FRED Film Radio - English Channel

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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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Brunna Laboissière, director of the documentary Fabiana.

An interview with Brunna Laboissière, director of the documentary Fabiana, which had its international premiere in the Bright Future strand of the 2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam. For this film, she went on the road with the title transgender woman, a stigma-defying seasoned truck driver, on one of her last journeys. In this interview, she talks about meeting Fabiana and the challenges that came with working with her along the way, and whether she was ever aware of what would happen next.

Fabiana: Fabiana is a seasoned trucker who has crisscrossed and conquered the roads of Brazil for 30 years. The fact that she is transgender doesn’t seem to make any difference for her nomadic life. In many places, she can hook up with a variety of women and is in her element among the guys on the road. Now she is approaching retirement, Fabiana realizes her life will change drastically. Her house, where she lives with her girlfriend when not on the road, will become her new world. During her last journeys, documentary maker Brunna Laboissière hitches a ride. Laboissière records the endless routes through changing landscapes, films intimate phone calls Fabiana has with friends and lovers, and functions as a confidante for the tawny, self-assured Fabiana. The truck’s cabin is her home, her route is paved with adventure. How do you deal with a changing life if you’re happy with the way things are?

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Paul Duane, director of the documentary While You Live, Shine.

An interview with Paul Duane, director of the documentary While You Live, Shine, from the 2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam. Here, Duane describes his film as being about “longing and finding something different than what you have”; in this case, it is about finding it through music and, specifically, it is about how American musicologist Chris King found it in his discovery of the music of Epirus in Northern Greece, one of the oldest forms of Western music. The film is an emotional journey, as Duane travels with King to find out more about this music and the culture that inspired it. In our chat, we talk about how Duane met King and how the Greek village reacted the making of the film, and more.

While You Live, Shine: This documentary takes us back to one of the oldest forms of Western music, using Chris King’s collection of 78 RPM LPs. King is an American music expert fascinated by early recordings of melancholy blues and folk from the start of the twentieth century. One of his favourites: the sad violin music of Greek Alexis Zoumbas, who emigrated to New York in 1910. It doesn’t get any better. “Everything recorded after 1949 is rubbish”, King opines. Duane’s title derives from the Seikilos song, the world’s oldest recorded piece of music, from Greece. The transcendental music carved into the stone remains alive in Epirus, where Greeks gather every summer to play, dance and sing. King travels there to experience the enchanting phenomenon that rekindles his love for this art form.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Anna Eborn, director of the documentary Transnistra.

An interview with director Anna Eborn, whose film Transnistra had its world premiere at the 2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam. For a year, Eborn followed and filmed a group of young people in their late teens, living in the tiny, unrecognized state of Transnistra, which split from Moldova in 1992 (although it is still officially recognized by the UN as part of Moldova). The director tells us about the contrast of old and new in her film, of being fascinated about hearing of the place during the making of the previous film and then once she saw it with her own eyes, and of “street casting” her protagonists, being particularly taken by the energy of one of them, Tanya. We also discuss the power of 16mm and how the technique of filming on 16mm, as she says, “just suits her.”

Transnistra: Dreamy documentary about the inner lives of underprivileged teens in Transnistria, an area that unilaterally declared independence from Moldova after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but remains unrecognised. Although ostensibly this declaration was occasioned by unity between the inhabitants, there is little evidence of this. Swedish director Anna Eborn reveals the uncertainty among youngsters. Should they stay or leave? Do they even have the money to do so? Transnistra focuses on the daily lives of six teens. Tanya plays the field with her male friends while she has a boyfriend abroad. She takes the boys into nature or to dilapidated tower blocks for brief trysts or to have good company. Combined with sensual music, Eborn’s intimate shots suggest this idyll is fleeting. Life is extra evanescent in a non-existent country.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Catherine Chagnon, producer of the film The Seven Last Words.

An interview with Catherine Chagnon, producer of The Seven Last Words, multidisciplinary film project based with seven different Canadian filmmakers interpreting Joseph Hayden’s oratorio The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross from 1787. The film was presented at the 2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam, where the film was accompanied by a live performance of the music by the Callino String Quartet. Changon tells us about the genesis of the project (she was approached by filmmaker, musician and composer, Kaveh Nabatian with the idea), the process in which the different filmmakers made their parts of the movies and how they were each given their themes and parts of the music to visually interpret, and more.

The Seven Last Words: As a filmmaker, musician and composer, Kaveh Nabatian doesn’t want to choose between music and film. He’d rather combine both disciplines as far as possible. For instance in this multidisciplinary project, for which he cooperated with six other Canadian filmmakers and the British Callino String Quartet. It’s based on the commissioned composition The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross (1787) by Joseph Haydn – a piece that is a special favourite around Easter and which grippingly expresses the state of the suffering Christ on the cross. Each of the directors in this omnibus film provides their own very personal view of the themes in Haydn’s piece: forgiveness, redemption, abandonment and reunion. Nabatian himself made the intriguing introduction and the concluding ‘earthquake’, which frame the seven short films. These films are very varied in genre and style: fiction, documentary, experimental, magic realist and sometimes also soberly filmed – intimate and personal.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Ena Sendijarevic, director of the film Take Me Somewhere Nice.

An interview with Ena Sendijarevic, director of Take Me Somewhere Nice, which had its world premiere at the 2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film follows Alma, a young girl who grew up in the Netherlands but goes back to her birth-country, Bosnia, to meet her ailing father perhaps for the last time. Through her relationship with her older cousin and a friend of his, the film also examines the themes of the cultures of the East and the West as well as male and female genders, but in this interview, the director shares with us her interesting takes on these topics. She also talks with us about the characters she designed, neither totally good nor bad, but also on the structure of her narrative, which sometimes takes unexpected road especially as the three protagonists embark on a road trip, and that as she tells us, hence reflects her view on life and its randomness.

Take Me Somewhere Nice: Can you simultaneously be two things or does that make you neither? Alma is in between everything: raised in the Netherlands by Bosnian parents, no longer a girl, but not really a woman yet. She hardly knows her father, but when he is admitted to a Bosnian hospital she decides to visit him one last time. This starts a journey with an unknown destination as Alma discovers herself and her country of origin. Cousin Emir unenthusiastically hosts her, but is too busy with shady deals to take her to the hospital in another town. His friend Denis, a complete layabout, gives Alma more attention. From casual relationships between these young adults to the bone-dry storytelling: everything about this refreshing road movie is reminiscent of the iconic Stranger Than Paradise. And not by accident. Ena Sendijarevic often refers to Jim Jarmusch as an example. Her feature film debut also elaborates on themes and stylistic elements that she explored in Reizigers in de nacht, Fernweh and Import: short films in which the characters seem out of place.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews José Celestino Campusano, director of the film Men of Hard Skin.

An interview with filmmaker José Celestino Campusano. Last year, the International Film Festival Rotterdam featured a whole retrospective of his work. This year, it featured his new film, Men of Hard Skin, in its Deep Focus strand. The film is set in the countryside and talks about the difficult sexuality within the rural context, particularly revolving around a young man’s sexual discoveries through a relationship with a pedophile priest. In this interview, he Campusano talks about his interest in sexuality, his familiarity with the countryside setting and also tells us a bit about the VR project that was also presented at this year’s IFFR, La Secta del Gatillo.

Men of Hard Skin: The power of this Argentine drama is shrouded in modesty. Through the prism of only two relationships, José Celestino Campusano sketches the difficult way sexuality is treated in different layers of Argentine society. Ariel is a good-looking farm boy who lives with his father and sister in a rural part of Buenos Aires province. He has become familiar with sex thanks to Omar, a priest with whom he has a secret affair. The film begins when Omar ends their relationship. Campusano, to whom IFFR dedicated a retrospective in 2018, sketches a complex but unsentimental and realistic picture of sex and abuse. He shows how the church tries to hide transgressions; how priests themselves have sometimes been the victims of this; how people regard prostitutes as a remedy for homosexuality. Despite everything, Ariel starts to trust his own body more, and trusts the patriarchal world around him less.

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