When in Romuva: An interview with Kaunas International Film Festival Director Ilona Jurkonyte

This week I spent a couple of days visiting the Kaunas International Film Festival, held in a Forum Cinema multiplex at the heart of Lithuania's second city. Only in its fourth year, the event is already gaining steam and able to boast some interesting guests. This year's event is playing host to the venerated Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr - who is coming to talk about his work whilst the festival celebrates his career with a retrospective. I was curious to know how the relatively small town of Kaunas, in an unfashionable corner of Europe, was able to attract such a guest - not to mention put on such an interesting and diverse programme which this year includes international festival hits: such as Thai Palm D'Or winner 'Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives'.

I asked the Festival's Director and founder Ilona Jurkonyte about welcoming Béla Tarr to the festival, and she was unsurprisingly enthusiastic when quoting for me a national film critic, who said: "If someone were to ask what were the two most important moments in Lithuania this year it would be the basketball bronze in Turkey and the Béla Tarr visit in Kaunas." To punctuate the significance of this declaration Ilona says to me: "you should have seen what was happening here after the basketball!" But how exactly did they pull it off? Well, strong links with organisations in the Hungarian film industry (such as the Hungarian Institute in neighbouring Estonia) have helped, but the connection goes a little deeper: "We started our festival with a Hungarian movie in 2007, and now these institutions are happy with what we've done... this is why they've helped us get such a guest as Béla Tarr."



Ilona's considerable coup in attracting such a prestigious guest is made all the more extraordinary for happening in a former Soviet country with few remaining cinema screens and little local film industry. It hasn't been an easy task establishing the annual event and she explained how it was founded as part of an ongoing local battle to save the country's oldest cinema, Kaunas' own beautiful 1930s-built Romuva, from being turned into a casino. I interviewed her the evening she had won an important victory in securing the venue's long term future - and the next day was privileged to be able to undertake a tour of the building itself (along with Splendor co-host Jon Barrenechea, pictured with Ilona inside Romuva below). It seems it is hard to talk about the KIFF without talking also about Romuva.

"We started this festival, with friends, because of cinemas. Cinemas were being closed all over Lithuania. Different countries, at different times, had this wave of closing cinemas, but in Lithuania it happened after breakthrough." "Breakthrough" is what Lithuanians call the moment they declared Independence from the Soviet Union on March 11, 1990 (becoming the first nation to do so). Until breakthrough Lithuania's cinemas had been protected by state ownership and a Russian belief in the importance of the art form as an ideological weapon. But since independence the cinemas were in decline and, according to Ilona, "nobody was taking any notice." It was almost a decade ago that Ilona and her friends "decided to take an active position in this... we started this festival to draw attention from people all over Lithuania to the oldest cinema – Romuva."



Festival directors can be tricky people to interview. I tried to pin down Tony Jones whilst visiting his festival in Cambridge last month, but the job requires so much diplomacy (and many years spent building up relationships with distributors) that they are often understandably reluctant to speak candidly on the record. Ilona is no different, and it is clear whilst talking with her that a few of the subjects of our conversation are not really for public consumption. But she is friendly, polite and passionate about the event which, this year, is three times the size of its 2009 incarnation. And she has every reason to be proud. Just a couple of years ago the situation was a lot bleaker than it is now.

Ilona explains: "There were no screens. There were no Lithuanian films on screens. Lithuanians could not see them at all because the multiplexes did not think they'd be popular. There were no film critics. We'd get, from time to time, these meaningless press releases about a Lithuanian film playing in another festival, but we wouldn't have a chance to see it here." Yet now the KIFF is closer than ever to rescuing a small independent cinema and is screening a Lithuanian feature, 'Eastern Drift' (pictured below), as well as a number of short documentaries and animations. They are also beginning to capture the attention of national press - which is no mean feat outside of the country's capital, Vilnius.



It isn't just press interest that Ilona is keen to encourage, however. She has also been targeting local government, which has been another uphill struggle - but one she appears to be winning: "The first year was hard because nobody knew what we were talking about. I had to go around the town and tell people about the need for audio visual literacy, and it was incredible because politicians knew nothing about cinema: to them it was just Hollywood blockbusters. We invited them, but they wouldn't come very often. But slowly, every year, we get more interest." It has also been difficult to gain the attention of the local community, but Ilona insists "Kaunas is not easy to start moving: but once it falls in love, it falls in love totally. We hope to be an apprectiated event because we really take pride in what we do, so we hope we infect more people!"

However, there is no danger that Ilona will compromise her vision for the sake of easy popularity: "We are not very careful about making our programme amusing and funny, and one year a journalist said “you show so many tough films, will you make your programme funnier next year?” but we've given up on catering for this! So now our slogan this year is “we don't show special effects, we create them” [poster below]. We know we have a pretty tough programme, but we say “take it or leave it”. If it's not for you, it's not for you. But more and more people are joining! Maybe people are a bit tired of this candy look and approach and some people are looking for something real... I also think many people have this demand, but they don't realise it yet!"



So what does the future hold for the KIFF? Ilona is realistic, saying that "a film festival in such a small country as Lithuania is very hard to have such big ambitions". Yet the ambitions she does have are not too modest. As well as saving, renovating and eventually reopening Romuva, Ilona has some noble socially spirited goals: "we would like to create an atmosphere of audio visual literacy in the town. We'd like to have representatives of every film, lots of good seminars and discussions." Ilona places a real emphasis on educating people about the role film can play: culturally and socially. In fact, last year's slogan was appropriately enough “sometimes you have to go into darkness to see the light.” It appears that Ilona and her hard working team are moving in the right direction. "Lithuanian national film history is not yet written" she says. I for one wouldn't rule Ilona Jurkonyte's involvement when that day finally comes.

The 4th Kaunas International Film Festival is continuing in Kaunas until the 10th of October, before moving to Vilnius from the 11th to the 17th. Béla Tarr is attending from the 8th until the 11th.

Where I've been this last week + Flick's Flicks October

I've not updated here in almost a week, probably the longest the site has gone without any "content" since it started back in January this year. So I wanted to post this as a stop gap to provide my excuses.

Basically, since my last post I've been busily writing programme copy for the upcoming CineCity Film Festival. Then I attended one of Europe's youngest and most obscure festivals: Lithuania's Kaunas International Film Festival. I returned to England from that yesterday and today was occupied with interviewing Oliver Stone in London (for 'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps') before watching 'Made in Dagenham'. Then tonight I worked the bar at the Duke of York's - returning to my day job.

October's edition of Flick's Flicks is up too. I am still hosting the show whilst regular host, Felicity Ventom, is on maternity leave - and I look set to continue into until the new year, which means I'll be recording two more episodes. Here is the latest:



Check back soon for reviews of Palm D'Or winner 'Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives' and Brit movie 'Made in Dagenham', as well as a interviews with Oliver Stone and Ilona Jurkonytė: the director of the Kaunas International Film Festival.

'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps' review:

Love him or loathe him, Oliver Stone is an interesting modern American filmmaker. Stone is not a director whose work I generally enjoy, or even particularly admire, but (as I have no doubt written here before) the source of my interest in him is twofold. Firstly, I am fascinated by the fact that he remains something of a chronicler of contemporary American history, covering everything from sporting life ('Any Given Sunday') to counterculture and popular music ('The Doors').

The filmmaker has made three films directly about the Vietnam War and as many covering American presidents, including one, 'W.', whilst the subject was still the incumbent. He also made his 9/11 movie, 'World Trade Center', within five years of the tragedy. Similarly films he has written but not directed, such as 'Scarface', have just as much to say about the American experience and (invariably) the evils of capitalism. This recurring interest in certain themes and issues is what marks him out as an auteur. This leads on to my second reason for finding Stone interesting.



I also really respect the fact that in an age where overtly polemical storytelling and documentary making is discouraged (or at least readily disregarded) Stone remains energised by a sincere politicism which he won't compromise. Whether you agree with him or not: Oliver Stone always wants to tell you something. More than that, he wants to convince you of something and even improve your understanding of the world. This is a rare trait – and, I think, a rather welcome one. Yet I must always come back to the fact that, in spite both these qualities, I am never moved to actually like his work. A fitting example of “good Stone/bad Stone” can be gleamed from his latest movie: 'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps'.

A sequel to 1987's original 'Wall Street', 'Money Never Sleeps' is a self-consciously timely look at the world of banking and finance in the wake of the current worldwide economic difficulties (archive news footage of which Stone blends into the film). Michael Douglas steps back into his Academy Award winning role as Gordon Gekko, who when as film begins in 2002 has spent the last eight years in prison as result of sleezy, insider trading crimes committed in that previous movie.



The first film focussed around Charlie Sheen's Bud Fox, but save for a small cameo role, this is not his story. Instead the sequel stars Shia LaBeouf as an opportunistic, up-and-coming Wall Street trader who begins a clandestine friendship with Gekko after becoming engaged to his estranged daughter, played by the illuminescent Carey Mulligan. As you'd expect, Stone wastes little time being subtle and early on Gekko gives a speech in which he tells us exactly what to think about corporate greed (whilst promoting his book “Is Greed Good?”).

The evils of Wall Street are also shown to us via high-level meetings in which a cast of really good old character actors, including Frank Langella and Eli Wallach (a scene stealer at 94), enact the sort of backroom deals that run the world. These scenes are reminiscent of situation room bits in 'W.', in which a lot of exposition is sold as dialogue. Also present is Josh Brolin as the film's antagonist, Bretton James (the “son of Satan”), the film's avatar for the ultimately self-destructive A-morality of corporate greed. Brolin, a last minute replacement of Javier Bardem (who chose to be in 'Eat, Prey, Love' instead), is flat as James, lacking the charisma that would make his attitude and lifestyle seem appealing. By contrast Douglas imbues the similarly morally bankrupt Gekko with considerable gravitas.



Stone makes it abundantly clear where his politics lie and what he thinks of these characters and this is the director at his most heavy-handed. The camera is forever circling characters, often zooming and panning around, often seemingly at random. But amongst his usual hyper-active grasp of cinematic style he does manage some genuinely inspired visual motifs, such as a graphic that likens the New York skyline to a diagram of boom and bust economics – a fitting metaphor, given how closely the growth of the city was itself tied up with the growth of international capitalism (with skyscrapers built by the biggest tycoons of the early twentieth century).

But generally, the director's bombast approach left me as cold as it ever has. He is helped a little in this instance by solid performers, with even LaBeouf shinning. But the focus on the relationship triangle between LaBeouf, Mulligan and Douglas is surplus to requirements (not to mention deadly dull) in a film which would do better to keep its eye on Wall Street. The resolution of this storyline is also pretty dire, feeling rushed and contrived – it seems to come from nowhere, not based on anything we have seen in the preceding two hours.



'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps' is, to my mind, the quintessential Oliver Stone film. It's overlong, brash, simplistic and oddly proud of itself at the same time. The camera is never still, the dialogue is trite and feels written, with an emphasis on style over substance which runs counter to Stone's obvious genuine interest in his chosen subject matter. However, it is also, like the rest of his work, boldly topical and daringly propagandist.

In the end it feels reminiscent of watching him interview South American leaders earlier this year in ‘South of the Border’, having unprecedented access to people like Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez, but in the end wasting the opportunity asking them to play soccer with him or enquiring about how many pairs of shoes they own. I'm thrilled that he is out there making these films, usually attracting big stars and big budgets. I just wish that he had the intellect or the artistry to support his obvious ambition - and, what I believe, are good intentions.

'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps' is out in the UK on the 6th of October and is rated '12A' by the BBFC.

Tony Curtis: 1925-2010

My Tony Curtis obituary is up on Obsessed With Film. Here are some good clips of the late icon:

'Certified Copy' review:

'Certified Copy' is a truly multi-national animal. A French, Italian and Belgian co-production, in which the dialogue is almost equally spread between French, Italian and English. Its writer and director, Abbas Kiarostami, is Iranian and its stars are the French Juliette Binoche and the English opera star William Shimell (in his first film role). The whole thing is set in Tuscany. But its nationality is probably the easiest thing to classify.

More than one critic has described it as "beguiling" and I'm not about to break ranks. Essentially, Binoche plays an antiques dealer and a single mother known only as "she" in the credits. She meets Shimell's James Miller (an author who has just written a book about the nature of originality and reproduction in art) ostensibly for the first time and they drive to a small, picturesque village for lunch. However, as you may have picked up from my not-so-subtle use of the word "ostensibly", things are not as they seem. Have the couple met before? Are they in fact a husband and wife? Or are they just a good facsimile of a couple? The answers are not altogether clear. Perhaps the more pertinent question is: does it matter?



These are the questions posed by Kiarostami's sweet and colourful film - his first feature made outside of Iran - which takes an interesting look at the idea of copies mostly via Shimell's scholarly author. Shimell is slightly wooden, affected and a bit pretentious, but no more so than an academic might be and he is a watchable presence. But it is Binoche who excels here in a role which requires her to (at times quite artificially) slip between extremes of emotion at a moments notice. Binoche is really quite something. She needs to be, as Kiarostami as always favours long takes on a single camera leaving nowhere to hide for either actor, especially when afforded one of many intense and prolonged close-ups. It is little wonder Binoche won the Best Actress award at Cannes for this role, earlier in the year.

Another Kiarostami motif recurring here is his use of a camera stuck to the bonnet of a car to capture the driver and passenger over a long, real-time journey, which is brilliantly used here. The buildings on either side of the Tuscan streets are reflected in the window, falling translucently over the protagonists, with the blue sky reflected between them. Your guess is as good as mine as to what (if any) significance that has as a visual. Perhaps seeing the sky and the buildings reproduced on a pane of glass so beautifully is proof of the virtue of a copy? In any case, it's a visually arresting film from a master filmmaker.



'Certified Copy' is difficult to talk about at length without running the risk of compromising it for those yet to see it (though perhaps any concern about the danger of "spoilers" is a testament to our belief that a copy can diminish the original?). In any case, I found it engaging and stimulating viewing, if every bit as unknowable, and well... beguiling, as I was lead to believe going in. Beautiful looking, with a terrific performance from its lead actress, 'Certified Copy' is engaging and thought-provoking cinema.

'Certified Copy' is on a limited release in the UK, playing at the Duke of York's Picturehouse in Brighton until Thursday. It is rated '12A' by the BBFC.

'Winter's Bone' review:

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival, 'Winter's Bone' is a gritty thriller adapted from a novel by Daniel Woodrell. The story concerns a young girl, Ree, who is forced by circumstances (a drug-addicted mother and a father absent through imprisonment) to raise her two young siblings in harsh surroundings of the Ozark Mountains in Missouri, facing immense poverty. Things quickly get worse for Ree when she learns from the local sheriff that her father has left prison, using the family's meager home as his bail bond and that he is nowhere to be found. Ree then sets on a quest to find out what happened to her father in order to save the family home. Is he dead or alive? That is what Ree must discover, and in doing so she must ask a lot of people a lot questions - and not everybody in the small community appreciates it.

Written and directed by Debra Granik, the film stars the young Jennifer Lawrence as Ree. A compelling young actress, I first saw Lawrence Arriaga's 2008 drama 'The Burning Plain', and she is without doubt the best thing about the film, convincing as a tough and capable girl whilst also seeming vulnerable and often desperate. It is Lawrence who carries the film and it's successes are hers. Also good is John Hawkes as Teardrop, Ree's uncle who exhibits a quiet menace as well as warmth and somehow dignity (in spite of his drug dependency and unkempt demeanour). Ree exists in a small town with few options for people of her social class. It is made clear during one scene (in which Ree walks through her high-school) that the only opportunities on offer for most kids are joining the army or having a baby. It is a bleak look at what I suspect for many poor, working class (well, technically lumpenproletariat) Americans is a grim reality.



Yet 'Winter's Bone' troubled me a little, feeling like a sort of "poverty porn" film, taking pride in its ugliness and spending so much of its time focused on "grim realities" that it began feel a little forced. It's a sort of middle-class oriented poverty safari. I suppose much of the same could be said about last year's Sundance winner, 'Precious', and 'Winter's Bone' is similarly relentless in the way things get worse and worse for our protagonist.

Another thing that diminished the film for me, cutting its impact in half, was the sense that I'd seen much of it before and done better, and by another film with a seasonal title. The 2008 film 'Frozen River' (also a Sundance prize winner and also made by a female director in Courtney Hunt) also looks at American, small town poverty from the perspective of one woman. In this case the woman (the Oscar-nominated Melissa Leo) was looking for her husband rather than her father, but for essentially the same reason: to save her home and protect her two children. But 'Frozen River' feels more authentic, being based on the genuine realities of life for people in that part of Upstate New York, and the harshness of the landscape is more visceral - the cold feels colder - and any suspense or thrill is generated by an emotional interest in Leo's character.



'Winter's Bone' enters more traditional thriller territory, generating suspense by way of threat and even violence, featuring a gang of unfriendly locals that wouldn't be out of place in a horror movie, or even a horror video game. It's riddled with cliché "why don't you just turn around and go on back home missy" dialogue and the people and the mise en scène feel like something out of John Hillcoat's adaptation of 'The Road'. The climax of Ree's story is so obviously tailor made to be edgy and disturbing that it ends up feeling slightly ridiculous.

This isn't the last we'll hear of 'Winter's Bone', however. Jennifer Lawrence is hotly tipped to receive an Oscar nomination, and she will deserve it. I hope and expect that there is much more to come from her. But for Debra Granik, whose first feature ('Down to the Bone') was similarly focused on poverty, drug use and the struggle to raise children under these circumstances, I can only see more Sundance-friendly liberal condescension. Middle-class experience, it seems, is not "real" enough as a subject matter. And the poverty safari rolls on in hope of finding some new tragedy around the next corner. Meanwhile, pampered Hollywood actors prepare to cover their perfect faces in dirt all over again in their continuing quest to win golden statues. Now there is a hideous borgeous reality Granik should know something about.

'Winter's Bone' is out now in the UK on a limited release. It has been rated '15' by the BBFC.

3D: a low-end gimmick or the future of cinema?

I'm back in Brighton now after a week and a bit working as a sub-editor on the Cambridge Film Festival Daily, and I thought I'd post an example of the sort of thing I've been writing whilst I've been away. This was in yesterday's paper:



Mark Kermode has confidently predicted the end of it within two years. On the other side of the Atlantic, Roger Ebert has told Newsweek that “It is unsuitable for grown-up films of any seriousness. It limits the freedom of directors to make films as they choose.” The industry-led resurgence of 3D films has steadily gained momentum over the last few years, reaching an all-time high with James Cameron's box office conquering Goliath, AVATAR, at the start of this year and attracting the ire of traditionalist movie critics the world over. Since then 3D films have looked set to become even more prevalent. Even features not shot purposefully for 3D, such as ALICE IN WONDERLAND and CLASH OF THE TITANS, have been taken into the world of plastic glasses and inflated ticket prices using a widely criticised post-production conversion process.

Some filmmakers have even begun to challenge the studios, speaking out against the ubiquitous use of 3D – including TRANSFORMERS helmer Michael Bay. I asked long-time Stanley Kubrick collaborator, Jan Harlan, whether he suspects the master filmmaker (ever the innovator) would have been at the forefront of this current craze. “He was interested in all technology that improved the image that he wanted to portray, and 3D isn't one of them... The only film he made where 3D could be interesting was 2001, in parts. But with a film like EYES WIDE SHUT why would you bother?” Echoing those comments of Ebert, Harlan added, ”if you want to make a deep film, it's distracting almost.” Bill Lawrence, an expert in the history of filmic innovations, is similarly unconvinced, seeing it as just one in a long line of gimmicks which diminish the quality of films made: “Quite often now they use the 3D effect to sell poor stories... to try and get an audience in.”



Many of these critics are willing to write the practice off, but film historian Ian Christie sees something fundamentally different in the current push towards the format, that sets it apart from attempts made in the fifties, seventies and eighties. For one thing, Christie suggests the technology behind it now is much better, giving it more appeal. But more important than that is the business side. ”I think now the mainstream industry is throwing a lot more behind it than was ever the case in the past.” Big electronics firms in particular are putting a lot of investment into it too: “the technology companies are determined to make it work. Sony in particular are throwing everything at it, and they see it as a massive solution to a lot of problems they've got.” Not to mention the fact that massive investment has already gone into upgrading many of Britain's projectors to support the push.

Another factor counting in 3D's favour, is that attitudes towards it have changed from within the creative side of the film industry. Speaking of earlier attempts he says, “It was seen as a gimmick, and it was actually seen as a sort of low-end gimmick. There is still a lot of that about at the moment... with PIRANHA 3D. But the difference is that some pretty serious filmmakers want to do something with it.” He was of course referring to the likes of James Cameron, but also more critically revered directors. “Scorsese's current picture is 3D as well. And I think that's going to be a real game-changer, because it's going to be hard for people to just write it off.” Meanwhile, Werner Herzog just premiered his first 3D film, a documentary on cave paintings, in Toronto.




Speaking to Christie is refreshing, as he expresses a sincere interest not really in vogue in film criticism. “I personally feel very enthusiastic about 3D, it's a wonderful resource and a whole new generation of filmmakers has to learn how to use it. It's not immediately obvious, it's a learning process. So if it can establish itself, then I think we might see a new generation coming through.” Perhaps the reluctance of people to seriously consider the process is not wholly unprecedented: “Cinemascope was bitterly attacked on all sides... and sound, was bitterly opposed, and colour. Just about every big development in the history of film has had its detractors – by defenders of what they consider to be true cinema.”

For Christie 3D is full of possibilities, and certainly nothing to be dismissed out of hand. “Cinema thrives on novelty” he enthuses. He ends our conversation on a similarly excitable note: ”I'd just like to see some more varied 3D films made. Bring them on, I say!”

Photos provided by the Festival's official photographer, Tom Catchesides. Thanks Tom!