People & Places

NEWS/FEATURES ARAB TIMES, SUNDAY, JULY 3, 2016

20

US actor Willem Dafoe poses for photographers after being awarded with the Crystal Globe Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema at the 51th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF), in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic on July 1. (AFP)

Actress and singer Jordin Sparks at-tends the 13th annual McDonald’s 365 Black Awards at the Ernest Moral Convention on July 1 in New

Orleans. (AP)

McConaughey Roberts

LOS ANGELES: This fall, Matthew McConaughey will bring his Hollywood expertise and heavy Texas drawl to the college classroom.

The University of Texas at Austin announced that the actor will help teach a fi lm class called “Advanced Producing: Script to Screen.”

Scott Rice is listed as the offi cial professor in the online course catalogue, but McConaughey and director Gary Ross will assist. According to its description, the class will take students “behind the scenes” of McConaughey and Ross’ recent collaboration, the Civil War drama “Free State of Jones.”

“By studying the movie’s source mate-rial, script, shot lists, storyboards, shooting schedule, VFX, fi nal cut and even exclu-sive behind-the-scenes footage, students will garner insight into the production of a major Hollywood feature,” the course description says.

There is a catch: the Oscar-winning actor will do most of his teaching through recorded videos, but is expected to visit campus at least once. The class is capped at 30 upper-level students. (RTRS)

❑ ❑ ❑

LOS ANGELES: David Brent is back ... and he’s as awkward as ever.

Ricky Gervais’ famous character in “The Offi ce” got a music video as part of the pitch-perfect promotion for the BBC show’s movie spinoff, “David Brent: Life on the Road.” Gervais returns as the failed middle-manager whose delusional rock star aspirations take him on a concert tour across the UK.

In the music video, Brent has fallen in love with a “Lady Gypsy.” In the fi lm, “Lady Gypsy” is the single for Brent and his band Foregone Conclusion’s new album, “Life on the Road.”

“I lost my heart to a lady gypsy, so long ago I forget her name. But I still remember the smell of the fl owers, the way my life

Variety

British actor Jamie Dornan (right), and Czech actress Anna Geislerova pose on the red carpet upon arrival for the opening ceremony of the 51th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF), in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic on

July 1. (AFP)

French poet Bonnefoydies at the age of 93PARIS, July 2, (AFP): France’s most famous contemporary poet, Yves Bonnefoy, has died at the age of 93, offi cials confi rmed Saturday.

The author of more than 100 books translated into 30 languages was highly decorated in his native France, and his name was often mentioned as a favourite to win a Nobel Prize for Literature.

He died on Friday, according to the College de France research and education institute where he was an honorary professor.

He was also known for his transla-tions of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as the works of Yeats, Petrarch and his friend Georges Seferis.

Admirers from around the world took to Twitter to mourn Bonnefoy, known for his piercing gaze and mop of white hair, many of them quoting lines from his most famous works.

would never be the same,” he sings.The folk ballad opens to Brent strum-

ming a guitar while leaning against a tree. While the fi rst verse captures Brent falling in love at fi rst sight — “I spotted an angel

just standing there. She was a traveler but she was pretty and clean” — in true Brent style, things get uncomfortable in the second verse. (RTRS)

❑ ❑ ❑

NEW YORK: It was the romance that provided the happiest of endings to an iconic memoir that became an interna-tional bestseller and spawned a Hollywood movie starring Julia Roberts.

But “Eat Pray Love” author Elizabeth Gilbert announced Friday that she was parting from her husband, Jose Nunes, with whom she fell in love at the end of a journey of self-discovery more than a decade ago.

“I am separating from the man whom many of you know as ‘Felipe’ — the man whom I fell in love with at the end of the ‘Eat Pray Love’ journey,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

“He has been my dear companion for over 12 years, and they have been wonder-ful years. Our split is very amicable. Our reasons are very personal.”

The couple married in 2007 and lived in Frenchtown, New Jersey about 60 miles (96 kms) west of New York where they ran a store. (AFP)

❑ ❑ ❑

LOS ANGELES: Writer and humorist Garrison Keillor served up a bittersweet farewell for some 18,000 fans at the Hollywood Bowl as he hosted his fi nal episode of the old-style radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion.”

Keillor’s swan song Friday night wasn’t markedly different from most of his nearly 42 years of “Companion” episodes, offer-ing a rich mix of Americana music and folksy comedy. (US President Barack Obama called in for a special segment recorded earlier Friday, but not even the Bowl audience will hear that until Satur-day’s broadcast.) (AP)

Film

Quietly enriching

‘Anishoara’ anhonest dramaLOS ANGELES, July 2, (RTRS): The anthropologically inclined coming-of-age story, something of a staple on the arthouse and fes-tival circuit, gets a sensitive and confi dent makeover in Ana Felicia Scutelnicu’s literal and thematic follow up to her 61-minute-long “Panihida.” Dovetailing with her experiences shooting that fi lm, which was set in the same small village in Moldova, “Anishoara” is the real name of her lead actress, whose unselfconscious, taciturn magnetism fascinated the director. Of course, things rarely come to-

gether instan-taneously in the fi lm world, and there is a sense that the ephemeral moment that so fascinated Scutelnicu, of Anishoara ’s transition from girlhood to womanhood, has already

(though recently) passed for the young non-professional actress. But rather than scuppering the fi lm’s al-ready diffuse storytelling, this qual-ity lends a somewhat overfamiliar story its freshest notes.

GracefulThe graceful yet honest, unvar-

nished performance from actress Anishoara, being just that moment older, gives character Anishoara a beyond-her-years wisdom, look-ing out from behind those un-fl ecked eyes. Her eyes do a lot of the work here since Anishoara her-self barely speaks at all — that we can hear, anyway. Instead, Scutel-nicu’s camera observes her with a removed but intense interest as she dashes through fi elds or listens to the sounds of night or does her chores, always with a strange, self-contained single-mindedness. It’s rare that a fi lm about such a disen-franchised and isolated world can observe it with neither condescen-sion nor romanticism, but it’s a line Scutelnicu walks deftly.

Because as much as the director is fascinated by her star, she is perhaps even more so by the circumstances of Anishoara’s life, presenting the Moldovan countryside as an ancient place, almost a time capsule of cus-toms and rituals and folklore forgot-ten by the rest of the world. Indeed, Scutelnicu’s one showy directorial fl ourish is to have the fi lm open with a folk tale, told straight to camera. A beautiful girl rejects all her suit-ors because she’s in love with the king of the sun, but she is burned by his embrace and turned into a starling, ever wheeling up back to him in the sky, only to drop down to earth again. It has its desired ef-fect: Throughout the rest of the fi lm, which is divided into the four sea-sons of a single year (necessitating several different d.p.s) as Anishoara engages with or gently rebuffs each of three potential suitors, we feel her story come into and out of phase with that of the starling-girl.

UnnaturalThe men who fl it on the fringes

of Anishoara’s life are glimpsed in brief interludes: the smitten older German tourist who makes himself ridiculous by getting his gray hair dyed unnaturally black, and brings her a wedding veil; the farmboy and probably childhood playmate who gives her and her friend rides on his tractor; and the out-of-towner, in a classic bad-boy leather jacket whom Anishoara fi rst spots at a watermelon picnic and sim-ply, unashamedly ogles. The next time we see him is sometime later as he takes her to the sea (Moldova is landlocked) on a brief lovers’ trip that is remarkable in the way Scutelnicu shows it to be made up of as much boredom as romance.

And elsewhere we have moments of simple, almost documentary in-terest (though the controlled cam-erawork never feels like it’s aiming for verite, and Niklas Kammertons’ sound design is exquisite). It’s to Scutelnicu’s credit that despite the considered, almost drowsy pace of the proceedings, she still manages to evoke a sense of almost animalistic peril. When one of her grandfather’s fellow carousers comes in from the revelry outside and sits heavily on Anishoara’s bed, she may pull back into almost complete shadow but you can sense her alarm, her alertness.

Anishoara’s life is not the stuff of thrilling drama, and it’s hard to see the fi lm gaining a huge amount of traction outside of specialty and festival outlets. But as her gradu-ation fi lm from Berlin fi lm school DFFB, it marks out Scutelnicu as possessing confi dence beyond her experience. Her watchful gaze over Anishoara is quietly enriching, giv-ing us a clear-eyed, unsentimental, and very gently liberating homage to all the girls of times gone by and all the girls of times to come who, in the words of Thomas Gray, would oth-erwise blush unseen and waste their sweetness on the desert air.

Scutelnicu

Hollywood stars matter to fi lm festivals

Taddicken on adapting Kennedy’s ‘Bliss’LOS ANGELES, July 2, (RTRS): Variety speaks with German director Sven Taddicken about his latest fea-ture, “Original Bliss,” an adaptation of Scottish author A. L. Kennedy’s 1997 collection of short stories, which has its international premiere in competi-tion at Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

The fi lm, which stars Martina Ge-deck and Ulrich Tukur, revolves around a woman in a failing marriage who embarks on an unlikely romance. “Original Bliss” is produced by Fris-beefi lms, Cine Plus Filmproduktion and Senator Film. Picture Tree Intl. is handling world sales.

Taddicken’s works include “Get-ting My Brother Laid,” his debut fea-ture, and “Emma’s Bliss.” When he’s not making fi lms, Taddicken teaches directing and writing at the Met Film School Berlin. He has also taught in Kenya as part of fellow German fi lm-maker Tom Tykwer’s One Fine Day fi lm-training initiative in Nairobi.

Question: What was it about A.L. Kennedy’s novel that inspired you to adapt it for fi lm?

Answer: I once listened to the novel more or less by accident while being stuck in a traffi c jam on the German Au-tobahn. A.L. Kennedy’s story starts out as a funny odd-couple-romance. Then it gets darker and darker, and guides you through the unexpected depths of its characters: the famous psycholo-gist Eduard Gluck and his weird sexual longings, and housewife Helene Brindel, who is stranded in a dangerous marriage with her violent husband, asking herself: Is the loss of “faith” the result of my situ-ation — or did it actually cause it?

In the end the story releases you with such a cheeky barefaced happy ending that you never expected to be believable — but it is. I was so moved that I wrote

myself a note that I would like to make a fi lm “like that.” It seems like a crazy and fateful coincidence that Alexander Bickenbach from Frisbeefi lms rang me up a couple of weeks later to offer me the chance to write and direct this novel. Needless to say that this was the most enjoyable traffi c jam I remember.

Q: What do actors Martina Gedeck and Ulrich Tukur bring to this particu-lar story?

A: They are both extremely expe-rienced actors, in fact the most expe-rienced actors I’ve ever worked with. They fully dedicated themselves to their characters and both gave a unique per-formance that is far from routine. Mar-tina Gedeck approached Helene Brindel in a very serious and thoughtful way, which made this fragile character believ-able. And Ulrich Tukur approached Ed-uard Gluck in a very playful and charm-ing way, which makes Gluck lovable, in spite of his uncommon interests.

Q: The book is set in Scotland — what kinds of changes did you have to make to the story for a German adap-tation? I guess it helped that the main characters have German-sounding names?

A: Well, the book takes place in Glasgow, London and Stuttgart, Ger-many, where the two main characters meet for the fi rst time at a conference on psychology. I changed these loca-tions to Konigswinter (in the fi lm an anonymous town in the west of Ger-many), Berlin and Hamburg, and made the story take place completely in Ger-many, for mainly practical reasons: In our situation this was the only way to get the fi lm fi nanced in Germany.

And yes, A. L. Kennedy references to the German language are quite fun-ny, especially giving Eduard Gluck a last name that actually means “happi-

ness” (Gluck) in German.Q: You have made a broad range of

fi lms but relationships and intimacy seem to be elements in a number of your works — are you attracted to sto-ries of couples coming together, of hu-man connection?

A: For sure. I guess a question that drives me is: Do I deserve love? Or do “we” deserve love.

While working on this fi lm I real-ized this for the fi rst time. It’s the same question that drives Max, the shy car-salesman in trouble, in “Emma’s Bliss,” or mentally-handicapped Josch in “Getting My Brother Laid.” The characters I’m interested in are often in need of love and are unsure if they are allowed to receive some.

Q: What fi lmmakers would you say inspire you?

A: So many. I take inspiration from the old-new British cinemA: Leigh and Loach. I enjoy Almodovar’s play-fulness and his love for cinema — and for “Original Bliss,” Daniela Knapp [the cinematographer] and I watched a lot of Douglas Sirk’s work from the old days. His combination of romance and violence was a big infl uence for “Original Bliss” and gave me confi -dence to touch these diffi cult scenes.

Q: You also teach fi lm — what does it contribute to your professional life?

A: Teaching makes you realize what you actually know — and what you don’t know. It’s a great thing to do, and it even gave me more confi -dence in directing.

Also:LOS ANGELES: The Karlovy Vary Film Festival, which kicked off Fri-day, looks set to be another major suc-cess as local festgoers lineup for the popular Czech event, and Hollywood stars play a very important part in the

popularity of these movie fi estas.Last year, some 40,000 festgoers

descended on the Bohemian spa town and fest organizers are bracing for similar crowds this year, in addition to some 550 fi lmmakers and 1,000 fi lm professionals.

“We expect full cinemas, as usual,” said Karlovy Vary Film Festival ar-tistic director Karel Och. “The tradi-tional online reservations of 10% of the tickets fi ve days before the festival proved the interest of the audience, for which we are grateful — 8,800 tickets booked in six minutes.”

The fest is set to get a dose of star wattage from the likes of Michael Shannon, Jamie Dornan, Willem Dafoe, Jean Reno and Toby Jones. “The star power and the glamour is a natural part of any A-category festi-val,” Och said. “It creates unforgetta-ble moments for our audience, for our partners and for us as well.”

The fest is unveiling a new industry meeting place this year in collabora-tion with Barrandov Studio, the Film Industry Pool, located above the Ther-mal Pool. The new site will host an in-dustry panel on July 4 co-sponsored by Barrandov Studio and Variety.

Other new developments include a new audience day. “2016 marks the fi rst year we will screen a few awarded fi lms on Sunday, July 10 — the day after the closing ceremony,” Och said.

In addition, KVIFF Distribution, a new joint initiative launched by the festival, local distrib Aerofi lms and Czech TV, aims to reach cinema-lov-ers in other parts of the country with the nationwide release in July of three fest titles, Matt Ross’ “Captain Fantas-tic”, Gabriel Mascaro’s Brazilian dra-ma “Neon Bull” and Bruno Dumont’s French comedy “Slack Bay.”

Film