CLAUDE BARRAS
Wang Bing Speaks about the Second Part of the YOUTH Trilogy
Béatrice Dalle Follows In Pasolini’s Footsteps
Marta Mateus on the Mystery of Filmmaking in Alentejo
Locarno Kids Award la Mobiliare
ESTABLISHING SHOTS
Giona A. Nazzaro ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
A osservare in diagonale la composizione dei Concorsi –quello Internazionale e Cineasti del Presente – si può notare come il cinema – lungi dall’essere la forza spenta che le Cassandre di turno vorrebbero – si presenta al Locarno Film Festival nel pieno delle sue energie. Affrontare le complessità del mondo attraverso lo specifico del linguaggio cinematografico è il primo “spettacolo” che va in scena sui nostri schermi. Il cinema – inteso come un rapporto dialettico fra le immagini e il tempo nel quale sono immesse – non può che essere al presente indicativo. Dai film che formano la compagine agguerrita dei Pardi di Domani (e non dimentichiamo le
eccellenze di Corti d’Autore) ai Cineasti del Presente fino al Concorso Internazionale, si può scorgere una determinazione generosa a non cedere alla nostalgia (peccato cardinale del cinema…) e a continuare a esplorare il possibile. Film avventurosi, spiazzanti, audaci, vitali. Tutto ciò che oggi è legittimo (doveroso…) chiedere al cinema lo trovate e lo troverete sempre sugli schermi del Locarno Film Festival, il luogo dove il futuro del cinema lo si vede ogni giorno, giorno dopo giorno.
Buon cinema, e ci vediamo in Piazza Grande!
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Christopher Small
LEAD EDITOR: Leonardo Goi
DEPUTY EDITORS: Hugo Emmerzael, Maria Giovanna Vagenas, Keva York
STAFF WRITERS: Laurine Chiarini, Savina Petkova
CONTRIBUTORS: Eddie Bertozzi, Fareyah Kaukab, Mathilde Henrot, Lucia Leoni, Giovanni Marchini Camia
TRANSLATORS: Tessa Cattaneo, Anna Rusconi
BRAND, EDITORIAL & MEDIA: Oliver Osborne
DESIGN: Joshua Althaus, Nadine Curanz, Alex Furgiuele
PHOTOGRAPHERS: Elia Bianchi, Julie Mucchiut, Ti-Press,
PHOTO INTERN:
| o.v. English
11:30 GranRex THE GLASS WALL by Maxwell Shane 80’ | o.v. English
14:00 GranRex IF YOU COULD ONLY COOK by William A. Seiter 71’ | o.v. English
19:30 GranRex MURDER BY CONTRACT by Irving Lerner 80’ | o.v. English
FUORI CONCORSO
17:30 La Sala LA PASSION SELON BÉATRICE by Fabrice Du Welz | 83’ | o.v. French, Italian, English | s.t. English, French
10:00 Forum @Spazio Cinema OPEN DOORS AWARD CEREMONY
16:00 La Rada OPEN DOORS TALK: COLLECTIVE VISIONS – THE ART OF COLLABORATION A performative talk co-curated by Open Doors and La Rada
17:15 GranRex HOMAGE TO STAN BRAKHAGE EIGHT FILMS – HISTOIRE(S) DU CINÉMA
18:00 BaseCamp PopUp @Istituto Sant’Eugenio THE FUTURE OF SURVIVAL PUBLIC ENCOUNTER: AI AND GENERATIVE HUMANITY
From the top: Alfonso Cuarón receives his Lifetime Achievement Award. Shah Rukh Khan takes a selfie with his fans. All images: Locarno Film Festival / Ti-Press The cover photos were done in collaboration with BaseCamp
Il favoloso mondo di Claude Barras
Occhi tondi, coraggio e un grande cuore: otto anni dopo Ma vie de Courgette (2016) il maestro dell’animazione Claude Barras porta a Locarno77 Sauvages, una nuova straordinaria storia in stop-motion, ambientata questa volta nelle foreste pluviali del Borneo.
di Laurine Chiarini
Nel suo lavoro artistico, Barras mantiene viva l’eredità dell’ambientalista e difensore dei diritti umani svizzero Bruno Manser, che visse con la tribù dei Penan in Malaysia dal 1984 al 1990. Durante nostra conversazione telefonica, Barras, vincitore del Locarno Kids Award la Mobiliare 2024, mi ha parlato di quanto Sauvages (2024) sia radicato nelle origini contadine della sua famiglia, del perché gli orfani siano sempre dei personaggi epici, e di come si possano ottimizzare i movimenti della bocca di un pupazzo quando un animatore può filmare solo quattro secondi al giorno.
Laurine Chiarini: Girato a Martigny, nel Canton Vallese, il film ha contribuito a far conoscere il Vallese nel mondo dell’animazione in stop-motion. Com’è stato lavorare in Svizzera con un team internazionale?
Claude Barras: Subito dopo Ma vie de Courgette, una co-produzione svizzero-francese, mi venuta l’idea per un altro film in stop-motion con un approccio artigianale e un budget relativamente modesto. Nonostante il nostro budget fosse inferiore rispetto a quello di registi come Tim Burton o Wes Anderson, abbiamo dovuto cercare l’appoggio di due o tre Paesi per potere finalizzare la produzione. Non bisogna inoltre dimenticare che un film d’animazione è un’avventura umana che si protrae per diversi anni. Per le riprese di Sauvages, l’idea è stata quella di riunire tutto il team in Svizzera – insieme a giovani talenti dell’animazione nazionale – dando a tutti l’opportunità di scoprire questa regione durante la lavorazione al film.
Ospitare 50 persone sulle rive del lago Lemano sarebbe stato troppo complicato, inoltre desideravo trascorrere di nuovo del tempo nel Vallese della mia infanzia. È stata l’occasione ideale per conciliare lavoro e piacere. Mentre lavoravamo al film andavamo a fare escursionismo in montagna, un’attività che è stata molto apprezzata dai giovani animatori, abituati a vivere in un ambiente più urbano. Sebbene ci fossero alcune differenze culturali devo dire che l’atmosfera era fantastica, quasi come in famiglia.
LC: Lo stop-motion richiede un notevole impiego di energie e risorse. Cosa ti ha spinto a scegliere questa tecnica invece del disegno o della computer grafica?
CB: Vent’anni fa ho frequentato un corso post-laurea in computer grafica all’ECAL, che ho trovato molto interessante. Ho poi lavorato come tecnico e modellatore a Max & Co (2007) e ho capito che preferisco lavorare con i materiali, con la realtà e guardare le persone negli occhi invece che attraverso uno schermo. Provengo da una famiglia di contadini di montagna che viveva in un villaggio nel Vallese. Il mio legame con la realtà, la natura e il mondo vero si riflette nella pratica artigianale della stop-motion, così come nella comunità che si forma sul set quando l’intera squadra si riunisce intorno ai pupazzi in plastilina. Pensiamo e risolviamo problemi insieme. La stop-motion ci permette di trasporre l’animazione nel regno della realtà con un set reale, dei pupazzi e degli animatori, che è un po’ come filmare con degli attori.
LC: Una volta che avete finito di filmare che fine fanno i pupazzi di plastilina e i set?
CB: Dipende. I pupazzi di Courgette sono stati in gran parte regalati alla Cinémathèque suisse, l’archivio nazionale del film. Il resto è stato distribuito ai produttori per workshop ed eventi. Nel caso di Sauvages, una parte delle scenografie, destinata a una mostra locale, è stata conservata sul luogo delle riprese. I pupazzi invece sono in parte a Ginevra, mentre il resto è stato distribuito a diversi produttori in Belgio, Svizzera e Francia, dato che il film uscirà contemporaneamente in questi tre Paesi a ottobre e verranno usati a scopi promozionali dagli animatori, dai tecnici della luce e anche da me per presentare il film al pubblico.
LC: Quali difficoltà hai incontrato nella gestione della produzione di un lungometraggio in stop-motion?
CB: La sfida principale è stata quella di rendere la produzione sostenibile, circolare e quanto più ecologica possibile. Purtroppo, l’impatto ecologico più grande dei film resta la distribuzione, perché il pubblico deve viaggiare per raggiungere i luoghi di proiezione, e questo è inevitabile. Anche affidarsi completamente al digitale per la distribuzione non cambia molto le cose perché i server richiedono energia ed eliminare del tutto le proiezioni sarebbe inutile, per varie ragioni. La sostenibilità è fondamentale per noi; abbiamo esplorato diverse soluzioni laddove era possibile. Il legno e molti dei materiali che usiamo sono riciclabili e abbiamo lavorato con compagnie locali con certificazioni di sostenibilità. Abbiamo fatto del nostro meglio per evitare l’uso di materiali inquinanti: gli alberi erano realizzati in cartapesta anziché in plastica. Per i pupazzi, che richiedono una particolare tecnica di fabbricazione, non è stato purtroppo possibile eliminare del tutto la colla epossidica e il silicone. Tuttavia, abbiamo utilizzato solo alcune dozzine di chili per oltre un centinaio di figurine, un livello considerato accettabile. Una volta terminato il film, gli stampi in silicone sono stati fatti a pezzi e riciclati. Il legno e i tessuti sono stati messi all’asta a basso prezzo o inviati a centri di risorse principalmente a Sion o in Vallese. Abbiamo fatto tutto il possibile, ma anche dopo anni di riflessione, è impossibile raggiungere la perfezione.
LC: Quest’anno non solo proietterai il tuo film ma riceverai anche il Locarno Kids Award la Mobiliare, un premio destinato ad una personalità in grado di ispirare un pubblico giovane. Sauvages ha degli aspetti educativi: avevi in mente i bambini come pubblico di riferimento durante le riprese?
CB: Come giovane padre e cittadino del mondo che coabita con altre creature viventi vorrei sempre a rivolgermi ad un vasto pubblico. Mi piace l’idea di lasciare qualcosa alla prossima generazione, proprio come l’ha fatto l’attivista svizzero Bruno Manser con la sua lotta per la protezione della foresta pluviale, affrontando le sfide del mondo attuale.
LC: Quanti animatori ci sono nel tuo team? Come riesci a mantenere coerenza tra le immagini girate simultaneamente da persone diverse, in condizioni diverse e non sempre in ordine cronologico?
CB: Il team era composto di 10 animatori e tre assistenti, che hanno lavorato a turni durante i 10 mesi di riprese. Il lavoro è organizzato nel modo seguente: gli assistenti preparano il set, eseguono test e girano scene semplici. Il responsabile dell’animazione non anima direttamente, ma definisce gli stili, fornisce istruzioni agli altri animatori insieme a me e da direttive agli attori. Garantire la coerenza delle immagini finali richiede una prepara-
zione meticolosa. Le voci finali vengono registrate basandosi solo sullo storyboard, con segnaposti per gli effetti sonori e gli ambienti, che non sono ancora definitivi.
In questo modo, il montaggio è praticamente stabilito prima dell’inizio delle riprese. Quando è possibile, le scene sono girate in ordine cronologico, permettendoci così di risparmiare tempo. Agli animatori non sono assegnati dei personaggi specifici, tutti lavorano su tutti i personaggi. Il responsabile dell’animazione è la persona chiave che si assicura che la coerenza sia mantenuta. Abbiamo creato insieme a lui una bibbia dei personaggi, con un copione per ognuno di loro. Per ogni personaggio, è stato necessario condurre test con 15-20 posizioni diverse: per esempio, un certo personaggio fa dei passi di un centimetro quando cammina; le sue sopracciglia, la sua bocca e le sue palpebre sono in una certa posizione quando è arrabbiato, quando è felice, eccetera. Questa “bibbia artistica” è la guida degli animatori, che poi la interpretano e filmano più o meno quattro secondi di tempo di visualizzazione al giorno. Le sequenze emotive sono quelle che richiedono più precisione. Antony Elworthy, il responsabile dell’animazione, ha fatto sì che ogni animatore avesse l’opportunità di dirigere alcune sequenze. È stato un bel modo di dar loro libertà e permettere alla creatività di fiorire. Quando conosci bene i tuoi animatori puoi rilevare delle variazioni da una sequenza all’altra – il che è un bene – ma il tutto rimane pur sempre coerente.
LC: In altri film di stop-motion, come la serie WallaceeGromit, alcuni personaggi non parlano perché farli parlare richiederebbe troppo tempo e risorse. Nei tuoi film, invece, tutti i personaggi parlano. Mi chiedo se questo renda il tuo lavoro molto più complesso.
CB: Per Ma vie de Courgette avevamo sviluppato un sistema magnetico di bocche che si attaccavano ai volti dei personaggi. Questo sistema è stato perfezionato e riutilizzato in seguito. Questo tipo di processo è molto più veloce che rimodellare una bocca per ciascuna nuova sillaba o usare bocche meccaniche. Abbiamo eseguito dei test per stabilire il numero minimo di bocche necessarie per far parlare i personaggi e mostrare una varietà di emozioni. Per i personaggi principali avevamo 21 bocche, mentre per quelli secondari ne avevamo 12. Ovviamente meno bocche ci sono più velocemente possiamo lavorare, perché la scelta è più ridotta. Per via di vincoli tecnici e di tempo abbiamo dovuto decidere quali scene richiedevano 12 bocche per i personaggi principali e quali 21. Abbiamo mantenuto un certo livello di complessità per le inquadrature che lo richiedevano e meno per i piani ampi e le inquadrature di transizione. Le voci degli attori, infatti, delineano già quasi la metà dei personaggi, infondendo loro energia e vitalità. Siamo riusciti a convincere i produttori a registrare le voci prima, anche se è stato molto più costoso. Quando le voci vengono aggiunte dopo le riprese, si perde un po’ di espressività e qualità. Registrare prima ci consente di lavorare sulla messa in scena prima di filmare e poi di montare il film con le voci definitive. Questo ci aiuta anche a trovare un buon equilibrio tra gli sguardi silenziosi e l’espressività vocale.
LC: Hai menzionato la storia di Bruno Manser come fonte di ispirazione. Il personaggio di Jeanne si ispira forse a figure come quelle della zoologa inglese Jane Goodall o della primatologa americana Dian Fossey?
CB: Jeanne è un personaggio ispirato a Bruno Manser, Jane Goodall e Dian Fossey, tre figure che mi hanno profondamente influenzato durante l’infanzia e l’adolescenza. È anche ispirata da Laetitia Dosch, che ha dato voce al personaggio e si interessa agli esseri viventi e all’ecologia sostenibile. Negli anni Ottanta, l’ecologia era già un tema ampiamente discusso, prima che le lobby neoliberali facessero apparire gli attivisti ambientali come dei sognatori contrari allo sviluppo umano e ai comfort. Questa lotta era già sentita e urgente quando avevo 10 o 15 anni. Ero profondamente coinvolto e indignato dall’inazione politica e dai conflitti di interesse che distruggono il mondo. Sauvages è strettamente legato al mio passato contadino, un mondo che è cambiato radicalmente dai tempi dei miei nonni. Oggi è proprio il modo in cui produciamo il cibo ad avere l’impatto maggiore sul clima. Tutto ciò mi ha fatto aprire gli occhi e mi ha spinto a combattere. Questa battaglia è una delle principali forze motrici del film.
LC: I membri del popolo Penan che hai incontrato erano familiari con l’animazione stop-motion? Qual è la loro opinione su questa tecnica?
CB: Quando ho incontrato il popolo Penan nella giungla del Borneo, ho mostrato loro alcuni segmenti di Ma vie de Courgette su un computer, tradotti da una guida del fondo Bruno Manser con cui viaggiavo. I pupazzi stop-motion ricordano ai Penan le sculture che creano dalla resina cristallizzata degli alberi e che a volte bruciano durante le preghiere. Questa tradizione ha ispirato la scena in cui il nonno racconta alla nipotina la storia della pantera per spiegarle le loro origini. Questo aspetto mi commuove, poiché i pupazzi che usiamo sono anch’essi uno specchio sciamanico delle nostre emozioni. Del resto, il cinema ha radici molto antiche. Le persone si riunivano nelle caverne, con il fuoco che illuminava i dipinti sulle pareti, e ascoltavano delle storie mentre li osservavano. Nella grotta Chauvet, ci sono dei dipinti che sembrano sequenze animate, come la riproduzione artistica del movimento dei cavalli. I Penan creano anche degli oggetti in miniatura come giocattoli per i bambini. Li abbiamo coinvolti nella realizzazione degli oggetti di scena: alcuni piccoli zaini dei personaggi e delle cerbottane sono stati fatti da loro.
LC: Nel film, Kéria e il piccolo orangotango Oshi sono entrambi orfani. È inevitabile pensare a Courgette, la cui forza è anch’essa nata dalle avversità.
CB: Lavorando su film per bambini, la figura dell’orfano mi ha profondamente ispirato. Sia adulti che bambini condividiamo tutti la paura dell’abbandono. L’archetipo dell’orfano che supera gli ostacoli per trovare amore, fiducia e una famiglia è estremamente affascinante. Da bambino, amavo storie come quelle di Heidi e Bambi, degli eroi orfani che hanno ispirato le storie che racconto oggi nei miei film per bambini. Durante la mia ricerca, ho partecipato a conferenze all’ONU e ho scoperto che, nei Paesi non democratici, gli attivisti ambientali corrono rischi maggiori rispetto a quelli politici; devono affrontare milizie e forze neoliberali molto più potenti delle loro stesse organizzazioni. Kéria incontrerà un elemento di violenza quando scoprirà il segreto della sua famiglia.
LC: Dal punto di vista linguistico, il film passa dalla lingua Penan, non sottotitolata, al dialetto “vaudois” di Jeanne, un tocco locale franco-svizzero che spicca nella giungla del Borneo. Questi aspetti e il contrasto con le espressioni locali potranno essere conservati nel doppiaggio?
CB: Il doppiaggio sarà sicuramente una delle nostre sfide più grandi. Abbiamo fatto qualche test, in linea di principio, dovrebbe essere possibile tenere le parti in Penan senza alterarle doppiando solo i dialoghi in francese. Accettiamo qualche leggera incongruenza. Per ora vogliamo provare a testare il doppiaggio in tedesco e inglese, scegliendo degli attori con delle voci che si avvicinano il più possibile a quelle della versione originale. Un’altra lingua però comporta anche un cambiamento radicale di tono. Un’altra opzione sarebbe quella di far doppiare tutti i dialoghi di un personaggio dallo stesso attore, che potrebbe mimare foneticamente le parti in Penan. L’idea è quella di trasmettere il fatto che ci troviamo in un Paese esotico e allo stesso tempo immergere il pubblico in una realtà che sembra famigliare. Allo stesso tempo, è importante trovare un equilibrio tra la necessità di mantenere una distanza dal mondo selvaggio e quella di rendere i personaggi più accessibili agli spettatori.
LC: In città, Selaï, proveniente dalla foresta pluviale, è chiamata selvaggia. Il padre di Kéria definisce i tagliaboschi come selvaggi. La connotazione della parola cambia a seconda di chi la usa e a chi è riferita. Siamo tutti, quindi, il selvaggio di qualcun altro?
CB: Assolutamente sì, siamo tutti il selvaggio di qualcun altro. All’inizio il titolo del film aveva un punto esclamativo, poi un punto interrogativo, alla fine abbiamo deciso che enfatizzare l’ambiguità della parola non era necessario, perché è abbastanza evidente nei dialoghi. Nella nostra società gli strumenti intellettuali e la sfera della conoscenza sono legati alla scienza, in un sistema del quale facciamo tutti parte. Conosciamo noi stessi, altri esseri viventi e l’impatto che abbiamo sul mondo. È molto interessante, con il potere della conoscenza è possibile raggiungere un punto di svolta. Il nostro potrebbe permetterci di riconciliarci con la natura, che ci procura l’aria che respiriamo e l’acqua che beviamo.
LC: Nel film, il cellulare viene sia ridicolizzato che presentato come uno strumento efficace per denunciare le azioni delle compagnie forestali. È davvero necessario utilizzare le nuove tecnologie per sensibilizzare i giovani sui temi ecologici e sulla biodiversità?
CB: Ad un certo punto del film Jeanne dice che non ha un telefonino perché “è il diavolo”. Io ho un telefonino e un computer, mi piacerebbe potermi disconnettere dal mondo digitale ma so che viviamo in una società dove questo sarebbe quasi impossibile. È pretenzioso ripudiare completamente questi strumenti, anche se sono progettati per imprigionarci e possono essere mal utilizzati. L’idea è di mostrare che possono anche essere usati anche per fare resistenza, per protestare e per stare connessi ad altri che combattono la stessa battaglia. Ero riluttante a includere un cellulare nel film, ma non potevamo ignorarlo poiché le giovani generazioni sono costantemente immerse in queste tecnologie. Non possiamo semplicemente dire loro che sono sbagliate, dobbiamo interagire creativamente con esse, per ispirare speranza nel mondo di domani, come sarà tra 10 o 20 anni.
LC: Infine cosa possiamo augurarci per Sauvages?
CB: Mi auguro una proiezione straordinaria in Piazza Grande, uno dei luoghi più belli per presentare un film, a patto che non piova. Inoltre, spero che il film venga visto da un vasto pubblico, affinché il suo messaggio possa raggiungere il maggior numero di persone possibile. La distribuzione sarà accompagnata da una campagna di consapevolizzazione in collaborazione con la fondazione Bruno Manser, Greenpeace e altre organizzazioni. Ognuna di loro proporrà delle azioni che gli spettatori possono sostenere facendo una donazione o cambiando le loro abitudini giornaliere in modo da ridurre il loro impatto ambientale. Queste iniziative sono destinate a coloro che desiderano mettere in pratica il messaggio del film attraverso gesti concreti. ◼ Tradotto da Tessa Cattaneo
WANG BING
“I Draw My Motivation from Reality”
One of the greatest non-fiction filmmakers in contemporary cinema, Wang Bing has extensively chronicled the textured layers of Chinese society. By patiently observing the lived realities of ordinary citizens, his documentaries offer poignant reflections on labor, endurance, and the fabric of life. A jury member in Locarno in 2016 and winner of the Pardo d’Oro for Mrs. Fang the following year, the director returns to the Festival’s Concorso Internazionale with Qing chun (Ku), the second installment in a cycle of films that closely observes sweatshop workers in the town of Zhili, in Eastern China. We sat down with the documentarian to discuss how his durational cinema speaks to the physical toil he’s captured in his latest film projects.
by Christopher Small
Christopher Small: The previous film in this cycle, Qing chun (2023) – known in English as Youth(Spring) – is also about work – but in this second film, Qingchun(Ku) –Youth (Hard Times) – the mechanisms of work are much clearer, more specific. We better understand what transpires in the hours spent working, the necessary negotiations, the difficulties.
Wang Bing: You’re right. The previous film was about individuals and how they experience their lives, which are of course dominated by work. But here we see the actual working conditions of people who are toiling on the lowest rung of society’s ladder. That might be because, while shooting, we very much adjusted to their lifestyles and their daily routines. We got up in the morning with them; we filmed them for the entire shift, until they finished work. In this sense, the process of our work making the film moved very much in parallel with their shifts [in the sweatshops]. That’s how we filmed them, constantly, for an entire year. Documentaries cannot be limited by a pre-determined story; you can’t impose an obvious framework from the outset. You just need to do this work and see where it takes you. What is most important is making a connection with the main characters, staying directly in contact with them and their ordinary routines. From that, you can make a film that is one with actual life. In that sense, the rhythm of the work determines the rhythm of the filming. Of course, it’s not for me to say how this film turned out; I can’t evaluate that. But what I can say is that I was constantly searching for a way to make the routines of their lives clear for the sake of the film.
CS: Did the presence of your crew ever bother them or invade their leisure time?
WB: They don’t have a lot of breaks. They work continuously all day, until 11 p.m. What was most important for me was not to put any stress on them and disrupt their work or their personal lives. At the beginning, when we came to this town [Zhili], we didn’t know anyone. Right from the start, we went from one sweatshop to another – there are many in this town – and some told us right away that it was impossible, that we were not welcome, but then some others were perfectly okay with us filming there. After six months we were familiar with the people and the environment, which freed us to shoot in most places without restrictions. At first it was difficult, not only because I’m a stranger but also because I’m a northerner from Xi’an, Shaanxi. The south is always a little bit unfamiliar for northerners, so it’s somewhat more difficult to get along with people and get to know them. At some point though, we were accepted and kind of melted into their daily routine. We never wanted to cause problems, so we simply kept very close to them, quietly shooting at their side. The cameras we used were very small so, even though there were four or five cameras, we didn’t bring any disruption to their working routine. Our crew was also very small and quiet.
CS: You’ve moved all over China to make your films. You started in Shenyang, in the northeast, where you made Tie Xi Qu:West of the Tracks (Tiexi qu, 2002), then you moved northwest, for Fengming: a Chinese Memoir (HeFengming , 2007), then southwest, to Yunnan, for what became Three Sisters (San zimei, 2012), then you met some young workers and followed them east, to Huzhou, for BitterMoney (KuQian, 2016), which led to these films. In a way, this project – filming so many kinds of Chinese people who are not usually seen and recording their stories – could be called “China”. That is of course a mad goal, but nonetheless I believe it informs the character of your work.
WB: It certainly wasn’t intentional. I was shooting in the northeast because I was going to university there; you film what is familiar to you and what is feasible with your resources. And then I went to the northwest because I found out about what happened there, what stories people had inside them – I went to record a lot of oral histories [of the Cultural Revolution period]. And when I went to the south, first it was for the fiction film [Bitter Money], but I kept recording the reality all around me, kept recording people’s stories, while also working on this fiction film. In making my films, I want to be thorough, so in the case of this project [Qing chun], whenever I had enough funding to go and stay there for six months, I would do so right away, and be immersed in the shooting. Working that way, it’s very difficult for me to say exactly when the film is going to be finished. We certainly didn’t have resources or support in China. Any support I could get, I used it. As a result, we were shooting for many years in an on-and-off manner. My resources were very limited, so we simply filmed when we could. Obviously, my working practice is very simple. Simply recording. I film a while; I find a glimmer of reality – and from this reality, some spark of life from the material I’ve uncovered, I can draw the motivation to continue.
CS: Several years had passed between the final day of shooting and the proper start of editing – by which point you had more than three and half months-worth of footage. I’m wondering how you even began to approach that huge amount of material.
WB: Well, we differentiated clearly between the three films from the start; I had that in mind when first sorting through the material. The footage that we shot between 2014 and June of 2015 was for the first film. For the second, it was everything between August 2015 and 2016. For the third, we’ll draw on everything from 2016 onwards. As I mentioned, Spring was naturally about getting to know these individuals for the first time. Now, in Hard Times, the second film, the focus had to be on these people’s existences. You move from the individual to a broader idea of people as a collective. We had spent more time there, so we got to know more about each of their lives. I didn’t want to judge any of the characters, didn’t want to pass judgement on their lifestyle, or exploit their personal histories. I just wanted to make a film that looked like their lives. As a result, the editing process was equally as long as the shooting. For a long time, I never really had
I try not to have an attitude towards what I’m filming; I don’t judge reality. I simply try to observe and record what appears naturally.
any problems with editing my films, but this time, it was very, very difficult. Even in 2021, after the pandemic, I still had no idea how to edit this material that I had been looking at for some time. I knew I wanted three films, each constructed out of 20-minute sequences, but I couldn’t find a way to find those sequences in the material. But after a year or so of trying, I figured it out. By 2022, [editor Dominique Auvray and I] had figured out how to cut the first film. And as a result, the second film was edited somewhat quickly – from September 2023 until April 2024. Whenever I’m editing, I try to find an internal coherence to the film’s structure, because I really want it to be a work of narrative. But then, especially here, I don’t want to simply extract the narratives from the lives of the characters. Editing for me is all about finding that difficult balance. Plus, what’s being depicted – people using sewing machines all day, working in a sweatshop – is itself very repetitive and thus difficult to shape into narrative material.
CS: Can you speak a little more concretely about the sculpting of a story structure from the material you shot? Because Hard Times has several major plot points, if you’ll excuse the term, including a startling political confession that takes place in a rather casual setting in the film’s final third.
WB: Yes, these moments came about naturally. When the boss escapes with his employees’ pay after beating up a supplier, for example… this was a common occurrence while we were filming in Zhili. During our few years in that area, there were around 400 such cases [per year], each very similar. I guess it’s a very typical moment in the lives of these workers. At the same time, we also got to know many bosses who were very fair. This conflict between bosses and their workers is not only in sweatshops – it is a universal class problem. As for the “confession” that you mentioned, he’s one of the young men who also appears in [Spring], but there his story is not as developed as the other two [protagonists]. At that time, we hadn’t really gotten to know each other so well. But after some years together, that was no longer the case, and so he just started spontaneously sharing his thoughts with me about the political situation in China, about his daily reality. He just wanted to share them and felt free to do so. The workers there are all living collectively and thus don’t have a lot of personal space. They’re living in dorms, and the conditions are very bad. As a result, I had no insight into how they think about themselves or how they think about their living conditions, so his thoughts came as something of a surprise. In China, not a lot of people are willing to share their true thoughts in public. Once he starts to do exactly that, it became obvious to me that all the workers are quite clear-eyed about their conditions and their lives, and about Chinese society and the mechanisms that sustain it. In Spring, the three boys are just working, but they’re also having fun sometimes. But once this boy starts to share his private thoughts in Hard Times, it becomes clear to us that all the workers are very much aware of the lies that Chinese society is built on. These lies are rules you must play by. You must accept them to continue working and living because there is no other option.
CS: They’re working in bad conditions, but they really do talk through everything to do with their labor. They talk through their pay; they talk through their problems. It’s complex, and not always rewarding, but there is a particular kind of solidarity between them.
WB: Their basic condition, as workers, is helpless. But yes, they talk together about their working conditions, they organize to some extent. When I was filming, I didn’t want to change anything – to intervene in or exert influence on what might be happening. I was at their side, recording, while they took one action or another, that’s it. I didn’t want to have any message to transmit through the film, any starting point for the project. In China, there are a lot of intellectuals who are absolutely obsessed with politics. The whole social reality is politicized. Everything you do must have some purpose or political goal. I have never wanted to do that, and I didn’t want to make this film into a tool to achieve any specific goals. I try not to have an attitude towards what I’m filming; I don’t judge reality. I simply try to observe and record what appears naturally.
CS: You attended Locarno in 2016 as a juror for the Concorso Internazionale and also premiered Mrs.Fang in 2017, for which you won the Pardo d’Oro. What are the expectations for showing this film at Locarno77?
WB: Before 2016, when I was on the jury, I didn’t really know much about Locarno, but when I came, I saw that it is very different from other major festivals. It’s much more relaxed. It’s far less of a strain or a workout. Generally, the attitude towards film is purer. Less about competing with one’s fellow filmmakers or exerting oneself to see as many films as possible. In a way, it’s more of a retreat. As for the audience response to this new film, I don’t have any expectations. Once I’ve finished each film, I find it difficult to be confident about the work I’ve done. The only thing you can do is be true to your own thoughts and feelings, and thus I don’t consider what other people might think about the films. I just keep working.
◼ Interpretation by Maja Korbecka
◼ Wang Bing’s Qingchun(Ku) premieres today, 13.8 at 16:45 at Palexpo (FEVI)
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Locarno Pro
The industry platform of the Locarno Film Festival has announced the winning projects for three of its landmark initiatives.
FIRST LOOK
Antaviana Films First Look Award DREAM OF ANOTHER SUMMER by
Irene Bartolomé
Music Library &SFX/Acorde Award & Laserfilm cine y vídeo Award RÍO ABAJO, UN TIGRE by Víctor Diago
Jannuzzi Smith Award MARES by Ariadna Seuba
Le Film Français Award BODEGÓN CON FANTASMAS by Enrique Buleo
ALLIANCE 4 DEVELOPMENT
Alphapanda Market Breakout Award BOURGEOIS PARANOIA by Lukas Nathrath
Script Consultancy Residency at DreamAgo offered by the Valais Film Commission
6 MOIS 6 JOURS (6 MONTHS 6 DAYS) by Michale Boganim
MIDPOINT Consulting Award LA FIN DE L’ÉTÉ (Atlantic Mirage) by Hakim Mao
Ticino Film Commission Residence Award ITACA (ITHACA) by Alessandro Grande
I CANNIBALI (THE YEAR OF THE CANNIBALS, 1969) by Liliana Cavani
VIRTUAL REALITY AT LOCARNO77
In this fast-paced ‘50s film noir thriller, it’s easy to get swept up in the hectic plight of our protagonist, Peter Kuban (Vittorio Gassman). While his struggles drive the plot, there’s something equally important happening along the sidelines: the background story of the secondary characters. At first, it might seem a little random, maybe a little unnerving – why so many details of their lives? But if you stay with it, I promise these will reveal something essential about the film – mainly the connection it makes between one’s social class, one’s moral compass, and the human condition, which makes Maxwell Shane’s The Glass Wall (1953) both universal and timeless.
Meet Peter. Peter is a stowaway, a displaced person, a refugee, a nationless, penniless man with only eight dollars to his name. He is at the absolute bottom of the social hierarchy, a pariah in every sense of the word. Not to worry, Peter will get what is coming to him; the events that unfold will be merciless. Peter has only known war since childhood. Peter has committed no crime. Peter is fundamentally good, with a purity typically reserved for saints and animals. Peter is a war hero, an uncertified, undocumented war hero. Also – and importantly – Peter wants to live, to live, to live with an ounce of dignity.
Then there is the border, this all-encompassing entity, this machine that needs to be fed. It needs the proper documentation, the proper passports, the right stamps, the convincing story, the certified story. (I had a little déjà vu of Lisa Gerig’s The Hearing [Die Anhörung, 2021], showing in this year’s Panorama Suisse, and I was rooting for him to flourish his story a little better.) It spits out the law, the law, the law. “That’s the law,” and that’s final. But is there a chance to…? NO! THE LAW! Peter jumps out of the window.
CRITICS ACADEMY x RETROSPETTIVA
THE GLASS WALL
By Fareyah Kaukab
The bureaucratic maze of a senseless obsession with technicalities triumphs over Peter’s reality and transforms him into a criminal.
Meet Maggie (Gloria Grahame), Peter’s romantic counterpart. She is one step above him in the social hierarchy, if only because she has a nationality. Maggie is a single woman, an unskilled laborer, a member of the working poor. Maggie faces sexual harassment both at work and at home. Maggie underwent a minor operation, which led to her losing her job. Maggie is hungry. Maggie is cold. Maggie is broke, and on the verge of becoming homeless. Maggie is fed up, fed up, fed up. Maggie wants to strike back at somebody. Anybody. Maggie makes the choice to help Peter.
In a failing social system that lacks universal healthcare and the right to adequate housing, Maggie becomes a criminal.
Director Shane offers a thesis: as individuals ascend the social ladder, their moral standards tend to decline. The myriad of secondary characters illustrate this, as their positions in the social hierarchy directly influence their actions and words regarding Peter’s situation.
Tanya (Robin Raymond), a first-generation American and single mother of two, works nights at a cabaret. Despite her relative stability– she has a family and a job– she only helps Peter after finding out why he’s on the lam. Tom (Jerry Paris), whom Peter once rescued, benefits from even more security as a member of the musician’s union. This detail is subtle but significant, yet Tom initially turns his back on Peter. We also see Tom’s fiancé, Nancy (Ann Robinson), a well-dressed woman whose profession is never revealed
but who is affluent enough to support Tom. Although she finds Peter’s situation troubling, she quickly dismisses it and instead focuses her energy on getting hitched.
All these individuals live against the backdrop of two grand forces pulling the strings of destiny: the city and the United Nations. The film’s New York is a harsh, impersonal entity. This portrayal reflects a broader reality applicable to any bustling city where rest is elusive – a city that neglects its inhabitants, with scarce public spaces, contrasting the oppressive streets with the relative sanctuary of private homes.
As for the United Nations, it is omnipresent throughout the film and mentioned constantly. However, at the pivotal moment when Peter barges into the human rights commission, looking for sanctuary, the camera lingers on the empty seats of the supposed guardians of human rights. The irony is clear, both in 1953 and in 2024, as Peter, hanging his head, says, “You come here to bring peace to the world, but what is the world as long as there is one man who can’t walk free? As long as there is one displaced person without a home? There won’t be peace.”
In a system designed to keep the poor impoverished, immigrants excluded, and those who don’t fit the mold criminalized, the vulnerable remain unprotected. The law, though portrayed as unyielding, is inconsistent, raising questions about justice and fairness. In the current political climate, marked by the rise of the far right and political unrest, the film serves as a reminder: before acting and speaking on world affairs, maybe we should remember Tanya’s mother’s words that most of our own forefathers were “good-fornothing immigrants”.
During the days of the Festival, the Geneva International Film Festival co-presents a double selection of free virtual reality experiences at the cutting edge of contemporary immersive storytelling.
Thanks also to BONALUMI Engineering SA, the program will take place in the Cabina, the former projection booth of Piazza Grande located near the Campari Lounge, as well as in the exhibition space at the BaseCamp PopUp, a creative hub dedicated to up-and-coming artists.
la cultura in prima fila
Emozioni uniche al Locarno Film Festival con la Posta.
STAN BRAKHAGE
for One Night Only
K.J. Relth-Miller and Erika Balsom are the curators of a special program dedicated to Stan Brakhage, titan of American experimental cinema. In this conversation with Pardo, they offer plenty of reasons why this unique opportunity to see Brakhage’s work in the cinema shouldn’t be missed.
by Savina Petkova
Amonth ago, some very special film prints arrived in Locarno, having traveled all the way from the Academy Film Archives in Los Angeles. These eight works by Stan Brakhage (1933-2003) will grace the GranRex today as part of a very special homage to the experimental legend. Even if titles such as Mothlight (1963), Dog Star Man: Prelude (1961), and Window Water Baby Moving (1959) –avant-garde classics – don’t ring a bell, K.J. Relth-Miller and Erika Balsom’s carefully curated selection should serve as a brilliant introduction to the alternative ways of seeing that characterize Brakhage’s work. When I spoke to curators Relth-Miller and Balsom about this rare opportunity to steep in Brakhage’s work as it was meant to be seen, a few key ideas emerged: firstly, silent films are never silent; secondly, Brakhage is more talked about than shown, and thirdly, this homage is actually not worlds away from this year’s big Locarno retrospective on Columbia Pictures, The Lady with the Torch.
Savina Petkova: How did this homage to Stan Brakhage come to be, and did you plan to work together on it from the beginning?
K.J. Relth-Miller: Before I came to Locarno last year as a Heritage Online juror, in the spring, I met with both Giona [A. Nazzaro] and Markus [Duffner] in Los Angeles. As we were talking about interests and favorite filmmakers, it transpired that Giona is a massive Stan Brakhage fan. At that point, I told them that since 2004, the Academy Film Archive has been the home of his collection: we have originals, negatives, printing elements, and other film materials. Naturally, we connected on that, and he was rhapsodic about the idea of bringing a Brakhage program to Locarno at some point in the future. But I can’t claim ownership over the program’s final form, that was all Erika. Erika Balsom: I was asked if I would make a selection that would be kind of like a “Brakhage 101 [Primer]”. The idea was to give people who had maybe never encountered his work before a sense of its development and range. While this is not entirely a “greatest hits” program, there is a little bit of that in there. Brakhage is often referred to as kind of like, the Jackson Pollock of U.S. experimental filmmaking, and there’s a sense that he is this towering and heroic, but also very patriarchal figure. Given all that, with this selection I thought that it was important to foreground some of his relationships and collaborations. There is a particular focus on his wives, Marilyn and Jane Brakhage, to underline their status as co-creators in some sense.
SP: Can you give me a taste of the films and the relationships they represent?
EB: Brakhage’s filmmaking often includes scenes from his everyday life. Cat’s Cradle (1959) features [experimental artist and filmmaker] Carolee Schneemann and [composer and music theorist] James Tenney, while Untitled (for Marilyn) (1992) is dedicated to his second wife, and Window Water Baby Moving shows his first wife Jane giving birth. The earliest film in the program, The Wonder Ring (1955), is a portrait of the Third Avenue elevated train in Manhattan just before it was demolished – a subject suggested to Brakhage by Joseph Cornell.
SP: Brakhage is a mainstay in film curricula and there’s this pedagogical potential attached to him as a figure. Do you feel like this retrospective might also have a pedagogical element to it?
EB: At this point, Brakhage maybe gets spoken about more than he gets seen. It’s important to say that this event will be an opportunity to watch these films in a cinema. Even though Brakhage’s work is maybe more available than that of many other avant-garde filmmakers, especially because of the Criterion Collection edition of his works, it’s something else entirely to watch his films in a cinema with the public. Our chronological selection will showcase many of the concepts, methods, and techniques for which he is best known, including somatic camerawork, his idea of “closed-eye vision”, the application of materials directly to the filmstrip, and hand-painting. It is a primer in some way, so maybe there is a pedagogical function to the program.
KR: I think the real emphasis is on the distraction-free environment offered by the cinema space. The magic of Brakhage comes to life when you’re seeing these films projected in the original format that they were printed on or conceived of upon. We’ve brought a 16 mm selection of prints that have either been preserved or restored by the Academy Film Archive.
SP: K.J., I meant to ask, what is a preservation print and how is it different from a restoration?
KR: It’s little different than a full restoration. A preservation print has been copied in a way so that the original can maintain its quality and can be preserved on the shelf, while the preservation print can circulate. But then, we also have some new prints that have been made by the Academy Film Archive, more specifically: a new print of Dog Star Man: Prelude from 1961, a new print of The Dante Quartet (1987), which is one of his hand-painted films, and a new print of Untitled (For Marylin) from 1992. Projecting these films on celluloid in a cinema makes for an entirely different experience than watching them on a television or a computer or a phone screen, on your own time, with distractions all around you. And I think the real pleasure of his works is not just the incredible imagery that’s going to be flying by before your eyes, it’s also the experience of total silence in a cinema.
SP: Why shouldn’t the audience fear Brakhage’s silence?
KR: These films will be screened without any accompaniment, as they should be seen. There’s always the fidgeting, or the breathing, or the coughing, or, God forbid, a phone alarm going off [laughs], but such little moments make each screening unique. In each case, too, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to be with this group of people in front of this set of films. Also, without the presence of sound, it is hard to gauge how much time you’re spending in the cinema; sound grounds you in a certain way. The film writer Amos Vogel said that Brakhage’s films “recall to us the role and presence of time,” but theirs is a different kind of duration, requiring a different kind of patience and attention, in order to feel locked into the experience. And I’ll admit, I’ve dozed off during some of those films before, in a way that actually makes it feel quite psychedelic. It’s not something that I would discourage: if you’re feeling a bit sleepy, don’t feel bad about it!
EB: Yes, these films really are about time, not slowness per se. In the contemporary moment, ideas of radical cinema are so closely tied to glacial long takes, but with Brakhage it is pretty psychedelic, as you said, K.J.; it’s a fast, hypnagogic flow of imagery that is often non-representational. And even when we do see images featuring filmed objects from the world, they’re often transformed beyond recognition.
SP: How does a festival screening, thinking about Locarno in particular, enhance that special aura?
KR: I am really excited to share this experience with an audience – the public and filmmakers who may or may not have works showing at the festival, and the locals; the mix of younger and older viewers, who also have an opportunity to revisit these films, or in some cases be exposed to them for the very first time. I love the lineup that Erika has put together, it has a beautiful direction!
SP: So, there’s also this big retrospective of Columbia Pictures happening in Locarno this year…
KR: Yes, “The Lady with the Torch”! I love those films.
EB: Brakhage himself collected a lot of 8 mm reduction prints, including some classic silent Hollywood films. It wasn’t the case that he was against narrative cinema as a viewer – but in his own work, he was trying to build up something entirely different.
SP: How would you conceptualize their coexistence within Locarno’s broader program though?
KR: If you think about how many of today’s studios have endured since the silent era, it’s remarkable! Within the past two years, three major studios – Disney, Warner Brothers, and Columbia, well, Sony – have celebrated their centennial. “The Lady with the Torch” retrospective is like a towering monument to cinema, even if it is pulling out some of the lesser-known titles from lesser-known filmmakers. It still stands in quite a fascinating juxtaposition to some of Brakhage’s work from the 1950s.
EB: It’s worth saying that Brakhage made all of his films more or less by himself. His is truly an artisanal cinema, not just in the sense that he was hand-painting on film, but also in that he was shooting and editing by himself too. He would often travel with the films and be there in person to present them. His is very much an intimate, first-person cinema – a mode of production that is very different from the industrial model of Hollywood. His films are very precise in their deployment of craft, but they are also absolutely personal and truly independent, I think this way of working also offers a lesson we can still learn from today.
KR: It’s also interesting to point out just how prolific he was, especially in comparison to major Hollywood studios in their heyday, when they were turning out two or three dozen films a year. So that is kind of similar to Brakhage. I mean, he produced over 300 films, some of them a few minutes in length, and others, almost two hours long. I believe he occasionally had benefactors and some films were funded, but not in the same way that traditional studio films were being funded. This can be inspiring to a generation of filmmakers working today who are up against so many hurdles when it comes to funding. One could even argue that Brakhage was responsible for even more production than any single filmmaker who ever worked at one of these studios! He is therefore definitely worthy of being mentioned in the same conversation as these major studio-funded, canonical filmmakers.
SP: Locarno audiences are curious enough, certainly, but if someone needed any more convincing, what would you say to them?
EB: I always want to push back against this idea that watching avant-garde films is like eating your cultural vegetables, or that it’s your duty to learn about some “difficult” work. I find Brakhage’s work immensely pleasurable to watch. It really is what he referred to as “an adventure in perception” that opens up totally different ways of seeing. He was very skeptical about language and how it governs our perception, and critical of the kinds of film language that are used in, say, mainstream narrative filmmaking. When we consider a program like this, in the context of this particular festival, I think it makes a lot of sense to put major works from the avant-garde tradition alongside contemporary films that are also pushing the boundaries of expression and form, something I think Locarno is known for.
◼ The program “Homage to Stan Brakhage” screens today, 13.8 at 17:15 at the GranRex
BÉATRICE DALLE
“I actually spend most of my nights with dead poets and dead musicians.”
With cinema icon Béatrice Dalle coming to Locarno for the documentary La Passion selon Béatrice, Pardo sat down with the dazzling actress for a free and exploratory discussion of her devotion to her artistic lovers, her laissez-faire approach to life, and her unquenchable hunger for love and beauty in an increasingly grim and soulless world: “Life is for pleasure, that’s all.”
by Hugo Emmerzael
It would be tempting to call Béatrice Dalle larger than life. Her striking presence, turbulent romantic history, and powerful roles in films by directors such as Claire Denis, Gaspar Noé, Michael Haneke, Jim Jarmusch, and Abel Ferrara certainly make her one of the iconic figures of cinema. And yet, a conversation with Dalle is not one about fiction, features, and facades, but rather about the realness and rawness of life itself. More than an actress, she presents herself as a vessel who absorbs the ideas of her great inspirations and passes them along to anyone interested in opening their arms to her.
Hugo Emmerzael: There aren’t that many people alive right now that could make a film about Pier Paolo Pasolini, and also make that film in many ways about themselves. You, however, blend the subjects of Pasolini and Béatrice Dalle in a beautiful way, which raises the question: was it a calling to make a film like this?
Béatrice Dalle: I have had devotions in my life. One is to Pier Paolo Pasolini, the others are to Jean Genet and Kurt Cobain. So far, I’ve acted on two of those callings already. In the case of Pasolini, I fell in love with him when I was 17. I went to see Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma, 1975) with my first husband and fell in love with the guy who was able to show fascism on the screen in such a unique way. There’s simply no better way to combine this depiction of fascism with Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom. It completely changed my life.
HE: La Passion selon Béatrice takes you on a journey, tracing Pasolini’s life and death. You put yourself into this conversation very explicitly. Did you find it scary to equate yourself with him, or bring yourself into his direct sphere of influence?
BD: Oh no, no, no. I am an absolute admirer of the man, his work, his movies, his political commitments, his poems, and his writings, but I don’t have any pretensions that I am on his level. I simply love to admire others. I love people; therefore, I am proud, very proud even, that, thanks to Fabrice du Welz and Anthony Vaccarello [the film’s producer, and the creative director of Yves Saint Laurent], this film could be made. Actually, there’s a very sad thing, because [writer, novelist, and filmmaker] Virginie Despentes and I were doing these live shows dedicated to our heroes, one of which was a tribute to Pasolini. At the end of these performances, the rightsholders of his estates came to us and said, “We’re stopping the show, because you don’t hold the rights and have to pay us a lot of money.” We found that very sad. We weren’t in it to make money – all the money it raised went to the venue and paying the technicians and all that. The same thing happened with Jean Genet, by the way. We weren’t allowed to perform his texts. I experience infinite sadness because of that.
HE: Why did you team up with Fabrice du Welz specifically to make this film?
BD: I wanted to make more than just a film about daily life and cinema. I’m not interested in that. I want something more: to find the magic in things, to commit myself to my lover. Fabrice allowed me to do that.
HE: Speaking of this magic: your film is also this quest to capture some of Pasolini’s presence, to see if his spirit is still alive in the places he passed through in his life and towards his death. Could you actually find him? Was he still there?
BD: The places and geographical locations we went to were actually devoid of him – we couldn’t find him at all. For instance, some place where they shot Medea (1969) with Maria Callas is now an Airbnb. It has completely lost its soul. So as far as places are concerned, we didn’t find the soul of Pasolini. But we did find him when we were filming with [Italian author] Dacia Maraini, whose partner and fellow writer Alberto Moravia was very close to him. She would tell anecdotes and stories that made Pasolini come alive again.
HE: How did this make you feel, the fact that the world has changed so much?
BD: Well, I also changed, because I also discovered things about Pasolini that I don’t like. For instance, we met many people who told us that Pasolini was somewhat mad at the Italian proletariat for doing so little to help others. That annoyed me, because my parents were from the French proletariat. They never donated to good causes or anything, not because they were bad people, but simply because they already struggled to feed our family. This disappointed me in him. I saw him too much as a saint, but in reality, he was just a human being.
HE: Isn’t this a somewhat natural process? To gradually start to see your idols and lovers as simply more real?
BD: Maybe that’s true in most cases. It happened to me with both Pasolini and Kurt Cobain. It has never, however, happened to me and Jean Genet. Everything is marvelous about him. I was never disappointed by him. He really is the love of my life.
HE: Your own life has been very intense, with exciting and difficult chapters in a very vivid biography. Would you say you draw the strength to live this very real and raw life from people like Genet, Pasolini, and Cobain? Or is it something that originates more from within yourself?
BD: Right now, my life is very small. I never get out of my flat –I’m not interested in that anymore. I actually spend most of my nights with dead poets and dead musicians. So, I’m living in a parallel world right now.
HE: In La Passion selon Béatrice, you talk very eloquently about music and poetry. I sense a lot of generosity there. Is it important for you to share your views on life and beauty with the rest of the world?
BD: For me, that’s everything. I’m very open and forthcoming. If people open their arms to me, I will literally dive into them with pleasure. But if they don’t feel like doing that, there’s nothing I can do about it.
HE: When did you get into poetry and music?
BD: When I was nine, I pretended I was my mother, and used this music home order catalog to order Magic Buzz by The Who and a Jimi Hendrix album. I had no idea who they were, but I wanted to have them. I was crazy about music then and still am. I don’t spend one second without it. Poetry, I discovered with Genet. I started with his “The Man Sentenced to Death” (1942) and had the same vision he has of love and death. I feel like we speak the same language. Sometimes, I fall in love with guys whom everyone considers dangerous or bad. I simply don’t care. I don’t care what others think. If someone lo-
ves me, that’s great; if they don’t, it’s no big deal.
HE: Did you always have this open-minded approach to everything?
BD: I just want to feel good, and [I] don’t think about consequences too much. For the pretty eyes of a pretty boy, I would do anything. Life is for pleasure, that’s all.
HE: I know you are also very open-minded in the way you work with directors. You can give yourself over to them entirely. That has resulted in some very intense films and performances. Would you say that you have to suffer for beauty and art?
BD: No, no! There’s never suffering. I want to punch the actors who say they are suffering. A firefighter is going to suffer, a soldier is going to suffer, but actors, please, come on… That’s not suffering.
HE: Your list of creative collaborations is staggering though. You have worked with directors like Claire Denis, Gaspar Noé, Abel Ferrara, Jim Jarmusch, and Michael Haneke. What is it specifically that you look for when you work together with a director?
BD: You know, I’m again searching for love. I want to be dazzled by a director. I need to be charmed by their intellect and enlightened by their personality. It is like a deep love, but without the sex. But I don’t care about that, because it’s like friendship – you don’t sleep with your friends, but you still love them passionately. Another aspect is integrity. I believe I wouldn’t have worked with such talented people if it wasn’t for integrity and honesty. I remember this interview Jim Jarmusch once did, in which he was asked about why he enjoyed working with me. He told them I was upright, honest, and had integrity, that I had dignity and a moral compass, even though it was the morality of a thug. That made me laugh! It might be thug morality, but at least it’s a morality.
HE: Did you always have this thug morality?
BD: I am very straightforward. If I say I do something, I do it. If people don’t like it, then that’s the way it is. So, yes, I’ve always been like this. Actually, I never was a child. I have always been an adult.
HE: So, what happens when you play a role? Are you still yourself or do you embody another character?
BD: It’s always me, always. In my opinion, even the prettiest girl in the world – and I am not talking about myself here –can only offer one thing: herself. So, in all my films, I have never played a character. I don’t disappear in roles; I don’t dress up and act like someone else. It’s all myself.
HE: So, in some way, your life is the artwork?
BD: That’s because I am the true widow of Kurt Cobain, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Jean Genet. They passed all of these things on to me. I will forever be grateful for everything they have transmitted to me. Their poetry, movies, music, and books have shaped my life.
HE: As your film revisits Pasolini’s legacy, and you mentioned his tackling of fascism in Salò, I wonder how you look at the world right now, where fascism is a much stronger force again. Do you feel that the urgency of Pasolini’s texts is coming back because of this?
BD: You have extreme right groups springing up everywhere, something that has been happening for a long time already. I remember back in 2002 when the far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen made it to the second round of the presidential election. Back then you would see teenagers saying they had never been prouder to be French. I was thinking: with classrooms full of children of all colors and backgrounds, how is it so that there isn’t more love for one another? At this very moment, people are being massacred. It is mentioned in the news, but not as much as it should be. That’s incredibly sad, you know? I did a performance two weeks ago, based on a text by Virginie Despentes, that featured the voices of people from Gaza. We were on this stage, and the performance was timed – we were given a timeslot of only three minutes. I said: “Fuck you! You are talking about people at war. I don’t give a shit about you. We will talk for as long as we want, so stop worrying about the things that don’t matter.” My view on all of this is simple: if you fall in love with someone, it’s not for their color, their ethnicity, or religion. Screw that! We have one life, so let’s enjoy it to the max. Let’s all love each other a bit more. We give so little value to human life, it’s so sad.
◼ Interpretation by Laurine Chiarini ◼
In all my films, I have never played a character. I don’t disappear in roles; I don’t dress up and act like someone else. It’s all myself.
Qing chun (Ku)
by Giovanni Marchini Camia
SELECTION COMMITTEE
The town of Zhili, in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, is also known as the “capital of children’s clothing”. Per a 2021 article from the China News Service, more than 14,000 companies operate there, producing around 1.45 billion pieces of clothing a year. What this report neglects to say is that these companies rely on manual labour, executed by a mostly very young and severely underpaid workforce. It’s this reality that Wang Bing (winner of the 2017 Pardo d’Oro for Mrs. Fang) reveals in his latest documentary on contemporary China.
Qing chun (Ku) (Youth (Hard Times)) is the second part of a trilogy on textile workers, following Youth (Spring) (Qingchun), unveiled last year at Cannes. The youths Wang introduces us to, some as young as 16, are migrants from other parts of the country. One of them, whose rural home we visit late in this film, came to Zhili from Yunnan, a province some 2,000 kilometers away. They travel such distances at great personal expense to find work in one of the countless sweatshops that fill rows of identical multi-storey buildings, where they also live in spartan dormitories. Working hours extend well into the night and only a single day off is granted every other week.
Much of the above information isn’t explicitly mentioned in Qing chun (Ku). Wang’s observational style, which links him to such documentary pioneers as the Maysles brothers and Frederick Wiseman, excludes voice-over, while the few on-screen titles mostly just state a worker’s name, age, and hometown. The camera is always in the midst of the action and the director’s signature extended runtimes – the Youth trilogy was whittled down from 2,600 hours of footage Wang shot between 2014 and 2019 – fully immerse us in the world depicted. Once drawn into the film’s rhythm, the sight of a camera operator’s shadow or an occasional breaking of the fourth wall comes as a jolt, reminding us of the presence of an external observer. The overall effect is at once intimate and epic.
We watch these young workers up close as they sew clothes at furious speeds, usually while also smoking a cigarette and engaging in banter with the others. Gradually, the narrative focus shifts from their work to the wage negotiations with their bosses. We witness the workers’ frustrated attempts at haggling a price of ¥4 per garment (equivalent to half a Swiss franc) and huddle together with them as they debate strategies back in their dorms. When one boss refuses to pay a boy his paltry salary because he has lost his timesheet, the injustice is so flagrant it’s almost unbearable. Later, word spreads that a worker who demanded his pay was beaten unconscious and left bleeding in the street. It could be that same boy, but it could just as well be another – this happens all the time.
Integral to Wang’s exceptional talent as a documentarian is his ability to choose very specific subjects within Chinese society that can double as microcosms for much broader realities. This was already evident in his groundbreaking debut, Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (Tiexi qu, 2002), which depicts the decline of a formerly thriving industrial zone whose changing fortunes mirror the country’s shift towards a market economy. The Youth trilogy can be read as a later chapter of this ongoing history, an account of how the current system is experienced by the new generation, eking out an existence at the bottom of the economic ladder. Though Wang refrains from finger-pointing, it’s impossible to forget that this, in our globalized present, is the ladder on which we all stand.
Stills from Kouté
Monsters
by Eddie Bertozzi SELECTION COMMITTEE
Who are today’s monsters? Oppressive regimes that mutilate lives and desires. Inner demons that push against our moral principles. A system that surrounds and controls us. Our primordial instincts.
Razeh-del is a precious new addition to the complex and fascinating body of work of Iranian filmmaker Maryam Tafakory. A fiery essay film burning with poetic intensity and political rage, the short takes us back to 1998, when two high school girls sent a letter to the first-ever women’s magazine published in Iran. A soulful investigation into the representation of women, their censored images, and forbidden bodies in post-Revolution Iranian cinema.
After winning the 2021 Pardi di Domani’s Silver Pardino in the national competition with after a room, Swiss filmmaker Naomi Pacifique is back in Locarno with her most mature work to date, looking she said I forget. An emotionally daring and visually immaculate exploration of alternative models of love, it takes viewers on an honest and lyrical journey of discovery that confronts the complexities of non-monogamous relationships.
Felix Scherrer’s Revier (Territory) is an intriguing object of paranoid observation. An impressionistic portrait of a city, Zurich, and a reflection on its inner turmoil and underlying violence: police and police control; ruins, streets, and parks; buildings. A voice – its subjective stance like a dark lullaby moving through fragments of images, conjuring a silent symphony of urban anger and existential distress.
Park Syeyoung, director of genre sensation The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra (2022), dives into the short form with the mesmerizing Gwe-in esi jeongche (The Masked Monster). A story of ancestral power and gravitas, this rumination on guilt and our innate capacity for evil strikingly blends silent film tropes and Korean legends with a soundscape reminiscent of Asian classic theater, and plenty of classic horror references.
Kouté vwa
by Mathilde Henrot SELECTION COMMITTEE
In Creole, “kouté vwa” means “listen to the voices”. This invitation to listen to the voices of History, of the land, and of each other lends the debut feature film by Franco-Guyanese filmmaker Maxime Jean-Baptiste its title and spirit. Co-written with his sister Audrey – with whom he previously directed the short film Écoutez le battement de nos images (Listen to the Beat of Our Images), unveiled at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival – the movie homes in on a Guyanese family still mourning the violent death of Lucas, uncle to young Melrick (Melrick Diomar) and son to Nicole (Nicole Diomar).
It’s their voices we hear: that of Lucas’s sister, Lucie, who calls for “the city to stop marking its territory”, and Yannick’s, Lucas’s friend, deeply affected by his untimely death. Yet there’s also Nicole’s sense of forgiveness, another voice, strong and hopeful, which helps her confront each of the people who participated in her son’s murder. It is the voice of the Other, whoever that may be, which prevents vengeance from fuelling new cycles of violence. It’s this epiphany that defines us as humans, and members of a community.
Kouté vwa captures the community via two processions: the joyful march full of music in which Melrick participates echoes the funeral procession held for Lucas a few years earlier. On both occasions, the community dresses in white and pleads for peace. Nothing new for Jean-Baptiste: his 2022 short, Moune Ô, which premiered at the Berlinale, also documented a procession that involved the filmmaker’s father. As a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and musician, Maxime Jean-Baptiste delves into the complex history of Guyana, a South American country marked by the violence of Western colonization. He uncovers the traces of past traumas in the present. Blending documentary images, staged scenes, dream sequences, and archive footage, the filmmaker approaches the suffering of Guyana’s land with both tenderness and the clear-eyed perspective of a diaspora child.
Fario
by Savina Petkova
Léo (Finnegan Oldfield) is a young French engineer who lives and works in Berlin. Like every self-respecting Berliner, he has messy relationships and often parties until dawn. At the beginning of Fario, the debut feature from Lucie Prost and a Cineasti del Presente selection, we meet Léo in tiny room, making out with a girl. “You should know, I can’t get it up,” he says to her, curtailing their attempt to have sex – but his disarming, wounded smile softens the blow. Instead of laughing at him, she returns his tender smile. One can easily sense that Léo is brazen only because he is stuck in an emotional limbo; that mix of defensiveness and vulnerability is telling. Yet, Prost handles him with care – he’s the kind of character that one immediately grows fond of, even without any knowledge of how he has been damaged. It’s only when he returns to France to sell the land that once belonged to his recently [?] deceased father that we see the wound festering: and of course, it’s familial. Is his impotence related to his father’s passing? Perhaps the fraught mining project underway there will unearth Léo’s own trauma.
Before Fario, Prost made two short films – the second of which, Va dans les bois, screened in competition at the 2022 Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. In these shorts and her debut feature, the director exhibits a penchant for unconventional, allegorical storytelling deeply rooted in social issues and personal struggles. In Fario, Léo’s demons shapeshift with ease; the narrative explores grief, love, depression, and jealousy, all framed within an ecologically conscious realism, with a twist.
In his rural hometown, a drilling company wants to mine for rare-earth metals. While Léo just wants to get it over with and return to Berlin, it seems as if the land itself just won’t let him. After wandering off alone one night, he has a peculiar encounter with fish schooling in the river – one of the film’s many phantasmic sequences all shot by Return to Seoul (Retour à Séoul, 2022) cinematographer Thomas Favel – that leads him to believe the mining site is toxic. As Fario veers into eco-thriller territory, its biggest asset is star Oldfield’s endless expressiveness. He is an actor who can fit into a horror like Infested (Vermines, 2023) just as well as a daring period drama like Corsage (2022) and still, with but a little dialogue on the page, effortlessly command his scenes. Both his piercing stare and, conversely, his refusing to look at someone function for Léo simultaneously as weapons and shields, but he cannot dodge the most human things of all: the pain of loss and the burden of gain Perhaps, when it comes to love, they are one and the same.
Uniti dall'amore per i film.
Grande cinema in Piazza Grande o a casa, con blue TV.
Pronti, insieme.
A Portrait of Locarno as Remembered by its Guests
In the weeks leading up to the Festival, we reached out to some of Locarno’s most illustrious former guests and asked them to share their first memories of the fest – whether that meant impressions from their world premieres or casual walks around the lake. The result, Beginnings, is a treasure trove of anecdotes and recollections; a polyphonic mosaic of the Festival assembled by those who’ve shaped its history.
Albert Serra, 1994
Nobody knows this, but the first time I visited the Locarno Film Festival was in 1994 when I was just 18 years old. One morning, at the beginning of that year’s edition, I read in a Spanish newspaper that the Festival was screening Exotica by Atom Egoyan – the film had premiered in Cannes a few months earlier – a director whose entire filmography I knew and who interested me. The same day I took a night train from Girona, which left me in Milan the next morning, and from there I took other trains to Locarno. I looked for accommodation on arrival at a hotel of which I vaguely remember the image and the location but not the name, and which I could not find in later years. I went to the screening of the film in the Piazza Grande and by chance, right before it started, I recognized Atom Egoyan by the stairs to the stage, greeted him and introduced myself as an admirer, congratulated him on his films and asked him for an autograph which I have lost but might be able to find. I only stayed one more day because the hotel and everything in Locarno was very expensive and I took the night train back. I arrived in Girona at 6 am on a Sunday. I hitchhiked to my village and I remember being picked up by a very rich businessman in a BMW 7 series car. Many years later, in 2007, Atom Egoyan saw my first film Honor of the Knights (Honor de cavalleria, 2006) in Paris and liked it very much, and a few years later I had the pleasure of meeting him for the second time. From then on we’ve kept crossing paths – we even did a masterclass together in Toronto – and I have a lot of affection and respect for him. As fate would have it, my third film, Story of My Death (Història de la meva mort, 2013), the only fiction film that I did not present at Cannes and was rejected by all sections at that festival – in a longer and unfinished version, it’s true – won the Pardo d’Oro in 2013 with Lav Diaz as president of the jury. Of all the films I’ve made, this one remains, to this day, one of my favorites. At Locarno I had previously presented a couple of other films of mine, The Lord Worked Wonders in Me (El Senyor ha fet en mi meravelles, 2011) and The Names of Christ (Els noms de Crist, 2010), and in later years I have come back and had the honor of meeting in person and talking for a long time with Francesco Rosi, John Waters or Pierre Rissient –among many others. But it all started spontaneously in 1994, hence my deep esteem for this festival.
Truong Minh Quy, 2019
The world premiere of The Tree House (Nhà Cây) at Locarno 2019 was actually the first time I could see my film completed. Due to budget constraints, I couldn’t attend the final post-production sessions in person. Ernst Karel, the sound artist, mixed the sound in his studio in the US, while Son Doan, the film’s director of photography, and Lionel Devuyst, the colorist, managed the color grade in a lab in Belgium. Although we were exchanging ideas and feedback online throughout the process, the final film remained a mystery for me until the premiere.
Just before the screening began, it started to rain torrentially. The mountains were obscured by a thick curtain of rain. We couldn’t wait for it to stop, so we all ran through the downpour to arrive at the cinema in time. Partially soaked, we went on stage and introduced the film. When the lights went out and the first sound and image of the film appeared, I was surprised and deeply moved. Having this film presented at Locarno was very important to me. The film is an experimental documentary essay, and I have to admit it was risky to build it in such a way, as it could be easily misunderstood or overlooked. But Locarno’s programming team didn’t overlook my film, for which I’m grateful.
In Locarno there are hills and mountains that when shrouded in rain resemble the ones in Vietnam captured in The Tree House After the screening, when we got out of the cinema, it was sunny and warm again.
Bertrand Mandico, 2021
“Locarno, The Sky That Speaks” I recall the premiere of After Blue (Paradis sale) in competition at Locarno; I was feverish and the sky was heavy.At the end of the screening, the clouds parted and the applause merged with the rain hammering on the roof of the auditorium. I was wiped out...
As we left the theater, the rain was so heavy that it formed a wall of water before us, as if we were looking out at Niagara Falls. We couldn’t leave the cinema, our ark, as the whole town was a torrent. We crossed Locarno in a car that looked like a boat going up a river in a city submerged, something between Conrad and Ballard. Night had fallen with the deluge, the only glimmer in the water-logged darkness the incandescent yellow of the Festival. We took to the roads, up on high, without ever passing the weeping clouds. And that’s what made a lasting impression on me: the sky above Locarno that was connected to the hearts of the filmmakers.
Women – and Politics – to the Front
By Lucia Leoni
For this year’s edition of Pardo, we invited historians Cyril Cordoba and Lucia Leoni to take us daily on a tour through the Locarno Film Festival’s history, chapter by chapter.
The new millennium marked an epochal transition in Locarno’s history: the end of Raimondo Rezzonico’s presidency (1981-1999) and the start of Marco Solari’s (2000-2023). Rezzonico had had a decades-long connection to the Festival – having served as a member of the organizing committee since the early 1950s, and continuously promoting the Festival via his newspaper, L’Eco di Locarno. When he handed over the reins to Solari, the Presidentissimo was saluted by the Swiss media for having made the Locarno Film Festival one of the two most important cultural events in Switzerland (the other being the Montreux Jazz Festival).
The start of the 21st century marked another important milestone: Roman film critic Irene Bignardi was appointed as the Festival’s artistic director, becoming the first woman to hold the position. With a vastly feminized operating team, Bignardi was also the first artistic director to give high-profile positions to women. This change was conveyed visually by the poster for the Festival’s 2001 edition, which featured a leopard-print stiletto poised pointily on the cobblestones of the Piazza Grande. However, not all of Bignardi’s innovations were well received. With the support of the Swiss Foreign Affairs department, she created a program strand dedicated to films that foregrounded human rights issues, titled (very straightforwardly) “Human Rights Program”. In a bold gambit, just a few months after the start of the American war in Afghanistan, she also dedicated a day of the Festival to Afghan cinema, in order to put forward an image of this country that was far more nuanced than the portrayals offered by Western media. Despite the disapproval this program generated at the time from critics such as Frédéric Maire – who chafed against the idea of a politicized Locarno, and axed the program when he became the Festival’s artistic director after Bignardi’s resignation in 2005 – Bignardi herself later described it as one of her greatest accomplishments.
In retrospect, her tenure can be seen to have been particularly faithful to the Festival’s mission as it was originally conceived. Bignardi’s predecessors had wanted to include countries that were ostracized by Western powers in the aftermath of World War II, and so create a space of peaceful coexistence in front of the big screen. In Locarno, politics has always gone hand in hand with culture, though some periods have proven more overtly engaged than others. Under Maire, Bignardi’s successor, the LFF’s positioning was more discreet – even if he took such decisive steps as doing away with the segregation of films shot digitally and those shot on film and, in 2009, organizing a daring retrospective dedicated to Japanese animated cinema, dubbed “Manga Impact”. In 2009, after just a few years as artistic director, Maire departed Locarno for the Swiss Film Archive (Cinémathèque Suisse), where he continues to serve as director. But even in this new role, he would help to reinvigorate an old Locarno tradition, restoring the close collaboration between the Festival and the archive. In the decade following Maire’s directorial tenure, other Locarno traditions would also make a comeback: glamour and controversy would be the hallmarks of the 2010s.
“We
Have a Name and We Stand Side by Side”: Marta Mateus on FogodoVento
Ahead of the film’s premiere, Pardo spoke with the Portuguese director about her feature debut, one of Locarno77’s most enigmatic and beautiful entries.
by Christopher Small
One of the most elemental premieres in the Concorso Internazionale this year is Fogo do Vento (translated as Fire of Wind), directed by the Portuguese filmmaker Marta Mateus. Elemental because this allusive work, at 72 minutes, consists almost entirely of long, intense, dreamy exchanges of whispered poetry. The plot, such as it is, is a simple one: laborers working in a field in Alentejo are one day forced up into the trees by a madly raging bull that has wrested free of its owners. Once in the treetops, the workers exchange anecdotes from their lives, as if the ascent into the branches above has freed them not only from back-breaking labor in the sun, but also from a spell that has stifled their ability to form a communal connection.
In anticipation of the audience at Locarno discovering this enigmatic and beguilingly beautiful first feature by a forceful new cinematic voice, I sat down with Mateus on the eve of her premiere to puzzle out some of its mysteries.
Christopher Small: There’s a clear relationship between Fogo do Vento and your previous short Barbs,Wastelands (Farpões,baldios, 2017), so I wanted to ask how close the preparation for this feature was to the completion of that short.
Marta Mateus: I finished the previous film immediately before it premiered at Cannes [Directors’ Fortnight] in 2017. I was as tired then as I am now, preparing this one to show in Locarno [laughs]. I returned from Cannes and for whatever reason I couldn’t get the image of a black bull out of my mind; I get that a lot, maybe others do too. Images come into your mind and their meaning isn’t clear to you. There I was, with a black bull in my mind, appearing recurrently. I’m super afraid of bulls, as everyone should be. With that image in my head, I started to sketch some ideas straight away. We had a deadline at the Portuguese Institute of Cinema, so I submitted the first script for a short film, in 2017. I developed it afterwards in a residency at the Casa de Velázquez, and only then did I get support to produce it in Portugal. But I had some health problems and then Covid came along. In the reality of the pandemic, it was impossible to shoot this film. By 2021, I had reworked the whole thing: the bull stayed, as did the people up in the trees, but it had completely changed. Being chased up into the trees [as happens in the film] is not something unfamiliar to laborers in Alentejo. It happened to some friends and in particular to Maria Catarina [Sapata], the old lady in the film, once when she was working in the fields. There are bulls that get out and run wild from time to time. You’re working in a field in the middle of nowhere – what choice do you have but to dash to the nearest tree and wait up there on the branches for somebody to come and take the bull away?
CS: What kinds of things happened during the several years that you were sitting with this film, waiting for a chance to make it?
MM: Well, I realized we were [all] completely different people after those pandemic years. I had already spoken with some of the people I knew that wanted to be in it, so we all waited patiently for this filming work to start over. But Maria Catarina had lost her husband to Covid in the meantime. It was quite incredible for me, as a friend, to accompany her through this grieving process. They were two people who grew up in a small village, born on the same street. He was a little bit older, meaning he was carrying her when she was a baby. A lifetime together. My family and I also passed through extraordinarily difficult circumstances. It was impossible for me not to be moved by all of it. So I kept rewriting, bringing our lives into the script. Sooner or later, I realized this wouldn’t be a short film. When you look at the film, we might see them as individuals up in the trees, but what interests me is how they form a community, a collective. Communities, in general, are breaking apart. In Portugal, in a very clear political gesture, the community is being dismantled. So it was important for me to work in this space of sharing, and to feel the time passing together. Really, this is how we, people, survived until today: community. But this community spirit is very broken, these links between people are frayed. People from the same place rarely cross paths, because they belong to different cultural or social environments and end up living without meeting each other, sometimes with their backs turned. And when something tragic or sad happens, or dangerous [like the bull attack]; when people find themselves in the same situation, it sometimes awakens a particular sense of solidarity. In pain, when life is in danger, some conventions and dogmas fall away, a truce is forged, and a form of mutual empathy emerges, an understanding heart prevails.
CS: How did you integrate the stories you heard into the script?
MM: I prepared the film for a long time before the shoot and I let these stories find their way into what I was writing naturally. More consciously, I concentrated on some spatial aspects: the movement from the ground to the trees, the entry and exit of the bull, time in suspension, and then how to articulate different narratives within this main one. I know why some images or words are in the film; others I don’t know where they came from. I guess they’re bleeding in from my unconscious. Maybe we’ll find out what they mean sometime in the future. Because I’m the producer of the film, I can do this work, which has also been a huge learning experience from the point of view of cinema and life. Then there are the words of Maria Catarina, who speaks in a beautiful language, familiar to people from Alentejo. She can’t read or write, which is common for people of her age, so this way of speaking is very particular – what people from Lisbon would surely call “poetic”. It is not a dialect, but it’s a very beautiful Portuguese. We would be together, sharing ideas about life. She is a sage, a huge heart, so I memorized and internalized her comments and stories. To me she is also the voice of History. Then later I would integrate those stories into our script. They’re not the exact words of Maria Catarina, not the precise stories, but they’re organized among others, through the filter of my memory and imagination. People from various social backgrounds take part in the film, and their words, their stories, their memories are also there. The people I brought in to play these roles are not actors; I like to call them “protagonists”, even though there are no real protagonists in this film. I can’t conceive of stories where someone stands out: life is in common, collective, it’s in relationships, in bonds. We each have a name and we stand side by side.
CS: That’s one of the beautiful things about the end credits of your previous film. The cast speak their own names as the text appears on screen.
MM: Yeah, I wanted to do that because some people simply don’t know how to read. I wanted them to know who else was in the film! And each one has a place and a voice.
CS: I kept thinking that your cinema – the way of arranging a scene, the way of shooting somebody in a tree, or putting two images together – is very ancient. In a sense, it doesn’t feel so much like you’re imposing something
on the subject, but rather listening, watching carefully, and then deciding, okay, this is the best way to film somebody’s face, for example.
MM: Yes, you’re right. Frankly, this film is very complex; it was so complex to make, including those simple moments or ideas you mention. During the shoot, for the first year with our little crew, we all constantly had to go back to the script to reorient ourselves: is this day or night? To remember where we were, what should happen next. At the same time, we were up in the trees all the time, which meant that the sun changed constantly and very obviously when on camera. You feel Earth moving, but up there the changes in light are uncontrollable and surprising. We needed to know exactly what the light would be in this tree at this moment and plan our schedule around that. At some point of course, we cannot control that: there are so many trees that you know there will be another tree that will cover the light and then suddenly, a whole new kind of light will appear. This is the most difficult and also the most beautiful work: nature dictates to us and we can work only if we accommodate those rhythms. It was very, very hard for the first year of shooting, very heavy. We were always in the middle of the countryside. Even walking is hard there, crossing fields with huge steps, walking on plowed land. It took us a lot of time to do anything. And then I realized, I’m not going to finish now [in this first period of shooting] – I must come back, but much lighter, relieved of the burden of organizing a team and dealing with so many different energies. With that in mind, I continued working on new sequences. Sometimes alone, sometimes with someone helping, a friend, Pedro [Costa], my son Safir, family, I continued shooting from time to time. During some shots in the forest, I was alone with the protagonist. When you’re alone, and you don’t have to worry about feeding a lot of people, moving them around in cars, you can experiment more freely. When there is trust, intimacy is a fertile treasure. Suddenly people would completely lose all tension. So these trees became my atelier. Me with my feet on the ground between reflectors and them up there. The trees release calming substances, just as it brings us peace to meditate to the sound of birdsong. We know this from experience and it’s also what science tells us... It was this movement that finally imposed itself on the work and which I tried not to give up. I spent four years with those trees, so by the end I knew many of them very well. And the people stayed with us over those years. Some of the kids grew up with this film.
CS: How did you begin to organize all that, in editing, into a cinematic form?
MM: In 2022, I worked for two months in Paris with [editor] Claire Atherton. We watched the images I had shot and experimented a lot with the structure. Through that process, we arrived at a certain form, but at that point I had the feeling I completely missed the heart of the film... So we went back to shoot. After that, I needed to grab the images and experiment myself, get to know them more deeply, and try to edit it in a different light. Sometimes, when you don’t know which direction you should be heading in, it’s best to just keep reworking it. Other times you have to leave the film alone to mature, like wine – you must give it a rest and then taste it again to make the right blend. As for me, images just come to my mind, as I said. Sometimes that happened intensely, repeatedly. They become sharper, so I know we needed to go and shoot those images. Then there’s the simple problem solving. When you work with people who are not actors, they have their own life, they have their problems, work, family. We must respect that, but also find a way to continue the process. Those kinds of unexpected problems meant that I had to continually think of ways to organize and reorganize the sequences, to weave this plot; I’m very afraid of linear stories anyway, or at least I feel I don’t know how to do those kinds of films. Better to put two images that you don’t quite understand together and see what that link creates. It often can’t be explained. We don’t need permanent rhetoric... The strength of these conjunctures goes deeper in awakening our unconscious, our whole being.
CS: Well, sometimes this film moves slowly, but mostly it’s surprisingly fast-paced in its montage of shots, faces, stories.
MM: It was a long process to achieve those rhythms. There were many desperate days when I looked at these images and I said, “I will not be able to solve this”... but then, as in my previous short, I knew that all these incredible people gave so much to the film, gave me this great joy of working together, so I had to finish the film for them at least. Films are not about the filmmakers. Or they shouldn’t be... This is about us all being in life trying to do something... It’s important to rediscover our images – we must forget why we did this or that, what happened that day, why didn’t we try it another way, why the light isn’t as good as it could be. That is very hard and it requires guts. Through all that, we search for... how do you say it in English? Potency. In French it sounds better: puissance. In cinema, that means finding an alchemic force. At the same time, making a film, any work of art, is also a kind of exorcism or the wielding of a magical weapon. I think that’s what Van Gogh, de Chirico, Munch, to just mention painters, did. That’s why their work vibrates and is alive. The tools of cinema are very rich, magical even, and that’s why they can also be so dangerous. We’re going through this process and drawing out forces that we don’t understand very well. Like the trees, between heaven and earth, up there the sun rules, the moon, stars, the universe: we are not alone. We are subjects of nature: we are side by side with the birds and all the other elements or animals – each play a role in the film. We are not completely disconnected as we are made to believe in this individualistic and sectarian society. This is not a philosophy. It’s a very concrete practice.
CS: I wanted to ask you about the title, Fogo do Vento, and where that comes from. I can imagine that the heat in the fields of Alentejo must only be getting more and
more unbearable for the workers, for obvious reasons MM: Actually, I don’t know where that came from. It was the title from the beginning. In English, it is Fire of Wind, which Andy Rector, my friend who did the translation, told me is a strange kind of English, but then that it sounds something like a Native American name – that totally convinced me to keep it. [Laughs] It goes back to what you were saying before about this feeling of things being ancient, also cinematically. There are two natural elements there: fire and wind. For me, this is important, also because I was born in Alentejo; it’s an elemental place. Alentejo is still a place where agriculture exists, even if the landscape was pretty much transformed into monocultures that suck up the scarce water and contaminate the soils – and now there’s the machine for picking up the grapes and you hear it in the evening. It works day and night, and disturbs everything with its very strong vibration. It’s so violent, shaking the vineyards, that it resonates for kilometers. And of course, that machine takes the job that people used to do. At the same time, there are no people to work in the fields and the people who work today are mainly Roma, or workers coming from Nepal. These are also the people who are attacked most viciously by the Portuguese extreme right. Their narrative is that they have taken away work from the “Portuguese people”, when actually there are no people to work. Where does this invention come from, this racism, this complete fiction? This violent machine? In that sense, the people of Alentejo, like everywhere, also moved away from nature. We no longer see ourselves as part of it. That’s why, as Artaud said, Europe is very sick. What the colonialists tried to impose abroad, they also tried to impose here, and the consequences of the climate crisis may have originated here. How paganism and the relationship with nature was shaped by the Catholic Church. “God is a verb,” say the women when they offer their children to the moon. “You raise her, and I give her breast” means that the stars feed the spirit, the mother only feeds the body. But talking to the moon resulted in many people burning in the fires of the Inquisition. We are still at war over territories, both spiritual and geographical. It’s a history of control, of the power one has over the other. What we’re experiencing today, the incomprehensible violence of the ongoing wars, stems from unhealed wounds. I thought we must go back, to understand where we came from, who we are, and where we are going. To bring back our dead in order to make peace with the past. I think that’s what Godard teaches us in TheImageBook(Lelivred’image, 2018): images of war reproduce war, language creates language; we need to destabilize our imagination. Our responsibility as directors is enormous. If our every gesture resonates in eternity, I keep in mind that the work of art does resist death.
◼ Marta Mateus’s FogodoVento premieres today, 13.8 at 14:00 at Palexpo (FEVI)
Locarno Kids la Mobiliare è un programma di proiezioni, incontri dedicati ai più giovani e laboratori, resi possibili anche grazie agli spazi messi a disposizione da SUPSI Istituzionale
Nelson 7 anni
Tutto inizia con la tua immaginazione
Il cinema è un universo di immagini, suoni, colori, storie, emozioni. E Locarno Kids è la chiave per aprire la porta di questo mondo, per entrarci da protagonista.
PLATEFORME 10: PAY US A VISIT
Home to three major museums, Plateforme 10 is a verifiable Lausanne institution, a self-contained museum-neighborhood with restaurants, terraces, book- and gift-shops, and arcades. All just a stone's throw from the train station.
Take your time to visit and soak up a long weekend of culture with a three museum pass for 25- per person. This gives you access to exhibitions of photography, fine art, and more for three months. It's transferable, so you can share it with your loved ones.
AFFASCINANTE CASA GEMELLA IMMERSA NEL VERDE
Cadro | 5.5 locali | superficie abitabile mq 290 ca. | terrazza mq 35 ca. | giardino mq 150 ca. | 1 posto auto interno e 2 esterni | CHF 1'490'000.-
LUMINOSO APPARTAMENTO VISTA LAGO
Maroggia | 3.5 locali | superficie abitabile mq 100 ca. | superficie terrazza mq 10 ca. residenza con una piscina interna e una esterna vista lago | CHF 800'000.-
VILLA D’AUTORE CON PISCINA
Novazzano | 8.5 locali | superficie abitabile mq 365 ca. | superficie terreno mq 1'730 ca. 2 posti auto interni e 2 esterni | zona tranquilla e ben servita | CHF 2'850'000.-
ELEGANTE UFFICIO IN STABILE RECENTE E PRESTIGIOSO
Paradiso | 3 locali | superficie utile lorda mq 130 ca. | standing elevato | locali luminosi 2º piano | 2 posti auto interni | CHF 1'230'000.-
Per informazioni: +41 91 695 03 33 immobili@interfida.ch interfida.ch
Looking for culture?
Discover the history of Lago Maggiore
Santuario della Madonna del Sasso, Orselina
Switzerland Tourism – Ivo Scholz
ACROSS
1. Walk and talk, for two
6. Locks down or locks up
8. Vanessa of Blow-Up
9. The other Vittorio De …
10. Soviet film theorist Kuleshov, eponym of the Kuleshov effect
11. Munches on
12. Clair who won the first—and second! —Pardo d’Oro
13. ___-la-la
14. Memo header
15. Persistence
18. Twist together
19. Fathers, to a tot
1. Hindu scriptures
2. Heartbeat chart, for short
3. 1920 play that introduced the word “robot”
4. Underwire-free undergarment
5. With 7-Down, this year’s edition of the Locarno Film Festival
6. 5-Down, in italiano
7. See 5-Down
8. Caboose
9. 7-Down, in italiano
12. Really comes down, say
16. Feature of an off-road vehicle, for short
17. Employer for Jason Bourne: abbr.
•Crossword by Nicholas Henriquez
Sauvages
by Claude Barras
August 13th, 21:30, Piazza Grande
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Sauvages — Illustration of the film by Ursula Bucher