A Film a Week - Third World / Treći svijet

 previously published on Cineuropa

In a political sense, the term “Third World” is quite well known, albeit fairly offensive. But in a more philosophical way, it could signal the space in between, or even the union of the known and the unknown, the earthly and the mystical, the tangible and the spiritual. Those are the things one has to bear in mind when considering the former Yugoslav rock/new wave band Haustor and their seminal second album, Treći svijet, meaning “Third World” in Croatian. In this case, where there was a union of two creative energies – one belonging to singer, guitarist and lyricist Darko Rundek, and the other to bassist and music composer Srđan Sacher – that “third world” is the space between them, the space they created together.

This serves as the starting point for Arsen Oremović’s documentary Third World, which has premiered in the documentary competition of the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival. Judging by the interest of the festival audience, the sold-out screenings, and the band’s enormous and enduring popularity across the generations in the West Balkans region, it is destined to become at least a minor regional hit.

However, Oremović has prepared something unexpected – something that is not a typical “rockumentary”, a music-fuelled biopic or a “making of” story about an album. The filmmaker warns us about this in the opening title card, stating that, above all, Third World is about two artists bringing their creative energies together and forging a new entity. And, for the most part, the documentary is focused on this aspect, but some conventions still have to be adhered to.

Roughly speaking, the doc could be divided into three parts: one about the “origin stories” of Rundek, Sacher and the band; another about the record that, at the time, was misunderstood both by critics and by the public alike; and a third part that deals with the hidden meanings that led to their subsequent recognition. All three acts are often interrupted by digressions, most often dealing with the band’s brief reunion in 2022 when the line-up from Treći svijet got together to “remake” a couple of songs. Through this, Oremović tries, and largely manages, to capture the creative energies of the band members, and the vibe in both the relatively distant and the more recent past, as well as to define the change of context over time, as since then, the concepts of “world music” and “genre fusion” have gained popularity.

The filmmaker uses standard tools to achieve this – interviews with the band members, occasionally observing them at work, and an abundance of archival material from both official and private sources. The thing is that he does so in his own way. In the interviews, the spaces that Rundek, Sacher and the rest occupy are just as important as their facial expressions and gestures, which cinematographer Marinko Marinkić captures with confidence. Oremović, serving as his own editor, blends archival material with experimental vignettes, creating a hypnotising atmosphere completely in sync with the band’s style of an impressionistic approach to both lyrics and music.

The trouble is that the creativity of Rundek, Sacher and the rest of the band members, as well as the mystical vibe of the Treći svijet album, cannot be completely comprehended and communicated by cinematic means only. However, with Third World, Arsen Oremović tries very hard to do so and succeeds to a certain extent. The movie will certainly speak to existing Haustor fans, but the question is whether it will attract audiences who know little about the group.

A Film a Week - Tatabojs.doc

 previously published on Cineuropa

Virtually every country in the world has at least one music act that pretty much everybody there knows and loves, and which lasts through the ages either by being consistent or by constantly reinventing itself. For the Czech Republic, this “one” band could be Tata Bojs, the members of which have been gracing stages since the late 1980s, constantly reinventing themselves, but staying faithful to their artsy approach to pop and rock music. The band has now got its own documentary, Tatabojs.doc, directed by experienced filmmaker Marek Najbrt, best known for his works Protektor (2009) and Polski Film (2012). The premiere took place at the Karlovy Vary IFF, as a Special Screening.

The history of Tata Bojs is an eventful one, but is pretty much devoid of turmoil and conflict. The band was founded by two life-long friends from the Hanspaulka neighbourhood of Prague, Marek Hunat/Mardoša (on bass guitar) and Milan Cais (on drums and vocals), as the final incarnation of the projects they had been involved in since elementary school. A string of guitarists passed through the band, while the keyboards, samplers, additional vocals and drums were added progressively as the group went through various phases. Tata Bojs started as an infantile teen punk-rock band that gained the general public’s attention and was one of the few to survive the transition from the drab late-socialist 1980s to the more liberated 1990s.

Since the design of the cover for their first album, the visual arts have been an important part of their expression and shows. Their second album, Futuretro, traced the general outline of their musical explorations in combining pop, rock and electronic influences, while their fourth, Nanoalbum (2004), was part of a wider artistic project involving Nanobook and the Nanotour DVD (2005), which earned Tata Bojs the national Anděl Award for Best Group. The band continued to experiment with their expression on later albums, remaining one of the most appreciated acts in the country.

We get to see all of this in a series of behind-the-scenes observations, as well as interviews with band members, the musicians’ parents, friends, collaborators and fans, lensed competently by Jan Baset Střitežský, plus archival footage from the concerts as well as from the musicians’ home collections. This is further spiced up by some animated intermezzos edited into the fabric of the film in snappy fashion by Petra Maceridu. However, Najbrt and his co-writer, Robert Geisler, wanted to make something more than a basic music documentary that celebrates the lengthy career of a beloved band and the friendship between its members. So, they introduced a “film within a film” series of sequences featuring men in space suits, which is close to the type of act the band would use for their concert choreography or music videos. It adds a little “something” to the documentary’s dynamism, but it is still not enough to qualify Tatabojs.doc as a completely “outside the box” documentary.

In the end, Tatabojs.doc is a decent piece of work that does justice to the band, and their music, art and friendship, but it preaches to the converted because the band itself is quite hard not to like. However, the film’s reach will be limited to the Czech Republic and maybe some of the neighbouring countries where Tata Bojs might be a bit of “a thing”, as the band’s music and art, and the film itself, are not that easy to translate into another context, and thus it will not win over any new international fans.

A Film a Week - The Child Within Me

 previously published on Cineuropa

Every music scene, whether in terms of location or style, has its own phenomena. Even though the Israeli guitar-based pop and rock scene is not as present or as recognised on the global stage as some other types of music coming from the country, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have its heroes, stars and legends. Yehuda Poliker is certainly one of them, and he is the focus of the documentary The Child Within Me, directed by Eti Aneta Segev and Yaniv Amoday, which has just premiered in the Music section of Docaviv.

The opening of the film, with black-and-white shots from backstage areas morphing into full colour once the star starts playing, is typical and even verges dangerously on the stereotypical when Poliker starts explaining how he becomes another person when he performs. Also, the title, which comes straight out of Poliker’s own mouth as an answer to the question of what keeps him going on stage, could have entailed a diversion into saccharine territory, but Segev and Amoday are more ambitious than that, and they are deft enough in covering their tracks. By the end of the film, the viewer will understand that the child within Poliker, as well as Poliker, the adult, are pretty complex.

The main framework of the doc, also shot in crisp black and white by Itzik Portal, is an extended interview with Poliker conducted by Segev herself from the special vantage point of being his one-time collaborator and his friend ever since. Poliker is a strong presence, a big man with a round face, an undercut and a “man bun” of hair as well as piercingly bright eyes, but he still seems friendly to the interviewer and, by extension, to the audience. The conversation moves organically and fluidly from one topic to another and is illustrated by a variety of archival material, such as home photos and videos, as well as clips from recorded live shows and TV appearances.

The first half is focused on Poliker’s developmental path in music, from taking a guitar in his hands for the first time in naval school to dropping out of school, playing in various bands, meeting Yaakov Gilad (with whom he would collaborate for the lengthiest part of his career), joining the band Benzene and going solo after the break-up of the group. This last move, and changing his music style from a blend of strictly rock influences to an intriguing mix of rock and traditional Greek music, opens up a number of new topics: his close-knit Greek-Jewish family and his parents, who were both Holocaust survivors and settlers in Israel; living with and being immersed in different cultures; his left-leaning world-view; his homosexuality and two-phase coming out (first to his family, and then, after his parents’ death, publicly); and eventually, the inspiration that led him to try painting, focusing on the eye-shaped patterns around him.

The topics that come up in conversation are both numerous and complex, which exposes the film to certain risks: the audience may get lost in them, or the movie may give the impression that it is only superficially touching on them during its 90-minute running time. Luckily, the directorial duo relies heavily on editor Shira Arad, whose work on selecting the material earned her a co-screenwriting credit and who blends the pieces into a smooth whole with a strong sense of continuity. In the end, The Child Within Me serves as a concentrated guide to an amazing music career and the complex, remarkable person that is Yehuda Poliker.

A Film a Week - Lights of Sarajevo / Svjetla Sarajeva

 previously published on Cineuropa

In the times of socialist Yugoslavia, Sarajevo had the informal status of, figuratively speaking, the scale model for the whole country, representing its diversities the most faithfully. This was the reason why pop-cultural products from Sarajevo, like movies filmed there and musical acts, could find their audiences all over Yugoslavia more easily than movies and bands from other cities and towns in the country. One of those legendary bands from Sarajevo is No Smoking (“Zabranjeno pušenje” in the original language), whose complicated history stretching over a 40 year period is the subject of Srđan Perkić’s documentary Lights of Sarajevo which just premiered in the documentary competition of the Sarajevo Film Festival.

Zabranjeno pušenje was formed by a group of Sarajevo teenagers as a punkish, subversive band in the late '70s and achieved first local and then nationwide fame in the '80s, releasing four albums and playing big gigs all over Yugoslavia. However, in 1990, the band's founding members and leaders Nele Karajlić and Sejo Sexon decided to split up over creative differences. After the war in Yugoslavia, two separate bands were formed under the same name, one based in Belgrade, the other in Sarajevo, both claiming rights to the original band’s heritage, while developing their careers in separate directions. Karajlić’s branch later became the No Smoking Orchestra, known for performing music in numerous Emir Kusturica films. Sexon’s branch of the band and Sexon himself (actually, the person behind the nickname, Davor Sučić) are in the centre of Perkić’s documentary, serving as its co-screenwriter and narrator, therefore providing the singular point of view that is still respectful to the other branch of the former band.

But Lights of Sarajevo is not just a story about the band, but also about the city, its unique way of life through different times (there is a sense of relief that the war is rarely mentioned and does not serve as the topic of the film), and especially one of its cult places, the Skenderija sports hall. The band’s last concert in it in 2019 serves as the film's framework, both narrative and musical, since the numbers played at the concert are abundantly re-used for the documentary’s soundscape. However, the juicier parts of the films consist of Sexon’s anecdotes both from the past and the present and his musings about the music, the touring, the status of the band that is cult on one level, but also down to earth and folksy on another.

Aware that he is making a music documentary, Perkić combines the archival and the newly filmed material, playing the band members and the things they contribute to their strengths. Sexon is a talkative and interesting narrator, providing intriguing information in a casual way. The band’s guitarist Toni Lović serves also as the film’s sound designer. Perkić infuses the film with some music video aesthetics as well, using short takes from multiple cinematographers and Tomislav Josipović’s sharp, rapid editing, even multiple projections, for seemingly no reason other than to show off.

Eventually, Lights of Sarajevo would serve as a very decent anthology of the band’s work and working conditions for existing fans, and as an introduction to it for new ones. Its sheer topic would be sufficient to get an audience in the region and among the Yugoslav diaspora and to secure bookings in regional festivals specialised in music documentaries, while its 68-minute format can make it suitable for television distribution.

A Film a Week - The Last Goze

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

“Goze” is a term that stands for a woman, usually, but not necessarily blind, who works as a travelling musician and singer. The tradition dates at least back to the Edo period, and it was present in the rural areas from Kyushu island in the south to Yamagata and Fukushima prefectures in the north. It was active well into the second half of the 20^th century when the last professional goze Haru Kobayashi retired from her work in 1978. “The Last Goze”, directed by Masaharu Takizawa, is a biopic about her, and too bad it is not a good movie.

The movie follows her from her birth, through her childhood and goze training and apprenticeships with different mentors, in the early adulthood and the beginning of her career as an independent artist, guild member and group leader. It starts with a warning printed on the screen, stating that the harsh language and actions are merely the reflection of the state of things back in the day, and it actually comes pretty handy.

Haru was born blind in the year of 1900, which was just the first tragedy in her life. She lost her father early on and she was raised by her grandparents. Back then, visual impairment was a severe limitation even to the women born in higher classes, so becoming a goze was pretty much her only option to make a living. In order to do so, she had to endure a strict training both at home, where her mother Tome (Hiroko Nakajima) undertook the role of an “ogre mother”, forcing little Haru (Non Kawakita) to learn sewing, to carry heavy burden and to walk almost barefoot in the cold, and on tour with her abusive first mentor, Madam Fuji (Shin Togashi). The things got a bit easier later on as she grew up (Miyu Yoshimoto takes up the role of Haru in her late teens and early adulthood) was picked up by the second mentor, Madam Sawa (Ayako Kobayashi), but the life of a goze is never an easy one, since a travelling musician has to endure a lot of hardships on the road, and also by the hands of the competition.

Largely all the problems in the film come from the script written by Takizawa with the help by Arei Kato and Isao Shiina. Firstly, the fact that it focuses only on Haru’s early age is a grave mistake, making it too reliant on the well-known clichés about the Japanese traditions and the life in rural parts of the before the WWII and before the modernization. In fact, Haru had an interesting life full of hardships also in her adulthood and old age (she lived to the age of 105, dying in the year of 2005, achieving the status of the national treasure before that), but the dying out of the tradition, which should be a central topic in the film about the last goze, is never addressed.

On top of that, their script is marred with the rigid dialogues, which results in rigid, declamatory and theatrical line delivery by the cast, and the over-abundant use of the narrator makes it feel like a literary adaptation, when it is, in fact, based on the semi-factual, semi-legendary, but actually well-known and publicized “wikipedian” bits and pieces from Haru’s life. Not everything that went in the acting department could be attributed to the script, some of it is the director’s fault. Takazawa does his best to mask the script’s faults by using the wider shots as much as possible, but the troubles become painfully visible in close-ups: being blind is not the same as having the eyes closed, which is the thing what the cast members playing the blind characters do most of the time.

Certainly, “The Last Goze” was seen as an important project aimed at preserving a piece of now-lost tradition. The appearance of the famous actors like Hiroyuki Watanabe, Ken Tanaka and others in bit roles signals it loudly. Some saving grace could be found in detailed production and costume design, as well as the use of the period-appropriate props, and generally in technical components like cinematography handled by Hideo Sasaki and Moritada Iju that shines especially in the open spaces, and the editing by Satoru Shiraishi that tries to establish some sense of rhythm in something very linear and flat-lined, but when the basis is crooked, there is not much to be done. Too bad.

A Film a Week - u.Q.

 previously published on Cineuropa

 

The name Uku Kuut might not sound familiar outside Estonia or selected music circles in Europe and America, but he was quite a phenomenon both regarding his art and his life story. The story about Uku and his mother, the jazz diva Marju Kuut (also known as Maryn E. Coote) is told by Ivar Murd in his second feature-length documentary u.Q. which just world-premiered in the Baltic Competition of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

After a quick prologue in which various people, mostly musicians, both Estonian and foreign, talk about how they got to know of Uku or got in contact with him, the story turns to his mother Marju and her beginnings as the singer of a hotel band. It was the '60s, she was 17 and usually the only woman in the band, so she often got hit on by her fellow band members. From her relationship with the trumpet player Ivar Krull, she got pregnant and gave birth to Uku who, apparently, gave himself this name by repeating the same sound. Their life journey full of adventure led the nice boy and his mother to Sochi in the '70s (where the two got really connected and where Uku discovered his interest in music), Stockholm in the early '80s (where Uku had his first electro-pop band) and eventually to Los Angeles in the late '80s where the duo created and produced music in the pop-funk and soft jazz register.

They returned to Tallinn in the early '90s, just before the final collapse of the Soviet Union, and tried to power and ride the wave of change, bringing their Western experiences to Estonian society. Uku got married twice, could never handle his money, went into several business ventures, got ALS, tried to combat it by getting back to music and eventually died of the illness. His relationship with his mother who was also his best friend and frequent creative partner was the central one in his life.

Ivar Murd covers the whole story of Uku's relatively short but somewhat adventurous life, during which he travelled to many places and saw many changes of system, in a very snappy fashion and in the compact format of an 83-minute documentary. The end result might as well have been a superficial film, in which the filmmaker checks the boxes of the clichéd portrait musical documentary, but it is not the case here, despite a structure divided into numerous short chapters. Murd's approach is smart enough to avoid the usual traps: there are no talking head interviews, the interviewees\ talks and remarks which sound as though they are coming over the phone line (kudos to the sound designer) are illustrated by a variety of different visual materials from different sources (personal and official archives) in different video formats (mostly Super-8, Beta and VHS, but also modern digital ones) edited by the helmer himself in a rapid fashion. With music by both the mother and son Kuut, u.Q. serves as an apt introduction to Uku's work, an intriguing view into his personal life and also as a testimony to some interesting times in recent history.

A Film a Week - Toma

 previously published on Cineuropa

For audiences of a certain age in the former Yugoslavia, there is no need to introduce Toma Zdravković, since he was a famous public figure – a true bohemian and a singer of Serbian folk music. Although he died of prostate cancer 30 years ago, many still remember his sad songs about the disappointments and the lack of happiness in love, and the anecdotes from his colourful life, like his passion for cigarettes, booze and gambling. His biography would seem an ideal topic to make a film about, so it was a tad odd that a biopic based on it had not been made yet.

This mistake has now been rectified by Dragan Bjelogrlić (both of the Montevideo movies and the regional hit TV series Black Sun) and Zoran Lisinac (the 2013 Michael Madsen vehicle Along the Roadside). The world premiere of Toma is a fitting choice to close the Sarajevo Film Festival in multiple open-air locations, bearing in mind that the protagonist was also quite popular in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the film’s chances of being distributed outside the Western Balkans region are slim.

The plot of Toma unfolds on two parallel tracks. The first covers the last few months of his life, from his collapse after a concert in Belgrade until his death at the time of the fall of Yugoslavia in 1991. The key relationship during that part is the one with the doctor played by Petar Benčina, and while the doctor tries to cure Toma’s body, Toma heals his soul. The second story covers the period of over 30 years in which we see Zdravković’s rise from humble beginnings in the town of Leskovac to national fame and fortune, as well as his subsequent succumbing to vices owing to unfulfilled romantic desires and the inherent sadness in his soul that he sang about. The main points in his life are covered there, but the core of the story is a melodramatic subplot involving his unfulfilled romance with fellow folk singer Silvana (Tamara Dragićević), for whom he wrote his best song.

Milan Marić (of Dovlatov fame) plays Zdravković both as a young man and as an old man, concentrating on nailing the “aura” of the character, despite the physical dissimilarities. He does a commendable job, with the only misstep being that his speaking voice is simply not the voice of an elderly man. As for his primary acting partners, Benčina is slightly wooden in his line delivery, while Tamara Dragićević channels the sexiness of a rising folk star with a hint of sadness in her soul. The other characters are usually types (Andrija Kuzmanović fares best playing the comic-relief provider, manager Drda), while some other well-known public figures are relegated to extended cameos, which will probably be corrected in the forthcoming series.

On a technical level, Toma is a decently made film, thanks to the detailed production design by Jovana Cvetković and Jelena Sopić, and the retro-stylish cinematography by Goran Volarević. The plentiful use of Željko Joksimović’s score makes Toma almost (but not exactly) a musical, and some of the connections between Zdravković’s songs and the main points in his life are just too obvious, while the metaphorical connection of the singer’s death to the collapse of the country is simply far-fetched. There is also a problem with numerous plot elements being presented but not quite fully developed, and the over-reliance on melodrama makes Toma even more of a tearjerker than Zdravković’s songs, but this self-proclaimed impressionist portrait of a well-known figure still opens up some new avenues for Serbian cinema.

A Film a Week - A Song for You / Ta yu luo ye dai er

 Previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Dukar Tserang is the best known as one of the most influential score composers and sound guys (handling everything, from design, via recording, to mixing) of the Tibetan cinema scene, with a dozen credits to his name, including the work on Pema Tseden’s “Jinpa” (2018). For Dukar, “A Song for You” is a step towards the unknown waters of filmmaking and directing, so it should not raise many eyebrows that he has picked up a topic that concerns his primary field.

The film premiered at Pingyao International Film Festival last year, and was also screened at Osaka Asian Film Festival and the virtual June edition of International Film Festival Rotterdam, where we caught it in Harbour programme. The names of its producer (Jia Zhangke) and executive producer (Pema Tseden) should secure it more festival bookings in the near future.

The story follows Ngawang (Damtin Tserang), a young folk singer / songwriter and mandolin player who is tired of the simple nomadic life in the heights and wants to make it as a professional musician with his traditionally sounding songs. He is talented, but the catch with the musical competitions are that the juries are more keen on awarding those who already have an album under their belt. Armed with a talisman of his muse Loyiter and his instrument and with some help of his friends and “frenemies”, with little to no money, he heads to the capital city with the aim to record an album or at least a single and a video clip.

Things might turn around for him when he sees a girl that looks exactly like his muse singing in a rock band. But can she help him? Is she real at all? And the music business in the nationally divided city is way tougher than Ngawang could even imagine…

“A Song for You” is partly a social study of the life in one of the most mysterious corners of the world, partly a story about the way to success, partly a road movie equipped with wonderful vistas and partly an insider “dramedy” about the emerging musical industry. It does not work equally well on all those fronts, but Dukar Tserang at least tries to play to his own strengths and the strengths of the very environment, sometimes offering some deeper insights in the background.

The main trouble with the film is the screenwriting, especially in the characters development department. Even Ngawang, as the main character, seems as a broad sketch, while the others, including his family, friends and even his muse are simply relegated to functions or one or two personal traits. The choice of the non-professional cast might seem to be the right one, especially when it comes to the authentic way they fit into the scenery, but it creates havoc in the dialogue scenes where the explanatory lines are even more highlighted with quite a theatrical, over-expressive and borderline fake delivery.

On the technical level, Dukar Tserang relies on his own music and sound design and fills the film with passages that could work on their own as music video clips. Paired with slightly “touristic” cinematography by Chan Hailiang and the adept editing by Di Jin (of “Suburban Birds” and “Balloon” fame), “A Song for You” is eventually a light-hearted movie that is easy enough to swallow, but some lasting impressions should not be expected.

A Film a Week - Heavy Trip / Hevi reissu

Some relevant scientific researches have found a co-relation between the strength of some country’s heavy metal scene, its general development and the overall happiness of its people. We can hardly imagine heavy metal as the music of happy people (or the upper classes for that matter), but apparently, if it is possible and socially acceptable for its young adults from blue collar background to channel the negative emotions like fear, angst and the appetite for (self-)destruction through some aggressive guitar-shredding, it means that some country is a happy member of the first world. If we take the Anglo-Saxon countries, Germany and Scandinavia as an example, we can see that the theory stands.

Also, it is worth noting that, contrary to the popular tropes and residuals of moral panic from the past century, metalheads are not necessarily dumb, aggressive kids and/or fanatical animal-sacrificing blood-thirsty Devil-worshippers, but simply people who prefer some kind of music over the others and spot a certain look. Movie-wise, however, the tropes still works, especially in comedies for the fun effect. And when treated in a smart way, which is the case with Jusso Laatio and Jukka Vindgren’s feature debut Heavy Trip, they can generate a lot of laughs without feeling condescending.

It is the story of a (fictional) extreme metal band called Impaled Rectum from a village in the north of Finland and its struggle to success imagined as a performance on a famous Norwegian festival. Before that, they kept rehearsing by playing covers in the basement of the fast guitarist Lotvonen’s (Samuli Jaskio) family business – the reindeer slaughterhouse. The band consists also of the daredevil drummer Jynkky (Antti Heikkinen), the walking metal encyclopedia bassist Pasi (Max Ovaska) who works as a librarian in his daily life and the gentle singer Turo (Johannes Holopainen of Unknown Soldier fame) who has to take the verbal abuse from almost everyone in the village, like the police chief and the local punks, while having a literally shitty job as an orderly in a mental institution. Needless to say, when holding a microphone, he turns into a growling beast. He is the protagonist and our perspective in the story and is also involved in a love triangle sub-plot with his ex-classmate, the beautiful florist Miia (Minka Kuustonen) and his nemesis, a local pop-singer buffoon Jouni Tulkku (Ville Tiihonen).

The description promises a road movie in the likes of The Blues Brothers, only more metal in sound and attitude, but Laatio and Vindgren, together with their co-writers Aleksi Puranen and Jari Olvi Rantala, take some sweet time to get the band on the road trip, while scoring laughs on the home field, putting the characters in some potentially dangerous situations with the rest of the townsfolk. Those set pieces are based on stereotypes and might prove to be even a bit offensive to both sides in the “conflict” (stupid metalheads doing dangerous stuff, sleazy rednecks that change their attitudes towards them when they have a shot to become famous), but here are done with a special warmth in hearts and minds of the writers, even though they are basically milking for laughs at predictable places.

Heavy Trip has some other classics of rock cinema in its DNA, like the early 90’s comedies Airheads and Wayne’s World, but the difference is Laatio and Vindgred are very aware of those films and that they are just playing with them (there is no way that every time the band plays, the look of the film changes towards some music video aesthetics), so they are not trying too hard to look cool while using the familiar tropes to make us laugh while making their characters silly in a likeable way. Not every joke is spot on, but most of them are and we can relate to the characters even though most of them are just rough sketches. The visual identity of the film is also smart, using the natural surroundings to highlight Turo’s loneliness and offering a glimpse into the boring life in Finnish countryside.

Once the road trip starts more than halfway into the film, more outlandish, over the top stuff is about to turn up, and Heavy Trip becomes one really enjoyable fare, no matter if the audience is full of metalheads or not. It is pure fun, nothing more, nothing less.

A Film a Week - How to Talk to Girls at Parties

originally published on Cineuropa

The idea of aliens meeting punk-rock teenagers in 1977 Croydon, London, seems outlandish, but it is actually the subject of Neil Gaiman’s short story adapted for the screen by Philippa Goslett and John Cameron Mitchell, who is also the director. How to Talk to Girls at Parties, shown in the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival’s New Visions One programme, crams a lot of ideas, tropes and genres into the mix. Basically, it is a coming-of-age romantic comedy, science-fiction fish-out-of-water comedy, and a kind of musical period piece dealing with the subjects of young love and conformity versus individuality. All of that blended together should not theoretically work that well, but somehow it does just enough to make it a pleasurable film experience with the potential for a cult following in the future.

Our protagonist, Enn (young Broadway actor Alex Sharp in his first screen role), spends his days editing a fanzine and hanging out with his two friends Vic (AJ Lewis) and John (Ethan Lawrence). After a gig they attend in the den of punk queen Boadicea (Nicole Kidman) goes awry, they get lost on their way to an after-party, ending up in a house inhabited by a crew of aliens with human masks who are on a research mission. It is here that Enn meets Zen (Elle Fanning), a curious girl who wants to get away from the party and do some surveying on her own. Since she is attracted to Enn, she is about to learn a great deal about punk music, culture and attitude. And so the adventure begins!

How to Talk to Girls at Parties works so well in its sheer ridiculousness mainly because of its fast pacing with a lot of snappy dialogues, and the sense for period details laced with campy aesthetics. Plus, it also features some of the funniest jokes this year, such as Zen’s first kiss with someone always being followed by vomiting, aliens dressed in Union Jack raincoats, like stereotypical naive tourists, and punk teens assuming that the alien crew is a Californian cult. A lot of attention has been paid to details such as recreating Gaiman’s detailed alien class system and society structure, which has been achieved by means of colour-coding and superb animation sequences. The whole lore is incorporated efficiently into the script, making the rhythm smooth. The casting of the leads is also spot-on: Sharp is compelling as a young punk enthusiast, while the role of a curious alien suits Fanning perfectly.

However, not all of the aspects of the film are so successful. Kidman overacts her role of a punk elder, mistaking it for campy charm and letting her accent drift from Cockney to Aussie and back again. In addition, the whole punk scene remains superficial for the duration of the running time, reducing the movement to several worn-out clichés and name-dropping of bands and artists, which is strange, given that John Cameron Mitchell is the filmmaker behind one of the most iconic punk movies of all time, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Finally, the tonal shift in the third act from pure fun to something more serious seems fairly abrupt but is also somewhat predictable in accordance with the template of an aliens-studying-Earth comedy. None of this weighs down the film too much, however, and How to Talk to Girls at Parties brings just enough heart-warming fun to its viewers.

A Film a Week - Liberation Day

Unlikely as it might seem, Laibach and North Korea are match made in heaven. Slovenian band was the first musical act from the West to perform in Pyongyang, mildly (or not so mildly) shocking both Western and Korean audiences on national holiday, the titular Liberation Day. The “pitch” to the Koreans was the idea that their country is being misunderstood (with the label of heavily militarized communist despotism) just like Laibach, a conceptual act which toying with different iconographies of dictatorship while having to deal with label “fascist”.

The man who made this strange cultural exchange happen was Morten Traavik, the Norwegian theatre director and provocateur who had previously dealt with both Laibach (he did a music video for them) and the North Koreans (he organized a tour for their national military choir in Norway, which was considered scandalous even in that open-minded Scandinavian country). He directed the show for which the audience reacted with genuine confusion and, with the help of the editor Ugis Olte, the documentary about the whole ordeal.

Just imagine the level of mistrust and miscommunication between the two worlds, one of them being extremely paranoid with all the “aparatchiks”, spies, secretaries, committee members and whatnot hanging around the band during the show preparations, trying to censor the whole thing (and usually succeeding). Laibach members, technicians and the whole entourage around them are not helping either: the frontman Milan Fras keeps wearing his “Nazi” hat even during the official photo-shooting, and the main ideologist Ivan “Jani” Novak almost caused the catastrophic incident by simply going for a walk, against the advise.

Naturally, the concert was also a strange compromise. First of all, the equipment in the hall is from the middle of last century. Also the music and the concept of Laibach is strange and even disturbing in the context of humourless North Korean society, so lots of last minute changes were being made, usually the things like projected videos and similar stuff. Maybe the craziest of all fuck-ups was the issue of the dialect: for one song, the band has translated some verses from German to Korean, but their pronunciation sounded suspiciously “southern”.

But the concert actually happened, and everybody involved was, well... satisfied. So, how about the audiences? In Slovenia at least, where the whole tour was covered in daily papers, an issue popped up just after the premiere: according to some critics, the film is neither about Laibach nor North Korea, but about Traavik himself, making it a publicity stunt. They have actually missed the point by a mile. It might not be about Laibach and Traavik might have made himself more important, but it definitely is about the parallel universe of North Korea. And in that universe every team has its leader, the one who is responsible. In the case of this particular show, that person was Traavik and it just shows how well he got the point about the North Korean culture. If it is not a shiny example of cultural exchange, I really do not know what would it be...

A Film a Week - Stockholm, My Love

Can a city be the star of the film? I mean, why not, we have seen first two Linklater’s Before films, two Julie Delpy’s Linklater rip-offs, a precious indie pearl called Copenhagen and a number of others, compilations of shorts included. And that goes only for the fiction films, without mentioning hundreds of documentaries. But outside the title, a city was never properly credited as the star. Until now, that it is. In Stockholm, My Love, the first fiction feature foray by a renowned British documentarian Mark Cousins, finally puts the capital of Sweden in the opening credits, alongside the singer Neneh Cherry in her first film role.

She stars as Alva, a woman dodging her work for a day, walking around the city and narrating a story about the city and her relationship to it in a somewhat "malickian" voice-over, shifting her talk from the audience to her dead father and later to another dead man which is connected to her and her psychological trauma in the past. We see her melancholy right from the start on Cherry’s de-glamourised face in close-ups and we assume it has something to do with her father’s passing. But the national trauma of Olof Palme’s murder serves as a trigger to her own, an old man called Gunnar whom she hit and killed with her car a year earlier. Is she looking for redemption from some form of higher being? Is she trying just to live with herself and the guilt or just picking up the pieces of her shattered life by relying on the one thing left that she loves, her native city?

It is for her to know and for us to try to realize in this short “city symphony” not much unlike Cousins’ work in general and especially the documentaries shot in Belfast, Albania and Sardinia. The label “fiction” is highly questionable here, since the style is the one of the documentary with lots of historic buildings and squares, usually empty, and the feeling is the one of a novel, an elegant, introspective, reflexive, lyrical novel. It all blends fine and works well, much thanks to the city itself and its grayish weather helping the mood a lot.

Neneh Cherry as an actress is a nice surprise, even though her acting tasks are not tougher than ones she is used to for her video clips, aside narration. She definitely has some screen presence here. Stockholm-born and raised and fluent in Swedish, she propels the film into another realm when she switches from English to her mother tongue.

The very ending, in which we hear her song while watching the more beautiful and optimistic vistas of the city and surroundings, this time with people around, could also serve as a meditative music video. Soundtrack plays a great part here, and it is not all done by Cherry. (That would add a couple of other labels to the film, like conceptual album or music video.) Cousins also uses the music of Benny Andersson (from ABBA) and the classical composer Franz Berwald, which goes great with the cinematography done by Cousins himself and Christopher Doyle that highlights love for the city and cities in general and the interconnection between the distance and the intimacy. Even if you have never visited Stockholm, you will find it a place you can fall in love with nevertheless.

A Film a Week - Afterparty / Afterparti

In his interview regarding the film’s world premiere at Belgrade International Film Festival, Afterparty writer-director Luka Bursać made a point that he was not criticizing social tendencies among the youth in Serbia particularly through the prism of Belgrade clubbing scene, but merely noting them. It sounds so smart and neutral, but it is also impossible. Usually, filmmaking is not a sociological research that can note something in an objective way, filmmakers have to have a standpoint, and try to point their views out the best way they can.

The choice to open the film with the archive material of building of New Belgrade, one of the biggest 20^th century newly founded settlements in the world, is a filmaker’s decision. The choice of main characters, a bartender / wannabe-actor Mare (Rade Ćosić), his next-door neighbour / part-time love interest Tića (Jana Milosavljević) and his drug-dealing bouncer buddy Stefan “Chinese” (Nikola Šurbanović), that all live in the same block and work at the same nightclub is also a filmmaker’s decision. The choice of surroundings, drab gray buildings, lazy days and heated-up nights is also a filmmaker’s decision. The choice of music, bad techno, bad hip-hop and Serbian special called “turbo folk”, is also a filmmaker’s decision. The choice of clothing for both male and female characters and extras is also a filmmaker’s decision. The choice of finishing the film with blending images of the “old New Belgrade” and contemporary clubbing scene and nail the point with a pseudo-existential pseudo-philosophical quote about going places and getting there taken form a “turbo-folk” song is a filmmaker’s decision.

It should carry some weight as a standpoint. And it would in the hands of a more skilled director. But here, all of the decisions and choices seem just random, disjointed, futile or just plain weird, attempting and failing to shock for its own sake. Sometimes the whole thing is offensive, cringe-worthy and completely uncalled for.

Unlike much of the contemporary Serbian cinema, Afterparty has no visible problem with its production value. The film actually seems more expensive than it probably was, with its clubbing scenes with a bunch of extras and copyright-protected music. However, almost every theme party in the club looks and sounds pretty much the same, just like some Serbian trash music video clip, but that can also be a comment of sorts. What gets lost in there is the character of the club owner Gagi, played by usually terrific Dragan Jovanović who is kinda boorish, but neither intimidating (as a character like that should be) nor funny (as the actor’s persona usually is), and, well, not even seen clearly because of the dimmed lights.

What the film lacks is the basic idea what to do outside of the club. We have some outlines of the story about Mare, his acting career, his on-again-off-again hooking up with Tića and his parents played by mismatched duo of late 80’s TV actors Slobodan Beštić and Lidija Vukićević, which is one of the rare touches of inspiration, sadly not developed into something more meaningful. We know a little bit about Chinese, his business and his family situation and sometimes we even see another of their buddies called Wig (Vladimir Gvojić) who is a comic relief of sorts. But it goes nowhere and takes a lot of time to get there. The payoff and its pseudo-funny punchline in the end is too weak and not worth the bother to see the whole film.

Instead, we get a casual bashing of another Serbian film, Stevan Filipović’s Skinning completely out of the blue, a casino robbery without any sort of explanation, some forced politically incorrect humour, a really bad porn moment and a fine share of wtf moments. How come an actor cannot tell the difference between a globally popular TV series and its bad gay porn parody just by its title? How come the producers of the same gay porn offer him a girl for a test shooting? Why does every apartment look exactly the same with the same outdated furniture? Why does a Spanish tourist speak English with a heavy Balkans accent? We could let any one or two of those things slide, but the sheer amount of them makes the case against the film.

Even if we dismiss all of that simply as Bursać’s weird sense of humour, there are some undertones of misogyny that cannot be overlooked. Up until one particularly disturbing scene, Afterparty can go under the radar as a misjudged, undercooked, weak mixture of “New Belgrade depression movies” from the beginning of millennium and movies about over-sexed aimless youth a la Clip. After that, it can be seen just as a vile little film. Sometimes not taking stand is simply not an option. And not trying to tell anything can be considered talking trash. Unlike his brave and prvocative diptich social realist drama / science fiction debut Blackness (Tmina, 2013), Afterparty is a huge miss.