Star-gazing & building bridges
Star-gazing & building bridges
At the Evolution Mallorca 13th International Film Festival
inMallorca writer, author and artist Lucy Hawkins shares her fantastic experience at the Evolution Mallorca 13th International Film Festival, where she was lucky enough to chat to film industry legends Oscar-winning Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle and Oscar and Bafta award-winning British director Asif Kapadia.
By Lucy Hawkins
1/11/24
Opening Gala at the Teatre Principal on a warm evening and there’s a buzz in the air. Actors and filmmakers walk the red carpet past the paparazzi into the beautiful theatre. The presenters on stage announce that it is going to be an incredible festival comprising 144 films from 33 countries including a selection of children’s films because, ‘cinema is the universal language that connects us all.’
The presenters welcome Sandra Seeling Lipski, the Festival Director, on stage where she gives an emotional speech about how she briefly thought their 13th festival might succumb to bad luck after Annette Benning was unable to attend to pick up her Icon Award, and the terrible flooding in Valencia. But she remembered all the hard work she and her team had put into the festival and how proud she is of it.
Then it was time for the first film of the festival, La Cocina, by Mexican director, Alonso Ruizpalacios. The film is about the kitchen and service staff at fictional restaurant, The Grill, in Times Square, New York. Money is missing from the till and all the workers are being questioned. Most of them are illegal immigrants fighting to keep their jobs. The working conditions are brutal, the characters are real, flawed and vulnerable. The film’s shot in black and white and despite being 138 minutes long rolls at an incredibly fast pace, underground in the bowels of New York. It’s loud and intense and claustrophobic, I feel like I’m in the engine room of a submarine. Rooney Mara is brilliant and her abortion scene and relationship with actor Raul Briones were so toxically engrossing I thought about the film long after it had finished.
The next morning I went to Portixol Hotel, one of the Festival’s sponsors, to join a press conference with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle. Anthony received an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for Slumdog Millionaire in 2009 and has worked on films such as The Last King of Scotland and Antichrist.
He’s recently been filming the sequel to ‘28 Days Later’ called ‘28 Years Later’, with Danny Boyle. He said they’ve been talking about it for almost 28 years, and that he and Writer, Alex Garland, and Director, Danny Boyle, would get together, disagree about something, go away and film other things, come back together, disagree about something, go away and come back. But they have finally made the film and it will be released next year.
Staggeringly, the film was shot on iPhone 15s! Anthony said he tested other phones but the iPhone worked best for this project. “It’s my job to embrace cameras. Production thought, ‘Oh great, it’ll be much easier and cheaper!’ but that’s not the case. I spent 6 months in a black room trying to figure out how to shoot a film with it.”
Anthony believes there are two types of Directors of Photography in the world: those that live in fear and those that explore life, and he wants to be the latter. When asked how he felt about receiving an Icon Award he replied, “It’s surreal to be here with you all and be called an icon. I just make films with my heart, not my brain or my wallet.”
He spoke of the nature of the relationship between DOP and Director, how the Directors he’s worked with are all different but have that integrity in common. He said, “Lars Von Trier will take you to the worst place on earth, but he’ll hold your hand.”
“Olive Stone will look at me in amazement and just say straight out, ‘What are you talking about?’. It’s an important thing (the Director and DOP relationship) to get right because it’s public. If you have a battle on set it affects everything and everyone.”
“Most films today aren’t organic. There’s so much s*** on screen today, we know where the plot’s going. The interesting ones will take you off balance. On set it’s about creating magic, it requires spontaneity. I’m not good at just saying yes (if I don’t agree with a decision), I can’t hide my feelings.”
Anthony described his unconventional path to becoming a cinematographer, “I actually thought about being a real estate agent. They sell you a home, they use imagination. When I was a kid we moved around a lot because of my dad’s job. My mum was an artist. And I was constantly shown a new room and told this is your bedroom and it was empty, no toys, so I had to fill the room with my imagination. That’s what I do for a living now, take a room, fill it with people and things, light it and that’s my job. I didn’t know what I was going to do for a living for a long time. I failed all my exams, eventually got into Oxford University but I still didn’t know what I was, who I was. It wasn’t until I went to India when I was 24 and started taking photos of people that I thought, this is what I want to do. Because it’s not just about the subject, when you shoot something it’s about me too, my personal interests.”
I went and talked to Anthony afterwards and told him I had just moved my children from Australia to Mallorca and shown them a new bedroom with no toys and that, just like Anthony’s mother, I too was an artist! Fortunately he didn’t hold it against me and told me how his childhood ultimately saw him in good stead. And then we took a selfie together on my iPhone, which seemed fitting.
The next day I return to the Portixol Hotel to meet Asif Kapadia, Director of popular documentaries ‘Senna’, ‘Amy’ and ‘Diego Maradona’. He first attended this festival in 2019 to receive an Evolution Vision Award and now he’s back to promote his latest film, ‘2073’. 2073 is a documentary film about a dystopian future and a warning against the authoritarian forces despoiling our democracy and our environment.
It seems incredibly timely after the destructive weather in Valencia this week. Asif couldn’t agree more, “That’s exactly the reason I wanted to make the film, to somehow make sense of it and put all of these big problems that we all have to deal with, globally, into one film. I didn’t want to make it about one country but about everything, everywhere, at one time as they’re all connected.”
“Everywhere I go in the world something is happening, with the climate or politically or technologically with surveillance. The footage looks the same as Valencia. We have a problem, we have a global issue. Because its already too late. The temperatures are hotter each year, the rain and wind are getting more extreme. At the same time we have a political issue and surveillance. Freedom of press. The main feeling for me is there’s a reason it’s all happening at the same time. We have to look at who’s in control. They’re becoming richer and more successful, building spaceships and flying to a different planet, they think if we ruin the earth we’re going to go somewhere else.”
“It’s scary. In the film we have this turn called ‘the event’, we’re in the middle of the event now and when you’re in the middle it’s difficult to comprehend. But we have to start speaking up. What’s happening with animals, insects, so many species are dying right now. We have to start thinking about it. It’s a problem for all of us. The people who care about nobody shouldn’t be the ones in power.”
The footage of red skies in the film was happening all over the world because of the dust storms. We haven’t changed the footage of San Francisco, that is really what it looks like. No visual effects. That’s what it looks like when you no longer see the sun anymore.”
Asif explained why he wanted to incorporate the future, “When I’m doing a film, I like to experiment. I like to challenge what you’re supposed to and not supposed to do in a film. There’s an experimental element to my films. The Warrior (Asif’s first feature film) was a Western. I’m from London and I didn’t make the film in English, no one had made a British film not in English. With Senna there were no interviews, the same with Amy and Maradona.”
“Senna was an action, Amy was a musical, Maradona is a gangster film. This one (2073) felt like a science fiction. I thought, ‘can I do a film playing with the form of dystopian literature?’ People don’t have a problem watching sci films or horror that are critical but you walk out saying well its just a movie, but this is real, all the visual references I used are all factual.”
“For me it was an experiment. There was no central character. With my biographies its easier, it's one person’s journey. If you want to make a film about what’s happening around the world its harder, it’s very intense. I wanted it to be like a punch in the stomach. You need to recover and then go somewhere else. I was inspired by Chris Marker’s film, La Jetée where a character goes back in time to change the future.”
At the Evolution Mallorca 13th International Film Festival
inMallorca writer, author and artist Lucy Hawkins shares her fantastic experience at the Evolution Mallorca 13th International Film Festival, where she was lucky enough to chat to film industry legends Oscar-winning Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle and Oscar and Bafta award-winning British director Asif Kapadia.
The next day I return to the Portixol Hotel to meet Asif Kapadia, Director of popular documentaries ‘Senna’, ‘Amy’ and ‘Diego Maradona’. He first attended this festival in 2019 to receive an Evolution Vision Award and now he’s back to promote his latest film, ‘2073’. 2073 is a documentary film about a dystopian future and a warning against the authoritarian forces despoiling our democracy and our environment.
It seems incredibly timely after the destructive weather in Valencia this week. Asif couldn’t agree more, “That’s exactly the reason I wanted to make the film, to somehow make sense of it and put all of these big problems that we all have to deal with, globally, into one film. I didn’t want to make it about one country but about everything, everywhere, at one time as they’re all connected.”
“Everywhere I go in the world something is happening, with the climate or politically or technologically with surveillance. The footage looks the same as Valencia. We have a problem, we have a global issue. Because its already too late. The temperatures are hotter each year, the rain and wind are getting more extreme. At the same time we have a political issue and surveillance. Freedom of press. The main feeling for me is there’s a reason it’s all happening at the same time. We have to look at who’s in control. They’re becoming richer and more successful, building spaceships and flying to a different planet, they think if we ruin the earth we’re going to go somewhere else.”
“It’s scary. In the film we have this turn called ‘the event’, we’re in the middle of the event now and when you’re in the middle it’s difficult to comprehend. But we have to start speaking up. What’s happening with animals, insects, so many species are dying right now. We have to start thinking about it. It’s a problem for all of us. The people who care about nobody shouldn’t be the ones in power.”
The footage of red skies in the film was happening all over the world because of the dust storms. We haven’t changed the footage of San Francisco, that is really what it looks like. No visual effects. That’s what it looks like when you no longer see the sun anymore.”
Asif explained why he wanted to incorporate the future, “When I’m doing a film, I like to experiment. I like to challenge what you’re supposed to and not supposed to do in a film. There’s an experimental element to my films. The Warrior (Asif’s first feature film) was a Western. I’m from London and I didn’t make the film in English, no one had made a British film not in English. With Senna there were no interviews, the same with Amy and Maradona.”
“Senna was an action, Amy was a musical, Maradona is a gangster film. This one (2073) felt like a science fiction. I thought, ‘can I do a film playing with the form of dystopian literature?’ People don’t have a problem watching sci films or horror that are critical but you walk out saying well its just a movie, but this is real, all the visual references I used are all factual.”
“For me it was an experiment. There was no central character. With my biographies its easier, it's one person’s journey. If you want to make a film about what’s happening around the world its harder, it’s very intense. I wanted it to be like a punch in the stomach. You need to recover and then go somewhere else. I was inspired by Chris Marker’s film, La Jetée where a character goes back in time to change the future.”
Where my kids go to school from 11 years old they have to give their fingerprint to get your lunch. Who collects that information? I don’t remember signing an agreement for that. A lot of schools have facial recognition just to enter the school. It becomes normal. Kids are used to it. At a drug store, you have to self-serve, there’s a camera filming you and I’m like, ‘Why don’t you just have someone working there?’ Instead they’re saying, ‘we’re watching you, you’re a thief.’ These futuristic ideas have just happened without us knowing it. Where does all this information go?”
“With biography films I’ve always been interested in the outsider, the person fighting the system. Senna hasn’t won the most Championships, Amy wasn’t the biggest selling artist of all time and Diego was amazing, but when I started the film people didn’t think he was the best player of all time. I like them because they’re imperfect and interesting characters fighting the system.”
Senna was amazing because he was so positive. Amy was different because she was a woman and young and funny and had a big mouth, but they portrayed her like she was an idiot. People didn’t really know her, I wanted to show how amazing and funny and talented she was. She created her look, wrote her music, played the guitar…she was so clever. Diego came from such a poor background but somehow got to the top. If you have no money and suddenly get money, how do you deal with it? Because I have to tell a story, you want a drama and a lot of ups and downs.”
What stories does Asif want to tell next? “What I’d love to do is make a proper Western. And a film in Latin America. And also, because of my background, there’s a story I’d like to do in India. And in Japan, a samurai film!”
I thanked Asif and told him I had read an interview with him where he said how he, his wife and children take it in turns to choose a film to watch together each night. I told him my family was going to do the same and he encouraged me because it’s meant his children now have really good taste in films, and he laughs. It reminds me of the opening gala and how the Festival has included children’s films too, because cinema really is the universal language that connects us all.
To find out more about the Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival go to: www.evolutionfilmfestival.com
