| PAGES FROM A WARM ISLAND : Izola Film Festival day two |
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| Tuesday, 31 May 2005 | |
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official site : KINO OTOK the second Izola film festival Slovenia, 25th - 29th May 2005 Thursday 26th May 13.16 Hot again. Last year apparently the temperature seldom got much above ten, and sleeping outside (at the festival's 'Camp Skamp' = 'Camp Shrimp') proved impossible. No such problems likely this year. I wake at eight thirty, shower then cycle into town for the ten a.m. animation programme curated by one of the press officers, Igor Prassel. I promised Igor I'd attend when I talked to him late last night at the opening night party on Izola's headland park. Despite intending to keep beer intake to a minimum, I ended up cycling home, well after midnight, half cut but thankfully without mishap or getting lost. If nothing else this promise to Igor forces me out of bed and into the open air. The animation programme is a typical mixed bag - eight shorts, running from four to thirty minutes. The best ones are Oksana Cerkasova's Man from the Moon (Chelovek s luny, Russia 2002, 14 mins), a wildly pretentious and ambitious but technically remarkable journey round the dying memories of an anthropologist (my best guess, as the subtitles were in Slovene); and Stepan Koval's The Tram No.9 Goes (Isov tramvai no.9, Ukraine 2002, 9 mins) - a droll Jan Svankmajer-ish comedy which makes particularly nimble use of putty but peters out somewhat at the end. Also worthy of note: a couple of stop-motion efforts from Africa: Prince Loseno (Jean-Michel Kibushi Ndjate Wooto, DR Congo 2004, 29 mins) with its oddly moving conclusion, and Tiga on the Phone (Tiga au bout du fil, Rasmane Tiendrebeogo, Burkina Faso 2004, 10 mins) which seemed quite well done, though my French wasn't quite sufficient for keeping up with the dialogue. Having not had breakfast, I am more than ready for lunch after the 80-odd minute animation, and soon after noon get what's (archaically) translated as "tunnyfish" salad at the trattoria which overlooks the small but chaotic main square. This square is Trg Republike, and traffic control is apparently a rather nebulous concept - much honking of horns as cars vie for space. Ambling pedestrians, oldsters, German/Austrian tourists, cyclists, bronzed young denizens on buzz/droning scooters. A cat strolls through the outdoor dining area as I lunch - apparently the fishing industry here means that the town's felines are unusually well-fed. Also strolling by: middle-aged blikes carrying cans and/or bottles of beer, to be supped at a leisurely pace in the adjoining leafy square. The countdown continues: it's less than half an hour to my first feature film of the festival: People of the Rice Fields, which is a slightly daunting 125 minutes. Back in the saddle... 21.10 Rice People [5/10] (Neak Sre aka People of the Rice Fields aka Les gens du Risiere, Cambodia/France/Switzerland/Germany 1994, 125 mins) was made by Rithy Panh - who recently had a festival hit with S21 : The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine. It was filmed in a small village on the Mekong Delta and is one of those slow, anthropological 'fiction' films which has at least one foot in (muddy) documentary territory. Tale of one family and the hardships they suffer over the course of a year, eking out a living by growing rice. And what hardships they are: mother (of seven daughters!) is bitten by snake, father steps on thorn, dies from infected wound; mother goes rapidly off the rails; the crop comes under threat from sparrows (!), crabs and floods. You get the picture. I nearly walk out 15 minutes in when aforementioned snake gets clobbered to death on camera - and there's clearly no 'snake double' being employed. The killing of animals in films has become a bete noire of mine (pardon the pun) in recent years, but the anthropological / documentary aspects of Panh's picture are marginally strong enough to prevent me from the early exit (the crabs also come in for some rather rough treatment). That and the fact that I've got a swollen ankle and sitting with it elevated on the seat in front (seat protected from damage by a paper towel) is an appealing prospect. So I swallow my principles and tough it out to the end - no mean feat considering the picture is about half an hour too long. Strong performance from Chhim Naline as the oldest daughter, Sokho, which is a major plus point. But the second half really drags as mother loses her marbles - presented in the usual cliched mad-woman style (messy eating; wandering in countryside with garish makeup on, etc). Music nicely integrated and the landscape cinematography (by the Cambodian/French crew) is appealing, but several scenes are clumsily overlit. Afterwards I go for a drink with Jan Cvitkovic, who has finally arrived (turns out the festival was essentially his idea, along with some other folk, but he now operates a hands-off role), and another old-pal Slovenian director Igor Sterk (Ljubljana). Igor has much higher opinion of Rice People picture than I do. Different strokes, etc etc etc. Conversation turns to last night's footy. It's starting to sink in that Liverpool are Champions of Europe. Also one in the eye for Berlusconi, for whom nobody here has anything approaching a good word. Jan has just finished his new film Gravehopping. He asks what I think of this title (the Slovene title directly translates as "Fron Grave to Grave") and I lamely offer the view that it sounds a bit too much like Trainspotting. Izola is so compact that sooner or later your path will cross that of all the other guests, including directors (chief Skafar tries to get as many filmmakers as possible to attend). And later we are joined by Burkina Faso-born, Rome-resident director Raso Ganemtore who speaks seven languages but not much English, so we converse over beers in my somewhat rusty French. I met Raso last night at the "beach" party but his memory of the encounter is clearly foggier than mine, as he again tells me about how he was given a hard time by British police when he arrived in the UK to show his film at the Cambridge Film Festival. I explain that attitudes dans le nord le l'Angleterre where I am from are rather friendlier than those in le sud. One drink leads to another and at eight o'clock I accompany Raso to the nearby Odeon cinema where his film Safi - the Little Mother (Safa - la petite mere, Burkina Faso / France / Italy 2004, 26 mins) is showing in a programme of shorts. I don't feel like watching the whole programme, but luckily Raso's film is on first - after a very long introduction in which the rambling questions and answers are translated between Italian and English. Safi then turns out to be a pleasant, competently made but somewhat inconsequential little fable about a young girl in a Burkina Faso village whose mother dies in childbirth. Local custom says the baby must be strangled to prevent the "evil eye" wreaking havoc, but of course this doesn't transpire. Instead Safi takes the child to "the city" where further adventures occur. I am a bit knackered and haven't eaten anything apart from bar-snacks since my noon tunnyfish lunch (which, prophetically in retrospect, was served on a bed of... rice!) My only realistic feature-film option this evening is "zany" Philippines comedy Mr Suave which doesn't sound massively appealing on paper. I'll give it two reels (20 minutes) then weigh up my options. Another 3am late "night" isn't an option. In theory. Neil Young click here for Friday's reports |
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