Subject
Julie Bertuccelli's film "Since Otar Keft"
From
Date
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----- Forwarded message from b.boyd@auckland.ac.nz -----
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 16:33:39 +1300
From: "Brian Boyd (FOA ENG)" <b.boyd@auckland.ac.nz>
A fine movie, though. -BB
_____
From: D. Barton Johnson [mailto:chtodel@cox.net]
Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 3:52 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Dmitri re alledged kinship with film maker Julie Bertuccelli
Dear Don,
Never heard of her, or of the "high-born" man with the "connections."
All best,
Dmitri
<http://www.nzherald.co.nz/>
<http://www.nzherald.co.nz/>
Best News Website - Qantas Media Awards
Thursday November 04, 2004
<http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/entertainmentstorydisplay.cfm?story
ID=3606749&thesection=entertainment&thesubsection=film&thesecondsubsection=g
eneral>
<http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/entertainmentstorydisplay.cfm?story
ID=3606749&thesection=entertainment&thesubsection=film&thesecondsubsection=g
eneral>
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/entertainmentstorydisplay.cfm?storyI
D=3606749&thesection=entertainment&thesubsection=film&thesecondsubsection=ge
neral
Legacy of secrets and lies
<http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/entertainmentstorydisplay.cfm?story
ID=3606749&thesection=entertainment&thesubsection=film&thesecondsubsection=g
eneral>
New Zealand Herald - Auckland,New Zealand
... When Bertuccelli was young, her widowed maternal grandmother remarried,
to a Russian, a high-born man with connections to the novelist Vladimir
Nabokov. ...
Entertainment News
<http://www.nzherald.co.nz/pics/4bertuccelli.JPG>
Julie Bertuccelli (right) directs Dinara Droukarova on the set of 'Since
Otar Left'.
Legacy of secrets and lies
04.11.2004 By PETER CALDER
The setting of Julie Bertuccelli's first feature film had a certain
inevitability about it. The 35-year-old French writer and director of
television documentaries had developed a strong relationship with the
countries of the former Soviet Union, travelling widely there and learning
to speak Russian. And it was the southwestern-most republic of Georgia, on
the Black Sea, that she liked the most.
It was also the place that best suited the story she wanted to tell. Since
Otar Left is a film about many things but running through it is a thematic
thread of exile and longing. The director says Georgians have always looked
to France as a cultural touchstone: historically, Georgian aristocracy spoke
French and aspired to the sophistication France embodied; now the citizens
of the economically beleaguered country long to flee there as refugees.
That cultural uncertainty is the undercurrent of Otar's deceptively simple
storyline which features three generations of women in a rundown apartment
in Tbilisi. The title character and man of the house - the son, brother and
uncle, respectively, to the three women - is a doctor, oddjobbing illegally
on building sites in Paris and sustaining, with the younger women's
assistance, his mother's illusion that he's struck it rich. When news
arrives that Otar has been killed, the pretences move to a different level.
The film, which Bertuccelli co-wrote, is based on the experience of a friend
of hers who disguised her uncle's death from his sister, her mother. The
film-maker's documentary credits were all what might be called urban
ethnography - one examined the workforce at the department store Galeries
Lafayette, another watched judges learning their craft - but she knew at
once that this story had to be done as a dramatic feature.
"I couldn't make a documentary about it because it is too intimate and my
documentaries are not about people's private lives," she says. "In any case,
I just wanted to take the story as a starting point and put a lot of myself
in there.
"There were a lot of things that I wanted to consider with this film, ideas
about exile and immigration and the end of communism and my relationship
with my own mother. It was a story with a lot of power for me and I found it
very exciting so I used the story I had been told just as a pretext - but
everything that happens I invented."
Setting the film in a country of the former USSR was important "because that
place was based on such a lot of political lies and so the family lie that
the women were telling was an echo of the bigger lie".
But there was a more personal connection as well. When Bertuccelli was
young, her widowed maternal grandmother remarried, to a Russian, a high-born
man with connections to the novelist Vladimir Nabokov.
Bertuccelli remembers being enchanted by the new family member. "I imagined
myself as a Russian princess. I enjoyed the fantasy of it all. I learned to
speak Russian and everything like this."
This harmless snobbery is a strong thread in Otar - the grandmother, a
devoted Stalinist who speaks fluent French, sees herself as a cut above her
compatriots on two counts - and it's touching to see the tenderness with
which Bertuccelli lampoons her. But the director's childhood experience
gives added pungency to the deliberate fictions that sustain the story.
"I don't judge whether the lying that the women do is good or not," says
Bertuccelli. "I just see how they use lies to change their own lives. Yes,
lying can be an act of love. But it's also a way of manipulation. The
characters use lies to get control of the situation.
"But it is in the end a story of how we need to have fantasies and dreams.
Everybody needs to have hope and part of that is how we live by proxy,
through our dreams."
On screen
*Who: Julie Bertuccelli, director, Since Otar Left
*Where and when: Academy Theatre, opens today
----- End forwarded message -----
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 16:33:39 +1300
From: "Brian Boyd (FOA ENG)" <b.boyd@auckland.ac.nz>
A fine movie, though. -BB
_____
From: D. Barton Johnson [mailto:chtodel@cox.net]
Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 3:52 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Dmitri re alledged kinship with film maker Julie Bertuccelli
Dear Don,
Never heard of her, or of the "high-born" man with the "connections."
All best,
Dmitri
<http://www.nzherald.co.nz/>
<http://www.nzherald.co.nz/>
Best News Website - Qantas Media Awards
Thursday November 04, 2004
<http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/entertainmentstorydisplay.cfm?story
ID=3606749&thesection=entertainment&thesubsection=film&thesecondsubsection=g
eneral>
<http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/entertainmentstorydisplay.cfm?story
ID=3606749&thesection=entertainment&thesubsection=film&thesecondsubsection=g
eneral>
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/entertainmentstorydisplay.cfm?storyI
D=3606749&thesection=entertainment&thesubsection=film&thesecondsubsection=ge
neral
Legacy of secrets and lies
<http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/entertainmentstorydisplay.cfm?story
ID=3606749&thesection=entertainment&thesubsection=film&thesecondsubsection=g
eneral>
New Zealand Herald - Auckland,New Zealand
... When Bertuccelli was young, her widowed maternal grandmother remarried,
to a Russian, a high-born man with connections to the novelist Vladimir
Nabokov. ...
Entertainment News
<http://www.nzherald.co.nz/pics/4bertuccelli.JPG>
Julie Bertuccelli (right) directs Dinara Droukarova on the set of 'Since
Otar Left'.
Legacy of secrets and lies
04.11.2004 By PETER CALDER
The setting of Julie Bertuccelli's first feature film had a certain
inevitability about it. The 35-year-old French writer and director of
television documentaries had developed a strong relationship with the
countries of the former Soviet Union, travelling widely there and learning
to speak Russian. And it was the southwestern-most republic of Georgia, on
the Black Sea, that she liked the most.
It was also the place that best suited the story she wanted to tell. Since
Otar Left is a film about many things but running through it is a thematic
thread of exile and longing. The director says Georgians have always looked
to France as a cultural touchstone: historically, Georgian aristocracy spoke
French and aspired to the sophistication France embodied; now the citizens
of the economically beleaguered country long to flee there as refugees.
That cultural uncertainty is the undercurrent of Otar's deceptively simple
storyline which features three generations of women in a rundown apartment
in Tbilisi. The title character and man of the house - the son, brother and
uncle, respectively, to the three women - is a doctor, oddjobbing illegally
on building sites in Paris and sustaining, with the younger women's
assistance, his mother's illusion that he's struck it rich. When news
arrives that Otar has been killed, the pretences move to a different level.
The film, which Bertuccelli co-wrote, is based on the experience of a friend
of hers who disguised her uncle's death from his sister, her mother. The
film-maker's documentary credits were all what might be called urban
ethnography - one examined the workforce at the department store Galeries
Lafayette, another watched judges learning their craft - but she knew at
once that this story had to be done as a dramatic feature.
"I couldn't make a documentary about it because it is too intimate and my
documentaries are not about people's private lives," she says. "In any case,
I just wanted to take the story as a starting point and put a lot of myself
in there.
"There were a lot of things that I wanted to consider with this film, ideas
about exile and immigration and the end of communism and my relationship
with my own mother. It was a story with a lot of power for me and I found it
very exciting so I used the story I had been told just as a pretext - but
everything that happens I invented."
Setting the film in a country of the former USSR was important "because that
place was based on such a lot of political lies and so the family lie that
the women were telling was an echo of the bigger lie".
But there was a more personal connection as well. When Bertuccelli was
young, her widowed maternal grandmother remarried, to a Russian, a high-born
man with connections to the novelist Vladimir Nabokov.
Bertuccelli remembers being enchanted by the new family member. "I imagined
myself as a Russian princess. I enjoyed the fantasy of it all. I learned to
speak Russian and everything like this."
This harmless snobbery is a strong thread in Otar - the grandmother, a
devoted Stalinist who speaks fluent French, sees herself as a cut above her
compatriots on two counts - and it's touching to see the tenderness with
which Bertuccelli lampoons her. But the director's childhood experience
gives added pungency to the deliberate fictions that sustain the story.
"I don't judge whether the lying that the women do is good or not," says
Bertuccelli. "I just see how they use lies to change their own lives. Yes,
lying can be an act of love. But it's also a way of manipulation. The
characters use lies to get control of the situation.
"But it is in the end a story of how we need to have fantasies and dreams.
Everybody needs to have hope and part of that is how we live by proxy,
through our dreams."
On screen
*Who: Julie Bertuccelli, director, Since Otar Left
*Where and when: Academy Theatre, opens today
----- End forwarded message -----