monthly newsletter of NISI MASA

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casting

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FEB12

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Marija Škaričić

ESP luxembourgEye of the sky

CONVERSATION

editorialWhy do we like Hollywood films so much? Of course there’s the story, and the stars (we’re talking about the entertainment industry here), but more importantly, there’s the fact that nothing takes us out of the movie. We are not confronted with the technicalities of the medium in any way and we are offered an opportunity to suspend our disbelief at wish. All that’s left for us to do is judge the quality of the film and decide if it caters to our taste. Does it touch us? Is it engaging?

Almost all important decisions are made in pre-production, and so are the mistakes. Hollywood has a knack for making everything fit the in-ternal logic of the film and that’s exactly why we don’t question any-thing. And that’s where casting comes in. In the end, that’s what we relate to. Human beings. They make everything fit. They say, put the right face in the right context and the actor doesn’t even have to act. Which is true to some degree, but what it means for us filmmakers is that there’s nothing more important than to identify the soul of your story, the spine of your characters.

Lots of directors have a tendency to look for the performance they’ve

been running in the moviola-of-their-mind and often fall into a “dream lover” approach to casting. Looks are deceiving. Casting is all about inspiration. Of course it is important to find out the actors ability, whether he’s right for the part, whether you can work well together and whether the actor works well in the greater scheme of things, but an audition is not a performance. You’re looking for a face that com-municates the soul of your story. The energy you’re trying to spread. Reading a face is like reading one’s autobiography. It’s up to us to catch that natural story hidden in between the wrinkles, the eyes, yes, the windows to the soul. Casting is a very intuitive endeavor. It’s up to us to read between the lines and catch that glimpse of natural make belief.

What brilliant cinematic debuts were those of James Dean, Jean-Pierre Belmondo, or Giulietta Masina. Where did these actors come from? Who found them? It had to be the directors who had the insight and intuition to sense the possibilities of these unknowns. Indeed, but ev-erything was already there, in their eyes, for us to see. Open yours and you will find.

By Wim Vanacker

credits.EDITORIAL STAFF Coordination &LayoutMario Kozina

Contributors to this issue: Severine Beaudot, Celluloid Liberation Front, Itxaso Elosua Ramirez, Mario Kozina, Klaus Pas, Wim Vanacker

NISI MASA (European Office) 99 Rue du Faubourg Saint Denis75010, Paris, FranceTel/Fax: +33 (0)9 60 39 63 38+ 33 (0)6 32 61 70 26Email europe@nisimasa.com Website www.nisimasa.com

Mas y Mas is a monthly newsletter published by the association NISI MASA.

Andy Warhol on the shooting of Screen Tests (1965)

dossier3

Did you know that casting originally refers to molding a liquid material (e.g. clay or concrete) into a certain shape? When you place it in the context of cinema, the term can take different meanings. For an actor, director or a casting director, it is one of the crucial occupations in film industry: finding the right person for the role. For the viewer it stands for the notion of how natural an actor fits the film character. For somebody with the knack for cul-tural studies and sociology, it represents the notion of conforming to many roles in our everyday lives. In the following pages we tried to give you a glimpse of all these approaches.

Casting

As an actor, taking part in an audition process is like taking part in a lottery, much like the Euro millions, El Gordo or the Lotto. Sure, you get to say a few lines, show yourself in profile, and show your hands to the camera. But it all comes down to you turning out to be exactly what the director and produc-ers seek. Or at least to be a close enough match.

From experience I’ve come to see that the process that accompanies this se-lection can be very different depending on where you are in the world (and who you have before you). In Holland directors tend to do the picking, se-lecting a few faces from a file cabinet of actors, all sorted by sex, hair colour, skills & etc. After which the selection process begins in company with the producer and the casting director, who advises in the matter.

In the USA, however, your agent puts you forward to the casting director, letting them know they absolutely need you for that particular part, and it’s generally the producers who decides, in collaboration with the director of course.

That’s not the only difference: as strictly prepared as the Dutch auditions are, how seemingly relaxed are the American. I once went to accompany a friend to an audition for a movie in Los Angeles. Though she wanted the part, she

was completely unprepared for it, but nobody seemed to mind. They just gave her the lines, and a producer even flirted with her. That would’ve been unthinkable in Holland, where even for a commercial you’re expected to come fully prepared, and often even dressed for the part. It doesn’t mean it can’t be fun, but fun comes after business.

But ultimately, wherever you are, it’s very hard to tell whether what you did was enough. Maybe they think your acting was awesome, but they prefer a blonde instead of a brunette.

Or maybe, as it happened to me, you will get a call from the casting director who says: “You were in the final two, but the director thought your acting was so credible, that they decided to go for the other girl... Although they thought your acting was better.” So, yeah: all you can do is give it your all, strut your stuff, and hope you have the winning numbers.

by Itxaso Elosua Ramírez

The Winning NumbersItxaso Elosua Ramírez, a Nisimasian and a profes-sional actress from Holland, writes about her ex-periences in casting and auditioning.

It's hard not to get interested in the juicy details behind Itxaso's story, so we asked her to give us some aditional information on the particular role she was auditioning for. This is what she wrote:

The role I was casting for was the best friend of the main character. In the story the main character was attacked/raped by a pizza delivery guy. The best friend enters the room, and in an impulse grabs a hammer from a tool kit that happens to lay there, and smashes the head in of the pizza delivery guy. You can therefore imagine my surprise when the casting director told me that my acting was too believable... As if I go around violently smashing people's skulls in with a ham-mer on a daily basis! The movie flopped, so in the end it was a good thing I didn't get the part ;)

To check Itxaso's "hammering quality" we decided to compare her with two celebrated performances where the actresses showed a daunting skill in handling the cold weapons of considerable weight: Joan Crawford, whose monstruous charisma fitted perfectly into the campy horror films like Strait-Jacket (1964) that she made at the twilight of her career, and Kathy Bates who even won an Academy Award for her psycho-role in Misery (1990).

dossier 4Casting

The Wrong Man

Hitchcock was famous for his collaborations with James Stewart and Cary Grant, but in one of his films he chose "the wrong man" to play the part

As a general rule, director is an interpretive artist and is often called upon to be critical and self-consciously analytical in his approach, full of verbal explanations rooted in deep thought. Alfred Hitchcock had his own way of being profound. "When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation?, ' I say, 'Your salary.'"

For a director who proclaims actors should be treated like cattle, casting becomes even more essential. Of course Hitchcock had the luxury to work

with some of the greatest actors ever to walk the face of the earth, but the films we remember will forever be associated with the faces of James Stewart and Cary Grant. One being the well hearted, slightly naïve boy from next door, the other being the playful, worldly charmer. Two flip sides to the same coin. It has been said that while Jimmy Stewart was the actor with whom Alfred Hitchcock most identified, it was Cary Grant who he wanted to be. Who wouldn’t.

The Wrong Man may be one of Hitchcock's most atypical films, being dif-ferent because it was based on a true story and conceived as a purely documentation of the original case. Yet although Hitchcock moves as close as he ever would to the quasi-documentary realism and noir sensi-bility, it might have been the most authentic film he ever made. Still, it is seen by many as a failure, a mistake.

The Wrong Man is an excellent depiction of human desperation, but it seems to miss this edge, the wit we typically find in Hitchcock’s oeuvre. It becomes a well told, engaging but very traditional Hollywood film from the fifties with Henry Fonda, the one to convey the sense of moral outrage, being the perfect John Doe. But he turns into a martyr in this almost biblical parable set in a flawed society instead of an ordinary hero who outsmarts his opponents. He’s too good to be true. The Wrong Man becomes too black and white and the hand of God plays too big a role. The casting was excellent for this story and this approach, but this is not Hitchcock. Let’s call it a case of mistaken identity. Finding the right man for The Wrong Man proved to be harder than expected.

By Wim Vanacker

Chastening Casting

Casting as a film motive in Andy Warhol's Screen Tests (1965) and Mohsen Makhmalbaf Salaam Cinema (1995)

Casting and its intransigent logic inform modern life; the way we are expected to package ourselves in attractive and instantly appealing forms is the quintessential formula of a successful cast. Public re-lations’ social economy dictates roles and manages spaces. Here is where profit directs social actors on the stage of life to the climax of a profitable and successful existence that is for those who make it to the end credits…

For life just like casting is not about expressing oneself but about trying to f it in (to a role), to satisfy the needs of (cinematic) produc-tion, to, as the hand-crafting referent suggests, mould our bodies into standardised casts.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Andy Warhol, foreign vectors on the cruel convergence of f ilmmaking, both reflected on their inherent sado-voyeurism as directors of actors and therefore lives.

In Warhol’s Screen Tests (1965) mournful expressions occasionally ‘lit ’ by cynical grins of sarcasm expose the ineluctability of passiv-ity in relation to stardom, the empire of images being the only self-authenticating illusion. In Salaam Cinema (1995) the insubordinate enthusiasm of wannabe Iranian actors constantly challenges the director’s instructions. They explicitly forge new characters and sets

of skills as they go along implicitly denouncing the inhuman impo-sitions of the silver screen. Warhol casts the mute representatives of a dominant superficiality, Makhmalbaf struggles with the unruly impulses of a humanity that while striving to stardom firmly rejects its emotionless tyranny.

In the Screen Tests we stare at the surface of actors that have accept-ed their role, in Saalam Cinema we witness the stubborn refusal of a scripted restraint. In Iran cinema is naively seen as some sort of ide-alistic practice while 30 years before Warhol had already inscribed it into the constellation of consumer falsity. The director has the f i-nal word: “cinema belongs to those who can sell their feelings” says Makhmalbaf, while Andy Warhol shows it.

By Celluloid Liberation Front

dossier5

Can you tell us something about the Shooting Stars program: what is its concept, who can participate and who selects the participants?The concept is the presentation of ten European young talents under 35 cho-sen by the jury. Every year member organizations of European Film Academy nominate an actor from their country based on certain criteria. Out of those nominees, the jury chooses ten participants.

What were your activities during the program?Meetings and conversations with casting directors, photo shootings, at-tending certain events where we were presented. It ended with receiving the Shooting Star Award.

What opportunities did participating in Shooting Stars offer?Meeting people and making contacts is for me the best thing that happens there. Coming from a small country, it is a rare opportunity to meet casting directors and fellow actors I would normally never meet.

What are the possibilities for successful Croatian actors outside of their home country? The possibilities for Croatian actors are limited, due to language and accent issues. There are so many wonderful actors everywhere and so is the case in my country. But there are not many roles we can play. We mostly get Eastern European characters, and there are not so many of these roles, either.

You also worked in Swiss, German and Ukrainian productions. How does the casting system in these countries differ from Croatia?The only audition I did was for the Swiss film. It took place in Croatia and I was invited by a Croatian casting director. The other two other roles I got directly. The directors saw some of my work and offered me to work with them. So, I couldn't say, really.

Can you describe the castings system in small national cinemas like Croatian: do you have to go to auditions, or do directors contact you directly?They usually contact us directly. There are auditions, but not so often. Croa-tia is a small country: a small community with a small production. Usually, the directors know who they want to work with.

There are many co-productions made in Croatia at the moment: did you try to audition for them?Not yet. But I think there are still many more to come. The fact that they exist is the opportunity.

By Mario Kozina

Casting

interviewMarija Škaričić recipient of Shooting Stars 2011 Award

SHE IS oNE oF THE MoST SUCCESSFULL CRoATIAN ACTRESSES. HER pERFoRMANCES IN FILMS LIKE "A WoNdERFUL NIGHT IN SpLIT" (2004), "dAS FRäULEIN" (2006) ANd "MoTHER oF AS-pHALT" (2010) BRoUGHT HER pRAISE FRoM THE AUdIENCE ANd THE CRITICS ALIKE, AS WELL AS AWARdS oN FESTIVALS IN SARA-JEVo (2006, 2006) ANd pULA (2010). SHE AppEAREd IN A NUMBER FEATURE ANd SHoRT FILMS ANd TV pRodUCTIoNS, BoTH CRo-ATIAN ANd EURopEAN. LAST YEAR SHE WAS SELECTEd AS oNE oF THE 10 pARTICIpANTS oF SHooTING STARS pRoGRAM THAT TAKES pLACE dURING THE BERLINALE.

news

feST - Training ground 2012 CALL FoR AppLICATIoNS

FEST, NISI MASA member organization from Portugal, has launched a call for registering for Training Ground 2012. Training Ground is one of the biggest and the most acknowledged forums for learning in the field of film, designed for young filmmakers and film enthusiasts all over the world. During one week the participants will attend the training course consisting of workshops, master classes and lectures by top experts from the industry. The program approaches the key issues on filmmaking: script writing, technical disciplines, as well as theory, and every participant can tai-lor the workshop according to his/her preferences. Two experts confirmed their attendance for this year’s edition: Scandar Copti, co-director of Oscar nominated film Ajami (2009) from Israel, and acclaimed Spanish documentarist Guillermo Garcia-Ramos.

Training Ground 2012 will take place from July 2nd to 7th during the FEST – International Youth Film Festival in the seacoast city Espinho. The first 15 people who apply can get the registration fee with a discount of 49 euros (accommodation is not included). The deadline for applications is not fixed, but the number of vacancies is limited so make shure to apply on time!

FEST pITCHING FoRUM 2012

Also, FEST organizes a pitching forum for filmmakers. Every participant will have a chance to present his/hers project to 10 potential producers and fi-nanciers. In order to participate in the Pitching Forum you must be registered with FEST training ground.

More info on both projects can be found on: www.fest.pt/?lang=en

niSimazine CanneS CALL FoR pARTICIpANTSNISI MASA is organizing a film journalism workshop during the upcoming Cannes Film Festival. 12 Nisimasians from Estonia, France and Turkey will have a chance to form the editorial team of Nisimazine, where their reviews, interviews, in focus articles, and videoblogs will be published on the daily basis. Deadline for applying is March 1st.

More info: www.nisimasa.com

lago film feST CALL FoR SUBMISSIoNSLago Film Fest, International Festival of Short Films, Documentaries and Screen-plays launched the call for submissions of the upcoming edition. Lago Film Fest is a partner organization of NISI MASA from It-aly, with the aim of promoting emerging movie artists. The festival will take place in Lago from July 20th to July 28th 2011. The festival has 2 competing programs. For the international short film competition eligible titles must be less than 30 minutes of length, and the titles submitted for the interna-tional documentary competition can be up to 50 minutes of length.

deadline for submissions is March 1st!

More info: www.lagofest.org/eng/lago-film-fest-2012/submit-your-film/

niSi maSa berlinale parTy! After being present at many international festivals on both sides of the At-lantic, NISI MASA decided to make a big entrance to the Berlinale Film Fes-tival. However, this time there won't be any workshop - there will only be a party! It is co-organized with Daazo, and will take place on the February 13th at 8 p.m. in Badehouse Berlin.

general aSSembly 2012The anual General Assembly of NISI MASA will take place in Zagreb from March 28th to April 1st. Hosted and co-organized by Kinoklub Za-greb, NISI MASA member from Croatia, the event will gather the representa-tives of all the members from the network. The focus of this year's General Assembly will be selection of new NISI MASA members. More details about the agenda will be confirmed soon.

offiCe newSTwo staff members of the European Office are leaving the pictoresque Par-is in February. One of them is Maartje Alders from the Netherlands who started her internship in February 2009 and since then organized, helped and supported many projects, as well as took care that all the NISI MASA publications have a fresh and functional look. Mario Kozina from Croatia just finished his 6 months internship program of being a project assistant and editor of Mas y Mas and is returning to finish his studies in Zagreb.

No need for tears, because the EO will get a kick of fresh blood from the new members. Viviana Carlet from Italy, who is also the artistic director of Lago Film Fest, will start working for the EO in the following months. Lucía Ros Serra from Spain will become a Communication Assistant and will take over editing and designing of Mas y Mas from Mario.

niSimazine roTTerdamFrom January 25th-31st NISI MASA organized the Nisimazine Special Rotter-dam workshop, designed for its alumni members. The emphasis was on the Tiger Shorts competition, famous for the selection of aesthetically darring and challenging films. The online issue of the magazine should be available soon so be sure to check the official NISI MASA site for updates!

agenda

13 february NISI MASA Berlinale party

4 - 5 february Self promotions for actors workshop (Munich Film Society)

28 february deadline for My Migrant Story

my migranT STory CALL FoR AppLICATIoNSDo you want to learn how to tell your migrant story? From May 8th to 15th Scuola Holden, school fo creative writing from Italy, organizes a 7-day workshop in Torino with the aim of ex-ploring the use of oral and written narratives to give a voice to the stories of national and in-ternational migration. Each person will have to come with an object connected to some family internal or external migration histories (photos, videos, object, super8mm films), and during the workshop, he/she will develop the story related to their personal experience (which can also

contain elements of fiction).

The workshop is designed up to 24 participants from various European countries. There is no age limit and voyage and accommodation are fully covered by Scuola Holden. However, Ital-ians and non-EU citizens have to pay the fee of 250 euros.

In order to apply, write the following texts:

- a short story of migration – no longer than 9.000 characters, space included, in English lan-guage.- a short description of an object connected to the story (like a photo, a super8 film, a small memory object etc). The participants will have to bring this object at the workshop.

…and send them to europe@scuolaholden.it before February 28th 2012.

More info: www.scuolaholden.it/English/News/my%20mi-grant%20story

ToTem - SCREENING IN RoTTERdAM

After its premiere in the competition program of International Critics’ Week in Venice, Jessica Krummacher’s Totem was screened during the upcoming International Film Festival Rot-terdam (January 25th – February 5th). It was selected for the Bright Future, a program with the spotlight on the first and second features of daring and idiosyncratic filmmakers. Co-produced by Munich Film Society, Totem was compared with the works of Michael Haneke, Ulrich Seidl and Pier Paolo Pasolini. It follows a young housemaid who starts working for a middle-class family in the Ruhr area, and as the plot evolves it plunges into the topics of family anxieties and a social class in crisis.

muniCh film SoCieTySEMINARS

Munich Film Society, NISI MASA member from Germany, announced many useful and inspir-ing workshops for February. Among others check out the two workshops closely related to this month’s Mas y Mas dossier topic. One of them is a workshop concentrated on self-promotion for actors (February 4th-5th) with many practical issues tackled: from cast-ings to making your own internet site. Also there will be a workshop concentrated on camera acting (February 18th to 20th), a three day workshop that will introduce and teach its participants to the basics of the “Con-rad technique”, one of the most widely used acting techniques in Hollywood.

There are many more workshops on practical side of filmmaking, so check them all out on:

www.filmseminare.de/termine

18 - 20 february Camera acting workshop (Munich Film Society)

20 february deadline for Greenhouse documentary program (see Mas y Mas January)

1 march closing submissions for Lago Film Fest

22 - 28 february Occupy Workshop

1 march closing submissions for Nisimazine Cannes

6spotlight

VARIoUS SKIES oF pARIS

Matadero: an old, huge, crazy and beautiful re-stored building in the heart of Madrid. A burning sun in October. Here we meet, five European as-sociations focused on cinematographic produc-tion: Franti from Italy, Nisi Masa France, Ms Bal-tazars Lab from Austria, Euphoria Borealis from Finland and Cinestesias from Spain, the initiators of the project which we are gathering there for on the 15th of October. No, it was not because of the „15.O“. But it still deals with young Euro-peans wanting to do something, dreaming and shooting.

The Eye of the Sky is a videographic project led by Cinestesias, which aim was to show the Eu-ropean sky through a game of exquisite corpse. With the freedom in the video-techniques, and references to André Breton and the European artists from the beginning of the 20th century, a lovely traveling box was sent in November and December from country to country, with the last frame from the previous shooting becoming the first frame of the next team.

First destination of the box was the European Of-fice of NISI MASA. On Friday night, 3 teams of 2 videasts met around a table with „Beaujolais nouveau“ wine, some cheese (with no intent of

a cliché!), and agreed to focus on shooting „the typical Parisian sky“. Hmm… That means quite various skies. We strolled through the streets of Paris for one day and one night, with actually a maximum freedom for creativity. Of course, there were no special framing or camera rules, which made the story quite funny (!) in the edit-ing room.

The final movie, composed of all our European skies, has not been screened yet, but the screen-ing is planned in each participating country in art galleries, etc... We will keep you in tune!

By Severine Beaudot

EYE

oF

THE

SKY This month we decided to put two

NISI MASA related events in the spot-light. One of them is the first session of the European Short Pitch 2012 that took place in Luxembourg from 3rd to 8th of January. The other is The Eye of the Sky, an audiovisual project iniciated by Cinestesias (Spain), struc-tured like a surrealist play of cadavre exquis where the ending shot of one short film becomes the first shot of the next. While its camera travelled through several European countries to explore the lokal sky-scapes, the project proved that for Nisimasians the geographic boundaries are not a problem. Only sky is the limit!

SYNERGY

When the short sci-fi family drama script Ctrl-Alt-Del that I co-wrote with Luc Walpoth got selected for the European Short Pitch 2012, we did not know exactly what to expect from a 5 day script workshop which required focusing ones atten-tion on 24 other short film scripts with an equal and genuine effort. It seemed too much in too little time. We were wrong.

During these 5 days in Luxembourg we expe-rienced two driving forces that allowed us to strengthen our story and convey our themes better. The first force was the power of mass com-menting. When ten people tell you that you are drunk, you should probably not drive. Cross-firing on each others scripts was very beneficial to us, for it helped us identify the core objective of our project, discard the distractions we had built into it and nourish ourselves from our fellow work-shopee’s experience with his/her script.

The second driver behind our successful step to-wards a better script sprung from the energy cre-ated by sitting 24, 12 and 6 souls into one room. In other words, we became synergetic. This phe-nomenon in itself truly gave us the creative ap-proach needed to tackle the flaws in our storytell-ing. Helping someone else to get his/her message accross on paper, unlocks something within you – it opens doors, broadens your horizon.

Eventually, we should also acknoledge the collab-orative tutoring that occured every day and that became instrumental in reaching the new draft we’re now polishing. The process was never de-structive or subjective in any way, so we did not leave Luxembourg with a script that was not ours anymore. We hope this powerful experience will continue until and during the Maribor pitching sessions.

by Klaus pas

ESp 2012: LUXEM

BoU

RG

photo by Severine Beaudot

photo by Monika Kotecka