AFI FEST 2016 presented by Audi has announced the features and short films that received this year’s Jury and Audience Awards. Select award-winning films will screened again on November 17, 2016, at the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres.
New Auteurs Grand Jury Award: THE FUTURE PERFECT
New Auteurs Special Jury Mention for Acting: Oulaya Amamra for DIVINES
Grand Jury Award – Live Action Short: ICEBOX
Grand Jury Award – Animated Short: PUSSY
Live Action Short Special Mention for Comedic Narrative: HOUNDS
Live Action Short Special Mention for Documentary: THE SEND-OFF
Live Action Short Special Mention for Acting: DREAMING OF BALTIMORE
Live Action Short Special Mention for Cinematography: A THOUSAND MIDNIGHTS
Live Action Short Special Mention: SPEAKING IS DIFFICULT
Animated Short Special Jury Mention: SUMMER CAMP ISLAND
Animated Short Special Jury Mention for Mixed Media: DEER FLOWER
Animated Short Special Jury Mention for Visual Aesthetics: SUPERBIA
World Cinema Audience Award: LAND OF MINE
New Auteurs Audience Award: DIVINES
American Independents Audience Award: DONALD CRIED
Breakthrough Audience Award: DIVINES
Breakthrough Audience Award First Runner-Up: ONE WEEK AND A DAY
Breakthrough Audience Award Second Runner-Up: THE RED TURTLE
Without any memories or knowledge of who she is or why she is there, Kaleche finds herself in a field. Soon she finds a group of strangers in the nearby resort who tell her the truth: She is dead and this is the afterlife, not quite heaven or hell, where everyone is waiting to move on. All they have to do to get what they want is write it down and their wish appears the very next day. The only thing they cannot have is escape. The magical realist debut feature of Mbithi Masya, a member of a popular Kenyan alternative house funk group, KATI KATI deploys memorable performances and deceptively simple cinematic techniques to give us a beautiful, dreamlike depiction of life and the possible life after it.
AFI spoke with Masya about the film.
Mbithi Masya
AFI: KATI KATI is your first full-length feature. What inspired you to set the film in the afterlife?
Mbithi Masya: I got the call to work on a project as I was in a time of mourning, having just lost a close friend. The idea for the story came from meditations around that loss.
AFI: The film addresses both personal and political tragedies, some of which are universal and some of which are specific to Kenya. Why did you select these elements, and how did you balance this mix?
MM: Most of the elements chosen were from very personal experiences. The characters themselves were heavily borrowed from actual people I know and situations around our lives. And the outlook on some of the political tragedies that have happened in Kenya was still approached from a very personal point of view.
AFI: Much of the film incorporates ambient noise, with the score and soundtrack used judiciously. As a musician, how did you approach creating the auditory experience of the film?
MM: We made the early decision to focus every single element of the film toward the emotion of each scene. That includes the visuals, the sounds and the performances. We put a lot of work into the sound design because we felt it deserved just as much attention as the visuals to make the film a complete cinematic experience.
AFI: As a production of One Fine Day Films and Ginger Ink, many of your film’s departments had the opportunity to work with mentors. How was that experience?
MM: The mentors were an excellent pool of knowledge and experience that we kept visiting and learning from. They didn’t exert themselves over our creative work but were always there if we had questions and wanted to ask advice. Having that safety net was reassuring and allowed us to move through the filming process with confidence in our own ideas.
AFI: The afterlife depicted in the film follows some clearly delineated rules, yet much is left unexplained. Was this ambiguity part of your script, or did it evolve as you were shooting and editing the film?
MM: It was a decision made from the beginning. We were wary of taking moralistic stances with the themes and subjects in the film. We wanted to present characters who made choices, and leave the audience to decide what to make of those choices. And I believe it has really benefitted the film as the audience is allowed to engage with the film as they wish. It has also led to very interesting engagements with the audience as different audiences have drawn different conclusions from the film.
KATI KATI screens at AFI FEST 2016 today, Wednesday, November 16, 7:15 P.M. at the TCL Chinese 5, in the New Auteurs section of the festival.
Japan’s Studio Ghibli has long been the gold standard in animated features, producing revered masterpieces such as GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (1988), PRINCESS MONONOKE (1997) and SPIRITED AWAY (2001) since its inception in 1985. For Ghibli’s first international co-production, the studio co-founded by legends Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata invited Dutch filmmaker Michaël Dudok de Wit (Oscar® winner for his 2000 animated short FATHER AND DAUGHTER) to create his first feature-length film. The result, after eight years of work, is a breathtaking, original fable about a shipwrecked man’s struggle to escape a deserted island, and the unexpected course his life takes when he’s prevented from leaving by the titular sea creature. The film dispenses with spoken dialogue, instead allowing Dudok de Wit’s vivid, meticulously rendered visuals to guide us through a lush natural landscape that contains both unimaginable hardships and simple, potent truths about family, aging and life.
AFI: What was it like working with Studio Ghibli as a first-time feature director? How were ideas exchanged?
Michaël Dudok de Wit: We had an excellent start, because I adore Studio Ghibli’s films and they expressed their strong appreciation of my previous work. I went to Studio Ghibli from time to time during the development phase of the story to discuss the latest progress and at one point I stayed for a month in Tokyo, working with intensely on storyboard changes. At Studio Ghibli, it is the film director who has the final say on the creative aspect of the film, and though the producers liked sharing their opinions with me, they did not impose them. I in return asked them a lot of questions, and we generally had fruitful, non-competitive conversations. To me, that was ideal.
AFI: Describe your collaboration with large teams of animators.
MDDW: There was a striking bond between us all and I felt nourished by that. The artists were all European freelancers, mostly French, selected carefully during a long recruiting period. Actually, the selection process was not unlike the selection of the samurais in Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI.
I’m an animator, background artist and designer myself, so my colleagues and I often understood each other intuitively. The main team worked in Angoulême, a small town in France, and most of us lived at walking distance from the studio, also from our favorite bars and from the local food market.
The idea was to have all artists working in the same building, but we needed extra help, so we also collaborated with an animation studio in Hungary, Kecskemètfilm. To my relief that worked really well, because the Hungarians were excellent animators and their team had a strong team spirit. The exchange of animated scenes between France and Hungary was done instantaneously via the internet.
As I was both directing and exploring, I had to learn how to cope with many tasks all at the same time. That was new and extremely challenging for someone who is used to concentrate uninterruptedly on one or two tasks per day.
AFI: You spent five years working on the story of this film. What aspect of the story changed the most from the first draft of the script that you presented to Studio Ghibli?
MDDW: The ending. The first draft had a fine ending, the story felt complete, whole, but one day, actually while I was walking on the street, I suddenly imagined the new, current ending. I was immediately moved to tears by the beauty of the new ending.
AFI: What was your biggest challenge in developing the lush soundscape and intricate sound mixing for the film?
MDDW: Amazingly, there was no big challenge. The sound was created and mixed by a well-established sound studio, Piste Rouge in Paris. They understood right away that this film did not need cartoony sounds and that the noises of nature had a striking presence throughout the film. The sound artists also worked closely with the music composer Laurent Perez del Mar to create the right chemistry between the music and the nature sounds.
AFI:Since THE RED TURTLE is dialogue-free, what was your technique for ensuring the animated characters could clearly communicate thoughts and feelings with one another, as well as with the audience?
MDDW: The sensitive scenes, I mean the scenes where the absence of dialogue was a real challenge, were animated quite late in the animation phase, to ensure that the animators would feel really at ease and intuitive with the characters. These scenes also took much longer to animate than usual. Moreover, we had filmed live actors who played those scenes, and the live footage was used by the animators, not for rotoscoping of course, but to use for inspiration. And the human sounds were important. Absence of dialogue can mean that the spectator has less empathy with the characters, but in the sound phase all the human characters were given natural breathing sounds, and that made a huge difference, we found.
THE RED TURTLE screens at AFI FEST 2016 on Tuesday, 7:00 P.M. November 15, at the Egyptian Theater and Wednesday, 1:15 P.M. at the TCL Chinese Mann 4, November 16, as part of the World Cinema section of the festival.
Sophia Takal’s sophomore feature follows two friends, Anna and Beth, both actresses with varying degrees of success, as they travel to Big Sur for a weekend getaway in hopes of reconnecting and reestablishing a bond broken by years of competitiveness and jealousy. Once away, tension bubbles to the surface, forcing them to finally confront their issues — and to lose grasp of their own identities in the process. Building on the theme of jealousy that permeated her debut feature GREEN, Takal explores the nature of female friendships and what it means to be feminine in the eyes of others. Mackenzie Davis and Caitlin FitzGerald sink their teeth into the roles of Anna and Beth, straddling a delicate line between melodrama and realism. Reminiscent of films like Robert Altman’s 3 WOMEN (1977) and other films about “psychotic women” from the 1970s, ALWAYS SHINE is a modern take that marks Takal as an important filmmaker to watch.
AFI spoke with Takal about the film, her second at AFI FEST after 2011’s GREEN.
AFI: Did ALWAYS SHINE come out of wanting to explore the theme of jealousy — which you examined in your previous film GREEN — further?
Sophia Takal: Sort of. GREEN was a very personal exploration of my own issues around jealousy, friendship and sexuality. I worked through those issues with GREEN, and they no longer have the same stranglehold on me. But new issues cropped up. Instead of feeling threatened in my romantic partnership, I felt very threatened by other women’s career successes. Right around when GREEN came out, a lot of my friends started working more as actors and directors and I got very, very competitive.
The idea for the film came from this insane competitiveness that took over me. I became obsessed with my career and felt an insane pressure to be “feminine” — shy, deferential. I traced all of those fears back to early memories of childhood where I felt that I’d been shamed for not embodying these stifling notions of what it was to be a woman.
I started talking more about my feelings of inadequacy as a woman with friends and realized that no one I knew felt like a “woman” in the way we were taught to feel, either. ALWAYS SHINE began as a desire to examine the negative impact that these very confining ideas can have on a woman’s psychology.
ALWAYS SHINE
AFI: This film is reminiscent of the “psychotic women” films of the 1970s. Did you have any of those films in mind when making this? What influenced you while making the film?
ST: Definitely! Robert Altman’s 3 WOMEN was a huge inspiration as was his film IMAGES — as were Ingmar Bergman’s PERSONA, John Cassavetes’ A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE and Lynn Ramsay’s MORVERN CALLAR.
Lawrence Levine, the screenwriter, read a number of books about celebrity obsession, narcissism and feminism. Books we referenced frequently were “Down from the Pedestal” by by Maxine Harris and “Fame Junkies” by Jake Halpern.
AFI: While you played one of the leads in GREEN, here you stayed behind the camera. Talk about that decision, and how you found Mackenzie Davis and Caitlin FitzGerald.
ST: Deciding not to be in the film was something that I thought about for a long time. Ultimately, I didn’t feel like I would be making the film better by acting and directing. To me, the joy of acting is losing myself in a character; being a director makes that an impossibility. I’m always worried about the camera, or the other actors’ performances. When Mackenzie said she wanted to be in the film, I knew that I found someone who would be infinitely better at bringing Anna to life than I would have been.
I cast Mackenzie and Caitlin the “traditional” way, through agents and casting directors. It was important to me to work with actors I had never worked with before. I wanted to challenge myself to be a sharper communicator and better director and I thought that by casting such talented actors, whom I didn’t know, I would be encouraged to do the best I could.
AFI: As someone who has worked both in front of and behind the camera, how do you approach your actors? Does being an actress yourself help with this process?
ST: Being an actor definitely helps with this process. I can’t imagine knowing how to direct actors without experience as an actor myself. Acting is such a vulnerable, exposing process. I think all directors should learn acting as part of their training.
This was a very intimate shoot with a lot of intense, emotionally complex scenes, so it was important to me to create a very relaxed, collaborative environment. We did meditation and acting warm-ups with the cast and crew. Breaking the barrier between the cast and crew was especially important. I wanted the actors to feel free to fail and to explore and play and I felt that by bringing the crew into the process (with warm-ups), the actors would feel safer. We did a week of rehearsals, too, which helped Mackenzie and Caitlin get to know each other.
ALWAYS SHINE screens Tuesday, November 15 as part of New Auteurs.
Sarah Adina Smith’s sophomore feature is the story of Jonah, a man who has been split in two by grief — one who lives in the woods and another who is trapped at sea — with each incarnation looking for a reckoning with God. Actor Rami Malek delivers an exceptional performance, playing fractured parts of the same man and imbuing each persona with a wholly different performance. Kate Lyn Sheil and DJ Qualls round out the cast, as Jonah’s sensitive wife and a drifter who contributes to Jonah’s downward spiral, respectively. Director/writer Smith expertly crafts a darkly humorous and touching film that explores the nuances of the human condition with elements of conspiracy theory and quantum entanglement. BUSTER’S MAL HEART is a visceral, mind-bending mystery that will keep you pondering long after it turns your world upside down.
AFI spoke with Smith about the film.
AFI: This film deals with some pretty complex ideas — identity fracturing, parallel realities. Talk about how the premise of this screenplay came to you.
Sarah Adina Smith: The idea for BUSTER’S MAL HEART grew pretty naturally out of [my 2014 film] THE MIDNIGHT SWIM. Both movies propose a cosmology, seen through the eyes of a so-called “insane” character.
Suppose that your soul is a traveler along the path of everything that ever was and everything that ever will be. THE MIDNIGHT SWIM shows us a character becoming conscious of that path. BUSTER’S MAL HEART takes it one step farther, showing us a character who rebels against that path.
THE MIDNIGHT SWIM was about a woman who was never fully at peace with being born, who chooses a conscious death. She’s the psychological equivalent of an astronaut — boldly launching herself into the darkness, surrendering herself to fate with eyes open. She successfully achieves conscious reincarnation. Her journey is an illumination of the path of eternal recurrence — the ceaseless unfolding of space-time that churns out the magnificent picture show we call “reality.”
BUSTER’S MAL HEART is about a character who feels in his bones that there’s something essentially messed up about the great machine of the universe. The protagonist, Jonah, rebels against God, or lack thereof. He refuses to be a player in a game where he didn’t create or consent to the rules. He was born with a bad heart; that was his Fate. But he found love — tangible love — through his wife and daughter…and refused to let go. BUSTER’S MAL HEART puts forth the idea that love can defy the laws of the universe. That love has the power to rip space-time a new one.
We are all in pursuit of peace. We want release from a cycle that has no end. Because Hell is real, kinda. Hell is the dark factory that processes energy and creates all the beautiful events in the world. I am grateful for Hell because here I am, enjoying these momentary glimpses of “Heaven.” (The beautiful picture show of passing cataclysms.)
For the vast majority of eternity other than the tiny blip of our existence, we are the fuel that runs that factory. Our bodies are no different than the fire of every sun that was ever born…all energy that ever materialized longs to escape. We know for certain that we will die. That our bodies will become fuel for the great machine. The good news is that history repeats itself. The better news is that it’s never fully the same. We’ll rise again from the muck and live another blip.
Jonah is a man who wants release from the whole comedy show. He wants to be truly free. But freedom doesn’t mean anything if you’re enclosed by a cage with no walls. It isn’t possible. Buster’s heart cries out for a reckoning with God or gods or even just nature. He demands it. And he succeeds in calling that trial to session through the sheer power of his heart.
AFI: Why did you choose the film’s very specific setting — both in Montana and in the years leading up to the millennium?
SAS: One half of Jonah charges up the mountain seeking a reckoning with his maker, but encounters only the void. The other half tries to escape a reckoning with his maker down south, and is washed to sea, forced into a conversation he doesn’t want to have.
I chose Montana because it’s the place where Americans go to find themselves in solitude and seek a conversation with the divine. We also shot in the ocean off the coast of Mexico. I specifically wanted to shoot in Mexico because it’s the place where (archetypically) Americans go to run away from their sins and avoid fate.
AFI: How did Rami Malek come on board the project?
SAS: Casting the lead role was the biggest challenge because I was set on casting a Latino actor for the role, which I had written to be bilingual in Spanish and English. My producers and financiers felt equally strongly that we should cast a native Spanish speaker. We spent about six months trying to find the right fit and kept striking out on availability. It finally became clear that if we were going to make the film in 2015, we needed to broaden our search.
But it was really important to me that we cast an actor of color in the role because the character Jonah feels like an outsider in an otherwise very white community. We made a new list and pretty quickly we all realized that Rami Malek was at the very top. This is before MR. ROBOT came out, so I had only seen his work in SHORT TERM 12 and THE PACIFIC, but I thought he was incredibly compelling.
Plus, I did a tarot card reading and the cards don’t lie. I can’t imagine anyone else playing the part. Rami’s a disciplined craftsman and his own toughest critic. He’s one of the hardest working, most inventive and gracious actors I’ve ever met.
AFI: You have a knack for casting great character actors in your films, like Beth Grant in THE MIDNIGHT SWIM and Toby Huss and Lin Shaye in BUSTER’S MAL HEART. How does that casting process work for you?
SAS: Oh man, thank you for saying that. I really love casting. I had the great pleasure of working with the casting director Samy Burch on this movie and she brought so many beautiful ideas to the table.
Toby Huss had been on my radar from HALT AND CATCH FIRE. He has this natural charisma that I find very compelling — he’s playful and serious at the same time. Kind of a jester in the very best and most honorable sense of the word.
I believe it was my producer Travis Stevens who brought Lin Shaye to my attention. Lin’s such a terrific fit for the role. She’s an extremely dedicated actress, fiercely intelligent and a truly wonderful person. In the moment of a scene, Lin is all heart, which is a joy to watch.
AFI: We’ve had the chance to watch you grow as a filmmaker. What lessons did you learn on [AFI FEST 2014 Breakthrough Award winner] THE MIDNIGHT SWIM that you carried over to BUSTER’S MAL HEART?
SAS: THE MIDNIGHT SWIM taught me to trust my instincts, to stay open to surprises and to carry the heavy weight of a feature on my shoulders from start to finish.
I had a really hard moment in the middle of editing THE MIDNIGHT SWIM — kind of a heart of darkness. Because I had lived through it once, I knew it would likely come again on BUSTER. It did come, I was just more prepared to deal with it this time around. I learned to have more faith in the process and to release myself just a bit to fate, over which I have very little control.
BUSTER’S MAL HEART screens at AFI FEST 2016 on Wednesday, November 16, as part of New Auteurs.
Viewed during the Santa Barbara International Film. Laurence Anyways, is a visual feast as Canadian director, Xavier Dolan, tells a love story between two highly charged individuals, Fred, played by Suzanne Clement a fashionable female film and television producer, and Laurence, played by Melvil Poupad, an up and coming successful, thirty-something in his own right who has decided he wants to be a woman and that he’s always wanted to be a woman. Imagine that!
While definitely viewed as a game-changer Laurence’s decision to become a woman isn’t really the central focus of the film despite the amount of attention Dolan provides for it as we see Laurence first few awkward moments and then his full on embodiment and womanly maturation. Nevertheless, the film wouldn’t have the soul to evolve without the essence of Fred as his fiance. Despite all the hype about the film being a caricature of a transvestite it’s a real love story between Fred and Laurence that takes place over the course of the ten years we are privy to in Mr. Dolan’s long tale.girlfriend for this film is really a portrait of their relationship over the course of ten years. They play wonderfully off each other, immediately conjuring intimate undercurrent relationship squabbles, shared amusements, and deep understanding of one another and each ones personal and emotional needs.
Laurence isn’t gay per se, yet Fred unequivocally states she wants to be with a man. Respectfully and with tremendous courage both Laurence and Fred try to go with it. Also of interest to note about Laurence – his mother, played by Nathalie Baye, hated her son but now loves her daughter. Poupad really seems to capture the very assertive yet conflicted nature of Laurence as he meanders emotionally revealing deep scarring in his psyche. Yet by the end of the film it’s become obvious Suzanne Clements has literally stolen the show with her round-robin buildup of intense emotional pandering to the man she so deeply loves and it’s her eyes that treat the viewer to Laurance’s transformation.
Undoubtedly, Dolan is establishing himself as a filmmaker and editor of quite some skill, having won awards at Cannes and at Toronto, and here takes on the costume design as well. Granted often said the clothes don’t make the man but in Laurence Anyways, the costumes illuminate the characters and raise them to a level of such visual delight I would venture to say these costumes help make the characters and assuredly radiate their inner light. In addition, Dolan seems to handle the obvious story beats with a crisp, elegant, and understated style and permeates the screen with an eye for color, pattern, and composition and with a solid dose of fetishism. He also cuts a mean musical score here as well using Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony to accompany a superb montage of raw emotion as the causality of the relationship implodes.
The film runs at 2:45 minutes. In my opinion, the story needs a little more brevity. Still, I give it a strong endorsement as it hits a home run with the 80’s nostalgia, the actor’s powerful performance levels, the gorgeous cinematography, and the colorful characters magnified so profoundly by the extraordinary costume design. Highly recommended.
RVINE, Calif., Nov. 11, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — VIZIO, Inc. announced today its third-year of collaboration with the American Film Institute, highlighted by a sponsorship of AFI FEST 2016 presented by Audi. With a joint mission to celebrate the art of filmmaking, the partnership between AFI and VIZIO connects cinema and technology to enhance the home entertainment experience. This year, VIZIO will showcase its complete VIZIO SmartCast line-up, including the VIZIO SmartCast™ P-Series™ Ultra HD HDR Home Theater Display collection, in the VIZIO Lounge at The Hollywood Roosevelt during the festival. The displays feature High Dynamic Range with Dolby Vision™ and HDR10 content support, culminating in a cinema-like entertainment experience at home.
VIZIO will host the Special Closing Night Gala Presentation of AFI FEST, featuring a red carpet celebration and screening of Patriots Day, directed by Peter Berg. The film stars Mark Wahlberg, Melissa Benoist and Michelle Monaghan and depicts an account of Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis’ actions in the events leading up to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the aftermath, which includes a city-wide manhunt to find the terrorists behind it. The Special Closing Night Gala Presentation of Patriots Day will take place at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on Thursday, November 17 at 7:00pm.
PHOENIX, AZ–(Marketwired – Nov 11, 2016) – Rising India, Inc. (OTC: RSII), a company focused in undervalued opportunities in entertainment, media and hospitality, announces today that fully owned subsidiary TomCat Films has closed deals on 27 film distribution licenses at the American Film Market last week with South Korea being the key buying territory of the market.
TomCat has inked a deal with Mania 22. The South Korean buyer has signed to distribute 20 titles from the TomCat catalog of new films, including “2021”, “3 Tails: A Mermaid Adventure”, “All In Time”, “Appleton”, “Forced Move” and more.
Action, Sci-Fi film, “Genesis: Fall of the Crime Empire” was picked up by Radice, Inc. of South Korea for All Rights.
Six titles went to Jaye Entertainment Co., Ltd. For South Korean rights, including, “Dutch Kills” with Peta Wilson, “Lazarus Rising” starring Eric Roberts and C. Thomas Howell, “All I Need” starring Caitlin Stasey, “Most Dangerous Game”, “Paramedics” and “Watch Me Die”.
Mermaid family film, “3Tails: A Mermaid Adventure” was picked up for Video rights in Germany by Lighthouse Home Entertainment.
U.S. DVD and VOD rights of 3-D horror film, “American Mummy”, were acquired by Wild Eye Releasing.
China’s FirstBrave acquired rights to two love stories, “Love Meet Hope” with Ed Asner and “All In Time” which is currently in U.S. theaters.
COO Ted Chalmers states, “We are very pleased with the deals and we are anticipating further results from the AFM to report to shareholders in the coming days and weeks, alongside news on new acquisitions and potential revenue streams”. TomCat will also be attending the European Film Market (EFM) in February.
Ranked at the top of AFI’s list of the greatest films of all time, Orson Welles’ portrait of newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane (a thinly veiled stand-in for William Randolph Hearst) is brilliant, blistering and beautiful. The story moves through the tragedies and triumphs of Kane’s life, from a happy childhood in snowy Colorado cut short; to a towering ascendance in the newspaper industry; a dysfunctional marriage with a tone-deaf wife he tries desperately to mold into a great opera singer; and a cloistered existence in his palatial home, Xanadu. Welles’ superb cast, many from his own Mercury Theatre, is made up of some of the most vibrant stars of the 1940s, including Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Everett Sloane and, of course, Welles himself, who perfectly captures the aging Kane with a deft mix of sensitivity and ferocity. Gregg Toland’s innovative cinematography is now the stuff of legend, putting the deep focus technique on the map with shot after shot of crisply layered foreground and background images. If this is your first or 100th time seeing this landmark film, make sure to catch it at AFI FEST 2016 in a restored DCP, courtesy of Warner Bros. Classics.
The screening will be followed by an AFI Master Class with Welles expert Peter Bogdanovich, who spoke to AFI about CITIZEN KANE ahead of AFI FEST.
AFI: CITIZEN KANE turns 75 this year. Why do we still talk about it today?
Peter Bogdanovich: It’s a landmark film, not just Orson Welles’ best film but a masterpiece. It was a masterpiece then in 1941 and still is. It’s a brilliant symphony, and is exciting to watch. Everything about it is dynamic, and that very dynamism is the camouflage for the extremely sad story Welles tells. You’re not moved to tears by CITIZEN KANE really, except as a kind of thrillingly done film.
AFI: What was it like seeing the film for the first time, in 1955?
PB: I was 16, and I was quite bowled over by it. I thought it was brilliant. I’ve seen it, I think, 10 or 12 times since then. I saw it the other day on television briefly. You can’t resist it. Everything about it is brilliant. The performances are amazing, and Orson himself, his performance is extraordinary. People spend so much time talking about the direction that they don’t notice how brilliant that performance is. It was everybody’s first film, which makes it even more extraordinary. It’s amazing to realize that all those people had never made a movie before.
AFI: Would you say that much of contemporary cinema is indebted to the style and direction of CITIZEN KANE?
PB: It’s funny because it’s not that extraordinary in terms of the technique. He used a pretty simple technique in many ways. A lot of long takes. The scene goes on, and you don’t notice how long it goes without a cut. That wasn’t that common, though a lot of filmmakers in that period did do shots like that, but not to the degree that Orson did. Years later, I said to him, “What do you think is the difference between doing a scene in one shot or in many cuts?” He said, “Well, we used to say that’s what distinguished the men from the boys.” The whole thing, the construction of the story, the flashback structure — it wasn’t any one thing that was unusual. It was the whole production. It’s a very depressing story. There’s not a shred of hope at the end. It’s all very downbeat, but the style of the film, the way he made it, the overlapping dialogue, the flashback structure, some surprising camera angles — the whole thing made a tremendous impression if you were sensitive to what he was doing.
AFI: How was the film received in 1941, versus years later when you first saw it?
It got great reviews in its original release, except in The New York Times. [Critic] Bosley Crowther didn’t care for it much. He thought the central character was shallow. It couldn’t play in a lot of theaters because the Hearst organization had blacklisted it. So, as Orson said, they couldn’t make money if they couldn’t get a theater. That’s why it failed. Orson suggested they open it in tents around the country. It was not shown for many years, but it was brought back to New York in 1955, to a small art house, and that’s where I first saw it. That’s when it started to gain this reputation.
AFI: You had a close relationship with Welles for many years. How did he feel about the film?
PB: He didn’t want to talk about it much. Orson did THE DAVID FROST SHOW [as guest host] in 1970 and I was there. He had a guest, [author] Norman Mailer, and after the show they went to Frankie and Johnnie’s in Manhattan and I joined them for dinner. We sat down and Norman said to Orson, “There’s a great shot in CITIZEN KANE…” and Orson said, “Oh, no, Norman, not CITIZEN KANE.” Norman looked perplexed for a minute and then said, “Oh, yeah, I guess it’s like me and ‘The Naked and the Dead,’” meaning that both Norman and Orson were plagued by the notoriety of their first effort. It was the only picture that anybody ever talked to him about, and he was irritated about it because he’d made other pictures that nobody saw. It depressed him actually. It was a struggle to get him to talk about KANE. Reluctantly he talked about it; I would trick him into it sometimes.
AFI: When Welles began CITIZEN KANE, did he know he was making a masterpiece?
PB: I couldn’t say. I think he thought he was making a pretty good picture. The thing about CITIZEN KANE is it’s very cold, and there are moments that are touching, but they’re few and far between. It’s not an emotional picture. KANE is relentlessly negative, but what makes it exciting is the way it’s told, and the way it’s acted and the way it’s done, really. It’s almost as though he’s saying that it’s only through art that we can really survive. The artistry of the picture is what gives it its lift, because if you examine the story, it’s pretty bleak.
AFI: How has CITIZEN KANE influenced your own seminal work?
PB: I can’t say I was influenced by CITIZEN KANE directly. I was influenced by Orson’s thinking, and things he said to me. But I wasn’t particularly influenced by the film. I wasn’t influenced by the technique of it as much as by the youthful spirit of it. I was influenced by a general feeling of fearlessness. CITIZEN KANE was nominated for Best Picture, but what won was HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY by John Ford, an emotional film about the dissolution of a family. CITIZEN KANE is a cold film about the dissolution and tragedy of a man who loses everything, including his soul.
CITIZEN KANE screens AFI FEST on Sunday, November 13, at 1:30 p.m.
Annette Bening has triumphed on both stage and screen since the 1980s. Early in her career, she scored a Tony® nomination for her Broadway debut in COASTAL DISTURBANCES. She has four Academy Award® nominations to her name, for THE GRIFTERS (1990), AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999), BEING JULIA (2004) and THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (2010), plus an Emmy® nomination in 2006 for MRS. HARRIS.
This year, AFI FEST highlights her role as a single mother in 1979 Santa Barbara in Mike Mills’ 20TH CENTURY WOMEN — one of her best performances yet. As Dorothea, Bening is a force of nature, channeling a smart, resourceful woman who anchors a rambling bohemian house with a slew of perfectly era-specific itinerants. Additionally, in RULES DON’T APPLY, the festival’s Opening Night Gala directed by and starring Bening’s husband Warren Beatty, she brings her sparkling charisma to a crucial supporting role.
AFI spoke with Bening about her films in the festival.
AFI: What initially attracted you to the character of Dorothea, and how did you join the project of 20TH CENTURY WOMEN?
Annette Bening: Mike Mills called and asked me to read the screenplay; we then met and had dinner. We talked extensively about his ideas, his mom and the character of Dorothea. Shortly after that he asked me to play Dorothea, and we’ve been talking about her ever since.
AFI: The film has an excellent and varied supporting cast, all of whom orbit around Dorothea in different ways. Can you talk about what it was like working with Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, Elle Fanning and Lucas Jade Zumann?
AB: We were a tight and loving ensemble, thanks to Mike Mills putting us together in rehearsal in immediate and imaginative ways. We danced, improv’d, did specific acting exercises and got to know each other. It was challenging and penetrative work, where we searched ourselves and each other to find the hearts of the characters. Hopefully that shows on the screen.
AFI: Does Mike Mills’ vision of 1979 resonate with your experience of it?
AB: I was 19 in 1979, and for me, Mike is contextualizing that time in his own unique way.
AFI: One of the many great things about 20TH CENTURY WOMEN is how it grapples with the idea of confusing and contradictory expectations about femininity and masculinity. As an actress, was it exciting to tackle this?
AB: In rehearsal and preparation, intellectual ideas are naturally at play. In performance, these ideas become nascent for me, and I’m trying to listen, respond and be in the immediate moment with my fellow actors.
AFI: You have a supporting role in the festival’s Opening Night Gala, RULES DON’T APPLY, written and directed by and starring your husband, Warren Beatty. Do you two have a collaborative relationship when working together on set?
AB: Working on RULES DON’T APPLY with my husband was for me a dream come true. He’s a great director, enjoying his actors with zeal and humor. He’s demanding and exacting in the best way and even let me improvise a little, and that’s my favorite thing.
20TH CENTURY WOMEN screens on Wednesday, November 16, as a Gala Tribute; RULES DON’T APPLY screens on Thursday, November 10, as the Opening Night Gala.
