AS THE FLAMES ROSE – Interview with JOÃO RUI GUERRA DA MATA: “As feelings are timeless, cinema should move in the same direction, an acute abstraction of reality that takes you forward while making you look back.”

Oana Ghera: You were inspired for AS THE FLAMES ROSE by Cocteau’s “La voix humaine”, a monologue written for theater  whose theatricality you expose in various ways, from  revealing its source (by posing the book on the character’s nightstand) to the expressionist play with the lighting (to name just one of your techniques). Yet, it seems to me, AS THE FLAMES ROSE is also a declaration of love for cinema as a medium, what with all the rear projections and TV footage, for artificial as they may be, still manage to expand the enclosed space of the studio in a deeply cinematic way. Where do you stand regarding the long theorised relation between cinema and theater? Where did the influence of the play end and where did that of cinema begin in your creative process? Or are they intertwined? And also regarding the matter of theatricality, how do you relate to Fassbinder’s work?

WE LIVED OUR ORDINARY LIVES – Interview with Daya Cahen – “Investigating how developments of exclusion, xenophobia and fear of otherness can arise within society is the starting point for all my work.”

How does one transform during war?  Subjective and genuine childhood memories of the siege of Sarajevo are combined with excerpts from guilty pleas from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Although in 2012 it is exactly 20 years ago the siege of Sarajevo began, the story doesn’t mention the actual context, becoming timeless and universal. DAYA CAHEN was born in Amsterdam. She is passionate about photographs, videos and video installations and her artistic work revolves around propaganda, indoctrination and mass psychology.

THE CURSE – Interview with Fyzal Boulifa – “Casting is the place you have to make the most frightening leaps into the unknown.”

THE CURSE is a powerful social parable about the conflict between the personal freedom and the social conventions.FYZAL BOULIFA is a British filmmaker of Moroccan descent. He is the writer and director of several short films including BURN MY BODY, described by Sight & Sound as ‘extreme’, ‘unfortunate’ and ‘expertly directed’, and WHORE, winner of Best UK Short at London East End Film Festival and Grand Prix du Jury at Angers Premiers Plans 2010. This is a brief thought-provoking journey into his aims as a young filmmaker.  

DRAWN FROM MEMORY – Interview with Marcin Bortkiewicz – “People on the screen never die.”

A young filmmaking student sets to make a film about his grandmother, who always wanted to be a horror film actress.Questioning the border between reality and fiction, DRAWN FROM MEMORY is an intriguing self reflexive short. MARCIN BORTKIEWICZ, film and theatre director, dramatist, screenwriter and actor, was born in Słupsk in 1976 AND graduated the University of Gdańsk and the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing.

KONIGSBERG – Interview with Philipp Mayrhofer – “It’s not about giving the right answers but certainly about asking the right questions.”

Esthetically enchanting, with a great appetite for retro-pastoral colors and dream-like settings, KONIGSBERG is a charming „existentialist” tragicomedy, reminding of the absurd humor, the melancholic reflexivity and the painterly aesthetics of Roy Anderson’s cinema, however remaining innerly personal, fresh and provoking. Deeply poetized, KONIGSBERG is daringly worth-watching film, with a rare dry humor: a swirling vertigo of the self. Philipp Mayrhofer, the director of the film, was born in South Tyrol, Italy, but is currently based in Vienna and Paris and this is a brief journey into his beliefs, paths and aspirations as a filmmaker.