Fifty-three films in seventeen glorious days.

{Wistfully recalls days spent flitting from cinema to cinema in search of brilliance and thrills. Farewell MIFF 2014. (Draws up a list of top ten films to sustain the heart's memories and archive the brain's thoughts.)}

MIFF 2014 may have ended but before we can summarise and draw up a list of favourite films, the last six sessions seen must have their airing.


Film 48: MAFIOSO (D. Alberto Lattuada) *
In the Forum theatre once more, in the year 1962, with Alberto Sordi as our endearing guide, Nino, travelling swiftly from Milan to Calamo to New York (by cargo crate) and back again. So glad we managed to catch this 11am screening brimming with humour and a fine machinery dance in an automobile plant to link us back to Denis Côté’s Joy of Man's Desiring. It is these visual links formed throughout the intensity of 17 days of films that I relish. That the film was also glorious to behold goes without saying. With an ear-piercing brassy score, a hirsute Rosalia waxed in time to get her down the aisle, and serves of squid ink pasta on the rooftop, what more could one ask for?

"Nino’s character is that of a man who swallows his crime, never to speak of it again", Lattuada noted. "He had to have the face of [an actor like] Sordi because it's rare that audiences accept a crime that goes unpunished." (Senses of Cinema)

* It appears that in the glorious haze that is MIFF 2014, I have twice doubled up my numbers (15 and 34). The total number of films to date is 48. With one screening cancellation (Still the Water) and one film missed (Welcome to New York), it is looking like we'll be seeing 53 films in 17 days instead of our hoped for 55.)


Film 49: VIRUNGA (D. Orlando von Einsiedel)
In Africa's oldest national park, Virunga, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I struggled to hold back the tears.

"In the forested depths of eastern Congo lies Virunga National Park, one of the most bio-diverse places in the world and home to the last of the mountain gorillas. In this wild, but enchanted environment, a small and embattled team of park rangers — including an ex-child soldier turned ranger, a carer of orphan gorillas and a Belgian conservationist — protect this UNESCO world heritage site from armed militia, poachers and the dark forces struggling to control Congo's rich natural resources. When the newly formed M23 rebel group declares war in May 2012, a new conflict threatens the lives and stability of everyone and everything they've worked so hard to protect." (Virunga)

(@virungamovie) (@gorillacd)


Film 50: BLIND (D. Eskil Vogt)
"Places are harder to remember."

Just another day lurching from glorious Commedia all'italiana (Mafioso) to heartache with a sprinkle of hope (Virunga) by way of the fantastical sensory disorientation and captivating frustration of Blind. Yes, just another brilliant day at MIFF, lurching from Sicily to the Congo and landing in the bright light of a Norwegian apartment. Here's to the last sessions! Here's to Monday’s film withdrawal playing fair.

Film 51: BLACK COAL, THIN ICE (Bai Ri Yan Huo) (D. Diao Yinan)
A dash of classic Hollywood film noir for the last day of the festival, and my last screening at the magnificent Capitol Theatre with its magical geometric ceiling that echoes nature. From this detective puzzle I am keeping the visuals that highlight the meeting point between hot and cold: steamed dumplings in a grimly restaurant, fogged up car windows, the humidity in the small Chinese laundromat, neon lights on snow-covered streets, fireworks in the grey of day, the exhalation of breath after a waltz on ice.


Film 52: HARD TO BE A GOD (Trudno Byt Bogom) (D. Alexei German)
So gloriously visceral was the experience of being in Hard to Be a God that when the house lights came on my shoes felt as heavy as if still encased in the boggy ground, and the desire to wipe my nose on my sleeve, in echo of the land I had just traversed, was hard to resist. I felt for snot, blood, and mysterious matter in my hair, and checked my pockets for a fellow slave’s dislodged eyeball. Three hours spent flying downward in a work that unsurprisingly took several years to film (and was thirty years in the making), a true festival highlight for me. I squelched through the mud at the behest of characters pulling me into the frame whether I wished to follow or not. Grabbed by the nose, a rope or a timber board for a necklace, the world somewhat strangely reminiscent of a Brueghel painting with the lights out. Of all the films I have seen of late, few have validated the importance of art quite like this. In a world without artists, scientists, and intellectuals, all is wretched and meaningless. A knowing owl, a mouse, a tightly coiled hedgehog, a monkey on a chain, a cow, some goats, a turtle, a leech, a barren of mules, and a flight of doves: the only ones to retain their dignity. Dragged though the excrement and vomit, the orchestration of these sensory tableaus read almost like a dance as snaggle-toothed characters appeared and disappeared, a chicken’s foot or a yet-unblemished rose obscuring the view of the stunning depravity (which saw a great many people leave throughout the film’s three hour duration). Sliding through this besmirched world of Arkanar with its strung-up dog carcasses, quilted jackets like human entrails, and bird droppings and fish scales made silver in glorious black and white felt unlike anything else and it was marvellous.

(Blows nose on sleeve)


Film 53: THE IMMIGRANT (D. James Gray)
“(Birds caw) (Cawing continues)”, the last subtitles read at MIFF2014. (The Immigrant, our 53rd film seen in 17 days, screened with English subtitles for the hearing-impaired.) Though there is fog, anguish, and struggle, my head and heart yearned for the space to read into the scene my own interpretation, and so remained in Hard to Be a God.

Top 10 films seen (in order seen, and based purely on my own enjoyment):
Goodbye to Language (D. Jean-Luc Godard)
Manakamana (D. Stephanie Spray, Pacho Velez)
The Story of My Death (Historia de la meva mort) (D. Albert Serra)
Joy of Man's Desiring (Que ta joie demeure) (D. Denis Côté)
National Gallery (D. Frederick Wiseman)*
Amour Fou (D. Jessica Hausner)
Jauja (D. Lisandro Alonso)
Concrete Night (Betoniyö) (D. Pirjo Honkasalo)
Fish & Cat (D. Shahram Mokri)
Hard to Be a God (Trudno Byt Bogom) (D. Alexei German)

* Actually a documentary, but I have slipped it in there nevertheless. My list, my rules. Broken or otherwise.

Top 5 documentaries (in order seen):
The Epic of Everest (D. Captain John Noel)
The Salt of the Earth (D. Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado)
German Concentration Camps Factual Survey
My Name is Salt (D. Farida Pacha)
Virunga (D. Orlando von Einsiedel)

And finally, an obscure tally of visuals drawn from memory (not compiled during the festival) and, as such, not to be trusted.

Films in which animals stole the scene:
Goodbye to Language
Jauja (for the fine wolfhounds, horses, and sea lions)
Hard to Be a God
Concrete Night (special mention to the rabbit in the metropolis)
Manakamana
The Hope Factory
Clara and the Secret of the Bears
The Epic of Everest
Ne Me Quitte Pas (RIP Louis)

Films in which a character is seen going to the toilet:
Goodbye to Language
The Story of My Death
Blind
Mafioso (very nearly)
Masculin Féminin (at a stretch)

Films in which someone peed themselves:
Concrete Night
Titli
Hard to Be a God

(A theme?)

Films in which machinary danced:
Joy of Man's Desiring (from start to finish)
Mafioso
My Name is Salt
(Making records in) Antoine et Colette

Films that featured forlorn flowers in a vase or bouquet:
I Hired a Contract Killer
Ne Me Quitte Pas
The Immigrant
Aunt Hilda!

Films that made me want to join the characters at the dinner table:
Our Sunhi
Mafioso (for the squid ink pasta mountain)
Black Coal, Thin Ice (for the steamed dumplings)
Fantasia (for noodles slurped)
Hope (for the stolen oranges)
Iranian
Sepideh—Reaching for the Stars (for the tea not allowed to go cold)

Films in which Vivaldi's Four Seasons plays:
Queen & Country
Force Majeure

Films in which a Vermeer is sighted:
The Great Museum
National Gallery
Ne Me Quitte Pas (a postcard of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring pinned to the wall)

Films in which Flemish Renaissance painter Bruegel the Elder is sighted:
The Great Museum
National Gallery
Hard to Be a God

Films in which someone is trapped inside their own body:
Abuse of Weakness
Blind

Films that feature a beautiful limited palette:
Blind Dates
Fish & Cat
I Hired a Contract Killer
The Hope Factory
Black Coal, Thin Ice
Amour Fou (Can I move in, please?)

One could go on, but one could also stop.

And with that, until next time.
FIN

(Coughs) (Exits theatre) (Heads home) (Blows nose) (Recalls Hard to Be a God) (Collapses)

+ “All the films I’ve made are denunciations of taboos, errors, crystallisations, impositions, injustices.” (Mafioso)
+ "Every shot is, essentially, an artwork, a painting. If you see a character in background, you can be sure that their costume is worked out to the tiniest detail." (Hard to Be a God)

+ In 17 days, we’ve seen 6,030 minutes of footage (MIFF 2013)