FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Abel Ferrara and Willem Dafoe, director and actor of the film Siberia.

After presenting Tommaso at the latest Cannes Film Festival, Abel Ferrara is in competition at the 70th Berlinale with Siberia, starring his muse actor Willem Dafoe. Siberia is not only the place where Clint ( Willem Dafoe) goes to live to hide away from a life he has to elaborate on and process but is also a place of the mind where past and present’s ghosts come to hunt you and memories come to mind taking sometimes a darker turn. For the audience and the protagonist’s story Siberia can also become a desert, a concentration camp or a green grass where to jump and dance surrounded by children and dogs. In Abel Ferrara’s Siberia a fish can talk and friends can become monsters. Willem Dafoe and Abel Ferrara describe their way of working together and how they connected the dots of Abel’s stream of filmmaking consciousness.

Siberia: A man flees from one world to another that is strange and cold. Furs and fires keep him warm; a cave serves as his shelter. He is a broken man who wants to be alone. But even isolation does not bring him inner peace. Once again, he goes on a journey, this time into the self. He explores his dreams, confronts memories and seeks out visions. The rare encounters with other people are in languages he does not speak, determined by bodies that fascinate him, and by types of love he explores and then loses. His journey becomes a dance with demons, but time and again it flares up: light. In cinema history there have been many attempts to portray the mythical as something intimate, and the radical as a personal journey. But there is only one artist who is as wildly anarchistic, metaphysically mysterious, and at the same time god-obsessed and fanatical about the truth: Abel Ferrara, joining forces here once again with his acting alter ego, Willem Dafoe. While his previous film Tommaso explored the way desire plays out in families, in Siberia the (male) ego abandons all semblance of everyday life in a tumultuous montage. To expose and discover himself.

To discover more about the film, click here.

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PODCAST| David Martos interviews Bill Nighy, actor of the film Minamata.

Bill Nighy, supporting actor in Minamata, a film included in Berlinale Special section of Berlinale 2020, talks to FRED Film Radio about this film, regarding the Minamata catastrophe in Japan. He also talks about his work with Johnny Depp and his vision on acting, directors and Brexit.

Minamata: War photographer W. Eugene Smith (Johnny Depp) travels back to Japan where he documents the devastating effect of mercury poisoning in coastal communities. Bill Nighy is the editor of LIFE Magazine, the outlet that sends him on his mission.

The post Bill Nighy – Minamata #Berlinale2020 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Akinola Davies Jr, filmmaker.

Akinola Davies Jr is one of the Talents of this year’s edition of Berlinale Talents. He shares with FRED’s listeners his background and experiences.

Akinola Davies Jr is multi-disciplined filmmaker and video artist. His work is situated between West Africa and the UK as he explores themes of community, race, spirituality, identity and gender, telling stories that bridge the gap between traditional and millennial communities.

To discover more about Akinola Davies Jr’s works, click here.

To find out more about Berlinale Talents activities, please click here.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Florian Weghorn, programme Manager of Berlinale Talents 2020.

The Berlinale Talents is about to start its 18th edition from February 22nd to 27th and is officially becoming an adult. 18 years are the ones defining the moment in which every person starts becoming a responsable member of society and this is why this year’s Talents’theme couldn’t be anything but “Collectives” as to highlight the importance of the team. Florian Weghorn, programme manager of the Talents since 2014, explains why it was about time to talk about working in a team and let our unique characteristics be an added value for the creative process. Through the years the Berlinale Talents has reached a Community of nearly 8,500 alumni and this year’s participants are 255, 126 women, 123 men and six that preferred to not state their gender: an amazing result, especially for the female participation in departments and categories that once were a man’s prerogative. Weghorn finally introduces the Talents Footprints – Mastercard Enablement Programme, enabled by co-partner Mastercard.

The Berlin International Film Festival’s talent development programme for 250 emerging filmmakers and series creators from all over the world.

To find out more about Berlinale Talents activities, please click here.

To discover more about this year’s edition of Berlinale, click here.

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PODCAST | Rouzbeh Rashidi, director, editor and cinematographer.

Rouzbeh Rashidi is one of the Talents of this year’s edition of Berlinale Talents. He shares with FRED’s listeners his background and experiences.

Rouzbeh Rashidi (born in Tehran, 1980) is an Iranian-Irish filmmaker. He has been making films since 2000, at which time he founded the Experimental Film Society in Tehran. He has always worked completely away from mainstream conceptions of filmmaking, striving to escape the stereotypes of conventional storytelling. Instead, he roots his cinematic style in a poetic interaction of image and sound. He generally eschews scriptwriting, seeing the process of making moving images as exploration rather than illustration. His work is deeply engaged with film history. Rashidi moved to Ireland in 2004 and currently lives and works in Dublin. 2020 is the twentieth anniversary of EFS, and they have plans for a series of exciting projects and events to run throughout the year. These will culminate in an ambitious retrospective and exhibition that will take place in one of Dublin’s most respected galleries.

To find out more about Rashidi’s activities, please visit here.

To discover more about this year’s edition of Berlinale, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Sebastián Lojo, director of the film Los Fantasmas.

An interview with Sebastián Lojo, director of Los Fantasmas, presented in the Bright Future strand of the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film is set in the lower classes of Guatemala City and explores, among other things, lack of communication. Lojo talks with us about this particular theme as well as how sex and violence serve as disruption within the narrative. He also talks about how the actors he cast helped shape the characters they portrayed and more.

Los Fantasmas: Handsome Koki earns a living in Guatemala City winning people’s confidence, after which their possessions go missing. By day he is a tourist guide, but at night he seduces men and takes them to Carlos’ hotel, where they are robbed. Koki and Carlos are two sides of the same coin; their fates are intertwined through their violent activities. One day, Koki is targeted by one of the men he stole from, leading Carlos to replace him with another good-looking young man. The shock of this sudden removal of his means of subsistence causes Koki to realise what his life was like, in an almost out-of-body experience.

To discover more about the festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Marion Hänsel, director of the film There Was a Little Ship.

Belgian filmmaker Marion Hänsel was the subject of a retrospective at the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam, within which she also presented her new work – an intimate feature documentary titled There Was a Little Ship (Il était un petit navire). Here, she tells her story of her life, revisiting memories from childhood to present day during a two-month stay hospital stay. In this interview, we ask the filmmaker whether it was difficult to revisit some of these moments, whether she considers herself a nostalgic person, the experience of working with archive footage along with footage she filmed herself, and more.

There Was a Little Ship (Il était un petit navire): A two-month hospital stay marks the start of a journey through the memories of a woman, the filmmaker. Invisibly providing voiceover, she returns to 1949, to the staircase she would take down to the water as a child in Marseille, where she was born. This leads her to Antwerp, England, New York, Paris and other places she visited as a child, teen or adult.

To discover more about the festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Maria Clara Escobar, director of the film Desterro.

An interview with filmmaker Maria Clara Escobar, whose latest film Desterro was selected for the Tiger Competition of the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam. Desterro also marks Escobar’s fiction feature directorial debut. In this interview, she shares her thoughts about some of the main themes dealt with in the movie, including communication and family. She also talks about some of the ways in which she worked with actors to get the right performances from them, how her background in documentary filmmaking influenced her work on this film and more.

Desterro: We follow the life of Brazilian couple Laura and Israël, who are in their mid-thirties and have a five-year-old son, Lucas. They live together, but seem to have lost interest in one another’s thoughts and cares. Their relationship seems headed for the rocks, and the only one who seems to still be looking for something from life is Lucas. Laura feels the warning signs of impending catastrophe. Then she disappears, and some time later Israël learns that Laura is dead, her body in Argentina. He doesn’t tell anyone – not even their son. As they were not married and have no savings, Israël faces the practical problems of bringing Laura’s body home. The last part of the film flashes back to Laura’s bus journey south and her encounters along the way with other (female) passengers, and particularly with a man who reminds her of her partner.

To discover more about the festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Jorge Thielen Armand, director of the film La Fortaleza.

An interview with Jorge Thielen Armand, director of La Fortaleza, presented in the Tiger Competition of the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film, in short, is the story of an alcoholic man who, while falling apart, travels to the Amazon jungle to rebuild a tourist camp and himself – but falls prey to various vices while there. The director reveals that this film was inspired by experiences and stories of his own father, who stars as a version of himself in the movie. He also talks about such themes as masculinity, present in the film, and his urge to talk about contemporary Venezuela, among other things.

La Fortaleza: Roque, who is old enough for a midlife crisis, has just wrecked his mother’s car. He blames the chaos in Venezuela, but his parents don’t share this view, and throw him out of their house. To battle his demons, and the drink, he travels into the southern jungle to renovate a cabin he built there in happier times. He meets old friends, now captivated by the gold rush. His desire for redemption conflates with an increasingly violent environment.

To discover more about the festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Jens Meurer, director of the film An Impossible Project.

An interview with Jens Meurer, director of An Impossible Project, presented in the Deep Focus strand of the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam. This documentary could be described as a love letter to all things analogue, which revolves around a man named Doc, who saved the last Polaroid factory. Meurer talks with us about how he met doc, whether he shares his same passion for analogue and why he decided to shoot this documentary on 35 mm. He also talks about one of the things he believes this film is truly about — the importance of preserving things before they fade away.

An Impossible Project: Dr. Florian ‘Doc’ Kaps had always been fascinated by analogue image and sound recording mediums, but it wasn’t until the very last Polaroid factory was threatened by demolition in the wake of the digital revolution that he swung into action, determined to save the famous instant photography device. However, this eccentric Austrian proved not to have much of a business brain. During the few years that this energetic documentary follows Doc, a shift in the zeitgeist occurs and other analogue lovers come to the fore. A small group swims powerfully against the tide, freeing themselves from the tech giants who hold us in their uncomfortable grasp.

To discover more about the festival, click here.

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