Tag: documentary

Tell Me Who I Am

Posted on by victorfraga

Seventeen-year-old Alex Lewis suffered a near-fatal motorcycle accident in 1982, which left him in a profound comma. Upon waking up, he immediately recognised his identical twin Marcus, who was on his bedside. However, he failed to identify his mother and his very own identity. He also forgot everything that he had experienced up to that date. It was like being born again. Marcus had to remind him of his past, and to teach him the most menial tasks, such as operating household devices.

Alex gradually realised that there was something unusual about his aristocratic upbringing. His mother was caring and yet very distant. His stepfather was entirely emotionally absent. He learnt that the brothers only went on holidays with friends, and never with their own parents. Fifteen years later, their mother passed away, and Alex came across come unsettling evidence that something very untoward and non-motherly had taken place throughout their youth. He confronts Marcus, but his brother is simply too scared, and refuses to open up.

More than two decades later, Oscar-nominated Ed Perkins interviews both brothers separately in the first two acts of the movie. They are now married men in the fifties with children of their own. They are given the opportunity to open up and to face the demons that have tormented them for so long. At one point, a teary Marcus reveals the morbid details of what had happened in their youth. It wasn’t just an isolated event, but instead a harrowing and yet normalised pattern. His confession is recorded and played back to his brother, who is perplexed to learn the truth. In the third and final act, the two brothers meet up and finally talk about the unspeakable, in an attempt to reconcile their differences and leave the horrific past behind.

The gigantic mansion where the family lived (located somewhere in rural England) is constantly featured in the film, from both inside and outside. It gives the film a sombre and mysterious tone. The old-fashioned timber frame house has a dark driveway and a creepy pearly gate – the stuff of horror movies. The naked tree branches cast a shadow over the dwelling and the existence of the two adults. The photographs from a disturbing past in the attic provide the final touch to this sinister story.

But this is not a horror film. It’s not exploitative, either. The brothers open up at their own pace, and the director seems to respect their wishes and fears. This is a movie about reconciliation. It’s also a very brave endeavour, which will encourage other males who have suffered a similar ordeal to come forward and heal their very own wounds. There is a taboo associated with masculinity that makes this story very painful and embarrassing. Horrific things can happen to people regardless of class, gender and nationality.

Tell me Who I am is in UK cinemas and also on Netflix on Friday, October 18th.

Mystify: Michael Hutchence

Posted on by victorfraga

The famous statement of Socrates that the unconsidered life is not worth living had a terrible and poignant relevance to the life of Michael Hutchence. The saying is usually made in reference to the intellectual life but there is no reason why it cannot be applied psychologically. Michael Hutchence lived a doomed life because he did not understand what drove him and, coupled with a disastrous accident, ended up in depression, drug abuse, tangled relationships, despair and suicide. None of this was necessarily his fault.

He was brought up in a strange, dysfunctional way by parents who sincerely loved their children but treated them more like accessories, subjecting them to long periods of abandonment and separation. At one stage, Michael was separated from his brother Rhett by his mother for no other reason than she wanted to live in another place temporarily and wanted Rhett to be with her. He, his sister Tina and Rhett must have felt like the children of some divorced parents, who do not know whether they are really loved for themselves or are just a nuisance.

Consequently, he longed for love and appreciation, which he found only too successfully in huge rock concerts throughout the world. He was a brilliant performer (although strangely, not especially musically talented) and gave his all at concerts, driven by his inner needs but also devoured by his adoring audiences and, most notoriously, by certain women. He was, like many who are cursed by the gods, very beautiful, both as a boy and a man. He traded on this but, like Marilyn Monroe, was consumed by others in his beauty.

The worst offender in this was Paula Yates, who in the extraordinary interview she conducted with him on a bed on live TV, seemingly seduced him in public without actually taking her or his clothes off. Paula Yates was the worst person he could have run into. Completely without boundaries and a victim herself of a strange upbringing, she messed up completely a very vulnerable man. All this was compounded by an accident in Copenhagen, where he was struck by a boorish taxi driver, hit his head severely on the pavement and, undoubtedly, suffered brain damage, which altered his personality and caused him to lose his sense of smell and greatly heightened his aggressiveness.

The movie also investigates his far less dysfunctional relationship to Kylie Minogue.

Richard Lowenstein’s documentary outlines this sad story. This is not necessarily a film about the wicked rock business swallowing a man up and spitting him out again. Michael Hutchence eagerly embraced the business and gave it everything he had. On one level, he had everything you could have asked for, beautiful women, money, fame, luxury and adoration, yet it was all prompted by an inner emptiness.

My only reservation about Mystify is its lack of talking heads. Instead, one gets a lot of voiceover from recovered filming. Many people do not like the talking heads documentary as they feel it tends to drown out the viewer’s judgments and produces an unnecessarily pretentious and academic tone. Yet talking heads would have helped here as I was not informed beforehand by Michael Hutchence’s life. This is a tale that deserves to be told well beyond the rock milieu. It is a cautionary tale that could be told of any one of us who could be described as “driven”.

Mystify: Michael Hutchence is in cinemas Friday, October 18th. On VoD on Monday, November 9th.

Meeting Gorbachev

Posted on by victorfraga

Werner Herzog opens up his heart to the former Soviet leader: “I love you”. It’s not often that you get to see the kind and affable side of the enfant terrible of German cinema, more widely recognised for his raw and bleak tone. He goes on to explain that his love and gratitude are due to Gorbachev’s role in the reunification of Germany. Then his provocative streak surfaces: “You probably thought the first German you met wanted to kill you”, in reference to WW2 grudges. The avuncular Gorbachev, however, dismisses the claim: “The first German I met was my neighbour, and I have very fond memories of him”. Gorbachev speaks in his native Russian language. Herzog speaks in English. Perhaps the Teutonic tongue doesn’t bring good memories, despite Gorbachev’s insistence that the two nations have since become good friends.

Herzog’s interview with Gorbachev is friendly and relaxed, despite touching on some very difficult topics and open wounds. The conversations are interspersed with archive footage portraying the most significant moments of Gorbachev’s admirable career. Herzog’s admiration for the octogenarian is very real and palpable, making this an unusually and unabashedly romanticised film. This filmic portrayal of Gorbachev is treacly, doused in saccharine. (unlike the sugar-free and diabetic-friendly chocolate cake that Herzog gives him for his 87th birthday).

We learn that Gorbachev was a skilled politician in touch with the working class from a very young age. In the 1960s, he visited peasants in the countryside and helped to implement new shearing mechanisms. This was a far cry from Soviet leaders such as Stalin and Brezhnev, who never mingled with the people and instead preferred to keep a distance, concocting a stern and formidable image. There were other differences. Gorbachev was eloquent and magnanimous. Never before had a Soviet leader circulated so smoothly in West. He was the new face of communism: transparent, democratic and with a profound respect for state of law. He was friendly with both Reagan and Thatcher, who did not conceal their admiration for the Soviet leader.

Meeting Gorbachev is a history class about the Cold War, nuclear disarmament and the demise of the USSR. We watch Reagan and Gorbachev meet during the Reykjavík Summit of 1986, and witness the handshake that helped to rewrite world history and likely avert an eventual nuclear war. We also learn that onus of the destruction of Soviet Union (and the consequent unleashing of unfettered capitalism and neoliberalism) lies with Yeltsin rather than Gorbachev. Tanks and shock doctrine ensured that the communist era came to an end. Russia was electroshocked into a new order.

There were two very painful deaths in the life of Gorbachev: the USSR in 1991 and his lifelong partner Raisa in 1999. He nearly breaks down when asked about them. His face is contorted with pain, a tear about to fall. But he holds himself together in silence. He dreamt of a united USSR and Europe, but sadly such marriage never came to fruition.

Overall, this is an auspicious and effective documentary about a fascinating human being. But as with any highly romanticised movie, it has a few flaws. Meeting Gorbachev quickly mentions in passing that many Russians perceive Gorbachev as a traitor, but it fails to analyse this in more detail. It almost entirely ignores that the fact Gorbachev does not enjoy as much popularity in his home country as he does abroad. It also fails to question: was Gorbachev naive in trusting Reagan and Thatcher? And what about Pope John Paul II, who is often credited with playing a pivotal role in the demise of the USSR? The pontiff is strangely absent from the movie.

Meeting Gorbachev premiered at the Cambridge Film Festival, which took place between October 17th and 24th. It is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, November 8th. On VoD on Monday, December 2nd.

Filmfarsi

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Iranian cinema can be as well defined by what it doesn’t show as by what it does. Women’s hair is never seen, characters never drink and sex is never depicted. Filmmakers, like Jafar Panahi (still technically under house arrest), must find novel ways to skirt restrictions to say what they want about life and society. What’s truly incredible is that despite these restrictions, Iran can lay claim to one of the richest cinematic cultures in the world.

Style follows form, the government’s rigid censorship paradoxically leading to some remarkably powerful works. Could the metafictional stylings of Abbas Kiarostami or the tightly wound social dramas of Asghar Farhadi have come out of a more liberated society? Perhaps I have been thinking about it all wrong. As the documentary Filmfarsi shows — surveying popular Iranian cinema up until the Islamic revolution of 1979 — Iranian cinema has always been characterised by wild invention, improvising with what you have and melding genres together.

Documentarian Ehsan Khoshbakht, narrating with the air of a seasoned university professor, calmly takes us into the world of Filmfarsi, cheap and dirty pre-revolutionary cinema revealing a completely different side of Iran. These are brazen, erratic works, seemingly shot on the fly and infused with sex, alcoholism, and violence. Plot-lines are often ripped off from Hollywood works, interspersed with dance scenes that act like a cross between Egyptian dance and Bollywood musicals.

Yet none of these Filmfarsi works, converted from rare VHS rips, are allowed to be screened in Iran; considered to be totally antithetical to the Islamic way of life. After the revolution, cinema halls were burned down and actors and filmmakers were forced into exile (although paradoxically some, like Kiarostami, went on to become household names in Iran). This gives Filmfarsi a great feeling of poignancy, both for a lost way of Iranian life, and the cinematic styles that went with it.

While it’s easy to think of cinema, a relatively recent invention, as an art-form that can easily be preserved, the reality is far more porous. Disintegrating film footage, producer meddling, endless rights battles and overall lack of care has led to many great masterpieces being either partially or completely lost. How much great Iranian cinema is still out there, yet to be (re)discovered or never to be found again?

When it comes to understanding the soul of nations, film becomes a highly useful tool; capturing a people’s attitudes, paradoxes and ways of life. Therefore, whether it’s the irreverent comedies from the Soviet Union, or Pre-Code Cinema of the USA, preservation of the past becomes both a means to fight against prejudice and to peek into alternative futures. By ripping up everything you thought you knew about both Iran — one of the most misunderstood nations on earth — and the Iranian cinematic tradition, Filmfarsi is yet another reminder to look beyond stereotypes to the far messier truth underneath. Khoshbakht’s approach is mostly academic, offering only a couple of personal anecdotes about his relation to the material. While a few more personal anecdotes may have imbued the film with even more melancholy, his love for the contradictions of the genre runs strongly throughout. Essential for lovers of Iranian cinema.

FilmFarsi premieres at the Cambridge Film Festival, which takes place between October 17th and 24th.

Hope Frozen

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Here’s a documentary with a difference about a family in Thailand. When their daughter Einz falls prey to brain cancer before her third birthday, her parents make the bold decision to have her cryonically frozen at death in the hope that she can, at some point in the future, perhaps in several hundred years’ time, be resuscitated and lead a normal life.

She has a devoted, older teenage brother Matrix who would do anything for her having waited over ten years for a sibling. Their dad Sahatorn is a working laser scientist who starts running experiments on his daughter’s cancer cells in an attempt to fund a cure before the condition kills her. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t find a cure. Eventually, he talks wife Nareerat and son round to the idea of having Einz cryonically frozen.

Upon Einz’ death, within 60 seconds her body has been frozen for delivery to a facility run by a company in Arizona called Alcor. We watch a representative of this company show the whole family round, which tour includes the cylinder at the bottom section of which Einz has been put into cryonic storage. For the family, it feels a lot like visiting a graveside. They’ll probably never see her alive again.

Matrix goes into a Buddhist monastery in order to try and come to terms with his sister’s death. When his parents later have another daughter Einz Einz, there’s speculation on the part of the wider family that Einz Einz is the reincarnation of Einz.

Much is made of the possibility of the human race overcoming death, but completely absent is any notion of income or cost. Clearly this kind of procedure is expensive because not everyone undertakes it. So well off people can be preserved while poorer people simply die. Yet without addressing any of that, this film presents its observations in an economic vacuum which is probably beyond the reach of most of us. That weakness aside, it’s a fascinating study of an area where science fiction is fast turning into science fact with huge philosophical, religious and socio-political implications for us all.

Hope Frozen plays in the BFI London Film Festival on Sun 6th and Mon 7th October (2019). On Netflix in September (2020).

For Sama

Posted on by victorfraga

Waad Al-Kateab is a young female journalist in East Aleppo. She captures the war with our own camera during the course of five years, as the city grapples with the devastating war combined with the sheer neglect from the outside world. Just as the situation begins to deteriorate, she marries a local doctor called Hamza and gives birth to the titular Sama. But instead of fleeing her hometown and country for the security of her own family, Waad decides to stay and fight. Her weapon is her camera. She has to contend with the rebels attempting to seize East Aleppo by hook and by crook. She claims that her resolve comes from her young daughter.

This is a documentary successful at portraying the horrors of war, extreme human resilience and boundless altruism. Eight out of nine hospitals of East Aleppo have been destroyed. The only surviving institution has moved into an unidentified building in order to avoid shelling. This is where the non-salubrious environment where the doting Hamza works round the clock, with virtually no medication and medical equipment to hand. Dying patients are brought in daily, and a copious amount of blood can be seen on the floor. There are corpses, living bodies riddled with bullets, severed limbs and gaping wounds everywhere. Makes Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) look like Mary Poppins (Robert Stevenson, 1964).

Yet For Sama does not feel exploitative. Waad – who never even knew whether she would survive the war – wished to compile a register of the horrors of the Syrian War for a mostly complacent world. In one of the film’s most harrowing and portent moments, a mother with her dying son on her arms begs to be filmed (presumably because she too wants the world to feel her pain, and grasp the gravity of the conflict). Harrowing images that will linger with a you for a long time. This is a film that you won’t easily forget. It’s painful to watch. It feels like a punch in the stomach.

Yet this is not a perfect movue. Firstly, it lacks contextualisation. We learn virtually nothing about the historical and political conjecture of the Battle of Allepo, which took place between 2012 and 2016. The military confrontation pitted the Syrian opposition (the Free Syrian Army and other Sunni groups such as the Levant Front) against the Assad Regime, (supported by Hezbollah and Russia). We know that Waad has little sympathy for the Assad family, who has ruled the country since Waad’s grandfather “was just 10 years old”, but otherwise we have no understanding about her allegiances, and the nuts and bolts of the conflict. Also, the movie is a chronologically incoherent, confusingly zigzagging back and forth in time.

At one point, Waad Waad raises a very important moral question: was it worth going back to Syria at the height of the conflict, after the family left to Turkey in order to visit a sick relative? She understands that her decision to return was extremely dangerous and questionable. Some will see it as brave, others will see it as selfish and foolish. She explains at the end of the movie that she did it in the name of “a greater purpose”. But I’m not entirely sure what that purpose was. Was it democracy? Helping the wounded? Making an investigative documentary? Vouching for her child’s right to grow where she was born? Waad motives are a little oblique, as is the film’s final message. Still, highly recommendable for its rawness and bravery.

For Sama won the Prix L‘Œil d’Or for best documentary at this year’s Cannes Film. It is in cinemas across the UK on Friday, September 13th. Watch it on Channel 4 on demand for free.

The Big Meeting

Posted on by victorfraga

Though ideologically different to The Big Short (Adam McKay, 2016), The Big Meeting bears more than just its first two words in similarity. Where Adam Mckay gave his sermons through a tasty portrayal of a bubble bathed Margot Robbie discussed the deductions global economics entails, The Big Meeting opens its treatise with a taste collection of colourful projected clips detailing the history of “precarious capitalism”. Through an inspired rotary of smoky factory chimneys, the documentary details the importance the people held over the capital which burned and killed them. A creative breath of fresh air for the left leaning intellectual viewer.

Through their own paintings, director Daniel Draper and company uncover a Durham cognisant and proud of their mining history, picturing an ageing teacher learning a brass instrument through the local brass orchestras, a 19-year-old Oxford student applying her own philosophies into a community bookshop while another virile man proudly shows his camera the “Still Hate Thatcher” badge that pins on his lapel. Though the banners and flags bear an unfortunate resemblance to The Orange Order’s militant vignettes, the local demonstrators demonstrate a loyal welcome to their community with a generosity that puts the loyalist armies drumming their forefathers killings to shame.

An annual celebration held every July, the film understands the evolution of the parading since 1871. Past paintings are collected in a book as an art historian informs the audience that only six of the 40 odd painters still breathe since signing their materials in 2002. Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingstone discuss the importance the Durham galas holds in their thoughts, both of them committed to their left wing principles at a time Tony Blair had few morals left. Political savants James Connolly and Tony Benn are referenced showing how the Durham parade welcomes the class struggle across globally rather than locally, while presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders videos himself commending the collective efforts of those who attend, as another politician notes that his 2016 speech wasn’t aimed at those who attended, but those who would and those who did attend at past galas.

Through their walks, the paraders experience history and through the assemblage of takes, paintings, portraits, parables and positions, audiences experience it alongside. It’s one of the more remarkably visceral documentaries, contextualising a struggle situated in everyday standings. And there’s a satisfaction to it unseen in McKay’s airier The Big Short.

The Big Meeting is in cinemas Friday, September 6th. On DVD in January 2020.

24 Snow

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

The highs and lows of extreme rural living are expertly depicted in 24 Snow, a documentary that dives into life in one of the most inhospitable places on earth. Alternating scenes of natural beauty with a down-to-earth character portrait of an middle-aged Yakut horse breeder, it celebrates traditional forms of living while lamenting their slow erosion to the forces of modernisation.

Sergey Loukin’s story takes place in the area around Sakkyryr, Russia, one of the coldest inhabited places on earth, where temperatures regularly plummet below minus fifty degrees. It’s so cold in the winter that sheets of ice cling to the horse’s fur and must be removed with axes, and reindeer and husky-pulled sleds remain the only form of transportation. There is no electricity, no internet and no shops for miles around. Sergei must make do with his immediate surroundings alone. We follow him for around a year, from snow to summer to snow again.

There is something very satisfying and empowering even in watching someone dedicate themselves to a simpler, less encumbered way of life. It’s evident that director Mikhail Baryin feels the same way. Stunning cinematography of the Russian Taiga — replete with endless snowy plains, misty mountains and huge lakes — give Sergey’s work a mythical vibe, as if his life is untouched by time itself.

But times are changing, Sergey deliberately framed with his cowboy hat and leather jacket like he’s the last hurrah of the old school. His eldest children have left for the city, earning plenty more than the mere 5,000 roubles (£61.79) he says he earns a month. Sergei knows he could earn more money working elsewhere, but its evident that nothing beats the rush of horse breeding or being so close to nature. He is also often estranged from his family for long periods of time: he says he left his daughter while she was starting to laugh and came back to see her starting to walk.

This is the price he pays for his life, which he accepts with both grace and a touch of regret. He knows he is an outlier, even for the Indigenous Yakut people, yet it is this very extremity that seems to be its own reward. Baryin finds ways to express this in both deeply dramatic ways, such as an epic horse herd crossing a vast river, and the perfectly simple; after cutting grass all day, he lies down and takes a nap, his exhausted expression the very picture of contentment. A likeable, talkative narrator, he warmly invites us into his life, regaling us with anecdotes and minuscule details, expertly communicating the sheer joy he finds in his work.

And there are certain moments that seem to place us right there alongside him. Cinematographer Mikhail Kardashevski rigs his camera on top of racing horses, travelling reindeer and the back of trucks, immersing us in Sergey’s journey across this vast, gorgeous, desolate landscape. Although we probably wouldn’t last a day in Sergey’s winter, rare films like 24 Snow give us the opportunity to imagine, ever-so-briefly, that we could. A truly transportive experience.

24 Snow shows on October 15th as part of the 13th Native Spirit Festival. Just click here for more information.

Discover Iceland in all its glory!

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

The Icelandic movie Echo (Bergmál), which premiered in competition at the 72nd Locarno Film Festival, is a major step up in form and content for Icelandic director Rúnar Rúnarsson. Set over the Christmas period, its a wide-spanning portrayal of the nation that’s equal parts profound, funny, and banal. Its standout quality is the way it marries formalist rigour — each scene focusing on a new character and shot with a single static camera — with emotion, humour and philosophical enquiry. We sat down with the director to discuss his unique approach to hybrid forms, Icelandic society, and working with real people.

Read our review now!

Redmond Bacon – Echo is very different from single character portraits Volcano (2011) and Sparrows (2015). Why the massive change in tone?

Rúnar Rúnarsson – I wouldn’t say that its a massive change in tone. People say to me: “you made some radical changes in your life making this film”. The fundamental difference is that we are portraying society instead of one person, but I think the fingertips of the creative team and I are quite similar.

RB – Echo takes such a panoramic view of Iceland. Do you think it will strike a chord across Icelandic society?

RR – Festival-wise my films have always done well, but I’ve never sold tickets anywhere, not even at home. I’ve been privileged in my life to do the things that I wanted. But you can’t have it all. You can’t have sold out theatres night after night. My main aim has always been to follow my vision. I have no expectations towards ticket sales, in Iceland or elsewhere. To be completely honest, I don’t think in this way. I have a big misconception of my films though. I think they are really audience friendly but I’m still regarded as an “artist director”!

RB – I think Echo is very accessible due to how true to life it is, and its humour. The form of the film is a hybrid between documentary footage and fiction. How much was documentary footage and how much was fiction?

RR – There was a really detailed manuscript. I think there were maybe nine or ten scenes that didn’t end up in the film. The rules we had were made for effect. I think we achieved a sense of authenticity. We decided not to say what is real and what is in full control. Anyway, even when you look at a fly-on-the-wall documentary, there are decisions such as when you come in and out of a shot and how its put together. There is always a sense of the author.

RB – Yes, there’s always an artificiality to a documentary, because you choose what to put in, you choose what to take out and you choose how to present it and edit it together. It doesn’t just happen by itself.

RR – All my fictional films are about things I’ve gone through in my life or people close to me. My goal is to be honest and capture a sense of reality and a sense of my emotions; to put it out for whoever would be interested. Most scenes in this film are in a greyscale. All people in front of the camera are under their own identity; sometimes you hear their names. And it is their real names. Often they are in their native surroundings.

Echo

RB – These are native actors playing versions of themselves?

RR – Sometimes being themselves, sometimes following a script. There are some with acting backgrounds, then they went into farming and play a farmer in the film.

RB – There’s so many different perspectives in the film…

RR – Iceland is a small community. The Prime Minister of Iceland [Katrín Jakobsdóttir] is in this film. We bumped into her while shooting another scene. There are homeless people as well. I know the assistant to the Prime Minister and I know one of the homeless people really well. In a society so small, you know somebody in every situation.

RB – So there isn’t a massive divide between rich in poor in terms of being aware of each other?

RR – No. It’s so small. But the gap is getting bigger. There is private education and healthcare, which didn’t exist when I was growing up. Society is changing, but it still has this Scandinavian Social Democratic foundation.

RB – You tackle the Panama Papers scandal when former Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson had to resign. Was it important to have these contemporaneous elements too?

RR – We shot during Christmas 2018. There were things debated at the time that ended up in the film. But it’s not about the truth of the period; it’s an echo, hence the title, portraying fragments of life from Iceland during that time.

RB – I want to talk about another Scandinavian director. Roy Andersson. Echo has a similar mise en scène to The Living Trilogy (2000-14)? Was this an inspiration?

RR – A friend of mine didn’t understand the project I was working on. I was about to go to the financing place and gave him the script. He went through it and said: “It’s going to be really simple for you to present this film. Just tell people to imagine if Vittorio Di Sica would make a Roy Andersson film.”

RB – In terms of narration it reminded me of the British movie Love Actually (Richard Curtis, 2003), in that there’s a lot of stories set around Christmas and the season itself becomes the narrator. Was this an inspiration at all?

RR – No. But when I was developing the movie it was at first about these fragments of life. First I thought about doing it over the period of a year. But I wouldn’t ever be able to afford it, and the more I developed it, the more I wanted to have more control. I felt like Christmas was the right framework because it’s hard to sympathise with people you don’t know. In normal films you have the time to build up a character and for the audience to care about them. Here you meet people and then they’re gone and never reappear…

RB – But Christmas gives it this sentimental overlay?

RR – Yes. It’s an amplifier of our emotions. It helps the audience to be put in the place of these people. Many of them have been in these situations. It’s a time of year where people are more observant. They try to be better people; more generous and open-minded. At the same time, for many people, it’s the worst time of the year. It was a good guide to constructing a narrative.

RB – Was it all shot within this two week period?

RR – There was one scene we just had to do earlier. The burning house scene is from another time of the year.

RB – That’s a very evocative scene. It reminded me of The Sacrifice (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986).

RR – He had to burn that house two times.

Your

RB – Films are always set against nature, a natural byproduct, I guess, of shooting in Iceland. But this film seems mostly focused on the people itself, which goes against a conventional approach to depicting the country. Was this intentional?

RR – It was never my intention of decorating something in nature. Nature is a part of living in Iceland. Look out the window and there are mountains! Nature is beautiful. But it shouldn’t only be used for decoration or production value. You should use it as a narrative tool. In a perfect film, everything that you see or hear should have a function. For example, the final shot of the film is there not only because its beautiful. It’s a metaphor of life continuing. Water is a transition, a vessel in the water, going through the tides and waves. It’s the year ahead.

RB – There are some great transitions, such as between a Children’s Christmas Pageant and a Bikini Body Building Contest. How long did it take to think “OK, this will go here and this will go there” before putting these scenes together to develop the film’s rhythm?

RR – We slowly put the film together while we were shooting. Working with these tableaus. Whether you go 10 seconds earlier in or out of a scene can have such an impact on the rhythm. So we try to take enlightened decisions. But you shouldn’t be too clever. You have to follow your instincts.

RB – The film has a strong cycle of life theme, best expressed when it contrasts New Years Eve celebrations with a baby being born. How did you gain the trust of the couple to film a live birth?

RR – Like with many other people in the film, it was a search for the right people who were generous enough to share their lives. There were many other people who showed interest then backed out. We have no control over a birth. We are not cutting either. We thought we would have to shoot many different births to have something to choose between. But we were just extremely lucky and only shot one birth.

To get people to participate in this kind of thing is about being honest with what we want to achieve. I don’t want to to manipulate anybody; whether its real people or my fictional characters. They represent something in me and I want to respect myself. Sometimes I’ve been to film school conducting lectures. At the end the moderators ask: “Do you have a message to the students? What should they do?”

And I say “Be honest!”

Photo Credit: Ottavia Bosello. Also pictured: Producers Live Hide (left) and Lilja Ósk Snorradóttir (right). Others photos are from the film itself.

Hail Satan

Posted on by victorfraga

Political activism has never been this dirty and fun before! A small and yet very vocal and active group of political activists founded an entity called the Satanic Temple. They dress up in black and use a copious amount of iconography, as you would expect from a good evil-worshipper. Yet there is no religious connotation to their endeavour. They have simply found a very peculiar and effective way to make themselves visible and their progressive statements heard.

Their creepy-looking leader Lucien Greaves (who is seemingly blind in one eye, although it’s not entirely clear whether that’s just a clever ruse), explains that the “satanism” is an entirely random choice. They are not eagerly waiting for the arrival of some Antichrist. Instead, they stand against “arbitrary authoritarianism” and demand a separation between church and state, and they find very provocative ways of drawing attention to themselves. During the film climax, they request that a Ten Commandments monument is removed from a government building in Arkansas, and upon failing that, they proceed to install a statue of the demonic Baphomet facing the holy scripture. To the sound of Marylin Manson’s I Put a Spell on You!

Hail Satan is a register of a little-known subculture teeming with vivid and extravagant characters, who are seeking a cathartic outlet from their mediocre existence. They are male and female, of various ages, and come from many parts of the US. What they have in common is that they are seeking more personal freedoms. This is expressed in a variety of ways, ranging from a passionate pro-choice enunciation to a very naughty and demonic dance, where male nudity is prominently featured (thereby challenging old-fashioned sexist orthodoxies). They are also anti-aesthetic, refusing body fascism and mainstream beauty stereotypes (which might explain Lucien’s eye)

They have devised the Seven Fundamental Tenets, which include “One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason and “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone”). Their principles are far more morally liberating than the Ten Commandments. They are also fiercely anti-violence (a member is promptly expelled after advocating) and very socially active (cleaning streets, educating children, etc).

All in all, Hail Satan is a devilishly fun documentary to watch. Ironically, it’s also a feel-good movie. It’s not anti-Christian. Instead, it challenges the autocracy of government of religion. Simply dirtylicious. Go see it!

Hail Satan is in cinemas on Friday, August 23rd, and then on VoD the following Monday,

Cinema that bites!

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

A remarkable hybrid of documentary and fiction tells the story of Laika, the first creature to be set into space by the Soviet Union. Growing up on the streets, the legend goes that she now roams Moscow as a ghost. Blending archival footage with remarkable on-the-ground tracking shots of wild street dogs, it is a bizarre, compelling and controversial tale, likely to provoke discussion for containing one of the most shocking documentary scenes seen all year. The brains behind the story are couple Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, who also produced the film under their own company RAUMZEITFILM. We sat down with them to discuss morality, Soviet cinema, and working with four-legged protagonists.

Space Dogs has just premiered in the Concorso Cineasti del presente section of the 72nd Locarno Film Festival. You can read our film review here.

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Redmond Bacon – What attracted you to the story of Laika?

Elsa Kremser – We wanted to make a film about a pack of dogs. But we had no idea where. Then we found out that Laika lived on the streets before she was sent to space. We had to go to Moscow.

RB – The narration is by famous Russian actor Aleksey Serebyakov. Why did you pick him as a narrator?

Levin Peter – We knew early on we wanted to have a Russian voice. Only a small part of the film has this narration, but it needed to be Russian because we wanted to create an atmosphere where you can imagine it’s an old scientist reading from his diaries, or a voice from the cosmos! Serebyakov was the first voice that we had in mind when we thought about a Russian voice.

RB – It reminded me of Aleksey Batalov in The Hedgehog in the Fog (Yuri Nortstein, 1975)…

Both Elsa and Levin – Yes!

RB – Discussing other Russian analogues, the subject matter also brought to mind classic Soviet film White Bim, Black Ear (Stanislav Rostotsky, 1977).

LP – Yes we love it.

EK – We watched it to better understand Russia’s relation to dogs. For them it’s a really important film. Every child in Russia has seen this film.

LP – When we watched it we were amazed by how they created a narrative about this dog. In comparison to American products, it’s much less humanising.

EK – And less pushy than something like Beethoven.

LP – If you compare these two movies, the Russian one wins.

RB – White Bim Black Ear is renowned for its unsentimental approach and very distressing scenes. Space Dogs has one scene in particular, which I won’t spoil as the film has only just premiered at Locarno, that is very violent! Did it just happen out of nowhere?

EK – Yes! We followed these dogs for weeks. Sometimes they slept the whole day and sometimes they were biting into cars. One morning this just happened. The entire team was immensely shocked!

RB – It’s interesting from a moral point of view: On the one hand it’s not something you want to see happen, but on the other, it does make for a great scene. As you’d expect, it provoked a few walkouts. How would you justify such a violent scene? How is it necessary in terms of the narrative?

LP – We really believe that there is no need to justify this scene. If you decide to make a film about dogs in the city who live on their own, it would be really stupid to believe that they will act like normal dogs. Of course we never expected this to happen. This was really a turning point in our production. We realised that night that we were working on something that was never shown before and in a way that was never shown before.

RB – It’s extremely well-filmed. How did you keep the camera stabilised for these low shots of the dogs? What equipment did you use?

EK – It took a long time to find the right equipment. Luckily the film is supported by Arri. They gave us all this equipment and helped us to develop this system. We shot with the Alexa Mini Body with a stabilisation system called Wave 2. The stabiliser is built by a little company in Munich [Betz-Tools], and it’s used for shooting on boats. But the beauty of the shots comes from cinematographer Yunus Roy Imer himself, because he had to put all his force into the movie; walking for hours and following dogs, all while keeping the camera steady.

LP – I want to point out the sound too. It’s a really fucked up job for a sound operator.

EK – To get footsteps of dogs!

LP – From the beginning we thought this is going to be a sound movie. From the beginning on we really wanted to hear the tiniest movements and the kind of sounds dogs make.

EK – It was very hard because we could not ask [our team] about any previous experiences. We had to invent everything. How can you arrange a sound recording system for this kind of specific thing? How can you arrange a camera system?

RB – Did you pick all the sounds up on mic, or is there also added foley work?

EK – In Moscow we also made foley recordings with the dogs because every dog has very different footsteps. It was a big collection.

LP – The archive footage was silent. We had to start from scratch.

RB – How did you find the archive footage? Was it all based in Moscow?

LP – It’s all from Moscow. We had brilliant support from Sergei Kackhin. He helped us stay brave enough to wait years for access. One source is the Russian State Archive for Scientific-Technical Documentation. It’s a huge archive where everything that was once invented in the country is stored. Much more interesting is the institute where the dogs are trained. In the basement there were mysterious reels of 35mm footage. Yet from the moment we were told about it to the time we digitised it, three years passed.

RB – How difficult was it to navigate Russian bureaucracy? Was it difficult administratively or was there also political pushback?

LP – It’s a very personal pushback. Of course it’s a huge system. There’s a lot of bureaucracy. But first you have to gain the trust of the person who is directly responsible. It’s interesting because when you enter nothing is possible, which we have also experienced in German archives, where the bureaucratic level stays the same. But in Russia, as soon as they understood our mission and what we wanted to do, they were more open.

EK – But we did struggle with the ongoing tensions between Russia and Europe, especially in the media. There have been scandals that have thrown us back for months. Every time something came up on a big German TV channel, they would say: “OK, no. Now it’s done you cannot come anymore and we don’t give you the material.” Then several months later, we talked again and again, and we made more progress.

RB – Most Western depictions of Russia don’t do much to help these tensions. What I found refreshing about Space Dogs is you don’t otherise Russia at all. There’s a conscious effort to see their treatment of dogs as a universal problem rather than through a stereotypical Anti-Soviet context.

EK – Yes. With the monkey scene [the American government sent the first monkeys into space] you can see that it happened all over. We also thought that these dogs are not Soviet or Russian. They might be inhabitants of these countries at these moments in time but these animals don’t have nations. We never wanted to be too pointed with the Russian angle. We wanted to show it’s a global thing.

RB – The Soviet Space Program has brought untold benefits for mankind, and is a huge achievement, yet for me, watching the way these dogs have been treated, I wondered: was it really worth it? What do you think?

LP – It’s such a difficult question. We still don’t know what will happen in the next 50 years. It would be naive to believe that everything they developed with dogs — such as the rescue systems and bringing living beings back to earth — wouldn’t be possible without these tests. It’s the same moral question when animal testing comes up; in cosmetics or medicine…

EK – But of course there’s the point that with medicine people survive thanks to them. The dog experiments raise the question: why do we want to conquer space so much?

RB – The film also challenges people’s perceptions about dogs. If the film was about rats in space, no one would care.

EK – And there are plenty of rats in space!

RB – Dogs are considered to be man’s best friend. But this film challenges this idea and asks: are dogs naturally domestic or are they actually quite wild and feral? Are you trying to change the way people understand dogs in society?

EK – Of course. We think it’s weird that we always want to be their boss. With the film we turn it around a bit and say it’s not just us controlling them. They have their own world.

LP – The Space Program was also about entertainment. It’s the same in our film, in a way. They are the main heroes. We followed these dogs and of course we gave them names and projected some kind of human behaviour onto them. It will happen with everyone who has seen this film. There is no escape.

RB – Thanks to the low point of view and lengthy shots of the dogs, its a very immersive experience. Are you trying to get people to imagine what it might be like to be one of these animals?

LP – Of course. To raise the question of how I, as a human, might look like from this perspective. From very early on we know that dogs are part of our world, but we know nothing about ourselves as part of their world. We know nothing about the role we play.

EK – What we enjoyed personally from watching our own film is that sometimes you can forget these are dogs. You can feel just like you’re in a movie and the main character is falling in love…

Space Dogs Interview

RB – Moving onto the Moscow setting. The dogs are filmed a lot at dusk, dawn and nighttime. The sky is electric orange and there’s not many people about. Was it your intention to make the city this kind of otherworldly place?

LP – It mostly came out of the situation, because these dogs mostly sleep during the day. At night, when the humans go home, this is their space. During early research there was a moment where we knew we could make this movie. We went to a factory where a pack of dogs were living. We came during the day and they were just sleeping. I thought: “It’s interesting but how can we do a movie with just sleeping dogs?” Then Elsa said: “Let’s try again at six am.” When we went the whole street was full of dogs. One pack was fighting against another…

EK – [interrupting] They were mating! Then we knew we had a movie.

LP – The good thing about the movie is that the more interesting people come out at night too. They really have a connection to the dogs, like the homeless man searching for goods in containers. It’s very obvious that he has his own language with these dogs.

RB – Circling back to the very beginning of the movie. It starts in space, then there’s a very trippy scene depicting Laika re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) homage?

EK: Of course. Especially in the sound design, we had a lot of inspiration.

RB – The music too; it sounds very cool.

LP– When we were finishing the music with composer John Gürther, we watched this 20 minutes of tripping in Space Odyssey again; just to check once again how it works on the audio layer.

EK – For music and sound development we watched hundreds of space films. Especially 70s.

LP – We liked The Andromeda Strain (Robert Wise, 1971). This was really the direction we wanted to go in.

RB – You’re currently working on a fiction feature set in Minsk, Belarus [The Green Parrot, telling the story of a 34 year-old autopsy assistant who falls in love with a 17-year-old woman, is currently in development]. What draws you to the Russian speaking world?

EK – The reason our next film is set in Minsk is a bit of a coincidence. It was not an intellectual choice, like: “We want to go to Minsk to tell a story about a guy in a morgue falling in love.” Coincidentally we fell in love with this area of the world.

LP – We grandfather taught Russian his whole life. There were Russian friends visiting my family once a year. We started to explore this world together from the first moment on. But it was never a choice to say: “We dedicate our lives to this.”

EK – It somehow happened.

Picture at the top: Locarno Film Festival, Marco Abram. The other images are from the film