Authors — Laya Maheshwari
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The Death of Mr. Tarelkin: Edward Snowden on the Multi-Media Russian Stage
Volunteers welcome you into the theater, guiding you towards your allotted place. The lights are going off slowly. As you sit down on your chair, you look ahead at the stage. It’s unlike any other stage. I was at the Culture Center ZIL in Moscow, attending a performance of The Death of Mr. Tarelkin, staged by the Manege/MediaArtLab Open School, Ballet Moscow Theatre and the International Centre for Dance and Performance TsEKh. This was a sidebar event at the 36th Moscow International Film Festival (June 19 – 28), described on the website as “a performance where Russian classics, contemporary dance, […]
by Laya Maheshwari on Jul 30, 2014 -
Interview Avoidance and Bollywood Rip-offs: Park Chan-wook on Vengeance, End Titles and Medium Cool
“Mr. Park Chan-wook is not giving any interviews. Sorry.” The Korean auteur was one of the biggest names present at the recently concluded 31st Jerusalem Film Festival, second only perhaps to Spike Jonze (who doesn’t really make for charming interviews). The problem with big names at festivals, though, is that securing a short meeting with them — let alone an interview — is difficult. The curt message from the festival press department, quoted above, is an example of that. Nevertheless, armed with the kind of resilience and never-say-die attitude that arises naturally out of journalistic passion and an empty bank […]
by Laya Maheshwari on Jul 22, 2014 -
“It is a Long Journey”: DPs Emre Erkmen and Wojciech Staroń in Conversation
Cinematographers are the best whores in the world. Christopher Doyle, the award-winning Australian cinematographer behind In the Mood for Love and Hero, sincerely believed this. He echoed this thought to Michael Ballhaus, the German cinematographer who shot Goodfellas and Gangs of New York, when the two met at a panel in Berlin. (Ballhaus agreed.) Several such anecdotes and beliefs on the art of photography were revealed when Turkish cinematographer Emre Erkmen hosted Wojciech Staroń, his Polish counterpart, for a conversation at the 33rd Istanbul Film Festival earlier this year. Staroń recently worked on Papusza, a black-and-white Polish biopic about the […]
by Laya Maheshwari on Jun 19, 2014 -
Tips on Submitting to Festivals and Crafting Pitches from EYE’s Ido Abram
Don’t chase the wrong festival — that was one of many simple but useful pieces of advice offered by Ido Abram at the recently concluded 33rd Istanbul Film Festival. Abram is currently the Director of Presentation and Communication at EYE, Netherland’s national film institute. In the past, he has been the director of the Binger Filmlab and the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s CineMart, the world’s first “co-production market.” He also serves on the Advisory Board of the prestigious Torino Filmlab. Throughout his career, Abram has listened to hundreds of pitches, trained filmmakers on how to make them, judged dozens of […]
by Laya Maheshwari on Jun 4, 2014 -
“I Try to Be Unbiased and Just”: A Masterclass with A Separation‘s Asghar Farhadi
In 2009, Asghar Farhadi made ripples around the world when About Elly picked up the Silver Bear at Berlinale. However, it was in 2011 that he truly took the world by storm. A Separation, a touching drama about a couple figuring their way out through a messy but amicable divorce, picked up the Golden Bear at Berlin and more than 60 other awards that year, including an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Having offended the conservative authorities back home, though, meant France became the setting of Farhadi’s latest project, The Past. At last month’s 33rd Istanbul Film Festival, the […]
by Laya Maheshwari on May 27, 2014 -
“I Jumped on a Running Train:” Interim Artistic Director Mart Dominicus on Rotterdam 2014
The Artistic Director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam since 2008, Rutger Wolfson had begun work on this year’s edition of the festival, the 43rd, when fate interceded. In November, Wolfson was hospitalized with a rare autoimmune disease. (Happily, he is expected to make a full recovery.) With the festival two months away from its starting date, Mart Dominicus — a lecturer at the Netherlands Film Academy, a screenplay and editing coach, and a member of the festival’s Supervisory Board since 2010 — stepped in to become Artistic Director for this year’s festival. At the festival’s end, Filmmaker sat down […]
by Laya Maheshwari on Feb 5, 2014 -
At Rotterdam, Cinema’s Components Stretched
The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) prides itself on being devoutly non-mainstream and an unabashed patron of independent cinema. Now, “independent” doesn’t necessarily mean “good” (something the Rotterdam programmers would do well to realize). However, it does let one explore work that exists on the fringes of conventional formats, be it artistically or technically. As it happens, I saw two films at the festival — within 12 hours of each other — that challenged the norms of a movie and its components. The resulting juxtaposition left me quite intrigued by the experiments undertaken, and whether there was some method to […]
by Laya Maheshwari on Feb 3, 2014 -
Angular Visions: Vertical Cinema at Rotterdam
What would vertical cinema be like? It is a question that must have percolated in the minds of many a cinema enthusiast. After all, there is no rule decreeing that a film can be made only in horizontal format. But, of course, theaters, distributors and historical viewing practices have made us think of cinema in no other way. However, there could have been an alternate universe where films resembled portraits, not landscapes. At the 43rd International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), underway right now, delegates got a peek into that alternate universe through a special section called Vertical Cinema. A Sonic […]
by Laya Maheshwari on Jan 28, 2014
