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TIGER AWARDS
During the 2004 Awards Ceremony of the International Film Festival Rotterdam today, VPRO Tiger Awards were granted to Bu Jian (The Missing), a minimalist parable about loneliness, alienation and emotional traumas by first-time director Taiwanese Lee Kang-sheng, who frequently appears as an actor in the films of Tsai Ming-liang; Unterwegs (En Route), the debut film by German director Jan Kruger in which a manipulative, slightly sinister but charming young man falls in with a young mother, her daughter, and the daughter's boyfriend on a camping holiday and leads them astray; and the Hubert Bals Fund-supported Ljeto U Zlatnoj Dolnini (Summer in the Golden Valley) by first-time director Srdjan Vulectic from Bosnia-Herzogovina, in which two young guys who dream of life elsewhere, hustle, hang out, get stoned and are soon caught up with a beautiful rich girl and a blackmail scam.
Following the IFFR Awards Ceremony, the City of Rotterdam awarded IFFR director Simon Field the Wolfert van Borselen Medal as a token of appreciation for his hard work and passionate commitment to the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The French Ministry of Culture and Communication also awarded Field with the grade of "Officier dans l'ordre des Arts et Lettres" for his achievements in the artistic domain and for his contributions to propagation of French culture. The farewell ceremony for Field, who will leave the IFFR after this 33rd edition, concluded with a series of cinematographic homages by some of his favourite filmmakers like Kitano Takeshi (Japan), Jan Svankmajer (Czech Republic), Catherine Breillat (France), Patrick Keiller (UK), Abolfazl Jalili (Iran), Tsai Ming-liang (Taiwan), Kees Hin (The Netherlands) and Kawase Naomi (Japan).
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/30/2004 02:51:40 PM
For fans of the work of recently-deceased Helmut Newton, Nerve has put together an excellent collection of some of the master photographer's best-known work. Each image is accompanied by testimonials about Newton's influence by Nerve's contributing photographers. It's a touching farewell to the man who revolutionized fashion and erotic photography more than 50 years ago (he once earned the nicknames the "35mm Marquis de Sade" and the "King of Kink") and continued to work consistently until his death last week, at age 83, in a car accident outside L.A.'s Chateau Marmont. For more about Newton's work, Barnes and Noble is a good place to start.
# posted by Matthew Ross @ 1/30/2004 01:58:25 PM
A PRIMER ON PRIMER
Upon hearing the awards news from Sundance this past Sunday in Rotterdam, most of the buyers and sales agents at the Cinemart all wanted to know one thing from me: "What the hell is Primer?" The small minority who caught the film in Utah, though, had a different question: "Why the hell did this film win the Sundance Grand Prize?"
International film business types customarily feel somewhat lost and bewildered at Sundance, unable to figure out the shuttle bus routes or how to make it into the evening parties. But to be completely confused by what's on screen? That's a new one that made their sense of cultural alienation all the more acute.
Primer happened to be the first film I caught at the festival. I was drawn, perversely, by Geoff Gilmore's catalog copy, which dubbed the dialogue "borderline incomprehensible." Indeed, from its first frame, Primer plunges you into the world of scientific research as it follows a small group of amateur scientists who stumble onto a world-changing invention. And yes, unless you're a physics and biochemistry dual major, the dialogue is impossibly hard to follow. Virtually every sentence is comprised of scientific lingo uttered in variations of the same measured-but-urgent cadence. At Rotterdam, I tried to explain to a Japanese distributor, who felt that her English wasn't good enough to "get" the movie, that it was okay not to understand it. I couldn't follow it either. Or at least I couldn't follow the moment-by-moment progressions of the plot. I did get the film's story of curiosity leading to exhiliration leading to fear as the "invention" wobbles out of control.I interviewed Shane Carruth, the film's writer, director, producer, star, editor, sound editor and composer at the festival, and our talk, which is a fascinating explanation of how this autodidact made the film and got it into Sundance, will appear soon in the magazine. One thing he told me though was how his inspiration for the film came from a cable-television '70s movie marathon he watched while recovering from an accident. Carruth said he was fascinated by movies like The Conversation, The Parrallax View and, particularly, All the President's Men. Most obviously Primer shares with Pakula's Watergate docudrama a focus on process, a belief that people doing important things is in itself dramatic. Like All the President's Men, Primer has little need for backstories and B-plots, and it doesn't dawdle with girlfriends, wives or "relationships" other than those between the scientists. And there's also no traitor within the group selling their secrets to the evil giant corporation. There's just a few guys in a garage -- and one storage locker -- trying to figure out why they are are getting the results that they are getting.
For me, though, what's most refreshing about Primer -- other than the stunning story of its realization -- is that it's one of the first films that acknowledges what writers as diverse as David Foster Wallace, Richard Powers and James Ellroy have been doing in their fiction for years. Primer completely refuses to buy into standardized Hollywood -- or even independent film -- ideas of how drama must be created from fact-based source material.
I haven't spoken to anyone on the jury, but I can imagine the conversations that resulted in Primer winning the Grand Prize. The Sundance awards usually are some sort of public reworking of the perennial "what is an independent film" argument, and in wake of Biskind book, which claims that American indie film has degenerated into its own crushing orthodoxy, the jury was compelled to award a film that is not only independent of Hollywood but also independent of the whole alternative system that makes and markets specialty movies. For Carruth, there was no Independent Feature Project, no Sundance Filmmaker Lab or AIVF, no Good Machine or Killer Films, no HBO or IFC, no Manhattan Film School or McKee Three-Day Seminar. There was no filmmaking mentor as exec producer or even, really, any producer at all -- other than Carruth, who taught himself how to make the film by reading books (and, he told me, Filmmaker magazine). There was no indie-friendly "professional d.p." -- no Jim Denault or Ellen Kuras or Tom Richmond -- behind the lens. Carruth lit and shot the film himself, buying fluourescent lighting banks from Walmart and checking exposure by testing his lighting setups in preproduction by shooting similarly rated slide film. There was no editing guru "fixing" the film in post. And making the above all the more impressive, Primer is a film, not some kind of "digital feature" that explains away its production shortcomings by huddling under the Dogme 95 umbrella.
Did the jury have any other choice?
More on this fascinating film in issues ahead.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/29/2004 07:02:36 PM
Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self, an exhibition at the International Center of Photography co-curated by Brian Wallis and Coco Fusco, explores the question "How do photographs make us see race?" The exhibition, which includes over 350 works in a variety of formats spanning nearly 200 years of photographic history, is organized in five thematic sections -- such as Humanized/Fetishized, which "contrasts photographs that emphasize a subject's individuality with those that objectify or dehumanize their subjects," and Assimilate/Impersonate, which "compares images of people attempting to look or act white with those of people assuming the characteristics of non-whites."
In conjunction with the exhibition, which runs through February 29, a free interdisciplinary symposium, Visualizing Race in American Photography, will take place Saturday, February 7 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Columbia Law School Jerome Greene Hall, Room 101. For further info or to register, call the ICP Education dept. at (212) 857-0001.
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/29/2004 05:58:16 PM
BERLINALE SPECIAL
The Berlin International Film Festival's Panorama section has confirmed another documentary, Traveling with Che Guevara (Italy, 110 minutes) by Gianni Mina, which will contribute further to shaping the festival's special focus this year on Latin America.
The film, made during the shooting of Walter Salles's Motorcycle Diaries, illuminates the circumstances behind Ernesto "Che" Guevara's motorcycle trip through South America in 1952 and how it politicized him.
Guevara, at the time a 23-year-old medical student, kept diaries about his six-month-long journey with his friend, the biologist Alberto Granado. The two traveled as leprosy specialists all across Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela.
Salles, who received the Golden Berlin Bear in 1998 for his film Central Station, convinced Granado to be his advisor on the film and to accompany the shooting. In Gianni Mina's documentary about the film's making, Granado clarifies incidents, recounts his own memories, gives guidance on details and lends his support to the actors Gael Garcia Bernal (Che) and Rodrigo de la Serna (Alberto). 81-year-old Alberto Granado told the documentary filmmaker, "Re-living all this seems like a dream".
Both Gianni Mina and Alberto Grando are expected to attend the Berlinale for the film's presentation. Walter Salles's Motorcycle Diaries, on the other hand, is reportedly headed to Cannes.
The Berlinale has also announced the creation a new series in its Official Program, the Berlinale Special, which will include the latest works of master filmmakers as well as revivals of important films related to the Festival's special focuses or to particularly explosive political topics.
This inaugural series includes four components:
1) the most recent films of directors Peter Greenaway (The Tulse Luper Suitcases, part 2, featuring Isabella Rosselini, Franka Potente and Ornella Muti) and Ermanno Olmi (Cantando dietro i paraventi / Singing Behind Screens);
2) three revivals: Jacques Demy's 1970 adaptation of the fairy tale Peau d'ane (Donkey Skin), starring Catherine Deneuve, Jean Marais, Jacques Perrin and Delphine Seyrig (to be preceded by Agnes Varda's short film, Peau d'ane); from Germany, a newly restored printed of the long-missing film Das Boot ist voll (The Boat is Full), for which director Markus Imhoof won a Silver Bear at the Berlinale in 1981 (the film was nominated for an Oscar the following year); and Peter Schamoni's Fruhlingssinfonie (Spring Symphony), featuring Nastassja Kinski, Rolf Hoppe and Herbert Gronemeyer, from 1984, which will be screened on the occasion of the director's 70th birthday.
3) two productions examining the political past: Egidio Eronico's Papa -- Rua Alguem 5555 (My Father, 2002), featuring Charlton Heston (as Joseph Mengele!), F. Murray Abraham and Thomas Kretschmann, in which a son confronts his father about his role conducting human experiments while he was a doctor at the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz; and Pour l'amour du peuple (I Love You All) by Eyal Sivan and Audrey Maurion, based on a former Stasi major's authentic eye-witness reports, which provide a kaleidoscopic portrait of a society (the GDR) under constant surveillance; 4) and three films related to the Festival's special focus on music: Rhythm Is It!, an unconventional German music film by Thomas Grube and Enrique Sanchez Lansch, which shows the Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra and their chief conductor Sir Simon Rattle during their first season together at their rehearsals for Igor Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps; a silent film by German director Oliver Herrmann -- who died last autumn -- that sets Stravinsky's ballet Le sacre du printemps in the world of Cuban Santeria, which will be accompanied by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle on February 15; and CS Leigh's Process, featuring Beatrice Dalle, Guillaume Depardieu and Daniel Duval, which will be presented as a live event with a score performed by John Cale.# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/28/2004 05:55:08 PM
SELLING DEMOCRACY
After World War II, western European countries received not only economic aid but also cultural and psychological aid from the U.S.
June 1947 marked the start of the Marshall Plan -- officially entitled the "European Recovery Program" -- which gave 16 European states financial and economic support, including food, raw materials and machines. Yet ideals were also disseminated: by the time the Marshall Plan came to an end in 1952 over 200 films had been produced documenting American aid efforts, motivating self-help and promoting intercultural understanding, democracy and pluralism -- and reinforcing boundaries against communist Eastern Europe. At the same time the films offered very practical introductions to new technologies and forms of agriculture: the spectrum ranged from a European electricity network to the construction of chicken coops.
This year's Berlin International Film Festival will present a selection of films produced under the Marshall Plan in 10 unique programs.
The retrospective and its films with their emphatic vision of a united Europe not only bring to light present-day parallels; these ambitious works by talented young directors are also still very compelling in their consciousness of form and occasionally light-hearted, imaginative tone. For instance, the Dutch production Houen Zo!, about the reconstruction of Rotterdam, received an award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1952. One of the filmmakers, Georg Tressler, later became a very successful German feature film director (Die Halbstarken / The Hooligans): his film Traudls neuer Gemusegarten (Traudl's New Vegetable Garden) elucidates new methods of cultivation and was one of the many films explicitly aimed at children.
42 films will be screened at the Zeughaus-Kino, Berlin, as part of the series from February 5 to 15. Georg Tressler and others involved in the Marshall Plan film program will speak at accompanying events.
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/26/2004 06:40:05 PM Comments (0)
Last night the Sundance Film Festival announced the winners of the Independent Feature Film Competition and the Audience Awards for the 2004 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.The Documentary Grand Jury Prize was given to DIG!, directed and produced by Ondi Timoner. Shot over a seven-year period, DIG! follows the parallel careers of two musicians, Anton Newcombe, leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Courtney Taylor, head of The Dandy Warhols -- star-crossed friends and bitter rivals. The 2004 Documentary Competition Jurors included Rory Kennedy, Mary Ellen Mark, Robb Moss, Robert Shepard,and Chris Smith.
The Dramatic Grand Jury Prize was presented to Primer, the debut feature by Shane Carruth. The low-budget film, reportedly made for only $7,000, tells the story of small-time entrepreneurs who build a cottage industry of error-checking devices that very quickly begin to test the limits of their friendship. The 2004 Dramatic Competition Jury included Lisa Cholodenko, Frederick Elmes, Danny Glover, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Ted Hope.The festival's Directing Awards went to Morgan Spurlock, director of Super Size Me and Debra Granik for the documentary Down To The Bone.
The Documentary Audience Award was presented to Born Into Brothels, a film by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski. The World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award was given to Seducing Doctor Lewis, directed by Jean-Francois Pouliot. The World Cinema Documentary Audience Award was presented to The Corporation, directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott.
The Dramatic Audience Award winner was presented to Maria Full of Grace, directed and written by Joshua Marston.The festival's Excellence in Cinematography Awards, honoring exceptional photography in both a dramatic and documentary film at the Festival was awarded to Ferne Pearlstein for Imelda from the Documentary Competition, and Nancy Schreiberfor November from the Dramatic Competition received the 2004 Cinematography Awards.
The Freedom of Expression Award, given to a documentary film that informs and educates the public on issues of social or political concern, was awarded to the Korean documentary Repatriation, directed by Kim Dong-won. The 2004 Freedom of Expression Jury included Molly Haskell, Jorgen Leth, and Siven Maslamoney.The Dramatic Jury presented the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for outstanding achievement in writing to Larry Gross for We Don't Live Here Anymore.
In addition, this year's Documentary Jury bestowed a Special Jury Prize to Farmingville, directed and produced by Catherine Tambiniand Carlos Sandoval.
This Dramatic Jury presented two Special Jury Prizes, to Brother to Brother, directed by Rodney Evans, and to Vera Farmiga for her performance in Down to the Bone.
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/26/2004 03:43:22 PM
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© 2004 Filmmaker: The Magazine of Independent Film