Idfa – film about Michaël Meshke
This is what is (also) nice about going to idfa – you meet directors and producers, whose work you have seen and appreciated before. Viktoria Szymanska made the wonderful “Themerson & Themerson” (photo) about the magic work of this British couple in early avantgarde cinema, pure dadaism, and Szymanska was successful in getting the tone of the artists into the film.
Now she is here to present another film project about an important artist, the puppeteer Michaël Meshke, 80 years old now, the man who had the fantastic “Marionettheater” in Stockholm, Sweden. Viktoria Szymanska showed me some footage, shot today and some archive clips with Meshke performing. She had shot a scene with Meshke walking the streets of Paris with the puppet Baptiste, a reincarnation of the main character in “Les Enfants du Paradis” – you remember it, Jean-Louis Barrault, Arletty, directed by Marcel Carné. It is indeed a very promising film project.
Szymanska’s film is being produced by Estelle Robin from the French company Balibari, based in Nantes, and Szymanska could not have got a better support for an international production. Robin stood behind the constantly award-winning “Village Without Women” by Serbian director Srdan Sarenac and “La Machina” by Polish/French/Italian director Thierry Paladino.
