Latest news with #LondonFilmSchool
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Colombia Takes Center Stage at Cannes, led by Simón Mesa Soto's ‘A Poet' in Un Certain Regard
Colombia has a robust presence in Cannes this year, starting with Un Certain Regard entry 'A Poet' ('Un Poeta') by Simón Mesa Soto, whose career trajectory has been linked to Cannes thus far. He premiered his debut feature 'Amparo' at Cannes Critics' Week in 2021. Prior to that, Mesa Soto, who studied Audiovisual Communications at the University of Antioquia in Colombia and later pursued a Master's degree at the London Film School, won the 2014 Cannes short film Palme d'Or with his thesis short film, 'Leidi,' while his next short film, 'Mother,' was selected to compete in Cannes two years later. More from Variety Luke Evans Joins Noomi Rapace in 'Traction,' Action-Thriller Set in Chechnya (EXCLUSIVE) Neon Names Cinetic's Ryan Werner as President of Global Cinema Mexican Helmer Alex Kahuam, in Cannes' Fantastic Pavilion With 'The Remedy,' Eyes European Locations for Next Major Project (EXCLUSIVE) 'A Poet' follows Oscar Restrepo (played by non-pro Ubeimar Rios), whose devotion to poetry has earned him little more than obscurity. Now aging and erratic, he embodies the archetype of the forgotten poet, lost in the shadows. But when he crosses paths with Yurlady (non-pro Rebeca Andrade), a talented teenager from humble origins, he finds new meaning in helping her grow as a poet. However, as he gets more involved in guiding her, he starts to wonder if bringing her into the difficult and uncertain world of poetry is really the best thing for her. The film shifts tonally between comedy, drama, parody and tragedy—making it, according to Mesa Soto, his most personal work to date. 'As I was finishing my first film, I felt overwhelmed and somewhat disillusioned with filmmaking and art—it's so hard, especially in Colombia. I even considered quitting cinema altogether. I'm also a university professor, so I thought maybe I'd just focus on teaching. I imagined myself in 20 years as a kind of bohemian professor, living off his past, like some of the poet-like teachers I knew in Medellín—eccentric, stuck in a surreal world where they believed they were great artists. That image haunted me. I thought: what if I made a film about the worst version of myself in 20 years if I gave up on cinema?' he says. Inspired by people in his life, the initial idea was to write and direct a freer, unrestrained kind of film, he says, adding: 'I was drawn to comedy because I wanted to reconnect with the joy of filmmaking—to enjoy the process again. Humor allowed me to laugh at myself as an artist and at the struggles of making art in a country like Colombia. I wanted something without formal constraints, not bound by expectations of what Latin American cinema 'should' be, but open to playing with cinematic language.' 'Those films about writers or poets often seem made for the First World—I wanted to create a version of that from the perspective of Colombia, from this tropical, complex, and unique place,' he muses. Like many Colombian filmmakers, Mesa Soto tapped the country's film fund, which he says has grown more difficult to access as filmmaking has surged in his country. 'It has grown more competitive as more projects are being made,' he observes. Luxbox handles international sales of the Swedish-Colombian-German co-production. According to Colombian Film Commissioner Silvia Echeverri, local film production has grown in spades but local box office earnings, which feeds the fund, are down so that has impacted the size of the fund. However, there are incentives for local businesses to invest in film. Drawn to the country's generous incentives led by the CINA 35% tax rebate on location shoot expenditures and the Colombia Film Fund (FFC), which provides a cash rebate covering 40% of audiovisual services expenses and 20% of logistical costs, more international projects have descended on Colombia. Among them are 'Paddington in Peru' and most recently, 'Shadow Force' with Omar Sy and Kerry Washington and 'Titan,' a Constantin Film-backed survival thriller, produced by 'Resident Evil' franchise producers Jeremy Bolt and Robert Kulzer. 'This year, project execution is going well and is already better than it was at the same time last year. It reflects a clear rebound in the development and consolidation of projects across the country,' says Echeverri. According to promotional agency Proimágenes, an unprecedented 70+ Colombian films were released last year, but total theater admissions dropped to 45 million, down from 54 million the previous year and well below the pre-COVID peak of 73 million in 2019. Forty percent of the releases were dramas, followed by documentaries at 36%, with the remainder consisting of comedies, horror, suspense and experimental films. Reflecting this mix of genres are the films participating in Cannes this year. Aside from 'A Poet,' Colombia is present in its co-production with France and Brazil, 'Black Snake' ('La Serpiente Negra') by France's Aurélien Vernhes-Lermusiaux, which participates in ACID Cannes. Set in Colombia's arid Tatacoa Desert, 'Black Snake' follows Ciro, a young man returning home after years away. Reunited with his dying mother, he confronts a land marked by tension and danger. The film explores themes of homecoming, fragile family ties and survival in a hostile landscape. Participating in the Cannes Doc section is 'We Were a Great Family' (Spain, Colombia) by Cristina Rosselló, Chiara Marañón and Colombian director-editor Juan Soto Taborda. Produced by Catalonian-based Ricard Sales and LaCima Prods., the documentary covers the period between 1941 and 1999 in Spain. In it, the couple Miquelina, Josep, and later their son Pattet, filmed their daily lives, aiming only to preserve memories—yet their footage unwittingly captures the soul of 20th-century Spain: life under Franco, the quiet shift to democracy and a family's evolving hopes, contradictions and dreams through a passing camera. Rising Colombian talent Juanita Onzaga, a visual artist and filmmaker whose works have been presented at Directors' Fortnight, MOMA in New York, Venice and the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, directs 'Floating with Spirits,' which participates in the Cannes Immersive Selection – Focus which showcases five creations that will give festival-goers new insights into the immersive creative process. In this VR experience produced by Cassette for Timescapes, Tarantula and Studio Biarritz, Mazatec sisters Jocelynne and Jaquelyne recall their shaman grandmother's ancestral wisdom amid Oaxaca's sacred mountains. As they prepare for the Day of the Dead, spirits return through ritual and memory. Guided by nature and imagination, they unveil the secrets of four spirits, offering a call to reconnect with Indigenous wisdom and the natural world. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Telegraph
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The man who changed the way you see (and hear) Hollywood
To describe Walter Murch as the Yoda of editing wouldn't do the man physical justice. Tall, bearded, professorial, the 81-year-old triple-Oscar-winner has more of a wizardly stature. Murch's sagacity in the field, though? Well, pretty much unmatched, it is. Not only the picture editor on such classics as Julia, Ghost and The English Patient, Murch was also the first person ever to be credited as 'sound designer' (on Apocalypse Now), having already mixed Coppola's first two Godfather films and The Conversation. There are few veterans of either discipline who have ever treated their craft more intellectually, or been more generous about passing on their discernment. Murch, who prefers to edit standing up, returns to his elevated desk every few years for a project now, but devotes more of his time to lectures and masterclasses. (He's an honorary associate of the London Film School, and lives in Primrose Hill with his wife, Aggie.) Previous books include his 1992 long essay In the Blink of an Eye, and, in his spare time, a translation of selected works by the Italian writer Curzio Malaparte, which he released as The Bird That Swallowed its Cage (2012). His new book, Suddenly Something Clicked, is a dip-in-and-out compendium, an evident passion project, the fruit of a life's work in cinema. There are 30 chapters, mostly adapted from lectures he's prepared in the past. All cleave to editing and sound as his main areas of expertise. (A second, longer volume on filmmaking's essentials will focus on the script, the casting and the vision of the director.) Murch goes off on a few technical tangents mainly addressed to film students; 'I am going to avoid keystroke-specific details about different non-linear editing systems' is intended as reassurance. And while his flights of erudition are wide-ranging – a Copernicus analogy, a tribute to the nymph Echo – they can dazzle and befuddle at once. Luckily, the man is a outright genius at what he does, with rare and deep first-hand knowledge of the whole production process. He co-wrote THX-1138 (1971) with George Lucas, and was temporarily fired by Disney while making the audaciously dark Return to Oz (1985), his sole directing job. What happened there was an executive reshuffle, which cast doubt on his vision, and it took phone calls from Lucas and Coppola to restore faith. We learn most from Murch when he digs into the nitty-gritty of particular problems he had to solve. For instance, when Coppola was yanked away from finishing photography on The Conversation (1974), because Paramount had him under the cosh to start The Godfather, Part II, Murch inherited a massive jumble of raw footage and a script that hadn't been completely filmed. There were holes. There wasn't really an ending. His salvage job on that classic of paranoid surveillance, deservedly famous, gets back-to-back chapters, and even film buffs who know the details are treated to a fascinating blow-by-blow account, complete with QR codes to Vimeo links of animated graphics (these are eccentric to see on the page, but strangely charming). Murch reshaped that whole film using sound, trimming subplots, and moving scenes into a revealingly different order. He never even met Gene Hackman, but he was responsible for piecing together arguably the late actor's greatest performance. The same ingenuity marked his work on Anthony Minghella's The English Patient (1996) and his painstaking restoration of Orson Welles's Touch of Evil (1958), when he was hired in 1998 to address all the complaints the late Welles had fired off, in a 58-page typed memo to Universal, when they re-edited it without his approval. Murch used all the available sources – a magnetic master of the audio, and a 15-minute-longer cut found in the 1970s – to refurbish the film in line with Welles's intentions. All of these adventures are charted, and make the book an enthralling treasury for anyone who cares about the nuts and bolts of filmmaking. There's a chapter, too, on dealing with Harvey Weinstein, back when he was nicknamed 'Harvey Scissorhands' for his infamous meddling on final cuts (before the considerably greater infamy to come). Murch had helped to restore 'semi-cordial relations' between the bullying producer and Minghella when they couldn't agree on the right way to end The Talented Mr Ripley (1999). For surviving Harvey's post-production tyranny on Cold Mountain (2003), the author gives less credit to himself and more to his beloved border terrier, Hana. The dog pounced into Weinstein's lap in the edit suite. 'Within five minutes his personality transformed, as if he had been slipped a dose of ketamine. All the changes that we had made to the film were now 'wonderful' and we were 'geniuses'.' A dumbfounded Minghella proposed an executive position for Hana at his production company. He was barely joking. It was Murch who wedded Wagner's 'The Ride of the Valkyries' to the helicopter raid in Apocalypse Now. When he did so, no one had bothered to check whether the rights to use George Solti's great 1965 recording had actually been obtained. This sent Murch scurrying off to purchase 19 other stereo versions of the piece from Tower Records, to find the closest approach to Solti's rubato. Nothing else worked quite so well. Thankfully, Coppola was able to seek permission from Solti directly. One issue remained: this was so late in post-production that there wasn't time to source the magnetic masters for a state-of-the-art mix. 'What you hear in the film,' Murch explains, 'is a tape transfer from the LP disk, spread in re-recording to six channels of sound as if it were coming from those military speaker-horns that you see sticking out of the side of the helicopters. But perhaps this contingency lends a certain serendipitous truth to the scene, since Colonel Kilgore himself, now revealed to be a connoisseur of music, would doubtless have also copied his tape directly, as we did, from Solti's Decca disk.' Other figures in cinema history have expanded the parameters of how we see or hear it. No one but Murch has welded sight and sound with such intuition for both.
