Papusza - a history lesson?

Papusza

 I was really looking forward to seeing this film as I'd had good reports from colleagues and because it's about Gypsies and their history.  I ran the Travellers' Times project at The Rural Media Company for 12 years and got very close to the rich mix of Gypsy culture, politics and battles with the UK's planning system, designed to prevent Travellers from traveling in the UK.   So the prospect of an authentic recreation of a vanished nomadic way of life, with a cast made up mainly of Roma non-actors, speaking in the Romani language - a recreation of Gypsy history to put the record straight - was much anticipated by me.

Romani people have not travelled since 2nd World War in Poland, like most East European nations.  The Nazi genocide and forced settlement by post war Communist regimes put a stop to their traditional way of life, and this has not been commemorated or reflected in Poland's national heritage.  So the Austrian filmmaking husband and wife team were forced to build the wagons from scratch, to recreate every detail of the Romani way of life from black and white photographs.  In fact they have done everything to try and stay true to the history and to Romani poet, Papusza's story,  one which co-director, Joanna Kos Krauze, first learned about at school and had been wanting to film ever since.   And they have made a  strikingly beautiful and intriguing film, certainly worth seeing. 

Papusza

But ultimately, for me, it is unsatisfying.  The filmmakers'  personal integrity - their wish to honour Gypsy history, to accurately retell its myths -  is both the making and the breaking of the film.  The shimmering monochrome wide shots of Gypsy wagons and camps fires cannot make up for the lack of emotional detail and personal experience of the Gypsy characters.   Papusza's own feelings are hidden away and we never get beyond the surface of the usual Gypsy mythology.  And thus the film reinforces and perpetuates that mythology - the wandering, the music, the despair, the harsh edicts of the elders.  The film keeps us in the position of  outsiders to Gypsy life, gazing in at a mysterious and alien community.   We don't understand what it means for Gypsies themselves and we need to hear their voices, to expose the myth that Gypsies are still forbidden from communicating with us, from writing their own history, from making their own films.  The reason they don't is rather a matter of lack of access to education, resources and opportunity than of ancient cultural edict.  Meanwhile prejudice and discrimination in Europe today continue to grow.   

Watch the interview with co-director, Joanna Kos-Krauze about the development of her film Papusza

Drilling DEEPER into the BFI London Film Festival #lff (Part 2)

Continuing my very intuitive London Film Festival 2013 taxonomy...

FATHERS AND SONS

Where would you find a film festival without a handful of films on this eternal theme? Three excellent ones here, a very controlled performance in Nebraska from Bruce Dern as an old, semi-alcoholic grump who is convinced he’s won a million in a lottery and wants to go to claim his prize. His son David takes the path of least resistance and decides to take him on a road trip that explores and redefines family ties with humour but without cloying sentimentality. 

Nebraska

Like Father, Like Son, the latest from Hirokazu Kore-eda takes a hypothetical situation, two boys swapped at birth, and tries and tests tests the two very different couples through what it means to be a parent as they contemplate exchanging their six-year-olds.  

Like Father, Like Son

A terse and contained British prison drama from David Mackenzie, Starred Up avoids the genre clichés through the strength and brutal detail of its opening scenes. Eric, a young offender is sent to adult prison because he is uncontrollable. His father happens to be banged up there and a conflict arises between the tensions in their relationship and progressive attempts to rehabilitate him through group therapy. A tough watch that only slightly dilutes as the plot moves towards its resolution.

FILMS WITH ESSENTIALLY ONLY ONE CHARACTER

 In which case the speculation is what happens to dialogue? Does the character talk to him or herself? Do we get interior monologue? Will it be a silent film? Three notable cases at the LFF: lost in space drama Gravity which delivers its very own 3D roller coaster ride, Locke (which I regretfully didn't see but is Tom Hardy in the interior of a car, driving from Wales to London for the duration of the film) and All is Lost in which Robert Redford is a yachtsman adrift in the Indian Ocean in a leaky vessel.

All is Lost

NEW BLACK AND WHITE FILMS

Computer Chess

Cinematography is the crucial element here, spectacular widescreen photography in Nebraska to convey the vast open spaces of midwest America and the closed, monotonous structures of small town life; in the US Indie offbeat comedy Computer Chess to simulate early 80s grainy video; and to stunning effect in the glittering, deep focus landscapes in the Polish biopic of 20th century Roma poet, Bronislawa Wajs, aka Papusza, a revelation, though there were barely 30 people in the audience at the public screening I attended.

Papusza

 

NATIONAL CINEMAS: GREECE

Luton

There were three Greek films in total, of special interest to me; I sought them out. Two of them - The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas and Luton - could be classified as Greek 'weird wave' films following in the footsteps of Dogtooth, Attenberg, The Boy Eating the Bird's Food,  though the young director of Luton repudiated this categorisation in his Q&A.  They reflect, as you might expect, a troubled and fragmented society and eschew a conventional narrative story-telling. The third, The Enemy Within, was similarly dystopian but in straightforward revenge thriller form. I was delighted to run into Margaret, formerly Flicks in the Sticks promoter at Garway, at the Luton screening at Vue Leicester Square. Her verdict on Luton was 'pretty hard to take', unremittingly grim social and personal relations, long, long sequences and not much indication of where the film was headed. Or indeed why it was called Luton. The director explained that the airport had something to do with it: a mundane place where not much goes on (?) that is a gateway to London where everything is happening. Thus the episodes depicted in the film.

The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas

 

  AND FINALLY...  TEN BEST LIST (NOT IN ANY STRICT ORDER)

• 12 Years a Slave - a tour-de-force from Steve McQueen (Hunger, Shame).
• Gloria
• Papusza
• Like Father, Like Son
• Ilo Ilo -  fresh, low budget Singapore family drama which won Anthony Chen the Sutherland Award for best first feature at LFF as well as Camera D’Or at Cannes.

  

  Ilo Ilo

• Exhibition
• Nebraska
• Sacro Gra - surreal, in the sense of bringing out the extraordinary in the everyday, this documentary that skirts around the margins of Rome's ring road won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Would make intriguing double bill, a long one, with The Great Beauty.
• The Epic of Everest - unseen since it was a box office draw in 1924, this restoration from the BFI National Archive of Mallory and Irvine's tragic attempt to reach the summit of the highest mountain in the world is fabulous, down to the lyrical but occasionally dodgy inter-titles.

  

  The Epic of Everest

• La Belle et La Bête - restored and simply magical. It seems likely this will play at Borderlines 2014 so come see and bring children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces (it's a PG) to catch the bug of cinema. 

  

  La Belle et La Bête