FOCUS:
Third Tirana
International Short Film Festival
After two strong
outings, abetted by the breaking news that Tirana
was chosen »World City 2005,« it was a sure bet that
the Third Tirana International Short Film
Festival (5-11 December 2005) would go bigtime
on the world festival stage too. With more than
20,000 Euros in purse prizes as bait, this year’s
TIFF received over 700 applications from 65
countries for entry in its five sections: 370 in the
fiction category, 185 in animation, 85 in
documentary, 60 in experimental, and 30 more in the
cross-country Albanian-language shorts section. In
addition, festival director Ilir Butka and
programmer Genc Permeti programmed 27 feature films
in free-fall evening programs that ran deep into the
night. Most important of all for a festival’s
continued existence, TIFF 2005 could count on the
support of 35 sponsors, plus the city’s foreign
ambassadors and cultural centers, for the six-day
event.
Three juries divided up
the awards. The International Jury headed by critic
David D’Arcy, awarded »Best Film of TIFF« to Heiko
Hahn’s Vorletzter Abschied (Before I Go)
(Germany), the poignant story of an old couple faced
with the woman’s shattering Alzheimer illness. Beth
Amstrong’s Danya (Australia), the story of a
young girl’s gradual grasp of the reality of death,
was awarded Best Fiction Film. Special
Mentions for fiction shorts underscored the
strength of this category. Robert Bodina’s
Lulebore (Snowdrop) (Albania), a moving tale of
a husband’s losing effort to raise the money to
secure for his ailing wife a life-saving operation
abroad, was also voted the Public’s Award.
Jason Branderburg’s 113 (Switzerland) uses a
subtle flashback technique to unveil the hidden
wartime secrets of a building (»113« is the street
address) about to be torn down by wreckers.
Another Special
Mention went to Roman Filippov’s Posvyashenie
(Initiation) (Russia). Shot in black-and-white, it
sketches the determination of a sensitive young boy
to escape his tormentors on a playground while on
his way to a flute rehearsal. A personal favorite
was another Russian entry: Vladimir Kott’s Dbep
(The Door). This absurd Beckettian tale begins with
a simpleton emerging from behind a still-standing
door after a house has been razed, whereupon he
carries the door around on his back like the clowns
in Roman Polanski’s Two Men and a Wardrobe
(Poland, 1959), drawing all and sundry into a merry
round of encounters until he disappears behind the
door again.
Indeed, the fiction
category was the strong suit at TIFF with Spanish
entries topping the list for audience appreciation.
The Media Award by Albanian critics went to
Alex Sampayo’s La buena caligrafia (The Good
Caligraphy), the story of an illiterate Spanish
woman whose desire to learn to read and write leads
to a secret about her husband that in the end warms
her soul more than distressing her heart. José
Javier Rodriguez Melcon’s Nana (Lullaby)
needs only three minutes to recount the dangerous
voyage of asylum-seekers on an open sea, for the
mother’s Lullaby is directed at a sleeping
baby in the arms of a frightened young African
mother. And Luiso Berdejo and Jorge C. Dorado’s
La Guerra (War), set in World War Two, focuses
on the efforts of a young girl to save her baby
brother after her parents have been wantonly killed
by marauding soldiers.
Equally strong were a
handful of entries in the documentary section. Igor
Strembitskyy’s Podorozhniy (Wayfarers)
(Ukraine), awarded Best Documentary Short,
depicts in striking poetic images the everyday in a
clinic for the mentally retarded. On the surface
Xavier Lukomski’s Le pont sur la Drina (The
Bridge over the Drina) (Belgium) appears to be
little more than a one-shot static portrait of a
bridge over the River Drina in eastern Bosnia as it
emerges from the darkness of night into the light of
day, save that the dialogue of a witness at Den Haag
pinpoints in chilling terms the death-toll of bodies
(men, women, children) that passed nightly under
this historic bridge once celebrated in a novel by
Nobel Prize winner for literature Ivo Andric. In
Maciej Adamek’s insightful Powrot (Getting
Back) (Poland) we follow the faltering efforts of a
man to start all over again after serving a 10-year
prison term. And Burbuque Berisha’s straight-forward
Te rritur ne rruge (Growing Up in the
Streets) (Kosovo) the focus is on street-children,
some with ailing or jobless parents, making the
rounds with produce and wares to make ends meet at
home.
Tomek Baginski’s
Fallen Art (Poland) was awarded Best
Animation Short. A multi-festival winner, it
depicts the crass attitude of a deranged officer at
a military base towards underlings in his command.
Another musing multi-festival winner was Geza M.
Toth’s Maestro (Hungary), which blends an
operatic aria with puppet animation to underscore a
closing pun on a »performance« gag. And Erik
Rosenlund’s Butler (Sweden) spoofs sex and
marriage in line drawings about a butler who loses
his job when a couple discover that the erotic
begins at homebase.
Shpend Bengu’s
Hyrje&Dalje (Enter&Exit) (Albania), a
black-and-white exercise in flashing images, was
awarded Best Experimental Short. And in the
new competition for »Albanian Shorts« the
entries included productions from Kosovo and the
USA. Dhimiter Asmailaj’s 89 cents (USA),
awarded the top prize, probes the searching
subconsciousness of a young student living in New
York City.
Currently, the Albanian
National Center for Cinematography (ANCC) is
promoting the launch of a half-dozen newly financed
productions and coproduction. Kujtim Cashku’s The
Magic Eye has already made the rounds of
festivals in Cairo, Tel Aviv, and Montreal. Robert
Budina’s short feature Snowdrop won two
prizes at this year’s Tirana festival. Artan
Minarolli’s Chant d’amour, a coproduction
with France based on a short story by awarded author
Ylljet Alicka, is finished and headed for either
Berlin or Cannes. Dhimiter Anagnosti’s Father and
Godfather, an original script backed solely by
ANCC funds, is now in postproduction. Besnik Bisha’s
Mao Tse Tung, the story of a boy given this
name during the country’s link to Red China, is also
nearing release. And Fatmir Koci’s A King for
Circumcision, based on Ismail Kadaré’s
historical novel Sinister Year, is ready to
go before the cameras.
Fatmir Koci, Albania’s
best known director abroad, was honored at TIFF 2005
with a three-film retrospective: his short features
The Third One (1988) and Ballad Through
Bullets (1989), plus the feature Tirana Year
Zero (2001). Ken Loach was on hand for the
special screening of Tickets (2005), an
interwoven train odyssey directed together with
Ermanno Olmi and Abbas Kiarostami. Serb director
Goran Paskaljevic’s Balkan Powder Keg (1999)
and Midwinter Night’s Dream (2004) were
sellout presentations at the Millennium 2 venue. So,
too, British documentarist Nick Broomfield’s Kurt
& Courtney (1998), his controversial film about
rock stars Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love. Last, but
not least, seven of Regina Ziegler’s Erotic Tales
were booked for late hour cineastes.
Ron
Holloway |
