Filmes
Jornal da Mostra
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31ª Mostra > 19/08/2008
Text: Rui Martins, from Locarno, special for ‘Jornal da Mostra’
FILMS FROM MEXICO, SWITZERLAND AND BRAZIL WIN THE FESTIVAL
The 61st Locarno International Film Festival has ended in Switzerland. The press was unanimous – the quality of the films this year was excellent and many were sorry with the announcement of depart of the artistic director, Frédéric Maire, the next director of the Swiss Cinemathèque.
The Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai received an Honor Leopard and showed five of his films, among which his most recent, One Day, You Will Understand, with Jeanne Moreau living the character of a grandmother who avoids telling her family’s history, as victim of Nazis and of the French collaborators.
Another retrospective honored the Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti, known for his left-winged political engagement in the past and for his opposition to the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The only Brazilian in the competition of the short films section Leopards of Tomorrow, Eva Randolph, got the first prize, the Golden Leopard, plus 32 thousand euros. The title sounds heavy, Dez Elefantes, but it is an extraordinarily sweet film and in 15 minutes shows a hide-and-seek game between two children and the courage of the girl who, hiding in a chicken coop, lets a caterpillar glide from her hand to her wrist. Ironically the film was rejected in Brasilia little before it was finished.
"My screenplay was thought to be made in video as an exercise of the cinema course at UFF, in Rio de Janeiro, but it was selected by the Rio Filmes screenplay competition and so I could make it 35mm. What had been planned to be made in two months ended up taking seven, everything was bigger than I expected ", tells Eva, a 25 year-old carioca, the daughter of a mother from Sao Paulo and a German father.
"I had a 50 thousand Real help, but that is very little, I had to add about 10 thousand of my own, for almost everything goes for the print, which had to be 35mm. I was very happy with the choice, but I think the total amount that goes for the chosen ones should be reviewed ", she says.
The short was made in the village of Miguel Pereira. Eva worked with Ana Azevedo and Eric Rocha. When the shooting took place, the girl was 8 and the boy was 11, and they were selected in a drama school in Laranjeiras, CAL. The shootings took one week, but the rehearsals lasted three months. The idea came from a short story by Lígia Fagundes Teles and Eva points out there was collective work up to the finalization.
The Locarno Festival granted the Golden Leopard to the Mexican film Parque Via, by Enrique Rivero, which shows the monotonous, lonely and pointless life of the janitor of a rich but empty mansion.
Parque Via lasts 80 minutes that seem to be more, and this is the option made by its director, Spanish Enrique Rivero, interested in showing the monotony lived by a janitor in a luxury house in Mexico City.
With one objective – show the existence of a Mexican society of well defined casts, the rich of European origin and the poor, mostly from Indian origin, leaving for the latter the least creative and interesting activities, which could be done by robots.
The character in the film, Beto, is lived by Nolberto Cora, the real-life janitor of a mansion belonging to Rivero’s family for 30 years. The closeness to this employee loyal to the family made Rivero state in his press conference that the patrons of these domestic workers have no idea the price paid with life for this loyalty.
Rivero also explained his option for a slow pace in the film, different from American movies, with the intention of showing more clearly the depersonalizing routine lived by Beto. These were the instructions given to the film editor.
The choice of the Mexican film is part of the great highlight given by director Frédéric Maire to Latin American films, present in competition and in the parallel sections of the Locarno Festival.
Rivero comments the presence of violence on TV, the only contact of his character with reality. Violence brings audience, and, therefore, says Rivero, it is constantly present in American films. Even though he cannot say how one should face the violence always present on video, he states that every person should know whether to accept or not entering this violent world.
Swiss film also wins
The Golden Leopard in the Filmmakers of the Present competition went to the Swiss documentary La Forteresse, shot in one of the Swiss centers for asylum-seekers, where drifters, hopeless, starving women and men are in search for the promised land, which will be denied to most.
La Forteresse, by Fernand Melgar, is a documentary made by a critic of Swiss society, looking into the main themes of the present. One of the last documentaries by Fernand Melgar was Exit: The Right to Die, about the Swiss association Exit, which offers self-euthanasia to elderly or seriously ill people.
Dez Elefantes, by young carioca Eva Randolph, is the break when one can breathe seeing children, because where there are children there is still hope, seeing the green and the water of a small lake in Miguel Pereira, Rio de Janeiro. And seeing the courage of a girl that lets a caterpillar stroll on the back of her hand to prove she is not afraid.
But, besides these main awards, some films also transmitted their social message – Dioses, by Peruvian Josué Méndez, shows the disoriented youth of a Peruvian economic elite and the effort of integration of a girl coming from the poor neighborhoods, from an indian origin, in her new rich family. For the director, the title Dioses denounces a ruling class in Peru which thinks everything is allowed to them, like the Gods in Olimpo, without being aware of the misery around it.
Feast of Villains, received a special mention. The film, shot in Beijing, shows a new phenomenon in China, the traffic of organs, worsened by the governmental decision of allowing a judicial resource to death penalty, part of the international human rights demands to the Olympics organization. With the lack of organs from the condemned to death, a dark market of organs was created, where mainly kidney donators are seduced. Not being able to afford the hospital treatment his father needs, in a China that privatizes health services, the main character, Fu-gui, naively decides to sell a kidney, and falls in the hands of unmerciful villains who won’t pay what they had promised and will leave him without post-operation treatment.
The film can’t be shown in China, but its director, Pan Jianlin already has another provoking project – Who killed our children? – about the consequences of the recent earthquake in China, which demolished many schools and killed the children, most of them the only child in their families. The schools had been built with inadequate materials to give more profit to the building companies and fell like card castles with the first quakes. One of the first consequences of the neo-liberal economical politics of the Chinese government, which started a generalized corruptions process.