Feature: Festival Diary, Entry #1: MIFF, the Certified Copy
Every cinephile is excited by the prospect of a film festival, whether it is Cannes, Venice, Rotterdam or the Kino OTOK festival in Slovenia: the coming together of movie lovers and a diverse group of films is a highlight of the calendar year. The first taste we get of the festival, in any case, is the festival program, the official guide to the event. Reading such a guide is like being a child again, poring over that tantalising showbag lift-out for the Royal Melbourne Show – there’s usually so much to read about and so many exciting films to circle. When the guide was finally released for this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival, I couldn’t wait for the webpage to load (the five seconds it took felt like a small eternity). So imagine my disappointment when the only discussion of the films online (just like in the hardcopy) is a complete reduction – a slight three lines to describe the latest cinematic treasures I have been anxiously waiting to see on the big screen all year.
Almost all major international festivals publish an in-depth program every year, containing insightful discussions of the films screened, critical dossiers on the retrospectives, and penetrating looks at the directors, writers and producers who have created the year’s latest potential masterpieces. MIFF seems to have employed the Kmart approach – i.e., pictures and taglines are the only things necessary to sell a film. Urban Outfitters, my favourite online clothing catalogue, produces a better analysis of its mid-priced fashion than the official MIFF guide does of its films (and their fashion deserves masterful words – the outfits are truly something).
Here is all MIFF has to say about Certified Copy, the newest feature from renowned Iranian filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami – a film which has already aroused many fascinating reactions from critics and commentators:
At the European launch of his latest book, academic author James Miller (operatic baritone William Shimell) meets his match in a passionate art curator (Juliette Binoche) who engages him in a battle of the sexes. Romanticism clashes with pragmatism as they set out on the road and are mistaken as a married couple – a role they play a little too well…
Filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (a guest of MIFF in 2003) returns from the depths of his poetry and experimental films to present his first narrative feature in years. At first glance Certified Copy has the appearance of a sun-drenched romantic comedy, but – as with all Kiarostami films – something deeper lurks just below the surface.
Juliette Binoche was awarded Best Actress at this year’s Cannes film festival for her performance in Certified Copy.
Just so you know, that’s 132 words. The ridiculous punchline, “something deeper lurks just below the surface,” is obviously intended to sell tickets, rather than further any intellectual discussion. Every year, the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain publishes up to six books centred on the programs and retrospectives of the festival, so does Jeonju in Korea, and Bobigny in France. These are the progressive festivals – ones unlike MIFF that do not bother to constantly reinforce the so-called ‘culture’ of their festival. Rather, they create it. MIFF may have begun to assist in the production of a couple of Australian films, but the other few hundred from around the world that they screen seem to be a rather pathetic attempt at mimicking the forward-thinking people of the international festival circuit. Instead of the wonderful insight to be found in the program of the Bologna Cinema Ritrovato, for example, we have a choc top and popcorn fighting over which film ‘wins’.
Here in Melbourne (as I am constantly reminded by those from interstate) we are the ‘culture capital’, the city which produces the best intellectuals, artists and filmmakers in the country. If MIFF and their guide is anything to go by, this is a bogus concept. Here, for example, is what MIFF wrote about L.A. Zombie (the film now banned by the OFLC):
Zombies don’t often come as fully-ripped as porn star François Sagat – except in Bruce LaBruce’s L.A. Zombie. Our anti-hero is convinced he’s an alien zombie sent to earth, where he roams the streets of Los Angeles in search of dead bodies and gay sex – an activity that reveals his ‘special gift’ of shagging the deceased back to life.
Conceived as a more hardcore companion piece to Otto, and featuring minimal dialogue but maximum soundtrack, L.A. Zombieraises the stakes with LaBruce’s infamous ‘schlock’ tactics – promising plenty of wound-shagging and more penises than you can shake a stick at.
Contains scenes that will offend
I love exploitation cinema and I hate to see a great film banned, but perhaps if MIFF had attempted to engage in a critical discussion of this film, it might have avoided the censor’s chop. Films can’t always speak for themselves; those who engage in an intellectual discussion of their meaning create understanding. MIFF and its horrifying guide seem to prove this event is just a poor copy of those great festivals that actually do something for cinema. MIFF’s programming is not terribly unique – there is very little screened which has not already unspooled at previous festivals. Instead of what it purports to be, an international cultural icon, MIFF is instead just another money-making machine – as their own website states, it simply delivers $8.6 million into the local economy. A certified copy, indeed.
jessie
24/07/10 - 4:15 PM
I think it’s good to criticize, and have high standards, but to be honest I think this is naive. MIFF is not a big, money making festival. It’s not a major festival on a world scale either, but they have worked hard to forge relationships with other festivals and bring a lot of cinema here that otherwise wouldn’t make it to our shores. They have a tiny paid staff who work their backs off to get a huge program over the line. They have a large unpaid or transient staff without whom the task would be literally impossible. We have many truly underground and progressive screen culture events going on in Melbourne all the time- but they have even more miniscule budgets and audiences to match. I think what you expect is unrealistic for this festival- the more mainstream content (and audiences that come to see it) leverage the more interesting programming.
And just so you know, Urban Outfitters is a large chain store in America who rip off and commodify the work of small independent designers, manufacturing their watered down products in sweat shops in China, so they can sell it cheap in malls. You may want to spend your hard earned coin elsewhere…
Alifeleti Brown
24/07/10 - 5:20 PM
(Jessie chimed in as I was preparing my comment below. I also wanted to further discuss Lauren’s criticisms of MIFF’s status as a film-festival. I edited this out of my comment below after I read Lauren’s comment but after I thought, I might as well offer up what I had written.)
I imagine the other festivals you discussed are all very much larger – in terms of attendance and budget – than MIFF. A lot of them are pioneers and mainstays of the festival circuit, with enormous reputations earned over several decades of activity, which garner massive international film and culture industry support. Quite simply we’re not on par with Cannes, Rotterdam, Venice, Tokyo or even Toronto in terms of population, international prestige, cultural sophistication or industry support.
While MIFF is not large enough to be progressive in the sense you ascribe to these other festivals, I think it serves us extremely well here in Melbourne. MIFF consistently manages to bring an important array of new and restored films all the way down to our relatively isolated “cultural” city. In my experience of the festival over the past few years I think the programmers have generally done an excellent job of providing a discerning and eclectic array of films that appeal to all kinds of specifically Melbournian audiences. It certainly isn’t anything like, say, Tropfest.
Also, all film festivals are money-spinners for their cities, and publicity-spinners for their films. It is probably impossible to really separate the production, circulation and appreciation of cinema from the money, marketing, politicisation, and populist promotion of cinema.
Alifeleti Brown
24/07/10 - 4:45 PM
I actually don’t mind that MIFF uses a punchy style of descriptive short-hand in its guide to generate interest in the films it screens. I think it’s quite likely that most people who attend MIFF choose to see films on the basis of their subject matter, rather than their specifically cinematic formal, critical, industrial or historical aspects (even though these things are of course inseparable from, and key to, the presentation of cinematic subject matter). Most people understand and appreciate films, and parts of films (characters, subjects, cinematography), without necessarily appreciating how films work or how they’re constructed or where they come from (the esoteric stuff that interests buffs, critics, academics, historians, film-makers etc). While it would be nice to see more official in-depth publications covering festival content, I have the impression that this would be overlooked by most. Basically, if you can get people with little knowledge of film-history or film-art to see a Kiarostami film on the basis of it being a love story with a mysterious twist, then that is a good thing. You can’t beat people over the head in order to get them to appreciate obscure, difficult or unconventional modes of cinema, but you can wink and sweet talk them into it.
That said there is a good case to be made for making available *some* extra literature alongside the programme. Whilst the people who would seriously take an interest in such would constitute a minority of the Melbourne film-festival audience, there would be enough numbers I imagine to justify the extra reading content. Perhaps they could go the way of the Cinematheque and commission new writing, or else compile existing writing on the films screening, given that most of them will only have been in circulation for the past few months or so. I’m sure the organizers at MIFF would be open to this idea. They’ve probably canvassed the idea before. If they made a magazine and charged for it I’d probably be willing to pay, and support the outlay costs and organising efforts on behalf of MIFF.
Brad Nguyen
25/07/10 - 3:10 AM
I think it’s a good point that MIFF does provide an opportunity to see important films each year. And I think the point that MIFF has limited support is an important distinction to make between it and other festivals.
But on the other hand, if MIFF is serious about contributing to film culture, they’d know that discourse surrounding film is as important as the film itself and in their campaigns they have generally tended towards encouraging a fairly hollow appreciation of film. (“It’s a matter of taste” or “Kubrick vs. Apatow” as if that’s really a helpful dialectic).
I’m always excited by the lineup of MIFF, always irritated by the pageantry of MIFF. But what to do? I think Ali’s suggestions are good ones. I hope the MIFF team would consider something like it for next year. And get rid of the fucking annoying choc-top and popcorn mascots.
Alifeleti Brown
25/07/10 - 3:24 PM
Wow. I totes get the “Kubrick vs Apatow” comment now. The pre-screening advertisement featuring Choc-Top and Popcorn facing off is truly awful. For starters, I hate that the ad is so brash and loud! It makes for a really jarring (and probably offensive) prelude to films with sensitive or intellectual subject matter. Also, the humour value is extremely limited. I can already tell it is going to start to grate even upon a second viewing.
I think we should kindly suggest on our MIFF feedback forms (and through our writing) that the festival drops the misguided advertiser that produces these gimmicky ads, with cheesy, narrow-minded concepts, or else set them straight. Personally I’d like to see an ad with true cinematic virtuosity, something quiet but visually stunning that you wouldn’t mind seeing over and over again.
Lauren Bliss
25/07/10 - 12:31 PM
Thanks, Brad. It’s great that we even have MIFF in the first place, but this does not detract from the point at hand.
I recommend everyone google some of the festivals I mentioned that you have not heard of. These are not large festivals by any shape or form. They operate with modest budgets and smallish teams. The difference lies in their dedication and appreciation of film as an art-form, something they recognise to be worthy of criticism and intellectual discussion.
The suggestion that MIFF operates on a budget that is not big enough to support some of the incentives I have suggested is ludicrous and completely naive. The team do not operate out of a shack in the hills! I am not asking for a full blown circus here, only more discussion and publications (something that would generate more income for MIFF). MIFF managed to find money to fund this marketing campaign (Choc Top v Popcorn)and have Jennifer Keyte (a bizarre choice!) support the festival with a video message at the beginning of each film. They make more than enough money from memberships, merchandise and advertising to commission more critical literature on the films from the festival. This sort of thing does not cost the earth.
The suggestion that this festival needs ‘the middle man’ to support it financially is a little strange, given the majority of people who attend are intelligent and artistically minded folk. I do not doubt these people, MIFFs majority, would delight with a more insightful engagement from the festival.
(and surely you all would too, given you attend the festival and are reading Screen Machine – itself a website dedicated to critical discussion).
jessie
26/07/10 - 8:30 AM
It’s an interesting discussion, it’s true. And I was probably being a leeetle defensive, being one of those unpaid workers at MIFF. David Stratton said publicly at an ACMI event earlier in the year that he doesn’t understand why film festivals have become so large- he said when he ran the Sydney Festival they had 50-60 films a year and never lost any money, while festivals now have up to 300 films a year and regularly lose (he may have been referring more to Sydney). He also pointed out that there weren’t neccessarily more good films, so why the huge program?
MIFF has reduced it’s program this year, which I think is an interesting and good move for lots of reasons. I don’t know where they sit with Stratton’s perhaps slightly crotchety and nostalgic comparison, but it’s related to what you are saying.