DIGRESSIONS: Venice Film Festival from Griffith to Anderson

Venezia .64 is getting closer. The Venice Film Festival reaching its 75th anniversary is trying to put a firm on its organisation after the earthquake caused by the birth of Festa del Cinema di Roma (we wonder if all of these "big" Festivals are not too much for one country alone). Still trying to come to terms with the shock of the Carreer Golden Lion assigned to Tim Burton – not that he won't deserve it in a decade or so, but it does feel like a subtile scheme to attract stars, press, consensus, audience in the best populistic way –, we cast a first gaze on this year's programme and the first few things catching our attention are the following:

1) ZERO WOMEN IN THE MAIN COMPETITION! (is it coceivable that among all the good films by women about to flod the market there is none worth the Venetian Lions? Mystery on the lagoon...). The only traces of women in the director's chair are to be found in the "fuori concorso" and the "orizzonti" selections. Shari Springer Berman (together with Robert Pulcini, authors together of the beautiful American Splendor never distributed in Italy.) is the sole woman in the "fuori concorso" section with The Nanny Diaries, a light comedy, following the best of Hollywood's traditions, and another title likely to attract stars and populistic acclaim. In the "Orizzonti" section an "impressive" 4 women compete for one of the minor awards: Laura Amelia Guzman with Cochochi, Barbara Cupisti with Madri, Paloma Rocha with Anabazys and Penny Woolcock with Exodus. A total of 5 women! Anything left to say?

2) For the "Special Events" Venezia .64 features the screening of the freshly restaured version of Intolerance (1916) by Cinema's pioneer David Wark Griffith. Not to miss!

3) Wes Anderson – the guy who gave us The Royal Tenebaums and The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou – is running for the Golden Lion with his new poetic, surreal, beautiful family saga titled The Darjeeling Limited. For this new film Anderson has teamed up with the usual Owen Wilson and nonetheless than the Coppolas' clan; in fact Roman (son of Francis Ford) is producer and writer together with his cousin Jason Schwartzman, who is in turn also one of the protagonists of the film; costumes are by Milena Canonero, who scored the 2007 Oscar for Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola.

As fans of Anderson's work since the word start –he's the American Gondry and, besides the undeniable technical and formal skills, he is also one of the very few who seem to remember the negligible detail that makes Cinema synonimous of pure and simple entertainment, not a medium for critics' lucubrations, nor a blatant mirror of reality...just Cinema: a dreams' factory that, from dream to dream manages also, between a tears and a smile, to make people think – we have definetively found our darling for this year's Golden Lion: all united for Wes!

Trailer The Darjeeling Limited (2007) by Wes Anderson

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AND THE WINNERS ARE...

Saturday 28th July, at 20.30h in P.zza del Gesù (Fiumicello) during the award cerimony Provincia di Potenza and the Municipality of Maratea gave the prizes of the III edition of IO, ISABELLA INTERNATIONAL FILM WEEK, an international jury indicated the winners of the Golden Wave 2007:

1. Golden Wave for the section SHE’S HOT, CHE BAMBOLA! DONNE IN CONCORSO to:

STORM OF EMOTIONS by Yael Klopman
(Israel, 2006. Documentary, 82’ italian premiere)

Synopsis: The 1982 peace agreement with Egypt obliged thousands of people to leave their homes in the Sinai desert. From the options they were given by the Israeli government, many chose "Gush Katif" in the Gaza Strip as their new home. To progress the peace process, the Israeli government ordered the evacuation of the Gaza Strip on August 2005. This decision created political and social turmoil. The evacuation was to be the most complex and sensitive mission ever to be undertaken by the police forces. This movie is about emotions, beliefs, conscience and true brotherly love, It is a story of humanity in its finest hour

Motivations: “brave non-fiction film, that offers a unique testimony following step by step the 2005 evacuation of the Gaza Strip. A film that, using the tools and language of documentary in a precise and effective way, manages without intrusion or rethorics to tip into the most humane aspects of the story it tells. In doing so the director gives to the world an amazing document that shows aspects of the Middle East's question like none has ever had the courage to do before! Yael Klopman shows all of her skills in putting into images, without taking a stand, a painful passage in the history of a Nation”.


2. The Golden Wave Provincia di Potenza for the section THE DISCREET CHARM OF DOCUMENTARY, goes to

THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING SWINDLE by Martin Durkin
(Uk, 2007. Documentary, 74’)
Synopsis: The definitive response to Al Gore’s AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. This film shatters all common theories about men-made Globa Warming with the support of scientists and academics, the documentary goes as far as highlighting how politically driven campaigns against CO2 emissions will hurt the development of the Third World.

Motivation: “balanced documentary in which the director does not fear to challenge the "big guys", with excellent technics and argumentations, without forgetting a noble display of humour, the winning ingredient that keeps audiences' attention alive all the way to the end”.


3. For the section PRIMIZIE: SHE’S HOT FIRSTLING EDITION, the prize for best first film goes to:

TAKE YOUR LIFE (Nimm Dir Dein Leben) by Sabine Michel
(Germany, 2005. Fiction, 100’ italian premiere)
Synopsis: Surrealistic feature film that weaves together the life of a strange village with that of a mysterious girl who, looking for her vanished fianceé, finds instead a very special boy.

Motivation: “the film stands out for its originality, both in the script that in the directorial choices; the young director uses at best the resources she has to realise this surreal piece of work, which balances excellently all cinematic tools and devices”.

4. SPECIAL MENTIONS A:

- Anna Biller for her amazing talent and the originality of her work.
“Biller shows a talent out of the ordinary in her aesthetical research and cinematic style. A 360 degrees artist like worldwide Cinema has not seen in a very long time”.

- Maria Victoria Andino for “El Secreto de la Sangre”
“Argentinian talent of which we hope to hear more in the future; in her graduation film she shows great care for the fundamental aspects of the cinematic medium, first of all the photography”.

- Karen Gehres per “Begging Naked”
“The director follows an incredible human story, managing without flaws to transalte it into a universal tale and a beautiful documentary”.

The ending titles roll over this Third Edition of IO, ISABELLA INTERNATIONAL FILM WEEK in a colorful trail of visions and meetings of different cultures that share real emotions lived on and off the silver screen.

See you in 2008!

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IO, ISABELLA's DIRECTORS CONQUER THE WORLD: Xiaolu Guo in Pesaro

writer/director Xiaolu Guo, who with her documentary The Concrete Revolution took part in IO, ISABELLA INTERNATIONAL FILM WEEK 2005, has gained a Special Mention at the 43rd Pesaro Film Festival, her film How is your fish today was part of the competition programme "Pesaro Nuovo Cinema" which listed 8 international titles.

Here is the jury's motivation for the Special Mention:

for the incisive way in which the director couples together, without scholastic strictness, a refined aesthetical research (e.g. the voice-over that, just like a troublesome consciousness, binds and explains the images) and the passionate charge of the difficulty, today, of living in a world without projects and dreams, without direction and without a collective aim. For the clarity and subtile irony used to tell the contemporary compulsion to live through somebody else's life, like the character invented by the protagonist in order to be able to travel just about anywhere; the splendid snowy village, where perhaps it's not worth going in the real life.

We like to congratulate with Xiaolu Guo for this deserved Mention, and hope she'll be part again of our Festival for the 2008 edition.

enjoy the film's trailer

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A TRIBUTE TO THE LOVE GODDESS

As the seasonal celebrations of the 7th Art are en route to Cannes, we like to stop along the way to dedicate a minute of our thoughts to Hollywood's hey-days legend Rita Hayworth, who passed away exactly 20 years ago. Italian Satellite channel Studio Universal (channel 320) devotes to the late actress a cycle of 3 films and a documentary, starting tonight with You'll Never Get Rich (1941) by Sidney Lanfield.

Margarita Carmen Cansino, started her career in 1933 as a dancer. Success strucks in 1941 with You'll Never Get Rich, where she stars cheek-to-cheek with Fred Astaire, and in Strawberry Blond by Raoul Walsh, co-starring with James Cagney and Olivia de Havilland.

Beautiful beyond belief, Hayworth was the perfect incarnation of Gilda by Charles Vidor, the role of a lifetime...in every sense of the word, since she got so close to her on-screen persona to never again being able to walk away from it. Rita is often quoted to have said "Every man I have ever known has fallen in love with Gilda and awakened with me." The quote mirrors the dramatic turns her life took, afflicted as it was by unhappy marriages (Hayworth went in by the church aisle and out by the court door five times, two of which with Orson Welles and Prince Aly Khan, son of the Aga Khan), depression, addiction and, later on, alzheimer that ultimately sealed her fate with death in 1987, at the age of 68. But even the devastating disease, which left her completely helpless, did not tarnish the glorious image of Rita Hayworth, the ever shining film star, the universal symbol of sensualty beaming from the silver screen.

Enjoy the beautiful dance scene with Fred Astaire that made Rita Hayworth a star:

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TCM celebrates Katharine Hepburn's 100th anniversary of birth

On May 12, Katharine Hepburn would have turned 100 years old, TCM (Turner Classic Movies) celebrates her anniversary of birth devoting 3 days and 27 films to the late "First Lady of Cinema".

Kate – as friends called her – cut her teeth in acting starting off the Theatre stages of New York. A Bill of Divorcement by George Cukor, who casted her against the advice of producer David O. Selznick, marked her grand entreé to Cinema, leading to a trail of successes (Little Women by George Cukor) and awards (Morning Glory by Lowell Sherman earned her the fisrt oscar)

Independent and outspoken, playing strong independent women with minds of their own, Hepburn epitomized the woman of the new era, becoming an icon of femminism all over the world. Proverbial was her refusal to play the "Hollywood Game", always wearing slacks (way before it became fashionable) and no makeup, never posing for pictures or giving interviews. her attitude towards the press and even fans was edgy, so much so that people started deserting her films. in 1938, she (along with Fred Astaire, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, and others) was voted "box office poison" in a poll taken by motion picture exhibitors. With a serie of flops Hepburn set sails back to Broadway to star in The Philadelphia Story (1938), and was rewarded with a smash. She quickly bought the film rights, and so was able to negotiate her way back to Hollywood on her own terms, including her choice of director and co-stars. The film version of The Philadelphia Story (1940) by George Cukor, was a box-office hit, and Hepburn, who won her third Oscar nomination for the film, was bankable again.

Katharine Hepburn died in 2003 at the age of 96, following after 38 years her life-long partner Spencer Tracy.

Hepburn figures in Martin Scorsese's 2004 biopic of Howard Hughes, The Aviator, she was portrayed by Cate Blanchett, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance.

related links: New York Times article


The Philadelphia Story by George Cukor - starring Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart

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Berlinale Retrospective 2007: City Girls. Images of Women in Silent Film

A bobbed hairdo, a bold gaze, confident manners and an active working life, all traits defining the stereotyped image of women whose myth persists in the term “New Woman”. This shift in the role of women in society is also the expression of political upheaval and social changes at the beginning of the 20th century. City Girls. Images of Women in Silent Film, the Retrospective of the 57th Berlin International Film Festival reflects the portrayal of this new type of woman on the screen.
“The ‘little shopgirls’ who belonged to the salaried masses mentioned by Siegfried Kracauer, were a new social phenomenon – although their existence was by no means more secure than that of their blue-collar counterparts. True, for the most part, the cinema romanticized their lives; nonetheless, it focused on them with astonishing frequency. The films promised a blissful marriage with a wealthy man – while also depicting day-to-day life prior to the inevitable happy end”, comments Dr. Rainer Rother, head of the Retrospective and artistic director of the Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen.
The setting of such female independence, mobility and libertinage is the big city. In its bright lights, these early films reflect different forms of changing values. Through the cinema, role models and clichés of the “New Woman” spread quickly: the demonic seductress of the turn of the century gradually gives way to the jaunty looking modern girl. An Eton crop, narrow hips and a flat chest are en vogue; ladies’ choice and Charleston, à la mode. Flappers flirt to the rhythms of jazz – the city girl takes over screens.

The Retrospective introduces a total of 30 silent films devided in 4 programs titled Working Girls, Flaming Youth, Husbands and Wives, and Fate and Passion. Working Girls features popular actresses playing roles of young salesgirls or office girls: Norma Talmadge is The Social Secretary (John Emerson, USA 1916); Clara Bow, the It-Girl (Clarence Badger, USA 1926/27) with that certain something.

The program Flaming Youth means to depict the radiant lightheartedness that was the theme of many films of the silent era: in Ernst Lubitsch’s turbulent comedy I Don’t Want to Be a Man (Germany 1918) Ossi Oswalda couldn’t care less about social conventions and he's just as impulsively capricious as are the two British serial heroines Alma Taylor and Chrissie White in Tilly’s Party (Lewin Fitzhamon, 1911).

The social changes mirrored in the era's role models mixed things up at the very heart of society: gender roles and the family, pictured in the program Husbands and Wives. The issue is deepened with the screening of films such as Abram Room’s social study Tretya Meshchanskaya (Bed and Sofa, USSR 1927) Carl Theodor Dreyer’s drama about a marriage Du skal ære din hustru (Master of the House, Denmark 1925).

Fate and Passion program brings together films portraying independent City girls, seductive, smart and glamorous. Yet these women are surrounded by the distinctive "fin de siècle" decadence. On screen are Vera Chernova in Yevgeni Bauer’s Sumerki zenskoi dushi (Twilight of a Woman’s Soul, Russia 1913) and Francesca Bertini in Assunta Spina by Gustavo Serena (Italy 1914).

On worldwide screens, the silent era propagated a new type of woman, one which still stands for modernity. In today’s debate of gender roles, many parallels can be drawn to the discussion of emancipation in this era, says Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick.

The Retrospective films will be screened at the CinemaxX on Potsdamer Platz and at the Zeughauskino. Two publications will accompany the series: The book City Girls: Frauenbilder im Stummfilm (Women’s Pictures in Silent Film), with essays by Daniela Sannwald, Annette Brauerhoch, Heike-Melba Fendel, and Fabienne Liptay, and the journal FilmHeft 11, which offers contemporary reviews (in German and English), and detailed information on the Retrospective screenings.


related links: what is "New Woman"? – what is the "Flapper"? – Sigfried Kracauer on book – Clara Bow on wikipedia – Ernst Lubitsch on wikipedia – Carl Theodor Dreyer on wikipedia – Francesca Bertini on wikipedia – SilentLadies.com –

VIDEO: Norma Talmadge The Helpful (?) Sisterhood; Clara Bow It; Ernst Lubitsch To Be or Not To Be, more E.L. on youtube; Carl Theodor Dreyer Vampyr Der Traum des Allan Grey (whole film), more C.T.D. on youtube; Francesca Bertini Il Mercante di Venezia

Love Among Millionaires (1930) by Frank Tuttle, starring Clara Bow

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