FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Katy Scoggin, director and cinematographer.

Katy Scoggin has been at Berlinale many times as a festival goer or as part of a film team. This year she is one of the Berlinale Talents and she is so thrilled to take part as a director for the first time. A big step for her!

Flood is her cinematic, decade-long search to understand her evangelical family. It begins with her failed attempt to thaw her relationship to her young-earth creationist father in a fiction short. When he charges that her film caricatures his beliefs, she turns her camera around on them. As divisive family drama takes over her script-writing, she finds herself slipping into her movie as a protagonist. But will her filmmaking teach her to love across her deepest divides?

To discover more about Flood, clik here.

The post Katy Scoggin – Berlinale Talents 2019 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Gonzalo Ladines, director and screenwriter.

Gonzalo Ladines is a Peruvian filmmaker who has been involved in 4 feature films as writer, director and / or producer.

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PODCAST | Guy Nemesh, director and editor.

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

The post Guy Nemesh – Berlinale Talents 2019 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Simone Smith, film editor.

Editor Simone Smith from Toronto, Canada, comes to Berlinale Talents for the Editing Studio. Find out more about Simone here.

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PODCAST | Christopher Makoto Yogi, director.

Christopher Makoto Yogi is a writer, director, and artist from Hawaii and living in NYC. His first feature film, August at Akiko’s, premiered at Rotterdam in 2018 and will be released theatrically in 2019. His second feature, I Was a Simple Man, is currently in development. His works can be seen at www.nahwave.com and at www.augustatakikos.com.

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PODCAST| Chiara Nicoletti interviews Florian Weghorn, programme manager of the Berlinale Talents.

The Berlinale Talents turns 17 and as for every teenager, it’s time to think about the future once the critical time of adolescence has passed. Florian Weghorn is back on FRED to talk about this year’s talent, taking place from February 9th to the 14th with its 250 up-and-coming film professionals from 77 countries. It’s not the first time that the number of women (141) overcomes the number of men and it’s a good sign that things will get better eventually in the whole gender quotes’ discussion surrounding festivals, film funds and awards. This year’s theme is “Mistakes” as the talents participating are navigating towards, through and beyond their errors, past and future failures to learn how to appreciate their mistakes and how to fail better in order to finally learn the filmmaking craft. A total of 20 renowned alumni are returning as guests, including the Golden Bear winner Adina Pintilie and the directors David Lowery, Guy Nattiv, Teona Strugar Mitevska, and many more. Among the “famous guests” meeting the talents: the recipient of this year’s Honorary Golden Bear, Charlotte Rampling, the Competition directors André Téchiné and Nadav Lapid and Roberto Saviano, whose novel was the basis of Claudio Giovannesi’s Competition entry La paranza dei bambini (Piranhas).

Berlinale Talents is an initiative of the Berlin International Film Festival, a business division of the Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin GmbH, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, in cooperation with Creative Europe MEDIA, a programme of the European Union, the Robert Bosch Stiftung and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. It was initiated in 2003. In addition to the extensive summit programme of master classes and panel discussions with top-notch experts, Berlinale Talents offers a range of Project Labs in which you can further develop and present your own project. Berlinale Talents also provides Studio programmes and workshops for specific groups of film professionals. As an initiative of the Berlin International Film Festival, the entire event is closely linked with the programmes of the festival sections and the European Film Market. While the roots of Berlinale Talents are firmly planted in Berlin new shoots of the initiative have been sprouting internationally. These Talents International editions, Talents Beirut in Lebanon, Talents Buenos Aires in Argentina, Talents Guadalajara in Mexico, Talents Durban in South Africa, Talents Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Talents Tokyo in Japan have the familiar structure and purpose of their German counterpart; all the while retaining a regional perspective and finding support and the necessary amenities in a locally based international film festival. Talents initiatives are supported by local partners as well as by the Goethe-Institut.

To know more about Berlinale Talents, click here.

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PODCAST | Michael Curtis Johnson, writer and director.

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

To discover more about his works, click here.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews filmmaker Edgar Pera.

An interview with Portuguese filmmaker Edgar Pera from the 2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam. The festival had a retrospective of his film work, describing it on their official website as “an overdue tribute to one of world cinema’s most unpredictable voices.” In our interview we talk about many aspects of his work, beginning with the first moment he remembers picking up a camera and how that experience shaped the vast creative output that followed it. He also mentions that when he works, sound (or “the unseen,” as he calls it) comes before the vision, and discusses the way in which his use of technology has evolved over the years, as well as the many tools he has used and uses to this day, including his interest in 3D filmmaking and VR. Reflecting on his retrospective – or “retro-future-spective,” as he calls it – Pera also considers how other re-evaluate his work and how he himself re-evaluates it. Besides the retrospective, he also describes the live cinema, cine-concert project he also did this year in Rotterdam, and we end by asking him in what ways, if any, an audience may also disappoint him. “I don’t think filmmakers today are better or worse,” he says. “I think spectators are worse.”

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Itay Tal, director of the film God of the Piano.

An interview with director Itay Tal, whose film God of the Piano has its world premiere in the Voices strand of the 2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film talks about a woman who programs her son to become the concert pianist she could, somehow, never become. In our chat, we discuss this theme but also the similarities Tal found between the world of classical music and the world of film. We also talk about the origins of creativity, whether it is generic or perhaps something else – something spiritual. Among the other topics discussed are his relationship with his actors, and we particularly focus on that with his lead actress Naama Preis, whose restrained performance counters, for example, the emotional Anna Magnani role in the similarly themes Luchino Visconti’s film, Bellissima.

God of the Piano: Concert pianist Anat’s waters break while she is playing. Devastatingly, her son proves deaf. The “Baby Mozart” CD her father gives her can go straight in the bin. However, Anat’s will to raise a piano genius who would befit her respected musical family only becomes stronger, and she takes drastic measures to make this happen. Composed as a moral parable with a touch of thriller, God of the Piano tells the story of a mother – played with great reserve by Naama Preis – whose obsessive behaviour and mile-high expectations threaten to crush her child, just as she was once crushed. While focusing on mother-son relations, the film also explores the uncertain nature of prodigy. Is talent inherited? Is there a secret tension or even an interplay between giftedness and averageness? And – most importantly – what price does a person, be it adult or child, pay for being labelled a genius?

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Frederikke Aspöck, director of the film Out of Tune.

An interview with director Frederikke Aspöck, whose third feature film Out of Tune had its world premiere at the 2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film is a black comedy set in a prison, and its plot revolves around a white-collar criminal and his problematic, power-thirsty relationship with a prison choir. In this interview, Aspöck talks about the timeless elements of her movie and the ways in which she attempts to defy representations of masculinity and make a film that itself is out of tune, different from other prison movies.

Out of Tune: Suspected of large-scale investment fraud, multimillionaire Markus Føns is remanded in custody. Self-assured as he is, he assumes that his connections with the underworld will come in handy in the remand centre, but quite the contrary turns out to be true. After being beaten up by a prison gang, he allows himself to be persuaded to go into voluntary solitary confinement in a special department that offers protection to the most despised prisoners: the father killers, abusers of women and rapists of children. The arrogance of the white-collar criminal contrasts starkly in this prison comedy with the social stigma confronting the other prisoners. Solidarity in the prison wing is typified by the choir they sing in every week. It’s not long before the newcomer joins the rehearsals, but taking part isn’t enough for the Machiavellian Markus. As an experienced manipulator, he starts, step-by-step, undermining the position of choir leader Niels.

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