DocsBarcelona 2013/ 1

On the night where FC Barcelona stars travel their city in an open bus, to celebrate the championship with their fans, it is the 22nd league title for the one and only club, this blogger follows on Danish television, whenever they play, it is time to look ahead to the programme of another institution in the Catalan capital:

... DocsBarcelona, which is an International Documentary Film Festival and a Pitching Forum. The festival runs from May 29 till June 2. The pitching forum is scheduled for May 30 and 31. A one-day interactive documentary seminar takes place May 29.

As head of the pitching forum and as co-programmer of the festival’s official section with Joan Gonzalez, director of DocsBarcelona, I will be reporting on this blog both during and (as now) before the event. Let me give you some overall information at this point:

The festival’s official section presents 19 films, including (let point out 5 titles for now) Jay Bulger’s wonderful portrait of the mad genius drummer Ginger Baker, ”Beware of Mr. Baker” (photo) is the title, full of music and archive from the times of Cream. Alan Berliner’s ”First Cousin Once Removed”, what an uplifting and warm film about  Edwin Honig, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, Berliner is a master in montage. Multi-skilled performance artist, Palestinian Khaled Jarrar has made ”Infiltrators” from the Jerusalem wall, important and shameful documentation of humiliation of human beings as it happens right now. ”Noise” is from close-by, in Tel Aviv, where Israeli director Dan Geva experiences a drama of constant noise that in the film is developed cleverly to more than a physical problem. And ”The Act of Killing” by Joshua Oppenheimer, for documentary interested people, I think no further introduction is needed.

Two master classes are scheduled to take place in Gaudi’s masterpiece, La Pedrera: One is with Michael Glawogger, whose ”Whore’s Glory” is in the official section, the other with Fredrik Gertten on ”Bananas!” and ”Big Boys Gone Bananas!”, both films are shown at the festival.

I will come back to the pitching forum and its content on a later occasion.

Football championship is won, the next adventures will come from DocsBarcelona 2013.

http://www.docsbarcelona.com/en/index.php?edicion=2013

10th Planete Doc Film Festival Warsaw

... starts its programme tomorrow May 10 and runs until May 19. The selection is rich – take a look at the website’s ”Film Sections”, link below, and you will notice that the director Artur Liebhart and his team do an interesting editorial promotion work, inviting the audience to have a look at what hides behind the caption ”Political Sciences” or ”Fetish and Culture” or ”Intimate Stories” or ”Heroes Are Among Us” and many more. Click, as an example, the intimate stories and you will find films like Latvian ”Documentarian” by Ivars Zviedris and Ines Klava, Mika Ronkainen’s ”Finnish Blood Swedish Heart”, Alan Berliner’s idfa festival winner ”First Cousin Once Removed”, ”Elena” by Brazilian Petra Costa and ”Private Universe” by Helena Trestikova.

There are retrospective series with Sergei Loznitsa and Peter Mettler, and tonight while this is being written – far away from Warsaw – the opening show goes like this with talented Austrian director Timo Novotny who:

… will create a film remix in front of the audience. He will be accompanied by live music played by Markus Kienzl and Wolfgang Frisch from Sofa Surfers. They use the opportunities that digital technologies offer, but at the same time they take from the tradition of silent films and tapers. The show will take the audience to New York, Los Angeles, Moscow and Tokyo. It will be based on images and musicthemes from Timo Novotny’s “Trains of Thoughts” (photo). Sofa Surfers wrote the score for the movie.

http://planetedocff.pl/index.php?page=sekcje

Hot Docs 2013 – and “Out of the Main Swim”

The festival has announced the winners at the 20^th edition of the big North American documentary festival. Debra Zimmermann was the Doc Mogul Award winner of this year, of course well deserved for her great work within Women Make Movies. Les Blank, who died beginning of April this year, was honored, the American director who was famous for his humorous and original personal essays like “Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers” and “Gap-Toothed Women” as well as for music docs like “Chulas Fronteras” and the films about/with Werner Herzog, “Burden of dreams” and “Werner Herzog Eats his Shoes”.

Apart from the many North American/Canadian documentaries awarded, a couple of international films were taken to the stage for recognition: The German film from China, “Dragon Girls” by Inigo Westmeier, the Chinese “Cloudy Mountains” by Zhu Yu, an ecological drama and “The Circle” by Belgian Bram Conjaerts.

Difficult to evaluate the festival when you have not been there, but Scottish Emma Davie, director of “I am Breathing” (photo), attended to present her film and has written a fine enthusiastic text, from which I would like to quote. I am sure she will not disagree:

“HotWarm reception of our film at this fab Hot Docs festival in Toronto where audiences have multiplied over the years.  Such is this city's passion for documentary that there is now a cinema called The Bloor which shows nothing but documentaries all year – I AM BREATHING will show there on

Visions du Réel Awards 2013

Winners were announced last night at the closure of the festival in Nyon, Switzerland. The Grand Prix for the best feature documentary was given to Ramon Giger and Jan Gassmann from the hosting country for their ”Karma Shadub”. The catalogue description of the film goes like this:

Karma-Shadub is one of Ramòn Giger’s four first names, as well as the title of a piece composed at his birth by his father Paul Giger, a world-famous violinist. When Paul asked Ramòn to make a film about the adaptation of this piece, the latter noticed their mutual remoteness… With this project, Ramòn hopes to understand the meaning of love. A sensitive portrait of different perspectives.

I have not seen this film contrary to the winner of the Prize for best medium length, ”Father” (photo) by Marat Sargsyan, that I have followed from the sideline – this is what was written in February 2011 after the pitching at DocsBarcelona:

Young producer Dagne Vildziunaite from Lithuania was very convincing in her presentation of a film about ”The Father”, a seventy year old former criminal (in Soviet times), who in his late years has settled down in the countryside to lead a true and honest family life. The production company (”Just a Moment”) has shot the film and the producer was in Barcelona to seek interest and look for fresh eyes, an editor who can complete the film. In the audience several editors queued up to help to get the film to a rough cut stage – enabling several of the broadcasters to make a pre-buy.

The film is now finished and the producer wrote to me on her way to the award ceremony: The next stop for “Father” will be Krakow, also competition section. But not sales agents yet, cause “it is another dark story from Eastern Europe that TV audience is tired of”. Let’s hope Visions Du Reel result will change something.

I share that hope – come on sales agents, this is a film for an “ordinary” documentary interested audience all over!

http://www.visionsdureel.ch/index.php?id=1412&L=2

http://www.justamoment.lt/en/

Tikhonova & Spritzendorfer: Elektro Moskva

Another film that premieres in Nyon (April 25 & 26) (see below), and another film that has been a long time on its way. And another film that gave high expectations that for me who has followed the film from the side, are (almost) satisfied.

Was it one of the Rolling Stones who said that ”my bass guitar gave me a reason for living”? Almost the same says Russian artist Richarda Norvila (= Benzo), one of the protagonist of the film, when he talks about his work:

”I arrive at the studio, turn on the equipment, I hear sounds and turns knobs, therefore I am...”, and he is also the one who intelligently makes the focus of the film clear, by saying: ”Let's assume that phenomenon of Russian life is, as said Lenin, inexhaustible, as the electron, then the nature of the native Soviet synthesizers also have this quality. They translate some kind of profound lifeline, the beginning of which was laid by the great October Revolution...”.

Yes, Benzo and other contemporaries like Aleksey Iljinikh, who finds, buys, repairs and sells the synthesizers to artists like Benzo, are for me the most interesting to watch in action. When music is composed in a studio with Benzo, AND when Dominik Spritzendorfer dares to let go the image side of the film in amazing sequences where the music playfully interprets, or maybe better to say – where the image is adding to the sound to stress the quality of the latter.

The overall theme that the electrification of the Russian and Soviet society, in a belief in the future for the communism, should benefit all citizens, but failed completely, making all inventions serve the military more than the people are conveyed, with wonderful archive interviews with Theremin from 1993, introducing the space adventure as well - in other words the historical part of the film is well made but a bit monotounos and heavy in tone so the flow and the pleasure in watching the film pop up when we leave the past and go to the musicians of today with very free, almost psychedelic sequences. It is the classical dilemma of how much information is needed to give to the audience, and how much you need as background info. Nevertheless, the film is multi-faceted and quite an achievement and deserves a long and good life.

Austria, 2013, 89 mins.

http://www.elektromoskva.com/english

http://www.diagonale.at/filme-a-z?ftopic=finfo&topic=finfo&fid=5747

http://www.visionsdureel.ch/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17340257

Vurdering:

Stoyanov and Rainova: The Last Black Sea Pirates

World Premiere in Nyon today of a film that was on its way for a long time. I have not yet seen the final result but clips on its way to completion give high expectations. The text below is taken from the website of IDF (Institute of Documentary Film), that also gives access to the trailer of a film, produced by Bulgarian company Agitprop and creatively written and directed by Vanya Rainova and Svetoslav Stoyanov:

It is like a fairy tale. A band of sun-dried, ganrly desperados live in a lagoon with their dreams about treasure hunting and careless living according to their own set of rules. They are six and each brings in a notable skill. Captain Jack the Whale is the leader, Trifon is the philosopher, Stoyan is the silent, Valyo is the digger, Krasyo is the driver and Nakata is the dynamite. The world of the 21st century, however, eventually locates every romantic piece of land, including pirate paradises, and pulls it down in the name of tourist luxury.


The Bulgarian seaside documentary farce The Last Black Sea Pirates was developed as the participating project of the year-round creative documentary workshop Ex Oriente Film in 2009. The authors later pitched the project to leading commissioning editors and funds at East European Forum, and took the opportunity to present the film’s rough cut to international buyers, sales and festival representatives within Doc Launch presentation in 2011. The film was finished with the assistance of DOK.Incubator workshop.

Soon after, the Agitprop- produced documentary stormed the programme lists of major international film festivals. The World premiere takes place April 23 at the Swiss-based festival Visions du réel, the North American premiere is held May 1 at Hot Docs, Canada.

http://www.dokweb.net/en/

FIDADOC 2013

The FIDADOC festival (the only one in the country with a focus on documentaries) has announced the programme for the 5th edition to take place in Agadir, Morocco. The festival, that was set up by Nouzha Drissi, who died tragically in a car accident in 2011, privilégie les oeuvres de cinéastes émergents (1er et 2ième films), in the competition programme with the opening film being impressive “Camera/Woman” by Karima Zoubir, the premiere of the film in her home country.

There are films from Congo, Tunisia, Palestine, Germany as well as “Elena” (photo) by Petra Costa from Brazil, “I’m Breathing” by Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon from Scotland.

The festival takes place April 22-28.

http://www.fidadoc.org/

CPH:DOX Awarded

Normally festivals award films and film directors, but festivals can also be awarded, and the Danish documentary festival CPH:DOX has received two recognitions lately, the most important (also important for future funding one can hope, sorry for being so materialistic) to be “The Cultural Event of Year” named by the organization Wonderful Copenhagen and the Municipality of Copenhagen, from the jury statement: In 2003 CPH:DOX had 12.000 visitors. Throughout the last decade this number has risen to over 50.000 admissions in 2012. In itself an impressive achievement, but the effect of CPH:DOX goes deeper than that. Today, viewing documentaries is no longer a niche activity for the selected few. It is an artform that has found a wide and dedicated audience both in cinemas and on TV, and CPH:DOX can claim a good deal of the responsibility for this turn.

The second award came from the readers of the daily newspaper Politiken, that every Friday publishes “I Byen” (a kind of weekly parallel to “What’s On”). Five cultural events were nominated with CPH:DOX as the winner and CPH:DOX got the “I Byen” prize. Politiken, by the way, has a weekly (every thursday) supplement on film, popular it is and much writing on documentaries there is and that helps the cinemas to take the chance to screen documentaries.

Politiken writes about CPH:DOX that it has made the documentary mainstream. That is not right. CPH:DOX has made an audience come to watch films which are not mainstream.

Congratulations!

http://www.cphdox.dk/d/index.lasso?e=1

It’s All True 2013

Amir Labaki, director of the It’s All True festival in Brazil (Sao Paolo, Rio, Brasilia, Campinas – from April 4-23), is a man, who loves film history and knows how to celebrate it, as he does this year with a fine retrospective of films by Dziga Vertov, 8 works (photo), including the fantastic ”The 11th Year” (1928) that I had the privilege to watch in Kiev last week.

Apart from that gift to the audience, the festival has an international competition, where you as in many other festivals notice the presence of the Georgian ”The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear” by Tinachin Gurchiani, the Czech ”Private Universe” by Helena Trestikova, Sergei Mironishnichenko’s ”Born in the USSR – 28 Up” and the new film of Avi Mograbi, ”Once I entered a Garden”.

In a special programme you find Alan Berliner’s ”First Cousin Once Removed”, ”Palme” by Kristina Lindström and Maud Nycander and ”The Gatekeepers” by Dror Moreh.

Of course there is a Latin American Showcase with ”The Last Station” by Cristian Soto and Catalina Vergara, a Brazilian retrospective that Labaki thematically introduces to be ”On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état of 1964 that removed President João Goulart (nickname “Jango”) from power and installed a military dictatorship for two decades”. And 7 films in the section, Brazilian Competition. And much more to be studied on the site:

http://www.itsalltrue.com.br/2013/index.asp

Visions du Réel 2013

The programme of the 44th (!) edition of the documentary festival (April 19 to 26) in Nyon, Switzerland has been published. The festival includes ” a total of 110 films in competition from 45 countries, including 24 Swiss films. For almost all of the films the festival screenings will be world or international premieres; the fruit of a record number of nearly 3 500 films submitted to Nyon or discovered in festivals around the world by Luciano Barisone and his selection committee. This record number of films screened underscores the growing reputation of the Festival nationally and internationally and enables the organisers to apply particularly stringent criteria in the selection process, Claude Ruey (president of the festival, ed.) proudly announces.”

About the selection, the director Luciano Barisone says, quite interestingly: ”In the face of the contradictions of a globalised system, the world is seeking a possible future. After the social unrest which in recent years has affected the West, the East, as well as the Arab world, filmmakers everywhere are reflecting on the current situation, exploring new ways of life, and imaging the future.” Adding that ”the  respect of the spectators and of the persons filmed, the filmmakers’ commitment to their projects, as well as the originality and aesthetics of the films are among the key selection criteria.”

Two strong international names present retrospectives of their works: Israeli Eyal Sivan (Jaffa-The Orange’s Clockwork, Route 181-Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel, The Specialist-Portrait of a Modern Criminal (Eichmann) among others) and Latvian Laila Pakalnina (Dream Land, The Oak, Papa Gena, Three Men and a Fish Pond, The Mail, The Ferry.. among others). There is a series of Lebanese documentaries. There is a film with and about Brazilian icon Gilberto Gil, new films by Israeli Yoav Shamir, Finnish Susanna Helke, as well as international premieres of ”Father” by Lithuanian Marat Sargsyan and Belgian Tülin Ozdenir’s ”Beyond the Ararat”.

A rich programme. Take a look:

http://www.visionsdureel.ch/

A Citizen with a Movie Camera

Sevara Pan writes about the DoxBox initiative called Global Day for Syria 2013:

In times when representations of the Orient lends itself to increasing misinterpretations, knowledge of languages and history does not suffice as much as the mechanical gathering of facts does not constitute an adequate method for grasping what is it all about. In such times comes art, which as the renowned poet and human rights activist Cesar Cruz put it, comforts the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

The Global Day for Syria, which took place two weeks ago, is a project initiated by the Syrian documentary film festival Dox Box in support of Syrian filmmakers and in high regard to its people who struggle for their vision of what they are and want to be. In March of last year the management of the Syrian documentary film festival Dox Box decided to cancel the festival due to the upheavals in the country. Instead, they called for documentary film festivals around the world to participate in the project Global Day for Syria.

The second edition of Syria Global Day put in spotlight a few short documentaries by filmmakers from Syria, including Salma Aldairy, Roula Ladqani, and Lina Alabed, among others. Yet, most importantly, it brought forth films made by Syrian citizens themselves in a program called “A Citizen with a Movie Camera” (in 6 compilations: Dialogue, In the Searching for Truth, The Leak, Letters, Moments, and Stories). Beautiful, unsettling, and at last insightful and thoughtprovoking the films were selected from over 300,000 videos from and about Syria that had been uploaded on Youtube. From this enormous amount

Docu Days Awards 2013

The festival is over, awards were given last night, again the Red Hall in the Cinema House in Kiev was packed with primarily a young audience full of enthusiasm. You may have head-shaking opinions about the architecture of the Cinema House and its many references to communist times but it is very practical to have two screening halls plus big corridors to socialise, a café, a restaurant and the festival office in the same building – with another venue 5 minutes away.

I was in the Docu/Life jury where we (Russian critic Lyubov Arkus, director Audrius Stonys and I) watched seven films of high quality, to give two special mentions and one Jury Prize. The mentions were given to Romanian Noosfera by Ileana Stanculescu and Artchil Khetagouri and to Latvian The Documentarian by Ivars Zviedris and Inese Klava. The motivations go like this:

Noosfera: A warm intimate close-up portrait of the excentric Nico, who as a scientist and a teacher conveys his look on the future of the world and love, trying to adapt his vision to his own life. The directors show great talent for catching everyday life situations and originality with respect and humour.

Documentarian: A hilarious and intelligent film about filmmaking, it raises all basic questions on the relationship between the one who films and the one who is being filmed. Inta is a film star, clever in her analysis of the film that

Docu Days Audience Behaviour

I dare the risk of being called a grumpy old man, but why the f... does the audience, quite a good part of it, here in Kiev, at the Docu Days festival, behave so disrespectful to the films being screened, and to those of us, who sit down from the beginning of the screening to concentrate and have a cinematic experience. For days I have been disturbed by members of the audience, who arrive in the middle of the film and insist to have a seat in the middle of the row with the consequence that many have to stand up, blocking the view of others, or the other way around, people leaving the film before the end making a lot of noise.

I know the screenings are for free, it is very good cultural policy, and I love the atmosphere here, professional introductions and q & a’s, big audience, many behave excellently, and it is a good selection of films including the seven in the Docu/Life competition where I am in the jury, more about that later.

Very simple: You produce a sign to put on the doors into the cinemas saying ”no entrance during the screenings”, and you put some doormen/women to talk loud if the sign is not respected. The cell phones being used during the screenings, texts messages being sent - well, that is all over, that battle is lost, I am afraid.

Photo: Monk from "Burma vj" appealing for Respect for the films!

http://www.docudays.org.ua/

Docu Days: A Farewell to Cinema

In June 2012 the football championship UEFA Euro took place in Poland and Ukraine. And of course some films came out of that. An Ukranian premiere was arranged at the Docu Days festival. 10 films were collected as a Youth Documentary Almanac, the directors, many of them film students or newly graduated documentarians, who had made films about policemen learning basic phrases of English to be used when meeting the invasion of football fans, or a young poet on his own, or people collecting metal to be sold or one who had a grandfather who built the old stadium, now to be rebuilt etc. – social, about persons, fresh, but in general with no focus and with big editing problems. One of those where you say to most of the films – ah, what a pity, go back to editing and find your film.

A small revelation for me, however, was the screening of the programme ”A Farewell to Cinema”, 5 films from 1987-1992, supported by the state. The times were for social critical films as I knew from Latvian Juris Podnieks and his groundbreaking ”Is it Easy to be Young?”. All films with an artistic quality. First of all demonstrated by (now) veteran director Sergey Bukovsky, who had made two of the five, ”Tomorrow is a Holiday” (1987) (photo) from a poultry factory where the women expressed deep dis-satisfaction about their life conditions, and ”The Roof” (1989) from a shelter for disabled people in a local monastery. The title of the programme comes from the last film in the programme (a dvd is being made by the national film centre), it has the following description, taken from the festival site:

Recently documentary filmmakers have been filming mass protests (end of 80’es, ed.) in the streets of Ukrainian cities, and now they themselves have to organize demonstrations in order to receive an opportunity to film. During the first years of Ukrainian independence, the production of chronicle and documentary films was cut to a minimum. The lack of financing or any state support whatsoever drove the veteran of Ukrainian documentary film, Israel Goldstein, to state: “The authorities are preventing us from filming because they are afraid that in several decades, the viewers of our films might ask: who was in power back then? Who put the people in such a state?” Today, the ‘authorities’ are well-known to everybody, but there is almost no film evidence of the consequences of their work. A Farewell to Cinema demonstrates why it happened this way: the filmmakers had to work as doormen, the studios were closed down, film financing was stopped. This film is one of the most radical in the genre ‘cinema about cinema: this is a film about the way that cinema ceased to exist.

http://www.docudays.org.ua/

DocuDays Opening Problems /2

Through reliable sources filmkommentaren.dk has succeeded to get hold of a translated version of the official document read from the stage at the opening of Docudays festival here in Kiev. As earlier announced negociations were held immediately that secured that the festival could start and so it did entering today into its third day... festival openings are normally full of loooong official speeches, the organisers of DocuDays deserve big Bravo for a spectacular alternative:

March 22, 2013 No. 826/3299/13-a

District Administrative Court of Kyiv City comprised of the presiding judge Pomidorov O. P. having considered under the written submission proceedings the administrative case claimed by the Kyiv City State Administration versus Human Rights Film Festival Docudays

RESOLVED:

In order to ensure the operational functioning of the government authorities of Ukraine, public safety, safety of government officials and facilities, Kyiv City State Administration appeals to the court with the claim for restriction on the right to peaceful assembly by means of prohibiting representatives of Human Rights Film Festival Docudays and other initiators to conduct any film screenings, meetings and assemblies starting with 22.03.2013 and through 31.12.2013 in Kyiv.

Court deems the claim subject to satisfaction in view of the fact that reported total number of potential participants in the referred to event is very substantial, which could provoke clashes and public disorders.

Resolution shall be enforced immediately.

Judge O.P. Pomidorov

DocuDays Opening Problems

Below you can read about the snow storm in Kiev outside the Cinema House, where the festival ceremony took place last night, March 22nd. But compared to what happened inside that was nothing. The nicely dressed presenters on the stage were suddenly pushed aside by representatives of the authorities, who declared, on behalf of a certain Mr. Pomodorov, that the festival would be cancelled due to its oppositional approach to the same authorities. In walked – see photo – uniformed militia with shields being lined up to protect the speaker from attacks and tomatoes... Some protest shouting were heard from the audience and some negociating took place, I could see from my seat on the second row – the soldiers left and the ceremony could take its beginning.

Clips from the many sections followed plus the opening film, Fortress, a film school film from Prague/FAMU by Klara Takovska and Lukas Kokes telling us, in a satirical tone, about The Transnistrian Moldovian Republic, its leader for more than 20 years, Smirnov is his name, an election process, visits to people who live there, a little bit of everything, and a lot of tv propaganda, which evoked a lot of laughter in the auditorium due to the constant reference to the Russian dominance but nothing more than that, in terms of filmic quality. For me the film sometimes crossed some ethical borders making fun of the naïve people living there.

At the end of the opening ceremony we saw the soldiers/militia people again on the big screen, they were out in the snow, suddenly turning their shields to use them as snow boards. The festival slogan came up: ”There is a Choice!”.

www.docudays.org.ua

Festival Opens with Snow Storm

Childhood memories! Snow, snow, snow. Well, we had it in Denmark the last week but not dramatic in the Copenhagen area and no problem in taking off from Copenhagen airport friday morning or to go by the connecting flight from Düsseldorf to Kiev.

But Kiev had snow all over – and traffic chaos. It took a long time to get into the city and the driver had to give up to mount the small hill where the festival hotel is situated. So directly we went to the Cinema House, Dom Kino, where the opening of the 10th edition of Docu Days UA was to take place. Time for a lovely warm borstj soup and off we were, Estonian filmmaker Marianna Kaat, partner in crime, and I for an extremely well attended press conference (photo) and afterwards the opening ceremony which was surprising and intelligent in its dramaturgy. Actually the whole festival was on the edge of being cancelled! More about that later.

Later I wanted to go to the hotel due to my winter coughing and general tiredness. But that proved to be a challenge! The hotel is just 10 minutes from the Cinema House but it was impossible to walk. So what to do? Festival organizer, director and cameraman Roman Bondarchuk took action, put me in his car, cleaned it from snow and started the motor. But the wheels were spinning nicely and we could not move. His friend had a car in a better position in the street and he succeeded to bring us to the small hill from where we climbed the snow to reach the hotel. Bondarchuk has a new film, a photo exhibition, a masterclass and is all over the place. I survived and Bondarchuk is a hero!

Now you know where I am and I will be reporting from the snow stormed festival that I attend, also to be member of the Docu/Life jury.

www.docudays.org.ua

O. Balahura: Life Span of the Object in Frame /2

Ukranianweek.com writes to a still from the film: ” ’Life Span of the Object in Frame’ began with a photograph taken by Oleksandr Chekmeniov seven or eight years ago at Privoz, a huge market in Odesa. The girl on the right of the picture told the director that the main character of the photograph – the woman sleeping under the counter – used to be a homeless red-haired beauty. She froze to death on the street after an illegal operation to remove her organs…”

Link to ukrainianweek.com/Culture  

O. Balahura: Life Span of the Object in Frame

A good advice – go to the trailer of this film which is to be found on the website of the upcoming festival in Kiev, Ukraine DocuDays UA. Click below.

It will give you a fine introduction to a documentary that is not easy accessible but attracts you with its many layers and angles, its beautiful verbal narration, its sincerety, its editing originality – you don’t see many (hybrid) essay films like that any longer. And it will hopefully give you appetite to watch the whole work, which you can do at the festival, if you happen to be there from friday onwards.

... a film about the film not yet shot... is the undertitle of the film and you see a film crew meeting and discussing, you see the actors, including the director, rehearse, saying lines, building up a labyrinthic studio with photos from the last 20-30 years - if I get it right. Photos that are extremely beautiful in their depiction of Life situations. The main photo that the film comes back to again and again is an almost surrealistic one with a woman sleeping in a marketplace, having found shelter on the ground while life goes on around her. Who was she? What has happened to her?

And what happened to us, the artists, the film narrative seems to ask. Through images from Genoa, from a room with a sea view, it is indicated that the man talking (the director?) had a mistress, forgot to phone home to his mother, these scenes are beautifully shot like a painting by Matisse from Nice. The photos and the colour manipulation of some of them bring forward a kind of nature morte feeling, there are discussions about Dante, verbal tributes to Jean-Luc Godard, and (the title) a constant going-back-sequences to Edward Muybridge, the movement of the dog running, the man coming up from his chair, a woman getting in or out of her bed... There are many side stories and there are for sure references that I do not understand, so let me give you the catalogue text from the festival:

”The time of exposure is the life span of an object in frame. In this regard, no photo is just a two-dimensional graphic composition – it always has the third, temporal dimension, the temporal depth. A photo is a time carrier, a time vessel. That means – a vessel of memory… But whose memory?.. Of the Face or the Thing or the Landscape which are still on the photo?.. Of the photographer?.. Having chosen photos as the material of the film and memory as the theme, we inevitably find ourselves in a labyrinth of our own and others’ memories, of our own and others’ time. And in seeking for the escape, we become a part of this labyrinth and the material of our own film.”

Had no real stills from the film, here is a photo of the director, who is in the film.

Ukraine, 2012, 116 mins.

http://www.docudays.org.ua/eng/2013/movies/specialni-podii/chas-zhittya-obyekta-v-kadri/

http://www.docudays.org.ua/eng/2013/jury/16/

Vurdering:

Thessaloniki Doc Fest 15

The 15^th edition of the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival started two days ago and runs until the 24^th of March. The programme is as always impressive – as is the communication from the festival that in a classical journaistic form reports on debates, speeches, meetings with the directors present, for us who are not able to attend… The section titles give a clear hint to what the visitors will be able to watch: “Greek Panorama”, “Music and Dance”, “Human Rights”, “Habitat”, “Portraits: Human Journeys”, “Recordings of Memory”, “Stories to Tell”, “Views of the World”. The director and selector for the festival, been there from the very beginning, Dimitri Eipides has put together a tribute to celebrate the 15 years. Here is his introduction and a link to the list of 36 films, in alphabetical order, (PHOTO) "Gaea Girls" by Kim Longinotto:

A retrospective marking the 15 years of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival can only be in the form of a summary. For how can one fit so many films, so many conferences and masterclasses, so many guests, so many parties – so many memories, in other words – in just a few lines? Each one of the Festival’s editions stands alone, as a living, breathing life collage, rich with emotions, experiences, social and existential questions, empathy and spiritual elation. Our tribute entitled “A Fascinating Journey” does not refer to the Festival’s best editions or best moments. In our hearts, each Festival is the best one. Our aim was rather to seek out and bring to mind of some of the documentaries that were especially discussed and loved by audiences; documentaries that followed developments or revaled hidden aspects of our daily lives; documentaries that caused a reaction; documentaries that moved or inspired us. This is a selection of films which we have been unable to been unable to forget; films which drew the public to the Festival; films which gave shape to the Festival’s character, ethos and role. It would not be an exaggeration to say that these documentaries are responsible for the boom of the documentary genre, its renewal, its release from past constraints and its elevation as the main form of expression of the human experience. One could say, then, that this 36-film tribute is our own summary of the fascinating journey the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival has been taking us on all these years. We hope you enjoy the view!

http://tdf.filmfestival.gr/default.aspx?lang=en-US&page=1110

Jon Bang Carlsen – The Inventor of Reality

Danish master Jon Bang Carlsen is in Bucharest these days. He has been invited to present a retrospective of his works at the International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, One World Romania, that runs until March 17, like the one in Prague, ”in memory of Vaclav Havel”. With a reference to his films shot in Ireland, ”It’s Now or Never” and ”How to Invent Reality” the Romanian organizers presents Bang Carlsen as ”the inventor of Reality”. Here is a clip from the text:

This year One World Romania organizes a retrospective dedicated to the Danish documentary filmmaker Jon Bang Carlsen. Fairly unknown in Romania, but considered a legendary director who reinvented documentary film, Carlsen will be... a special guest of the festival. Between the 11th and the 17th of March, the audience will have the chance to see more than half of his works, produced between the 1970s and 2013, and to participate in debates with the director.

In his work, Jon Bang Carlsen has always explored the land between fact and fiction. From 1977 onward, mise-en-scene with real characters plays a very important part in his productions, and this method is detailed in his meta-film, How to Invent Reality (1996) – which will also be screened in Bucharest. His documentaries are often visually and symbolically powerful staged portraits of marginal figures and milieus that involve compelling stories...

There are many other films at the festival, ”Shoah” in its full duration and ”Act of Killing” just to mention two masterpieces.

http://oneworld.ro/2013/l/en/news/103/jon-bang-carlsen-at-owr-the-inventor-of-reality-in-bucharest/

Documentary Feast Beyond Belief

They are masters of promotion, the Czech organizers of East Doc Platform that runs from next week parallel to the One World Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. Here is their press release with all the links you need, start with the one at the end of the text, Beyond Belief!

Prague becomes the capital of documentary film - East Doc Platform starts Monday, March 4, 2013!
There is only few days left to the second edition of East Doc Platform, presenting in Prague the traditional events designed to support East European documentary film - East European Forum, Doc Launch Presentation, Project Market, and East Silver Videolibrary. Same as last year, there is more: Master Classes, Case Studies, Lectures, Panel Discussions, Round Tables, Networking Parties and Special Screenings. 

Major tool for the upcoming week is now available online: the finalized version of East Doc Platform Open programme. Still disoriented? Read all about East Doc Platform in the concise, updated East Doc Platform directory! Should you found yourself in Prague and need any help to get around East Doc Platform, consult the Practical information section on our website, including addresses, maps, important phone numbers and names. Make sure to stay tuned for daily portion of tweets and posts on our facebook!

With all the guests confirmed, we are happy to confirm East Doc Platform will host the over 180 East European filmmakers and producers, who seek creative, financial and distribution support, and more than 80 key international decision makers, who arrive to the Czech Republic to decide about the most promising documentary projects and films in Central and Eastern Europe.  

At the moment we are busy scheduling one-on-one  pitching sessions at Project Market – 350 meetings over 3 days, bringing 40 producers and filmmakers from 15 countries  together with 50 decision makers – commissioning editors, distributors, ales agents, festival and funds representatives.

You can already see that this year's East Doc Platform is Beyond Belief!



www.dokweb.net

Photo: Russian film Winter, Go Away is in competition at the festival.

ZagrebDox 2013

... is running until March 3rd with a fine programme put together by the founder and director of the festival, now in its ninth edition, Nenad Puhovski.

The international competition includes strong films like ”Elena” by Petra Costa, ”Chasing Ice” by Jeff Orlowski, ”Bengali Detective” by Phil Cox, ”Private Universe” by Helena Trestikova, ”The Act of Killing” by Joshua Oppenheimer and ”The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear” by Tinatin Gurchiani. 19 films all together will be watched by the international jury, and there is a great variety to find also in geography. Just look at the films mentioned, they come from Brazil, USA, UK, Czech Republic, Denmark, Georgia.

24 films compete in the regional competition, most of them new to me, but notice ”Dragan Wende” by Lena Müller and Dragan von Petrovic as well as the wonderful ”Summer of Giacomo” by Italian Alessandro Comodin.

And then the Croatian audience and the festival guests are offered 8 of Viktor Kossakovsky’s documentaries as well as a Scottish Documentary Institute Retrospective with ”I am Breathing” by Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon, ”Cutting Loose” by Finlay Pretsell and Adrian McDowall and ”Pablo’s Winter” (photo) by Chico Pereira. These are all films that travel to many festivals, but what is (also) interesting about the programme in Zagreb is the short videos that the Institiute, under the leadership of Noë Mendelle, has produced during training sessions in Libya and Morocco.

If you are in Zagreb there is film and fun for you to night according to the website: A Scottish Documentary Institute Retrospective, curated by Finlay Pretsell, is one of the official programmes of this year’s ZagrebDox. After the film part,  today at 8pm, Festival Centre, we will raise our glasses to the magnificent Scottish documentaries and their authors with a bagpipe player and some whisky. PS. I know Pretsell very well, and he knows about whisky!

Flaherty: Epic Encounters

No, it is not a forgotten film by ”the father of documentary”, Robert Flaherty. Flaherty is, of course named after him, ”a nonprofit organization dedicated to the proposition that independent media can illuminate the human spirit. Its mission is to foster exploration, dialogue, and introspection about the art and craft of all forms of the moving image. The Flaherty is based in New York City and was established to present the annual Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, named after the maker of such seminal documentaries as Nanook of the North, Man of Aran, and Louisiana Story.”

The Epic Encounters is the title of a film series (6 films), organised by Flaherty on six Wednesdays in March and with critic and tv host Jeronimo Rodriguez as programmer. It takes place in NYC at 92Ytribeca (website below). Regret to say that I don’t know any of the films, but having read about/googling them, I see high quality, a programme maybe to be copied somewhere in Europe? Here is an intro:

“Some things in life fall away into a forgotten chasm, relegated to imperfect human memories, tucked away in a remote abyss where you will probably never hear from them again. Film often reverses the course of events, giving these things a place in our history. This program focuses specifically on the ability of film to shed light on those spots that might otherwise be lost forever. The selected films deal with episodes of a nebulous past, with activities that are not usually represented, with fractured spaces, and finally, with the frailty of memory. Filmmakers, videographers, professionals, and amateurs from Latin America, Spain and the US help create a bridge between what is seemingly irrelevant and what takes on significance. This show features a Hi-8 home video, an underground scream, a fading memory, an unknown story, a rehearsal, and a rarely seen film.

Some of the Spring season highlights include: Xurxo Chirro’s mythmaking in Vikingland, constructed from editing found footage recorded by a Galician sailor in the early 90s; El otro día (The Other Day) in which Ignacio Agüero’s past and the complexities of Chilean society are revealed through everyday objects left in his home; Argentine filmmaker Matías Piñeiro’s Rosalinda (photo), which pulls back the curtain on the act of rehearsing; and a selection of short films that examine rarely seen spaces, many of them fractured or undergoing transformation, like the eerie tranquility of a Peruvian beach resort recorded by Andrea Franco in En Ancón (In Ancon).”

http://flahertyseminar.org/

http://www.92y.org/Tribeca/About-Us.aspx

Marathon Dok 2013

Here we go again, EDN has announced the classic, yearly Marathon Dok where Danish professionals and film/tv students are invited to get updated on new original documentary work. A clip from the website:

“March 2, 2013. From 14:00 to 22:00. Theodor Christensens Plads 1, Filmskolen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Marathon Dok is a looooong day full of funny, fascinating and fantastic documentaries. This one-day screening program brings new international high quality documentaries to the big screen in the beautiful cinema of the Danish Film School. The screenings start at 14:00 and end at 22:00.

We invite you to sink in one of the cosy theatre seats in the nice atmosphere of The Danish Film School's cinema and have a day surrounded by coffee, colleagues and of course the latest of the best international creative documentaries.”

As usual the day starts with short documentaries, 4 of them, 3 from the Nordic countries and one from the US. Later awarded films like Lithuanian UB Lama (photo) by Egle Vertelyte, Jukka Kärkkäinen and J-P Passi’s world hit The Punk Syndrome are on the programme that ends up with The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear by Georgian Tinatin Gurchiani and Kakha Macharashvili.

With their choice EDN programmers deserve credit for leaving the main road with a format that everyone can adopt.

http://www.edn.dk/activities/edn-activity-texts/edn-activities-2013/marathon-dok-2013/

Hybrid Docs at Forum Berlin

The Forum of the Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (runs until February 17) is the section, where you can be sure to find new and exciting works. Including documentaries. Here is a clip from an interview with the Forum director Christoph Terhechte, with the mentioning of four docs, below please find a link to the full text:

Is the Portuguese film Terra de ninguém (No Man's Land) by Salomé Lamas, in which a mercenary talks about the atrocities he has committed, an example for this sort of blurring the boundaries between fiction and documentary?

It is a documentary, but at the same time a piece of fiction. At first the director asks herself whether or not it is fiction, because until the very end she cannot be sure whether the man who recounts his story is telling the truth. What is clear is that the background information is true, insofar as the actions that he mentions actually happened. But it remains unclear how much he was really involved and to what degree the story is false. Of course, the same goes for every documentary. One can never know whether people are telling the truth and there are always different versions of a story. Terra de niguém explicitly addresses the possibility of falsehood or pathological lying.

The undefined boundaries between feature and documentary film can be seen in many of this year's films. Larger audiences are beginning to get used to these hybrid forms. The Greek documentary Sto lyko (To the Wolf) is partially staged. But you don't know how much, because the people play themselves in the film. La plaga (The Plague) employs a feature film style of dramaturgy, in order to follow its five protagonists in today's Catalonia. A batalha de Tabatô (The Battle of Tabatô) (photo) is a feature which has very strong documentary elements. The film takes place in Guinea-Bissau and tries to contrast African tribal traditions with the colonial history…

Link to berlinale.de 

Best Nordic Documentary/2

A short follow-up – Mika Ronkainen got his well-deserved Dragon Award Best Nordic Documentary at the Göteborg International Film festival. The jury motivated the award to ”Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart” (photo) with these words:

… a touching story of inner and outer exile, which brings out a rarely discussed trauma of the Swedish welfare state of the prosperous 60s and 70s. With great sensibility and refinement, the director describes a personal relationship between father and son and their emotional trip down memory lane in the search of a sense of belonging. Their conversations and meetings with other Swedish Finns along the way gradually unfolds the theme of rootlessness and estrangement, while intertwined live recordings of Finnish immigrant songs from the 70s poetically comment on the theme and widens the picture to encompass an entire culture.”

http://www.giff.se/us/public/article/post/the-dragon-award-winners-2013-1590.html

Magnificent7 2013/6

The 9th edition of the European Feature Documentary Film Festival ended Sunday night at the big hall of the Belgrade Sava Centre. Manuel von Stürler presented his ”Winter Nomads” followed by Helena Trestikova’s ”Private Universe”. For the first film, that the European Film Academy voted to be the Best Documentary Film of 2012, and that is this week being released in cinemas in France, around 1000 spectators attended the screening that included a small lamb entering the stage to be saluted by von Stürler and animal lover, festival director Zoran Popovic!

Trestikova’s film was watched by around 900 enthusiastic viewers, who followed the life of an ordinary Czech family over a period of more than 30 years on the background of the country’s history from 1968, Husak, Havel, EU etc.

Staying for a moment with the statistics, the festival augmented its number of viewers with around 10% from 2012 going up to about 6000 – for 7 screenings!

This monday morning the festival held masterclasses with von Stürler and Trestikova. The latter took us, in a very well prepared presentation with 11 scenes from her films, through her work of long-time observation. She showed us clips from ”Marcela”, ”Katka” and ”René” (Best European Documentary in 2008) and talked about the ethical questions connected to being so close to her characters, helping them ”outside” the film as well, to get on the right track in their lives. Trestikova said that she did not really consider herself as a filmmaker, more as a chronicler, who has new films coming up this year and has plans to continue to film René and maybe also the family in ”Private Universe”. Deep respect for Trestikova for a constant non-tabloid humanistic focus on people outside the celebrity spotlight.

Several of her films are available on the vod DocAlliance:

http://dafilms.com/director/167-helena-trestikova/

http://hivernomade.ch/en/

Magnificent7 2013/5

Magic evening in the Sava Centre last night. 8-900 people had decided to spend their saturday night out in the company of Finnish artist Kimmo Pohjonen. It was a good choice you could hear from the reactions during and after the screening of ”Soundbreaker”, directed by Kimmo Koskela. Good choice... it was like being at a rock concert, the well deserved applause and cried out ”bravos” that was given to Pohjonen.

You might have some small reservations about the editing of the film but it has no influence at all on the overall impression that Pohjonen conveyed from the screen. What a performer, what a musician and what a sympathetic man, who has something to say to his – in this case – viewers and listeners. We enter a hole in the ice in the beginning of the film, are taken under water(!), where he is playing his 17,5 kilogram heavy accordion to concerts with other musicians like the Kronos Quartet, but first of all to himself performing in front of the camera, in constant movement, both caressing and fighting with the accordion, gentleness and brutality at the same time, with a music instrument, which, he says in the film, in Finnish can be understood as an asshole! We are also taken to England to the fascinating Earth Machine Music project filmed around farms, where he collects his sounds from tractors, pigs, tools, machines for potatoes, whatever. Some of the scenes are hilarious and conveys the obvious humanistic fundament of Pohjonen’s art.

It sounds banal but what Pohjonen comes up with is a message to all of us – find your voice inside yourself, express yourself, be creative. What an energy and what a wonderful and powerful sound-breaking and sound-making music instrument the accordion is. In the film it is, through excellent camerawork, being given a Life of its own, it moves on its own, it is strong and powerful, or small and pitiful, or some kind of nuisance that has to be smashed!

If you want to know more about Pohjonen, go to his website, there are videos to watch and listen to, and he has a blog, where he recommends documentary films that we should watch. A gentle and generous, wild man!

http://kimmopohjonen.com/

www.magnificent7festival.org

Magnificent 7 2013/4

Ilian Metev, director of ”Sofia’s Last Ambulance”, started his friday masterclass at Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade playing Bach on his violin, quite a generous gift to the workshoppers from the young Bulgarian artist, who had a career as a violinist, has studied fine art in London and ended up at the National Film School in Beaconsfield in England, where he graduated in 2008 with the very succesful film ”Goleshevo”.

Metev made the link from music to the ambulance film saying that ”I often think of films as tensions and releases, like in music”. That is indeed a perfect reference to a film that is so much linked to the cases that the three in the ambulance meet on their shifts in the Bulgarian capital. People suffering in the back of the ambulance, people talking to doctor Krassi and nurse Mila in the appartments, you never see the patients, perfect choice, always tension and then the more uplifting moments of smoking and relaxing between the cases, small talk about life and love, or getting out to get some apples from a tree...

There is no music in the film, and yet, as said Metev, ”the ambulance is like an orchestra” of sounds. He told us how the sound was recorded separately, he explained the position of the cameras in ”the cockpit” of the ambulance, and how he, in the editing was ”constantly hunting for eloquent moments”.

A lot of questions from the workshop participants were about the three wonderful people in the ambulance. How they are today, what they earn – which is nothing more than 300€ per month – that is why the driver Pramen has two other jobs – and about Metev’s frustration that the film is considered as a piece of art (indeed it is!) but far too little attention has been put on the social reality that it shows, when it has been screened in Bulgaria.

www.magnificent7festival.org

Magnificent7 2013/3

The festival in Belgrade enters into its third day, and the response from the audience has been, yes, magnificent! On the opening wednesday night the film by Swedish Malik Bendjelloul ”Searching for Sugarman” was met by great enthusiasm by the estimated close-to-2000 people, who watched the film. Some hundred less came for Jérôme le Maire’s beautiful ”Tea or Electricity”, nominated for the French-Belgian film award, named after Magritte, and to be distributed this evening in Brussels.

As usual some 30 young filmmakers/visual artists/journalists met with the director the day after the screening. As the director of the film about fabulous Rodriquez, and the whole crew around the film, are in Los Angeles preparing for the Oscars, and therefore could not be in Belgrade – Jérôme le Maire was the first one to talk to the workshoppers thursday morning, and he did that brilliantly, explaining about and showing clips from the three films that he had been making during the last decade. Amazing clips from ”Where is Love in the Palm Grove” shifted with quotes from his hybrid (documentary/fiction) ”Le Grand Tour”, two very different films in style and content. Also le Maire told about his work with ”Tea or Electricity” (photo), about how he approached the people in the mountains, being there for a long time, winning their confidence, before he started to operate the camera. And he shot for months and months, communicating with the villagers in Arabic, having problems with those of them, especially the women, who spoke in the Berber language that the director does not master. It was indeed an entertaining and well prepared two hours insight to filmmaking methods given by the Belgian director.

Thursday evening ”Sofia’s Last Ambulance” by Ilian Metev was shown. The director and his Croatian producer Sinisa Juricic were present at the screening that ended with a long lasting applause and a surprise award of 1000€ given by the private medical clinic BelMedic to the director of the film. Ilian Metev mentioned that today was the birthday – for those of you who have seen the film – of the doctor, Krassi, to whom and the two other of the ambulance team, the nurse and the driver, he would dedicate the award.

www.magnificent7festival.org

Best Nordic Documentary?

Guest writer at filmkommentaren, Danish Mikkel Stolt watched Finnish Mika Ronkainen’s latest work ”Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart” (photo) at the Nordisk Panorama in September. The original, non-mainstream hybrid documentary made a big impression on Stolt, who concluded – referring to a John Cage sentence – ”I will have to give it full six pens - simply because it made such a profound impression by moving me and not pushing me.”

The film got no award at the Nordisk Panorama but has now the chance to win the ”Dragon Award Best Nordic Documentary” at the Gothenburg International Film Festival that runs now, and until February 4. The winner will be presented on February 2, 8 films are nominated, apart from Ronkainen, you find strong names like Margreth Olin from Norway, Stefan Jarl and Mia Engberg from Sweden as well as talented Danish Camilla Magid with ”Black White Boy”

http://www.giff.se/se/start/festivalen/dragon-awards/best-nordic-documentary.html

Dragan Wende West Berlin

Two important prizes for a film by Lena Müller and Dragan von Petrovic, co-directed and filmed by Vuk Maksimovic, whose uncle is the protagonist of a film that the team itself – on the site of the film – calls tragicomical. A quote from the synopsis: … the young cameraman Vuk from Belgrade embarks on the trail of his eccentric uncle Dragan Wende who, 30 years earlier, became the street king of West-Berlin’s 1970s hedonistic disco scene. Earning easy money in Berlin’s most famous nightclubs, work and play went hand in hand… 20 years later, Vuk’s uncle is an aged alcoholic who lives off social welfare and memories of his youth…

The film has other charismatic characters, is playful and entertaining, with “absurd and sit-comic situations”.

The film was appreciated on two occasions during the last few days. It got the prestigious Max Ophüls Prize and it received first prize for best documentary at the Trieste Film Festival. The motivation from the German prize looks like this:

"Ein Stück irrwitzige Weltgeschichte, erzählt aus der Küche eines abgehalfterten Bordell-Türstehers. Ein Stück berührende Familiengeschichte, erzählt in der historischen Dimension des kalten Krieges. Ein Stück derbe Männergeschichte, erzählt mit Pfiff und Ironie dank sicherer Montage – halbseiden, blockfrei und humorvoll. Das hat die Jury begeistert und darum vergibt sie den Dokumentarfilmpreis Max Ophüls an den Film„Dragan Wende - West Berlin“."

OBS. The producer Lena Müller has made an excellent website for the film that goes far beyond normal mainstrem promotion, check it and watch trailer and teaser and listen to the soundtrack.

88 mins., 2012, Serbia/Germany

http://www.von-muller-film.com/home.html

http://www.triestefilmfestival.it/en/comunicati/si-chiude-la-24a-edizione-i-vincitori/

Sundance Shows Living Room Documentaries

A very interesting critique of (some of) the selected documentaries for the Sundance Film Festival comes from Anthony Kaufmann, who has written for NY Times, Village Voice, Variety among others.

I dare to make a long quote from the beginning of his article that can be read in full length by clicking the link below:

This year the Sundance Film Festival captured the zeitgeist. Films that premiered this past week in Park City investigated, explored and exposed the biggest issues of the day, from abortion (After Tiller) to immigration (Who is Dayani Crystal?), from economic unfairness (99%, Citizen Koch, Inequality for All) to information in the digital age (We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, Google and the World Brain), from covert wars (Dirty Wars, Manhunt) to other political and social injustices (Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, God Loves Uganda, Blackfish, etc).

But no matter how incisive, exhaustive, convincingly argued or shrewdly structured, most of the films employed tried-and-true formal elements. As far as I saw, there was no Catfish or Exit Through the Gift Shop (photo), no Imposter or Man on Wire, no radical mixes of documentary and fiction—in short, very little stylistic experimentation. Watching the docs at Sundance was like being holed up in your living room and held captive by HBO, besieged by hours upon hours of solid reportage.

Not all of Sundance’s docs were created equally, but they were made in mostly the same mold: some TV-ready combination of first-person interviews, verité observations, archival footage and informational text. Whether it’s the tyranny of broadcast television executives or the conventional training of most documentary filmmakers, Sundance was awash in issues, not artistry…

Link to blog.sundancenow.com

Magnificent7 2013/2

On Wednesday January 30 at 7pm the opening of the 9th edition of the European
Feature Documentary Film Festival, Magnificent7 will be announced
by the lady, who represents the festival venue, the biggest theatre in the region, the Sava Center in Belgrade. Ms Nevena Djonlic will be followed by Mr Popovic and Mr Müller, who will introduce the selection of films for the 9th edition of the European Feature Documentary Film Festival, Magnificent7. The festival runs until February the 3^rd.

The opening film is the international hit, nominated for an Oscar, Searching for Sugar Man (photo) by Malik Bendjelloul. The 6 other films in the programme have equally received awards and been world wide honoured for their quality. That goes for Tea or Electricity by Jérôme le Maire, Ilian Metev's Sofia's Last Ambulance, Kimmo Koskela's Soundbreaker, Helena Trestikova's Private Universe and Manuel von Stürler's Winter Nomads.

Tonight the 7^th film in the festival, Swedish Palme, directed by Kristina Lindström and Maud Nycander, is nominated in three categories at the Swedish award ceremony Guldbaggen.

The audience will be spoilt with good films in the evening with an additional workshop programme during day time for, quoted from the website: "young film authors and film students as well as students in related art disciplines, but also towards all those who feel the need for a different kind of “film food”; film professionals and professional amateurs are also the suitable candidates for our workshop."

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/home.html

Magnificent7 2013/1

This text is written for the catalogue of Magnificent7 2013: I am writing this from New York, a metropole of mainstream entertainment cinema, but also the place to be for two veterans of independent cinema, the 86 years old Albert Maysles and the 90 year old Jonas Mekas. Maysles, part of the classical direct cinema movement once said that "the eye of the cameraman should be the eye of the poet". Mekas is, if anyone, the father of the personal cinema, never compromising in his way of putting together his diaries from all over the world.

One should go for innovation but also honour roots and tradition - this is what we do in Belgrade year after year with a festival that carries the name of a mainstream American movie but has its focus on poetry and independent, personal storytelling.

And which, like the old people mentioned, insists that documentary films should be shown on a big screen for a big audience. In cinema halls.

Actually all the films selected for the 2013 edition of Magnificent7 have been shown theatrically in their countries of origin, some of them also in theatres abroad. It can be interpreted as one more sign of the golden times, we experience for the popular documentary genre, but it also proves that the filmmakers who come to Belgrade with their films have thought of the big screen when making their works.

We promise you poetry and personally made documentaries. With a diversity in themes and “handwriting”. From the minimalistic and original interpretation of an urban social reality in “Sofia’s Last Ambulance” to the beautiful and respectful meeting with people, who do very seldom appear in the media: “Tea or Electricity” and “Winter Nomads”. From the portrait of a great humanist, Olof “Palme”, who was shot down, when he chose to walk home after a visit to the cinema, a rich film in its time depiction of a society asis the Czech “Private Universe”, a family film in the wonderful epic tradition.

Magnificent7 is a tribute to the art of cinema, but it is also a tribute to the power of art itself. Two films point directly in that direction. “Searching for Sugar Man”, internationally the most succesful documentary of 2012, is (also) about the fact that important art will always survive, whereas “Soundbreaker” (photo) is, as the title indicates, about an artist who seeks to break all rules to give us viewers and listeners an experience, we will never forget.

Do come to the 7 films we hope you will enjoy and never forget.

Tue Steen Müller

IDFA Statistics and Info

It is a good idea to get on the mailing list for the idfa newsletter. The one from January 18 includes statistics on the 25th edition of the festival last November and communicates deadlines for the IDFA Bertha Fund (before Jan Vrijman Fund), the Docs for Sale, the festival and the Academy Summer School. How to it, quote from the newsletter:

If you would like to stay in tune with IDFA and all our industry deadlines and events, then subscribe now to IDFA’s monthly Industry Newsletter. Subscribing is easy and can be done via your MyIDFA account.

… and for the news: the 25^th edition of the festival in 2012 had 2700 festival guests and 200.000 tickets sold. Twohundredthousand tickets!!!

Furthermore IDFA, the European Film Market and EDN runs a documentary newtworking platform at the upcoming Berlinale (February 7-15), where 16 documentaries from the idfa festival are screened – among them are “The Gatekeepers”, “Elena” (photo) and “Beware of Mr. Baker”.

Link to idfa.nl

Link to efm-berlinale.de

P.P.P.

Taken from a newsletter from FID, the International Film Festival in Marseille (July 3-8), where a passionate director Jean-Pierre Rehm writes:

Concerning our upcoming 24th edition… a retrospective will be devoted to Pier Paolo Pasolini. A Mediterranean figure, certainly, since such is the orientation of Marseille, but also a personality of mythical importance. Poet, writer, playwright, critic, polemicist, screenwriter, actor, painter, filmmaker: some go so far as to call him a contemporary saint. The wager of this undertaking devoted to Pasolini remains largely before us. That is why, citing his own words, we have baptized this homage, “P.P.P., the scandalous force of the past.” Implemented in conjunction with three local organizations, Alphabetville, the CIPM and INA Région, the programming of his films, amplified by an exhibition, readings, round-tables, etc., will take place a month-and-a-half before the festival. A way of multiplying the possibilities to better embrace, in its integrality, his untimely oeuvre that is generous as well as dazzling.

Bravo!

http://www.fidmarseille.org/dynamic/

http://mubi.com/cast_members/2150

Documentary Fortnight 2013

A press release in an edited version: Moma, the Museum of Modern art in New York organizes February 15–March 4 “Documentary Fortnight 2013: MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media”, the 12th annual two-week showcase of recent documentary films examining the relationship between contemporary art and nonfiction practices, and reflecting on new areas of documentary filmmaking.

This year’s festival includes an International Selection of 20 feature-length films and several shorts, all of which are U.S. or New York premieres that will be presented by the filmmakers. The festival also features New Cuban Shorts, a spotlight on films by emerging Cuban filmmakers, many of which have never before been seen in the U.S.

The programme also includes a tribute to POV, highlighting award- winning films from the past 25 years of Public Television’s longest-running showcase for independent documentary film—plus a sneak preview of a title in the upcoming season.

The festival opens on February 15 with two daring new approaches in filmmaking: Ilian Metev’s Sofia’s Last Ambulance (Germany/Bulgaria/Croatia, 2012) (photo), which premiered at the 51st International Critics Week at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, where it was the second documentary ever to compete; and Chico Pereira’s Pablo’s Winter (Spain, 2012), winner of the Competition for Student Documentary at IDFA, the world's largest documentary festival. Sofia’s Last Ambulance follows a three-member paramedic crew in one of

Ada Bligaard Søby: Petey & Ginger

Ada Bligaard Søby har i lidt mere end syv år været i gang med et konsekvent filmisk værk, som med undertitlen til den seneste af de syv film, det består af, også samlet kan kaldes a testament to the awesomeness of mankind. Det er store ord, men de siges på en stilfærdig måde. Der larmes ikke i hendes film, men hver rystende detalje, hvert udbrud af pludseligt vid præcist på plads i konstruktionerne, er fyldt med intens og sagte alvor: dette er mine ønsker for menneskets fremtid, og i et kaos af nutidig moralsk og materiel sammenbrud skimtes i filmene en forunderlig blid fasthed og en ærbødighed over for enhver kulturs integritet og historie. Alle filmene har, uden at Ada Bligaard Søby har rystet på hånden, i et og alt intenst levet op til de store ord. Der har været bygget og bygget på værket.

Sådan er det derfor selvfølgelig med den syvende og seneste film, Petey & Ginger(2012), som havde premiere på CPH:DOX i november og har været sendt for nylig på DR K. Den skal ikke først og fremmest nye veje, den skal videre med det, værket er i gang med. Så den vender tryg tilbage til den første film, American Losers (2006) i tema, den amerikanske kultur, og i kunstnerisk greb, en sammenstilling af en kvindes og en mands biografier og liv nu. I denne tilbagevenden, i denne sunde vedholdenhed fremstår den som en rig variation i en filmisk passacaglia.

Vurdering:

DocPoint Helsinki

The programme of the Finnish documentary film festival reflects again that the festival selectors know what they are doing – and they should in a country that has such a high standard in documentary culture.

From January 22-27 more than a hundred films will be shown. Personally I am not sure I like the thematic curating approach that is used to section the films to be screened on the website, I find it confusing, but behind headlines like ”Der Prozess”, ”Hard Day’s Night”, ”Higher Ground”, ”Home Sweet Home”, ”Kaleidoscope”, you find many exciting works like Eugene Jarecki’s ”The House I Live In”,  Jerome le Maire’s ”Tea or Electricity”, ”Private Universe” by Helena Trestikova, ”The Gatekeepers” by Dror Moreh and ”The Reluctant Revolutionary” by Sean McAllister – to mention those seen by this blogger.

There is a retrospective of films by Mario Ruspoli, ”surrealist as a documentarist”. Have to confess that I know his name but do not remember having seen any of his films. I quote from the site of Cinema du Réel 2012, where a retrospective was held: "Mario Ruspoli (1925-1986), one of the pioneers of the modern documentary, explored and experimented with image and sound techniques, yet his work remains unfamiliar to many despite its richness, its eclecticism and its historical importance. This year (2012), Cinéma du réel is proposing some of his classics and little gems." And now DocPoint does the same. Bravo!

There is – of course – a series of New Finnish documentaries, 13, with good names like Susanna Helke, “American Vagabond”, the original and touching “Finnish Blood Swedish Heart” by Mika Ronkainen and “Hilton” by Virpi Suutari. There is “North by Northwest” with films from Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Norway and Denmark. I mention the films that have been reviewed on this blog: “Winter go Away”, “The Will” (“Testamentet”) and “Documentarian” – at the same time as I would like to raise attention for Lithuanian Giedre Beinoriute’s “Conversation on Serious Topics” (photo) that will be reviewed here as soon as I get the final version of a film, I was priviliged to watch when in rough cut state.

And there are more sections ending up with the “Winners and Bestsellers”, 12 films and I am happy for the Finnish audience that they are to watch “I am Breathing” by Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon and many more films that have been at DOKLeipzig and idfa.

http://docpoint.info/en/content/etusivu

Khaled Jarrar: Infiltrators

I can not write a review as I have not seen the final edit of the film, and as I have seen material shot by Khaled Jarrar as well as cuts during sessions of the Storydoc programme, I would definitely not be able to be neutral in my judgement. BUT, having said so, it is no surprise at all that Khaled Jarrar (photo), the Palestinian multi-artist, ”an amazing artist,” I have called him on this site, has won two awards at the Dubai International Film festival that ended yesterday.

The film in question is ”Infiltrators”, produced by Sami Said and Mohanad Yaqubi, 70  mins. long, that won a Special Jury Prize at the Muhr Arab Documentary Competition as well as the Fipresci (the critics) award.

This is what was written on filmkommentaren.dk almost 9 months ago:

”We met at the office of Idiomfilms in Ramallah to see a first draft of Jarrar’s first documentary... We watched a 75 mins. cut of a film that with its non-aggressive approach gives the viewer a unique account of the climbers, big and small, old and young, who go to Jerusalem illegally. To work first of all. It uses a non-linear structure, it has many angles and stylistical elements that wonderfully surprise you as a viewer, who is used to strong films in all genres, aggressive against the Israeli occupation. You have sometimes a clear laugh when you see the different ways of climbing, sometimes you laugh because of the absurdity, and sometimes you are moved and feel angry: this can not be true, this is not civilisation 2012! But it is.”

And the catalogue description of the festival in Dubai: The checkpoint is closed. “Detour, detour!” shouts a taxi driver and announces the beginning of the journey. The film unravels adventures of various attempts by individuals and groups during their search for gaps in the Wall in order to permeate and sneak past it.

http://www.dubaifilmfest.com/en/films/detail/mutasalilun/19362/2012

http://www.facebook.com/infiltrators.pal?fref=ts

Nahed Awwad: Gaza Calling

Samer lives in Ramallah, his mother is Safa, who lives with his father and siblings in Gaza. Mustafa lives in Gaza, his mother, Hekmat, and his sisters live in Ramallah. The distance between Gaza and Ramallah is around one hour’s drive. Samer and Mustafa are separated from their families, they can not meet them. They communicate via cell phones and video clips shot here and there. They live in occupied territories and the occupier does everything to make their lives difficult. To say the least.

It is a very important film that Nahed Awwad has made. It is both informative and emotional. It visualises what we seldom hear about – how it is to live under these apartheid conditions. It goes, to use a stupid cliché, behind the scenes of thousands of news clips from Palestine and Israel. In that respect it unfolds a human perspective on the background of the humiliating living conditions, which are given to the Palestinians by the Israelis.

Awwad also uses the film medium to convey the buraucratic absurdity of communication between the Palestinian Authority and the Israelis, whenever the Palestinians apply for an id to travel or stay or... Accompanied by light bossanova music a brilliant montage takes us (and the letters/applications) from the offices of the Authority to the Israeli administration offices that happen to be placed in a settlement! Just around the corner. (The film originally carried the working title, ”The Mail”).

The film also touches upon the relationship between Palestinians from Gaza and from the West Bank. Hekmat, for me the most impressive character in the film, has a Gaza id, stays illegally in Ramallah, ”I’m a criminal”, she says, having no intention to go back to Gaza, wishing/hoping/trying to get permission to see her son Mustafa after years of separation. In the most moving scene in the film, Hekmat and her daughters watch clips with Mustafa on the beach in Gaza. The camera stays on their faces as the heartbreaking scene develops emotionally. Don’t talk about it, show it. This is what this film does so well.

Palestine, 2012, 64 mins. Will be shown at the upcoming Dubai International Film Festival (December 9 – 16)

http://dubaifilmfest.com/en/films/cast/id/11436

Vurdering:

Idfa Awards 2012

Sometimes you are lucky because normally you leave a festival having NOT seen the winner. Not this year where this blogger was privileged to take part in the idfacademy where the first point on the agenda was a screening of Alan Berliner’s ”First Cousin Once Removed” that tonight received the prize for Best Feature-Length Documentary at idfa 2012. A great film as you can read on this site. The jury argumented that ”Alan Berliner employs intelligence, inventiveness and a poetic sensibility to create a film that uses the onset on Alzheimer's to make a beautiful, moving and artistic statement about the intersection of personal history and memory.”

The award for Best Mid-Length Documentary was given to “Red Wedding” by Lida Chan and Guillaume Suon, “the poignant story of Cambodian Sochan Pen, who as a sixteen-year-old was forced to marry a soldier of the Khmer Rouge”, the First Appearance prize went to Dutch Esther Herzog for “Soldier on the Roof”, “a film providing insight into everday lives in the Jewish enclave in Hebron, where 800 colonists live among their 120,000 Palestian neighbours.”

Have not watched these two films, but a salute to the juries that gave two prizes to Malik Bendjelloul for his well-known “Searching for Sugarman” and to the wonderful “Pablo’s Winter” by Chico Pereira, that was also at DOKLeipzig, where the filmkommentaren correspondent had these words to put forward: Another character who is charismaric in his old, grumpy age is Pablo, a pensioned miner... a warm film that perfectly catches the rythm of moving slowly around, having time to argue with the wife and teach a kid how to bicycle.

Another bravo to a film that was presented in a rough cut session at DocsBarcelona this February: ”The IDFA DOC U Award, worth (€ 1,500) and awarded by a jury of young people, went to Marcel Barrena for Little World (Spain), about nineteen-year-old Albert who travels in his wheelchair, with his girlfriend but without any money, to the other side of the world.” I said hello to Albert at idfa, what a role model he is!

https://www.idfa.nl/industry/latest-news/First-Cousin-Once-Removed-wins-VPRO-IDFA-Award-for-Best-Feature-Length-Documentary.aspx

Why Poverty?/ Hvorfor fattigdom?

Danish text to inform the Danes where they can watch the series of films ”Why Poverty”, see more below in previous posting:

Det danske Filminstitut (dfi) har sammen med DR støttet produktionen af serien og DR står bag kampagnen, der er knyttet til filmenes tema. Filmene udsendes fra søndag den 25. November til torsdag den 29. November og der er på hjemmesiden oplæg til temaerne og til skolebrug undervisningsmateriale for grundskole og gymnasier.

Fra den 3. December kan danskerne se alle filmene på Filmstriben, de 30 kortfilm er allerede tilgængelige på youtube.

Dfi oplyser at ” bibliotekerne der viser filmene og deltager med arrangementer, udstillinger m.v. er en del af en global cross-media kampagne, som når ud til over 500 millioner mennesker over hele verden.”

Link til dr.dk/Undervisning/Hvorforfattigdom

http://www.filmstriben.dk/

Why Poverty?

Today, Idfa guests and idfa audience had the chance to watch the eight long films in the long awaited and now well promoted series “Why Poverty?” – with four days to go before the worldwide launch that you can read about below.

Production is made by the non-profit organisation Steps International, that as logo on its website has “great stories can change the world”. The key person behind this initiative as well the previous “Why Democracy” and “Steps for the Future” is Don Edkins, a true gentleman in the world documentary community, and a man who in his work in a true Griersonian way seeks to combine the documentary art form, campaign and information. Among the directors of the eight films are Chinese Weijun Chen, American Alex Gibney, British Ben Lewis and Brian Hill, as well as Danish Christoffer Guldbrandsen. Here is a text clip from the website of Why Poverty?:

… uses film to get people talking about poverty. We've commissioned award-winning film makers to make eight documentaries about poverty, and new and emerging talents to make around 30 short films. The films tackle big issues and pose difficult questions, but they're also moving, subtle and thought-provoking stories. They transmit around the world in November 2012, on more than 70 national broadcasters reaching 500 million people. They'll be accompanied by events designed to spark global and national debates and an online conversation to get people asking “Why Poverty?”

You can watch clips and shorts online now, and find out more about what’s happening in your country.

After November, the documentaries will be available to everyone online and we’ll begin an outreach programme, building on the momentum from broadcast…

Impressive, wish you all the best luck!

www.steps.co.za

http://www.whypoverty.net/en/about

I am Breathing/ Letter to Oscar

Emotional moment when Emma Davie welcomed her audience at the premiere of the film at Munt cinema. She stressed how much her main character, Neil Platt, who died three years ago, wanted the film to be made, to have a focus put on his disease, Motor Neurone Disease and consequently to have more medical research done in that field.

Emma Davie, who made the film with Morag McKinnon, made the audience aware that the family was attending the screening. The main protagonist, however, together with Neil, was not there, his name is Oscar, he is the little boy, who runs around his father, the film could have been entitled ”Letter to Oscar”, which is what Neil is writing, a letter, added with a beautiful ”memory box” for his son to remember his father. Remember Humphrey Jennings ”Diary for Timothy”?

Well, he – Oscar, must be 5-6 years old – now, has a film that is made for him and for a big audience, I am sure.

Here at idfa there are two hit lists of most watched films. One is at ”Docs for Sale”, where buyers come to watch, ”I am Breathing” is number 4 with 44 screenings by November 21. The other is the Audience Award Top 10, where ”I am Breathing” is number 7. Well deserved!

www.idfa.nl

scotdoc.com/idfa

Idfa Forum 2012

... edition Number 20! In itself a marvellous event where filmmakers from all over the world meet to present their projects, catch up on professional and private matters, it is indeed a clear sign of the both warm and professional climate in the international documentary community. And there are many people around the table, mostly broadcasters but also an increasing number of representatives from funds. AND that is important as the broadcasters basically have no money or little money – you sometimes wonder why they want to sit around the table and express their opinions when they can not help the pitching filmmakers – for creative documentaries.

Creative documentaries... yes, where were they. Or call it artistic documentaries, where were they? Is it a matter of a bad selection from idfa, or is it because the selection is done so it fits to the fact that broadcasters are not interested in creative, artistic documentaries. ”Content is King”, it has been said and that is right, but the form/ the filmmaking, what about that, is it not important?

To be fair: I watched 15 out of 20 presentations in the so-called Central Pitch, and none in the round-table, where more ambitious projects often are to be found. The first morning I was suffering: A noisy tv-interview based doc, ”The Shadow World” about arms trade, a total – sorry for my French – shitty superficial cliché-filled about Stalinists and Russia of today, ”In the Wake of Stalin”, a straight forward interview based, character driven tv programme from Naples, ”Zero Waste”, ”Eurocalypse-Why we are poor now”, scripted by Nick Fraser from BBC, to be directed by Ben Lewis, in the presentation constantly stressed to be funny- it was not, not at all. Two exceptions: the winners of idfa last year with ”Planet of Snails”, came up with a beautiful teaser, ”Like Wind, Yeji and I” (photo), and the Finns had a story from Uganda that had an artistic feel, ”Prior to Farewell”. Funny it was to hear the producer state that the editor of the film will be Danish superstar Niels Pagh Andersen, to calm down eventual doubt: then it can’t go wrong!

The second day, to stay in the positive mood, the Israeli ”The Visual Crash” about media coverage of the 2010 Gaza Flotilla, by Yael Hersonski (”A Film Unfinished”) had a great teaser and artistic ambition (”sophisticated” a man from New York Times called it), and raised a good discussion. An American project, however, about people from Human Rights Watch and their work around the globe, ”The E-Team”, had a disgusting teaser cutting the energetic youngsters with dead corpses accompanied by dramatic music. Only one commissioning editor (thank you Sabine Bubeck from ZDF/arte) objected to this non-ethical approach – the answer from the filmmakers was, ”oh yes, but it is only a trailer”! Content is King, maybe, but ethics demonstrated in the form, please!  

www.idfa.nl

Pitch and Trailer Training

... was the headline of the afternoon session that I attended, run by EDN’s Mikael Opstrup with a (maybe too) small introduction by Jesper Osmund on the nature of what he (good choice) calls pitch trailers. Osmund, who has edited several international documentaries, including ”Big Boys Gone Bananas” (read review below) stressed the simplicity as a principle for constructing a pitch trailer and showed the sweet ”Milk Bar” (Sweden, Ewa Einhorn and Terese Mörnvik, 2007), the effective character-based “The Believers” (final title “Football is God”) (Denmark, Ole Bendtzen, 2009) (Photo, tatooed Maradona) and scene-based “Sofia’s Last Ambulance” (Bulgaria/Croatia, 2012, Ilian Metev).

After the introduction four projects were picked for pitch, one from Colombia, one from Armenia, one from Russia and one from the Netherlands. The idea was that the projects being pitched were to be commented by a panel consisting of Osmund, Sabine Bubeck from ZDF/arte, Stephan Kloos producer and distrbutor, and producer Lise Lense-Møller. I am not sure that the concept is right – to let the panel analyse the technical side of the pitch without talking about the film that is presented. For me it became a clinical, school teacher like session that showed no interest in the content or ambition coming from the young people, who brought their projects to the room. It made the panel grumpy and combined with a looong procedure around the competition set up to find the best pitch, performed by the sympathetic “Cuban Hat” people, it became boring. The Cuban Hat people spent a lot of time explaining and praising what their initiative is about. The winner, after the hat had gone around, got 48$, some slices of ham and a bonbon. Halleluja!

http://www.wgfilm.com/english/productions/productions/milkbar/

http://vimeo.com/footballisgod

http://www.cubanhat.tv/

Give Your Film a KickStart

Was it because people were a bit tired hearing about crowdfunding that there were less people in the auditorium this morning. Or because of all the parties that are offered from the side of idfa? To idfacademy participants who are mostly young, the mature man wrote. Or because it is too American? At least that was the immediate reaction to hearing Elisabeth Holm from Kickstarter, a speedy talking New Yorker, who introduced the crowdfunding organisation in a precise, professional way with numbers and an obvious commitment to documentaries. (You can read in details about Kickstarter on its website). Holm stressed that Kickstarter is not for charity and campaign, but for creative documentaries (and other art forms). And by the way you need an American bank account to qualify to get into Kickstarter, where you get the money if you reach the target you have set for your project. But not if you are lower than that sum.

With a butterfly in the room, flying from screen to screen, Holm showed a clip from a succesful Kickstarter film, T-Rex, about a black female boxer, who went to the Olympics in London, and won a gold medal. The crowdfunding for the film, still not finished, raised $64.507 with 652 backers, with – in general - the most common contribution to be $25. Who are the backers: fans, friends, internet, press, kickstarter community.

What can Kickstarter do for you, Holm said: Engage your community, Share your story, Find new patrons, Retain complete creative control.

There are other crowdfunding platforms. Indiegogo is one and American director Steve James introduced his ”Generation Food” project, that runs there, and Margaret Jangård from WG Films in Malmö Sweden brought up the company's experience with crowdfunding on ”Big Boys Gone Bananas”, (photo from "Bananas!") the interesting film on how the American banana company Dole wanted to stop their film. For Jangård using Kickstarter was ”a great marketing tool” for the film.

http://www.kickstarter.com/

www.bigboysgonebananas.com

www.idfa.nl

IDFAcademy 2012

The programme is ”an intensive four-day training program for emerging filmmakers, producers, and film students”. As coach for the group of filmmakers from the Black Sea Docstories workshop I am there as well and have enjoyed the well composed and organised training initiative led by Meike Statema.

Alan Berliner – see the review of his new film below – was the perfect man to start the Academy with his modest and passionate approach to filmmaking. ”Editing is the greatest joy I have in my life”, he said, at the same time as he said that he had pretty limited technical skills when he sits in front of the buttons with the material. How to use metaphors, he was asked by the young filmmakers and students, the answer was that with ”First Cousin Once Removed” he wanted to poetisise the world of Edward Honig, who had decided to give his brain to science, ”but my aim was to preserve his mind” with the film.

Sean McAllister was the man in the chair te next morning after a screening of his ”The Reluctant Revolutionary” the night before. McAllister showed clips and talked about his looking for characters, a process that can take a long time, as he exemplified with clips from his ”Japan. A Story of Love and Hate” (photo). ”I use film to empower people”, he said with reference to the development of his two male characters in the films mentioned.

Ove Rishøj Jensen from EDN made an excellent inspirational and precise 90 minutes introduction to storytelling models using the film of Geoffrey Smith, ”The English Surgeon” (the classical) and Coco Schrijber’s ”Bloody Mondays and Strawberry Pies” (circular, author driven model) as references.

With some of the filmmakers from the Black Sea countries, I had the pleasure to meet Isabel Arrate from Jan Vrijman Fund, which is now the Idfa Bertha Fund after funding comes from the Bertha Foundation. Arrate explained the rules for the fund that will have its first deadline by February 2013. From Vancouver-based Knowledge Network came Murray Battle, who in a fine way listened to and commented on projects from Georgia and Turkey making it clear what a North-American audience would love to see.

Today saturday and sunday the Academy programme goes into financing and presentation matters.

www.idfa.nl

Alan Berliner: First Cousin Once Removed

Famous for his film about his father, ”Nobody’s Business”, clever and funny with an excellent, playful montage, it was simply great to watch the newest documentary by Alan Berliner, also with a family member as main protagonist, also with a playful montage and also a tribute to Life even if it deals with Edward Honig, who has Alzheimer’s disease, sits in his chair through the whole film, with family archive material flasbacks here and there and everywhere, shot over five years, a wonderful experience, because Edward Honig was wonderful to meet, a poet and a translator of poetry, among others Portuguese Pessao, a man on his way away from the Life he had been praising again and again, sitting in this room full of books and papers not knowing why and where and what and who.

Berliner asks and asks and gets moments out of Honig, at the same time as he tells the story about him, twice married, haunted his whole life by feeling guilty for the death of his brother when a child, and treating his sons of second marriage really bad. He gets the second wife and the two children into the film as well as other key witnesses to the life of Honig. As well as the director’s own son in musical sequences with the old man. When Honig answers Berliner, he does it normally with a humourous reaction to his own situation, that makes Berliner make excellent associative sequences (often with trains through tunnels) that loosens up tension and gives us viewers a bit of free time to reflect... well it could be on ”la condition humaine” to use a kliché. There are many films about Alzheimer’s disease, and it is indeed hard to watch what used to be a strong, well formulated man get to the point where he expresses himself with sounds, that Berliner refers to as an inspiration coming from outside the window of the room where he sits. From the birds. ”Remember How to Forget”, Honig says, ”little boy, I like you, take me for a ride in your story”, which is what Berliner has done with respect and a storytelling that is non-chronological with an elegance, that makes you think what a wonderful thing FILM is.

USA, 2012, 78 mins.

http://www.alanberliner.com/#

http://www.idfa.nl/industry/tags/project.aspx?id=F840443F-1331-482A-A23D-5C21E854D304&tab=-

Vurdering:

IDFA Opening

The opening ceremony of the 25th edition of idfa took place in the Tuschinski theatre close to Rembrandtsplein in Amsterdam. The mother of the festival, as she is called, flamboyant Ally Derks made the opening speech full of passion and proudness for what she and her team have been doing in the 25 years that have passed – my comment: built up the most important yearly meeting point for professionals from all over the world and succeeded to create a huge audience that in the coming 10 days will fight to get tickets for the screenings of which many are already sold out.

BUT, and there was a big BUT that was coming back again and again in the speech of Derks – the government’s announcement of cuts in funding for documentaries through Mediafonds (The Dutch Cultural Media Fund) and the broadcasters IKON and Human TV.

“These cuts are very, very serious. They de-stabilize the whole industrial structure. The jobs, the suppliers, the families they support. All will be lost. Clearly 80 percent of all the Dutch films we are showing at IDFA have been supported by the Mediafonds. Where will this lead? To dark screens for Dutch documentary?”. The plan of the government is to close the fund by 2017 and to let the broadcasters do the support!

(Facts about the The Dutch Cultural Media Fund: This Fund currently provides approximately €16 million annually for documentary, fiction, digital projects, radio and talent development. Of this, €8 million is devoted to documentary. 40 titles at this year’s IDFA were made with the Fund’s support, among them the opening film Wrong Time Wrong Place by John Appel. In all, the Fund backs around 70 documentaries a year.)

Back to the speech: “You know, films are a lot like flowers. There are many people who love tulips. Others like roses. Some even like weeds. But you can

Jørgen Leth Collected Texts on his Works

…the Danish director, who has been an inspiration for generations of Danish filmmakers. With Lars von Trier as number one as readers will know from the film”The Five Obstructions”. (Tue Steen Müller)

Mid wednes(day) off from Copenhagen with troubled SAS to Amsterdam to attend the 25th idfa (International Documentary Film Festival). On board is also Jørgen Leth on his way to idfa as several times before. This year to be in the main jury with (among others) Michael Glawogger, and to attend his own ”My Name is Jørgen Leth” exhibition that is part of the idfa ”Expanding Documentary” that opens at 7pm tomorrow November 15th at De Brakke Grond here in Amsterdam.

The exhibition that ran succesfully in Copenhagen – arranged by Danish curator Michael Thouber at the Kunstforeningen Gl. Strand in Copenhagen – gives the visitors the chance to watch (some of) Leth’s films, photos, notebooks as well as listening to his commentating bicycling races like Tour de France. One of the many characteristics of the director, who in the car from Schiphol to the hotel immediately fell into discussions about this one of many passions of the Danish director, who has been an inspiration for generations of Danish filmmakers. With Lars von Trier as number one as readers will know from the film ”The Five Obstructions”.

Which leads to the most important information: You can watch 7 of Jørgen Leth’s films for free on the vod Docalliance (link below), a – too use one of the director’s favourite words – generous offer to film lovers all over to see ”A Sunday in Hell” (Paris-Roubaix race) (PHOTO), ”Moments of Play”, ”Good and Evil”, ”Notes of Love”, ”66 Scenes from America”, ”Haiti Untitled” and ”The Perfect Human”. A small festival in itself with the usual high quality text intros from the Docalliance people. For free until November 25. A must for all film students! And cinéphiles of course!

http://www.idfa.nl/industry.aspx

www.lethfilm.dk

http://dafilms.com/

JØRGEN LETH – MASTER OF DOX

This is how Danish veteran Leth is characterised on the site of ZagrebDox (February 27 – March 6, 2011) in a quite interesting intro text, that also has a greeting to what is called Danish puritans:

“Can ‘eroticism’ be measured? Can it be limited or defined? In his latest film, one of the most significant documentary filmmakers of today, 73-year-old Jørgen Leth (‘The Perfect Human’, ‘The Five Obstructions’) travelled from North Africa to Rio in order to register the form and sense of eroticism, refusing to accept it as a part of the dominant currents of new Puritanism and/or commercialised video-style eroticism of ‘fake breasts and backsides’.

Quite predictably, Leth’s sensual, poetic and unbiased exploration of human eroticism, created during the course of ten years, was harshly criticised by reviewers (The Variety describes Leth’s accomplishment as shameful) and Danish puritans, calling the author ‘controversial’. Another unfavourable element was the fact that Leth, as an honorary ambassador to Haiti, was involved in an intimate relationship with his cook’s under-age daughter, describing the episode in his memoirs ‘Imperfect Man’ and causing great controversy in Denmark.” (Tue Steen Müller 13-02-2011)

Jørgen Leth

Mid wednes(day) off from Copenhagen with troubled SAS to Amsterdam to attend the 25th idfa (International Documentary Film Festival). On board is also Jørgen Leth on his way to idfa as several times before. This year to be in the main jury with (among others) Michael Glawogger, and to attend his own ”My Name is Jørgen Leth” exhibition that is part of the idfa ”Expanding Documentary” that opens at 7pm tomorrow November 15th at De Brakke Grond here in Amsterdam.

The exhibition that ran succesfully in Copenhagen – arranged by Danish curator Michael Thouber at the Kunstforeningen Gl. Strand in Copenhagen – gives the visitors the chance to watch (some of) Leth’s films, photos, notebooks as well as listening to his commentating bicycling races like Tour de France. One of the many characteristics of the director, who in the car from Schiphol to the hotel immediately fell into discussions about this one of many passions of the Danish director, who has been an inspiration for generations of Danish filmmakers. With Lars von Trier as number one as readers will know from the film ”The Five Obstructions”.

Which leads to the most important information: You can watch 7 of Jørgen Leth’s films for free on the vod Docalliance (link below), a – too use one of the director’s favourite words – generous offer to film lovers all over to see ”A Sunday in Hell” (Paris-Roubaix race) (PHOTO), ”Moments of Play”, ”Good and Evil”, ”Notes of Love”, ”66 Scenes from America”, ”Haiti Untitled” and ”The Perfect Human”. A small festival in itself with the usual high quality text intros from the Docalliance people. For free until November 25. A must for all film students! And cinéphiles of course!

http://www.idfa.nl/industry.aspx

www.lethfilm.dk

http://dafilms.com/

CPH:DOX AWARD VINDERE 2012

DOX:AWARD 
The act of Killing af Joshua Oppenheimer.


Special mention til Tchoupitoulas af Bill og Turner Ross

.

NEW:VISION AWARD 
Leviathan af Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verana Paravel.



NORDIC:DOX AWARD
 Searching for Bill af Jonas Poher Rasmussen.

SOUND & VISION AWARD 
Beware of Mr Baker af Jay Bulger


Special mention til Kidd Life af Andreas Johnsen



POLITIKENS PUBLIKUMSPRIS 
A normal Life af Mikala Krog

AMNESTY AWARD (OBS: Uddelt onsdag) 
Tomorrow af Andrey Gryazev

SONIC:DOX AWARD (OBS: Uddelt onsdag) 
White Black Boy af Camilla Magid (Lyd: Peter Albrechtsen)

REEL TALENT AWARD Daniel Dencik



http://www.cphdox.dk/d/index.lasso

Joshua Oppenheimer: The Act of Killing

Han sidder der ved det simple træbord. Over for ham sidder forhørslederen ved en skrivemaskine, jeg ved han ved, hvad der skal foregå. Siden jeg som stort barn så Poul Reichhardt i De røde enge i en tilsvarende rolle over for en tyske forhørsleder har det siddet som traumatisk rædsel i mig. Jeg har vidst hvad der nu vil komme til at foregå. Nu kommer torturen. Jeg har i alle filmene siden (Rom, åben by, Slaget om Algier… frem til Deer Hunter måske, erindringen står  af...), når den scene nærmede sig, set ned i biografgulvet og som den næste af de tre aber tillige holdt mig for ørerne, til det var forbi. Siden jeg så traileren til The Act of Killing har jeg på grund af den scene frygtet Oppenheimers film på grund af den scene. Torturens forfærdende virkelighed og konstante mulighed og simultane aktualitet i denne verden. Og så skulle det i biografen onsdag aften endda blive værre, meget værre, end jeg frygtede. Til mishandlingen føjede sig de allermest smertefulde ombringelser, som på vore kirkers vægmalerier, som hos maleren Goya, specielt specialiteten: garotten...

Ilian Metev: Sofia’s Last Ambulance

Have you ever thought about becoming a doctor or a nurse on a Bulgarian ambulance? Well, as this little marvel of a film suggests, there might be an opening or two coming up.

It’s technically an observational film, but what we observe is not the action or the events in the daily life of the three characters, but mainly the faces. Mila, Klassi and Plamen are doctor, nurse and driver of an ambulance in Sofia, and quite radically we never really see their patients or even the ambulance itself. We do get glimpses of the surroundings, but for large portions of the film we see one of them sitting in the cockpit while the other two are out of frame. But still, due to their conversation, the futile calls to their headquarter and the circumstances of their different house calls, you get a very precise sense of their struggles to make their workday tolerable in the seemingly decaying society. The humanity of the three protagonists is vividly conveyed to us and even with the somewhat erratic filming and with no music to help us feel the right things; you are drawn into their daily life. 

The film and the main characters definitely have a sense of humour, but if I still needed a bit to be completely blown away it’s because I have a feeling, that it could have been even more grotesquely funny and thus giving an even stronger sense of their absurd situation. I guess I am always looking for that last bold step where a film not just observe an irrational reality but really takes it to another level by being a real DOComedy where also the filmmaker has something at stake.

Nevertheless, it has won a number of prizes and was shown at Semaine de la Critique in Cannes and I have this sensation that it will grow in my mind over the next days or weeks.

Ilian Metev: Sofia’s Last Ambulance, Bulgaria, 75 mins. Set på CPH:DOX i Falconer Biografen.

Link to Tue Steen Müller`s post, a second opinion... (ed.) 

Vurdering:

Le Mois du Film Documentaire

For the 13th time the French launch their Month of Documentaries all over the country. More than 1700 films, new and old, are being screened in what can only be seen as the most effective promotional tool to create interest for documentaries.

The participants – as the organizers call them – are Médiathèques, salles de cinéma, associations, établissements culturels, éducatifs, sociaux, collectivités territoriales, conseils régionaux, conseils généraux, partenaires locaux, etc.

To give an example, an “Hommage à Chris Marker” is organised in Basse-Normandie at the Bibliotheque Jacques Prévert, in Limousin and at Institut francais d’Ukraine. Volker Koepp is shown in Paris, “Five Broken Cameras” in Lyon, Stan Neumann’s wonderful “La Langue ne Ment Pas” in Strasbourg, “La Nuit Elles Dansent” (photo) in Fort-de France in Martinique and so on so forth.

Film policy, ladies and gentlemen!

http://www.moisdudoc.com/

Oppenheimer, Cynn, Anonymous: The Act of Killing

Behind the scenes, the making of.. a film. We have seen them lots of times, following how the actors prepare for their roles, how the shooting was done, how the director directed. This is exactly what ”The Act of Killing” does, with the big difference that the film being made is, to use a kliché, ”based on a true story”. A story about the mass murder of around 1 million people in Indonesia in the 1960’es, opponents of the military regime. Communists. Chinese. The killers were saluted, and still are, as the films shows, through the paramilitary fascist group, now a political party, as I understood it, Pancasila.

Werner Herzog asked the protagonist in his masterpiece ”Little Dieter Needs to Fly” to reenact the horror actions he experienced in Vietnam, the directors of ”The Act of Killing”, an absolute masterpiece as well, have done the same with their killers – please re-constitute what you did at that time. And how you did it, we will help you to make your vision as authentic as possible. The filmmakers - = the killers, they call themselves gangsters which they say mean ”free men” – choose different ways to convey their stories. They have found their inspiration in what they call ”sadistic movies” a la Scorcese and Tarantino, they have gorgeous more reportage style shooting from the streets, where extras are found, who can play communist family members, shot in observational style and with kids involved who break down as they do not know, whether this is for real or not and they make the most astonishing tableaux that make you think about Herzog and his Fitzcarraldo period.

But first of all the film has a fantastic main charismatic personality, the leader of the gang and the director of the film in the film, Anwar Kongo. A Shakespearean character, haunted as he is by what he did. ”When I sleep it comes back to me”, ”a communist ghost”, he says, and the film is constructed around his journey from, as the cph:dox catalogue puts it, ”arrogance to regret”. Accompanied first of all by the fat man, of course his name is Herman(!), who does and has done all the atrocities he is told to do, and by the way tries to get into the Indonesian parliament(!) with Pancasila, Anwar Kongo lets his hair become black and goes from showing the most effective (= less blood) killing method to play a victim in his film, to getting sick in the end scene. Still you sit with the feeling that Anwar Kongo, the charismatic grandfather, at any time would repeat the sentence ”all this talk about human rights pisses me off”, whatever the political situation in today’s Indonesia is.

The film premiered in 60 Danish cinemas yesterday via the DoxBio.

Denmark, 2012, 115 mins.

www.cphdox.dk

Vurdering:

cph:dox Recommendations

The 10th Copenhagen documentary film festival runs until sunday. Filmkommentaren will review some of the films and recommend  Copenhageners and festival guests, what should be watched.

A must of course is Oppenheimer’s ”The Act of Killing”. The film still has 4 screenings at the festival (two of the 159 mins. version and two of the 115 mins. version). The cinema distribution (the 115 mins. version) kicks off on the 7th (wednesday) through the brilliant DoxBio initiative. Equally you should not miss the Brothers Taviani and their ”Caesar Must Die”, Golden Bear in Berlin. Where ”The Act of Killing” is a grandiose Shakespearean story, ”Caesar Must Die” (photo) is literally the mise-en-scène of the play ”Julius Caesar”, magnificently performed by inmates in a prison in Rome. The word magnificent is the one and only to be used about the cinematography of a third film in the main competition of cph:dox, the one that did not win at DOK Leipzig, ”The Last Station” by Chilean Catalina Vergara and Christian Soto, the latter responsible for the camera work, which brings dignity and love to the old people at the nursery home, the last station.

... and if you want to experience how light and playful filmmaking (also) can be, watch Scottish Mark Cousins wee film, ”What is this Film called Love”, shot on a mobile phone in Mexico City during three days where the director had no agenda, did some push-ups in his hotel room but ended up going around in the city communicating with a photo of Eisenstein, who never finished his Mexico-film. 18 mins. of pure pleasure!

And here is quote from the review made of the new film by Timo Novotny, ”Trains of Thoughts”: Novotny is an aesthete and his fascination of lines and forms is brilliantly conveyed through the montage of images, words and the music of the Sofa Surfers. Music that flows the whole way through and is synergetic with the image in pulse and rythm, contrary to the mainstream use of music in documentaries today, where the music is poured on like sugar to hide lack of energy in the sequences.  

And another quote from the film of Namir Abdel Messeeh, ”The Virgin, the Copts and Me”, a doc comedy: This storytelling tool, including the making of the film in the narrative, a meta plan, works in this case as the film is about a young French filmmaker who, after 15 years, goes back to his Egyptian coptic roots in a village, against the will of the mother, who in the beginning says that ”no members of the family (should be) in the film”. But the help of mum gets the film to be finished, the family members all end up in the film, which adds to the film’s light-hearted entertaining qualities at the same time as it gives a beautiful hommage to people far away from Tahrir Square, in a small village where someone once saw the apparation of Virgin Mary.

http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/a1.lasso?e=1

Dan Curean: Gone Wild

To be honest, I did not have high expectations. I knew that Dan Curean had worked 4 years on his film about wild horses in the Romanian Danube delta, but I had no idea that he had done so to get it all and he had transferred the material into a multilayered documentary epic on man and nature, rich on poetic observations, and on conflicts and with a great camera work.

On top of that, Curean tells his story in first person with a brilliant text performed by a brilliant voice. You trust the ”I” from the very beginning when he takes you to the horses and to the boy, Ivan, who we follow on horseback, with the horses, with his horse Viktor, who gives him lice (!), sailing in the water of the marshes, right to the end of the film, where he, years older, seems to help those who have come to catch the horses to bring them to the slaughterhouse. Avoiding the eyes of the ”I”, Ivan is, the camera, Dan Curean. Many horses go, but a public protest campaign stops what is called a massacre.

Wild horses, stray horses – the background is that ”the abandoned horses of the communist time farms were slowly being turned into wild horses like in the old times”, and now they spoil the forest, it is being said.

Dan Curean puts the story into a human context. Apart from the boy Ivan and his relation to nature (reminding this viewer about ”Louisiana Story” by Robert Flaherty and Richard Leacock), he introduces Murgur, an older bearded, wise man, who knows all about horses and their behaviour, and is a teacher for Ivan. As well as old Dochia, a woman who is said to be mad, ”a good witch” she says about herself, happy that Mugur is there as he reminds her about her (dead or disappeared?) husband. She brings fine songs to the screen. Not to talk about Taras, who is in his nineties, he kept one horse until his death.

There is a beautiful balanced blend of fairy tale and documentation, even a cowboy film feel there is, in a film, that catches all seasons, and luckily has many wordless sequences. Including images of horses, who freezed to death during the harsh winter of 2010 as well as a visual demonstration of social life in almost deserted villages, where alcoholism reigns.

The film won an award at the festival in Sibiu in the category ecological films. No offense to this genre but ”Gone Wild” will, I hope, be placed in many festivals as what it is: an excellent, creative documentary!

http://www.astrafilm.ro/astra-film-festival-2012-awards-1.aspx?theme=1

http://tifftv.ro/interviu-dan-curea-gone-wild

Romania, 2012, 87 mins. 

Vurdering:

DOK Leipzig 2012 – the Awards

DOK Leipzig winners have been announced to night. For this filmkommentaren correspondent it was a surprise (see post below) that the Swedish ”Colombianos” by Tora Mårtens got the first prize, the Golden Dove, whereas the Silver Dove to Ilian Metev for ”Sofia’s Last Ambulance” was an expected winner, as well as the honorary mention to the Chinese ”Cloudy Mountains” by Zhu Yu by the jury of the main competition.

Bravo also to the fine and warm ”Pablo’s Winter” (photo) by Chico Pereira, who received an honorary mention in the Talent category – and the award for the best film about the subject Work.

The MDR (the local broadcaster) Prize went to Helena Trestikova for her ”Private Universe”.

The many awards, and the motivations, at the DOK Leipzig are listed on the website below.  

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/festival/preistraeger_2012

http://www.stocktown.com/2012/03/colombianos/

DOK Leipzig – Films/ 4

Had an interesting conversation with Polish filmmakers last night at a dinner reception held by the good and always active people from Krakow Film Foundation and Festival. Two of their compatriots, members of juries, had to leave early for an evening screening with an audience. Is that right, we discussed, should juries watch the competing films with the audience or on their own, and should juries watch films in the evening after a long day – or should they do their work in the mornings. Of course there are a lot of practicalities involved, when festival people organise a time schedule for juries, but having been in loads of juries I can only say how pleasant it has been to watch films in the mornings and early afternoons with other jury members and to have the first discussions right after the screenings. With films on a big screen, of course.

So what does the DOK Leipzig international jury decides to communicate tomorrow night at the closing ceremony.

Let me try to come up with some ideas for films that could be candidates for the awards in the ”DOK Internationaler Wettbewerb”, the feature length international competition. I have seen most of the films – in the mornings at the market – some of them only in parts, to be fair.

”11 Images of a Human” by the couple Markku Lehmuskallio and Anastasia Lapsui was disappointing compared to what they have been doing before. Heavy and over-structured it is and not at all the ”poetic reflection on cave paintings and petroglyphs” that the catalogue text says. ”Another Night on Earth”, by Spanish David Munoz, is one of many current films that let people be driven and filmed in a taxi, this time in Cairo. Conversations, sometimes entertaining but most of the time boring. I already, below, wrote about the Bangla Desh film ”Are You Listening?”, it will get a prize for sure but maybe not the Golden Dove, whereas the Chinese ”Cloudy Mountain” by Zhu Yu might candidate because of its visual strength depicting people working in asbestos mines. Swedish ”Colombianos” by Tora Mårtens is weak, ”Documentarian” (see below) will not go for main prizes, and I doubt that Peter Mettler’s essayistic ”The End of Time” can unite a jury. Polish pedophile subject film, ”Entangled”, by Lidia Duda, demonstrates how difficult it is to make a film, where you are not allowed to show faces, and Damien Ounouri’s fine ”Fidaï” about the Algerian FLN fighter going back in time and place is probably not strong enough. German ”Der Kapitän und sein Pirat”, on the contrary, is a great piece of investigative and character driven documentary, raising so many moral and ethical questions about the ship piracy, this time off the Somalian coast. Swiss Olivier Zuchuat has visited Makronisos with ”Like Stone Lions at the Gateway Into Night”, several Greek filmmakers have done the same, much better than this documentary that suffers from too much perfume.

The Chilean ”Last Station” (photo) will get a prize, one of the Doves, is my guess for its beauty in approach and cinematography, rightly characterised in the catalogue as ”picturesque dark tableaux vivants, the rythm of slowness turns into poetry”, and another one will be given to ”Sofia’s Last Ambulance” by Bulgarian Ilian Metev.

... but I might be totally wrong! (And I have not talked to any jury members!)

www.dok-leipzig.de

DOK Leipzig – Films/ 3

The festival in Leipzig also hosts several workshops, where documentary projects are being developed. Andrea Prenghyova, one of the founders of the IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) in Prague, presented for the second year, in collaboration with the festival, projects that were at rough cut stage, or at rough rough cut stage as one said to me, or finished. The session with the presentation of the projects were very well received, and it seems that the DOK.Incubator has come to stay.

Also the Mediterranean focused Storydoc programme had its final session in Leipzig. The workshop that include film proposals from Palestine, Algeria, Greece and other countries, is organised by the Greeks in collaboration with the EDN (European Documentary Network).

A film that came out of a workshop connected to Dox Box festival in Damascus had its world premiere in Leipzig. Lina Alabed, of Palestinian/Egyptian origin, presented her ”Damascus, My First Kiss”, shot in Damascus (where she no longer lives) with herself as the leading character in a courageously open and well told story about three women and their growing up in a culture where talking about your body and sexuality is a taboo.

http://dokincubator.net/

www.dok-leipzig.de

www.dox-box.org

http://www.proactionfilm.com/pkg09/index.php?page=show&dir=docs&ex=2&lang=2&ser=1&cat=168

DOK Leipzig - Films/ 2

The Doc Alliance vod that characterises itself ”your online documentary cinema”, and has over 700 quality films in the catalogue, that can be streamed or downloaded for a prize between 0,50 to 5€ - also takes part in the DOK Leipzig with a generous offer to all of us:

Watch for free a selection of short films from DOK Leipzig 2011!

To be recommended (seen by this blogger) are ”Decrescendo” (photo) by Polish Marta Minorowicz, the Scottish ”Kirkcaldy Man” by Julian Schwanitz and the Russian ”I will for get this Day” by Alina Rudnitskaya. Read more about them and others on the site of Doc Alliance, and take a closer look at the site of the best documentary vod.

http://dafilms.com/

DOK Leipzig – Films/ 1

Any films that we must see, film students and others who enter the festival centre ask me. Many, I answer, because there are many that have high quality. The problem in my answering is that many of the films I have not seen yet, as they are world or European or National premieres, but after three days at the video library, see below, I have tips to pass on. Some of these will later on have a review on this site, some will not.

A film that I keep on recommending is the masterly done ”Sofia’s Last Ambulance” (photo) by Ilian Metev, as well as ”The End of Time” that I have not seen yet, but Peter Mettler is a unique film essayist, so for that it is a must. As is the opening film of the festival that I also screened in the video library, ”Are You Listening” by Kamar Ahmad Simon from Bangla Desh, a classic humanistic, cinematically brilliant work that character-wise brings back memories of the Apu-trilogy of Satayit Ray when it comes to the film’s boy and his parents.

The Latvian ”Documentarian” by Inese Klava and Ivars Zviedris is of course a must for all who work with documentaries, it has humour and a fantastic character, who loves and hates to be filmed at the same time as she is building a friendship with the cameraman/ director who comes to see her.

Another character who is charismaric in his old, grumpy age is Pablo, a pensioned miner, whose daily life is followed by director Chico Pereira in ”Pablo’s Winter”, a warm film that perfectly catches the rythm of moving slowly around, having time to argue with the wife and teach a kid how to bicycle.

Finally, ”Tea or Electricity” by Jerome le Maire, from a village in the mountains of Morocco, just nominated for the European Award as best documentary, is a film to be enjoyed for its way of treating the theme of, yes, do we really need electricity?

www.dok-leipzig.de

DOK Leipzig – Being There

Time for a small report after three days at a festival that it is always pleasant to visit in a city, that it is always pleasant to visit. Eine Kulturstadt, that has developed immensely since the days around 1990 where I attended the festival for the first time nach der Wende. Now the festival centre is in the Museum der Bildenden Künste, in the new building from 2004. This is where the very well functioning digitalised video library is situated and where your blogging correspondent for a couple of festivals have passed hours in front of the computer picking films from the big catalogue. With good image and sound. Professional it is, as most of the elements of a festival that is well visited and visible in the streets where accredited professionals and documentary film buffs walk from one place to the other with their red bags, heading for not only cinemas bul also places where discussions take place within the industry section of the festival. I counted that today thursday there are 10 seminars/workshops taking place during daytime and evening, from ”outreach and campaigning in focus” to ”cross media case studies” – to, networking is important, the daily get-together with a couple of non-hearable speeches and glasses of wine being carried around.

Food is important and the festival centre has a fine café with fine food mastered by the same people who stand behind Hotel (and restaurant) Michaëlis, where I usually stay. This year I am at Motel One, two minutes from everything, a big machine that is ok and where most of the festival guests are staying.

Photo from the best film I saw today: Thomas Riedelsheimer’s beautiful work on the Japanese artist Susumu Shingu, “a journey through the world as he follows his life-long dream-project and explores the energy of wind and water.” Title: Breathing Earth, Germany, 2012, 93 mins.

http://www.mdbk.de/

http://filmpunkt.com/projects_WInd_eng.html

www.dok-leipzig.de

The Act of Killing Interview with the Director

The headline of the interview in Realscreen is “Mixing the real and the surreal” and the first lines go like this:

“In time for its presentation as the cph:dox (Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival)’s opening film, filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer tells realscreen about his “observational documentary of the imagination.”

The film opened the festival today tuesday evening with several screenings during the festival of the 115 mins. version as well as the 159 mins. version.

Read more: http://realscreen.com/#ixzz2ApBt0M48

Chinese Winner at DocLisboa

Wang Bing got one more prize added to his impressive filmography through the ”Grande Prémio Cidade de Lisboa”, the first prize at the DocLisboa that ended sunday. The film in question is ”Three Sisters” (153 mins., France Hong Kong, 2012). Description taken from the site of the festival:

“Three sisters live alone in a small village family house in the high mountains of the Yunan region. They spend their days working in the fields or wandering in the village. The father returns to the village. He has come to take the girls with him to the city but he then agrees to leave the older one under the supervision of her grandfather.”

Special Jury Prize was given to “The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 years without Images” (66 mins., France, 2011) with a special mention to the film that wins wherever it goes, “Sofia’s Last Ambulance” (75 mins., Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany) by Ilian Metev from Bulgaria.

The two last mentioned are to be watched at DOK Leipzig this week, “Sofia’s Last Ambulance” competes in the International Competition category. One more award… for this excellent piece of cinema?

http://www.doclisboa.org/2012/pt/edicao/premiados/

www.dok-leipzig.de

DOK Leipzig Opening Night

Opening nights can be very long with speeches and introduction of juries and honorary guests. DOK Leipzig is no exception. It took looong time to get people seated so the ceremony was delayed up front, and it did not help that the master of ceremony, head of programming at the festival, Grit Lemche, not the most obvious choice for that job, improvised to make a warm atmosphere, fine enough but to much internal small talk, that took time.

Before the film from Bangla Desh, see below, Claas Danielsen (photo), festival director, made his welcoming and film political speech, where he championed filmmakers and criticized current production and working conditions. “In many areas of the film industry, there is an imbalance of power that has the potential to push entire groups within the profession to the edge of economic survival,” Danielsen said. Films often develop under exploitative conditions for writers and in conjunction with an enormous financial and personal risk for producers. The festival director criticized broadcasters, but also spoke in hopeful terms: “I envision a partnership-based approach that finally establishes a fair playing field for the work of creatives in all genres. We need filmmakers and writers who can make a living from their work.” Danielsen also appealed to politicians: “We need real copyright protection for creative professionals – and politicians who will do all they can to protect their achievements.”

At the opening festivities, the Danish film THE WILL by Christian Sonderby Jepsen was given the 2012 Doc Alliance Award. The prize is worth 5,000 euros and is handed out alternately at the six European film festivals that have formed the Doc Alliance.

Good for the Leipzig audience that they can watch a Danish documentary – otherwise idfa has taken priority to screen new Danish documentaries, 9 this year (!), which leaves out DOK Leipzig. Schade.

www.dok-leipzig.de

DOK Leipzig Opens Monday Night

As a festival guest and reporter for this blog you receive loads of mails about what is to happen. Of course. The Leipzig festival sustains a good tradition for press releases that  - unlike others – refrain from saying ”we are the best in the world” but limits itself to convey information letting the enthusiasm come out in the film descriptions that are authored by members of the selection committee. Good idea but also ”dangerous” as you might run into texts that include an interpretation of what you are to watch. But that is another story. Here follows an edited version of the press release  that introduces the festival:

The 55th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film will opens Monday in the Leipzig CineStar theater complex… A keynote speech will be delivered by festival director Claas Danielsen. DOK Leipzig will open with the animated film DEMONI by Theodore Ushev and the documentary film ARE YOU LISTENING! (photo) by Kamar Ahmad Simon, the first film from Bangladesh to be shown in the International Competition at DOK Leipzig. Grit Lemke, head of the documentary programme at DOK Leipzig, will preside over the evening.

By Sunday, 360 films from 62 countries will have been screened at DOK Leipzig. The official programme includes 84 documentaries and 114 short animated films. About 200 filmmakers will be present in Leipzig, as will numerous protagonists from the various films. Alongside the 264 film screenings, DOK Leipzig will be offering a variety of master classes, workshops, case studies, roundtables and panel discussions on issues facing the industry today. The 1,400 accredited industry guests this year are evidence that DOK Leipzig has become one of the main gatherings of the documentary industry.

This year, the 5,000 euro Doc Alliance Award will be presented in Leipzig during the opening festivities. The most important prizes at DOK Leipzig are the Golden and Silver Doves and the Talent Dove of the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig, which will be awarded on the festival Saturday in Leipzig's Central Theater. A record 79,000 euros of prize money will be awarded at this year’s festival.

www.dok-leipzig.de

DOK Leipzig Highlights

As advisor for the festival (that starts on monday the 29th), when it comes to films from the Baltic countries I was happy this morning to see that the festival on their site put a focus on 9 films with two of them being from the region that I know and like much:

The Documentarian (photo) by Ivars Zviedris and Inese Klava from Latvia and Ub Lama by Egle Vertelyte from Lithuania. Here follows the description of the film from the site, signed by members of the festival’s selection committee:

The Documentarian: Dziga Vertov himself regarded “life caught in the act”, “life as it is” as the ultimate goal of the documentary. He and his kinoki used every means, even hidden cameras, and no one got mad because the cinematograph was a sensation people wanted to be part of. Almost 100 years later, the two young directors Ivars Zviedris and Inese Kļava take their camera to the moorlands of Kemeri near Riga to explore the life of a hillbilly named Inta. This rustic eccentric with the impressive voice may not own a TV set, but she knows the rules of mass media (including the nuances separating docu-soap and reality show) only too well, especially concerning her worth and rights with regard to the “paparazzi”. She takes command from the start, showering directors, cameramen and producers with curses whose violence makes ordinary mortals blush. Inta says things like “You’re shitting into my soul, you fucking bastard, with your damned camera!” and is not averse to taking up a metal stick to “smash Ivar’s head” or hand him to the “pederasts”. She won’t accept money, but those who “get rich on her poverty” ought to pay nonetheless. Later she’ll cry... while the film has long since become a tragicomic relationship movie, like a meta-commentary about the “documentarian’s” existence in the age of radical moral abandonment. (aka: authenticity).
– Barbara Wurm

UB Lama: A boy like many others of his age: Galaa (12) is a smart, pudgy little rascal who’s not overly fond of school. He prefers to hang out with his little brother (6), listen to hip hop music, watch wrestling on television or eat junk food and play at online dating. The latter is only a fantasy, though, for Galaa lives with his mother and little brother in a yurt settlement on the edge of Ulan Bator (without a computer, of course). For the family – his father died in an accident a few years ago – every new day is a balancing act of survival, for what they earn as ambulant petty traders on the market is barely enough to buy food. So enrolling the boy in a Buddhist monastery school is less a matter of vocation than of existential self-defence. It would be a relief for the family if he was accepted and Galaa himself would be offered a real future perspective. The boy soon realises that this thing would not be bad for him at all and acquires a taste for the whole ceremonial order of Buddhist monasticism with its drums, prayer mills, colourful clothes and bags. A charmingly light and fascinatingly profound documentary coming-of-age story deftly balanced between materialism and spiritualism and – last but not least –fuelled by a heart-rending sense of humour.
– Ralph Eue

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/festival/filmfinder

The Act of Killing – Interview with the Producer

Signe Byrge Sørensen is CEO and producer at Final Cut for Real, which is located in Copenhagen, Denmark. She has been a producer for 14 years...

This is how an extended interview with the producer of the opening film of cph:dox starts, done by EDN (European Documentary Network) and to be found in its full length on the website of the organisation.

And it is indeed very good reading. Not only because it gives the background to the collaboration between Signe Byrge Sørensen and the director of the film, Joshua Oppenheimer, but also, actually first of all, because it gives a fine story about how a young Danish prodcer made her way from politically engaged, social documentary production in the financially good climate for documentary funding in Denmark, to now stand behind a film about which the director of dph:dox Tine Fishcer says:

"The Act of Killing' is like nothing else I have seen. It is radical in its political analysis and criticism, it is progressive in its combination of genres; gangster drama, glossy musical and surreal psychotic drama. And it sits with you in a way that is inescapable. It will become a film which will receive a prominent place in film history, and a film that everyone should see. Not only those with a particular interest in political documentary, but everyone who has the courage to face 'the heart of darkness'. It never becomes black and white because even the most hardened executioner can be confronted with his own lies."

"The Act of Killing" opens cph:dox in some days.

www.edn.dk

www.cphdox.dk

Klara Trencsenyi: Corvin Variations

I met Hungarian Klara Trencsenyi at the Astra Film Festival, where her newest work “Corvin Variations” was screened. Two years ago Trencsenyi organised a project development workshop for creative documentaries in Budapest that I took part in. Since then the political situation in Hungary, also called ORBANistan, has worsened drastically, which also has influenced the film funding climate that as in many other areas is said to be suffering heavily from corruption… Back to the film, here is the description taken from the festival catalogue:

“The so-called Corvin Project initiated in 2003 was the largest and most awarded Central European city development project. It envisioned the full transformation of cca. 22 acres in Budapest's 8th district, which implied the demolition of all buildings in that area. Both the local government and the investor wanted to get rid of the "slums" by relocating more than one thousand families - among them many Roma people - who could not afford buying property in the old-new area. The protagonists of Corvin Variations are all local residents who have been relocated in the course of the project - and who recall, with nostalgia and criticism, the life in the old neighbourhood and community. They no longer see each other - they meet only in the reconstructed space created by the filmmakers…”

Out of this theme the director, who already showed her excellence in camerawork in her previous film ”Bird’s Way”, has created a light-toned stylistically playful documentary about memories that disappear as the houses are being demolished, about a neighbourhood where people helped each other, whereas now ”people are closed”, as one of the characters say in the film that is very much based on cleverly interviews and monologues with the inhabitants, who now, in general, live in the new flats they had to take when they were re-housed. Almost all Romas are out, as are most of the old people, as the flats are too expensive for them.

Hungary, 2011, 39 mins.

Vurdering:

Ada Bligaard Søby: Petey & Ginger

1. november på CPH:DOX får Ada Bligaard Søbys nyeste film premiere. Den har titlen Petey & Ginger - a testament to the awesomeness of mankind og på dens hjemmeside hedder det kontant om den: "When the global economy collapses the only true victors are those that weren't invited to the boom. Petey & Ginger elegantly and honestly documents two very real characters who semi-happily live on the fringes of I-don't-really-give-a-fuckville-and-that's-okay-ish. Filmmaker Ada Bligaard Søby again invites us into her ongoing infatuation with the treasure that is the blissfully detached lives of American Losers. Take notes…"

Trailer: http://youtu.be/5jANTWcpbdI 

Hybrid Films?

What is the future of hybrid films?... is one of many interesting debates that are to take place during the upcoming cph:dox in Copenhagen, November 1-11. It is the tenth edition of the festival with five international competition programmes, more than 200 films, 16 concerts, seminars, a forum, debates, events, ”and a birthday party, of course” – all can be checked on the website of the festival.

Back to hybrid films, this is the text that introduces the interesting seminar:

Over the past five years, the borderland between fiction and non-fiction has experienced a true creative boom. The field includes many different films, for example'The Ambassador', 'R', 'The Arbour', 'Quattro Volte', 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' (photo) and not least films made by the godfather of the whole movement, the Austrian Ulrich Seidl. The number of documentaries that can be found in this hybrid field is growing, and so is their artistic success. Hybrid films have the potential to deliver complex stories with a strong basis in reality, but with a fundamentally cinematic interpretation of it. But it is also a difficult field - financially speaking. For how do you support a film you don't know for sure if it is a documentary or a feature. Are the traditional genre definitions experiencing a paradigm shift, and what does this mean for how films are developed and supported? We have invited a number of film experts, whose professions all involve working with and supporting the new hybrid film forms. Meet, among others, Channel 4's Tabitha Jackson, the woman behind some of the most successful hybrid films, such as The Arbor. Lucas Smith from ZDF, who supports both fiction, non-fiction and new hybrid formats, Thomas Robsahm from the Norwegian Film Institute and Martin Schweighofer, the director of the Austrian Film Commission, which has a particularly strong tradition of supporting the new hybrid wave.

Date November 7.

http://www.cphdox.dk/d/index.lasso?e=1

Astra Film Festival/ 3

The festival in Sibiu ended last night with a very professional international orientated prize ceremony, held in Romanian and English languages. The Grand Prix went to ”Phnom Penh Lullaby” by Polish director Pawel Kloc, who with this film has made one of the most noticed works from the last couple of years. The director told me that this was his 6th award (plus several honorary mentions) and that the film had participated in around 70 festivals. The jury, headed by Luciano Barisone, director of the festival Visions du Réel in Nyon, Switzerland formulated the following motivation for the Grand Prix winner:

”The film captures the conflict in a strange couple’s private existence and draws a portrait of a complex man who is caught between realism and naivety and whose genuine desire for love clashes with a society corrupted by mass prostitution. The filmmaker shares with his protagonists an uncomfortable situation, keeping just the right distance from them and leaving the audience with the sad sense of life’s disappointing truth. The Jury was really impressed by this intense and painful journey to the end of the night.”

In the category ”Romanian Realities” the award was given to Artchil Khetagouri and Ileana Stanculescu for ”Noosfera”. With this motivation from the jury:

”Any debate on love is subjected to controversy. It has been the case of the jury members, who have expressed diverse feelings for one or another of the films in this competition. However, since love cannot be trapped between walls, or since some walls enclose three simultaneous  love stories, for the intrinsical humour of the approach, and for a universal reality, even if the story happens in Romania, for the subtle portraying of the characters, and in appreciation of a well-done  work, the jury gives the “ROMANIAN REALITIES” AWARD to NOOSFERA.

Khetagouri and Stanculescu were in Sibiu not only to show their film but also to conduct the workshop DocStories Black Sea. For this they deserve an award as well.

Dan Curean got the Ecocinematograff prize for ”Gone Wild”, a film on wild horses that this blogger met four years ago at the Discovery Campus as a promising project. The director gave me a dvd, the film will be reviewed on filmkommentaren.dk later. Swedish Maria Kuhlberg’s ”He thinks He´s Best” was best international documentary.

http://www.astrafilm.ro/astra-film-festival-2012-awards-1.aspx?theme=1

Goran Radovanovic: With Fidel Whatever Happens

The Serbian director held an inspiring and entertaining masterclass after the screening of his film at the Astra Film Festival in Sibiu in Romania. Radovanovic was one of the tutors at the DocStories Black Sea workshop session that includes filmmakers from Azerbadjan, Armenia, Georgia, Russia, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine.

The film, shot in 8 days, has a fine tone tied to a dramaturgical, authored construction of scenes, that the director lets develop in a pace that suits the rythm of life in the countryside in Cuba. An old man with his motorcycle that has problems in starting and in climbing the streets. Three big men on bicycles, filmed from behind. A young man going by bus to a far away village, he is a dentist. A couple in their house taking care of a public phone where private conversations can be heard. And a megaphone to be used on the first of May celebration day – ”with Fidel whatever happens”. Glimpses of life in Cuba put together in a poetic language.

I need reality to recreate, the director said, inviting the audience to understand his working method. I have staged everything, I was working with actors and I paid them. But the man with the motorbike is a man with a motorbike, the dentist is a dentist and so on so forth. This is my manipulation. But I am not lying at any moment. I am a director, not a social worker, but I never invent, I take from reality when I make documentaries.

The film that ends with a beautifully performed version of ”Lagrimas Negras”, also presents a woman in white who approaches the camera to sing Russian songs, and to serve as one, who chapters the filmic narration.

Serbia, 2011, 47 mins.

http://www.goranradovanovic.com/confidel.html

Vurdering:

Doc Stories Black Sea/ 5

The first session of the DocStories Black Sea was held in Tbilisi, Georgia, the second one here in sunny Sibiu in Transylvania, Romania within the framework of the 19th edition of the Astra International Documentary Film Festival. Which has a good audience for its programme, three halls with parallel screenings with whatever is needed to surround the screenings: a bar, an exhibition hall, video screens, and some hotels where guests are taking their sleep.

The workshop included several open sessions for others than the filmmakers taking part with their projects, that were more or less developed since the first session. Petr Lom showed and talked about his film from Egypt, ”Back to the Square”, lots of people and questions related to (mostly) ethical questions connected to the clips he showed  in his masterclass from previous films like ”Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan” (2004) and ”On a Tightrope” (2007) about the Uighur minority in China. The latter includes an old teacher of tightrope, who says ”A person without Love is like a tree without leaves”. Voila!

The animators of the masterly done animation doc, ”Crulic” (photo) (director Anca Damian), Raluca Popa and Dan Panaitescu gave a fascinating insight to how they made a fantastically creative work out of a, from a first glance, rather banal story about a Romanian man, who was wrongly detained in Poland, went on a hungerstrike and died from that, while noone was trying to make an investigation into his case, that created a scandal in both countries. The director made the right decision, when she decided to include animators/visual artists in telling the story that has so many great stylistical elements. Small budget but much more interesting to look at than ”Waltz With Bashir”!

The same (many elements in storytelling) goes for the personal film of American Rick Minnich, who presented his (and co-director Matt Sweetwood) ”Forgetting Dad”, which (text taken from the website of the film, link below) ”tells the bizarre (2008) story of Rick’s father’s sudden and incomprehensible amnesia, which began one week after a seemingly harmless car accident in Sacramento, California, in 1990. After the onset of his amnesia, Rick’s father re-christened himself “New Richard” and began a completely new life, leaving his family feeling abandoned and baffled at where “Old Richard” went.”

Minnich took the audience on a well prepared, honest and open tour into his (and the co-director’s) fight to make a film that was interesting universally – and he succeeded brilliantly to have us viewers follow the story from A to Z. For this blogger because he is constantly surprising us with new elements in a film that has the essay character but is also what he himself calls ”a psychological detective story”. Which is good keeping some distance to the obvious very sentimental sequences, where family members talk about losing a father, who is still there but who is he?

http://lomfilms.com/FILMS.html

http://www.forgettingdad.com/

http://www.astrafilm.ro/news.aspx

http://www.docstories-blacksea.com/ 

DOK Leipzig

This is the press release from the upcomoing DOK Leipzig. Of course there is a lot of publicity words in this but figures are impressive and interesting, and the quotes of he director document that the political engagement, and the openness to the so-called third world are intact elements of the prestigious old festival:

84 documentaries and 114 short animated films will make up the official programme of this year‘s DOK Leipzig. Among the documentaries are 27 world premieres and 14 international premieres, a record number for the film festival. The 198 selected films were chosen from 2,847 entries submitted from 113 countries. The number of countries also marks a new high. The 55th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film will also feature numerous special programmes, so that a total of 360 films from 62 countries will be shown during the festival from 29 October to 4 November.

Festival director Claas Danielsen praised the depth and scope of the festival’s official programme: “This year’s films paint a very exciting and varied picture of a world in transition. In that way, the festival serves as a barometer of fundamental political, social and cultural change.” The themes of protest, resistance and globalization recur throughout the programme. “Told through the stories of individual human beings, the work of the filmmakers provides an emotional window on how the world is changing.” This year, DOK Leipzig is proud to be showing films from five continents. The opening film ARE YOU LISTENING! comes from Bangladesh, a first in the history of the festival. The 13 films in the prestigious International Competition come from renowned directors as well as from impressive new talents in Europe, Asia and Latin America. “The maturity and determination of these young talented filmmakers is absolutely extraordinary,” says festival director Claas Danielsen.

Danielsen is equally impressed with the German competition: “This year’s group is perhaps the strongest since we introduced the section eight years ago. The quality of documentary film production in our country can absolutely hold its own on the international stage.” Also among the five competition categories in which the Golden and Silver Doves and many other prizes will be awarded are the International Competition Animated Film, the International Short Documentary Competition and the Young Cinema Competition (formerly Generation DOK). In addition to the competitions, DOK Leipzig will be presenting attractive special programmes such as the “The Spirit of Freedom” focus on Latin America, the “Utopias and Realities – The Red Dream Factory” retrospective and four filmmaker tributes. Those honored will be Barbara Hammer, Peter Nestler, Mariola Brillowska and Boris von Borresholm. New this year is an extensive children’s and youth program with contemporary animated and documentary films. More Information: www.dok-leipzig.de

Photo: UB Lama by Lithuanian Eglė Vertelytė is in the competition for young cinema.

Doc Festivals All Over

Tomorrow I am going to Sibiu in Romania, to a workshop that takes place within the Astra Film Festival, that runs until the 21st, whereas DocLisboa with its new leadership started on the 18th and runs until the 28th, overlapping the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival October 23-28, with DokLeipzig starting the day after, the 29th of October running until November 4, where cph:dox in Copenhagen has been running for a couple of days with the end on November 11, 3 days before idfa opens in Amsterdam!

Bulimi? Because I am sure, I have missed some festivals that have chosen the same dates for their (as idfa beautifully puts it on its website) celebration of the creative documentary. Why so many in October? Some say because it makes the funding process easier/gives you more time if you are late in a calendar year, others say that the European rainy autumn is perfect for watching films in a cinema, other (festivals) say they want to be away from Berlinale in February... and the Sheffield DocFest has moved to June from October/November to avoid competition, also because many people complain that it is too much.

The too-much'ers are professionals connected to the so-called industry events. They are buyers, commissioning editors, producers who are to pitch their projects... and they are having a busy time going from one to the other. On the other hand, it is their job!

If you look at the festival selection processes, the many festivals at the same time definitely creates strong competitive elements as festivals want films to have European or World or National premiere to boost their programme. Should I go to DOKLeipzig or to idfa, many directors ask confused knowing that you can not be at both, at least not in the competition sections.

But does the hungry doc audience in Sibiu, Lisbon, Jihlava, Leipzig, Copenhagen or Amsterdam care about these internal exclusivity rules? Of course not, they want to watch the best of the best and they expect their festival programmers to take care of that.

One of the films that go to several of the festivals mentioned is by the master Peter Mettler, titled ”The End of Time”, photo.

Joshua Oppenheimer: The Act of Killing

Werner Herzog says of Oppenheimer's depiction of power and violence: "I have not seen a film as powerful, surreal, and frightening in at least a decade... unprecedented in the history of cinema." And Errol Morris praises Oppenheimer's portrayal of violence and cinematic imagination: "Like all great documentaries, 'The Act of Killing' demands another way of looking at reality. It starts as a dreamscape, an attempt to allow the perpetrators to reenact what they did, and then something truly amazing happens. The dream dissolves into nightmare and then into bitter reality. An amazing and impressive film." (blogs.indiewire.com)

Når Herzog og Morris siger sådan, bliver jeg mere end interesseret. Når jeg ser traileren på Vimeo bliver jeg rystet, helt bogstaveligt rystet, selv om jeg forstår, det er rekonstruktioner, ikke fiktion, nej, omhyggelige genskabelser af erindringsbilleder, ikke fortrængninger, men de mest forfærdende hændelser og gerninger, disse medvirkende lever med som deres liv. Som noget selvfølgeligt, forstår jeg? Jeg SKAL se den film om de indonesiske dødspatrulje-gangstere, som myrdede kommunister for magthaverne midt i 60’erne. Den åbner CPH:DOX 30. oktober.

Filmen havde premiere på festivalen i Toronto tidligere i år, den er produceret af blandt andre Final Cut for Real og klippet af Janus Billeskov Jansen og Niels Pagh Andersen med flere, så den skal vel i dansk distribution efterhånden?

Still: En af scenerne fra traileren, en mere end brutal afhøring.

PS Jamen dansk distribution er altså sikret! Jeg siger selvfølgelig ja til Saras invitation, og her er hendes link til DOX:BIO med liste over alle biograferne, hvor filmen vises simultant 7. november:

http://www.doxbio.dk/dbio/b.lasso?d=2012502&n=1119&e=0 

Astra Film Festival 2012/ 1

“Eighty films produced in twentyfive countries  to be screened in seven days”, this is the way that the Astra Film Festival (October 15-21) in Sibiu, Romania introduces itself. The festival has an international competitive programme of 9 films (see below), a Romanian competition of 9 films, a section called Eco Cinematograff, also competitive as well as a student section. But if you want an insight to new Romanian documentaries, Sibiu seems to be the place to be. This is the (slightly shortened) text from the website in troducing the themes of the films:

In mid-autumn, while Romania's television screens are snoring accompanied by the noise of political talk-shows, stories of Romanian realities heat up the projection screens of Sibiu's Astra Film Festival.

A diversified image of today's Romania is sketched through the Romanian films being screened for a week in Sibiu: from unusual subjects, such as young men's first days of freedom after years of incarceration (Turn Off the Lights by Ivana Mladenovic), a year in the life of a young Roma beggar in Helsinki (Helping Mihaela by Hanna Maylett), or the troubles of Sumna, a 20 year-old woman from Israel who has been adopted as a baby and is searching for her biological mother in Bucharest (Sumna’s Letter, by Hadar Kleinman-Zadock); to subjects dealing with Romania's recent history, such as a digest of the events in December 1989  (Empty Hearts and Full Wallets, by Cornel Mihalache) and the recent flawed privatizations of some Romanian factories (Crosses of the secular plants, by director Gabriela Baiardi).

The line-up of Romanian films promises a great cinema experience, as each film has a different cinematographic approach, thus covering the whole range:

Astra Film Festival/ 2

As stated above10 films are listed in the international competition of the Astra Film Festival in Sibiu in Romania. Among them are films that have made an impression on this blogger at other festivals like Petr Lom’s ”Back to the Square” from the revolution in Egypt, Dana Budisavljevic’ ”Family Meals”, an intimate look at the director’s family’s lack of communication about subjects ”not to be mentioned”, made in a warm and entertaining way, as well as the strong and intense portrait of a couple in constant trouble in ”Phnom Penh” by the big talent from Poland, Pawel Kloc. How we meet another culture is the theme of ”Solar Eclipse” by Martin Marecek from Czech Republic, funny and thought-provoking.

The festival also hosts the second session of ”DocStories Black Sea”. Apart from tutoring the projects of the workshop, Petr Lom will do a masterclass named ”Profession Documentarist”, American Rick Minnich will show his ”Forgetting Dad”, a personal and investigative film, Serbian Goran Radovanovic will present and talk about his docufiction ”With Fidel Whatever Happens”, and French producer Serge Gordey will do a session on web documentaries and interactive storytelling.

The workshop is run by Romanian Ileana Stanculescu and Georgian Artchil Khetagouri, both directors, their last film being ”Noosfera”, reviewed on this blog. I will be there as well, as a tutor.

http://www.astrafilm.ro/news.aspx

http://www.docstories-blacksea.com/

Message to Man 2012 Winners

The St. Petersburg festival ended with several awards as the tradition goes at the festival that covers documentaries, long and short, animation, short fiction and experimental films. Headed by Austrian director Michael Glawogger the international jury gave the main prize, the Golden Centaur, to the 15 minutes long Slovakian film ”The Last Bus” by Martin Snopek, a mix in style between animation and live action. Best long documentary award was given to the beautiful Italian ”Summer of Giacomo” by Alessandro Comodin and best short to Spanish David Munoz for ”Another Night on Earth”.

In the national competition “Centaur” for the best full length documentary film goes to ”Born in the USSR: 28Up” (Part 1) by director Sergey Miroshnichenko, for the best short documentary Valery Shevchenko was awarded for ”Inside a Square Circle”.

The Russian film critics prize as well as the Pavel Kogan Prize was given to Antoine Cattin and Pavel Kostomarov for ”Playback”

http://message2man.com/eng/

Collective Work: Winter, Go Away

This is how the film was described at its international premiere in Locarno a couple of months ago: “Ten director graduates from Marina Razbezhkina’s School of Documentary Film and Documentary Theatre lived with a camera for two months in order to chronicle the last “Russian winter” and its popular uprising against Vladimir Putin’s presidential run. People, faces, conversations, protests, failures and triumphs come together to chronicle the campaign.”

And as such one can only state that the students have graduated with bravour. What they give the viewer is a tense insight to all the activities run by the opposition against the fraud comedy around the re-election of Putin in March this year. Most of it happens in the streets, the demonstrations, the slogans, the confrontations with the police, the brutality – but when inside you also, as an example, experience a mother asking her son, who is about to make stilts for a street happening: Would you like to have a cup of tea before saving Russia?! Yes, there is a lot of fun in the film, there has to be as everyone knows that the result of the election was decided in beforehand, there is a lot of freshness, you get the Leacock “feeling of being there”, you get an interview with members of Pussy Riot and footage from the performance in the cathedral, and on the election day you witness what is quite evident a manipulation of votes. Only a few times I felt that I should know more to understand what I see, mostly with who-is-who matters, otherwise I left the film breathless because of tension that had been documented and informed from an anti-Putin point of view – with some fine scenes where Putin supporters discuss with the opposition activists.

Russia, 2012, 90 mins. / Directors: Aleksey Zhiryakov, Denis Klebleev, Dmitriy Kubasov, Askold Kurov, Nadezhda Leontieva, Anna Moiseenko, Madina Mustafina, Zosya Rodkevich, Anton Seregin, Elena Khoreva

Seen at Message to Man Festival, St. Petersburg 2012

http://www.pardolive.ch/catalogue/film.html?fid=629902

Vurdering:

Sergey Miroshnichenko: Born in the USSR: 28 Up 1-2

Based on the original idea of Michael Apted – the 7UP series – Sergey Miroshnichenko has filmed a group of Russian kids when they were 7, 14, 21 and now 28 years old. The two-part series (each of them around 100 mins. long) presented at the Message to Man festival in St. Petersburg is an impressive piece of work that you just take in piece by piece = person by person, amazed to experience how much history has played a role in their lives, that started when USSR existed and took a completely different direction when the empire fell apart.

As in the work of Michael Apted (who now films kids who are in the 50’es!) Miroshnichenko cuts back and forward in time to let us see the 7 year old innocent having hopes for the future, the 14 year old having discovered more of the world including the opposite sex, the 21 year old who has already had the first child, and changed work several times and the 28 year old who divorced or has moved to another country – and did, in most cases, not have their child hopes fulfilled. There is drama, there is sadness but also happiness, and there are critical comments to Russian politics or religious commitments or... yes, they are like you and me, but their lives have definitely been destined by the outer circumstances. Like the Georgians, like the Lithuanians who lived in the same country when they were born but in independent republics when they were 7.

However, what comes out strongest in the films – where the director goes from person to person, with in-between-montage sequences that have a group of them comment on the same theme – is the emotions conveyed to us like (first part) the small boy Andrey, who when 7 do not have his parents, who get adopted to one family abroad and then to another one in the US, a boy marked by his past, and a young man who sits down as a 28 year old saying that he does not want to be filmed any longer. For personal reasons that he does not talk about. Heartbreaking as many of the stories are at the same time as you are impressed by the reflections that they make as kids or as grown-ups. Or (second part) the twins from St. Petersburg with their gamin faces constantly in trouble in opposition to each other, desparate to have a good life but not achieving a lot of what they hoped for. Fun and sad at the same time.

It is difficult to make a film with so many characters but Miroshnichenko succeeds to have the narrative go in a smooth rythm, and in a warm tone, with fine associative ”bridges” and with a voice-over that glues it together when necessary. You learn so much about Russia, well about life watching this work.  

http://message2man.com/eng/program_english/id/2/block/17

Vurdering:

Mika Ronkainen: Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart

This morning, my daily newspaper reminded me of a John Cage-quote: “I like to be moved, but I don’t like to be pushed”. Two days ago in Oulu, Finland, I found myself in a situation which I liked. It might have been some of the vodka from the night before, but during the end credits of this film my eyes couldn’t resist the welling of moist any more. Am I that big a cry-baby? Well, I know I wasn’t the only one in the theatre feeling this way and the film just slowly took a gentle grip of my throat and never let go.

Kai is a Finnish musician who - after he got a son - realizes that he in a strange way misses a sense of belonging, probably because he spent most of his childhood in Sweden. The film consists for a large part of him and his father going on a road trip to Gothenburg trying to understand that period. Kai and his father have never spoken much of the moving back and forth between countries, thus giving Kai a sense of rootlessness. Now they gradually start to talk – and on the way they are also meeting other Finnish Swedes under various circumstances which weaves into the story and theme.

The other main part of the film is even more congenially intertwined. It consists of live recordings of songs written by Finnish Swedes in the past and now performed by a new generation on the very locations Kai and his father reaches on their trip. It sounds corny, and it probably is, but it works so well and the music and the lyrics are poetically commenting on the theme of not quite belonging or even being looked down on as a foreigner in a foreign country.

Three cameras followed the pair on the trip and the cinematic skills – the filming, the editing and the sound mix – are just as they should be. Okay, maybe there is a few times where you suspect the director has asked those taking part in the film to say specific things or that they themselves were self-conscious about bringing information to the audience. And maybe you see one or two birds too many (the trick the film uses to tell us that Kai is thinking of his own ornithology interested son), but I can forgive that because Kai’s and his father’s relationship is depicted so empathically with lots of sweet moments, music, dialogue and pauses.

It didn’t win anything at Nordisk Panorama and has been rejected at both CPH:DOX and IDFA which either proofs that festival juries and selecting committees are insensitive bastards or that I really am a wuss. Okay, it may not be cutting edge or a glimpse into the future of documentary film making, but it really should be a globally appealing film. I feel very rooted in my Danish soil and I don’t have kids, but still I will have to give it at full six pens - simply because it made such a profound impression by moving me and not pushing me.

Mika Ronkainen: Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart, Finland 2012, 90 min. Seen at Nordisk Panorama in Oulu, Finland.

PS:

I made a quite grave mistake above in the review: Sweden finns and Finnish swedes are two completely different things

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish-speaking_population_of_Finland/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Finns/  

Kai and father don't meet Finnish swedes in Sweden cos Finnish swedes live in Finland. They meet Sweden finns.

Vurdering:

James Marsh: Project Nim

I guess that most readers know that James Marsh ”Project Nim” is about the dramatic life of a chimpanse... nevertheless read how Peter Bradshaw precisely introduced the film in Guardian August 11 2011:

“Project Nim was a sensational Pygmalion-type experiment devised by Professor Herb Terrace, a specialist in primate cognitive abilities at New York's Columbia University. In 1973, he wanted to see if a chimp (called Nim) could be taken into a human family and taught to communicate with sign language. Yet Marsh elegantly shows his audience that this is not entirely what Project Nim was about. Without any of the human participants acknowledging or even realising it, Project Nim was effectively a manipulative experiment in human sexual behaviour and family life.

Terrace was evidently a charismatic and powerful alpha-gorilla academic who simply declared that a former student of his (with whom he once had a sexual relationship) would have the honour of mothering his chimp-pupil…”

I can only support this analysis of this good film and add that it clearly demonstrates Marsh skills in building, one could say designing a story so it functions dramaturgically. He separates stylistically the interviews from the fantastic archive material with Nim, he has a strong music side the whole way through, as well as a sound design, and there are graphics (mostly words of or drawings from Nim’s sign language) filling the screen once in a while. It is all very effectively conveyed, we are asked to laugh and to cry at the right moments, it is a superb construction like “Man on Wire” was it, like “Searching for Sugarman” (same producer) is it. The use of effects to reach the goal is not hidden for the spectator, on the contrary. What I am trying to say, is that I felt like looking at a form that prevented me from entering the film totally, even if I wanted to. There are other new documentaries which are copying the style of Marsh or are a bit alike (Erroll Morris is a master of designed documentaries), am I the only one who is afraid that this trend will end up in predictable, designed superficiality?  

Seen at Message to Man, St. Petersburg 2012

http://www.project-nim.com/

UK/USA, 2011, 93 mins.

Vurdering:

Nordisk Panorama 2012

Awards were distributed at the Nordisk Panorama festival in Oulu. The best documentary prize went to the succesful Danish documentary “Ballroom Dancer” by Andreas Kofoed & Christian Bonke. The jury motivation:

"The Nordic Documentary Award goes to a perfect example of the power of documentary to capture the fragility and intensity of human emotion in a world that demands perfection and excellence at any cost. With cinematic grace and passion, the film presents dance as a beautifully realized microcosm of the complexities of human intimacy. Ultimately this is a film about love."

http://filmkontakt.com/

Crossroads Film Workshop Cairo

No, I did not see the pyramids or the Egyptian Museum. Yes, I saw the Nile from my hotel and had a quiet wonderful boat trip late night on the river. Yes, I crossed the Tahrir Square every morning on the way to the venue of the workshop, I attended as a tutor. And I saw how the street entrance to the American Embassy was blocked with huge stones. But on the tuesday morning where the workshop started, everything had calmed down after days of riots due to the film, everyone talks about but few have seen, including me.

So there was little, actually no time for seeing the sights but time dedicated to see filmmakers with documentary projects under the umbrella of the Crossroads film programme initiated and run by AFAC (The Arab Fund for Arts & Culture). A film programme so much needed – as the manager of the programme, Rima Mismar, wrote to me in the invitation letter, ”launched a year ago to support emerging filmmakers from the Arab world working on projects related to "possibility" and "change"… for young filmmakers who represent an exceptional talent cross-section from our region”.

As one who has followed the changes in the Arab world during the last year(s) this initiative is to be so much welcomed after news clips, and reportages, and the many documentaries, many of them good it has to be said, made by non-Arab filmmakers.

Back to Cairo and the workshop where you as a tutor arrive having read the projects, knowing a couple of them in beforehand, curious to meet the makers, talk to them, see material, see previous work – to try to have an impression that can form the basis for feedback the filmmakers can profit from. Of course it goes both ways, the filmmakers should know who you are. It always helps to talk about something that has nothing to do with the film to be done.

It was at the Cinematheque the workshop took place. Situated in an old, pretty worn, decadently beautiful art nouveau building, 8 floors, a charming hotel on the top floor, and, if I got it right, the plan is to have three floors dedicated to

RIDM 2012

A press release from Montréal, where the RIDM Festival resides, this year from November 7-18. The festival has chosen to celebrate its 15^th edition with a “special anniversary program, 15 Years, 15 All-Time Favourites”... "to mark our first 15 years, we invited 15 major figures from the film world to program their all-time favourite documentary. The result: 15 personal choices that add up to a unique subjective history of the first cinematic genre, presented together as a special program.”

The guest programmers and their picks: Lou Reed chose Visions of Light (Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy, Stuart Samuels) 
Barbet Schroeder chose Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki) 
Agnès Varda chose La France qui se lève tôt (Hugo Chesnard) 
Frederick Wiseman chose Hôtel Terminus (Marcel Ophüls) 
Philippe Falardeau chose Une délégation de très haut niveau (Philippe Dutilleul) 
Gael García Bernal chose Megacities (Michael Glawogger) (PHOTO) 
Philip Glass chose The Color of the Prism, the Mechanics of Time (Jacqueline Caux) 
Patrizio Guzmán chose Arcana (Cristóbal Vicente) 
Gilles Jacob chose L'homme à la caméra (Dziga Vertov) 
Naomi Kawase chose Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (Jonas Mekas) 
Kim Longinotto chose Into the Abyss (Werner Herzog) 
Samira Makhmalbaf chose Afghan Alphabet (Mohsen Makhmalbaf) 
Alanis Obomsawin chose Reel Injun (Catherine Bainbridge, Neil Diamond, Jeremiah Hayes) 
Laura Poitras chose Blowjob (Andy Warhol) et Crossroads (Bruce Conner) 
Jia Zhang Ke chose El cielo gira (Mercedes Álvarez).

http://www.ridm.qc.ca/fr

DOK Leipzig

Crisis... maybe, but films are made, just received this press release from DOK Leipzig: Some 2,850 films from 77 countries were submitted to this year's International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film, among them 2,200 documentaries and 650 animated films. The number of entries is down slightly from last years, when DOK Leipzig received a record 3,012 entries. The 55th edition of DOK Leipzig will take place from 29 October to 4 November 2012.

Around 75 films will be selected from among the entries to compete for the Golden Dove awards in the five competition sections. In all, DOK Leipzig will showcase around 200 documentaries and 150 short animated films. In addition, the festival will present a number of special programs and tributes. This year's retrospective will be on the German-Russian film studio Mezhrabpom, whose films in the 1920s and '30s inspired the entire European film avant-garde. The traditional country focus will be devoted to the young documentary cinema of Spanish-speaking Latin America. Awaiting animation enthusiasts at DOK Leipzig will be a journey of discovery through a century of Polish puppet anima- tion. Shortly before the presidential election in the United States, the festival will pay tribute with its special program on democracy to the U.S. documentary showcase "POV" ("Point of View"), which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Photo: Patricio Guzman, previous guest at the festival, for sure an inspiration for the young Latin American filmmakers coming to Leipzig.

www.dok-leipzig.de

Message to Man St. Petersburg

There are 11 feature length documentaries in the international competition of the Message to Man festival that takes place September 22-29. There are well known festival hits and winners like ”Bad Weather” (Giovanni Giommi), ”The Collaborator and His Family” (Adi Barash and Ruthie Shatz), ”Planet of Snails” (Seung-Jun Yi) and ”Bakhmaro” (Salome Jashi), but also a bordercrossing (between fiction and documentary) film like ”Summer of Giacomo” by Italian Alessandro Comodin. And this film blogger, who was in the jury of the festival two years ago, looks forward to watch Jerome Lemaire’s documentary from Marocco, ”Tea or Electricity”, as well as ”Miner’s Hymns” by Bill Morrison and Antoine Cattin/Pavel Kostomarov ”Playback”.

The festival includes several sections with short films, animation/fiction/documentary and has a national documentary competition, ”Gateway to Russia”, 23 films, long and short. Sergey Miroshnichenko presents his much awaited ”Born in the USSR: 28 UP”, built on the concept that was introduced by Michael Apted with ”7 UP”. The audience will also have the chance to watch talented Sergey Kachin’s ”On the Way Home”.

The festival has special programmes that are intriguing, like a chance to see films by the pioneer Vladislav Starevich, a section called ”nuclear propaganda” and a true film historical focus, the Oberhausen manifest that was made 50 years ago:

"The old film is dead. We believe in the new one." On 28 February 1962, at the 8th West German Short Film Festival in Oberhausen, 26 West German filmmakers proclaimed the Oberhausen Manifesto. This moment marked a milestone in the development of German cinema – never before, and never again, would a break with existing production conditions be demanded, and induced, with such vehemence. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Oberhausen Manifesto, the project "Provoking Reality – 50 Years of the Oberhausen Manifesto" provides a concrete basis for addressing this proclamation and related 1960s movements aiming at cinematic, cultural and political renewal in Germany.

http://message2man.com/eng/

Vilnius Documentary Film Festival

The 9th edition of the documentary fest in the capital of Lithuania takes place September 20-30. The opening film is Carlos Klein’s fine documentary Where the Condors Fly about Viktor Kossakovsky shooting his masterpiece Vivan las Antipodas. A prologue to a retrospective of the director’s work giving the audience the chance to watch great films like Belovs, Wednesday and Sviato – and of course Vivan las antipodas.

The festival has a strong competition programme with four films from each of the Baltic countries. From Estonia there are The New World by Jaan Tootsen and This is the Day by Kersti Uibo, the latter ”captures the flow and simple beauty of daily life in a monastery standing on a hill above the Serbian village of Velika Hoca in Kosovo”, to quote the webiste of the festival. From Latvia Laila Pakalnina comes with two works, Snow Crazy and 33 Animals of Santa Claus, and from the hosting country you find Giedre Zickyte’s How we Played the Revolution, Ramin by Audrius Stonys, Mindaugas Survila’s The Field of Magic (photo) and Goda Rupeikaite’s Variations on a Subject of Masks.

Furthermore there is a programme of films on beat poets and philosophy (Burroughs, Kerouac abd Ginsberg), and a panorama section with works like Planet of Snails and Private Universe by Helena Trestikova. All in all, an impressive artistic orientated selection. As last year where I was in the jury in Vilnius.

http://www.vdff.lt/uzdarymas

Baltic Sea Forum 2012/ 4

A kind of summing up after 5 intense days of Baltic Sea Forum in Riga Latvia, the16th edition. The reader should know that I have been part of the event from the very beginning, where it took place on the island of Bornholm as an integrated part ot the Baltic Film & TV Festival. So it is an insider’s personal reflections that you will get, words from one who have enjoyed to be a project selector, tutor and moderator 15 times... after the 10th edition I decided to stop but regretted and was accepted to make a comeback, to use a football term.

Simon Drewsen Holmberg, a founder of and for many years a driving organisational force behind the Forum through the Baltic Media Centre on Bornholm, now director of the Danish Cultural Institute in Riga, asked me and Mikael Opstrup from EDN, whether we still found it useful to set up a Forum as the current financial situation for support of creative documentaries is so much worse compared to when the Forum started 16 years ago...

Indeed, true it is that the broadcasters do not have the same possibilities today, and there was little money around the table at this Forum, BUT anyhow I would say that the Baltic Sea Forum is of great importance for filmmakers, the experienced as well of (especially I would state) the younger ones who get their projects tested and developed at the stage they are. There is a strong project development value connected to the Forum, some projects still do

Baltic Sea Forum 2012/ 2

First day of pitching at Baltic Sea Forum in Riga taking place at the Albert Hotel on the top floor of the hotel, that has Albert Einstein quotes everywhere (!) – and a beautiful view to the city of the capital of Latvia, including a glimpse of one of the art nouveau buildings built by the father of Sergey Eisenstein. ”Flying Monk’s Temple” from experienced Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis (VFS Films) opened the session that had twelve projects, a mix of film proposals from new directors and producers, new directors and established producers, and filmmakers like Russian Vitaly Manskiy whose project ”The Pipeline” was presented by German producer Simone Baumann.

Thematically Russia and Russians were, like at most of the sixteen Baltic Sea Fora, on the agenda this first day. The Estonian ”Not My Land” was about Estonians of Russian origin, whose allotment gardens are threatened by the planned enlargement of the airport in Tallinn. The Russian ”Playing Paper Games” was an insight to how the presidential election March this year was seen from the humorous point of view of an observer from an opposition party in provincial city of Saratov. Totally different in tone and aesthetics was ”To Sing” by Russian young director Olga Korotkaya (photo), whose producer is Polish Dorota Roszkowska, offering the panel what looks like having potential to become an extraordinary film about two female throat singers in Tuva – who are not allowed to sing in public. Also Russian in theme was the Estonian producer Marianna Kaat’s ”New Silk Way” to be directed by Russian Evdokia Moskvina, an intriguing story about Russian women who go to China to find goods they can sell with profit in Russia.

The day ended with ”The Term”, a project about Russia today, in the trailer presented through direct cinema material from demonstrations, material not seen before unless you follow the work on

www.srok-doc.livejournal.com

by the pitching producer, Estonian Maxim Tuula, described as an alternative tv channel. With names like Pavel Kostomarov, Rastorguev and Swiss Antoine Cattin the idea is to make a film out of this material, using the method that stands behind the films ”I love You” and ”I don’t Love You”.

http://www.mediadesklatvia.eu/baltic-sea-forum-for-documentaries-2012/

Ada Bligaard Søby, alle blogindlæg om hendes film

Scene efter scene stilles i kø i disciplineret række og forbindes kontrapunktisk med interview- og dialogmateriale, dokumentariske beretninger i løsreven fastholdelse. Det er meningsfuldt i en ganske anden form for filmfortælling end den normale danske tradition; og det er befriende, så befriende…

Ada Bligaard Søby er månedens instruktør i FILMKLUB FOF i Randers, vi skal se nogle af hendes film og snakke om dem, og 1. november på CPH:DOX får hendes nye film premiere. Den har titlen Petey & Ginger - a testament to the awesomeness of mankind og på dens hjemmeside hedder det kontant om den: “When the global economy collapses the only true victors are those that weren't invited to the boom. Petey & Ginger elegantly and honestly documents two very real characters who semi-happily live on the fringes of I-don't-really-give-a-fuckville-and-that's-okay-ish.” Filmmaker Ada Bligaard Søby again invites us into her ongoing infatuation with the treasure that is the blissfully detached lives of American Losers. Take notes…” Så nu er det tid at samle, hvad jeg til nu har noteret om hendes film:

AMERICAN LOSERS (58 min., 2006)

Det begynder med allerførste scene. Den kvindelige hovedperson inviterer os med et blik i kameraet til at følge efter i denne historie. Det er selvfølgelig ganske ligetil og uskyldigt – og det virker. Man følger gerne med. Det er en kompetent disposition.

Punk Syndrome and Other Master-Docs to Riga

The Baltic Sea Forum in Riga – September 5-9 – includes several interesting film projects from the Baltic countries, Russia, Georgia, Ukraine plus some Western producers with themes relating to the East. The 16th edition of this classic forum that took off on the Danish island of Bornholm, organised by the Baltic Media Centre, a parallel event to the Baltic Film & Tv Festival, is now handled by the National Film Centre of Latvia with local support and with money as well from the EU MEDIA Programme.The meeting for the professionals is added by a parallel audience orientated mini-festival of high quality documentaries with a great opening film, the one that goes all over the world, Finnish ”The Punk Syndrome” (photo) directed by Jukka Kärkkäinen and J-P Passi, the team that also stood behind ”Living Room of a Nation”. The directors will be there for the screening. For those who have forgotten about the band, here some lines from the website:

Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät (Pertti Kurikka’s Name Day) is a punk band that was formed in 2009 in a culture workshop arranged by Lyhty, a nonprofit organization. Lyhty provides housing and education services as well as workshops for adults with intellectual disabilities. Pertti Kurikka, the band’s guitarist and front man, writes the lyrics with vocalist Kari Aalto and composes the music. The other two members of the band are bassist Sami Helle and drummer Toni Välitalo.

Among the other films to be screened are ”5 Broken Cameras” By Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, Patricio Guzman’s ”Nostalgia for the Light”, a brand new, exciting Latvian film ”The Documentarian” by Ivars Zviedris and Inese Kļava, Danish ”The Ambassador” by Mads Brügger and ”Argentinian Lesson” by Wojciech Stáron.

Superb programme! Read more on links below and join the Baltic Sea Forum facebook group.

http://www.mediadesklatvia.eu/baltic-sea-forum-for-documentaries-2012/

http://kovasikajuttu.fi/en/