#21stsff

"Dead bodies!", she shouts. Visions of the future in the arts rarely ooze with optimism, but with an author as cynical as Don Hertzfeldt, one can be certain that the story will reach Beckettian proportions. Otherwise loved and notorious for his surreal tragic comedies about socially and existentially awkward people like in LILY AND JIM (1997), BILLY'S BALLOON (1998), IT'S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY (2011), Hertzfeldt now returns with the 17-minute short WORLD OF TOMORROW (2015) to deliver an additional blow to the notion of humanity. Two hundred twenty-seven years into the future, the shooting stars are bodies of people who cannot afford better teleportation services to flee the doomed Earth. What used to be the symbol of wishful possibility is now but a symptom of social injustice.

It was in the Sundance-curated shorts programme at the 21st Sarajevo Film Festival that the audience got to experience Hertzfeldt's latest work. The wicked animation starts rather simple – with little Emily approaching a phallic videophone to receive a call from her future self, the third-generation Emily clone. A grim account is delivered of what the future holds: dehumanized, desensitized, and alienated human beings binge-watching the memories of their previous incarnations in search for a sense of self. Estranged from themselves, they are stuck in an inexplicable feeling of nostalgia, unable to fully grasp the world around them. Thus, while the background changes, shifts in shapes and colours, the people of tomorrow barely move – everyone save for little and blissfully ignorant Emily. There is still naïvety left in her to feel joy.

At its core, WORLD OF TOMORROW is a typically forceful, in-your-face Hertzfeldt affair, transposed into the future. He is very unsubtle about what he wants to say – future Emily is fairly blunt in making a point that there is no real connection possible anymore. With no “mental and emotional capacity” to process her feelings, her love affairs include a rock, a gas pump, and a brainless clone. Memories are, then, the only human quality they have left. These, now digitalized, are being passed along the line of clones for pseudo-life purposes.

Interestingly enough, WORLD OF TOMORROW marks also Hertzfeldt's leap into digital animation. His characteristic black-and-white, simple-shaped style of human subjects is complemented with the digitally manipulated colors, shapes, and lines of their surroundings. Although unusual for the director, the mix works well as an organic whole.

Anna Muylaert’s latest feature, THE SECOND MOTHER / QUE HORAS ELA VOLTA (2015), focuses largely on the social context of its setting, namely Brazil, where due to general unemployment problems many mothers have to move from the countryside to the big cities to work as au pair at upper-class family homes, thereby leaving their own children behind.

This is what happens to Val (Regina Casé) who moves to São Paolo and helps a wealthy couple to raise their only son, Fabinho (Michel Joelsas). The teenager feels more connected to his nanny than to his real parents, as their relationship is closer and far more caring. Jealousy and inability for real communication are the main sources of the conflicts in the plot, as well as Val’s inner fear and anxiety as she feels like a second-class citizen in the house.

The main quality of the movie lies in its depiction of the psychological process of self-opression through the portrayal of Val’s character. Her place in the house is strictly limited to the kitchen and her tiny bedroom. In addition, within the family, she is very much forced to the periphery. It is never made clear in the movie how the hierarchy got built up throughout all these years; however, supposedly, it was Val who adapted herself to the rules too willingly and became too obedient, thus ending up as a slave. Muylaert’s movie reflects on important issues in contemporary Brazilian society, first of all – the prohibitions which maintain the distance between wealthy and poor. Yet, even though it raises serious questions, the film keeps up a light-hearted tone. Muylaert creates a very pleasent atmosphere without understating the problems.

One of the very few plot twists comes when Val’s daugher Jéssica (Camila Márdila) appears out of the blue and establishes a claim to relocate for the entry exam at the Architecture and Urbanism College in the University of São Paulo. Val invites her daugher to live with her, but this turns out to be a bad idea, as the girl refuses to respect the rules of the house. Due to the teenage girl’s stubborn character, her arrival ends up creating an overly awkward situation, reminiscent of the plot in Pasolini’s THEOREM / TEOREMA (1968). Each family member develops an individual relationship with Jéssica, which leads to essential changes in their personalities. The most significant of these is the change in Val, who finally comes to the understanding that she cannot live oppressed any longer.

Regina Casé, one of the most popular character actresses in Brazil, plays a rather clumsy but still very likeable personage. Muylaert’s script contains many comical scenes, and Casé fits these perfectly; however, sometimes she overacts. That said, the most memorable scenes are the solo episodes of Val, when she stays alone for a moment and enjoys being unseen.

A little girl receives a phone call from the distant future. The woman, whose voice lacks the slightest emotion, talks very formally, almost like a robot, turns out to be her granddaughter who wants to say something important to her ancestor. In WORLD OF TOMORROW (2015), the US-based indie animator Don Hertzfeldt tells a science fiction story using many humorous elements, both in terms of narration and visual depiction.

The future grandchild insists on sharing her memories with the girl, and she invites Emily to take a peek into the future world, where technology dominates over human feelings. As here people are all clones, romantic relationships are not necessary for reproduction any more. Women rather fall in love with rocks or fuel pumps than men and talk about their feelings as mental and emotional shortcomings. Their job is programming robots, and when they get tired, they go on holiday to Mars.

Despite the advance state of technology, society does not differ a bit from today's: there are huge differences between rich and poor, first of all, in their access to technological inventions. As long as wealthy citizens can enjoy several advantages of technology, the poor cannot afford these – unlike their rich fellows, they live a painful life or die unnoticed. The movie's satirical tone leads to black comedy, in which the main source of humor is the lack of empathy. It is not only about creating an upside-down image about the future of humanity but also the absurdity of sharing heavy information with a five-year-old child, who is not able to understand it yet, and, not surprisingly, does not care too much either.

There is an interesting contrast between plot and visuals. Plot-wise, the most significant problems in science, such as time-travelling or medical experiments on human bodies, seem to be ridiculously simple, only human beings see them as difficult. In contrast to the plot, in terms of visuals, human characters appear very simple, as images drawn by one line, while the background images, representing the world of science, consist of many colorful, geometric elements, which makes them seem very complex. Besides, different ages appear in different visual styles: the far future in vivid neon colors with sharp outlines, whereas the past appears brown and a bit blurred.

In comparison with the two previous films made by Radu Jude – THE HAPPIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD / CEA MAI FERICITĂ FATĂ DIN LUME (2009) and EVERYBODY IN OUR FAMILY / TOATĂ LUMEA DIN FAMILIA NOASTRĂ (2012) – which focused on contemporary problems, the latest one, AFERIM! (2015), goes in an unexpected direction: historical drama. This cinematic project is a rather ambitious enterprise in the context of the well-established Romanian tradition of producing historical features that was broken after the turbulent changes in 1989. In this sense, AFERIM! is a very important work, because it attempts to re-conceptualize the national history beyond the ideological clichés, so typical of the socialist epoch.

Structured as a black-and-white road movie, a genre widely favored by the cinema of the Balkans, AFERIM! recounts the story about the gendarme Constantin and his son who are looking for an escaped Gypsy in Wallachia. It is a rarely known fact that on the territories of modern-day Romania, in the nineteenth century, members of the Roma minority had the status of slaves. The plot is based on authentic documents, and Radu Jude skillfully managed to draw attention to his film, making subtle reference to the slavery in North America. In addition, the director puts in the center of his narrative a representative of a specific ethnic group.

Irrespective of the fabulous camerawork and precisely elaborated ethnographic details relate to the different nationalities and minorities that are depicted on the screen (Hungarians, Turks, Russians, Jews, Gypsies); at a discursive level, the filmmaker chose to present Roma people through the model of victimization. In a comparative aspect, within the Balkan region, the figure of the Gypsy is extremely preferable in cinematic texts, and as a result, Roma characters become an easily distinguishable metonymy for the movies from the peninsula. This reduction is quite symptomatic of and naturally linked to the continuing intensive proliferation of films in the latest three decades - both features and documentaries – devoted to Roma personages and their lifestyle.

Undoubtedly, the prominent Bosnian director Emir Kusturica was internationally perceived as the most influential promoter of the Gypsy genre and whose tremendous artistic impact has marked the emergence of a great number of gifted followers. Moreover, the frequent movie representations of the ethnic other, predominantly Roma, provoked some scholars, for example Goran Gočić and Marian Ţuţui, to launch a new term – “ethno cinema” – in the field of Balkan Film Studies.

Generally speaking, there are two main conceptual approaches in building up Gypsy personages: #1 exoticism and #2 victimization. The first pattern includes emblematic examples such as TIME OF THE GYPSIES / DOM ZA VEŠANJE (1989) and BLACK CAT, WHITE CAT / CRNA MAČKA, BELI MAČOR (1998), also GUCHA: DISTANT TRUMPET / GUČA! (2006), whose vitality, music scores, and emotional appeal made them much more famous abroad than the rest – concentrated only on the mentioned minority’s isolation and poverty. Furthermore, there was an essential prerequisite explaining the enormous international success acquired by these “exotic” movies: the spectators’ preliminary expectations constructed under the influence of Western European literature and cinema classics, in which Roma personages were greatly romanticized, treated like a total embodiment of freedom, passion, and nomadic lifestyle. Consequently, the Gypsy iconography inherited from other arts (fiction, opera, and painting) was consciously recycled and developed further in some original and commercial film productions.

As far as the second model of representing is concerned, its main achievements are linked to the names of well-known filmmakers, such as Aleksandar (Saša) Petrović with I EVEN MET HAPPY GYPSIES / SKUPLJAČI PERJA (1967), Goran Paskaljević with GUARDIAN ANGEL / ANĐEO ČUVAR (1987) and WHEN DAY BREAKS / KAD SVANE DAN (2012), Slobodan Šijan with WHO'S SINGIN' OVER THERE? / KO TO TAMO PEVA? (1980), Stole Popov with GYPSY MAGIC / CIGANSKA MAGIJA (1997). Their approach to the problems of the characters depicted was critically orientated and put in the public eye the burning issues about inequality, violence, despair, and lack of any normal social perspective – both in the period of the common Yugoslav state and after its dissolution. In the world built by these authors there is no room for miracles, dreams, happy love, or brightly fantastic images; even music, with rare exceptions (WHO'S SINGIN' OVER THERE?), is deeply melancholic. Simultaneously, it is quite interesting that a notorious story covered by the local media in the eighties about the disgusting fate of Roma children in Italy inspired Goran Paskaljević and Emir Kusturica to present their impressive artistic interpretations on this topic, respectively GUARDIAN ANGEL and TIME OF THE GYPSIES, narrated from different standpoints and constructed through opposite stylistic means.

Among the short films screened within the framework of the 21st Sarajevo Film Festival, the debut of the young Bosnian director Una Gunjak is very impressive. THE CHICKEN / KOKOŠKA (2014) visualizes a simple human story inspired by the personal memories and experience of the filmmaker with the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the nineties.

Six-year-old Selma receives as a gift for her birthday a live chicken, provided by her father who is in the army. The girl is emotionally attached to the bird and she is deeply disappointed to learn that the chicken will be the main course during her birthday supper. Selma spontaneously decides to release the prisoner, however, this act has very dramatic consequences: her mother goes outside in order to chase the missing chicken and turns into a sniper’s target. Selma and her older sister observe that horrible scene with growing fear. At the end, the members of the family are together again enjoying their dinner.

What is important about THE CHICKEN is, primarily, the interesting approach through which the traumatic events from the period of ex-Yugoslavia's dissolution have been referred to. The topic of the war from the early nineties was, and, to some extent, still is, a widely exploited theme in cinema, and as a result it is a great challenge to contribute something new to this subject. Una Gunjak discovered the appropriate formula, representing the hard times in war-torn Bosnia through the eyes of a young girl. In 1997, Ademir Kenović applied a similar narrative mechanism in his unforgettable feature THE PERFECT CIRCLE / SAVRŠENI KRUG, in which two orphaned children develop a close relationship with an old alcoholic poet. Putting the accent on the personal micro-world of a human being is the best way to evade the trap of the political interpretations and inevitable judgments. In the case of Una Gunjak, the filmmaker understands that the pain suffered by the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina is still very strong and finds a delicate manner in which to resurrect those memories in the minds of her compatriots.

Still, THE CHICKEN could be read as universal message about growing up and the lessons related to this usually tough process. In other words, Selma learns her first difficult lesson in the episode when her mother is very close to real death.

VIAJE (2015), the second feature of young director Paz Fábrega, starts as a cute-boy-meets-girl / road-trip film with two characters, all shot beautifully in black and white as to suggest from the beginning that this is not a mainstream romance.

Luciana and Pedro meet at a party and leave together for a simple and unattached one-night stand. As they discuss this on the way to his house, they are persuaded not to commit like their friends who married, had children, and changed into different persons. They are gullible, young, and beautiful, and as the narrative progresses, nothing from the real world seems to trouble them. They meet, they like each other, they seem to have good sexual chemistry, and so Luciana goes with Pedro for a few days to Rincón de la Vieja National Park, where he works as a biologist. The film unfolds with beautiful and conventional erotic imagery amongst nature, though it keeps away from actually being lascivious. They obviously like each other, but she is unsure whether to stay or leave; she does not seem willing to give up her lifestyle, nor her freedom.

It is a modern fairy tale with gender roles overlapping and patriarchal stereotypes contradicted. However progressive the film is in its intentions, there is a conflict between supposedly having a feminist protagonist and actually representing a female character through the same old lenses of traditional love stories. It is disappointing that the narrative encourages the viewer to wish for her to stay, because the film does not allow space for her feelings, and at the same time the director sends a message that such a turn would be wrong. It would ruin the perfect escapist love story that we were invited to. The reason for this clash lies in the way their relationship is presented: a fantasy of what conjugal happiness is supposed to be. It is not so much a sexual fantasy, but Paz Fábrega does very much use eroticism as a way of making the viewer both immerse and empathize with the story.

In terms of characters, there is a problem with the way Luciana never reveals herself to the spectator more than she does to Pedro. It clearly mimics her indisposition to stay still for long, but for a plot that already announced this from the first scenes, it becomes tiresome, not to say that it also rhymes poorly with the Kodak moment of the two lovers touching sensually a mimosa pudica. And as it is such, it shows her more afraid than liberal.

A young director, a low budget, a small crew, and a take on the lives and relationships of twenty-somethings who do not know how to behave like adults – or maybe do not even want to. Add a great soundtrack and sensual (black and white) cinematography and you get a number of unconventional indie films that just keep popping up around the world, like wild flowers in a desert after extensive rain.

VIAJE (2015) by Paz Fábrega, the latest film that falls right into the above mentioned category together with HIDE AND SEEK (2014) by Joanna Coates, YOU'RE SLEEPING, NICOLE / TU DORS NICOLE (2014) by Stéphane Lafleur, and A COFFEE IN BERLIN / OH BOY (2012) by Jan Ole Gerster, is a textbook example coming all the way from the green shores of Costa Rica.

Luciana (Kattia González) and Pedro (Fernando Bolaños), two typical members of the young generation, meet at a costume party. After a silly night and a beer or two too much, the kindergarten teacher and the bear wake up in a strange apartment. They kind of like each other and are feeling somewhat adventurous, so they embark impulsively on a camping trip to the Rincón de la Viaje Volcanic National Park.

They walk through staggering landscapes shot in muted black and white, they run and jump, they swim, talk (mostly nonsense), and laugh out loud. They seem careless, simply existing in that single moment in time. It is one of those situations in which you feel completely open and free, not caring about what anybody else thinks of you.

You cannot always hear what they are talking about and it does not really matter. The first half of the movie just feels like one long, sweet, and playful take. The film's visual language is reminiscent to the canon of quirky indie films. Although VIAJE looks sometimes like a fashionable Calvin Klein commercial or an attractive music video, it still feels very true and honest at the same time. Luciana and Pedro are very genuine, full of energy, passion, and wonder.

As they get to know each other better, the film tones down. It becomes slower and more melancholic. The shift is not too dramatic. Passion and exuberance give way to more serious and thoughtful conversations. Both characters become more conscious of themselves and their emotions.

The change of the rhythm is also connected with the change of setting. The solitude of nature interacts with their emotions and somehow changes how they feel. They escaped the staleness of the city to find something, something they cannot describe or do not even know what, and time is running out for them.

Poison comes in small bottles. Carefully mixed to make your heart stop beating. It is not usual for major and important stories to be told in the form of a short film. Events bigger than life, distilled and stripped down to an important day, a single concentrated emotion or a memory. But when those stories are condensed in the 15-minute frame, they are poison. They can make your heart stop.

In the programme of shorts, presented by the Sundance Film Festival, there were two films which took a rather daring short take on immensely complex historical events.

THE CHICKEN / KOKOŠKA (2014) by Una Gunjak is set in Sarajevo in the early nineties. The war devastated the city. It is Selma’s 6th birthday, and she gets a live chicken as a present. The realization that the animal is going to be killed in order to become her meal persuades her to save it. The bitter-sweet beginning with the “chicken on the run” comic elements manages to make you forget that you are located in the middle of the war zone. But the brutality of it inevitably enters the story and knocks you off your feet.

The story has a perfect dramatic arc and could stand on its own, but what makes the film stand out is its metaphorical component: the hard awareness of the realities of war and accepting death as a part of it.

THE CHICKEN is based on the director's childhood memories, which separates it from being just another war story. It is not a generic tale about the cruelty of war but an interesting and unique anecdote through which we are able to glimpse into the dramatic reality of the conflict – something unknown to most of us.

There was another short film in the programme that drew from personal experience. SATURDAY (2015) by Mike Forshaw brings us into the emotional breakdown that followed the Hillsborough Stadium disaster in 1989 when 96 people died during the football match between Liverpool F.C. and Nottingham Forest F.C.

SATURDAY is full of small, very carefully thought details and visual hints that work like one of Proust’s madeleines. You can feel the buzz on the streets, the excitement. The details of that fateful day give you a vivid sense of the impact these tragic events had on the whole community. Even though the story revolves mainly around one family, we are still able to hear the heartbeat of the whole city.