News on independent international film events at 24th Raindance Film Festival
Train Drivers Diary – Raindance offers up a true tragic-comic gem.
Hailing from Serbo Croat filmmakers this film was selected as Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards and the acting is something very special as well as the choice of story. Train drivers the world over during their professional careers have to deal with ‘accidental’ incidents resulting in death to up to an average of 30 people per driver. These may be careless vehicle drivers, people under the influence of alcohol, or those who have not paid due care and attention on the railway tracks. This results in the train drivers being “innocent murderers” as they cannot always stop their trains in time to prevent accidents like those mentioned. The drivers have to live with these sad statistics knowing much about each one and it must be a haunting experience.
Cleverly interwoven in the plot is the subplot of the life of a young orphan who is adopted by a traindriver and the orphan has had to realise his parents gave him up as a tiny baby wrapped in blankets and placed in a banana box near the orphanage. His dream is to be a train driver but his foster father does not want this, due to the innocent murders being part of the job.
The small cast consists of Lazar Ristovski as IIija, Peter Korac as Sima, Pavle Eric as Mali Sima Mirjana Karanovic as Jagoda and Jasna Duricic as Sida. We are treated to an off on romance between the foster father train driver who is close friends with a single lady psychologist and frustrating scenes of the young orphan growing up disillusioned and yearning to be at the helm of a train. Once his dream is realised, the film darkly descends into his expectations of fatalities to the point of a surreal and warped yearning for one to happen whilst his foster father getting very much older himself, trying to fulfil his adopted son’s crazy dream. There is an interlude where the young man is initiated into the art of love.
Do not expected to be made to laugh too often but laugh you may as this cleverly put together story is a rare treat to those who are jaded about formulaic scriptwriting dishing out sagas which can be predictable and often high budget. Grab a copy if you can get it and lend it to your friends. It is something extra special and palatable in its strange relation to truth.
Penny Nair Price
After Adderall – Why be predictable when you can be the opposite?
Stephen Elliott has penned seven novels which he himself could regard as depressing in content but then perhaps he is chasing a dream like many of us about life giving up more pleasure than angst? Adderall is a type of amphetamine and anti depressant and I wager that really it is just a name for the antics Stephen and his close friends have got up to in the name of having some fun in their slightly undeniably confused lives in After Adderall. The film is all in black and white and at the Q and A Stephen immediately mentioned Casablanca as a case in point of a movie which makes audiences feel a sense of more reality even though one would expect the opposite, black and white DOES draw people into stories.
His diaries were optioned in 2010 by James Franco and in 2015 a film directed by Pamela Romanowsky starring James Franco and Ed Harris was made and premiered at the TriBeca Film Festival. After Adderall is his film about the making of that adaptation.
After Adderall had a budget of $10K and is not a commercial enterprise according to Stephen Elliott. There are ego issues amongst the actors with a feminist prostitute poetry-reading belle who is convinced that men are egotistical and central to all of life and women come second and yet she has a pull that implies the opposite, sporting tasteful and very expensive outfits and underwears to tantalise her clients, lovers and friends. At points the saga descends into dark and frightening areas of bondage and sadomasochism but this is given swift coverage indeed by the editors. Nudity also surfaces in the film and an eccentric cage- like bed which Stephen occupies at times.
Stephen says he got permission to use songs and poems non-commercially from his friends and fellow thespians. Stephen also pointed-out about acting in the film, “you can’t honestly portray yourself as you’re always changing”. The crew experimented with 2 cameras – camera A shooting everything they needed and B everything they didn’t need and then put them together. It is very much a film of the meeting of two worlds. The theme is “who owns the story?”. Stephen has directed two other movies, and underlines that first and foremost he is a writer.
Again clearly if and when you see this film you will recognise the artistic quality of it including the use of black and white instead of colour and it is in no way a formulaic story. Enjoy.
Penny Nair Price