For Your Consideration... 2014 Cannes Film Festival

One of the larger film fests in the film fest circuit and the most prestigious, the Cannes International Film Festival, wrapped up this past weekend. The Turkish film, Winter Sleep, took the prestigious Palm d'Or award. The second place award, also known as the Grand Prix or Grand Prize, went to the Italian film, The Wonders. And in third place there was a tie between a Canadian and a French film, Xavier Dolan's Mommy and Jean-Luc Goddard's Goodbye to Language. The Cannes Film Festival usually highlights European films, so there is a good chance that these will be available soon to watch from home and will probably show up in many other film festivals around the world.

The stars of Red Army featuring Captain Slava Fetisov
who became a two-time NHL Stanley Cup winner.
Photo: wildbunch.biz

There is one Cannes movie that particularly caught my eye called Red Army, and it is especially appropriate now that hockey's Stanley Cup Finals are about to start. Red Army is a Russian documentary about the Soviet hockey team during the 1970s and 80s. This documentary features many of the team's stars discussing hockey, as well as the social and political issues surrounding that time period. This film sounds like a great pairing with the American film, Miracle, that features the American hockey team that went on to win the gold medal in the 1980 Olympic Games for all you hockey fans out there.

If You Like "The Pursuit of Happyness", You Will Love...

Children of Heaven – Iran (1997)

Children of Heaven is one of those movies that has always popped up when I've looked up Iranian film, so I decided to give it a chance. The story focuses on the story of two children from a low income family in Tehran. Ali is on a family errand, buying vegetables and also picking up his sister's, Zahra's, fixed shoes. Before he can get home, Ali loses the shoes and is scared of getting in trouble for doing so, so he tells Zahra that she can wear his sneakers to school, hurry back home, and then he will quick put them on and get to school himself.


The storyline sounds kind of simple, and it is. The film follows the tradition of Italy's The Bicycle Thief as Zahra keeps seeing her lost shoes but can't get them back. It also shows how this sibling pair sticks together to keep each other out of trouble until they can a way to replace the shoes. And this film, unlike so many others, is perfectly fit for a G-rated family night.

Z

Directed by Costa-Gavras (1969) 

Algeria & France

 

Z is a Franco-Algerian co-production that was produced not even ten years after Algeria’s independence from France. The movie was based on the novel of the same name and directed by a Greek expat, Costa-Gavras. The story is based on true events, but takes place in a fictionalized world. 

These policemen look
a little 1984 to me...

In an unknown country, the government stands on a pro-war platform, but there is a growing opposition movement forming. A leading figure in the opposition movement, Z, decides to appear in public and give a speech to the opposition supporters. Because the government controls everything, he and his party are denied request after request for a venue. The party finally finds a venue, but not without resistance. An angry mob forms, and then, an assassination attempt occurs. Was this a planned attempt? Is an angry opponent to blame? Or could it be the government? Digging through layers of potential corruption, the prosecutor tries to put the pieces of the story together to find out who is behind the attack.

"Any resemblance to real events, persons living or dead is
not a coincidence. It is INTENTIONAL."

This film is a classic example of a Cold War-era drama, with the totalitarian feel that 1984 has which I liked from the start. For the first twenty or so minutes of this movie, I was not wowed by it, but then after that, it got really interesting, especially since there are many different layers to the story. If you watch the Criterion Collection DVD version, the cast and crew interviews are worth a watch. In director Costa-Gavras' interview, he claims that the movie is just the story of a typical man (yet, if you see the screenshot to the right, you can see that his claim is probably not 100% accurate). In 2009, he reveals that the movie was was based on a true event that occurred in his home country of Greece. When this film was made, Greece was in a very volatile geographical position during the Cold War. A political assassination attempt was made in a very similar vein to the one in the movie, and Costa-Gavras believed that this film was “his way of doing something as a filmmaker” to communicate the story to a wider audience. 
 

 

For Your Consideration... Bollywood

After a brief vacation hiatus (to Iceland, not to India, but a movie from that country will be profiled in a future post), I wanted to talk about Bollywood, especially that now all of you have had a chance to see the movie, 3 Idiots. Bollywood is a pretty unique film industry for many reasons... not only is it one of the largest national film industries in the world (if not the largest), but most of the movies feature song and dance, and if they don't, then it doesn't feel like a Bollywood film.

Bollywood is the nickname of the Indian film industry. Bollywood, unlike Hollywood, isn't an actual place you can visit, but rather a name that sums up the country's industry (so don't pack your bags just yet). Most Bollywood movies have a formula, and they revolve around themes involving as forbidden love, education, marriage, difference in values between generations, and terrorism & violence. While these central ideas are visited over and over again, the songs, dances, and actors are what keep people coming back to see different movies with similar plot lines.

Song & dance is so intertwined within Bollywood movies that if a movie doesn't feature these elements, the movie generally tanks at the box office. The song & dance tradition in Indian entertainment can be traced back to the 2nd or 1st century BCE. In drama pieces, these elements have always appeared, so it was only natural that they would be carried over to the film industry in the 20th century. While American movies with song & dance are considered musicals, Bollywood movies without song & dance are considered "art films".

The moral of the story is that if you like (or even dislike) Baz Luhrmann (yes, the guy who told you to wear sunscreen), you will most likely love Bollywood.

If You Like "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", You Will Love...

3 Idiots – India (2009)

3 Idiots is the Indian equivalent of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in terms of storyline and comedy (although there is no principal or headmaster in any movie who will probably live up to Rooney). The movie starts where two of the three idiots are thinking back to their days at engineering school. They have a friend, the third idiot, who went to engineering school because of his father’s wishes, but really wanted to pursue photography. From his first appearance in school, he smart mouths the teachers and challenges every little thing they challenge him on, making the other students think in a new way. 

This movie plays on the idea that I’ve seen in a lot of Bollywood movies where the modern generation is challenging the older generations on career aspirations and other personal values. And this one does it in a way that will keep you laughing for two hours.

Plus, there is a very catchy song, “Aal Izz Well,” and the whistling in it will be stuck in your head for days.

No Man's Land

Directed by Danis Tanović (2001) 

Bosnia-Herzegovina (Slovenia, Italy, France, Belgium, and the UK too)

No Man’s Land swept the foreign language film categories in the United States in both the Oscars and the Golden Globes in back in 2001 and won 40 additional film awards, but somehow, this is a movie I would have never come across if I wasn’t researching titles for this blog.

 

The film takes place in the middle of the Bosnia War that occurred from 1992 until 1995 in the aftermath of the breakup of Yugoslavia. A Bosnian man, Ciki, finds himself wounded & stuck in no man’s land and eventually in the trenches of the Bosnian Serb forces. While in the trenches, he overhears an enemy soldier’s plan on how to best trick the enemy; his ruse is to place the bodies of the enemy onto landmines so that when their fellow soldiers try to move or retrieve the bodies, they will set off a landmine. This angers Ciki, and he shoots Nino, one of the enemy soldiers. While both suffering from injuries, a third soldier lying in the trench, a Bosnian named Cera, comes to consciousness, but he cannot move because he is one of the unfortunate casualties placed on top of a land mine.

No Man’s Land takes place within a series of wars driven by territorial and ethnic disputes that resulted in thousands of casualties, many of whom were victims of war crimes. When Yugoslavia disintegrated in the early 1990s (1992 to be exact), the government in Belgrade (modern Serbia) wanted to prevent the country from breaking up. This led to a series of wars between the different ethnic groups of the country and the eventual independence of six nations, taking Yugoslavia off the map and putting it into the history books.

This film, produced not too many years after the conflict, confronts the Bosnian War in a way that you don’t feel like you are watching a full-on war film, but rather one that shows how conflict can or cannot be resolved amongst opposing soldiers and peacekeepers.

For Your Consideration… International Co-Productions

In general, when you watch a foreign film, if you look at the DVD case or the online description of the movie, it will generally say that the movie is French or Indian or Spanish, etc. But in reality, a lot of foreign movies being made now are not only the product of one country, but multiple countries' resources being combined. When you watch some European films, for example, they actually have been produced by multiple nations.

In recent years, there have been an increase in the number of international co-productions. In these international co-productions, two or more nations pull together resources (money, production crew, etc) in order to pull together one final product. This blend can be interesting when you have two countries that have often been in conflict with each other, such as France and Germany, make a movie about a mutual conflict, such as during World War I. There are also many films I’ve come across that have been released in the United States that are not just American films, but co-productions between Canada, Mexico, or other countries.
   

In Europe, there is a program run by the European Union’s Council of Europe called Eurimages. This program provides support to a select number of films a year that are produced by two or more member nations that exemplify common European values. If you watch many European movies, you will see a stamp that indicates it was supported by the Eurimages funds.
 
In Asia, China has just signed two international co-production agreements, one with India and the other with South Korea. This is significant as China has a 20-foreign-film-per-year limit on movies that can be imported into the country. In addition, India also signed an agreement with Spain in order to increase film collaboration there.

While many films are co-productions, they still get nominated for awards, making it appear like the film was only produced in one country. In some cases, like the Academy Awards, the nomination is based on the spoken language in the film. Usually, the country whose language is used in that film will apply to be nominated for the award. In the case of the next featured film in this blog, No Man’s Land, this film was produced by many nations, but the credit is mostly given to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Co-productions are a great way for film companies from different countries to work together, plus it helps smaller film industries to be seen by more people. And it’s further proof of how the world is smaller than you would think it is.