Nisimazine May 09

Leni Riefenstahl directs her camerman from a trolley during the shooting of her official film Olympia at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. (Getty Images: IOC Olympic Museum/Allsport)

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NisiMazine May 09

TABOO

TABOO

Editorial aboos; knowing that they T exist and roam our cultures is a logical and yet strange fact

that you don’t solve by reading Anthropology for Dummies. Lots of taboos have certainly been lost or become obsolete to the eyes of newer generations (mine can certainly thank the internet and its gigabytes of [insert taboo name here]), but most of them didn't go very far; surrounding more conversations and debates than we'd like to admit.

"As a discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1" says Godwin's law. At least today, our respective languages allow us

to speak taboos out loud. A theme like this year’s for our annual Script Contest would not make any sense if the only language you could write in was Newspeak, with its “goodthinkful” and political correctness. If something can be said, it can be thought, it can be written; and it probably must.

I always thought that writing something explicit down could demystify its unmentionable character, while raising your voice on a particular topic immediately makes you feel like the minority, that in the end will have to drown in the spiral of silence.

Taboos are about strong emotions.

In the end, when it comes down to

the individual we do not choose what is good or what is evil, but what is expected from us. Suicide, an incontestable taboo, is the number one cause of death among the youth in many countries today.

What? No I didn’t say anything about the Hitler's youth!

Write a script!

Maximilien van Aertryck

For more info on NISI MASA activities, check out www.nisimasa.com!

Agenda May, 12-25 Cannes, France Nisimazine Cannes May, 15 Matter of Taste Deadline for uploading shorts on food May, 21 Cannes, France Screening of Cinetrain Films

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Next Issue...

NISIMAZINE # 22 ~ June 2009

Special focus: EDITING

May, 31 Lima, Peru Deadline for Nisimazine Lima applications

Nisimazine is a monthly newsletter published by the association NISI MASA. EDITORIAL STAFF Coordinators Gülçin Sahin & Maximilien Van Aertryck Layout Maartje Alders Contributors to this issue Maximilien Van Aertryck, Gülçin Sahin, Eva Sancho, Atso Pärnänen, Jude Lister, Iulia Rugina, Zeynep Güzel 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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Dossier - Taboo

Introduction

T

aboos exist because of the fear of being 'different' or 'the other' or staying alone between strict minded, ordinary people... And breaking a Taboo by speaking it out or challenging it is something directly linked to the daring and courage that we have.

Recently in Istanbul, anonymous grafittis have emerged on the walls of most crowded streets of the city such as: 'I am a man and I like to wear woman clothes. So what?' , ' I am a

Kurd in Turkey and I speak Kurdish; So what?' , ' I am a woman and I like to be out alone during night. So what?' , 'I don't like this country and I won't leave it either, so what?' The grafittis have been hidden by painting over several times but 'the ones' have kept on writing them again and again.

Imagine that we dare to speak these sentences out all together without hiding ourselves.. So what?

GÜlçin Sahin

IS THERE STILL SUCH A THING AS A TABOO ABOUT FILMMAKING?

One aspect of cinema that still feels untouchable is the idea of artistic integrity or personal authenticity. These are romantic notions, but nevertheless existing in these cynical and media-saturated times. So some may feel disturbed when A Cock and Bull Story launches a satirical attack on these ideals. It is one of those movies about moviemaking, and an extremely self-conscious one on top. The soundtrack includes music from other films about filmmaking like 8 ½. The story plays out on a

In Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages, Michael Haneke raises another cinematic taboo. The inability to truly say something, to communicate, is at the centre of the film’s theme and style. Its plot is what the title promises, fragmentary tales of seemingly random individuals. With each scene awkwardly cut off to black, the film’s structure urges us to question what we are shown.

When the film ends we are left wondering what was told at all, feeling confronted with the limits of cinema.

3. Which Italian film was called a "moral holocaust" by Variety after its release in 1980?

Perhaps there is a lesson in these films, now that audiences are no longer shocked by experimental styles. Breaking a taboo does not mean pointing out what cannot be said, it means saying something prohibited. When you chal-

Eva Sancho Rodríguez

QUIZ 1. Which Renny Harlin film was banned in Finland as antiSoviet?

2. Which controversial filmmaker who touched on many taboos was found dead, mutilated in Ostia in 1975? © czggfilms

ot many things come to mind when you think of a purely cinematic taboo. When À bout de souff le was made in 1959, the jump cuts were intended to shock the audience. Cinematic forms were used to challenge ideas about cinema. Now, 50 years later, stylistic rule breaking may not be so offensive anymore. Audiences are used to films experimenting with conventions, understood as characteristic of avantgarde or independent cinema. So what kinds of taboos remain? And more importantly, why do they matter?

lenge what cinema is, what matters is not what you are reacting against (say Hollywood conventions), but what you are speaking out for.

4. Who is Johnny Eck? 5. Which controversial director was named the "greatest filmmaker of the 20th century" by many critics?

1. Born American 2. Per Paolo Pasolini 3. Caligula 4. The "Half-Boy" in Tod Browning's Freak.

5. Leni Riefenstahl

from Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages © Bavaria Films

N

movie-set during an “unfilmable” adaptation of a famous literary work. Focussing on self-obsessed characters and mocking all kinds of conventions, it succeeds in being both funny and thoughtful. The point of the adapted novel is explicitly spelled out: life is too rich for art to capture it. But unlike the director in Fellini’s 8 ½ (who is earnestly struggling with the artistic process) the filmmakers in A Cock and Bull Story are too self-obsessed to be bothered by this daunting problem. It is this point that makes Winterbottom’s film more than just an exercise in postmodern filmmaking.

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Dossier - Taboo

Getting into the Terms of friendship

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aboo has the potential for the eyes that ventures to come near to alteration of norms, revealing the formulas that surround us and determine our actions and ideas. The films that challenge our ideological, political and moral efforts of fitting into the social expectations feed themselves from social taboos. That is how one could wish to deal with the inconvenient issues in society. The TurkishArmenian conf lict is one of such issues. The assasination of an Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink in Istanbul, in 2007 made people think more, talk more on the issue and made their stories and their past to be outspoken more than before through the pain of their loss.

that is organized by the Golden Apricot International Film Festival in Yerevan and Anadolu Kültür in İstanbul (it recently resulted in the Armenian Turkish Cinema Platform). I thought that it would be the chance for me to get engaged with this conflict by creating something, and the result was meeting people who believe that cinema can be a way of confronting ourselves with the past, understanding each other in the process of becoming friends.

I participated in several workshops for filmmakers from Armenia and Turkey

*(The book of Hrant Dink)

That’s how we started a documentary project with Nagehan Uskan, about the cultural closeness of oral traditions and literatures of this two close People two distant neighbors*...

Photo by Armine Avetisyan. Location: Gyumri - Armenia pre'research for the documentary

B

oy A follows Jack Burridge, a young man coming out of a long imprisonment for a horrific crime committed as a boy. The film certainly deals with some controversial questions, such as the reinsertion of violent offenders into society, and the right of an individual to wipe his/her slate clean. Yet can we say that these subjects are taboo, given that they have already been widely discussed in the public sphere? Maybe not, but presenting Jack as protagonist, hero, and victim, just could be. As we all know, taboos are about context, and in the UK at least, the case of toddler Jamie Bulgar (killed by two 10-year-olds, who were later released and given new identities) is still fresh enough in

Romanian cinema: The twisting road of uncovering taboos

R

omanian Cinema has had a bumpy road in dealing with taboos and the 1989 Romanian revolution opened up a Pandora box of taboos.

In a society that has been shaped by a communist regime for almost 50 years, filmmaking was a taboo in itself. As this passed, the next years brought on a story taboo: the Romanian revolution. 2006 meant the release of three films with a similar subject: Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12:08 East of Bucharest, Catalin Mitulescu’s The Way I Spent the End of the World and Radu Muntean’s The Paper Will Be Blue. They all raised the interest of international viewers, by dealing with the taboo of the Romanian ones: the nostalgia, the confusion or the absurd of the

the collective memory to make Boy A touch a few raw nerves.

Director John Crawley (rightly) seeks to demonstrate the poisonous effect of the tabloid papers’ pantomime sensationalism, and the fact that incomprehension and revulsion make it easier to label such incidents as the work of “evil” rather than a real human being. In the end though, Jack’s story is less morally challenging for the viewer than it might claim to be. Flashbacks showing the run-up to the past crime provide enough extenuating circumstances to ease our discomfort at sympathising with him. Furthermore, the act itself is never shown, thus avoiding breaking perhaps one of the ultimate taboos.

Jude Lister

end of communism. In 2007, Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days touched another sensitive taboo. Pregnancy and abortion during communism was something disturbing and never put to screen before.

As Romanian cinema developed, new taboos were put on screen: homosexuality (in Tudor Giurgiu’s Love Sick), racial discrimination (in Adrian Sitaru’s short Waves), prostitution (in Napoleon Helmis’s Italian Girls) and the dark face of the Romanian sanitary system in Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu.

The way is long ahead, but the past is still hiding unsaid things. And there is so much more to be shown…

Iulia Rugina Boy A, 2007 © Film britannique

BoY A (John crawley, uK)

Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, 2007 © A Mobra Films Production

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Dossier - Taboo

Interview: Emilie Atef What draws you to these “forbidden” subject matters?

I couldn't believe whilst researching and making my last film The stranger in me (which deals with a mother not having any emotional bond with her new-born baby), how big of a taboo and forbidden matter it was.

I was shocked that although nowadays postnatal depression is a known sickness that touches 10 to 20% of all mothers, no one talks about it, as if it was an evil sickness to be swept under the carpet.

I myself am not a mother yet and a few years back I was simply ignorant, taught to believe by society that when a woman wants a child and gives birth, she automatically feels a deep feeling of love for it.

But when my friends and relatives were getting children I started to observe and to ask how they felt.

After a first quick “OK” many told me later that the beginnings of motherhood are often not easy, that there is a lot of fear or feelings of helplessness; not knowing if one is doing the right thing and will manage. They didn't dare to talk about these feelings, not even to their husbands or friends.

The incomprehensive thing about this taboo is that postnatal depression is completely curable. The psychiatrist in Berlin, who helped my co-writer Esther Bernstorff and me during the scriptwriting process has a 100% success rate! The women that come to her

have suicidal thoughts, some thoughts of even hurting their child, they live in a black hole yet all of them come out of it. So why not talk about it?

In which way do your films deal with taboo?

Not all my films deal with Taboo. My next film Kill Me is the story of a 12 year old German country girl who wants to die, a death wish that is a serious, genuine desire and not a child's daydream. She meets a 43 year old escaped murderer and they embark on an amazing journey, travelling almost solely on foot through Germany and France till Marseille together.

I think that teenage suicidal feelings are something that is rarely talked about though.

What are the new taboos for you?

Definitely when a mother does not on the spot love her new-born and is not happy for the gift she has just become... Also when couples don't or can’t have a child, there is always a feeling of shame, of not being “normal”. Mental health as well, if you are sick, if you need to take medication, even if you are living a depression...

All these are taboo subjects that society does not really accept and the person in question is judged and almost put aside...

But who doesn't have problems, who hasn’t gone through depression or doesn't know anyone that has? Why not be more open about these subjects, and talk about them...

How do you address taboo cinematographically?

With The stranger in me it was our biggest challenge: how do we tell the story of Rebecca who is little by little falling into post-natal depression; a sickness where women feel such a shame that they often isolate themselves. It’s a sickness where non-communication and silence are strongly present. So since we are always at Rebecca’s side and since it was important for me that the audience lives the sickness with her and doesn't just sit back and judges her, the challenge was to show what is progressively, mentally hap-

pening to her without the use of dialogue.

My cameraman, Henner Besuch and I spend a lot of time thinking how we can intensify the emotions Rebecca is going through solely through camera angles, cameras movements and locations we would shot her in. It was a very inspiring work. The sound design and the minimalistic music score were also very important to tell this story emotionally without being sentimental.

Maximilien van Aertryck

Latest news SURVIVE STYLE FILMS IN BLOIS Five shorts from the Survive Style project in 2007 are selected to be screened by the French organisation l'Europe Ensemble at the Day of Europe in Blois, France on the 9th of May between 19:00 and 20:30.

They are:

1200 guests visited the Filmfoyer, a meeting place where film organizations, schools and companies presented themselves and networked with the visitors in a creative environment.

We would like to thank everybody that came for their interest and wish to see each other again next year! www.sfi.se/dromfabriken

Home?

by Lilia Obletsova and Evelina Sorokoviha (Lithuania)

October 3, 2009. Five directors, one from each continent, are selected and invited to live together for five weeks to take part in the residential fi lm-production project. Transport costs, accommodation, food, supervision, crew, shooting and editing equipment are provided so that each director can produce their own fi lm. The submission deadline is May 22, 2009 www.festival5sur5.be/documentaireEN.html

On a train

by Barnabas Toth (Hungary) KRUG

by Maartje Alders and Silvio Ivicic (The Netherlands and Croatia) Young survivors from a small city

by Natalia Ivanova (Bulgaria) Mimoune

by Gonzalo Ballester (Spain) Silvio Ivicic and Maartje Alders will be attending the screening to represent their film and NISI MASA. Congratulations to all the directors for their selection!

 DRÖMFABRIKEN 2009 NISI MASA Sverige from Sweden, just had three wonderful days at the Drömfabriken event in the Swedish Cinematheque in Stockholm, where they had their spot to represent the NISI MASA network.

 ASOLO INTERNATIONAL ART FESTIVAL

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PROJECT FOR AN ARCHIVE AIAF LAB proposes to build an archive completely dedicated to graduation thesis about cinema and let it be freely available for consultation. This way students will have the possibility to let their own work be known between all cinema fans and everybody who knows and collaborates with A.I.A.F., even then professionals and experts. For detailed information please visit : www.asolofilmfestival.it

 L’ESPACE DRAGONE 2009 L’Espace DRAGONE invites young fi lmmakers from the five continents to take up a challenge: to make a documentary fi lm in just a few weeks in la Louvière (Belgium) from August 28 tot

 CALL FOR ANIMATION FILMS KLIK FESTIVAL The KLIK! Amsterdam Animation Festival is an accessible platform for animation in the broadest sense of the word. From the 17th to the 20th of September Kriterion, the ground breaking cinema that has been run by students for the past sixty years, will host the second edition of the KLIK! Amsterdam Animation Festival, a true multimedia festival that will screen animated shorts from all over the world, combined with interactive gaming fun, fascinating animated sidebar activities and the finest festivities. If you have an animated film that you’d like to show at KLIK!, the Call for Entries is open untill the 15th of June Check for entry forms: www.klikamsterdam.nl

In the spotlight: THE NEW BOARD! The new shiny NISI MASA Board is proud to present:

The NISI MASA Board Manifesto (2009\2011)!

As some of you already know, NISI MASA has a new Board since the GA 2009 in Alba, made up of five members. The Board will be in charge for the next two years, with a mission to improve Associations & Networking inside NISI MASA. The aim is: -To be always the first contact for any kind of problem between the single associations and NISI MASA -To involve the associations in creating and organizing networking projects -To help the growth and the autonomy of each member in terms of organizations, raising funds and creating local projects The final goal is to have a network made by many associations, each one of them able to make plans and projects, with a particular and unique profile in term of skills and fields of work.

After this our plan is to conquer the American continent and then to build up to Nisi Masa Earth – but please, don’t tell to anyone, it’s still a secret!

Simone fenoil: (Voiceover) Simone II: Il Presidente. A true story based on the life of a real leader.

After the presidency between 2003-2005 when it was the rising years of NISI MASA, he is again in charge with the aim of a golden age for the network. An Italian, skilled for finances (treasurer of Franti), a young politician (employer in city of Turin), and a key-person for cinema industry (working for Alba Film Festival)... A lively and serious person, he also has a good knowledge about the Italian mafia (see Nisimazine Cannes 2008). As he is good at crisis management and problem solving, the next topic in his hidden agenda is to finish the Israel-Palestanian conf lict, before conquering the earth!

Hannaleena Hauru: Hannaleena and NISI MASA discovered each other in 2005. A young, talented Pictures from the top: Simone, Hannaleena, Esra, Anu and Itxaso.

scriptwriter and short film director from Finland, her winner script of the 4th Script Contest was starting with “If I fall, if there is nobody, do I make a sound?”. Frankly, her short “If I Fall”, a glory of our network, made a lot of sound all around the world.

A good tool to invade the world! Besides being the vice-president of NISI MASA and having great ideas about productions, filmmaking and scriptwriting, she is going on making short films and finishing her school.

Esra Demirkiran Esra Demirkiran, General Secretary of the NM Board. She is from NM Turkey, and she has been our President in the last Board (2007/2009), where they used to call her Queen Esra (something like Queen Elisabeth). A perfect attitude for diplomacy, but also a strong attitude for solving any kind of organization problems (Workshop projects, General Assembly, birthday party, etc. etc.). The right girl in the right task!

Anu Aun Estonian producer-director, currently working for Luxfilm. Besides she has worked as a film critic and cultural journalist for different newspapers and magazines.

She came across Nisi Masa taking part of Script&Pitch workshops. One of the founders and the president of Nisi Masa Estonia. In NM board she is in charge of film production. Anu is one of those people who are extremely professional in everything they do, but that do it all from the heart. She’s a fantastic travel companion, a cat lover and has eyes that will win anybody over.

Itxaso Elosua Ramírez Itxaso Elosua Ramírez studied drama in Maastricht. She has consistently been working as an actress and director/playwright, creating her own multi-medial theatre plays. And performing both on stage and in short films. She’s also president of the MeccaPANZA board, and the treasurer of the NM board. Itxaso has an incredible amount of positive energy and a great sense of humour. There is a rare combination in her of toughness that will probably take her through water and fire and a very kind, understanding and considerate heart. She loves cats and she has remarkably catching and brave ideas for staging a play combining screens, sex and tango.

Thanks to the Board for their introductions!

pictures from G archive

PORTRAIT

Guillaume Protsenko (Moviement)

Where does World end? uillaume Protsenko is G a key-member of NISI MASA member organisation

MOVIEMENT. He is the one who brought the idea of NISI MASA networking filmmaking to Russia. He certainly knew what he was doing. Being himself born into a very multinational family (as you can already get from Guillaume’s French name and Ukrainian surname), he knows how important it is to live in a world where people are connected and culturally open.

In 2003 he came to Russia to study film directing in the Russian State Film Institute. Much water has flowed under the bridge since then… He took part in the French NM Script Contest, initiated Moviement, organised Cinetrain and finished film school. At the moment Guillaume is shooting his Diploma film in the Moscow suburbs. But all the information about it will be available after the film is finished and ready-toscreen. For now let’s take a look for some of Guillaume’s thoughts on Cinetrain – his most important project so far.

“My main aim in the project was to make Cinetrain happen. And I am 100% satisfied with the shooting process, it was unique experience”, says Guillaume. “You observe how 20 people unfamiliar to

each other become close friends.

Everybody learned a lot from the project, but most important is that we all learned to work in a team and share our ideas. As a director I learned more about how to rule the crew, share responsibilities and find optimal solutions. In the toughest conditions you share with others all you have. Comfort and cleanliness are not the mood for creativity. Now I can record sound really well – during the project I improved my sound directing skills a lot. It was really difficult to record songs people sang in the train so I had to create some special methods to do it.

And if we talk about the result… some managed better, some not so well, but it doesn’t really matter.

The most important is that all the films reached their audience and we continue organising Cinetrain.

All the participants keep in touch, some even realised common projects – so our aim to unite young filmmakers is reached! Cinetrain gave birth to a Russian-Hungarian love affair, French-Scottish and French-Hungarian-RussianUkrainian filmmaking partnerships.”

Where does Europe end – this was the theme of previous Cinetrain as you know. But for Guillaume it’s not the question of only Europe’s end. Discovering all the world and human nature is the aim of every filmmaker. Maybe that’s why Guillaume together with other Moviement members

Anna Dmitrieva and Aleksandra Marchenko didn’t stop in Vladivostok and left other cinetrainers for Japan, North Korea and China. The second Cinetrain, which is also Guillaume’s co-brainchild, will help him to know more about human nature.

Guillaume explains: “The second Cinetrain will bring us to the countries I’ve never been to before.

And this time I want to participate as a director, with a fresh point of view. The topic of former USSR countries is very timely now. I want to see and understand how these countries co-exist today. It’s a very rich theme for documentary films. I didn’t decide yet if I am going to shoot my own documentary film or if I will prepare a “making of ” film and do some administrative work. Last year the project really missed a lot a “making of ” film: 50% of Cinetrain is concentrated in the process."

Guillaume believes that to make films and live in peace with a crew you should have a good sense of humour. He gave an idea to include in the Cinetrain application tricky questions to check if the applying person had a sense of humour. Well done, because however talented they are, only easy-going, nice and smart people can survive and stay creative in Cinetrain.

Hanna Mironenko