JUST TALKING 18/11
The third ‘Just Talking’ event of this year’s TIFF took place on Tuesday, November 18th, at the Old Pump Station of Thessaloniki’s port.
Kostis Bassogiannis, director of the film ‘Unitas’ (DigitalWave), Arta Dobroshi, leading actress of the film ‘Lorna’s Silence’ (Dardenne Brothers retrospective), Paolo Villaluna and Ellen Ramos, directors of the film ‘The Inmate’ (International Competition), Lizzie Nastro, Director of Acquisitions and Co-productions of IFC Films, and Uygar Asan, director of the film ‘Shell’ (Balkan Survey) were participating in the discussion.
‘We study many things in life inside or outside of universities’, said Kostis Bassogiannis who is also a dentist. ‘I have also studied arts and industrial design, but never made any money out of it. We learn the most important things on the streets, in markets, during the night and our journeys. I never introduce myself as a dentist or a director; I just like to experiment with whatever comes my way. Our profession is not the most important thing in life’.
‘My story is not an exciting one’ said Lizzie Nastro. ‘After I finished college, I knew I wanted to work in the film industry. I started with New Line Cinema, as a publicist, but I wanted to get involved with acquisitions and production. Two years later I found a job at IFC and felt very happy because I have an interest in independent films. Two weeks later I was asked to carry my first film print, and I ended up in Toronto watching films. When they asked me if I could do this longer, I just answered yes! I am very happy that I got the chance to work with so many talented directors. There are many films without distribution, a sad fact that we try to change by working with films with no specific label in terms of marketing, offering “a home” to directors from all over the world’.
‘When I was younger, I wanted to be an astronaut, but that never happened!’ confessed Arta Dobroshi. ‘I was 17 years old when I took part in a performance with a group of young people. We were practising all day, but I wanted more. My friends were mad at me because they thought that the director would make us practise more because of me! My brother was studying cinema, and I was influenced by him too. I am from Kosovo and I know the feeling of life in prison very well. We had two different lives, the normal one where you would listen to the music everyone did, watch MTV and the Oscars and another one where you had to be very careful if you wanted to stay alive. Ever when you are finally free, fear remains. In the film Lorna lives in a prison too but it is her choice’.
‘The Inmate is the first film from Philippines that participates in the International Competition section of TIFF and we are very proud for that’, said Paolo Villaluna. ‘It is one of the few art house films in Manila that was filmed without any economic targets in mind. But success came in the end and we won the majority of awards in our country. This came as a very pleasant surprise’.
‘We have a very strict censorship committee with elderly members’ explained Ellen Ramos when asked why their movie was banned. ‘Some members are more liberal but we were judged by the old and conservative ones. There are no violent scenes in our film, only scenes that might make you shiver. Because of that the film was deemed “inappropriate” and it was banned in our country. We had to do a little trick to get approved’. Paolo Villaluna continued: ‘The committee complained that a certain rape scene was too real and we had to remove it. What we did for the second assessment is that we added extra violent scenes, that the committee wanted us to remove. However, these scenes were not included in the original version, so when we removed them we ended up with our first and original version! The Inmate was banned for a few days and finally the original version of the film got the approval’.
‘I am interested in video. I used to make short films and write scripts, and this is my second feature-length film’, said Uygar Asan. ‘The budget for my films is very small; my first film cost 2000 euros and the second one 4000. The title of my film is Shell. I believe that every day we become more isolated and lonely. Anyone can see that. I cannot remember a time when the world was a beautiful place. Human history is written in blood and that’s why the fact of our loneliness can be justified. The point is how we manage to get out of our shell’.
