Day 6 — Thursday, February 14

Ben Cho on Martin Scorsese and the Stones
Natalia Ames didn't like Before Fall, Spanish director F. Javier Gutiérrez' debut, but attests it a certain talent for direction
Dilek Aydin attended the workshop "Eyes on the Music" which hosted composer Gustavo Santaolalla
Ezequiel Schmoller reviews Natasha Arthy's Fighter
Suchandrika Chakrabarti attended the panel "The Dark Side of Cinema", which took a wide-ranging look at human emotions in film
Martyna Olszowska enjoyed Jose Luis Lopez-Linares' cooking documentary The Chicken, The Fish And The King Crab
Mayank Shekhar on Amos Kollek's Restless
Ezequiel Schmoller reports on a panel devoted to documentary
Natalia Ames attended the panel "The Language of Spaces and Things" and talked to designer Alex McDowell
Shaibu Husseini presents the Script Station of the Campus
Suchandrika Chakrabarti reviews Bananaz by British documentarist Ceri Levy
Ben Cho talks with cinematographer and first-time director Ellen Kuras
Shaibu Husseini reviews Albertina Carri's La rabia

Opening Night Satisfaction?
By Ben Cho

Was Shine A Light's super-charged star wattage of Martin Scorsese and the Rolling Stones too tempting to pass up as an Opening Night uber-spectacle for Berlin Film Festival director Dieter Kosslick? Both "Marty" and the Stones showed up on the red carpet for the festival's opener and the Berlinale Palast was crowded with die-hard fans, hordes of photographers, jostling video-crews and the curious passers-by who couldn't help but gravitate towards the flashing lights and red carpet. A shrewd choice for Kosslick: well-respected filmmaker, mega rock band and offbeat (after all a concert film isn't the usual kick off for a festival) enough to generate a point-of-difference for a new year of the festival cycle. Unfortunately though "offbeat" was probably the best description for the film itself, an overlong piece of eye-candy whose only major draw card was the formal prowess in capturing the band with an intimacy and humor that alludes so many straight-to-DVD concert films.

No stranger to rock music icons with docs on Bob Dylan and The Band most famously under his belt (he also had editing duties on Woodstock) Scorsese even noted in a foreword for Sam Fuller's book, "A Third Face", that you can't really call yourself a fan of rock music if you don't like the Stones (in the same way you can't really love cinema if you don't love Fuller). The problem, like some of the director's recent output, is that the "Martin Scorsese" of respected cinephilia, pop/rock soundtrack wizardry and all-round ambassadorship for cine-archivalism isn't enough to wax over the "Martin Scorsese" of bombastic misfires like The Departed, Gangs Of New York and The Aviator.

Scorsese possesses an undoubted passion for the band and frequently in the initial behind-the-scenes footage you can sense that this is some kind of dream project — he even provides a lengthy wishlist of songs to the Stones for consideration in the concert. But when Keith Richards remarks that it's all about getting into the "zone" when he's up on stage, Scorsese seems to have taken this as the major task-at-hand. There's little doubt he penetrates into this "zone" with precision. Numerous close-ups unearth minute details that would escape the visceral charge of being there live fifty feet away from the stage. The bulging veins on Ronnie's arm and Mick's neck; Charlie's cheekiness between songs; the pleasure that washes over Keith's face as he nails a riff; and on and on. But what Scorsese fails to do is advance the film after the initial jolting pleasures as light switches from behind-the-scenes humor to the slickly-shot stage shenanigans of Jagger and co. Yes, he enters into this zone and most of us who will never have the pleasure of waiting in the wings of a Stones concert are going to see the band with details that would allude the fan ten or fifteen feet away from the stage. However the film basically flatlines after the second or third song and only registers a few minor blips with some of the more famous tunes. Most disappointingly Scorsese establishes a visual grammar of grandiosely swooping push-ins, energetic whip-pans and tight close-ups only to inter-switch between these coverage choices without any real logical flair or direct relationship to the songs.

Expectedly closing the film with "Satisfaction" (as in "I can't get no…") was an invitation for some critics to serve up punchy one-line summaries for eager editors and blog-watchers back home. It may have earned the right kind of buzz for the Berlinale but it's hardly going to go down as a momentous occasion in the history of rock-docs. What this selection perhaps reveals is the pain and dilemmas facing so many fests with internal tensions running high between enticing sponsorship dollars, maintaining art-house creed and generating glitz with superstars. Kudos to Mr. Kosslick for an opening night buzzing with energy and excitement. Even if the film was far from Scorsese's best, in the words of the Stones, "you can't always get what you want". (Ben Cho)

Being Original Is Not Everything
By Natalia Ames

When we see the first minutes of Before Fall (Tres dias, Spain), a movie about the final days of the human race before a meteorite hits the earth, we can imagine the director searching financing for his project: "It is a film about the end of the world, is not that a good idea?" Well, sometimes a good idea does not make a good picture, especially when this idea is taken as an excuse to draw the attention of the audience rather than being worked out in a properly cinematic way.

Even if the film is attractive in its visual form, with aesthetic framing and good moments of suspense, the script is problematic from the beginning. The way we learn that the meteorite is going to fall in only three days (through a television announcement), and the immediate consequences of this information, are not credible. It is the end of the world and we only see isolated reactions and random scenes from other parts of the planet.

But following these brief panic reactions, the film focuses on the tragedy of a family trying to escape from a murderer looking for revenge. The narrative almost forgets what is happening in the rest of the world and tells the story of Ale, who has to save his brother's children, and this task becomes more important than the meteorite.

So why did the director start with the premise of the end of the world? Was it only to make his proposal more interesting, more original? The story of Ale's family has its peaks and is well directed, showing that F. Javier Gutiérrez could have done a better opera prima if he had not bet on this delirious starting point. Besides, the script falls into many clichés of "the last days" type, such as the declaration of love in its final moments.

It is not that the film is too ambitious, but it is certainly pretentious. The movie tries to cover too many themes. Before Fall could have been much better if it had focused on fewer aspects and developed the characters and its plot about the family. Nevertheless, we wait for this director's next film — but hope he gets another scriptwriter. (Natalia Ames)

Tracking The Film In Music
By Dilek Aydin

One of the discussions on the last day of the Berlinale Talent Campus was about film soundtracks. "Eyes on the Music", moderated by Peter Cowie, hosted Gustavo Santaolalla, this year's mentor of the Volkswagen Score Competition and acclaimed composer of films like Amores perros, Motorcycle Diaries and Brokeback Mountain. Santaolalla was accompanied by three young composers Vasco Hexel, Conrad Oleak and Sonal Shah who are the finalists of the Volkswagen Score competition. 

To be a film composer is more than locking yourself into a studio and making the music you like. It clearly requires an awareness of the film. The soundtrack of a film has a great psychological and emotional effect on the audience and can easily change perceptions. Taking this vital influence of the music as a basis, the panelists discussed how it should be chosen. Should it be a subliminal, minimalist score or should it have a big theme? The panelists agreed that each film requires very different music which has a character consistent with the film's atmosphere. Santaolalla reminded the audience how "a dramatic scene can turn into a melodramatic one with wrong music" and advised young filmmakers not to try to change the emotional depth of a scene with a dissonant score. During the discussion it was easy to deduce that the mentality of "this scene is not going well, let's put some music on it" jeopardizes both the film's success and the career of the composer. Santaolalla and the young composers said that they welcome both the director who comes up with his own ideas about the music and one who gives the composer total freedom. To be able to meet at a point where the composer and the director understand each other seems the most important thing in this creative process.

Composing a score for a film is another way, like directing, acting, or lighting, of reflecting the personality and ideas of that film. There may be a million ways of doing it. But as the panelists agreed, this reflection should be in harmony with what is on the screen. (Dilek Aydin)

Familiarity Breeds Content
By Ezequiel Schmoller 

Aicha, the main character of Natasha Arthy's Fighter, is a real… well, fighter. She fights boys, girls, cupboards, walls, punching balls, whatever gets in her way. Her passion for kung-fu and the determination to practice it gets her into real trouble. "You've got to control yourself," her teacher tells her during an early scene of the film. But the essence of adolescence is not to control oneself and Aicha goes on practicing kung-fu and improving her level. Her Turkish-Muslim family, especially her father, disapproves of the activity. She should study hard, become a doctor like her brother, and stop doing stupid things like kung-fu fighting. That's the only way to climb the social ladder in Germany and avoid being another factory worker like her father. But Aicha, like the boy-dancer in Billy Elliot, doesn't care for social conventions; she just wants to kung-fu. Her tenacity is the main motor and fulcrum of the film.

In a way, Fighter (screened in the Generation 14plus section) is not one but two movies: a sports film and an impossible love story. The sport side is conveyed through training montages, kung-fu experts giving spiritual advice, and a competition at the end of the road. The impossible love story involves Aicha, the Turkish Muslim girl, meeting a German Christian boy; they like each other but society won't allow their love to be consummated. By now it's fairly obvious that Arthy's Fighter will never revolutionize the cinema, it will not enter film history books, and if you watch it today, you will probably forget it by next week. It does nothing to avoid the common-place, conventional music overlays sentimental scenes. Everything about the film is predictable and all too familiar. However, oddly enough, Fighter somehow works. It is quite an enjoyable and at times even moving film. After a mere twenty minutes we know exactly what is going to happen, and how events are going to unfold, but we enjoy it anyway, in the same way we enjoy finding things in their usual place after returning home from a trip. Cinema is also made up of these nice little films. (Ezequiel Schmoller)

Emotion: The Universal Language
By Suchandrika Chakrabarti

Cinema has "to engage in the depiction of emotional extremes," said Vinzenz Hediger, the moderator of "The Dark Side of Cinema" panel, which took a wide-ranging look at human emotions in film. The Berlinale Talent Campus event featured Israeli Arab actress Hiam Abbass, known for subtly playing tormented characters in The Syrian Bride and Paradise Now. Alongside her were Nigerian director Newton I. Aduaka (Ezra), Lebanese/Swedish director/actor Josef Fares (Leo) and English director/writer Damian Harris (Gardens Of The Night).

Speaking about her role in Lemon Tree, which is showing at this year's Panorama at the Berlinale, Abbass said that cinematic emotion is key to reaching geographically disparate audiences. She asked herself, "How do I bring all these people to understand the same language?" and said that she often finds her answer in facial expression and gesture.

Although Abbass adds that such roles give her the "enjoyment of exploring different emotions that I'm not always exposed to in my private life," she is careful not to identify too closely with her characters. She said, "I need this separation of myself and the character I'm playing, to be able to look at her."

Aduaka, whose film Ezra is about Nigerian child soldiers, mentioned that his work was inspired by wanting to bring news stories back to life. He said: "Behind the headlines there is a lack of sensitivity." Hediger agreed, and added: "Cinema can do what other forms of journalism can't do, put you in the emotional position." Harris, whose Gardens Of The Night is about child prostitution, said "it was horror that attracted me" to the subject, and the clip we saw succinctly conveyed this emotion.

Bringing a ray of sunshine to proceedings, Fares said: "I love to give the smile to my audience." Abbass concurred, but added that if she makes her audience cry, it isn't necessarily a negative experience, it can be cathartic. (Suchandrika Chakrabarti)

The "Nobel" Art of Cooking
By Martyna Olszowska

Chickens and fish, cubicles measuring eighteen square meters, a dozen jury members, five and a half hours, some mouth-watering dishes, a multicultural audience, and the finest chefs from all over the world — this is the "Bocuse d'Or", the Nobel Prize of cooking, and a competition which has been held every two years in Lyon.

Jose Luis Lopez-Linares' documentary, The Chicken, The Fish And The King Crab (El pollo, el pez y el cangrejo real) focuses on the months of preparation on the part of Spanish chef Jesus Almagro for the final in Lyon. The director examines the process of how the various plates are composed and presented. Everything must be perfect, if one wants to win. The dishes should contain three ingredients — chicken, crab and fish — and it should reflect the personality and national culture of the chef. Precision and self-control are the most important elements for those who have to compete in very tough conditions and under enormous pressure.
 
Linares' movie is, however, not only a document about a competition and the struggle with one's weaknesses, even though he well describes the hard work and emotions involved excitement which in fact the viewer can share. He catches perfectly the fatigue, the irritability, as well as sometimes the amusing expressions on the chefs' faces. Linares goes into both the artistic and everyday side of cooking with a sense of humor and sometimes irony. He also shows respect for the stamina of Jesus Almagro.

Linares goes too with his camera to the North Pole, to Norway, and to the French town of Bresse — the sources of the main ingredients involved. That's an occasion for meeting with "the happy halibut", "the king crab" or "the French chicken". Through editing and an imaginative soundtrack, the director gives his documentary a light and witty mood.

"What's easy in cooking?" is the rhetorical question posed by one of the jury members. After over an hour of hearing about new trends in contemporary cooking and the much-vaunted "nouvelle cuisine", of looking at tasty examples of the culinary art, it's hard not to agree with him. There could be only one danger — that the Sunday lunch at home becomes too mundane. (Martyna Olszowska)

A Sure-Watch
By Mayank Shekhar

It is easy to tell where Restless, Amos Kollek's competition film, is coming from, besides Israel, the country of its origin. As you watch old Moshe drowning himself in whisky at a New York bar, you can sense an inner hollowness and turmoil, no less urgent than that of the home he's left behind. Moshe (Moshe Ivgy, an inspiring performance in an equally inspired role) is a poet in exile.

It's been almost 20 years since he moved from Israel, disillusioned by a violent region he didn't want to call his own. He also had a son he disowned soon as he was born. Moshe, a lost, illegal immigrant, roams the streets of New York, before finding himself local fame reading poetry at a bar. The future has always confused him.

In old age, he wallows in loneliness, no different from the two women with whom he discovers a kind of intimacy and love. It is difficult not to empathize with Moshe's messy state and a gloomy world-view. The humanity of the character, given the part of the globe he represents, is both timely and precise.

It's his son's story, though intriguing and believable, that could border on a risky exaggeration. He's a homicidal sniper in the Israeli army, sacked for accidentally killing a child in Jordan. He's lost his mother. Jobless and restless now, he trains his wrath on the father he never had. The father and son meet. Yet, their bombastic encounter — at one moment the son even points a pistol at the father in an open street — doesn't seem out of place in what's otherwise a relatively quiet narrative.

It's usually hard to be convinced by a film that is at once intimate in its purpose, reasonably poetic in dialogue and yet so immensely rhetorical in its plot. Restless could rest among a rare few that actually manages it quite effectively. A sure-watch then. (Mayank Shekhar)

Between Realities: From Turkey to Orwell
By Ezequiel Schmoller

In a panel devoted to documentary, Doc Station Talents enthusiastically explained, developed and defended their projects — from Turkey to Canada, from "city symphonies" to "observational documentaries", from love stories to soccer, from Vietnamese communities to singing competitions, from super highways to military dictatorships, from TV tarot experts to Orwell. Then they listened to comments, criticisms and suggestions from the experts. The moderator was Sirkka Möller, a film curator, documentary consultant and programmer of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival from 2001 to 2006. Featured experts were Heino Deckert (Managing director of MA.JA.DE Film Production), Dick Fontaine (Head of documentary at NFTS in London), Asako Fujioka (programmer of the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival), and Ulla Simonen (a Finnish producer and filmmaker).

Each of the twelve Talents had previously written a one-page presentation of their project which was read aloud in the "Between Realities" panel by Keith Davies, an American film director and actor. The reading was accompanied by a screening of images and photographs that illustrated each project. The documentaries of the Doc Station are in different stages of production and deal with a wide range of subject matter and formal procedures. The session lasted only two hours, and there was little time to go into great detail regarding individual projects. But the presentations and the feedback from the experts were very useful in understanding the intricate process that underlies the making of documentaries and their almost limitless thematic and formal potential.

The main advice given to the Talents was to focus, to avoid the commonplace and to really know their subject matter. The panel dealt with issues such as how to "fictionalize" reality, how to experiment with form, how to distribute documentaries, how to decide which materials and procedures to employ and, last but not least, how to prepare a proper presentation of the project. If all goes to plan, in the next few years we'll have the chance to see some really interesting documentaries. (Ezequiel Schmoller)

The Eye of an Artist
By Natalia Ames

Responsible for the visual aspects of eye-catching movies such as Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and Fight Club, production designer Alex McDowell spoke with moderator Peter Cowie on the panel "The Language of Spaces and Things", an accurate name for a talk that focused on the symbolic roles of architecture and objects in films.

We had the opportunity to interview McDowell, who talked in depth about his vision of production design. He shared with us the basic elements of his work, beginning from the script by analyzing it to find, as he said, "an internal logic, and the look of a film will spontaneously follow the logic." He also told us about his influences, which come mostly from visual arts, including masters of art direction such as the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. McDowell is deeply interested in communicating metaphors and symbolic messages through the architecture and the props, even when they are not mentioned in the script. "With my work I try to surpass the obvious, go beyond the written page and try to express more things. Production design is a beautifully complicated art form."

During the panel, McDowell had already talked about his background: he started as a visual artist, then worked on music videos and commercials and he has been in charge of the production design for ambitious films such as Minority Report and Bee Movie. We were curious about the responsibility of working with talented directors such as Steven Spielberg, Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton, therefore we asked him if he thought there was a special signature in his work or if he just followed the directions of the filmmaker. "Production design is like being a translator to what the director wants, and I am not interested in imposing my style," he answered, "but I notice there is a progress in my work, following a pattern around my interest in building social spaces."

McDowell knows the danger of emphasizing the production design in a movie: "I want to find a delicate balance, disappear into the whole to integrate perfectly with all the other aspects of the film." With his charisma and his knowledge he won our sympathy and left us waiting for his future collaborations with Zack Snyder, Wes Anderson and Stephen Daldry. (Natalia Ames)

A Feel For The Lines Before Tape Rolls…
By Shaibu Husseini

With twelve selected writers, plus eight actors and a mentor, Alby James, the stage was set for "Between the Lines: Script Station Presentation". Though essentially designed to give screenwriters the opportunity to pitch their works, the Script Station, a hands-on sector of the Berlinale Talent Campus, has become an appropriate platform for writers to see actors slip into the personality of the characters they have created, even as the work is still in progress.

James explained at the start of the presentation that the process begins with the submission of ideas by writers. A few of the ideas are subsequently selected and the writers are then invited to work with a mentor during the Berlinale. Similarly, acting talents are invited and are guided to discover and understand the characters the writers have created.

That was exactly what played out on the second floor of Hau 2. The writers took turns pitching their ideas. Then the acting Talents read out selected scenes from the Script Station screenplays, most times coming close to actually playing the roles. David Thompson, former Head of BBC Films, who moderated the pitching session, was impressed by the presentation made by each of the writing talents. He observed that their presentations sounded promising but stressed the need for the talents to keep their presentation short at future pitching sessions. "What is important is the main idea," he said. "Try and identify and stress on the main idea." Thompson also observed, as did James, that there is no connection between a good pitch and a good film. "We have seen good pitches that have turned out flat," Thompson said.

Rodrigo Guerrero, a writing Talent from Argentina whose script was read at the session, found the exercise of having actors pre-test scripts in front of a live audience very rewarding. He noted that such an exercise will enable writers to "feel and test the pulse and the mood of the characters" they have created. Also, Guerrero continued, writers will be able to determine the appropriateness of the dialogue and the scenarios they have created. 

Although the pitches were roundly impressive, it will take the end product to determine whether the scripts will be as appealing and engaging as they sound. (Shaibu Husseini)

A Celluloid Scrapbook
By Suchandrika Chakrabarti

"I'm just a twat from Leytonstone," says Damon Albarn in the documentary Bananaz (Ceri Levy, UK, 2008), which had its world premiere last night in Panorama Dokumente. The quote is typical of the film's filthy, silly humor, which also encompasses giant penis and fart gags. Bananaz is able to take such an intimate look at its subject, the animated band Gorillaz, thanks to the director's friendship with the group. It is this quality that was missing, or felt manufactured, in Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones pop promo, Shine A Light (USA/UK, 2008), which opened this year's Berlinale.

Albarn, ex-frontman of 1990s Britpop band Blur, set up Gorillaz with his friend, comic strip artist Jamie Hewlett, in 2000. They decided to draw a virtual band. Obviously, such a band could run into trouble when performing live, but the Gorillaz gang have a set-up involving playing behind an opaque screen while their cartoon character band members are streamed across it. The screen turns them into characters in their own animated film.

The movie makes use of these techniques too, as well as a grainy, vintage-looking film stock and animated interludes. Still photos are also used in a stop-start, cartoonish way, like flicking through a photo album. Levy's use of such digital trickery adds to the sense of this being a scrapbook of the band's origins, as idiosyncratic and visually arresting as the band's own music videos. A narrative arc suggesting the band's rise is perhaps obscured by the impressive imagery, but this would have made the endearingly raggedy film too slick.

The subjects are clearly at ease with Levy's camera, and increasingly start to speak directly into it, kiss it and, at one memorable point, suggest that the director should stop filming naked (we just have to hope they're joking). The camera doesn't shy away from more difficult moments either, such as a raging Albarn-Hewlett argument, or a confrontation with an American schoolteacher over racially-sensitive lyrics. Albarn doesn't come out of this incident well, and Levy is brave enough to show it. The truth, warts and all, is what documentary should aim to show, and Bananaz isn't afraid to dig the dirt and then expose it. (Suchandrika Chakrabarti)

Shining A Light on Ellen Kuras
by Ben Cho

Ellen Kuras may have worked with some of contemporary cinema's big names (Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch and Michel Gondry) but the venerable cinematographer was remarkably down-to-earth as she lectured a near-packed audience at the Berlinale Talent Campus. Her advice to aspiring directors: "Don't be an asshole" (with similar bluntness she raised applause declaring, "documentaries don't have to look like crap to be real"). In addition to her participation at the Campus, Kuras is in town to promote Shine A Light and Be Kind Rewind, two films she shot, and the international premiere of her directorial debut, The Betrayal. In between her hectic schedule — she's preparing to shoot Sam Mendes' next film and start pre-production on Martin Scorsese's Bob Marley music-doc — Kuras sat down with me to discuss cinematography, social anthropology and her directorial debut, The Betrayal. 

You studied social anthropology at Brown University and obviously for The Betrayal that background had a direct bearing on the film but what influence has your social anthropology studies had on your other work, the fictional features and documentaries?

Ellen Kuras: Yeah, studying social anthropology is really about people and interaction. It has really has influenced my work in terms of being able to make the connections visually between people and their world and their environment, people and each other and being able to see it on the level of gesture, of nuance of looks, of a moment, really how people react in real situations and in dramatic situations which are created. So I'm very much about how people relate to each other and how you can create meaning in the image that depicts that.

Some cinematographers bring their own authorial stamp to their work. Do you try and bring any personal aesthetic or moral concerns to the table when you go into development? Do you want to have a certain consistency running through your work?

Ellen Kuras: I think the consistency that I have in my work is that I look for ways to capture the emotional within the visual and be able to create a look of a film that is able to be tactile and enable people to relate to it.

With The Betrayal I know this was a 20-year odyssey for you and I'm just wondering how did you strategize to nail certain moments in the doc but be mindful of not being too overbearing on your subjects? When you went in did you go in with a set idea of emotional beats you needed for the film or did it all arise organically?

Ellen Kuras: The point of making The Betrayal was about creating these stories which form the structure of the film, these prophecies that basically are kind-of the stepping stones for the film, it's kind of moral compass if you will. Those stories basically helped me to see what material I was going to need in terms of the family. In terms of what happened in the family, there were so many things that happened that I couldn't have possibly predicted. There was the story about the gangs in the film where Thavi [co-director Thavisouk Phrasavath] and I had this long dialogue about how we were going to show how these kids fell into becoming gang members because of being influenced by American society and society at large, if you will. There were a series of events that happened with the gang that we could never have foretold. So it was a kind of combination of events happening and I think we finally realized that the film was done, we had gotten what we needed, because the film had always been in the single voice of Thavi and largely his story and we realized that we really needed to hear a different dimension of the same story which was ultimately his mother. For years his mother had been present during the times we had been filming and she basically experienced the same journey that Thavi did but in a different way — as the wife of a soldier and as the mother of these children in war and afterwards. When we did the interview with Thavi's mother, which was only several years, it was kind of groundbreaking for us. We both turned to each other and said, "we have the film now", because we realized that that interview closed the circle.

Was there a temptation for you to do something more commercial for your directorial debut given your background?

Ellen Kuras: There's always a fear of coming out with a project when one is fairly well known and all of a sudden it becomes a "directorial debut". I really felt with The Betrayal that I wasn't going to let any kind of that fear or feel any pressure or obligation to come out with some sort of splashy narrative when that wasn't really what my heart was about and I had been working on this personal project for many years. For me the most important thing was to get the story out.

You've worked with Scorsese, Jarmusch, Gondry, Schnabel, Spike Lee, you've got upcoming work with Sam Mendes, the list goes on and on. Are you looking to branch out and work with directors from different regions?

Ellen Kuras: Definitely, I just felt like that for a number of years I was staying close to home because I had a dog that I was overseeing, I had for fifteen years. I would go to Los Angeles but I didn't do as many films in Europe as I would want to. I'm really interested in exploring other aspects of cinema with other directors in other parts of the world. I mean look at what's happened with Chris Doyle and Wong Kar-wai in Hong Kong how they just basically, you know, really made a dent in contemporary cinema with the look and feel of their films. It's phenomenal. I think there are other areas in the world where cinema and where auteurs are emerging from. Look at Mexico and what happened with Iñáritu and with Emmanuel Lubezky. It's all not about Hollywood anymore, it's about the world. (Ben Cho)

A Drawing and Two Dark Farmhouses
By Shaibu Husseini

Four years after the release of her dramatic feature Gemini, and a year after the release of Urgente, award-winning Argentine filmmaker Albertina Carri, 35, returns with the Panorama film La Rabia (Argentina), a touching story that is emotionally fraught and intellectually provocative.

Set on a farm in Argentina, La rabia tells the story of Poldo (Victor Hugo Carrizo), a farmer who would not want his wife, Alejandra (Analia Couceyro), anywhere near Pichon (Javier Lorenzo), a fellow farmer, who is a brutal sex maniac. Pichon has abused Poldo and Alejandra's mute daughter, Nati, (Nazarena Duarte), and Poldo thinks that the best way to keep Pichon away from Nati is to stop Alejandra from socializing with him. Poldo does not even want Nati, who expresses herself through drawing, to spend time with the harmless Ladeado (Gonzalo Perez), Pichon's teenage son. Behind Poldo's back, Pichon is in a passionate and raunchy relationship with Alejandra. They steal out to engage in rough sex, often within full sight of Nati and Ladeado. Unable to express herself, Nati puts her thoughts on paper, and her drawings inspire the grimy violence that eventually plays out between Poldo and Nati.

Although this is all wrapped around the twin issue of infidelity and violence, two issues that have been over flogged and have dominated cinema themes, this 83-minute feature film is a bittersweet drama told with a splendid cast and with stark images that resonate even after the last frame. The movie not only shows sex and violence, but also gets behind issues of infidelity to demonstrate the feebleness of human nature.

The camerawork and production design are appealing, but the movie may be slammed because of the brutal onscreen sex. Though the movie came across as a cross between fiction and realism, the ferocious and intense open sex display may narrow the movie's audience. The sex scenes turned almost pornographic and dwarfed the movie's essence. Also, was it necessary to indicate at the start that the animals used in the movie lived and died as they would naturally do, when it was obvious that a few of the animals were gruesomely killed? Children and conservationists may find the movie's numerous slaughter scenes upsetting.

Though it is roundly engaging, theatrical prospects for this intensely emotional and realistic fable may be minimal. (Shaibu Husseini)

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