Fill the Void (2012)

Discovery Zone Luxembourg City Film Festival  -as the full title goes- brought lovely Rama Burshtein over, to present her first overwhelmingly successful feature Fill the Void (2012). Audience was too shy to ask important questions during the Q & A sessions -we're in Northern Europe after all- but I was surprised enough to find out for myself that Rama is a smoker and that she became a supporter of the Haredi Jewish community (the most conservative form of orthodox Judaism according to Wikipedia) on her own will, and not as a result of parental upbringing. Last but not least, she is quite humble and she actually feels strongly about respect towards women -her community does show great respect to them, she asserts (even if to some of us the film gives slight hints for the opposite). 

The Last Temptation of Christ

 "I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free." is engraved on Kazantzakis tombstone -kind of, anyways, as it's written in its original language, Greek. Nikos Kazantzakis was a Greek writer and philosopher (και ένα τι αμπελοφιλόσοφος); he was inventing new words, he had an inimitable writing style, lively, rich in imagery and substance, filled with realistic and deep characterisation, albeit his many adaptations for the big and the small screen. 

He was a great thinker -he was even nominated for a Nobel Prize, which he lost to Albert Camus, who later said that Kazantzakis was worth the prize "a hundred times more" than him. I grew up reading his inspiring books; the only thing I have to reproach him with is that no matter how much he tried to convince himself, and everyone else, he was an atheist, he was actually a deeply religious person, quite attached to Christianity and pure Christian suffering. As a matter of fact, when the Greek Church -which is totally out of context, as usual- condemned his work he replied: "You gave me a curse, Holy fathers, I give you a blessing: may your conscience be as clear as mine and may you be as moral and religious as me". Consequently, the Roman Catholic Church included his book The Last Temptation of Christ the Index of Prohibited Books. I guess they don't know at the Vatican that they only boost sales, whenever they do that, poor things.

The Convent (1995)

Religiousness is embedded in everyday life, you cannot escape it. There's no point even in trying; frankly, I've given up. I prefer to submerge in the religious experience nowadays, not as a believer, but as a tourist. Religions have certain things to bring to a dry post-modern life, as Alain de Botton noticed recently.

Having visited the Cathedral in Nancy and having bought  a dozen of the famous macarons, I settled in my couch and decided to watch the seven-year-old Convent (1995); not so much for the pious title, as for his stars and especially his perennial Festivals favourite Manoel de Oliveira. I started eating the macarons -they were made following a secret nuns' recipe- and I pushed play. The titles were a bit kitschy -a canary yellow tone- but auterism is bizzare sometimes, so I persevered. 

On the Path with the RIFFers

Tonight, I attended the first ever thematic evening organised by RIFF, maybe the most inspired cultural organisation here in Luxembourg; and I'm not saying that because they are my friends, and fellow ex-volunteers, no, I'm saying it because it's true. In the first instance, check their name: RIFF stands for Rocking Integration on Futuristic Festival -isn't that totally nuts, and cool, and lovely?

Then, look at the events they are proposing this year: not some lengthy conferences or banal workshops, where you are told to do this and that, but you are the shy participant who hides behind people's backs hoping it will never be your turn, no. RIFF is proposing you to eat and drink, to dance if you feel like it, but you are not obliged to, to meet new people, have a chat, then see a film and then go home and talk about the new cultural experience you had an make people jealous. Food and drinks and dances and film, they are related to one broad cultural region per event; tonight it was the Balkan Paths event. Ow, what an event.

Scorsese and Women; Guilt and Pleasure: Who's that Knocking

Machismo is definitely what Scorsese is linking back to most of the time;  Scorsese did direct Alice doesn't live here anymore (1974), a road-movie  that won Ellen Burstyn an Oscar, though. It's an ok melodrama, but nothing impressive. Mafia and gangsters, weirdos, defiant personalities and secret agents are definitely more impressive, especially if they have the Original Sin in the back of their  heads to give the story an unpleasant twist.

A Look at Israeli Cinema: Kadosh (1999) with Yaël Abecassis

Our brilliant Cinémathèque here in Luxembourg City is featuring some Israeli Cinema these days, in the form of a festival called Regards sur le cinéma israélien and of course I would not miss it; I must admit it was a first, though. I should maybe also admit that I tend to favour the Palestinians, conflict-wise, if it's not very politically incorrect to say it like that, light-heartedly.

The programme, which goes on till mid-December, includes newer and older films, like Revolution 101, a Mike Moore-ish documentary by Doron Tsabari, Three Days and a Child (1969) that is part of the Israeli New Wave (yes, they do have one, as everybody else!), La Visite de la fanfare (2007) that won the Jury Prize at Cannes' section Un Certain Regard, and many more, most of them of festival circuit and art-house cinema fame.

According to the cinema historian Ariel Schweitzer, Israeli cinema is from the beginning of the 80s "a cinema of the Other", when the Other is, as Emmanuel Levinas and many other philosophers put it, the opposite of Me -and Me is a male potent human being that does everything right. The Other, in other words, may be: women, homosexuals, non-believers, and Palestinians, in this case.

Much Ado About Nothing

I have been quite busy dealing with cinema lately, old and new, but nothing was astounding enough to make me contribute a whole post to it. Or, better, I was enthused with an old Hitchcock and then planning to write a short and funny post on exploitation cinema and even to start swearing (always in a post) at church and monks and sins and all that --apparently Vincent Cassel did not manage to console my rage against the machine of faith-- but, guess what: no time to lose in reciting these days, I am busy doing. No time to step back and see if I did it right, why, how, could I do it better, could I have not done it at all or this and that.

I will find some time soon, for the moment I can only hold you back, keep you away from going to watch Le Moine with Cassel, it is slow-paced, banale, uninspired and with a horrible ending. It depicts faith with bleak colours, but it still pisses me off to see that believers still exist nonetheless.

Then, here comes a funny trivium, and also pure evidence on the heavy smoking that takes place in film shootings: when Vincent walks towards the city to visit a certain house and give some comfort with his words to a miserable mother, we clearly see a cigarette end laying on the ground. Someone forgot to clean the place and then someone else didn't bother to do the right editing to erase its trace --maybe he thought that the audience is dumb and/or blind. But, there was something that the film got right: the omnipotent carnal lust.

It is there, believe me; even a bright spirit is unable to fight it, god knows why.