Spotlight: 13th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Ajami Directors Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani

Ajami Wins Again at Tallinn
06/12/2009

Continuing a successful two years for a resurgent Israeli cinema scene, Ajami added yet another award to its roster, picking up the Grand Prix for Best Eurasian Film at the 13th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. The Awards, which closed the festival on Friday night also saw wins for Letter to Father Jacob, No One Knows About Persian Cats, Vortex, December Heat and Disco and Atomic War.

Critic Jaan RuusIn addition to the many films and film practitioners who were celebrated at the closing ceremony, Jaan Ruus, one of Estonia’s most respected critics and a writer for the IFG, was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Next year’s Black Nights Film Festival, part of PÖFF, will take place 11 November - 5 December 2010

The complete awards list for the 2009 festival:

Official Competition EurAsia Jury Awards

GRAND PRIX FOR BEST EURASIAN FILM (scholarship of 10,000 euros)
Ajami, by Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani (Germany / Israel)

Best Actress Marie BonnevieJURY PRIZE FOR THE BEST DIRECTOR
Klaus Häro for Letters to Father Jacob (Finland)

JURY PRIZE FOR THE BEST ACTOR
David Denick in Brotherhood (Denmark)

JURY PRIZE FOR THE BEST ACTRESS
Maria Bonnevie for The Angel (Norway, Sweden, Finland)

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
Wedding in Bessarabia, by Napoleon Helmis (Romania, Moldova, Luxembourg)

JURY PRIZE FOR CINEMATOGRAPHICALLY CAPTURING CONTEMPORARY LIFE IN UNDEGROUND IRAN (scholarship 1,000 euros from P. Mutasen Elokuvakonepaja OY)

Multi-award winner, Bahman Gobadi’s No One Knows About Persian Cats Turaj Aslani for No One Know About Persian Cats, by Bahman Ghobadi (Iran)

Tridens Baltic Feature Film Competition Jury Awards

BEST FILM (scholarship 5,000 euros)
Vortex, by Director Gytis Lukšas (Lithuania)

SCOTTISH LEADER ESTONIAN FILM AWARD (scholarship 50,000 kroons)
December Heat, by Director Asko Kase (Estonia)

CINEVERA LV AWARD FOR THE BEST CINEMATOGRAPHER OF THE TRIDENS BALTIC FEATURE FILM COMPETITION (scholarship 1,000 euros)
Victoras Radzevicius for Vortex (Lithuania)

SPECIAL MENTION
Bank Robbery, by Andrus Tuisk (Estonia)

Jaak Kilmi hilarious award winner, Disco and Atomic WarSPECIAL MENTION
Disco and Atomic War, by Jaak Kilmi (Estonia)

North American Independent Film Competition Programme Jury Award:

AWARD FOR THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIE FILM WITH BEST DISTRIBUTION POTENTIAL (distribution in Baltic Cinamon cinemas, promotional activities in TV channel Silver)
(UNTITLED), Producer Catherine DiNapoli (USA)

FICC Jury Award
No One Know About Persian Cats, by Bahman Ghobadi (Iran)

NETPAC Jury Award
No One Know About Persian Cats, by Bahman Ghobadi (Iran)

FIPRESCI Award
Disco and Atomic War, by Jaak Kilmi (Estonia)

Audience Award
Castaway on the Moon, by Lee Hey-jun (South Korea)

Lifetime Achievement Award
Jaan Ruus (Film Journalist, Estonia)

The Power of Documentary
02/12/2009

At their best, documentaries can shine a light on subjects or places that were not known to us, revealing hidden worlds and introducing us to the rich and varied lives of other cultures. They can also report on injustice, sending despatches on topics that need our attention. One of the year’s best documentaries details the plight of the Burmese population and the efforts of those who attempt to shine a light on the injustice and human rights abuses committed there.

Anders Østergaard powerful Burma VJ: Reporting From A Closed CountryBurma VJ: Reporting From A Closed Country takes place during the demonstrations by the country’s peace-loving Buddhist monks, who decided to speak out against the governing regime and its brutal tactics. Their treatment at the hands of the state army was appalling. The world was able to see these events unfolding thanks to the bravery of journalists who went out on to the streets with hidden cameras, recording the demonstrations, before sending the images to a television station in Denmark, which would transmit them back to Burma and around the world, so that people could witness the Burmese populace’s attempt to bring democracy to their country. Anders Østergaard gathered together much of this footage, along with the testimony of a journalist forced to feel the country, to create this extraordinary and deeply disturbing film.

Social injustice also dominated one of the highlights of the festival’s excellent strand on Portugese cinema. On 12 June 2000, Sandro do Nascimento boarded Bus 174 in Rio de Janeiro, brandished a gun and told the passengers they were now his hostage. The hijack took place downtown, in one of the city’s plusher areas and also outside the main television companies offices. The hijack played out live on national television, attacting one of the largest audiences in the country’s history. By the end of the day, two people were dead and the police claimed victory for ending the hijack to end end with a comparably low loss of life. José Padhilla’s documentary opens with this footage, but then looks back to the events that brought de Nascimento on to the bus. What he discovered was a hopeless life that was haunted by the events of 23 July 1993, when a group of men, including police officers, massacred homeless youths sleeping outside the Rio’s Candelária church. Sandro do Nascimento was there that night. Bus 174 identifies this as just one moment in a lifetime of neglect and abuse. Never condoning the young man’s actions, Padhila’s film suggests that Rio’s ill will never be solved if the forces of law and order are no less brutal than the criminals they pursue.

George Clooney in The Men Who Stare at GoatsTruth and fiction blur to create a strange hybrid in The Men Who Stare at Goats, Grant Heslov’s film of Jon Ronson’s highly amusing book, which explored the US Army’s occasional dip into the paranormal. An impressive cast fleshes out Ronson’s series of vignettes into a somewhat strange and ultimately unsuccessful narrative. The film works best when staying close to Ronson’s discoveries, particularly the various tools invented to aid the missions these paranormal warriors were sent on. Less impressive is the way Heslov attempts to pass comment on American policy in Iraq. At best naive, these sequences highlight that often, like the documentaries showing at this festival, truth can offer much, much more than fiction.

A Tour Around Europe
30/11/2009

Anyone doubting the strength of contemporary European cinema need only take a cursory glance at the programme at the 13th Black Nights Film Festival over the last two days to see what a vibrant and exciting scene it is. Films from France, Romania, Hungary, Georgia, Azerbaijan and the UK all contribute to a sumptuous feast of film across all venues.

Tahar Rahim and Niels Arestrup in Jacques Audiard’s Un prophèteThough Michael Haneke walked away with the Palme d’Or for The White Ribbon (screening on 6 December) at this year’s Cannes festival, it was not without tough competition from Jacques Audiard and arguably his finest film to date, Un prophète. The hard-hitting account of a young French Algerian man’s incarceration in a tough prison and how he succumbs to the bitter rivalries there makes for riveting viewing. Relative newcomer Tahar Rahim is excellent as the petty criminal who commits worse crimes following imprisonment. And as his Corsican gang leader boss, Niels Arestrup (who played the father in Audiard’s previous The Beat That My Heart Skipped) is suitably menacing.

George Ovashvili’s The Other Bank tells the story of a son’s search for his father across the decimated landscape of Abkhazia. Featuring a startling performance by Tedo Bekhauri (think David Bennent in Schlöndorf’s The Tin Drum), the film blends a surrealist edge with a powerful anti-war sentiment and has deservedly picked up awards from festivals around the world.

Hilda Peter in Peter Strickland’s Katalin VargaThe UK/Romanian/Hungarian co-production, Katalin Varga, was directed by Peter Strickland. Taking the rape revenge movie - a staple of 1970s exploitation cinema - and turning it on its head, Strickland has crafted a beautiful, haunting rumination on the insidiousness of violence and how the Old Testament idea of ‘eye for and eye’ only perpetuates the cycle of violence. In yet another fine performance (another aspect of today’s selection - some of the year’s most impressive turns by a wide selection of actors), Hilda Peter is the eponymous heroine, who is intent on redressing the violence she was subject to, years before. A cineaste steeped in European film culture, Strickland invests the film with traces of Tarkovsky, Paradjanov and many other sources, as well as blending various genres, which make for one of the year’s most accomplished debuts.

Winner of the IFG Inspiration Award at this year’s Cottbus Film Festival, Elchin Musaoglu’s The 40th Door plays like a deceptively simple parable, before opening up to examine life in modern-day Azerbaijan. On hearing of his father’s death, 14 year-old Rustam gives up school in order to support him and his mother. Against her wishes, he travels to the capital, Baku, where he washes cars. Defying a local gang, who demand payment for allowing him to work on their streets, Rustam soon finds out how tough life can be. Shot in an unfussy style, Musaoglu makes room for his principles to map out their lives and feelings. The result is an admirably low-key drama.

Sam Rockwell in Duncan Jones’ MoonCinema sometimes acts like a comfort blanket, allowing us to return to the things that make us most comfortable or remind us of earlier experiences that gave us pleasure. 1970s cinema was the period that dominated this writer’s early experiences of film. In particular a strand of sci-fi that featured a more dystopian view of the universe than had been previously presented, although sharing with the best sci-fi films of the 1950s and 1960s and strong narrative trajectory. It is something of a pleasure, then, to encounter Duncan Jones’ Moon. A throwback to those films and featuring Sam Rockwell in a role that bears comparison with Bruce Dern in Silent Running (or even Pail Mantee in Byron Haskin’s Robison Crusoe on Mars), Jones’ moon-based thriller shows how, with a great deal of invention, a very low budget can go a long way. With an excellent script, from a story that mixed familiar tropes with enough surprise to satisfy, Moon is a supremely entertaining and timely (coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the first lunar mission) film. That it stands alongside such a diverse collection of European films only highlights what rich pickings the Black Nights festival programmers had this year.

Estonian film Disco and Atomic War

Doing Business on the Black Market
28/11/2009

An exciting new element to the Black Nights Film Festival is a market, entitled Black Market Industry Screenings, whose aim is to showcase the latest productions from North, East and Central Europe to members of the international film industry. There is also Books Into Movies, a literary rights market, which will introduce works from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Finland, Norway, Georgia and the Ukraine.

Advice on the films screened, as well as recommendations, will be available from the Solaris Centre, which is manned by festival staff.

Those looking out for a local film to watch will likely pick few better Estonian films this year than Disco and Atomic War, the slyly comical play with the documentary form by Jaak Kilmi. A description of the film’s narrative trajectory will do little justice to the sheer level of invention and enthusiasm the director invests in this story of life in Soviet controlled Estonia in the dying days of communism. Forget Gorbachev, Reagan and the nuclear threat, the film tells us. The Iron Curtain was levelled by Dallas, Knight Rider and a special screening of Emmanuelle that, nine months later, saw a spike in the birth rate in Estonia. Intelligent, engaging and very, very funny, Kilmi’s account of growing up in the 1980s deserves a wider audience beyond the Baltic countries.

Catherine Breillat’s BluebeardA very different film, but no less an achievement is Catherine Breillat’s beguilling adaptation of the Bluebeard myth. At first glance, it seems an atypical choice for Breillat, but once it hits its stride, Bluebeard is firmly in the ideological territory that the director has been exploring for years. Finding a new angle on the tale, she empowers the central character, investing the matricidal count’s new partner with more power and influence than we have previously seen. In a parallel story, set in the 1950s and featuring two girls reading the tale aloud, we witness the fine line between the assertion of self and the cruelty that the power over others can provoke. It is also one of Breillat’s most beautiful films.

Finally, the day also saw a very entertaining film about an extremely dry subject. RIP: A Remix Manifesto explores the complex world of ownership and illegal downloading. Brett Gaylor’s film explores the legal quagmire of music publishing, employing the music of Girltalk to discuss where one artist’s creativity ends and another’s begins. The film may not win many converts, but it raises important issues in a dynamic way.

top