FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | David Martos interviews Chris Lewis, son of myth Jerry Lewis, about the film The Day the Clown Cried.

Chris Lewis, son of actor and comedian Jerry Lewis, visits Berlinale 2020 because he’s preparing a donation for the Deutsche Kinemathek: all the materials kept by his father from the shooting of The day the clown cried, a film lost in time.

The Day the Clown Cried is an unreleased 1972 Swedish-French drama film directed by and starring Jerry Lewis. It is based on an original screenplay by Joan O’Brien and Charles Denton, from a story idea by Joan O’Brien, with additional material from Jerry Lewis. The film was met with controversy regarding its premise and content, which features a circus clown who is imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp.

To discover more about the 70th edition of Berlin International Film Festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Helen Mirren, actress and Oscar-winner awarded with the Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement.

The 70th Berlinale honours Oscar-winner Dame Helen Mirren with the Honorary Golden Bear for her lifetime achievement. The British actress has been collecting awards after awards and is one of the most international artists the audiovisual world can count on. When receiving a career award, every actor is forced to look back at their career and Helen Mirren makes no exception. She is particularly proud to receive an honorary award from Berlinale as its festival audience has always been a very demanding one and that makes the prize even worthier as it is not given lightly. Among the transformative moments Dame Helen Mirren can recall are two very important, the first is when she saw a Shakespeare play for the first time and the second, was her watching L’avventura by Michelangelo Antonioni. Those two moments defined her choice of wanting to be part of that world, the acting world, hoping to have the chance in her future to hold a script in her hands preparing for a part. Luckily enough, Helen Mirren’s dreams came true and audiences around the world have been gifted with her outstanding performances in films, theatre plays, tv series.

The 70th Berlin International Film Festival will honour Oscar-winner Dame Helen Mirren with its Homage and award her the Honorary Golden Bear for her lifetime achievement. The award ceremony on Thursday, February 27, 2020 at the Berlinale Palast will include a screening of The Queen (2006, dir: Stephen Frears).

Not only is Helen Mirren one of the world’s most renowned actresses, she was also one of the youngest ever to join the famed Royal Shakespeare Company. Over the decades, her charisma, expressiveness, and range as an actress have been amply demonstrated in a wide variety of genres.

Among the many accolades Mirren has received, she won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Actress and Golden Globe for her performance in The Queen. In addition to many international film prizes, her stage work has also been honored with the leading theatre tributes – the Olivier Award, Tony and Drama Desk Awards. In 2003, Helen Mirren was awarded the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for her services to drama.

Helen Mirren has a unique acting style that allows her to feel at home in both British and American cinema, making it possible to work with auteur filmmakers, who have clearly defined styles such as Robert Altman or Paul Schrader, and acting in big US action films like RED and the Fast and Furious franchise.

After working mainly in theatre, including with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Mirren’s first major film role was in Michael Powell’s 1969 comedy Age of Consent. She subsequently made her mark in 1980’s The Long Good Friday (dir: John Mackenzie), playing the assertive girlfriend of a top gangster. Her portrayal of Georgina in Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) was also legendary. Beginning in the 1990s, Helen Mirren increasingly expanded and diversified her roles in both film and television, among them Robert Altman’s 2001 Gosford Park (Berlinale 2002). Her flair for comedy was once again in evidence with Calendar Girls (2003, dir: Nigel Cole). Between 1991 and 2006, she headed up the seven instalments of the TV series Prime Suspect as police superintendent Jane Tennison. In The Last Station (2009), directed by Michael Hoffmann, she played Leo Tolstoy’s wife Sofya. She was at the Berlinale in 2015, alongside co-star Ryan Reynolds, with Woman in Gold (dir: Simon Curtis). Since then, she has appeared onscreen in Eye in the Sky (2015, dir: Gavin Hood) and The Leisure Seeker (2017, dir: Paolo Virzì) among others.

Mirren gives another terrific performance in the thriller The Good Liar (dir: Bill Condon), co-starring with Ian McKellen, which recently opened theatrically in Germany and will also be shown in the Homage section.

Click here if you are interested in Homage and Honorary Golden Bear 2020 for Dame Helen Mirren.

To discover more about the 70th edition of Berlin International Film Festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Nicolò Comotti interviews Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, DOP of the film Last and First Men.

FRED Film Radio has the chance to talk to the talented cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, here at the Berlinale for his work with the late Johann Johansson and his Last and First Men. Last and First Men is a hypnotic total work of art, a requiem for the universe containing echoes of Kubrick, Tarr and the avant-garde that turns cinema into a pure synthesis of sounds and images; a place of the impossible, where the deepest past meets the most distant future.

Last and First Men:  There are no people in Last and First Men, but the film does feature three very special protagonists: the concrete testimonies of Yugoslavian brutalism, Tilda Swinton’s voice and the music of Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, who composed the soundtracks for Sicario and Arrival and who died in 2018 at the age of 48. Jóhannsson made several Super 8 and 16mm shorts and often used visual elements when performing his musical works. The idea for his first feature-length film came to him in 2010 when he saw Dutch photographer Jan Kempenaers’ images of the colossal monuments of the Tito era. Jóhannsson, an avid reader of science fiction, accompanies his 16mm black-and-white footage with excerpts from British author and philosopher Olaf Stapledon’s eponymous visionary 1930 novel, read ethereally by Tilda Swinton.

To discover more about the film, click here.

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PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Eric Steel, actor of the film Minyan.

Eric Steel crafted a moving and precise tale, with a perfect description of an era , through an astonishing color palette and camera pov . The plot is moving and educational, bringing us back, in a softer and more intimate tone, to an updated Scorsese’s Taxi Driver atmosphere. Eric talks about the film and its production with Angelo Acerbi, at the world premiere in Berlin.

Minyan: For a Jewish prayer community or “minyan” to be able to hold a service, it must consist of at least ten practising Jews. David, who was born into a Russian immigrant family, is 17 years old and regularly helps out at minyans in Brighton Beach, a district of New York that is characterised by Jewish life. His father, a former boxing coach, his mother and his beloved grandfather all take this for granted. But David, who is just starting to tentatively explore life in the East Village gay scene, gradually begins to question the strict rules of his community and makes friends with two elderly gay Jews. At the same time, David’s sexual awakening cannot help but be affected by the emergence of HIV and AIDS. Director Eric Steel sets his sensitive portrait of a gay Jewish youth in the as yet un-gentrified, roughshod New York of the 1980s. In his feature-film debut, he depicts unobtrusively and with quiet humour how one young man squares social attributions – immigrant, Jew, homosexual – with his own feelings and learns to define them anew.

To discover more about the film, click here.

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PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Samuel H. Levine, actor of the film Minyan.

Samuel H. levine is a nice, funny and handoms actor who shares with Angelo Acerbi, in Berlin, his thoughts about his role in Minyan, where he plays a young jewish russian gay guy coming to terms with his own sexuality and proudly balancing the rules and teachings his upbringing brought him with his personal life, in a almost neo-realistic New York of the late 80’s. His talk shows his passion for this film and his role in it.

Minyan: For a Jewish prayer community or “minyan” to be able to hold a service, it must consist of at least ten practising Jews. David, who was born into a Russian immigrant family, is 17 years old and regularly helps out at minyans in Brighton Beach, a district of New York that is characterised by Jewish life. His father, a former boxing coach, his mother and his beloved grandfather all take this for granted. But David, who is just starting to tentatively explore life in the East Village gay scene, gradually begins to question the strict rules of his community and makes friends with two elderly gay Jews. At the same time, David’s sexual awakening cannot help but be affected by the emergence of HIV and AIDS. Director Eric Steel sets his sensitive portrait of a gay Jewish youth in the as yet un-gentrified, roughshod New York of the 1980s. In his feature-film debut, he depicts unobtrusively and with quiet humour how one young man squares social attributions – immigrant, Jew, homosexual – with his own feelings and learns to define them anew.

To discover more about the film, click here.

The post Samuel H. Levine – Minyan #Berlinale2020 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Tim Sutton, director of the film Funny Face.

Tim Sutton explains what he had in mind while creating the film, writing it visualising a specific look, and aesthetics, to give us the unfamiliarity of a city where the two heroes live in solitude . Stunningly beautiful, demanding and fascinating, Funny Face is a film to remember.

Funny Face: What does romance look like in times of housing insecurity and shocking, widening wealth gaps? In a Brooklyn threatened by disfigurement as a result of real estate speculation, two young people meet in a late-night bodega. Saul and Zama are two orphans of unchecked capitalism brought together by circumstance, who thrive in spite of their differences and bring each other solace. Meanwhile, up in his ivory tower, the rich man responsible for their predicament struggles to find reasons to smile. This film takes a central, complex social issue – urban development and gentrification – and turns it into a universal metaphor for survival in times of displacement. Director Tim Sutton delicately explores how, in today’s “real” world, being a superhero means being able to recognise beauty and how, if it is truly impossible to defeat the oppressive greed of the powerful, we can at least help each other to survive it. In this way Funny Face is, without doubt, a very modern romantic tale.

To discover more about the film, click here.

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PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Cosmo Jarvis and Dela Meskienyar, actors of the film Funny Face.

Through this chat with the lead actors of Funny Face, we get the real and deeper meaning of the film and the effects of the creative process the director applied in shooting the film. Two nice people, passionate and committed, Cosmo Jarvis and Dela Meskienyar discuss with Angelo Acerbi their performances in Funny Face, at Berlinale 70.

Funny Face: What does romance look like in times of housing insecurity and shocking, widening wealth gaps? In a Brooklyn threatened by disfigurement as a result of real estate speculation, two young people meet in a late-night bodega. Saul and Zama are two orphans of unchecked capitalism brought together by circumstance, who thrive in spite of their differences and bring each other solace. Meanwhile, up in his ivory tower, the rich man responsible for their predicament struggles to find reasons to smile. This film takes a central, complex social issue – urban development and gentrification – and turns it into a universal metaphor for survival in times of displacement. Director Tim Sutton delicately explores how, in today’s “real” world, being a superhero means being able to recognise beauty and how, if it is truly impossible to defeat the oppressive greed of the powerful, we can at least help each other to survive it. In this way Funny Face is, without doubt, a very modern romantic tale.

To discover more about the film, click here.

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PODCAST | Nicolò Comotti interviews Stephen Maxwell Johnson, director of the film High Ground.

Stephen Maxwell Johnson talks to us about his highly anticipated return behind the camera: High Ground. High ground is a revenge thriller that uses the tropes of Western westerns to tell the real history of Colonial Australia and its barbaric intervention in order to tame and ultimately eradicate aboriginal culture. High Ground premiers worldwide here in Berlin, inside the Berlinale Special Gala section.

High Ground: After fighting in the First World War as a sniper, Travis, now a policeman in the vast empty spaces of Northern Australia, loses control of an operation that results in the massacre of an Indigenous tribe. When his superiors insist on burying the truth, Travis leaves in disgust, only to be forced back twelve years later to hunt down Baywara, an Aboriginal warrior whose attacks on new settlers are causing havoc. When Travis, now a bounty hunter, recruits as his tracker the young mission-raised Gutjuk, the only known survivor of the carnage, memories threaten to resurface and turn the white man from hunter into the hunted. Set in the 1930s, High Ground is inspired by true events. A frontier western about colonial violence and misunderstandings that deeply resonates in today’s Australia – and indeed all over the world – the film explores the nature of loyalty and the ability to distinguish freely between right and wrong, in opposition to the dogmas of the age in which you live.

To discover more about the film, click here.

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PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Micheal Stutz, Head of Panorama at the 70th edition of Berlin International Film Festival.

Michael Stutz started as an intern in Panorama, then assistant of the historical director Wieland Speck; now he is in charge and he has perfectly clear in his mind the legacy he has to bring forward and the future that awaits Panorama. Let’s hear it form his voice…

To discover more about the 70th edition of Berlin International Film Festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Bassam Tariq and Riz Ahmed, director and actor of the film Mogul Mowgli.

A very few people know that Riz Ahmed, british pakistani actor, known for TV series such as The night of and films like Venom or Nightcrawler, is also a rapper and musician. In Mogul Mowgli, debut feature by Bassam Tariq screening in competition at the 70th Berlinale, he finally combines these two worlds. Bassam Tariq and Riz Ahmed found each other in the eaxct moment when both of them wanted to explore the clash or the diffcult balance between keeping family traditions, culture, links and wanting a different life, a different and/or ambitious future. Mogul Mowgli depicts this contrast in a very balanced mix between a brutal reality and dreamlike moments.

Mogul Mowgli:  On the brink of his first international tour, Zed, a British Pakistani rapper, decides to fly home to the UK to visit the family he has not seen in two years. In the midst of trying to reconnect with his parents and rummaging through cassettes of Qawwali music, he is suddenly struck down by an autoimmune disease. As his condition worsens and his big breakthrough moment is in danger of vanishing into thin air, Zed descends into a physical and emotional crisis, amplified by vivid hallucinations. Long-buried childhood memories resurface with a vengeance, mingling with his father’s memories of fleeing India during Partition and confronting Zed with his repressed cultural heritage. Giving centre stage to incendiary rap lyrics and a striking central performance by actor Riz Ahmed, a rapper himself, Tariq’s debut feature film is a disquieting and electrifying exploration of male malady, family frictions, social mobility and transnational citizenship.

To discover more about the film, click here.

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