An educational workshop ARRI ALEXA was held on the sixth day of Kustendorf International Film and Music Festival 2013. Guests and students attending the festival attended a presentation of the ALEXA camera which features an anamorphic lens. At the beginning of the workshop, the representative of ARRI, Milan Kršljanin, thanked in the name of companies ARRI and Visual Impact (Serbia), as well as the partners of Living Pictures (Serbia) company, for the chance to present the digital camera ALEXA for the second time at Kustendorf. Introducing themselves with the capabilities and uses of ALEXA camera, attendants of the workshop watched numerous clips from commercials, music videos, television series and trailers that were filmed using the camera including the film Skyfall which used eleven ALEXA cameras, film Zero Dark Thirty directed by Catherine Bigelow, and the film Life of Pi by Ang Lee. Renowned for its unmatched and truly cinematic picture quality, film-like ease of operation and reliability, as well as the most straightforward postproduction, the ALEXA camera system has quickly become accepted by directors, cinematographers and producers as their “best friend on the set and in post.”  At the end of the workshop, the students got a chance to see and test ALEXA anamorphic camera and lenses. 

workshop with Yeşim Ustaoğlu Fifth feature film of the Turkish director Yeşim Ustaoğlu Araf - Somewhere in Between was shown on the fifth day of this year’s Kustendorf festival. During the workshop following the screening, the director described her work method, common problems she faced during the making of her last film, her theoretical perspective, and the reception of the film in Turkish society. Questions that were asked by the attendants of the workshop were mostly concerning specific scenes from the film Araf. The students were interested in the way that Ustaoğlu works with actors, which she described as a long-term and intensive process that requires full dedication. According to her, improvisation comes as an additional step in the process where precise directorial instructions are crucial. In order to help her actors achieve an accurate state of the characters that they are portraying, Yeşim Ustaoğlu shot Araf in continuous, chronological order - as it was written in the script. Intensive preparations and rehearsals allowed her to shoot incredibly demanding scenes with minimal amount of retakes. Ustaoglu especially emphasized the conversation scene at the psychiatrist’s office, which she shot in a veritistic manner, in real time, as the event would have occurred if it were happening in reality. Her intention was to allow the viewers to come to their own conclusions surrounding the questions posed in the scene, in order to achieve authenticity. The role of the psychiatrist was given to a woman who is a psychiatrist by profession. The rest of the workshop, Yeşim Ustaoğlu spoke about the importance of sound in her film. She described her use of direct and ambient sounds in certain scenes, along with various effects that allowed her to create a desired atmosphere. The greatest part of the discussion was dedicated to the scriptwriting process, and as Ustaoğlu described, the atmosphere she finds herself in while writing holds a great importance to her work. Writing commonly starts with the director visiting locations where she plans to later shoot her film. She then thoroughly observes and takes note of details. In order to familiarize herself with people that she plans to write about, Yeşim Ustaoğlu spent plenty of time observing their way of life. She wrote the film Araf while living in a small, provincial town, and becoming friends with truck drivers. Ustaoğlu compared the writing of the script with psychodrama, stating that it is important for her to recreate and live events that she plans to shoot in the film, during the process of writing. Yeşim Ustaoğlu went on to describe in great detail the editing process in which she worked with three different editors. As Ustaoğlu wished to follow the shooting style of Araf, the initial version of the film was five hours in length. Even though the first version was “absolutely watchable”, bringing a new editor to the process, she managed to cut the film down to half of the original running time. According to her statement, involving a new editor brought a fresh and distanced approach to the film. Third and final version was done with editor Svetolik Mića Zajc. 

You’ve acted in both Hollywood movies and European productions. Can you compare the two experiences? Which do you prefer, Europe or America? The only difference is the economic difference. But when you are in front of the camera nothing changes – you act and you do your work low budget or high budget. There is no difference at all actually, you just act. The difference is just money – it means you have a bigger room, a bigger trailer. You are just more spoiled, protected. But apart from that, nothing changes. I never lived in America. I never decided to live there, to go there, to have a house in New York or Los Angeles. My life is in Europe. I love Europe  and European movies. When you read a script, how do you analyze characters and the relationships between characters? What attracts you in a role? It’s not so much an analysis, actually. It’s more instinct – it’s not about the brain, it’s about the soul. When you read a script, there is something that pushes you to do it and sometimes you don’t know why.  You are a world famous star who has been at numerous film festivals. How is Kustendorf different? This is my first time. It’s very charming and very interesting. It’s beautiful to have an artistic place in the middle of nowhere. To me, Emir is a multitalented person. I saw he’s a pilot because I saw him fly the helicopter yesterday, he’s an architect, he’s a businessman, but most of all, he’s an artist. 

Kustendorf Awards - Golden, Silver and Broze eggs, as well as the Vilko Filač Award for Best Cinematography, accompanied by unique, embroidered diplomas, were exhibited in a custom-made glass case in restaurant “Visconti” in Mećavnik. Golden, Silver and Bronze eggs are crafted from stone decorated with filigree-intricate mosaics, and are a work of Bisenija Tereščenko. The mosaics consist of small pieces of stone with gilded, silvered and bronzed details that together form whimsical images of chicks, which appear almost lifelike when light plays on the glistening stones. Vilko Filač Award for Best Cinematography is featured in a frame made from wild cherry wood, while the award diploma frames are crafted from black walnut tree. They are a work of artist Radenka Jungić and her workshop “Radinost R” from Banja Luka. Prizes and diplomas are crafted using traditional Serbian embroidery called “pokrstica” (cross-weaving method) with thin threads in gold, silver and bronze colour. Every award represents an authentic artistic work - a trademark of Kustendorf. Their exhibition sparked the interest of students and visitors of the festival. Golden, Silver and Bronze egg, as well as the Vilko Filač Award will be presented to the best student works on the final day of the festival, during the Closing ceremony in the cinema “Damned Yard ”. 

workshop with Mateo Garone On the fourth day of the festival, Italian director Mateo Garone held a workshop. The greatest part of the discussions was dedicated to his new film Reality that was screened as part of the Contemporary Trends programme. At the beginning of the discussion, Garone introduced himself as a man whose films have been greatly influenced by autobiographical events. After he met his future wife during the shooting of his previous film Gomorrah, Garone, a native of Rome, was initiated into the world of southern Italy, Napoli in particular. The uniqueness of this world was best described by the director’s statement that the local street dialect spoken in Gomorrah was incomprehensible even to those from Napoli, while the language spoken by the characters in Reality is a Napoli dialect which was canonized by the poet, actor and dramatic writer Eduardo de Filipo. Garone explained that the core of his film Reality, a moving story about a man whose life is changed by his dreams of fame, is actually a true story that happened to the husband of his sister, who was convinced that the brother of his new wife, a famous director, will help him become a contestant on the reality TV show madness Big Brother. The film itself is an adaptation of the story about his brother-in- law, which Garone described as his attempt to find a relation between comedy and drama, the real and the surreal, fairytale and reality, nightmares and dreams. Garone told young directors that he always shoots his films chronologically, meaning that the scenes are filmed in the order in which they appear in the script. To him, that approach is most suitable for actors and their development of characters. The director described his film Reality as an enormously expensive film that did not do too well in the box offices of Italian cinemas. Aware that he will not be able to provide a budget of those proportions for his next films, Garrone also stated that he is not worried, as he wanted to seize the opportunity given to him after the success of his film Gomorrah. He said that the massive budget allowed the production ambitious production design ventures, scenes with hundreds of extras, and a large crew of world-class collaborators in every department, such as the composer Aleksandar Desplat and the costume designer Mauricio Milenot, who worked with Fellini. Garone listed Fellini as a great stylistic inspiration for Reality, especially the film Casanova.