The injurious impact of the still on-going pandemic on the film festival in 2020 has been strikingly visible for events which have built part of their profile on grandeur of red-carpet ceremonies and glitz of star-studded events and parties. But equally hit hard were those film events such as Fantasia Film Festival which have been profoundly reliant on a legion of devoted spectators amassed across previous editions who joyously poured into the theatres to show their support for the festival. Facing restrictions enforced in the hope of curbing the spread of the invisible enemy, the organisers of Fantasia found it inevitable to plunge into the virtual world and ditch probably the biggest asset of the event, i.e. the collective reactions of a famously passionate and effusive audience. While it is much commendable of the festival people to keep the cinephilic flame alive in time of crisis, even in the desolate realm of virtual world wherein collectiveness just as anything else is stripped of its materiality, there’s no escape of this feeling that the programmed and streamed films constituted only a faded ghost of an event that could have been. In absence of physical events and considering that all virtual talks and events have been made available to public via internet, here I will conjure up flickers of this ghost of a festival simply by going over some standout titles.
As a genre-film oriented, it is heartwarming to find on the programme an increasing feminine presence – in terms of films, filmmakers or both- which considering typically broad selection of festival programmers can be reflective of a similar trend in the industry. In his newest film Alone, John Haymes -famed for his contribution to Universal Soldier franchise- starts with his female young protagonist finding herself in a breathtaking scene of tension on the road a la Spielberg’s Duel, before turning the film into an abduction tale which then continues into a suspenseful cat and mouse game between the young woman and his abductor. Playing by generic conventions, cliché situations naturally enter the film, but Haymes manages to add a fresh intensity to his material through details and his skilful handling of the scenes. This entails a well-though use of long take coupled with camera movements and staging in depth to inspire premonition (camera pans around and changes focus as the protagonist is on a phone conversation with her mother to show her deep disconcertion caused by cars in a distance) or suspense (the abductor’s conversation with his wife as witnessed by the girl in hiding and the contrast between the man’s composure and the girl’s escalating fear). Another interesting point about the film is how it addresses the commonplace communication technology of mobile phone to lend credibility to the situation and heightens the dramatic tensions without making the dramatic twists fully dependent on it (for instance at the climax the young woman manages reach out on the phone to the man’s wife to reveal to her his secret, but this doesn’t change the course of a physical square off). The film is visually punctuated with haunting images of the forest which could also emphasise the primeval tone of this journey of survival, which also put itself on display in the animalistic catharsis of the mud-daubed protagonists.
The feminine journey in Savage state (David Perrault) is a of a collective type. Borrowing landscapes and some other visual elements associated with Western, the film completely subverts this essentially male genre by gradually removing the men from the story and developing the story around a sisterhood which prevails. The film deals with the American civil war in a less conventional way through the lens of a French family living in the South who, who feeling threatened by soldiers of the Union army, hit the road and cross with intention of sailing back to France. The conflict between North and South mainly serves as a backdrop to a story of feminine emancipation, however the racial tension usually accompanying the civil war narratives is still present in an alternative form in relation between the mother and family’s manumitted live-in maid. The women of the film are all somehow feel bound and shackled by bourgeois traditions and mores. Even the heroine of the film, the youngest sister with her defiant character and already in rebellion, is still shown enchanted with the traditional idea of pursuing a romantic relation with a “charming prince” and needs a sobering experience to learn how untrustworthy appearances and her impetuous affections are. The director employs ample circular and almost balletic camera movements, accommodated by settings of aristocratic mansions and boundless desert, which often also stresses the bond between characters of the film. This graceful style is also made manifest in the operatic action of the climax, a veritable battle of sexes. Interestingly even female characters who are cast in a negative light find redemption in death or remorse and their negative aspects are shown to be stemming from jealousy over men, who are apparently not worth it. On the other hand the main male character of the film- the trickster who leads the family through hinterlands and becomes the subject of young girl’s infatuation- is from the start pictured as an opportunist and, despite a brief mawkish dalliance with the girl, proven to be unmistakably driven by the pure greed, who wouldn’t mind sparking a fatal rivalry between his older love interest and the young lady which expectedly ends in the former’s demise. He effectively becomes a subversion of loners of westerns. In this feministic saga, Perrault also stages a clash of cultures and uses the maid’s traditional beliefs as antithesis to Christianity, which is suggested to be the origin of restrictions the girls of the family have been enduring. The final battle scene visually translates the need to break free from this oppressing culture through narratively-motivated image of firing at a cross. In contrast, the maid’s culture is depicted as empowering. It is through voodoo practice by maid that the young girl succeeds in exacting her revenge. Savage state therefore follows the filmic trend of affording a liberating role to alternative systems of belief and the occult, while also seems to treat this magic practice as exemplifying the colonised people’s suppressed culture whose position needs to be rehabilitated.
Even if such tendency to show a positive image of magical ceremonies is perceived as a reaction against cultural hegemony, the attendant risk of overcorrection and falling into the pitfall of glorifying superstitions must not be ignored.
There was no shortage of older female protagonists in this year’s selection. In the short film F for Freaks (Sabine Ehrl), a cancer-ridden middle-age woman embodies a desire for survival, even if this comes at cost of others’ lives and freedom. Ehrl mixes sci-fi conventions and fairy tale characters to picture a post-apocalyptic-looking world in which humans hunt down elf-sized characters and use them for medical treatment. The film doesn’t give away much about its dystopian landscape or what is in store for the captured creatures. This evasive treatment, even if chiefly dictated by the limited running time, has definitely added to the mystery of the film and its impact.
A middle-aged woman and her bodily concerns are also at the centre of Marygoround (Daria Woszek) a mischievously charming paean to belated sexual awakening which meritoriously collected three Cheval Noir awards from the festival. The film is built around the experience of a woman who is on the threshold of menopause without having yet cherished the carnal pleasure. With tighter shots only sparsely used, the tastefully-composed images of the film render the loneliness and aloofness of the protagonist all the more readable. The omnipresence of religious icons in the protagonist’s residence points to the roots of this self-imposed inhibition. Even the main character is named Maria and she has a habit of collecting statues of the Virgin Mary, which eventually get smashed prior to her decision to end her celibacy. Such writ-large symbolism however doesn’t bother the spectator due to its light-hearted humour, though one restrained and enriched with a human and sympathetic treatment of the subject. The colourful opulence marking most of the images of the film indeed befits a film that celebrates caprice and joys of life. Here again, there’s an unfortunate episode involving a male intruder who feigns amorous feelings, but this eventually facilitates rather than forecloses overcoming the inhibitive impulses.
Morgana (Josie Hess and Isabel Peppard) similarly navigates the waters of libidinal self-discovery, but through a real person’s experience. This documentary deals with the Morgana Muses, an Australian woman who after an unsuccessful marriage expresses her revolt against conservative expectations from a divorced woman by making pornographic films. But in doing this she is chiefly motivated by exploring her own desires and feelings and her films demonstrate an approach a personal and intimate approach which the polar opposite of the conventional and maligned view of pornography. The film chronicles the experience of Morgana as a porn-filmmaker almost in a chronological fashion and in the process communicates her past through personal testimony and some metaphoric images including one showing her trapped and confined in a doll house. Later in the film this latter image is also evoked to refer to the extra-hurdle of her emotional problem and bipolar disorder. However, partly due to the adopted chronological order, not enough time is allotted to this supposedly significant and complicating aspect of Morgana’s life which pops up as a later revelation in the film. Although Morgana is shown shooting a particular scene as if to come to term with this psychological turbulence, it is not made clear how it informs her porn films in general. Even the external pressure caused by not fitting in a conservative milieu is conveyed verbally for the most part. These minor complains notwithstanding, Morgana is a praiseworthy and timely effort in showing an alternative and progressive vision of porn, often overshadowed by its widely denigrated image.
In her short documentary Modern Whore, the Canadian young filmmaker Nicole Bazuin exhibits a similarly positive attitude to the sex-related activities which have often been vilified and labelled as debasing. A different take on sex worker, the film makes itself distinguished first and foremost through a jaunty tone. The eye-candy lighting and joviality of the re-enacted scenes are leagues away from dismal shades in which sex workers are traditionally illustrated. The main gripe of the female escort of the film is not about selling sexual services, but being deprived of voice and reduced to a fantasy in forum discussions of her clients. Viewing herself not as a victim but an entertainer, she claims her role as an active participant even in a commodified scene and rebuts the image of sex market as one of one-sided gratification. Within its short running time, the film intrigues us to yearn for more and feels almost like a teaser for a larger project. Modern Whore, together with Morgana and Marygoround, represent a concerted and collective effort by female filmmakers to highlight significance of sexuality as a tool for woman’s interiority to express and realise itself. By giving voice to a sex-positive view of feminism, these films launch a counterattack and shield the world against the creeping invasion of prudish values which exploit movements such as MeToo and to come back with a vengeance and pose serious threat to sexual liberties under the pretence of defending women’s rights. Extra plaudits indubitably should go to Fantasia programmers for putting this trend in the spotlight through this year’s selection.
With Climate of Hunger the Oklahoma based- and apparently prolific- indie film director Mickey Reece offers an interesting approach to horror conventions in envisioning of a vampiric tale in a setting furthest from the blood-sucking creature’s generic habitat. The film mixes up vampirism with mental ailment and drug influence and turns into a hybrid entity with a tentative connection to the genre. It begins with a homely, almost dreary style with little appeal to the genre fans, but gradually shift gears and this transformation clearly shows itself in its visual style. The film follows the story of a cabin-bound woman with a history of psychological instability who hosts her unmarried and workaholic sister and a male childhood friend whose wife is committed to a mental institution. Although everything in the film is pointing at the main character’s unhinged status and substance abuse, we still remain uncertain about the nature of the vampiric visions as the director keeps the boundary between reality and illusion ambiguous and we are not sure when the film switches to the mentally-troubled woman’s point of view. With a contemporary North American countryside setting of the film making the old school appearance of vampire incongruous, the typical aristocratic air surrounding the vampire here has been sublimated into the male friend’s literally and eloquent manner of speech, narratively warranted on his writing profession. For its ingenious way to repurpose the figure of vampire within a non-generic context, using inexpensive effects and set and in an almost experimental spirit Climate of Hunger – in the manner of Abel Ferrara’s Addiction– can be viewed as a blue-print, tailored to low-budget filmmaking, for an alternative type of supernatural pictures.
In A Mermaid in Paris (Mathias Malzieu), the filmmaker pictures Paris through a familiar touristic lens and transforms the city into a place with magical potentials, where a visit by a mythical creature doesn’t drop jaws. In this rosy image, the movie follows in footsteps of films such as Amélie and totally abandons the realistic and bleak presentation common in arthouse cinema, save for a mild joke with the health care system. This escapism might raise some brows, but let’s not forget that making such films is significant for maintaining diversity of approach in European cinema, which often feels to be saturated with films focused on immigrants and other social problem. In this fantasised landscape, the director weds the mythology of sirens to a gender-reversed version of The Shape of Water. Despite the deadly features of the supernatural entity, it is the romantic aspect of the story which overweighs and so the suspense in the film is mild and never bereft of light-heartedness. Above anything else, the vibrantly coloured bathrooms hosting the bewitching creature, almost work to dispel all dark shades of her morbid charm. The film is brimming with nostalgically French delight, expectedly evoked by resorting to some of its well-worn icons. Nonetheless it still remains an enjoyable ride, not least due to serving as an invitation to explore new horizons of imagination rather than dwelling on the charms of the past (even though the film ironically feels to have adopted the opposite route!)
Tezuka’s Barbara (Macoto Tezka)- adapted from a manga written by the director’s legendary animator father -also has at its centre an enigmatic female character who adds a new spark to the male character’s way of life. The eponymous character, lowly-looking and giving an air of a society reject at first blush, is picked off from the street by a writer who seems to feels like a pen-pusher disenchanted with the writing milieu. Despite this ‘Pygmalion’-like premise, the girl refuses to be patronised and talked down to and forced to put aside her wild ways. Rather, it’s her who brings the writer under her own control and, despite initially being perceived as vulgar, and turns into a muse incarnate, one who reveals a hidden world to the writer. Once Barbara temporarily disappears, the writer, in his quest for her, finds himself at one point in almost the same helpless position in which he had met her for the first time. Just as the siren in Malzieu’s film, this mysterious muse is at once spellbinding and baleful. She protects the writer against luring beings, but herself puts him in peril by making him besotted with her. Unlike the magical siren, however, Barbara has to die so that the writer, after a futile necrophiliac attempt to revive her, transforms her into a literary creature of his own. With its jazzy soundtrack, the film has a mysterious quality to it just as the character it’s named after, and despite one or two episodes of magical transformations, for the most part its eschews overtly generic features in favour of an understated uncanny, leavened with a dollop of crucial eroticism.
After the dazzling success of Shinichiro Ueda with One cut of the dead I was most curious to see how he has kept on pace with his new film. Special Actors again explores the notion of acting and real behaviour becoming intermixed and inseparable, but this time around with no supernatural element involved. The film sees a young man, whose aspirations to become an actor is marred by his indisposition, joins a troupe of actors who are hired to perform in real-life situation and give their pre-scripted acting an illusion of reality. The troupe’s help is then enlisted to lift the lid off the schemes of leaders of a cult for taking possession of an inn belonging of a brainwashed follower. As the cult leaders are also shown as performing – in their own way- for their followers, we are in essence witnessing two teams of actors are pitted against each other. The parallel is further reinforced when the leader of the cult is shown as prone to easily losing his nerve and becoming the weak spot of the cult, just as the main character’s tendency to faint in excitement can endanger the troupes the plan. At one particular point the connection between reality and play-acting becomes totally confused, when we are about to believe that the troupe’s premeditated plan has gone awry and they have to react to the situation excitedly as their real selves. But then we realise the whole thing was scripted and the filmmaker had kept part of it from us for this surprise effect. The film makes this whole concept even further complicated in its ultimate twist, which bring the veracity of the entire affair into question. However by saving this twist for the last minutes, the final revelation of the film comes off as gimmicky and a show-off, not letting the spectator revisit and analyse the whole thing and probably discover contrivances or holes (in this regard, the director has taken a direction completely opposite to his previous film, which basically goes over what’s unfolded in its first third to show them in a different light). But even without this last twist, the film still very well functions as an entertainingly though-provoking piece which reminds the audience how playacting pervades and informs every sphere of their daily lives.
Of all selected films, I have been most excited to watch Nobuikho Obayashi’s Labyrinth of Cinema, made by the deceased Japanese master during the last phase of his losing battle with cancer, despite being aware of its conception by the director as a didactic project. Just as the late works of Akira Kurosawa- who has been expressly praised by Obayashi- Labyrinth of cinema is not shy about its pedagogic mission of being a warning to the new generation and reminding them about ugly realities of war and militarism, which the director’s country once went through. But in spite of this unmistakably preaching tone, the audacious style of the film prevents it from dominating the film and turning it into a dreary piece of elderly advice. In its experimental attitude to the style, Labyrinth of Cinema indeed doesn’t strike us as one being issued by an octogenarian filmmaker. The film is surprisingly unrestful in pace, not just in fast rhythm of its images- which sometimes is even further intensified by horizontally flipping the same image- but also in delivery of lines of dialogue and narration with almost no breather. In this respect, it clearly gives away a sense of pressure of time which might have been experienced by the death-bound auteur in delivering this audio-visual testament and cramming it with ideas. The film exhibits in its images the same pop culture-influenced sensibility for which Obayashi was well known, here present in ample use of composite images. However, overall and in steering clear of straightforward storytelling and a free-floating and sometimes digressive structure Labyrinth of Cinema shows more affinity with Obayashi’s earlier experimental films such as Emotion. Within a wafer-thin premise of an all-night screening of war films in an old-style movie theatre, Obayashi delivers his cautionary message through a love letter to cinema with a labyrinthine structure- hence the title- where times and characters perpetually shift and mutate. Cinema in the film works as a time machine which dissolves all boundaries between past and present and reality and illusion and in a dream-like state engages the audience for a literally immersive lesson in history. As the film wildly moves across the episodes of contemporary Japan history and goes back and forth between the movie theatre and the imgaes on its silver screen, the characters are also subject to constant change and repeatedly reincarnate under different identities in the projected fictional film. In this cinematic reflection on the disastrous path taken by Japan which culminated in the atomic explosion, Obayashi inevitably refers to various historical peoples, incidents and even trivia. This definitely creates a challenge for non-Japanese audience – who are not apparently the primary target of the film- to grasp all details and together with a 3-hour running time and a barrage of the volatile image and sound can potentially feel overwhelming. Obayashi also tipped his hat to Japanese cinema in particular by making visual or verbal reference to a few of its famous figures. This also involves a few scenes made as a pastiche of Japanese silent films, the majority of which has actually been lost in no small measure because of the war.
Acknowledging his inextricable bowing out, Obayashi shows the closure of the old movie theatre after this final show. In view of damages inflicted on the film industry- including festivals- by the current universal health crisis, this image can assume a saturnine and bitter tone for us who are forced to watch the film on our monitors rather than in one of the festival’s typically jampacked venue. Obayashi’s film is however anything but plaintive; it ends with a cheerful song that calls for disarmament and its optimism and hopes for future demonstrates itself in its forceful call for action and juvenile energy oozing out of its images. So let’s not take this closure literally and instead look at its finale in an optimistic light. After all many great films have helped us keep our hopes and dream afloat in times of adversity. The films shown at this virtual edition of Fantasia, in their variety of colours and tones and fresh interpretations of genres, tickled our imagination about cinematic pleasures we are going to experience again once this hiccup in our civilisation has passed and we are back the habit of experiencing films as a group, in celebration of both film art and our essential social life.
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