| Director: | Andrei Ujică |
|---|---|
| Production: | Les Films du Camélia (Ronald Chammah), Modern Electric Pictures (Andrei Ujică), Tangaj Production (Anamaria Antoci) |
| Running Time: | 86’ |
| Language: | English, French, German |
| Country: | France, Romania |
| Screenplay: | Andrei Ujică |
| Editor: | Dana Bunescu |
| Sound: | Dana Bunescu |
| Visual Effects: | Olga Avramov |
| Voices: | Tommy McCabe, Thérèse Azzara, Shea Grant, Sarah McCluskey |
|---|---|
| Drawings: | Yann Kebbi |
TWST begins with the arrival of the Beatles in New York for their August 1965 concert at Shea Stadium and takes its title from a Beatles song that anticipates a time when the present moment will have become a haunting past, neither retrievable nor forgettable. The frame of reference steadily broadens, juxtaposing adjacent realities of 1965—the New York World’s Fair and the Watts riots filtering through from the East Coast on television. A cast of thousands is summoned—each separate sphere, face, and place given equal weight, each instant a centre. Within these domains, ghostly incorporeal presences circulate, their words audible—figures of vanished youth still inhabiting these locations, whose gritty photographic textures confirm their reality. A journey to the hidden core of a world both gone and palpably present.
There is a sentence in Madame Bovary that captures the entire ambition of the book. After Rodolphe’s final refusal, Emma exits the castle filled with deadly despair: “The earth beneath her feet was more yielding than the sea, and the furrows seemed to her immense brown waves breaking into foam”. When I read it in my teenage years, I was struck by the jubilation Flaubert must have felt, understanding he had managed to elevate prose to the heights of great poetry. Then, a question began to take root in my mind: when could cinema reach the complexity of literature? Half a century has passed, and I have found only fleeting answers. Among my high school dreams, some were also more accessible: to get to work with a great pop band and to make an American film. However, it was only fifty years later that I dared to make a film about the first concert of the greatest band of all time on Shea Stadium. As I said to the young New Yorkers—the actors whose voices we recorded last autumn—it doesn’t matter how long it takes to fulfil your dream, as long as you do it before you forget it.
PRODUCTION 1: LES FILMS DU CAMÉLIA –Ronald Chammah
28, Rue Mazarine
75006, Paris, France
Tel. 33 680227128
ronald@pariscinemaclub.com
Website: www.lesfilmsducamelia.com
PRODUCTION 2: MODERN ELECTRIC PICTURES - Andrei Ujică
6, Monetăriei
011216, Bucharest, Romania
Tel. 40 752685460
aujica@me.com
PRODUCTION 3: TANGAJ PRODUCTION - Anamaria Antoci
30, Nicolae Filimon
060302, Bucharest, Romania
Tel. 40 740155602
anamaria@tangajproduction.com
https://www.facebook.com/tangajproduction
https://www.instagram.com/tangajproduction
https://www.tangajproduction.com
ITALIAN DISTRIBUTION: Minerva Pictures - Monica Ciarli
monica@minervapictures.com
WORLD SALES: Minerva Pictures - Monica Ciarli
monica@minervapictures.com
PRESS OFFICE : THE PR FACTORY
Barbara Van Lombeek / barbara@theprfactory.com / +32 486 54 64 80
Marie-France Dupagne / mariefrance@theprfactory.com / +32 477 62 67 70
www.theprfactory.com
