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Ukrainian film funder forced to resign
Screen Daily
5 March, 2014 | By Martin Blaney
International colleagues have expressed concern at the news that Kateryna Kopylova, head of the Ukrainian State Film Agency since December 2010, was forced to resign her post at the end of last week.
According to the Ukrainian news agency LB, the resignation had been tendered by Kopyleva “by mutual agreement”.
This development comes after the Maidan Square protestors took over Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture and appointed actor Evgeny Nishchuk as the new Minister of Culture.
Since then, the various professional associations have initiated an “open discussion” about the future of the Film Agency. A source in Kiev told ScreenDaily that the current situation is “a mess” with people bringing their own particular opinions and demands.
The Association of Producers of Ukraine (APU) was even forced to remove and distance itself from comments made by its CEO Denis Maslikov on it’s website.
The present vacuum at the Film Agency is also likely to pose a problems for productions which were expecting production funding to be paid out for shoots scheduled this year.
Question mark over Sevastopol festival
Political efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region will determine whether the international film festival in the Crimean port of Sevastopol will be affected.
Igor Gouskov, formerly one of the team at Vologda’s VOICES film festival for young European cinema, had told ScreenDaily during this year’s Berlinale that he will serve as programme director for the Sevastopol International Film Festival.
As the festival’s website indicated today (Wed), the 2014 edition is scheduled to run from Sept 19-24.
Kusturica supports Russian Ukrainians
Serbian film director Emir Kusturica has spoken out in support of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine during a tour of his band, The No Smoking Orchestra, in Russia.
Speaking to the ITAR-TASS news agency in the Volga region’s city of Samara, Kusturica said: “Unfortunately, Ukraine is following the Yugoslav scenario, and I regret it. I see the same kind of catastrophe. I think that Russia should protect ethnic Russians residing in Ukraine.”
During the concert when he spoke English and Russian, Kusturica and his band dedicated the famous military march Farewell of Slavianka by the Soviet conductor and composer Vasily Agapkin to “our Russian brothers in Ukraine”.
方文山有句歌詞說:""凋謝的世道上,命運不堪. 我一生在紙上,被風吹亂."" 電影裏把前一句翻成英文: A fate hard to swallow，""一段難以下嚥的命運"". 幾年前回國定居,買了生平第一支手機,學習寫簡訊,只會寫英文,寫下的第一個句子就是從電影 ""滿城盡帶黃金甲"" 裏看到的這一句:A fate hard to swallow. 想起半生滄桑,想起病榻掙扎的父親,此話聽來格外悲涼.
The original concept for the film was to make a movie about a man who wants to fight God. That is, of course, a very vast obstacle but when I was writing the film, I was going through some very existential times in my life - we were expecting our second child and it was a difficult pregnancy - and the idea of having a character who wants to fight God without knowing why very much appealed to me.
With that as the concept, I elaborated by adding a character who believes he is God (Chang), obviously the antagonist, with the protagonist being a gangster who is looking for religion to believe in (Julian). This itself is, of course, very existential because faith is based on the need for a higher answer but most of the time, we don’t know what the question is. When the answer comes, then, we must backtrack our lives in order to find the question. In this way, the film is conceived as an answer, with the question revealed at the end.
With hindsight, I am able to see the similarities between Chang and One Eye in Valhalla Rising, and Driver in Drive - all are rooted in fairytale mythology and have difficulties living in the everyday world. I can see that technically, there is a resemblance in their stoic behavior, silence, and fetishistic portraits even though they live in different times and are portrayed by different actors. In Valhalla Rising, One Eye is enigmatic - we don’t know his past but he is defined by his name. In Drive, Driver is defined by his function. And in Only God Forgives, Chang is first of all defined by his enigmatic behaviour, to such an extent that he becomes a disembodied character, an ‘it’, defined not by his name but solely by his image.
In a way, Only God Forgives is like an accumulation of all the films I’ve made so far. I think I was heading toward a creative collision, full speed ahead, in order to change everything around me and to see what would come after. I have always said that I set out to make films about women but I end up making films about violent men. Now that everything is colliding, it may end up turning things upside-down for me. This collision is exciting because everything around me becomes so uncertain and we must not forget that the second enemy of creativity, after having ‘good taste’, is being safe.
