FRED Film Radio - English Channel

Andy Herzog / Matthias Guenter – director, actor / director, cinematographer – Winter Guest

FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews Andy Herzog and Matthias Guenter, who co-directed the film WINTER GUEST, which was presented in the 60th edition of the Cork Film Festival (Herzog also plays the leading role in the film, while Guenter was its cinematographer).

The blueprint of the story was drawn up in advance. However, a lot of it was also constructed on the go, making WINTER GUEST a road movie that was actually made on the road, and therefore includes many aspects and elements that were really captured while filming – such as the interaction between the disenchanted and lost character with some colourful characters he meets along the way.Herzog and Guenter also talk about the different artists and films that influenced them in making the film, as well as the challenges they themselves, in real life, encountered in making their first feature film – kind of like the leading character of the film itself, although to much greater success.

WINTER GUEST: In the six years since Stefan Keller released his celebrated short film he has been in a creative crisis. Although he already filled 2000 pages with notes for his first feature film, the rough draft is far from finished. Much to the disappointment of his girlfriend Christina, whose biological clock is ticking. Now in financial distress, Keller takes on a job as an anonymous tester of youth hostels. It’s the beginning of a mad odyssey: Keller desperately fights for his film idea, tries to save his relationship and encounters strange characters and ordinary folk, all searching for the meaning of life.

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Carolina Hellsgård – director – Wanja

FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews Carolina Hellsgard, director of the film WANJA, which screened at the 60th edition of the Cork Film Festival.

WANJA is the first feature by Hellsgaard, so she talks about how the transition from short to feature was. We also talk about her aims at achieving a type of minilalistic cinema that does not try to manipulate a viewer’s emotions through, for instance, fancy editing or music – Carolina also took over on the editing during post production.

We talk about her relationship with the cast, and the various influences that helped shape her feature, as well as her future project, which she is currently working on and her more general thoughts on female representation in cinema today.

WANJA: The former bank robber Wanja is released from a long prison sentence. As her feelings of loneliness escalate, Wanja sets out to find work and hereby a new identity. Against all odds she lands an internship at a horse race track. In the stable she gets to know the troubled teenager Emma, and a strong friendship develops between the two women. When Emma slips deeper into her own drug abuse, Wanja decides to rescue her.

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Daisy Asquith – director – After the Dance

FRED’s Matt Micucci meets director Daisy Asquith, whose documentary AFTER THE DANCE screened at the 60th Cork Film Festival.

A very personal documentary, Asquith talks to FRED about the challenges of making it and the opposition she encountered from members of the family who were reluctant of her exposing such a personal and obviously delicate part of their family history.

But we also talk about the significance of AFTER THE DANCE in view of its portrayal of the Irish society of the forties and fifties, and the effects it still has on Ireland to this day.

AFTER THE DANCE: In this funny and moving documentary, acclaimed film-maker Daisy Asquith tells the very personal story of her mother’s conception after a dance in the 1940s on the remote west coast of Ireland.

By exploring the repercussions of this act, Daisy and her mother embark on a fascinating and emotional adventure in social and sexual morality. Her grandmother, compelled to run away to have her baby in secret, handed the child over to ‘the nuns’. Daisy’s mum was eventually adopted by English Catholics from Stoke-on-Trent. Her grandmother returned to Ireland and told no-one. The father remained a mystery for another 60 years, until Daisy and her mum decided it was time to find out who he was.

Their attempts to find the truth make raw the fear and shame that Catholicism has wrought on the Irish psyche for centuries. It leads Daisy and her mum to connect with a brand new family living an extraordinarily different life.

After The Dance trailer from Oisin Lunny on Vimeo.

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Simon Pummell – director – Brand New-U

FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews Simon Pummell, director of the film BRAND NEW-U, which had its Irish premiere at the 60th edition of the Cork Film Festival.

Simon talks to us about where the inspiration for the story came from, and how he adapted its very real and current themes of identity crisis, dopplegangers and paranoia within the science fiction genre.

The film looks amazing, thanks to some excellent effects, and despite the fact that BRAND NEW-U did not benefit from the large scale budget of other similar works. We talk how the stunning visual work was achieved, but also how he managed to not let the film be overtaken by it, retaining lots of substance in a story that seeks open interaction with its viewers and aims to be immersive with its meticulous pace and intense atmosphere.

BRAND NEW-U: The organisation BRAND NEW-U identifies networks of Identicals – “people who walk like you, talk like you, but are walking through different, better lives” – and helps their customers make a life upgrade: eliminating the Better-Life donor, and relocating their client to that Brand New life. But errors can occur, and a Brand New life can cost more than expected.

Brand New-U follows Slater as he is forced to move through a series of parallel lives. He becomes more and more obsessed as he tries to find the lover he lost, but what he must find in the end is himself. BRAND NEW-U takes elements of science-fiction movies and thrillers, strips them down, and re-mixes them into a looping dream-logic to create a contemporary allegory of our search for identity and human connection in our rootless, media-saturated worlds.

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Katina Medina Mora – director – You Will Know What To Do With Me

FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews filmmaker Katina Medina Mora, whose film YOU WILL KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH ME had its World Premiere at the 60th Cork Film Festival.

Katina described working on this film as a cathartic process before the film screened at the Gate Cinema – and she tells us why that is, and the mahy personal aspects of the film that led to its development over the lengthy course of eight years.

She also talks about the different choices she made for the film, such as the narrative structure that sees the blooming love story between the leading characters from each of their individual viewpoints or the subtle and yet meaningful visual stylistic choices.

On top of that, we talk about how she cast and worked with the actors themselves, whose excellent performances and the fantastic chemistry they share between them contribute to the beauty and overall impact of the film.

YOU WILL KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH ME: Photographer Nicolás, epileptic since childhood, and is forced to take care of himself and sacrifice a lot, though he lives a normal life. On the other hand, Isabel is a woman who, apparently, has her whole life figured out although her mother is ill and she has no choice but to try to save her. Isabel and Nicolás fall in love in spite of themselves, their demons, their ghosts, and their weaknesses. Suddenly engaged in a relationship none of them would have even dared to imagine, they experience the love, passion, insecurity, fear, and allergy to commitment in this subtle and intelligent love story.

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Hagai Levi – director – The Accursed (Episode 1)

FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti meets Hagai Levi, in Rome at the 21st MedFilm Festival to present, as a Special Event, the pilot episode of the 5th episodes Mini-Series THE ACCURSED he completed in 2014.

After creating the well-known Tv Series IN TREATMENT , based on the Israel version BETIPUL which made him famous all around the world, Levi wrote along with co-creator Sarah Treem the Golden Globes winning series THE AFFAIR.

Despite the huge success of THE AFFAIR which is currently programmed by Showtime in USA, Hagai Levi decided it was time to go back to his roots and to Israel to work on The ACCURSED and on a long feature film he has been wanting to do for a long time.

At the MedFilm Festival Hagai Levi will be protagonist of a Master Class moderated by Andrea Fornasiero.

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Kevin Allen – director – Under Milk Wood

FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews director Kevin Allen, director of the film UNDER MILK WOOD, selected as the UK’s entry for best foreign language film at the 2015 Academy Awards. The film was also featured in the programme of the 60th Cork Film Festival.

With this film, Kevin Allen re-imagines the work of DYLAN THOMAS, commissioned by the BBC, and it is a suited production considering last year’s celebrations of his centenary. But is is also quite a dreamlike film that aims to, rather than re-imagine it, straigh on imagine it from scratch, with a distinctive style.

The director talks with us about how he got the film to come together and hoped to make it an interactive experience, which not only stands as a film itself, but a work with a life that will go on, not only with the DVD release of the film, but a vinyl and book to go with it.

Furthermore, we talk about how the cast, headed by RHYS IFENS and which includes CHARLOTTE CHURCH was composed, and how the overall production was meticulously constructed.

UNDER MILK WOOD: Rhys Ifans returns to his South Wales roots with this lusty cinematic remake of the celebrated radio ‘play for voices’ by legendary Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. This beautiful adaptation of Thomas’s iconic classic, stars Rhys Ifans and Charlotte Church.

Very different indeed to the 1972 version, brimming wih Richard Burton gravitas, Allen’s (often very) erotic, surreal cinematic approach explores some of the more visceral elements of the funny, magical dreamscape of Thomas’ seaside village Llareggub (buggerall backwards). The film is lush and enthralling, with the lyricism of the language matched by rich, dreamlike imagery

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Jonas Carpignano – director – Mediterranea

Jonas Carpignano is back on FRED to talk about his film MEDITERRANEA being presented in ROME as the opening film of the 21st edition of the MedFilm Festival and also introducing the LUX FILM DAYS in Rome as the first film to be screened among the three titles in the shortlist ( MUSTANG and THE LESSON).

It is just a coincidence that the title MEDITERRANEA matches with the Festival but it is a fact that the film well represent the festival’s mission of creating a dialogue between cultures. MEDITERRANEA manages to create empathy between the audience and this man whose story is portrayed and that is exactly what director Jonas Carpignano wanted to achieve. “we wanted to put a human face to a big story ” , this is what Carpignano says and did while shooting.

MEDITERRANEA: Ayiva recently left his home in Burkina Faso in search of a way to provide for his sister and his daughter. He takes advantage of his position in an illegal smuggling operation to get himself and his best friend Abas off of the continent. Ayiva adapts to life in Italy, but when tensions with the local community rise, things become increasingly dangerous. Determined to make his new situation work he attempts to weather the storm, but it has its costs.

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Tao Ruspoli – director – Monogamish

Is Monogamy natural for the human being? Tao Ruspoli, director of Monogamish, is rummaging through couples’ lives, affairs, poligamy, poliamory to find alternate ways of mating for life while living our sexuality to the fullest.

MONOGAMISH: Recovering from a heartbreaking divorce, independent filmmaker and son-of-an-Italian-Prince Tao Ruspoli takes to the road to talk to relatives, advice columnists, psychologists, historians, anthropologists, artists, philosophers, sex workers, sex therapists, and ordinary couples about love, sex & monogamy in our culture. What he discovers about his very unconventional family, and about the history and psychology of love and marriage leads him to question the ideal of monogamy, and the traditional family values that go with it.

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Eddie Tamir – festival director – Jewish International Film Festival

Festival director Eddie Tamir talks about JIFF 2015: a world-class film festival of 60 Australian premiere features, documentaries and TV series from Israel and around the globe. In his own words “The agony and the ecstasy of the Jewish experience condensed into a few weeks”.

Click here to visit the official website of the Jewish International Film Festival.

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