For Kibera!

Kibera!
Kati Juurus | Finland 2015 | Documentary | 56 min
PC: Yleisradio Oy. P: Erkko Lyytinen. D+SC: Kati Juurus. Cinematography: Jouni Soikkeli, Abdallah Musa. S: Anssi Tamminen. ED: Antti Isoaho. M: Jimi Tenor
Tampere Film Festival (TFF), National Competition 7
10 March 2016, 22.00, Plevna 2, in English with English subtitles by Minna Franssila

TFF introduction: "Boy Dallas lives in Kibera, a famous slum in Nairobi, Kenya with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, making it the second largest in Africa. Here, Dallas works as a radio personality and is known as “the voice of Kibera.” He’s inundated with stories of injustice, and Dallas increasingly starts to wonder why it is that he’s so poor. “A human life is cheap in Kibera. We are born, we survive and we die. We are just slum people.” Kibera is a “celebrity slum” where more than 200 NGOs [non-governmental organizations] are active and many famous people have paid a visit. Nevertheless, rape and murder are business as usual, the streets are filthy and there are no sewers. The little river where Dallas played as a child has dried up and is full of trash. What use are the new apartment buildings (with parking spaces!) to the residents of Kibera? As a self-taught cameraman, Dallas sets out to find out why a neighborhood that has received so much help for so long is still in such a terrible state. He talks to ambassadors and donors and sees just how different their world is from his. With his handheld camera, he reveals the harsh reality of living in Kibera."

AA: A strong documentary feature on Kibera, the "celebrity slum" of Nairobi, Kanya, as seen through the eyes of a bright local champion called Boy Dallas. "I used to be interested in music only. Then I became a journalist, the voice of Kibera". We start from immediate observations of the lifestyle which may seem exotic and colourful to a foreigner. Kenya has been receiving huge sums of development aid for decades, also from Finland since 30 years, but nothing has changed, and the people of Kibera have seen nothing of it while there are expensive housing projects realized in the neighbourhood. We start to understand how structural corruption works. Big sums of money from well-meaning helpers go to the pockets of the elite in many different ways. The journey to the reality behind the exotic facade does not end here. We see views of violence, murder, and rape. People who are desperate and without a future are able to do anything.

This film is very impressive both in its wealth of concrete observations and in the big perspective it provides.

Visually, it combines footage of raw handheld quality with professionally lit and photographed footage whenever possible.

Kihniö

Saija Mäki-Nevala | Finland 2015 | Documentary | 53 min
PC: Filmimaa. P: Markku Tuurna. D+SC: Saija Mäki-Nevala. DP: Jarkko T. Laine. S: Olli Huhtanen. ED: Samu Heikkilä. M: Jaakko Laitinen & Väärä Raha.
    Tampere Film Festival (TFF), National Competition 7.
    10 March 2016 | 22:00 | Plevna 2.
    Contact: Filmimaa / Markku Tuurna, www.filmimaa.fi

TFF introduction: "Director Saija Mäki-Nevala returns to her childhood village and observes its life through the camera. She follows the life as it opens in details along the one and only road: abandoned houses, coffee room tranquility and the moments of happiness. The documentary is a portrait of a silent village, but the main role still belongs to its people. They are living peaceful life in safe Finnish community. It’s important to know each other and even if it’s hard to get permanent job, moving away is not an option. The documentary captures the spirit of our insecure times, but shows the traces of past times also. Is Kihniö more than its inhabitants? Is Kihniö just a name for the roots which we can’t either choose or forget?"

AA: A film against the grain, against mobility, modernization, trendiness, against keeping up with the turbulent change of the world. There are still villages like this, pockets of a traditional rhythm of life. These people cherish values of a quality of life that are not hectic. They do not need holidays for respite, withdrawal from the treadmill, or relaxation, since their entire life is based on a balance of activity and leisure. The film itself indulges in ordinariness, even in its music track.

Space Is the Place. Restored Psychedelia from the Academy Film Archive (curated by Mark Toscano)

Pat O'Neill: 7362

Space Is the Place. Restored Psychedelia from the Academy Film Archive (curated by Mark Toscano)
Tampere Film Festival (TFF)
    Curated, introduced, and program notes by Mark Toscano.
    All films in 16 mm
    10+12 March, 2016, Plevna 6

7362
Pat O’Neill | United States 1967 | Experimental, Avant-garde | 11 min
    Mark Toscano: "Pat O’Neill’s formative classic, named for the high-contrast film stock it generously employed, exists at some previously uncharted nexus between sculpture, animation, photography, and design. By transforming various organic and inorganic forms via hand-processing and contact-printing techniques, O’Neill renders an otherworldly, uncanny space in constant tension between abstraction and figuration, flatness and depth."
    AA: A voyage of exploration beyond the Herculean Gates of perception and consciousness, a fantasy of colour, a rhythmic experience, a sensual movie with a throb evoking intercourse, with flicker elements. There are images resembling Rorschach tests, mirror images, complementary colours, and ultra fast colour changes.

Robert Nelson: Grateful Dead (1967)

Grateful Dead
Robert Nelson | United States 1967 | Experimental, Avant-garde | 9 min
    Mark Toscano: "Like a number of filmmakers at the time, Bay Area legend Robert Nelson was given some free color film stock by the Gevaert film company in 1967, with their request that he use it to make a new film. Desiring an appropriately energetic subject matter, Nelson asked his friends The Grateful Dead if he could film them, to which they readily agreed. They gave Nelson a tape copy of their just-finished debut album, and he cut it into a climactic 9-minute collage, influenced in part by another friend at the time, Steve Reich. The picture was then precisely edited to the rhythms of the sound collage, and the resulting film won multiple awards and was subsequently shown by the Dead at countless concerts in the ensuing years."
    AA: Robert Nelson's Grateful Dead is a fascinating entry in the history of the music film, an impressive contribution to the pre-history of the music video, a film by a leading experimental artist which became a part of the corpus of the band itself. Devices include blurred vision, time lapse, extreme close-ups, negative footage, graphic inserts, rhythmic editing, superimpositions, neon flashes, and concert light show approaches. A solid Grateful Dead score.

Dana Plays: Grain Graphics

Grain Graphics
Dana Plays | United States 1978 | Experimental, Avant-garde | 6 min
    Mark Toscano: "Repeating human movements are multiplied with rephotography techniques in various configurations until what seem like millions of little film frames fill the screen. As simple gestures are magnified and multiplied, they seem to form ripples across the frame, a visual echo of the film’s gamelan soundtrack."
    AA: Another precious contribution to the canon of "visual music". The sound of the manipulated gamelan seems to evoke this elaborate study of multiplied motion. Visual means include split screen, negative, disintegrating image, image turning into ever tinier bits of mosaic, purple haze, Gestalt patterns, and graphic approaches. Interesting music.

Adam Beckett: Evolution of the Red Star

Evolution of the Red Star
Adam Beckett | United States 1973 | Experimental, Avant-garde | 7 min
    Mark Toscano: "Incredibly, this early masterpiece from Adam Beckett was made from a basic set of only six animation drawings, which were made increasingly more complex as shooting progressed. By employing his characteristic ‘infinite loop’ technique with a masterful integration of optical printing, Beckett leads us through his vast extrapolation of a single red star form into a pulsating, complex universe."
    AA: A mesmerizing work in Adam Beckett's unique and original "infinite loop" mode. Mao Zedong is crying tears in the shape of little red stars. There is a movement towards the core of the star. The animation covers continuous transformations of forms: swelling tubes, squares, circles, opening forms, including an opening star, inside which there is a film. Musique concrète.

Kathy Rose: Mirror People

Mirror People
Kathy Rose | United States 1974 | Experimental, Avant-garde | 5 min
    Mark Toscano: "This iconic, absurdist animation features numerous grotesque characters noisily inhabiting an uncertain and uneasy environment. Rose drew the entire film upside-down and lit the artwork from underneath instead of above, to achieve its subtle and strange appearance."
    AA: A truly original animation which fleetingly reminds me of the much later work of James Rizzi for Tom Tom Club, including their animated music video "Genius of Love" created by Cucumber Studios.  Based on drawn animation this is a work of miraculous transformations. The music is wonderful.

Daina Krumins: Aether

Aether
Daina Krumins | United States 1972 | Experimental, Avant-garde | 5 min
    Mark Toscano: "A sci-fi/occult/psychedelic performance film set to an original soundtrack by Rhys Chatham. This lesser-known student film from the maker of The Divine Miracle and Babobilicons marked the first time Krumins felt she had arrived at a cinematic language and process that she could use to express the otherworldly inventions of her fertile imagination."
    AA: Means of expression include abstraction, negative, superimposition, dance, and stylized colour, and motifs of imagery a snake, fish, swimmers, and a naked man. Like a musical dance choreography number executed in experimental film mode. Mark Toscano characterized Rhys Chatham's music as post-minimalist.

Skyworks: Wind + Fire
LeAnn Bartok | United States 1975 | Experimental, Avant-garde | 8 min
    Silent.
    Mark Toscano: "Bartok, at this time known more as a performance and conceptual artist, had begun to film her ephemeral Skyworks events, which involved the choreographed release of colored streamers and other objects by skydivers out of airplanes. Not content to limit the films as mere documentation, these records were transformed by her into something like kinetic time sculptures, via rhythmic rapid cutting, juxtapositions with related symbolic imagery, and allegorical performances by the artist herself."
    AA: Based on skydiving performances, an experimental film based on natural elements (the sky, the ocean, the beach), the colours red, white and blue, flames, flicker, firecrackers, flower forms, large petals, superimpositions, and time lapse. There is a strange tension. It ends with a woman lying on the beach lifting her arms towards the sky.

Chick Strand: Waterfall

Waterfall
Chick Strand | United States 1967 | Experimental, Avant-garde | 4 min
    Mark Toscano: "A gorgeous and delicately haunting film that uses hand-processing, solarizing, and contact printing techniques to transform various sequences of found footage into an ethereal and sweetly enveloping experience."
    AA: A film with an affinity with the first movie of this program, Pat O'Neill's 7362. Found footage inserts include skating, Olympic diving, goldfish, and somersaults on a trapeze. There is some Busby Berkeley style pattern choreography. This is a kinetic experiment with footage in negative, repetition, looping, abstraction, multiple superimposition, and flicker.

Will Hindle: Later That Same Night

Later That Same Night
Will Hindle | United States 1971 | Experimental, Avant-garde | 10 min
    Mark Toscano: "This little known gem from Will Hindle connects with and radically amplifies all of the disaffection and disenfranchisement he perceived in late ‘60s youth culture. Feelings of rootlessness, sadness, and a deep yearning is woven throughout the work via Hindle’s inspired shooting, editing, and inventive audiovisual techniques."
    AA: A sympathetic outsider's look into the contemporary counter-culture. Mark Toscano told us that this was the first film made in Alabama's Utopian film community. There are views of the free, alternative lifestyle of the young people. Inserts of animation, DNA, chromosomes, a passing train. Fascinating music, also incorporating "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child".

Peter Rose: Incantation

Incantation
Peter Rose | United States 1968 | Experimental, Avant-garde | 10 min
    The original 8 mm footage has been digitized.
    Mark Toscano: "A miraculous, ecstatic meditation filmed entirely in-camera in 8mm, Peter Rose’s first film employs a variety of shooting techniques, including single-framing, superimpositions, color separation filters, and calculated zooms. The discipline and rigor of the shooting, far from stifling the material, serves only to heighten the hypnotic audiovisual experience to a level of pure kinetic energy."

AA: An Islamic chant from Muslim liturgy launches the score. There is a track forward to the nature imagery with superimpositions, flicker, a simultaneous movement back and forth, between the trees, towards lucidity. An adventure in psychedelic colour. An enchanting painterly colour world.

A rewarding and inspiring show, each film introduced by Mark Toscano. All in original glorious 16 mm except the last one, shot in 8 mm, seemed to be in digital here.

Tuntematon pakolainen / Refugee Unknown

Hamy Ramezan | Finland 2016 | Documentary | 79 min
P: Veera Ikonen. SC: Veera Ikonen, Hamy Ramezan, Ali Jahangiri, Aram Aflatuni. Cinematography: Hamu Ramezan, Arsen Sarkisiants. S: Toni Teivaala. ED: Katja Pällijeff.
    Contact: ITV Studios Finland / Veera Ikonen, www.itvstudiosnordic.com
    Tampere Film Festival (TFF) National Competition 5
    In the presence of Hamy Ramezan, Ali Jahangiri, Veera Ikonen, etc.
    In Farsi and English with English subtitles and e-subtitles in Finnish.
    10 March 2016 | 18:00 | Plevna 2

TFF introduction: "In the autumn of 2015, the Finnish-Iranian Ali Jahangiri wanted personally to experience the reality faced by refugees in Europe. Ali travelled across Europe to Finland with refugees who had landed in Greece. Refugee Unknown is an authentic documentary of encounters not covered by the news."

AA: In the discussions at the cinema before and after the film the film-makers emphasized that they want to keep a distance to the stereotyped debate on the refugee crisis. Hamy Ramezan stated that human reality is simpler than the images in the media. Ali Jahangiri added that his anxiety was higher before they started the project. When these people manage to escape it is one of the most joyful moments in their lives. Ramezan said that the final long image of the boy looking at the camera in Mytilene was one of the most important moments. The boy helped Ramezan to see and go through his own feelings. It was a Mexican stand-off, a staring contest where the boy won Ramezan who was squatting with a 8 kg camera on his shoulder. The sun set, darkness fell, and everybody in the Mytilene harbour was watching them. Finally Hamy gave up. Ali and Hamy stated that the debate on refugees has gone wildly awry. Hamy: there is an attempt to lead us via fear. We must take care not to be a part of this, that the debate does not lead us too much to the side of hate. The film-makers concluded by stating that there are no such barriers in the world of children. Very soon the children are taken to school, and a process of integration is started. The world of children gives us hope.

There is a home movie approach in Refugee Unknown. Both Hamy Ramezan and Ali Jahangiri have themselves come via this route some 25 years ago.

We witness the night at sea. Refugees are dragged to the shore of the island Lesbos. There is a refugee camp at Moria. The film starts in English and continues in Farsi. The camps are surrounded by barbed wire. The black market is in full swing. There is a long sequence of children washing their faces and socks. We come to the Mytilene harbour. A happy little girl makes fun of Ali. From Mytilene, we travel to Athens. We meet greedy taxi drivers. We hear the story of the guy who was robbed. At the Greek-Macedonian border there is a huge bank for charging mobile phones. Clowns perform for children. At the Macedonian-Serbian border a Syrian-Palestinian invalid in wheelchair is helped along difficult paths. Little by little we learn details from Iran, a control society with little freedom. Alcohol among many things is strictly controlled there but a lot of drugs are used. There are many cameras recording the crossing of the border. We proceed to Croatia and follow the action of the police at the border. We proceed further to the border between Austria and Germany. People laugh when they hear that Hamy and Ali are going to Finland. "Why Finland?" "There's plenty of room in Finland. There are five million Finns only. There are 15 million people in Teheran. I'm looking for peace and comfort." A 14-year old guy from Afghanistan has lost his family during a shooting. We hear about smugglers who just throw people to the sea. Next we are on icy waters. Cut to the final shot of the boy at Mytilene in the staring contest with Hamy Ramezan.

There is an approach of humanity in this movie. It is not about facts and figures, not about the big picture. It is about the human detail. These characters are not representatives of a phenomenon but individuals. Family ties are strong. New extended families are formed during the trek. It is important to be a part of the group even in emigration.

The most memorable images are those of the eyes of children.

I have just finished reading The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. The island of Lesbos and the town of Mytilene feature prominently also in that account of the terrible 30-year war in Greece where the Persian Empire was a key player. What we are experiencing now is also a part of a very long story.

Teta Veleta - Early Letters of Pier Paolo Pasolini

Kalle Hamm | Finland 2015 | Documentary | 22 min
P+D+DP+ED: Kalle Hamm. S: Mine Gügnör. Contact: Kalle Hamm, www.beelsebub.org
    Pasolini's voice: Valter Benigni.
    Tampere Film Festival (TFF), National Competition 9
    10+11 March, 2016, Plevna 5, 2

TFF: "The film is based on Pasolini’s early letters, texts and so called The Red Notebooks, which were written when he was age of 18-31. Video is a portrait a young man, who finds himself through the personal scandal. Video is filmed in Casarsa and Rome, where he lived while writing the texts."

AA: A distinguished and well made poetic biographical documentary on the early years of Pier Paolo Pasolini based on his early letters. Imaginative illustrations of paintings, landscapes, authentic locations, historical news footage and sound recordings of Mussolini. This film conveys a sense of mindscape of the young Pasolini.

Kielletyt leikit / Forbidden Games

Malakias | Finland 2015 | Animation | 3 min
PC: The Dead Will Rise. P+D+AN+S+ED: Malakias. Contact: Malakias
    Tampere Film Festival (TFF), National Competition 9
    10+11 March, 2016, Plevna 5, 2

TFF: "Silence is golden."

AA: Pornographic childhood memories about mother-to-son incest and doing it with the mother of one's best friend in the sauna. Wacky animation footage with little connection to what is being told.

One

Juha van Ingen | Finland 2015 | Experimental | 8 min
P+D+SC+DP+S+ED: Juha van Ingen. Contact: Vesa Puhakka, www.av-arkki.fi
    Tampere Film Festival (TFF), National Competition 9
    10+11 March, 2016, Plevna 5, 2

TFF: "The starting point for ONE is a video taken with a mobile phone. The camera hasn’t been able to capture the original view and the resulting video contains only mystical glitch. What causes the glitch? What is the moment or subject, which was originally attempted to be documented? Is there a huge planet or a tiny cell in the video? Perhaps it is something else – a human or even God? The soundscape of ONE is homage to big questions, a mash-up of 60’s sci-fi cinema soundtracks."

AA: Abstract, non-figurative views with constantly evolving shapes from a mysterious glowing round form. The magnificent soundtrack of found science fiction music brings a sense of epic splendour to the enterprise.

Pieniä kömpelöitä hellyydenosoituksia / Clumsy Little Acts of Tenderness

Miia Tervo | Finland 2015 | Fiction | 9 min
PC: Mjölk Movies. P: Ilone Tolmunen. D: Miia Tervo. SC: Laura Immonen, Miia Tervo. DP: Päivi Kettunen. S: Janne Laine. ED: Antti Reikko. M: Johannes Wist. Contact: www.made.fi
    Tampere Film Festival (TFF), National Competition 9
    10+11 March, 2016, Plevna 5, 2

TFF: "A weekend father wants to show his teenage daughter his love by taking her to a carwash, but instead of the carwash they end up on a life-changing adventure in the supermarket, at the endless sanitary towel shelf. They get “help” from an older lady who shares a bit too intimate stories of her experiences around and majorly off the theme."

AA: How awkward can a weekend father be? A caricature of a clumsy father's (Hannu-Pekka Björkman) miserable attempts to please his estranged daughter.

Miles to Go Before I Sleep / Saa uni vielä odottaa

Hanna Hovitie | Finland 2015 | Documentary | 14 min
PC: Metropolia AMK. P: Emmi Vuokko, Hanna Hovitie. D: Hanna Hovitie. SC: Noora Kuparinen, Hanna Hovitie. DP: Hanna Hovitie, Ilkka Salminen. S+M: Miikka Katajamäki. ED: Noora Kuparinen. Contact: Arto Tuohimaa, www.metropolia.fi
    Tampere Film Festival (TFF), National Competition 9
    In English with English subtitles.
    10+11 March, 2016, Plevna 5, 2

TFF: "When the protagonist was seven years old, her parents sent her away from Congo to be adopted in France. After her adoptive mother’s death, years of ordinary life in Paris turned into a nightmare. In the film she shares her story of becoming a victim of abuse and child trafficking. Through twists and turns beyond belief, she is thrown into a whirlwind of drifting between continents. The film is a journey through her memories of homes that were never truly homes. When deprived of one’s identity, can it ever be restored? In order to be able to start fresh, she must first face up to her past."

AA: This film is her first person testimony, with her voice-over, about her ordeal which started when she was sent to Paris. "My 'adoptive father' drugged me and abused me." There is illustrative footage of colours spreading out in water. On a trip to South Africa she was robbed, and the officials then detected the child trafficking case. She was taken to the orphanage, to the UNHRC Transit Center, to stay at a camp in Meheba for four years. "My case was sent to Finland. Going to a country where I do not know anyone." From beautiful Africa to cold Finland. "I still do not know why my parents sent me to France and never contacted me." A moving and heart-breaking story of being abused and abandoned.

A Sun

Lauri Harju | Finland 2015 | Animation | 8 min
P: Susanna Lätti, Lauri Harju. D+AN+DP: Lauri Harju. SC: Tero Liimatainen. S: Joni Heinonen. M: Janiv Oskar.
    Contact: Lauri Harju.
    Tampere Film Festival (TFF), National Competition 9
    10+11 March, 2016, Plevna 5, 2

TFF: "On a small island above the clouds a father and son have different views on their daily routine of keeping up the sun."

AA: The sun keepers: a puppet animation in rustical circumstances on an island in the sky. There is a bird's nest on the ceiling. The boy plays with a hot air balloon. Chicks hatch out and learn to fly. The boy takes off in a hot air balloon. A consistent and original visual world, mixing the cosmological with the rustical.

Talvisydän / Winterheart

Jussi Hiltunen | Finland 2015 | Fiction | 19 min
PC: Pohjola-Filmi. P: Elina Pohjola. D+SC: Jussi Hiltunen. DP: J-P Passi. S: Kössi Väntänen. ED: Jussi Hiltunen, Antti Reikko. M: Hisser.
    Contact: Viivi Veivo, www.pohjolafilmi.fi
     Ville Virtanen (Eikka), Rosa Salomaa (Saija), Linda Tuomenvirta (Laura), Jonna Järnefelt (Helmi).
    Tampere Film Festival (TFF), National Competition 9
    10+11 March, 2016, Plevna 5, 2

TFF: "Winterheart is a story of Eikka, a cab driver in his fifties, who has betrayed his family and is now losing the connection to his teenage daughter Laura. Eikka has been unfaithful to his wife, and Laura, as well as her mother, has a reason to hate Eikka for destroying their family. One night Eikka meets Saija, a girl same age as his daughter, who claims to have been raped. Eikka gives her a lift home, but can’t forget the tragic and sad girl. He’d like to help her more, not least because she happens to know Eikka’s daughter."

AA: A panting girl, Saija, enters a taxi on a bridge. "I have just been raped". The taxi driver Eikka (Ville Virtanen) hits the would-be rapist with a bat before he learns that Saija may be telling stories. Eikka himself has been thrown out of his home as he has been having an affair. He tries to connect with his daughter Laura who is of the same age, 18, as Saija. It does not end well. There is a psychological intensity in the story.

Null Statue

Timo Wright | Finland 2015 | Experimental | 8 min
P+D+SC+DP: Timo Wright. AN: Iiro Harra. S: Taneli Bruun. ED: Veera Lapinkoski. M: Katri Onnela, Timo Wright.
    Contact: www.av-arkki.fi
    Tampere Film Festival (TFF), National Competition 9
    10+11 March 2016, Plevna 5, 2

TFF: "Null Statue is an experimental short film where crude oil is thrown at invisible objects, creating temporary abstract sculptures. Through editing, chaotic virtual statues are created only in time, not space. When viewed with 3D glasses, these statues come to life into the real world, evolving in front of the spectators."

AA: A 3D animation. Against a white background, black crude oil in slow motion forms abstract-looking patterns. The camera circles around it, highlighting the 3D quality of the vision. There is also footage in reverse motion. The soundtrack is hypnotic, minimalistic (piano, percussions, cello, basso, human voices).

Takaisin pintaan / Diving Into the Unknown

Juan Reina: Takaisin pintaan / Diving Into the Unknown (FI 2016). Featuring the cave divers Sami Paakkarinen, Patrik Grönqvist, Kai Känkänen and Vesa Rantanen. 

Juan Reina | Finland 2016 | Documentary | 82 min
P: Monami Agency / Juho Harjula, Fuglene / Therese Naustdal, Fuglene / Gudmundur Gunnarsson.

    D+SC: Juan Reina. Cinematography: Tuukka Kovasiipi, Jarkko Virtanen. S: Håkon Lammetun. ED: Riitta Poikselkä, Juan Reina. M: Kaada. 

    Feat: Sami Paakkarinen, Patrik Grönqvist, Kai Känkänen, Vesa Rantanen.
    Contact: Monami Agency / Juho Harjula, www.monamiagency.com
    Tampere Film Festival, National Competition 2
    Introduced by Juho Harjula and Jarkko Virtanen.
    9.3.2016 Wed 22:00 | Plevna 2 | English title graphics and subtitles

TFF introduction: "Diving into the Unknown tells the story of four Finnish divers, who risk their lives to bring the bodies of their lost friends home. The Finnish cave divers’ worst nightmare becomes a reality, when two of the group members drown deep inside an underwater cave in Norway. After the official retrieval operation is called off by Norwegian and British authorities, the friends set off on a secret mission to try to retrieve the bodies themselves. Diving into the Unknown is more than just the extreme story of a secret operation. It is also a profound story of the groups’ unconditional friendship. This is a unique group of specialists who have to rely on each other every split second of the dive. While each of them has spent years exploring deep and dangerous caves, together they are all about to face the biggest challenge of their lives. The physical demands of this deep-water dive are nothing compared to the psychological toll it will take on everyone involved. With multiple cameras both on and under the surface, this film follows the breathtaking recovery mission as the team risks their own lives to bring their friends back home."

AA: The story of the diving calamity in Plurdalen, Norway, on 6 February 2014 when two Finnish divers drowned at the bottom of a long cave in winter. Three barely survived. After the officials failed there was a clandestine rescue mission by the team to bring the two drowned ones back home.

In the introduction to the screening we learned about the background to all this. This was from the start a film project which started in 2010. The top expert diving team had been diving in underwater caves under Budapest. Their actual goal was the world's longest cave dive in Spain - 11 kilometers. "No one knows where the cave ends". The Plurdalen dive was not considered to be exceptionally hard - it was a case of practice for diving in Spain.

The project was technically very demanding. There were two filming teams. The cave was cramped and dirty. Every two hours they had to clean their stuff. It was dangerous, but the camera gave a distance to the subject. It was necessary to concentrate on every step.

This is Hawksian material, a story of a dedicated elite group, the best in their act, who focus laconically on their mission. Their survival depends on full trust on each other's contribution.

While the material is excellent, there is tension lacking in the structure, especially towards the end, and the music feels slightly generic.

This is also an exciting entry in the great tradition of Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Cousteau took us to depths that had never been filmed before. So does this team. This is a mission of transcending one's limits. The zeal involved may be hard for outsiders to understand.

The imagery is mostly based on powerful claustrophobic footage shot in narrow underwater caves in water near the freezing point. On the other hand, there is footage on the camaraderie of the team. And there are sublime, magnificent aerial views in Norwegian Lapland, incidentally, not far from Mo i Rana, home of the vaults of the Norwegian film archive.

There are also illuminative map graphics of the long and dangerous underwater cave where we can follow the course of the diving and rescue missions.

The finale takes place in Pozo Azul, Spain. The team does not give up.

FROM THE TAKAISIN PINTAAN HOMEPAGE:

Valkoinen raivo / White Rage

FI 2015. Documentary. 70 min. P+D+SC: Arto Halonen. Cinematography: Mika Orasmaa, Peter Finckelberg. M+S: Kirka Sainio. ED: Arto Halonen, Otto Heikola. C: actors playing roles during the entire picture.
    Contact: Art Films production AFP Ltd.
Tampere Film Festival (TFF). National Competition 1.
9 March 2016 | 16:00 | PLEVNA 2 | English subtitles

TFF official introduction: "This is the story of Lauri, and through him the story of other victims of both school bullying and a separate childhood trauma: victims full of white rage, which may lead to school shootings and other extreme acts of violence. The film is also about our society: a society without sufficient understanding or desire to address the emergence of school violence. Later on Lauri became an academic researcher and a respected scientist specialising in human aggression and violence. Yet when he was growing up he experienced extreme bullying. At two points – as a teen and again as a university student – he began to develop serious fantasies about committing mass murder. The documentary goes through Lauri’s life journey; how he became a carrier of white rage and how he survived this heavy burden by recognizing it and taking to action."

AA: There are two themes in this powerful film which combines documentary with fictional reconstruction: mass killings and bullying at schools and universities.

The soundtrack consists of the first person confession of Lauri who had entertained plans of mass murder at two stages of his life: at school and at the university. He had been a victim of violent harassment and bullying in both. At both stages he seeked help and found it in therapy. He identified himself as someone who looked too defenseless and too nice, an easy victim for bullying. He became an ideal target for bullying. If the bullied one switches school, he gets bullied again, since he has the stigma of the victimized. Lauri learned to dissociate himself from pain, even from physical pain and suffering. In the army Lauri was in his element with his passion for shooting, to the extent that his comrades in arms were alarmed. Even in the army he sought therapeutic help and was relieved from service.

Black rage according to Lauri is blind fury. White rage, in contrast, is not impulsive; the person is calm and collected, emotionally cold. White rage is not innate. One can control white rage all his life.

Interlaced are vintage news bulletins on the mass killings of Myyrmäki, Jokela, Kauhajoki, the planned Helsinki University massacre, and international mass killings such as Columbine and Utøya. Lauri discusses the dehumanization of the intended victims. He has also interesting remarks on the ISIS.

The taiko drum is an essential sound element in the movie, a signal of the drive of aggression.

"I will be a potential killer all my life" says Lauri who has studied aggression and violent fantasies deeply.

A disturbing film about a phenomenon that is latently much bigger than we are usually aware of.

Black Panthers (2013 restoration in 2K)

Black Panthers. © 1968 Agnès Varda

FR/US 1968. PC: Ciné Tamaris. D+SC: Agnès Varda. Cinematography: David Myers, Paul Aratow, John Shofill, Agnès Varda – 16 mm – 1,37:1 – colour. Camera assistant: Tom Luddy. S: Paul Oppenheim, James Steward - mono. ED: Paddy Monk. Featuring: H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, Ron Dellums, James Forman, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale. 28 min, 31 min
    A 2013 restoration in 2K, complete with the restoration credits 29 min
    2K DCP from Ciné-Tamaris viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Agnès Varda), 8 March 2016

Black Panther Party had been established in 1966, initially as a black self-defence organization against police brutality in Oakland, evolving into a full-fledged revolutionary party.

Agnès Varda takes us to the heart of the action. There is a "Free Huey" demonstration going on in Oakland. We witness at length rallies and speeches, including by Stokely Carmichael (1941-1998). Huey P. Newton (1942-1989) is interviewed in jail. HE founded the party with Bobby Seale (born 1936). There is also an interview with Eldridge Cleaver (1935-1998). We get a full introduction to the ten point program of the Black Panther Party. We witness their military training and their pride in black beauty with giant Afro hairdos.

There is a raw energy of something momentous being recorded at the right moment. There is an aspect of retaliation in the Black Panther movement, of creating an "organ of power through guns and justice through power".

There is also a probably unintentional sense of vulnerability in all this. There could be no future in all this gun bravado. But the impact of the movement on black pride, consciousness and self-respect was permanent.

The digital restoration conveys a sense of the original juicy and colourful 16 mm footage caught in the heat of the action.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BASED ON BETH MAULDIN, CRITERION, AND TOM LUDDY:

Salut les Cubains (2014 digital restoration in 2K by CNC)

Salut les Cubains. © 1963 Agnès Varda. Ciné-Tamaris, le site officiel Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy.

Hi There, Cubans. FR/CU 1963. PC: Société Nouvelle Pathé / ICAIC (Havana). D+SC: Agnès Varda. Photographs: Agnès Varda. Animation trick photography: D.S.A. - J. Marques, C. S. Olaf. ED: Janine Verneau. M: Bande originale: chants et danses afro-cubaines, cha-cha-cha, orgue de Manzanillo, Benny Moré, tangos, danson, boléro. S editing: J. Decerf. Narrators: Agnès Varda, Michel Piccoli. Dancers: Nelson Rodríguez. Featuring: Selma Diaz, Fidel Castro, Osvaldo Dorticós (President of Cuba), Benny Moré (singer), Raúl Castro, Nicolás Guillén (poet), Roberto Retamar (poet), Alejo Carpentier (writer), Wifredo Lam (avantgarde painter), Raúl Millen (artist), Renz Portocarrero (artist), Alfredo Guevara (ICAIC), Hector Garcia Mesa (ICAIC), Sarita Gomez.
Court métrage documentaire, 35 mm, 1,66:1, b&w, 28 min
    The soundtrack also includes "La Internacional", "Gracias, Fidel", rhumba, guaguancó, and charanga bands.
    Restored in 2K by CNC in 2014, with restoration credits 30 min
    2K DCP from Ciné-Tamaris with English subtitles by J. Miller viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Agnès Varda), 8 March 2016

A vivid and vibrant photomontage and photo-animation on Cuba in its exciting early revolutionary period. There has been a successful "alfabetizadores" campaign on general literacy. There is an enthusiastic feeling of "anything is possible" on the island of "tropical socialism". It is a land of sugar with great challenges with the U.S. embargo. Fidel Castro gives six-hour marathon speeches. We have a crash course on the saga of the revolution as we visit the Granma boat. We get an exciting introduction to the roots of Cuban music - Iberian, African, and French. We visit musicians, poets, painters, and the ICAIC film institute. There is a lot of dancing in this movie composed of still images.

This is a music-driven film. The soundtrack is marvellous, and if there were a soundtrack album, it would be worth listening to.

A distinguished case of digital restoration.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BASED ON LISA NESSELSON AND CRITERION COLLECTION:

Lust for Life 2 - van Gogh and Gauguin

Vincent van Gogh: A Pair of Shoes. Paris, 1886. Oil on canvas. 45 x 37,5. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Photo: WikiArt Visual Art Encyclopedia.

Lust for Life is a study of the solitude of Vincent van Gogh and his struggle to establish communication on the most profound level.

Vincent studies to become a preacher but does not pass the examination. Yet, "I want to help the unfortunate. Use me". In Borinage during his sermon he realizes that his words are empty and he must truly learn to know the coalminers, to become one of them. By committing himself to them he alienates himself even further from the official religious administration. "I don't believe in the God of the clergymen. I believe in the God of love". This aspect of Lust for Life has an affinity with other masterpieces of the 1950s such as Europa '51 (Rossellini) and Nazarín (Buñuel).

Vincent's closest ally is his brother Theo, and they are also soul brothers. All his life Theo and his family help Vincent; Théo dies only half a year after Vincent's premature death. Their common mission is "to be of use, to bring something to the world".

Vincent the amateur artist keeps drawing and painting. He is self-educated and highly self-critical. He is being helped generously by his cousin Mauve who gives him equipment, paints, and even plaster models for study exercise. Vincent paints in the wind at the coast of the sea. He struggles to overcome the iron wall between his vision and his expression, to the end agonizingly frustrated because he sees more than he can convey.

The Paris of the Impressionists is a revelation for Vincent: the colour, the light. There are vignettes in the movie on fellow artists like Camille Pissarro ("take in everything at once, trust in your first impression") and Georges Seurat (the scientific, the mathematical method, painting systematically in the studio). Père Tanguy and Toulouse-Lautrec make brief appearances. Later in the care of Dr. Gachet van Gogh learns about Cézanne, Daumier, and Manet to whom Gachet has also been a mentor. Paul Gauguin is openly scornful towards almost everybody. With the exception of van Gogh. When Gauguin sees Gogh's A Pair of Shoes he recognizes in the painting something "direct, vigorous, and honest".

Gauguin goes to Normandy, van Gogh to Provence, which inspires him to an ecstasy of creativity. The exalted Van Gogh invites Gauguin to share a house he has discovered in Arles thanks to a genial postman. But although Gogh and Gauguin connect on a deep level, they are opposites in many ways. Gogh is chaotic, Gauguin orderly. Gogh eats whatever he can grab, Gauguin can cook. For Gogh facing the living reality is essential in order to paint, Gauguin can also create without a model. Gogh worships the sacred in work, Gauguin has no patience with such matters. Gogh adores Millet, Gauguin despises him. Gogh is spiritual, Gauguin is practical. Gogh suffers from loneliness, for Gauguin loneliness is the human condition. For Gogh the inside matters, Gauguin works on the surface. Gauguin seems tough and cynical but we sense that it is his hard shell to protect his sensitivity. Anyway, shocked at the failure of communication Gogh cuts his ear off.

Little by little van Gogh approaches "a terrible lucidity". Simultaneously his seizures get more and more agonizing, until he cannot take it anymore.

Vincent van Gogh: Le docteur Paul Gachet. Auvers, 1890. 68 x 57. Musée d'Orsay. Gift of Paul and Marguerite Gachet, children of the model (1949). Photo: Google Art Project.

Lust for Life

Lust for Life. Kirk Douglas as Vincent van Gogh.

Hän rakasti elämää / Han som älskade livet / La Vie passionnée de Vincent van Gogh / Vincent van Gogh - Ein Leben in Leidenschaft / Brama di vivere. US © 1956 Loew's. PC: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures. EX: Dore Schary. P: John Houseman. D: Vincente Minnelli. SC: Norman Corwin – based on Lust for Life. A Novel based on the Life of van Gogh (1934) by Irving Stone. ED: Adrienne Fazan. DP: F. A. Young (Freddie Young), Russell Harlan – Ansco Color – prints: Metrocolor, CinemaScope. AD: Cedric Gibbons, Hans Peters, Preston Amesm, F. Keogh Cleason. Cost: Walter Plunkett. Makeup: William Tuttle. Copies of van Gogh paintings by: Robert Parker. M: Miklos Rozsa. S: Dr. Wesley C. Miller (rec. supv), Harold Humbrock, Ed Haight, John Logan (S ed) – Perspecta Sound. C: Kirk Douglas (Vincent van Gogh), Anthony Quinn (Paul Gauguin), James Donald (Theo van Gogh), Pamela Brown (Christine), Everett Sloane (Dr. Gachet), Niall MacGinnis (Joseph Roulin the postman), Noel Purcell (Anton Mauve), Henry Daniell (Theodorus van Gogh - father), Madge Kennedy (Anna Cornelia van Gogh - mother), Jill Bennett (Willemien), Lilnel Jeffries (Dr. Peyron), Laurence Naismith (Dr. Bosman), Eric Pohlmann (Colbert), Jeannette Starke (Kay), Toni Gerry (Johanna), Wilton Graf (Rev. Stricker), Isobel Elsom (Mrs. Stricker), David Horne (Rev. Peeters), Noel Howlett (Commissioner van den Berghe), Ronald Adam (Commissioner De Smet), John Ruddock (Ducrucq), Julie Robinson (Rachel), David Leonard (Camille Pissarro). David Bond (Georges Seurat), Jerry Bergen (Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec), Frank Perls (père Tanguy). Helsinki premiere: 5.4.1957 Gloria, released by Oy Metro Goldwyn Mayer Films Ab – telecast: 28.4.1972 ja 12.9.1993 YLE TV2 – dvd: 2008 Warner Bros. Entertainment Finland – VET 46337 – K12 – 3362 m /  123 min
    Locations: France (Arles, Auvers-sur-Oise, Bouches-du-Rhône), Belgium (Wallonia, Borinage), Netherlands (The Hague = 's-Gravenhage, Nuenen).
    A SFI print with Swedish subtitles by Per Helman viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Vincente Minnelli), 2 March 2016

Lust for Life. Kirk Douglas as Vincent van Gogh, Anthony Quinn as Paul Gauguin.

All his film-making life Vincente Minnelli had worked for MGM's dream factory. For once he could choose a subject of his own, the life of Vincent van Gogh. With the producer John Houseman and the star Kirk Douglas he had already made The Bad and the Beautiful. Lust for Life was produced on location in Europe on a solid studio budget, and the result was a personal favourite film for Minnelli (van Gogh's namesake) and Douglas.

I have loved this film since I first saw it at UCLA in the context of MOCA's "Hall of Mirrors: Film and Art Since 1945" exhibition in 1996. Famous for his films of glamour, Minnelli here instantly demonstrates an anti-glamour stance. Already before the credits proper we see a long list of acknowledgements to art museums which had helped the film-makers with access to van Gogh's art.

Then we witness Vincent's early years as a failed preacher, and his shattering experience at the coal mines of Borinage. We are literally taken to the bottom of the pit of anti-glamour. We see child labour, the existence of the living dead, and the literally dead who have perished 2000 ft underground in the coal tunnels.

On the one hand this is an account of van Gogh's failures and disappointments, in love and in work. He never finds a true romantic partner. Friendships remain ungratifying. Key people, most importantly brother Theo, the Arles postman, and Dr. Gachet help him survive. Van Gogh fails in his private life, but he transcends his circumstances in his art which becomes one of the treasures of mankind.

Famously, van Gogh failed to sell his paintings with one single exception. Now they command top prices whenever they are on the marketplace. This subject is not new nor original, but there is something macabre in the pricing of art. Some of the most expensive prices are being paid for contemporary artworks about which one may predict that they will be worth nothing in a hundred years. Maybe the art market itself is a case of conceptual art, both mirroring and belonging to the fantastic world of high financial speculation.

Kirk Douglas in one of the most powerful performances in the history of the cinema gives us a Vincent van Gogh who is clumsy, awkward, and without social grace. At the same time we totally believe in him as a giant of the spirit and a genius of inspiration. His is an agony where art is a matter of life and death. Lust for Life is a film about the passion of art.

There is a touch of the theatrical in the performances, but it is consistent and acceptable in a story which is about experiences that are out of the ordinary.

Lust for Life is also a bold film about madness, and Kirk Douglas gives us a performance of an artist who is aware of his madness. The sequence at the mental hospital feels believable.

Lust for Life is also bold about the fact that madness and inspiration in Vincent von Gogh's art are inseparable. There is a gravity in this account that is unique and extraordinary.

This theme is crystallized in the shattering finale where Vincent paints his last painting, The Wheatfield with Crows. It is a vision to which Akira Kurosawa paid tribute in Dreams, with Martin Scorsese as van Gogh.

In his memoirs Minnelli lamented that of this favourite film of his, the colour driven Lust for Life, it was no longer possible to see a decent print. But the print I saw at UCLA was perfect.

Vincent van Gogh has been served well by film artists (including Altman, Pialat... ). The most unexpected masterpiece is Alain Resnais's Van Gogh (1947), consisting entirely of van Gogh's art - in black and white. One of its revelations is how strong the graphic element was in van Gogh.

The print we saw today was clean, but the colour was no longer perfect, although there were glimpses of the original full colour. The print gave us the full graphic force of the image and much of the colour but not all of it.

Lust for Life. Kirk Douglas as Vincent van Gogh. Hitchcock may have seen this.

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams with Martin Scorsese as Vincent Van Gogh.

Vincent van Gogh: Wheatfield with Crows, 1890. Wikipedia. Do click to enlarge.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE FROM VINCENTE MINNELLI'S MEMOIRS "I REMEMBER IT WELL":

Panj é asr / At Five in the Afternoon

پنج عصر / Kello 5 iltapäivällä / Fem på eftermiddagen / À cinq heures de l'après-midi / Fünf Uhr am Nachmittag / Alla cinque della sera.  IR / FR / AF 2003. PC: Makhmalbaf Productions, Bac Films, Wild Bunch. EX: Siamak Alagheband. P: Mohsen Makhmalbaf. D: Samira Makhmalbaf. Ass D: Razi Mohebi. SC: Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Samira Makhmalbaf. DP: Ebrahim Ghafori, Samira Makhmalbaf. M: Mohammed Reza Darvishi. ED: Mohsen Makhmalbaf. S: Farouk Fadace. C: Agheleh Rezaie (Noqreh), Abdolgani Yousefrazi (father), Razi Mohebi (poet), Marzieh Amiri (Leylomah). Language: Dari. Helsinki premiere: 18.3.2005 Diana, released by Kamras Film Group Oy with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Jarmo Åhrlund / Jan-Erik Larson – VET 200219 – S – 2930 m / 106 min
    The title is inspired by the first words "a las cinco de la tarde" in the poem "La cogida y la muerte" (1935) by Federico García Lorca. Translated into Finnish by Matti Rossi as "Häränsarvet ja kuolema" in Federico García Lorca: Andalusian lauluja [Songs of Andalucia]. Helsinki: Otava, 1967. Read the poem beyond the jump break and find the link where it is read aloud.
    A KAVI print viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (History of the Cinema: Iran), 2 March 2016

There is a sense of dignity in this disciplined and intensive vision of refugee existence in Afghanistan directed by Samira Makhmalbaf. There is an epic approach to the human catastrophe about which we learn via the plight of a refugee family: a father, two daughters, and a baby which starves to death during the trek. The protagonist is the daughter Noqreh who has qualities of responsibility and leadership. She rejects the attempts at contact by the sympathetic poet guy who, however, impresses her by a copy of a Dari translation of the poem by Federico García Lorca which inspired the title of the film.

As in García Lorca's bullfight poem, the film is about life in constant and imminent mortal danger. There are minefields everywhere. The entire country seems like a minefield. Shot on location in Kabul, there is a documentary aspect to this film. The fictional footage blends with the documentary seamlessly. The film belongs to the same great tradition as the original masterworks of Italian Neorealism such as Roma città aperta. The proximity of the calamity is so great that people forget to act, forget about the camera.

Noqreh has a twin existence. Via her father and via the Quran school she is a daughter deferential to tradition, carrying a burkha, fully covering herself. In the next moment she is a modern young woman who visits a women's class where the students are encouraged to become teachers, engineers, doctors - or even the first woman president of Afghanistan. Much of the dialogue is about the political future of Afghanistan and the possibility of a woman president, with leaders such as Indira Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto providing inspiring models. One of the young women that are considering to become president, the one with glasses, dies in a freak mine explosion.

The recent history of Afghanistan is personified in the family saga of the young poet played by Razi Mohebi. One of his brothers was killed by Russians, another died in the civil war, and yet another was killed by Taleban.

An epic vision of Afghanistan in turmoil. The views are rich and full of life. This is a film of passion and vibrant feeling. The composition and the camera movements are assured.

The cinematography is beautiful without being prettifying. The views seem to offer a colour space dominated by something similar to the much discussed "orange and teal" syndrome. The women's dresses are blue; the colour of the desert seems to complement the blue.

The print looks beautiful and may be struck from a source close to the negative.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY JARI SEDERGREN:

The Bad and the Beautiful

Särkyneiden haaveiden kaupunki / Brustna illusioner / Illusionernas stad. US © 1952 Loew's. PC: MGM. P: John Houseman. D: Vincente Minnelli. SC: Charles Schnee – based on a story by George Bradshaw. DP: Robert L. Surtees. Cost: Helen Rose. M: David Raksin. "The Bad and the Beautiful" theme also composed by Raksin. ED: Conrad A. Nervig. C: Kirk Douglas (Jonathan Shields), Lana Turner (Georgia Lorrison), Walter Pidgeon (Harry Pebbel), Dick Powell (James Lee Bartlow), Barry Sullivan (Fred Amiel), Gloria Grahame (Rosemary Bartlow), Gilbert Roland (Victor “Gaucho” Ribera), Leo G. Carroll (Henry Whitefield), Vanessa Brown (Kay Amiel), Paul Stewart (Syd Murphy), Elaine Stewart (Lila). Helsinki premiere: 12.2.1954 Gloria - telecast: 31.10.1972 MTV1, 25.12.1991 TV1, 21.10.2012 ja 1.4.2013 YLE Teema: K12 – VET 39501 – K16 – 3220 m /118 min
    A DFI print viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Vincente Minnelli), 28 Feb 2016

Kirk Douglas, who will turn 100 later this year, gave some of his strongest performances for Vincente Minnelli, including as the ruthless producer in The Bad and the Beautiful.

The Bad and the Beautiful, which itself won 5 Oscars, is still a top "Hollywood on Hollywood" picture, and we showed it fittingly on the evening of the Academy Awards night. (The sun rises in Helsinki ten hours earlier than in Hollywood, and the ones who want to watch the show in real time here need to stay up all night).

It is a tough Hollywood self-reflection from five angles: the executive Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon), the producer Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas), the director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan), the screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell), and the star Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner). Shields breaks all their hearts, and they all rise to the top of their game despite that but thanks to him.

The structure of the film is reminiscent of other three-part stories then popular in Hollywood, films such as Unfaithfully Yours and A Letter to Three Wives.

The Citizen Kane / Rashomon connection has also been mentioned. The portrait of the tycoon Jonathan Shields develops like a jigsaw puzzle from the recollections of the other four protagonists. Let's also note the presence of John Houseman as the producer and Paul Stewart among the cast. The Shields building with its "non sans droit" motto brings to mind Xanadu and Manderley.

As often with Minnelli, it's about the relationship between life and art. As often with Minnelli, it's about putting on a show. The scenes about film-making are engrossing. There is true passion in them. We can believe in the charismatic urge in the story of this small team of friends evolving via many hardships from Poverty Row to multiple Oscar winners.

There are tragedies involved. Jonathan Shields in the beginning buries his father, a Hollywood pioneer, so hated that Jonathan has to pay extras to attend the funeral. Among them is Fred Amiel who cannot help saying frankly what he thinks. Jonathan is angry at first, but they become partners.

Georgia Lorrison is the suicidal, insecure daughter of a superstar of the stage and screen (the images on her wall remind us of John Barrymore). Jonathan Shields finds on the wallpaper of their decaying mansion a caricature of his own father as a monster. He cuts it from the wallpaper and hangs it prominently in his own room. Shields bullies Georgia into self-confidence.

A secret of the creativity of the writer James Lee Bartlow is his passion for his wife Rosemary (Gloria Grahame). She distracts him all the time and excites him all the time. In Hollywood circumstances this chemistry is, however, not working, and Shields separates them and even urges "Gaucho" Rivera (Gilbert Roland) to show Rosemary a good time. Their airplane crashes and they die. Bartlow is shattered.

Shields has betrayed them all at crucial moments of their lives, but they have survived. Let's just mention that the way Shields betrayed Harry Pebbel was intentionally losing all his money to him in a card game in order to get a job with him in order to be able to pay back the gambling debt. Now Shields has lost everything again, this time an entire fortune, including Pebbel's, and he asks them all to work for him one more time. The story remains open-ended.

The Cat People parody does not do justice to Val Lewton's masterpiece but the scene where Shields explains the essence of horror is brilliant. "In the dark all sorts of things come alive". You only see the eyes, you only hear a scream.

The Georgia Lorrison story displays Shields's skill in cruel manipulation but also his genuine instinct and sympathy. "To give truth to a performance there is nothing like love". Georgia shines because she believes that Shields loves her. But: "love is for the very young" is Shields's motto. "Love is for the birds" says Lila (Elaine Stewart) with whom Shields spends the night as soon as the premiere has taken place.

The Bad and the Beautiful is an unsettling story about the torment that is film business. I had not seen it for a while. It is certainly worth revisiting. A thrilling score by David Raksin. Exciting cinematography by Robert Surtees.

The print is brilliant.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BASED ON MÅRTEN PIIL (1964):

The Pirate

Paula kaulassa / Med snara om halsen.
    US 1948. PC: MGM. P: Arthur Freed.
    D: Vincente Minnelli. SC: Francis Goodrich, Albert Hackett – based on the play by S. N. Behrman - [Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Frances Marion, Joseph Than, n.c.]. DP: Harry Stradling (Technicolor). AD: Cedric Gibbons, Jack Martin Smith. Set dec: Edwin B. Willis, Arthur Krams. Cost: Tom Keogh (design), Irene (supervisor), Karinska (execution). Makeup: Jack Dawn. Hair: Sydney Guilaroff. Songs: Cole Porter, directed by: Lenni Hayton, arranged by: Conrad Salinger. M numbers: “Niña”, “Mack the Black & Pirate Ballet”, “You Can Do No Wrong”, “Be a Clown”, “Love of My Life”. Dance directors: Robert Alton, Gene Kelly. S: Douglas Shearer. ED: Blanche Sewell.
    C: Judy Garland (Manuela), Gene Kelly (Serafin), Walter Slezak (Don Pedro / Macoco, Mack the Black), Gladys Cooper (Aunt Inez), Reginald Owen (the advocate), George Zucco (the viceroy), Nicholas Brothers (Specialty Dance), Lester Allen (Uncle Capucho), Lola Deem (Isabella), Ellen Ross (Mercedes), Mary Jo Ellis (Lizarda), Jean Dean (Casilda), Marion Murray (Eloise), Ben Lessy (Gumbo), Jerry Bergen (Bolo), Val Setz (juggler), [The Gaudsmith Brothers (Poodle Act, scenes deleted)], Cully Richards (Trillo).
    Finnish premiere: 7.4.1950. Telecast: 1965 TV1, 1983 MTV1, Yle TV2 1997, Yle Teema: 14.3.2010 ja 25.6.2011. VET 30227 – S – 2810 m /  103 min
    Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Vincente Minnelli), 27 Feb 2016

Probably more than one of us was thinking about Peter von Bagh while watching this fantastic Vincente Minnelli musical about which Peter wrote an insightful essay in his book Taikayö [Magic Night]. The Pirate is a vision on the power of dream and fantasy and the relationship of reality and illusion, as usual with Vincente Minnelli, and never better than here.

Judy Garland and Gene Kelly are at their best in this musical based on a play by S. N. Behrman and showcasing a full set of Cole Porter songs with lavish production numbers designed by Robert Alton and Gene Kelly.

The genius of Vincente Minnelli is in transforming into great art something that might remain pure fluff in lesser hands. He approaches the fairy-tale as it is (the film literally starts with pages of a fairy-tale book about the pirate  Macoco / Mack the Black) but turns the story into a celebration of the make-believe. Art is an illusion which can make us see reality more deeply than a matter-of-fact account. The Pirate, like The Band Wagon, is about show business, but there is also an awareness than in modern life almost everything has an aspect of show business. The foolish and the serious are not separated. The sublime and the ridiculous can be two sides of the same coin.

There is a dizzying vortex of switching identities in the narrative. Manuela (Judy Garland) is to be wed in a marriage of convenience to the mayor Don Pedro (Walter Slezak), but she secretly dreams of the great pirate Macoco. The circus ringmaster Serafin (Gene Kelly), infatuated with the reluctant Manuela, decides to pose as Macoco. But when Serafin and Don Pedro meet it turns out that it is Don Pedro who really is Macoco, or was in his previous life (and failed to kill Serafin when he threw him overboard) - by now he has turned respectable. Now Serafin's impersonation has been so effective that he is about to be executed by hanging, but he is granted his last wish, a last performance, in which Manuela's declaration of love for the great pirate is so overwhelming that the madly jealous Don Pedro drops his cover and exposes himself.

Gene Kelly offers an athletic performance where he is fully equal to Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn as a dashing pirate. Or a would-be pirate in a performance inside a performance that fools everyone. His production numbers are robust, physical, and athletic, and exhilarating in his first "Be A Clown" number with the Nicholas Brothers. He is introduced as a Papageno character in "Niña" where he calls every woman "Niña" because there are too many to remember them by name. However, thereafter he focuses on the one woman who rejects him, Manuela. "The Pirate Ballet" is a breathtaking action dance number.

Judy Garland covers a lot of emotional and psychological ground in her performance as Manuela whom we first meet as an immature girl still believing in fairy-tales - or wanting to. She, however, also states that there is a practical world and a dream world, as she is determined to enter a marriage of convenience. The high point of the film is the one where Manuela realizes that Serafin has been fooling her. We have learned to know Serafin as an athlete, but in the big turning-the-tables sequence Manuela gives him a beating, even shattering statues on him. From then on they are even, and they truly start to get closer without pretending. The final number is their mutual version of "Be A Clown".

The dialogue is witty, and there is a wonderful sense of joy in making such artifice work.

Yet another film with a cancelled marriage as the central plot concept.

For the first time I saw a 35 mm print of this masterpiece which I knew previously from video and 16 mm prints. A full sense of glorious Technicolor with a moment of weaker colour in the pirate ballet which therefore felt more stylized.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY MARKKU VARJOLA (1986):

Saikaku ichidai onna / Life of Oharu (2016 blog note)

Kenji Mizoguchi: 西鶴一代女 / Saikaku ichidai onna / Life of Oharu (JP 1952) with Kinuyo Tanaka as O'Haru

西鶴一代女 / O’Haru – naisen tie / O’Haru – en kvinnas väg / La Vie d'O'Haru femme galante / Das Leben der Frau Oharu. 

    JP 1952. PC: Shin Toho. EX: Isamu Yoshiji. P: Hideo Koi, Kenji Mizoguchi. 

    D: Kenji Mizoguchi. SC: Yoshikata Yoda, Yoshii Isamu – based on the novel Koshoku ichidai onna (in Finnish Kirsikkatyttö [Cherry Girl], 1978) by Saikaku Ihara, written in the 17th century. DP: Yoshimi Hirano. PD: Hiroshi Mizutani. M: Ichiro Saito. Historical consultant: Isamu Yoshi.
    C: Kinuyo Tanaka (O’Haru), Toshiro Mifune (Katsunosuke), Masao Shimizu (Kikuoji), Ichiro Sugai (Shinzaemon, O'Haru's father), Tsukio Matsuura (Tomo, O'Haru's mother), Kiyoko Tsuji (inn hostess / landlady), Toshiaki Konoe (Harutaka Matsudaira), Hisako Yamane (Lady Matsudaira), Yuriko Hamada (Otsubone Yoshioka), Kyoko Kusajima (lady-in-waiting Sodegaki), Noriko Sengoku (lady-in-waiting Sakurai), Haruyo Ichikawa (lady-in-waiting Iwabashi), Eitaro Shindo (Kabee Sasaya), Sadako Sawamura (Owasa), Hiroshi Oizumi (Bunkichi), Masao Mishima (Taisaburo Hishiya), Eijiro Yanagi (wealthy provincial / forger), Jukichi Uno (Yakichi Ogiya). Loc: Shin Toho outdoors studio at Hirakata near Kyoto.
    Helsinki premiere: 22.11.1963 Orion, distributor: Aito Mäkinen, Finnish / Swedish subtitles: Aito Mäkinen / Jerker A. Eriksson – telecast: 28.11.1968 MTV1, 29.10.1989 Yle TV2 – VET 67280 – K16 – duration according to sources: 148 min (IMDb, Wikipedia) – in Finland 3760 m / 136 min
    The KAVI print deposited by Aito Mäkinen viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (History of the Cinema), 27 Feb 2016.

See also my 2012 blog note on Saikaku ichidai onna.

Revisited a masterpiece by Kenji Mizoguchi, with one of the greatest performances of Kinuyo Tanaka who was Mizoguchi's anima, a versatile actress for many other directors – and a talented director in her own right. Tanaka's remarks on Mizoguchi are memorable in Kaneto Shindo's marvellous biographical Mizoguchi documentary Aru eiga-kantoku no shogai (1975).

We witness ten stages in the life of Oharu: - the dutiful daughter of a distinguished samurai, - a young maid caught in a forbidden love embrace with a page, - a suicidal daughter of a family now banished and living in poverty, - the concubine of daimyo Matsudaira giving birth to his son and then sent home, - a courtesan at an expensive house of pleasure caught in a scandal with a forger who wants to buy her, - an assistant to a clothier with a bald and jealous wife and a crooked young errand boy - a happy young wife of a fan merchant who is robbed and killed - a nun at a Buddhist monastery - a soka, the lowest of the low, a tramp whore of the street - rescued by her mother, she is again banished from the court where her son now reigns, and is last seen as a mad beggar singing the desolate theme song of "how bitter and and fickle life is / my life withers like a rose".

Oharu is the key masterpiece in Mizoguchi's post-war cycle of proto-feminist films, often starring Kinuyo Tanaka. Right after WWII he had made a series of passionate films with a direct social tendency. By Oharu he had moved to his Buddhist stage with a deeper spiritual involvement, but in no way watering down his sense of social indignation. Although a Buddhist by now, Mizoguchi never forgot the Friedrich Engels dictum about the status of women being the barometer by which one can measure the level of a society's development.

Oharu is also a celebration of the beauty and dignity of love, persecuted during centuries by society when it transcended class boundaries. Mizoguchi also celebrates Oharu's burningly high sexuality which causes her nothing but trouble. Even at the court the trouble starts when the relationship of convenience between the daimyo Matsudaira and his concubine Oharu turns into real passion.

Mizoguchi paints a rich portrait of Japanese society in the 17th century. We move across the entire social ladder from the most sumptuous court life to the most desolate slums. There is something Balzacian in Mizoguchi's passion of painting such a rich portrait of society. There is something Baudelairean in his sympathy for les femmes damnées.

Oharu is an epic tragedy. It has scenes of aching beauty (Oharu's amok run after she has read the last words of her lover to her before his execution). It has scenes of comedy (Matsudaira's envoy assigned with the task to find the perfect concubine) and moments of contes drôlatiques (the forger who comes to spend all his money at the Shimabara brothel). It has passages of pure elegy (Oharu's downfall). In the end, it is a saga of profound disappointment and fundamental solitude.

Mizoguchi is at the peak of his powers as a director in Oharu. With John Ford and Andrei Tarkovsky he belongs to the few who can combine an epic approach with a lyrical touch on this level of mastery.

The music by Ichiro Saito is enchanting, often played with a single instrument at a time (a flute, drums). The desolate theme song is performed by a derelict woman who sings and accompanies herself with the samisen. At the end the woman is Oharu.

The cinematography by Yoshimi Hirano is rich and subtle, often in deep focus, often in plan-séquence, often in dramatic high angle. Mizoguchi belongs to the masters of the crane shot and the long take; with him the long take is always full of life and movement, not meant to convey a sense of la nature morte.

The print often enough conveys the refined definition of light of the deep focus cinematography, but unfortunately it is uneven, and there are also low contrast passages (black missing), including in the very start. For a little while there are water / decomposition damage marks from the source from which this print was struck, showing that the source was not in perfect condition even then.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY PETER VON BAGH (1964):