Nisimazine rotterdam shorts
special
February 2012
table of contents Page 3
Editorial
Tiger Shorts Competition Focus
Pages 6-7 Manque des preuves Pages 8-9 La Maladie blanche Pages 10-11 Ovos de dinossauro na sala de estar
Interviews
Pages 14-15 Interview Takashi Makino, director of Generator Pages 16-17 Interview Miguel Fonseca, director of As Ondas Page 19 Interview Head of Shorts Programme Peter van Hoof Pages 21 Impressions from a Jury Member Dana Linssen
Reviews
Pages 22 Pages 23 Pages 25
Reviews Agatha, El arca, Light escapes through the intervals Reviews the meaning of style, Springtime Critics’ Votes on the 21 competition shorts
Spectrum Shorts
Page 28 Page 29 Page 30
Reviews CafĂŠ Regular, Cairo, Cerro Negro, fancy-fair Reviews Historia del Mal, Killing the Chickens to Scare the Monkeys, Sack B Review Vexed
Page 30
Credits
Since its creation in 2001 NISI MASA - the European Network of Young Cinema - has been all about short films. From a continental short film script contest to the most diverse – and often insane – (short) filmmaking workshops, we have been creating, breathing, generating, watching and sharing shorts by hundreds! We naturally ended up commenting on them when Nisimazine started in Cannes 2006 – till now the only publication extensively covering the short films screened on the French Riviera. Still we never had the chance to exclusively focus on the shorts of a major festival. With 21 films screened in its ‘Tiger Award Short Competition’, 196 in its ‘Spectrum Shorts’ section, and considering its well-known commitment for experimentation (as explained by Peter van Hoof, Head of Short Film Programme; page 18), Rotterdam Film Festival was definitely the place to be for Nisimazine. And very much in tune with the editorial line of our new ‘Special’ format, initiated at Venice’s Orizzonti last September, which has “daring, unconventional, emerging” for key adjectives.
Barrow
editorial
Our small crew composed of six young journalists from all over Europe fed on the weirdest hybrid pieces of visual art thus decided to attend together all the screenings of the short film competition... and well, we have to admit our enthusiasm got dampened from time to time. Too often it seemed films had been selected solely for a certain consistency of the artistic approach regardless of what the filmmakers actually managed to achieve. Some Q&A’s were either startling, as it appeared the artists’ intention was largely un-conveyed on the screen (“Are they talking about the film we
have just seen?” I could hear from the seat next to me), or funny at listening, as a member of audience was worrying at the directors’ social abilities. “Do you have girlfriends?” the makers of Field Notes from a Mine had to answer to. With the passing of time though, “the time for reflection, appreciation, wonder and growth”, as jury member Dana Linssen puts it in her thoughts (page 21), clear infatuations emerged. Three films (that did not entice the jury) won our votes: we were blown away by the execution of Hayoun Kwon’s animated documentary Manque de preuves, that tackles an overlooked dimension of the asylum seekers issue (page 6); the fine crossing between reality and fantasy of the enchanting black and white village fairy tale of Christelle Lheureux’s La Maladie blanche completely captivated us (page 8); the precisely staged and scripted confession of a 80 year-old widow in Rafael Urban’s Ovos de dinossauro na sala de estar took by surprise: initially humorous, this declaration of love beyond death proved to be the festival’s “coup de Coeur” (page 10). There was much more worth exploring: Nisimazine met with awarded Japanese experimental filmmaker Makino Takashi (page 14) and Portuguese director Miguel Fonseca (page 16), and reviewed five of the competition films (pages 22-23). Eventually, we did our best at highlighting seven of the many gems that may remain unnoticed in the plethoric ‘Spectrum Shorts’ section (pages 28-30). We wish you an exciting journey!
Matthieu Darras, Director of the publication
tiger shorts competition
Manque de preuves Lack of Evidence
Hayoun Kwon // France // 2011
How did you come up with the story? I heard about Oscar from a friend who works for the committee for defending the rights of foreigners and asylum seekers. She knew I was interested in the topic of reconstruction of memory because of my previous film. It was about a prison in Korea that commemorates the painful history of the Japanese colonization of the country. The prison offers reconstructed torture scenes, with mannequins that move and cry, almost like in a theme park. I made a documentary that was critical towards this kind of reconstruction of memory. Lack of Evidence is different because this time there was no material proof to support Oscar’s story, there was only his memory. My biggest challenge was to find an appropriate way of presenting it.
How did you decide that animation is the right medium for presenting this story? Oscar’s story doesn’t rely on material proof, but only on a mental image in his memory. That is why I decided to visualize his story in a purely abstract space of computer. It starts as a 3D animation, which during the film starts to show the basis of the construction of the image, devoid of textures and shadows, with only lines. For me it was important to show the skeleton of a 3D image to emphasize its artificiality, its constructed side. However, there are material proofs of Oscar’s story, right? Yes, those are the drawing he made and a letter of testimony. These are also the only real, non-animated objects that I
Oscar’s story is a perfect, but also a tragic example of how the facts from one culture lose their value when transported into another. The brilliant thing about Lack of Evidence is that it doesn’t stop at a re-telling of Oscar’s story, but also finds a visual equivalent to point out its inner frictions and complexities. Presenting a genre of documentary through animation alone serves as a strong statement. Only Oscar’s drawing and his typed testimony are filmed (“documented”) as (f)actual objects, while everything else is reconstructed through animation. This approach clearly illustrates
shot and used in the film. I’ve put them in the middle of the film to emphasize how the two worlds clash in these objects. I also tried to do it through different animation techniques: to reconstruct Oscar’s story I used 3D animation, and for the administration office where his letter is being discussed I used scotch tapes to make the black lines that create an optical illusion. So I contrasted two types of animation - computer and material because in this story there are two realities: one is Oscar’s, without proof and credibility, and the other is of the administration, which is an office that exists in reality, but as Oscar cannot get their papers, it’s almost an illusion.
Lack of Evidence is extremely well thoughtout even in the types of animation that it uses. It starts with a scene of a village from a fairytale, which gradually exposes itself as 3D animation. Shot in a simulated one-take, the 3D gradually turns into Oscar’s real life, with an unanimated drawing placed on a desk of an office. However, the office space is again illustrated/animated, but through a different technique of simple black lines and devoid of color. The drawing stands on the friction between two different styles of animation; or, one could say, two different mind sets with different means of creating the image of reality. Emphasizing the illustrated basis of both worlds, Lack of Evidence suggests that the way the reality is shaped and organized into systems of representation is in both cases equally artificial.
What do you think: is Oscar’s story real? There is always the question of whether he is telling the truth or lying. Before making this film I did some research about sacrificial rituals in Nigeria, and found out about many strange customs. Personally, I want to believe his story. For the film, I think it doesn’t matter if his story is true or not, because I was exploring the possibilities of the reconstruction of memory and the fictional dimension of testimony. In the end, Oscar is probably the only person who knows if the story is real or not.
review
the fragility of Oscar’s story, which leaves the impression of a folk tale or a children fantasy struggling to gain the strength of “something real”. In a culture with an exclusively positivistic approach of representing reality, it is a battle already lost.
interview
Hayoun Kwon, director of Korean origin who lives and works in France, made an impressive second film that deals with the fictional dimension of memory and the (im) possibility of its reconstruction. Lack of Evidence (Manque de preuves) is an animated documentary about Oscar, a young asylum seeker from Nigeria whose father killed his twin brother in a religious ritual and planned to do the same with him. However, he can’t offer the material proof to support his story and therefore can’t obtain asylum in France.
text by mario kozina // photo by johanna kinari // nisimazine special: rotterdam shorts // 7
La Maladie blanche The White Disease
Christelle Lheureux // France // 2011
French artist and director Christelle Lheureux brought a little taste of mysticism to this year´s Tiger short competition. We spoke with her to find out more about it. How did La Maladie Blanche come about? I used to go to this town in the Pyrenees every summer. When I was there I realized I wanted to write a short script, shot it in a place I like and with people I like. You know, make something simple and just try to tell a story, because before I was doing more experimental films. Is this based on a real legend? No, I made it up from nothing. Of course it
is related to some feelings I had but it was not done consciously. I was just trying to approach the fear you have when you are a kid. I wanted to work with the idea that when you are a kid you are ready to believe anything. The film features a wild boar very close to a child. How did you shoot that? We had two trainers because it is really dangerous. We could have easily shot a wild boar in the area, either walking around in the town at night, or in the forest. But to me it was really important to frame the little girl and the boar at the same time. In fact we got the most famous wild boar actor in France (Laughs). He did some documentaries for Arte TV
Lheureux creates a specific atmosphere of a summer night when everything is possible. Her manipulations of reality are subtle. She relies on black and white photography to distance the viewer from a sense of immediate reality, and tries to emphasize the magic in everyday situations, like the light of fireflies and baaing of sheep. In the soundtrack, distant beats of party music change places with nightly sounds and
channel (Laughs). For one shot it took us three hours to set it up so the boar would not go up the stairs while the little girl was there. It was not easy. How did the audience react to your film? I was a bit surprised. I love it when people laugh and that varies a lot from country to country. I liked the way people laugh here (laughs). There are similarities with your film and the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, with whom you have worked in the past. I was wondering how much he has influenced you… I actually know him for more
One could easily mistake The White Disease for the story about growing up: an ending of the period when magic coexisted with the real world. Quite the opposite, The White Disease shows that magic is still an integral part of people’s lives. Teenagers find it in the coloured photographs on their mobile phones, kids in the shadows by the fire or reflections in the mirror. Even the ending doesn’t bring the expected “awakening from a dream”, leaving both the viewers and characters charmed by everything that happened in the cave and around it.
review
noises, which also gives a dreamy touch to the whole. So when the monster actually comes out of the cave where the prehistoric drawings are hidden, we are not surprised that it looks like a wild boar. Instead, we believe that the wild boar IS the monster!
Christelle Lheureux’ film shows that nobody is immune to magic. And it only takes an idea of kissing a frog to cure the white disease that made the drawings in the cave fade away, and to make them shine again in the torch light… or lurk from the dark!
than ten years. We are good friends and we did two short films together. We also did a workshop together with my students in Chiang Mai. I don’t think I am so much influenced by him. I think we influence each other. We talk a lot and share ideas. We are very interested in each other’s work and we trust and help each other a lot. For instance, on my next film, which will be my first feature, I am going to shoot part of it in Thailand and he is helping out. I have six scenes to be shot in Thailand, 20% is shot there and the rest in France.
interview
Fairy tales are set in a world different from ours, and they are often associated with childhood. However, there is a fine line between reality and fantasy and it can easily be crossed by anybody, no matter their age. The White Disease by Christelle Lheureux takes place in an isolated village of the Pyrenees on a hot summer night. We meet the main characters during the aftermath of a village party: children gather around the fire to talk about ogres, while teenagers dance to kitschy pop music or search for a hidden place to exchange embraces. Even the grown-ups are in a special mood: a group of people plays with a frog and a man asks: “What will happen if I kiss it?” Christelle Lheureux cuts the scene off, although the scent of possibilities remains lingering in the air. As the music starts to fade and the village gets covered by darkness, an ogre comes out of its den and seduces a little girl to follow it into the woods.
text by mario kozina // photo by johanna kinari // nisimazine special: rotterdam shorts // 9
Ovos de dinossauro na sala de estar
Dinosaur Eggs in the Living Room Rafael Urban // Brazil // 2011
How did you approach the script? The text developed after the completion of 17 encounters I had with Ragnhild over the course of two years. I was also handed plenty of personal material that inspired my first treatment: 35 hours of home videos, 2,000 slides, dozens of photos and newspaper clippings. Ragnhild gave her own input as well during the rehearsals. She wanted to avoid appearing sad in the film, because ‘it would be unfair to a man who made her happy’. Ragnhild communicates her story is in a very stylized manner, yet she evokes our emotions. True. The film starts off with this eccentric figure placed against peculiar domestic interiors, but after a while we go beyond the first impression and feel a connection with her. After all, her story is universal and it is
beautiful to see people going through different reactions when watching the film. It seems like her drive to document everything about their life is powered by the memory of Guido. She has even learned how to use Photoshop… Her motivation stems from the things she lived with this man and she wants to preserve his memory so that her 10-year old grandson can learn more about his grandfather too. Not only is she an avid Photoshop user, but she also scanned over 3,000 letters exchanged between her mother and grandmother. Living by herself, her main occupation is to preserve these collections. What can I say; at the age of 79 she seems more active than ever. The film underlines her extravagant
ial and attractive quirkiness without its star’s self-irony and the catchy lines delivered in a fusion of German/ Norwegian/ Portuguese accents. Brazilian director and film critic Rafael Urban responsibly transcribes the woman’s delicate memorabilia into rich cinematic tableaux, creating an unreservedly enjoyable docudrama that marks his rebirth as a filmmaker.
review
There is more than meets the eye in this entertainingly stylized portrait of an idiosyncratic woman living in Brazil, showcasing an exceptional drive to revive the memory of her beloved husband Guido. Dinosaur Eggs in the Living Room refers to Ragnhild Borgomanero’s largest fossil collection in Latin America, currently residing in her 4,000 square meter apartment, but also serves as the trigger for a singular love story to be told. A devoted collector of many unusual items for life, Ragnhild shifted her attention to collecting family history the moment she become a widower. This 79year-old bionic woman is deadly serious when taking up Photoshop courses so she can digitalize and archive her life; a full-time occupation that seems to cover the void and compensate for her loss.
personality. Is she aware of her larger-than-life persona? Absolutely! She’s been living in Brazil since the 70s, so she is perfectly aware that she is part of a society where things are very different. In Brazil when people talk about emotions, they put it out there and express themselves in a very dramatic way. Coming from Germany, Ragnhild isn’t open in that way, although she does use very strong expressions – the ones a Latino would use. What was her reaction when she watched the film? Her first words were ‘I should have practiced better!’ She noticed that she mispronounced some words in
Portuguese and she was embarrassed she didn’t rehearsed more… But she was also impressed by the audience reactions. In Rotterdam, I was very pleased with the film’s reception; people seemed to be in line with the film. Do you still keep in touch with her? Yes. Every now and then she calls to congratulate me for something she read in the paper about the film. She is very happy about its success and has accompanied me in some Q&A’s with great enthusiasm. There is no doubt for me that she is really a star. If Antonioni had met her in the 60s, she might have been a cinema goddess.
interview
Visually, there is no doubt that Ragnhild is the joy of every filmmaker, her extravagant personality and dramatic demeanor effortlessly provide for an engaging viewing. Nevertheless, the film wouldn’t have achieved its congen-
text by eftihia stefanidi // photo by johanna kinari // nisimazine special: rotterdam shorts // 11
interview
Takashi Makino
Generator // Japan
Takashi Makino is one of the most talented Japanese experimental filmmakers. His works are regarded as cunning explorations of the film medium, as well as impressive illustrations of the feeling of being overwhelmed in a contemporary, always-on-the-move society. His latest work Generator resembles the audiovisual quality of his earlier masterpiece Still in Cosmos (2009), but this time his search for hidden order in the overwhelming chaos has a different, organic basis.
interview
Can you explain the idea behind the film? The idea originally came from Aichi Arts Center, an institution from Nagoya that produces an experimental film with the body as its theme every year. I was interested in the body as a system, its cellules and how they are connected since I was young, so I decided to apply and eventually got their grant to make the film. In Generator my first idea was to show the city as a body. I wanted to express the moving of the cells by emphasizing the grainy texture of the image. Also, I tried to make the visual organization to resemble the blood-stream, and to make it pulsate like a heartbeat. That is also why I chose the color red and showed it rhythmically changing from darker to brighter to resemble not only heartbeats, but also the movements inside of the body. Music plays an important role in your film. Can you tell us something about your collaboration with Jim O’Rourke? I first met Jim 6 years ago. I gave him my earlier film and asked him to compose the music for it. He didn’t contact me for a long time, but after 2 years he brought me the music. The soundtrack was really good, and I listened to it quite often, especially while I was travelling by plane. So, while I was shooting this film I immediately started to think about the soundtrack. The original soundtrack was only three minutes long so I asked Jim to recompose the music and to make it longer. The two of us collaborated several times so far and normally I don’t interfere with the score. Generator was an exception because I directed him in detail on how to compose the score for the film. Do you show him the film before he starts composing? Yes. The image is always first and I think of it as a graphic score: a visual basis for composing music.
You started working on the film before the tragic events in Japan: the earthquake and the Fukushima disaster. How much did these events influence your artistic decisions? The idea has been the same from the start, and it didn’t change. But while I was looking at the footage during the editing, it reminded me of the nuclear waste, and the destruction brought by the tsunami. During the process there were times when I really wanted to stop the project, but then I read again the original “script” - the textual piece I wrote before I started to shoot the film - and I decided to keep on making it. It was really difficult, but in the end I’m happy that I’ve done it. What happened in Japan was a big influence, but I think I needed to change my anger and disappointment with everything that happened into energy! The possibility of this kind of transformation is one of the important reasons why I am an artist. Can you explain the title? My goal is to create films with neutral images: without strong messages or pointing the audience into certain conclusions. The audience should think and imagine by themselves, because the answers are not set. When you confront the images, you start to make your own meanings. Generator in the title has nothing to do with the nuclear plant: it’s the generator of imagination.
text by mario kozina // photo by johanna kinari // nisimazine special: rotterdam shorts // 15
interview
Portuguese director Miguel Fonseca´s As Ondas was one of the biggest surprises of this year´s Tiger Short Competition. In his third film, Fonseca took a minimalist approach to filmmaking, by developing a project where the sea and the Portuguese coast take the center role. At a difficult yet successful period for cinema in Portugal we spoke to him to hear his views on the future of filmmaking in his country as well as his new and future work.
Miguel Fonseca As Ondas (The Waves) // Portugal
interview
In what context did this project come about? I felt my last film, Alpha, was a bit too complicated and dark. At the time I felt I had gone too far. So I wanted to do something completely different. This project actually suffered a lot of changes from the original concept. It was suppose to be a summer film. I had a light narrative script about two twin teenage sisters on a beach holiday. But due to complications with the Portuguese film institute the shooting took a long time to start. I wanted to shot it in the summer, so by the time I actually got to do any shooting I had fallen out of love with the story. My relationship with this film changed drastically. But the focus of the story, the sea and its sound, stayed the same. How did the audience react? I was surprised to find out the film works a lot better than I expected. This is actually the first time I see it in a big screen. My objective was to take a lot of the energy of the original script. For instance, one of the characters, the sick girl, doesn’t really do anything in the film. I took so much out of it. I thought it had become cold, that it would be a hard film to watch. I was not sure if the audience would be interested as I took so much out of the story. So I was surprised to see it selected for competition and hear people telling me they enjoyed it so much, that they thought it was beautifully shot. So I am curious to see the reaction in future screenings. You graduated in Philosophy. How did you end up making films? I began working with Sandro Aguilar and I started to learn slowly. I used to love watching films and now I’ve learned I enjoy making them as well. I´m actually beginning to think of a feature, but as things stand now in Portugal, with all the budget cuts, I’m not so sure if it is a good idea. If the cuts are going to last one or two years, to be honest, I don’t think it is worth it to make films without decent conditions. In the past I have done films without any money, and I see people shooting films with mobile phones. I see nothing wrong with that, but to make the films I want to make without the necessary conditions it´s not worth it. I´d rather not do them at all. Apart from
that I am also not sure I am ready. I think filmmakers should first gain a lot of experience doing short films. I´ve done a few, but I am not sure I am completely ready for a feature. Don’t you think it is strange to be in such a large and influential festival with ten Portuguese productions in the program at a time when film production in Portugal is completely halted? Of course! Just yesterday I was at the screening of João Salaviza´s new short and everyone was asking what was going on. How come such a small country was producing so many and such great films! It is wonderful to have so many films here. This is a great time for Portuguese cinema. I obviously understand the budget cuts at a time when everything else is being cut. What I find strange is the fact they don’t explain exactly what is going on. You have seen the other films in competition. Have you seen films you liked? So far I’ve not seen many that blew me away. I did enjoy the Brazilian film I watched today (Dinosaur Eggs in the Living Room, by Rafael Urban): I thought that one was good. It was very well structured and controlled. It could have been easy for the director to take it in to the comedy realm, but he did well not to do it. The rest of the films are not my beach as we say in Portugal.
text by fernando vasquez // photo by johanna kinari // nisimazine special: rotterdam shorts // 17
Peter van Hoof Head of Shorts Programme
Peter van Hoof, Head Programmer of Short Films at International Rotterdam Film Festival, sheds light on this year’s selection, asserting he has the most amazing job in the world.
interview
There are 21 films in the Tiger Short Competition and with the Spectrum Section 196 are screened. It is a large selection… The size of the programme has a lot do to with the fact that there hasn’t been another short film festival in Holland for a long time. Almost every country has at least one ‘old’ short film festival, but not us! IFFR has undertaken that role of hosting shorts since the early years and its inclusion has been very important to us. Many short film festivals accept films only up to 30 minutes, however in Rotterdam we get to see works of various lengths, which is refreshing. How daring is this choice from a programmer’s perspective? Well, we never make a distinction between long and short films. What we care about is quality. We don’t mind showcasing a film as part of an installation or even a six-hour piece. As long as we can find a way to present it, this is a good enough reason for us. It is also a matter of challenging an audience and introducing works that one normally doesn’t get around to. The Tiger Short Competition showcases art-house and experimental shorts in its majority, instead of the more traditionally narrative ones. What is the idea behind this? The festival has always been a platform for experimentation, inviting the work of auteurs and encouraging artistic freedom, therefore there is an inherent inclination towards the genre. By the same token, IFFR almost overlaps with Clermont-Ferrand and since for them the emphasis lies on narrative films, I do not see the point why we should compete. It is true that most film festivals prefer to screen narrative shorts due to their better economical value, but we like to take a different route. Apart from emerging talents, we are also interested in artists who have been making films their entire life regardless of length limitations
(that opt to a marketable future). For us it is important to make room for those filmmakers that have no commercial plan, but artistic determination. After all, our films are not only addressed to cinephiles, but also curators, programmers and a variety of cultural organisations. The Tiger Award for Shorts was recently introduced. How difficult is it to maintain prizes for short film, when the cultural sector is being axed and film festivals are struggling to survive? Seven years ago we had a discussion about this and we were convinced that we were ready to introduce the concept, as we really wanted to help short filmmakers to find financing for their next work. We figured that if they gain a title from us they would have more chances to be noticed. Regarding the economical crisis, it does very much exist and things have been difficult especially in Holland, because of our government cutting the cultural budget in half. We have been lucky with our festival though, as being under the IFFR umbrella means that we can benefit from its resources and not depend on a single sponsor per se. Can you speak about your career trajectory leading up to the role of the Short Film Programmer at IFFR? Is it the best job in the world? Yes, it is! But let’s not forget the massive amounts of work it requires…I have to say, I was lucky enough to be born in times where I was able to start up a squat cinema in Amsterdam and run it for ten years without having to worry about money. In the 80s, the cinematic culture was stagnant so we decided with a group of friends to distribute films not shown in Holland. When we organised a Turkish cycle, we had to find a more respectable venue to welcome the filmmakers attending. That place was De Balie, an independent cinema and political cultural center. This screening paved the way for my collaboration with De Baile, where I was given the freedom to curate experimental and political cinema - the two enemies of programming! Until one day, the Director of IFFR phoned me asking to oversee the short film section… and here I am!
text by eftihia stefanidi // photo by johanna kinari // nisimazine special: rotterdam shorts // 19
Long thoughts on short films
The best thing about short films is that they are not short. They may be short in duration, and at the International Film Festival Rotterdam that can be up to 60 minutes, but there is something immeasurable about shorts that make them defy any notion of time we might have. Being a member of the jury for the three equal Tiger Awards for Short Film at this year’s IFFR made me realize once again that the time of chronometers is quite unreliable when it comes to the measurement of experience. The 21 films in competition counted from 5 minutes (Phil Collins’ The Meaning of Style) to 42 (La maladie blanche by Christelle Lheureux)
and everything in between. Light Escapes through the Intervals (by Tasaka Naoko) was the title of another film in the selection, and I would like to add ‘through the intervals of time’, as that seems the appropriate way to describe the journey we made. It took us from the port of Marseille (in Mati Diop’s Big in Vietnam) to the pre-disaster city of Tokyo (Makino Takashi’s Generator) and the endless buzzing of bees in Jeroen Eisinga’s transfixing performance piece Springtime, to only mention our winners. And long after the screening had finished, the films still resonated in our minds. My fellow jurors Andrea Picard, Rania Stephan and I deliberated them for several hours. Some
say it was seven, I guess it was more, and contrary to what may seem we were not indecisive. We just gave the films the time they demanded. Time for reflection. Time for appreciation. Time for wonder and growth, time for confusion and disarmament, as by their originality, boldness and sometimes intangibility they made us understand once more (and oh that joy of re-cognition) that a true cinema not only escapes through the intervals of time, but more important through the intervals of canonization and compromise. Dana Linssen Dana Linssen is editor in chief of the Dutch film magazine de Filmkrant
photo by johanna kinari // nisimazine special: rotterdam shorts // 21
Agatha
El arca (The Ark)
Beatrice Gibson // UK // 2012
Cristobal Leon, Joaquin Cocina // Netherlands, Chile // 2011
Agatha is a short film by Beatrice Gibson based on a recollection of a dream by British composer Cornelius Cardew. It tells a story about a person who goes to another planet and gets seduced by the alien creature from the title. One could describe it as a gender-bending science fiction film or pulp erotica, but it is also a clever play with the codes and signs of cinematic storytelling.
Chilean born and Amsterdam based animators León and Cociña don’t shy away from some good old manual labor. That includes taking turns strutting around in a self-made sweaty aluminum space suit carrying a blow-up type doll with golden hair. Coming out of the woods with their latest short El arca, inspired by the work of 17th century Renaissance man Athanasias Kirchner, their story weaves together different themes of Christianity (Adam & Eve, Noah and the Ark) and literature in an original package of a spaceman trying to procreate into a human ‘being’.
Beautiful landscapes of the Snowdonia mountains, as well as actors who appear on screen, only loosely embody the elements of the story (characters and places) narrated in the voice-over. Also this voice over is stripped down of its referential quality when the protagonist/narrator with a gentle, female voice informs us that his/her gender will remain unspecified. This alien society doesn’t exist within the binary oppositions we often find in our culture, so the gender differences between people are much more subtle, and possibly exceed the two we find on Earth. Sexual attraction between the alien species is not only the driving force of the plot, but also a structural principle of the way that cinematic elements stand in a dialectic relation: they don’t mimic each other, but play with each other’s codes and meanings. It is as if Beatrice Gibson loosened up the ties between the sound, image and the content of the story, leaving them to float in the diegetic universe, less straightforward and less fixed, thus proving that even when it deals with figurative imagery, cinema is the perfect medium to describe the places that exist beyond words.
by Mario Kozina
22 // nisimazine special: rotterdam shorts
Balancing between fun, cute and slightly disturbing, this intensely creative duo manage to make their scotch taped puppets come to live and, despite their coarseness, create a believable little universe. In this world, black and red paint bubbling and slurping out of paper beaks and buttholes can abruptly turn a mood of child play into something darker. The use of hipstamatic looking cinematography including other ‘cool’ elements such as handmade figures, poppy colours, make-shift outer space, and minimalist music could be accused of bowing to the new generation of bohemian-chic hipsters. But El arca elevates itself above this through true craftsmanship and great sensitivity for the different textures of the chosen materials and their respective effects. A breath of fresh air in this years’ competition.
by Maartje Alders
Light Escapes through the intervals Tasaka Naoko // USA // 2011
This years’ short film competition at IFFR has been completely dominated by experimental pieces. Throughout the last few days I saw my fair share of time lapse, distortions, overexposures, textures and frontal nudity shots. I even saw a guy being slowly covered in bees. No matter how creative and original a filmmaker or artist tries to be, this sort of thing is bound to get somewhat repetitive and slightly annoying. There are exceptions though. And few more interesting then Tasaka Noak´s Light Escapes Through the Intervals. This graduation film experiment stands out, above all, due to the perfect balance between two key factors overlooked by most of the rest of the competitors: image and sound. Admittedly, the film is Tasaka Naok´s own search for ways to express ideas she cannot put into words. Through the use of a breathtaking soundtrack, that jumps from instrumental surf rock to industrial mechanical drone sounds, she managed to connect images that otherwise would not form a solid basis for such vagrancies. The slow motion pace is delightful, giving the audience the impression the life and soul of the piece resides as much in the process as in the final result. Ultimately, Light Escapes Through Intervals is an enchanting and relaxing voyage into a personal abstract line of thought, that works perfectly both conceptually and in practice.
by Fernando Vasquez
Nisimazine Cannes 16th to 27th of May
Nisimazine Special Karlovy Vary 29th June to 7th of July
Springtime
Phil Collins // Malaysia // 2012
Jeroen Eisinga // Netherlands // 2011
Meaning of style is a unique experience in many ways. Originally commissioned by the 2011 Singapore Biennale, the film is experimental British filmmaker Phil Collins´s view on the relationship between East and West.
Visual artist Jeroen Eisinga tried not to be afraid although he ‘peed in his pants’ the first minutes of his 90-minute long performance, of which Springtime shows a nineteen minute extract. Eisinga himself is the focal point of a daredevil feat reminiscent of Jack-ass (for young readers) or Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader (for older readers) who recorded several ‘falls’ of driving himself on a bike in a canal or dropping off a roof whilst sitting on a chair. In Springtime the source of potential bodily harm is bees.
In order to explore the theme the director traveled to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he discovered an entire subculture of Skin Heads, very much like those found in many suburbs of Great Britain in the 1970´s. Far from the stereotype of the skinheads we find today in Europe, this group is loyal to the original skinhead movement, born out of the rise of Caribbean and Ska culture in the 20th century. Using a sequence of slow motion panning shots and a dream like soundtrack the characters are shown as fully embracing Western culture. They read Western publications, such as Melody Maker and the Radio Times, they listen to Western music, they dress in Western clothes and they fight among each other just like Western youth. In many ways Meaning of Style is an abstract portrait of two worlds coexisting in relative harmony. Throughout the film East Asian symbolism is repeatedly persistent, with butterflies and Buddhist swastikas forming the setting, while Western habits are all too dominant. Above all this piece stands out for its brilliant conjugation of simplicity and visual beauty taking the audience into an artist vision of two worlds colliding.
by Fernando Vasquez
Nisimazine Special Venice 29th August to 8th of September
After letting himself be covered in queen bee hormones on the upper body, the filmmaker disappears in a sea of small creatures, slowly engulfing his face until nothing remains to be seen but his mouth. Through a single frame, black and white images and no sound, the film is a tableau vivant through which the viewer is subjected to watching the bees in silence, getting closer and closer to obstructing Eisinga’s eyes, nose and mouth. Sometimes, an eye opens itself to stare straight into the camera. The difference between a Jackass episode and Springtime is solely its form and the nature of the intended shock. Where the first one plays on gloat and enlarges the action, the second is an intellectualization of the same action to which the viewer is guided by the stillness of the presentation. Eisinga becomes a curiosity, a stretching of the moment of danger to be watched with your head slightly tilted.
by Maartje Alders
Nisimazine Kaunas
26th September to 7th October
Nisimazine Abu Dhabi 11th to 20th of October
Nisimazine
the meaning of style
agenda
2012
matthieu fernando eftihia maartje darras vasquez stefanidi alders (france)
(portugal)
(greece)
(netherlands)
mario kozina (croatia)
average Im Freien (In the Open) - Albert Sackl Big in Vietnam - Mati Diop the meaning of style - Phil Collins Springtime - Jeroen Eisinga As Ondas (The Waves) - Miguel Fonseca Shadow Life - Cao Fei Scene Shifts, in Six Movements - Jani Ruscica Generator - Makino Takashi Ovos de dinossauro na sala de estar - Rafael Urban
I’m Lisa - Charlotte Lim Lay Kuen Al bahth an madina - fi awraaq Sein - Hala Elkoussy Field Notes from a Mine - Martijn van Boven/Tom Tlalim El arca (The Ark) - Cristobal Leon/Joaquin Cocina
Manque de preuves - Hayoun Kwon Draud iami jausmai - Deimantas Narkevicius Light Escapes Through the Intervals - Tasaka Naoko
Agatha - Beatrice Gibson La maladie blanche - Christelle Lheureux Postcard from Somova, Romania - Andreas Horvath
5000 Feet Is the Best - Omer Fast Bobby Yeah - Robert Morgan
Critics’ votes nisimazine special: rotterdam shorts // 25
spectrum shorts
Café Regular, Cairo Cerro Negro
fancy-fair
Ritesh Batra // Egypt // 2011
João Salaviza // Portugal // 2012
Christophe Hermans // Begium // 2011
The dust hasn’t settled yet, its politics that talks about Egypt these days. Café Regular, Cairo is one of the few steps in this festival out of this realm, into normal life, into a discussion that would go around in more quiet times. Nonetheless, these are the questions underlying a revolution, the freedom to shape your life as you wish.
João Salaviza is more than just one of the promising Portuguese filmmakers to have appeared on the scene in the last few years. Since he received the short film Palme d´Or in Cannes in 2009 for his breathtaking portrayal of a young man on house arrest (Arena), he has been frequently pointed out as a turning point and a new beginning in Portuguese cinema.
A graduate from the IAD film school in Belgium, Christophe Hermans brings a powerful drama into the Spectrum section attention. Fancy-Fair depicts a significant day in a woman’s life (Nathalie), as she breaks out of the mental asylum to attend a family reunion for her daughter’s school performance.
Director Ritesh Batra puts the viewer on the wrong foot in the first minutes of the film, playing cleverly with stereotypical tyrannical Arab men and timid suppressed women in headscarves diverting their gaze. In a simple décor and through simple framing, a conversation between a couple somewhere in a coffeehouse takes unexpected turns. The woman requests her boyfriend to have sex before marriage to see if they would ‘fit’, speaking about it candidly within earshot of the other customers and waiters. Taboos are breaking left and right, the tone of the conversation changing realistically from tense to loving and back. Acting is somewhat painful in the beginning, but gradually becomes very engaging, a great accomplishment by the two amateur actors who play a version of their own lives. An encounter with foreigners used in the narrative as the catalyst for the woman’s daring plan is perhaps not the best choice. But this film is exactly the kind of story that can diversify the representation of the Arab world.
by Maartje Alders
The pressure of such a title seems to have had little or no impact at all on his latest production. Cerro Negro takes us into the lives of a small immigrant Brazilian family in Lisbon, separated by the imprisonment of the father. While the young child seems oblivious to the situation, both the father and the mother contain their frustration in a zombie like state. Simple and effective in its structure, the films’ great triumph is in its capacity to set an atmosphere of quiet desperation that makes the film flow with great beauty even though some of the acting is far from brilliant. Salaviza appears to have achieved a certain maturity and restraint in his direction. There are obvious similarities with his earlier success. In many ways Cerro Negro is a natural follow up of Arena. Yet, the film stands on its own as another prelude to all that is expected from the young filmmaker. by Fernando Vasquez
From the first scene, we are immediately introduced to Nathalie’s slightly offbeat behavior. Sibel Duquesne’s moving performance favours subtle fidgeting gestures, heightened enthusiasm and elusive facial expressions to successfully portray a ‘woman under the influence’. The film soon suggests that Nathalie’s inaptitude to be ‘normal’, or let’s say, cured, lies in the fact that the people closest to her resent her for her weakness. As she encounters her lover, his macho temperament implies the emotional blackmail that she has been enduring along the way. Her teenage daughter is ‘not in the mood’ either. Only her son (Jérémie Renier, L’enfant) treats her in a humane and tender way, and when a family fight sparks during the festivities, suppressed emotions arise violently to the surface. Fancy-Fair is a naturalistic and minimalistic glimpse at the mechanisms behind a family on the rocks. The paradox lies in the fact that even if the mother is the one in mental care, bitterness urges the rest of the siblings to alienate themselves and go through individual breakdowns. Sadness from an irreparable break underline the film as Nathalie mutely perceives the hostility of her environment, making Hermans’ directorial work one to keep an eye upon for the future. by Eftihia Stefanidi
Historia del mal
Benjamin Naishtat // Argentina, France // 2011
There are many ways to tell a story, and according to filmmakers such as the Argentinean Benjamin Naishtat, the same could be said about history. Historia del Mal, screened at the Echoes of the Past session of the Spectrum Shorts Program, explores an innovative method to talk history; reliving it through old re-mastered footage. The film focuses on the 1879´s exploration campaign into the southern deserts of Latin America, where General Roca and his army expanded the territory of his young nation by pushing several indigenous communities away from their lands. The military campaign, which helped shape the Argentina we know today, came at a great cost. An estimated 1 250 Native Americans were killed and many more were made prisoners. The real strength of Historia del Mal is in its capacity to look at the past with one eye looking straight at the present. In some strange and bizarre way it functions as a sort of therapy for present generations to deal with the brutal actions of their ancestors, which still have an impact today. No doubt Naishtat´s vision is a chaotic one, very confusing at times, but so is the period he is trying to approach. This is unquestionably a fresh and interesting form of studying history and I would be very surprised if we do not see more of this in the future.
Killing the Chicken Barrow to Scare the Monkeys Sack Ben Rivers // UK // 2011 Jens Assur // Sweden, Thailand // 2011
The military milieu of Killing the Chickens to Scare the Moneys (title referring to a Chinese policy by which dissidents are executed to frighten others) was a probable choice from Swedish artist and former war photographer Jens Assur. Named photographer of the year by the age of 23, Jens brings an astute and ironic story of military justice in the Republic of China. Comprising of nine scenes divided into two parts, but screened retrospectively, the film deploys cold hearted and subversively humorous methods to recount a fatal incident that was powered by a blind political regime in conjunction with a haphazard turn of events. The aloofness in which the film treats the violence reverberates a universe reminiscent of Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, yet the emphasis is not given to a rigorous scripted dialogue amongst militants, but to the meticulously choreographic mise-en-scène. Despite his photographic background, Assur is not interested in showing off what he can do with fine imagery; he opts for an extremely wide lens instead, which envelops the action in a series of uninterrupted takes. As a result, the spectators’ eye is free to roam within the cadre and explore foreground and background for various narrative clues. It is until the second half of the film though that we realize the randomness of it all, which is what really pays off (or not) after its strikingly unhurried opening scene. by Eftihia Stefanidi
by Fernando Vasquez
Ben Rivers is a British director whose style can be recognised by several characteristics. He always shoots on 16mm film, and has a knack of mixing fiction and documentary in a subtle, innovative and playful way. His latest film Sack Barrow demonstrates some aesthetic departures from his style, most notably the use of a TV aspect ratio instead of the cinemascope, and vivid instead of washed-out colors. The film focuses on the daily routines of the workers of metal factory Servex Ltd. There is no particular story line here, nor are there any dialogues. The goal is not to tell the story about the place, but to immerse the audience in its atmosphere: the vivid colors, details of mineral crust on the machines, and smiling faces of pinup girls from the porno-magazines on the wall. Although very rhythmical and with a subtle sense of humour, the film possesses a strong notion of melancholia, and as the credits start rolling we find out that the factory was in fact closed last year, after 80 years of its existence. The qualities of the 16mm film, its grainy texture and the capacity of its emulsion to absorb colors, as well as the retro TV-aspect ratio are the only hints that suggest that we are witnessing the last breaths of a world already gone. In a time when there is much talk about the death of analogue film, filmmakers like Ben Rivers demonstrate that the old medium hasn’t had its final word. by Mario Kozina
nisimazine special: rotterdam shorts // 29
director of publication: Matthieu Darras contributors: Maartje Alders, Matthieu Darras, Johanna Kinari, Mario Kozina, Eftihia Stefanidi, Fernando Vasquez
Vexed
design/art direction: Maartje Alders
Telcosystems are an audiovisual trio from the Netherlands whose
photography: Johanna Kinari
Telcosystems // Netherlands // 2012
work is synonymous with spectacular, suggestive and - let’s not forget - loud merging of computer art and cinema. Their latest work Vexed took four years to complete. Inspired by the particle theory, Telcosystems create an unstable world where particles move at a speed faster than light. Over the course of the film, their unpredictable and seemingly chaotic trajectories pose a challenge to the perception of the viewer: they inhabit spaces that at the same time resemble flat surfaces and volumes, their achromatic flickering turns into color, and as the film reaches its climax, cold digital textures start to get an organic
Very special thanks to Bert-Jan Zoet, Peter van Hoof, Edwige Leblay Giovanni Vimercati this is a publication of
feel. The changes can be traced even in the soundtrack, where the drones start to form a rhythm that fades away as soon as it appears. However, all the processes in Vexed contain a dose of ambiguity, and as soon as the patterns start to form, they dissolve into the digital primordial soup they originally came from. The clever approach to the media and well thought-out structure make Vexed an audiovisual piece that is much more than an abstract parable about the hidden order behind chaos. Its visceral power poses many challenges to the perception of the viewer, using the uncertainties to emphasize the ambiguity and fragility in everything that surrounds us: from the particles that flicker on the
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cinema screen to the God’s particle in scientists’ pursuits.
by Mario Kozina
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EUROPEAN SHORT PITCH 2013