Dear Blog of the Cinema, I go away for three days at the Festival du Film Fantastique de Strasbourg, and already your logo in black and blue and your design uncluttered I lack. I would like you to be there to see that the generosity of the alsatian capital is equal to the heat load of the cooking. When you receive this postcard, I will be already entered and the winners of the festival will already be announced; allowing us to see whether or not there is a schism between the choices of the public and the professional jury.
The selection of this ninth edition, yet hearty and varied, has almost been overshadowed by a parallel event that helped to celebrate both the cinema of terror and the days of the heritage. We will long remember this session immersive of Teeth of the Sea, in the magnificent setting of the municipal baths; and it’s a safe bet that in the years to come, the fans who had dressed their most beautiful bathing suit for the occasion, will attempt to find a concept that also effective to unseat this tribute water classic Spielberg, in the pantheon of the best ideas ever developed.
Between two sessions, I engaged in conversation to find out what moments I had missed, and I found out that there was an archetype of the spectator also bearded and hairy than me, and I guessed the atoms in common between the genre film festivals and the rocks, seen the t-shirts to the effigy of groups metallers, whose names could also serve as titles to the works of the well-appointed Rob Zombie, or as of midnight movies at the charm chart just as assumed. My second observation is concentrated on a few ladies including the tips of hair dyed green or red, the piercing of the lips and bags decorated with the skull of Jack Skellington, have deeply printed in my retina. As a teenager, I was the court to the same kind of disturbing apparitions; me who asked me where they were gone, I am happy to learn that they come out of the mist every year in Strasbourg.
This population open to any kind of object film, and was particularly applauded Swiss Army Man of Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, of which the first has opened in beauty the festival, by playing skillfully on the outs tones that promises its pitch, unlikely, in which Daniel Radcliffe plays better dead, that it has never interpreted the living. Another standout among the films presented out of competition, Late Shift of Tobias Weber has managed to caused a time of joyful communion, by proposing an interactive process to guide the narrative. The experience must be exhilarating to live in between accomplices of the dark rooms; however, a lady told me to have regretted that the crowd galvanized opted for the more radical, giving a film a tad nag, at the end rushed, where some participants would have preferred a more subtle and less expected from this thriller swiss-british.
The interest to be involved in planning, three retrospectives and four selections, allows you to vary the pleasures in a single day, where one can just as well enjoy a Universal Monsters like Proust’s madeleine, to discover a satire on hipsters of new york such Creative Control by Benjamin Dickinson, and have the pleasure of talking with the journalist, Gilles Penso, who presented the documentary, Creature Designers, co-authored with his colleague Alexandre Poncet, in which are compiled of testimonies and exciting masters of american special effects, physical or digital. It is during this session that I noticed the friendliness prevailing on this week cinéphilique, when Penso thanked William Lustig, president of the jury, to be moved and discreetly installed in a chair of the third rank, while it wasn’t planned in his busy schedule.
The time to move me to a different cinema to the next meeting, and I meet again Lustig, who presented a session of catch-up to his cult film Maniac, so that once more his presence was not announced in the program. Great kid good-natured that no one can deny the influence on a line of thrillers gory and craspecs, the filmmaker has not forgotten to remain accessible, and adds before leaving the room, that it will be in the area until the closing ceremony, and that it will not hesitate to approach him if an issue we ran through the mind.
An atmosphere conducive to the sharing of popcorn and exchanges of our respective approaches of film genres, that seems to be increasing over sessions in the same day. We can start the afternoon by enjoying a use a soft, quasi-naturalistic to the fantastic, such as that of Shelley d’Ali Abbasi (a Rosemary’s baby lost in the forest), and push the views up to the sessions of twenty-two hours and midnight that we offer masterpieces to alternate between nanars and poems of the surreal. Terra Formars by the prolific Takashi Miike offers us a science-fiction tinged the gaudy colors of the sentaï, in a history of cockroaches mutants who will stop at nothing, nor ridicule, nor the lyricism.
So I leave Strasbourg to go back to you, my sweet Blog, and spread good news about your pages : first of all, the lovers of genre cinema Italian, crying the state moribund since the end of the eighties, can rejoice in the arrival blaring from They call me Jeeg of Gabirele Mainetti; comedy is packed full of references to pop, speculating around the figure of the superhero, in a context more evocative than an artificial universe of comics, how to Super from James Gunn.
The second good news, it is about the French cinema which shows two films in competition, that it is doing well and that a new generation of filmmakers knows how to find ideas bold as to distill the codes of different genres in their works of authorship. With his first film The Open, Marc Lahore invests the story felt wandering in a post-apocalyptic setting, interpreting the course emotional of its protagonists through the prism… of tennis ! Able to cope with a modest budget, Lahore proves that you can successfully install an atmosphere by playing clothing with the drawing, and a technical mastery of each position allows for a dramatic tension to the screen, too intense for the body than what the story gives a glimpse of the inside of minds.
And how to conclude this article without mentioning the phenomenon, Serious ? First movie also, which allows the writer Julia Ducournau to express now his talent at the realization. I take advantage of this article to share my deep dismay at the media which relayed the echoes of the festivals of Cannes and Toronto, bringing Serious two statutes, that the director provided that the public of Strasbourg were taken to the derision during questions after the session.
Yes, some people have fainted at screenings in other festivals, but the reactions of spectators too sensitive, do not determine the degree of gore to a film experience. We laugh often, it shudders sometimes but the hemoglobin is not surdosée and encroaching ever on the relevance of the scenario and the emotion aroused by this tragedy teen, who before the use of aesthetic elements of body horror, take it from him first, the themes deep the exploration of the body, of sexuality, of the dignity physical. And for pity’s sake, ladies and gentlemen of the specialists of the buzz, stop qualify Serious film pro-vegan; it is not the question, and if some of the characters express actual beliefs, this is not a speech in the film. Film what’s more, speaks more of the taboo from athropophagy and the initiatory journey of a young woman, before her face her instincts, and find a moral issue in the hectic time of the transition to adulthood.
Dear Blog, you shall have understood in the reading of this account, next year, if you look for me at the beginning of the fall, you know already where to find me.
PALMARES :
Octopus d’or and Prize of the public : Grave of Julia Ducournau
Méliès d’argent : I Am Not A Serial Killer of Billy O’brien
Special Mention of the jury : Another Evil of Carson Mell
More info on : http://strasbourgfestival.com/
Arkham
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