Being a festival goer is not always easy, in the sense that you often have to deal with the very same kind of cinematographic tricks, and you are even more sensible to it. Most of the time, they are supposed to add more rhythm, depth or complexity to the films. Most of the time they seem a bit obvious or awkward, because at the end of the day, a lot of directors use them without paying attention to it. Glue, by Alexis dos Santos and Flakenberg Farwell, by Jesper Ganslandt use a grainy image to capture in a nostalgic way the daily life of some boring teenagers. As if it was necessary to have such a formal style to mask the vacuity not only of the narrative but also of the artistic project. It should be some kind of Sofia Coppola’s syndrome, that tend to widespread as she gets more and more credits for her films. Another well-known trick consists in adding small vignettes to each others and go for the choral film, with its crescendo, its acme and final explosion: Shortbus is stereotypical in this regard and a bit annoying in a way, given the tricks it uses are way to obvious and heavy. Last but not least, Hotel Harabati by Brice Cauvin uses a very French trick that consists in mixing somehow fantastic and psychological dramas. The two characters did not spend their holidays in Venice, and yet their photos show that they did. This trick adds some confusion to the narrative, and makes everything even more doubtful. It is nonetheless a very artificial mean to make the film more opaque and dramatic. Many French films like La Moustache and Lemmings use it, for the worst most of the time. Fortunately Brice Cauvin offers us a few images that give to the film its reason: a mother and her childs lying and laughing on a carpet, a husband looking at his wife, while she takes a shower. All a film needs is a reason, a few shots that make sense and crystallize the desire that made the film possible.

What I like in Reykjavik is that sense of desire and necessity that animate the Icelandic artists. I have that feeling (maybe as a foreigner) that entertainment doesn’t make as much noise there as it does in most of the western countries. On the other hands, there is not much to do in Reykjavik expect creating and experiencing art in its various forms. I found in Reykjavik and its film festival a great appetite for art and true sense of dialog between its multiple forms. This is what is so amazing about this city, small and yet extraordinary living, or beating should I say, to the extent that music plays a significant role in its vitality.
I watched an interesting Icelandic documentary, that is called Act normal, by Ólafur de Fleur. It tells us the story of a monk who once lived in Reykjavik, and then decided to become normal, to have a wife, a job, etc. For him, being normal meant disappearing. No one was looking at him anymore, he had became invisible. Maybe Iceland was the only place where he could have done that. There is so much space here, that you can get lost at any time. There is no places, just space. Iceland is all about disappearances and appearances : you see nothing, and yet you can feel that everything around you is constantly moving and living : you can hear some sounds, see some elusive lights, and then it’s gone. I like to think about Icelandic art and films in terms of pure events and epiphany. “The sublime is now” used to say Barnett Newman, and I think it definitely suits Iceland. I still remember those shots in Noi Albinoi, when the main character looks at the sea. The contre-champ shows the sea and the mountains. It gives no answers, but in a way it is the answer. Iceland is so full of lights, and cherishes darkness so well, cinema is at home there, no doubt about that.

William Friedkin answers a question about paranoia after the screening of his feature film Bug at the 59th International Film Festival in Cannes.
The film was competing in the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs”.

Inside the Carlton Hotel, on La Croisette, we met Haitham Ahmed Zaki who introduces HALIM.

The world premiere of the film happened the 19th of May and was followed by a huge party on the Carlton beach.

Hiroyuki Nakano presents Iron, his short movie about a Yakusa who is still alive today.

Good News Group is one of the biggest media group in the arab world and its CEO, Adel Adeeb, explains its strategy while presenting the world premiere of “Halim” in Cannes.

Seems like Egypt is gaining momentum in cinema with Good News Group which schedules another big project, about Al Qaeda, after Halim.

Halim is the most expensive film to date in the arab world with an overall budget of USD 6 millions.

Interview recorded the 18th of May at the Carlton, in Cannes.

A Complicated Story, Simply Told (short)
Director: Jaap van Heusden

Interview with a promising young director whose film has been selected in the prestigious Cinefondation selection at the 2006 International Film Festival in Cannes.

Here is an exclusivity from Cinelogs, the cinema’s weblog : the debate following the screening of Sonhos de Peixe for the International Critic’s Week in Cannes 2006.

SONHOS DE PEIXE, directed by Kirill Mikhanovsky
SYNOPSIS : In a village on the northeastern coast of Brazil, Jusce, 17, scrapes a living by diving 30 meters, with rudimentary equipment, for lobster. His “prize” at the end of a long day of risky work is sitting close to Ana, who lives with her mother and young daughter, as she savors the drama of urban sophisticates on her favorite soap opera. Ana dreams of leaving the village to see the world. Jusce is content with the life he leads .The other fishermen, friends of Jusce’s dead father, help him to buy and fit out his own fishing boat. One day an old buddy, Rogério, returns from the big city to work at giving dune buggy rides along the coast. The day Rogério gives Jusce a ride to Ana’s place marks the beginning of their rivalry for Ana’s attention. Jusce has to reinvent himself in order not to loose Ana to the adventurous life style of Rogério.

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Solaf Fawakhergy is a syrian actress coming to Cannes for the first time and will attend the world premiere of Halim directed by Sherif Arafa.

She plays Didi, Halim’s first love.

In festivals, movies especially created for them and their peculiar audience are warmly welcomed indeed. Or perhaps the question should be considered the other way round. Festivals create demands and rumours, watch out for the slightest sensation and therefore create the trends.

In their own way, Hamaca Paraguaya and Taxidermie suit Cannes’ Festival perfectly. Hamaca provides it with pure meaning, and makes itself the standard of a Latin American Cinema, quite affected and conceptual. This is the sheer tedious even if interesting festival-movie around which you think for a short while : « Yes, this is strong! » (well…heavy rather than strong, in short let’s say cerebral!). The selector himself must have thought he had to keep it for its radical aspect, there was a place for it in the selection, bluff it or not, that was not the point. I think there is -even if unsaid- some kind of quota for such films, beacause they can exist but in festivals, or perhaps in museums. However it is good that such films should exist, that they should promote not only a tougher and more elementary cinema, but also that they should enable to experience cinema and time quite differently, let’s say more vertically than horizontally to sum it all up, somewhere nothing might be expected. Where the point isn’t to expect anything, but to feel.

In quite an opposite way, Taxidermie is a kind of monster-movie, absolutely baroque, with sex, orgies, horror -in short, an image that constantly strive for escalation, and does not content itself with being brutal but also crude, ugly and shocking. Being attractive in no way, that film however shows the lines of a strong and daring thesis about the history of Hungary, from the Second World War to the post-sovietic area. Over three generations, men and their bodies change : pain and fantacy in the earlier times, inventing a new man in the second generation, gorged untill he cannot eat no more, and eventually inventing of course a body. Ideology prints its mark on a body that, having been taking too much, only yearn for vaccum, for « becoming-thing », just as if it had failed in its task, as if being a man was too dangerous for it, too unrealistic also to be but a man in the end. Monster-Movie about monstruosity. A very human movie, as people say. You see? Just like Barbarism With a Human Face. That is Monster-Movie. That kind of humanity, its critical outcome.