Interview with Nicholas Maksymow

No film student worth their salt could deny Russia’s epic influence upon cinema history. It was here that montage techniques were first pioneered and refined, and it was here that some of film history’s greatest masterpieces were born. So many years and one iron curtain later, and Russia is again eager to reassert its position on the international cinema landscape. The 2007 Russian Film Festival Russian Revolution is a tribute to Russia’s fast growing cinema industry, and, this week, it makes its way into our part of the globe.

“Russia’s film production is increasing at an incredible rate!” exclaims the festival director, Nicholas Maksymow, “Firstly, there are lots of private bodies who provide funding for budding filmmakers, and if that does not work there is always the state funding board. What’s happening there now is similar to what the AFI did in the late seventies to revive the Australian film industry. There’s this strong, creative reenergising.”

Luckily, Russian filmmakers are also enjoying a lucrative success at the Russian box office. This year they are expected to retain over one quarter of the total national box office takings. “Unlike Australians, Russians don’t really experience that kind of ‘cultural cringe’,” explains Maksymow. “There really isn’t a pressure to be Western, because Russians are so proud of all their art and above all their cinema… Films like Daywatch and Nighwatch and Wolfhound are obviously Russian films trying to copy Hollywood, but there is still this unique ‘Russianness’ about them, and there’s no pressure to get rid of that. In fact, that’s why people seem to enjoy them so much.”

Maksymow connects this sense of “Russianness” with the Russian artistic drive to paint realistically complex pictures of daily life, that accurately scan the whole range of the emotional spectrum. “For instance, in one movie you might cry, you might laugh and you might feel scared,” he emphasises, “There is so much emotion going through one film and that’s what life is like in Russia at the moment, because it’s so unpredictable. In everyday life people go through both laughter and hardship, and Russian film is all about capturing that realistically.” At this point, he laughs about how the highest rating Australian film to have ever been screened in Russia was Lantana – a fact that he attributes to Lantana’s complex, realistic, and unquestionably dark, treatment of human emotions.

If there is one section of human life, though, from which Russian cinema steers clear, it is contemporary Russian politics. While the world reels in response to news about Russia’s (often brutal) censorship of political journalism, the film industry is safe in its detachment. Maksymow explains, “The journalists get into trouble because they’re overtly political, and trying to push a certain view, while cinema is still seen as a democratic form of the arts, in the sense that it’s not really political at all. Filmmaking doesn’t really touch sensitive political issues in Russia; it’s more about making fun of the old politicians and examining our past than looking at the contemporary situation.”

Cinema and politics therefore enjoy mutual support and respect in Russia, a phenomenon reflected by the fact that Vladimir Putin (the Russian first head of state to ever visit Australia) officially opened the festival in Sydney last week. Significantly, Putin’s visit to Australia (for the APEC summit) corresponds with the 200 year anniversary of Australia’s relationship with Russia. Maksymow ponders on how all these aspects work together to strengthen international cultural understandings, as he reflects, “While obviously our relations, and Putin’s visit, have been mainly political and economic… festivals like these fill in the cultural aspects… I believe that what we’re trying to do by having Russian film festivals in Australia is giving not only those of Russian heritage, but also Australian citizens, a chance to see something they would not usually see.”

Interview with Anna Broinowski

Out of the often overwhelming mass of documentary genre clones and failed attempts at objectivity, there rises one, recent, unique offering. From director Anna Broinowski, Forbidden Lie$ explores the controversy surrounding Norma Khouri, the international best-selling author of an autobiographical novel about Jordanian honour killings, who was later exposed as a fraud and a con-artist. Rather than simply forcing one perspective or opinion upon her audiences, Broinowski plays with the notion of truth, spin and fact, encouraging viewers to question the film they are watching as much as they question Khouri herself.

“I think that people who say that documentary filmmaking is the most truthful form of filmmaking are not correct,” Broinowski asserts, “I think that the minute you point your camera at someone, whether it’s a drama or a doco, you are shaping reality… Every decision is personal, and it’s all about your opinion of the subject. I was keen to explore that in the film, and Norma’s tendency to deceive people became the perfect springboard for me to mirror stylistically what she does to people’s minds.” Drawing more inspiration from con movies like Catch Me If You Can and Ocean’s 11 than from the well worn conventions of documentary filmmaking, Forbidden Lie$ is peppered with CGI, fast paced cinematography, snappy cutaways and dramatic re-enactments.

The dramatic impact of the film is certainly enhanced by the fact that all Broinowski’s interview subjects presented such animated testimonies that they feel almost staged. “None of them were scripted, and I too was gob smacked,” she remembers, “I just couldn’t believe my luck when this high-up lawyer in Chicago said to me, point blank, to the camera, having just met me, ‘She is evil and diabolical.’ I think it wasn’t so much good fortune, but the fact that Norma polarises people around her, so you can’t have a mediocre response to her. So it was delightful, because everyone was passionate about her, whether for or against. And I was like a kid in a toy store, because I had this cast like something from a thriller, and the only difference was that they were real.”

Like many of the people she interviewed, including sophisticated minds in media, publishing and law, Broinowski was also not immune to the charm of this sweet talking woman. She describes herself as initially being a “Norma convert,” and remembers how her initial vision for the film was one that would redeem Khouri, and prove the media’s negative spin on her to be entirely incorrect. “Norma is so likeable you really want to believe that she’s no where near as cunning or as diabolical as these crimes that she’s done would make her out to be,” Broinowski stresses, “She’s really audacious, she’s feisty, and she has a strong spirit. In many ways she’s a post-feminist icon… and you can’t help but admire that. And how do you marry that up with the fact that she tricked an old woman out of her life savings and her home?”

Naturally, this vision had to shift, as promised evidence and interview subjects disappeared, and Khouri’s story became more and more tangled. Broinwoski insists though, that this film shouldn’t be about judging Khouri, so much as about judging the system in which we live, that allows people like her to thrive. “The film’s message is ‘trust no one, believe no one, question everything, corroborate everything’,” she concludes. “I think that we have lost contact with the importance of truth. As a society, we have become so cynical that we know longer care about the fact that we’re being spun to by the media and by politicians. We need to fight again, to make truth and facts and investigation important once more.”

The Jammed

These past few years have seen Australian cinema grow darker than ever before, boldly exposing our cities’ dark underbellies, and fearlessly diving into the previously unexplored or unacknowledged echelons of our society. Inspired by true events, The Jammed is another Australian release that treads where no other films have tread before; exploding into the violent reality of Melbourne’s sex trafficking industry. Director Dee McLachlan cleverly juxtaposes two vastly different worlds by interweaving the story of Ashley (Veronica Sywak), a restless, middle class, insurance company employee, with the story of Crystal (Emma Lung), a recently arrested, Indonesian sex slave about to be dumped in a detention centre because of her expired visa papers. These two worlds collide when Ashley finds herself reluctantly assisting Sunnee (Amanda Ma), a Chinese woman on a desperate search to locate her missing daughter, who they soon learn is now a sex slave working alongside Crystal.

Interestingly, The Jammed was rescued from obscurity only because of the wildly positive reaction it provoked during its (extremely limited) initial release. Some of these reactions do seem excessive, as the film is far from perfect. Its exposition suffers from uneven chronological jumps and generally stilted dialogue and performances. Both the plot and the actors actually take quite a while to warm up, significantly affecting the story’s emotional impact. Even when the film eventually eases into a more natural rhythm, it does tend to dip into unrealistic action sequences and to falter under the weight of a very distracting, overly sentimental score. At the same time, though, there are some brilliant performances in this film (the stand-out being Saskia Burmeister, who is virtually unrecognisable as the Russian prostitute, Vanya,) and the story itself, while perhaps a little convenient, is also admittedly enthralling. Moreover, with Australia listed as the tenth main destination for sex traffic victims, this is a particularly relevant film, and you can’t help but admire McLachlan’s gutsy attempt to highlight this issue. Even though this is not brilliant cinema, this is one of those films with a story that is truly worth telling.

Rating: 8.9

The White Planet

With the world going documentary-crazy, never before have we seen so many entirely average efforts somehow worming their way onto the silver screen. One such example is Canada’s The White Planet; a celluloid postcard from Antarctica. This film’s footage is undeniably brilliant, stitching together intimate animal close-ups, sweeping aerial pans and magical underwater visions. It simultaneously captures the breath-taking spectacle of the continent, and the delicate vulnerability of the creatures that inhabit it. Yes, this documentary is indeed a picturesque insight into an ecosystem that may not be around for much longer (thanks to the impact of climate change and human intervention), but none of these factors alone seem to warrant the film’s feature length, and its widespread cinema release.

Ignoring for a moment the fact that surely any half-decent filmmaker could obtain amazing footage in a context as inspiring as Antarctica, The White Planet also has one significant drawback; its monotonous, and greatly irritating, narration. Its only purpose seems to be to point out that which is already quite obvious or to add an unnecessarily pretentious edge to the proceedings (apparently walruses now “philosophically await the return of the ice” and sturgeons “exude joie de vivre”). In the meantime, bizarre natural phenomena are captured onscreen but never explained, new species are shown but not introduced, and the jumble of varying footage seems to often lack any sort of strong cohesion or connection. Furthermore, despite being largely advertised as a film about global warming, the narration skirts only over the surface of these issues. Some films are best reserved for television or DVD release; and The White Planet is worth seeing only for the occasional (and undeniably adorable) baby polar bear, or in order to celebrate its carbon neutral distribution.

Rating: 2.5

Dr Plonk, Once, Shut Up and Sing

With each new film he makes, Australian director Rolf de Heer seems to surprise his audience just a little bit more. Now, during a time when everyone around him seems to be pushing the boundaries of cinema potential, he ploughs backwards through film history to the days of silent comedy. Set in 1907, Dr Plonk is a slapstick romp (reminiscent of Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin) that tracks the efforts of scientist/inventor Dr Plonk, as he attempts to prove his theory that the world will end in 101 years time by developing a time machine in order to travel there. While De Heer’s effort to reconstruct the feel of silent film reel is commendable (it was actually a complex process combining old technology with extensive digital post-production), the narrative is unfortunately just as dull as it sounds. Slapstick routines haven’t gotten any funnier than they were to begin with, and while this film will illicit a few laughs here and there, it’s not particularly clever or memorable humour. At best, this film will offer a pleasing amusement for those who enjoy (or nostalgically recall) the slapstick comedy of silent film. At worst, this film could be described as a pallid, two dimensional effort from a director who has previously always hit the spot. Perhaps de Heer should stay away from movies that demand a more overt humour.

Director John Carney always dreamt of making a film that, while bypassing the stale conventions of a traditional musical, would still utilise songs in order to tell a “very modern, very simple love story.” The result is Once, a simple, low budget effort, set in modern Dublin, where a heartbroken busker (Glen Hansard) meets a spirited Czech migrant (Marketa Irglova), and the two fall in love over shared duets and broken vacuum cleaners. With only sixty pages of dialogue, music envelopes practically ever visual gesture in this film, infusing it with a deeper, more intangible emotional quality. Where one would usually find trite romantic dialogue or stifled exchanges, there are instead naturally occurring songs that speak volumes about the gradually developing relationship without the need for tired clichés. Strangely, there is no particularly direct narrative correlation between (most of) the lyrics on the soundtrack and the script itself, yet both share the same musical texture, emotive tone and intimate personal voice. While at times this film digresses onto unbelievable territory (look out for the singing banker, and the slightly overdone recording studio montage), it is redeemed by this indescribable magical quality. The combined impact of Hansard’s composition, the simple cinematography and the actors’ touching sincerity is, quite frankly, monumental.

During a time when documentary has become the new black, Shut Up and Sing stands out because it is harder to classify than your average, being neither strictly political nor strictly musical. It focuses upon the journey of the Dixie Chicks since 2003, when their lead singer spoke out against George Bush’s War on Iraq, and the group became the instant victim of Republican outcry. Unfortunately, the film’s shifting focus, while arguably its most defining feature, is also its most irritating. The film jumps through chronology, skipping from 2003 to 2006 (when the Dixie Chicks are working on their comeback album). Not only do these jumps in time feel awkward and forced, but the contrast in footage is also quite significant. While the scenes from 2003 are compellingly action packed, those set in 2006 focus upon the “personal triumph” of the band (looking at emotions, relationships and so on), and are, ultimately, quite dull and lacklustre. As the film nears its end, it increasingly focuses upon celebrating this personal strength, much to the film’s detriment. Rather than tapping its potential to explore issues of democracy and freedom of speech, the filmmaker has opted to produce yet another story of inspiration and personal struggle. While this may all be indeed quite affecting, it’s hard not to feel a little cheated after the promising potential of the film’s seemingly fresh trailer.

Dr Plonk: 1.5
Once: 9.5
Shut Up and Sing: 6.0

Interview with Glen Hansard

When we meet, Glen Hansard is looking a little battleworn. His hands alternate between rubbing his eyes open and, almost nervously, fiddling with a grey pick, which he twirls through his calloused fingers with acrobatic ease, and occasionally taps against the bench. “To be honest, I’m almost missing all this success, because I am so busy,” he sighs, looking suddenly even more exhausted. “This is not a complaint, but I need to take a break just to get some perspective. Perspective is important, both with great success and great failure. Also, they say that if you don’t take time to celebrate when your ship comes in, it’s just another day at the office.”

Hansard certainly does have cause to celebrate recently. After seventeen years of leading Irish independent band, The Frames, he’s receiving a new kind of media attention. As the lead actor in Once, a touching romance/drama about a Dublin busker who falls in love with a Czech migrant, both his musical and personal profile have received a welcome bolster. This comes just in time for a current tour with Bob Dylan, and the release of his band’s new album, The Cost, a beautifully emotion recording which includes several songs featured in the film.

“The movie was just a three week bit of fun with some friends, and it never had any significance at all to my career, except now it does,” he reflects, sounding almost a little shocked by his own success. “Now, this film has brought us a huge amount of new audience. In an ideal world, you’d hope that you could write a song and people would respond to it in a certain way, but the world isn’t that simple and the media really doesn’t hasn’t had much to say about us in a while. There is no ‘myth,’ if you like… And now, we haven’t done anything different to how we’ve always done it, but there’s this film, and sometimes people just need something like that to latch onto. And this has just brought a whole new wave of energy around the band. It’s definitely reenergised the audience, which has in turn reenergised the band.”

Initially, Hansard’s role in Once was not as high-profile. Working with director and ex-band member John Carney, he was to produce a set of songs in concurrence with the script. For Hansard, working under Carney’s direction was an unusual power reversal. “I was working on his project, whereas before [in The Frames] he’d always been working on mine,” he explains, “It was such a perspective shift, having to ultimately adhere to John’s vision, and also such a good thing. When you spend a long time being the one who makes the art, you tend to get that ‘I’m right’ attitude happening a lot, so it is good to work on someone else’s art and, even if you don’t agree, they will say ‘well, this is me vision,’ and that’s that.”

Hansard’s role shifted dramatically, though, when Cillian Murphy (arguably a dubious casting choice) pulled out of his role as the lead actor. Given Hansard’s strong connection to the main character, it was suggested that he fill those shoes. “I honestly didn’t feel that comfortable about it,” Hansard confesses, looking slightly awkward, “But John just said, ‘Trust me, I will get a good performance out of you.’ And all I asked was that he promise to fire me if he had to, because I don’t want to be in a shit film. All he said was, ‘I won’t let you be.’ So that was the deal we all struck with each other. In the end, I wasn’t acting very much… John just kept on saying, ‘stop acting, and pull back a bit more.’ Sometimes I would really stop acting altogether and just read the lines and he would say, ‘Now that’s perfect.’ He just wanted us to be ourselves.”

As Murphy departed though, so did the producer and the film’s financing. “We had no lead and no money,” Hansard remembers, “We had to convince all the crew to work for free, meself and Mar [Irglova, the lead actress] worked for free, and we made the film in seventeen days as that was all the crew could give us.” Overnight, Once had become a project financed entirely by love, a factor which definitely shines through the final product. Suddenly, several sharp cost cuts were made; the Dublin scenes were filmed on long lenses without official permits, the musical recordings were done in Hansard’s bedroom rather than in a studio, and the entire film was shot on HD instead of on the intended 16mm film stock.

“It felt really good, though,” Hansard emphasises, “If you’re doing something like this where everyone is working for free – and I’ve been in this situation with my band many times before – you have to get as much out of these people as possible, so there’s a high energy. We were knocking out about four or five scenes a day.”

Perhaps this is the reason why the film feels so natural and organic; although that may also be attributed to the fact that so much of the film was improvised. Hansard clarifies, “What I love most about music is doing it live, when it’s all in the moment, and everything is real and happening right there, so that, when you fuck up, it’s almost part of the beauty of the performance. That’s what a performance is – imperfect…. And I think John understood that really well, that it had to be improvised in order for it to be enjoyable. A lot of directors are really precious about their dialogue, but John said, ‘If you can find a better way to get to that same point, you should do it.’” Naturally, the fact that Hansard is essentially playing himself, and that he is now actually romantically involved Irglova (this is the one point in the conversation during which he looks significantly more awake), helped infuse that improvisation with a poignant sense of reality.

For Hansard though, it seems that Once is about more than the love between two people. “John described the movie as a ‘love song for Ireland’ – but it kind of depicts a Dublin of about fifteen years ago. I mean, it’s all shot on the streets of Dublin now and with no extras, but Dublin now, like Australia, is full of wine bars and cappuccino cafes now, and we’ve got all the high-end designer clothes shops and people are driving around in Range Rovers flaunting their wealth. What we wanted to do was make a film about Ireland before that happened. Also, the Irish were once famous for their friendly welcome… but when we had to deal with immigration we became quite cruel and quite the opposite. My character in the film actually just represents older Ireland, the guy who just accepts the girl, and likes her for who she is, while there’s no real talk about her past and her Czech history or her poverty.”

Significantly, Once did not receive a raving response upon its release in Ireland. (“Irish people don’t see Irish films,” Hansard explains.) Perhaps this is the reason why Hansard, believing the film would never be successful enough to actually warrant a soundtrack, decided to go ahead and record the film’s songs on a separate album, together with Irglova. “We ended up making this record called The Swell Season, which was just a basically an album of the songs from Once,” he reflects, and then laughs, once more recalling that now familiar tone of disbelief, with which he adds, “We figured Once would never be seen by anybody.”

Interview with Tony Ayres

Tony Ayres, the enthusiastic writer/director of Home Song Stories, seems unusually jumping for a weekday breakfast. He speaks at an accelerated pace, as if riding aboard a morning wave of caffeine, or (more likely) simply bursting with ideas and feelings regarding his latest cinematic effort. It comes as no surprise that Ayres has so much to say. After all, Home Song Stories is a film about his own childhood experiences and about a difficult time when, just after his family’s move from China to Australia, his mother’s lifestyle escalated out of control.

“Personally, this was obviously a set of events that shaped my life and profoundly moved me,” he explains happily, obviously now quite used to discussing this difficult past, “As a starting point, as a filmmaker, you have to be affected by your own story. The challenge of making the movie was about taking this profound event, which seems very powerful to me, and turning it into something that would also affect others. I also find it so fascinating how, when you have something that comes from the truth, you can kind of bend the story out of shape. It gives you a bit of tolerance, in terms of the way in which it fits in, because real life doesn’t fit into conventional narrative.”

While certainly not revolutionary, the narrative of Home Song Stories does indeed twist its way through time in an imaginative fashion. This is a chronological collage of memories, viewed through a child’s perspective, but retold and collated by the adult version of that child (based on Ayres himself), who makes fleeting appearances in brief cut-aways and voice-overs. Seen typing the story onto his computer, he is obviously, like Ayres, in search of catharsis. “I was trying to emphasise that the film is being told from later,” Ayres comments, “If there is a theme to the film, it is about a little boy falling out of love with his mother because of her behaviour, and trying to, as an adult, revisit that behaviour and try and find a sense of forgiveness.”

As eager as he is to discuss his mother, Ayres seems taken aback when I steer conversation towards his representation of women. “I think that in terms of her representation there is a truth to her character, which I know to be true because my mother experienced it, but there was definitely no underlying political thesis,” he stresses, “I think that if you want a film to resonate with your audience, you have to find a contradictory truth. If you want to communicate a thesis, you’re better off writing it. I wasn’t making the film as a statement about women, or about the Asian diaspora, or Chinese representations.”

Alive with contradiction, complexity and humanity, Home Song Stories is without question far removed from the predictability of dogmatic cinema. While Ayres still seems weary about accidentally suggesting that his film belongs in such a category, he does add that his film’s very existence reflects a huge shift in attitudes from the 1970s in which it is set. “When the population changes, inevitably more stories like mine will be told, and they will hopefully provide a human face to these diaspora stories,” he suggests, “There will be more stories like Romulus My Father, or Clubland. Those are three stories all about mothers, and all about migrants, and they’ve all come out this year. That’s a reflection of our shifting culture.”

We can only hope that, as our culture continues to shift, it will also continue to reveal more precious tales such as this one, concerned as they are with capturing poignantly subjective memories rather than with pushing trite political agendas. This film makes a perfect addition our ever-expanding treasure trove of recently uncovered Australian stories.