Brazilian Film Fest starts this Friday! Stefan Zweig film adaptation one major highlight

I love film fests and Montreal has so many unusual and interesting ones to be proud of. Sure, our film festivals aren't Toronto's: we don't have Nicole Kidman or Channing Tatum walking the red carpet. We don't have photographers snapping photos or $300,000 cocktail parties.

But Montreal's not that kind of town. And this makes me proud, actually: we're not about Hollywood glamour or red carpets. We're not about simply spending a certain amount of money to make something "good." We're about interesting, creative programming for intelligent sophisticated art lovers. We should embrace this fact about our city.

I've been probably every year to see something at the Brazilian Film Fest since its inception, and every year I've seen something to knock my socks off. One film that I am really looking forward to this year is "The Invisible Collection," based on a Stefan Zweig short story.

The short story is set in post-WWI Europe when a young man, financially ruined by the war, sets out to find some art that an elderly aristocratic man has in his country estate. By touring the countryside at this pivotal moment in history, Zweig shows us the huge disparities between classes in Europe at this time and in hindsight, we can see all the signs of the looming bitterness that eventually leads to WWII.

Brazilian Bernard Attal's film version is set in contemporary Brazil and again considers the inequality that is rife in Brazilian society with the same rough storyline: Beto, whose family antique store has fallen on hard times, travels to the countryside in search of rare drawings that will change his future.

Though Zweig didn't set his story in Brazil, he was connected to Brazil at the end of his life, fleeing with his wife from the Nazis ascension to power, and settling in a small city just north of Rio. He has a huge reputation in Brazil and a museum has been made at the site of his former home. It was there, in 1942, that he and his wife committed suicide, despairing at the rise of Nazi Germany and pessimistic about the future of humanity.

The final period of Stefan Zweig's life was beautifully captured in a best-selling book by Laurent Seksik, Les dernieres jours de Stefan Zweig (this piece was itself adapted into a hugely successful French play in Paris) and then made into a gorgeous graphic novel (with some of the most beautiful illustrations I've seen in recent graphic novels) with Seksik and the French artist Guillaume Sorel.

The film as part of the Festival du film Bresilien plays on Monday, December 1 at 5pm and then again on Thursday, December 4 at 7pm. Tickets here.

A lot of excellent stuff worth seeing this year including a documentary about the hugely successful film City of God, called City of God - 10 Years Later. The film looks at the actors and others associated with the 2002 film to explore how their lives have changed after the international phenomenon that the film created. This weekend they play The Way He Looks, Elena, and Meeting Sebastião Salgado (about the Brazilian photographer).

Check out the entire schedule on their website and be sure to like their Facebook page for updates.

The Last Days of Stefan Zweig

Crazy busy week and no time to blog. In the meantime, been reading two very interesting books.

Les derniers jours de Stefan Zweig has some of the most beautiful illustrations that I've seen in a long time. The story, too, is one that hooks the reader almost immediately: on a ship leaving New York harbour as Stefan Zweig and his wife leave what will be their last voyage abroad, on their way to Rio de Janeiro. The graphic novel is based on the book by Laurent Setsik (an influential book, it also inspired a play being shown in Paris while I was there back in the fall).

Only read about a third of the graphic novel so far, trying to revel in it and not read it all in one sitting which is what I want to do...so far the tension between the Zweig character and his young and nervous wife is one of the book's pulls, but so is the fame that Zweig had at this point in his career. All the boat passengers keep approaching him and making conversation or ask him for an autograph. One forgets how incredibly famous Stefan Zweig was at the height of his career so nearly forgotten was he a number of years back (in the Anglophone and Francophone worlds at any rate).

Also been reading Aya de Yopougon by Marguerite Abouet and illustrated by Clement Oubrerie. This one tells the tale of a young girl growing up in Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, of being a young girl and the tension which comes from this in a traditional family. It's a funny book and the illustrations are also funny and charming. It's a book geared at "young readers" but I still find a lot in here that's interesting, particularly the portrayal of contemporary urban African life.

I hear from a few sources that Marguerite Abouet's book is now being made into a film (such an old stories with French writers: a movie is made of their work and suddenly they are impossible to confirm for our Festival, case in point David Foenkinos, Delphine de Vigan, among others...) which is an exciting development for the author and illustrator of her book.

"Light" Reading, Part I

From our Facebook page:

Can you recommend short (200 pages), amazingly good novels available in paperback? I have to be able to hold it and turn the pages with one hand while nursing!

Yes, naturally! For me the trick is the "amazingly good" part since one person's amazingly good might be another's snore-fest, but here is what I'd suggest today:

The NYRB classics line are often short novella-sized novels, always paperback, and generally fairly light (physically). These issues are very international in focus, usually translated from other languages and often contain introductions from some of the best-known contemporary writers working today. Also, the authors are generally no longer living so these are not as contemporary as some prefer.

Stefan Zweig was one of the best-known German writers of the 20th century. He never really had a huge following in the English-speaking world until NYRB started re-translating (and translating for the first time) some of his better known works: Confusion, Beware of Pity, Chess, The Post-Office Girl are just a few of his titles. He is not a writer without controversy but he definitely presents a specific time and place in European history that is long gone.

A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor (the introduction is by Karen Armstrong, win-win!). One of the greatest travel writers, Fermor chronicles his travels through Europe at some well-known monasteries in search of silence and respite from our modern, chaotic lives.

Tove Jansson has some really lovely books that are fascinating portraits of Scandinavian childhoods spent on seashores and in forests. They are almost fairy-tale like (Jansson was the author of the very popular Moomin series of kids books). Two of her that I've read and enjoyed include The Summer Book and The True Deceiver.

For crime-writing lovers, there's Georges Simenon. The NYRB almost single-handedly brought him back from (relative) obscurity in the English-speaking world and his works are dark, foreboding, psychologically complex and highly entertaining. Some good books by Simenon: Monsieur Monde Vanishes, Dirty Snow, Three Bedrooms in Manhattan.

Finally, there's Albert Cossery, a writer whose work I find to be highly influential and interesting. Born in Cairo of Greek and Lebanese extraction, Cossery lived most of his life in Paris and wrote novels, graphic novels, stories, journalistic pieces and many other forms of writing. Two of his books done by NYRB include Proud Beggars and The Jokers. I've written about another of his works before here.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the excellent work the NYRB does in issuing and re-issuing some of the best of international literature.

For more contemporary books that can be held with just one hand, stay tuned later this week.