MWFF 2012: Opening Night

Montreal World Film Festival

The Montreal World festival has ended, and now only memories remain. Above is a photo of the entry to the Place-des-Arts just before the commencement of the festival's Opening Ceremonies. It seems it had been for the first time that an orchestra played during the Red Carpet walk.

Just above is the view of the Hyatt Regency hotel terrace where a cocktail party was held before the Closing Ceremony. The buffet of cold cuts and cheese was laid out inside the hotel, but one could step with a plate and a drink outside onto the terrace.

And this is a Red Carpet walk to the Closing Ceremony. I really could not tell whether there was anybody famous in that shot. To me it simply made a nice composition of people walking on the Red Carpet inside Place-des-Arts towards Maisonneuve Theatre, where the Closing ceremonies were to be held.


And the last but not the least are two photos of the founder and director of the Montreal World Film Festival Serge Losique. The picture on the left was taken at the cocktail party held before the Closing Ceremony. He was walking too fast... The one to the right shows Monsieur Losique on the stage at the Maisonneuve Theatre, Place-des-Arts. 

Visit the Montreal World Film Festival website.

Click on images to enlarge them.

All photos in this article by Nadia Slejskova.

© 2012 Nadia Slejskova

MWFF 2012: Latitude 52

LATITUDE 52
Montreal World Film Festival

First Films World Competition
2012 / Colour / 97 min / China

PRODUCTION TEAM

Filmmaking : Degena Yun, Leon Du
Scriptwriter : Zheng Xianmin, Zhang Jianjua
Photography : Zhang Hao
Montage : Zhang Jianhua
interpreters : Qi Hang, Wang Zheng, Boris Bedrosov, Fedor Selkin, Ren Shan, Ya Ru, Svetlana Tsvichenko
Production House : Yan Xiaoming, Mu Ren, Ming Zhenjiang, Mailisi Film Co. Ltd., 8-2201 Jian Dian Garden, Wen Hui Yuan North Street, Hai Dian District, Beijing (Chine), tél. & fax: (+86) 10 6225 43 01,dongguiyouxiang@163.com

Official description of the film:

LATITUDE 52 (LAO SHAO QIA)

In the late 1960s, growing ideological tensions between the two most powerful communist nations caused a final split between Soviet Union and China. In the dead of winter, A’ersileng, a young Chinese soldier, arrives at the tense border to man the Chinese watchtower. Under the command of Sergeant He Dazhuang, they watch over the border together, but A’ersileng struggles to adapt to the solitude. After a series of incidents, he is sent out to search the border for Soviet spies. There he stumbles across a love letter sent to Sergei, a Soviet soldier, blown over from the Soviet side. Between A’ersileng and Sergei -- two soldiers guarding two sides of the border, separated by a barbed wire fence, unable to meet or speak -- an unlikely friendship grows. A hidden friendship, so strong, that in the face of danger A’ersileng risks his life rushing across the border to save Sergei. But it is this fated first close encounter that would also to be their last. Years later a female Russian officer comes to China and delves into this faded past...

I met the two Chinese film directors Degena Yun and Leon Du, as well as the Russian actress Svetlana Tsvichenko on the terrace of the Hyatt Regency hotel that hosted the World Film Festival 2012 in Montreal. Leon Du told me that the film’s script was based on the recollections of a former Chinese boarder guard Zhang Xian Min who described many true instances of edgy situations on the Russian – Chinese border, but most interestingly, also true friendships that also developed along the border line during the very strained period of political tensions between the two countries.

The most compelling theme of the movie is the friendship that grows despite the spiked wire fence between the two watchtowers on the opposite sides of the border. Both towers have two solders stationed there for their military duty. The Chinese solders watch the Russian watchtower and minutely check on what the Russian guards are doing, and the Russian solders do the same. They do it day-long, day after day. They watch each other through binoculars, and pretty soon they learn a lot about each other. The two main characters on the opposite sides of the border learn to really like and respect one another, even to the extend that the Chinese solder risks his own life to save the Russian solder's life. During this incident he even disregards the strict rules and crosses over the boarder line.

The film clearly shows that a true friendship and a concern for another human being, even if that person is of a different race and political alliance, will flourish even under the most restrictive and repressive circumstances, and that the artificially created political differences and antagonisms fade in the face of the true human values.

The choice of the actor Qi Hang who portrays the main character -  the Chinese border guard who risks his life - is superb (see his photo above, at the very beginning of this post). He fits the role very well, and is able with his unassuming way of acting to project the humanity aspect into the toughest of the situations. With his performance, he makes a loud and clear statement that at the end all that really counts for us human beings is the humanity in each one of us, and not the political associations or other artificial persuasions that keep us hating and mistrusting each other.

The photo on the left shows  the two directors of the film (Degena Yun in the middle and  Leon Du on the right). To the left of them is the Russian actress Svetlana Tsvichenko who portrays a daughter of the Russian solder whose life was saved by the Chinese border guard. Years later, the character she plays arrives to China to find out all the details about what had happened on that fateful day on the Russian – Chinese border that preserved her father’s life.

Here are two more photos of Svetlana Tsvichenko on the terrace of the Hyatt Regency hotel, Montreal, 2012.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Image at the very top of the article courtesy of MWFF and the director of the film.

All other photos in this article by Nadia Slejskova.

© 2013 Nadia Slejskova

MWFF 2012: Invasion

INVATION
Montreal World Film Festival

2012 / Colour / 104 min / Germany - AustriaWorld Competition (feature film)

PRODUCTION TEAM

Filmmaking : Dito Tsintsadze  
Scriptwriter : Dito Tsintsadze
Photography : Ralf M. Mendle  
Montage : Karina Ressler
interpreters : Burghart Klaussner, Anna F., Merab Ninidze, Heike Trinker, David Imper, Jasper Barwasser
Production House : Thanassis Karathanos, Karl Baumgartner, Ebba Sinzinger, Vincent Lucassen, Pallas Film GmbH, Mansfelder Str. 56, 06108 Halle, Saale (Allemagne), tél.: (49 345) 6787 323, office@pallasfilm.de / WILDart Film, Pfeilgasse 32/1, 1080 Vienne (Autriche)

Official description of the film:

INVASION

Joseph is mourning the death of his beloved wife. At the funeral, some unexpected visitors introduce themselves as relatives of his deceased wife, a woman named Nina and her son Simon. They invite Joseph to Simon's Kendo tournament where he meets Simon’s wife Milena. Before long, Nina asks Joseph if the young couple could live at his place for a while. As time passes, Nina seems to be showing up at Joseph's with increasing frequency, and soon her boyfriend and Milena's son Marco have taken up residence in his house. Although Joseph had initially been pleased to have company, not least to take his mind off his recent loss, these new sub-tenants become increasingly aggressive in their behaviour, practically forcing their way they into his life. Is Joseph simply being paranoid or is his the victim of a real, brutal home invasion?

In my opinion, this film is about a brutal home invasion which ends in an even more brutal murderous resolution, from which none of the surviving characters, regardless of how mistreated they were, should have come out with a clean consciousness, although they actually do. Moreover, the film presents an “idyllic” ending with what appears to be a loving couple walking through a beautiful scenery into a misty future, love being the trophy for the brutality committed. Maybe in the Middle Ages it was OK to take the law into one’s own hands, since the society did not present any infrastructure for doing it otherwise. But in our modern world other means exist to rid oneself of the blatant abuse, rather than defiling one’s soul with murder.

Yet, I heard a different opinion from festival’s professionals who attended the Press Conference with the director of the film Dito Tsintsadze, and I wonder if that idea had not originated with the director himself. The people I talked to claimed that the entire and very graphic invasion and the ensuing murders were not real but only represented a metaphor for having to “kill” many surrounding people who prevented a man and a woman to love each other. They thought that the misty shots of an ally in the beginning and the end of the film were to signify that the whole film was only a metaphor. Since the supposed “metaphor” was by so many degrees more vivid and graphic in comparison to the bleakness and briefness of the shots of the ally by the lake at the beginning and the ending of the film (though those shots were very beautiful), it is really very hard for me to see the entire film in between as being only a metaphor. Also, a supposed “loss” of memory at the very end of the film concerning those who were killed does not imply to me that those characters never existed and were simply only metaphors. It rather shows that the survivors would prefer to forget everything that took place and brush it off as never existing. If the director indeed attempted to present the entire film as a metaphor, than, in my opinion, he did not entirely succeed.

On the other hand, the director was very successful with the purely cinematographic means of structuring individual shots, the way he presented his visual narrative, and also with how carefully he chose the camera’s shooting angles and the shapes and colours of the film’s imagery. Also, the actors did a commendable job of portraying the intended personages of the film’s drama.

In the film, Marco, the small boy, plays an ominous role. He is introduced to the viewer as being a peculiar child, and appears at first to be retiring and even somewhat dim-witted. But for me that impression faded the moment I saw him to wink at his mother across a table, and her winking back at him. I knew right away that this was not a gratuitous element included in the film for no purpose. Shortly after the murders began. The second incident of Marco's facial gesturing occurs just before Nina’s murder, when by waving his palm up and down in front of his face he presents to Nina in rapid succession a smiling and a serious face, both expressions looking like an unreal mask. The symbology of that was clear: the niceties of smiles were ending and serious business was to take place.

Marco's playing with a toy car controlled from a distance was also ominous. At first he drives it in the courtyard where his stepfather terrorizes him with physical training. His stepfather was the first to be killed. Next, the boy drives the car at Nina, his stepfather’s mother. The car forces Nina to jump into the swimming pool where she is killed. And then he goes into Nina’s boyfriend’s office and handles his gun. That was a clue as to who was next in line to go.

A question begs itself to be asked: did Marco have some evil powers to manipulate the reality at a distance, or was he simply used to control the supposed “metaphor” of the film? If he was used as such, than what is the moral implication of utilizing a child character in order to facilitate presentation of violence in a film?

As for the boy's mother Milena, she is shown standing behind a window in a scanty nightwear rearranging her hair. Joseph, the old man and the owner of the house, sees her through the window in his bedroom while lying in his bed. And apparently she knows it. Shortly after she enters his bedroom and immediately initiates sex.  Her husband, the boy’s stepfather, budges into Joseph’s bedroom in search for her, but she manages to escape. Later, we see Milena once again displaying herself in the same window, with Joseph watching her from his bed. But this time she goes into the attic. Joseph rushes out of his room and bumps into her husband who is once again looking for his wife. They both climb into the attic only to see Nina’s boyfriend engaged in an abusive sexual activity with Milena. Although we find later on that Nina’s boyfriend is Marco's father, there are no motivating clues in the film why his mother Milena had to go to the attic and endure abuse. Maybe it was simply to lure Joseph and her husband into the attic to instigate the first murder in the film? Was the Milena simply a super manipulator?

One of the festival's professionals I talked to interpreted the film in this way: the second part of the film represents hallucinations of Joseph, the old man, a metaphor of what he would have wanted to happen in order to end up with Milena, the young woman. The hallucination sequence starts after the man throws everybody out of his house and then comes back into the seemingly empty house on Christmas Eve.  Yet soon he is not alone. Not only the people he threw out but many others start pouring into the living room through various doors, holding candles and sparkles in their hands, very reminiscent of a surprise birthday party. This scene is supposedly the beginning of Joseph’s hallucinations since it was unbearable for him to be alone in his huge house on a Christmas night. 

The invasive birthday–like party on the day when many celebrate the birth of Christ quickly deteriorates and marks the beginning of the murders. I am not really sure what was intended by the party's symbology.

In this interpretation of the film as hallucinations of an old and lonely man, the final scene of the film, where Joseph is walking hand in hand with Milena and her son Marco along the misty winter ally, I was told that Joseph is actually all by himself, in the same way as he is alone in the very beginning of the film, and there is nobody with him. The last scene of the film is simply Joseph's hallucination as to what he would have liked to have.

Is this film simply about a mental illness of an old man? Somehow I never got that impression when I watched it. Joseph appeared to be the most stable of all the people portrayed.

The interpretation that the second half of the film is about hallucinations of an old man also seems to contradict as to what I was told the director said at the press conference. He stated that it was hard to tell what would happen between Joseph and Milena in the future, how their relationship would progress.

One can ask whether the film director, being also the screen writer, chose to portray all the violence in order to exorcise his own demons? It is well known that the creative process requires a deep involvement of the creator’s mind and spirit, of his entire being, and entails, to a varying degree, a projection of oneself into the work being created.

The film seems to mystify the viewers without providing the real clues as to what is attempted to be portrayed: a reality,  metaphor, or mental illness - hallucinations? There might be those who would object that the film’s point is to erase any lines between the reality, metaphor and hallucination. Yet, even if that was so, I still feel the film has not succeeded in doing this type of thing effectively.

I would invite the readers of this post to see the film and to decide for themselves how to perceive the portrayed: as totally real, where none of the present seem to be perturbed about crimes taken place; as a metaphor to achieve love; or as hallucinations of a lonely man? If this were reality, ask yourself how would have you acted in a similar situation? Keep in mind that if what is portrayed is a true brutality towards others, then we have been really desensitized as to not react to it in disgust, similarly as the characters portrayed. In addition, in real life these types of conflicts could have been resolved through law channels and not through gratuitous crime.

In case the film is only a metaphor, then it would not have required extremely graphic and even bloody portrayal of violent acts. The people who were “preventing” love between Joseph and Milena could have been very elegantly and artistically eliminated, for instance, with a simple stroke of a brush, instead of polluting our minds  with violence, and making many of us even more desensitized to watching brutality than we already are.

And if the film is about hallucinations, then why should one really care about what type of violent private mental imagery - hallucinations a perturbed, lonely, ageing man has, even when artfully cinematographically depicted? If there is a reason for us to care, than this point should have been made much stronger in the film.

Although the film appears to have a clear story line, it failed to present clearly its intent, or get us involved in the characters’ and our own humanity.

MWFF 2012: Shifting the Blame

Shifting the Blame
Montreal World Film Festival

2012 / Colour / 93 min / GermanyFirst Films World Competition

PRODUCTION TEAM

Filmmaking : Lars-Gunnar Lotz  
Scriptwriter : Anna Maria Prassler
Photography : Jan Prahl  
Montage : Julia Boehm
interpreters : Edin Hasanovic, Julia Brendler, Marc Ben Buch, Pit Bukowski, Natalia Rudziewicz
Production House : Matthias Drescher, Philipp Knauss, FFL Film & Fernseh-Labor LB GmbH & Co. KG, Hoferstr. 20, 71636 Ludwigsburg (Allemagne), tél.: (49) 7141 488 84 33, specht@ffl.de / info@ffl.de


Official description of the film:

SHIFTING THE BLAME (SCHULD SIND IMMER DIE ANDEREN)

Ben is given the chance of a new beginning in the idyllic "Waldhaus". As one of seven juvenile offenders he is expected to develop his social skills and experience security in a family-like community. But when he meets his housemother Eva, he is shocked: she is one of his victims. His brutal assault on her was never resolved. Ben does his best not to attract attention, but Eva soon starts to suspect something. "With almost Shakespearean force and a differenciated view, Lars-Gunnar Lotz paints the portrait of a young offender guilty of violent crimes who serves his sentence in an open prison. The complexity of guilt and forgiveness is dealt with meticulously and the often stereotyped profession of the social worker is rehabilitated."-- Joachim Kurtz (Die Zeit)

At the beginning of the film we see a brutal crime being committed by an animal –like being in a human form. At the end of the film we see the same person who fully reposes his human nature and all his human qualities. This film does not only deal with the moral but most directly with the spiritual nature of a man. It portrays evil and examines the issues of repentance and forgiveness, where the theme of forgiveness is especially in the forefront. Eve, being a true professional, chooses to control as best as she can her personal suffering and the revulsion towards the criminal who attacked her. She barely holds her restrain not to reveal Ben as her attacker. She chooses silence and waiting  in order to allow the criminal to fully come to terms with what he has done, to assume the full responsibility for it, to confess publicly his crime, and to ask for forgiveness from the very center of his being.

If you ever had a hard time forgiving anybody, this might be a good film for you to see.

Shifting the Blame - Trailer