Edited by Sarah Cooper
sarah.cooper@
emap.com For more tales from the Croisette, see
ScreenDaily.com/home/blogs DIARY The Big Fix, which was made in
just nine months, was funded independently to avoid restric- tions on content. Peter Fonda — already a fan of
Josh and Rebecca Tickell in a scene from The Big Fix Oil crisis
BY WENDY MITCHELL If you’ve seen a woman with an elegant parasol on the Croisette this week, that’s not just a fashion statement. She’s Rebecca Tickell, one of the directors of controver- sial documentary The Big Fix, about the BP oil spill and the sub- sequent claims made about it. She was in Louisiana, research-
ing the doc with her husband and fellow director Josh Tickell, when
she got extremely sick from the oil and dispersants contamination. There are still parts of her skin that can’t be exposed to sunlight. She’s not alone — the film-makers estimate there are 4-5 million peo- ple in the spill’s impact zone. “That was just the beginning,”
Josh Tickell says of their trip to see oil washing up on beaches, after the government had said the water was safe. “Then we did an investi- gation into the real cause [of the disaster and the subsequent spin].” This took them to Capitol Hill.
Khoo meets his sensei
BYLIZ SHACKLETON Singaporean director Eric Khoo has been a fan of Japanese manga master Yoshihiro Tatsumi for dec- ades, but when he picked up his autobiography, A Drifting Life, he knew he had to turn it into a film. Fortunately he had a Japanese
producer f r iend, Masato Yamamoto, who could write the ‘sensei’ a polite letter, sent with some of Khoo’s movies, to request a meeting. “He appreciated My Magic very much, so we met in an
Gust’s back Van Den Berghe
Still only 25, Gust Van Den Berghe is in Cannes for the second year running with his new feature, Blue
Bird (his debut, Little Baby Jesus Of Flandr, premiered here last year). The new feature is based on
the play by Ghent-born Nobel Prize winner Maurice Maeterlinck. Van Den Berghe is probably the
only film-maker in Cannes who is also an accomplished breakdancer. In his hot-footing youth, he danced in public spaces and also toured with the Royal Ballet of Flanders. He says: “Dancing is something
that helps you explore yourself… it’s a very good [way of] learning how to express yourself through intuition.” Geoffrey Macnab
PRODUCERSONTHE MOVE 2011 The 25 film producers from 25 European countries, selected by European Film Promotion’s members, are: (back row, from left) Lukasz Dzieciol (Poland), Joao Trabulo (Portugal), Dan Wechsler (Switzerland), Gian-Piero Ringel (Germany), Michal Kollar (Slovak Republic), Joonas Berghall (Finland), Rebecca O’Flanagan (Ireland), Borislav Chouchkov (Bulgaria), Dritan Huqi (Albania); (middle row, from left) Jesper Morthorst (Denmark), Hlin Johannesdottir (Iceland), Maria Ekerhovd (Norway), Justin Taurand (France), David Grumbach (Luxembourg), Mimmi Spang (Sweden), Samm Haillay (UK), Michael John Fedun (Netherlands); (front row, from left) Darko Popov (FYR of Macedonia), Maria Hatzakou (Greece), Marta Donzelli (Italy), Attila Csaky (Hungary), Ada Solomon (Romania), Radim Prochazka (Czech Republic), Linda Krukle (Latvia) and Borja Pena (Spain).
n 10 Screen International at the Cannes Film Festival May 17, 2011
old coffee shop in Tokyo with a translator and talked for four hours,” Khoo recalls. “He has a great sense of
humour and said, ‘If we put all my short stories together, don’t you think people will want to commit suicide after watching the film?’ I told him, ‘That’s why we also have to put in your life story.’” The end result intercuts Tatsu-
mi’s life with five of his dark and realistic short stories, all animated with a different colour palette and
Tatsumi
score. Tatsumi, who turns 76 this year and is “hugely excited” to be attending his first Cannes, was pleased with the results, though it took him a while to approve a voice talent to play his own mother. Tatsumi, which is being sold by
The Match Factory, screens today in Un Certain Regard (Salle Debussy) at 10pm.
the Tickells’ previous film, Fuel, about the need for green energy — came on board, as did actress Amy Smart and musician Jason Mraz. All of them joined the film-making team in Louisiana to see the disas- ter for themselves. Now, Tim Rob- bins has also boarded as an executive producer. The Big Fix screens tonight at
8pm, with Mraz and Fonda in attendance. Josh Tickell thanked Cannes for
“creating a place for these highly controversial and politically charged movies”, pointing to past screenings such as Lucy Walker’s Countdown To Zero. Bec Smith and Rena Ronson at
UTA are selling. Eva Ionesco
French-Romanian actress Eva Ionesco makes her directorial debut with My Little Princess, the true story of her childhood with her eccentric mother (played by Isabelle Huppert), who controversially photographed the young Eva in the nude.
What are your earliest memories of posing for your mother’s photographs? The very first memory is a photograph of myself aged four. I am posing nude with my legs spread and there is some staging in the frame. There is a half-bitten apple on a wall behind me. I did not remember posing for this photograph, I was too young a child. I only had this memory much later — about 15 years ago — when I started doing research for my first lawsuit against my mother — I wanted to be able to get hold of the erotic photographs she had taken of me. And this moment of loss of identity and panic is the one that triggered the need to write on the matter, as if I had to put the whole story together and try to understand it. I had been the victim of ‘theft’ through images, so I needed to speak out. Why did you cast Isabelle Huppert? Was it intimidating working with such a strong and celebrated actress? I trained as an actress. Actors do not intimidate me. My approach is different. I wanted a strong actress,
a ‘giant’ and also an iconic actress. It was obvious to me that Isabelle would be the only actress fully able to interpret this complex character. I gave her the script and, fortunately, she agreed to take on the part. How did you find Anamaria Vartolomei (who plays the daughter)? We auditioned about 500 young girls. Anamaria was The One. Are you nervous about presenting the film in Cannes? I am so happy my film was selected because the whole process of making the film has been a difficult one. Funnily enough, I am so excited about showing the film that the anxiety is only second to the excitement. What do you plan to do in your spare time in Cannes? Find a producer and the financial means to make my movies. What are your next projects? I have three different projects: the sequel of this film with the same actress who plays Violetta, [Vartolomei]; a project called The Day My Father Died, which is a film noir, with some kind of melodrama and tells the story of a woman who suddenly finds herself forced to look for her father who has just died; the third project is very dear to me and is about the Pierre Goldman affair. Geoffrey Macnab
My Little Princess is screening in Critics’ Week.
Meet the debutants EVA IONESCO,MY LITTLE PRINCESS
Today
Sunny, high 20°
Tomorrow
Sunny, high 21°
My Little Princess
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