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60 films in competition at Middle East International Film Fest

60 films in competition at Middle East International Film Fest — Sep 29 2008 12:00AM

Over 60 films from 32 countries around the world will take part in the Official Competition for this year's Middle East International Film Festival, running October 10-19, 2008.
This year's festival will see 138 films screened from East to West, up from 80 films in MEIFF's inaugural festival in 2007. This year's Official Competition is comprised of four sections: feature, documentary, short films and student films.
"I am pleased to say that MEIFF 2008 has attracted some of the top films, filmmakers and distinguished industry guests from all corners of the world and we are honoured to host them in Abu Dhabi," said Vice Chairman of MEIFF, Mohamed Khalaf Al Mazrouei.

"The Official Competition is the place to be at MEIFF to see up and coming films and premieres from across the globe," said Nashwa Al Ruwaini, Director of MEIFF. "These films should be the first stop for cinema lovers in Abu Dhabi. Among our many world and regional premieres, the In Competition feature films O'Horten (Norway) and Mermaid (Russia) have both been submitted for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film."

With ten days in this year's Festival, the slate of films has increased and is balanced with both international and Arab films. The line-up includes critically acclaimed films, award winners and crowd pleasers. The Black Pearl cash prize distributed to the winners, along with a trophy, has been increased this year with prizes totaling over $1 million. All Black Pearl Award Winners will be decided by a jury split into two sections, a feature and documentary jury and a shorts, students and advertisements jury with the winners announced in the Closing Ceremony on October 19, 2008.

Jon Fitzgerald, MEIFF's Director of Programming quoted, "With an expanded Festival in 2008, it was logical to increase the number of films in Competition. We are pleased to present such a strong line-up, building on our success of 2007, where we presented Counterfeiters with a Jury Prize, before it went on to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. This year, the selections include a high percentage of dramatic works that focus on women, their relationships and the universal challenges they face in the world around them."

The Black Pearl Awards will be given in the following categories:

Feature Films and Documentaries:
The Black Pearl for Best Narrative Film - $200,000
The Black Pearl for Best Documentary - $150,000
The Black Pearl for Best Actress - $75,000
The Black Pearl for Best Actor - $75,000
The Black Pearl for Best Artistic Contribution - $75,000 (For any arts of Cinema except direction and acting)
Special Jury Prize- $125,000

Short Films:
The Black Pearl for Best Narrative Film - $75,000
The Black Pearl for Best Documentary - $75,000
The Black Pearl for Best Animation Film - $75,000

Student Films:
The Black Pearl for Best Narrative Film - $25,000
The Black Pearl for Best Documentary - $25,000
The Black Pearl for Best Animation - $25,000

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Special Jury Prizes (3)

Audience Choice Award
Audiences are asked to vote for their favorite film between the 130 films in the festival and an award will be handed to the winning film.

The Narrative Competition features 15 films, seven of which are world premieres and two regional premieres. Among the films premiering are Samir Habachi's Beirut: Open City (Lebanon), Magdi Ahmed Ali's Fawzia: A Special Blend (Egypt), Saleh Karama's Henna (UAE) and the much-anticipated Rashid Masharawi's Laila's Birthday making its regional premiere. Among the international films competing in the Festival are Ayten Mutlu Saray's Zara (Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands, Kurdistan) marking its world premiere, Alexander Melnik's Terra Nova (Russia) making its regional premiere and Indian Girish Kasaravalli's Gulabi Talkies.

Films participating in the Documentary competition are Seven Blind Filmmakers (Iran) directed by Mohammed Shirvani, Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love (Senegal, Egypt, France) directed by Elisabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Man on Wire (UK, USA) directed by James Marsh, to name a few of the eight competing.

In the category of Short Films, 30 films from 21 different countries will compete to win the prestigious Black Pearl. The shorts program is divided into four sections, 'Aspects of Life', A 'World of Youth', 'Middle East Vision' and 'Animation and Experimental'. Featured short films include Sometimes (Egypt) directed by Mahmoud Soliman, Boxing Lesson (Romania) directed by Alexandru Marrodinue, Breadmakers (UK) directed by Yasmin Fedda, Boutellisse (Tunisia) directed by Nasreddinee Shili and The Graffiti of Mister Tupa�a (New Zealand) directed by Christopher Dudman.

The 17 Student Films in the competition include Ali the Iraqi (Lebanon) directed by Vatche Boulghourjian, Kate Wakes (USA) directed by Jasmine Kosovic, The Morning with Other Eye (Russia) directed by Philipp Yurev, Ya Halawood (Jordan) directed by Students of Workshop by Amman Filmmakers Cooperative among other films competing to win the three $25,000 Black Pearl Awards.

Also part of the Black Pearl Awards is a Special Advertisements Section with three special jury prizes.

MEIFF, held in Abu Dhabi, is an annual event and a project of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH). The Festival is a cultural event dedicated to bringing a diverse slate of international films and programs to the community and introducing filmmakers from around the world to the resources of the region.

This year's MEIFF will see several new additions to an already exciting schedule. For the first time, there will be a section of the Festival concentrating on Environmental Films as well as a showcase of documentaries highlighting the 60 years since the division of Palestine and various high-profile industry initiatives.

Japanese

Japanese — Sep 22 2008 12:00AM

Besides the usual emphasis on Latino and Made-in-Spain films, new directors, and the Open Space (Zabaltegi) catch-all international sections, one of the eye openers of the 56th edition of this tasty Basqueland festival is a forty-three (43!) film overview of so-called "Japanese Film Noir". Film Noir purists who love to split hairs over the definition of the term, and over which films qualify for inclusion in the category and which ones do not, may be taken aback by some of the entries in this saucy sidebar, but anyone who takes them in is in for some unusually uproarious festival fun.

Titles seen so far in the first weekend of the fest were: "Karakkaze Yaro" (afraid to Die) by Yasuzo Masumura, 1960, starring Novelist Yukio Mishima as a lowdown gangster, "Pigs and Battleships", (Shohei Imamura, 1961), "Yaju Shisubeshi" (The Beast to Die) by Toru Murakawa, 1980, and "Hakuchu no Buraikan" (Greed in Broad Daylight) by Kinji Fukasaku, 1961. Many are basically cheap gangster flicks churned out after the war with noirish elements and definite American influences, while other are of the Yakuza or just plain gangster genres, however, all are interesting and provide a fresh new view of the popular Japanese cinema which tends to be overlooked by the breed of snooty western academics who do most of the writing in the west about Japanese cinema. The collection is called "JAPON EN NEGRO" and puts out an eye-catching poster from the early Kurosawa film "Stray Dog" (Nora Inu) with a handsome young Toshiro Mifune as a clean-cut detective in a white cap on the cover. A T-shirt with the same image is on sale. Details on these films will follow in subsequent reports.

PRESS SCREENINGS AND PRESS CONFERENCES
The daily festival routine here starts out with two press screenings of competition films in the vast main hall of the beachfront Kursaal (CASINO) Cube, each of which is followed by a major press conference in a Kursaal basement hall set up for this purpose. Arriving only on the second day I missed the big ones for Woody Allen and Banderas, but have managed to attend three so far on the first weekend of the fest. The Friday noon film was a little known sleeper from Sundance entitled "Frozen River", a first film from femme director Courtney Hunt. This is a story of an antagonistic relationship between a white trailer-trash woman of middlish age and a younger Indian woman, based on their mutual economic misery and their attempts to survive based on the dangerous smuggling of illegal immigrants over the Canadian border --the frozen St. Lawrence River in winter --to the Mohawk Reservation on the American side.
This grim and gritty picture won the Grand Jury prize this year at Sundance. One American reviewer stated that Melissa Leo, who plays the down but not-quite- out spunky white heroine, "Ray Eddy", should win the next Best Actress Oscar, and that might not be a bad choice --although I think that Amerindian actress Misty Upham, deserves equal credit for her taciturn portrayal of Mohawk smuggler "Lila Littlewolf". The film was roundly applauded by the large press gathering with is a very positive indication of Golden Concha (best film) potential. At this early point I would say that Frozen River has the inside track.

The following press conference with the two main actresses and director C. Hunt at the press table was, to my surprise, sparsely attended, and did not last very long as there were not many questions from the scattering of Spanish scribes. It did turn out, however, that Misty Upham is actually a member of the faraway Blackfeet tribe in Browning, Montana, not a Mohawk from upper New York State. She is at least, an authentic Native American, Seattle based, and would seem to have a promising mainstream film career ahead of her. Other Indians in the film were real Mohawks from the reservation, not Hollywood Indians with Bronx accents.

By way of contrast, the next press conference of the day was SRO packed to the rafters, mainly because it featured straight from Hollywood big-name talent, athough for a shmucky film that forced this writer to walk out at the halfway mark to avoid brain damage. The film in question, Ben Stiller's latest frenzied brain storm, "Tropic Thunder", and the conference participants Director/actor Ben himself, and his main co-star, Robert Downey, Jr. Stiller radiated calm and confidence, the mark of a young man (43) who has definitely arrived at the pinnacle of Hollywood wheeler-dealership, whereas Downey, facing the press at his side, appeared and acted droopy-lidded, wasted, and spaced out on something � or other. The pair carried on what amounted to something like a private in-joke dialogue - more or less like a David Letterman show without David Letterman -- in sum, a waste of time as far as press conferences go.
As for the film, incredibly an official selection of the fest, it was apparently meant to be a satire of Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" and maybe all war films -as well as a send up of all the foibles of Hollywood itself, and features a numberof Hwd superstars, notably Nick Nolte and Tom Cruise, in unrecognizable makeup. The first five minutes, a fake trailer, is really funny, and if it would have ended there this writer would have had his laff for the day. However, it quickly descended into such trashy shlock and endlessly repetitive mayhem that it left one stunned rather than amused halfway threw. Different strokes, and different bashes over the head for different folks -some of the Spanish journalists I talked with later found it amusing and "worthwhile". But, as the Spanish hemselves say, "sobre gustos no hay nada escrito".
A welcome change of pace was offered by the romantic French competition entry "La Belle Personne", which director Christophe Honor� explained at his Monday morning press conference, is a timeless update to contemporary Paris of a 16th century French classic, "La Princesse de Cl�ves". This tale of criss-crossed lovers, some of them gay, others just unhappy, is now set in an upscale Parisian lyc�e where a very attractive new student, busty, sultry Junie, 16, (L�a Seydoux) signs up for an Italian class and is soon upsetting everybody's romantic applecart, including that of her Italian teacher, Mr. Nemours, (Louis Garrel) who, until her arrival reigned as Monsieur Irresistible among all the horny co-eds. To me this films reads a bit like a more subtle Gallic version of "High School Confidential" with Miss Seydoux providing the sexual voltage instead of Mamie van Doren - but this may be stretching a point. At any rate "La Belle Personne" starts out as a tender tale of teenagers in Paris, and is a bit slow and over tender under hard-to-get Junie flashes opens her winter coat, wearing nothing underneath -- to expose her wondrously proportioned torso and breastwork to shy goggle-eyed boyfriend Otto -from which point the pic takes off to its tragic, almost noirish conclusion. When Otto suspects that Junie is also carrying on with Mr. Nemours -which she isn't -she's just teasing both him and herself - poor Otto jumps from the balcony of the school to his death on the concrete below. Junie takes a quick look at the corpse on the ground then quietly splits town, but you can be sure that the Lyc�e Henri IV will never be the same without her. I'm almost sorry I attended the press conference because young L�a Seydoux in loose blonde hair without the severe black Cleopatra hairdo of the film, was just a shy kid herself nothing like the teenage femme fatale that had so excited my adrenaline and other secretions during the course of the film. Sometimes we're better off with our fantasies, but ain't that, after all, just what the flickers are all about �?
ALEX DELEON, SAN SEBASTIAN

Viennale Trailer by Jean Luc Godard

Viennale Trailer by Jean Luc Godard — Sep 15 2008 12:00AM

The annual festival trailer has been one of the Viennale's special features for quite some time now. This is not a commercial trailer as such, but rather a small, autonomous piece of cinema, standing on its own and for the festival alike. At the Viennale's invitation internationally renowned directors have created these one-minute films for the festival in the last few years, among them Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Leos Carax and Agn�s Varda.
Festival director Hans Hurch has been trying for quite some time now to win director Jean-Luc Godard for such a trailer - and it was worth the effort. Jean-Luc Godard has kept the promise he made this summer and sent us a short one-minute film, which, as the filmmaker emphasizes, he has created especially for the Viennale at the festival's invitation.

This is all the more noteworthy, as it is the director's first work for the screen since his last film, Notre musique, from the year 2004.

Une catastrophe
Entitled Une catastrophe, the film is a kind of cinematographic poem about violence and love, conceived in Godard's characteristic montage and combination of cinematic material, sounds, language and music. It includes short excerpts from Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925) and the collective film People on Sunday (1930), accompanied by a Low German 18th-century poem from Western Pomerania with the lines: Kumm du um Middernach / Kumm du Klock een / Vader sl�pt / Moder sl�pt / ik slap alleen. Klopp an de Kammerd�r / fat an de Klink. / Vader meent / Moder meent / dat deit de Wind
"With Jean-Luc Godard's wonderful work for our festival, a dream has come true for me," says festival director Hans Hurch, "and at the same time I consider it as a token of high esteem and a symbol for the importance the Viennale has meanwhile gained in the film industry."

The festival trailer Une catastrophe will be screened from September 18 in 100 selected Austrian cinemas as well as during the course of the Viennale program from October 17 to 29 and displayed on fest21.com
click to start the video.

Film in focus from Toronto: Every little step

Film in focus from Toronto: Every little step — Sep 9 2008 12:00AM

OK, true confessions time.....I have been a lifelong musical theater enthusiast and even a bit of a "Broadway baby", so a documentary that charts the birth and revival of a landmark piece of musical theater is right up my show biz alley.

In the delightful and surprisingly emotional documentary Every Little Step, co-directors James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo have preserved the genesis and historical significance of the landmark musical A Chorus Line. The musical was a milestone when it premiered in 1975 (I saw it at least three times that I can remember during its original run). Not only did it abandon the usual trappings of a traditional Broadway extravaganza, it introduced a kind of enhanced realism, in its tale of young singers and dancers doing whatever they can to make it into the chorus of a Broadway-bound musical comedy. The original production ran for 10 years, making it the second longest running Broadway show ever after Cats.

The film ably mixes rare archival footage and audio tapes that point to the genesis of the project with a storyline that chronicles the recent revival that just closed on Broadway last month. Michael Bennett, a dancer-turned-choreographer, had an idea that the actual struggles of young dancers with Broadway stardust in their eyes would make a compelling musical showcase. Basing his chorus line of distinct characters on the audiotaped testimonies of real "Broadway gypsies", Bennett brought a modernist and realist edge to the musical theater form that was embraced for its humor, its honesty and its depiction of the struggles to express one's talents as a way of defining one's self in the world.

The contemporary parts of the film illustrate the hard work, cut-throat competition and grueling process of auditions that each of the hopefuls put themselves through for the sake of their art. As the potential cast list gets cut further and further, it becomes clear that the whole process is generally one of rejection after rejection, with the hope of breaking through one day that must be kept alive in order to put oneself through these exhausting paces.

In many ways, A Chorus Line, with its frank depiction of the grit behind the glitter and its acknowledgement that the theater is a tentpole for a unique tribe of sexual and societal misfits, predated the current rash of talent reality shows that blanket American television. The same thrill of watching a young novice move all the way to the top (e.g. become the new American Idol) is mirrored in the film and the musical's depiction of the heartbreak of being cut and the exhilaration of being chosen.

These very human emotions make this more than a film strictly for musical theater afficianados. As in the most revelatory art forms, the artifice reflects on reality. The aspirations of these "Broadway babies" are the hopes we all have to make the most of our talents and find a way to express our individual selves.

For more information on the film, log on to: http://www.endgameent.com/

Sandy Mandelberger, Toronto FF Dailies Editor

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