History in the Forefront and the Background

Details

Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Features

Published on Friday, 15 May 2015 09:46

Written by Marian Masone

Never let your guard down in Cannes. Nineteen years and you think you can handle it all. Then: you take a header – splat! – right on the Croisette, spraining  your leg, knee to foot. But at least nothing’s broken; not even your sunglasses or your iphone, both of which went flying.

Just when you have that under control (get band-aids, antibacterial ointment, ace bandage – or French equivalent – and so on) and you can take care of it all without professional assistance (ie, a doctor), you realize your credit card has been stolen and the miscreants tried to charge over $5,000 in a half hour. Now you need the professionals  - that is, your bank. The rest of the festival will be an all-cash affair.

Somehow this intrepid correspondent still managed to take in a number of films. While waiting for the bank to get on the line, there was time to consider themes and trends in what has played in Cannes so far. It’s only the third day of the festival: what can a dozen or so films tell us about the world as we know it?

History certainly looms large, and the Holocaust is never far from our minds. Competition film Son of Saul, a first feature by Hungarian director Lázló Nemes (eligible for both Palme d’or and Camera d’or) tells an original WWII tale of a Jew in a camp who tries to get one murdered boy a proper burial. 

Actress Natalie Portman’s first directorial turn, A Tale of Love and Darkness, screened out of competition, puts images to author Amos Oz’ memoir of the birth of Israel. Portman also plays Oz’ mother, so we see the nation take shape through the stories she tells her son and his observations of his mother as she navigates the new country they are forming.

Politics and world events are the background for Arnaud Desplechin’s film My Golden Days which played in the Directors’ Fortnight. While the film is a memoir of young love and its lasting effect, when our protagonist (Mathieu Almaric is the adult Paul Dédalus) is stopped at the border coming back to France after years abroad, he relates how, as a teenager, he helped Jewish “refusniks” and carried out a dangerous mission while on a school trip to Moscow. The past is present, indeed.

Finally, even a new film that evokes the French New Wave – Philippe Garrel’s In the Shadow of Women, which opened the Directors’ Fortnight – has shades of the war (as in WWII) on its fringe. Actually the story of a couple in love who make low budget documentaries. Each has an affair, but they don’t want to leave one another.
Très français, non? The film is in black and white, and there are many shots of characters walking down Parisian streets (which certainly reminds me of la Nouvelle Vague). I may be making light, but I’m not putting the film down; it’s a lovely, light love story.

Oh – and the war angle? One of their subjects, a resistance fighter, turns out to have made up his exploits! Hmmm. Sounds familiar? Sounds contemporary? Europeans are still very preoccupied with World War II and with good reason, just as we in New York will be forever linked with 9/11. And there have been more than a few French who want to be associated with the Resistance, since they turned out to be on the winning side. As we have journalists now who want their own modern-day war coverage to be more exciting than it may have been.

Other groups of films will focus on other elements – whether as a major plot line or something on the side. No matter what the story is, there will always be reality grace notes.

As The Film Unravels: Cannes 2015

Details

Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Features

Published on Tuesday, 12 May 2015 08:27

Written by Marian Masone

As Sitting in a park in Paris, France… cue up Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” album (get well soon, Joni). Sitting in that park in Paris after screening a couple of Cannes Film Festival titles (sales agents often have early screenings in Paris before the festival starts), one starts to salivate, wanting to see more and more films.

As I write this (now in Cannes), final preparations are underway before the festival begins tomorrow. Carpets are being nailed into place – both inside and outside the Palais. Journalists and film professionals are scurrying to the accreditation office to pick up their badges. Then everyone will take a deep breath before the races begin, and it does seem like a race. There never seems to be time to stop, reorganize yourself, and shift your screening priorities. (They shoot critics, don’t they?)

In terms of the festival slate, the number of veteran filmmakers with works in this year’s program is staggering. The official competition boasts names such as Kore-eda, Garrone, Moretti, Van Sant, Haynes (as in Todd), Trier (as in Joachim, who is approaching veteran status), Paolo Sorrentino, Jia Zhang-ke, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Denis Villeneuve (who had two films in release in the U.S. last year). Ahem, we won’t mention the lack of women’s names here – certainly no “veteran” female directors are gracing the competition, but that’s another article.

In other sections, masters such as Woody Allen take a bow without the stress of a competition slot. Naomi Kawase opens Un Certain Regard and the lineup in that sections features a new film by past Palme d’or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul (remember that name and learn how to pronounce it; in a few years – if not now – you will be glad you did).
Bold face names of the auteurist kind, Arnaud Desplechin and Philippe Garrel, both make appearances in the Directors’ Fortnight. Why Desplechin’s film, “My Golden Days,” is not in the competition will be the subject of debate in the days to come. And two stars known in front of the camera – Natalie Portman and Louis Garrel (yes, Philippe’s son) – will make their directing debuts on the Croisette: Portman will present A Tale of Love and Darkness out of competition at a special screening, while Garrel’s film “Les deux amis” will bow in the Critics’ Week.

Big names, maybe big films, hopefully big ideas. In the festival’s Classics section, some past movie giants will be remembered with new documentaries, among them Orson Welles, François Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock, Ousmane Sembène and Sidney Lumet. All of these names bring me back in Paris, where the Cinématheque Française is currently presenting an exhibition on the life and work of Michelangelo Antonioni. Beautifully mounted, it invites us to take in all aspects of this genuine Master of filmmaking.

From photos taken during production of almost all of his films, to his own abstract paintings to letters, cameras, music that inspired him (or did he inspire it?) and clips of his seminal films, the exhibit is a portrait not only of the man and his work, but the culture and politics of the times. Times which, of course, he prefigured in his films. In fact, I took a very low res (and compromised by the shine of the plexiglass) of a handwritten note to Antonioni from Roland Barthes. I had to capture at least a small portion of correspondence between these two cinematic intellectuals!

The Cinématheque Française and critics write of Antonioni and his heirs. How many of these heirs will we discover – or rediscover – on the Croisette this spring?  This is the beauty of the Cannes Film Festival: the conversation of images that will take place for twelve days in which our cinematic past can connect with its future.

Utah Verité

Details

Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Features

Published on Tuesday, 07 April 2015 23:38

Written by Marian Masone

Sembene!

A substantial number of nonfiction films make a showing annually at the Sundance Film Festival. There are two competitive categories, for U.S. and World documentaries, as well as a documentary premieres section, which mirrors the dramatic feature premiere part of the festival. And once in a while, a documentary might sneak into the Next or Frontiers areas of Sundance.

Many of the films in the Documentary Premiere section hit on hot-button topics. Alex Gibney, know for sharp investigative filmmaking  (he’s shone light on clerical pedophilia in the Catholic Church, grand scale corrupt corporate greed, scandals in politics and sports, the war on terror and more), looks at the secretive but ultra-powerful world of the Church of Scientology in his hard-hitting film, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. While he hit hard, Scientology hit back. They continue to do all they can to disparage Gibney.

Other films made a big impact, including 3 ½ Minutes in the competition. In 2012 a young man of color was shot to death by a white man in the parking lot of a Florida gas station. Filmmaker Marc Silver covered the trials that ensued and exposes the continued cracks in our criminal justice system, as well as the ongoing racism in the U.S. that we cannot get rid of. This film won a special jury award for social impact.

Also winning awards (for cinematography and directing) and also focusing on social justice was Matthew Heineman’s Cartel Land, about the border wars with drug lords. And brothers Bill and Turner Ross won another special award for verité filmmaking for Western, their portrait of small towns on both sides of the U.S./Mexican border.

Crystal Moselle won the Grand Jury prize for Wolfpack, her strange but true portrait of a family whose children have been locked in a housing project. Their only contact with life seems to be movies, and so they act accordingly, becoming true indie filmmakers themselves. How she managed to make this film – and to get the children to trust her – could be a film in itself.

Filmmakers Jimmy Chin and E. Chai Vasarhelyi’s documentary Meru won the audience award for its stunning look at a Himalayan climbing expedition. (It would be a crime for a film about nature in all its glory not to be beautiful.) Laura Gabbert didn’t win anything for City of Gold, her look at L.A. food critic Jonathan Gold. But her brilliant study of the Pulitzer Prize winning writer goes beyond food and cultural criticism and speaks to the importance of the critic in the social fabric of our world.

While much attention is paid to the U.S. doc competition, the films in the World documentary section have a better chance of being noticed than the international features in the World dramatic competition. There’s always a chance that the compelling subject matter in a film will draw viewers’ attention.

Sembene! is a strong and moving look at the life and work of the father of African cinema, Ousmane Sembene. Directors Samba Gadjigo and Jason Silverman show his rise from immigrant dockworker to filmmaker. Sembene’s successful struggle is a grand tale, and not just a biography of the man, but the history of African cinema.

Listen to Me Marlon is another artist’s biography, but told from a unique perspective. Filmmaker Stevan Riley used unfettered access to Brando’s audio archives to allow the late cinematic icon to tell his own story. The film plays out like an investigation by the subject himself. Chad Gracia’s The Russian Woodpecker, which won the World Documentary jury award, is also an investigation. In this case it is the Chernobyl disaster. This time the investigator is one of the victims of the nuclear accident and his investigation includes a conspiracy theory that could very well be real.

At one point, The Russian Woodpecker turns into a political thriller, as does The Amina Profile. Sophie Deraspe’s documentary doesn’t so much expose the truth about the Gay Girl in Damascus blogger (pretty much everyone knew that already), as expose the dangers and costs – political as well as personal – that still exist on the internet.

After all the dark themes and suspenseful stories, turns out the winner of the audience award for international documentary was Dark Horse, a charming story of English working-class neighbors who take on the “sport of kings” and purchase a race horse. Their journey is inspiring, which would make someone like me turn away. But in the end the film is a fascinating group character study. And fascination is at the heart of the Sundance nonfiction films.