COURMAYEUR NOIR IN FESTIVAL XIX

AVATARS, DETECTIVES AND ZOMBIES AT THE NOIR FEST

The 19th Courmayeur Noir in Festival (December 7-13, 2009) is marked by variety within a genre that no theorizing has yet encapsulated and ordered into a single formula. Avatars and mutants, zombies and vampires, detectives and spies, desperate men and dangerous criminals will rendezvous at the foot of Mont Blanc for a irresistible offering of emotions, thrillers, laughs and nightmares, that never ceases to examine and reflect upon reality. 

“We’re not afraid to join entertainment and civic passion, new languages and traditions,” say festival directors Giorgio Gosetti, Marina Fabbri and Emanuela Cascia. “It is precisely this combination that makes our festival unique, a not-to-be missed event of cinema and literature, among historical memory and the documentation of the real, cartoons and television, discovery and celebration. Next year, the challenge of our 20th anniversary awaits us, and we wanted to prepare ourselves by laying all of noir’s cards on the table.” 

The figures of the Courmayeur Noir in Festival 2009: 29 films (of which four first films and five second films) that range from premieres, tributes and documentaries; six TV series; 30 writers from throughout the world; four days of panels and in-depth discussions; five film awards and three literary awards; two creative workshops for the “festival within a festival” MiniNoir; a lecture by Adrian Wootton in honor of Raymond Chandler; a graphic design exhibit; a concert; a play; and a seminar on film criticism.

The guests of a Festival that Variety deems should not be missed: Oscar-winning author-screenwriter Diablo Cody with her new film, Jennifer’s Body; the criminal Renato Vallanzasca, author and protagonist of Carlo Bonini’s book-interview, Il Fiore del Male; Michael Caine, the wonderful star of Harry Brown, this year’s opening film;Leonardo Padura Fuentes (winner of the 2009 Raymond Chandler Award), the imaginative narrator and free voice of Cuban culture; Federico Zampaglione, musician (who will perform with his new group The Alvarius) and director (with his newest film, Shadow); Carlo Lucarelli and Giancarlo De Cataldo, who inspired two episodes of the new series of Crimini, one of which is set among the snows of Courmayeur; the virtual creatures of James Cameron’s new masterpiece Avatar: an extended prmo of the film will be screening simultaneously with the world premiere of the film. 

This year’s theme – blending memory and news, film and literature, civil action and historical research – will be the anniversary of December 12, 1969, “Piazza Fontana Day.” Discussing this Italian mystery, its judicial and investigative consequences and above all its political and social implications for our collective memory will be Gaetano Savatteri, journalist Paolo Cucchiarelli and judge Guido Salvini, along with essayists, writers and commentators. 

The genres and themes most present in this year’s film selection are: the return in grand style of the undead (the hilarious parody Zombieland) and warriors of a distant future (the mutants of the Mutant Chronicles, finally making their way to the big screen); the legacy of the celluloid classics from Jean-Pierre Melville (evoked in by Johnnie To in Vengeance) to 1970s Blaxploitation (parodied in Black Dynamite); the rediscovery of social and civil noir with the illegal immigrants of Jackie Chan (Shinjuku Incident); the urban disenfranchised (The Queen of Clubs); the spies who brought down the Berlin Wall (Farewell); psychological drama (Tomorrow at Dawn); new examples of Italian noir such as the exercise in style that is the Manetti Bros’ Cavie and the marathon of TV series Il Mostro di Firenze, directed by Antonello Grimaldi for Fox Crime (an official  partner of the Festival).

This same versatility also spans the writers present in 'The Dark Page' literary meetings: a lesson on contemporary noir by James Sallis (president of this year’s international jury) and the labyrinths of the psycho-thriller in the new novel by Sebastian Fitzek (The Child); the return of Matt Haig (after The Dead Fathers Club) with the sophisticated mystery The Last Family in England, and Jonathan Rabb with his cinephile fresco of Fritz Lang’s Berlin (Shadow and Light); the enigmatic historical crime novel by Carlo A. Martigli (999: L’Ultimo Custode) and the adventures of an Indian Hercule Poirot by Tarquin Hall (The Case of the Missing Servant); the great Spanish tradition of Juan Madrid (Pajaro en Mano) and the rebels of the new Berlin narrated by Zoran Drvenkar in Sorry. There is also the fiction debut of Gianni Canova(Palpebre) and Marco Lombardi (I Nuovi Amici), a journey through the voices of “Sardinia in Noir” (Angioni, Bellu, Fois, Murgia, Saba, Todde) and the five finalists of the Premio Giorgio Scerbanenco – La Stampa Award for the Best Italian Genre Novel.

 

There are five films in the DocNoir sidebar (organized in collaboration with the Festival dei Popoli) vying for the Mystery Award presented by a jury of young critics: the daily violence under the Mexican sun of Welcome to Tijuana and the snowy cold of repression in Chechnya told in Entre Ours et Loup; the frightening topicality of a massacre that becomes a game (Playing Columbine) and the game of massacring by the ‘Ndrangheta in Duisburg (Mobsters Without Borders); and recent American politics traversed by the madness of The Killer Poet, told by Susan Gray, director of Citizen Berlusconi.  

There are four highly anticipated film premieres inMiniNoir: the hysterical catastrophes in 3D of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, from the children’s book by Judi Barrett; animated Italian film Cuccioli – Il Codice di Marco Polo, presented in world premiere by director Sergio Manfio; Stefan Ruzowitzky’s fairy tale Lilly the Witch: The Dragon and the Magic Book; and the TV series Casper’s Scare School, presented by Cartoon Network.

There are five top-quality series in the sidebar TV Noir: in collaboration with Fox Crime, besides the marathon of Il Mostro di Firenze, also showing will be the premiere of Episode 1 of the 10th series of CSI: Las Vegas and the pilot of White Collar (the most-watched series in the US today), starring Matt Bomer. Thanks to CBS, we will also present the pilot of The Good Wife, produced by Ridley and Tony Scott and featuring Chris Noth (“Mister Big” ofSex and the City) and Julianna Margulies (ER). Italian TV will be represented by two new episodes of Crimini: Neve Sporca by Davide Marengo, from Giancarlo De Cataldo; and Niente di Personale by Ivano De Matteo, from Carlo Lucarelli and Giampiero Rigosi.

The retrospective Spanish Noir of the 50s offers five films, organized with the Instituto Cervantes in Milan. Five police dramas from a political season we know little about, the height of Francoism: Julio Salvador’s Apartado de Correos, Ignacio F. Inquino’s Brigada Criminal, Julio Coll’s Distrito Quinto, José Luis Sáenz de Heredia’s Los Ojos Dejan Huellas and Francisco Pérez-Dolz’s A Tiro Limpio (from the early 1960s). It will be particularly interesting to compare these works with the contemporary Spanish noir we will host at Courmayeur this year:

 Patxi Amézcua’s Catalan film 25 Carats and literary guest Juan Madrid

US writer James Sallis will preside over the jury that will present the Black Lion and other prizes at this year’s Courmayeur Noir in Festival. This will also be an unforgettable opportunity for audiences to hear the author speak about his work and the film adaptation of his bestseller Drive, currently in production, directed by Neil Marshall and starring Hugh Jackman.

Sallis studied at Tulane University in New Orleans and lived in London and throughout the US (New York, Boston, Pennsylvania, Texas) before settling in Phoenix, Arizona. Sallis is often considered a southern author, since many of his stories are set in New Orleans and rural southern America, yet it was his nomadic nature that influenced his writing style.

In 1992, Sallis began a series of noir novels set in New Orleans featuring African American private eye Lew Griffin. More than crime novels, Sallis’ books are reflections of America. 

In 2003 he began a new series, a trilogy featuring main character John Turner, an ex-cop/ex-con/ex-therapist seeking refuge in a cabin in the woods outside Cypress Grove, a small town in Tennessee. He spends his days trying and hoping to be forgotten by the world, running away from the ghosts of his past that resurface every so often in order to be exorcised. But Turner also evolves over the course of the three novels. In the second instalment of the trilogy, Cripple Creek, he comes out of self-isolation and becomes a deputy sheriff. 

A prolific writer, Sallis has flanked his noir writing with the avant-garde novel Renderings, spy novel Death Will Have Your Eyes, many short stories and essays, four collections of poetry and a biography of Chester Himes. He has furthermore written literary and music criticism, and translated authors such as Raymond Queneau, Blaise Cendrars, Mikhail Lermontov and Boris Pasternak. Sallis plays numerous musical instruments, including the guitar, French horn, mandolin, sitar and Dobro guitar. He has also acted in an independent film. 

NOIR IN FESTIVAL ON BLANC The NOIR landed with its shadows on the snows of ItalianMont Blanc in the early 90’s after a decade’s experience with MystFest on the Adriatic coast. Every year at the beginning of December the best of cinema and literature in the field of thriller, mystery, spy story, horror and noir s.f. is on show in one of the most fascinating ski resorts in the Italian Alps: Courmayeur, at just an hour drive from Geneva and Turin and 2 hours from Milan. The 12 films in competition are all premières of the year and will be screened by an ever prestigious Jury and awarded the Mystery Award for Best Film and the Napapijri Prize for the Best Performance. The Festival also features adocumentary section, retrospectives exploring the history of the genre, discovering cult authors, setting new trends, as well as a TV Noir section and the newest festival for young audience MINI Noir.  As to literature, the Festival promotes the meeting with the best Italian and the International crime-novel writers, and gives each year the prestigious Raymond Chandler Award to the career of a master and the Giorgio Scerbanenco Award to the best Italian published crime-novel. Conferences and seminars investigate into the genre's artistic developments and into its close links with reality. Events, exhibitions and publications further enrich the appointment with Courmayeur Noir in Festival: not to be missed by all fans and professionals of the genre. NOIR IN FESTIVAL ON SCREEN In its long tradition of discoveries and rediscoveries of new or already known authors under the sign of thriller, Noir in Festival has proposed, among retrospectives and films, a complete panorama of Italian crime movies from the 40’s to the 70’s, a fresh look on masters such as Alfred Hitchcock, Pierre Chenal, Orson Welles, Robert Wiseand William Friedkin (attending in 1997), and imposed new authors like Wes Craven, Sam Raimi, John Woo, Quentin Tarantino, Takashi Miike (1999: his first Western retrospective), Sabu and Park Chan-wook. But also documentary masters like Emile De Antonio andFred Wiseman have been celebrated, as well as the great literature on the screen with tributes to Durrenmat,Conrad or Dostojevski. The international Juries of the NOIR have had among their members: Dario Argento, Edward Bunker, Suzanne Cloutier, Maria Grazia Cucinotta, Jules Dassin, Jeffery Deaver, Jean-Christophe Grangé, Maria de Medeiros, Abbas Kiarostami, Val Kilmer, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Mike Hodges, Peter James, Christopher Lee,  Laura Morante, Chris Penn, Michele Placido, Amanda Plummer, Gillo Pontecorvo, Patricia Rozema, Jimmy Sangster, Jerzy Skolimowski, Bob Swaim, Michael Tolkin, Margarethe von Trotta, Peter Weller, Donald Westlake and Farley Granger. In 1992 NOIR IN FESTIVAL brought to Italy Quentin Tarantino (a true fan of our festival) with Reservoir Dogs, in 1993 premiered Romeo is Bleeding, with Gary Oldmanand the noir tv series Fallen Angels, produced by Sydney Pollack. In 1994 Shallow Grave by Danny Boyle, withEwan McGregor and The Seed of Madness by John Carpenter have been presented; while in 1995 Seven  byDavid Fincher was launched, and the 1996 saw the début as director of Kevin Spacey with Albino Alligator. Prestigious guests in 1997 with the tribute to William Friedkin and the premieres of The Devil’s Advocate at the presence of Charlize Theron, and of Starship Troopers, at the presence of the director Paul Verhoeven and the actor Casper Van Diem; and finally Alien Resurrection, with Sigourney Weaver. In 1998 we saw in CourmayeurEnemy of the State, by Tony Scott with Will Smith, andThe Spanish Prisoner by David Mamet, while 1999 introduced to Italian audience the Oscar winner American Beauty, the hit The Bone Collector with Angelina Jolieand Denzel Washington, and Martin Scorsese’sBringing Out the Dead, guest of honor Dante Ferretti. In 2000 two major premieres, among the others, of Neil LaBute’s Nurse Betty and of M.Night Shyamalan’sUnbreakable, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis. In 2001, the first “Iran Noir” program in Europe was set up in Courmayeur. An Italian event of 2002 was the première of The Legend of Al, John and Jack by the leading comic trio Aldo Giovanni & Giacomo, while the Italian debut of the jap horror cult The Ring has also taken place. In 2003 the festival presented Runaway Jury, starring Gene Hackman and Rachel Weisz, as well a tribute to Stan Lee (the father of Marvel comics). The 2004 saw the Hong Kong trilogy Infernal Affairs which inspired Scorsese for The Departed, while in 2005 the festival introduced A History of Violence by David Cronenberg and The Cronicles of Narnia Italian première. The 2006’s hits of the Noir were Cassavetes’Alpha Dog(Best Film), the Academy Award recipient The Last King of Scotland, Tony Scott’s Déjà vu and the young audience’s favourite Flushed Away among others. Many other directors have competed for the Black Lion Awards in Courmayeur: Tim Burton, Lucas Belvaux, Luc Besson, John Dahl, Claire Denis, Eric Rochant, Mike Figgis, James B. Harris, Neil Jordan, James Merendino, Mark Peploe, Bob Rafelson, Nicolas Roeg, Carlos Saura, Ron Shelton, Steven Soderberg, Robert M. Young. THE DARK SIDE OF THE BOOK In the name of Raymond Chandler, the master giving his name to the Prize awarded to a great mystery writer’s career, Noir in Festival has hosted the best names of the literature of the genre like Scott Turow, Elmore Leonard, John le Carrè, Leonardo Sciascia, James G.Ballard, Frederick Forsyth, James Grady, Graham Greene, John Grisham, Manuel Vasquez Montalban, Osvaldo Soriano, P.D. James, Fruttero & Lucentini, Ed McBain, Andrew Vacchs, Mickey Spillane, Ian Rankin, George P. Pelekanos, and James Crumley who have all been awarded the Prize. But also, Quentin Tarantino, Chris Carter and Arturo Perez Reverte have been awarded with a Special R.Chandler. Literature at the NOIR does not only mean prize awarding, but also book presentations, meetings with foreign and Italian authors, the promotion of publishing series, magazines. Many are the remarkable names to be remembered in this territory as well: Robert Bloch, Mary Higgins Clark, Robin Cook, James Ellroy, Anne Perry, Walter Mosley, Michael Tolkin, José Latour, Joe Lansdale, Nicholas Evans, Raymond Benson, Kathy Reichs, Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett, Ian Caldwell, Harlan Coben, Jefferey Deaver, Barry Gifford, Amitav Gosh, Jean-Cristophe Grangé, James W. Hall, Jean-Claude Izzo, Michael Marshall Smith, Matthew Pearl and Patrick Raynal; the recent exploit in noir science fiction with Norman Spinrad, K.W.Jeter, and Bryan Aldiss (as an hommage to S. Kubrick); the 2006 tribute to the first time in Italy Elmore Leonard. Rediscoveries and discoveries also on the literary side with the publishing revival in Italy of Cornell Woolrich, David Goodis, Jim Thompson, Philip K. Dick, Ed Bunker; the “revelation” of female crime-writing with Ruth Rendell, Anne Perry or Dorothy Unhak, the launching in Italy of the new authors of the French Série Noire, and of theNew Age of British Mystery, but also the discussion on the many mysteries of history like the Cold War Spies, the JFK assassination or the 1956 Uprising of Budapest.