DIVINES, one of the most critically acclaimed and talked-about films at this year’s Cannes film festival and recent awards winner at the American Film Institute’s AFIFEST 2016 presented by Audi, will be available to Netflix subscribers exclusively today, November 18th. Get a first look below!
The funny, suspenseful and often emotional drama tells the story of Dounia, a tough, but naive teenager who sees getting rich or dying trying as her most viable option in life. Set in a ghetto near Paris where drugs and religion reign supreme, Dounia is hungry for her share of power and success. Enlisting the help of her best friend she decides to follow the footsteps of a respected and successful neighborhood dealer. But when Dounia meets a strong-willed and sensual dancer, her life takes a surprising turn.
Houda Benyamina’s energetic directorial debut was awarded the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for the best first feature film presented in one of the event’s selections. Most recently, the film received multiple accolades yesterday AFIFEST. Benyamina, Oulaya Amamra, and Divines were winners of the New Auteurs Audience Award, Breakthrough Audience Award and the Special Jury Mention for Acting.
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.
Disenchanted and unimpressed by the parameters of life in the slums of Paris, a fearless and ferocious teenager named Dounia unabashedly dreams of prosperity, not only for herself but also for her charismatic best friend and alcoholic mother. In her audacious pursuit of money, power and respect, she aligns herself with a ruthless gangster who uses her as a pawn to exact revenge on a rival drug lord. When their plan goes off the rails and escalates into violent territory, Dounia is forced to reconcile the allure of quietly escaping to the life of her dreams with the reality of the ramifications of her actions. Shot in a style that is at once melodic and discordant, DIVINES is a cinematic haiku of empowerment, youthful angst, racial inequality and the consequences of poverty.
Winner of the Camera d’Or prize at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, DIVINES is the feature film debut of director Houda Benyamina.
AFI: Oulaya Amamra gives an intense performance as the raw and uninhibited protagonist Dounia. How did you develop that character?
Houda Benyamina: One year of physical training was necessary. Douniais a fighter who develops an incredible lust for life and you had to feel it through Oulaya’sbody. Her body had to embody this strength and this lust for surpassing herself; that is why Oulaya took boxing and parkour lessons. Apart from that, the character had to be in peak physical condition to keep up with the pace of the rehearsals and of the shooting. This was long and intense, and needed stamina.
Dounia has a cat-like side, she slides in and out of underpasses, passageways; she is at the same time deep down and high up. So Oulaya’s task was to watch documentaries on felines to grasp their way of being and moving. She also viewed a lot of gangster films and films in which the hero is transforming. We were looking for an organic transformation and this required an important identifying process. Oulaya suggested lots of ideas of clothing. During a whole year she wore Dounia’sclothes, she ate, slept and lived like Dounia. She even went sleeping in a gypsy camp because she had to understand her character’s rage due to a feeling of injustice, and to be able to find in herself Dounia’s anger for being ostracized.
AFI: What was your rehearsal process?
HB: During the shooting I developed a sort of safety line around the actors to protect them from any lapse in concentration. The camera, for instance, was on all the time so that the crew did not have to care about it and could keep focused on the actors. To me the film set is like a sanctuary, a holy place. I ask everybody to be extremely concentrated, full of solemnity toward the actors acting. And it is very important to me.
AFI: Questions of race and class inequality come up in the script. How did those themes shape the characters and plot?
HB: DIVINESis a film on spirituality and holiness. What was important to me was the apocalyptic ending. How does one rise from the ashes? How does one learn [that] there are so many things which shape us: family, social class, education, politics — but through these primary determinisms, I wanted to raise the question of free will and how it appeared in these characters looking for appreciation and dignity. Injustice is my driving force to creation. I feel close to my characters, who oscillate between darkness and light; I like exploring the two sides of human beings. Social inequality and the hunger to overcome are present for sure, but they are elements of the characters and not their essence. The essence centers on them and their inner lives.
Most important was to arouse emotion, because it makes us think and allows us to understand and question society. I intended to make a universal film with universal issues of love, friendship, the quest for recognition and dignity, and ambition.
AFI: You’re a celebrated short filmmaker. What made you want to make the transition to feature film?
HB: It was important to find someone who understands me and has the same artistic and human values, and I found him: my producer, Marc-Benoît Créancier. Once we had made my medium-length film SUR LA ROUTE DU PARADIS together, it was obvious to me to make a feature film. As a film director and a great believer I have lots of doubts and I ask myself lots of questions. My producer helps me overcome them; he encourages and guides me and he trusts me so much that making a feature film with him was a foregone conclusion.
AFI: In one sentence, what statement or question would like to linger with the audience following the screening?
HB: What do I really need to succeed?
DIVINES screens at AFI FEST 2016 on Saturday, November 12, and Monday, November 14, as part of the New Auteurs section of the festival.
2016 has been named ‘The Year of Cinema’ in Russia, with extra funds allocated for the local film industry. Russian Sputnik News service recalls five Soviet movies which left a lasting impression worldwide and are still looked up at as examples of stunning cinematography.
The Cranes are Flying, 1957 (Letyat Zhuravli)
This military drama, based on the play “Eternally Alive” (“Vechno zhivye”) by Viktor Rozov was directed at Mosfilm studio by the Soviet director Mikhail Kalatozov. The Cranes are Flying has become the first and so far the only domestic film to have been awarded the Palme d’Or — the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
With surprising emotional power, the film reveals a tragic story of two lovers, who were cruelly and permanently separated by war. Picasso himself was shocked, saying he had not seen anything like this in the last hundred years.
In order to film some of the epic scenes, Russian cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky invented and built the first operator’s circular rail. Some of the groundbreaking techniques he pioneered are still used by filmmakers. According to renowned American film critic Todd McCarthy, the influence of Kalatozov and Urusevsky was obvious in the 2015 Oscar-winning movie The Revenant.
Battleship Potemkin, 1925 (Bronenosets Potyomkin)
In 1958, this Soviet silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm was named the greatest film of all time at the Brussels World’s Fair. Twenty years later, film critics worldwide rated this movie first on their hundred best films list. And in 2009, the Russian drama was cited as one of the top 15 blockbusters to have had the greatest impact on world cinema.
Created in just four months, Battleship Potemkin was ordered by the Soviet government, which needed propaganda material to mark the anniversary of the First Russian Revolution. In 1926 in Germany, the government tried to ban the film. A few years later, mutineers aboard the Dutch ship “De Zeven Provinciën” claimed that their revolt was inspired by this film.
Hundreds of examples can be found in world cinema copying the principles of the film’s famous shooting scene. The scene was directly quoted in Coppola’s Godfather, Gilliam’s Brazil, and De Palma’s The Untouchables. Even The Simpsons have referenced Eisenstein.
Andrei Rublev, 1966
A sincere biographical historical drama directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and co-written with Andrei Konchalovsky is loosely based on the life of Andrei Rublev, the great 15th-century Russian icon painter. A version of the film was shown at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI prize from The International Federation of Film Critics).
Tarkovsky sought to create a film that shows the artist as “a world-historic figure” and Christianity “as an axiom of Russia’s historical identity” during a turbulent period of Russian history. It became a real eye-opener for Western audiences, which had perceived the Soviet Union as a bastion of atheism and godlessness.
At home, the film was often labeled as “Anti-Russian, antipatriotic and ahistorical.” The Soviet government refused to release the movie until 1971, when a censored version of the film was released. According to a 1978 survey of world film critics, the film had become one of the hundred best movies in the history of cinema. The European Film Academy in 1995 included it in its ten best films of world cinema.
War and Peace, 1966-67
Leo Tolstoy’s immortal novel has been adopted for the silver screen and television several times. The Soviet war drama written and directed by Sergei Bondarchuk won the Golden Globe Award in 1969 for Best Foreign Language Film. It was the first Soviet picture to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and also the longest film ever to receive an Academy Award. Produced by the Mosfilm studios and released in four parts, the film became the most expensive one ever made in the USSR, at a cost of 8,291,712 Soviet rubles, equal to 9,213,013 USD in 1967 or over 66 mln USD in today’s money. In 1967, the film was entered into the 1967 Cannes Film Festival outside of the competition; it was sent there instead of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev.
Bondarchuk’s War and Peace became known for its large-scale battle scenes and use of innovative panoramic filming of battlefields. Several scenes were shot using a hand-held 1KSSHR camera, which weighed about 10 kg and required uncommon physical strength when wielded by film operator Anatoly Petritsky.
Some unusual techniques were adopted by the film makers during the shooting. Some scenes of the Battle of Borodino were taken with the camera fixed on a 120-meter-long cable, which was stretched across the battlefield. To “dive” into the atmosphere of the Natasha Rostova’s first ball, Petritsky stood on roller skates and was moved among the waltzing couples by an assistant. These techniques were included in a documentary about filming the movie and were later used as study material for the training of future operators.
Hedgehog in the Fog, 1975
This Soviet animated film was directed by Yuriy Norshteyn and produced by Soyuzmultfilm animation studio in Moscow. In 1976, the cartoon won its first prizes at the All-Union festival of animated films in Frunze and at the Festival of Films for Children and Young Adults in Tehran. In 2003, the cartoon was crowned the best animated film of all time in Japan and worldwide from among a top-150 list created by 140 critics and animators from different countries. The main hero of this animated film, the Hedgehog, received its own sculpture in Kiev. The film was also referenced in one of the episodes of the animated comedy series Family Guy, “Spies Reminiscent of Us” in 2009.
Famous Japanese film director Hayao Miyazaki, who created such anime masterpieces as My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, named this Soviet story about a little hedgehog his favorite work.
Interesting techniques were used during the cartoon’s creation. The fog effects were created by putting a very thin piece of paper on top of the scene and slowly lifting it up toward the camera frame-by-frame until everything behind it became blurry and white. The film also used a trick of combined filming; for example, the water was real, albeit hatched by the artist.
Viewed at the AFI Fest 2012 at the Egyptian Theatre. Holy Motors, winner of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival’s Award of the Youth and the Hugo Award for Best Feature at the 2012 Chicago International Film Festival, directed by controversial Frenchman Leos Carax of Tokyo! fame, tells a beguiling tale of one Monsieur Oscar, a master of disguise, as he journeys from one appointment to another through the course of the dark hours of the night in Paris. He is, in turn, a beggar, captain of industry, an assassin, a bizarre reptilian-like virtual sexcapade participant, a sewer-dwelling, underground railroad member resurfacing as a cemetery-robbing monster gorging himself on flower bouquets and eventually kidnapping a famous model (played stunningly by Eva Mendez) complete in accompaniment with accordion players and more bizarre culinary choices with Ms. Mendez’s hair and paper Euros.
The film opens with a beautiful shot of the night sky. From there the unusualness begins. We see a sleeping audience. Then, the “appointments” begin with the old woman without a care begging on the sidewalk.While his stretch limo motors from locale to locale Monsieur Oscar utilizes the commute time to change his appearance through elaborate forms of make-up and disguise techniques. Carax gives the viewer an eyeful with a frontal nudity scene while paying tribute to American Beauty with rose petals and in a more human form with the camera presence of beauty Mendez. Throughout Holy Motors Carax allows famed cinematographer, Caroline Champetier (Of Gods & Men ) the camera ample time in the limo itself. This choice amplifies the effects of Monsieur Oscar’s ability to metamorphisize while on the go from appointment to appointment lending a genius effect that Monsieur Oscar is involved in transacting business, of sorts.
I initially was excited to see Parisian scenes and the River Seine. And while I did get to see these, I also got to see a lot more in the way of artistic license as Carax pushes the limits of normalcy through the antics of Monsieur Oscar through the dark of night in an unseen before Parisian form. Finally, towards the end of the night the viewer is returned to a sense of normalcy as Monsieur Oscar plays a caring family only to be trumped by a surprise ending
I do recommend this film. It has a most interesting style of storytelling. While it may or may not be mainstream, it has unusual artistic value in the subtlety Carax implements to drive home his point that in the end French cinema is all about business in one form or another. Well done, Mr. Carax.
One of the classics at Cannes Film Festival in May was AJ Kardar’s 1959 black and white movie, Jago Hua Savera (Day Shall Dawn).
The film, which was to be screened as part of the Restored Classics Section of Jio MAMI 18th Mumbai Film Festival starting October 20, has been dropped.
Made in 1959 in what was then East Bengal, Kardar’s work was to have screened at Mumbai. But the prevailing political climate has not allowed this.
In a section titled, Restored Classics — which has become quite a hit at Cannes since it was introduced some years ago and which has seen the works of some Indian masters like Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen figuring — Jago Hua Savera was described as a gem.
Be that as it may, Jago Hua Savera is a haunting piece of celluloid that was also Pakistan’s first ever submission to the Foreign Language Oscars. The year was 1960. A moving story of fishermen in East Pakistan, the movie traces their weaknesses and strengths — clearly underlying their never-say-die spirit in the face of a hostile nature and prowling man-eating tigers.A Cannes brochure said: “By many standards, life in these far flung tiny villages is dull and monotonous, yet, for the people who live there, life is full of trials and turbulence. This is the story of the people of the river to hunt for fish. This is the story of one such man, of many such men, each aspiring to own their own boat.” The simple folk had a simple aspiration – to own a fishing boat, but caught in a web of loans, they lost even before they began their fight. The big sharks were too powerful for these small fish.
After all these years, what strikes as truly remarkable about Jago Hua Savera was its truly international crew and cast. The revolutionary Pakistani poet, Faiz Ahmad, wrote the screenplay and even penned lyrics for this quasi-documentary fiction, while a German-born British cameraman, Walter Lassally, caught the fantastic rural scenes with a kind of unforgettable magic. He used the Arriflex camera with superb dexterity to capture a set of rank amateur actors as they went about their mundane lives on the banks of Meghna. The style was true realism.
The original story came from West Bengal’s Manik Bandhopadhyay, the lead actor, Tripti Mitra, too. She was a member of the Indian People’s Theatre Association. And Indian music director, Timir Baran, co-composed along with Pakistan’s producer-composer Nauman Taseer. Shanti Chatterjee, an assistant of Satyajit, was also part of the crew. And one can see Ray’s influence in Kardar’s work.
Cut to present. The movie was restored with the help of the Nauman Taseer Foundation. Picture and the Deluxe Restoration in London. Taseer had been the financial backbone of Jago Hua Savera in its original avatar. Now his son, Anjum, took it upon himself to reconstruct a long-forgotten classic. He dug up the prints from France, London and Karachi, screened them at festivals like the Three Continents at Nantes (France) and New York, before he got restoration teams to work on the film, a painstaking job.
When the digitally-remastered movie was shown at Cannes, Faiz’s daughter and celebrated poet now living in Lahore, Salima Hashmi, had tears welling up, and she called the experience “emotional”. Understandably so. For, her father was in jail — as part of the anti-Communist crackdown by Pakistan’s General Ayub Khan — when Jago Hua Savera premiered in London. The movie went on to win a Gold at the 1959 Moscow Film Festival, and nothing was heard of it after that. Till it re-emerged as a brand new print at Cannes.
And Kardar’s life like that of the fishermen in the film ran parallel to the sea and the surf and the sand. He initially worked as a sailor and then went to London to study cinema. His first dabble with the megaphone was Jago Hua Savera.
In an important way, Kardar’s brilliant piece of creativity was a turning point in not only the cinematic fortunes of East Bengal — which really had no money for the arts and was always subjugated culturally by the rich and powerful West Pakistan — but also that of the country as a whole. After the 1947 partition of the Indian sub-continent, the thriving film industry in Lahore shifted to what was then Bombay. Talent migrated, and Bombay became Maya Nagari, while the movie industry in Lahore floundered and perished. Jago Hua Savera came as a whiff of fresh air, injecting oxygen into Pakistan’s business of cinema. But the glory was not allowed to last by Pakistan’s military rulers, who saw a threat — real or imagined — in the emergence of cinema in their eastern wing, which boasted of several men of letters.
It is, therefore, not surprising that the number of films produced annually in Pakistan is well under 20, while India churns out about 1300. After, Jago Hua Savera, Pakistan did not submit anything for the Oscars till 1963 (Ghunghat). It was a long gap after that — till 2013, when the country sent Zinda Bhag.
Jago Hua Savera was a landmark work all right, and it is a pity that it will not be screened at Mumbai Film Festival.
Japanese films failed to make the Golden Lion shortlist at the 73rd Venice Film Festival that wrapped up in September. A question was posed at the Venice Film Festival Press Conference on why Japan is missing out on challenging in the top competition for the second consecutive year.
Also in Cannes and Berlin this year, no Japanese films were shown in competition, meaning they were not in the running for the top prizes at the “Big Three” film festivals.
While experts say Asian films have been losing their foothold in the increasingly competitive film festival circuit, they urge Japanese filmmakers to pursue their ingenuity and attempt a more international perspective.
The Venice festival has given the Golden Lion prize to Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon and Takeshi Kitano’s Hana-bi, and also showcased films by Kitano, Hayao Miyazaki, Shinya Tsukamoto and other Japanese filmmakers in competition for 13 consecutive years until 2014. Although three of the 21 films showcased in competition in 2008 were from Japan, no Japanese movies have made it to the main competition for the past two years.
“With the number of films produced having increased, the margin for not only Japanese films but also for other Asian movies to be featured at international film festivals has shrunk in recent years,” said Tokyo International Film Festival programming director Yoshihiko Yatabe. “As it stands, it is less of the quality of the works than the fact that organizers can’t get around to reviewing Asian films as South American and North European films are also doing great.”
However, Filipino director Lav Diaz won the Golden Lion for Best Film for his The Woman Who Left at Venice this year.
A forum focusing on the rapidly growing Chinese market was also held on the sidelines.
But Venice festival director Alberto Barbera said the festival had picked up a powerful and beautiful Japanese work in the Orizzonti section for cutting-edge films: Kei Ishikawa’s first feature film Gukoroku–Traces of Sin.
While Ishikawa was presented in Orizzonti, Yasushi Kawamura’s full-CG film Gantz: O–also his first full-length feature–was screened out of the competition at Venice.
At Cannes, Koji Fukada’s Harmonium received the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section.
“In Japan, it is difficult for filmmakers to make auteuristic art films, but it shouldn’t be impossible if they are determined,” said film journalist Atsuko Tatsuta, as to how Japanese films could break into the competition lineup. “They need to gain a more international perspective by collaborating with other countries and making other efforts.”
Jean-Michel Frodon, former editorial director of film magazine Cahiers du Cinema, said that although Japanese filmmakers are making good films, they have yet to earn recognition abroad. He also stressed the importance of showing their presence at other film festivals and promoting their works to overseas audiences.
*Featured photo: The red carpet at the Venice Film Festival in Lido Island, Italy, where all the films want to be competing (The Asahi Shimbun)
Here are all the films in competition at the 2016 QCinema Film Festival
Aside from the films in competition, there are also special screenings, including its opening film, Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden, which was nominated for a Palme d’Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.
In celebration of the 20th death anniversary of the Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski, his films Blue (1993), White (1994), and Red (1994) will be screened at the festival.
For the Screen International section will screen films that have been lauded in the international film festival circuit, while RainbowQC will show movies that depict the experiences of the LGBTQ community.
Digitally restored films will be shown for Back Throwback, movies from across the country will be shown for Cinema Rehiyon, and Pinoy Spotlight features Blanka by Kohki Hasei and Area by Louie Ignacio.
