IFFR Weblog

Forget Africa 33: Without title

Programmer Gertjan Zuilhof teamed up with Indonesian filmmaker to watch Edwin in Kenya. They ignored the Masai Mara and Mount Kenya Parks. They went to the dark and dirty parts of Nairobi.

Most people visit Kenya on a tourist safari group package. We saw them coming and going in and out of our hotel, while we profited from
the group discount and stayed. The hotel was gated and guarded and most tourists never enter the city of Nairobi that even by locals is nicknamed Nairobery. But we did not come to stay within the gates, so we went out, followings the flights of the Marabou Storks that scavenge the more dirty parts of the city.

 
Marabou Storks in Nairobi.

The big birds (with a wingspan like a Condor) rested in trees everywhere in the city, also right opposite the hotel. I asked a taxi driver where they would find there food. They fly far he said. As far as Dandora. At that point the word Dandora had little meaning to me, but that would change.
To get something of the ground in a place you don't know and never been to before you need at least one resourceful local who it willing to help. Luckily I found people like that all over Africa and in Nairobi it was Jimmy Ogonga who showed us the way. Jimmy is running a small but sophisticated arts organization and he had the names and numbers of the filmmakers and artists we should meet. He also out placed his nice assistant Jenipher Nabs to Edwin's film production.

 
Jimmy Ononga trying one of Edwin's kretek cigarets.

When Jimmy heard we would like to follow the Marabous to Dandora he made it clear we could not just go there. In the middle of Dandora is a huge dumping site (that is where the Marabous feed themselves) and around it are the worst slums of Africa. The area is controlled by gangs. Good and bad gangs. Good gangs are the hip hop gangs. Only they can protect you. He would phone somebody of Ukoo Flani MauMau, one of the more famous hip hop formations. He did so on the spot and the same afternoon we would meet the notorious rappers MC Kah and G.rongi.

 
G. rongi, the Hip Hop star in his garden.

 
Rapper MC Kah in rapper G. rongi's garden.

Very nice cool guys those hip hop stars and we hang around in the nice garden of G. rongi for the rest of the afternoon. Smoking things that are only legal in Holland and of quite bad quality in Kenya. G. rongi's house was situated in a very rich neighborhood and we wondered how he could have the street credibility to get us around in Dandora. But G.rongi introduced us to the khat chewing Robert who was setting up film activities as a social worker in Dandora and who was a hip hop musician as well.
So a few days later we indeed went to Dandora. Edwin wanted to find some local old people to play the dialogues Tan Chui Mui had written for him (see blog 28). Robert invited us in the back room of a local bar.

 
Musician and social worker Robert and Edwin.

The idea was to let the people who came for audition play a game of true or dare. The recording of it would make clear who would work the best for the movie.
 

Edwin and assistant Jenipher Nabs during Dandora auditions.

Now we have to admit that we came later than announced to the bar. By the time we arrived most of the aspiring actors were already drunk.

 
Audition in a Dandora bar.

We had a very funny and entertaining afternoon, but no actors that could be used. Yet, the going to Dandora was not completely useless. Like so often when warned for dangerous places in Africa, Dandora turned out to be just like any other slum neighborhood. Not a nice place, but mainly a place where normal people try to survive by running little shops and little businesses. On his last day Edwin would shoot a music video with Robert in the neighborhood.
And the rappers pointed us in another useful direction. We asked them where we could see and hear local life music and after some hesitation, it was a normal week day, they mentioned Simmers. Not a place they would go to, but we could try. Clearly the place was not cool, but they were nice enough to bring us anyway. It was a place for men in suits and prostitutes and great Congolese life music. In the audience we spotted an interesting looking older man. A musician on his night of. Also from Congo. Yes, he could play in a movie. Pas de problème. We could call him Bikas and Bikas would be the star
of Edwin's movie. So in the next chapter we go to another slum, Mlango Kubwa, to the little room where Bikas lives and where Edwin shot the movie.

 
Auditioning Musician Bikassy.

The last one standing

During the IFFR festival I thought that it would be great to spend one additional day here, in Rotterdam. This last day, however, felt unbearable sentimental. I walked through the empty halls of De Doelen, envying the Volkskrantdag's crowds. So, I decided to pay one final visit to the video library and the choice was clear -- “Two Lines” was the only new Turkish film from the YT programme I was not able to see during the festival.

When I started watching the YT titles 10 days ago, I could compare them only to the well-known Iranian style. On the other hand, I was surprised that almost all plot-lines dealt with the problem of initiation. The eight features I saw, were focused on a young male character who is about to wrench from the delicate web of family expectations or daily routine, but usually does not (except for Cemal, the main protagonist in “The Storm”). Yet, the psychoanalytical approach is too conventional, so I looked for another explanation and immersed myself in this new universe, where emotional and social issues merge together. Now, I must admit that I am absolutely in love with the Turkish cinema. I think I learned to decode the silence and to interpret each gaze. After this, one can easily become addicted to this beautiful cinematography with long static shots and exquisite mise en scène.

If you are curious about the YT selection, I recommend two titles for a start: “Wrong Rosary” (one of the Tiger award winners) and “Black Dogs Barking”. The first one is a modest romance involving two people, dedicated to two different religions. The second one is a dog-eat-dog story with a predictable outcome, but great editing and soundtrack. Both of them offer an interesting, actually opposite, perspective to Istanbul as well. In one of the last days I had the chance to make an interview with the directors of “Black Dogs Barking”, Maryna Gorbach and Mehmet Bahadir Er. While discussing with them the so called New Wave in the contemporary Turkish cinema, I was amazed by the community feeling among all young authors and especially by the respect they pay to the former generation. Not only Maryna and Mehmet, but also the other debutants, have a lot of experience in shorts, documentaries and commercials. Nevertheless, they prefer to avoid high-sounding definitions and self-confident forecasts.

I am already on my way home, but I still think about these eight Turkish movies I saw. I sacrificed a lot of Japanese and Russian titles, but I have no regrets, because in Bulgaria it would be easier to find them, rather than a Turkish film. God save the torrent sites and I hope to meet you all again next year!

Yoana Pavlova

Jerichow: an unespected surprise

Because of my assignements as a member of FIPRESCI jury and also those for the magazine I write for, I'm always writing and discussing about VPRO Tiger Awards Competition movies. Besides them I actually watched few many others films, especially shorts. But one of the movies I particularly liked in the huge program of the festival, was Jerichow. It was an unespected surprise, because I usually don't love remakes.

After The Postman Always Rings Twice starring Lana Turner in 1946 and the homonymous film by Bob Rafaelson with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange (1981), now Cristian Pretzold gives a new interpretation of the book written by James M. Cain. The German director moves that story to a suburb of East Germany and builds a very intense remake of that classic. The husband now is Turkish, according with the prevalent ethnic minority in Germany, but the strength and passion of the love, that makes his wife Laura cheats him with the unknown Thomas, is practically the same. Dirty feelings and hidden past are the main ingredients of this movie. Laura belongs to his husband Ali, because of a huge debts she has to pay to him, and the only solution for the lovers to run away, is to organize his murder.

No virtuosity, neither stylistic inventions in the shooting. The movements of the camera are very simple and precise, getting along perfectly with the lonely and silent set made by long roads punctuated by few houses hidden in the trees.

The strict screenplay respects the main characteristics of melò that perfectly combine, in the second part of the film, with the thriller, before going back again to melodrama in the crucial scene of the conclusion.

Gaetano Maiorino

Rerberg and Tarkovsky takes on the master's myth

The most talked about title in the Signals: Regained section of the festival is Igor Mayboroda's Rerberg and Tarkovsky: The Reverse side of "Stalker". It has received a chilly reception from most critics and casual viewers, many of whom have commented on its ungainly length and lack of polish. Perhaps more troubling is that the dead cannot speak for themselves; in a film that attempts to posit Gregori Rerberg as the real genius behind Tarkovsky's later efforts, it lacks a convincing case against Tarkovsky and relies largely on slander to do its bidding. I can't wait for the six hour version apparently in the works. -- Brandon Harris

The Sounds of Insects

Peter Liechti might be called a filmmaker of sound. All of his works are infused by a extraordinary musical sensibility, no matter the films are focused specifically on music. IFFR pays tribute this year to this Swiss director with an extensive retrospective of his films. Liechti, who run for a Tiger Award in 1997 with his celebrated fiction movie "Martha’s Garden", is also presenting his last work, "The Sound of Insects. Records of a Mummy" . World premiering in Rotterdam, the film adapts Shimada Masahiko’s well known novel, "Miira Ni Narumade", about a man who commits suicide by starving himself to death.

 Liecthi first approach to the novel was through the listening the musical adaptation Otomo Yoshihide did years ago. When writing the script for the film, he erased some specific passages in order to arrive an international audience: neither Yukio Mishima nor Harakiri Japanese suicide ritual original references appear in it. In his correspondence with Mishima, Japanese writer and Nobel prize, Yasunari Kawabata, complained about the lost of meaning when Japanese literature is translated into an occidental language. On the other hand, Liechti has been able to express all the deepness within the Shimada Masahiko’s work. "The Sound of Insects" is an emotional trip towards death and, paradoxically, a celebration of life.

The film flows between three main elements: words, images and sounds interweave together in a kind of video-diary experience. The narrator never explains the reason for his suicide, he only tells the audience how little by little his body is dying, depicting all levels of physical suffering, while on the screen beautiful images evoke his last days. Last, but not least, the sound -the noises of wilderness, the waver of a river, the rainwater falling, the insects chirping- and the music, made by musician Norbert Möslang, complete this intense portrait of self destruction. At the end, "The Sound of Insects" might be a challenging proposal, but it is an extremely sensitive and sensual approach to one of the biggest taboos of human kind.

By Paula A. Ruiz (Trainee Project)

Skolimowski retro in full swing

We've reached the second half of IFFR 09'. Although I've been swamped trying to catch competition films for the FIPRESCI jury and other films I've been intrigued by (which at a festival that is programmed to have such breadth, can be quite a chore), I'm definitely going to take a detour to check out some of the films in the Jerzy Skolimowski retrospective, which hits its zenith today.

Skolimowski, who along with Roman Polanski was a central figure in the Polish New Wave of the mid to late 60s (and like Polanski, left Poland to make films across Europe and the US), has a new film playing this evening, Four Nights with Anna (19:30, Cinerama 1) along with four other features: Deep End (21:45, Schouwberg Grote Zaal, with the short Erotique), Hands Up! (15:45, Pathe 4), Moonlighting (20:00, Cinerama 7) and The Lightship (14:15, Venster 2, with the short The Menacing Eye). 

Brandon Harris, Trainee Project for Young Film Critics

Cok kalabalik

My first impression from IFFR can be described as “culture shock”, not only because this is my first international festival, but also because the atmosphere in Netherlands is completely different from my home country. Everyone is totally relaxed – last time I saw people singing on the street early in the morning was one year and a half ago, in Italy. My initial three days, however, went by in a constant hassle. I lost several personal belongings, missed an important event from our training schedule and during my first interview my recorder let me down. So I think I have reached a point where I do not care anymore and just enjoy the festival. 

Another aspect of my initial shock was the meeting with the other trainees. I was truly surprised that we all share a common experience with contemporary cinema and with our careers, although we are from different continents. These were among the most pleasant moments so far, sitting together and talking about films, no matter that we prefer different styles or directors. We cannot afford to spend too much time together, as all of us have various tasks, but, luckily, our work with the FIPRESCI jury delivers this type of professional comfort as well. 

Covering the Young Turkish Cinema programme is one of my assignments, and the titles I saw so far contributed to my general amazement. Bulgaria and Turkey are neighbors, yet I have to admit that we are not very familiar with the Turkish cinematography. I already managed to see “Milk”, “The Storm”, “On Board”, and “Pandora's Box”. They all left me with the feeling that our cultures are extremely similar, even though our politics would not admit it. Of course, while watching, I constantly drew a comparison between these films and the one produced in my country. I must say I admire the bold artistic approach of the Turkish directors. As a rule, the Bulgarian cinematography still strives to catch up with the Western mainstream and I was delighted to see an opposite example. I promise more details about the Turkish cinema in my next posting!

Yoana Pavlova (from the Trainee Project of Young Critics)

What do I recommend from IFFR

Probably because there hasn’t been anything similar in Spain, I firmly recommend not to miss the Urban Screens, from the Size Matters programme. Although Spain, and specially Barcelona, the city where I come from, has very well-known cultural centres with cutting edges cinema programmes, nobody has had yet this great idea of projecting movies on buildings surfaces. We are used to watch there advertisements or, sometimes, TV excerpts, mostly broadcasting of news. But, what happens if instead the CNN we watched Isabella Rossellini being electrocuted? That’s the proposal of Urban Screens, a kind of "Blade runner" aesthetics exercise that tell us a lot about what cinema could or could not become by placing the cinematic image outside its conventional scenario. Canadian Guy Maddin, mexican Carlos Reygadas and dutch Nanouk Leopold are the three filmmakers chosen to transform three buildings of Rotterdam into an open air screen. They are also another reason of why I recommend the section. Maddin is my favourite director nowadays. His very unique style, a pastiche of vintage speedy images and laberynthic stories, has captivated me for a long time. Let me suggest you something. When watching his short, "Send me to the electric chair", at the Robeco building, just in front the Cinerama theatres, pay attention to the sound of the traffic light for the hearing impaired: it is perfectly synchronised with the frenetic rhythm of the movie. It’s funny to realise, then, how environment could provide as well an improvised soundtrack that it was not written at the script.

Paula A. Ruiz (from the Trainee Project of Young Critics)

I wanna like Alonso...

In 2000, Lisandro Alonso presented the world his unique narrative style, coming up with “La libertad”. From this moment on to “Liverpool” (2008), which is being exhibited in Rotterdam’s Spectrum section), the Argentinean director got specialized in his own kind of character-driven cinema that, with this last movie, seems to have reached a wastage point.

An unconditional fan of misfit types and of the construction of a reality that resists fiction, Alonso puts his camera in the life of average people wishing it wasn’t there. He gives up mostly sounds and tracks, telling it all through silence and, during apparently insignificant minutes (which are actually very heavy, for the weight all characters seem to carry or for the landscape that doesn’t welcome anybody, pushing away any psychological interpretations), make us get used to his characters. But then he – or his camera – follows another way, interested in environment, in others, in anything. Or in everything what he, Lisandro, wishes to say. 

The thing is that, in this anti-narrative movie game, the search for identification doesn’t stay aside, even if he wants to. For this misfit guys, Alonso hopes for proximity. So it is, that he gives us information on Farrel, the main character in “Liverpool” through the mouths of other characters. More than he has ever done with his previous movies, as if his previously mentioned style were draining to the last drops.

This is what I felt here in Rotterdam, during a press screening of the movie: the spectator that accepts Lisandro Alonso’s cinema hopes, anyway, to get closer not only to his characters, but to him as a director, trying to like what they saw. My fellow journalists, for example, risked some reactions of anxiety during the movie, like little laughers and suspiration, mostly in cuts from one scene to the other, when some change in the situation created new expectations.

And in the final shot, when a character finds a key ring with the word “Liverpool” sculpted in metal, explaining the title, they let out the final loud breath meaning “Is he going to end the movie here?”. Yes, he will. And he did, showing that what he does is what he wants to do. In this dynamics, I confess, I get sometimes a little lost, like some of my colleagues. I wanna like Alonso, but I don´t know if I can.

On this video published in You Tube, Alonso talks about “Liverpool” and the kind of cinema he is interested in (in Spanish):

By Camila Moraes (trainee in Rotterdam's Proyect for Young Film Critics)

Starting it up

Hello there. I'm Phil. I figured that since I was up and I have internet access in my room, I'd start this blog thing up. I've been writing for the last two hours or so anyway, so I might as well keep the ball rolling.

I'm really excited to be here at the festival. Back home, I spend most of my time watching mainstream films, which makes me one of the few people on this planet to have watched all five of these movies in the last year: The Hottie and the Nottie, Prom Night, Blonde Ambition, Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie. Thankfully, I got to skip Daddy Day Camp. But my point is this: with all the dreck I have to see for my work, I rarely get a chance to catch what's going on in alternative and international cinema. It's just amazing to be able to cross the street and catch a movie I've never heard anything about before and being completely surprised by what I find.

Today I'm catching Edwin's Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly, which I missed back when it was shown in Cinemanila. And I think I'm going to spending some time getting to know the video library. As much as I love being inside the cinema, there's just too much I have to catch.