Nisimazine monthly: December 08

NisiMazine DECEMBER 08

Films of the Year 2008

Š Photo by YoungRobV (flickr.com)

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Editorial C

hristmas time brings another chance for box office figures to go through the roof, but the end of the year is also a hectic time when it comes to awards. Many quality films are scheduled to be released so that they are eligible - e.g. for the Oscars.

To set the marketing going you would start with a huge campaign saying that this is a small film, and open it up at some festival, letting it build before the tie-in deals with video games or fast food restaurants start to be seen in subways.

Soon we will hear what the critics and industry professionals consider the best and the brightest of the year. Brolin as Bush, Jolie in Changeling? But of course the awards don’t always reflect our own tastes, and we don’t always agree with the nominations and winners chosen by others. Let’s instead look at how to make one!

As you take your time off and spend the holiday season writing the step outlines, character bios and a treatment, please make use of the thoughts on the best films of the year provided by fellow Nisimasians and try also the quiz, this time with Christmas movies!

For the best movie of the year you should have an Italian cinematographer, a German production manager, money and technical equipment from America with studio backing, some British cast with female leads from Scandinavia… and the French would of course be the critics.

Or, you could just have a good script to start with.

Stay tuned for another exciting year with many projects taking place - whether they be in Europe or South America!!

Atso Pärnänen

For more information on NISI MASA acitivites, see www.nisimasa.com!

Agenda December, 6 Copenhagen, Denmark 21th edition of the European Film Awards December, 10-17 Toulouse, France 23th edition of the Corrida audiovisuelle

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Next Issue...

NISIMAZINE # 17 ~ January 2009 Special focus: South America

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: SEvEN (BULGARIa)

Nisimazine is a monthly newsletter published by the association NISI MASA. EDITORIAL STAFF Editor-in-chief Matthieu Darras Secretary of the editorial Jude Lister Layout Nina Henke Contributors to this issue Maartje Alders, Mercedes Cubria, Esra Demirkıran, Julia Sabina Guitiérrez, Zsuzsanna Kiràly, Jude Lister, Atso Pärnänen, Sebastiano Pucciarelli, Gülcin Sahin, Silvia Taborelli, Maximilien Van Aertryck NISI MASA (European Office) 10 rue de l’Echiquier, 75010, Paris, France; Tel/Fax: + 33 (0)1 53 34 62 78 + 33 (0)6 32 61 70 26 Email europe@nisimasa.com Website www.nisimasa.com

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Films of the Year 2008 © Still from In Bruges; focus features

In Bruges Martin McDonagh (UK/USA, 2008)

“

Bruges is a shithole”. “Bruges is NOT a shithole”.

“Bruges IS a shithole”.

I like comedy as dark as my morning coffee, when the Stockholm syndrome has reached you and no villain on earth should be judged as long as he’s as morbidly funny as Mr. Buscemi in Fargo. When you laugh heartily at the annihilation of earth in Dr. Strangelove, you wish the whole world could laugh with you. And when a man wants to hang himself with his belt and his trousers fall down, you wonder if it’s allowed to crack up.

I’d like to, as much as to cry. In Bruges is something close. Some sort of emotional elevator set in a medieval town which develops into a character itself. It is simply beautiful, emerging from a fairytale in which two hit men are sentenced to sightseeing after a “job” gone bad, the nature of which you discover in a flashback that will horrify your senses.

"If I'd grown up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me, but I didn't, so it doesn't."

Cities change people, each with their individual characters. People are afraid to merge on the highway in Los Angeles, Dubai is f**king nuts and Chinatown… Well, forget it Jack, it’s Chinatown.

Bruges is the place of the Final Judgment. Sightsee and let destiny send you the bullet that has your name on it. Those already in heaven will remain in heaven and those already in hell will remain in hell.

But at least in heaven, and at least in hell, “you’re not in fucking Bruges”.

Maximilien Van Aertryck

Pranzo di Ferragosto Gianni Di Gregorio (Italy, 2008)

R

ome, August 15th. In the hot summer the city is empty. Gianni lives with his edlerly mother, who he looks after. His property manager and his doctor corner him into taking care of their mothers too. Gianni does his best to organise a nice mid-august holiday for the four old ladies who, with their stubborn yet tender behaviour, reveal the complexity of the third age.

Pranzo di Ferragosto is a delightful comedy which was presented on the quiet during the last Venice Film Festival (Critic’s Week), quickly conquering audiences and the press. It won an ‘ideal revelation award of the year’ in Italy and outclassed the too eagerlyawaited films from Bechis, Ozpetek, Avati and Corsicato, all in the official competition.

A very nice surprise, if not from a young newcomer: Gianni Di Gregorio is already an accomplished scriptwriter, assistant director (he works with Garrone, who is credited here as producer) and actor, but Pranzo di Ferragosto is his first film, and a very successful one at that.

The four amazing protagonists aren’t young at all of course (over 80 year-old women), but the film is their debut on the big screen.

They really won over the Italian people: guests on TV programmes, interviewed by newspapers - they succeed in ousting for a while the top models and showgirls.

Silvia Taborelli

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??? Nisi Christmas Quiz !!!

Whether it’s the snowy streets of Bedford Falls with Jimmy Stewart or Pluto’s christmas tree in From All of Us to All of You, movies are part of the holiday season. Check how well you remember them!

?!

1. Wings (Capra: It’s Wonderful Life) 2. Paris 3. Jingle All the Way 4. Oskar Ekdahl 5. 34th Street (Miracle on the 34th Street) 6. Michael Caine 7. German, French and Scottish troops

1. What does the angel get every time a bell rings?

2. To which NISI MASA capital does the family travel in Home Alone?

3. In which movie does the Governor of California go after a Turbo Man for his son?

4. Who falls ill during the Christmas season in Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander?

5. On which street does a miracle happen in the 1947 classic starring Maureen O Hara?

6. Who plays Ebenezer Scrooge to Kermit the Frog’s kindly Bob Cratchit?

7. Who calls a ceasefire during Christmas Eve in the film Joyeux Noel?

Atso Pärnänen

© Bayrischer Rundfunk

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Films of the Year 2008

Ulzhan

Volker Schlöndorff (Germany/France/Kazakhstan 2007) It is hard to guess what exactly catches someone in a film which earns it the title of their ‘film of this year’. It could be what you get out of the film itself, or the moment you watch it – there are many variables which affect the meeting of the film and the person, including the mood of the person as the first factor on the list.

I watched Ulzhan last April at the Istanbul Film Festival, on an early-spring, cloudy day in the city. It was one of the films that I had no idea about except some lines of synopsis and the countries involved in the production. I didn’t know about its previous festival career. Maybe the essence of pure film watching becomes more possible when the person does not have pre-structured knowledge about it, its theme, etc. (so if you want to have a pure experience of this particular film, stop reading this article now! – ed.)

Ulzhan is the story of Frenchman Charles, who leaves his life behind to go walking (and riding horses) on the steppes of Central Asia, and young teacher Ulzhan, in a remote village of Kazakhstan. A third party and their intermittent companion along the way, word merchant Shakuni, is the portrait of the ‘de-territorialized’ and an element of craziness.

Charles, besides leaving his life behind him, is someone who can easily abandon his passport or his car when it is out of gas. His mission is to go to high Khan-Tangri (literally, “the place of god”) mountain, where, according to Ulzhan’s mother, shamans used to go to die.

What is powerful in Ulzhan is that the film has different dimensions, each connected to the other. Besides the main plot, the film is a road movie of which the landscape is a big part, Charles’ journey through his inner self, and a confrontation of East and West in a global world - with an original flavour. In contrast to the common interpretation of the “soulful” East and the “rational” West, Ulzhan is the talkative, enthusiastic, demanding one; Charles is the one who refuses communication and wants to be alone.

Alongside the impossible love of Charles and Ulzhan, the newly-built scenery of Astana, oil companies, ideas of borders… all of these are ingeniously attached to the plot so that the film talks about both personal and global issues.

Esra Demirkıran

© Alicia Produce

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Films of the Year 2008

Caótica Ana (Chaotic Ana) Julio Medem (Spain, 2007)

A

na is a young girl who lives in Ibiza with her father - in a cave. Her life is innocent and naturally wild. One day Justine sees Ana’s naïve and original artistic works and the doors that she drew on the cave walls. She invites Ana to her art school in Madrid. Ana moves into the communal lifestyle of the school in an old building. During a lesson she concentrates on the movement of the brush on a fellow pupil’s canvas. She feels something deep inside and starts to cry uncontrollably. In this way Ana meets the mysterious and problematic Said, who is her prospective love.

One evening in a restaurant with Said and the others, Ana has a nervous breakdown and starts to speak in Arabic. After this evening, Said disappears without saying a word, and Justine suggests to Ana that she let herself be hypnotized by Anglo.

Ana starts to discover that she is not alone during these hypnosis sessions. She has past lives - in her words, “deaths”. These are tragic deaths of women throughout the history of mankind. Ana discovers all the secret corners of her chaotic consciousness by opening the doors in her cave - which makes everything even more chaotic. After losing her father she decides to run away to New York where she will figure out the starting point of her memories and learn the story of her tragic encounter with Said.

The fascinating thing about Chaotic Ana is that it’s almost unpredictable. The film moves us from a desert to a plaza in New York, and while doing this it doesn’t follow a logical or dramatic progression, at least not in the sense that we’re used to. The movie itself is a chaos and hypnosis - it counts back to front from 10 to 1 - which forces us to discover the bleeding parts of our souls. It is not possible to describe it as feminist, political or surrealist.

Maybe it is all of them at once.

The scenes which connect us to her past memories, like the one in which she cries because of Said’s painting, are imprinted in our minds. She is the “mother of all good men” and carries the pain and the anger of generations. The strongest feeling that the movie left me with was that of the inescapable pain that we inherited from our ancestors. We all carry this lament unconsciously, besides our daily troubles, and it makes us break into tears or feel depressed unexpectedly Ana screams it out - as the mother of us - in order to make us remember our secret memories.

Gülçin Şahin

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Films of the Year 2008

Ramin Bahrani Favourite Director of 2008

I

At the Q&A after the Viennale screening Ramin Bahrani appeared to be an intelligent and perfectionist individual, who is an eloquent story-teller and great observer. He is looking for the places and people others wouldn’t notice.

All of the main characters in Bahrani’s three features are everyday heroes with immigrant backgrounds, who have un-prestigious jobs, but a strong will to improve their living conditions. Solo (Goodbye Solo), a Senegalese cab-driver in Winston-Salem (North-Carolina) is trying to make friends with the elderly William - who wants to commit suicide, keeping his family together and getting a better job as a flight attendant at the same time.

Ale (Chop Shop), an energetic, ambitious boy from Queens (New York) is doing his best to earn his sister Isamar and himself a better life at an auto-repair shop. Finally, Ahmad (Man Push Cart) sells doughnuts and coffee to New Yorkers passing by, who know him as the cart vendor, but not as a former Iranian rock star who lives separated from his estranged son and whose wife died some time ago.

© Photo by Matthew Monteith

f somebody asks me about my best cinematic moments this year, it’s easy to choose: the Cannes screening of Ashes of Time Redux with the appearances of Wong Kar Wai, Christopher Doyle and Tony Leung, and the films of up-and-coming Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani, whose recent features Chop Shop and Goodbye Solo I saw for the first time at the Viennale in October. Although I consider Wong Kar Wai a genius, my favourite director this year was definitely Ramin Bahrani.

Bahrani talks about people in a globalised society, about the real world and not the Technicolor brushed Hollywood-like one. He stays true to his subjects without judging or moralising their lives and behaviours. Thus he creates a realistic story around a character that feels unique, symbiotic and touching. The success of his films results not least from his semi-trained actors.

Graduated from Columbia University in New York City with a degree in film theory, Bahrani left in 1998 to visit his parents’ homeland, Iran, where he stayed for three years. After living in Paris for a short time, he returned to New York, where he is currently living and working.

Ambitious and passionate, I am absolutely sure that Ramin Bahrani will be successful in the future - not just in winning prizes, but making his audience experience more unforgettable cinematic moments.

Zsuzsanna Kiràly

Burn after Reading © Mike Zoss Productions

Ethan & Joel Coen (USA, 2008)

H

uman stupidity and individualism have no limits in today’s society. After the dissonant No country for old men, the Coen brothers have come back to their particular, funny and cold universe with Burn after reading.

With a plot close to Leslie Nilsen’s absurd comedies, the movie questions the values of western society through a rich script full of cinematic references. Characters with different mentalities coexist in this crazy movie: people who behave like spies as if in an Alfred Hitchcock film (the roles played by the splendid Frances McDorman and the unrecognizable Brad Pitt), a sentimental yet calculating business woman (the character of Tilda Swinton), an unfaithful government employee (George Clooney)...

All of them are moved by their strong obsessions, ignorance and deep selfishness. As in The Big Lewoski, the unusual personality of the characters is the driving force of the film but the viewer will prefer to not identify himself with anybody. The story, always lacking in common sense, is perfectly woven and, in the end, even believable. The return of the Coens with this comic and intelligent critique of the highest spheres of society leaves the door open to new masterpieces.

Mercedes Cubría

European Film Awards 2008 From the personal favourites of young European cinephiles, to the official crème de la crème of the European Film Academy! The annual awards ceremony took place in Copenhagen on the 6th December 2008.

The biggest winner of the night was Gomorrah by Matteo Garrone from Italy (Best European Film, Best European Director, Best European Actor for Toni Servillo, and Best European Screenwriter). The movie is based on the non-fiction bestseller by Roberto Saviano: below you will find a short background article about the book.

Furthermore, there is a short review of Hunger by Steve McQueen (UK), which won the award for European Discovery 2008 and an interview with David Polonsky, Art Director of the animated documentary Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman (Israel), for which Max Richter got the prize for Best European Composer. All are extracts from our Nisimazine Cannes festival issues. You can find the full articles on www.nisimasa.com!

Gomorrah

Matteo Garrone (Italy, 2008)

G

omorrah is no longer a book, at least not in Italy. Published in April 2006 by unkown 27 year-old Roberto Saviano, it has since been adapted into a play, a hip-hop song – and now a film. But the definitive confirmation stamp was provided by the criminal bosses whose activities Saviano exhaustively recounted in his 300 pages reportage-novel: a fatwa was openly declared against him. (…)

The book unveiled the new economic strategies of criminal clans based in the area of Naples, the old camorra now transformed into the Sistema. No more criminal romanticism or Cosa Nostra ideology as a sort of revolutionary ‘anti-state’.

The new winning model is the global financial company: luxury clothes manufacturing and distributing, toxic waste management and construction businesses can be even worth more than the usual illicit trafficking. (…)

Gomorrah is a socio-economic map of our age, in its insightful ability to show the multiple directions of legal-illegal activities. Scorsese’s Goodfellas and Casino have been the only in-depth economic and human studies of this kind to reach the big screen, but such a story can’t be taken away from its homeland and brought to New York or Las Vegas.

Quite a challenge for director Matteo Garrone then, but this brutalised territory can be the very starting point for a filmmaker who has already proven his ability to capture the spirit of our times through filming real locations. Will Garrone, with his full belief in visual storytelling, be able to give moving images the same role that Saviano brought back to the written word?

Sebastiano Pucciarelli (edited by Nina Henke)

Hunger Steve McQueen (UK, 2008)

T

urner Prize winning artists have often been the happy bedfellows of controversy, and Steve McQueen is no exception. His astonishing debut feature Hunger focuses on a key event of the long and violent conflict in Northern Ireland: recounting the last months of Provisional IRA paramilitary Bobby Sands, who died after 66 days on hunger strike in the infamous “Maze” prison in 1981.

This beautifully composed film offers an intense, intimate and disturbing depiction of life within the prison’s walls; where inmates resist by refusing to wash and smearing their cell walls with excrement, and the guards respond with routine beatings and humiliations.

Sand’s death provoked an international wave of sympathy for the IRA’s agenda and an intensification of the violence between nationalists and unionists. Today he remains an iconic figure for Republicans, and his face is kept alive in various public murals.

Hunger is a harrowing evocation of one of the many dark moments in the history of Anglo-Irish relations.

Jude Lister

Interview with David Polonsky Art Director of Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman (Israel/France/Germany/USA,2008)

How did this project start for you?

I've worked once before with Ari (Folman, director) on a TV-series that had bits of animation in it. Right after we finished that project he introduced me to his idea for Waltz with Bashir. I was excited by the possibilities of an animated documentary that deals with memory; drawing people's memories, manufacturing fictitious truths, seemed like a very juicy business. And I was taken by the story. What grabbed me was the unimaginable absurdity of what happened there. A grim farce, still being played with a direct influence on my life.

Do you think animation can address a reality with the same effect as a filmed documentary?

This touches the very heart of Waltz With Bashir.

As there is no filmed account of the specific personal stories told by the different people in the film, depiction by animated drawings is as true, or may be truer, than a filmed reenactment of the stories by actors, or some historic footage screened with VO narration. I'm not saying that what you see in Watz With Bashir is the "reality", but it's as "real" as any other depiction. All documentary films use suggestive cinematic techniques, devised by the film maker to tell a story that is chosen and controlled by him. Some documentaries are successful in creating a guise of reality, the same way we come to believe that the stories we choose to tell our selfs, our memories, are true.

Maartje Alders (edited by Nina Henke)

Latest news ZAGREB JURY MEETING Thanks to a wonderful week of intense and emotional debating the European Jury spent in Zagreb from the 18th to the 23rd of November, NISI MASA is proud to announce its three winners of the 7th edition of the European Script Contest on the theme “Escape”!

 Ülkü Oktay’s (Turkey) script Scamps tells a travel adventure set in Eastern Turkey through the eyes of two young schoolboys. A “feel-good” story that gives beautiful insights into the country and its culture.

Ariel Shaban from Kosovo won with The Wedding Tape, a local and yet very global satire about the absurdity of bureaucracy, in which a man has to fake his wedding ceremony in order to get a visa.

SCRIPT & PITCH This year’s Script&Pitch finished with a pitch in Torino in front of 70 producers. 6 projects were given the development award. The alumni meeting will take place in January so if you are a Script&Pitch alumni member start checking your calendar!

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www.cartoonsbay.com

DOCS IN THESSALONIKI Docs in Thessaloniki is a forum of coproduction which takes place every year during the festival Images of the 21st century in Thessaloniki, Greece. In 2009, the dates are from the 18th to the 22nd of March. 21 selected documentary filmmakers will get the chance to participate in workshops and get a feedback from professional tutors.

At the end, the documentaries will be pitched to representatives from Greek television. The event is organised by the European Documentary Network (EDN). You can submit your projects until the 25th of January 2009. www.filmfestival.gr www.edn.dk

Melissa Suarez del Real from Spain delivered Furniture, in which strong visual humour depicts the awkward everyday life of a couple living in a small apartment, packed with their belongings.

The talented winners will participate in the European Short Pitch scriptwriting workshop from the 15th to the 22nd of February, and eventually pitch their scripts in front of European producers at the Moulin d’AndéCéci (Normandy, France).

You can send your animation films until the 15th of January or upload them directly onto the website. The call is open for recent animation works made for television and multimedia platforms.

Cartoons on the Bay 2009 The 13th edition of Cartoons on the Bay, the International Television and Multimedia Animation Festival, will take place between the 2nd and the 5th of April 2009 in Rapallo and Portofino, Italy.

EUROPEAN Animation MASTERCLASS And again, animation! The European Animation Masterclass is a further training for professionals and graduates in animation. It will take place between the 3rd of February and the 6th of November 2009 in Halle (Germany) and probably in Prague and Turin.

The main subjects are the business of animation, its production and the practices. Each is treated within about three months. The participation fee is around 750 euros. Please send your application before the 15th of January. www.halle-academy.de

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©Photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy

PORTRAIT

Nadia Hotait (Cinestesias, Spain)

I

f your path crosses Nadia’s, it’s sure that you won’t forget her. It could be due to her essentially Mediterranean character (she was born in Madrid to a Lebanese father and a Spanish mother), or her free soul. A video artist who had her first solo exhibition this October in Chicago, she’s also one of the oldest members of Cinestesias - not because of her age but because of the time she has been involved.

I met her at University, in the corridors. We were both holding a BA in Audiovisuals and were looking forward to going into the action. We began to work on collective artistic projects, a series of documentaries about the city, about ideas, more concerned with politics than cinema. She loved the experience with video and didn’t stop working with it.

In a very short time she made documentaries in Spain, Morocco, Japan and Lebanon.

In these documentaries we began to see Nadia’s artistic spark. It was like a bomb on the verge of exploding. Some of the topics apparent in these pieces, such as an interest for the place in which she was living, and for the place where her family was from, are obsessions still present in her mature work.

Nadia comes from many countries, and maybe it’s because of this that she has an adventurous spirit and can’t stop travelling. But her love for freedom does not end there. The relationship with her environment, with the land, the irony (but never cynicism), the abstraction in the forms… All this creates her own style, but she’s always looking for new supports to express herself. Nadia went further and passed from cinema to break out of the four margins of the screen.

This artistic spirit is combined with a personal strength capable of motivating others. Nadia renewed Cinestesias by joining enough people in the organization of the meeting of the Festival in Alcala de Henares and putting Spanish artists in touch with the NISI MASA Network. It was the perfect opportunity for her and her latest work to be mixed with so many people of different cultures and origins in this informal school of cinema.

One day Nadia left Madrid to go live in Tokyo, leaving a hollow space – which was never actually empty because she continued helping and giving strength from the distance.

Then she went to Chicago, where she is currently an MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute. I follow her work and remain amazed at how far she has come in all the aspects that she is exploring, without losing her critical and tender touch. We miss Nadia in Cinestesias but we are proud she’s following her own path, taking her own risks.

She tells me that she’s been working on different video installations, one of them called ‘Filming underwater in Beirut’: “In Lebanon the different wars have established the importance of archiving or documenting what is lost… different people are videotaped underwater, they are dressed and keep doing ordinary actions in an extraordinary context (underwater). These images emulate the idea of a laboratory of conservation. The Lebanese find themselves in a state of permanent incertitude, in which their daily lives are always vulnerable to local and regional politics. It is about the murdered witnessing and waiting. It addresses the ones who remain after a catastrophe.”

The exhibition this October, called ‘Friction’, was made up of two channel video installations displayed on LCD screens integrated into a fake architectural structure imitating an already existing one in the place: “Friction deals with the concept of the unattainable [possibility] of a communication process. The attraction and repulsion of a magnetic field expressed by a cut in the architecture where two characters struggle to reach the other side. The viewer finds himself in an uncomfortable space where taking part in the conversation flux demands attention.”

If you have the chance to go to Chicago and see one of her exhibitions, and there’s a black haired woman entering in the place like an explosion, this is Nadia Hotait. www.nadiahotait.com

Julia Sabina Gutiérrez