Valeria Golino and Alba Rohrwacher in Laura Bispuri's 'Daughter of Mine'
© Vivo film / Colorado Film / Match Factory Productions / Bord Cadre Films
From the fabulous women of 'Daughter of Mine' to a wondrous man, my early Sunday morning at Berlinale was spent in the company of Elia Suleiman, the Palestinian filmmaker extraordinaire and Artistic Advisor of the Doha Film Institute.
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Edith Bouvier Beale, Caroline Lee Radziwill in a still from 'That Summer' by Göran Hugo Olsson
Photo © Peter Beard
I've been a fan of Göran Hugo Olsson's filmmaking since I watched his 'The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975' quite a few years ago. He talked to me then about having a "100 percent connection with the material" which make his films not only wonderful but deeply honest.
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The day started with a long, leisurely talk with Algerian-Brazilian, NYC-based filmmaker Karim Aïnouz and the two men who are the center of his latest film, 'Central Airport THF' -- Ibrahim Al Hussein from Syria and Qutaiba Nafea from Iraq. I won't talk about the film itself until it premieres tonight since the festival here in Berlin is quite strict about embargoes and more power to them for that! But I will say that some films really grow more special and important once the intention of their filmmaker becomes clear. In simpler words, sitting down with Aïnouz made his latest project wildly more interesting, because of who he is but also because of his subjects' backstories -- both refugees who are in Germany after escaping from their war-torn countries.
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Courtesy of the Berlinale
This year, at Berlinale, the annual film festival held in Berlin, there is media chatter of a red carpet that should have been black in honor of the #MeToo movement. In my country a black carpet means someone died so I wonder, do we want to open a film festival, a festive event by definition, with a gloom and doom parade of stars on a drab black piece of carpeting? Isn't it enough that we woke up on its inauguration day to the news of yet one more totally avoidable shooting in the US?
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Photo courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox
A movie festival is nothing without films and I kicked off my first full day at Berlinale by watching Wes Anderson's animated treasure 'Isle of Dogs' featuring puppets like you've never seen them before, beloved actors giving voices to fantastical dogs and a message of humanity hidden within a film that is so darn entertaining to watch, I may have to go back for seconds. Or thirds even. I know you've heard me talk like this before, but this time I mean it in a whole new and different way: If I went home today, I'd be happy, after watching 'Isle of Dogs'.
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My third and last day of Pitti Uomo 93, Fall/Winter 2018-19 collections held some surprises. Most were pleasant, welcomed discoveries of designers who hadn’t been on my radar, and now forever more will be. Yet one, at the very end of the day was a disturbing reminder that the #MeToo movement needs to evolve, and include models, young men and children. If we don’t protect every victims — not just the attractive women stars of Hollywood who are looking for a second wind in their career — we are failing allthe injured.
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PHOTO COURTESY OF ETON
A look from Eton’s Fall/Winter 2018-19 collection ‘Kyoto Anywhere’
On my second full day of Pitti Uomo, I went on a journey eastward to Egypt, Korea and Japan, thanks to the vision and wit of four fashion brands.
I’ll start with Eton, because for me Pitti Uomo always begins with Eton. The Swedish shirt brand has become synonymous with fashion with a conscience, and a symbol of how great ethics and cool designs can make for a powerful, winning combination in today’s market. While some designers with attitudes, and their ungrateful PRs can create attention for almost anything for a season or two before disappearing into oblivion, these days it’s with principles and great artistic vision that fashion houses thrive, time and time again. The inclusive atmosphere I experienced at the Gucci Garden launch party here in Florence only confirmed my theory.
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PHOTO BY VANNI BASSETTI, COURTESY OF PITTI IMMAGINE
The dinner in the Sala Bianca, organized by the Centro di Firenze per la Moda Italiana
Fashion has become the most affordable of art forms. We could all wear a piece of Christian Lacroix while he designed for Spanish brand Desigual and even typically untouchable Christian Dior features a few knick-knacks under $200 in their current collection, courtesy of artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri — whose streetwise styles have reinvigorated the Maison.
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“Are you ready for us to make history again?!”
As I stepped into one of the magnificent Majlis — literally translating as a “place of sitting” from the Arabic — a meeting room inside the Madinat Jumeirah complex to catch up with the Chairman of the Dubai International Film Festival, Abdulhamid Juma uttered those words. I was taken aback for a moment and then I remembered that throughout the six years I’ve attended DIFF, I’ve sat down with him and together, we’ve come up with some of best questions about Arab cinema, its place in the world and its importance in dispelling stereotypes and breaking down walls.
This year, I came to DIFF with a heavy heart and I leave it still wondering if all the efforts — personal and collective have been worth it. We’ve witnessed how easily the mighty of the film stratosphere can be taken down in Hollywood when no longer of use to their business partners, destroying careers that should be looked at with respect, regardless of these men’s questionable behavior. We seem to have forgotten that “the casting couch” is a term as old as the movies themselves. Now we just “throw out the baby with the bathwater” as the old saying goes...
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PHOTO BY NEILSON BARNARD/GETTY IMAGES FOR DIFF
A view of Madinat Jumeirah on the opening night of the 14th Dubai International Film Festival
Anyone who has ever had to travel for work knows, deeply and personally, how important a hotel room can be.
For me, while I spent eight nights and nine days at this year’s Dubai International Film Festival, the Mina A’Salam hotel, in Madinat Jumeirah provided a home away from home, the perfect place to get away from it all and write, not to mention my very own soft place to fall. All rolled up into the perfectly glamorous package of a luxury 5-star plus hotel.
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PHOTO COURTESY OF DISNEY
Adam Driver as Kylo Ren
I wasn’t a huge fan of the last installment of ‘Star Wars’ titled ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’, which closed the Dubai International Film Festival in 2016. I found the chemistry between Felicity Jones and Diego Luna like a couple of fingernails dragging on a blackboard. When they were — **spoiler alert!** — done away with, I was actually kind of happy. And that’s not how you should feel about intergalactic heroes, am I right?
Fast forward one year and I found inspiration and fun in another chapters of the ‘Star Wars’ saga which has been going on since I was a child!
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PHOTO BY NEILSON BARNARD/GETTY IMAGES FOR DIFF
Bushra on the DIFF red carpet
We need more women film writers. Repeat after me. We need more women film writers and when they are published, those few random times, we need to support them.
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PHOTO BY VITTORIO ZUNINO CELOTTO/GETTY IMAGES FOR DIFF
“In Conversation with Morgan Spurlock” at this year’s Dubai International Film Festival
What is heritage and how important is our connection to the past in shaping who we will be in the future? And if our ideals seem to clash with what our leaders are encouraging, or we simply can see beyond the chaos — are we right? Or does that make us just different... Those are all questions that have come up in the last 48 hours for me, at this year’s Dubai International Film Festival.
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This place never ceases to surprise me. HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, has stated that he wishes the Emirate to become an open air art gallery by the time it will host Expo 2020. And in fact, at every corner during my stay here for the Dubai International Film Festival, I’ve experience art, beauty and film.
I mean, where else in the world can you sit listening to Sir Patrick Stewart talk film and life, watch a cool cultural Emirati film like ‘Sharp Tools’ by Nujoom Al Ghanem and then walk over to a turtle sanctuary just behind your hotel, at Jumeirah Al Naseem all in one day? If you said Dubai, you got it.
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PHOTO BY NEILSON BARNARD/GETTY IMAGES FOR DIFF
When the whole Hollywood sexual predator news broke back in October, I received a message from a colleague I’m connected with on Facebook. He pointed to the fact that as a woman, in light of the recent revelations, I would now find it much “impossible” to get one-on-ones with male stars and directors. The statement hit me and I felt an immediate pang of anxiety. I mean, my job as a woman, a blogger, someone who holds on to her personal opinions and is proud of going against the current if need be is already pretty difficult as it is. To add to that burden — because lets face it, even when diversity and/or equality are celebrated and demanded in the arts, it never really manages to trickle down to the media side of things — would only make my work impossible.
But DIFF has proven my colleague wrong, of course. I’ve never had more access, and more professional intimacy than what I’ve experienced here so far. I mean, the kind of face to face talks that mean so much to a writer, because in the end, you know they will help the pieces write themselves. The kind of great human connections that we all strive to create, across cultures, with different personalities and among our fellow humans.
What’s that saying DIFF? “Film Will Find You”? Yes, it always does, and helps me to discover the way back.
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PHOTO BY NEILSON BARNARD/GETTY IMAGES FOR DIFF
Sir Patrick Stewart and HE Sheikh Mansour Bin Mohammed Al Maktoum
Lets face it, it’s a frightening time to be alive. If a certain North Korean dictator doesn’t nuke us into oblivion first, maybe the recent decision regarding the status of Jerusalem by our President might just turn the wraths of the entire Muslim world population upon us. Admit it, you’re beginning to think this way, even if just a little bit...
And yet, here I am in the midst of the Arab world and film, the power of great cinema is helping me to get a grip on what it’s really like, once we step away from the frenzy of inflated CNN headlines and the anger that these days appears to be the sole motivation for so much around us. Because when we dig deep into our collective hearts, we all feel the same way, and if poked, we all bleed the same color blood.
Even Shakespeare knew that to be true, more than five hundred years ago.
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PHOTO BY FRANÇOIS DUHAMEL, COURTESY OF VICE
Jim Carrey in a still from ‘Man on the Moon’
Every meeting at this year’s Venice Film Festival has been a once-in-a-lifetime chance encounter for me. From chatting with the fabulous James Toback, to meeting his visionary producer Michael Mailer, from the relaxed junket on San Clemente island with Kirsten Dunst and the Rodarte sisters to sitting leisurely with artist Shirin Neshat at Villa degli Autori, from the wisdom of Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel to the Zen discipline and class of Maestro Ryuichi Sakamoto — it’s all been divine. There is no other word to describe it.
And yet, on the seventh day of the festival, another surprise awaited me. A cozy, wonderful junket with Jim Carrey and director Chris Smith, who together made a film that has quickly risen to my top five — alright top three actually — in Venice.
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COURTESY OF THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL AND NETFLIX
Peter Sarsgaard in a still from Errol Morris’ ‘Wormwood’
On one of the English language news channels this morning, they were talking about this new film ‘Toilet: Ek Prem Katha’ which is making a big splash — or shall I say “flush” — in India at the moment. It’s a love story shot around the absolute, undeniably dire need for better plumbing facilities in the Desh. “This is one instance where perhaps a movie has been able to change policies,” said one anchor. Duh, I thought. Cinema has been changing the way we think, act and feel since its inception. It’s just that we don’t often think about it, because the kind of films which usually change us, for better or for worse, are those that entertain us without apparently teaching us anything. But the power of their subliminal messages is there, always, on the big screen, your TV and even your mobile screen.
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COURTESY OF VENICE DAYS
A still from Shirin Neshat’s ‘Looking for Oum Kulthum’ featuring Yasmin Raeis
If you think that in order to feature strong women a film festival only has to pay attention to the male to female ratio of filmmakers in their Competition section, think again. At this year’s Venice Film Festival, powerful, interesting, revolutionary women roles, filmmakers and icons have been everywhere. You just have to know how to look. And maybe you won’t always find them in the director’s chair, which is alright by me. But in the case of the first two films I’ll talk about here, they happened to be both in front of and behind the camera.
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COURTESY OF THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
Sienna Miller in a still from James Toback’s ‘The Private Life of a Modern Woman’
It is a thin line that filmmakers walk every time they make a film, that invisible border which separates cinema the audience wants to watch from the work they really wish to make. Sometimes, as in the latest film from American auteur James Toback premiering at the Venice Film Festival, they balance perfectly on that tightrope and create a watchable masterpiece like ‘The Private Life of a Modern Woman’ which is also critically acclaimed and emanates important subliminal messages for days after viewing it. Other times, for example with George Clooney’s ‘Suburbicon’ well, they miss, tumbling onto the safety net of their celebrity-dom which allows fans of their work to oh and ah, regardless of how valid their product really is.
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