Arthouse distributor Richard Lorber, of Kino Lorber, was one of the few arriving at the festival in a “glass half-full” kind of mood. Lorber sees the landscape changing for the better, and is eager to find opportunities. But he releases movies in a handful of theaters; this festival is made for his kind of business.
Count on Lorber and IFC and Sony Classics to be picking up quality titles for crumbs.
The documentary Kimjongilia is a total experience of North Korea that layers music, animated sequences, interpretive dance, and, most strikingly, harrowing interviews with escapees of the totalitarian state, interwoven with hallucinatory propaganda footage. Filmmaker N.C. Heiken creates a consistent and incredibly unusual sensibility in her film of pain and propaganda. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans fill stadiums in praise of their leader with gymnastics, fireworks and synchronized marching formations – the footage may remind viewers of Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will. This footage is edited together with the voices and faces of victims behind the veneer who reveal a human loneliness and despair that is rarely communicated in life.
This film is a visceral reminder of the devastating injustices practiced around the world today. This is a country where a “crime” committed by one person leads to the life-long imprisonment of three generations of his or her family, and where children are forced to watch their family members publicly executed. In one particularly memorable testimonial, a man recounts how he escaped the prison camp at the expense of his friend’s life: the friend was electrocuted as he passed through the barbed wire fence, allowing him to escape unscathed.
Awarded the EST FILM 2010 from One World Brussels, in co-op with Human Rights Democracy Network, Kimjongilia examines the mass illusion possible under totalitarianism and the human rights abuses required to maintain that illusion.
Italy's culture minister has snubbed an invite to the Cannes Film Festival in protest at a decision to screen a film about the L'Aquila earthquake. Sandro Bondi has objected to the satirical documentary which criticises Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's handling of the disaster. Read more
Lagos, Nigeria, a city of 15 million people, is the capital of contemporary African cinema. Since 1992, with the popular success of Living in Bondage, a film in which the Nigerian elite use black magic to maintain their social and financial prestige, the Nigerian movie industry (christened Nollywood) has become the third largest in the world after Hollywood and Bollywood. In this exploding market for locally made home videos, Nigerian filmmakers cast, shoot and sell films at lightning speed in the heart of Lagos. A truly populist cinema, Nollywood produces up to 2,000 films a year, reaching African audiences throughout the continent and the world.
Nollywood Babylon demonstrates the power of cinema to speak to and create a social identity. According to filmmakers Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal, the themes of these films "reflect the collision of traditional mysticism and modern culture." The films temper frightening, ecstatic visions of cult practices and witchcraft with redemptive Christian endings that seek to reconcile their deep contradictions. Despite this sensationalism, Addelman and Mallal show how these films deal with the defining conflicts of African life, and hone in on the profound, universal human struggles contained within the films’ melodramatic excess. Addelman and Mallal take the viewer into the complex world of Nigerian cinema in this captivating documentary, and leave us with the feeling that we are on the brink of a truly immortal Nigerian cinema. The Great African Film will come out of this movement.
I think festivals should always pray for chilly, rainy weather because there is a direct correlation between screening attendance and sunshine, i.e. the better the weather the fewer movie goers, which might explain this years long lines and inability to get in to watch some films last week in Austin. With all the rain, I felt like I had never left the East Coast.
Much has been said about the films in Austin and how it is a growing festival with a unique angle on the intersection between film distribution and technology. Panel after panel discussed why some digital ventures don’t deliver, the future of independent film distribution, and how to succeed in making a video go viral (without kittens). We are entering what is probably phase 2 of DIY film distribution, where ventures such as BSide proved that there were audiences to be reached using online outreach to get niche audiences to screenings, but failed to generate sufficient revenue for their investors. We have the Auteurs who offer a proprietary VOD platform but can’t get eyeballs, suggesting that technology and content alone are not sufficient. And now YouTube has announced that it will offer Pay Per View to independent filmmakers. Is it the solution filmmakers have been waiting for or is the habit of free to deeply entrenched in the YouTube culture to translate to Pay Per View? I guess we’ll see… one of our upcoming Knitting Factory Entertainment releases is a YouTube Pay Per View feature and so far it is going well at more than 166,000 views.
On the film side, I had my favorites. I think the highlight was the after-party for CANAL STREET MADAM. Talking to the (in)famous Jeanette was a pleasure and only proved my hunch that the lady might be a whore, but she isn’t anybody’s victim. Another viewer over at Indiewire suggested that she is simply ‘libidouness,’ but that is like saying that most people go to work in the morning not for the money but for the pleasure. Perhaps that is true for the guys over at IndieWire, but tell that to your average joe and he’ll probably spit in your coffee. Most of us, alas, must work for our bread and Jeanette earned hers the old fashioned way. Nothing wrong with that – like she said, if it is between two consenting adults it shouldn’t be illegal.
The EyeSteel Films crew was out in full force. Omar Majeed, the filmmaker behind TAQWACORE: THE BIRTH OF MUSLIM PUNK will be keeping fans new and old abreast of all things Taqwacore related at taqwacore.myfilmblog.com. Sign-up and stay tuned for updates regarding festival screenings, the upcoming NYC premier and theatrical dates throughout the summer.
REEL INJUN, which will open theatrically at MoMA in June, and THE SOUND OF INSECTS also garnered attention. Stay posted for further updates.