Yesterday was the first official day of screenings the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2012, and I kickstarted my first ever film festival experience with a full day of diverse viewing pleasure.
Bart Vegter at the Sub-Urban Video Lounge, IFFR 2012
To start with, I enjoyed a lovely lunch and coffee at the Urban Espresso bar, which houses the Sub-Urban Video Lounge in its basement. During the IFFR they are screening a compilation of experimental films in memory of Bart Vegter, an experimental filmmaker from Rotterdam who passed away last summer. Vegter’s own work is shown alongside the work of some of his Dutch contemporaries, showcasing a mix of experimental film made between the 1980s and the present day. I couldn’t stay to watch every single piece, but will probably return for a second viewing over the next week (I also can’t resist their goats’ cheese and beetroot bruschetta…) You can find a full list of the work on show here.
'Anna', by Alberto Grifi and Massimo Sarchielli
I had to make my way over to the cinema quickly for the 4-hour long screening of Anna, a documentary by Alberto Grifi and Massimo Sarchielli made in the 1970s (not many people in the audience managed to sit through it in its entirety, although I was somewhat surprised at the woman who started snoring 20 minutes into the film). The premise of the movie is the surprising relationship between Sarchielli and the eponymous protagonist, a 16 year old homeless girl called Anna who is heavily pregnant. The film is a test of endurance, but it pays off if you manage to stick it out till the end; the slow developments and long takes allow for an in depth perspective on multiple parallel narratives, including a very self-aware statement about documentary filmmaking itself.
Sarchielli’s seemingly charitable gesture of taking Anna into his home and providing her with food and shelter is off-set by the exploitative and self-serving act of making a film about her. She complies, but the film is littered with scenes that honestly and brutally expose an ethical conflict that is often hotly debated by the participants on the screen. Hippies, intellectuals, and bourgeois figures passing their time at cafe terraces on the Piazza Navona offer their opinions to the cameras, which often lead to heavy debates about the wider politics of the 1970s. In one scene a working man enters into a debate with the group of hippies who, often in conflict amongst themselves, pontificate about the reasons why they aren’t employed. When the man insists that everyone has a right to employment, encouraging the young men and women to seek out jobs, he is humourously confronted with the fact that they do not want to be employed. These little moments of naive honesty residually build up throughout the film, making a gradual and multi-faceted portrait of life in Rome at this time, exposing both personal experiences and the bias of the camera.
The film itself is beautiful in its degraded state; the first part of the film was shot on 16mm, after which Grifi started to use one of the first incarnations of video available in Italy (and indeed, the rest of the world). As the medium transforms, so does the technique- short staged takes are replaced with long lingering recordings that seem to want to catch every valuable speck of of real time experience. There are interesting scenes where the filmmakers experiment with the coupling of image and sound; two scenes around the middle of the film show Anna dialing a number repeatedly, and the only sound available to us as the audience are the sounds recorded through the telephone, including the repetitive dial tones and the manual turning of the dial itself. You are both warmed to and repelled by the treatment of the central girl; there are numerous endearing and unintentionally funny moments, including a moment where Anna gets frustrated with the telephone saying she can’t hear anything, and Massimo informs her from off-screen that she is holding the horn upside down. But these are also countered by understandable moments of aggravation, and no-one is spared from a critical treatment of their personality and intentions.
Perhaps one of the most moving moments in the film is the closing monologue, provided by the film’s technician, who had started a relationship with Anna at a later stage in the film. He talks about the personal problems Anna and him faced in their relationship after the birth of her daughter, and her identity as a young mother who for a large part of her life remained outside the institutions of society. He talks about Anna, and how motherhood had forced her to become an institution herself, confining her free spirit to constraints placed upon her by society. You don’t see her after the birth, which itself is relayed to the audience only through her boyfriend’s account recorded outside of the hospital. His first appearance is ecstatic, confessing he feels changed by the experience. The consecutive scene shows him again standing outside the hospital, this time wrecked by the stress surrounding the payment of the birth and the bureaucratic aftermath. His closing monologue is heartfelt and highly reflective of the various political points made throughout the film. In the end, the story of Anna becomes symbolic of the struggle in general for the young generation of the 70s to establish their own identity amidst political and social upheaval.
After a brief intermission, heading home to have a quick bite to eat, I made my way out to the screening of 11 Flowers, Wang Xiaoshuai’s autobiographical film about the last year of the Cultural Revolution in China.
'11 Flowers' by Wang Xiaoshuai
The film chronicles a year in the life of Wang Han, an 11 year old boy living in the countryside with his parents and younger sister. The narrative is a recognisable coming-of-age story set to the extraordinary historical backdrop of Chinese communism and its far-reaching implications in everyday life.
The film is surprisingly uplifting and joyous, celebrating the naivety of the young boys who are just enjoying their childhood in a beautiful countryside setting, with occasional glimmers of the harsh political reality encompassing their lives. Of course this story is being told from the point of view of an 11 year old, so the film knowingly focuses on innocent observations and childhood experiences. But the film doesn’t shy away from heavy political themes; Wang Han’s father, an artist who encourages his son to paint and draw daily, is a key political character who is representative of the creative and intellectual class so heavily taxed and punished by the communist regime. Most violence happens off screen, and is effectively implied rather than shockingly exposed.
A main plot line is Wang Han’s encounter with a wounded fugitive, who happens to be the brother of the enigmatic girl him and his friends are besotted with. The fugitive steals the boy’s new shirt, lovingly made by his mother two days before using a year’s worth of cloth rations, to dress his wounds. Wang Han, desperate to get his shirt back for fear of how his mother will react, follows the fugitive into the forest.
The ensuing events are remarkably poetic, and the cinematography is spellbinding. And although Wang Xiaoshuai admitted in the Q&A after the screening that the fugitive storyline was largely fabricated (he did witness a confrontation between a fugitive and the police, but in reality the fugitive was arrested and was unable to flee), he also said that perhaps the blending of fiction and fact is more representative of reality than history itself. After watching this film I am eager to watch his other works, including Beijing Bicycle and Shanghai Dreams. It is a beautiful ode to his own experience of the Cultural Revolution, and, like Anna, the plight of the central character becomes symbolic of a significant moment in a wider history, both through hindsight and cinematic intervention.
(1).jpg "Eve Arnold. Marilyn Monroe, Mount Sinai, 1955")
