(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
There are few short film awards that boast a more impressive winning list than the Grand Prix at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF). The prize was first handed out in 1965, as MIFF had already existed for over a decade. Award winners include names like Werner Herzog, City of God-the duo Kátia Lund and Fernando Meirelles, Denis Villeneuve and Sue Friedrich. The festival equals the categories in terms of eligibility for the award: Any short film in any section – experimental film, fiction or documentary – is a candidate and possible winner of the Grand Prix.
Low budget films Prisoner of Society by Rati Tsiteladzes of Georgia, and House of JXN of the American duo Rosie Haber and Lauren Cioffi stood out for this year's program. With a playing time of 16 and 9 minutes respectively, these films – like many of the best documentaries – represent a small but enlightening window to hidden, underreported corners of the world. The two films take on an empathetic attitude towards their protagonists, who, from birth, must deal with nightmarish circumstances that reveal prejudice-driven patterns of social dysfunction.
House of JXN is a sweet introduction to "rainbow families".
Tsiteladze's backdrop is unusual for a filmmaker: The 30-year-old from the seaside resort of Batumi in the Black Sea has occasionally worked as a photo model (the sexy images of the muscle bundle are still popular online) and became the world champion of kickboxing in Egypt a decade ago. Later, he excelled in karate, but joined martial arts in 2010 to begin as a film actor and director (in 2014, he took a break, to participate in the Georgian version of Skal vi danse, where he ended up in fifth place). And so far he has succeeded well in the film industry. The short fiction movie Mother (2016) won awards at festivals around the world, and the sequel Prisoner of Society looks like it might be equally burdened with awards after it first appeared at the Tampere Festival in March: The jury chose it as the festival's nominee for the European Film Awards, which will be distributed in Berlin in December.
Hostile landscape
Prisoner of Society is a close-up portrait of about 20-year-old Georgian Adelina, who was born as a man ("George") but who identifies as a female (the film does not state if she is sexually operated yet). The audience gets to hear the views of her conventional, middle-aged parents, who (as the opening text tells) kept Adelina locked up at home for ten years. The film is divided into four sections, focusing individually on each family member, before they are all gathered in the picture frame for the final section.
Tsiteladze employs a number of strong stylistic approaches, most of them effective. It begins with the eye-catching choice to record the entire movie in 1: 1 format – an obvious but good means of emphasizing Adelina's claustrophobia, isolation and feeling trapped. But retaining this very unusual format – possibly a small greeting to Quebec phenomenon Xavier Dolan's equally crunchy family chronicle Mommy (2014) – indicates that Adelina's parents are also, to some extent, trapped, with a horizon bounded by shame and social disgrace. And the mother's concerns are certainly of a practical nature: She talks about two recently-killed Trans Georgians, and she keeps Adelina away from the public's gaze for fear that she will suffer the same fate. Although Georgia is relatively "progressive" compared to other former Soviet states – as in the Baltics and Ukraine, the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans and intersex
people (LGBTI) protected by law – the country can still be hostile to sexual / gender minorities. This is largely due to the strongly traditionalist attitude of the powerful Georgian Orthodox Church.
Prisoner of Society can be a potent kick in the progressive direction.
Prisoner of Society serves as a poignant and often raging example of how domestic dynamics can be shaped and distorted by cultural pressure. The film's stylistic power – the digital images, with its palette of pink and purple, often has the texture of 70s 8mm films – seems to arise organically from how the articulate, imaginative and aesthetically tuned Adelina looks at herself and her situation. "Probably the movie will not be shown in Georgia," we hear Tsiteladze say behind the camera, interviewing Adelina's deeply troubled mother. But given the director's fame and impeccable macho image – along with the film's travels around the world – it may mean a small but potent kick in the progressive direction.
rainbow Families
As a reflection of the reality LHBTI people face in Georgia today, ends Prisoner of Society necessarily in a depressed, muted tone. House of JXN, on the other hand, takes a positive, festive and optimistic attitude. First shown at New York's Tribeca Film Festival last year, it's a short and sweet introduction to "rainbow families" in Jackson, Mississippi. They are self-established, self-supporting, non-biological clans formed by LGBTI people, as an alternative to their more orthodox family units. As Cioffi puts it: “The rest of the country views the queer life down in the Deep South as tragic and extremely demanding, and eventually it ends in suicide. What I wanted was to elevate these stories and celebrate them, as I saw them flourish. ”The result is New Deep South, a series that was originally made for television / web, but which will probably find its way to the big screen at major film festivals, thanks to its cinematic qualities.
The "rainbow family" phenomenon has been featured in several documentaries already, and it is obviously a complex and rich theme that can easily fill a mini-series. Cioffi and Haber use House of JXNs short length to concentrate on sexes (identifies with their biological sex, ed.) women and transgender men. They talk openly and defiantly about coping in a society where they run the risk of being confronted by "rednecks as well as blacknecks". The protagonists sound almost joyfully when they speak of their "collective love" as a supportive and protective force.
The editing is a high-tempo bizarre product made by a group of five, led by chief executive Rosalina Merrihue. In Hollywood feature films, several directors of one movie are always a danger signal; here it is a useful reminder that a group can come together and find their own harmony.
