Programme sections

PERSPECTIVES

The official competitive section of new directors (first or second feature film) competing for Mobitel's Kingfisher Award

AVANT-PREMIERES

Films for Slovene distribution

KINGS AND QUEENS

Works by renowned and awarded masters of contemporary film

WORLD FILM PANORAMA

Festival favourites from five continents

EXTRAVAGANCE

The so called ‘midnight cinema’ brings daring and titillating contents of diverse genres

AGAINST THE WIND

Radical authors sailing against trends

FOCUS

An insight into one (or more) of the hottest national cinematographies

RETROSPECTIVE

An overall presentation of films by an important contemporary cineaste

TRIBUTE

A short, condensed presentation of an author who has received a fair share of festival and media attention.

INTRODUCTIONS

LIFFe 2007: States of Independence

You'd perhaps be forgiven for thinking that independent American cinema began in 1990 with Steven Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape, and has since that date consisted almost entirely of quirky comedy-dramas, offbeat romances, and deadpan crime-romps - preferably starring Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey, Patricia Clarkson, Philip Seymour Hoffman and/or William H. Macy. The "American Indie" (AmerIndie for short) has now become something of a genre of its own: increasingly viable at the box-office, the darling of critics, a magnet for prizes - such as the Oscars heaped in recent years upon Crash (2005), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), and Sideways (2004). Too often, however, these "independent" films are really nothing of the sort. Generously funded by the "specialty" wings of major studios (who routinely spend $10 million on a marketing campaign for a single movie), they feature a plethora of well-known actors seeking to boost their credibility and are clearly intended as calling-cards for ambitious writers and directors with their sights on lucrative Hollywood careers.

But genuinely independent American cinema - in the low-budget, high-invention, groundbreaking traditions of, among others, Kenneth Anger (Scorpio Rising, 1964), Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep, 1977), Jim Jarmusch (Permanent Vacation, 1980), Gus Van Sant (Mala Noche, 1986), Barbara Loden (Wanda, 1970), and John Cassavetes (Shadows, 1959)  - is as vibrant today as it's ever been, though it's all too easily overlooked.
As Robert Redford's behemoth Sundance Film Festival and its myriad imitators become increasingly (and unashamedly) corporate, a boisterously rowdy network of underground events have sprung up across the country, created and sustained purely by the savage passion and never-say-die commitment of their participants, organisers - and, most important of all, audiences. Check out the websites for the New York Underground Film Festival, Chicago's C.U.F.F., and Boston's B.U.F.F., to name but three. It's this strain of cinema which LIFFe's States of Independence seeks to showcase and celebrate. Some of these films are quite slick productions which wouldn't look out of place in your local arthouse - or even your nearest multiplex. Others are proudly confrontational affairs which reject compromise, commercialism and safety at every turn.

This is a journey around some unexposed corners of this dizzyingly vast and diverse country - from rural idyll to urban wasteland - not to mention Caveh Zahedi's giddy globetrotting in I Am A Sex Addict. We take in southern California (Mike Ott's Analog Days); the cotton-bowl of Arkansas (Jeff Nichols' Shotgun Stories); sun-kissed Florida (Chris Fuller's Loren Cass) - and pay several visits to the ever-fertile creative hotbed that is the Pacific north-west: the wide canvas of Apart From That; the delicate miniature that is Aaron Katz's Dance Party USA, and of course the bracingly transgressive succès de scandale that is Robinson Devor's Zoo.
While Devor and Zahedi are relatively well-established as award-winning talents on the international film-festival circuit, most of the filmmakers represented here aren't what you'd call household names, even in their own home towns: youthfully energetic, articulate, politically-savvy representatives of a wealthy and educated nation where film-making equipment and know-how are, relatively speaking, easily accessible. There's also a vast pool of acting talent to draw on: we defy you to find a single weak link in any of the ensembles assembled here. Indeed, the work by - to take two performers from either end of the age spectrum - Dance Party USA's Anna Kavan and Apart From That's Alice Ellingson represents screen acting of the highest calibre. Extremely good things, then, in (mostly) small, unlikely-seeming packages: glimpses into the cinematic soul of a nation at another fascinating juncture in its ceaselessly-turbulent history.

Neil Young

New Romanian Film: Revolutionary or Not?

Is there really a new wave in Romanian film, as numerous festival reporters write, or is there "merely" a talented generation of (relatively) young directors who surfaced at approximately the same time? This remark by Cristian Mungiu is probably true; contemporary directors do not share any common style or ideological stance, they do not belong to the same film school. Moreover, modern Romanian film is not based on a particularly noble tradition, as under the strict communist regime, no generation of directors has emerged that would be comparable to the Czech new wave and the Yugoslav dark film, or to the new Polish film of the fifties. From a historic point of view, Romanian directors at the beginning of the 21st century can be compared to the representatives of the new German film of the early sixties. In both cases, they are young authors with no "film fathers" and no tangible historical foundation.

Lucian Pintilie (born in 1933) has been almost the only internationally recognized director of his generation. Notably, it is Pintilie's Niki and Flo (2003) that created a bridge between the young and the old generation, as the script was written in cooperation with Cristi Puiu, whose Death of Mr. Lazarescu (shown at the 16th LIFFe), two years later, would significantly change not only the image of Romanian film, but also the complete Western perception of a film industry that was never really "hot". In a single blow, Lazarescu placed the Romanian film on the world film map. More importantly, he had followers. There is little similarity among young Romanian directors (except perhaps in their sense of humour and their attitude towards the 1989 revolution), but they entered the scene with such an independent posture that the phenomenon cannot be pronounced anything but new wave, and the greatest festival of all – the film festival in Cannes – has become its central stage and promotional "interface". In recent years, no other cinema at Cannes has offered such consistent presence and quality, supported by all the most prominent awards. The Romanians have literally conquered La Croisette; Cristi Puiu's Lazarescu and Cristian Nemescu's California Dreamin' (2007) won first prize in the "Another View" section, Happened or Not? by Corneliu Porumboiu won the Golden Camera for best first-time director, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days by Cristian Mungiu won the Golden Palm for best film. In a manner of speaking, they won the grand slam of the cinema.

There are, however, two tragic sides to the success of the new Romanian films. The first one was literally covered in blood; Cristian Nemescu, one of the most talented young directors, died tragically in a car crash during the editing of California Dreamin'. The second is an obvious consequence of transition; in the last ten years, the number of operating film theatres in Romania has decreased dramatically by several hundred, so that there are only some sixty working cinemas left in the whole country. This has made Cristian Mungiu set off on a distribution tour of small towns, where he has been showing his Cannes prize winner to the audience in his travelling cinema, reminiscent of old Italian films. So, has the Romanian film triggered a revolution or not? Abroad, it certainly has. The question remains whether – considering the lack of cinema theatres – the enthusiasm is shared by the audience in Romania as well. This will probably be one of the topics discussed by directors during the 18th LIFFe.

Simon Popek

Roy Andersson, a Pessimist with a Feeling for Slapstick

Roy Andersson, one of the most original figures of European and world film, is special in all aspects. A humanist, critic of the bourgeoisie, civilisation pessimist and aesthete without comparison, in short, an Artist with a capital A, has been earning his living for the past thirty years mainly by making advertising spots, the »cursed« form of expression that most serious cineastes despise. He has only made four feature films in forty years, and a quarter of a century passed between the second and the third one. His is probably one of the most successful Swedish films of all times, A Swedish Love Story, and probably the biggest financial flop, Giliap. Since he founded his own production company, Studio 24, in the early eighties, he hasn’t left anything to coincidence any more. Andersson doesn’t like producers, hurrying, and amateurism. He shoots his films without screenplays, storyboards or filming plans, exclusively in studios, with many repetitions and corrections. The result of all this is a perfect coordination between concept and realisation, visual perfection based on German expressionism in painting (Beckmann, Dix), especially its “exaggerated simplicity”, which in Andersson manifests in his (often criticised) “dialogue trivialities” and his strict, ascetic interior. 

Andersson is one of those rare contemporary cineastes whose films should not be watched on the small screen – that would be a crime! The fragmented, non-narrative films abounding in symbols and black humour, Songs from the Second Floor and You, the Living, were shot entirely in his studio, including the mass sequences and monumental “exteriors”. It took him six years to shoot and edit the first film, and four years to complete the second one, which is a completely opposite practice compared to the quick production of thirty-second-long advertising spots, the commercial form in the service of corporate logic that he criticises in his latest films. 
Andersson picks up his inspiration from details, trifles, such as from the verse of Peruvian poet César Vallejo, or from a faded photo in which the Nazis hang a Jewish family. His sometimes shocking vision of millennium paranoia in Songs from the Second Floor is indeed strict in terms of form, but it should be stressed that Andersson is an extremely witty author, sometimes cynical, absurd and brutally sarcastic, but never stepping over the edge of vulgarity. The films Songs from the Second Floor and You, the Living have cemented his distinctive style, recognisable by its loosely linked vignettes, long static shots, and “cold” cinematography, which, among other things, expresses the prevailing pessimism and human pain. No wonder that the Americans labelled him as “Ingmar Bergman with a feeling for slapstick”. In a way, his is a Buñuel-like type of teasing which spares neither the clergy nor the bourgeoisie. This characteristic is not only typical of his last two feature films, but also of his earlier opus – dealing with the non-perspectiveness of the middle-age-crisis generation in his debut, A Swedish Love Story, and with the antiquated codexes of Swedish bourgeoisie in Gilliap.

Simon Popek

Otar Iosseliani – the Poet of Georgian Film

Otar Iosseliani has pointed out on several occasions that, regardless of the fact that he has lived and worked in Paris since the first half of the 80's, he feels Georgian, and, consequently, his French films are Georgian, and he is a Georgian director. Of course it needs to be said that this statement should be understood in a purely aesthetic sense, as in Iosseliani's films - to use the formulation by Serge Toubiana – his nationality is primarily expressed as un regard étranger – a foreign, even "alienated" emigrant's view of his time, culture, history, and  human civilisation in general, far from any nationalism or ideology. At first sight, Otar Iosseliani has a recognizable style, he is an aesthete, a man of the world, a spiritual aristocrat, a descendent of one of the oldest Christian nations, coming from a country rich in cultural and historical monuments of priceless value.
Undoubtedly, Iosseliani's films are clearly influenced by his music studies, which he completed with a degree in composition, conducting and piano from the National Conservatorium in Tbilisi in 1952, as well as by his mathematical studies in Moscow, which he never completed, because he was charmed and seduced by the seventh art. In 1958, he directed his first film, Akvarel, and three years later he graduated in directing from the VGIK National Film Institute. The 60's and 70's in the Soviet Union were not at all favourable for his creativity, as he experienced censorship at the very beginning. The film April (1961) was banned for over ten years, while Iosseliani spent quite some time making a living as a sailor on a fishing boat, and later as a worker in a metallurgy plant, which partially explains why his later films are filled with a strong will for freedom, a kind of vagabond spirit, a desire for spiritual and social liberation. After the success of Pastorale (1978), it became definitely clear to Iosseliani that he would have to find artistic freedom outside his homeland. [...]
Judging from the overwhelming ironical-satirical, sometimes even parodical, tone of his films, Iosseliani sees life as slanting downwards, in the direction of progressive social, spiritual and material degradation, which nevertheless has nothing to do with the definition of film naturalism by Deleuzo. On the contrary. Even though he deals with the »discreet charm of the (modern) bourgeoisie« in Favorites of the Moon, as well as – even more plastically and directly – in his later films, Chasing Butterflies and Farewell, Home Sweet Home, his gradually increasing thematic triad shows a form and an effect of fluidity that are considerably closer to the French tradition of the 30's – poetic realism. In his films, Iosseliani uses the logical-mathematical composition of a mosaic puzzle and the lyrical abstraction of a musical piece to talk about the transient nature of cultures, traditions and objects, while – as pointed out by Serge Toubiana – the sociological view never prevails over the poetic one, but merges with it into a whole. All Iosseliani's art, he says, lies in the observation of things in their revolving, in their permanent imbalance, always changing, always flowing. In his works, the dimensions of time and poetics – besides that of comedy - are fundamental.

Mateja Valentinčič
(Excerpt from a longer text published in Ekran magazine.)

James Benning: When Film Has Shown Almost Everything 

Fernand Léger, a versatile avant-gardist, once said that the essence of cinematographic revolution lies in "making visible, what used to be merely noticed". At the same time, he forgot to ask what would happen when the "revolution of the visible" was completed – when the film had shown almost everything? When all the time everything can be seen, and nothing merely noticed? This is the question posed by the films by James Benning, another versatile avant-gardist.

The films also offer the possibility of an answer: they allow us to notice the most obvious again. 13 Lakes consists of 13 ten-minute statical and symmetrical shots of North-American lakes, and in Ten Skies the concept is expanded – the observations are generalized. We gaze at the sky and its appearances, clouds, light, bodies in the air. In the vacated spaces of the film, unnoticed events become parts of a dramatical performance directed by nature.

Landscape films fulfil the century-long ambition of film – the longing for universality. Not only in its substance, but also in its view: everyone has noticed the suggestions of the clouds in the sky, offering the possibilities of narration, suspense, action... of all that which the film has brought into the visibility field. This dreamy view of the thought is the real substance of the film: a view that has to keep thinking of what it is looking at, in order to retain it at all. If Léger wanted to rediscover the old image of everyday things, this is the opposite: each of us discovers their new and different images.
Of course, more tangible meanings are hidden behind the views of the sky and the lakes. Benning said that both films were basically political. The important part lies in details – which in a film of details, of course, become statements – placing the discovered images in time. The shot of a piece of the sky is accompanied by the song of workers in the background, in another shot poisonous gas covers the sky, in the third gunshots resound. Around the lakes, we hear phantom sounds of trains, ships and people – and gunshots again... Not only nature exhibits, but also products of concrete culture, accompanied by the history of exploitation or merely romantic views. Benning's "policy" is anchored in this permanent presence and attention to the outer world, in the space between the visible and the audible.

The abundant patience of 13 Lakes and Ten Skies is an exception rather than a rule with Benning. One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later represents the other aspect of his work that is, in many ways, true to the tradition of American avant-garde of the seventies. Since the beginning, Benning has been interested in the fundaments of film language, which he plays – often with humour and affection for the viewer – in a rhythmical, rhymed and arithmetical composition. Mondrian's painting Broadway Boogie Woogie, from which the film gets its title (original version from 1977), suitably reflects both tendencies of the film: the playfulness of musical improvisation and the strictness of architecture. At the same time, the film survives as a lucid dedication to the hopelessly post-industrial Milwaukee, where the author grew up. When he returns to the scene twenty-seven years later to revive memories, surrealistic situations and lost friends, the reality of Bush's America is too aggressive to be overlooked among the riddles propounded by the film. The flag that was fluttering in all its ironical glory in one scene is now hanging from its pole, torn and withered. This second epilogue scene is the only one in the film in which the author (in his own words) breaks the rule of his game – he shoots it at another location, as the original flag had disappeared long ago. In this way, the "false" double image of time becomes the most expressive comment on political reality.

Nil Baskar