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Berlinale 2004: The Talent Press
Saturday, February 7

Gabe Klinger on "The Sign of Chaos" (Rogério Sganzerla)
Pamela Biénzobas on "Witnesses" (Vinko Bresan)
Violeta Kovacsics on "Night of the Living Dead"
  (George Romero)
Övgü Gökce on "Akame 48 Waterfalls" (Ginjirou Arato)

Gabe Klinger
”The Sign of Chaos" (O Signo do Caos”) (Market Screening)
Written and directed by Rogerio Sganzerla

Among the many idioms and proverbs voiced to the camera in "The Sign of Chaos" – all spoken didactically and with over-strained seriousness as if to defeat their own meaning - one stands out as particularly revealing of the film's self-destructive qualities: "The image of chaos is chaos itself." In the film, one sees the culmination of Brazilian director Sganzerla's career-long obsession with Orson Welles, though the phrase in question is more Nietzschian than Wellesian. For it was Nietzsche who questioned that any assertion could be made beyond the predicates of a thing or person's appearance. Similarly, Sganzerla wishes for us to believe that "The Sign of Chaos" is crude and unorganized, when in fact these are the deliberate calculations of a master director who is – like every great "marginal" filmmaker – unapologetic to audiences and unassuming to himself. And why should it be any other way? When revealing his Welles side, Sganzerla is an old-fashioned cineaste who still believes in the popular allure of cinema – but as a reflection of cumulative bitterness of Welles' career – beginning with his disastrous trip to Brazil in 1942 – "The Sign of Chaos" denies a certain amount of pleasure to the audience in favor of biting reality. Cinema is as fragile as ever, the film seems to be saying, and like Welles, some filmmakers are the slaves of "appearances" and rarely the interlocutors of the fragmented expressions of human emotion we often associate with painting, music, etc. "The Sign of Chaos" is an analytical film, but it does not lack beauty, nor the intelligence to show it in its rawest state.

Gabe Klinger

Pamela Biénzobas
“Witnesses“, Croatia (Competition)

Director: Vinko Bresan. Script: Bresan, Zivko Zalar and Jurica Pavicic, on Pavicic’s novel "Alabaster Sheep". Camera: Zivko Zalar. Cast: Leon Lucev, Alma Prica, Mirjana Karanovic.

The tale of the murder of a civilian Serb in a war-struck Croatian community in Vinko Bresan's Svjedoci may seem like a war thriller, or perhaps a portrait of recent Balkan horrors, but it is in fact more than that. It is not simply a dramatic story of guilt, revenge and wartime ethics. And even though it flirts with psychological clichés now and then, and in the end does not completely avoid the moralistic, its best moments are when it becomes a non-judgemental look at the most ordinary features of human nature. Unlike what centuries of dramatic fiction have persuaded us of, we remain essentially as good, bad or ugly as usual, no matter the circumstances.

For once, the fragmentary narrative and changing view-point does not intend to tease nor to play with what the spectator knows, since the basic information is presented from the beginning. The idea is to follow the subjective perceptions and reactions of each character to the events, as common and prosaic or as tragic and extreme as these may be.

The film's greatest lucidity lies there. Beyond the historical and political circumstances, the wartime setting shows that whether we're trying to decide on tonight's meal or how to solve a slight "problem" - such as having a child witness our crime - we obey the same drives and convictions, and are ultimately no better or wiser if the situation is more or less serious. It's just the exterior that changes, and the consequences of our actions may vary from a silly punishment to unintended murder. And that, by now, we should already know.

Pamela Biénzobas

Violeta Kovacsics
Night of the living dead (Retrospective)
USA, 1968, Director: George A. Romero, Screenplay: George A. Romero, John A. Russo, Cast: Duane Jones (Ben), Judith O’Dea (Barbara), Karl Hardman (Harry), Marilyn Eastman (Helen), Keith Wayne (Tom)

The funny, scary joke "Barbara, they are coming for you…" that Johnny tells to her sister sets the tone for this cult zombie movie. It was 1968, long after the B-movies' golden age; George A. Romero directed his feature-film debut with a tiny budget and a simple story line: a group of people are trapped in an isolated house that becomes the claustrophobic bunker where they try to resist the assault of a band of zombies. Lit with care and shot in grainy black and white, the film builds terror through camera movement and diagonal framing. The horror mixes with some charming and comical B-movie details like the zombies' banquet of real meat (that bloody heart!) and plastic hands. The continuous TV news showing the official response to the catastrophe contributes to the false documentary atmosphere.

"Night of the Living Dead" shows parricide, fratricide and doesn't stop there. Romero moves the film away from the familiar structure of the struggle of humanity against an external enemy. Zombies are our brother or our daughter; the massacre might start with our own family. The surprising ending, with the hero, the only survivor, dying by a police shot, reinforces this idea and ends this little B-pearl as it ought to: the menace of humans is not that far from that of the zombies.

Violeta Kovacsics

Övgü Gökce
Akame 48 Waterfalls
Director: Genjirou Arato

Starting with its name, "Akame 48 Waterfalls" by Genjirou Arato, opens up a realm of meaning, which is woven around the idea of "space," how it assembles/separates/delineates the inner and outer aspects of urban life in modern Japan. The narrative is organized so as to lead the dwellers of this space toward displacement, an impossibility of belonging.

The story is structured around a young man, Ikushima, as he arrives in a new city. Here, he reduces his life to preparing skewers of raw meat for a restaurant owned by an ex-prostitute. Ikushima's inner life/space is disturbed by the existence of a young woman, Aya, who lives next door in his apartment building. The interiors do not create a space for intimacy, not even any kind of contact among the inhabitants of this pension; the space is divided by the corridors, stairs, doors which frame and fragment their inner life.

The second half of the film pictures a completely different environment for Ikushima and Aya, in relation to the perils of their growing relationship. They plan to run away together, without knowing where to go, even why or how. Trains, hotels, stations become more prominent - all places for outsiders, leading them to the end of their road: the waterfalls. Having created a world where it is not possible to belong, the film here poses, as a last resort, the possibility of solving the problem of not belonging through an imaginary death. However, this possibility is, inevitably, withdrawn: death is an abstraction, not a place. It doesn’t work within the frame of a film so concerned with the meanings created by specific spaces – spaces for living.

Övgü Gökçe

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