myDylarama

Film and event! Bella Ciao: Song Of Rebellion - An exhaustive and rousing doc about the revolutionary anthem

judy — 2023-05-01T08:21:00Z

London audiences were able to watch the film at our screening at the Garden Cinema on 25 April, which was followed by a Q&A with the directors, hosted by journalist Steve Topple. See pictures below and a link to the post-screening Q&A with Steve.

A 90-minute documentary film about the roots and rise of the most popular revolutionary song in the world. With more than 20 interviews on three continents, this historic documentary traces the cultural history of the song and investigates its international success, using archival film and performances of its different expressions, including the secret of how it became an anthem for the series "Money Heist" as told from the series' creator, Alex Pina, in Madrid.

The film was screened as part of the Beirut Art Film Festival with a Q and A with the team.

Bella Ciao is a global anthem yet at its best this is a film about Italian history. The first half is by far the most captivating as a series of partisans, historians and archivists describe the Italian anti-fascist movement and Bella Ciao's role within it. Paolo, a partisan commander, recounts first hearing the song when visiting a medic after a mortar shell injured his foot; he heard it again on his return from Monte San Vicino and again on his way to raid a barracks. Paolo is one of many lively characters who shares his memories of the partisan struggle. Their stories, alongside the many, many, many shots of a map of Italy reveal just how regional the anti-fascist movement was. The wit and warmth of the people interviewed and the depth of their memories save the film from becoming a belaboured list of all the different points in history where Bella Ciao makes an appearance. In musicology context is everything and that is especially true here. After the defeat of Nazism post-war optimism set Bella Ciao in a new direction and a song about the willingness to die became a celebration of the will to live: ‘we sang this Bella Ciao with great enthusiasm, the enthusiasm of freedom. Freedom from war, from Nazism, with the desire to do things, to live…that's it, to live'. This re-purposing demonstrates just how adaptable the song is, for better and for worse since it has now been co-opted by corporations as much as activists.

Where the film is weakest is in trying to hold onto the vitality of the song as it travels all over the world. Rooted in the history of Italy, from the paddy fields to the partisan struggle, the song and the film are powerful and interesting – spread thinly across the world in universal fights for something called freedom, both lose their dynamism. Despite this weaker ending, the film succeeds on both an emotional and intellectual level and the desire of contemporary musicians and activists to thwart twenty-first fascism is felt keenly in the final third of the film. In any case the story of how Bella Ciao was responsible for the death of Piero Paolo Pasolini makes this a film worth watching.

Get in touch with us if you wish to find out more about the film or get in touch with the team behind it.

Steve with Paul Russell and Andrea Vogt.

ARCHIVE SPECIAL! The Remake Film Festival

judy — 2021-07-27T19:23:31Z

To mark our editor Judy's return to Mydylarama after completing her epic PHD, here's one of her older cracking reviews and an opportunity to revisit the wonderful concept behind the Remake Film Festival.

As Hollywood's fiscal calculations ensure it pumps out sequels, prequels and trilogies (etc.), the Remake film festival sets out a different relationship between box office hits and contemporary production. Filmmakers from around the world are invited to reimagine, reinterpret or remake scenes from classical Hollywood movies - this year scenes were taken from Psycho, Casablanca and Singing in the Rain. It's a great premise which brings to mind the fantastic and fantastical films from Michel Gondry's underrated ‘Be Kind, Rewind' where a community on the brink of demolition come together to make movies, using beach coat hangers, tinsel and all manner of junk to re-create box office hits including Ghostbusters and The Lion King (an endeavour which the Comedians Cinema Club now bring to the stage). Unfortunately no such frivolity or playful daring prevailed at the Remake Festival where the majority of entries were profoundly lacking in imagination, even when prompted by some of cinema's most beloved moments. Given the international scope of the festival, its inviting premise (structured yet with wide scope for interpretation) and the work of Hitchcock et al as a springboard, this says a lot more about the current state of cinema than about the festival itself.

Tellingly, of the ten finalists, only one was inspired by Singing in the Rain, evidencing an inability by judges and/or filmmakers to embrace the chaos and reverie which could be wrought by lay people trying to splash about like Gene Kelly. In contrast, Psycho remakes abounded; apparently stabbing scenes come easily, while joyful abandon is almost impossible. It's true that low budget short films are hampered by a range of constraints (hammy actors not being the least of them), yet our relationship to the medium of film itself is a significant barrier to the filmic imagination. Performers and writers in fringe theatre (comedy especially) are able to create characters, props, sets and stories using found objects, trinkets, puppets and the like, yet such imaginative re-appropriation is considered uncinematic, even in the act of remaking.

Moviegoes love to laugh at Tommy Wiseau's unintentional cult film The Room because they know what a proper film looks like - and he keeps getting it so wrong! How hilarious that he can't follow the recipe. This deference to formulaic habits, the conventions of genre and a resistance to a playful and imaginative engagement with our material environment are stifling the filmic imagination. The Remake Film Festival provided filmmakers with a structure within which to push the boundaries of their imaginative capacities, a realm in which to let loose in the manner of Gene Kelly's Don Lockwood as he dances wildly and blithely down the street. Don's effervescence is brought to a halt by a cop; unfortunately ours never got started.

Our Picks + Be Kind Rewind

Coco Green, judy — 2021-02-12T17:24:37Z

This week, guest and Mydylarama co-founder Judy Harris joins us to discuss the beauty of amateur cinema, community cohesion, gentrification, colourblind casting and the joys of play in Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind.

We also touch on the issues around race and casting choices in Netflix hit show Bridgerton.

When she's not doing revisions on a PhD on the utopian film theory of the poet Vachel Lindsay, which the viva panel described as "conceptually ambitious but let down by its organisation" - a statement which could be applied to her whole life - Judy works with community groups at Hackney CVS.

As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama

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Encounters 2019 Arab selection

judy — 2019-10-13T09:39:56Z

Strange Cities Are Familiar, Dir. Saeed Taji Farouky

At once lyrical and political, this film centres on a beautifully understated performance by Mohammad Bakri as Ashraf, a refugee living in London who is unable to return to Palestine to be with his dying son. Ashraf is both stern and tender as the London landscape around him transforms into scenes from his past life and the imagined sufferings of his son in the present. Featuring a brilliant use of sound from the outset the film is atmospheric and rarely overplays the tragedy of Ashraf's plight. The brutal bureaucracy he is up against in his quest to return to his son is given a kindly though impotent human form in the hapless travel agent who cannot find Palestine on his ‘drop down list'. The awkward exchange between the two men is utterly convincing. An assured and well paced film which conveys Ashraf's inner turbulence without too many sentimental turns.

Magic Boat, Dir. Naaman Azhari

'The Magic Boat | Trailer from Naaman Azhari on Vimeo.

In this animated short a mother attempts to persuade her son Khaled to flee their homeland on a ‘magic' boat, using stories of beautiful fish, coloured ships and feasts. The tension between the reality of their situation and the unconvincing stories she conjures to lure Khaled into taking this life threatening journey deepens as her desperation erupts and she utters meaningless pleas, reassuring him that he is a hero while maintaining that there is nothing to be scared of. The film is never still, each line quivers and tilts evoking the experience of both sea travel and the mother's inner turmoil. Interspersed with scenes from the present are fragments of intimate moments between the two laughing, playing, hugging and tugging at one another. The visual and aural effects are so powerful that the melancholy piano soundtrack is unnecessary and slightly takes away from the gravitas of the story. A memorable and heartbreaking work.

Makr, Dir. Hana Kazim

In this horror film a man invites an exorcist into his home to expel a demon from his wife's body. However the trickster exorcist (who enlivens the bodies of the possessed with electrical currents to convince his clients of his efficacy), is himself being tricked as it turns out the couple are not what they seem. While Mansoor Alfeeli gives a strong performance as the exorcist, this film doesn't quite pull off the muddling of faith, deception, reality and delirium that it hopes to. The return to the pendulum clock swinging menacingly in the hallway feels tired and uninspired (by now a clichéd technique used way back in 1915 by D.W. Griffith in his Poe adaptation The Avenging Conscience). Well shot and with some unexpected twists, unfortunately the stakes feel low throughout.

Run (a) Way Arab, Dir. Amrou Al Kadhi

While preparing for his drag performance as an Egyptian deity Queen Za Dream reflects on his mother's own performative femininity, remembering the times he witnessed her adorning herself with eyeshadow, bracelets and belts. After applying her makeup before her dressing table mirror young Nazeem helped her pick out handbags and outfits, witnessing his mother turn her gaze upon herself, admiring herself as her own creation and anticipating the gaze of others. When Nazeem mimics his mother by dressing in her clothes and applying makeup, she is terrified and furious and her response shatters their relationship (the mother is brilliantly played by Ahd whose response could easily have descended into melodrama). Unfortunately the use of music to underscore the story's sensuality and emotion is overplayed and the dreamy flashbacks of young Nazeem putting on his mother's clothes and rubbing her fur coats against his cheek aren't as convincing as the contemporary drag scenes. The film is strongest when it shows how Queen Za Dream (Amrou Al-Kadhi) has turned conflicting memories of his mother into a powerful performative impetus.