Tra i film di questa edizione del Torino Film Festival, Une dernière fois rappresenta un oggetto anomalo. A ben vedere infatti, non capita spesso che un film definito pornografico scavalchi i confini degli eventi di settore, i quali, seppur in aumento, costituiscono pur sempre un universo a parte, ben distinto dai festival generalisti. Mettiamo da parte i fraintendimenti (e per qualcuno le speranze): il primo lungometraggio di Olympe de G. non è solo sesso, così come il suo scopo non è (soltanto) quello di eccitarci. Non lo è perché la protagonista Salomé (Brigitte Lahaie), sessantanove anni, donna in salute e benestante, ha deciso di morire. Ed è a partire da questa scelta, serena ma irrevocabile, che nascono le interazioni sessuali, il susseguirsi di amplessi alla ricerca della persona giusta con cui vivere la sua “ultima volta”.
Archivi tag: torinofilmfestival
TORINO 38 SHORTS
Article by Francesco Dubini
Translated by Nadia Tordera
Eighteen years after the last edition, the competitive section of short films returns to the Torino Film Festival. Two programs, twelve shorts chosen from more than 500 titles for six female directors and six male directors from all over the world. Very different talents compared to a heterogeneous parterre that combines a fascinating and precious variety of techniques and ideas. It is proof of the importance and strength of a complex and demanding genre capable of “giving back the cinematographic machine in a small way” at an international level, according to the recruiter Daniele De Cicco
Continua la lettura di TORINO 38 SHORTSTORINO 38 CORTI
A 18 anni di distanza dall’ultima edizione, torna al Torino Film Festival la sezione competitiva dei cortometraggi. Due programmi, dodici corti scelti tra più di 500 titoli per sei registe e sei registi provenienti da tutto il mondo. Talenti diversissimi a confronto in un parterre eterogeneo che unisce una varietà affascinante e preziosa di tecniche ed idee. Prova dell’importanza e della forza, a livello internazionale, di un genere complesso ed esigente in grado di “restituire la macchina cinematografica in piccolo”, secondo il selezionatore Daniele De Cicco.
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“SIN SEÑAS PARTICULARES” BY FERNANDA VALADES
Article by Francesco Dubini
Translated by Carmen Tucci
A los migrantes, en sus viajes inciertos y llena de promesas, a las famillas de los desaparecidos.
This dedication closes the end credits of a movie that doesn’t end for real, but it continues to vibrate in the powerful echo of reality that tells. Immigrants, their uncertain journeys with a lot of promises, families of missing people : the movie is about these facts following Magdalena’s journey, a mother who’s looking for his son, who left for the United States in search of safety and disappeared for months. Born as a short film in 2012, the movie grows with its director with the bad situation that tells, about violence that tears mexican society apart and it opens a wound that doesn’t stop bleeding. Fernanda Valadez chooses to analyze that blood through the measure of intimacy : Sin señas particulares denounces the pain of a country through the pain of a mother.
Continua la lettura di “SIN SEÑAS PARTICULARES” BY FERNANDA VALADES“SIN SEÑAS PARTICULARES” dI FERNANDA VALADES
A los migrantes, en sus viajes inciertos y llena de promesas, a las famillas de los desaparecidos.
Questa la dedica che chiude i titoli di coda di un film che non finisce per davvero, ma continua a vibrare nell’eco potente della realtà che racconta. Dei migranti, dei loro viaggi incerti e pieni di promesse, delle famiglie dei dispersi: il film racconta tutto questo percorrendo il viaggio di Magdalena, madre alla ricerca di un figlio partito per gli Stati Uniti in cerca di salvezza e scomparso da mesi. Nato come cortometraggio nel 2012, il film ha continuato a crescere con la sua regista insieme al male che racconta, quello della violenza che lacera la società messicana di oggi e continua ad aprire una ferita che non smette di sanguinare. Fernanda Valadez sceglie di analizzare quel sangue attraverso la misura dell’intimità: Sin señas particulares è un film che denuncia il dolore di un paese, nell’esperienza del dolore di una madre.
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“TOMMASO” E “THE PROJECTIONIST” DI ABEL FERRARA
Il controverso e provocatorio regista americano Abel Ferrara è presente nella sezione Festa Mobile del Torino Film Festival con ben due film: Tommaso e The Projectionist, due storie rispettivamente di redenzione e di determinazione.
Continua la lettura di “TOMMASO” E “THE PROJECTIONIST” DI ABEL FERRARA“TOMMASO” AND “THE PROJECTIONIST” BY ABEL FERRARA
Article by: Maria Bruna Moliterni
Translated by: Alice De Vicariis
The controversial and provocative American director Abel Ferrara is present in the section Festa Mobile of the Torino Film Festival with two films: Tommaso and The Projectionist. The former is a story of redemption, the latter of determination.
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“KINGS” di Deniz Gamze Ergüven
Los Angeles, 1991. Le televisioni di tutti i cittadini sono sintonizzate sullo stesso canale. Sullo schermo vibrano le immagini del 3 marzo dello stesso anno, quel nefasto giorno in cui quattro poliziotti (Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind e Theodore Briseno) aggredirono brutalmente il tassista afroamericano Rodney King al termine di un lungo inseguimento. Segue, sempre in televisione, il processo in tribunale, che si conclude con il proscioglimento di tutti e quattro dall’accusa di aggressione. Tredici giorni dopo la quindicenne afroamericana Latasha Williams viene uccisa con un colpo di pistola da Soon Ja Du, proprietaria del market in cui la ragazzina si era recata per comprare una bottiglia di succo d’arancia. La donna nota Latasha infilare la bottiglia nella tasca posteriore dei pantaloni e la accusa di volerla rubare; dopo un breve scontro fisico, la donna afferra la pistola da sotto il bancone e le spara alla testa. La ragazza muore sul colpo e ad immortalare il tutto c’è lo sguardo impietoso della videocamera di sicurezza. Continua la lettura di “KINGS” di Deniz Gamze Ergüven
“KINGS” by Deniz Gamze Ergüven
Versione inglese a cura del Master in Traduzione per il Cinema, la Televisione e l’Editoria Multimediale
Article by: Giorgia Bertino
Translation by: Federica Franzosi
Los Angeles, 1991. Every citizen’s television is on the same channel. On the screen, images from the 3rd of March of the same year are shaking. In that ill-fated day four policemen (Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind and Theodore Briseno) brutally assaulted African-American taxi driver Rodney King after a long chase. On TV, the images are followed by the court trial, concluding with the four of them being absolved of assault accusations. Thirteen days later, fifteen-year-old Latasha Williams, an African-American young woman, is shot by Soon JaDu, the owner of the shop where the girl had gone to get some orange juice. The woman had seen Latasha put the bottle in the back pocket of her jeans, and accused her of stealing; after a short physical altercation, the woman had grabbed the gun and shot the girl in the head. The young woman died immediately and the security camera captured the scene on film.
High Rise by Ben Wheatley
Article by: Lorenzo Trombi
Translation by: Roberto Gelli
The movie is the screen adaptation of the novel High Rise, written by James Graham Ballard. Jeremy Thomas, winner of the Academy Award, had been interested for year in making a film from Ballard’s novel but he only succeeded in producing it in 2014.
After showing a preview of High Rise at Toronto International Film Festival, the film was presented at San Sebastián International Film Festival and now it arrives at TFF within Festa Mobile section, reserved to non-competing films and unreleased films in Italy, which represent the best international movie production.
The movie is rich in rather interesting visual solutions such as the different kinds of oppressive verticality related to the skyscraper itself, where the story takes place. These are well conveyed by oblique and sloping framing or by the protagonist movements surrounded by the lift’s mirror but the film is not able to completely overcome the difficulties to cinematographically render situations and atmospheres implied in Ballard’s novel, in which we find different levels.
The screen challenge was perhaps to shape that metaphor of modern society, where everyone has the same role of tormentor and victim. The represented microcosm is located in a skyscraper, which offers every kind of thing people may need.
Most of the characters never leave the building except for the new surgeon, the protagonist Robert Laing, who in the first part of the film goes out to work. But in the end, after the tumultuous events have ceased, we will see him starting his professional activity within the skyscraper.
Often, the residents are referred to by mentioning their room numbers, as it happens in the dialogue between Laing and the architect during the squash match. This is clearly a sort of obsessive depersonalization.
Let’s step back and have a look at the plot. It all starts with the new surgeon moving in a luxury flat in the skyscraper. It won’t be long till he realizes the social distribution taking place throughout the building: the poorer classes live downstairs while wealthy people stay upstairs. The architect even invites him to visit his extra luxury attic but Laing looks indifferent and he only seems to be interested in seducing women.
During a blackout things become chaotic and everyone starts to understand that the more they go upstairs, the better they feel. This “physical” rise corresponds to a “moral” transformation: the majority of them become greed and fight with one another. One of the main female characters explains to her husband her sense of suffocation and tells him that she would like to enjoy the same light that those in the upper floors have at their disposal. Documentary filmmaker Richard Wilder heads the uprising with the aim of killing the architect.
In the last scenes we hear a speech saying that capitalism will never allow political liberty.
However, the film mood is oppressed by a script, which sometimes aims to be overfilled with facts and dynamics. The characters take themselves too much seriously and there is a lack of whatever possible temporary break out and lightness, which could reduce its general claustrophobia. Almost all of the film is made of internal shooting.
There are a lot of narrative premises in the movie but their developments lead too much towards a dead end track.
For sure, High Rise is worth seeing again, in order to ponder its content.
Lo scambio (Nameless Authority) by Salvo Cuccia
Article by: Lorenzo Trombi
Translation by: Martina Taricco
Torino, November 23, 2015 – Lo Scambio, directed by Salvo Cuccia, is one of the four Italian movies which run in the main section of the 33rd Torino Film Festival.
The story is inspired by real events. The director wrote it after several meetings with Magistrate Alfonso Sabella, where the two had the chance to touch the subject of a mafia homicide in which three young boys were killed: two of them were, without any doubt, not tied to organized crime.
The first estranging element is that characters in this story do not have a name: this choice contributes to amplify the ambiguity of the plot. The whole sequence of events starts in media res with a series of crossfades of people walking in a normal city market. The music is deafening. Here, all of a sudden, two strangers appear on the scene and kill two young boys.
In the next scene the action moves on to a police station, where something does not completely persuade the audience. Although the badge of people who work in such place is shown many times, there are some elements, scattered all along the movie, which give to the public the feeling of not really being in a law seat. In a narrative climax, played on the edge of uncertainty and of the untold, is instilled the doubt that who serves the law might, actually, be a ruthless mafia boss. The proof of this comes shortly after, in a scene where a presumed chief of police, one of the protagonists, is shown, years before, while being questioned himself.
On a scenographical level, there is an interesting contrast between very austere house interiors and the exteriors of an extremely degraded Palermo. The interiors where a hypothetical Janus Bifrons moves, that is to say the chief of police who actually is a mafia boss, are rational and tied. It is however behind this formalism and this aseptic cure that a strong anguish feeling is hidden. The pitch is reached when the boss’ wife hangs herself as she can not live secluded in her own house, hunted by her demons.
Every character has its double; their psychologies are all shifty and cryptic: anyone could be anyone else. This choice made by the director is intended to focus the audience attention on the core of the events rather than on the personalities of the characters or on relational dynamics.
Everything in the movie is made essential; the story is apparently narrated in an impersonal way. The credo that is in force in this film is not siding with anyone.
These atmospheres enhance the feeling of indefiniteness and uncertainty in which a significant thematic crux is unraveled: what if the mafia has got the wrong person?
The chief of police questions a helpless surveyor who had the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The man is eventually killed, an eye-opening event which shows us how the mafia can sometimes get off track when deciding who has to be killed. By this stage of the film, as confirmed by the title, it seems very likely that there was a mistake and the man was mixed up with somebody else.
The several changes of the focus really strike the eye and add to the feeling of anxiety and oppression experienced by the characters in the film.
The decision to film a gunfight without actually showing it but presenting it to the audience in a fixed camera shot and through the gunshot sound is spot on.
Similarly, in a beating scene we don’t see people fighting but it is possible to understand what is happening thanks to the noise we hear and the shadows on the walls.
Cuccia’s notable work is structured as a moral story where all events are connected in a cause-effect relationship. He depicts a dry and cold story where everything is based on retaliation.