Exclusive Interview: Antonio Banderas, Classic Spanish Cinema and His Future

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Interviews

Published on Sunday, 16 May 2010 09:06

Written by Brad Balfour

While the stylish and ever-charming Spanish actor Antonio Banderas may be running off to promote to his latest Hollywood excursion, Shrek Forever After -- again voicing the hilarious re-invention of Puss in Boots: "I have to do my duty," he says -- his latest passion has been curating a free film series "Realism in Spanish Cinema 1951 - 1963" at Manhattan's Spanish culture center, The Cervantes Institute (211 East 49th Street).

Banderas, who serves on the Cervantes advisory board, conceived the idea for the program, and was on hand for its first two nights -- at the screenings of José Antonio Nieves Conde's Furrows/Surcos and Luis García Berlanga's Welcome Mr. Marshall!/Bienvenido Mr. Marshall! Spanning an especially tough chapter in the post-WWII fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco, the 10-movie set, running from May 10th - 19th, 2010, is comprised of classic works selected for their artistic and historical merit.

Evita, The Mask of Zorro, Desperado and other hits catapulted Banderas to Hollywood royalty. Though his celebrity has overshadowed his eclectic interests, they are at this 49-year-old actor's core -- something amply demonstrated when he was nominated for Broadway's 2003 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical thanks to his star turn in Nine The Musical.

Yet his early collaboration with director Pedro Almadóvar, including on the Oscar-nominated Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, established him as a symbol of Spain's post-Franco counter-cultural movement, the Movida.

Again, the handsome actor's voice animates the digitally generated Puss in Boots, one of the lead characters in the Shrek series. Shrek Forever After, the supposed finale, adds a further layer of kid/adult irony to it's humorous telling of

As Banderas explains in this exclusive interview, his versatility is re-confirmed in curating this series.

Q: This is a fascinating opportunity for you to look back at the history of Spanish cinema and explore it in various ways.

AB: Absolutely. But the interesting thing for me is not only in a personal way -- because I knew these movies -- it's the possibility of showing these movies. When I came to America for the first time, it was a surprise for me that very little was known about the Spanish Neo-Realist period of movies.

People knew about Italy and about France, but very little about Spain. So when Eduardo Lago got this crazy of idea of [adding me to] the Cervantes Institute, I thought, hmm, I have to [lend] some value to this title that they gave me.

It shouldn't just be my name on the programs and just my picture to bring people here; it was not enough. So I had this idea that he actually picked enthusiastically. We got in contact with [Carmelo Romero], the president of the Festival of Spanish Cinema in Malaga -- which is actually my hometown -- and a person that I met when I came to New York for the first time in 1984 presenting our movies at the time.

So it was a great opportunity and a framework because it's not just to bring movies in exhibition in big movie theaters, but it's in a very specific environment, the environment of the Cervantes Institute in New York, with the idea that actually this cycle can go all around the world.

There are 73 Cervantes Institutes all around the world; in [places like] Shanghai, Tokyo,  and in different places in the United States like San Francisco and Miami. With these movies people are going to recognize links that they can see now in filmmakers that are making movies in Spain, like Pedro Almodovar and Julio Medem.

The beginning of that was there in these earlier filmmakers. They're actually like the missing links that will make sense for [cineastes or directors] if they've been following Spanish movies to see this. At the same time, they can recognize different times in the history of my country.
 
Q: When they did this year's Spanish Cinema Now series at Lincoln Center, I realized people don't know much about that lost period when Franco was the dictator. It's little known outside of Spain that there was all this cinema being made at that time.
 
AB: Absolutely.
 
Q: Filmmakers were trying to react or respond even while they were being repressed; they had to work around it. This series makes a link between the cultural experience and the conflict, and offers us a chance to understand it. Would you agree?
 
AB: It's a picture, almost like an x-ray, not only of Spanish art in general, but of a political period in the history of Spain. The need, the cruelty, of what it was behind the Franco regime and the imposition of religion and other cultural stuff; that has to be known.

At the same time, the way that actually filmmakers at the time got to go around censorship in order to just go with an idea, they do it sometimes through comedy, black comedy; they have to hide. I saw a movie this morning which I've seen a couple of times before, but today I wanted to just refresh, and I saw Death of a Biker / Muerte de un ciclista. It's unbelievable because there is a moment in which you lose eight minutes of the movie, and you can see the jump in the movie. It was totally eliminated.
 
Q: Was that the censors?
 
AB: Oh absolutely. These guys came with scissors and mercilessly cut eight minutes out of the movie. So I think it's important for the people, if they really are interested in the Spanish cinema to see these, because it's almost like a ladder in which they took steps out.

It's very difficult to recognize what is happening now if you don't go back a little bit and have the sight of these guys that were making movies with a lot of imagination, against the dictatorship, without them knowing that they were criticizing them.
 
Q: What did you learn about yourself as a Spanish person who has lived in the United States -- and not as an exile -- but for creative reasons? You don't always get an opportunity to look at it on an intimate basis.
 
AB: It's very difficult because for me I get to almost an emotional place. It's of recognition of my own country that sometimes makes me cry. When I see Welcome Mister Marshall /Bienvenido Mr. Marshall!, I see this little village waiting for the Americans to come and fix the whole entire situation with the Marshall Plan. And they prepare during the entire movie for that to happen. Then the cars cross in front of them and they never stop. It makes me cry because this is a story of my country.

I can see my father and my mother reflected there. I can see something that has to do with your genes -- and at the same time a certain gratitude that we were able to overcome without a bloody revolution after Franco died, that there was a pass of power that made sense in an evolution, not a revolution.

So it makes me reflect about my own persona, about my own community. For me it's unbelievably interesting just to see how the Americans are going to react to that, because at the same time in Welcome Mister Marshall, you see people giving opinions, sometimes outstanding opinions, of the Americans that are [supposedly] going to come.

They talk about the Americans, how the Americans were seen in the 1950s and 1960s, and I just can't wait to see the faces of people [in this day and age] when we play Welcome Mister Marshall!

This movie speaks for itself, it is one of my favorites in the Spanish cinematography but I believe that it is very interesting to be showed in the USA.

For me, it was particularly important to show this movie because I have lived both realities, the Spanish one and the American one. They get mixed here in a very interesting way. The USA was like Santa Claus in this movie, the past of poverty that is portrayed in this movie as if it was a fairy tale.

There are two points of view that I would like that you pay attention to in this movie: the view of the priest and the view of the hidalgo [the old aristocrat]. The hidalgo says that Spain was a country that used to be big and the conqueror of the world. Some of the visions of the priest are even racist, but you don't have to forget that Luis Garcia Berlanga was criticizing these kind of ideas through these characters.
 
I believe this is the 15th time I've watched this movie, but I never get tired because it's really very funny and I even cry a bit. These movies are going to travel around the world via Instituto Cervantes.

Q: When you see the first film, Furrows/Surcos, back to back with this one, you get a two-sided look at Spain of that time, during the Franco regime -- the dark side and the comic one.

AB: The two movies showed the mood of the time, how the people survived and chronicled the society without judgement. The country was destroyed after the revolution, and though Hitler tried to pressure Franco into joining the war, all the country wanted to do was survive without money and over a million dead.

I admire this group of filmmakers because they were brave enough to face the Franco regime, but they had to do it using only their imagination. You needed to be very smart to avoid censorship, and they did it using irony and dark humor, but also by creating scenes that were very strong. They knew they would get censored, so other scenes were subtle but probably even stronger in a way so they would pass the censors. To me these filmmakers were masters in their field not only because they were very brave but because they were facing the regime in a very subtle way.

Q: After Franco died and the society undid the Fascist state, they made a peaceful transition to a democracy.

AB: Yes they made an amazing bloodless transition, without recriminations or revenge. We made an amazing recovery and our [recent] filmmaking reflected that as well.

Q: But now there is a crisis again, an economic one as Spain and other countries in Europe formed the Union and tried to stand apart from the U.S.

AB: It is a very difficult situation now. Until a year ago, a plumber thought he could afford a Mercedes, and then suddenly everything is crumbling. The situation in Greece is very dramatic. Spain or Europe doesn't think anymore they need the Americans. They are doing it by themselves but they are also connected in the world at large....

People like myself, Javier [Bardem] and Penelope [Cruz] and Pedro or Rafael Nadal, Severiano Ballesteros... We are all people that in a way are helping to shake out this feeling of inferiority that Spain has had for many years. Our success represents a shaking out from the past of our country.

Q: This is a crucial opportunity to reexamine yourself and your next step. Where are you going now? How will this affect you? Are you going to be directing? Your last few movies are more lighthearted. How will that change you?
 
AB: I'm going to work with Pedro Almadóvar again in August. We are going to do a movie, finally, after 21 years without working with each other. It's tough movie; he's going back actually to his roots as a balls kicker, and I love that opportunity.

And then I have an agreement with another company in Madrid. We're increasing the possibility of doing movies with more quality and quantity too. We have a plan to start producing more often than we were doing with a little company in Southern Spain.

We're just experimenting; it's almost like a laboratory just to see how we're going to do it. So now is a time to jump and take a leap ahead, and so I'm going to be doing that. And after that I may come here to Broadway and just get on the stage.
 
Q: Do you have an idea what kind of thing? Would it be a serious play or would it be a musical?
 
AB: It would be Zorba. We were doing a workshop here in town like four months ago, just reading in front of an audience trying to refresh the play because we don't want to just clean the dust off it and put it on the stage.

Q: Isn't it uncanny timing, given the situation in Greece?

The situation in Greece is very, very critical, I didn't think about that, but it would make more sense that we put in the mouth of Zorba, that street philosopher, things that are happening in actual time.
 
Q: Have you seen some of the Spanish horror films, some of the genre stuff?

AB: No... I saw [Rec] ....

Q: Of the Spanish cinema you've been seeing now, or cinema in Spanish language, what's been exciting you, who's been exciting you?
 
AB: I saw a movie the other day of director Julio Medem called Room in Rome /Habitación en Rome, which is a very sexual, interesting reflection of our life -- the relationship between two girls with a lot of style.

I liked [Alejandro Amenábar's] Agora very much; I thought it was a beautiful approach to a big dimension movie from the perspective of a market like Spain. We are not so used to this type of production. And I liked the last Almodovar movie, Broken Embraces / Los Abrazos Rotos.

Bobby Sheehan's "Docufantasy" Has a Twist

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Interviews

Published on Wednesday, 21 April 2010 03:44

Written by Brad Balfour

When I first moved to New York City as a freshly minted associate editor at Circus Magazine, I quickly immersed myself in the downtown scene where conceptual art events, outlandish fashion statements and cutting-edge rock performances flourished in its clubs, galleries and loft spaces.

As the scene developed at the end of '70s and flowed into the early '80s, places like the Mudd Club, Club 57, The Pyramid and Danceteria provided the environment for punk rock to merge with electro-New Wave, for sexual identities to alter and for new kinds of art to get invented.

For a moment there, just hanging out was something of a statement -- of rebellion against the encroaching conformity and cultural backsliding suggested by the Reagan era -- and a celebration of an artistic world where money and marketing weren't all that mattered.

Read more: Bobby Sheehan's "Docufantasy"...

Stranger Than Fiction Inhales Documentaries

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Interviews

Published on Wednesday, 27 January 2010 22:17

Written by Laura Blum

In the immortal wisdom of comedian Robin Williams, "Reality is just a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs." Judging by the high that Stranger Than Fiction has been delivering its audiences since the documentary showcase began in 2004, reality is quite the opiate (though perhaps less mutually exclusive than Patch Adams would have it).

Each STF screening — whether a sneak preview, special tribute or retrieved classic — is punched up with commentary from its filmmaker(s). The moveable feast resumes at the nearby Alibi bar, letting participants swap thoughts with a film’s creators, or hit them  up for professional tips, without a couple hundred other pairs of ears intercepting.

Programmed by Thom Powers and Raphaela Neihausen and hosted by New York’s IFC Center, Stranger Than Fiction opened its 12th season on January 12, 2010, with a preview of Vikram Jayanti’s Snowblind, about a blind dogsled racer in Alaska.

Upcoming titles are The September Issue, which deconstructs Vogue and its editor, Anna Wintour; The Cove, Louie Psihoyos's baring of Japan's dolphin racket; and Dan Klores’s sports-rivalry epic, Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks. Other entries in the series, which convenes every Tuesday night through March 16, are listed below and at http://STFdocs.comorifccenter.com.

On offer last night was Weijun Chen’s kitchen and class portrait, Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World, followed by a Q&A with editor Jean Tsien. It played to a sold-out crowd of mostly filmmakers, including such industry grandees as Barbara Kopple and Michel Negroponte.

"We turned away 10 pretty unhappy people in the wait line," faux-lamented Powers.

As vying entertainment platforms hack away at theatrical box office, interactive, personality-driven forums like STF assume an increasingly prized place in the cinema cosmogeny. Attendance for the hosted documentary series has grown incrementally with each season, making it a top performer for the IFC Center and fueling the amoeba-like division from two annual editions to spring, fall and winter trimesters.

"I could see these movies on Netflix, but the reason I come is because the filmmakers are here," said Bill Gallagher, associate producer of Marshall Curry’s forthcoming Earth Liberation Front exposé, If A Tree Falls.

Fellow STF regular Anne Checler is also drawn to the industry fold and its networking possibilities. "As an editor, I sometimes feel isolated, and here you really get that sense of community that I was missing."

To promote STF as a place to "meet accomplished people" in the New York scatter, "Passholder" bios are posted on the festival website, explained artistic director Powers, who also programs the documentary section of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Beyond providing the glue for current encounters, STF celebrates the "continuity of documentary filmmaking," per Powers. On January 19, cinema verité legend Albert Maysles joined Powers in retro-examining Running Fence, his 32-year-old portrait of Christo and the recently deceased Jeanne-Claude’s vast fabric fence along 24 miles of California soil.

On February 2, Sherman’s March director Ross McElwee will show two of his rarely-seen short works, Charleen and Backyard; and the February 9 session features Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujaim’s 2001 study in Silicon Alley hubris, Startup.com.

For the spring lineup, Powers is keeping tabs on current Sundance favorites. Though on a far more modest scale, the ongoing West Village series has begun to serve as a distribution platform not unlike a film festival.

"We are one of many incubators trying to find ways to bring documentary films to larger audiences," said Powers. A key impetus behind STF’s launch was to provide filmmakers with a venue to show their work to decision makers — without having to rent screening rooms — after failing to secure distribution on the festival circuit, he explained. Rather than pay to showcase their creations, filmmakers receive a $250 honorarium per STF screening.

Several of the series’ selections have gone on to commercial runs at its host multiplex. "The IFC Center has used our series as a barometer of how a film might perform," said Powers, citing Erik Gandini’s Videocracy as an example. Having sold out at STF, the documentary about Italian celebrity worship is now slated for a week’s run at the IFC Center in February. 

Still Bill is another title whose STF sellout swayed IFC Center programmers. Music fans have the series to thank for the currently extended showing of Damani Baker and Alex Vlack’s filmed biography of soul great Bill Withers.

As Powers put it, "The series is sometimes used as a buzz builder." STF screenings accommodate either 114 or 210 voluble cinema mavens, depending on the IFC Center plex.

In today’s glutted content marketplace, credible arbiters of taste command an increasingly important role, both viewers and curators alike, Powers opined. "Because you can’t stay on top of all the work that’s out there now, you look to other people to help you decide."

That glory once fell to film critics, he pointed out. "Film critics have been reduced to giving thumbs up or down or four stars," he said. "They haven't been supported by their publications."

What's more, film critics don’t run theaters. Said Powers, "If I see something at a festival, I can bring it straight to an audience."

With today's competition for public screens to exhibit documentaries, some might say that gratifying scenario is stranger than fiction.
 

Stranger Than Fiction: Spring 2009 Season
 
January 5: Pre-Season Special – Which Way Home (2009, Q&A w/ dir. Rebecca Cammisa)
January 11: Pre-Season Special - Valentino: The Last Emperor (2008, Q&A w/ dir. Matt Tyrnauer & editor Bob Eisenhardt)
January 12: Opening Night - Snowblind (2009, Q&A w/ dir. Vikram Jayanti)
January 19: Running Fence (1978, Q&A w/ co-dir. Albert Maysles)
January 26: The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World (2008, Q&A w/Jean Tsien)
February 2: A Night with Ross McElwee (Q&A w/ dir. Ross McElwee)
February 9: Startup.com (2001, Q&A w/ co-dir. Chris Hegedus)
February 16: The Art of the Steal (2009, Q&A w/ dir. Don Argott)
February 23: Winning Time: Reggie Miller VS. The New York Knicks (2010, Q&A w/ dir. Dan Klores)
March 2: A Healthy Baby Girl (1997, Q&A w/ dir. Judith Helfand)
March 9: Best of Orphans Film Symposium (Q&A w/ curator Dan Streible)
March 16: Closing night - David Holzman’s Diary (1967, Q&A w/ L.M. Kit Carson aka David Holzman)