieve that balance between observation and analysis, but through very clear and defined characters by which one could enter the film and feel empathy. For example, this was fundamental when we had to decide whether we were going to include the scenes that took place outside the school. And I decided to shoot outside because the film was not only about a school but about those characters. So I thought it would be interesting to be able to see them in other environments as well.
Speaking of your characters, in your films there is a very strong interest in young people and children.
The idea of young people or children has to do with taking a position, a distance from which to see the adult world. I think that in all my films, even though there are children in the leading roles or the point of view in the story is that of a young person, the films are always dealing with the social dynamics presented by us adults. It is an indirect way of approaching the social world of adults. I think young people and children make an interesting point of view as regards reality.
There is a big distance when comparing the kids' behavior in ESCUELA NORMAL (which surprised you with their great interest in participating) with the characters' behavior in UNA SEMANA SOLOS, but the politicial aspect is never absent.
By observing the kids in UNA SEMANA SOLOS, I was examining a microcosmos that is the result of a social and political environment. This kids' situation has to do with an adult context of discussions and politics. It is a social analysis through the observation of everyday situations. By following the kids in UNA SEMANA SOLOS we can think of today's society and what are its foundations, and that's were the political aspect appears. Besides, perhaps because they are very young, they are are even more pressured by their circumstances. The confinement of a gated community is in that sense very graphic; they are in a limiting situation and they are not very active. When they do act out, they do it as a way of reacting to something that's opressing them. In ESCUELA NORMAL, instead, what I took from reality was precisely that children have a voice, a possibility of acting as regards the outside world.
Your third film, LA TERCERA ORILLA, which you began developing before ESCUELA NORMAL, is on its way.
LA TERCERA ORILLA takes place in Concepción del Uruguay, also in Entre Ríos, in the border with Uruguay. It is the story of a 16-year-old teenager and his relationship with this father, a well-known doctor in the city. Their relationship is very particular since the kid is not part of the doctor's official family circle. This has to do with the idea of identity and the film narrates the moment or the process the character has to go through to decide what to do in the context he lives in, with that social and paternal mandate. We are currently doing auditions and we'll be shooting at the end of the year. I began working on that script in 2009, and even when shooting ESCUELA NORMAL, I never fully interrupted the development of LA TERCERA ORILLA. It takes a lot of time to make a film with a bigger financial structure. Shooting the documentary was a great opportunity so as not to spend so much time without shooting. And at the same time to be able to shoot a film with much more freedom. I don't like spending much time without shooting, though I am not the kind of person who needs to be on location all the time. Processes enrich me, especially when there is that dialogue between the written text that is fed on what I find in reality.
]]>As in any other zombie movie, panic is widespread among the population. The situation is the best excuse for the main character of the film to become the hero of the story. Played by the Cuban actor Alexis Diaz de Villegas, Juan is a man who lives on the terrace roof of a building with his best friend Lazaro, played by the film director Jorge Molina. Both characters prefer to stay on the Isle forever; they think this is their only possibility to live a comfortable life.
Juan finds out the best way to kill the zombies and he knows this will be the perfect chance for him and his friend to make money. He creates a business with the motto “Juan of the dead – we kill your beloved ones”; and for a reasonable price he and his unemployed friends of the neighborhood accept the task of killing the infected ones. But the plague becomes uncontrollable and the only alternative for Juan is to assume the hero's roll to save his beloved ones of this madness. His daughter, who doesn’t live with him because of his easy life, is also in danger.
Through this character we get to know Juan’s regrets as they grew further apart. But Juan wants to change this situation showing her his love for her in the middle of the zombie invasion. Brugues leaves this idea a little unclear, he could have thought up a better way to solve the conflict without deserting humour; it is clearly a feeling of frustration and attachment that the character feels towards Cuba.
JUAN OF THE DEAD is inspired by the so-called horror comedies, which make fun of nonsense situations like zombie invasion. This Cuban production filled the theaters during its screening at the New Latin-American Cinema International Festival in La Habana. The film director had already surprised Cuban filmmaking with PERSONAL BELONGINGS (2006), a very well-received melodrama. It seems that Brugues prefers to explore new ways of national cinematography, since he has been pleading for an auteur cinema, worried about social issues during the past decades.
However, his lack of experience didn’t mark his final product. Alejandro worked together with the Catalonian photographer Carles Gusi. For Gusi it was not difficult to achieve those scenes where everything seemed bigger and more spectacular than in real life. Among Gusi’s filmography we can list comedies like MUTANT ACTION or TORRENTE, EL BRAZO TONTO DE LA LEY, films in which he had already gathered experience with this extravagant kind of work.
The music joined the story in a very suggestive way. The film starts with local sounds in La Habana, and finishes in a ghost town atmosphere. The funk rhythm of the 70’s decade was an accurate idea, due to the fact that zombie movies date back from that time.
From the beginning of the shooting, Brugues insisted this movie was meant to be fun. He declared the idea of packing La Habana with zombies was quite likeable. JUAN OF THE DEAD is a film which heaps Cuba’s everyday life with laughter – using scary and amusing special effects- and leads the audience to reflections. The film has its own lecture on reality; in fact, the jokes refer to daily life in the Isle (bloggers, neighborhood reunions, state informants, dissidents, the need to travel, etc). However, it becomes a series of reiterative jokes – some of them already used in Cuban movies of the 90’s.
Unfortunately, we never get to know the characters position, as if it was a coincident ambiguity; nor the background of the absurd presented on the comedy. This might have been Brugues intention although he never clears it up.
]]>EVERYBODY'S GOT SOMEBODY... NOT ME has a screenplay with poetical ambitions that exceed the solutions the director had when he filmed. References to Fernando Pessoa, Hegel, Foucault, and many other important authors coexist in the film like a mixture of random axioms. The over-the-top hypertextuality hinders the narration instead of making it easier; neither the intertitles nor the reading or recitation of poem fragments are precise and strong enough to clear certain conflictive moments and the climax of the plot. For this reason, the film turns hermetic and impenetrable for the audience, the inner world and relationships among the main characters.
Fuentes doesn’t justify some of the actions or decisions of the main characters; for example, the falling in love and breaking up process results too unexpected. Seduction is repeatedly used as a connective resource that opens and closes the circle that distinguishes Alejandra’s role; this implausible element makes her look like an object of desire for any woman that gets near her.
The lesbian issue is subject to the prevailing representation schemes of this kind of stories: beautiful and utterly tempting women that fall in love with other misunderstood, unstable, confused and frustrated women. The complex narrative structure of the film more than demonstrating the rigor of the drama (using flashbacks and other resources) highlights the disturbed psychology of the characters and the drama of being a lesbian women in different phases of life.
In this film, it is up to third parties to pry into the most intimate aspects of the main characters; we can see this in the case of the unsuccessful writer, who anticipates the ending of the story by revealing Alejandra’s soft spot for a beautiful woman, likewise the weakness of her love for Maria. We can infer that Alejandra has sparked off the main conflict (persuading Maria to have a homosexual affair) just to please herself, or for a mere sexual and affective necessity.
The black and grey color scheme of the film acts as a reference to classic artistic photography and, to an extent, as an implicit allusion to high culture (the main characters talk about visiting New York, meet in galleries, recite Whitman’s lines). In turn, Alejandra’s ruses to win Maria’s heart could have to do with the idea that intelligence and culture are considered an authorization to seduce, impress, influence and win the love and admiration of other people.
This intellectual refinement myth, as a bastion of invulnerability or as a primacy symbol becomes fainter in Fuentes’ film: Alejandra takes Maria to a movie theatre to see a film that everybody seems to ignore. Then, they start making love on the seats regardless the context. She is convinced, just as Foucault (whom she refers to in some parts of the film) that the power may produce as much approval to the extent of being desired; however, she submits to the writer’s influence.
Some musical and photographical elements can be interpreted as symbols of the opposite personalities of Maria and Alejandra: a scene in which they are filmed with their back towards the camera; also some checkered floor tiles can be seen at the center of the shot; the soundtrack includes some punk and disco tracks that are danced by Maria, which makes a contrast to Alejandra’s musical preferences; art direction and costumes also make a difference between them.
It seems that Raul Fuentes wanted to include the majority of his artistic and technical experiences in this movie. However, this seems to be the main mistake of the film.
]]>INNER SPACE is a movie based on real facts. Played by actor Kuno Becker, the film tells the story of a Mexican architect's days in captivity of a that led to the creation of Lázaro’s character.
The story goes quickly through the abduction so that the capture of the victim does not distract the attention away from the story; for the film is not about insecurity and violence. In a press conference, actor Kuno Becker said: “INNER SPACE does not pretend to be a film about kidnapping; but about a guy that survives in spite of the circumstances and manages to turn things in his favor. It was a spiritual journey, a quite human one, that he experienced and that now I am permitted to reenact. It’s the best role I’ve ever had.”
After being captured, Lázaro is isolated in a small room in which he can only access minimal belongings. The conditions of his tiny cell and the shock caused by the abduction sink the character into a deep depression which he will overcome later on. The cell design, the usage of a closed-circuit camera to monitor the victim’s activity and the clothing used by the kidnappers give the movie a disturbing allure, which will increase with long-length silences and just a light bulb to illuminate the room.
Thus, this psychological thriller centers the dramatic tension on the role played by the man’s strength against himself, for the kidnappers are an alien factor that expose Lázaro to a difficult mental game that he manages to overcome through faith, and the memories of his family. In this way, we can say that the director’s goal is achieved by making a movie about hope starting from the atrocious circumstances in which the main character was involved.
When Edmond Dantés, the main character of Alexandre Dumas' famous novel “The Count of Monte Cristo”, was subjugated to the cruelest tortures during his seclusion in the mythical dungeon of the Château d’If, he suffered a similar process in which faith also played an essential role. In his case in particular, the feeling of revenge was important too, but this makes us ponder the importance of faith in controlling the human psyche; which in its oldest conception, the Greek one, it was a synonym for strength.
Psychiatrist Kübler-Ross, in her notes about thanatology mentioned the five stages of human acceptance. Said process starts with denial, turning into anger, followed by a “pact” that allows balancing the emotional strength caused by trauma, resultant in depression and finally, the reaching of acceptance. If we think it through, Lázaro’s behavior follows this pattern, making him a credible character.
Even though we share the character’s fear for a few moments, especially at the moment when he escapes, I wonder: Is really human strength against adversity the theme of this film? Or is it just an attempt to recreate an interesting story out of morbid fascination aroused by the horrifying circumstances in which he was held captive?
]]>The nostalgia for the origin of cinema has invaded not only famous studio mega productions, but also creators from other circles. To set to music silent films has become a very popular and recurrent activity. Films like A TRIP TO THE MOON by Méliès, or THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI by Wiene are now masterpieces subject of rework by musicians from all genres and origins. In Mexico, classics like LA BANDA DEL AUTOMOVIL GRIS have returned to the widescreen thanks to these cinematographic nostalgia exercises.
Michael Nyman, key character of cinema’s music, turned to Jean Vigo to set to music his documentary film À PROPOS DE NICE, in which the French director depicts the bourgeoisie of the 1930s; the frivolity in the streets and beaches of this touristic centre, the contrast with the working classes in the city. This half hour movie was screened at a gala at Teatro Diana, in Guadalajara within the framework of the 27th International Film Festival. Nyman at the piano set to music the film, as well as the video WITNESS I, with a composition of his authorship; he also interpreted a set of pieces of his repertoire.
WITNESS I presents us with a sequence of unknown faces. A compilation of old photos, front and side view, overexposed and superimposed on the image of a wood fence, fading away slowly. There are no references, only a couple of legends on the photographs, indicating names, origins and dates. The sad look of these anonymous people; we face them and wonder who they are, where they came from, how they lived and what could have happened to them. In fact, they are Jews and gypsies whose destiny was the Nazi concentration camps: victims of one of the most tragic events of the 20th Century.
Nyman sets up this video against the work of Vigo to reinforce his social critic of À PROPOS DE NICE: the joy of the rich ones and the horror that is about to come; the celebration and the tragedy; the 1930s from different points of view.
Nyman's music adds an extra value to the screening. New technologies and cinematic forms allow us to enjoy live music at the movie theater, which makes it a very attractive show, at the same time and for a few minutes, recreating the whole experience of silent films. However, these artworks, in comparison with other silent movies, don’t need incidental music to guide the narrative or to direct the audience’s emotions. Nyman suggests atmospheres, environments, and a delicate accompaniment for the images to transmit a message.
]]>With NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, the image of zombies became popular around the globe, and twenty-five years later, in 1985, the genre would renew and take a new path linked with the social situation of the time. This is why Dan O’Bannon’s RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD appears distant from horror, closer to parody; a low budget production in which a new generation, keen on horror creatures, would look for the satisfaction of new concerns. During this new wave special effects, from kitsch to unlikely, the stories were told in a very simple way, with a very light humor. In 2004’s SHAUN OF THE DEAD, director Edgar Wright reaches unlikeliness, as hordes of zombies appear as a plague and the story focuses on the diverse ways to exterminate them; starting from martial arts and even ranging to flamethrowers being the preferred tool to exterminate this unloving beings.
I am interested in this topic not only because of the relevance of the subject for the collective imagery for constructing a zombie archetype, but also because this formula has been used for years to make this metaphor more complex, more interesting. It is all about this faculty-less beings which are not completely death, which can walk, fight, but not think. JUAN OF THE DEAD is more of a black comedy than a horror film; it is a movie that responds to both formulas. Zombies become a parody to question the values of Castro’s Cuba, but there’s still a particular nationalism embedded in Juan.
It is important to emphasize that the cult for zombies is a result of the videogame phenomenon in which these creatures have a fundamental role as well as in comics and animation. This trend dates back from RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD and afterward SHAUN OF THE DEAD. At the end of JUAN OF THE DEAD we appreciate a sort of image which respond to this tradition of illustrating shocking or action scenes. The zombie killer is “immortalized” in a grotesque way beside American heroes, the legacy of the great depression – they were also used as a metaphor of the American conventional values.
Except for the image of the famous Mexican luchador “El Santo” against the living dead, zombie cinema is not part of the Latin American culture; however, it is a genre with millions of enthusiasts all over Latin America. JUAN OF THE DEAD tackles the subject of the zombies through a chaotic story in which the characters are part of a group of exterminators with Juan at the head. They seem not to be impressed by the way this pest expands and they never wonder where this curse comes from, they only make fun of the official reports saying it is a Yankee conspiracy.
With a very noisy humor and a nonsense construction, this movie is very agile, the freshness of the script avoids the loss of interest because of the hyperbolic hemorrhages of thousands of zombies. As I mentioned before, a low budget and a not very detailed revision are fundamental aspects of the tradition of this genre. The interesting point of the film is the reaction to a zombie invasion, which is not as different as we might think, considering that JUAN OF THE DEAD and SHAUN OF THE DEAD are productions of countries that do have an antagonist posture towards each other.
Finally, this film is a pioneer in our continent. There is no doubt that JUAN OF THE DEAD is a (very Latin) reinterpretation of the image of the zombie as a reflection of social discontent. Call it dissident, call it Yankee or Castro, the zombie represents a lack of ideas and an interest for satisfying basic needs, like eating a brain or contaminating the rest of the population of a tough restriction. This is the reason for the fascination with this creature, that can convert the population into zombies and the only way out of the tragedy is parody.
]]>This phenomenon was named “intrahistory” by Miguel de Unamuno: “Journals do not say a thing about the silent life of millions of people with no stories who at every hour and everywhere around the globe, wake up as the sun rises and go to their fields to continue with their eternal, dark and silent pieces of work, just as sub-oceanic madrepores lay the foundations on which the islands of history are based”. This film is about a character that could seem dull for many people, but he is a perfect example of millions of passers-by who “suffer” the course of time, walking aimlessly until their last day on earth.
Albert Laffay said: “cinema tells and represents at the same time, contrary to the world that just is by itself”. In this sense, we find in PASSERBY a representation of the world through images and above all through sounds, which play a vital role in the film; they act as a sound memory of the streets where the soundtrack is composed by the main character’s experiences and memories; Expedito calms down his own emotions through music and sounds, and establishes relationships with people through them as well. In the film it is shown that Exposito loathes machinery noise, which represents the hostile and monotonous existence of the main character. The black and grey color scheme offers a deeper reflection about the daily living in a large metropolis.
]]>Alejandra, who works as an editor, and Maria, a private high-school student, are alienated by their own cultural environments. Alejandra is a snob, insulated in a narrow-minded intellectual world; she seems to loathe youth and even says “What a waste of time and neurons” when she attends a party with Maria. The latter, bored with her peers, finds in Alejandra a partner that can open a whole new world for her. However, she is not willing to leave behind her youthful interests, which is what Alejandra wants her to do.
Andrea Portal and Naian Daeva play these women in a natural and free-flowing way. Their work even overcomes this story full of stereotypes and pretentious reactions: While Alejandra gives deep and artistic speeches; Maria is always interrupted by a phone call. Furthermore, it seems the director is looking forward to saturating the audience with cultural references by quoting songs and books over and over again during the film, which doesn’t contribute to shape the film.
The director uses soft black-and-white color schemes as well as front shots and horizontal and vertical camera displacements, which allows him to develop sequences harmoniously. The main characters are always taken from a side angle or face to face, except for the jazz club sequence, shaded using chiaroscuro technique, in which Alejandra dances with her lover. To oppose the personality of both women, the director has chosen to constantly show Maria’s sneakers and Alejandra’s shoes.
It is worth pointing out that this film restricts its vision only to Mexican upper-middle class from Del Valle and Coyoacan residential areas, a delimitated sector the director seems to transform into an intellectual, refined and ideal world. The only times these scenarios are left behind, just a few beggars and boozers appear as silent witnesses of the action.
This film inquires into a generational clash and Alejandra’s inability to evade the inflexibility of her intellectual world which makes her feel lonely and pushes her to be always looking for short-term love affairs. However, Fuentes was not able to pose more complex questions. Both women seem to be set adrift in a frivolous and empty world that neither books nor parties are able to question.
]]>Expedito, who is in his fifties or sixties, lives alone in a small apartment. The only people he talks with are the teller of the bank he withdraws his pension from, a cab driver (Djavan), and the only niece he receives a birthday gift from. From the first sequence, we can see that he starts a tacit and innermost conversation with his past; this seems to be the best way he has found to live a life with no children nor grand children. First, he goes to his mother's grave and then he goes on along with his ill-fated luck of nocturne bolero. The black and grey color scheme of this film has allowed the filmmakers to walk between the two psychological times and the contrast of Expedito's life, as well as to freely mix together fictional scenes and the documentary moments of the film.
The battery radio the main character carries during his journeys along the city and even at home, reinforces the anachronism of the character and acts as the main leitmotif of the story. Besides the narrative function of this element – that appears as well within the soundtrack as it will be explained later – Rocha has chosen the radio to act as a connection between Expedito and the life of the others, as well as to start living his own life through everyone else's.
Old, isolated, with no books written yet, neither possessions nor descendants, Expedito is one among millions of atomic particles of ephemeral dust of humanity. He’ll live in this world and pass unnoticed by history, he doesn’t disturb anyone. He is happy watching from the distance either an argument or a hug between a couple; the skirt or the hair of a woman; someone else's birthday cake; Adriano's goal or the Flamengo fans at the Maracaná… He can even bear the noise of the cranes which lay the foundations for three buildings in front of his window.
Because of music, Expedito is conscious of his solitude and his lethargy; he puts in his shut mouth the melancholic song of the lonely passerby. However, it is the music that takes the film out of close-ups and out of focus from the very beginning. In this way, it also saves the main figure from the daily torpor which sets the rhythm of his days. The preacher found by Expedito acts as a metronome as well, he also finds the way out of the ossuary in which his mother's mortal remains are buried after the exhumation.
Using religious symbols, we can think that it is in this moment when Expedito achieves his final redemption – PASSERBYis a film bursting with symbols. From this moment on, Glauber Rocha’s son looks for a solution for the psychological conflict expressed at the beginning of the film, which ends in a desolate street, like the one of “Paseo nocturno” in Rubem Fonseca's crowded Río.
]]>An unemployed youth (Fritz Genschow) and a prostitute (Lissy Arna) join the beggar (Paul Rehkopf) in a rat race over a string of pearls that fall off a wealthy lady at the city harbour. Seemingly their ticket out of poverty, the necklace soon evolves from a good luck charm to an albatross. Given a large sum of money as alms, the beggar imagines himself savouring the best cigars and then goes to a bar to celebrate. The jobless youth and the prostitute fall in love, and the beggar begins to distrust this young man with whom he once shared a home. The entrance of an infamous smuggler (Sig Arno) adds a darker twist to the tale, and as selfish interests take over, it’s impossible to sympathise with anyone but the beggar.
The plot of Mittler’s film is easy to follow, but the director sometimes focuses too much on life around the harbour: scenes of dockworkers and coal stokers going about their work distract from the impending drama. The scene where the necklace falls becomes a monumental moment, with a volley of shots showing the expressions on the beggar and the prostitute’s faces as both realise that a pot of gold has just fallen into their laps.
As it all winds down, the beggar can’t escape his pursuers and ends up dead at the bottom of the sea; the youth is hunted as the likely murderer; and the necklace is discovered to be a fake. This is the news the man in the park seems to be reading, but hasn’t been reading at all. His only interest is in the time he will enjoy with the prostitute, who is sitting across from him. For the prostitute, life goes on as usual as she heads off with her latest client. Which returns us to the question posed at the start of the film in regards to a beggar, a prostitute and an unemployed young man on the harbour: “Who takes the time to think about them while enjoying a cup of coffee and a cigar?”
JENSEITS DER STRASSE tells a timeless story that wouldn’t be out of place in modern times. It shines a spotlight on the lives of members of the underclass and subtly leads the audience to reflect upon their own social position.
]]>Your movie IMPOSSIBLE EXCHANGE begins with a provocative proposition about visa. You also have a 2001 project called TRANSIT VISA. Visa seem to be a very important issue in your work, why is that?
Basically to highlight the fact that there are certain people in this world that need a piece of paper to cross between countries. And this is not easy to get, it's actually very difficult. For them to give you that piece of paper you need to get a lot of documents and give a lot of information about yourself. This gathering and collecting takes weeks. Once they grant you a visa, it's not actually guaranteed, and sometimes they give you a visa for only four days. And you have to pay, even if you don't get it. And this process is kind of humiliating, it's not nice. So that's why, that's one of the ideas, one of the messages of the film.
How is the Lebanese film scene nowadays?
There's a big scene of filmmakers in Lebanon. Like in any other country there are a lot of filmmakers, and they're making shorts and feature films. The main difference is that it's not supported by the government. Most of the Lebanese young filmmakers, though, end up working for TV in Lebanon and in the Gulf. Even though they study film, they don't work in film. They work in TV or advertising.
You said there is no support from your government to produce films, how do Lebanese filmmakers manage this situation?
Through grants, commissions or private investors – such as advertising agencies, companies, sometimes private money, from banks, institutions… They have this kind of industrial cycle, and they decide from time to time to produce some short films and some films that they like. Sometimes they choose certain topics – like politics, the environment or tourism – and give money to others to make films about these certain topics.
Do you think it's getting easier to make movies in Lebanon?
It's not easy at all, it's extremely difficult. It has being difficult for the last 15 years, it's never easy, and it's not getting easier.
What projects are you working on now?
I just finished filming my first feature film, two weeks ago. It's called STABLE UNSTABLE. It's about psychology in Lebanon. We finished shooting, and I plan to edit it now, and finish the film. After that film, I have no idea. Making a movie is very difficult and it's a very long process.
The twelve-minute long BATMAN is polished and incredibly precise. It states its goals clearly, perhaps exceedingly so, to the point of coming across as a bit schematic. Its characters hold specific symbolic resonance and hardly breathe outside their functionality within the theme, while its narrative riches are exhausted once the political point is made. But it is undeniably successful at telling its story.
The film opens with chaos, a long chains of cars stuck at a traffic jam at a checkpoint outside Jerusalem. From the lowered windows of all the vehicles flows an aural tapestry of delicious complexity. We hear radio music, indistinct insults, and fragmented conversations. As the camera pans from right to left, each frustrated carpool unit represents a possible story. So there is a misleading sense of arbitrariness when the camera finally finds its subjects: two boys – one Palestinian, the other Israeli – trapped with their parents in separate cars.
But, of course, there is nothing actually aleatory about this choice of protagonists. Both families represent their respective nations, while the arguments that erupt between them are microcosmic echoes of larger conflicts. A traffic accident makes both sets of parents collide in a stream of bickering, while their boys stage their own dispute, fighting over a doll-sized Batman and running amidst the motionless automobiles languishing on the sun-drenched road.
Although they appear to mimic the adults, the boys are free of prejudice. Their fight is primarily playful, and although their game ends in violence, the result is nothing more than a temporary wrestle over a toy. Later, they return to the innocent whim of making funny faces at each other, their noses flat against the passenger windows of their cars. Without meaning to, they savagely satirise their parents, reducing their incoherent debate about the traffic accident – and, by extension, about the situation between their nations – to the level of a kindergarten playground brawl.
The grown-ups never raise a fist, but the unspoken tension between them is far more violent than the tumble their kids have on the asphalt. And there is an even more pernicious violence at work, the institutional violence that damages the texture of human relations. As the Israelis drive on home, the Palestinians are detained at the checkpoint. Still absorbed in their duel of funny faces, the boys share a final glance before parting, unaware of the meaning behind what separates them.
]]>The evening began with the screening of the film, which Farocki freely translated as “An Uncertain Study.” Afterwards he delivered a lecture on the montage techniques used by the two filmmakers and their political implications. He also showed clips from his and other directors’ films that used similar techniques.
Baruchello and Griffi’s film is a paramount example of the use of experimental formal techniques to create politically charged films. By using similar sequences from different genre films (spaghetti westerns, melodramas, historical epics, etc.) and gluing them together, making purposeful “mistakes” in the expected narrative sequences, Baruchello and Griffi produce comic and ironic effects. The film remains devoid of narrative, character development, psychological investigation or explicit message. That is what ties it to early avant-garde filmmakers such as Dziga Vertov and Hans Richter, both of whom opposed traditional bourgeois narration centred on the individual hero and opted for a panoramic dissection of a segment of the society or a whole city. The filmmakers deploy the artistic technique of the “objet trouvé” or ready-made, which adds artistic value to non-artistic objects (in this case mainstream genre film sequences) through recontextualisation. In LA VERIFICA INCERTA the recontextualisation produces a sharp critique of hegemonic clichés present in genre cinema, which usually conveys the point of view of the dominant class, race and gender.
The use of ready-mades is also an indication that the avant-garde believes that in film, montage is the key element of authorship. Hence Farocki’s lecture appropriately focused on that aspect of the film, investigating the theoretical and historical implications of techniques such as shot/counter-shot, repetition, mirror-reversal, etc., which were all carried out manually by altering the film stock, and not digitally, as we would do today. Farocki, who himself has worked with the editing of archival footage in his film-essays, took us on a journey through film history and theory, while also giving insight into the practical process of filmmaking and montage.
]]>Lana (Ladya Cheryl) spends her days filled with longing, at a zoo in Southern Jakarta. As the film begins, Lana is shown as a little girl walking alone in the zoo, as if she is searching for a particular escape. Lana keeps shouting “Father,” but the zoo remains silent.
Growing up without a family, Lana takes sole responsibility for giving her life a sense of continuity and for living it passionately and cordially. Besides, Lana is free to do everything in her little zoo. She bathes tigers, feeds giraffes, controls public toilets and guides the visitors. Paralleled with her “free” life, there are numerous animals caged in classes and categories. Unlike Lana, these animals are not free.
Lana’s longings are answered when one day, she encounters a magician cowboy and follows him out of the zoo and into society. There, Lana goes to work in a spa as “girl number 33.” A guest asks her to wear a leopard costume to amuse him. Suddenly, we find a perfect symmetry between the zoo and society: one is caged for the benefit of others. The only difference is that the zoo consists of animals caged by humans, while society consists of humans caged by humans. We follow Lana as she moves from a world where she is the ruler, to one where she is the one being ruled.
The film itself is an obvious symbolism. The magician is a husband-figure who transforms Lana from a zoo expert into an innocent Native American girl, a match to his cowboy ways. The relationship plunges her into a patriarchal family. Unfortunately, the magician is just a stereotypical bastard who disappears after taking advantage of her. Compared with Edwin’s first feature, BLIND PIG WHO WANTS TO FLY – which deals mostly with domestic issues in Indonesia – POSTCARDS FROM THE ZOO, with its narrative style, is far more accessible and universal, as well as easier to follow. Edwin maintains his poetic-banal style, while this time avoiding being too absurd. With its soft fable style, POSTCARDS FROM THE ZOO shapes itself as a sincere meditation on the nature of being in space.
]]>The film’s overt focus is the relationship – in and out of the kitchen – between Michel and his son Sébastien. Despite the disagreements between both men, it is obvious that Michel will eventually hand over the business to his son. Initially, Sébastien appears bossy and impatient, hardly yielding to his father’s suggestions for the business, but it becomes obvious that Michel himself is no pushover, especially in the scenes where his son seeks his opinion on yet another culinary invention. Like Anton Ego, the food critic from the movie RATATOUILLE, Michel makes a big fuss out of the tasting sessions, but Sébastien reminds him that “food is for eating.”
Food is also to be appreciated, as Lacoste shows. As each dish is made, the intensity of the effort is obvious, but Lacoste deemphasises the chef and zooms in on the dish, involving the audience in its making and encouraging interest in how it might taste. This occurs best in the opening scene, where Michel is making his most famous recipe, “The Gargouillou“. With the plate as his canvas, dashes of colourful ingredients are tossed on it in sequence, conjuring an enthralling culinary portrait. We don’t see Michel, but we hear him as he names each condiment that lands on the plate.
Lacoste himself uses the evolving landscape as his palette for depicting the Bras: long walks in open fields and watching the sunset become meditative moments for both father and son as they bond over their love for making food. We see Michel learning how to cook from his mother, and Sébastien is joined in the kitchen by his nine-year old son, Alban. The Bras story is made interesting in Lacoste’s hands, and he wraps it up with three Bras generations in the kitchen. With a smile on his face, Sébastien watches Alban helping Michel at the kitchen counter. Their hopes and dreams for the restaurant are firmly in place and the generations shift smoothly on course, with no fear of too many cooks spoiling the broth. Like a good and savoury dish, ENTRE LES BRAS leaves you sated.
]]>It took Gatlif only a few minutes to find and cast his protagonist, a young African woman named Betty. Her role is integral, he says, in ensuring INDIGNADOS did not simply represent Gatlif’s point of view. In the film, Betty lands in Europe to find a better life, only to find the opposite, as she is consumed by the energy of one protest after another. “I chose her because she has this very pure and neutral sight on the world. She discovers something without any kind of critique or opinion”, says Gatlif.
Five-minute casting is indicative of the speed with which Gatlif moved to release INDIGNADOS, which Gatlif says was due to the highly topical nature of the film. “One very important element of the movie was that it was made very quickly. I did it with my own money. Funding takes years to find and this was not possible with INDIGNADOS.”
The project started when Gatlif read Stephane Hessel’s essay “Time for Outrage!”, a best-selling essay that calls for non-violent protests against financial capitalism. “When I read it I found a lot of topics and problems that moved me, and that I agreed with,” he says.
Gatlif wasn’t the only one. The essay’s strong political message propelled many of the Occupy protests in Europe last year. In Spain, the protests were called (among other names) Indignados, taken after the essay’s translated Spanish title.
“What interested me was: who is reading this book, and what will happen after they read it?”, says Gatlif, who got the film rights immediately after the essay was published in France in December 2010.
In January 2011, “Occupy” was not yet a household name. “I was still waiting for something to happen. On May 15, it happened. It started in Spain”, he says. The movement spread like wildfire across the world, and Gatlif moved with it, camera in hand. Spain, Greece and France all make a presence in the film.
While Gatlif’s films often focus on discrimination against Roma people, he says his switch of focus to Occupy did not fall outside his comfort zone. “It’s the same thing”, says Gatlif, comparing gypsies to Occupy protestors. “You have 500,000 people in Occupy who move around. They live in tents. They are nomads. The gypsies have ‘occupied’ Europe for the last 500 years.”
]]>“The distinction between writing and directing doesn’t exist,” began Leigh in response to a roundabout question by Ben Gibson, the evening’s moderator, regarding the idiosyncrasies of his process. Despite having earned five screenwriting Oscar nominations for the likes of VERA DRAKE and ANOTHER YEAR, Leigh says he wouldn’t know where to begin writing a verbatim script, only ever beginning a film with a loose outline in mind. He allows his ideas to germinate during months of preparatory research and rehearsals with his cast, where he individually works with each actor through the process of creating their character, developing elaborate backstories to help shape their personas. Then, with each actor only knowing as much as their characters and nothing of what lies ahead, Leigh lets the drama create itself. What results are scenes that unfold with an element of honesty and immediacy that is often missing from traditionally shot sequences, where the actor would know their complete trajectory in advance. Leigh likens this naturalistic process to that of a documentary, where “the journey of making the film is the journey of discovering what the film is.”
But there exists a verse of the Mike Leigh process that sounds like a confused contradiction: “It’s all about creating precise work.” So how can impulse be precise? Leigh explains that while the on-the-spot spontaneity of a rehearsal is ultimately what he wants to capture on film, he would still like to retain an element of control over how a scene unfolds, right down to the exactitude of the mise-en-scène. Thus, as soon as Leigh feels a rehearsal is ready for filming, he fractures the action into meticulously staged and photographed shots where the actors must revisit the emotion of the rehearsals. Therein lies the unique and oft-misunderstood dichotomy of the Mike Leigh process; capturing spontaneity with precision.
On top of his background in theatre, the genesis of Leigh’s distinctive style lies in his strict diet of Hollywood and British films during his youth, where he often pondered how great it would be “if the characters were real people.” So where, as one audience member enquired during the tail end of the event, do his seemingly endless stories of real people come from?
“Well, they come from living,” Leigh replied.
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