![]() ![]() Not unlike Mati Diop’s Mille soleils, Haroun’s Bye Bye Africa (99) explores expatriation, longing, and film history, but takes place during the ascendance of Nollywood in the late Nineties when traditional film theaters were being closed across the entire continent. Savaged by censors during its original release (according to Pabst’s editor, the theater owner insisted on cuts after opening night), it had been unavailable in anything close to a complete form in the years since.Īlmost as habitually under-viewed by mass-audiences are the films of Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, the Chadian-born director who has lived in France since 1982 and who received a complete retrospective this year. ![]() Pabst’s The Joyless Street (25) also played to a packed house, again with the accompaniment of the Matti Bye Ensemble. The very next evening, the restored 149-minute version of G.W. Blending elements of tragedy and humor, as well as featuring mountaintop stunts performed by-as director Pawel Pawlikowsi put it-“some fat actor,” the lost eight-reeler achieved a sophistication most contemporary films could only hope to attain. When the widow’s brother-in-law, an unsavory lawman, comes to arrest the thief, she rejects her life of comfort and flees into the mountains with her lover. In Sjöström’s story set in 18th-century Iceland, a thief seeks employment at a wealthy widow’s farm, and soon enough, they fall in love. The Outlaw and His Wife, which was accompanied live by the impressive Matti Bye Ensemble, is not just uniquely beautiful (as noted by both the Cahiers critics and Louis Delluc) but an engaging story that goes far beyond its titular premise. Judging from the audience’s reaction to von Bagh’s declaration, it was clear that the film projections weren’t some quirky bonus, but the way things should be. Introducing a restoration of Victor Sjöström’s Swedish silent The Outlaw and His Wife (18), von Bagh said that digital restorations were “destroying film culture.” These sentiments are echoed in the festival program’s brief cover note, which concisely (and passionately) argues against conflating digital with eternal. In this cinephilic spirit, if something was shot on film, it was screened on film. (The standout: Jovan Jovanović and Mika Milošević’s Kolt 15 GAP, a 1971 documentary whatsit powered by Stanoje Cebic’s Lenny-Bruce-meets-socialist-pioneer-leader-meets-schizophrenic-street-preacher performance.) Having just experienced the extended tedium of SXSW-which privileged parties, promotional gimmicks, Lady Gaga, and app launches over film-I found Midnight Sun not just refreshing but edifying, as members of the press, filmmakers, locals, and groups of visiting students camping out in tents could all rub shoulders and rejoice in the pleasures of the medium. I followed that cinematic feast with a pancake-wrapped soja makkara, a beer, and a program of mind-blowing Yugoslavian Black Wave shorts from Oberhausen’s archive, co-programmed by FC’s European editor Olaf Möller and Oberhausen programmer Lars Henrik Glass. On my final afternoon at the festival, I watched Alice Rohrwacher’s sweet, luminous second feature, The Wonders, in a peculiarly appropriate circus tent, then trotted some 500 feet to Sodankylä’s singular film theater to catch Gleb Panfilov’s mannered but impressive 1983 television adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s Vassa. With 24 hours of Arctic sunlight and screenings running nearly round the clock, you really don’t have an excuse to sleep. Nestled among ancient forests, the five-block-wide town of Sodankylä boasts intimate, easily accessible venues that allow you to drift from one fantastic film to the next without any pesky downtime. Founded in 1986 by Aki Kaurismäki, Mika Kaurismäki, and critic/filmmaker Peter von Bagh, the festival (which ran June 11 to 15) features a mix of up-and-coming filmmakers, retrospectives of underappreciated and established directors, obscure genre surveys, and contemporary Finnish cinema. The Midnight Sun Festival in Finland defies the see-it-first mandate that guides so much programming and critical response, but without being a mere exercise in cinephilic nostalgia. ![]()
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