Director of Programming James McNally is attending this year’s Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival from January 31st to February 8th
Slept a little later than I would have liked, which ruled out anything screening at 10am so I decided to head to the Capitole cinema to see I11, which included Melissa Hickey’s film Ni-Ni. I’d forgotten that for anything screened outside of the Cocteau, there would be no English subtitles at all. Even Melissa’s film, made at the American Film Institute, was in Spanish. But somehow I managed. The ones I really liked I can follow up on and maybe see again with subtitles at the market.
I’m glad to report that Ni-Ni is really good, even though I only got about a third of the dialogue (between the spoken Spanish and the French subtitles). It’s a gritty story of a young street tough in a Mexican border town who has a potentially redemptive encounter with a girl he knew in his childhood. Having met the filmmakers already, I wanted to like it, but it’s even better when my impartial self can agree that it’s good work.
The first film in the programme, Chidiya Udh, played like an Indian gloss on Upstream Color, which is not all good. Composed of some wonderful images, this almost wordless film tries much too self-consciously to be artistic and deep. It’s refreshingly different from anything I’ve yet seen from India, though, which makes filmmaker Pranjal Dua someone to watch.
My favourite of the programme, though, was the quirky and charming animated piece Nashorn im Galopp (image above) from German filmmaker Erik Schmitt. Using the pixilation technique of animating live actors, Schmitt creates a romantic story about Berlin and the people who live there. Even though I didn’t get much of the dialogue, this easily won me over with its playful technique.
From there, I raced over to the Vian screening room in the basement of the Maison de la Culture for the Lab selection L2. I’d already seen one of the films, the absolutely sublime Notes on Blindess, but I was curious about several of the others.
A Man on the Road is Best Left Alone and I Love You So Hard were both very silly and enjoyable, but otherwise not exceptional.
Paleosol 80 South and The Rising both tried to bring creepy sci-fi elements to documentary-like material with limited success.
And the film that bugged me the most might be one of the best-made of the bunch. Going into the screening, I was convinced that La Parte de l’ombre (image below) was attempting to be a documentary, maybe using some re-enactments and other “hybrid” elements. During the film I became convinced that the whole story might just be fiction. A tragic tale of a Hungarian photographer who disappears on the eve of his first exhibition in 1944, just as the Nazis are poised to invade Budapest, the film is beautifully made. So beautiful, in fact, that I quickly realized we couldn’t be looking at material from the 1940s. Nonetheless, filmmaker Olivier Smolders has created something quite interesting. Familiarizing myself with his other work would have prepared me a bit more, I think.
After a quick lunch at fast-food chain Quick, I raced back to see if I could get into the US3 programme at Conchon, but alas it was full. I even spotted American filmmaker Keith Bearden (The Raftman’s Razor) ahead of me not getting in. So back to the apartment for a head start on this blog entry, and now, a nap…
Finishing this up now at around 10:30pm. At 7pm, I was able to go over to where the Short Film Market begins tomorrow and sign up for some time using the booths of the library to watch more films on Wednesday morning. Then while lining up to go into the next screening at the Cocteau, I saw on Twitter the news that one of my absolute favourite actors, Philip Seymour Hoffman, had been found dead in his New York apartment. Very sad news, and a terrible loss to the world of film. I’ll remember so many great performances from him, and I’m sorry there won’t be any more.
The 8:15pm programme I saw was F6, so another selection of French films in the official competition. There were some truly bizarre films in this group. Maman is a wordless animated piece that just revels in weirdness and then ends abruptly. Style, admittedly good style, over substance here. Equally stylish, but even more zany, is Prehistoric Cabaret which uses all sorts of retro and horror (giallo?) references to tell its story of a woman doing a very revealing striptease. Hilarious but went a little nuts, even for me, at the end.
Extrasystole is an earnest coming-(out)-of-age film from writer/director Alice Douard. A student develops a crush on her female teacher but ultimately one of them loses courage in an emotional game of chicken. Excellent performances from Mathilde Poymiro and Laetitia Dosch. I actually saw Dosch after the screening standing alone so went up and complimented her on her performance. I suspect Douard will make the jump to features quite easily, since this was a 38 minute “short.”
I wasn’t as impressed with Vos Violences which told its story of criminal guilt and innocence with some intense performances but not much else. A lot of white liberal guilt sends a lawyer into ethical quicksand.
The last film in the programme certainly had me laughing, but it was so cheap-looking and off the cuff that it played out more like a Jackass skit. Todo se puede is about a young Mexican man who’s on the prowl for ladies, but can’t seem to score. It’s like a horny version of Slacker with a bit of Napoleon Dynamite thrown in. When our hero ends up fighting with luchadores despite his scrawny build, you too will believe that “anything is possible.” It’s a shaggy dog story that might be so bad that it’s awesome.
I contemplated squeezing in one more screening after that, but realized that I needed to make a proper schedule for the rest of the week, since the market opens tomorrow and there will be lots of people to meet.