tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54244808603023639372024-03-19T08:12:34.444+01:00shomingekiblog English blog of the filmmagazine shomingekishomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.comBlogger237125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-3220987522411784912024-02-26T14:50:00.001+01:002024-02-26T14:51:35.967+01:00Notes on Raíz (Through Rocks and Clouds), by Franco Garcia Becerra, Peru: 2024-Berlin Filmfestival2024 VIII.-Generation<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNKaLtWMfyayQ6k1NhoGc1JTCcuq6IYIUt7NO6UbY0S5uyyIipF35KyhOtACQBLvRKGigPSpIB0hFEdx7s9Ew3Pxm7DaKyLyNsk6dl4aBFs-CPLGpPLdkKn1YlDaPh_KPGxg2KbSUCOHsqs_SMvH4Jnf6c2iSi6zf43P51oP3s4MnLCmtWsBsO05DmAmlX/s2046/202406370_3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="850" data-original-width="2046" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNKaLtWMfyayQ6k1NhoGc1JTCcuq6IYIUt7NO6UbY0S5uyyIipF35KyhOtACQBLvRKGigPSpIB0hFEdx7s9Ew3Pxm7DaKyLyNsk6dl4aBFs-CPLGpPLdkKn1YlDaPh_KPGxg2KbSUCOHsqs_SMvH4Jnf6c2iSi6zf43P51oP3s4MnLCmtWsBsO05DmAmlX/w640-h266/202406370_3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><i>Raíz</i> takes place at the time of the qualification for the Football World Championship in Russia 2018, when only a few matches separate the nationnal team of Peru from qualification. All what we see in this film is already recent history. The film takes place in the Peruvian Andes. The boy Feliciano is part of a community of Alpaca herder. Most of this indigene community earns a living from selling Alpaca wool. But minor companies are still getting their hands on this land.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The wild and breathtaking beautiful mountain landscape show already signs of disgrace and destruction. The Alpaca herder are already divided in a group who is willing to sell their land and a group who resists. Most of these people fear that their traditional way of life, their culture is threatened by the miner companies. The presence of the miners are visible in scars in this landscape already caused by them. The landscape, how it is presented in stunning cinemascope images appears for now like one of the last paradises on earth.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">It really does not matter that the film is on the surface for now a beautiful drama appropriate for the very young audience. There is enough humor (Feliciano named his favorite Alpaca w”Ronaldo”). An old transistor radio is the only contact to the world outside. For watching a football match at TV, the people have to go to the nearest town. Into this seemingly “Feel good” film there is a very disturbing moment when the herders learn that some Alpaca´s are killed, probably by henchmen of the miner company for intimidating this community. It does not really matter how the film concludes, these traces of destruction this threat to a community which represents an own culture is an obvious wound in this incredible beauty.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The reason I do not get this film out of my mind, is not easy to explain. There is something which reminds me in the time when we were told fables and fairy tales in our childhood. Even though most of these modified fairy tales appropriate for children have happy endings, but the scaring parts of a fairy tale remains nevertheless as much in my memory than the enchanted happy ending. The tricky thing with cinema is, that it presents very often paradises but as well the idea that this specific paradise has already perished and the images wee see are only projections of a world which doe not exist anymore. Not only are the traces of destruction in In <i>Raíz</i> visible, it feels like Becerra wants us to see them. <i>Raíz</i> is a film of two opposite forces.The first one is the almost solemn evocation of the natural beauty of the landscape, this community and the solidarity of its people which keeps it together. The other force is the permanent resonating idea that this beauty is in danger to vanish, if it has not vanished already.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: small;">It does not matter how the film ends. When the last image disappear into the ending credits (a cinematic ritual and a much underrated aspect in the art of filmmaking) it can sometimes be as intense like we see the very last time a sunset. </span>One has to choose on its own if one is enchanted by this images of incredible beauty or if one feels like mourning about the images as a reflex of a world which has already perished. For me, it is just the tension between the two opposite aspects which made it unforgettable. Anyway, <i>Raíz</i> by Franco Garcia Becerra is a fascinating piece of cinema.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-76835650108809204812024-02-25T14:19:00.003+01:002024-02-25T15:21:46.691+01:00Notes on L´ Homme Vertige (Tales of a City), by Malaury Elois Paisley, France: 2024-Berlin Filmfestival2024 VII.-Forum<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYLyYMNGV-KLvV9ELDjarBjctAcylrYOZ0NldmExMAkb4YCwlqJ0g7GilMGNGROgN2LBfJxIocMd9_Pi2uvAX0LvLkVL_KXbK6cl-OH1R6isMXNOnyg1v4FC-Exso-DaIQJY-627w2hPR0_Mh8oyIfVMC3SMW34LuS78EOTphL17U8gOtcxHDz8-rMZg1y/s1915/202406554_1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="931" data-original-width="1915" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYLyYMNGV-KLvV9ELDjarBjctAcylrYOZ0NldmExMAkb4YCwlqJ0g7GilMGNGROgN2LBfJxIocMd9_Pi2uvAX0LvLkVL_KXbK6cl-OH1R6isMXNOnyg1v4FC-Exso-DaIQJY-627w2hPR0_Mh8oyIfVMC3SMW34LuS78EOTphL17U8gOtcxHDz8-rMZg1y/w640-h312/202406554_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The strongest echo the film left in my memory was the permanent noise of demolition of buildings. Several time we see demolition excavators destroying a huge building. It is hard to imagine if here is something demolished to build something new or it is just an orgy of destruction. Very often there is a duel on the soundtrack between this mean sound of demolition and the jazz music by Magic Malic. The music appears to me like an encrypted part of the cultural heritage which is in danger to vanish. It has its pendant in the images where the destruction, the rapid change is confronted with the protagonists who stay in this seemingly deserted city Pointe à Pitre.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Cinema is for me often a kind of traveling, but seldom a full booked all-inclusive tour. The fascinating images do not show the places where tourist spend their holidays. There is a mood of solitude and melancholy. But real traveling is not just vacation. If one never felt solitude, melancholy or sometimes even depression, one has not traveled at all. Guadeloupe, a Caribbean island is official an oversea department of France, but in truth one of the last colonies on this planet. How the filmmaker often said in interview, the majority of the population consists of descendants of slaves but it is owned by the descendants of slave holder. Their mother tongue is Creole. The own identity, history or culture is endangered. The only documented identity are their names in a French passport.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">To continue my idea of an analogy between cinema and traveling, what remains in my memory of all the journey I have made so far are the encounters with people I met, especially the native people. As a visitor, the stranger, you get at least an idea about their life, in the best case even a taste of their culture. But as soon as you get involved with the residents of a country you are exposed to, this completely other life, the escape to the next hotel bar is out of reach. Of course a film seen from the spectator´s perspective is a virtual journey. The 93 minutes of<i> L´Homme Vertige</i> are distilled out of a huge amount of work, experiences, decisions many years of shooting and many hours of footage etc. which we do not see in the film. But as these experiences and work is entirely transformed into images and sound, they nevertheless evoke in me moods I know from my travelings. Neither during traveling nor while I see a film, I can´t hesitate to imagine, even if only for short fleeting moments how it would be to live there to share a likely life like the people I met on my journeys or the people I encounter on the big screen. Especially the images, shot at night in this seemingly abandoned city I remember like a strange dream.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The protagonists in this film are really exposed to this urban landscape, climate or social conditions and very much involved in their own struggles. But for moments we share with them the mean sound of demolition which penetrates even the walls of their private apartments. It evokes the scaring feeling that what we call home is not guaranteed and can taken from us at any moment.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">There are the things we experience through these images of an urban landscape or through the tales told by the protagonists. But even the things we do not know, the complex postcolonial history and culture of Guadeloupe – there is a strange feeling they are hidden in these empty streets or in the individuals presented in this film. Malaury Eloi Paisley said once that she wanted ”to tell something about this solitude, the decomposition of bodies and the city at the same time”. Film is as well a kind of memory, but one which can at least theoretically stored forever why the biological human memory will vanish after the end of a life.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><i>L´Homme Vertige</i> is often like a complex musical composition. Each protagonist sings his own song. The images we see from them are the images they wanted to present from themselves. There is Eddy, who is struggling with drug addiction and always trying to make in effort to bring his life on the right track and whose stories are unforgettable. Ti Chal an old man who is very sick and is depending on an oxygen tube was an independent activist, Eric is something like a guardian of the endangered culture of Guadeloupe, especially literature and as well a living memory.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><i>L´Homme Vertige</i> is like a kaleidoscope. In it´s circular structure always around these protagonists the filmmaker knows for many years and to whom she has a very personal approach, the film reminds me in its circular structure as well in <i>Shilpo Shahor Shapnalok</i> (The Happiest People in the World) by Bangladeshi-German filmmaker Shaheen Dill-Riaz or in <i>Köy</i> by German filmmaker Serpil Turhan. These films are condensed accumulations of experiences and encounters.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><i>L´Homme Vertige</i> is an impressively cinematic encounter. That it was by accident the last film I saw at this festival must have been fate.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: small;">There is a very interesting conversation between Malaury Eloi Paisley by Christiane Büchner and Madeleine Bernstorff on the <i>Arsenal</i>-webseite:<a href="https://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/forum-forum-expanded/programm-forum/hauptprogramm/lhomme-vertige/interview-finding-history-in-the-body/?fbclid=IwAR2g-Ij8Wdu1cQH5SDCEggSDr_HfAk2imEmxSj-AK0TVdKMElGRTWAoyxno" target="_blank"><b> </b></a></span><a href="https://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/forum-forum-expanded/programm-forum/hauptprogramm/lhomme-vertige/interview-finding-history-in-the-body/?fbclid=IwAR2g-Ij8Wdu1cQH5SDCEggSDr_HfAk2imEmxSj-AK0TVdKMElGRTWAoyxno" target="_blank"><b>Finding history in the body</b></a></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-23944428708391042412024-02-22T11:26:00.003+01:002024-02-22T13:28:29.570+01:00Notes on The Fable, by Raam Reddy, India: 2024, Berlin Filmfestival VI.-Encounters<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1qFINadntq_561qBBAdcrnfyOZ_OAjmr_9CsRe5fPBaCl3NJ4xFzTpnkP1jqtDpTaKlASrLB2vJ1h-krxbGTtLHLnRtGXfq4lZNGPT0fuf4zhw_EbMuBKHXEGK2ZhcnaOJr65lSRgGWF1wvZHY8MlhA3gj7KKUPUzhZ2R1uXVNQ53TL-ER-HvSpi91phD/s3582/202409890_3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2160" data-original-width="3582" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1qFINadntq_561qBBAdcrnfyOZ_OAjmr_9CsRe5fPBaCl3NJ4xFzTpnkP1jqtDpTaKlASrLB2vJ1h-krxbGTtLHLnRtGXfq4lZNGPT0fuf4zhw_EbMuBKHXEGK2ZhcnaOJr65lSRgGWF1wvZHY8MlhA3gj7KKUPUzhZ2R1uXVNQ53TL-ER-HvSpi91phD/w640-h386/202409890_3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I walked through this film (which goes in different directions) like through a magic forest. At the beginning the paths are clearly laid out but the further are go, I am in another world. <i>The Fable</i> has many layers and it offers several ideas about storytelling and cinema. I should have watched it more than once. For now, it looks the film tells a quite straightforward story. There is an owner of a huge orchard near the Himalaya. He lives with his wife and his little son in a big house. His teenage daughter visits them while taking holiday from her boarding school. Several villagers are working for him. One day he finds a burned fruit tree and later more trees are burned. There are several suspects, the fat and very seedy policeman, but also some workers or the peaceful silent pilgrims. Reddy manages it from the beginning to capture the spectator´s attention and keeps it awake the whole two hours of its length. And I realize while writing this, that to form a quite usable synopsis is probably a meander. The film seems to me like a strange,wonderfully confusing mesmerizing dream.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">What I called a “straightforward story gets some small cracks early in the film. The owner of the orchard has a strange hobby. He constructs wings for human beings and uses it for himself like an Indian Ikarus. I have hardly time to ask myself why, because the film keeps already the next wonder in readiness. As we are captivated by the story, the film offers a beautiful meditation about storytelling. The mother sometimes sings, only for friends or the family. And at the evening she tells fables or fairy tales for her little son. The film does not only bring back the fascination when we are told stories in our childhood, the film itself turns into a celebration of storytelling very much like in George Miller´s culpable underrated film<i> Three Thousand Years of Longing. </i>If there is a beautiful image for the strange fascination of this film than this fantastic moment (indeed the most mesmerizing film moment I experienced at this year´s Berlinale) when the family is gazing to the stars which are very recognizable in the clear night sky. The whole screen becomes for a moment a night sky full of stars. It is a moment of pure cinema. As cinema recycled almost all forms of storytelling I got as well the idea that cinema existed already millenniums before the technical invention of the cinematograph with its illusion of movement. Just about this very moment one could philosophize endlessly. And yes – it is as well a film about light. The daylight, the dawn and the darkness of the night where only shadows and contours are visible. Unforgettable are the rides of the daughter at night through the forest, the lack of light and the fact that most of the visible things are hidden in the dark, inspires the imagination and for a moment there is this old fascination again, the time of our first encounter with storytelling. Shot entirely on 35 millimeter, the photography avoids arbitrariness of artificial light in so much films and television series. And one almost has forgotten how beautiful analog cinema looked like.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: small;">Why is the daughter so magnetized by one of these silent pilgrims? Who is responsible for burning the trees? And more questions appear. But these questions have no other meaning than stimulation. The film is like a tour de force through the visible concrete world and the invisible world of fables and storytelling and myths. It is film full of great cinema moments in which one want to sink in forever. </span>As I do not want to give away the pointe, I have to say after this firework of fantastic ideas, I was slightly worried how the film will be concluded. Too often I have seen films which use off their richness of ideas long before the film is close to its end. But Reddy surprises us a last time with a virtuous last twist. Needless to say that this film must be seen on the big screen. It is a powerful manifestation what cinema still can approach. As a film, <i>The Fable</i> was with <i>Comme le Feu</i> (Who by Fire) by Philippe Lesage the narrative film I saw at this year´s festival which come closest to a masterpiece.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-5266047551699495102024-02-21T16:00:00.000+01:002024-02-22T07:07:48.915+01:00Notes on Re tian wu hou (Remains of the hot Day), by Wenqian Zhang, China: 2024-Berlin Filmfestival2024 V.-Berlinale Shorts 2)<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCjEKCVoWFcjPEFVwFjx4i4RsEbCgIulT33mkaDumYKLz8T1eBEFkwpJ3aWglT1bIW3o5Pu0WPvL0TYMcjEOMwE8Ab3vCl381ZtmGfFZ336-XT-zkiOwharh5LIK0gBcMFj1i2WOxRhLQnu3wDT_YhuHG1vo-xg3dtR9xvrK97oMmn8XjMCpAg2eX2neG6/s3508/202412084_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1863" data-original-width="3508" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCjEKCVoWFcjPEFVwFjx4i4RsEbCgIulT33mkaDumYKLz8T1eBEFkwpJ3aWglT1bIW3o5Pu0WPvL0TYMcjEOMwE8Ab3vCl381ZtmGfFZ336-XT-zkiOwharh5LIK0gBcMFj1i2WOxRhLQnu3wDT_YhuHG1vo-xg3dtR9xvrK97oMmn8XjMCpAg2eX2neG6/w640-h340/202412084_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Taking place in the late 1990s the film is an insight into the microcosm of a Chinese family of three generations. The narrative movement is reduced entirely on every day moments. A child is playing on the floor, another one is crying and stressing the grandmother who is busy with organizing the household. One after another the children, grandchildren and the in laws gathering around a big dinner table. Despite their individuality is only perceptible through small hints, one can feel there is something behind the mundane routine. It is filmed like a memory of an event we usually don´t remember at all. From outside we hear growling thunder which announces the desired rain on this hot summer day. It is a milling crowd of vitality, the excited children the stressed grandmother and the other adults exhausted and tired from work. As the film is a visualized memory no one will ever remember, there will a smell, aa change of the light or the taste of the food which will remain but detached from this very dateable day. No one remembers a siesta after a rich meal. But the detached memory of a feeling of comfort will remain.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The film offers, or in better words, celebrates small every day moments, small non-events. The history of cinema, especially through the old Japanese masters taught us that non-events are as cinematic like action, drama and movement. The longings and the dreams of these protagonists are for a moment hidden behind the very day moments. The children are absorbed by their plays like the adults are absorbed by their routine. This “to be absorbed” by mundane life by routine does not necessarily mean they are happy or even content with their life. The family dinner is a kind of consent to bring all these different characters, their dreams and ambitions together. Soon they will be busy with their own affairs. But all of them are longing for the long desired refreshing summer rain to temper the summer heat.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Films which deal with the mundane life, the non-dramatic and the non-events are always interesting. The protagonists in this film might be bored, but the view at this slice of life is always fascinating and inspiring. As life-like this film appears, it is a cinematic reconstruction of a memory which never really exist. And in all its hints to every day life, <i>Re tian wo hou</i> is an almost abstract film. One learns hardly anything about this family and the individual stories of all its members. But we get an idea about a whole human life and that this life not only consists of big happy or sad events but mostly non-events and always recurring every day rituals. This was already the third short film which impressed me a lot this year.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-25923373006667918472024-02-20T10:21:00.001+01:002024-02-21T07:31:33.384+01:00Notes on Adieu Tortue (Bye bye Turtle), by Selin Öksüzoḡlu, France: 2024-Berlin Filmfestival IV. -Berlinale Shorts program 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi84a3TEvDAogfiXVLMZ618UeoF9Xc1pRIMdUdUmh3mTWyp7GqRgWHN0MFsx4galp6_sTNNLdhMGdnSDhda5TqQv52Fng1Rzt0rArIoZBRx-ACr63OJ9yqIgi9fNis0IgNDPh91thcXQXAzfKTYNY5lTAbm6fSuPxIv4R96X90fLICx4ZXir24wmZvsGnpR/s3508/202414399_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1896" data-original-width="3508" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi84a3TEvDAogfiXVLMZ618UeoF9Xc1pRIMdUdUmh3mTWyp7GqRgWHN0MFsx4galp6_sTNNLdhMGdnSDhda5TqQv52Fng1Rzt0rArIoZBRx-ACr63OJ9yqIgi9fNis0IgNDPh91thcXQXAzfKTYNY5lTAbm6fSuPxIv4R96X90fLICx4ZXir24wmZvsGnpR/w640-h346/202414399_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">I had no idea that this film will be still present in my memory a few weeks after the press screening. The wonder of a film is sometimes when it captivates you from the very first minute. The mountain landscape with its rare signs of human settlement sometimes vanishes almost entirely into the fog. This landscape is impressing and absorbing and sometimes it seems it will suck us completely into its world. A little girl who just lost her mother meets an adult woman. They walk together for a while. The little girl and the woman walk through this strange and fascinating world like two lonely and homeless souls. The woman left her father years ago. The little girl reminds me in the little Ana in Victor Erice´s masterpiece<i> El espiritu de la Colmena</i> (The Ghost in the Beehive). Each glance of her is an unspoken question.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"> Sometimes the protagonists vanish in this foggy landsape and with them the traces of their individuality. There is a lostness in space, sometimes like in a painting by Caspar David Friedrich. I remember there is a small pantomime scene between the two different characters. They try to assert their presence in this landscape which is always in danger to vanishes ino the fog. Is this the excellent landscape photography or the presence of the landscape itself which gives the film a strange and almost dreamlike quality? The encounter of the girl and the woman is as well an encounter of two stories and two stages of a human life. They are crossing each other, mirroring each other and finally they depart in different directions. Their stories might only be implied but nevertheless in our imagination they are perceptible beyond the limited time of 25 minutes and its masterful framed images. Each of the protagonists is a female Odysseus and the film is partly as well a Road Movie. The film offers both: a meditation about human life in an seemingly endless landscape of mountains and fog but one can also enjoy it as a mesmerizing cinematic poem. Near the end a little truck picks them up. And old woman sings a song. As simple this moment is, it transported me for a moment into a paradise of cinema. The whole film becomes finally a song. </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">What we see might be only 25 minutes long and soon after the film is finished when it begins its second life in our memory, there remains a strange sense for infinity. The 25 minutes we have seen seem to extend themselves. Selin Öksüzoḡlu offers in her short film a powerful demonstration of the beauty of cinema. And it is a film which enfolds its visual beauty only on the big screen. And as it is the last Berlinale where I will regularly review films, I am happy to accept this little gem <i>Adieu Tortue</i> as a nice farewell gift.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-40124500975299244302024-02-19T13:28:00.004+01:002024-02-20T08:16:23.246+01:00Notes on Kaalkapje (Baldlocks, by Marthe Peters, Belgium: 2023-Berlin Filmfestival III.-Berlinale Shorts Program 2<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeQ4452qkRzz2Rgu09WDw31RfIr4xL4UdV13eBgvlW-UUzCbHApgLXso5TBOmLpONpjEVnpPA3cf7jUczYbeRvwdIsAobKvEMkTBvlJwq3Xvh7pVMyPkRVEtOmowJBHSgJxU_1xS5dCio3Op-MQWnwPNxmzeiFmB-zFZWOQNJ9LZwnquVxXriy1GUgKJjU/s2884/202404955_2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2138" data-original-width="2884" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeQ4452qkRzz2Rgu09WDw31RfIr4xL4UdV13eBgvlW-UUzCbHApgLXso5TBOmLpONpjEVnpPA3cf7jUczYbeRvwdIsAobKvEMkTBvlJwq3Xvh7pVMyPkRVEtOmowJBHSgJxU_1xS5dCio3Op-MQWnwPNxmzeiFmB-zFZWOQNJ9LZwnquVxXriy1GUgKJjU/w640-h474/202404955_2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">How can one describe a film which is a deeply moving autobiographic essay and at the same time a very wise reflection of image making. It is the relationship between the vulnerable body and soul who has survived a serious cancer disease in her early childhood and the precise devices of modern filmmaking. The footage of the rollicking baby the filmmaker once was are integrated in this short but very intense piece of film. This footage from the filmmaker´s early childhood is shot by her father on video and the kind how it is inserted in this film, it appears like an artificial extension of the limited human biological memory. The father´s video recordings conserves a memory which would be otherwise lost. In her voice-over commentary, the filmmaker reflects about the traces the long struggle against her cancer disease has left on her body and soul. Her voice over-reflects as well about this huge amount of work which was needed to help her survive and recover. If I remember correctly there is not much seen of the adult filmmaker, I remember only a detail shot of her body during a massage.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The baby we see in the old video footage differs from all the childhood photos and videos we know from our family and friends only through a tube in her nose. The baby is just old enough to face playfully during her first steps the challenges gravitation and balance. The film does not work only on two time levels, (the early childhood and the present), there is also a special relationship between Peters voice over-reflections which is explicit personal and for now - the footage of her childhood which is observant and which emphasizes the almost neutral objectivity of the image making device. The emotion this footage evokes in Marthe Peters family we can only guess. But through the montage, this Proustian jumps between the two time levels evokes in me the impression of a very moving cinematic poem. It is not only a film about devices, the medical ones who guaranteed the protagonist´s surviving and recovering and the image making devices who enabled her to find images for this struggle against this treacherous disease, the film becomes a metaphor for life or its power to struggle for surviving itself.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><i>Kaalkapje,</i> by Marthe Peters is not only an excellent example for <i>Caméra Stylo</i> but as well one of these wonders which reminds us not only why Cinema was invented but at the same time why the short film, the oldest format of filmmaking since the beginning of cinema is still as vital like 129 years ago. Anywhere between the wonderful essayistic films by Trinh T. Minh-ha and the heartbreaking explicit autobiographic films by Yang Yong-hi, <i>Kaallapje</i> is a short but unforgettable and very intense film experience.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-89340132475402794882024-02-19T11:01:00.001+01:002024-02-19T11:05:34.876+01:00 Notes on Comme le Feu (Who by Fire), by Philippe Lesage, Canada: 2024-Berlin Filmfestival2024 II. -Generation<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVi90Na26IP7pSt2-0u6gDcBzuLZiOUIfZr7gYwddCu9z9wSus-L6Hd9hXpQR-Z0cjsDxcIop0H2aZ2U-VRfA-2pQJSmwVFIWe1Vay3MfHK47pzsAUGcui5gZaleACoV9N2ww4lStXQrV8GYA5wLhyzMN4Cskj4ObDX5emRi9Jnc7hSPiOpaGd-KTV_G7D/s2560/202403456_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="2560" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVi90Na26IP7pSt2-0u6gDcBzuLZiOUIfZr7gYwddCu9z9wSus-L6Hd9hXpQR-Z0cjsDxcIop0H2aZ2U-VRfA-2pQJSmwVFIWe1Vay3MfHK47pzsAUGcui5gZaleACoV9N2ww4lStXQrV8GYA5wLhyzMN4Cskj4ObDX5emRi9Jnc7hSPiOpaGd-KTV_G7D/w640-h268/202403456_2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p> </span><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: small;">The camera follows a driving car on a Road which curls itself through a huge forest landscape. It is a very long sequence with a quiet but anxiously swelling music. One almost feels the thin red line between the perception of a real landscape and the gradually sinking into a dream. The car and its protagonists seem strangely fragile in this mighty dominating landscape. Two films came into my mind: The opening sequence from Kubrick´s <i>The Shining</i> but as well the more horror between people in Konkona Sensharma´s bleak <i>A Death in the Gunj</i>. </span>Jeff, a teenager is invited by his best friend Max to spend some days in an isolated forest cabin. With them are Max´s father and his sister Aliosha (in whom Jeff is secretly in love with). After the car drive, the film director Blake Cadieux (once a very close friend of Max´s father), picks them up with a water plane, the only way to reach the cabin.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The film has a bit of this situation everybody knows. The anticipation of an exiting trip and later the disillusion that one has chosen the wrong people to travel with. The impressing natural environment overstrains especially the young Jeff very soon. One of his first experiences he has to make is to go astray in the forest, just after he walked by night a few hundred meters away from the cabin. One wrong step and one can loose the orientation</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: small;">Lesage uses often very long takes, sometimes with slightly camera movements or even static shots. A motive which recurs several times in slightly changed variations is when all the visitors of the cabin are sitting around the dinner table. These are scenes without the slightest manipulation and here Lesage has a deep confidence in the attention of the audience. These dinner table scenes alone remind me in another master of long takes, the Taiwanese Hou Hsiao Hsien. Like out from the nothing the tensions between the protagonists are loaded up like static electricity and it often leads to harsh emotional outbreaks. The anticipation fades away. Cabin fever is taking over. Overstrained and confused by this stay in a very isolated place, most of the characters become not only more aggressive but strangely as well much more vulnerable. In one of these dinner table shots and after a seemingly harmless joke, a harsh argument between Max´s father and the film director breaks out. The father, a helpless neurotic is the first victim of Blake´s often cynical games. </span>The film motivates the tensions between the protagonists only in small hints which raise the feelings of doubt and suspiciousness. Blake Cadieux, once a successful director is obsessed by survival actions, Hunting or canoeing in wild waters. The aging man is obsessed with his own masculinity. The kind how he uses the weakness of others for his benefit is close to what Konkona Sensharma calls toxic masculinity referring to her likely gloomy film <i>A Death in the Gunj</i>.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: small;">Even though the film appears like a quiet volcano, the more the film proceeds, one awaits its eruption at any moment. </span>There is as well an uneven duel between Jeff and Cadieux, the boy once idolized. Jeff, thinks that Aliosha has an erotic relationship to the older Cadieux. A photograph (we do not see) is his proof. The film neither confirms Jeff´s suspiction nor does it denies it. Even though the film takes place at an isolated place as it is surrounded by a mighty wild natural landscape, the protagonists are much too busy with themselves. Even without much dramatic twists, the film slides slowly into a tenacious sticky undefinable nightmare.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: small;">From the promise of some exciting days (especially for Jeff and his hope to come closer to Aliosha) almost nothing has left except a hangover of loneliness, tiredness, disappointment and melancholia. </span>In its excellent Cinemascope photography and in masterful composed images, it is one of the richest films I saw this year and it reminds me in some films of another great master from French-Canadian film history, Jean-Pierre Lefebre. Its unusual long takes create a subtle but constant suspense. It is quite a heartbreaking contrast between the film´s rich and cultivated cinematic language (the film is a visual fest on the big screen) and the heavy melancholia it leaves us with. As a film lover, I am sure I have seen one of the finest films at this year´s Berlinale, as a human being I think it is also the saddest film I saw this year.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-78270142698258877242024-02-18T16:56:00.002+01:002024-02-18T17:14:36.927+01:00Notes on Gokogu no Neko (The Cats of Gokogu Shrine), by Kazuhiro Soda, Japan: 2024-Berlin Filmfestival2024 I.-Forum<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd1HaT7kcz8Y8RzeTUKgcI948VVvfaqQ052Mvx54J_0g1VA0_c16nPqqekQglqmfIL_bwP_6bPe36_g4b57aVQDhpL65TZ1zWXSAYb8HZW0XauXZPo1HUUG5ngLMvLFtL0q0_YHPJ23E4Om7JfNRWULybLZA2hJC3JOD8wuHlYpiKpwc_zHuBNBkT_j4YA/s1920/202401305_3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd1HaT7kcz8Y8RzeTUKgcI948VVvfaqQ052Mvx54J_0g1VA0_c16nPqqekQglqmfIL_bwP_6bPe36_g4b57aVQDhpL65TZ1zWXSAYb8HZW0XauXZPo1HUUG5ngLMvLFtL0q0_YHPJ23E4Om7JfNRWULybLZA2hJC3JOD8wuHlYpiKpwc_zHuBNBkT_j4YA/w640-h360/202401305_3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">A ginger colored cat fights determined with the “fur” of a wind protection microphone. It is a strange and rare moment in this film where the observed subject has a direct interaction with one of the film´s recording device, especially in a film that cultivates mostly pure cinematic observation. This observation of cats and men is captivating precise and every emotion or mood which can be evoked seems to originate from the observation itself. Only in a few moments when Soda talks with some residents of this village he talks about himself. Once he tells an elderly resident how and why he became a filmmaker.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">There is no hierarchy between the significant and the negligibly in this film. Cats and people are equally present. The motivations of the people we can understand halfway but the cats, these wonderful creatures (impossible to dislike the film when you are a cat lover) lead their own life and seem to understand the world in a different way not always according to human understanding despite the fact that the relationship between men and cats is almost as old like ancient civilizations and mythologies in different cultures. Even though the film seems to be a fest for cat lovers, Soda does not rely at all on superficial cuteness. His cinematic view reveals reality layer by layer like analyzing an onion. Some of the old residents don´t like the cats because of the dirt they leave behind. Some members of the district administration suggest to use the stray cats near the Gokogu shrine as a tourist attraction. For a big part of the film, Soda follows the hard work of members of an animal protection association. The life of stray cats is miserable. They capture them in cages, cover them up to avoid their panic. They bring them for surgery or castration to the vet. The bitter truth is (someone mentions in this film), is that stray cats have a very short expectation of life. The fight for food, injuries and several infectious diseases are evident for a very unlucky life. I know, this description sounds much more sober than the film really is. There are many moments of beauty and lovable humor. A group of cats are lurking around some old angler hoping there will be some fishes given to them. There are some shots of this picturesque environment at different day times with different weather. Sometimes it is only the change of light which gives a seemingly small moment almost the poetry of a cinematic haiku. But they are never forced, they seem accidentally originating in front of our eyes.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">First of all, <i>Gokogu no Neko</i> is a meditation about the seeing itself. As much as Soda has confidence in his precise technical devices, his view on this piece of the world includes as well a lot of tenderness. His creative achievement has for my side to do with one of the central thesis of André Bazin who thought the the things, captured by the camera will enfold themselves. The film has a refreshing lightness and it looks never exerted. Kazuhiro Soda´s film is a cinematic pleasure about seeing, about the perception of the world without the chains of predetermined concepts. It is not only a film which I enjoyed to watch but which I always enjoy when it appears in my thoughts or memories.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-66956944751651455212023-11-26T15:04:00.003+01:002023-12-08T06:57:42.347+01:00 Notes on Main Tenu Phir Milangi (We will meet yet again) by Supriya Suri, India: 2022<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7XgC1f6kJlXWVYjpZ9sj8rcXMFtOoMsdBNtHja2YmNe-GwdZkYqhrrLsd7uO0187hpvn5mRbm_19ecxOnbbjKV1h6_4OjnJk60RTylfYXTUvEgUVJRWaN1IQI0naH2S_bxrXEVb_9KIlyxz8LFdiDAD0a_PVBVudS1El3-3-tr8_zjAWZTdBaM-MlM4_r/s3508/MTFM%20(5).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2480" data-original-width="3508" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7XgC1f6kJlXWVYjpZ9sj8rcXMFtOoMsdBNtHja2YmNe-GwdZkYqhrrLsd7uO0187hpvn5mRbm_19ecxOnbbjKV1h6_4OjnJk60RTylfYXTUvEgUVJRWaN1IQI0naH2S_bxrXEVb_9KIlyxz8LFdiDAD0a_PVBVudS1El3-3-tr8_zjAWZTdBaM-MlM4_r/w640-h452/MTFM%20(5).jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /> </span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">An old woman is reflecting her life, talking about her family and her late husband. Some of her family members have already died. She has no regrets in life and seems to be aware that she is already in the last chapter of her life. This old woman is the grandmother of filmmaker Supriya Suri. Three woman of different generations take a trip to places of their ancestors and finally to the holy city Varanasi at the Ganges River. <i>Main Tenu Phir Milangi</i> is Supriya Suris third long documentary. After <i>Maestro a Portrait – a Film on Buddhadeb Dasgupta</i> and <i>Aruna Vasudev – Mother of Asian Cinema</i>, her newest film deals with her own family history.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: small;">They talk a lot about religion and the very colorful and complex Indian mythology. Sometimes, especially the elder women falls into mantras or prayers, some spoken some almost sung. But for now, the film cultivates a rather sober almost ascetic form, like a report on a journey and a contrast to their talk about Indian mythology. Later one realizes that it is not only a journey to places but as well a journey through time. After a while, this seemingly sober film fills as if by itself with different moods and emotions. And very soon, one realizes that especially this prosaic tone is the cause of a very relaxed but perceptive seeing. There is also a relationship between movement (they travel by train or walk through long but narrow lanes) and statics when they sit and reflect. </span>As we have to listen them often talking, sometimes about very mundane things like what to do with the things one leaves after the end of life, sometimes very concrete memories and very often about religion and mythology, it is very interesting that the very worldly affaires in life and the spiritual ones go hand in hand. The sharp limitation between the material and spiritual world we are now used in the West, does not seem to exist in India. There are more nuances in this film, in the spoken language but as well in its images. These nuances are often small, sometimes deliberately hardly perceptible. In retrospect, I still wonder that these images are so much more evocative than it seems at the beginning. Martin Scorsese´s famous quote that “Cinema is a matter about what is in and what is out” is here often very helpful.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The women stay at the holy river Ganges. The heaven is heavily clouded and together with the river it is a very greyish environment. Very prosaic images which are far away from all the colorful travel brochures. In another moment, they ask a priest for help. They are looking for some recordings about their ancestors. The priest seems beside his mantras and prayers very well organized. He looks into a huge kind of register book. And this spiritual man has at the same time the eagerness of a historian. It is a small moment but it is very significant for this relationship between the world and the hereafter. The impact of the film is not only what it shows but as well what it evokes. There is a moment when the grandmother crosses a long bridge. For now this event seems to be recorded accidentally and not forced. But as soon as I remember this moment, this image will be loaded up to a moving impression of the probably last big journey of an old woman.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">They put little boats with flowers and lights into the Ganges, another ritual to honor the ancestors. A celebratory gesture, a beautiful moment that stands for itself. Such moments have often the fascination of the films by the brothers Lumière. And what I called the prosaic and sober tome of this film turns into a special adventure of seeing and reflects how we see. In the context to the whole film, it looks rather like that what André Bazin once said about film, “that the things must present themselves”.</span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Sometimes we see the three women in the cafe of a hotel lobby. A huge window opens like a big screen the view to the environment of the river landscape. While the women are talking about their family history (some old photographs are inserted), we can also look out of the window. The very personal and the idea of the whole world around us are connected. What I called prosaic or sober is probably Suri´s confidence in the ability of film in recording the material visible world. One has to look a bit closer to recognize some very sophisticated, even poetic visual ideas, often imbedded in very mundane actions. In another scene they sit on an open air terrace. No window frame separates them from the world around them, the border between the private, personal and the world is suspended. It is</span> night at the Ganges. Only tiny myriads of light punctuate the darkness like distant stars in the universe. During another ceremony on the Ganges we see a big crowd. We hear music and prayers. The crowd begins to dance. Even the old woman begins to move and is clapping her hand according to the rhythm. She seems almost absorbed. It is again a beautiful picture about what defines us as individuals with a specific biography and what connects us with the rest of our fellows and the world. At the same time it also connects us to our ancestors from the very beginning of storytelling in human history which probably began with songs and dance.</div></span><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: small;">The journey is over and the film´s prologue is like a very Ozu-like echo. The end has a moment which is very moving despite its very mundane event and the the final scene from Ozu´s masterpiece <i>Banshun</i> (Late Spring) came to my mind. The old woman meets her daughter on the street. Her daughter bought her some fruits. She asked her she wants to come with her but the old woman answers softly that she wants to be alone with herself. Even though it is an every day farewell, there is a slight idea of panic felt by the daughter worried about the fragile old lady. Alone in her apartment, the old woman peels a citrus fruit. She is framed like in a portrait photograph, a piece of time frozen for the eternity. She looks like absorbed by her memories. If the memory of this concrete trip or the memory of the journey called life - I do not know. </span>These seemingly casually images turn very soon in an unforgettable film experience. After sleeping a night over it (like we do after a long and moving journey), the film appears to me like a beautiful, at times melancholic meditation about the fleetingness of life. <i>Main Tenu Phir Milangi</i> is probably Supriya Suri´s most beautiful film to date.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWH8DThEH4BvgFcMUifnybeVO29kF2EQwhEbB-ZuWewMYYpWKOYeu_jtgSKEqPglrrV44iWnzLKqGVd_fyUTtSyy3j9Xt7Ygb19GWK1oF4KmJhmY-k1UXTft7cuRuHI0O1agUaCtKTNQXvt7QtHtbhrRvHi4xUTikoDRwcA0JJuzI_EjNvylk1TlZEOFaU/s3508/MTFM%20(3)%20(1).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2480" data-original-width="3508" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWH8DThEH4BvgFcMUifnybeVO29kF2EQwhEbB-ZuWewMYYpWKOYeu_jtgSKEqPglrrV44iWnzLKqGVd_fyUTtSyy3j9Xt7Ygb19GWK1oF4KmJhmY-k1UXTft7cuRuHI0O1agUaCtKTNQXvt7QtHtbhrRvHi4xUTikoDRwcA0JJuzI_EjNvylk1TlZEOFaU/w640-h452/MTFM%20(3)%20(1).jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><br />shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-91437753012384551352023-10-18T14:38:00.001+02:002023-10-18T14:38:21.721+02:00 Notes on My Darling in Stirling, by Bill Mousoulis, Australia: 2023<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfHBFXFELpoGH9c3AOp_XJztS862i9KF5E3-ZFHDTx9sSqC3JjGcTn8lkWCS0VTZlBCFjkmhcbUqsl-wIwga36j8gSbFAa_IY7dx7XHtR5MlrGiQdez4suyhDrygAxfXCyAN86GNKZuePKybXpqwK6nugXNLhxYubadsnjehSaG1FuIx-HWFMAFxYKKMU5/s1280/darling%20in%20stirling%203.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfHBFXFELpoGH9c3AOp_XJztS862i9KF5E3-ZFHDTx9sSqC3JjGcTn8lkWCS0VTZlBCFjkmhcbUqsl-wIwga36j8gSbFAa_IY7dx7XHtR5MlrGiQdez4suyhDrygAxfXCyAN86GNKZuePKybXpqwK6nugXNLhxYubadsnjehSaG1FuIx-HWFMAFxYKKMU5/w640-h360/darling%20in%20stirling%203.jpeg" width="640" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The kind I walked through Bill Mousoulis´ new film <i>My Darling in Stirling</i> with open eyes and ears appears to me like I have witnessed a strange wonder. The urban landscape of the Australian town Stirling is real, nothing seems to ne designed especially for this film. The bookstores, the coffeeshops, the streets and the alleys are welcoming us. The leaves of the trees are blazing in different colors. Sometimes, especially the red leaves turn this location into an engrossed zone. A duck family crosses a little street. We can not only enjoy looking at all the things enfolded in front of our eyes and we feel invited to dream from time to time. For now the only perceptible artistic engagement seems to be the fact that it is a musical in which each word is sung. Before the film introduces the love story of Emma, the student and Nick, the waiter, I look at this piece of the world like I am already in love myself, especially in this very mixed condition between being engrossed and the innocent perception of a child.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The love story of Emma and Nick, the story about Emma´s mother or her aunt, they all are embedded in these images of Stirling. The emotions, or the kind the film distinguishes its characters are as well connected with a celebration of every day rituals. As the film has a wide range between being realistic and engrossed, it has also a wide range between strong emotions and mundane actions.</span><span style="font-family: arial;">There are two interactions between Emma´s mother and the postman (who will be retired soon) at the beginning and near the end. At the first encounter the sung text suggest a kind of every day politeness, the second one appears as a subtle almost Ozu-like echo of the whole film. The film like the song texts works itself from the mundane to the depth of the characters souls. The postman might not be a central character in the film. His story is not enfolded but there remains a strong feeling that he has an own story and an own identity which exists beyond the length of the film and the restriction of the frame.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Bill Mousoulis mentioned that his film is inspired by Jacques Demy´s masterpiece <i>Les Parapluies de Cherbourg</i>. There is also a wide range between playfulness and a certain formal strictness. In the combination of two seemingly disparate aspects like realism and the very artificial form of a musical (the songs are recordesd by other singers), <i>My Darling in Stirling</i> approaches in a different way than Demy an authenticity of the characters, not far away from the subtle dramas by Yasujiro Ozu or Mikio Naruse or the films by Eric Rohmer and Rudolf Thome. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">As we are introduced to the characters through rather mundane moments, the film in its images and sung dialogue, explores the characters with more depth. The mourning of Emma´s mother for his late husband or the aunt who is still dealing with the loss of her son – these moments evoke a lot of emotions. But they never seem to be forced. The emotions and moods which are evoked seem to have grown all from this visible very concrete environment of Stirlingand its ordinary people.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Beside all its beauty, there is often a strong bittersweet feeling for the fleetingness of the moment. One of these moments is a scene with Emma (Amelie Dunda), who has just fallen in love. She is dancing in a park, first alone than with her lover. She dances frolicsome, euphoric. As we can not see the flow of the endorphins, this moment of happiness is entirely translated into music and movement. Amelie Dunda´s mesmerizing dance does not only remind me in my own euphoric moments, when I was in love myself, nor is it only one of the great nearly Proustian moments of this film, but I have to recall also Melanie´s (classical Indian) dance in Jean Renoir´s <i>The River</i> or Olga Kurylenko´s crazy poetic Demy-like and Chaplinesque dance in a supermarket in Terrence Malick´s <i>To the Wonder</i>. If I had to choose one of the most beautiful love scenes in recent cinema, than this one. If I shall melt in joy or feeling very melancholic because these moments are very fleeting – I do not know.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">One can be sure that a musical like <i>My Darling in Stirling</i> must have been a very challenging task. Just alone the coordination of the acting and the recorded songs, the combination of image and sound must have been an enormous effort even without having mentioned the very low budget or the interruptions of the shootings caused by the Covid Pandemic. Possible are such films (rather made with love than with money) only with a very dedicated crew who believe in it as much as the filmmaker does. But the wonder is that there is no second in this breezy film which feels exerted or arty. For me it rather looks like a film which is dreamt at night by the filmmaker and written down on the next morning.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">There is the book shop in which Emma works as a volunteer. Her love for books is evident. We see her often with a book in her hands. In modern cities, bookstores or coffeeshops are often an unmistakeable sign that at least in some urban quarters a social cultural community is still intact. But serious bookstores are as well like libraries, a cluster of knowledge, wisdom and about nearly everything what people thought, feared, felt, for what they were longing for, or about what they have dreamt of - since books are existing. That goes as well for the history of music, art and of course for the history of cinema, these other cultural clusters. His previous long film <i>Songs of Revolution</i> was an essay about the history of 100 years of Greek music but made with diverse cinematic approaches. As an independent filmmaker for more than 40 years, Bill Mousoulis is himself a part of this gigantic cluster of cinema. But as a curator, critic and activist for Independent Cinema he is at the same time one of its guardians.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><i>My Darling in Stirling</i> defines independent cinema not only as a niche far away from conditions and restrictions dictated by the film industry but as well as an equal contribution to the diversity and richness of cinema. This film by Bill Mousoulis is not only the most beautiful film romance I came across this year, it is as well a strong reminder that there is still this freedom to make such films. The pessimist in me is mostly worried about the future of cinema not because it lacks talents but because of a rising self destruction of the industry. The best medicine against this depression is a film like <i>My Darling in Stirling</i>, one of very few really refreshing film experiences I made this year. It is quite a gift of a film.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The film will have its world premiere on Sunday, October 22, 4.30 pm at the Adelaide Filmfestival, Australia.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjArPIP-KBn-XQHehkI0rpgcKrlBOIAor0e02C3RgOPfs_fxmrAMWRhebdNvfE9lbVmyvgj1RRL15OQZrwPuyZVBjAzF14msYfAAnfCP1vn00Qhqpm98JcbMnx8tKTXpHiX4ChPWKcXgfSRK6D_WoScd_54xqurM1GpT850O1Rpz1FIEtYClE0KT-UkurRd/s1920/darling%20in%20stirling.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjArPIP-KBn-XQHehkI0rpgcKrlBOIAor0e02C3RgOPfs_fxmrAMWRhebdNvfE9lbVmyvgj1RRL15OQZrwPuyZVBjAzF14msYfAAnfCP1vn00Qhqpm98JcbMnx8tKTXpHiX4ChPWKcXgfSRK6D_WoScd_54xqurM1GpT850O1Rpz1FIEtYClE0KT-UkurRd/w640-h360/darling%20in%20stirling.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-38072227151119621192023-07-14T12:48:00.005+02:002023-07-14T14:14:25.280+02:00 Notes on The Mirror (from the episodic film Lust Stories 2) by Konkona Sensharma, India: 2023<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNNKopqNU8dhnIx4weSRxFERGdfqExtimETfFSLkTusqAXGx8U0TjwDol22mZ0eXBccHjWXFAoOZ2tcIjclSR8dzj_zRgyFu0AvpZTlWp7FPkusPtnXobMaZQEoxEafRdKoxp8o9BvO-8bwJC9btciAbSwFx4SuBoeDsOP3Pq13sbb4gBGwGRWU98-lDT9/s2458/the%20mirror.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1360" data-original-width="2458" height="354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNNKopqNU8dhnIx4weSRxFERGdfqExtimETfFSLkTusqAXGx8U0TjwDol22mZ0eXBccHjWXFAoOZ2tcIjclSR8dzj_zRgyFu0AvpZTlWp7FPkusPtnXobMaZQEoxEafRdKoxp8o9BvO-8bwJC9btciAbSwFx4SuBoeDsOP3Pq13sbb4gBGwGRWU98-lDT9/w640-h354/the%20mirror.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Many years ago, I once wrote on Konkona Sensharma´s performance in Aparna Sen´s <i>Goynar Baksho</i> that she would have been as well en excellent silent film actress. When I saw her most recent work as a director, <i>The Mirror</i> (her contribution for the Netflix episodical film <i>Lust Stories 2</i>), I can imagine her as well as a great silent film director.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Just after the first shots, <i>The Mirror</i> distinguishes itself from the other three episodes as a piece of very concentrated pure cinema. The most striking aspect is a this very complex formal treatment of a short-story-like content: The wealthy woman, Ishita learns by accident that her maid has secretly sex with her man in her apartment and bed. Shocked at the beginning, she is later very excited about it. Secretly she sneaks into her own apartment to watch them. She uses a mirror through which she can watch them without being watched. The mirror is a bit like the tele lens of James Stewart´s character in one of the classic films about voyeurism, Hitchcock´s <i>Rear Window</i>. Both optical devices become a metaphor for the apparatus of image making itself. But the mirror in Sensharma´s film seems to be a metaphor for both the image making machines who record but also for the projected image. While Stewarts observation point is (except for the last 30 minutes) a relatively save place to enjoy his voyeurism without being seen, the mirror used by Ishita is a much more insecure place. The danger to be discovered is here from the beginning very close. Only the audience gets the information that the servant discovers her observer very soon. While the close ups of Stewart´s face in <i>Rear Window</i> suggest for a long time superiority of the observer towards the observed, the close ups of Ishita (Tillotama Shome) display a strange vulnerability, almost nakedness. Ironically, when in both films the devices of secretly observation are discovered and herewith out of function, another illusion breaks: the illusion of the distant observer, the safe voyeurism. The moment the things we see, which move, disturb, scare or excite us - the distance is broken. What we see and how we see has to do with ourselves and there is no escape from it. While <i>Rear Window</i> leads finally to a naked fear of death, <i>The Mirror</i> leads finally to a power struggle between mistress and servant but as well to an unwelcome and sudden awareness of Ishitas loneliness.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Even though the film displays some sex actions, they are well integrated in the economical, reserved style of the film. And cinema is not always what it displays but sometimes what it hides. Sometimes we get what we want to see and a second later it is taken away from us. A small traveling movement of the camera away from the door entrance and the whole action is hidden. <i>The Mirror</i> is as well a film about the lust of seeing and among so much other things it is a film about glances. But it is also about the difference between the technical and arranged simulated glances of the camera and the human glances, finally a strange ballet of glances. Tillotama Shome is one of these actresses who can tell very much in a short time just through glances, the most essential aspect of cinema. It reminds me what Tag Galagher said in his feature on Max Ophüls´<i> Letter From An Unknown Woman</i> (Every good film is as well about moviemaking) or in Truffaut (who believed as a young critic that a good film must have both: an idea about the world and an idea about filmmaking).</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Without stressing the comparison between Sensharma`s episode with the the other 3 parts of <i>Lust Stories 2</i>, Sensharma avoids nearly all kinds of easy entertainment, exotism or dramatic effects. There is a certain soberness in <i>The Mirror</i> beginning already with the opening shot as a hint to contemporary Mumbai. Voyeurism, obsessions and lust is here growing between a sad and sober reality. To express desire, longing or just lust, Sensharma tends rather to a certain minimalism. The fascination or sometimes the subversive element of a film is not only presented by what it reveals but very often by what it evokes in the characters and in the spectator equally.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">One can see something like a New Wave of Indian cinema with filmmaker all in the Thirties of early Forties like Pushpendra Singh, Akshay Indikar, Atanu Ghosh, Rima Das, Konkona Sensharma and many others I have not mentioned or which I still have to discover. That might be enough talent to lead cinema into the next decades. But very few of their films happen with generous support, most of them hardly without self exploitation. One can wonder that these films exist at all.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Notes_</span></p><ol><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">There is an interesting article by Sohini Chattopadhyay in <i>Moneycontrol</i> called <i>Director Konkana Sen Sharma on shades of 36 Chowringhee Lane(<a href="https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/trends/entertainment/konkana-sen-sharma-on-shades-of-36-chowringhee-lane-in-the-mirror-in-lust-stories-2-there-are-things-that-i-sought-to-recreate-from-the-film-10928351.html?fbclid=IwAR2h-isjgyywWnyrYjbwSEL5_OZ-A_2EI4iePFe34q0T_y3ERtUts7TwmZU">Link) </a>in The Mirror</i>. She compares aspects of Aparna Sen´s wonderful film debut with Sensharma´s latest film.</span></p></li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">An old review of mine on Sensharmas first long feature film <i>A Death in the Gunj</i> (<a href="https://shomingekiblog.blogspot.com/2017/07/notes-on-death-in-gunj-by-konkona-sen.html?q=a+death+in+the+gunj">Link</a>) from my blog.</span></p></li></ol><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-80949623381069133872023-04-10T15:04:00.001+02:002023-04-10T15:22:18.461+02:00 Notes on Seven – a web series by Anjan Dutt<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 15pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ9DThYR6PqKUJWLWp0ks9u0H9wpS0tQTx3ZSw0Ezt0FDLmaRl9TFaZ7yhKB3MnNrt0PjKq3DuU5JJ25SSC31JvlyAH1zXd06VsTD5GpfDYKKn9nGmZdDzCktDUm8tAYlA_jKD5ZkkXr5u2hXq_YUmHFTRgHIcqDE0WLzsAHxlGUn5Ltxq4JJzZeNSTg/s1024/IMG-20230311-WA0023.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="682" data-original-width="1024" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ9DThYR6PqKUJWLWp0ks9u0H9wpS0tQTx3ZSw0Ezt0FDLmaRl9TFaZ7yhKB3MnNrt0PjKq3DuU5JJ25SSC31JvlyAH1zXd06VsTD5GpfDYKKn9nGmZdDzCktDUm8tAYlA_jKD5ZkkXr5u2hXq_YUmHFTRgHIcqDE0WLzsAHxlGUn5Ltxq4JJzZeNSTg/w640-h426/IMG-20230311-WA0023.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div> <p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">I discovered Anjan Dutt at first as an actor and later as a filmmaker. At that time, I was totally unaware that he is as well a famous singer and songwriter and stage actor. More recently he created some web series, <i>Murder in the Hill</i>s, <i>Murder by the Sea</i>, <i>Danny Detective Inc</i>. (based on his own detective stories) and finally his newest web series <i>Seven </i>(available at the streaming platform zee5).</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The opening of <i>Seven</i> looks really like a crime thriller. Two drug dealers are supposed to exchange drugs and money. Each of them wants to cheat and they kill each other. By accident a car full of five tourists passes by and one of them takes in his cockiness the bag full of money. But after this spectacular thriller-like opening the series turns more and more into a kaleidoscopic portrait of first five and later even 7 characters, their greed, their discontent and their dysfunctional relationships. Beside these seven characters this wild and thin populated landscape where the wildness of the environment is scarcely punctuated by signs of civilization like buildings and more or less insufficient roads. It becomes almost another protagonist. This mighty landscape between jungle and hills includes not only the manmade roads and paths, but a jungle behind where people can be lost forever and slopes where a body once dropped will never be found.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Even though the initiation point of the series is a quite spectacular thriller moment which turns into a sharp portrait of human behavior, it has an important function, to keep our attention and the suspense permanently awake. The criminal element is rather what Hitchcock called a MacGuffin.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Since <i>Bow Barracks Forever</i> (2004) Anjan Dutt introduced his very special talent to work with ensembles of actors, an ability he perfected in films like this unsung gem <i>Aami Ashbo Phirey</i>. In <i>Seven</i>, each individual story and each personality appears for a moment in the center and later vanishes in the interactions between the characters. The nervous energy in which the actors reveal the tensions, aggressions or even their neuroses of their characters reminds me in such different films like Satyajit Ray´s <i>Aranyer Din Ratri</i> (Days and Nights in the Forest) but also <i>Husbands</i> by John Cassavetes. Actors and actresses like Rahul Bannerjee, Gaurav Chakrabarty, Ridhima Ghosh, Suprobhat Das, Ankita Chakraborty or Anjan Dutt – John Cassavetes would have fall in love with each one of them.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The variety of human emotions is very high between the protagonists. Tensions, jealousy, greed mistrust and senses of inferiority – a whole kaleidoscope of the inner life of ordinary people from the urban middle class who came for a holiday and become more and more caught into a nightmarish situation. The moment they found the bag of money they react on like what Chabrol called “a stone thrown into a quite stretch of water”. It is also a series of decisions. What to do with the money, to bring it to the police (who could be corrupt) to share it between them? Each next decision can be fatal. And before they finally get a consent, two other characters get to know about the money. The entanglement becomes unmanageable. A way out of this seems far out of sight.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The art of Anjan Dutt´s storytelling is very subtle. The opening appears as a push, the story needs. After that the narrative flow seems to move on its own. In visual storytelling one works with both, the things who are already present and the fiction, the invented story. The presence of the landscape alone in its wild beauty (which reminds me a bit in the French Provence near the Luberon) is impressing enough to tell its own story. And it is engrossing enough to imagine an ideal environment for a magic fairy tale because only the man-made buildings and streets, the cars and the people reprove an exact datable time. The story about this seven people is a very modern contemporary story but it also gives an idea about the fascination of storytelling which accompanied our specie since the very first campfire. Anjan Dutt´s art of visual story telling results from a razor sharp awareness of how and when the natural things which are already present and how and when the invention, the fiction comes or should come in. We might me captivated by the drama between the protagonists but when we remember this series, we will always remember the landscape and its unsolved mysteries.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><i>Seven</i> is entertaining and thought provoking at the same time.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a href=" https://www.zee5.com/global/web-series/details/seven/0-6-4z5322929" target="_blank">link to Seven </a>(subscribers only)</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-34139717186028602062023-03-02T14:37:00.001+01:002023-03-02T14:38:16.152+01:00Notes on Ha´Mishlahat (Delegation), by Asaf Saban, Israel/Poland/Germany: 2023, Berlin Filmfestival VI.-Generation<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8WuxLvSHVaaqvvoAIia363h1oVXbguc9vy5-qIpxYovg9o0687P6r2KDSXuJ1Gg9u7vzBEWzyW0Td18R48R12i1bfeYii-3p-1Az5hAwH0cDqf6twPoMPn_eNRHIGLV9Pc1ks-2ElrLL8sfGz8qT79_ENb6gPP6cLYyNA_Az0C8VBf3ih7-MFxO3nmw/s2560/Delegation-Frontpage-scaled%20jpg.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1707" data-original-width="2560" height="490" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8WuxLvSHVaaqvvoAIia363h1oVXbguc9vy5-qIpxYovg9o0687P6r2KDSXuJ1Gg9u7vzBEWzyW0Td18R48R12i1bfeYii-3p-1Az5hAwH0cDqf6twPoMPn_eNRHIGLV9Pc1ks-2ElrLL8sfGz8qT79_ENb6gPP6cLYyNA_Az0C8VBf3ih7-MFxO3nmw/w640-h490/Delegation-Frontpage-scaled%20jpg.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"> <br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Another film which does not leave my head and which I wished had got more attention than it finally received. At first, the film has the structure of a Road Movie, a travel narrative. A class of Israeli students make a trip to monuments of concentration camps in Poland. It is a common tradition for young Israelis to visit the places of the worst genocide in the history of mankind as well like traces of the most painful chapter of their own national history. The film often changes between the fact of the very special tradition among the Israeli youth and their normal behavior as young people who could be from any part of the world. Cliques are formed, dalliances are implied. They talk about how to spend the free time in this or that city, what pubs or places of interest should be visited. But the films raises as well questions like what or how should they feel about their encounters with monuments of history which affected their own existence. what to feel about this specific chapter of history they already learned in school. One of the students is accompanied by his grandfather, a Rabbi who is a Holocaust-survivor. Before checking into hotels, a security advisor gives a briefing how to avoid terror-attacks and how to keep a “low profile”.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The film´s bravery is evident in the confrontation of history and the present from the point of view of young people but also with its artistic approach to evoke own images about a historic tragedy where a lot of facts are already known and a lot of images already existing. Asaf Saban approaches own cinematic images and thoughts.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The relationship between past and present happens in different ways. One of the student´s grandfather, the Rabbi Frisch gives lectures for the class about his own experiences with the Holocaust. He represents living history in contrast to the frozen monuments and museums. Sometimes he stumbles in the middle of his narrations, unable to find words for his experiences, unable to continue and overwhelmed by the painful memories. A walk through a landscape, a forest grown over mass graves. A casually walk can be invaded without warning by the terror of history. Once the student are gathered in a museum in one of the wagons which deported the prisoners to concentration camps. For a short moments the students feel the narrowness in a crowded wagon which raises anxiety attacks for some of them. There is a numberless collection of clothes and shoes which were taken from the prisoners before their last way into death. These are despite its shortness unforgettable moments. The terror of the past dominates for moments the present.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">A more artificial but nevertheless brilliant idea is the use of music. It is mostly a swelling sounds which ebbs away and the other way around. Sometimes we are aware of it, sometimes not. These outbreaks of the terror of the past from this very chapter of history seem like sudden eruptions from the depth of history to the surface of the rather restraint narration.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Another movement in this film is always the experience of a journey including the encounters with history and the reflections about them. The film must have been carefully scripted and researched but seems nevertheless rarely forced. Asaf Saban´s confidence in cinema and its ability to present truth is captivating. It seems that in his film, history can neither be denied nor can it be forgotten, it breaks its ways even to the most banal things and events to the surface like and uncontrollable force.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-55717879503356938792023-02-26T15:01:00.003+01:002023-02-26T15:06:16.868+01:00 Notes on Gaby Les Collines (Gaby´s Hills), by Zoé Pelchat, Canada: 2023, Berlin Filmfestival V.-Generation (short films kplus Program 3)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3RY-ypH6ytcGkDN2ujI6-nS7E98XE705JDYrlvB08J1kNZU_Gd-q_ofnilkfZmR-97r_4fH6PZo8Y6WJNN16iwu_C_MFG0g0xVdbZIm78L-sGt0sXDuZEz9IrOfAO0vJChxErHUAbmK5qy61e3ybifBMaBN6eXHfne0IHklu9hX1tLOF8GnjDSWczsw/s640/gaby.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3RY-ypH6ytcGkDN2ujI6-nS7E98XE705JDYrlvB08J1kNZU_Gd-q_ofnilkfZmR-97r_4fH6PZo8Y6WJNN16iwu_C_MFG0g0xVdbZIm78L-sGt0sXDuZEz9IrOfAO0vJChxErHUAbmK5qy61e3ybifBMaBN6eXHfne0IHklu9hX1tLOF8GnjDSWczsw/w640-h360/gaby.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The best of all these “Coming of Age”- films resist in romanticizing the adolescence of young people. They often deal with what Zoé Pelchat said about her <i>Gaby Les Collines</i>, when she “wanted to express the disconnect puberty creates between head and body.”</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">In cinema we can see for the time being only the surface, the landscape, things and bodies. What happens in the head can be at the most perceptible in the kind the visible things are context of the each other created arrangements and the montage which finally will allow them to represent themselves in the sense of André Bazin. Than the visible surface of the visible things are getting more depth. Gaby´s growing breasts are at first a superficial fact, not more and not less like an evolutionary event. The body language and facial expressions of Gaby suggest confusion, discomfort or even rebellion against the dispossession of her body by ideology and social categorization. It seems like she defies being put into a stereotypical gender pattern.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">She spends the holiday with her divorced father and his girlfriend on a picturesque island in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec. Actually, she is a passionate football player and a good goal keeper. For now the environment suggest nothing else than a place where body and soul can recover</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The film has two opposite currents. The one is the pleasant surface of a landscape during holiday holiday, summerly and breezy. The other current is rather subversive and it is represented in two remarkable moments. The girlfriend of her father gives her a dress which underlines her flourishing female curves. She might have done it in good intentions but there remains a sign of discomfort in the girl´s face. Her body becomes a certain image preformed by a certain stereotypical gender stereotype begins to take possession of her body. While her father and his girlfriend feel obviously comfortable with their sexual identity, Gaby is still confused.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Later, Gaby attends a beach party with some other young people. The seizure of a natural developing body by ideology and social categorizing becomes more aggressive. With some of them she has played football in her childhood not too long ago. One of them sings a obscene mock song about Gaby´s changing body. It is already a verbal assault. The surface of this picturesque landscape during holiday becomes deceptive. Gaby and the film itself that her (Gaby´s) image about herself against engulfment by others and the film has to defend the freedom, literally the “art of seeing its images against all predetermined social patterns.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><i>Gaby Les Collins</i> is a wonderful crystal clear variation of the “Coming of Age”-genre (the Berlinale dedicated it a whole retrospective) and it answers as well the question why this genre is present in the film history for ages and in numberless variations.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-59402484449677269572023-02-25T09:04:00.002+01:002023-02-25T09:28:14.763+01:00 Notes on Nanitic, by Carol Nguyen,Canada: 2022- Berlin Filmfestival IV.-Generation (short films kplus, Programm 2)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji4aVl92KCiVO_qRQb1-Qx1_uU-ARyt-nlpfpJeHYK2GT4RXa7ojgGtr8IxDKuByV9Cnr8kYBLFCLciDB_w9y9m0ORklfqulhSQflXEg5h-3w_00vh7-XdTJq652aRRrljtpl-ZFgQJdT-wnKWwcAj5iDvPA30a7uXGi1o2OEL8H_-TPImdkh83hqsog/s2964/tan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2160" data-original-width="2964" height="466" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji4aVl92KCiVO_qRQb1-Qx1_uU-ARyt-nlpfpJeHYK2GT4RXa7ojgGtr8IxDKuByV9Cnr8kYBLFCLciDB_w9y9m0ORklfqulhSQflXEg5h-3w_00vh7-XdTJq652aRRrljtpl-ZFgQJdT-wnKWwcAj5iDvPA30a7uXGi1o2OEL8H_-TPImdkh83hqsog/w640-h466/tan.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Two little girls are playing in the house of their aunt. They are obsessed with collecting insects, especially ants and feeding them with sugar. The aunt is too busy with the household, the kids are on their own. Like the spoken language suggests, it is an emigrated Vietnamese family anywhere in North America. In another room, an old woman, the seriously ill lies in her bed. Even though it is not outspoken but one feels that she is going to die. An anglophone nurse is taking care of her essential needs. It is not only a film about the microcosm family but it is also a little introduction in the universe cinema where we have to find our point of view how we look at things. The camera is recording everything without knowing anything. The point of view of the little girls is guessing things without understanding the full consequences of what happens in front of their eyes. The author/director coordinates this cinematic phenomenon of different possible views. The cold accuracy of the image making apparatus finally creates the space for the human view at the visible things of this world. If the camera is the technical distanced view on the world, the offers offers as well the innocent, playful and curious view of the world. It is the transition from the technique of the apparatus into poetry. From time to time we hear the sick old woman coughing. Even the girls sense that soon things won´t be the same anymore.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The film takes place entirely in internal rooms. Beside the children and their playful exploration of the world, the adults are caught up in their daily routine. The drama, the anticipated death of the grandmother is not just yet happen. The notion remains in the background like a quiet threat.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The household itself is the metaphor for the whole film. A household must be functioning for providing the life of the family. The furniture has at first a function but the point of view of the kids transform these rooms almost into a world of wonders. One can experience the film as a strange childhood memory which absorbs us in 14 minutes, a memory which does not belong to us. But it reminds us in a very special viwe at things we had in our childhood, let me call it the natural cinematic view. All what we see, all what we experience appears a short fleeting privilege. Even though Carol Nguyen celebrates a cinema of understatement and restraint, a kind of high cultivated simplicity, the film becomes in retrospect a deeply moving experience, like a short cinematic poem about a “Search for the lost Times”. <i>Nanitc</i>, this enchanting little jewel is one of the most beautiful and most intense moments I experienced this year on this festival.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p>Rüdiger Tomczak </p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-80200442565674394652023-02-24T11:34:00.003+01:002023-02-24T11:36:30.491+01:00 Notes on Sica, by Carla Subriana, Spain: 2023-Berlin Filmfestival III.-Generation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWJDUBiD1ew0XetDzRpsYvzklEkPseqFrQ8SYCSeWQiTdEzWmlXiwSGduM9_642mjZbl-77xWz0jpvNqCu3gmpuigXgYWxSgxT9r6VZEPaCg2PwBGDTzdAVZbmZ_zPxFH5QlmoJIq483yb9c1PK1qwimR-257lzrztz0lgS-DmIPWfxpQpLxHlYodv-A/s3508/sica.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2339" data-original-width="3508" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWJDUBiD1ew0XetDzRpsYvzklEkPseqFrQ8SYCSeWQiTdEzWmlXiwSGduM9_642mjZbl-77xWz0jpvNqCu3gmpuigXgYWxSgxT9r6VZEPaCg2PwBGDTzdAVZbmZ_zPxFH5QlmoJIq483yb9c1PK1qwimR-257lzrztz0lgS-DmIPWfxpQpLxHlYodv-A/w640-h426/sica.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">First thing which got my attention was the coarseness of the images. The film was recorded on 16 Millimetre. One has to get accustomed with it, because our habits of seeing became much too depending on the plain and sharp digital image. This “Coming of Age”-film is about a 13 years old girl who has to deal with the loss of her father, a fisherman who lost his life at the sea. Just alone like the documentary style and the fictive element are corresponding with each other, is fascinating. The rough sea landscape in the Spanish region Galicia with its rocks and cliffs reminds rather in Ireland than in a country so much loved by sun worshipper. The characters represent a community which is struggling for their economical surviving. The life of most of them relies on fishing. Even without the global warming, the people are exposed to unpredictable forces of nature. One can also sense that community which is endangered. Beside the struggling for their existence, grudge and resentment eats this community from inside. Sometimes it seems that the faces of the protagonists reflect the rough landscape, but mostly the film distinguishes its views on human civilization and on nature. Some images suggest a world which is much older than civilization. In some images of the sea, nature seems to recapture the world (and literally the film´s frame) completely.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Changing its views always between the two aspects, civilization and nature, the film changes as well often between its two aspects, the documentary-element in images of this Galician landscape with the incorruptible precision of the image making apparatus - and the fictive storytelling. Sica, the adolescent girl has not only to deal with the obligatory problems of a girl of her age. The mourning about the loss of her father and her forlorn wish that her father could have survived (his corps will never be found) makes it all worse. How she moves through this rough part of the visible world, in these seldom moments when nature and civilization come together, different images arise. Sica´s difficult journey of life evident in this landscape where rocks and wind makes every step burdensome.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: small;">It seems that this shattered community appears in <i>Sica</i> almost as indifferent as the nature. Beside being exposed to this nature, there are as well violent conflicts and mobbing between teenager. </span>Sometimes the characters, especially Sica who is almost an outsider in her community, seem lost in this mighty landscape which is fascinating and frightening at the same time – a bit like in some paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. That means the natural landscape appears never as an idyll but mostly as an endless space where you can get lost. Sometimes a shot of the sea landscape or a constellation of clouds let arise images of almost psychedelic beauty. I remember one of these images from the sea landscape. From the off we hear a folksong. These are unforgettable moments of beauty mixed with uncanniness.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">One can think of the long tradition of ethnographic cinema, one can think of Robert Flaherty – but one can also think of André Bazin´s thoughts about the complex relationship between cinema and reality, which are today as inspiring like they were more than 60 years ago. In many ways – Carla Subriana´s decision to record this film on 16 Millimetre is a very brave and sophisticated esthetic one. Like we learn a lot about a regional community depending on the traditional profession of fishing, we learn as well about an almost forgotten but great tradition of filmmaking. Sometimes, cinema has to go a step back while facing its future.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The images of this film <i>Sica</i> are never pleasing in a superficial way, every shot seems to be painstakingly developed. <i>Sica</i> is not only a fascinating uncompromising piece of a film, it reminds us as well in the endless diversity of filmmaking.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-23751557794134546442023-02-23T15:23:00.000+01:002023-02-23T16:00:04.124+01:00 Notes on Aatmapamphlet (Autobio-Pamphlet) by Ashish Avinash Bende, India: 2023-Berlin Filmfestival2023-II.- Generation<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPbIlVxejrktLNBUW1gt4Oqp5PMG4qBa0YHUiLEMDRuhZuN7c_wNJJ6mk378cRLCJeyrARdH5enKUBeFFu2MyY08Tww9DkvqXSEgUQb9G9aRLzV3q4v2dAv0TUcIjzdrdoMUXSuefBz26oGBau9guRJ0sp1nNO0816gnJ-mZ_YfuWGCmpFj9p-dqXIGw/s1920/aatmapamphlet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1920" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPbIlVxejrktLNBUW1gt4Oqp5PMG4qBa0YHUiLEMDRuhZuN7c_wNJJ6mk378cRLCJeyrARdH5enKUBeFFu2MyY08Tww9DkvqXSEgUQb9G9aRLzV3q4v2dAv0TUcIjzdrdoMUXSuefBz26oGBau9guRJ0sp1nNO0816gnJ-mZ_YfuWGCmpFj9p-dqXIGw/w640-h400/aatmapamphlet.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">My first impression of <i>Aatmapamphlet:</i> it was like a very fast rotating Laterna Magica. One might me afraid, this Laterna Magica will bust at any moment. One has to get used to the enormous speed of this film.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Like a chameleon, the film originally filmed in Cinema scope changes into various aspect ratios. Often the film uses archive footage and at the beginning it looks like a collage. As the English title <i>Autobio-Pamphlet</i> suggests, the film appears for now as an ironic distanced and sometimes exaggerated point of view. As the film tries to display relations between the individual memory and the certain part of history in which the director grew up, it is also a very ambitious approach. In the last 20 years, quite a few films are more or less obvious autobiographical inspired. That includes all forms of cinema, experimental films, documentary essay, art cinema until mainstream like the very anticipated new film by Steven Spielberg, <i>The Fabelmans</i>. The list is long and it includes filmmaker like Yang Yong-hi, Patricio Guzman, Paramita Das, Terrence Malick, Anjan Dutt or recently James Gray, to mention only some of them.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The changes between aspect ratios, the contrast between references to Indian history and the rather burlesque episodical narrative style offers as well a small tour de force through film history, especially through the almost forgotten art of slapstick. One of the classic elements of most of “Coming of Age”-films, the first love of the boy to his class mate is in this film a strange gravitation field. The film will always return to this chapter of a memory like a song to its refrain. The episodical narration is not flowing but literally jumping from event to event which is is indeed an interesting analogy to the kind like human memories are working. Some moments are completely absorbed by the event which takes place right now, another reminder of the great art of American slapstick. How history is finally related with an individual biography is something one learns in retrospect. In the rousing montage of this film all the Indian history with its riots, its clashes between Hindus ans Muslims or between castes would have offered enough stuff for tragedy or melodrama. Bende seems to choose often the anarchistic humor, an essential element of slapstick at all. All this gives the film an almost music-like character.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">To bring some order in this funny, chaotic and nevertheless likeable film, one has to re-edit it in the own head. And if I think of the autobiographical inspired films I mentioned above, most of these filmmaker offer not only a certain vision of their place in a certain part of history, but most of these films offer as well the filmmakers place in the diversity of film history, what Truffaut once called a “vision about filmmaking”.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><i>Aatmapamphlet</i> is quite a work which makes us thinking about cinema. The seemingly disorder created by the montage is finally an invitation to crate an order solely by watching the film. Strangely the spectator has to become a accomplice. If I think about all these films which are inspired by autobiographical events, I have to think of Walt Whitman´s great poem "Song about Myself". Bende adds another inspiring and funny variation to this long list.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Screenings:</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fri, 24.2, 15.30, Filmtheater am Friedrichshain</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Sat, 25.2., 15.30, Cineplex Titania</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Screenings</span></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-91302297884769165602023-02-20T08:52:00.003+01:002023-02-20T21:26:31.510+01:00 Notes on Adolfo, by Sofia Auza, USA/Mexico: 2023-Berlin Filmfestival I.-Generation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHX86VGJ9k-hPneZ2mrIJMDp-Eap_BByuuD9r2mh1Vx8C8ghJRQWGnhvIUPBgC5GoeaTS9IV2xkJsWe2PTMAiw_BbV664X_jpiLK70j6q5BGFdbuUL8GV8a4qQvlQ2ftgUwmzSJDgKg-Cb26oZWJlUuL09XbPGOCrNkFLnVe5TW0HDdgzpsnr6kuIUkA/s1920/202301665_1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1920" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHX86VGJ9k-hPneZ2mrIJMDp-Eap_BByuuD9r2mh1Vx8C8ghJRQWGnhvIUPBgC5GoeaTS9IV2xkJsWe2PTMAiw_BbV664X_jpiLK70j6q5BGFdbuUL8GV8a4qQvlQ2ftgUwmzSJDgKg-Cb26oZWJlUuL09XbPGOCrNkFLnVe5TW0HDdgzpsnr6kuIUkA/w640-h480/202301665_1.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">From the very beginning, I had a good feeling about the film. Hugo, young man and Momo, a young woman meet at a bus station at night. He is on his way to the funeral of his father. He carries always a cactus with him which he named “Adolfo”, the only thing his father has left to him.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Places of departure or arrival like airports, railway stations of in this film an almost abandoned bus station are always good starting points in cinema. Hugo misses his last bus and has to spend the whole night with this strange woman.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Of course, the film is scripted, planned and performed, the dialogues probably as carefully scripted like in Hans Weingartners masterpiece <i>303</i>. But what it felt like the film seems to arise from this point almost by itself. I felt it like an unexpected dream. Almost entirely filmed at night, the artificial lights of a party, a pub or a food stall turn the sad environment into a magic landscape, a film like made for the darkness of a film theatre (an artificial night) where only the screen is visible. I was lucky enough to have watched the film in one of the few last great film theatres in my city. Strangely when a film motivates my attention, one part of me feels like dreaming while the other part of me is wide awake. One can call it the “Eyes Wide Shut”-effect. It is one of the rare experiences when I almost feel like the artificial chemical, mechanical or in this film digital memory is overtaken by my own biological one.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: small;">At the beginning, Hugo and Momo are as anonymous like us, the spectators in a film theatre. They carry their burdens of life with them like we do. She has to deal with her drug addiction, he with his mourning. And like in a strange dream we can sense this strange homelessness of the characters.</span>Despite the fact some other characters appear for a short time , the film is mostly a piece about two persons who met by accident at night. And this night where every light is artificial creates a very cinematic zone. Even though, seemingly not much happens, the film attracts attention to every detail. Sometimes he things are what they are and sometimes they become what they evoke.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The “Boy meets Girl”-element does not really turn into an romance but it offers romance as a possible option. In this sense the film is a close relative of Aparna Sens masterpiece <i>Mr. And Mrs. Iyer</i> or Hans Weingartners wonderful Road Movie <i>303</i>. And like all good films, <i>Adolfo</i> tells not only about things nwe see or which are outspoken but as well about things we do not see.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">We neither learn very much about their stories but piece by piece we got an idea about the complexity of two human lives. It is one of those quite compact films (only 69 minutes) which will expand itself in my memory to an eternity. The masterful dialogues rather evoke our imagination than explaining everything. <i>Adolfo</i> seems to be closer to a music piece or a song. A quite eventless plot unfolds to a night piece of somnambulistic beauty. One feels the fleetingness of this moments of lights and movement which will vanish when the day breaks.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The Night, Hugo and Momo are drifting through appears as well as a nice image for cinema itself. One can not escape the burdens, the fear and the losses of life but we can at least imagine that it is possible to be happier than we are.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Some films I can relate too, understand them and appreciate them, others seem to have discovered me because they are given to me as an unexpected gift.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The intensity of a dream is most evident in moments like when Hugo and Momo hug each other. It is quite a heartbreaking contrast between the two persons who get a bit closer each other and the mercilessness of the film print which reaches its last images. Sometimes in a film a relative simple gesture can have a vehemence like a natural spectacle, an effect only the big screen can offer.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Maybe the film itself is a little bit like Adolfo the cactus. A cactus is a living being which can survive under hostile conditions. As cinema itself exists and survives now under very tough conditions, we need such cinematic jewels like <i>Adolfo</i> by Sofia Auza to imagine that a future of the endangered art of cinema is still possible.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Screenings:</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Tue, 21.2, 12.45 Zoo-Palast 2</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Sat, 25.2, 20.00 Urania</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-21326106475598826772022-02-21T15:15:00.004+01:002022-02-21T15:16:24.417+01:00 Notes on Everything will be Okay, by Rithy Panh, Cambodia/France: 2022-Berlin Filmfestival2022 V.-Competition<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhOomnkwR_4mLj_20t3eu7nyph3nsy738tzfGxpkL0AFQ9o7Leid7grcgTAPfNt0r-tdPKU0ppoHuOHqlYFDYonCuCtJ7S56tetbb8TiWgmhRF5XlBfHjJTM1BK3J0mkWhwNhK0pl3IBoe8chf4c2_nwpZtCVHn3Ksg8_2wdDTfgwDmF-alhayDm8myfQ=s1024" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="1024" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhOomnkwR_4mLj_20t3eu7nyph3nsy738tzfGxpkL0AFQ9o7Leid7grcgTAPfNt0r-tdPKU0ppoHuOHqlYFDYonCuCtJ7S56tetbb8TiWgmhRF5XlBfHjJTM1BK3J0mkWhwNhK0pl3IBoe8chf4c2_nwpZtCVHn3Ksg8_2wdDTfgwDmF-alhayDm8myfQ=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In his new film <i>Everything will be Okay</i>, Rithy Panh uses again painted and static clay figures like he did in his autobiographical masterpiece <i>L´Image Manquante</i>. On the other hand the film has like his previous one <i>Irradiés</i> often the form of a collage, sometimes even like an art installation. The work with clay figures is now integrated in a very complex and very detailed miniature landscape which also includes buildings. The soundtrack appears as complex as this detailed miniature design: Thunderstorms, diverse animal sounds, shots of machine guns and other firearms and electronic sounds. And there are also the spoken over voice- texts and the music. In this miniature world even computer and tiny monitors are installed. The image-making apparatus itself has a strange presence. In the social medias one can see some production photos published by the director himself which gives an idea about the tremendous amount of work which was already done before the first images were recorded. Beside that and like in his previous film there is a lot of archive footage and excerpts from other films. Panhs documentaries or his two early elegiac masterpieces <i>Neak Sré</i> (The Rice Field) or <i>Un Soir après la Guerre</i> and even <i>L´Image Manquante</i> in which he directly tells from the off his heartbreaking story in the Killing Fields are together rare cinematic reflections about the Cambodian genocide. His last two films are more abstract and multilayered and it is evident that he tried a total new artistic approach.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The narration is a kind of dystopian fantasy about a world were animals have overpowered mankind. And what began as a revolution leads to a grotesque travesty about the atrocities (especially from the Twentieth Century) of men against other species or against the own kind. He uses the very old form of storytelling, a fable as one element for his modern film essay.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Each review on this film can be only a provisional one and it does not matter if you like it or not if we take the challenge of this film or not. I wonder how quick some reviews on <i>Everything will be Okay</i> were done with this film and how reckless with their judgement and very unsophisticated phrases. What means the film is “overloaded?” For my side it means I have not understood everything and the film deserves a second viewing. Some critics complained that the over voice texts force certain thoughts on the audience, which is indeed total nonsense. The poetic texts might be Panhs thoughts and reflections or better -poetic formulated streams of thoughts. He uses spoken language in his last two films a bit like Marguerite Duras, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker – and yes as well a bit like Terrence Malick. How Panh uses over voice- texts are streams of thoughts but during watching the film, they meet our own streams of thoughts. If we don´t have any or if we are to lazy to generate some, than we are hopeless lost in films like <i>Everything will be Okay</i> and in much more other films as well.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">What is visible of archive footage on the miniature monitors, (in some moments some film frames are split or even divided in several frames) is indeed hard to bear. But the challenge, this feeling of discomfort quite appropriate for this subject is something we have to go through or we have to abandon it. If one does not feel like to see the film or review it, I can live with this. But stupid phrases like “dull” or “narcissistic” like some critics called this film is pure cynicism.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The great sentence from André Bazin about film criticism: “It is not about serving the truth on a silver plate but to extend the shock, a work of art has left on us.” goes as well for this film and especially for films like this which just has its world premiere.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The film is not a provocation, it is the nightmarish continuation of Panh´s previous body of work. I do not believe that Rithy Panh evokes here any mood, feeling or thought he he has not felt himself.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Among the very few known examples of famous but heavily traumatized filmmaker through certain historic events whose body and soul were really endangered like Rithy Panh, the Indian Ritwik Ghatak or Chileans like Patricio Guzman or Marilu Mallet come to my mind. Almost their whole body of work is to deal with traumata as individuals who suffered under it but as well as witnesses of history against the forgetfulness. Beside their exposure to certain cruel historic processes, all of them are as well cultivated and intellectual artists who are as well always looking for new forms to express what their experiences and the echo it left in their soul in in their minds.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">What I admirer in Rithy Panhs work is despite he uses the technological options of the image-making apparatus to its full extent but has always the courage for a certain vulnerability. Panhs esthetics in his two last film and especially in <i>Everything will be Okay</i> is not one to overpower the audience, it is first of all a very unique form of “Caméra Stylo”. Despite the gigantic artistic efforts, despite all the diversity of facets Panh has saved himself as well a certain delicateness, a sense of vulnerability which still shines through.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-17923248462406539462022-02-18T20:51:00.001+01:002022-02-18T20:52:33.663+01:00 Notes on Bimileui Eondeok (The Hill of Secrets), by Lee Ji-eun, Korea: 2022-Berlin Filmfestival IV.-Generation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhpIHuQu_tilgFwSJGAuLcJ9fhiJoc6cKItdLfffyRDyk9ybFoJFBg5tfVAGDBXW8Vir_pxTWhlLXcFPT53OhM0MdXphiwfpj3b-VBW9xfC9kjQSBhRuoTrCIrZ3F5XESPQQ9JEv71I8D4ESdHNIFGQN8FEknBxg9-zwjUhEcSIC0PNrih51mxedyCDBg=s1380" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="746" data-original-width="1380" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhpIHuQu_tilgFwSJGAuLcJ9fhiJoc6cKItdLfffyRDyk9ybFoJFBg5tfVAGDBXW8Vir_pxTWhlLXcFPT53OhM0MdXphiwfpj3b-VBW9xfC9kjQSBhRuoTrCIrZ3F5XESPQQ9JEv71I8D4ESdHNIFGQN8FEknBxg9-zwjUhEcSIC0PNrih51mxedyCDBg=w640-h346" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In the last years, it became almost a tradition to watch a Korean film from the Generation-section and I was never disappointed. Films like <i>Fighter</i> by Jéro Yun or Kim Boras breathtaking debut <i>Beol-sae </i>(House of Hummingbird) are still in my memory. This time another impressing children film, <i>Bimileui Eondeok</i> (The Hill of Secrets) by Lee Ji-eun came to my attention. It is about the 12-years old girl Myung-eun and about her proletarian origin. She denies her family and dreams of more elegant and wealthy parents. In the last 30 years, Korea became one of the most interesting and in its diversity richest Asian film countries and last but not least because of the fact that even its film history is more discovered outside of Korea.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Bimileui Eondeok</i> is one of these films I saw recently which brought me to the idea, that Korean cinema created something like their own shomingeki-films, means films on ordinary life and about ordinary people with a special view on every day life, a cinematic movement once cultivated in the two great eras of Japanese cinema but mostly abandoned by the Japanese like the Italian abandoned finally their Neo-Realism.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Like following a certain tradition in contemporary Korean Cinema, Lee Ji-euns film is earnest (though not completely free of humour) in revealing longings and problems of children or adolescents. She offers a seismographic sensitive look into the world of children including often the dark idea what a problematic, unjust and hierarchic world is waiting for them. The anyway spare use of children cuteness can disappear from one moment to the next completely. <i>Bimileui Eondeok</i> has very few narrative twists. That what we call a story seems naturally originated from the surface of the world revealed in this film.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The aspect which distinguishes this Korean view on everyday life from the Japanese every day dramas films from the 1930s and 1950s, is often a personal if not autobiographical point of view. Like in <i>Woorideul</i> (The World of Us) by Yoon Ga-eun (Berlinale-Generation 2016), <i>Nammaeui Yeoreumbam</i> (Moving On) by Yoon Dan-bi or Kim Boras film, I mentioned above are inspired by childhood memories and I presume that it goes as well for Lee Ji-euns film, which – by the way takes place in 1996.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The seeming lightness of <i>Bimileui Eondeok</i>, its almost non-event- narration has this special side effect to sharpen the spectator´s attention. There are sometimes invasions of the more brutal and reckless world of the adult life like a school director who is more interested in the reputation of his school than in the children. The world of class differences is already mirrored in the school class.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It is also a film about inferiority feelings, originated from a certain place in society. And to reveal this feelings, the film does not need much more than some exchanges of glances. This seeming attention for the surface of the world manifests the hidden depth of this film- When Myung-eun feels ashamed about the low social and educational status of her parents, her school class gets two new girls who pretend to be twin sisters but in reality they are different daughters of prostitutes. When these two girls are mobbed by their classmates, Myung-eun participates at the beginning. It is one of the darkest but also sharpest moment in this film and for a moment our heroine is already poisoned by this unjust and cruel world which is waiting for her. But the phenomenon is that Lee Ji-eon approaches these insight almost only by patient observation without the least trace of any ideological predetermination.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Like all great films about children and like in this historic prototypes of children films, <i>Umarate wamita keredo</i> (I was born, but..., Yasujiro Ozu) or <i>Ladri di Biciclette</i> (Bicycle Thieves, Vittorio de Sica) <i>Bimileul Eondeok</i> ends with a painful perception of a child about the world which is waiting for her. <i>Bimileui Eondeok, </i>this beautiful and unpretentious<i> </i>film<i> </i>by Lee Ji-eun belongs to a certain kind of new Korean films which also make me think about the greatest European film theorist of a cinematic realism, André Bazin (1918-1958).</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-89866247258437511282022-02-18T15:54:00.002+01:002022-02-20T11:23:32.462+01:00 Notes on Nana (Before, Now and Than), by Kamila Andini, Indonesia: 2022-Berlin Filmfestival III.-Competition<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgU3jAPqZgWvrkXdCMCpu1LQx3PLrY4wd1i-rpBoAwpFplIr6fbOPWxvjHVQiK7eOMzH5mRiM--waTmfoN2qWusWQdRW2WP8n5VsZNdG82G-89mMd0zx7bDoE6MOwBW0VdpdZrOWDH88Ch4RL0yGJrWXZtynXbKymwha3oQTlAX7zE-jp3jUFQ3yiXwQ=s2560" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="2560" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgU3jAPqZgWvrkXdCMCpu1LQx3PLrY4wd1i-rpBoAwpFplIr6fbOPWxvjHVQiK7eOMzH5mRiM--waTmfoN2qWusWQdRW2WP8n5VsZNdG82G-89mMd0zx7bDoE6MOwBW0VdpdZrOWDH88Ch4RL0yGJrWXZtynXbKymwha3oQTlAX7zE-jp3jUFQ3yiXwQ=w640-h320" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></span><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Some things in this film seemed strange to me and I am not sure if I have understand the whole context of the film to culture and history of Indonesia. But that does not make me nervous at all. It was not different when I saw the first films by Ozu, Hou Hsiao Hsien or Ritwik Ghatak. But as films they have won me over long before I began to learn more about the culture these films are originated from. What I realized in the first 10 minutes from <i>Nana</i> is, that Kamila Andini is a virtuoso of cinematic images which she varies like one of these mentioned old masters.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Taking place on two time levels, the 1960 in Indonesia the time of the anticommunist pursuit and the takeover of the ultra right wing general Suharto. No doubt, an Indonesian spectator might be a more quick to capture the film´s historic context. In the film, the hints to history are evident in some dialogues and especially in some radio news. But like Hou Hsiao Hsiens Taiwan-trilogy, Andini deals with both, history but especially how it affects the intimate life of individuals. And like Hou´s characters, Andinis characters are exposed to certain historic events without understanding the whole complex context opposite to the following generations who can can learn about these events from history books.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Nana is married for a long time with a wealthy plantation owner who is much older than her and has several children. Before her marriage, she went through a traumatic experience, a conflict in which she lost her whole family, including her first husband. Even though the interiors (just alone the film´s production design is a masterpiece itself) suggest she is a wealthy woman. But how she walks through these well decorated rooms of this big house she appears like a lost soul, rather homeless than really belonging there.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The film is punctuated by Nana´s nightmares about this traumatic experience. These nightmares come always unexpected and what begins like a flashback leads to a nightmare and she always wakes up totally deranged. How these scenes are integrated, they appear like evil ghosts in the midst of a seemingly safe present. As the film proceeds, he befriends with a female butcher (a rumor says she is a communist or at least a sympathizer). For the first time she has someone whom she can tell about her story about things she never talked about to anyone. I remember there is one wonderful long scene when she tells her new friend about herself, a masterful long dialogue scene in this opulent decor. It is also a hint to the fascination of this film this strange combination of minimalism and opulence. And it is symptomatic for this film. Impossible to turn away eyes and ears from such scenes. Even if this film is narrated in a quiet flow (except dream sequences), a lot of things happen often at the same time, some of them I can recognize, some remain a mystery to me, but I stay captured by each shot, each movement. <i>Nana</i> is one of these miracles which allows in some moments to discover all the wonders of Cinema again for the first time. During special festivals or celebrations we see often performed dances. Even though I do not know if these are old classic dance forms how they exist for example in India or old traditional ones. But these dance performances intensify my impression that the whole film is a strange but breathtaking fascinating modern Laterna Magica. Like all great films, <i>Nana</i> offers always options. You can be absorbed by this masterful composition of colours, light and movements even without understanding everything but you can also enjoy the perception of small details. If you dream yourself through this film or if you rather follow the film´s attention for small details, that is your choice. Sometimes I felt as absorbed by this kaleidoscope of colours, light, movements and music like I was when I saw for the first time Jean Renoir´s India-film T<i>he River</i> while I learned much later that especially this film made in India is probably Renoir´s most personal film.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Like I mentioned - there might be a lot I have to learn to understand <i>Nana</i> in its historic and cultural context. But what I understood very quick is that <i>Nana</i> is a stellar piece of a film which I would like to see again as soon as possible. <i>Sekala Niskala</i> (The Seen and the Unseen, 2017) one of Kamila Andinis previous films (Berlinale-Generation 2018) is still warm in my memories. Just to watch a film like <i>Nana</i> on a big screen (where it belongs to) tells me the reason why international filmfestivals still make sense.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-61328989134047811172022-02-16T11:31:00.006+01:002022-02-16T11:37:35.196+01:00 Notes on Kind Hearts, by Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes, Belgium: 2022-Berlin Filmfestival II.-Generation<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhUCxvr-9_VEyT9ypZKUwc48Oh6lDEYA8RMPjppE5a3vuuzJFS1Iwh5lZrXyGbXKZe1QnXNNV8TSZJjgV0MemX1b9pAicPILF130UNQDGd3bZzKcN5jmgCUB6AL-mgNq_QIZtcvc4d53TNRWh43MsPow1xDz7JkyfOInOimdG9uY_iZRcwLm-2ALk5joA=s770" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="537" data-original-width="770" height="446" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhUCxvr-9_VEyT9ypZKUwc48Oh6lDEYA8RMPjppE5a3vuuzJFS1Iwh5lZrXyGbXKZe1QnXNNV8TSZJjgV0MemX1b9pAicPILF130UNQDGd3bZzKcN5jmgCUB6AL-mgNq_QIZtcvc4d53TNRWh43MsPow1xDz7JkyfOInOimdG9uY_iZRcwLm-2ALk5joA=w640-h446" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Before the film unfolds its unagitated but beautiful portrait of a young couple between final secondary school examinations and University, it offers a very special opening: A swing carousel on a fun fair. The swing carousel appears as a microcosm with different character constellations in it like a father with his son, immigrants, the young couple and many more. They are not only exposed to the centrifugal force but this carousel also screws itself to dizzying height. It is already dizzying to watch and I do not envy the cinematographer. Cinema which has its roots in fun fairs and strangely the film seems to remember where it comes from before it enfolds its subtle cultivated portrait of this couple. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">At the first sight it seems as a very unorthodox opening for a documentary which is mostly about the every day life of ordinary people. After this fierce introduction, the film will calm down image after image. As it mostly consists of quiet conversations, it will offer a total different cinematic attraction. Just to think about the strange relationship between this opening and the quiet but high concentrated flow of this film can inspire to philosophize about the two elements of Cinema, the movement (or the cinematic illusion of movement) and the static. As </span><i style="font-family: arial;">Kind Hearts</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> belongs rather to the family of Yasujiro Ozu or Germany´s finest documentary filmmaker Peter Nestler, it begins with exuberant movements like in films of the masters of articulated camera movements Ophüls, Malick, Murnau or Kubrick.</span></div><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: small;">The young couple´s (Lucas and Billie) life is in transition. First of all, they are trying to find out what to do after school what to choose to study at the university. But their relationship is also in transition. They are still too close to break up but already thinking secretly about it as an option. Lucas (“DJ Lucas”) helps a young woman who is a singer with “polishing the sound” As fragmental all these moments appear at the first sight, a few moments later almost nothing in this film seems accidental. The people are not just filmed, they themselves seem to “polish up” their appearance, the image from themselves. And as the film proceeds, whole human lives are through or despite this fragmental structure perceptible in all its gravitation. </span>The recorded conversation remind me also in one of the most difficult aspects of a documentary – to find a balance between closeness, means to learn something about these people and a certain discretion to protect their privacy. <i>Kind Hearts</i> manages this difficult balance with somnambulistic eloquence. The seeming “lightness” of the most parts of the film in contrast to the powerful opening scene disappears slowly. Are the protagonists exposed to mighty physical forces at the beginning, what now dominates is the invisible gravitation of human life with all its ramifications.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">There is a wonderful moment which takes place in an Italian restaurant. Billie and Lucas are sitting ans talking not yet openly about separation but carefully about “giving each other more space”, more time for themselves. In the background we hear quiet folkloristic music. Seemingly nothing happens and without being able to put the finger on why, it nevertheless appears to me as pure cinema. It is one of this seldom immersions into the image of the world the film offers. As fragmented this look on a couple in a situation of transition seems, in such moments one can sense the whole weight of human lives.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Kind Hearts</i> is has not only to do with the art of documentary filmmaking between closeness and discretion but it has also to do with the places and the time and also with a certain point in history in which these individuals are imbedded. </span>The parks, the library, restaurants and especially the room under the roof top where Lucas and Billie are learning have a strong presence in my memory of this film, as strong as the powerful opening. In retrospect the whole film seems like a kaleidoscope.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: small;">As I enjoyed this film already while watching it, some hours later when I recall it, it even appears more beautiful and rich and it is hard to believe that the film is less than 90 minutes long. </span>Cinema is not always only about what it reveals, sometimes it is also about options, potentials. <i>Kind Hearts</i> by Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes seems to lead after the watching a life on its own, an echo which can be left on you after watching a film by Yasujiro Ozu or Eric Rohmer.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">If there is any doubt that documentaries can be a great cinematic experience on the big screen films like for example <i>Herr Bachmann und seine Klasse</i> (Mr. Bachmann and his class, Maria Speth)) and this amazing film <i>Kind Hearts</i> suspend this doubt for good.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Screenings:</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Fri, 18.02, Cubix 8, 17.00</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-44556128827362479812022-02-16T09:23:00.003+01:002022-02-16T09:26:15.199+01:00 Notes on An Cailin Ciúin (The Quiet Girl), by Colm Bairéad, Ireland: 2022-Berlin Filmfestival2022 I.- Generation<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi18aWt8Cd-wjCzL-b1fAQjB5TR4lj_Ch9z6VZ3ZlOovJpYQaoklOJ8UT4_wpvhSvmoEAUVujTJx9kSE8eTFo9ExcUFLhINblQeI4NrEEuoERWAdjIRp4zMCBc05vRLYGQxpZb0Kpo7DyA6aHnA591N-2ova0u0r483siRV-X_Ug6ZJLmDru6UDhK39nQ=s1380" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1037" data-original-width="1380" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi18aWt8Cd-wjCzL-b1fAQjB5TR4lj_Ch9z6VZ3ZlOovJpYQaoklOJ8UT4_wpvhSvmoEAUVujTJx9kSE8eTFo9ExcUFLhINblQeI4NrEEuoERWAdjIRp4zMCBc05vRLYGQxpZb0Kpo7DyA6aHnA591N-2ova0u0r483siRV-X_Ug6ZJLmDru6UDhK39nQ=w640-h480" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The film is shot in the classic Academy-format and despite Bairéads wonderful use of this aspect ratio, one wishes for the shy and introverted 9 years old girl a temporary escape into dreams in Cinema scope. Cáit, the girl is often glancing out of the window of the small kitchen or of the side windows of a driving car. Landscapes pass by quickly but her glance evokes an unsaid longing. Rather than the cliché of endless green fields of Ireland, Bairéads film deals at first with the narrowness of rooms and with the difficulties of Irish farmers in the 1980s to earn their living. There is a complex relationship between the film´s uncompromising sober view on the tristesse of the every day life of Irish farmers in the 1980s. But on the other hand the film is also punctuated with short and fleeting, almost dreamlike moments which does not evoke happiness but suggest its possibility.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">During car rides when Cáit looks out of the window, the passing landscapes melt together into a blurr of lights and trees. This film is sober and realistic on its surface seems dreaming itself like its protagonists.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Cáits parents are overstrained by the work on their farm and the many children they have (the mother is pregnant again) Cáit is the outsider, the problematic child who is wetting her bed and who is always daydreaming. During holidays they send her to Seán, a cousin of her father and his wife Eibhilin far away. Received warmly by Eibhilin and ignored at the beginning by Seán who is tight-lipped and grumpy. As her father has forgotten her suit case she wears clothes of an unknown boy. Encouraged by the care of the elderly lady and the gradually growing affection by the aging man, the girl adapts her new environment very quick. The couple has not less troubles to manage their farm like Cáits parents. And even unwanted, Cáit discovers a hidden family tragedy. Opposite to her life with her own family, the girl seems to grow with new challenges. Even though her “holidays” are not idyllic, she experiences love and care, things she did not know that they even exist. The film which seems as tight-lipped like its protagonists allows in the midst of its laconic narration moments of revelations, wonder and poetry. The girl witnesses a funeral service (an old neighbour has died), in another moment she feeds with Seán a little calf. Eibhilin shows her a hidden well. Especially through these inserts of revelations, poetry and wonder in his reluctant simple but exquisite images, Colm Bairéad evokes an incredible respect for the things and the living beings.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Once the girl and her father´s cousin made a night excursion to the sea. Landscapes only lighted by the moon, it is one of the most engrossing scene in this film. The look to the seaside evokes infinite scope. From faraway, they see three lights of boats. Between its accurate look on every day life of Irish farmers, the film offers these moments I would like to call pure cinematic when we look at something and dream at the same time. This moments seem to encourage the people to continue with their difficult life. No wonder that the Irish, repressed for centuries and often confronted with extreme poverty made the most beautiful folk songs in Western Europe.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">By the way, the film is made entirely in Irish-Gaelic language which is just another proof for the film´s authenticity and its unique artistic vision. The film does not conquer our hearts with cheap melodramatic approaches. The closer the film comes to its end, it is evident that its laconic narration is nothing else as respect and love for the things and people it reveals but as well for the audience who get a taste what it means “film is the art of seing”. One might have to make some efforts to adapt this films unique style, a little bit like the girl has to adapt her new environment with strangers far away from home. But the reward is much more worth than the efforts we have made.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">At the end the almost secretly hidden poetic moments lead to a strong emotional moment, I do not want to give away. All the beautiful fleeting moments the film is punctuated with lead to a very special cinematic wonder, as intense as some moments in films by Terrence Malick and as mesmerizing like so much songs Ireland is famous for.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">There is a moment when the Seán sings a song in Irish-Gaelic. It is one of the small moments which makes this film unforgettable. Sooner or later this will will become in my memory a song itself.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Further screenings:</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Fri, 18.02, Urania 11.00</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Sun, 19.02 Cubix 8, 17.00</span></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-81434925874013390582022-02-08T15:59:00.002+01:002022-02-08T16:00:30.349+01:00 Notes on Aruna Vasudev, Mother of Asian Cinema, by Supriya Suri, India: 2021<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH7XlnuGSGLxGgQRRZIvmQJ7BUoLqlXtBb_eE5qQmhhBMncCBI9npUYs9qIZ2Uu0YqFpyN9phvxRHcMHhYkQkNQSYPw5keW-pF4l4nFY-VqzfH49lng4Gpmk3AjMxfY3xPwO1WevJxcpNylbH35tQFdV7AF7o6plUQObE28UYQlfNJlFzl5WQuy9hBTw/s3840/Copy of Film Still 2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2160" data-original-width="3840" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH7XlnuGSGLxGgQRRZIvmQJ7BUoLqlXtBb_eE5qQmhhBMncCBI9npUYs9qIZ2Uu0YqFpyN9phvxRHcMHhYkQkNQSYPw5keW-pF4l4nFY-VqzfH49lng4Gpmk3AjMxfY3xPwO1WevJxcpNylbH35tQFdV7AF7o6plUQObE28UYQlfNJlFzl5WQuy9hBTw/w640-h360/Copy of Film Still 2.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The beautiful title gives already a hint to what Aruna Vasudev accomplished for a rising awareness for Asian Cinema in several ways: she was the editor of the wonderful unfortunately discontinued film magazine <i>Cinemaya</i>, she was one of the founders of the organization called Netpac (Network for the promotion of Asian Cinema) and as well the head of the Cinefan festival for Asian and Arab cinema (later Oisan Cinefan) which as well was discontinued.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Even though there were some voices in the West like Donald Ritchie, Max Tessier or the former director of the Berlinale-Forum Ulrich Gregor who suggested already since the late 1950s or 1960s that Asian Cinema is in its diversity and history at least equal to the Cinemas of Europe and America, if not superior at all.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">But with <i>Cinemaya</i> there was a new self-perception among Asian critics, filmmaker, festival programmer and film historians. In the issues of <i>Cinemaya</i> one finds many essays about the specific history of certain asian countries, written by people from this specific country like Peggy Chiao on Taiwanese and Chinese Cinema, Gönül Dönmez-Colin on Turkish cinema, Tadao Sato on Japanese Cinema or Chidananda Dasgupta on Indian Cinema etc. I can hardly remember any Asian country which remained disregarded in this magazine.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Supriya Suri divides her film in this three chapters. After an introduction to Aruna Vasudev, the chapters deal with the film magazine, the Netpac and finally with the (Oisan) Cinefan film festival which took place in New Delhi. </span>As there are many interviews with filmmaker, critics, film historian or festival programmer in this film, Suris film reveals another important fact about this movement. A magazine like <i>Cinemaya</i> did not only inspired Western cinephiles with a special love for Asian Cinema like me, it reveals also that the film people from Asia as well were in a permanent exchange of ideas, if in this magazine, if on festivals or anywhere else. One gets an idea of this atmosphere of departure especially in the 1990s. It was the time when people like Hou Hsiao Hsien, Wong Kar Wei and a a lot other directors became famous at big International Filmfestival. Even the film festival in Busan/Korea has since its first edition more or less replaced the International Film festival of Hongkong as the most important hub for Asian Cinema.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">A film about Aruna Vasudev was long overdue. As the film is very well researched, it brought a lot of memories back to me. Some of the interviewed persons I met on film festivals long ago. </span>As <i>Cinemaya</i> was for me like an endless source of information about new but also about the history of specific Asian Cinemas, the founding of Netpac was another step. The organization installed Netpac Juries on many International film festivals including Berlin and Rotterdam and quite a number of new talents and now recognized filmmaker were discovered.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">And all this began with <i>Cinemaya</i> where Vasudeva changed the office of her husband into the editorial head quarter of the magazine. Some shots show the very unique design of this magazine. The coordination between Netpac and <i>Cinemaya</i> was a further step to expand the discussion on Asian cinema.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">And finally as another result of Vasudevs tireless eagerness was the Cinefan Film festival. The first edition took place in 1999 and from 2004 it was named Oisan Cinefan, sponsored by the auction house Oisan. For around 10 years it introduced Asian cinema to Indian audience. The encounter with Asian and Arab Cinema shaped the love for cinema for a lot of young cinephiles. The filmmaker herself (how she mentions in a statement) one of them.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The financial crash in 2008 changed a lot for the worse. Oisan withdrew their financial support which ended the festival and the magazine as well. It was a disputable decision and still hard to retrace. Only the Netpac organization remained from Vasudevs efforts. </span>And one can ask in retrospect if the dependence from Oisan was problematic.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">All of us who have a special love for Asian Cinema owe Aruna Vasudev a lot, the audience, especially the young Indian audience owes her the encounter with films from regions normally hard to access in Indian cinemas.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Even though the retired Aruna Vasudevs last sentence in the film is : My life is like an endless party”, the film left on me a melancholic aftertaste. For me it evoked especially memories in the 1990s when I had with some of the interviewed persons smaller or bigger talks when they crossed my ways during the Berlin Filmfestival, including Aruna Vasudev. Some of them are very old or retired, some even not alive anymore. It is the strange feeling when my warm memories become history. Just alone as a piece of reminiscence alone, Supriya Suris film is impressing enough. At the first sight Aruna Vasudev, Mother of Asian Cinema seems sober and journalistic. But what it evokes in me is much more moving. For all of us, critics, cinephiles, but also festival programmers, curators and filmmaker, Aruna Vasudev was indeed like a mother. And it was her accomplishment that one can talk much more about Asian cinema – and especially as its gigantic contribution for world cinema at all. Filmmaker Supriya Suri has correctly identified this accomplishment of Aruna Vasudev and that is another resason why I consider her documentary as a very important comment about film history and especially a tribute to a woman who kept film history alive.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424480860302363937.post-57845577791761977902021-10-24T16:43:00.007+02:002022-04-11T14:35:02.938+02:00 Notes on Seize Printemps (Spring Blossom) by Suzanne Lindon, France: 2020<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXuaEg4df6iPjJwMXXKVgvYSV4wUK2tRLfycQPRkd4ExPl6_7K749iVeFj5qbtfJqxbQWXuICNig6gzrxzv9RhZJN86L4KE8ACyVvsplg3tVra5PNYU2w2Diiocc9LhGcjO9TuKWS20QcD/s1920/Fruehling_in_Paris_2.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXuaEg4df6iPjJwMXXKVgvYSV4wUK2tRLfycQPRkd4ExPl6_7K749iVeFj5qbtfJqxbQWXuICNig6gzrxzv9RhZJN86L4KE8ACyVvsplg3tVra5PNYU2w2Diiocc9LhGcjO9TuKWS20QcD/w640-h360/Fruehling_in_Paris_2.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <span style="text-align: justify;">(Still 2020 Avenue B Productions)</span></div></span><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">For J.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">First of all, <i>Seize Printemps</i> was for me an unexpected gift of a film. I have seen it at this very weekend when the film theatres in my country reopened after a shutdown of 8 months. It was a Sunday and I wanted to see Chloé Zhao´s <i>Nomadland</i> again which left quite a strong but painful impression on me. At the same film theatres, <i>Seize Printemps</i> was shown and I could easily integrate it in my schedule. And I was lucky about that because one week later the film almost disappeared from the cinemas in Berlin except the german dubbed version. While <i>Nomadland</i> has to do with aging, loneliness, losses and the eternal search for a place in the world, Suzanne Lindon´s film has to do with another and more comfortable but also very intense feeling, this special feeling when one fells in love at a very young age. Now since the reopening of the cinemas, I have two films in my mind which won´t leave my me for quite a while.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Among so much what <i>Seize Printemps</i> is, it is as well another example of my beloved sub genre “Coming of Age” and here it is about a 16 years old girl´s love to a stage actor taking place between the end of childhood and the rite of passage. There is a strange somnambulistic balance between an often nearly minimalistic approach interwoven with fine dosed moments of pure cinematic magic.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">What we see of the geography of Paris is mostly reduced to the places, Suzanne passes during her every day routine, the way from school to home, a few cafe´s and the apartment where she lives with her parents and her sister. Even the shy love story between Suzanne and a stage actor in his mid thirties originates literally from this every day geography: the old dusty theatre (where the actor Raphael works) is on the way she passes every day. If there is any trace of eroticism than rather in this strange harmony of their movements as in some shy kisses.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Strangely, smart phones or other technical hints to the 21. Century are hardly visible. And it is especially the film´s economy which causes moments of dreamlike beauty. There are some several dance scenes in this film, some of them part of the story and others appear as formalized cinematic movements. Once they sit in a café (a common or garden), Raphael, gives her the head phone of his mp3-player and they listen a vocal work of Vivaldi. As the music begins the move head, hands and their body totally synchronous. And suddenly this not too cozy café changes into a mythic cinema place. In these ritualized moments one comes to think of the universes of an Ozu or a Pialat but in its musicality I think as well of Demy or Ophuls – not to forget Olga Kurylenko´s chaplinesque dances in Malic´s masterpiece <i>To the Wonder</i>. There is a wonderful moment when Suzanne just walks on a street and suddenly she begins to dance. It is another of the fleeting moments (as fleeting as this love story itself) but only this moment alone makes me wish to watch the film again.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">This strange balance between a certain sensitivity for every day moments changing into totally engrossed moments alone would have been enough to admire this first feature film of a very young filmmaker.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">But it is especially the “Café-Vivaldi”-scene which does not leave my mind. The emotional impact it has on my mind is complex and exhausting like an endless loop in my memory. Technically it is this strange effect when we watch people on the screen who are totally absorbed by something like I am by the film. It is one of these cinematic miracles which allow me to be absorbed by what I see but at the same time I felt like I was travelling through my own life time. Just these intensity one listening music when one has fallen in love affected me a lot. Just the combination of feeling engrossed but at the same time time to feel alive and exactly at the right place and at the right time in the world, this film pointed with an uncanny but as well indescribable precision.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">And of course, <i>Seize Printemps</i> (Lindon began to write the screenplay at the age of 15) is another wonderful example of autobiographic inspired “Caméra Stylo”, an aspect of cinema which occupied my mind a lot in the last 15 years especially in the films by Korean Yang Yonghi (whose four films deal entirely with her family story), the autobiographic inspired films by Terrence Malick or Anjan Dutt´s <i>Dutta Vs Dutta</i>. But interestingly, while Terrence Malick, Yang Yong-hi, Hou Hsiao Hsien or Anjan Dutt are dealing with their memories of the more or less far distant past, Suzanne Lindon´s memories or even childhood inspirations are like we say in Germany “still very warm”.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">In several reviews of this film, the term lightness is used, sometimes as a compliment, sometimes slightly deprecatingly. The “lightness” is not so much in the subject like the German and the international title, <i>Spring in Paris (Frühling in Paris)</i> and <i>Spring blossom</i>) try to suggest, because adolescence or first love are anything else than simple. The “lightness” which attracts and enthuse me, is the lightness how a very young filmmaker moves freely through the history of cinema and how she makes at the same times something very personal.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><i>Seize Printemps</i> is a very special first feature in Cinemascope and it should be seen on the big screen. If the film is not a big sign of hope for the future of cinema, what then?</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Rüdiger Tomczak</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p>shomingekihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17128623042658610547noreply@blogger.com0