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Joined: 2006-11-06 14:19
Last Online: NOV 07 2006 11:42AM
- Film: FAMILY LAW
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Film Production Blog "FamilyLaw"
Daniel Burman: biofilmography
Nov 07, 2006 11:18AM
In 1995, Brief Stories, a full-length feature film made with ten short films by film students and novel directors, came across as a true landmark within contemporary Argentine cinema. It showed there was another possible cinema. A cinema that opened new paths for the transformation of an agonizing film narrative.
Among these ten shorts, Niños envueltos, by Daniel Burman, revealed some of the first images of this different and unclassifiable new cinema. Only two years later, Burman released A Chrysanthemum Bursts in Cincoesquinas, his first full-length feature, a violent, tormented story of love and revenge narrated by means of a highly innovative visual and sound design. This film had its world premiere in the section Panorama of the 1997 Berlin Film Festival; and was also invited to many festivals such as Sundance, Montreal, Chicago, San Sebastian, Havana, and Biarritz.
In 2000, with Waiting for the Messiah, his second feature film, Burman started exploring the theme of the construction of one’s identity by telling the story of a young Jewish man who feels trapped in a hostile and always changing environment. His tradition, his family ties are obstacles for a freer life, one without so many impositions. Co-produced with Italy and Spain, and with the support from Euroimages, Waiting for the Messiah continued the successful run through the circuit of international film festivals: Venice, Toronto, Tokyo, Thessalonica, and Sao Paulo. In Biarritz, it was awarded the Grand Prix de Public; in Valladolid, the Fipresci Award; in Havana, the Coral Prize for Best Film; and in Buenos Aires, the Best Actor Award.
Burman, himself of polish-jewish descendent, portrayed essentials facets of his community with Seven Days in Once, a documentary that narrates, with precise details alongside an acute gaze, the every day life in the quintessential Jewish neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Also in 2002, Burman premiered Every Stewardess Goes to Heaven in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival. Later on, the film took the Great Prize of the Jury in the Los Angeles Film Festival. The script of this touching love story between a disenchanted, sad-eyed stewardess, and a young widower who’s as disheartened as he is sensitive, had been awarded, the previous year, with the Sundance / NHK Filmmakers Award.
With Lost Embrace, his fourth feature, winner of the Award for Best Original Script given by Canal +, Burman revisits the theme of the construction of one’s identity through the story of a late teenager deeply suffering from the absence of his father, at once real and symbolical – to the point of determining his whole outlook of the world. In official competition in the 2004 Berlin Film Festival, Lost Embrace won two Silver Bears: Best Film and Best Actor, for its leading actor, Daniel Hendler.
Burman has, above it all, the sophisticated ability to explore existential themes with no traces of pompousness whatsoever, deliberately light weighted and profound at once.
Family Law, selected as the Opening Feature of the section Special Panorama of the 2006 Berlin Film Festival, is a heartfelt and reflexive expansion of that universe that never crystallizes: that of one’s identity.
It was also selected to represent Argentina as the Submission for the Best Foreign Language Film – Oscar.
Daniel Burman is also one of the founders and vice-president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Argentina.
Among these ten shorts, Niños envueltos, by Daniel Burman, revealed some of the first images of this different and unclassifiable new cinema. Only two years later, Burman released A Chrysanthemum Bursts in Cincoesquinas, his first full-length feature, a violent, tormented story of love and revenge narrated by means of a highly innovative visual and sound design. This film had its world premiere in the section Panorama of the 1997 Berlin Film Festival; and was also invited to many festivals such as Sundance, Montreal, Chicago, San Sebastian, Havana, and Biarritz.
In 2000, with Waiting for the Messiah, his second feature film, Burman started exploring the theme of the construction of one’s identity by telling the story of a young Jewish man who feels trapped in a hostile and always changing environment. His tradition, his family ties are obstacles for a freer life, one without so many impositions. Co-produced with Italy and Spain, and with the support from Euroimages, Waiting for the Messiah continued the successful run through the circuit of international film festivals: Venice, Toronto, Tokyo, Thessalonica, and Sao Paulo. In Biarritz, it was awarded the Grand Prix de Public; in Valladolid, the Fipresci Award; in Havana, the Coral Prize for Best Film; and in Buenos Aires, the Best Actor Award.
Burman, himself of polish-jewish descendent, portrayed essentials facets of his community with Seven Days in Once, a documentary that narrates, with precise details alongside an acute gaze, the every day life in the quintessential Jewish neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Also in 2002, Burman premiered Every Stewardess Goes to Heaven in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival. Later on, the film took the Great Prize of the Jury in the Los Angeles Film Festival. The script of this touching love story between a disenchanted, sad-eyed stewardess, and a young widower who’s as disheartened as he is sensitive, had been awarded, the previous year, with the Sundance / NHK Filmmakers Award.
With Lost Embrace, his fourth feature, winner of the Award for Best Original Script given by Canal +, Burman revisits the theme of the construction of one’s identity through the story of a late teenager deeply suffering from the absence of his father, at once real and symbolical – to the point of determining his whole outlook of the world. In official competition in the 2004 Berlin Film Festival, Lost Embrace won two Silver Bears: Best Film and Best Actor, for its leading actor, Daniel Hendler.
Burman has, above it all, the sophisticated ability to explore existential themes with no traces of pompousness whatsoever, deliberately light weighted and profound at once.
Family Law, selected as the Opening Feature of the section Special Panorama of the 2006 Berlin Film Festival, is a heartfelt and reflexive expansion of that universe that never crystallizes: that of one’s identity.
It was also selected to represent Argentina as the Submission for the Best Foreign Language Film – Oscar.
Daniel Burman is also one of the founders and vice-president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Argentina.
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