Pietro Marcello: La Bocca del lupo

In his Danish language texts from this year’s Cinema du Réel, my co-blogger Allan Berg reveals avec plaisir that his prejudice about the festival being for the pure observational documentary maybe is wrong. It is indeed, both because the development of the creative documentary in general draws away from the observation including much more fictional or personal reflective essayistic elements in the narrative, and because the festival selection this year (this is my gut feeling as I did not get to watch it all) appears more daring than usual when it comes to breaking the classical dramaturgy.

Which is the case for one more (the other being ”la paura”, see below) Italian film that confused and surprised me with its ability to create an intense, mostly visually dominated atmosphere by presenting an abrupt, disharmonic structure that points in many directions. The place is Genova, never seen as beautiful as here with these brownish harbour images; archive with scratches as has the character of the film, Enzo, a former gangster, now a person in a film that lets him sort-of-play himself, going around in film-noir sequences, in old worn down factory buildings, in small streets full of prostitutes and transvestites, accompanied by local songs. It is all very textual, scratches, old film material being used in a new way, a reconstruction of a past, but there are also wonderful observational improvisations like one in a bar where a client and a barman perform a dance – and then suddenly there is a long interview with the companion of Enzo through 2o years, a transsexual, a beautiful love monologue it is. What a fine mess of a film! Title translated: The Mouth of the Wolf.

The film runs at Cinema du Réel the 26th and 27th of March.

Italy, 2009, 68 mins.

www.cinereel.org

http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/forum/program/

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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