“Be honest”
David Beckham, in the documentary Beckham
(Fisher Stevens, 2023)
“How do you do to tell the difference
between absolute honesty and disappointment?”
Allen Ginsberg in a letter to Jack Kerouac
An introduction
In 1956 writer Frank O’Hara titled one of his poems To the Film Industry in Crisis. This poem is more a hopeful praise for certain classic cinema than a pamphlet about the problems of cinema and its industry. O’Hara was a poet and not a journalist, but even still, he was always connected with his time and with what was happening in the world of culture and art in general (I almost use the word “zeitgeist”, but I will not). It is enough to review his body of work to figure what I am talking about. O’Hara was such an important character of that period (late 50s and early 60s) that even Don Draper himself read one of his books in a memorable episode of the drama series Mad Men (2007-2015). The book was Meditations in an emergency (1957), which includes this very poem. It would not be strange that the poet has seen a similar headline in some newspaper or entertainment publication around that time and has decided to use it in his work. The point is that cinema and its industry were always in a crisis. Even one of its creators sentenced it in a well-remembered phrase: “Cinema is an invention that has no future”, turning out to be rudely mistaken, yet leaving an eternal stigma on him. But let us remember the Lumieres for cinema rather than their skills as futurologists.
Something similar happens with film festivals, why should not be? They are always in crisis, always going through some sort of problem or conflict. Be it political, economic, their programming or organization. Of course, that changes immediately when checking the social media of such events. There one can find images that contradict those problems: fancy people, celebrities (of all kinds and sorts), red carpets (sometimes crowded, sometimes not so much, but there is always a carpet and it is always red), sold-out screenings, with the press and even the very programmers praising each one of the films being shown at the festival. Even complaints seem to be ordered and tidy. These complaints, of every kind and sort, already seem to be part of the programming schedule. Festivals nowadays seem to take place more at virtual spaces rather than at the actual geographical spots where they really take place on. And critics are not helping much. The few lucky ones who have the opportunity to attend only seem interested in telling us how good is Almodóvar’s latest film and not so much about what really happens around them (there is a type of critic, who likes to pose as sacrificial monks that only devote themselves to see movies from sunrise to sunset with barely time to eat a piece of stale bread with a side of, perhaps, a boiled potato, while there is another bunch of characters, not just film critics, who made and still make their careers in festivals by attending parties. I do not know which one is the worst. We will go back on this subject). The pandemic also left us with another bad habit: that of critics that write about movies without attending festivals, seeing them through links sometimes provided by the festivals themselves. But critics are not the only ones to be blamed. In the economy being dealt with today around the world, and especially in our country (to clarify, when I write “our country” I am still referring to Argentina), it is almost impossible to solely commit oneself to write about cinema. On the other hand, and this is one of the really serious issues, festivals are no longer interested in critics. Nowadays in major festivals (my apologies, but for the time being we will talk about them; there will be time for the others) there is no room for critics other than some open forum or collaboration, and sometimes not even that. It is enough with checking out the juries in Cannes or Berlin of the last few years to realize about this. It is easier that a young actor or actress with a hit TV show occupies a spot in the official competition jury at Cannes than people like Alexander Horwath, Nicole Brenez or Adrian Martin. In the latest edition of the Locarno Film Festival, Charles Tesson himself, former director of the downcast Semaine de la Critique and a film critic as well, who alongside Olivier Assayas was responsible for a mythical issue of Cahiers du cinema that helped the wonderful Hong Kong cinema of the 80s to be known, thanked the festival’s artistic director for giving him a spot in the jury of the Concorso Cineasti del Presente competition, the second most important in the whole festival, mentioning in his speech about the places critics no longer occupy.
But there is a new space of recent apparition in festivals, these are the schools for young critics, called by different names in every event, but in the end, they tend to be, more or less, the same thing. In these spaces the festival selects people, almost always youngsters, who attend masterclasses, open forums, etc. and who, by the way, also write about the event taking place. Or, better said, about movies participating in the festival’s line-up. But here appears, once again, an issue similar to the one mentioned previously. On account of one of those bizarre occurrences, Adrian Martin himself, the Australian film critic I mentioned before, wrote the following on his Facebook account a couple of days ago (The rather clumsy translation is my own, as well as some editing made to the text which, I believe, does not alter its meaning):
“It came to my mind the idea of reading some of the many writings from the “Film Criticism Campus” related to several film festivals around the world and featured in several web sites. I’m not at all against the idea of a campus of this sort, but I’m surprised about the frequency with which they lead to a generalized predominance of a type of writing approach: to simply talk about the films that critics (mainly young ones) see at the festival screens. There’s almost nothing (although I’m sure there are exceptions) about (to use the latest buzzword) the event’s “infrastructure”, the diverse organization and control networks, the way in which things happen behind the scenes… although one can imagine that the participants are in an ideal position to delve into these things. It can be critical commentaries about politics, speculations about selection principles… but all that is related only to the films being seen, the interviewed famous guests, etc.
In the end, the festival uses the campus mainly as another form of publicity/promotion (and an overwhelmingly positive one at that), […]
Every time I lectured on a subject related to film festivals, I tried (not always successfully) to “integrate” the students not only in the seats of the theater, but into the entire organization as well, anywhere where they could find out how those events really worked. […]”.
What Martin points out is true. But what is also true is that most of the people who handle those young critics’ spots, are also critics and, most of the time, also young. And critics, even when they are granted the position of programmers, usually have no knowledge about festival organization beyond the tasks implied in the job description. Why, or how, would they talk about something they do not know either? And besides, why criticizing a spot that in the future could be a source of employment? Constructive criticism is a fable critics tell their children at bedtime.
This landscape is even more terrible: there are festival presidents, even artistic directors, who worked their entire careers without ever knowing how or in which way a festival works in its entirety. The point is that film festivals, as I suppose about most cultural spaces of certain relevance, are also fitting places for people with power (be it by fame or politics, or a mix of both) that want and can be a part of this kind of events (although I have to be honest: the knowledge of these “festival mechanics” tends to be of any importance when it comes to the success of a festival). I cannot help but talk with some degree of anger about this niche, that gave me a job –which fortunately I was able to perform for several years–, and, at the same time all those years “behind the scenes”, as Martin says in his writings, are the ones that allow me to confirm what I said with absolute confidence and knowledge about the subject. Naturally, most of people I have worked with all these years were qualified and talented (they were not that many; I am not going to play Mr. Nice Guy at these lengths), but they were not the ones to make it into spots of true importance. They tend to be the ones staying in minor and sacrificed works (I almost add a “like me” to that sentence, but it would be unfair, I got access to those places of certain power, although I decided to stay at the door. In some cases, they even chose for me, but that is another story).
Upon re-reading the above I realize it sounds too aggressive and quite angered, although not for that less true. Actually, I was very lucky to work with some festival directors I admired and still do to this day, and some others –in some cases, they are the same– with which we are no longer in speaking terms, nor we ever will be again. I write this not without some degree of sadness. It is that us, festival programmers are like those second-rate gangsters in Asian movies, sent by a powerful boss to undertake some dirty work. We begin with an impeccable suit, ready to take the world by storm, but as time and “jobs” go by, we end up with our clothes torn and bloody, and when we realize about it, it is already too late: the blood in the suit is our own. I apologize for the drama. As my beloved wife would say, too many movies.
I have been wanting to write about film festivals for quite some time. A bit in the line of what Adrian Martin is saying. Since I think one must never be at both sides of the counter (although there are programmers who are also film producers, we will address this subject later on), now that I stepped away from the Mar del Plata Film Festival, I will allow myself to do it. I do not know which is the right way, so I am going to use my attendances to several festivals, from this point on until the end of the year, as an excuse. Festivals I am going to attend thanks to my wife’s generosity and not so much because of my celebrated track record as a programmer (laughter). This also says something about the world of festivals.
This introduction already got more extensive than I thought of. I would like to say what comes up next will indicate the form of the following texts, but I am not so sure. It will be a little bit of everything for everyone: festival chronicles, film criticism (not so much criticism, but an analysis on why certain movies are where they are and why others do not), socials, aphorisms (!), anecdotes old and new, sure-to-be unproductive digressions, etc. But I actually do not have much of an idea. I write, as I was saying, in the middle of a series of travels and therefore, some of the texts will arrive a lot later than the festival dates in point. As indicated by the extensive, and rather pretentious title of this text, this is a journey of which we do not know for sure where it will lead us, or even if it will take us to any destination. I do not know either if festivals have a heart that makes them come together or even share one, although I suspect they do. Abandon all hope all those who do not approve of the first person, gossiping, bad jokes (and misdeeds in general) and the boutades. You have been warned. I write this in the mythical Train to Busan, after spending a couple of beautiful days in the renewed DMZ docs festival. To them is dedicated this first entry. Here we go.
1. Life at war times
Upon strolling down Seoul is hard, almost impossible, to imagine that the Republic of Korea is a country in a state of war since its separation between the north and the south. Of course, this is a war taking place at offices and not so much at battlefields. The north and the south, capitalism and communism, separating a country, God knows for how long. But this is not the place to talk about Korean politics. There is nothing sadder than tourists that, after a brief visit, dedicate to make sociological and political analyses on the visited countries. Besides, you run the risk of becoming dumber than you already are. This is simply a brief introduction to talk about the geographical zone known by the acronym DMZ (standing for Demilitarized Zone). That is the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas which also is, quite strangely, a tourism spot where merchandise can be bought, ride in a cable car and get into abandoned tunnels utilized during the war. While these tasks are performed, one can also hear distant gunshots product of the soldiers in training; in Korea, military service is obligatory, and you can also see signs forbidding access to certain sectors since they could be land mined. All of them are leftovers from a past war that can also be seen when arriving there by car. Great extensions surrounded by barb wired fences and abandoned security watch posts, surely replaced by security systems as effective as they are virtual. But let us return, right away, to the festival.
The DMZ docs had its first edition in 2009, making it a relatively young festival. Another one of its particularities is that this edition was organized by the cities of Paju and Goyang, both belonging to province of Gyeonggi. Unlike other festivals, DMZ Docs changed cities in its different editions. We were saying that the festival started in 2009 and, somehow, finished defining the panorama of Korean festivals: Busan (BIFF), the biggest and more powerful, dedicated to major auteurs with a huge market draw, started in 1997; a year later comes the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN), which as its name indicates, is dedicated to fantasy and horror film genres. 1999 marks the birth of the Jeonju International Film Festival (JIFF), dedicated to independent cinema and new auteurs, and ten years later DMZ Docs was born, dedicated to documentaries, although this would change over time. Of course, there are more festivals in Korea, but these four are the most important and the ones that, in some way, define a map on Korean festivals.
The DMZ Docs, like all festivals, had its good times and bad times, but for the past two years, with the arrival of programmer Jang Byungwon, former programmer at Jeonju, has been experiencing a sort of rebirth and new winds of change. Like many events knew how to do (I think of the FIDMarseille directed by Jean-Pierre Rehm, who knowingly and purposefully visited this festival last year and who we will talk about soon) and were originally dedicated to documentaries, DMZ decided to include fiction features and hybrids, that trendy little word, therefore amplifying its panorama substantially and, besides, adding installations and exhibitions related to the programming. For instances, this year, upon entering the shopping mall where most events at the festival took place, one could find installations by some of the directors attending the festival. All these initiatives gave DMZ Docs an air of modernity that sets it apart from the rest of festivals, making it more similar in programming to that at Jeonju festival since both aspire to show a similar idea of cinema, an auteur cinema that appeals to new forms, not only of filmmaking, but of producing their own films and even extending the forms of cinema beyond the theater. The Argentine presence in the festival makes this very clear. In the International Competition Martin Rejtman was present with Riders (2024), and in the Frontiers competition, dedicated to “riskier” films and new filmmakers, director Manuel Embalse was present with The New Ruins (2024).
Both movies, starting from a documentary record, offer particular outlooks on recent subjects and, as I said before, use formal and personal tools that escape forms and resources classic to the genre. The inclusion of a modern classic such as Rejtman, plus that of a young filmmaker like Embalse, make it very clear what is the concept of programming the festival aspires to have. An idea completed with the rest of the films presented and some of their guests.
2. Heinz at the cities
The major guest of this edition was German filmmaker Heinz Emigholz, who has shown an extensive retrospective of his filmography and presented the world premiere, which meant a great deal of pride for the organizers, of The Suit (2024), his new film which continued the form of “dialogued” movies the auteur began with Streetscapes [DIALOGUE] (2017), where actor John Erdman transforms into an alter ego of the filmmaker. The Suit was a work of science fiction where the protagonist encounters with his future “self”, with whom he holds interminable dialogues in which the director makes clear about his outlook on the world and on cinema in particular. In the final credits it can be read that the movie is dedicated to author Phillip K. Dick. Emigholz tells me before the screening of one of his films that he used to be a friend of Dick’s during the 70s, a time where he lived in America and Dick loved his drawings. Heinz’s drawings also were an important part of his visit, since the festival also organized an extensive exhibition of this not-so-known side of the filmmaker’s body of work. For the grand finale, and as if everything that came before was not enough, a book was also edited, as small as it is beautiful (book design in Korea tends to be particularly sophisticated), titled Oblique Vision – Heinz Emigholz, which includes a series of essays, an interview and a great deal of the mentioned drawings, that rather than complementing the auteur’s body of work, showed another side of him that was, at least for me, unknown.
Emigholz not only presented each one of his programmed films and delivered a Master Class (where, among many other things, said that cinema’s greatest problem was that of following the ways of narration, rather than those of the essay, transforming almost all cinema being produced into mere entertainment), but also found time to attend the screening of films made by his colleagues. In the second day of the festival, but the first with public screenings, I had the pleasure of seeing next to him, at a morning screening, James Benning’s last film, for the time being, titled Breathless (2024), which consists of a static shot lasting 88 minutes. But we will talk later about this film. To find directors that during the festivals see other movies besides their own is almost a miracle.
Emigholz finished his visit by signing autographs on copies of his book for a group of very young Korean girls. Do not ask me why, but in that screening 90% of the audience were young women, excited after the screening of Streetscapes [DIALOGUE], which according to Heinz is his favorite film. Korean cinephilia is just like that: sophisticated.
3. The revolution will not be (televised)
“And thus, the cancer of our society: advertising”
Jean Renoir, “Le Petit beret d’André Bazin”
I must admit that I knew nothing of the two new films by Radu Jude being shown at the past edition of the Locarno film festival, just a year after the Romanian filmmaker won one of the top prizes at the Swiss/Italian event with Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023). Obviously, the fact that they were two features, with a runtime of an hour apiece, and that they were presented in non-competitive sections, were data that made clear that neither was the case of being his “official” new film (this is, or will be, the Dracula adaptation –with the working title of Dracula Park— and will mark the first time in cinema history that a Romanian will adapt the legend of his vampiric compatriot), but works made quite rapidly and with a spirit of experimentation the filmmaker has been displaying in his later years and films. Although sometimes these “experiments” tend to come out better than the “official” films. I use the term “official”, apologizing for the excessive use of quotation marks, to refer to those movies that are thought to be screened at the competitions of the world’s major festivals and do not tend to happen from one year to the next. Surely, if Radu reads this (Hi, Radu!), he will tell me that is not the case, and for him all his films are worth the same. And this is sure to be true, but here I am talking about the values seen and considered in the films by the festivals, rather than other “values”, perhaps more important when it comes to talk about cinema and also for its makers, but that matters very little to major festivals. Perhaps, because of all this, my surprise was not so big when a few minutes into the screening of Eight Postcards from Utopia (2024) I discovered we were attending, and surely would see till the end, to a succession of Romanian TV commercials aired between the early nineties, shortly after the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu, up to, give or take, 2011. The end credits have the air dates of each one of the commercials, but they are so many it is difficult to read their corresponding years. I see the film with a Korean friend of mine who is not into cinema or festivals for that matter, who at one time asks me “Why do I have to see this?”, a logical question for which I did not have, or still have to this day, any answer to. First, because as a viewer I am very passive, I could see the filming of a building for 24 hours (I think I heard this before) and not bother so much nor ask many questions, and second, because I was having a great time seeing the film. To my surprise, the Romanian commercials looked a lot like Argentinian commercials of that period. From the costumes, haircuts, up to the (supposed) humor. All those images were reminiscent to the Argentine Television of not so many years ago. I also realized, while the clips came one after the other without pause, that advertising looks a lot like bad mainstream cinema. The idea that a common denominator exists between the audiences and the characters appearing on screen and from that place comes the necessity of creating fiction (products) that the audience can identify with and, eventually, buy. Once the screening was over, I tell my Korean friend about the similitudes between the Romanians and the Argentinians, to which she answers she has no idea, since she does not know any Romanian and only knows one Argentinian, which is me. Later, as I socialize with other guests, someone reminds me that Pino Solanas attended the festival in 2018, where he was the subject of an homage and among the films of his being screened was the restored version of The Hour of the Furnaces (1968). I tried to find out if during the screening of the film someone hung a sign with the phrase “Every viewer is a coward or a traitor”, but no one seemed to remember. I do remember that in the screening at the Lugones theater, where part of the restoration was screened with the director in attendance, the sign was hung, bearing that phrase that got lost in time. After that, to be a viewer nowadays requires an extreme degree of bravery. And so much more if you are in the audience of a film festival. Solanas, like many other Argentinian directors, shot commercials at one time or another. And not for nothing TV commercials in Argentina were called “propaganda”. The point is that cinema (sorry: the audiovisual) was always a powerful weapon when it came to sell us something. Be it a refrigerator or an ideology. But let us return to the Romanian film. One of the commercials show an idyllic home inhabited by a young married couple in the precise moment the male member (Is it still called that way?) finds out he won some sort of lottery. Upon hearing this news, he asks his wife to pack her bags. The woman, overjoyed, asks if it is a beach vacation or a mountain vacation. To which the husband replies that neither; she is asked to pack her bags because he is kicking her out of the house. A scene that could easily be in the script for an Adrian Suar movie titled I married a lottery gambler. This begs the question: Does something like a Romanian Adrian Suar exist out there?
4. My night with Claire
The following story did not happen in Korea, but in the small city of Basilea, homeland of Roger Federer, and the place where the much interesting Bildrausch Filmfestival takes place. The organizers of Bildsrausch Filmfestival claim to not believe much in awards. Even still, they do offer one, which consists in a hefty sum of money. Unlike the rest of festivals, which usually have a jury integrated by several personalities (always in uneven numbers to reduce the possibility of swampy tie result), our Swiss friends found a very particular way of choosing their winners, which I do not know when or how they started to implant, but that is the way it is: the award-winning filmmaker in one year comes back the next as a jury, and besides, has the possibility of choosing who will accompany him in the election of the awarded film. Claire Simon turned out to be the winner of the 2023 edition with her documentary Notre Corps (2023) and as it is stated in their rules, in 2024 she returned to the festival, this time as a jury. But due to the twists of fate, and of festivals, her partner in the jury had to delay her trip for health issues (nothing serious), reason why Simon asked the organization if there was anybody who could accompany her during that day in which she had to attend several screenings, since she did not want to go alone and preferred to have someone with which she could talk about the movies once she had seen them. The festival is brief, yet intense, and there are not many screenings, even less for the juries on duty. Upon this request, those responsible at the festival thought of me, who I happened to find myself performing the only duty I have been performing lately at festivals: being my wife’s husband, who aside from standing me, is one of the programmers at Bildrausch Fest, alongside an incredible programming team comprised of a Portuguese woman (with an Argentinian past), a Romanian man and the leadership of an Austrian woman, the great Susanne Guggenberger, director of the festival. Obviously, I accepted the task, and thus, I went with Claire to see movies and talk about them. It was a very fun evening that ended in a night of drinking, courtesy of the festival organization. Some guys get all the luck, as the song goes. Obviously, I knew Claire Simon, or should I say knew her body of work, while she did not know me, although she did mention to know the Mar del Plata film festival and not as a mere pleasantry, since she, by the way, complained to me on why we never programmed her films. I gave the usual explanation I offer on these cases: I blamed it on my colleagues. The name of Claire and the French nationality seem to imply a high degree of bravery, since Simon, like her namesake Claire [Denis], has no qualms about giving their opinions about cinema in general, and particularly the French one. Almost no one can survive her merciless outlook, not even many of my heroes in French cinema. For instance, she defines the aforementioned Denis and Nicole Brenez as “mundane”. But she also has words of praise towards those she admires, such as director Alain Guiraudie, of whom she recently saw Miséricorde (2024) at Cannes and had it stood out as a great film. Claire also tells me she is a fan of Argentine cinema. She mentions Trenque Lauquen (2021) and The Delinquents (2022) with a great deal of admiration and tells me of the time she was part of the jury for the prestigious Camera D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, award granted to the first films shown at different sections. She confesses me that during that year, 2001, the entire jury agreed to give Lisandro Alonso’s Freedom (2001) the award, except for one member that refused, claiming the movie was not a documentary, a reasoning so absurd it made me ask for a name, to which Claire answers: a French critic from Positif magazine. This confirmed my despise for the mythical rag. Mythical only for being the opposition to Cahiers du Cinema. A quick search in Wikipedia leads me to find the name of the culprit of not awarding Alonso, but it is better to not mention his name. Let us leave him in the place he deserves in cinema history, which is oblivion. Although now I remember a voting on the best Argentinian films ever made recently held in my country and the spot occupied there by Lisandro’s film. Critics in general, whether they belong to Positif or not, are not fond of Freedom either.
(Perhaps someone may accuse me of being indiscreet for revealing a private conversation. They can say what they want. But it was Claire Simon herself who, after I asked for her permission, authorized me to write about our talks. In fact, I am the one that does not dare to include more names of the luminaries denounced by the fierce Frenchwoman and not just because it was a long list, but because the champagne drank that night was not very kind to my memory).
In this edition of the DMZ Docs, one could see Claire Simon’s latest effort, titled Apprendre (2024) and it makes clear that the documentary is the genre where she excels at. Simon makes that phrase by Rossellini, “There’s reality. Why interfere?”, her own and so registers the life of her protagonists, in this case, the teachers and students of a French elementary school. With the simple and classic direct recording and posterior editing of the recorded, Simon shows us a universe populated by children that, like all children, can go from charming to annoying in a matter of minutes and a few shots. In one of the scenes, a teacher takes her students on a boat ride on the Seine. The children burst in screaming every time they go under a bridge, while the teacher tries for the trip to be of some use so they can learn something. Thus, as the boat moves on, she asks questions to her students. One of them is about the name of a monument that recently caught fire. The children’s answers, also screamingly loud, are absurd: Paris! Says one, Marseille! Says another. With infinite patience she says no, that it is not a city, but a monument, to which another of the children bursts out with his answer: Argentina! Although the teacher, already tired, corrects him that it is not, that it is the church of Notre Dame. Now, as I write this, I realize that this kid, upon suspecting our country was set on fire, he knew enough about Argentine current events.
In the now far beginnings of this extensive text I promised boutades and so far, I have not delivered them. So, now that we are at it, here we go with the first one. The celebrated film Dahomey (2024), by Mati Diop, is to documentaries what The Substance (2024), by Coralie Fargeat, is to horror movies. Of course, we will talk about these films, but later on, when we review other festivals. For the time being, as it is my custom, I will only, as the saying goes, cast the stone and hide my hand.
5. The infinite films
In the annual poll taken in 2023 by the website Con los ojos abiertos, titled La Internacional Cinéfila, programmer Agnés Wildenstein accused several festivals, including one I was working with back then, of turning down a film, adding that such rejection was a mystery, since the film in question deserved to be seen and debated. Agnés is a friend and she could have consulted us about the reasons behind our decision, but programmers, eternally anonymous heroes, we like to seize those few moments in which we can display our bravery before our colleagues. And by the way, point out and stand out our good taste and sound judgment when it comes to others. One of my arguments, should Agnés had consulted me, could have been that not all films not included in a festival are rejected, some just do not have any room for very different motives. This may actually sound like a corporate defense, but in the case of this movie in particular it was actually true.
The film in question was Voyage au Lac (2023) by French filmmaker Emmanuelle Démoris, a ten-hour piece, divided in three parts. You do not need to have been part of a festival organization to realize that a movie of such a length implies a series of issues and extra costs. The festival for which I was working back then, the very beloved Mar del Plata festival, has been suffering budgetary cutbacks for a long time from the incumbent politicians (on both sides of the spectrum) and that edition in particular was the one with the least number of films in years. Of course, any good programmer in the presence of a masterpiece will find a way to include it, regardless of its running time. But there lies another issue, beyond the organizational and the financial. And it is that, as of late, there are many films with extensive runtimes that are not masterpiece. Screenwriter and friend Sebastián Rotstein told me once, many years ago, that lengthy films tended to be very good or excellent, since only very personal or talented directors were the ones daring to engage into such kind of projects. This talk (I am sorry, Sebastian if the quote is not entirely accurate), surely took place at the BAFICI edition where Sátántangó (1984), the greatest masterpiece within eternally long films, was screened. But that was many years ago, when the making of a film of such nature implied difficult technical processes that are now history. Nowadays, every year, a couple of films appear that surpass, or almost surpass, the ten-hour runtime. And not all of them are masterpieces. They are, and this is saying a lot, films that simply run way too long. However, upon seeing the programming at the DMZ Docs, I realize that perhaps Agnés was right in questioning our decision, a bit coward at that, of not including a ten-hour film, since my Korean colleagues decided not only to include the fourteen hours of exergue – on documenta 14 (2024) by Dimitris Athridis, but also to program the almost five hours of Occupied City (2023) and the three hours of Invisible Zoo (2024) by Romuald Karmakar. A gesture that not only demonstrates bravery, but also a complete confidence in its audience. But let us step into, albeit briefly, into lengthy films.
Both exergue – on documenta 14 and the figure and body of work of Steve McQueen (not the blond actor) awake an absolute fascination in some sophisticated programmers. This, I think, has to do with the admiration awaken in cinema programmers about their colleagues in the art world. They are not called programmers, but “curators” and they tend to be a lot more respected. While programmers, even those occupying interesting spots, have to deal with an artistic director surely more concerned in getting Jennifer Lopez to attend the festival than in screening the latest works of, let us say, Godard, museum curators do not have to undergo such an experience. As one profession becomes more vulgar, the other becomes more sophisticated. Or that is the way some programming colleagues make it out to be. Even filmmakers are dying to enter into the museum world. exergue – on documenta 14 is a detailed vision of that world which, I doubt it, will lose its strength and interest upon being seen as a series in the comfort of home rather than a marathonical fourteen-hour session at a movie theater. The opposite happens with Invisible Zoo, a work impossible to imagine anywhere else but within a movie theater, not so much because of its merits, but for its contemplative and sensorial form that if seen somewhere else than a theater it would turn out to be unsustainable. The Karmakar film, just like Ben Rivers’ new film, Bogancloch (2024), a return to the withdrawn character in Two Years at the Sea (2011), show that “modern” directors, those who rose at the prime of film festivals and transformed into interesting, required names started to show a kind of exhaustion and an alarming nostalgia for their past.
As for Steve McQueeen (not the 70s star, the other), I do not know what to say. I do not fully understand the fascination he exercises over some critics and “sophisticated” programmers, although the love professed over this director’s work makes me doubt, no so much about their taste (since bad taste is something we can all have), but of their judgment. McQueen (No, not the lead in Bullitt, the other one), as a good dilettante, moves between the world of art, museums and the most mainstream cinema with incredible ease, attracting admiration in both worlds. I suppose that it also means a lot of money gained. I do not know about his “artistic” side, but his cinema, which is divided in two, documentary and fiction, is quite debatable. Films such as 12 Years a Slave (2013), produced by none other than Brad Pitt, or Widows (2018), are difficult to even be taken seriously. It is the old qualité cinema with a slight (and at the same time not so much) veneer of modernity. His best work, so far, is the miniseries Small Axe (2020), but there is not anything new to see but the good old reliable British television, which, now that I think about it, it is the best thing the British gave to cinema history: its television. And thus, almost without seeking it, came today’s second boutade.
6. First farewell
We can say that this was a successful edition of the DMZ Docs, and that the work of programmer Jang, alongside young Kang Jinseok, someone who still becomes emotional when a viewer likes the films he chose, brought new energies to the festival, beyond its fine programming.
Long ago, after a vital and controversial edition of the Valdivia Film Festival (Chile), I wrote that festivals have to grow with each edition as way to guarantee some relevance, but now I am not so sure. Major festivals, even those with good programming, ended up becoming hostile spaces where people cannot gather, or worse yet, where people choose to gather rather than bumping into each other at the end of a screening. DMZ Docs, for the time being, fulfills the most important requisite a film festival can have: to make those who came once, to come back. And that is no small feat.
And, without further ado, we leave DMZ Docs and set our sights towards Busan.
To be continued.
