MovieMaker Magazine

John Cusack in Being John Malkovich

The Venice International Film Festival

When I received my first prize in Venice 18 years ago, a critic from Time magazine wrote ‘Nobody from nowhere won,’” remarked Competition Jury President Emir Kusturica (director of Underground, Black Cat White Cat) at the inaugural press conference of the 1999 Venice International Film Festival. “Maybe that will be the criterion for picking this year’s Golden Lion winner.” The well-rounded international competition, which began when the late Stanley Kubrick’s final masterpiece, Eyes Wide Shut, screened uncensored on opening night, boasted mostly well-established names and seemed to offer few opportunities to reward bold newcomers and unknowns.

Ranging from Chinese master Zhang Yimou’s latest work, Not One Less, to Mike Leigh’s Topsy Turvy, Iranian Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us and Lasse Hallstrom’s much anticipated The Cider House Rules, the competition roster, unmistakably partial to the auteur, reflected the vision of newly-appointed festival director Alberto Barbera. Famous for his undying support of emerging filmmakers during his tenure at the prestigious Turin Youth International Film Festival, Barbera again renewed his commitment to young directors in the more cumbersome setting of the Venice Biennale, giving them ample opportunity to shine in the festival’s many sidebars. In addition to a new section called Cinema of the Present, Barbera established the “Luigi De Laurentiis Prize” for best first feature (equivalent to the Camera D’Or at Cannes). Intended to assist first-time filmmakers in what he called “the most crucial moment in a moviemaker’s career—the transition to the second film,” the prize consists of $100,000 to be split between the winning director and producer, and 20,000 meters of film offered by Kodak.

American independents turned up conspicuously among the 21 first features eligible for the De Laurentiis Prize. Kimberly Peirce’s provocative directoral debut, Boys Don’t Cry (see cover story —ed.) jolted audiences on the second day of the festival with the harrowing account of the 1993 murder of Brandon Teena in Nebraska. On a lighter note, Spike Jonze’s idiosyncratic comedy Being John Malkovich won over audiences with the droll acrobatics of an unlikely trio of lovers in search of the perfect “love-requitable” identity. Priceless ensemble work is delivered by stars John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener and an uproarious John Malkovich as himself. Other highlights of the selection included Mark Hanlon’s brooding and visually haunting first feature Buddy Boy and Lisanne Skyler’s Sundance official entry Getting To Know You. Ineligible for any prize but taking audiences by storm anyway was indie enfant terrible Harmony Korine’s controversial Julien Donkey Boy. Largely improvised by Chloe Sevigny, Werner Herzog, and Ewen Bremmer in the title role, the story of a schizophrenic young man who works as an attendant in a school for the blind is broken up into seemingly random issues/36/images and occasional lucid fragments of Julien’s deteriorating perception. Realized according to von Trier’s tenets of Dogme 95, Korine’s follow-up to Gummo was shot in digital video by Celebration’s cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle, then transferred to 16mm reversal stock and finally blown up to 35mm, which resulted in a volley of shredded, raw issues/36/images of astonishing beauty.

Far from being a ‘nobody from nowhere,’ the winner of the Golden Lion turned out to be world-renowned Chinese auteur Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern) with Not One Less, a delicate tale set in rural China, arguably the most deserving among a roster of impressive competition titles. Among those was Jane Campion’s much- anticipated world premiere of Holy Smoke, co-authored by Campion and her sister, Anna Campion, which feature

Hollywood fare was kept to a threadbare minimum, with only one title in competition: Antonio Banderas’s directoral debut, Crazy in Alabama; and a few in the “Dreams and Visions” section, most notably David Fincher’s nerve-hitting Fight Club. Out of competition was the world premiere of Woody Allen’s bittersweet comedy Sweet and Lowdown, starring Sean Penn in a compelling, tour-de-force performance as the volatile, eccentric and ultimately irresistible jazz guitar master Emmet Ray.

Martin Scorsese was in attendance, presenting his work-in-progress documentary on Italian neo-realism Il Dolce Cinema at the closing night ceremony, where he also presented a Golden Lion for career achievement to Jerry Lewis.
At the festival’s close it became clear that with Alberto Barbera’s savvy and sophistication, the much-speculated Venice Renaissance is now well underway. —A.G. Basoli

This time of year the Indian summer breezes off Lake Ontario swirl fallen leaves around the rock monuments at the Yorkville “Festival Village,” which has become ground zero of the Toronto International Film Festival. And like the scurrying leaves, groups of festival goers constantly move back and forth from area theatres and hotels, trying to make the most of their time at an event where 317 films are presented in 10 days. With more than 250,000 attendees and 4,000 film professionals and press in attendance, this festival can, by most standards, be considered the largest film gathering in North America.

While a string of soon-to-open studio films dominate the festival’s “Gala” and “Special Presentation” series, the other sections—Contemporary World Cinema, Reel-to-Reel, Masters, Midnight Madness, Planet Africa, Discovery and Perspective Canada—offer something for every cineaste. Also included this year was a section of New Spanish Cinema, a spotlight on brilliant Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) with a retrospective of his works from 1985’s The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl to three new films—Barren Illusion, Charisma, and License to Live; a tribute to the late Toronto programmer David Overby; and Dialogues: Talking with Pictures, a series in which eight prominent moviemakers screened films which “changed the face of cinema,” and discussed them with audiences after the shows.

One of the most remarkable finds was Shower, the first feature from Zhang Yang, a pioneer of China’s underground music video scene. The backdrop for this moving tale of changing times is a traditional Chinese bathhouse, where customs date back thousands of years. The bathhou

Shower is the story of a son who is lured back to his elderly father’s side by a letter, and reluctantly rediscovers the magic of the bathhouse and the social purpose it serves. He is forced to face the responsibilities of family and confront the problems of modernization on a personal level. Shower is a delight throughout, extremely well shot and paced. It’s humorous and touching, and meaningful on a broader level, as it addresses the challenges of modernization in China today. It was awarded the Fipresci Prize by a jury of international film critics for a new work by an emerging filmmaker “for humor and compassion in its treatment of the tensions of family life in a rapidly changing society.” In short, this Shower is most refreshing.

An “Eastern” theme, albeit transplanted to urban America, is also the subtext of Jim Jarmusch’s newfilm Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. Forest Whitaker is Ghost Dog, a loner gun for hire who lives by the code of the Japanese Samurai, and is guided by the words of an ancient text that Jarmusch shares with the audience.

Ghost Dog lives above the world on a roof-top with his birds, carrier pigeons which serve as his means of communication to the outside world. In the spirit of the Samurai, he has pledged his loyalty to Louie, a small time mobster who saved his life many years before. But Louie is a member of a dysfunctional Mafia family in the throes of self destruction. Ghost Dog’s simple world of mastery, loyalty and ancient wisdom parallel, and often clash, with the crumbling code of the Mafia world.

Into the mix Jarmusch blends Betty Boop, Felix the Cat and The Simpsons cartoons that help to inform the film’s action. He incorporates Japanese teachings, hip hop, mythology and pop culture, which lace the film with potent substance.

The clashing of worlds apart is a Jarmusch mainstay, along with questions of communication (particularly non-verbal) and absurdist juxtapositions of character and place, along with ample amounts of irony and layered meaning which harken all the way back to Stranger Than Paradise the film that first brought him center-stage on the American independent film scene.

Culture clash takes on more threatening proportions in My Father’s Angel, which represents Canada’s tradition of emigrant internationalism, more a cultural “crazy quilt” rather than a “melting pot.” Directed by the Sarajevo filmmaker Davor Marjanovic, who now lives in British Columbia, the film is set in Vancouver but cuts to the essence of the tragic circumstances in Bosnia. The film centers around two Bosnian families, one headed by Ahmed, a Muslim, the other by Djordje, a Serb and former Yugoslavian soccer star, who now works as a courier in Canada.

Djordje and his family emigrated before the horrors began and dismisses reports of monstrous Serb atrocities as “lies” and media fabrications.

Ahmed and his family, on the other hand, are recent immigrants who have suffered anti-Muslim horrors at the hands of the Serbs. His wife

Surprisingly, My Father’s Angel has its humorous moments and is as much about the teenage boys of the respective families as about their parents. The two grow to hate each other at school, have fistfights “over history” and learn to look beyond their differences and hatred to find peace. “I still can’t believe this has happened in Sarajevo,” Marjanovic says, obviously moved. “I had to make this film to try to understand how this could have happened. It’s a film about humanity and forgiveness.”

Another story based on real life events is from Australian director Paul Cox, who was in Toronto with his film Molokai: The Story of Father Damien, the story of the young Catholic priest who dedicated his life’s work to the well-being of lepers on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. The film explores Father Damien’s tireless efforts to gain recognition and support for his forgotten flock, but also examines his personal challenges as he develops a relationship with a young Hawaiian woman. Typical of Cox’s films, Molokai is layered and multi-dimensional, and challenging for the audience.

In this case, however, the filmmaker had to face the biggest challenge of his career. “I had to learn the Way of the Warrior,” Cox confesses. “During the shoot trouble started with the financiers. It was a real ‘war zone.’ When I work I have a script to start, and then mold it during and throughout production. They didn’t like that and tried to sack me during production, but it didn’t work. The teamsters, crew and even the patients on Molokai wanted me to stay. They were my dear friends. They went on strike for five days ’til I was brought back. They were totally loyal to me. The money guys called them the ‘Paul Cox Mafia.’

Shooting on the island itself was particularly tough because there is no infrastructure. Everything had to be flown in. “It was a miracle that we got a film out of it at all,” Cox said.

“I did the first cut of the film and then they took the film away from me and re-cut it totally. When they secretly started to cut the negative I went to court and got an injunction on the post-production. They showed a version of the picture at a film market and I disassociated myself from it. When the foreign buyers, who had pre-bought a ‘Paul Cox Film,’ found out, and saw the producers’ awful, disjointed version, they pulled out of the sales,” Cox says.

“I took them to court on artistic grounds and won, after a long struggle. I shoot in a certain way, and my films have to be edited as I envisioned them while shooting. I don’t just cut from face to face, but shoot for the finished, edited film.
“Today’s version is completely different than the one shown in the film markets,” says Cox. “There is some justice in the world; now I have the film and I learned to be a relentless warrior.” In the meantime, Paul Cox has shot another film which is, naturally, under his own control, called Innocence.

Among the festival’s other noteworthy prize winners were Sam Mendes’s American Beauty, which won the Air Canada People’s Choice audience prize, and the Benson and the Hedges Film Discovery Award winner, Goat on Fire and Smiling Fish, by Kevin Jordan (see “How They Did it,”—ed.)

At the end of the festival, Toronto’s swirling winds bring rain and with them a remembrance of Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog and its quote from the ancient samurai text, The Hagakure:

“There is something to be learned from a rainstorm.When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. By doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you will still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to all things.” —Stephen Ashton

With Venice and Toronto following so closely on its heels, the 23-year-old Montreal World Film Festival has rarely been known for glitz or market activity. But this isn’t a detriment, as the festival doesn’t try too hard to be glamorous. This year’s typically diverse edition featured 307 films from 68 countries, and with numbers like that the focus naturally centered on the films themselves.

Montreal remains a great place for a moviemaker to gauge audience response because, while practically every screening is jam-packed, only a small fraction of a given audience is made up of press and “industry” types. The citizens of this beautiful, French-speaking city are pure movie lovers, and they turn out in force to catch everything from new studio releases (there were a few) to the most obscure Turkish, Swiss, and Croatian pictures. This year’s jury, considered to be one of the strongest ever, included Stephen Rea, Bibi Andersson, and directors Percy Adlon, Pat O’Connor, and Fernando Solanas.

The weather was unusually hot and sunny this late August, and as a result, the annual outdoor screenings on rue St. Catherine were especially popular. At 9 p.m. each night it was remarkable to find a veritable sea of people gathered on the steps of the Place des Arts watching, in utter silence, movies such as The Red Violin, Central Station, West Beirut, and Life is Beautiful.

In the theaters, the offerings were decidedly mixed. Many films, such as Miramax’s Mansfield Park, (easily the weakest of the recent Jane Austen adaptations) suffered from a lack of visual storytelling, becoming nothing more than pictures of people talking. Several first-time and independent foreign films suffered the same problem. Off-beat subject matter is no longer enough to stand out from the pack; what really stands out is technique and storytelling, which ironically can elevate even the most simple, mundane or over-used plots into something special.

One film that certainly succeeded on this level was Post Mortem, which won the Best Director award for Montreal native Louis Belanger. A twisted tale of crime, true love, and necrophilia, it’s riveting from first frame to last. Linda, a single mom, leads a secret double life as a seductress who clubs her unsuspecting male victims unconscious and then steals their money. When she meets her match in a rough American, the film abruptly focuses on a new character—a morgue attendant with a sad, solitary life—until Linda re-enters the picture.

Belanger keeps his audience absorbed by forcing its sympathy for characters whose actions are highly suspect, morally, by inserting two incredible plot twists at surprising moments and by using flashbacks in a way that leaves you wanting more each time they end. Scene for scene, the young writer-director coaxes convincing performances and knows where to put his camera in one of the year’s most assured directoral debuts.

Exciting filmmaking was also found in the Iranian film (and Grand Prix winner) The Color of Paradise, a simple tale of a blind boy who returns with his father, a poor coal worker, to his home village in the northern highlands of Iran. Feel

What makes Majid Majidi’s picture so compelling is the truly unique soundtrack, in which the sounds of nature and animals are heightened to create a feeling similar to the boy’s sense of sound. The cumulative effect of this over the course of the movie is remarkable; it feels like a brand-new way to experience a movie.

From Italian director Giuseppe Piccioni came Not of This World, a beautifully-realized portrait of loneliness and life choices which won the Jury Prize. Caterina, a nun only months away from taking her vows, finds an abandoned baby and gradually her maternal instincts are kindled, causing her to call into question her entire belief system. Meanwhile, she tries to track down the baby’s mother and is led to a lonely, middle-aged man who runs a dry cleaner and may or may not be the baby’s father.

At this point, the plot’s mystery element fades as the picture focuses on these two characters, their emotional paths and their very moving inner conflicts, without becoming maudlin. Piccioni is such a talented storyteller that one could watch his movie without sound and still easily follow along and be affected emotionally. Shooting anamorphically with elegant, gliding camera work, he makes it clear visually, in scene after scene, just how much is at stake for these characters. He lends their dilemmas weight, and in so doing makes his audience care and think. Ludovico Einaudi’s music is gorgeous and used very well, commenting on the emotions of the story rather than creating them.

Other popular films included the sensual, semi-pornographic, and sold-out Romance by French director Catherine Breillat; Fine Line’s The Cup, a whimsical tale of two boys in a Tibetan monastery who try to rent a satellite dish to watch the World Cup soccer tournament; The Last Word, part of the Irish Cinema sidebar and a surprisingly poignant tale of a stuttering teen; and the affecting drama The Bridge, in which Gerard Depardieu (who co-directed) and ever-stunning Carole Bouquet find their marriage disintegrating in the 1960s. American films were in short supply, but included the world premiere of the final cut of Happy, Texas, acquired by Miramax at Sundance and subsequently re-cut by director Mark Illsley. Also premiering was Universal’s The Bone Collector, filmed in Montreal, with Denzel Washington and director Philip Noyce on hand to add a touch of studio glitz. Washington was introduced before a full house by producer Martin Bregman but he surprised everyone, including Bregman, by not addressing the crowd, instead just waving and smiling before leaving the theater and the country.

Special mention must be made of Alexander Petrov’s groundbreaking The Old Man and the Sea, a 20-minute, animated retelling of the Hemingway novel in IMAX format. The stunning painting-like animation was the result of two years of painstaking work by Petrov, who finger-painted four layers of glass with oil paint to create each frame. The final result—the first-ever animated IMAX film—is not only physically beautiful but manages to retain the full emotional essence of the novel.

The festival was well-organized, with five venues and a total of 11 screens showing movies from 9 am to midnight. Most theaters had excellent projection and sound. The festival nerve center remained the Hotel Wyndham, which housed most participants and contained a popular meeting space in its piano bar. After complaints about last year’s dead party scene, there were more bashes this time around, though with the low glamour quotient most were rather restrained. —Jeremy Arnold MM