Without any lengthy introductions, just gonna post my "Telluride Diary," just little notes jotted down after each day of amazing films, people, tributes, etc. Here goes...
September 4, 2009
This is a dream town, out of a 1930s Western: everyone nods hello, everyone has dogs, and there are creeks and bridges running everywhere!
Symposium:
Paolo Cherchi-Usai
It was strange to see people like Linda Williams (first group “leader”) and Cherchi-Usai appear before my eyes, since they were scholars I’d only read about in the classroom. He was this clean-shaven, thin Italian middle-aged man, who was very well-spoken, and a great listener as well. He seemed to be really passionate about film preservation, to say the least. It was interesting to hear that he’d make these short films made out of found footage, show them only in Catholic churches, and then burn them afterwards. So much for preservation. He was not only knowledgeable about silent film, but also of the new digital media—very impressive.
Ken Burns
I’d only heard about him when I read an interview on So Yong Kim, director of Treeless Mountain. I still have not watched his works, but feel strongly about them nevertheless, because of his great analogies and emotional anecdotes peppered delightfully throughout his discussion. It’s true, it’s all about subjectivity. Everyone has a right to their own truths, even though in the end, we’re all trying to tell a story. And yes, there is a beginning, middle, and an end, but I think he should’ve added the phrase, “not necessarily in that order.” He truly had a hopeful message for all film students, and alerted me to the fact that there are some films he hasn’t seen, and it’s okay.
Alexander Payne
Funny that he is the guest director for this year’s festival, especially since our Script Analysis class had the pleasure of speaking to his long-time collaborator, Jim Taylor. He was brutally frank about everything, which was a relief after the two very serious, very intimate conversations that preceded his. When he said, “I don’t know” multiple times, it wasn’t frustrating; quite the contrary, it was refreshing. It really confirms the notion that it can really be up to the film critics to analyze and interpret every filament, and the director has the liberty to make it and leave it, so to speak. He definitely seems confident and comfortable enough in his own skin. It was surprisingly easy to just go up to him and ask for a picture, then add the bit that I met his pal, Jim.
Vision (dir. Margarathe von Trotta)
After the short introduction by the lovely Professor Annette Insdorf, I started to get sleepy—blame the jet lag! I dozed off multiple times throughout the screening of Vision, but it was very much like a modern version of Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc. This could be a good or bad thing. I will need to view it more thoroughly to make other judgments, I’m afraid.
The White Ribbon (dir. Michael Haneke)
Believe it or not, this is my first Haneke experience. I can’t say whether this was the best first Haneke film to watch, but it was certainly captivating and mind-bending. First of all, there is an absolute lack of a soundtrack. Yes, there are hymns and choir boys’ harpings, but aside from the “live” music, there is only the voice-over, the dialogue, and sounds of nature. It was very Bressonian, in my opinion, and it really showed in his proclivity for long takes and stretches of silence. There’s also the classic Ozu touch, of showing “empty spaces” or the Italian Neorealism style of showing a whole process without cuts and punctuations.
The subject matter is very bleak and pessimistic; and this is an understatement. It was all the more striking that Haneke did not choose to show any of the violent acts until Karli’s post-torture trauma. Someone in the gondola also made a good point about “unresolved chords” in the live music presented throughout the film. Not only the music seemed unresolved, each scene was the same: the scene in which the pastor father presents the kneeling children with the wine comes to mind; we don’t hear him finish his “your sins are resolved” with the last boy.
Haneke was perhaps trying to make the point that war is present everywhere. A label is just that, a label. We call this one World War I, and that one the Battle of Algiers, but in a sense, they were present in the peoples’ minds even before they actually declared it, and before the first gunshot was sounded. It’s also unsettling to know that the culprit is never clear, and the truth is not always revealed, despite tiresome investigations and bitter accusations. If violence is present in a small countryside in Germany, it is present anywhere. We must also ask ourselves, if cruelty is committed against the children of the sinful parents, who are we to blame? How can the matter be tackled?
September 5th, 2009
Toni (dir. Jean Renoir)
This was shown as a part of the Manny Farber introduction, and is a film that he supposedly taught often. Thankfully, I was awake for the entire thing. My favorite bit was the live singing that took place every so often, with the wandering travelers. Instead of unnecessary dialogue or heavy reliance on comedic relief, the music dispersed throughout the film allowed for emotional release, and was far more graceful than if it were other visually stylistic devices.
Touching also were the book-ends—that is, the railroad tracks—that signal the beginning and ending, not necessarily in that order, and of the cyclical nature of the lives of the immigrants in this small town.
STUDENT PRINTS
Martina y la luna (dir. Javier Loarte)
This was a good way to start off the shorts: part little-girl fantasy, part technical experimentation extravaganza. The fact that her “prince” is a green paint-riddled vagabond who speaks Russian—Martina’s interpretation is that he is a green-skinned alien who speaks Lunarese—is ingenious.
The Last Mermaids (dir. Liz Chae)
Nice to see a Columbia M.F.A represented, as well as someone who is of the same ethnicity! Perhaps it was too short to tackle the history and nature and pain of the Jeju haenyos, but I’m still pleased with the underwater effects and the traditional Korean singing.
Firstborn (dir. Etienne Kallos)
This was perhaps the most disturbing, if not most poignant of the shorts, simply because it dealt with the touchy subject of incest, and one between brothers at that. It is an isolated town in South Africa, and I believe the family is of some Nordic descent. The reclusive nature of this family alone may be to blame for the horror that ensues throughout the film. It may also be an polarization of our fears of others—if I must use the word, of xenophobia—and the suspicion drives us to the point in which we’d rather hurt our own kind.
Sinkhole (dir. Eric Scherbarth)
Another Columbia M.F.A student graced us this day. I suppose it was a judicious choice on part of the curators to include this in the middle, but I don’t have much to say about it. A good scare/laugh was needed. End of story.
Kid (dir. Tom Green)
We often want so much either to be part of the adult scheme and story our parents are involved in, and at the same time so repulsed that we wished we were forever young. Just from looks alone, the adolescent boy who appears in this film is already too ashen for his age, his cheeks sunken in.
Carpet Kingdom (dir. Michael Rochford)
I must be so warmed up to the New York-style humor or way of life that Cali humor does not stimulate me in the least. Another student at the symposium mentioned that this was probably the most expensive short of them all. In addition, I think it was mainly placed as the last short because of the “obligatory happy ending” we often dislike to admit but desperately need.
Symposium:
Michael Haneke
Haneke’s appearance goes so well with his film style. I was also pleased to know that his favorite filmmaker is Bresson, something so evident in his own works. He spoke a little about engineering: how sound scares/effects more than images, and how the preparation and research is 80% of the finished work. The voice-over narration was employed to the effects of personalizing the narrative further; the schoolteacher admits from the get-go that he is not pretending to know anything.
Margarathe von Trotta
Maragarathe is strikingly beautiful, even for her years. Once again, I was pleased to hear that she had a lot of Leone’s images and Seventh Seal in mind for not only Vision but other works as well. To her, the memory of films affects the subconscious so much so that one may not even realize its surfacing until after a whole film has been completed.
A Prophet (dir. Jacques Audiard)
Suffice it to say that this was nothing like I’ve ever seen before: style, acting, editing, etc. It was unbelievable to me that the protagonist, played by Tahar Rahim, was cast in his very first role (the director and he had met in the back of the car, according to the Q & A session).
Prison is a microcosm, complete with betrayals, social hierarchy and brutal violence (again!). And the only reason is to survive.
Vincere (dir. Marco Bellochio)
In dealing with insane asylums, I was very much reminded of Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor. The portrait that we get of Benito Mussolini’s mistress is so sad that it is powerful. It makes me wonder how much a woman will go in order to protect her offspring and protect her pride. The heredity of insanity is also placed into speculation, since all three characters—the two Benitos and Ida—encompass a realm that we as audiences cannot even dare to imagine.
As always, Bellochio’s choice of actors and music was nothing short of miraculous.
On a personal note, I will never forget this night, because I was shivering in the cold for about an hour (or more). What a time to encounter the Telluride rain.
September 6, 2009
Second to the last day. Impossible.
Whether it was meant as flattery or not, it was nice to hear from Howie Movshovitz that we were the best group of students. Who knows what he’ll say next year, but I’m still blushing.
Room and a Half (dir. Andrey Khrzhanovsky)
Along with The White Ribbon, this is probably my favorite film thus far. It is just the right amount of poetry recitation, animation, cats, and conversation with the dead. And this was nine in the morning!
I am inspired to the point that I would research more about Khrzhanovsky, about Brodsky, and about Proust. Thesis?
Special Medallion: Serge Bromberg
I’ve never seen any live performances with such good taste for silent shorts in my life! I wish I can remember everything: the titles, the premises, and the names. Alas, I will try… the pig, the trip to the star (twice), the drunken man who sees naked women, the hen who can pop out chicks and absorb them again, the somewhat disturbing spaghetti commercial, and of course, Gertie the dinosaur.
I forget that there’s a whole science to film.
Symposium:
Jacques Audiard & Thomas Bidegain
It must be very convenient for Audiard not to travel with a separate translator, since Bidegain really knows his stuff. They took a total of about three years to complete the project, and they had a collection of about two to three notebooks that they used to research and plot the film. They relied on many non-actors, most of which had prison experience, and most of whom gave the tips to the director himself.
What I found most interesting about what Audiard said was related to his background/foreground way of filming. Instead of heavy reliance on the shot as a single unit, the idea of splitting it beforehand in the mind, and allowing that to govern the action that enfolds on the screen is really ingenious.
The constant appearance of Reyab’s ghost is what Audiard liked to refer to as Malik’s conscience: within this crazy shithole of a prison, this is the only thing he has to rely on, a reminder of his first guilty act committed on the inside, and his first and only friend, in many cases.
The most spontaneous image was the deer that crashed into the car, and “saved” Malik, and also earned him the nickname of “the prophet.” The title was problematic for the director, as he had originally wanted to use “Gotta Serve Someone,” an allusion to Bob Dylan’s music, but there was apparently no French translation for this, and the idea had to be scrapped. In French, “prophet” is also slang for gangster, which is very important to the film, obviously, but also dangerous for religious reasons.
Andrey Khrzhanovsky
Khrzhanovsky was probably the most lofty of the directors invited to speak to us, and as a true Santa Claus-like figure (he looks like one, too), gave us age-old words of wisdom. Firstly, we must read, feel, write, do anything to get the insides out into the world. He loves to observe different kinds of people in parks, and what-have-you, but found that it was difficult in Telluride. He said of the locals, “they are free, kind, and love dogs.” Very well put.
It was fairly apparent that his film was only a fragment of the many engagements he had with poetry, animation, and of life’s multitude of images. He said it took TEN YEARS to make the film, for goodness sake! I am truly inspired.
L’Argent (dir. Marcel L’Herbier)
This was the first time I’d ever seen a live orchestra accompaniment to a silent film, and the experience was phenomenal. This was, in any case, how it was meant to be projected when it was made. It was complete with an intermission mid-way.
I often forget just how expressive silent film actors have to be, and the man who played Saccard really was the paragon of this type of acting: he was creepier than any big-bellied corporate executive I’d ever seen on film, or in real life. I would say he was the creepiest man, period.
As Cherchi-Usai had mentioned in his discussion, the film may sometimes be “too much.” The elaborateness of not only the costumes and sets, but of the sheer money that can be heard and seen tinkling around the celluloid truly conveys L’Herbier as a perfectionist, one who cannot just rest with what’s “okay.”
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (dir. Werner Herzog)
I don’t think it would be too extreme to say that Terrence (played by Nicolas Cage) is possibly one of the most disgusting yet charming anti-hero and existential character seen in any medium.
Most of the time, I had trouble comprehending the pure evil of his acts, yet at the same time, it was clear that Terrence had something going on that was harmless and fun, and it definitely showed in his karma turn-around throughout the film, and especially at the ending.
Werner Herzog’s short, filmed in Africa, with the use of an Aria.
Sometimes, all it takes is a camera, a village, and some willing natives who will pose and stare into the camera. Something that was to be repeated in his sneak peek.
Short: Rahmin Bahrani’s A Plastic Bag (narrated by Werner Herzog)
This was the first time I had heard Herzog’s voice for an extended period of time, and I would honestly just want to contain it in a capsule and use it to have bedtime stories read to me every night.
It’s not only comedic, the film is also truly an ironic capture of plastic’s devastating presence in the modern world. The last statement (I think) made by the plastic bag says it all: “I wish I would die faster.”
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (dir. Werner Herzog)
I definitely don’t know enough Sophocles to get into the discussion of the film.
What I do understand is that Lynch’s mark was definitely in this.
Celebrity watch: Helen Mirren, Nicholas Cage, Laura Linney.
Nice long chat with Michael Lerner and Tecci in the line for L’Argent.
September 7, 2009 (last day)
In the breakfast discussion, it was fairly evident that film school isn’t everything.
Gigante (Adrián Biniez) – preceded by the super graphic and slobbery short, Scoring
It was interesting to hear from Biniez that although twenty-four days seems short, and the budget was considered low in this side of the world, it was pretty immense for a small town in Uruguay. It goes to show that it’s really not all about money, and the time that money buys. I think the two guests in the morning said that these days, Hollywood movie will spend just as much on marketing and selling a flick as it did to make it.
The honesty and humor contained in this film is not enough to pronounce simply as “sweet,” or “cute.” There is a lot going on with the idea of surveillance: Jara always watches Julia within his job post, but he also watches her outside of his occupational confines. Often, he gets into half-baked aggressions and predicaments, but even these encounters are delineations of a character that one cannot help but fall in love with, despite the fact that he is indeed a stalker. It is a very rare and interesting moment when Julia stares back at the camera, as if straight at Jara; also, when he is in the convenient store, and Julia watches him through the monitor, just as he had always done for all those days.
He has managed to get into her space so well (despite the physical distance he had always maintained throughout his pursuing) that by the end, it’s okay that his gigantic shadow invades her private space, and he merely sits down next to her—all one hundred kilograms, maybe, or more, of him—to embark on a conversation beside the not-so-wonderful beach of Montevideo (?), Uruguay.
Symposium:
Werner Herzog
It is difficult to place this man under any label. I will simply list some Herzog-isms:
Nicolas Cage’s character operates on what is called the “bliss of evil.” That is, there is no clear motivation for his actions.
The film took three weeks for pre-production, there was editing going on during the shooting, and it took all of ten days to deliver the final cut. Efficiency, in a word.
You do not want the “accountant’s truth.” He favors, above all, inventiveness, the “ecstasy of truth.”
Never underestimate the quality of sound. He even has a set radius in which all cellphones crossing such a border will be confiscated. He wants all ambient sounds, all silence, all croakings and cawings, etc.
What he feels about preservation: “Posterity can kiss my ass.”
He cannot stand for the “cameraman’s bullshit: stale aesthetics.”
“No man should date a woman who does yoga. I hate meditation, I hate yoga. Yoga was invented for bored California housewives.”
His egomania is not bothersome in the least bit. It suits him fine, and if he believes in his work, and others support him in the process, that’s what it is.
His advice for us is, above all, “read, read, read, read, read.” (I think he actually repeated it this many times.)
El Verdugo (dir. Luís García Berlanga)
It’s sometimes hard to believe that antiquated films (like this one, from 1960) can still touch the hearts of audiences today, and induce as much laughter as the director had intended. And nothing about the humor seems superfluous or coerced, just hints here and there, shy invitations for us to giggle or more.
I especially liked the legacy that will ensue with the executioner’s position: not only are we aware that as the father-in-law had practiced it for forty odd years, Rodriguez will most likely suck it up (after his horrific virgin experience) and live with it. This becomes clear since the baby is always in the frame as he discusses what he believes is the hopeless future of this new position (he wishes to resign as soon as he begins; no, even before he begins).
Interesting also is the stigma supposedly attached to those who work with the dead. They are not to be associated with, and anytime one comes close, they walk away, using the excuse “we are decent people.” It is only natural, therefore, that an executioner’s daughter and a grave digger unite. The church will not even roll out the carpet for them at their wedding!
The ending is rather curious: instead of focusing on the new executioner and his family, no doubt de-briefing after his first experience, the camera moves toward a boat, with dancing foreigners (I think they’re foreigners), all dressed in black. Does this mean that all of this is laughable? Does it also mean that this is merely the beginning of another era? With all the inserts of foreigners, I wouldn’t be surprised if the filmmaker were making a reference to the changing nature of the Spanish culture—of Americanization, to be precise—even under Franco’s regime.
Along with Godard’s Contempt, I must say that this film has one of the most beautiful opening credits I’ve seen.
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