50TH THESSALONIKI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
WHY CINEMA NOW?
November 13-22, 2009
PRESS RELEASE
INDEPENDENCE DAYS AT THE 50th THESSALONIKI FILM FESTIVAL
The Independence Days section, curated by film critic Lefteris Adamidis, remains committed to showcasing independent and unique works and to discovering emerging filmmakers. As previously announced, ID organizes a tribute to New Philippine cinema, as well as a program dedicated to Japanese Pink film. The section’s core program, ID-09, identifies this year’s political, aesthetic, and thematic landscape of worldwide independent production. The ID section also includes parallel tributes, special screenings and events.
ID-09
Complementary to the New Philippine cinema tribute, the following features from Southeast Asia, one of the most fascinating breeding grounds for alternative cinema, will be screened during the 50th TIFF:
Blind Pig Who Wants To Fly, the debut feature of Indonesian director Edwin, is a series of vignettes, all connected by characters that are uncomfortable with their –geographical or metaphorical– place in the world. Edwin’s dark comedy won the FIPRESCI award at this year’s Rotterdam IFF.
At the End of the Daybreak by Ho Yuhang, a Malaysian/S. Korean co-production, is a subversive film noir. At the center of the film is the illegal love affair between a destitute 23-year old man and an upper class 15-year old girl; Ho succeeds in using the genre as a vehicle for exploration of human behavior at its extremes.
Between Two Worlds by Sri Lankan director Vimukthi Jayasundara explores his country’s two-decade civil conflict by bestowing a mythical quality to the story of a man and a woman running away from the war. Partly derived from the Mahavamsa, a verse history of the early Sri Lanka kings, the film is an enigmatic and poetic work, balancing great beauty with unspeakable horror.
A strong Latin-American presence is evident in this year’s independent cinematic crop.
Castro by Argentinean director Alejo Moguillansky is an idiosyncratic film, loosely based on a Samuel Beckett play. Eschewing a traditional structure for a chase story that is more ontological than realistic, Castro is bizarre and at the same time humane and entertaining.
Debut feature Huacho by Alejandro Fernandez Almendras (who won a Golden Bear in 2007 for a short), recounts a day in the life of an impoverished Chilean family, keeping in tune with Argentinean cinematic realism, but also providing an astute, absorbing look into life’s simple realities and its valuable minutiae.
Gigante by Andrian Biniez won three prizes in this year’s Berlinale, including the Silver Bear, the Alfred Bauer prize and Best First Feature and is indicative of Uruguay’s rise as one of the most interesting countries in the Latin American cinematic map. The story of a shy security guard who falls in love with a cleaning woman, Gigante turns romantic comedy on its head by focusing on the mysteries of a relationship before it’s even begun.
Paraiso, directed by Hector Galvez, is a shantytown on the outskirts of Lima, Peru, where Galvez organized a video workshop in 2000, to attract local kids away from gangs and their troublesome lives. The director’s ensuing friendship with several of the children resulted in the film Paraiso, a fiction inspired by real-life situations, tough, but also amusing, a testimony to the resilience of its protagonists.
Other titles screening in the ID-09 program are this year’s Venice Golden Lion winner, Lebanon by Samuel Maoz, South Korean productions Mother by Bong Joon-ho and Thirst by ID regular Park Chan-wook, Hadewijch by Bruno Dumont and Lourdes by Jessica Hausner, the breakout hit in this year’s Venice IFF.
YOUNG AMERICANS
In the tradition established by the ID section, this year’s gems of the American independent scene will be screened during the 50th TIFF. Many of the films presented here are works by directors that Independence Days first introduced to the Thessaloniki audience.
Beeswax by Andrew Bujalski is the third film by one of the leading filmmakers of the so-called mumblecore movement. Non-professional actors populate this charming story of two sisters, one of who is a paraplegic; the end result is representative of Bujalski’s cinematic style and storytelling, but also of his evolution as a director over time.
Joe Swanberg’s filmmaking also matures with every new film and Alexander the Last, which premiered in South by Southwest (Texas) and was simultaneously released on video-on-demand, received rave reviews. Alexander, a newlywed and aspiring actress, is falling for her co-protagonist in an off-Broadway show; Swanberg effectively uses the often-unclear boundaries between performance and life to communicate issues of intimacy and young love.
The Exploding Girl by Bradley Rusty Gray is filmmaking akin to the mumblecore movement, starring charismatic Zoe Kazan (granddaughter of Elia) in the role of a New Yorker returning to her city for a summer college break. Coping with bouts of epilepsy and a distant boyfriend, the young heroine tries to figure out who she is and how to express that.
Joshua and Benny Safdie, the young American brothers who get regular spots at the Cannes IFF, co-directed Go Get Some Rosemary, another New York story, starring Ronnie Bronstein. Bronstein, himself the director of successful indie Frownland, is an acting discovery and utterly comfortable in his role as an amiable slacker.
Korean-American director (and producer of The Exploding Girl) So Young-Kim delighted audiences and reviewers with her debut, In Between Days, shot in the US. For her second film, Treeless Mountain, equally deft and moving, she returns to Korea to tell the story of two young sisters abandoned by their mother.
Shot in Boston, in black and white 16mm, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench by Damien Chazelle is a story about love, heartbreak and music that Variety described as a “magical amalgam of Jean-Luc Godard, Miles Davis…and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”, since trumpet solos and tap dances are seamlessly incorporated into the narrative.
SOMEONE TO WATCH: MAREN ADE
Maren Ade is a German director, scriptwriter and producer. With Valeska Grisebach (presented in 2006 as that year’s Someone to Watch) and Ulrich Kohler, she belongs to the “Berlin School” of filmmakers whose “policy” is one of collaboration and exchange of ideas. In 2000 she founded the production company Komplizen Film, with which she has produced her own and other directors’ films. Her work has been lauded for its subtle psychological insights, as well as its effortless humor and tenderness.
The Forest for the Trees, Ade’s first feature, made in 2003, tells the story of a small-town teacher, an idealist who moves to a big city to create a new life. Her gradual mental disintegration, studiously and affectionately shot, occurs when she has to face the loneliness of the megalopolis and her students’ derision. The film received rave reviews and won several awards, amongst which, the Special Jury Prize at Sundance and the Best Actress award at BAFICI. The success of The Forest for the Trees was quite advantageous in obtaining funds for Everyone Else, Ade’s second feature, which won the Silver Bear and the Best Actress awards in this year’s Berlinale. The film follows a German couple on vacation, gracefully unfolding the problems and incompatibilities hidden behind a seemingly perfect romance.
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Sharon Lockhart’s work has been shown at film festivals and cultural institutions such as NY Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center and the Kunsthalle in Zurich. The films Lunch Break and Exit, to be screened during the 50th TIFF, have been shot in the Maine Bath Iron Works historic shipyard. Filmed over a period of one year, they are not just observations of the minutiae of daily life, but contemplations on a specific place at a specific time.
Film Ist. a Girl & a Gun by Gustav Deutsch, the “master of found footage”, uses images from fiction, documentary, pornographic, scientific and propaganda films from the first 45 years of cinema to assemble a drama in five acts: Genesis, Paradeisos, Eros, Thanatos, and Symposion. Starting from D.W. Griffith’s maxim that “all you need to make a film is a girl and a gun”, Deutsch puts together an opus on love, passion and sexual confrontation.
In December 21st of 1989, the German band Einstuerzende Neubauten had its first concert in East Berlin, a musical as well as historical landmark since a West Berlin group had never been allowed to perform in the GDR. Director Uli Schueppel’s documentary, Off Ways, includes concert footage and also traces some of the concertgoers and the musicians 20 years later, literally taking them back to their past.
Henri-George Clouzot’s Ιnferno by Segre Bromberg & Ruxandra Medrea: In 1964 Henri-George Clouzot set out to make L’ Enfer, starring Romy Schneider. The production was shut down after months of camera tests and shooting; the spectacular images remained unseen for 40 years, until Bromberg, a renowned film restorer, chanced upon them. In this documentary Clouzo’s material is presented for the first time.
The Crowd, King Vidor’s 1928 masterpiece was a breakthrough in its time. It dealt with the daily life and struggles of an American everyman trying to make it in the big city; moreover, it did so without melodrama or hyperbole. Seen today, it is a perfect time capsule of the Great Depression era; 80 years after its creation, it seems more timely and contemporary than ever. The Crowd will be presented with live music accompaniment music, performed and composed specifically for the film by the Greek band Prefabricated Quartet.
A completely different look to the past of cinema offers The Housemaid, made in 1960 and directed by Korean horror director Kim Ki-young, a favorite of Park Chan-wook abd Martin Scorsese. The first installment of his Housemaid Trilogy, the film marks a turn from his previous realist films to the expressionist, psychological horror films of his subsequent career.
The traditional Children’s screening organized by the ID section is this year the animated film A Town Called Panic by Stephane Aubier & Vincent Patar, which started as a successful TV mini-series in Belgium; it is the first stop-motion animated feature selected to participate in Cannes. In the titular town, plastic figurines of animals, cowboys and policemen create mayhem when plans for a barbeque go horrifically, spectacularly and hilariously wrong.
THE COMPLETE FILM LIST OF THE INDEPENDENCE DAYS PROGRAM WILL BE FEATURED IN THE LINE-UP PRESS RELEASE ON NOVEMBER 4.
