FEATURE
Among her many brave acts for the film, such as hiding her camera inside her burqa through Afghanistan’s streets, and fighting off pimps while interviewing women forced into prostitution, perhaps her bravest (and most daring!) act was to travel and film without a translator. Relying on the most basic visual communication to enter communities or gain introductions in each country,
F OOD F O R F I LM In the real world, though, Charlotte Griffiths, deputy editor of Advanced Photographer, knows firsthand from her stills work how hard it is to bring food alive on camera. “It’s a cliché that’s bandied around but it’s important that people are able to taste the food when they look at it… The food must look appetising, most of the time it’s done to encourage people to do something”.
In the short documentary WERNER HERZOG EATS HIS SHOE, the German director informs us: “I’m quite convinced that cooking is the only alternative to filmmaking”. Having lost a bet with fellow director Errol Morris, Herzog lovingly cooks up and devours his footware in front of an audience. The funny thing is, though, that they don’t look all that bad. Shoes aside, food in films is all about "look, don’t touch". This presents filmmakers with a unique challenge when conveying senses like taste and smell without using them. So naturally, the easy approach to stimulate the palate visually is to piggyback on sex drives, or to use food as porn.
... Mickey Rourke rams the assorted contents of his exceptionally well-stocked fridge into Kim Basinger’s gaping maw ... Amidst many examples, this starts with 9 1/2 WEEKS where Mickey Rourke rams the assorted contents of his exceptionally well-stocked fridge into Kim Basinger’s gaping maw (see also Tony Richardson’s TOM JONES). This then leads to pastiche in HOT SHOTS, with Charlie Sheen frying eggs and bacon on Valeria Golino’s stomach, and out-and-out horror in Lukas Moodysson’s A HOLE IN THE HEART, where amateur pornographers take the food/oral sex metaphor to emetic extremes. More wholesome ways in include CHOCOLAT or BABETTE‘S FEAST which are more about delayed gratification than anything else.
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Griffiths stresses the importance of lighting when shooting food: “I try to use food that looks like it has
Given the visual link from eye to stomach, food as horror is much easier... been shot with natural light. “ She generally tries to use what the chefs provide her with, although she does have a few tips. “You can brush a bit of waterand-oil mix to give food its shine. Cooked food often goes quite matt but fresh food looks nice because it has lots of shine.” Certainly given the visual link from eye to stomach, food as horror is much easier - as the ‘chilled monkey brains’ from INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, or the endless cuts of suspicious meat in PARENTS show. These are just reiterations of themes in TITUS ANDRONICUS and SOYLENT GREEN. Griffith, though, fears only one dish: risotto. The Italian rice is less photogenic than Mickey Rourke. David Perilli EL BULLI screens at 5.45pm on Wednesday 21st September; FORKS OVER KNIVES screens at 8.15pm on Thursday 22nd September.
INTERVIEW
with the director of "c a r t o g r a p h y o f l o n e l i n e s s "
nocem collado
Providing exposure – of people, organisations, places – is the essence of documentary making. It’s assumed that documentaries provide a more candid and accurate exposure than other kinds of filmmaking, although obviously the act of focusing a camera on anything is by nature subjective. Nocem Collado, Spanish director of ‘Cartography of Loneliness’, a study of the plight of widows in India, Afghanistan and Nepal, took a particularly brave step in how she documented the stories she wished to expose. Collado describes herself as a Guerrilla filmmaker, which she defines as using a very low budget and working intimately with the subjects of one’s documentary. “I believe most documentaries are fiction”, she argues. “Most have a minimum of five people working on an interview with one person. How can that person be close and free? You are asking for that person to be like an actor or actress.”
“It is a paradox to film a documentary about loneliness, being alone” Collado countered this by immersing herself in her subjects’ living conditions and their emotional state. She travelled and filmed the whole documentary alone and in India lived for one month in a sheltered community with around 100 widows. “It is a paradox to film a documentary about loneliness, being alone” she says. “I wanted to know the real situation of women there. Living with them, sleeping with them, cleaning rice, peeling potatoes; after this they see me as someone alone like them and after they see me in an equal state they open up very easily.”
“I never understood what they wanted to tell me, so their spirit was very free” Collado simply acted as a vessel for the women’s voices until she returned to a larger city to have her recordings translated. “I never understood what they wanted to tell me, so their spirit was very free” she explains. “The translation was a surprise!” The widows’ stories told within ‘Cartography of Loneliness’ are earnest, without self pity, and very compelling. In her approach Collado perhaps becomes as objective a documenter as it is possible to be. Fiona Scoble CARTOGRAPHY OF LONELINESS is screened on Thursday 22nd September at 6.30pm at Emmanuel College.
T A K E ONE © 2011
Cambridge Film Festival Review
Editor Rosy Hunt Deputy Editor Fiona Scoble Comms Manager Mike Boyd Design Rosy Hunt Photography Tom Catchesides Print Victoire Limited
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REVIEW
r o m a n ti c s anonymous
d IR:JEAN-PIERRE AMERIS, FRANCE/BELGIUM 2010
A first date can certainly bring butterflies and clammy hands to even the most confident of people, but if you suffer from severe shyness this can be a truly terrifying situation. So when chocolate factory owner Jean-René (Benoît Poelvoorde) is asked by his therapist to confront his fear by inviting a woman out to dinner, he inadvertently finds himself dining with his newly hired sales-representative, the equally shy Angélique (Isabelle Carré).
While unaware that Angélique is in fact a gifted chocolatier, he does recognise her passion for chocolate and hopes that she will be able to reverse the fortunes of his nearly bankrupt factory. Thus, they embark on a journey together, professional, but first and foremost personal that requires a suitcase full of clean shirts on constant standby to deal with his nervous disposition, amusing mishaps and quirky dialogue to match this.
His socially awkward demeanour is perfectly complemented by Carré’s tentative, sweet nature resulting in believable chemistry. Poelvoorde is very convincing as the reluctant boss who prefers to hide in his office because he hates any kind of social intimacy, and whose fear of the unknown extends to his inability to answer a ringing telephone. His socially awkward demeanour is perfectly complemented by Carré’s tentative, sweet nature resulting in believable chemistry. Director
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Jean-Pierre Améris whips up a genuinely sweet tale of two socially inept people that share a common passion and fall in love, but have to overcome their fears to find their happy ending. Ultimately, this romance is like consuming your favourite chocolate: you choose it because you know the outcome will be sweet and satisfactory. Maria Sell
CFF STUDENT CRITIC REVIEW
DRIVE
DIR:NICOLAS WINDING REFN/USA 2011
DRIVE is an intoxicatingly spectacular display of classic cinematography, epic sound and Class A acting. The deceptively gory action is set in the suburbs of LA with a contrasting Miami Vice pink text. From the offset pulses are racing and adrenaline levels soar, as we’re introduced to a stunning Ryan Gosling pulling off a dangerous heist. Gosling’s role is executed flawlessly: cool, sophisticated and precise. Gosling’s character is named simply as “Driver”, the man with no name. He speaks little and lets his driving and ruthlessness do the talking. He is electrifying. When Driver bites off more than he can chew in helping his neighbour Irene’s ex-convict husband, he gets himself tangled into a world of corruption and violence, which also leads his oldest and closest friend into the fight. Gosling’s performance shows his versatility, from the opening voiceover to his calm collected nature and the dramatic switch to an intelligent, bad-ass, smouldering warrior. It should be noted that the film pushes the boundaries of every emotion of the audience. Amongst fear for Gosling’s character, there’s content for Irene and her son, the happiness of Gosling‘s friendship with his boss and after all that there’s intense pulseracing action. The film goes through the transition of a somewhat ‘cute’ plotline, to a violent, brutal blood fest. This film exploits the old corrupt image of LA and leaves a mark on the audience so distinct you’ll be talking about it for days. Intense, thrilling, masterfully crafted. Check out DRIVE. Jack McCurdy
REVIEW
I N T I MA T E G R AMMA R
DIR: NIR BERGMAN
Aharon (Roee Elsberg) is not like most 11-year-old boys growing up in Israel in the 1960s. When he spends his afternoons with his friends breaking into the flat of his beautiful and mysterious neighbour, Miss Blum, (as you do) he is more interested in her collection of books and the image of Picasso’s Guernica hanging on the wall, than what is inside her underwear drawer. And when
is stifled in an increasingly virile world. Director Nir Bergman (BROKEN WINGS) displays great sensitivity and intelligence in navigating the story, aided by some touching performances. Elsberg wonderfully inhabits the iconoclastic Aharon, who when not dreaming of his childhood sweetheart dancing for him on a cinema screen, emulates his hero Houdini by escaping from within a closed suitcase. For those souls who once refused to grow up they now have a hero in Aharon. Mark Byrnes INTIMATE GRAMMAR screens on Sun 25th at 12.45pm. REVIEW
LA T E S E P T EM B E R
the same friends move towards involvement in the burgeoning youth movement and eventual military service, Aharon decides he should follow another, artistic path, one which is at odds with his peers’ and parents’ expectations. So, as an expression of dissent and to avoid the perils of being an adult, he refuses to grow even an inch in three years, much to the shame of his mother (a superb performance by Orly Zilbershatz who injects humanity into a role that could easily have been caricatured).
DIR: JON SANDERS
Evoking such introspective ensemble pieces as Woody Allen’s theatre-influenced SEPTEMBER and, to some extent, the Danish family cacophony that was FESTEN, Jon Sanders’ latest film focuses on the intricate relationships and emotions shared amongst a group of people over the space of twentyfour hours. Featuring a group of theatre-trained actors and no hint of a screenplay (the dialogue
... a wonderful portrait of adolescence in extremis ... Based on the acclaimed novel by David Grossman, INTIMATE GRAMMAR is a wonderful portrait of adolescence in extremis; of how a sensitive soul
is completely improvised), LATE SEPTEMBER is a tender, quietly affecting drama about the
complexities of marriage and the transience of humanity, set during a seemingly civilised birthday party. The film plays out like a typical Mike Leigh scenario, albeit a paler version, and it is somewhat inescapable to draw conclusions with the great auteur’s style; the technique of building performances through vague whiffs of narrative structure is all too similar, as are the tragedyinduced themes, though this is rarely to the detriment of the film.
...each lingering, u n o b t r u s i v e scene flows with an unhurried naturalism. What Sanders does which is so engaging here is to use the dense, occasionally claustrophobic setting of the echoey house, in which the film is set, to his advantage; staggering the indepth analysis of the chequered marriage between Ken (Richard Vanstone) and Gillian, expertly played by Anna Mottram, so that each lingering, unobtrusive scene flows with an unhurried naturalism. It is true that some sequences go on for slightly longer than they probably should, and a few of the characters are seen but rarely focused upon, particularly the underused son who drifts in and out, but these are mere quibbles to a cherished and delicately handled piece of low-budget filmmaking. Ed Frost LATE SEPTEMBER is screened on Tuesday 20th at 10.30am and Friday 23rd at 1pm.
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INTERVIEW
SPECIAL REVIEW
THE DIRECTOR OF " M U M B AI CHARLIE "
DEE P A K V E R MA
MK: On "Eastenders" you were amongst the first characters to bring cultural diversity. What do you think about how different cultures are represented by the English media? DV: I am very proud to be in that position, where the character was the first Asian/Indian character there, whom the people just saw as a character and just loved as a character, and not as some Indian guy. And that for me is very important, and I think it’s very wrong to just start being diverse, and I think that [...] organised diversity does not work. It just doesn’t work, it’s a failure, and it doesn’t really say anything. It’s just ticking boxes, and [...] I really
I’m not ticking any boxes, I’m just doing what I want to do. To me that’s really, really important... believe it’s about the story, and [MUMBAI CHARLIE] was made with private money, and it is what it is, you know what I mean? I’m not ticking any boxes, I’m just doing what I want to do. To me that’s really, really important, because I think that’s where these companies get it wrong, where an x amount of money will go to black filmmakers, and x amount will go to Asians, I think that’s wrong, I think it should go to the best filmmakers, and if none of them are black, fine, and none of them are Asian, fine, if all of them are Asian, great.
" T H E W OMAN " D ir : L uck y M c K ee /100
mins /USA
2011
DV: No, I think if it’s hindered me it’s something that has to do with what I do as a person, and if
At the end of the day it all comes down to script, and character and obviously idea, that’s all it’s about, it’s about nothing else. anything has propelled me, it’s what I’m doing. I have this saying: “it’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at.” And if where you’re at is telling you to seek stories, than people will follow you. But if you keep barking about how “I’m Asian, and I don‘t earn enough money…” I think it’s rather about what you want. At the end of the day it all comes down to script, and character and obviously idea, that’s all it’s about, it’s about nothing else. When form-filling takes over, which a lot of times it does, a lot of film makers do get financing because they know how to fill in forms and they’re from a particular cultural background. That does happen, it does. People will deny it, but it happens. I think that’s just gonna get nowhere. You might take the forms and [...] say we have that many blacks or Asians, and it doesn’t do anything for me. I think it is the same for theatre, I think it’s just about what is interesting. Mihai Kolcsar
It is the domestic violence that is perhaps the film‘s scariest aspect ... herself (played to wild perfection by Pollyanna McIntosh) being merely a catalyst for a film about so much else. Through the growing malice shown by father and son, and the hesitancy of the mother to step in, the film explores politically relevant themes of lacking a moral compass and the culpability of those who witness harm and stand by. It is the domestic violence that is perhaps the film's scariest aspect—that is if, of course, if you don't include your face being bitten off and savagely eaten in front of you or the danger that lurks in the kennels...
MK: Do you think your cultural background has hindered you from finding any work in England?
Read the full interview online at www dot cambridgefilmfestival dot org dot uk
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HENRY AND B ARNWELL ON
amateurish affectations such as overuse of cross-fades and fade-outs, and an overblown soundtrack with inappropriate song choices. However, it’s an interesting film, with the woman
Claire Henry and Naomi Barnwell
Angela Bettis THE WOMAN is a feral creature captured by Chris, a cheery sitcom patriarch with an increasingly dark side. The woman is locked in a cellar and kept as a pet or family project, with everyone taking responsibility to ‘care’ for her and help civilise her through torture. Hideous and realistic tortures are inflicted on the woman’s body by Chris and his son, so that the eventual, inevitable revenge risks being both disappointing and tokenistic, tacked on to justify the violence against women in the rest of the film.
The awkward family moments increase in frequency and a stark slap resounds throughout the rest of the film. Chris proves to be a vile misogynist whose actions any viewer would be dying to see avenged by the woman or—we begin to hope—by his wife and daughter Peggy, whom he treats with the same brutal contempt. The wife's jealousy and the father and son's lust for the woman intensifies, making for unsettling viewing. The awkward family moments increase in frequency and a stark slap resounds throughout the rest of the film. THE WOMAN complements its strange subject matter with a copious use of slow-mo and other
MINI INTERVIEW DIRECTOR OF " THE WO M AN "
LUC K Y M c K EE
RH: Society goes in cycles of liberation/prudishness and this is a prudish decade - but housewives still relish nonfictional torture/rape porn in the form of misery lit. Do you think this contradictory attitude emerges when we lose our healthy, balanced perspective? Or are we all just mental? LM: "We ARE pretty mental. I agree on the cycles though. It is a very conservative time. I‘m amazed how much fear there was from film buyers in regards to my film. Ten years ago it wasn‘t like this. I‘m hoping the cycle turns itself around and we start getting bolder films sold to the masses. We all need something fresh and new and honest." Rosy Hunt
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