Nisimazine Cannes #1

Nisimazine the magazine by NISI MASA - European Network of Young Cinema

Friday 16th May 2014

from Darker than Midnight by Sebastiano Riso

CANNES

#1 Bande de Filles Fla Darker than Midnight Teenage girls feature

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CREDITS

Editorial

NISIMAZINE CANNES 14th-25th May 2014 Edition of Friday 16 th May 2014/#1

by Fernando Vasquez (Portugal)

Just a few hours before the official opening ceremony of the festival, the adrenaline was already kicking in. Slightly out of place in the madness and glamour of the lobby of the Martinez hotel, my incessant comments proclaiming Cannes is not merely a playground to the stars seemed to fall in deaf ears among some of the young European critics and photographers we have brought to the south of France this year. It was an unfair mission to be fair.

With Sofia Coppola, Catherine Deneuve and Frida Pinto pretty much bumping into us, I have to admit even I found it hard to believe my own words. Once the “lunacy” and “circus” crossed over to the other corner of the Croisette, the playground was finally ours, and our film obsession was finally free from distractions. In came Sebastiano Riso (interview on page 6), director of “Darker then midnight”, to save the day and open the adventure that has just started.

carried the flag of film criticism, multiplying opportunities for fresh meat to be “sold” in this unforgiving and dying market. It may seem pointless to some, but for us (incredibly stubborn people) it is vital to maintain the flame alive and keep opening paths for in-depth discussion and debate on the films being displayed here in Cannes.

For those of you not yet converted to the many charms of the Nisimazine universe, the next print and online editions we are about to unleash may come as a surprise.

For nine long and intense years we have

More than enough reasons to make you keep reading. Enjoy!

A magazine published by NISI MASA in the framework of a film journalism workshop for young Europeans with the support of the ‘Youth in Action’ programme of the EU EDITORIAL STAFF Director Fernando Vasquez Coordinator Mirona Nicola Tutor Anna Smith Layout Francesca Merlo Contributors to this issue Robert Arnott, Robyn Davies, Alexandra Fechete, Simran Hans, Bernardo Lopes, Mirona Nicola, Andrei Sendrea, Martin I. Petrov NISI MASA European Network of Young Cinema 99 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis 75010, Paris, France +33 (0)1 48 01 65 31 europe@nisimasa.com www.nisimasa.com www.nisimazine.eu

©Francesca Merlo (Italy)

Picture of the day

So sit down for a couple of minutes and dare to enter our first official edition of Cannes 2014, where you’ll not only get a chance to discover the courageous universe of the Critics’ Week competition’ s opening film (page 5), but also find out about Céline Sciamma’ s exhuberent “Girlhood” (page 3), Djinn Cerrénard´s “FLA” (page 5), have a quick peek at one of the short films competing in Directors’ Fortnight (page 4), and last but not least, figure out why contemporary filmmakers are so infatuated with teenage girls.

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review

Bande de Filles

© Hold-Up Films & Productions / Lilies Films

Céline Sciamma, France/Directors’ Fortnight

While Sciamma’s Water Lilies and Tomboy explored similar themes of youth, femininity and identity, Girlhoood sees a change of pace for the director. Crackling with frenetic energy, Céline Sciamma’s third outing is her boldest yet. Focusing on sixteen year-old Marieme (Karidja Touré), an under-achieving tomboy living on the outskirts of Paris, Sciamma looks at the perils, pleasures and pressures of being a teenage girl.

to Rihanna’s ‘Diamonds’. The girls mime the lyrics in mock-music video fashion; shot through a blue filter, they appear like a fever dream. Marieme watches on shyly, desperate to join but still unsure. The camera closes in on Touré’s astonishingly expressive face, bathed in yellow light and piercingly youthful. And then something clicks; she gets up to join the other girls, surrendering to the moment and choosing not to be broken any more.

Desperate to escape the vice-like grip of her violent, overprotective brother and the responsibility of taking care of her younger sisters, Marieme takes up with a tough, jean-jacketed trio led by ‘Lady’ (Assa Sylla). Swapping her sweatpants for a leather jacket and a sultry, lipsticked pout, she joins Lady, Adiatou (Lindsay Karamoh) and Fily (Marietou Touré) for an afternoon at the shopping mall. Impressed by Marieme’s resoluteness, Lady rewards her with a gold nameplate necklace that reads ‘Vic’ -- as in ‘Victory’.

Girlhood is punctuated by four cut-to-black inserts, which divide the film into four acts. While acts one, two and three track Marieme’s realisation, assimilation and resignation within a conventional narrative arc, the film’s fourth act muddies Sciamma’s otherwise clean structure. Sciamma eschews any happily-ever-after resolution by plunging Marieme into a dark, adult world without the support of her peers. These later scenes, which see Marieme in a blonde wig selling drugs to Paris’ elite, are a jarring departure from exuberant mood of the rest of the film.

The film’s opening sequence, an all-female American football match played out in slow-motion, set to throbbing eighties electro-pop, sees the girls tackling one another with a vigour that is often reserved for their male counterparts. Sciamma does not shy away from the toughness that is required of these girls. Lady prepares for a public fight, applying red lipstick like war paint in a local kebab shop, only to be beaten savagely by a ‘hood rival. Later, in an act of solidarity, Marieme takes part in a fight on Lady’s behalf, kicking her opponent to the ground and cutting her lace bra off in triumph with a penknife. These fight sequences mirror the physicality of the opening sequence, giving these young women the opportunity to show their physical and mental strength.

It’s not all doom and gloom though; Girlhood glows and pulsates with life. Sciamma captures the purity of female friendship; the girls sleep in a pile like kittens, hugging and dancing with each other. The film’s high point sees the girls renting a hotel room with money they have stolen from their peers. They throw a private party, spiking their Coca-Cola with whiskey, luxuriating in bubble baths and blowing smoke rings in their shoplifted dresses. The party reaches a crescendo with a transfixing dance sequence set

The society within which these girls operate strips them of autonomy and choice; they are not allowed to be strong and independent and vulnerable and sexual. For girls, there are only two roles; the virgin and the whore. To be considered “une fille bien” – “a decent girl” – Marieme must choose a dead-end life of conformity and social stagnation. At its heart though, the film is about the power of female friendship, of sisterhood, of girls sticking together in tough times. The film’s final act drives home Sciamma’s point: that without sisterhood, girlhood is a lonely place.

by Simran Hans (United Kingdom)

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review

Torn

Elmar Imanov-Engin Kundang

Germany-Azerbaijani/Directors’ Fortnight

Torn waltzes into Cannes with a great pedigree behind it; codirector Elmar Imanov previously won a Student Oscar with his film The Swing of the Coffin Maker, while his latest is the first Azerbaijani production to enter into competition. It follows the dual stories of a father and son living in a city tower block in the city of Baku. The ‘Kid’ (Mir Movsum Mirzazade) is a curly haired, isolated boy who yearns to be a part of the neighbourhood football gang. Living alone with his father (Rasim Jafarov), the boy tries to enveigle his way into the posse through false bravado only to be humiliatingly knocked back by them.

While his father is absent he takes solace in the influence of one Travis Bickle, imitating his infamous mirror speech and shaving his effeminate locks off in an attempt to show his macho credentials. In the second part of the film, his father has a romantic rendezvous with a woman. The pair sit on the rooftop overlooking the night time city, sharing intimate stories and digging up old wounds. She recounts dressing up as a small child in fancy

clothing, while he confesses an act of cowardice and the events of his wife’s death.

Initially the film comes across as a little cliched and perhaps even twee. The boy’s story is essentially a coming of age piece, where he learns to overcome his flaws and become one of the ‘guys’. It is in the second half of the film that things really click into gear, as we hear the father’s confessions to his date. We begin to see the fragility inherent in him, his doubts over his helplessness in his relationship, and how this has clearly affected his son. This is where the film gains a quiet power; we see how one generation’s troubles has affected the next.

The acting is uniformly strong. Young Mirzazade manages to convey both an ebullient recklessness and a soft, timid centre as the troubled boy. Directors Elmar Imanov and Engin Kundag have succeeded in eliciting a naturalistic, nuanced performance from the young actor. Rasim Jafarov, as the doubting father, delivers a complex performance. In his dealings with his son he is tactile and serene, careful not to be too strict, yet with his date (Zulfiyye Qurbanova) he is open and emotional. We get the sense that she has many suitors to pick from, yet nothing substantial to speak of. The pair of them together seem like lost souls.

The film is a little reminiscent of the talky, confessional Before Sunrise trilogy. It has a leisurely and natural flow to it, and character and emotion are put at the forefront. The direction by Imanov and Kundag is unshowy, letting the actors and dialogue work their magic. There is no music and the shots are framed with an observational eye.

While the film is enjoyably understated and nuanced, it lacks a real emotional punch to make it really linger in the mind. Many viewers might be attracted by the idea of getting a glimpse into the Azerbaijani way of life, but Torn feels more like a universal film than a distinctive representation of a lesser known nation.

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by Robert Arnott (United Kingdom)

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reviews

Fla

Djinn Carrénard, France/Critic’s Week

The unlimited energy that independent filmmakers have when challenged to create a work of art with limited resources- such as skeleton crews, low budgets and whatever is available to start a film- can result in a passion-driven and reality-documented shots: guerrilla filmmaking. Djinn Carrenárd’s second feature film, FLA, is an unorthodox approach to this film style.

Laure is a stewardess that gets used to the idea of accepting the child she’s carrying from Oussman, a rapper that has the ambition of becoming a famous artist. Kahina, Laure’s sister, is a prisoner on leave for Christmas who wants to see her son again. Together, they’ll simultaneously support each other and

compete to pursue their dreams, in a relentless search.

The film’s concept, as its French title Faire: L’Amour recalls, aims to devalue the pre-conceived ideology of what love is all about using the conflict between these three characters as grounds for experimenting. However, it doesn’t successfully achieve its objectives, mainly because of the artificially distant in which the concept is actually implemented, that’s contradictory to its purpose.

Visually enganging and photographically intriguing, FLA has trouble creating a compelling and coherent atmosphere throughout its development. The competent artistry conception by art director Salomé Blechmans turns out to be the finest achievement in this feature, creating a responsive disposition of the color spectrum and a fine balanced contrast between the scenes. On the other hand, Carrenárd’s choice of lens, evoking a vintage look, could have been served in a smaller dose, becoming ostensible, sometimes incomprehensible. Nevertheless, it’s worth mentioning his careful and subtle choice of framing, focused on the instinctive reactions manifested by the characters.

Although intensely painted, FLA becomes a stiff essay about an elevated meaning of love, where an unknown person can mess up other´s lives in the name of love. With avoidably stilted scenes, by cause of unnatural dialogues, Carrenárd’s second feature doesn’t impress all the way through but gives promising prospects for his future.

by Bernardo Lopes (Portugal)

Darker than Midnight (Più buio di mezzanotte)

Painfully tender and compassion-generating, Sebastiano Riso’s debut Darker Than Midnight powerfully rips the surface and reaches the core of sensitivity from its very first minute.

The film depicts the early adolescence of Davide, a fourteen year old boy who is confronted for the first time with his sexuality.

Being bullied by his own father, who seeks in him a more manly behaviour, Davide leaves home and enters the dangerous world of Catania’s famous park Villa Bellini. There he finds the support he had always sought, in the company of youngsters living on the margins, ignored and mistreated by the local society.

Sebastiano Riso focuses on Davide’s transformation with the gradual loss of innocence and the abrupt transition to a dark and unexpected adulthood. The streets of Catania feel more secure than home for the young boy seeking liberation through his love for music and his overflowing need to share – feelings, dreams and visions for a future that always seemed blank and unknown.

The dark and mundane atmosphere of Catania, combined with the bursting youth and the perfectly accomplished smoothness, communicate the feelings through a constantly moving image that follows every step but simultaneously keeps the distance, leaving the characters to untangle their personalities.

The strength of choice and its interaction with independence and personal acceptance are the basic lines that cut through each other to build Davide’s enigmatic recreation. His mother, caring but trapped in the patriarchal conformities of her husband and La Rettore, Davide’s new friend and protector from the park, are the two main figures that guide his emotional metamorphosis running smoothly through the entire film. The young boy’s apprehensiveness gradually finds a way to leak his

Sebastiano Riso, Italy/Critic’s Week

feelings through the communication and the integration in a community, now becoming synonyms to his atonement.

Dealing with homosexuality and violence, Sebastiano Riso frames his characters in their day-to-day life and simultaneously does not expose them at all. Taking advantage of their uniqueness, the director digs into their personal desires, beliefs and even talents, making them look oblivious of the societal ignorance, but still brave and devoted in their rebelliousness.

Following the paradigm of Godard, Riso decides to protect his characters, especially young Davide, behind the glass of morality and the angelic veil that surrounds his vulnerability.

Picking up controversies on its way, Darker Than Midnight is a strong statement of a parallel world that remained in the shadow for years and is now finding its way to the surface. Set in one of the most conservative regions of Italy, the story unfolds the past aiming to establish a connection with the vanity of modern society that seems to remain in denial of the difference.

by Martin I. Petrov (United Kingdom)

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#1 © Francesca Merlo (Italy)

Sebastiano Riso

interview

Director of Darker than Midnight (Più buio di mezzanotte), Italy/Critic’s Week What was that attracted you to this story in particular?

Because this age is really important. When you are fourteen, you are passing from childhood to another stage, you are not a boy anymore and every kind of emotion is getting then really strong. All the great auteurs like Truffaut and Rossellini talk about that age in their films.

Did you have any personal connection to the story?

Absolutely. I met Davide Cordova on a flight and we started talking.

We lived in the same building in Rome but we had never talked before.

I had just finished my film studies and the story about his transition from childhood to adolescence was exactly what I was looking for. I found there all the dramaturgic characteristics needed for a story like Davide’s. After that I interviewed him several times and I combined his story with my own experience so far, giving always priority to the first.

How did you decide to focus on that specific part of Davide’s life and not expand to a later phases of his life as well?

Because after that age, it didn’t seem interesting to me. When you are sixteen or seventeen you have already decided about who you are, whereas at the age of fourteen you are in the middle. And consider that in a country where law doesn’t exist, but at the same time the tradition has very strong presence.

I assume it was even more difficult considering the fact that he was born in Catania, Sicily, a completely different part of Italy and way too conservative at the time.

Sicily is like a different country, it was dominated by different nations and this brought such diversity to the land. People think that is actually a different world where open-mindedness can’t find its way through tradition and religion. It is true, but you would be surprised by the acceptance and understanding that many people have. During the Second World War the biggest homosexual community in entire Italy was the Catanese. My grandmother was telling me stories from when she was a teenager and there were men dressed in women’s clothes walking freely on the streets of Catania 75 years ago. This, itself, is very telling.

What exactly made you choose Davide Capone for the main character’s role?

It was a nightmare because in two years’ time I saw more than 9000 boys and no one seemed suitable for the role. Then when I saw Davide one day in a school, I just recognised him, I knew that it was meant to be him. The similarities were incredible, even the name and their passion for Nina Simone’s music is the same. It was also very easy to explain the character because he was aware of the story and knew exactly what I wanted from him. Two months before filming we were working on his part for five hours per day, to make him feel more comfortable, to make him feel it, considering that he is not even a professional actor.

The music in the film is coming and going very smoothly. Apart from a concert scene, the soundtrack is slow-pacing and calm. Was there a personal choice around this?

Music is the second most important character in the film after Davide.

The music represents his escape from reality, his liberation and at the same time is works like a drug, like something illegal. The soundtrack is really important for the diegetic process, you can hear through it Davide’s feelings and get connected to his universe.

We see the main character’s transformation and his feelings are not directly expressed from the beginning. Does his runaway represent the turning point in his way of interpreting social interaction?

When Davide leaves home he feels free for the first time and the street becomes his school. He learns from his new friendships and gradually becomes wilder, stronger and more self-confident. My personal story has contributed a lot to this choice in the film. I come from a very dangerous area of Catania. From my entire high school I am the only 6

one who received higher level of education, but I always liked communicating with my peers there, they seem more honest, more sincere. Because I come from the bourgeois middle-class family, which is huge in Italy, in the lower social layers you can find something very powerful and motivating.

How easy it was to approach the local community in Villa Bellini and gain their trust and support?

It was an extremely interesting process. Some of them I actually found on the street, one of them was selling watermelons nearby and they are not very far from I wanted to bring out in the film. I worked with them for quite long in order to keep the balance between their personality and the part they had in the film, because I wanted both. It is not easy to show who you are when 65 people look at you on a set. It is amazing that they became a perfect group and they are even now in Cannes, although we were unable to cover their transportation here. They really feel part of the film and they are now real friends.

The sex scenes and the violence are not really explicit and they are balancing in the film. They are still powerfully emotional though. How easy it is for a 14 year old boy to approach them?

Of course all 14 year old today know much more about sex than before. The Italian television is rubbish; there is no need to show everything. If you actually show everything, it comes really close to documentary. I decided not to push him with, given that there are many ways to create emotion without exposing someone. We played a game, I wanted to be honest with everyone. It was absolutely funny because everyone was laughing after these scenes in a very natural way. Showing everything for me is immoral, not showing it at all is pretending. Like in Haneke’s Funny Games, you know, the viewer feels very involved and feels the violence, but at the same time it doesn’t feel insulting.

Have Davide and the rest of the cast seen the film already?

No, they will see it in the official premiere tomorrow. I have to make sure that I run away earlier because I am sure they will try to kill me after the screening (laughing).

by Martin I. Petrov (United Kingdom)

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Teenage Girls Feature Teenage girls are taking over the world. Or, at the very least, they’re taking over our cinema screens. In a male dominated industry, the last couple of years have seen an influx of female-focused films, in particular those homing in on the lives of young women.

And it seems the infatuation is especially strong when it comes to the idea of teen rebellion. We’re currently in a time where the media at large is awash with debate concerning adolescents - whether it’s Miley Cyrus’ antics or high schoolers’ addictions to social media, everyone has an opinion on it. With this in mind, and with the premiere of Céline Sciamma’s Bande de Filles (another bad girl centric film) at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, it’s time we ask just why contemporary cinema is so obsessed with teenage girls.

Lately it’s as if the curtain has been lifted on the dark underbelly of teen life, and it’s exactly what society has feared. In Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, the girls are sex-obsessed, drug-fuelled and dangerous - and more importantly, they enjoy it. After falling in with Alien and his creepy crew, the characters fully embrace that lifestyle, to the extent that a couple of them even delay their return home. Hardly victims of exploitation, they instead feel empowered by their sexuality and criminality with a lack of remorse. Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring portrays a different but no less disturbing side of teen behaviour.

Here the girls are vapid and shallow, infatuated by the idea of celebrity and determined to embody it at all costs.

They rob houses and post self-indulgent evidence of their endeavors online, fully of the opinion that if you don’t document the experience, you didn’t live it.

Of course, both representations here are huge exaggerations, but with good reason. These films need to be shocking in order to highlight and allow us to recognise one main factor (and one which might just be the key to the genre’s success): we all identify with teenage girls. No matter how minor the connection, or how reluctant we are to admit it, audiences identify with what’s on the screen, and that’s what keeps them coming back. It’s perhaps this reluctance that has made the voyeuristic approach to these films so popular, letting us observe intimately but from a distance – a ‘guilty pleasure’, of sorts. There’s no denying that Korine made use of this method, as Spring Breakers could hardly be more exploitative. His camera zooms in repeatedly on bare flesh, following the girls who are constantly in bikinis. “Pretend like it’s a video game”, one of them urges another before committing an act of extreme violence, and that’s the message the audience is to take from it as well: live vicariously through these characters and feel a sense of freedom. The same looks like it will apply to Sciamma’s Bande de Filles, or ‘Girlhood’. It follows a young girl who changes her clothes, her name, and even quits school in order to be accepted into a gang.

Away from the eyes of authority, it’s the perfect set-up for a voyeuristic, freeing experience – and who better to achieve that than teenage girls?

focus

It would be easy to assume that cinema is simply condemning adolescent behaviour, but it actually feels quite the opposite. Filmmakers are beginning to catch on to the idea that teenage girls are everywhere because they want to be.

Twitter, Instagram, blogs and Youtube, modern culture is full of platforms for them to put themselves out there and garner attention. They’ve always rebelled and experimented in an attempt to shape their personalities, but now it’s much more in the public eye and more open to discussion.

Filmmakers are utilising this, almost acting as an extension of that self-expression. Instead of criticising the apparent obsession with technology and labelling all teens as shallow, cinema is accepting that the world has evolved, that youth desires publicity and that people will respond to it. It’s a form of understanding. As Sofia Coppola said of the subjects of The Bling Ring, “these kids were trying to find their identity”, and that rings true. Ultimately, teenagers haven’t changed at all, but rather the means through which they express themselves. Contemporary cinema is essentially just helping them to do this in front of a larger audience.

So is this market really so profitable that studio execs are falling over themselves in their haste to produce more? In short, yes. Teen films have always made a good amount of money – after all, they target an audience most likely to frequent the movie theatres – but this new wave of bad girl cinema is attracting all audiences and is therefore bringing in more profits than ever. You need only look at the box office numbers: The Bling Ring pulled in over $19m worldwide while Spring Breakers reached over $30m, despite their low production budgets. It’s a market that’s soaring financially, so it’s little wonder that producers are willing to exploit it so much.

Teenage girls aren’t going to disappear from our screens any time soon. As long as they want to be talked about, filmmakers will continue to target them, and we’ll continue to watch.

by Robyn Davies (United Kingdom) 7