Forty-eight, going on fifteen

This is a review of A Story of Children and Film (2013)

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26 April (updated 28 April)

This is a review of A Story of Children and Film (2013)

Mark Cousins (@markcousinsfilm) came to Cambridge with his film A Story of Children and Film (2013) (@ChildrenandFilm), which he told us that he had not been intending to make after – as he described it – six years making, and two years editing, The Story of Film : An Odyssey (2011).

The film was here both in its own right, and to introduce a series of films – The Cinema of Childhood – that has been curated by Cousins and by Filmhouse (@Filmhouse) (which was sourced with the assistance of Neil McGlone (@NeilMcGFilm)) and which has been showing since at The Arts Picturehouse (@CamPicturehouse) (of which there are reviews here of Palle Alone in the World (Palle Alene i Verden) (1949) and Bag of Rice) (Kiseye Berendj) (1998)).

Cousins had previously been at The Arts for the showing of the last part of Odyssey (which had been screened in full in preceding weeks), and of his new film What is This Thing Called Love ? (2012), and had been an agreeable and interesting guest.

This time, as well as eloquently introducing Children and Film and explaining how it had come about and how personal its genesis had been, Cousins was not making special pleading for the way in which he had constructed the film* : he had simply realized, in looking at the filming that he had done (in his home and with the camera in a static position) of his nephew and niece, that the patterns of behaviour that they showed, as they got used to the camera and, together and singly, played, gave him a way of being reminded of the roles for children in the best films that feature them, rather than those that impose an adulthood on a child before its time :

As he suggests at http://dogwoof.com/childrenandfilm/filmmaker, Cousins contrasted the sweet perfection of Shirley Temple (Curly Top (1935)) with the young girl who puts on a family entertainment with Esther (Judy Garland) in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), and who is allowed to make mistakes and be out of key, as, of course, many a child would.

At the same time, Cousins is not singling out St. Louis as a film that we would necessarily go to, but wants to introduce us to examples from all around the world from Senegal to Sweden, and also reminds us to look again at others that we may already know, such as Ken Loach’s Kes (1969), Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter (1955), David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946), Chaplin’s The Kid (1921), and even Spielberg’s E.T. : The Extra-Terrestrial (1982).

Punctuated by returning to the Cousins’ flat for more development of what is happening with the relatives on screen, but looking first, by paying a homage to where Vincent Van Gogh lived in Provence at the end of his life, at the world that the painter created in his work as he interpreted his surroundings, Cousins wants to remind us that making a film is projecting a visual and aural view of the world (and the poetic element in what he said to us was patent). Those views, and real life in Cousins’ home, do provide a contrast and a structure – if we can take them on their own terms, and accept, when he tells us, that he did consider other structures to this film, rather than using the original one, but found that nothing worked as well.

Children and Film, though it has a shorter running-time and is a very different type of film, is as demanding of us as Slavoj Žižek is of us in The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012), because Cousins does not slacken his pace or his use of terms to describe the camera’s movement or position, and ideally one needs to see the film several times over to take in all that he is not only saying at any one point, but to absorb the action in the clips, and the information such as the film’s name, translation and where and when made.

An excellent reason to order the DVD from Dogwoof (@dogwoof) (available from 28 April), but, in the meantime, the list of films featured can be found here :


http://dogwoof.com/childrenandfilm/about.


The film was also reviewed here by Amanda Randall (@amandarandall5) for TAKE ONE (@TakeOneCFF) at Cambridge Film Festival in 2013


To correct an omission

Those who know Cousins' camera-work will be well aware that he is a skilled cinematographer, but the quality of the images, their framing and composition, when he had travelled on to the Isle of Skye is beautiful : a real treat where it comes, because what has gone before has been the footage captured in the flat and clips from his chosen films, even if the opening, which seems a while away now, had been in Provence. (Whether he had linearly been contemplating the possible significance as a frame for this film of his niece and nephew at play, and had developed detailed ideas by the time of his time on Skye, really does not matter, for, in a sense, this is a story just as even any memory that we have is, a way of telling to the world what happened.)


End-notes

* Cousins had the large sheet on which he had worked out the connections between films with him, which those daring enough to approach afterwards were able to see close to.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

I want to go to the park

This is a review of Bag of Rice (Kiseye Berendj) (1998)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

Easter Monday

* Contains spoilers *

This is a review of Bag of Rice (Kiseye Berendj) (1998)

It was shown as part of the series The Cinema of Childhood (please visit the web-site at cinemaofchildhood.com for more information), which is presented by Mark Cousins (@markcousinsfilm) and Filmhouse (@Filmhouse), and is introduced by Mark Cousins' film A Story of Children and Film (2013) (with Neil McGlone (@NeilMcGFilm)). At a special screening at The Arts Picturehouse in Cambridge (@CamPicturehouse), its director, Mohammad-Ali Talebi, was present to introduce the film and answer questions in a session hosted by Toby Miller (@tobytram) from FM 105’s Bums on Seats (@Bums_on_Seats)

In A Story of Children and Film (2013), Mark Cousins has held up director Mohammad-Ali Talebi’s film Bag of Rice (Kiseye Berendj) (1998) as an example of a child actor being allowed to be like a child, and, in Tweeting about the film, Cousins has called it ‘a tonic’ and ‘one of the best things that you could do with 80 mins’.

If u r in Cambridge England + r feeling sad, go see Bag of Rice. @picturehouses at 3.20 2day. It'll make u feel better abt the world. Joy .
— mark cousins (@markcousinsfilm) April 13, 2014

Rice establishes a mood that does not seem prone to abate, so we are genuinely uplifted when it does : a world of cynicism, complaint and grumbling, not just within the home, seems left behind. We had heard, in the words that Talebi (through his interpreter) gave by way of introduction, that the film was set just after the end of Iran’s war with Iraq (which ended in August 1988, after nearly eight years). Maybe, however, since Iran had become an Islamic Republic following the revolution (in 1979), and the deposition of the Shah, we expected that people might be less materialistic and not so quick to find fault.

Then again, these are people who have had to cope with years of war, and, apart from having the fact of continued rationing at its centre, the film has scenes that show us how fearful people are of losing a job or spending too much money. There is, to an extent, a sense of neighbourliness in queuing together for bread fresh from the oven, but tensions and frustrations quickly become apparent. However, criticizing or even obviously commenting on the extent to which the revolution had had an impact on everyday people’s lives does not seem to be part of Talebi’s purpose.

In the question-and-answer session, Talebi was asked whether, in a film that takes a good look at human nature, and seems to incorporate spiritual wisdom (such as sharing each other’s load), there had been a deliberate reference to Louis Malle’s Zazie. In fact, although Talebi says that he likes Malle’s films, he has not seen Zazie dans le métro (1960), and will seek it out when he gets home. Others, too, had said to him that they find a spiritual message in his films, and, although he is not saying that it is not there, it had not been his intention to put one there.

That said, he told us that one of the first things that he did on arriving in Cambridge had been to go into a Catholic church, and that watching people waiting to receive the sacrament had moved him to tears. Nonetheless, in a long and revealing answer to this question, he said that he relates more to the notion of humanity without a religious dimension. Once the observational part of the film gives way to adventure, a summary of what happens would not seem capable of filling the remaining minutes.

For the strength of the film is not in an elaborate plot, but in simplicity, and in the genuineness of the central performances from Jairan Abadzade (Jairan) and Masume Eskandari. We were told that, even so, some devices elicited Abadzade’s performance, such as giving her a toy for much of a day and then denying it to her, and that Eskandari’s polite assurances that she was happy with how the shooting was going were belied by being able to catch her, on a microphone, cursing how things were being handled. (In the screenplay, this insincerity is mirrored by her complaining to herself that Jairan talks so much, and attempting to hurry away to avoid being with her (the latter of which Jairan is aware, and remarks on it to her).)

The principal scene that first moves us is when another’s actions, after all that has been gone through to procure forty-five kilos of rice and get them onto the bus home, threaten to be fatal – until all on the bus play their part to save the day. A description in such broad terms does not permit for feeling either what happens or the scope for the film’s development, but the root lies in the interactions between child and adult, and in the former having the vision and faith for things to happen.

All of which ends in the richness of preparing a meal, and of involving those who live nearby – in a positive sense of community, sharing food with them, which makes the effort of getting the rice back redemptive and worthwhile.


Rice was screened with Palle Alone in the World (Palle Alene I Verden) (1949) (which is reviewed here, and was shown first)


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)