Far Side of the Moon

Colour, 35 mm
Canada, 2003, 105 min
Section: Focus on Canadian Films
Oficiální stránky: www.lafacecacheedelalune.com

Synopsis

Like another Canadian film screened this year at the festival (I, Claudia), The Far Side of the Moon is an adaptation of a one person theatre show, this time written for a male performer. Several characters appear on screen in addition to main hero Philippe: his brother André also plays a key role, both vividly acted by the writer-director, celebrated Canadian filmmaker Robert Lepage. He experiments with HD digital technology to evoke Philippe’s sensitive world of feelings; for years he has been vainly struggling to push through his scientific work on the cosmos. At age fifteen he underwent brain surgery and its consequences are the apparent cause of his difference: at forty, he is lonely, withdrawn, fixated on his mother and his unsuccessful theories, and is out of touch with his brother. His life is already embittered by permanent disappointment, then he must suddenly come to terms with his motherVs death. But one positive element is his new-found awareness of his brother’s solidarity: André’s proffered hand which rids Philippe of all earthly burdens....

About the director

Robert Lepage (b. 1957, Quebec) began studying at the Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique de Québec in 1975. Then after a year’s internship in Paris (1978) he began writing, directing and acting for the theatre. He gained fame with his innovative directorial approach to a wide repertoire of plays, and in the 1990s he even directed Shakespeare at London’s Royal National Theatre. In the same period when he founded his multidisciplinary production company Ex Machina (1994), he debuted with a writer-director feature, The Confessional (Le confessional, 1995), screened at Cannes. In addition to being one of Canada’s foremost men of the theatre, he has shot a total of five films, distinctive for their formal and narrative experimentalism: Le Polygraph (1996), Nô (1998) and Possible Worlds (2000). All of his films have been shown at the Karlovy Vary IFF. For his latest film, The Far Side of the Moon (2004) he won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2004 Berlinale.