No Dice by the Nature Theater of Oklahoma

Where most plays I’ve seen smooth and pat down language to make it articulate and beautiful, because always memorised and known, deleted of possible mistakes and plainness, this play is based entirely on transcribed conversations between friends. The conversations are full of inarticulateness, every um and ah, every uh-huh, is kept, and every broken down, empty sentence, every mistake, every misuse of a word, every unfinished thought is left unfinished and uncorrected. The result is some kind of poetry of inarticulateness, the most mundane conversations dramatised and made to mean something. They are not simply reproduced, they are given something they didn’t have before, or that was hidden inside of them. They ham it up, they make pathos where there was no pathos (or where pathos was hidden). They make an “uh-huh” seem loaded with anger or tragedy or joy or fear or rejection or love, that is unspoken, behind the words. They tell a story with out a story, that speaks to “the element inside” of us that is looking for something, because we’re the population of people that can’t do it for ourselves, make our own everyday mundane conversations mean something, to keep them and make them real, because we don’t hear ourselves speaking, we just speak. This play makes us hear ourselves, in them, and understand that there is communication and joy and hilarity even in our most inarticulate rambles. Last night I saw No Dice, a four hour epic homage to communication and connection, to dialogue and communication. It’s nothing short of wonderful.

Possible Worlds Film Festival – My Winnipeg

Last night I saw the claustrophobic fantasy documentary My Winnipeg. I have tried to see it and missed out a couple of times before, and finally managed to see it at the shambolic Possible Worlds Canadian Film Festival in Sydney.

I must admit, although I enjoyed My Winnipeg overall, I was kind of bored by it about half the time. A lot of the lyrical repetitive narration was obviously not meant to be taken seriously, but it did kind of go over the top. And although it really effectively portrayed the odd evil that children can find in mundane things, and the association with adults and childhood homes of lurking malevolence, most of the slimy body-horror is focused on women and girls and left a lingering sense of misogynt. Guy Maddin says “Mother” a little bit like Buster in Arrested Development.

As a film about a cold city it is incredibly atmospheric. The train that rides through the streets of the city is evocative of those dreams I guess everybody has, where you’re navigating a perverse neighbourhood just like your old hometown. Scenes like the one where the characters straighten a rug in a re-enactment of childhood rug-straightening are effectively surreal.

Funny, spooky, and evocative of the best kind of fever-dream. But also kind of dull at times.

Film – KVIFF Day 8 – Citizen Havel / The Photograph / The Guitar / Rusalka

Obcan Havel / Citizen Havel

I am so lucky to have seen this film, which provides such an insight into the workings of Czech politics and Vaclav Havel as a person and politician. He was very different to how I expected him to be from having read his books, plays and speeches. He writes with such clarity that it is strange to find out he’s more like somebody’s bumbly embarrassing Dad than anything. He describes people’s perception of him as “not behaving like a President”, just a “man in a sweater”, an “eternal little boy”. He behaves petulantly sometimes, and occasionally seems confused. He is modest to a fault for a politician. After a particularly bad day in the press in which his policy mistakes were enumerated, he said to his advisor that he’d make a statement saying why the press was wrong about these mistables, and then explain what his real mistakes were. The footage seemed to include a lot of quite confidential meetings etc., which I guess is why they waited so long to put out the documentary.

Vaclav is shown with his wife of 40 years companionship, Olga (of Letters to Olga fame of course) and their moments of bickering, as well as moments of obvious affection and support. At Olga’s funeral Vaclav is visibly at a complete loss, staring at her coffin with a look of incomprehension, reminding me of my oft-bewildered grandfather. He touches the box as though trying to straighten it, even though it’s not crooked, standing back to assess its aesthetics as though the only thing he can do is make sure it’s looking right, which appears to be something he does in times of stress, fussing over details – his tie, his jacket, are always wrong – too big, too small. While preparing to make a speech, he fusses over ugly lecterns – “One day I’ll have a lectern by Pi_____, but not yet.”

The film had elements of Yes, (Prime) Minister – the idealist but ultimately self-interested politician talked around by his staff. It was, in this way, frequently very funny. Of course it had been edited that way – the Czechs are never ones to take politic(ian)s too seriously (see Right, Left, Right last year).

The documentary is composed almost entirely of footage from Havel’s 2nd and 3rd incumbency, which of course makes the title a little ironic. But somehow appropriate, since it certainly shows him simply as a person trying to influence his nation in a positive way. Whether or not he achieves this is hard to say. I don’t know enough about the practical results of his presidency to say for sure. But it was interesting to see the city change around him throughout the mid-late 90s and early 00s. The film finishes up just after the end of his Presidency in 2003, which is about the time I first visited the city. There’s no doubt that the quality of life for people in the Czech Republic has improved a lot since then; whether that’s because of Vaclav Klaus’ policies, EU membership or would have happened anyway I do not know.

Incidentally the rivalry between the two Vaclavs – Havel and Klaus (then the Prime Minister/Premier), provides much of the comedy. At one point Milan ________ makes an announcement of a Presidential electoral vote by saying “the candidate with the most votes is Vaclav Kla- Havel. Sorry about the slip-up there”. When Havel wins an election, he brushes dandruff off Klaus’s shoulders before they head out to speak to the cameras. Another time, Bill Clinton came to Prague and was presented with a sax to play in Reduta Jazz Club. Here Vaclav shows his petulant side – before Clinton arrives he inspects the saxophone, saying “It’s so golden and lovely – bit of a waste isn’t it, he’s just an amateur! Does he know what all these buttons do?” then he gives it a blow and says “It doesn’t make any sound at all – must be a heap of junk!”. Then he recounts a story to his aides about how Vaclav Klaus had complained that he wasn’t invited to the show. Havel says “I’ve decided to be 1/10th as rude to Klaus as he is to me. Obviously my politeness made me want to say – you should come along then! – but I didn’t! – I didn’t say anything! This is a major breakthrough. I’m not being nice to Klaus.” Although the rivalry is mutual, Klaus clearly has Havel under his his thumb. Before making a decision about how to form a government after a coalition dissolves, Havel says “I must check with Klaus”, showing in this scene perhaps a lack of political courage and leadership, showing his discomfort by falling silent, fiddling, and giving a sheepish smile. Clinton is shown playing sax – Klaus is in the audience.

It is interesting also to view this movie as a companion piece to Rene, which is punctuated by footage of the Velvet Revolution, the split of Czechoslovakia, and each of Havel’s swearings in, as well as his stepping down as President. It’s a view of a changing nation “from the inside” – just a different kind of “inside”.

Havel is always talking about his duty to the people of the country, even when he’s clearly at his most uncomfortable with his role. The temptation of starting a new life with his new young wife must be immense. “Everyone is captive to their situation.” – as the director of Plennyj / Captive said at its premiere. Even Citizen Havel.

The Photograph

This is a beautifully filmed, touching story about a beautiful country girl who is in the city to improve the life of daughter and grandmother who live in village in the countryside. She lies to her family about what she does, and sends what little money she has after her pimp gets his cut to them. Still, they always need more, and she needs to live, leading her to develop debts. Eventually things fall apart for Sita, leading her to run away from her pimp. She then has to ask her landlord, a photographer close to death, for work in lieu of paying rent. He agrees, and after spending a lot of time together, they become awkward friends, because they need each other, and see something in each other. He is sicker and sicker all the time, and she becomes torn between the need to provide for her family, and the need to admit to the truth about her own life. “A photograph can say anything, it depends on the ones you hang as your truth.” Sita realises she is someone different to who she pretends to be. Her happy youthful cutesy photographs of herself no longer seem authentic or to reflect her truth. She destroys them, in the meantime learning the secrets of the old man’s past as he comes closer to death.

The director said that she was inspired to write movie after the death of her film professor, and in a way it’s about learning from those who’ve come before you, or becoming who you are through the people that you’ve loved and lost.

The Guitar

I loved The Guitar, which was introduced by the star Saffron Burrows, who is wonderful in the film. Apparently KVIFF is her favourite festival and she’s been here 3 times.

Anyway, the film is such a fantasy, really beautifully done – supposedly it’s based on a true story but more than anything it seems like a fantasy, like an extreme version of the fantasy of a child / teenager left at home alone without her parents and with a wad of cash for food.

Melody is diagnosed with an inoperable, fast-growing cancer and given two months to live. She’s then made redundant and let down gently by her boyfriend when she goes to tell him (he doesn’t give her a chance). People bash into her in the street without apologising. She’s cold. Everyone around her is cold.

She discards this life for a temporary one, holes herself up in an enormous penthouse (paid for with her severance cheque) because what good have people proved themselves to be? She applies for a handful of credit cards, throws away everything she owns and buys herself a new little world. The movie becomes a celebration of excess – she fills her temporary home with expensive items, drinks and eats whatever she likes, has sex with whoever she likes.

In the end the movie is both a film about the freedom of a finite life, both financially and, I guess, morally, as well as about the value of possessions. Can things make her happy? Well, seemingly, yes, because she has no worries – there are no consequences for her actions. But in the end it is creativity that is her salvation.

Rusalka

At last, a Russian film that is forward-looking, hopeful AND youthful.

An adaptation of a fairy tale, this seemed, in the way it made you feel, the odd characters and the supernatural/magic realist sensibility, a little like a Russian Amelie. Even the high contrast, high saturation photography recalled that French film (except that it was green and purple rather than red!)

The casting was absolutely amazing. The main character Alisa was played by two different actresses, but there is no way you could have convinced me they were not the same person. Even though IMDB is telling me that they are not even related – no way! The plot is slightly random, fantastical and very funny. The subject matter is somewhat depressing but it is so warm and satirical and the main character is such a wonderful bold shy thing. I fell in love with her and so did K.

Film – KVIFF Day 7 – Puffball / Days in Between / Be Kind Rewind

Puffball (United Kingdom, 2007)

Puffball is a movie by Nicolas Roeg which was part of a tribute to him although it is a new movie. We really wanted to see Walkabout which we’d both seen as children but never since, but it kept clashing with other things we wanted to see, so we saw this instead.

Anyway, it is very bad, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Although it is occasionally atmospheric, it has a very dated, schlocky style, like Mr Roeg hasn’t changed his filmmaking tactics since the 1970s (something we can only wish was true for Dario Argento). The plot is irritating, none of the characters are likeable, and the audio is really shitty. It is hard enough to understand Irish/English accents when you aren’t used to them, and I kept waiting for subtitles to appear. We laughed afterwards that we both got as much from the Czech subtitles as from the audio track.

Most of the plot revolves around witchcraft, and fertility, as well as British folklore. A girl who is an architect moves to this crazytown to build a house. She gets pregnant and her mad neighbours plot to steal her baby, casting disgusting spells and running around muttering things a lot.

Oh my, it was bad.

Die Besucherin / Days in Between

I really liked this movie, with its very German sparseness and terse sensuality, all strained tendons and hard mouthes. It’s detailed, clean and cool aesthetically. It’s like Tajnosti / Little Girl Blue in that it’s about a 40-something woman whose relationship is in crisis, who is frozen by her circumstances and shut out of her loved ones’ lives. So she starts to spend time in the empty apartment where she waters the plants, becoming fascinated by the lives of the people who lived there. The life she has at home starts to crumble as it becomes obvious that her real life is empty and soulless. In the meantime her invasion of the privacy of the couple becomes more and more complete. It’s very psychological, and although there’s not a lot of verbalisation (the main character never really enunciates how she feels to anyone, because there is no one for her to talk to) it’s very easy to empathise with the main character and to understand what she’s going through solely through the actress’s performance.

Kind of like: Atomised, Little Girl Blue

Be Kind, Rewind

I probably don’t have to say much about this, we decided to see it because it’s a known quantity and we thought it might be fun to see it in Velky Sal (large theatre), which it was. Melonie Diaz introduced it, and she’s a cute one. Anyway I didn’t love it quite like The Science of Sleep et. al. but it was super fun indeed.

Public Transports

I came back to Sydney 6 weeks ago, and I’ve been living with my mother in the ryde-eastwood area until I find a place of my own with K. John Watkins resigned from state MP-hood a little later, so now there’s a by-election. I’m not enrolled here at the moment, but hopefully I have time to remedy that before the polling day.

Every morning, nonetheless, I see the candidates at the train station drumming up support. It’s getting feisty. There has been a lot of telephone polling, from which I understand the priorities for the people in this electorate were Health, Education and Public Transport. I got polled as well and I said Public Transport, Public Transport, Public Transport! Because I do not drive and do not wish to, I am really reliant on the transport network and don’t intend to compromise on that because of stupidity on the part of infrastructure planners.

This morning the Libs had a poster up saying that the ALP plans to cut train services from Eastwood & West Ryde. I checked it out and it does appear to be true.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/rail-cuts-kept-under-wraps-before-poll/2008/09/26/1222217517568.html

Final commissioning work on the 12.5-kilometre Epping to Chatswood link is under way. The tunnel will open in February and a new timetable will be introduced from June. Importantly, it will bring a huge increase in capacity through the western suburbs.

An independent shuttle service will operate on the line until midyear, forcing commuters to change trains at Chatswood to get into the city. But after June, when the integrated timetable is introduced, four trains an hour travelling down from Hornsby on the main northern line in the peak period will be diverted to the city along the $2.3 billion link.

As well as providing services to a part of Sydney that has never had access to trains, the Epping to Chatswood line will ease congestion along the western line by as much as 33 per cent. There will be four extra trains per hour in the peak, providing capacity for an extra 12,000 commuters a day from the western suburbs.

The Rees Government is hoping the boost in capacity will reduce overcrowding now crippling CityRail and give it breathing space until new rolling stock is delivered from 2010.

For passengers who join trains at Wentworthville, Pendle Hill and even Toongabbie – Mr Rees’s local station – journeys to the city will be faster. There will be more room for people on trains that stop at Auburn, Granville and Harris Park, and after June, Parramatta and Westmead will have more fast trains.

But every time there is a substantial timetable adjustment, there are also losers – and in next year’s timetable the biggest losers will be those who currently join express trains into the city from Eastwood and West Ryde.

See I just don’t understand, because the trains are already crazy full at peak hour, and I doubt I could count 4 trains an hour at all let alone that could afford to be cut. Most of the day there are 3 trains an hour, one of which is an express and doesn’t always stop at Eastwood.

They are also considering not building the North West Metro. That is completely ridiculous.

So what to do? I am so loathe to give the Liberals my vote, but Labor is completely shredding Sydney and has been for years. I am so unhappy with them. I guess I already know the solution and it is the right solution (you can’t keep rewarding people for bad governance purely because of supposed closer ideological alignment which is not really apparent in policy-making) but it is a painful, painful choice.

Film – KVIFF – Day 6 – Karamazovi / Plennyj / Mein Freund aus Faro

Karamazovi / The Karamazovs (Czech Republic, 2008)

A drama company from Prague arrives in Cracow to present a stage adaptation of Dostoevsky’s famous novel at the city’s alternative theatre festival; the production is to be staged in an unusual venue – the local steelworks. During rehearsals, the drama on stage spills over into real life, behind the scenes and front of house… In both his chosen theme and form, director Petr Zelenka has come up with an exceptional piece, oscillating between fiction and documentary and centred on the successful production presented by Prague’s Dejvice Theatre.

The Karamazovs is an adaptation from a popular play which is in turn adapted from the Dosteoyevsky novel. In the movie itself, the play is relocated to a factory in Poland for a theatre festival, and as the theatre actors rehearse, the lines between performance and reality are blurred.

I can’t really add much to the description in the program, it’s a pretty accurate description and it doesn’t get too much more complex than that. It’s extremely well done though and also touches on the shared history as opposed to the stark cultural differences between Poland and the Czech Republic, such close neighbours (brothers, even) with different ways of living. The Czech Republic as the atheistic, agnostic nation/brother, and Poland as the most religious of nations/the priest brother. The play calls for a religious icon as a prop and one of the actors chooses a picture of a pope as a prop for a character to spit upon, all the while conscious of the controversial nature of this act (in Poland). It’s adaptation from a Russian novel also affords an opportunity for Petr Zelenka to question Pan-Slavism – as the atheist brother says as he attempts to confess to killing his father (a metaphor for the Soviet Union as well as God?) – killing a father should not be considered morally wrong, patricide is the greatest crime possible etc. Possibly as a person schooled neither in Russian literature nor Polish-Czech relations I missed a lot of references, but I found the film both aesthetically and culturally rich. The actors were also wonderful, and the play is very beautiful in its language, and traditional in style and form – I don’t mean anything by this except that it felt a bit like watching a Shakespearean play!

Plennyj / Captive (Russia, 2008)

This is a story about war in the Caucasus, where one day is equal to a whole life, where kindness may be a damnation, death a solution and beauty something that can truly terrify. The struggle to survive assumes its own dimensions which govern the rules of behaviour, defying all notions of morality.

I don’t know how it is that the least brutal of the Russian films I’ve seen so far this week was set in a war zone, but this is mostly a gentle story about the complex relationship between a soldier and his Chechnyan prisoner. In the background, of course, is the harsh reality of the war itself, and the lives of the people back at base. Eventually these realities subsume the personal story taking place and the bubble of tense, fragile friendship is burst tragically. The movie was subtle in its portrayal of the emotional traumas of war, and it was beautifully shot. I felt at the end like I had only watched a short film (even though it’s 80 minutes long), and perhaps in some sense it is thus too shallow to be truly wonderful, but I liked it a lot.

Mein Freund aus Faro / To Faro (Germany, 2008)

Melanie met Jenny and fell in love. But Jenny thinks Mel is Miguel. Mel looks, dresses and acts like a boy, and people frequently take her for one. Like Jenny’s friends do when the two fall in love. This tale of the obliquity (sexual and otherwise) of adolescence is a tender and beautiful film about youth and the sadness, loneliness and confusion that go with it.

This is mostly a pretty standard teen romance, with the misleading introduction awkwardly maintained until it all implodes in a climax of misunderstanding and recriminations. It was most effective in its portrayal of the stifling atmosphere of small town life for someone who is different. But ultimately I found it implausible that a 22-year-old woman would think it is okay to seduce a 14-year-old girl (who is clearly very young) while posing as an 18-year-old boy.

Film – KVIFF Day 5 – Fighter / The Mother / Rene

Day 5 – Fighter / The Mother / Rene

Fighter (Denmark, 2007)
http://www.fighter-filmen.dk/
The headstrong daughter of conservative Turkish immigrants in Copenhagen tries to meet her uneducated parents’ high expectations while remaining true to her private passion – kung fu – in Fighter. Quality teen drama boasts an appealingly feisty heroine and high-energy martial arts action choreographed by Xian Gao (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).

This was like a Danish, kung fu version of Bend it Like Beckham, but with a Turkish/Muslim heroine rather than a Indian/Hindu heroine. As a fantasy of that nature, and for dealing with themes of finding your own identity and becoming independent, it works very well. It also has some satisfying fight scenes. It was easily enjoyable and aesthetically pleasing and that’s exactly what I needed after the previous day’s films!

The Mother / La Mere (Russia/Switzerland, 2007)

The main character in this film is Lyuba, who flees with her nine children to the countryside to escape from a violent husband. This remarkable record of the dramatic and intimate moments in Lyuba’s life at the same time offers a highly authentic look at the bleak reality of today’s Russia.

I was dreading seeing this film after Cargo 200 the previous day. The Mother is a documentary following a Russian woman and her 9 children. Lyuba and her very pretty oldest daughter, Olessia, were very warm and down to earth, nurturing characters. However their circumstances seemed to confirm the intractableness of the problems in Russian society. Lyuba had been traded basically into sexual slavery at the age of 14 by her mother, and she was forced to accept this circumstance in order to avoid sexual abuse/rape at the hands of her mother’s various boyfriends (“fuckers” was her word). She and her Olessia work on a farm and raise the younger children together. During the film Olessia marries a guy who is convicted of assault and sent to gaol a couple of months after their marriage. In the meantime Lyuba and Olessia look after a toddler who is being neglected by his mother, and they would be happy to adopt him but they have no right to him and his mother eventually comes to take him away. Olessia herself is pregnant however and the film ends with her happy healthy baby’s smiling face.

In this way the documentary is both terrible and hopeful. Olessia and Lyuba are capable of raising lovely, happy children, but the social system into which they are born could so easily tear them apart. Lyuba must give her oldest son up to military training, although she knows he will be beaten there. She can only protect her children so much from the world around them.

Rene (Czech Republic, 2008)

The main protagonist in another of Helena Trestikova’s long-term documentaries is the die-hard criminal and imaginative writer Rene Plasil. With raw authenticity, the director records the luckless fate of Rene over a period of twenty years as he yo-yos between prison and freedom.

It took a while for this documentary to grow on me. Rene is a familiar character, both intelligent and incredibly stupid, unable to get his life on track. He first went into gaol at the age of 15, for petty crime, and then became habituated to life in prison. Apparently the documentary started being filmed in the late 80s as part of a series of documentaries on young Czech people from different backgrounds. Rene was the token young criminal. Over the years (and with regime change), Helena Trestikova lost funding for that particular documentary, but found Rene interesting enough to want to follow him further. Rene also maintained contact with her via letters – he said later in the film that perhaps he was in love with her when he was young.

At first I wondered why Rene was interesting at all. He was just a young, fresh-faced petty criminal with a sense of entitlement and a chip on his shoulder. In 1990, he robs Helena’s flat. Eventually, as Rene becomes an adult with a throaty, chainsmoker’s voice and is covered in prison tatts (including the wonderful “fuck of people” around his neck), he develops an intelligence and a poetry. With Helena’s help he has two books published and starts to achieve a strange kind of fame. His stints in gaol and out of gaol begin to be recorded by the media.

Life in gaol has a timeless, listless quality, and the passage of time is marked only by the swearing in of different presidents, the revolution (most definitely televised), and the break-up of Czechoslovakia. Rene happily poses for glamour shots of himself keening for freedom, balanced on windowsills with his face turned to the sky, showing his tatts and looking mean, looking breakable and sick (he is later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis) over cups of stupidly strong tea, each at different stages of his life. Eventually the documentary becomes a documentary not on the passage of a writer/thinker’s life (as the description optimistically states) but as a study of manipulation (on both sides) and the relationship between a documentary filmmaker and a documentary subject.

In the Q&A, Helena Trestikova, who is clearly much loved by the audience and was apparently a member of Parliament at some stage, seemed to dodge these questions (although I only heard her answers in halting translation) but in the documentary itself it is definitely the most interesting theme. The moments when Rene becomes self aware, decides to stop performing his role of disaffected, value-free social outcast, are touching – “I would have been nothing without you”, he tells Helena. He can also be very bitter towards her at times, accusing her of ruining his life, of making him vulnerable, of putting his life on display, of buying him from himself because he had no other choice but to sell himself to her for her creative use. As the film progresses it seems more and more like a dysfunctional love relationship, at least on his side. Helena tries her best to keep a professional distance but is ultimately unable to maintain objectivity. Her defensive voice from behind the camera, with the tremble in it when she tells him he mustn’t come to her home, or tries to answer an intimate question diplomatically, is fascinating and terrifying. Movies have been made on this theme, of getting too close to the subject, I know, but to see it in action is something else entirely. A really amazing documentary.

Film – KVIFF Day 4 – Involuntary / Cargo 200 / Night Owls

The word “spatne” in Czech means bad but it also means wrong, not wrong as in incorrect but as in “everything is going wrong”. It seems like a pretty good word to describe today’s movies. I only had about 4 hours sleep the night before so maybe my trembly reactions had something to do with that.

De Ofrivilliga / Involuntary (Sweden, 2008)

Two blond teenage girls have affected chats, a group of young men experiments with sex, a young teacher tries to resolve a case of bullying and a group of passengers are held prisoner by a bus driver. With his bizarre sense of humour, tegether with its uncanny talent for observation, the filmmaker examines the herd mentality and the urge to overstep taboo.

Involuntary was a really good film, although it’s portrayal of the most horribly awkward moments of social life made it kind of difficult to enjoy. It was funny, if uncomfortably so, but also “spatne”. The guy next to me kept saying the word and shaking his head. I understood what he meant. The audience gave a lot of nervous giggles/gasps. It was a very Scandinavian movie, in its black humour, its austerity, and the style of filmmaking which recalled Dogme – this is a cliche but it’s still true! I guess the movie is about consequences, and lack of self-awareness in people, and generally a study of embarrassment and anxiety. It’s also about people’s inability to take responsibility for their actions, truly, and to act as they would expect others to act. For instance a crazy bus driver decides to prevent the bus from moving because someone has broken the curtain rail in the WC, until someone owns up, and the woman who has accidentally broken the rail finds herself incapable of owning up. She is less and less able to do so as time passes. There are 5 different stories, each uncomfortable to watch in its own way, each very truthful but a little “wrong”.

Gruz 200 / Cargo 200 (Russia, 2007)

This film, hailed by Russian critics as the most important screen event of the year, draws attention to the inauspicious traits of the Russian mentality. The filmmaker strengthens his message using hyperbole not only in the thriller elements of the story but also in his choice of spatio-temporal setting, namely the year 1984, a period when the marasmus of the stagnating regime was at its worst.

I have no idea how to handle this movie. It is the first movie I’ve seen at this festival, this year or last year, where no one clapped at the end. What can you say, really? It is so inappropriate to clap after a movie like this, even if it were a masterpiece.

It is interesting to compare it to my favourite movie of last year’s festival (Horror, Which is Always With You) with which it shares its country of origin and also tone, aesthetic, and pacing. But in other ways it is entirely different. Horror was a highly symbolic, metaphorical, surreal, farcical parable, whereas this movie had no metaphoric elements that I could see. Still, it feels, so much of the time, like a farce. Misery packaged as satirical entertainment.

I felt nauseous for about 20 minutes after I left the theatre, and I had strong physiological reactions to events in the movie (which is very disturbingly violent). There was something really wrong about it.

I think I can sum it up like this.

No one needs to see a girl raped in a room full of rotting corpses, even if it really happened, no wait, especially if it really happened, and especially if it’s then packaged as some farcical trope, some black comedy, some ambiguous almost-pornography (the girl, who is in some ways portrayed as a hysterical and ridiculous victim, grotesque in her reactions to her systemic abuse, seems almost to be enjoying her rapes – I wondered if I was imagining this but K also asked me about it later).

As an indictment on Russian culture, then, it probably succeeds. Pretty much every character in the movie is some way a sociopath, except for a Vietnamese labourer killed in the first half hour. As a satire it sits very uncomfortably, to me, particularly alongside its “true story” status. Velmi, velmi spatne.

Nonetheless, after a few days I find myself seeing this movie a little bit differently – it has an extremely evocative format, and I find the tone/feel of it fascinating. I feel like Russia is working through some kind of extreme trauma through its films, which are never easy to watch, but often very interesting. Russia has become a kind of badlands in Europe, and viewed in the light of other Russian films I have seen this year I feel that perhaps people are right to consider this film significant, as difficult as it was to watch. But it will never be a popular film in suburban America, for instance…

Deti Noci / Night Owls (Czech Republic, 2008)

Ofka has given up on her dreams and now works in a 24-hour store owned by her brother-in-law. Her world is filled with similar lost souls who, like herself, only live at night. Will she be able to say goodbye to her artificially extended childhood? Will she find true love and step outside the confines of the neighbourhood where she was born? Oscar-nominated director Michaela Pavlatova offers an intimate story set in Prague’s night-time Karlin district.

I thought this movie would be pretty cool, and I enjoyed it, especially because it was set in a part of Prague I am slightly familiar with (we spent last week in Karlin in fact!) so it made me happy. It is exciting just to hear the trams go br-br-ding! However it seems like a lot of other Czech youth movies I’ve seen (e.g. Samotari/Loners, ennui + love trouble + club scenes = youth movie!), and maybe lacks the warm soulfullness of movies like Tajnosti and Something Like Happiness, which both deal more with adult Czech lives. The main character is also not particularly likeable, because she seems extremely concerned about her own emotional traumas but has no patience for anyone else’s. Sure that’s a commonly adolescent thing but I’m pretty sure she was meant to be in her early twenties! The aesthetic is quite nice though, and the male love interest was a nice character, an awkward misfit apparently played by a transformed Czech heart-throb. But the whole movie seemed neither realistic nor particularly interesting or new.

Film – Karlovy Vary – Fermat’s Room

Le habitation de Fermat / Fermat’s Room (Spain, 2007)

Math and mystery add up to an engrossing solution in Fermat’s Room, a locked-room teaser that handles its limited dramatic permutations with flair, skill and a nicely contempo air. Featuring four scientists struggling for survival in a shrinking space, skillfully turned plot develops with some satisfying twists of logic.

This was my partner Kristian’s choice, and was presented by its very charismatic Directors. Considering how apparently low budget, time poor its production was, it was extremely slick and had really high production values. The acting is great, the writing is witty and cool, the plot is only occasionally drawn out and weird (the plot requires 4 mathematicians to solve puzzles in less than a minute – they usually spend most of the minute/more faffing about and arguing about random things), the set design is absolutely amazing, and it’s definitely another film which deserves worldwide distribution.

Film – Karlovy Vary – Who’s Afraid of Kathy Acker?

Who’s Afraid of Kathy Acker? (Germany/Austria, 2008)

The very first biographic film about the legendary American feminist writer who rose out of the New York underground scene. From her beginnings as a wild punk rocker the film follows her life with similarly wild ingenuity and brutal candour, combining animation, the memories of her contemporaries and scenes adapted from her book.

Kathy Acker was a strong influence on me as a teenager, and still is an obvious influence on my fiction writing, so I was pretty excited to see this film and find out more about her life and gain some insight into the themes in her writing.

This was a good, straightforward documentary which gives a thorough account of Kathy Acker’s life alongside personal testimonies from young women about how her work affected them, interviews with friends, footage and photographs from different stages of her career, and some appealing (partly animated) readings by a young American girl with a really nice voice.

This had a lot going for it and I think it pretty accurately portrayed her intentions and influence on American culture and global feminism. Not much really groundbreaking in the format, but that’s not necessarily a criticism, and in this case it definitely isn’t.