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Final Cut’s clip service


BY MIKE GOODRIDGE It took Hungarian director Gyorgy Palfi three years to put together Final Cut — Ladies And Gentlemen, a dazzling collage of moments from more than 450 films which closes Cannes Classics on Saturday. Palfi, who has an international


reputation from Hukkle and Taxi- dermia, had the idea for the project when a Hungarian periodical made a call for concepts to cele- brate the 100th anniversary of cin- ema, but he shelved it at the time. In 2009, however, when the


Hungarian public system col- lapsed, Palfi found himself with an unused post-production grant.


Agnes Varda Gyorgy Palfi


“So I decided, if I can’t shoot a movie I will use the whole of film history as my footage and spend the money on post-production.” The process took three years,


with Bela Tarr’s company on board as producer. Palfi did not have rights to the clips, but when he screened the film at Hungarian


Film Week for local film-makers, the response was so ecstatic he began the process of clearing them. “We hope the rights owners will


understand that we needed to complete this movie before asking for the rights,” he says. “We also hope they will understand this idea was born from a love of cinema.” Wild Bunch has come on board


to represent sales of the film and help with the clearances. Cannes audiences are bound to


be thrilled at the result, which is filled with the joys of storytelling. “It is like a fairy tale to be in Cannes,” he says. “After spending years in a small editing room with- out any support and lots of doubt, we’re here at the biggest centre of cinephiles in the world.”


ALovely ‘mad hybrid’


Varda on Cléo from ’62 to 2012


BY MELANIE GOODFELLOW Exactly 50 years after Agnes Varda first screened in Cannes with Cléo From 5 To 7, the French film-maker is back at the festival with a restored version of the film, thanks to an initiative led by France’s National Cinema Centre (CNC) and National Film Archives. “The film had incredible press


but it didn’t win,” recalls Varda. “Antonioni’s L’Eclisse and Bres- son’s The Trial Of Joan Of Arc shared the Grand Jury prize so I couldn’t complain because they were amazing films.” The New Wave classic stars


Corinne Marchand, who Varga met on the set of her husband Jacques Demy’s 1961 film Lola, as a singer waiting for medical test results. “I shot it in real time and in real


geography,” says Varda. “We are with Cléo all the time as she wor- ries about whether she has stom- ach cancer or not. It was incredibly difficult to plan.” The film also features cameos


by Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina and composer Michel Legrand, who scored Demy’s The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg. “It is a glimpse of the New Wave,” says Varda.


BY LIZSHACKLETON Ashim Ahluwalia’s debut fiction feature, Miss Lovely, which screens in Un Certain Regard tomorrow, promises to be a potent cocktail of cinematic styles. Ahluwalia is known for documentaries — his feature-length doc John & Jane premiered at Toronto — but he also works as a commercials direc- tor and refuses to be pigeonholed. He filmed Miss Lovely, set


against the backdrop of Mumbai’s sleazy C-grade film industry, in 2009 but then deconstructed and rebuilt it in the editing room. “I shot a fiction film, but then


wanted it to look more like a docu- mentary, so I chopped it up and reassembled it,” explains Ahlu- walia. “At times it feels like a documentary, then at times it’s super-pulpy and sometimes noir, so it’s a mad hybrid of genres.”


Butler savours cool spaghetti


BY JEREMY KAY Scottish actor Gerard Butler braved Sunday’s weather to stride on board a yacht and talk up his forthcoming action thriller Motor City from Emmett/Furla and Sil- ver Pictures. Butler will play a wrongly


imprisoned man who must break out of jail and seek revenge on a villain (Gary Oldman). “What got me excited is it has a


retro feel and yet it’s also fresh,” Butler said. “It has the tone of so many different movies like Death Wish, The Crow and the early


n 6 Screen International at Cannes May 23, 2012 Ashim Ahluwalia His combination of pop and


auteur sensibilities will draw com- parisons with other Asian film- makers, such as Wong Kar Wai, to whom Ahluwalia feels much closer than Bollywood or India’s parallel cinema. That was partly why he decided


to work with Fortissimo Films, an early champion of Hong Kong and Thailand’s new wave, on interna- tional sales. “I had to find the right people who are going to under- stand it,” he says. Cinetic Media is handling North American rights.


Meet the debutants ADAM LEON, GIMME THE LOOT


This time a year ago we hadn’t met [Tashiana]. We looked at more than 500 girls — it was a six to eight-month process. We were on subways and had our casting directors at schools, at the beach, at the park. We were about to shut down production and she came in at the end of July [2011].


AdamLeon


Thirty-year-old Adam Leon’s Bronx-set Gimme The Loot won the Grand Jury best narrative feature prize at SXSW and screens in Un Certain Regard here in Cannes. It will be released in the US through Sundance Selects.


What film training did you have? I didn’t go to film school. I’ve just always wanted to do this since I was four or five, and have been very determined. Since I was a teenager, I bounced around the movie world as much as possible.


What gave you the idea for Gimme The Loot? I co-directed a short film [Killer] some years ago and we cast some graffiti writers from the Bronx. It was a great jumping-off point to explore these real-life action heroes who jump off roofs and run away from bad guys. Ty [Hickson, who plays Malcolm in Gimme The Loot] was in the first film and I felt he could carry a movie, so it was a huge advantage knowing I could write this movie for him.


How did you find the female lead, Tashiana Washington? We knew that to pull this off we would need two realistic leads.


The film seems natural. How did you capture that? I wrote a full script and had a lot of people look at it so we could make sure it was authentic in terms of language and settings. We didn’t use shaky cam and a faux documentary style, but everything had to be super-authentic in terms of the language and the people. We brought in this legendary graffiti artist called SP1, who taught the kids how to write and taught them about the culture.


The film is more than an adventure… For us graffiti was a jumping-off point; it’s a great profession in which to frame the story. Malcolm and Sofia have something much deeper. That’s there from the beginning of the movie.


How did you secure funding? The money came from angel investors, a couple we knew who loved the script and believed in the business plan. We also got money from [crowd-funding platform] Kickstarter and friends.


Does it feel good to be showing your first feature in Cannes? It’s hard to describe the feeling of making this movie with this group of people nobody knew and then having someone say this should be shown on the ultimate stage. Jeremy Kay


Gerard Butler


spaghetti westerns. It will have a strong visual style, and yet very lit- tle is actually said. It’s got ‘cool’ written all over it.” Albert Hughes will direct, with


production due to begin on Sep- tember 30 in the US.


Gimme The Loot


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