The eleventh issue of movieScope is on the stands. Online, readers can access an abbreviated edit of my conversation with Arnaud Desplechin (ah, wordcount!), as well as Adam Thursby's profile of actor Stephen Rea. Liz Hobbs writes up the Old Vic Theatre and explores the collaboration between stage and screen.
A portion of the cover feature on Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler is available by way of editor Eric Lilleør's introductory editorial. At the "Fading In" sidebar Andy Conway wryly riffs on "Fundophobia, Draftophilia and the ADDP."
In the Insiders P.O.V. sidebar of the print issue, Mick Southworth & Martin McCabe reminisce on the bygone era of movie poster art in their essay "Coming Soon: The Art of the Quad." Director Ron Oliver offers tips on directing children in his piece "Alligators Have the Right Idea." Rick Drew recruits Seth Lochhead as a case study of what's involved in selling a script and building a career in his article "What Happens After Your Big Break?" With "¡Viva Producing!", Leopoldo Gout shares how a multi-cultural and multi-medium background can enhance a producer's eye. And Kieron Connolly profiles Oscar®-winning Brit film editor Anne V. Coates in "Film isn't the End of Everything."
The Features sidebar includes Adam Thursby's dispatch from the 2008 British Independent Film Awards. Chris Patmore catches up with actress and human rights activist Nandita Das at The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival where she screened her directorial debut Firaaq. Patmore likewise profiles Tulpan director Sergei Dvortsevoy. Athos Kyrus focuses on Michael V. Lewis, CEO and co-founder of the world's leader in 3-D projection technology. Liz Hobbs follows up and updates her 2008 list of filmmakers to watch. And Rich Bradley elicits a survey of African cinemas from Burkina Faso's most prolific director Gaston Kaboré.
Cross-published on Twitch.
It took four years for Israeli director Ari Folman to complete his animated documentary Waltz With Bashir, which was entered in the competition for the Palme d'Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Though—despite predictions—it did not win that honor, Waltz With Bashir went on to win six awards from the Israeli Film Academy, including Best Picture. It had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and its US premiere at the 46th New York Film Festival. The film has been submitted as Israel's entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, as well as for Best Animated Feature. Predictions for an Oscar win look optimistic, judging from its recent Golden Globe for Best Foreign Feature; the first nonfiction film in Golden Globe history to claim that honor. Concerned with the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, the film came highly praised at its Cannes premiere as one that would "leave its mark forever on the ethics of war films in general" (Screen Daily). Variety hailed it as "something special, strange and peculiarly potent." Time magazine asserted that "the message of the futility of war has rarely been painted with such bold strokes." It was with considerable respect that I sat down to converse with Ari Folman.
* * *
Michael Guillén: First of all, Ari, Waltz With Bashir is a remarkable film. It's a film that confirms that—by diving deeply into the personal—a filmmaker can achieve the universal, the philosophical, the political. I consider the commensurate practices of psychotherapy and filmmaking to be sibling practices, having both appeared on the scene at relatively the same time, and both practices are continually evolving. You've frequently been asked about the therapeutic effect of Waltz With Bashir in healing your own psyche, but what do you hope will be its therapeutic benefit for others, not only in Israel but worldwide?
Ari Folman: First, I'm not a great believer in psychotherapy. If it's evolved, as you say, it has evolved to the point of being a quasi-religion, almost a cult. If you are a believer, it can work for you. If you are a non-believer, it probably will not work for you. I say that after—as you can imagine—having experienced long terms of psychotherapy. That's my general opinion of the system and how it works.
Guillén: Have you ever read a book by James Hillman and Michael Ventura called We've Had A Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World's Getting Worse?
Folman: No.
Guillén: It's a wonderful book.
Folman: Yeah?
Guillén: It's an articulate indictment of psychotherapy, which might interest you.
Folman: My belief is that any kind of filmmaking is therapy; but, it's dynamic. You're actually doing something. It's not the masturbatory ritual of meeting your shrink once a week. You travel, you meet people, you record them, you listen to and deal with what they have to say, you write a screenplay, you film your subjects, you imagine and invent things from scratch, a new dimension of memory, you do real work. Sometimes in psychotherapy you don't do real work. It's not as strong as creative expression. And it doesn't have to be filmmaking. It can be writing, painting. Waltz With Bashir is—I don't know, maybe it's too pretentious to say that it works as psychotherapy for other people—but, it works. My life has changed tremendously in the last seven months since Cannes; and what's happened is I can't go to public events anymore because in the end I find myself sitting in the corner, very gloomy, and someone I've never seen before sits beside me and tells me all his horrific war stories—there have been many wars so it could be any one of them—and then he says, "I can't help it. This is coming out of me because I've seen your film and it's encouraged me to talk, so I want to talk to you because everyone in the film talks to you." So the film admittedly motivates people. I predicted that but I didn't predict hearing from so many women that Waltz With Bashir was the first film that really showed them what war is. Not that they had anything against war movies in general; but, they never understood the experience through film. Waltz With Bashir was the first time for them to understand a lot of things about their husbands, about their sons, and about the little children who might be soldiers someday. I don't know why this film specifically appeals to women—much more than any other war film—but this is what I've been repeatedly told.
Guillén: The film's narrative structure, its structured subjectivity, is comparable to how narratives are structured in so-called "objective" documentaries and, thus, Waltz With Bashir achieves an equation between subjectivity and objectivity.
Folman: I don't believe in objectivity. There is no objectivity in filmmaking. Logically, it cannot exist. The basic fact that you go into an editing room with 200 hours of footage and by the end of the editing process come out with a film that is 50 minutes or an hour negates objectivity.
Guillén: In all honesty, I agree. Waltz With Bashir is a subjective statement by which you have created an understanding of yourself. Its intense subjectivity has thinned the membrane between the personal and the political and, thereby, has engendered a historical document about how a nation or a culture has created an understanding of itself. Yet it's also thinned the membrane between filmmaking and the psychological process of editing. History making, filmmaking, selfmaking.
Folman: I agree with you and you have phrased it like no one ever has to me. When you go on a very personal journey, in the end you hit all the political points that you didn't think you would. It's true. And I think by utilizing the personal, you achieve more because audiences sense that your initial inspiration was not just to do an anti-war film. When you are honestly personal, an audience feels less manipulated.
Guillén: Waltz With Bashir's anti-war statement is evident—that is its obvious surface—but, what intrigued me the most was the psychological process of editing: how you make a film, how you remember your life, how you remember history. The fact that it's animated, and starts right off with animals, gives it a double whammy of anima. A soufulness immediately launches and situates the film. It grounds it.
Folman: That was planned.
Guillén: You have recounted many times how you achieved your animation design, and I know one critic wrote about how your particular style of animation leaves the viewer unmoored, floating somewhat. How did you develop that aesthetic of being slightly afloat?
Folman: The animation was dictated by the design of the film. At the beginning I was obsessed to make a film where the design was as realistic as possible, meaning putting in more shadows on the characters, more wrinkles, shapes, contours. However, the more details you have, the more complicated it becomes to move the characters in cut-out animation, which is actually the simplest animation. We took it to the most extreme level. On the way, I saw the down side of the technique. Slow movement was the most complicated thing to achieve with this technique. Just a person walking slowly down a corridor was the most complicated thing to capture; contrary to the big action scenes with shooting and the movement of armored vehicles. Basic movement killed us. There was one moment where I decided, "Let's make everything in cut-out, but the lower part of the body will be classic animation. From the knees down, it will be frame-by-frame." The resulting look had something unique, disconnected from time. It released you from time, which I rarely see in filmmaking. For example, in David Lynch's movies, you lose a sense of time.
Guillén: With regard to timelessness in your creativity, then, you enter the terrain of mythmaking. So along with selfmaking, history making, filmmaking, we add mythmaking. I feel a need to stress these multiple equivalent threads in your film. I study a lot of mythology. I study a lot of cosmogonies from various cultures around the world and there are two basic principles I've observed with regard to cosmogonies; two approaches that are engaged in the process of a creation myth. They either see it and it becomes or they say it and it becomes. I bring this up because it's my understanding that Waltz With Bashir was largely predicated upon sound and that sound is the driving creative force behind this film.
Folman: For me, always. The only tough part about creating a film for me is the writing, which I treat as my main profession because it's real work. I'm sometimes embarrassed by how much fun I'm having with all the other stuff involved in filmmaking. I don't want to admit the truth that I'm just having fun and not working, you know? The most fun for me is doing the sound. It's miraculous. For example, in the opening scene with the dogs we had 102 tracks of animal sounds. We had wolves, lions, tigers, etc. The sound was engineered in a studio in Berlin that had formerly been the gym of the Nazi hierarchy. It was an incredible place. The sound designers were very talented German engineers. I told them to go wild. There are a lot of things I say about the war in the film but one of the basic ways I envisage it is as a bad acid trip. You might know that in a bad acid trip you go on a journey where you never know what's next, which I think is a lot like filmmaking as well. Hopefully, it's not predictable. Everyone talks about visions when they talk about LSD, but really it's more about sound, and rarely do you see that truth expressed in filmmaking. In the 10-12 minute Mardi Gras scene in Easy Rider—which I think is an incredible scene—it's all about sound, nothing about visuals. I felt that I had to take the audience immediately into that dimension, to strike them with the opening sequence, shock them, and then let them fly into the film. So we went really wild with the sound and put a lot of effort into it.
Guillén: I would have to say as stunning as the visuals are in Waltz With Bashir, its sound design is what I consider its presiding achievement. It's the sound design that captured me and stayed with me long after seeing the film and which, in my opinion, best approximates the recollective process of memory. I know exactly what you're saying about LSD. I actually studied with Stanislav Grof who, you might know, conducted extensive research into the therapeutic usage of altered states of consciousness through a career's worth of experiments with LSD. Grof was the one who discovered through his research that LSD was a serial experience that progresses upon repeated usage and that the visual hallucinations usually associated with LSD were merely the first stage of the acid trip, followed by a more pronounced and enduring stage of aural hallucinations. Returning to the cosmogonic principle that sound manifests, if you place—let's say—iron particles on a drum skin and strike a tuning fork, the vibrations will arrange those particles into mandalic patterns. In other words, sound creates form.
Folman: You're totally right. I completely agree with you.
Guillén: And, of course, the Biblical cosmogony follows suit with God speaking and creation becoming manifest. I'm very clear that the form of Waltz With Bashir, its manifest structure, relies heavily on its sound design. The visuals were arresting and, as stated earlier, unmooring; but, it was the film's sound that gave me the best handle on the film's themes. Cosmogonies aside, who did you work with to create the sound design?
Folman: The sound designer is Aviv Aldema, who I've always worked with in Israel; but, the whole sound team—the mixer, the sound effects designer—were German. Then I brought in a British composer Max Richter who I think is brilliant. I had never met him but I used to listen to his albums while I was writing. He was truly inspiring for me. I wrote the script for Waltz With Bashir in six days, listening only to Max Richter's albums. I didn't mean for that to happen like that, but it just happened. When I finished the script, I thought, "This guy has, in effect, written the soundtrack for the script." Because scripts have soundtracks. Think about it. If you listen to Bach for a month while writing, Bach will emotionally influence the writing. Nothing influences emotions more than music. As a former resident of San Francisco, Frank Zappa, used to say: "Music is the best." [Chuckles.]
Guillén: I'm convinced music is the highest of the arts. Without question, Waltz With Bashir has served the purpose of informing audiences of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, of which many of us were unaware. As history, as information, that has merit in and of itself; but, the film's most visceral effect is in its simulation of the very real process of active imagination. Any artist or, for that matter, any person who is grappling with memory, attempting to individuate through memory, attempting to reconcile memory, anyone who is looking into themselves, is engaged in active imagination. I can understand why—when you go to cocktail parties—everyone wants to come up to you and tell you their war stories because you have unleashed a therapeutic device. It may not be psychotherapy or the talking cure; but, it's a creative device by which people can cope with selfmaking. One of the most interesting critiques of your film, which I've had to sit with, is the notion that Waltz With Bashir is the shadow of the Holocaust. Can you speak to that?
Folman: Yeah, yeah. I have no problem at all speaking about it. First, I'll tell you that—since the film was released in Israel—I have never been asked about the Holocaust at all. For a very simple reason: because the comparison was obvious. It's in the DNA of the Jewish people in Israel. Whenever they see newsreel images of any kind of mass murder—Sabra and Shatila, Srebrenica in Bosnia, Armenians, Rwanda, it doesn't matter—for them it strikes immediately and flies them into the past. I never mentioned The Holocaust in the film but it's referenced two times. First, when we entered the camps I was asked, "Do you remember the famous photos from the Warsaw ghetto?" And I say yes. And my other friend the therapist says, "It's not the Sabra and Shatila camps; it's the other camps." It's as if Waltz With Bashir is speaking in code. Never in the history of my country has there ever been such a demonstration of outrage such as took place the day after the Sabra and Shatila massacre. I'm not even sure people fully understood why they were taking to the streets. Israeli troops didn't directly participate in the massacre. They've done terrible things but in this case specifically they didn't do the shooting. The Israeli people had never demonstrated to such an extent before nor afterwards. But when they saw the newsreels, which I incorporated into the end of Waltz With Bashir, they freaked out. They protested that there was no way that the Israeli government could be connected to such an atrocity, taking into consideration what had happened to the Jewish people during the Holocaust.
As I've traveled with the film, people have found it very hard to understand how I could make the comparison; but, it's not a comparison. Some things can't be compared. They can hardly be understood. Can you understand what happened during the Holocaust? There's no way to understand it. There's a 90-minute film called Massaker that's about Sabra and Shatila. It's about five Phalangist soldiers, filmed in silhouette, who recount what they did in the camps. It's nothing but them speaking. As you listen to them, you can't believe that any human being could have done those things. You just can't believe it. You say, "No." And then in the end you say, "What? Did they invent these stories? Why would they do that?" The point is they did it. Some things just can't be explained. For us it's easy to make the reference; but, in some places, they just couldn't figure it out at all.
This is actually one of the most interesting discussions I've had on the film. I want you to consult with me on my next film. I think you could help me. It concerns all these areas that we're discussing.
Guillén: It would be my honor. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.
Cross-published on Twitch. Waltz With Bashir is currently playing in San Francisco at the Clay Theatre, 2261 Fillmore Street, San Francisco; (415) 267-4893.
The cover article of the November 2008 issue of Film International (Vol. 6, No. 5, pp. 60-67)—"The Arn Franchise: Launching a Small Country Blockbuster"—authored by the issue's guest editor Erik Hedling argues that "with the advent of Arn, Sweden has obtained its first fully fledged Hollywood-style film franchise in the manner of Lord of the Rings, complete with bestselling books, thus far a highly successful historical epic, and an aspiring tourist industry, drawing heavily on the books and films." Acknowledging that the film has set a new standard, Hedling proposes: "In Arn, a particularly powerful historical fetish—the very foundation of Sweden as a country—can be discerned lurking behind the whole project."
As reported at Wikipedia: "Arn–The Knight Templar (original title in Swedish: Arn–Tempel Riddaren) is a 2007 epic film based on Jan Guillou's trilogy about the fictional Swedish Knight Templar Arn Magnusson. The film was released in December 2007 and the sequel, Arn–The Kingdom at Road's End (Arn–Riket vid vägens slut), was released August 22, 2008. While the film is mostly in Swedish and most of the production was made in Sweden, the film is a joint production between Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Germany. With a total budget of around US$30,000,000 for the whole production, it is the most expensive production in Scandinavian film history." An international version—a single film comprised of parts from the first two films in the trilogy—will be launched in the autumn of 2009.
Svensk Filmindustri, the co-producers and Swedish distributors of Arn, encapsulate the plot as follows at their website: "The film about Arn and Cecilia is set in Sweden as well as the Middle East, and offers a rich gallery of brave knights, powerful queens and treacherous kings. It is a tale of war and intrigue, friendship and betrayal, but also an unforgettable love story. Arn Magnussson [portrayed by relative newcomer Joakim Nätterqvist] is born in 1150 on Arnas farm in West Gothia in the western part of Sweden. He grows up to become an educated young man and a skilled swordsman. He meets Cecilia [Sofia Heflin], the love of his life, but a cruel and jealous world forces them apart. Cecilia is imprisoned in a convent and Arn is sent away as a Knight Templar to the Holy Land, where war is raging between Christians and Muslims. They both have to fight to survive, they have to learn how to confront evil and overcome physical hardship. Their painful separation causes their faith in God and his goodness to waver—though not their faith in each other and their confidence that they will one day be reunited. When Arn returns home he has to fight for his love and what has become his life's mission: to unite Sweden into one kingdom."
Based on Guillou's Crusader series of novels, The Road to Jerusalem / Vägen til Jerusalem (1998), The Knight Templar / Tempel Riddaren (1999) and The Kingdom at the End of the Road / Riket vid vägens slut (2000), which have sold more than two million copies in Sweden and have been translated into multiple languages including English, Spanish and German, Guillou—an avowed atheist well-known for his pro-Palestinian views—has admitted he felt compelled to write the trilogy in response to the "War on Terror." As Hedling has reported, in Guillou's epilogue to the 2007 edition of his novel, the novelist opined that "already by the mid-1990s one could see that the big war—what we now label as the 'War on Terror'—was approaching. …Everywhere, Arabs and Muslims were depicted as demons. In precisely that way, the first Holy War, the mediaeval crusade to Palestine, was initiated. …And now, on our way towards the third millennium, the Holy War was to start again, as if we had learnt nothing from history. Thus, I have to write the story about how this war appeared when it was first fought."
This political admission complicates the Arn franchise with a compelling relevancy. As Hedling has researched: "In the preface to their anthology The Medieval Hero on Screen [published by McFarland], Martha W. Driver and Sid Ray claim that the popularity of the kind of film represented by Arn is due to [the fact] that 'reference to the Middle Ages seems to grant films license to present extreme forms of masculinity and to justify, even celebrate, war'; the authors also allude to the War on Terror by invoking the idea that the Gulf War (1990) 'was a bonanza for medievalists' as American politicians depicted nations in the Middle East as fiefdoms of the Middle Ages and cast themselves as the crusading hero of democracy' (Driver and Ray 2004:9)." Compounded by Guillou's frank self-confessed motives for writing the trilogy, Hedling points out that Guillou's admission adheres "to Driver and Ray's theory regarding the appearance of films with mediaeval settings in the 1990s—albeit from exactly the opposite point of view." [Emphasis added.]
Despite being highly anticipated by Todd Brown at Twitch—"Looking forward to it? You bet."—some growsing ensued in the comments section about grand, epic battle scenes becoming tiresome and that some new and different stylization was required to keep the genre fresh. First, I would query: "Fresh for whom?" Western audiences already saturated with trilogy franchises? Does that not demean the projected and actual success of marketing the Arn trilogy as a franchise, first for Scandanavian audiences, and now—securing that achievement—international ones? Secondly, reading the film with the above-stated political intentions is arguably a "fresh"—perhaps even necessary—perspective on the mediaeval epic. Notwithstanding, I'll concede the complaint bears some legitimacy. As Boyd von Hoeij has written at european-films.net: "Though the books have been bestsellers in Scandinavia and several other European countries including Germany, it remains to be seen whether the cinema-going public is ready for a Crusades epic so shortly after the lukewarm reception of Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, in which heartthrob Orlando Bloom was sent off to the Holy Land."
"Kingdom of Heaven," Hedling points out, "draws on the same historical circumstances and the same historical figures as Jan Guillou's Arn trilogy regarding, for instance, the representation of the Holy Land…. Both works also contain representations of Salah ad-Din, the mighty warrior-sultan of Syria and Egypt, who eventually won the struggle for Jerusalem." It will be fascinating to monitor how Guillou's "opposite point of view" will be received by non-Scandanavian (i.e., Christianized Western) audiences, given statistical evidence that—as of 2005—85% of Swedes do not believe in God, which might account for their embrace of Guillou's literary perspective.
As for whether the shifting of the books' dramaturgy towards "standard swashbuckling antics" via a more simplified, marketable "masculine spectacle" (the story of Arn's beloved Cecilia has been greatly reduced in the films) will, indeed, prove tiresome for being overly familiar, only time will tell. Like Todd, I'm eager to decide for myself whether director Peter Flinth (Mastermind, 2005) and screenwriter Hans Gunnarsson (Evil / Ondskan, 2003) have succeeded in their filmic adaptation of Guillou's Crusaders trilogy.
As for the rest of the November 2008 issue of Film International and its focus on the "new wave in Swedish cinema", Hedling has historicized Scandanavia's contributions, most notably with the art-house classics of Carl Theodor Dreyer and Ingmar Bergman, the contributions of such Danish auteurs as Lars von Trier, Susanne Bier and Tomas Vinterberg, and Finnish auteurs Aki and Mika Kaurismäki. Cognizant that the hope for the emergence of a new wave of Swedish cinema inspired by the work of Lukas Moodysson's Together (2000) and Josef Fares' Jalla! Jalla! (2000)—to name just two main examples—has, perhaps, peaked in this last decade and "slightly faded", Hedling nonetheless solicited contributions from film scholars working at the Department of Film Studies at Lund University in southern Sweden, just across the strait from Copenhagen in Denmark. In his introductory editorial, Hedling synopsizes those contributions.
In "A New Deal in European film? Notes on the Swedish regional production turn", Olof Hedling analyzes the drastic industrial changes in Swedish film production during the last decade. In "The Black Pimpernel: The Biopic as a mediator of the past" Tommy Gustafsson traces the history of Harald Edelstam, Swedish ambassador in Santiago during the Pinochet coup d'etat in 1973. Although The Black Pimpernel failed at the box office, Gustafsson's article "draws attention to the biopic in particular by discussing the 'genre' of the biopic in general and also touches upon the question of why some biopics succeed as mediators of the past when others do not." In "Cinematic Sex Education in the Twenty-first Century: Narration, Reflexivity, and Sexuality in Kärlekens språk (2004)", Elisabet Björklund investsigates the Swedish sex education film, particularly the remake of Kärlekens språk (1969) in 2004. Mikael Marcimain, the young director nominated in December 2007 for Sweden's prestigious Dagens Nyheter Arts Prize, is at the center of Mats Jönsson's discussions in "Marcimainstream? History in two contemporary Swedish TV-series." Finally, in "Hollywood in Sweden: Cinematic references imagining America", Ann-Kristin Wallengren looks closer at the direct influence of Hollywood cinema on Swedish film, both in terms of genre and, above all, the explicit use of filmic characters, stereotypes and common images and ideals.
Yet again, a great, informative read.
Cross-published on Twitch.
Romance at the Castro Theatre might be silent on Valentines Day, at least as far as films go, but—over at the Victoria Theatre—the romance will be raucous! As the indefatigable Marc Huestis declares: "It's time to take the wig out of the box and join the fabulous John Cameron Mitchell performing live for this ultimate Valentine's event! Mitchell sings selected songs from Hedwig, as well as other romantic ditties expounding on the origins of love, sex, and…. Followed by screenings of his cult classics Hedwig (Saturday, February 14 at 7:30PM; Sunday, February 15 at 8:00PM) and Shortbus (Friday, February 13, 8:00PM and Saturday, February 14 at 11:00PM). The screenings of Hedwig on February 15 and Shortbus on February 14, 11:00PM will include a live director's commentary on the sexy behind-the-scenes happenings and other tidbits on making these totally rockin' flicks. There will be special guest hosts for each show. So hold on to each other ... hold on tonight."
Tickets are $25 each or $45 for two shows and are available by calling (415) 863-0611, at A Different Light Bookstore, 489 Castro Street, or online at Ticketweb.
In the immortal words of Female Trouble's Dawn Davenport: "Who wants to die for the sake of art?" Peaches Christ wants to know! "Why?" you might wonder. Because All About Evil, the feature film debut of writer/director Joshua Grannell (aka "Peaches Christ") begins shooting in San Francisco this March, 2009, and Peaches needs a few extras to kill off, don'tcha know? In a heady mix of cult icons and up-and-comers, All About Evil will star Thomas Dekker (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), Noah Segan (Deadgirl, Brick), Cassandra Peterson (Elvira), Mink Stole, Mary Woronov, Candice Accola, Peaches Christ, Martiny, Timmy Spence, Jen Taher, and more. Maybe even you!!
In All About Evil, a mousy librarian, who has inherited her father's beloved old movie house, discovers her inner serial killer—and a legion of rabid gore fans—when she starts turning out a series of grisly shorts. What her fans don't realize (yet!) is that the murders in the movies are all too real. This over-the-top horror comedy is currently recruiting volunteer extras prepared—as Peaches puts it—"to participate in giant scenes of pandemonium, mayhem, and mass murder. Due to the low-budget nature of this project, extras are unpaid but you will get free popcorn, soda, possibly pizza, and a chance to appear in one of the strangest films to come out in years." Plus, you'll get to see Peaches directing large action scenes in half-drag, which even Peaches admits "might actually be the scariest part of making the movie!" Though all extra work is unpaid and may require large blocks of time (up to twelve hours), it's a chance to be part of the underground world of SF cult movie fanatics and help make this outrageous film where you literally become part of the horror movie. Oh hell, even if you don't want to die for the sake of art; die for fun!
You can register here. And you can read up on what a long, strange trip it's been to bring All About Evil to the bloody screen in Michael Fox's article for SF360 ("Some screenwriters have a specific actor in mind when they write; he had a theater. 'The outline in my head has always been the Bridge,' [Peaches] confides.")
In an e-blast sent out just yesterday, Peaches wrote: "So, speaking of Mink Stole... Dupuy and I are currently at my parents house in Maryland and are lunching with Ms. Stole tomorrow in beautiful Baltimore. As you know, I'm her biggest fan and she is one of my all-time favorite actresses. It's surreal to think that we are meeting and discussing my very own screenplay where her character has the scariest, most disgusting, and elaborate kill sequence in the movie. After reading the script, she called me and said you must really hate me. I explained to her though that it's actually a big compliment and that she got the most over-the-top treatment because she was worthy of it. And it's true! However, we do have to discuss some of the more awkward realities of playing this part, including uncomfortable prosthetics and worse. She assured me however that she's up for the challenge and was quick to remind me that she's crawled through chicken shit and had sex with a 400 pound woman all for the sake of art."
So how about you?
Cross-published on Twitch.
The Global Film Initiative and Virgin America, the California-based airline, are partnering to release the Initiative's critically acclaimed traveling film series—Global Lens—on Virgin America's interactive, in-flight entertainment system, RED™. Films from the series are now available on demand on all Virgin America flights.
"Global Lens is a one-of-a-kind film series. Virgin America is a one-of-a-kind airline. Put the two together and you have an in-flight experience that has no comparison," says Santhosh Daniel, Director of Programs at the Global Film Initiative.
The Global Lens series is a collection of dynamic feature-length film from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East that can be seen in more than 35 cities across the United States and in Canada. On Virgin America, the Global Film Initiative brings this diverse and pioneering collection to new audiences via RED™—Virgin America's touch-screen personal in-flight entertainment system.
"Virgin America is committed to offering guests the best and most eclectic entertainment choices in the sky," says Porter Gale, Vice President of Marketing at Virgin America. "The partnership with Global Lens allows us to offer guests an in-flight film festival of independently produced films at every seatback."
The inaugural release of Global Lens on RED™ features South African comedic hit Bunny Chow (dir. John Barker) and Argentine drama Kept and Dreamless (dir. Vera Fogwill and Martin DeSalvo), followed by Indonesian critic's favorite Opera Jawa (dir. Garin Nugroho) and Iranian culinary tour-de-force The Fish Fall in Love (dir. Ali Raffi). In March, Virgin America will also release Global Lens 2009, the sixth installment of the Initiative's renowned series. One of the most acclaimed lineups yet, Global Lens 2009 includes three North American premieres, Macedonia's official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, and prize-winning features fresh from the top festivals worldwide.
As part of the new partnership, the Global Film Initiative and Virgin America are also launching Wing It! a hip, new quarterly arts and culture contest for high school and college-age students. Winners of each contest will receive a ticket to anywhere Virgin America flies, and will also be featured on the Initiative's website. Wing It! is a creative expansion of the Initiative's Education Program and will go live Spring 2009. Contest details are available here.
Cross-published at Twitch.
Hot on the heels of what was hands down my favorite magazine volume on cinema in 2008—Film International Vol. 6, No. 5, guest edited by Dina Iordonova (I think I bought every existing copy they had at Borders to distribute among friends)—Iordonova has called attention to a very useful annotated bibliography on scholarship related to Film Festivals that has been made available by Marijke de Valck and Skadi Loist at the web-site of the University of Hamburg in Germany, available here. It warrants repeated notice for being such an amazingly rich resource of articles and—perhaps even more importantly—a great exposure to their authors. I've been Googling these names to familiarize myself with their work and the research is producing a cornucopia of film writing available online. It has caused me to consider, however, that the nascent field of Film Festival studies does not seem as pronounced in the United States. Is anyone perhaps aware of academic programs in the Bay Area that specifically focus on Film Festival studies? I would be interested to know. (Via the ever-resourceful Daily @ IFC.)
The eleventh issue of movieScope is on the stands. Online, readers can access an abbreviated edit of my conversation with Arnaud Desplechin (ah, wordcount!), as well as Adam Thursby's profile of actor Stephen Rea. Liz Hobbs writes up the Old Vic Theatre and explores the collaboration between stage and screen.
