26x14 Meter Celluloid Songs

Day 6 - Monday, 7 August

A few days ago, when the rain was pouring on Locarno, Little Cheung himself could have been seen singing and clowning merrily on the Piazza Grande, like he does in Fruit Chan's latest movie, presented in the international competition section. Now, as the sun is firmly set above the festival's arena, celluloid songs are back for good. After Isaac Hayes's funky Shaft tunes, Hans-Christian Schmid's Crazy adolescent rhymes, the giant 26x14meter screen was enlivened again last night by Paolo Rocha's hymns, sung in the most colourful fashion by the transvestite characters of his latest film, A Raiz do Coraçao. Paolo Rocha's first film, Os Verdes Anos (1962), is universally considered the film that began the new Portuguese cinema and was awarded at Locarno. In 30 years, the Portuguese director, former assistant of Jean Renoir and Manoel de Oliveira, has not lost his lyricism, his passion, his dreamlike vision of the human existence, expressed here in a story of lust and love in the middle of political passions. The screening of the movie was followed by a one-hour moonlit discussion with the director.

Your mission, should you accept it... is to find Hélène Angel, member of the official jury, set up an appointment with her with a view to discussing in earnest the stakes of "auteur" cinema as illustrated by the theatrical distribution of Peau d'Homme, Coeur de Bête, (Skin of man, Heart of Beast), the director's first feature and winner of the Golden Leopard last year at Locarno. To accomplish your mission, you will be given to wear a Serge Riaboukine mask, complete with its voice-imitating device.

Such was the mission that we entrusted to Daniel Lavaud, the French member of this year's CICAE/Arte Jury, which bestows its prize to the best independent art film. CICAE is the international federation of art cinema theatres, set in defence of independent cinema and pleading for a greater interaction between movies and their audience. Hélène Angel, whose first feature was strongly backed by the CICAE, met Daniel Lavaud at the beautiful Reber hotel, on the banks of Lake Maggiore.

"Going into the theatres and meeting the audience is an essential point" said Hélène Angel. "It is exhausting but great. You get lots of different reactions, which is very challenging. Also, it was in art cinema theatres that I first got the chance to discover such great directors as Abbas Kiarostami, for instance. I guess it must be painful for you when you see such directors leave the art theatre circuit and adopt a wider distribution system..." "It is vexing indeed" confessed Daniel Lavaud. "And it also has dramatic financial consequences for the theatres. But more and more now, the two distribution systems coexist, which is a good thing."

In Switzerland, there are two million readers of daily newspapers, out of a population of five millions. One Swiss out of two is a potential film spectator. The passion for movies is reflected in the size and popularity of the Locarno International Film Festival. Even more to the point: there are 120 legitimate film critics in Switzerland, writing in French, German and Italian.

The Swiss Critics' Week is the result of this profound interest for cinema. Similar to Cannes Festival's International Critics'Week, the Swiss body is made of seven selectors (chosen from the 120 members of the Association of Swiss film critics) who select 7 films. But, unlike Cannes , Locarno Critics'Week's films are documentaries. It is not widely known that Switzerlznd is one of the biggest documentary-makers in the world. In 1999, more documentaries (23) were produced than fiction films (22). In existence since 1990, the Swiss Critics' Week has shown veteran directors like Robert Leacock, Stephen Doskin and Robert Frank from the States. They focus on finding the link between fiction and documentary, a new genre, best illustrated by Beyond Reason and Blue End.

Beyond Reason is the story of a correspondence between a young Dutch woman and Bryan Jennings, a death row inmate of Starke Prison, Florida. The film's director is a woman from Amsterdam. Blue End's topic is the fate of Joseph Paul Jernigan, who was executed in 1993 in Huntsville, Texas and who dedicated his body to science.

The two organizers of the Swiss Critic's Week, Irene Genhart and Thomas Schärer spoke to Claire Clouzot (from Cannes' International Critic's Week) on a sunny day at the Locarno Film Festival. Questions were about the choice between fiction and documentary.

"It does not matter whether it is documentary or fiction" starts Irene Genhart . "It is just a film. Maybe the distinction was necessary for a number of years to get all the theories about film language, but now you have new media, very fast cameras, you can make films on very low budgets. But the discussion will go on, because now everybody can take his own camera and make a film..."

"The original idea of Critics' Week was that we, the critics, go to a lot of festivals and see a lot of films which never come to Switzerland. You choose the films you like best as a critic and you bring them to your home country." "The distribution of documentaries is quite difficult," adds Thomas Schärer. "Even very known names have difficulties getting distributors. Somehow we can contribute to establish a little bit more this idea that commercially-thinking distributors are ready to have a small side section in their programme which can contribute to a profile for their company."

Switzerland is represented in competition in Locarno by one film screened at the Piazza Grande: Denis Rabaglia's Azzuro . The return of an Italian immigrant to his home village is going to be celebrated at two parties in honor of Swiss cinema. One at the Viscontian Grand Hotel and another one, late after the Piazza Grande showing, in the "public baths" of Lanca on the Lago Maggiore.

Tomorrow's big Piazza screening will be L'Amour, L'Argent, L'Amour by Philip Gröning (Germany).