IO, ISA WORLD CONNECTIONS: FOCUS ON JENNIFER BAICHWAL AT HOT DOCS FEST IN TORONTO

Toronto's Hot Docs Festival pays tribute to the work of Jennifer Baichwal, director of the beautiful Manufactured Landscapes, which as national premiere at IO, ISABELLA IFW 2007 stirred the admiration of Italian audiences. The Canadian director enters the crew of the many excellent Canadian non-fiction filmmakers (Mark Achbar, Peter Winthonick, etc.) that in recent years brought us wonderful pieces of work. With each new film Baichwal has expanded her considerable skills as a filmmaker, with Manufactured Landscapes (2006) widely considered among the finest international documentaries of 2007.

Focus On Jennifer Baichwal opens Saturday, April 19 at 11:00 AM with THE TRUE MEANING OF PICTURES: SHELBY LEE ADAMS' APPALACHIA at the SCENE Screening Room at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto.

Hot Docs is on from April 17 to 27.

Manufactured Landscapes - the trailer

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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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WONG KAR-WAI OPENS CANNES

In a matter of minutes the 60th Cannes Film Festival will open its doors, the film to mark this moment is My Bluberry Nights by Wong Kar-Way, the Hong Kong director we discovered in Locarno in 1994 where he got nominated for Chung Hing sam lam, re-discovered with Happy Together, loved with In the Mood for Love and declared a master with 2046.

My Bluberry Nights is his first "american" film, it features a prestigious and refined cast (Jude Law, Tim Roth, Rachel Weisz e Natalie Portman), it marks the film debut of talented singer Norah Jones, and promises all the stylistic trademarks and ambience for which the director got his way right into the high ranking positions of best filmmakers worldwide. The plot is the simplest known to man: the film is a delicate road-movie narrating the story of a young girl, Elizabeth, who hits the road after breaking up with her boyfriend, starting a journey of self-discovery; along the way she will meet surreal characters who will help her in the quest.

Only suspicion on the work is the daring choice of the director to cut his "marriage" with Christopher Doyle – supreme master among DOPs, without any dubt one of the best ever – who lended his eye to Kar-Way's visions in 8 films (from Days of being wild to La mano, episode of the collective Eros), a strong and succesful collaboration reminisent of these such as Bergman/Nykvist, Spielberg/Kaminski. For both My Bluberry Nights and The Lady from Shanghai (Kar-Way's next made-in-USA film, a remake of the 1947 Orson Welles' film by the same name.) photography has been put in the hands of Darius Khondji a gifted french-iranian DOP who signed the infernal tones of Se7en and The Ninth Gate.

Here is My Blueberry Night's TRAILER

Following the videos of the trailers for In the Mood for Love and Days of being wild:



related links: interview to Kar-Wai on My Blueberry Nights – Chris Doyle video on cinematography

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CANNES' RIB: HOW "LA CROISETTE" CREATED THE WOMAN (AND THE OTHER WAY AROUND)

Do you know that weird feeling of "gee I wish I would have thought of this myself"? Well, that's exactly how I felt reading the article And Cannes created woman on the online version of The Independent. How could I not have thoutgh about posting something on the subject on our very own women-in-film oriented blog? I wonder what possesed me. However, thank God our very thoughtful friends at the British paper were sharp enough to point out that nothing better than the long line up of female stars on "La Croisette" summarises the 60 years of history of the father of all glamour struck Film Festivals.

As the Cannes Film Festival starts tomorrow and I will be en-route to this next two weeks Cinema's belly botton, after reading the piece I went on a web-hunt for video/photo material on the subject, just to lift some dust off my Cannes' conscious self, and I was quite surprise to find out that there is not much of a web-trace of those glamorous haydays on the French Riviera. Just some pictures and a handful of videos (some of which I link in this post). Regardless the scarsity of images, looking at the fading portraits of graceful figures flirting with the camera, the legions of photographers following them with their beautiful old paparazzi-style cameras (just like those in La Dolce Vita by Federico Fellini) and the famous Bardot bikini stunt that granted moral appropiate status to bikinis throughout the world, was a bit of a spoiler for my trip to this year's Festival...in 2007 it just cannot work the same way! And I wonder: has Cinema lost its power to make the world dream?

Here it's how it used to be, and a glimpse of Juliette Binoche steeling airtime at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival where she was for her lead role in André Téchiné's Rendez-vous:



The 60th Cannes Film Festival runs from 16th to 27th of May.

related links: Cannes' video Archive - The Independent

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BETWEEN SORROW AND JOY: "We Are Together" wins Tribeca's Audience Award

Between sorrow an joy, We Are Together (Thina Simunye) by british director Paul Taylor goes right to one's heart...and wins the 2007 Cadillac Award at Tribeca Film Festival. Paul Taylor and producer Teddy Leifer will dedicate the $25,000 cash prize to school fees for the Agape children through their RISE Foundation.

Filmed over three years by Paul Taylor and his crew, We Are Together (Thina Simunye) tells the story of a very special choir, that of the Agape Orphanage in KwaZulu Natal, a home for children, many of whom have lost their parents to AIDS. The film is a heartfelt story about sorrow, joy and the strength of the human spirit, or as the director puts it: ...it also sums up this duality between sorrow and joy, and the capacity of the human spirit to deal with suffering with humor, dignity and strength...

"Singing makes me think of my home because that was where I learnt to sing," states Slindile Moya – a young 12 year old girl in South Africa. She lives at the Agape Orphanage and together with the other children from the orphanage form a choir which becomes their greatest source of comfort and hope. Meanwhile Slindile makes regular visits to her former home, where her parents taught her to sing as a child, and where her brother Sifiso is now unwell. It's unclear what is wrong with him, but Slindile's worst fears are confirmed by the hospice. He has HIV. Sifiso must face the inevitable, but the family still has the strength to sing. Back at the orphanage, despite the hardship the children have been through, they too continue to sing, which takes them on a journey they could only dream of. For children like Slindile and her friends at Agape, life has not been easy, but their voices continue to ring loud and clear. As they come to terms with a series of painful setbacks, including the loss of loved ones to AIDS, their spirit stays strong and their singing takes them to places they have never been before.

Filmmaker Paul Taylor spent three months in KwaZulu Natal (South Africa) in 2003 volunteering at the Agape Orphanage. He was profoundly affected by his experiences there, the children’s personalities and, in particular, their beautiful singing. He returned with Teddy Leifer (producer) and Pauline von Moltke (associate producer) to make a film and help facilitate the production of the CD that would eventually bring the children to the attention of the world. We Are Together (Thina Simunye) has been more than three years in the making and has involved editors Masahiro Hirakubo (Eragon, Trainspotting, The Beach, A Life Less Ordinary) and composer Dario Marianelli (Pride & Prejudice, Shooting Dogs, V for Vendetta).

We Are Together had its world premiere at the 2006 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) where it won two prizes: First Appearance Award and the prestigious Audience Award, receiving the highest score in the festival’s history. It has now played in four festivals and won five awards.
Worldwide theatrical rights for the film are currently available and profits from the documentary will be donated to benefit The Agape Orphanage and other HIV/AIDS projects.

We Are Together is directed by Paul Taylor and written by Slindile Moya and Paul Taylor. It is produced by Teddy Leifer and Paul Taylor, with Annie Roney and Pauline Von Moltke as associate producers and Leigh Blake, Sheila Nevins and Jess Search executive producers. The film is a Rise Films Production in association with The Channel 4 British Documentary Film Foundation and HBO Documentary Films.

related links: keep a child alive - tribeca film festival - help the Agape Orphanage children

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IDFA TIME IT'S A GOOD TIME

Here in Amsterdam it's IDFA time. Almost a week into the hypest bo-chic event on Planet Documentary and Io, Isabella decides to skip for a moment any comment on random films fattening the already fat Festival programme, and devote all the attention, heart and soul, to our many friends showing their work on the world's most prestigious Documentary screens. First and foremost the newest SUBMARINE productions.

Jungle Rudy, The Chronicle of a Family by Rob Smits. The film has already won the Golden Kalf at the Nederlands Film Festival and now keeps on harvasting consesus at the IDFA. The Documentary tells the amazing story of Rudolf Truffino, son of a rich banker from Den Haag, who, shortly after WWII, builds an exotic holiday camp in the middle of the Rain Forest in Venezuela.

Bloot (Naked) by Mischa Kamp (in the picture). The serie of mini-documentaries in rotoscope has finally got out of the bubble (we already screened the first episode at Io, Isabella 2005) and it's ready to hit the road. 5 episodes of 6 minutes each describe, or better "draw" the small dramas of puberty: the first menstruation, boobs growing out of control, the shaping of a sexual identity. The director of Het Paard van Sinterklaas pushes the boundaries of Non-fiction filmmaking. Bloot is a little treat for each Documentary and Film lover.

A sparkling diamond pops out the magician's hat of producer San Fu Maltha (he just released the latest Paul Verhoeven's film Black Book), it's 4 Elements by Jiska Rickels; the film opened the Festival on November 23rd. Maltha "kidnapped" this incredibly talented young director right out of the Nederlandse Film en Televisie Academie and his intuition prooved right: the film is a rare gem, an epic tale of the human struggle against Nature.

Among usual suspects and less known faces IDFA goes on till December 3rd...hence, look out for more juicy reviews.

One last tip: to keep informed on IDFA's and Shadow Festival's Culinary films, we suggest to click by Culiblog edited by our friend and Food Royalty Debra Solomon

related links IDFA – Idfa daily – food-related films at idfa – Jungle Rudy trailer (dutch) – Jungle Rudy the book – Jungle Rudy's Ucaima camp in Venezuela – who is Sinterklaas? – Sinterklaas on wikipedia

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GUZZANI GOES DUTCH!

November 25th. It’s my birthday and instead of celebrating with a breakfast with my Italian friends in Firenze and a dinner with my Dutch friends in Amsterdam (that’s one of the things I simply adore about living in Europe where everything is so close and airports serves almost every major city as if they were metro stations!) I board a train to Roma at six in the morning (!) to finally, after a four weeks chase, meet Sabina Guzzanti.

Sabina is busy lately, very busy. No wonder, since she brought to life the most impressive and important Italian documentary to date.
It started small and quietly, until the buzz about her new film, in one single blow, broke all expectations: an Italian documentary that sells throughout the world! (distributed by Wild Bunch, the same of Fahrenheit 9/11) It's like a mythological oddity, it's like nothing seen before; while national Cinema lives in perpetual anguish, Sabina Guzzanti makes an award winning Documentary.

Hailed as the Italian Michael Moore, Guzzanti titled her reel Viva Zapatero! (watch trailer) in praise of Spanish Prime Minister's liberal reforms. The film is, first and foremost, a rare pearl for Italy, still non-fiction filmmaking virgin-ground. Apart from being a stroke in the chest of the Berlusconi government and his control over the country's mediated media, Guzzanti’s virtuoso excursion in Documentary-Land is a well constructed, brave little work of genius. A little thing of beauty which masters filmmaking best tradition and potentials to tell a personal story that turns to be a perfect polaroid of the Italian current political predicament, and goes all the way to spring into a universal tale, which simple language makes it accessible to just about everybody. Accounting for Italy’s lost freedom of speech and information, Viva Zapatero! triggers laughter and anger, it brings out sorrow and irony, starts with misery and ends up with hope, and does exactly what good films do: it shakes you right in your blood, it stirs your consciousness, bestows awareness and inspires the masses, all this while providing top class entertainment.

Personally, I was shocked by the fact that such an anti-establishment reel could even get a distribution deal in Berlusconi’s Italy, a supposedly democratic country where the dejà-odd Prime Minister can and does “fire” (among many others) Enzo Biagi, a mythical figure in journalists’ circles: a man with the longest and most brilliant career in his field was suddenly “purged” out of public television guilty of interviewing Oscar winning director/comedian Roberto Benigni during the 2001 Electoral Campaign. A few years later, in 2003, brilliant comedy queen Sabina Guzzanti shares the same fate: her satirical program RAIOT, weapons of mass distraction broadcast on public television gets cancelled after the first hugely successful episode. Why? The answer lays in the simple fact that regimes dislike comedians, because they are like children: they cannot help to tell the truth.

Viva Zapatero! tells the truth about Guzzanti’s unfair dismissal with disarming simplicity, and in doing so the film unveils the devastation of a western-capitalist political system going sour, a noiseless catastrophe in which every single individual is involved without even being fully aware of the extends of their drama.

I wanted to give evidence on how a Democracy turns into something else, right under everyone’s nose Says Sabina who at the beginning of the film describes herself as just a jester, one that makes governments shudder in fear!

The film won a buck-full of prizes around the world and will be screened at the coming International Film Festival Rotterdam, worldwide home to best independent films.

related links:
video RAIOT, weapons of mass distraction (in italian) – Viva Zapatero! on wikipedia – article in VARIETY – article in INDIEWIRE – RIOT on wikipedia (in italian)

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