Neil Young's Film Lounge

CLUJ 2006 : T.I.F.F. dispatches by S.Seacroft : part 3

SHEILA SEACROFT WRITES, 'LIVE' FROM CLUJ : EXCLUSIVELY FOR JIGSAW LOUNGE.

reviewed below : 12:08 East of Bucharest [8/10]; Working Man's Death [7/10]; Transilvania [5/10]; El Bonaerense [6/10].

previous reviews can be found on page one including Megacities [8/10], The District [9/10], and Taxidermia [9/10]; while page two includes Marilena de la P7 [9/10] and A Roof over One's Head [7/10].

  11 June
  Having been up till 3.30, with my knees gone and my hearing still shot, I wasn't sure if I would make it to the 10 o'clock film, a must-see as it was film of the festival 12:08 East of Bucharest.  Determination is a wonderful thing, however, and I was at the cinema by 9.40. So were lots of others, and by the time I got to the box office it was a choice between standing, sitting on the floor, or missing a top film.  I sat on the floor.
   
  12:08 East of Bucharest
  A fost sau n-a fost?
  Romania 2006 : Corneliu PORUMBOIU : 80 mins (approx) : 8/10
  Another excellent film looking back with frankness and humour at the events of 1989, this time from a contemporary viewpoint. The Romanian title means more or less 'Was it or wasn't it'. Something happened in the main square of a small town near Bucharest on 22 December 1989 – but was it a revolution? This is the question posed by local TV owner and phone-in presenter Jderescu. The question comes down to whether people were on the streets before or after 12.08, the time when Ceausescu took to a helicopter, indicating the game was up – were the townsfolk revolting or merely joining in after the event?
   More than half of the film is straight to camera by the unlikely trio of pundits – an increasingly exasperated Jderescu, an irascible academic who was there and wants to believe he was a revolutionary, and a randomly chosen pragmatic old chap, known by everyone for playing Father Christmas at children's parties. He was doing it in 89 and he's still doing it now, and he is the least concerned of them all with the past.
   Though obviously about a certain time in history, it should do well internationally because it's about the fallibility of memory and how we reconstruct our own versions of the past. It's beautifully done, absurdist but warm humour with exquisite timing, three great comic performances. The audience loved it, and I soon forgot I was sitting on the floor. And an unexpectedly moving poetic ending makes it more than "just" a comedy.

  Out into a beautiful sunny Sunday morning, and streets filled with folk in their best clothes just out of church, many carrying some kind of green branch – can it be a special feast day? At the Orthodox cathedral the service is being transmitted to the crowd on the steps outside, that powerful singing that puts me in mind of Ivan The Terrible. And at last I understand the function of those curious metal structures on tall legs outside that look like some kind of barbecue oven. They're now full of burning buttercup-yellow votive candles.
  Clujians are great ones for sitting out, and all the benches in the squares by the fountain, under the trees by the Catholic cathedral, and along the strip of promenade down the middle of the wide main street are full of gossiping or lounging people. Flower sellers crouch at street corners selling bunches of modest garden blooms, and a young man wanders up and down with an armful of coat hangers and wooden spoons for sale.
  A placinta, the flat Romanian form of beignet or churros, from the little open-fronted kitchen down a side street, hot and crisp and sprinkled liberally with sugar, tops up my energy levels, and I'm all too soon off out of this balmy ambience into what I am expecting to be one of the grimmest films of the festival…
  
  Working Man's Death
  Austria 2005 : Michael GLAWOGGER : 122 mins : 7/10
  Third Glawogger of the Festival, and winner of awards at London and Leipzig film festivals, I had enormous expectations of this film that were not entirely fulfilled. Maybe his possibly too-glamorous Megacities, which I saw on Wednesday, has corrupted my expectations of documentary. Aesthetics, even the aesthetics of the ugly, are certainly less prevalent here, a sober look at working lives in the 21st century, which are mostly invisible to the consumers of the products of their labours.
   It's in 5 separate sections: Ukrainian miners, who dig their own narrow-seamed mineshafts, contrasted with 30s film of miners presented as happy national heroes; diggers of sulphur in Indonesia; animal slaughterers in Nigeria; Pashtun shipbreakers in Pakistan, and Chinese foundry workers. Finally there's a brief look at an old industrial site which is now a museum to shown what heavy industrial work used to be like.
  There's no commentary: the people speak for themselves. The Chinese have pride in what they do, are well-informed, see their labours in a larger scheme of things, not just as a day-to-day grind to be got through. The ship breakers, in a section of some beauty, are mild and devout. The outstanding section is the Nigerian one, almost unwatchable at times. "Abbatoir" seems a too clean, civilised word for this hellish place, where beasts are brought, held down, killed or half-killed, chopped up, then blackened in foul fires made of bones and rubber tyres. It's shocking and grotesque – sandalled feet spattered with blood plash about in the wet black mud, a man carries a pair of cow ribs slung over his shoulder like a matador's jacket. What a contrast to the scrubbed and neutral colours of the killing environments I saw a few days earlier in Our Daily Bread.
  And yet I found the film as a whole less moving and less haunting than the earlier Megacities. It's more objective, less manipulative of our emotions, which perhaps is a good thing, less poetic. They are all hard, unpleasant, dirty jobs, but maybe because we don't enter so far into the inner worlds of the individuals as in the earlier film, and because strangely they seem accepting of their work, it is a more cerebral delivery of a truth about the reality of life for so many people, more an important historical document than a poem. Megacities was a negative vision that posed questions about the meaning of life, this at least shows that humans are capable of incredible resilience, and even the most awful of work is something that can be survived and accommodated. 
                   [click here for Neil Young's review of the same film]
   
  Transilvania
  aka Transylvania : France 2006 : Tony GATLIF : 103 mins : 5/10
  There are too many promising films for me to see today, so having been inspired by Tony Gatlif's joie de vivre at the Gala last night, I plump for his Transilvania, the official closing film, a story of gipsy life. The brooding Asia Argento, queen of the sullen pout, plays Tzingarina,a volatile girl who's searching for her lost love across Transilvania. It's a bit inconsequential and rambling to begin with, and it doesn't get any better. When she finds her lost amour it appears that he doesn't love her after all, at which she goes mad, and is taken under the prickly wing of Tchango, a louche rogue who travels around living off a trade in jewellery and bric-a-brac.
   After a session of exorcism in a country church which involves being doused in milk, Tzingarina, pregnant by the lost love, develops a right old temper along with a foul mouth and the pugnacious stance of an old salt telling yarns. Also acquiring rather fetching gipsy clothes from some unexplained source, she reveals that she can box like the best of 'em and smoke like a chimney too. Predictably she starts in labour in the depths of winter, and is ministered to by three old wise-women who come out of the snowstorm, wielding a knife. Ouch.
  What on earth is going on? What is it really saying about Transilvania? Or indeed gipsy life as a whole? I can't deny there are very enjoyable patches and great music, and some sequences had the audience in stitches (a bit like our post-natal Tzingarina, I suppose), though I'm not sure if that was the director's intention. But the sudden moods and shrieking get really tiresome, and the whole thing, though showing many masterly film-making touches, desperately needs pulling together into a coherent whole that doesn't look as if it's a series of undeveloped plot ideas strung together like bright ill-matching beads.
  
  My last film of the festival turns out to be in my favourite cinema, the Arta, so it's across the cathedral square by Transilvanian moonlight. The venerable old cinema's still pretty full, just local people now that most of the festival crowd have gone home. I'm so impressed by the hunger for film here. Three sets of subtitles this time – French, English and Romanian, but the audience aren't fazed when the two latter pack up halfway through the film. I just about manage with the French, struggling a bit when it comes to fast-talking cops. Let's hope I didn't miss a salient bit of plot!
  
  El Bonaerense
  Argentina 2002 : Pablo TRAPERO : 97 mins : 6/10
   A bitter attack on police corruption and incompetence in Argentina, this follows the progress of Zapa, a locksmith from a country area who gets unavoidably caught up in dodgy police activities when he helps his petty criminal mate, and as a trade-off via his policeman uncle lands a place at cadet training college. He graduates, carried along in a kind of fugue state, doing as he's told, even though he seems to see the wrongness of it all, puzzled but not opposing the system.
   His personal life is stripped away from him. His poverty puts him in the control of his superior, through owed favours. A romance with a colleague comes eventually to nothing when she begins to disapprove of his involvement in corrupt dealings. He is unable to be open with his family in their delight at his promotion, gained again as a reward for connivance in a dodgy deal. After a trip home he finally sets off towards the tainted city again, sad for his lost real life but accepting, apparently, his situation.
   Jorge Roman's performance is a triumph of the low key, a simple soul who knows what's good for him, trapped, moral enough to see wrong, but not willing to compromise his safety by standing up against it. While this is not a very dramatic film, given that the figure of Zapa is such a void at its heart, it is a powerful demonstration of the process of corruption of ordinary people. 
                    [click here for Neil Young's review of the same film]

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And so ended my first ever foreign film festival. I don't believe I could have chosen a better one. Cluj is a lovely, easy, fascinating city, compact enough for each cinema to be scarcely more than five minutes' walk away from the rest. Staying at the splendid Agape Hotel right in the centre I was little more than five minutes from each, and right beside the Meeting Point in the Banfy Palace courtyard, handy for arranging rendez-vous(es) and the location of internet facilities. Cheerful red-shirted volunteers zipped around between here, the cinemas and the headquarters at Republica cinema, always ready with help and information. No swank or putting on airs here, no poseurs, just lots of people who love films, and one of the aspects I liked so much was the fact that so many local people came along to every screening – and made their presence felt with strong reactions – something many festivals in the UK can only dream of. 
   
I loved all the very characterful cinemas, despite their sometimes slightly wonky seats. The difficult job of getting capacity audiences into and out of screenings, plus the frequent  and very welcome Q and A sessions afterwards, did sometimes play a little havoc with timings, but no-one seemed to mind.  English speakers were well looked after, with subtitling and on the spot translations of Q and A sessions. And the films – I saw 16 in 5 days, and given time and more stamina could have doubled the number quite happily. Mostly European, mostly new or very recent releases, a few retrospectives, and most exciting of all, plenty of Romanian films, still not easily seen in the United Kingdom. Let's hope that situation will improve. At a time when Romanian cinema is, as was said at the Gala Awards evening, going through a new golden age, it was a real privilege to see some important films in the company of the Romanian public. And Hungary Day, reflecting the Romanian/Hungarian cultural histories of the area also brought some real gems, including the never-to-be-forgotten Taxidermia, a talking point for the rest of the week. 
   
Particular mention has to go to special guest Udo Kier, who was here there and everywhere, at screenings and parties and just generally hanging around, always ready to chat, always amusing and as willing to listen as to talk. A real star. 
   
So, what will I remember from Cluj?  Watching films about the momentous events of 1989 with an audience of whom many had their own memories, in emotional silence and in uproarious laughter. Feasting on street food in the sun as I hurried from one cinema to another. My first sight of the auditorium of the splendid National Theatre on Gala Night. Walking across a silent Piaţa Unirii* (note the cedilla under the 't' in Piaţa making it sound like 'Piazza') at three in the morning under a Transilvanian moon. Capacity audiences day after day.  Scruffy, friendly little internet cafes in obscure courtyards. The smiling lady in the Arta box office. The market with its mixed scents of strawberry and dill.  The calm interior of the C15th Calvinist Reformed Church. Sitting on the floor with lots of others at 10 in the morning to watch 12:08 East of Bucharest. Enthusiasm, energy, and laughter.

Sheila Seacroft
16th June 2006

read more of Sheila's reviews at Floatation Suite  

further Cluj coverage : part one … part two