Interview with Festival Director Paola Melli (SOUTH SOCIAL FILM FESTIVAL)

South Social Film Festival is a trans-geographical, multicultural and multidimensional festival celebrating independent cinema, dance, world music, art and regional cuisine, launched in 2015 in London.

https://www.instagram.com/southsocialfilmfest/

Matthew Toffolo: What is your Film Festival succeeding at doing for filmmakers?

Paola Melli: Creating a platform where they can express and promote themselves.

2) What would you expect to experience if you attend your upcoming festival?

Networking with professionals, a good selection of up and coming filmmakers , discovering talents and culture.

3) What are the qualifications for the selected films?

New and original content, young filmmakers that need to be boosted.

4) Do you think that some films really don’t get a fair shake from film festivals? And if so, why?

Short films unless they go to a short film festival, don’t get enough exposure. A balanced mix of feature films and shorts could be a winning strategy.

5) What motivates you and your team to do this festival?

Passion about diversity, different cultures, innovative kind of filmmaking, discovery of new talents.

6) How has your FilmFreeway submission process been?

It’s been good and helpful, it really put us on the international map.

7) Where do you see the festival by 2023?

Maybe a franchising in different countries.

8) What film have you seen the most times in your life?

Wings of desire by Wim Wenders

9) In one sentence, what makes a great film?

Being symbolic, mesmerising, unique and representing a life changing experience.

10) How is the film scene in your city?

Thriving, lots of diversity and talent that sadly is not widely seen.

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Interview with Festival Producers Christine Cannavo & Eafat Newton (WOMEN IN COMEDY FESTIVAL)

Women in Comedy Festival is thrilled to partner with HBO, NBC and Showtime’s Frankie Shaw to work towards closing the gender gap in the film and television industry. The festival will feature original comedic content created by filmmakers and screenwriters from all over the world.

Hot Docs 2019 Review: INSIDE LEHMAN BROTHERS (Canada/France 2018) ***1/2

Inside Lehman Brothers Poster
Messy mortgages taken out by Lehman Brothers caused a real estate crisis in America ten years ago. This led to a global financial crisis. Ten years later, the French journalist Jennifer …See full summary »

INSIDE LEHMAN BROTHER is a documentary about finance.  Those involved in the world of stocks and finance will find this doc timely, insightful and interesting but how about the other group of people not dealing with the financial world.  

Director Deschamps, a French journalist (who co-wrote the script) attempts to bring interest to this group of people as well so that the film will have a larger target audience.  The doc begins with what appears to be an ordinary woman caught in extraordinary circumstances.  She is in a big residence in a large wooded area and says: “I would scream but no one would ever listen.”   

Deschamps clearly has got her audience’s curiosity piqued.   As mortgage brokers for Lehman’s subsidiary BNC, Linda Weekes and her Californian colleagues were at the forefront of the subprime crisis.  The whistle blower is Matthew Lee then headquartered in New York, who was the first leader to have refused to validate the accounts tainted by fraudulent transactions.  Former CEO Richard (Dick) Fuld Jr. is the chief villain on display, an an evil villain at that. 

 There are appearances of President Trump (another villain) and ex-President Obama (the hero) in the film.  If Deschamps’s aim is to infuriate the audience at the injustice, she has done a great job.  The details are explained, making up the bulk the movie.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_2k-OXzgXY

Film Review: THE INVISIBLES (Die Unsichtbaren)(Germany 2017) ***

The Invisibles Poster
Trailer

While Joseph Goebbels infamously declared Berlin “free of Jews” in 1943, 1,700 managed to survive in the Nazi capital through the end of WWII. The Invisibles traces the stories of four young people who learned to hide in plain sight.

Director:

Claus Räfle

Writers:

Claus Räfle (screenplay), Alejandra López (screenplay)

1943.  Four Jewish youths have to hide their identities in Berlin in order to survive the Third Reich.  A true story- as the film continues to remind the audience.

Films from Germany on the injustice of the Nazis have shed new insight.  Audiences learnt that many Germans living today are unaware of the holocaust and the horror the Nazis have committed on the Jew in the concentration camps.  (Sorry, I can’t remember the title of this German movie, but the film traces the exploits of a German proving that the Holocaust exists.)  Audiences also learnt that Germans also committed horrors on their own German people as in the recent Academy Award German nominee for Best Foreign Film – Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck‘s NEVER LOOK AWAY.

While Jospeh Goebbels infamously declared Berlin “free of Jews” in 1943, some 1,700 (out of 6000, as the audience is later informed at the end credits) survived in Nazism’s capital until liberation.  Director Räfle’s gripping docudrama traces the stories of four real-life survivors who learned that sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight.  While moving between cinemas, cafés and safe houses they dodged Gestapo and a dense network of spies and informants, knowing that certain death was just one mistake away.  Yet their prudence was at odds with their youthful inclination towards recklessness, sometimes prompting them to join the resistance, forge passports, or pose as Aryan war widows.

The four youths are Hanni (Alice Dwyr), Cioama (Max Mauff) , Eugen (Aaron Altaras) and Ruth (Ruby O. Fee).  These are four German Jews coming from different social classes as well as different neighbourhoods.  The film takes its time on each, showing their relationship and difficult separation from their parents and loved ones.  The problem with this, is that the trials each undergo are identical and it makes the narrative repetitive.

For each character, a few solid suspense set-ups are worthy of mention.  One involves a Jewish informer, Stella (Laila Maria Witt) who recognizes Ellen Lewinsky (Victoria Schulz) while she and a friend go to the cinema dressed as war widows.  Stella informs so that she gets special privileges from the Gestapo that her parents do not get deported.  But they do, regardless.  Another suspenseful scene has Jews hiding in a room when a German appears going from room to to room in that house looking for lodging for Germans displaced from bombings.

One plus of the film is the interspersing of the enactments with interviews of the four main characters now much older, which are the survivors in real live.  This tactic adds to the film’s authenticity.  The film is also interspersed with archive 1940’s film footage.

Despite the film’s flaws, THE INVISIBLES is a worthy and insightful account of not only the triumph of the human spirit in surviving but also the inherent good in the few Germans who risk everything in helping the Jews.  Just as the proverb goes ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’, desperation forces the desperate to survive against all odds.

Trailer: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5586052/videoplayer/vi2626534169?ref_=tt_pv_vi_aiv_1

Film Review: SUNSET (Napszallta)(Hungary 2018) ***1/2

Sunset Poster
Trailer

A young girl grows up to become a strong and fearless woman in Budapest before World War I.

Director:

László Nemes

Writers:

László NemesClara Royer (co-writer) | 1 more credit »

SUNSET, Hungary’s Academy Award entry for the Best Foreign Language Film 2019 is a lavishly mounted production with great attention to detail in dialogue as well as production sets, wardrobe, hair and yes, hats.  One problem of the hair is that Leiter has the perfect curls throughout the film.  The story protagonist is the daughter of the original owners of a established well-successful hat shop in Budapest.  When the film opens, Irisz Leiter (Juli Jakab) arrives at the hat shop seeking employment as a milliner, but is turned down.

Director and co-writer of the script Names already won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2016 for his Jewish concentration camp drama, SON OF SAUL.  Watching SUNSET immediately brings to mind the similarities of both films despite its different settings.  What is most notable is Nemes’ fondest of keeping the camera at neck level of his main character and the story unfolds as if seen from the character’s point of view.  In SUNSET, the camera also reveals, while at neck level, Leiter’s collar of her period dress as well as her hair and of course, stunning hat.  Every line of dialogue appears to be carefully written with subtle innuendoes often found in many of them.  This technique does get tiresome after a while.  Clues to the story and Leiter’s history are also revealed in the dialogue.  Example: when Leiter tells a stranger who inquires the reason of her sadness, she says: “I just got turned down from a job at the hat company.”  “That is not the only hat company in town,” is his reply to which she retorts: “But it is the only one with my name on it.”  The film’s best line: “the horrors of the world (at the brink of the first world war) hides behind these infinitely pretty things (referring to the hats).

The story is set in thriving Budapest in the early 1920s.  It is before the first world war when the Austro-Hungarian was the centre of Europe.  Besides the wealth on display in Budapest, poverty still exists.  When Leiter returns to her boarding house after being rejected from her job, she is told she is returning to dust and bed bugs.

The story is about Leiter leaving the orphanage and finding out the secrets of her family.  Leiter was put in the orphanage at the age of 2 after her parents’ death.  She does not remember anything.  She learns of a  brother, who had committed crime and now presumed gone into hiding.  Her re-appearance at the hat shop generates fears and memories of her brother’s evil deed.  But Leiter is determined to learn the truth surrounding her brother and keeps inquiring despite very bad vibes from those she asks.

The twist in the story occurs around the half way mark in the two-hour over film.

For what the film is worth, the period atmosphere and setting are extremely well done.  The narrative fails to satisfy in what would have resulted in an outstanding film.

Trailer: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5855772/videoplayer/vi1684650521?ref_=tt_pv_vi_aiv_2

Hot Docs 2019 Reviews: THE DAUGHTER TREE (Canada 2019) ****

The Daughter Tree Poster
Trailer

THE DAUGHTER TREE is a cinematic character-driven feature documentary with unprecedented access that explores the aftermath of a cultural preference for baby boys sweeping through interior … See full summary »

Director:

Rama Rau

Indians are stubborn to have a boy.  They abort the girls.  Changing the natural order results in unbalances in the human ecology of things.  There are insufficient girls to be married off and many males end up singles, unable to find a wife.  Brides are often sold to willing males.  

The insightful doc THE DAUGHTER TREE, filmed in India is an entertaining  and absorbing examination of the problem.  This is a totally new Canadian documentary written, produced and directed by Rama Rau, an epic documentary film, six years in the making, about the disappearance of women in India resulting in all-male populations in some villages.  If there is a feminist themed movie, this is the one as it deals with the subject from the roots.  

Females are just as important if not more important than  their male counterparts.  The film explores the aftermath of a cultural preference for baby boys sweeping through interior India, through the eyes of a fearless Warrior midwife called Neelam who counsels and advocates for baby girls, while a lone man in the Village of Men – so called because no girl has been born here the past three decades – goes on a quest to find a wife.  

The film is also beautifully shot by D.P. Nagaraj Diwakar.  India never looks so stunning, especially not in a documentary.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/244731236

Film Review: BLUE NOTE RECORDS: BEYOND BLUE NOTES (Switzerland/USA 2018) ***

Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes Poster
A revelatory, thrilling and emotional journey behind the scenes of Blue Note Records, the pioneering label that gave voice to some of the finest jazz artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Director:

Sophie Huber

Writer:

Sophie Huber

The second documentary after her critically acclaimed HARRY DEAN STANTON: PARTLY FICTION, BLUE NOTE RECORDS: BEYOND BLUE NOTES is about the record label company called Blue Note Records and the artists mainly jazz musicians that played on the label.

The founders are apparently still alive and they are seen in archive footage together with their artists they signed on.  

The question is what is so special about Blue Note Records.  Director Hubert is clear to let her audience know.  For one, it is a label that the owners sign jazz musicians on because they love their music.  Making money is only the secondary reason.  An example is the commitment one of the owners had for jazz (or alternative) pianist Thelonious Monk.  It took a while before people liked and got familiar with his music and the owner believed in the man and his music.  Other artists that made Blue Notes Records their home include Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bud Powell and Art Blakey, as well as present-day luminaries like Robert Glasper, Ambrose Akinmusire and Norah Jones.

The founders are just as interesting as their company.  The company was founded in New York in 1939 by German Jewish refugees Alfred Lion and Francis Wolf who fled the Germans.  If, the history of Blue Note Records goes beyond the landmark recordings, encompassing the pursuit of musical freedom, the conflict between art and commerce and the idea of music as a transformative and revolutionary force.

The film also includes an impressive cast of interviewees: Ambrose Akinmusire, Michael Cuscuna, Lou Donaldson, Robert Glasper, Robert Glasper, Derrick Hodge, Norah Jones, Keith Lewis, Lionel Loueke, Terrace Martin, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Kendrick Scott, Wayne Shorter, Marcus Strickland, Rudy Van Gelder, Don Was.

The film’s best moments are, s expected the artists performing.   This is rare footage where the audience gets to see and hear the best jazz performances as delivered by history’s best artists.  Who can ask for anything more?  Even non jazz lovers will be converted.|

Trailer: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://vimeo.com/263839824&source=gmail&ust=1553306177251000&usg=AFQjCNFoRfi3pfUvD2O6BDNDQXdA5g2xIQ

Film Review: THROUGH BLACK SPRUCE (Canada 2018) ***

Through Black Spruce Poster
Trailer

The disappearance of a young Cree woman in Toronto traumatizes her Northern Ontario family, and sends her twin sister on a journey south to find her.

Director:

Don McKellar

THROUGH BLACK SPRUCE has one scene where a character walks through wooded black spruce.  There is something subtle about the scene though one can not be 100% clear what the meaning of it all is.  The same thing can be said overall of Canadian actor/director Don McKellar’s (LAST NIGHT) mesh of missing persons mystery and indigenous people statement.  The film is an ambitious and diligent work but the two genres fit uncomfortably in a somewhat drab thriller, not for want of trying.

There are two things going for McKellar’s movie.  The first is the beautiful and stunning Ontario landscape of James Bay.  The shots of the lakes, forests and vegetation are typical of the beast scenery Ontario, Canada has to offer.  The second is the impressive performances of the film’s indigenous cast.  Veteran Graham Greene returns as well as the Toronto Film Critic’s Association’s darling (they recently honoured her), Tantoo Cardinal as well as Brandon Oakes.  New is Tanaya Beatty in the title role of Cree woman Annie Bird.

The film is bookended by the violent beating of Annie’s Uncle, Uncle Will (Oakes) of a golf club by the local drug dealer.  The golf club is one of the most awful weapons used in film – the last time it was used was when Randy Quiard took out Sandy Dennis, the school councillor in PARENTS.  The story of what happens in between is the movie.

Suzanne, Annie’s sister has gone missing after chasing her modelling career in Toronto.  The subplot emphasizes Canada’s major problem of missing indigenous women.  Annie stays in Toronto hunting for clues for her missing sister.  She learns of her sister’s drug habits including some shady dealings with ex-drug dealer boyfriend Gus.  In the mean time, she has a mild romantic fling with her sister’s last photographer, the fast-rising Jesse (Kiowa Gordon) before thing with the sister started falling apart.

In the mean time, Uncle Will takes off on his plane despite not having a void pilot’s license for a decade up north into hunting territory for reason revealed at the end of the film.  These segments are interspersed with Annie’s mis-adventures in Toronto.  The two segments do not flow well, and the dramatic effects of each are lost when the segments change.  Thankfully, all makes sense at he film’s climax when all is explained.

Despite the film’s flaws, credit must be given to McKellar for mounting such an ambitious indigenous film.  The hunting scenes especially the ones with the grizzly bear and the moose’s carcass bring authenticity into the story.

The Toronto famed scenes are also well done.  McKellar seems fond of Toronto’s Queen Street where streetcars frequent (as observed by an overturned streetcar in LAST NIGHT).  The club scene with the throbbing vibes whee Annie gets totally stoned look chic and trendy.

Not a total miss and not without its intrinsic pleasures, THROUGH BLACK SPRUCE is an entertaining mystery while shedding a little isight on the troubles of the indigenous people of Canada.

Trailer: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7400118/videoplayer/vi2304227865?ref_=tt_ov_vi

Film Review: DUMBO (USA 2019) ***

Dumbo Poster
A young elephant, whose oversized ears enable him to fly, helps save a struggling circus, but when the circus plans a new venture, Dumbo and his friends discover dark secrets beneath its shiny veneer.

Director:

Tim Burton

Writers:

Helen Aberson (novel), Ehren Kruger (screenplay) |1 more credit »

Everyone loves and remembers Disney’s 1941 favourite animated feel-good fantasy, DUMBO.  Dumbo, the baby elephant is born with huge ears that allow him to fly thus becoming the sensation of the circus.  Don’t expect the same with the live action film DUMBO written by Ehran Kruger and directed by Tim Burton.  Burton’s most famous films were BEETLEJUICE, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS and THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS all known for its darkness and nightmarish ideas.  It is not surprising then that Burton’s DUMBO is dark and gloomy. Dumbo rarely smiles, the scenes are mostly dark and the soundtrack is filled with loud and annoying sounds like chimpanzees screening, loud circus music and people yelling rather than talking normally.  Those prone to migraines best stay away from this one.

The films starts on a bleak note where a rundown train carrying the circus that is falling on hard times travel through poverty America.  Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell) is returning by train home to his children after the war.  It is revealed that he has lost one arm.  His wife has also passed away from influenza.  Holt is out of a job because circus owner Max Medici (Danny DeVito) sold his horses).  How more gloomy can the plot get?  

More!  Baby Dumbo is born and separated from his mother.  The circus is sold to a conniving entrepreneur, V.A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton) who is out to make money out of the new sensation of the flying elephant.  Dumbo’s act needs to be polished and creates havoc when Vandevere wants the bank to invest money in his amusement world.

The magic of the original DUMBO emerges only a few times in the movie – mainly when Dumbo soars into the air.  Even then, most of the flight takes place in the enclosed tent and if outside, occurs in the dead of night.

A lighter note is added with the characters of Max Medici and Vandevere’s French girlfriend Colette (Eva Green).  Both have the propensity to do good.  The end up taking Dumbo’s side.  Even the one henchman of Vandevere ordered to kill Dumbo’s mother tells on the deed, and quits his job out of disgust at his boss.  Keaton in full powder-packed make-up, hams up his villainous character to the extreme of being cartoonish.  His love for money ends up his downfall.

Nico Parker as Milly Farrier, Holt’s daughter and Finley Hobbins as Joe, Holt’s son are sufficiently charming reminding audiences that this is supposed to be a family movie.  The other circus performers are just there for show with little much to do except for Miss Atlantis (Sharon Rooney) who does a few mermaid tricks and the snake charmer (Roshan Seth) who gets to utter the magic words “Fly my little one!”

But for whatever is director Burton’s vision for the film, he does effectively capture the gloom of a struggling circus as he does on a world recovery from the war.  His mark is certainly stamped on this movie.

For all that it is worth in terms of gloom vs. feel-good, DUMBO does grab the audience into the adventure of the circus and one does feel sorry for the elephant when his mother is forced to leave him.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NiYVoqBt-8

Film Review: GIANT LITTLE ONES (Canada 2018) ****

Giant Little Ones Poster
Trailer

Two popular teen boys, best friends since childhood, discover their lives, families, and girlfriends dramatically upended after an unexpected incident occurs on the night of a 17th birthday party.

Director:

Keith Behrman

Writer:

Keith Behrman

GIANT LITLLE ONES is the second feature from Vancouver filmmaker Keith Behrman (FLOWER & GARNET) that has already won accolades including three DGC (Directors Guild of Canada) nominations and the Vancouver Film Critics Circle’s BEST Screenplay for a Canadian film.  It also made this year’s Canada’s Top 10.  It is a film about youth – and one that captures the bullying and expectations of both upon youth.  The film has a gay slant and one that straight youth cannot accept, even in these days of gay acceptance.

The film opens with the protagonist, Franky Winter (Josh Wiggins) riding his bicycle around his neighbourhood.  It is a great scene that celebrates writer/director Behrman’s love for filmmaking.  The plot and story is not yet established and the camera just spans and moves around in  exhilaration as if to celebrate the joys of filming.  And the joy is catching.  The audience gets to enjoy this spanning of the landscape before the story settles on a more serious subject.  What is seen on screen could very well be a suburb of a Canadian or American city – but the setting is left ambiguous.  But one would wish that since it is a Canadian film, that the setting would be more deliberately stated as Canadian.  Money talks – and an American setting means a bigger target audience.  

The story is about labelling.  A straight swim team member is labeled as gay and the story concerns on what he does to survive the labelling.  Things do not help that his father (Kyle MacLachlan of BLUE VELVET) has recently come out gay and his mother (Maria Bello who also co-produced this film), has written the book “Whatever… Love Is Love: Questioning the Labels We Give Ourselves”.

It all started off at Franky’s 17th birthday party when his girlfriend, Natasha (Taylor Hickson) leaves after the incident in which they both fail to lose their virginity.  Her brother, Ballas (Darren Mann) also on Franky’s swim team spreads the rumour that Franky may be gay.  That is when all the trouble starts.  And continues through the film.

Behrman is brave enough to attempt certain daring lines in his script.  In one key family scene, when Frank is told his visiting gay father has been told of the incident, he storms out of the room screaming: “I am not f***ing gay!”  The words that might offend a portion of the gay audience are left intact to emphasize the emotions Franky is undergoing.  Credit to Behrman.  The film also shows the teens behaving maturely, as adults thug still dealing with teen issues.  This aspect of the film shows that teens demand more respect as adults.

Excellent performances are delivered by all the young performers aided by Bello and MacLachlan.  MacLachlan does not have many scenes but he creates quite the impact in those he is in.

So how does it all end?  Is there a message for the audience?  Revealing more would definitely be a spoiler to what is an excellent paced and remarkably moving film about coming-of-age, acceptance, family acceptance and a whole lot more issues.

Trailer: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4481066/videoplayer/vi1848097561?ref_=tt_pv_vi_aiv_1