di  Rossana M. FONSECA

The Secret in the Satchel

di Tay-jou Lin

China 2007, 52'

Even animation can be quite heavy, when it’s used to illustrate the stories of three young Chinese students. Professor and filmmaker Tay-jou Lin uses different techniques to reveal the emotional stories of these anonymous students. Dramatizations, interviews with actors and actresses, voice overs with a different voice and animations are rapidly interwoven.
The three main themes are violence, confusion and sexuality. Tay-jou Lin found out about the disturbing private life of students by the drawings, pictures, letters and journals he accidentally found in their housework. When he asked the students how many of them have thought about suicide, they all rose their hands. Three of them wanted to share their story. A complex web of memories is being unfold by the different images, and during this process, the students seem to have more in common than expected.

This film is both a piece of art and a disturbing portrait of this generation in China. The relationship between Tay-jou Lin and his students takes the film to a higher, trustworthy level. Although the stories have happy endings, I still was left with anger and distress, and I still can’t forget the moving but scary drawings that are not just illustrations, instead they carry the film to a higher level.

28/30

Septembers

di Carles Bosch

Spain 2007, 90'

Every September a songfestival is being held at a prison near Madrid. The event deeply inspired filmmaker Carles Bosch, and he decided to follow some of the singers during one year – from September until September. Every song is dedicated to a loved one, husbands, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, parents, grandparents, children. Loved ones that are close, not so close or loved ones they might never see again.
Norma has already won the festival twice, she dedicates her songs to her daughter who thinks she’s working abroad. Adalberto is a gay Argentinian whose grandmother thinks he works on a cruiseship and has a girlfriend. Arturo dedicates his gypsy song to his wife and three children. Jose, a former rock band drummer, finds love in Fortu from the women’s prison department.
Bosch finds the people to whom the love songs are addressed, and makes a remarkable, expressive and emotional film about hope, love and joy behind prison bars. Since the protagonists are no murderers, rapists or other heavy crime committers, it is not that hard to sympathize with these drug-couriers, frauds, ex-junkies and bank robbers. They might be innocent, they might be guilty, it just doesn’t matter anymore as you only want them to have a bit of the love they long for in their lives. Bosch shows us the daily life of these prisoners, their hopes and dreams, several releases and final verdicts, a wedding behind bars and New Years Eve in prison, until the next songfestival arrives. “If I win, I’ll sing Fly Me To The Moon” says Norma. And so the film ends, “In other words, I love you”. I cried my eyes out. Bosch managed to get under the skin of both protagonists and audience.

Therefore, Septembers is the best film I have seen at this year’s IDFA.
 

30/30

Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Incognita

di Maria Finitzo

USA 2007, 60'

Stem Cell research is hot these days. Every single day you can find an article about stem cells in the papers. It’s a controversial subject as well, religious groups are against the use of embryo’s, and President Bush is on their side. The other camp is represented by scientists and moral idealists. Maria Finitzo does a pretty good job in presenting the controversy from a number of angles: neurologists, lab scientists, bio-ethicists, religious groups and patients.
If you had access to stem cell research, what would you do if your child became paralyzed and this research might allow her to walk again? Jack Kessler, head of the Department of Neurology and Clinical Neurological Sciences at Northwestern University has to face this question, as his daughter Allison suffers from spinal cord injury after a skiing accident at the age of 15. She becomes paralyzed from the waist down. Kessler immediately shifts his focus to a form of stem cell research, hoping for a cure. Mapping Stem Cell Research follows the efforts of Kessler and his team, and the corresponding ethical dilemmas. Meanwhile Kessler’s daughter just wants to live, with or without her wheelchair. She is a bright young woman that respects her father’s values and efforts, but she clearly thinks he is too obsessive with finding a cure. As she states “If a cure will be found, it will not be in 5 years. I’d better make the most of it now”.
Finitzo puts Kessler’s face on stem cell research, as his advances and setbacks have fuelled the nationwide debate about genetics and the corresponding legal, medical and ethical dilemmas. The audience is forced to choose its own position on the issue of stem cell research, as Finitzo asks us to think of the thousands of people like Allison who daily face the struggle to overcome incurable disabilities. I think these questions have to be asked in our society, and the subject of this documentary is therefore well-chosen and effective. The filmmaking style and technique was clearly inferior to the subject, as Mapping Stem Cell Research is a standard American TV documentary, with talking heads, bombastic statements, and family values above all. Also, the comparison with Terra Incognita (The New World) is a bit pretentious and obvious.

But as faces have to be put onto these ethical dilemmas, I do agree with the IDFA selection committee to chose a documentary like Mapping Stem Cell Research as a Silver Wolf Award Competitor.

28/30
 

Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go

di Kim Longinotto

UK 2007,100'

Kim Longinotto is an old time favourite IDFA guest, and friend of the festival. She has made many successful documentaries, for example Sisters In Law and The Day I Will Never Forget. In Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go, her latest film, she follows troubled children at a special school. The IDFA daily this year described her way of filming as ‘fly on the wall technique’, which does provide a good analysis of her earlier work. However, in Hold Me Tight the children sometimes are aware of the camera, and they sometimes even interact with the woman behind the camera. You can’t say it’s a new and original approach for Longinotto, as she sticks with her observational style (no interviews or talking heads), however she does not remain the familiar fly on the wall. Could it have something to do with her own childhood?
It is quite a confronting and emotional portrait, this documentary. Place of action is the Mulberry Bush School, a boarding school for troubled children with behavioural problems. These children are no longer allowed at regular schools, and cannot be handled by their parents. If they succeed at the Mulberry Bush School, they will go back to regular public education. The school’s philosophy is to ‘keep the children safe’ and make them regain their self-esteem. The harder they kick, bite, spit and swear (and yes, they do), the tighter the teachers will hold them. Just as long as they need. No punishments, only a calm-down-room full of colourful cushions and paintings, where the child may explain why he acted in such a way. This paradox works: aggression appears to be vulnerability.
The teachers’ incredible patience, love and caring must have been Longinotto’s first inspiration. She also clearly sympathizes with the children, who are searching and longing for the love, attention and acceptance which they don’t receive from their young and unstable parents. The filmmaker succeeds in presenting the daily life at school from different angles: it is about kicking the teacher between her legs as much as about wanting to marry her. Heavy and aggressive scenes are intertwined with lighter and more playful storylines. The undertone, however, remains emotional and confronting. Although the children come from different backgrounds, they all suffer severe trauma. The parents cannot be blamed alone, but the scenes of the parents visiting have great impact on both the children and the audience. “Did you tell him no hurting?” whispers the little wet-eyed redhead when he gets to spend a weekend with this parents. Say no more. Although the children come from different backgrounds

Kim Longinotto has spent several years in a boarding school herself, and she told the world her negative experiences in her first documentary. Her background could have led to a certain bitterness, but she surprisingly maintains her observing style, and lets the protagonists interact with the camera. A boarding school can be loving and caring. There is hope, as the children are smart enough to succeed in life after the Mulberry Bush School. However, by the end of the film you wonder what will become of them, when they leave their safe environments and are being thrown back in the lives they have lived before. We don’t know.

We can only hope.

25/30

Mechanical Love

di Phie Ambo

Denmark/Finland 2007, 79'

Former Joris Iven Award winner Phie Ambo has brought her new film to Amsterdam. Mechanical Love is the first part of a trilogy about what kind of creatures human beings are. It sounds pretentious, but Mechanical Love lives up to the expectations as it investigates the relationship between robots and humans on a profound level.
The film follows a number of people who are in different ways connected with a robot. The Japanese engineer, a devoted scientist who develops robots with the main goal of making people love it. He has even created his twin robot to investigate his 8 year old daughter’s trust in machines. The old German woman who cares for a baby seal robot named Paro. We also meet the creator of Paro and learn about the production process.
When does a robot become a beloved creature? The Japanese daughter is afraid of the robot, and she doesn’t accept him as her father. But as the Danish caretaker in a nursing home stated: “they perfectly know this white baby seal is like a computer or a coffee machine. But as soon as he opens his eyes and starts to howl, they forget everything”. The other residents of the nursing house make fun of the old woman. But Paro keeps her memories alive. Of course, she rationally knows the animal has no living soul, but still she quickly develops an emotional relationship with the soft, cuddly seal that is programmed to be contact-seeking.
Mechanical Love does not preach, teach or lecture. Phie Ambo wants us to think for ourselves, and therefore she poses many questions instead of giving the answers. The documentary just follows people and their behavior, and it’s up to us to figure out what it means. This documentary captures one of the bigger issues of our (future) society. Ambo ends her film with the well known phrase “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return”.

Is it? Can it be mechanical? Ambo just wants us to think about it. Meanwhile I can’t wait for the second part of the trilogy.

28/30

Up the Yangtze!

di Yung Chang

Canada 2007, 93'

It’s called the Farewell Cruise. Western tourists enjoy a luxurious boat trip on the Yangtze river, while the Chinese workers offer them all they need, drinks, food and entertainment. Meanwhile they gasp at the landscape that will soon disappear. Up The Yangtze is Canadian director Yung Chang’s powerful portrait of his grandfather’s rapidly changing country. China is developing into the world’s next economic power, and the Three Gorges Dam is the perfect example of the political, social, cultural and geographical changes this ambition implements. The Dam has already been appointed the perfected metaphor by the cinematic master Jia Zhang Ke, although using this Dam as a symbol for China becomes almost too obvious.
A demographic movement of two million people is caused by the Three Gorges Dam. 16-year-old Yu Shui’s family represents just one Chinese family that is being harmed by the immense project. However, Shui is the perfect example of a young Chinese adolescent that is sent to work instead of the university she longs for. Her family faces relocation. Shui manages to find a job at one of these luxury cruise ships that offer Farewell Cruises. Meanwhile, Chang also follows the presumptuous and spoiled Chen Bo Yu. He dreams the American dream of a quick fortune. Both Chen Bo Yu and Yu Shui have to face the Western culture, a culture that will mix up their lives forever.

Up The Yangtze is Chang’s own cinematic Farewell Cruise, as he salutes China as it once was, his grandfather’s homeland. This documentary is a remarkable poetic masterpiece that captures the great changes of this century. Like the young protagonists, we have to face what is yet to come while the stream never stops. Memorable and beautiful, one of the best documentaries I have seen so far.

28/30

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