More on Birdsong

It was disappointing not to catch Albert Serra's El Cant Dels Ocells (Birdsong) anywhere last Christmas, and a further disappointment was in store when I tried to get a copy of the film on DVD for this Christmas. Sadly, despite rave reviews, the film has only had very limited distribution.

But seeing as it's Epiphany today, I thought it would be fitting to link to a couple of pieces on the film that might be of interest.

First up, there is a review of the film over at Cinema Scope. Then there is also an interesting interview with Serra by Senses of Cinema's Darren Hughes. Hope they ease the disappointment of taking down the Christmas decorations.

Birdsong at London Film Festival

The programme for the London Film Festival has been announced and amongst the treats for thos eable to attend is Birdsong (El Cant Dels Ocells). The festival has done a great job with its website: in addition to a neat summary there are also 11 stills from the film both in colour and black and white.

The film will be playing on Thursday 16th October at 18:30in National Film Theatre 3 and again at 16:15 the next day (Friday 17th October), this time in the ICA Cinema. I'm not sure whether I'll be able to make it, but the following snippet from Maria Delgado capsule review certainly tempts me:

Serra’s visual palette, however, moving effortlessly from Laurel and Hardy’s Another Fine Mess to Welles’ Chimes at Midnight, shows a film-maker effortlessly able to draw on the mythology of the past to examine what spirituality means in our present day world.

El Cant Dels Ocells (Birdsong) Playing this Week at TIFF

Back in June I mentioned a new film on the three wise men El Cant Dels Ocells (Birdsong) by Albert Serra. As I'm currently writing a piece on Nativity Films for the Winter edition of The Reader I thought I'd check to see if there is any news on it getting a general release in the run up to Christmas. Whilst there doesn't seem to be any news on that, it does appear that Birdsong will be playing this week at the Toronto International Film Festival as follows:

Tuesday September 9th 5:00pm AMC 5
Wednesday September 10 8:30pm Varsity 5
Friday September 12 5:00pm AMC 4

It turns out that the film will also be playing at the Vancouver International Film Festival where they will also be showing Waiting for Sancho - Mark Peranson's documentary about the making of the film. The VIFF dates are as follows:

Birdsong - Oct. 5th at 6:40pm - Empire Granville 7 Theatre 3
Waiting for Sancho - October 6th 7:00pm - Vancity Theatre
Birdsong - Oct. 7th at 1:15pm - Vancity Theatre.
Waiting for Sancho - October 7th at 3:45pm - Vancity Theatre

I'm looking to hear the reports of Vancouverites and fellow Bible film fans Peter Chattaway and Ron Reed in due course.

El Cant Dels Ocells (Birdsong)

Amongst the things I missed whilst on holiday last week (was it only last week?) was news of a new film about the magi. Birdsong (El Cant Dels Ocells) is Albert Serra's take on the story which showed at Cannes this year. Justin Chang from Variety describes it as:

Hushed, contemplative, but often quite droll, experiment offers beautifully sculpted images on a black-and-white canvas across its sometimes hypnotic, sometimes tedious runtime... Three robed men (all played by thesps with the first name Lluis) tread very, very slowly across a craggy landscape, bickering comically over how they should proceed in their search for the Christ Child. Grounded in desert dunes and rocky ruins, pic reps a profound attempt to locate the spiritual within the material. There's no disputing Serra's remarkable eye (some brief underwater footage is especially mesmerizing), though most shots, such as one that reduces the men to specks on the horizon, are sustained well past the endurance point. Absent any unnatural light, much less a guiding star, nighttime shots are impenetrable.

It sounds very similar to Ermanno Olmi's Cammina, Cammina which I reviewed last year (although perhaps the images are a little more refined). That's an observation shared by Peter Chattaway who's not yet managed to see Olmi's film. Doug Cummings is considerably more positive, however. "Serra has found an even more exalted and stunning sky-and-earth atmosphere (the rocky, volcanic heights of the Canary Islands substituting for the Mid-East desert) than he did for Honor de cavalleria". There's also a good length review from l'Humanité which notes Serra's indebtedness to Pasolini and concludes that with "its use of a wide screen, of static shots (with very few exceptions), this contemplative, sensitive film takes us on a quest for the essence of cinema, even as its characters are questing for the essence of something else."

There's not a great deal of further information on this film, even in the more Cannes-friendly section of the press. It's in Catalan and Hebrew and at 96 minutes is considerably shorter than Cammina Cammina.