|
The 22nd International Festival of Films on Art
March 11-21, 2004
By: S.B. Berger
The 22nd edition
of the International Festival of Films on Art, aka FIFA, reeled out its fare
this year in Montreal with 240 films from 30 countries. Of those, 50 were chosen
for official competition. Not only does this festival showcase documentary films
about art and artists, but has a wonderfully eclectic ambience, covering
anything and everything from the world of cinema, literature, painting,
photography, dance, and architecture. If you missed out on a liberal arts
degree, these 10 days may satiate those arts-challenged pangs. And if you’re a
culture vulture, this is the festival worth nesting in.
Here are some standouts from
the collective…
CINEMA
Luchino Visconti
The BBC’s Adam Low takes on Italian
neo-realist film auteur Luchino Visconti in
The
Life and Times of Count Luchino Visconti. FIFA’s opening film looks at the
life of the blueblood Visconti from the eyes of those who both knew him and
worked with him (a frequent intersection of personal and professional mingling
in his life). Scenes and discussions of his great works (The Leopard, Death in
Venice) explain the depth of his visionary mastery of film.
Death in Venice
A tribute to
American avant-garde theatre whiz kid, Robert Wilson is unveiled with Wilson’s
film chronicle of his populist/political operatic piece,
Einstein on the Beach,
with music by pop culture magnate,
Philip Glass.
Anthony
Hopkins: A Taste for Hannibal follows the enigmatic Hopkins on his life’s
journey into film. Hopkins reveals his conflicted feelings on his relationship
to the profession of acting.
Anthony Hopkins
The Peter Sellers Story-As He
Filmed It--The personal history of the late, great comic genius Peter
Sellers is unspooled via his own home-movie footage. Told in the words and
images of Sellers himself, confiding his own self-analysis and insecurities. A
peek into the mind and heart of one of cinema’s finest, whose untimely passing
in 1980 left us wanting.
Peter Sellers
Arthur Miller,
Elia Kazan, and the
Blacklist: None Without Sin considers The McCarthy Era and its effect on the
longtime friendship between Elia Kazan and Arthur Miller, who not only shared a
passion for the cinema, but a bodacious starlet named Marilyn Monroe. The film
also chronicles the Hollywood career-smashing powers of the anti-Communist
pundits of America in the 40’s and 50’s.
Elia Kazan
Arthur Miller
Mike Leigh—No
cinema literary quotient is complete without a profile of British kitchen-sink
drama icon Mike Leigh, whose
contributions of High Hopes, Naked, and Secrets and Lies have catapulted the
tales of the working class to ever-new legions of art house filmgoers.
Mike Leigh
LITERATURE
“Realists are always hated, especially in a
sanctimonious society of hustlers”…so said Gore Vidal in
The
Education of Gore Vidal, part of the acclaimed American Masters biography
series on PBS. His various roles as essayist, playwright, and provocateur were
never compromised in a career that spanned six decades. His controversial and
seditious, yet forever witty commentary on American history and politics are
evident in his prolific novels and essays (“Why become a senator when you can
buy one”). One of his earlier novels, The City and the Pillar (1949) was among
the first explicitly gay works of fiction in American history. Gore Vidal, a
true American intellectual, on writing: “A writer must always tell the
truth...as he sees it.”
Gore Vidal
George Orwell--A Life in
Pictures--This British TV biopic had two difficult challenges to
overcome--there remains no real archival footage of George Orwell (aka Eric
Blair), nor any voice recordings. The written word is the only legacy that
remains.
George Orwell
Out of a life of diaries and letters, photos and journalist notes,
director Chris Durlacher offers a dramatized documentary that recreates the
tumultuous, yet short (1903-1950) life of one of the world’s greatest authors
best known for penning 1984 (in 1948). 1984 remains on the top 10 bestseller
list for English novels. He also wrote the political satire, Animal Farm (1945),
still studied in classrooms worldwide. Orwell’s vision of the future was bleak:
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human
face--forever.”
George
Orwell
MUSIC
Elgar (Fantasy on a Composer on a Bicycle)—Britain’s renowned South Bank Show
host Melvyn Bragg met filmmaker Ken Russell more than 40 years ago on the BBC’s
art program, Monitor. This revisiting of Russell’s film on Sir Edward Elgar
(1857-1934), who bicycled over the hills of Worcester most of his life and
composed music inspired by this, is an apt ode to one of Britain’s most popular
composers - creator of the famously oft-played Pomp and Circumstance.
Freddie Mercury--The Untold Story—The public knows Freddie Mercury as lead
singer of the pop group Queen, whose gargantuan popularity spanned a decade.
What they don’t know is that
Freddie Mercury was born Faroukh Bulsara in
Zanzibar, educated in India and contracted AIDS shortly before his death in
1991 at age 45. Interview footage reveals a complex and intense man who loved
the arts and quietly guarded his private life from the footlights of his
flamboyant public stardom.
Freddie Mercury
ART
Marc Chagall, (Chagall—A la Russie, aux ânes et aux autres)—Marc Chagall, one of
the foremost and most controversial artists of the 20th century, is
retraced through film interviews, family accounts, never-before-seen-works, and
archival material. The director’s fascination with the artist from his humble
beginnings - the shtetl (small Jewish town) of Tsarist Russia - to his circle of the artistic elite (Cendrars,
Matisse, Picasso, Mayakovsky, and Malraux) is delineated to the art lover's
delight.
Marc Chagall
PHOTOGRAPHY
Ansel Adams: A Documentary Film—Quintessential American wilderness photographer
Ansel Adams is one of the few nature
documentarians who just about any plebeian
can recall. Visionary, pioneer, and environmentalist, Ansel Adams was a
sensitive artist who wrote poetically to those he knew: “Love is a seeking for a
way of life…the resonance of all spiritual and physical things…art is…both the
taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light of the inner folds of
the awareness of the spirit.” Since his passing in 1984, no photographer has
ever rivaled the timeless beauty of Adams’ images of the American West.
Filmmaker Ric Burns has produced a full portraiture of this extraordinary man’s
life and work for American public television.
©
David Hume Kennerly
Ansel Adams
ARCHITECTURE
Living Architecture--The Work of Tadao Ando
— “I do not believe architecture
should speak too much. It should remain silent and let nature in the guise of
sunlight and wind speak.” Self-taught Japanese architect Tadao Ando is known for
his austere concrete structures using simple geometric shapes that resonate with
the ambience surrounding them. He has designed houses, churches, temples,
and museums, including the UNESCO building in Paris and Modern Art Museum in Fort
Worth, Texas. This film explores the creative process of his works.
Tadao Ando
Interview with Frederick Baker—Imagine, Imagine
Imagine, Imagine —“Imagine there’s no heaven, It’s easy if you try, No hell below
us, Above us only sky…” Imagine, John Lennon’s ‘hymn for the new millennium’ was
voted (in the year 2000) as Britain’s favourite song lyric of all time. No small
wonder BBC director Frederick Baker made the film from the perspective of a
cultural anthropologist. “Imagine is truly a phenomenon…from a painful
experience in Yoko’s childhood [she’s now credited as co-author]…to a circle in
Central Park....to a line of baby products …it also cuts cultural boundaries,
from New York to Georgia (USSR), to Japan.”
Baker was only 6 when the song came out, but throughout his life Imagine
maintained an upward spiral of consciousness that has cut seamlessly through
generations and inspired peaceniks, musicologists, and spiritual-seekers for
over 30 years. Baker says, “You must have respect for the song--for the people who love it and
hate it. You cannot deny its popularity and impact. John Lennon harnessed the
media to get the message across.” Yoko Ono has continued the ‘Give Peace A
Chance’ tradition with the opening of the
John Lennon Airport in Liverpool…the
new logo features Lennon's self-portrait, along with the words 'Above us only
sky' (taken from the lyrics of John
Lennon’s famous ‘Imagine’ song),
used for an urban renewal project in the city
of the working-class hero.
Psychologists discuss how Imagine seals a void left by the current crisis in
faith with its placebo effect of Utopian religious themes: the worship of pop
music as the closest substitute for religious meditation. As a representation of
socio/political/historical films, Baker added, “This is not just a film about
Imagine. This is a film about the whole process of imagination, and why in the
21st century people used a song like Imagine to fill a spiritual
void…Imagine always appears in a context of healing pain. Now, with the current
climate of war versus peace…it’s a global thing…All of us in the world are in
the same boat….Imagine conjures an enormously hopeful feeling for the world.”
|
