Day four: A gem has been found!

Day four may have been the most successful day so far in terms of my Warsaw Film Festival treasure hunt. I was mesmerized by Twenty Feet From Stardom, Morgan Neville’s documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was screened at many other and whose intent is to shine a spotlight on the women who’ve spent their careers just outside its reach using a mix of live interviews (with Bette Midler, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger, Sheryl Crow and Sting to name just a few) and rare archival footage to let the background singers, and their music, tell their stories of vocal talent and frustrated ambition.

Twenty Feet From Stardom by Morgan Neville

The second film I saw was Heavenly Shift, Márk Bodzsár’s directorial debut feature that enjoyed its premiere here in Warsaw. It follows Milán, a young Hungarian paramedic who escaped the war in the Balkans and works the night shift on an ambulance in Budapest. His colleagues’ (the doctor and the driver) income comes from selling dead bodies to an entrepreneur, and soon, he becomes involved in illegal euthanasia. Bodzsár has demonstrated that he is a fan of Tarantino, a ninja sword aficinado and that death and violence are not particularly gruesome to him! Following the steps of his paragon, indeed…

Heavenly Shift by Márk Bodzsár

Although it is no gem, Heavenly Shift is fun! The treasure hunt round five is on today! So, stay tuned for more! 

Days one, two and three: looking for gems while meditating on life

At the Venice70 Jury Press Conference of this year’s Venice Film Festival, its president, the eminent Bernardo Bertolucci shared one of the reasons he first declined the presidency of the jury: it is too much work! Indeed, it is! Although having a vote in the FIPRESCI jury of the 29^th edition of the Warsaw Film Festival is most certainly an exciting challenge as well as an immense honor for every aspiring film critic, I cannot help but agree with the Italian maestro. Screening – in a fully alert manner - eleven films competing for the FIPRESCI Award here in Warsaw over the course of three or four days is a rather demanding task yet one I am taking a great pleasure in completing.

Moreover, the Warsaw Film Festival is a wonderful place to be digging true cinematic gems out. And, its 29^th edition opened on 11 October with precisely one of these: Still Life, Uberto Pasolini’s second feature film and winner of the Orizzonti section of this year’s Venice Film Festival. This particularly touching film explores the life of John May, a London funeral officer and the small gestures he does so that the people he helps bury do not remain alone on their last day on Earth and thus completely forgotten forever.

Still Life by Uberto Pasolini

Continuing with musings on how life – and sometimes death – happens and films screened during the second day of the festival that, unfortunately, proved to be less of a success in terms of quality and allure. These included: The Gambler, Ignas Jonynas’s debut feature that screened in San Sebastián’s Kutxa-New Directors section and is now competing in the International Competition program here in Warsaw, a raw and brutal portrayal of the Baltic inhuman medical “underbelly” of gambling that explores the game of life and death, vice, love and morality however insufficiently, the human conscience; Iulia Rugina’s enjoyable and heartwarming first feature film, Love Building, that is the product of a 2010 actors’ workshop (Actoriedefilm.ro) starring thirty-one non-professionals and three well-known Romanian actors, Dragoș Bucur, Dorian Boguță and Alexandru Papadopol who play three therapists who run a seven-day camp called “Love Building”, conceived to mend broken relationships and last but not least, The Japanese Dog, Tudor Cristian Jurgiu’s deep, quiet and moving debut film that was also screened in San Sebastián’s Kutxa-New Directors section and that follows an elderly man in the Romanian countryside whose recent loss brings him back in touch with his son, who moved to Japan.

The Whirlpool by Bojan Vuk Kosovčević

The third day proceeded in a similar fashion, without my stumbling upon any shining gem. I should perhaps confess that I am not particularly engrossed by the goods produced by the film industry of my native country (Serbia) but Bojan Vuk Kosovčević’s first feature film, The Whirlpool, proved to be a rather positive surprise, a proof that there may still be hope for the film industry in Serbia. After watching Yozgat Blues, Mahmut Fazil Coskun's film, which enjoyed its world premiere in Istanbul, you cannot refrain from humming Joe Dassin’s famous and distinctive tune “L’Été Indien”.

And so, day four will perhaps prove to be slightly luckier! Stay tuned for more!

Going Slightly Mad: The Japanese Dog, The Whirlpool, Ludwig II

The third day of WIFF brought something I missed after the second - films to talk about, be they good or bad.

On the positive side, the competition of debut and sophomore films showcased The Japanese Dog, directed by Tudor Cristian Jurgiu. I probably have to revise the statement I made yesterday, saying that any Romanian film will be selected for a festival just for the sake of having a film from Romania; although I can't be sure that such quota doesn't exist, The Japanese Dog is a fine film on its own. Taciturn and chary of action - although not enough to fall into the category of "slow cinema", - the film follows an old widower named Costache who lives in a village, his house destroyed by a flood. He is visited by his son - an engineer who emigrated to Japan and married a local woman there. The unlikely combination of rural Romania and metropolitan Japanese culture is in the core of this subtle movie - in the first half we mostly see Costache's everyday life, and, due to the attentive mise en scene and cinematography, are able to examine the tiniest minutiae; then the son with his family arrives, and something very alien appears in the rustic landscape - an epitome of which is a toy robot dog that Costache's Romanian-Japanese grandson gives to him. Interestingly, this story of alienation is set in a rural environment, whereas usually that topic is associated with urban areas.

In Discoveries section, The Whirlpool, directed by Bojan Vuk Kovacevic, was shown. A film set in the 1990s, soon after the Yugoslavian war, is written like a 1990s' film - it combines three different, but intersecting stories (cf. Three Colors, Pulp Fiction, Short Cuts and many more), each with its own protagonist - Nazi skinhead, gangster, and the shell-shocked war vet nicknamed Count. The Whirlpool is designed in such a fashion that the intensity is being built up not only within each story, but also from one story to the next - so as early as in the end of the first segment the film becomes ridiculous and remains so to the bitter end. The movie's lowbrow humor, over-the-top hysteria and cheesy soap opera devices - extreme tastelessness, in one word - remind of the work of Emir Kusturica (who appears onscreen as the abusive father of the skinhead - is there a way to explain Nazism without cheap pseudo-Freudism?), but without Kusturica's rich imagery or Bregovic's music. The Whirlpool looks like an amateur show shot on home digital, which it essentially is. However, the film is so bad that it's sort of good - in a way that Art Brut, like the work of the poor madman Count, is interesting.

My personal journey into the mouth of madness continued with the screening of Ludwig II, the new biopic of the legendary Bavarian king, directed by Marie Noëlle and Peter Sehr. There are dozens of reasons why is it a bad movie, but somehow I don't want to criticize it - perhaps it's a failure, but there is something very estimable in this failure. Of course it's madness to revive in the 21 century the grand style of Visconti (who made the 1972 epic about Ludwig) or Max Ophüls (who directed, among other films, a picture on Lola Montès who is referenced to in Noëlle and Sehr's film). But this madness is akin to that of Ludwig, who himself was building castles in the times of Marx and Bismarck - although the result of Noëlle and Sehr is not that impressive, Ludwig II with its pompous interiors, elaborate costumes and elevated dialogues is rather charming in its old-fashionedness, and certainly doesn't deserve its IMDb rating of 4.4 out of 10.

Matters of Love and Death: Love Building, The Gambler, Thirst

After the more inspiring opening film Still Life, Saturday at Warsaw Film Festival was the first day of the routine - main programs, comeptitive or not, start to unfold, ten days of searching for real gems amid more than a hundred entries are ahead. But, unfortunately, the three films I caught on Saturday were all more or less mediocre - which is probably the most unfavorable definition for a movie.

Love Buidling (dir. Iulia Rugina) is rather hackneyed screwball comedy from Romania set in a countryside summer camp for couples in troubled relationships. The plot, although sometimes a bit hard to follow, is well-knit, but it's no use to retell it here - Love Building works best as a sitcom bonding on comical quality of separate episodes and the charisma of certain actors. The movie is in all ways determined by its background - conceived and realized as a graduation film of a summer acting school, Love Building is deprived of any ambition, very amateurish at times, and, essentially, looks like a cheesy TV material. Indeed, it's crowd-pleasing and all, but sometimes you just wonder if any Romanian film would be selected for an international festival these days, based on its country of origin alone.

The International Competition opened with the Lithuanian entry The Gambler (dir. Ignas Jonynas). The story of a gambling-addicted paramedic Vincentas who makes books on his patients' death to earn some money, is obviously influenced by the work of Martin Scorsese, especially the underappreciated Bringing Up The Dead, where another wacky paramedic was played by Nicolas Cage. However, despite the Scorsese-esque tracking shots, idiosyncratic framing, eerie pulsating soundtrack by Paulius Kilbauskas and Domas Strupinskas, and rigid appeal of Vytautas Kaniušonis who plays the lead part, Jonynas in his first feature film can't help but adhere to some massive clichés of social realism, handheld camera and brutal violence included; at some point the events and actions become very predictable in their morbidness, not unlike in Alejandro González Iñárritu's everything-will-be-very-bad dramaturgy. That being said, The Gambler was the best of the three yesterday's films.

The long tradition of kitchen sink realism is the main reference point for Thirst, the Russian entry to the International Competition, directed by another debutant Dmitriy Tyurin. Although the scriptwriter Andrei Gelasimov turns the venerable chernukha genre (exploitation cinema about poverty and crime) into some kind of a fairy tale - the protagonist Kostya is an alcoholic veteran of the Chechen war who hides his heavily burnt face under a hood and tells his neghbor's kid a story of his life to get him to sleep. The movie alternates between a succession of episodes set at grim, poverty-stricken locations (the richly decorated apartment of Kostya's father, the hypocritical politician, provides the contrast), and flashbacks, shot and designed in a subjective, more whimsical fashion corresponding to Kostya's artistic imagination; however, the story lacks real development, and the ending feels unmotivated.

Press workshops

FIPRESCI Warsaw Project 2013

The Warsaw Film Foundation and the International Federation of Film Critics FIPRESCI are pleased to  invite young film critics to Warsaw to report  on the films presented at the 29th  Warsaw Film Festival (October 11-20th, 2013) and on the events of the 9th  CentEast Market Warsaw (October 18-20th, 2013).

1. Who are we?

Nine years ago the Warsaw Film Foundation and FIPRESCI began organizing workshops for young aspiring film journalists  from Central and Eastern Europe. FIPRESCI Warsaw Project – Talent Press was designed for critics who are at the beginning of their career but have already been writing about film. Just like in previous editions, this year too they will have a unique opportunity to participate in the Warsaw International Film Festival, one of the most important cinema events in Eastern Europe. Our aim is to create an opportunity for participants, who usually have little chance to go abroad and work in their profession, to work with world-class professionals and be exposed to movie journalism at the highest level.

2. Who are we looking for?

We expect all potential participants to have excellent oral and written communication skills in English. They should also work or study in the area of film,  have published articles in a newspaper, film magazine or on a specialized Web site and be eager to report on films within the framework of the Warsaw Film Festival and the events held during the CentEast Market

The program is designed for critics under the age of 30.

3. What do we expect from the participants?

The participants will  attend editorial meetings with their mentors (be always punctual and prepared) and work in all fields of journalism – they will write interviews, reviews, reports, articles and features on the Warsaw Film Festival and the CentEast Market. Novelty of this year’s edition will be a workshop dedicated to TV interview as well as preparing of an interview for the festival television FesTiVi.We expect the  participants' attention to be focused on festival events and workshop duties.

4. What do we offer?

The organizers provide accommodation in a youth hostel at no charge and cover travel expenses. Participants will be guided through the Warsaw Film Festival by experienced film critics who work for the world’s leading trade publications.
We also guarantee an unforgettable adventure and give a unique opportunity to meet the most interesting contemporary filmmakers from all over the world face-to-face.