Author Archive
Thursday, February 9th, 2012
To have the presence of Cannes Artistic Director Thierry Frémaux at your festival is like getting a seal of approval from the godfather of cinema himself. Arguably one of the most important players in the film industry today, Frémaux arrived by helicopter with French actress Isabelle Huppert to Emir Kusturica’s Fifth Annual Küstendorf Film and Music Festival, held this January in Serbia. “Sure Cannes is glamorous with its red carpet,” said Frémaux. “This is not the red carpet, it’s the white carpet, it’s the snow. And I think that is Emir’s style.” Küstendorf is a festival free of corporate sponsorship that aims to give back the gifts that cinema has bestowed upon Kusturica to a new generation of filmmakers, as 20 student films are screened alongside established director debuts.
When Frémaux is not running the Cannes Film Festival, he is directing the Institut Lumière in his hometown of Lyon. The museum and library honors the birthplace of cinema in Monplaisir and is dedicated to preserving the works of the Lumière brothers. He also serves as Director of the Festival Lumière in Lyon to showcase new film restorations and revivals each October.
We spoke with Frémaux at the Visconti Café at Küstendorf on the increasing importance of world film festivals in today’s market. Traditionally the goal of any new director at a film festival is to seek out distribution. As independent distribution unfortunately continues to shrink — unless you’re a filmmaker lucky enough to be working in France — film festivals may just be evolving into a very worthy substitute.
What is the relationship between Cannes and global festivals?
There are the major festivals: Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Venice, but the family also has a lot of small cousins and I want to pay attention to them. If Cannes can help we will, because showing the interest of Cannes helps the festivals we support.
I think that film festivals are like music festivals. A filmmaker can go for two years having 50,000-100,000 people watching his film, which is enormous. They screen the film in front of 200 people here, 500 people there. It’s like … Read the rest
Monday, February 6th, 2012
The original King of Indie Abel Ferrara made a stop at Emir Kusturica’s Küstendorf Film and Music Festival this January to screen his latest film 4:44 Last Day on Earth. The Loisaida-set film paints a picture of addiction at the end of the world, starring Willem Dafoe and Shanyn Leigh. Ferrara has always felt a connection to Kusturica, and felt very welcome at Küstendorf, the Serbian director’s wooden village high in the mountains of Mokra Gora. “We just kinda have a connection, other than I look like him,” Ferrera told me, minutes before entering a workshop to discuss the film with students who had descended upon the festival from all around the world to learn from the week’s line-up of cinema greats. Also at the fest were Kim Ki-Duk (Korea), Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey), Marjane Satrapi (France), the Dardenne Brothers (Belgium), Andreas Dresen (Germany) and Frederikke Aspock (Denmark).
These days, Ferrara is generous in sharing his wealth of knowledge on the industry. Just keep him away from the bear sanctuary, a new habitat Kusturica is building for abused circus bears at the Mokra Gora nature park, among his many projects in the region. “If you’ve got that kind of energy it’s great. But I wouldn’t be dancing with no bear, I’ll tell you that much,” said Ferrara, referring to a photo he had seen earlier that day of Kusturica getting intimate with a brown bear. “There’s a picture of him with fucking sugar in his mouth kissing it, I don’t know. I’ve had nightmares about bears my whole life. If that bear was around I’d be on a helicopter out of here.”
Fortunately for Ferrara, the brown bears of Mokra Gora were hibernating during his visit. So I sat down with him to discuss some of the top lessons he’s learned over the years from his vast and diverse lifework. So stop fucking around and take note.
1. New game, new rules.
“Being independent now is like being the loneliest man in the world.
I think independent was a reference to a film structure that was outside of Hollywood. I … Read the rest
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011
Fresh off an Ecuadorian tour with his No Smoking Orchestra, the twice-awarded Palme d’Or director Emir Kusturica flew to Morocco for the closest thing he can get to downtime. As President of the Jury of the 11th annual Marrakech International Film Festival, Kusturica got to enjoy one of his favorite pastimes, absorbing a dozen or so independent films from around the world in a week. His second time at the festival, the auteur was honored with the Golden Star award in 2009 for his outstanding career.
While he spent most of the festival behind the scenes, apart from presenting a new Golden Star to another like-minded conspirator, Terry Gilliam, Kusturica granted us a rare interview at La Mamounia in a dark intimate conference room. He detailed what he’s up to when he’s not busy being a professional Jury President, and it’s a doozy. To call Kusturica a renaissance man is an understatement. It’s more like a “fuck your renaissance man. I’ll create my own renaissance” man. For starters, this coming January marks the 5th year of his annual Küstendorf Film and Music Festival in Mokra Gora, this year honoring directors Kim Ki-duk and Nuri Bilge Ceylan. As usual the fest will focus on young talent, with 20 student films from all over the world in competition.
He recently starred in and shot a 15-minute story about a Serbian Orthodox Monk, to be a part of Guillermo Arriaga’s larger film on religion, Words With Gods, which will come out next year. Then there’s the book he’s writing, “The Book of Stories,” a collection of stories that will be sure to grab you by the throat. And he just finished penning his next script, a film about the recent history of war in the Balkans. Stay tuned.
His hotly awaited Pancho Villa film is on, this time with a slightly truncated script. Benicio Del Toro, no stranger to playing Mexican revolutionaries, takes over the role from Arizona Dream star Johnny Depp, who dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. The new film focuses on the love story between a woman who … Read the rest
Monday, December 19th, 2011
“Billy Wilder once said that there are only two things aging directors can’t avoid…awards and haemorroids [sic]. I’ll stick with just the awards for the moment, please.” So says a recent Facebook post from the brain behind some of the greatest films of the last century, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail to Brazil to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Yes, Terry Gilliam has joined Facebook, as an experiment to promote his latest venture, the short film The Wholly Family, about Italian Pulcinella figurines coming to life inside a small boy’s imagination. (I highly recommend following his status updates). Fortunately for Gilliam, he’s on the awards path, recently honored with the Golden Star Award of the 11th Annual Marrakesh International Film Festival.
Wearing a Filipino-print shirt he purchased at his favorite craft shop in Los Angeles, and socks covered with cows sporting sunglasses, Gilliam showed up the night after his award ceremony to the Palais des Congrès to teach a Master Class to an audience full of Moroccan film students. When asked why he films, Gilliam responded with a long pause and then said into the microphone, “I suppose it’s the best job out there.” For Gilliam, film is the one medium that combines every art form he loves. I caught up with Gilliam for a short chat before his master class. Here, in his words from both our talk and the class, are the combined lessons, or anti-lessons, he has to offer from his long and rich career in the world’s greatest profession.
1. Growing up is for losers.
As a child, I always drew funny creatures, funny characters. But I think the trick is not to grow up, not to learn to be an adult. And if you can maintain the kind of imagination you all had when you were babies, you would all be wonderful filmmakers. But the world tries to make you grow up, to stop imagining, stop fantasizing, stop playing in your mind. And I’ve worked hard to not let the world educate me.
2. Film school is for fools.
Live … Read the rest
