Competition
Dir. Charlotte Silvera
In 2008 after a prolonged
interval French cinema won back the Palme d’Or in Cannes with the movie
“Klass”. The event was followed by an avalanche of movies about
discontent at school, which – just to be objective – reflected the real
importance of the problems in French education. Last year Isabelle
Adjani got a “Cesar” for “La journée de la jupe” where she defended
herself with Moliere and Racine against a whole class of partially armed
with the guns of the multicolored ignoramuses tribe. In contrast to the
above mentioned movies, in “Escalade” a more exquisite group of
schoolchildren will ring the doorbell of Alice Naba (played by Karmen
Maura) on the day of her birthday. Their parents are fathers of the
city, just one call from them is sufficient to save the life of the
teacher’s mother who urgently needs a kidney transplant. In return they
want answers to the forthcoming final tests. Their reasoning is
rational, each has selected a path in life where he won’t need this or
that subject. Their examples will put to shame Adjani’s teacher: “De
Gaulle was unable to put two and two together, Kafka would have become
Kafka even without mathematics”. They have at their disposal the latest
gadgets, the super-phones which will let them, in case of a refusal –
which they get, – instantly simulate an orgy with the participation of
the teacher and circulate it over the Internet.
If to the Russian
viewer it sounds familiar, he is right: we are dealing with a foreign
interpretation of Lyudmila Razumovskaya’s play “Dear Elena Sergeevna”.
The screen version by Eldar Ryazanov appeared at the height of
Perestroika. It was rough and inappropriate (a disappointing
miscalculation by our favorite director) like a dressing-down of pupils
at a komsomol meeting for going to watch “Kabaret” instead of sitting at
a lesson and aroused an uproar in the newspaper “Ucnitelskaya gazeta”.
At the same time the debut work of the director of “Escalade” Charlotte
Silvera called “Louise... l'insoumise” was released in our theatres. It
remined almost unnoticed, but was full of compassion for the
schoolchildren. Very well, mademoiselle Silvera and her schoolchildren
have grown up and noticed that a new generation has succeeded them and
it is full of shit. With all their gadgets they are shallow, have no
life experience, have not lived through the dramas of life which provide
the key to survival. In this sense it seems interesting to compare
“Escalade” to the recent “Scream 4” which contains similar observations
about the generation gap.
In the beginning of “Escalade” Karmen
Maura dressed in a wrap-over dress (which, as Elisabeth Taylor used to
say, beautifies the woman of any age and built) opens a bottle of port
wine with a savoury “pop” to pour herself a morning glass and we
immediately understand that unlike Razumovskaya’s play, the battle will
not be fought against the background of the teacher mumbling about the
classics and morality. With the inimitable possessed expression with
which Maura added sleeping pills to gazpacho in “Women on the Verge of a
Nervous Breakdown”, the teacher stuffs mineral water with laxatives and
emetics. Now one of the pupils can no longer leave the toilet and in
the doorway he sees that the woman, who only a minute ago was unable to
get up because of the leg trauma, is sneaking in the darkness with a
knife. Her tormentors realize that with their idiotic phones they were
unlucky enough to find themselves in the wrong cinema. The old cinema.
With which the new cinema can never compare, in no epoch, ever. And
their teacher is an actress from Almodovar’s movies of the time when he
was still bursting with energy and could defend his eternally drunken
characters with a leather lash.
Alexey Vasiliev
Competition
Dir. Ivan Vladimirov, Valeri Yordanov
Six people
escape from Sofia. Their flight is depicted humorously, dashingly and
briefly: for example, the camera is watching trough the shop window how
the 50-year-old drunkard slaps his woman across the face. The next
moment a girl in working clothes runs into the café, he pushes her
outside, but she immediately reappears to pour his beer on his head.
Almost a silent comedy. Running their separate ways they utter lines of
dialogue from which we learn unbearably tragic stories which were wisely
left out by the authors so as not to insult the film medium with their
prints. One of them was writing a script and meticulously repaired
furniture in his rented flat. The landlady knew about his plight and
constantly raised the rent so that he was forced to take more and more
orders which seriously interfered with his script. Another was speeding
to the village to see his father and almost bumped into his coffin. The
third one, still very young, started out as a successful boxer, but
earned five haematomas in his head which now cause him to lose his
temper at the wrong moment and beat up policemen whom his drunken mind
mistakes for hoodlums.
All together they will end up on the sea
shore. Here the compulsive race of the stories stops, giving way to a
different rhythm. Jackets and working clothes are shed. Their bodies
suddenly become agile and their arms which were created to embrace
someone, are open to the sun and the sea, the honest eyes and the lips
hungry for a kiss are open to the camera which one of them is carrying
and with which they share their intimacies. Their stories are strikingly
different from those we heard in the beginning like the ones about the
greedy landlady, alcoholic mother and wanderings about Sofia night
clubs. “I am going back to the village and I am taking my brother with
me. If need be, I’ll cut this city from his brain with a chainsaw”, says
one of them. “In the East when a warrior dies, they say he went West.
I’ll head the other way. I’ll shine on you from the East. With no fear
and shame. Free and proud”, - promises the other. “What do I hate?
People. No, not that. I hate the people, who force me to be ashamed of
myself” - muses the third, drawing deeply on his cigarette and looking
straight into the camera.
I heard one Indian astrologist say:
“The unhappy man is the one who is out of his mind”. “Sneakers” is a
movie about six people who have broken loose from someone else’s mind
and are beginning to live by their own brains. What turns this film into
a masterpiece – ad this is undoubtedly the long awaited masterpiece –
is the acting among other things. Six impeccable acting accomplishments:
from the ones by acknowledged stars like the sad clown Ivan Barnev (“I
Served the King of England”) who is booked for years ahead in Bulgaria
and “Sneakers” co-director Valeri Yordanov (“Stolen Eyes”, “Crayfish”)
to the debutant Ivo Arykov whose work in Javor Gardev’s theatrical
production of “The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?” was blessed by the author
himself – Edward Albee – just like Tennessee Williams once blessed the
young Pierce Brosnan. The comparison is justified. The guy is incredibly
handsome and taking into account that his interests spread from
Strindberg to animated films like “Just You Wait!”, there is just one
way to describe the feeling when you listen to his monologue about
becoming a simple manual laborer – heart attack. Orson Wells used to
say: “If I had two lives, I would have devoted one of them entirely to
the cocaine”. Arykov plays his boxer as though he were living his second
life to the fullest, the one for which he would have had to forget
Strindberg and would have never know Albee, but which would have been so
sweet to live: the simple life of a handsome guy, whose existence is so
easy up to a certain point but whom the state and society use as cannon
fodder with sadistic pleasure and consistency worthy of a better
application.
Skillfully using the wide screen the authors switch
to amateur camera now and then, the one that accompanies the characters.
The smoke from the fire still lingers, the same bagpipe of a stray
Zambian is heard off-screen, but the morning mist clears already on the
screen of the amateur camera. Only the tune is constant. The melting
clouds and the earthly images, which time and again turn into cinema,
remind us of the uneven light of Maya. Messiah from Richard Bach’s story
of the sane mane took the protagonist to the movies to explain to him
the meaning of earthly life: “When Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
were dying you cried, you would have given up your life for them, but
you did not die. Watch your own life like you watched this movie”. The
time will come to remember these words when “Sneakers” take you to the
closing scene.
Alexey Vasiliev
Competition
Dir. Judit Elek
All happy families are happy in
the same way, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. That
is the case in Judit Elek’s movie. The Romanian and the Swedish families
have very little in common. What could a Transylvanian forester and a
respectable West-European lady have in common? Nothing. And still at
some point they start the inexorable movement towards each other from
points “A” and “B”, traversing the frontiers… Do they want this meeting?
No. But… It depends… Will they meet? No. Though…
Judit Elek is
one of the most experienced Hungarian directors (she began filming in
the 50s and is considered a representative of the “first generation” of
the founders of Hungarian cinema). She ventured to experiment on a large
scale, juxtaposing three epochs, three worlds on the screen – Hitler
occupation, the West and developed socialism. The latter is taken in its
most flagrant form familiar from the usual first-hand stories: when
Perestroika was under way in the USSR, Soviet people, who came to
Bucharest and tried to talk to the “aborigines” in the way they had
already got used to on TV, they met with horrified glances and fingers
pointing at the ceilings in the hotels, which meant that everything was
bugged.
The movie is set long before the Soviet Perestroika, in
1980. Katherine, a Jew of Hungarian-Romanian origin living in Sweden
ventures to come to Transylvania, which she had left at the age of 7.
She was taken to the death camp and miraculously survived: her relatives
dismantled the floor in the freight car, but only a child could squeeze
through the opening…
Almost everything in this country reminds
Katherine of a Holocaust, it might even seem that the director indulges
in flashbacks. The border guard turns into a Gestapo soldier (while the
curt, barking noises in the background prove to be a football broadcast
and not the Führer’s speech); people lying along the walls in the dark
bring back a lot of memories, but it is a usual socialist hotel: no more
rooms and the lights are out. When after all the dramatic events on the
Romanian soil the car with the Swedish number plates crosses the
roadway barrier, Katherine’s little daughter asks: “Is it OK to sing
now?” and hears the answer: “Yes, now everything is OK”.
Meanwhile
the forester Teletski does not yield to his wife’s entreaties and
refuses to beget a child: “I don’t want to make babies for them, I don’t
want my son to become a murderer”. At the same time it is for “them”
that he himself prepares the hunting ground, for Ceausescu who is due to
shoot bears here. And the moment you think about the paradoxical notion
of “murder” in the context (in a few years the opponents of the regime
will themselves finish off the Ceausescus), the forester’s rifle fires
and soon Teletski is wanted for double murder. Evidently paradoxes of
the 20th century cannot be understood without Shakespearean plot twists.
Igor Saveliev
For the first time in Russia, a retrospective of Béla Tarr’s
full body of work will take part at Pioneer and October venues as part
of the 33rd MIFF.
Tarr’s latest feature, The
Turin Horse, based on an apocryphal story of Friedrich Nietzsche, was
entered into the main competition at this year’s Berlin Film Festival
and won Silver Bear for best directing and FIPRESCI prize. The director
claims it’s his last film, a farewell of sorts to filmmaking.
Béla
Tarr debuted in 1979 with Family Nest, which, along with Outsider,
Prefab People, and Autumn Almanac, composes his realistic chamber drama
cycle, a series of vignettes from Hungarian everyday life that are in
their ruthless precision very much alike to John Cassavetes’
masterpieces. Damnation (1988) marked a watershed in Tarr’s oeuvre. The
monumental Satantango and sophisticated Werkmeister Harmonies are both
stately metaphysical parables with distinctive visuals galore. Susan
Sontag wrote about Sátántangó, "Devastating, enthralling for every
minute of its seven hours. I'd be glad to see it every year for the rest
of my life."
László Krasznahorkai, a prominent
Hungarian writer, has collaborated with Tarr on more than one occasion.
However, the director is also known for his adaptations of other famous
books, including his masterful rendition of Macbeth and The Man from
London, which is loosely based on Georges Simenon’s novel (starring
Tilda Swinton, the film vied for the coveted Palme D’or at Cannes).
Day two of 33rd MIFF was full of events. First jury members of the three
competitions – Main, Perspectives and Documentary – were introduced. On
Friday first competing films were demonstrated.
The main event
of Friday was a meeting with 33rd MIFF jury which took place in the
lobby of Khudozhestvenny Cinema Hall. Photographers would not let go
those who will shape destiny of festival films. It should come as no
surprise that the most photographers’ attention was drawn to the
Chairman of the jury, actress Geraldine Chaplin. Hardly had the
improvised photo session ended, questions to the daughter of the
outstanding Charles came like a flood. Despite her surname, Geraldine
Chaplin made her own way in cinema with some dozens of characters –
starting from Tonya Gromeko in Doctor Zhivago by David Lean and up to
Catherine Bilova in Talk to Her by Pedro Almodóvar.
The press
conference announcer Peter Shepotinnik opened the press conference with
his traditional question, “What have you had to forgo to come to
Moscow?” Geraldine Chaplin simply answered she had nothing to give up,
but her family. “I had a lot of film projects in my life, last year I
participated in five pictures simultaneously. And one film has been shot
this year. So, it is enough for me.” Israeli stage director Amos Gitai
also turned his attention to his colleague from Main competition jury.
“My mother wrote me how she had met my father. It was in Haifa, my
native city. At their first date they came to the cinema to watch a film
with Charles Chaplin. So I owe my life to your great father”, Amos
Gitai shared his personal story.
Another start person from 33rd
MIFF jury – Hungarian classic Károly MAKK did not share his plans for
film staging and also preferred to dive into recollections. “My first
time at Moscow Film Festival was 45 years ago. I was a member of the
jury in far 1977. Hungarian film-makers have always had tight bounds
with Soviet, Russian colleagues. Now it is high time to see what has
changed and to meet those whom I remember from that far period”. Javier
Martín-Domínguez, the director of the Seville European Film festival and
a member of 33rd MIFF jury, has also been to Moscow before, but not as a
film-maker, he came here as a journalist. “It was late-1980s, I covered
the meeting of Gorbachev and Reagan. This time I’ll combine business
with pleasure: I’m preparing a Russian program for my festival in Spain,
so this is the best opportunity to watch your films.”
The only
representative of Russia in the Main competition jury is stage director
Nikolay Dostal. Two years ago he won MIFF with his film Petya po doroge v
Tsarstvie Nebesnoe / Pete on the Way to Heaven. “What do you not like
in modern cinema?” the audience asked. “Dominance of entertainment over
art, and it is our tragic future”, said the stage director hoping that
MIFF’s films will make the future more bright. But probably the main
question was addressed to the Chairman of the jury. “What are the
criteria for Geraldine Chaplin to judge a film?” The answer was
straight. “I hate the very word “judge”. Art does not tolerate judges. I
can name one hundred reasons when I dislike a film. But there are none,
if I think a picture is magnificent – you are just short of words. We
watch films not with our mind, but with eyes, consciousness, our body.
That is why it is very hard to understand who the best is when we talk
about arts.”
On June 24 Moscow Film Festival saw some other
contesting films. The first film demonstrated was Montevideo, Taste of a
Dream / Montevideo, Bog te video (Serbia). It was presented by Director
Dragan Bjelogrlić, Producer Dejan Petrović, actors Miloš Biković and
Milutin Karadžić as well as Nina Jankovi. All the events taking place in
the Former Yugoslavia in 1930s are about football. It is worth
mentioning that this very game was the central topic of Hermano /
Brother, last MMIF Main Prize winner. The press conference announcer
Program Director Kirill Razlogov wished to the film crew that this year
the tradition went on. “I wanted to shoot a film free of the spirit of
nihilism and seamy side. I am interested in real human values”,
described his aim Dragan Bjelogrlić. At the same time he mourned that in
his country and in Europe in general such films are not staged any
more. It turned out that he is an actor with 30-year experience.
Montevideo,
Taste of a Dream is Dragan Bjelogrlić’s debut as a
stage director. He decided to shoot this picture because of soreness,
“There are a lot of stage directors who intentionally draw their
countries in dark colours thus making their way to the global market. I
wanted to make a good-natured picture with a note of nostalgia for the
Former Yugoslavia.” And Producer Dejan Petrović added that before the
shooting started they had known that they would like that the first
night of their film was at Moscow International Film Festival. “MIFF is
the best place for the first night of our film, it is a real honour for
us”, director added. The story depicted in the film is real:
protagonists’ prototypes are known Serbian football players. The
featured actors are young Balkan actors, they are still students. “To
shoot them was a bold and wise decision”, summed up Dragan Bjelogrlić.
In
the Name of the Devil / W imieniu diabła is another Eastern European
film from the Main competition which was demonstrated on Friday. A
Polish picture about strange events in a nunnery was presented by
Director Barbara Sass and actress Katarzyna Zawadzka. At the press
conference it turned out that initially the author had intended to shoot
a film on another topic. 20 years ago she read in a newspaper a
catching story about an American sect and got interested in the
phenomenon of people manipulation. “I was really affected by the topic”,
says Barbara Sass. “But when I started to dig dipper I realized that
this American story is alien for our Eastern European environment, so we
had to change the story.” The only thing the director was interested in
was people manipulation. The reason for film shooting was a scandal
about one Polish nunnery where the Mother Superior drawn nuns into a
sect. But being a real artist, Barbara Sass wanted to imbed only her own
feeling and emotions in this story, therefore she had not talked to
participants of that conflict; she made her own story instead which
turned out to be more close to the reality.
The Friday at MMIF
started from a press conference with authors of the Undercurrent / Brim.
Films from Iceland is an event in their nature, not often amateurs in
Moscow get a chance to watch a film from the native country of Bjork and
Eyjafjallajökull volcano. All the better that the Undercurrent / Brim
is a kind of cubed Iceland. Cinema verité about everyday life of
fishermen, nature subdual fleshed out with suicides and betrayals. The
first question asked by journalists was not a surprise: why for his film
Árni Ólafur Ásgeirsson chose such a stereotype Icelandic topic as
fishing? “Yes, it is an important part of our culture. Nevertheless, for
modern Icelanders, especially for town dwellers, fishing in the sea is
rather exotic. There is certainly the memory of generations: our
fathers, grandfathers, they all were fishermen. Even I, though not a
professional fisherman, sail on the seas and fished. But the conflict of
generations is nowhere to hide”, explained Árni Ólafur Ásgeirsson his
decision. It is not by chance that the Undercurrent / Brim reminds you a
performance. By the way, the director drew on the idea from the theatre
when he saw the performance staged. After that he decided to shoot as
true a story about Icelandic fishermen’s life as possible, “You may not
shoot a film about fishermen in my country telling fibs – it will be
noticed at once.”
True cinema uncensored – such films are
expected from the participants of MIFF by members of Perspectives
competition jury. They also had their conference on Friday. But not all
of them had a talk with journalists in Khudozhestvenny Cinema Hall –
Aleksandr Kott will join his colleagues only tomorrow. Nevertheless,
there were no problems with the conversation – by chance, 33rd MIFF jury
member all speak Russian. These are a Serbian film critic Miroljub
Vučković and Kazakh stage director Ermek Shinarbayev. These were them
who answered journalists’ questions. Miroljub Vučković, the Program
Director of Film festival in Belgrade and Head of the Film Centre
Serbia, knows he expects from the films participating in MIFF, “Fresh
mountain air or sea breeze. The main task of the film festival is to
discover new trends which in the near future will become a dominant in
the world cinema art. They say that at the moment auteur cinematography
is having a bad time, but believe me such words would be appropriate any
time. In the Perspectives competition I will search for a film which
will stir me up.” It turns out in all appearances that his colleague
from the jury Ermek Shinarbayev is prompted by the very Moscow
atmosphere, “It has a kind of energy in it which you want to share. It
is very familiar to me as we are brought up by Russian cinematographers
and make our films in Russian.” According to the stage director from
Kazakhstan, perspective film does not necessarily mean negation of all
cinema cannons. “For me, expectation of a miracle in the cinema hall is
very important and, you know, miracles usually happen and when we were
to talk about modern cinema, young stage directors say that classics in
out-of-date. Then you see: their films are directly associated with
classic cinematography.”
The Abendland, a film from the
Documentary competition which is held within MIFF first time for 22
years, is presented by Nikolaus Geyrhalter. He is the leading
documentalist of Austria, his home country. And this status was
officially confirmed as early as in 2003 with the state award, some
local award similar to the State Prize. Apart from this award Geyrhalter
won film festivals in Vienna, Amsterdam and Berlin for his film Das
Jahr Nach Dayto, a shrilling documentary film about the war in Bosnia.
His latest work which the author brought to Moscow is called Abendland.
During
the press conference in Khudozhestvenny Cinema Hall Nikolaus Geyrhalter
said that he had crossed half Europe in order to understand what the
Old World is if the lights are out. It is a series of stories about life
of European megalopolis – from Rome to Berlin, from the Pope on the St.
Peter's Square in Vatican to whores in the red light quarter of
Amsterdam. Scrambling through night club raves and criminal shoot-outs
in city suburbs, the stage director came to a surprising conclusion
which he wants to share with Moscow audience, “Only homes for elderly
people are similar all over Europe. Elderly people and the romanticism
they keep in Europe are the things worth seeing and thinking of.”
Watching the film, the viewer is not always aware of where Nikolaus
Geyrhalter’s camera is. “For the most curious audience we placed the
list of all cities where we were shooting the film in the closing
credits”, promised the Austrian stage director.
Also the documentary
film program presents the Czech Peace by Vít Klusák and Filip Remunda.
Te film is about citizens of a small Czech town the mayor of which
decided to lead a matchless fight again the USA planning to place their
air defence missile systems in the town. It is a very topical story
which will undoubtedly draw viewers’ attention.
On that very day
members of the Documentary competition jury were introduced, among them
were the Chairman of the Jury director Michael Apted, director and
cinematographer Alexander Gutman and film expert Tue Steen Müller. Films
selected by them, like in the Main and Perspectives competitions, will
be awarded with St. George for the first time during 22 years of MIFF.
Grigory
Libergal, one of the competition supervisors, who announced the press
conference open, said that “disappearance of documentary films from the
competition was due to the hard economic situation in the country and in
the cinema art in particular.” But he thinks that now documentaries are
coming back. Danish film expert Steen Müller agreed with this
statement, “as nowadays documentary cinematography may afford
practically anything up to using game history episodes.” And director
Michael Apted confessed that h loves documentary for its unexpectedness
as “at the beginning of the film-making process it is impossible to
predict what the end of the film will be.”
‘Being John Malkovich’ – what does it mean? Who knows. Anyhow the actor
himself affirms that in the noted Spike Jonze’s picture, where his head
was being turned into a virtual portal, he just played an odd role of
the character with such a name, no way related to him.
Malkovich
played over 70 various parts in cinema, including the noblest Athos in
The Man in the Iron Mask, but gained great recognition after vicious
Vicomte de Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons, and for the psychotic
political assassin from In the Line of Fire he was nominated for the
Academy Award and the Golden Globe. It might be said that his range
stretches between judicial Dr. Jekyll and ominous Mr. Hyde from thriller
Mary Reilly, but Malkovich confesses: "I'm drawn to a character with a
lack of humanity. People give reasons for being cruel or sadistic but I
think it is just a lack of humanity and concern for others. I think I'm
good at them because I don't like them”. Paradoxically enough -
audiences are attracted to those roles played by Malkovich which he
deeply hates. Maybe this makes him agree to participate in the projects
where he can parody his dramatic type.
The actor indulges portraying
a burlesque of those villains and rogues which made him public’s
favourite, with special delight picturing his character’s abasement.
As
Malkovich recalls, his first teacher in acting taught, that the worst
sin was to be boring. With this lesson in mind he daringly takes up
inconceivable tasks always presenting something an audience won't have
seen. Nowadays public at large not only in Italy, Germany, Australia or
Austria, but also in St. Petersburg and Moscow came to know his operatic
talent as he toured with the opera The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a
Serial Killer. His performance of Jack Unterweger, who strangled 11
women, arose a controversial reception; some spectators reproached him
of glorifying the monster. But this impression is deceitful: charming as
usual in this part, Malkovich just shows that moral monsters often have
human face and that the evil may appear very attractive. But his own
sympathy wins another charming operatic personage – famous womanizer
Casanova in The Giacomo Variations where he plays against Ingeborga
Dapkunaite.
Nina Tsyrkun
The winner of the 2011 Golden Bear in Berlin, Nader And Simin, A Separation by Asghar Farhadi will open the Wrocław-based event on the 21st July. The second opening film will be Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. The closing film on the 31st July will be Pedro Almodovar’s latest movie The skin I live In.
Among the confirmed guests are Terry Gilliam, Kim Ki-Duk and Bruno Dumont.
All three competitions of the festival are looking strong this year with titles such as Urszula Antoniak’s Code Blue, Paula Markovitch’s El Premio and Nanouk Leopold’s Brownian Movement in the main, New Horizons International Competition and Kim Ki-Duk’s Arirang and Marie Losier’s The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, among others, in the Films on Art International Competition.
The New Polish Films competition will see the world premiere of Wilhelm Sasnal’s It Looks Pretty from a Distance. Sasnal is a world-famous contemporary artist, whose works are in collections of the Saatchi Gallery and Tate Modern in London.
Jury highlights include Frédéric Boyer (Directors’ Fortnight Director in 2009-2011), Anocha Suwichakornpong (Mundande History), Denis Côté (Curling), Dimitris Eipides (Director of the Thessaloniki IFF) and György Pálfi (Taxidermia).
The Juries will award 65.000 EUR in cash prizes. The winners of the Grand Prix, Audience Award, FIPRESCI Prize and the Films on Art International Competition are guaranteed distribution in Poland.
The festival will host a big presentation of Norwegian cinema and films from the phenomena of pinku eiga, red westerns and midnight movies, as well as retrospectives of Terry Gilliam, Bruno Dumont, Andrzej Munk and Mariusz Wilczyński.
The main music star of the 11. New Horizons International Film Festival will be Nick Cave and Grinderman, who will stage a concert on 29th July.
Project selection started – Receptions in Karlovy Vary and Sarajevo – New award for postproduction
Berlin, July 1 2011- November 3 and 4 will see the 13th edition of the East- West-Co-production market Connecting Cottbus in the context of FilmFestival Cottbus. 13 East European feature film productions will be presented with the goal of initiating co-productions between East and Western Europe. The market that has launched films such as MY JOY (Cannes 2010), TILVA ROSH (Sarajevo 2010), THE TRAP (Berlinale 2008) or PIGGIES (Karlovy Vary 2009) will also be a forum for discussions about current trends in the European film industry. 150 guests from East and Western Europe are expected for the event.Since the beginning of 2011,
Connecting Cottbus has a new director. Bernd Buder, who will leverage his intimate knowledge of the industry acquired as curator, festival scout, and film journalist with a focus on Eastern Europe, succeeded Gabriele Brunnenmeyer who had been the artistic director until 2010. "To take over from Gabriele Brunnenmeyer who developed Connecting Cottbus into a focal meeting point for the industry is an exciting challenge that I am looking very much forward to", says Buder.Another new addition to the Connecting Cottbus team is Martina Bleis, who can look back on 15 years of working for various film festivals and has vast experiences especially regarding co-production markets.Buder and Bleis intend to strengthen the program offerings of
Connecting Cottbus this year, using panel discussions and workshops to more thoroughly discuss the structural and immediate challenges for European films in the market and lay the foundation for developing future market strategies. The core of the event will still be project pitches, opening on November 3 with the winner of the Special Pitch Awards 2010, the current project of Serbian director Oleg Novković. With his internationally successful feature WHITE, WHITE WORLD, pitched at Connecting Cottbus in 2007, Novković won the Grand Prize of the Jury at the FilmFestival Cottbus for the second time last year. The additional twelve projects will be selected in September by a jury consisting of eight members including Kirsten Niehuus (Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg), Susanne Schmitt (MEDIAAntenne Berlin-Brandenburg) and Franka Bauer (MDR television). The application deadline is July 15, 2011.Internationally, Connecting Cottbus extends its outreach this year by participating in receptions at the festivals in Karlovy Vary and Sarajevo, organized in collaboration with the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and the FilmFestival Cottbus.Another first for the coming fall is the new "Post Pitch Award". The Berlinbased post production company "The Post Republic" is donating color correction services and the production of a DCP for a suitable project. The winner is chosen by a jury of three film professionals. "The Post Republic" will also run a workshop on processes and budgeting for digital film productions for participants in the pitch.
Connecting Cottbus
takes place parallel to the 21st FilmFestival Cottbus - Festival of East European Cinema. The festival, which runs from 1st till 6th of November 2011, will show around 100 films from more than 30 countries, thus providing a unique overview of the current Central- and East European cinema scene. This year's Focus “Eastern Europe by Regions” concentrates on the regional diversity in our Eastern neighbouring countries, with particular emphasis on Poland and the Ukraine, who will be co-hosting the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship. In parallel to Poland taking over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2011, an additional separate film series set in the context of the Weimarer Dreieck will investigate the cinematic cultural relationship between Poland, France and Germany. Because of its huge success, the previous year's Focus “globalEAST” now will constitute an independent section within the festival and continue its tracing of East European influences in cinema production around the world. The Retrospective titled “Location Lusatia” will present film locations in Brandenburg and thus will bring its landscape, people and mentalities to life and thereby raise awareness for these in others. Film Submission will be open till the 1st of August 2011.Connecting Cottbus is supported by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, the MEDIA Programme of the European Union and MDM/Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung. Connecting Cottbus is organized by pool production GmbH. The partners of Connecting Cottbus are MEDIA Antenne Berlin- Brandenburg, CineLink, EAVE, Moscow Business Square, the NipkowProgramm Berlin and Sofia Meetings.
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FNE - IDF DocBlock: Films Have Become Illustrations: Interview With Michal Marczak
Region 02-07-2011The upcoming Karlovy Vary IFF will present several documentary films from Eastern Europe, many of them in competition. Among them is the Polish documentary film At the Edge of Russia by Michal Marczak, a unique insight into the private worlds of soldiers stationed in a military outpost deep behind the Arctic circle, guarding the Russian border.
Press release Warsaw, 1 July 2011
Cinema City awarded the title "International Exhibitor of the Year"
Moshe Greidinger receives the highest award of the cinema industry in Amsterdam
Moshe (Mooky) Greidinger received yesterday the award "International Exhibitor of the Year" granted by European theatrical community during CineEurope in Amsterdam, the largest convention of cinema industry in Europe. This is the second award for Cinema City following the title "International Exhibitor of the Year" received in 2004 in Las Vegas during ShoWest convention.
"It's a great feeling to receive this title and to receive it for the second time. This is the highest recognition from the industry for all Cinema City team. We believe very strong in bringing modern multiplexes and best standard of services to territories thirsty for good exhibition." said Moshe (Mooky) Greidinger, CEO of Cinema City, the largest multiplex cinema operator in Central & Eastern Europe and in Israel. "We are now operating close to 900 screens in 7 countries and we came a long way from the beginning of our business and a long way even from 2004, when we were running 350 screens in 4 countries. The greatest potential to expand this business lies in emerging countries, where cinema going levels are much behind mature markets. We will be continuing our expansion as there is still so many empty places on the map."
"It is a great pleasure for CineEurope to be able to acknowledge and pay tribute to Mooky Greidinger, who heads up the leading cinema circuits in Israel and Central and Eastern Europe," noted CineEurope managing director Robert Sunshine. "From its humble beginnings as a family business and the first cinema in Haifa, Israel, to the launch of the first multiplex in Israel to their expansion into Europe, Cinema City International are cinema exhibition forces to be reckoned with."
Cinema City International is the largest multiplex cinema operator in Central & Eastern Europe and in Israel. The Company operates 93 multiplexes with 885 screens, in 7 countries: Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Israel. In the beginning of the year the Company boosted its screen count by 141 screens through acquisition of the Palace Cinemas chain in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. Cinema City is also actively involved in cinema related advertising through New Age Media and film distribution through Forum Film companies, its wholly owned subsidiaries. Cinema City is the fastest growing cinema chain in Europe having binding lease agreements for 35 more multiplexes, which will offer approximately 360 new screens, which are planned to be opened mostly in the coming 2-3 years. The major portion of openings will be in Romania, where in 2010 the admission per capita ratio stood at 0.3.
In 2010 Cinema City reached EUR 235 million cinema related revenues (24.4% more over 2009), EBITDA of EUR 56 million (21.1% over 2009) and EUR 30.4 million net profit (24.5% over 2009). The company sold 30.5 million tickets in six countries. The Cinema City group employs over 4,000 people in 7 countries.
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