50
51
formed the starting point for Kyros Papavassiliou
when making
Impressions of a Drowned Man
.
It is no coincidence that the main character is an
existentialist poet. Kostas Karyotakis is considered
one of the most influential Greek poets of the
1920s. His poems, often impressions of nature,
are highly expressive, showing influences from
Expressionism and Surrealism.
Under-rated in his own time, Karyotakis
committed suicide in 1928 at the age of 32.
In the film, he appears in the here and now,
without knowing who he is or where he comes
from. Although he is totally free to do what he
wants, he is nevertheless shaped by the people he
meets. Everyone who crosses his path knows who
he is, tells him what his days will be like and how
it will all end.
Almost as in a film noir, the film is a search for
identity, while the story unfolds associatively and
poetically. Referring to Karyotakis’poetic style, the
film is also shaped by impressions of nature and a
touch of surrealism. The world we see is a strange
reality; daringly serious and intellectual, with a
beautiful, melancholic heart.
The winners of the Hivos Tiger
Awards Competition 2015
As is the case every year at International Film
Festival Rotterdam, three of the nominated
directors went home with a Hivos TigerAward and
prize money of €15,000. Besides the prize, they
also gain international recognition and attention.
La obra del siglo (The Project of the Century)
By Carlos M. Quintela
Drifting effortlessly between raw psychological
realism and dreamy surrealism and loaded with
unique Cuban archive footage, this film portrays
three generations of Cubans. In their apartment in
the workers’ quarters at a half-built nuclear power
station, they are forced to simply carry on; a fresh
voice from, and about, a country in a stalemate.
The Electro-Nuclear City (ENC) was once part of
an ambitious Soviet-Cuban venture to build the first
nuclear power station, in Juragua in the Caribbean.
But the fall of the Soviet Union brought everything
to a complete standstill. Decades later, the ‘project
of the century’has still not been completed, and the
enormous dome towers like a totem pole above the
dismal blocks of workers’ flats. Carlos Quintela
set his second feature film in this fascinating
location, where the workers lived at the time of the
construction.
The Project of the Century
was shot in appropriate
black-and-white. Interspersed with beautiful,
unique archive material from Cuban television
– giving a more rose-tinted, assertive impression
of the situation – this adds to the social-realist
atmosphere, which gradually makes way for a
surreal, at times absurd sense of oppression.
Men from the pest control department arrive to
spray an apartment for dengue fever mosquitoes.
Three Cuban men live here – son Leo, father
Rafael, and grandfather Otto – forced by
circumstances to live together. This is not
easy: Otto is obsessed with his few material
possessions; Rafael is unemployed and without
any prospect of work since construction of the
power station stopped; Leo is back again because
his girlfriend broke off with him. On television,
they watch the arrival of the Cuban delegation at
the Olympic Games in London. The grandfather
has a goldfish, Benjamin – the only one who can
breathe under water.
Videophilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) –
Videofilia (y otros síndromes virales)
By Juan Daniel F. Molero
Internet cafés and slackers, not-so-innocent
schoolgirls and amateur porn using Google Glass,
Mayans and the end of the world, acid trips and
guinea pigs as extras in an exorcism: things in
Lima, the Peruvian capital, are pretty similar to
HIVOS TIGER AWARDS WINNERS (L-R) Jakrawal
Nilthamrong,Carlos M. Quintela, Juan Daniel F. Molero
La obra del siglo
Stills from The Impressions of a Drowned Man
Videofilia
