Some notes from the competition films’ selector
15/4
First movie. South Korea. A track driver doesn’t fuel with gas, but with his own urine. So, he has to drink. Drink a lot. Otherwise, he won’t get anywhere. And you know that from somewhere to somewhere else is pretty damn far! While watching the film, I’m feeling an urge to urinate all the time. As if that wasn’t enough, the next film is about a man who drinks water like crazy. He’s drinking the clear liquid from plastic bottles. And then? Then he vomits it out. In the following movie, there is again this urine topic. A boy is helping his disabled grandma and carries her urine bucket away. And then an Argentinean movie about a boy who is training to stay the longest under the water. Water everywhere. And it’s not getting any dryer.
Some notes from the competition films’ selector (April – May 2009)
15/4
First movie. South Korea. A track driver doesn’t fuel with gas, but with his own urine. So, he has to drink. Drink a lot. Otherwise, he won’t get anywhere. And you know that from somewhere to somewhere else is pretty damn far! While watching the film, I’m feeling an urge to urinate all the time. As if that wasn’t enough, the next film is about a man who drinks water like crazy. He’s drinking the clear liquid from plastic bottles. And then? Then he vomits it out. In the following movie, there is again this urine topic. A boy is helping his disabled grandma and carries her urine bucket away. And then an Argentinean movie about a boy who is training to stay the longest under the water. Water everywhere. And it’s not getting any dryer.
18/4
Why are there inner monologues everywhere? Or some narrators‘ insane voices? Why must you tell me, “I went to have a beer…” when I can fucking see it!? It would be better if they recorded such movies on audiotapes. The climax then is a brilliant work of genius, in which one single person in one single environment tells his whole story. Its transcription into Braille would be undoubtedly more colourful. Comparable then was only an audio-movie, whose meaning I could not get though I really tried hard and even in spite of the fact that it’s text was almost as long as the credits of the Lord of the Rings. In this way, an absolutely perfect movie.
22/4
Cleaning ladies, cleaning ladies everywhere, and maids too. Old, young, fat, slim, all races and religions. Humble and quiet or loud and rude. Is it the social empathy of the new generation, calling for the abolition of modern-day slavery? A relic from the bourgeoisie times? Or a reminiscence of how they feel about their own jobs in advertisement companies? Who knows. It‘s a specific phenomenon.
26/4
A very depressing evening. Students love depression. They look for it and they coddle all its forms. They make themselves drunk with darkness and sadness, they snuggle in sorrow, grief, crying, injuries, deaths. They love zombies, corpses, the hanged, bottomless melancholy. They invent the least probable form of destruction and death (children are the most popular victims), individual or whole-world apocalypses, ordinary and inventive suicides, abortions, child and elder abuse, scratching in unhealed wounds. I would give a fortune for a small bit of (good) humour! And after those screenings I would give it for a pack of Xanax too.
8/5
Today, finally. A beautiful, loud and liberating laughter. A Romanian one. A girl is calling her boyfriend abroad via skype using a web cam for the first time. She plays some music, dancing in front of the tiny web cam. She throws her scarf around a coat-rack and leans backwards lustfully. But the coat-rack is attached to a wardrobe, which doesn’t bare this bigger girl’s weight and falls over on her. Then just the music, static shot of the room with a wardrobe on the floor. Hahaha! Bravo!
(In the above-mentioned fragments of my notes I tried to point out some form and content trends in this year’s collection of student films that we received. Motives from particular movies were used there, and I would like to apologize to the directors for that. On the other hand, it’s a kind of value that they stayed in my memory, out from the huge amount of films I received and watched. And for certain they weren’t all just bad. I hope, that this year’s Fresh will convince you of that.)
Jan Stehlík
