Panorama Europe 2016 Film Festival: Youth Will Be Heard

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Features

Published on Wednesday, 13 July 2016 14:55

Written by Nora Lee Mandel

Silent

Read our coverage of week one and week two.

Youth dominated the third and final weekend of the 8th Annual Panorama Europe Film Festival through an impressive collection from Europe – classic youth, youth in crisis, and youth in love.  At the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) in Queens, with additional screenings on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at the Bohemian National Hall, seven features over May 20 - 23, most in New York premieres, showcased striving young generations in contemporary Greece, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Slovenia, 1980’s Poland and Spain, then centuries back in Portugal.  Each screening attracted enthusiastic audiences, with many who didn’t need the English subtitles.

The Festival climaxed amidst the fun hubbub all around MoMI of the "New York On Location" street fair set in cooperation with the adjacent Astoria Studios and the many labor unions whose members benefit from the increasing filmmaking jobs in NYC.  Crowds risked real rain to watch demonstrations of fake rain and fire; stunt professionals (as in “Don’t do this at home!”) racing in car chases and falling from towers; make-up artists showing their tricks; and inside looks at those trailers which frequently take over parking spaces during all that movie and TV production in the great back lot that is the Big Apple.  

MoMI offered free admission to its exhibits and screenings that Sunday, but fans of new international cinema coming to see the final day of Panorama Europe 2016 were busy discussing interpretations of earlier festival screenings.  Two films that weekend were re-imaginings of classic European forms.

Silent
MoMI is particularly known for showing contemporary Greek films, including co- hosting the annual New York City Greek Film Festival, a favorite for their Astoria neighborhood.  Senior Curator David Schwartz announced the Museum will be presenting a retrospective of the films of Greek director Theo Angelopoulos (1935–2012) in July.

Schwartz introduced director Yorgos Gkikapeppas as an exemplar of Greece’s “New Wave”, with his two films both winning awards at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival.  Gkikapeppas explained that Silent, his second feature, is structured like a classic Greek tragedy with: prologue; parode; strophe; antistrophe; epode; episodes; and exode – some of these parts are specified on screen as chapter headings.  Classic and modern Greek cultural references abound.  The symbolic chorus is the silent central character – opera student Dido, the extraordinarily physically expressive Kika Georgious in the role written for her.  

The noisy prologue is the May 1968 student protests, with crowds demanding more freedom.  Dido anxiously emerges in the present with a suitcase, traveling across Europe to get home.  “Part I – Cage”, she closes herself into an apartment with no electricity.  She ignores the insistent phone, but, reluctantly, not the knock on the window.  The young man there can’t be ignored: “Can you speak? Talk to me!”  To use another term with Greek resonance – he’s quite charismatic, so lack of eros is not her problem.  His concerned questions persist, from tender to frustrated shouts: “When did this happen?  We should go to the doctor!”  

“Part II – Branch” is flashbacks, first to her classes at a Vienna conservatory with a tyrannical teacher (“Dig deeper!”) who warns about the importance of her final soprano performance exam of “Dido’s Lament – Remember Me” aria from Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.  She coughs – and no song comes out.  Her teacher seems even more upset: “You are one of the best! I can make it better – we’ll start over.”  A doctor examines her vocal chords (in close up).  Diagnosis: a mysterious case of hysterical aphonia (My Greek-sourced vocabulary is almost done).

She flees them all (Doesn’t every mortal in Greek myth try to flee the will of the gods?).  Retreating to her family’s abandoned summer home, her childhood aspirations haunt her - large posters of Maria Callas stare down at her and her old piano, even as she attempts vocal exercises.  Her past starts to intrude physically, as each member of her family pushes in, her older sister, her mother and father.  Each at first brings succor, but ancient resentments soon pour out, against her, against each other, and against the demands of her art.

Their verbal clashes, room to room in this deserted mansion that today’s Greeks can no longer afford (redolent of Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard), are as tense and exhausting as any epic battle, hardly leaving any time for the combatants, or the audience, to breathe.  Inspired by John Cassavetes’ style, cinematographer Marianna Ellina follows them intimately as they inflict psychic thrusts and pain.  Gkikapeppas sees this elite family as the modern equivalent of the royalty at the center of classic Greek plays, yet the wounds inflicted feel achingly personal for Dido.  

The Maias: Scenes from Romantic Life (Os Maias - Cenas da Vida Romântica)
With the passing of giants in Portuguese cinema, film director Manoel de Oliveira in 2015 and Cinémathèque director João Bénard da Costa in 2009 (as seen in this year’s First Look Festival at MoMI), director João Botelho is carrying on the tradition of keeping a light on his country’s artistic heritage for a wider audience, especially as four decades of dictatorship suppressed social criticism until 1974.

Botelho presented the free New York premiere in Manhattan I did not attend, but his raison d’etre to make this saga of 19th century elite families clearly comes out of his dedication to the Portuguese classic by José Maria de Eça de Queiróz (1845-1900).  Ranked with Balzac and Tolstoy, this literary giant is less known to English-language readers.  His 1875 The Crime of Father Amaro was adapted to film in 2002 by Mexican director Carlos Carrera, starring Gael García Bernal, and that book made available in an English edition.  But The Maias, first published in 1888, was not translated into English until 2007.  Portugal’s Nobel for Literature laureate José Saramago has called it the greatest book by his country’s greatest novelist, befitting this Masterpiece Theater kind of treatment, and there seems to be a four-part mini-series version that extends from this over two-hour film.

For all that slow seriousness, the heart of the story that Eça de Queiróz narrates is noble youth – headstrong, selfish, passionate, and idealistic, who are the hope of a future that is constantly being constrained by the past.  At the center is Carlos da Maia (Graciano Dias), the scion of a great family, or at least of the great mansion of his grandfather Afonso (João Perry), who took him in after his parents’ scandalously dissolved marriage.  By 1875, Carlos has admirably achieved a medical education, that he seems to even sometimes put to good use, though his best friend João da Ega (Pedro Inês) enjoys the notoriety his political writings generate more than any revolutionary ideas beyond living off his mother and married women lovers, even if he sometimes has to conveniently leave disapproving Lisbon for their country homes or world travels.  

Carlos really comes to life when a mysterious countess comes to town and he falls head over heels in love.  Botelho takes them beyond languid formally costumed days and undressing those many layers at nights.  Even after the revelation of their linked ancestry, the Gilbert and Sullivan-esque coincidence boils over into a heedlessly discomfiting close-up passion, though there’s some symbolism about the incestuous ruling class.
But more than Portuguese social history, the reason to see the film is the production design.  The actors (and horse-drawn carriages) move through late 19th century Lisbon and country estates recreated in large-scale sets that are colorful and gorgeous, and dark interiors with oil paintings by João Queiroz.  These stage sets have both a heightened theatricality and a transporting sense of time-travel.

Marshland (La isla mínima)

In the tradition of Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night (1967) and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), Marshland is a brilliant noir policier in a distinctive environment where the fraught political and economic circumstances hang over the solution to a shocking crime.

With the same creative team as the more commercial anti-corruption crusading cop flick Unit 7 (2012), director Alberto Rodríguez, screenwriter Rafael Cobos, and cinematographer Álex Catalán plunge deeper into the conservative backwater of Spain’s deep south in late 1980.  The post-Franco dictatorship democracy is still rocky – there will be an attempted coup early the next year -- a local fiesta features a banner for the right-wing Fuerza Nueva, and the uniformed militia has more influence than the police department.  But there’s also labor unrest in the rice paddy fields of Andalucía, that provide half of the country’s crop, with strikes threatening the opulent villas of the white-suited plantation owners.  The employment situation for ambitious young people is bleak (a somber portend of the worse yet to come).

Into this social swamp comes Pedro (Raúl Arévalo), a punctilious detective demoted from Madrid for an insubordinate letter to the editor in a leftist newspaper.  His orders from the local police chief are clear: find the missing teenage girl and get out.  But everything is going wrong from the start of his investigation – his car breaks down so he loses his hotel reservation and he has to share the room with his gregarious, local, old-school assigned partner Juan (Javier Gutiérrez).  Worse, the parents of the missing girl are too terrified at first to tell them much, let alone the sister who shortly goes missing, too.

There’s the classic older bad boyfriend who looks good to blame, as far as the mayor is blithely concerned, but when the first body is found, his alibi and modus operandi don’t match the planned viciousness the cops are sickened to document.  Pedro keeps hunting and tying together clues, both physical evidence and coded tips from mysterious sources.  While Juan is full of helpful local empathy, he is more apt to beat the truth out of a witness.  Both are horrified to see a pattern of similar poor young women missing over the years, that no one wants to recognize, especially the higher ups in the town.

The crimes are as brutal as less classy movie serial killers.  But the opportunities to play out violent psycho-sexual kinks are so rooted in the area’s class and gender power structure that their awfulness helps motivate the detectives to suspensefully challenge the hierarchy and determinedly try to save victims, at the extreme risk of their lives (the local priest is notably ineffectual about the truth).  Adding to the gut-wrenching tension, Pedro and Juan also have to surmount each other as they learn about what each may or may not have done under Franco.  

Winner of ten Spanish Academy's Goya Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Editing, Marshland is available in the U.S. on DVD and streaming platforms.  But on small screens you may not appreciate the full vistas of day and night chases and confrontations along murky canals and narrow roads filmed above the Doñana National Park.

The Lure (Córki dancingu)

Born in the late 1970’s, the creators of The Lure look back fondly on the 1980’s through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia for their childhoods.  But beloved children’s stories and pop songs get a bit of blood and gore when mashed-up into a horror spoof.  With a nod to Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Mermaid, the animated opening with skulls in flooded caves shows debut feature director Agnieszka Smoczynska was more inspired by Homer than Disney when sibling sirens of the sea decide to come ashore (zs to my bias, Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid repeated on TV whenever I was home sick as a kid).

Promoted as Poland’s first musical, in Robert Bolesto’s very original script, sisters Silver (Marta Mazurek) and Golden (Michalina Olszanska) want to sing with a family band they see on the beach.  Silver falls in love with the handsome young bass player (Jakub Gierszał), while Golden views the humans hypnotized by their seductive duets as fodder for her darker appetites.  Brought on shore, their slimy fins dry out into legs, albeit with a few Barbie doll-like anatomical features when seen naked that make them intriguing to the band’s impresario, even before a splash of water can restore their bottom fins.  

Gypsy’s burlesque “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” comes to an American mind, but Smoczynska and the very tuneful songwriting sisters Zuzanna and Barbara Wronski (of the band Ballady i Romanse) grew up accompanying their musician parents at the dance hall restaurants of Warsaw – clubs like where this was filmed just before demolition.  (The Polish title means “The Daughters of the Dancing”).  Their childhoods were full of watching the vodka-filled cross-section of Polish society enjoy magic tricks and cover versions of local and international hits (all the appealing cast members, many known for their work in renowned serious Polish dramas, do their own vocals).  Now they are remembered as the only places with bright colors and erotic fantasy within the gray behind the fading Iron Curtain.  Some critics call this style Communist kitsch, but it’s fun, in the way that Grease is a pastiche of 1950’s America.

While some Communist-era references go by an American viewer (like a joke about Bulgarian vacations), who could resist the musical numbers, as the sisters rise in popularity with ever more elaborate routines -- and corrupt capitalist exploitation.  In addition to the misty meanderings that recall cinematographer Kuba Kijowski noir 2013 work in Floating Skyscrapers (Plynace wiezowce), The Lure won a Sundance Festival Special Jury Award for Unique Vision and Design earlier this year.  There’s also a strong feminist theme of the sisters’ romantic choice between conformist female appearance vs. the sirens’ naturally dangerous supernatural female power.  Silver’s traumatic more-than-cosmetic plastic surgery is almost as gruesome as Golden’s succubus-like cannibalism.  For all the comic plays on genres, their search for love, maturity and each other is genuinely heartbreaking.

The Beat of Love (Utrip Ljubezni)

The Festival featured another winning musical with echoes of Grease, set in the hip hop scene of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.  Writer/director Boris Petkovic made the documentary In the Year of Hip Hop (V letu hip hopa) in 2010, so he’s presumably an expert on this pop genre that is new to New York.

The raucous opening rap “Welcome to Slovenia” behind the opening credits and graffiti run is by Zlatan Cordic- Zlatko, one of the most popular rap artists in the country.  Here, he’s Zoki, the cap-turned-backwards, fist-bumping band mate of Bruno (Jernej Gasperin).  Bruno would doubtless be called “the cute one”, while yet again he wins the free-style crown for the night to the cheers of fans in the crowded club.  Their band is on its way to qualify for the big showdown competition that could mean a record contract.  Shades of Eminem in 8 Mile, but, despite the resistance of a few older folks in the audience who probably complain about Hamilton too, is a whole lot sweeter and broadly appealing.

Also performing back-up to acts there is pretty violinist Nina (Judita Frankovic) (Has there ever been a fiddler at a rap club in the States?).  She resists Bruno’s flirts until he proves he really is a free-lance masseur to soothe her aching shoulder.  Over the next days, he wins her over in truly adorable declarations of love outside her conservatory of straight-laced (and middle class) classical musicians.  An accidentally extended romantic date, with a song co-write, is followed by a misunderstanding that grows out of each making incorrect class presumptions about the other.  Amidst a few lyrical references to their generation’s frustration with the country’s economic problems (not all the songs had English subtitles), there’s also a touch of social realism back story to their relationship.  Nina practices hard to keep her scholarship so she won’t have to go back to Zagreb.  Bruno is an underemployed college grad frustrated by the country’s stalled economy; he supports his elderly aunt and mentors an admiring young break dancer.  Heck, he even convinces his ex-girlfriend to help him get Nina’s attention.

A continuing throw down with guys who look down at them (something about “southerners” vs. “northerners”) helps shake up Bruno’s broken heart depression, but leads to broken body parts (and a fun run through a clinic).  He finally shows up for rehearsals in a makeshift studio to finish their demo recording for a manager they impressed at their last performance.  What wins over Nina, the battle of the bands concert, and a broad audience, is the titular, absolutely irresistible, catchy number.

The Cleaner (Cistic)

Working at job to clean up after death has been played in movies for comedy in Christine Jeffs’ Sunshine Cleaning (2008) and in TV’s Spotless to cover up crimes.  In writer/director Peter Bebjak’s third film (the earlier features were not seen in the U. S.), what starts out as another depressingly gray Eastern European allegory of rapacious capitalism profiting from the death of communism, turns into a touching and exciting cry for freedom from anomie that could be hopeful or futile.

Tomáš (Noël Czuczor, in a scarily absorbing performance) is tightly controlled young man, who maintains a rigid, isolated existence amidst the Soviet-era apartment blocks in Slovak’s capital city Bratislava.  He picks up free-lance jobs methodically scrubbing apartments after deaths, while the occupants are at the funeral, and eats in his living space the same simple meals bought at the same shop, with barely a response to the flirty cashier Kristína (Rebeka Poláková), usually while fielding repetitive phone calls from his mother (Éva Bándor).  Furiously pedaling on his bike in his hoodie sweatshirt, he can’t always avoid bullies, but when he’s attacked, he ferociously strikes like a tight spring unwound.

Only very gradually are his back story and fantasies revealed.  Sometimes the cleaning brings on flashbacks of his childhood, exacerbated by visits to his mother, who seems to think he can clean up the violence that haunts their past (especially with bargain fabric softener).  As he socks away his earnings, he weaves a vicarious life in the nice places he cleans up.  If the clients are out of town, he stays and snoops (and sometimes takes souvenirs).  Not only does he sometimes barely get out before the residents return, he more and more becomes a silent voyeur on their lives and relationships (not that he tells his shrink at his required appointments).

His observations take a different step when he starts following Kristína, because his protective curiosity is piqued by the domineering, pony-tailed man in her life, Adam (Kamil Kollárik).  He not only searches their apartment for clues to their relationship, he hides and watches – from right under her bed, night after night.  He (and the audience) begin to realize that she’s a prisoner of her family’s past with Adam, like Tomáš and his mother.  The encounters Adam forces Kristína into get more and more bruising, and Tomáš instinctively reacts.  

Even after this violent rescue, Tomáš coming out from under the now helpless Kristína’s bed initiates a surprisingly sweet and tender period of mutual healing.  It is a strange, yet lovely, oasis that Adam’s gambling debts soon threaten.  In virtual silence with rising tension, Tomáš risks everything on a trap for revenge that could lead to a hopeful future – he even smiles.  Cynics and optimists will have different interpretations if he succeeds, but all will be riveted.

The Summer of Sangaile (Sangailes vasara)

The Festival brought back to New York Lithuania’s beautiful entry for the Foreign Language Academy Award after its theatrical run last year and winning the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema – Dramatic Directing Award for Alantė Kavaïtė.

Not only does the film introduce wider audiences to the Lithuanian extreme sport of aerobatics and the popularity of air shows (as in rural America too), the female adolescent love story feels sensuously fresh.  Staying at her family’s country home, seventeen-year-old Sangaile (Julija Steponaityte) flies head over heels into two passions.  Though she’d been afraid both of heights and fully exploring her sexuality, she gains the confidence to be able to choose between fulfilling her dream of becoming a stunt pilot and a new fashionably dressed local lover Auste (Aistė Diržiūtė).  

While the film is available on streaming platforms and on DVD from Strand Releasing, the big screen showing at MoMI allowed for full appreciation of the beauty of Dominique Colin’s gorgeous cinematography that swirls with youthful passion and optimism.

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