Berlin 2005 : the Talent Press

Tuesday, February 15th 2005

Screening Life (Liu Jiayin: OXHIDE)
Found in Translation
Still Far From Paradise (PARADISE NOW - Competition)
Exposing Documentaries: Inside ERUV
Bringing Fantasies Alive
Conscious and Cool (Raya Martin, Edwin, and the New SEA Cinema)

Screening Life
Liu Jiayin: OXHIDE

The young Chinese director in her first feature filmed 23 scenes in 23 steady shots about her own and her family's everyday life. The result is a funny, natural, fresh and very human movie. A fictional documentary with the strong personal involvement of the author - that could be the short definition of this extremely valuable movie.

The camera shows a small part of the place where the action takes place in each scene, and it is never moved, with the focus never readjusted. We can't see the person who is in the centre of the action and they often move out of focus. This method gives us the feeling that nothing is organized, that the family is living its ordinary life, and that the camera was placed in their flat in secret. The acting of these people is more natural and convincing than the performance of many professional actors.
The film shows us three central problems. The most important one is the question of money, as the family lives with difficulty from the income of a shop where they sell their handmade leather bags. The stubborn father doesn't want to offer discounts, and he often argues with the mother who is worried about the bills and the rent. All these discussions seem dramatic because we feel that it is the family's everyday existence that's in question. The second problem is the daughter (and director's) height, because in the father's opinion she is not tall enough. At the end of the film he says he is really disappointed by the kid because she doesn't grow. The third problem is the most amusing: the father's belly is too large, and this is a regular topic between mother and daughter. In a very funny scene, they even try to stretch the pants of the father.

Is this closer to fiction or to documentary? The dramaturgical structure of the scenes, as every one has some kind of punch line at the end, suggests that this is a fiction film. But the way of filming, the natural acting and the whole atmosphere convinces us that this is the real life of a real family - this is one of the most authentic ways to present reality in fiction.

The personal involvement of the director makes this piece even more valuable: we see a very honest presentation of her life. If we agree that in art the artist always shows something of himself, then we have another argument to consider this movie as a work of art.

Zsolt Gyenge

Found in Translation

"I need water" says the soft voice of the princess. And the prince runs to the other end of the world to win her heart by bringing it. Do you remember fairytales like that?

Today, of course, the princesses get their own water. Probably non-carbonated and with low natrium level to keep the skin fresh. And the prince ... well, even if he's forced to bring the water from the other end of the world, he'll call DHL to get it.

The animation GENE-RATIO by Estonian director Mait Laas brings us back to something romantic and pure. It is cut into six pieces to bring together five short stories called LOST AND FOUND which opened the Berlin Forum. The animated sequences frame four short features and one documentary, all from different countries and in different languages.

The main element in Laas' animation is liquid - from water running into a bathtub to milk bursting out mother-bee's six nipples and winding up in a kitten's milk-bowl. All those liquids symbolize the circle of life. In this case the metaphor is the little matchstick-men running for the water that the soft-voiced woman asked for. Laas tries to demonstrate how the energy of one generation passes on to the next, and shows magic and chemistry between men and women.

His animation is in different techniques, mainly in puppet, drawn and live animation. (By the way, to get ten seconds of live animation the crew had to work for the whole day and move the actor shot by shot like a puppet). So it's a complicated and abstract story that can be interpreted in very many ways. But because it's cut to six pieces, the viewer may have some initial trouble in following his story.

The keyword to LOST AND FOUND is movement. All the countries involved in the project - Bulgaria, Serbia-Montenegro, Bosnia, Hungary, Estonia and Romania - are in the area of Europe that changes very quickly. And this production proves in that process much can be lost and found.

The idea of LOST AND FOUND was to bring together six filmmakers. However, their goal was not to make six shorts, but one full-length story containing six parts, said the man behind this project, Nikolaj Nikitin, during the discussion at the Berlinale Talent Campus. Though the concept might seem utopian, I must admit that they managed to do it - all the parts complete each other, are almost equally strong, and reflect the film potential in Eastern and Central Europe.

There is a conflict between traditional values and the modern world, there is a middle-aged lady releasing the fears of her past by hijacking a tram, there is an incest story by a mother's deathbed, and even a pet turkey. The weakest link of the project is unfortunately the only documentary part, about two Bosnian girls separated by a religious and ethnic chasm. It fell out of the picture because of its one-dimensional lack of subtlety.

The fragile democracy, rapid changes and a confused identity between east and west have created a mellow soil for a very intriguing culture. All the six parts of LOST AND FOUND are a little romantic and tell us weird post-Soviet fairy-tales. But, despite any flaws, the team achieved their goal. The parts work together as a full-length film, and are also strong enough to be shown seperately. And when we have more films like that then maybe some day at least some of us will understand that Balkans and Baltics are not the same thing.

Still Far From Paradise
PARADISE NOW - Competition

In the tag team of two young Palestinian men, Said and Khaled, director Hani Abu-Assad brings an intensely gripping tale of suicide bombing to the Berlinale.

But he is a sensitive filmmaker. He does not torment his viewers with terrible scenes of destruction, or any act that wantonly displays the results of terrorism. Rather, he chooses to treat the issue at stake with robust sensitivity, without failing to lay bare the grim realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. This is the beauty in PARADISE NOW, which is in competition at the festival.

The last 24 hours of the two childhood friends, played by actors Kais Nashif and Ali Suliman, who are recruited for "a major operation" in Tel Aviv, brings to the fore many of the contentious issues in the age-old Middle Eastern conflict. But all the issues raised are from the Palestinian perspective, hinging on the historical, moral, legal and the spiritual.

Yet, germane as they are, they present no one way out for the arguments for and against armed resistance. And recognising that the lead characters are poor mechanics whose worldview is affected by the limitations of their social and intellectual exposure, the film carefully makes it difficult to trust their postulations.

We see the seeming deception that goes into recruiting a suicide bomber and the emotional trauma that goes with it. We see confused recruits struggling with the justification of armed resistance, and we see the glaring difference between an Israeli and a Palestinian city.

But the operation does not go according to plan and the two friends are forced to reconsider their stances after a woman comes into the picture. She provides the voice of reason about the futility of armed resistance.
Surprisingly, it is at the point of operation in Israel that Khaled, all along the more enthusiastic of the two, backs down. Said, who had earlier refrained from detonating a bomb inside a bus because a baby girl was inside, is left to go the whole hog. His new target has more soldiers on board.

A good script that patches the rough edges of a very volatile issue and the director's rich cinematography make PARADISE NOW truly absorbing.
Abu-Assad has not told a new story, but he has conveyed his perspective on the issue in a deeper and thought-provoking way.

Unfortunately, he does not see any immediate hope in sight. In using Abu's daughter as the major moderate voice in the film - considering that she was born in the West (France) and raised in Morocco - isn't the director risking being seen as gaining inspiration from abroad, especially when one notes that he is based in Holland?

Steve Ayorinde

Exposing Documentaries: Inside ERUV

ERUV - THE WIRE, is the second and last film to win the PLANET Documentary Award, which will be discontinued from next year. For the Award, young filmmakers from the world submitted treatments for expose projects, in order to gain complete funding. The winner for 2005, Kai Wiesinger, is a German film actor turned director. ERUV is his first documentary.

Perhaps something important has been lost in translation, but expose means a certain thing, and a film like ERUV doesn't usually fall within that definition. Nevertheless: the film "exposes" the Orthodox Jewish practice of the Eruv, a wire boundary within a town, that transforms the enclosed area into a private domain for the purposes of Talmud law. This allows Jews to "carry" within that area on the Shabbat, as opposed to just within their houses. The filmmakers interviewed orthodox Jews in the area of Teaneck (New Jersey), a classic white-collar middle-American suburb. It also talks to some of the residents opposed to the Eruv because of its effects on the secular flavour of the community.

Unfortunately, this film doesn't get far enough beyond description of the Eruv. An expose could have focussed on the controversy of setting a precedent for religious interference in state matters on a social level. It could have exposed the seamier underside of political lobbying on a local level. It could have focussed on the conflict created within the Teaneck community. In the post-film discussion with director and producer, both admitted having to alter their original objective. They ideally wanted a "discussion", involving the interested parties, of the conflicting points of view on the Eruv in Teaneck. However the reticence of most opponents of the Eruv to express their views on screen, meant that the documentary could not present a balanced view.

Some fault also lies with the editor for choices of structure that fail to involve the audience and keep them engaged. The audience is relegated to a passive position, and this quickly becomes boring.

This film fails most because it is hard to care one way or another about the subject; the involved parties are living in what is a highly privileged situation, in a affluent middleclass haven, and one can't help feeling that there are more pressing issues at hand than the existence of a fairly innocuous wire attached to the telegraph lines. The filmmakers probably should have made a decision whether to focus exclusively on the origin and nature of this highly specific religious practice, or to tie this to the more interesting, and universal, story about xenophobia in conservative communities. There are allusions to this, particularly an interview with a concerned Christian living within an increasingly orthodox Jewish community.

To the filmmakers' credit, they seemed very willing to examine the audience reactions to the film, and clearly are open to the idea of re-editing the story. While a more robust exchange of ideas between audience and filmmakers would have been excellent, it is still encouraging to see first-time documentaries receiving serious consideration by the public.

Dee Jefferson

Bringing Fantasies Alive

"Film appears magically to satisfy a wish, a wish we may not even have recognized as our own: the wish for the world re-created in its own image." -Stanley Cavell

The main focus of the 2005 Berlinale Talent Campus is production design in film. Playing a crucial intermediary role in the whole production cycle, production design means the creation of film space. The workshop "Eternal Triangle", on February 14, combined three departments which shape the way a film "looks": production design, cinematography and costume design. Three acclaimed experts in these fields came together to discuss their craft, the nature of their collaborative work and their experiences, and provided insights into the synergy they create.

One of the guests was Swedish art director and production designer Anna Asp, who has worked with Sweden's most honoured director, Ingmar Bergman. After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm, she collaborated with several prominent directors, including Bille August and Andrei Tarkovsky. Her reputation was sealed with Bergman's FANNY AND ALEXANDER in 1983, for which she won an Oscar for her work in that epic of imagination and memory. She built the interior set of this "family drama, soap opera" - which is set in a flat - in the studio, on a theatre stage.

"In Sweden we don't call it production design, but scenography," says Asp. "I got the Oscar not for the production design, but just set design. They don't have an Oscar for production design."

Explaining the responsibility of a production designer, she says, "from the beginning to the end, you must have an idea of colour, locations and light - and also try to give the drama a colour. That's what I aim for."

Are film directors dictators or is there give and take? "The younger the directors are, the more they think they must know and try to control everything, believing that their idea is best. As you get older, you are much more open to discussion."

Among the most challenging sets she created was "the second half of SACRIFICE, where we constructed the house twice," she says. "The house we built had to be burnt down at the end of the film. The first burning down was very bad, but we had the opportunity to build again. It was a kind of miracle that we did it in three days. The second time it burnt beautifully, and it could not be better."

Conscious and Cool
Raya Martin, Edwin, and the New SEA Cinema

Southeast Asian Cinema has become a hot buzz word in international film circles, with many critics and programmers fawning over the works of emerging directors like Apichatpong Weerasethakul (BLISSFULLY YOURS, TROPICAL MALADY) and Pen-Ek Ratanaruang (MON RAK TRANSISTOR, LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE) in Thailand, and James Lee (THE BEAUTIFUL WASHING MACHINE) and Ho Yuhang (SANCTUARY) in Malaysia. But the Southeast Asian cinematic landscape extends much further than these admittedly great works, with a host of fascinating and dynamic young filmmakers. The Berlinale Talent Campus plays host to two of these very gifted young men - Raya Martin from the Philippines, and Edwin (no last name) from Indonesia.

At 20 years old, Raya Martin is a precocious young film major from the University of the Philippines . Having been awarded the Ishmael Bernal Award for Young Cinema at the 2004 CineManila International Film Festival for his atmospheric short BAKASYON (THE VACATION), Raya is now currently halfway through the shoot of his student thesis film, an ambitious film set during the 1890's Spanish occupation of the Philippines . Shot half in 35mm b/w and half in vibrant color digital video, the working title of the film is MAICLING PELICIOLA NANG YSANG INDIO NACIONAL (O: ANG MAHABANG CALONGCOTAN NANG MANGA KATAGULAGAN) which translates: A SHORT FILM ABOUT AN INDIO NACIONAL (OR: THE PROLONGED SORROW OF THE TAGALOGS), and stars seasoned theater group Barasoain Kalinagan. The film takes place in three parts each centered around a different theme - Birth, War, and Death, and featuring a young Filipino man (the same? different? we don't know) at different stages of development, as a 10-12 year old church bell ringer (an anomaly at the time, as the Church was run by the Spanish oppressors), a 16-17 year old aspiring member of the revolutionary group Katipunan, and a 20-year old stage actor.

DAJANG SOEMBI: THE WOMAN WHO IS MARRIED TO A DOG, a 7-minute b/w 16mm short by Edwin, was featured recently in the TV5 Tiger Cub Competition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. DAJANG SOEMBI is about the often-overlooked first part of a well-known Indonesian folklore. The short, which according to Edwin is the first true Indonesian Silent Film, tells the tale of a woman who was married to a lying dog, played by experimental filmmaker and cinematographer Faozan Rizal, and their child who uses brutally violent means to correct the situation - murdering the dog and handing its (or his) heart to his horrified mother. Though old folklore and a tale of brutality, the story also serves as a metaphor for Indonesia today - with the son representing youth; the dog, old guard; and the lady, the motherland, Indonesia. "The youth today want change" and they have gotten it, Edwin tells me, but they were unprepared and have gone about it in the wrong way, and the country is no better for it.

While SEA as a region appears ready to explode onto the world map, intelligent and conscious young filmmakers like Raya Martin and Edwin, prove that the attention is well-deserved, and make sure that it does not go to waste.

Alexis Tioseco

© FIPRESCI / Berlinale Talent Campus 2005

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