The first Queer Festival in Sarajevo was to be an historic occasion. Instead it turned into a tragic confrontation. Here are some reports:One from
Amnesty International.
This from PinkNews.
Here is a statement from the president of the Gay Center of Paris:
Extrême violence homophobe en République de Bosnie-Herzégovine
2 octobre 2008
Le Queer Festival de Sarajevo qui se tenait le 24 septembre, à l’Académie des Arts Visuels, a été interrompu par de violentes attaques perpétrées par des groupes religieux extrémistes, contre les participants.
La police ayant relâché les agresseurs au bout d’une nuit de garde à vue, les organisateurs, déplorant au moins dix blessés hospitalisés, ont en effet préféré annuler l’évènement.
Depuis des menaces de mort ont été proférées à l’encontre des organisateurs et responsables LGBT, une vidéo publiée sur You tube montre la décapitation de la responsable, Svetlana Djurkovic.
Les militants sont obligés de se cacher, certains ont fuit leur pays.
La liberté de rassemblement et d’expression est l’un des droits fondamentaux les plus importants dans une démocratie.
Ainsi que le rappelle régulièrement la Cour Européenne des Droits de l’Homme, les manifestations et évènements LGBT doivent être autorisés et protégés par les forces de police si nécessaire.
Aux cotés de l’ILGA-Europe, le Centre LGBT Paris IDF exige des autorités de Bosnie et Herzégovie, qu’elles assurent la protection des militants LGBT menacés.
Le gouvernement français qui s’est engagé à soutenir la journée mondiale de lutte contre l’homophobie – IDAHO- devrait intervenir auprès du gouvernement Bosniaque.
Les institutions européennes et le Conseil de l’Europe doivent continuer d’observer avec une extrême vigilance la situation des personnes LGBT en Bosnie et Herzégovie.
Christine Le Doaré
Présidente du Centre LGBT Paris IDF
In my English translation:
Extreme Homophobic Violence in Bosnia-Hercegovina
2 October, 2008
The Sarajevo Queer Festival which began on 24 September at the Academy of Visual Arts, was disrupted by violent attacks on participants carried out by extremist religious groups.
Police took the aggressors into custody but then released them the following morning. The organizers, noting that at least ten participants had to be hospitalized for their injuries, decided to call off the festival.
The organizers and LGBT figures involved in the event were the targets of death threats and a video put up on You Tube showed the mock decapitation of the event’s organizer, Svetlana Djurkovic.
The gay activists were obliged to go into hiding, and some have fled the country.
Freedom of speech and right to assembly are fundamental and among the most important rights in a democracy.
According to the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights, LGBT gatherings and events should be authorized and if necessary, protected by the police.
The Centre LGBT Paris IDF stands with the ILGA-Europe in demanding that the Bosnia-Hercegovina authorities insure the safety of the threatened LGBT activists.
The government of France, which actively supports the International Day against Homophobia, (IDAHO), should intercede with the Bosnian government.
The European institutions and the Council of Europe should continue to observe the situation for the LGBT community in Bosnia and Hercegovina with extreme vigilance.
Christine Le Doaré
President of the Centre LGBT Paris IDF
October 2nd, 2008
Roberto Saviano’s 2006 book, “Gomorra” has had enormous success in a very short time. In it he tells the stories of organized crime that circulate through the Italian consciousness like vaguely remembered recurring nightmares. The book describes the activities of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia, considered the oldest criminal organization in Italy, as it has evolved in the Twenty First Century. This is where cocaine, sweatshops, loan sharks, illegal immigrants and toxic dumps all come together to create a modern day horror of biblical proportions.
The book has sold over one million copies in Italy and has been published in numerous translations, illustrating not only Italian readers’ morbid interest in the subject, but also the alarming parallels for so many other societies suffering the ills of modern life. It is available in bookstores in approximately 50 different countries, in spite of the fact that it cannot be easily classified. It is a work of reportage, but done in a narrative style, a sort of non-fiction novel. Saviano cites the murdered Russian reporter Anna Politkovskaya and Truman Capote as his forerunners in this genre and his work seems to occupy a space somewhere between the two, investigating the corruption of big business on the one hand, and the sick allure of bloody crime on the other.
The Camorra, (which when spoken with a Neapolitan accent sounds like the infamous biblical city) along with its Calabrian counterpart ‘Ndrangheta are not nearly as well known as the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, and for that reason, they have very successfully insinuated themselves into the industrial economy of the country. Saviano says in an interview with Fabio Fazio for Italian television, that the Camorristi don’t even call their organization by its name, merely speaking of the “system.” Members of ‘Ndrangheta similarly speak of “Cosa Nuova.” To them, calling their own organizations by their names is something laughably quaint, like calling murder, usury or blackmail by such pedestrian names. These people see themselves as mythic figures living out the cinematic visions of a hundred films. With this book, this courageous journalist (who has been the victim of numerous death threats) endeavors to tear the covers off of this clandestine culture, as one would tear the bandages off a festering wound. He calls evil by its name, and then dares Italian society to do something about it.
“Gomorra” is not just a fascinating book, one so true to life that it is the most widely read book in Italian prisons, it is also a powerful film directed by Matteo Garrone, and winner of the Grand Prize of the Festival at Cannes in 2008. The screenplay takes five of the stories from Saviano’s book and intertwines them dramatically. Garrone uses a mix of professional and non-professional actors who move through a filthy labyrinth of decaying housing projects and polluted lands as they sleep walk/run through this nightmare. There are quarrels and beatings and deep rooted fears, and there is cocaine to make it bearable, either through its money or its high. And there is murder, lots of it. But what is most tragically depicted, is the hope that so many of the individuals kindle inside of themselves, to succeed in some way, hopes that will inevitably be snuffed out. The film is a searing, burning tool with a sharp edge that cuts the images into the spectators brain, just as Saviano intended to cut his words into the reader’s mind. Here we see the underbelly of modern Europe, the apocalyptic Naples that cries out in self-inflicted pain. It is up to the viewer to decide if this is really someone else’s problem, or a social disease that infects every one of our cities, no matter how far we live from Vesuvius.
The book has been published as “Gomorrah” in the U.S. in 2007, translated by Virginia Jewiss. The film of the same name was shown at the 2008 Toronto Film Festival and will be distributed in North America by IFC. It is to be released in late 2008 or early 2009.
September 30th, 2008
“Hunger” directed by British filmmaker Steve McQueen, is a frightening look at life in Maze Prison during the IRA “dirty” protests of 1981. As the scenes unfold in this unrelentingly dark film, the camera moves into cells with walls covered in feces, through halls flooded with pools of urine, under the clubs of sadistic prison guards as they beat prisoners and into close-ups of the savage chopping of hair and beards, with bits of scalp and flesh cut away for good measure. This is violence that goes both ways, balancing the savagery neatly with the assassination of a prison guard while visiting his mother in a rest home. He ends up with his brains blown out in her lap, as she stares uncomprehending into the distance.
The graphic violence is difficult to take, and this is certainly intentional. McQueen wanted to make the horrors of that period visual and visceral for today’s audiences. There have been so many other calamities and historical upheaval since those years, that we are in danger of forgetting the suffering that so many went through, and this film very successfully puts the brutality of that era “in your face.” The director achieves a growing tension in the film through several strategies, some of them quite effective. At the beginning there is a sense of barely contained violence in the images, and interaction that eventually explodes into scenes of horrible brutality. This is also reflected in the dialog. McQueen has stated that at first he wanted to begin the film with almost total silence, and then build the pressure to a sudden outpouring of words. He eventually modified this approach somewhat, with the first thirty minutes or so of the film characterized by extremely sparse dialog. The near silence is suddenly ruptured by the first incongruous sound of chattering voices in the prison chapel, where a Catholic priest is saying Mass, his formulaic words barely audible above the din of urgent conversation. The camera pulls back to reveal a crowded room of political prisoners standing around talking excitedly as though at a cocktail party, rushing the words out in this their only opportunity to communicate beyond their isolated cells. It is a highly effective scene, illustrating beautifully the paradox of profanity, humanity and religious mission at the basis of the IRA movement.
Many questions are raised by a film like this. The most obvious ones begin with, “What for?” Why did these men join the IRA, why did they fight so tenaciously in the prison, and why were they treated so inhumanely? And the most pertinent question, why bring this all up now?
Steve McQueen avoids any direct answer to these questions in the interviews he has given regarding the film. It seems that he considers the entire tragedy of those years to have been a force of human nature, an inevitable Via Dolorosa that the Irish and British people needed to stumble through for their own salvation. He says that he created the story in a non-judgmental way, and did not intend to take sides with this film. However, the portrayal of Bobby Sands, the most well-known IRA fighter from that period, is presented with undeniably heroic overtones. For this reason, the film will almost certainly be very controversial in its UK release in October, 2008.
Although the scenes are intense, the storyline of the film has certain weaknesses that detract from its potential impact. The story seems to meander from a distance before it finally takes some direction to chronicle the last days of Bobby Sands’ life. It begins in the home of one prison guard as he leaves for work in the morning. It follows him into Maze Prison where it then takes up with a new prisoner as he is being processed into this vast dungeon. We follow this prisoner into his cell where his cellmate has already covered the walls with his own feces. We are quite far into the 96 minute film before we even meet Bobby Sands, played by Michael Fassbender, and a while more after that before we realize that this silent character locked up further down the corridor is, in fact, the protagonist of this film. In compensation, Fassbender’s performance, when he is finally brought front and center, is outstanding, and his final agony as he struggles with his own responsibilities and slowly dies of hunger, wasting away before our eyes, is an astounding performance.
But besides chronicling the physical suffering, McQueen is interested in also presenting the intellectual dilemma that this situation laid bare: the anachronistic existence of this medieval religious warfare in Twentieth Century Western Europe. He achieves that through the use of a crucial central scene, a polemical conversation between Sands and a priest who has come to visit him in the prison just as the hunger strike is getting underway. This seventeen minute scene, a tour de force filmed without any cuts, seeks to encapsulate through dialectics the entire tangle of contradictions, paradoxes and doom inherent in the situation, with Sands defending the choices made by the striking prisoners, and the priest taking the opposing views.
At the Sarajevo Film Festival, there was much talk about the technical achievement of creating such a long scene without any cuts, as well as the dramatic talents of the two actors in pulling this off. However, the real measure of success for this scene is how effectively it communicates the message. In my opinion, the seventeen minutes without a cut was static and counterproductive. It served to highlight the stagey-ness of the dialog, with the back and forth repartee of Sands and his confessor quickly becoming wooden and artificial. After about five minutes I had the sense of watching a verbose Edwardian production, and the scene still had twelve more minutes to go. Perhaps in an attempt to give it an emotional drive, the actors progressively talked faster and faster, but for me, this only made it worse. It seemed like they were pushing the words out to try to get through the scene before collapsing in exhaustion. With these distractions, I had difficulty listening to the barrage of arguments in those thick Ulster accents and I found myself repeatedly wondering when this scene would ever be over.
Even with its defects, this film is forceful and impressive, reminding us that history can never truly be resolved. The implications go far beyond the borders of Northern Ireland. When the film was shown at the Sarajevo Film Festival in August 2008, the actor who played the priest, Liam Cunningham, alluded to this when he spoke to that Bosnian audience, referring to parallels between the Irish situation and Bosnia’s own “troubles.” Steve McQueen has also hinted at a certain parallel between the brutality of Maze Prison and the prison scandals that have come out of the Iraqi occupation. This may be a story about one time in British and Irish history, but in a sense it is about the tragedy of human nature, when one group takes control over another, far beyond the rules of civilized society.
“Hunger” is an important addition to the body of work dealing with this painful period. Hopefully it will inspire a new, more emotionally detached discussion of the meaning of those years. This film very articulately poses the questions. If it has no answers to give, that is because there are still none to give. This is history still being written, very painfully, one page at a time.
September 30th, 2008
I managed to catch the last few days of the Sarajevo Film Festival in August, 2008, and see some interesting and not-so-interesting films. I have written separate reviews for “Gomorrah”, and “Hunger” two excellent films that should not be missed. However, there were some other films of note that deserve a few lines as well.
I saw two documentaries. One was “24 City,” by Jia Zhang Ke, a film about the transformation of Chengdu, from military factory town to modern metropolis, as seen by a group of aged former factory workers. The stories that these people tell, of lives filled with hardship and unrecognized sacrifice is very touching. Hopefully a wider audience will get a chance to see this film on European television.
The other one was “A Road to Mecca - The Journey of Muhammad Asad,” directed by Georg Misch was a fascinating look at the life of a Muslim scholar with a unique background, and an even more unusual life. Muhammad Asad, born Leopold Weiss, an Austrian Jew, wrote many books about Muslim theology which became very popular in the Islamic world during the mid-Twentieth Century. He lived in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Pakistan, becoming the ambassador of this last country to the UN. He died forgotten in Spain in the 1970s.
There were some good feature films.
“The Fourth Man,” directed by Dejan Zecevic was a brilliant mystery in the style of “Klopka,” also from Serbia, which made the rounds of festivals last year. Serbia is by far the largest producer of films in the former Yugoslavia, and the superior technical production values of these films is evident right from the start. The script here (by the director and Boban Jevtic) was also far better than most of the work on display at Sarajevo.
“My Marlon and Brando,” directed by Huseyin Karabey, is an entertaining film about a star-crossed love affair between a melodramatic Iraqi Kurdish film actor and a somewhat unattractive struggling actress from Istanbul. Ayca Damgaci, as the Turkish actress, is exceptionally good in this role, playing it with a great amount of comedy and affection for the character. She went on to win Best Actress at the festival, an award she certainly deserved.
“Delta,” a Hungarian film directed by Kornel Mundruczo, tells the story of an incestuous relationship in a small Hungarian community. It is an interesting study of small town attitudes but it has the usual defects of this type of film. There is very little real communication, and very little exploration of people’s motivations for the things that they do. The atmosphere of the Danube Delta is fascinating, though and the local characters are interesting to watch, even if they don’t have very much to do.
One of my few favorite films at the festival was “My Winnipeg,” directed by Guy Maddin. The technique is similar to that used in “The Saddest Music in the World” from 2003. The wintry, black and white Winnipeg setting will be familiar too. This film is supposedly auto-biographical, though it is impossible to tell when he is being ironic, silly or just plain lying. The script also gets tangled up in supposed reality scenes from the shoot. It is truly an original script. There is a great preponderance of voice-over narration, usually a deadly device, but in this case it works perfectly. The narration is poetic and funny, and is perfectly complemented by the surrealistic scenes. The film is an original work of art, and served, unfortunately, to highlight how conventional the story telling and conservative the filmmaking of so many of the other films at the festival.
Now that I have gotten through the good stuff, on to some duds that sputtered and died on the screen right from their first scenes:
“Buick Riviera,” announced immediately that it was going nowhere. A woman stands at her window in a modest suburban American home. It is a snowy winter morning and she is watching the man who has just left the house clear snow off the clunky gas guzzler parked out front and get in and warm it up. I used to hate the endless minutes spent sitting in a 1980 Oldsmobile warming it up, and I really don’t want to watch someone else do it for several minutes. The film was well received in Sarajevo, though, because it touched on a subject of interest there. The protagonist is Hasan, a Bosnian refugee who meets another ex-Yugoslav, a Serb named Vuko. The two see each other in a new light, lost as they are in this frozen North in middle America.
“We’ve Never Been to Venice,” directed by Blaz Kutin, begins with a scene of a young couple sitting on a couch staring toward the camera. They sit and sit and do nothing. The doorbell rings, and they continue to sit and do nothing. I’m not fascinated. I’m bored. Is the director is willing to waste my time with this, how good can this film ever get? Not very. Actually, the film does contain an interesting plot twist that becomes clear only at the end of film. If you must see it, do so with a DVD player with your finger firmly on fast forward.
“Los Bastardos,” directed by Amat Escalante managed to be disappointing, even after it was clear that something was wrong right from the first scene. This was an extended sequence when two figures walk toward the camera along the Los Angeles River canal. They get from way in the distance, past the camera and up the sloping bank of the canal in real time. It was a mind numbing waste of film stock and time, the kind of self-conscious hackneyed beginning that is a staple of artsy “festival” cinema, and it should have served as a warning to get out of the theater immediately and find something more original. The film was ostensibly about the exploitation of Mexican migrant workers in Southern California, but it managed to exploit the Mexicans, the Southern Californians and the Sarajevo Festival for little purpose, all at the same time.
But it was not the worst beginning I saw at the festival. The first few minutes of “In the City of Sylvia,” directed by Jose Luis Guerin, was possibly the most pretentiously empty feature film opening sequence I have ever sat through. It begins with an endless shot of a young man writing in his diary on the bed in a cheap hotel. He writes furiously a couple of words, and then gets stuck and stares into space, and stares and stares. I found myself watching his eyelids, just to assure myself that the camera was really running and that this was not a movie still. The film has no plot, and barely any dialog in its script (which must be about five pages long). It is really a concept, a young man looks longingly at beautiful women in the streets and cafes of Strasbourg. He sees one that he thinks he recognizes to be Sylvia and follows her through just about every street in the city. There are some nice shots of women, a neck, a hand gesture, a whisper in someone’s ear, but is that the basis of an 84 minute film? Fifteen minutes, max! This was absolute torture.
On the whole I guess I saw two good films for each seriously lousy film. Not a good ratio. What was particularly disappointing, was the fact that most of the really bad films that I saw were from the Features Competition. I have the feeling that the selection committee wants to give the festival an identifiable quality, to distinguish a Sarajevo style. With the proliferation of film festivals all over the world, it is probably a very good idea to make Sarajevo distinctive in some way but be careful what you wish for. Branding is always good,… as long as your brand doesn’t mean boring, pointless and pretentious.
September 29th, 2008
The anguish of a man who is slowly turning into a demi-fly: it was worth two successful film versions, so why not an opera too? Paris audiences got a look at the baritone insect this summer at the Théâtre du Châtelet, and Los Angeles opera goers will have their chance in September, 2008. So what’s the buzz?
Although the French critics were less than enthusiastic, they didn’t swat down the creature entirely, and their criticisms were fairly consistent.
First the good news: A large number of the critics were sufficiently impressed by the staging to mention it in their reviews. The theatricality of the story, with its surreal aspects, makes it eminently suitable for opera. The staging is well done, with the discreet use of acrobats, puppets and TV screens. They provide some unusual effects that never overwhelm the music and the action. The costumes, both the 1950s fashions and the fly metamorphosis are intriguing. The acclaimed film director David Cronenberg proves that he can also use the language of the stage to great effect.
The acting of the principals was often praised, though Placido Domingo’s conducting was not. However, it is hard to understand how much critics could assess the conducting on a score that they have never heard before, so much of the negativity might be attributable to the usual cattiness. In any case, it was a good thing that Domingo stayed in the pit and did not stray onstage to perform the lead role. The main gimmick of the opera is the fact that Seth Brundle (Daniel Okulitch) plays many scenes wearing just a pair of white boxer shorts that would look a bit unbecoming on Mr. Domingo. And if that’s not enough (and nowadays, it isn’t) just as he is about to climb into his mad-science telepod, the soon-to-be-fly suddenly strips entirely naked to sing his lines in his birthday suit. Perhaps this does serve some dramatic purpose, but considering the dullness of the music, one has to give a cynical smile (under one’s opera glasses). Although Okulitch was not at all unpleasant to look at, I would have preferred a more musical reason besides my own prurient interests to sit through this particular opera.
That’s the bad news: the overwhelming consensus among the critics is that the opera is very uneven musically. And that is particularly bad news: if the music is not interesting, then why would audiences subject themselves to two hours of people standing around in semi-paralysis (as opera singers are almost forced to do), reciting lines of dialog that are stilted and clumsy (more on this libretto later), playing out a story that ignores the most basic rules of narrative dynamics (the story begins from a dead stop and only drags itself to life after the first fifteen minutes)?
Music is the real language of an opera, and Howard Shore has chosen a quasi-atonal idiom for The Fly. However, as composers have learned in the first century of polytonal music, it is extremely difficult to effectively communicate human emotions atonally. Brundle may be employed by Bartok Industries (his titular employer in the opera) but Howard Shore is no Bela Bartok, and Brundle’s lab is no Bluebeard’s Castle. The bulk of the opera is carried by Seth and Veronica, and one or both of these two characters are on stage almost at all times. Their music is depressingly flat, written in an unforgivingly deadpan declarative style that lets each sentence drop off on a downward cadence. Moreover, there is no variety in the severe tempo of the recitative, (which constitutes the majority of the singing), so the listener has the stultifying experience of listening to people speak very very slowly for long periods at a time. Ironically, the most effective voices are the two telepods, and they save the day. Whenever the telepods kick into gear, so does the music, shaking off its lethargy to rise to electrifying crescendos. The telepods even have lines of their own, sung by an offstage chorus. They have a monotone, robotic lyric that allows the composer to give a complex rhythm to their words, somewhat reminiscent of Philip Glass. The introduction of these rhythms gives the telepods an unusual power, and the mind numbing stretches of Seth and Veronica dialog that one has to muddle through to get to them suddenly seem (almost) worth it.
It is almost as though the composer Howard Shore was inspired to write powerful music for the telepods and then found that he had to write page after page of declarative lines to sew them together. Adding to the artificiality of the recitative, the libretto is at times startlingly clumsy. There are jokes that fall flat and idle talk about champagne and journalism. The 1950s costumes would have the audience believe that the opera is set in the time period of the first Fly movie, yet there are jarring anachronisms: Seth is called “nerdy” and one of the many abilities of the telepods is the analysis of DNA, even though DNA analysis was not even begun until decades later. Some of the linguistic clumsiness is not Hwang’s fault. The silliness of the name Seth Brundle begins to multiply as it is used in phrases like “Brundlefly.” The fearful phrase used by Veronica, “Be afraid, be very afraid!” is such a campy cliché that it has lost all power to describe fear. In fact, it would have provoked laughter if the audience was not already half asleep at this point. Who even remembers that it originated as a tag line in the movie posters for the 1986 film?
In any case, it can be assumed from the reviews that many listeners, like myself spent much of the time yearning for something a bit more musically involving. The scene of the depressed crowd at the bar is particularly grim. Here was the opportunity to create some dynamics, some power in the massing of voices. Instead the half drunken characters slouch in their chairs and drone on about how bored they are. The climax of this scene, in which the soloist sings his anguish while he cradles his grotesquely broken arm, is the climax of a missed opportunity. At the end of the opera, there is another climax manqué, when Veronica equivocates between having her fly-baby and getting an illegal abortion. Certainly, this is a moment worthy of some operatic hysteria, isn’t it? Modern operas are capable of creating great mad scenes, using odd tonalities to great effect. An outstanding example can be found in Nixon in China. Yet, if Veronica is not Judith at Bluebeard’s she is also not Madam Mao in Beijing, either. Veronica comes through this just a bit too dignified, and the opera goers file out of the hall with just a bit too much of their own dignity intact. Visually, the opera is a real success, and it has some thrilling theatrical moments, especially when Brundle has completed his metamorphosis. But the locomotive of the opera, the music, just doesn’t build up momentum. Maybe we’ll just have to wait for the sequel, when the Brundle-baby reaches the terrible twos.
This production will go next to Los Angeles, opening September 7, 2008. Daniel Okulitch, bass-baritone plays the role of Seth Brundle, the “fly” and Ruxandra Donose, mezzo-soprano plays Veronica Quaife, his romantic interest. The libretto is by David Henry Hwang, Tony winner for M. Butterfly, and the music was composed by Howard Shore, who wrote the soundtrack for the 1986 film as well. Directed by David Cronenberg, and orchestra conducted by Placido Domingo.
July 17th, 2008
Ferzan Ozpetek has created another grand film that promises so much, only to inevitably fall just short. Saturno Contro (Saturn in Opposition) is an ensemble story of a group of friends who create their own sense of family in the absence of traditional relationships. They face a series of personal crises together and find their way forward through adversity realizing, (though they seem to already know) that without each other, they would never survive.
If this storyline seems to be everything and nothing at once, then you have hit upon the major weakness of this film. The cast is superb, with convincing performances put in by all these accomplished actors, and they have engaging personalities and quirks. But the jumble of interlacing lives leaves little room for a story to develop. Most of these people have been friends for many years, and their backstories continually intrude and dominate the proceedings. This imposes some very real problems of storytelling that the script is incapable of resolving. The film must take so much time filling in the past that the there is no time left for the future.
There are simply too many people on the set at any one time, and too many subplots. There are even two couples whose stories compete to be the central focus of the proceedings: Lorenzo and Davide, the gay couple and their straight friends, Antonio and Angelica. All four actors (Luca Argentero, Pierfrancesco Favino, Stefano Accorsi, and Margherita Buy, respectively) are excellent and ultimately wasted in a story that does not go very far. But at least they get to center stage. Other fine performances by Ambra Angiolini and Ennio Fantastichini are thrown away in roles that are simply screaming for development.
Certainly the problem is not with the filmmaking. Ozpetek is an accomplished director who manages to make this rather artificial story thoroughly enchanting. The exteriors are sweepingly grand, the close-ups peculiarly revealing; especially with the extravagantly handsome Luca Argentero and the hauntingly needy “other woman,” played by Isabella Ferrari. And there is one scene that is so ingenious it could be considered a lesson in filmmaking. While the ensemble of friends sit about in a public space, gloomily contemplating the future, a stranger, a woman talking on her cell phone, comes into earshot. She is speaking in a foreign tongue and her voice is at first a minor disturbance that the characters and the spectators try to ignore. But gradually, we can tell from the tone of her voice that she is describing some disaster over the wires, and finally, her sobbing, nearly hysterical voice completely dominates the scene, sending the characters off to face their crisis. In this way, this unknown woman becomes the personification and the expression of all their grief and anguish. It is stunningly effective.
There seems to be a desire to say too much with this one film, like someone who is trying to hold far too many tennis balls in their arms: inevitably there will be several tennis balls bouncing away on the floor, and that is what will draw our attention. All of the missed opportunities are like films waiting to happen, and Saturno Contro ends up feeling like the pilot for a television mini-series.
July 5th, 2008
Il Sibilo Lungo della Taranta, 2005.
Documentary Film Reviewed by Dominic Ambrose
Fotos from the film website (see below), Area Stampa.
Most people know the Tarantella as the iconic popular music form of rural Southern Italy, but it is far more than that. It is the manifestation of a tradition that is rich in mythology and social significance, some of which have never been fully explored. It is said that the tarantella originated as a cure for people affected by the bite of the tarantula. Now this historical form, the taranta pizzica (the bite dance) is the subject of Paolo Pisanelli’s documentary “Il Sibilo Lungo della Taranta” (the long hiss of the spider). Pisanelli goes to the heart of tarantella culture, to Puglia and looks at the phenomenon in the area of the Salanto, the extreme southernmost part of the heel of the Italian boot.
The bite of the local tarantula is not merely a physical event, but a psychic eruption, a mystery wrapped in legend, a secret of the soul. It is not so important if these spiders really did bite women in the past (and then mysteriously stopped), what is far more significant is what role these bites and their ritual cleansings had in the society of Southern Italy. The film begins by investigating the history of tarantism, using film from a 1960s documentary and explores the cultural legacy that it has left for today’s inhabitants. In the old film we see women writhing and gyrating wildly in their humble homes, as village musicians played music and sang. These ritual healings would often last through an entire night and end with the affected women making a pilgrimage to the church of St. Paul of the spiders in Melpignano. The words of the anthropologist Ernesto De Martino are used to explain the psychological power of these rituals to cleanse women of the effects of an oppressive social structure. This fascinating historical study is progressively intercut with images of the people of the region today, who infect the film with their healthy optimism about life in this arid and poor region of Italy. At the same time, the film is moved forward by the prospect of a popular music festival to be held in the town of Melpignano, celebrating the traditions of Pizzica (bite) music.
Eventually, the theme of the upcoming music festival takes over. We see the preparations, the auditions, the instructions given by Maestro Ambrogio Sparagno to the performers, who will become part of a new ensemble, the Orchestra Popolare La Notte della Taranta. We see the townspeople getting excited in spite of themselves about the arrival of 50, 60 or 70, 000 people for this all night musical feast in August. The mayor of the town gives an interview in which he talks about the significance of the preservation of traditional culture for this region, which has been drained by emigration for over a century. For him and for many others, the concert has become a symbol of a healing of this open wound in the rural society. That it is also an economic shot in the arm for this isolated province is not bad, either.
The auditions are wonderful to watch, the clear, brilliant voices of the singers, mostly women, who show up to sing the age old melismatic, entrancing sounds of pizzica, add a glorious new dimension to the story. The beauty of their dark Mediterranean faces, the grace of their movements and the quicksilver flow of their singing is magical.
Finally, the night of the concert arrives, “La Notte della Taranta.” Tens of thousands of people arrive, mostly young people who are filled with enthusiasm, dancing on the grass at the outdoor concert, and jumping up and down in a sea of tarantism. The elderly townspeople, who had been seen earlier in the film debating dubiously about the coming festival, are shown watching on their huge living room TVs. They are shown sitting on the edge of their upholstery, at first clapping softly, then eventually rising to their feet to dance around the room with the uncontainable joy of seeing their lifelong culture finally justified by the television cameras. For a people who have lived their culture for decades laboring under obscurity and prejudice, it is liberating moment.
Il Sibilo Lungo della Taranta is a multilayered and complex documentary that brings to life a world that is significant as a repository of ancient culture and knowledge which has been forgotten in our mad rush toward modernity. It is a joy to watch for any lovers of Mediterranean culture, and especially for those interested in the culture of Magna Grecia, the lands of Southern Italy that were a major part of the Greek civilization before the rise of Rome. These are the lands where the synthesis of Greek and Roman culture first came about, forming the basis for our Western world. For those of us who are the children of the great Southern Italian diaspora in Europe and the Americas, it can also have another great significance, as an opportunity to see how our ancestral lands can continue to develop and be relevant to our lives. We have forgotten too much because our grandparents spoke with a voice that we could never understand. Finally we have an opportunity to hear them speak with the voices of our contemporaries and it is a glorious revelation.
More information can be found about the film, the Notte della Taranta festival (which has become a yearly event) and the culture of tarantism on the film’s website, www.ilsibilolungodellataranta.it, as well as on the festival website, www.lanottedellataranta.it.
The Documentary is a production of Big Sur in collaboration with local entities of the Province of Lecce. Paolo Pisanelli is a filmmaker with several well received documentaries to his credit, including films about Don Vitaliano, the activist priest, and another about Enrico Berlinguer, the late leader of the Italian Communist Party.
June 29th, 2008
On Wednesday, June 25, 2008 Edmund White read from his new novel/biography Hotel de Dream at the American Library in Paris, thus giving the last word on Parisian literary readings for June.
After 22 published works, Edmund White is still exploring and expanding and experimenting with literary forms. In this volume he gives us biography of the last days of the writer Stephen Crane and mixes it with a fascinating novelistic setting. But he goes one step further, in that he also introduces the reader to the legend of Crane’s lost final manuscript, and then proceeds to rewrite that manuscript himself.
It is a conceit that would be folly for any but the greatest modern writers, and Edmund White proves himself up to the task. The brilliance of his writing comes through beautifully on the page; however, the added dimension of Mr. White’s own inflection, emphasis, humorous spirit and intelligence which is provided by his reading voice is truly memorable. On this evening, he read a passage in which the writer Henry James comes to visit Stephen Crane in his sickroom. The interaction between James and Crane’s wife, Cora, an adamantly earthy former prostitute from Florida, is intricately wrought and masterfully brought to life in Mr. White’s voice. He understands the effete genius and the self appointed queeniness of Henry James, just as he understand the compulsive concreteness and the healthy tolerance of Mrs. Cora Crane. He loves them both enough to admire and laugh at them, and so he presents them with affection and ruthless humor. As he explains in his remarks to the listeners, White does not mean to belittle Henry James with this somewhat mocking depiction, since he considers Henry James to be one of the great writers of his epoch. However, Henry James has already been the subject of some rather hagiographic biographies in recent years, and so Mr. White feels that he can spare a bit of his image for some very entertaining scenes that may in fact be far closer to the truth.
In the past, Mr. White has always been referred to as a “gay” writer, since his subject matter is overwhelming gay themed. But Edmund White is a great writer, period. And now I know, a great reader as well.
June 26th, 2008
The stripper continues to strip.
The tour St. Jaques has lost another layer of renovation tarps making it look more impressive than ever,
and the city baked under the first strong sun in a week. I was downtown to meet some friends, but the crowds made me lose the desire to walk around and check out the various wannabe acts shouting about on the streets. Some musicians had big crowds blocking the sidewalks and street, while others sang to just a few stragglers.
The Lonesome karaoke singer:
This man, on rue Faubourg de St. Denis, was singing to no one at all. What’s worse, the music store that he was standing next to was playing recorded music very loud, as though to drown him out. He was singing with an amplifier and a karaoke CD of Bollywood music. I stopped and listened and took a picture and clapped and called out bravo at the appropriate times, all under the bemused gaze of the young men hanging out at the music store. I listened to two songs, until I realized that the man was singing awfully off-key. Then I quietly left.
At the end of the street, where it meets Boulevard Magenta I found the real subcontinent party, the Franco-Bangladeshi concert. that was good for awhile, but I got tired of standing in the slightly tipsy crowd, so I moved on, stopped by an Arabic singer in a cafe for awhile, but ended up celebrating la Fête de la Musique the way most people do, I suppose. I watched it on TV, namely the big free concert at Hippodrome d’Auteuil where 100,000 people watched hours of TV ready acts. It was co-hosted by NRJ, so the emphasis was on best selling pop music, there were the expected, Christophe Mae, Calogero and Amel Bent, and they were predictably good, Nadyia was just predictable, lip-synching the same old disco anthem, the mix master of the moment David Guetta, who was goofy when he had to emerge from behind the mix table and actually converse with the emcee Olivier Minne, the mellow Raphael and BB Brunes a young rock group that had a really original sound and stage presence. There was the best and worst of Australia: the classy Tina Arena, and the ditsy bimbo Micky Green. When it was over at one a.m. I turned off the TV and hoped that my whole neighborhood would agree that the fête was over and it was time to get quiet and go to sleep. However, that’s wishful thinking in the extreme. Tonight, despite the warm weather I would have to sleep with the windows closed.
Vive la Fête de la Musique!
June 22nd, 2008
Shakespeare and Company, the well-known English language bookstore just across the Pont au Double from Notre Dame, held its annual festival last week in a tent set up nearby in Square Viviani. The theme this year was memoirs and biography, and the list of participants was truly impressive. I managed to attend a few of the readings, interviews and discussion panels and had a great time. Here are some of my favorites:
The high point of Thursday’s sessions was Jung Chang, talking about her biography of Chairman Mao. She has had a fascinating life, a privileged childhood as the daughter of party officials, she then experienced the chaos of the Cultural Revolution as a teenager. Later in the 1970s she was among the first students to go abroad (in her case, to England). She had lots of great anecdotes, e.g., about Imelda Marcos, who flirted with Jung Chang’s husband during the interview and said that the only western man that understood her was Richard Nixon. She also spoke of Mao’s fascination with Nixon, whom he sent for as he came close to death. In this biography of Mao, she and her husband, Jon Halliday focus on the reign of terror that existed under Mao. They write about the 70 million people who died because of the crimes of the government, and Mao’s sadistic attitude toward this suffering. He even ordered that the corpses of those who died in the Great Famine of 1958-60 be buried simply in the fields so that they may fertilize the land. He also refused medical attention for his second in command, President Liu Shao Qi, and had his agony filmed daily so he could watch it in the evening. This was in retaliation for Liu’s opposition to the Cultural Revolution. But loyalty was no protection from Mao’s sadism, and Zhou En Lai, who did not oppose him, was likewise refused cancer treatment, simply so that Zhou En Lai would die before Mao.
On Friday the thirteenth, English PEN presented a reading from imprisoned writers from various parts of the world. The letters from a Korean dissident were the centerpiece, and his concerns about tooth problems, and attachment to a spider were very touching in their simplicity. After that A.M. Homes spoke about her memoirs, “Secrets, Lies and the Truth In Between” which tells about her discovery of her own birth mother, and the contradictory emotions that this life-changing experience provoked in her. She spoke with humor, but made it clear that the humor was her only way to express the pain in any clear and socially acceptable way.
On Saturday, June 14th, A.C. Grayling gave a talk about Descartes. He is the author of “Descartes’ Mind, Descartes’ Body,” and his thorough scholarship and sharp wit made this the most entertaining hour on the program. His depiction of Descartes’ stay at the royal court in Sweden was magnificently funny. It seemed that Queen Christiana had little notion what to do with this mathematician and philosopher, having called him up to Stockholm on a whim for prestigious human trophies for her court. She asked him to dance, but he couldn’t, then she asked him to write a play, which he did reluctantly, then she asked for another, and he balked, so she had him tutor her at 5 a.m. in her unheated quarters in January. The refined Frenchman was soon properly dead from pneumonia, and his head cut off by souvenir hunters (thus the origins of the biography title).
This session was followed by Paul Auster, who was probably the true disappointment of the festival. Mr. Auster came out with the bound galleys of his new novel, available later in 2008. He opened to a page, seemingly at random, and began reading. He read for about forty minutes, stopped at the end of a paragraph somewhere, said thank you and left. It was very unsatisfying to say the least, especially considering that what he read was disjointed, meandering and taken completely out of any context. He later stood at the door of Shakespeare and Company accepting the adulation of his adoring fans.
André Shiffrin spoke on Sunday about the publishing industry in the U.S., U.K. and in France. It was enlightening, and he was a very sympathetic speaker. Naturally, what he had to say was basically an affirmation of the notion that commercial publishing has become a profit greedy business, and that the university presses have taken over the publishing of innovative fiction with a smaller profit margin. However, these presses all together garner just one percent of book sales.
Later, Marjane Satrapi, who, along with Paul Auster was the headliner of the festival, took questions from the audience. She was very entertaining and besides speaking about her graphic novel, “Persepolis,” she spoke with a lot of insight into her relationship with Iran and with the other countries she has lived in. She lives in Paris, and she got her best reactions from the audience when she spoke of the foibles of the French, which she made sure to add, she totally identified with and shared. She said that Iran was like her mother, someone she loved and accepted no matter what, and in times of need she would run to help. France, on the other hand was like her wife (!) someone she loved, but yeah, she could always cheat on, have a baby with someone else.. It was a lot of fun, and a great way to end the festival.
June 20th, 2008
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