FRED Film Radio - English Channel

Michael Rowe – Director – Early Winter

FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews Michael Rowe, whose film EARLY WINTER had its world premiere in the Venice Days section of the 72nd Venice Film Festival.

Rowe talks to us about his search for genuineness in portraying the struggles of everyday life with realism. He talks about how his background in theatre helped him shape up as a filmmaker, and discusses the art of acting and the way in which his cast acted in EARLY WINTER, as well as his respect for the importance of silence in films.

EARLY WINTER: David, a man in his forties, lives a predictable life with his wife Maya and their two children. To please his wife with the latest gadgets, he works solitary shift work, days and nights, as a janitor in a retirement home. But when he begins to suspect that Maya is having an affair, he starts to lose ground, his past threatening to smash everything in his path. “At the end of the day, happiness and living well don’t have a whole lot to do with circumstances, but rather with knowing how to be happy and how to interact with the people around you. I think we often get trapped in these emotional cycles… These are issues I explore in Early Winter. […] As a scriptwriter and director, it’s so wonderful and enriching to build a narrative together with two people who have also been building and structuring characters for 20 years, and are experts at it. I don’t understand why more directors don’t work this way.”

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Liu Shumin – Director – Jia (The Family)

Fred talks to first feature filmmaker Liu Shumin, here in Venice, with his 4 hours and 40 minutes film JIA, chosen as pre-opening event for the International Critics Week.

Plot: Jia is a coup de foudre that lasts 4 hours and 40 minutes, and it’s the debut of a Chinese filmmaker of Australian citizenship, Liu Shumin. With autobiographical but fictionalized tones, Liu uses non professional but extremely expressive actors to recount a few days in the life of an old couple who live in a city of inland China. He follows movements and every-day rituals, relationship subtleties with their three children, their common worries and the threats of old age, through a long voyage that both undertake to visit their children. With them, we will discover a country in profound transformation, balanced between tradition and modernity.

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Sandino Saravia Vinay – Producer – Un Monstruo de Mil Cabezas

Fred meets with Sandino Saravia Vinay, producer of the films Un monstruo de mil cabezas and Neon Bull, here in Venice at New Horizons section.

UN MONSTRUO DE MIL CABEZAS: In his fourth film, Un Monstruo de mil cabezas (A Monster with a Thousand Heads), the filmmaker confirms his great talent as an author, in a film that tells the story, with a remarkably sober narrative style, of a sort of social parabola with the purpose of condemning the inefficiency, bureaucracy and corruption of a society that cares only about profit. In only 75 minutes, the victims of a common case of medical error become the negative heroes of a paradoxical news story, which turns into tragedy. He bends the conventions of the thriller genre to the urgency to condemn the thousand-headed monster that threatens the lives of ordinary citizens. Given the impossibility of defending one’s rights in any other way from the moral irresponsibility of those who wield the power of control, the individual has no other choice but to react in a distorted, self-defeating way. NEON BULL: Iremar works at the “Vaquejadas”, a rodeo in the North East of Brazil where two men on horseback try bring down a bull by grabbing its tail. It’s dusty and back-breaking work, but Iremar is a natural vaqueiro feeding, prepping and taking care of the bulls. Home is the truck used to transport the animals from show to show which he shares with his coworkers; Galega, an exotic dancer, truck driver and mother to her spirited and cheeky daughter Cacá, and Zé, his rotund compadre in the bull pen. Together they form a makeshift but close-knit family. But Brazil and the Northeast are changing and the region’s booming clothing industry has stirred new ambitions in Iremar. Swinging in his hammock in the back of the truck, his head is filled with dreams of pattern cutting, sequins and exquisite fabrics as he mentally assembles his latest sexy fashion designs…

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Riccardo Costantini – Coordinator of Cinemazero and Luca Giuliani – Curator of the restoration – The Merchant of Venice

FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews Riccardo Costantini. coordinator of Cinemazero and Luca Giuliani, curator of the restoration of THE MERCHANT OF VENICE by Orson Welles, which was presented at a very special event at the 72nd Venice Film Festival, in the Venice Classics section – the section dedicated to restored works and retrospectives. The year 2015 mark the 100th anniversary of Orson Welles’ death. The occasion has been celebrated in many ways at many festivals, but this is arguably the greatest treat any fan of cinema and Welles himself could hope for – the frequently cited as an unfinished film, though better described as a partially lost film due to the loss of film negatives, THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, and the fascinating, meticulous work that was done in order to bring this unseen masterpiece back to life. Riccardo and Luca tell us about this story, which in itself tells us about the importance of film restoration in the promotion of cinematic culture the world o ver, as this film’s future screenings in various parts of the world also stand to represent further.

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Piotr Chrzan – Filmmaker – Klezmer

FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews director Piotr Chrzan, who presented his first fiction feature film KLEMZER at the Venice Days (Giornate degli Autori) section of the 72nd Venice Film Festival.

He talks to us about the historical side of the film, and his own personal motivation with such delicate events that took place in Poland during World War Two in Poland. He also tells us about the contrast between the theatrical and cinematic in his feature, presented by the fact that despite the story being very much dialogue and character driven it takes place wholly outdoors in the distinctive forests of Poland.

On top of this Piotr also talks to us about the challenges he encountered in bringing his first feature to the big screen, and finished off by revealing that he indeed has a few ideas in his head that he would love to see materialize in the future.

KLEMZER: It is a sunny summer day in 1943. Poland is under German occupation. A group of young people, inhabitants of a nearby village, goes to the forest to gather fir cones and brushwood to use as firewood. They talk, flirt and make plans for the future. However this outing has an unexpected outcome: a certain event that is new to them will change their lives and the lives of other people who appear as the story develops.

“One day, I was playing with other children in the yard behind a big, old house in which we lived with a few other families. We were running around, when suddenly our nanny yelled: ‘Don’t go running there, it’s where they buried the Jew!’ We sat down next to her on the grass and she told us about the only Jew that lived in our village before the war. He was shot dead on a summer day during the war by another villager, a General Government Polish policeman. These strange facts, fascinating for a child, stuck in my mind. Years later, from these memories, coupled with what I had read about the Holocaust, Klezmer was born.”

TRANSLATION OF THE INTERVIEW BY: Marina Fabbri

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Aleksandra Zakrzewska – Producer – Klezmer 

FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews Aleksandra Zakrzewska, producer of the film KLEZMER by Piotr Chrzan, which was presented in the Venice Days (Giornate degli Autori) programme of the 72nd Venice Film Festival.

She tells us a little bit about the story of the film and the delicate historical topic it deals with. She also reveals what she thinks might be the reaction to the film, from both the international audience and a Polish one. Aleksandra also tells us about the challenges she was met with in making this film, and a little bit about her background – having made her feature film debut as a producer.

KLEZMER: It is a sunny summer day in 1943. Poland is under German occupation. A group of young people, inhabitants of a nearby village, goes to the forest to gather fir cones and brushwood to use as firewood. They talk, flirt and make plans for the future. However this outing has an unexpected outcome: a certain event that is new to them will change their lives and the lives of other people who appear as the story develops.

“One day, I was playing with other children in the yard behind a big, old house in which we lived with a few other families. We were running around, when suddenly our nanny yelled: ‘Don’t go running there, it’s where they buried the Jew!’ We sat down next to her on the grass and she told us about the only Jew that lived in our village before the war. He was shot dead on a summer day during the war by another villager, a General Government Polish policeman. These strange facts, fascinating for a child, stuck in my mind. Years later, from these memories, coupled with what I had read about the Holocaust, Klezmer was born.”

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Pascal Diot – director – Venice Film Market

With around of 1.200 accredited professionals and a couple af specific panel events on gap financing and third world film funding, the Venice Film Market in its foruth year of life shows to be the right place to start the professional year. the market director tell us more .

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Alexandria Bombach – director – Frame By Frame

Alexandria Bombach shares with FRED her amazing experience in Afghanistan while shooting Frame by Frame, a documentary about free press in a country where until not long ago taking a photo was a crime.

FRAME BY FRAME: Set in a modern Afghanistan, Frame By Frame follows four Afghan photojournalists as they navigate an emerging and dangerous media landscape. Through intimate interviews, powerful photojournalism, and never-before-seen archival footage shot in secret during the Taliban regime, the film connects audiences with four humans in the pursuit of the truth.

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Amin Palangi – director – Persian International Film Festival (Sydney, Australia)

Amin Palangi talks about a festival that brings together screen stories of diverse global Persian communities to celebrate their similarities, diversities and complexities through cinema.

The 4th Persian Film Festival is on from 03 to 06 September at Palace Norton Street Cinemas, showcasing the best of Iranian cinema and the Persian speaking world. Over four days the festival offers its viewers a great line-up of 22 films including features, documentaries, short films and animations, and Q&A sessions with filmmakers from Iran, USA and Australia.

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Gergana Doncheva – Film Critic – Film Stage Studio.

Gergana Doncheva from Bulgaria, one of the film critics who participated in the 2015 Talents Sarajevo platform, made a report for FRED Film Radio from Film Stage Studio – a cross-disciplinary training for a selected number of all participating talent professions by Gyula Gazdag and Mirjana Karanovic, which had its inaugural edition at the 21st Sarajevo Film Festival.

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