FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Irina Trocan interviews Shevaun Mizrahi, director of the film Distant Constellations.

Director Shevaun Mizrahi talks to us about the enterprise of following her subjects – the inhabitants of a retirement home – throughout her documentary Distant Constellation, what is specifically Turkish on universal about her subject’s life stories and how the creative decisions behind it took shape.

Distant Constellations: several intertwined stories of a retirement home unfold before the camera, determining us to look into the past and connect to these strangers’ life stories.

For the official page of the film on the festival website, click here.

The post Shevaun Mizrahi – Distant Constellations #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Bénédicte Prot interviews Pascal Greggory and Paul Hamy, director of the film 9 Fingers.

Two actors from the fantastically noir ensemble cast of this B&W movie – which breathlessly moves from Melville (Jean-Pierre) to Melville (Hermann) and takes us to a ghost vessel floating in time, on his way to Nowhereland, with a loot of polonium and Zeitgeist-infused words, feverishly inhabited by the many film and literature references that have always nourrished the radical work of poet, filmmaker, and punk rock musician Ossang – describe their characters and quote their favourite lines in this ‘spoken’, beautifully shot piece of art, accompanied by powerfully visceral sound work and music in 9 Fingers.

9 Fingers opens like in a film noir: at night, in a train station, a man called Magloire runs from a police control. With no luggage and no future. No sooner has he found a huge amount of money than trouble begins. A gang on his heels will soon make him a hostage then an accomplice. It is Kurtz’s gang. After an aborted break-in, they all have to flee aboard a cargo ship with a dangerous volatile freight. Nothing happens as it was supposed to be – poison and madness contaminate everybody. Kurtz’s men seem to be the pawns of a conspiracy led by the mysterious 9 Fingers…

For the official page of the film on the festival website, click here.

The post Pascal Greggory, Paul Hamy – 9 Fingers #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Jim McKay, director of the film En el septimo dia – On the seventh day

FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti interviews Jim McKay who is at the 70th Locarno Festival in the international competition for the first time with En El Septimo Dia, his fifth feature film. The film focuses on a group of undocumented immigrants from Mexico whose everyday life is devoted to the hardest and tiring jobs available in Brooklyn, New York except for the 7th day, Sunday when they finally rest on the soccer fields. McKay comments on his choice of casting non-professional actors and how good they were in following his instructions and the script. Some of them want to pursue an acting career and we might meet them soon and welcome them on FRED.

For the official page of the film on the festival website, click here.

The post Jim McKay – En el septimo dia (On the seventh day) #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Irina Trocan interviews Ana Urushadze and Nata Murvanidze, director and actress of the film Scary Mother (Sashishi Deda).

Director Ana Urushadze and actress Nata Murvanidze discuss their first film collaboration and the director’s feature debut, Scary Mother. They reveal behind-the-scenes aspects of the shoot as well as how biography ties to the artistic process, for the character as well as for the film artists themselves.

Scary Mother (Sashishi Deda): a 50-year-old housewife, Manana, struggles with a dilemma: she has to choose between her family life and a love for writing she has repressed for years. When she finally decides to follow her passion, she is ready to sacrifice everything for it, mentally and physically.

For the official page of the film on the festival website, click here.

The post Ana Urushadze, Nata Murvanidze – Scary Mother (Sashishi Deda) #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Travis Wilkerson, director of the film Did you wonder who fired the Gun?

Defined by Sight & Sound Magazine the “political conscience of 21st century American independent cinema,”Travis Wilkerson goes back directing a documentary feature, this time with a very personal film Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? in which he goes through a journey trying to uncover the events of the October 1946 in his hometown in Alabama where his great grand father killed Bill Spann, a black man without ever serving prison for the crime. After Sundance Film Festival, Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? is in the International Competition at the Locarno Festival , the 70th edition and this participation marks Wilkerson’s second time at the Festival after Machine Gun or Typewriter in 2015. Wilkerson describes his journey and reveals how he still feel ashamed for his family’s past without feeling relieved at all after going through this visually intense documentary trip.

Did you wonder who fired the Gun?: Alabama, 1946. S.E. Branch, a Southern racist and director Travis Wilkerson’s great-grandfather, murdered Bill Spann, a black man. The murder has become hidden family lore and when Wilkerson sets out to unravel the mystery, he encounters obstacle upon obstacle, destroyed records and everyone refusing to talk. He’s accused of bringing shame upon the family, shaking up old trouble nobody wants. Soon enough, his life will be threatened too.

For the official page of the film on the festival website, click here.

The post Travis Wilkerson – Did you wonder who fired the Gun? #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Adrien Brody, actor who is at the 70th Locarno Festival to receive the Leopard Club Award.

Adrien Brody is the special guest of this year’s Locarno Festival. At the 70th edition of Switzerland’s most important cinematographic event of the summer, Brody receives the Leopard Club Award and participates in a conversation with artistic Director Carlo Chatrian with the press and selected audience. The Oscar Winner for Roman Polanski’s The Pianist talks about his life and career before and after this very important achievement and also comments on the vivacious kiss to Halle Berry during the ceremony. While recalling memories from the set of The Thin Red Line with Terrence Malick or Summer of Sam with Spike Lee, Adrien Brody describes his way of approaching a new character and how he totally becomes another person when acting in a film.

Leopard Club Award: in bestowing the Leopard Club Award on Adrien Brody, the 70th Locarno Festival will pay tribute to Academy Award-winning actor Adrien Brody, who will receive the 2017 Leopard Club Award. Brody gained a lasting place in the collective imagination of the movie-going public when he played composer Wladyslaw Szpilman in The Pianist (2002), and has since demonstrated his status as one of the most versatile of actors, appreciated by filmmakers in Hollywood and beyond. Born in New York City and son of Sylvia Plachy, an artist and acclaimed photographer, and Elliot Brody, a retired history professor, Brody’s career’s starts with his role in the American sitcom Annie McGuire (1988). It is only after the film Bullet (1996) with Tupac Shakur and Mickey Rourke that his way to the top begins. After Eric Ross’ Restaurant (1998), The Thin Red Line (1998) by Terrence Malick and Summer of Sam (1999) by Spike Lee it came to no surprise that Roman Polanski’s The Pianist brought him the Academy Award for Best Actor only at the age of 29. Brody’s interpretation of the pianist and composer Wladyslaw Szpilman strikes for its poetic, powerful and tragic nature, very common features among the roles he played. The actor has since contributed to the success of many films by well-known directors such as Wes Anderson, Peter Jackson or Woody Allen. Because of his multifaceted talent, the title actor doesn’t suit Brody, but finds a better definition in the word “artist”. His presence on the stage fascinates with roles like the ventriloquist Steven Schoichet in Dummy (2003), for which Adrien Brody learned the art of ventriloquism. In order to completely dive into the role of the pianist, the actor gave up all of his possessions and dedicated himself to learning Chopin’s pieces. Not only a director for films such as for the documentary Stone Barn Castel (2015) and being part of many short films, like most recent Come Together: A Fashion Picture in Motion (2016) by Wes Anderson, Brody is also a painter.

For the official page of the event on the festival website, click here.

The post Adrien Brody – Leopard Club Award #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Bénédicte Prot interviews Xu Bing and Matthieu Laclau, director and producer of the film Dragonfly Eyes (Qing Ting zhi yan).

Chinese artist Xu Bing tells us more about the technical aspects of his ambitious film project Dragonfly Eyes and describes how he was able to fabricate a narration based on silent footage selected from myriads of images (filmed in different locations – hotels lobbies, streets, theme park, virtual chatroom…- which only have in common that they are inhabited by Man). We discuss the relationship between data and reality, and the implications of the surveillance camera’s frame. Bing also tells us more about the writing of the humourous texts that accompany this very scary discourse on our society.

Dragonfly Eyes (Qing Ting zhi yan): each of us is captured on surveillance cameras, on average, 300 times a day. These all-seeing “eyes” observe Qing Ting too, a young woman, as she leaves the Buddhist temple where she has been training to become a nun. She returns to the secular world, where she takes a job in a highly mechanized dairy farm. There, Ke Fan, a technician, falls in love with her, breaks the law in an attempt to please her and is sent to jail. On his release, he can’t find Qing Ting and looks for her desperately until he figures out that she has reinvented herself as the online celebrity Xiao Xiao. Ke Fan decides to revamp himself. Chinese artist Xu Bing, known for his installations made of cast or carved letters conveying how easily texts can be manipulated, or made to look deceptively intelligible, ventures into cinema and delivers a remarkable film evading all categorization (even though it is based on the premise that the whole world is incessantly being mapped and analysed and sorted into identifiable subjects and items and phenomena). His ability to create an apparently consistent love-story – emphasis on apparently – from thousands and thousands of surveillance camera footage, by playfully superimposing sounds and dialogues to the silent images, is an essential reminder – especially in the contemporary world, where the overflow of information is paralleled by the supremacy of mainstream ideological conformism – that even in “reality”, there is no such thing as “The Truth”, only interpretations/narratives. Working from data so incessantly and invasively collected, so randomly recorded or on the contrary deleted, data where the individual can only drown at the same time he is always being watched, and so precise that it is reconstitutes a story dangerously similar to reality which actually deeply betrays it, Xu Bing explores the limitations of the fixed, “arbitrary” frame offered by these many eyes staring at us every day, cameras which, by definition, are always on to film what is in front of their cold and square stare whether something is happening or not, in a culture where virtual dangers and catastrophes are sometimes perceived as just as real, and where human connections lose ground to be replaced by fallacies.

For the official page of the film on the festival website, click here.

The post Xu Bing, Matthieu Laclau – Dragonfly Eyes (Qing Ting zhi yan) #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Francisco Noronha interviews Valérie Massadian, director of the film Milla.

Valérie Massadian is a french director who is at the Locarno Festival for the second time, after being here with Nana, which shares with Milla the look on children and their free and wild way of trying to survive in the world.

Milla 17, and Leo not much more, run away to a small town by the English Channel. A love to live, a life to invent. A life to hold on to, always, no matter what.

For the official page of the film on the festival website, click here.

The post Valérie Massadian – Milla #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Jaime Grijalba G. interviews Felipe Hirsch, director of the film Severina.

Felipe Hirsch is a Brazillian filmmaker and play director whose second film, Severina, plays at the Concorso Cineasta del Presente. In this interview he speaks about the plot of the film, the influence of Latin American literature in his work and on the original novel in which this film is based, the importance of working with cast & crew from the rest of Latin America, and about his future projects, both in film and theater.

Severina: a melancholic, aspiring writer and bookseller is shaken by the appearances and disappearances of his newfound muse who steals books from his bookstore. When he discovers that she also steals from other bookstores, he is consumed with jealousy and starts living in a kind of love delirium, on the border between fiction and reality. The closer he gets to her, the more indescribable she becomes and he begins to wonder why she steals, what are her values and who is the older man she lives with. At the end, what is real and what isn’t? And will he find a place in her life as he moves away from his own?

For the official page of the film on the festival website, click here.

The post Felipe Hirsch – Severina #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Leonardo Goi interviews Andrea Magnani, director of the film Easy.

Italian director Andrea Magnani sat with Fred Film Radio to discuss his debut feature, Easy, a delicate, bittersweet road-trip competing in the Locarno Festival’s Cineasti del Presente Section. Tune in to hear Magnani speak about Ukraine’s breath-taking landscapes, his passion for Westerns, and how he crafted such a memorable character.

Easy: Isidoro, known by everyone as Easy, is lonely and depressed. His career as a young go-kart driver was interrupted when he began to gain so much weight he was not able to get into the seat any more. So he went back to live with his mother, and now passes his days in front of the TV, eating diet food. One day, his brother Filo – brilliant and successful – turns up with a job offer for him. It is a simple job, just so he can get out of the house and finally be behind the steering-wheel again: he has to take a coffin from Italy to a small village in the Carpathians, in Ukraine. But this journey to an unknown land can turn out to be much more complicated than planned…

For the official page of the film on the festival website, click here.

The post Andrea Magnani – Easy #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.