Showing posts with label Reel Solutions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reel Solutions. Show all posts

Saturday, 20 June 2015

The ICA's #CatalanAvantGarde season : A brief interview with Sílvia Munt

This is a short interview with Sílvia Munt, director of El Cafè de la Marina (2014)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

This is a brief, recollected* interview, from #CatalanAvantGarde at the ICA (@ICALondon), with Sílvia Munt, director of El Cafè de la Marina (2014), which had a screening on Tuesday 28 April 2015 at 8.50 p.m.

30 April




A very useful event, arranged for the audience, allowed one to ask director Sílvia Munt some questions before the screening (two young Catalan-speakers, one already familiar, kindly agreed to help with translating) : useful, since the exigencies of The Agent’s travel turned out to make lingering long in the Q&A itself inconvenient. So, over some Cava, one was able to establish that, as well as having a warm and welcoming presence and a willingness to engage with enquiry, Munt has directed herself in three of her eight feature films to date (though this one, as became clear (please see below), had been conceived for television).

In this case, though, Sílvia had just directed – as well, that is, as having scripted the film (with Mercè Sàrrias). However, when suggested, she did agree that she is not with Woody Allen in how he is reported to direct himself, by being reportedly keen to quit at the end of the day to catch The World Series. Rather, she can fifteen takes to get what she wants from her own performance, and, when she writes, it takes her three months to develop a script. [Damn ! Could have asked her whether she also uses Allen’s method, when writing, of bashing it out on an old Olympia typewriter... (And, in like analogue vein, substituting text by stapling slips of paper in place over the old material.)]

That said, regarding how scripts develop during shooting, Munt said that hers remain malleable (because actors may find that the words do not sound right when they speak them), and then, as it were [not her words], she ‘reframes the utterances’. She went on to say that this approach fits the nature of her work, as dramatic comedy (rather than, say, permitting the cast to improvise replacement material) : therefore, she does re-writes, because any other approach would not (for her) be congruent with her material. [Another point of comparison (not made) with Allen, who tells us that, if his actors re-formulate his text on set, he can even go with that, seemingly irrespective of genre.]


As became apparent during the conversation, as it specifically turned to El Cafè de la Marina (2014), Munt has adapted what is regarded as a classic of Catalan literature : a stage-play of this name, in verse form (with lines of ten syllables), by Josep María Sagarra. Just from what she was saying, concerning difficulties of location-scouting an unspoilt shore, the film about to be watched** had to be a period piece. [As it is not a period film, though set on that coast, one had to refrain (as this was meant to be active listening [link to Wikipedia®]) from reflecting aloud on Menú degustació (Tasting Menu) (2013), from Camera Catalonia***.]

As Munt spoke, the likelihood arose (as mentioned to her, and realised in the seeing) that there would nigh inevitably be connections with the themes of actor / director Daniel Auteuil’s Marseilles-set trilogy in the making**** (but of which she said that she did not know). (The original films, apparently much loved, were derived from two stage-plays by Marcel Pagnol and then directly from his film-script, which he directed to conclude it, and later turned into a play : the first play had been directed as Marius (1931) by Alexander Korda, and then Fanny (1932) by Marc Allégret.)

As for El Cafè de la Marina itself on film, a confused account (on IMDb and elsewhere) suggests, with little detail, that one was made in 1933 (or was it in 1941 ?) : if so, contemporary with Pagnol on film. At the time of viewing Munt’s version, that had not been known, or that it had been conceived as a t.v. movie. However, when Munt was asked in the Q&A (before The Agent had to rush off) about the effect of using light indoors in the café, it appeared that there had been some issues in converting it to a DCP, and that the look that we had seen might have been different from what had been intended…


A little more (by way of a quick review) to come...


End-notes

* I.e. not digitally recorded, but relying on neuronal techniques of capture...

** ‘From cold’, that is to say with no prior knowledge - on the basis that A film should speak for itself.

*** The six-film Catalan strand at Cambridge Film Festival in 2014 – the third year of films at #CamFF from Catalunya, curated by Ramon Lamarca (who hosted this evening’s Q&A).

**** So far, we have had Marius (2013) and Fanny (2013) (at Cambridge Film Festival 2013 (#CamFF / @camfilmfest)), but César now seems ‘put back’ from having been, previously, noted as in pre-production on IMDb (@IMDb) :



Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Thursday, 5 March 2015

On the go¹

This is a review of Sobre La Marxa* (The Creator of the Jungle) (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

5 March (Tweet and image added, 7 March)

This is a review of Sobre La Marxa* (The Creator of the Jungle) (2013) as screened in the series Catalan Avant-Garde (#CatalanAvantGarde) at the ICA (@ICALondon)


Sobre La Marxa¹ (The Creator of the Jungle) (2013) opened the season of films Catalan Avant-Garde, which screens at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (@ICALondon) in association with the Institut Ramon Llull (@IRLlull_London) and Reel Solutions (@ReelSolutions, whose Ramon Lamarca hosted the Q&A) :

The season opened with this film on 28 February 2015, and runs until Friday 18 December, the full programme being (all screenings at 8.50 p.m.) :

Saturday 28 February
Sobre La Marxa (The Creator of the Jungle) (2013) followed by a Q&A with director Jordi Morató

Tuesday 28 April
El Cafè de la Marina (The Marina Café) (2014) followed by a Q&A with director Sílvia Munt

Friday 26 June
Tots volem el millor per a ella (We All Want What's Best for Her) (2013)

Friday 28 August
Born (2014) followed by a Q&A with director Claudio Zulián

Tuesday 27 October
La Plaga (The Plague) (2013)

Friday 18 December
El cant dels Ocells (Birdsong) (2008) followed by a Q&A with director Albert Serra


General observations
For some, the subject-matter of a [documentary] film is what makes or breaks it (even if such may not be their general approach to film-watching) : one might feel this, say, with The Imitation Game (2014), on the assumption that a desire to celebrate Alan Turing’s achievements may have blinded them to the liberties taken both with history and with portraying him².

For others, taking the example of documentaries such as Blackfish (2013) [whose review has the implausibly high number of page-views, which exceeds 6,000] or The Armstrong Lie (2013), the subject-matter and the footage (both contemporaneous, and shot for purpose) may be as remarkable and worthy as one likes, but that does not make for a good film per se : for one can still wish that the construction of the narrative were tighter or more coherent in terms of the story told (and of organizing the elements employed to tell it), since it seems that it can be too much assumed (because the story is overfamiliar to the director ?) that what the film objectively presents actually tells it...




Thankfully, Sobre La Marxa (2013) has been put together with much care. Which is not to say that it does not still pose questions about how it was made (or even how the subject came to be chosen) – indeed, the Q&A, with director Jordi Morató (and hosted by Ramon Lamarca of Reel Solutions (@ReelSolutions)), at The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA, @ICALondon) was enthused by discussing it, and was lively and inquisitive.


Particular comments
Mainly employing footage from the early to mid-1990s and the director’s own, carefully scripted narration (with three script supervisors also credited), the film allows us to discern quite clearly what story is being given to us, whether or not we query (or even wish to reject) the interpretation that the latter contains (overlays the footage with, even), or doubt whether the former can be genuine (as Ramon Lamarca told us that he had done when first watching) : in fact, watching with that eager uncertainty is enriching, not destructive, and is conducive to feeling that one is a co-creator with the film-elements. The quality of the narrative voice is, it was suggested to Jordi Morató, hypnotic in delivering a highly poetic (as well as recursive) text, and he was asked whether it bore some relation, but by contrast, to the impulse in Werner Herzog that had him call his documentary³ (set in a not dissimilar landscape, with, as well as a cave, afforestation, water, and an arched bridge) Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010), but where its lyrically poetic content is narrated quite differently.

In fact, Herzog does so in such a way as to heighten our incredulity at what we are seeing, by seeming to have a tone that could perhaps be characterized as one of gentle mockery (or irony) – visually, it is his art to catch those who feature in his films in as fantastical a way as if he were actually directing Klaus Kinski in the title-role of Fitzcarraldo (1982) (even if it was originally to have been Mick Jagger), and it is the juxtaposition of caught sound and visuals with the narration that makes films of his such as Encounters at the End of the World (2007) so memorable. The mesmeric quality of Morató’s delivery of the text is partly accounted for by the fact that, in his answer, he called himself ‘dull’ in comparison with his subject, Garrell (one might be reminded a little of the admiration, at a suitable distance, in which the title-character of [Alan-Fournier’s novel] Le Grand Meaulnes is held ?) :

In a way, one senses that, unlike Herzog (where we are always quite clear whose vision we see in the film, even when Herzog has others before the camera), he does not wish to detract from Garrell, and so is restrained, because – perhaps if he were he not – the mythologizing nature of the words would be a competing force. For example, the language reverts, again and again, to motifs such as the historical precedence of water over fire – as if to reinforce truths at its heart, as might a passage from scripture (or a fairy-story). The narration, then, is Sobre La Marxa’s chosen bond for unifying disparate periods of footage (by the teenage Aleix, by a US academic researcher into outsider arts, and by Morató himself) :

Garrell, when not being himself, is nothing if not in character in his jungle⁴, but he needs Morató to put him in context – to be, as it were, the Laurel to his Hardy. This is what Morató has rightly divined in how he has put this documentary on the screen.

For, at the level of its hypnotic quality, we have to snap out of it, if we are to be at the sort of distance from his subject that Herzog is, rather than - alongside Garrell - integrated with and into his story. That we feel seduced by Morató’s almost flattened, almost expressionless voice [in the Q&A, he seemed to use and endorse such characterizations] means that we can give ourselves to the film, but that is not because (as averted to above in General observations) any film on this subject would be sufficient to convey what this one means, but because this one allows it to speak.




Put this documentary alongside other films, too, and there are useful distinctions (or parallels) to be drawn. So, in Calvet (2011), maybe Dominic Allan fails to put even this respectful distance between his artist, French-born Calvet, and him – we sense that, with the figure of Calvet (and who he is / what his experience means), Allan leaves it less open for us to decide for ourselves (richly inviting and persuasive as Morató’s voice-over may be). In Gerhard Richter : Painting (2011), director Corinna Belz’s desire to immortalize the artist at work is so great that the filming actually spoils him being able to do so – whatever persona Richter may have, it does not (in this respect, at least) thrive before the camera-lens as Garrell’s (and Garrell 'himself') appear to do (though we do question not a little where what seems to be a persecution fantasy, at the hands of the generalization of ‘civilized man’, stems from in Garrell’s fictional, on-screen psyche⁵…).

Where, perhaps, we find a fruitful point of contact is in regarding Timothy’s Spall’s hands, contorted behind his back in Mr. Turner, although Turner himself appears confidently aloof (when confronted by his daughter’s mother with bad personal news) (2014) : Garrell, maybe we sense, is no more really sharing himself with us, in relishing fire and destruction, than Turner is in this front to his estranged family, for (to begin with in the film) Turner only seems truly at ease in his relations with, and in relation to, his father ? Here, Morató’s informed choice is to show us Garrell only in the context of his created world within a world – we can see him treating the forest as a jungle, within which he places himself (as a child might imagine a doll’s hose, or a diorama, the world, and a figure him- or herself within it), and must guess at the rest of him.


Poignantly, in fact, a close similarity may be in Toby Amies' (@TobyAmies') detailed portrait of the man who theatrically calls himself - as he regarded himself as always on stage (and as performing) - Drako Zarharzar (@DrakoZarharzar), in the documentary The Man Whose Mind Exploded (2013). As Oliver Cromwell is said to have directed when he was to be painted, the film gives us Drako warts and all, and, when it was brought to Cambridge Film Festival in 2013 (@camfilmfest / #CamFF) with a Q&A, Toby Amies said to The Agent, when interviewed, that someone had told him that he had made the first mistake of documentary film-making, falling in love with his subject.



 So Amies' film, though hiding nothing, is very affectionate, and immensely touching. In Morató’s film, he has a man fully as eccentric and even as whimsical as Drako (or, for that matter, Turner), but, despite showing obvious affection and regard for Garrell (actually, probably on account of having those feelings), he only has Garrell present his purely public face(s) - as if the striking figure of Drako, with his cape, waxed moustache and mauve make-up highlights, had paraded around Brighton for the whole film, never returning home.


Closing note : on forests
As Ramon Lamarca had brought El Bosc (The Forest) (2012) to Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest / #CamFF) in 2013 [where the forest itself is both a physical and metaphysical escape from The Spanish Civil War], it seemed worth asking whether the idea or experience of the forest had some resonance in Catalan culture (since, in the convenient fiction of British history at least, the forests were cleared and the wolves made extinct in mediaeval times).

In fact, as we heard in contributions from Catalan-speaking members of the audience, making constructions in the forest – which sounded like something more than a tree-house, if not resembling Garrell’s Daedalian-style labyrinths (with all that they invoke) – was something that struck a chord in their past…



End-notes

¹ This is how Ramon Lamarca translates the Catalan title, and Garrell, the film’s subject, is rendered in sub-titles as saying that his approach to creating, within his chosen environment of the forest / jungle, is always going on the go.

² However well Cumberbatch may play the part written, it is hardly faithful to every facet or trait of Turing, and so, as some agree in calling it (e.g. @MovieEvangelist), is caricature.

³ Although those interviewed in the documentary scarcely support Herzog’s interpretation, about the origin and meaning of the artefacts under study (i.e. that the ancient cave-paintings that it features (best viewed in 3D) recorded the makers’ dreams) he used this description as its title anyway : the cave itself has only lately been rediscovered, hence 'forgotten'.

⁴ However, in the Q&A, Morató tells us that Garrell (apparently, in real life, a mechanical engineer) went a year after the two men had been in close contact without mentioning the films that Aleix and he had elaborately put together over several years (because, Morató informed us when questioned, Garrell could not see the merit in them that Morató found, who said that he immersed himself in them for a very long time). (We do wonder, then, what they were for, e.g. in terms of who ever saw them (at the time) ?)

⁵ It is only the fictive ruffians (on quad-bikes, etc.), in some of the films made with Aleix, whom we ever witness as forces of destruction, and the only ‘real’ and gratuitous destruction that we see (rather than have vandalism, and even harm to creatures, reported to us), is when Garrell smashes up his own ground-level building on camera, doing so – as he counter-intuitively explains – to show that anyone can destroy, even he, and that he knows how to do it totally, and will. (The distinction is with times when, nigh gleefully, Garrell topples and torches his own creation [because ‘required to’].) As he says to camera at one point (via sub-title), In order to live decently, I have to complicate my life.

This fits in, in psychological terms, with Garrell’s over-arching, self-proclaimed fantasy as king of the jungle, but he, thus pictured, is unlike his original (who was orphaned in the jungle by chance, but ends up adopted and brought up there by nature – itself a sort of riff on Jean Jacques Rousseau’s ideas about the ‘noble savage’ in the ‘state of nature’ [e.g. in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1754)]). In comparison with that king of the jungle, Garrell’s king always seems to have been there – but (not unlike Wagner’s Wotan in Der Ring des Nibelungen ?) has temporal concerns that require a succession (and so Garrell’s real nephew, and a friend of Aleix’s, play his film-son, even a semi-Christ-like character ?).

Yet, as king, Garrell is more a sort of Adam (who maybe once had an Eve), and in whose story civilized man plays the role of seeking to enter Eden from outside to destroy it (a descent, both physical and moral, memorably dramatized in Paradise Lost [where the poet sees his task as ‘to justify God’s ways to man’]). At the same time, we may suspect that it could well amount to a paranoid projection of Adam’s own [internal] disobedience onto outside forces of evil, to distance himself from it [as in and from the world that is situated externally to Adam’s own])… (Something, again, about the nature of the artist’s vision / story of himself, in relation to his art, in Calvet (2011) ?)




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