Author: Antoanela Safca

What would you ask Alice Gruia, the filmmaker of Rodicas, if you had the chance to? Get your questions ready because she’s joining us on Sunday via Skype.

Alice Gruia will join us for an intimate conversation this Sunday after the screening. The filmmaker will connect via Skype from Germany to chat about her experience of directing Rodicas.

Alice Gruia is a German actor, writer and director with Romanian roots. Her award-winning documentary, Rodicas, features two octogenary best friends, one of which is her own grandmother.

This is the perfect opportunity to look closer into the process of directing a documentary, removing sentimentality, and extracting a story that anyone can identify with.

You will need to be at the screening for that, so if you haven’t already done so, book your pass for Sunday now.

 

 

Older characters can often be cliched in films: cranky and sentimental for the old times, almost inviting sympathy from audiences. Not in Rodicas. The two octagenarians don’t have time to feel sorry for themselves.

Director Alice Gruia didn’t want to have her two protagonists sitting down with a photo album, reminiscing times long gone. The two women are on the move, they have an active life going for coffees, walks on the beach, cultural events.  Their conversation topics vary from sex and gin to career and philosophy.

I was more interested in how they are right now. I was talking a lot about how they see themselves, if they’re bothered about being old, looking old, when it was that they stopped thinking ‘I am attractive’.

Throughout the film, you’re likely to find yourself in awe of the characters’ youthfulness, energy and fun spirit. How do they do it?

There’s a lot to be said about films that give us a new perspective on aging. There is good and bad in getting old, but perhaps the good doesn’t get enough of the limelight. Let the two Rodicas show you how it’s done.

Book your ticket now.

 

From Thelma and Louise to Napoleon and Pedro, friendships have often been the motor that keeps a film moving.  Rodica and Rodica are another example of what an impact friendships can have on us.

They can bring meaning to our lives and help us grow. They can stretch us further than we’re comfortable going, drive us mad and push us to take more risks. In each other’s company, the two Rodicas become youthful, jovial and giggly, borrowing energy from each other.

Here are some other memorable screen duos:

• Mathilda and Leon in Leon
• Frances and Sophie in Frances Ha
• Pedro and Napoleon in Napoleon Dynamite
• Romy and Michelle
• Withnail and I
• Thelma and Louise.

What screen friendship has rocked your boat and made you long for your bestie?

Book your tickets now.

In a film environment defined by fast pace, quick cuts, compulsive dialogue and music prompting our emotional responses, Ida’s stillness comes almost as a shock.  Apart from the last two scenes, the camera doesn’t move, and the scenes are one take, invoking a state of contemplation.

The important scenes do not arrive with bells, whistles or music to arouse expectations. The raw emotion comes unadorned, unannounced and hard hitting.

From the opening scene, the film is a continuous display of perfect frames, worthy of gallery spaces. Pawlikowski’s use of light and austere surroundings makes for a constrasting backdrop for Ida’s beautiful and innocent features.

Why black and white

There is no doubt that the choice of black and white adds to the severity of the film’s atmosphere. Pawlikowski says he imagined the 60s in black and white, and thought the monochrome limitations would better suit the film’s intentions: ‘a little abstract, timeless, more of a meditation than a story’, he says  in an interview with The Film Stage.

I wanted to limit the field of vision and information and to make people watch it in a different state of mind, to contemplate rather than follow a gripping story — hopefully it is quite gripping, too — but I wanted to give the audiences a certain state and it helped me to do it in black and white.

Minimalist dialogue to match

The austere ambience is matched by minimalist dialogue. Pawlikowski’s use of dialogue is again, in contrast to what we usually see in mainstream films. There is no waste of words and scenes often start half way into a conversation, revealing only essential exchanges that advance the plot.

I don’t want to make a film that “tackles history,” God forbid. As soon as you start explaining, not only do you have bad dialogue because it’s full of exposition, but also it’s like a very partial explanation. In cinema, emotional truth and psychological truth is much more important.

The characters in Ida don’t talk about what they feel or what they think. Pawlikoski trusts them and the story to relay emotion and his trust pays off.

With all these minimalist techniques, you might think that Ida is ‘stay away’ kind of film. Nothing could be further from the truth and there is a reason why awards and audiences flocked to it. Join us next Sunday at 2.30pm to see it. Get your pass now.

 

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I predict that by the time you will finish reading this post, you will want to know more about Pawel Pawlikowski and see all his films. My own research led me into a Pawlikowski internet black hole. With every quote, he become more intriguing. He follows his nose and curiosities like few others. He never seems driven by commercial goals and he has been known to drop projects when he felt a film was out of his creative control.

‘I stayed an amateur who needed to live a bit in order to make films. I don’t need to be on the set and just keep churning out films. For me, each film, each script is like a little journey in itself, and I’m reinventing the wheel.’

He was born in Warsaw to a doctor father and a ballerina mother and immigrated to England with his mother when he was 14. As his character Ida, Pawlikowski grew up Catholic, to find out as an adult that he had Jewish relatives who died in Auschwitz. He took a directorial break when his Russian wife was diagnosed with cancer and later died. The following five years he spent teaching at the National Film School in  the UK and looking after his children before they graduated.

He is a not a stranger to acclaim. After his academic stint as an Oxford Brookes fellow, he started his filmmaking career as a documentary filmmaker in British television. He was awarded at Sundance and Toronto for his first feature, Last Resort. His next one, My summer of love, won a BAFTA for best British film, and gave Emily Blunt her acting break.

After his break, he returned to filmmaking with The Woman in the fifth, a failed biopic set in Paris staring Ethan Hawke. Ida started with the idea from the idea that he felt needed to go back to Poland.

‘I needed Warsaw because it’s so clearly shaped by history. It’s a place of simplicity and coherence. And that’s where I am in my life.’

Ida, of course, ended up winning many awards and recognition. But Pawlikoski almost seems to prefer it if it remained a small arthouse film that people engage with on its level. ‘Now it’s become a big political thing, because that’s what Oscar buzz does to people’s brains,’ he says when interviewed by The Atlantic magazine.

Is that enough to ignite your curiosity just a little bit? Let’s explore Pawlikowski’s beautiful film together on the 16 October. Buy your tickets now.

 

Ida has been described as a masterpiece, made it on the BBC list of  the 21st century greatest films, and won the first Oscar for a Polish film. Only a year after its release, it is becoming somewhat of a classic.

The film has at its centre an 18-year old woman about to become a nun in 1962 Poland. On the verge of taking her vows, young Ida discovers disturbing facts about her past. She meets her only living relative, ‘Red Wanda’, a woman who still bears the horrors of the war fresh in her mind. Ida’s known truths are challenged when she finds out her parents were Jewish and had been killed during the war. The unlikely couple, the saint and the sinner, take a journey into the past to discover what really happened to their family.

Ida explores a multitude of themes; faith, identity, lost ideals , jazz and rock and roll among them. Pawlikowski’s intention was to explore ‘different versions of Polishness’.

Director Pawel Pawlikoski himself was brought up in a traditional Catholic family, only to find out later in life that his paternal Jewish grandmother died in Auschwitz.  As an adult he met a priest who discovered his Jewish identity late in live. The character Wanda is inspired by a real life encounter with a former judge in post-war Poland. These narratives all came together in Ida.

When Pawlikowski told his friends he was making a black and white film, in Polish and set in Poland, his friends warned him of committing professional suicide. The risk certainly seems to have paid out.

Book your pass for Ida now.

Corneliu Porumboiu, the son of a soccer referee, is one of the directors who defined the Romanian New Wave. Not often a director gets their first feature film awarded at Cannes Film Festival, but that’s what happened to Porumboiu. 12:08 East of Bucharest was the film that put him on the cinema map, but he certainly didn’t stop his explorations there.

Here are some of his films you might like to watch:

• Police, Adjective – 2009
• The Second Game – 2011
• The Treasure – 2015.

What Porumboiu does best, without any judgement or pretense of owning ‘the truth’,  is ask important questions. You’re guaranteed to leave any of his films in a state of inquisitiveness.

What about this Romanian New Wave?

In the mid-2000s, Romanian cinema made a leap towards exploring and forging its new identity. Films in the Romanian New Wave are generally defined by minimalism and realism, with black humour a frequent feature. The international film community immediately responded by praising and awarding these films. And so the Romanian New Wave was born.

‘Everybody is a revolutionary in their own way,’  says Piscoci, the retiree in 12:08 East of Europe. In a plot determined to identify a specific type of hero, his reflection brings us back to the reality of everyday life, every day courage.

We think of heroes as courageous, brave, willing to make sacrifices without any personal gain. But can a hero be an ordinary person? If asked to think of the heroes in our own lives, we might think of a parent, a grandparent, a sibling, ordinary people that face live and adversities as best as they can.

What do you think makes a hero? Who are some of the people you consider heroes?