When people think of European cinema they often think of black and white film, hand-held camera and existential truth shown at 24 frames a second. And of course there’s quite a bit of that and really, who does it better? The problem is that there are geniuses of European cinema like Czech animator and film fantasist Karel Zeman who then don’t fit the pre-conceived image and end up far lesser-known than they should be.
Fear not though, as this injustice is set to end with a May 11 screening of Zeman’s version of the legendary adventures of Baron Munchausen – “Baron Prášil” – at the University of Texas. For more on the man whose film versions of the books of Jules Verne are unrivaled (including by Jules Verne’s originals).
And to complete the European animation double bill a report from the recent AniFest, a major international animation festival held in the Czech town of Teplice in which 15,000 visitors watched almost 500 films. The festival’s Grand Prize winner was “Divers in the Rain” by Estonians Olga and Priit Pärnovi.
More on the festival at http://www.anifest.cz/
Coming next: An interview with a Polish animator who screened her work at AniFest and whose documentary-feature animation presents the history of clothing through the main character’s traveling back in time in a magic wardrobe.
(Photo courtesy of the Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas at Austin)
The themes of family, identity and society link this year's films, largely drawn from the ranks of independent movie makers. Thirty-nine films--many with a documentary focus--explore the grave social changes and questions people from across the world face day to day.The Coen Brothers commence the festival with their film “True Grit”, while Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog screen documentaries and Hungarian director Béla Tarr and the French animation filmmaker Michel Ocelot also present new work.
It is hard to say. If by believing you mean praying to an anthropomorphic deity who created the world and half controls it and half observes it, then I am probably not a believer. But if you mean that it is not all accidental, that there is a mystery to existence, a deeper meaning, that I do believe in. Actually, I am pretty sure of it.... we ask, why is there anything living? And then we ask, why is there anything at all? And if you tell some advocate of scientism that the answer is a secret, he will go white hot and write a book. But it is a secret. And the experience of living with the secret and thinking about it is in itself a kind of faith.
I am always amused when people try to put me in a drawer and label me as this or that. It is not all that important. What is important to me is the truth. And the truth is that Russia has become a threat to its neighbors. I don’t care whether this be considered liberal, or conservative, or progressive. But it is the truth. I am not a friend of war. But it is the truth that if we had intervened in Kosovo sooner, we might have saved many lives. The same thing holds for Iraq. When the first Gulf War took place, I was all for going all the way to Baghdad. When dictators get appeased, people die.
(Men on the Bridge) represent(s) the best of what’s happening in sections of (Turkish) cinema: a willingness to grapple with the big themes and ask the right questions, a socially engaged cinema largely untainted by didacticism, which is generally purveyed in solidly naturalist style and firmly embedded in ordinary lives and real worlds, usually at the sharp end of economic circumstance.
