Kamran Shirdel’s beautiful 35 minute film is to documentary what “Rashomon” is to narrative
Set In northern Iran, the film focuses on a schoolboy from a small village near Gorgan that allegedly saw a train approaching flooded rail tracks. In an act of bravery he set fire to his jacket, ran towards the train and averted a serious and fatal accident.
“Shirdel’s film does not concentrate on the heroic deed promulgated in the newspapers, but on a caricature of social and subtle political behavior – the way in which witnesses and officials manage to insert themselves into the research into this event. Shirdel uses newspaper articles and interviews with railway employees, the governor, the chief of police, the village teacher and pupils, each of whom tell a different version of the event. In the end, they all contradict each other, while the group of possible or self-appointed heroes constantly grows. With his cinematic sleights of hand, Shirdel paints a bittersweet picture of Iranian Society in which truth, rumor, and lie can no longer be distinguished.” —onlinefilmhome.
The film is obviously a satirical poke at the media and how people are so easily divided by it (especially during the 1960′s where hostility between the Iranian authorities and the working class was at a high). However, the film is much more than its subject matter, it is a transcendent piece of cinema by one of the many over looked Iranian documentary filmmakers.
It’s a great example of documentary being used to convey more than a hard hitting subject matter and truly understanding cinemas validly as an art form.
Okay so “Our Neighbour, Miss Yae” is known collectively as the first SHOMIN GEKI film (the Japanese realist genre that sprung onto the scene in the 1930s), but there is no denying that Shimzu Hiroshi was the monumental figure of it. With the likes of Ozu, Mizoguchi, Naruse, Shimazu and Yamanaka all adopting the term “monument” for him, this alone stresses the significance of his influence.
His films, like that of Ozu cultivated the poetic value of the everyday and did so with a brilliant eye that enabled him to see the beauty in the mundane.
Known for being a bit of a playboy he still managed to marry Japanese superstar Kinuyo Tanaka, who starred in my favourite of his works, “Ornamental Hairpin (1941).
Below is a link to a great article on the great man.
“This is a fabulous review. It’s beautifully succinct and educated and – crucially – made me want to see the film (again!). There were a couple of repetitions of words (‘short’ and ‘almost’) that could be tweaked for a smoother read, as well as a few extra bits of punctuation just to break up some of the longer sentences.
But what I loved about this review is that, right from the off, you know that the reviewer knows their stuff. There’s no messing. They’re aware of what the short film is trying to do, how it fits into movie history, and what Saloon is trying to say. It’s a deceptively simple review that packs a lot of insight into its few words.”
In the late 1980s/early 1990s Taiwanese film maker Hou Hsiao Hsien made three films that lyrically portrayed different aspects of Taiwans unique social history. Rüdiger Tomczak, writer of German film magazine Shomingeki has put together three beautiful film journals on them.
Not“can it translate into cinema?” but“can it WORK in cinema?”
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Literature can never be fully translated into cinema without limiting both mediums (in this case limiting what the literature did do and what the cinema can do).
The ideology of Haiku really is about limitation and how it can influence a greater exposure of the innate nature of things/places. It’s important not to see the limitations as a task or a gimmick, but as a means of being selective. Understanding that natures most incredible beauty is hidden in its simplicity.
*3 shots opposed to 3 lines*
Again, like Haiku in its literature form this is not to gimmick the medium but to put people in a situation where they have to see the poetic value of a moment in its simplest form. “What represents that moment most in 3 shots?” … not … “how can you make a film in 3 shots?”.
In all the rains of May
there is one thing not hidden -
the bridge at Seta Bay.
- Matsuo Basho
There are many videos floating around the web that take on Haiku in video form, this is mine … It was the hardest video I’ve ever edited
This is a continuation to Manjeet’s previous post.
After almost completing our first feature “The Meeting” it is very liberating producing a film without the professional technical procedures.
“The Meeting” despite its simplicity is the most technically polished film we have ever made and with anything that aims to achieve that technical level involves a lot of collaboration. It made me question digital film makings relevance in cinema, apart from it being an extremely cost affective alternative to celluloid. Sometimes I feel we only use digital cameras for its cheapness and not to exploit its advantages over celluloid … is digital cinema just the poor mans celluloid?
Would an artist try to paint a water painting with poster paint? just because it’s cheaper than water colours? Of course not, one of the biggest flaws a craftsman can commit is using their tools for the wrong reasons. I think using a medium to serve the purpose of another suffocates it and prevents it from reaching its fullest potential.
Instead of asking myself, “how can digital work its way to the standard of film?” I asked “what can digital do that film can’t?”. This is obviously something many filmmakers have contemplated long before myself (Abbas Kiarostami, Agnès Varda and Liu Jiayin first come to mind) so we have a lot to base it off.
Kiarostami once said “The digital camera allows the artist to work alone again”, by reducing the collaborative aspects of film making you are in a position to produce something personal, like a poet or a painter. Film is usually associated heavily as a collaborative medium, but why? Obviously the collaborative elements of filmmaking has its artistic benefits, however why is its place in film production engraved in stone? The answer derives from the history of film production, to produce even the most minimal efforts of film making you needed a team and without a team producing the familiar results is almost impossible. So is collaboration a creative necessity? Or is it just a cultural familiarity that we associate with filmmaking because of its historical technical conventions?
I am not trying to say collaboration isn’t needed in the creative process, all I’m trying to say is it is not a necessity and thanks to digital technology we now have that option.
During the production of “The Meeting” I saw many things I wanted to film, such as a brief shadow from the wind chimes or how a gate was blowing in the wind. Yet, by the time we got the camera and mic set up we would have missed it and it is these brief poetic moments that are very hard to capture with a film camera. I asked my self “oh, If only I had my digital camera … hold on we are using a digital camera!”
We were treating this digital camera so much like a film camera we forgot about the natural advantages it has. So worried about the footage looking like film we missed great opportunities to fully utilise what we had.
i guess essentially it all comes down to “IT’S NOT WHAT YOU DO, IT’S HOW YOU DO IT”.
I am in the middle of editing some audition footage I filmed not long ago, for a supporting actress role … for a film that is now not going to be made. What’s interesting when you look back on audition footage is obviously how each person sees the character differently. Then when you look at it a little closer you see how the different interpretations are subtle (sometimes obvious) peep holes into the actors world. This was the initial hook that got me interested in editing the footage into a film, however it wasn’t until I realised how much of the film the actresses were auditioning for had major aspects of my own life in it. When I wrote the script I did it for the sake of a feature, so I wanted a script written as soon as possible and the meat would hopefully develop whilst collaborating with the actors. Putting moments and characters from my own life was a way of speeding up the writing process, whether it was consciously done or not. Seeing and hearing actors strip down these personal moments in my life was a difficult thing to take sometimes. There are so many decisions I’ve made in life that I felt I was right to make, then hearing an actress poke out all of the holes in my logic, making me see the situations in a different light and making me think what was once a good decision might have actually been a mistake.
The film is called “Michelle with one “L” … named after the get up kids song. I’m still editing as we speak … with no idea how I am going to go about it.
An out of character choice for Virgin Media Shorts?
”Saloon” is a 2:20 minute poetic panorama of several moments in one of India’s many unique saloons.
I found the film to be a pleasantly unusual short list choice for such a commercially driven short film competition like Virgin media shorts. Usually “short short films” linger on the themes and techniques that accommodate the notion
”You have 2 minutes to say something that should stick with an audience, the way a longer film would”.
This usually results in the films relying on hooks, gimmicks and plot twists to produce a memorable impact within the highly limited duration.
“Saloon” on the other hand takes its time and chooses to use its short duration to capture brief environmental moments, rather than a sequence of events leading the audience from A to B. The filmmaker uses short film the way a poet uses short literature. Consisting of short shots of different characters getting haircuts, head massages and not forgetting staring in the mirror giving themselves their own final touches. It almost resembles how Humphrey Jennings used the everyday lives of people during WW2 and edited them together creating a natural rhythm, almost blending the people into their environment. That is exactly the effect “Saloon” produces, the men retreating almost socially in the saloon slowly merge into their surroundings.
Are we a product of our environment? Or is our environment a product of us?
To effectively expose an environment and culture in such a short duration, not only shows the filmmaker has a great understanding of cinema, but validates the power of the medium as an art form (with or without gimmickry).
“Saloon” is a great example of how cinema can so effectively capture the poetic value of everyday life.
We recently attended a ‘film’ meet up in Birmingham aimed at bringing together and providing opportunities for filmmakers in the region. A great idea in principle and something that we should be doing in order to understand, feed off, learn from and share with each other. Unfortunately, however positive the meet up’s intentions were, they were marred by the general attitude, naivety and ignorance of most of the people that attended (I must stress that this does not encompass everyone who attended).
Let me explain. Our initial interest in the event came from our love of film, our love of the area and wanting to connect with others that felt the same way. The problem was, people were simply there for self gain, and ended up moaning and complaining that “no one is funding our films”, “why can’t I get a job in media” and all things relating to ‘the world owes me a living because I studied film’. A simple fact that everyone in the region has to come to terms with is that there is no film industry here and unless you’re making corporate videos, 9/10 your films aren’t going to make you any money at this stage.
We can only offer our opinions on things as, at such times, things aren’t great for film in the area, and we don’t have a definitive answer as to how to fix the problem, even if we thought it could be fixed. But trying to spend the little money you have on making a block-busting, scriptastic, cinematic wonder is not going to give much return on your efforts. If it’s your first film you will make countless mistakes that will ruin the chances of its success and waste whatever money you’ve put into it. Keeping it to yourself and not showing others because you fear they’ll steal your idea will not achieve anything. Getting defensive and touchy about your film when it is criticised will only hinder you.
And finally, thinking that graduating from a film course instantly gives you everything you need to make a huge money making film makes you completely useless and will define you as a product of the X-Factor generation.
What we desperately want to see is filmmakers from the area getting up and making films their own way, being individuals and defining themselves through their own expressions. As with any other art form, express your own experiences and feelings through film, and please do not attempt to emulate others on low or no budgets because you think that’s what’s expected of you. No one can tell you what should be expected, what is the right or wrong way of doing it. This has been our ethos from day 1 of Black Country Cinema, and with every film that we have made, we have learned more and more and developed our own voice. And the best thing is we haven’t spent all of our cash developing ourselves.
I want to see a meet up of filmmakers in the area where we get together and show each other our films, discuss them and learn from one another’s experiences. If there is any money in the pipeline, it will come later, but don’t hold your breath. I will always remember the words of a certain person during the Q&A at our first screening back in 2009 -
“I don’t think chasing money is the point… to exist you’ll find a way of living. But it’s about your experiences that you want to talk about and I think you should keep on doing that”
Although our first collective feature film isn’t fully completed yet, a couple of us have already begun shooting new films. However, this time we’ve opted to go for a much rawer and natural method of production. Our film’s up until now have all been shot with professional equipment, and while cinema rigs, multiple lenses and boom mics have allowed us a lot of creative freedom when working as a collective, they don’t lend themselves much to lone shooting.
Matt is currently shooting on a consumer camcorder for his film, and I’ve gone for an even smaller, pocket camera to shoot mine. This isn’t a competition to see how good our films can be with a crappy camera. It’s purely about using the right tool for the situation. I remember speaking to Cristi Puiu back in June, where he mentioned that he doesn’t care what is used to make the film (we were talking about shooting digital or film) it’s simply a tool to use, just as a painter would choose to use oils, water colours etc. There is such a profound truth to this, which I only fully understand now.
The film I’m currently making is loosely based around distorted memories, and requires me to shoot things people see everyday in all sorts of situations. So I caught the underground the other day, while I was in Rome, and saw something I thought would compose nicely on camera. As returning the following week with a cinema rig was out of the question, I reached for my pocket camera and started shooting. The beauty of it was that it was ‘in the moment’ and not setup. This is using the right tool for the situation. Of course just as shooting with large unwieldy equipment has its drawbacks, so does this method, but if you know what you want, it’s not an issue.
The situation I’m faced with now however is hours of footage, and a mass jigsaw puzzle that needs assembling.
