Film critic David Thomson is already saying that awards for short films, documentary and all, should be removed from the main night to make the event crisper.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which gives the most publicized and recognized awards for short films does not seem to distinguish between short films made in the U. S. and those made in “foreign” countries.
There seems to be more recognition for short films in Europe and Asia than in the U.S.
BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts opens its short films awards contest only to shorts made in the U. K. We assume there are enough shorts made there and plenty to interest to sustain such a competition.
There isn’t yet a single extensive treatment of what a short film is; how the form of short film persists and how it is set to flourish in the age of digital film making and distribution.
We want to pursue over the next few months these and related questions on short films. Students at Arcadia University will join us in their semester-long study of the topic.
We will pursue conversation started by our friend and colleague,K. Hariharan of L. V. Prasad Film and TV Academy in Chennai.
For now, here is a piece in The Guardian (beginning with a quote): why Hollywood is making films in India? And, does this make for a “transnational” film?”
Let us return to this issue.
Article by Xan Brooks from the film pages of The Guardian.
This is an explanation from Gitesh Pandya (Box Office Guru) on how marketing strategy for Slumdog Millionaire:
Slumdog Millionaire was initially released in only six major cities on November 12 and American and desi moviegoers alike were targeted. I invited the South Asian media to come and see the film early as we screened the film over a month before its release date so journalists could do stories on it in order to raise awareness. The film was selling out at all theaters and each week more theaters were added in more cities across the country. The momentum kept building and so before Christmas Fox Searchlight expanded the film to over 600 theaters in big and small cities alike. It continued to increase its weekend gross every week as people have been recommending it to others making it a true crossover success.
This has been an increasingly effective marketing strategy. Here is an account of recent developments from The New York Times:
David Thomson profiles Danny Boyle in The Guardian this week. Like Frank Rich in The New York Times (and many others to echo elsewhere), Thomson calls it the film for the times of recession, a story of rags to riches. That is; it is a “feel good” movie that is likely to lift us up in bad times. If there is a message here, it is about how povery is “written” on the bodies of the poor. The lucky coincidence of Slumdog’s success is more about how the game shows attempt to bring out the pathologies of the masses rather than present a feel good story for the Oscars season. If you see only the narrative and not its movement, its steady stealing of emotions with principles of pleasure, you miss everythiing. More on Slumdog later.
Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven has to be one of the best films of 2008. A complex, interweaving narrative of six characters in Germany and Turkey, it has a deft structure and some of the most memorable performances. The film is about “going home” in a world where everyone seems to be displaced, either emotionally, physically or both. Turkish immigrants in Germany (Hambourg) are firmly anchored in both worlds, including Akin himself, born of parents with German and Mexican pedigree in Germany. The narrative shifts from Hamburg to Turkey only to find that the two worlds are so incomplete and so innately connected. Incomplete because the assurance of German identity gives away quicky to larger (European! Cosmopolitan?) perspectives and the search for Turkish identity collapses into questions about revolution, freedom and the possiblity of “speaking to each other” in a mixed world.
Akin shows, perhaps unbeknownst to himself (the accompanying docu about “making the film” strips away the authorial depth), that this is how the world is shaped now. There is no returning home. It is only a question of returning to our lost ideals or finding new ones. This is encapsulated best by the character of Susanne Staub played by the ever so elegant Hanna Schygulla. As the mother of Lotte, a generous, warm hearted idealist German whose friendship with Nejat propels the narrative into multiple levels of questinos about the new generations in these countries, Hanna Schygulla’s Susanne at once shows the hard nosed tradition of the “older” (core?) Europe but at the same time holds the key to understanding the emerging worlds. She is hesitant first at her daughter’s relationship but then gives in only to realize what commensurability of souls can merge the worlds.
This film is about the new “cosmopolitanism” in world cinema. It is now possible to be anchored in your own soil, your own nationhood, either blessed by the nation-state or by your own loyalties but at the same time belong to that larger world that holds hope for a universal, broader language of humanity.
When it comes to “foreign” cinema, we are never too shocked at how The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences or for that matter, the movie going public in general can ignore what they cannot grasp. There is the irony. The world that should be more worldly believes in parochial values. And those who are locked in more real conflicts than we are, are searching for more meaningful solutions.
