It is not the first time
that I made exciting discoveries at the
children and youth film section known under the terrible name
“Generation” but a section which seems to be for me the only one in this festival which has a distinctive contour.
Another aspect of this year´s
festival edition will stay with me: Except one example, almost all
other films which inspired me, are documentaries. Even though all of
these documentaries might have different approaches. Loving Lorna,
for instance seems to be very close to the favoured documentary
filmmaker of my country: Peter Nestler and Helke Misselwitz. I have
seen Loving Lorna in Berlin´s most beautiful film theatre
called Zoo-Palast and I feel again confirmed that documentaries
belong to the big screen.
The film is a miniature of
the life of an Irish working class family in a social deprived suburb
of Dublin. The father is unemployed for some years and caring for his
horses is his way to deal with it.
The mother suffers under
epilepsy, which restricts her life in a certain way. She compensates
this with her passion about books, reading, collecting all kinds of literature and bringing
her private library always in a new order. The small insights in the
dreams and longings of this people is filmed with big reverence.
These insights are very intimate but discreet at the same time. One
of their children is the 17 years old red-haired and freckled Lorna
who has inherited the love for horses from her father. Her own horse is at the same
age like her. She wants to become a farrier, a profession which almost becomes extinct. Her violent backache will probably prevent her
from fulfilling her dream.
The film is close to the
idea of André Bazin once described in his book on Jean Renoir, that “the
things appear like accidental in front of our eyes and it is just a
temporary privilege we enjoy.
The mother´s disease, the
father´s unemployment are evident in these stories they tell in front of the camera. The
“drama”, the tragedies hidden in almost every family story is here embedded
in every day actions. I remember a critic writing on Yasujiro Ozu´s
characters (the name escaped me) once that “Ozu´characters
are to busy with life to explain themselves.”
Even though different in
it´s formal approach, Loving Lorna is the second quite
Ozuesque film I saw after Ann-Carolin Renninger´s and René Frölke´s
wonderful From a Year of Non Events on this year´s festival.
The suburb itself is in
the process of transformation. A shabby high rise apartment building
is demolished. Power shovels with wrecking balls are often visible in this
suburb.
When Lorna rides on her horse it appears like an anachronism.
The Ozuesque love for things which irresistible disappear is present
in each moment. When the last image is fading away, the struggle of
this family will continue. But for this heartbreaking short time of
61 minutes we got a glimpse of this “circle of life”. Loving
Lorna is a piece of more recent social history but history which gets
for a short times faces, names , identities – literally bodies and
souls. And these bodies and souls appear through or despite this
strange phenomenon cinema which bases on a mechanical and chemical
process standardized by an industry which never cared much about the art,
documentary or poetry of cinema.
When the identities of
these wonderful people disappear in the anonymity of the end credits,
when the film takes literally it´s last breath a feeling for the
transients of life stays long, long, long with me. This little
masterpiece by Swedish twin sisters Annika and Jessica Karlsson I
have seen on the mighty big screen of a cinema cathedral called
Zoo-Palast (which enhanced ordinary life for 61 minutest to an
almost cosmic event), I am sure I got a glimpse of the “lost
paradise of cinema”, a term Wim Wenders once used for the films by
Yasujiro Ozu.
Rüdiger Tomczak
Screenings:
18.02, Cinemaxx 3, 16.00
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