Enter the Void "is the work of an artist who’s trying to show us something we haven’t seen before"
The New York Times
Tecnópolis is an interactive project conceived as an extension of the May 1810 Argentina Revolution bicentennial :
Wild Bunch International & the Havana Club's Facebook propose new pictures from the shooting of Gaspar Noé's short titled FRIDAY, one of the 7 shorts of the omnibus movie 7 Days in Havana (Siete días en La Habana) sht in Cuba last spring :
"7 DAYS IN HAVANA is a snapshot of Havana in 2011: a contemporary portrait of this eclectic city, vital and forward-looking, told through a single feature-length movie made of 7 chapters,
directed by 7 internationally acclaimed directors.
Each chapter depicts a day of the week through the daily - and extraordinary - lives of its characters. A world away from the familiar touristic clichés, 7 DAYS IN HAVANA aims to express the
soul of this city and its diverse neighborhoods, atmospheres, generations and cultures, in touching, entertaining and funny style.
Seven directors (one from Cuba, six from other countries) share a common purpose: to capture, through their different sensibilities, origins and cinematographic styles, the energy and
vitality that make Havana unique. Some have chosen to see the city through foreign eyes; others have preferred a deeper immersion and drawn inspiration from local people.
All seven stories have independent plots, but the many connections between them help to create a powerful dramatic unity. Shared locations play their part: emblematic Havana landmarks like
the beach or the Hotel Nacional form the backdrop for some of the chapters. Several characters appear in more than one story - a protagonist in one chapter plays a secondary role in another -
subtly connecting the stories and demonstrating that in Havana all social spheres run parallel, intertwine and intersect at various times of the week"
Xavier Gens : “If you watch ‘Irreversible’ or ‘Enter the Void’ (both from Gaspar Noé), there are people who think it is genius – I think it is genius – but you will
have people who think it is very bad, but I think it is because they cannot accept and cannot deal with it.” (source)
Christopher Smith (about Triangle)
"Prenez
un film comme Irréversible, de Gaspar Noé : la construction narrative est passionnante. Bizarrement, j'accroche moins à Enter The Void : j'adore pendant pendant 1H40, notamment quand on suit le
mec de dos. C'est génial.
Puis, je décroche quand la caméra flotte au-dessus de Tokyo. Les mouvements de caméra répétés jusqu'à l'épuisement, ça va quelques minutes. Sur une heure, c'est indigeste. Mais ce n'est pas à moi de dire ce que Gaspar Noé aurait dû faire : c'est lui l'artiste sur ce coup !" (source)
Theophilus London :
"Yeah, I did watch [Enter the Void] during the recording process, and
then I kept talking about it, and in a matter of two weeks I became good friends with the two leading actors in the film, Nathan Brown and Paz de la Huerta. That was kind of surreal.
I started going to clubs with them, doing psychedelics with them, and then all of a sudden I shot my video [for “Last Name London” with Mr. Brown as producer]. [One night] he was like, “Yo,
Gaspar’s out with us at a bar, do you want to hang out with us?” I turned the offer down. I just don’t want to sit down and be bro with him and have a beer with him. I just want to idolize him,
as a director." (source)
In an Hungarian interview for www.origo.hu, Gaspar Noé talks a little about
his projects :
- Cuba : "I recently shot a short film in Cuba, I thought that that would excite me, but unexpected difficulties arose. I've got used to
the way the Japanese work, they are really workaholics, six days a week, fourteen hours a day working on the set. Perfectionists, as I am. So wherever I shoot after that time, I miss
it."
- His sentimental & erotic movie : "I'll be willing to talk about it when I start to shoot. Moreover, they offered me a horror film, but I won't I start a new movie, as long as it does not feel that I would really enjoy the work. [...] Now I wait to team up for the sentimental and erotic film financing, because if so, I want to do it sooner because it would be a lighter, faster work."
- The Golden Suicides (from the story of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake's suicide) : "It's a very exciting project, but it would be Hollywood film, and if I undertook it, I would have to spend a lot of time in the U.S. [...] Only then [his sentimental & erotic movie will be shot, NOTW] would I undertake the other project, which would completely reorganise my life. I do not like to spend so much time in other countries, as I am always homesick. This certainly comes from the fact that my parents always moved when I was a kid. I loved filming in Japan, but one of my most dramatic moment was when I had to leave France for three months, I felt I should cut off both my arms. If there's only a day to go before I travel, I can't sleep the night before."
- Nicolas Winding Refn thanks : "I think he meant this only as a private joke, as we did not work together. But he did really call once when Drive was shot, and asked how I solved the head smashing scene in Irreversible, because his film had a similar scene. One day at Cannes we were having a drink together, so maybe this is why it jumped into his mind, and that it would be funny if he mentioned this. Moreover, it is possible that Drive was designed to exceed the violence in Irreversible. Perhaps the scene with the head-kicking could not do that on its own, but there are a lot of bloody scenes in the film, I loved it! At the end it is totally sadistic, one of the murder comes after another. My favorite is the scene with the arm cutting."
Thanks to our translators - picture : Tuba Zoltán
Excellent
film director Nicolas Winding Refn (Pusher trilogy, Bronson, Valhalla Rising...), Best Director just awarded at Cannes for Drive, has publicly thanked
Gaspar Noé for... "head smashing" for his movie !
Quotes from New York Times : "So we called up Gaspar Noé and asked him how he did the head smashing in “Irreversible.” He’s the king of head smashing — you’ve got to call the king."
More informations on the tumblr we dedicated to Nicolas Winding Refn.
According to Mike Goodridge from ScreenDaily, "Chris Hanley of prolific US production
outfit Muse Productions and Jordan Gertner of sister financing company Hero are in Cannes talking up a slate that includes films of novels An Expensive Education by Nick McDonell,
Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis, The Shakespeare Riots by Nigel Cliff and London Fields by Martin Amis.
In addition, Hanley and Gertner are close to attaching a director to the original Brett Easton Ellis script Golden Suicides on which Muse is partnered with PalmStar Entertainment. Gaspar Noe is one of the film-makers mulling about taking on the film."
Golden Suicides is the true story of "artists Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan, a glamorous couple who eventually secluded themselves in a cocoon of paranoia when they believed that government organizations and Scientologists were out to get them. Duncan killed herself in July 2007, and a week later, the despondent Blake walked into the Atlantic and drowned." (source)
Previously, the project should have been directed by Gus Van Sant. In another news, we mentionned Bret Easton Ellis tweet (22/10/2010) as following : "Fascinating and instructive double feature by obsessive auteurs: Gaspar Noe's "Enter the Void" and Peter Jackson's "The Lovely Bones"..."
Exclusive LTDT : the synopsis and the first informations (taken from Cannes pressbook) about the 7 Days in Havana's short movie by Gaspar Noé
Friday - Untitled - by Gaspar Noé
Yamilslaidi, an attractive Afro-Cuban schoolgirl, is parting with some friends on a beach in Havana. The music'c pounding. The atmosphere's hot. Another girl gets close and dances with her.
They begin to kiss...
In the morning, they wake up naked under the outraged gaze of Yasimilslaidi's parents. Determinated to rid their daughter of the curse that has been placed on her, the parents drag her to an
Afro Cuban priest and ask for cleaning ceremony.
Gaspar Noé about 7 Days in Havana :
"This film portrays the purification ritual of a young woman in the midst of a forest. We will shoot this last part in a wood in the heart of Havana, with trees blanketed with long leaves and creepers twisting here and there, so entangled in their branches that they seem to belong to another world.
The film starts with a commonplace yet amusing premise, then moves on to the the description of a ritual that will ressemble a dream or something from a parallel world. We will shoot as much as possible in long takes that will grow in complexity, and as regards the image, we will overexploit the vibrant colors of the sets and the costumes found in Cuba.
I am very happy finally to be shooting a film in Spanish, my native tongue, but with black and mixed-race characters, and in Cuba, a country of which my parents have always dreamed and that, indirectly, has afected the course of my life"
Thanks to our secret source in Cannes
According several media quoting Morena Films & Full House, the shooting of 7 Days in Havana (Siete días en La Habana) is finished. Shot from March to May 2011, the movie is present at the Cannes Film Market .
In the next news, we'll tell you more about the content of the promo reel/teaser/trailer of 7 Days in Havana (Siete días en La Habana), shown during the Film Festival. Stay connected.
