Thursday, October 31, 2013

Venice 70: Future Reloaded

This year the Venice International Film Festival commissioned 70 filmmakers who've had success at the fest to create original short films, between one and three minutes long. There are some compelling names on that list, including Todd Solondz, Bernardo Bertolucci, Atom Egoyan, Isabel Coixet, Claire Denis and yes, Catherine Breillat. The festival describes the series of films, collectively titled Future Reloaded, as, "both a collective tribute to the Festival (the world’s first film festival to celebrate its 70th edition) and a reflection on the future of cinema." The films have already been completed and at least most of them seem to be available onlime.

The credits for Breillat's entry (which doesn't seem to have its own, individual title) aren't too helpful, only saying, roughly translated: "Catherine Breillat, her actors and crew," which I take to mean she's working with her usual people. At any rate, that's definitely Breillat herself in the primary speaking role, talking about film's dependance on money in this semi-documentary, semi-fictional film. It's just barely over ninety seconds long, so rather than explaining it further, I'll let it speak for itself:


Interestingly, the IMDB has an entry for a two hour documentary called Venice 70: Future Reloaded, which lists all 70 of the filmmakers as co-directors. I don't know if this is an upcoming documentary about the short films, or very possibly just a lazy way to list all 70 short films as one easy entry to the database. I'm hoping it means that the festival intends to package all 70 films as a single DVD, so I'll be able to remove it from the "DVDs Still M.I.A." list as quickly as I added it; but we'll see. At any rate, we've got an unexpected new short film by Breillat on our hands - enjoy!