(This is a translation of a post from last week, thanks to Jeannette Pope.)
The RIDM was at its peak yesterday.
I saw ‘The War on Democracy’ by John Pilger who was here for the occasion. Not my type of cinema – the moments of spontaneity are rare – but it has a very good analysis of the American intervention and progressive forces in Latin America. The passionate crowd at Concordia University received Pilger like a hero. (A screening jointly organized along with Cinema Politica.)
John Pilger, Photo: Simon Bujold
CARLOS FERRAND’S COUP DE COEUR: ‘DESCRIPTION OF A MEMORY’
Last week I asked the programmers of RIDM to give us their ‘coup de Coeur.’ This week it is the turn of my filmmaker friends.
The RIDM dedicated a page to Carlos Ferrand. The festival has presented three of his shorts as well as his new feature-length film – Americano – produced by Les films du tricycle.
Carlos is a visionary filmmaker full of contradiction and ambiguity and with one hell of a writing style!
Here is his ‘coup de Coeur’, a film that will be screened later this week in which an Israeli filmmaker reappropriates the material in a film by Chris Marker to construct his own vision of things.
Carlos Ferrand below, the Papa.
‘Description of a Memory’ the film by Dan Geva stays in the head and spirit like the good proverbial wine in the mouth. In contrast to the current fashion which puts simplicity and other synonyms of easiness into form the core; here is an ambitiously, complex, difficultly rich and over demanding piece of work.
Like the memory that Dan Geva tries to catch, the film has numerous facets. The surprising element is that the form and content are in harmony. What is absent in the work is that tyranny of content – which is so often present in documentaries – where the form lies flat in front of ‘Master Reality!’
No, not here – the viewer has to work almost harder than the filmmaker. Dan Geva nags into our brains, obliging us to constantly reconstruct his meanings and marry them with the images and decipher the signs in Chris Marker’s film and his own.
It is like a hunt of meaning with the film, filmed with a terrifying angular objective which seems to swallow the world.
Enough is not enough and the aggressivity of the images makes one think of the battle between the Mongoose and the snake. A fight till the death against all stupidity and age-old ideas!
Dan Geva has balls. Dan and his wide-angle lens stands up against Chris Marker, the sacred monster of independent cinema in a sort of game, but also with generosity which proves that he himself is worthy of being a monster and that we should bless him.
Dan the mongoose crunches his head – a sort of bitter taste – like most of the best tonics – to to be savored raw!”
