Competition
Dir. Václav Havel
“Leaving” is the feature film
version of the Vaclav Havel’s play, the draught of which he had written
in the late ‘80s. At that time the play wasn’t completed since the
author had been driven away with something more important: the former
dissident, persecuted writer and a political prisoner took the helm of
the Velvet Revolution, which ended years of Communistic regime in
Czechoslovakia and brought him into the chair of the president of the
Republic. But the demonstrative theatrical architecture of the film
bears some more profound rationale. If, as Shakespere states, all the
world’s a stage, politics are stage twice.
“
"Leaving” is the
seriocomical grotesque or rather political pamphlet. No wonder the plot
is loaded with lots of citations and allusions at the classical plays –
from “The Cherry Orchard” to “King Lear” and even “Hamlet”. The story is
focused around Vilém Rieger (Josef Abrham) - the newly dismissed
chancellor of an unnamed country (though one shouldn’t look for any
similarity between the protagonist and the author). The scene is laid at
the premises of his beautiful country residence in the cherry orchard.
Rieger, humiliated by sad circumstances of resignation, is told to make a
crucial choice: either leave his comfortable state-owned villa or
publicly support his successor, Vlastik Klein – his most hated political
opponent.
The main hero is surrounded by whimsical figures of
his family members, servants, the former secretary and a couple of
ubiquitous paparazzi, who play not the last role in the chancellor’s
future.
Among the brilliant cast Havel's wife, actress Dagmar
Havlova must be singled out as his screen wife Irene. Though 74-years
old Havel is a debutant in filmmaking, he is not an occasional person in
cinema. The Havel family is closely connected with Czech film; his
uncle Miloš built the famous Barrandov film studios, and his grandfather
opened Lucerna Palace the first permanent cinema-theatre in Prague.
By
the way, Havel says he won’t stand behind the camera anymore; but in
this film he appears in a funny prankish cameo, summing up the message
of the picture, which can be in other words put as follows: what
frustrate the lives of those no longer in office may be less the loss of
power than the loss of a sense of purpose, that is human impotence at
finding oneself.
Nina Tsyrkun
Competition
Dir. Sergei Loban
Pretty, but lonesome girl
meets a nihistic guy nicknamed Cyber Ranger on the Internet. First she
drags him out of the virtual space on a real date, and then – to Cremea,
where she continues to draggle him around with her – to the beach,
dinner or discotheque – with fatal consequences for not so experienced
in love affairs blogger.
In the second part of the film it is
deaf young man Lyosha’s turn to come to the resort, together with a
bunch of bohemian guys leaded by a impetuous Pioneer (the gang calls
themselves a unit and wears red ties). Lyosha is followed by his old
friends, who are also deaf and numb and ready to fight furiously for
their right to stay the way they are in the face of the sounding world.
In
the third novella the young and shy first-time director encounters his
father – famous actor – after a long time of absence. The father wants
his son to forgive and drags the boy to the wild nature – to be closer
to wildlife and feel true spirituality.
Finally, in the last
chapter of the movie an ambitious producer from Moscow takes his mentee,
the look-alike of Viktor Tsoi for a tour, with the not so smart guy not
aware of the fact that he is looking like an idiot in the eyes of the
whole country.
The chapters of the films, named Love,
Friendship, Respect and Cooperation, are crossed as the plot develops
(the protagonists of one novella appear in others as extras) and rebound
one from another with the same idea: that every given private tragedy
feels like a banality, not only in the face of the eternity, but even
being compared with another given private misery. This thought is also
confirmed here by the fact that all of the protagonists of each chapter
in the moment of crisis points say one and the same monologue, and the
closer is the end of the films, the more piercingly those words sound.
The
dramaturgy is interesting, but the way the screen space is organized is
even more fascinating. Sergei Loban, who proved his talent of remaining
realistic and precise in the bounds of grotesque genre in his previous
work Dust, works here in the form of “quiet surrealism”. He takes
reality as it is and doesn’t fabricate it, organizing it his own way
instead, slightly turning the familiar accents. Having thrown away most
of the fixations from which Russian cinema often suffers, the authors of
the film are working with the most simple, most familiar details if
life – Cremea, Tsoi, conversation about Jorge Luis Borges on the first
date and constant drunken talks about ethics and aesthetics. The
metaphors are also quite simple and obvious: in the moments of despair
the real tempest hits the resort, in the moments of sincere yearning –
the non-metaphorical fire happens. In some point of the story there
appear a monstrous local producer, a wise cameraman, a miserable film
director called Shpagin and another producer from Moscow, who is too
sophisticated to realize that his stupid mentee gradually takes his life
from him. The whole action starts looking self-ironical at the moment.
At the very end of the film the miserable producer shouts: “By this
gesture I wished to say…”, but, as it usually happens in such cases, he
doesn’t have a chance to finish. Which is probably right. And from this
point of view – not only this article should end right now, but to tell
the truth, many it shouldn’t have been started at all.
Olga Artemieva
Perspectives
Dir. Ludwig Wüst
The director, having decided
to make a new project, sets a casting at his place, which he also plans
to tape on video. Having set the camera in such manner that there would
be just red sofa, piano and the front door seen in picture, he presses
“rec” – and the recording is going to stop in sixty minutes – this is
the time “Tape End” lasts, which is made in single shot, in one take.
An
actress come to the casting – the same one, the director has been
working ten years ago. And something says that it wasn’t just plain
work. The rehearsal gets interrupted by director’s wife and daughter,
but soon they leave. When they are finally left alone it takes only ten
minutes for the actress to put up a fight with the director, say some
awkwardly rude words and blame him for all that went wrong in her life –
from a forced abortion to her “lost youth”. Then, first her head is
lying on his shoulder, then she is already sitting on his knees and soon
– between his knees.
In the absence of the other artistic
instrumentation, the film is based upon almost exclusively on the
acting. This is the task Ludwig Wüst is challenging his actors with – to
improvise, as much as they can, in the cramped bounds of the story. And
this is also the thing the director is asking the stress to do in the
film.
So the most interesting part here is to watch the
improvisation of the real actress and that one of her character being
crossed. When she breaks into tears, telling him that she was forced to
make an abortion because she “didn’t want to have children with such
moron” – was she sincere of was she just getting into her role? And in
the moment she started to unbutton his pants?..
Unfortunately,
this improvisation is not that powerful to keep the viewer’s attention
for sixty minutes straight. The most agonizing moments are those of
significant pauses between dialogues, when either nothing is happening
or the sound of running water in the shower can be heard. This situation
gets partially made up by the end of the film, when the woman
demonstrates that she doesn’t need a professional education to be a real
actress. Especially, when she is inspired by such powerful feeling as
jealousy.
Nikita Kartsev
Competition
Dir. Nikolay Khomeriki
Once upon a time lived a
young man named Kostya – employee of subway, with apartment, mother,
girlfriend, and other standard features of normal life. One day Kostya
went to see doctor to make EKG, which resulted in doctors telling him
that he’s almost perfectly healthy, except for the fact that he has some
illness of the heart, with which he could die any day – not necessarily
that he would, but still. Kostya then drank some vodka in karaoke-bar
and went on to live what’s left of his life – maybe a day, maybe a year,
or maybe even hundred years – but still, his pictured in black and
white life, lived by the uniform buzz of the outside world.
It
may seem like the EKG divides Kostya’s life into two parts, as it
usually goes – before and after, but this is not completely true: the
scene in a hospital is the opening scene of the film, so there is
formally no “before”, which only stays implied somewhere, beyond the
screen space – just like the fact that this “before” is not so different
from “now”. Using this slide of dramaturgy, the authors of the film
turn the story told from the plot about how a man’s life’s changing
after some fateful new, into a story about how impossible it is to
really change it. If, if one would go a little more further, - about how
fatal can a pronounced word turn out to be. The unsophisticated
statement that every given person – despite his own capacities, talents
or ambitions – can stop existing any minute, being articulated and
properly addressed, has the effect of gardening equipment with which one
is being heat on the head – no doubt it is a little awkward, but still
effective.
To make the point more obvious the main protagonist
of the film is chosen among those, not even average, but minimally
tending for any kind of existential self consciousness. So Kostya
embarks on his “free voyage” more intuitively than consciously. The
material of abstract categories is developed on a level of everyday
life. But even on this level any labors not to be a “clock orange”
disappear. Every exit beyond the bounds of system turns out to be some
absurdity.
In the process of this Odyssey Kostya discovers the
unpleasant truth about life being the sequence of physiological actions,
which he lived, but had never felt or seen. However, it turns out that –
just like in the case of gardening equipment, it is hard to answer
something reasonably to this statement. Sure, one can always refuse to
see his heart as an organ of human body and find somewhere its
traditional poetic meaning. But it can easily lead to even more tragic
repercussions – what if you finally find this poetic meaning, but
instead of a symbol or a metaphor there will turn up a paper valentines
card?
Olga Artemieva
Competition
Dir. Kaneto Shindo
Kaneto Shindo is the holder of
the absolute record in the history of the Moscow Film Festival. He is
the only one who took he main trophy three times: in 1961 (“The Naked
Island”), in 1971 (“Live Today, Die Tomorrow”) and 1999 (“Will to
Live”). On the 28th of April he turned 99 and all the younger
competitors (especially the young ones!) should learn from him something
about the thoughtful and unique mis-en-scene in every shot, the
ability to foresee the end result when all these dissimilar episodes are
brought together to make an organic whole. About the incredible
precision in the timing of the narration which makes it possible to
teach the student the art of scriptwriting, taking just this movie as an
example. About that knowledge, lost even in Hollywood, of how to make a
film larger than life without making it stylized or old-fashioned. In
short, if the Golden George chooses him for a fourth time, it would only
be justified.
The action begins in 1944 in the Tenrikyo
Headquarters, where a hundred sailors toiled for a month to turn a sheer
fleabag into a military base and a marine transfer point. Now they are
getting further assignments by lots drawn by their commanders. Most of
them will sail to conquer the Philippines, only a handful will be sent
to reequip the Takarazuki theatre into another military base. Among the
majority are a lard bucket, a candy hound and a funny performer of love
songs Sazuo Morikawa. On the eve of the departure he leaves a note with
his friend Keita, assigned to Takarazuka. It is a short postcard from
his wife saying: “Today is the day of the carnival, but it is so empty
without you”. He asks Keita to take it to his wife if he dies, which he
surely will.
Why Keita will appear on the Morikawa widow’s
doorstep only after 5 years and one hour of screen time later you will
learn after watching the film, but the amount of events, happening
during this period, will be enough to fill three series. There will be
solemn scenes of seeing the soldiers off to the front to the
pioneer-like spirited marches composed by Yukio Naguchi, and the
placement of the urns of those who died in battle, reminding one of the
marionettes theatre. There will be the hilarious episode of the instant
death of a heart attack, the laconic style of which arouses memories of
the silent cinema of the 1910s, and the hear-rending vision of sleepy
sailors whose faces fade in the pre-dawn darkness of non-existence after
the roll-call like lanterns in the night. There will be the Bollywood
interlude in a striptease bar, the black-and-white chronicle of
Hiroshima and the waves of such an emerald color which for some reason
you can get only on Fuji Film. And only then the encounter of the man
and the woman will take place. And the film, which is sadly enough
always relevant, telling us that every soldier with his lot and number
is some one’s dearest candy-hound, hulk and loud-mouth and is very much
needed there.
Like all great cinema, “Postcard” is a one hundred per cent actors’ film.
Most
surely, Shindo uses everything at the director’s disposal to support
his actors: shows a close-up of the man’s face so that we could feel
ill-at-ease because of the hysterics of the woman, left in the depth of
the set, through the silence and the downcast gaze of the man, who is
listening to her. Or wraps the head of the village elder in a kerchief
like an old granny so that we could enjoy the comic situation when the
man is caught eavesdropping. And when it comes to the men’s
rough-and-tumble before the eyes of the thrilled widow, the showcase of
judo, karate and boxing techniques will be presented in the rays of the
vigorous sun over their heads.
Etsushi Toyokawa playing Keita
deserves a special compliment: no one since Tatsuya Nakadai managed to
move so graciously and look so stunningly good in yukata. After this
hypnotic performance the question why the unforgettable role of the one
who “lived daringly and died daringly”, played by Nakadai in Kurosawa’s
“Tsubaki Sanjuro” half a century ago, was given to Toyokawa in the
recent remake will be answered once and for all.
Alexey Vasiliev
Perspectives
Dir. Frank Spano
The starting point for the
action in the film is the real extremal situation, resurrected on screen
with documentary shots of the wild outrage of nature. Streams of rain
water, sweeping away bridges, houses, streets. Unprecedented flood
happened on the North cost of Venezuela in 1999 – with 15 thousand
victims and many people disappearing without a trace. Information about
such disasters is branded upon our conscience just like that – in
illegible details and panoramic shots that all look alike. The author of
the film, famous actor Frank Spano, who’s debuting as a director,
changes wide shot for a close shot, whipping away two destinies from
this tragic whirl. He also points out the question, which is also
relevant for the audience: how do you survive, when everything is lost,
when your past has been swept away, and you are standing all alone with
your grieve.
Two protagonists: 40 year old Isabel and 17 year
old Yudeixi leave for Isabel’s native land – Spain, or to be more
precise - the Canary Islands, to start a new life and get a chance to
have some decent – maybe not future, but at least the present. They have
nothing in common, except the loss of their loved ones: Isabel has lost
her husband, and Yudeixi’s lost her child. Isabel – a medical nurse, is
a beautiful intelligent woman, filled with inner grace and unbearable
pain in the same time. That’s the way this character is portrait by the
Spanish actress Rosana Pastor. Her adolescent companion Yudeixi has
grown up on a street and was living on picking; she is daring and
rebellious. Despite the fact that Isabel perfectly recalls the face of
the girl, who has robbed her in a hotel’s hall just before the flood
happened, she is helping her to get on a plane, having presented herself
as her mother. From this moment on, their lives are tied together,
despite that they differ in just about everything – their outlooks on
life, their habits, manner and the way they talk – slang words that
Yudeixi uses is hard would be hard to find in a dictionary. And this
contrast creates the main strain of the action, centering on the
development of the heroines’ relationships, who has suddenly become
emigrants. Isabel will be telling her young friend that “thieving means
slowly dying”, and will explain who Hitchcock is and what suspense is.
Thought soon she will be forced to forget her principles and start
making money for a living by transporting illegal Peruvian workers from
the airport. And one day Yudeixi will run off with a big sum of money –
an advance received by Isabel from their employer – and tries to live
independently, working as a dancer. Fabulous Canary Islands – a
delightsome place for Russian tourists – is shown her from a different
perspective: without common landscapes, but through the eyes of those
who doesn’t relax, but works.
The final can be called a happy
ending – Yudeixi comes back to Isabel with the money, she earned. She
has now started to think about her life and not just about how to
survive, like before. Together with Isabel and a little Peruvian boy she
saved, they come back to Venezuela. And that’s how the transformation
of alienated people to a real family has finally happened – as well as
Frank Spano’s debut as director.
Tatiana Vetrova
Perspectives
Dir. Rob Nilsson
A small sketch from the life of
Ukrainian emigrant woman Miri, who – after her husband had deceased –
is trying to contrive the small hotel she owns, placed in a porch of a
house in some troubled district of San Francisco suburbs. There is an
international cacophony of sounds in the air – English, German and
French tongues are found side by side with the story about Holocaust
told by Ukrainian host on a radio and with the sounds of Russian songs,
coming from the only decent restaurant in this distinct. The community
is quite relevant. There is homeless who’s feeding Miri, when things get
too bad. A seller in a small shop, who’s come to USA from Germany. A
black man, who’s living in Miri’s hotel with his children and stealing
money from her to buy drugs. A female bartender – also and emigrant
(from Paris), who is playing solitaire and is bragging about the love
adventures of her past. Soon Miri’s niece will suddenly come with a
visit and will experience some difficulties getting used to all this
poor scenery.
Just the same thing – poor scenery, but of the
film, not the hotel – is the first thing to be noticed, even before the
main credits start. Rob Nilsson, being classic and cult figure of
American independent cinema and also one of the first authors to start
experimenting with video, has finally come to extremes in his aspiration
to move far away from traditional cinema. Image in “The Steppes”
reminds of that shot by mobile phone. The sound is recorded by
microphones hidden under the clothes, with results in awful rasp in
moments of embracement. Outside, the sound of wind is so strong, that
almost drowns the words of characters, and real citizens of
San-Francisco function as extras, seemingly having no idea they are
being pictured. But one can easily adapt to all of this: together with
respectabilities the characters start to lose their masks, which differs
them from real people. Abrupt picturing starts looking as the fragment
from someone’s private archives, and all together it turns out to be one
more proof of the common statement that it doesn’t really matter what
optics does the author use. What matters is what this optics is
picturing.
Nikita Kartsev
This year we have finally made a short film contest, and we made it in
the Internet. This is importaint for two reasons: first, short films
section has never been a contest before, and we are happy that this
first competition is users' choice, because viewers are usually the most
honest audience. Second thing is the Internet - partly or fully, movig
into the interactivity is a powerfull tendency among the festivals, and
like it or not, it is tomorrow.
Also, it's locigal that first
Internet competition is short films one - shorts have always been the
most flexible and fresh area of the cinema. Most of the authors are
young and independent, so their films really reflect what they wanted to
say, especially if it is something linked to videoart, formal
experiments animation - short films are very good territory for the
experiments. For this year's contest we selected films that are very
different - by genre, by language, by author's point of view - and our
only request for the audience is not to be preconcieved. We are very
interested ourselves in the results of the competition.
http://vision.rambler.ru/cinema/17223229/
Please, enjoy the films!
Perspectives
Dir. Mounir Maasri
Any director is flattered
when he turns out to be a prophet. At a meeting some two years ago a
young filmmaker was passionately insisting that the scenes with “bad
cops” had been shot in that very precinct which later became notorious
because of the major Yevsyukov’s case. He lamented that they had cut out
the sign-boards. If that is the case, then Mounir Maasri can smile
modestly without having to prove anything to anybody. His movie about
revolutionary unrest in the Middle East (events in Lebanon ten years
ago) was released perfectly on time. Including “direct hits”: Syria is
the hot news and in “Huvelin Street” the group of merry students fight
the army of that country…
There is no need to go into the
subtleties of Middle-eastern history (who occupied whom and why and what
is the pretext for the presence of foreign troops in the country) to
understand the restlessness of these youngsters for whom their not too
secret activities in the underground student organization as merely part
of their tumultuous, risky youth, their robust life. That is what is so
charming about all their gatherings, get-togethers with girls and
guitars and heated arguments about the best way to oppose the military:
by surprise or silently with stickers saying “Freedom” covering their
mouths. The night before the final face-down these nice guys
boisterously smoke at the poker table and ask each other what is going
to happen the next day. The metaphor for the message of the movie (or at
least one of the messages) could be the scene in which Joy, a
dark-haired revolutionary, can barely drag the heavy suitcase into his
room in the hostel. “Flags? Leaflets?” demands the strict janitor.
Somehow Joy manages to persuade him that it is only summer clothes.
Anything could be expected, even weapons, but instead a girl jumps out
of the suitcase in the room. It can’t be helped. In Russian just like in
Lebanon, guards in hostels are especially strict about the morals of
the students.
This does not invalidate their sincere hatred of
the occupants. In general where there is public spirit, the youthful
student racket becomes more meaningful. The youngsters are so
passionately running about the night campus, hiding Lebanese flags in
the bushes. How enthusiastically they meet an American journalist in a
café: they seem to be saying very bold things, but at the same time are
fearful lest it all should appear in the news.
But the principal
plotline seems a bit artificial. Ives, an incipient journalist, is happy
to have acquired a new camera and can now shoot everything during their
gatherings. But the sudden (!) realization of how misery his salary is,
forces him to sell the most explosive shots to the newspaper… It is
hard do say why he opens the Pandora box: the driving forces, the
conditions, the conflict are – to put it bluntly – a far cry form the
“Ascent” by Larisa Shepitko. But there is a certain fundamental truth.
It is felt in the demands of friends that Ives, a creative personality,
should fight almost with an automatic gun, but he is not at all happy
about the idea that word should be equaled to bayonet. It probably is no
accident that in one of the scenes the director makes Ives sit next to
Che Gevara’s portrait. The haircut, the beard, the moustache are all
exact copies of those in the picture. This is the message: don’t put
pressure on a creative personality, he will definitely sell everybody
out.
Igor Saveliev
Perspectives
Dir. Lee Young-mi
A woman in her forties, a
university professor, is carrying out scientific research on a relevant
theme: “Changes in female psychology following marital unfaithfulness”.
The story of her unfortunate personal life (but that is a big “secret”)
is told by… an inanimate object, by a copier, so let us forgive a
certain straightforwardness of the narration. The copier is worried:
since the time its owner hired a new assistant for her sociological
research, her life has become all messed-up. The young man has the looks
of a super model as though he stepped down from the video supplement to
the South Korean version of “Penthouse”.
It became especially
noticeable after the professor and the student interviewed a lascivious
woman who enthusiastically cheated on her husband and had no remorse
about it.
This fateful encounter had a deep effect on the
professor. She looked at her student with different eyes and it occurred
to her academic mind to do with him what is very reluctantly indulged
in (judging by the movie) with middle-aged women in South Korea. But her
views which proved to be not so liberal prevented this lady with the
Internet nickname “Liberalcunt” from accomplishing an instant transition
from words to actions. There are a number of reasons. First of all, the
rigid morals still do not allow a South Korean woman (especially an
older one) to look upon a man (especially a youth) as a sexual “object”
(the morals, naturally, do not look the other way). Secondly, the
traditional Confucian approach denies any erotic overtones in the lofty
relations between the teacher and the disciple.
In her
feature-length debut, which caused an uproar in her native country, the
45-year-old feminist Lee Young-mi boldly challenged the obsolete taboos,
but unfortunately did no find the radical artistic means to express
these legitimate protests. Feminine sexual longing is shown with the
help of trite metaphors worthy of erotic Hollywood blockbusters like
“Wild Orchid” or “Two Moon Juncture”, intended for the same grateful
audience but shot by men. Subconsciously copying those movies, the brave
Young-mi turns her romantic hero into a voyeristic sexual object, who
is as animate as silicone sex symbols from movies directed by males.
They admire females as impotents would and possess them purely
symbolically.
Stas Tyrkin