Platform

Catherine Breillat unveils "The Last Mistress"

In the 20 years since 36 Fillette shocked audiences with its unflinching depiction of an unhappy 14-year-old girl determined to lose her virginity on a seaside family holiday (and discovering her sexual power along the way), French author and director Catherine Breillat has carved out a reputation as a fearless provocateur. Not coincidentally, she’s a magnet for controversy, attacked in some quarters for presenting sex and the sharp-elbowed power plays between men and women in the rawest terms. But perhaps it’s the notion of a woman director pulling back the curtain on society’s ugly secrets that pushes the buttons of some critics and moviegoers, rather than the confrontational themes of works like Romance and Fat Girl. The Last Mistress, which opened the San Francisco International Film Festival in April and begins its local theatrical run Friday, is at first blush a restrained, talky drawing-room drama set in the repressed 18th century. It soon reveals itself as a fierce passion play between an independent woman (Asia Argento) and a younger man who, after 10 years, stuns her by deciding to take a wife. Breillat, still showing some of the physical effects of her 2004 stroke that delayed production of The Last Mistress, was paradoxically much more playful and cheerful this time than when she visited the festival in 2003 with Sex Is Comedy. She speaks and understands English, but we relied on a translator.

topics: directors, q&a, san francisco international film festival, women filmmakers

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Jessica Yu, "Protagonist"

Jessica Yu’s latest documentary, “Protagonist,” takes on the ambitious topic of applying the dramatic structure of classical Greek playwright Euripedes to contemporary life. Centering on four rather damaged individuals, Yu uncovers the conditions and decisions that brought them to their present state. They include a German terrorist, an “ex-gay” evangelist, a bank robber, and a martial arts student. Certainly a departure from her other current project, the narrative comedy “Ping Pong Playa” (which debuted in Toronto this September), Yu continues to expand her extensive resume, which includes the Academy Award winning short doc, “Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien” and the heralded 2004 feature doc, “Into The Realms of the Unreal.” Yu talked to indieWIRE about “Protagonist,” which opened in New York November 30.

topics: bay area, directors, documentary, filmmakers, women filmmakers

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New Italian Cinema

Italy arguably had a larger hand than any other single country in the creation of a post-World War II U.S. audience for foreign “art” films.

Nothing drove that growth at first more than Italian “neorealist” films by Roberto Rossellini (“Open City,” “Paisan”), Vittorio de Sica (“Shoeshine,” “The Bicycle Thief”) and others. These movies created a new cinematic language in their gritty, quasi-documentary dramatization of poor rural and urban dwellers struggling desperately to survive in the literally ruined landscape of a country paid the price for choosing the wrong side in the world’s first truly global conflict.

topics: film festivals, italian cinema, women filmmakers

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Ariella Ben-Dov, Madcat mastermind

As the Madcat Women’s International Film Festival heads into its final stretch this coming week in San Francisco, SF360.org felt it was important to catch up with its chief curator, Ariella Ben-Dov. The “catching” part wasn’t exactly easy. As you read this, Ben-Dov is traveling at warp speed through various neighborhoods of San Francisco, working the last-minute arrangements at an assortment of locations, and creating the illusion that the globe-spanning, genre-busting festival of the people is an operation run by hundreds of hands. It actually comes mostly down to two: Ben-Dov and her very close associate, Rebecca McBride. Throughout the year, they get help from a graphic designer, projectionist, 10-15 volunteers, and a small pre-screening committee. But when you consider the scope of the shows and varieties of venues, you see what they’ve accompolished is no small feat — in fact, it’s not being replicated anywhere else in the world. Wonder why? We did eventually find Ben-Dov, and she offered her thoughts, mid-festival, over the phone.

SF360: I think midway through is probably the best time to ask: What’s the most challenging part of running a film festival like this one?

Ariella Ben-Dov: I wish it were a more interesting answer, but it’s probably the same for any arts organization in the U.S.: money and resources. It’s never about the work. There’s never a dearth of work.

SF360: How big is Madcat?

Ben-Dov: The two main people are myself and Rebecca McBride. We bring on a graphic designer and projectionist. We have 10-15 volunteers throughout the year, and we also have a pre-screening committee of about 10 people. It’s very small, and definitely we rely on interns and volunteers for support throughout the preparations.

SF360: I’m so impressed by the scope and variety of the films this year; can you describe your curatorial process and how it did or didn’t differ from years past?

Ben-Dov: We do send out an open call for submissions. This year we received a bit over 1,400. I’m always seeking out movies, whether it’s filmmakers who’ve shown at Madcat in the past, or filmmakers recommended by other curators. I go to a few other international film festivals each year. The process of reviewing the films and curating is a very long organizing process. There’s of course a few programs each year I have an idea of doing. I knew when Helen Hill passed away this year, I wanted to have an evening dedicated to her films. But most of the films come from submissions. It’s really exciting, because I don’t know what I’m going to get. I know what filmmakers are going to send work, but I don’t know what themes are going to arise. It’s a process of watching and rewatching. There are many films that don’t fit our guidelines…. It’s easy to weed those out. There are many films that could work, but I don’t say ‘Yes’ to until I see it fits our program.

Every year I feel like I hold on to more and more tapes of films I wanted to show but couldn’t find a place for, that’s what makes the shorts programs at Madcat so strong. The body of work is as important as each individual piece in the program. My hope as a curator is that audiences are going to walk away and be talking and thinking about the movies they see — not only that individual film, but how these films play off each other….

Obviously the filmmakers have an intention with their films

topics: film festivals, q&a, san francisco, women filmmakers

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Lynn Hershman Leeson's 'Culture" war

Even at this late stage in the decline of the constitutional republic, with essentially no restrictions on Federal wiretapping and the elimination of habeas corpus (as of press time), most blithe Americans consider themselves immune from Third Reich-style abuses of power. Steve Kurtz, a SUNY/Buffalo associate professor of art and one of the founders of the Critical Art Ensemble, is savvier than most about the government’s dark side, but even he couldn’t anticipate the Orwell-meets-Kafka house of horrors in which he’s been trapped since May, 2004. As depicted in Lynn Hershman Leeson’s riveting and unconventional documentary, “Strange Culture,” Kurtz is a victim of mistaken identity, paranoid overreaction, and official muscle. As those noirish TV shows of the ’50s used to put it, his story could be yours. And yet we seem less troubled by the ramifications of the case than our concerned friends overseas.

“At Sundance we were told Europeans would not understand the film,” Hershman emails from Montreal, in the midst of setting up four installations of her work. “It was the opposite, especially in [cities] like Warsaw and Berlin, where there has been serious repression, and a fight for freedom of expression, and censorship. People were outraged and shocked that this could happen to an artist in America.”

What happened was Steve Kurtz woke up one morning to find his wife, Hope, dead. The paramedics saw all kinds of scientific equipment and Petri dishes (hence the film’s title, or at least one of its meanings) and, in a post-9/11 world, alerted the police. They, in turn, brought in the FBI, who treated the house like the headquarters of a bio-terrorist plot. Kurtz was indicted on a number of felonies (although the grand jury would not rubber-stamp the terrorism charge), and his life was essentially ripped out from under him.

In reality, the Kurtzes were putting together an installation for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art that challenged the hidden incursion of biotechnology into food production. Their heavily researched work entailed a certain amount of scientific activity, which explains the gear and samples in the house. From a monolithic corporate-government perspective, sure, the project was subversive and dangerous. But a public health threat or a criminal enterprise? Not even close.

“Strange Culture” debuted at Sundance amidst a raft of documentaries and features centering on the continuing occupation of Iraq. Although it stood alone in its portrait of the civil liberties war at home, and Americans were finally expressing some interest in hearing about the abuses of the Bush Administration, distributors didn’t line up. Perhaps they had commercial considerations, or maybe they felt a chill. .
“Though we sold to DVD and Sundance Channel, it did not get distribution, despite rave reviews,” Hershman says. “Some courageous theater owners began to screen it on their own, one sending it to the other, and all paying [their own] advertising for it. So there are still those individuals with courage and spirit in the world, but not normal distribution channels.”

Hershman turns out groundbreaking films, such as “Conceiving Ada” and “Teknolust,” that challenge both our relationship with technology and our reliance on conventional storytelling. “Strange Culture” is the most straightforward and approachable film she’s made, as if she’s acknowledging that real lives are at stake, not abstract principles. At the same time, she provides a stylistic fillip out of narrative necessity and artistic audacity: She cast Tilda Swinton and Thomas Jay Ryan (“Henry Fool”) as Hope and Steve, and gracefully splices their scenes alongside straightforward interviews with Steve and broadcast news clips. It is an unusually effective and undeniably artful approach, in which the structure of the work reflects its subject’s iconoclasm and experimentation.

By integrating dramatic recreations with common documentary techniques, “Strange Cuilture” exemplifies “the creative interpretation of reality,” which is how the late great British filmmaker John Grierson’s defined “documentary.” But what are the limits of fiction in evoking the truth? And, for that matter, what are the limits of nonfiction?

“Aha!” Hershman wrote back enthusiastically. “That’s a key question because it is all point of view and perspective, right? Fiction in art can have a more profound element of truth than documented evidence. Documented evidence is only what can be derived at a particular time, from a particular language or point of view.”

She adds what we might take as a Hershmanian non sequitur, or a helpful mantra to get us through the fall-winter season of “prestige” films. “As Man Ray says, ‘In all great films there are 10 bad minutes and in all bad films there are 10 good minutes.’”

“Strange Culture” opens this week (beginning Fri/21) at the Roxie New College Film Center and Smith Rafael.

topics: documentary, filmmakers, political film, women filmmakers

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Five from Madcat

The Madcat Women’s International Film Festival, at 11 years old, is a young film festival by Bay Area standards, and the festival acts its age in the best of ways. Its mix of women’s films is generally wildly irreverent and often plucked from the margins — not just the margins of form, since a lot of the work is experimental, but also the furthest reaches of the planet. Its exhibition is freed as well from the constraints of festival tradition and convention — with films shown under the sky at the El Rio, “Your Dive,” where BBQ and beer precede the official entertainment, as well as in the heart of the Mission at Artists’ Television Access, with a few shows at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Here are a few quick takes on programs that look particularly worthwhile. The festival runs through Sept. 26.

1. ID Docs
An “identity” program with non-cliched concepts of what creates the essential “you,” ID Docs includes a film about the perceptions of an albino girl, a meditation on widows of a Baltic sea-coast village town, and a nonfiction look at identical twins expressing their individuality. (Tues/18, 8:30 p.m, El Rio.)

2. A Tribute to Helen Hill
Billed as “an evening of handcrafted 16mm films by the late, the great, Helen Hill,” this program the work of a DIY original and author of Recipes for Disaster: a handcrafted film cookbooklet, who, after surviving Hurricane Katrina, and working to clean her flood-damaged films, was shot, at age 36, by an intruder into her New Orleans home. (Wed/19, 8:30 p.m., El Rio.)

3. My Daughter the Terrorist
With startling access, Beate Arnestad’s impressive and fascinating film about two young, female Tamil Tigers, takes political documentary filmmaking a step further, not just offering historical context for the horrific and suicidal situation these two 20something women find themselves in, but also giving us full view of their surprisingly sweet and sentimental natures as they bond with each other and say goodbye to the world. (Fri/21, 7:30 p.m., ATA)

4. 4 Elements
Jiska Rickels beautifully lensed film reduces life to its basics: fire, water, earth, air — and work as it frames the hours of Siberian forest firefighters, king crab fisherman on the Bering Sea, German mineworkers, and Russian cosmonauts. (Sun/23, 7 p.m., YBCA)

5. Between States
An SF Cinematheque co-presentation, the program offers experimental takes on immigrant stories by Jacqueline Goss (“Stranger Comes to Town”), a new anti-war short by Lynne Sachs (“The Small Ones”), and a dazzlingly structured piece of visual poetry by Julia Meltzer and David Thorne, “We Will Live to see These Things, or five pictures of what may come to pass,” that moves through the strange history of downtown Damascus building, an equestrian event, and more, all shot in Syria during 2005-6. (Sun/23, 8:30 p.m., YBCA)

topics: bay area, filmmakers, lists, women filmmakers

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Shonali Bose on "Amu"

Indian-born director Shonali Bose’s Berlin and Toronto ’05 feature "Amu" is the story of Kaju, a 21-year-old Indian American woman who returns to India to visit her family and discover the place where she was born. The film takes a dark turn as Kaju stumbles against secrets and lies from her past. A horrifying genocide that took place twenty years ago turns out to hold the key to her mysterious origins. The film received the FIPRESCI prize at the 2005 Bombay International Film Festival as well as two national awards of India for best English-language film and best director. (SF360.org editor’s note: This interview was published originally in indieWIRE on May 25, 2007. The film opened May 25 at New York’s Cinema Village and opens Friday in the Bay Area at the 4 Star Theatre in SF and NAZ8 in Fremont.)

indieWIRE: Please introduce yourself.

Shonali Bose: I was born in Calcutta, India and did my undergraduate in History Honours in Delhi. I left India for the first time ever at the age of 21 — being the first one in my family to come for graduate school to America. I was given a scholarship by Columbia University to do a Ph.D in Political Science. As soon as I landed in Manhattan I felt it was home. It is very much like Calcutta and Bombay where I grew up. Conversely it was very difficult to adapt to Los Angeles where I now live.

indieWIRE: What were the circumstances that lead you to become a filmmaker, did you go to film school?

Bose: I was an actor from childhood and was writing directing and starring in school and college productions and then some professional theater while in India. I loved watching films but had no interest in either acting in films or directing them. The turning point came at Columbia University.

Firstly as a stage actor, I found I had extremely limited choices and mostly dreadfully stereotypical roles. Secondly, I found that I did not have the passion for Political Science that I had for history. The approach to studying in the Third World was extremely conservative. Had I stayed in India I might have remained in academics. Thirdly, I took a class with Richard Pena (head of the Film Society of Lincoln Center)in the Film Department where we watched and analysed the Third Cinema — films from Africa, Latin America, Asia — these films inspired me and spoke to me deeply. I finished my Masters and worked at Manhattan Cable TV directing small videos on current issues and live TV shows. I absolutely loved it and decided to apply to Film School. I was lucky to get a scholarship to UCLA Film School to do my MFA in directing. Within one month of starting film school, I realized that I had found my calling.

indieWIRE: How did the idea for your film come about?

Bose: My film is based on true stories that shook my world and me when I was in first year of college at the age of 19. For three days in the capital city of India where I was studying, a genocide was carried out by the Indian State — by politicians, police with the complicity of the administration and covered up later for over two decades by the judiciary. Men and boys of one particular community were hunted down by government led mobs and burnt alive after dousing their bodies in kerosene. I worked in the relief camps — set up by ordinary citizens — for many months and felt overwhelmed in trying to deal with the grief of the widows — the mothers, wives many of whom were raped. Their wails still ring in my ears.

Aside from working in the camps I co-wrote and directed a street play on the genocide which we performed all over the city, including market places, schools, colleges and the affected areas. Twenty years later, when I graduated from film school in a far away country — and was deciding what my first film should be about — it struck me that no one had made a film on this shocking incident which was still so alive as justice had still been denied to the victims.

As I was writing the script another such horrific genocide was organized in India, in 2002, against another community by another government. I ended the film with this event as the cycle of violence has continued in the present and will not stop until an example is made of the perpetrators.

Once I decided on the core story, which was a true one, I built around it with other themes which interested me. For instance I made one of the protagonists a girl who was American as she had lived in LA since the age of three. I was moved by the poignancy of the situation of second generation youth (of whatever national origin) who do face a crisis of belonging caught between two worlds and cultures.

Another core stem of the film is a close mother-daughter relationship which becomes turbulent because of secrets and lies. I was extremely close to my mother and lost her tragically soon after the ’84 carnage. In fact, this was the reason that I decided to leave India and come to America for graduate school.

I had never written a feature script before and felt that I would be most honest and true if I went as deep within myself as possible for the characters, the situations, the emotions. My history professor commented to the videographer who interviewed her for the "Making of Amu" that she was not surprised that not only was my first film on the 1984 carnage, but also about a mother-daughter relationship set in that context. When I was in college, I did not even dream I would become a film maker — but my film "Amu" was born at that time and for twenty years has been running in my veins.

indieWIRE: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in either developing the project or making and securing distribution for the movie?

Bose: The biggest challenge has been raising financing for the film. No one wanted to touch it because of the theme. There were many false leads and it took three years to write the script and raise money for it. The seed money for the film came from my husband, a scientist at NASA who invented the technology that produced the world’s smallest camera — and current cellphone cameras.

In India the theatrical release of the film was held up by the official censor board, which asked me to remove five lines of dialogue all of which indicted the government. Instead of replacing those dialogues with acceptable lines I allowed the characters to go silent. This had a powerful impact in Indian theaters as a ripple would go through the audience, "censor censor…"

The censor board also gave it [the equivalent of] an NC 17 rating, stating as a reason that "why should young people know a history that is better buried and forgotten." As a result of this rating, the film is banned from being shown on Indian television — even on private channels.

But after four months of holding the film up with these cuts etc. it was released in India in early 2005. It has taken an additional two years from that time to release the film in North America.

indieWIRE: What are some of your all-time favorite films, and what are some of your recent favorite films?

Bose: "The Courage of the People," "Blood of the Condor" — Jorge Sanjines
"Battle of Chile" — Patricio Guzman
"Memories of Underdevelopment" — Tomas Guiterrez Alea
"Amarcord," "8 1/2" — Fellini
"A woman under the influence" — Cassavetes
"The Great Dictator" — Chaplin
"Battle of Algiers" — Pontecorvo
"The Apu Trilogy," "The Big City" — Satyajit Ray
"The Milagro Beanfield War" — Redford
Recent: "The Namesake," "Pan’s Labyrinth," "Babel," "Little Miss Sunshine," "Brokeback Mountain," "Maria full of Grace," "Far from Heaven," "Motorcycle Diaries"
Also love "Bollywood" films. Recent favourites: "Omkara," "Bunty aur Bublee"

indieWIRE: What are your interests outside of film?

Bose: Activism. Feel passionately about injustice, exploitation. Issues of imperialism, war, attacks on immigrants, cruelty to children, discrimination on basis of race, gender, sexuality, class…

indieWIRE: How do you define success as a filmmaker, and what are your personal goals as a filmmaker?

Bose: To move an audience, to make it think across all languages and cultures. That has been the biggest reward for "Amu" — the audience responses all over India, and in so many different countries (at festivals). The success is not the box office (dependent on marketing and not quality of film) nor which festivals or awards, but the honest reaction of audiences.

My personal goals as a filmmaker is to strive to make more "Amus" — films that I believe in, stories that are unknown and need to be told without compromise, without being dictated to by financiers or distributors. To have full artistic integrity and control as I did in "Amu," and to be able to get this without the huge sacrifice and painful process of "Amu." That’s the dream… to make the films one wants and always get backing both for it to be made and for it to be released in theaters. As a filmmaker, that is the ultimate destination for me… to be in wide release everywhere.

topics: directors, independent film, q&a, women filmmakers

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