15th Kolkata International Film Festival

The 15th Kolkata International Film Festival ran from 11-18th November  and it was a privilege to be able to attend some of the screenings.

The festival is non-competitive and aims to bring the best in global cinema to the cultural capital of India. The event is funded by the Government of West Bengal and as a consequence its main function is to bring a range of films to cinephiles in Kolkata. It takes place mainly on the site of various auditoria  built by the government for the cultural benefit of the city and the delegates are mostly students, filmmakers and actors from West Bengal. Invited guests tend to be international filmmakers flown in to discuss their films.

This year the festival had its budget cut by 30% and also faced serious security issues after an increase in activity by Maoists in North East India. I did wonder if it was all going to happen at all, especially when the festival’s website seemed to be out of action. But at the last moment, the  festival sprang into life. I’ll report on some of what happened over the next few days.

 

Leeds International Film Festival

 

The 23^rd Leeds International Film Festival runs from November 4^th till the 22nd. There are more movies than ever and I think this is the strongest programme for several years. What promises to be particularly interesting is the selection 20 Years of German Reunification. There are a number of promising titles in this slot, plus a couple of episodes from the seminal series Heimat. The latter also has a public symposium devoted to both series, I and II.  There are other events with presentations and discussions and Leeds University contributes with a Film Music Conference.

As in previous years there are a wide range of films including new commercial releases like Jane Campion’s portrait of the romance between the poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, Bright Star. And at the other end of the spectrum there are documentaries, experimental films, and animation together with the regular horror slot. One topical film is the Palestinian Pomegranates and Myrrh (Al More wa al Rumman, 2008), dealing with land confiscation. There is also an Israeli film, Seven Minutes in heaven (Sheva dakot be gan eden, 2008), which includes a bus bomb in its plot. I did wonder if this was felt to be some sort of balance?

There are a wide range of formats, and the printed guide helpfully lists these. Unfortunately several films that were once available on celluloid are now presented on digital video. This includes the Eastern European Underground slot, featuring rare classics like the Czech film Daisies (Sedmikrásky, 1966). This is presumably down to the distributors: substituting video copies for film, is an increasing problem across the UK exhibiting sector.

The official guide is rather fulsome in its praise for nearly every film on show. This can make it difficult to decide between competing films. I am inclined to privilege the cinematic forums, with the Hyde Park, a treasured relic from 1914, heading my list. This Cinema is host to one of the real treasures in the programme: a screening of two films by the 1920s French avant-garde director, Germaine Dulac. The Seashell and the Clergyman [La Coquille et le clergyman, 1928} was strongly influenced by surrealism. The British Board of Film censors banned the film in the UK with the memorable comment; “It is so cryptic as to have no apparent meaning. If there is a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable.”  The other film is her earlier The Smiling Madame Beudet (La souriante Madame Beudet, 1923), which fits into the earlier ‘Impressionist’ film cycle and presents the ‘inner life’ of a young woman facing an oppressive marriage. Since these are ‘silent’ films there will also be live music for this performance.

The free guide should by now be available in most local libraries and there is a festival Website, www.leedsfilm.com.

There are also videos on You Tube www.youtube.com/user/LeedsFilmFestival and more on twitter, facebook and flickr. So it should be fairly easy to check screening information. We will be bringing you reports on some of the films from the Festival.

 

 

Chakushin ari (One Missed Call, Japan, 2003)

Don't take the call!

Genres are, by their nature, formulaic however new examples of the genre need to be different otherwise audiences, having seen it all before, will ‘turn off’. One Missed Call is a Ringu rip-off, instead of video tapes and a week to live, the hapless victims receive a mobile phone call – uncannily from themselves – from a day or two in the future were they get to hear their last words. Then someone else in that person’s ‘contacts’ receives a call.

There is very little difference from Ringu, and other examples of J-horror: the emphasis on school girls; the useless cops; the slightly older man who tries to help; disturbing young children; long hair witches-ghosts; brilliant set pieces… And that’s why One Last Call is worth watching, for despite it’s overlong near-two hour length, there are many genuinely chilling moments. J-horror directors relish placing something uncanny in the mise en scene without drawing attention to it. So a routine search of an abandoned flat suddenly becomes creepy as you think, ‘Are those fingers sticking out of that cupboard on the wall?’ You look ‘closer’ to realise the bloody witch is in there.

Directed by the incredibly prolific Takeshi Miike (80 films in under 20 years), One Last Call is a worthy entrant to the J-horror cycle. Wonderfully composed shots – how the hell does he do that when directing four films a year?! – and a genuinely scary finale offers a satisfyingly cold-sweaty experience.

Why We Fight (US, France, Canada, UK, Denmark, 2005)

Eisenhower saw the military-industrial complex coming

This film focuses on why the US invaded Iraq from the claim it was involved in 9/11 to Bush’s statement that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with that ‘watershed’ attack. However it contextualises these years by explaining America’s neo-colonialist project throughout the 20th century and bookends the film with Eisenhower’s swansong speech as President when he predicted that war would become a function of capitalists’ desire to make money. As the documentary shows, this has come to pass.

It’s tempting to think everyone watching this movie would be convinced of the argument that wars are fought for businesses like Haliburton. However, as Dan Gardner demonstrates in his brilliant Risk (Virgin Books, 2009), once humans believe something to be true it is almost impossible to convince them otherwise. So while I find this film utterly convincing, those who are politically on the right are likely to believe that it’s left wing propaganda.

Jarecki mixes archive footage with interviews with politicians, ex soldiers and, refreshingly, Iraqis supposedly being liberated. A range of political voices are heard, including the right wing idiot who argues that a pre-emptive strike is legitimate because it’s common sense to shoot first before someone shoots at you; it may be but Iraq NEVER had weapons of mass destruction and and didn’t have the capability to shoot first.

The question ‘why we fight?’, echoing WWII propaganda films, is asked throughout and is answered, most potently, by Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski ret. who saw at first hand the Bush adminstration’s abuse of intelligence in the Pentagon, when she says we fight because not enough people stand up against war. Given the millions who protested against the Iraq war this might seen harsh, however the war went ahead anyway. It’s the problem with democracy, many people believe it is ‘power of the people’ and – hegemonically – accept their powerlessness; it isn’t, it’s ‘power of the capitalist’. We need a better political system.

Soul Food (US 1997)

Mama Jo and her three daughters in the kitchen

I really enjoyed this film. A touch too schmaltzy perhaps but I’m prepared to forgive writer-director George Tillman Jr when the characters are as well drawn as these and the ensemble playing is so good. This is a genuine family melodrama which would not have shamed Hollywood in its classical melodrama period.

The narrative is female centred with the soul food of the title comprising the key focus for all the extended family’s concerns. In the original family home in Chicago, Mama Jo still presides over her grand Sunday feast. Upstairs her brother never ventures out of his room and his meals are taken up on a tray and left outside his door. The three grown-up daughters all have partners and in one case, children who come over on Sunday, along with the local Minister and, at holiday times, other assorted guests.

The narrative conflict arises from the different attitudes of the daughters. Teri (Vanessa Williams) is the careerist lawyer who has chosen work over family. She doesn’t have children and is in danger of losing her partner, another lawyer who would rather be a musician – but she earns the money that her sisters need to borrow. Maxine (Vivica A. Fox) is the happily married mother of two. Her son, Ahmad, is in the narrator of the story. The third daughter is Bird (Nia Long) and it is she who brings in to the family the potential narrative disruption when she marries Lem (Mekhi Phifer). Lem comes to the family with a criminal record behind him and although he has  turned a new leaf, the past catches up with him. When trouble starts, the different reactions of the family members help to make matters worse. Added to this is a further irritant – the arrival of Cousin Faith, a viper in the bosom as far as the sisters are concerned.

In parallel with this disruption, Mama Jo becomes seriously ill – her diabetes not halted by herbal medicine and, dare we suggest, not helped by her generous portions – and is unable to perform her usual healing effect on family squabbles. As Mama slips away, it is clear that the men cause the problems, but the squabbling sisters make them more difficult to resolve.

The focus on eating together in a family setting is of supreme importance and that’s why it provides the title of the film. We know full well that whatever happens, the family (presumably a metaphor for community) will all still have a chance to solve their problems if they can get back to the table and share some traditional dishes. Ham hocks, pigs feet, chitterlings, biscuits, fried chicken, greens, fishcakes, string beans, salads, black-eye peas and pasta are clearly on the menu. As Mama Jo says, “soul food cooking is cooking from the heart”.

There are many references through food and eating to other African-American movies, not least Daughters of the Dust and To Sleep With Anger. The film was successful and later became a successful TV series running for four seasons, but not coming to the UK as far as I know.

There is a perceptive review of the film here and also an interesting lesbian perspective on the TV Series which revels in the drama between three sisters.

Eve’s Bayou (US 1997)

Southern (and Sirkian?) Melodrama

Watching Eve’s Bayou is to experience something that is strangely familiar whilst it is set in such an exotic landscape. A tale set in the bayou country of Louisiana, it is soaked in the idea of history and memory. The setting for Lemmons film evokes an emotional response in us – a place we feel we know even if we have not visited it. And as, for example, the mountains and coastline for Ireland carries with it universal stories and a particular connection with myths and legends that constantly interject into the present, so this landscape, as it is so unchanging, carries its past into its present. What Kasi Lemmons has achieved is to evoke the mythological and the ethereal so vividly within the setting of the film, but used it as a context for a family melodrama that is both modern and ancient because it is a story that can and is told time and again. And, therefore, we respond to the characters and are engaged in their story from a very human point of view. In addition, whilst we might not share that exact-same history of those characters, we can empathise with that feeling of being part of a family and a place and a set of cultural superstitions that form our home.

The film is narrated by the older Eve as she looks back at a particular devastating event in her childhood. Eve is a classic character – a young girl aged 10 – sitting on threshold between childhood and adulthood. As such, she instinctively responds to and takes part in those traditions of her world whilst being on the cusp of moving against them. She is her Aunt Mozelle’s tender and faithful acolyte as she receives suffering people to give them the gift of seeing where their loved ones have got to. No-one in the story doubts Mozelle’s second sight and vision, but the children rebel against their beleaguered mother’s reaction to these warnings. What performs so dramatically in this film is the juxtaposition of the ancient culture and (relatively) modern family existing there – with the incendiary tensions of an unhappy marriage and teenage children who are beginning to see what is really happening. The events of the film are pure melodrama in both senses – the extremes of violent action and the claustrophobic (and so easily dysfunctional) life of the family. We could equate it (narratively) to some of Douglas Sirk’s dramas of the 1950s, with the internal struggles of the family and the absolutely, immovably central figure of the woman within that family. Lynn Whitfield’s matriarch (Roz) is a Sirkian concoction of breathtaking beauty, rustling silk (the credits note that her costumes were ‘built’ by Patty Spinale) and sculptured eyebrows. Samuel L. Jackson perfectly encapsulates the persuasive charm of the patriarch, Louis, who is, ultimately, more callow and confused than impressive. Unlike Sirk, it is not Roz’s story throughout the film and it is only by the end that we truly appreciate her strength and her power. When Roz (mother) embraces her youngest (male) child, Poe, so intensely at the beginning of the film, she seems a little mean to her second daughter, Eve. The moment is quickly passed into a light-hearted chase – but later we can reflect that that embrace was for the only child that was hers entirely – Louis has stolen the two elder daughters entirely for himself. By the end, she has become a powerful centre who has truly learned how to ‘look to her children’ as Diahann Carroll’s soothsayer has warned her to do.

The frustrations of the marriage are the central focus of this film, with a representation of an African-American family who are affluent and well-regarded in their community – occupying the space that is generally reserved for WASPish families in American cinema. The ‘issue’ for these characters is (unusually) not race and its struggles – but their internal desires. Just as in Todd Haynes’s Far from Heaven (the Sirkian-influenced exploration of repression in marriage) we are focussed on the women’s response. In Eve’s Bayou, however, it’s not the mother but the child who is our centre of consciousness as we watch. Eve also actively drives the narrative. Eve hates with the passion of a ten-year-old towards someone who has harmed the person she most loves and believes in and, as a result, she is the instigator of particular events in the action. The story constantly juxtaposes the feeling of events that are fated (Mozelle’s foreseeing of a child’s accident) and events that are effected by the deliberate (if unknowing) action of people. Eve is responsible for these events if not to blame for them – and the narrative manages to walk this incredibly tight balance without losing sympathy or empathy for any of the characters involved.

It’s interesting that Louis is the doctor – when the film is dense with references to others forms of superstitious healing. These are so often related to the female rather than the male sensibility – the man being related to science (knowing). The film clearly sides with the power of superstition and female ‘knowing’ – the person that can look into your eyes or hold your hands – and just know what you are thinking, is the powerful force within this film.

Which brings me back to Mozelle. Whilst Roz is the desperate housewife, Mozelle is the repository of power in the family. Her voodoo heals where Louis’ medicine is ineffective. Lemmons has written some tour-de-force female protagonists and has decided to shoot them in the style of a costume drama to ensure that, visually on screen, they have maximum impact. Their vibrant costumes are not modern but belong to a different world which enhances our impression that this film is from a different place. Both women are completely desirable and like ‘candy’ on the screen – vivid, strong and ultra-feminine. However, this is not a costume drama staged rigidly in one era of American life – the 50s or 60s, that we can recognise and immediately to give us a context for behaviour and morals. Instead, Lemmons appears to be seeking after a much more ambiguous feeling – a time outside of any era and linking to the ancient landscape it sits in. It has been termed Southern Gothic and to draw on a comment for a very different film (Sling Blade): “As in most Southern gothic fiction, the past weights heavily on the present and it gives Sling Blade an ominous feel.” (Greg Meritt: Celluloid Mavericks). The same is true of Eve’s Bayou which is steeped in a feeling of a world living in both past and present, and evoking the mythical resonance of something like Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (a graduate of the same film school as Charles Burnett) is resonant here – about the families of the Gullah community – reiterating ancient customs through their poetic language. In Daughters they are reiterating them just at the point they know they are about to lose them – as the community moves from the islands onto the mainstream. In Eve’s Bayou there is no sense of a threat of change impinging on the lives of those – the final shot shows the sisters watching a sunset with every possibility of life remaining the same, the ebb of loss and tragedy an accepted part of that experience.

Winning an Independent Spirit Award for this film in 1998, Kasi Lemmons has continued to act and direct. She is currently in pre-production with a gospel musical version of the nativity story (co-written) called Black Nativity. Roy tells me the (very good) print of Eve’s Bayou arrived recently at Bradford covered in dust – what a shame it’s seemingly become a hidden visual and thematic jewel.

Katalin Varga (Romania/UK/Hungary 2009)

Katalin and Orbán in the Carpathians

I wish that I’d seen this film when I was more alert and less pre-occupied. I think that I saw something astonishing, but I’m sure I missed some nuances.

The story is very simple, but begins with a flashforward – or possibly it begins ‘now’ and then proceeds as a flashback for half the film’s short (82 mins) running time. Katalin Varga is the mother of a ten year-old boy in Transylvania – the district in the Carpathians that was once part of the Hungarian empire but since 1918 has been part of Romania. Most of the actors in the film are ethnic Hungarians living in Romania. With an English writer-director and Sovaks as well as Romanians and Hungarians, eventually produced by Libra Films from Romania and distributed by a French company Memento, this is a co-operative enterprise – even if some malicious parties have criticised director Peter Strickland for stirring up enmities between Romanians and Hungarians.

When the ’secret’ behind Katalin’s son’s birth eventually emerges via gossip, her husband throws her out of the house and she takes her son Orbán, telling him that they are going to visit his grandmother. They travel by horse and cart into the mountains and Katalin becomes an ‘avenging angel’ as she seeks out those responsible for her current predicament.

Beautifully shot on 16mm in stunning landscapes, the film is a visual treat. I was reminded at times of the beauty of the Turkish film Times and Winds but the real link is to the fabulous films of Miklós Jancsó, who is himself from Transylvania. I’ve only seen a couple of his famous 1960s films – both in black and white – but the images of flower meadows, valleys, plains and rivers has stayed with me. The visual splendour of the landscapes in Katalin Varga is complemented by an extraordinary soundtrack which mixes Hungarian and Romanian folksongs with avant-garde electronic music by Steven Stapleton and his group Nurse with Wound and Geoff Cox. The effect is quite startling and at times like a horror or science fiction film. I haven’t seen most of Tarkovsky’s later films and I wonder if there is any similarity?

Hilda Péter as Katalin

The performances are very good, especially Hilda Péter as Katalin. A theatre actor with no previous film experience, she has a striking face – strong and attractive but not conventionally beautiful. I think she is going to be a star. Tibor Pálffy as the man Katalin is seeking also has a remarkable presence.

I guess this can only be described as an art film, but I hope that this doesn’t put people off. Get into the right mood and it will entrance you, though I wouldn’t recommend it as a Friday night date movie. It’s a traditional form – a revenge tale that ultimately leads to the angel consumed by her quest and becoming bad. It takes place in a world that seems to have changed little since medieval times. The occasional interruption by a mobile ‘phone ringtone and a couple of modern teenagers who warn Katalin that she is ‘taking the road to hell’ stand out as modern intrusions into an ancient tale. I recommend the film highly.

Nominated for the Golden Bear, Berlin 2009, Silver Bear Winner for Sound Design.

Cineuropa Film Focus (including interview with the director, Peter Strickland)

Press Pack from Memento (in English).

Similar Press Pack from Artificial Eye.

The Artificial Eye trailer:

Creation (UK 2009)

Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany

I enjoyed Creation, the new film released to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On The Origin of Species, much more than I expected. I was attracted to it by Philip French’s intelligent and knowledgable review in the Observer. But as soon as I began to read other comments on IMDB and other sites, I quickly became distressed by the range of reactions to it.

French suggests that the film is mistitled – promising more, and less, than is actually delivered. On reflection he is probably right. This isn’t a long polemic or a science lecture on a sensational scale. It isn’t ‘epic’ at all (which some viewers seem to expect). French argues that it isn’t like the old Warner Bros. biopics. I bow to his greater recall but it did make me think of some traditional biopics in that it is more of a family melodrama than a scientific narrative. What seems to have angered several viewers is the complex time shifting which leaps backwards and forwards, primarily in relation to the strong relationship between Darwin and his daughter Annie. She died aged 10 and her death troubled Darwin greatly. She reappears in his thoughts and it isn’t clear when she is alive and when she is just a memory.

Yes, I did get confused – but that didn’t bother me. Why should it? The film is scripted by Randall Keynes – a descendant of both Darwin and John Maynard Keynes – and uses his account of Annie’s Box (the memories and artefacts that Darwin associated with her). There are sequences seemingly filmed like a BBC wildlife series to illustrate some of Darwin’s ideas, but mainly the focus is on Darwin’s struggle with illness, exhaustion and a crisis of conscience, worries about Annie and guilt that his wife would suffer, both from his neglect and the possible attack on her Christian values.

The expected criticism of the film is also that it looks like a BBC classic serial. Well, it never looked particularly ‘televisual’ to me. Instead I enjoyed a CinemaScope movie appropriate for a big screen. It seems incredible that half the population of the US, if the figures are to be believed, would find this film offensive because they believe in literal readings of the Bible. I don’t really see how anyone could find offence in the film (or believe that God created the world in seven days) but there you go. Unfortunately, the UK audience has either lost its marbles and thinks it would be offended as well or else it is bored with Darwin celebrations already. Either way, a decent film is failing to attract large audiences and taking less than £1000 per screen on the first week of release. My guess is that its real audience is waiting for a TV screening – a shame I think.