Nisimazine Cannes 2009 #2

SATURDAY 16 MAY 2009

NisiMazine Cannes

from Ordinary People, Vladimir Perisic © TS Productions

A Magazine Published By NISI MASA, European Network Of Young Cinema

Rien de Personnel Ordinary People In Focus: l’Atelier

#2

NISIMAZINE CANNES

Saturday 16 May 2009 / #2 A magazine published by NISI MASA

editorial H

by Moa Geistrand

A couple of minutes walk from the buzz around the red carpet, the streets of Cannes are calm, and the only things reminding you of the world’s most famous film festival are the big Brad Pitt posters on the bus stops.

Excited about all the fantastic films I was about to see, I asked the guy in the supermarket what films he was looking forward to. “Oh”, he said, “Has the festival started already? Well, I don’t have time to see any films. I have to work. Since there are so many people here for the festival, we have to stay open until two in the morning”

EDITORIAL STAFF Director of Publication Matthieu Darras

Maartje Alders Jude Lister Layout Maartje Alders

Editors-in-Chief

In the late 19th century, during the birth of cinema, films were shown wherever they could possibly attract the biggest audiences. The screenings of the Cannes film festival also attract huge crowds, but the audiences are only those with free press passes and the privilege of having time to see the films.

“In its sixty years of history, the Festival de Cannes has never ceased to live with its day”, says Thierry Frémaux, General Delegate. He might be right about that, but, more precisely, whose day is he referring to?

Contributors to this issue

Natalia Ames , Bruno Carmelo Esra Demirkıran, Andrea Franco Moa Geistrand, Emilie Padellec Luis Sens , Enrique Vivar

Coordinators Joanna Gallardo, Maximilien van Aertryck, Gulçin Sahin

NISI MASA 10 rue de l’Echiquier, 75010, Paris, France. + 33 (0)6 32 61 70 26 europe@nisimasa.com www.nisimasa.com

BY LUIS SENS

,

ow does hosting a gigantic film festival affect a city? 62 years of screening controversial movies from all over the world, sometimes throwing attention onto social injustices and causing stormy debates - does all this create a generation of curious citizens, eager to embrace the world and dive into new ideas?

Apparently not. During the years of the rising popularity of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Cannes was one of the cities in France where he got the biggest support.

And Le Pen is maybe not the guy you would connect with an eagerness to embrace the world and all of its citizens.

with the support of the ‘Youth in Action’ programme of the EU

‘UP’-scaling

picture of the day

© Karé Productions

film of the day

Rien de Personnel Mathias Gokalp (France) SIC

C

risis. For months, TV, radios and newspapers have had nothing to say but this six-letter word. Sony, Caterpillar, Continental, Molex: if the name of the concerned company varies, the script of restructuring repeats itself identically. At the end of it all, an often sinister end awaits the employees: massive layoffs. Refusing to be sacrificed, some workers resist, going even so far as their boss’ confinement. Perhaps there’s nothing personal here, but it is definitely a matter of gut reactions: a question of human dignity. As an echo of this current socio-economic plight, Mathias Gokalp signs Rien de Personnel, the opening film of the Critics’ Week.

review

Slightly Kafka-esque, this behindclosed-doors black farce follows the confrontation of the manager and employees of the Muller company, a fictitious pharmaceutical firm. During a freezing winter night, it is between the walls of a luxurious private mansion that they are all about to take part in a strange kind of work social event.

Strange, because what on the earth is the goal of this refined reception which turns quickly into a collective evaluation where face-to-face oral tests are disrupted by the rumour of an imminent acquisition?

Who is out to skin other people alive, and at which price? Can the freedom of speech, courage and impertinence of some free electrons

and outcasts compete with the capitalist coldness and cynicism of the decision makers? At the end of the day, which behaviour should be chosen: to play the game, proud of an Agnes B. suit like Bruno, the coach and actor played by JeanPierre Darroussin, to unionize like Gilles (Denis Podalydès), or to be delighted in advance by an early and cushy retirement in one’s “garden and shack”? And what about self-esteem amongst all that? And love?

Carried by equally talented actors and actresses (from Pascal Greggory, just perfect as an icy blueeyed, bitchy manager, to Bouli Lanners, very touching, especially

during his drunken version of Johnny Hallyday’s hit, Je te promets), Rien de Personnel is an astonishing first film. The viewpoint of Mathias Gokalp is at the same time lucid and surrealist, his Alain Resnais-like kaleidoscopic narration is intelligently developed. And it is undoubtedly not by chance if this existentialist tragicomedy starts with quasi clinical shots of eviscerated bodies and closes itself on scenes of reconciliation, where the main characters speak open-heartedly. Or how to switch from the greed for power (Vanitas) to the honest joy of being together.

by Emilie Padellec

Spring Fever / Chun Feng Chen Zui De Ye Wan

Lou Ye (France)

by Andrea Franco Inspired by the French New Wave, Spring Fever reminds one of that so godardian release of the camera and urban sound, plus a frenetic use of images and photography, very close to Christopher Doyle’s work.

Lou Ye increases the grain of the pictures in an attempt to give more realism and proximity to the characters, as if someone were shooting them with his personal camera.

The director immerses us in a dangerous quintet in which no one seems to know what he or she really wants.

Passion and feelings emerge in this sordid story about people with rather confusing sexual inclinations, who let their impulses act by themselves.

Although Cannes Jury awards have already been given to similar stories in past editions - such as Wong

Kar Wai’s Happy Together or Chen Kaige’s Farewell my Concubine, Spring Fever is still far from those great works. It shows too many unnecessary sex scenes and

is guilty of an excess of runtime which finally leads to a fall of interest for the viewer.

Harsh lives that could have been dealt with from a more interesting perspective.

©TS Productions

review

Ordinary People

Vladimir Perisic (Serbia, France, Switzerland) SIC

I

n war contexts, society tends to block reality for a while (especially when there is secrecy and human rights violations), and then, when the truth appears, everybody wants to find somebody to blame. This is happening in Serbia, after the traumatic war they suffered some years ago.

Ordinary people, by Serbian director Vladimir Perisic, is a powerful movie about war,

violence, death, and especially, about the issue of responsibility in these contexts. The title refers to the characters of the movie, a group of soldiers who have to face a terrible day of service in the middle of the war: they do several summary executions, even though one of them, Drazen, the new member of the troop, is against this practice.

Progressively we see his change of attitude towards the killings, and come to understand that a

“normal” guy, after facing these terrible actions, has to deal with his conscience for the rest of his life. Without victimizing his characters, Perisic approaches the subject by posing many questions about the real responsibility for war crimes.

The movie, which was part of the Atelier in 2005 and is now being shown at the Critics’ Week, is Perisic’s opera prima. This is striking, because the film is shot

with a great maturity, respecting its characters and giving them space to carefully observe their reactions. At the beginning, the slow tempo conveys an atmosphere of uncertainty, which then gives way to an oppressive and uncomfortable environment.

Drazen is an example of what war does to people, and the final scene makes us think about what is happening now with these socalled “war monsters”. Are they able to sleep at night?

Natalia Ames

© PB Filmproduktion

Pablo Lamar (Paraguay)

T

critics’ week shorts

© Pablo Lamar

Noche Adentro

ender is not the night. Neither is the soul.

As we get closer to this notion, a few things could overwhelm our sight. Fortunately, certain movies and images still gather some secrets, even in the darkest night. Noche Adentro has one secret, a hard, beautiful one.

A long shot in a lonely corridor in which a man carries away the inert body of his young bride covered in blood-stained sheets. Why does love need to bleed? Why do irrational impulses posses us like sharp-edged claws?

We don’t know, and we don’t care at all. This is a strong image; what cinema in shorts should be. A thinking image surrounded by mystery.

A patchwork elaborated with flesh, soul (and blood). Not a complete body, just pieces. In fact it’s a drawing, full of statements, thoughts, noises, errors. Really powerful.

Susciter, soutenir et défendre l’émergence d’écritures cinématographiques exigeantes

MOULIN D’ANDÉ - CÉCI RESIDENCES D’ECRITURE : 3 1 O C T O B R E 2009

PROCHAINE SESSION

www.moulinande.com / ceci@moulinande.asso.fr / Tél . +33 (0)2 32 59 70 02

Although I’m talking about pieces, Noche Adentro manages to unify its parts in time and movement - a backward movement from the explicit to the poetic (a vagina, traces of blood on a penis, ripples of water in which the moon tries to reflect its shape). I could place it somewhere between the primitive violence of Leonardo Favio films, Lucrecia Martel’s tropical physicality and even Lisandro Alonso’s pretentious sense of time. But Noche Adentro is clever enough to keep away all these ghosts and make us believe in one real secret: Talent.

Enrique Vivar

interview

© Les Films des tournelles

Riad Sattouf

Director of Les Beaux Gosses, QR

Creator of famous comics such as La Vie Secrète des Jeunes and Manuel du Puceau, Riad Sattouf is presenting in Cannes his first film, Les Beaux Gosses, a “light comedy” in which he treats some of his favourite themes: adolescence; its fears and discoveries; its relationship with sex, family and religion.

In your books Ma Circoncision and La Vie Secrète des Jeunes, you show a very critical posture towards the Muslim religion. How does your religious background influence you work?

I was born into a very traditional Muslim society in Syria, so I have a concrete vision of religion. I’m always surprised by the ability that human beings have to believe, whether it’s in God, in UFOs, in lies, in anything. Even myself, I believe a lot in science for example, I believe in progress and in the human ability to bring us some light. Religion, on the other hand, is like the night.

The portrait you make of society concerns mostly the lower classes. The few times wealthy people are mentioned, it’s in a deeply sarcastic way. Why is that?

Well, because I don’t spend my life in rich neighbourhoods.

When I have the occasion, I

visit some. But I show them as it feels [to me], I don’t keep asking myself questions. My subject is not class warfare.

Tell us a little bit about Les Beaux Gosses. How did you have the opportunity to make your first film?

Les Beaux Gosses is a film with 14 year-old teenagers, all nonprofessional actors. It was the producer, Anne Dominique Toussaint, who came up with this idea. I would never have taken the initiative of looking for producers, convincing them, putting up with their fears and concerns, changing a screenplay a hundred times to avoid disturbing some catholic association… Anne Dominique Toussaint loved my work, and she gave me total freedom.

I was very lucky. I really liked doing this film, it was like paradise. Low budget, no big stars (just a few, actually), no pressure… perfect!

In Les Beaux Gosses, there are two death scenes which are shown in a surprisingly soft way. Why have you decided to include death and suicide in your comedy?

It’s pretty easy: I thought from the point of view of the teenagers in the film, in the way that the world seen through their eyes isn’t charged of such a moral content as people may think. I didn’t want to say “look how strange these teenagers are”, but “look how strange the world is when seen through their perspective”.

Has your experience with comic strips helped you develop your characters and dialogues? How did you proceed in the choice of frames and compositions?

I realized pretty fast that comics and cinema had nothing to do with one another. They are two very distant languages, despite what people may think.

I thought about making a storyboard, but once I found my actors, I gave it up. I saw it had to come from them. I would ask them not to act, to do the scene as the felt like it; and then we would modify, make some adjustments… I wanted to be really close to them, so I used a lot of close shots and

bizarre compositions; to really feel their animal side. And I chose to have little movement with the camera, since there is some heaviness in them; the world is turning around them, they are their own prisoners.

Your film has been chosen for the Cannes film festival, which doesn’t normally select many comedies. What does this selection mean to you?

I was really happy, of course.

But I’m not really sure what that means, I’m just happy that people are going to watch my film and that they will be able to see something different from hundreds of other comedies, even if it sounds pretentious to say that!

After the experience with Les Beaux Gosses, do you intend to pursue a career in the cinema? Do you have other film projects in mind?

I loved doing this film. Of course, I’d like to repeat this experience, as long as I can work in the same conditions as this time, I mean, with complete freedom to do anything I want.

by Bruno Carmelo

L’Atelier is our special focus of the day. We met with two participating directors, Seyfi Teoman and Bertrand Mandico.

l’Atelier

in f o c us

Young Turkish director Seyfi Teoman is attending l’Atelier with his second feature project Our Grand Despair, adaptation of a novel with the same title.

by Esra Demirkıran When did you decide to adapt the novel into a film?

I read the book when it was published in 2004. We had contact with the author Barış Bıçakçı before, since I adopted a small story about bubble gums from a previous book of his in my first feature Summer Book. He allowed me to adapt the book into script, but didn’t want to be involved in the writing. He decided to be the co-writer after the second draft, in July 2008. Now, we’ve finished the eighth draft.

Did you have difficulties in cowriting?

The difficulty is multi-layered: Writing the script with someone else, adapting a novel into a film, and doing it with its author. Fortunately we have similar views with Barış. He knows the worlds of the characters well. Our collaboration made the script very rich.

Which support have you gotten for the project?

In April 2008, I got support for my next project at the Istanbul Film Festival, attached to the best film prize for Summer Book. In May 2008, the project got Hubert Balls funding support. Also, we attended the co-production platforms Pusan Promotion Plan, Netherlands Production Platform in Utrecht, Produire au Sud in Nantes, and Korea.

What do you expect from l’Atelier?

We met Georges Goldenstern, general manager of the Cinéfondation, in Pusan. As the shooting period and finances of the film were suitable for l’Atelier, we applied and got selected. We have co-producers from the Netherlands and Germany. I expect to meet co-producers and sales agents who would be interested in it.

What are the benefits of coproduction workshops?

The first reason why the project got attention was that people liked Summer Book. Also, they liked Our Grand Despair and selected it. These platforms are useful for promotion and the visibility of the project, having feedbacks from people from different countries and finding partners.

Photo by M. Murat Kocaaga

What is the main idea of the film?

It is about the close friendship - almost lovers - of two men in their 40s. But then they fall in love with a 20-year-old woman. It tells about how borders of friendship and love could be described, the impossibility of turning back time, and growing old.

interview

Selfportrait © Bertrand Mandico

portrait Bertrand Mandico

Working with your obsessions

French director Bertrand Mandico is not a newcomer to cinema – far from it. Yet in spite of a long experience in film, this year Mandico is arriving at the Cannes film festival with his first feature film in development. His screenplay, The Man Who Hides the Forest, had already been selected for festivals in Turin and Rotterdam, and now it’s Cannes’ turn, where it is participating in L’Atelier.

M

andico proposed to meet in a bar in the north of Paris, but not just any bar: “Several filmmakers have already made films in this place.

Tarantino shot a whole scene of Inglorious Basterds here”, he explains. There’s no doubt: he’s come to talk cinema. As he presents himself, a very calm and shy tone of voice contrasts with the portrait he outlines of his work: “I like working with my obsessions”, he affirms. Soon, he would be throwing out words such as scatology, surrealism, baroque, trash; a whole group of references that could make it hard, at first, to understand the personality of this director.

Going to extremes It all becomes clear, though, when Mandico starts explaining his tastes in cinema. His website had already given an idea of what to expect: it presents a portfolio crossing all kinds of aesthetics, genres and formats;

in which stop-motion animations are side-to-side with western black-and-white dramas, experiments with silent films and funny, surrealistic publicity campaigns.

His learning of the cinematic language was a lot more conventional, though. He studied in an animation school, because of the “solitary aspect of it that fits me well” and the possibility to work with both cinema and visual arts. Soon however he would experiment with more collaborative working styles, such as for a short narrative film co-directed with a friend (“which I’ll never do again; co-direction is such a decoy!”), publicity campaigns for products ranging from medication to insurance and music videos for artists such as Tété and Pink Martini.

Will he keep on working with the same diversity? Not really, he confesses. The advertising

business found his work too “radical” (watching some of the campaigns, it’s easy to understand why), and music videos present him with a limitation in terms of content. As The Man Who Hides the Forest announces, he’s now more focused on medium and feature narrative films.

When in Rome…

For this screenplay, Mandico wants to work with contradictions. Inspired by directors such as Werner Herzog and Alejandro Jodorowsky, he intends to bring from these peculiar personalities a baroque aesthetic, and apply it to a story that suits most of it’s author’s “obsessions”: the conflict between cinema and visual arts and the possibility to “push the grotesque to its paroxysm”, in his words. The protagonist he chose is a decadent film director who is hired to show a famous French painting to the poor natives in Siberia – and shoot their reaction. The anthropological experience doesn’t excite him at all; his real interest lies in the chance of doing one last film.

In order to have the project accepted by his producer, one condition was imposed:

Mandico would have to go to the Siberian forest himself, get in touch with the real natives and feel the environment he intended to describe. Despite some reticence at first, his answer was positive. Mandico affirms having experienced things he would have never imagined, and having been pushed to his limits. “The result”, he says with a smile, “is that some of these stories really got into the screenplay…”

Just the beginning You can expect any director to be really excited about going to Cannes, but Mandico admits feeling nothing but nervousness: “I can’t be relaxed, the film isn’t done yet!” Indeed.

He will be going to Cannes thinking about the shooting of The Man Who Hides the Forest, but also about a medium-length western project he’s looking to direct, as well as a sitcom for French television. The festival might be a great opportunity for Mandico, but he’s not the type of director to rest on his laurels. His ambitions go way beyond that.

by Bruno Carmelo

NISI MASA European Network of Young Cinema