Blog: Director Hugh O'Conor's Experience at the Berlin International Film Festival
Berlin: Hugh O'Conor is the director of the Signature short CORDUROY. CORDUROY was officially selected for the Generation 14Plus short competition at the Berlin International Film Festival. This is his blog of his experience of having a film in competition at one of the main film festivals in the world.
Monday 22nd February
Where am I? What day is it? Why has my head gone numb?
Ah yes. I remember now. It's the day after the Berlinale came to a close, and I'm in the Motel One, waiting for my taxi. It's been a long week. Apologies in advance for any slight fuzziness.
I've only just realised that in my previous post I forgot to mention the Irish Ambassador in Berlin and his wife came to our premiere screening on Tuesday, which was really good of them. They left immediately after our short ended, without waiting for the rest of the shorts in the program, and I thought that was awesome. Screw those other guys, I bet he was thinking. I'm not the ambassador of them.
The rest of our screenings went really well. The Berlinale audience has a slightly brutal tradition of clapping at the end of a film, letting the credits roll, and then deciding whether or not to clap again once the lights have come up. Fortunately we got a generous double clap each time, which reassured my slightly panicked heart.
We had some interesting questions in the Q+A after our second screening on Friday, and one woman in particular voiced her disgust at an issue I mentioned in my previous entry - "How can you show such adult material to such a young audience?", she asked one of the section's co-ordinators, who was standing onstage with us. A 17-year old boy then stood up and said he thought this was exactly the sort of thing they should be seeing, and they'd prefer not to be patronised, thank you very much. He sat down to a rousing round of applause, and the woman ran out of the auditorium in tears. Okay, she didn't, but she certainly didn't look happy.
Also on Friday I got to see the other six shorts in the 14plus section. Three in particular stood out for me. Fenar Ahmad's warm and funny Megaheavy portrays a rather nerdy young girl on a small Danish island with a deep love of the band Iron Maiden, who loses her virginity to a recently returned (and much older) neighbour. There was a definite Wes Anderson influence in the carefully framed widescreen shots, often using ultra slow-motion with a teeth-shattering heavy metal accompaniment.
The Finnish short Whispering in a Friend's Mouth by Hannaleena Hauru uses a fascinating backwards/forwards technique in its tale of a kiss between a boy and a girl. A great example of cinema's ability to play with narrative structure, it made me look forward to seeing it again to work out exactly how it was achieved.
Most remarkable of all, the Danish film Out of Love blends a mixture of documentary and fiction to show the lives of various young children in the battle-scarred city of Priština in Kosovo. Speaking directly to camera, often in eerie whispers, the children tell their stories with a stark, chilling simplicity. "I am only talking to you", one boy says, "because I am hungry. I am so hungry I could eat you. I could eat everything in the world." The director met the children in Kosovo, heard their stories, then composed a series of monologues. She returned to Kosovo for the shoot, getting the children to learn the dialogue, so there was a real poetry to their words, as well as to the visuals. It received a well-deserved special mention from the young Generation jury.
The short film that won the jury award, Batin Qobadi's Ask the Wind, is the story of a young Iranian women whose veil is blown away by the wind, which triggers an unforeseen series of tragic events. It's a testament to the director's tenacity that the film even got made, as it had to pass Iran's strict censorship laws, and shows a world that is rarely seen to the outside world.
The most awkward moment of the festival came when the wonderfully passionate director of the Generation section, Maryanne Redpath, came onstage to announce the prizes at the packed ceremony on Friday night. Before she introduced the jury, she said she just had to mention her favourite guest, the young Chinese director Huang Ji, who had such an infectious energy. Maryanne asked her to stand up so everyone could see her. The spotlight shone over, everyone clapped, and Huang Ji, clearly not understanding what had just been said, bounded up onto the stage and hugged Maryanne tightly, clearly thinking she had won an award. It was finally explained to her that she hadn't won anything, they were just saying she was lovely, and could she please return to her seat. Which she did, more than a little confused.
The Generation feature prize went to Agostino Imondi and Dietmar Ratsch's Neukölln Unlimited, an enjoyable and informative mix of reconstructed and straight documentary which follows the life of a charismatic Lebanese family living in the working-class district of Neukölln in Berlin. Dealing with issues of immigration, deportation and breakdancing (yes, that's what I said), it has boundless energy and was a popular choice with the audience.
Although Thomas Vinterberg's Submarino sadly didn't screen again while I was here, I managed to see two other features - Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me and Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop.
Casey Affleck plays the Texan sheriff's deputy with a hidden psychotic streak in John Curran's adaptation of Jim Thompson's 1953 classic pulp novel, which Stanley Kubrick called "probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered." Although the violence onscreen is enormously disturbing - especially as much of it is directed at women - it didn't feel exploitative, but rather showed the horror of what someone with such a condition is capable of. Walkouts were not as plentiful as reported at its first screening, and though there were some boos at the end, it is undeniably the work of a first-rate filmmaker, and is already one of my favourites of Winterbottom's films.
Banksy's film, in contrast, was the most fun I had at a screening all week. We're introduced to Thierry Guetta, a hip, successful and enjoyably crazy L.A.-based clothes shop owner with a lifelong compulsion to film everything, everywhere he goes. After becoming obsessed with the burgeoning trend of street art, he begins documenting the different artists at work on the streets of L.A. The only artist he hasn't been able to meet is his hero, Banksy, but thanks to his connections he's soon not only filming the great man himself at work, he's also helping him pull off one of his most daring stunts. What happens next calls into question not only what art is, but also what we as an audience will accept as such. It's a great, funny and ultimately disquieting film that also serves as a great first-hand history of the art itself.
All in all, it was a fantastic festival to be a part of, especially as everyone I met seemed to care so much about their work, and I hope to get back there again. My thanks are due to the Irish Film Board for giving me the chance to be there in the first place. It was a total honour.
Right. Taxi's here. Passport? Check. Hangover? Check. Airport food? Excellent...
Wednesday 17th February
There's a hell of a lot of celluloid in Berlin right now. If you laid it all out, frame by frame, (and I don't know why you would, but go with me on this) it would stretch from the snowy-topped Brandenburg gate to... well, somewhere very, very far away, probably.
(I know that's not the best way to open this blog, but we've had a few late nights, and that's the best I can come up with right now. I'm so sorry. I'll plough on regardless.)
The Berlinale is celebrating its 60th anniversary, and since its inception in 1951, with the premiere of Hitchcock's Rebecca, it's become one of the most respected festivals in the world. Today, scanning the pages of the telephone book-sized program, it's clear this is a festival - and an artform - in the rudest of health. With over 250 films in competition, and many more screening for potential buyers or to commemorate the festival's history, there's an abundance of exciting filmmaking on display. This year's festival began last Friday, and there's already been a real buzz about certain titles - Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop and Thomas Vinterberg's Submarino have had particularly strong word of mouth. I'm hoping to see them before the week is out, if I can get tickets, that is...
We're here with our short film Corduroy, funded under the IFB's Signatures scheme, and had our first screening yesterday. We've been selected for the Generation 14Plus short competition, which focuses on young people - there's also Generation Kplus, for children.
There seems to be a tendency for the older generation to decide what is appropriate for the younger generation to be exposed to, and then act shocked when they behave in a way that is not appropriate at all. But by refusing to enter a debate, the problem does not go away. To judge by the films we saw yesterday, that is not happening here. There was everything you wouldn't expect a young audience to see on the screen - violence, sex, drug use, and an impressive and quite creative use of profanity. Yet nothing was gratuitous, and all of it was relevant. You could feel the young audience appreciating that they were not being talked down to, or treated as less than equals. It was encouraging in all the best ways.
Our team in Berlin include my producer Eimear O'Kane, the actor/writer/director Domhnall Gleeson who acted the male lead in the film, and two of the Noho post-production team, Danielle Considine and Niall Campion, who did the effects. The main actress, Caoilfhionn Dunne, couldn't attend because she was performing in the opening night of Thomas Kilroy's new play in the Abbey, Christ Deliver Us! We all agreed it was a pretty good excuse, even though we're missing her badly.
Domhnall recently acted in Mark Romanek's upcoming adaptation of the Kazuo Ishiguro novel 'Never Let Me Go' with the dazzlingly talented young actor Andrew Garfield (Boy A, Red Riding). Andrew plays the lead role in Spike Jonze's beautiful short film I'm Here, which is also screening in our section, and at the Generation party the night before - our first night here - Domhnall and Andrew were happily reunited. He spoke with great passion about Spike Jonze's way of working on the film, which is about the love between two robots in modern day L.A. There was a script, but there was a lot of improvisation too, and he often let scenes play on just to see what would happen, never judging, and always inspiring. It's a deeply moving and breathtakingly visual film about what we will sacrifice for the person we love. Hopefully it will be screening in Ireland before too long.
Another impressive short in our section was the Polish film Siemiany by Philip James McGoldrick. A measured, darkly unsentimental story of two boys coming to terms with their adolescence in a tough, working-class Polish resort, it took great risks with tone and performance that were, ultimately, handsomely rewarded. The director is definitely someone to watch out for.
Most of our team are heading back today, but I'm staying for the rest of the week for the two other screenings, and hoping to see as many films as I can, as well as the other program of shorts in our competition. I'll write a bit more then.