Movie reviews

19TH DOCS AGAINST GRAVITY FILM FESTIVAL

This year the festival took place in 8 cities, with the addition of Łódź. Łódź Film School even suspended classes for 4 weeks for the staff and students to participate. There was a new competition - of short films and extended industry field. The European Film Academy invited the festival to its major ones. This year's ratio of female to male directors was 90 to 90. The descriptions below are what the organizers said about the content: Loznitsa's "Babi Yar. Context" premiered. The documentary uses KGB, Red Army, German archives to confront the same places shown by both propaganda machineries. "Young Plato" covered Belfast after the Troubles. "The Territory" premiered and opened the festival. It was a western-like documentary on Indians' fight for territories in the Amazon. "Lombard" ("The Pawnshop") was a Polish film about a couple's on/off relationship. "Pisklaki" ("Fledglings") presented hard-of-seeing kids, "Silent Love" two women with a baby. "Simona" depicted Simona Kossak. The woman had left her comfy life to conduct research on Białowieża Forest. An exhibition of photos, some funny, of Simona Kossak accompanied the festival. "Lot" ("Flight") was about Roman Stańczak's return to art. British "Cow" depicted a cow's life. "River" was an epopee with orchestral music. "Meat the Future" tackled the struggle to let meat grow without killing animals. "Into the Ice" took you inside glaciers. "Going Circular" was on recycling plastic, on how we need to rethink everything, by the producers of "My Octopus Teacher", with 100-year-old Professor Lovelock. "Skál" saw a girl from Faroe Islands in love with a bad boy hip-hopper. There was Susan Sontag Retrospective, including "Waiting for Godot... in Sarajevo" and Bill Morrison Retrospective, after whose film "The Village Detective: A Song Cycle" a discussion was held between him and Loznitsa. The industry section included a meeting on why it's worth shooting documentaries for children. Many guests arrived. Darren Aronofsky wasn't able to but his co-producers of "The Territory" came. Chumbawamba frontman DJ'd from vinyls others' soul and funky. He conferred his fee to Ukraine. The protagonists of Hanna Polak's "Anioły z Sindżaru" ("Angels of Sinjar"): Hanifa and 7 others visited the festival, the interpreter couldn't come because of a lockdown. The director of "Et hus af splinter" ("A House Made of Splinters") - a film about a social workers' house for kids from pathological families in East Ukraine - came too. There was also a meeting with the director and book author of "Three Minutes - A Lengthening" - a film made of 1937 footage found in Nasielsk. Other meetings included: vegan cooking, a comedy club, meditation workshops. A few concerts took place.

ANIOLY Z SINDZARU (ANGELS OF SINJAR)

Recommended. Surrounding sound and clear pictures present a story of the atrocities of ISIS and their hideous mental tortures. The captured were being pissed on, forced to cannibalism. The free could sit on a mined couch. 

FABIAN ODER DER GANG VOR DIE HUNDE (FABIAN: GOING TO THE DOGS)

Watchable. Unusual moaning-like chorus in the opening. The metro, which started operating in Berlin in 1902, though in the picture looks overly modern. You're confused as to the time. 

Saskia Rosendahl as Cornelia, Michael Wittenborn as father surpass Tom Schilling as Fabian himself or others who don't shine either. The meandering storyline taking 3 hours is too long. At least the sound is surrounding even in an online screener, especially the club music is thumping around which immerses you in the film.

Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.

INFINITE STORM

Watchable. The movie opened in the US ranking 10th, taking in 800,000 dollars. Is it truly worth watching then? While it's based on a true story (with 'a' missing in the caption), the devil is in the details. Pam purports to be a mountain rescuer and a nurse but she rubs the man's frostbitten feet - that would only damage blood vessels! She also questions him if he's high on some substance, while in hypothermia you may well be confused and irrational. She also doesn't wash her hands after using the toilet. At least her claim that drinking snow dehydrates you is true. The first half an hour is basically a hit and miss account of Pam's battling an icy storm. Later she finds a man and, among other pointless behaviours, she takes off her goggles. The thriller part is engaging, especially since the man's identity remains unknown. The drama, however, is protracted and tedious. Sadly we never find out how she located the man - or he her? Also, in what way did he transform her life? Nothing changed. The poor script and/or editing ruin the promising set-up.

SCRIPT FIESTA ONLINE

KLINIKA SCENARIUSZOWA (SCRIPT CLINIC)

Why is Ślesicki peddling movies about people with Down's syndrome and accepting one with cancer? II feel like puking just hearing about ever new films about diseases. Besides hundreds of thousands have lost health or close ones to Covid in Poland alone, that is never covered. German-sounding names appear in Polish scripts for no reason at all - I agree on that one..

SZCZERZE O SCENARZYSTACH (ABOUT SCRIPTWRITERS IN EARNEST)

Streaming platforms don't pay royalties. The original idea was that the creator should benefit from them, just like they do in the US. Extra drafts should be payable too, just like actors are for extra shooting days. A lawyer is needed. There should be proper regulations in the law as well.

DROGA ZAWODOWA (PROFESSIONAL PATH)

Networking is essential: with producers, other writers, directors. And when you send your draft to producers, send your final version.

VOICE FROM THE WRITERS' ROOM BY LUKASZ M. MACIEJEWSKI

1 person over 1 year writes 1 2-hour film. Writing a series includes: the storyline, next episode treatments, episodes, shortcuts, dialogues. Animation is expensive. 

JIM UHLS

A luncheon was set up at which he was to pitch the script, based on Palahniuk's book, to the director and producers. He didn't pitch. He had arrived early, sat at the table and talked to Fincher, who arrived next, so others visualised them as working together and next he talked to everyone what and how could be done. 

CASE STUDY OF "MAGNEZJA" ("MAGNESIUM")

Multi-threaded stories are the hardest to write due to interconnectedness. They divided the film into a series of episodes 8-minute-long and each ending in a twist.

Borys Szyc acted as a woman because they couldn't find an actress as strong as to toss guys around. 3-4 hours of music recorded by an orchestra were matched to the pictures by the writers' duo. They had to rewrite to locations. Westerns were derived from Asian movies, just as Tarantino's films are. Actors, not used to westerns - non-existent in Poland - didn't know how to act. So he had to play Ennio Morricone's music to them so that they enter in the rhythm and with "cat lightness" and not march or pause - the balance between seriousness without falling into comedy. Writer/director Maciej Bochniak doesn't like extras, he hires his mates. They did stunts without protection out of enthusiasm. Smarzowski tries out many solutions in rehearsals and then the text is fixed.

CASE STUDY OF "ZEBY NIE BYLO SLADOW" ("LEAVE NO TRACES")

Kaja Krawczyk-Wnuk would have needed a year of research but that would be too long with no pay. She wrote the treatment based on her own knowledge. Only when the producers ordered the script in July to be ready in March, did she start reading about the case. That took her 3.5 months reading all day and it was impossible to read everything. November was her own deadline to start writing. She has a habit of typing the script only when she's got it ready in her head - so typing it took her 5.5 weeks. She also finds it useful to have time off to mull over the vision of the events. There was an idea not to show the killing at all and to mention a battering of a student after which the movie structure would spread like a fan.

W RYTMIE SCENARIUSZA FILMU "INNI LUDZIE" (IN THE RHYTHM OF THE MOVIE SCRIPT OF "OTHER PEOPLE")

Aleksandra Terpińska scripted the movie. The adapted book is all written in rap, without stage directions. So she needed to write a new genre: musical drama. Now Aleksandra Terpińska and the book author Dorota Masłowska are writing a premium series.

SCRIPT FORMAT

Programs do it technically: plugins to install in Microsoft Word, programs like Final Draft, Celtx, Fade In, Screen River, Slug Line, Highland, online services like Writer Duet. The website of the Polish Film Institute lists all the formatting requirements. The webinar was about mistakes, chaos and the lack of care in formatting which, for a person tired of reading 4-6 scripts a day is a pretext to reject one. The front page needs to contain the title and the author's name, e.g. BROOKLYN by Nick Hornby. If adapted, "adapted from the novel by XY", we need to have the copyright. We never give the draft number, unless we work for a producer or TV station, it just doesn't work in our favour. But we should give the date of the draft: under the author, above the "adapted" line. Next, in the bottom left corner we should give info who the copyright belongs to: name, postal address, email, phone. If it's us, we should give at least our email address. Mostly in the US, once the movie goes into production, scenes are numbered. Then no more drafts are made, only revisions. Once we go into the revision mode, the program marks all additions as e.g. scene 5a, page 5a. Stage directions are always tiring to the reader while dialogues are fast to read. We should use "enters" = each paragraph is a new take. So every time the camera position changes, we should press enter. Another golden rule is 1 page of a screenplay is 1 minute of a movie. Too long stage directions can disrupt that. We shouldn't number pages or they'll think it's already in production or a shooting schedule's been made. Only shooting drafts have numbered pages. Having pages numbered is not a problem in Poland though. Int./Ext. is used for car scenes. The line order is: int. or ext., location, time of the day, e.g. INT. FITTS HOUSE - RICKY'S BEDROOM - NIGHT. Best to put just: day, night, dusk, dawn, purists don't like: morning, evening. Each character should be introduced in Caps Lock - only then. We can introduce with a first and last name and next use only first. When intro, we often give the characters's age too. Caps Lock is for all important things, e.g. camera directions: We're FLYING above..., DESCENDING SLOWLY toward... but not necessary, distracts the reader, too technical, the reader should see the picture rather. Better not to adjust any info to the right since we read all looking on the left. An ALARM CLOCK is ringing, Jane's wearing PAJAMAS - important info in Caps Lock. We shouldn't use or overuse italics, emboldening, underscore. With long shots Berman's scripts are worth mimicking: he gives new headings but each sentence ends and commences in three dots. As for dialogues, brackets are guidelines for dialogues only, e.g. sb starts crying, now he speaks to sb, next to sb, pause, ironically. SB (O.S.) = off screen i.e. we hear but can't see the person at the moment. (V.O.) = voiceover = the person's not in the scene at all, a narrator rather. So behind the door is O.S., on the phone is V.O., sound from TV is V.O. - the sound is added separately. No capital letters or dots in brackets, commas sometimes. We can address the reader directly, e.g. if Adam appears in scene 2 and next in the finale, better to add it's the same Adam as in scene two. If dates matter, we should put them in stage directions: "text on the screen: 5th March". Quick montage can be described like in "House of Cards": QUICK MONTAGE and each paragraph starts with -- to show each take e.g. sb looks in horror from the back seat, sb else looks in horror at the screen. 

Most recordings of the festival were barely audible but fully professionally conducted. All were translated into English - most with subtitles, one with voiceover. Two weeks online only, plenty of materials - all useful though I managed to see only half.