NisimazineAbu Dhabi
#7, Thursday 20 October 2011A magazine by NISI MASA, European Network Of Young Cinema
from
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sons
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eart
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ipst
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مجلة تصدرها نيسي ماساـ الشبكة االوربية للسينما الشابة
العدد7 - الخميس 20 أكتوبر 2011
نيسيمازين
Arturo RipsteinA SeparationMapping Subjectivityارتورو ريبستينليلة صيف ابتسامات خرائط الذات
BY M
ART
INA
LA
NG
(AU
STRI
A)
,
picture of the day / صورة اليوم
Everybody is rushing to reach the screenings on time, they need to arrive at least half an hour early to guarantee their seats. If you don’t hold a ticket, you may be subjected to standing in a queue as if you were queuing for food stamps. If you are lucky, you may be able to get through and continue your film experience. The volunteers checked my ticket and wished me a pleasant viewing, insisting on saying it in English.The enthusiastic audience floods into the hall, scanning the area for the best seats to maximize their enjoyment. As for me, I chose to pounce on a middle seat in the last row. The hall filled up and the lights dimmed and silence spread in the hall apart from the noise of potato chips and popcorn crunching.
Light began streaming down from a source at the back of the hall and onto the white screen in front of us, and the magic contained in stories and characters exploded in the dark to amaze the crowd. For a moment, the sight of the overflowing hall drew my attention and engulfed my thoughts and made me wonder if what we do as cinema makers is really as significant as it seems and warrants such vast numbers? Of course as someone working in the film world, my answer was positive, to give myself hope and derive some pleasure out of the moment.
Minutes later, the last scene in the movie ends and one of the organizers of the festival very gently invited the director of the movie to the podium to start a Q & A. As the sound and the production design in the film were excellent, I was pinned to my seat in anticipation to find out the names of the two talents behind the work. Unfortunately however, the magic screen’s lights went off and disorder ensued in the hall as some people left and others remained in their seats. As the director stood in the spotlight on the podium, I asked myself “do I have to be a director in order to be encompassed by light? What about the rest of the other crew members?” Your story, Mr. Director, was incomplete, for there are people involved in the creative process of making the film whose names the audience did not get to see on the screen.
The festival has a responsibility, as a platform for us to show our creativity, to give credit for each single person who worked in the movie and to highlight them, rather than lower the dimmer switch without any valid excuse.
صالة الى المناسب الموعد في للوصول الجميع يتراكض لكي األقل على ساعة نصف قبل الحضور عليهم العرض. تذكرة، لديك تكن لم إذا القاعة. في أماكنهم يضمنوا الجمعية« بـ«طابور شبيه طابور في للوقوف فستضطر إن حالفك أما المصرية. السينما أن نشاهده في اعتدنا الذي الحظ، فستتمكن من الدخول والتمتع بتجربة السينما. ألقى »مشاهدة لي وتمنوا تذكرتي، على نظرة المتطوعون
ممتعة«، مصّرين على قول جملتهم هذه باإلنكليزية. يقوم الجمهور المتحمس بإجراء عملية مسح للمكان، كي متعة. أكثر لمشاهدة المناسبة المقاعد احتالل إلى يسارع األخيرة وتمترست في مقعد الصفوف أحد اخترت فقد أنا أما
وسطي.
امتألت القاعة وانطفأت األنوار وعّم الصمت، إال من بعض أصوات كرمشة رقائق البطاطا المقلية والبوشار. ومن مصدر خلفي شّع ضوء من البهاء سقط على الشاشة البيضاء؛ ضوء يكتنف سحر القصة والشخصيات التي ستبهر الجالسين في الظلمة. للحظات، استحوذ مشهد الصالة المحتشدة بالجمهور على كصناع به نقوم ما هل التساؤل: إلى بي دافعًا انتباهي، يستقطب لكي األهمية من الدرجة هذه على للسينما األمل تمنحني إيجابية، إجابتي كانت بالتأكيد هؤالء؟ كل كشخص يعمل في مجال السينما، وتجعلني أستمتع أكثر
بهذه اللحظة.
أحد سارع حتى الشريط، من األخير المشهد انتهى إن ما منظمي المهرجان بلياقة واضحة إلى دعوة مخرج العمل إلى الجمهور. لقد كان تصميم المنصة لكي يخوض نقاشًا مع في تسمرت لذا جيدين، الفيلم في الفني واإلخراج الصوت العمل أنجزا اللذين الفنيين أجل معرفة اسمي مكاني من بموهبة وتميز كبيرين، لكن لألسف عّمت الفوضى المكان، وانطفأ ضوء الشاشة السحرية. خرج من خرج وبقي من بقى. وقف المخرج وتسلطت األضواء عليه. فسرحت ثانية بخيالي، علّي ُتسلط أكون مخرجًا كي أن يجب ألسأل نفسي: »هل
االضواء؟ ماذا عن باقي طاقم العمل؟«.يستطع لم أبطال فهنالك المخرج. أيها ناقصة قصتك جاءت
الجمهور قراءة أسمائهم بعد مشهدك األخير.فيه نقدم الذي المكان وباعتباره المهرجان، مسؤولية إن إبداعتنا، أن يسلط الضوء على كل من شارك في هذا العمل
الفني، ال أن نتجاهله ألي سبب كان.
by F
ilipp
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NISIMAZINE ABU DHABI
Thursday 20 October 2011/# 7A magazine published by the NISI MASA in the
framework of a film journalism workshop
for young film journalists from Europe and the
Arab World with the support of
the Abu Dhabi Film Festival
EDITORIAL STAFF هيئة التحرير المدير المسؤول: ماثيو داراس
Director of Publication Matthieu Darras رئيس التحرير/التصميم الفني: مارجه ألدرس
Editor-in-Chief/Layout Maartje Alders المشرفان: جي وايسبيرغ و زياد الخزاعي
TutorS Jay WeissbergZiad Khuzai
المساهمون في العدد
زياد عبد الصمد ,محمد بشير ,جبهة تحرير الشريط السينمائي ,فؤاد هندية ,فيليبو
زامبون ,مونيكا غيمبوتايتة
Contributors to this issueZiad Abdul Samad, Mohamed Beshir
Monika Gimbutaitė, Fuad HindiehCelluloid Liberation Front
Filippo Zambon
NISI MASA rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis 99
75010, Paris, FrancePhone: +33 (0)9 60 39 63 38
[email protected] www.nisimasa.com
// editorial by Fuad Hindiehفؤاد هندية
فتتاحية ا
The TempleThe Temple (Deool) is a good example of ‘Indian’ cinema made to play to a cer-tain kind of hipster, film-festival friendly audience. Single-layered, uni-dimensio-nal narratives with slick editing and ca-merawork seem to be the norm in these movies, with a handful of social issues thrown in for good measure.
The story is set in a rural village in Maha-rashtra facing drought-like conditions. Resources are scarce but goodwill and common-sense prevails. Development is on its way, slowly but surely through the village leader and a few elders. The serenity is rocked by the news of a cow-herd who has an inspired dream and the entire village is convinced of its truth. The rest of the film is about the conse-quences of this incident.
The movie loses the plot halfway through. Perhaps it attempts to play it safe, not wanting to hurt any right-wing sentiments. The aspirations of a peasant seeking a higher level of belief are hila-rious, but only to a certain extent. After such a brilliant start, I felt the director Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni explains too much and gives his take on religion ins-tead of allowing the story to be carried
out in its own crazy course. The acting is the highlight of the movie. There were delightful performances by the inimi-table Nana Patekar, Dilip Prabhavalkar, and Girish Kulkarni. However the wo-men actors, including the cow, manage to steal the show whenever they share the screen with these stalwarts. Maybe certain special appearances could have been avoided and the funds better used in employing a few old-school writers.
The camera-work is also noteworthy, masterfully bringing out a feel of sen-suality. The rural landscape is captured in all its glory and the interiors of rural households beautifully composed. The cinematographer also plays a big role during the enjoyable song sequences, with a liberal use of moving shots wi-thout appearing excessive. The first half of the film was simply joie-de-vivre with characters full of energy and potential. And yet after establishing the captiva-ting storyline, it succeeds in driving the perfectly-running special-edition Am-bassador Landmaster off a cliff.
Ziad Abdul Samad
Ashgar Farhadi’s A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin) is a morally challenging and powerful drama about modern Iranian society, although the themes that are being analyzed are universal and understandable to everyone.
An unhappily married couple wants to split up. Simin wants to leave Iran for her daughter’s future, but Nader refuses to emigrate because his old father is Alzheimer’s ravaged. The film starts in court where both try to explain situation from their own perspectives. As man and woman sit apart, avoiding looking to each other, we have a feeling that they have already separated. We cannot see the exact figure of the judge, as the characters talk directly to the camera. Audience becomes a judge and this happens to be the key to the whole film.
One mistake leads to another and terrible mess starts. As in his previous film About Elly Asghar Farhadi is interested not in action itself but in consequences it may cause and, most importantly, in reactions and moral dilemmas of people. Characters in the film are separated from each other by sex, age, social class or religious beliefs, yet they all make the same mistakes when they try to convince themselves that a small lie is not really a lie.
There is no other word to describe the acting besides brilliant. Every similarity as well as every single difference is shown as clear as possible, avoiding exaggeration or overacting. Clear structure of the narrative and powerful dialogues create an atmosphere of being right in the middle of what is happening, feeling the same anxiety and suspense as the characters feel. Farhadi doesn’t take sides. In this psychologically complex drame he uses clear and sensitive voice to prove that usually we cannot blame just one or another – everyone may be right, everyone may be wrong.
Monika Gimbutaitė
review / عرض نقديA Separation
by F
ilipp
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Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni, India - Showcase
Thursday 20/10 VOX 5 - 9:00 PM
Friday 21/10 ADT - 4:00 PM
Asghar Farhadi, Iran Narrative Competition
by F
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focus / بقعة ضوء
Mapping Subjectivity
The cinema of the Middle East is often ste-reotypically seen under the restrictive frame of realism. Euro-American audiences tend to associate formal experimentation with Wes-tern culture and often consider it an exclusive characteristic of their own aesthetic tradition. This widespread assumption underlines a deep preconception that sees non-Western
cultures unable to reflect upon themselves and to deconstruct their own formal conven-tions. Dominant narratives often depict Arab countries as prisoners of their own culture while the very same term, ‘culture’, stands for creativity and critical production when used in a ‘democratic’ context. Curiously enough, typical traits of experimental cinema happen to be characteristic of Islamic visual culture that “quite consciously sought to emphasize surface over shape and gave itself the means to be as free as possible of an object’s or mo-
nument’s physical properties.”(Oleg Grabar, ‘The Formation of Islamic Art’)
Hence the predilection for flow over classical form, abstraction and open-ended signs and, most interestingly, embodied perception, are all elements we find in Islamic art. Since Islam does not contemplate the visual figuration of God, the body, unlike that of Christ, is not so-mething to be represented but to be evoked. Consequently, images, freed from the burden of figurative representation, suggest instead of dictate possible compositions whose final shape depends upon the viewer’s elaboration. The arabesque, carpets’ hypnotic motifs and the very lettering of the Arabic language fea-ture flowing signs where image, information and spirituality unfold from each other.
When rigid figurative patterns are missing the spectator is ‘forced’ to actively engage with the work of art in order to make sense of it. Only in the 20th century has Western art embraced abstraction through modernism and considered for the first time non-figu-rative representation. Western experimental filmmaking is very much the child of this artistic experience. To seek a correspondence between the image and reality is the quintes-sential concern of cinema. It is important to stress how this preoccupation derives from the Euro-American tradition from which Arab cinema descends and whose traits were ob-viously highly influenced by the former. If we
were to place cinema within the continuum of visual arts though, we would see that non-figurative forms are very much part of Islamic history. Observed under this perspective the work of Elia Suleiman is not merely derived from Buster Keaton, of the rarefied narratives of European cinema and so on, but concep-tually linked to an older history.
What this ongoing retrospective has been presenting is a largely unknown story of ex-perimentation in the Arab world preceding international recognition of the director of Chronicle of a Disappearance. This is a move-ment that saw unexpected trans-continental collaborations without the need for patroni-zing distributors on the trail of gold, as in the case of Summer ’70 (Un Film Girato Nell’Estate del ’70) by Nagy Shaker and Paolo Isaja. Una-ble to finance their own ambitions with their individual budgets the Egyptian and Italian directors joined forces to produce an eerie mediation on change and difference with an original score by Suleiman Jamil and the unselfconscious beauty of a young American friend of theirs.
Freed from the distortions of historical linea-rization audiences will hopefully be invited to look beyond the surface to discover the un-folding beauty of a rich but sadly criminalized culture.
Celluloid Liberation Front
‘Mapping Subjectivity: Ex-perimentation in Arab Cine-ma from the 1960s to Now’ was organized by ArtEast and MoMA in New York where it was initially pre-sented before travelling to Abu Dhabi via London. Conceived as a three-part nomadic exhibition, ADFF is presenting this year two films from the second instalment and will offer more throughout the co-ming year. Nisimazine felt it appropriate to reflect upon the significance and role of experimentation in (Arab) cinema.
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’70
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Chronicles of a Disappearance by Elia Suleim
an
Principioy Fin
meet mahfouz
Principio y fin (The Beginning and the End) is one of Arturo Ripstein’s well-known films. It is loosely adapted from Mahfouz’s novel of the same title about the story of a mother and four children af-ter the death of the father. The death opens up a wormhole. The central theme is loss of social status, and how material comfort was the loose thread that bound the family members to each other. When the thread unravels, tears appear in the moral fabric of each other’s selves. The puri-ty of love and the need to be loved are replaced by eroticism and lust.
The mother takes matters into her own hands and the subsequent events can be attributed to her decisions. The hope of the entire family falls on the shoulders of the youngest son, a smart and handsome college student who is on the verge of a scholarship and has his way with wo-men. The women in love are stripped one after another of their dignity but their desires remain stronger than ever. Every female character lo-ves him in one way or other. He is the bearer of other people’s dreams. When failure starts cree-ping into his life, he repays the love by cruelty. The mother pays for the Faustian bargain.The three other siblings at first can watch from the sidelines the mayhem unfolding. By helping the golden child of the family, the three of them in turn fall into the mix. The only sister, convin-ced of her ugliness, turns to a sinister profession like her eldest brothers. The second (the mo-ther’s least favourite son) maintains a level of sanity to the end.
Biblical themes are interwoven into the narrati-ve, the concepts of sin and punishment, heaven and hell, and acts of God. The family members cannot seem to place responsibility in their misfortunes on anything coherent and instead succumb to their fate. Ripstein’s works are rich in symbolism where mirrors, indoor carousels and crosses add meaning to the dark, constricting interiors of the living spaces. Music is used spa-ringly and at crucial intersections. A better title would have been Beginning of the End. Ripstein manages to portray a living breathing family drama out of a political work of Mahfouz. In fact this is an apt tribute to the writer, an internatio-nal director of this repute, to choose his story to be the canvas of this brilliant movie.
Ziad Abdul Samad
أفالم أشهر من واحدًا والنهاية« »البداية يعّد أرتورو ربستين، وهو مقتبس بتصّرف عن رواية نفسه، العنوان تحمل التي محفوظ نجيب موت بعد األربعة وأطفالها أم قصة وتروي إلى فتح هوة في حياتهم. الذي يؤدي والدهم المكانة خسارة حول الفيلم ثيمة تتمحور كان المادية البحبوحة أن وكيف االجتماعية، ببعضهم العائلة أفراد يربط الذي الرفيع الخيط الدموع تبرز الخيط، هذا ينقطع وحين بعض، من واحد كل ذوات في األخالقي النسيج في أن إلى المرء وحاجة الحب نقاء أما اآلخرين.
واإليروتيكية. الشهوانية محلها فتحل ُيحب
بسير متحكمة األمور، زمام األم تتولى أملها بأسرها العائلة وتضع التالية. األحداث ذكي جامعي طالب وهو األصغر، االبن في منحة على الحصول حافة على ووسيم، النساء. مع الخاصة طريقته وله دراسية األخرى بعد واحدة يجردن العاشقات النسوة إال أن رغباتهن تبقى على قوتها من كرامتهن، الفيلم في نسائية شخصية كل نفسها؛ إال أنه حامل أحالم تحبه على هذا النحو أو ذاك، إلى حياته، بالتسلل اإلخفاق يبدأ اآلخرين، وحين ثمن األم وتدفع بالقسوة. الحب يقابل فإنه
هذه. الفاوستية الصفقة
من اآلخرون الثالثة اإلخوة يراقب البداية في الذهبي الولد بمساعدة الخراب. تكشف بعد في بدورهم يقعون ثالثتهم فإن العائلة، في خضم هذا الخراب. أما األخت الوحيدة المقتنعة الشنيعة المهنة إلى تنحرف فإنها بدمامتها، الثاني االبن أما األكبر. شقيقها شأن شأنها )الذي تبادله األم أقّل قدر من الحب بين أوالدها( في العقلية سالمته من قدر على يحافظ فإنه
النهاية.السياق في الدينية الموضوعات تتشابك الخطيئة مفاهيم مع للفيلم، السردي الرّب ينزله وما والجحيم، والجنة والعقاب على قادرين العائلة أفراد أن يبدو وال بالبشر. عليه يلقون يحملونه منطقي سبب أّي إيجاد لمصائرهم. فيستسلمون مصائبهم، تبعات
المرايا، حيث بالرموز برستين أعمال تحتشد معنى تضيف والصلبان، الداخلية والدوامات التي الفضاءات دواخل مؤلفة العتمة، إلى الموسيقى أما الشخصيات. فيها تعيش على حضورها ويقتصر بتقشف، فتستعمل عنوانًا ولعّل الحاسمة. السردية المنعطفات أكقر ليكون كان النهاية« »بداية قبيل من ربستين فيه ينجح الذي الفيلم، لهذا دقة رواية من مؤثرة عائلية حكاية استخالص في فإن األمر حقيقة في السياسية. محفوظ اختار إذ للكاتب، تحية مناسبة الفيلم يشكل لكي قصته ربستين، بشهرة يتمتع مخرج
هذا. البديع فيلمه قماشة تكون
عبدالصمد زياد
Arturo Ripstein (Mexico, 1993)
بداية ونهاية
1993 المكسيك - ارتورو ريبستين
You can find all our coverage online on:www.nisimazine.eu
&Watch video with Leonard
Retel Helmrich explaining his
camera techniquevimeo.com/channels/199250
Wednesday 20/10 VOX 3 - 9:00 PM
from
Sum
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portrait / بورترية
Arturo Ripstein
“The ideal film festival would go like
this”, Ripstein said. “You go to Cannes
or Venice and you enter the competi-
tion, and by that I mean that all ap-
plicants for a certain year receive the
same script and the same amount
of money, and they are given a year
to come back with a film. You have
a limited margin of change in the
script and the budget according to
your country, but the concept stands.
You present all the films in the next
edition of the festival with no names
attached to them except the country,
so you would not know who the film-
maker was. Only then you will know
who the best filmmaker was.” Ripstein
takes the idea of film festivals to an
Olympic echelon: “It’s like you take my
three-week shoot film and put it in the
same competition with Apocalypse
Now. Where in the world would this
be a fair competition?” The Mexican
director concern about the way film
festivals are developing stems from
the increasing business control over
them, and of course the American
influence. He recalls a visit to Cannes
years ago to find a huge advertise-
ment of Godzilla: “I thought to myself,
this festival has gone from Godard to
Godzilla…God grief!”
Later that night Ripstein was intro-
duced by Peter Scarlet, executive
director of the ADFF, to a full thea-
tre coming to attend the regional
premiere of his entry for the narra-
tive competition, The Reasons of the
Heart (Las razones del corazón), a re-
vision of the French classic ‘Madame
Bovary’.
Once the screening started Ripstein
walked out of the theatre and did
not come back until the end credits.
He explained during the Q&A’s ses-
sion how painful it is to watch his
own films, and that the only way to
forget what he has just finished is to
work on a new film.
The next morning we had our official
appointment for the photo shoot.
Sitting in an empty, dim café, the
Mexican director pondered on his
affinity to retrieve the same moti-
ves in his adaptations - he is one of
the few filmmakers who still adapt
classic novels onto the screen. His
repeated patterns revolve around
certain themes -- in his continuous
one-shot scenes the camera floats
around his troubled characters in
their sordid surroundings, driven
by their hearts to their doom. When
asked about these cinematographic
recurrences, Arturo Ripstein simply
replied: “There is a word in Spanish
that goes for being stupidly stubborn,
as in falling in the same hole twice, on
the same day.”
As I was praising his stubbornness,
he gave insight into the pressure he
had to face with 1986’s Deep Crim-
son (Profundo carmesi), when one of
the producers forced him to cut out
twenty minutes for the release of the
film. Our discussion then went on
the question of censorship at large.
“It’s a phenomenon that deserves to be
studied more, because one dismisses
it instantly as an enemy, but it has a
strange correlation with creation”, Ar-
turo Ripstein explained. “ Censorship
always existed. In my time it used to
be moral, where you could not show
breasts or harsh violence because it
was immoral, then it became political.
Now it’s the worst kind of censorship:
economic censorship. You could avoid
moral censorship by being sly, and you
avoid political censorship by using
metaphors, but there is no argument
against economic censorship.”
Despite his extensive carrier, dating
back to working as Luis Buñuel’s ap-
prentice, Arturo Ripstein does not
consider himself a successful film-
maker. “My work is known to some
cinephiles, but I’ve always been a pe-
ripheral artist, and now that I am an
old filmmaker it’s even the periphery
of the periphery.” After a smile, Rips-
tein concluded: “This is not modesty,
quite the opposite. Modesty pertains
to the well-bred and the secure, and I
am not.”
Mohamed Beshir
I accidentally met director Arturo Ripstein in the Fairmont hotel lobby, during a small break between a long TV interview and a photo shoot. He gave me the firmest handshake I’ve had during the festival as of yet, and we sat down flipping through the jury catalogue, me introducing the faces from the region that he does not know, while he was introducing the Eu-ropean ones I haven’t met.
Director of The Reasons of the Heart, MexicoNarrative Competition
phot
o by
Fili
ppo
Zam
bon
