Fiftieth Anniversary SFIFF 2007

I remember the Allende film being shown in New York but I missed it. I did see mention of Urzua's father in the Variety review; however, there is nothing to indicate that he cooperated in or influenced the film. He is not interviewed. She does not mention him in her statements or refer to his work in the film. And he is not otherwise mentioned in the press kit. I think we should note that she is his daughter and leave it at that--unless you find information to the contrary (i.e. that he had some direct involvement in her documentary). Perhaps by the way, should I call her "Guzman Urzua," though, as Deborah Young of Variety does, rather than simply "Urzua"? Someone was chastised for calling Gael Garcia Bernal "Bernal" and not "Garcia Bernal," I remember.

If you know of other SFIFF films I've reviewed that are available so reasonably on DVD's, please tell us.

The authenticity of age: strong politics and a strong aesthetic from Mexico. The SKYY Prize winner at the SFIFF.


FRANCISCO VARGAS: THE VIOLIN (2006)


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A lovely little package: Turkish village life.


REHA ERDEM: TIMES AND WINDS (2006)


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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Perhaps by the way, should I call her "Guzman Urzua," though, as Deborah Young of Variety does, rather than simply "Urzua"? Someone was chastised for calling Gael Garcia Bernal "Bernal" and not "Garcia Bernal," I remember.
Yes, you should call her "Guzman Urzua" just like one should use "Gonzalez Inarritu". In Latin America, it's traditional to use first the last name of your father followed by tha last name of your mother (I am Oscar Jubis Siman in El Salvador). This practice is probably most common in Mexico and least common in Argentina, by the way. It would be slightly more acceptable to call her "Guzman" than "Urzua", or in the case of G.G.B., "Garcia" rather than "Bernal". But both choose to use the double last name so that would be the right way to refer to either.

If you know of other SFIFF films I've reviewed that are available so reasonably on DVD's, please tell us.
The Old Garden is the other film you've reviewed that's cheaply and easily available on NTSC dvd. If you find one made in Korea is probably somewhat better quality than one made in China.

Thanks. I'll put in Guzman. And all this time I have been saying "Innaritu," and it was wrong. . . But what I can't understand is that this site now doesn't seem to support any kind of coding for accented letters. I thought it did before. This spoils my painstaking efforts to be accurate with names and foreign titles, and this isn't true of my site or IMDB entries.

How do they do names in Argentina--do they just more often use the father's name alone?

I'm glad The Old Garden is available, though more will be lost on a small screen of its complex large-scale images than for the very TV-screen-ready Ad Lib Night.

If that's the only other one currently, I dare say many will be coming on dvd later. Well, some..

Youthful New Wave-ish wit from Norway (this year's Best Foreign Oscar entry): a whole generation headed by two ambitious young writers.



JOACHIM TRIER: REPRISE (2006)


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Cuba on the brink of the revolution: a droll coming of age tale.


PAUL GIROUD: THE SILLY AGE


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Regarding El Violin:

*The film's controversial politics resulted in it being ignored by Mexican distributors even after the prize at Cannes and seven Ariel nominations. Guillermo del Toro managed to use his clout to get The Violin distributed in Mexico. It finally opened on 4/27/07.

*The first name of the actor who plays Don Plutarco, the winner of Best Actor of the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes '06, is Angel, not Anjel.

*The first name of the character who is the son of Don Plutarco is Genaro, not Genero.

*The scope is certainly not "epic" but, what do you mean by "footnote" when you write: "the focus on him makes the story a footnote rather than an epic"?

Thanks for the corrections of my misspellings--I've fixed them.

I may be undercutting the heroic aspect of the characters and events in The Violin, in your view. I don't mean to do that. There's just a difference between heroic and epic, and Vargas is deliberately working on a specific, limited scale in his depiction of the campesino rebellion. I might better phrase it "more a footnote than an epic," not to say it's either. (A footnote can be very important.) I would compare The Violin to Pontecorvo's epic (using the word somewhat loosely) The Battle of Algiers, which includes specific heroes of the revolt and covers the whole sequence of events from both sides in great detail. Vargas doesn't do this. Again, that doesn't mean The Violin is nothing but a "footnote." It's just not an epic, even though its main characters are brave and heroic.

A couple of other points about the historical references and your use of the word "propaganda". You said as you recall:

Quote:

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Vargas purposefully avoids anything that specifies time and place, both in the dialogue and in the visuals. The tale brings to mind a number of conflicts in Latin America although, if I had to guess, I'd say this is Chiapas,Mexico during the Zapatista "insurrection" of 1994.

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As to the period and rebellion Vargas is referencing, in an interview in the press kit Vargas replied as follows:

Quote:

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The history which the film sends us back to is still present in the memory of the country: the peasant revolt of Guerrero in the 1970's, this repressed voice which erupted in defense of the rights of the peasant Indian communities, surprising both the reigning power and public opinion. This revolt recalls also that of the Chiapas populations, directed by the deputy commander Marco, leader of the revolutionary group EZLN (Egercito Zapatista de Liberacion National).

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Variety's review focuses on the period Vargas points to first, referring to Don Angel Tavira, as fiddling "his way into the front lines of Mexico's peasant revolts during the 1970s." Vargas also says in the press kit interview "Those who have seen the film in Mexico are reminded immediately of recent events like the miners conflict and the military oppression in Atenco." And he refers to the repression of alternatives to President Fox's version of democracy during the presidential compaign, which was still going on at the time of the interview. So all that would help us understand better why the film was regarded as controversial in Mexico. The fight goes on.

As to the film being propaganda, you wrote in your review,

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The Violin's politics are quite simple: the film is supportive of the rebels to such extent that it could reasonably be called "propaganda". It clearly aims at every stretch to present Plutarco and Genaro as heroic and their adversaries as villanous.

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Propaganda tries to convince us of a distorted position's validity. I don't see that happening in either film. I'm more inclined to call something propaganda when it promotes assertions that are patently false. Of course indeed Vargas' sympathies are with the campesino rebels. But I don't think that either in The Violin or The Battle of Algiers sympathy for the rebels and the drawing of clearcut lines makes the film propaganda -- though no doubt there are those who would differ -- namely those who would like any campesino rebellions quashed in Mexico or those who wish Algeria were still a French colony. Being political, specific, controversial, and taking sides don't make a film propaganda. At the end of The Battle of Algiers the French won. But in the long run, they lost. So Pontecorvo's stand is with history, and I'd say Vargas' is too, which also helps keep either from being propaganda. It doesn't keep them from being controversial, though.

Running from emotion in Patagonia.


PABLO TRAPERO: BORN AND BRED (2006)


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I wasn't ready to disagree with the line I quoted from your review without further elaboration from you. I find your explanation quite satisfactory.

I find you're discussion of the time and place in which the film is set also good. The Violin is relatively vague about its place and time, perhaps so that the viewer relate the events to a series of clashes between Mexican governments and revolutionaries dating back to the 70s. Like I wrote "the tale brings to mind a number of conflicts..."

My statement that The Violin "could reasonably be called propaganda" is related to the clear assignment of good traits to the peasants and bad traits to the soldiers. It's an extremely one-sided tale of good vs. evil, like a traditional western (I think you made the comparison to films from that genre in your review). I like the film (to a point) and I'm glad it's playing at 20 Mexican theatres right now. But its politics are simplistic and reductive. That's all I'm willing to say as I don't wish to discuss Mexican politics in this forum.

I forgot Cannes' Actor award for Angel Tavira. That's kind of an honorary award. I'm not sure that's fair to all the professional actors who work so hard.

Not propaganda, but biased. Yes, cowboy movies analogy works, with their good-guy/bad-guy lineup. You aren't playing entirely fair when you refuse to discuss "Mexican politics" but say of The Violin" its politics are simplistic and reductive," which is indirectly a statement about Mexican politics--that they are more complex than this film. I take it that not all peasant rebellions are admirable or helpful. and the question is, which one is this, and is it an admirable or helpful one? And the answer is, Vargas doesn't say, so we can't say. That's maybe what you mean by "reductive."

Battle of Algiers shows the French conferring and making up strategies; The Violin doesn't sow the gov't from the inside. What I love about Pontecorvo's film is that it is very specific about events. But I think what leaves me dissatisfied in The Violin isn't that it isn't that way, but that it is pro-campesino rebellion without explaining why they should be having a rebellion, and what their action is aimed at achieving, etc. Which in The Battle of Algiers is quite clear (even though they aren't achieving it).

You don't sound that enthusiastic about The Violin now --"I like The Violin (to a point." I'd consider it one of the standouts of what I saw, though didn't fall in love with it.

Am finding it hard to find ones I loved, but can only eliminate a third of what I saw so far from the running as possible "highlights" because so many of them were worth watching, but not super-exciting. My notepad now lists

Along the Ridge
Daratt
The Violin
Agua
Lady Chatterley
Reprise
Murch
Ad Lib Night

I crossed out Rage, because it's . . .virtually "propaganda." No, don't like that word at all. But it's very exaggerated to offend or galvanize viewers. Agitprop, maybe.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Chris Knipp
I'll only say that Vargas' choice of not being specific does not at all protect him from being taken as making statements about the present; there's no way of avoiding that.
I agree.

When you say "I like the film (to a point)" you don't sound very enthusiastic. I think it's a standout of "my" SFIFF even though I didn't exactly fall in love with it.
It's a good film in my opinion otherwise I wouldn't have had the confidence to recommend it to you. But I didn't fall in love with it either. I think I've expressed why.

In fact it looks like it's going to be hard to pick highlights from what I saw from this festival.
I made a list of favorites from the MIFF and I decided I didn't want to post it. I pondered making a list of "commercially viable" films and "festival films" and decided against it. The reviews say exactly how I feel about each film. Once I post year-end lists for 2007, distributed and undistributed, my preferences will be spelled out more clearly. I certainly reserve the right to change my mind with subsequent viewings of a few of the films from the fest, although I rarely change my opinion.

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I made a list of favorites from the MIFF and I decided I didn't want to post it. I pondered making a list of "commercially viable" films and "festival films" and decided against it. The reviews say exactly how I feel about each film. Once I post year-end lists for 2007, distributed and undistributed, my preferences will be spelled out more clearly. I certainly reserve the right to change my mind with subsequent viewings of a few of the films from the fest, although I rarely change my opinion.

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You can keep yourself pure in this way, and I don't generally like rating movies that much, but I like to be forced to make a decision, and for Cinescene I promised to write a roundup piece as I did of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema this year. That was easier to do, because there were ones I really liked.

I was thinking that I would very much like to be able to watch some of the films again. I can't, not only because they aren't available, but because I just can't go on working on this forever. But they all came too close together, so it's harder to observe them closely. I did revise my opinion about How is Your Fish Today? after the second viewing, but I didn't alter my review to make it more negative or critical, why be mean to a very low budget first film that basically had some nice ideas behind it?

"Commercially viable" vs. "festival films" is a fun game to play I guess.

After seeing Lady Chatterley with an old friend (actually business partner) she said she loved it, and I said, "that is an art film," and she said, "Oh, is it?" I thought it was great, but I also thought it was very long, and a rather strange. She just loved it and for her it went by fast so it wasn't "an art film." For me it was, but it was good.

Commercially viable?

I would say of these, that I listed above:

Along the Ridge
Daratt
The Violin
Agua
Lady Chatterley
Reprise
Murch
Ad Lib Night

Any one of them could be "commercially viable" in the sense of having some art house legs especially if well reviewed, with the reservation that Murch is maybe too short for a theatrical run. And there are others, but they're not on my list because in my evaluation they had flaws. For instance, Il caimano lacked unity. The Road to San Diego--Sorin--surely has an art house run ahead, ansl Vanaja -- 12 Labors?-- and of course some are already having them or about to, La Vie en Rose, Bamako, Coeurs, Dans Paris, Flanders.