Next Cinema Lounge

The Cinema Lounge meets Monday, March 8 at 7:00pm, to discuss religion in the movies. Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ has finally hit the big screen amid raging controversy of anti-Semitism. Join us as we discuss the way positive and negative ways Hollywood portrays religion in film. Suggested viewing: Wagon Master (John Ford, 1950), The Ten Commandments (Cecile B. DeMille, 1956), The Rapture (Michael Tolkin, 1991), Kundun (Martin Scorsese, 1997), The Omega Code (Robert Marcarelli, 1999), and The Passion of Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004).

Cinema Lounge, a film discussion group, takes place the second Monday of every month at 7:00pm at Borders Books, 600 14th St., NW in Washington, DC (near the Metro Center Metro stop).

And the Winner Is ...

By Cheryl Dixon

The Washington, D.C. Film Society celebrated the 76th Annual Academy Awards broadcast live on the big screen at the Arlington Cinema ‘N’ Drafthouse on Sunday evening, February 29 with And the Winner Is... Co-hosted by the ever-popular film critics Joe Barber and Bill Henry, the 12th Annual Party featured a our biggest silent auction, abundant movie trivia prizes, a “Predict the Winners” contest and lots of movie promotional items from posters to hats. And the results of the D.C. Film Society's own Best of 2003 were also announced throughout the evening. The films, actors and directors picked by Film Society members eerily mirrored the results of the Academy with only one exception.

And the Winner Is... was our most successful event ever, with over 170 attendees and record-setting silent auction--all to support the Film Society and our parent organization, Filmfest DC, for which we are a major sponsor annually. The Film Society extends its thanks our hosts Joe Barber and Bill Henry, our many silent auction donors and members of the coordinating committee for all of the work put in to this party. Special thanks to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Allied Advertising, Allison Silberberg, FilmBiz Happy Hour, Tony Fisher and the Arlington Cinema ‘N’ Drafthouse staff, Entertainment Weekly and Video Warehouse for their part in making the evening fun and successful.

Festivities began with the broadcast of the red-carpet arrivals and interviews, while Film Society members and their guests mingled in the art-deco atmosphere of the theatre to view the many varied selections of the Silent Auction. The choices ranged from framed posters (The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, the Official 2004 Academy Awards poster); autographed movie items (21 Grams, Bubba Ho-Tep, The Last Samurai and Dirty Pretty Things), show tickets (Woolly Mammoth, the Folger, Warner Theatre, WPAS, Shakespeare Theatre, the Improv, Gay Mens Chorus, and more); movie passes (Landmark, Loews, the Avalon, Visions, Loews Wisconsin 6), dinners (Zola, Maggiano’s, Rosa Mexicano, Red Sage, Louisiana Express, Daily Grill, and more), museum memberships (Hillwood, Corcoran, Phillips, National Building Museum), hotel weekends (the Churchill, River Inn, Radison Barcelo), PLUS a Panasonic 5-disc DVD/CD player, a gift packet from The Sundance Channel, Blockbuster Coupons and more!

Attendees also cast their ballots in the “Guess the Winners” contest. One ballot was chosen from the many that correctly guessed most of the actual Oscar winners in seven categories won a special prize bag filled with movie passes and DVDs.

With the start of the actual Awards ceremony, attendees hunkered down with refreshments and drinks in the casual comfort of the theatre to welcome the return of host Billy Crystal and his always thrilling opening sequence, “The Return of the Host,” appropriately borrowed from The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. While Billy did not disappoint, the Awards ceremony itself was somewhat “laid-back,” “low-key,” and “understated.” I think you get the picture…. In an otherwise somewhat entertaining show with tributes to Katharine Hepburn and Blake Edwards, it was surprising to see Jack Black and Will Ferrell perform a number that could make the show seem more funny and exciting than it actually was. Adrien Brody’s breath-spraying was another hilarious moment. It was a GREAT night, as you know, for all of the folks in New Zealand, as The Lord of the Rings and director Peter Jackson rightfully were in the spotlight for the entire ceremony. Attendees remarked on the lack of inspiring acceptance award speeches, and lack of political commentary, except for Errol Morris’ remarks upon winning for Best Documentary for The Fog of War. Perhaps it was the predictability of the evening; there were very few, if any, surprises.

And so, while the Oscars ceremony at times dragged, Film Society members and guests could entertain themselves by rushing back to the Silent Auction tables to check on the status of their bids throughout the evening. Or catching up on Oscar news in the complimentary Entertainment Weekly magazines. And of course, they could choose to answer the many trivia questions posed by Joe and Bill, e.g., do you know the name of the only Oscar-winning female Director? Our hosts urged the audience to name the movies that were not nominated for best picture but should have been. Bill disagreed with my choice of House of Sand and Fog. But it does not matter--we agree to disagree. As Sean Connery mentioned at the beginning of the Academy Awards Ceremony, “movies bind us together.” So, let us continue to celebrate the magic of going to the movies: see you at Filmfest DC (April 21 through May 2, 2004) and at next year’s And the Winner Is... party.

Special Thanks to our Silent Auction Donors
Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, AFI Silver Theatre, Allied Advertising, Avalon Theatre, Blockbuster Video, Booeymonger’s, Churchill Hotel, Corcoran Gallery, Daily Grill Euphoria Talent Inc., Filmfest DC, Folger Theatre, Ford’s Theatre, Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, Hillwood Museum & Gardens, Improv DC, Bonnie Joranko, Landmark Theatres & Matt Cowal, Loews Theatres, Loews Wisconsin 6, Louisiana Express, Maggiano’s Restaurant, National Building Museum, James Parker, Jr., Phillips Collection, Potomac Peddlers Bicycle Touring Club, Radison Barcelo Hotel, Red Sage, River Inn, Rosa Mexicano, Round House Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre, Signature Theatre, Judy Simmons, State Plaza-Garden Café, The Sundance Channel, Visions Cinema/Bistro/Lounge, Warner Theatre, Washington Jewish Film Festival, Washington Performing Arts Society, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Zola Restaurant.

Tasmania, Dolphins, Tibet, and David Attenborough: Environmental Film Festival Spans the Globe

An Interview with Luigi Falorni, Director of The Story of the Weeping Camel

By James McCaskill

ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands. I am exceedingly grateful to the International Film Festival Rotterdam Press Office for the considerable amount of time and effort they put in to arrange this interview with Luigi Falorni, co-director, The Story of the Weeping Camel (Falorni and Byambasuren Davaa, Mongolia/Germany, 2003).

Deterek Elley, writing in Variety, says, "If Oscar ever invents a category for Best Performance by an animal, Ingen Temee and baby Botok should be its first recipients." This has to be the first film where two camels get screen credits and well deserved they are. Ingen Temee, the mother camel, and Botok will melt your heart in this intriguing film by two Munich (Germany) Academy of Television and Film students. They have reinvented the documentary that, while focusing on the birth and acceptance of a camel calf, unveils the dilemma of nomadic life in modern Mongolia. This is not your typical Discovery Channel documentary. Falorni has called it a "narrative documentary." He said, "It implies the use of feature film elements and drama techniques, still placing the film within the boundaries of the documentary family. Our protagonists are real nomads from the Gobi that played before the camera the same roles they have in real life. Most of the actions in the main storyline--the delivery, the rejection, the ritual--actually took place as they are shown in the film. On the other hand some of the side stories and connections between scenes were re-enacted for the camera, in order to complement the main storyline and to sustain the film flow." This has been done before in Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North and Man of Aran with non-actor characters in carefully planned scenes to show Eskimo life and the struggle for survival on Irish Aran islands. "His most quoted metaphor to describe his ambition as a filmmaker is: 'You must show how a rose smells.' I hope our film honors this legacy."

The story is a deceptively simple one: Springtime in the Gobi Desert of South Mongolia where a nomadic family assist the births of their camel herd. One of the camels has an excruciatingly difficult delivery but, with help from the family, births a white camel. Despite the family's efforts, the mother rejects the newborn, coldly refusing it her milk and motherly love. When any hope for the little one seems to have vanished, the nomads send their two young boys on a journey through the desert in search of a musician. This is a traditional ritual where the sound of a horse-head violin along with the melodic singing of one of the women will cause the mother to break into tears and allow the infant to nurse.

What would have happened if the ritual had failed or not taken place? Co-director Byambasuren Davaa, who is from Mongolia, said, "The camel baby would not stop crying. even if someone would have fed it with a bottle. It is a heart-breaking cry; no one can bear it. The nomads would never let this happen. Also the camel would not develop. It probably would die from sorrow. Camels really have a hard time getting over the mother-child separation. They have to overcome the trauma and the music and the singing helps that. I spoke to a lot of nomads about this, but I never heard that it didn't work. In our case it took one day." "The music ritual that is being used doesn't have lyrics, just four letters: HOOS. It is an ongoing repetition of this word. The word has no meaning, just an effect."

The film shows the conflict of traditional life and the desire for a modern life. The number of nomads has plummeted in recent years as more and more people move to the city. Ten years ago about 25% of Mongolia live in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar. Today it is almost 50%. This shift has brought unemployment and alcoholism, two problems that did not exist before. The young people want what they see as the modern life: Coca Cola and Gameboys. In their traditional world, the nomads produce all they need for life. Their assets are the animals themselves. When asked about the radios in their tents, Falorni said, "They all want radios and television but these are battery operated and they don't have the batteries."

Falorni and Davaa share directing and writing credits. "Byambaa and I worked closely together through the production," Falorni said. "In spite of our very different personalities, we share a similar taste and most decisions were taken unanimously. We are complementary to each other in that I believe Byambasuren has the gift to give warmth to each single scene, whereas my strength lies in fitting the different bits and pieces to a consistent story. During the shooting Byambasuren mainly took care of the communication with the nomads and of their direction. Besides camera work, I concentrated on planning the next day's shoot on the base of what we had already filmed. We had a fairly detailed treatment as a guideline, but documentary work requires a lot fo improvisation and adaptability to the unforeseen. The scary thing about this project was that, as camel deliveries all take place within one month each springtime, we only had a few weeks to shoot the whole film . If anything had gone wrong we wouldn't have had any possibility of fly back to Mongolia and do some re-shooting."

Shooting in the desert brought unique challenges, he continued. "The Gobi Desert is a magical and wonderful place to visit as a tourist, I guess. Not quite the same if you are there to work. Storm winds of up to 150 km an hour, temperature drops of over 30 degree Centigrade (over 80 degrees Fahrenheit), unusual food and living conditions. It was never boring. Each one of the six member team got sick at some point or another, some of the film equipment broke down and we often had to stop shooting because the wind was making sound recording impossible."

"The nomads were just wonderful. They accepted us right away and participated with great enthusiasm and patience in the shooting. At first they found it quite funny when we had to ask them to repeat an action or a dialogue for the camera. But later on they got so used to the shooting procedures that little Unga, the infant child, once even anticipated us at the beginning of a take by saying in German, 'Ton, ab." ("Sound, roll."). One thing I still regret is that because of our tight schedule we didn't have the time to be with the family off camera. Only when the shooting was finally over and our equipment packed was it possible for me to relax and enjoy one last memorable night in the company of the nomads. One night we spent drinking Mongolian brandy and singing a delirious mixture of Mongolian and Italian songs until dawn."

The film was recently shown to the family. "The family," Davaa wrote, "was touched to tears and they laughed a lot. The great-grandmother died a few weeks earlier and I felt guilty that I didn't finished the film so she could have seen it. The screening was very emotional. When Unga saw her on the screen, he became very quiet. And her husband was so sad about the death of his wife that he said he did not want to live anymore. It was very emotional."

When I asked him how this has changed his life, Falorni said, "It has opened up possibilities, new options. Things I had never thought of are now possible. I had made documentaries before but only shown on TV. This film opens cinematic world to me." In fact, this film, a student project of the Munich Academy of Television and Film, was planned to be a 60 minute TV documentary but has ended up as a full length picture that had a January 2004 release in Germany. "Some distributors," he continued, "are becoming aware of the commercial potential." "So after The Story of the Weeping Camel my dream for the future is to be able to make films for the big screen again, that magic surface that makes it possible to show how a rose smells." "It is like going from a Fiat to a Ferrari." He currently has two new projects in progress that are also documentaries.

Davaa has retuned to Munich where she is in the final year. Other graduates of this unique school are Nico Humbert, Wim Wenders, and Oscar winner Caroline Link. Besides Mongolia and Italy, currently students from the U.S., Georgia, Syria and most European countries are enrolled.

The Story of the Weeping Camel is scheduled for a June release in the U.S. but before that it will be shown at numerous film festivals: Goteborg, New Directors in New York, Palm Springs, Miami, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Thessoloniki, Greece and Buenos Aires. I highly recommend your looking for this ground breaking documentary.

Yasujiro Ozu, the Complete Retrospective

"Do you speak Ozu?" (Overheard at an Ozu film many decades ago). The 2003 Ozu 100th Anniversary Project, spearheaded by Shochiku Motion Picture Company where Ozu made most of his films, is finally arriving in our town (albeit it post-2003) after touring film festivals in Berlin, Hong Kong and New York plus other cities in the U.S. and Canada. All 33 of Ozu's extant films plus two fragments will be shown in three venues: the National Gallery of Art, the Freer Gallery of Art and the American Film Institute during March and April. The only film missing is Ozu's short 1935 documentary on the Kabuki. Although we have had scattered showings of Ozu films at the Biograph, the AFI and at the Gallery in the past, we are extremely fortunate to have this unique opportunity to see and study all of the great humanist's films. You, too, will "speak Ozu" fluently after this retrospective.

Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963) had a unique approach to filmmaking that is often compared to Robert Bresson and Carl Theodore Dreyer. A film buff as a child--he was infatuated with Pearl White--he skipped school to watch movies, mostly American and other foreign films, and claimed that he had only seen three Japanese films by the time he got a job at Shochiku studio as an assistant cameraman. A real slacker in his early years, Ozu was kicked out of dormitory for drinking and claimed that he was watching Rex Ingram's Prisoner of Zenda instead of taking his entrance examinations. He also had a contrarian streak--to thumb his nose at Cinemascope ("which I wanted nothing to do with"), when long shots and long scenes were in vogue, Ozu shot shorter scenes and more closeups, even though he didn't like those features. While working in his first job in movies as an assistant cameraman, a manual-labor job that entailed hauling the heavy camera from one spot to another, he claimed that he would rather spend his nights drinking rather than be a director and staying up all night working on continuity.

Ozu's style evolved over the years, becoming more and more spare and minimalist. (True confession: the first time I ever fell asleep during a movie, it was an Ozu film). His films all deal with the same topic: the Japanese family and conflicts between its members. He wasn't interested in plot of action, only in the relevation of character and the exploration of emotion. Many of his films seem similar: they have similar title names (although the Japanese translations are different), use the same actors and were made by the same crew. He was famous for saying "no"--no to sound (he didn't make a sound film until 1936); no to color (he made his first color film in 1958); no to camera techniques in common use such as fades and dissolves ("a dissolve hasn't been used successfully since Chaplin's A Woman of Paris"); no to widescreen ("it reminds me of toilet paper"); no to camera movement; no to his actors. However, because of his great popularity, Shochiku trusted him and allowed him to work in his own way. He carefully worked out the film in his head before shooting, often taking nine months to write a script. After shooting his great masterpiece Tokyo Story, he wrote in his diary, "103 days and 43 bottles of sake." In fact, he reportedly got drunk every night and the phrase "drunk last night" was the second-most common entry in his diary.

Wim Wenders claimed that Ozu was the only director that he learned anything from and it is worth a side trip to the Goethe Institute to see Wenders' Tokyo-GA, in which Wenders goes to Tokyo 20 years after Ozu's death to compare present day Tokyo to Ozu's films.

Ozu was the first film director elected to the Japanese National Academy of Art and he received 6 Kinema Jumpo awards for best film of the year. He is considered the "most Japanese" of all of Japan's directors and for this reason his films were not exported or even sent to international film festivals until an enterprising entrepreneur brought Tokyo Story to the London Film Festival in 1958. Conversely, after Western critics and audiences took enthusiastically to his films, the Japanese then felt--if Westerners could relate to them--that he wasn't Japanese enough.

Shochiku has released the films on DVD without subtitles ("Our people don't want that"), but fortunately Criterion has bought the rights to the titles and will be releasing them, with subtitles, over time.

An Interview with Takeshi Kitano, Director of Zatoichi

By James McCaskill

ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands. Takeshi Kitano's creative juices continue to gush. The man has an amazing array of talent: film director, actor, highly respected television entertainer, accomplished cartoonist and painter, as well as writer of novels, collections of short stories, essays and poetry. His 1997 film, Hanna Bl, picked up Venice's Golden Lion and was named Best Non-European Film by the European Film Academy. His acting talents were seen in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Nagisa Oshima, Japan, 1983) and the cult film Battle Royal (Kinji Fukasaku, Japan, 2001). He currently stars in Battle Royal II (Kenta and Kinji Fukasaku, Japan, 2003).

With Zatoichi, his first period film, Kitano traded his trademark yakuza guns in for a cane sword of lighting fast speed. For this, his eleventh film, he has reinvigorated the cult action anti-hero, Zatoichi, which is one of Japan's most popular hero in period drama. Usually period films restrict a director as it imposes costumes, locations and language upon a director. "I thought Zatoichi was going to be a tough film to make because making a period piece is commonly considered to be more painstaking. It actually turned out to be quite a fun film to make. I had to fabricate everything. This allowed me to do preposterous things and explore new areas I had not before.

Zatoichi is the story of a blind master swordsman and dice-gambling genius who travels disguised as a masseur. Kitano wanted to make his version not only more entertaining but distinctive from the 1962-1989 film-television series that stared Shintaro Katsu. While the original "had dark hair, dressed in a plain colored kimono and carried a brown cane sword my Zatoichi is actually a pretty eccentric person," Kitano revealed. "He has platinum blond hair and a blood red cane sword. Mr. Katsu's Zatoichi was more about an almost warm-hearted relationship he had with the good and meek townspeople. Mine doesn't mingle with the good guys. He just keeps slaying bad guys."

"In terms of sword fighting," he continued, "I did not want this film to be like other samurai films with actors clanking their swords over and over. I did not want to rely on computer graphics and visual effects for the action scenes. I wanted to do my own swordplay stunts as much as possible because I loved doing them." Being blind made the fight scenes complex. "It was even more difficult to perform the sword movements with my eyes closed when the camera was facing me. Sometimes I didn't know where I was swinging my sword. It was very disorienting to have to do everything with my eyes closed. Even just walking straight was hard. Even with ground marks. I had my share of stumbles and falls. I couldn't tell what was the space between me and my co-stars. I couldn't see their expressions or actions when acting with them."

In many ways the film is a tribute to the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa. Kurosawa's daughter, Kazuko, was the costume designer on this film. "Kurosawa usually did numerous takes of a well-planned out sword fight," Kitano said. "Zatoichi's rain sequence is my homage to Kurosara's Seven Samurai. Incidentally while shooting that scene, not only was it cold, but the smell of the rain changed at some point. Apparently water from a carp pond was used because there was not enough tank water. It really stank. It felt like we had carp pouring down on us."

The film's off-beat sense of humor seems to have been contagious as "the cast seemed to be enjoying themselves." "During one of the sword fighting sequences I told Kazuko that this was a tribute to her illustrious father. 'No way,' she said. 'You've got to be kidding.' Once in a long day of shooting, I started to doze off when I felt Katzuko tap me on the shoulder. 'Stay awake,' she said and then told me her father use to fall asleep during shooting as well."

"It seems that in Kurosawa's films the more accidents there were on the set the better the film did at the box office. I asked Katzuko if she would sacrifice her life for this one to be a hit."

The film has a fantastic ending and readers who want to be surprised may want to skip this paragraph, although nothing major is given away. "I use to make fun of Japanese period dramas, which all had identical endings. For example, when the hero leaves town and walks on a road along a rice field, the farmers plowing the fields suddenly started singing and dancing while they worked. When it came time for me to direct my first period piece, I thought, 'Why not do my own rendition of a typical happy ending in a period drama.' I felt it would be boring to reproduce traditional Japanese folk dancing with a bunch of amateurs, which isn't exciting visually and sonically. Then it struck me,'Why not let them tap dance?' I figured the basic premise of the Zatoichi--a blind masseur cum master swordsman who can draw his secret sword cane at the speed of lighting--was in itself preposterous enough for me to set out to make an all-out entertainment movie. So I did my modernized rendition of typical festival dancing scenes. I let Japan's top tap dancers, appearing as farmers and carpenters, dressed in traditional kimonos, wooden clogs and straw sandals, do the latest style of tap dancing backed by hip-hop rhythms. I had become acquainted with the Japanese tap dancing team called "The Stripes." I saw their show and was completely fascinated by their dancing which is modeled on Gregory Hines' dance moves. That is how I came to use the "The Stripes" in Zatoichi.

Credits: Written, directed and edited by Takeshi Kitano. Based on a short story by Kan Shimozawa. Music by Keiichi Siuzuki. Produced by Chieko Saito. Tap Dance Choreography by The Stripes. Cinematography by Katsumi Yanagishima.

Takeshi Kitano was born in Tokyo in 1947 and entered show business in 1972 as 'Beat' Takeshi, the stage name he continues to use today as a performer. As part of the comic duo Two Beats, Kitano was one of the leading figures in the manzai (stand-up comedy) boom in the late 1970s. With his distinctive art of speech and his idiosyncratic perspective, Kitano became one of the most popular entertainers in the country during the 1980s. As an actor he has appeared in Johnny Mnemonic (Robert Longo, US, 1995) and Tokyo Eyes (Jean-Pierre Limosin, France, 1998).

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