Defending Cinephilia (8) - Simon Killen, another Melburnian, survives a lockdown year

Kelly Reichardt

Vidor and Reichardt in Berlin

The cinematic year started for me in Berlin as usual. Passing through Singapore airport, an elevated level of masking, and the first temperature testing sites being set up at various gates were ominous motifs for the year ahead. A very disappointing line-up at Berlinale but two fine highlights: The exhaustive King Vidor retrospective (I was able to see only STELLA DALLAS and THE REAL ADVENTURE, but reports from others were all pretty joy-filled). And what would turn out to be my final real life festival screening, both in Berlin and 2020 (gulp!) was Kelly Reichardt’s FIRST COW. And took place in the glorious jewel that is the Friedrichstadt Palast. Rarely has a screening venue been as incongruous – but what a beautifully made piece of cinema this film is. Later in the year I would shed a quiet tear at the notion of watching it on a small screen stream. 

Hear My Eyes

Shortly after Berlin, an even bigger screening: SUSPIRIA at Hamer Hall. A collective named Hear My Eyes had commissioned a new score which was performed live – and very large indeed. King Gizzard Wizard mini orchestra created a buzzing and tense score that gave the viewer an entirely new angle on the Dario Argento film. I had misgivings about the process before the experience – but am now a total convert. I would never miss a Hear My Eyes production in the future.

 

Gable, Colbert, It Happened One Night

It Happened One Night

These two mammoth screenings gave way to the smallest of the year – and in many ways the most enjoyable. At North Fitzroy library, a screening of IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT with around 18 people of various ages was a complete joy. To my shame, I’d never seen the film. I’d heard how risqué it was over the years, but was still unprepared for just how sassy it is, how much it spits and fizzes – and shows a glimpse of a possible future for Hollywood that the code quashed. And to be sharing the laughs with a group of strangers was pretty joyous.

 

Jay Weissberg, Pordenone (top)
Guy Borlée, Bologna

Bologna and Pordenone

Festivals, so long the cinephilia anchor for many, were turned upside down. And for me, there was huge upside. The loss of Cannes is pretty incalculable, but at least there was a market on-line where a lot of content was screened. And there was even a bidding war or two that took place on Whatsapp and messenger. But the loss of Cannes opened up space to attend Bologna and Pordenone virtually. And thus my biggest surprise of 2020: which country provided the highest quality service and resolution in digital film delivery? Italy! Forza italia!! Bologna was excellent, but Pordenone took the on-line festival experience to the highest level. Jay Weissberg’s introduction to each night’s feature from a different part of Pordenone was passionate, knowledgeable and welcoming. Seeing him do this made me realise that we so rarely get to see a person synthesize all the elements of a festival so well. The Q & As that followed were equally as well run. 

 

Sandra Wollner

Remembering MIFF

Back at home, MIFF acquitted itself really well with a fine programme given the restrictions they operated under. But sadly it won’t be the excellent programming that MIFF 2020 will be remembered for in the world of cineastes – it will be the sad spectacle of Sandra Wollner’s THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN strange journey. Invited after its Berlin screening, and subsequently uninvited in a secretive process shortly before the festival opened. That the time-line of withdrawal took place in public without clear communications from the festival was unsavoury. Yes, it’s a small thing in the wider world. But for those with an intense interest in defending cinephilia, it’s a bad marker.

 

Eliza Scanlen,Babyteeth

Oz

Back at cinemas, I entered lockdown one with an excellent Australian film, and re-entered new normal after lockdown two with four well above par Australian films. IN MY BLOOD IT RUNS, BRAZEN HUSSIES, THE DRY, and BABY TEETH all present unique and thoughtful portraits of contemporary Australia and all do it with a strong eye to entertainment as well. And while on Australian cinema, no film was better for screening during the COVID period than Warwick Thornton’s THE BEACH. The timing for a gorgeously shot film about a man having a wise-crack speckled existential crisis in the most breathtakingly lonely and beautiful landscape in Australia could not have been better. And his son Dylan River continues to be a cinematographer whose work I’d crawl over broken glass to see. 

 

David Thomas

Vale David, Amree and Bill

Apart from being inherently depressing in and of itself, we all lost so many loved friends and families through the lock-down, so many people have thus not been celebrated in the way we might ordinarily have done so. I toast in the most virtual sense: Dave Thomas, projectionist at MIFF forever, solver of all problems known to humankind. When we can finally send him off as he fully deserved, the stories are going to be sensational. Amree Hewitt, as referenced by Adrian Danks in his summary - a woman of intelligence and effervescence who as Adrian said, could make a day better by being there. An energiser, a producer, a networker par excellence. She'll be hugely missed. And over in New Zealand, the man who was never entirely sure he was the longest serving film festival director in the world died - and I think we'll print the legend on this. Bill Gosden was a lightning rod for quality in all forms, cinema being the central one. Cheeky as a schoolboy until the very end, but as erudite and passionate about cinema - all arts - as anyone I've known. His notes for the NZFF programme were a year in, year out delight. And I'll pull them out every now and then to marvel at his fluent expression - I envied him that so very much. Vale Bill, Amree and Dave.

Melbourne International Film Festival (online) - Karl Quinn responds to Tom Ryan and David Stratton about MIFF’s decision to pull THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN from its program and reports on his interview with the director Sandra Wollner

Below is a story written by Karl Quinn, senior culture writer at The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, about the Austrian film The Trouble With Being Born, which was due to screen at the Melbourne International Film Festival this month. The story was never published, however, because events took a very different turn, as readers of this blog will be aware, when MIFF pulled the film on the eve of the festival in response to comments by two forensic psychologists quoted by Quinn. 

Both Quinn and The Age have come in for criticism from contributors Tom Ryan and David Stratton on this blog over what they have intimated was a "beat-up". 

 

Here Quinn defends his reporting, and offers some background on what unfolded between filing the original story below and the story that eventually did run, some days later. 

 

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Karl Quinn writes:

 

This story begins a couple of weeks before MIFF opened, when Jake Wilson filed a short review for Spectrum, The Age's weekend culture section, in which he described The Trouble With Being Born as a "detached yet outrageous ... provocation" whose subject matter "is exploitation and specifically paedophilia". Wilson added that the film was "almost enough to make you glad MIFF isn’t running as usual this year. Under any circumstances it’s a uniquely uncomfortable experience, but it would be even tougher to get through in a crowded cinema." 

 

Given that, it was almost inevitable the news desk would want a story, and I was asked to provide one. So I watched the film, found it unsettling and fascinating in equal measure, interviewed director Sandra Wollner over Skype, and wrote - for the news pages, with the likelihood of some controversy clearly flagged - the story you see below.

 

But that story didn't run. After I filed it an editor asked me to seek and add to it the views of someone expert in the area of sex offences against children. Given the subject matter and the images in the film, that hardly seemed an unreasonable request.

I received responses from three forensic psychologists, two of whom I quoted. All three had serious issues with the film. I fed these responses into the original story, while retaining as much as possible of Wollner's explanation of her intentions. But given the strength of the psychologists' responses, I thought it only fair to share them with MIFF before publication, in case the festival wished to respond.

 

A few hours later MIFF did respond - by pulling the film. 

 

At that point the story became something else entirely, which is what I reported and what we ultimately published. 

 

Far from a "beat-up", the story arose because I sought multiple viewpoints, and gave MIFF the right of reply. I stand unreservedly behind that, as I do my subsequent report of the criticisms of MIFF by Ryan and Stratton. I concede I did not report their criticisms of my initial report in this second report because it simply seemed too solipsistic to do so. 

 

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of MIFF pulling the film, the fact the festival was online this year was deemed a critical factor, both in the issues identified by the psychologists and the decision made by MIFF. But that point could easily be missed in the responses of Ryan and Stratton published on this site.

 

Also missed in some of the responses - though not in my reporting - is that while MIFF dumped a film that had been "approved" by the censor, that approval was granted in the form of a general exemption, not a specific assessment of the film in question. MIFF insists that detailed descriptions of The Trouble With Being Born were provided to the Classification Board, as required, and one might argue that those descriptions should have been enough to suggest that this particular film ought to be assessed on its own merits. 

 

One psychologist - responding to my detailed but neutral descriptions of scenes in the film (which she declined to view) - asserted that they likely constituted Child Exploitation Material.

 

Personally, I think this is unlikely, but I'm no expert. But if she is correct, screening that material - let alone distributing it over the internet - would be a criminal offence in this country. 

 

Had the Classification Board asked to view the film, that matter could have been definitively settled. The fact that no one at the Board did so ultimately left MIFF in the unenviable position of having to play censor to its own programming.

 

Now, here's the unpublished interview with Sandra Wollner.  

 

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Sandra Wollner with Berlinale Prize

A film in which an android child has sex with its human "father" is destined to be one of the most controversial offerings at this year's Melbourne International Film Festival.

 

The Trouble With Being Born, from Austrian director Sandra Wollner, arrives at the digital-only MIFF 68 ½ following its debut in February at the Berlin Film Festival, where it received a Special Jury Award in the Encounters section dedicated to more daring works.

 

But the slow-burning, barely futuristic tale, which one UK newspaper dubbed an "android paedophile film", also prompted audience walkouts.

 

Al Cossar, artistic director of MIFF, is unapologetic about its inclusion in the festival's line-up. "The content is certainly confronting, however we do not see it as an empty provocation, but a film that transcends troubling subject matter with substance, craft and voice," he says. "We also hope that any response to the film from audiences – positive or negative – comes from a place that is informed, that people respond to what the film actually is, rather than an idea of what they have in their minds, which may not be reflective of the reality of it."

 

The relationship between Papa (Dominik Warta) and Elli (the pseudonymous Lena Watson) is inappropriate purely by implication rather than overtly pornographic, though it is almost impossible to miss.

 

Director Wollner says she knows her film is "strange, weird", and is likely to prompt some strong reactions. But she has been surprised by the personal nature of some attacks – invariably from people who have not seen it.

 

"We've had some strange responses from the alt.right, saying it's 'praising paedophilia', which is obviously not what's going on there," she says. "Some people have been really angry that I, as a potential mother – I'm not yet – could make this. 'You're able to give birth to children, how could you give birth to something like that?'"

 

Wollner says she had initially wanted to make an "anti-Pinocchio" film that defied the trope of an artificially intelligent being wanting to become human. It would be a way of exploring what it is that actually makes us human – if not 'memories', which AI can replicate to an astonishing degree of accuracy, then what?

 

"It's the God question, in a way. Memory is just a very specific way to look at it," she says.

 

It was her co-writer, Roderick Warich, who first came up with the idea of a sexual relationship between a man and an android "child", but it immediately struck a chord with Wollner.

 

"I had stumbled upon pictures from a Japanese company selling sex dolls of little kids and pre-teens, that are really life-like, really realistic, and this shocked me," she says. "But it's a doll, it's an object, so where do we draw the line?"

 

She wasn't interested in making a film about her moral repugnance, though, and she didn't know how to answer the question of what impact such things have – "does it do any good, by letting people live their sexual fantasies with an object, or is it triggering something?"

 

Rather, she says, "I was more interested in doing a film about the fact this exists ... to see the AI as the mirror of the human soul, of the darkest abyss of the uncanny valley, where there's no light. So I needed to go down this path."

 

Anyone unconvinced that "this exists" need only look to the fact that last week anti-pornography campaign group Collective Shout pressured Alibaba into removing all listings for "child sex abuse dolls", after attacking the online retail hub for profiting "from normalising the abuse of infants by facilitating users' fantasies of raping a child".

 

But what of the real child actor who plays Elli? No matter what the intellectual justifications for the film, does it not raise serious duty-of-care issues?

 

Absolutely, says Wollner, which is why the then-10-year-old was given a false name, wigs, and a heavy silicon mask, applied fresh each day, to hide her identity. "You would not recognise her if you saw her in the street," she says.

 

The script was shared in advance with the girl's parents, "the nicest family I have ever met". A psychologist with expertise in child sexual trauma guided Wollner through the language she should use in explaining situations to Lena; the child was talked through the subject matter in "child-appropriate ways"; and nude scenes were filmed with her in a flesh-toned bathing suit, which was digitally removed in post-production.

 

"These matters are always scary," says Wollner. "It's very important how you work with the kids."

 

One challenge that has so far been insurmountable, however, is that Lena is too young to watch the film. "I think it's weirder for her that she cannot show and see what she did."

 

Ultimately, of course, Wollner cannot know for certain that Lena's involvement in the film will prove benign.

 

"I've thought about it a lot, what's it going to be like when she discovers her own sexuality, will it do something to that," she says. "Working with kids you always force, in a way, something on them, but we did our best [to be] transparent.

 

"She comes from such a healthy environment, and knows it's just a game, that I don't think there will be any trauma." 

Melbourne International Film Festival (online) - David Stratton has some thoughts about MIFF's decision to withdraw THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN (Sandra Wollner, Austria, 2020) from its program

 

Tom Ryan’s excellent piece  on the Melbourne International Film Festival’s selection of the Berlin prize-winner THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN, and the festival’s own subsequent banning of the film, deserves further comment.

 

As Ryan says, the former director of MFF, Erwin Rado, and I fought a long and bitter battle between 1966 and 1971 to free the festivals from Government censorship.  We had the full support of our respective Boards; in my case, the Board President for most of that period, Ross Tzannes, who was a lawyer, was of the utmost importance.  It was a struggle and it was painful but in the end we were given freedom from censorship to the extent that we were able to screen Nagisa Oshima’s sexually frank IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976) without any cuts whatsoever.

 

It is therefore especially galling to me to witness MIFF’s apparently craven response to a film they themselves selected.  If, in the future, the Government wants to censor a festival film, the festival will no longer be in a position to protest; they’ve done it to themselves.

 

I haven’t seen the film and nor, I gather, has at least one of the ‘experts’ who commented on it for what seems to be a beat-up in The Age (I would have expected more from this newspaper and from the journalist who wrote the story. Back then The Age’s film critic Colin Bennett was a staunch supporter of all of our anti-censorship battles.)  

 

But the point is, as Ryan makes clear, that someone from MIFF must have seen the film, probably in Berlin, and decided that it should be shown.  For the film then to be banned by the festival itself is shameful and unforgivable.

 

I think we need to know who saw the film in Berlin (if, indeed, anyone did) and recommended it to the festival for inclusion and also whose decision it was to ban the film.

 

Incidentally, I emailed Festival Director Al Cossar on July 31 to express my concern in this matter.  A fortnight later I have not received a response.  I realise he’s busy, but still…