Birdman, directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu, winner of four Academy Awards including Best Picture of 2014.
(A review: originally published Thursday, Feb 26, 2015 on CineCero film blog, San Juan, PR)

Epigraph: (What We Talk About When We Talk About Art)
by Jan Galligan & Lillian Mulero, Santa Olaya, PR

 Lillian and I talk about art most of the time. I don't mean that this is the only subject of conversation, just that art inhabits our life; we look at everything from the point of view of the artist. This is probably true for doctors, lawyers, maybe accountants, certainly true for scientists, musicians, filmmakers, writers, poets, and theater people – the world is a stage, after all.

Alejandro G. Inarritu's latest film, Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), takes this literally, although the world here is confined to mid-town Manhattan and all the air above it. For the most part, it is further confined to the backstage and basement dressing rooms of the St. James Theater located on 44^th at Broadway, in the Theater District near Times Square. Some of the action is restricted to the theater's stage, while the rest takes place inside the main character's head. Riggin Thompson, former Hollywood star of the blockbuster action-film series Birdman, has written a play based on What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (original title: Beginners), Raymond Carver's iconoclastic, breakout, short story. Carver had the reputation for writing very terse, short short stories. His writing has been labeled minimalist, and “dirty-realist,” although he rejected both characterizations. Recent literary scholarship has revealed that the version of his story published in an award-winning collection of the same name, had been pared down by Carver's editor, Gordon Lish, so that it represented less than half of the original manuscript. The original story, Beginners, has recently been published in its entirety, through the efforts of Carver's widow.

All seventeen of the stories in that collection were heavily edited by Lish, and most were retitled. On the eve of publication, Carver had a change of heart, a crisis of confidence, and wrote a seven page impassioned letter to Lish begging him to delay publication, or not publish at all, despite having signed a contract with Knopf based on Lish's version of Carver's stories. 

Carter wrote: Dearest Gordon, I've got to pull out of this one. Please hear me... I look at “What We Talk About...” (Beginners) and I see what you've done, what you've pulled out of it, and I'm awed and astonished, startled even, with your insights. Please help me with this, Gordon. I feel as if this is the most important decision I've ever been faced with, no shit... Please, Gordon, for God's sake help me in this and try to understand. Listen. I'll say it again, if I have any standing for reputation or credibility in the world, I owe it to you. I owe you this more-or-less pretty interesting life I have. But if I go ahead with this as it is, it will not be good for me...

Two days later Carver relented, the stories were published as Lish had edited them, the book garnered rave reviews, cemented Carver's reputation as a minimalist, and sold thousands of copies. Two years, and one more collection of stories later, also edited by Lish, but this time lightly, relations between Carver and Lish were strained to the breaking point. Lish wrote to Carter: … we've agreed that I will try to keep my editing of the stories as slight as I deem possible, that you do not want me to do the extensive work I did on the first two collections. So be it Ray. Two months later Carver wrote to Lish: What's the matter, don't you love me anymore? I never hear from you. Have you forgotten me already?

Writing about Birdman, critics have made much of the fact that Michael Keaton, former star of the blockbuster Batman series, plays Riggin Thompson, former star of the blockbuster Birdman series, who plays Nick, narrator of Carver's story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, who is the main character in Thompson's play of the same name. They also point to the fact that Edward Norton played Bruce Banner in the Incredible Hulk, after playing the lead as the Narrator in David Fincher's breakout film Fight Club. In Birdman, Norton plays famous Broadway method actor, Mike Shiner.

On the eve of opening night, during the final preview performances, Thompson hires Shiner to replace an actor Thompson deposes, because he was not up to the part. Shiner is more than adequate. He has inhabited the play even before arriving for his tryout, primarily because he had been rehearsing the play for months with Lesley, his live-in girl-friend. He lives with her, or as she says in a puzzling aside, “we share a vagina.” Funny, because he is also purported to be impotent, at least off stage. On stage he is a demonic actor, impetuous, impervious, inspired and sexually charged. In his first run through with Thompson, Shiner knows all of his character, Mel, a 45-year old cardiologist's lines and Thompson's Nick character's, as well. Within minutes, Shiner has -- through a series of readings, coaching Thompson on how to deliver his lines, making continual suggestions that Thompson pare down his dialog, cutting it to the bone -- rewritten the action so that Thompson's Nick has Shiner's Mel completely mesmerized. It's at this moment it becomes clear that the film Birdman, is not about a theatrical, and by extension cinematic, adaptation of Carver's story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, but is instead about the tortured relationship between author Raymond Carver and his editor Gordon Lish.

This explains the subsequent conflicts between Thompson, and Shiner who is constantly working to remake the play, find its essence, hone its presentation, and control the public's perception, and ultimate reception of the play. Shiner dramatically cuts short his first preview performance by stepping out of character, breaking down the wall, and talking directly to the audience, to tell them what shit the play is at that point. This nearly leads to fisticuffs between Shiner and Thompson. Next, Shiner manages to get a cover story in the Arts section of the New York Times, an interview with him and a preview of his participation in Thompson's production. He practically takes ownership of the play, and does take ownership of Thompson's origin story of having been inspired by Raymond Carver to become an actor. Thompson is so incensed, that he does end up in a fist-fight with Shiner, nearly giving him a shiner, and finally, they are wrestling on the ground, in a metaphoric sexual embrace. Thompson is embarrassed. Shiner remains impervious, as Thompson beats him over the head with the wadded up newspaper article.

By this point, Thompson has lost face and most of his self respect. The only solution seems to be a dramatic gesture. On opening night, in the emotionally wrought closing scene, Thompson enacts the suicide shot to the head using a real gun, but he misses and shoots off his nose. The curtain falls.

The play is a critical success. Despite his Hollywood action-hero baggage, Thompson is hailed as a new voice in American theater, bringing fresh blood to the stage and, displaying the unexpected virtue of ignorance, inventing a new super-realistic form of dramatic presentation. He has literally “cut off his nose to spite his face,” and with that, he flies out the window.  

Looking at Inarritu and his co-writers' script suggests that despite a great deal of the dialog, especially in scenes of the play, coming directly from Carver's short story, the central conflict, and some of the off-stage dialog comes from Carver's tortured letter to Lish, trying to delay or halt the publication of his book of short stories. There seem to be three central themes to Inarritu's Birdman.

One: getting caught with your pants down, everyone's worst nightmare -- running around in public in just your underwear. For Thompson this is a major humiliation. For Shiner, it's just another day at the office. 

Two: floating – above the ground, or high in the sky. Everyone's favorite dream, and the essence of self esteem and well being. Here that domain belongs to Thompson alone, and it may be all in his head. This was true for Carver as well. In a letter to Lish, at one of his high points, six months before publication of his story collection, Carver writes: I'm happy, and I'm sober. It's aces right now, Gordon. I know better than anyone a fellow is never out of the woods, but right now it's aces, and I'm enjoying it.

Actor Michael Keaton as Riggin Thompson, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, director Alejandro G. Inarritu, and co-writer Nicolás Giacobone, with Birdman 3 poster.

Three: mentioned before, Thompson's act of self-mutilation, self-retaliation. From the start of the film this is hinted at, foretold, in the masks which cover the Birdman movie character's face, the mask of The Phantom of the Opera, still playing across the street from the St. James Theater, at the Majestic Theater on Broadway, and the hospital bandages of an old man in a story Thompson's cardiologist Nick character tells during the play, and then Thompson's own bandages when he wakes up in the hospital after his gun “accident” and a rhinectomy and nose-replacement surgery. His face is not the same and his public image will never be the same. People will no longer recognize him for who he was, let alone who he has become. 

Exactly the fate that Carver feared so deeply when he wrote to Lish, wishing there was some way to rise above it all: As I say, I'm confused, tired, paranoid, and afraid, yes, of the consequences... So help me, please, yet again. Don't, please, make this too hard for me, for I'm just likely to start coming unraveled... God almighty, Gordon... Please do the necessary things... Please try to forgive me, this breach. Ray.

Epitaph: “A Thing Is Just a Thing, Not What People Say About That Thing.” [card, taped to the mirror in Riggin Thompson's dressing room]

(re-published here: Wednesday, June 7, 2023)

Why I go to the movies with Lillian: HEAVEN AND HELL, ON EARTH
by Jan Galligan & Lillian Mulero

Driving into San Juan's Miramar neighborhood, we pass by the Fine Arts Cinema and the paid parking lot. We're early for the 2 PM showing of Styx, the first film on the list for the 30th annual edition of the San Juan International Film Festival. We drive around the corner and head up the hill, looking for street side parking. "Go slow," says Lillian, "we always find a spot along here." She's right, there's one just ahead. As I pull the Jeep over, a little car zips past, cutting us off. The Suburu driver leans out his window as he backs up. "That's my spot!" he yells. We drive on. Two, three, four blocks up the hill, we make a left turn onto a side street and see an opening, but the curb is painted yellow and it's at an  intersection. "We probably shouldn't park here, we could get towed," I tell Lillian. "Nobody gets towed," she says, as another car backs into the spot we just passed. Finally, two blocks further there's another opening. I quickly back the Jeep into place, and we walk down the hill to the movie theater.

When attending a film festival, Lillian and I make careful plans. We look through the list of films to be shown, we read the short synopses, we make our choices and write out a schedule. As a rule we don't watch film trailers or read reviews. We prefer the element of surprise when watching a new film. We save the research for after we've seen the movie and can compare our reactions and interpretations with others we find online. 

Lillian has one strict rule: we must be on time and cannot miss the opening moments. I try to abide, and I make certain that she is there when the credits roll, but sometimes I myself get waylaid heading into the screening. I stop for a last minute coffee, or check information on other events in the lobby. I often miss the first few minutes. 

That happened with Styx, a German film directed by Wolfgang Fisher who was nominated for the Audience Award in 2018 at the American Film Institute Festival. Lillian was in her seat, I was getting a coffee. I arrived five minutes into the movies. "You missed the opening again," Lillian whispers. "The protagonist, who seems to be a doctor, stopped in the middle of a city to help people injured in an automobile accident," she tells me. "All the while she was watched by a group of monkeys perched on the ledge of a nearby building, as we watched her from the monkeys' vantage point. There's something strange about those monkeys, but I don't know what it means." 

Right now, the doctor character is carefully loading a large quantity of supplies into a twenty meter sailing yacht. Clearly she's going on a long ocean voyage, apparently alone. We watch as she plots her course, starting in Gibraltar and aiming for Darwin's famous Ascension island off the coast of Africa, 2500 miles south over the open ocean. As she sets sail, we are right there with her, looking over her shoulder or staring into her eyes as she pilots the sailboat in relatively calm waters, a good wind at her back. She's more than capable, she's totally in control, confident with a commanding presence. 

What's immediately impressive about this film is the camera work. Steady and rock solid, despite the shifting environment and rocking of the sailboat. Clearly they've employed a Steadicam for this project. Invented and introduced to the cinema in the 1970s, the Steadicam apparatus, worn by the cinematographer, keeps the camera in an absolutely still position even as the cameraman moves around or up and down. Here, we see the horizon evenly dividing the screen across the middle, and as the boat shifts with the wind and waves, the horizon line does not move. This unwavering horizon provides a touchstone and portent for the rest of the story -- the future lies at or beyond that horizon.

Gustave Dore, Styx, illustration for Milton's Paradise Lost, 1886

The film remains an immersive and compelling story to the very end, which we will not spoil for you by recounting it here. Afterwards, we begin our research. What was it about those monkeys, which I missed at the beginning? It turns out they are the Barbary Macaques, well known semi-wild monkeys that dominate the streets of Gibraltar, where the story begins. The monkeys may be a harbinger for the doctor's encounter that comprises the final act of the film. Refugees from Africa, congregating in groups of 20 to 50, the macaques have adapted to their new environment, living on the edge, while often venturing right into the center of the city. Clearly they represent wild, untamed nature versus the civilization of the city.

Interviewed at the Cannes Film Festival, director Fisher says his film "represents existentialism in every way, which raises three questions: Who are we? Who do we want to be? and Who do we have to be in the world we are living in, right now?" The film title Styx references the deity of Greek mythology in that realm between earth and hell where souls of the newly dead are transported, and where the wrathful and sinful are drowned for eternity.

Further research informs us that Fisher deliberately chose, against all advice to the contrary, to film the entire story aboard the sailboat on the open sea. Filmed over a period of forty days, each day the crew and main actress Susanne Wolff sailed from their port in Malta until they were far enough out to sea that no land was visible on the horizon. By the second week of filming, Wolff who had no prior experience piloting a sailboat, had become an expert sailor.

Styx had a working budget of 3 million dollars, modest compared to a film like Almodovar's Pain and Glory with a production budget of  $20 million and earnings of $25 million. In comparison, Styx has so far earned less than $100,000 world-wide, but with festival successes and good marketing it should be positioned to earn back the investment, and more.

The second film on our list for this session was Yomeddine a first time effort by 34 year old Egyptian director Abu Bakr Shawky who got a huge boost when his film was selected for the Cannes Film Festival, after winning the Audience Award at the 2018 Wisconsin Film Festival presented at the university in Madison. Yomeddine translates from the Egyptian as Judgment Day. Coptics hold the Last Judgment to be one of the central tenets of their faith, the day when all people, alive and dead, are judged – not physically but by their attitudes and deeds and are rewarded with Heaven or cast into Hell.

Stefan Lochner, Last Judgment, 1435 

Yomeddine tells the story of a middle-aged man, cured of childhood leprosy, living a destitute life in the same leper colony where his parents abandoned him as a child. He makes his way by scavenging a trash mountain that looks like a hurricane's aftermath. Events lead him to decide to search out his family and this quest takes him hundreds of miles by donkey cart, and after the donkey dies, by railway boxcar and finally on foot. When it appears he can go no further, exhausted and slumped against the wall on a busy street corner, he is accosted by a man who charges up to him, propelled only by his arms as he has no legs, screaming at him, "That is MY spot!", demanding he leave immediately. Ultimately, this paraplegic pities the protagonist, saves his life and teaches him a lesson in humility. At one moment, when asked by another outcast how he is doing, the paraplegic responds, "Well, my legs are tired from standing on them all day." 

Yomeddine is characterized by what Lillian and I call the cinema of intimacy, which we define as films that rely on extreme close ups to tell the story. It's fundamentally a technical term, based on the development of light weight, inexpensive, high quality video cameras which have been available for the past ten years. We started thinking about this after seeing Los Tres Mundos de Mark directed by Flora Pérez Garay at the Festival here in 2016. For us the use of extreme close up facilitated by these cameras creates a relationship between the actor and audience that is too intimate, too intense. 

Intimacy can measured. Normally people interact at arm's length, 30 inches. When you move closer, to a forearm's distance of 15 inches, you begin to invade someone's personal space and that only really works if  you have an intimate relationship with the person. If you move to hand's length, 7 inches, then you are really up close and personal. A bit of geometry is useful. Movie theater screens are about 20 feet tall. If you sit in the front row of the theatre as Lillian and I like to do when we can find an open spot, the image overwhelms, and you are immersed in both image and story. When the director uses a close up, you enter the personal space of that character. Until the advent of these cameras, arm's length was as close as equipment would allow. Now cinematographers can move in to hand's length if they prefer, in which case you are inches away from the character's face, nose, or ear. That's intimate. And those kinds of viewpoints are increasingly popular in films made with these cameras. It's so close and so intimate that it becomes uncomfortable to sit in the first few rows. Imagine a 20 foot high nose. You could walk right into the nostril. 

Another aspect of the low cost equipment algorithm are facilities for digital film editing, which tend to be desktop or laptop computers along with the primary outlet for presenting the film which tends to be online. During production and in distribution the film is seen on computer screens, and often iPhone screens, which means all of that intimacy is substantially reduced to a manageable size. On an iPhone, you can't get too intimate. Our feeling is that these days, low budget directors do not factor in the big screen when thinking about their film's final format.

In the case of Yomeddine a majority of the scenes are filmed in extreme close up. After the first ten minutes, we had to change seats and move further away, it was just too uncomfortable being that intimate with this character and his situation. As well, it was difficult to read the subtitles spread across the screen. In general we've given up our favorite spot at the front of the theatre in favor of seats half way back from the screen. That tends to resolve the intimacy issue for us. 

As well as using low cost, high quality equipment, Shawky made Yomeddine on a very small budget, characterized by a Kickstarter campaign which raised $20,000 to complete the film. That suggests a budget of under $100,000 for the entire project. To date the film has reportedly earned about $12,000. However it's early and momentum is just starting to build. At the moment there are no authorized online outlets for his movie, but if Shawky is able to make a deal with Amazon, as has been done by Wolfgang Fisher for Styx, then Yomeddine could be a financial, as well as artistic success. 

Which brings us to our conclusion: for us filmmakers are like artists. In general they are driven not by the need to make money but instead the goal is to tell a good story, while challenging the status quo and highlighting the human condition. The result is art, whether in an art gallery or on the silver screen.

Click link below read full story in Spanish ...

https://www.claridadpuertorico.com/why-i-go-to-the-movies-with-lillian-el-cielo-y-el-infierno-en-este-mundo/

Full story in English to follow shortly

Lillian Mulero & Jan Galligan
your correspondents, in Santa Olaya, PR

Late yesterday afternoon (Tues) we set out from Santa Olaya for a day of film viewing. First on our list was a 5:45pm showing of Quentin Tarantino's latest, Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood. Screening now at the old-school movie house CINE METRO in Santurce the film is presented on their 40 x 100 foot screen in an old-fashioned large auditorium with cushioned reclining seats.

This scene from early in Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood shows actor Rick (Leonardo DiCaprio), Rick's stunt double Cliff (Brad Pitt) and film producer Marvin (Al Pacino) taking a meeting at the old Hollywood restaurant Musso & Frank. (photo: Andrew Cooper/Columbia Pictures)

Our one word review of Tarentino's Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood (which clocks in at 2 hours and 40 minutes) : FLAWLESS.

The second film our our self-styled double bill was showing further down avenue Ponce de Leon at the Fine Arts Miramar cinema as part of the Festival de Cine Internacional de San Juan. Scheduled at 9:15pm, Long Day's Journey into Night by Chinese director Gan Bi, is not based on the Eugene ONeill's play, but as the Chinese title (Di qui zui hou de ye wan / translation: Last Evenings on Earth) suggests, it is based on the novel of the same name by Roberto Bolaño. 

We were attracted to this film by one line in the written preview blurb: "notable for the final 59 minutes of its 2 hour and 17 minutes running time, which consists of one unbroken long take shot in 3D". Unfortunately we were not provided with 3D glasses for this viewing, although they would not have helped us as we both lack natural 3D vision. 

In a word, critics have called this film: MESMERIZING.

Our take on this Long Day's Journey into Night : endlessly beautiful.

Total viewing time for the day (not including snack break): 4 hours 57 minutes. By the time we got back to Santa Olaya it was 1:23 am on Wednesday.

Lillian Mulero & Jan Galligan
Santa Olaya, PR

photo by: German Roque

Report #2

CLICK TO VIEW

Report from the field (#1)

With our friend Nerieda, who first introduced us to this Festival in 2010.

Screenshot: ROJO, directed by Benjamin Naishtat, Argentina 2018, drama, 109 minutes

So, you'll have to click to view trailer ...

by Jan Galligan & Lillian Mulero
Santa Olaya, PR

Lillian and I watch movies from the perspective of artists. She's a multi-faceted constructivist and I'm a conceptual photographer. We agree that a good story, well told, is fundamental to a successful film. For Lillian, the story must be constructed the way you would build a well-crafted sculpture. For me, the pictures are critical. If the film's structure has not received the necessary attention, the movie becomes disjointed: the story difficult to discern, the plot hard to follow.

Betty Kaplan was born in New York City and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. She made her directorial debut in 1981 with an independent short film, Neurosis on Wheels, about traffic problems in the capital city. That film was quickly followed by an epic, made for Venezuelan television mini-series about the life of Simon Bolivar. In 1994 she co-wrote and directed Of Love and Shadows, based on Isabel Allende's novel, starring Jennifer Connelly and Antonio Banderas in his first English language role. In 1997 she wrote and directed Doña Bárbara, based on the Venezuelan novel by Rómulo Gallegos, and in 2004 won the Peasbody Award for Almost a Woman, the film version of Esmeralda Santiago's autobiography of life in Puerto Rico and New York City.

Recently Kaplan directed the Emmy award-winning One Hot Summer, a story set in the Cuban community of Miami, but filmed entirely in Puerto Rico. Three years ago Kaplan moved to San Juan from Hollywood with her partner, film producer Peter Rawley. Finding “an art, music and literary community bursting with creativity,” they quickly acquired the rights to Eduardo Lalo's novel Simone, which had been awarded the Rómulo Gallegos prize for international literature.

This year Kaplan was selected as juror for the Competencia Caribena of the 2016 San Juan International Film Festival. Twelve films, one each from Columbia, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, and four from Puerto Rico competed for this annual award. The other members of the jury were the film critics Manuel Martinez Maldonado and Pedro Zervigón. Together, they had seven days in which to see the films in competition, while trying to view some of the other 33 films presented in the Muestra del Cine Mundial, a daunting task for even the most ardent cinephile. “One of the high points of film festivals,” explains Kaplan, “is there are always films you cannot see. It's exciting, if sometimes frustrating, but that makes you choose films and plan your days carefully, while still leaving room for a surprise or two.” This festival was no exception, presenting 48 films from 27 countries in six days, making it impossible to see them all. “The overall quality was consistently high,” Kaplan says, “and I found a couple of movies that captivated me with their bold originality and storytelling.”

Betty Kaplan and Manolo Cruz, winner of the Dr. Ricardo E. Alegría Prize in the Competencia Caribeña of the 2016 San Juan International Film Festival

Kaplan has considerable experience judging films, having served on juries for festivals in Los Angeles, Huelva, Malaga, Cancun, and recently here in San Juan for the European film festival of the Alianza Francesa. She says that festivals can serve as “launchpads” for new films and are excellent situations in which directors can test audience reaction. She says that festival juries have a deep respect for filmmakers, especially for having survived the ordeals and obstacles in getting a film completed. The standard method for judging films in competition is to create a tally-sheet and award each film points on a series of standards: direction, script, acting, cinematography, story-telling and originality. Kaplan asks these questions when watching and rating films: Is the story well told? Does the story grab and hold your attention? Do you have empathy with the characters and their story?

For Kaplan, “Point of view is everything. The point of view of the director, the point of view of the cinematographer, and the point of view of the script. We want to know who tells the story and who is the center of attention. Each film has a point of view and if not presented clearly, the film suffers from a serious flaw. The viewpoint can be explicit or implicit. But, if the public is uneasy, giving close attention to what is happening and they cannot empathize with a character, then the story and the film is not working. A common mistake is to try to describe the story from multiple viewpoints. We might start following the actions of one character and suddenly we are asked to follow another character. When the point of view changes suddenly, the public is unsettled. Not that I'm against disorder. But, it should be deliberate, carefully crafted and incorporated into the structure, while functioning as an essential element of the story.”

Asked what advice she would offer someone starting out in filmmaking, Kaplan says the first thing to do is to “practice the pitch. Develop the ability to tell your story to as many people as will listen, even before you begin writing the script. You should have a very clear idea of the story before you commit to paper or film. The script is everything. You cannot fix problems in the script during production or post-production. Future directors should study acting in order to know the process from the inside-out. Acting on the stage is a good exercise that all directors should try.”

Her final suggestion to new directors regards the completion of the movie. “Before considering your film finished, use your rough-cut and do a test screening. Show the film to an audience and observe their reactions. Do not be afraid of negative criticism. Learn from your mistakes and learn to heed the audience. They have a point of view that is different from yours and it's important to listen and learn whether you have reached the audience, or not.”

Kaplan and Rawley look forward to beginning production on their adaptation of Simone, set in Santurce and Rio Piedras, the heart of the city's vibrant art community – literary, musical, and intensely visual. The sights and sounds of the city will form the backdrop for their story of one writer's search as he walks the streets of San Juan, looking for a mysterious artist who secretly stalks him with pictures and anonymous messages. With some luck maybe we will witness the premiere of their movie at the next San Juan International Film Festival.

Note: The winning film for the 2016 Competencia Caribena, was La Cienaga: Between  sea and land. Filmed in Columbia, it is Manolo Cruz's first effort at full-length filmmaking. Cruz plays the lead role of Alberto, a 28-year old afflicted with debilitating muscular dystrophy which keeps him locked to his bed when all he wants is to swim in the sea. Besides winning the 2016 Dr. Ricardo E. Alegría Award, the film won awards for acting and directing this year at the Sundance Film Festival.

WHY I GO TO THE MOVIES, WITH LILLIAN
by Jan Galligan & Lillian Mulero, Santa Olaya, PR
published Feb 26, 2015 : cinecero.blogspot.com

Birdman, directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu, winner of four Academy Awards including Best Picture of 2014.

 Lillian and I talk about art most of the time. I don't mean that this is the only subject of conversation, just that art inhabits our life; we look at everything from the point of view of the artist. This is probably true for doctors, lawyers, maybe accountants, certainly true for scientists, musicians, filmmakers, writers, poets, and theater people – the world is a stage, after all.

EMMA STONE

Alejandro G. Inarritu's latest film, Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), takes this literally, although the world here is confined to mid-town Manhattan and all the air above it. For the most part, it is further confined to the backstage and basement dressing rooms of the St. James Theater located on 44^th at Broadway, in the Theater District near Times Square. Some of the action is restricted to the theater's stage, while the rest takes place inside the main character's head. Riggin Thompson, former Hollywood star of the blockbuster action-film seriesBirdman, has written a play based on What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (original title: Beginners), Raymond Carver's iconoclastic, breakout, short story. Carver had the reputation for writing very terse, short short stories. His writing has been labeled minimalist, and “dirty-realist,” although he rejected both characterizations. Recent literary scholarship has revealed that the version of his story published in an award-winning collection of the same name, had been pared down by Carver's editor, Gordon Lish, so that it represented less than half of the original manuscript. The original story, Beginners, has recently been published in its entirety, through the efforts of Carver's widow.

All seventeen of the stories in that collection were heavily edited by Lish, and most were retitled. On the eve of publication, Carver had a change of heart, a crisis of confidence, and wrote a seven page impassioned letter to Lish begging him to delay publication, or not publish at all, despite having signed a contract with Knopf based on Lish's version of Carver's stories. Carter wrote: Dearest Gordon, I've got to pull out of this one. Please hear me... I look at “What We Talk About...” (Beginners) and I see what you've done, what you've pulled out of it, and I'm awed and astonished, startled even, with your insights. Please help me with this, Gordon. I feel as if this is the most important decision I've ever been faced with, no shit... Please, Gordon, for God's sake help me in this and try to understand. Listen. I'll say it again, if I have any standing for reputation or credibility in the world, I owe it to you. I owe you this more-or-less pretty interesting life I have. But if I go ahead with this as it is, it will not be good for me...

Two days later Carver relented, the stories were published as Lish had edited them, the book garnered rave reviews, cemented Carver's reputation as a minimalist, and sold thousands of copies. Two years, and one more collection of stories later, also edited by Lish, but this time lightly, relations between Carver and Lish were strained to the breaking point. Lish wrote to Carter: … we've agreed that I will try to keep my editing of the stories as slight as I deem possible, that you do not want me to do the extensive work I did on the first two collections. So be it Ray. Two months later Carver wrote to Lish: What's the matter, don't you love me anymore? I never hear from you. Have you forgotten me already?

Writing about Birdman, critics have made much of the fact that Michael Keaton, former star of the blockbuster Batman series, plays Riggin Thompson, former star of the blockbuster Birdman series, who plays Nick, narrator of Carver's story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, who is the main character in Thompson's play of the same name. They also point to the fact that Edward Norton played Bruce Banner in the Incredible Hulk, after playing the lead as the Narrator in David Fincher's breakout film Fight Club. In Birdman, Norton plays famous Broadway method actor, Mike Shiner.

On the eve of opening night, during the final preview performances, Thompson hires Shiner to replace an actor Thompson deposes, because he was not up to the part. Shiner is more than adequate. He has inhabited the play even before arriving for his tryout, primarily because he had been rehearsing the play for months with Lesley, his live-in girl-friend. He lives with her, or as she says in a puzzling aside, “we share a vagina.” Funny, because he is also purported to be impotent, at least off stage. On stage he is a demonic actor, impetuous, impervious, inspired and sexually charged. In his first run through with Thompson, Shiner knows all of his character, Mel, a 45-year old cardiologist's lines and Thompson's Nick character's, as well. Within minutes, Shiner has -- through a series of readings, coaching Thompson on how to deliver his lines, making continual suggestions that Thompson pare down his dialog, cutting it to the bone -- rewritten the action so that Thompson's Nick has Shiner's Mel completely mesmerized. It's at this moment it becomes clear that the filmBirdman, is not about a theatrical, and by extension cinematic, adaptation of Carver's story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, but is instead about the tortured relationship between author Raymond Carver and his editor Gordon Lish.

This explains the subsequent conflicts between Thompson, and Shiner who is constantly working to remake the play, find its essence, hone its presentation, and control the public's perception, and ultimate reception of the play. Shiner dramatically cuts short his first preview performance by stepping out of character, breaking down the wall, and talking directly to the audience, to tell them what shit the play is at that point. This nearly leads to fisticuffs between Shiner and Thompson. Next, Shiner manages to get a cover story in the Arts section of the New York Times, an interview with him and a preview of his participation in Thompson's production. He practically takes ownership of the play, and does take ownership of Thompson's origin story of having been inspired by Raymond Carver to become an actor. Thompson is so incensed, that he does end up in a fist-fight with Shiner, nearly giving him a shiner, and finally, they are wrestling on the ground, in a metaphoric sexual embrace. Thompson is embarrassed. Shiner remains impervious, as Thompson beats him over the head with the wadded up newspaper article.

By this point, Thompson has lost face and most of his self respect. The only solution seems to be a dramatic gesture. On opening night, in the emotionally wrought closing scene, Thompson enacts the suicide shot to the head using a real gun, but he misses and shoots off his nose. The curtain falls.

The play is a critical success. Despite his Hollywood action-hero baggage, Thompson is hailed as a new voice in American theater, bringing fresh blood to the stage and, displaying the unexpected virtue of ignorance, inventing a new super-realistic form of dramatic presentation. He has literally “cut off his nose to spite his face,” and with that, he flies out the window.  

Looking at Inarritu and his co-writers' script suggests that despite a great deal of the dialog, especially in scenes of the play, coming directly from Carver's short story, the central conflict, and some of the off-stage dialog comes from Carver's tortured letter to Lish, trying to delay or halt the publication of his book of short stories. There seem to be three central themes to Inarritu's Birdman.

One: getting caught with your pants down, everyone's worst nightmare -- running around in public in just your underwear. For Thompson this is a major humiliation. For Shiner, it's just another day at the office. 

Two: floating – above the ground, or high in the sky. Everyone's favorite dream, and the essence of self esteem and well being. Here that domain belongs to Thompson alone, and it may be all in his head. This was true for Carver as well. In a letter to Lish, at one of his high points, six months before publication of his story collection, Carver writes: I'm happy, and I'm sober. It's aces right now, Gordon. I know better than anyone a fellow is never out of the woods, but right now it's aces, and I'm enjoying it.

Actor Michael Keaton as Riggin Thompson, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, 
director Alejandro G. Inarritu, and co-writer Nicolás Giacobone, with Birdman 3 poster.

Three: mentioned before, Thompson's act of self-mutilation, self-retaliation. From the start of the film this is hinted at, foretold, in the masks which cover the Birdmanmovie character's face, the mask of The Phantom of the Opera, still playing across the street from the St. James Theater, at the Majestic Theater on Broadway, and the hospital bandages of an old man in a story Thompson's cardiologist Nick character tells during the play, and then Thompson's own bandages when he wakes up in the hospital after his gun “accident” and a rhinectomy and nose-replacement surgery. His face is not the same and his public image will never be the same. People will no longer recognize him for who he was, let alone who he has become. Exactly the fate that Carver feared so deeply when he wrote to Lish, wishing there was some way to rise above it all: As I say, I'm confused, tired, paranoid, and afraid, yes, of the consequences... So help me, please, yet again. Don't, please, make this too hard for me, for I'm just likely to start coming unraveled... God almighty, Gordon... Please do the necessary things... Please try to forgive me, this breach. Ray.

Epitaph: “A Thing Is Just a Thing, Not What People Say About That Thing.” Card, taped to the mirror in Riggin Thompson's dressing room.

 Yesterday, at a screening during the 2015 edition of the San Juan International Film Festival, a new reader of this film blog suggested that it would be more engaging, lively, and interactive with feedback from other readers. 

Here's a link to the current Table of Contents for the blog.
Every post has provision for comments at the bottom of the page. 

http://cinefestsanjuan.posthaven.com/archive

Your feedback is welcome.

#ExperienciaFICFA,

NOTES FROM THE FESTIVAL
by Jan Galligan & Lillian Mulero
Santa Olaya, PR

This year the Festival invited us to take “An Excursion Through the World of Cinema" via 42 films shown over six days. It was impossible to watch seven films every day in order to see them all. Clearly we would only take a short jaunt. After studying the festival website and watching every movie trailer, we managed to see ten films, starting with Dona Barbara by Venezuelan film director Betty Kaplan who is currently living in San Juan and working with producer Peter Rawley on a film adaptation of Eduardo Lalo's novel Simone. We wanted to see her 1995 film on the big screen. It exceeded our expectations. The Rómulo Gallegos story is set in the plains of central Venezuela, and is considered the most widely known Latin American novel. Gallegos was the first elected president of Venezuela, and in 1967 the Premio Rómulo Gallegos was created by the Venezuelan government. In 2013, Lalo's Simone was awarded that honor. We are looking forward to their film depiction of Lalo's novel.

The closing night of the festival when all the prizes are awarded, featured El Clan, Agentinian director Pablo Trapero's brutal yet quotidian account of sequestration and murder, which takes place in what appears to be an ordinary middle class household in Buenos Aires during the time of el Proceso and la Guerra Sucia. The film tells a story both macabro and banal.

Another film with the theme of kidnapping and forced imprisonment, El Secuestra de Michel Houellebecq is unique in a few respects. The fictional account was inspired by a rumor that French novelist Houellebecq, had been kidnapped by Al Qaeda in reprisal for comments he made calling Islam “stupid.” French director Guillaume Nicloux turns the rumor into an actual event, but supplants Muslim kidnappers with Polish Gypsies who spirit Houellebecq from his Paris apartment to a modest house in a gritty, industrial, countryside. The abductors have their hands full, as Houellebecq, who plays himself, requires a constant supply of cigarettes, excellent wine, books to read, good whiskey, and eventually the ministrations of a young woman. Filmed verite style, you are given an intimate, seemingly truthful account of Houellebecq's sequestration, as he adapts to his situation and becomes increasingly more interested in the lives of his captors. This is the power of the novelist, on the page and in real life – an ability to know and understand life in any milieu, wherever and whatever that may be. We watch fascinated, as Houellebecq chain smokes day and night, eats every meal with gusto, drinks large quantities of wine and whiskey, and evolves from prisoner to guest in the home of his captors. Ultimately, at the moment of his release, he asks if he might continue his stay for “a few weeks more?” 

A Cambio de Nada, which I thought meant “nothing ever changes” but Lillian explains means, “in exchange for nothing,” by Spanish director Daniel Guzman, tells a buddy-movie story, featuring Dario a teenager living in Madrid who is faced with the improbability of finding work at a time when over 50% of his compatriots are unemployed. Dario proves to be resourceful, inventive, stealthy, and cunning. At odds with his parents, he leaves home to live on his own. Short and skinny, Dario joins his best friend Luismi, tall and fat. Together on a small motorscooter, they make a funny team, with Dairo driving and Luismi barely managing to hold on behind. Bending over as low as possible, they race down the highway, trying to reach 120 kpm. The best they can manage is 113. Luismi is too tall and weighs too much. Like El Clan and Houellebecq, this story centers on money, foiled attempts to get as much as possible, and here, altruistic plans for what to do with the money, once obtained. You could say, nothing changes -- money is hard to come by and these days and you pay a high price trying to get it.

En Duva Satt på en Gren och Funderade på Tillvaron (A pigeon sits on a branch contemplating existence), directed by Roy Arne Lennart Andersson, led Lillian and me to a discussion of translation. For this screening, the Swedish film was presented with Spanish subtitles.The English version of the Swedish title calls the bird a pigeon. A mourning dove or huilota in Spanish seems more exact. The opening scene of this succinctly surreal film, which unfolds like a series of figurative paintings by American artist George Tooker, shows an older man and his wife, in a natural history museum. Impatient, she is about to walk into the next room. He is caught between two displays. To his left is a large mounted bald eagle. On his right, a mourning dove sits on a branch. He paces back and forth, removing his glasses to view them in detail. The eagle is war. The dove is peace. The rest of the movie is a complexly beautiful essay on the delineation of the meaning for both.

Back to the Beginning, one of two Puerto Rican films in the festival is David Aponte's feature film debut. This film also depicts a struggle for money. Erick Montalvo, played by Jorge Alberti, is a small time drug dealer. The first act of the film is filled with the harrowing, brutal, day to day of his life in prison. Money is the only relief. Bribes to the guards, payoffs to other prisoners, and finally a large under the table payment to a lawyer who manages to bribe Erick's release. Back on the outside, Erick strives to lead the straight life, forgoing his criminal past in favor of a nine to five job. His wife is pregnant and they are about to be evicted from their upscale condo. No one will hire him and he cannot escape his past. Desperation drives him back to his best friend and criminal partner, Leo, who gives him money to pay the bills and enlists him in an elaborate plan to hijack an armored truck loaded with cash. Leo, a murderous enforcer for the major drug lord of San Juan, and Erick disguise themselves as security guards and steal the truck. Instead of delivering the money to the drug lord, they keep the loot for themselves. Leo escapes by driving an Audi R8 sports car into San Juan rush hour traffic, bouncing over the median, and leaving his pursuers stuck in a traffic jam. Erick, on a hijacked motor cycle, pulls off a similar feat, also stranding the police as he makes his escape to the hospital where his wife is having their baby. He arrives in time to see his seriously ill newborn son. The police arrive moments later. Erick drops $120,000 in loose bills, the hospital's charge to save the baby's life, on the floor as the police lead him away, back to prison, where he was at the beginning.

Other films we saw include Defret, from Ethiopia, Experimentor, about social psychologist Stanley Milgram, Carmina y amén by Paco León, and the Israeli comedy The Farewell Party. Films we wished to have seen include Miss Julie, Nao Pare na Pista, El Abrazo de la Serpiente, Alias Maria, La Patota Paulina, Invasion, Ixcanul from Guatemala, and the Puerto Rican transgender documentary Mala Mala.

SPANISH VERSION as published in En Rojo, cultural supplement to Claridad

THE ROAD TO THE MOVIE THEATER, WHILE PAVED, IS FILLED WITH MANY OBSTRUCTIONS

by Jan Galligan and Lillian Mulero
Santa Olaya, PR

2014 San Juan International Film Festival : Day Four (SPOILER ALERT!)

On a good day, meaning light traffic, we can make San Juan from Santa Olaya in 28 minutes. Over time, we have learned that the preliminaries before the start of a feature movie, a series of commercials and coming attractions, last for 20 minutes.

Calculations for when to leave the house in order to arrive at the start of a movie go like this: the published time for the film is 7:10; which means the film will begin at 7:30; which means we should leave at 7:02; but the chances of heavy traffic are 60%, so we should leave at 6:45; plus 5 minutes for parking the car, so we should leave at 6:40.

Lillian hates to miss the opening moments of a film. For her, it's like a journey by public transportation: if you're late, the train has already left the station; you've missed the boat and the rest of the trip is spoiled, no matter what else might happen. I like an element of mystery. The first ten minutes of most films are filled with expository information which sets the scene and describes the action that will be carried out for the rest of the movie. If you miss that introduction, then you have an interesting problem in trying to figure out exactly what is going on in the story and what is motivating the characters. The movie becomes a puzzle to be solved. “Maybe,” says Lillian, “Regardless, I hate missing the opening minutes of a movie.” We should leave at 6:20, which means we may end up sitting through most of the commercials and coming attractions.

I generally don't like watching trailers for films I am planning to see. Inevitably they show you the entire plot of the film. Watching the movie then becomes an experience of seeing something that you are already familiar with, and for which you have a pretty good idea of how it will evolve and maybe even what the ending will be. For similar reasons, I don't like reading reviews before seeing a film. There's a good reason that they are called reviews, not previews, and trailers should be something that follow the main event. Good reviews summarize a film, but also analyze the story and critique the way it is told. If the movie has an inherent puzzle or mystery, reviews often attempt to provide a solution.

Screenings for the San Juan International Film Festival follow a different pattern, and require a different calculation. Posted start times are fairly accurate, the preliminaries last only five minutes and there are no coming attractions. 

We were late for four of the five screenings. I blame it on the traffic. An accident blocking the highway; a truck broken down in the middle of the road; road repairs and a detour; and in the first instance, two traffic jams along the way. Lillian was not happy, while I found myself plunged into mystery. “What's going on?” I'd whisper to Lillian. “Shut up and watch the film,” she'd reply. The mysteries were complicated by the multicultural nature of the movies being shown: Dominican film in Spanish, no subtitles; Austrian film, in German, with English subtitles; Uruguayan film in Spanish, no subtitles; Taiwanese film in Chinese, with English subtitles, but very little dialog; a film from Turkey, in Turkish, Arabic and English, with Spanish subtitles. My ability to read Spanish is serviceable, but I often get lost in complex verb conjugations. “What'd they say?” I'd whisper to Lillian. “Quiet!” she'd reply.

After four or five films in a few days, the stories start to run together, but here's a brief synopsis: 

STRAY DOGS (Jiao You), a French, Taiwanese co-production, was filmed in Mandarin, in Taipei. The anti-hero of this film, is a middle-aged homeless man, with two children, a young boy and a younger girl. He's an alcoholic and earns money each day working as a human signboard, standing next to a highway intersection in downtown Taipei. He has built a shelter for himself and the children in a storage bin under the highway. They do their nightly ablutions in public bathrooms, including brushing their teeth. This 138 minute film, directed by Tsai Ming-Liang, claimed by him as his “final film” is a text book exercise in the minimalist slow cinema genre, of which Tsai Ming-Liang is considered a leading proponent.

The film contains five very lengthy sequences: (1) 7 minutes – The opening scene where a woman, possibly the children's mother, combs the girls hair. (2) 5 minutes – The man holds his sign board and recites, then sings a 12^th Century Chinese militant poem. (3) 11 minutes – The man, in a drunken stupor, attacks, then eats a large head of cabbage which the children had made into a puppet. This takes place in the bed they share while the children are apparently asleep. (4) 8 minutes – The woman tours an underground derelict building, then stares fixedly at a landscape wall mural graffiti painting. (5) 20 minutes – near the end of the film. The man hugs the woman from behind, while they stand completely still. He takes drinks from a series of mini-liquor bottles. She sheds a single tear. They stare into space. A cross-cut reveals they are looking at the painted mural. She leaves; he follows.  

Will the young wife tell the man about the money? Will the man leave immediately for Istanbul? How will the poor Muslim family pay their rent? Will the young boy graduate from school and attend college? Will the writer continue to publish his columns on politics, religion, economics and history?

Walking out of the theater at the movie's end, late at night, the drive back to Santa Olaya should be an easy one. Most of the roads will be deserted, and barring any accidents or road repairs, it should be an unimpeded journey. I decide to tell Lillian that during the film, I came to realize that there was a new, better person inside me, one who knows the value of arriving to a film on time, in order to see the opening sequence. “We will leave earlier next time we go to the movies,” I tell her. “Right,” she says, “We'll see about that.”

The Cine OCD Project

Lillian and I watch at least one film per day, sometimes two, and on obsessive days it could be three. Given the ubiquity of online resources to immediately stream movies to a computer, smart phone, iPad or a Kindle, I can understand if your reaction is: – “So?” But at least consider that this means we've watched over 12,000 films in the 35 years we've been together.

It also means to date we've watched only about 5% of the feature films listed on the Internet Movie Database. I should point out that 20 of those past 35 years were spent watching movies in the analog era, before IMDB, YouTube, iTunes, or any form of video streaming.

We met in Albany, NY, where Lillian had finished graduate studies in painting and I was an artist working for biomedical science. We discovered a small shop in our neighborhood, run by an aging cinephile, and this store was filled with movie posters, film stills and other memorabilia, along with a substantial library of 16mm movies which you could rent for one or two dollars per day. I bought a 16mm film projector and within a year we had watched nearly his entire catalog. Imagine carrying home Citizen Kane, five giant reels of film in heavy metal canisters.

Over the years we became preferred customers at the Blockbuster and Hollywood video rental stores, and whenever, and wherever we traveled, we always made a point of seeing as many films as possible during our visits. In this way we learned about watching movies in their V.O. (version original) and developed an ability to sit through a long afternoon of triple features. We were also very fortunate to have an art film repertory cinema in Albany, which while we lived there, grew from one screen, to what is now the Spectrum Eight Theaters. Then, as now, we were convinced that the best way to watch movies is in the theater, on the big screen. Movies are a social medium and always best experienced in the company of other people. The energy of the audience, especially in a crowded theater on opening night, is palpable, and definitely affects your experience of the film. The impact of the movie is inversely proportional to the size of the screen. The image of the protagonist looming as a 30-foot face has a much greater impact than the same face on your home video screen, computer, or iPhone. Larger-than-life is always more effective than same-size or smaller.

An Island in the Sun

Preparing for our move to the remote barrio of Santa Olaya, in the summer of 2010, we were lucky to find a going-out-of-business sale at our favorite Hollywood video store in Albany and purchased a large stack of DVDs for one or two dollars each which we brought with us to the island. Fortunately when we arrived, we discovered Hollywood and Blockbuster were still doing business on the island. Even better we found a small, but well stocked, video bodega in Sabana, the barrio next to Santa Olaya, run by a young and enthusiastic cinéaste who added at least a dozen new films to his collection each month. Before long we had worked our way through the catalogs of all three rental stores, and not long after that they went out of business, one after the other: Hollywood, Blockbuster, and finally Sabana's Video Zone. Such is the power of Netflix and Redbox. We did manage to add another stack of DVDs to our collection during their respective going-out-of-business sales. In our many years of annual visits to Lillian's family, we learned to love three cinema gems here on the island: Cine Fine Arts, before it moved into the jewel-like atrium of the Banco Popular Center, Cine Fine Arts Miramar, even before its very handsome recent renovation, and the venerable Cine Metro in Santurce. We could always count on fulfilling our movie quota at one or all of these theaters.

(Weren't we here already?)

Our first introduction to art and culture on the island was the 2010 Festival de Cine Internacional de San Juan, where on opening night – Lillian being who she is – we ended up sitting next to a handsome film director from Columbia whose film eventually, after we had spent the better part of the week hanging out with him, won the festival. It was a productive time for us, and with an invitation from Maria Cristina, we ended up publishing four articles, two overviews and two profiles, in Claridad's cultural supplement, En Rojo. In the articles we confessed, publicly and for the first time, that we are a couple who tend to talk through movies while we watch. Here's an excerpt from our first article, published in November, 2010: “I'm having deja vu,” Lillian whispers in my right ear, the good one. I am a little deaf in the other, so she always sits on my right side. Otherwise we would be a disturbance in the movies. We're a couple who like to talk about movies, at least during the good moments – or sometimes, the bad. “What do you mean?” I ask her. “You know what I mean. Deja vu,” she says. “I think we've seen this film before. Definitely we've watched this story before.” “I don't know,” I mumble, “I'm not feeling it.”

Postcards from the Edge, aka “Recuerdos de Hollywood”

In the summer of 2012 we learned that the movie Runner, Runner would use Puerto Rico to play the part of Costa Rica. Directed by Brad Furman, of Lincoln Lawyer fame, it would feature Ben Affleck, Justin Timberlake and Gemma Atterton. We emailed headshots to the casting office and to our surprise, I got an invitation to audition for the role of TOWEL, a brief scene where I would play a politician being bribed by the Ben Affleck character. The scene was set in a steam room and my one line would include the word blowjob. I spent the day walking around the house wearing a towel and muttering my line with various inflections. Finally, Lillian demanded, “Put some clothes on, for Pete's sake!” As I was getting dressed, an email arrived from the casting office telling me to forget the TOWEL part. Instead they wanted me to read for the SHOOTER, as they described him – “an obnoxious casino gambler from New York. We'll send you the sides.” (note: sides refers that fraction of the script containing the character's lines for which you will be auditioning.) “You know the type,” they said. 

Actually I didn't, but I figured I'd give it a shot. Knowing nothing about acting or casino gambling, let alone having never auditioned for anything, the first thing I did, after reading through the part about a dozen times, was buy a new tropical weight black suit. Hopefully I could look the part. Then Lillian and I set out for El San Juan Resort & Casino in Isla Verde to learn how to play the craps table.

A few hours and $200 dollars later, we had a better idea of how the game was played, but I had not mastered an air of obnoxious self-confidence. I was having a lot of trouble with the word greaseball.

Runner, Runner's script was written by Brian Koppleman and David Levien, who also wrote Rounders and Ocean's Thirteen. I figured they knew something about gambling, but based on this dialogue, might not know a lot about Costa Rica or Caribbean culture. To be honest, I didn't know what a jammer was, so I looked it up online, where I learned more about jamming slot machines or cell phones than someone who could “cool your roll.” I tried the online Urban Dictionary for a better understanding of greaseball and learned that this originally refers to Italians, “but generally it can be anyone who does not wash his or her hair.” I got Lillian to put a lot of gel in her hair and spent the day before my audition walking around the house in my new suit demanding that she, “Pay the bet, greaseball!” 

Generally, I was met with her dismissive, hostile looks. I did not get the part.

Our rehearsals paid off when we were offered the chance to work as extras in a scene being filmed at a mansion on the island's north shore, near Dorado – two sixteen-hour nights starting at 3 p.m. and ending at 7 a.m. We were to play a sophisticated couple at an extravagant outdoor casino gambling poolside party. Lillian immediately bought a new dress. When we arrived at the base camp, Lillian spent the next three hours in makeup and being fitted for a gold lame evening gown from the wardrobe department. Once we were on the set, we wandered around the mansion for about three hours until shooting started. By then we knew the layout of the place quite well. We were put into position by the background wrangler and given directions for a choreographed walk through the party. The scene was fairly long, lasting over three minutes. The main action involved Justin Timberlake arriving at the party, walking through the mansion and out the back door, followed by a line of young women carrying trays of champagne topped with glowing sparklers and wearing very skimpy, tight, gold lame body suits, which Lillian felt would compete with her dress. We walked through the scene as directed, while Timberlake met up with Affleck and together they made their way to a craps table, where the SHOOTER character was getting ready to call the STICKMAN a greaseball. I convinced Lillian that she should find a way to get to the craps table and end up next to the SHOOTER. She did, and became an integral part of that scene for the next eight hours, as they filmed it from four different angles. I managed to walk by while SHOOTER was delivering his tirade. 

Which brings us to the 2014 Academy Awards. Runner, Runner is not on the list of nominees. This is because rottontomatoes.com scored the film at 9% out of a possible 100%, based on a compilation and assessment of all reviews for that film. Her scored 94% and Gravity, 97% . All of the films nominated for Best Picture scored over 90% except The Wolf of Wall Street, which was rated 76%. Rolling Stone magazine called Runner, Runner a film where “the actors hit the jackpot, but only in terms of their paychecks, while the audience gets a tension-free, tight-assed, Casino ripoff leaving them thoroughly fleeced.”

Normally, Lillian and I do not have much interest in the Oscars. In the past, we were unlikely to have seen more than a couple of the nominated films, as our interests run more toward foreign language imports, independent films, and art-house cinema, few of which ever make the list. Generally we end up reading about the Oscars in the following day's newspaper. This year is different. Witnessing the movie making process from the other side of the screen has given us new insight into what's involved and how it happens. We've felt like the character in the Coke commercial which was recently shown at the Cine Fine Arts theaters, before the main attraction --the one where a young guy goes from watching movies while drinking Coke, to playing a daredevil scene in an action movie then drinking a Coke, to walking the runway at the Oscars while being watched by other young movie-lovers, also drinking Cokes. Seeing yourself on the big screen, even for a fleeting moment, is definitely a thrill.

Over the past couple of months we have managed to see all of the films in contention for this year's Best Picture award. One thing we noticed – of the nine nominated films, all but three – Gravity, Her and Nebraska – are based on true stories. Granted, the truth has been massaged, stretched and twisted to fit the silver screen, still, this leaves us with the impression that the premises of reality television now dominate the world of cinematic fiction, in a manner similar to how those same principles dominate night time dramas and sitcoms on broadcast or cable TV. A caveat is in order: We should note that we do not have cable or broadcast television here in our remote jungle outpost. We have watched very little television during the past 35 years, but we do read many cultural journals and magazines, and have been able to keep abreast of the trends. Ripped from the headlines seems to be the predominate point of departure. Too often however, working in this mode, the train never leaves the station.

May I have the envelope, please?

What might the film Runner, Runner have been with a more sensitive, finely-tuned script, and a freer hand for Brad Furman to exercise directorial control? One example is Ridley Scott's The Counselor, based on a story by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Cormak McCarthy, who also wrote the script, his screenwriting debut. Starring Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, and Brad Pitt, this is a complicated story, rooted in the grim reality of Mexico's drug cartels. Eschewing the headlines, it weaves a story of drugs, money, influence peddling, deception, and duplicity, with a surprise twist ending – all elements that Runner, Runner contained, but could not pull together. The Counselor also has a terrific, high-energy musical soundtrack performed by a number of urban contemporary Mexican groups, including Mexican Institute of Sound and Choquibtown. Ironically, Runner, Runner, purportedly set in Caribbean Latin America, has a soundtrack that also features mostly Mexican urban contemporary music, including Choquibtown. Talk about a deaf ear.

My choice for the Academy Award for Best Picture is American Hustle, another example of what Runner, Runner could have been. Starting with its disclaimer that “Some of this actually happened,” this film is a study in character, and is filled with characters who make that study fascinating. These are people you might like to spend time with, even if you'd hesitate to invite them into your home. Desperate, despicable and irascible at the same time, the two principals, played by Amy Adams and Christian Bale, spend the entire movie outwitting themselves, each other, and everyone around them. Who's conning whom is the constantly repeated question. Set in New Jersey, at the time of the infamous Abscam scandal, ambitious, and duplicitous politicians sell their souls and their constituencies for a chance at a bigger prize, offered to them in a scam organized by Adams and Bale. This story is timely in a weird way, given the problems of the current governor of New Jersey and attempts by his administration to embarrass the mayor of Ft. Lee, NJ by creating a tapon enorme on the New Jersey side of the George Washington bridge – which sounds like a case of life imitating art imitating life.

She nearly lost it, at that movie 

Lillian's choice for Best Picture is Gravity, directed by Mexican, Alfonso Cuarón, creator of the wonderful Y Tu Mamá También. The film stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as a scientific engineer and an astronaut working together in the near future, to repair a malfunctioning module in the Hubble Space Telescope. When their space shuttle explodes leaving Clooney and Bullock floating, tethered together with only their space suits protecting them from certain death, they devise a desperate escape maneuver that ultimately defies credibility. As Clooney says, “Our only hope for rescue is to use my jet-pack to travel to the space station,” which is seen as a glowing light over the horizon. “It’s a long hike, but we can make it,” says Clooney.

New York Times science reporter Dennis Overbye, who normally writes cogent, readable reports on high energy physics and cosmology, watched Gravity in the company of NASA astronaut Michael J. Massimino and together they discovered a fatal flaw. Overbye writes: “As we recall from bitter memory, the Hubble and the space station are in vastly different orbits. Getting from one to the other requires so much energy that not even space shuttles have enough fuel to do it. The telescope is 353 miles high, in an orbit that keeps it near the Equator; the space station is about 100 miles lower, in an orbit that takes it far north, over Russia. To have the movie astronauts (Clooney) and (Bullock) zip over to the space station would be like having a pirate tossed overboard in the Caribbean swim to London.”

The entire premise for this film is scientifically impossible. “I don't care,” says Lillian. “I can suspend my disbelief in this instance. It makes for a thrilling story. I almost had a coronary waiting to see what would happen to this couple drifting alone, together somewhere in outer space. George Clooney is the same chatty, but highly articulate and funny story teller he played in O Brother Where Art Thou. Besides, the movie screen seemed to me the perfect medium for displaying a world with no up and no down. The space images are as gorgeous as Clooney made them out to be. Consider, here's a couple, not obviously romantically engaged, brought together by circumstances beyond their control, floating hand-in-hand toward an outcome neither can predict or imagine. To reach their goal, they must separate, each going their own way. She makes it, and then, as if in a dream, he appears, at the right place at exactly the right time, to help her solve an impossible technical problem, and afterward – he disappears, again. The perfect man, for a perfect movie.”

Initially, I thought Lillian had a secret crush on George Clooney. That changed when we went to see his most recent project Monuments Men, which Clooney co-wrote, directed, and in which he plays the lead role. This film received a rating of 34% from rottentomatoes, and for good reason. A movie that the Los Angeles Times calls, “Earnest and well-intentioned but ultimately inert,” it caught our interest because it presents an adventure story about art and art's place in society. Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, and Bob Balaban, with help from Cate Blanchett and a few others, struggle to save the art history of the western world from thieving Nazi hoarders. None of them are able to save this film from Clooney's clunky script and clumsy directing. At the end of the movie, president Harry Turman asks the Clooney character if art is worth dying for. Should you watch this film, you can be the judge.

Jan Galligan and Lillian Mulero
Santa Olaya, PR

After years living and working in Albany, artist Lillian Mulero - whose work deals with issues of gender, faith, and politics, and is never predictable, and photographer Jan Galligan - known for years as "one of upstate's best kept art secrets" relocated to Santa Olaya, where they currently write about art and film for En Rojo, the cultural supplement of Claridad, the island's weekly newspaper.

CINEMA BLOG:
http://cinefestsanjuan.posthaven.com

LILLIAN MULERO, ART WEBSITE:
http://lillianmulero.com

GUIDE TO ART AND CULTURE AROUND SAN JUAN, PUBLISHED ONLINE IN LONDON, UK:

http://file-magazine.com/citylikeyou/profiles/lillian-mulero-jan-galligan

ART BLOG:

http://janguarte.posthaven.com

by Jan Galligan & Lillian Mulero
Santa Olaya, PR

LA JUALA DE ORO
[preview screening: 5^th Festival de Cine Europeo, sponsored by Alliance Francaise of Puerto Rico]

Nearly 12,000,000 undocumented immigrants now live in the US. More than half came from Mexico, and over 1,300,000 from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. From Guatemala alone, some 12,000 people manage to enter the US each year. Many make the trip by way of La Bestia, a series of trains that travel from Guatemala to the Mexico-California border. More popularly known as The Train of Death, it is a fearful journey filled with terror and uncertainty. Hundreds of men, women and children ride for 1500 miles on the top of freight cars, hanging on to their hopes of a better life in El Norte.

Stuffed in my pocket, my cell phone keeps buzzing. Right now, I'm far too engrossed in what's happening on screen to bother with incoming messages. We are about half way along a journey from southern Guatemala, crossing the vast expanse of Mexico. Headed north, we're trying to get to Los Angeles. This trip is unimaginably arduous, and as we've heard, dangerous and life-threatening. It's not at all certain we will make it to the end. Two of our party of four are already missing. One decided to drop out near the Guatemala-Mexico border. The other, has just been taken away by a vicious gang, operating near Zacatecas, in central Mexico. The thieving bandits are also kidnappers, who force their victims into slavery and prostitution.

Juan is a sixteen-year old from the slums of Guatemala City. He's traveling with Chauk, the name given a young Mayan Indian who speaks no Spanish and who has been incessantly trying to teach us a few words from his language. Me, I'm holding onto the edge of my seat, listening to the Spanish, reading English subtitles, and trying hard to learn a bit of Tzotzil, hoping for a few clues to help sort nightmare from reality. Trouble is, there is no separation.

The nightmare began in a tin shack barrio, Region 3 in Guatemala City, where Juan worked the streets, saved a few dollars and dreamed of escape from his dead-end existence. Juan enlisted Samuel, a teenage friend who scrapes a living from mountains of garbage near their barrio. Together they enticed Sara, who, before they departed, turned herself into Osvaldo by cutting off her hair and hiding her pubescent breasts with tape and gauze.

Juan's plan is to ride El Tren de la Muerte. He's packed a few essentials into a napsack and sewed his savings into the lining of his jeans. Samuel travels light, just a t-shirt and a pair of sneakers. Sara has tucked her remaining strands of hair into a baseball cap to reinforce her new identity as Osvaldo. Catching the train is a nightmare which involves running along next to the train, grabbing a handhold on one of the cars and jumping up onto the moving train. They miss their first attempt. Waiting for the next opportunity, they encounter the young Indian, carrying a cloth bag and a large machete. Juan and Samuel are suspicious and resentful of the Indian. Sara is curious and intrigued.

Together, they catch the next train headed north. Pulling themselves to the top of a freight car, they settle in for a very long journey. Fortunately, the young Indian has brought some food which he tries to share. Juan and Samuel refuse. Sara accepts. The Indian begins his language lessons and Sara names him Chauk. Then, he falls asleep and dreams of snow, and soon we are lightly covered in metaphor.

Chauk (Rodolfo Dominguez), Juan (Brandon Lopez) and Sara/Osvaldo (Karen Martinez)

When the train reaches the Guatemala-Mexico border near Tapachulas, Samuel gets off, choosing to return to the absolute poverty of his ghetto home. Juan, Sara and Chauk press on, until they are accosted by Los Zetas, the bandits in Zacatecas. Sara is kidnapped. Juan, nearly beaten to death, is saved by the ministrations of Chauk, who uses a salve of ancient Mayan plant medicine to treat Juan's wounds. As Juan lays recovering, he dreams of snow. When he wakes, the nightmare continues, unrelenting – until one last snowstorm, right before the closing credits.

Walking out of the screening room, we are swept to the middle of a cocktail party, and I discover Lillian deep in conversation with Diego Quemada-Diez, director of this, his first feature length film, La Juala de Oro,. Lillian quickly fills me in on Quemada-Diez' background: born in Burgos, Spain; works in Mexico and Hollywood; cameraman on films by Oliver Stone, Spike Lee and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu; adherent of a verite, extemporaneous style of filming, most likely learned working with Inarritu. Lillian says that he chose the young actors because they were inexperienced and untrained, which added authenticity to their performances. Most of their dialogue is ad lib, invented on the spot, based on outlines given to them by the director. The movie was shot on film, using super-16, light weight, extremely portable equipment, which allowed for filming documentary-style, riding on top of freight trains, crawling through tunnels, and running through the woods. Most scenes were filmed in actual situations, which allows the fiction of the story to blend with the reality of the moment.

I'm puzzled by the film's title. Lillian tells me it comes from a song by the Mexican band Los Tigres del Norte, an ode to the despair of undocumented migrants who quickly discover that working in the US as poorly paid laborers is like “living in a golden cage.” The song says:

De que me sirve el dinero,

si estoy como prisionero,

dentro de esta gran nacion,

cuando me acuerdo hasta lloro,

aunque la jaula sea de oro,

no deja de ser prision.

Curious about the recurring metaphor of falling snow, filmed at night – thousands of white flakes falling from a deep black sky – I turn to our companion for this private screening, the English translator of Mundo Cruel, Luis Negron's collection of stories about the gritty street life of working class Santurce. She tells me that the story of this film is a trip from hell, through hell, that ends in hell. The snow offers a faint glimmer of hope. If not an escape, it is at least a respite from unrelenting misery. She says it also represents the thousands of immigrants making their way north, following a dream, looking for a light at the end of the tunnel and trying to end the nightmare of being trapped in a life of abject poverty.

Juan and Chauk at the Mexico-California border

La Juala de Oro is not the first film on this subject. Cary Joji Fukunaga's 2009 Sin Nombre tells the story of a teenage Honduran girl and her frightful encounters with a Mexican gang while riding the train trying to get to the USA. Quemada-Diez's film may be the first attempt to direct the story to audiences on both sides of the fence separating South America from El Norte. South of the border, the message is clear: you will travel at your own risk, and face the likely chance of being robbed, beaten, raped if you are female, arrested by the police and/or captured by Immigration and sent back to where you started. For the US audience, living north of a border, for all intents sealed from intrusion, the film puts you in the shoes of someone desperate enough to take those risks for a slim chance at a better life.

Is the risk worth it? Ten years ago, Frida Hinojosa rode the train from Tapachulas to find work in the US. In an article in the BBC, she says, "I saw a mother whose child died on the train and she had to bury him on the Mexican side of the border before continuing her journey. I saw rapes, I saw murders. Knowing that I was doing this for my son gave me the strength and hope to keep going. Now he's a grown-up, God bless him, and we are together.” Asked if she would do it again, she replied without hesitation, “Of course I would. Everything I got here makes it worth the ordeal. I wouldn't have achieved anything if I had stayed in Mexico. Most migrants on the train shared a dream. We were in it together.”

Brandon Lopez (Juan), Diego Quemada-Diez (director), Karen Martinez (Sara/Osvaldo) and Rodolfo Dominguez (Chauk) at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival where they won the Un Certain Regard (A Certain Talent) award.

LA JUALA DE ORO

102 min

Drama

October 2013

Mexico-Spain

Directed by Diego Quemada-Diez. Screenplay, Quemada-Diez, Lucia Carreras, Gibran Portela. Camera (color, widescreen), Maria Secco; editors, Paloma Lopez Carillo, Felipe Gomez; music, Jacobo Lieberman, Leo Heiblum

Staring: Brandon Lopez, Rodolfo Dominguez, Karen Martinez, Carlos Chajon. (Spanish, Tzotzil dialogue)

An Animal de Luz Films, Machete Prods., Kinemascope Films production

Jan Galligan 

SUBJECTIVE INTERPRETATION

Trying to make sense of the films we've seen during this year’s festival, I created a list of subjects: food, clothing, shelter, money, music, art, love, hate, sex, fear, pregnancy, birth,death, travel and multiculturalism – tracking them in the films we watched. One notable surprise this year was the prevalence of bathroom scenes, primarily showing a female character sitting on the toilet. Usually this is intended to create a feeling of intimacy with the character, not unlike scenes of sexual activity. However, in one film, the Peruvian Octubre directed by the Vega brothers, the toilet scene was important to the development of the story. Sophia (the woman next door for whom Clemente, the protagonist moneylender has only a mercenary interest – he uses her to care for a baby left on his doorstep by one the many prostitutes he frequents) puts a spell of seduction on Clemente by wiping herself with her underpants and soaking them in a pitcher of drinking water. She then serves a glass of water to Clemente who drinks it down with gusto, unaware of its magic charms. It works, almost. Clemente is under her spell, but remains resistant to her sexual entreaties, preoccupied with finding the puta de madre of the baby left in his care. It should be noted that the baby steals every scene in which it appears on screen - or off - when all you hear is its crying and all you can think is “take care of that baby!”

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE AS PDF...

Jan Galligan
75Grand/Sur
Santa Olaya, PR

http://75Grand.posterous.com [foto blog]
http://JANGuarte.posterous.com [art blog]

Reflections of an American at the Festival de Cine Internacional de San Juan, PR

"You remember the gala de apertura for last year's Festival," says Lillian, "We didn't know anybody at that red-carpet event." It's true. We had just moved to the island and the Festival was our first experience of the San Juan cinema and art scene. "Do you see anyone we know?" asks Lillian.

We're early and a crowd has just started forming in the lobby of Cine Metro in Santurce."No, not yet," I tell her, although I notice a few people pointing at us and one raising a camera to take our photograph. Then I look down and realize we're standing on the red carpet in the area reserved for actors, directors and other invited guests. "I think we'd better move," I tell Lillian. Press credentials in hand, we make our way to the table where tapas and wine are being served.

The selections for this year's Festival are diverse, featuring movies from 20 countries, including Brasil, Chile, China, Hungria, Iran, Noruega, Peru, Rumania and Turquia. 13 of the 30 films are competing for the Don Ricardo Alegria Premio a la Mejor Pelicula de Caribena, and include films from Republica Dominicana, Cuba, Venezuela, Columbia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Barbados, Guadalupe, and four films made here in Puerto Rico. This year's Festival also includes a special grouping, Nuevo Cine Espana...

Jan Galligan y Lillian Mulero
75Grand/Sur
Santa Olaya, PR

http://75Grand.posterous.com [foto blog]
http://JANGuarte.posterous.com [art blog]

photo caption: Affonso Beato's workshop on cinematography.

Publicado: 7 diciembre 2010, Claridad - En Rojo

AFFONSO BEATO ON THE DESIGN AND EXECUTION OF TWO MOVIES

ANTONIO DAS MORTES

"O Dragão da Maldade contra o Santo” Brazil / 1969 / 100 minutes / drama

Director / Glauber Rocha, Director de fotografia / Affonso Beato

"Palm D'Or" / Cannes Film Festival

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

USA / 2010 / 121 minutes / drama

Director / David Fincher, Director of photography / Jeff Cronenweth

The camera does not move. The scene is like a painting, like a proscenium stage. The stage is a town square. The town is in the Pirahna Valley. The town is crowded with people chanting and singing, circling as they sway to the rhythm of the music. In the foreground the circling figures are seen from the waist up, in ranks, maybe ten deep diminishing towards the background. In the background, very small, are two figures - Antonio das Mortes and Colonel Horácio, a landowner who has hired Antonio to rid the village of these chanting, swirling people. The intruders are lead by Coirana, a congrecerio, who we see now and again as the crowd circles in and out of the frame. The perspective of this scene is flattened, foreshortened like a painting. As the crowd continues singing, the same refrain over and over, the landowner shouts, "Make them stop this infernal singing." We see him move down from his perch above the crowd, bringing Antonio with him. They wade into the crowd  pushing their way toward us, to the foreground where we know the cangrecerio is swirling, singing with his people, of their hope for a better life, a chance to settle here in Pirhana Valley. The landowner and Antonio come closer. Finally, Antonio and the cangrecerio are face to face, their faces filling the screen, the painting. This painting has the warmth, depth, the intensity of the great spanish masters. Like St. George and the Dragon painted by Valesquez or Zurbaran. This is no accident. This is the plan as constructed, piece by piece, by Glauber Rocha, the great Brazilian film director and Affonso Beato, director of photography, now considered one of our great cinematographers. In 1969, Beato was a young man working on his third feature movie. In time he would photograph over fifty movies, among them Love in the Time of Cholera, The Queen, God is Brazilian, Ghost World, Orfeu, Live Flesh, The Big Easy, The Flower of My Secret, The Two Worlds of Angelita, and The Promised Land.

As part of the 2010 Festival de Cine Internatcional San Juan, Affonso Beato presented a two part taller de direccion de fotografia at Estudio de PJ Gaffer in Bayamon. Part one considered "the design and execution of a film" from the point of view of the cinematographer. Beato explained that the most important thing is the vision of the director and the cinematographer working together to realized that vision, which is  personal, informed, carefully considered and becomes the look of the film. The vision is informed by the history of film and the history of art. “You must know your tools, their capabilities and their limitations, in order to use them correctly in the execution of the plan of the filming of the movie under construction,” explained Beato.

Digital hardware and software have revolutionized the process of making a movie over the past five years and even more change will come in the months and years ahead.  At present, hybrid methods are employed, which involve shooting the movie digitally, reviewing the shots on site as the movie is being recorded, digitally editing and processing the scenes, screening a preview, transferring the edited digital master to a film negative which is then transferred to a film master and duplicated for distribution. The near future holds the promise of removing film entirely from this equation. Movies will be shot, processed, edited, previewed, mastered, distributed and presented in theatres entirely in digital format. In effect it will be the end of film, as we know it.

Cinema is a collaboration that demands the careful orchestration of script, direction, design and cinematography. A movie can correctly be considered art when the style of the film matches the intentions of the director. The style is almost always a result of a gestalt - the sum of all elements working together in a harmonious relationship. It cannot be explained or defined in precise terms. It cannot be broken down to an exact interrelationship of any of the elements, but as Beato explained, "We know it when we see it, and without that gestalt, a movie has no soul, it is an empty vessel, devoid of true meaning, artless - a collection of elements, stitched together that never become more than the parts themselves."

The key to realizing this gestalt is the process of anchoring the visual elements of the movie. These elements include most importantly the framing of the scene which is defined by camera position and the lens employed. The visual elements also include color, lighting and movements of camera and actors. Different combinations produce different interpretations of the story being told.

Beato said there are two fundamental rules in cinematography. One is “never shoot where trucks cannot go.” This is because of the enormous amount of equipment needed for any full-scale production. The second rule is “the cinematographer should always be there first,” prior to the actual shooting of the scene, in order to know all the particulars of that location, and to walk through and pre-plan the scene as it will be photographed. The cinematographer shoots the scene in his mind, edits, makes changes, and carefully plans and plots the exact camera positions and movements that he will employ. The key to the successful execution of the plan for recording that scene is to have a map. Then, "Bingo! All the elements fall into place and the scene practically realizes itself, " says Beato.

Speaking of films currently in release, Beato said The Social Network is ground-breaking cinema, a landmark movie by director David Fincher, who Beato characterized as a control freak. He explained that Fincher employed the latest digital moviemaking techniques and technologies to make this movie. The story is about a controlling visionary, the world’s youngest billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, considered the father of social networking, Fincher has created a visually arresting movie to tell his story. One striking example of the powerful use of digital technology is the depiction of the Winklevoss twins, Zuckerberg's nemesises, who were played by one actor, then digitally composited into every scene where they are seen together. "Go seen this film," Beato exhorted, "See it again if you've already done so. Watch carefully as the story unfolds. Ignore the sound and just watch the pictures. You'll see what I mean."

Jan Galligan y Lillian Mulero / Santa Olaya, PR

NEXT: Affonso Beato on The Third Dimension – the future of cinema

=============

AFFONSO BEATO SOBRE EL DISEÑO Y LA EJECUCIÓN DE DOS PELÍCULAS

USA / 2010 / 121 minutes / drama
Director / David Fincher, Director of photography / Jeff Cronenweth

Como parte de la 2010 del Festival de Cine Internatcional San Juan, Affonso Beato presentó una segunda parte más alta de direccion de fotografia en el Estudio de PJ Gaffer en Bayamón. Por una parte considera "el diseño y ejecución de una película" desde el punto de vista de la fotografía. Beato explicó que lo más importante es la visión del director y el director de fotografía trabajando juntos para di cuenta de que la visión, que es personal, informó, considerado cuidadosamente y se convierte en el aspecto de la película. La visión es informada por la historia del cine y la historia del arte. "Usted debe conocer sus herramientas, sus capacidades y sus limitaciones, con el fin de utilizarlos correctamente en la ejecución del plan de la filmación de la película en construcción", explicó Beato.

La clave para la realización de este Gestalt es el proceso de anclaje de los elementos visuales de la película. Estos elementos son lo más importante la elaboración de la escena que se define por la posición de la cámara y la lente empleado. Los elementos visuales también se incluyen el color, la iluminación y los movimientos de cámara y los actores. Las diferentes combinaciones producen diferentes interpretaciones de la historia que se cuenta.

WHY I GO TO THE MOVIES, WITH LILLIAN 01:

We've been here before!

Publicado: 23 noviembre 2010  Claridad, En Rojo

 [ENGLISH]

Reflections on the San Juan International Film Festival. October 14 - 20, 2010

"I'm having deja vu," Lillian whispers in my right ear, the good one. I'm a little deaf in the other, so she always sits on my right. Otherwise we'd be a disturbance in the movies. We're a couple who like to talk about movies, at least the good moments - or sometimes, the bad.

"What do you mean?" I ask her.

"You know what I mean. Deja vu," she says, "I think we've seen this film before. Definitely we've watched this story before."

"I don't know," I mumble, "I'm not feeling it."

It's day six of the seven day San Juan International Film Festival. Actually it's day seven, if you count opening night. Thirty films in seven days. That's four films per day plus two days with an extra matinee showing. By now we've seen so many movies that the stories are starting to run together. Don't get me wrong. We're fans, but not the caliber of our friend Buckeye of Middlebury, VT. He's a film fanatic. Middlebury is one hour south of Montreal, Canada, home to a world famous film festival. Over the years we've heard many stories about trips to Montreal. One day - five films. Drive home. Sleep a few hours. Drive back - watch another five. Buckeye almost always goes by himself. Who could keep up with a schedule like that?

"It's worth it," he’d tell us. "How else can you see these movies most of which are showing for the first time. Many of which will not find distribution. Films from all over the world. World class cinema. Films I'd go to see in their home country if I could. Who's got money for that, or the time?"

I know what he means. But still, I'm not getting the dejavu that Lillian's having. The story seems familiar. Dominican Republic, three dead sisters, and Rafael Trujillo. But the colors are wrong, the lighting too bright, too high key. Technically the film is high quality, but the acting is leaden, amateurish. You can see the actors anticipate their next line. You can read what will happen in their faces. Those in the scene with nothing to do flap their eyebrows, fix their ties, shuffle in place.

"Mariposa," Lillian whispers. "Las Mariposas!"

"What?!" I ask, cupping my hand to her ear.

"It's not deja vu," she says. "This film is the same true-life story as that other movie we saw years ago, called Las Mariposas."

"You're right!" I tell her. "Let's talk about it in the lobby when this film is over." 

Actually I'd like to talk right now. This film is torturous, like being trapped in Trujillo's dictatorship. We are trapped. As usual we're sitting front and center about 10 rows back. There's a decent crowd so we've got people on both sides. Getting up now and walking out would create a disturbance.

"Do you want to leave?" I whisper to Lillian.

"What?"

"Never mind."

What is it that separates good acting from bad? It's not necessarily experience, as some actors, the best, have it right from the start. Clearly it's a matter of expressiveness. That ability to light up the screen. A presence that commands attention. It also includes the ability to inhabit the person being portrayed. It's subtle. Not every character is a commanding presence. But every well portrayed character is riveting. You can't take your eyes off them. The saving grace of this movie is Michelle Rodriguez. We used to see her on tv. She was a character in Lost and more recently played a detective in a crime dramatic series. She's good. She's got character. I believe her. Unfortunately I can't believe any of the others: her sisters, her husband, her compatriots. Even Trujillo is a wooden stick figure of his former self. A voodoo doll. Actually he looks like the living dead. Pale, washed out, he sounds like a ventriloquist's dummy. Someone's pulling his strings. His voice comes from stage right. He's killing me.

The acting in the film I saw before this one, a wonderful first film by young Brazilian director, Exmir Fihlo, called Los Famosos y los Duendes de la Muerte was great, and those actors were even younger than Fihlo. High school boys, searching for meaning, while waiting for Bob Dylan to come to their hometown and play a concert. Not really, but that was the fantasy played out mostly on-line via Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and instant messaging. That movie is absolutely real and dreamlike at the same time. Wonderful scenes, backlit with deep Caravaggio light between one boy and his mother. Other scenes outdoors on a railroad bridge where much of the story takes place, or on the streets of Rio Grande do Sul, enveloped in an ever-present fog. There's a scene at the beginning where the boy, leaving home for school, walks down the street, away from the camera, and disappears into the fog. This is matched near the end of the film when we see him on the bridge. That scene is shot from far away using a telephoto lens for a close focus, shallow depth of focus point of view. Everything in the background is a fuzzy blur. As he walks away he begins to disintegrate. He becomes a blur and disappears, blending into the background. It was beautiful. You could have ended the film right there.

As the torture continues in the Dominican Republic, I remember another Brazilian film, Antonio das Mortes, Glauber Rocha's cinema novo, Cannes prize-winner, brilliantly filmed in 1969 by Affonso Beato, filled with amazing performances. A flawless movie, which we saw on Tuesday, or Wednesday, it's hard to recall at the moment. And Carlos Gaviria, from Columbia, whose realistic dramatization Retratos en un Mar de Mentiras tells the story of a young girl and her brother who take an epic roadtrip from Bogata to Cartagena, to the sea, as they try to unravel the lies that have forced them on to the road. Again, riveting acting, masterful filming and editing and a great story. Yesterday we watched a terrific film, Joel esta Imposible by local director William Rosario Cruz. Made on a very low budget, the film adheres to the Dogma95 and Mumblecore movements, and champions a new tradition of 'imperfect cinema.' No matter, it was perfect for us. Other films we watched include: Ano Bisiesto from Mexico, again made on a low budget. Unfortunately it suffered from being projected from DVD. It was washed out and indistinct when it needed to be bright and sharp. Still it was a good story, well told. Carrancho, from Argentina is an excellent crime-drama. This film was also shown in DVD and that was a mistake. The image was squashed, out of proportion and the projection was washed out, low contrast, when the film was shot very high contrast, especially all the nighttime scenes. This movie stars Ricardo Dario, a master actor, especially in the confounding film noir Nine Queens. We saw a little bit of Celda 211 from Spain. Just the end, the last ten minutes. If the rest of the film was like that, then this is a dynamite movie. Late one night we watched Chugyeogja (The Chaser), another noir story, made in South Korea in 2009 by Hong-jin Na. Based on a true story of a sicko serial killer, this is a brutally realistic film with actors and actions you can't stop watching. Except maybe at the most gruesome moments, as Lillian did. There were a number of other films we wanted to see, but like I said, we don't have the stamina of Buckeye. 

At the moment, we're just wishing someone would overthrow arch-villain Trujillo so we can get out of here. It's a one-hour drive back to our finca in the country, and we do need sleep. Tomorrow is another day, the last day in fact, and we want to be rested for the showing of the classic, 1961 puertorrican movie Palmer ha Muerto, directed by Juan Fortuny and starring Ines Alma, Ricardio Palmerola, Onix Baez and Rosita Fornes.

"It looks like they’re about to organize a resistance led by the three sisters,"

Lillian whispers.

"Thank god, we’re nearing the end," I think.

===============

WHY I GO TO THE  MOVIES, WITH LILLIAN 01:  Hemos estado aquí antes. 

Reflexiones sobre el Festival de Cine Internacional de San Juan. del 13 al 20 de octubre, 2010 

"Tengo déjà vu," Lillian susurra en mi oído derecho, el bueno. Soy un poco sordo en el otro, por lo que siempre se sienta a mi derecha. Así no les causamos moléstia a los otros en el cine.  Somos una pareja que les gusta hablar durante la película pero con mucho amor y cortesía ¿sabes?

"¿Qué quieres decir?" Le pregunto.

"¿Sábes lo que quiero decir? Déjà vu," dice, "Creo que hemos visto esta película antes. Definitivamente hemos visto este mismo cuento antes."

"No sé," murmuro, "No lo estoy sintiendo."

Es el día seis de los siete días de Festival de Cine Internacional de San Juan. En realidad el septimo día, si se cuenta la noche de la apertura. Treinta películas en siete días. Son cuatro películas por día más dos días con un matiné adicional. Hemos visto tantas películas que las narraciones se están corriendo juntas. No me malinterpreten. Somos afficionados del cine, pero no del calibre de nuestro amigo Buckeye de Middlebury, Vermont. El es un fanático desde arriba para abajo. Middlebury es una hora al sur de Montreal, Canadá, el hogar de la famosa Festival mundial de cine. Con el paso de tiempo hemos escuchado a muchas historias sobre sus viajes a Montreal. Un día - cinco películas. regresa a casa. Duerme un par de horas. Viaja  de nuevo- ve otras cinco. Buckeye casi siempre va solo. ¿Quién podría mantener  un programa así como ese?

"Vale la pena," nos dice. "¿De qué otra manera se pueden  ver éstas películas? La mayoría de las cuales se estrenan por primera vez y muchas  dellas no encontrarán distribución. Son películas que llegan aquí desde todas partes del mundo. Cinema de clase mundial. Películas que iría a ver en su país de origen si pudiera. ¿Pero quién tiene el dinero para eso, o el tiempo? "

Yo sé lo que quiere decir. Pero aún así, no estoy recibiendo el deja vu que Lillian tiene. La historia resulta familiar. República Dominicana, tres hermanas asesinadas, y Rafael Trujillo. Pero los colores son incorrectos, la iluminación demasiado brillante.  La técnica es de alta calidad, pero la actuación es de plomo,  chapucero. Se le puede ver a los actores anticipando la proxima línea. Los que están en la escena sin nada que hacer baten sus cejas, fijan sus corbatas, cambian su peso de un pie al otro.

“Mariposa, dice Lillian. Las Mariposas.”

"¿Qué?" Le pido, con la boca pegada a su oido.

"No es déjà vu," dice. "Esta película lleva el mismo tema de otra  que vimos hacen  años atras, Se titula  Las Mariposas, la historia de las hermanas Mirabal.”

"¡Tienes razón!" Le digo. "Vamos a hablar sobre eso en el lobby cuando la película se termine.”

En realidad me gustaría hablar ahora. Esta película es una tortura, cómo estar atrapado bajo la dictadura de Trujillo. Estamos atrapados. Como siempre no sentamos frente y al centro bien cerca a la pantalla. Con tanta gente alrededor, salir ahora haría un alboroto espantoso.

"¿Te quieres ir?" Le susurro a Lillian.

“No. Quiero ver los bonitos trajes de la epoca que llevan las hermanas.”

¿Qué será lo que separa la buena calidad de la mala en una presentación? No es siempre tener mucha experiencia, ya que algunos actores, los mejores, lo tienen desde el principio. Es evidente que se trata de una cuestión de expresividad. La capacidad  de iluminar á la pantalla.  Una presencia que llame la atención, la abilidad de encarnar al personaje. Es algo sútil, ya que todos los protagonistas no pueden ser personas impresionantes. Pero  cuando el actor rinde una interpretacion crédula, le trae vida al papel, es una maravilla. No se les puede quitar la vista. La única verdadera actríz en esta película, es Michelle Rodriguez en el papel de Minerva Maribal. Ha trabajado mucho en television. Fue una de los protagonistas de Lost, y más recientemente hizo el papel de un detective en una serie policiáca.  Ella sí es brutal. Tiene carácter. Le creo.

Lamentablemente no se les puede creer á  ninguno de los otros: sus hermanas, su esposo, su compatriotas. Incluso Trujillo quien da un parecido a un marioneta de madera. Un muñeco de vudú. En realidad se parece a los muertos vivientes. Pálido, sus labios casi azules, suena como el muñeco de un ventrilocuo. Alguien los esta controlando. Su voz viene de la derecha del escenario. !Me está matando!

La película que vi antes de ésta, una maravillosa primera película del joven brasileño director, Exmir Fihlo, titulada Los Famosos y Los Duendes de la Muerte, fue estupenda. Los actores eran aún más joven quel mismo director. Eran niños de escuela secundaria, en busca del  sentido á la vida, mientras esperaban un concierto de Bob Dylan que venga a su pueblo. Mentiras. Es decir que esa fue la fantasía que jugaban en  mayor parte  a través de Facebook, Flickr, YouTube y el mensajería instante. Esta película manifiesta una realidad en absoluto y a la misma vez un sentido de sueño. Escenas asombrantes en su belleza entre un niño y su madre, contra-iluminada en un chiaroscuro profundo. Otras escenas, al aire libre sobre un puente de ferrocarril, donde mucha de la historia toma lugar, o en las calles de Río Grande do Sul, envueltas en una niebla omnipresente. Al principio hay una escena donde el niño, al salir de casa  camina por la calle, alejandose de la cámara, y se desaparece en la niebla. Esto corresponde al fínde la película cuando lo vemos en el puente. La escena se toma desde lejos con lente telefotográfico produciendo un punto de vista con enfoque llano y cercano.

Todo al fondo está sin definición. A medida que se aleja comienza a desintegrarse. Se convierte en un borrón y desaparece, integrandose con el  fondo. Fue estupendo. Se pudiera haber terminado la película ahi…nada más.

Otra película brasileña, bellísima,  Antonio das Mortes, cinema novo de Glauba Rocha,  recipiente del premio  Cannes, con el brillante cinematógrafo Affonso Beato en el 1969, fue llena de actuaciones fenóminas.

Una película impecable, que vimos el martes o el miércoles, se me olvida cual.  Carlos Gaviria, Colombiano, cuyo realista dramatización en Retratos en un Mar de Mentiras cuenta la historia de una niña y su primo que toman  un viaje épico por auto desde Bogotá a Cartagena, á la mar. Otro instante de actuación inspirado, magistral filmación y edición y una grande  historia.

 Ayer vimos una película extraordinária, Joel está Imposible por el director puertorriqueño William Rosario Cruz. Fabricado de bajo presupuesto, la película  adhiere a la Dogma95 y movimientos Mumblecore, abogando por una nueva tradición de "cine imperfecto". No importa,  para nosotros sí fue perfecta.

Otras obras que vimos incluyen: Año Bisiesto de México, tambien de presupuesto bajo. Desgraciadamente sufrió por ser proyectado desde el DVD. Resultó aguada y difusa cuando debería haber lucído brillante y nítida. Sin embargo se trataba de una buena historia.de narración emocionante. Carrancho, de la Argentina, es un excelente crimen-drama. Pero desafortunadamente esta también fue demostrado en DVD. El imagen fue aplastado, fuera de proporción y la proyección  de bajo contraste, aunque la película fue filmada en contraste muy alto, sobre todo se nota en las escenas nocturnas. Protagonizada por Ricardo Darío, un actor dominante, mejor conocído por su destacada presentación en Nueve Reinas. Vimos un poco de Celda 211 de España. Sólo los últimos diez minutos pero suficiente para lamentar no haberla visto toda. Otra  noche vimos Chugyeogja (El cazador), otra historia de cine negro, hecho en Corea del Sur en 2009 por el director Hong-jin Na. Basado en una historia real de un asesino en serie psicópata, esta es una película brutalmente realista con actores y acciones aunque   quieras taparse los ojos no se pueden dejar de ver. Excepto quizás en los momentos más terribles, como hizo Lillian. Hubo una serie de otras películas que queríamos ver, pero como he dicho, no  podemos aquantar tanto como Buckeye.

Por el momento, estamos rogando que alguien acábe con el muñeco-monstruo, Trujillo, para poder salir de aquí. Tenemos una hora de viaje para regresar a nuestra finca, y necesitámos dormir. Mañana es otro día, el último día, , y queremos estar descansado para la proyección del clásico de 1961  película puertorriqueña,  Palmer ha Muerto, dirigída por Juan Fortuny y protagonizada por Inés Alma, Ricardio Palmerola, Onix Baez y Rosita Fornes.

"Parece que están a punto de organizar una resistencia liderada por las tres hermanas," dice Lillian  en voz baja.

"Gracias a Dios.  Quizas estamos al fin.”

“No te lo creas,” susurra Lillian.

Jan Galligan - cronologista, artista de fotos y Lillian Mulero - artista,
flaneur, recientemente ubicados desde Albany, NY a Santa Olaya, P.R.

SIGUIENTE: Affonso Beato en el diseño y ejecución de dos películas: Antonio das Mortes y
The Social Network (la Red Social)

 
Published 01-26-11
CLARIDAD, En Rojo

WHY I GO TO THE MOVIES WITH LILLIAN: 03
interview with Carlos Gaviria

[ENGLISH VERSION:]

10 Months, 23 Festivals, 20 Prizes:
Travelling the world with Retratos en un Mar de Mentiras 

“Are these seats taken?” Lillian asks the handsome, bearded man sitting by himself at the front of the theater. We are attending our first art/cultural event since moving to the island and Lillian had a difficult time deciding what to wear. Thanks to Nereida de la Torre, publicity director for the San Juan International Film Festival, we’re invited to the grand apertura including a party after the screening. Lillian finally decided on her black and white dress, although it is a bit descotado (revealing). As I slide into my seat she is in a conversation, quickly learning that he, Carlos Gaviria, is a film director from Bogota, Columbia and arrived in San Juan from Montreal just two hours ago. He will present his film later in the week.

The lights go down and we settle back to watch the movie. When the film ends the three of us make our way to the party and are quickly introduced to many other guests. Over the next ten days we join Gaviria for screenings, lunches and events including a workshop on cinematography led by Affonso Beato. On the final day of the festival, Gaviria must to fly to Mumbai to present his film at the World Cinema Festival. While waiting for his taxi to the airport, he gives us the opportunity to record an interview. Unfortunately he will leave before learning that his film has won the Premio de Ricardo Alegria here in San Juan.

Jan Galligan: Before you came to the festival in San Juan you were in Bogota, Berlin, Cartagena, New York, Montreal, Vancouver and Lima.  Which festival was the breakthrough for you?

Carlos Gaviria: Berlin. In Feb 2010 my film was shown in the section Generations: 17 plus. Being in that festival and the reception that the film received has taken us to many other festivals, including this one in San Juan.

JG: Your film falls into the category of road movies. Did any other road movie influence your film?

CG: A film that is not a road movie but which had a significant influence on my film is "Midnight Cowboy." Waldo Salt the writer of that film was my teacher at NYU when I was studying filmmaking 1983 to 1986.

JG: Did other people that you studied with go on to play a major part in the film industry?

CG: Do you know the Argentine director Juan Jose Campanella?

Lillian Mulero: Didn’t he direct El Hijo de la Novia?

CG: Yes. His most recent film, El Secreto de sus Ojos won an Academy Award in Hollywood. We were students together at NYU.

JG: Were there other latin american students in that film program?

CG: Several. Actually there were even several from Columbia. Edgar Gil, cinematographer for Retratos, as well as another friend who was a year behind me. What happened was the Columbian government gave several scholarships to people who wanted to study filmmaking, through the government's Office of Film. They were interested in supporting and promoting filmmaking in our country.

JG: Do you feel that film schools in the US were important to latin america cinema?

CG: At that time, studying film at home was very difficult and expensive and access to those schools and high quality equipment had an positive effect on the students. The teachers were very good, and the programs were good too. However, now everything has changed. You can learn film with an HD video camera that costs a couple of thousand dollars. I'm not saying that studying film is not important, but school is not as important now I think, as it was at that time for a young person to start making films. And in latin america there are now several film schools that are very good.

LM: So you think a young person in Bogota interested in filmmaking could stay in Columbia and do well there?

CG: Yes, there are a number of schools available in latin america. Cuba has a very good school. I think it is called San Antonio de los Banos. Garcia Marquez teaches there. He worked there with Hilda Hidalgo the young director of El Amor y Otros Demonios. Marquez was giving a seminar and she was a student - and somehow she convinced him to let her shoot her movie based on his novel.

JG: For some time I've had the impression that latin films are not as well recognized or received in the US as films from France, Germany, Italy or even Spain.

CG: The reception of latin film has gone up and down in history. Mexico had in the 40s and 50s what is called the golden age of Mexican cinema with wonderful films and a powerful film industry. Then by the 70s, it was fading; it went away. Brazil had a period of exciting film production called cinema novo in the 60s, that was finished when the military came to power. Glauber Rocha's Antonio das Mortes is from that time. And now, the Mexican film industry is reviving. Brazil has many very good films. Columbia is doing very well, and Argentina. In addition, there are many people from Mexico's film industry working in the US. Garcia Marquez's son Rodrigo, recently made an incredible film called Mother and Child. It's very beautiful and very powerful.

JG: Turning to your film specifically, something I noticed was the presence of a character in Retratos who was literally dead, yet he is depicted as if he were alive. Reanimated as the living-dead. Does that image have a latin american origin?

CG: In my case the use of the dead person is connected to the post traumatic disorder that affects people who have been in war, and here is experienced by the young girl, who is living in a world that is suspended. The idea of the dead people in my film has a lot to do with that, more than anything else. It doesn't come from an aesthetic imperative. I needed something to show that many people were killed in her town and that it wasn't only her family who were killed. When she sees the dead, what she's doing is remembering, because she lost her memory of that time.

LM: She's remembering and projecting at the same time.

CG: Exactly. She goes to a little store and remembers the way it was before, and suddenly sees the owner, dead. The important thing is for her to remember that she saw him when he was dead, with the blood and all that. Now the only thing that is different is that she sees him alive, even though he's dead.

JG: For me, that image seems particularly latin...

CG: Actually a lot of people have talked about that. The magic realism influence, and all that, but in my case it comes from a different sensitivity. Maybe because I've seen so many latin american films, the use of that image came naturally.

LM: What has been your experience here at the San Juan International Film Festival, so far?

CG: I'm having a great time here, the films are very good, everybody is really friendly. This is my second time in Puerto Rico. I was here before, working on a commercial film for a US production company. I had a great time then. All my crew was puertoriccan. We worked together very well and I made many good friends here. I was lucky enough to meet up with some of them the other day.

LM: What is your favorite thing about puertoriccan culture?

CG: The music.

Since San Juan, Gaviria has presented his film in a number of other festivals including Valladolid, Amiens, Geneva, Zurich, and most recently Kerala. Over the past ten months,  Retratos en un Mar de Mentiras has won 16 prizes in international festivals and four prizes in national festivals, including 11 for best picture.

============

[spanish version]

10 Meses, 23 festivales, 20 Premios: Viajando por el mundo con "Retratos en un mar de mentiras"

por Jan Galligan y Lillian Mulero/Especial para En Rojo

Las luces se apagan y nos dirigimos a ver Retratos en un mar de mentiras del realizador colombiano, Carlos Gaviria. Cuando termina la proyección Lillian y yo caminamos juntos hasta la fiesta donde nos presentan muchos de los otros invitados del Festival de Cine Internacional de San Juan. Durante los próximos diez días nos unimos a Gaviria para proyecciones, comidas y eventos que incluían un taller de cinematografía dirigido por Affonso Beato. En el último día del festival, Gaviria tiene que viajar a Mumbai para presentar su película en el Festival de Cine Mundial. En lo que esperaba su taxi al aeropuerto, aprovechamos para grabar esta entrevista.

CG: Una película que no es un “road movie,” pero que tuvo una influencia significativa para mi fue Midnight Cowboy. Waldo Salt el escritor de esa película fue mi maestro en NYU cuando estudiaba cine en el 1983 hasta el 1986.

CG: ¿Conoce al director argentino Juan José Campanella?

CG: En ese tiempo el estudiar cine en Colombia era muy difícil y costoso y el obtener acceso a las escuelas de los E.U.A con sus equipos de alta calidad tuvo un efecto positivo en los estudiantes latinoamericanos. Los profesores fueron muy buenos, y los programas eran buenos también. Sin embargo, ahora todo ha cambiado. Usted puede aprender cine con una cámara de vídeo HD que cuesta un par de miles de dólares. No estoy diciendo que el estudio de cine no es importante, pero la escuela no es tan importante ahora como lo era antes para un joven empezar a hacer películas. Y en América Latina en la actualidad hay varias escuelas de cine que son muy buenas.

La recepción del cine latino ha subido y bajado durante la historia del cine. México tuvo en los años 40 y 50 lo que se llama la edad de oro del cine mexicano con películas maravillosas y una industria de cine de gran alcance. Luego en los años 70, se estaba desvaneciendo hasta desaparecerse casi por completo. Brasil tuvo un período exitoso de producción de películas en los años 60 llamado cinema novo, pero todo se acabó cuando los militares llegaron al poder. El Antonio das Mortes de Glauber Rocha es una de esa época. Y ahora la industria del cine mexicano está reviviendo. Brasil tiene muchas películas muy buenas. Colombia está haciendo muy bien, y Argentina. Además, hay mucha gente de la industria de México que trabajan en los E.U.A El hijo de Gabriel García Márquez, Rodrigo, recientemente realizó una película increíble llamada Mother and Child. Es muy bella y muy potente.

CG: En mi caso el uso de la persona fallecida está conectada con el trastorno postraumático que afecta a las personas que han estado en guerra, y aquí es experimentado por la joven, que vive en un mundo en que ha sido suspendida. La idea de los muertos en mi película tiene mucho que ver con eso, más que cualquier otra cosa. No viene de un imperativo estético. Necesitaba algo para mostrar que muchas personas perdieron la vida en su pueblo y que no era sólo su familia que fueron asesinados. Cuando ve a los muertos, lo que está haciendo es recordar, porque había perdido su memoria de ese tiempo.

El autor es cronologista, artista de fotos y la autora es artista, flaneur, reubicados de Albany, NY a Santa Olaya, P.R.

We are pleased to report that our second article, based on our experiences at the San Juan International Film Festival has been published this week in the en Rojo suppliment of CLARIDAD. If you don't have easy access to the print version you can find it online here...

WHY I GO TO THE MOVIES, WITH LILLIAN 02:
Affonso Beato sobre el diseno y la ejecucion dos peliculas
Jan Galligan y Lillian Mulero / Especial para En Rojo  

Our first article about the San Juan International Film Festival was published in the cultural suppliment of Claridad in the en Rojo cultural section, as part of a special issue called "ELLAS" dedicated to Las Mariposas, the sisters murdered by the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.

WHY I GO TO THE MOVIES, WITH LILLIAN 01:
We been here before!

SPANISH AND ENGLISH

We are privileged to be accompanying another review article of the film festival by Maria Cristina Rodriguez, critica de cine para en Rojo.

75GRAND/SUR

Jan Galligan y Lillian Mulero
correspondentes cultural
Santa Olaya, PR

El autor es cronologista y artista de fotos
La autora es artista y flaneur
Ellos recientemente ubicados desde Albany, NY a Santa Olaya, P.R.

Carlos Gaviria of Columbia - director of "Retratos en un mar de mentiras" - wins the festival's grand prize: PREMIO RICARDO ALEGRIA. Story from the Puerto Rico Daily Sun.

Closing night of the FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL DE CINE DE SAN JUAN DE PUERTO RICO.

20 octubre 2010
from Facebook:

NOCHE PASADO
The closing night of the festival was quite enjoyable for Lillian and me. We saw two films: "Palmer ha Muerte," Puerto Rico 1952,  an amusing film noir crime drama with: the walking dead, Cine Metro, UPR Theater, the Condado and more than a couple of Rambler Americans. Our final film of the festival was "Un Dia en El Bulli" Ferran Adria's self produced look inside his world-famous restaurant in Spain. Having dreamed of going there, this was the next best thing. Or better, except for the inability to taste the food we were watching. As is usually the case the film was a bit over-the-top in terms of heroic music, sunsets, etc. but Adria and his brother Albert, who directed the film, have a sense of humor about themselves and their project. The film is a testament to the ability of "anyone" to make a film using digital technology. I would say however that "Joel esta Imposible" and the Brazilian film "Los Famosos y los Duendes de la Muerte" are true testaments of the ability of talented filmmakers to employ digital technologies to make superior quality films on a very low budget. It is the birth of a new "cinema novo" maybe "cinenuevo" for the 21st century.

DATE: TBA

[Fecha que se anunciará]

AFFONSO BEATO

el maestro de
cinematografia

PICTURES:

[left photo - ed., left; Carlos Gaviria, right - photo by J. Galligan]
CARLOS GAVIRIA
director / scriptwriter

[right photo - Victor Cruz Cruz, left; Carlos Gaviria, right - photo by Victor Cruz Cruz]
VICTOR CRUZ CRUZ
key grip / gaffer

lives and works / LA,CA

WORKSHOP WITH AFFONSO BEATO - SATURDAY 2PM | PJ GAFFERS, BAYAMON, PR