BERGAMO FILM MEETING AWARDS JAMES’ JOURNEY

The 22nd edition of Bergamo Film Meeting (13-21 March), one of Italy’s veteran cinema festivals, came to a close, awarding its main prize, the Golden Rosa Camuna, which takes its name from the Northern Italy town’s effigy, to James’ Journey to Jerusalem. First feature by widely-appreciated Israeli documaker Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, James’ Journey to Jerusalem, which premiered last year at Cannes’ Quinzaine, is an astonishingly subtle and insightful yet always light and pleasantly refreshing look at contemporary Israel, as seen through the eyes of a young African Jew who has come to the Promised Land as an ambassador of his native village and is mistakenly took as an illegal immigrant. Runner-up in the audience’s preferences was the Italian entry, La Spettatrice, first film by Paolo Franchi, recipient of the Silver Rosa Camuna, while the Bronze Rosa Camuna was presented to another début, Mein erstes Wunder, a sensitive portrait of the troubling and poetic relationship growing between an eleven years old girl and a middle-aged man directed by German Anne Wild.
Although faced once again to consistent budget cuts, the festival programmers managed to build an appetizing selection that satisfied the local filmgoers through a disparately satisfying choice of retrospectives, all featuring recently restored prints. A small tribute to John Ford included such classics as They were expendable and The Grapes of Wrath, plus a midnight screening of Stagecoach, while complete retrospectives were devoted to masters Andrei Tarkovski and Lindsay Anderson. Anderson’s programme notably offered the occasion to discover a little-known tassel of Free Cinema, Together by Lorenza Mazzetti, which Anderson helped editing, and to listen to moving testimonies and memories evoked during an informal roundtable on the filmmaking and life of the author of If… and Britannia Hospital.
The findings of the 2004 edition comprised a surprise screening of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s suggestive early masterpiece Michaël, the rediscovery of an almost forgotten 1961 Italian gem Scano Boa – Violenza sul Fiume (Violence on the River) by Renato Dall’Ara, a powerful and revealing social drama set in a small village of sturgeon fishermen, and a focus on Guy Maddin. Virtually unknown to Italian audiences, the Canuck grandmaster of eerie midnight cults Tales from the Gimli Hospital, Archangel and Careful conquered the enthusiasm of cinéphiles with his highly idiosyncratic pictures that rediscover silent filmmaking techniques in a mesmerizing recreation of dreamlike landscapes filled with amnesiacs and sleepwalkers. Thanks to his peculiarly self-ironic humour and semi-naïve unashamed sincerity, Maddin also proved the most warmly welcomed guest of the festival. Presenting his latest, superbly entertaining and politically sharp The Saddest Music in the World, Maddin recalled how, before starting the shooting, he was afraid for the fate of star Isabella Rossellini’s legs. In fact, a strange curse seems to have been striking some protagonists of Maddin’s previous films, who have been experiencing real-life mishaps, such as amnesia, reproducing those of the characters they played. Since in Saddest Music in the World Rossellini’s legs are sawn, Maddin’s concerns are no doubt funnily disquieting!
Paolo Bertolin