REVIEWS
FILMS FROM ISRAEL AT THE BERLINALE 2011
COMPETITION
LIPSTIKKA Director: Jonathan Sagall World Sales: Obelis Productions E-mail:
Obelis@bezeqint.net
THU FEB 17 16:00 CINEMAXX 7 - PRESS THU FEB 17 22:30 BERLINALE PALAST - GALA PREMIERE FRI FEB 18 15:00 FRIEDRICHSTADT PALAST FRI FEB 18 20:00 URANIA SUN FEB 20 17:30 URANIA
PANORAMA
INVISIBLE Director: Michal Aviad World Sales: WestEnd Films LLP, Maya Amsellem E-mail:
maya@westendfilms.com
MON FEB 14 19:00 CINEMAXX 7 - PREMIERE TUE FEB 15 17:45 CINESTAR 3 WED FEB 16 20:30 CUBIX 7 & 8 (INTERLOCK) SAT FEB 19 22:30 COLOSSEUM 1
MARKET SCREENINGS FRI FEB 11 16:00 CINEMAXX 18 TUE FEB 15 09:30 CINEMAXX 16
THE QUEEN HAS NO CROWN Director: Tomr Heymann World Sales: Heymann Brothers Films - Barak Heymann E-mail:
barak@heymannfilms.com
SAT FEB 12 17:00 CINESTAR 7 - PREMIERE SUN FEB 13 22:30 CINESTAR 7 MON FEB 14 15:30 COLOSSEUM 1 SAT FEB 19 17:00 CINESTAR 7
GENERATION MON FEB 14 15:00 FORUM
Switz. 2011. 111mins Director-cinematographer Thomas Imbach Production company Okofilm Productions International sales Okofilm,
www.okofilm.ch Producers Andrea Staka, Thomas Imbach Screenplay Thomas Imbach, Patrizia Stotz Editors Gion-Reto Killias, Thomas Imbach Music Balz Bachmann
Day Is Done BY LEE MARSHALL
Billed as ‘an autobiographical fiction’, Swiss auteur Thomas Imbach’s Day Is Done is a slow-burn arthouse meditation on how life happens even to a director who has chosen simply to film it as it goes by. Consisting largely of long shots of the Zurich cityscape from
Imbach’s studio behind the city’s main train station and a soundtrack of messages left on the director’s answering machine over the course of several years, the film at first seems like an almost pilotless, documentary take on Rear Window. But gradually we realise Imbach is making stories out of his obser- vations, and fictionalising his artistic detachment from family, lovers and friends. In the end Day Is Done becomes, among other things, a poetic but also wryly humorous study of the self- ish artist trying to play the indifferent God, but ending up revealing himself as all too human. However, this is a slow and defiantly uncommercial viewing
experience which saw several walkouts in an already sparsely attended Berlinale press screening. Pulling back from the more accessible style of Imbach’s kooky modern fairy tale I Was A Swiss Banker (2007), Day Is Done will play mostly to festivals and at the more resilient end of the European arthouse circuit. Filmed largely on a refurbished vintage 35mm and trans-
ferred to d-cinema digital, and using extensive passages of sped-up footage, Day Is Done contains images of ravishing though unconventional urban beauty. Imbach dwells on a power station smokestack which over the course of filming becomes obscured by the balletic cranes of a building site and eventually by the skyscraper they produce, while we also see effects of clouds and light, a copper sunset reflected off train windows, a buzzard flexing its wingtips in the up-draughts as it hovers over the marshalling yards. Meanwhile we start to identify voices on the answering
machine: Thomas’ father, who dies in the course of the film, and the director’s partner, with whom he seems to have a troubled relationship which only gets worse when their son, Noah, is born — who himself eventually begins leaving messages for daddy. Thomas never answers any of the messages: he is absent, as
a lover and a father, as a creditor and house hunter, as a friend and a potential festival attendee. A soundtrack of guitar-accom- panied songs (some of them Bob Dylan covers) by Swiss musi- cian Balz Bachmann hold out the promise we might be watching some sort of lyrical metaphor for human life — but they are cut off abruptly, denying us the comfort of easy poetry.
MARKET SCREENING FRI
THE FLOOD Director: Guy Nattiv World Sales: K5 International - Carl Clifton E-mail:
carl@k5mediagroup.com HAUS DER KULTUREN DER WELT KINO 1
TUE FEB 15 15:30 FILMTHEATER AM FRIEDRICHSHAIN WED FEB 16 14:00 CINEMAXX 3
FEB 11 13:30 CINEMAXX 10
INTIMATE GRAMMAR Director: Nir Bergman World Sales: Films Boutique - Laura Inoka E-mail:
laura@filmsboutique.com
SAT FEB 12 12:30 HAUS DER KULTUREN DER WELT KINO 1 SUN FEB 13 14:00 CINEMAXX 3 TUE FEB 15 16:30 HAUS DER KULTUREN DER WELT KINO 2
MARKET SCREENING MON FEB 14 13:30 CINEMAXX 10
BERLINALE SPECIAL LIA
Editing Director: Taly Goldenberg World Sales: Go2Films Distribution & Marketing - Hedva Goldschmidt E-mail:
hedva@go2films.com
SUN FEB 13 11:00 INTERNATIONAL BERLINALE SHORTS
SUSYA Directors: Dani Rosenberg & Yoav Gross World Sales: Cinephil – Distribution & Co-Production E-mail:
info@cinephil.co.il
SAT FEB 12 16:00 CINEMAXX 5 - PRESS WED FEB 16 22:00 CINEMAXX 3 - PREMIERE THU FEB 17 17:45 COLOSSEUM 1 FRI
FEB 18 16:00 CINEMAXX 5 FORUM EXPANDED WE WILL BE STRONG IN OUR WEAKNESS
A Presentation of The Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland Director: Yael Bartana Contact:
info@jrmip.org THU FEB 17 12:30 KINO ARSENAL 1
MARKET SCREENINGS STRAIGHT FROM SUNDANCE
RESTORATION Director: Joseph Madmoni World Sales: Chaim sharir – Yezira Ivrit Ltd. E-mail:
chaim@sharir.name
MON FEB 14 13:00 CINEMAXX 13
PRECIOUS LIFE Director: Shlomi Eldar World Sales: Bleiberg Entertainment & Cinephil – Distribution & Co-Production E-mail:
roman@bleibergent.com,
info@cinephil.co.il
SAT FEB 12 15:45 CINEMAXX 18 TUE FEB 15 12:30 CINEMAXX 19
ISRAEL FILM FUND / TEL: 972 3 562 8180, FAX: 972 3 562 5992
WWW.FILMFUND.ORG.IL
THE YEHOSHUA RABINOVICH FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS / CINEMA PROJECT TEL: +972-3-5255020, +972-3-5254920 / FAX: +972-3-5255130
WWW.CINEMAPROJECT.ORG.IL
February 14, 2011 Screen International in Berlin 21 n
THE ISRAEL FILM COUNCIL
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