| home > festival reports > Berlin 2006 > Talent Press - Thursday, February 16th |
|
| coming soon |
Berlin 2006 - Daily reports
Thursday, February 16th
Love kills. Anne von der Goenne reviews Valeska Grisebach's Longing (in competition). 
Michel Gondry's Block Party. Katie Kohn saw both films by Michel Gondry opening at the Berlinale: The Science of Sleep (competition) and the concert film Dave Chapelle's Block Party (Panorama), which she reviews.
The Circus of Lost Identity. Vera Brazzoni reviews Sono Shion's Strange Circus (Forum).
Trick the Location. Olya Aylarova attended the "Trick or Treat" panel: solutions and tricks of shooting in countries with unstable political or social situations.
Meet the Bad Guy. Maria Antonia Vélez-Serna met Sandy Lieberson, producer, once president of 20th Century Fox and of MGM.
Three-coloured Kieslowski. Wim Wenders, Agnieszka Holland and Andres Veiel shared their memories on Krzysztof Kieslowski during the discussion "Colour Me Kieslowski". Oleksiy Radynski reports.
Listen to Your Own Voice. Soumaya Beltifa met Andres Veiel, one of Kieslowski's students when he was teaching in Berlin during the early 1980's.
Back in Berlin. Leo Mirani explains how Atsushi Funahashi is back in Berlin, presenting Big River in the Forum after participating in the Talent Campus 2004.
Love kills
The fire fighter Markus is dancing absolutely drunken, with closed eyes and all by himself on a dancefloor in a village in Brandenburg. The guy is just slowly moving his head and arms while Robbie Williams sings "I just want to feel real loved, feel the world that I live in. 'Cause I got so much life running through my veins, going to waste...". In this very moment this simple man can overcome for one moment his own, ordinary life. And gets an alarming energy which leads him into the arms of a woman, who is not his wife.
 |
Valeska Grisebach creates in her wonderful second movie Sehnsucht (Longing) a very realistic picture of the depressing day to day life of some Germany's countryside's inhabitants. In very long sequences she provides the spectator the needed liberty to reflect about the sensitively told story. After his misconduct, Grisebach's romantic main character can't decide whether he should stay with his wife, who he knows from his early childhood days or if he should choose to live with his affair Rose. In the end it aggrieves the big hearted Markus so much that he takes his shotgun and aims it to his heart. Grisebach even refers to Shakespeare in those parts. Love is worth dying for, because love is all we need, could be the essence of "Sehnsucht".
The amazingly honest and realistic movie captivates through its extraordinary approach. The director chose to hire laities, who she found in Berlin and Brandenburg - a perfect decision. Those new faces make the story authentic, so much that it sometimes seems just like a documentary. But the movie has a very poetic side as well. The images transfer a certain loneliness and abjection. Valeska Grisebach's contribution is definitely the best German movie in competition and would absolutely deserve a "Bear".
Michel Gondry's Block Party
Of the two Michel Gondry features making their debut at the Berlinale this week, the concert film, Dave Chapelle's Block Party and the whimsical diary piece, The Science of Sleep, only the latter retains his familiar technical ingenuity and charm. Unfortunately, the film also drowns in it. Where The Science of Sleep is overwhelmed by a Gondry script, Gondry autobiography and Gondry animation, Dave Chapelle's Block Party belongs to no one. Like its subject matter, which is what happened on one rainy day in September, the television star who arranged it and people who made it all happen, Dave Chapelle's Block Party is a grassroots production in the heart of New York City and, in a better world, would reside in the public domain. That said, its worth your ten spot.
 |
In 2004, comedian Dave Chapelle got it in his head that he should host a party - a big one. In Brooklyn, New York, they call them block parties because as the day goes by, the crowds swell and fill the whole block. A block party shuts down the city street for a while, halting the ordinarily hectic and weathered New Yorker's day for a warm fall afternoon or a breezy summer evening of pure social relaxation. Imagine the spontaneity of the block party combined with the big artist line-up of a major concert tour. Imagine the hip-hop superstar Kanye West mingling with day care teachers, a Midwestern marching band, gas station attendants, senior citizens, and fans from all ages and all the boroughs of New York City. They arrive on school buses and Greyhounds and convene in front of a dilapidated warehouse which was adopted by an eccentric married couple and transformed into a live-in sculpture called "The Broken Angel", now one of the most beautiful and strange buildings in a city famous for them. The district is Bedford-Stuyvesant, the famous black and Hispanic neighborhood of Brooklyn, that has produced half of today's most respected rap artists and was immortalized by Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing.
The film follows the absurdly charming Dave Chapelle, a stand-up comedian who made himself into a small movie star in films like "Half Baked" and an enormous TV star on his own show, "The Chapelle Show". First stop: Dayton, Ohio, Chapelle's hometown, where he invites people to hitch a free bus ride to New York, complimentary room and board and a freestyle concert featuring the hip-hop stylings of Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Mos Def, Kanye West, Talib Kweli and, in a finale that can only be called a hallmark in music history, The Fugees. Those who are not hip-hop fans might identify more with the guests from Dayton, who at least seem to appreciate a window into a very different culture, a window which Gondry make as clear as possible.
Gondry is an invisible presence throughout the film and, other than a signature animation sequence during the opening credits, he restrains the talent he has for creating wondrous worlds because the one before him is wondrous enough. I would like to think that it was an act of providence that brought a great director, a great performer and a great ensemble cast of civilians together before the camera, but when it comes to talent there are no coincidences. It is their job to make this kind of magic happen.
The Circus of Lost Identity
Sono Shion is a director of bizarre taste, as his filmography shows: his most successful film was called The Suicide Club (2002). Now he is back with this grotesque story of incest, murder and loss of identity in a rich Japanese family: an 8 years old girl is forced by her father to witness her parents' sexual intercourses; then she is forced to have sex with her father while her mother witnesses the scene. The insane competition between the two women culminates in a series of murders, suicides, mutilations, mental disorders. Twenty years later, a beautiful writer on a wheelchair tells the story of the two women in a novel she hectically writes 24 hours a day; but who is she really? And who is her mysterious literary agent? What secrets do they hide?
 |
Although the subject is dramatic and tragic, the director frames it in a colourful, fast-paced and mind-blowing shape: the Strange Circus of the title is a Fellini-style set that represents the chaos in the young protagonist's shattered mind; built up as a triumph of lights, colours, gothic imagery, surreal figures dancing around an ubiquitous guillotine, the visual side of this film violently hits the eyes of the public; surprisingly, it manages to communicate the sense of trauma and confusion in a much more effective way than a normal psychological drama could do. A trio of wonderful actresses carry the weigh of three characters (whose identities eventually melts in an unpredictable way) that conceal their grief under incongruous, unsettling bright smiles; the devilish power of sex, alternatively seen as a source of pure pleasure and of perversion, is conveyed not only by explicit, graphic scenes but especially by the intense faces of the three bewildered women.
Unfortunately the solution of the plot is difficult to understand, but that's what happens when you see a Japanese film with only German subtitles and no English at all! Nevertheless, this work remains thought-provoking, enjoyable, but most of all is a shocking moral lesson; no doubt Sono has relied on a very original script, but he has enriched it thanks to a powerful classical soundtrack, divided into childlike themes and solemn elegies, and high speed editing. An epitome of post-postmodern aesthetics with remainders of Edgar Allan Poe and Stanley Kubrick, Strange Circus is too creative to be shown in the Official Competition, and is aptly placed in the Forum of the Berlinale. Yet hopefully it will be released (or I should say "unleashed") in Europe and will haunt a wider public.
Trick the Location
The "Trick or Treat" panel on the Berlinale Talent Campus was not about building budgets or working in co-production as you might think. The producers of The Syrian Bride, Silent Waters and Paradise Now Bettina Brokemper, Helge Albers and Gerhard Meixner, as well as Najwa Najjar, director of the Yasemine's Song featuring in this year's Panorama, spoke on solutions and tricks of shooting in countries with unstable political or social situations.
Moderator Margret von Schiller started with a question to the audience. What do you think about when you say "a difficult location"?
Politics! Police! Danger! Law! Negotiations! Nature! War! - the Talents responded. And these topics helped the panelists to start the conversation. Najwa Najjar talked on shooting in the area of Palestine-Israeli conflict. "To give the permission for shooting, the Israelis usually want to read the script. We decided to skip this procedure because it took extra time and expenses. We shot quietly, trying not to draw people's attention. And it worked".
 |
But in some cases this solution does not work - like when you are shooting in North Korea. In that case you have to deal with the State Film Agency that will help you to coordinate your work, but at the same time will control all of your activities. Most likely it will put a Korean co-producer on board and check your film to censor all the material. As one of the panelists recalled, while shooting in Vietnam 14 years ago the crew had a special member from the Vietnamese government. Everyday he went through all the filmed materials and marked the rolls he had approved. But the filmmakers found the solution - they bought him alcohol, and he was not so keen about fulfilling his duties.
The panel raised many issues important for those who plan to shoot on a difficult location. How to get a shooting permission, deal with the countries authorities, prepare to all the possible problems and even humiliation that are waiting for your in a foreign country. Najwa Najjar shared her impression of the airport in Israel where, in security measures, she was once made to take off her clothes to prove she had no dangerous items on her. Moreover, one of the rolls with her film was opened and X-rayed while transportation.
An interesting question came from a young Iranian filmmaker who tried to pitch his Bagdad-based script at the Co-Production Market here in Berlin. Several producers offered him to shoot at other similar locations but refused to work in Bagdad. As the panelists said, the main problem here was the insurance: most of the companies that do film financing demand insurance guarantees, and any possible danger for the crew reduces the chances of raising money for a film.
Nevertheless, the panelists appealed never to give up a project because of the difficult location. Just remember to keep your eyes open and keep your fingers crossed!
Meet the Bad Guy
Sandy Lieberson on training producers
Sandy Lieberson is a good example for anyone interested in making his way to the top of the mainstream film industry. He built a name as a producer for the likes of Terry Gilliam and Jacques Demy, whilst also working with Sergio Leone and Peter Sellers. The 1980's found him as a president of 20th Century Fox and then of MGM; he is now a lecturer in London and San Antonio de los Baños. In conversation, this relaxed, witty Californian explains how he skewed big business and is now conspiring for an independent filmmaking revolution.
"You learn to live with being the bad guy", he says on being a top executive. But after giving up the big league (together with its stressing responsabilities) to start a new family, he did not have it much easier either. "When I arrive in Cuba every year, I have to spend the first day explaining to the students what a producer does: producers are what makes films happen". The lack of trained producers in Latin America, Lieberson says, is one of the factors holding regional cinema back. He wants his students at the International School of Film and Television to understand production as a creative process, to be aware of the conditions and potential of the Latin American market, and to abandon their traditional aversion against producers.
 |
Alas, this mistrust is not confined to Latin America. When he arrived at the National Film School in London, Lieberson found out that England was not training producers either. He founded the production degree, and he says now the results are visible: there are more British films being made, and his former students are working as producers or executives in several companies, or in the UK Film Council. "They are making a difference", Lieberson says, "and I'm pleased by that".
As chairman of Film London, a new organisation that aims to support filmmaking and film culture in the UK, his dream is to start a movement, arguing that "Europe does not have a film movement. Film London is planting the seeds, and now they are starting to sprout". He is keener on the American "exciting" independent scene, because "people are not waiting for others to give them permission to do things". This is part of the revolution brought about by digital media, which, according to Lieberson, has democratised filmmaking and allowed small groups of people to make movies without consulting the big industry.
Latin American filmmakers, however, have yet to adopt this mentality: shooting in 35mm is still a mystified dream of professionalism for most of them. Although Lieberson believes that the audiences do not care wether the movie was shot on 35mm or digital, he does not think digital will be completely replacing film in the short term. Maybe, he says, people will be going back to celluloid as a reaction against digital hegemony in a few years. And even if it is just a matter of romance, Lieberson concludes, "I appreciate it, because I think there should be romance in filmmaking".
Three-coloured Kieslowski
Wim Wenders, Agnieszka Holland and Andres Veiel shared their memories on Krzysztof Kieslowski during the discussion "Colour Me Kieslowski", moderated by Peter Cowie. The event was dedicated to the forthcoming10th anniversary of the director's death.
The three well-known directors presented various visions of Kieslowski's personality. All of them had one common feature - their attitude was formed not only by his art but also by their personal relations with him. When Agnieszka Holland came to Poland in the beginning of the 1970's and was introduced to a young Polish documentarist, who was admired only by a couple of colleagues but already had a habit of permanent smoking, it was impossible for her to guess that, 35 years later, she'd be discussing his art in this company. Wim Wenders first met Kieslowski in 1988, when both of them where approaching the height of their art. The meeting of the two great auteurs happened during the ceremony of the European Academy Awards in a toilet, which both of them were attending constantly - Kieslowski due to health problems, Wenders because of his permanent need to wash his hands. When Veiel attended the director's classes in Berlin, he along with most of the students considered Kieslowski to be their guru.
 |
Three attidudes to Kieslowski as a person turned into three ways to interprete his art. Agnieszka Holland shared Peter Cowie's opinion on Kieslowski's early documentaries as fundamental works of great importance. Talking about Kieslowski's last project Three Colours, she confessed that she had once offended Kieslowski by calling this trilogy "the philosophy for cooks", which wouldn't sound too bad in the context of this years' Campus whose theme is food. Andres Veiel argued about the ethical issues of Kieslowski's films, stating that every camera angle was a moral choice for Kieslowski. Wenders maintained his reputation of a person with borderless imagination. Talking on Kieslowski's art, Wenders suddenly interrupted his speech and informed the audience that the little ladybird which he noticed on his paper was a sign from the beyond. This resulted in a discussion on what Kieslowski would shoot if death hadn't taken him so early.
Listen to Your Own Voice
"Colour Me Kieslowski" was a discussion aimed at evoking the memory and brilliance of the late Polish maestro, who died ten years ago this coming March. Wim Wenders, Agnieszka Holland, and Andres Veiel shared their thoughts about this inspiring director. After the event, I spoke to Veiel. He was one of Kieslowski's students when he was teaching in Berlin during the early 1980's.
What have you learned from Kieslowski?
In essence, it's a very simple message but at the same time a very complicated one. Kieslowski always maintained: "Listen to your own voice". In other words, tell what you have to tell and don't think too much about your market, your producers, or your commissioning editor. First of all, you have to know what you want to say and that's the voice you need to follow. Later you have to fight with those boys because if you listen too much to all the advice about how to shoot and how to write and how to make the whole marketing process, you're just lost. I think you have to be radical and you have to work without compromise. In many films I miss this necessity and this obsession.
 |
What influence did Kieslowski exert on you?
I was asked the same question fifteen years ago when I started to make films and I've said there is no influence. But now, when I look back, I see how many things germinated in my mind when I think about "Balagan" or "Black Box Germany". Sometimes, the structure resembles "A Short Film about Killing". Two ambivalent characters, a killer and a victim but on the same time, you want to give the killer a chance even if his actions are so repugnant. I think in terms of complexity, to tell the story and to go from one profound contradiction to another, while giving the spectator time to reflect. Kieslowski's films are great examples of this. In the final analysis, you have these classic films that are so full of oxygen, and they remain fresh and valuable remain even after twenty years.
Is your latest film, "The Kick", still in the Kieslowski idiom?
On each of my projects, I look for a specific form. In terms of a radical approach I think about the story I want to tell, and whether it will emerge as a documentary or a piece of fiction. As "The Kick" stands now, it is extremely abstract, very close to theatre. It's a challenge to reconcile documentary elements in an artistic setting. Next time around, I'll be facing another challenge.
Back in Berlin
There are some who go back from the Berlinale Talent Campus with fond memories, new friends and raging hangovers. There are some who go back home with contacts, phone numbers and a backpack full of business cards. And then there are some who back home with producers.
Atsushi Funahashi attended the Campus two years ago and is back in Berlin this year with the result of that event, his film Big River, which is playing in the Forum. Funahashi met his future co-producer Mohammed Naqvi at the Campus's Talent Project Market - a scaled down version of the main Film Market.
"I'd never pitched a project. People asked me what my film was about and I didn't know how to answer. The orientation and training programme at the Talent Market really helped me learn how to talk to a sales agent, distributor or financier," says Funahashi.
 |
Along with his partner Eric van der Brulle, Funahashi prepared a thorough pitch for their film, including a breakdown of the budget, estimated shooting days and their preferred choice for the cast before arriving in Berlin, but it was the Campus that really gave them the atmosphere they needed to realise their dream.
Says Brulle, "There was this energy here and we had access to so many resources that it really helped us to seek out the people who would be interested in our project. It (The Talent Project Market) gave us a sense of real potential to make our project happen. I don't think we could have found a better place."
The duo met Naqvi at the Campus and he officially came on as co-producer two months later, in April 2004. They then finalised talks with Office Kitano in Tokyo, who eventually funded the film.
Naqvi, who was at the Market with his own project, says that the most important thing he learnt at the Campus was the power of interacting with other Talents. "Many Talents go directly to the big sales agents. What they don't realise is that many are in the same boat as them and they can also really help you out."
"There are certain elements that intrigue certain production companies. One shouldn't blindly pitch to everyone because not every production company is for you. I think that's really important," he added, stressing on the importance of research beforehand.
Their film, Big River, is a post 9.11 road movie about the unlikely friendship between a Japanese traveller, a Pakistani immigrant and a blonde, trailer-park American girl.
© FIPRESCI / Berlinale Talent Campus 2006
|
| recent festivals |
Berlin 06
Talent Press |
