THESSALONIKI '09: Begging That Question

A shadow was cast over this year's 50th anniversary celebrations of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, which wrapped on Sunday. The fest, one of the most stimulating (a wide range of new and newish movies, retrospectives, photographic exhibitions) and enjoyable (good food and parties, lively town), traditionally provides a shop window for Greek cinema.

However, this year, the Filmmakers of Greece (FoG), a group which consists of more than 200 prominent directors, producers and screenwriters, decided not to send any of their films and to boycott the annual State Film Awards, usually held at the end of the festival. Their aim was to amend what they see as an outdated Greek law. "We want a constructive film law that would set standards, regulations, and incentives more in line with the rest of the European & international film community," they declared. Actually, behind the formal announcement were charges of corruption and vested interests of those who hand out the State Film Awards.

As a result, 18 narrative features, 6 docs and 28 shorts—essentially the bulk of this year's 65-film production—were withdrawn. With this action, FoG members forfeited over 300,000 Euros in prize money and, in some cases, the opportunity to have their films represent Greece at other international fests. All this comes in a year when Greek cinema has received public international acclaim in Cannes (Yorgos Lanthimos' Un Certain Regard winner Dogtooth), Berlin (Pano Koutras' Strella) and Locarno (Filipos Tsitos' Plato's Academy). Alas, festival goers were left with a selection of eight rather mediocre Greek films.

Otherwise, it was business as usual with a particularly strong international competition of first and second features. The winner of the Golden Alexander was Scadar Copti and Yaron Shani's violent but tender Israeli drama Ajami, a film whose structure—multipart simultaneous stories with interlocking characters—has become a narrative cliché. Among the notable films in the competition was the subtle, funny and moving Northless (Norteado), which won the best director prize for Rigoberto Perezcano of Mexico, shedding new light on the well-worn subject of Mexicans trying to get over the border into the USA.

Calin Peter Netzer's Medal of Honour (Medalia de Onoare), given its world premiere here, continues the unstoppable triumph of Romanian cinema. Another sardonic satire on the Ceausescu period, it focuses on the consequences of a 75-year-old man receiving, in error, a medal from the state for "heroic actions" during World War II. My own favorite was the haunting Father's Acre (Apaföld) by the very promising 29-year-old Hungarian Viktor Oszkar Nagy. With so many over-talkative, over-emphatic and over-plotted films around, it is a relief to find one in which expressions and gestures communicate more than words. In this case, it's an awkward East of Eden-type father-son relationship, and the adolescent son's sexual longing for his aunt.

Also unhooked on dialogue or plot was the sole US entry, David Lowery's St. Nick. I would call it "minimalist," if that term were not so overused. By limiting the film mainly to the activities of an 11-year-old boy and his 8-year-old sister, who have inexplicably run away from home, Lowery has provided insights into the behavior of pre-adolescents that many of us may have forgotten. The fact that they seem to come from a loving home doesn't alter the fact that kids have a need to be adult-free and create their own world.

Outside the competition and rich sections such as Balkan Survey and Experimental Forum (good to see films by Carmelo Bene and Jeff Keen), Goran Paskaljevich and Werner Herzog—who both had retrospectives of almost their entire oeuvres—lent their benign and erudite presences to the birthday celebrations.

"Why Cinema Now?" was the slogan of this year's festival, and a thick book was put out in which the question was answered, at different lengths and in different tones, from the profound to the platitudinous, by a range of cineastes and film critics, including yours truly. Among the more succinct replies were those from Carlos Reygadas, who wrote: "Why cinema now? For the same reason semi-apes painted caves," and from Takeshi Kitano: "Why cinema? I have no answer to that. That's why I keep making cinema. I have been puzzling over another question that is just as important as yours, which is, why sushi now?" Actually, this year's Thessaloniki festival was a positive answer in itself.

Posted by ahillis at November 25, 2009 10:36 PM