Mel's flock spreads word to grass roots
Canadian branch of Campus Crusade for Christ busily sows support for Gibson's controversial film

BRENDAN KELLY
The Gazette

Sunday, February 22, 2004


In an effort to help Mel Gibson's controversial movie The Passion of the Christ, Bob Kraemer, a former Winnipeg Blue Bomber receiver and a longtime official with an evangelical group, grabbed the ball and ran with it.

As director of special projects at the Langley, B.C.-based Canadian arm of Campus Crusade for Christ, Kraemer became keenly interested in the movie last autumn.

The Passion of the Christ is directed and co-written by Gibson. In fact, the star of Lethal Weapon and Braveheart also financed the $25-million (U.S.) film himself.

An ultra-traditional Catholic, Gibson has made what most reports describe as a brutal, emotionally charged look at the last day in the life of Christ, including graphic footage of his death on the cross.

All of the dialogue is in the languages of the time and place - Latin and Aramaic.

The movie opens in Montreal and across North America on Wednesday, which happens to be Ash Wednesday.

Thinking it would be a great tool to spread his group's evangelical message in Canada, Kraemer quickly contacted Icon Productions, Gibson's company, and persuaded it to let him take charge of developing grassroots support for the film among Canadian Christian leaders.

In an unprecedented move, it was Campus Crusade for Christ and not Equinoxe Films, the Canadian distributor of The Passion of the Christ, that organized a series of screenings across the country last month.

Kraemer's group screened it a dozen times in a host of cities, including Montreal, Halifax, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton and Surrey, B.C.

Most of the screenings were in churches in front of audiences of between 800 and 1,200 people, and Kraemer estimates that a total of 9,000 people saw The Passion of the Christ during the cross-country tour.

The viewers were almost all Christian church leaders, which is exactly what Gibson and Icon Productions wanted, Kraemer said.

In the United States, Icon Productions itself set up similar screenings for Christians.

Gibson's company has made no secret of its goal of using the movie to boost the Christian faith. Icon Productions sent promotional kits to churches in the United States with a flier that suggested the film is "perhaps the best outreach opportunity in 2,000 years."

Few Jewish leaders in Canada have seen the film. Gibson has said it is a faithful retelling of one of the world's most famous stories, based directly on the Scriptures. It has also been criticized by many for being anti-Semitic or, at the very least, a film that could incite anti-Semitism.

For Kraemer, the media focus on allegations of anti-Semitism is only serving to obscure the movie's real message.

"People want to talk about anti-Semitism, they want to talk about the graphicness (of the violence)," Kraemer said. "For us, the central thing is the character of Jesus and his death and resurrection. We want to make that the issue: Who is Jesus and what does Jesus's death and resurrection mean for people (today)? It's an obvious thing for us to want to jump on this opportunity."

But the charges that Gibson is potentially inciting hatred against Jews won't go away. Newsweek recently ran a cover story with a photo of Passion actor Jim Caviezel as a bloodied Jesus under the explosive headline "Who Really Killed Jesus?" The article, by the news magazine's managing editor and former biblical scholar Jon Meacham, argues Gibson's film can easily be interpreted as blaming the Jews for Christ's death.

Kraemer and executives at Montreal-based Equinoxe Films reject claims the film is anti-Semitic and say the controversy is simply helping to market the film.

"Ultimately, all publicity will be good publicity," Kraemer said. "Our interest is in getting people to see the film. People will see that (Christ's death) was a real act of sacrifice and that he did it so our sins can be forgiven."

"I think (the controversy) is positive because people will want to see it for themselves," said Yves Dion, vice-president of distribution at Equinoxe.

Dion said he doesn't see The Passion of the Christ as a religious film. But he said he thinks it's a cinematic masterpiece and will be a major hit.

He and two Equinoxe colleagues saw a rough cut of the movie at a cinema in the Soho district of London in October and all three were blown away.

"We were completely flabbergasted by the quality of the film," said Dion, who has worked in the Canadian movie distribution biz for 20 years. "This is one of the best directed and most powerful films I've ever seen."

Equinoxe quickly bought Canadian rights to The Passion of the Christ from Icon Productions and, Dion said, all of the top Canadian film companies were interested.

This was in contrast to the U.S., where, despite the fact it was a project by one of Hollywood's top stars, all the major studios passed on it. Finally, tiny Newmarket Films acquired the film's U.S. rights.

Equinoxe's original plan was to open it small in Canada, on about 20 screens.

But all of the media hoopla has the company now planning to give it a Hollywood-blockbuster launch on 200 screens on Wednesday. (It will be released on about 2,800 screens across North America.)

Equinoxe is spending less on marketing The Passion of the Christ than it would on other major releases because the film is benefiting from so much free publicity in the press.

"It's unusual because this film has been talked about for the past 12 months," Dion said. "It's on Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, Good Morning America, CNN. So the level of awareness is pretty high."

Equinoxe would usually buy more than $1 million worth of television advertising for a release of this magnitude, but instead is only spending about $300,000 on TV commercials, Dion said.

The entire Canadian marketing campaign will cost between

$1.7 million and $2 million, he said. Last year, Equinoxe spent more than $3 million marketing the Canadian hit Mambo Italiano.

U.S. box-office expert Paul Dergarabedian told Variety that The Passion of the Christ is one of the most talked-about movies since the first Star Wars prequel. The same Variety article reports that advance research predicts the indie film could make from $15 million to

$30 million U.S. on its opening weekend, and some studio executives are predicting it will gross $100 million during its North American run.

Partly because of the grassroots screenings for Christian leaders, churches are buying up thousands of advance tickets for the Gibson film, sometimes reserving entire screenings for their congregation. Advance sales to church groups are not quite as strong in Canada as they are south of the border, though at least one Canadian church bought more than 8,000 advance tickets, Dion said.

Kraemer attended all of the advance screenings for Christian leaders in Canada and said those viewers - clearly the primary target audience for the film - came away deeply moved by the experience.

"A holy hush came over the audience after the screening," Kraemer said. "In 12 showings, I didn't have more than three people voice negative opinions."

But will the general public be as enthusiastic?

Film-industry analysts are split on whether moviegoers are ready for Gibson's sometimes-gruesome traditionalist take on the life and death of Christ. Entertainment Weekly's cover story - titled "Can Mel Gibson survive The Passion of the Christ?" - suggests that Gibson's career might suffer just as much if the movie turns out to be a major hit. The article notes that if the film does boffo box office, but is still seen as anti-Semitic, Gibson's "defiant, unconciliatory stance may well be read as a decision to trade away Jewish concerns for Christian box-office dollars."

The Passion of the Christ opens in Montreal Wednesday.

bkelly@thegazette.canwest.com

Digital video frees film-makers

Consumer video cameras are allowing film-makers to create award-winning films on tight budgets, reports the BBC Go Digital presenter Tracey Logan.

Friends star Courtney Cox was not fazed when she saw the consumer video cameras on the set of award-winning psycho thriller November.

In fact, according to Director Greg Harrison, she found the whole experience refreshing.

And his indie film's surprisingly low budget, just $150,000 instead of the $1-2 million low-budget movies usually cost, meant his backers at Indigent Productions were happy too.

Mini-DVs are widely used nowadays in news reporting and for TV documentaries and some soaps.

But November's award at the Sundance Film Festival for Excellence in Cinematography shows they have moved beyond the Blair Witch Project's rough, hand-held, natural light aesthetic into something more fitting for the silver screen.

"I wanted to push the technology and not abandon a cinematic look," Greg Harrison told the BBC's Go Digital, " and still work with colour and shadow and framing and lighting" to convey the tension in this psychological thriller.

25 mini-DVs

The corner store scene of a violent robbery and murder in the film needed to look dark and murky.

In a film shoot of just 15 days and on a very low budget, the special lighting and coloured gels of conventional filming were out.

But November's director of photography, Nancy Schreiber, got her Sundance citation by achieving the same effect through white-balancing video cameras in the warm tones of a nearby streetlight.

As well as cloning the look of more expensive film-shoots, the Panasonic DVX-100 cameras Mr Harrison used had unexpected spin-offs for the actors.

With a price tag of just $2,500 apiece, the crew bought around 25 min-DVs, allowing them to use multiple cameras simultaneously on conversation scenes to capture wide-shots, close-ups, and cutaways without the need to repeat the scenes endlessly.

It meant the cast spent more time acting and less time standing around on the set.

"You can't tell that we shot it on a consumer camera, it just looks like a regular movie," said Mr Harrison.

Faster, cheaper

All of this suggests the imaginative use of consumer video cameras could start to erode the stigma of low-budget film-making.

Scenes were shot by multiple cameras all at once
It could allow more independent film-makers to compete with the big studios for those precious box-office dollars.

The combination of such cameras along with cheap, desktop editing could change the picture for production companies around the world, technology analyst Bill Thompson told Go Digital.

"I would imagine Bollywood and other film centres could start to look at these technologies and say can we make our films faster and cheaper and get more films out there, given that we have the ideas and the cast to do this.

"It could be a very good thing for film-making around the world."

Anything is possible Whale Rider producer says
23 February 2004

Keisha Castle-Hughes best actress nomination at the Academy Awards comes at the end of a long and well-planned campaign, the film's producer John Barnett says. He talks to Mike Houlahan .

"Anything is possible" is the moral of the story of Whale Rider, and the film's producer says that phrase also sums up the chances of the film's star becoming an Oscar winner.

Next week 13-year-old Auckland actress Keisha Castle-Hughes takes her place among Hollywood's elite at the Academy Awards. Win or lose, her nomination for Best Actress is already historic – she is the youngest person ever to be nominated in the category – and John Barnett says the starlet has a legitimate shot at glory.

"There are hundreds and hundreds of films made every year in the world, and to be picked as one of the five best, and to be the youngest ever, they can't take that away from her. It's just fantastic," the Auckland-based producer says.

"This is a performance where the film is absolutely about the lead actress. . . this is Keisha's film and it's an uplifting performance. If she's not the lead (contender), she's second equal."

The moment the Niki Caro-directed film emerged as a serious Oscar contender, Barnett wasn't even in the same hemisphere as the movie.

Whale Rider had just had its world premiere screening in Canada at the Toronto International Film Festival, but afterwards the team behind the film had gone their separate ways.

"Before the festival began there was already a certain buzz about the film," Barnett recalls.

WHALE RIDER IN HOT COMPANY

"We were excited, but you get to Toronto and there's 350 films and a lot of them are studio pictures and have big names in them. We knew it was a popular vote and maybe we won't really stand out all that much so we all came home after the screenings, so none of us were there in Toronto when the awards were announced. . . Niki was in Los Angeles and she rang me at 5am to tell me 'Guess what? We've won'."

Barnett was naturally thrilled the film had received the People's Choice Award, but became positively electrified when he did some reading and discovered the previous four Toronto award winners had been Amelie, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Life Is Beautiful and American Beauty – Oscar nominees all.

"I called her back and said 'Gee, this is really something here.'. . . those films were serious pictures and you think 'Hang on, we're in hot company here'."

Whale Rider – based on Witi Ihimaera's story of the coming of age of a young Maori girl at a remote East Coast village – had only been finished in late August, with the Toronto festival the following month. Its surprise win suddenly meant a major rethink on how best to sell the film, which influential industry observer www.oscarwatch.com was already talking about as an academy award contender.

Whale Rider was entered into a diverse range of festivals, including Sundance, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Seattle, Maui and Lake Placid, winning many more awards along the way.

The thinking was Whale Rider was a classic example of a film which would sell by word of mouth, and festivals were where film people talked, Barnett says.

"Who was necessarily going to see a film about a young Maori girl from New Zealand, a film that had no action or romance starring no one you'd ever heard of coming from a place you'd never seen? The important thing was to put it in front of audiences so they could see it."

American distribution for Whale Rider had been secured at Toronto, an arrangement which was reworked slightly after the award win.

In June Newmarket released Whale Rider in the US on a small basis with nine prints, and gradually built up over the next two months to 500 prints.

From small beginnings, Whale Rider was in the US box office top 20 for 14 weeks.

"You start in the right places, New York and Los Angeles, and get a high per-screen average," Barnett says.

FOCUS ON PROMOTIONAL CAMPAIGNS

"We did $15,000 per screen which was no 2 screen average for the week. It means people start looking at it. The next week they went to 11 prints, then 60 prints, the next week they went to 120, then 180, then 220 and 240, and built it up gradually as the demand warranted."

However, there were two strong disadvantages to building up Whale Rider's profile. Caro was pregnant with her child due in the middle of the American launch, and the movie's star – Keisha Castle-Hughes – was then 12-years-old.

"She equally couldn't just up sticks and spend three weeks touring around," Barnett says.

"Also, you couldn't work her so hard. . . they did a terrific job with what they had."

To work around those difficulties, Caro went to the US ahead of release, while Keisha went to the US for the launch and also to London and Tokyo for those premieres.

As the momentum for an Oscar bid built, Castle-Hughes returned to the States three times, while Caro returned to promote the film in November.

Barnett says plans for an Oscar promotional campaign were laid right from the win at Toronto, after which. Oscarwatch.com had rated the movie a chance for best supporting actress, director, best picture and screenplay.

Such campaigns are funded by the film's distributors – who ironically also distribute Monster, the movie starring Castle-Hughes' main rival for the Oscar, Charlize Theron – with the costs being deducted from the return investors receive from the movie's US takings.

They also don't come cheap, Barnett says. He estimates a couple of million dollars might have been spent promoting Whale Rider – by comparison, he suggests the promotional budget for New Zealand-made Oscar rival The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King might be closer to $10 million.

However, by the time Oscar nominations came around Whale Rider had by and large done its dash on the world's cinema screens and was being released on DVD. . . while Return Of The King is still on wide release world-wide, meaning promotional money was going to bring a higher return for that film.

"We were never reluctant to spend money, but we needed it to be spent effectively," Barnett says.

FOCUS ON CARO AND CASTLE-HUGHES

"For example, you don't go for best cinematography, even though we think it was great, or art direction – it would clearly be harder to sell costumes on Whale Rider against the costumes in Lord of the Rings or The Last Samurai or Master And Commander."

The consensus was a campaign should focus on Keisha Castle-Hughes, and Niki Caro. Having read 500-odd American reviews which universally praised the performance, script and direction, those were the areas concentrated on.

"I didn't think we had a shot at best picture because they tend to be bigger pictures," he says.

Running a campaign is one thing, but actually getting your movie to the Oscars is quite another. Barnett was overwhelmed the day he discovered Castle-Hughes was nominated in the best actress category, as opposed to everyone's expectation if she made it at all it would be in the best supporting actress category – "It surpasses everyone's hopes and dreams", was how he described it.

He says over and above the individual efforts of everyone involved with the film, Whale Rider's success comes down to one simple factor – people liked the film.

"Honestly, you can't make it (to the Oscars) unless the audience and the critics tell you that's what's likely to happen," he says.

"There was no question in our minds that Whale Rider was going to do well – in fact, there had been no question in my mind from the time I read the book that this was a project that would resonate with people everywhere.

"Then Niki made such a great job of it that it lifted it above anything else. . . It's been an enormous amount of fun."

The Academy Awards will be presented in a ceremony in Los Angeles on February 29 (March 1 NZT).

INDEPENDENT film series visits Oklahoma
Oklahoma Daily - Norman,OK,USA

... He also said he has a specific message for students after the showing. “Most independent film producers have a short trip to hell and back,” Felix said. ... Link< >

INDEPENDENT film to debut at art center
Zanesville Times Recorder - Zanesville,OH,USA

... In addition to their independent film, the art center will also show "The Twilight Zone: The Invaders" featuring Agnes Moorehead. ... LINK < >

INDEPENDENT film buffs lobby theater for more
Baltimore Sun - Baltimore,MD,USA

... of people who are particularly interested in having independent and art films come to Columbia," said Maggie Greif of Columbia, who hopes that independent film ... LINK < >

THE great Oscars debate
Telegraph.co.uk - London,England,UK

... I also wonder if Peter Biskind's hilarious, snarky book, Down and Dirty

Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film has had any impact. ... LINK < >

FLOGGING Gibson's Passion
Toronto Star - Toronto,Ontario,Canada

... It is opening on a whopping 2,000 screens in North America next Wednesday (including about 200 in Canada), which is a big number for an independent film. ... LINK < >

ON Movies | Egos , gossip , and independent film
Philadelphia Inquirer - Philadelphia,PA,USA

... Subtitled "Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film," Biskind's book is rife with blazing egos, backroom bullying, overturned hotel furniture, and ... LINK < >

ROBOT Stories, With a Heart
Wired News - USA

... Obviously, an independent film can't do the sort of things that Hollywood science-fiction movies can, so I didn't even try," Pak said. ... LINK < >

FILM buzz for big swim

Geraldton Midwest Times - Geraldton,Western Australia,Australia Sydney based independent film maker Suzanne Anderson made a short visit to Geraldton recently to meet some of the people involved in the swim. ... LINK < >

Film on Gujarat riots bags awards at Berlin festival

By Shiv Kumaar, IANS

A documentary film on the aftermath of the bloody Gujarat riots in 2002 has won two awards at the 54th Berlin international film festival.

"Final Solution" bagged the honours at Berlinale 2004 Sunday night.

According to information received from the film's director Rakesh Sharma in Berlin, the documentary won the Wolfgang Staudte award. The award is presented in memory of noted German film director Wolfgang Staudte (1906-1984) and carries a cash prize of 10,000 euros.

"Final Solution" is the first Indian film to win this award that was instituted in 1990.

It also won the Special Jury Award by the NETPAC jury comprising Garin Nugroho (Indonesia), Dorothea Holloway (Germany) and Fang Yu (China).

The jury said in its citation: "The award goes to 'Final Solution' for its clarification of issues that spawned hate and violence between Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat, its analysis of propaganda mechanisms for political purposes, and its measured voice to seek a final solution to the conflict."

Five Indian films were invited to the festival at the International Forum of New Cinema section. These were "Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi" by Sudhir Mishra, "Maqbool" by Vishal Bhardwaj, "Kal Ho Naa Ho" by Nikhil Advani, "Hava Aaney De" by Partho Sengupta and "Final Solution" by Sharma.

Incidentally, "Final Solution" was refused permission for screening at the Mumbai international film festival. The decision was panned by critics who called it an attempt by the Bharatiya Janata Party government to suppress criticism of the government in Gujarat.

The 140-minute long feature was shot following the riots that rocked Gujarat after a train carrying volunteers of a Hindu radical group was set on fire in February 2002.

The subsequent violence largely orchestrated by the Hindu rightwing groups claimed the lives of over 1,000 people, mainly Muslims.

Weaving alternatively through the lives of the Hindus who lost their dear ones in the train tragedy and Muslims who were affected by the subsequent riots, Sharma documents a society that continues to be polarised on communal lines more than a year after the riots.

"Final Solution" also probes the systematic efforts made by the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its radical affiliates like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal to penetrate the interiors of Gujarat over the past two decades.

Unlike other filmmakers, Sharma scored by getting some of the VHP leaders to open up on record.

For instance, a middle-aged college teacher turned VHP preacher, Prahlad Shastri, tells on camera that Pavagad town in Gujarat has been made completely free of Muslims.

Similarly, Kalubhai Maliwad, who was accused of leading a mob that burned 67 Muslims, and his lawyer were among those who gave long interviews in the documentary.

"My impression is that the VHP people were not approached by the secular media," feels Sharma. He himself made it clear to all parties that the documentary aimed to look at the long-term impact of the riots on Gujarat.

Cinema: Berlin Film Festival
By Nigel Andrews
Published: February 16 2004 4:00 | Last Updated: February 16 2004 4:00


Berlin must have a hip flask filled with some magical "Drink me" potion. With the gleaming new city centre growing larger each year, the film festival palace, once an oasis amid construction rubble, is now surrounded by high-rise buildings that could have marched in from New York or Hong Kong. By night, stars shine above canyon-tall streets. By day, mile-high glass walls flash back sunlight.

Meanwhile the film festival's red carpet is becoming so international - this year trodden by Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Robin Williams, Ken Loach, Theo Angelopoulos - that you would think the global village had finally arrived, or that Cannes had re-located to the banks of the river Spree.

Ironically, though, the best movies this year were about the continuing problems of integration in a notionally contracting world. Immigrant communities took centre screen in outstanding films. Ken Loach's Glasgow-set Ae Fond Kiss, Abdellatif Kechiche's L'Esquive (France) and Fatih Akim's Head-On (Germany) show there are huddled masses still screaming to be free, even after absorption by well-meaning host countries.

Head-On was a home made Golden Bear winner, carrying off the Best Film prize to German delight. Alternating mirth and miserabilism, with a crime passionnel thrown in to raise the dramatic stakes, its tale of two Hamburg Muslims marrying for convenience then falling in love has blistering performances (Birol Unel, Sibel Kekrilli), unsparing authenticity of milieu - the hero's flat is the most comically convincing den of bachelor squalor since Withnail and I -and real conviction of character and context. It knocked its German rival for a loop, though that took little effort, with Romuald Karmakar's daft marital drama Nightsongs being a sort of Mike Leigh movie gone moronic.

Loach's latest is a tough and touching charmer about the havoc unleashed when Irish-Catholic teacher Roisin (Eva Birthistle) strikes up a romance with young Pakistani Carim (Atta Yaqub). The boy's family, preparing an arranged marriage for him with a flown-in cousin, goes ballistic; the girl's priest thunders imprecations; jobs and friendships are soon on the line.

If you think you have been here before in My Beautiful Laundrette and East Is East, you have. But this well does not go dry. Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty lower the bucket into darker depths of human pathos and tragedy, while scooping plenty of comedy on the way back up. The film's title comes from a Robert Burns poem, a writer who when put to music by the heroine for a school religious service provokes a prudish teacher's response that Holy Mass is no place for "a song by a well-known drunken fornicator". With opinion-formers like that, no wonder we sympathise with the dissidents.

Teachers get a better report card in L'Esquive. In a school outside Paris, they drill French-Muslim teenagers in a Marivaux play. The true drama, though, happens off stage, in the comedy of passion, jealousy and feuding between support groups, sparked when a handsome boy (Osman Elkharraz) leaves his designated girlfriend to pursue the play's pretty, capricious lead actress. To woo her he takes a role, though he is the worst actor since records began, and the Rohmerian complexities and scintillations begin. Funny, helter-skelter, wonderfully human.

L'Esquive showed in the Panorama sideshow. Other fringe movies deserving world distribution included Brazil's The Other Side of the Street, a wry and clever thriller-romance giving Fernanda Montenegro her best role since Central Station, and Thailand's daffy but engaging Beautiful Boxer, the truth-based tale of a boy who won glory as a kick boxer in order to fund a sex-change operation.

Back in the main event, the jury surprised everyone on awards day by double-honouring Argentina's modest Lost Embrace, with a runner-up Grand

Jury Prize and Best Actor Silver Bear (for Daniel Hendler). Daniel Burman's tale of a man seeking his roots in a Polish-Jewish past had few critics betting their shirts on its being a winner. We had been more prepared to go topless for Patty Jenkins's Monster from the US, dramatising the life of serial killer Aileen Wuornos and winning half a Best Actress prize for a bravely uglied-up Charlize Theron (the other half going to Catalina Sandina Moreno in the US-Colombian drug drama Maria Full of Grace); or for Theo Angelopoulos's majestic Greek epic The Weeping Meadow; or even for Richard Linklater's Before Sunset, the maverick American director's Paris-set sequel to his 1994 romance between Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, Before Sunrise. Full of charm and wit, it received a storm of applause but no baubles.

Never mind: many of the packed houses at Berlin were for sideshow-screened documentaries, anyway. In the age of Bowling for Columbine, Touching the Void and the like, docu-features are becoming the new rock-and-roll. Truth is stranger than fiction - or simply, at best, more dramatic. Britain's Death in Gaza movingly recounts the last days of cameraman James Miller, shot dead from an Israeli tank in Palestine while he and colleagues walked towards it with a white flag. Russia's horrifying Out of the Forest probes the memories of people in a Lithuanian village that once stood near a Nazi killing camp. One hundred thousand Jews were executed, almost literally under the villagers' noses. And Italy's fascinating Che: the Last Hours sets out to solve the mystery of Che Guevara's death in action - or inaction, we learn, while he was held in a schoolroom-prison after capture - during a Bolivian war seemingly influenced by that ubiquitous interventionist Uncle Sam.

All this and Robin Williams. At the press conference for his sci-fi thriller The Final Cut (minor but fun), the ad-libbing, ex-comedian was on a roll. He laid into everything from the Iraq war ("Bush talks about a failure of intelligence; isn't that kind of redundant?") to his new career playing weirdoes and psychotics ("You get a different kind of fan mail, mostly from prison") to - well, just about everything. Clearly, time for another one-man show.

Were there disappointments? Yes. Eric Rohmer's The Triple Agent is a soporific spy drama from an off-peak French genius. Catherine Breillat's Anatomy of Hell has the Romance director going in close again on the anatomy of sex. Tres déjà vu. And Ron Howard's woolly western The Missing shows that you have to be John Ford to do or re-do The Searchers. Nonetheless, we who sit in the dark for art salute the 2004 Berlin festival. There have been better ones. There have certainly been far worse.

Tax clampdown may scare off Hollywood studios
By Larry Schlesinger [16-02-2004]


The glamour of last night's Baftas has been dampened after one of Hollywood most influential film studios warned that the Treasury's decision to scrap favourable tax breaks could force it, and other major studios, to ditch the UK.
Link: UK film industry threatened by tax clampdown
Miramax, the studio responsible for hits like Cold Mountain and Gangs of New York issued this dire warning after new rules came into effect last week which clamp down on tax avoidance schemes that exploited trading losses through partnerships.

Colin Vaines, head of European productions at Miramax, which uses British crews and studios to make its films, said the tax changes would 'strike a terrible blow to investment in Britain'.

He told The Observer: 'Miramax and other US majors such as Warner Brothers, who make Harry Potter and Universal, who are behind James Bond, will take the bulk of their productions to Canada, Berlin or Hungary - where the tax breaks are becoming more favourable.'

The Revenue is currently discussing the legislation with representatives from the UK film industry.

Turks' German culture clash given a voice by film series
By Wesley Morris, Globe Staff, 2/16/2004

According to the 2003 "Britannica's Book of the Year," 2.5 million Turks account for almost 4 percent of Germany's population, by far its largest minority. (The Kurds are distant runners-up.) As you might expect, the strangers-in-a-strange-land conflicts produce a revolving tension between the Turks' native culture and their adopted one, and produces a third culture, as the generations pass, that is a fusion of the two. That third culture has begun to express itself in German popular culture.

"Young Turks of the German Cinema," a film series co-presented by the Harvard Film Archive and Goethe-Institut Boston, showcases the extent to which the country's Turkish voice has learned to speak in the first person -- and in German, too. The eight-film series begins Friday and is attention-getting, particularly because it's been programmed with the notion of cultural fluidity in mind.

In "I Think About Germany: We Forgot to Go Back," Fatih Akin examines his family in both countries. His mother left Turkey resentful of his father for uprooting her. But, to her husband's surprise, she began to see herself as something besides a housewife, becoming an outspoken schoolteacher. The film's strength is the compelling notion of homeland it raises, suggesting that for some, it's a state of mind. We meet Akin's non-native German friends, and start to see the ethnic expansion of a country that, historically, has seemed so uncomfortable with it.

Aysun Bademosoy's documentary "German Cops" takes the conflict of self-perception and how one is perceived into the area of law enforcement. Centering on five immigrant officers who patrol a Berlin precinct, the film is long on passive observation and lacking any real investigation, but it offers some insights. For instance, one of the movie's young Turkish cops embraces the simplified idea that the police are good and the criminals are not, a belief that casts foreign-born cops as traitors in the eyes of some of their countrymen.

Most of the films offer glimpses of Turks on the margins of Berlin culture, ensnared in crime dramas -- writer-director Thomas Arslan's "Dealer," Sinan Akkus's "Sevda Means Love," and a fiction short from Akin called "Weed." But the major discovery -- or rediscovery -- is "Lola and Billy the Kid," a daring family melodrama that made its way around the United States in 1999. Five years has done nothing to rob the movie of its lurid power. It rages up from the Berlin underground like a fist.

Writer and director Kutlug Ataman takes every inch of the situations presented in several of the other films (poverty, disenfranchisement, assimilation versus cultural custom) and turns them inside out, tacking on the elsewhere unmentioned taboo of homosexuality.

The film's attention is split between Lola (Gandi Mukli), a drag queen, his self-loathing hustler boyfriend Billy the Kid (Erdal Yildiz), and Lola's 16-year-old-brother Murat (Baki Davrak), who's exploring his attraction to men. The younger brother was born around the time the boys' macho older brother disowned Lola. As they try to repair the family, all hell breaks murderously loose.

Ataman hitches the psycho-emotional cruelties of certain Fassbinder love-tragedies to the basic story structure of Visconti's "Rocco and his Brothers." The finished film takes on Turkish cultural rigidity, a severely ignored German underclass, hate crimes, and the challenges of making love endure in a world of drag shows and hustling. Here's a movie that pushes a handful of neglected subjects to a country's attention. And it breaks a few rules along the way, as any Young Turk must.

Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com.

Fatih Akin's "Head On" Wins Top Prize at 2004 Berlinale

by Eugene Hernandez

Fatih Akin (right) with "Head On" stars Birol Unel (left) and Sibel Kekilli (center) on Saturday in Berlin, winners of the Golden Bear at the 2004 Berlinale. Photo by Eugene Hernandez.

German-Turkish director Fatih Akin's "Gegen Die Wand" (Head On) won the Golden Bear, the top prize at the 54th Berlinale. Jury president Frances McDormand announced the international jury awards during an afternoon press conference here in Berlin on Saturday. Jurors McDormand, Maji-da Abdi from Ethiopia, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi from Italy, Samira Makhmalbaf from Iran, Peter Rommel from Germany, Gabriele Salvatores from Italy and Dan Talbot from the United States honored seven competition films with prizes this year.

Thirty-year-old filmmaker Akin, who was born to Turkish parents in Hamburg, told the press on Saturday that he considers the film an international movie, being that it comes from someone with a dual cultural background. The film explores the world of second-generation Turkish immigrants in Germany and stars Birol Unel and Sibel Kekilli. During the late afternoon session with the media Akin added that he has established a small production company and will soon embark on his next movie, entitled "Soul Kitchen," in Hamburg. "Head On" also won the FIPRESCI award from a jury of nine international film critics. read whole article

Berlinale winner hopes film will help integrate Turks
Sat 14 February, 2004 17:27

By Katie Allen

BERLIN (Reuters) - A low-budget German production that won the Berlin Film Festival's top Golden Bear award was only added to the competition at the last minute, leaving its Turkish-born director stunned by its improbable success.

Fatih Akin said in an interview he hoped the film "Head-On" ("Gegen die Wand") that won the Berlinale's best film award on Saturday will help the integration of Turks in Germany some four decades after millions of "guest workers" started coming here.

"It is just great, simply grand," Akin told Reuters on Saturday. "I didn't have any hopes that the film would win the Golden Bear. I only hoped one of the actors might win something. It's just great that an international jury picked it."

Germany has 82 million people, about two million of them Turks. Many live in ethnic neighbourhoods and in most parts of the country Turks are only partially integrated with their German neighbours.

But Akin's film casts above all a critical eye at steps some Turks take themselves to thwart assimilation -- a theme that surfaced in other Berlinale films such as British director Ken Loach's "Ae Fond Kiss" about the struggles Pakistani first generation immigrants have assimilating in Britain.

In "Head-On" a young Turkish woman in Hamburg played by first-time actress Sibel Kekilli is trying to break free from her traditional and strictly Muslim home. She's already tried to kill herself once and has been beaten by her brother.

She enters a fake marriage after convincing an older, depressed German-born Turk with alcohol problems to marry her. They share a loveless flat. But as Sibel enjoys her new-found freedoms, he begins to fall in love with her, causing serious problems. She eventually falls in love with him as well.

"I wanted to make a film that shows a love story between people on the outer edge of society," said Akin. "A film about people who are willing to inflict pain upon themselves just to show that 'Yes, I'm alive'."

Akin, who also made the critically acclaimed film "Short Sharp Shock" ("Kurz und Schmerzlos") about Turkish, Greek and Albanian immigrants in his home town of Hamburg, said he was hoping his new film due out in German cinemas in April would provoke some new thinking in Germany's Turkish community.

"I hope the film will stimulate some discussions in conservative families," he said, adding that it was not intended as an insult to traditional Turkish family values.

Akin said he believes most Turks in Istanbul lead a more modern life than many of the older Turks in Germany. The 30-year-old nevertheless admitted he was nervous about how his parents will react when they see his film.

"I definitely feel like I'm a German filmmaker," he said. "I'm making films with German money and represent Germany. Sometimes I feel German, sometimes Turkish. But that's not a disadvantage. It's good for the creativity and doesn't cause me to tense up at all."

Nancy Schreiber Wins Sundance Excellence in Cinematography Award for "November"

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Veteran director of photography Nancy Schreiber A.S.C. was recently honored with the Excellence in Cinematography Award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival for her “exceptional photography” on the drama “November” starring Courteney Cox, James Le Gros and Anne Archer, and directed by Greg Harrison. “November,” produced by IFC Productions’ digital initiative InDigEnt and Map Point Pictures, was shot with Panasonic AG-DVX100 Mini-DV 3-CCD camcorders.

For Schreiber (only the fourth woman voted into membership into the American Society of Cinematographers), this is her second Cinematography Award from Sundance, having shared the 1997 prize for “My America…or Honk If You Love Buddha.” Among her many other accolades are a Kodak Vision Award, an Emmy nomination (HBO’s “Celluloid Closet”), and an IFP “Spirit” Award nomination for her striking work on “Chain of Desire,” starring Linda Fiorentino and Malcolm McDowell. Other projects include “Your Friends and Neighbors,” directed by Neil LaBute, starring Ben Stiller, Amy Brenneman and Jason Patric; and “Loverboy,” directed by Kevin Bacon, starring Kyra Sedgwick, Sandra Bullock, and Matt Dillon. She has shot more than 100 music videos for such recording artists as Aretha Franklin, Billy Joel, Sting, Van Morrison and Reba McIntire. In 2000, Schreiber was named one of Variety’s ten top DPs to watch.

Women Take Leading Role at Berlin Festival
Wed February 11, 2004 07:53 PM ET

By Kirk Honeycutt
BERLIN (Hollywood Reporter) - As the Berlin Film Festival heads into its final days, two U.S. films have emerged as front-runners for its top awards, the Silver Bears.

Those would be Patty Jenkins' Oscar-nominated "Monster" and Joshua Marston's Sundance award winner "Maria, Full of Grace." Both concern women pushed to criminal extremes by limited opportunities and their status as outsiders. And Charlize Theron, a leading Oscar contender for her role as a serial killer in "Monster," could well collect another acting award here this weekend.

Yet juries are always difficult to read -- just witness the peculiar choices made at last month's Sundance, where the top prize went to the micro-budgeted time-machine drama "Primer." And, as anticipated, there has been much to admire among the many strong competition entries at this year's Berlin International Film Festival.

The only film universally dismissed by most critics is John Boorman's South African apartheid drama "Country of My Skull." Most observers found the Sony Pictures Classics film not only heavy-handed but also unpersuasive in its love story between Samuel L. Jackson and Juliette Binoche.

Otherwise, critics found things to like even in a couple of extremely downbeat films, Bjoern Runge's over-the-top Swedish melodrama "Daybreak" and Annette K. Olesen's Danish exercise in life's-a-bitch-and-then-you-die called "In Your Hands."

The Berlinale, once a lonely cinematic outpost of Western freedom surrounded by Eastern Bloc conformity and censorship during the Cold War, has always welcomed political movies. Vinko Bresan's "The Witnesses" from Croatia, for instance, has an intricately structured narrative that says a great deal about the corrupting effect war and ethnic hatred have on moral behavior. Set in the early '90s during Croatia's war with Serbia, the film concerns three Croatian soldiers on leave from the front who try to blow up the house of a Serb but wind up shooting him instead and kidnapping his young daughter. Several local residents decide that such a cold-blooded killing is unacceptable, no matter that he was a Serb and a smuggler to boot.

Political and economic migration is a major theme among competition movies. "Beautiful Country," an American film about a Vietnamese youth's odyssey to America by Norwegian Hans Petter Moland, is a beautiful piece of filmmaking, combining intimate details with the harrowing adventures of an illegal immigrant. The film features strong performances by newcomer Damien Nguyen as the youth and Bai Ling as a Chinese prostitute he meets in a refugee camp in Malaysia.

Immigrant struggles in Europe are at the center of two other competition entries. Ken Loach's "Ae Fond Kiss" tells of a Pakistani youth in Scotland who falls in love with a young Catholic woman. And "Gegen die Wand" (Head-on) by Turkish-German director Faith Akin focuses on the struggles of a daughter of Turkish immigrants here in Germany against the traditions of her Muslim household.

In "Lost Embrace," Jewish Argentine director Daniel Burman shows considerable improvement over previous work in this light though incisive comic drama about shopkeepers in a Buenos Aires mall, focusing in particular on the grandson of Jews from Poland who wants to unravel the mystery of why his dad left the family to live in Israel.

While many of these films come from relatively unheralded filmmakers, veteran directors have found favor with critics as well. French director Patrice Leconte's "Intimate Strangers" displays his usual penchant for odd story lines and strong characters in a tale of a woman who mistakes a tax lawyer for a shrink and pours out her marital troubles to the startled man.

Another romantic two-person talkathon, Richard Linklater's "Before Sunset," received loud applause at its press screening. A sequel to his 1995 "Before Sunrise," the film features the two characters from the first film -- again played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who wrote the script with Linklater -- strolling about Paris in real time as they talk about the past and sort out their future. The film did have a few walkouts, but these undoubtedly were non-English speakers grown weary of reading constant subtitles. (This may be the odd movie that actually would benefit from dubbing.)

Another American film, Ron Howard's "The Missing," is a serious contender for acting awards as well as best picture.
Then there were disappointments. Matteo Garrone's dark, dark "First Love," about a goldsmith who wants to mold his lover's body into an anorexic design, was an abysmal experience for many (including me), but for some, it's the hit of the festival.

After the wonderful debut of his "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring," Kim Ki-duk's "Samaritan Girl" is a major frustration. The story involving Christian Koreans -- Kim is himself a Christian -- gets hopelessly lost in a lush though lurid tale of teenage prostitution and physical and emotional violence. For some reason, prostitution is a prime topic in many films in the various sections of the festival.

One of the most dynamic films in Berlin this year emerged from the Panorama section. Ekachai Uekrongtham's "Beautiful Boxer" is the true story of a transvestite kickboxer in Thailand. This first film by one of that country's leading stage directors does not play the story for camp or sensationalism but rather is an artistic investigation into a divided soul. The film not only calls into question ingrained notions of what constitute masculinity and femininity but the degree to which the distinction between athletics and show business has blurred.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

FEATURES
'Skull' puts SA in Berlinale limelight
by Deborah Cole
Posted Mon, 09 Feb 2004

The Berlin film festival put the accent on South Africa on Saturday with the premiere of John Boorman's 'Country of My Skull', a drama about racial reconciliation in the decade after the end of apartheid.

The film, based on a book by Antjie Krog, stars Samuel L. Jackson as a Washington Post reporter and Juliette Binoche as a South African poet and journalist who are covering the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings.

The TRC, set up under former president Nelson Mandela, allowed victims and perpetrators of the campaign of violence by the white minority government to confront each other and shed light on the country's brutal legacy.

Jackson's black American journalist questions the legitimacy of a body that ultimately offered amnesty to more than 11 000 perpetrators of atrocities in exchange for publicly telling the truth about their actions.

Binoche portrays a liberal Afrikaner forced to confront her own culpability in South Africa's dark past.

Their sparring over justice and the prospects for peace between blacks and whites gives way to a love affair that expose prejudices neither knew they harbored.

Director John Boorman, who won Oscars for 'Deliverance' and 'Hope and Glory', said although the ultimate impact of the TRC remained controversial he was impressed by the extraordinary effort South Africans made toward creating a multiracial democracy.

"It's a fascinating country to be in because it's like being at the birth of a nation. This is a nation that's only 10 years old," Boorman said.

"It makes you realise when you stay in South Africa that we all rather live in consumer societies where there's no ideology. In South Africa, everything is ideology. Everybody is involved, everybody takes a political position. The debate is extremely stimulating."

He noted that the TRC's example as a vehicle for redemption was serving as an example in countries as Bosnia and being considered for Iraq.

US producer Robert Chartoff said he was drawn to the script because it offered lessons that would transcend national borders.

"At last there was something that I read that relates not only to the South Africa problem but it's essentially a universal one," he said.

"As far as America is concerned, rather than approach evil with 'An eye for an eye' or 'Bring them on,' which has now become a famous statement by our president, this was a different kind of approach: the question of dealing with evil through reconciliation, through forgiveness."

South African actor Menzi Ngubane, who plays a TV sound engineer in the film, recalled the impact of Mandela's example of reconciliation.

"I remember that day when our former president Nelson Mandela came out from jail. In his first speech in Cape Town he said, 'Comrades I greet you all in the name of peace'," Ngubane said.

"And us as the youth were so angry and we thought he was crazy. But for him to say, 'Let's sit down to talk' and to have the TRC in South Africa was a good thing."

The festival has singled out South Africa for special focus this year, a decade after the first free elections in the country.

A series of documentaries called "Project 10" and produced by South African broadcaster SABC1 are being showcased in the festival's Forum section and singer Miriam Makeba has been invited as an honorary guest.

'Country of My Skull' is one of 23 contenders for the Golden Bear prize at the 54th Berlinale. Cate Blanchett was to present her competition entry, the mystical Western 'The Missing', later on Saturday.

Oscar-winning American actress Frances McDormand ('Fargo') is chairing the seven-member jury, which will hand out the top prizes on February 14.

Briefs from the Berlinale
BERLIN Feb 11 - It's been a busy week at the Berlin film festival. Herewith are some briefs pending the weekend's awards.

``Cold Mountain'' stars turn up late

The stay-away stars of ``Cold Mountain,'' the movie which opened the Berlin film festival, aren't staying away any more. Jude Law was due to fly into the German capital Wednesday, six days after the screening.

Renee Zellweger beat him to it, having arrived Sunday pleading scheduling difficulties due to filming the sequel to her ``Bridget Jones'' hit. ``Sorry I'm late,'' she told a brief photocall.

Still, there's no word from Nicole Kidman. She was last heard of excusing herself because of ``family problems'' in her native Australia. Unkind newspaper reports had suggested she was not best pleased at the film's relatively poor show in the Oscar nominations.

Jack Nicholson proud of his butt

Serial womaniser Jack Nicholson - who does a spot of acting in his spare time - is proud of his attributes, on display in ``Something's gotta give.''

``I'm very proud of my ass,'' he drawled.

``I did suggest it for the poster of the picture and was told that would be illegal which I found both complimentary and interesting at the same time.''

Nicholson, 66, couldn't help flirting with co-star Diane Keaton, who also takes her kit off in the film.

``She likes to get naked in bed,'' he joked to hundreds of journalists as she shrieked in delight. ``She blushes easily, don't you honey?''

North Korea debuts at Berlinale; not everyone's happy

Judging by its debut film here, Stalinist North Korea's movie industry has some way to go to appeal to a global audience.

Unless you're a big fan of its leader Kim Jong-Il, of course, described in ``On the green carpet,'' a love story set in the unlikely world of synchronised gymnastics, as the sun around whom we rotate.

There were some biting comments at a question and answer session after the showing - like, what about your six million starving? - but as the Goethe Institute, which presented the screening, said, the fact North Korea was here at all was a small step out of the cold.

Red carpet suffers

Berlin's mercurial weather, which can't seem to decide what to do next as long as it involves blizzards of sleet, has claimed its first victim - the Berlinale's red carpet.

The walkway was to be changed Wednesday after six days of being trod on by stars, film-makers and producers alike. Silver Schrodi of Minuth, the company in charge of its daily upkeep, said it was a precaution because of the ``harsh weather'' to make sure no big names trip up.

Cabaret girl Liza Minelli, again

Liza Minelli swept back the years with a well-received reprise of ``Welcome to the cabaret,'' the song from the movie ``Cabaret,'' set mostly in Berlin, that won her an Oscar in 1972.

This time she was doing it for a good cause at the Berlinale's ``Cinema for peace'' gala, a fundraiser for UNICEF and the fight against AIDS.

It was a pricey do with guests paying 1,000 euros (US$1,270) to hear her croon. Add to that the auction of a Vivienne Westwood dress, a VW Beetle car signed by Matt Damon ... and nearly 300,000 euros was raised.

Lars von Trier ``censored''

Danish director Lars von Trier, he of ``Dogville'' fame, couldn't be at the ``Cinema for peace'' gala to receive an award for the Nicole Kidman film, so as is now customary he pre-recorded a message of thanks.

Unfortunately, only a shortened version was shown on the big screen, so up popped his producer Vibeke Wineloev on stage to announce that she was really quite ``pissed off'' that his message had been, as she said, censored.

It turns out the original version contained a few pertinent criticisms by Trier of charity galas ... such as ``Cinema for peace.''

Schwarzenegger? It wouldn't happen here ...

Arnie may have moved from Terminator to the California governor's mansion, but in Berlin they're a bit sniffy about actors who think they can turn their hand to politics.

``I don't think Schwarzenegger would have had a chance here,'' Hans-Ulrich Joerges, an expert on politics and the media, told a discussion panel.

``People aren't stupid. They want serious people in politics. An actor who's only known from the screen needs to have something else.''

Lothar Bisky, head of Germany's ex-communist PDS party, was more welcoming - ``why shouldn't they play a role in politics?'' - but couldn't resist a dig either. ``I know some highly intelligent actors.'' And the others, Lothar?

Israelis, Palestinians told they're European now

Israeli and Palestinian directors will now be allowed to enter the running for the European Film Award and become members of the academy that dishes it out, the organisation said on the sidelines of the Berlinale.

It's ``a first step toward countries of the Mediterranean, where the art of film has a natural, historic link to Europe,'' opined the academy's chairman, Humbert Balsan. - AFP