PERUVIAN CINEMA: OCTUBRE / October (2010): interview with Diego Vega

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This has been a great year to engage with Peruvian cinema. Not only did I have the chance to speak with Claudia Llosa whose film La Teta Asustada (The Milk of Sorrow, 2009) was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Academy AwardR, but I was able to follow-up with Dr. Kimberly Theidon, whose research informed Llosa's film. Also, I had the opportunity to speak with Javier Fuentes-Leon, whose Contracorriente (Undertow, 2010) has seductively haunted the hearts of festival-goers the world over and earned the honor of being Peru's official submission to the foreign language category for the 2011 Academy AwardsR. Further, I was fortunate to sit down with Diego Vega--half of the brother team behind Octubre (October, 2010)--upon the occasion of October's North American premiere at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). October's full dance card on the festival circuit required filmmaker brothers Daniel and Diego Vega to divvy up rounds. While Diego introduced the film at TIFF, Daniel was off in Vladivostok introducing October to the Russians. Most recently, October has been announced in the World Cinema Now lineup at the 2011 Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF).

Money-lender Clemente (Bruno Odar) only knows how to relate to others through transactions. His life is turned upside down when someone leaves him a baby in a basket. When a client, Sofia (Gabriela Velasquez), steps in to help tend to the baby, Clemente is faced with new possibilities during Lima's October celebration of the Lord of Miracles. As further synopsized by Diana Sanchez in her official description for TIFF: "Austerely shot with careful attention to framing, October signals the arrival of a distinct cinematic voice from Latin America. The Vega brothers compose a moving and charming film, balancing themes of loneliness and disconnection with an absurd comic tone that steers the narrative away from melodrama."

[This conversation is not for the spoiler-wary!]

Michael Guillen: October is an enchanting fable and the line that jumped out of the movie at me was: "Poor is not someone who has little but he who wants a lot." This struck me as the lesson of your film's fable, particularly because your main character Clemente is a money lender who somehow misses the true value of his transactions. How did you and your brother go about developing this story? Did one of you write it? Did you both write it?

Diego Vega: We started on October quite a long time ago. The first idea came after I graduated from film school--I studied at Escuela Internacional de Cine y Television in Cuba--and when I came back to Peru, I was full of films and emotions from having been at the school. I liked Robert Bresson's films a lot and had seen his last film L'Argent many times. As you might remember, L'Argent is about a counterfeit bill that crosses the lives of many characters with tragic consequences.

Guillen: Fascinating! I failed to make that connection.

Vega: Well, also in Peru, we have a lot of fake money in circulation. Peru has a "fake" culture in the sense of piracy. Everything is sold as something it's not. You buy something and it's not the real designer label; it's not the original. It's common for Peruvians to be suspicious and scrutinizing when anyone pays them with paper money. Whether it's paying for a taxi, going to a small store, eating at a restaurant, anywhere, people will always check the money you are handing them to see if it's fake. So the influence of Bresson's L'Argent and this cultural practice in Peru of doubting authenticity were the origins of October.

I'm the screenwriter so I took the idea and began to write the script. My brother Daniel and I talked a lot but I wrote the first draft, and then he read it and offered comments. Even though October has a counterfeit bill in it, we left it as a source image. It doesn't move or travel in our film. It stays with Clemente.

Guillen: He can't get rid of it.

Vega: But that counterfeit bill is the source of the story. At the beginning, we had many different families involved but we ended up telling a story about attempting to build a family, even if in our film it is a strange and bizarre family composed of individuals who have no connection to each other yet find themselves together as a family for the birthday party, for the climax.

Guillen: Just so I'm clear, the counterfeit bill in October is 200 soles. Roughly, what would that be in American dollars?

Vega: It's about $70; a bit more than about half of the official minimum wage per month in Peru, which is around $100. Thus, 200 soles is an important bill in Peruvian currency. Some families only have 200 soles to live on for the month. It's distinguished for bearing the image of Santa Rosa de Lima. But it's not a common bill and it's not one that anyone in Peru wants to have in their possession, because they're too often fake. Peruvians prefer a 100 soles bill, or 50, or 20; but, not 200.

Guillen: Let's return to this interesting idea of the constructed family. Are you playing with the idea because there has been so much social upheaval in Peru? Resulting in many Peruvians losing their original families? Or is it because Peruvians are migrating to the cities and losing touch with their original families? Why was it important for you to create the portrait of a constructed family for your narrative?

Vega: The fact is that many original families--including my own family--are dysfunctional families. Either that or one of the parents has abandoned the family, or one of the family members is missing, or they don't get along. Though, yes, I constructed the family for my film, it's not for the reasons you've stated. Daniel and I didn't think about migration into the city or anything like that, even though during the violence of the '80s and '90s many Peruvians did migrate into the city. But that wasn't what we were thinking about. Originally, if I recall, we started to build five families with the fake bill traveling between them and they were all dysfunctional families and that's primarily because that's how Daniel and I grew up. All of the parents of my friends have either split or are dysfunctional in some way. But this isn't a tragic way of seeing the family or anything; it's just like that, no? It's difficult to put people together and keep them together for 30 years. In Peru, my parents' generation is just that way, no?

Guillen: Is Daniel older or younger than you?

Vega: Daniel is 11 months older than me.

Guillen: So I have a sense now of how the two of you negotiate to develop a script; but--when it comes to the actual shooting--is one of you more of a director than the other?

Vega: We split duties. Daniel takes care of the visuals, the cinematography, and works closely with the DP during the shooting, while I stay with the actors.

Guillen: How did the two of you come to that arrangement?

Vega: It was organic and natural. I'm the one who starts the writing and--since I'm the one who comes up with and develops the story--I understand the characters and their motivations and can thus guide the actors better. My brother comes in and has an overall view which has developed from our conversations but has not experienced the lonely process of creation. The actors asked a lot of questions that he couldn't answer so it became easier for me to answer those questions for them. So we came to this arrangement organically. Plus, my brother has always loved cinematography so it's natural for him to be caught up in the film's visuals. Before the shooting, we talk a lot to decide what we want to do so that we're clear and decisive when the shooting starts. But even though we've divided it so that I'm the one who gives notes to the actors, Daniel can always offer comments to the actors as well. Or I can suggest certain framings to the cinematographer. There have been times when I've said something to an actor and then Daniel has come along and said something opposite and the actor complains; but, we just laugh about it and work it out.

Guillen: Clearly the collaboration with your brother works because one of the strengths of your first film October is how your characters are so well-developed and how the film is so visually interesting. I don't know if you can speak for Daniel or not, but in terms of the look of the movie I became keenly aware of how the camera rarely moved. Was that decision partly an economic one?

Vega: We had always visualized the film in that way, though perhaps not so much. We had thought about some small, slow movements, maybe towards the beginning; but, when we sat down with the money we had, and started to draft our shooting budget, we decided to get rid of all of the movement, perhaps to the extreme? Though we had thought of making a film in that way, probably we would have moved the camera a bit more if we could have. Our ideas were conditioned by the budget.

Guillen: Are you and Daniel intending to work together again?

Vega: Yeah! In fact, we are developing our next script. October took so much. It took years to get the funding. But now it's finished and it's working and we're very happy and pleased about that. But during the process of pulling October together, we had time to do a lot of other things--my brother had two kids, continued working while we developed this feature film, and I wrote a couple of scripts--so now that we have put October out into the world, we've returned to one of those scripts and are rewriting it together. Now--because everything is functioning--we're going to keep working.

Guillen: Can you speak about Sofia's ritual of adding her pee to a glass of water she then offers Clemente? At first, I thought it was a vengeful act but then it gradually dawned on me that it was more a form of feminine magic?

Vega: Yes, that's right, and it's common in Peru. Not everybody practices it, of course, but ladies in their forties to sixties are familiar with the ritual. They probably know a friend or two who have done it. For me it's a symptom of desperation. Sophia is a religious woman, a devotee to the Lord of Miracles, and she expects the Lord of Miracles to answer her prayers; but, when she doesn't get what she wants from the Lord of Miracles, then she goes the other way. It's a kind of voodoo, no? Sofia thinks, "The Lord of Miracles is not giving me what I want--which is this man, this family--and so I'll try to catch him with this panty tea."

Guillen: Panty tea?

Vega: In Spanish we call it te de calzon. You've seen Persepolis?

Guillen: Yes.

Vega: Well, Marjane Satrapi--who wrote Persepolis--also wrote a small comic called Borados. I don't know how you say it in English?

Guillen: Embroideries.

Vega: Ah. Well, one of Satrapi's main female characters in Borados does a similar thing. After performing sex, the woman puts a key in her vagina in an effort to catch her lover. But she has to perform the ritual quickly, within 20 minutes of having had sex. Not only does she have to immediately put the key into her vagina, but then she has to boil water, remove the key from her vagina and put it in the water, and then serve this "tea" to the man.

Guillen: A love spell, eh? Yikes! After Sofia performs this love spell on Clemente, he goes to have sex with a whore and, apparently, the magic has worked because he can't get it up to fuck the whore. What impressed me in that scene was the whore's wise response when she comforted Clemente by telling him, "Well, you know, you can't stay the same." I admired that you invested such common sense wisdom into this lady of the night.

Vega: I'm not sure if you remember but that same woman wears glasses. After she finishes having sex, she puts on her glasses, which reveals that she's actually a grandmother, or something like that. We wanted to keep far away from stereotypes of prostitutes and prostitution and to remember that prostitutes are the women men go to in order to feel warm for a moment. Clemente, being the kind of man he is, goes to this woman to feel a moment's warmth, to feel he is at home, but the minute he's finished with her, he rises, cleans himself, and gets out because, probably, afterwards he feels guilty. But during his time with her, he feels okay and a little more human and that woman, of course, she understands this in Clemente, she understands this in men in general.

Through that scene we wanted to give a tip to the audience that Clemente is missing something; he's missing an opportunity. We were too subtle and needed a bit more and by having her say that--"You can't stay the same"--audiences understand better the necessity of Clemente's character arc. They understand that Clemente himself is beginning to understand he needs to change. What's beautiful is that this insight arrives through his involvement with a prostitute who is--in effect--a grandmother.

Guillen: As a character Clemente is quite interesting, but profoundly sad.

Vega: Yes.

Guillen: What struck me was that--whereas Sofia had her faith in the Lord of Miracles to rely upon and (failing that) feminine magic--Clemente had neither. In fact, the film's final image of Sofia walking in the procession of the Lord of the Miracles while Clemente walks against it seemed so telling at how at odds they were. It's as if--though he senses he needs to change--he still doesn't understand why. He doesn't get it.

Vega: He's stubborn, yes. He's too cold, too dry, and--though he has understood something--maybe he hasn't changed? He's understood that he has to do something, he has to move forward, change; but, he resists. That image you bring up of him walking against the procession was the original ending of the script and has stayed through the end of the film. But when we were in the editing room, we felt it was too dark and we wanted to add some light to the final scene. Because of his resistance, we couldn't put the light and the hope in him; so we decided to use Sofia to close the film because--in a way--it's the sensation of a happy ending, even though it's not a happy ending.

Guillen: It ends on a note of faith, which is to say hope.

Vega: The truth is that--even if Sofia and Clemente get together--it doesn't insure happiness. They're difficult personalities and maybe they'll get together but won't know how to be happy? But the sensation at the end of October is that you feel the light of hope, which is what we wanted, because October is dark, it's difficult, and it's sad. We needed the film to end the way it did.

Guillen: Let's touch upon the story of the old man and his poor girlfriend in the wheelchair. You have them leaving the city at film's end. Where did they go?

Vega: They're going off to die.

Guillen: But at least together?

Vega: Yeah. He wants her to die with him somewhere outside of Lima, which is too big and annoying and hard for old people. I think they're going to find a small town somewhere where they can just live at peace until they die together. It's a small thing this man is doing but by the end of the film it's a big thing because they're together. He risks a little bit by kidnapping her, no?

Guillen: Though I have been brought up religiously, I can't say that I am a religious person, though I can say that I am a superstitious person. I believe in the invisible world and am fascinated with the Catholic religion's negotiation with the invisible world, especially as inflected through different cultures. Catholicism in Guatemala is a totally different animal than Catholicism in Peru, though they're both spotted one-eyed cats. In your film October the month of October is associated with the Lord of the Miracles and I'm wondering if that's actually true in Peru?

Vega: Yeah, yeah.

Guillen: Can you speak a bit about that tradition?

Vega: It's a huge tradition in Peru that started up some 400 years ago. It's origin is in Black Peruvian culture. A slave from Angola who had been brought to Peru in the 17th century painted an image of the Crucifixion on a wall. This painting survived earthquakes and floods and--because of that--people began to venerate it. Then they built a church to house the mural [the Sanctuary of Las Nazarenas]. After hundreds of years, the veneration of the Lord of Miracles has become what you see in October.

Throughout the month of October, the image is taken out of the church and moved through a series of six processions from one church to another throughout Lima. The first procession is a small one to the center of Lima but the others are huge, long processions that carry the anda--I don't know how you say it in English--for kilometers. It's become quite popular and is rooted in the modest people, the people with needs, and is now called the Purple Month. That's why Sofia is wearing a purple habit. So, basically, the processions of the Lord of Miracles is from Lima and worshipped primarily in Lima, though--if you go to New York--the Peruvian community there would probably do the same thing. I'm not exactly sure about New York, but I wouldn't doubt that it's the largest procession of the Lord of Miracles outside of Lima, Peru.

Guillen: Is the Lord of Miracles the patron saint of the poor?

Vega: No, he's not. We have a lot of saints in Peru with a lot of different associations. For example, this Lord of Miracles in Peru is also associated with a soccer team named the Alianza Lima. In October, this team changes their regular outfits to purple ones associated with the Lord of Miracles. And though the worship of the Lord of Miracles had its origin among the marginalized Black slaves, it now has less to do with the marginalized and more to do with the lower middle class. In Peru, for example, we have Sarita Colonia; she's a younger saint for the criminals, the marginalized, the prostitutes, no? She's related to the port in Callao. The worship of the Lord of Miracles has to do with much more than that, even though--because of its origins--it's rooted in the lower classes.

Guillen: So are you saying that faith in the Lord of Miracles has more to do with the dreams of the middle class who are still aspiring and want a little bit more?

Vega: That's right. They don't ask for big things.

Guillen: More material things, like a washing machine or something like that?

Vega: That's right. The faithful of the Lord of Miracles wear the purple habits during procession because they are expecting something from the Lord of Miracles. If you remember, the white cord with which they tie their habits have knots and the more knots the cord has, the more they are expecting from the Lord of Miracles. Some folks wear these habits the whole month of October. It depends on what they are expecting. For me, these religious practices are efforts to explain what cannot be explained or to fill the emptiness, right? In the case of the Lord of Miracles, I think the faithful are feeling emptiness and are asking for--not just material things--but spiritual things as well: to have a better year, let's say. It's common for the people to thank the Lord for the miracle of being alive.

Guillen: Well, Diego, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today about October. It's a lovely film. Congratulations on being picked up for North American distribution by New Yorker Films.

Note: Incidentally, after the fact as I researched the matter, it appears there is a strong following for the Lord of the Miracles among the Peruvian community in San Francisco, who honor him with mass and a procession on October 17 each year.

Cross-published on The Evening Class.

View the original article here

PSIFF 2011: CARANCHO: interview with Pablo Trapero

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Pablo Trapero was born in San Justo, Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1971. He wrote, directed and edited the short films Mocoso Malcriado (1993) and Negocios (1995) before directing his feature debut, the award-winning Crane World (1999), a black and white 16mm film that proved to be a breaking point in Argentine cinema and that encouraged dozens of young directors into their first features. Crane World was released internationally at Venice, harvesting awards and critical acclaim at film festivals around the world.

In 2002, his second feature El Bonaerense premiered at Un Certain Regard in the Cannes Film Festival, again to critical and audience acclaim. That same year he opened his own production company Matanza Cine in Buenos Aires, from which he has produced ever since not only his own features but also those of other Argentine and Latin American filmmakers, including Lisandro Alonso, Enrique Bellande and Raul Perrone. "Matanza", Trapero informed me when we met at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), is the name of the neighborhood where he was born and raised and literally means "the killing." El Bonoaerense was filmed there, as were several sequences for Carancho (2010), Trapero's sixth feature and Argentina's official submission to the Foreign Language category of the 2011 Academy AwardsR. It's been picked up for North American distribution by Strand Releasing and has been programmed into the Awards Buzz: Best Foreign Language Film sidebar at the 2011 Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF).

As a director, between shorts and TV films, Trapero's credits include Rolling Family (2004), Born and Bred (2006), and Lion's Den (2008). My thanks to Marcus Hu of Strand Releasing for setting me up to interview Pablo Trapero at TIFF and to Doug Cummings for initially publishing the transcript of our conversation at the AFI Fest website.

Michael Guillen: Let's start with the title of your film. What does carancho mean?

Pablo Trapero: Carancho is a vulture; but--how do I say this?--it's handsome in a way; it's goodlooking. The feeling you have in front of this bird is not like the feeling you normally have in front of a vulture. Still, they eat roadkill.

Guillen: Is a carancho different than a zopilote?

Trapero: Yes. You only find a carancho in the countryside, in the pampa. It's a big bird. The idea is that it represents the character Sosa (Ricardo Darin). Interestingly enough, after the film showed in Argentina, people began using the term carancho to describe these types of lawyers. Recently in Argentina, in fact, the anti-carancho law was announced.

Guillen: Carancho immediately reminded me of a comment made by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano that the term "accident" to describe a car wreck is inaccurate. Galeano argues that there is nothing accidental about car wrecks; that, in fact, from the moment cars were manufactured and set loose on the roadways car wrecks were inevitable. He said a better word to describe a car wreck would be "a consequence", rather than "an accident". In the case of Carancho, it might be said that it's also a consequence that cars would be rigged to crash. I'm intrigued that you've used a love story to reflect upon this corruption. Why did you move in that direction?

Trapero: The idea was to create a love story within a war zone; to show a love that comes from desperation or an extreme situation. Both ideas began at the same time: the love story and its environment. From the beginning I had the two characters of the lawyer and the emergency room doctor: they're two professions that one sees all over Argentina. I did a lot of research to learn about their worlds. Also at the beginning was the idea of creating a film noir.

Guillen: I'm surprised that you reference film noir because--though others have referenced it as such--you've initially called Carancho "a classic black thriller", which I feel is more accurate. For me, Carancho is not a film noir; it's more a straightforward crime drama. So I want to make sure what you mean by using "noir" in this reference: are you referring to using a relationship to reflect a dark social situation? Social problems that could be considered dark?

Trapero: That's right. But not by talking about those problems. More by having them be present in the background. That's how I mean noir. Through this love story we can guess the bigger picture.

Guillen: One of the pleasures of Carancho for me were its scenes of unexpected violence in situations where I wouldn't have anticipated them. For example, when the drunk man Lujan (Martina Gusman) is trying to help assaults her in the ambulance or--even more so--the gang war in the emergency room. The latter scene, especially, came off thrillingly comic. The audience I was in actually laughed at that scene.

Trapero: Ah, really? Great!

Guillen: Can you speak to your usages of violence, such that at times it's funny and other times not?

Trapero: In both of the scenes you mention, the violence serves as a way to let off steam. It's an escape valve for the intensity of the emotions. Of course, the violence serves a black humor in the film but not everyone understands that and some take it very seriously. But I meant it to be enjoyed, as you say you enjoyed it. And that enjoyment has to do with the contradictions in the situation; the contrast between what Lujan is trying to do--she's trying to help others--and instead there's violence against others. In that is a black humor.

Guillen: And no one is better at capturing these contradictions than Ricardo Darin. The carancho is a perfect metaphor for his character because on one level he's contemptible for being an ambulance chaser; but, he's also somehow charming about it. As you described the carancho, there's something seductive in Sosa's predatory nature. In fact, I'm frequently amused in Darin's performances in how he goes about seducing his female leads.

Trapero: Which is the same as saying how he seduces his audiences.

Guillen: Exactly. Though his characters--and particularly Sosa in Carancho--possess questionable ethics, he charms you into accepting his seedy ethics. He's what I would call an operator. What was it like working with him? It was your first time, no?

Trapero: Yes, it was my first time to work with him. Of course, I've known Ricardo since always. I met with him to discuss this project when he was shooting Juan Jose Campanella's The Secret In Their Eyes (2009). At a very early stage of developing the treatment, I contacted him to see what he thought, if he liked it, and if he would like to be in the movie? We kept in touch about all developments on the story. Both of them, Ricardo and Martina Gusman made a good team. I could feel their chemistry from the very beginning. We knew from their first meeting that it could work; that it should work. I spent a lot of time with both of them reading the script in table rehearsals, talking about it, having lunch, having drinks, talking and talking, even more than true rehearsals with the scenes. We went straight from those discussions to filming the scenes rather than directly rehearsing them too much. This was the opposite of how Martina actually works. She spent six months researching her role, once a week doing a 24-hour shift in an actual hospital emergency ward. In effect, she became an assistant to the emergency doctor. Her approach to the role was very old-fashioned, you know? She became the character, little by little.

Guillen: This is your third time to work with Martina Gusman. What is it in her talent that you keep wanting to film in your movies?

Trapero: It's funny, because when we met a long time ago she was working in a production; that's how we met. But since she was four years old, she's been studying as an actress. When she was 17, she worked with a famous maestro named Carlos Gandolfo, which was unique for her being so young. Martina has deep formation as an actress. What I like about her work is how she goes through her characters. Her attention to detail--movement, her way of looking--this is more important than simply reciting the right words at the right moment. Both Martina and Ricardo are technical in their craft. If I tell them to move from here to there, they always hit their marks; but, at the same time, they can improvise as needed. I like to add new elements to a scene while we're shooting. Take by take, I'm always trying to improve the film, trying to make each take unique. Both of them are good at that. Of course, Martina knows me too well. But it's great to have that foundation and trust.

Guillen: I loved her performance, of course, in Lion's Den; but, have to say I loved her performance even more in Carancho. Let's shift to your sound design. You've used much ambient traffic noise, of course, which I'm presuming was fully conscious?

Trapero: I mentioned earlier about the idea of a war zone, an environment that's really tough on the characters, but I didn't want to just film that on camera. I wanted to bring the mood of it to the scenes, to suggest that life is really tough out there. All the noises and sounds are a way of providing information to the audience, even if Sosa and Lujan are just cooking or watching television or resting quietly on the sofa, the audience hears all the living city sounds drifting in from outside their window.

Guillen: Can you speak to working with your cinematographer Julian Apezteguia to capture the feeling of confined vehicular spaces?

Trapero: It was strange to film in such tight spaces and we had a lot of long sequence takes, some as long as eight minutes. We didn't use a steadicam or anything like that. Julian always used a handheld RED camera, though with the assistance of a harness, and we shot in real cars. As for locations, we shot in real hospitals for the ambiance but we also built sets within the walls of the hospital to shoot the scenes in the emergency room. These sets had hidden access doors so that we could effect the long takes going through these small rooms.

Guillen: Lately I've been intrigued by what constitutes a "contemporary" film, especially from the directorial vantage. As your films frequently directly address social issues--such as the insurance fraud in Carancho--do you consider your films contemporary? What does that term mean for you?

Trapero: I like the idea that my films have a dialogue with what is happening in the world off screen; but, I'm not sure if that could be called "contemporary." Maybe it is? My films are more a witness or a portrait of the moment. Even if you are shooting a science fiction film you are commenting upon the moment when you are shooting. It's not a matter of just being contemporary in terms of time, but in views of reality. That's what I like. When you make a film, you can feel the time when you were making the film; but, you can also feel it working on you now when you watch it. I like that a film can last for years and that it reflects the time when it was made; but, can still talk to audiences many years later. That for me is a contemporary film, even if it was shot 80 years ago. I like the idea of talking with movies over time.

Guillen: Can you talk a bit about your production company Matanza Cine? Do you have a signature style to the films you produce? A certain look? Or a certain message you're trying to get across in your films?

Trapero: No, no. What I enjoy doing with Matanza is to help directors throw it out there, to do it in the way that is proper to them, in the way they want to. I help them to have creative control. I give them the tools to help them go through the production of a film and to do it in such a way that the necessary production of a film does not hurt the soul of the film and a filmmaker's unique vision. I try to help them survive the process because sometimes making a movie fights against the spirit of their vision.

Cross-published on The Evening Class.

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PSIFF 2011: POLL events (2010): interview with Chris Kraus

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Chris Kraus was born in Goettingen, Germany and studied at the German Film and Television Academy (DFFB) in Berlin, where he now teaches. Already a noted scriptwriter before making his debut as a director, Kraus scored a notable success with his first feature, Scherbentanz (Shattered Glass, 2002), which was awarded two Bavarian Film Prizes, among other awards. His second film, Vier Minuten (Four Minutes, 2006), was one of the most successful German films of past years and won over 50 German and international awards, including the Audience Prize at San Francisco's 2007 Frameline Film Festival. In The Poll Diaries (2010) [official German site], Kraus continues his tradition of introducing sensational young talents to the movie-going public: after Hannah Herzsprung in Four Minutes, it is now Paula Beer's turn to shine as Oda von Siering, the adolescent protagonist of The Poll Diaries, which boasted its world premiere at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and is now poised for its U.S. premiere in the World Cinema Now sidebar at the 2011 Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF).

As synopsized by PSIFF: "On the eve of WWI, 14-year-old Oda Schaefer (Paula Beer, mesmerizing)--soon to grow into the real-life German poet--journeys by train to live with her estranged and discredited doctor father. She brings with her two 'gifts': her dead mother's body and a two-headed fetus. So begins Chris Krause's strange and deeply affecting drama that examines the chaotic home life of the poetess-to-be against the backdrop of civilization coming apart at the seams. Oda's father has little regard for human life--he is more concerned with furthering his disturbing studies on biology and destiny. Her stepmother is carrying on an affair. A wounded anarchist brings out Oda's maternal side, as she secretly nurses him back to life. Meanwhile Archduke Ferdinand has been shot and the world is sliding inexorably into war....

"Observant and profoundly humanist in belief and act, Oda serves as the audience surrogate, allowing us entry into a harsh and mysterious time, a time when the sacred sat alongside the profane, when the bizarre and gory were countered by the beautiful and the deeply felt. The Poll Diaries is a singular work, not easily forgotten."

I thought now would be a good time to revisit my interview with Kraus and I want to once again thank Stephen Lan for arranging time for Chris Kraus and I to sit down at the Toronto International to discuss his latest project. I likewise remain grateful to Sebastian Keismueller of Bavaria Film International for access to the film's production stills, including Jim Rakete's portrait of Kraus.

Michael Guillen: You have been working on The Poll Diaries (2010) for close to 14-15 years: from the original idea, through development and pre-production, to the actual filming. That's an unusually excessive amount of time to be working on a project and--since people change over time....

Chris Kraus: Yes, that's true.

Guillen: ...how was that for you? Did your approach to the project change over the years, as I assume you changed? Can you speak to the pros and cons of having such a length of time to develop a film?

Kraus: I like this question, I must say. I never thought about it but it's true. In 1995, I wrote the script because in 1993--shortly after the freedom of Estonia--I traveled to Estonia and visited Poll. The story went through an interesting process because at the beginning I just wanted to give the script to another director. After a while, I became a director and--after all my efforts to bring the script to another director fell through--suddenly the possibility developed that I could work on it myself.

At that point the script itself went a little bit darker. Over time it became darker. That was the process. At the beginning, it was a story about a girl's adventure where at the end the anarchist escapes and she grows up; it was a coming-of-age story. Nothing really changed except the community in which the story was set. By the time I decided to direct the story myself, it had darkened, there was more tragedy, more pain. In retrospect, I'm glad that this film wasn't made when I was a young guy because now it's filled up with the ambivalency of being neither good nor bad, which is a theme of interest to me. Also, the idea of how luck can bring a person to the right decision and not the wrong. Allowing the script to mature to incorporate my personal interests was better for the project.

Guillen: This tragic shadow that fell over the script over time, was it truer to the source memoirs of German-Baltic author Oda Schaefer (1900-1988)? Or were these tragic concerns more in league with your own personal development?

Kraus: Yes, absolutely, because when I began writing the script based on Oda Schaefer's memoirs, I felt that there was something wrong with this woman's story, like something was missing. I felt something had happened that she hadn't included in her memoirs. So I decided to create the world that she never talked about in her memoirs. Admittedly, my creation of Oda's world was incorrect--Poll was never destroyed and some of the information at the end of the film is incorrect--but, I wanted to play with this balance between fiction and non-fiction. Though the character of Oda Schaefer is real--she was a famous lyric writer in the 1950s--she is almost unknown today, though she remains real for my family. During her time at Poll, Oda Schaefer discovered her own identity. So perhaps it's safe to say that the way of her story and the way of my own story are not so far away from each other.

Guillen: That you both became writers surfaces as a common element? I'm aware you studied literature at the university, but what prompted the shift to scriptwriting? At what point did you choose film over literature?

Kraus: There's not a direct link. Yes, I started at the university studying two years of literature; but, then I did a lot of other things, my life was mixed up, I stopped my studies, and only ten years later was lucky enough to study four years at a film school. To make a long story short, I decided to be a writer because I came from a background of writing. In those days at the film school everyone wanted to become a director. I never wanted to become a director. I had children I had to feed.

Guillen: Well, I'm glad to say you became a director, I'll put it that way.

Kraus: You're very charming.

Guillen: In your director's statement in the press notes, you state: "I wasn't interested in a world of the past, but in the onset of a period that we live in to this very day." Can you expand on that? What are the characteristics of this period we now live in that were introduced by the historical precedent of your story?

Kraus: I'm not sure. Your questions are very complex and with my limited English I'm not sure I can be on the same level; but, I'll try. I don't believe the connections are details of time. It's more a feeling of insecurity that has been passed down to us from that time. Further, the changes in time from then to now are not as big as we think. On one hand, when we think of 1914 it seems almost the same as considering the ancient Romans--it seems so far away--but, on the other hand, all of the emblematic characteristics of the 20th century were already there in 1914: science, the cars, the beginning of psychology, all of those aspects of modernity were already in place. What I meant in my director's note was that 1914 was just the beginning of a modern age that we experience moreoreless today.

Guillen: To return to your earlier comment regarding your concern with the ambivalency of right and wrong and how seemingly straightforward events can lead to right or wrong decisions, what I found difficult to watch in The Poll Diaries was the characterization of Oda's father Ebbo von Siering (in a disturbing performance by Edgar Selge). Here is a man desperate to be acknowledged within a mainstream academic community who begins to scientifically experiment on human beings, which--historically, of course--we know led to the heinous practices that occurred during WWII. But it comments even further on the genetic splicing being explored today. That scientific impulse of experimenting with the human body, once started, has never stopped and I was wondering if this was the "onset of a period" that you were referencing? Or as Cameron Bailey phrased it in his program notes: "Posing a range of ethical questions, the film offers a compelling commentary on a morally bankrupt brand of reasoning that would come to underlie some of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century."

Kraus: I wanted to choose one part of the early turn of the century that would tell us about ourselves today. I chose science. I could have chosen other things as well. I could have chosen psychology, for example. The real existing Ebbo on whom my character was based was actually a journalist and--though he began his writing career with some interesting pieces--he was eventually unsuccessful as a writer. Filled with hate and resentment over his failed career, he became anti-Semitic. I gave that lack of success to my character Ebbo as well to show how he became more and more radical and extreme. When a man is not successful in life, he feels pressured and begins to resent and hate the times that work against him. I chose science as a way to articulate this theme of conflicted modernity. As a filmmaker, of course, you choose what will allow the most imagery and I felt I could do more with Ebbo as a scientist than I could if he were a journalist.

Guillen: One of the things I found most compelling about The Poll Diaries was precisely your directorial intent to create a historical drama that speaks to modern audiences. I'm continually intrigued by what makes such a historical drama contemporary. Do you feel The Poll Diaries is a contemporary film?

Kraus: It's hard for me to answer that; but, I think the characters are modern. Do you know what I mean? It's like trying to imagine what it would be like to live in the 16th Century or--in the specific case of The Poll Diaries--the transition from the 19th to the 20th Century. For me, as a German, with a family background in National Socialism, what I imagine as modern is what it would feel like for me to be this adolescent girl Oda? Although I never met her, I liked her a lot. It was forbidden to talk about her in my family.

Guillen: Oda Schaefer was your great aunt?

Kraus: Yes, she was my great aunt and--because of that--that's the modern connection. The same family dynamics occurring during Oda's adolescence in 1914 are the same dynamics occurring in my family today. I'm pretty sure my family doesn't like my film.

Guillen: I was going to ask you how they felt about your championing the black sheep of your family.

Kraus: No, no, no, they are absolutely against this film.

Guillen: They didn't want anyone to know about her, right?

Kraus: No, that's not exactly right. They're not really interested in her; but, they're interested in the status of her own tradition and because I show a German-Baltic who is a bad guy doing bad things to people. Actually, I don't think of him as a bad guy. He's an ambivalent personality. Maybe he could have been a good guy?

Guillen: If he'd been academically successful?

Kraus: Maybe? Or maybe Oda could have turned out to be a bad girl? Because I've staged that ambivalency, my family is totally against this film. I'm sure no one in my family could have imagined this, coming from an aristrocratic background with its tradition of pride. But to return to your question: this is the modern thing. This is what's contemporary about the film. The attitudes of my family. We even tried to work with German-Baltic organizations but it wasn't possible. They read a small treatment of the script and rejected participation. That reaction alone tells me that there is something in this story that is not just a fairy tale.

Guillen: At a large international festival like TIFF where I'm watching so many different movies from different countries--which is such a compressed, almost artificial way to watch movies--one of the welcome delights is how certain movies begin to speak to each other. Your film The Poll Diaries speaks to two others I've seen at TIFF: Lee Changdong's Korean feature Poetry and Aleksei Fedorchenko's Russian feature Silent Souls. All three films concern individuals who--in their struggle against social constraints and personal tragedies--become poets. And though all three films are stylistically different, it's through the tragedies of their individual lives that their poetry emerges. In The Poll Diaries Oda is encouraged to become a poet through the influence of the Estonian anarchist "Schnaps" (handsomely played by Tambet Tuisk). Is this one of the fictional elements you added to the life of your great aunt Oda Schaefer?

Kraus: I thought about the character of my great aunt and wondered why she was not like the rest of the family? The answer is: because she became a writer. When you're a writer, you're never sure of the conditions of living and have to live with a certain insecurity. You have to be content to ask and perhaps not know the answers. When you begin to ask questions, when you begin to think about things, perhaps at the end of your questioning there will be no answer; but, because of all the questions you have asked, you maybe learn who you are. If you're a slave to family traditions, you will never find yourself. Speaking personally, that's the tragedy of my own family. So many members of my family have been so far away from themselves; but, my great aunt Oda tried to find herself. She spoke honestly of her feelings and that made a difference. That's also what interests me in other people.

Guillen: The Poll Diaries is sumptuously filmed. It's visually beautiful. The entire production design is stunning. I was bemused reading the production notes that most of your production team is female.

Kraus: [Laughs loudly.]

Guillen: Your director of photography Daniela Knapp, your production designer Silke Buhr, your make up supervisor Susana Sanchez, your costume designer Gioia Raspe, your editor Uta Schmidt, your original music by Annette Focks, your casting director Nina Haun, even your producers Meike and Alexandra Kordes: all women. This is somewhat unusual and commendable. I respect this. What was this like for you to be surrounded by such an ensemble of feminine creative talent informing the film?

Kraus: I like to work with women! They add another sensitivity. The truth is that most of my team began with my career. We have grown together. It just happened.

Guillen: I appreciate that you use the term "sensitivity" because the voice that comes out of this film, this young girl's voice, is a strong, feminist voice. The role you have given Paula Beer to play possesses admirable agency. It's a great debut performance for a young actress. I'm curious if the fact that you have such creative women working with you has helped develop and strengthen that feminine voice, not only here in The Poll Diaries but with your previous feature Four Minutes (2006)?

Kraus: It's just the way my life happened. When I began with my first film Scherbentanz (Shattered Glass, 2002), it wasn't that I said, "I only want to work with women." It just happened. I've planned a trilogy of films about my family. Scherbentanz was about my mother and The Poll Diaries about another female character. I think today that's very modern. Female characters now are more interesting because today they can do things; they're not victims anymore.

Guillen: Which reflects the central theme you're admittedly interested in of how an individual can find him or herself against all odds and despite opposition from the social environment.

Kraus: Yes. For men, of course, in our male world, it's normal; but, for women it's a challenge. Even for a woman to become a cinematographer is a challenge. Your question reveals to me that this is a theme in my work and I apologize for laughing so loudly. Why did you look at that? Why did you check that out?

Guillen: Because I personally relate to that feminine struggle for independent agency. I am one of those men who believe that the emancipation of women sets us all free. And I've met enough people in the film world to know how difficult it is for women to get a toehold in the industry; thus, I admired your production ensemble, which has served you well. Four Minutes was internationally successful.

Kraus: Yes. I see.

Guillen: Returning to the production, this house that serves as the main location in your film, this incredible Palladine-style manor, is an incredible presence in your film. As Cameron Bailey described it in his program notes, it's "a character in its own right, a hulking, neoclassical manor that hovers on stilts above the sea." Can you speak to how you and your production team came up with this structure?

Kraus: The decision to build that house was mine. It was the only possibility to bring it alive. Even though at first we looked for an existing structure in Estonia. But the details of the house, its construction, was the work of Silke Buhr.

Guillen: Who, again, worked with you on Four Minutes, as well as on Florian Henckel von Donnersmarcks's The Lives Of Others. This house that Buhr designed, I'd never seen a house like this before.

Kraus: That's because it doesn't exist.

Guillen: So it was more an aesthetic concept rather than an architectural reconstruction of a historical structure?

Kraus: It has more to do with imagination. It's a house that could have existed. We thought about how we could bring it alive and it depended upon a character who could imagine such a house. A king in the 16th century, let's say, might say, "I want a mosque as a house" and he would have it built. Silke Buhr and I thought, "Okay, 100 years ago there might have been a grandfather in Alaska who wanted to bring a Palladine-style manor to Alaska." We decided that--though such a structure didn't exist--it could exist, especially if we had a character such as Ebbo von Siering who was crazy enough to build it. Thus, this somewhat fairy tale house came alive. I heard today, in fact, that some people found it admirable that we had found the house in Estonia!

Guillen: Speaking of Estonia, what was it like to film there? The Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival has become one of my dream destinations. I've heard their cities hold the old world charm of Prague. Was it a special experience for you to film there?

Kraus: Yes, it was a special experience; like filming here in the wilderness of Canada. We filmed in a nature reserve away from civilization. I haven't seen much of Estonia. I've mainly just seen its forests. When we filmed from the helicopter, it was amazing to see nothing but wilderness as far as the eye could see. This is uncommon for middle Europe so I was delighted to use this footage. For me, Estonia was archaic. That would be the word: archaic. Unfortunately, with regard to the old world charm of Tallinn, they have polished it up. It's too new now. It's very nice; but, when I saw it in 1993, everything was wonderfully wrecked.

Guillen: It had character?

Kraus: Unbelievable character. It was like stepping back into the past 100 years. But it's not like that anymore.

Guillen: Can you speak to how you worked with your director of photography Daniela Kapp to create the pastoral atmosphere of The Poll Diaries? The look of the film is gorgeous, all that late afternoon low-angled amber light reflected off the surfaces of things. If I walk away from a movie with even just one image seared into my mind, I am happy and with The Poll Diaries it was that amber light glinting off of spider webs wavering in late afternoon breezes and those busy black ants trafficking over the coarse bark of trees. I'm sure you didn't place those spider webs or anything; but, I admire how your DoP had an eye for such pastoral detail.

Kraus: Though The Poll Diaries was my fourth film, I wasn't able to work with Judith Kaufmann who was my DoP on Four Minutes. Daniela arrived in Estonia five weeks before shooting began so it was just a process of bringing her into the project. And though, yes, you are right, we did not place the spider webs on the set, the ants were placed by four people who brought them in.

Guillen: [Laughs] Ant wranglers!

Kraus: Yeah, really. [Laughs.] Absolutely. I think it was wonderful that Daniela had the same vision. She contributed some very good ideas. But sometimes communication doesn't have to do with speaking. Of course you talk and all that, but you also communicate on another level and, perhaps, this is again that special thing of working with women. It's easier. With men, something else happens. You never have such problems working with women. You have other problems; but, not the ones you have with men.

Cross-published on The Evening Class.

View the original article here

MICROCINEMA: Interview with Meghan o ' Hara, and students from its course "Bay Area film scene.

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Filmbud Federico Windhausen recommended me to filmmaker Meghan O'Hara, who teaches a course entitled "Bay Area Film Scene" in the Film and Video Production Department of the Art Institute of California, San Francisco (AIC/SF). She invited me to lecture to her students on the topic and I agreed on the sole condition that--rather than lecture--I could engage the students in informal discussion.

O'Hara explained that her course "Bay Area Film Scene" is a first-time offering at AIC/SF, whose purpose was to get students to think about themselves as being part of the Bay Area film scene; to start to recognize and distinguish different parts of the filmmaking and film viewing communities in the Bay Area; to have some sense of the history of those communities; and to give some thought to how they might participate once they graduate from school.

The course was her idea, which she suggested to AIC/SF when they sent out a call for elective courses. Having recently graduated from Stanford's MFA program, O'Hara recalled that one of her favorite courses while studying at Stanford was one where the instructor brought in filmmakers to discuss their craft. The course gave her a tangible sense of what it took to make films. It was that kind of experience she wanted to offer her AIC/SF students. To that effect, she's invited filmmakers to speak to her students, arranged a study trip to KQED's production facilities, and was appreciative of my willingness to speak about my firsthand experience of attending Bay Area film festivals as a film journalist. Despite being a member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, I made it clear that I don't identify myself as a film critic--respectful of the specific skill set required to be a committed film critic--and, instead, am a devoted film enthusiast with a great love for the variety of cinematic experience offered to the moviegoing public in San Francisco and environs. Another outing she arranged for her students was to attend the first San Francisco Film Society's Essential SF Awards ceremony held at The Lab. Many of her students were unaware of these honorees. They didn't know Rick Prelinger, Les Blank, or Marlon Riggs but witnessed a community paying its respects. O'Hara's hope is to create "hooks" upon which her students can build their interests.

Her class assignment for our session was to read Rebecca M. Alvin's Cineaste essay "Cinemas of the Future"; a piece that borrows from Robert C. Allen's research essay "From Exhibition to Reception: Reflections on the Audience in Film History", originally published in Screen 31(4)(Winter 1990):347-356, and later included in a book of collected essays: Hollywood: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies by Thomas Schatz (Editor); Routledge, 2004, pp. 345-354 (available in partial transcript at Google Books). I was momentarily confused reading Alvin's essay because my understanding of "microcinema" was that it referred to small exhibition digital formats (like watching movies on a handheld device). I've since learned that, according to Wikipedia, "microcinema" can have two meanings. "It can describe low-budget or amateur films shot mostly on digital video, edited on a computer, and then distributed via videotape, disc or over the Internet. Or it can describe a mode of low-budget exhibition--a small theater or screening series operated in order to show small-gauge filmmaking, artists works, shorts, and repertory programming." The latter definition was clearly Alvin's focus, though both definitions worked aptly for students engaged primarily with digital and video production.

O'Hara's AIC/SF class was further instructed to choose a repertory theater or film festival, attend a screening and then respond with a one to two-page composition addressing 1) a description of the theater and their experience watching the film and 2) an explanation of that particular theater's programming mission. By studying the screening calendar, she asked them to describe what kind of films were shown at the theater and--should there be multiple genres of film--to explain how they were arranged and organized. I was pleased that O'Hara recommended the Film on Film Foundation's calendar to determine current listings and that some of the venues she suggested included the Castro Theatre, the Red Vic Moviehouse, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the San Francisco Cinematheque, Artists Television Access (ATA), the Roxie, Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive (PFA), Palo Alto's Stanford Theatre, Fremont's Niles Film Museum, and The San Francisco Film Society's New Italian Cinema film festival (NICE).

Aware of their assignment and their instructor's recommendations, I took a quick survey of the group for results and determined that only one student attended a film at NICE, and the rest caught screenings at the Roxie and the Sundance Kabuki, one at ATA, and one at a local theater in Palo Alto. Only one student was unable to fulfill the requirement due to a heavy course load and demanding work schedule. My first sense was that the Sundance Kabuki Cinema did not satisfy an experience of a "microcinema" and--if anything--veered in the opposite direction towards elitist exhibition (with which, admittedly, I remain conflicted). More power to those who have the means to pay the price of reserved seating (with attendant service fees) or to those who have the time (if not patience) to schedule in advance. One student agreed that he found it problematic to commit to a screening reservation, preferring to choose and watch a movie on whim. My suggestion was to circumvent the usual protocols of the Sundance Kabuki and experience the space and its variously-sized theaters by attending the San Francisco International Film Festival who screen the majority of their films in that venue. I then proposed some alternate venues for experiencing cinema in San Francisco, based upon affordability and sheer fun.

Even though their training is in digital and video production, I strongly underscored the value of 16mm and 35mm projections and their opportunity in San Francisco to experience exhibition of such waning film formats. I argued that the film viewing communities in the Bay Area are a literate constituency who have been educated in format discernment through such festivals as Noir City and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, as well as by programs arranged by such archival and museum institutions as PFA, SFMOMA and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA). We discussed whether or not such exhibition formats were of importance to them as digital filmmakers and if they created their works with the thought of eventually transferring to 35mm?

Oddball Films--Located in the heart of the Mission at 275 Capp Street, I recommended Oddball Films for the sheer viscerality of the experience. There's something almost "holy" about being surrounded by looming walls of film canisters. As young filmmakers they should also be aware that Oddball licenses film stock for inclusion in larger productions. The producers of Milk, by example, recently licensed vintage footage of San Francisco for their film. As a personality in the Bay Area film scene, Oddball's director Stephen Parr is a true character, rich in experience from both the East and West Coast film scenes. A conversation with Stephen is worth the price of admission! Parr curates singularly unique programming from 16mm films discovered in Oddball's ever-expanding inventory, which has yet to be fully catalogued. One of my favorite Oddball programs in recent years was a compilation of films about monkeys, which included a documentary on Jane Goodall, commercials, and TV clips. My first glimpse of some of the first footage of Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues was at an Oddball program.

Coming up on Friday, December 3, 8:30PM, Oddball is presenting "Bass on Titles": an evening of films showcasing one of the 20th century's legendary graphic designers, filmmakers and title producers: Saul Bass. Bass was famous for designing brilliant animated sequences for motion pictures. In his 40+ year career he did work for the best Hollywood movie makers including Otto Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese and many more. That's certainly a program I plan to catch.

Vortex Room--Located at 1082 Howard Street @ 7th, the Vortex Room is billed as a cult film and cinema lounge, though I tend to think of it as an edgy speakeasy. Administered by Joe Niem and Scott F. Moffett (who in his role as dashing bartender fixes one of the meanest "vortinis" in town), The Vortex Room has public Thursday night screenings and private members-only Tuesday night screenings; both solicit a $5 donation. Usually double-bills, sometimes triple-bills, with the first usually being a 16mm projection culled from the Cosmic Hex archive, the faux-plush Vortex Room truly is an "Embassy to the Stars. A place beyond time, beyond space to experience movies, drinks and cosmic reverberations." It's also a place to have a helluva lot of fun watching cult classics. My favorite night there was when they allowed me to program and watch Del Tenney's The Horror of Party Beach (1964) after five martinis! Shame on me for having too much fun.

The Dark Room--Distinct from the aforementioned 16mm microcinemas are outlets that offer DVD projection within multimedia and educational contexts. Another fun spot in the Mission is The Dark Room located at 2263 Mission Street (between 18th and 19th). Along with featuring comedic and theatrical events, The Dark Room hosts a Sunday night Bad Movie Night for $5; the MST3K-style comic heckling and underdone potatoes are free. Coming up in December are campy Christmas classics A Christmas Carol (2009), It's A Wonderful Life (1946), Santa's Slay (2005), and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000).

Italian Cultural Institute--Complementing instruction in Italian, the Italian Cultural Institute offers DVD screenings of Italian favorites (with English subtitles) through their Cineforum. Their current program Giallo: a Retrospective on Italian-Style Thrillers offers gems from Dario Argento and Tinto Basso.

Alliance Francaise San Francisco--Again, complementing instruction in French, Alliance Francaise offers DVD screenings of French favorites through their ongoing classes, each only $5. Coming up in December are holiday-related screenings of Christian Carion's Joyeux Noel (2005), Jean-Marie Poire's Le pere Noel est une ordure (Santa Claus Is A Bastard, 1982), and Christian Gion's J'ai rencontre le pere Noel (Here Comes Santa Claus, 1984).

Midnites For Maniacs--Returning to a focus on Bay Area programmers/impresarios who host 35mm revival screenings, mention must be made of Midnites for Maniacs, hosted by the way-too-fun Jesse Hawthorne Ficks. Ficks teaches Film History at San Francisco's Academy of Art University but is, perhaps, best loved for his emphasis on dismissed, underrated and forgotten films from the '80s, which he programs in double-bills and triple-bills at the historic Castro Theatre (though his programs appear here and again at guest venues). His 35mm triple-bills are a steal at $12. Upcoming on December 10's bill, William Lustig (dir., Maniac) will be featured live onstage.

Midnight Mass--As I once joked to Joshua Grannell (aka Peaches Christ), "I've heard so much about you." "No doubt from me," Joshua retorted. Largely responsible for reviving midnight movies in San Francisco, drag impresario Peaches Christ hosts cult programs at the Bridge Theater with spectacular pre-shows. Upcoming on December 11, Peaches is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Christmas Evil with director Lewis Jackson in person, $15.

VIZ Cinema--If the "fancy schmancy" atmosphere of the Sundance Kabuki is just not your thing, I advised O'Hara's students, then walk across the street and up the block to the VIZ Cinema whose gem of a theater programs Asian fare, both classic, cult and contemporary. With Blue Bottle coffee offered at their cafe and strange merchandise on sale upstairs at New People, the VIZ is one of the hippest venues in Japantown. Coming up in December is the 8x8x8 Film Festival (a program of shorts curated by San Francisco's Jewish Film Festival), the "China Underground" film series showcasing acclaimed documentary films directly from China, which were made outside the system--"Unauthorized, uncensored, underground, totally independent, and from a new generation of filmmakers in China!"--followed by an encore presentation of Katsuhito Ishii's racing anime Redline; seven Akira Kurosawa films featuring Toshiro Mifune; a week-long engagement of Atsushi Ogata's Cast Me If You Can (2010) and one-off screenings of SORI's Ping Pong (2002) and Jun Ichi-Mori's anime The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (2010).

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA)--Within its museum setting, the film program at YBCA is bravely curious, offering artist residences and mini-retrospectives, cult fare, film maudit, and many other delights. Programmer Joel Shepard has a taste for the psychosexual and is unfraid, for example, to celebrate the Christmas season with his series "Go to Hell For the Holidays: Horror in December". Who else is honest enough to admit how horrific the Yuletide season can be? I truly consider the Serbian genre piece Life and Death Of A Porno Gang to be a gift left under the tree just for me! But don't panic if you're not a gorehound, stay calm, breathe in and out, and attend YBCA's alternate December program: the "International Buddhist Film Festival Showcase 2010".

Recommendations to these students in digital and video production would be remiss not to recognize what I consider to be true microcinema, the digital or digitalized films available on streaming formats from handheld devices, laptops, computer screens and (by way of PS3 players and other apparatus) direct-to-home entertainment systems on demand screening. Netflix Instant Play has definitely changed the way I process movies. Two weeks after HULU Plus shifted out of BETA and set an affordable fee structure, Netflix zoomed in and lowered theirs to compete, initiating incentives to do away with the "old" way of renting DVDs by mail and opting instead for streaming-only subscription plans. There's still some wrinkles on this garment. At some point thought has to be given to the unattractive practice of not offering DVD extras and commentaries (which one student advised might be offered in the future by iTunes Live Stream) and also to the sometimes sketchy selection offered on Instant Play (which I imagine in the future is destined to be expanded). MUBI is already well-known for offering films online with attendant commentary, though their targeted audience appears to be everywhere else but the United States (many of their films are not available to US members). My vote is for FANDOR, the recently-launched San Francisco site that curates service for exceptional independent films on demand. Their curatorial team has been scouring and continues to scour the globe for the best narrative features, documentaries and shorts, to bring them to US homes. FANDOR provides a destination for film-lovers who want to look past the multiplex to a world of inspired, beautiful and surprising film. Fresh out of BETA, they are currently offering an introductory free one-month subscription.

After two hours of discussing many elements of the San Francisco Bay Area film scene, I wanted to hear from each student what they craved as a cinematic experience? And--if they could reach the ear of Bay Area programmers--what types of films they would like to see?

MYLES--Just MYLES, all caps, no last name. Roughly my age and cognizant of the value of having grown up through the countercultural 1970s in San Francisco, MYLES came to AIC/SF precisely to learn digital and video. He felt compelled to find a media that could inform the struggling masses in the Black community, which have been ground down to 7% of the city's demographic through San Francisco's regentrification initiatives. A born-and-raised SF native, MYLES feels a new perspective is needed in the media to highlight African Americans in film and to redirect focus away from the chronic stereotype of Blacks as violent criminals predisposed to breaking the law. He wants to be a filmmaker who changes that chronic perspective. I asked MYLES if he knew Barry Jenkins and was familiar with Barry's film Medicine for Melancholy (2008)? He was just about to bring that film up as the only recent depiction of the effects of the African American exodus from San Francisco, but argued that Barry--originally from Florida and despite the value of his film--was looking from the outside in. MYLES grew up in the Fillmore and wants to creatively express his wealth of experience and information. I look forward to watching his work.

Stephanie Miller--Stephanie and I spoke briefly before the class started. She has gravitated towards being the producer of student films at the Institute because of her commitment to detail and her willingness to wear that usually-shunned hat. A fellow student commented, "She's just good at it." Stephanie told me about a project she and some of the other students had completed that was a filmic study of the karaoke scene at The Mint in San Francisco. That amused me because I'm old enough to remember when The Mint was a piano bar where gays came to drink and sing along with the piano player, which she recalled the owner of The Mint mentioning. Stephanie would be interested in seeing what other student filmmakers are doing and learning in the Bay Area and thereby creating a stronger support network between student filmmakers to "connect, converse and even collaborate." She wants to know what students are experiencing at USC, UC Berkeley or the Academy of Art, not only to break out of the insulated bubble of her small social circle at AIC/SF but also to see who's doing what in the Bay Area and who might actually be up-and-coming. She's not so sure if she's thinking of a Student Film Festival per se, but I told her that--given her administrative skills--there might be no better way for her to find out what she wants to know than to program such a film festival, though I suggested she not call it a Student Film Festival; but, something more like Up-and-Coming Voices, New Visions. I want to see her do it and I want to cover it for The Evening Class.

Carl Sturgess--Carl has an interest in directing, cinematography and editing specifically. He would like to see more emphasis on graphic design- and architecture-related films with a focus on social issues, which he feels would speak to the large design community in San Francisco. Carl exalts the benefit of being able to walk around in San Francisco and encountering nicely-designed advertisements, well-architected buildings, aware of design sensibilities catering to sustainable housing, etc. In other words, he is convinced of the value added by creative design. He's aware that the First Annual Architecture and Design Film Festival just ran in New York for four days with a program consisting of 40 films. Some were about architecture in general, some about specific architects, some about generational variance in architecture, and he would like to see that festival travel to the Bay Area. If, as he suggests, San Francisco has a vibrant design community, such a festival might easily achieve financial and community support. It's an idea to suggest to PFA, SFMOMA or YBCA: institutions accustomed to sharing curated programs.

Wayne Narruhn--Wayne's emphasis is on directing, cinematography and editing and he is scheduled to graduate in no less than two weeks. What he would like to see are films that reflect local stories that either use the Bay Area as a backdrop or the culture of the Bay Area as a huge component of the work. Like MYLES, Wayne was born and raised in San Francisco and has enjoyed films like La Mission that--not only use San Francisco as a backdrop--but evoke the community of the '60-'80s; a community that is drawn back to such movies, as if to see themselves in a mirror. Even television shows like Bay Area Backroads or Eye on the Bay, Wayne argues, harbor value in letting people know the stories that are going on in the Bay Area. Wayne was unfamiliar, however, with the San Francisco Film Society's Cinema By the Bay series, which just presented its second edition at the Roxie. Curiously, the class outing to the Essential SF Awards ceremony was in conjunction with Cinema By the Bay. I recommended he keep his eye on that festival and consider submitting his own work to them when the time comes.

Vlad Korishev--Vlad is interested in seeing work similar to his own: avante-garde, experimental, mixing different media within the same frame--claymation, animation, along with digital--and films which are also sound-design heavy or which use a lot of post-production editing. He's a huge promoter of the post-production aspect of filmmaking and believes that's where the movie comes together for the most part. He'd like to see scary films that are shocking and in-your-face. Surprisingly, Vlad has not taken much advantage of venues like Other Cinema, the San Francisco Cinematheque or the current retrospective Radical Light being presented throughout the Bay Area so I strongly encouraged him to do same.

Matt West--Matt primarily writes and directs and hopes to graduate from AIC/SF come June 2011. Gauging that most folks were responding to my question by focusing on the genres or types of films they hoped to eventually make themselves, Matt followed suit and said he would like to see more underground and independent comedy. Heavily influenced by John Waters, he has to believe that filmmakers are still making films like his. I asked him if he'd caught All About Evil (2010)? Matt had, and considered it the first SF underground comedy he's seen in recent years; hopefully the first of many. The last he remembered was Josh Kornbluth's Haiku Tunnel (2001), which he didn't find that funny, by contrast to All About Evil, which he admittedly enjoyed. When I asked him to provide an example of who makes avant-garde comedy, he mentioned the Kuchar Brothers, and said he'd like to see more of that kind of filmmaking. Matt mentioned that some television programming, such as Adult Swim, are offering experimental pieces that exhibit an artisanship to the jokes they're telling; he can tell these films have been created by artists and not just comedy writers.

Carlos Rodriguez--Carlos wants to be a cinematographer and found it difficult to think of anything he might suggest programmers add to SF's cinematic landscape because he's convinced it's pretty much available and all you have to do is look for it. I appreciated his confidence in the scene that has been created for San Franciscan audiences by our local programmers, impresarios and cultural institutions.

Dominic Mercurio--Dominic's focus in the AIC/SF program is also writing and directing but he likewise enjoys cinematography. He would like to see more modern stories; stories that can only be told right now that focus on modern themes, such as the effect of the digital age on human behavior. Naturally, this leans into my current exploration of what constitutes a contemporary film. There are those who have told me that they consider a contemporary film to be a film whose themes concern modernity and I would situate Phil's desire within that definition. I asked him what he thought of David Fincher's The Social Network (2010)? If that satisfied what he was hoping to see? Phil thought Fincher's film was amazing and that's exactly what he wants to see; films that discuss what we're going through as a civilization. I commented that the ability to tell those stories through filmmaking has increased with the advent of digital filmmaking which shortens the time from initial idea to execution. In the old days it might take three or four years to bring a film to the screen, by which time its topics might already be out of sync. Digital provides for a more immediate storytelling.

Delaney Howard--Though an interior design student and not a film student, Delaney is interested in eventually doing set design. Modest to a fault, Delaney doesn't feel she knows as much about film as her classmates even though she watches a lot of movies. Yet she knows what she relates to and she gravitates towards those films. Again, films about topical subjects going on now or situations in which she can see herself, rather than over-the-top romances or vampire films. Though I agreed with her disfavor of romance films ("I'm too old," I moaned, "it never happened. They lied to me"), I mimed twisting a knife in my heart when it came to her dissing genre films, since I love my monster movies and could spend entire afternoons watching one after the other; but, I could definitely understand and respect her love for small films set in an apartment building that reveal the lives of one or two people she can identify with or documentaries that allow you to take something away from the viewing. This was another opportunity to stress the importance of attending film festivals whose curated selections cater to various interests and where she could locate the human-scale dramas and informative documentaries relevant to her tastes and interests.

Nikkia Adams--Nikkia wants to see more films that reveal the history of San Francisco. For example, she's interested in the history of the Clift House and how it was built. Her mother and grandmother have spoken to her about Playland, the carnival by the beach, and she would like to know more about that. And she would like to know about the San Francisco Zoo and its history. I encouraged her interests. As far as I'm concerned, any corner of San Francisco holds the world's attention. And as young filmmakers who live in the Bay Area, there are countless histories to explore and locations to film, either by permit or through guerrilla filmmaking. It's a vast, historic resource just asking to be tapped.

Cross-published on The Evening Class.

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Interview: Charles Ferguson, Director of "Inside Job"

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Austin360 blogs > Austin Movie Blog > > 2010 archives > > 04 November > Entry By Charles Ealy |Thursday, November 4, 2010, 03: 19 PM (This interview originally ran in the Statesman on May 23, 2010)

CANNES - Despite the glamorous setting of the French Riviera, the movies that played at this year's Cannes Film Festival portrayed a world that has hit rock bottom.

A washed up movie promoter takes a group of New Burlesque stars to seedy French towns in Mathieu Almaric's "On Tour." A group of monks in Algeria are beheaded in Xavier Beauvois' "Of Gods and Men."A low-level Barcelona fix learns he's dying of cancer and ends up accidentally gassing a group of Chinese immigrants in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's "Biutiful."

A nanny is brutalized in Im Sangsoo's "The Housemaid." Hundreds of hoodlums are systematically executed in Takeshi Kitano's "Outrage."A grandmother tries to figure out how to respond to news that her grandson has been involved in a gang rape in Lee Chang-don's "Poetry."And an alcoholic woman watches her life pass by in Mike Leigh's "Another Year."
All of these movies are competing for the Palme d'Or, which will be awarded today. Aim even movies screening outside the official competition had dark implications.

A marriage unravels in Derek Cianfrance's "Blue Valentine," starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling.A nurse for terminal patients in an Hungarian hospital gorges are cream puffs in complete boredom as she watches a wall of heart monitors in "Adrienn Pal." The world faces unimaginable apocalyptic dangers in Lucy Walker's nuclear arms documentary "Countdown to Zero." And if the world really comes to an end, we might all be so poor that we don't even care, according to Charles Ferguson s riveting Wall Street documentary, "Inside Job"

Of all the movies screening at this year's festival, "Inside Job" has to be the most outrageous, provocative and disturbing.

Ferguson, whose previous documentary was the war analysis "No. End in Sight," contends that Wall Street has become so corrupt that its stench has infected a complicit government as well as academia.

His ambition is monumental.He seeks to explain the finding possible terms, how the financial meltdown of 2008 occurred, and who is to blame. Interviews include a who's who of alleged economic experts, some of whom come off as being Ars en.

The basic premise is this: that the deregulation of financial markets that began in the 1980s has led to a series of meltdowns, each one getting worse, and that both Republican and Democratic administrations progressivement have aided and abetted Wall Street criminals.
Ferguson is quite insist on using the word "criminal."

"I m not against people making money," he said in an interview."But I think the ways of making money should be honest and that people should be doing something useful." That's not the case with Wall Street.Businesses make real things, and they have to stand by what they make. "Banks don't make real things."

Ferguson tracks much of the current financial problems to the unregulated financial innovations such as securitization of mortgages and speculative credit default swaps.

If that sounds like a bunch of gobbledygook, Ferguson wants to explain it. People buy houses, sometimes even when they can't afford to.But banks and mortgage companies make the loans anyway because they get paid by commission. Then they sell those mortgages in bundles to investors.

The financial ratings agencies become complicit in the scheme, assigning high AAA ratings even to the riskiest of investments, including subprime mortgages.And Wall Street brokerages aggressively market these investments to clients, even though they know they are quite risky. In fact, these same Wall Street firms simultaneously invest in credit default swaps that will pay them handsomely if the securities they're selling to their customers fail.

In short, the game is rigged, and Ferguson shows no. deference to such power brokers in his interviews.

Goal Ferguson doesn't stop there. He says business professors throughout the country supplement their incomes by writing reports favoring deregulation and then get paid to sit on executive boards that benefit from deregulation.

He interviews Frederic Mishkin, a professor at the Columbia University Business School, and confronted him with payments he received from the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce to write a glowing report of that nation's economic standing shortly before its financial collapse.Ferguson's big complaint: that Mishkin didn't disclose to investors that he was taking money from the Icelandic chamber.

Ferguson also corners Glenn Hubbard, chief economic adviser during the George w. Bush administration and the current dean of Columbia Business School, as well as John Campbell, chairman of Harvard University's Department of Economics.Both end up being flustered and defensive as Ferguson details ethical conflict.

Goal Ferguson doesn't stop there.He launches a full-scale attack on the Obama administration for what he sees as a business-as-usual approach, most vividly epitomized by two of his top economic advisers, Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner.When asked whether he thinks Obama will take any action to correct Wall Street excesses, Ferguson, who supported Obama meaningful in the 2008 election, answers with a flat "no."

Ferguson said he was well aware that his movie was premiering in Cannes a day after Oliver Stone's "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps."He declines, at first, to criticize Stone directly."Let's just say it's a piece of Hollywood entertainment."

But when pressed, Ferguson opens up, noting that Stone glamorizes the very world that he is supposedly attacking, using glowing shots of the New York skylines and all the accoutrements of wealth.Such glamorization led to the first "Wall Street" spawning an unintentional icon, the crooked character of Gordon Gekko.And throughout both movies, there's a concept that Wall Street has a few bad characters among many honourable ones.

In interviews, Stone sounded more thoughtful than his movie did, wondering about the fate of capitalism itself.

"I am confused as to whether capitalism can still work," he said."I would love to see some serious reforms."After (the crash of) 1987, I thought it would cure itself, but it didn't."And there's still a tremendous inequity and injustice."

Goal Ferguson still sees a problem with stone's stance.

"There's an implication in stone's movie that this kind of criminal activity is done by a small number of people on Wall Street," Ferguson said."In fact, this criminal activity is done by a large number of people, with government and academic involvement."

Ferguson says he hopes "Inside Job" will help "demystify the current financial crisis.""I think it's essential that Americans understand so that they can take back their country."

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