The Circuit

by John Hopewell
This year, the San Sebastian festival went discreetly New World-y in its opening ceremony on Thursday night. On stage, a troupe of dancers in glitzy grey, full-bodied swimming costumes and huge sunglass goggles did a mechanical-movement dance. Two musicians bonged away softly at wooden xylophones. (photo courtesy San Sebastian International Film Festival)

A huge poster of San Sebastian’s celebrated horseshoe Concha Bay, blue in sunlight, added a blowsy air. There were a few highlights. Actress Asunción Balaguer, the eighty-something widow of Francisco ceive his Donostia Award,” she then said.

Rabal died on a plane August 29 2001 returning to Spain, after the Festival had already announced he’d receive one of that year’s prestigious lifetime achievement Donostia prizes.

Cristian Mingiu (pictured), director of Cannes Palme d’Or winner “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days,” picked up the Fipresci film of the year. David Cronenberg, who opened San Sebastian with “Eastern Promises,” and has a fine line in drollery, said he was “hugely excited” to be at the ceremony, especially having come down the steep-banked stage staircase without falling over.

But you always wonder how many of the one-liners or gushingly emotional speeches are staged, or at least prepared. There was one moment, however, of blinding humanity which just couldn’t have been scripted. Jury chairman Paul Auster walked on stage, took a felt tip pen from one of the swimmers, and walked arm-in-arm with her to a big board where he scribbled his signature in a theatrical flourish.

So far, all by the script.

But returning the pen to the swimmer, he dropped the pen cap. And he instinctively, immediately, let out a “Sorry” and scrambled down the stage to pick the cap up. Really, he didn’t have to bother. Coming on stage, he’d just received the biggest applause of the night. He was a festival jury chairman. And there he was being so polite, and apologizing.

You here and read terrible things about festival juries. I remember William Goldman’s account of serving at Cannes and how he was psychoanalyzed by a fellow jury member. You hear stories - and I’m not just talking about San Sebastian - of how prizes are divided up by the winners’ friends on the jury, or the jury members’ countries. And you wonder how much of a truth there is in all this.

Auster went on - dressed in an immaculate blue suit: I’d love to know his tailor - to make a little joke. The Jury had made two promises: “To open its eyes, and not fall asleep.”

That was prepared, of course.

But I got a feeling that this year’s jury could be a happy jury. That there wouldn’t be so many stories of ego face-offs, cadre voting or dictatorial bullying. The jury chairman has simply been too well brought up.