A Film a Week - Nova '78

 previously published on Cineuropa

The Nova Convention was a three-day event that took place from 30 November-2 December 1978 in New York. It was produced by writer and book editor James Grauerholz, poet and performer John Giorno, and literary critic and cultural theorist Sylvère Lotringer in order to celebrate writer William S Burroughs, and his ideas, influence and legacy. Late filmmaker Howard Brookner (1954-1989) and his core crew documented the whole event, but the material was considered lost until it was unearthed in 2012. The largely previously unseen material was progressively restored up until 2024, and Howard’s nephew Aaron Brookner and his Portuguese colleague Rodrigo Areias composed a documentary called Nova ’78 out of it, which has now premiered at the 2025 edition of Locarno, out of competition.

While most of the previous paragraph could be read in the opening title cards of Nova ’78, there is more of a backstory here that did not end up in Brookner and Areias’ documentary. Maybe the reason for this is the fact that some of the material was also used for the 2014 updated version of Howard Brookner’s Borroughs (1983), and that Aaron Brookner explained the life and the work of his uncle, and his ties to him, in his 2016 documentary Uncle Howard. For those acquainted with those two docs, it should not come as a surprise that Tom DiCillo and Jim Jarmusch were signed up as the cinematographer and the sound recordist, respectively, on Nova ’78, as they were part of the original Burroughs crew.

Nova ‘78 is pretty much focused on the very event, from the last backstage arrangements the day before the convention to numerous panel discussions, dance, theatrical and musical performances, readings, and expressions of gratitude for the inspiration that Burroughs provided to all of them. Regarding the speakers and performers, the list is long and varied: Philip Glass, John Cage, Laurie Anderson, Patti Smith, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin and many more. Some of the initially announced guests did not appear, like Susan Sontag and Keith Richards, but those who did surprised many with their openhearted confessions. For instance, Frank Zappa, who was never much of a reader, deeply admired Burroughs for writing and publishing Naked Lunch. The rest of the conversations revolved around the future and the fear of it for reasons that still stand today, like wars, the environment and the persecution of minorities, while one conversation between Burroughs and Ginsberg on the topic of the turmoil in Iran just before the revolution sounds prophetic from such a distance.

Howard Brookner set the style somewhere between a fly-on-the-wall kind of observation and a reportage that aims to be as factual as possible, and Aaron Brookner and Rodrigo Areias maintain it for the better part of the film, as they stay at the convention and in its immediate surroundings. However, they both know that they have to relax the atmosphere a little and also show the hero of the story, Burroughs, in some other settings, so they take us away from the convention and into his world of long walks and road trips where every source of inspiration can be turned into a work of art through a process of mental training. The almost abstract imagery is accompanied perfectly by a psychedelic guitar- and synth-heavy soundtrack by Paulo Furtado (aka The Legendary Tigerman), while the precise editing by Aaron Bruckner and Tomás Baltazar keeps the running time of this dense documentary at a pleasant 80 minutes.

The convention it portrays proved to be a uniquely influential event. As a documentary, Nova ‘78 deserves the same outcome.

A Film a Week - A Cup of Coffee and New Shoes On / Një filxhan kafe dhe këpucë të reja veshur

 previously published on Cineuropa

In 2013, two Belgian twin brothers, both 45-year-old shoemakers from the town of Putte, put on a new pair of shoes and had a cup of coffee with their relatives before saying goodbye to them and leaving to get euthanised. Although they had not been diagnosed with a terminal disease, they were already deaf and the new diagnosis was of a degenerative disease that would eventually leave them blind as well, thus their plea for euthanasia was approved.

The premise of that story served as an inspiration to Albanian filmmaker Gentian Koçi for his second feature, A Cup of Coffee and New Shoes On. The film has just premiered in the Official Competition of Tallinn Black Nights, and was picked as the Albanian Oscar entry even before the premiere itself.

Agim and Gëzim (Portuguese twins Rafael and Edgar Morais, respectively) are identical and inseparable twins who have been deaf since birth, which means they are each other’s primary companions. They live together in a flat in Tirana, where Gëzim’s girlfriend, Ana (US-based Kosovar actress Drita Kabashi), visits them on a regular basis. They work together in a carpentry workshop and spend their free time together, usually going to their cabin and the mountains.

One day, while driving back from work, Agim’s vision starts getting blurry, and he almost causes a fatal accident, so he goes to see his ophthalmologist. The diagnosis is not good, as he is about to lose his eyesight – and to make matters worse, the same will happen to Gëzim later on. The idea that, after a lifetime in silence, they will have to accept the darkness as well deepens the rift between them and the world, as well as the rift between the brothers. A decision has to be made, over a cup of coffee and with new shoes on.

A Cup of Coffee and New Shoes On clearly shares a lot of traits with Koçi’s debut feature, Daybreak (2017), as it is a carefully measured exercise in subtlety with a perfect mise-en-scène (as demonstrated in the opening scene of the routine that the trio shares), realised with great attention to detail. The plots of both films mostly take place inside flats, but A Cup of Coffee and New Shoes On cares even less about the exterior world, outside the bounds of the one that the brothers share, and is more focused on their emotional states.

Koçi also repeats the collaboration with his Daybreak cinematographer Ilias Adamis, who always faithfully captures the events and the emotions from the right distance, opting for static takes with some rigorously symmetrical framing. While the rhythm of the succession of usually long takes works perfectly in the beginning, thanks to editor Myrto Karra, the drop in tempo halfway through threatens to hamper the film; nevertheless, the intensity of the emotions between the characters keeps up the momentum.

Special attention was paid to the casting and working with the actors. The Morais twins were selected after an international audition call: they are professionally trained actors who are not deaf, but they still had to learn the Albanian sign language for the role. Their primary task of channelling the connection between the twins, which helps them conquer their impairments, is handled perfectly, while the presence of Drita Kabashi as Ana, a person who wants to offer them physical and emotional support, is also priceless.

A Film a Week - The He Without Him / Runanbandha

previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Judging by its international title, the third feature by Kolkata-based Bengali filmmaker Amartya Bhattacharyya, The He Without Him, is a poetic and spiritual meditation of sorts. All the doubts should be cleared with the explanation of the original Hindi title Runanubandha rather than its translation (as it is “credit union” which makes no sense). Used in spirituality, the term signifies “body memory”, a combination of genetic memory and empiric memory of an intimate personal contact of not necessarily sexual nature. For instance, it is also a bond between a parent and a child. The film premiered on its home turf, at last year’s edition of Kolkata International Film Festival in the official international competition.

Plot-wise, it is a story about a daughter Shatarupa Biswas (Priyanka Ghosh Roy) looking for her long-lost father, the poet Michael Hemanta Biswas on the streets of the megapolis of Kolkata, finding his voice in the voice of film director (both characters are voiced by the filmmaker himself), which leads to a conflict between trust and doubt, attraction and rejection, underlined by another actress (Urbi Sengupta) playing the imaginary version of the same character. On the symbolic level, it is also connected with the Brahman mythology and the story of Lord Brahma, the universal father and creator, being attracted to his own daughter named Shatarupa (or Saraswati, according to other sources).

Bhattacharyya is not only an indie filmmaker covering most of the jobs in the film crew, but also a painter, a poet, a writer, a photographer and, as stated in his biography, a recitation artist. His themes gravitate around the dark corners of human soul and his imagery is usually surreal and all of that could be seen in The He Without Him which was filmed on a shoestring budget, with non-professional cast (including even the film’s producer Swastik Choudhury), with Bhattacharyya doing most of the work himself, from location scouting, props and costume design all the way to writing, directing, voice-acting, editing and handling the cinematography.

Sometimes full control results in a somewhat hermetic piece of cinema and that is certainly the case here. More to the point, Bhattacharyya himself gets kinda lost in handling all the things all the time, and falls for the easy solution of being frequently repetitive in the terms of narrative and also the style with, for instance, smooth transitions from full, vivid colour to black and white and back. The lasting impression would be that The He Without Him would be more effective in a more compact format, as a 20-30 minute short, which is also the format that suits Bhattacharyya best, since he holds a pack of awards for his fiction and poetic documentary short works.