Winners of the Fantasy Film Festival

The IV Riga International Fantasy Film Festival was closed on March 7, when a cheerful and fruity dedication to Nikolai Gogol – the great Russian literature classic – was offered to the audience and guests at cinema “K.Suns”.

The competition included 12 feature films, which were evaluated by an international jury: Magnus Paulsson, founder of the Fantasy Film Festival in Lund (Sweden), Kata Anna Varo, journalist and programmer of the International Film Festival Titanic in Hungary, and Dāvis Sīmanis, film director from Latvia.

Festival’s main award – The Golden Tooth – was given to the film Sauna (2008) by the Finnish director Antti-Jussi Annila. The jury agreed that this film “has a distinguished visual look that believably recreates the atmosphere of past times and gives a sense if inescapable doom. It is a physical journey, which becomes a spiritual one, revealing the good and evil in everyone of us. In the end we must all suffer the consequences of our worldly deeds – in the darkest place of our existence – the Sauna”.

The jury decided to award two Special Mentions, as well. Not Quite Hollywood (director Mark Hartley, Australia, 2008) received a Special Mention for being an “inimitable documentary – a true work of love that makes the viewer keep smiling long after having seen the film and gives a unique charge of inspiration”. The second Special Mention was given to Quid Pro Quo (director Carlos Brooks, USA, 2008) for a “perfectly filmed and well played film, offering great music and a truly interesting story that allures one to enter the nearest hospital and steal a wheelchair or buy a pair of magic shoes in an antique shop”.

The audience was also able to vote for its favourite film and the audience award and honorary diploma was given to Quid Pro Quo.

Let us meet again in two years, in 2011 at the V Riga International Fantasy Film Festival!

Photo: Uldis Austriņš

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Winners of the Fantasy Film Festival

The IV Riga International Fantasy Film Festival was closed on March 7, when a cheerful and fruity dedication to Nikolai Gogol – the great Russian literature classic – was offered to the audience and guests at cinema “K.Suns”.

The competition included 12 feature films, which were evaluated by an international jury: Magnus Paulsson, founder of the Fantasy Film Festival in Lund (Sweden), Kata Anna Varo, journalist and programmer of the International Film Festival Titanic in Hungary, and Dāvis Sīmanis, film director from Latvia.

Festival’s main award – The Golden Tooth – was given to the film Sauna (2008) by the Finnish director Antti-Jussi Annila. The jury agreed that this film “has a distinguished visual look that believably recreates the atmosphere of past times and gives a sense if inescapable doom. It is a physical journey, which becomes a spiritual one, revealing the good and evil in everyone of us. In the end we must all suffer the consequences of our worldly deeds – in the darkest place of our existence – the Sauna”.

The jury decided to award two Special Mentions, as well. Not Quite Hollywood (director Mark Hartley, Australia, 2008) received a Special Mention for being an “inimitable documentary – a true work of love that makes the viewer keep smiling long after having seen the film and gives a unique charge of inspiration”. The second Special Mention was given to Quid Pro Quo (director Carlos Brooks, USA, 2008) for a “perfectly filmed and well played film, offering great music and a truly interesting story that allures one to enter the nearest hospital and steal a wheelchair or buy a pair of magic shoes in an antique shop”.

The audience was also able to vote for its favourite film and the audience award and honorary diploma was given to Quid Pro Quo.

Let us meet again in two years, in 2011 at the V Riga International Fantasy Film Festival!

Photo: Uldis Austriņš

[Show as slideshow]

4^{th Riga Fantasy Film Festival has begun!}

On Friday, 27th of February Canadian director Guy Maddin’s film “Brand Upon the Brain!”opened the 4th Riga Fantasy Film Festival. Festival is being hold in cinemas “K.Suns” and “Cinamon” from 27th of February till 8th of March.

Festival’s programme offers 12 competition films which will be evaluated by international jury. The jury represented by Magnus Paulsson – founder of Lund IFFF (Sweden) and also producer of vampire-film “Frostbite” already screened in previous edition of Riga FFF, Kata Anna Varro – programmer of Hungary IFF “Titanic” and Davis Simanis – a Latvian film director shall decide the winner of Golden Tooth – the prize for the best film.

Italian horror cinema classic Dario Argento’s film “Deep Red” (1975) will be screened as a special dedication to the festival’s focus – horror in red. Argento is also known as Italian Hitchcock and Violence Visconti; his films respond to Italian cinema’s giallo genre unifying elements of detective and mystery, famous for their visual sophistication, deep red and original music (Italian group “Goblin”).

During the festival the 30th anniversary and premiere in Latvian cinemas will celebrate Ridley Scott’s film “Alien” which brought fame to the young actress Sigourney Weaver and world’s appreciation to dark genius H.R.Giger – artist who won Oscar for film’s visual effects in 1980.

Russian classic’s Nikolai Gogol’s 200th anniversary will be celebrated in the Closing Ceremony of 4th Riga FFF with the outstanding film “Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka” (1961).

Photo: Helmuts Pešiks

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4^{th Riga Fantasy Film Festival has begun!}

On Friday, 27th of February Canadian director Guy Maddin’s film “Brand Upon the Brain!”opened the 4th Riga Fantasy Film Festival. Festival is being hold in cinemas “K.Suns” and “Cinamon” from 27th of February till 8th of March.

Festival’s programme offers 12 competition films which will be evaluated by international jury. The jury represented by Magnus Paulsson – founder of Lund IFFF (Sweden) and also producer of vampire-film “Frostbite” already screened in previous edition of Riga FFF, Kata Anna Varro – programmer of Hungary IFF “Titanic” and Davis Simanis – a Latvian film director shall decide the winner of Golden Tooth – the prize for the best film.

Italian horror cinema classic Dario Argento’s film “Deep Red” (1975) will be screened as a special dedication to the festival’s focus – horror in red. Argento is also known as Italian Hitchcock and Violence Visconti; his films respond to Italian cinema’s giallo genre unifying elements of detective and mystery, famous for their visual sophistication, deep red and original music (Italian group “Goblin”).

During the festival the 30th anniversary and premiere in Latvian cinemas will celebrate Ridley Scott’s film “Alien” which brought fame to the young actress Sigourney Weaver and world’s appreciation to dark genius H.R.Giger – artist who won Oscar for film’s visual effects in 1980.

Russian classic’s Nikolai Gogol’s 200th anniversary will be celebrated in the Closing Ceremony of 4th Riga FFF with the outstanding film “Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka” (1961).

Gallery from the Opening ceremony:

Photo: Helmuts Pešiks

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One of this years FFF special screenings celebrated the film’s Alien 30th anniversary.

Genre: Sci-fi horror thriller

In 1979 I was six years old and could know nothing about it. Now I’d love to travel in time to an Alien’s premiere at a theatre, exactly at the moment when Chestburster breaks out of that chap’s body and flees whipping around its tail. The astonishment and hysterics of the cast are said to be quite genuine. Nobody was warned what was going to happen in that episode. And how must had felt a guy who’d just bought a ticket and relaxed in his theatre seat with his new date? A guy who hadn’t been on the set and maybe seen some of the props there? A guy whose friends had not painted the Alien and other of H.R. Giger’s creatures all over the ceiling of their living room? A guy who’d never played a computer game with an Alien in it? A guy who had never ever heard about someone named Giger? Giger had been chosen as production designer exactly because there was something “disturbing” in his works. Giger is a guy who probably still meditates in a black room and suffers from night terrors all his life. Not just nightmares, but a genetic sleep disorder, when a person has a panic attack in his sleep, but can not wake up and shake it off. His first works are said to have been a part of a therapy. Creators of the movie somehow came across Necronom IV painted in 1976, and decided that this was how the Alien would look. They had to convince the studio’s management really hard, because the design was seen as too ghastly (for a movie the idea of which had been successfully sold the same management as “Texas chainsaw massacre in space”). At the height of the 80’s videoboom I had seen many things. As they say, the guts were hitting the fan. Though I remember that something held me back from watching Alien. I passed on several occasions, before making up my mind. I had seen some fragments and there was something disturbing indeed… And then I suddenly have to admit, that I was probably simply afraid. Of a movie! And you know, there is no other movie of which I can say the same.

Valters Verners

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After losing her embezzling boyfriend Jolli to a four year prison sentence, Hildur, a drop-dead gorgeous high society girl, must now fend for herself. Possessing no real practical job skills, Hildur has a hard time finding employment, until one day, she accidentally stumbles upon a position working in sales at the local fantasy shop Astropia, selling role-playing books, video games and accessories. From that moment her life transforms. At Astropia Hildur is introduced to a group of nerds who give her a new outlook on life.

Gunnar Bjorn Gudmundsson (1972)

He lives close to Reykjavik.  He started early making short films and working in the theatre.  He has received many awards for short films and music videos.  Astropia is his first feature length film. Currently he is working on his adaptation of the best-selling novel Hullabaloo (Gauragangur) by Olafur Haukur Simonarson.

Films: Astropia (2007)

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The FFF’09 was opened with a very special film: Brand Upon the Brain!.

A remembrance in 12 chapters

Brain upon the brand

Like looking at scrupulous decorations of a Gothic cathedral, queer stone faces and shadow play – that is how one could characterize a look, fixed to everything that the leading neo-Goth of the modern cinema – Gay Maddin – has done to a film. His mind is utterly original, as releasing great surrogate movies he makes people believe in his skills of alchemy or dark magic. Being far ahead with his experiments, he is not afraid to create a psychosexual mentally deficient atmosphere by using collages of radical means of expression. To observe it in the audience means to experience an impetuous balancing between horror, laughter and feel of cinema that is almost a century old.

A film on Guy Maddin – the painter – is no exception! The impenetrable fog that embraces us, when the film starts, and the main character, lost somewhere in the sea and ending up in his childhood nightmare, serve as a frontier, behind which the audience is left in insecurity. This is where Maddin – the director – starts his intended experiment – an oedipic phantasmagoria, in which an endlessly rotating lighthouse beam spreads occultism, vampirism and the retaliation of the character’s mother on miserable orphans. This neurotic world, in which frayed 8-millimetre filming interchange with the quickness of editing, resembles a kaleidoscope of black-and-white pictures, that similar to Turn of the Screw by Henry James, makes one plunge into the mercy of hypnotic fear. Maddin’s fantasy overflows the scars on the heads of the little children and of us, too. Probably, it is no movie at all, but rather a hidden research, that observes us from the screen seeing us watch, slowly entering the darkest tunnels of our mind and encountering the open mouth of a chimera there…

Dāvis Sīmanis

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This year the FFF showed a special film of the italian horror film classic Dario Argento –

Deep Red.

The Italian horror film classic – named also the Italian Hitchcock, the ‘Visconti of Violence’ – Dario Argento made his best films starting from late 1960s till early 1980s, although his last film to date Mother of Tears (La Terza Madre) was released in 2007; he will continue his work this year as well.

Early Argento’s films have a charming naivety of the age of innocence, being of the viewpoint that the frontiers for depicting the physiology of an individual’s dread is far from having been reached, which might be the reason for one of the critics to call his works ‘the horror films of the time when we were too young to watch them’. The director uses violence and evil as a metaphor of introspection (the main character is often a young girl), and the films’ structure is based on the initiation rite and its attributes (blood, fire), which is used to emphasize the transition of the hero/heroine into a different stage of existence, in order to emphasize the process of identity forming. Argento’s films lie in the so-called Italian giallo (it. “yellow”) genre, which has the elements of both, a detective and a mystery, but in a wider context (which undoubtedly applies also to Argento) he uses the French fantasy genre (having roots from the Middle Ages), which is characterized by a vehement presence of eroticism. It is said that an excessive shedding of blood, a stylistically elegant work of the cameraman and extraordinary music mark the giallo style in cinema. For quite a long time Argento has been cooperating with the Italian band Goblin, who has been composing music for his films ever since the 1970s. Argento’s films reveal a slightly noticeable influence of the gothic novel tradition – for example, a closed room as the character for the hero’s/heroine’s inner feelings, etc. Argento uses a very well approbated method to show tension and horror in his films – he creates a foreign and visually unexposed presence, as the Unknown is scarier than the enemy standing in front of you. Argento’s films reveal that sometimes a look is not that innocent at all and that an individual is unable to keep himself from looking, for example, in the film Bird with the Glass Feathers (L’Uccello dalle piume di cristallo) (1969) a man sees an attempted murder through a glass wall and thus becomes part of the events he saw. And in Argento’s best film Suspiria (1977) one of the heroines, though being taken over by paralysing fear, cannot keep herself from looking out in the black dark through the window, and thus is being killed by a mysterious murder: looking means gaining experience.

Viktors Freibergs

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Celebrating the 200th anniversary of Nikolai Gogol, the FFF presented the fantasy comedy, an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s story Christmas Eve – Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka / Вечера на хуторе близ Диканьки.

Christmas Eve at Dikanka village. There lives blacksmith Vakula and his mother Solokha – a witch who enjoys riding on her broom, wealthy Cossack named Choub and his beautiful daughter Oksana loved by all the village men, Vakula included. The blacksmith visits Oksana and fills her ears with sweet words but pretty girl would not pay much attention to him. Suddenly she notices new embroidered slippers of her friend, and announces that she would not marry Vakula unless he can get for her the slippers of Tsarina. Realizing that it is the only way to win her Vakula leaves for St. Petersburg riding a devil to whom his soul has been promised.

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Pictures from the FFF press conference on 19.02.2009

4th Riga Fantasy Film Festival’s press conference was hold on 13th floor of Rietumu Banka on Thursday 19th of February.  Honor president of International Centre of Cinema Augusts Sukuts opened it inviting everyone to raise a glass to Nikolai Gogol and Jan Svankmajer whose anniversaries shall be celebrated during this edition.

Chairman of Rietumu Banka Charity Fund Board Inga Sina emphasized that Rietumu Banka has supported FFF since its very beginning and proudly watched it grow to an international widely known festival.

Festival’s director Sarlote Liduma informed the press about the competition programme and festival’s special events. This edition will celebrate 200th anniversary of Nikolai Gogol by screening Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka and Ridley Scott’s  film Alien (1979) shall experience its premiere in Latvia. Festival will also celebrate Czech animator and director Jan Svankmajer’s 75th anniversary and a very special prize – A Fish – is prepared for him. It is a sophisticated masterpiece of jewelry made of cupronickel, bronze, agate, obsidian and turquoise and its author is Juris Lauders.

During the conference also the festival’s catalogue – as bright and rosy as festival’s poster – was presented and will be available in cinema K.Suns booking office.

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