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
Image from the press conference for the
announcement
of the competition selection films.
for
more...
SELECTED FILMS FOR COMPETITION
OF THE 3-rd EDITION OF TIFF
for
more...
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