Festival “Manaki Brothers”, part II

/, Gallery, Blesok no. 18/Festival “Manaki Brothers”, part II

Festival “Manaki Brothers”, part II

The Silver Camera 300 was given to the D.O.P. Jens Fischer for the film Under The Sun, directed by the naturalized Swede (ex-British) Colin Nutley (Oscar Award Nominee for the Best non-Anglo-American film this year). Under The Sun looks alike the old but precious grandma’s handcrafted gobelin, emerged out the “memory chest”; like aromatic meadow, blue sky, cozy and warm home and smells of fruit and of the old furniture!
From Argentina came the comedy Wind With The Gone, directed by Alejandro Agresti and D.O.P. Maurizio Rubinstein. In the film-in-a-film style, Wind With The Gone is a funny, profound and sympathetic story, contemplation on the attractiveness of the cinema.
From the rich Polish cinematography, in the Official Competition was the feature A Week In The Life Of A Man, directed by Jerzy Stuhr. This is his third long-length feature film – film on the one week of the life of one man, who is, not by chance – a District Attorney who besides the all good things that happen to him, realizes that can’t bare some other issues, the issues on which he judges other people. The D.O.P. is Edward Klosinski, a leading name in the Polish cinematographer phalanx, who worked with the Andrzej Wayda and Krzsystof Kisczlowski, among the others.
A lot of Awards this Spanish film Solas (Alone) won, a film whose title tells the story by itself. It is dedicated to the “ordinary” people in the neighborhood, their frustrations, conflicts, unfulfilled dreams, tragedies and misfortunes with a lot of warmth, authentically – and in spite of all this – with quite a lot of optimism. This film is directed by Bonito Zambrano and with D.O.P. Tote Trenas.
In the Official Competition entered the Italian representative Pane E Tulipani (Bread And Tulips), the sympathetic drama-comedy directed by Silvio Soldini and for D.O.P. Luca Bigazzi.
I Could Read The Sky is the first long-length feature film of the author Nichola Bruce (known as scriptwriter, director and photograph). Together with the two directors of photography – Owen McPolin and Seamus McGarvey (one of the most talented British cameramen from the younger generation), she filmed this filmed based on the same-named novel – a film who is one of the most multi-layered, reflexive and psychologically built films in the Official Competition of the Festival. The story is about an Irish emigrant in London, after the long years of hard labor, in his tiny and poor rented room, who tries to put his life threads together. The photography of the film, with rare excellence succeeds to take you into his incoming madness, in the whirl of the memories on passed deaths, gone loves, sufferings, the small beauties of music and rare friendships, and into the horror of the emigrant’s loneliness…
The Austrian drama Nordrand (Northern Edge) by the young female tandem – director Barbara Albert and D.O.P. Christine A. Maier, attracted the audience with its fresh, actual, urban and real story on the emigrants in Vienna. For this tandem – the emigrants, their inner-search upon their restless souls are the challenges for these two young authors, which in one social and psychological dimension put their questions on the humanity in general, with no difference where their roots are.
The film Geography Of Fear is the latest achievement from Finland, and also, the first representative at the Festival in Bitola from this part of the Nordic cinematography. The film is an impressive story on the actual worldwide problem: molested women. Now, they’re in the circles of revenge, and after all, what remains of the equality among sexes, is only the eternal battle. Authors of the film are the young Auli Mantila, director, and Heikki Fдrm as D.O.P.
There is always something in the sensibility of the Czech film that makes it so recognizable and subtle, simple and candid. So is with the story and the atmosphere of the film The Return Of The Idiot. A young man, after the long years spent in the psychiatric clinic, comes back home. Strangely, but now he understands others more than they understand themselves. For the others this is like, his return, somehow, puts them into position to reconsider their own lives. All these is very “neatly” spread onto the film track by the 30-year old Sasha Gedeon as director of the film and Stepan Kucera as D.O.P.
Another worthy represent of its cinematography is the Croatian project Marshal, directed by young director Vinko Breshan and Zhivko Zalar as D.O.P. This presents another film success and another commercial achievement of the Croatian film. The inhabitants of a small island on the Adriatic Sea are “haunted” by the ghost of the Josip Broz Tito, the ex-President and the Supreme Marshal of ex-Yugoslavia. And while the leading character – a young policeman – makes all efforts to solve this mystery, some cunning citizens start with the “spiritual tourism” in order to benefit from all that circus. Successful comedy that got the sympathies of the Bitola audience, so it was pronounced as the Best Film by the Cinema Audience.
Sky Hook – director debut of Ljubisha Samardzic, who draws attention on the actual historical events in his country: the bare survival on the edge of life and death, which hunts from the sky above Belgrade in 1999, making of it one “human” story. As a D.O.P. is signed the experienced Radoslav Vladic, whose work made this film as a very solid one. This film was presented in the Competition of the 50th International Film Festival in Berlin.
And when we are talking of Festivals, this year’s Award Winner of The Gold PalmDancer In The Dark in Kahn, was also shown in Bitola. This Danish film can’t be resisted because of many things: if you can’t forget the masterly performance of Emily Watson in Breaking The Waves (we’ve seen it in Bitola, four years ago), it’s the same feeling you will take out of the cinema theater with you – after you touch the world of the young Czech emigrant and single mother who works hard in a factory and overtime also in some rural part of USA. But, with the whole intimate world within herself – the dreamland of the old Hollywood musicals, step-dancing and singing she desires so much on
one hand, and with her intimate secret and drama on the other. The role of this Czech emigrant brilliantly performs the extraordinary talented pop-singer Bjork (together with a number of other, everyone very specific in their own way, actors). Again, the director Lars Von Trier, with the Dutch D.O.P. Robby Müller, continues the “trend” of “weaving” the original film expression. Both of them belong to the phalanx of the most talented filmmakers today in Europe – and worldwide, reaffirming their reputation from one project to the another, with this one as the latest (and in 1996, Robby Müller got the Bronze Camera 300 in Bitola, for their magnificent film Breaking The Waves).

On the films Out Of Competition…

We already mentioned the film of the Opening night of the Festival, The Straight Story, which was one of the six films shown Out Of Competition – primarily in function of presenting the styles in the framework of the portrays of their creators – cameramen honored by this Festival.
Carl Gustaf Nykvist, with his long-length documentary Light Keeps Me Company, which is dedicated to the great Swedish cameraman Swen Nykvist, Award Winner Golden Camera 300 for Life Achievement in 1998. This film (which is partly filmed in Bitola) found its place in the Festival Program, with a certain dose of discrete contemplation through the 90 minutes of the film. “When the light is with you, you don’t feel lonely any more” – says Swen Nykvist in the film…
Another film voyage that the Festival Program offered to us, was the epic voyage towards oneself and towards the self-recognition – especially the emotional, tender and easy acceptable story of the film Cider House Rules, story which dives rarely deep into the human inner-self. This film is the first co-work among the director Lasse Hallstrom and the D.O.P. Oliver Stapleton (he worked on a numerous influential films, along with the Steven Frears, Michael Hoffman, Julian Temple, etc.).
In its whole specificity, the Czech film The Past certainly distinguishes itself. The director of this film is the young Macedonian director Ivo Trajkov (graduated at the Film Academy in Prague, where he lives and works, and on this Festival he was a member of the International Festival Jury). The film tells us a story about a deaf boy who after few years in prison, gets out and starts a search for his girlfriend. Everything in the film is shown from the subjectivity of this young boy’s perspective – and the camera becomes almost – he, himself. That happens with the audience also, leaded primarily by the sound components and by the life-beat of the instinct’s rhythms. The Past participated at over 30 festivals and received seven to eight Awards for directing, camera and sound. Before The Past, together with this film’s D.O.P. Klaus Fuxjдgger, during the period 1997/98, Ivo Trajkov mainly worked on the mid-length feature and documentary projects, and seven years ago participated at the “Manaki Brothers” Festival with the film Canarian Connection.
Two more films were shown Out of Competition. One of them is the long-length Swiss documentary ID Swiss, made of seven episodes by seven young Swiss directors, who contemplate over the idea of Switzerland and with a dose of criticism look up over their own identities in it.
The second one, on request of the producers themselves, the Belgian-French-Macedonian co-production named Revenge was shown Out Of Competition, on the Closing night of the Festival. This film project partly involves Macedonian history at the crossover of the 19th and 20th century, and in that context, the leading story starts, and continues much later, in the both countries – Macedonia and Belgium, with parallel lines, both in times and in places. The director of this film is the Belgian director (and producer) Ian Hintjens, on the script by Slobodan Despotovski (Macedonian who graduated film directing in Belgium, where he lives and works today), Ian Hintjens and Bob Gussens. Aside from the Belgian actor crew, few Macedonian actors play in this film: Ljupcho Todorovski, Refet Abazi, Dejan Lilic, Aleksandar Mikic, Sofija Kunovska, Valentina Gramosli.

AuthorSuzana T. Pavlovska
2018-08-21T17:23:48+00:00 January 1st, 2001|Categories: Reviews, Gallery, Blesok no. 18|0 Comments