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Rotterdam 2006
Young Film Critics by Belinda van de Graaf 
A Tear-Shaped Universe by
Adam Nayman
The Hubert Bals Fund and the Promotion of Latin American Cinema by Daniel Steinhart
Young Film Critics
By
Belinda van de Graaf
At the 35th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) three young critics were invited to the festival's Trainee Project for Young Film Critics. For the 8th time the festival created this possibility for young and upcoming critics (under the age of 30) to get aquainted with the festival and the world of independent cinema. The trainees participated in the deliberations of the FIPRESCI jury and wrote about their experiences in the festival daily (the Daily Tiger). And for the first time they wrote about their adventures in a daily weblog that was specially created for them at the festival's website: www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com.
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Left: Pawel T. Felis from Poland |
As Adam Nayman (24) from Canada put it in one of his daily blogs: "I saw my favorite American film of the past 365 days, Kelly Reichardt's Tiger-winning Old Joy. I sat at the same table as Hou Hisao-hsien and said a casual hello to Jia Zhang-ke, both of whom well entrenched on in the front ranks of Asian cinema. I re-watched Michael Haneke's brilliant Caché, and discovered Bill Daniels' lovely Who Is Bozo Texino? "
And Daniel Steinhart (28) from the US noted: "I've been averaging about four movies a day. One of the best tests of a film's impact at a festival is the length of time that it sticks in the brain. One of the films I keep on replaying in my head is Andrew Bujalski's Mutual Appreciation. As the lights went up after the screening, I turned to my colleague Adam and we quickly agreed that we'd seen the real deal: a film about young people that gets it right."
For Pawel T. Felis (27) from Poland the real world suddenly entered his festival experience: "Unfortunately during the last days I couldn't enjoy the festival as much as I wanted to. Saturday's tragedy in Poland (the roof collapsed in Katowice and at least 67 persons died) broke me totally just as everyone in Poland. Some people from the festival asked me where Katowice is. And I answered: watch the first part of Ode To Joy (the Polish film in the Tiger Award Competition) titled 'Silensia'. It was shot there and tells the story of people who live just there."
As Adam, Daniel and Pawel were invited into the heated debates of the FIPRESCI jury as well, they will also offer their thoughts on the 35th International Film Festival Rotterdam to the FIPRESCI website. Here are their short biographies and the themes they will write about:
Pawel T. Felis (27) is writing for the 'Gazeta Wyborcza', the biggest daily newspaper in Poland and is collaborating to film magazines like the weekly 'Przekroj' and the monthly 'Film' (the Polish edition of Premiere). Pawel studied Polish Language and Literature at the University of Warsaw (Poland). Prior to Rotterdam he visited the festivals of Berlin and Cottbus, and a couple of film festivals in his homeland. Pawels favorite films in Rotterdam were Madeinusa by Claudia Llosa, Something Like Happiness by Bohdan Sláma, La Sagrada Familia by Sebastián Campos, Mary by Abel Ferrara and Into Great Silence by Philip Gröning. For the FIPRESCI website Pawel is pondering the theme 'being a man, being a woman', and for this he will concentrate on films from the Tiger Competition (La Perrera, Madeinusa, Ode to Joy, Glue, Un Jour d'Été and Walking on the Walk Side) and make comparisons to other films in the festival, made by young directors, like La Sagrada Familia, Me And You And Everyone We Know , Something Like Happiness and Johanna. He will include films from well-known masters as well: Bubble by Steven Soderbergh, Gabrielle by Patrice Chéreau, Lunacy by Jan Svankmajer and My Nikifor by Krzysztof Krauze.
Daniel Steinhart (28) is a freelance writer from the US. He is freelancing for a number of media publications, including the trade magazine 'Film Journal International'. Daniel currently lives in Los Angeles, where he is is pursuing a master's degree in film and media studies at UCLA. Prior to Rotterdam, he covered the New Directors/New Films Festival in New York and the Donostia-San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain. Daniels favorite films from the IFFR are The Death of Mister Lazarescu by Cristi Puiu, Tale of Cinema by Hong Sang-soo and Old Joy by Kelly Reichardt. One of his favorite festival moments: "having a drink in the Hotel Central with a colleague and three former trainees, who are now some of the best film writers in North America". Daniel will write about the Hubert Bals Fund's promotion of regional cinema and four Latin American festival films that were supported by the fund.
Adam Nayman (24) is a freelance writer from Canada. He completed a double major in English and Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. Prior to Rotterdam he covered the Toronto International Film Festival for five years, and also two dozen other film festivals in Toronto, including 'Hot Docs! Inside/Out', 'Rehab', 'Sprockets!' and 'World Wide Shorts'. Adams favorite films in Rotterdam were Old Joy by Kelly Reichardt, Who Is Bozo Texino? by Bill Daniels and Mutual Appreciation by Andrew Bujalski. His favorite festival experiences were sitting a few seats away from Hou Hsiao-hsien, discussing Tony Scott films with Austrian film critic Chrisoph Huber and the last-night Chinese food-feast with colleague Daniel Steinhart and the festival's Bert-Jan, Gert-Jan, Anton and the volunteers. Adam will write about Kelly Reichards Old Joy, one of the Tiger Award winners.
A Tear-Shaped Universe
By Adam Nayman
There is a scene midway through Kelly Reichardt's Tiger Award-winning Old Joy, adapted from the novel by John Raymond, in which its two principals, Mark (Daniel London) and Kurt (Will Oldham) share a conversation beside a roaring bonfire. They are en route to a secluded hot-spring in the Cascade Mountain region of Oregon. They have been forced to camp out because Kurt, who suggested the trip, has forgotten the way. Daniel, a father-to-be whose wife (Tanya Smith) had expressed reservations about his departure, is visibly frustrated with his old friend, but allows himself to be drawn into a discussion of Kurt's foray into night-school physics classes.
Tall, rail-thin and balding, with bushy eyebrows and thick beard, Kurt looks like a wild-man, especially in contrast to his neatly turned out companion. His voice is high like a child's, and he talks too quickly. He'll get ahead of himself and then reverse tack, is if sputtering in time with the flames. At this moment, he is explaining to Mark that the official reckoning on the shape of the Universe is, incorrect. His pet theory, which tumbles out in stops and starts, is that all matter is slowly falling through space: that we inhabit a "tear-shaped universe." Kurt does not seem to acknowledge the poetry of this statement, but Mark's face betrays some reaction. The fire crackles on.
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Old Joy |
As its title implies, Old Joy is a film in which the optimism of youth has weathered over time. Mark and Kurt are both in their mid-to-late thirties; both seem to be products of the post-1960s counterculture. Mark has slipped into the mainstream, setting his car radio dial to Air America as the last vestige of his former activism. Kurt has drifted even further in the other direction- he looks and acts like the sort of person many who consider themselves to be sympathetic liberals would cross the street to avoid.
Mark and Kurt's rapport will be familiar to anyone who has grown apart from a loved one. Their attempts at re-connection, with nature and with each other, carry the faint, mildewed whiff of good intentions. The insistent vibrations of Mark's cell phone suggest that his wife is keeping tabs on their idyll; the fact that she does not ask to speak to Kurt serves as confirmation, and also a kind of clue. Their weekend progresses pleasantly enough, but there are no breakthroughs, no revelation of what led to their impasse, no overt renewals of friendship. They strike camp and sit together in a greasy-spoon diner. They arrive at the ancient wooden bathhouse and silently undress for a soak.
Old Joy 's fragility prevents me from further describing its contents, although at this point, the narrative is very nearly over. It is enough to say that it is a film that takes place inside the 'tear-shaped universe' that Kurt describes. It can be read as many things: as a sorrowful account of liberal alienation, as a gentle rebuttal of weekend-warrior movie tropes, or as a muted tragedy of unrequited affection. Old Joy is complex, but it is not a carefully attenuated Rhorshach test like Gus Van Sant's Gerry, one of several films to which it will inevitably be compared (the others are Apichatpong Weerasthakul's Blissfully Yours and, more tenuously, Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain).
As with Van Sant and Apichatpong, however, the filmmaking is exquisite. The locations are greyly beautiful, but there is none of the sledgehammer lyricism familiar from so many films about forays into Nature. Objects and gestures come loaded with significance, but meaning seems to spring from within, rather than being artfully imposed from without. The characters are ostensibly types - the earnest sell-out and the wizened hippie - but the finely modulated performances by the principals (and even by Lucy, Mark's ever-energetic dog) avert cliché. The screenplay retains the dialogue from Raymond's book, and yet never feels written. The final movements are ambiguous but not obscure-- we can speculate on what will happen next, but the final cut comes at the correct moment. Old Joy is slender and powerful, modest and generous. It invites discussion but feels fully formed. All the critic can bring to it is his or her attention and then gratitude.
The Hubert Bals Fund and the Promotion of Latin American Cinema
By Daniel Steinhart
The International Film Festival Rotterdam's founding director Hubert Bals once said, "The future of cinematography is not to be expected from Europe or the United States, but all the more from lesser known film cultures." Attending any recent edition of the IFFR, you can't help but agree with Bals. While this year's program offered strong work from Europe, the US, and always-vibrant East Asia, some of the most exciting films came from unsung places like the Philippines, Indonesia, and Uruguay. The IFFR has not only created its distinct identity in the festival world by showcasing this kind of undiscovered work, but also by financing it. The festival's Hubert Bals Fund has been a quiet but vital force in fostering filmmaking in these emerging film cultures.
Initiated in 1988, the Hubert Bals Fund provides grants for projects from developing countries in order to support script development and post-production. The fund also assists with the distribution of the projects both in their country of production and abroad. Rather than rewarding Hollywood copycats or films that pander to the world market by overstuffing themselves with global themes and styles, the fund's committee chooses work steeped in local flavor. Artistic quality is the most important criterion for selecting projects, believes fund coordinator Marianne Bhalotra. In addition, she explains, "A project should be rooted in its country. For us, it's important for a film to have a personal voice from the country where it's made." Ironically, it's precisely this kind of regionalism that achieves universal appeal. A number of Latin American films showcased in this year's festival, and supported by the Hubert Bals Fund, are exemplary of work that feels fixed in its time and place.
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La perrera |
Co-winner of the Tiger Award, Manuel Nieto Zas' La perrera is a film so entrenched in its locale's sleepy moods and rhythms that it makes its protagonist a prisoner of it. This Uruguayan film unfolds slowly, but never monotonously, as David, a 25-year-old underachiever, wiles away the late summer days in a resort town devoid of women by smoking pot and sleeping. When his stern old man returns from holiday, David is forced into the almost Sisyphean task of building his own house with few supplies, little experience, and not enough money to pay his co-workers. The film's careful interest in the labor of the house's shambolic construction suggests that David will achieve some sense of personal accomplishment by its completion. However, the film's project is more fatalistic; the raising of the house secures David's bonds to a place he won't be able to escape from. Actor Pablo Riera's wild physical transformation, which is nicely balanced by his underplayed performance, betrays the inner turmoil that his character experiences.
The Tiger competition's other South American slacker film, Glue , came from Argentina's Alexis Dos Santos. Whereas La perrera's protagonist becomes trapped by his unforgiving environment, the aimless lead of Glue defies his dead-end Patagonian town by finding freedom in a freewheeling existence. 15-year-old Lucas sings in a crappy garage band, writing hilariously nonsensical lyrics. He breaks into his father's apartment and huffs Dad's model glue. At the apex of pubescent sexual discovery, he has a drunken three-way with his pal Nacho and their mousy friend Andrea. These episodic scenes would have little impact were it not for the actors' brave performances and the film's casual aesthetic, which mixes Super 8 and video. The film also creates an amusing depiction of Lucas' fractured family. The sensitive handling of their physical intimacy recalls the cozy family portraits of Argentinean director Lucrecia Martel, another Hubert Bals beneficiary.
In the Cinema of the Future: Sturm und Drang program, two Mexican films, Batalla en el cielo and Sangre, aimed for provocation and transcendence. The screening of Batalla en el cielo was something of a homecoming for its director Carlos Reygadas, who made the world cinema scene at the 2002 IFFR with his Hubert Bals-funded debut Japón. If Japón is a tribute to the quiet, rugged beauty of Mexico's mountainous landscape then Reygadas' follow-up is a celebration of the savage jungle of Mexico City. With an Arbus-like fascination in the uncanny nature of the commonplace, the film follows the guilt-ridden wanderings of Marcos, a chauffer whose botched kidnapping scheme leads him to confess his crime to his boss' prostitute daughter. The exploration of Catholic guilt and class discourse through enigmatic imagery makes the film's morality feel equivocal. However, Reygadas is more assured in his stylistic flourishes. His use of shifting subjectivities, elaborate camera movements, and rich soundscapes gives the film its compelling power.
Amat Escalante's Sangre, on the other hand, plays out with more restraint. Shot in static, widescreen long-takes, the film captures the quotidian life of a middle-aged doorman and his wife. Living in a culture that encourages routine, the characters carry out sex, work, and eating with perfunctory effort. Like Reygadas, Escalante, who served as an assistant director on Batalla en el cielo , is interested in the existential crisis of the common man. And like Reygadas, Escalante allows his leading character redemption even after the most barbaric of acts. In Sangre , this moment of transcendence would be unwarranted had it not transpired in such a surprising and modest way.
Escalante's next film, Los Bastardos, was one of the most sought-after projects at this year's CineMart. Escalante, like the aforementioned directors, are heralding a vibrant new wave of film activity from Latin America, thanks in part to support from foreign investments like the Hubert Bals Fund. These formally and thematically bold movies, with a strong sense of local identity, suggest that we pay close attention to the future of filmmaking in these Spanish-speaking nations.
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