Tag Archives: Cannes

Scorsese, Pio and making THE CIAMBRA

In the second part of our interview writer/director Jonas Carpignano talks about working with Scorsese, his young lead Pio Amato and the perils of shooting in The Ciambra.

A Ciambra clearly delineates the various tribes in Rosarno – the Italians, Romani and Africans – and shows how only Pio can move freely between them, which makes Pio’s relationship with Ayiva one of the hopeful elements in the film.

I fundamentally believe that besides the coercive political, economic and national structures, exposure to “foreign elements,” whether they be people, food, or music is the only way to dissolve the artificial boundaries between us. To me, Pio can move freely through the complex layers of his world because none of them are truly foreign to him. He has grown up in a Calabria that has now Africans, Bulgarians, Romanians, and so on. For him they are part of the social fabric of his world. That was not the case for the previous generation.

The same is true for Marta in Mediterranea. She doesn’t see Ayiva as an invader. For her, Ayiva is a worker like so many others. She didn’t know what Calabria was like before the arrival of the Africans. Both Pio and Marta see Ayiva as Ayiva. And while both films are realistic about the limits of this relationship, I think they both depict a path forward towards a more “integrated” Calabria.

Pio’s grandfather represents a way of life that has disappeared. There is a wonderful moment in the film in which Pio has a vision of his grandfather, what was the inspiration for this?

History has a certain weight. We like to contextualize ourselves and to feel that we are part of something larger than ourselves, that we have roots and that we are the continuation of something that has come before us. This is true, to varying degrees, for all of us, but it is especially relevant in the Ciambra. Yet, if you really think about it, our connection with the past is more abstract that we would like to think. I mean, we cannot physically occupy the past, we can never experience it for ourselves. The past is something that is constantly reimagined, often to justify who we are or who we would like to be.

How did producer Martin Scorsese get involved?

RT Features and Sikelia have created a fund to support first and second films. The producers at RT saw Mediterranea, they liked it, and they brought it to Martin and his producing partner Emma Tillinger Koskoff, who were immediately supportive and enthusiastic about the project.

The nature of making films in Gioia Tauro is such that everything outside feels very, very abstract compared to what is happening on the ground. I spent the last year knowing that Martin Scorsese was a producer of the film but it didn’t really sink in until we got to the editing process. I was lucky to have his notes on several versions of the cut, and his thoughts surely made an impact on the film. On a larger level, not only his work is massively influential, but his approach to and respect for the medium is what I particularly value.

What was the process for creating the look of the film? What were some of the challenges in filming where you did?

While the building blocks were similar to the process for Mediterrana (and the shorts), the overall picture was very different and that came from the different perspective that the film inhabits. I always believe the film itself should feel like the main character. In that vein, Mediterranea feels very fragmented and closed in. The visual grammar is designed to mirror Ayiva’s perspective: he only has a fractured understanding of his surroundings and therefore the film only presents a fractured portrait of the place. In A Chjana, Pio’s grasp of his surroundings is more assured and, even though we used the same type of camera moves and editing style, the perspective is much larger, more comprehensive.

Shooting in the Ciambra was the challenge. It’s impossible to fully articulate what the Ciambra is like, but from the film I think you get an idea. It is a wild and unruly place where anything that can happen will happen, often ten or fifteen times over. Luckily we knew this before going in, so we gave ourself time. We ended up shooting for 91 days.

Can you talk about the music? As always the score and the pop songs are on.

I love pop music. I got this question a lot while I was on the road with Mediterranea, and I’ll say now what I said then: pop music is the common denominator. No matter what language you speak, no matter where you are from, when the beat drops on a song that everyone knows, everyone is suddenly on the same wavelength. Everyone is moving to the same rhythm and I find that to be a major icebreaker when venturing into less familiar territories.

The film ends with a boy becoming a man, but not without a cost. Do you consider it an optimistic ending?

Optimistic? In my own life I tend to be a very optimistic person, but I try not to think about my films in terms of optimism or pessimism. In the end the goal is to give the viewer my take on what life is like where I live, and to leave them to decide for themselves how they feel about it. While my films are not “objective,” they don’t have a specific agenda, they are not a rallying cry for any specific cause. They are primarily designed to be character explorations. They are about characters who find themselves in conflicting and contradictory situations, who must try to cope with those situations as best as they can.

While this film touches on race relations, poverty, stereotyping, crime, etc., it is ultimately about Pio, about who he is and who I see him becoming. In life, I am optimistic about Pio. I love him very, very much and I appreciate who he is now and who he will become. At the same time I realise that every place imposes certain structures that are often hard to shed when you live within them.

I think that if confronted with the choice he has to make in regard to Ayiva, Pio would do exactly what he did in the film. What happens is obviously very, very sad, but in the end I don’t think that the viewer will dislike him. Good people do bad things, and when our backs are against the wall we usually resort to tribalism and embrace the burden of identity, which is frequently the easy way out. People in the Ciambra have done all kinds of things that are viewed and judged as “bad,” but they are not bad people and I think this film is a testament to that.

So just like with the end of Mediterranea there are those who will view this ending optimistically and those who will view it pessimistically. In the end I think it’s important that, while Pio does what he does, we see how hard it is for him. It takes a toll on him, and ultimately if there is a path to some form of solidarity between the Africans and the Gypsies it will be through someone like Pio. You can be pessimistic about the social architecture imposed on Pio or you can be optimistic about seeing how he feels at home, and made to feel at home, in the African community. Nobody is perfect, and I am personally relieved to know that Pio Amato is out and about, doing his thing.

Find the first part of this interview on how Jonas met the Amato family on the Peccadillo Blog

Meet the Amatos – with THE CIAMBRA Director Jonas Carpignano

In the first part of a two part interview, writer / director Jonas Carpignano talks with us about about casting the Amato family in his film THE CIAMBRA.

Writer-Director Jonas Carpignano

How did you first encounter the Amato family?

The first time I met the Amato family was in 2011 after the Fiat Panda filled with my crew’s film equipment was stolen. We were in Gioia Tauro (Calabria) shooting A Chjana (the short film which would later become Mediterranea). In Gioia Tauro, when a car disappears, the first thing you do is “go to the gypsies.”

That’s when I saw the Ciambra for the first time. I immediately fell in love with the energy of the place. Whenever I tell this story, Pio says that he remembers seeing me, but at the time I didn’t notice him – there was too much to take in. We had to wait three days to get the car back because Pio’s grandfather (the Nonno Emilian character is based on him) had just died and they wouldn’t negotiate the ransom for the car until after the funeral. Clearly that funeral procession made a big impression on me because five years later I wrote it into the film. Needless to say the entire situation had an enormous impact on me and soon after I wrote the first draft of the short version of A Ciambra.

It’s hard to generalize the position of the Romani in Italian society, and I don’t have the space here to really get into the complexities of their situation in Italy or in Europe in general. The fact is that they are not a monolithic group. There are those who have risen to the top of the organized crime pyramid like the Casamonica in Rome; or the hard working blue collar Romani who have everyday jobs and are indistinguishable from other Italians; or the nomads who live in squalid trailer camps created by local governments on the periphery of many major Italian towns; and countless other examples. What is relevant for the film is the role the Romani of the Ciambra play in Gioia Tauro and their relationship with the newly arrived African immigrants in Southern Italy. While I think that looking at this example can, hopefully, speak to a more universal condition, the goal with this film was never to shine a light on these broader sociological factors. I am interested in Pio and Ayiva and I think the film clearly articulates their relationship – specifically, its potential and its limits.

Pio Amato stole the show in Mediterranea and your short film A Ciambra (2014). Was it always your intention to go back and write a film around him and his family?

I met people who had all kinds of opinions while I was on the road with Mediterranea, but one thing that was consistent was the complete, utter love and appreciation for Pio. He has, as my friends in New Orleans say, it. Whatever it is, Pio has enough to burn, and I realized that the second I met him.

That said, I had intended to make a feature in the Ciambra before I ever met Pio, even before we started shooting Mediterranea. Casting the short version of A Ciambra was exactly like casting the short version of A Chjana. I went into the Ciambra with a rough idea of a story. Once I met Pio, I revised the story to take into account him and his family. Biographical elements of the Amato family ended up reshaping and altering the story in the same way that Koudous Seihon’s story shaped Mediterranea.

In both cases, after meeting the protagonist, I tried to make the films as true to their protagonists’ experiences as possible, while keeping some semblance of dramatic structure. In the case of A Ciambra (the short), I was interested in telling the tale of two brothers. In the winter of 2013 I started going to the Ciambra regularly to cast the film and the first person I was drawn to was Pio’s older brother.

At first he was completely against the idea of being in a film. He was so reluctant that one of the producers encouraged me to find someone else. However, I couldn’t see anyone else playing the role, so I kept after him for months.

A week or so later, Pio and I began becoming closer. He had shed his initial distrust for an outsider and it became clear that he and I had a special bond. It’s hard to describe what and how it happened but both of us knew, pretty quickly, that we would be important to each other. In a lot of ways his relationship with Ayiva in the film is a combination of his relationship with Koudous and with me. The first testament to that was when Pio helped me convince his brother to be in the short. It was our first success, kind of.

Kind of?

I say “kind of” because in reality Cosimo is played by two twins, Cosimo and Damiano Amato. I was always after Damiano, but for the short film I had to use Cosimo because Damiano wasn’t having it. Finally, by the time it was time to make the feature, Damiano came around to the idea and the film is all the better for it.

You have managed to get remarkable leading performances out of non-professional actors Pio Amato (and his family). What’s your approach in working with cast?

It’s different for each cast member. My approach to working with Pio was very different from my approach with Koudous, Iolanda, Pasquale or even my father, who played the guy at the train station. If there were one consistent element in working with all of them I’d say it was the atmosphere I tried to create. I am very militant on how many people are allowed on set, who is watching, and so on. Since we are always shooting in real locations, often in people’s houses, I never want to feel like we are altering the natural rhythm of the place. I always said to the crew that we need to adapt our approach to them, instead of trying to impose a traditional filmmaking infrastructure upon them. That would have never worked. So I think that by going with the flow, we were able to create a very safe atmosphere where people didn’t feel exposed. I’m not sure I could have gotten the same performances if I brought the A Ciambra cast to shoot those scenes on a soundstage in Rome, for example.

I also spent a lot of time breaking down barriers between the cast and myself. It was not a “professional” relationship. There was a deep familiarity between us which I think is why they were willing to go places when I asked them to. I can’t remember who said it recently, but I recall hearing: “There are two styles of directing. One where you stand still and demand that the actors come to you. And one where you go where they are and try to steer them in the direction you think is best.” I clearly fall into the second category.

Read part two of this interview here.

A profile on cult FUTURO BEACH director KARIM AINOUZ

Ainouz’s first feature debut, MADAME SATA, premiered in 2002 at the Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard and has won over 40 prizes in national and international film festivals.

His following films, LOVE FOR SALE and I TRAVEL BECAUSE I HAVE TO I COME BACK BECAUSE I LOVE YOU (co-directed by Marcelo Gomes) premiered at the Venice Film Festival, Orizzonti, in 2006 and 2009. LOVE FOR SALE won the Grande Coral – First Prize at the Havana Film Festival among another 50 awards, and I TRAVEL won the Grand Prix Coup de Coeur of the 22nd Rencontres Cinemas D’Amerique Latine of Toulouse, France, amongst 20 other prizes.

Between 2006 and 2008 he directed the HBO TV series Alice, which played in all of Latin America and the US and in 2010 he directed one of the fragments of the collective film Desassossego, which premiered at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam. His feature, The Silver Cliff, premiered at the Quinzaine des Realisateurs at the Cannes Film Festival and won Best Director at Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival.

In 2011 Ainouz directed a short for the 2011 Destricted Collection Brazil and was invited to direct a commissioned film for the Sarjah Biennial 10. He also collaborated with Olafur Eliasson creating the video installations YOUR EMPATHIC CITY for Videobrasil Festival.

Recently he shot, in Germany and Brazil, his next feature, FUTURO BEACH. He also took part in the project Cathedrals of Culture, a documentary TV series in 3D and 2D that explores how six significant and very different buildings reflect our culture. The project has Wim Wenders as executive producer and features Ainouz as one of the directors. Ainouz was invited as jury to the Cannes Film Festival for the Cinefondation and Short Film Competition in 2012 and to the Heiner-Carow Award at Berlinale in 2013. He was also a jury member at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival and Tokyo Short Shorts Film Festival among others.

As invited lecturer Ainouz has been to Princeton University – Princeton, Brikbeck College – London, MIT – Bostopn, EICTV – Cuba and SFAI – San Francisco.

From 1989 to 1992, he worked as assistant director to Todd Haynes and assistant editor to several feature films. In 1992, Ainouz began to devote himself to his own film projects and directed several shorts and documentaries including SEAMS aand PAIXAO NACIONAL. His work as visual artist has been shown at The Whitney Museum of American Art, Sao Paoulo Biennial and Temporare Kunsthalle Berlin. He was part of the Cannes Residency, Cinefondation, and a resident artist of the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada and of the DAAD – German Academic Exchange Service. He is co-writer of the films BEHIND THE SUN by Walter Salles, CINEMA, ASPIRINS AND VULTURES by Marcelo Gomes and LOWER CITY by Sergio Machado.

Karim holds a degree in Architecture from the University of Brasilia and in Cinema Studies from New York University. After his Master’s he enrolled in the Program of Independent Studies of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

LGBT History Month: Queer Around the World

We have our LGBT History Month Tree up here in the Peccadillo office (it may or may not be the Attitude ‘Naked Issue’), and we thought we’d do a series of blog posts throughout the month on LGBT history. Today: LGBT rights around the world.
Gay people on film gets more and more mainstream every year – THE IMITATION GAME, PRIDE, DALLAS BUYERS CLUB – these are massive, blockbuster, Oscar nom’d films – but they’re all Western, British or American, in English. I mean, no-one’s expecting a big gay Russian LEVIATHAN, but it’s sad, no, that a big gay Russian LEVIATHAN would, most likely, not get made? At least not right now. (The closest Peccadillo gets to this is our 2013 Polish drama IN THE NAME OF – a moving and controversial film designated ‘A genuine breakthrough’ by Sight and Sound.)

IN THE NAME OF: Polish men get biblical in the water.

Gay icon Hillary Clinton is good on this: ‘Gay people are born into, and belong to, every society in the world. They are all ages, all races, all faiths. They are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes. And whether we know it or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends, and our neighbours. Being gay is not a Western invention. It is a human reality.’

HILLARY CLINTON: The definition of sass.

So let’s take a whistle-stop tour through some of our favourite LGBT titles not in the English language. This week we’re celebrating the UK release of Brazilian film THE WAY HE LOOKS on DVD and Blu-ray, a sweet, funny and charming film about a blind teenager wondering who he’ll give his first kiss to, his best friend Giovana or handsome newcomer Gabriel. Brazil, with its yellows, lush greens and blues, looks phenomenal on film, and we whole-heartedly champion director Daniel Ribeiro on to his second feature film!

The heat is all well and good until you forgot sunscreen.

THE WAY HE LOOKS: The heat is all well and good until you forget sunscreen.

Also from South America is Lucia Puenzo’s (WAKOLDA, THE FISH CHILD) first feature film – XXY. After winning the Critics’ Week Grand Prize in 2007, the film disarmed audiences around the world with its unflinching portrayal of the life of an intersex teenager (played by the outstanding Ines Efron) living in Uruguay.

XXY: I would write a joke here but this is a genuinely upsetting scene. The bully is skinny.

One of our most remarkable films is Ligy J Pullappally’s drama THE JOURNEY, which tells the story of two beautiful young women who fall in love in an idyllic, though traditional, Indian community. LGBT rights in India are pretty poor, with the Supreme Court reinstating an upheld ban on gay sex in December 2013. One step forward, two steps back. LGBT activism in India remains, however, undimmed, and THE JOURNEY remains a powerful and poignant riposte to the December 2013 ruling.

THE JOURNEY: Splashy fun and games until the chafing kicks in…

Finishing today’s post (but throwing us forward into next week’s ACTIVISM! post) is CIRCUMSTANCE – one of the bravest titles in the Peccadillo collection. Telling the story of two girls navigating the underground club scene of Iran, as well as the extremely repressive restrictions placed on Iranian women above ground. Based on director Maryam Keshavarz’s own experiences of persecution, the film is nevertheless a subtle and intimate look at the burgeoning sexuality of two young women in a dangerous, stifling world.

CIRCUMSTANCE: If you have a sexual reaction to heat, Iran is a great place to live.

The writers, directors, producers and actors behind these films are exceptionally brave people, and here at Peccadillo we feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to work with them, and continue to work with them. Each film demonstrates how essential it is to see LGBT History month as a global, rather than national, event. Stay tuned for more posts throughout the month on LGBT history. Next time: ACTIVISM! The dramas and documentaries that really inspired, or reflect, change.

Following The Golden Dream

The talented young cast from The Golden Dream

A note from Saffron Hill Films Chairman, Tom Abell, on The Golden Dream.

“Every so often a film comes along that we know we just have to bring it to your attention.

We saw THE GOLDEN DREAM by first time director Diego Quemada-Díez during the Cannes film festival last year and were profoundly moved by this exquisite, masterful piece of filmmaking. It immediately became a “must have” and securing it for UK and Irish distribution was one of our highlights of the festival.

The film follows four Guatemalan teenagers as they attempt to escape from the slums of Guatemala City to the bright lights of Los Angeles, a dangerous journey undertaken by thousands every year. Six hundred of these actual migrants became extras in THE GOLDEN DREAM as they undertook this almost impossible journey and each of them receive a named credit in the closing titles of the film. No one knows how many of them managed to cross that final border into California.

Many of the non-LGBT films that Peccadillo distributes deal with basic human rights, very often championing those who are normally classified as “outsiders”. Each year the desire to find a “better life” drives hundreds of thousands of would be immigrants across the world to leave their homes and take perilous journeys to find their own golden dream, but more often than not the “dream” bears no resemblance to the brutal truth. Immigration is a subject so often abused by politicians as they use it for political points scoring where “being tough” is incorrectly seen as a solution to a problem that no one really wants to address.

THE GOLDEN DREAM tackles this in a non-sensational, compassionate way that never once becomes sentimental, yet never flinches from honestly showing the plight of those who strive to achieve more than they have. The film challenges the world to face up to that terrible reality and that is why we have to bring you the film”

Diego with Ken Loach at the London Film Festival

Diego with Alfonso Cuarón for opening night of THE GOLDEN DREAM at London’s Curzon Soho

Feburary’s Must See: Stranger By the Lake

Peccadillo Pictures are thrilled to be behind the critically acclaimed and widely admired gay cinema sensation of 2014; Alain Guiraudie‘s intoxicating blend of bold homosexual erotica and compelling psychological thriller, Stranger By The Lake (L’inconnu Du Lac).

Stranger By The Lake has been praised in countless publications and chosen as a highlight of many must-see lists of the year – Time Out and French film journal Cahier du Cinema, Little White Lies, to name but a few – and it was awarded a five star rating by Empire. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it went on to win the award for Best Director, and the Queer Palm award. It also currently holds an 100% score on go-to film rater Rotten Tomatoes. Guiraudie – one of France’s most accomplished auteurs- is now on his tenth feature and finally earning his place in the art-house limelight. So what, you may ask, is this fuss about? The reasons are multiple.

There’s the atmospheric setting; a picturesque, serene lake in France during a balmy summer, which also happens to be a cruising spot for gay men. A setting that is at once erotically exposed and secretive. When the film gives way to mystery and suspense, the sense of place transforms from a place of natural, pastoral beauty to something more eery and sinister. Of the cruisers, the film focuses on Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), a highly sought after cruiser in the spot. After several mindless encounters, Frank swims past Michel (Christophe Paou) and rapidly falls into love – or lust – with him, despite warnings from middle-aged Henri, a fat and disillusioned loner he has befriended by the lake. After seeing Michael commit a terrible act of violence, Franck’s unflinching passion threatens to disrupt his moral integrity.

There’s also how celebratory it all is of homosexuality and the male form. It would be a trying effort to find a more sexually explicit art-house film than this, (yes, even Blue Is The Warmest Colour) and a franker portrayal of gay sex so utterly devoid of any inhibition or apology. Likewise, the voyeuristic quality of the sex scenes, plus the treatment of the suspense, expertly echoes Hitchcock; a similarity many viewers are enjoying. The film also moves effortlessly from a sensual art-house film into a murder thriller. Not to mention, there is somehow humour in there too, in the form of an overweight and overtly optimistic cruiser named Eric, always hopefully trying it on with his superior looking fellow naturists. The comedy somehow blends in expertly well, in a film which you wouldn’t expect it to at all; leading this film to become a wonderful and unique hybrid of comedy, romance, erotica and murder thriller.

We could go on, but it would be wiser to believe the hype and experience this absorbing sexual thriller for yourself, in cinemas from 21st February.

IN THE NAME OF and director Malgoska Szumowska

“A local community of a Polish village, that is soaked with Catholicism to the marrow, would probably tacitly accept his affairs with women, but they will never accept “a queer”. In The Name Of is a film about Church institution that is a system full of bans and commands, a system that is collapsing. A film about longing for love, the search of love against this system and about rebelling in the name of love.

But it also shows, that in such situation, there is no “good solution”.

Ex-Catholic writer/director Malgoska Szumowska’s latest film, In The Name Of, has it’s cinema release this weekend.It is a daring yet understated film, thoughtfully depicting the life of Father Adam (Andrzej Chyra), a closeted priest who is sent from Warsaw to rural Poland, where he sets up a centre for difficult boys in a small town. Here he falls for Lukasz (Mateusz Kosciukiewicz), one of the young men in the town who has a quieter, more introverted demeanour than the others.

Malgoska used a mixture of trained actors and local non-actors to construct the naturalistic feel of the film, working with the amateurs in a documentary fashion to get them used to the camera and forget its presence, and to bring out their own personalities. The lead couple, however, are trained and well known Polish actors who Malgoska, with her writing partner (and cinematographer Michal Englert) had in mind to play the roles from the film’s inception.

The director chose to make a film that in her own words is about ‘this feeling of somehow being torn from the inside, a feeling of being unfulfilled in contacts with other people, this great longing for something strong and powerful’. She explains that the film is not essentially a “gay film” but a film that tackles wider issues in Polish society, exploring love in a setting of intolerance and repression, that hopefully all can relate to: ‘In Poland, we still have a problem with accepting differences and manifestations of being different’ she explains.

Of course, the rural setting is important in order to provide a background of small-minded social pressure, in which everybody is aware of each other’s business. It was important for Malgoska not to set the film in a city because it would be ‘saying less about Poland ’. She states that ‘Polish provinces make up 80% or more of [Polish] society’, and therefore she wanted to highlight a particular dangerous aspect of a country still heavily steeped in Catholicism.

When asked if she is afraid of controversy, in wake of the 120,000 ticket sell out in the first 10 days in Warsaw, Malgoska responds: ‘I’m curious…What I wouldn’t like, is a cheap sensation, bunch of shouters, that’s for sure. I’d prefer I serious discussion. In Poland, we still have a problem with accepting differences and manifestations of being different. The society still calls itself being 90% catholic, and unfortunately, very often it’s a synonym of being closed. I think, that this film may be an important voice in a discussion.’

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