 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 23 - 29 September 1999 Issue No. 448 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 23 - 29 September 1999 Issue No. 448
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Comment Focus Special Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Critical posturing
The international jury, headed by superstar Laila Olwi, boasted several leading personalities from the world of film. Three jurors -- Alain Masson, Martial Knaebel and Rafiq El-Sabban -- spoke to Mohamed El-Assyouti on important developments in the field of cinema
Film critic Alain Masson and his colleagues at the leading film magazine Positif engage with current French film as well as re-examining and interpreting the cinema in its full historical and geographical diversity. Their recent efforts have concentrated on young French filmmakers and Taiwanese, Japanese and New Zealand cinema, especially the works of Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Shohei Emamura and Jane Campion respectively.
The debate between Positif on the one hand and Cahiers du Cinéma and Tel Quel on the other reached a peak in the late 1960s. Although all three journals have since modified their critical perspectives, their prior oppositions are not completely forgotten. At its root the debate had both political and aesthetic aspects.
"Our point of view was that we could approach films with political responsibility in mind but without overlooking their own aesthetic value," begins Masson. "Because we give priority to aesthetics we have no pre-determined set of principles according to which we evaluate films; some films can be aesthetically good without necessarily having a proper ideological consciousness," he adds.
The clash between Cahiers and Positif 30 years ago stemmed from the former adopting a Marxist-Maoist-Brechtian hypothesis while the latter insisted on the importance of diversifying the sources of pleasure in the film-viewing experience. According to Masson the debate is almost forgotten now and films are not judged according to theoretical canons fixed once and for all: "The job of the critic is to follow the art. We are not in a court of law," he exclaims. "Even though we are not always in agreement, Cahiers' general position has eventually become closer to our own.
"Nonetheless, Cahiers' theoretical activity positively influenced most French critics including myself and made us look more closely at film form and structure, whereas before our regard was rather superficial and inadequate. Even though the 'unsaid' and the 'unseen' that Cahiers' psychoanalytic Marxist hypothesis focused upon are not the object of our attention today, as we try to think of what is on the screen rather than what the framing and the editing left out, we do not entirely neglect the latter. Cahiers' movement was generally something healthy and positive.
"It is a strange thing being a film critic, because you pay attention to all films. Any film shown in Paris becomes a subject for Positif, whereas in literary or art criticism the critic is only concerned with particular works. Therefore, although we don't systematically follow the old cinéphile habit of classifying films into elaborate lists, still every once and a while Positif has to resort to lists because there are too many films. However, in order to avoid falling into the exclusion trap, we consider the opinions of filmmakers and cinéastes all over the world," he explains.
From top: Zoltan Kamondi's The Alchemist and The Virgin; Lucia Rikaki's Dancing Soul and Manuela Viegas' Gloria, denied entry at the festival
Masson does not agree with film theorist Serge Danney about the death of cinema. "We have seen some young directors grow up, like Wim Wenders and Theodoros Angelopoulos," says Masson who believes that "there is no void in film history". He continues, "Nevertheless, two phenomena strike me. First, there is a void in the audience, moviegoers are aged between 15 and 25, when they get older they watch video. Furthermore, these young people are more interested in what they call music than in films, whereas when I was young it was the contrary. Secondly, there is a widening gap between art films and mainstream entertainment, each liable to be either good or bad. Before, there was some continuity between Fellini and general Italian Cinema, between Altman and Hollywood. The independent cinema has grown while Hollywood keeps trying to absorb and contain it. I don't like this situation, a filmmaker should make films that any one can like."
Connecting these two phenomena, Rafiq El-Sabban, film critic, scriptwriter and professor at the Higher Institute of Cinema, says that because the majority of films respond to the high demands placed on entertainment by youngsters, art films had to move aside from the mainstream industry. The banks and corporations that have supported Hollywood since its inception have systematically and effectively developed its consumer-entertainment aspects.
"We all know that cinema is a monster with three limbs: art, industry and business. Hollywood foregrounds the latter two relegating art to the status of an appendage. Banks and corporations thus propagate their ideology via entertainment material wrapped in a fragile layer of art form," comments El-Sabban. "In the arts there are always low points followed by more flourishing ones. The previous peak in world cinema during the sixties and seventies was worth the long trough that followed and which we are still experiencing. Hopefully world cinema will undergo a tidal change soon.
"Filmmaking has withered during this decade in all of the Arab world: Algeria -- due to civil war -- and Tunisia -- for financial difficulties -- which made many a remarkable film in the past, have now almost stopped producing films; and Syria produces a film every three years. Consequently, with the relative rise in the number of Egyptian films this year -- 10 of which are being screened in different sections of this film festival -- we have reasons to be optimistic. The Ministry of Culture's support of filmmaking is praiseworthy; even if its support takes the form of reducing the costs of services and presenting available resources free of charge, it is better than giving generous financial support to some films then stopping in the future," El-Sabban concluded.
Martial Knaebel, film critic and director of one of Switzerland's film festivals, believes that cinema like any other art form is related to the thoughts and experiences of the society in which it is produced and is also linked to the political and social changes occurring in the world.
"In European cinema today we sense a lack of ideas on the intellectual and philosophical level; no more great filmmakers in this sense," he says. "However, in Asia, Africa and Latin America there is still some movement in art and culture. For instance, African cinema dealt for a long time with the history of colonisation and the struggle for independence, but today they are trying to do something different. They are trying to go back to their roots -- or what they think are their roots -- and focus on their traditions. Egyptian cinema has a long history in terms of making films and has significance for the Arab world where the films are shown. It is one of the few cinemas in Africa which has both popular entertainment movies alongside intellectual art films; in many other countries only the latter exists because there is little public and no external market for the former."
* * *
In the shadow of upheaval
The Eastern European films in competition at the Alexandria Festival indicate that the political, social and economic upheavals that have wrenched the region continue to impact on filmmaking, argues Mohamed El-Assyouti.
According to Romanian scriptwriter/director Marius Barna "the change to a free market economy prompted a change in not just the policies but also the mentality governing film-making."
"Our dwindling film industry is now getting its act together again with the government's support," he says. "And now a film which manages to secure 20 per cent of its total budget from private sources is eligible for a further 50 per cent from government sponsorship. The result is that we now make 10 to 12 films a year."
Barna's own route into filmmaking is instructive: he entered a scriptwriting competition, won, and as a consequence received government funding for new directors.
Barna's concentration on psychological drama requiring a minimal budget was a plus. He used only three principle characters and a single interior location. He also used Beta Cam for the news footage that comprises a substantial part of the film. Face to Face was shot in 35 days within a $200,000 budget and took Barna nine months to complete. It has since been screened at the Montreal Film Festival, and in Romania attracted an audience of 20,000 over a period of five months.
The film is shot almost entirely in a single house where a writer and one-time political activist turns on the TV to discover, along with the entire country, that her journalist husband had for 20 years been an informer for the security services of the old regime, she being the main subject of his reports.
The film raises questions over the kind of choices that might be exercised under a dictatorship, while the prying eyes of the media, which eventually break into the house, heighten the dramatic conflict accentuated by fine performances. Noteworthy is the TV programme in which a graphologist explains the protagonist's character relying solely on his hand writing.
Locally the film excited much debate, not least because the situation with which it dealt was familiar and because, as Barna says, "in my script I chose to be consistent with the nature of the protester who always contradicts the expectations of the majority."
Although Hungarian scriptwriter/director Zoltan Kamondi's first feature film was made in 1990 and screened at the Cannes Film Festival, his cinematic ambitions were subsequently thwarted for the best part of a decade as tumultuous political changes swept filmmaking to one side. He started his own experimental theatre company, working first in small towns then moving to Budapest. After seven years he had to disband the company following financial and managerial difficulties, fortunately at a time when the government was renewing its support for the film industry.
Zoltan chose alchemy as a subject for his film The Alchemist and The Virgin: "Gold is the boundary between the spiritual world where it is the basest material, and our own world where it is the richest," he says. "Alchemy is a process in which human, material and spiritual elements correspond. It is a metaphor describing the chase after material prosperity and success, the search to find ourselves then lose ourselves again."
Croatian scriptwriter/director Digan Surak insists "we are a post-communist, post-war country. And everything has changed in the film industry for better or worse. Now we make three to six films a year fully sponsored by the Ministry of Culture."
Surak produced the first version of his script in three weeks and shot it in six weeks on a tight budget. Some of the 50 movie theatres in Croatia will screen Garcia, and two distribution companies in London and Los Angeles will distribute it world-wide. The events of Surak's film follow Garcia as he is chased by his creditors and the police, and watch his transformation into a mythical symbol of justice.
Alexander Pacherov, a Russian who has acted in over 20 films, starred and scripted his directorial debut Iron Heel of Oligarchy, in which he plays a literature teacher who comes to St Petersburg to incite workers to rise up against capitalism. A set of comic situations ensues, including lectures to his girlfriend and the prostitutes he picks up, and dancing à la Pulp Fiction with a prostitute to heavy metal in a night club. All the while authorities spy on him until finally he meets a violent end at the hands of men in black. An interesting blend of the serious cinema of Andrzej Wajda with Tarantinoesque humour.
