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Belgrade's New Author Film Festival
By Rada Djurica
Belgrade’s New Author Film Festival was supposed to open with
the Chinese film Summer Palace by Lou Ye, but just minutes before
the movie started, Serbian authorities pulled the movie, because China
threatened to jeopardize diplomatic relations with Serbia. The film
Summer Palace mentions events from Tiananmen Square massacre
that took place in 1989, when the Chinese Army killed more than 1,000
students. Terrifying indeed. The film was shown at the festival a couple
of days later, but the bitter taste of communist censorship still hung
on. Film director Lou Ye has already shot a couple of films without
permission from the Chinese government and in a fitting tribute to that,
Summer Palace won the festival's Best Film Award.
The New Author Film Festival in Belgrade is a young festival, founded
during the period of civil war in the '90s in ex-Yugoslavia, to oppose
political film currents with an authentic author’s aesthetic. With
a very small budget and a quality film program, over the years, it has
formed its own artistic integrity. Remarkably, in the year 2006, when
cinemas are on strike because of a lack of audience, Belgrade’s
New Author Film Festival was a sold out event.
FILM SELECTION
From the festival program, I would single out the Russian film Euphoria
directed by Ivan Vilypajev (known as a theatre writer), a visually fantastic
yet cruel piece, with slightly unreal, poetic cinematography, yet aesthetically
and socially functional content.
Film East of Bucharest by Bulgarian director Corneleiu Porumboiu
won a critic's award, probably because the events mirror Serbia’s
similar past. An Italian film which caught my attention was Wedding
directed by Marco Bellochio, strongly fulfilling the social and visual
aspects of an excellent, artistically colorful film.
I would also like to mention the Croatian film All for Free
by Antonio Nuic, a film that won a couple of awards, the Golden Arenas
at the Pula Film Festival in July 2006 and a Special Award at the New
Author Film Festival: a beautiful, poetic, cruel, romantic and glorious
story. One of the most mentioned among film critics at the festival
is Gela Babluiani’s 13. It’s a Gruzia directed French
film that won the Jury Grand Prize as the Best Foreign Fiction Film
at Sundance Film Festival 2006, a skilful, atmospheric Hithcockian suspense
film about secret society Russian roulette players in France. In addition,
it won an Australian Film Institute Award, Rotterdam Award, Discovery
Award in Toronto and the Best Film Award in Mar Del Plata.
Look Both Ways, directed by Sarah Watt, is an attractive and
strong film, with typically recognizable Australian film poetics. The
festival also showed the Scottish Screen film Red Road by Andrea
Arnold, a Jury Prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival 2006.
The jury of the festival included Lordan Zafranovic, an internationally
famous Croatian film director; Faruk Loncarevic, a theatre and film
director from Sarajevo, honored this year the Sarajevo Film Festival;
Srdan Golubovic, a young Serbian film director; and Dinko Tucakovic,
a well known festival director.
Reviews: Look Both Ways,
All for Free
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