A film by Yesim Ustaoglu

Synopsis

Somewhere in Between  is a film project that puts into question how growing up in and the experience of today’s world is nothing more than “being in total limbo” by the narration of desires, dreams, cravings, viewpoints, expectations and loves of two adolescents who are stuck in the threshold of purgatory and chained to their anguishes. It is a story of abiding a plastic world that is suppressed, depreciated and debased by fake, illusory expectations - a process that also deepens the immutable social inequalities.

Fiche technique

Shooting  January  2011

Production

France           Catherine Dussart  -  CDP

Turkey          Yesim Ustaoglu  -  Ustaoğlu Film

Japan            Hisami Kuroiwa  -  Media Space, Inc ,

Germany       Michael Weber- The Match Factory,

Diffuser       ARTE

Director    Peter Greenaway

With          John Malkovitch

Synopsis

In the winter of 1590 the Dutch printer and engraver Hendrick Goltzius, approaches the Margrave of Alsace at Colmar for funds to set up a printing press to make and publish illustrated books. He proposes that the first two books manufactured by this new printing press should be dedicated to the Margrave and his court and should be an illustrated Old Testament featuring six tales of an erotic nature, and the second should be an illustrated Metamorphosis of Ovid featuring the infidelities of Jupiter.

To tempt the Margrave further, Goltzius and his printing company will offer to perform dramatisations of these erotic stories for his court. The Margrave, a noted liberal priding himself on his religious and cultural tolerance, with a large library, and an educated interest in books and the new technologies of printing, is tempted. He agrees before witnesses, that if he is stimulated and excited he will reward Goltzius and his company with the asked-for funding.

Goltzius with his Pelican Company of printers and their wives and mistresses, all associated with theatrical entertainments, proceed.

Their first dramatisation is of the Genesis Story of Adam and Eve, with God creating Adam and then Eve, the temptation of the Devil and Eve persuading Adam to eat the apple. The performance takes place before a selected section of the Margrave’s family and court and a collection of differing religious representatives, a catholic priest, a Calvinist protestant and a Jewish rabbi. The dramatisation is skilfully accompanied by spectacular effects of God and his angels, the Devil in the tree of knowledge, and the wonders of the garden of Eden, with the finale of the expulsion of Adam and eve from the garden accompanied with a winter snow-storm blasting through the palace. The audience are surprised, shocked and delighted by the frankness and magic of the performance and the religious representatives are stunned into hot debate about questions of representing God. The Margrave is amused, and is titillated by the actress Susannah, playing Eve, who in turn sees an opportunity to become the Margrave’s mistress and retire from acting.

Goltzius’s second play is a dramatisation of the story of Lot and his Daughters. The Pelican Company stage the play in the palace’s boiler-rooms to simulate the fires of Sodom and Gomorrah, the act of Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt is replicated, and the frankness of the dramatisation, deeply disturb the court and the clerics, who accuse Goltzius of blasphemy and order the arrest of the Pelican Company’s playwright Boethius, who retorts with skilful arguments about the validity of the performance, hinting at his own Anabaptist, if not outright atheistically opinions. The Margrave meanwhile has become excited and enamoured of the actress Adela who played Lot’s second daughter, and who is Boethius’s mistress, thus creating intense jealousy in the actress Susannah.

The third Goltzius dramatic offering is the story of David and Bathsheba. Boethius challenges the court and the clerics with Old Testament hypocrisy, and the Margrave, determined to sleep with Boethius’s wife, and eager to get him out of the way, agrees to his arrest, charged with heresy.

The Pelican Company, disrupted but determined to continue, persuade Boethius to write the fourth drama in his prison cell and they perform the Old Testament story of Potiphar’s Wife where the powerful wife of an Egyptian official seduces a reluctant Joseph who is played by the Margrave’s younger brother. It is a blackmailing stratagem arranged by Goltzius to get the Margrave to release Boethius, by humiliating the Margrave in seeing his brother humiliated on stage.

Goltzius’s fifth story is the Old Testament tale of Delilah’s seduction of Samson, and the large and physically powerful Jewish rabbi is coerced into playing Samson, who is not so unwilling since he is to play opposite the actress who played Potiphar’s wife who excited him. The outcome of the Samson and Delilah story is the emasculation of Samson whereby the rabbi has every hair on his body shaved. The distraught rabbi furiously and revengefully denounces the Calvinist’s seduction of the Margrave’s brother to the Margrave and in a parody of the Samson and Delilah story, pulls down the Pelican Company’s pavilion.

Boethius’ mistress, in a bid to get her lover Boethius released, agrees to perform the sensuous role of Salome in the New Testament story of the Death of John the Baptist with the Margrave being permitted to play Herod, if Boethius can play John the Baptist. In the subsequent performance, Boethius’ mistress publicly scorns the Margrave, and makes love to Boethius in public in front of him. In a furious jealous rage, and to fulfil the biblical story, the Margrave, playing Herod, orders the beheading of John the Baptist played by Boethius. But this is no enacted simulation but the real thing and Boethius is beheaded.

Consternation breaks out, the Margrave is shunned, his Catholic representative buys off Goltzius and his Pelican Company by signing the funding of the printing press contract, and the Pelican Company are swiftly driven out of Colmar in a snowstorm. On the road south to Italy, Boethius’ mistress in the carriage unrolls a parcel to reveal Boethius’ bloody decapitated head which she has stolen, and which she now ardently kisses and caresses. The carriage rushes into a dark tunnel in the Alps. Goltzius takes his Pelican Company to Italy.

Fiche technique

Shooting : November 2010

Coproduction :

The Kasander Film Company BV
Westewagenstraat 60, 3011 AT Rotterdam
The Netherlands
T: +31(0)10 -433 3043 / F: +31(0)10 -433 3061
www.kasander.com

CDP
25 Rue Gambetta 92100 Boulogne/France
T: + 33 (1) 46 05 02 59 / F: 33 (1) 46 05 02 59
Cdpdussart@aol.com

With the support of the MEDIA
Programme of the European

A film by Rithy Panh

Running time   110′

Synopsis

Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell

Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge regime caused the death of some 1.8 million people, representing one-quarter of the population of Cambodia.

Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, was in charge at M13, a Khmer Rouge-controlled prison, for four years before being appointed by the Angkar (“the Organisation”, a faceless and omnipresent entity which reigned unopposed over the destiny of an entire people) to the S21 centre in Phnom Penh. As party secretary, he commanded from 1975 to 1979 the Khmer Rouge killing machine in which at least 12,280 people perished, according to the remaining archives. But how many others disappeared, “crushed and reduced to dust”, with no trace of them ever being found?

In 2009, Duch became the first leader of the Khmer Rouge organisation to be brought before an international criminal justice court.

During the trial, Duch finally requested .

The judgement will be pronounced in the next few weeks.

Duch reveals here how he considers that he fully carried out his mission, and the reasons which led him to command M13 and then S21:

- His faith in the ideology of the Angkar

- His obsession with work well done, his cult of hierarchy and his eagerness to gain the approval of his superiors.

- His passion for power, discipline and organisation.

- His talents as a teacher, eager to train perfect workmen to carry out of a collective and silent crime.

- His instinct for survival, and his fear of death.

Rithy Panh records his unadorned words, without any trimmings, in the isolation of a face-to-face encounter. At the same time, he sets it into perspective with archive pictures and eye-witness accounts of survivors. As the narrative unfolds, the infernal machine of a system of destruction of humanity implacably emerges, through a manic description of the minutiae of its mechanisms.

Fiche Technique

AUTHOR Rithy Panh

DIRECTOR Rithy Panh

RUNNING TIME 110’

coProducteurs / COPRODUCERS

CDP/Ina/Bophana Production

with the participation of France 3

]]> http://cdpproductions.fr/en/television-documentaries/duch-le-maitre-des-forges-de-lenfer/feed http://cdpproductions.fr/en/projets/ipu-cest-ce-que-je-dis http://cdpproductions.fr/en/projets/ipu-cest-ce-que-je-dis#comments Wed, 07 Apr 2010 13:19:02 +0000 pascale http://cdpproductions.fr/?p=1388 Director   Bogdan Dreyer

Synopsis

One morning, as the Second World War is still raging, Alex, an 11 year old boy, finds a dead German soldier lying in a field by a small village in Transylvania. Someone from the village has cut the soldiers throat.

The Captain of the German forces, that are occupying the village orders, that whoever was responsible, has to turn himselves in by five o’clock the next morning. If not, he will have 10 of the most prominent townspeople executed at once. Although the townspeople do the utmost, the murder can not be found. The 10 prominent townspeople - the priest and his wife, the mayor, the doctor and his family, the Police Chief, and the notary - come up with a plan to save their own lives. They organize a grand dinner at the priest’s house and invite Ipu, the village madman, as the Guest of Honor.

Ipu was a French soldier who developed total amnesia after he was badly wounded fighting with the allied forces during WWI. Because of that, he stayed on in the village, where everyone considered him very friendly, but mad.

Nobody in the village speaks to him except little Alex, who found the dead German and who has come to the village to escape the bombing in the capital, and is staying with his Aunt Margherita and her husband, the priest. Alex and Ipu are inseparable friends and Ipu teaches Alex to fish and introduces him to the joys of the countryside. At the same time he cautions him to pay attention to the dangers that even a pleasant place this remote village can have.

Alex is also attending the dinner where Ipu is the “Guest of Honor”. When the dinner begins, the priest and his friends try to convince Ipu to “admit” responsibility for the crime and to sacrifice his “worthless” life in order to save their own. This act, they assure him, will insure that he becomes a national hero as he sacrifices his life to save the life of ten other people.

At first, it appears that Ipu may agree to their plan. But the madman is a lot crazier than anyone thought. He demands to see a demonstration of the spectacular funeral which the priest has promised him after his death. He wants to see the mass that the entire town will attend, the band playing the French National Anthem, the WWI veterans dressed in uniforms escorting his casket. He wants to see how he will be buried at the best spot in the cemetery with the most impressive black marble monument and how a bas-relief memorial stone will be installed in the main square and dedicated to him. He wants to see how all the village children will bring fresh flowers to his grave. And he wants to see it all before 5 o’clock in the morning, when the Germans will return, looking for those to be executed.

Time is running fast and the priest and the other townspeople have no choice but to comply and act out the gala proceedings. And Alex is forced to “attend” the funeral of his best friend, knowing it’s the last time he’ll see him.

The festivities are organized fast and with the utmost diligence and indeed they satisfy Ipu’s fantasy. Just when all papers have been signed and he’s ready to turn himself in, word comes that the War is over. As the word spreads, the Germans can be seen hurriedly leaving the village.

As the square fills with townspeople, celebrating ecstatically, it is now unclear if Ipu will go back to his role as the “town’s madman” or if he will become the hero as promised.

As he and Alex stand together, side by side, only Alex knows what his friend is going to do next…

Fiche Technique

Shooting  August 2010

Director Bogdan Dreyer

Screenwriter   Anusavan Salamanian

Consulting Piero de Bernardi

Composer Nicola Piovani

Produced by

France Catherine Dussart   CDP

Germany  Daniel Zuta – Harbour Entertainment GmbH

Roumania Giuliano Doman - Tandem Film

Genre Drama  -  All Audiences

Format 35mm – scope - Dolby

Running Time 100 minutes environ

Shooting Language French

Shooting place          France

Shooting date September 2010

Casting

Ipu              Gérard Depardieu

Father         Ioan Harvey Keitel

Alex            Bogdan Lacu

A film by Rithy Panh

Synopsis

Cambodia, late 1970s. US bombers have been shelling villages to support the Lon Nol Government.

Two bewildered young boys living in a mountain village catch sight of an enemy plane for the first time as it flies by above them.

It was only because there were no young men around in the village and because of the occasional death notification brought in by the mailman that they had so far realized a war was going on.

The next day, woken up at daybreak by a dramatic commotion one of the kids goes out and realizes with amazement and anxiety that all adults have left the village – and then he finds out what happened: the aircraft has crashed and all the men have left to scour the jungle and locate the enemy crew.

“What could those enemies look like?” the kids wonder, wishing that the men would be found alive and that instead of being killed they’d be taken prisoner so that the kids could watch them at will.

The villagers eventually file back in, bringing along their catch – the only man who survived the crash by parachute jumping. With his feet bound by a wild-boar-trap chain, he slightly limps along as he raises his big black face towards the sky.

Indeed he’s a Black man. Bewildered and confused by the man’s colour, the children cannot regard him as an enemy.

But the thing is the villagers cannot consider as one of them either. So they work it out by regarding him as a beast that has to be kept, shut in and fed until the Prefecture authorities are informed and decide what to do with him.

What if he escaped from the cellar where he’s being kept, slaughtered all the children and all the dogs in the village, burnt down the houses – the kid worries, shuddering with fear.

While the adults are at work up in the mountain, the mesmerized children, left to their own devices, watch through the window the weird prisoner slumped on the floor of the shed. After a while one of the kids earns the exclusive privilege of bringing him his meals twice a day. He lets his brother and his best friend share this honour with him.

At the end of the day all the kids think about is nothing but the prisoner. Their lives revolve around him. And the three kids get used to staying in the cellar with him, under the pretext of keeping watch over him.

They gradually take to him. One day, they decide to take the chain off the feet of this harmless prisoner who keeps crouching on the ground.

Released from his chains, the prisoner jumps up to stretch himself – but instead of swooping down onto them like an eagle – as they thought he was going to do – he sits back down just like a pet – or so the kids think.

Much to the kids’ wonder the prisoner begins to communicate with them. And this sign language reinforces their view of him as a beast.

They can’t believe that this sweet-natured Black man could have ever been waging war against them. Then the unschackled prisoner who performs small chores soon looks like a human being to them.

When the children notice that the soldier smiles at them, they are surprised and they gradually come to realize that strong, deep, almost human relationships are forming between them.

When the villagers are eventually given the order to hand over the prisoner to the Prefecture authorities, one of the kids, staggered by the news, goes down to the cellar to inform the prisoner who takes him hostage. The prisoner has turned into an enemy again.

Double-crossed, he feels anger, humiliation, pain and fear in the face of the armed villagers – including the kid’s father – who are threatening them.

The child spends the night in the Black man’s arms and the morning after, the shed’s padlock is unlocked. Holding a billhook, the kid’s father lunges at the prisoner who grabs the child’s wrist and lifts it to his face in order to shield his face.

A piercing scream is heard in the cellar when the kid’s left hand is hit by the billhook – the Black man’s loosens his grip.

The convalescing maimed child listens to his friends telling him what happened as they pick up wood to burn the Black man’s body.

He’s aware that he won’t belong to the community of children anymore.

The war – the unrelenting, bloody battle of gigantic proportions engulfing the village and intoxicating his father with the blood shed on the battlefield and making him brandish his billhook – was certainly going to last, leaving the kid in the midst of the turmoil, gasping for breath.

Fiche Technique

Title « SHIIKU »

French title « GIBIER D’ELEVAGE »

Adapted from « Shiiku » by Ôé Kenzaburô .- The Wylie Agency (UK)

Screenwriters Michel Fessler and Rithy Panh

Director Rithy Panh

Genre Feature film - Drama

Shooting place Cambodia

Shooting Language Cambodian / English

Length 90’

Beginning of shooting 2nd December 2010

Duration of shooting 12 weeks

Format HD/Color - 35mm

Date of delivery May 2011

Produced by

CDP/France

Bophana Production/Cambodia

Co-producer ARTE France

Casting :

The prisoner Cyril Gueï

This project was selected by the « Atelier » at the Cannes film festival 2010

PPP Pusan International Film Festival

Pitch

1972, An American plane bombs Ho Chi Minh runway before crashing in the Cambodian mountains. The children of an isolated village capture the sole survivor, a black pilot.

presskit_bassidji_engl_web

Synopsis

In a desert, on a hill, men and women in chadors and children are wandering in a vast open air “museum”
dedicated to the memory of the martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war. This is the Iranian new year, we are close to
the Iraqi border. I’m following my guide. He’s tall and charismatic. His name is Nader Malek-Kandi. For almost
three years, I’ve decided to immerse myself in the very heart of the most extremist supporters of the Islamic
republic of Iran (the bassidjis), to better understand their paradigms. We are from the same country,
however everything divides us. I can only hurt their convictions being an atheist Iranian, living in France, and
son of communist activists under the Shah’s regime. Nevertheless, we engage in a dialog. But, between
seduction and rhetoric games, moments of truth and the reality of the political and religious system they
support, how far are we ready to give up some of our respective convictions to perceive and understand one
another ?

presskit_bassidji_engl

Festivals

VISIONS DU REEL 2009 – COMPETITION INTERNATIONALE
TORONTO IFF 2009 – REAL TO REEL

Fiche Technique

Director
Mehran TAMADON
Writer
Mehran TAMADON
With the collaboration of
Laetitia LEMERLE
Producers
Catherine DUSSART – CDP (France)
Franck HULLIARD – INTERLAND (France)
Elena TATTI et Thierry SPICHER – BOX PRODUCTIONS (Swiss)
Mehran TAMADON (Iran)
Camera
Majid GORJIAN
Editing
Andrée DAVANTURE
Rodolphe MOLLA
Sound editing and mixing
Jérôme CUENDET
Color grading
Cécile CHEURLOT
Translation and subtitles
Caroline LEMERLE
Graphics
François DULEX - OFICINA
Production assistants
Pascale PIGEON
Elodie BRUNNER
Administrator
Béatrice HANNEQUIN
With the support of
Centre National de la Cinématographie - MEDIA Plus Programme de la Communauté Européenne - Slate
funding
La Région Ile-de-France
And the participation of
Fonds Sud Cinéma, Ministère de la culture et de la communication –CNC, Ministère des affaires
étrangères, France
La Télévision Suisse Romande – Unité des films

© 2009 / CDP – INTERLAND - BOX PRODUCTIONS – MEHRAN TAMADON

Image gallery

“The little Apple King”
Or “If only the Tiger were a Vegetarian”

A tale animated and directed by Joël Farges

Synopsis

Do you want me to tell you a story? Do you want to know under what circumstances you were adopted?

A father who is also an actor and a storyteller draws his inspiration from the real story of his adopted son and composes a philosophic tale whose hero is his own son. And his narrative leaves him to reflect upon our world as it goes or rather as it goes awry. And just as they use shadow screens to tell stories in Cambodia where his son was born, so does our storyteller. Various shadow theatre techniques are used to adjust to the narrative and to the countries in which the story takes place. Our shadow theatre artist uses a large variety of styles: first Cambodian, then Chinese, Indian, Russian and lastly Turkish. Then the story takes place in France and our storyteller uses puppet manipulation techniques. Until our hero, disheartened as being nothing but a small shadow on the world’s stage, turns into a real human being. A little boy extraordinarily keen on orchard apples.

This is the story told by the father playing the actor-mime-characters’ voices-storyteller-shadow theatre artist.

King Maniac III could not have any children. “If I can’t have any children, nobody in my kingdom shall have any!”
This was how a period of terror started for the children of that small kingdom that we call the country of rain and tears. At the far end of the country and utterly unaware of this tyrannical insanity, Bima was transplanting rice with his mother and his sister Sita when children killers suddenly appeared. Bima and Sita ran away across the border and to unknown land…
In the middle of the jungle they thought they were safe. But all of a sudden they heard a sad roar.
It was a tiger trapped in a cage.
Kind-hearted Bima opened the cage.
The tiger writhed in agony because his stomach was so empty. The tiger apologized:
-    “I can see only one solution to ease my pain… Sorry, I liked you!”
A marmoset drawn by the outrage cry of the children stood up for them:
-  “It is very bad to want to eat one’s benefactor!”
-  “But you can’t blame a tiger for being a tiger!”
-  “This is a kind-hearted little boy, he’s good.
-  “Yes, you’re quite right, he is good. Juicy and tasty.
-  “Stop playing on words.”

The little monkey was persuasive enough. The tiger decided to be generous. But on one condition. Bima had to find one animal, just one, no matter which one, who would say nice things about men. “And then I will let your sister go and I will become a vegetarian.”

This was what set off Bima and his friend, the world’s most talkative marmoset, on a journey around the world.

In the country of Great Stability, a beautiful young jellyfish (a childhood friend of our marmoset and only child of the queen of the Silver Thread) was getting married to the son of the king of the Pearl.

-    “My friend will say nice things about men. Her family does business with men and makes a lot of money. By getting married the bride and her husband will be able to set up a factory of pearls and sell them at a very competitive price. And they will become the King and Queen of the Pearl Necklace.”

An extravagant wedding party. A moving wedding ceremony. A grand event attended by Bima and his friend who was much moved. But the proletarians and the female workers of the new consortium took to the street: “We won’t string pearls and be paid peanuts.”
The newly weds enraged at being disturbed sent their crabs and a big fight ensued on the Square of Friendship:
-    “So forget about the jellyfish. She is ruined and can’t bring herself to say nice things about men.”

Bima and his friend landed up in an island – formerly pristine land – but now ravaged by human invasion. Deforestation and river pollution hurt the orangoutans living here.
They were depressed, hungry, surrounded by mud, and when they mentioned men they couldn’t help calling them all sorts of not so polite names.
On the island of everlasting peace an unfortunate gecko – he and our chatterer had once been as thick as thieves – had been crippled after a small dispute that men were unable to settle and which turned into an everlasting war.
-    “Nice things about men, no way!”

In the country of right side and wrong side, Pegasus the champ would have praised human kindness but unfortunately he had not been spared from political regimes. He was sometimes cherished and sometimes beaten up, depending on whether the rich were rich or the poor, poor. And vice-versa depending on regime changes. And if he was hated, it was because of the black and white spots on his skin.
They came to the country of the Sublime Door and met with a poor Persian cat who had landed up in Istanbul. She was willing to say nice things about men. Being a penniless refugee she had to scavenge through the dustbins for food. But she was an illegal immigrant in this albeit hospitable country, so she was arrested by the police.

A whirling dervish who was also a seer comforted our friend. He told him about a worm who just loved the apples of the happy valley. The worm would tell him nice things about men who loved those apple trees.
But dreadful Mondiablo had resided in the orchards. The apples which had so many different tastes – so much so that men wondered which ones they liked best – had been eradicated and replaced by tasteless, square-blue apples.
Tasteless? Because everybody agrees on their lack of taste and so there could be no surprise, neither good nor bad. Blue because they were appealing in ads. And treacherous Mondiablo had managed to make apples unwilling to have worms inside them. They were square because it made it easier to carry them.
The small worms kicked out of their heaven were very angry. In order to launch his new product Mondiablo held prisoner the former king of apples whom Bima readily released from prison.

To allay his anger the old king discovered an old garden in which he could enjoy the apples. Bima and the old king found a happy worm hidden in the pulpy flesh of a Rennet apple. Bima took advantage of the king’s good mood to have him say nice things about apples… “Oops, I mean men.”

Bima and his friend, the men’s champion, got back to the tiger. Bima realized that his sister was not easily fooled and that the angry feline who had shown his claws and bared his teeth was nothing but a submissive big cat who had become a vegetarian.

Meanwhile and as it is not possible to tell the whole story in a synopsis, the little hero’s mother announced to the tyrant that our hero was his own son. The tyrant was so happy that he overthrew his throne. Bima refused to recognize him as his father and declared that his real father was the deposed king of apples.

He had not found any animal willing to say nice things about men. But his journey was not useless because he found a loving father who wanted his son to take his place at the head of the kingdom of the orchard apples.

Director’s Statement

This project follows on from my other movie, Serko, which featured very short shadow sequences.
Some viewers were surprised by this narrative approach. They thought I was the one who had invented it. I had not invented anything. I just used shadow puppetry as it was shown in France in the 19th century.
These “Ombromania” shows (as they used to be called in those days) are how film started. And they originated in faraway Asia.

I have always been fascinated by shadow puppetry. I am a real ombromaniac – and I felt like carrying on with a project that had started to take shape in Serko by composing a story using shadow screens in different styles.
Indeed what people generally don’t know is that there are various techniques: black and white (using figures made of leather) or multicoloured (obtained thanks to translucent figures). The manipulation also depends on the country: with several hands, the bodies of the animators are visible or totally hidden. There can be up to 30 puppeteers. The light behind the screen varies according to the country. An oil lamp, a grand fire, a gas lamp… The light changes the atmosphere, the magic, the poetry… A flame can make a character unreal or give it a fantastical aspect. An oil lamp plays on the shady zones. A strong electrical lamp plays upon the accuracy of the features of the characters and the setting.

As I thought about all these techniques, I told myself a story using this very old art form. And I wanted to interpret it in a new way and emphasize its magical power, how bewitching and captivating it can be.

For The Little Apple King, I drew my inspiration from Paul Grimault’ The King and The Bird (Jacques Prévert wrote the script), from Voltaire’s stories (The World As It Goes and Candide) and from Salman Rushdie’s novel (Haroun and The Sea of Stories).
I raised topical issues and used traditional narrative form. A Ulysses-like character set out on the Quest of the Philosophical Grail: an animal who would say nice things about men. The further he walks, the more unreachable his goal seems. It is the very definition of adventure. (Etymology: “advenire”, which means to arrive, from ad + venire = to come.)

In The Odyssey, Ulysses comes back home after pacifying a world in shambles.
But when a world in shambles is pacified, there is no story to tell anymore.
In my project, the hero settles down where his feet had led him. He doesn’t go back home. He becomes an “immigrant”, between two cultures. Belonging nowhere. However the world is still in shambles but the character accepts the unsteady world with its unstable balance. He accepts that the essence of the world is instability.
He is made king of the apples and takes root like thousands of other immigrants who have come to Europe in so far as Europe welcomes them.
By travelling the world, our little hero becomes discerning.
The little Apple King is not content with cultivating his garden; he pays attention to those who are miserable and does his utmost to keep intact the miracle of the existence of the universe.

A few last words: the reader must read the story with children’s eyes, listen to it with ears wide open unto the woes of our time, to imagine it as if made from shadow screens which keep showing us their secrets and of course accept that the special form of my narrative is proof that I still believe that the world is not a complete mess. I mean, one can still tell cock-and-bull stories but aim to be slightly philosophical and political.

3. To tell this story.

In order to tell this story I intend to use the old techniques of shadow puppetry. I am going to draw and make figures according to the general tradition for the main character that will have a mobile chest and head as well as mobile arms and legs so that they can be animated. Then I will insert this character and his companion into other settings and among other characters in accordance with local styles and traditions.
Our figures and our settings will be made by local and traditional craftsmen, and then we will shoot the different parts of the story in the different countries where the story takes place (Cambodia, China, India, Turkey…).
The shadow theatre is a ceremony, a ritual. And this ceremony will be evoked because we also shoot the backstage and the audition rooms. We will also see the puppeteers give life to the figures. It will be a strange, secret art in progress. An art about delicate, fine features, about subtle colours, about the magical chiaroscuro, about the mystery of animation.

We will use several styles, each style fitting one specific story.
The Khmer shadowists (Sbek Thom) of the Royal Phnom Penh Company will be in charge of the first part, the story of the tyrant and the tiger. They will use the traditional characters and we will ask them to insert our two characters Bima and our monkey and to look after the development of the story.

Chinese artists from the city of Xian will be in charge of the second part (that of the disastrous marriage between the squid, the king of the Pearl, and the jellyfish, the queen of the translucent thread). They handle the translucent inks, the diaphanous textures, the fine fabrics with great art .
The Beijing Company will be in charge of the journey of Bima in the mountains because they know how to handle black inks and are able to hint at dark landscapes as no one else.

The itinerant shadowists of the Tamil Nadu in India will be in charge of the third part (the story of the unfortunate gecko). They usually work on a screen lit by fire, scene after scene. They are never more than four puppeteers whereas in Cambodia they can be up to twenty or more.

The fourth part (the story of Pegasus the horse) will be made in France after the style of the Chat Noir (Black Cat), a famous shadow theatre which featured poetic fantasies by creators like Caran d’Ache or Henri Rivière at the end of the 19th century. La Marche de l’étoile (March of the Star) is one of the masterpieces of this little known art. For a few years now, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris has been rehabilitating this art. We will adopt Rivière’s style and will draw our inspiration from Picasso’s ink horses.

The Turkish shadowist will be in charge of the fifth part (the undocumented little Persian girl) and we will use the Karagheuz style.

Then in Pinocchio-style the main character will become a puppet that, like all the other characters met in the Isle of Big Consumption, will be animated by masked puppeteers after the fashion of Bunraku .

After our character has become alive, we will turn to live-action shooting. The picture – often against the light – will retain hints of the shadow theatres which are our source of inspiration for our stories.

Second element of the film: the storyteller. He is an important character since he is the pivot, the link, the connecting element between the different parts.
We’ll hear him, he will intervene, he will play all the parts and all the voices (except that of Bima, played by a little boy, and that of the sister played by a little girl).
He will play Zadig, the deposed king of apples.
We need a versatile actor able to mime, change his voice, perform all the parts and instil into the storyteller unparalleled stamina and gusto. His role is that of the traditional storyteller, of the African griot, and the Indonesian dalang. His mission is to make sure the narrative is dynamic. An actor, a voice, a mime, he gives his all to the show and changes into whatever character he performs.
Our actor-storyteller makes sure the whole system works; he will be a member of the company of our puppeteer.

There will also be live-action shots.
As I am extremely fond of the 19th century picaresque tale in which a writer intervenes in the story, in the behaviour of his characters, and often in what is none of his business, I have made use of the same device – that of the storyteller.
He is seen playing the voices, miming the part, handling the figures and puppets. We notice that he is heckled by a hostile audience in some passages of the story, and he is working hard for his sad story to be successful. He tampers with the misfortunes of his characters when the audience is against him…
The famous Turkish actor Tuncel Kurtiz will play Pomodor.

The music (a crucial element of our film) which constantly accompanies the 75-minute film will be composed by the great Turkish DJ Mercan Dede. He will be accompanied by Anglo-Indian singer Susheela Rahman.
For those familiar with his subtle scores, the music will convey the rhythm, the bewitching melody which one hums as soon as one leaves the movie theatre.
One last point: Joëlle Bouvier will be in charge of the choreography (the apple tree sequence). She is amazing when she makes ordinary couples dance. Those dancers – often coming from poor neighbourhoods – become princes or princesses, the sons and daughters of the greatest kings thanks to her art.

]]> http://cdpproductions.fr/en/projets/le-petit-roi-des-pommes-ou-dommage-que-le-tigre-ne-soit-pas-vegetarien/feed http://cdpproductions.fr/en/television-documentaries/le-bouddhisme-au-village http://cdpproductions.fr/en/television-documentaries/le-bouddhisme-au-village#comments Sat, 25 Oct 2008 14:58:58 +0000 admin http://cdpproductions.fr/?p=54 Sorry, this entry is only available in Français .