The FILMSCHOOLFEST Munich, Part 2
In which the festival finishes with Programs 6-10, featuring more award winners and insights into some of the finest film student short films.
The third day of the festival started picking up steam again in Programs 5 and 6, the former showing the winner of the festival’s main prize and the latter with the ARTE Short Film Prize winner.
Program 5
Since 1994 the Verwertungsgesellschaft der Film- und Fernsehproduzenten (a copyright management company) has endowed the main prize of the Filmschoolfest, which awards 10,000 euros to the best film. The main festival jury chose the first film of the evening, “Regime Change,” directed by Yana Sad for the Moscow School of New Cinema. The 18-minute film is about Ivan struggling to take care of his autistic brother Oleg while trying to maintain the modest activities of his own young, normal life. The pair lives together, alone, somewhere on the outskirts of a small Russian town. The film is mostly dialogue-free and it’s unclear if Oleg can speak let alone carry a conversation. The climax reveals an outburst of suppressed energy from Ivan by roughing up Oleg a bit too much.
The film won the best film prize, but I’m not sure why it received a unanimous decision. It’s certainly competently made and tells a story that, as the jury said later, highlights an unfilmed taboo subject. The film relies on a sensuous atmosphere, both physically and mentally, to build the tension between the brothers. At the end, the tension is momentarily released before going back to life as usual, which is a fine model of crafting any short story, written or filmed. But for myself (in a contradictory revelation that I’m fully aware of), the short story wasn’t flushed out enough or fulfilling when it eventually reached its violent climax. I wanted something more like Vinterberg’s atmosphere relying on storytelling rather than Götz Spielmann’s atmosphere dictating the storytelling. The jury similarly stated: “This film portrays a tender and rather unusual bond in a relationship defined by the disability of a brother who is autistic. The camerawork embraces the natural beauty of human beings in all their imperfection — physical, mental, and emotional. It is particularly courageous for a Russian filmmaker to tackle and discuss such a subject, which in many societies is a taboo. This makes this film all the more valuable. The jury has unanimously decided to present the VFF Young Talent Award to ‘Regime Change’.”
Program 6
ARTE is a Franco-German public broadcasting service known for creating cross-border productions subtitled with other European languages, the point being to create a broad European video programming network. Since 2005 the channel has been awarding a prize each year at the Filmschoolfest that includes 6,000 euros and the film’s broadcast rights. This year the independent ARTE jury awarded the prize to my second favorite film of the festival, “Must Be Painful,” by writer/director David Semler for FAMU, Prague. The short takes place in a small indoor train stop in the Czech countryside in which a young couple get to the station and find a middle-aged Czech couple already waiting there. The Czech couple slowly notice that the two young men are a gay couple and start making lewd, but not overly grotesque, homophobic comments. But what they don’t know is that although the young couple is speaking Spanish, one of them can understand Czech (played by Semler) because he’s studying in Prague. (The title comes from a comment from the Czech couple while talking about what anal sex can be like). Interweaved throughout the lingual play we find out that the couples have their own problems: a sibling of the woman in the Czech couple doesn’t like the man and the visiting Spaniard wants kids but not the one studying. In the end both conflicts become resolved after the repressed urges released following a near violent conflict when the Czech man finds out that the student understands Czech.
It’s easy to see why the cross-border ARTE would pick up this short film. It features a pan-European misunderstanding of languages that is both funny and dramatic, which Semler perfectly directs so as not to go too heavy in either direction. It would have been easy for a short premise like this to go either way, but Semler opted for the tougher balancing act. The acting, which allowed this balancing act to work so well, was the best I’ve ever seen in a short film. Czech actors Matej Dadák and Lucie Zácková were sincere without being soppy and ignorant without losing that basic kernel of sincerity, which made their homophobic comments sound uninformative rather than malicious. And it was this crucial point that Semler had to write/direct into the characters for the humor and suspense to work so well together. The ongoing societal taboo of public displays of affection from a gay couple need be managed with deftness and nuance in a story for the realism to work. In the Q&A after the film, Semler recalled audiences both laughing and crying, which is an accomplishment for only 15 minutes of action.
The ARTE jury: “In a waiting room at a train station in the Czech Republic, a relationship drama plays out between two completely different couples. Homosexuality, discrimination, adultery, love, and separation: all the big social issues are dealt with in the smallest of spaces and in two different languages. The story of these two couples keeps us in constant suspense, and we don’t know how it will conclude until the very end. "Must Be Painful" by David Semler succeeds in recounting the great dramas of our time in an intense, atmospheric chamber play lasting only 15 minutes.”
Alongside “Must Be Painful” in Program 6 was the short documentary “$75000,” which accounts for how in Africa people hunt for those with albinism to sell their body parts. Directed and animated (he learned how to animate from YouTube videos) by Moïse Togo for Le Fresnoy – Studio des Arts Contemporains, “$75000” received a special mention in the documentary film section for “its unique graphic design, which makes the unseen perceptible and the horror visible, which transforms a pencil into a camera, and which puts animation in service against a terrible and little-known issue.” Its unique, de-rendered animation showed bodies frozen in motion in a world with nothing solid. The transparency, as Moïse Togo pointed out in the Q&A, divides the reality of a person with albinism into real and imaginary worlds. Although focusing a lot of attention on the landscape, the animation shows the kidnapped victims with voice-overs from family members recounting the actual experiences. The product is a haunting vision of the, for me at least, little-known, present-day issue of kidnapping and hunting of fellow Homo sapiens.
Interlude
It was between Programs 6 and 7 in which it dawned on me that there exists an insecurity among young filmmakers when telling a story beyond their own experiences. Almost all the fiction films were personal stories based on realistic events to some degree, especially so if the director also wrote the script. Self-expression and the “write what you know” mantra are taken literally to the point of banality. When asked about specific elements and choices made within the film that seem to be symbolic, the directors responded with contrived contemplations and/or a shoulder shrug. They found meaning afterwards. Or none at all. In a synonymous way, the alternate trailer of the Filmschoolfest made fun of this exactly: an interviewer asks directors from the festival a couple of decades ago about their films, why they made them, etc., and they respond with incomplete tangents or silence, which when edited together created a humorous display of this insecurity.
Program 7
The seventh Program featured both the best photographed and most original award winning films. Starting with the former, each year since 1997 the “Film & TV Kamera” has provided the 2,000-euro Student Camera Award for best cinematography. This year Ian B. Morales won the award for “The Water’s Whisper” (for The National School of Film Arts, Mexico City), which he wrote, directed, co-edited, and shot. It’s easy to see why it won with all the underwater and Malickesque imagery in which Morales wasn’t afraid to fix the camera on pieces of nature for a longer than usual amount of time. The story is incomplete (in the Q&A Morales claimed this short was part of a longer film), which features a boy mesmerized by a mermaid and teased by his sister. Morales also claimed that most of the shots were spontaneous and made using a DSLR, which makes the imagery (and award) even more impressive. The jury said: “On a glimmering and shimmering ray of light refracted by the water, this poetic film takes us inside the mind of an adolescent boy. The exquisite photography and precise framing within a technically challenging environment create a uniquely sensual atmosphere.”
The other award-winner of the program was Thom Lunshof’s “Harmonia” (for The Netherlands Film Academy), which won the 2,500-euro Wolfgang Längsfeld Award for most original film. With one of the most professional-looking productions, Lunshof’s “Harmonia” is about a young woman nearly killing herself to make the prestigious crew team at a highly competitive university. In a telling Q&A, Lunshof said the film is about the competitive nature of the generation we’re currently in, specifically among film students: striving to be the best rower = striving to the best director, etc. This is the area in which he found his voice for the film. The style of the film is a mix between the warm, ivy-university aesthetic of The Social Network and the frantic editing/pace of Whiplash. Although not original in this regard, the film finds its power in the poetic tones and ending, which emphasizes a communal letting go. In this way the film is the most original of the festival in its succinct ability at explaining one of this generation’s qualms.
The jury said: “Furious, frenetic, and poetic. The jury is thrilled to celebrate a movie that jolted us into a bold cinematic experience that never settles for comfortable storytelling. A young woman’s brutal effort to overcome an environment of extreme pressure is broadened into a collage of individual struggles, forming a collective portrait, an explosive mirror of our times, in which the need to succeed at all costs creates a society on the brink of crashing and burning. Ambitious filmmaking choices, beautiful performances, and an experimental take on the narrative tradition culminate in a manic, ruthless, and stunning climax. If winning means being alone, we invite this brave filmmaker to keep pushing his craft, to take the stage and enjoy a moment of solitude with all of us.”
Program 8
In the final program of the penultimate day of the festival came the audience favorite, “Her Dance” (Bar Cohen for The Steve Tisch School of Film and Television), which won the 1,500-euro Audience Award. During a Sabbath evening, Aya sneaks her way into the home of her Orthodox Jewish family to celebrate her sister’s wedding. But the problem is that Aya is a trans woman and was outcast from the community. We watch as she breaks into the house, slowly approaches the dinner table, and anticipates the reaction of the community, which created a highly engaging story only minutes in because of the sociocultural taboos/conflicts surrounding the trans community. Aya’s sister is glad to see her, but the mother is clearly irritated. Aya’s mother is worried that her presence (Aya is wearing a colorful dress whereas everyone else is wearing monochromal rags) will scare away the members of the Jewish community that her sister had recently married into. As Cohen later said, the story is about what it means to change. This change is partly accomplished through Aya poetically dancing with the females (A Dance of One’s/Her Own) until finding herself singled out and having an arguing climax with her mother.
In following with the tradition of student films being self-expressive, Cohen said in the Q&A that this story was based on subjective experiences growing up in this kind of orthodox community; she had paid the price by the society and that bringing this to the screen is payback. Cohen reveals here a retributive (and potentially therapeutic?) approach to an injustice, which offers an interesting amendment to the interlude.
Program 9
During each day of the festival Covid kept up its (previously unseen for Munich/Bayern) exponential rise, which undoubtedly created an uneasiness for some. It appeared that attendance was declining slightly each day. On the final day of competition film viewings, a couple of women next to me started arguing about vaccine mandates and the government’s response to the virus. The argument proceeded along typical binary lines, authoritarian v. non-authoritarian responses and the risks of both. In the end, of course neither convinced the other, except the anti-mandater lost her cool and resorted to dramatics. But anyway, today was the final day and I was excited to end the five plus hours of nightly mask-wearing.
Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains in Tourcoing, France is a dual exhibition center/post-grad training school that focuses on multimedia and multi-disciplinary work. They produce results as one of their fellows, Moïse Togo, received a festival jury shout-out while another animation, “Scum Mutation” by Ov, received the zweiB award for Best Animated Film. In this experimental animated short, humanoids with alien/animalistic characteristics are dancing, mutating, working-out, etc. The narration and on-screen text clue us in that it’s a protest/resistance piece against oppression and victimization. There isn’t much else to say about it other than using the typical film critic adjective-splaining: “Scum Mutation” indeed pulses and vibrates with energy, it’s unsettling and eye-opening, it’s a unique and visceral attempt at directing youthful rage…The jury was similarly skirting around: “In a necessary outcry against binary and systemic oppression, mutilated bodies lead us to an artistic and powerful explosion that challenges the audience’s awareness. The zweiB Award for best animation goes to SCUM MUTATION.”
Program 10
In the final program of the festival came two different films that felt both personal and also projected tones that could resonate with anyone. First was Kristi Hoi’s “No Law, No Heaven” for the UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television (the school that had rejected my graduate program application and allowed me to eye Europe). The film takes place in Hong Kong Kowloon’s Walled City, in which a man’s life is depicted in three eras: boyhood, young adulthood, and late adulthood. In the first, the boy is growing up in a packed/poor urban center condemned to fall apart to history. In the second, the young man is exploring his sexuality as he has an affair with a visiting British man but must end it because of the sexual taboo and his familial restaurant responsibilities. In the third, the old man reflects on his past as he is still successfully running now one of the only traditional, handmade food shops in town. The man’s life tracts nicely with the condemned Walled City, which is condemned to destruction at any moment it seems. Both have a broken pasts with lost opportunities brought upon by the invisible hand of the socio-political superego.
One of the most “professional-looking” short films, like “Harmonia,” “No Law, No Heaven” and Hoi bring a fresh, well-needed sensitivity to a story about national/sexual identity. One can easily imagine how many people can relate to this story, which in only twenty-four minutes manages to capture the lifelong socio-sexual feelings of an individual and succinctly be able to offer its own aged reflections.
ARRI is one of the global leaders for cameras, lenses, and lighting equipment. It first opened in Munich in 1917 and has since provided innovative designs for cameras still used today. A brief list of films using ARRI includes: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Bullitt, Easy Rider, Taxi Driver, Apocalypse Now, The Shining, Barry Lyndon, Black Swan, The Revenant, Parasite, 1917, Birdman, Gravity, Life of Pi, Hugo, and Game of Thrones. Since 2005 ARRI has awarded the Best Documentary Award at the Filmschoolfest, which this year went to “A Dance for the End of the World,” directed by Paula González García, Gloria Gutiérrez Álvarez, and Andrés Santacruz for the Escuela de Cinematografía y del Audiovisual de la Comunidad de Madrid. The plot revolves around the first month or two of Covid lockdowns in which two people are communicating via chat. Their conversations touch everything from Covid to their feelings of loneliness and beyond. And it is in this beyond where the film takes us to different picturesque period pieces as they talk about what it would be like at those times.
The text chains are at times long and monotone, but the period piece sets snap us back into the basic story of two people, unknown to each other, just chatting online. Their imaginations make the isolation bearable, which are portrayed with humor and ironic gusto. Indeed, as the world is ending, they find a dance to be a fitting (figurative and literal) end. The jury said: “As times change, so, too, does the way people communicate, especially in isolation. This film offers an unusual perspective on how people, each in their own way, experience loneliness, look for creative ways of staying in touch, and find joy during troubled times.”
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