Nisimazine Cannes 2009 #9

#9

from Dust Kid, Yumi Jung Š Sensitive Bear

SATURDAY 23 MAY 2009

Quinzaine Shorts Cristian Mungiu The History of Aviation

NisiMazine Cannes

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

This is our 9th and last issue. Having roamed the Croisette at sundown, become quite efficient in elbow fights, and kept smiling after the many deadlines with too much coffee, we feel like we all got a proper slice of the Cannes cake. Here we say goodbye with our personally most memorable cinematic experiences of the festival.

NISIMAZINE CANNES

Saturday 23 May 2009 / #9 A magazine published by NISI MASA with the support of the ‘Youth in Action’ programme of the EU

Andrea Franco, Spain

EDITORIAL STAFF Director of Publication Matthieu Darras

Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos)

Maartje Alders Jude Lister Layout Maartje Alders Tutor Lee Marshall

Editors-in-Chief

This film was shocking, unpredictable, different to all the movies I’ve ever seen. Either you love it or hate

Contributors to this issue

it, but you’ll always remember it.

Natalia Ames, Bruno Carmelo Eftihia Chatzistefanidi, Estela Cotes Andrea Franco , Joanna Gallardo Moa Geistrand, Laura Talvet Luis Sens, Enrique Vivar Coordinators Joanna Gallardo Maximilien van Aertryck, Gulçin Sahin

HERE (Ho Tzu Nyen)

The film Here, from Singaporean director Ho Tzu Nyen, was one of the most interesting surprises I’ve had in the festival. With its unique and experimental aesthetic it managed to shock the public, stand out

Bruno Carmelo, Brazil

from the other titles and remind us that a cinema festival is meant to be looking for new ways of filmmaking as well as confirming classic ones.

Eftihia Chatzistefanidi, Greece

NISI MASA 10 rue de l’Echiquier, J’ai tué ma mère (Xavier Dolan)

75010, Paris, France. + 33 (0)6 32 61 70 26 europe@nisimasa.com www.nisimasa.com

First feature celluloid dreams. A dark room; a ray of light; the moving image. It takes only one second to get

Natalia Ames, Peru

inspired and feel the butterflies.

Thirst (Park Chon-wook)

Moa Geistrand, Sweden

For those who love stylish gore (like me), Thirst is a delicious feast, with plenty of hallucinated moments in a bizarre

Polytechnique (Denis Villeneuve)

story that challenges our senses. It might be hard to see

I usually don’t get offended watching angry-

for some, but for me the vampire tale with high doses of

man-with-a-gun-who-hates-women films, but

sex and several litres of blood contained some of the most

with Polytechnique, it was different. It was

memorable moments of the competition.

like the hatred left the screen and entered the room: that it was aimed at me personally.

After the screening, I didn’t want to talk to my male friends, and whenever I think about the film, that feeling returns.

Enrique Vivar, Peru

Samson & Delilah (Warwick Thornton)

only film I will choose for this “pick up” proposition. I found real life in Cannes, in the crowded

When it comes to love, one is used to

streets, in the cues for the films, in the fascina-

talking about communication problems

ted faces of people seated in front of images and

and sexual frustration. That is why it’s

stories just like in the old days or probably in the

rather refreshing to follow a radically

future. I felt languages, colors of voices, tones of

different angle of a romance. No bored

skins, sunglasses, beauty, covered with sweat fo-

people, no time to worry about being intellectually

complicated

or

reheads, noisy mobil phones, cameras, instants...

not.

This is my best film in Cannes, but also, of course,

Australian rising star Warwick Thornton shows

Giovanna Mezzogiorno’s extremely beautiful eyes.

that love needs less. And the

rest is just a question of luck.

There is no better film than life. In fact, it’s the

Laura Talvet, Estonia

I’m mesmarized.

All photos by Luis Sens

all our material and more can be seen on:

www.nisimazine.eu

and our next editions will be at Festival de Lima (Peru) and Festival do Rio (Brazil)

© Bizibi

film of the day A Repüles Története /

The History Of Aviation

Balint Kenyeres (France, Hungary), QR

W

e would normally start with a simple synopsis, but presenting the aesthetics may give a better idea of this film: The History of Aviation is built of a series of long sequences filmed with telephoto lenses in a sumptuous widescreen format. The camera glides over a coastal landscape, framing a group of people moving around and looking for a little girl who’s gotten lost from her family.

of composition and depth of field.

This Hungarian short is clearly an exercise in style and control, where no improvisation is allowed.

The natural background is completely dominated by this ostentatious camera that is not afraid to let us remark its presence. There is surely no realism here: the scenery seems to be chosen to fit the choices of framing, not the other way around.

The effect of this choice is an image that moves steadily, engaging in a fluid choreography which surveys the horizon whilst juggling with multiple possibilities

However, it’s not all about aesthetics. The title is The History of Aviation, and yet there’s no mention of the facts and people involved in the beginnings of

Montparnasse

But there is one explicit reference to flying (and what a special moment it is), when the roving camera suddenly stops and contemplates a tiny dot moving through the sky. The important action that follows lasts only a few seconds and is shared with no one but a silent little girl and the audience.

“May this be our little secret”, the film seems to imply; and the birth of aviation becomes a small, familiar event under the complicity of our gaze.

One of the interesting things here is to see a short film conceived not as an aesthetic experiment, but as a narrative one. Hungarian director Bálint Kenyeres proposes quite an unusual way to tell a story; in which a moment in the history of aviation is mostly built by the direction rather than by the screenplay itself.

by Bruno Carmelo

Mikhaël Hers (France), QR © Les Films de la grande ourse

review

mechanical flight. That’s what makes this episode so interesting: the main reference to aviation is probably that of the camera itself, shooting from afar, moving along cliffs and beaches as the frame alternates from one character to another.

by Joanna Gallardo

O

ne night. An area in Paris. Three sequences for three stories. This simple concept is deserving of the topic of Montparnasse: the subtleties of communication between human beings. Each time the action is based on conversations between two or three protagonists. We discover step by step the context of each situation: whether it be difficulties in finding one’s right place in society, continuing to live after the death of a loved one, or expressing very personal feelings. The dialogues are simple but effective, and the situations, filmed often in long shots,

seem common but then start to be interesting thanks to the depth of the characters. They are in some cases not the kind often shown on screen: particularly the young musician, shy and not so cute.

Montparnasse is just a setting, a pretext for the story, which is a bit of a pity. Mikhaël Hers could have better exploited the atmos-

phere of this Parisian neighbourhood, aside from shooting images of the famous tower.

Beyond this disappointment though, the film is successful in creating a strong sense of intimacy with the audience. And finally, It’s all right, as one of the songs in the film suggests.

Yes, it’s all right, we think as we return to daylight at the end.

Colombo Films

review

1989

Camilo Matíz (Colombia), SIC

I

n 1989, Colombian director Camilo Matiz wants to talk about violence, especially about the ongoing bloodshed in his country. But instead of approaching the subject in a global, sociological way, the director analyses in depth a single violent act, portraying his characters (three customers and a waitress) on a rainy night. Vincent Gallo plays the lead, in a role that seems much influenced by his past work (and by his real personality). The film is di-

A

lways wondering about human relationships, filmmakers try to give an explanation for the increasingly weird behaviour of people.

Or at least, when there is no answer to this everlasting question, they try to reflect it on screen. This medium length film tells a story set against the background of a six-hour dating service.

Through the eyes of a young taxi driver who disconcertedly observes this new way of socializing, we immerse ourselves in the coldness of an impersonal world.

Shot with extreme sensitivity,

review

using soft frames in which the city lights dance and float over the image, we stroll through the streets of this unknown Asian town. The early scenes seem to recall those of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver: the eyes of the guy in the rear-view mirror, the music, the disturbing atmosphere, the dark.

Sun-woo drives his taxi to have the chance to meet others, trying to get the attention of people living in an increasingly dehumanized world. He attempts to attract their interest by talking about art books; “Are you by any chance interested in paintings?” he asks, desperate to put an end to his loneliness.

6 hours

vided into two distinct parts: beginning with a section based on a long conversation and then shifting to a strong scene which depicts violence in a purely visual way.

1989 is ambitious: it wants to make us reflect on time, on the importance and the relevance of a single moment, but also on the possibilities of the power of cinema to capture elusive sensations. Its approach may occasionally fall into pretentiousness, but

He even pictures the soulless eyes of his date as the empty gazes of Modigliani’s portraits.

Here, social relationships seem to suffer a return to the past - a past where women have turned into modern geishas. Thus, in his loneliness, Sun-Woo finally realizes that the only way of making contact today is through this kind of pretence: by behaving like actors in this fake movie we are starring in.

That’s the reason why he tries to convince himself that his arranged date is an accidental meeting - because that’s the only way to survive.

by Andrea Franco

Moon Seong-hyeok (South Korea), SIC

that doesn’t prevent us from admiring the potential of its slow motion scenes. The problem is that this admiration is linked in an unclear way with the reflection on violence that the film aims to propose.

Are these beautiful shots glorifying the violence depicted?

Or do they want to make us conscious of the horror of these events? The relationship between technique and purpose looks ambiguous in this still promising film.

© Korea National University of Arts

©

by Natalia Ames

PHOTO by LUIS SENS

interview

Cristian Mungiu Writer and Co -Director of Tales from the Goldan Age, UCR Palme D’Or winner Cristian Mungiu, who impressed audiences with his powerful drama ‘4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days’ in 2007, is back in Cannes to present ‘Tales from the Golden Age’ a group of stories about the late communist era in Romania. The five stories were written and produced by Mungiu, who directed one of them himself and called on four other Romanian filmmakers (Hanno Höfer, Razvan Marculescu, Constantin Pupescu and Ioana Uricaru) to make the others.

How is the experience of coming back to Cannes after having won the Palme D’Or? It’s different for me now because it’s my third time in Cannes, but my first time as a producer, introducing somebody else. Now I feel a bit more responsible, and I’m a bit more nervous. But I am really glad that it was possible for us to show the film in Cannes, because it is the best place to show a film, especially a collective film… it’s difficult to find a place for it.

You are taking this project as an intermediate step between the last film you authored and the next one.

Yes, after the success of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, I decided to invite directors to take this script to the screen. I deliberately went to people I knew very well and who had not had made their debut full length feature. I

chose people that I knew I could work with.

And how was the job of being producer?

From the beginning I was really involved in everything. I helped them a little bit with the casting, with the editing, but I wanted to give them the freedom to express their own voices - to make the film an independent art product with individual voices.

How could you define the relationship between Romanian people and humour?

It was the way they discovered to survive [through] that time. The dictatorship was very harsh, but its side effects could be funny at some points. The only way to survive that period was to mock it, not taking things seriously.

All the stories that we see in the movie are urban legends. People had to make queues in the

morning without knowing what they were going to get; they used to make jokes about it, about Ceauşescu, etc. Everybody believed these legends and everybody was telling them with a little bit of a difference. One can understand Romanian history through the urban legends of that time, so I decided to make this subjective piece on the late Ceauşescu era through these myths.

What is the reaction of Romanian audiences when you unearth bad memories?

The film has this mechanism of being nostalgic, not about the period, but about the humour.

And it was very important for me to portray the harsh period as I remembered it, especially for Romanian audiences, to make them revive the humour they needed to survive. The film has not been released yet in Romania, but I think the audiences will go to see it because it is a comedy, it’s easy to digest, very evocative, and everybody at the end of the movie will have his or her personal view of the period.

Do you think this movie has the potential to be universal?

I don’t know how much they could relate to making queues for food in France, for example, but lots of people from countries

which have experienced this kind of problem, even if they did not have communism like this, might relate to this use of humour to stand against the abuses. [It’s] one of the ways to fight against the power, whether it is in South America, Asia, or other countries. I suppose those audiences will feel surprised at the way they relate to it.

You and Ioana Uricaru were part of the Berlinale Talent Campus some years ago. What do you think is the importance of this kind of event for young filmmakers?

I believe that all the initiatives that are close to big festivals, bringing together people to talk with professionals, watching films and knowing each other, can be very fruitful - especially because they bring together people of the same age. And when somebody tells you something about your work that you had never thought about, you will understand your cinema better.

I had a very good experience in the BTC by talking to people who had another idea of cinema, and I had also wonderful experiences when I brought my films to Cannes, because I had immediate feedback from people who see cinema in other ways than I do.

by Natalia Ames

Quinzaine Shorts

in f o cus Dust Kid

Yumi Jung (Republic of Korea)

© Senstive Bear

by Moa Geistrand

Drömmar Från Skogen Johannes Nyholm (Sweden)

© Joclo

by Andrea Franco

Les Fugitives

Guillaume Leiter (France)

© Cinéma de Facto

by Laura Talvet

T

races are everywhere, if you look for them, and leaving traces is inevitable.

In Jung Yumi’s animated fairytale Dust Kid, the traces are dirt, dust and disorder; small memories of a lonely life in the anonymous apartment of a young woman. She wakes up in the middle of a rainy night and starts to clean, carefully polish, arrange. But in every dusty corner, she finds a tiny replica of herself, looking for rest, or maybe company. She tries to crush the little crea-

T

he world of animation is constantly exploring new ways of giving life to its characters. The process of flicking the pages of a notebook seems to belong to the past, and now creators move their shapes with both their computers and their imaginations. Dreams of the Forest, by Swedish director Johannes Nyholm, recreates a traditional shadow puppet show in a modern version which deliberately includes with delicate movements - the threads and sticks that move the figures.

S

ummer is adventure. And sometimes, an irascibility at having had too much of it. Two pretty things leave their common lover in Paris and travel to Naples, a sort of summery escapade to the decadent city. Hélène, one of the girlfriends, feels lonely and tries to find a new lover.

However, things don’t quite happen as she would have ex-

ture, flush her down the toilet, and drown her in a teacup.

But she keeps coming back.

Yumi’s animation technique is minimalistic pencil drawings, and every stroke is a work of art. She skips dialogue and the dramatic free ride of enhancing music to instead focus on sound as a narrative.

The buzzing of the fridge, the scratching of slippers against the floor, the sudden shock of a water squirt in the sink - these are all sounds you

mostly don’t register, unless you are padding around alone at night, when everyone else is asleep.

The perfect simplicity of Dust Kid is what makes it extraordinary. Instead of giving answers, Yumi opens up for reflections, gently leading you right to your own lost traces: the thoughts you carry with you, padding around awake at night.

In this dark fairytale, which seems to draw on children’s fears, a bird falls in love with a girl who’s strolling through the forest. The girl, who doesn’t pay too much attention to her little suitor, keeps walking between the wooded paths, unconcerned about the danger that lies ahead of her. The tale soon turns into a disturbing story, in which fire and even death - playing a tempting melody, appear on the scene.

The atmosphere is transmitted through the darkness of the silhouettes and the shadows,

and the music leads to an uneasy feeling.

pected. Until she finally finds consolation when forming a new trio with Réa and Hermann, their guide.

Réa’s girlish romantic singing on the boat. The rest of the film shows bored, tired lovers who are heading for a new adventure, trying to escape somewhere. But where to and from whom – they probably don’t know yet themselves.

Guillaume Leiter’s short brings out the lazy rhythm of the Mediterranean summer together with a nostalgic, dreamy visual, reminding us at some points of Pierrot Le Fou’s atmosphere - especially

Apparently simple and naïve, the story is told with homemade resources: curtains simulate the wind and the rain, and plastics move as the sea. Extremely beautiful, ingenious, and provoking an incredible oppressive sensation, this is the perfect example of the cartoon’s imaginative strength.

I

n a worn-down shopping mall, João has a key. In fact he has lots of keys, because he’s a locksmith. This mall isn’t just any mall; it’s almost abandoned, empty except for João’s key shop and a café, run by a podgy girl. From the key shop there’s a backdoor, leading to a basement where his father sits in the dark with a French dictionary, citing words of wisdom. Sometimes at night, or in João’s daydreams, this desolate

B

arroco, a style of art in Brazil, deals with, besides others themes, the extremes: the spiritual and the material, good and bad, heaven and evil. The first short film directed by the Brazilian Renata Pinheiro is selected in Cannes after having been awarded prizes at two festivals in its homeland, in Brasilia and Recife.

With beautiful photography, the plot portrays an old

The father’s reaction is very interesting: he is shocked by this view, but he decides to “fix” the situation by putting the soldiers in war po-

commercial space turns all red and poetic, and a longhaired girl wanders around with a message.

The keys are actually the key to where this surrealistic story is going. One day a girl needs a copy of a giant key, which opens the entrance to a green park - possibly a parallel universe, far from the sad temple of keys and coffee… Clearly influenced

by David Lynch, João Ni-

and lonely man who lives surrounded by memories.

Walking on the streets and singing to himself, he seems to be living in the same way as when he had a wife and family. He’s almost crazy in this routine.

Pinheiro, an artist and former art director of movies such as The Dead Girl’s Feast (screened at Cannes last year), used video pro-

ses, before tenderly taking care of his son, helping him to take a bath with a manly energy.

John Wayne hated horses Andrew Betzer (USA)

by Natalia Ames

This film shows humour in a sober way, forming a deep portrait of its characters which is filled with empathy. The laughter at the father’s shock is mixed with a contemplative view of the landscape and a touching father-son relationship in this complex film.

colau’s characters suddenly appear or disappear with the simple use of jumpcuts, and the dialogues are a joy if you’re into bizarre changes of subject. But where Lynch’s films have a direction, and make some kind of weird sense after all, Cancao de amor e saude gets lost in the weirdness, and never really finds the way home.

jections on the sand and around the house to concretize his memories. At some points these images interact with the great performance of Everaldo Pontes. The sound of running water and the sea reminds us that for him time is still passing, even with the sadness. It’s a creative film in terms of language with elements of video-art and a great use of photography.

© Abdrew T. Betzer Film Production

While the father works out military style, cultivates

his land and takes care of his house, the son plays around the fields, having a different connection with his environment. Suddenly, the father discovers his son’s games, which put his toy soldiers in homosexual situations.

Canção de amor e saúde João Nicolau (Portugal,France)

by Moa Geistrand

NISI MASA

© Les Film du Bélier

f a father tries to raise a child in his own image, perhaps he feels disappointed when his son turns out to have another vision of the world. This is what happens in John Wayne hated horses, a short film by American director Andrew T. Betzer which challenges the notion of what it means to be a man.

European Network of Young Cinema

SuperBarroco

Renata Pinheiro (Brazil)

by Estela Cotes ©Aroma Filmes

I

Alain Cavalier, director of Irène, UCR

NISI MASA European Network of Young Cinema