Festivals and Awards 2001
Freedom Film Festival Poster by Wiktor Sadowski © American Cinema Foundation The Holloway FileDatabase of Russian and Ex-Soviet Union directors |
The year is difficult to characterize, and no single trend seems to emerge. Concerns about freedom in the face of tyranny extend to the West, with the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia ("Sky Hook", "The Punishment"). Questions about the direction of the future lead once again to explorations of the past and all its fictions ("Ordinary Bolshevism", "A Trial In Prague"), and its tentacles in the fictional present ("Brother 2"). But the ability of poets to make living art in the face of dictatorship ("Wojaczek," "Abschied") and everyday life ("Otesánek") remains, as always, the driving force of filmmaking.
Berlin and Los Angeles
The Freedom Film Festival takes place in Los Angeles at the time of the American Film Market, and the Berlin Freedom Film Showcase takes place at the same time as the Berlin International Film Festival. These programs are independent initiatives that take place in cooperation and coordination with the American Film Market (AFM) and with the Berlin Festival. This year for the first time our presentation partner in Berlin is the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Art). The year 2001 was our fourth year in Los Angeles and our third in Berlin.
The Berlin Freedom Film Showcase opening night, featured Jan Svankmajer's newest full-length film, "Otesánek." The series of film screenings followed at the Akademie der Künste and the Czech Center. At the gala closing night ceremony at the historic Berliner Rathaus, Poland?s legendary film director (and 2000 Honorary Oscar recipient) Andrzej Wajda presented the second annual Andrzej Wajda Freedom Prize to Jan Svankmajer.
In Los Angeles the opening-night film is "Sky Hook" (Yugoslavia). A series of films by producer Peter Rommel begins at the Monica with the ground-breaking comedy set in East-Berlin "Nightshapes" and continues at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles with his documentary about early television in Europe "TV Is King."
Summer/Fall 2001
At the Moscow International Film Festival, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic, and the Festival East-West in Baku, Azerbaijan, the Freedom Film Festival co-presents films in partnership with our sister festivals.
Freedom Film Festival 2001 (English) Deutsch » 
The Farewell
|
93 min., color, 35mm Director: Jan Schütte Sonnenstrasse 21, 80331 Münich, Germany Telephone: 49 89 55 87 60 Fax: 49 89 55 87 61 88 Email: skowronnek@telepool.de |
Abschied
(Germany 2000)
About the Film
On one of the last days of an unusually hot summer, just before his death in 1956, Bertolt Brecht is surrounded by close friends and former lovers at his lakeside villa near the Brandenburg town of Buckow, north of Berlin. Shortly, he will leave for the Berliner Ensemble to begin the new season.
But right now he wants to look back on his past life, reflect on the political upheaval stemming from Stalin's recent death, and review his role as a dramatic force. His wife Helene Weigel is on hand, as are his daughter Barbara Berg, his former lover Ruth Berlau, his latest flame Kathe Reichel, and the dissident Wolfgang Harig. Over the course of the day "from seven in the morning to five in the afternoon" the peaceful setting erupts into a storm of raw emotions until Brecht finds himself at the very center of the controversy. Director Jan Schütte says "This is a fictional story, although at the same time an authentic one. We are more interested in showing the situation of a great writer who has encountered many difficult situations in his private, political, and artistic lives." —Ron Holloway
Director's Filmography
Jan Schütte was born in Mannheim, Germany in 1957, and studied literature and philosophy in Tübingen, Zurich and Hamburg. He worked as a magazine photographer and in television before making his first film in 1992, a documentary entitled Ugge Bärtle-Bildhauer. A member of Hamburg's Film Bureau since 1998, he has his own production company and has taught film at the Ludwigsburg Film Academy.
Films:
Da ist nirgends nichts gewesen ausser hier (1983)
Eigentlich wollte ich ja nach amerika (1984)
Dragon Chow (1987)
Lost in America (1988)
Winkelmann's Journey (1990)
Nach Patagonien (1991)
Bye Bye America (1994)
Voyage Into the Innermost of Vienna (1995)
Fat World (1998)
Brother 2
|
123 min., color, 35mm Director: Alexei Balabanov Contact: Intercinema Art Agency |
Brat 2
(Russia 2000)
About the Film
Once the safest (police) state in Europe, today's Russia is all too often painted as a dark citadel of crime. It was only a matter of time before a fictional anti-hero emerged from Moscow headlines and startled world movie audiences. Alexei Balabanov's "Brother," (1997) a smash hit in Russia that is still being discovered by Westerners at film festivals and on DVD, might just be that emblematic film that starts a saga. "Brother 2" continues the adventures of Danila Bagrov, (Sergei Bodrov, Jr.) a deceptively innocent-looking young man, seemingly eager to please, whose remarkable energy and ingenuity is totally devoted to wiping out his many, many criminal enemies. The first film took him from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Now Danila Bagrov's talents meet a new challenge–America. Like the hero of Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange," you reluctantly admire Danila's steely nerve and physical courage even as his cheerful amorality and itchy trigger finger chills the blood. The violence is as stylized as a Jackie Chan film; few non-combatants stumble into the crossfire to mess up your growing attachment to young Bagrov. Not just cold, witty entertainment, the "Brother" films say something interesting and true about post-Communist Russian life, just as "The Godfather" has something to say about postwar America.
Director's Filmography
Born in 1959 in Sverdlovsk, Alexei Balabanov graduated from Gorky University's Foreign Language department in 1981. Between 1983 and 1987 he worked as assistant director with the Sverdlov film studio. He then graduated in 1990 from the Higher Courses of Screenwriters and Directors in Moscow. His professional debut was as co.author of the script for Border Conflict (1991) in collaboration with V. Suvorov. Films:, Nastya and Yegor (1989), About Flying in Russia (1990), Happy Days (1991) Official Selection Cannes IFF, winner of five National Awards; The Castle (1994), Trofilm (1995) Berlin International Film Festival, Grand Prix in the Message to Man International Film Festival in St. Petersburg; Brother (1997) Cannes IFF, winner Second Prize and FIPRESCI Award at Torino IFF; Of Freaks and Men (1998), Cannes IFF, 12 National Awards.
The Little Voyage
|
100 min., color, 35mm Director: Mihály Buzás Contact: Katalin Vajda, Magyar Filmunio |
A kis utazás
(Hungary 2000)
About the Film
Eastern European films have always had a special place for the personal history, the people's-eye, ground level view of a now discredited past. In this breezy, sarcastic story, set in the 1970s, a group of Hungarian teenagers win the coveted prize of a trip "abroad"–a summer's labor at a GDR youth camp. The supposed national characteristics of the Germans and the Hungarians sometimes come into play, but the real comedy is provided by incomprehension of other kinds; the usual gap between teenagers and adults is everywhere altered by the hypocritical need to pay "lip service" to the building of socialist character.
Director Buzás intersperses home movies taken by the reluctant young servants of the state. There isn't much political fervor among the kids, and there surely isn't much international solidarity among the unruly rebels who sneak out of group singing to experience the joys of drink, making out, and rock and roll. Like Germany's "Sonnenallee," "The Little Voyage" captures a vanished moment in modern history that people who grew up in any part of Communist Europe will recognize. It is too ironic, a little too acidly unsentimental to be called "ostalgic."
Director's Filmography
Jan Schütte was born in Mannheim, Germany in 1957, and studied literature and philosophy in Tübingen, Zurich and Hamburg. He worked as a magazine photographer and in television before making his first film in 1992, a documentary entitled Ugge Bärtle-Bildhauer. A member of Hamburg's Film Bureau since 1998, he has his own production company and has taught film at the Ludwigsburg Film Academy.
Films:
Zsebcselek—aka Pocket Tricks, TV series (1996)
Leptinotarsa avagy privát nyomozati anyag a krumplibogár titokzatos feltüneserol Magyar-országon—aka Leptinotarsa—or Facts of a Private Investigation About The Mysterious Appearance of Potato Beetles In Hungary, (1996) with Jozsef Szolnoki
Magyar vándor (anti-utifilm)—aka Hungarian Pilgrim—(anti-road movie)
Night Shapes
|
104 min., color, 35mm Director: Andreas Dresen |
Nachtgestalten
(Germany 1999)
About the Film
Tonight, the Pope is flying into Berlin, former front-line city of the cold war. Despite all of the earth-shaking change that has happened all around them, Berlin's night people still have to seek their own salvation and their own happiness, one person at a time. "Night Shapes" is a cluster of stories from that single night, weaving together three main encounters and several smaller ones. For a homeless couple, the unexpected gift of 100 marks means a jealous fight and a Cinderella night in a cheap, but clean, hotel. A farmer from the sticks learns a lesson in life when he defends a drug-addicted prostitute. A middle-aged businessman wrongfully accuses an Angolan immigrant child of theft, and ends up responsible for the boy throughout the long and unpredictable night. "Night Shapes," for all of its sentimental grace, is at heart a bitter, hard-edged comedy about being down and out. It continues the Berlin Noir series we began at the Freedom Film Festival last year with "Wege in die Nacht."
Director's Filmography
Andreas Dresen was born in Gera in 1963. Made his first amateur films as a boy. After graduating in 1982 he worked as a sound engineer at the theater in Schwerin. In 1985/86 he was a trainee in the DEFA feature film studio. From 1986 to 1991 he studied directing at the Konrad Wolf film school in Babelsberg. In 1996 he staged Goethe's "Urfaust" at the State Theater in Cottbus. He became a member of the German Academy of Arts in 1998. Presently lives in Potsdam.
Selected Films:
Der kleine Clown (1985)short film
Schritte des anderen (1986) short film
Zug in die Ferne (1989) short film, State of Hessen film prize
So schnell es geht nach Istanbul (1990) short film
Stilles Land (1992) German critics' prize
Krauses Kneipe (1993) documentary
Kuckuckskinder (1994) documentary
Mein unbekannter Ehemann (1995) TV film, jury prize Max Ophüls Festival, Saarbrücken
Das andere Leben des Herrn Kreins (1995) TV film, DAG TV gold prize
Polizieiruf 110–Der Tausch (1996) TV film
Raus aus der Haut (1997) TV film.
Ordinary Bolshevism
|
76 min., black and white, 35mm Director: Yevgeny Tsymbal Contact: Intercinema Art Agency |
Obyknovenny Bolshevism
(Russia 1999)
About the Film
"Ordinary Fascism" is the title of a once-famous Communist documentary about elements of the Nazi past that survived the war. "Ordinary Bolshevism" has positioned itself as its present-day moral and historical equivalent. It's a fast-paced, scathing review of the history of the USSR, told with attitude and indignation. The director, Yevgeny Tsymbal, deftly uses archival footage that visually backs his claim that Russia before the Bolshevik revolution was already a nation on its way up, an emerging success story that might have made a very different contribution to twentieth-century history. The film's most controversial section compares newsreels of the rise of Lenin in 1917 to German footage of workers ten or so years later, as that country was on the brink of falling for another charismatic European dictator. "Ordinary Bolshevism" has the populist feel and the energy of the best-remembered U.S. World War II documentaries, especially Frank Capra's "Why We Fight" film series.
Director's Filmography
Yevgeny Tsymbal was born in 1949. He graduated in history from Rostov University, and in 1984 from the Higher Courses of Directors in Moscow (VKSR) where he studied under Eldar Ryazanov. He briefly attended the Sundance Institute's screenwriter's workshop, and the Nordisk Folk High School in Sweden, where he also taught. As an original director of Mosfilm he made one of the first films dealing with Stalinist repression, Advocate Barrister Sedov (1988) which won the Special Award and FIPRESCI Prize at Mannheim, as well as receiving awards in Los Angeles and from the British Academy for Film and Television Arts. In 1990 he made Unextinguished Moon revealing obscure behind-the-scenes Stalinist intrigues. He directed second-unit photography for Nikita Mikhalkov's The Barber of Siberia.
The Punishment
|
91 min., color, 35mm Director: Goran Rebic Contact: Anne Laurent, Austrian Film Commission |
(Austria 2000)
About the Film
The Punishment" is a documentary that explores the same moral issues that the fictional "Sky Hook" does. Director Goran Rebic interviews residents of Belgrade after the 1999 war. His subjects include elementary school students, members of the professional class, and a former film star (Sonja Savic). Though we've seen television news footage of the effects of the bombing, Rebic also adds the eye of a filmmaker, observing Belgrade's shattered glass and angry graffiti. Unlike many works of advocacy, "The Punishment," for all its conviction, is balanced by an honest appreciation of the dilemma faced by people of good will who, dealing with an intractable and evil government, feel that they have no option but to use war plans that put civilian populations at risk. You may well feel that it is still worth the cost; but Goran Rebic wants to make sure that you really know the full cost. For many others, "The Punishment" will remain as a valuable snapshot of a way of conducting history that we must try to avoid repeating.
Director's Filmography
Goran Rebic was born in Vojvodina, Yugoslavia in 1968. He has been a resident of Vienna since the age of one. He made his fiction debut with 1997's Jugofilm. The award-winning film centered around a Vienna family of Yugoslavian immigrants struggling with the echoes and ramifications of the raging war in their mother country. After the 1990 short Domovina, a mix of enacted and documentary elements, Rebic's first full-length works were the acclaimed documentaries During The Many Years (1991) and On The Edge Of The World (1992). Both films dealt with subject matter that Rebic would continue to explore in both Jugofilm and The Punishment. In On The Edge Of The World, Rebic studied the effects of war in the Georgian Republic, focusing on the loss of hope and home, as well as the transition from socialism to nationalism. Rebic is currently preparing his second fiction feature. Tentatively titled Danube, the film is set to be an intercultural offering against the backdrop of the various countries that the river crosses.
Sky Hook
|
95 min., color, 35mm Director: Ljubisa Samardzic Contact: Ljubisa Samardzic, Cinema Design |
Nebeska Udica
(Yugoslavia/Italy 1999)
About the Film
Belgrade, less than two years ago. For the first time in more than 50 years, a major European city is under intense and regular air bombardment. We are confronted with the now-familiar, but still discomfiting images of modern people, who dress and look like us, dashing fearfully into underground shelters to escape Western bombers. Like Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing," the subject of "Sky Hook" is a city block under the pressures of endless summer heat and the fear of sudden violence. A former athlete goads his pals, unemployed by sanctions and war, into clearing a basketball court out of the rubble of a shattered factory. Slowly, the collective effort of maintaining the court and playing the roughest of street basketball restores a degree of normality to their lives.
Underneath the canopy of bombing, it's the universal story of a tough, colorful and desperate urban neighborhood, of a loosely connected gang of friends, lovers, and rivals who sometimes collide and sometimes pull together, a clear metaphor for the way that director Ljubisa Samardzic saw Serbian national life during one dramatic moment at the end of the century. "Sky Hook" avoids explicit political statements and stays with the human drama of families and friends unwilling or unable to leave the Yugoslav capital. It doesn't challenge your opinions of that doomed government, but it directly engages your conscience about war.
Director's Filmography
Ljubisa Samardzic was born in 1936 in Skopje and studied at the Belgrade Drama Academy. He has long been one of Yugoslavia's most popular movie stars, having appeared in more than 150 films. Winner of six Yugoslavian Film Festival awards for acting, he also received the Best Actor award at the 1967 Venice Film Festival for his performance in "The Morning." After the collapse of the unified Yugoslav state, he founded the production company Cinema Design (Belgrade), which he owns and operates with his son, Dragan. They produced the dark comedy "Wheels," which screened at the 2000 Freedom Film Festival. Sky Hook is his directing debut.
A Trial in Prague
|
82 min., color & black and white, 35mm Director: Zuzana Justman Contact: The Cinema Guild |
Praszky proces Ein Prozeß in Prag
(Czech Republic/USA 1999)
About the Film
It's 1952. The war has been over for only seven years, but already Europe fears the outbreak of World War III. The world's press is focused on a glittering propaganda event in Czechoslovakia. The notorious Slansky show trials purport to uncover a pro-Western spy ring at the center of Prague's Communist government. Fourteen state and party officials stood accused of high treason. Although they were innocent of the charges, they confessed and were convicted. Eleven of the fourteen were Jews. "A Trial in Prague" is a new documentary that draws together archival footage of the trial, present-day personal testimony, and secret state documents that have only come to light after the collapse of the Iron Curtain. How can so many people be made to confess to imaginary crimes? How many other people knew, or should have known, that the trials were a sham? Who, in the West, cared enough to speak out? Who didn't? And who actively supported the tormentors? Director Zuzana Justman balances compassion for the trial's very human victims with a wider concern for the way a whole society can be coerced into obedience.
Director's Filmography
Zuzana Justman was born in Czechoslovakia but now lives in the United States. A graduate of Vassar College and Columbia University in Russian and Slavic studies, she worked as writer and translator before making her filmmaking debut in 1989 as producer and screenwriter of Terezin Diary, a documentary about the World War II concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where she was incarcerated for two years. In 1993 she wrote, produced and directed Czech Women: Now We Are Free and she received an Emmy award in 1999 for Voices of the Children, a documentary about three concentration camp survivors.Sky Hook is his directing debut.
Wojaczek
|
90 min., black and white 35mm Director: Lech Majewski Contact: Urszula Suszko, film promotion coordinator, Film contract, Chelmska 21, |
(Poland 1999)
About the Film
"Rafal Wojaczek was a rebellious poet, who died prematurely, like Jean-Michel Basquiat or Jim Morrison. He died in 1971 at the age of 26. Fueled by his self-destructive life, his poetry made a great impression on generations of Poles. He drank and fought and walked through windows. Constantly attempting suicide, he unsuccessfully hanged himself and jumped from the third floor. Confronting death on a daily basis, he tried to tame it. Loved by women, he cared for no one, not even himself, living desperado-style only for poetry. Conscious of the need for myth in the mythless reality of communist Poland, he burned his life as an offering" —Lech Majewski.
Director's Filmography
Lech Majewski was born in 1953 in Katowice, Poland and graduated in 1977 from Lodz Film School. After making two features in Poland, An Annunciation (1978) and The Knight (1980), he emigrated to the United States in 1981. His first American film was Flight of the Spruce Goose (1985). In 1989 he directed Prisoner of Rio, about one of the Great Train Robbery perpetrators, Ronald Biggs, with whom he wrote the script. Gospel According to Harry (1992) takes place in California and stars Viggo Mortensen and Rita Tushingham. In 1996 he wrote, and co-produced, Basquiat which was eventually directed by Julian Schnabel, before returning to Poland to film his own The Roe's Room (1997) an autobiographical opera. Mr. Majewski is also a noted poet, novelist, set designer, and director of opera and performance art (including Penderecki's "Ubu Rex" and Robert Wilson/Tom Waits/William Burroughs' "The Black Rider") and producer of CDs of modern Polish music.