Ahmad Abdalla (Heliopolis), David Lowery (St. Nick),
Anthony Gittens (Director at Washington, DC International Film Festival), Spyros Thomopoulos (film critic)
Film script flexibility and elliptical narrative, the organisation of a film festival, and the role of film critics were among the main themes of the fifth “Just Talking” event held on Thursday, November 19, at the Old Pump Station, coordinated by journalist Elena Christopoulou.
Participants were Ahmad Abdalla (Heliopolis) and David Lowery (St. Nick), Director at Washington, DC International Film Festival, Anthony Gittens and film critic Spyros Thomopoulos.
Occassioned by screening of excerpts from Heliopolis and St. Nick, which are showcased in the International Competition section in this year’s jubilee Festival edition, the two filmmakers talked about the details of their shootings. “This motion picture has been a risk for me. All people who worked in it were experienced professionals, who volunteered to work for free. Actually, there was no production. The film shooting took 15-16 days and the difficulty I had to face was to persuade actors to participate for free by stealing time from their other activities. In contrast, technicians are invariably easier to adopt their schedule,” stressed Ahmad Abdalla, director of Heliopolis, a film that records the bittersweet everyday life of citizens in Cairo. The Egyptian director remarked that money and time limitations in shooting the film forced him to become “flexible” towards the motion picture’s dialogues. The script consisted of only 27 pages. What I wanted was to give the cast an idea and let them develop their characters free from the constraints of detailed dialogue,” said Ahmad Abdalla. He added: “Besides, the focus of the film is not the people, but the Cairo neighbourhood, which I wanted to depict with a nostalgic tone. The consecutive scenes of the film make up the city’s puzzle, the course of this neighbourhood through time.”
The script’s flexibility and economy was also a defining element in David Lowery’s St. Nick, but not for the same reasons as in Heliopolis. “The basic storyline of the film was short and we developed it over the 18-day shooting. To me, words are not as important in a film as silences are. Thus, during the first 20 minutes there is basically no dialogue. This way, the spectator is gradually immersed in the desirable atmosphere,” argued the American director, who relates the cruel journey of two children who have run away from home. Commenting upon his two child actors, David Lowery pointed out: “Their conduct was absolutely natural and in order to retain this mood, I didn’t even ask them to read the script. I would described it to them and let them perform in their own words, without learning a single sentence by heart. I was lucky, because they are two smart kids, creative and intuitive, who led the scenes into unexpected directions.”
Coordinator Elena Christopoulou remarked that another common element between the two works is the absence of causes accounting for the protagonists’ initial acts, around which the films dramatically develop. At this point, Ahmad Abdalla referred to the allure of elliptical narrative by underlying: “The scene where a man is looking through a half-open door, without the audience seeing what he can see, and thus having to speculate based on his expression, condenses the idea I wanted to convey in the film.” Similarly, David Lowery said: “In the film, at first the two brothers run away from home, hoever, the ordeal that follows has been more attractive to me. So, I did not consider it necessary to present the reasons for this action. Regarding the element I drew from my personal childhood and integrated in this motion picture, I would say it was the curiosity of exploring everything, and feeling surprised by everything, as children do.”
The lack of clarification as to the two children’s flee from home in St. Nick was defended by Director at Washington, DC International Film Festival, Anthony Gittens: “Not knowing ‘why’ increases interest at the beginning of the film. After a few minutes, however, you forget the initial unanswered question ‘why’ and proceed elsewhere, towards more important paths.” Next in “Just Talking,” Mr Gittens elaborated on the process of organizing a film festival, a combination of stressful and satisfactory moments. “If a Festival’s films could be compared to a beautiful swan swimming in the lake and attracting admiration, we are the swan’s feet constantly moving underwater, which noone can see,” he mentioned. We went on to say that “there are, of course, the magical moments. The best part of this job is when you insist on screening a film, regardless of technical and other adversities that may crop up, and in the end becoming the agent for the audience to watch a wonderful film.”
The epilogue of the conversation included the exchange of views on the interactive relationship between filmmaker and festival organizers, and even more so, film critics. Film critic Spyros Thomopoulos underlined: “Nowadays, the audience already has sufficient information about big productions and to a great extend has neither the time nor feels like reading a film review about them. However, film critics are still indespensible. The critic’s role is to find the way to introduce to the public financially ‘smaller’ films, which are not widely advertised and for this reason would go unnoticed without their mediation. Just as Mr Gittens feels great when he becomes part of a film’s ‘opening’ to more viewers at a Washington, DC Film Festival screening, so can the film critic contribute towards the same direction through his own role, by widening the audience of an interesting film.”
David Lowery, in turn, highlighted the importance of the film critic’s role: “There is indeed an interaction between filmmaker and critic. Not only because a film review can encourage or deter viewers, but also because it can become a point of reflection for the director himself. To me, negative reviews are as invaluable as favorable ones, provided they are well-written, that is to say they substantiate the opinion they express. I personally believe that these reviews make me think of what I haven’t done right.”
