Viennale '12 +

Thoughts on the Viennale '12 and bits and bobs since its end...

[viennale2012-blog]

Bubbly Bubble

It's time for a passage out of Argentinian writer César Aira's piece Festival about the ins and outs of festival life.

Let's face it: Festivals are the narcissists among cultural events.It doesn't matter what festival it is, be it theatre, film, dance or photography. In the run-up to the festival and during it, everything revolves just around le festival, eclipsing reality and real life itself - completely. And after 4 or 2 weeks it spits one out again, into the dark alleys behind the cinema or the cellar-cum-performance venue and, jaded and bleary-eyed, one comes to the realisation that there is life beyond discarded ticket stubs, over-long Q&As, and The Importance of Being Earnest Festive.

Aira does a wonderful job combining all festivals' need for attention, recognition and above all, relevance, in his take on the beast that is le festival:

"Der Minister hatte ihn beruhigt: Niemand in der Regierung interessierte sich im Geringsten für die Meinungen der Journalisten bezüglich des Festivals, der gezeigten Filme oder der eingeladenen Gäste. Das Vertrauen in die Programmgestalter war ungebrochen. [...]

Der Direktor war nun der festen Überzeugung, dass es wirklich nichts zu befürchten hatte...stattdessen begann ihn nun aber eine viel größere Sorge zu plagen. Aus den Worten des Ministers war deutlich herauszuhören, dass es für ihn und seine Kollegen in der Regierung, letztenendlich für alle Leute, die sich mit ernstzunehmenden Problemen des Staates und des Gemeinwesens beschäftigten, völlig bedeutungslos war, was sich im Rahmen des Festivals abspielte. Man betrachtete die Verantwortlichen als Kinder, die sich auf harmlose Weise mit ihren Spielsachen vergnügten. Ständiger Zank gehörte dazu, ein Geschrei um Nichtigkeiten, über die Erwachsene nur lächeln konnten...

- Out of Festival by César Aira, Translation by Elisabeth Boroviczény

Quick English fix:

The minister reassured him: Nobody in the government was in any sort of way interested in what the journalists had to say about the festival, the films that were shown, or the invited guests. Their trust in the people who put together the festival programme remained unshattered.

The director realised that he had nothing to fear...instead he was now taunted by a much bigger concern. From the minister's words it was evident that neither he or any of his colleagues in the government, or for that matter, any people who deal with serious issues concerning the state and the public, cared in the least bit about what was going on at the festival. The people in charge of the festival were regarded as nothing but children who entertain themselves with their toys. Constant quarrels were a part of it, the tuck-and-war about unimportant matters, about which the adults were only able to laugh...

[viennale2012-blog]

Sleeping Beauty...

Sleeping Beauty or what it would have looked like had Derek Jarman done a film with Walt Disney is happening! At MoMA.

Marina Abramović sat in the MoMA.

Tilda Swinton sleeps at MoMA.

And since we are not in NYC we will just have to watch a film in which Tilda sleeps a lot. So, obligatory late-night viewing for tonight: Orlando, in which Swinton falls asleep, lives for longer than 400 years and changes from a man into a woman. Based on Virginia Woolf's novel of the same name.

[viennale2012-blog]

Bling and the Glitter of le Cinema

Electric Shadows and JUE Festival's Asian Cinema Week is taking place in Shanghai and Beijing right now!

The premiere of Mongolian Bling, a spanking documentary by Benj Binks on Ulaanbaatar's hip-hop scene*, already took place last week but over the weekend there's still time to catch Chai Chun-Ya's Four Ways to Die in My Hometown, Pema Tseden's Old Dog, and much more - from Youku productions to Malaysian shorts. 

* For another take on the world-wide hip-hop scene, far removed from the West/East Coast, check out In the Year of Hip-Hop, a documentary about the evolution of hip-hop in Slovenia..

[agoosedad]

[deactivated-blog]

They shoot beautiful films…

“Many of my films been made with Kar-wai who doesn´t have a script. We find the film rather than making the film. I never studied film and I don´t really see many films actually (laughs). I don’t have a formal education, it happens very often you make so cool mistakes, what people call innovations. So I think that’s an important sort of attitude to have. To approach to work in that way is very liberating but it takes a lot or energy also. You have to be constantly re-working what the real meaning of what you’re doing is.”

- Christopher Doyle

[viennale2012-blog]

There he is again: Du Ke Feng AKA Christopher Doyle

[viennale2012-blog]

Diagonale 2013

- Diagonal: a diagonal line or plane.

  - Diagonale: Film festival focusing on Austrian film productions; takes place annually in Austria's second-biggest city, Graz.

  - Diagonale 2013: This year's edition, which starts tomorrow, 12th March, with the end credits rolling on 17th.

[viennale2012-blog]

Christopher Doyle & 杜可风 at the Shanghai Literary Festival

Last night Christopher Doyle gave a talk at the Shanghai Literary Festival. A renowned cinematographer who has worked with the likes of Wong Kar-wai and Zhang Yimou, Doyle has been the recipient of "the AFI Award for cinematography, the Cannes Technical Grand Prize, the Golden Horse and the Hong Kong Film Award, the latter two multiple times".

In what was the 'southern part of China's' premiere of Doyle's film/self-interview Away With Words – it had been shown a week before in Beijing – Doyle mused on the spontaneity and parameters that inform cinematography, joked about himself as a Chinese with a skin disease, furthermore claiming, „That's how I know I'm a Chinese cinematographer. 'Yes' means 'maybe'“, and explained what separates the old from the young, „When you are old, you do what you can, not what you want.“

Peppering his talk with Leonard Cohen lyrics*, Doyle offered a brief glimpse into his oeuvre and into how he works as a cinematographer, doing away with words,finding a way with words, and at the same time trying to figure out whether the essence of the work is its medium or content.

The Keith Richards – not Mick Jagger** – of the cinema world offered an interesting performance-cum-presentation, teetering between debauchery and humility, and proclaimed his love for his work and the people who work and worked with him, saying “others take me further than I would have gone alone”.

All in all, an enjoyable evening. Now where's that can of pinepapples...

*Other cultural references during the evening:

Mayakovsky – A Cloud in Pants

Frank O'Hara – Why I am Not a Painter

Je veux qu'il revienne by Françoise Hardy

**Although Doyle claims to have the hips for it.

[lolplacesite]

[viennale2012-blog]

It's really time that I go watch that film. Reminds me of Young Me/Now Me.

[racebending]

“It is a pity the young Pi was not nominated There’s not much you can do. He’s an Indian actor and nobody knows him so he was easily overlooked. With peer voting, people will vote for their friends or based on their impressions. He’s a newcomer and we often said he had never acted before—that’s a disadvantage to getting nominated. But I do think his performance was the purest performance.”

Taiwanese director Ang Lee noting Hollywood’s tendency to overlook Asian actors to a Chinese radio station.   Ang Lee was disappointed that Suraj Sharma was not nominated for Best Actor for his performance in The Life of Pi.  Lee added that he felt Irfan Khan should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and that Zhang Ziyi was not nominated either for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, nor were any actors nominated for Slumdog Millionaire.

What’s a guy gotta do to get an Oscar?  Here’s some trivia about Sharma’s work on the film, from FirstPost.com.

Sharma beat out 4,000 other applicants (Ang Lee decided from the start the role would not be whitewashed.)

Sharma had never acted prior to this so Ang Lee assigned him a pile of homework and made him act scenes from Teneesse Williams and other playwrights just for practice.

Sharma didn’t know how to swim when he was cast for the role.  When he first started out he could only hold his breath for 14 seconds.  In the end he was able to go for one minute and a half.

Sharma spent most of the movie filming in a pool emoting in front of a blue screen to an invisible tiger.

Sharma lost 20% of his body weight for the role, eating a diet that mostly consisted of tuna fish, just like his character, so his ribs would show.

Sharma cut himself up frequently while working on the boat and used those injuries in his acting.  He would allow himself to get flipped along with the boat.

The production was banned from speaking the Sharma.  Ang Lee and Sharma agreed that he would not to talk to other people for almost two months so he would understand what isolation was like.

1.   This kid is badass.

2.  When white actors like Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio do stuff like lose 20% of their body weight or cut themselves and keep acting everyone cheers uproariously.

3. It is weirdly dismissive when films about characters of color get nominated but their actors do not.  Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Slumdog Millionaire, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Last Emperor, etc.

4.   As FirstPost points out, a lot of the Oscar snubbed actors that people are talking about like Leonardo DiCaprio have plenty of other opportunities to star in other big movies.   When is the next big project for an actor of South Asian descent coming up?

(via racebending)

[viennale2012-blog]

Mood Indigo

I will not watch the trailer. Patience.

Romain Duris, Michel Gondry... Patience.

Viennale 2013! Quick!

Oh Clementine, Clementine...

Now let's all watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Again.

[chapinski-blog]

[filmfestivallife]

Finally, Michel Gondry might have a film in the same glorious vein as this.

Featuring Audrey Tautou and Romain Duris, Mood Indigo is set to be released in festivals in September 2013.  Trailer here.

[viennale2012-blog]

Things We Have Learnt

Only two out of all the films I saw were directed by women: Fremd by Miriam Faßbender and Augustine by Alice Winocour.

Three were directed by a team of two or more directors – one of them being female: Leviathan (Véréna Paravel), Francine (Melanie Shatzky), Only the Young (Elizabeth Mims), and The Central Park Five (Sarah Burns).

Female characters do not abound and rarely get to talk to each other. But when the protagonist is female, the film almost always tends to bear her name. Case in point:

Anna

Augustine

Educating Rita

Francine

Margaret

Marina Abramović – The Artist is Present

Starlet (→ Jane)

Exceptions being Beasts of the Southern Wild, Donoma and O som ao redor who all boast a bigger cast.

Evidently, this is not a reflection of the full festival programme - I did limit myself to the films in competition for our award and a couple of others - but even so. The name thing is a weird coincidence.

Ten out of the 22 films and documentaries eligible for the audience jury award were US productions or co-productions.

Surprised by the fact that almost half of the films were US-made...

There were probably a couple of gems that I didn't get to see.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

[viennale2012-blog]

Leviathan

The Viennale 2012 audience jury award winner - Leviathan! In Austrian cinemas* from today on, 1st March 2013**.

What the derStandard Viennale Publikumsjury had to say:

"Der Film, den wir auszeichnen möchten, ist für uns vom ersten Augenblick an aufgrund seiner hohen audiovisuellen Individualität hervorgestochen. Er zeigt sein Thema in einer unausweichlichen Direktheit, die uns am Ende fast glauben lässt, selbst ein Teil davon gewesen zu sein. Der Film vermittelt sein Sujet, den Arbeitsalltag auf einem Hochseefischerboot, mit vollkommener Ruhe und macht die zerstörerische und doch vitale Gewalt des Meeres spürbar.

Wir freuen uns, den diesjährigen Der Standard Viennale Publikumspreis an Véréna Paravel und Lucien Castaing-Taylor für ihren, die Grenzen der klassischen Dokumentation sprengenden Film LEVIATHAN, vergeben zu können."

Voilà, c'est ça!

*Well, at least at the Gartenbaukino in Vienna. A start is a start.

**It also opens today at the IFC Center in NYC!

[viennale2012-blog]

Kubelka and Short Films

Other offerings we got to see at the Viennale 2012:

  Short films:

Century by Kevin Jerome Everson - OK

Erdbeerland by Florian Pochlatko - Nay

Snow Tapes by M. Zupraner - Yay

  Trailers:

20 Little Films - A compilation of Viennale trailers from the past two decades, directed by David Lynch and many others...

  Special screening

Monument Film - An evening with Peter Kubelka who really does not like digital. Not at all.

[viennale2012-blog]

Marina Abramović - The Artist is Present

Matthew Akers' documentary about Marina Abramović and her retrospective and performance at the MoMA in 2010 is a conventionally-made, solid film about the artist and her work. The camera follows Abramović over the weeks leading up to the opening at the MoMA while it also provides insight into the artist's past and earlier performances and projects. Most importantly, it shows Abramović during her two-month stint at the MoMA and the audiences or participants reaction to her performance.

Both Akers and Abramović were present at the screening, which was followed by a Q&A session. Akers admitted to being worried about the outcome of the documentary film, since he was afraid it might show Abramović in a bad or critical light. This came off as slightly insincere and above all you just felt that he was really chuffed that he had had a chance to do a film about Abramović.

It is curious to note that at a certain point during the documentary Abramović points out how much administrative work goes into an artist's daily life – all the e-mails, the meetings, the decisions. Her quote brings to the forefront the simple truth that not all good art makes it to the top – a lot of work that is not directly related to the crafts'wo'manship of the artist and his or her 'products' goes into the making of an artist. In this respect, Marina Abramović - The Artist is Present serves as a sort of marketing or advertising tool for Abramović and her work, another piece in the overall puzzle that goes into the 'making' of an artist.

The film, never in any way truly critical, has a certain manipulative feel to it – carefully slowing down for the emotionally charged moments – such as when Marina sits opposite her old partner Uwe Laysiepen – and speeding up the process when the audience needs to 'feel' how hectic the preparations for the performance and retrospective are. Then again, maybe that's good editing, but one never shakes off the feeling that the documentary has a sort of Reality TV, behind-the-scenes quality to it.

As for Abramović herself, she is an intriguing character with an array of interesting projects behind her – the Great Wall of China project in collaboration with Uwe Laysiepen being the one that stood out for me. Heart-breaking in its simplicity it also asks the question where the private life of an artist begins and where it ends. Does everything become art. A project?

Furthermore, one cannot watch the documentary and not also reflect on the performance at MoMa – The Artist is Present. Again, what strikes you is the simplicity of the performance – two chairs (with at first a table in the middle) – the artist, and a visitor. No talk.

In her role as the artist who tries to connect with the visitor and illicit an emotional reaction from him or her, Abramović reminded me of the character of Arthur Lockwood, a fake medium, in A.L. Kennedy's novel The Blue Book*.

Abramović connects with each person – yet there is nothing easier than connecting with someone you don't know (most of them she didn't), since one always has limitless love for strangers. And when a stranger opens up to you with his or her eyes, you can interpret it as anything – their emotion is real and raw, the reaction to it is not necessarily fake, but it is a broader feeling of compassion or complicity that can and could apply to anyone – just as Arthur Lockwood's descriptions always apply to somebody in the room at the very end. One size fits all.

In one scene Abramović is seen writing down comments about the people who sat with her. I would have liked to know whether, after the performance, she tried to seek out any of these people – if anyone stuck out, left an indelible print in her retina. Somebody who raised her curiosity beyond the mere limits of the performance*. But perhaps it is a question I can partly answer myself: Who says real-life relationships aren't a performance as well? There is always the unexpected beginning, the establishing of a connection – of trust – but afterward, people can walk out of your life at any given moment – without giving any prior notice - your ten minutes passed.

And all you are left with is a brief moment spent in their presence.

* The Blue Book by A.L. Kennedy. You should read it. You should.

**Curiously enough, word is being spread that Abramović is thinking about making a film about the life of James Franco, one of the 'sitters' one could see in the documentary.

Another funny thing about the performance - it also has a certain Warhol-esque nature to it, giving the sitter the opportunity for his or her 15 minutes of fame, to be seen by the artist. Maybe on of the reasons for its popularity?

[viennale2012-blog]

Into the Abyss

Into the Abyss, Werner Herzog's study of the death penalty in the USA is a moving documentary that benefits from the straight-forward interviews the director conducts with the perpetrators, victims, family members, and other people involved in the case of a murder that ocurred in October 2001.

Yet Herzog is also the weakest link in the documentary, sometimes asking the same question over and over again, when the interviewees have already given an earnest and loaded answer. Furthermore, by focusing on only one case, it's fair to ask if the director can give a full assessment on the topic that is the death penalty – his other interviews from other cases have been compiled in a miniseries called On Death Row.

Herzog is not going after facts or figures, nor is he interested in resolving or looking over the case at hand, hence, the film with its loose structure can sometimes feel a bit rambling.

Nevertheless, a compelling documentary. And by the end of the film one hope's one knows what to do with that dash that one has been handed.

[viennale2012-blog]

Fremd

Europe! Europe!

German director Miriam Faßbender travelled to Algeria and other parts of Africa in her quest to document the lives and fates of the (mostly) African men who try to make their way to the promised land that is Europe.

The documentary portrays with unflinching earnestness what it takes for these men to even come close to the fortress Europe. The viewer follows the men from Mali or Cameroon, watches them seamlessly cross borders, until, bit by bit, their journey takes a turn for the worse. Once in Algeria, it is almost impossible for them to cross into Morocco from where they could make their way to Spain, the tip of the tongue of a European continent that promises riches and happiness.

Through interviews we learn about each of the men's story. How often they have already tried to cross the border. How often they've been brought back from Morocco to Algeria. The grotesqueness of their state, since they can neither return home nor advance any further, is palpable in every breath they take.

The full brutality and desperation of their situation can be seen in Jerry's realisation: After living for almost four years in a no man's land in the Algerian wilderness, he realises that now even his imaginary paradise has started to crumble. It is 2008, and the news of the financial crisis that is sweeping over Europe and especially Spain has also reached him.

Fremd puts a human face – or many human faces – on the hot political topic that is illegal immigration.

The film recieved a special mention from the audience jury: "Außerdem möchten wir den Film FREMD von Miriam Faßbender lobend hervorheben, der die Migration von Afrika nach Europa thematisiert."