FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST| Nicolò Comotti interviews Soudade Kadaan, director of the film The Day I Lost my Shadow.

We have the chance to talk to Syrian director Soudade Kadaan about the making of her first feature film: The Day I Lost my Shadow. The Day I Lost my Shadow is here in Venezia 75 within Orizzonti’s official competition.

The Day I Lost my Shadow: Syria, 2012. During the coldest winter the country has witnessed, all Sana dreams of is cooking gas to prepare a meal for her son. She takes a day off from her job to search for a gas cylinder and suddenly finds herself stuck in the besieged area. It is then that she discovers that people lose their shadows during the war.

To discover more about the film, click here.

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PODCAST| Nicolò Comotti interviews Ron Mann and Cindy Hulej, director and protagonist of the film Carmine Street Guitars.

FRED has the pleasure to talk to Ron Mann and Cindy Hulej about their experience during the filming of Carmine Street Guitars. Mr. Mann’s Carmine Street Guitars has captured the life and the music within Rick Kelly’s custom guitar shop in Greenwich village, while keeping a keen eye on the future of Kelly’s inspirational work, embobdied by Ms. Hulej’s skillful and artistic craft.

Carmine Street Guitars: Once the centre of the New York bohemia, Greenwich Village is now home to upscale restaurants, and buzzer door clothing stores catering to the nouveau riche. But one shop in the heart of the Village remains resilient to the encroaching gentrification: Carmine Street Guitars. There, custom guitar maker Rick Kelly and his young apprentice Cindy Hulej, build handcrafted guitars out of salvaged wood from old hotels, bars, churches and other local buildings. Nothing looks or sounds quite like a Rick Kelly guitar, which is the reason they are embraced by the likes of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Jim Jarmusch, just to name a few. Featuring a cast of prominent musicians, the film captures five days in the life of Carmine Street Guitars while examining an all-too-quickly vanishing way of life.

To discover more about the film, click here.

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PODCAST| Nicolò Comotti interviews Andreas Goldstein and Jacobine Motz, director and co-writer of the film Adam & Evelyn.

Andreas Goldstein and Jacobine Motz talk to us about their experience together during the making of Adam & Evelyn, here in Venice for the International Critics Week.

Adam & Evelyn: Summer 1989, East Germany. Adam works as a tailor, Evelyn as a waitress. They are planning a vacation together when Evelyn finds out that Adam is cheating on her and decides to leave for the holiday on her own. She travels to Hungary, trailed by Adam. As the border with Austria falls, everything changes in Hungary. The frontiers are open, as the new possibilities for Adam and Evelyn to decide in which world – Eastern or Western – they want to build a happy life. Adam und Evelyn is based on the homonymous novel by Ingo Schulze, translated in more than ten languages.

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PODCAST| Nicolò Comotti interviews Anne Kanis, actress of the film Adam & Evelyn.

Anne Kanis joins us at our Venice studio booth to discuss about her research and performance on the latest film by Andreas Goldstein, Adam and Evelyn, in the official selection of the International Critics Week.

Adam & Evelyn: Summer 1989, East Germany. Adam works as a tailor, Evelyn as a waitress. They are planning a vacation together when Evelyn finds out that Adam is cheating on her and decides to leave for the holiday on her own. She travels to Hungary, trailed by Adam. As the border with Austria falls, everything changes in Hungary. The frontiers are open, as the new possibilities for Adam and Evelyn to decide in which world – Eastern or Western – they want to build a happy life. Adam und Evelyn is based on the homonymous novel by Ingo Schulze, translated in more than ten languages.

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PODCAST| Nicolò Comotti interviews Florian Teichtmeister, actor of the film Adam & Evelyn.

Florian Teichtmeister joins us at our Venice studio booth to discuss about his research and performance on the latest film by Andreas Goldstein, Adam & Evelyn, in the official selection of the International Critics Week.

Adam & Evelyn: Summer 1989, East Germany. Adam works as a tailor, Evelyn as a waitress. They are planning a vacation together when Evelyn finds out that Adam is cheating on her and decides to leave for the holiday on her own. She travels to Hungary, trailed by Adam. As the border with Austria falls, everything changes in Hungary. The frontiers are open, as the new possibilities for Adam and Evelyn to decide in which world – Eastern or Western – they want to build a happy life. Adam und Evelyn is based on the homonymous novel by Ingo Schulze, translated in more than ten languages.

The post Florian Teichtmeister – Adam & Evelyn #Venezia75 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Mila Turajlic, director of the film The Other Side of Everything.

Filmmaker Mila Turajlic’s latest film, The Other Side of Everything, is one of the 2018 finalist films of the LUX Prize and was screened at the Venice Film Festival where it was featured in the program of the Giornate degli Autori strand. Her documentary is at once intimate and universal. Turajlic tells us about some of the challenges and doubts she faced during filming, and other interesting aspects of its production, such as her desire to avoid interview formats in favour of conversation and the way in which the editing and post production impacted the final work. As a bonus, the filmmaker also shares with us her definition for the term “documentary” and leaves us with a thought on European cinema.

The Other Side of Everything: For Serbian filmmaker Mila Turajlic, a locked door in her mother’s apartment in Belgrade provides the gateway to both her remarkable family history and her country’s tumultuous political inheritance.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Wolfgang Fischer, director of the film Styx.

Wolfgang Fischer’s latest film, Styx, is one of the finalist films of the 2018 LUX Prize, and was screened at the 75th Venice International Film Festival, where it was featured in the program of the Giornate degli Autori strand. Fischer tells us the exciting and dangerous adventure of the story, a Herzog-like journey, with much of the film being shot on open water. In this interview, he also tells us about his formative years working as an assistant for Paul Morrissey and Nan Hoover, and spares a thought on European cinema.

Styx: Rike – 40, a doctor from Europe – embodies a typical Western model of happiness and success. She is educated, confident, determined and committed. We see Rike’s everyday life, as an emergency doctor, before she fulfils a long-held dream and sails out to sea alone in her sailing boat. Her goal: Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean. But her dream holiday is quickly broken off on the high seas, when, after a storm, she finds herself near a stricken fishing boat. Around a hundred people are about to drown. Rike follows maritime law and radios for help. As her request is going nowhere, she is forced to make a fatal decision.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Benedikt Erlingsson, director of the film Woman at War.

Benedikt Erlingsson’s latest work, Woman at War, is one of the finalist films of the 2018 LUX Prize and was screened at the Venice Film Festival within the program of the Giornate degli Autori strand. In this interview, the filmmaker discusses the influences of Fellini and other great filmmakers on his work, as well as the way in which his film work is informed by his background and involvement in traditional theatre as a performer and director, and what he can achieve in film that he cannot achieve in theatre. To end our chat, Erlingsson also comments on the current situation of European cinema.

Woman at War: Halla declares a one-woman-war on the local aluminium industry. She is prepared to risk everything to protect the pristine Icelandic Highlands she loves… Until an orphan unexpectedly enters her life.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Alexander Kluge, director of the film Happy Lamento.

Alexander Kluge, a director with a long and illustrious history at the Venice Film Festival, returns to the Lido with his new film, Happy Lamento, featuring the filmmaker Khavn De La Cruz. In this interview he reveals that as a filmmaker – one of the filmmakers who signed the famed Oberhausen Manifesto – he has never stopped experimenting with the art form and reveling in the opportunities that technological developments allow.

Happy Lamento: At heart, the film concerns electric light, the circus, the song Blue Moon, and street wars among children’s gangs in North Manila, a wilderness otherwise inaccessible to Western eyes. We see how the circus comes to town with the appearance of President Trump at the G-20 summit in Hamburg in 2017; we see how the street wars of the children in Manila run on for years; Helge Schneider appears as a “human light snake” as in Edison’s Annabelle: Serpentine Dance, from 1895; my friend, the dramatist Heiner Muller, philisophizes about the moon; we hear a musical requiem for commodities that lie unpurchased on a Saturday; we see the dramatic evacuation of a circus in Russia that tries to save its elephants in the early morning stands in contrast to a world that is increasingly savage; the poet Ann Cotten appears in the role of King Kong, the cinematic hero that defends what he loves to death. The images that one sees in this sequence are filmed through glass panels made by artist Kerstin Braetsch in New York.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Sameh Zoabi, director of the film Tel Aviv on Fire.

Filmmaker Sameh Zoabi premiered his new film Tel Aviv On Fire in the Orizzonti section of the 75th Venice Film Festival. The film revolves around the production of an imagined produced in Ramallah, and the misadventures of an intern-turned-writer on the show. Zoabi talks with us about the power of the soap operas especially within this social and political context – that of the Israel and Palestine conflict, as well as the sense of humor of the film and more.

Tel Aviv on Fire: Salam, a charming 30-year-old Palestinian living in Jerusalem, works as an intern on the popular Palestinian soap opera Tel Aviv on Fire, produced in Ramallah. Every day Salam must pass through an arduous Israeli checkpoint to reach the television studios. He meets the commander of the check point, Assi, whose wife is a huge fan of the show. In order to impress her, Assi gets involved in the writing of the show. Salam soon realises that Assi’s ideas could get him a promotion as a screenwriter. His creative career catches fire, until Assi and the show’s financial backers disagree on how the soap opera should end. Squeezed between an Army officer and the Arab backers, Salam can only solve his problems with a final master stroke.

To know more about the film, click here.

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