The Merchant of Venice: Writer/Director Michael Radford and Actress Lynn Collins

By Cheryl Dixon, DC Film Society Member

The popularity, universality, and timeless quality of Shakespeare’s works have led to the production of numerous adaptations for stage and screen. Recently I had the opportunity to meet with U.K. writer/director and Academy-Award nominee (Il Postino) Michael Radford and U.S. actress Lynn Collins to discuss Radford’s co-writing and directing efforts and Collins’ experiences working on the movie version of Shakespeare’s play, The Merchant of Venice. This movie, similarly titled, features brilliant acting, with Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, and Lynn Collins, and a terrific script and firm direction from Radford. In writing about this movie during the Venice Film Festival, I had previously described a scene featuring the acting talents of Pacino, Irons, and Fiennes in a single frame as “explosive.” Collins, as Portia, has one of the strongest female roles as a beautiful, intelligent, and cunning woman. She is superbly up to the task. Pacino, as Shylock, has never been better. The movie, however, is not without controversy. The anti-Semitism portrayed is sometimes difficult to watch. Radford and Collins talked about this as well as the homo-erotic nature of the relationship between Bassanio (Fiennes) and Antonio (Irons) and its effect on the relationship between Portia and Bassanio.This movie is set for a January release. Put this one on your must-see list.

Question: There have been several different dramatic versions of “The Merchant of Venice.” Why do this one?
Michael Radford: It’s never been a movie before. There’s a silent version. This is probably one of the most famous of Shakespeare’s plays, probably his first great one. It’s a remarkable piece of writing in terms of the complexities of all of the characters. They are neither good, nor bad. There are also very strong emotions--love, dislike. From a human psychological point of view this intrigues me....
Lynn Collins: As soon as I read the script, I wanted to work on this. It was a fight for me. I tried out for a smaller part, of Jessica, but was grateful to get to play the role of Portia.

Question: What would you say was the central theme of the movie? There are so many!
Michael Radford: Humanity is a complex and difficult thing. One cannot solve the problems of the world in five sentences. All great attempts to show that complexity lead to an understanding of our common humanity.This is a story of two cultures which do not understand each other. There’s no common language. Everything is written in bitterness and hate and some of the characters cannot see beyond that.
Lynn Collins: Actors can’t be thinking about theme. But, having seen the film, I think we have achieved illustrating that complexity, whether it is 1595 or 2004.
Michael Radford: For example, there was a Muslim who stood up at screening in London and said that, as a Muslim, he could totally identify with Shylock. Excuse the divergence, Shylock has some of the greatest speeches about the cruelty towards him. All characters are flawed. He is not an exception. We have absolute sympathy for him, but he goes too far. We have all been in a rage and Antonio (whom we assume is Christian) has no understanding of Shylock’s plight.

Question: Can you talk about the writing process, and specifically the process of adapting the play for the screen?
Michael Radford: Well, I just copied out the play and put my name on it! No, actually, when you adapt the work, you can’t change it. You visualize it and cut the text where the story can be told in images and pictures. You bring out the subtext and keep a lot of characters even when they disappear. Also, the decision was to set the film in 16th century Venice.

Question: Yes, I noticed that this version of Venice is not quite what I had ever seen before...
Michael Radford: If you’re going to make it real, you have to do a lot of research. Venetians in this time did not wash. There were communal bath houses and peoples’ clothing got dirty. There were lots of prostitutes as depicted in the movie. Visitors to Venice then could not believe the debauchery.

Question: Who is the Merchant of Venice?
Michael Radford: Antonio. But the hero of the story is Bassanio, whose desires drive the plot.

Question: Ms. Collins, I want to commend you on your performance as Portia. I had no idea that you were an American actress, you were very convincing as English. You had a terrific role as a strong and wise female. Could you comment on your role?
Lynn Collins: Thanks. We are used to seeing woman portrayed in extremes as a madonna or the direct opposite. Portia is complex. Like the other characters, she is flawed. She is very naive. In the courtroom scene [where she is acting as a male] she is very hard-core, without bias. But this was difficult. Michael said to me, “stop finding yourself, men have to be your peers.” To take away what women are defined by--sex and beauty and to use intelligence.... I am so grateful. It’s very rare to have a role like this written for a female in an acting career.

Question: Can you comment on the relationship between Antonio and Bassanio and if and how it impacts the relationship between Portia and Bassanio?
Michael Radford: You could describe the relationship as homo-erotic, but you cannot view the relationships between 16th century males on the same terms as you would for the 21st century. Just as you cannot look at anti-Semitism in the 16th century the same way as you would in the 21st century.
Lynn Collins: I love movies like this. Does Portia know what she’s doing or not? Definitely. She knows that she’s involved in a menage a trois...

Conclusion: So Portia has to fight for her man and have him prove his love for her. Two cultures do not understand each other, where the minority is treated badly. Powerful emotions: love, hate, envy, jealousy, prejudice, revenge, anger that emerge as themes. Shakespeare’s 16th century relationships resonate with contemporary relationships. Shakespeare, the bard for the ages, and Radford together present in The Merchant of Venice, a timeless work to which many will find parallels to issues in their own lives.

Beyond the Sea: Q&A with Kevin Spacey and Andy Paterson

By John Suozzo, DC Film Society Member

On December 9, Landmark's E Street Theater hosted a screening of Beyond the Sea with writer/actor/director Kevin Spacey and producer Andy Paterson. DC Film Society director Michael Kyrioglou was moderator for the discussion that followed:

Michael Kyrioglou: Welcome back to DC.
Kevin Spacey: Thank for that warm welcome. I love this town!
Michael Kyrioglou: We had you here on stage at the Kennedy Center with Lost in Yonkers and The Seagull and with Jack Lemmon in Long Day’s Journey Into Night. So you definitely have a theatre background which you’re returning to now in London at The Old Vic. I wanted to know how what you’ve done in theatre has impacted what you’ve done in this movie. It’s a very theatrical performance. You get to do everything except play Sandra Dee.
Kevin Spacey: Yeah, but I’d be too old for the part. I just like to create an atmosphere where each individual actor feels that he is an important part of the film, that they bring their best to the table every day and that they have a good time. Theatre and film are totally different media--I think I prefer theatre as an actor but I definitely prefer film as a director.

Question: This film is something that you have been passionate about. There’s something about the writing process--less dark and acerbic than All That Jazz--but it still has different characters from different time periods talking to each other. Did All That Jazz influence this project?
Kevin Spacey: It did. I’d say there were two movies that influenced me: All That Jazz and Fellini’s 8 ½, of which I’m a huge fan. There have been a lot of interesting stories about the making of this movie. The truth is that this film was under development for about 15 years at Warner Brothers under Barry Levinson, who is a fantastic director, and they went through about 6 or 7 screenplays. I also had my eye on the project because I wanted to play the part. At the time I first heard about it, in the late ’80s, I was a relatively obscure theatre actor and oddly they didn’t think I was the right guy to play the part. Fools they be! I inherited all those scripts and I ended up using one of those writers’ material more than anyone else and that is why the WGA gave both me and Louis Colick credit. We never actually worked together--we were more of a tag team. When I figured out the basic concept of the movie--the movie within a movie, Little Bobby--that was all my original work. I was then able to insert Louis’ work--he wrote some fantastic stuff: the Oscar night argument, the wedding night scene, which I loved because it was funny and advanced the narrative along.

Q: Toward the end of the movie, I noticed the number of songs Bobby had recorded, but I also noticed that his uncle went back to work as a cab driver. What happened to all the royalties from all those hit songs?
Kevin Spacey: Charlie did that because he wanted to. On the set, Bob Hoskins became Charlie for me. He literally took care of me because I had so many responsibilities every day. He made sure that I got enough rest, he’d get me coffee. He kept people at bay. He just took on the role of Charlie in real life. Bobby used to joke that Charlie was his valet but he couldn’t iron a shirt. But that was his family. There even was a time when Nina was doing his fan mail for about a year and a half and received a regular salary for it. But at the end of the day, Charlie was a worker bee and that was what he did. Charlie was not the type of guy who was going to sit back and collect checks and do nothing. He liked people too much. There’s a great story about how Charlie was the real “gatekeeper”. One night after a performance, Bobby told Charlie “I need a rest” because he was really tired that night. All of a sudden Dean Martin showed up backstage--and Charlie wouldn’t let him in! “How could you not let Dean Martin in?” Bobby yelled at him later. “You said nobody gets backstage,” Charlie said.

Q: There were some very brisk, exciting dance numbers. Were the dancers part of the German crew?
Kevin Spacey: I thought Bobby Darin was one of the greatest entertainers ever. He did everything. The big question was how could I show that Bobby could do everything and not end up with a two-hour concert film. I loved how the old MGM musicals were made--they used song to move the film along. They were brash and filled with exuberance for life.
Andy Paterson: There was not a lot of time for the dance scenes. The whole movie took 50 days to shoot; we filmed the last dance scene in just 1½ days. We had a few American, quite a few British but not many German dancers at all.
Kevin Spacey: The dance rehearsals were really tough after a full day of shooting. We really pushed the dancers hard. I am not a professional dancer by any measure. The Beyond the Sea dance sequence was filmed in the dead of winter in Berlin--it was so cold! The dance sequences were great fun.

Q: Is there any truth to the mother’s scene with Bobby Darin?
Kevin Spacey: Bobby never acknowledged Nina in any way publicly. Almost everything else in the movie happened except that. I felt that if I didn’t resolve that it would be quite unsatisfying for the audience. Filming that scene--everyone knew how difficult it would be--was very emotional. I kind of lied to Carolyn Aaron that we would be filming another scene that day. As we got closer, I could see she was getting more and more nervous. But I needed the scene to be fresh and spontaneous so we shot it then, even if it ended up that we never used it. I put two cameras on her--and she nailed it on the first take.
Andy Paterson: On the set, the sound people were upstairs and weren’t told about the scene either. I had to tell Kevin we blew the sound. It was the only time in a year and a half that he threw something.

Q: You’ve directed a film before. How tough was it to direct and act at the same time?
Kevin Spacey: Good question. I didn’t want to act in Albino Alligator, I just wanted the experience of directing. I thought about acting in this for a long time. I knew exactly what I wanted by the time I walked onto the set. I did have a remarkable set of eyes and ears help me on the set. And how should I say this delicately? It was the first time I directed myself officially. Sometimes as an actor you find yourselves in a situation where you realize the person at the helm doesn’t really know where the boat is.

Michael Kyrioglou: Did you consider someone else directing it?
Kevin Spacey: I never intended to direct this movie. At the end of 2002, I got close to offering the job to two people but they couldn’t start until this year. I couldn’t wait that long. The choice really was do you make this movie now and direct it or never make the movie.

Q: The Oscar night fight scene was my favorite. How long did it take to shoot?
Kevin Spacey: Barely a day to shoot that sequence. I dreamed about that whole sequence. I asked Andrew Laws to build that exact bedroom. The bedroom was set up deliberately with the Oscar Boy signs. We only had 4 of those signs and I couldn’t rip them down from the ceiling. That frustration you saw on screen was not my acting--it was real. By the way, Sandra Dee saw the film for first time last week and she said she wouldn’t change a frame of the film. So we pleased our most important audience.

Q: How was it playing a role of someone in Showbiz?
Kevin Spacey: You have a responsibility when you play someone who lived. I’ve played Clarence Darrow, the television evangelist Jim Baker in a TV movie, and I played a living character in Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil. There’s a responsibility to the friends of the character who are still alive. In this case, I wanted to honor the man but I didn’t want to so a slavish impersonation. That makes you self-conscious--are you holding your hands correctly, etc. My own instincts took over but I knew I had watched too much film about him. I had become a version of him. I was doing my version of Bobby. But he was a unique performer and I’ll never be as good.

Michael Kyrioglou: This movie and Ray in the same year. Are you and Jamie Foxx going to do a duet?
Kevin Spacey: When we were up in Toronto, I heard Jamie Foxx was there at a party so I had to go see him. I thought they sent me up to his room. It turned out to be a club with about 950 people. He was rapping when I walked in. But Bobby Darin and Ray Charles got back together that night and sang Splish Splash!

Q: For Andy, how many producers were part of the project?
Andy Paterson: There were a lot of Executive Producers, who put the money in. There were the producers from Lions Gate who really supported the movie. The Associate Producers credits are basically our team who worked hard on the movie. There were some Producers from a ways back and three real Producers (me, Kevin and Jan Fantl).

Q: About Bobby Darin’s anti-war activities. His sentiments about when they said “They lied” seemed very timely. Was he always politically active?
Kevin Spacey: Bobby was always politically active. That’s why the scene with Bobby going to bat for a black opening act was included. And he did get the Copacobana to allow black warm-up acts. He marched in Washington, DC. Joan Baez was upset that Bobby didn’t know where Vietnam was. But he eventually got involved in 1967 through 1969. I always wanted to use Simple Song of Freedom in the movie. That sequence was written for the movie four years ago. In 2003, we went to war but we decided not to make didn’t make the older scene current. We decided to let the similarity speak for itself.

Q: What surprised you making this film?
Kevin Spacey: That it was a dreadfully complicated series of treaties about the different nationalities you had to hire for the cast and crew. You needed Henry Kissinger to figure it out. My best advice for anyone that tries this is don’t take no for an answer. When we ran out of money, many agents were advising their clients to leave the set. And I was proud at how the entire group stayed with us.

Beyond the Sea opened in theaters December 29.

Cinema Lounge Takes a Break

By Brian Niemiec, Cinema Lounge Host and DC Film Society Member

After 4 years and 48 discussions, Cinema Lounge is going on hiatus; or rather I am going on hiatus. I’ve decided to take a break while I think about the next project I’d like to work on with the DC Film Society. This project may be something completely different, or it may involve reimagining Cinema Lounge (I can promise no strange endings with apes in the Lincoln Memorial).

In any event, it has been a fun run and I’d like to thank a few people who’ve helped me along the way:
Adam Spector who immediately jumped on the opportunity to help me get Cinema Lounge off the ground and came to nearly every Lounge (except when at the Toronto Film Festival). He even subbed for me a few times when I couldn’t be there. Couldn’t do it without you, man.
Jim Shippey whose endless knowledge of movies kept the discussions intelligent and the topics fresh and diverse. Jim also worked with Adam as co-host for those times I couldn’t be there.
Kathye Hamilton who kept the ideas coming and baked the occasional cookies. It was also good to get a female perspective on the movies and the topics we discussed.
Jason Russo who brought a sense of humor with him to every meeting. I could always depend on Jason to come up with something that would keep us laughing. Oh yeah, and thanks for your ideas, too.
Stacy Baker, my wife, for her endless support and ideas--even if she couldn’t be there all the time.
Michael Kyrioglou for promoting the Lounge and getting the word out to all our listserv members.

I’d also like to thank the Lounge regulars, Andy, Martin and Deon, who kept coming back for more every month. I’ll miss you guys. And regards to all the others who have visited us over the past four years.

This won’t be good-bye, this is just a see ya’ later.

Hotel Rwanda: Q&A with Terry George and Paul Rusesabagina

By John Suozzo, DC Film Society Member

Writer/director Terry George and the Manager of the Hotel Milles Collines Paul Rusesabagina attended a screening of Hotel Rwanda at Landmark's E Street Theater on November 16. Emira Woods of the Institute for Policy Studies was moderator.

Question: Can you give us a little background on the Hutu-Tutsi conflict?
Terry George: The division between the Hutu and the Tutsi was a division of society first created by the Germans and then by the Belgians to basically divide and conquer the people they ruled. They set out to divide society into two segregated groups. They created the elite Tutsi who they defined as wealthier, lighter-skinned, taller and more elegant who were descended from Ethiopian extraction as opposed to the Hutu peasant class who farmed the land. They literally measured noses and heights and handed out identity cards. When the colonial powers were fleeing from Africa, the Belgians turned over power to the Hutu majority without any reconciliation of the divisions they created. The Hutus then launched a pogrom against the Tutsi minority and drove many of them out of the country. In 1990, when a Tutsi rebel army that had been outside the country came back in, a civil war broke out. And that was what the UN was brokering when President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down and that event sparked off the genocide that you witnessed. I cut out a scene in the movie when the General was talking to Paul in the bar he tries to apologize for the genocide. He asks Paul how Americans would have felt after President Kennedy was shot if someone had come on the radio and said it was a black man who killed him and you must kill all the black men for killing our President. I put that question to you now--what would have happened? It’s not enough to say “it’s Africa and it’s just two tribes killing each other”. Kigali was a middle-class, modern city.
Paul Rusesabagina: I think Terry has told you everything I could have told you about the conflict. This business about the Hutus and the Tutsis goes back to the Belgians’ theory of divided rule. They are the ones that taught us how to read and how to write but they also bear some responsibility for this, too.

Q: How has your family fared in Belgium over the last ten years? Secondly, how have the trials progressed?
Paul Rusesabagina: My daughter was 16 in 1994. She’s 27 now and has a daughter herself. My wife is doing well and she will be joining me in New York and we will go to Los Angeles together for the premiere. Our son, who was a young boy in the movie, is finishing his primary school. Our other son is in college and my nieces are in secondary school. I think we are doing well. About the trials: So far the UN has identified about 50 people and those people have not yet gone to trial. There are also about 100,000 prisoners. So, you can see at this rate it will take 1,000 years for all the people involved in the genocide to come to trial! Draw your own conclusion.

Q: Exactly what finally happened to the hotel itself and the European owners. I hope you didn’t have to pay them back for the bribes and damages. Did they sponsor your move to Belgium? Did they give you a job there?
Paul Rusesabagina: Where the movie shows me going to the Tanzanian border, I actually went to the RPF side of the border. Two weeks later, I reopened the two Sabena hotels and started cleaning them up. On July 19, when the RPF government was put in place, both hotels were operational. My colleague had returned from Belgium and we each managed one of the hotels. In 1995, having seen the videotape of the genocide, I felt I had to resign and do some other things. So when I moved to Belgium, it was on my own as a refugee and not with Sabena. But when I arrived there, some former Sabena colleagues offered me a job. But even though they offered me a position, they did not have an office for me to work in. I wanted to do things my own way, so I declined their offer but told them I would be back if I failed on my own.

Q: Could you talk a little bit about the casting? How did Don Cheadle become involved and for Paul Rusesabagina, did Don spend time with you?
Terry George: I always had Don Cheadle in mind as I was writing the script. I always try to visualize specific actors whenever I read or write a script and I consider Don to be one of the finest actors in the country if not the world. I had seen Sophie Okonedo in a film called Dirty Pretty Things and some BBC shows. She had this chameleon-like ability to disappear completely into a role. I met her in London and it only took one meeting to know she was the right one for the part. Nick Nolte had heard about the project, asked to see the script and then agreed to do it. Joaquin Phoenix is a good friend and I asked him to do this for me as a favor. Joaquin has an extreme fear of flying so convincing him to get on a plane for a 16-hour flight to South Africa was a major, major achievement. A lot of the South African cast are stars on the local soap operas. After we finished casting, it was off to Johannesburg for 49 days of shooting. It was a tough but joyous experience.
Paul Rusesabagina: As to the second part of your question, once Don got the part he sent me a lot of emails. He asked me a lot of questions: Who was I? What did I eat? What were my school background, my hobbies and my taste in music? Everything. Before shooting began, I met him in South Africa and we spent almost a week together. During that week we shared some food and some good wine as he followed me around, observing me and listening to my accent. He also had a dialect coach with him who listened to both of us talk. I stayed there for the first 15 days of shooting, went home, and then rejoined them for the final week of shooting. The first time we met, I talked with Don Cheadle, the actor. The second time we met, we were a little closer, more like friends.

Q: Can you describe the difficulties you had getting this film made?
Terry George: In 2000, I wanted to write a film about Africa. I had just started to write a fictional story about Liberia when I came across a story by my co-writer Keir Pearson, who had just graduated from NYU. The story epitomized to me everything I wanted to say. So we joined forces and co-wrote this script. Everyone we showed it to said “Great script, but not for us”. It had three strikes against it: it had black main characters, it was about Africa and it was about genocide. Finally Lions Gate came aboard. Another problem was I only had Don Cheadle for 50 days starting January 1 before he had to leave for Ocean’s Twelve. All the delays meant we didn’t actually start shooting until the 12th and I didn’t know how I was going to finish in time. But the next day Brad Pitt tore his Achilles tendon and Oceans Twelve had to be postponed. Thank you, Brad.

Q: What was the budget?
Terry George: The budget was in the high teens. A substantial portion of that were the interest payments on a production loan. So the actual shooting budget was in the low teens, the total budget in the high teens.

Q: Your movie moved the bar as far as documenting wartime. You really captured the sense of chaos of the situation. How did you shoot the crowd scenes?
Terry George: My favorite and saddest scene was when Paul’s family was leaving the hotel and they came past a Tutsi family being dragged out and there’s a moment when you can see a child and that was priceless--you could see the fear on the child’s face. You don’t like to scare any children but, in that moment, you could see the terror. never set out to show the gore of the genocide--I could never show that. What I set out to do was to create the genocide’s horror within your head. You hear it but never see it. I was determined to get a PG-13 rating. The first time we submitted it we got an R rating. So MGM appealed the ruling. The first thing the woman from the MPAA said was that they couldn’t allow a scene where a van drives over dead bodies. And I said “Hold on! You don’t see a van drive over the bodies--you just think you see it.” She kept bringing up things she thought she saw until finally we told her that all of the scenes she objected to were in the trailer, which was approved for all audiences. They finally gave us a PG-13, which was vitally important, because the movie needs to be seen by teenagers in school.

Q: Is this film going to be shown in the US to shame people into doing something in Darfur, Sudan?
Paul Rusesabagina: Yes. Not only in DC but the movie needs to be seen by as many people as possible. This should not be limited to New York or the UN or the USA only. I know the average person is not well informed. My intention is not to shame politicians; I would be pleased if they simply apologized for not doing anything to stop the violence in Rwanda.

Q: Have things changed much today in Rwanda?
Terry George: They have a system very similar to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Northern Ireland. Basically people gather under the trees and plead their case, say they have reformed, beg forgiveness and ask to be let back into society again. And perhaps there is some hope for this process to be successful. Because the two most abused words in the language today are “Never Again”--too often that becomes “Again and Again”. No matter what we say it seems that every ten years, whether it is Rwanda or Sudan, man keeps committing crimes against other men. The terrible thing about the genocide in Rwanda is that the DC Police Department could have put it down. The Hutu army was a ramshackle affair and was armed with only machetes and clubs. This was not Somalia--there were not hordes of armed partisans. The force that went in to evacuate the Europeans could have also stopped the genocide. So there needs to be a moral commitment to stop what is going on in Sudan and Northern Uganda, where a lunatic fringe known as “The People’s Army of God” has displaced 2 million people and killed 40,000 in the past six months. So until we determine that a life in Africa is equal to a life in the West, I’ll continue to make films like this.

Hotel Rwanda opens in theaters January 7.

U.S. Films in the Running for CineMart Support

By James McCaskill, Storyboard European Correspondent

Amid the snow and icy gales of January in Rotterdam you will find hot and heavy discussions under way at CineMart, the marketing arm of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (January 26-February 6, 2005).

Eight hundred co-producers, television buyers, sales agents, distributors and fund representatives will meet with film project representatives all keen to fund the next The Magdaline Sisters, which found funding here several years back. Ido Abram, CineMart Director, said: "The record number of 539 entries provided us with a good overview of the current, very lively market situation for small and medium budget films. The overall high quality of this year's 47 strong CineMart makes Rotterdam the ideal industry platform at the beginning of the new year."

Included among the 47 chosen are three US film projects: 6IXTYNIN9, Jim Fall, Bohemian Films & ShadowCatcher Entertainment; Helen, Sandra Nettlebeck, Echo Lake Productions, a US-German co-production; Honeydipper, John Sayles whose company has the interesting name, Anarchists' Convention. Both Nettlebeck and Sayles have had successful films. Nettlebeck helmed Bella Martha and Sayles skippered Return of the Secaucus 7. David Mackenzie (UK) who directed the successful Young Adam is here with a UK/Sweden production, White Male Heart.

It may be several years before any of these can be seen at festivals or your local cinema but like the highly praised The Holy Girl (La Nina Santa, Lucrecia Martel, Argentina, 2004) will be in the IFFRotterdam festival program and has already been picked up for other film festivals.

The CineMart, coupled with other components of the Rotterdam experience, the Hubert Bals Fund and the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition, has a strong line-up with strong projects about strong people in strong stories.

Russian filmmaker and photographer Yevgeni Yufit (1961, Saint Petersburg) has been selected as IFFR 2005 Filmmaker in Focus. The festival honors Yufit with the screening of four feature films (including his latest film Bipedalism as world premiere), eight short films and a photo exhibition. After finishing his studies in mechanical engineering in 1983, Yufit took film lessons from Aleksandr Sokurov. Yufit went on founding the film studio Mzhalalafilm and started making experimental films. He was the founding father of the 'Necrorealism' movement in Saint Petersburg that includes filmmakers, photographers, painters and writers. Manifesting themselves by the beginning of the Eighties, death as a physical reality became a principal theme in their works. IFFR's Hubert Bals Fund has supported his Bipedalism (2005). Yufit's works had considerable influence on a later generation of Russian progressive filmmakers and artists. One of the IFFR 2005 theme programs will be 'Near Past and Near Future' devoted to a choice of feature and short films from this 'Parallel Cinema' movement.

The rise of what in Russia is known as 'Parallel Cinema' (which includes Yufit's 'Necrorealism') is closely connected to the 'perestrojka' period and the disintegration of the former USSR. 'Parallel' meaning that these films were made and screened without official support or consent of the authorities. A second generation, now including artists, performers, musicians, photographers, writers and journalists continued the Parallel Cinema throughout the Nineties. In and around Moscow, they now have a network of own festivals, production platforms, websites, films and film stars. IFFR focuses the attention on eight feature films and five short films from this widespread alternative circuit. Themes and forms of these films vary from the very Russian 4 by Ilya Khrzhanovky, the anti-Chechen war drama Green Elephant by Svetlana Baskova to the bizarre comedy Ivan the Idiot by van Alexandr Doulerain & Sergei Koryagin.


Golden Globe Nominees Do Well at European Film Awards
Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake, UK, 2004) and Javier Bardem (The Sea Inside, France/Italy, 2004) picked up European Actress and Actor Awards ast recent Barcelona ceremonies. Both are nominated For Golden Globe Awards. European Film of the Year went to Head-On(Fatih Akin, Germany, 2004) a film that lead my Top Picks at the London Film Festival. Another German film, Wolfgang Becker's Goodbye, Lenin, took top honors last year. European Director award was picked up by Alejandro Amenabar for The Sea Inside. European Screenwriter 2004 went to Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri for the French film Look At Me. Top cinematographer was Eduardo Serra for Girl With A Pearl Earring.

Award Winners of the 15th Anniversary Washington Jewish Film Festival

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