Nisimazine Cannes 2008#5-En

Nisimazine Cannes Saturday 24th May 2008

5

A Bilingual magazine created by Nisi Masa, European Network of Young Cinema

Involuntary Entre les murs Valeria Ga誰 Guermanika

In partnership with

Full French and English versions online: www.nisimasa.com

Editorial

NISIMAZINE CANES Saturday 24th of May 2008

Sebastiona Puccarelli

Afghana Jones in the Temple of Cinema

S

ince becoming a Taliban cinema lover - no blockbusters allowed, Kazakh films subtitled in Armenian preferably - I had checked off most of the big festivals on the list, but for some reason Cannes was still missing.

Now, after 10 days, around 30 films watched, 2 bow ties borrowed for red carpet climbing, a few litres of coffee and countless UFOs (Unidentified Free Objects) swallowed at the international pavilions, maybe it’s time to share some overall feelings about the festival.

It’s mainly about answering the definitive question: is Cannes the last temple of cinema or is it simply the biggest show-biz circus of our times?

EXTERIOR, CROISETTE – DAY/NIGHT Between around 9 and 2am, you may note the “circus effect”: a bizarre cocktail of glittering dresses, flashes Lamborghinis, roaring loudspeakers… watching films really looks like the last of the options offered.

INTERIOR, THEATRE – DAY (FOR NIGHT) If you are lucky enough to enter a screening, you can still immerse yourself in a unique celebration of the vitality of cinema. Protected by devoted selectors, defended by legions of guards in beige uniforms, in these theatres you can experience the re-birthing emotion of discovering excellent new films. You just need the endurance of a pearl-seeker, to cut out the waste and find the gems inside.

Maybe I should admit I’m not the fundamentalist I used to be, but I deeply believe both are allowed.

A magazine published by the NISI MASA organization with the support of the ‘Europe for Citizens’ programme of the EU and of the French Ministry of Health, Youth, Sports and Associative Life.

EDITORIALE TEAM Editor-in-chief Matthieu Darras Secretaries of the editorial Jude Lister, Emilie Padellec English translations Jude Lister French translations Emilie Padellec, Julien Melebeck Contributors to this issue Maria Bianco, Esra Demirkiran, Zsuzsanna Kiràly, Johanna Kinnari, Mario Kozina, Hanna Mironenko, Julien Melebeck, Kheira Bourahli, Tania Laniel, Sebastiano Pucciarelli, Cécile Strouk Cover’s picture: Entre les murs, by Laurent Cantet

NISI MASA (European Office)

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January 21st - 25th, 2009

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Heart-winning film

Involuntary

By Ruben Östlund (Sweden)

L

et me say this from the word go – De Ofrivilliga (Involuntary), the debut film from 31-year-old Ruben Östlund, is a small masterpiece. Intelligent, funny and formally inventive, the film is constructed from five alternating stories. Not one is linked to another, apart from the fact that they are all set in present-day Sweden.

A firework set off in a tastefully tendered garden provokes a not-so-minor accident. In a coach, there is a debate over who broke the toilet curtain. As long as nobody denounces the culprit, the driver won’t start the vehicle.

Two very young adolescents have fun taking pictures of themselves in sexy poses, getting drunk and ending up at a debauched party.

A teacher of a revolutionary pedagogy publicly denounces the physical punishment that one of her colleagues inflicts on a young pupil in front of her eyes. Nobody speaks to her any more.

During a country outing between old childhood friends, a schoolboy prank goes too far.

Without seeming to, but with tacit consent, this film poses questions of an ethical human dimension. The theme of limits is here central. When a game becomes a drama. When a trivial incident (such as the breaking of a toilet curtain) flirts with the moral order. When transgression drives towards real danger.

Involuntary examines the fundamentals of the individualsociety relationship with modesty and intelligence, leaving the viewer an out-of-frame to reconstruct, a choice of pluridirectional interpretations. Written with an attention to detail, an acute sense for dialogue and situations, the scenes are often comic and never gratuitous.

Review Tulpan

By Sergey Dvortsevoy (Kazakhstan)

When, during an evening between mates, one of the young guys, pretty drunk, strips naked, bends himself over into tripod shape, and another arrives with a Swedish flag, pretending to stick its pole in his asshole, it remains all in good taste and not lacking in an evident political dimension.

Ruben Östlund plays with stereotypes without falling into them. The limits are reflected in the fixed and distant framings which always put the characters either with their backs to the frame, on the edge of it, or outside of it. In one memorable wide-shot scene, a man pursues another to give him a blow job in a field (the playground). Their friends walk along a path on the right of the frame (the world of reason), and end up facilitating the gesture by entering into the fieldplayground. The game transforms into a violation: bursting open a taboo and overstepping the limit whilst remaining visually remarkable. Within the image, the characters are tiny, completely on the border of the frame. We guess what is happening more than we see it.

The film doesn’t deliver an identifiable thesis or message, but questions ethics through engaging scenes which dialogue with one other, convening Kant and Nietzsche to the counter of images.

Julien Melebeck

K

azakhstan, in the midst of incessant sand storms. Upon returning home to the steppes, a sailor awaits the consent of a young girl in order to get married to her.

The life which he dreams of is within hand’s reach… But what happens when your destiny doesn’t depend on yourself? Director Sergey Dvortsevoy approaches this question through a portrait of Kazakh shepherds.

When Asa, our young protagonist, speaks with Tulpan’s family to obtain their approval, he feels that fate seems to be turning in his favour. But this impression is as brief as it is euphoric. Tulpan doesn’t want to marry him after all.

From then on, Asa must fight alone in order to change his future: If he doesn’t succeed

in getting married, he will never be able to have his own farm. Tulpan is his only hope. Appearing for only a few seconds on screen, but ever-present throughout, she is the outline of an impossible dream.

Visually, the film is fascinating.

The predominance of browns and blues gives it a simple, unembellished beauty.

Masterfully directed, the combination of the character’s movements and those of the camera, created by a surprising choreography, form a dance rocked by the sounds of the desert and the character’s voices. This enchanting feature film reminds us of the importance of acting according to one’s own values.

María Blanco

Review Versailles

By Pierre Schoeller (France)

V

ersailles, the debut feature of Pierre Schoeller, was born from a desire to unveil the misery of SDFs lurking deep in the woods. However, his viewpoint is not reductive. Between exclusion and voluntary marginalisation, the film gives food for thought on the situation of homeless people.

Half of the scenes were filmed in outside locations at night. The characters, illuminated by the fire, take on a ghostly allure, the flames shaping their bodies in the manner of De La Tour. Certain sequences also remind one of the photographer Yves Trémorin, such as those revealing the nudity of these individuals worn by time. This is the case when the old man Tony washes himself. The cadaver-like whiteness of his skin contrasts with the darkness of the forest and the dead leaves which cling to him.

Competing for the Camera d’Or, this film is ingeniously brought to the screen. Everything seems to be designed to bring out the poverty and exhaustion traced on the faces of the protagonists. The graininess of certain images accentuates the precarious situation of Nina and her son Enzo, as well as that of Damien, the man who will end up looking after the young boy. © «Land of Plenty» by Win Wenders (2004) Their determination to survive will lead them to a social reinsertion marked by sacrifice.

By day, the secondary characters are sometimes drowned in the blurriness of the image. All our attention is thus concentrated on the homeless people and their perpetual struggle. A desperate struggle to find work, begin a new life and hope for a less rough future. Brief moments of happiness: two overexposed sequences stand out from the rest of the film. Working in a retirement home, Nina dances with one of the elderly residents in a room bathed with light. Enzo, like a little prince, washes himself in the middle of nature under a glaring sun. Impossible dreams? If Versailles was the sumptuous palace of the Sun King, this film is its hidden face.

Tania Laniel

Interview with:

Sam Taylor Wood

Director of Love You More (UK)

? ? ? ? ?

Sam Taylor Wood is no newcomer when it comes to walking the red carpet at Cannes.

After her participation in the sulphurous Destricted project, this captivating London-based photographer-video maker, who is fond of suspended bodies (SelfPortrait Suspended, I-VIII) and vulnerable souls (Crying Men), is offering Love You More, an excellent short film about sex, love and rock’n’roll.

© Photo by Johanna Kinnari

H

ow has your pluridisciplinary approach given you a specific vision and use of each media?

When I have an idea, it is always very specific to either photography or film. The landscape of each is similar for me but operates mentally at different speeds. Film in its nature takes more time but often the photographs I take are equal in the length of process especially if it is a series. A new series of photographs has taken almost a year for me to produce.

Your previous short film Death Valley, dealt explicitly with

masculine self-stimulation. In Love You More, two teenagers experience their first time, and maybe first true love.

I seem to be drawn to dealing with sexuality. The Destricted project was tough for me, pornography wasn’t an arena I wanted to get into but it was interesting enough as a whole concept that I felt it needed a woman’s perspective.

Love You More was very different, there is a narrative that isn’t totally governed by a cum shot.

In Love You More, the interaction between images and soundtrack seems crucial. Do you have a particular interest in the links between music and cinema?

I play music constantly so it’s integral to my life, therefore to my work also. The Buzzcocks song ‘‘Love You More’’ was perfect to imbue the film with fast furious energy but also the words are so romantic with the most abrupt ending. It enabled me to play with the repetition of the track in a way that made it conscious and gave the film humour in amidst the ferocity of sex.

Emilie Padellec

Short Film Corner Smáfuglar

By Rúnar Runarsson (Iceland)

A

gain this year at Cannes a large number of films are dealing with adolescence. Is this a sign of a time in which a Russian film (Everybody Dies But Me), an Argentinean film (Blood Appears) and a Swedish film (Involuntary) all accentuate the portrait of youth centred, without other motivations, on alcohol, drugs and sex (often in this order)? The contemporary ‘no-future’, castrated by its own revolt, seems to know how to give itself a blow job. Even though this is the case in Two Birds, an Icelandic short selected in competition, the film goes beyond this kind of statement. Four friends: two boys and two girls around 15 years of age allow themselves to be lead into a heavy party by one of the group. If one of the couples is officially together, the other one isn’t.

The girl would like to be, but the younger guy hesitates out of shyness. Of course, during the evening the four take a little ketamine pill washed down with a mouthful of beer. The anaesthetising drug plunges the young adolescent and his admirer into a sort of comatose high.

The boy emerges, a tear rolls down his cheek. He catches a glimpse of his passed-out companion being raped by two thirty-somethings. In the early morning, there is

no longer anyone around and the boy sees his nude girlfriend asleep on the bed. He gets undressed and lies down beside her. She opens her eyes, and tells him that she is happy that her first time was with him. He agrees, takes her softly in his arms, avoiding thus giving her a nightmarish wake-up call, saving her life. His face seems to have matured. Giving oneself to another to grow up. Hope at the end of chaos. Two Birds is filmed with sensitivity and sensuality. Close-ups of hands, extraordinarily clear eyes, the crudity of the sex scene, the beauty of the unfinished adolescent bodies: all creates a remarkable aesthetic. A simple yet powerful small film which promises big things to come.

Julien Melebeck

© Photo by Johanna Kinnari

PICTURE OF THE DAY

Coming soon: the ‘Cannine’ Film Festival...

Portrait Valeria Gaï Guermanika

D

ans la Russie d’aujourd’hui, Valeria Gaïa Guermanika, jeune femme de 24 ans, est peut-être la seule réalisatrice russe à avoir la chance de réaliser si jeune un film de fiction en 35 mm. Habituellement dans l’industrie cinématographique russe, quelqu’un qui n’a ni d’éducation particulière ni une grande expérience de la vie a peu de chance de percer.

© Photo: Johanna Kinnari

Valeria est connue comme réalisatrice de documentaires, en particulier son film Devochki (The Girls), produit par le label Kinoteatr.doc. Ce docu dresse le portrait intime de trois jeunes filles qui entre dans l’âge adulte.

A cette époque, Mihail Sinev fut le seul à miser sur le potentiel cinématographique de cette jeune fille.

Ils mourront tous sauf moi, son premier long métrage (sélectionné à la Semaine de la Critique) est produit par Igor Tolstunov qui a prit le risque d’engager sa société de production PROFIT sur ce film. Elle a eu beaucoup de chance de collaborer avec ces deux producteurs, d’autant plus que la plupart des réalisateurs et critiques russes n’aiment pas particulièrement les films de Guermanika. Ils l’accusent de négliger le langage cinématographique et de dédaigner les règles classiques du montage.

N

owadays, 24-year old Valeria Gaï Guermanika is probably the only female Russian director who has the chance to direct a 35mm fiction movie at such a young age. Usually in the Russian film industry, someone with neither a certain special background nor a large amount of life experience has no such possibility.

Valeria is already known as a documentary filmmaker, in particular for her film Devochki (Girls), produced under the Kinoteatr.doc label. Devochki intimately followed a few days in the lives of three ordinary young girls on the brink of adulthood.

Back then Mihail Sinev was the only one who believed that this young girl and her camera experiment had potential. This time around, for her debut fiction feature Everybody Dies but Me (selected for the Critic’s Week), it was Igor Tolstunov and his film production company PROFIT who took the risk. She has had a great deal of luck to be able to cooperate with both of these producers, especially since most Russian filmmakers and critics are not fond of Guermanika’s films, accusing her of neglecting the cinematic language and remarking her disdain for classical editing styles.

Audiences on the other hand appreciate her honesty in choosing the subject matter for her works and the way she treats these themes. Although she makes provocative documentaries, she never pushes her subjects to do things they wouldn’t do normally. And it works: her Devochki totally forgot about the camera and said and did things they would never have if someone had told them to.

It seems that Valeria reads what the journalists write about her films in the mass media, because she is well acquainted with the general opinion amongst Russian film critics. In one of her interviews Guermanika even said that she doesn’t want to screen her

future films in Russian film festivals because there are angry critics who will be judging.

She makes her films not for them, but for the public. But where to screen her shorts?

They are not quite appropriate for either TV or cinema formats. Hopefully another fate awaits Everybody Dies but Me. This new fiction film, covering similar ground as her previous documentary work, is about three teenage girls preparing for a school disco. When most people hear this it provokes a smile, seeming not quite serious enough as a subject matter. But Valeria is convinced that this topic is crucial. She remembers well those days in her recent past when she was the same as her subjects - as a teenager, choosing the right dress or lipstick for a party was much more important to her than any school lesson. She didn’t want to study, and even left one secondary school. In those days, the cancellation of a party seemed to be a largest disaster ever. Valeria thinks that it is important to speak about and show how teenagers live – what they dream about, what they want, what they do and think.

In her own way she tries to build a bridge between generations: between teens who have daily confrontations with inflexible adults, and older generations who are frustrated by frivolous and lazy youngsters. She tries to show that these young, hormonally-charged women are real personalities - simply of a different generation from their parents.

Indeed Valeria herself, when growing up in Moscow, was seen as somewhat unusual by the adults around her - a delinquent protesting against the pretence of ‘decent society’. Now however she has changed. She has already given birth to her own child, and has inevitably grown up in the process. And so has her work. Yet for some reason they are still not really well-known amongst Russian filmgoers, remaining a dish more likely to be found on a festival menu.

Cependant, le public apprécie son honnêteté dans le choix de ses sujets de films et, dans la façon dont elle les traite. Bien qu’elle réalise des documentaires provocants, elle ne présente pas les choses de façon irréaliste. Et cela marche : les jeunes filles du documentaire Devochki, oublient totalement la caméra, parlent et agissent sans que personne n’ait eu à leur demander de faire quoi que ce soit en plus.

Il semble que Valeria lise dans les médias ce que les journalistes écrivent à son propos. Elle connaît l’opinion générale des critiques russes. Dans une des ses interviews, elle va jusqu’à dire qu’elle ne veut pas projeter ses prochains films dans les festivals russes car elle n’y récolte que des critiques sévères.

En même temps, elle ne fait pas de films pour les critiques mais pour le public. Mais où alors diffuser ses courts métrages ? Ils ne sont formatés ni pour la télévision ni pour la diffusion en salle de cinéma.

Heureusement, un autre sort attend Ils mourront tous sauf moi Thématiquement similaire à son précédent documentaire, son nouveau film raconte l’histoire de trois filles qui se préparent pour une soirée organisée par l’école. Quand on entend ce pitch, cela prête à sourire.

Cela ne semble pas très révolutionnaire. Mais Valeria Gaï Guermanika est convaincue de l’importance de ce sujet. La réalisatrice se souvient bien de cette période qu’elle a vécue elle-même il n’y a pas si longtemps.

Quand elle était adolescente, choisir la bonne robe ou la bonne couleur de rouge à lèvres pour une soirée était bien plus intéressant pour elle qu’aucune leçon scolaire.

Elle ne voulait pas étudier et a même voulu quitter le lycée. A cette époque, l’annulation d’une soirée était le pire désastre qui pouvait arriver.

Valeria pense qu’il est important de parler et de montrer la vie des adolescents – leurs rêves, leurs désirs, ce qu’ils font et ce qu’ils pensent. A sa façon, elle essaie de construire des ponts entre les générations: entre les adolescents et leurs préoccupations quotidiennes, et ces adultes inflexibles appartenant à la vielle garde, frustrés par ces jeunes frivoles et paresseux.

Elle essaie de montrer que ces jeunes femmes en plein bouleversement hormonal ont aussi de vraies personnalités. Elles appartiennent seulement à une génération différente.

Valeria elle-même, qui a grandit à Moscou, était vue par les adultes de son entourage comme une fille à part – une rebelle en crise contre la prétendue « société décente ». Aujourd’hui, elle n’est plus la même. Elle a déjà donné naissance à un enfant.

Cette expérience la fait inévitablement mûrir. Ses films aussi. Actuellement et pour plusieurs raisons, ses films ne sont pas très connus du grand public, demeurant plutôt réservés au menu des festivals.

Hanna Mironenko

Reportage I remember you in Chelsea Hotel

O

ne day, Janis Joplin was looking for Kris Kristofferson in the corridors. In the lift, she asked a little man for Mr. Kris. The man told Janis that she it was her lucky day because he was Kris himself. Janis of course didn’t believe him, since Kris was a tall and handsome man in contrast to Leonard Cohen, the one in the lift. It was in this lift in the Chelsea Hotel that they first met before spending nights together in room #2, which later inspired Mr. Cohen to write the famous song Chelsea Hotel #2.

They were just two of the many famous figures who stayed in the glorious quarter-of-a-century-old hotel based in Manhattan, NY. There were lots more: amongst them were writers (Burroughs, Bukowski, Kerouac, Sartre), legendary musicians (Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Patti Smith, Edith Piaf ) and of course stars of cinema (Miloš Forman, Dennis Hopper, Jane Fonda).

The Chelsea Hotel was the birthplace of many an artistic creation. Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey while staying there, which was collaborated on and later brought to the screen by another one-time Chelsea resident, Stanley Kubrick.. The building itself has also been the subject of numerous films, the most famous being Andy Warhol’s 1966 work Chelsea Girls. The film focused on five Warhol Superstars, including Nico of The Velvet Underground and Edie Sedgwick. The split-screen documentary - with one darker part symbolising black and one lighter part representing white - explained both the disturbing and the innocent aspects of the hotel.

Chelsea on the Rocks by Abel Ferrera, given a special screening at Cannes this year, is a nostalgic documentary comparing

Interview with:

Juan Pittaluga

the old and new times of the hotel. In its glory days in the 60s and 70s, it was a place for bohemians to meet and discuss; drugs parties, intellectual exchange and artistic creation. Nowadays it is a kind of boutique hotel owned by a company which operates different hotels in the city.

Using archive footage of the old time residences -“the ones who are in heaven, or hell, or not staying at the hotel at all” as Nico said in Chelsea Girls - and interviews made

with those still living, the film is like a blues ballad for the old and hard times of the hotel. Some liked the sunny mornings behind its yellow curtains, some counted the many days they spent there, and some wished to leave the hotel soon.

All in all, the Chelsea is still inspiring for contemporary artists; even if they never lived there and even if its corridors haven’t retained their old spirit.

Esra Demirkiran

? ? ? ? ? wine and culture which was selected in Competition in 2004. My 2006 documentary Mensonages / Lies is about ethics and times when you lie yourself.

Juan is a participant of the Cinefondation atelier with his film project Punta del Este.

Y

our cinema career?

I am from Uruguay, living in Paris. I quit studying sociology and philosophy and started to work in cinema. Writing scripts during my university years was a passion for me. After my first short Rêver, I made my first feature, Orlando Vargas, which was screened at the Critics Week. In 2004 I co-directed Mondovino with Jonathan Lassiter, a documentary on

Your project?

Punta del Este is a small place in Uruguay. It is wild and sophisticated at the same time. The film is a love story about ethics. I think that in the 19th century, there were universal values, integrity and sharing. In the 21st century, values are fighting to survive. My character Francisco brings the values of the 19th century; so he is not lost.

The atelier?

In these last days we made 40 meetings with producers, co-producers, sales agents... and are very satisfied about the stage that the project is at now. It helped us to meet potential partners and other project-owners. I will shoot the film from February - March 2009 in Uruguay.

Esra Demirkiran

Work in progress Cyber-adoration[dot]Cinema

T

he Internet has created its own form of reality - an infinite digital space devoid of material bodies and full of the ones and zeros which transfer information. Anonymity opens up opportunities for manipulation: you will not always be taken to account for the things you put out there for all to see.

The protagonist of Atom Egoyan’s Adoration decides to reinvent his life in cyberspace. The experience of losing his parents at an early age becomes a fertile ground for inventing a sensational story, in which the figure of his father transforms into a Lebanese terrorist, planning to use his pregnant mother to carry out his diabolical plan. When he posts the story on a video blog in an internet chat room, people start to react and their participation in the discussion makes the illusion even more effective. People start to construct recollections of events which didn’t ever happen, which then exert an influence over their everyday lives. False memories arouse a lot of confusion in Egoyan’s cinematic world, while the same is achieved in the mind of the audience by blurring the distinctions between truth and lies; exploring the way in which our sense of reality is constructed through different media.

If Egoyan’s character uses the Internet to reinvent his past, the young people in Antonio Campos’ Afterschool use it to fabricate their present. For them there is no reality behind the one they see on the computer screen. Emotional and adrenaline-charged situations of sexual arousal and violence are only to be experienced through bad quality internet clips, and when something similar happens for real, the director chooses to show it through the lens of a webcam.

The identical way in which death is treated in the characters’ on and off-line experiences underlines their incapability to produce any kind of emotional connection with each other.

Even the sex scenes from the internet blog (nastycumholes.com) seem more real than the ones in which the characters engage, which nevertheless manage to retain some of the pain and humiliation suggested by the obscene name of the site. The experimental and unbalanced frames of Campos’ film enforce the feeling that his characters have lost their centre, while the direct gaze into the eyes of the viewer at the very end poses a direct question: are we still able to discern the difference between experienced and mediated reality?

While Afterschool mainly speaks of emotional arousal blocked behind an impenetrable computer screen, Juraj Lehotsky in Blind Loves asks another intimate question: how is love possible in cyberspace?

©Photo by Johanna Kinnari

Blind Loves is an omnibus film which deals with the difficulties confronted by blind people when expressing their feelings of fondness and love. In the eyes of others they are not only defined through their medical condition, but also their social background. In one story a blind teenage girl has an internet romance with somebody she has never met. But when her sweetheart proposes a meeting in the real, non virtual world, the possibility for rejection and getting hurt reappears.

The Internet remains a kind of oasis wherein communication is unobstructed by prejudice.

But that particular kind of love can only exist in cyberspace.

Love in the material world is ‘polluted’ by bodies, touches,

smells and sounds. In other words, love in the non-virtual world is blind. Or is it the other way around?

All of these films explore the way in which onscreen reality influences the one experienced by the characters and thus becomes a part of it. The questions they arouse could easily be applied to our own lives: How honest are we when we present ourselves to other people, hidden behind a mask of anonymity? And are we still capable of feeling something that isn’t obstructed by a computer/cinema screen?

The questions are formed but their answer is left for us, the spectators, to find.

Mario Kozina

1 book/1 film The Class

T

he Class by François Bégaudeau is a book which tells of a difficult junior high school in Paris. Its strong testimony, composed above all of dialogue, describes the cruel reality of a national education system in an immense state of suffering. It plunges us into two different worlds: one of rebellious adolescents, the other of completely powerless teachers. The author, himself a French teacher, tells of a struggle to teach a language which is totally without value in the eyes of most young people. Through their behaviour and language, these students bring the ‘cité’ (French term denoting the high rise housing projects on the margins of the city centre) with them every morning. There is no longer a difference between the school and the area.

The original title of the novel (Entre les Murs – ‘Between the Walls’) evokes a prison rather than a school. Reality becomes frightening when faced with the general sense of discouragement. Only real human and material means can reverse the course of events. We observe the determination of the youngest to defy the adults, who in turn seek to provoke them. Only the break room allows an instant of escape before a return to the “battlefield”. The book demonstrates the weakness of these schools left to abandon, the walls tarnished by sadness. The labelling of the junior high as a “priority educational zone” discriminates against everyone. Luckily, there remains affection between the pupils, and with certain teachers. The young people are more held back by the viewpoint of their friends than that which they share with the adults. The most important thing to retain is the fight of this teacher to return to a love of education. The hardness of an unconscious youth and the lack of means needn’t become unavoidable…

A cinematic adaptation of this kind of book, being of a disconcerting realism and dealing with a burning issue, is very delicate. One worries that The Class could be badly interpreted, given the complexity of the situation. Today, Laurent Cantet is throwing himself up against the wall.

Kheira Bourahli

Into the festival

Professional Encounters: Philippe Rouyer

P

(Film Critic)

hilippe Rouyer revealed himself as a cinema critic at a very young age, whilst attending a screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick. Around a decade later, he obtained his doctorate in cinema, undertaking his thesis on cinematic genres which had been given little analysis until then: gore movies and porno.

Without skipping a beat, he joined Positif, a magazine in which he found a family of thought ideally adapted to his conception of the 7th Art. Here today to meet the ‘60 à Cannes’, he has allowed us, with determination and generosity, to share in a rich cinematographic experience. Passionate about his profession, which he has been practising for 22 years now, he defines good film criticism as “a guiding light in the search for the golden nugget”, a visionary who is able to capture the essence of a film through sensitive and precise writing. A complex job which requires a constant working rigour and a tenacious will. Qualities which Philippe Rouyer finely demonstrates.

3 questions to:

Cécile Strouk

Amanda Kernell

By Zsuzsanna Kiràly

Passionate storyteller Amanda, 21, from Sweden has always enjoyed making up stories in her daydreams. As a child she wanted to become an actress, until she realised she’d prefer to create films herself.

A

re you as a scriptwriter inspired by the different people you have met in Cannes?

People here have lots of stories to tell, they can talk about their love for cinema for hours. This is inspiring, as long as they realise their own projects, because good ideas shouldn’t be wasted.

What do you consider as the main strength of cinema as an art form?

Making a film is a social project: I enjoy working together in a big family, because scriptwriting is lonely work.

Watching films, on the other hand, is something I only do at festivals.

Nevertheless it is amazing what you can create with image and sound. A good film can give you a rest from your own life and provoke a deep and unconscious emotional reaction at the same time.

Do you have a dream project that you absolutely want to realise?

I always wanted to write about my family, especially about my grandmother, who is Sami, but started to hate Samipeople when she got older. This is an important social and political issue in Sweden.

Il resto della notte Francesco Munzi

F

rancesco Munzi, an expert in travelling across Italy’s contradictions through the eyes of immigrants, unfortunately didn’t prepare his narrative vehicle very well this time. In fact, the journey of Il resto della notte doesn’t even start.

This social-related story is infected by capital sins such as: flat and stereotyped characters, the mechanical and simplistic application of a 3-part narrative structure, and overperforming and uneasy actors (psycho-analyst Stefano Cassetti and the I-feeluncomfortablein-theseshoes Sandra Ceccarelli).

Some friendly advice for the next trip: a pit stop in Liège at the Dardennes workshop..

Sebastiano Pucciarelli

© Photo Johanna Kinnari

the big swindle

c’est un choix

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Une banque aux côtés des associations et entreprises culturelles

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