At the first session of the Ex Oriente the directors taking part were asked to write a text “I am your character” in a couple of hours. I used the two hours before meeting the directors with their texts to write about some images that stayed on my mind from what I had seen. For you readers I have made some notes below so you know just a little bit of what I am talking about. Here is my small image-poetry:

The view from my hotel window.

Three angles, the church next door, the green and more green, the man packing his car. For a Sunday drive ?

Football – Dani Alves making a great goal on my apple computer last night, they say he is 36 years, no no, he is young as ever. 1)

Football without ball. Jan Gogolas clip with the kids, who are bored of the match going on, talking about the teeth that they are losing and getting…

The intellectuals as Gogola called them in conversation about Vaclav Klaus breaking a pen somewhere far away from the stadion. 2)

… and the little boy crawling into a cupboard or whatever it is in the flat in Pilsen. Unforgettable. 3)

Cut to the people looking into the kiosk, to Ania, the mother of everyone in the Polish town, a man giving her flower, you are beautiful he says. 4)

Love

the mother in Belarus, who has a mission, she cares, she travels her country to fight the

dedovschina

magic word to say, terrible meaning 5)

and this morning the clips from Israel, the Palestinians having their eyes covered, cut to corpses, the boots of dead men and a boy who is in jail because he is addicted to the internet, gosh ! 6)

and the small Roma in Maidan, no-one wants him but for the director Olga PHOTO (by Daniel Svoren) who sits next to him, she cares, she is a hero, is he a lost soul 7)

as maybe also Jesse from Canada is, coming back to hug her mother in Romania and to meet her father,

where do I belong, here or there or everywhere 8)

everywhere,

the world is ours as Lubo and Laco visualise, let the music and the poetry take us to Manhattan and to the streets of Paris, with or without teeth 9)

all is possible, there are no limits, if you want to send a message, use the post office, if you want say something, use the image, make

a composition that is your own, put your heart into it, learn from

Rembrandt, Brueghel, Tarkovski, Truffaut, Coutard, Sokurov, Hanak!!!

Notes:

  1. Copa America, Bresil – Qatar 5-0
  2. Film 2-0 by Pavel Abraham, 2012
  3. Project by Jaroslav Kratochvil: Comfortable Century
  4. Project by Daniel Stopa: Women in Kiosk, Staron Film
  5. Project by Anna Bodyako & Alexander Mihalkovich: The Mothers´Crusade
  6. Israeli producer Hilla Medalia showed strong clips from “Uncensored Voices” and the Chinese internet-film
  7. Project by Olga Zhurba: Roma, producers Viktoria Khomenko and Darya Bassel
  8. Project by Laurentiu Garofeanu: Lost and Found
  9. Film Steam on the River by Kirchhoff and Remunda, 2015
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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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