A man attempting to commit suicide, equipped with a rope and dumbbell for weight training, meets a young woman on a bridge. Although, she had come there with the same intention, she ends up convincing him that there is sense in living and that it isn't necessary to think about death just yet. Made even more nervous by her mediations, the man finishes his preparations and jumps. However, the dumbbell, which was to serve as a weight, gets caught in the bridge guard-rail, leaving the man helplessly dangling a few metres above the water. With the help of two passers-by, the woman pulls him up. As the young couple is leaving commenting that they'd never seen such hopeless bungee jumping before, the "suicidal" pair experience a catharsis as they burst out laughing. This release of tension on the bridge as well as in the audience is very convincing. Nevertheless, in the last shot as we watch the woman leaving, we can hear the sound of a splash - this time definitive.

The film Rollercoaster (Achterbahn) by Frank Wegerhoff, which was awarded a bronze medal in the independent professional (IP) category, is described above in such detail deliberately. There were only a handful of other films that inspired such whole-hearted laughter - and it was at that moment when the chilling point of the story was made. I don't think that I was the only one leaving this festival with a feeling of melancholy bordering on depression. To make the point even worse, the film collection was made up of work by young filmmakers from all over the world! They didn't give that impression at the social events or in the lobby during breaks. Perhaps it is not they who are really like that, but the globalized world. Most of the other films of the festival also lacked a cheerful note. The darkened screening hall of Bretislav Bakala exuded mainly heaviness, pain and sadness. (This seemed to coincide with this year's change in graphic design; the traditional cheerful yellow-green hues were replaced with black and red accents!)

Another comical exception was Jakub Kořínek's film AN.A in the category for students of film schools (S) - a decently made work parodying the style of tele-shopping commercials. Its effect was unfortunately watered down by the extensive playing with style, the small frequency of humour and the absence of a point. Nevertheless, the jury - evidently overwhelmed by anxiety - awarded this piece with a special prize for humour. A special prize for concept was given to the slightly problematic, although only prize-winning film from the Singapore school collection this year - Fonzi (directed by Kirsten Tan).

Conversely, I was very pleased with the awarding of a special prize for originality to the excellent Russian film Fugue, which had already obtained a prize at the festival in Oberhausen. Already last year, the filmmaking team of Galina Myznikova and Sergey Prochorov surprised the audience with their praiseworthy experimental work Three Sisters, their unique style being truly distinctive and original. With long shots and a slow tempo, I was somewhat reminded of the famous Tarkovsky disciple Alexander Sokurov. The over-extended pauses between action and reaction are known as his "emptiness", evoking the transcendental time of a work (as in the oriental philosophical category "mu", applied in the films of Ozu and Mizoguchi, for example; "it is the emptiness that gives purpose to the preceding action", explains Richie). I certainly value the film Fugue as more than a bronze, as for instance Martin Láník's unremarkable Episode VIII. The same medal was given in the amateur (A) category to Václav Hrzina for Mud (Bláto) - this year's winner of the first prize Czech Little Lion, and which was written about earlier here. Another film in the IP category, which was given two bronze medals for filmically and skilfully depicting a short - or more specifically, an interesting opening to a situation, rather than a story. I've already written about Rollercoaster in the introduction. There was another film from Germany - by Jan Thüring called Three Travellers (Drei Reisende), which used a somewhat bizarre situation as a basis: a coincidental meeting in the compartment of a train between a blind girl, a mute musician and an insolent conman who tries to take advantage of their disabilities to rob them. The filmmaker imaginatively escalates the situation with constantly new peripetia devices. The film personally delighted me not so much for the way the scoundrel was incriminated, but more for the guitar motif that underscored the personal sympathies between the blind woman and the mute man. The happy ending is a little too sweetly sentimental; however, in light of the above-mentioned sombre atmosphere of the whole collection, it was refreshingly welcome.

The bronze medals in the student category were of a completely different variety. Speed Dating by German Gregor Buchkremer depicts a strange catastrophic epidemic, the result of which is that single people are suddenly dying and dating agencies are therefore matching couples a quickly as possible.
Based on the requests of the protagonist, the computer matches him with Denis - a man, to his surprise (incidentally, films with gay themes significantly increased this year). After the initial antipathy, a desirable relationship eventually develops between them; nevertheless, in the end, Denis sacrifices himself and goes off to die, but not before he matches the protagonist with his own beautiful sister. With the exception of this noble gesture, this film did not impress me that much. This was not so much for its bizarre theme, but rather for the particularly fragmented screenplay.

A much tighter and more expressive film is The Vaudevillian by American filmmaker Bryan Nest. A cabaret ventriloquist is let go from his job with his puppet, which is in constant conversation representing his other "self". The vaudevillian travels from village to village trying to earn a living, but ends up sinking lower and lower morally, finally abandoning even the puppet - his partner, his conscience. The appeal to ethics is very strong here.

The jury, lead by successful film director Petr Nikolaev, did not have an easy time. I considered the top twenty or so films to be very close in merit, and in spite of the special prizes and doubling of all the bronze medals, there were still a few high quality films that remained without awards. This is because there is no objective way of measuring this and personal feelings and tastes come into play. I personally enjoyed the film Hearse Driver (Anthony Yan, Hong Kong - S), which despite its title paradoxically was one of the few lighter if not happy films. Since the death of the mother, there is tension between a father and son, who work together as hearse drivers. This tension is intensified when the boy falls in love and the father announces that he will be getting married again. Classically, gradually and with great narrative sensitivity, the film delights especially with its ending where, as we like it, love and reconciliation win out in the end.

Quite a lot sadder is the Turkish-Iranian film by Faysal Soysal, The Dreams of Lost Time. Using a method that is more familiar in amateur productions, the filmmaker created a complex structure about the movement of time, interweaving the identity of the main protagonist, her mother and daughter. Instead of narrating a story, the film thus becomes an engaging meditation full of memories of the mother and the desire to return to childlike innocence. A similar style is used by Zlín student Gabriela Janková in her film Breakfast (Snídaně). The freedom with which she courageously renounces chronology does not in this case serve as meditative remembrance, but in the style of various top notch amateur films, as a way to express the emotions relating to the recent departure of a girl's boyfriend. The metaphors of humbling exposure, helplessness and desolation are no doubt interesting and are evidence of the filmmaker's talent. There are moments, however, that are distracting due to the dissonance between the image and dialogue, and the film would benefit from a slight shortening. The hard impact of fate also affects the protagonists of the professional Spanish film Down the Hole (En el Hoyo) by David Martín de los Santos. In contrast to the above-mentioned mosaic of associations, the filmmaker works with terse reality focusing on two motorcyclists that have just crashed and are unable to move - innocent victims of fateful coincidence. This microscopic concentration on such a hopeless situation also aggressively multiplies the resulting feeling of depression.

From the perspective of editing, it would be appropriate to mention two more films. Xanax (by Zeng Zih Jun of Taiwan - IP), which presents us with the fictional case report of a psychiatrist treating a young man with deviations caused by the child abuse tyrannies of an alcoholic father. The side-effects of the medication - being taken for suicidal tendencies - are as yet unknown. The conceived tension of the images, discontinuity of narration, fast PD to VD editing, and foreshadowing of the presumed tragic ending are well supported by the suggestiveness of this "documentary" account. The German film The Pub (Die Kneipe) by students Gabriel Gauchet and Andrzej Król is then a not even ten-minute long rapid montage of close-ups creating an objective dynamic depiction of an obscure locale as well as an expressive subjective feeling gradually leading up to the disgust of drunkenness. Let's get back to the prize-winning films.

The silver medal in the amateur category was won by German director Simon Bütner for the film Henri Orange. The fact that a frustrated protagonist who is sick of his life is cured by love at first sight is not such a ground-breaking theme. What is unusual and appealing is his occupation: he laughs professionally to get the studio audience reacting for the laugh track that is added to sit-coms. The repertoire of his laughs is unbelievably varied. The female protagonist succumbed to charms as did the B16 audience and even the international student jury, which awarded the film its grand prize - the Little Head Full of Films.

The silver medal in the student category went to Slovak filmmaker Mariana Čengel-Solčanská, who last year was awarded the Cultural Centre Director's Prize for her film Monštrancia. Her film Abel's Black Dog (Ábelov čierny pes) is set in a Czech village in the Banat region. The suggestive authenticity of the environment and the tough crudeness of the relationships reminded me a little of the excellent (and unappreciated by overly commercialized Czech critics) debut feature film by Marta Nováková called Marta. It is not only the old-time atmosphere of the village environment, but also thanks to the precise detailing of the characters (from "film star" Pavel Liška to less known actors and non-actors) that in the end an excellent gradating story evolves from the comical situation of a grave-keeper, who pretends to have bought a vicious dog, to the tragic victory of vulgar aggression - which leads to the hero's suicide. In contrast to the harsh reality of village aggression, there is the gentle and emotional immersion into the soul of a young woman in the German film No One Loves You Like I Do (Niemand liebt dich so wie ich) made by Italian-native film professional Luca Zamai. Shortly after the death of her mother, a young woman visits her childhood home and remembers with sadness her own departure from home and her mother's embrace.

A completely different if not unique family situation by today's standards is presented by another Slovak film student Marta Ferencová in her work Closer (V tesnej blízkosti). The well thought out screenplay, excellent acting (M. Vančurová, M. Lasica and Z. Fialová) and mature filmmaking brought about the creation of what may be the most humanistic and spiritual message of the whole festival: people who love each other visit each other after death. Without hesitation, I would place this film among the silver if not gold winning films. According to the list of winning films, it was the recipient of the valuable Petr Hvižď Prize.

In regards to the decisions of the jury, I am traditionally quite critical; however, this year, with the exception of about two or three works, the jury's decisions generally corresponded with my tastes. There was absolute agreement on the top four films. In the amateur category, it was the seemingly inconspicuous but very humane film Unsellable Goods (Ladenhüter) by Felix Stienz of Germany. (By the way, have you noticed how frequent German filmmakers are among the winners? A total of seven awards is testimony to this unrivalled collection; the distant Singapore collection - which last year had the filmmakers take home two medals and a prize for best collection - this year received only one special mention for concept for the film Fonzi.) Stienz's short is about a small shop where practically nothing is happening or being sold, yet somehow an ambiance of congenial solidarity is created, not only entertaining us but exuding an intimate feeling of joy from the comfortable environment of cozy servitude. The second gold medal film - Vika (by Israel film school student Tsivia Barkai) is thematically in fact a social document about a girl who upon her return from boarding school finds a completely devastated household and drunk mother, who tries to pacify her neglected and crying baby with milk mixed with vodka. This image of base physical and psychological poverty is presented to us with great urgency by the filmmaker. There was also a third genre: the Polish film Streetlight Man (Latarnik) by debuting Mateusz Rakowicz (IP) is actually absurd entertainment. Three friends on their way home from a party in the early morning see a man sitting in a lamp-post. What to do with him? Get involved and help him? Avoid getting involved? Give him a smack in the head? Equally clueless is the police patrol passing by. They can't solve it until the forensic psychologist arrives: he politely asks, then gives an order with the authority of his office. The man climbs down and walks away. This is an excellent micro-study of human temperaments and reactions to an unusual situation!

The Tube with a Hat (Lampa cu căciulă) was directed by Radu Jude of Rumania. Early one morning an eager boy awakens his weary-worn father and they set out on a journey. On road and cross-country, they cumbersomely carry their mysterious load through the bleak countryside - through rain, building make-shift bridges over flooded ditches, helping to jump-start a car they had stopped - until finally they arrive at the repair shop, with a line of people waiting outside. They are bringing their television set, because the boy wants to watch a Bruce Lee film that evening. The television is old - they can't afford a new one - and the needed tube with a hat is not available. The father later manages to somehow get one, so the journey home is somewhat more joyful. Unfortunately, on the way the television falls. At home they discover that it doesn't work again and both of the disheartened travellers decide to open up the television set and give the new tube with a hat a push - and presto - it works, but the Bruce Lee film is long gone and the father and son complacently enjoy at least a boring nature documentary together. This is a very simply, but superbly made film, even if by standards which we've been elevated above long ago. That is to say, it is as if it was about nothing, until we realize that this pilgrimage is an allegory of life: a journey full of struggle, overcoming obstacles, compromises, a little bit of essential good luck - and at the end of the day, the final attainment of the long yearned for ideal.
Of what exactly? Of a television delusion?

In Jilemnice on 17 November 2007 Josef Valušiak
Donašeč dobrých filmových zpráv 4/2007

When looking at the winning films of the 48th Brno Sixteen International Fiction Film Festival, held October 17 to 21, 2007, it is easy to get the impression that those truly praiseworthy films which would not have even been successful at some preceding festivals were not many at this festival. The grand prize was awarded to Romanian director Radu Jude for The Tube with a Hat (Lampa cu caciula), which had already gained laurels in Venice, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Bilbao. The grand prize in the independent professional category was awarded to another worthy film called Streetlight Man (Latarnik) by director Mateusz Rakowicz. Awarding films acclaimed at other festivals must be taken quite separately. Assessing the overall quality of the competition in this way could be disdainful and one-sided. Nevertheless, the multiple positive responses to these films simply affirm the exceptionality of such works and simultaneously demonstrate the Brno Sixteen's reputation in the eyes of foreign filmmakers who submit their work here and at the same time screen in Toronto, Venice or Sundance.

The 81 short fiction films, screened in three categories (amateur, student and independent professional), offered an array of individual and in many cases cinematically imaginative views on a variety of themes. Many of them seemed to resonate despite the fact that the borders of national cinemas traversed several continents. With the diverse forms of love, partnership or general co-existence, including multi-sided marital and non-marital infidelity and sexual relationships between siblings and homosexuals, the Brno Sixteen also included themes related to suicide, self-torment, emotional and physical exploitation, the malicious manipulation of others, even those with very close ties, and drug and alcohol adventures as means to self-discovery.

With the limitations of the short film form, there are naturally some sacrifices made at the expense of having a carefully composed, complete and compact story. For this reason, one of the key principles of the director's work is the ability to use individual abbreviation - resourcefully and spontaneously, rather than conspicuously - to present the backdrop necessary for comprehending motivations, causes and consequences. In addition to the carefully depicted destinies, the festival also offered short studies, situations or candid snapshots which did not dwell on the psychological depth of characters or their transformations, or the variety of repercussions of motives or side plotlines. In order not to confuse the audience, they tried to avoid the erasing of borders between reality and dream, or experimenting within the confines of a particular film conception - as in the sense of working with time and space. Many of these types of film essentially remained mere illustrations of a joke or funny idea, the comic point of the scene being limited by the unity of time, space and action, to a length of 7 to 9 minutes at most. Although abbreviation lends itself much more to experimentation, the inclination to this by filmmakers in the live-action fiction genre was quite sporadic, at least as seen at the Brno Sixteen.

Such exceptions which did innovatively experiment with the possibilities of film time this year included Fugue (by Galina Myzniková and Sergej Provorov), The Wall (Mur by Benjamín d'Aoust) and The Dreams of Lost Time (by Faysal Soysal); each of these used a completely different filmic language. While The Wall and Fugue prompted the integration of film time with projection time, The Dreams of Lost Time captures the fate of an older woman in the context of a single, integrated spacio-temporal whole, presenting a triad of past time-spaces - the childhood of the protagonist, the life of her mother, and intervention from the grandmother. Although moving within the same space, these three women never meet directly; they pass each other like shadows or reflections in a mirror. In contract to this, The Wall depicts nothing more than a boy playing with a ball, whereby the monotonous bouncing marks the façade with grey smudges. There is some kind of internal dialogue between the boy and the wall, evoking tension through its ambiguity - a very strong sense of anticipation. The moment which in another film would promise the start of some kind of action logically for this film remains unresolved. Already screened this year at Oberhausen (see Film a Doba 2/2007, p. 107), the third film, Fugue, unsettles and irritates the audience in a completely different way. This film, about a musical composition performed during a strong wind, completely takes over the audience and their attempt to form a hypothesis about the subsequent development of the story. It rejects all stereotypes of expected behaviour, thereby very provocatively drawing the viewers into their own play and prompting them to quite seriously think about the action carried out on a wave of non-sense poetics.

The Singapore film Fonzi by Kirsten Tan was a conceptually analogously conceived work. Its content could be summarized in one sentence, although this is unfairly oversimplified, as being about searching for oneself during a period of coming of age. The protagonist deals with the search for self-realization through confrontations with her other self, which speaks to her through the television screen, and later even the cinema screen. In this way Fonzi schematizes the concept of the visual media as a monitoring consciousness and simultaneously shows the potential of the surrounding environment as an imaginary world created by one's own thoughts, with adapted constructs for and by the individual. The films Fonzi and the above-mentioned Fugue received honourable mention as formal experiments. On the contrary, the films that were awarded prizes in the basic categories were unconditionally based on the presumption of a strong storyline.

Among the many winners, Streetlight Man made by Polish independent director Mateusz Rakowicz partially steers away from its orientation, allowing its protagonist to climb up so that he can explore the possibilities of free will between the confines of the law and its imposed limitations. As a very effective "idea with a message", this was one of very few awarded works where it was "enough" just to film a comic cabaret act. Otherwise, as was mentioned earlier, the festival was dominated more or less by narrative introspective films.

The grand prize winning film The Tube with a Hat evoked not only the cheerless quality of the Romanian landscape and the "standard" of living of its inhabitants, their transportation and services, but its several rare and thus stronger moments depicting the relationship between the father and young son - seemingly quarrelsome and discordant, and downright malevolent in some moments of high tension, yet permeated with gentle and conspiratorial humour. In spite of the father's protests, the two of them set off one Sunday in the rain to take their old broken television set to be repaired in the nearest town. The boy really wants to watch a Bruce Lee film that is showing that evening. The father does not want to think about how much a new television set would cost, let alone how they could afford one. This film was especially persuasive for its authenticity above all, as was the case of the winning film of the student section, the Israeli film Vika by Tsivia Barkai. Without the constraint of a sophisticatedly composed storyline (especially common to northern, German or British films - although technically proficient), this film speaks about similar feelings of disappointment and helplessness. A diffident look of the protagonist, a girl of almost 12 years, at the disordered life of her collapsing mother leads to a liberating and brave act - the abduction of a small sibling to beyond the reach of the broken-down mother. Returning home for a few days from boarding school, Vika observes without reproach, but mere quiet disagreement how her mother consoles the younger sibling with milk that has been mixed with vodka - the mother's own daily bread. Instead of an idyllic home life, Vika must in this way tolerate the irritated reactions of her mother to her attempt to bring order into the messy house, as well as to any expression of love or tenderness.

Films about the lack of contact between parents and children were many in this year's Brno Sixteen collection, especially those related to material rather than emotional issues. The topic of career-burdened couples living in a practically childless world seemed to be one of the key themes especially in the German films. These works reflect the state of a general loneliness that lead to the consequent frustration of the younger and middle generation; the outcome of this well-provided-for but unsatisfying lifestyle results occasionally even in suicide. This is how an unnamed man and woman meet on a bridge in the German film Rollercoaster (Achterbahn by Frank Wegerhoff), incapable of empathetically accepting the story of the other. Through a natural, flowing and witty dialogue, they mutually pass on their worldly wisdom, thus pushing back their suicidal plans to jump from the bridge.

The theme of facing the loss of a loved one and overcoming the trauma was most uniquely addressed by the filmmakers of Before You Hit the Ground (Inn an du slar I marken), Closer (V tesnej blízkosti) and No One Loves You Like I Do (Niemand liebt dich so wie ich). After a sudden death and repeated loss of faith, various characters attempt to come to terms with things in a variety of ways. In the German film No One Loves You Like I Do by Luca Zamai, a young woman walks through the rooms in the apartment of her recently deceased mother, where she recalls various incidents from her difficult childhood. The images of the past materialize into the present - at first sight they are of an orderly household, but gradually we see through the keyholes the concealed exploitation and abuse of an innocent little girl.

On the contrary, in the film of Swedish filmmaker Magnus Holgrem Before You Hit the Ground and the mystification of the film Closer by Slovakian Marta Ference, the characters are on the edge of dream and reality battling with their lost past. Holgrem with his dynamic story searches for the limits and possibilities of dying in one's sleep. Ference has made a well-conceived interlude about an aging married couple and their adult daughters. The director leaves the audience in uncertainty for a long time as to which of the characters are ghosts and which are alive. Due to this, she prompts her audience to constantly re-evaluate whose interpretation at any given moment will be accepted and whose they will be deceived by. If Closer is on the edge of mystification, then another representative of Slovakia at this festival, Mariana Čengel-Solčanská with her bachelor's project Abel's Black Dog (Ábelov čierny pes) interestingly depicts the consequences of an accidental, defensive white lie which causes the entire village to turn against the protagonist, including his love. Set in the landscape of the Czech-Romanian Banat region, the film uses all the local color and character of country life there and unravels a story about the defamation of people. A funny little story about a big black dog that Ábel invents so as to protect the cemetery, which he takes care of, quickly transforms through the exaggerated imagination of the villages into a pretext for attacking Ábel and blackmailing him. This light comedy suddenly becomes a psychological drama about an individual being persecuted by a crazed horde.

The situation of a person governed by the regulations of a system is portrayed in the allegorical slapstick comedy Speed Dating by Gregor Buchkremer, whereby an exaggerated situation arises from a state of crisis in German society. It involves the inescapable social convention of having a partner in life and being married. In a dynamic and comical way, the film more effectively and inwardly, often using exaggerated psychological scenes, focuses our attention on the problem of high divorce rates in Germany and the unwillingness of young couples to have children.

The aspiration of amateur filmmakers to compete at the Brno Sixteen was not so much to draw attention through a unique formal creative work, but rather to depict distinctive characters. Attempts at an innovative approach to film as phraseology ended up (with the exception of some of the above-mentioned works like Fugue and Fonzi) in all the sections more as stereotypes, ambitions that went out of dramaturgical control, unaware of their own meaning, let alone able to convey meaning. In this way, the experimental "toothlessness" of the competition submissions allowed the uncompromising, simple-hearted, thumb-nail sketched characters to stand out from their often specific rituals, like for example in the German film Unsellable Goods (Ladenhuter by Felix Stienz) about the owner of a small tobacco shop and his regular customers. There was also the Czech film Mud (Bláto by Václav Hrzina), about a fifty-something married couple, and the French work Henri Orange by Simon Büttner), where the protagonist is a man who earns his living by laughing for the soundtrack of sit-coms.

Films screened at festivals like the Brno Sixteen undoubtedly present a significant alternative to mainstream production and for the filmmakers themselves they can to a certain extent serve as a kind of inspirational creative workshop, a platform for dialogue and feedback, which the short film form often lacks. Although many of the works can be considered miniatures referring to trends of the contemporary independent film scene, the opportunity of having a wider audience will be possible for only a few of these. If we disregard the occasional made-for-television programs, we can say that in respect to the overall quality of the collection presented by this year's Brno Sixteen, it is a pity that cinemas have all but abandoned the tradition of screening shorts before feature films.

LUCIE ČESÁLKOVÁ in Film a doba 4/2007