Loach is a Cannes regular whose “The Wind That Shakes The Barley” won the Palme d’Or, the main prize in 2006 and last year threw “Looking For Eric” into the ring.

“Route Irish,” written by frequent collaborator Paul Laverty, tells the story of two former soldiers who head to Iraq as private security contractors. When one is killed, the other doubts the “official story” about his friend’s death and sets out to find the truth.

“Route Irish” is the term used for the dangerous highway connecting Baghdad’s Green Zone to the airport.

Will Loach’s luck hold up with the Cannes Jury headed this year by Tim Burton? We will know in a matter of days.

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Stephen Ashton

The film world is calling for the release of director Jafar Panahi, who was arrested  in his house in Tehran by plainclothes officers of the Iranian regime. The following were also arrested: his wife and daughter, film directors Mohammad Rasulov, Mahnaz Mohammadi, Rokhsareh Ghaem-Maghami and cameraman Ebrahim Ghafari.

It would appear that the director, who supports opposition leader Mir Hossein Moussavi, was arrested because he was making a documentary film about the wave of protests that broke out last June after the controversial election of president Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Panahi did not receive permission to shoot the scenes of his new film in Tehran.

Last summer, Panahi was detained by the police, along with his wife and daughter, after taking part in a commemoration ceremony for Neda Agha-Soltan, who was killed during an opposition demonstration.

There have been vociferous protests against the Iranian director?s arrest from film circles across the world. The FERA – European Federation of Film Directors has called for the immediate release of Panahi and his family.

Cineuropa is collecting the signatures of its readers to join in this demand: send an email to the following address cineuropa@cineuropa.org including your name, surname, city and country. You may add a comment which will be published on our website.

Look for our reports coming up soon.

Guadalaja, based in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, is host to what has become one of the most significant film events in Latin America, FICG or the International Cinema Festival of Guadalajara. The Festival runs from March 19-27, 2009.

Since its inception in 1986 it has grown from a showcase of Mexican Film to an important force in the film industries of Latin America and Spain. In addition to featuring new films from the ever surprising Mexican film world, the Festival this year, its 24th, will present a special Guadalajara International Prize to moviemaker and musician Emir Kusturica.

Born in Sarajevo in 1954, Kusturica made his first film in 1981 with “Do You Remember Dolly Bell?” The film won a Gold Lion at the Venice Film Festival. In 1985 he won a Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival with his movie “When Father Was Away on Business,” which also garnered an Oscar Nomination as Best Foreign Film. Kustirica thrilled the Cannes Jury again in 1989 with his “Time of the Gypsies” which won him the Best Director Award.

He made his absurdist comedy “Arizona Dream” in the United and won a Gold Lion at the Venice Film Festival with “Black Cat, White Cat,” a comedy set once again in his favored Gypsy world. He follows with “Life is a Miracle,” “Promise Me This” and “Maradona”

Kusturica is an accomplished rock musician as well and will perform in Guadalajara with his band, TNSO, at Telmex Auditorium on Sunday, March 22, as a Festival Special Event.

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The American Film  Market takes place in Santa Monica where industry players from around the world gather for meetings, sales, screenings and purchases of films of every genre.

The AFI, on the other hand, is at the other end of town. Based at the impressive ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood, the AFI promised to be a harbinger of the Oscars, showcasing upcoming fall releases and many of the world´s best films selected to represent their respective countries for Best Foreign Film.

The AFI had grown leaps and bounds under the directorship of Christian Gaines, who refined his vision bit by bit in each succeeding edition.  He established a comfortable “Festival Village” of tents on the rooftop of the parking lot of the cinemas that serves as hospitality areas, conference areas and of course, the inevitable party-place to be for the ten day run.

Gaines left AFI this summer, with Artistic Director Rose Kuo and her team heading up the Festival until another exec director is named. It appears that this edition will begin without an official Director, but the Festival is still days away and anything can happen.  The main thing is, as Gaines so aptly said upon leaving, “the Festival is in good hands.”

What new is promised for this year?  It is a little soon to tell, but given the past few festivals, it is bound to be exciting.

Story and Photography
By Stephen Ashton
The lounge of the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel seemed a fitting setting to interview the young German director about his cautionary new film THE LIVES OF OTHERS. It had just been screened in AFI FEST, but the story is an old one: political paranoia and suppression of civil liberties. The walls of this hotel, if they had ears and voices, could tell similar tales from Hollywood’s darkest hour… the Blacklist years. I had the chance to discuss it with Florian Henckle von Donnersmarck.

Stephen Ashton: Your film is quite an astounding piece of work especially for a first feature.  What was your background?

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck:   I studied at Munich film school and made a lot of short films. My first encounter with film was in 1996 when I was an intern with Richard Attenborough. He was my first mentor. I originally wanted to be a producer, but it became clear to me that I would really have to be a director because I was so concerned about the details. Early on I wanted to be a novelist, but soon I realized that cinema is the art form of our times.  I think you can reach people so much more intensely in film.  You get to use so many different art forms.

I had a great conversation the other day with Sony’s Amy Pascal and she said it so beautifully… “The great thing about films is that you get to tell your story SIX TIMES. You get to tell it through the writing, you get to tell it through the actors, through the music, through the production design (art direction), you get to tell it through the costumes and of course you get to tell it through the images.”  She is quite a philosopher of film actually.

SA: And a poet…

F :   Yes really. I have been thinking about that ever since she said that yesterday, and it is so true. That is why filmmaking is such a satisfying experience, because you get to explore so many different facets of art.

SA :  Yes, that is really what is amazing about cinema, particularly when the storytelling is practically dialog free, relying mostly on images… and it is even more effective. John Ford would tear pages out of the script right on the set telling the actors that they could get the scene across best by just using gestures and action, non verbal visual means.

F: Right, and if an actor doesn’t feel that his lines are right we have to respect that and respond.

SA: Well, this is a massive kind of a story to tell. Especially for your first feature. It had to be spot on accurate historically, or you could be su

F: Right, looking back to the 20th Century, it is century of ideologies. And I still think we are suffering from ideology. Even after the end of the cold war… Islam is an ideology. I started to think about “what is ideology”

SA: Yes, it’s like Socialism faded out and Islam came to rise… as if people have a deep need for something to stand for… for principles or ideology.

F: Yeah. Exactly. I realized that ideology is just principle taken too far. Principle without feeling. Without compassion. If you only pay attention to your principles, without considering your feelings – then, that’s it – you are an idealog.  If Osama Bin Laden did not just think about what he thinks are his principles, but started thinking about his feeling, about compassion, then he could not be able to commit these atrocities.

I thought that would be an interesting theme to explore. Just the question of how people lean more to the side of principle or to the side of feeling. That’s a decision every one of us has to make every day. I do see ideology as something very very dangerous.

Even today, in the case of Bush, for example, I have tried for a long time to understand for a long time… he uses a language of ideology to justify his actions, and that is something he should not do. The great thing about America has always been the kind of diversity and freedom of opinion here. There is not a single ideology. I think he should also use a language of feeling and compassion.

SA: Language is a very important thing historically, you know, how something is characterized. In your film you have a scene that refers to a theatre director who the protagonist says is “Blacklisted.”  And he is criticized for using this term… even though it is obvious that the director has been prevented from working because of his views. That’s a very incendiary idea, with these very walls of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, which witnessed one of America’s darkest moments during the Hollywood Blacklist.

F: Exactly, during the McCarthy era in the US you had it too.

SA: I would imagine that it was a very hot button in East Germany where they could criticize the US for its infringements on civil liberties, right? Isn’t it also a bell-weather for today’s crackdown of civil liberties in the era of the “Patriot” Act? Although set in communist East Germany I think your film is incredibly timely.

F: Yes exactly. Writers, artists are supposed to be the ones who are safeguarding freedom and our liberties.

I think that it is vitally important when you see the very beginnings of infringements you have to fight it. It should be fought by your profession, the journalists and by the filmmakers and artists.

SA: Although there is the fear of something like a terrorist attack, it is also a pretense which can be used by political forces to crack down on personal freedom and civil liberties.

F: Well, I think… Being from a country that has seen just how far things can go, I think it is so important to understand that FREEDOM, especially here in the United States where freedom is more profound than any where in the world, that’s just the tradition of this country. That freedom also comes at a price… you have to accept that it might be a little more difficult to find potential terrorists because the government or police do NOT have the right to surveille every single individual. Of course its going to be easier to find a terrorist if you go totally to a “BIG BROTHER” state whose sole intention is to prevent terrorist attacks is going to be successful, but then what’s the point if you are going to turn your Free Society into a Police State (where everyone is spied on and is riddled with informers.)

You don’t want to give up Freedom in order to defend it.

I am not a friend of a strong executive branch of government.

I know that America is moving away from the right to bear arms for example. I see that as a danger. If you take Germany, we don’t have the right to bear arms. The government has a monopoly on the right to use force. Is this right?

There is a price to pay for these things.

SA the right to bear arms is logical particularly if the arms are used in a way to protect your liberties. So if there is a military force, as there has been in many latin american countries and in eastern europe and elsewhere, then you may need to bear arms to defend your liberty, but that presumes that there is a “conversation” in the society about what the LIBERTIES ARE… that there is a reason to bear the arms.

F: Right, you never know when that is going to come upon you. Do think that the Jews in Germany had an idea about what was coming? You see it would have been necessary to empower the individual. I have faith in the individual. I think that that is the great strenght of the United States… the great faith in the individual.

In Germany for example everything is take so far. In Germany people don’t make voluntary contributions to the church. An obligitory “Church Tax” is taken from your yearly income. You just fill in what religion you belong to, and it is taken from you and given to them. You have no choice in the matter. It’s like everything is regulated by the government and it’s not a good thing. It makes people very passive. It makes people stop thinking of themselves as masters of their own fate. And the great thing is that in free countries you can be master of your own fate.

Both Ziggi (his publicist) and I know about this. Ziggi left Poland during martial Law.

SA: Well, specifically about your film. You have a main character, a STASI secret police guy who is spying on the protagonist. They have every room of his house bugged and every sound is listened to personally. It is frightening. Then he has a change of heart and protects the family. Tell me about the motivation of that character, how and why you put that in.

F: I wanted to him to transform from a man who was blocking out his feelings to a person who realizes that he can’t do that long term. I wanted to it not be one pivotal point for him, like you are supposed to do according to screen writing text booksI wanted it to be a gradual continous transformation, almost like a mid-life crisis,  like it is in real life. I wanted him to realize on the one hand, on the STASI side, his friend and colleague who was always a little less loyal and less intelligent always moved ahead in his career. And on the enemies of the State are not much of an enemy at all, that they are (pausing, as if to see them in front of him, feeling for them) normal people.  And at the same time he is moved by the discovery of music and poetry… things he has never head that way before.

All of this acts upon him slowly. First he is a Passive Hero, He begins to withhold details… personal details of their lives. And then he thinks about maybe betraying them after all.  He is almost an Accidental Hero. He is not a Hero in shining armor who fights for the good of all. I think that that is what all heroism is really. It just comes upon us and is drawn out of us.
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