Inside and Out: The Olympion Theatre as projection space
Whisked back from beneath the limpid Aegean skies to my humdrum day-to-day existence on the more austere side of the European Union, I’m reminded of the words of Lawrence Durrell in Balthazar, the second book in his Alexandria Quartet: “We live lives based on selected fictions. Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time, not by our personalities as we like to think. Thus every interpretation of reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed.” It’s not to difficult to appreciate the huge influence Greece had in Durrell’s own fiction, but one wonders what he would have made of this year’s Thessaloniki International Film Festival, which was inaugurated exactly fifty years ago, around the time he wrote these words, and drew to a close last night. I think he might have liked it. The wonderful selection of films from across the globe gave an impressive insight into the various lives lived in such far flung reaches of the world as Australia, South America, Somalia and the Philippines, and in this context, the question “Why Cinema Now?” that served as the tag-line for its 50th anniversary and whose text formed part of the montage of images projected across the facade of the impressive Olympion Theater, seemed particularly well posed.
The madding crowd, outside the John Casavettes screen.
Like many avid consumers of world cinema, I often feel I live in a different reality from the many whose opinions are informed by the more pervasive voices of the dominant mass media rather than the more rarefied world inhabited by the film curator and habitual festival-goer. What can we possibly understand about the daily lives of, say, an Australian aborigine, the middle-class metropolitan population of Cairo or those who were caught in the midst of the Rwandan genocide if the only windows on to the rest of the world we ever have access to are the increasingly conservative medium of television, the weighted voices of news pundits, or the mass entertainment opiates that overwhelm our cities’ cinemas and video rental and retail outlets?
Why Cinema Now? Festival poster at Thessaloniki airport.
The global film industry is going through a funny phase at the moment. While technological advances mean there’s more films being produced across the world than at any other time (especially in countries without well-established industries), the current crisis in distribution, in part due to this large number of films out there at present, means that many of the titles I am about to mention will largely go unseen outside of the festival circuit, which is a shame. In all other ways, we are far better connected with each other than ever before, but not only are opportunities for large groups of strangers to meditate together on visions of distant lands within a shared communal space rapidly dwindling, even finding information about what is available is a vast challenge. There were plenty of films screened at the festival that wouldn’t have looked out of place in London’s arthouse cinemas about ten years ago. Now, sadly, I’m not so sure this is the case.
The main pier forms an atmospheric hub for the festival.
Thessaloniki’s unique geographical position as a nexus between the European Union, the Middle East and the Balkan States, its cosmopolitan cultural mix and its long and influential history no doubt had a huge bearing on the selection of the films that screened there. True, some of these have played other international festivals already (a couple of titles came straight from last month’s London Film Festival), but the general impression I had was that more room was made for those films that reflected the general tastes and ambiance of the area rather than titles from, say North America or Western Europe. (A great film though it may be, the typically grimy British socio-realism of Samantha Morton’s directorial debut The Unloved seemed to attract fewer bums on seats than some of the other films in competition). Unfortunately, while Greece’s main festival was initially established to showcase the national cinema, for various political reasons which I won’t detail here, a large number of the country’s directors decided to boycott Thessaloniki this year, so the local product wasn’t so well reflected.
The poster for Blue Film Woman, part of the popular Beyond Pinku Eiga programme.
The competition results were announced last night: for more details you can check out the winners on the Variety website. I’ll have to confess I didn’t see many of these, but given that all the titles that competed are to be screened over the next two weeks in 17 cities throughout Greece and the amount of media interest generated by the guests who attended, it seems that Thessaloniki is a pretty good place for any filmmaker to showcase their work. For the ten days of the festival, there were films playing simultaneously in every one of the six screens, and the level of attendances was really quite staggering. There were a number of times I couldn’t get into the screenings I wanted, but on the flipside, one has to applaud any festival that can get in over 100 people to watch a double bill of Blue Film Woman and Gushing Prayer that started at midnight on a Friday night. The Beyond Pinku Eiga programme that presented my raison d’etre for being there was hugely successful – and I wish to say a big thanks to Lefteris, Myriam, Natasha and the rest of the Independence Days staff who made it all happen and who made my stay so pleasurable. There’s a brief article in Variety about this program too, but I’ve said enough about pink films over the past few months, so instead I’d rather focus on some of the other standouts from my trip.
Still time for sightseeing: in front of Aristotle statue
Coming back from any festival that boasts such an overwhelming amount of material presents a chance to bemoan what one has missed and celebrate what one saw. I probably caught about 20 films in total, while also making good use of my non-viewing time to do a bit of sightseeing and enjoy the city and probably the last bit of decent sunshine I’ll get to experience over the next six months. Over the coming days I want to write a bit about my favourites and hope that in some small way my words might shine a light on films that you might not get a chance to hear about otherwise.
Cannes Camera d'Or winner Samson & Delilah
The first truly great title I caught was Samson & Delilah (film website here), Australia’s shot at the Best Foreign Language Film for the 2010 Academy Awards. Yes, that’s right, foreign language – it’s perhaps too easy for us on the other side of the world to forget that Australia does have its own indigenous population, but the other thing one might note about Warwick Thornton’s film is there’s precious little in the way of any dialogue at all. Samson & Delilah really caught me by surprise. The one thing about focussing on Japanese cinema is that most of the festivals I get invited to focus primarily on either Asian film or genre/cult material. Until now, I’d assumed that The Horseman or Coffin Rock were the best contemporary Australian cinema had to offer. I’m happy to have been proven wrong.
Warwick Thornton's Samson & Delilah
Samson & Delilah is set in a remote aboriginal community in the Northern Territories (it was filmed near Alice Springs) and follows the relationship between a young man and woman, the Samson and Delilah of the title, in an environment that offers little in the way of hope or even basic material comfort. Samson might not be most girls’ dream date, but nonetheless, he’s the best on offer, and given the options in life afforded to him, one wouldn’t expect him to be any different. Initially resistant to his crude advances, the death of her grandmother leaves Delilah with little other place to turn, and their life together as they leave their tiny community soon descends into a nightmare of petrol-sniffing, poverty, hunger and homelessness. The early scenes detail the two protagonists’ mundane lives in their community in wordless detail and with a Groundhog Day-like monotony. Despite the miserable trajectory of their existence, the nuanced performances balance delicate moments of humour with considerable pathos. Like the best of the films I aim to cover from the festival, this is a story that if written down would appear slight and inconsequential. It masterfully harnesses the unique ability of cinema to convey emotions and ideas in images, and by doing so transcends the limits of the medium. Aside from the beautiful cinematography, the one thing that really stood out for me was the adroit use of sound. I remember little in the way of background music, but instead the emotional intensity of the scenes are underscored by the use of natural sound: for example, the scene in which Samson finally loses his rag with the Verandah Band that play continuously outside his bedroom unfolds in a screech of amplified feedback as he attacks the guitarist. It comes as little surprise to hear that Thornton’s credits as director, writer and DOP on the film sit alongside another credit, as a composer. He and sound designer Liam Egan have clearly worked very closely together to achieve such a remarkable synergy of sound and image, resulting in a remarkable work of visual storytelling in which dialogue is all but redundant.
Samson & Delilah
Samson & Delilah won the Camera d’Or for best first feature at Cannes Film Festival this year, and also played London Film Festival. A French release is imminent, and a UK release planned for earlier next year. So regardless of what I said earlier, this at least is a title that will get the wider audience it so deserves. At least one Australian critic has labelled it “the best (some would say the first) Australian film yet made”, and I for one am inclined to agree with him. A week and half since I saw it and it is still vividly and indelibly burned into my brain.
Posted at 16:35 on 23 November 2009
Filed under 
Tagged
Popular Posts
Search
Tag Cloud
FAQ
Links