Alex Deleon, <filmfestivals.com>
This is an all European film festival with no American junkfood and surprizes every day.
Chantal Akerman, 1950 ~ 2015
Tuesday, day 4 was an unbroken streak of Six features.
1. "Sirokkó", Early Jancsó, 1961. His "French film" with Marina Vlady and Jacques Charrier. By no means the best of Jancsó, but has all of the usual suspects; naked woman, horses flashing by and people constantly on the move with arbitrary unrealistic shootings, and lots of political sloganing.
2. "Jesus Christ's Horoscope", Good late Jancsó, 1988.
Modern setting with a prominent skyblue VW bug and a film within the film being shot. All star cast features György Cserhalmi, Dorottya Udvaros and Ildiko Bánsági. This was Jancsó numbers five and six and the week is still young. Some his master shots are yet to come.
3. "Esma's Secret, Grbavica". Berlin 2006 Golden Bear prize winner by Jasmila Žbavićs, set in postwar Sarajevo. Starring Mirjana Karanovic as a war widow Esma, and Luna Mijović as her beautiful but troubled teenage daughter. Daughter wants to believe her father was a Bosnian martyr (shaheed) but is shocked when her mother reveals that she was raped by Serbians so her father would have been a Chetnik rapist. Very powerful.
4. "Suzanne Simonin, la Religieuse de Diderot". Colorful period drama directed by Jacques Rivette in 1966 stars Anna Karina as unwilling nun forced into monastery life much against her will in 18th century France. Long and emotionally brutal, but worth the effort to see Karina in such an uncharacteristic role. Lesbian overtones in latter part of the picture provide some sauciness and even a few laughs before Karina plunges out the window to atone for her earthly sins.
5. "I don't belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman"
By Marianne Lambert, 2015. RT 67 minutes.
This is a highly revealing biopic as well as a deep discussion of the film art of late Belgian avant garde filmmaker Chantal Akerman, largely in her own words and partly by professional colleagues, notably American director Gus Van Sant, french actress Aurore Clément, and the editor Claire Atherton qwho worked with her regularly on her films.
Ackerman, the daughter of an Auschwitz survivor said that her mother's silence about her Concentration camp experience was an important instigation for Ackerman's taking up filmmaking. . She committed suicide in Paris last October at the age of 65 leaving behind a most unusual body of 40 films which not often seen by the general public but are analyzed here in considerable depth for a relatively short document, only 40 minutes long. One of her films exerpts of which are seen here presents explicit lovemaking between women but Chantal refused to have her films shown at LGBT festivals and also rejected the label "feminist filmaker". In the end the only label she was willing to a accept was Jewish film maker although jewishness is not an important theme in the body of her work. Ms. Lambert's documentary is an exceptionally insightful film about the art of film making but beyond that offers a wealth of food for thought. The discovery if the day.
Her most commercial film, “A Couch in New York,” about an apartment swap between a New York psychologist and a Parisian woman, starring William Hurt and Juliette Binoche was released in 1996. The rest are basically what might best be called experimental in The best sense of that word.
6. "Ce soir ou jamais" (Tonight or never) 1961. Directed by Michel Deville with Claude Rich and a cast of other French nondescripts.
This was the second film of the day in the Anna Karina tribute, an incredibly boring black and white talkathon about a director trying to find a good actress for his next film. Karina looks great in a non Godardian nouvelle Vague film but the if this is Nouvelle Vague it must qualify as a lowly pit between crests of that energetic wave. The film broke down near the end plunging the room into darkness which provided a good excuse for a quick exit. Buona notte, giorno quattro.
