| PAGES FROM A WARM ISLAND : Izola Film Festival day four |
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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 Saturday 28th May 09.40 Not much kip last night. Late to bed ('la Punta' strikes again), then a disturbed sleep when one of my fellow residents at the apartment-hotel in Jagodje spends an hour at three a.m. noisily retching into the sink of the toilet adjoining my bedroom. Eventually my patience snaps and I suggest he keeps the noise down. He's apologetic and I go to bed a touch guilty - what if it's some serious stomach complaint? A lie-in this morning would have been nice, but I interviewing Iraqi producer Sattar Alwan for the film-festival newspaper and so have to see his film Zaman - The Man from the Reeds which is showing at Odeon at 10 o'clock. So I'm up at eight thirty to shower and have my first shave of the week. Izola's vibe is decidedly unshaven, but four days of my gingerish stubble isn't especially flattering so off it goes. I buy two bananas from the fruit-market opposite the internet cafe where I'm writing this report (and still struggling with a slightly alien keyboard, the Y and Z switched round and the apostrophe very easy to lose). The fruit stall bloke doesn't have much change and obtains same from an elderly woman customer. They converse in Italian - everybody here seems to be at least trilingual: Slovene, Italian, English (the younger ones at least). German is also commonly heard, especially from tourists in the photogenic narrow twisting (and easily confused) streets of the Old Town. I say grazie tante to the vecchia donna as I depart and head for the internet cafe across the street... One banana down so far (my 'breakfast'), one to keep me going during Zaman... 12.26 The child who made himself heard but not seen at yesterday's screening of Pin Boy continues his precocious cineaste education by attending this morning's ten a.m. Zaman, the man from the Reeds [5/10] (Zaman, l'homme des Roseaux, Amer Alwan, Iraq/France 2003*, 76 mins). This time he only makes himself audible right at the end of the film, so is clearly catching on that chatter and artfilms don't go very well together. After the screening I see him and a young woman I presume is his mother. Kid looks about five at most. They head back in for the 11.30 showing of Pjer Zalica's well-executed Bosnian comedy Days and Hours which I saw last month in Linz, Austria. I go in search of Zaman producer Alwan, who also happens to be the director's brother. No dice. Instead I run into Matevz Kostanjsek, one of the festival drivers who I got chatting to the other night (he drove me to my apartment-hotel on the first day). Turns out Matevz is actually a photographer, and has a website showcasing his work. We talk about providing a link from this diary to his site. I say I'll see what I can do. And what of Zaman? More slow anthropological-style film-making of the type which I nearly always suspect would work better as a documentary (for which funds and festival screenings are harder to obtain). Focus is on sixtysomething marsh-Arab Zaman (Sami Kaftan) and the slow rhythms of his life in Iraq around 2001/2 (?). No mention of the widely reported exploits of Saddam Hussein in draining the marshes - which seems a curious omission, to say the least. Second half of the picture sees a somewhat perfunctory plot develop. Zaman's wife falls ill. He has to go to the city to get medicine. No dice. Heads to Baghdad. Complications ensue. Nicely shot by a crew combining Iraqi and European personnel (film opens with syrupy voiceover in French praising the marsh-Arabs and their unique environment), but something of a misery-fest with only very occasional lightening of mood. Though not my cup of tea, pic is in many ways admirable and worthy, with an intriguing (and probably unintentional) subtext which can be read as anti-God (Zaman is essentially a modernday Job), anti-authority... brave in any middle-east country, especially so in Iraq. There's a football game of crew vs guests on Sunday and I'm asked if I'd like to play. I make excuses about my ankle (still a bit swollen), but this could be too good an opportunity to miss: one of the visiting directors is acclaimed documentarian Mohammed Soudani who, in a previous life, played for the Algerian national soccer team. I can also ask him if he shares my view that Ivory Coast (where he now lives, I believe) will be to the 2006 World Cup what Greece were to Euro 2004. I myself haven't kicked a ball "in anger" since 1987, so the Guests team may well feature a rather radical range of 'abilities' among its ranks... 20.54 A quick update before the hospitality office shuts its doors (and computers) in about five minutes. This afternoon saw the Iranian film 20 Fingers [6/10] (20 angosht, Iran 2004, 72 mins) by strikingly chic fest-guest Mania Akbari, who was the star of Abbas Kiarostamis film 10. I cant get apostrophes on this weird keyboard and time is running out! Very much in the style of 10 (annoyingly so, but I actually prefer this one, if truth be told) with a series of DV shot twohander dialogue-heavy scenes featuring a couple in present day Tehran. Akbari plays the wife, the films producer Bijan Daneshmand plays the husband. They're invariably in motion: in cars, trains, boats, funicular railways etc. The husband seems modern enough, but reveals himself as an oldfashioned, boorish, abusive ogre before long. The wife is a rebellious free spirit. Problems, very heated exchanges ensue. Some dead spots over the 72 minutes, but several very strong sections including the penultimate sequence. A hot auditorium at the Cultural Centre contributes to my eyelids drooping from time to time. I partly blame the WienerSchnitzel I had for lunch. A belated affair as I have to wait for Zaman producer Alwan (who Im supposed to be interviewing for the daily festival paper) to finish a press conference. Interview is quickly conducted. Then as me and him and Charlie Cockey (veteran American festival-programmer and my Jagodje neighbour... not the vomiting one) are heading for lunch, I realise Ive misplaced my keys. Two for my accommodations and one for the bike lock. I spend half an hour in frantic search before discovering them in my back pocket. Much aggravation for absolutely nothing, and probably the lowlight of what has been a very enjoyable few days. I even have something approaching a sun tan, though this is likely to be washed away rather quickly when I return home to the rainy north east of England on Monday night. After the Iranian matinee my plans to catch another film or two hit trouble when a contingent of friends from Ljubljana (the capital, about an hours drive north) arrive. Octopus supper in an outdoor cafe overlooking the marina. A busy day in town with lots of holidaymakers ambling along the waterside. A glass of Crni Baron (the darkest, most elusive and therefore best Slovene beer) as the sun, slowly for once, makes its way into the Adriatic. The Ljubljana lot are having a wander around the old town. Ill drop off my rucksack, perhaps change shirt (its humid again) and head back down a little later. Then tomorrow Ill track down some apostrophes and regain my punctuation selfrespect. No hyphens either. Oprostite is Slovene for sorry. Neil Young click here for Sunday's report * postscript: IMDb lists Zaman as a TV movie but I can find no evidence for this. |
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