Odessa International Film Festival 2011 (Ukraine)

On the Potemkin Stairs
The Odessa International Film Festival
By Klaus Eder

The Movie, 1925.

The Stairs, 2011.

There's a story about the making of Battleship Potemkin (1925) that finds Sergei Eisenstein and his cinematographer Eduard Tisse standing at the stairs which lead from Odessa's historical center down to the harbor. They talked. They ate cherries and spat out the stones and watched them roll down the stairs. This gave them, says the legend, the idea for the scene in which Cossacks slaughter helpless, innocent citizens fleeing down the stairs. It's one of the most famous scenes in film history – and the "Potemkin Stairs" are one of cinema's most famous locations.

What a pleasure to see a movie on those stairs! At its inaugural edition in 2010, the Odessa International Film Festival screened Battleship Potemkin there. This year, it was the restored version of Metropolis (1927/2008, 147 minutes), accompanied by the Symphony Orchestra of Odessa National Academic Opera and Ballet Theater, conducted by Igor Savruk. (They played the original music by Gottfried Huppertz, reconstructed by Frank Strobel – the same score played at the film's Berlinale screening). By the organizers' estimation, over 10,000 spectators came to enjoy the show, sitting on the stairs – which, late at night, still reflected the warmth of the day.

You may know Metropolis; you may have seen it several times. Nonetheless, the screening on the Potemkin Stairs added another, magical dimension to the experience. Somehow, one could both recall and witness the birth of cinema, both by Eisenstein and Fritz Lang. Not to mention the pleasure at seeing how both directors drove the language of cinema forward in giant strides, with a speed and an imaginativeness which should turn most of today's filmmakers green with envy.

The next day, the festival offered another historical cinematic event: A screening of films by Georges Méliès, selected by his great-granddaughter Marie-Hélène Lehérissey, accompanied on the piano by Lawrence Lehérissey. This was another overcrowded, open-air event — held at another staircase, the Langeron Stairs (named after a French general who joined the Russian Army during the Napoleonic Wars).

These two events, dedicated to the history of cinema, generated a great deal of local chatter. They drew a lot of attention from the local media and created a heightened interest in the festival among the locals. Headed by Viktoriya Tigipko (president) and Alik Shpilyuk (program), the festival has already, in its second edition, been accepted by the Odessa public – not only regarding the "festival of festivals" films (Tykwer, Moretti, Kaurismäki, Hanks, Trier, Wenders), but also for its lesser known films and series (New Russian Films, Made in Odessa, French Panorama). The "Ukrainian Laboratory" presented five reasonably recent movies, among them films by Kira Muratova, Sergei Loznitsa and Alexander Mindadze, probably the most known names of contemporary Ukrainian cinema.

Another welcome initiative, and one embraced by young people drawn to cinema, was the "Summer Film School", with lectures given by American actor John Malkovich, Russian director Alexandr Mitta (Shine, Shine, My Star / Gori, gori, moya zvezda, 1969), Paris-based Georgian filmmaker Otar Iosseliani (Chantrapas, 2010), Polish actor Jerzy Stuhr, Portuguese actress Maria de Medeiros and Russian filmmaker Valeri Todorovski, among others.

The festival team is well-suited to one another; they work together in a distribution company which they run all year long in Kiev, the country's capital. They provided a pleasant atmosphere and hospitality (including a yacht trip on the Black Sea). This festival would deserve our full sympathy and favour … if not for the international competition. It failed to knock us sideways, even if we consider that it's always difficult for a young festival to get the films it wants to get.

"There are films of every possible genre, style and trend", says the catalogue, "yet they do have an important common feature: the conceptual sense of humor." Aside from these lines — which hardly formulate a convincing conception of an international competition — the selected films were rather a mixed bag, both in quality and standing. Films known from other festivals were included ("Almanya — Welcome to Germany", from Berlin, won the public prize in Odessa), as well as films which enjoyed considerable success in their own countries but neither need nor deserve an international exhibition. (The Italian Qualunquemente, Whatsoeverly, a dull comedy about a corrupt local politician, is an excellent example.) This competition needs to be carefully improved — possibly with films which attract also foreigners (for example, Black Sea cinema).

Imitation of Cinema

Jorge Jellinek — A Useless Life?

One of the most interesting films in competition was the Uruguayan A Useful Life (La vida útil), the second long fiction film by Federico Veiroj (born 1976). The film had premiered in San Sebastian (2010). At BAFICI, the Buenos Aires Festival of Independent Cinema (2011), Jorge Jellinek had won the prize as best actor. It was a surprising decision, as Jellinek isn't an actor — he's one of the country's leading film critics. In A Useful Life, Jellnek plays (in a performance that's astonishingly good for a film critic) an employee of the Uruguayan Cinemateca.

The real Cinemateca, in Montevideo, is run by Manuel Martinez Carril, one of the continent's most admirable film archivists. The film shows the Cinemateca as a place run by film lovers for film lovers, and tells how this place of melancholic memories of better times loses all public and private support and has to close down. And it tells how a man (Jellinek) who by now could manage his life loses his work and finds himself unexpectedly unemployed and without perspective. This second half of the film is remarkably unsentimental. It seems that the man sees his own life and misadventures as part of a film, a second-hand life (see the scene where he clumsy-nimbly dances on a staircase). But cinema is not imitation of life; life is imitation of cinema.

Maria de Medeiros, "Journey to Portugal"

In a special screening, Maria de Medeiros (who served on the international jury) presented the film Journey to Portugal (Viagem a Portugal) in which she plays the lead. It's the first fiction film by Sérgio Tréfaut, the Portuguese documentary filmmaker of Brazilian origin. He knows his subject: Immigrants who have all the documents and legal qualifications to enter the country but are turned away, often after humiliating procedures. The film focuses on one of those stories, the tale of a young Ukrainian doctor who wants to pay visit to her husband, a Senegalese doctor who survives in Lisbon as a construction worker. The film begins with the woman's arrival at an airport near Lisbon (Faro); and ends one night and day later with her deportation.

Sérgio Tréfaut avoids all tv-"realism" and conventional psychological narration. His black-and-white images are rich in contrast and highly stylized. Maria de Medeiros' iconic face contrasts strongly with the clear and often empty backgrounds, like the cold interior of the airport immigration office. The film develops its story in snapshots, grabbing certain moments and skipping others. This minimalist way of narration allows us to understand everything that's going on without having it spelled out — in the immigration office as well, as in the mind and heart of the woman. Take the humiliating, even violating scenes of a body search: though nothing is shown directly, it's nevertheless completely clear what is going on. Tréfaut shows the degrading situation without showing it, for him it's more important that we, the spectators, understand it. Indeed, his focus on faces (both of Maria de Medeiros and Isabel Ruth, as the inspector) allows us to get to know a situation which leads some people to act inhuman and others to suffer from that inhumanity.

Maria de Medeiros plays a Ukrainian citizen. In her role, she speaks fluent Ukrainian. For this, she got a lot of applause in Odessa, Ukraine.

Klaus Eder
© FIPRESCI 2011

Odessa International Film Festival, July 15-23, 2011, www.oiff.com.ua/en/index.htm

Klaus Eder works as freelance film critic in Munich, Germany.

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