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The Fresh Selection – The Promising Five

June 19, 2009, 10:49 AM

Mia Grau, director of the German film Desert/Exterior/Day (Wüste/Außen/Tag), has chosen an environment which filmmakers have treated on many occasions – the film set. She uncovers the actors’ futile efforts to find common ground away from the camera and, conversely, the ease with which they succumb to self-delusion. This she does with a sense of
stringent dialogue which, however, testifies all the more to the director’s specific aims. In much the same way, Israeli student Bar Hadas in the film Numb (Sheina Zeira) takes a subtle look into the mind of a young woman who has been completely isolated from hectic city life by a recent trauma. Her inability to conquer the dark and growing shadow of separation is a fine example of film thought processes at work: thinking through images. Romanian student Annamaria Chioveanu was profiled at last year’s Fresh Film Fest with her minimalist study Fragmente and, as her new film the Long Way Home (Lungul drum spre casa) also demonstrates, she is particularly adept at combining economy of narration with the convincing
psychology of her protagonists. Whereas, last time, the two main characters spent the entire film in a single room, now the story is set in the troubled suburbs of a major Romanian city.

Doxology by American director Michael Langan is literally a manifesto of the philosophy of the Fresh Film Fest. Unlike the preceding filmmakers, Langan trusts his intuition implicitly. And this is a question of attitude, not coincidence. Representing domestic production is the film World’ s Best Lip Singer (Nejlepší playbacková zpěvačka na světě) by director Jitka Rudolfová. She has already shown in her previous works that, of the upcoming generation of female directors, if anyone comes close to the “freshness” of the early films of Věra Chytilová, then it’s her. Her method of story-telling is provocative and defies the conventions often plaguing films in general, not just those by students.

The films in The Fresh Selection are, with the exception of the American film Doxology, presented in Karlovy Vary in preview, and they will be included in the program of the upcoming 6th edition of Fresh Film Fest, which will take place August 12 – 16 in Karlovy Vary.

The Fresh Selection – The Promising Five

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