"All screens Fest" in Geneva broadens the view

"ALL SCREENS FEST" CINEMA TOUT ECRAN IN GENEVA BROADENS THE VIEW


The 12th edition of the Cinéma Tout-Ecran Film and Television Festival took place in Geneva from October 3O to November 5, 2OO6. I must admit that never having been much of a TV fan and having to my credit (or discredit) an almost encyclopedic ignorance of TV sitcoms and famous long-running series (I never saw a single installment of "Dallas"), it was with a certain trepidation that I signed up for Tout-Ecran, wondering whether such a "mixed" festival could really have much to offer a confirmed cinéphile such as myself who tends to regard television as the feeble-minded cousin of cinéma. Cut to the chase – I was most pleasantly surprised!

As the name of the festival (Tout-Ecran, or "All the screens") clearly implies, this is a cinema event which embraces both films made for full size theatrical screenings as well as films made to be seen on smaller, more intimate, television screens. Artistic director of the festival, Leo Kaneman, maintains that the barrier which people set up in their minds between cinema and TV is basically illusory, and that filmmakers working in either medium are using the same fundamental tools and concepts to tell their motion picture stories. In other words, films whether made for television or for the big screen are merely slightly different aspects of the same singularity known as "The Seventh Art". Says Kaneman, "Cinema Tout-Ecran confirms this singularity by focusing on the films (of whatever category) and their artistic qualities while disregarding the cinema-television frontier.” In fact, of the various films shown during the week – all of course, on full-scale movie screens – it was about fifty-fifty between made-for-TV and made to be seen in theater products.

To my mind the flagship film of the entire festival was, in fact, a two-part TV docu-drama about French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and his life-long consort, Simone de Beauvoir, entitled "Sartre, L’Age des Passions", directed by senior Swiss helmer Claude Goretta (77). This was shot on Beta and the running times of the two segments are 87 and 8O minutes, respectively. While made for French TV it seems clear by the nature and scope of the work that Mr. Goretta has a more general audience in mind and he told me later that he is already thinking in terms of a transfer to film stock for eventual theatrical exploitation. The film basically covers the period from 1958 – the high point of Sartre’s existentialist period, to the political rumblings of 1964 with the Algerian war in the background and events which would lead to the downfall of De Gaulle in 1968. During the nearly 3 hour saga we get a complete picture of Sartre the Philosopher, Sartre the writer, Sartre the politically-engaged anti-colonial media celebrity, and, last but not least – Sartre the hideous skirt chaser! It was no secret that he and his true love, Simon de Beauvoir, herself an internationally acclaimed writer (and a leading spokesman of the Women’s movement with her widely translated best-seller "The Second Sex") had a so-called "open relationship", allowing for outside affairs without recrimination, and it was also no secret that the rather physically repulsive philosopher made maximum use of his fame and notoriety to get laid as often as possible.

In the sub-plot framing the political main theme one such fling Sartre enters into with a devoted female disciple causes the breakup of her relationship with her young beau, Frederic, who is also both a disciple of, and an assistant to, the celebrated philosopher. The role of Sartre is undertaken by French actor Denis Podalydes who turns in a characterization which is so accurate that it bears comparison with Philip Seymour Hoffman’s true-to-life depiction of Truman Capote, for which he received the best actor Oscar earlier this year. Not only does Podalydes bear a srong physical resemblance to Sartre – made uncannily so by the insertion of an ocular prosthesis to capture the bulging right eye which was the philosophers most striking visual trade-mark – but he has also mastered every nuance of Sartre’s characteristic vocal delivery. This I was assured of by several people who had seen documentary footage of Sartre over the years, or who remembered him personally from the telecasts of the time. General agreement reigns that this was, all-in-all, a letter perfect tour-de-force performance. Those interested in Sartre’s political and philosophical ideas will have plenty to chew on as long sequences are devoted to just this – Sartre expounding at length on his views at press conferences and symposia, while fielding hard questions from highly involved listeners. And yet, this does not feel like an overly talky film, partly because Sartre was such a dynamic, charismatic individual, even when spouting abstruse philosophical views -- and partly because Podalydes has been so successful in capturing this dynamism with such precision on screen.

Anne Alvaro, an actress with a three decade career behind her, presents a magistral Simone de Beauvoir with great dignity and aloofness – also a chillingly realistic portrayal. Though she doesn’t have much to say she is a constant presence throughout, and her presence says it all -- every bit as imposing as the real Beauvoir must have been in real life – and, of course, the ever-present head bands which were her own personal trademark. Simone and Sartre were perhaps the strangest, and at the same time, the most imposing intellectual couple of the twentieth century, and Claude Goretta’s new look at their relationship is a towering achievement in the domain of docu-drama, which is to say, the reconstruction of reality with the devices of fiction.

I asked director Goretta (born, 1929) what it was that attracted him to this slightly abstruse subject – especially considering that Sartre and Existentialism have now become, if not completely forgotten, not exactly the hot current issues they were some four decades ago. To this Goretta replied that although he is himself a product of those heady days of the Parisian fifties and sixties, he had himself kind of forgotten the impact and importance that Sartre once weilded. And of Simone de Beauvoir as well – in fact, the entire era. As he looked Back he found himself more and more involved and then felt that this was the right time to bring a new view of Sartre and his exciting times to the screen. (That the spirit of Sartre and Simone has not completely disappeared from the Left Bank scene in Paris, let it be noted that the square on Blvd. St. Germain des Pres in front of the Café Deux Maggots, where the high profile couple used to hang out and hold court, has been renamed „Place Jean-Paul Sartre”)

I was personally hypnotized throughout and wonder whether a new generation is ready for this kind of intellectual-plus cinema. However, I have a feeling that if the publicity is properly handled Goretta’s Sartre will speak to audiences even beyond the film’s natural habitat of France and neighboring francophone countries. Incidentally, Sartre was an inveterate chain-smoker and the number of cigarettes Denis Podalydes consumes in this film has got to be a new world’s record for ciggies consumed by one individual in a single film. Makes Bogie look like a piker …Thank you for smoking indeed!

Next on my agenda, and now we are in the realm of full fledged TV Sitcom – were two segments of a new German TV series entitled – get this –"Turkish For Beginners"! The title is obviously playing off of that of the successful Danish comedy of the year 2OOO, ”Italian for Beginners” but, as far as any other similarities –forget it! This is an extremely comical and extremely hard-hitting (and extremely politically incorrect) study of relations between Turks and Germans in a typical German city. Doris, a divorced New-Age therapist with two teenagers in tow – a boy and a girl – decides to move in with her new Turkish boyfriend, Metin, who works in the police department, and has a brother, Cem, Germano-assimilated, and the beautiful Yaghmur ("rain") a full time devotee of Allah, head-scarf and all. Now these teen agers do not pull punches when insulting each others beliefs and habits and this newly established Turco-German family is something like The German children of Archie Bunker meeting the distant cousins of Bin Laden. Hilariously funny, scene after scene – with winning performers all around, but especially the "white” teen age daughter as played by cute, sexy, sassy, salty, impossibly lovable young actress Josephine Preuss, who is a bundle of dynamite combining the best of early Meg Ryan with – hm – shall we say Goldie Hawn? –alles auf Deutsch of course! Preuss is undoubtedly a presence to look out for on the German screen scene and these episodes should shock anybody out of any cultural smugness behind which they may have been hiding.

Still on the TV side a new Swiss series "Nos Archives Secretes" (Our Secret Archives) consisting of ten 1O minute segments, casts major events of the past century in a new light revealing the "Swiss participation”. Monumental XXth century events such as the moon landing in 1969 are "re-examined" (by inserting new footage into actual archival films) to demonstrate the pivotal roles played by Swiss participants. For instance, it turns out that a Swiss couple –yes, He and She – were in the moon orbiter making love while two other Swiss astronaughts, abandoned on the lunar surface, are beating each other up with clubs. This segment ends with the words,”The moon landing 1969 – A small step forward for man, but a giant step forward for mankind …and a giant step backward for Switzerland!” – Very clever, very funny and a definite step forward for Swiss TV.

Another made-for-TV film was the German 2OO5 production "Just an Ordinary Jew” ("Ein Ganz Gewöhnlicher Jude”), RT 96 minutes, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel (b. 1957) who also directed the international hit "The Downfall" (Hitler’s last days in the bunker) in 2OO4. This is basically a one-man-show — an extended monologue – by the brilliant German actor Ben Becker, and what a monologue it is! In present day Hamburg, Emanuel Goldfarb, a jounalist of Jewish background, receives a letter from a school teacher asking him to speak before his students on the subject of "Being a Jew in Germany today”. Goldfarb’s reaction is disgust and anger at being singled out for his Jewishness – when he would prefer to see himself as a perfect modern German – okay, a Jewish German, but not a German Jew!

He sits down at a mechanical typewriter and starts to type out a brief sarcastic letter of refusal, but then realizes that he has a lot more to say on this subject than he himself bargained for – not really having given this subject very much thought before -- so he picks up a tape recorder and, with ever rising fury, starts to record his angry, agonizing thoughts as he paces from one room to another in the apartment. This turns into an all night session and when he types it all out it comes to some nineteen pages of unmitigated condemnatory painfully self-revealing diatribe. Every aspect of the Jewish identification problem has been addressed but the most damning remark – one which could well be the title of this film, and one which in Goldfarb’s view sums up the entire closet antisemitism of the Germans today – is dumped into the laps of the audience like a car bomb -- "The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz!!!" -- Though Goldfarb thinks it is pointless to try to convey to a group of modern day German teenagers what it really means to be a Jew in Germany – though he has spent the entire night composing a vehement rejection ---at the end of the film we see him in the classroom facing the eager-to-learn students – then, after a long silence which seems nearly interminable – he affixes a polite smile to his lips and begins …

The one man show put on by Mister Becker (who frequently plays abominable Nazis in German films) as a Jew is something that goes beyond mere acting. There are not many actors around, in any language, who can hold an audience spellbound for ninety minutes while talking to themselves alone on screen – into a tape recorder yet –but this is exactly what Becker does. It is, simply put, an amazing performance in an amazing film –made for TV, but if ever there was a TV film that needs to be seen by the general movie public, this is it. I actually saw ”Ein Ganz Gewöhnlicher Jude” last year in Hamburg at the advance premiere –-- in German with no subtitles. It was overpowering then, and had lost none of its power on a second viewing here in Geneva enhanced with subtitles in both English and French.

So much for some of the TV discoveries unearthed in Geneva. But, hold on – there were also many just plain ordinary theatrical films and a Ken Loach retrospective. These will be covered in a subsequent report. But there is no question that Geneva’s "Tout-Ecran" festival while relatively small in scope, is pushing the envelope and extending the view of the screen experience.

Alex Deleon