Asia still under-represented in Paris documentary festivals
By Kunang Helmi-Picard [10 pts ML]
PARIS, France (JP): At the recent Academy Awards in the United States, the Oscar for the best feature documentary was awarded to I am a Promise by Susan and Alan Raymond.
Despite their preference for the annual Cinema du Reel documentary film festival in Paris, which also ended last month, the couple conquered the limelight in Hollywood with their riveting story about a devoted school principal determined to bring equality in education to the impoverished, inner-city children of North Philadelphia.
The American documentarists' comment about the Cinema du Reel was, "Here documentaries are treated as ...priorities, unlike the Academy Awards in America where huge fiction film productions dominate the screens."
Apart from the 16th Cinema du Reel documentary festival from March 11 to 20, Paris also played host to the 13th ethnographic film festival, the Bilan du Film Ethnographique from March 21 to 25, which always follows the first.
Suzette Glenadel, the energetic red-haired director of the Cinema du Reel, received 550 film applications for the festival this year, 150 more than last year.
A total of 45 films were selected for the International Competition and the Panorama of French Production.
Of the selection, Glenadel said, "Woven from memories, time, anticipation or promise in a quest for meaning and truth, our images of the `real' are all singular stories intended to reveal what is universal, to enrich our knowledge and to fight against amnesia."
This selection was completed by a retrospective of Italian documentaries of over 100 films by such directors as Fellini, Visconti, Bertolucci, and De Seta shown together for the first time in Europe.
Thus Parisian film enthusiasts had an amazing choice of high- quality documentaries on large-size screens during the festivals - apart from their daily choice of 400 films in the city.
Among the overwhelmingly serious themes, three films at the Cinema du Reel stood out due to the underlying humor.
One of them, Metal en Melancholie, which, despite its somber title, treated the theme of eccentric Peruvian taxi drivers and their battered old cars in Lima in a poetic manner provoking much gaiety among audiences.
Its Dutch film-maker Heddy Honigmann went on to win the main festival award, the French Heritage prize.
The most amusing one was The Lapirovs move to the West, by Jean-Luc Leon, showing how a Moscow family emigrated to the U.S. via Vienna, despite bureaucratic tangles and how they came back to visit their friends in Russia.
Asia
Yet again Asia was under-represented at this festival with only three films, all by non-Asian film-makers: one by Frederic Labourasse on an Indonesian school boy; another by Gianfranco Bosi about Indian boatmen of Benares, and Peter Brosens' film on Mongolia which won the Joris Ivens prize for a first film.
Mario Simondi, director of the Italian documentary film festival in Florence, who had just admired Indonesian Gavin Nugroho's Surat untuk Bidadari, asked The Jakarta Post why Indonesian documentary and fiction film directors do not send more contributions abroad, since film enthusiasts in Europe are waiting to see more works from Asia.
Brazilian jury member Caesar Paes stressed the importance of this festival for those film-makers from Asia, Africa and Latin America.
"Since winning an award myself four years ago, I have considerably less trouble finding financial backing and distributing my films world-wide."
The 52-minute film on an Indonesian boy, Uria, Child of the River, was twice shown to appreciative audiences at the Georges Pompidou Culture Center in Paris.
The director, Labourasse, is no stranger to Indonesia as he served as cameraman across the archipelago for a series of television films by the famed marine expert, Jacques Cousteau.
When Labourasse visited Siberut Island in West Sumatra, he decided to film a Mentawai schoolboy who came from a remote village on the island and who attended a Catholic school in the principal village. Uria reaches his school by a strenuous three- day canoe journey.
Thirteen-year-old Uria is poised between the world of his parents who recently settled down in a newly founded village after leading a nomadic life through the rain forest, and the modern world where money for exchanging goods is a new experience.
We see an affectionate Uria teaching his father to count correctly when he returns home for holidays. Although Uria is Catholic, he still participates in ancient rites because his father is a dukun (medicine-man).
He wants to return later to help his family and others after completing his high school education on the main island of Sumatra like his elder brother.
School scenes contrast with scenes of daily life at home while the long journey home on the river and through the rain forest is fully depicted separating the two sections of the film.
After the festival, film-makers, ethnologists and enthusiasts from all over the world then stayed another week to enjoy the Bilan du Film Ethnographique, initiated since 1981 by renowned French ethnologist Jean Rouch.
As in the Cinema du Reel, not only spectators and film-makers attended, but also television program directors, distributors and other film professionals eager to discover new talents.
Flores
Films by students as well as by visual anthropologists from many countries on a variety of subjects such as music, rituals and artisans are shown in different theme groups before discussions take place.
From the nostalgic tunes of Parisian accordion music to the frenzied chants and dances of the Wai Brama tribe in Flores, Indonesia, from the canoes of Senegal to the story of the last Yahi Indian of California, tales of the changes in daily or ritual lives filled the screen.
Timothy Asch's A Celebration of Origins about the rituals of the Wai Brama tribe celebrating their mythic origins was greeted with much interest.
Here we are introduced to the problems of upholding traditional social order in Flores, where the Wai Bramas have to reconcile tradition, Catholicism and modernization.
The domain of Wai Brama is the largest, and, according to their myths of origin, the oldest, of the seven ceremonial domains among the people of the Tana 'Ai region of Flores.
On a final note, both Glenadel, director of the Cinema du Reel and Rouch, director of the Bilan du Film Ethnographique, expressed their regrets about the increased use of videotape in filming.
The process destroys the reflective quality and beauty of 16 millimeter or 35 mm film. Archives have grave storage problems as video films shot for television purposes only a decade ago are already fading and have to be restored at great cost.
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