Reeling round the cinema

It's film festival time. With Alexandria over, and Cairo about to begin, Mohamed El-Assyouti speaks to the directors of three lesser-known European festivals, Amiens, Göteborg and Bergen
Amiens Film Festival
Jean-Pierre Garcia's grandfather was a poor worker who emigrated from Spain to Algeria in the late 19th century. Following the Algerian war of independence in 1962, 15-year-old Garcia went with his family to live in France. During his childhood he enjoyed the musicals of Umm Kulthoum and Farid El-Atrash. When he moved to France he frequented film societies and eventually co-founded the International Amiens Film Festival. Garcia has been involved with every one of Amiens's 21 rounds, in a variety of capacities, as critic, as festival director and as a specialist in African cinema. The festival screens 340 films, including fiction and documentary, of any length and on any format except super 8.
Garcia also heads the EU Brussels cultural office, which funds the work of black African filmmakers. He feels that he belongs to a Mediterranean culture and his participation in the Alexandria Film Festival for the second time -- he was a jury member also in 1995 -- is for him "a return to the mother land of the Mediterranean culture, which welcomed various civilisations throughout history and gave us Youssef Chahine."
With big corporations investing more in the cinema the politics of film distribution and production in France, as well as in Egypt and Africa, has changed over the past two to three years. What are the implications of these changes on the quality of the films?
Commercial literature always imitated earlier, popular models. So by the time of the invention of cinema at the turn of the 19th century entertainment was not necessarily dependent on originality. Always in cinema people tried to copy or reproduce other success stories, other money makers, and to do this they searched for what is called the recipe. Today, there is so much sophistication in special effects in addition to big superstars and locations, that it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, for other countries to imitate a Hollywood movie. In a way the imitation will always look like amateurs' work. In Europe a lot of filmmakers -- like Luc Besson and some British directors -- try to make Hollywood-style films, even hiring Hollywood stars, but half the time they fail. You need promotion and a chain of cinema multiplexes to supplement the Hollywood-imitation. It happens that money is essential. In the US a studio sometimes gets its money back in less than two weeks -- this simply is not possible anywhere else in the world. There you never really lose money, so you can do what you want.
On the brighter side, with film industries everywhere imitating Hollywood's big productions, filmmakers and technicians have the opportunity to work, to learn while shooting. This is important.
Part of the negative effect on the quality films that try to cope with Hollywood's dominance by imitating it is a distortion in the cultural identity of the work.
For me cinema is self-evidently an art but at the same time one possible only with so much money so that once it's time for commercial release almost the only desire of the filmmakers is getting the money back. With age sometimes I feel that this gap between economics and aesthetics is essential for the creative process: one can make a very commercially successful film with very low artistic value, but also one can make a personal film and try to break even, which is the exciting challenge. Fighting to get the money for a film in which the filmmaker believes is always fascinating: it generates strength, energy and a link between the filmmaker and the society in which he works. Sometimes, if the fight takes five years, the artistic movie has passed out of reach, but what can we do? Consciousness of the fact that we're already very deep into the global economy forces directors to go back to their own cultural roots and search for what's more authentic there. Looking at Tom Cruise's face on a poster, or a Coca Cola advertisement, one perhaps recognises the face of globalisation and accepts the challenge. Now we can see what American cinema means. I'm a true believer in the other American cinema. I respect studio owners like Howard Hughes, David O Selznick and Louis B Mayer who risked their own money, sometimes knowing that the film won't get the money back, just to create a distinctive style, a signature for their studios. Today, the corporate managers who run the industry only finance the recipe that includes all the ingredients to attract a particular, mostly teenage, target audience. We all know that a Hollywood movie today is a 100 minute advertisement clip selling Coca Cola, brands of jeans, T-shirts, sports shoes, sun glasses, certain singers and a certain look.
Is there a permanent focus in the Amiens festival on African cinema?
Outside Hollywood there was, is and always will be life. Amiens always pays tribute to a studio from the south alongside one from Europe. We devote attention to African films every year. Our link to African cinema is aesthetic but also professional. We work to promote African films. We publish an annual review of African cinema and a guide for production and distribution. We have an author-supporting mechanism and organise mediation between African filmmakers and producers to regulate contracts and protect copyrights. Amiens also has a script-development fund. Additionally, I head an EU cultural office in Brussels which supports and funds black African cinema.
Does this mean that Amiens pays no attention to American cinema?
I like intellectual cinema but I love the action one. From America I like genre films in general, vampire, comedy, musical, detective, film noir, John Ford's westerns, the films of Clint Eastwood and of Martin Scorsese. In previous rounds the Amiens festival had paid tributes to Sam Peckinpah, Monte Hellman, Dennis Hopper, Robert Aldrich, Don Siegel, Leo McCarey, Delmer Daves, Jack Arnold and Budd Boetticher.
When Europeans watch African cinema do they seek stereotypes to reaffirm their convictions about the colonial past and its impact on the present?
For some people this is true. However, the stereotypes are becoming old. For instance, because a trip to Egypt from Europe is cheap almost anyone can afford to come and see first-hand Luxor, Aswan and the Pyramids. But the stereotype of Egypt in Hollywood is a different matter, because people who consume these movies don't care at all for Egypt or any other place except their small city or town. The important problem comes with how Western countries are seeing the Palestinian or the Iraqi issue. Because of the lack of democracy in this part of the world stereotypes are reinforced, especially those of Arabs and Muslims in Western cinema.
In Amiens we have special focuses under titles like "Image of blacks in US cinema," "Image of American Indians in US cinema," "Image of the Enemy in Hollywood," and "Stereotype of gays in Arab cinema."
Who do you consider the most important filmmakers?
From Egypt I loved the films of Henry Barakat with Faten Hamama, and I enjoyed the musicals with Umm Kulthoum and Farid El-Atrash during my childhood in Algeria. I like Kamal El-Sheikh's An Angel and a Devil, and consider Shadi Abdel-Salam a genius and Chahine's work an important step. Also, Atef Hatata is a very promising young director.
Senegal's Ousmane Sembene, Mali's Suleiman Sisi, Mauritania's Abdel-Rahman Sisako, Algeria's Mohamed Chouikh, Morocco's Nabil Ayoush, Tunisia's Nouri Bouzeid are among my favourite directors in Africa. From France I like André Téchiné, Bertrand Tavernier and many women filmmakers like Claire Denis and from Italy I like Nanni Moretti. I also think young Egyptian filmmakers should look at what's happening in Latin America and Asia.
Bergen Film Festival
Bergen Film Festival screens 80 feature films in 35mm format from all over the world, alongside documentaries, a growing area of interest. It is directed by Tor Fosse.
How does the dominance of Hollywood affect European cinema?
The major talents in the EU are eventually seduced and sucked by Hollywood which has some sort of sex appeal for them. There the dream of big money comes true. Some stubborn people refuse and resist the temptation, and the EU is trying to help them do so. There are many mechanisms endeavouring to make the situation better. In Hollywood, the star comes first, then the script and the director comes last. In Europe the director is of primary value for the work.
How does Bergen Festival foster new talents?
It's very important for me as a festival organiser to try to discover new talents. We invited two independent American films to participate in the festival -- but also brought 10 commercial Hollywood films to attract audience. But as a Norwegian festival we're facing a problem. For instance, films from Iran and developing countries prefer to go to Paris because that's where the sales and distribution companies are. There it's a very powerful market and when an emerging festival wants a film they ask for a lot of money -- $1000-3000 per screening. This problem appeared only during the past five years. On the contrary major festival like Cannes and Berlin have very flexible agreements with these companies.
How many film festivals are there in Norway?
About 12 film festivals, but some are very specialised: animation, short, and gay and lesbian. Oslo alone hosts five festivals, but it's not necessarily true that the capital is the best place for a festival, because there it's hard to notice them. Bergen has half the population of Norway -- which is 4.5 million people. Most of the country is mountains.
Göteborg Scandinavian Film Festival
Sweden makes around 20 features a year. The average budget is $1.5 million per film though a Von Trier film, co-produced by Sweden, costs around $10 million. Typically a producer needs a mix of funds from the Swedish Film Institute, TV stations and one of the few local production companies. There are also many Scandinavian co-productions. While at the box office Swedish films are often successful, the market is dominated by US productions and American companies own the biggest multiplexes.
Göteborg Scandinavian Film Festival, Scandinavia's most prestigious festival celebrates its 25th anniversary in February. Bengt Toll has been at the helm of the festival for seven years now, and before that he was on the programme's committee. Twelve to 15 films enter the competition which is restricted to Scandinavian filmmakers -- from Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland and Denmark. Additionally, Göteborg shows around 400 films from across the world, all feature-length 35mm format, on 12 screens. In addition to these 400 films, the festival screens every Swedish film produced in the previous year, alongside many shorts and videos. The festival relies on the box office and sells some 110,000 tickets. It invites distributors, producers and TV stations to watch films in closed screenings. It runs a series of seminars and discussions under the festival umbrella and publishes the largest Swedish film magazine.
Do you enjoy Dogma 95 films?
I like Von Trier's work and Dogma 95 which he and his producers invented to bring about a new focus after the success of Breaking the Waves. Jacobson directed Mifune, Winterberg directed Festin (Party) and Von Trier directed The Idiots. They're all good films but they all cheat and never stick to the rules. They never rely solely on natural light, they add music, they use more than one location and they shoot out of sequence. However, the restrictions of Dogma 95 are helpful because they force filmmakers to be more inventive when it comes to finding solutions during shooting. In other words, the aim is to try to follow the rules but not necessarily abide by them. Dogma 95 channels the creative process but without encumbering its freedom. It also makes filmmaking possible without much money and that's why filmmakers from all over the world are following Dogma 95 principles.
For most cineastes Bergman is synonymous with Swedish cinema. How does his reputation impact on the work of his contemporaries?
My generation has had a problem with Bergman's gigantic shadow. Other distinguished Swedes are Oscar winners Jan Troell and Bo Widerberg, both in their seventies, and Lars Hallström, who works in Hollywood. However many other filmmakers are in a way Bergman's disciples. They were students when he headed the Swedish Film School and the Royal Dramatic Theatre. Now at 84 he still directs a play every year, he recently made a film for TV and wrote Best Intentions.
What are the characteristics of the new Swedish cinema?
The new generation couldn't care less about Bergman. Sweden has only nine million people but some Swedish films are very successful in Europe. The vast majority of filmmakers in Sweden these days were either born elsewhere or are second generation immigrants. This mix of struggling immigrants has meant a lot to Swedish culture: the music and films that have made it internationally are mostly by immigrants. Last year the most successful film was Jalla Jalla, directed by Josef Fares, a Lebanese, and tells the story of Lebanese immigrants with biographical overtones. It depicts three park- maintenance workers, one Lebanese, one Swedish and one Ethiopian. Fares Fares, the director's brother, who is now established in theatre in Sweden, played the lead role, his father played the father and his grandmother played the grandmother. Another very successful film is by an Iranian. The most successful of them all is Fucking Amal, by a Swede. Amal, in Swedish, is said when something is very boring, but the film also takes place in a small city called Amal. It tells of an affair between two 16-year-old school girls -- but it's really about love. I think the most talented director is Lukas Moddyson, who made Together, a comedy about his parents set in the 1970s.
In Sweden we have an auteur tradition. Like Bergman, filmmakers don't adopt novels and write their own stories instead. This isn't good. We need to develop scriptwriting skills. Hallström is an exception. He always directs scripts adapted from novels.
What did Bengt Toll like as a young cinephile?
I took a BA in literature in 1967, then worked in theatre and the opera with the aim of directing opera, but turned to TV and worked there for many years. I'm not saying this because I'm sitting here, but in those days I loved Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. It's my first time here and I'd like to walk around. In the 1970s I enjoyed Fassbinder's films, Peter Weiss's plays and studied all Mozart's operas. I learned the importance of narrating the inner thoughts and psychology of the characters from Mozart's music and started to regard a good filmmaker as one who would make images like Mozart's music. I liked Kubrick's work and Strindberg's plays.
Do you like being on a jury?
I've never been to Egypt. We travel a lot. We have seven festival board members touring the world seeing different film cultures. We work a lot with Southern Africa and Latin America. Sithengi is a big film market in Cape Town in which we take a great interest.
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