International Women's Day: Women in Berlin

Until women reach a 50-50 parity with men directors, my mission continues to count the women directors in upcoming and recent film festivals (and an occasional informal glance at what’s selling in the markets). Women’s films in Berlin reflect women’s place in the world both in content and in the numbers of women represented as directors, producers, writers, etc. John Cooper of Sundance stresses the increasing and possibly 50-50 parity of women producers, but I am looking at the directors. As March is Women’s History Month (and all the other months are Men’s History Month according to Gloria Steinem’s L.A. Times Article of March 4, 2010) this blog is in honor of all women everywhere.

Congratulations to Kathryn Bigelow for winning the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture.  LA Times puts into perspective the fact that the Best Director Oscar went to Kathryn Bigelow and that in the world of directors "...Although successful female directors appear to have gained higher profiles of late, the actual percentage of top films directed by women has remained static for 25 years at 7% to 9%, according to an annual study of women writers, directors, and producers of the 250 top-grossing films of the year by the Center for the Study of Women in Film and Television at San Diego State University.  'We're running in place. There's been no progress since 1987', said Martha Lauzen, the center's executive director.


I have learned much during this festival cycle of Sundance, Rotterdam and Berlin from the lesbian filmmaking community. The lesbian community regards cinema from a historical point of view and their films, as I learned in The Owls (which stands for Older, Wiser Lesbians) are made (and seen) in the historical perspective of speaking up, and progressing from being ghettoized and to becoming mainstream…a progression applauded in The Kids Are All Right, one of the most acclaimed films both in its Sundance premiere and here in Berlin. The Owls’ broken narrative sheds illuminating light on the broad spectrum of lesbian “types” from femme to transmale as opposed to butch, etc. I think this inner reflection is definitely a female trait which in this film reaches a glorious compendium of naming as many types as there as there are individuals. I was charmed by the film and its storytelling techniques. As a companion piece to the picture it paints of modern day lesbianism, the newly restored 30 year old feature showing in the Forum Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives dovetails with this theme.


Wieland Speck, head programmer of the Panorama at the Berlinale has this to say of The Owls by Cheryl Dunye: a very interesting American filmmaker. Dunye works to some extent with a Brechtian V-Effekt (distancing effect) and, using a split screen, thereby repeatedly intervening in the dramatic process. The story is interrupted, the actresses reflect upon the characters and their life situations, but also on the current situation of lesbians in the US. In this story about an all-women band, they’ve survived everything imaginable, the glamour has faded, and relationships are disintegrating. Something new has to happen. And so a tragic story from the past related to the band resurfaces – here too you see the movement towards the past. These and other paths back into history are perhaps due to a certain zeitgeist, which is a little scared of the future, but which doesn’t want to remain passive.

To continue into the Berlinale counts, in Competition and Special Sreenings, women directors are represented by a mere 7 out of 30 or 35% if I am correct in attributing the female gender to these directors: Jasmila Zbanic’s On the Path from Bosnia, Natalia Smirnoff’s Argentinean Rompecabezas (Puzzle), Pernille Fischer Christensen’s A Family from Denmark, Doris Dorie’s The Hairdresser (Die Friseuse), Anusha Rizvi makes her feature directorial debut on Peepli Live, the story of a poor farmer who announces he will kill himself so his family can benefit from a controversial compensation scheme, Please Give by Nicole Holefcener and The Kids Are All Right by Lisa Choldenko. These last three screened in Berlinale competition as well as at Sundance. Revolucion features 2 women directors out of the 10 chosen -- Marianna Chenillo ('Nora's Will') and Patricia Riggen ('Under the Same Moon'). Nicht so viel (Not many)…

The Forum (15 out of 68 titles = 23%): Los Angelina Sharon Lockhart’s Double Tide about a female clam digger in Maine, Lockhart’s 4th film about work, American Laura Poitras’s The Oath which also played in Sundance, Chinese Yang Rui’s Fan shan (Crossing the Mountain), Finland’s Anastasia Lapsui and Markku Lehmuskallio’s Seven Songs from the Tundra, France’s Chantal Akerman’s D’est, Tatjana Turanskyj’s Eine flexible frau (The Drifter), Imani by Uganda’s Caroline Kamya, Orly by Germany’s Angela Schanelec about two people meeting in the Paris airport, Argentinean Ines de Oliveira Cezar’s El recuento de los danos (The Counting of the Damages), Gamma Bak’s Schnupfen im Kopf (Head Cold) the staged video diary that Gamma Bak filmed in 1993 at her kitchen table, two years before she underwent her first psychotic episode. Five more episodes follow. Yang Yonghi, a Korean-Japanese with an M.A. in Media from The New School in New York City, tells the story of her family, a story that takes place between North Korea and Japan, in Sona, the Other Myself. Other films by women include Sunny Land by Berliner and Bennington and Humboldt Universities graduate Marietta Kesting and Aljoscha Weskott, Brandeis and Edinburgh educated, Debra Granik’s Winter Bone, acquired during Sundance by Roadside Attractions for the US and in time for EFM by Fortissimo, the still apt Mariposa Film Group’s Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives, the lives of 26 lesbians and gay men in December 1977, a year before Harvey Milk was shot dead and just acquired by Rialto for US, and finally, Claire Denis’ Beau Travail.

Panorama (9 of 54 films = 17%): Film Unfinished by Yael Hersonski was in Sundance FF and is in Panorama Documentary, Cuchillo de Palo by Renate Costa, The Owls by Cheryl Dunye, Missing Man by Anna Fenchenko, Budrus by Julia Bacha, Lucy Walker’s audience winner Waste Land, Fucking Different Sao Paulo by Monica Palazzo, Joana Galvao and Max Julien, Death by Instalments by Ilona Ziok, Blank City by Céline Danhier, USA

 
Generation(s) The percentages are too small to calculate:

Pudana – Last of the Line (Sukunsa Viimeinen) by Anastsia Lapsui, Markku Lehmuskallio of Finland in Generation Kplus, A Brand New Life from South Korea and France by Ounie Lecomte, Bran Nue Dae by Rachel Perkins, Dutch director Ellen Smit’s EEP!, La Pivellina by Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel

Perspektive Deutsches Kino: Portraits of German Alcoholics by Carolin Schmitz, Cindy Does Not Love Me by Hannah Schweier, Desert Flower by Sherry Hormann

Market Screenings: A quick and informal glimpse at the market screenings: Stefanie Sycholt’s Themba from Germany and South Africa being sold by Sola Media, Sweden’s Teresa Fabik’s Starring Maja (Preinsessa), Lola Doillon In Your Hands being sold by Elle Driver, Sherry White’s Crackie being sold by Shoreline, Paz Fabrega’s Agua Fria being sold by Films Boutique, Dominque Monfery’s Eleonore’s Secret sold by Films Distribution, Adriana Magg’s Grown Up Movie Star, Luca (?) Guadagnino’s Io Sono L’Amore (I Am Love) (The Works sold it to Cineart for Benelux), Susanne Bier’s Vengeance (Trust Nordisk sold to Cineart), Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights (Hanway to Cineart), Anahi Berneri’s It’s Your Fault (Por Tu Culpa), Dania Paquini and Max Giwa’s Street Dance 3D, Urzulla Antoniak’s Nothing Personal, Charlotte Sieling’s Above the Street Below the Water being sold by The Match Factory, Bettina Oberli’s The Murder Farm, Simone Laine’s Michel Ciment, The Art of Sharing Movies, Children Of Glory, directed by Krisztina Goda and produced by Andrew G Vajna, an epic story of the 1856 revolution in Hungary. Visit licensed Picture Me to Strand Releasing for US. a documentary by Ole Schell and Sara Ziff, and is also selling Ramona Diaz’s Don’t Stop Believing: Everyman’s Journey. Wide is selling Valerie Minetto’s Mine, My Life Behind The Scenes, Ines Compan’s Open-Sky is a Mosaique Films and Le Hamac Rouge production about the Kolla natives of Argentina and their battle against a Canadian silver-mining company, In addition, Wide screened a 60-minute rough cut version of Laure Charpentier’s Gigola, with a cast including Lou Doillon, Eduardo Noriega, and Marisa Berenson. The drama focuses on a well-known character from 1960s Pigalle, an area of Paris, and is based on Charpentier’s controversial bestseller of the same name. Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s The Extra Man. Leila, from director Audrey Estrougo, sold in Bulgaria (Pro Films), Hungary (DMC), Czech Republic (Hollywood Classics), South Africa (Video Vision) and Korea (Mars), among several others. Pierre Salvadori’s Full Treatment sold in Switzerland (Frenetic), Spain (Golem), Portugal (Lusomondo), the Baltic States (Acme) and China (Champs Lis), Donatella Maiorca’s Sea Purple (Viola di mare), She a Chinese by Xiaolu Guo, Rai Trade’s Ten Winters (Dieci inverni) by Isabella Ragonese, Michele Riondino, Glan Blackhall, France’s Mes Cheres Etudes by Emmanuelle Bercot, Cuban Rebeca Chavez’ City in Red, Canada’s Danishka Esterhazy’s Black Field, Dorothee van den Berghe’s My Queen Karo, Spain’s Mascares by Elisabet Cabeza,

Birgitte Berman’s Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel is seeking a sales agent. I would suggest Lightning or Arrow as both deal with mainstream and spiritual themes. Cinemavault would also be good.

Coming up: Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnau (Persepolis)’s Waiting for Azrael by Celluloid Dreams, Studio Babelserg and Clou Partners, all under the umbrella of new European production powerhouse TheManipulators.
More soon on the Berlinale Co-Production Market, but for now: Alicia Scherson’s The Future.

Palm Springs FilmFestival: 8 Films on World War II and 2 on China

What do 8 films on World War II -- all submitted for Academy Award consideration for Best Foreign Language Film by their originating countries -- have in common with two Chinese Films, City of Life and Death (Nanking Nanking) a 9th film about World War II and Quick Quick Slow?

1. They are all part of the Palm Springs International Film Festival. (White Ribbon, Winter in Wartime, Broken Promise, Ba’aria, Max Manus, Protektor, Draft Dodgers, Reverse - except for Ba'aria)

2. All the films are state financed.

3. All are male centric (except for Reverse).

3. All (perhaps not the romantic comedy Quick Quick Slow) reflect the realization that war is not a black and white issue but involves many shades of good and bad, personal decisions as well as national decisions, all are male centric, and all call for re-examination today as ultimate tools to destruction of all mankind in the face of current conflicts still occurring around the world.

The contradiction of this desire for peaceful resolution which would result in greater liberty for all segments of a society is given substance by the Chinese decision to pull their films from Palm Springs because Palm Springs insists on showing the Tibetan documentary, The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet’s Struggle for Freedom, about the Dalai Lama and protests over Tibet's status vis a vis China. Obviously we're not waging a war over this here in the U.S. but just as obviously, it is apparent that the words and sentiments being expressed by the films are the idealistic reexamination of the past and not the Real Politik of the present.

Parenthetically a further contradiction: Nanking, Nanking is also dislked by many of the Chinese for the supposedly sympathetic portrait of some Japanese colonial miltary officers during that infamous WW 2 massacre of thousands of innocent Chinese civilians by the Japanese Army.

My interview here in Palm Springs with Nicolas Steil, the president and CEO of Iris Productions in Luxembourg shed an interesting light on the universal need to give voice to one's thinking. After his career in journalism in print and producing TV news, in 1986 Steil was one of 5 who decided to start a film industry in Luxembourg from scratch. Today it has all of 600 industryites (US has about 10,000) in a country with a population of 500,000. They produce 25 coproductions a year with France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and the UK. They have 20 active directors, no film school. During the war years his film Draft Dodgers depicts, the Germans took over Luxembourg quite quickly and the young men were forced to serve in their army or flee. Steil, who has produced numerous works and directed docs, news and much live theater chose this story as his debut fiction feature, taking 5 years to write and raise financing. He chose it because of the urgency of not repeating such war elsewhere, as a way to use in schools, especially after September 11, to create a political conscience about engagement and the necessity of engaging on different levels and for many complicated reasons.

A nation such as Luxembourg, but probably not just Luxembourg, was comprised of 4% collaborators and 4% resistors during the war years. The rest of the population just waited...It is likely that after September 11 until today 4% of the US population is vociferously jingoistic, 4% is determined to resist the racist and jingoistic factions and the rest just waits...hoping the world will be alright in the end.

To be a part of the Palm Springs Festival, resisting -- as did the Melbourne Film Festival -- the demands of the Chinese State to pull films expressing undesirable points of view, as Toronto Film Festival did and Edinburgh did not -- resisting demands of individuals not wanting the Israeli point of view to be visible, to be part of the international film community actively engaging in this dialogue of unity vs. exclusion puts us personally into that 4% segment of resistance which is exactly the reason most of us entered the world of independent film to begin with. I am proud to stand with Darry McDonald and the rest of the Palm Springs International Film Festival for the freedom of expression in this country and to resist the dictates of any country or individual to determine which film should or should not be played.

New Thread: Women in Movies

My blogs are often created as responses to requests of clients seeking research or to my own interests. I was recently put on the board of the new website www.Twolia.com and my blog on that site will be posted here as well because it is hitting that all important demographic: Woman.

Here is the first:
I am going to blog about women in film...starting with Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" which is bound for Academy Awards.

If you want to follow this blog, also sign up for free to www.imdb.com because that's where you can find out more about the names here. If you are a film professional, you might sign up ($100/ year) to www.IMDbPro.com where you'll get even more information with contact information.
So, Kathryn Bigelow has been an actress, is a writer, director and producer. A list of films she's directed (from IMDb of course) is here.

The Hurt Locker (2008)
Mission Zero (2007)
"Karen Sisco" (1 episode, 2004) - He Was a Friend of Mine (2004) TV episode
K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)... aka K*19: The Widowmaker (USA: poster title)... aka K-19 - Showdown in der Tiefe (Germany)... aka K-19: Terreur sous la mer (Canada: French title)
The Weight of Water (2000)... aka Le poids de l'eau (France)
"Homicide: Life on the Street" (3 episodes, 1998-1999)... aka "Homicide" (USA: informal short title) - Lines of Fire (1999) TV episode - Fallen Heroes: Part 2 (1998) TV episode - Fallen Heroes: Part 1 (1998) TV episode
Strange Days (1995)
"Wild Palms" (1993) TV mini-series (hour 4)
Point Break (1991)
Blue Steel (1989)
New Order: Substance (1989) (V) (video "Touched By The Hand Of God")
Near Dark (1987)
The Loveless (1982)... aka Breakdown
The Set-Up (1978)
Her films are very male in that they deal with action, hard core crime, and in "The Hurt Locker", with war - this time in Iraq. After that absolutely fantastic film, you never need to see another movie on Iraq. I looked hard for the woman's touch and maybe found it in a rather out of place scene where one of the soldiers sneaks into a private home and the woman of the house yells at him until he leaves like a dog with his tail between his legs.

It looks like Bigelow is bound for the Oscars which brings to mind someone else's blog which I am going to post here as well. Anne Thompson in Thompson on Hollwood (TOH!) in her article (see Ladies First) says:

"If Kathryn Bigelow were to be nominated for best director, she would become only the fourth woman - and second American woman - ever to receive that honor. If “The Hurt Locker” were to be nominated for best picture, it would become only the seventh best picture directed (or co-directed) by a woman. And for the first time ever, she could have some female competition. Back in indieWIRE‘s post-Cannes awards check-in, we noted the first inclinations of this fantastic potential. Jane Campion (one of the previous three female director nominees) seems to be in good shape for contention after the Cannes screenings of her “Bright Star", and Lone Scherfig’s “An Education” was still enjoying the promise that met it at the Sundance Film Festival.

Both “Star” and “Education” - set for release in September and October, respectively - continue to seem like likely fixtures in the awards race. And they could possibly be joined by a few as-yet-unseen female-helmed films, from Mira Nair’s “Amelia” to Julie Taymor’s “The Tempest” to Nancy Meyer’s (who has supassed Penny Marshall as the highest grossing woman director) as-yet-untitled (It's Complicated) but promisingly cast (Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin!) new film. That makes for six strong female-directed possibilities - not to mention a slew of female-centric possibilities like Rob Marshall’s “Nine” and Lee Daniels’s “Precious” (oddly enough, both directed by gay men) - in these unchartered ten best picture-nominee waters. And wouldn’t that make good on the Academy’s suggestion that the fattened shortlist would “broaden the possibilities” of Oscar?

At this point, it would be surprising if five films that have already screened either theatrically or in festivals—“The Hurt Locker,” “Bright Star,” “An Education,” “Precious” and “Up”—did not end up serious contenders for Oscar’s top ten. That would make for half the list being filled with three female directed-films, a film directed by an African-American (which has never made the shortlist), and an animated film (which has happened just once in 1991’s “Beauty and the Beast”)."