ART-ZINE REFLECT
REFLECT... КУАДУСЕШЩТ # 16 ::: ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ
Elvina ZELTSMAN, Rafael LEVCHIN. FILMS & MOVIES.
aвтор визуальной работы - A.Tat
“What’s a film? That’s a very long movie. Critics kinda like it….”
We decided not to talk about all movies, but choose some films (not movies!) from every festival (sometimes two or more, but mostly one). We believe, that’ll be enough.
The 39th Chicago International Film Festival: we could talk about passionate CALLAS FOREVER by Franco Zeffirelli (oh, remember Maria Callas as Medea in Pasolini’s MEDEA?).
Or maybe we should talk about OTETS I SYN (FATER AND SON) by Alexander Sokurov, intensive and provocative, sort of last song of masculine civilization, a song from the world of warriors and nomads, who can share their lovers and their dreams.
It was a pleasure to see I WAS BORN, BUT… by Ozu (1932), silent film with parallel performance by a traditional Japanese "benshi" – a narrative interpreter, who’s talking for all characters and making sound effects; sad and funny film about childhood (kids, who were playing here, probably were killed later in WWII).
And we absolutely disliked A TALKING PICTURE by Manoel de Oliveira, Catherine Deneuve, Irene Papas, John Malkovich don’t do this movie better; it is flat and not artistical. It’s not an art at all. It is just …yes, a talking picture. Postmodern, pardon us!
We liked dark anti-utopian TIME OF THE WOLF by Michael Haneke (but his THE PIANO TEACHER we adore!).
We were very happy by THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE by Sylvan Chomet; this dialog-free animation with its visual language, great humor and sadness, long fight against French Mafia and frogs eating; it is so close to animation PRIKLIUCHENIIA KAPITANA VRUNGELIA (THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN LIER) from our childhood!..
But the best and the most significant film was, for sure, THE TULSE LUPER SUITCASES, PART 1. The Moab Story by Peter Greenaway. Director come in person with motto: “Cinema is dead – long live to the new cinema!”. This “new cinema” is his new mega-project: reconstruction of life of Tulse Luper, writer, traveler, adventurer, his affairs, his struggles and so on. It is about life, death, war, sex, food, violence, nakedness, fascism, grotesque, literature… but actually all this is about texture and color, because director was – and is – an artist; and, of course, it goes with multiscreen, superimpositions etc. It seems, Geenaway IS a genius (actually, we like PROSPERO’S BOOKS more, but that’ not the point!)!
If International Film Festival represents the apollonian spirit of Chicago, The 10th Chicago Underground Film Festival does the dionysian. We choose ALLAH WA'AKBAR and MUHAMMAD AND JANE by Usama Alshaibi. The first one is the animation, based on ancient Islamic ornamentations. Director just scanned these images and animated them, spinning and moving. Film attempts to come closer to beauty and mystery which is God. And the second one is the semiautobiographical story about young Muslim with Polish last name, who returns to US from the Middle East, meets with friend (starring by director himself), talks about his illegal business, shows to viewer many passports; then he meets girl Jane, and they both are afraid of everything, but we can not say for sure, are their fears senseless or not. Some scenes (an anti-war protests etc) are documentary… Film is very professional.
Also not to forget THREADS OF BELONGING by Jennifer Montgomery about fictional therapeutic community, where schizophrenics and doctors are living together; the first half of film we were sure, that this is documentary!
We missed Z-festival, but we visited Movieside Film Festival and watched DOWN BY LAW by Jim Jarmusch (1986) and director himself; also his short INT.TRAILER NIGHT. He really is one of the best directors of independent cinema (his DEAD MAN is unique!).
That was 2003. Now, in year 2004 on European Film Festival we watched DOGVILL by Lars von Trier, LOVE ME IF YOU DARE, and TWENTY NINE PALMS. All of them have sex scenes, but TWENTY NINE has it too much (the director, Bruno Dumont, is also a director of HUMANITY; and if in HUMANITY with it multisex was not so distasteful, here it was so… false, so… we’d say, naïve false! Ok, ok, just relax! We’re absolutely not against the sex scenes (and sex anyway), but when people are trying hard show us: this is the real sex!!! – we can’t help, but not believe). Probably, LOVE ME IF YOU DARE is what we need: mixed reality and surreality, and good one! O, yes, this is what we need. We’d say what exactly we need! Because this was not the story. This was a cinema.
Dyke Delicious (presented by Reeling: The Chicago Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival): THE HUNGER by Tony Scott, neo-gothic Vampire movie with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. Their lesbo sex scene was really good: well tempered and beautiful, but zombies (cadavers) at the end were too much (the donkey ears of Hollywood!). Without them this movie would be much nicer. On the other hand, the end, when dead heroines are resurrected and become younger, was not bad… hell, we sort of liked it, honestly! And we especially liked sad play with word “forever”.
On 2nd Chicago International Documentary Film Festival we didn’t interested PUTIN’S MAMA, or MOSCOW SIEGE and so on (as you know, we don’t like most of contemporary Russian cinema; and there were a lot of Russian or about Russia docs!), but we watched SUPER-8 MOM by David Ellsworth, SAFETY TIPS FOR KIDS by Roz Mortimer, and CASTING by Goran Radovanovic. The last one is nice, about sex industry in Serbia, and these girls, who’re trying at the first time to pose half-naked in front of camera, are very touching.
And the last one, an absolutely fresh visit was on 20th Chicago Latino Film Festival. O PRINCIPE (THE PRINCE) by Ugo Giorgetti is sort of banal story: Gustavo, the protagonist, returns from Paris to his hometown in Brazil to meet his mother, his old friends, and his former beloved. And, of course, it isn’t possible to return to the past: everything was changed beyond recognition. So what? can we ask… But this film has one more level: Gustavo’s nephew, Mario, is trying to re-write Brazil’s history, to make from routine a poetry – and this is an allusion to great Borques!
Not on the festivals we watched perverse, erotic, beautiful, with many references to the other movies DREAMERS by Bernardo Bertolucci, brilliant KAGEMUSHA by Akiro Kurosawa (actually that was our second time, because we watched it in USSR in 1986, almost twenty years ago!), and very poetic THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAINT MATTHEW by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
But real event for us were THE FILMS by Maya Deren (Eleanor Derenkovskaia, born 1917 in Kiev), the pioneer of American avant-garde cinema. Unfortunately we didn’t know her before, but from now she will be the director # 1 for us! She IS a genius, no doubt. The most interesting for us were MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (1943, with her first husband, Alexander Hammid; she’s herself playing in this film), AT LAND (1944), and RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME (1946). These surreal, symbolic, magical masterpieces are what exactly we need from cinema: dreams, myths, calls!
следующая 4th page of cover of #16 (23)
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предыдущая Klaudia RUMIN’SKA. ELIOTTIMESPACEDEATH
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