Nisimazine Venice 2013

28th August - 7th September 2013

Orizzonti Special

Nisimazine Venice

content

Page 2 Page 3

Index Editorial

Orizzonti Features

Page 6 - 7 Eastern Boys Review Page 8 - 9 Eastern Boys Interview Page 10 - 11 Ruin Review Page 12 - 13 Fish and Cat Review Page 14 - 15 Wolfchildren Review + Interview Page 16 - 17 Medeas Review + Interview Page 18 - 19 La vida después Review + Interview Page 20 - 21 Palo alto Review Page 22 - 23 Algunas chicas + The Sacrament Page 24 - 25 We are the Best + Why don’t you play in Hell Page 26 Picola patria + Still Life Page 27 Il terzo tempo + Je m´apelle Hmmm Page 28 - 29 Little Brother + La prima neve

Photo Reportage Page 32 - 33 Page 34 - 35

Pictures by Interview Jay Weissberg

Shorts

Page 38 - 39 Page 40 - 41

Page 42 - 43 Page 44 - 45 Page 46 - 47 Page 48 - 49 Page 50 - 51 Page 52 - 53 Page 54 Page 55

Kush Review Un pensiero Kalashnikov Review + Interview Death for Unicorn Review + Interview Blanco Review + Interview Quello che resta Review Houses with Small Windows Cold Snap + Toutes les belles choses Galina + Audition Balkoni + Stagnant Water Aningaq + Minesh

Photo reportage Page 58 - 59 Page 60 - 61 Page 62 - 63

Pictures by

Interview Marco Busato Photos of workshop + Credits

editorial 70 years after Venice began a trend that was to be repeated extensively all over the planet, the festival has found in itself the necessary strength to look into its future and dig for alternatives. As it embarked on this journey it ended up, voluntarily or by mere accident, creating an interesting debate regarding the role of a film festival in the modern troubled international film industry.

Faced with an increasingly influential Toronto film Festival on the other side of the Atlantic, that is inevitably diverging a large chunk of the film energy that traditionally was reserved for the great Italian event, the efforts to maintain its influence go well beyond the creation and growth of the film market started two years ago, a welcomed initiative nevertheless, yet not the factor that makes this transition particularly special.

As Paolo Bertolin, Venice´s advisor and correspondent for the East Asian Territories, told us on an interview published earlier on Nisimazine’s second Newsletter, the mother of all festivals has always distinguished itself from the pack of A-list film events for not being ruled by a “market Logic”. This fact has allowed the festival organization to always go a step beyond everyone else, selecting works from filmmakers and regions that rarely saw the light of day.

The result could not have been more vital, and the continuous increase of popularity of Asian cinema, that began first in Venice, is a great example of the festival´s unique and innovative contribution to the film world.

In 2013 Venice took yet another leap by offering a selection that not only brought in established figures such as Terry Guilliam, Stephen Frears or Kim Ki-duk, but also opened the door to a wider audience, by selecting many genre pieces.

The large numbers of comedies, animations, horror flicks and even gore fests found a place side-by-side with more intellectual pieces from some of the most daring filmmakers out there.

Perhaps some of the criticism is valid, as the absence of major influential and consensual films was notorious. Yet, by providing a window to the global film scene, with all its wonders and dubious factions, Venice´s effort and courage is applaudable. To top it all off, what better way to celebrate such a phenomenon by awarding the Golden Lion to a documentary?

Cannes did it first, it is a fact, but in a context light years away from the one that rejoiced in Gianfranco Rosi´s Sacro Gra. In the following pages you will find some echoes of this new found openness to the film industry in its entirety. Focused on the Orizzonti section, 12 young writers and photographers from Romania, Croatia and Italy dived into this melting pot of archetypes and fresh scented visions, finding many pearls along the journey.

So be brave, turn the page and immerse yourself into the world of new cinema and get ready to be surprised!

by Fernando Vasquez

Orizzonti Features

by Robin Campillo // France

In a lost part of the interview I had the chance to do with him, Robin Campillo talked about Jaques Derida`s concept of hostipitalitĂŠ. Hospitality and hostility are the elements of the relationship between the French protagonist and the boys from the east that invade his home. One other thing from the interview that stuck with me, was the director`s love declaration towards Gare du Nord in Paris, a declaration that is all too obvious in the almost sensual shots of different places and characters in the train station, that comprise the long sequence opening of the film.

Then there is Daniel`s expensive apartment.

The party is an excellent cinematic translation of the concept of hospitality: Daniel is both threatened but at the same time he`s enjoying this new found excitement in his life. The viewer gets an extensive tour of the house: the furniture, the electronics, the paintings and the photos. The materiality of this apartment and tells us a lot about the owner. The director uses spaces in order to construct the inner world of the character.

Just one example will suffice: the shades that come down electronically every time he`s about to have sex.

Putting aside all the details of the story, Eastern Boys could be described as a film about places. The film has three major settings and all of these locations are very important in the structure of the film. Robin Campillo masterfully generates conflict and tension between the characters by breaking the rules specific to each space. The way he breaks the rules is by putting characters in places where they don`t belong.

Thirdly, the space changes from one home to the other, and the illegal immigrants get to know how it feels to have an intruder violating their personal space. In this third and last location that makes up the film, there is only hostility.

First, we see the characters on neutral ground, the Paris railway station, famous among other things as a landmark for male prostitution coming from the East. The older Daniel sets his eyes on the much younger Marek as they arrange for a private meeting. In this sequence the rules are the laws: Daniel breaks the law and, as we witness later in the film, the law can`t help him anymore.

review

Eastern Boys

The characters move from one space to another, and we understand what makes this a good film. It uses a material world (one which the camera can show with great accuracy) to mirror the movements of the soul.

Marek changes spaces as he transforms from a prostitute into something else.

Orizzonti Award for Best Film review by Andrei Č˜endreaNisimazine // Nisimazine Venice Karlovy Vary // 77

Robin Campillo Director of ‘Eastern Boys’ // France

Nisimazine Venice // 8

What idea did you want to convey with this film?

I wanted to do a film about prostitution around a station, because I love Gare du Nord station. I wanted all the people to be “illegal”. The foreigners and also the French character, because he’s going to met up with prostitutes.

I also wanted to show that, between these people, the power can shift. I like the idea that our real life is not a legal life, it’s the other life, it’s a strange life. I’m very much for gay rights and gay marriage but I like the idea that, especially gay men, can have such a strange life.

Considering part of the film is in a language you don’t understand how did you manage to direct the actors without compromising the tension of the narrative?

Kirill doesn’t speak French and he doesn’t speak English. In the end we used Google Translate. I needed to see how Kirill would react to the gay scenes. I needed to have an enlightened consent from him so I did a script which was similar to pornography. I prefer people to be shocked and know if they are OK with it or not. After all he is 21, he thinks he can do a lot of things but he is like a child.

It seems as if you were trying to share ideas about violence in the film.

I wanted to show that violence can be really civilized and you don’t need to be brutal to have power. The boss is smiling and saying: “We have fun with you”, because the blackmail about paedophilia is so strong that he doesn’t need to be brutal.

Gay issues are currently a tense topic in many of the countries of your characters.

Do you think it will provoke controversy and debate?

I think we’ll show it in Ukraine, because Kirill is Ukrainian. I don’t want the film to go to Russia. I would like to present it there but I want to be sure it’s not putting them at risk. The laws were not so restricted when we did the film.

How did the Casting process go? Was it difficult to find the right actors?

It took me nine months to get to the Russian guys. It was on the internet, I saw films, films, films! They were doing a lot of theatre and a lot of films. Kirill Emelyanov has been working since he is five years old. All his family are comedians and actors. Daniil Vorobyov, I think he’s the greatest actor I’ve worked with. I have two projects and I don’t know how to put him in these projects because, it’s a fortunate opportunity to find someone like him.

interview

The winner of this year’s Orizzonti competition, Robin Campillo, may have just completed his second feature, yet he is no stranger to the film industry. As a scriptwriter and editor he has achieved fame in France, signing credits in hugely successful productions thanks to a long established relationship with Laurent Cantet, with whom he joined forces to write and edit films such as the Cannes Palme d´Or winner The class or the winner of the Venice don Quixote Time Out. We caught up with him before his moment of glory to understand the motivations and process behind his celebrated film Eastern Boys.

How different is it to write for yourself and other filmmakers’ films?

I wrote and edited films for Laurent (Cantet) but it was not my films. Some things with Laurent are very close to me. But it’s true; we don’t have the same point of view. He’s on the realistic side. When I’m doing it for me I prefer to narrate stories which are unbelievable.

interview by Andrei Șendrea // Nisimazine Venice // 9

Nisimazine Venice // 10

by Amiel Courtin-Wilson & Michael Cody // Australia With Ruin, his third feature, Amiel CourtinWilson and co-director Michael Cody stick to the signature elements put forward in Hail (which also premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2011): nonprofessional actors, fast tempo (sound and editing) matching the occasional outbursts of extreme violence, an elaborate sound universe that at times escapes the diegesis and delivers an audio version of the characters inner storm, and very engaging close-up photography.

The story is also similar, a love tale spiked with violence between a prostitute and a hustler that begins in the dirty dangerous outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. As their unusual bond grows into love, so too does the setting change. Driven further from the city by the increasing number of bodies left behind, the couple escape in the jungle, a sort of purifying journey home that gives them a sense that, not only can they love but also deserve to be loved.

Unlike with most movies where the title gives away the conclusion, the ruin in this film is actually the premise. In the city it is every man and woman for themselves, money buys and sex sells, the exchange currency is never the same. Yet in the jungle, they hunt in pairs, as in the scene where the girl distracts the three men with her good looks while the man steals their money.

The hunt builds trust and the film emphasizes it by closing in on their intimacy through extreme close-up shots tracking the imperfect details of their anatomical geography.

The close-ups work as a sort of organic connection, getting so close to the skin, so porous, that the viewer should feel like he’s watching his own skin up-close. So if it is a bit difficult to get in the mindset of a prostitute or that of a street thug, it is not that hard to feel what the characters are feeling, which is in the end what all lovers feel: skin, hair, eyes, mouth, breath and a general stillness.

review

Ruin

As there isn’t much dialogue this is the most important way in which the film tries to impress on the audience a sense of what the characters are feeling and not so much what they are thinking. After all thinking, where they are going to hide next or how to get money, apart from always leading them to bad places, is movement. Movement is what gives human existence a sense of time, and the mark of time, is ruin.

Special Orizzonti Jury Award review by Andrei Č˜endrea //Nisimazine Nisimazine Venice // //11 Karlovy Vary 7

Nisimazine Venice // 12

by Shahram Mokri // Iran

If a David Lynch influenced by Asian horror films would have directed Elephant instead of Gus van Sant, the result would probably have looked a lot like Iranian filmmaker Shahram Mokri’s second feature, Fish and Cat. Having as a starting point a true story about a restaurant that served human flesh for food, the action of Fish and Cat takes place in the winter, mostly by a lake where some students are organising a kite flying competition. Not far away from the lake there is a small hut, whose three inhabitants seem to be keeping a restaurant. One by one, the students start to disappear.

Although just like in Elephant the camera follows at turns the characters and the same action is often shown several times and from different perspectives, there is one extremely important technical detail that distinguishes Mokri’s film from Gus van Sant’s work: Fish and Cat was shot in a single take. This implies that, in order for some of the scenes to be repeated, the actors had to quickly regain their position, wait for the camera’s return and then try to re-enact the scene as accurately as possible. An immense endeavour, meant to help the main theme of the film, time, to stand out.

Fish and Cat laughs in the face of the widely spread opinion that using long takes is a more transparent technique of filming, one that goes hand in hand with realism. Proving that this assumption is not completely true is one of the main reasons why this film is very innovative. The manipulation of time is taken even further. Voice-overs accompany some of the movie scenes and it can be suspected that

review

Fish and Cat

the lines is, at times, come from the future, from a time beyond the ending of the action that the film shows.

The film discourages the audience from trusting either time, nature or characters. As it develops, the spectator loses any certainty it might have regarding the linearity of time.

Nature also seems to have been toyed with.

The trees seem to be pulsating throughout the film, the sky can rapidly get darker and then become lighter again, although still of an oppressive shade of grey. It is hard to set apart the real characters from the unreal ones. A man who only exists in the imagination of a schizophrenic girl can be seen by the audience clearly as any other character.

Threatening dissonant music often follows the images. At times we get brief glimpses of clues that point out to the death of yet another student. A foot standing out of a pile of leaves, plastic bags filled with blood and meat. None of the killings is actually shown on screen.

There is no need for it; fear is being induced by plenty other means.

Far more interesting than Ana Arabia and Balcony, two other films shot in one take presented in this year’s edition of the festival, Fish and Cat is very likely the most innovative film in the line-up and a shattering, unsettling cinematic experience altogether.

Orizzonti Award for Innovative content

review by Ioana Florescu //Nisimazine Nisimazine Venice // //13 Karlovy Vary 7

Wolfchildren

by Rick Ostemann // Germany

Rick Ostermann´s Wolfchildren kicked off the Orizzonti competition with much grace and inspiration. Ioana Mischie met up with the german filmmaker to try and understand what motivated him to pursue this real story about unfortunate childhoods.

What is for you the most important theme in the film?

First of all it’s a movie about identity, that’s all about. The only thing that the kids have is their own name, they have no passport, no papers, so it’s a matter of identity. On the other hand, it’s a story about how the kids are going to survive in such cruel situations and as well about how kids live in nature.

Nature is very important in the movie.

I felt you are playing very much with extremes.

It was important for me to show what’s happening to them, what’s cruel to them and I wanted to show them as kids as well. The real wolfschildren told me that they had

a really hard life but they found moments when they were just kids. I wanted to be the most emotional I could, to touch the spectators of the film, to show both sides of the film - the cruel stories but also that the kids have the other part of their life - the nature.

You made Still, a short film connected to this story. How was it connected with this feature?

I have been working on the Wolfschildren project for 7 years and I haven’t been to the film school before. I worked as a first AD in the film business and I wanted to make this movie. Everybody told me - if you want to make your own debut movie, just make a short film and try to tell or show people if you are talented. Then I said to myself ‘OK, I will do it’. Still is connected because it explores a single story from the wolfschildren story.

Why did it take 7 years to be made?

Financing was the biggest obstacle. It was my first movie and I came up to all the

The dramatic premise launches the entire spiritual journey: 14-year-old Hans and Fritz, his 9-year-old brother, promise their mother, on her death bed, they will take care of each other and they will go to Lithuania, in search of a farmer, to give him a silver inherited amulet. As the scenes unfold, Hans realizes that the quest is much more profound: struggling to survive, while not denying his origins, no matter the circumstances. “Mom told us not to forget who we are” is a genuine credo of the film.

financiers and I said I’m a first AD, I worked in film business for 12 years and I want to make my first movie only with kids in the forest, without dialogue, and it will be a historical movie. If you do your first movie don’t shoot with kids, don’t shoot with animals, don’t shoot in the forest, don’t make it historical. Shoot a love story, that’s easy, but don’t do this. That was the biggest obstacle.

German cinema seems to be going through a rebirth. How do you perceive German cinema as a whole at the moment and how do you see yourself in the German filmmaking playground?

I think there always have been good German films and in the last years more get to foreign audiences. I´ve been working on this project for 7 years and before I only worked as a first AD, so I can’t really answer this question because it’s still unrealistic to be in Venice with a movie…I can answer this question in two weeks or ten years but not now.

The cinematography delineates the film as a mesmerizing visual poem, conceived in retro-pastoral colors, alternating expressive close-ups with geometric ensemble plans capturing the wildness of Lithuanian lands. Ostermann chooses extremes, melting frontal shots and subsized silhouettes of the children, that appear as shadows in the mamut-enchanting-landscapes. The rhythm of the film is well paced, creating suspense.

The only subtle flaw could consist of the set of coincidences involved in the narrative -there are moments when the wolfchildren appear and disappear almost inexplicably, however, even these choices have a strong directorial motivation, being inspired by real facts collected from testimonials.

Ostermann delineates a stunningly thought-provoking universe, fully driven by unprofessional actors, helped by the remarkable contribution of make-up and scenography. The performances of the Levin Liam and Helena Phil are full of expressiveness, building maybe some of the most powerful portraits recreated in the recent German cinema.

interview

The road trip of the two boys is a cinematic kaleidoscope, alternating moments of profound genuineness like dancing in the rain with brutal moments surprising fights for survival or desperate ways of escaping from the guns of the war soldiers. Even the scenes dominated by an unapologetic brutality are treated with much care and fragility by the director. We witness the infants killing animals in order to survive, eating raw meat, insects or warms, and hiding in the wilderness of the forests for hours, and this makes the transition from ordinariness to their heroic portrayal.

In the labyrintic forests, Hans meets other children on the run, and slowly, an entire society seems to be configured as a residence of the wolfschildren.

review

Rick Ostermann’s debut feature film is a touching manifesto of self-rifice, with profound social layers. Although the story is set in 1947, in an East Prussian village under Russian occupation, the contemporariness of the subject is undeniable. Wolfchildren mesmerizingly explores identity, unity and friendship in a brutal eclectic world.

review & interview by Ioana Mischie // photography by Marta Lučić // Nisimazine Venice // 15

Medeas

by Andrea Pallaora // USA

Andrea Pallaoro´s Medeas was one of the most talked about films at this year´s event. Even though it gained no accolades it received widespread acclaim. We sat down with the filmmaker to find all about his much appreciated and rich work.

What attracted you to this story? Why did you choose this subject?

I’ve always been very interested in the extremes of human behavior, in desperation and alienation. I really find that the extremes give the opportunity to understand better who we are. So, to start with the myth of Euripides, Medeas, was a natural choice because this is one of the extremes of that desperation for me – the parents and the children – and the question of what leads someone to go there has always intrigued and interested me.

Since this is your debut feature film, could you tell us more about the prepa-

rations and the shooting?

I was lucky enough to collaborate with a crew and a cast that are all extraordinary.

I also knew that I needed to prepare. A lot of problems of the current film industry are linked to the fact that the films that come out of it are very little prepared, which shows in the films themselves. So, I really wanted to take as much time as possible and especially in the relationship with my DoP. The cinematography in Medeas is particularly beautiful and poetic and the emphasis is more on the visual style than on the action. Would that be fair to say?

This is a film in which the camera puts as much emphasis on what is left out as on what is in the frame. In fact, the fragmentation of the bodies is a very important subject for this film and not only the bodies but also the landscape. So, we really used the camera to embody the overall approach to

Andrea Pallaoro’s debut feature-film is a very rare oeuvre in the contemporary cinematic playground: for its observational intimacy, for the mature way it gives profound meaning to routine, to simple feelings and for the way it progressively intensifies drama. The director denies conventional storytelling, deciding to rather “paint” a pluri-valent portrait on screen, in a slow-paced rhythm, with a minimum of dialogues.

Medeas has multiple axiological layers. At a first look, it can be perceived as a touching visual essay that zooms ordinariness with great care. On a more careful reading, it becomes an in-depth conflict, perceived from a multitude of point of views. Furthermore, it can be perceived as a universal manifesto against conventions, exploring the way we communicate with each other, the way we hide or reveal secrets, the way we react or refuse to react in a critical situation.

limit the manipulation of the audience as much as possible.

Is Medeas representative of the kind of cinema you want to make? Are there any models you wish to emulate and where do you see yourself going in the future?

This is a natural beginning for me and a good starting point. In fact, I do envision and plan to articulate a cinematic language and to explore one that can manifest my vision as clearly as possible and in a very minimal type of cinema. If I have to say one name, that would be Michelangelo Antonioni.

Why did you choose Patty Pravo’s song La Bambola? (smiles) That was a very personal choice. I love Patty Pravo and I love that song. She’s one of my favorite singers in Italy and that was just an instinctual choice.

Almost oxymoronic, the film starts to witness a journey of self-destruction in a very subtle manner, but also a tacit manifesto for complete freedom. The atmosphere recreated

by Pallaoro has a visceral touch. Although sometimes we don’t understand the inner drives of the characters, we slowly empathize with their genuineness, their oscillation.

The film’s rareness is intensified by the visual choreography of the frames. Cinematography-wise, each frame resembles a sublime painting proliferating warmly nuanced colors and mostly centered characters. What is inside the frame is just a continuum of what is outside, and we are challenged to recompose the whole universe.

Pallaoro has the merit to invent a new cinematic language, replacing conventions with personal choices, replacing words with noetic moods, replacing explicit frames with suspense.

interview

Thematically, the film reconfigures in an innovative way Medeas, a tale of the Greek Mythology. We explore the betrayal of Christine and the avenge reaction of her husband Ennis.

However, the value of the film resides not in the context as a whole, but in the details, in the unpredictable consequences from small gestures.

The film begins with the sound of a river and ends with the persistent sound of rain. Nature almost seems to substitute feelings. The spectators become slowly voyeurs of this isolated family with its shifts, believes and unpredictable turns and try to unravel the inner psychology.

review

Medeas is a touching self-exploration of a rural family, oscillating between unity and separation, peacefulness and desperation, love and despair.

review by Ioana Mischie // interview by Tara Karajica // photography by Marta Lučić // Nisimazine Venice // 17

La vida después

by David Pablos // Mexico

Nino Kovačić caught up with David Pablos to figure out the inner challenges of The Life After.

How did the idea for writing The Life After, that you co-wrote with Gabriela Vidal, start off?

It started off after my diploma film Song of the dead children. I took two of the characters from that film for this feature and gave space only for them to interact with each other. My initial premise was to question the idea of family structure and love within it, as it is a sacred institution in Mexico.

You are thought by your parents that you have to love your siblings, but when you grow up and don’t have good relationships with them you start to question this.

Your directorial style puts you visually very close to the characters.

Yes, I chose mostly long lenses to shot with; very few wide ones. I wanted to get as

much into their heads as possible as they are trapped in their own minds. These two characters are isolated and self-involved during their travel.

Do you think it’s important to give the viewer more credit and space to imagine?

Absolutely, otherwise it becomes boring.

It intrigues me more and makes me think as a viewer as well. I also feel the gaps in my own story, but when you don’t know the answer, you give something of yourself to the character. It is cryptic at moments but important hints for the construction of the whole story.

Are these kinds of intimate stories and directorial style something that you would like to pursue in the future?

Well, I like characters with very strong inner worlds and points of views, meaning that I like to see the story from their per-

David Pablos’ debut feature is an intimate journey into a family setting that is not often seen in films. After a childhood episode in which we are introduced to specific relations between characters, we get to observe them years later, when Silvia abandons her sons without an explanation right after celebrating the older brother’s eighteenth birthday. Considering that their mother is a depressed alcoholic, the brothers suspect where her final destination could be and embark on a journey to find her, a journey of which is expected to have a devastating outcome.

spective. Intimate stories have to do with family and family is what makes you who you are. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a story about a family but it is always present as a basic.

How was the casting process?

I worked with Américo Hollander before and he was again perfect for the role. When I saw him together with Rodrigo Azuela (this is his first film) I had no doubt it would be them. As for María Renée Prudencio, she is a very good actress and hasn’t been on film for the last three years because she didn’t like the industry part as much as acting itself, so I’m glad that she is back.

Was the collaboration with the cinematographer José de la Torre was influential?

José had a good energy on the set, was open to suggestions, sensitive to details and most importantly, he listened. It was an enjoyable process as José was giving everything to the film and I was very obsessive on the images which were precisely set and I already knew how the frames were going to be like.

The life after at times has a documentaristic feel to it, as it is shot with a handheld camera and almost completely under natural light. It also insists of often being very visually close to the characters, to pick up upon their internal conflicts bit by bit through detailed segments of their behaviour. When it comes to the casting Américo Hollander and Rodrigo Azuela, the two are already in appearance a perfect brotherly mismatch, while the strong opening performance of María Renée Prudencio creates enough tension to last throughout the journey of the brothers.

With a feel for subtle representation of intimacy and a respectful attitude towards his characters and audience, David Pablos’ work is something to look out for and forward to.

interview

Their trip is very much the viewer’s intimate one, as we are asked to invest much of our own emotional experience and imagination into the construct of the character’s relations and personal history. Nevertheless, the important coordinates of the brothers’ story are there in details, gestures and outbursts, seldom put into words, so it is the viewer’s main task to put together the mosaic of their inner lives. This is a specific advantage of The life after: it gives its viewership more credit and offers space to imagine and ponder upon,

by presenting important information in allusions and not making the characters say things out loud. The inner worlds of Samuel and Rodrigo speak to us of burden of parental legacy, of doubts of responsibility and relations of power in the family, of impact that the even smallest episodes of violence have on us, and more.

review

How often do we get to watch a film with a family love triangle that consists of two brothers and their mother?

When was the last time you’ve seen a death of a pet turtle on big screen?

review & interview by Nino Kovačić // photography by Valentina Calà // Nisimazine Venice // 19

Nisimazine Venice // 20

by Gia Coppola // USA

The name Palo Alto has been generating a lot of buzz lately in the festival circuit, both because it is the title of James Franco’s bestselling short stories and because it is the title of Gia Coppola’s debut feature, competing in the Orizzonti section.

Following the lives of a bunch of Palo Alto teenagers, it is the portrait of a new lost generation of kids: the IPhone generation.

It may have a romantic ring to it but the concept that the film portrays bears no romance at all. It isn’t an entirely new concept either.

Palo Alto is a raw, accurate and universal representation of today’s wasted youth. Indeed, the “lost” teenagers from Palo Alto are no different from any other average teenagers in the world. They drive drunk, smoke weed and deflower virgins: Nothing new.

Nevertheless, this film strives to capture the truth of these teens’ experience, depicting accurately the occasional racism, misogyny and self-destruction that inevitably comes with the package of growing up and manages to sensibly convey the innocence they are truly yearning for.

The film bears many similarities, style wise, with the films of Sofia Coppola, heavily drawing its inspiration from her The Virgin Suicides and lingering on peripheral details. Naturally, this comes as no surprise.

Moreover, there is a strong emphasis on the cinematography that comes from Gia Coppola’s background in photography. This is especially visible in the beautiful and poetic shots of faces during sex scenes thanks to Autumn Durald’s dreamlike lensing.

The film starts very dynamically with a drunken conversation scene in a car followed immediately by the title accompanied by compelling music, thus establishing an energetic pace. However, in spite of its short running time, at times it feels overlong but never spirals into tediousness. The film goes to great lengths to give more significance and a deeper layer to its characters but also strives to give a moral lesson without taking a patronizing tone or indulging in preaching. Gia Coppola also manages to cover a wide range of emotions, ranging from fun to horror and conveys them perfectly to the audience.

review

Palo Alto

As far as the acting is concerned, she manages to bring out the best in her cast.

Emma Roberts, the newbie Jack Kilmer (son of the legendary Val Kilmer) and veteran James Franco all render equally great performances in their respective roles.

Palo Alto doesn’t seem to be anything new but it does it with a personal, sincere and confident style and this should be praised indeed. I am curious to see where Gia Coppola will go from here and in which character the biggest chunk of Franco is hidden.

review by Tara Karajica //Nisimazine Nisimazine Venice // //21 Karlovy Vary 7

Algunas Chicas The third film by Argentinian Santiago Palavecino, Algunas Chicas, is a confused piece that, in trying to create a psychological thriller out of female depression, loses itself along the way.

With a strong opening scene, the film sets an eerie, tense mood that promises to draw us into the dark world of several female protagonists in rural Argentina.

Devoid of any neat psychological explanations for the characters’ states of mind, Santiago Palavecino instead lets us into their heads through a nonlinear narrative that makes it difficult to distinguish between waking life and dreams, between the visions of one character or the other. This approach, reminiscent of David Lynch’s films, in theory, is definitely one to be commended, since we have seen too many female characters be subordinated to a plot that feels the need to explain everything.

The feisty, handheld camera that never manages to find stability contributes to this absence of fixity, to the confusion and dizziness that overwhelms the characters.

However, through its excessive self-consciousness, Algunas

Nisimazine Venice // 22 // review by Raluca Petre

by Santiago Palavecino // Argentina

Chicas traps its characters in a form that does not know what it wants to achieve. While he intends to focus on the inner life of the protagonists, Palavecino contradicts himself by portraying certain aspects through an objective point of view for the sake of amplifying the mysterious feel of the film. A scene in which he shows the husband of the main character´s friend listening in on a conversation between the two women without them realising may amplify tension. Yet it also left me wondering how genuine the director is in portraying the subjectivity of his characters, rather than using it as a means to keep his audience on edge.

The elliptic editing creates a strong feeling of foreboding for the first half of the film, though after a while it comes across as forced and repetitive.

It’s well known that depression is a frightening experience that traps humans in distorted spaces and times. The film does not stimulate thought about the issue, but only raises one question for me: was Palavecino really trying to get into the heads of these girls or was he applying ready-made techniques that have been used to convey inner turbulences for the sake of getting a reaction from his audience?

The Sacrament After the amatorial video-diary mark seen in the collective V/H/S, young indie fimmaker Ti West engages in the contemporary found-footage style part of mockumentary. A declared (fake) inspiration from real events linked with the typical contemporary pervasiveness of camcorders in the story (supposed to be the real protagonists above human characters), fixes the framework of another cam-scope, this time dressed as a sort of social\ethnographic reportage. An indie Tv troupe reports the story of a boy searching for his sister who decided to devote herself to a small protectionist community in an unknown place outside the U.S. The suspicious curiosity of the strangers and the ambiguous reception of the locals makes them think that there’s something hidden behind the appareances..

Through the figure of the “Father”, a wise manipulative man idolized by the community, preecher of love and peace in the name of a divine judgement, West tries to tease us on social issues. The interview granted to the troupe is a discourse addressed to westerners and their corrupted values guided by consumerism and imperialism, but the main point is that this community has chosen to live in total isolationism to get rid of the dogmas of the western lifestyle. The opposition between global and local and their (false or assumed) idols concerns

by Ti West // USA

an attempt to a re-appropriation of a puritan American way of life, self-sufficient and able to ensure itself a paradise on Earth, clearly without the intrusion of “foreign” curious around and with an high price for the minds of members. In fact that’s exacly what moves the story into a terrifying final direction.

The choice to keep the cameraman alive added to a kind of echos of the Vietnam war (as the final gaze from the helicopter) returns a certain dramatic tension stressing the duty of having to inform on the tragic events documented. West is careful of mantaining the structural skeleton of the genre, that is precisely the necessity for the cameraman to keep the camera on even if a gun is pointed at his face. If at one point this necessity seems to be neglected, the writers finds a trick with the fact that both victims and executioners wish to (or have to) keep on filming, based on their own moral motivations (History and Civilization have to know in the name of Information and God judgement!). This game gives this film an enjoyment, even if it is not enough to move the gere in new Orizzonti...

review by Yuri Lavecchia // Nisimazine Venice // 23

We Are the Best!

by Lukas Moodysson // Sweden

We Are the Best!, Lukas Moodysson’s seventh feature film presented in the Orizzonti section is a warm film about Bobo, Klara and Hedvig, three thirteen years old girls in 1982 Stockholm. They are brave. They are tough. They are weak and they are weird. They have to take care of themselves too early, they cook fish fingers in the toaster and they start a punk band with no instruments, when everyone says punk is dead.

that immediately takes us on a bittersweet trip down memory lane. Moreover, We Are the Best! is not only a film about growing up and fitting in but it is also and above all a film about friendship and its preciousness and deeper significance and importance. These three lonely girls on the inside discover it by sticking together through the good and the bad and by accepting each other as how and what they truly are.

With a lot of realism and authenticity, the Swedish director explores the tricky subject of growing up, discovering one’s self with its joys and sadness, its good things and its bad things.

What strikes us most in Lukas Moodysson’s new work is how carefully and with a lot of heart, he approaches the typical growing up issues the three girls face on a daily basis.

Lukas Moodysson also contrasts today’s youth with the one in 1982, which also contributes, in a certain way, to the film’s raw nature and thus sends an important message to today’s youth in Sweden and in the rest of the world. He also shows what Swedish punk was like through teenagers’ eyes, a somewhat subdued, clean and white vision, just like Sweden’s snow.

The naturalism is not only deeply rooted in the script, based on Coco Moodysson’s graphic novel Never Goodnight (72% of it according to the director) but it is also very present in Moodysson’s skillful directing and Ulf Brantås’ raw cinematography.

Their conjunct style conveys a very strong sense of realism, almost documentary like. This genuineness and sense of immediacy are also achieved thanks to Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin and Liv LeMoyne’s spontaneous and precise acting

We Are the Best!, a sweet and fresh Scandinavian gust of air, is a deeply moving and universal coming of age tale and a young, rebellious and loud ode to friendship. So, folks, keep your friends close and your best friends even closer!

Nisimazine Venice // 24 // review by Tara Karajica

Why don’t You Play in Hell? by Sion Sono // Japan Rivers of fake blood gush joyfully through Why don´t You Play in Hell?, Sion Sono´s latest extravaganza. The film is his homage to the yakuza genre and analogue filmmaking, both of which nowadays carries a strong air of nostalgia. Sion Sono, one of Japan’s foremost directors, is known for his twisted renderings of themes of revenge, hatred and incest which he usually masks in well made genre clothes. His latest is no exception. He wrote the script seventeen years ago but only decided to make it into a film with the arrival of digital technology. He proclaims Why don’t you play in hell? to be his very own “Requiem to 35 mm film” and in his bizarre way manages to deliver what he promises.

The yakuza story follows the all too bloody conflicts between two warring clans, led by Muto and Ikegami, whose relationship is that of admiration disguised as hate. To make things even more complicated Ikegami falls madly in love with Muto’s young and beautiful daughter, Satsuko. She on her part desperately wants to become an actress and this is how this story intertwines with that of the renegade crew of amateur filmmakers who call themselves The Fuck Bombers. They are the innocent film buffs who mourn the end of film theatre at-

tendence and moviemaking as we know it. When they cross paths with the bloodthirsty yakuzas determined to not only shoot their enemies but also movies, film history takes place, and it will look like a film bloodbath, of course.

Why don’t You play in Hell? is packed with extremely entertaining and violent action scenes reminiscent of those from Tarantino’s Kill Bill films. This masterfully done and highly amusing film also has a meta function of commenting on the yakuza genre, its rules and history. Gallons of conspicuously red blood used in the film look as if they are proud to be fake and thus send out the message that fantasy is so much more fun than reality. No one is more aware of this than the film crazed Fuck Bombers who stop at nothing to make a masterpiece. Using the yakuza genre tools Sion Sono manages to pay sentimental and entertaining tribute to a bygone era when filmmaking was reserved for those privileged enough or those crazy enough.

review by Višnja Pentić // Nisimazine Venice // 25

Piccola patria

Still Life

orizzonti AWard for best director

by Alessandro Rosetto // Italy

by Umberto Pasolini // UK

Piccola patria recontextualizes violence, betrayal, love, faith and dissimulation in a complex, although sometimes excessively eclectic discourse.

Alessandro Rosetto’s first fiction feature reshapes an expected spectrum of human relationships surprised in a small provincial town, that becomes a character in itself.

John May is a man with an unusual profession: he is a council worker who investigates the possibility of the next of kin, and accordingly organizes funerals for the recently deceased people who have died alone.

His personality is defined by this work, as he finds that the bureaucratic form of his position requires a meticulously organized routine that he pushes to the borders of obsessive compulsive behaviour. May feels strongly for his departed clients and believes in a dignifying burial for every one of them. When he gets notified about his letting-go, his life takes a different turn as the investigation of his last case goes unexpectedly.

Known as a documentary and anthrosophy-oriented director, his approach explores human interactions in a nonfiction way, while exploring improvisation and observation as a core-elements in the filmmaking process, one of the most valuable merits of the film.

The “small hometown” is an hermetic space with its own cinematic journey: at first a distant erotic playground, but as we are immersed into the story we discover the inner dimensions and the backgrounds of the ones involved.

Although we follow multiple characters in a blend of interactions, aiming to leave the town one day, the plot focuses on uninhibited Louisa teasing her Albanian boyfriend, Bilal, while having an unpredictable relationship with mysterious Renata.

As the film tries to unravel the inflationary relationships of the characters and the consequences of their actions, it becomes rather difficult to empathize or to identify a constant protagonist.

The cinematic narrative has a rather amateur-inspired approach, interrupted almost in a Brecht-ian way by ensemble plans of the town heightened by classical music, that appear as a demiurgical discourse, contextualizing every individual story into an universal collective one.

Everything is based on an yin-yang of contrasts: inhibition-open-mindedness, innocence-sin, life-death, individual-community.

Rossetto conceives his film almost as a Rubik cube, teasing the audience and offering possibilities of matches between the characters, their attitudes and progressive shifts. For this reason, it requires time and patience to be digested. Some audiences might consider it overwhelmingly incoherent, but others extremely provocative.

Nisimazine Venice // 26

by Ioana Mischie

Still life is written, directed and produced by Umberto Pasolini, who is, judging upon the standing applause after the premiere, on home ground in Venice, although he spent most of his career in British cinema. Pasolini drew inspiration for his second feature from the late films of Yasujiro Ozu and the result is by-the-book directorial style that pin-points where you have to feel moments and turns out to be moral didacticism. With predominantly still shots and a tiresomely anchored camera, which are to mimic the main character’s vision, the film has the feel of an old British TV-drama.

Due to this, Eddie Marsan in the lead role cannot match up his best performances.

As for the main character, it can be read that May controls his own fears by a sense of life purpose in a responsibility granted to him by the state system. His aseptic social world, which is dramaturgically imposed upon us, promotes a fantasy of an orderly life: a kind that seems to offer the viewer an envisioned comfort of control. Along with this comes a grand narrative of destiny which ensures that the consummation of a cathartic experience goes down quite well.

Still life is a feel-good tragedy: not a genuine cinematic exploration, but a generic presentation of a certain idea embodied solely in the character.

This unfortunately limited the starting potential of its positive bizarreness, as clean cut stories and metaphysical ponderings usually have more calculations and less truth to offer about great themes, like dignity and death, then the ones that aren’t self-overwhelmed with the importance of form of presentation and fixed meanings.

by Nino Kovačić

Il terzo tempo

Je m’apelle Hmmm

With a sold-out public screening at the Sala Grande on a Saturday afternoon, Il terzo tempo stands out from the majority of the Orizzonti films as an entertaining form of popular Italian cinema. Framed within the hot-blooded world of rugby, the film is a social drama about a young delinquent, Samuel, who, upon his release from juvenile hall, finds fulfilment through his discovery of the sport. Vincenzo, his social worker, who is also a rugby coach, plays an essential part in the youth’s socialization.

First thing you notice about Je m’apelle hmmm... is that it looks as if it was done by a person who knows nothing about cinema. Which in strange since it is a directorial debut of fashion designer Agnès B, who produced a couple of Harmony Korine´s films with her production company Love Streams and calls herself a passionate cinephile. Both facts come across as puzzling after you watch her disturbingly inept filmmaking effort which neither looks good nor has anything new or interesting to say.

Artale’s debut feature will please if one knows what they’re in for. There is cheesiness and there is predictability, as the young hero sets his eyes on Vincenzo’s daughter and struggles to prove that he’s good enough. Similarly, while he is initially rejected by his teammates, they slowly warm up to him, as he starts playing for the rest of the team, rather than for himself. The ending comes as no surprise, yet it can still be indulged in.

The film follows 12-year-old Céline who after being repeatedly sexually abused by her father decides to run away from home. She hides in a big red truck owned by Pete, a seemingly rough, heavily tattooed Scott, in his forties. Predictably the two become friends and find solace in each other.

They travel constantly experiencing unusual things which are supposed to convey the poetic feeling of restored childhood. Yet they don’t due to the incredible lack of authorial vision and overall blandness of execution.

When this odd pair is finally caught by the police we do not feel sorry, we feel relieved.

by Enrico Maria Artelo // Italy

by Agnès B // France

Picturesque night shots of the nearby city and the diffused sunlight of the rural area to which Samuel is relegated add an artistic slant to an otherwise straightforward narrative. The sports scenes are top-notch and alert, Artale focussing in on Samuel’s corporeality, on the struggle that he carries out with his body for personal betterment.

However, the association between personal betterment and the pursuit of a heteronormative family, of ‘socialization’ into a typically adolescent male identity is what makes the characters appear mechanical. I felt the rush of the sports scenes because of excellent execution through camerawork and editing, yet the characters themselves seldom drew emotion from me.

There are times when Artale attempts to make us empathise with Samuel, depicting him in his solitude, unable to control his aggressiveness. Yet, it still feels contrived and like the script is ticking the inner conflict box, with the purpose of resolving that conflict by the end. The film gives off a strong Hollywood scent; surely there are complex enough characters to be found in Italy?

by Raluce Petre

Agnès B´s work with actors in non-existent, framing is an offense to the art of filmmaking and all this is made worse by Jean-Philippe Bouyer’s cinematography. The way the film looks has to be seen to be believed.

The light only functions in exterior shots, there are unmotivated changes of focus inside frames and a lot of visual gimmicks that make no sense at all. When the director suddenly decides to use more experimental techniques such as drawings and letters it looks as if a drowning woman is struggling for the last gulps of air, however her ship has already sunk.

by Višnja Pentić

Nisimazine Venice // 27

Little Brother The first Kazakh film to be presented at the Venice Film Festival after a break of nearly two decades, Little Brother, Serik Apymov’s six feature, did not turn out to be a highlight of this year’s Orizzonti competition.

A nine year-old boy, Yerken, lives in a small mountain village.

His father is away on a business trip, his mother is dead and his older brother is studying in the city. Therefore, apart from attending school, Yerken has to take care of the household himself. Apparently not at all overwhelmed by his responsibilities, Yerken seems to have found a way to handle it all. In order to earn money, he sells bricks that he makes himself. In a tiny stall he keeps a sheep. The long awaited visit of his older brother, around which the film revolves, turns out to be a disappointment. It brings little change to the boy’s routine of getting things done. Its main consequence is that after the brother’s departure, the child feels more certain of the fact that he has to go on managing by himself.

The rhythm is quite monotonous, as the narration seems to follow a simple pattern. With the exception a few scenes taking place in Yerken’s house after the arrival of his brother, the film mainly shows the short trips the boy makes in order to accomplish tasks.

Nisimazine Venice // 28 // review by Ioana Flurescu

by Serik Aprymov // Kazakhastan

These short trips have three functions. Firstly, they are a pretext to deliver the audience with a complete image of how the village looks. The school, mosque, bus station, movie theatre, all the important spots of the village are meticulously shown.

Secondly, they help the audience get a better sense of the boy’s character. Although the other villagers tend to not take him seriously, Yerken insists on being treated like an adult and ultimately proves to be more mature than any of them. Thirdly, seeing as at the end of each trip the boy encounters a peculiar character, his wanderings are also used as an excuse to reveal the human typologies that can be found in the village. What is noticeable about these characters is the contrast between their social status and their daily activities. Destiny seems to punish those who treat the little boy badly, some having strokes, others even dyeing.

In one of the scenes Yerken and his brother go to the cinema and, bored by the film, they fall asleep. Irritated by the monotonous rhythm and unwilling to give in to the emotional blackmail and feel sorry for the main character, the spectators of Little Brother might as well do the same.

La prima neve La prima neve is the second fiction film by Andrea Segre, among his documentary works. The film tells the encounter between two lives linked by the pain of a loss, a deprivation which dramatically affects their being in the world. Dani is a man born in Togo, arrived in Italy fleeing the war in Libya. His story is common to many immigrants arrived in Italy and in search of stability in Europe, tragically compounded by a bereavement. He temporaly finds work in Pergine, a village in the mountains of Trentino, as an aid to an elderly man, a carpenter and beekeeper. Here he also mets the daughter Elisa and the grandson Michele, a fatherless kid. Thoughtful and restless, Michele lives his emptiness in conflict with his mother while he sees the figure of his uncle as a support, and in his grandfather the wisdom of life and work. The contact with Dani is a way to help both to develop their own grief, to get it out fully from themselves by finding a way to stick together, in the name of compassion and love towards their family and the people who are close to them.

by Andrea Segre // Italy

and restlessness. A setting where you can lose, hide or reject, but also find your own space, learn to listen to others and open up. It´s a meeting place for two solitudes wearing the scent of tragedy. A landscape that will soon be covered with snow and therefore capable of esternal change, the mirror of the inner need of the protagonists over their grieving process.

The filmmaker moves softly between research of intimacy of the individual and choral moments, situations of dialogue and eloquent silence, with a touch of humor that characterizes the locals, with their colourful expressions of language and manners that surely amuse (italian) viewers. A clear film and sincere in his intentions, made of compassion among its characters but avoiding the risk of ending up in the melodrama, focused on putting together the personal stories and social issues evoked.

Segre is careful to state the places where the characters run through their stories and so the landscape plays a fundamental role in defining this narrative. The woods and valleys are defined by shadows and lights, between silence and noise, calm

review by Yuri Lavecchia // Nisimazine Venice // 29

Photo reportage

by Valentina CalĂ

Jay Weissberg Variety’s Journalist

One of Variety’s correspondents in Europe, Jay Weissberg is one of the most recognizable faces of modern film criticism. A usual presence in the festival circuit, he has been living in Italy for quite some time, giving him privileged insight to what is happening in the local scene. We sat down with him for a long chat about modern Italian cinema in the backdrop of the nation’s most influential and important event.

Being a foreign film critic based in Italy you have more access then most of us. How exactly do you see the current state of film in Italy?

Italian cinema has been in a crisis for a good number of years. A good illustration is the clips of old footage of the festival, where they talk about films that everyone was excited to see. This does not happen with modern films. Without question there are still great directors working here, Paolo Sorrentino is one I admire very much, and a few others as well. These are directors that have some kind of vision. One of the big problems of Italian cinema is a common problem in Italy. It has become fashionable to say that Berlusconi is not one of the problems but he is one of the symptoms. That is partly true but he is one of the big problems as well.

The fact that he owns so many media outlets means that the films he has been producing, for the most part, not for all, are films that play well on TV. So any kind of creativity or experimentation is frown upon, some people are afraid of political commentary, etc.

Once you get to a certain level this is not true, but most directors have to look for his companies because they are pretty much the only game in town.

What about the film festival scene. Is it also affected by this crisis?

When Marco Muller was heading the Venice Film Festival he started a section called “contracampo italiano”, which became a dumping ground for Italian films. You´ll notice here, but also abroad, that you go to a screening of Italian films and there are hardly any international critics. When that section appeared a lot of foreign critics were happy because there was an entire sec-

tion of the festival they did not have to bother with. What it meant was that it damaged even the good films, because nobody was going except for the Italians themselves. When Alberto Barbera came in and got rid of the section there was an outcry among the Italian critics. Thank God he got rid of it because it was ghettoizing a cinema that was already frowned upon by everybody.

How has the political scenery of Italy, which is rarely middle ground, influenced the film scene?

One of the big problems is a weakness for nostalgia, and a very false one. The best example is perhaps the films of Pupi Avati, who makes about one film a year, funded by conservative elements. These are movies that take this idea of a storied pass, about children who fall in love, idealizations of village life before or during the war. There is a collective amnesia about the war and about the aftermath of the war. The way they found to push away that reality is by creating a mythical past where everything was lovely. It is a very different nostalgia from Fellini´s nostalgia because his was a world seen from a child’s eye, but also informed by politics. Generally that does not happen here now. We could take it even further. There was a film in Locarno called Sangre by Pippo Delbono that made me furious. It made a lot of Italians furious, because it was basically an apology for the Red Brigades. I think that many people in the Italian left who maybe say “that wasn’t such a great thing” still have sympathy for the Red Brigades. So, you´ve got two sides of a coin in a sense, right wing people who have this funny nostalgia for the war years and left wing nostalgia for the sixties and seventies, without actually addressing what went on. This is something that has infected cinema here in a way.

In the last few years it seems to me that a lot of women filmmakers in Italy have suddenly appeared out of nowhere. My knowledge of Italian cinema is very limited, but as far as I know there weren´t that many before.

Is this true and why are there so many emerging right now?

The first woman to become famous behind the cameraswas actually Elvira Notari, who was very successful in the silent period. After that it is very hard to think of women directors, and of course that tends to be true all across EuropeanAmerican cinema. Italy is behind France for sure, but there are a few. Yet, even someone like Roberta Torre I feel has not fulfilled her promise. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi is now making movies of very mixed quality. The Comencini sisters are very uneven and I don’t think they are there yet. Valeria Golino´s film in Cannes, Miele, was one the biggest surprises for me, I was impressed how good her film was. Emma Dante is another women filmmaker who has a first feature here and I think it has some very interesting aspects. It is not perfect but it addresses life in Palermo. It has some lesbian themes which is something new in Italian cinema.

I think this is worldwide issue. Again, how many women directors in the United States you can think of that are making a name for themselves? There is Kathryn Bigelow and a few others, but it has taken so long. Why? The thing I am always spouting is that if you look at the women filmmakers’ directory in the middle-east it is huge. It is ironic that we have this idea of women in the region but the first person to make a film in Saudi Arabia is a woman.

What about the Italian films in competition here?

There haven’t been any disasters. It is interesting that the films have divided people. Via Castelana is a good film because I like what it says about Palermo society and about the divide in class, the need to get out in every level. It is very constructed obviously, almost too metaphoric, but it worked for me. I have problems with Gianni Amelio´s Intrepido because everytime he is about to say something important he undercuts it. There are some great Italian cinematographers.

Luca Bigazzi who shot this film is a terrific DoP. As I always said the talent is here.

Then there is Sacro Gra. Gianfranco Rosi´s point of view is always interesting; He is looking for people I ungenerously call “freaks”, people on the margins and he refuses to engage with the subjects, he wants to truly be the fly on the wall. There is purity to that on one level. On the other I am constantly asking why this people and what is he doing with them. I love the idea of looking at the people in the edge of a highway but I don’t think he gives me enough. He does not explain what is the thread that connects them besides the highway.

Finaly Ettore Scola´s film made me weep at the end because it closes with a great montage of Fellini´s film. Fellini is the reason why I became a film critic, I feel in love with his work, so deeply. In Scola´s film there is a section on Il Mondo Nuovo, that made me think about the end of the ancient regime and led me to associate that with the film world. Before the French revolution became something more sustainable there was a reign of terror. I appreciate that revolutions have to happen and they always mean the destruction of the beautiful and well as the bad. Yet, I keep thinking that with the end of that golden era of cinema, filmmaking changed.

How much longer we have to go through the reign of terror in cinema? I am over interpreting my own comments but I do wonder what comes after, particularly in Italian cinema.

After Fellini, Pasolini, Bertulucci and so many other amazing directors whose work you always wanted to see, you have to ask What happened? I am not all doom and gloom for the future, this feeling is all about the present.

interview

Nevertheless there seems to be a new generation of filmmakers emerging. Are there young artists that you feel have a different approach?

Sorrentino is a good example. He is not that young but he has an assertive style, not afraid of politics. For me Il Divo is one of the great masterpieces of Italian cinema in the last decade. You also have Marco Bellocchio. Vincere was a wonderful film and I think very underrated, which was directly dealing with Mussolini and the enforced amnesia. Andrea Segre is also taking a fresher look at what Italy is today. I have seen in the last few years more inclusion of immigrant issues for instance. There are Italian independent filmmakers portraying Italian society in a way that shows movement, social movement. They are the people that I am hoping will continue to develop, get funding and maybe even make bigger films, addressing complex issues.

You´ve covered this festival for many years now. Where do you see it going in the future?

I have a personal attachment to the festival. I like it very much.

The fact that it´s the oldest does mean a lot to me. I like that it isn´t over programmed, there it has the right amount of films for a festival this size and caliber. Yet, I have many colleagues saying they don’t know if they will come back next year. It is too expensive. I know the festival is working on that. I think that only the Mayor can do something about it. A lot of people were disappointed with the selection of the main competition and think “why don’t I go to Toronto instead, it´s cheaper and there are more opportunities”. I am worried they might just do that.

Isn´t the fact that this festival is a survivor, going through so many phases, a certainty that it will survive and maintain its influence?

I like to think so. I believe in reputation and historical connections. I think Alberto Barbera (Festival director) is very competent. It is going to keep on going but there is a threat of losing its influence. I still think it is second after Cannes (smiles), unquestionably.

interview by Fernando Vasquez // Nisimazine Venice // 35

Orizzonti Shorts

Nisimazine Venice // 38

by Shubhashish Bhutiani’s // India

Shubhashish Bhutiani’s short film, Kush, is India’s only entry at this year’s Biennale di Venezia. Taking place on 31 October 1984 and inspired by true events, it recounts the story of a teacher traveling back from a field trip with her class of ten-year-old students. In fact, she is trying to protect Kush, the only Sikh student in the class, from the growing violence and riots in the aftermath of the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s by her Sikh bodyguards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh.

Kush is a moving story of compassion, humanity and unity: its universality transcends all ages, religions and classes. Kush’s message is one of equality and against hatred, exactly the one that Indira Gandhi expressed the day before her death: “I am alive today, I may not be there tomorrow.

I shall continue to serve till my last breath and when I die every drop of my blood will strengthen India and keep a united India alive”. Yet, unfortunately, this did not happen and this film tries to show it with a story that is, at the same time, big and small: Big in its significance, importance and ideology and small in the grand scheme of History.

This particular message is not present in the film per se but it is one that is ultimately passed on.

This short film is very well made, with excellent performances from the newbie Shayaan Sameer, the Indian model Sonika

Chopra, the famous director Anil Sharma and all the children. The cinematography is also to be lauded with a palette of colors that lively evokes the spirit and essence of India. Kush has a very dynamic narrative that also intelligently builds up the tension and successfully conveys a sense of fear and suspense. In addition, it manages to make the audience feel and root for everybody on this bus, especially for Kush and the mistress. We are, indeed, immediately drawn to these characters. What the captivating script also achieves is to compel us to research the events that inspired Kush.

review

Kush

With a running time of 20mins Kush rekindles a part of Indian History that may have been forgotten but it does it humbly and with a great sense of conviction and passion. It is undoubtedly a highly educating and most recommendable film indeed!

Orizzonti award for best short film

review by Tara Karajica //Nisimazine Nisimazine Venice // //39 Karlovy Vary 7

Un pensiero Kalasnikov

by Giorgio Bosisio // Italy

Giorgio Bosisio (director), Alex Grigoras (DOP) and Rahdy Elwan (executive producer) talked about working on their short film Un Pensiero kalasnikov.

They also exposed their ideas on the differences between the environment for filmmaking in different countries, as well as on their role as young filmmakers.

Giorgio, you studied economics before cinema. Are these skills useful now?

GB: I did a degree in economics of the creative industries. It hasn’t been helpful yet, but I’m sure that for the future it will be. These days in Venice I’ve met people who gave me a very practical point of view; it got me interested in learning from them. What I told them was that for our generation it’s important not only to point out the things that don’t work but also to actively try to solve them. I’m sure it’s all going to change little by little. For now, paying the rent is still a challenge. But you can get other things in return for working for free- like being in Venice.

You all gathered in London coming from someplace else. Why did you leave that

place and would you go back?

AG: I realized I wanted to do cinema and I chose for the place that I thought would be the best with respect to that. Then, because of networking, I stayed there. I think London, for now, is a good place for me because there are enough things happening to give me the opportunities to work for what I want, but also to be able to sustain myself.

So you wouldn’t go back to Romania now?

AG: I would go back to work creatively. I guess when you change the cultural space, the scenery, your own cultural background becomes much more clear for yourself.

RE: And you bring it back. Not just the pragmatic and technical terms, but also the life of film that they have there, and the combination for me is very interesting.

AG: I find very interesting what you’re saying, because for me Kalasnikov was an Italian film that was shot in a very British way. It had a certain rigor, without which we could have ended up with a very different product.

How about future projects? Are you going to stick together as a team?

GB: Well, with Alex I’ve worked since we

The quick cuts at the beginning, as Pietro tries on the coat of his absent father, express the boy’s uncertainty and search for something, perhaps for an identity, for confidence. As the film unspools, his journey is represented as an evolution of his relationship with his mother. We see his initial reluctance to support her turn into a silent acknowledgment that he will stand by her, as he understands that he cannot control her decisions.

This could smack of cliché, yet Bosisio’s understatement and gentleness avoid this trap.

his curiosity as he finds himself in the bourgeois style set-up of the tutor’s apartment, which contrasts with the more modest setting of his own. His sense of wonder increases as he begins his lesson and, through close-ups of the girl’s profile, we sense Pietro’s attraction to her.

The framing of the teenage character as a quiet, awkward, slightly bemused observer acts as the core of the film’s sensitivity; if Pietro won’t let us in through language, we will share his passing, everyday moments in a more meaningful way.

review

A highly sensorial piece, A Kalasnikov Thought lyrically strings together a few flickering episodes from Pietro’s early adolescence. Giorgio Bosisio, who used the film as his graduation piece for the London Film School, is not so much concerned with narrative as he is with the way in which experiences feel.

started the studies. And though I considered working with someone else, in this team he is more than a DP. It’s not just I’m technical, you’re creative. I’m sure we will work together again, though I’m not sure it will be the next one.

AG: I think each film needs a certain crew. The way we work might seem good to us, but I’m sure for other directors it would be hell if the DP would ask so many questions and question so many things.

GB: Regarding the next projects... I think the matter is not just to write something, but to also consider in the process ‘will I be able to do this?’

So maybe the economics shine through after all.

GB: Yes, exactly. Rahdy was telling me the other day ‘you should stop thinking about it. You produced this film, but you’re not going to produce the other one’ and I agree with that! Because when you are creating something it’s good to have the freedom. It’s also important to have some limits…

RE: But also when you set the limits. You can’t start with them because that gives you a false start. It’s better to find creative solutions for production problems rather than shut down the whole thing. The creative process is something you can’t hold back, and that’s a good thing.

interview

Alternating between interior and exterior shots, the mise-en-scene of the living spaces indicates an ability to communicate effectively through all that the filmic medium has to offer. As Pietro enters his young female tutor’s house, we immediately partake in his experience of being on unknown terrain. We first get a glance of

review by Raluca Petre // interview by Mirona Nicola // photograpy by Valentina Calà // Nisimazine Venice // 41

Death for a Unicorn

by Riccardo Bernasconi & Francesca Reverdito // Switzerland

Riccardo Bernasconi and Francesca Reverdito, the co-directors of the Swiss fairy tale Death for a Unicorn, created a magical and mysterious universe, much in the style of Tim Burton´s earlier efforts. Ioana Flurescu sat down with them to investigate the inner details of this short film.

At first, we only had money from Swiss Television, no funding from the state. Then we participated in a little workshop in Italy, we won the first prize and they also gave us a little money. Everybody worked for free, even Tilda [Swinton] and Luis Molteni, who plays the grave digger and is a well known actor in Italy.

How did you come up with the idea to make this film and how did you collaborate?

It is an entirely made up story that came to our minds while we were on holiday in Scottland. Normally, when we write a story, the ideas come up from a brainstorming between us two. The first idea is usually very large but then we slowly reduce it and in the end we come up with the final version. While shooting and later, when doing the editing, we divided tasks between each other.

How did you get the idea to make part of the decor in cardboard?

We do not like digital at all. I [Michela] did the set design and I personally do not like it when it has a fake feeling to it. Initially, we wanted to shoot in Scottland, but we couldn’t go there. So we had to figure out a way to bring Scottish cemeteries to Italy. I wanted the Scottish cemeteries to have a realistic feel to them. It’s strange what I am saying because cardboard does not make them any more real. But at least we do not try to make the cardboard look like something else

How did you get the funding?

We had a very small budget at our disposal.

Your story is a fairy tale but it has a gro-

death and transformation into a ghost) is not shown on screen, only hinted at by the narrator saying something about poison.

It is the story of little orphan boy Billy, who lives with his mean, ugly and played-by-a-male-actor aunt. One day Billy enters the forbidden area and encounters a girl ghost, Myrtle, who becomes his only friend.

The audience gets introduced to the fantasy world by the at times soothing, often mysterious, and when needed frightening voice of Tilda Swinton, the narrator of the film. A common effect of using a narrator, the voice both facilitates the viewer’s access to the fictional world and prevents him or her from sinking completely into it. One never gets fully accustomed to the fact that when the characters are shown speaking, the sound that renders the dialogue is still Swinton’s voice. The text is written in verses that rhyme.

Another mean of preventing the viewer from forgetting that the portrayed world is a constructed one, is the spreading of a few set design elements made of cardboard, such as plants, an owl or the unicorn’s horn throughout the film. Together with the good image quality (achieved partly in the editing process), these elements provide for the quite pleasant look of the film.

The grotesque is mainly achieved by adding a touch of wrongness to symbols of innocence. Billy’s kite has a skull painted on it, a unicorn indirectly caused little Myrtle’s death, both children have dark circles under their eyes. However, there are also more bluntly put grotesque images in the film, such as the hairy, ugly and played-by-a-man aunt having sex with the grave digger.

There are also a few other directorial choices that prevent the audience’s total immersion in the story. The mean aunt is played by a hairy, ugly man. Furthermore, it is easy to notice that the climax of the film (little Billy’s

Death for a Unicorn is a homage that rises up to the standards of its genre. However, one might wonder if its approach to the genre is innovative enough for it to become a memorable piece of filmmaking in itself.

review

Having a grotesque fairy tale look and story to it, Death for a Unicorn is a short film reminiscent of Tim Burton’s early attempts at filmmaking.

interview

tesque feeling to it. Who do you see as the audience for this film?

Maybe if you are producing a feature movie you have to think about the commercial value of your film. For us it’s all about telling our story and creating the world that we want to show. However, it is the audience that likes Tim Burton’s early films that might also like this film.

What are your chances of showing Death for a Unicorn outside of festivals?

There isn’t really a distribution for short films. Our film is too long to be shown before a feature in movie theaters and too short to be shown by itself. It will be broadcast by Swiss television next summer.

Apart from that, we do not know.

review & interview by Ioana Florescu // Nisimazine Venice // 43

Blanco

by Ignacio Gatica // Argentina

Argentinian cinema had a powerful presence at this year´s edition of the Venice Film Festival. One of the many works on display was Ignacio Gatica´s short film Blanco. Yuri Lavecchia had the opportunity to met him to learn more about the film.

What’s your artistical background?

I studied sound design and cinematography at the public University of Buenos Aires. I also studied fashion photography and worked in television production for 5 years. Celina [actress] is an architect, she didn’t study in a proper academy but she took lessons by different professors on her own, in the theaters at first.

How long did you manage the project?

We wanted to make something small to manage, but in a good day. The priority was to film just in one day and it took one month to complete it . We didn’t want big projects,

we involved just a few people, director and assistant and the two actors.

Would it be fair to say your intention in the film was not to expose too much of the story but give suggestions?

We could say the story itself is below and the viewer has to interpret it through elements given, we could say to complete it.

We beleive in different possibilities to interpret the film, that’s exacly what we want from the viewer, to open his or hers own interpretation, and that’s emerges from the way of filming things.

What’s the role of the house as background and the entrance of light?

The work is essentially inside the house, you feel a sense of oppression that something has to explode. I was interested by how the light invades the home, as an “invasion” it acts like a filter above the image, a texture and the use of vivid colours go in

the same direction Where do you go next?

We are working on adapting a short story, A perfect day for banana fish by J.D.Salinger ,mixing it in the argentinian context, maybe reflecting some social issues with the story´s structure.

What does it represent to you being in Venice?

It’s very special to be here, for our work, our acknowledgment, to prove ourselves with this “personal” work, without co-production, all the money from our own pockets. Venice is a special place. It was very good for us to share our time with others directors of short films, even if the shorts can be really different in style and contents, you feel the same urgency of sensibility in our looks. So you feel close to the other in a global shared feeling and spirit even if we come from different countries, and the “competition” aspect dissolves.

Since the intention is to expose the surface as let suppose the untold below, Blanco seems to be an evocative experimental act of filmmaking, an exercise of creative work with the camera with the risk of provoking the viewer both in a sense of suggestion and dissatisfaction.

interview

The film is basically composed by frames where the characters and nature around are mostly presented as fragments, details, parts. A mouth, a fleeting look, a pose, a gesture, a barking coming from outside. Some images seems to recall an emblematic idea of the process itself, moving between exposure\hidden, presence\absence. The gesture to cut the fruit as the act of dividing something in parts, the knife as an element of tension through the idea of division. The dress lifted up by the sister, in a moment when the brother is outside is perhaps an exposure or the call for a look, or idea to visually reminds the hidden below.

The lack of a clear definition of a story is precisely the challenge posed by the authors. The visual style is surely part of this intentions. Through a pushed work on photography, the film insists on the value of light as an element able to raid in the moment of this two young people. The sun illuminates faces but its density also covers. An intrusion, a presence itself. The use of reflections of light as the use of vivid colours in the camera´s eye would perhaps trasmit something perceived on the skin but, in what measure is it able to imprint?

review

Blanco, the debut of argentinian Ignacio Gatica is like a beam of light that for a brief moment rests on two brothers who live in an old house in the countryside.

We don’t know anything about them, we’re supposed to catch a glimpse of the relationship between them, the house and the animals living around.

review and interview by Yuri Lavecchia // photography by Valentina Calà // Nisimazine Venice // 45

Nisimazine Venice // 46

by Valeria Allievi // Italy

After directing several documentaries, Valeria Allievi makes her short fiction debut with a 20 minutes cinematic essay exploring an almost deserted world: the mines at Cogne.

Her directorial approach recreates a distant and observational canvas. The film can be read as a honest anthropological exploration of two miners who extract magnetite in order to keep their uninhabited mine alive.

Rhythmically-wise, we explore their repetitive actions, their mechanical paths in the darkness, their seismic fluctuation between real world and the underground world, their psychology, their gestures and basic needs. The long observational frames create a sense of isolationism.

gorical space, that shapes personalities, attitudes and inner statements.

The cinematographer Alessio Balza tries to follow and capture the claustrophobic space, the architecture, the darkness, opposing it to one of the strongest images in the film when one of the characters can distinguish the splendor of a mountain through the window.

review

Quello che resta

This short film is an evocative work that recreates the mine as a micro-society with its own routine and set of values.

Quello che resta seems a slow paced hyperrealist construct. However, if we go further into one of its symbolic echoes, the daily existence of the mine reminds of the Platonic Parable of the Cave, seeming a rather alle-

review by Ioana Mischie //Nisimazine Nisimazine Venice Karlovy Vary////47 7

Nisimazine Venice // 48

by Bülent Öztürk // Belgium

The story and the context of Houses with Small Windows is fairly simple and a very straight forward one. A young woman is taken from her home by two relatives and shot dead in the outskirts of a village, due to being unfaithful to her husband and thus shamed the family. This is an honour killing that occurs somewhere in South-East Turkey within a Kurdish community where a blood law demands that the family of the murdered be compensated with another women. A decision by the family council of the murderers is made and a man is instructed that he is to give away his six-year old daughter.

Houses with Small Windows is a Belgian produced short film by Bülent Öztürk, a director of Kurdish origin, which depicts his own personal experience as his mother had been a case of a child who has been compensated due to a blood law. According to Öztürk, he had actually started making a documentary about his mother’s trauma but she couldn’t handle it so he decided to make a fiction film instead.

images of their surroundings which tend to be poetic, as a striking vision they define the people’s lives. Very little is spoken in the film as the characters are very restrained due to their ‘obligation’ and interiorise their emotional burden allowing themselves only cries in solitude.

review

Houses with Small Windows

This heartbreaking situation, which is a routine practice due to the existence of honour killings, sets the viewer in staggering position, wondering how this could be a normal practice that thousands of women go through in similar blood law communities around the world. As said earlier, the story is presented in a straight forward manner without direct moralisation, but is without a doubt a strong political statement. Perhaps, due to its haunting issue and potent atmosphere Houses with Small Windows deserved to be made as a longer feature.

As Öztürk is fore mostly a documentary director, this shows in the way that we are given to observe the characters and the actions: with precision and clarity of images from which we read out the characters’ inner worlds in desolation. Nevertheless, the

review by Nino Kovačić //Nisimazine Nisimazine Venice // //49 Karlovy Vary 7

Cold Snap

by Leo Woodhead // New Zealand

To say that Cold Snap is a film about life and death would seem too simplistic, but it would also be the truth. What makes it special is that it seems to treat with the same seriousness and, at the same time, detachment, the life of animals and that of humans. What director and co-writer Leo Woodhead gets across through this story is that even when you would rather be dead, you are still afraid of death. Nevertheless, for some of us, things are far less complicated.

the audience to discover and understand this boy for them to fully be able to understand the character’s gesture in the end.

Though he is merely a kid, he has experienced grief and pain.

It’s not that he is immune to it- on the contrary. After dealing with death every day (because of the opossums) he has a much more pragmatic approach to it. It’s either black or white; you can choose to live your life despite hardships, but if you can’t find the strength to do so, it is simply not worth living.

The main character in this short film is a boy who roams the forests surrounding his house and sets traps for opossums. He then skins them and sells the furs for a living. He is left to take care of himself in this way after his parents have died in a car accident, on a frozen road. He gets attached to one of his neighbors, a woman expecting a baby. They are taking care of each other, since she seems to be on her own as well. When she has a miscarriage, her life dramatically changes. Yet, through his experience with animals, the boy knows exactly what to do to put her out of her misery.

Such an approach from the main character spills over in the directing and the photography of Cold Snap. While the camera lingers rather kindly on the characters and the landscape they inhabit, the colors give a sense of crisp coldness and stillness.

The voice over is delivered in a plain and resigned manner by the boy, reinforcing the idea that life and death are perceived as a pretty straightforward deal. Combined, the visuals and the voice over result in a sort of morbid and disturbing feeling.

While that might not be pleasing to everybody, it is admirable that it steers the entire story and approach away from what could have been a by the book melodrama.

The film is quite short for such a dense type of relationship, everything being pretty much explained straight forward through voice over. Visually, the director focuses mostly on guiding

Nisimazine Venice // 50 // review by Mirona Nicola

Tous les belles choses

by Cécile Bicler // France

Among the short films in the Horizons section, a varied selection of content and styles, Toutes les belles choses seems to stand in balance between dramatic and comedic tones. The choice of a unique set with two characters on stage presents a piece that is a dialogue between two young women, childhood friends. At dawn, the celebrations are over. There was a wedding, it was probably a nice day. A perfect moment to say “All the good things,” when the party is over and there is a desire for a moment of thoughts, a free flow of considerations.

The girls discuss about relationships with men, more precisely about the directions of a relationship. There is a man who married one, but also had an affair with the other. The confessions of an incurable disease. A joke, a provocation? These are (semi-)serious statements that are likely to strengthen their relationship, or skew it, in each case to shake it, to rise to the occasion, literally.

reveal. The film “begins just when things should be coming to an end,” as the director says, and that’s precisely the filmic exercise which the director draws attention on.

The marriage is a narrative pretext, and so a kind of backstage situation has now the main part. Cécile Bicler exposes the relationship between her characters in an intimate set, out from the others’ eyes, a setting in which the viewer could feel as an intruder. Their presence is in their speeches on themselves, after all. And by doing this, the film seems to be also a test for the actresses- Laure Calamy and Marie-Bénédicte Cazeneuve. It remains a jump on the elastic carpet, in the sense of tension dulled on which shakes those bodies symbolically locked in “clothes” (roles) that fit too tight. Tous les belles choses has all the features to be a preparatory exercise, almost a test or audition fit both for the actresses and the characters they play.

The film is presented as a “back story” that raises as main focus, something that begins from the end of an event, with the emergency of what is left out or on the borders, in which to find a right time to stand aside face to face, to speak and

review by Yuri Lavecchia // Nisimazine Venice // 51

Gallina

by Manuel Raga // Spain

Young Spanish filmmaker Manuel Raga is much more than one of Spain’s upcoming talents. For the last few years he has been working at the famous and notorious La Fura del Baus theatre company, immersing himself into a world of experimentation and extravagance.

Such an experience and vision translates perfectly to his Orizzonti selected short film, La Gallina, loosely inspired in Mercè Rodoreda´s short story of the same name. The result is a dreamlike and slightly disturbing journey into an organic world of power relations and desire.

Matilde is her owner´s favorite hen, being the target of special treatment and a not always healthy obsession. To a degree, the patriarch seems more willing to treat his preferred pet more humanly then his own family. When his wife falls victim to an unknown illness that ties her motionlessly to a bed, the chicken seems to assume an even greater role in his life, turning his wife and son into mere instruments of pleasure and abuse.

Rebelling against the increasing decline of his family, and the monstrous treatment of his mother, the son hubs his anger towards the animal that stole his parental love and affection.

Nisimazine Venice // 52 // review by Fernando Vasquez

The sense of touch and texture is key to the atmosphere Raga recreates. There is an all overpowering grittiness in the film that focuses constantly on dirty feet and the crawling fauna that thrives in the dry terrain of the setting. Much like the ants and bugs that blossom aimlessly on the ground, this family filthy and grubby universe is unsettling.

As an exercise of disquieting surrealist and even absurd ambience, the film functions with great success, capable of making the annoyingly catchy and bizarre choir soundtrack even tolerable. For an audience searching for sensorial experiences La Gallina will surely not disappoint.

Audition

by Michael Haussman // Italy

The movie is a well shot exercise in black-and-white but that’s as far as Haussman takes it. The story, besides being one that has been told countless times before (the characteractor ambivalence), is dull and doesn’t really go anywhere.

The film ends with the same ambivalence and leaves the spectator wanting more, either more information or more tension, which would at least make the story more entertaining.

terms at play: irony stems from the conflict between all the artifices mentioned above and the lines which are at times comedic with an almost bad soap opera touch, and the baffled expressions of the casting crew. Yet the comic relief never comes, the film carries on without ever resolving the conflict. This is its major flaw, it builds up certain expectations but never delivers.

It feels like not even the director has the story all figured out and is using a lot of secondary elements to cover it up, artificial gems for the eyes and ears, the kind you would usually find in a commercial or music video (Haussman has a lot of experience in those fields). They actually make the film worse because the audience is also left to wonder about the meaning of the black-and-white photography, the setting (the famous Cinecittà studios), the very specific music and the gravity of the acting.

Good cinema is not always the kind of cinema that doesn’t leave the audience searching for answers. Although this film looks like it’s trying to pass the spectator a responsibility that should be shared with him at best.

All these classy elements seem to reference the grandeur of the big budget productions of the past. However at the same time the film appears, in the beginning at least, to have a comedic spin. As a spectator you think you understand the

review by Andrei Șendrea // Nisimazine Venice // 53

Stagnant Water

interview

Balkoni

by Lendita Zeqiraj // Kosovo

by Xiaowei Wang // China

One shot, twenty minutes. For most of the time of the film, the camera moves smoothly through the crowd gathered in front of a building. The source of attraction, the trigger for the gathering of passersby, policemen and firemen, is a little boy sitting on the edge of one of the building’s balconies, cursing and spitting at the crowd beneath him.

This is not going to be a film review as there is nothing to review about a film which seems to only be a part of the ‘globally correct’ set Venice short film program.

The boy himself is only briefly shown, seeing as the focus of the film lies rather in pointing out the behaviour of the people observing him. As the camera glides through the assembly and fragments of conversation reach our eyes and ears, it becomes clear that the topic has rapidly shifted from the problem-boy to simple chit-chat. Under the impression that they’re witnessing something spectacular, the characters seem to be rather excited than worried.

Like an insistent observer, the camera follows the characters at turns, abandons some of them shortly and then returns to them. We do not learn more about the characters by seeing them more than once. They are only attributed with one feature, usually a flaw, one that is already pointed out the first time we catch eye of them. The two dressed up girls unable to take decisions without consulting each other are not more than they appear to be and neither is the obese boy carrying a bucket of peanuts.

Seeing how the film fails in delivering an enjoyable portrayal of individuals [or human typologies], one might start expecting that it will at least turn out to be a satisfactory study of crowd behaviour. It might have, if the punch line, made in the last minutes of the film, would have had more depth. The problem-boy’s mother arrives and, not at all worried by seeing her child sitting on the edge of the balcony, scolds him for swearing. This way it is unsubtly suggested that people tend to make a big deal out of nothing, If trying to interpret Balcony in big words, one might end up stating that it is a critique of crowd behaviour and even one of society. However, maybe it is inappropriate to describe it in big words. Its only asset is the at times smooth, at times swift, movement of the camera.

Nisimazine Venice // 54

by Ioana Florescu

Stagnant Water, a second short film by a young Chinese director Xiaowei Wang’s, competing in the Orizzonti section, was the only film from the Chinese mainland to be accepted in a formal section at this year’s festival.

Shot in black-and-white, the film is about a cab driver who during a traffic jam on a hot summer afternoon goes down to the riverside, where he meets an artist painting a cloud. After chatting a while, the driver gradually discovers that there might be something hidden in the river. Basically, it’s a pretentiously poetic and porely directed amateur work (it shows that Wang had no professional training in film) lasting for 17 minutes of your life that you will never get back for watching it. So, the question “why was it selected?” goes to the Venice programmers.

However the story of Xiaowei Wang seems to be a mildly interesting one. As explained in an interview, he came to Beijing after graduating at an art institute, wanting to become a filmmaker. After two year of working as a web editor, Wang quitted his job and spent the amount of 800 dollars that he wanted to buy an iPhone with, on renting a camera instead.

The idea for this film came from a canal near the place he lived. “Such a peaceful river without any traces of flow. However, it never dries up. I’m terrified by the thought that something might be hidden deeply in this river. Could our life be like the river? Will it be a storm coming after the peacefulness of life?“, he stated.

Stagnant Water was shot in five days with help of his friends and Wang worked on it as the scriptwriter, director, producer, actor, and editor.

Eventually he had to borrow money from his parents for the tickets to Venice and was not hoping for a reward but as long as he can tell stories in this way, he is satisfied. Xiaowei Wang is hoping to do a long feature soon.

by Nino Kovačić

Aningaq

Minesh

by Jonás Cuarón // USA

by Shalin Sirkar // Africa, Germany, Denmark

This short film takes on the subjet of communication or, more precisely, the lack of it. But alongside the inability to communicate, there is the human need for company. A female voice is asking for help in her mission: not to die. An Eskimo, on the other hand, asks for a doctor to treat his dog, for he does not want to kill him.

Minesh is the only South African film in the official selection of the 70th Venice Film Festival. It is an international co-production between South Africa, Germany and Denmark, written and directed by Shalin Sirkar from Chalia Films.

Two problems without any mutual understanding but, nonetheless, a basic exchange of emotions even when only done by the pronunciation of sounds that break each character’s lonliness - an odd and subtle connection is established.

On one hand, the astronaut got the company he needed in his last living moments; the fisherman, on the other hand, has someone to share his concerns. The two languages, Greenlandic and English, clash into one another with their completely different sounds and vocabulary. It is definitely a good and enjoyable short film, with a delicate touch that oscillates between a comic and a tragic note.

Written by Jonás Cuarón, son of the well known Alfonso Cuarón, who directed Gravity, and having Sandra Bullock (main actress of Gravity) as the voice of the astronaut, we cannot help but to see this as more than just a coincidence: it is rather part of the feature film, working as some sort of backstage snippet, the repetition of the scene from another stand point, the point of view of a Greenlander fisherman on earth.

The focus of the short film section in which this film is included is nonetheless missing, since it is supposedly dedicated to experimentation, new languages and showcasing new directors – it would be perhaps more pertinent as a perfect unconventional spin off of Gravity.

by Viviana Carlet

The young director presents us the hard and tortuous life of a child living in a violent family. The first images of the film already show the distance between this boy, playing alone in a garden, and his father, working next to him but without giving any sign of his presence, either emotional or physical: a simply absent father figure.

The father’s violence, directed towards the mother, triggers the child’s decision to escape from home. He runs into the middle of the unknown, a forest where his pursuit of happiness will transforms itself into the discovery that the world could be worse.

He moves slowly, perhaps unable to fully understand his own situation: the audience can instinctively guess that he is trying to get away from the violence he found himself in. He meets other children, apparently like him, abandoned under a tree. They make him part of the group by sharing their own way to overcome their position of outsiders and their loneliness: the inhaling of chemicals. Alongside his journey, he is constantly introduced to another type of violence: the one from the outside world, illustrated by the split between image and sound, slow motion movements and amplification of ground noise and sound.

Dreaming seems to be the only way to exorcise the brutality and responding in some way to difficulties. Then, after a delirium, the boy wakes up and returns to his house, where everything is all too quiet.

by Viviana Carlet

Nisimazine Venice // 55

Photo reportage

by Marta LuÄ?ić

nisimazine rotterdam shorts // 15

Marco Busato Queer Lion Award

Marco Busato is involved, as an organizer and jury member, in giving out the Queer Lion award. We interviewed him about this year’s selection, but also about how the awards places itself within the Venice Film Festival and in the bigger political and social context.

How this award was started and what was your role in starting it?

The project of having an award during the Venice Film Festival for the film that best represents gay, lesbian or transgender themes started more or less 10 years ago. Due to the change of the festival director we had to restart with all the bureaucracy, but the award was finally established 7 years ago. Over the years we had noticed that there have been a number of movies, even good movies, which go unnoticed. Some are really good and we wanted to give out an award to signify that that particular movie had something to tell, something interesting, to be remembered. That was and still is, more or less, the spirit of the award.

What kind of institutional barriers did you encounter when setting up this award?

Basically it was convincing this institution [the festival] of the necessity of this award. Something like this might have been perceived, at least in Italy, as something uncomfortable, something that might have caused troubles. That happened actually for the first edition. We do not see the movies in advance. We ask the

Nisimazine Venice // 60

selection committee for the films. We are given a preliminary list. If we find out other movies we add them, or discard some that don’t have enough content. So in the first edition what happened was that some movies that were given to us didn’t actually have any gay or lesbian content, or had very little. Some of the producers or press representatives officially made calls to the Biennale asking to be removed, asking to have nothing to do with this award. They want to sell movies. They don’t want to loose potential audience over this.

Has that perception changed with time?

It’s something that has been changing but it has to do with a lot of factors. It has to do with the fact that, year after year, people are getting more and more used to the idea. At the same time, even the concept of gay movie is changing. The concept of homosexuality is something that is blending more and more in movies. So it’s becoming easier to find movies with homosexual elements, and it becomes less common that you find movies that can be labeled as purely gay movies.

So do you judge the films based on aesthetics or on how they portray the theme ?

It really depends on the movie. Of course, our main aim is for it to be more of an artistic lesson than a political lesson.

Because if you go just for the political lesson you might end up awarding bad movies just because they talk about that.

There is always, anyway, the political aspect. We also assess whether, while talking about gay and lesbian themes, it gives anyway a positive image. Or, if not positive, at least not negative.

How do you think an award like the Queer Lion can influence the distribution of a film in countries that are still very conservative in terms of gay rights?

I really depends on the kind of movie you award or promote.

5 years ago we gave the award to A Single Man. That is a film that would have traveled either way, with or without our award. On the other hand, if you end up labeling a small movie, our award might be the only one it receives and it could be helpful for it. I don’t think it is necessarily helpful in places where the situation is difficult. If we take the example of Russia, of course if we stick the label of Queer Lion it probably makes things even more difficult. When we will be giving out the award, afterward we will have a debate about the reinforcement of our law against homophobia. We are trying to support the gay community in Russia within our limits, but we still have stuff to do in Italy.

Who is involved in judging the films selected?

Every year we are going for different juries. So, over the years we’ve had movie critics, film distributors, directors.

This year we have as the head of Jury one of the programmers of the Seattle Film Festival, who was also a selector for the Turin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Then the other two members are Daniel, who is the creator of the Queer Lion Award and myself. I am a member of a cultural association which deals with queer films all year long.

You had quite a lot of films to choose from this year.

We initially included 9 and then we also added a 10th, Philomena. It was quite interesting this year because the films they were as diverse and different as they could be. When you do films on gay and lesbian themes, you always start from a certain degree of tragedy. Then you can turn to comedy and then you start blending them into the narrative and treating them both as part of it. As we go on we are seeing homosexual and lesbian elements being integrated in more diverse ways in stories, in the sense that we see them as active parts in a script of a thriller or a romantic story.

To what extent that these different approaches have to do with how liberal the countries they come from are in terms of gay rights?

As with any other borderline topic, there are countries where artists of any kind are using these themes to defy authority.

If they feel it is forbidden, they will be attracted to them. It has become something of a usual thing that, while Marco Muller was the director of the festival, that films would be included in the competition at the last moment and those films usually were coming from China. The actual reason for them to arrive at the last moment was because they had to avoid censorship. It might have been easier for the directors to avoid certain topics. But as a director, as an artist, you feel the need for freedom.

interview

How do you see the role of dedicated queer film festivals in promoting these films?

Venice is a movie festival that embraces a wider audience, whereas, obviously, a festival dealing with specific subjectsthat can be homosexuality, but also others- has a smaller audience and a smaller interest. I think they helped a lot giving visibility to products and even helping with the idea that those are movies anyway. If you think that until 10-15 years ago it was not unusual that a gay themed movie meant a porn movie basically, it helped a lot. Still. as with any thematic, there are good movies and bad movies.

This year the Queer Lion was awarded to Philomena.

As a member of the jury, how do you motivate your choice?

This film fascinated us because it is built in a perfect way. Its main topic is already a huge topic and still finds a way to treat the theme of homosexuality, of homophobia, of AIDS. We found out that the way those elements are dealt with is very lighthearted, in an otherwise dramatic story. It has an excellent script, it deals with a topic that could have been a tearjerker, and doesn’t exaggerate it. It is surprising on many levels. If you think about the blend of drama and comedy in the movie, that is not something easy to achieve.

What’s next for this award? How do you plan to take it forward?

We want to make it grow. We would like to keep being here every year. We would like for the award to become more and more recognized as something linked to Venice and to a label of quality. That is our mission, there is not much more that an award like this can do. We are very aware that being here during these 10 days means that we can be more in the spotlight than we can be for the rest of the year. If we would be given the chance, we would like to be able to become a reference point for debates and discussion on these films during the festival.

interview by Mirona Nicola // Nisimazine Venice // 61

editor: Mirona Nicola (Romania), Fernando Vasquez (Portugual) Writers: Ioana Florescu (Romania), Raluca Petre (Romania), Andrei Șendrea (Romania), Viviana Carlet (Italy), Yuri Lavecchia (Italy), Nino Kovačić (Croatia), Mirona Nicola (Romania), Fernando Vasquez (Portugal), photographers: Valentina Calà (Italy), Marta Lučić (Croatia) layout: Lucía Ros Serra (Spain) original design: Maartje Adlers (Netherlands) logistical manager: Viviana Carlet (Italy) Very special thanks to Alberto Barbera (Festival Director), Michela Lazzarin (Press Office), Carlo Migotto, Elisa Bernardi, Matthieu Darras and everyone directly or indirectly involved in the production of the workshop and this ebook This is a publication of:

Nisimazine Karlovy Vary NisimazineVenice // 8 // 22

Supported by:

credits

director of publication: Fernando Vasquez (Portugal)

this is a publication of