Two, Three Times Branco: A Legend’s Producer
Deux, trois fois Branco-
FRANCE, PORTUGAL / 2018 / French, Portuguese, English / Color, B&W / Digital File / 110 min
Director, Editing: Boris Nicot
Photography: Denis Gaubert
Sound: Ricardo Leal
Producer: Gérald Collas
Production Companies: Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), LX Filmes
Source: Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA)
Film critic Serge Daney went to Lisbon in 1981 to visit director Manoel de Oliveira on location. As Daney wrote, Portugal in those days was “not a center, but a temporarily magnetized pole” of cinema, and many filmmakers such as Raúl Ruiz, Wenders, Kramer, and Monteiro gathered here, making films that were then shown around the world. A young man name Paulo Branco produced many of these works. This film is about a return journey to that era, thirty-five years later—with Daney’s texts to guide him, a documentarist belonging to the new generation departs for Portugal to visit this legendary producer, who travelled back and forth between Lisbon and Paris repeatedly meeting both economic success and failure.
Goodbye My Love, North Korea
- KOREA / 2017 / Korean, Russian / Color / Digital File / 80 min
Director: Kim So-young
Photography: Kang Jin-seok, Shin Imho
Editing: Kim So-young, Kang Jin-seok
Sound: Jeong Ji-young
Art Director: Lee Amy
Appearances: Choi Kuk-in, Kim Jong-hun, Han Zinaida, Kim Tae-hun
Producer: Kang Jin-seok
World Sale: CinemaDAL
This is a film directed by Kim So-young, whose Koryu: Southern Women, South Korea made under the name “soha” was shown in New Asian Currents at YIDFF 2001, and is the final episode of the “exile trilogy” that interviews Korean people who emigrated from North Korea in groups. Among them were the so-called “Moscow Eight” who left soon after the nation’s foundation to study film in Moscow, in 1958. They criticized the idolization of Kim Il-sung and left behind the future they were promised, in exchange for exile in the Soviet Union. Through interviews, surviving members such as cinematographer Kim Chong-hun, director Choi Kuk-in, in addotion to the Russian widow of Moscow Eight the writer Han Tae-yong, talk about their lives in a foreign country, their work as artists, and their beliefs. The question posed by this film, “if where you are born is called your hometown, what do you call the place where you are buried?” shows the tragic destiny of a diaspora caught between a sense of nostalgia and decisions about the future.
Mute Fire
Pirotecnia-
COLOMBIA / 2019 / Spanish / Color, B&W / Digital File / 85 min
Director, Script, Editing: Federico Atehortúa Arteaga
Photography: Mauricio Reyes Serrano
Production Design: Simón Vélez
Sound Design: Diana Martínez Muñoz, José Delgadillo Muñoz
Music: Carlos Eduardo, Quebrada Vásquez
Producer: Jerónimo Atehortúa Arteaga
Production Company, Source: Invasion Cine
On March 6, 1906, four men were executed by firing squad, for the attempted assassination of Colombian president Rafael Reyes. A photo exists showing the crowd looking at their dead bodies, left tied to chairs. This image was later used in a fictionalized film depicting the failed coup d’état, and eventually helped strengthen the power of the dictatorship. This film suggests that Colombia’s film history started here, and that Latin American cinema has always been connected with a history of violence. Falsification, forgery, and the propaganda aspects of images are not unrelated to personal memory. Searching for the reason why the director’s mother suddenly stopped talking, and using home videos she left as a clue, this film reveals the scars and silenced voices of oppressed people who became victims of History.
Isadora’s Children
Les enfants d’Isadora- FRANCE, KOREA / 2019 / French / Color / Digital File / 84 min
Director: Damien Manivel
Script: Julien Dieudonné, Damien Manivel Photography: Noé Bach
Editing: Dounia Sichov
Cast: Agathe Bonitzer, Manon Carpentier, Marika Rizzi, Elsa Wolliaston
Producers: Martin Bertier, Damien Manivel
Production Companies: MLD Films, JeonJu Cinema Project
World Sales, Source: Shellac Distribution
Following the loss of her two children in April 1913, the legendary dancer Isadora Duncan (1878–1927) created a farewell solo piece entitled “Mother” in which, in a moment of extreme tenderness, a mother cradles her children for the last time before letting them go. A century later, four women encounter this heartrending dance. This was the first film in which director Damien Manivel focused on dance itself, and it received the Best Direction Award at the Locarno International Film Festival.