Film Selection for Karlovy Vary 2009 Festival
The Karlovy Vary IFF (July 3 - 11, 2009) presents over 220 feature films from all over the world every year. Apart from the films in the special retrospectives, most of the films are screened in the Czech Republic each year for the first time, many of them in their world, international or European premiere as well. This year again, the audience will have chance to see interesting retrospectives and focuses apart from the traditional program sections.
Official Selection - Competition
The exceptional status of the Karlovy Vary IFF Official Selection - Competition always ensures that these films attract the largest audiences. Only films made after January 1, 2008 which haven´t been previously shown in the competition of another international film festival may be included; films selected are generally world, international or European premieres.
As stipulated by the FIAPF festival statute, we present a complete list of competing films 14 days before the start of the festival.
14 films selected for the Official Selection - Competition were announced:
OFFICIAL SELECTION - COMPETITION
Un ange à la mer / Angel at Sea / Anděl u moře
Director: Frédéric Dumont
Belgium, Canada, 2009, 86 min, World premiere
Twelve-year-old Louis lives with his parents and older brother in a small town in southern Morocco. Louis is a happy boy until the moment when his father tells him a secret that only they will share. This successful feature debut relies on excellent performances by Olivier Gourmet, Anne Consigny, and especially the convincing Martin Nissen as Louis. The movie is gorgeous to look at, and features a gripping story.
Applause / Applause / Potlesk
Director: Martin Pieter Zandvliet
Denmark, 2009, 86 min, World premiere
Danish director Martin Pieter Zandvliet debuts with a suggestive psychological portrait of an actress whose life has been destroyed by alcohol; now, after a stint in rehab, she tries to regain what is (as she states herself at least), most important to her: her two young boys.
Barami Memounen Got, Himalaya / Himalaya, Where the Wind Dwells / Himálaj
Director: Jeon Soo-il
South Korea, France, 2008, 95 min, International premiere
A minimalist film which follows the mission of an aging Korean man who, wearing a business suit and an overcoat, arrives in a remote little village high up in the mountainous region of Nepal. His anabasis captured in distanced shots reflects the process of inner revival but also refutes the idealistic tradition of "journeys from the city".
Bist / Twenty / Dvacet
Director: Abdolreza Kahani
Iran, 2009, 88 min, International premiere
Only twenty days remain before the closure of a small restaurant, and its staff, for whom working for Mr Soleimani means much more than a mere source of income, decide to do something about it. The initial tragi-comic situation turns into a moving psychological drama not only about people, but also about the place and age in which they live.
Cold Souls / Cold Souls / Duše Paula Giamattiho
Director: Sophie Barthes
USA, 2008, 101 min, European premiere
A melancholic comedy by debuting Sophie Barthes which presents Paul Giamatti as a
new york stage actor who decides to confront his approaching nervous breakdown by having his soul extracted and deep-frozen. Gogol, Buñuel, Jung and Woody Allen were the inspiration behind this original film, screened for the first time at this year's Sundance festival.
Nem vagyok a barátod / I am Not Your Friend / Nejsem tvůj přítel
Director: György Pálfi
Hungary, 2009, 100 min, International premiere
Sara loves Mark and they are expecting a baby. He loves her too, but he also loves Sophie. She has eyes for Andras, it's just that he's married to Rita, who looks after young Natasha - and so on and so forth. His new project confirms director György Pálfi (Taxidermia) as an experimental provocateur. This highly cynical mosaic of disaffected relationships came together in 20 days of improvisation by the filmmakers and nine amateur actors.
Nije kraj / Will Not Stop There / Bez konce
Director: Vinko Brešan
Croatia, Serbia, 2008, 112 min, International premiere
War veteran Martin happens to see the beautiful Desa in a porn version of Little Red Riding Hood. Through the Romany Djuro he makes the girl's acquaintance and buys her from her pimp. The deeply traumatised girl can't understand that this isn't just another man who wants to take advantage of her. It later turns out that both protagonists have something in their past which comes back to haunt them, even now the war has ended... Experienced director Vinko Brešan has come up with a tragicomic story of love in a world where it seems all human values are put up for sale or destined for cynical destruction.
Oveja negra / Black Sheep / Černá ovce
Director: Humberto Hinojosa Ozcáriz
Mexico, 2009, 83 min, International premiere
Arthur flags down a truck on the motorway during the night. In order to stop his weary driver from falling asleep in front of the wheel, he tells him a gripping story about two friends - shepherds - who decide to take their hapless fate into their own hands. A tale of courage, adventure, love and friendship, in which the characters are confronted with their dreams.
Pokoj v duši / Soul at Peace / Pokoj v duši
Director: Vladimír Balko
Slovak Republic, 2009, 97 min, International premiere
Tono, a man in his forties, is released after many years in prison and tries to resume his life as an ordinary citizen. Jiří Křižan's script, Martin Štrba's camerawork and meticulous direction from Vladimír Balko together create a compelling tragedy about crime and its consequences, the desire to start afresh in spite of spectres from the past, about faith in good things, and a propensity towards evil.
Świnki / Piggies / Sviňky
Director: Robert Gliński
Poland, Germany, 2009, 94 min, World premiere
Tomek is a good student, he's interested in astronomy and plays football to please his father. Except that he lives in a little border town plagued by unemployment and poverty, whereas, on the other side of the river, lies Germany with all its relative affluence. When Tomek meets Marta at his first disco and falls in love with her, he starts to think up ways of earning money in order to keep her interested. He has no idea of the brutal fate which awaits him.
Tutta colpa di Giuda / Freedom / Za všechno může Jidáš
Director: Davide Ferrario
Italy, 2009, 102 min, International premiere
When a young avantgarde director decides to stage the Easter Passion in a prison, she has no idea how much the experience will change her life and what problems she'll be up against: none of the inmates involved in the play wants to take on the role of Judas. This musical comedy features performances from actual prisoners.
Villa Amalia / Villa Amalia / Villa Amalia
Director: Benoît Jacquot
France, Switzerland, 2008, 97 min, International premiere
When Ann sees her partner kissing another woman, she decides not only to end their long-standing relationship, but also to erase her past completely. She wants to start again with a clean slate, even though she's not as young as she used to be. An old, abandoned house above the sea might be the place where she finds her footing again. No actress could have portrayed Ann with such conviction as Isabelle Huppert.
Volčok / Wolfy / Vlček
Director: Vassily Sigarev
Russia, 2009, 86 min, International premiere
From the very start of the film it's clear that, for Mother, the birth of Daughter is an unwelcome burden, and that's how it'll always be. Until, one day, when it's too late, Mother realizes that she has not only ruined her own life, but her daughter's as well. Despite his young age, Vassily Sigarev has written 18 stage plays, one of which, Plasticine, was performed in Prague's DISK theatre five years ago. His film debut, based on his own play, demonstrates that Sigarev is well able to convey his own, distinctive style to the big screen just as effectively as he has done for the stage. Wolfy recently took the top award at the Kinotavr festival of Russian films in Sochi.
Whisky mit Wodka / Whisky with Vodka / Whisky s vodkou
Director: Andreas Dresen
Germany, 2009, 108 min, International premiere
Renowned actor Otto is as well-liked as he is moody. So what happens when a nervous director hires an understudy? This tragicomedy, by the director of the festival hit Cloud 9 (Karlovy Vary IFF 2008), is enhanced by a "film within a film" about unforeseen relationship intrigues. Will the rest of the crew, let alone audiences, take a liking to Otto?
Documentary Films in Competition
Act of God / Act of God / Boží zásah
Director: Jennifer Baichwal
Canada, 2009, 75 min, European premiere
In her new film, the creator of the renowned work Manufactured Landscapes chronicles seven stories from around the world linked by lightning strikes. Is it chance or God's intervention? The director seeks answers from, among others, writer Paul Auster and a Cuban community that worships Shango, the god of lightning.
Anas: una película india / Anas: An Indian Film / Anas: indický film
Director: Enric Miró
Spain, 2009, 118 min, International premiere
Anas Zaghlul from the town of Nablus is an engaging Palestinian who was once a promising athlete and an usher at a movie theater. One night, however, a shocking experience changes his life. The film's Spanish director offers an original blend of stylized documentary and journalistic insights into the dismal reality in which his uncommon hero is trying to lead a normal life.
Anders & Harri / Anders & Harri / Anders & Harri
Director: Åsa Blanck, Johan Palmgren
Sweden, 2008, 13 min
Anders and Harri are best friends. They both like music but Anders also loves trains. One day they set out for the town of Geta where a tragic railroad accident occurred in 1918. They are so moved by the memorial site that they write a song about it. A non-sentimental film about friendship, fear, and trains.
Diario di uno "Scuro" / The Diary of an Affiliate / Deník mafiána
Director: Davide Barletti, Edoardo Cicchetti, Lorenzo Conte
Italy, 2008, 61 min, International premiere
The true story of Antonio Perrone, a university student from a respectable middle-class family, who in the 1980s became a founding member and boss of the mafia organization known as the Sacra Corona Unita. Today he is serving out a 49-year sentence.
Do bolu / Till It Hurts / Než to začne bolet
Director: Marcin Koszałka
Poland, 2008, 25 min
A 53-year-old psychiatrist still lives at home with his mom. After a long period of emotional abstinence, he meets Ewa and his enthusiasm over his new love evokes a hysterical reaction from his imperious mother. An intimately-drawn tragicomedy by a great talent of Polish documentary filmmaking, part of a documentary series that follows up on Kieślowski's Decalogue.
Lessons from the Night / Lessons from the Night / Noční přednášky
Director: Adrian Francis
Australia, 2008, 9 min
During the routine execution of her job, a Bulgarian immigrant named Maia - one among the nameless hordes of male and female cleaners - muses about life and its meaning, thus allowing a look into her surprisingly diverse past. This existential film about cleaning is also a tribute to the thousands of anonymous individuals carrying out serious work for laughable pay.
Los que se quedan / Those Who Remain / Ti, co zůstávají
Director: Juan Carlos Rulfo, Carlos Hagerman
Mexico, 2008, 96 min
What does it mean to live in a Mexican village where half of the population has left to find work in the USA? What do parents go through who haven't seen their children in years, or children who grow up without their fathers? Juan Carlos Rulfo (winner at the 2006 KV IFF with In the Pit) and Carlos Hagerman present a decades-old problem from the perspective of those left behind.
Muezzin / Muezzin / Muezzin
Director: Sebastian Brameshuber
Austria, 2009, 80 min, World premiere
Since the time of the Prophet Mohammed, faithful Muslims have heeded the muezzin's call to prayer five times a day. Each year in Turkey the best of these compete, and their powerful expressivity proves that muezzins are a special kind of artist. This Austrian film follows the dramatic progress of the competition and investigates the phenomenon of individuality within Islamic culture.
Osadné / Osadné / Osadné
Director: Marko Škop
Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, 2009, 65 min, World premiere
In this cheerful "document-toury movie" by Other Worlds creator Marko Škop, an Orthodox priest, a long-serving mayor, and a Ruthenian activist set out on a journey from the remote eastern Slovak village of Osadné for the European Parliament in Brussels.
Side om side / Side By Side / Vedle sebe
Director: Christian Sønderby Jepsen
Denmark, 2008, 30 min
A debut filmmaker decides to get at the truth of the causes of an age-old grudge between his father and elderly Mr. Frost, two men who have long had adjoining backyards. This staged documentary features compelling visual compositions and the disarmingly dry humor of the distinctive inhabitants of western Jutland.
The Sound of Insects - Record of a Mummy / The Sound of Insects - Record of a Mummy / Bzučení hmyzu: zápisky mumie
Director: Peter Liechti
Switzerland, 2009, 88 min
The actual diary entries of a man who decided to commit suicide by starving himself to death, elaborated into a literary form by Japanese writer Masahiko Shimada. Drawing on the novel, this evocative cinematic reconstruction of events provides a hypnotic record of the feelings of someone who voluntarily forfeited his life.
La terre de la folie / Land of Madness / Kraj šílenství
Director: Luc Moullet
France, 2009, 90 min, International premiere
In his latest movie, French film legend Luc Moullet analyzes the fecund occurrence of psychological disorders and their attendant murders and suicides during the past century in a southern French region at the base of the Alps.
Thriller in Manila / Thriller in Manila / Thriller v Manile
Director: John Dower
United Kingdom, 2008, 90 min
Gripping reconstruction of one of the most dramatic sporting events of all time, the 1975 rematch between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier for the heavyweight boxing title. Archive footage and testimonies from those who witnessed the "fight to the death" illustrate not only the drama in the ring, but also US sociopolitical realities of the 1960s and 1970s.
Wagah / Wagah / Wagah
Director: Supriyo Sen
Germany, India, Pakistan, 2009, 14 min
Until 1947, India and Pakistan were part of British India. The peculiar "festival" of symbolically closing the border, which takes place each evening at Wagah, the lone border crossing, connects for a symbolic moment two nations that, after decades, still feel like part of a unified region.
We Live in Public / We Live in Public / Žijeme na veřejnosti
Director: Ondi Timoner
USA, 2009, 90 min, European premiere
This year's winning documentary at Sundance is a fascinating portrait of Josh Harris, an eccentric visionary and propagator of communications networks - "the greatest Internet pioneer you've never heard of."
Yugong Yishan / The Old Fool Who Moved the Mountains / Starý blázen, který pohnul horou
Director: Joanna Vasquez Arong
China, Thailand, Philippines, 2008, 30 min, European premiere
Vasquez Joanna Arong (Neo-Lounge screened at the 42nd KV IFF) takes the viewer from a Chinese fable through Mao's Little Red Book and on to an independent music bar in Beijing. This emotionally compelling movie takes a closer look at contemporary China as seen by peculiar "old fools," whose perseverance can change the world.
East of the West - Films in Competition
40-ci qapi / The 40th Door / 40. dveře
Director: Elchin Musaoglu
Azerbaijan, 2008, 82 min, European premiere
Fourteen-year-old Rustam lives with his mother in a village. After his father's death, Rustam tries to provide for himself and his mother without resorting to illegal money-making schemes. But his dream is to join a music band. Thanks to its authenticity and lack of ostentation, The 40th Door offers a gripping excursion into exotic Azerbaijani cinema.
Alive! / Alive! / Žít!
Director: Artan Minarolli
Albania, Austria, France, 2009, 90 min, World premiere
Koli, a student, returns to his native mountain village to attend his father's funeral. When someone takes a shot at him, he is alarmed to discover that he is ostensibly a victim of a blood feud sparked by his grandfather sixty years earlier. How deeply entrenched in people are the traditions of their forebears? And to what extent are they able to accept them as part of their modern, superficial lifestyle?, asks director Artan Minarolli in this psychological film drama.
Artimos šviesos / Low Lights / Tlumená světla
Director: Ignas Miškinis
Lithuania, Germany, 2009, 92 min, World premiere
For the three young heroes of this Lithuanian urban road movie, night rides through the empty city streets offer a break from punishing routine. Director Ignas Miškinis creates an image of alienation in the modern hurried world, in which people are, in his words, "abandoned and lost, they're moving away from those around them."
Baksy / Native Dancer / Šamanka
Director: Guka Omarova
Kazakhstan, Russia, France, Germany, 2008, 87 min
Aidai's large courtyard is always full of visitors. The old woman cures privations of the body and soul, and can reconcile disordered relationships. When businessman Batyr builds a gas station and motel here, Aidai, distressed by the abduction of her grandson as well, disappears. Yet, only she can reverse the inauspicious concurrence of events...
Bumažnyj soldat / Paper Soldier / Papírový voják
Director: Alexey German Jr.
Russia, 2008, 118 min
Therapist Daniil, his wife Nina, a doctor, and his lover Vera are involved in the preparations for Gagarin's launch in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Their awareness of the risks involved in the project has a detrimental effect on their relationships and adversely foreshadows their destinies. A far cry from the romantic atmosphere and official optimism of the time.
Djavolja Varoš / Devil's Town / Ďáblovo město
Director: Vladimir Paskaljević
Serbia, 2009, 82 min, World premiere
Devil's Town is a film about people driven only by their basic needs, deep instincts, obsessions, ambitions, fears and frustrations. Is their moral crisis merely a consequence of the hard times they have to live through, or is it the other way round?", asks the director of the film. This black comedy about modern life in the director's native country is the debut of Vladimir Paskaljević, after whose short stories his father Goran created the award-winning film The Optimists (KV IFF 2007).
El Paso / El Paso / El Paso
Director: Zdeněk Tyc
Czech Republic, 2009, 98 min, International premiere
Věra Horváthová refuses to feel guilty for being Romany. And after her husband dies, she doesn't understand why she has to move out of her apartment and give up her kids to social workers. For most of society, her existence presents a problem - luckily she finds people willing to help her. This story of a Romany mother, fighting a court battle for the right to raise her own seven children, was inspired by true events.
Gagma napiri / The Other Bank / Druhý břeh
Director: George Ovashvili
Georgia, Kazakhstan, 2008, 90 min
Twelve-year-old refugee Tedo, scraping a living with his mother on the outskirts of the Georgian capital Tbilisi, returns after seven years to his native Abkhazia to find his father, whom illness prevented from fleeing the conflict with his family. The Other Bank is a universal story which speaks of the consequences of war, of nationalism and of children who were forced by circumstances to grow up before their time.
A hetedik kör / The Seventh Circle / Sedmý kruh
Director: Árpád Sopsits
Hungary, 2009, 107 min, International premiere
The film The Seventh Circle, whose title makes a reference to the seventh circle of hell from Dante's Divine Comedy, tells the story of a gang of rural teenagers who, after the arrival of the mysterious boy Sebestyén, start experimenting to see just how far they can go. This unsettling philosophical drama which steps over the boundary of reality, was based on the motifs of two tragic events which recently occurred in Hungary.
Niciji sin / No One's Son / Ničí syn
Director: Arsen Anton Ostojić
Croatia, Slovenia, 2008, 100 min
Ivan is a former rock singer and disillusioned war veteran who lost both his legs and his wife's favor in the war. Then he discovers a dark family secret that radically changes his attitude to life... The best Croatian movie of 2008 and the hands-down winner at the 55th Pula IFF with six Golden Arena Awards.
Poltory komnaty ili sentimentalnoje putěšestvije na rodinu / Room and a Half / Jeden a půl pokoje
Director: Andrey Khrzhanovsky
Russia, 2008, 130 min
"Poets always return - in the flesh or on paper" - an expression of nostalgic resignation from Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996), visualised in an unusual film portrayal of the lives of his family. The film features animation incorporated into live-action sequences, while evocations of historical events are woven into the more personal elements of the story.
Raci / Crayfish / Raci
Director: Ivan Cherkelov
Bulgaria, 2009, 108 min
Friends Doka and Bonza are unemployed; Matanov and Tsonchev are competitors in the world of privatisation, each has a dark past and an equally dark present. They'll stop at nothing to increase their coffers, even if this means resorting to mafia tactics. Without realising what they've got themselves into, Doka and Bonza agree to become involved in a seemingly innocent, well-paid assignment.
Rysa / Scratch / Prasklina
Director: Michał Rosa
Poland, 2008, 89 min
In his intimate psychological drama Scratch, director Michał Rosa tackles a delicate theme from the recent past. An aging couple's long-term relationship begins to fall apart when the wife discovers that her husband probably worked for the secret police and informed on her father. The female lead is masterfully played by Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak.
Utolsó idők / Lost Times / Ztracené časy
Director: Áron Mátyássy
Hungary, 2009, 90 min, International premiere
Lost Times is the story of young car mechanic Iván, who lives with his mentally disabled sister Eszter in a God-forsaken village on the Hungarian-Ukraine border. The wonderful, almost virginal natural landscape provides a stark contrast to the frustrations of village life. Áron Mátyássy's debut is dominated by mesmerising camera work and a beguiling score.
Forum of Independents
Adulthood / Adulthood / Dospělost
Director: Noel Clarke
United Kingdom, 2008, 99 min
Writer-director Noel Clarke plays the lead in his feature debut Adulthood. Sam Peel is just returning from prison where he spent six years for manslaughter. Driven by the rhythms of rap, this exciting movie plays out over the course of 24 hours, and offers an authentic portrait of Sam's journey from adolescence to adulthood.
Eamon / Eamon / Eamon
Director: Margaret Corkery
Ireland, 2009, 85 min, International premiere
Little Eamon still loves sleeping in bed with his mother Grace, something his father, Grace's boyfriend Daniel, doesn't much appreciate. He just feels left out and frustrated by Grace's lack of interest. When the family is forced to spend a week's vacation at the beach, their problems increase. Unfolding at a gentle pace, this unostentatious film is a promising feature debut with an original outcome that makes it well worth viewing to the very end.
Everything Strange and New / Everything Strange and New / Všechno to podivné a nové
Director: Frazer Bradshaw
USA, 2008, 84 min
Disappointed by life, Wayne personifies the flip side of the American dream. His everyday life is so grueling that it doesn't even leave him room to find a way out - but in this he is far from alone. This introverted but provocative movie was presented at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.
Fuga dal Call Center / Escape from the Call Center / Útěk z call centra
Director: Federico Rizzo
Italy, 2008, 90 min, International premiere
Newly-graduated university student Gianfranco is forced by a lack of alternatives to take on a tough job working for pitiful wages at a call center. His life, so far from his ideals, begins to resemble a living hell. This biting comedy takes a grotesque look at young Italians' less-than-auspicious lives.
Jee-geum E-dae-ro-ga Jo-a-yo / Sisters on the Road / Sestry na cestě
Director: Boo Ji-young
South Korea, 2008, 90 min, International premiere
After their mother's funeral, a young sophisticated yuppie sets out with her older, earthy sister to find the father she never knew. The classic road movie here blossoms into a surprisingly complex and original work in which it is unimportant where the journey leads the heroines, but rather how it changes them internally.
Kislorod / Oxygen / Kyslík
Director: Ivan Vyrypaev
Russia, 2009, 75 min, International premiere
To the rhythm of hip hop, rap and breakbeat, and reflected against the backdrop of a mixed-up world, two young presenters comment on the chaotic film-clip relationship between a boy and a girl, both called Sasha. Life-giving oxygen would sort everything out, but its strength is derived from knowledge of the Word and the laws of the Ten Commandments. Except that no-one understands them anymore...
Menteur / Liar / Lhář
Director: Tom Geens
Belgium, 2008, 78 min, International premiere
Antoine is a 25-year-old loser who endeavours to prove to his family that he isn't the idiot they take him for. He tries to find that dream job but, because he hasn't the qualifications or intelligence for it, he embarks upon a tragicomic road from one failure to the next, which only fuels his despair... This agonizing study of the need for recognition is the feature film debut of Belgian director Tom Geens.
Merkhav mugan / Secure Space / Bezpečný prostor
Director: Oren Gvili
Israel, 2008, 50 min, International premiere
Because of the bombing, the citizens of Haifa, Israel are not allowed to leave their homes. Jewish bride and groom Maya and Roi spend their wedding day in the cellar where the ceremony is to take place that evening. The closest members of the family have already gathered in the improvised shelter... Oren Gvili graduated with this poetic film from the University of Tel Aviv. With its contemporary subtext, this writer-director statement grows from an intimate tale of a spoiled marriage into a metaphoric contemplation of the eternal threat to personal space.
New Denmark / New Denmark / New Denmark
Director: Rafaël Ouellet
Canada, 2009, 72 min, World premiere
During a long, cloudy summer, Carla spends her time working, caring for her house, and looking for her missing sister. Her friends and a stranger aid the girl in her search. This third feature from an unconventional and original Quebecois director will be screened at Karlovy Vary as a world premiere.
Ramírez / Ramirez / Ramírez
Director: Albert Arizza
Spain, 2009, 90 min, International premiere
A drug dealer by day, by night a serial killer of lonely women.... A thriller about a young man from a well-situated family who eventually becomes a victim of his own heartlessness. This debut, which costars Geraldine Chaplin in the role of the gallerist, took Discovery Motion Picture at Sitges.
La Tigra, Chaco / La Tigra, Chaco / La Tigra, Chaco
Director: Federico Godfrid, Juan Sasiaín
Argentina, 2009, 75 min, European premiere
Esteban returns to his home town where he meets his childhood friend Vero, who has grown into a beautiful woman. Old memories rise to the surface, new bonds are formed... This delightful low-budget directing debut by Federico Godfrid and Juan Sasiaín, crowned with a FIPRESCI award at the festival in Mar del Plata, rests, above all, on its authentic acting performances.
Wojna polsko-ruska / Snow White and Russian Red / Červená a bílá
Director: Xawery Żuławski
Poland, 2009, 108 min, International premiere
This adaptation of the literary debut by Dorota Masłowska, which was also published in the Czech Republic, tells the story of a tough nationalist, homophobe, racist and anti-semite called Silny. The film is a poetic, direct and disturbing portrayal of love, hopelessness and political burnout in contemporary Central and Eastern Europe.
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Four Events at American Ballet Theatre
American Ballet Theatre / Metropolitan Opera House, NYC / May 18 - July 11, 2009
ON THE DNIEPER
As celebrated in Russia as the Mississippi is in America, the mighty Dnieper River has accreted to itself a history, an atmosphere, and a mythology that reaches out to several arts--just as Mark Twain's masterwork, Huckleberry Finn, for example, is bound to the Mississippi.
Rushing to the Black Sea, the Dnieper passes through Ukraine, where Alexei Ratmansky, the new Artist in Residence at American Ballet Theatre, first danced professionally. Working to the Prokofiev score originally choreographed by Serge Lifar in Paris in 1932, Ratmansky put his singular ingenuity into his own version of On the Dnieper--a 40-minute ballet deriving its title from the music, which is considered his first official work for ABT. (A pièce d'occasion for the gala showcasing Nina Ananiashvili, which opened the company's May 18 - July 11 season at the Metropolitan Opera House, apparently doesn't count.)
Like all of Ratmansky's work that I've seen, On the Dnieper reveals the multiple influences on the formation of his aesthetic: training in the Bolshoi Ballet's academy in Moscow, then, when rejected for admission to the parent company, performing as a principal dancer with the Ukraine National Ballet, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and the Royal Danish Ballet, and choreographing for prestigious companies from St. Petersburg's Kirov Ballet to the
new york City Ballet. For some four years he has been the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet and one of its most inventive choreographers, at times taking his inspiration from Soviet-era ballets once thought better forgotten and making them utterly new and delightful, as with The Bright Stream. Now he has given up the leadership of the Bolshoi, with its soul-devouring administrative demands, to concentrate on his choreography.
Marcelo Gomes, Veronika Part, and Paloma Herrera in Alexei Ratmansky's On the Dnieper
Photo: Gene Schiavone
On the Dnieper tells a tale that the Romantics among us will believe in, others not. Sergei (Marcelo Gomes in the first cast, as are the others I name) returns from World War I to his beloved native village, indicated by weathered wooden fences, and the poignant springtime sight of blooming cherry trees just beginning to drop their petals. Though welcomed by his fiancée, Natalia (Veronika Part), he's distracted by Olga (Paloma Herrera), the community's vivacious beauty who has already developed a distaste for the fellow to whom she's engaged (David Hallberg). Parental figures and the young people of the village surround them, witnesses and judges as the plot plays itself out--with much self-recrimination on Sergei's part, and a selfless renunciation in favor of Olga on Natalia's part--to an ecstatic happy ending amid a veritable storm of petals, in which love conquers all. Yes, the program note is needed, but Ratmansky comes closer than most dance storytellers to indicating situations and, especially, deep feeling directly through his choreography.
What I like best about this ballet is its mood. Without making a melodramatic fuss, it supports the primacy of feeling, the respect for social behavior (at its moral base and in its formal traditions), and the wrenching conflict between those and the pull of the unexpected, often inexplicable, desires of the heart. It evokes the world as imagined by Tudor and by Chekhov.
Herrera, I'd venture to say, has never danced more eloquently. Finally, no doubt largely because of Ratmansky's ballet, she's realized that bravura technique cannot, alone, make a ballerina. In On the Dnieper she's exploring the realm of fusing her extraordinary physical prowess to a range of emotion. I hope the revelation of this possibility will carry through to the rest of her repertory; it could make her glorious.
Gomes, as always, has a commanding presence and here he lives up to the way he looks. At the same time, he is very affecting in his confusion and regret when he realizes that, for his own happiness, he must betray a sensitive woman he once loved. He needs only a little more detail and nuance, the patina a role acquires with time in the hands of a resourceful interpreter.
Part is just right for the reticent sensitivity of the abandoned, self-sacrificing sweetheart. I was touched by the moment she "gives" Sergei to Olga and they bow to her formally, then rush off, elated, to their future and she falls to the ground, unwitnessed in her anguish. She's the one character that made me think of her future--never marrying, I fantasized, becoming a nun or a nurse to the incurable, anything that would allow her to give her life to succoring humanity and expunge self-interest from her soul. The fact that Part's role is about emotions rather than famously difficult steps relaxes her frequently visible mistrust of her technical abilities, freeing her as a creature of the stage.
Hallberg, unfortunately, has a role that doesn't show him to any particular advantage, though he may, like many a wise dancer, make something better of it as he performs it more.
It was fun to see the seniors associated with the company (teachers, coaches, regisseurs, and the like) in the parental roles and wonderful to see a corps de ballet convincing in its robust dancing and in its walkaround roles as well, as witnesses, abettors, and benevolent spies--roles that make a community cohere.
DÉSIR
For reasons I can't fathom, ABT's artistic director, Kevin McKenzie has returned to the work of the Canadian James Kudelka and Prokofiev's Cinderella score, after adding the choreographer's self-consciously quirky program-length version of the fairy tale to the repertory three years back, without much success.
Kudelka's 1991 Désir, given its ABT premiere on this season's Prokofiev program, is a plotless one-acter that uses the only four remarkable passages in the Cinderella score and two other numbers gleaned from the composer's Waltz Suite (reworked from his opera War and Peace). The dance is a pretty little thing, nothing more, admittedly useful to fill out a mixed-repertory program, but essentially insignificant.
Isabella Boylston and Cory Stearns in James Kudelka's Désir
Photo: Rosalie O'Conner
Two couples, one of them (Gillian Murphy and Brian Hoven) opening the piece, the second (Isabella Boylston and Cory Stearns) appearing midway through, demonstrate joyous, fulfilled love, the first pair with an allegro pulse, the second in an adagio mode.
Misty Copeland and Carlos Lopez seem equally content, but they introduce a small ensemble expressing the doubts and tensions that arise between the sexes. Clusters of closely bonded young men and similarly united young women reflect the emotional difficulties of moving beyond a single-gender group. I think. This is not the clearest ballet in the whole world.
The movement is often soft and curving, over a firm ballet base. Nothing you haven't seen before. The dance would befit from a wider, more inventive vocabulary.
There is no hint of a subplot behind the activities, several of which are incomprehensible. Why do the men repeatedly stretch out supine and stiff? Is this a premonition of death? What's the meaning of a repeated frozen arm position in which the women hold their full skirts bunched into a bundle in front of their bellies, like a wedding bouquet or its logical aftermath?
The best elements of the piece are the gorgeous costumes by Marjory Fielding (designed for the National Ballet of Canada production)--and the presence of Isabella Boylston in the first cast. Boylston has an uncanny calm that rivets the viewer's attention, even when she's tossed into the air and flipped backward by her partner. She has the face of a Flemish Madonna, a long, suavely proportioned body, and impeccable technique. In repose, she seems sculpted from marble; in motion, she's like that cool, noble stone magically endowed with fluidity. The fact that she has incredibly beautiful feet is underlined by the duet's finishing with her partner's extending his body along the floor to kiss one of them. The gesture is embarrassing, though, at odds with the formal tone of the duet, and entirely unnecessary. However, Boylston, still a corps de ballet dancer, deserves promotion to soloist rank on the performance of this role alone.
As for the costumes, the women's ankle-length dresses have a subtly composed palette of colors related to fuchsia and fire-truck red. They're set off by one in muted blue, another in intensely deep violet. The lavish skirts swirling in unison have a ravishing effect. The men wear casual t-shirts in shadowed tones that echo the women's gowns; they top workaday trousers of burnt sienna. The women are flowers; the men, the earth from which they spring.
OSIPOVA
One way to sell tickets to the ballet (or to sell anything else, for that matter) is to cause a sensation. In the States, the general public that comes to the ballet loves a sensation (for one thing, it justifies the cost of the tickets) and does its best to exaggerate the dimensions of one with wild cheers and applause during the performance, escalating into feverish standing ovations and bouquets from the spectators pitched onto the stage at the end.
Natalia Osipova in August Bournonville's La Sylphide
Photo: Marc Haegeman
During ABT's current season, the Bolshoi Ballet's Natalia Osipova--whose fleet, airborne technique took my breath away in 2005 in a solo in her company's Don Quixote--did a stint that I assumed to be a tryout for a larger guest association with ABT in the future, dancing the title role in two Romantic-era ballets, Giselle and La Sylphide.
Sensations, however, have only a tangential connection with artistry. Osipova's elevation (an issue of hip flexibility and leg power) and fleetness (foot articulation and power) are near miraculous. So much so that they have become phenomena--the feet working like hummingbirds' wings, for instance--not really the province of dancing anymore. Other parts of her body have been neglected: her face doesn't create the illusion of beauty that enhances a ballerina; her torso has no fluidity. She has also obviously been over-coached, a fact that destroys the childlike naturalness she had when I first laid eyes on her.
Giselle was the better of her two portrayals, thanks in part to the sympathetic partnering of David Hallberg. Still, with emotions coursing through her one after another at febrile speed, none of them lasted long enough to register and eventually add up to something coherent. And her continual grinning in Act I, as if this were an emblem of joyous, innocent love, should have been squelched at the first rehearsal. Her subsequent Mad Scene was reasonably good, if still immature.
In the second act, Osipova carried everything before her, seeming to fly and whirl at once when initiated into the ghostly tribe of wilis by a wonderfully malevolent Veronika Part. Still, the necessary change in movement texture between the live girl and the dead one who still retains her early passion for her lover, forgives him, and saves his life, was absent. I would guess she understands the difference intellectually, but can't yet make it happen physically. If, with time, experience, and sound professional advice, she still doesn't, her sensational effects are likely to deteriorate into mere circus tricks.
Osipova's La Sylphide was a disappointment. Her particular gifts do little to evoke the enchanting Bournonville style (which the Russians have never mastered and the Danes themselves are losing) in its phrasing, irrepressible ebullience, or charm. Her partner, Herman Cornejo, who seems to be able to adapt to any style he tries, was the hero of that performance.
ANANIASHILVILI
June 27 saw Nina Ananiashvili's farewell performance with American Ballet Theatre. She took on the celebrated dual role of Odette-Odile in Swan Lake, the very thought of which can make a ballerina two decades younger than she quake in her pointe shoes. (Ananiashvili is 46.) The performance was extraordinary; I've never seen anything like it. Throughout, she demonstrated the exquisite technique that she has honed to perfection over the decades, but here, in the "white acts," she added little miracles like executing the mime passages, as in her relating her woeful story to Prince Siegfried (Angelo Corella)--"my mother's tears formed this lake"--so fluidly it became the veritable cousin of dancing. Then, with a masterly containment of emotion so profound it was almost unbearable, though devoid of obvious acting, she made the dancing so refined it looked abstract. If classical dance can be transmuted in the equivalent of an Ozu film, this was it.
Nina Ananiashvili in Kevin McKenzie's Swan Lake, after Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov
Photo: Nancy Ellison
Instead of the cheap thrill of the full 32 fouettés (which, by the way, neither Margot Fonteyn nor Maya Plisetskaya ever mastered) she did a mere 24 as neatly as could be imagined and wisely quit while she was ahead. As if to make it up to the audience this slight diminishment of bravura, she executed a surprise carnival-style move in which Von Rothbart (Marcello Gomes at his sexiest) threw her high into the air to be caught in the deluded Siegfried's arms. The three repeated the feat on the curtain-calls, much to the delight of the madding crowd.
In the Black Swan act, Ananiashvili's rendition was tantalizing enough to contrast with her Odile, and some of her feats, though subtly executed (such as long balances in which she seemed to stretch up and out as on a breath) were remarkable. She made a quiet though compelling seductress, though, admittedly, her Odile doesn't seem as truly evil as her Odette seems good by nature's design.
The bows themselves, which seemed to run on hourglass time, rather than that of a stopwatch, constituted a ballet within themselves and were designed with unusual good taste. Even the single explosion of confetti, white and gleaming, looked like a falling star in a fairy tale instead of the familiar torn up paper drifting listlessly through a net. My favorite moments were the cast's applauding the ballerina, and she, them; Ananiashvili's personally presenting one white flower to every single corps de ballet swan; ABT's other ballerinas, in svelte black mufti, coming on to offer the heroine of the hour a long-stemmed blossom, followed by her male partners in the company, and, later, the artistic director himself, Kevin McKenzie, to whom Ananiashvili bowed low as she had to the Russian coach and to the former Kirov prima, Irina Kolpakova; the appearance of the ballerina's little copper-haired daughter, whose mom promptly enough shooed the child back into the wings after a bow or two; Ananiashvili's catching in one hand bouquets that the audience hurled at the stage, simply snatching them out of the air. You might say she has a gift for coordination.
Curtain call for Nina Ananiashvili's farewell performance with ABT.
Photo: Gene Schiavone
Ananiashvili's final season with ABT has included some of the most demanding roles in the nineteenth-century classical repertory in terms of dancing and acting: In addition to Swan Lake, she did Giselle, La Sylphide, Le Corsaire, and, from the twentieth century, Balanchine's sublime and eccentric Mozartiana. She flourished in all of them but the Bournonville and there she was simply at the mercy of the wrong-headed Erik Bruhn production staged for ABT a half-century back and what seems to be a standard Russian interpretation that makes the characters look crude. And then there's the inevitable awkwardness of the Bournonville style for dancers who haven't been trained in it from the start (ABT's Herman Cornejo and the American Lloyd Riggins are the only dancers I've seen overcome this challenge convincingly).
At the opposite end of the spectrum, a pair of Giselles I saw, differently tempered because danced with two different partners, were luminous. With Marcelo Gomes, Ananiashvili matched the power of his stage presence; with Jose Manuel Carreño, she echoed his more understated, yet emotion-filled approach, effortlessly launching shape after beautiful shape into the air, then letting them dissolve into the flow of the dancing.
Moving through the trajectory of Giselle's story, Ananiashvili gives us both the shyness and blitheness of an innocent girl utterly in love; the suddenly distorted landscape of a woman literally broken-hearted by that lover's betrayal; then, beyond the grave, a mature sorrow for his plight, his anguish as well as an enduring devotion that saves his life. As the story unfolds, we come to know a remarkable person who remains nakedly true to herself from beginning to end, one of those rare human beings wrapped in a cloak of tenderness.
Ananiashvili's Mad Scene--the result, no doubt, of years of thought, experiment, and minor but telling adjustments--is an example of how the wholeness of her performances is now invariably extraordinary, every detail of movement and feeling perfectly accounted for, anything extraneous firmly excised.
In both Giselles, she gave us immaculate dancing that was nevertheless softened and full of grace. Yes, her grands jetés cleave the air, but they seem as downy as rose petals. In her high-speed whirling initiation into the tribe of wilis, her legs swathed in the layers of her tulle skirt, her foot barely grazes the floor as she turns herself into a gossamer cloud caught in whirlpool of wind. Her grace has a spiritual dimension, too, that makes her Giselle real, loveable, and tragic, and it is this quality--of the soul perpetually infusing the body--that make our hearts hers.
Ananiashvili's many fans may wonder why this much beloved ballerina would withdraw from the big time when her technique was still up to the challenges of such works and her artistic powers were at their height. Reasons for such major decisions depend greatly on instinct--what your heart or gut is telling you. But Ananiashvili is practical enough to placate her audience (and, perhaps, herself) with a handful of practical arguments in favor of bowing out: to support her husband, Grigol Vashadze, Georgia's Foreign Minister, who is pursuing a burgeoning political career, just as he has helped her in the last two decades of her career; to spend more time with their young daughter, Helene; to further the development of the State Ballet of Georgia, based in her home town of Tbilisi, which she was specifically brought in to head in 2004; and because she knew--and admitted to herself, as so many dancers are unable to--that the body's abilities inevitably fade with age. Any one of these reasons would be persuasive.
There's no denying that a significant part of Ananiashvili's appeal is her sheer physical loveliness. Her face, with its creamy skin, dark hair, and heavily browed, soulful dark eyes, has the cast of a Spanish Madonna. Underneath that look is an instinctive empathy for the characters on stage around her. Her long, exquisitely proportioned body seems destined for classical dancing. Her promise of beauty and the perfect poise of her body--a natural harmony--is evident even in snapshots of her as a child. Complementing these attributes is a melancholy frequently underlying even her most vivacious roles, where her smile is infectious, even teasingly flirtatious, yet her eyes suggest that she knows that everything in life is evanescent.
From her first engagement with an American company (a guest stint with the
new york City Ballet in 1988), we've seen how smart she is, how open to ideas about dancing that are radically different from the Russian ones in which she was scrupulously bred. She was accompanied in the venture by her celebrated Bolshoi colleague Andris Liepa, who continued to do everything in the Russian way familiar to him, while Ananiashvili tried to absorb Balanchine's way.
In the course of her sixteen years at ABT, we've watched the harmony and flow of her dancing in the lyrical vein become more and more beautiful and natural, like the motion of a nymph--a naiad perhaps. The steely aspect of her personality has served her in good stead--both in her dancing, when virtuoso passages require it, and offstage in shaping her career and leading the State Ballet of Georgia, essentially a pleasant regional company that the government is eager to upgrade. She is also blessed with a sense of humor, which Alexei Ratmansky caught in Waltz Masquerade, the pièce d'occasion he created for her to perform at ABT'S opening night gala. It might have been called "The Diva and Her Devotees."
Diane Solway, interviewing Ananiashvili in W Magazine, asked the ballerina what she'd be doing after her farewell performance with ABT. The answer: "Crying." Her tears were not the only ones shed on the occasion.
© 2009 Tobi Tobias
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