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Fresh Generation – The New Face of the Competition

After its premiere at the last year’s festival this year’s debut and second films section of the competition sets off to a new clearly defined direction. The Fresh Film Fest was built on the effort to present fresh and progressive films, show as vivid face of the world cinematography as possible and bring to attention those streams of European and world production which only scarcely find their way to the Czech film distribution. With regard to the changing spectrum of foreign festivals there is no more need for the Fresh Film Fest to participate in other Czech festival’s fighting for the few debuts from the “more ambitious” productions that are worth attention. Great talents and progressive personalities can be found in the sphere of genre or spectator-oriented production as well. Of course these categories don’t mean that they include films without ideas or creative input (for that matter even canonical pieces of work by the essential authors of the world cinematography from Kubrick to Truffaut to Kurosawa can be included in these categories). Even though each of this year’s six presented films can be marked with distinctive genre label, they all are characterized by fresh work with patterns, personal view on the existing concepts and fruitful mixture of seemingly irreconcilable influences.

Sauna

Finland, Czech Republic 2008, directed by Antti-Jussi Annila

In 1995 after the end of the war between Russia and Sweden a group is passing through the countryside charged with the task to mark out new frontiers. Two Finnish brothers accompanied by Russian soldiers come across a mysterious village with spectral sauna in the middle of the morass. The characters haunted with their own interior daemons for the atrocities they have done during the war start to sink into their imaginations. The film is composed as a mystical parable. It amalgamates the means of horror films and ghost stories while at the same time it metaphorically elaborates on the philosophical question of guilt and remorse. The screenplay builds on the tradition of sauna which in the Finnish area reaches back to the pre-Christian times. Back then the sauna represented an equivalent to churches because it provided not only cleansing of the body but also of the soul.

Sex Galaxy

USA 2008, directed by Mike Davis

This unique film recycling project amalgamates the tradition of second-rate cinematography with the contemporary trend of fan film-remaking. In the 1960s the Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women by Roger Corman was carried out; it is a mixture of shots form a Soviet sci-fi Planeta Bur (Storm Planet) and scenes filmed with a sex bomb Mamie Van Doren. Forty years later a debutant Mike Davis re-edited Corman’s film, added materials from other public domain pictures (educational films, cartoon comedy, advertisements) from the years between 1926 and 1979 and a few new takes with a porn star Puma Swede and redubbed everything. That is how an obscene caricature as well as honour to the second-rate sci-fi films from the 50s came to existence where brave astronauts travelled to the distant galaxies to spread not only democracy.

Mrtví venku / The Dead Outside

Great Britain 2008, directed by Kerry Anne Mullaney

This motion picture set into the plains of Scottish Borders builds on the concept of horror stories dealing with zombie apocalypse as the revolutionary Night of the Living Dead by George A. Romer. However, this time a small group of people inside an isolated house do not face a zombie attack but a group of people infected with virus causing insanity. The contrast between the frightening outside world and the inside providing seeming safety gradually vanishes similarly to the differences between the infected and non-infected people. The insanity that people carry in their minds gets on the surface through the traumatizing experience from the people’s past. The film impressively contrasts the calm countryside and the cosy house with the grimaces of insanity.

Black

France 2009, directed by Pierre Laffargue

This stylish action crime film follows a journey of a second-rate black robber from Paris to Africa, where he is supposed to steal heavily guarded diamonds. In the spirit of the new millennium’s cool criminal stories a motley assortment of life-threatening adversaries is interested in the diamonds as well as the ambiguous hero. Independently produced debut mixes the turned form of French mainstream thrillers with action films with themes from the rich tradition of American blaxploitation films (black second-rate films from the 70s) and mystic motives characteristic of the African genre cinematography. The leading part is played by one of the top French hip hopers MC Jean Gab'1 who produced an exclusive single for the film.

Neustávat v tanci / Weitertanzen

Germany 2008, directed by Friederike Jehn

A film wedding ceremony and the immediately following celebration generally serve as a trigger for schematically motivated humorous moments. Male characters reveal their panic fear of hitching up, female characters, on the other hand, personalize vanity and a stubborn need to organize. The German debut brings an original female view of this situation which includes all the potential happiness, embarrassment and disaster. The wedding reception is portrayed as a ghostly space on the margins of reality, metaphor and hallucination. During one evening is the heroine in the wedding dress confronted with her own doubts when she has to face bizarre wedding guests, her unrestrained mother and a persistent ex-boyfriend.

Lanýže / Truffe

Canada 2008, directed by Kim Nguyen

As a consequence of the global warming Canadian Montreal became the world’s greatest power in truffle extraction. Nevertheless, as the time passed this gastronomical rarity lost its value and now it is taken as an equivalent to a distilled beverage yearned by demoralized “truffle-miners”. This atmosphere hosts a surreal grotesque story which by the means of bizarre situations imaginatively reveals the economic relations in the modern society. The storyline follows a funny and fantastic fight of a married couple running a small bistro against a non-human corporation which is after taking control over the world truffle trade. The critical level which resembles the financial crisis is decently spun into the story telling, which in the most part presents different aspects of the peculiar world.