Unspoken Cinema

*** Festival des 3 continents – Nantes 2021 – Montgolfière d’argent ex-aequo *** Natesh HEGDE comes from a small village of the Western Ghats in Karnataka in India (south of Mumbai). He studied journalism at the university of Karnataka in Dharwad. He is director, screenwriter and editor on his first film. He is a young self-taught prodigy who made the remarkable Pedro , his debut feature, which premiered very recently at the Busan International Film Festival (South Korea) on the 9th of October 2021. The next week it was selected at the BFI London Film Festival (UK). Again a week after that at the Pingyao International Film Festival (China) where he won the Roberto Rossellini award for best director ! Before going to the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival (Taiwan) on November 12th. And I saw it in Nantes in competition at the 3 continents festival (France) on November 21st, where it won the Silver Montgolfière (ex-aequo with another Indian film : Shankar’s Fairies ). Read my...

*** FESTIVAL DES 3 CONTINENTS 2021 *** Montgolfière d’argent ex-aequo *** (Spoilers inside) PEDRO (2021/Natesh HEGDE/India) Competition Opening sequence : It’s pouring down. The screen is all green, or rather greyish, filled with a rain-soaked jungle. On the foreground a man in raincoat stands there, looking off screen, a roll of wire in hand. Is he Pedro ? He adresses someone offscreen, in the upper left corner. This static shot shows a sinuous road going away, far out of focus, where from a red van drives in. The van pulls over in midground, and a voice starts bossing around the two drenched men. That voice belongs to the landowner sitting on the passenger’s seat. Pedro finally enters the frame right, as the van drives off. The titular character makes a delayed entrance, and let us guess his identity amongst the multiple possible candidates on screen. The two men left on their own device, under a deluge, climb on a motorbike and ride into the next shot. In one statement-shot (just...

*** FESTIVAL DES 3 CONTINENTS 2021 *** LA TOUR D’INTROSPECTION (1941/Hiroshi SHIMIZU/Japon) 100ans Shochiku Les tribulations amusées d’un camp de redressement pour adolescents, aux allures de colonie de vacances maoïste, dans le Japon d’avant guerre. Le film débute comme un documentaire de propagande, où le directeur fait un tour du propriétaire suivi de près par des parents et leur vilain rejeton, dortoir par dortoir, atelier par atelier, classe par classe, avec une voix off sentencieuse. Les enfants récalcitrants sont confiés à des « mères » en charge de leur surveillance, et à des professeurs en charge de leur éducation. Chishu Ryu (égérie d’Ozu) est l’un de ces professeurs charismatiques, vu quelques fois à peine en plan moyen, dans ce film essentiellement construit en plans larges. Les indociles sont invités à faire une autocritique public (à la Mao), ils s’y prêtent volontiers ayant pourtant été insupportable et indomptable dans la scène précédente. « L’introspection » du tit...

  After a year without audience, the Festival des 3 continents is back in public, in theatres, in Nantes, between the 19th and the 28th of november 2021 ! And I will attend this year's edition. Last year won, ex-aequo, for the Mongolfière d'or, both : 精神０ ( Seishin 0) / Zero / Professeur Yamamoto (2020/Kazuhiro SODA/Japan) 남매의 여름밤 / Moving On (2019/YOON Dan-bi/South Korea) And they will both be projected on Sunday 28th of november. In the lineup, many contemplative gems are featured : TSAI Ming-liang's Days Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL's Blissfully Yours Whisky by Juan Pablo REBELLA & Pablo STOLL Alamar by Pedro GONZALEZ-RUBIO La vie sur terre by Abderrahmane SISSAKO Mysterious Object At Noon by WEERASETHAKUL And Life Goes On by Abbas KIAROSTAMI Tug by Jon LAZAM A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces by ZHU Shengze (DOCU) Pedro by Natesh HEGDE Follow the round tables and news on their YouTube channel . * * * My reviews from the festival at Unspoken Cinema : La...