MandagsDokumentar Efterår 2010

We have written about it since the start of filmkommentaren.dk and we will continue to do so as this excellent  initiative is exportable: You find a documentary and short film addict - and connaisseur -  with a wide network and a talent for programming, and you let him or her invite films AND filmmakers to meet the audienceonce a week in a nice and cosy meeting place. Films are shown and films and subjects are being discussed. This is what Danish Ebbe Preisler has done for years. He has now opened his autumn season for Copenhageners to som and enjoy every monday. I switch to Danish to introduce a bit of the huge film offer:

Der kan bruges mange rosende gloser om det arbejde Ebbe Preisler har gjort for formidlingen af kort- og dokumentarfilm med sin MandagsDokumentar. Han er opdateret og viser ”Armadillo” med instruktøren Janus Metz og fotografen Lars Skree til stede, han har ”Bifrost” af Freddy Tornberg på programmet (begge film anmeldt her) og han har bedt Miki Mistrati komme for at vise sin tv-gyser om børnearbejde, ”Chokoladens mørke bagside”. Men for denne blogger er det ligeså herligt at se at Preisler vil gøre sit publikum opmærksom på den guldgrube af film, der ligger i Det danske Filminstituts arkiv. En meget fortjent hyldest gives således til produktionsselskabet Filmforsyningen, hvis leder Svend Johansen (foto) viser sin børneklassiker ”Aborresøen” (1978) ligesom der vil være lejlighed til at se mesterværket ”Eventyret om den vidunderlige musik” (1991) af Anders Sørensen og Liller Møllers vidunderlige tegnefilm ”Mellem to stole” (1993). Nogle uger senere har Preisler sammensat et program, han kalder ”Fattig og Rig”, hvor to af vore største dokumentarister er til stede. Lars Engels viser ”Orkanens Øje” (1991) og Jon Bang Carlsen ”En Rig Mand” (1979). Det hele foregår i PH cafeen på Halmtorvet i København.

www.mandagsdokumentar.dk 

On Being There with Richard Leacock

Richard Leacock, 90 years old in 2011, a master of cinema vérité, always energetic and inspirational... finally gets a filmic homage. It happens now at the Telluride Film Festival and it takes place in association with the first public screening of Monica Flaherty’s 1980 sound version of the 1925 film, Moana by Robert Flaherty (Leacock worked with Flaherty in 1946 on Louisiana Story). Wow, film history!

Jane Weiner is the director of the film ”On Being There” on Leacock. Here is an edited clip from the press release that came in this morning:

In the summer of 1972, Jane Weiner started filming with a prototype camera of the experimental Super 8 Sync-Sound-System that Leacock was then developing with Jon Rosenfeld and Al Mecklenberg at M.I.T. Shooting over 4 decades on a variety of ever-changing film and video technologies, Weiner doesn’t hide the image artifacts, film flutter and glitches, which were part and parcel of experimenting in small-format. She follows Leacock to his boyhood home in the Canary Islands – the location of his first oeuvre, Canary Island Bananas; she recounts his relationship with his mentor, Flaherty, and details his involvement and passion for a particular documentary aesthetic developed by Leacock, Pennebaker, and Robert Drew in the early 60’es. The title refers to the ”feel of the place” that Leacock tries to capture in the non-interventional, observational shooting style of cinema vérité... However, in On Being There with Richard Leacock, Weiner often breaks her mentor’s own rule of ”never asking questions”. Constructed as conversation that covers 70 years of his involvement in filmmaking history, the documentary lets Leacock tell his own story in his own words with few comments and/or commentary from his former protégée.

The feature-length film that is being screened in Telluride to honor Leacock, a work-in-progress it is, will be out in 2011 for theatrical and dvd release – and there will be retrospectives and other festival tributes to the master. Can’t wait to see the film! Photo: Leacock, 2009.

http://www.richardleacock.com/32943/About-RichardLeacock-com

DOKLeipzig 2010

Autumn is coming and the documentary festival season opens. The festivals start to announce their programmes. DOKLeipzig is one of the bigger – this blogger will be there to report and be in a jury – that at this time is finishing the selection process, to be published later. This is an edit of their press release of today, impressive it looks, also the amount of money waiting to be passed on to awarded filmmakers on the October 23rd when the festival is over:

The 53rd International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film takes place from 18 to 24 October 2010 in Leipzig. Cash prizes totalling 71,000 euros (!) will be awarded in various competition categories. Special highlights include a special programme of films from the Caucasus, a selection of films on the subject of money (Money Matters), a retrospective from the German Federal Film Archive on the military in German society (Regime and Regiment), a series dedicated to the animated film-maker from New York Signe Baumane and an hommage to German director Klaus Wildenhahn.

DOK Leipzig is also a marketplace. It offers international industry professionals master classes and DOK podium discussions on such subjects as cross media, sales, marketing, film criticism and the future of film subsidies and grants in Germany. It has an impressive (my comment after the two last years) digital DOK market, a co-production encounter, screenings of new German documentary films, DOK Summits and a Forum for Innovative television, which focuses on strategies for international broadcast stations in the age of cross media. On 23 and 24 October the final presentation of the Documentary Campus Master School will take place under the auspices of the festival. Photo: 2009 winner at DOKLeipzig, "The Arrivals", reviewed on this site.

www.dok-leipzig.de

Tomas Kudrna: All That Glitters

Good news for a good film reviewed on this site a couple of days ago, edited from the press release of the festival DOK Leipzig:

“All That Glitters” by Tomáš Kudrna, developed at the Documentary Campus Masterschool 2007, has been selected for the official programme of DOK Leipzig. It will run in the section non-competitive International Programme. DOK Leipzig is the largest and most traditional German festival as well as one of the leading international events for artistic documentary and animated films.

OFF Odense Film Festival/1

The 25th edition of the festival in Odense, Denmark takes place 23-28. August. There are many reasons to congratulate the municipality of Odense for keeping alive this film festival for all these years in spite of constant battles to raise the necessary funding. The 2010  festival, as it is being presented on its site, see address below (programme both in Danish and English), is communicated with a lot of fresh energy and proudness, now with a focus on the short film as it looks today, the one for the big screen and the one for the internet via YouTube etc. I switch to Danish language in this posting as well as in the one below, which is a tour down memory lane for this blogger.

Programmet er omfattende med den internationale konkurrence i centrum. Det er animation og fiktion og dokumentar, og det er film fra filmskoler verden over og fra lande som Finland, Canada og Frankrig, som stadig dyrker den trængte filmgenre professionelt. Programmerne er delt ind i temaer, desværre med besynderlige overskrifter som ”inderlig eksistens”, ”ejendommelig eksistens” og ”intet er som det syner” m.fl. Sælger det billetter til et ungt publikum?

Måske er det lige meget for der plejer at være fuldt hus i Odense til festivalen, der nu overalt i sin branding slår på at være OFF mainstream, et valg som også slår igennem i valget af nogle fremragende internationale dokumentarer. Publikum kan se ”RIP – A Remix Manifesto”, Ulrich Seidl’s controversial ”Tierische Liebe”  og ”Crumb” af Terry Zwigoff. Og så er der et pitching arrangement for kortfilm, YouTube konkurrence, masse af aktiviteter for børn og unge osv osv. Bravo!... Photo from the short film thriller "Kitchen Sink" by Alison MacLean, Australia, one of the many eternal hits (from 1989) from the retrospective festival section.

OFF Odense Film Festival/2

En lille tur ned ad Memory Lane: Klokken er fem, sagde festivaldirektøren, så er det tid til en kold øl. Der havde vi 4-5 udvælgere siddet fra morgenstunden i et af kommunens mødelokaler og set bunker af kortfilm tilsendt fra hele verden. Direktøren hed Jørgen Roos, dansk kort- og dokumentarfilms største navn (1922-98). Fra 1985 og 12 år frem var han leder af festivalen, og havde folk som journalist Mogens Damgaard, filmkonsulent Ulrich Breuning og undertegnede til at hjælpe sig med at sammensætte et program, der havde et højt kunstnerisk niveau og samtidig var overraskende, fantasifuldt og eventyrligt. For det skulle det være for en festival, der foregik – og foregår – i H.C. Andersens by, den forfatter som samme Jørgen Roos nåede at lave flere film om. (”Mit livs eventyr” og ”Andersen hos fotografen” er med i en antologi, som er tilgængelig via filmstriben.dk). Vi så film i en uge og hvert år udspilledes det samme lille drama efter et par dage. Jørgen Roos sukkede og erklærede, at der nok ikke blev en festival i år for der var ikke film nok af høj kvalitet! Det var hans ene holdning, der ofte var præget af at vi i timevis kunne rende ind i en stime af amerikanske universitetsfilm, som var mere eller mindre håbløst umodne jokes. Den anden holdning var filminstruktørens generøse indstilling til sin métier – jamen, tænk at han/hun har arbejdet i et år eller mere på sin film, og den er måske ikke helt vellykket men der er vilje og ambition og talent... der kom et par film fra Uruguay og Ecuador med på den konto! Den frie film kæmpede Jørgen Roos for, den film der ikke skulle igennem rækker af tv-redaktører eller filmkonsulenter, den film der var personlig og modig. Og helst på film, 35 eller 16mm, tænk, sagde han engang med henvisning til videoens fremmarch, tænk på den dag, hvor vi ikke længere kan se ridser på lærredet, hvor det hele er sterilt! Jeg tror, han ville have hadet YouTube for det lille billede og (ofte) manglen på æstetisk overvejelse, men han ville have glædet sig over at her lever den frie film i bedste velgående.

Baltic Sea Forum in Riga

Documentarians meet in Riga at the beginning of September. The Baltic Sea Forum includes a meeting for professionals – film projects will be presented to broadcasters, mostly by filmmakers from the region. But the Forum – organised by National Film Centre of Latvia – also invites the Riga audience to see new documentaries at the cinema K.Suns. It starts September 8 with the Dutch film ”The Erectionman” by Michael Schaap and ”Beauty Refugee” by Claudia Lisboa from Sweden. Later that night the mega-success ”Waltz with Bashir” (photo) by Israeli Ari Folman is screened. Check what we wrote on this site.

The festival runs until September 12 and has the theme ”Footprints in the Future”. The audience may thus also enjoy Danish Michael Madsen’s ”Into Eternity” and the American ”Future by Design”. For the politically interested Riga citizens two strong documentaries are offered – ”Bananas” by Fredrik Gertten (many times noticed on this site) and ”Russian Lessons” by Andrei Nekrasov, a film on the Russian-Georgian war.

This minifestival as well as the Forum is always a joyful event with young talent and experienced competence and (this year) an old time master as Ivars Seleckis, who wants to make a follow-up to his two previous works from a street in Riga: ”Crossroad Street” and ”New Times at Crossroad Street”. For Riga citizens and visitors: The films will be shown in their original language with subtitles in English and translation into Latvian.Tickets Ls 2.10. Forum participants, children, students, pensioners and film professionals can view the films free of charge, obtaining free passes at the Cinema K.Suns box office prior to the screening time.

http://www.mediadesklatvia.eu/baltic-sea-forum-for-documentaries-2010/

The Spirit of Robert Flaherty

The tenth edition of the festival “Flahertiana” takes place in Perm, Russia October 14-20. The selection for the competition programme (including of course several “Nanook” prizes) has been announced, and it is a pleasure to see a list of films that communicate quality. At least this is what I conclude from the titles that I know and have written about on this site: Pawel Lozinski’s Chemo (photo), Mika Ronkainen’s “Freetime Machos”, Lixin Fan’s “Last Train Home” and “Village Without Women” by Srdan Sarenac from Serbia. A text from the website of the festival:

"The more your work corresponds to real life, the better it seems..." — these words said by Dürer, an artist of the Renaissance, are the most laconic expression of the aesthetic conception of the film festival Flahertiana.Our festival is dedicated to films which show a character that lives on the screen a part of his life, directed by the author according to the laws of dramatic art. The first film of this genre, Nanook from the North, was made by Robert Flaherty in 1922. The film became the aesthetical manifest for the subsequent generations of cinema-makers.

Unlike his colleague from the Soviet Union Dziga Vertov, who at that time experimented a lot with montage, working out the type of screen thinking which we now call clip, Flaherty was focused on a prolonged observation of his characters. The naturalness of a documentary character’s behavior in front of the camera is the main task of the film-director who works in the genre discovered by the American documentary film-maker. Our festival is dedicated to practical and theoretical questions of this genre of the documentary cinema."

http://flahertiana.perm.ru/eng/

La Bocca del Lupo Awarded at Dokufest

The International Documentary Competition jury at Dokufest in Prizren, Kosovo, composed of Pamela Cohn (USA), Sonja Henrici (Scotland), AJ Schnack (USA), Adriatik Kelmendi (Kosovo) and Doug Block (USA) awarded the Italian film La Bocca Del Lupo (The Mouth of Wolf) by Pietro Marcello (photo, previously reviewed on this site) as Best Int’l Feature Documentary and Albert’s Winter by Danish director Andreas Koefoed as Best Int’l Short Documentary. About “The Mouth of the Wolf” the jury said: Using unique archive footage, Italian documentarist and Genoese native Pietro Marcello has succeeded in brilliantly reviving the unique atmosphere of Genoa’s port quarter, which he then uses as a backdrop to unfold a singular love story between a tough but goodhearted Sicilian named Enzo and transsexual Mary.

And about the Best International Short Documentary, “Albert’s Winter” by Andreas Koefoed, Denmark: Albert is at his window, watching the snow dance through the cold winter. Eight years old and feeling the pressure of the world. His mother is sick and in chemotherapy. Albert would rather not talk about it. Meanwhile his parents want him to start choir school.

The jury also gave two special mentions. First mention went to Brit Adam Stafford for his film The Shutdown and the second mention to American filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt for his suicide exposé The Darkness of Day. The jury noted the following for films: "The jury was incredibly impressed with the breadth and quality of the short films in this year’s international competition. We are giving two honorable mentions to films that expand the documentary

The World According to Ion B. Awarded

The International Documentary and Short Film Festival in Prizren, Kosovo ended two days ago with an award ceremony - The Balkan Documentary Competition Award went to Romanian film The World According to Ion B. (photo) by Alexander Nanau. The jury composed of Emel Celebi (Turkey) Mike Palmieri (USA) and Sissi Korhonen (Finland) noted the following about the competition and awarded films:

“The Balkan Documentary competition films were all connected by their shared examinations of traditional values of family and place vs personal values that break with those traditions. Sometimes the characters in the films illustrated the break, other times by the unique craft of the filmmaking itself. The jury felt strongly about three films that managed to explore these themes in unique and special ways. The jury awards its main prize to a director whose filmmaking skill merges seamlessly with the character he portrays, leaving no opportunity wasted in the telling of his story. It is a deeply intimate portrait told with a grace and humor that won us over unanimously.”

Same jury also gave the Best Newcomer Award to two films from Balkan Documentary Competition. The winning films were 1717 Kilometers of Summer 2009 by Slovenian filmmaker Jurij Meden and Tobacco Girl by Macedonian Biljana Garvanlieva. Balkan Documentary Centre from Sofia, Bulgaria sponsored the award.

“The emerging Balkan filmmaker prize is shared between two filmmakers whose approach to their subjects could not be more different from one another, but whose films conveyed a powerful sense of character and place that left a lasting impression on us” the jury noted. 

http://www.dokufest.com/2010/

Toronto Int Film Festival Documentary Boost

The Toronto International Film Festival (September 9-19) is first of all known for its high quality feature film programme focusing on originality and innovation but due to the renaissance of the creative documentary, the festival now also treats that genre with respect and big names, as you can see in the list below of films. This is how they present it, and for our Danish readers who read Allan Berg’s praise of today of Errol Morris, and share his point of view, it all starts with the announcement of a new film by the director. From a Danish point of view it is very much worth mentioning that the long awaited “Erotic Man” (photo) by Jørgen Leth will have its world Premiere in Toronto. The press release runs like this, wow there is much to expect in other festivals, it is worldwide, it has a lof of well known names and alas, of course again with the unfair and incompetent exclusion of documentaries from Eastern Europe…:

TIFF proudly presents a veritable who’s who of documentary filmmaking as Errol Morris explores a woman’s bizarre search for one true love in Tabloid, Thom Zimny reveals Bruce Springsteen's creative process in The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, Kim Longinotto tracks an Indian feminist group in Pink Saris, and Werner Herzog films humankind's earliest known images in 3-D in Cave of Forgotten Dreams. These are a few of the high-profile world premieres among the documentaries screening at this year's Festival… the list goes on

Gala

The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town Thom Zimny, USA
World Premiere
The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town takes us into the studio with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band for the recording of their fourth album. Grammy and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Thom Zimny has collaborated with Springsteen on this documentary, gaining access to never before seen footage shot between 1976-1978, capturing home rehearsals and recording sessions that allow us to see Springsteen’s creative process at work.

Masters

Erotic Man Jørgen Leth, Denmark
World Premiere
Danish master Jørgen Leth travels the globe in this sensual, provocative and sometimes autobiographical essay film about a man searching … searching the world for the nature of the erotic.

Nostalgia for the Light Patricio Guzmán, France/Germany/Chile
North American Premiere
In Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers peer deep into the cosmos in search

Summerfest: Free Documentaries to Watch

One year ago the humourous ”Disco and Atomic War” by Jaak Kilmi and Kiur Aarma, a mix of archive material and reenactments, charmed the audience at the Baltic Sea Forum due to its originality and the story about what it meant to be a child in Soviet Estonia making all kind of efforts to be able to watch Finnish television. Jaak Kilmi (photo, to the left) has proved to be a fine talent for docu-comedies with a serious background. The film has travelled all over, it has won prizes, and Kilmi is a central character in the small country’s film life.

Now the film can be watched for free on the site mentioned below, until August 12. A long interview with Kilmi accompanies the film. Several other documentaries are available, including ”Videocracy” by Erik Gandini.

http://www.snagfilms.com/

Elena Demidova: Cranberry Island

Russian countryside village and a family. Mother and father and 4 children. We have seen it many times before, and we will see it again. With pleasure. You smile, you think ”how the hell can they survive under these poor circumstances”, some would say ”in this shit”, but you enjoy and you feel sometimes that this is too much. The latter comes especially in connection with the charismatic entrepreneur, the husband and father, who in the beginning of the film is constantly yelling at his wife, quite unsympathetic actually, but slowly the director (who is also the camerawoman, sound engineer and editor) builds him up as a character, who wants to create good life conditions for his family, and you get some empathy for him. His big project is to build and make work a windmill. But he is also a beekeeper, the family has a couple of pigs, and he has installed hot water and a wc in the house.

In the house where the lovely mother expresses herself to the husband: ”I don’t need your idealism. I see Life. We will lose everything with your idealism, our children before all.” Marina is good piano player and in the cosy sitting room, the children does their homework, one of them fighting with German words. A tough life, indeed, and they go to the city to try to find a job in the house of the Prince of Lichtenstein, as I got it!

For good and worse you can see that the film crew is one woman. Elena Demidova has spent a lot of time with her characters, they talk to her behind the camera, she has their confidence, and she has caught some of those beautiful magical moments that you can’t script – you just have to wait for them to happen. On the other hand the technical quality and the editing of the film suffers a bit when you have to do it all by yourself.... the windmill, the red thread in the storytelling, yes it works at the end of the film. And Marina sings like an angel!

The film won the environmental prize at the Message2Man Festival in St. Petersburg – see below.

Russia, 71 mins., 2010

Trailer: http://www.kinoglaz.fr/u_fiche_film.php?num=5719

Contacts: arazlogova@hotmail.com antel-dem@yandex.ru

Vurdering:

doxpro St. Petersburg

During the Message2Man International Film Festival (se below) I had the pleasure to run a small doxpro workshop for around 10 young and younger Russian filmmakers. Through three hot mornings (July 17-19) the group discussed four projects that had been selected and all had a written proposal and visual material to present. Several others joined with projects they wanted to bring to the table for sharing and discussion. With the four projects as starting point information was given on the European documentary landscape, that is far too closed for the many Russian talented filmmakers. This is precisely why Ludmila Nazaruk and Viktor Skubey has initiated the website www.miradox.ru and the doxpro international program for documentary professionals. Let me repeat what Nazaruk said when the first edition of doxpro was organised in November 2009:

”Every year in Russia more than 3000 non-fiction films are produced, more than 400 of them have state financial support, but only 5-7 films end up on the international market. For Russia it is disastrously low. Real co-productions, that bring together broadcasters, distributors, sales agents, distributors, cable channels, IT-platforms (Video-on-demand, Pay per view), we do not see.

DOXPRO intends to become a business platform for the interaction of Russian and foreign documentary, to form long-term international cultural and economic ties, and create favorable conditions for realization of joint projects in the field of documentary filmmaking. Analogues of such programs to date in Russia do not exist.”

After these two sessions it is easy for me to say that there is talent and projects with international potential. DoxPro is the right forum and the participants like the openness, and to have their projects focused. Production skills are needed, writing and presentation skills as well, but the most obvious missing link is the language. Too few of the filmmakers speak the international documentary community language: English.

www.miradox.ru

Documentaries in Sarajevo and Prizren

Two festivals are coming up in Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo:

1) The 16th Sarajevo Film Festival runs from July 23 through July 31, 2010, with eighteen mid-length and feature documentaries from the Balkans, Turkey, Cyprus and Austria competing in the documentary programme. In additon to a wide array of features and shorts, the festival also hosts the CineLink Co-production Market (July 28 - 31).

”The long Road through Balkan History” (photo) by Zeljko Mirkovic is one of the competing documentaries, reviewed on this site. Others are Turkish Doga Kilcioglu’s ”Married to the Camera”, Croatian Nenad Puhovski’s ”Together”, review will follow next week on this site as it will of Greek Marianna Economou’s ”Twelve Neighours”, Romanian ”Paradise Hotel” by Sophia Tzavella and ”The World According to Ion B.” by Alexander Nanau. The two last ones were shown at the Message2Man festival in St. Petersburg.

www.sff.ba

2) Totally dedicated to documentaries and short films is the festival Dokufest in Prizren, Kosovo that runs from July 31 to August 7, 2010. It includes a wide range of sections. There is an international and a Balkan competition in which the films of Mirkovic, Puhovski, Nanau and Kilcioglu mentioned above in the festival in Saravejo will also compete. Internationally are films like ”Chemo” by Pawel Lozinski, ”The Mouth of the Wolf” by Pietro Marcello, ”The Player” by John Appel and ”Six Weeks” by Maciej Krawczyk to be found. All reviewed on this site. Also in the competent programme selection are two films that have been showed earlier this year at the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade: ”The Living Room of the Nation” (as part of a big Finnish retrospective) and ”Les Arrivants” (”The Arrivals”)

http://www.dokufest.com

Message2Man/6

An almost two year old boy running around observing what goes on. And touching the Golden Centaur statuettes lined up to be given to the winners. A conferencier shouting Russian words into the microphone trying to make a festive atmosphere. Next to him a very professional female interpreter who repeat in English. One after one the winners are called to the stage... but not many of them are present. The atmosphere is supposed to be lifted by loud music that is generally tough for the ears. Nothing is really planned in details and people are sweating during the hour it takes before departure to the farewell reception.

A nice atmosphere, some would say chaotic, my fellow jury friend said ”excuse me my French, but this is a complete disaster”, I would call it anarchistic – and yet, politics are being made, the director of the main private sponsor, a Dutch company, is called to receive a medal as was he a filmmaker, and the board of directors give special prizes for filmmakers, who were not on the lists of the juries...

And outside my travel partner and I look at the young women, who fight to walk the high heels, that they all have. If you don’t wear them, you are not a real woman, one of our young smiling guides told us her mother had said. Photo from "Paris Return", winner of Message2Man category Best Documentary, see below.

www.m2m.iffc.ru

Message2Man/5

The 20th edition of the St. Petersburg International Film Festival ended with an award ceremony yesterday night in the Dom Kino. There were a large number of prizes to be given, I will limit this posting to include those in the documentary categories.

The prize for the best long documentary (US$ 2000) was given to the director Yossi Aviran from Israel for the multilayered description of the reflections and lives of an Israeli and an Italian man living together for three decades in Paris. The Israeli man doubts whether to go back to Israel for the rest of his life, the Italian, a bit younger, is the constant optimist, and enjoyer of life. A beautiful film about life and death coming nearer, title ”Paris Return”. The short documentary prize (US$ 2000) was given to the Slovak documentary, ”Arsy versy” (photo), by Miro Remo, original and fresh in its approach to the theme of mother and son, the latter being obsessed with bats. It has rythm and passion.

The Grand Prix (US$ 5000), the jury (that I was chairing) had chosen was ”Draft” by Timofey Zhalnin, young Russian director, who had managed to make a light and yet deep film about the drama of a woman who is recording herself on camera in order to compete for a role in a theatre play. She is, however, constantly being disturbed by the ”intrusion” of reality – family, friends in the small appartment. Documentary and fiction.

The national competition for short documentaries decided not to give a first prize for quality reasons, and the critics chose ”David Wants to Fly” by David Sieveking.

www.m2m.iffc.ru

Golden Apricot Awards

The Golden Apricot film festival in Yerevan in Armenia (July 11-18) ended as a triumph for Russian director Pavel Kostomarov, whose  fine film ”Together” (reviewed on this site) got the first prize, the Golden Apricot, for the Best Documentary Film in the international section

In the Armenian Panorama Competition the Golden Apricot was given to, as the best Armenian film, was given to ”The Last Tightrope Dancer” by Arman Yeritsyan and Inna Sahakyan, also reviewed and commented upon on this site.

Special prize in the feature film competition was given to the first feature film by well known documentarian Sergey Loznitsa, ”My Joy”.

http://www.gaiff.am/en/

Message2Man/4

The international competition included yesterday the film ”17th of August” by Alexander Gutman, reviewed and commented several times in this site. Here is a reprint of the review:

This fine Russian director has, apart from the masterpiece ”Frescoes” from Armenia, made a couple of very strong documentaries shot in prisons, ”Three Days and Never Again” and ”Blatnoi Mir” (directed by Finnish Jouni Hiltunen, Gutman was production manager), and here comes another that I do not hesitate to call masterly done as well.

One day in the life of a prisoner, sentenced to lifetime for murders, a man in a small cell, watched through the small window in the dark cell door, walking from one end to the other, exercising, making a cup of tea, praying with his head towards an icon of the bleading Jesus hanging on the wall, getting some food... and a small walk to a strongly fenced and guarded courtyard, filmed from above to achieve the impression of a man in a cage, A close-up study that works because of the brilliant combination of pictures with the monologue of the prisoner. On Life, on the conditions in the isolated prison, on being alone and away from it all, on being close to guards who are there all the time and in a way sharing his destiny.

Sometimes with some shots from the courtyard outside. A horse stands there, an old man comes and makes it ready for transport, they leave the prison, and the camera stays – later on they come back with a coffin to pick up the corpse that we have seen in a previous scene. Or a window with a cat. Did I say that it was black and white. And slow. And extremely well edited. Not a moment too much. Sympathy for the murderer? No, not really, but respect for a human being, curiosity.

Russia, Poland, 2009, 62 mins.

Message2Man/3

... but there has been time to visit the Hermitage museum and fight one’s way to study the great collection of Rembrandt works (oh, documentarians, go and study how he caught the magical moments when he did his portraits)  and the two ”Madonna with Child” by Leonardo da Vinci – as well as an exhibition of Picasso set up due to the French-Russian cultural year.

I write ”fight one’s way” as the Hermitage – apart from being one of the most wonderful art museums in the world – also is a battlefield where tourist groups from all over, led by sometimes very loud-speaking militant guides, who want their group to have the best views. And the best place to take photographs. Why is it not possible to see, just see, without gazing through a camera?

Film-wise the visit made me want to re-view Alexander Sokurov`s ”Russian Ark” (photo), a one-shot feature length film interpreting the museum magnificently, made to celebrate the 300 years of St. Petersburg. I remember the head-shaking commissioning editors when the film was pitched at the idfa forum. Not possible, and why a one shot, they said, led by BBC's Nick Fraser - they were very much wrong the rating hunting tv executives. The film is available through many dvd outlets.

www.m2m.iffc.ru

Message2Man/2

Don’t say that films are not being made... the selection committee of the festival watched 2853 films from 83 countries. 73 were selected for the international competition (documentaries, animation, short fiction) and 24 for the National Documentary Competition, ”Gateway to Russia”. Looking back at the Grand Prix list of the festival’s 20 years one finds new classics like ”The Belovs” of Viktor Kossakovsky (in 1993) and ”Bread Day” of Sergey Dvortsevoy (in 1998).

The documentary profile of the festival is definitely social as readers of this site will be able to know by reading about ”Victor” (photo) by Andris Gauja from Latvia and ”17 August” by Alexander Gutman from Russia. Finnish director Jukka Kärkkainen introduces his favourite character Tero (the main protagonist in his masterpiece ”The Living Room of a Nation”, reviewed and noticed several times on this site) in ”Do you still remember Hilma Limperi”, and Bulgarian international producer Martichka Bozhilova presented the impressive ”Paradise Hotel” about a gypsy residential area that in socialist times was meant to be ”a paradise”, which it is absolutely not nowadays.

No complaints, watching films is a privilige, 3 two hour programmes per day, that is how it goes in a sauna-like hot hall that yesterday night (saturday) had a good audience, whereas earlier screenings had a limited attendance.

www.m2m.iffc.ru

Message2Man/1

Mikhail Litvyakov is the director of the festival in beautiful St. Petersburg. He has passed the seven decades of age but there was no sign of lack of energy when he was on stage to welcome guests and audience in the Dom Kino, to the 20th edition of a festival that includes an international competition, a national competition plus several side programmes. He and the president of the festival, film director Alexey Uchitel, and the rest of us, were pleasantly suffering the heat of St Petersburg when the opening ceremony took place ending with an honorary prize of the festival given to Agnès Varda, who was there to introduce her fine last film, ”Les Plages d’Agnès”, a film with many layers, young in spirit, and also a fine piece of film history presenting clips from her own films such as ”Cléo from 5 to 7” and ”Le bonheur” with constant references to the love of her life, late Jacques Demy.

I am here to chair the international jury for a programme that includes documentaries, animation and short fiction – and to hold a small project development seminar with Ludmila Nazaruk from DoxPro, a continuation of the November 2009 meeting that has been reported on this site.

www.miradox.ru

www.m2m.iffc.ru

Nagham Mohanna: Back to Gaza from Corfu

Young Palestinian filmmaker Nagham Mohanna, who took part in the mediterranean/middle east documentary training program Storydoc (see below) sends this report on her journey back to her home via Egypt. I have made some small edits and language corrections:

Hello everybody, I hope everything is ok and not so horrible as I am feeling now. Let me tell you about my travelling because it is really amazing. I left Corfu at 7:25 am and arrived in Athens at 8: 20 am on Saturday. Stayed in Athens airport around 5 hours.

Left Athens at 2:30 pm and arrived in Cairo at 4:30 pm.

And here we begin. The opening of a torture journey. When an Egyptian officer saw that I am Palestinian the procedures were started, to know if they can let me enter Egypt or not.

While waiting in the airport and seeing how other people with other nationalities entered Cairo without any problems, they called me to investigate about my job and the workshop that I attended in Corfu. They told

Karlovy Vary Awards

What a wonderful and well deserved piece of news. The Best Documentary film (category: under 30 mins.) at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival was yesterday given to the Lithuanian documentary ”The River” by Lithuanian filmmaking duo Julija Gruodienė and Rimantas Gruodis. Described at the IDF (International Dcoumentary Institute) site in the following way: An introduction  to life in a remote village. Via eloquent, visually striking footage and the villagers’ humorous commentary, the directors acquaint us with a local way of life whose rhythm is set by a river. Prize 5000$.

I have just been to Lithuania to view the annual production 2009-2010. Still quality but a very remarkable effect from the financial crisis of the country. So much more great the Gruodiene and Gruodis win, a veteran couple in Lithuanian documentary, I can say, having met Gruodis several times during the Baltic Film & TV Festival on Bornholm 1990-2000. I remember strong works like the perestroika masterpiece ”Ona and Mykolas”, ”The Pain”, ”The Bathhouse” and ”The Territory”.

The Best long documentary was won by Mikael Wiström, Alberto Herskovits for ”Familia”.

http://www.documentary.lt/Default.aspx?Element=I_Manager2&TopicID=70&Lang=EN&IMAction=ViewArticles

http://www.dokweb.net/cs/

www.kviff.com

Storydoc/1

Storydoc is an EU supported training programme ”for filmmakers with Mediterranean projects”. The first 2010 session took place July 5-7 in Corfu, where these words are being written the day after a workshop that was full of heat outside and inside AND of passionate filmmakers with film projects at different stages of development. From the following countries: Greece, Germany, Romania, Scotland, Italy, France, Croatia, England, Latvia, Bulgaria, Palestine and Israel. 24 projects were worked upon with tutors (generalists, commissioning editors, directors, editors, distributors and producers) from Denmark, Greece, Israel, Palestine, France, Germany, Scotland, England, Finland and USA.

A workshop de luxe as said Cecilia Lidin from EDN referring to the amount of and quality of the tutors present, as well as the variety of projects.

Three long and intense days full of discussion and watching, everybody at the same hotel (swimming pool and beach to be reached by lift), eating together and the semifinals of the World Cup of football. Storydoc is run by Chara Lampidou and Kostas Spiropoulos helped by producer Rea Apostolides and me as responsible for content. The second session will take place in Athens, December 5-7.

French director Stan Neumann (photo) was one of the invited tutors.

www.storydoc.gr

Storydoc/2

UK based Saeed Taji Farouky came to the workshop with his story about ”The Runner” (photo), the activist athletic who wants, through the running, to raise awareness about the non-recognition of his country Western Sahara, occupied by Morocco. Salah Ameidan is his name and he wins all sympathy as he is presented in the intimate trailer. The director was given an award that includes transport and stay at the Documentary Campus workshop in Leipzig in October where he will be able to pitch his project to around 45 commissioning editors. (See website below)

Also awarded with scholarships and 1000€ were 1) Croatian Dana Budisavljevic, who is developing a film project called ”Diana’s List” about Diana Budisavljevic, who saved thousands of Jewish children during ww2. 2) Greek Marianna Economou who has a wonderful proposal to make a film that deals with Greek mothers who make and get sent food for their sons abroad! ”Flying Food” is the name. Gorgeous idea. In a less humourous style 3) Palestinian filmmaker Mahammed Abu Sido presented his ”Waiting for You”, an unlucky family story told by the director who wants to unite his family in a film, as it is not possible in real life!

www.touristwithatypewriter.com

www.storydoc.gr

Storydoc/3

There were three inspirational lectures at the workshop in Corfu.

Louise Rosen, American (from her cv) ”media executive in the international television and film business, project development, production and distribution”, talked precisely and inviting about meeting the audience and urged the filmmakers to use promotion tools like YouTube, vimeo, facebook, twitter etc.

Commissioning editor Iikka Vehkalahti, YLE Finland, was asked to give the audience ”five reasons to be optimistic about the future of the documentary”. He started his speech by doing the opposite naming five obstructions: the decline of the relationship between tv and documentaries, the lack of financing (”the golden age of copro is over”), the cinematic quality is worse than ever, the monocultural perspective reigns, as does the predictability of most films. This total deconstruction was then followed by the positive mention of the many current platforms where you can launch your film, from festivals (which he compared to art exhibitions) to webdoc and vod. Vehkalahti, who always has a very special, unconventional take on his listeners, and has many times been credited on this site for his pioneer work with ”Steps for the Future”, ended by showing two exceptional clips, one from a rough cut of a film from Chechnya, and one from the new Finnish documentary hit, ”Steam of Life” (review will follow).

”Who can bear to feel himself forgotten” is a legendary line from ”Night Mail” the documentary classic from 1936, a film that is famous for using poetry – written by W.H. Auden. Peter Symes, filmmaker and editor and teacher, had his lecture focus on this subject, ”Poetry in Documentaries”, himself being the one, who used it in several films, where he worked with the poet Tony Harrison. Symes stated that you can ”say the unsayable” through poetry, which was exactly what he had been doing with Harrison in the films ”Mimmo Perella” (funeral rituals in southern Italy) and ”Hiroshima”. When he was at BBC, Symes set up ”Poets’ News”, which was great to watch clips from, as was (great) the session with Symes on films where ”the poet will come to work as a commentator”.

Photo: "The Box", great Greek documentary, by Eva Stefani, one of the tutors at Storydoc in Corfu.

www.storydoc.gr

Dialëktus Film Festival Awards

The festival in Budapest ended with the main award being given to Peter Kerekes for his excellent ”Cooking History”, reviewed and mentioned on this site several times. The jury consisted of Bojána Papp director (Hungary),  Adina Bradeanu director and film critic (Romania) and András Müllner aesthete (Hungary). They gave the following motivation and some general remarks on the state of the art of documentary:

„We will start by noting that the international documentary competition at Dialektus has confronted us with a wide range of documentary films which were not only displaying different levels of artistic accomplishment but have also, stylistically, made us reflect on the wide range of possibilities opened to documentary film-makers today –  meaning by that what exactly we, as audiences, are ready to accept as ‘documentary film’ today, as opposed to, say, 50 years ago.

Some of the films screened have already been extensively awarded in the past year, subsequently reaching a status of almost ‘canonical’ works within the field of documentary film-making – we refer here to films such as Helena Trestikova’s RENE and Kim Longinotto’s ROUGH AUNTIES. Some others presented themselves as straightforward, at the same time entertaining and

Documentary in Europe

The yearly documentary gathering in Bardonecchia in Northern Italy starts this coming wednesday. Bardonecchia is a small winter sport resort that has a fine cultural centre that is used for documentary film screenings, case studies, a so-called matchmaking where directors pitch to producers and other colleagues, and the public pitching session. It is a conference but the organisers also show films for the local audience. This year the event, held for its 14th time, and arranged by the association Documentary in Europe (hosted by the production company Stefilm) and EDN (European Documentary Network), deserves a big applause for its screening focus on Eastern Europe. Among the great films are Gyula Nemes Lost World (PHOTO) and Atanas Georgiev Cash and Marry, not to forget the masterpiece Blind Loves by Juraj Lehotsky. All films mentioned on this site.

Also Boris Mitic, wonderful crazy Serbian director, who made Good bye, How are You (see review on this site) will do a masterclass called ”homemade storytelling”. It will not be boring!

 http://www.docineurope.org/home.php?l=eng

Dialëktus Festival/1

The director and cinematographer Klara Trencsenyi and her husband, anthropologist Vlada Naumescu made the beautiful documentary Birds Way that was reviewed on this site some months ago. In the review I used the words ”hospitality and openness” and they could very well be used again to characterize how Trencsenyi welcomed her colleagues from Poland, Slovakia and Hungary in the workshop she organised in the framework of the Dialëktus festival, see more about that below.

The workshop was named ”My Deer. Project Development Workshop” and had the very simple aim to have the 9 projects looked at, discussed, rewritten and/or re-edited for the trailers that had been made for presentation at the workshop, where Hungarian director and professor Andras Peterfly and I were the teachers.

Projects included ”Cracow by Polanski” based primarily on the autobiography of the director and presented by the Polish producer Jarek Manka. There was the very promising ”Hungarian Style” (photo) about Hungarian men with impressive moustaches – manhood and patriotism – to be directed by Nora Lakos. ”A Place to Win” by Petra Pelsöczy about old people from Budapest who won a flat in Lotto half a century ago. ”Regina Jonas” by Diana Groó who has a strong filmography of fiction films, animation and documentaries, many of which, like this about the first female rabbi, are Jewish stories. ”Rise of the Snow Leopard” by András Kollmann, a film about a mountain climber who had one leg amputated but wants to go back to climb. The charming ”Roma Rally” by Gabor Hörcher about two young romas who fix cars and want to compete in a race. And another gypsy story by Iraqi director Koutaiba Al-Janabi, himself a foreigner in Hungary, ”7 Days with Gypsies”, it had a great trailer. And ”Young Forever” by Diana Fabianova who will go from menstruation (her first film, ”Moon Inside You”) to questioning the aging.

The film projects were at the end of the week presented to a panel, that included representatives from Hungarian and Czech television, a film critic, an experienced producer, a festival director and a represenative from IDF, Institute of Documentary Film in Prague. One project which is in its editing phase, ”Wonderful Gladiators”, produced by Hungarian HBO, and made by Zsofia Varga-Kabarcz and Panna Boros, was not pitched but I had the privilege to watch a trailer from this film about mentally handicapped actors – looked great, the finished film will travel.  

To read about the projects, go to

www.dialektusfesztival.hu

Dialëktus Festival/2

... is taking place right now in Budapest, last day today for a programme of ”European Documentary and Anthropological Film Festival”. Festival director is Zoltan Füredi, a film director himself, I met him years ago where he was working on a film from Mongolia. He still is, hoping to finish it this year – if he does not initiate new projects for the development and promotion of the documentary in Hungary.

Last time I was in Budapest, Zoltan told me that he would set up a documentary cinema. It is there now, small and cosy art cinema (name DokuArt) with café attached and screening equipment from 35mm to dvd, including an old 16mm machine stading in the corridor as a museum object, but no it still works I was told.

The festival screened, among many others, Cooking History by Peter Kerekes, Moon Inside You by Diana Fabianova, René by Helena Trestikova, Welcome to North Korea by Linda Jablonska and Sevdah (Photo) by Marina Andree – all films that have been reviewed or noticed on this site.

www.dialektusfesztival.hu

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

... takes place July 2-10 and has a fine short trailer with Milos Forman. Take a look at the site below.

The festival has through the last years paid more attention to documentaries and this year 16 titles have made it to the international competition. The on this place constantly mentioned ”Armadillo” is one of them but 4 others reviewed or noticed will be shown in Karlovy Vary:

Katka by Czech Helena Trestikova, The Mouth of the Wolf by Italian Pietro Marcello, The Player by Dutch John Appel and Together (photo) by Russian Pavel Kostomarov.

http://www.kviff.com/en/news/

Maziar Bahari on idfa tv

On this site we have written about Mazia Bahari several times. For readers who have not seen his films here is a unique chance to get to know his work. Idfa, the world's biggest documentary festival has published this press release: The filmmaker and journalist Maziar Bahari was arrested on 21 June 2009, nine days after the presidential election in Iran. IDFA TV has compiled a special programme celebrating Maziar Bahari’s work and his vision of Iranian society. Life in Iran through the eyes of Maziar Bahari includes five documentaries by Bahari about Iran, the master class he presented at IDFA 2007, and the interview he gave following his release from prison.
 
Bahari (1967, Teheran) has made more than ten documentaries, both inside and outside Iran. Life in Iran through the eyes of Maziar Bahari includes five of his documentaries that focus on various facets of Iranian society.  Art of Demolition (1998) focuses on a group of artists in Teheran who transform a building scheduled for demolition into an art gallery. One member of that group, Iranian painter Khosrow Hassanzadeh, is also the main character in Paint! No Matter What (1999). This is a self-portrait by the artist, in which he discusses his art with customers in his greengrocery shop and with members of his family.

Football, Iranian Style (2001), currently being screened as part of the IDFA TV Soccer Docs programme, reveals a cross-section of Iranian society through the stories of football fans. In And Along Came a Spider (2002, realised partly with support from the Jan Vrijman Fund) Bahari interviews an

Moscow IFF Free Thoughts

They launch it as “From Yamagata through IDFA to Oscar”, the documentary section of the 32th Moscow International Film. They are Russian documentary director Sergey Miroshnichenko and producer Grigory Libergal. The two competent people make the selection for the fifth time with the aim “a selection of outstanding documentaries from the last year - winners of prestigious film festivals along with films with good box-office revenue”.

This year 23 documentaries will be screened in the program. The section is called “Free Thoughts”. The ones in bold have been reviewed and/or written about on this site:

THE COVE, dir. Louie Psihoyos, USA. THE YESMEN FIX THE WORLD, dir. Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno, Kurt Engfehr, USA. PIANOMANIA (PHOTO), dir. Lilian Frank,  Robert Gibis, GERMANY, AUSTRIA. POSTE RESTANTE, dir. Marcel Lozinsky, POLAND. CHEMO, dir. Pawel Lozinsky, POLAND. THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA, dir. Judith Ehrlich, Rick Goldsmith, USA.

THE PLAYER, dir. John Appel, THE NETHERLANDS. WE LIVE IN PUBLIC, dir. Ondi Timoner, USA. ANOTHER PERFECT WORLD, dir.  Femke Wolting, Jorien van Nes, THE NETHERLANDS. RESTREPO, dir. Sebastian Junger, Tim Hetherington, USA. LA VIDA LOCA, dir. Christian Poveda, FRANCE, MEXICO, SPAIN. A FILM UNFINISHED, dir. Yael Hersonski , ISRAEL, GERMANY. THE WOMAN WITH THE FIVE ELEPHANTS, dir. Vadim Jendreyko, SWITZERLAND, GERMANY. LA DANSE - THE PARIS OPERA BALLET, dir. Frederick Wiseman, FRANCE, USA. OCEANS, dir. Jacques Perrin, FRANCE, SWITZERLAND, SPAIN, MONACO, USA. THE LAST SCREENPLAY, dir. Javier Espada, Gaizka Urresti, SPAIN. IRON CROWS, dir. Bong-Nam Park, SOUTH KOREA. LUMIKKO, dir. Miia Tervo, FINLAND WASTE LAND, dir. Lucy Walker, UK, BRASIL. LAST TRAIN HOME, dir. Lixin Fan, CANADA, CHINA. THE FORTRESS, dir. Fernand Melgar, SWITZERLAND. BANANAS!*, dir. Fredrik Gertten, SWEDEN, AUSTRIA, USA, SWITZERLAND. FROM ARARAT TO ZION, dir. Edgar Baghdasaryan, ARMENIA

Moscow International Film Festival takes place on June 17-26,

http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/eng

The Edinburgh Pitch Projects

The DocWeek 2010, see below, organised by the Scottish Documentary Institute, hosted a one day pitch event that included 11 documentary projects, presented by American, UK, Chinese, Irish and Spanish filmmakers. In the panel to react to the pitches were the channels POV (US), BBC Storyville, BBC Scotland, DR Denmark, ZDF/arte, CBC Canada plus sales agent Autlook Austria and the local public funding mechanism Scottish Screen.

Project content? A film about Chinese muslims. One about an American fashion designer who wants to help Sierra Leone by ”turning Western cast-offs into haute couture”. An investigation into the life of a man who led ”a dual life as revolutionary activist and informant for FBI”. A human life story from Liberia on the ”extreme challenges Liberian Firestone Rubber Plantation workers face today”. ”Orion: The Man Who Would be King” = Jimmy Ellis, an unknown singer who was given a new identity behind a mask, as ”Elvis back from the grave”. A garbage island next to the Maldives. A mother and her two sons in a fascinating and moving story with the working title ”Trailer Park Love”. An original musician and composer, Moondog, who stood as a ”Viking of Sixth Avenue” in New York, everybody knew him and he was an artistic inspiration for people like Philip Glass. A film about the cultural dilemmas the population of the Easter Island faces. And a local (Scottish), and yet universal project called ”You’ve ben Trumped” from a place North of Aberdeen where American tycoon Donald Trump wants to build a holiday resort for the filthy rich, wanting to get rid of the local residents. Finally, the best presentation to my mind, ”The Runner” (Photo), by Saeed Taji Faroucky, a Palestinian who wants to make a film about the champion long-distance runner Salah Ameidan, who dreams of running for his country, Western Sahara, under Moroccan occupation since 1975. (You can see the trailer on vimeo, google "Salah Ameidan the runner vimeo")

They all showed trailers, they all got got response, most of them got the answer ”come back to me when you have more to show”, which is the normal sentence in pitching sessions nowadays. Nobody dares take risks... and competition is pretty tough.

http://www.touristwithatypewriter.com/

www.docscene.org

Edinburgh DocWeek

It takes place at the same time as the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It is organised by the Scottish Documentary Institute that ”run annual programmes which develop filmmakers and producers such as Bridging the Gap (previously written about on this site) and Interdoc (feature documentary)”. (The many activities of the Institute can be read about on the site below.) And it does indeed have all the elements of a well developed international documentary event: pitching training, pitching to a panel of financiers, rough cut screenings, masterclasses, debates with the filmmakers whose films have been taken for screening at the festival etc.

Among those are films that have been praised on this site, first of all the beautiful personal essay of local Amy Hardie, ”The Edge of Dreaming” (photo). It was already screened at idfa Amsterdam 2009 and at DOCSBarcelona, where also Mika Ronkainen’s ”Freetime Machos” about a rugby team in Oulu, Finland met its audiences. Bravo also for programming Nicolas Philibert film about 40 year old ”Nénette”, the orangutang in the Zoo in Paris. All three have been noticed on this site whereas I hope to get to watch ”Two in the Wave”, a film for film lovers of la Nouvelle Vague, about the difficult love-hate relationship between Truffaut and Godard. And ”Out of the Ashes” about a cricket team from Afghanistan and its making it to a World Cup tournament. Again it is nice to observe documentaries to be part of a bigger film festival although the programme  selection seen as a whole does not communicate a clear artistic profile but more a wish to reach a wide audience. Respect for that, of course.

www.docscene.org

www.edfilmfest.org.uk

Ole Bendtzen: Football is God

In the name of the Father, the Son and Diego Maradona. Amen... is the subtitle of this new Danish film that for a football addict, who will spend hours watching the coming World Cup, was a gift to watch at the premiere in Copenhagen. On a big screen. The film takes its audience to Buenos Aires,  the hometown of the legendary club Boca Juniors. It conveys – through three characters – what addiction in its most extreme version looks like, and it does it well. Hernan, the sportsjournalist, is a character you will not forget. You see him losing control when Boca wins, on the edge of breaking down, you see him at the shrink, who discusses his addiction and you hear him explain his addiction. Clear and understandable. La Tia (means The aunt) is a wonderful old lady who looks upon the players as her sons, byuing underpants for her favourite no. 9 on the team! And Pablo is the one who looks a bit like Maradona, comes from the bottom of the society and goes to the Maradona church where fan couple can be married.

The three characters are presented in an entertaining (although a bit schematically structured way) one hour documentary perfect for television and probably also fine for some festivals around.

So far the following broadcasters will show the film: DR (at the Dokumania slot tuesday evening June 8 9.25pm), SVT Sweden, YLE Finland, VPRO Holland, SBS Australia, Ceska TV. More will follow for sure....

And cross fingers for Argentina and their coach Diego in the coming weeks. Come on Messi, Milito, Higuain! 

Denmark, 2010, 52 mins.

http://www.final-cut.dk/home

http://www.footballisgod.dk/

Vurdering:

Docs Online: China, Soccer, Giro d’Italia

For viewers worldwide and for free – IDFA, the biggest documentary film festival in the world, based in Amsterdam, invites you to go online with IDFA TV, where there is an excellent selection of excellent documentaries.

IDFA staff is at the World Expo in China and for that reason you can watch films from and about China. World Cup in South Africa starts this coming friday and for that reason IDFA offers films about football, like Maziar Bahari’s ”Football, Iranian Style” from 2001. Giro d’Italia is over but you can still watch the classic of Jørgen Leth, ”Stars and Water Carriers” abour the bicycling race year 1973, premiered in 1974. As written on the site: ” These were the glory days of Eddie 'The Cannibal' Merckx (photo) who showed the entire field a clean pair of heels whether it was on the flats or up in the highest of mountain passes.”

The online service has several other neo-classics available like Florin Iepan’s Romanian masterpiece, ”Children of the Decree”. Starting point for the film: “Procreation is the social duty of all fertile women,” was the political thinking during the 1960s and 1970s in Romania. In 1966, Ceaucescu issued Decree 770, in which he forbade abortion for all women unless they were over forty or were already taking care of four children...”

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

MakeDox 1/Words of Documentary Enthusiasm

MakeDox is inspired and financed by people who love documentary film. People with a great desire to make their own festival, the kind of festival that I would like to visit myself. Petra Seliškar, Programme Selector..

I graduated in social work… I work in the film industry… I feel the need to exchange creative energy… I feel inspired to influence my everyday surroundings… I have a goal to share documentary creations with you… films that engage, inspire, enrich… Films that speak through their relevance, idea, message, thought, inner cry… that stratify, but do not insist on change, that dig up the roots and penetrate daringly without worrying about the soil and the dirt… that do not tend to wash it out or sort things through so that they would look better… And they do it in their own, powerful, unique way… they intrigue you, make you think, give you the shudders… they’ll maybe even change you against your will. That’s the kind of documentary films we focus on. Kirijana A. Nikoloska, Festival Director.

http://www.makedox.mk/indexen.html

MakeDox 2/ Words of Documentary Enthusiasm

More than 35 years ago, I broke my cousin’s Contaflex. Why? I wanted to see how that fascinating “eye” worked. I fixed it and ever since then I have been seeing with only one eye.

I lived to be fascinated again 30 years ago in the house of my favourite childhood dog Calvick. In the room where it slept, Victor kept different kinds of 8mm and 16mm cameras. I didn’t stop looking with one eye, but the photographs started to move. Shots of passers-by, insects, trees, animals, passengers… Unrelated images of the reality documented a moment, a particular space. After that I spent some time with the cinema amateurs, a period of exploration, and my love turned into a passion for documenting reality.

The next 15 years of professional engagement provoked my “eye” to return to its first love – creative documentary. For the last 10 years or so, I have dreamt about documentary films, I work on documentary films, and I find pleasure in every new film product. I am truly happy about the first edition of “MakeDox”, I am happy about the travelling cinema, I am happy that documentary film will reach every home in Macedonia, I am happy to see that the documentary dream has become a reality. (From the site of the new festival).

Brand Ferro, Producer

http://www.makedox.mk/indexen.html

MakeDox in Macedonia/3

Wonderful. Well done and good luck are the best words to congratulate the organisers of a new documentary festival in Macedonia. It starts tomorrow. My text –The following is taken from the IDF site: As nutritious and beneficial as the freshly pulled onion on its poster, the first edition of MakeDox - Creative Documentary Film Festival takes place June 5 - 11, 2010 in Skopje, Macedonia. The programme includes 62 films (official selection, Macedonian short documentaries, films by newcomers, etc.), as well as several lectures.

In its Official Selection, the festival will present The English Surgeon (dir. Geoffrey Smith, UK 2007); Burma VJ (dir. Anders Østergaard, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom 2008); Border (dir. Harutyun Khachatryan, Armenia 2009); Goodbye, How Are You? (dir. Boris Mitić, Serbia 2009); Cooking History (dir. Peter Kerekes, Slovakia, Austria, Czech Republic 2008); The Player (dir. John Appel, Netherlands 2009); Mostar United (dir. Claudia Tosi, Italy, Slovenia 2009); The Edge of Dreaming (dir. Amy Hardie, Scotland 2009); The One Man Village (dir. Simon El Habre, Lebanon 2008).

All of them (except “Border” and “Mostar United” have been reviewed and/or noted on filmkommentaren.dk)

http://www.dokweb.net/cs/

http://www.makedox.mk/indexen.html

Waiting for Godard

Our Paris correspondent has previously (search Godard) dedicated a posting to the one and only JLG, Jean-Luc Godard, whose ”Film Socialisme” was screened in Cannes. I found this clip from an overall festival article by Jason Solomons, The Observer, May 23:

The real gem wasn't in competition but in the more experimental (and this year, dull) Un Certain Regard selection and it came from the grand master of the filmic game, Jean-Luc Godard, or JLG as he's now known, like some kind of perfume (a whiff of bitterness, with top notes of genius).

Helped with production by fashionista Agnes B and using words ("textos") credited to J Derrida, W Benjamin, S Beckett and W Shakespeare, among others, 79-year-old JLG's avowed final work Film Socialisme was the freshest, coolest thing I saw, bursting with a new wave of anger and vitality, retooling once again the visual language of cinema.

Shot in astounding, crisp HD, it's a fragmented collage of ideas and thoughts, beautifully pure graphics, scratched Dolby sounds and twisted images. He even plays with the convention of subtitles, merely placing English words along the bottom of the frame: "smile dismiss universe" or "destructive constructive". At one point, a girl at a petrol station refuses "to talk to anyone who uses the verb to be". Then a llama appears behind her. You want story? Forget it, but there's plenty of meaning here as Godard swipes at European history, Palestine, Jews, bankers and the futility of language and the strictures of time. As the final credits simply say: NO COMMENT – and the old man didn't show up for his Cannes press conference.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/may/23/cannes-godard-frears-loach

Janus Metz: Armadillo/5

The news agency AFP reports tonight from CANNES: A controversial Danish movie set in Afghanistan and a first feature from a Vietnamese director on Thursday scooped awards in Cannes' Critics Week section…

"Armadillo", about the growing cynicism and adrenaline addiction of young soldiers in the battlefield, won the top prize for Janus Metz. Shot on the Afghan front, it is the first documentary ever chosen to compete for the Critics' Week prize. Described as a journey into soldiers' minds, the movie made wars on the home front this week after showing Danish troops claiming to have "liquidated" Taleban fighters wounded in combat. The army has called for an inquiry after parliamentarians who saw it this week dubbed it "Denmark's Vietnam."

Janus Metz: Armadillo/4

Sund fornuft sejrede: ARMADILLO FÅR PREMIERE DEN 27. MAJ - 6 UGER FØR PLANLAGT. Klip fra pressemeddelelse: Siden den overvældende modtagelse ved verdenspremieren på filmfestivalen i Cannes har Armadillo været omtalt massivt i både danske og internationale medier. Filmen har fået omfattende ros og har sat gang i en ny debat om krigen i Afghanistan, men endnu er det kun danske pressefolk og udvalgte politikere der rent faktisk har set filmen. “Efter den massive mediedækning skylder vi danskerne, at de også selv får mulighed for at tage stilling til filmen – og ikke blot få andres holdning præsenteret gennem medierne. Derfor har vi valgt at sende filmen i biografen så hurtigt som muligt”, udtaler instruktør Janus Metz.

Filmkommentaren.dk (see below), and many others, found it stupid that the film Armadilo was set to premiere by July 8 at a moment where the Danish and foreign media praised the film and debated the Danish involvement in the war in Afghanistan. That has now been changed, of course, so the Danes can see the film. Premiere in a week, May 27.

Thierry Paladino: La Machina

I did not watch the final film yet but followed the film project, when it was developed at the Ex Oriente workshop in Czech Republic and when it was presented at the most important market place for new documentary projects, the idfa Forum in Amsterdam. Now it has won the Audience Prize at Planet Doc Review in Warsaw. Of course it has! The production company is Centrala Film, Poland in coproduction with Balibari Films, France. Thierry Paladino is French/Italian, educated at the Wajda film school in Warsaw. And one of the most talented filmmakers, I have met in the last few years. I have previously written about his short film, At the Datcha, on this site. Here is what his new film (91 mins.) is about, and from what I saw in a very rough cut stage, I would say ” with a flavour of both Renoir and Kiarostami”, and with a classical theme: the old man and the boy... without Michel Simon and Pierre Noiret, but introducing Sergio Dotti. Voilà, and watch out for it, it will go all over!:

Somewhere in the South of France a boy and an older man live: Sergio – a Master Dollmaker and Adrien – his disciple. They will begin their journey for the first time this summer. They will meet cheerful and fascinating residents of colourful towns. "La machina" is a story of this travel, a story about the meetings, a story about a relation between the master and the disciple. Sergio Dotti is one of the last Master Dollmakers in France. He lives in the South. Here, Nice is called Nissa. Once, after the show Sergio met a nine-year-old boy called Adrien. The boy had been so interested in the performance that he came back the following day to be in this magic world again. This summer, they will begin their journey together for the first time to discover the hospitable and picturesque area of Nice. Travelling from town to town, they will show the world of imagination to children and adults. Adrien, full of admiration and enthusiasm, may prove to be Sergio’s last disciple, the one who will take over his skills, the last one who may become a master one day.

http://www.dokweb.net/cs/

Photo: La Machina, fra optagelserne

Janus Metz: Armadillo 3

Did you read the report from our Paris correspondent, Sara Thelle – see below. The core of the article is the hommage to wonderful Agnès Varda but Thelle also mentions the success of the Danish documentary, Armadillo, that not only filmkommentaren.dk but international press as well characterises as a strong and important work.

The film has for a couple of days hit the headlines in Danish newspapers and Danish politicians have queued to get on national tv to express their opinions about the ”Danish Vietnam” in Afghanistan as one politician expressed it.

Thelle reports that Parisian filmgoers can watch the film in Paris on June 5... the Danish audience has to wait until July 8! I am neither a marketing nor a film distribution expert but use some common sense, please, get the film on screen (and/or television) NOW when everybody talks about it. Right now – in Denmark – the situation is that a debate rolls about a film that very few people have had the chance to watch. So stupid!

News from Paris: Cannes

Every year in Cannes, at the opening of The Director’s Fortnight, la Quinzaine des réalisateurs, the international society of filmmakers, la Société des Réalisateurs de Films (SRF), hands out the award The Carosse d’Or to honour “the innovative qualities, courage and independent-mindedness of his or her work”.

This year the honour goes to Agnès Varda, 81, the queen of truly independent French cinema.

As an introduction to this occasion on May 13th, Varda’s film Lions Love… (and Lies) from 1969 was shown.

Lions Love… (and Lies) is a crazy, charming docu-fiction, or rather fiction-docu, Varda filmed when she stayed in Los Angeles with her husband Jaques Démy in 1968.  Peace and love, sex and politics, freedom and soft drugs! The main caracters is the trio Viva, Andy Warhol’s muse, Jim and Jerry, the authors of Hair, and Shirley Clarke in the role of herself…

”I’m always cheating with reality and fiction” states Varda (Le Monde, 15.5.2010, reporting from the debate she had with Frederick Wiseman after the screening of her film: Le Monde )

Agnès Varda’s production company Ciné-Tamaris, have been so kind to inform me, that not only can you watch all of Agnès Varda’s films on international VOD from May 18th, 35 films, short and long, many of them previously unreleased, on:

http://www.theauteurs.com

But also, a DVD set with the complete works of Agnès Varda, including Lions Love… (and Lies) which has never been released on DVD, is in it’s making and is expected to come next year.

http://www.cine-tamaris.com

Jean-Luc Godard cancelled his expected visit to the Cannes Festival for enigmatic reasons and to the great regret of the Festival. His latest film Film Socialisme was shown Monday May 17^th in the competition Un certain Regard. The film will come out in theatres in France May 19^th.

And at last, Filmkommentaren is of course following Armadillo’s success in Cannes.

For those who are lucky to be in Paris, Janus Metz’ Armadillo can be seen already the 5^th of June (17.30 p.m.) in the special program 49ème Semaine internationale de la critique at the Cinémathèque in Paris, shown together with the short film Berik by Daniel Joseph Borgmann, also in the competition: Cinémathèque

Cineuropa wrote: “Janus Metz’s extraordinarily forceful documentary Armadillo stunned the audience in Critics’ Week at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival”. Read the rest here: Cineuropa

The Hollywood Reporter: A “Vivid and frightening documentary”, “When the bombs go off and the bullets start flying, Metz and his cameraman provide a real-life vision of what a hurt locker is really all about”: Hollywoodreporter

The trailer for Armadillo can be seen here:

http://armadillothemovie.com/armadillo/TRAILER.html

And a little bonus, greetings from Paris and Agnès: Le lion volatile (2003):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7PzW9s7b9I 

Photo: Agnès Varda in Cannes 2009 (Reuter)

Janus Metz: Armadillo 2

Take a look at the boy. Look at his eyes. See the fear of a soldier. A very young Danish soldier who has just been hit. He serves in Afghanistan, he fights Taliban. He is caught at that very moment of injury in the film of Janus Metz. The cameraman Lars Skree filmed the sequence of the wounded soldier who has his eyes wide open. A sequence where the boy seems about to faint and where you as spectator (at least I did) gets the impression that he is dying. His head falling down as if he is losing consciousness.

He did not die. In the film he returns to the image a couple of times. In a hospital scene where he is happy to meet his pals from the camp, and at the end of the film where he with a big, proud smile shows his family the scar. A memory from Afghanistan.

It is amazing how close the director and his cameraman have come to the characters in the camp in the Helmand province. They have filmed in the camp, in the tanks, on mission, in combat, at debriefing sessions. They have filmed and recorded phone calls to home in Denmark, they have filmed the free time activities from swimming to watching hard core porno films. It is such a rich material they have collected to make

Vurdering:

Berlusconi Again Again...

The headline is taken from a small report by Camillo de Marco, who from Cannes Film Festival writes for the CinEuropa website. About one more documentary that puts its focus on Berlusconi... Italian documentarians do not have so go far to find good stories as Michael Moore did not when George W. was in the White House. Here is the note:

A throng of journalists, applause and some laughter greeted the morning’s press screening of Draquila: Italy Trembles [trailer] by Sabina Guzzanti, on how the aftermath of last year’s earthquake in Abruzzo was handled by the national Civil Protection Agency (see article). The nearly 400-seat theatre was full well before the film began.

The actress-director also met with the Italian press this morning, and expressed her “deep shame" over Italian Minister of Culture Sandro Bondi’s decision not to attend Cannes because the film is a"a propaganda product that offends the country". Yesterday evening, Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, denied accusations of Italy’s "subjugation" of the film’s content. "It’s a problem of cultural decline", added Guzzanti. Meanwhile, the 100Autori Association is asking for Minister Bondi to resign. Distributor BIM has published the film’s initial box office. Since its domestic release last Friday, Draquila has grossed €413,000 (and yesterday, €56.500), to earn it third place on the charts after Robin Hood and Iron Man.

PS. Below the official site of the film (with clips) and a link to Cineeuropa that in its editorial choice also includes a huge amount of trailers, mostly for fiction films.

http://cineuropa.org/index.aspx?lang=en

http://www.draquila-ilfilm.it/

San Sebastian Celebrates the Documentary

The prestigious film festival in San Sebastian (September 17-25), one of the so-called A-festivals, has announced a special celebration of what on this site often has been called the new Golden Age of the documentary film genre, in the text below characterised as “a new heterodoxy of the genre, rich in multifarious expressions, alternative paths and unexpected solutions”. A good text from the site of the festival:

With the title of .doc – New paths of non-fiction, San Sebastian Festival will, at its 58th edition, dedicate a wide-reaching retrospective to contemporary non-fiction cinema. This cycle will include some of the most representative examples of international non-fiction cinema.

If any single phenomenon has captured attention on the world movie scene in recent years, it has to be today’s interest in documentary cinema, a practice which, save extremely rare exceptions, had followed a path largely falling by the way of the histories of cinema, international festivals and the memory of film buffs. But contemporary documentary cinema is so incredibly varied and versatile that even the classic notion of the term has to be questioned. Requirements traditionally associated to the documentary (like objectivity, a serious tone and lack of expressiveness) are no longer considered essential and can even be deliberately avoided.

Janus Metz: Armadillo – in Cannes

It is always to be noted that the Cannes Film Festival picks a documentary for a competition screening. This time a Danish one, Armadillo by Janus Metz, has been taken for the Semaine de la Critique. The first screening in Cannes takes place May 16, and the film has a Danish cinema premiere July 8. For that reason we wait with a review till early July but want to tell you what the film is about. Here is the text from the site of the Danish Film Institute:

Armadillo is an upfront account of growing cynicism and adrenaline addiction in young soldiers at war. Mads and Daniel are serving their first mission in Helmand, Afghanistan. Their platoon is stationed in Camp Armadillo, right on the Helmand frontline, fighting tough battles against the Talebans. The soldiers are there to help the Afghans, but as fighting gets tougher and operations increasingly hairy, Mads, Daniel and their friends becomes cynical, widening the gap between themselves and the Afghan civilisation. Mistrust and paranoia set in causing alienation and disillusion.

And about the director Janus Metz: Born 1974, Denmark. MA in Communication and International Development Studies from Roskilde University. Has worked as a researcher on documentary film projects. Metz lived in Johannesburg for one year (2002-03), working on a South African drama series, »Soul City«. The stay inspired him to make his debut film, the documentary »Township Boys« (2006). Also in 2006, he produced the programme »Eventyrerne«/»Clandestine« for the national broadcaster DR, which follows a group of illegal African migrants through Sahara on their way to Europe. »Fra Thailand til Thy«/»Love on Delivery« (2008), recipient of two GuldDok awards at CPH:DOX and selected for IDFA's Silver Wolf programme, is Metz' first film about Thai women and their pursuit of a Danish husband. Succeeding this is »Fra Thy til Thailand«/»Ticket to Paradise« (2008), selected for IDFA's Reflecting Images: Panorama, and honoured with a Special Mention at CPH:DOX.

My co-blogger Allan Berg has several times written about the two thai-films on this site. Search ”Janus Metz”. Photo: Lars Skree, cameraman of the film.

www.dfi.dk

News from Paris: Kitano

This spring Paris is under the sign of Kitano. Japanese filmmaker (Sonatine, Hana-bi, Zatoichi a. o.), actor, TV presenter, comedian, painter, singer, poet and writer Takeshi Kitano (born 1947 in Tokyo) is everywhere. He has a big exhibition at le Fondation Cartier, le Centre Pompidou is running a retrospective of all his films, his first autobiography outside of Japan is being published, his film Achilles and the Tortoise (2008) is out in the cinemas and he’s presenting his latest film Outrage (2010) in the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival.

Since March, the cinemas at le Centre Pompidou (Beaubourg among Parisians), is showing the retrospective Takeshi Kitano, l’iconoclaste: 40 films, TV films and documents (many unreleased), the most complete retrospective ever on Kitano’s oeuvre as filmmaker and actor. (Beaubourgs retrospectives are great, last year we were spoiled with a complete program of absolutely all of Werner Herzog’s films).

All screenings until June 26: (link to the Pompidou site)

Parallel to the retrospective, le Fondation Cartier (situated in Jean Nouvel’s transparent glass building since 1994) is showing an exhibition of Kitano’s artwork. The project is an invitation from le Fondation Cartier and it is the first time Kitano, under the name of Beat Takeshi Kitano, is showing his work. Kitano explains: “With this exhibition, I was attempting to expand the definition of “art,” to make it less conventional, less snobby, more casual and accessible to everyone”. The exhibition is a mixture of paintings, installations and screens showing his TV shows, set up as a playful amusement park, an interactive universe meant to address children in particular. As Kitano mentions himself: “If somebody consider that it is not art, I won’t feel insulted”.

Art or not art, frankly, my eight-year-old daughter and me couldn’t care less, if only it’s funny, interesting, beautiful, impressive… Unfortunately neither were the case!

But go see for yourself:

Gosse de peintre, Beat Takeshi Kitano, Fondation Cartier, 261 bd Raspail, Paris 14e. Until September 12, 2010. http://fondation.cartier.com

Kitano par Kitano (Grasset 2010): Kitano’s first autobiography outside of Japan based on conversations with the Tokyo-based French journalist Michel Temman.

Documentaries:

Takeshi Kitano, l'imprévisible (MK2 1999, 68 min.) by Jean-Pierre Limosin, in the series “Cinéma de notre temps”, Centre Pompidou Cinéma 2: June 12.

Jam Session (1999, 93 min.) by Makoto Shinosaki, Centre Pompidou Cinéma 2: Mai 23 and June 6.

Photo: © Takeshi Kitano dans "Sonatine, Mélodie mortelle", 1993 (c) Bandai Visual, Shochiku Co., Ltd./Studio Canal, Tamasa Distribution-Collection TCD (Daniel Bouteiller) (c) Centre Pompidou, direction de la communication, conception graphique : Ch. Beneyton

Reflections on Festivals

The Canadian documentary film magazine POV asked me to write an article on festivals. I did so, it has been published in connection with the HotDocs festival that is running right now. You can read the article below and for further info on this excellent magazine visit the

http://www.povmagazine.com

or

http://www.docorg.ca/en/point-view-magazine

There are some festivals that I have come back to year after year, with pleasure, almost  with a feeling of being part of the furniture. I place myself on the same row in the cinema and make my own screening schedule that fits with lunch and dinner breaks and meetings with friends. Then there are festivals where I have been to only a few times--or go reluctantly.

It is not easy to write about festivals as an insider who goes there

Doc Alliance: Free films

More free viewing for documentary addicts. A generous offer is given by the Doc Alliance (the four festivals in Nyon, Leipzig, Jihlava, Warsaw and Copenhagen). Below is their promotion text, and the films are available from April 21-25. When you visit the site, notice also all the very fine titles available for screening for a very small amount of €’s:

To celebrate the upcoming 2010 edition of Visions du Reel Nyon (April 15 – 21), DocAllianceFilms.com will offer free streaming of the five documentaries from the Doc Alliance Selection 2009,

“Maggie in Wonderland” by Ester Martin Bergsmark, Beatrice "Maggie" Andersson und Mark Hammarberg (Sweden, Finland 2008, 72 min) Maggie, a young woman from Kenya, films her world in the Swedish city of Malmö. A creative portrayal of the meaning of social isolation. “

Auto*Mat” by Martin Mareček (Czech Republic 2009, 90 min). Martin Marecek invents a militant, jubilatory action to combat the automatisms generated by Prague’s automobile culture. “

Big John” by Håvard Bustnes (Norway 2008, 86 min) The rise and fall of a young boxer coached by his father ‘Big John’ – who was also his trainer, impresario and agent. ”Hotel Sahara” by Bettina Haasen (Germany 2008, 85 min) Nouhadibou in Mauritania: a melting pot of dreams, hopes and the terminus of countless young African emigrants who end up here. “

Survival Song by Yu Guangyi” (China 2008, 94 min) A family of Chinese peasants is condemned to poverty and broken apart in the name of modernity. A deeply moving and sublime social tale.

www.docalliancefilms.com

idfa: for Viewers Worldwide

8 excellent documentaries can be watched for free on the net, made available for screening by idfa, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Let me just mention three of them – Florin Iepan’s Romanian ”Children of the Decree” about the atrocities during Ceaucescu, Heddy Honigmann’s ”Underground Orchestra” set in Paris and as always with this great director dealing with people, and Danish Jørgen Leth’s masterpiece ”Haïti Untitled” from 1995, his declaration of love to the country where he lived until the earthquake this year forced him to leave his totally destroyed home. Photo: Jørgen Leth.

http://www.idfa.nl/industry/idfa-tv/films/worldwide.aspx

Visions du Réel Nyon 1

The important documentary film festival in Nyon, Switzerland takes off in two days, April 15 and goes on to April 21. As usual a huge programme is offered, an emphasis is put on the authored documentary, a strong collaboration with and influence from the European cultural channel arte is visible, workshops will take place, a market will be filled up with buyers, and feature length documentaries will be pitched. The festival has all the elements.

Also for creating a debate, I hope! Big surprise it is for me to see that the film of Nino Kirtadzé, “Something about Georgia” has been chosen for the international competition. I saw the film at the premiere in Tbilisi and wrote about it on this site. Here is some of my hard criticism: … big disappointment, I have to say. Pure propaganda for the politics of the president Saakhasvili, who according to this film has no opposition in his country... Propaganda, yes, and it could be ok, of course documentaries should have a standpoint, a personal view...

Visions du Réel Nyon 2

Festival director Jean Perrret leaves the festival after this edition. Here are his fine words of goodbye: It is comforting to feel the quietness emanated again by the films selected for this 16th edition of Visions du Réel. Not that they are slow,  oh no, some of them are very fast-moving in the way they tell stories! They convey a different experience which documentary filmmakers share with their spectators when they - filmmakers - take time to cast their gaze and focus their attention on the faces, landscapes, voices and din of the world. This film genre is comforting when the real world takes shape thus in its exciting complexity. It is exhilarating to share with the audiences these visions that reflect the extraordinary diversity of genres, scripts and viewpoints. Nearly 2,000 films have been viewed by the members of the Working Group, which is made up of specialists hired to spot the most striking films, to write the texts of the Catalogue and to moderate debates and meetings. At a time when the conditions under which films made by independent directors can assert their identity are deteriorating in terms of production and distribution,

Ripping Reality

The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival (April 29 – May 9) has introduced an interesting category in this year’s festival programme: Ripping Reality. Ten films have been chosen that in each their own way have added something new to the documentary genre in the last decade. I was asked to give my point of view on this and listed 10 Eastern and Central European works that are close to my heart and demonstrates originality and innovative strength. The Hot Doc people, led by festival director Sean Farrell, has put up a website that has a lot of interesting texts on the state of the art of the documentary. Here is my text contribution for the initiative – and do visit http://www.hotdocs.ca/film/program/Ripping%20Reality

and

http://www.rippingreality.com/

Tue Steen Müller: The last decade of documentaries, a new wave or new waves… well, you can have a look at it from different angles. As a documentary workshop organizer, both in my time as director of EDN (European Documentary Network) and now as a free lancer, I see more and more upcoming talents who try to fight their ways through endless sessions of

Another Planet gets Another Award

There are many films the career of which we have been following with great pleasure. Another Planet by Hungarian Ferenc Moldovanyi is one of them. The film has won the Special Award from the Ukranian Helsinki Human Rights Union at the 7th International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, which took place in Kyiv from 26th March to 2nd April 2010. (See more about the festival on this site)

Another Planet has won 18 awards and been presented at 58 festivals in 43 countries on four continents and has been broadcast by various prestigious television channels. Congratulations.

Several other films like “Burma vj”, “Cash and Marry” and “The Living Room of a Nation” were also awarded at the festival in Ukraine.

www.docudays-ua

Soccer Cinema

Soccer Cinema is a real dream come true. A travelling cinema, bringing some of the world’s best soccer documentaries to 50 small towns, villages and townships, spread across all 9 South African provinces. The journey begins on 6 April 2010 in Cape Town and will end there on 2 June, followed by a Soccer Cinema Festival held at the Labia Cinema from 5 to 10 June.

Here is a clip from the press release: The FIFA Football World Cup is a unique and very special event. It has the potential to unite South Africa as few other events since democracy was established in 1994. In the months before the championship it is vital that everyone feels part of this. Unity can be built by inspiring South Africans through documentary cinema with insight into famous players, teams as well as incredible highlights and events from the beautiful game's colourful past.  These films are new to South African audiences, and comprise a history and world-view of football that will be available to the public across the whole country. (Full film list see here)

The aim of Soccer Cinema is to better inform audiences about the

News from Paris: Maysles

It’s the Maysles!

At this years edition of Cinéma du réel, the festival paid tribute to Albert Maysles. The Maysles Brothers: the late David on sound and Albert behind the camera, classic direct cinema.

As was the case two years ago, with the retrospective Americana showing the works of Shirley Clarke and Jim McBride (not to forget Agnès Varda’s rare and wonderful Lions Love (1969)), it is a pleasure to be able to discover or rediscover these films on the big screen.

Everything in Albert Maysles films is beautiful; from the American ballerina at the Bolshoi ballet in Anastasia (1962), Yoko Ono performing her Cut Piece (1965), a hilarious and very attractive Brando in Meet Marlon Brando (1966), the self-revealing Truman Capote in From Truman with love (1966), a bible-salesman driving his car in Salesman (1968) to the eccentric mother and daughter in Grey Gardens (1975).

Godard has called Albert Maysles the best American cameraman. The two of them worked together in the Barbet Schroeder production Paris vue par… (1965), a curious piece of film history, described by Albert here:

http://www.arte.tv/fr/Comprendre-le-monde/arte-journal/103288,CmC=3115724,CmPart=com.arte-tv.www.html

Albert Maysles sums up his approach to documentary with a quote from Grey Gardens: “ Come on in, we’re not ready!” (Little Edie in Grey Gardens).

If you can live with the English version with French subtitles, a DVD including both Salesman and Grey Gardens (ArteVidéo) is available on French Amazon http://www.amazon.fr/. Or separately in an English version as well as Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason (1967), Jim McBride’s David Holzman’s Diary (1968) on amazon.uk. You can watch Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece at:

 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3dsvy_yoko-ono-cut-piece_shortfilms.

For the French resident readers, some of the Maysles Brothers films can be seen on TV on CinéCinéma Club, on April 30 and May 7.

As for the rest, we are lucky to have retrospectives at the festivals!

I would also like to mention that, unfortunately again only for French residents, the films from the international competition and the French panorama at Cinéma du réel are available on VoD at http://www.universcine.com/promotion/cinemadureel2010 the whole month of April.

Photo: The Maysles on location, Grey Gardens (1975)

Eric Pauwels: Les Films rêvés 2

Jeg er ikke blevet færdig med indtrykkene fra Cinéma du réel, eller rettere, der er film, som bliver ved med at trænge sig på. Nu Pauwels’ tre timer lange sag, i to dele (85 og 95 minutter) i udtrykkelig 4/3 format. Det står på forsiden af dvd-udgaven, som CBA i Bruxelles har været så venlig at sende mig. Den slags er vigtigt, når det er billeder i en tid og fra en tid, det drejer sig om. Med en mening om deres eget udseende. Det gamle tv-format. Og på forsiden er der seks billeder i dette klassiske format, på bagsiden yderligere seks og så synopsen: Un jour, un homme, un cinéaste fait un rêve: il rêve qu’il fait un film qui contiendrait tous les films qu’il a rêvé de faire. Inden i er tiden, de to dele, i alt 180 minutter.

Jeg så filmen i Paris uden at forstå særlig meget af den franske voice-over og dialog. Men dvd-udgaven har engelske undertekster. Så nu kommer et frydefuldt arbejde med at se det store, smukke værk, omhyggeligt, afsnit for afsnit. Læse det så langsomt, som det indbyder til. Så tiden holdes fast. Hvad dvd kan.

Det begynder med en poetik. Her kan man som begynder begynde. Her kan man som blasert og erfaren begynde forfra og blive ydmyg. Det er yderst håndfast: der findes disse film, og så demonstreres en scene. Og der findes disse, og der demonstreres en scene. Det er medrivende grundlæggende. Og så følger afsnittet om Jean Rouch, hvor poetikken foldes ud, men ikke som skema, nej, som liv og død… 

Vurdering:

News from Paris

Filmkommentaren.dk welcomes Sara Thelle as our Paris correspondent. She will (see below) keep the readers informed about film events and issues from the French capital. Sara Thelle, Danish origin, has a BA in study of Religions from Copenhagen University and is currently finishing a Master Science sociales des religions at l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. For 15 years she works in the fashion business.

News from Paris

And the festivals continues…

The festival Cinéma du réel is almost over for this year, but Paris still has more to offer.

As every year following the Cinéma du réel, the Festival International Jean Rouch sets for the 29^th time it’s focus on the ethnographic film. This year the festival takes place in the beautiful Museum of natural history, La Grande Galérie de l’Évolution in Jardin de Plantes in the 5^th arrondissement from March 27th to April 5th. The festival is organised by le Comité du film ethnographique founded in 1952 at le Musée de l’Homme at Trocadéro, currently closed down for renovation until 2012.

The Festival International de Films de Femmes takes place in Créteil, a suburb of Paris, from April 2-11. The theme of the festival this year is called Trans-Europe-Afrique and it opens Friday with a concert by the Malian singer Rokia Traoré. Created in 1979, it hosts female directors from all around the world showing their vision on society, paying attention to the artistic, political and social involvement of women in the world, as expressed through their cinema. In competition: 10 feature fiction films, 10 feature documentaries and 30 short films, together with retrospectives and debates.

Amongst former award winners are Eva Mulvad, Enemies of Happiness (2007), Susanne Bier, Brothers (2005).

The programs can be downloaded from the festivals website:

http://www.comite-film-ethno.net/festival-international-jean-rouch/2010/index.htm

http://www.filmsdefemmes.com/

Xiaolu Guo: We Went to Wonderland

Masser af film bliver vist uden for konkurrence, og en fin ting på Cinéma du réel er ”værkstederne”, Dédicaces et ateliers, afdelinger for enkelte instruktørers samlede værk. I år er det Maysles (også her..), Marcel Hanoun, Michel Khlrifi (en enkelt film) og Xiaolu Guo. Jeg nåede to af hendes film og hun er et lidt spændende nyt bekendtskab. (Se hendes hjemmeside, link nedenfor.)

På en måde er det hjemmevideo. Instruktøren, som bor i London, har besøg af faderen og moderen hjemme fra Kina. En scene gentages to gange, tror jeg: moderen sover, faderen tager bad, det er ikke observerende kamera i direct cinéma forstand, det er aftalt og instrueret aktion, rejsens tid levet foran kameraet, for kameraet, så frit og ukunstlet at man smiler indforstået, filmen finder sin autenticitet i denne intimitet, ja, i selve privatheden. Det er cinéma vérité. Godard (og Varda?) er blandt forbillederne. ”La célèbre plaisanterie métaphysique de Jean-Luc Godard: ’Je fais des films pour occuper mon temps’ ”, citerer hun i en tekst i kataloget. Tiden ja, og hun filmer Coutards grå nuancer af dagslysscener og egensindige beskæringer. Det er i hvert fald, hvad jeg kommer til at tænke på. Vemodig og glad, bølger ruller tilbage, værker bliver stående. Fascinerende uforståelige.

Historien er altså den, at instruktørens forældre på rejse til en anden verden, til England, hvor faderen er blevet opereret, med filmen er vi i rekonvalescensen, som han lever med alle sanser vidt åbne (han er maler og nu skribent også, da stemmen er væk), og moderen er med hele tiden som lige så opmærksom ledsager. De oplever og kommenterer de britiske omgivelser, senere kommer en rejse til kontinentet, til Rom. De forstår mindre og mindre, længes hjem. Men de resignerer i humørfyldt hjertelighed, i træffende og kloge bemærkninger, som koderen formidler på begges vegne. Ja, og så pakker de og vender hjem. Og filen slutter i en telefonsamtale mellem mor og datter: Ja, vi er kommet godt hjem. Ja, din far er i atelieret. Cinéma du réel. Virkelig tid. Virkelighed.    

Xiaolu Guos roman A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers handler (læser jeg et sted) om en kinesisk kvinde, som kommer til England, hvor hun dels mister sit navn, som ikke kan udtales på engelsk, dels ikke forstår, det hun møjsommeligt lærer at oversætte sig til. Hun møder en mand, også uden navn. De bliver elskende, skønt de ikke kan tale sammen, men alene hver for sig opdage deres egen identitet. Er det rejsens væsen? Kærlighedens? Forfatteren og filminstruktøren forfølger nok sine temaer, de store pakket i de små, i alt hun skriver, romaner og film. Et udfordrende bekendtskab at tage med fra den rige og brede Paris-festival.

Xiaolu Guo: We Went to Wonderland, Kina 2007, 79 min. Manuskript, fotografi  og co-produktion: Xiaolu Guo, klip, musik og lyd: Philippe Ciompi, produktion og distribution: Perspective Films phciompi@btopenworld.com

http://www.guoxiaolu.com/

Cinéma du Réel Awards

Awards have been given at Cinema du Réel and congratulations to the winners and to the festival to have a international jury that did not go for compromises but honoured originality and non-mainstream filmmaking.

The two films awarded have both been reviewed and praised on this site, see below. Here follows the names of the jury and the two winning films: “The International Jury composed of : Sólveig Anspach (filmmaker – Iceland/United States), Sepideh Farsi (Filmmaker - Iran), Michaël Gaumnitz (Filmmaker - France), Stefan Mayakovsky (director of the Shadow Festival – The Netherlands), Bruno Muel (filmmaker and cameraman - France), has awarded

The Cinéma du réel Grand prix, 8 000 €, granted by the Bpi with the support of the Procirep, to 48 (photo) Susana de Sousa Dias (Portugal)

The Scam International Award, 4 600 € granted by the Scam, to La Bocca del lupo, Pietro Marcello (Italy)

For the rest of the awards, please check

www.cinereel.org

Marcello Gomes og Karim Aïnouz: Viajo porque...

Parisfestivalen Cinéma du réel slutter her i weekenden. Og jeg tænker på indtrykkene – en fornemmelse af opbrud og vækst melder sig. En række film kombinerer altså for mig at se med ny rolig selvfølgelighed reportagen med essayistikken. Blander fagsproget og den lyriske fremstilling. Sætter det dokumentariske stof sammen med fiktionens forestillingskraft. Som nu filmen her, Jeg rejser, fordi jeg skal, jeg vender tilbage, fordi jeg elsker dig. Måske er den et passioneret kærlighedsbrev, en billedskøn elegi. Måske er den en samfundsskildring i rejsebeskrivelsens form. Sandsynligvis er den begge dele.   

José Renato er geolog. Han bliver sendt på feltarbejde i det nordøstlige Brasilien. Hans opgave er at påvise mulige forløb for en kanal fra regionens eneste flod. Vi ser, hvad han ser, han er kameraet. Vi ser aldrig ham, men vi hører hans stemme hele tiden. Den stemme (Irandhir Santos’) bærer fortællingen og refleksionen. Om og over rejsen, og med den arbejdet og så altså kærligheden, intet mindre. Som filmens titel lover. Og vigtigst er jo kærligheden.   

Manden og kvinden. Det er deres professionelle arbejde, som skiller dem, har skilt dem, kan jeg tro. Hun er botaniker, han som sagt geolog. Han gør sit arbejde til poesi, filmen åbner i et verbalt digt om feltarbejdets medbragte bagage: måleinstrumenter, tegnepapir, blyanter, landkort, kameraer…, åbner i et vekslende sløret og knivskarpt billeddigt over feltarbejdets objekt: terrænet, dets formationer, mineraler, højdeforskelle og vegetation… Men så møder kameraet stedets kultur, dets mennesker og opdager deres forskellige skæbner. Dagene går, kærlighedslængslen trænger sig på, konverteres til sex, der kommer kvinder ind i billedet, én nats begivenheder. Præcis som den alt omfattende poetiske naturiagttagelse forvandler sig til nøgtern materiel indsigt, økonomi og sociale modsætningsforhold. Kanalen vil give nødvendig vand til nogles behov, vil tvinge andre til at bryde op, opgive deres huse og tilværelse der på stedet.    

Og kærlighedshistorien er tilsvarende modsætningsfyldt. Et hjerte af sten over for en kødædende plante, som Yann Lardeau nøgternt konkluderer sin tekst i festivalkataloget.

Marcelo Gomes og Karim Aïnouz: Viajo porque preciso, volto porque te amo, Brasilien 2009, 71 min. Manuskript: Marcelo Gomes og Karim Aïnouz, fotografi: Heloïsa Passos, klip: Karen Harley, lyd: Waldir Xavier, medvirkende: Irandhir Santos, produktion og distribution: REC Produtores

 claire@recprodutores.com.br

Man kan få et indtryk af filmens skønhed og generelle stemning i traileren på siden her:

http://www.cinemadureel.org/article3974.html 

Documentary Days Kiev

From today and until April 2 the film interested audience in Kiev, Ukraine is given a treat with the Documentary Days – the International Film Festival, theme Human Rights. A variety of films are sectioned in a ”Human Rights Competition”, an ”Art Competiton” (= artistic films), special screenings and retrospectives. Opening film is ”Rabbit a la Berlin” and from the programme can also be mentioned several other films that have been reviewed or noticed on this site:

”I am a Monument to Myself” (photo) Ukranian film by Dmytro Tiazhlov, ”Hotel Sahara” by Bettina Haasen, ”Desert Brides” by Ada Ushpiz, ”Burma vj” by Anders Østergaard, ”A Place Without People” by Andreas Apostolidis, ”Bananas!” by Fredrik Gertten, ”Another Planet” by Ferenc Moldovanyi, ”Cash and Marry” by Atanas Georgiev, ”Chemo” by Pawel Lozinski, ”Long Distance Love” by Magnus Gertten and Elin Jönsson, ”René” by Helena Trestikova and ”Living Room of a Nation” by Jukka Kärkkäinen.

Of course human rights questions are important in that region and personally I look forward to get the chance to watch what an old friend, Belarussian Volha Nikalaichyk reports in her "Murder on the Eve of Spring" as well as "Love me, Please!" by Valery Balayan from Russia - a film that includes "real video records of Russian fascists and musical clips placed on nazi websites". Take a look at the website, very inviting it is.

http://docudays.org.ua/2010/en/

Susana de Sousa Dias: 48

This is gonna be a bit longer blog text than usual. Simply because this is an extraordinary film that calls for more than an ordinary review. My co-blogger Allan Berg wrote – in Danish and after having seen 30 minutes of the film – that this would probably be the film experience of his festival viewing. It was definitely what it became for me. My hope is that the following will inspire festivals to introduce a totally different approach to writing history. To deal with memories. To seek a new minimalistic film language. And work with music and sound in a new way.

First an introduction to the team behind the film; the info is taken from their website: The director Susana de Sousa Dias - completed a thesis in Aesthetics and Art Philosophy and holds University degrees both in Painting (Lisbon University) and Cinema (National School of Theatre and Cinema). She studied music at the National Conservatory of Music and is currently preparing a PhD in Aesthetics, Art Science and Technology (University Paris 8). The producer Ansgar Schaefer - graduated in German Language and Literature and Political Science. Works as a historian and university professor. The sound designer António de Sousa Dias - composer, Ph.D. in Musicology (Paris VIII) sponsored by the Portuguese Scientific Foundation FCT. Is currently developing a research work on CAC - Université Paris VIII / MSH Paris Nord in the field of music creation and virtual environments.

An academic film team would normally make me, a documentary addict, shiver with fear for the outcome of “48”, in this case no, for that simple reason

Vurdering:

Reality Break at Cinema du Réel

You plan and plan for weeks and months, you make the schedule, you ask the directors to be there for the screening, you sell the tickets... and then it all have to be changed, at least for a handful of screenings. The Cinema du Reel and its har working team experienced this last sunday when a bomb alarm made the police empty Centre Pompidou. Take a look (link below) at the small report made by film students. False alarm it was, luckily. PS! The opening shot reveals the favourite café of Allan Berg on the corner of rue Rambuteau. Monsieur Berg took his breakfast and wrote his texts for filmkommentaren at this cosy location.

http://blog.cinemadureel.org/2010/03/21/alerte-a-la-bombe-dimanche-21-mars-au-centre-pompidou/

Anat Even: Achrey Haso (Closure)

Painters have done it for centuries – chosen their motif literally close to themselves. ”View from my window”. Not many filmmakers have done the same. Kossakovsky did it with Tische! He looked out of the window from his appartment in St. Peterburg. And Now Anat Even, Israeli director, has done the same and made an extraordinary clever and personal film essay. From her window.

With a tone of melancholy, mature, in first person, the director tells about the loss of her brother who lived in the yard, had his workshop for pottery and sculptures there, always within reach, working there if he was not taking a break to go outside to sweep the pavement. While talking about him the view from the window gives the viewer trees or people going to and fro, or a child being bathed. Or clips from films with the brother.

Gradually a demolition takes place in front of our eyes. A skyscraper is to be built near the house, and the courtyard is getting a house that will block the view from the window. Palestinian workers are building a wall next to the appartment building of the director! Closure is the English title of the film, of course, what else could it be, but does it sound too definitive and simple in words, I can not stress enough the multilayered generosity that Anat Even brings forward, when she constantly shows and talks about the place as having historically a strong multicultural importance. Those days are over. 

www.cinereel.org

Israel, 2009, 50 mins.

Vurdering:

Jorge Léon: Vous êtes servis

At Cinema du Réel 2009 Jorge Léon’s ”10 min.” was shown, and reviewed on this site (search: Jorge Léon). Subject: Prostitution. This year he continues his social documentary line with a story about Indonese young women, who are being trained to become maids in Taiwan or in the Emirates. The training takes place in a school and Léon has caught many illustrating and funny situations on how to serve. These sequences are mixed with fine stylised monologues from the young women, who simply need to take the jobs as servants for filthy rich people wherever and to almost whatever price. They leave the airplane to enter a new life away from home. Globalisation. There is nothing new or exceptional about this film, we know it all, which should not make tv stations hesitate to get hold of the film and show it to the broad audience it deserves because of its subject.

Belgium, 2010, 57 mins.

www.cinereel.org

http://www.cinergie.be/critique.php?action=display&id=1159

Vurdering:

Victor Asliuk: Vostrau Belarus

Asliuk is a veteran at Cinéma du Réel. He has won prizes at the festival for his lyrical short documentaries from the countryside of Belarus. It is therefore only natural that he is invited back with his new one-hour long documentary, English title ”Island Belarus”.

But it is painful to experience that Asliuk does not master the long format at all. He goes from one more inauguration of the president Lukashenko to an old man in his garden in the countryside where he has placed small sculptures that illustrates the agricultural life as it was. Which is a theme for the film – the disappearance of traditional agriculture and values in the countryside, while people are demonstrating against the dictator in the capital Minsk. Being brutally beaten by the gorillas of Lukashenko.

Two different worlds, yes, a divided country, yes, an elegy for a culture and a nation, yes maybe, but it is not enough to just go from A to B and back again, where is the director? Asliuk has chosen a genre, a political statement that is not the right one for him.

The film is shown at Cinema du Réel friday the 26th and saturday the 27th.

Belarus, 2009, 52 mins.

www.cinereel.org

Vurdering:

Pietro Marcello: La Bocca del lupo

In his Danish language texts from this year’s Cinema du Réel, my co-blogger Allan Berg reveals avec plaisir that his prejudice about the festival being for the pure observational documentary maybe is wrong. It is indeed, both because the development of the creative documentary in general draws away from the observation including much more fictional or personal reflective essayistic elements in the narrative, and because the festival selection this year (this is my gut feeling as I did not get to watch it all) appears more daring than usual when it comes to breaking the classical dramaturgy.

Which is the case for one more (the other being ”la paura”, see below) Italian film that confused and surprised me with its ability to create an intense, mostly visually dominated atmosphere by presenting an abrupt, disharmonic structure that points in many directions. The place is Genova, never seen as beautiful as here with these brownish harbour images; archive with scratches as has the character of the film, Enzo, a former gangster, now a person in a film that lets him sort-of-play himself, going around in film-noir sequences, in old worn down factory buildings, in small streets full of prostitutes and transvestites, accompanied by local songs. It is all very textual, scratches, old film material being used in a new way, a reconstruction of a past, but there are also wonderful observational improvisations like one in a bar where a client and a barman perform a dance – and then suddenly there is a long interview with the companion of Enzo through 2o years, a transsexual, a beautiful love monologue it is. What a fine mess of a film! Title translated: The Mouth of the Wolf.

The film runs at Cinema du Réel the 26th and 27th of March.

Italy, 2009, 68 mins.

www.cinereel.org

http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/forum/program/

Vurdering:

Sophie Bredier: Elie et Nous

It is such a good story carried by a charismatic old man, who is full of humour and charm. You are simply entertained contrary to what you thought when reading that this was one more holocaust survivor documentary:

Elie Buzyn had his concentration camp number removed from his arm in 1956 – in a way that he could keep the removed tattooed skin, and the number, with him. He did so, he wanted this to be a heritage for his children to remember not only that he was in a camp, but also that on that day where the tattoo was made, his parents, their grandparents lived their last day.

So far the background, what happens is that Elie loses the piece of his skin that he had in his jacket that was stolen in a gym! So the evidence of his being in a camp, an evidence that he wanted to live without in his life, was away... he starts to wonder what to do and up comes the idea to have the number tattooed again and removed again, ready to be given to his children! He has a photo of the skin with the number but is that enough?

Not a cinematic film, this thought provoking film lives because it is full of life, of warm and intimate family meetings, of reflections on life now and then, of how important it is to live NOW.

France, 2010, 69 mins.

sarah@agatfilms.com

www.cinereel.org

Vurdering:

Andreas Hartmann: Tage des Regens

A graduation work from the film school HFF in Potsdam. Respect for the ambition: to describe the Vietnamese countryside life through a family that fights to build a new home in an area where the flood has spoilt their old house, an area where de-mining after the wars is still an issue. 

The director has a wonderful boy, Quynh, as the key character, you feel the strong connection between the two, through many sweet scenes with him, collecting frogs or talking about his future, but overall the film suffers from being far too detailed and repetitive in its description of the relocation and what that takes. It goes in circles where a strong focus on the boy would have made it much more engaging.

www.cinereel.org

Germany, 2009, 72 mins

Vurdering:

Pippo Delbono: La Paura

The director has made two films before but is more known in Italy as an actor and theatre director. The French Forum des Images gave him a mobile phone with camera and said to him: do what you want.

He chose – yes – to be mobile, went on a journey and the result is a fragmented very cinematic documentary essay about what he sees and gets involved in, in his country, Italy, most of the time accompanied by music and by text, which sometimes refers to the Divina Commedia of Dante.

Shop windows, perfect slim women, tv about fat children, a gym, filming his own stomach trying to make the camera catch his penis as well... other chapters with homeless people, intercut with tv commercials, xenophobic grafitti on the walls, ”someone should know what is going on this shitty country”, a racist murder, he goes to the funeral, which is also a demonstration (a policeman watches him constantly, photo), returning several times to a camp for romas with their vans, it is built like a music piece, and suddenly there is a classic film scene: a person in a car by the sea, it is raining cats and dogs outside, melancholy, but towards the end of the film mostly anger and paura, fear, conveyed with sarchasm when a long tv sequence lets a man perform animal sounds... cut to a man in a sofa, who is not able to talk, a man in an asylum, Bobo is his name, he has been there for 50 years, free from the outside Italian world.

Will be screened at Cinéma du Réel on the 27th and 29th of March. First long film, shot with a mobile phone, that I have seen. Director found the aesthetic limits and possibilities.

Italy, 2009, 66 mins.

www.cinereel.org

http://www.lesfilmsdici.fr

Vurdering:

Eric Pauwels: Les Films rêvés

Man begynder med at filme sin hund. Måske. Eller man begynder med et afsnit med Jean Rouchs første film om rejsen på floden. Eller man begynder med den smukkeste og værdigste strip-tease, man altid har ønsket at filme. Til begyndelsen af Beethovens klaversonate Quasi una fantasia. Sådan begynder man som filminstruktør, hvis man vil lave alle sine drømte film på én gang, i én film. Eric Pauwels har gjort det. Jeg så den på Ciinéma du réel i går. Det tog 180 minutter, del 1 og del 2 i én køre. Det var den rigtige måde at se det værk på. Og jeg så ikke noget overflødigt minut. Og fortællerens stemme var inde voice-over fra først til sidst. Det blev ikke for meget. Det må være fordi Pauels filmdrømme ikke er private i alt dette meget personlige. De kan generøst deles ud. Og de er vedkommende - mærkede jeg også på reaktionerne i den voksne del af salen.

Festvalen har interessant nok fundet plads til dette lyriske filmessay i konkurrenceprogrammet. Det er altså min rene fordom kun at vente klassisk dokumentar her... cinéma vérite, samfundskritisk realisme og etnografiske undersøgelser.   

Susana de Sousa Dias: 48

Det hemmelige politis portrætter - forfra og fra siden, så vi ser afstandsstøtten i nakken - står helt roligt afklarede i lang tid på lærredet. Det hæslige forehavende har lånt modellernes skønhed, værdighed og autenticitet. De erindrende interviews lånt dem kendsgerningernes andre billeder, oprivende og brutale. Og mærkeligt også lysende humor. I tidsafstandens nødvendige distance. Billederne er nænsomt bearbejdet, så deres aura yderligere bliver synlig. Faktisk. Og den nøgne lyd af stemmerne fra samtalerne må være bearbejdet, som var det sart musik. Så den bliver til sart musik.

Det handler om det portugisiske diktaturs politiske forbrydelse. Overgrebene mod styrets modstandere. Om anholdelserne, ydmygelserne, torturen, fængselsopholdene. Det er så frygteligt og vildt, og det er fremstillet så smukt og roligt afklaret. 

Filmkunsten her er usædvanlig dristig i sin minimalisme. En montage af ganske ensartede arkivbilleder og interviewenes lydbåndoptagelser. Ikke mere. Og netop derfor måske så meget. Jeg måtte gå fra filmen efter de første cirka 30 minutter (festivaljag..). Jeg havde set en torso. Men jeg har på fornemmelsen, at de 30 minutter bliver min vigtigste oplevelse på årets Cinéma du réel.

Tue Steen Müller har lovet at skrive en anmeldelse af Susana de Sousa Dias’ film.   

Susana de Sousa Dias: 48, Portugal 2009, 93 min. Manuskript, klip og lyd: Susana de Sousa Dias, fotografi: Octávio Espiritu Santo. Produceret af Kintop info@kintop.net

Volker Koepp: Berlin-Stettin

Koepp is, if anyone, the chronicler of life in the former GDR. In numerous films he has described the work and the social conditions of ordinary people in the GDR that he was born into – in Stettin in 1944. Two years ago his ”Holunderblüte” won the Grand Prix at Cinéma du Réel, it was written about on this blog by Allan Berg (in Danish). Koepp’s filmography is long and impressive, and should I choose to point at one of the many masterpieces, I would go for the collection of 7 films that he made in Wittstock from 1974-1997. Wittstock that was a town with a textile factory, where Koepp found great women to be his characters.

In ”Berlin-Stettin” that is being shown out of competition here at Cinema du Reel, Koepp talks in first person through his voyage to places where he has been before in his films, sometimes looking for people who took part in previous films, asking them about their life today, showing clips from then, and sometimes finding new characters that can take part in a film that gives the viewer an impression of the Eastern part of Germany after the 1990 unification of BRD and GRD.

It is all done in a calm, reflective way, he dares to let people speak out, no editing interruptions, look at the people, listen to them, is what he asks us viewers to do. Respect. At the same time as Koepp lets his cameraman Thomas Plenert convey beautiful landscape images from the area between Berlin and Stettin.

Warm, interview-based documentary with great personal archive (his own films!) material about a part of Germany that today suffers from unemployment and what might come from that: riots, neo-nazism, racism.

Germany, 2009, 110 mins.

www.cinereel.org

Vurdering:

Fan Lixin: Last Train Home

Åbningen er voldsom indtryksfuld. Set fra en høj kran skildrer kameraet en mængde kinesere – jeg ved jo i forvejen, det er kinesere, men ville heller ikke være i tvivl – det regner, alle farvers paraplyer ses deroppefra og kinesernes tøj som pletter af kulør. Denne uforglemmelige mumlen af folkemængde høres sagte, men den stiger til højdepunktet af larm samtidig med, at kameraet udvider beskæringen af billedet, og mængdens antal vokser og vokser. Det er en uoverskuelig mængde. Det må være alle kinesere samlet. Det land er forfærdende stort, jeg føler jeg drukner.

Det er snart nytår og nytårsfesten er familiens fest. Millioner af arbejdere i byen skal hjem til familien i landsbyerne. Hundreder af kilometre. Og de skal jo alle hjem på én gang. Det er dette sceneri, filmen skildrer. Vi følger et ægtepar, som arbejder på en meget stor systue, hvor der sys blå jeans til eksport. De lever der, yderst beskedent og midlertidigt i årevis. Børnene er hjemme i landsbyen hos farmoderen. Én gang om året rejser de hjem. Det er til nytårsfesten. Og det er nu, de befinder sig et sted nede i mængden som to farvede pletter blandt tusinder og venter på at blive lukket ud på perronerne til togene. Til det sidste tog hjem. Arbejdet på fabrikken, kampen om pladsen i toget, samværet i familien. Det er filmens hele indhold – men en meget stor rigdom af iagttagelse og forståelse er arbejdet ind i skildringen. 

Filmen har disse to blik, det store oversigtlige fra oven, hvor alle venter på at blive lukket ind på perronen, og politi og militær forsøger at holde orden i det angstfyldte. Beskytte den enkelte ser vi. For kameraet, som er vokset ud i den svimlende oversigt fra det nære, vender tilbage til det nære. Det er filmens andet blik. Med det er vi er nede i flokken, nede hos parret, som er vores medvirkende, medvidere. Her er kampen mod angsten, for trygheden. Og trygheden er indkomsten, som kan opretholde hjemmet ude på landet ved den smukke flod og hønen med kyllingerne omkring sig som dengang, som altid. Det nære blik er titlens andet led, det hjemlige.

Men der er ingen nåde. I en ro af smukke, sceniske fastholdelser demonstreres opløsningen af de gamle værdier. Højdepunktet er dels et voldsomt slagsmål mellem far og datter – og senere en lang samtale mellem kvinden og manden tilbage i storbyboligen. To slags kammerspil i en række. Store, lange filmscener, som klippet føjer sammen og hviler i.

Det er forbavsende, at dette tilværelsens overblik, denne gennemarbejdede film er instruktørens første. Fan Lixin har også lavet lyden og det imponerende kameraarbejde. Han er født kinesisk, uddannet i Canada. Filmen vises på Cinéma du réel festivalen i Paris i en serie af debutfilm. Tue Steen Müller har tidligere her på siden nævnt filmens fremgang på festivalscenen.

Fan Lixin: Last Train Home, Canada 2009, 87min.Manuskript, fotografi og lyd: Fan Lixin, klip: Mary Stephens. Produceret af Eyesteel Films, distribution: Cats & Docs  

http://www.eyesteelfilm.com/lasttrainhome

info@catdocs.com 

Vurdering:

Arce & Rujailah: To Shoot an Elephant

"(...) Afterwards, of course, there were endless discussions about the shooting of the elephant. The owner was furious, but he was only an Indian and could do nothing. Besides, legally I had done the right thing, for a mad elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog, if it's owner fails to control it". George Orwell wrote this and his way of witnessing Asia still remains valid. "To shoot an elephant" is an eye witness account from The Gaza Strip. December 27th, 2008, Operation Cast Lead. 21 days shooting elephants. Urgent, insomniac, dirty, shuddering images from the only foreigners who decided and managed to stay embedded inside Gaza strip ambulances, with Palestinian civilians.

… this is a text clip from the site of the production company that stands behind one of the most shocking documentaries I have seen in the last years. A film that had a physical impact on me through several sequences where the filmmakers and the ambulance drivers and the human rights activists were more than close to the bombing atrocities performed by the Israelis during the Gaza war. The value of the film, however, is not “only” the documentation that it gives, which would have been enough (!), it also demonstrates a cinematic quality in the editing/chaptering of the material. Far from the reportage the film includes small touching scenes with ambulance drivers, and scenes where children ask the cameraman – why do you film… without losing the ambition of the film, that simply is to show the world what happened. To let the images speak for themselves. It does so in 113 minutes of scary tension with unbearable scenes of children, who got killed while playing, and a scene where two ambulance people want to pick up a corpse in the middle of a street and are being shot at. Why? Anger and despair, and death to the Jews and their nation, are the words coming from the loudspeakers at the prayers… today, Friday March 19, 2010, one year after, Israelis are bombing the Gaza strip again. 

The film can be viewed on this site:

http://www.toshootanelephant.com/

http://www.eguzkibideoak.info/en

www.cinereel.org

Vurdering:

Zeina Daccache: 12 Angry Lebanese

The director of this impressive documentary is also the director of the impressive drama therapy project at the Roumieh prison in Lebanon. Zeina Daccache worked for more than a year “inhouse” with a group of inmates – and her work changed their lives. This is at least what the film communicates and I believe the film and its director, who has a tough job in a male prison, but who is also a tough cookie, who wants her project to be succesful!

“12 Angry Men”, the film from 1957 with Henry Fonda in the leading role, an excellent psychological drama with twelve jurors to decide whether the accused was guilty or not… maybe you remember it, a brilliant text put into film, and such an obvious choice for a play to be performed by the men in prison, who have been convicted for murder, rape, drug dealing! In the film you follow the rehearsals of the play, the moments of crisis, the many moments of joy, supplemented by talks to the camera of the inmates, who give us their stories and background for their crimes, and comment on what their participation in the drama therapy has meant for them. In which way they have been able to identity with the roles they are to play. They also sing and dance… and they describe the conditions for the inmates in a hard prison. Building of self confidence, letting go the emotions, opening up to the outside world, simply doing something. And the opening night followed by tears, and visit from officials, helping an “early release law” be accepted by the Lebanese parliament. They are guilty these actors in the prison, they have been locked up because of their crimes, but they need no second punishment as it is said in the film. Respect for this initiative, and for a well done and touching film.  

The film won the Audience Prize at Dox Box 2010.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/12-Angry-Lebanese-the-documentary/243363177059

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7914973.stm

http://www.dox-box.org/new/

Vurdering:

Thessaloniki Documentary Festival

The 12^th edition of the Greek festival is running since the 12^th of March and goes on until the 21^st. Under the leadership of Dimitri Eipides you will find a high quality programme accompanied by debates like “The Earth after Copenhagen” (climate summit reference o course), “Documenting Reality: Ethical Issues in the Digital Age” and “Immigration and Assimiliation”. A humanistic, subject born selection with retrospectives honouring masters of cinema. A clip from the  press release from the opening of the festival. Dimitri Eipides:

The documentary is the highest form of alternative information. All the films inform the audience on subjects which don’t make it in the newspapers and would never appear in a newscast… The Documentary Festival is offering the highest possible honour to good cinema. Whether this is a tribute to Joris Ivens, Krzysztof Kieslowski (PHOTO) or Contemporary Polish Cinema, our priority is good film making… Documentary means knowledge about world issues. Therefore, this year’s Festival turns towards North Korea in order to discover its truth, beyond what is permitted to tourists by the official state.

Eipides noted that the Documentary Festival’s Market is completely digital for the first time, making film screenings easier, and he announced that a meeting of European Documentary Producers will from now on be a permanent part of the Festival in Thessaloniki. 189 films from 41 countries will be screened during the 12th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, while Greek productions will continue to be at the center of interest, with 40 films screened.

http://tdf.filmfestival.gr/

Dox Box – and the Winners are

Clip from press release: The third edition of DOX BOX, the independent documentary film festival in Syria closed its curtains on the evening of March 11^th, 2010 in Damascus. With over 65% rise in audience numbers (+7000 first edition, 12000 second edition, +20000 third edition), the festival confirms its position being the region’s leading documentary film festival.

The festival, with its newly introduced section “Voices from Syria” presented its first DOX BOX – Soura Award, to the best film from Syria, and the jury members were: Jehane Nojaim (Egyptian-American multi-awarded filmmaker), Isabel Arrate (the coordinator of IDFA’s Jan Vrijman Fund) and Nezha Idrissi (Moroccan-French producer and the director of Fida Doc festival in Agadir). The first DOX BOX – Soura Award went to Lina Al Abed for her short documentary “Nour Al Huda”. The award comprises of a trophy designed by renowned Syrian sculpture Mustapha Ali and a cash prize of 2200 USD. The festival’s main award, The DOX BOX Audience Award, went to Lebanese Zeina Daccache for her feature-length film “12 Angry Lebanese” with a new record in audience voting, where the film’s final score was 9.54/10. The award comprises of the festival’s trophy and a cash prize of 3000 USD.

Both films will be reviewed on this site. PHOTO from The Danish Insitute where part of the Dox Box Campus was held.

http://www.dox-box.org/new/

http://www.damaskus.dk/index.php?id=2

Dox Box Damascus 12

Summing up this morning in the lobby of the Fardoss Tower Hotel before colleague Mikael Opstrup and I return home from a Syrian capital, warm as an extraordinary Danish summer would be.

Summing up after a breakfast chat with Omar Amarilay, the most important Syrian documentary maker, who has made 18 films, shown all over the world – only two of them showable in Syria! A viewing commitee watches all films to be shown in the country in order to eventually grant allowance for public screening. A nice gentleman, a censor, from the Ministry of Culture told us yesterday about the procedure and the list of points to be considered for the committee. With a smile he added that he had seen 120 hours of films presented by the Dox Box organisers! Who off the record praises their censor, a man with love to cinema, who is doing his best to help films pass... Amarilay, on the other hand, was not so optimistic with the way the country is going politically and did not see a bettering of the conditions for arts and culture, at the same time as he expressed his admiration for the work done by the organisers of Dox Box, Diana El Jeiroudi and Orwa Nyrabia from ProAction Film. (Photo from "Dolls" produced by the company)

As outsiders who have followed the development of the festival from its beginning, we can only join the salute and say Bravo. What is being done with a high quality international festival programme, that appeals to an audience (they estimate 16.000 spectators this year), with a presentation of new Arab documentaries, with an ambitious Campus for Syrian and Arab wannabee-filmmakers, with the setting up of a distribution catalogue of films about women to be launched in the Arab world, with the publishing of texts, academic or popular, on documentaries... is an exemplary pioneer work, the best I have seen since the establishment of the IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) in Prague a decade ago. A film political and cultural effort that deserves all the support it can get from official European sources as well as from the international documentary community. The festival closes on the 11th of March. And by the way, Proaction Film also produces films and offers subtitling services.

http://www.dox-box.org/new/

Dox Box Damascus 11

Saw two films – one about older people, one about children. One with Bari in Italy as location, one taking place in a quarter in Damascus. ”Housing” by Federica di Giacomo is a film about people, who – as said on the site of the production company - “become prisoners in their home” while waiting to be resettled in a new home. They have fear of being attacked by squatters, they complain about the neighbours – and many totally absurd situations come out of these situations. A woman adores her mayor – and hates Berlusconi – and complains about the neighbour moving her furniture around. Another has a dressed-up kind of scarecrow named Rocco sitting in an armchair in order to make outsiders (thieves, squatters) believe that someone is at home…. And several other non-mainstream characters are described with warmth and empathy, allowing you to have a laugh at the same time as you are watching social outsiders in trouble.

Nidal Debs, awarded Syrian feature film director, educated at VGIK in Moscow, presented his first documentary “Black Stone” (PHOTO), that is a shocking look at a group of children who collect scrap metals to earn a little money – and support their families. The children have a wonderful energy even if they have been subject to abuse and violence in their families. The film suffers from weak cinematographical quality and shaky editing. Too many words, simply, not time for breathing, emotions and reflection. But as a document second-to-none about a Syrian reality of today.

Italy, 90 mins, 2009

Syria, 63 mins, 2006

http://www.bbfilm.tv/eng/?p=386

http://www.dox-box.org/new/

Dox Box Damascus 10

I was surprised when I saw that ”The Moon Inside You” by Diana Fabianova, a film and a director that has been written about several times on this blog, was selected for the Dox Box Festival here in Damascus. Surprised because I did not think that a film on menstruation would pass the censorship in Syria. It did luckily and the organisers proudly announced that the film had a full house, 500 people, and a very positive reaction. In connection with the admirable project of the organisers of the festival, to build a documentary culture in the country, the ambition is also to create a distribution initiative, a catalogue of women’s films, and ”The Moon Inside You” is of course on that list.

http://www.mooninsideyou.com

Dox Box Campus 8

Nagi Esmail from Egypt made a 9 mins. long city film during a workshop in Cairo, the title is ”171”, which refers to the steps you take from the train platform in the metropole until you are in the street. Shot in one day and edited in 3 hours, the film by the 2006 graduate from the film school in Egypt shows clearly a young filmmaker with a talent for visualising. Lina Alhafez from Syria has made a film about the Syrian band ”Kilna Sawa”, which is 42 minutes long. The film includes the dialogue between 5 of the band members and some of their supporters, created in the edit as all words come from the people sitting in or driving in a car. The story about the band that is hugely popular for transforming old songs into new interpretations, is a fine graduation work, has a fast pace, mixed with archive from their performances that are amazing to watch. They – the band members – look back on their carreer, comment on many emotional moments and stress that crticism is present in all they do. Léa Bendaly from Lebanon lives in El-Mina, north of Beirut. She has made a nice wordless film hymn to the city accompanied by music of Ludwig van Beethoven. Bendaly, as Esmail and Alhafez, took part in the Dox Box Campus that ended monday with a presentation of six film projects. Bendaly has the ambition to make ”Good Bye El-Mani”, her visit to the places and people, she remembers from her childhood and youth.

Still: Sonia Bitar from Kilna Sawa

http://www.dox-box.org/new/

Dox Box Damascus 7

Patricio Guzman in Damascus. The great director behind the film historical classic ”The Battle of Chile” from the beginning of the 1970’es met the audience of young wannabee filmmakers and older people, who remember the dramatic period where the government of Salvador Allende and ”la pouvoir populaire”, as the French speaking director put it, tried to unite the Left and introduce democracy in Chile. We all know how that went. A quote from the site of Guzman:

In 1973 he films “The Battle of Chile”, a 5-hour documentary on the end of Allende’s government. After the military coup, Guzmán is threatened to be executed and spends two weeks arrested inside the national stadium, unable to communicate his whereabouts to anyone. He leaves the country in November 1973. He lives in Cuba, Spain and then France, where he makes “In the Name of God” (Grand Prize, Festival of Popoli, 1987), “The Southern Cross” (Grand Prize, Festival Vue Sur les Docs, Marseille, 1992), “Chile, Obstinate Memory” (Grand Prize Festival of Tel Aviv, 1999), “The Pinochet Case” (International Critic’s Week, Cannes, 2002), and “Salvador Allende” (Official Selection, Cannes, 2004). In 2005, he makes “My Jules Verne”.

About ”The Battle of Chile” Guzman said that it is a film on words. It is a film on the quality of the politics of the people from the base – the working class. The five hour long film had an editing time of three years. Cuban film people came to watch at the edting room and said that they had never seen such a high political culture. The films deals with the period from 1970 and to the military coup and is about ”le pouvoir populaire”. Guzman referred to the East german political filmmakers, who were filming in Chile at the time, Heynowski & Scheumann, and told that their cameraman filmed the bombing of the presidential palace, whereas Pedro Chaskel, the editor of Guzman, filmed the flight over the palace. The two teams exchanged footage... for buying dvd’s of the films, consult the site of Guzman.

http://www.dox-box.org/new/

http://www.patricioguzman.com/index.php?lng=en

Dox Box Damascus 6

This is one of the highlights of Dox Box 2010, Orwa Nyrabia said as a proud and enthusiastic introduction to the masterclass with D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, moderated by idfa director Ally Derks. And it turned out to be a very pleasant couple of hours with the renowned filmmakers who made film history together with other big names like Albert Maysles, Richard Leacock and Robert Drew, the Direct Cinema/Cinéma Vérité directors. At the festival, among others, the Bob Dylan film ”Don’t Look Back” was shown and the young filmmakers had a lot of questions to that film and especially to the method connected to the filmmaking style.

The best way to reflect what was said during the masterclass is to quote Pennebaker and Hegedus for many wonderful sentences that may inspire our readers, Hegedus being the analytical and Pennebaker the one full of stories, loving the anecdote, both of them being very generous and warm in their approach to the audience:

Am I a master, ”No I was not the first person to put my foot on the beach”. Subject, how do you find them, ”We don’t, they find us, we are very depending on our friends to give us hints, people come to us”. Story?, ”You don’t know what is going to happen when we start”. Hegedus and Pennebaker is a couple privately: ”We get divorced four or five times during a film”. Where does the inspiration come from, ”Creative energy can’t be stored!”. ”A documentary is like the stories you heard as a child, once upon a time...”. Film crew?: ”The smaller the better”. Agreements? ”We go for a handshake agreement”. A fly on the wall? ”No, I can not take an invisible pill... I watch, I am like a cat, you can not see what I think”. ”The money always comes”. ”I don’t feel like a director”. Observation, Objectivity? ”No, how can one’s person’s observation be all people’s observation?”. ”We are following the action, and is very often led by the sound”. ”You are like a detective, because you don’t know what happens”. ”Style is driven by technology”. ”You are filming for an audience”. ”Look for accuracy”.

http://www.dox-box.org/new/

http://www.phfilms.com/

Dox Box Damascus 5

We have heard it for so many years, and we have seen films, fiction or documentary, that informs about or interprets the life in GDR (German Democratic Republic). But they – the Syrian young filmmakers-to-be - had not. That was very obvious from the reactions and questions at the campus of the Dox Box Festival. The local Goethe Institute had invited the GDR photographer Dieter Riemann to make an exhibition of his photos, which is running until March 25 here in Damascus, and the organisers of the festival took advantage and had Riemann come talk about his life as a photographer in a closed society where artists were not allowed to travel and where Stasi was strongly present.

Riemann told that he always worked with a conceptual format. He took photographs for book publishing, walls, windows, mentally ill people, old people etc. The basis was always humanistic, critical and trying to be as honest as possible. ”Socialdokumentarisch”, he called it. Inspiration: the Magnum photographers, Cartier-Bresson, Edward Steichen.

www.ddr-fotografie-riemann.de

On the way back to the hotel I talked with my co-tutor, the cameraman Peter Badel, who also worked in the GDR, very much with Thomas Heise (”Material”, see below, PHOTO), and we remembered great names like Sibylle and Hannes Schönemann, who were imprisoned for their critical documentaries.

http://www.dox-box.org/new/

Sergio Basso: Giallo in Milano 2

Mail from the producer of the film of Sergio Basso, English title: “Made in Chinatown”, reviewed on this site not long ago: You can see our new web-documentary MADE IN CHINATOWN (the first in Italy on the web-site of one of the most important italian newspapers, Corriere della Serra), at the link www.corriere.it/gialloamilano. Now the English version is there! The film will also be shown at the coming Visions du Réel in Nyon, Switzerland.

Dox Box Damascus 4

4 Polish documentaries and a Syrian. And again bravo to the organisers for putting an emphasis on the short documentary which is of course well targeted in a country with limited funding possibilities – where short film can be made – and for the rest of us, who have experienced this special art form disappear from public television to become a playground-like platform for young people, who want to experiment, develop their skills and find their own voice.

”Six Weeks” is a small masterpiece by Marcin Krawczyk. In 18 minutes he tells the story about a woman, who like many others decide not to keep her child because she does not think she can offer it a decent life. Visually it is strong, it is dealing with a tough subject in a respectful way. Polish short documentaries have a flow in storytelling, they have rythm, they go directly into the story... You can see the inspiration of old masters like Kieslowski and Lozinski.

”Mother” (theme: family), ”A Woman Sought” (theme: matchmaking), ”Till it Hurts” (theme: mother and son) were the other Polish film in the programme, high quality, right to the point, made with invitations to laugh at our crazy life.

Syrian ”Women's Talk” was a film that pleased the full cinema. It has three acts, the first one full of male chauvinistic remarks from old men, who think that women are well of now – they have electricity, it is warm in the kitchen, and we don’t beat the women any longer... the middle act responds to the first one, you see a quick edited MTV-style sequence of women working in all professions, with no dialogue. Which there is in the last sequence where women around the fireplace comment on the men. Payback! They laughed in the theatre, it was funny, but also for a foreigner a terrible comment on the position of women in modern Syria. There is along way to equality!

http://www.dox-box.org/new/  Still: 6 Weeks.

Dox Box Damascus 3

German cameraman Peter Badel is one of the mentors of the Campus – together with Dutch producer Joan Morselt, Danish colleague Mikael Opstrup and myself. The participants in the workshop are aspiring young filmmakers, who have been grouped according to their wish to be a producer or a director – or ”I don’t know where I want to go yet”.

Badel gave a very inspiring lecture, ”The Narrative and the Image”. He told us about his close collaboration with excellent German director Thomas Heise (read about his ”Material” on this blog) and how they, as close friends, understood how the images should be – you do your job, Heise says to Badel, and I will not interfere. Technical details were given by Badel, who started with 35mm in the times of the GDR, and now works with a small digi camera. And he showed some photos, he had taken and talked about how they were composed and he gave us the stories connected. Much time was dedicated to clips from Heise’s masterpiece ”Vaterland” and to ”Heinz und Fred”, a one hour wonderful film by Mario Schneider, a composer who went to filmmaking. Fred is a handicapped old man but lives a good life with his father and all the old machines that he wants to repair. Badel showed us a great crane tour from the end of the film saying that in this case the crane was a kind of cameraman – two takes they made. 800€ for hiring the crane.

http://www.dox-box.org/new/

Dox Box Damascus 2

Bravo Dox Box, was the shout from the last row of a full cinema on the opening night of the festival. And ”Shout” was the title of the opening film, from the Netherlands, directed by Sabine Lubbe Bakker and Ester Gould, who were more than happy to have the world premiere of the film in Damascus, one of the locations of a film that literally starts with people shouting from one side of Golan Heights to the other. From the occupied mountain territory in Israel to the mountain area in Syria – on both sides members of Palestinian families gather and try to communicate through loudspeakers. In many cases the families have not seen each other for 40 years!

The film focuses on two young men, Golanis they are called, who go to study in Damascus. One is Ezat and the other Bayan, and both have used the opportunity that you once per year can cross the border. The filmmakers have followed them for a year  and go back with them for the summer holidays. Not a big film, but in several sequences the camera catches beautifully situations that reflect the absurdity and tragedy of the world we live in. Ezat’s father lives in Israel with no passport as he has refused Israeli citizenship. His grandfather lives in Damascus, quite old and ill, but a hero in Syrian eyes, greeted as such by the Asad, the late president. Ezat studies theatre in Damascus and decides to go back (Bayan stays in the occupied territories) after the holidays. The tone is light among the two, the emotions come in when they are with their families.

Holland, 54 mins., 2010

http://www.dox-box.org/new/

Vurdering:

Dox Box Damascus 1

”To our guests who come here every year and fill our hearts with pride and support: we promise to surprise you with our imperfections just the way we like our life, and cinema, to be!”.

These catalogue sequence taken from the welcoming catalogue foreword of the directors of the third edition of Dox Box International Documentary Film Festival in Damascus, Syria.. illustrate perfectly the spirit of hospitality and of humbleness, which characterises Diana El Jeiroubi and Orwa Nyrabia, the couple behind Pro Action Film and a festival that grows from year to year, both in programming and in a strong Campus programme for young filmmakers in the region.

They can be proud of their programme this year. They have succeeded to get D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus to Damascus with a fine retrospective (PHOTO: DONT LOOK BACK - Bob Dylan), as well as Patricio Guzman with his masterpiece ”The Battle of Chile” in three parts, and they have several great and good films that have been written about on this site: Boris Ryzhy, Zidane, Freetime Machos, The Moon inside you, Pink Taxi, Antoine, Hold me Tight let me go. There are Middle East documentaries and there are many guests from abroad, who can discover the professionalism and passion behind a new festival that clearly has a mission: to introduce the creative documentary in a country where there are limits to what can be said and shown.

The festival runs 3-11 March and I will report from there daily.

http://www.dox-box.org/new/

Marathon DOK 2010

This yearly initiative of EDN (European Documentary Network) takes place March 6 from 2pm to 10 pm with breaks for coffee, talks and a a sandwich. The Danish Film School in Copenhagen rooms this mini festival that has proved to have a succesful format could easily be exported to other countries. The Danish Film Institute supports the Marathon Dok, that is open for participation to students and professionals from the film and TV industry only. The programme is still in its completion phase but this is what is confirmed so far. Chapeau for the emphasis on actuality and the short documentary. Click the titles and you can read – and in some cases watch – the titles online:

1st Screening Block - Starting at 14.00: Poste Restante (Poland, 2009, 14 min, DigiBeta) by Marcel Łoziński. Drona & Me (The Netherlands, 2009, 20 min, DigiBeta) by Catherine van Camp. Portrait of a Reluctant Gentleman (Sweden, 2008, 13 min, HD) by Gustav Danielsson. Civil Servant P327JUM (Sweden, 2008, 14 min, DVD) by Johan Bjerkner.

2nd Screening Block - starting at 16:00: Hanasaari A (Finland, 2009, 15 min, DigiBeta) by Hannes Vartiainen. What Remains (Austria, 2009, 33 min, DigiBeta) by Clarissa Thieme. I love my boring Life (Czech Republic, 2009, 27 min, 35mm) by Jan Gogola

3rd Screening Block - Starting at 18:00 TBA

4th Screening Block - Starting 20:00

Last Train Home (China, 2009) (PHOTO) by Lixin Fan. Idfa winner 2009

www.edn.dk

One World Festival Prague

A text quote from the site of an amazing film festival that has it all – a thematical focus, a distribution strategy, debates, and a catalogue full of strong films:

“Over 100 films, dozens of foreign guests – primarily film directors, screenings for schools, streamed films online, a range of accompanying events and more – these are the things that you can look forward to at the 12^th edition of One World. The main festival will be held in Prague between March 10 – 18, 2010 followed by the Regional One World festivals in 29 towns and cities of the Czech Republic through the end of March into early April. In addition, a select number of films screened at One World, the biggest human rights documentary film festival in Europe, will be presented in Brussels in mid April.

This year’s festival will feature 101 documentary films from over 30 countries within both competition and thematic categories. These have been selected from more than 1600 submitted films. This year’s festival will open with the Iranian documentary Green Days, which portrays a current and striking example of human rights being repressed (see below).”

The following films, that have all been written about on this site, will be screened in Prague: Salome Jashi: The Leader is Always Right (photo), Pawel Lozinski: Chemo, Bories & Chagnard: The Arrivals, Fredrik Gertten: Bananas!, Andreas Apostolides: A Place Without People, Neta Efrony: Kalandia-A Checkpoint Story, Gianfranco Rosi: Below Sea Level, Anders Østergaard: Burma VJ, Linda Jablonska: Welcome to North Korea!

http://www.oneworld.cz/2010/#

One World Festival Prague 2

The opening film of the 12^th annual One World festival (March 10-18) will be the Iranian documentary Green Days. This extremely relevant film documents one the worst examples of the suppression of democratic principles in recent years. Since the violent crackdown of post-election demonstrations last summer, People in Need has helped organise discussions, screenings and happenings in support of the Iranian opposition. During this year’s festival, People in Need would also like to emphasise the longstanding role played by student activists in the pro-democracy movement in that country.

The protagonist of Green Days is a young Iranian theatre director called Ava, who finds herself caught up in the euphoric pre-election demonstrations being held by the supporters of the presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Through spontaneous interviews with Mousavi’s followers, the film takes a very open look at an opposition movement imbued with optimism. Just a few days after the rigged elections, however, these pictures are replaced by shocking footage from small handheld cameras and mobile phones recording the brutality of the Iranian police, which had already claimed hundreds of victims. This film by the 21-year-old Iranian director Hana Makhmalbaf (who had to leave her country for fear of arrest) won the Bravery Award at last year’s Venice International Film Festival.

http://www.oneworld.cz/2010/#

ZagrebDox

From February 28 March 7 the sixth edition of ZagrebDox will take place in the capital of Croatia. I have attended previous editions – but have other obligations this year. But this should not refrain me from making publicity for a festival that was started by and is produced by Nenad Puhovski and his strong team. Here is a text clip from the website of a festival where you will be able to watch many films that have been reviewed or mentioned on filmkommentaren.dk

… some 140 documentaries will find their way to Zagreb audience! The major thing about this year's edition of the festival is its new location – for the first time, it will take place in Movieplex in Kaptol Center. The new venue has been selected in order to provide even better conditions for the audience because it has five theaters with top-notch equipment.

The official international and regional competition programs include 65 films that will compete for the main prize, Big Stamp. Besides three existing programs – Musical Globe, Controversial Dox and Happy Dox – a new addition to the official program is The State of Things program, giving us an unusual insight into the world we live in through documentary stories about the problems from various social spheres. Nenad Puhovski: “In addition to the acclaim of more than 20,000 viewers who came to see the world’s best documentaries, ZagrebDox and I received two more recognitions in 2009: one from the documentary professionals and one from the community we work in. European Documentary Network (EDN) presented us with its annual award for ‘outstanding contribution to the development of European documentarist culture’, and the Mayor of Zagreb awarded us the Medal of the City of Zagreb for ‘a success beyond all expectations that the festival has made’. However, even greater recognition for us was the requests we received from numerous Croatian and regional authors during preparations for this year’s festival: they want their latest films to have their world premiere right here, at ZagrebDox. Accepting this honor, which is an obligation at the same time, we have introduced Dox Events program in which we will show the latest Croatian and regional documentaries, introduce their authors and enable them (due to the more spacious venue) to talk to the audience. This is yet another way for ZagrebDox to pay its debt to authors and viewers without whom the festival would not be possible,”

Words from a man who has all reason to be proud! (Photo from Pawel Lozinski: Chemo, in international competition programme)

http://www.zagrebdox.net/2010/en/

Lars Becker-Nielsen: Den bevægede jord 3

Lars Becker-Larsens dokumentarfilm om den moderne naturvidenskabs tilblivelse modtog søndag den 14. februar hovedprisen som bedste dokumentarfilm i Torino på kulturarvsfestivalen AVICOM.

Festivalen i Torino arrangeres af ICOM (International Council of Museums), UNESCO's museumsorganisation.

Filmen har tidligere vundet Best Documentary ved Vedere la Scienza Festival - International Scientific Film Festival i Milano, samt den prestigefulde Grand Prix på den 46. Internationale Festival TECHFILM i Prag.

Den bevægede jord er en omhyggelig fremstilling af, hvordan og under hvilke forhold videnskabsmænd som Kopernikus, Brahe, Kepler og Galilei i renæssancen skabte et nyt verdensbillede og dermed grundlaget for den moderne tanke.

I festivaljuryens motivation hed det: "De visuelle nyskabelser, rekonstruktionerne og den gribende fortælleteknik gør kompleksiteten i det behandlede emne tilgængeligt for et bredt publikum på en fascinerende og let tilgængelig måde. En sand revolution!"

http://www.danishdoc.dk/jord_dk.html

Mumbai Festival awards Alexander Gutman

The documentary by Russian Alexander Gutman, ”17 of August”, was chosen as the best documentary at the Mumbai International Film Festival (for docs, shorts and animation).

http://www.miffindia.in/Awards2010.aspx

Here is a clip from the review that was written on filmkommentaren.dk:

This fine Russian director has, apart from the masterpiece ”Frescoes” from Georgia, made a couple of very strong documentaries shot in prisons, ”Three Days and Never Again” and ”Blatnoi Mir” (directed by Finnish Jouni Hiltunen, Gutman was production manager), and here comes another that I do not hesitate to call masterly done as well.

One day in the life of a prisoner, sentenced to lifetime for murders, a man in a small cell, watched through the small window in the dark cell door, walking from one end to the other, exercising, making a cup of tea, praying with his head towards an icon of the bleading Jesus hanging on the wall, getting some food... and a small walk to a strongly fenced and guarded courtyard, filmed from above to achieve the impression of a man in a cage, A close-up study that works because of the brilliant combination of pictures with the monologue of the prisoner. On Life, on the conditions in the isolated prison, on being alone and away from it all, on being close to guards who are there all the time and in a way sharing his destiny…

Fritz Lang: Metropolis

The 60th Berlin International Film Festival starts today and goes on until the 21^st of February. The European cultural channel arte celebrates by dedicating a whole evening to the showing of “la version longue inédite du chef-d'oeuvre de Fritz Lang, présentée en ciné-concert”. A 147 minute long version is brought to the viewers in a direct transmission from the Friedrichstadtpalast in Berlin. Here is the French intro to the film screening – but - just to be sure you remember -

You dont need French language skills to watch this silent movie masterpiece in the history of cinema:

Quatre-vingt-trois ans après sa première mondiale, le chef-d'oeuvre muet de Fritz Lang vient de renaître dans sa version d'origine que l'on croyait perdue à jamais. Restauré dans tout son éclat par la Fondation Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau, ce Metropolis est projeté ce soir en avant-première au Friedrichstadtpalast de Berlin, au cours d'un ciné-concert diffusé en direct par ARTE, avec une musique originale interprétée par l'Orchestre symphonique de la Radio de Berlin. Si l'intrigue du film reste la même dans cette version longue, vingt-cinq minutes de scènes inédites rendent l'histoire plus compréhensible, notamment, l'équipée en voiture de Georgy à travers la cité, la visite de Freder et du "Mince" chez Josaphat, des images hédonistes des jardins et de Yoshiwara, la scène où la jalousie de Joh Fredersen et Rotwang éclate au grand jour...

The film starts tomorrow night at 20.45 and is followed by a one hour documentary about ”Metropolis” and its many versions. Some statistics – the film had 310 shooting days, plus 60 nights, 36000 extras, 200000 costumes, 3500 pair of shoes, 500 skyscrapers with 70 floors...

http://www.arte.tv/fr/programmes/242,day=7,week=6,year=2010.html

Czech Them Out!

An addition to what I wrote below - in Danish - about the Czech films in Cinemateket in Copenhagen. The films also tour to other places in Denmark:

De tre fine dokumentarfilm "Citizen Havel", "Czech Dream" og "René" (foto) bliver også vist i Odense og Århus. Læs om filmene på denne site og/eller på Café Biografens og Øst for Paradis hjemmesider.

http://www.docuinter.net/en/net_archive.php?id=830

DOCSBarcelona

... is running until this sunday, February 7th. It includes an international film festival and a pitching forum, with a variety of masterclasses, award ceremonies and professional meetings. A meeting place for professionals and a generous offer of films to an audience. It is organised by Parallel 40 with local support as well as support from the EU MEDIA Programme and many others. I am proud to be part of the organising team. Below some impressions from a hectic week.

www.docsbarcelona.com

DOCSBarcelona Pitching Forum 1

24 projects were presented at the 13th Pitching Forum of DOCSBarcelona February 5-6. 15 broadcasters, film funders and distributors were around the table to comment  and eventually show interest in what was verbally and visually pitched. Most of the project pitchers had been trained at a workshop during two days before the Forum. The rules of the game: 7 minutes of presentation including a trailer and 7 minutes of questions and answers from the panel, that was supplemented by a so-called Row 0 of public funders and several Spanish local broadcasters and distributors. Not to forget a couple of hundreds of observers – producers and other professionals – who were there to create documentary partnerships, which in a period of cuts in budgets all over is more necessary than ever. It is not possible to raise all funding for your feature length documentary nationally any longer, you have to co-produce internationally. This situation was very much reflected in the fact that 243 projects were submitted for the Pitching Forum. A record in the history of DOCSBarcelona.

There are many international pitching sessions. With a different touch and emphasis. DOCSBarcelona is a public forum where others go for one-to-one organised sessions: producer meets broadcaster on an individual basis. For me the public pitching is the right format – is is sharing ideas, getting a sense of the market situation, networking. It is indeed hard for the pitchers, some call it a theatre, and of course it is not possible to tell everything in 7 minutes, but it is a unique chance to invite people to take part in your film project. And the pitching is followed by one-to-one meetings.

www.docsbarcelona.com

DOCSBarcelona Pitching Forum 2

What were they about, the 24 film projects at the Pitching Forum – what films can you expect to be ready within the next couple of years, what were the themes and stories presented at DOCSBarcelona 2010:

The invention of the personal computer. Mister Edhi – a Pakistani equivalent of Mother Teresa. Chinese in Congo. The fate of an Uighur refugee. My father was a Colombian guerilla fighter. Swedish helpers in Africa. Hitler’s schools in South America. Copyright. Iraqis in America. Bullfighting. Hungary, a horse nation. Llorenc Barber, a composer. Tourism changed Spain. Gospel music unites. Chinese build a railway in Angola. A Russian child in an orphanage. Anacoana, a Cuban female orchestra. Children becoming soldiers in Israel. Housing in London. San Mao, a Chinese writer. Veteran table tennis. The life and death of a mountain climber. School buses buried in the desert! A detective in Bengal.

Quite a mixture! High professional level. Good trailers, with the humourous projects being the easiest to convey in a pitching session.

www.docsbarcelona.com

DOCSBarcelona Pitching Forum 3

A special tribute was given to the Swedish commissioning editor Vera Bonnier, who had her last pitch at DOCSBarcelona. For 34 years Bonnier has worked for SVT, the Swedish public broadcaster, and has now decided to retire. She comes from a tradition in public broadcasting where it was possible to commit to a film project and then find place for it on the programme schedule afterwards. Today it is mostly the other way around – first comes the time slot and what it requires, when it comes to theme and approach, and then the film projects have to fit in.

Vera Bonnier, however, has been enormously flexible in her way of getting films she loved scheduled on the cultural slot K-Special, that runs prime time friday night. A personal note: This is a programme that I love to watch as Danish television friday night is nothing but quiz shows and American series.

Also on this last international documentary event for Vera Bonnier, she demonstrated this unique eye for seeing the talent and bending the rules for what can be considered as ”culture”. With warmth and personality. Thank you!

www.docsbarcelona.com

Komeda – the Soundtrack for a Life

Krzysztof Komeda... was the one who made the music for several of the films of Roman Polanski, Jerzy Skolimovski, Andrzej Warda, Danish Henning Carlsen and Jørgen Leth. He died in 1969, 38 years old.

I am sure you remember the lullaby in ”Rosemary´s Baby” and maybe also the extraordinary score from”Sult” (”Hunger”) by Henning Carlsen. Both directors are interviewed in this tv documentary, that is well done and is wonderful to watch simply because it includes so many film clips from the great film that Komeda made music for. We hear about his way of working and living back in the times of the European iron curtain. Polanski’s short films arte quoted as well as his early polish works like ”Knife in Water”. Both Polanski and Carlsen stress that ”we were working for Krzysztof, not him for us”. Social and political background is added to this competent work on the often neglected art of film music that Komeda mastered. 

2008, Germany, 52 mins. Director : Claudia Buthenhoff-Duffy

http://www.krzysztofkomeda.com

http://www.komeda.vernet.pl

Magnificent7 – Full Houses

Last night of a festival with a small amount of films and a huge audience. With the focus on the authored films and with the authors – or other creative persons from the crews – present  and taken care of in a warm family-like atmosphere, created by the organisers from Kvadrat film school and production company, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic. Surrounded by a team of young Serbian filmmakers, and supplemented by a workshop with the present filmmakers for 35 film students and upcoming documentarians.

Two films were shown in the big hall, ”Below Sea Level” (PHOTO) by Gianfranco Rosi, watched by almost 2000 people, and ”My Life with Carlos” by German Berger, watched by around 1200 spectators. A loyal and enthusiastic audience attends and year after year it is growing in this festival for European feature documentaries. An estimate is that the audience grew 50% this year for at least 4 of the screenings. The sixth edition of Magnificent7 is over and the organisers have no reason not to be proud of what they are doing on a shoestring budget. The festival was the only one totally dedicated to documentaries 6 years ago when it started, now there are two other documentary festivals in Belgrade as well as the international FEST that has included documentaries in their programme.

This can only be called a Magnificent Film Political Work.

www.magnificent7festival.org

Magnificent7 – Nina Hedenius

In ”Way of Nature” (”Naturens Gång”) Swedish filmmaker Nina Hedenius uses a radio piece to convey to the audience that there is a world outside the farm that is the location of her film. In a workshop session at Magnificent7 in Belgrade, the director showed clips from her previous films, and revealed that a radio clip from her film ”Vintersaga” from the 70’es was the same as the one in the film from 2009, including a report on Israeli bombing in Southern Lebanon! Noone has reacted, said Hedenius, who refrains completely from social and political themes in her films - even if you can only interpret this 20 year old sound clip as a subtle comment to world politics!

To verbally characterize the work of a filmmaker as Hedenius, who does not use many words but insists on the image, seems unfair and a banalization... but I dare phrase that this unique filmmaker, who does everything herself, is constantly searching for beauty. Her films bear witness of a background as a painter working with magic images where she very often goes ultra-close and transform the skins of cows, or the feathers of chicken, or the hair of a dog into abstract tableaux that you can dive into meditatively.

For ”Way of Nature” Hedenius edited for 14 months, 4 to 5 hours per day. The reason for this long period is to be found in a very strong work on the sound. In the session in Belgrade, she told how she records sound when she is shooting but ”cleans” the sound to make it more authentic. I cant have a dog barking outside the image if there is no dog in the film! Unique in production, Hedenius is as well. She presents her projects to SVT (Swedish public television)(she only wants one financier and no producer), gets the funding, respects the deadline and delivers without having anyone seeing the film in beforehand. Not even colleagues and friends, I asked her, no I get confused from comments. An independent and free filmmaker who is so because of her groundbreaking audience successes with ”The Old Man in the Cottage” (Gubben i Stugan) and now ”Way of Nature”. (Both films are available on dvd, Swedish version, but the dialogue is so scarce that the films can travel all over).

www.magnificent7festival.org

Magnificent7 – Asylum Seekers

Take a look at the photo. The young woman leaning forward is Caroline. She is a social worker at a reception centre for asylum seekers in a municipality of Paris. The woman with her back to the camera is Zaleh, she is Sudanese, pregnant, and has come for help. Caroline is good at her job – from a bureaucratic point of view, but when it comes to deal with the asylum seekers as human beings, she has no idea.

”The Arrivals”, by French couple Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard, awarded with the Golden Dove at DOKLeipzig 2009, is an impressive and masterly done direct cinema documentary about the European political and social problem number one: Immigration. In this case told through the observation of people on each side of the desk – the seekers and the helpers. Apart from a couple of small tours in the streets of Paris, the scenes in the film are all shot inside the small offices of the centre or in the bigger room, where the first registration takes place. The characters are Ethiopians, Mongolians, Sudanese, Sri Lankese... and then there is Caroline and Colette, who is the motherly social worker, who is constantly over budget but finds her ways to solution.

It is touching, you laugh and you cry, and you think while you are watching one humiliating moment after the other. At an excellent session the two French filmmakers invited the audience to get an insight to methods of filming and reflections on the profession of being a documentarian. The camera was integrated in the room, they never forgot that they were filmed, and we did not want them too, said Chagnard. At the beginning – the first out of 4 months of shooting – we lost the power, we were too quick and they did not really trust us, but gradually we achieved our ”authorisation intérieure”, which is the most important, because when you have that, the reality organises itself, and you have the patience and the courage to wait. This is an important humanistic, creative document about a European reality, that could be everywhere where people come and aim at a better life than the one they had. And it shows the strength of the observational style combined with time and cinematographic skills.

France, 2009, 111 mins.

www.magnificent7festival.org

Magnificent7 – Finnish Living Rooms

Jukka Kärkkäinen (JK) and his cameraman J-P. Passi (JP) are in Belgrade to present their film ”The Living Room of a Nation” that has been highly praised on this site several times. The JK presentation of the film and himself was full of shyness and a sense of showmanship. Gazing at his shoe and clutching his hat he told the audience that they were at eye level with the characters, physically and mentally. We showed them who we were and they showed us who they are. Tero (photo) is my alter ego, the difference is only that he wants to be in front of the camera, me not. Russian director Sergey Loznitsa and Swedish master Roy Andersson are sources of inspiration, JK continued, and sang a song before the screening, translated by his cameraman from a Nokia phone. The two have definitely already won many hearts here at the Magnificent/ festival in Belgrade. Here is a text clip from the review of the film from this site:  

...this minimalistic approach is underligned by the way the camera is placed without any movement recording what happens within the frame. Or one could say on the stage of Life. It gives a distance, it gives you respect for the people you are watching, and, the more you get into the film, also compassion for their destinies. The main character is the young man, who becomes a father – you never see the mother – and knows that a new life must begin, without alcohol. Towards the end of the film you hear him say that he can only see his child once a week. He is indeed a tragic character, as is the big man who moves from one apartment to another, a smaller one, where he gets his arm chair placed at the point for watching television. The filmmakers must have been with the characters for a very long time. It all seems so truthful what we are invited to watch, most of the time with a sad feeling but as in a play of Samuel Beckett or a film of Roy Andersson, the interpretation of meaningless goes well with humour. And bravo for an editing that elegantly takes us from one situation and character to the next and the next... and back again.

http://www.thelivingroomofthenation.com/

http://www.deckert-distribution.com/films/deckert_268.htm

www.magnificent7festival.org

Magnificent7 – Opening Night

The Sava Center in Belgrade hosted two films for the opening of the 6th European Feature Documentary Festival, Magnificent7. The big hall made last night room for around 1500 spectators for each of the two films, that were introduced to the Serbian audience, who could do nothing but enjoy the fascinating insights to normally closed worlds that were given in ”Pianomania” and ”Kill the Referee”.

In the Austrian/German coproduction ”Pianomania”, directed by Lilian Franck and Robert Cibis, you meet Stefan Knüpfer who is an extremely sympathetic and energetic magician in his profession that is to tune pianos for world famous pianists like Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Lang Lang. Aimard and his way to recording Bach’s ”The Art of Fugue” constitutes the red thread of the film, whose editor Michèle Barbin is in Belgrade to meet the audience.

Eric Cardot, present in Belgrade, is one of the three directors of ”Kill the Referee”, that provides an insight to the world of those men on the pitch, who we love to hate. Shot during the Euro 2008 the films follows the referees at work – the funny and amazing sound communication between the referee and his assistants during the matches are recorded – in the dressing rooms before and after the matches, at the meetings with the UEFA officials, including Michel Platini, as well as their families at home, watching husbands and fathers at work. English Howard Webb (photo) is the main character in the film, the man who was threatened by the Polish nation because of a mistake in the opening match against Austria!

The organisers of Magnificent7 had invited the former international Serbian referee, Zoran Petrovic, to attend the screening which he did with applause to the film and clever reflections on the hardships of a profession that to my opinion has never been so well conveyed as in ”Kill the Referee”.

www.magnificent7festival.org

Magnificent7 – a Sexy Festival

The 6th European feature Documentary Festival opens tonight in the big hall of the Sava Centre in Belgrade. My guess – based on ticket office information and on experience from previous years – is that more than a thousand spectators will attend each of the screenings of the two films of the opening night: ”Pianomania”, presented by the editor Michèle Barbin, and ”Kill The Referee”, presented by one of the directors Eric Cardot.

As usual the organisers Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, with their team of young Serbian filmmakers (Mila Turajlic, Iva Plemic, Sonja Blagojevic, Jelena Stankovic and Andrijana Stojkovic) have done a huge work to promote the festival in electronic and printed media.

... including a free full page advertising of the festival in the local version of Playboy! Yes, documentaries are getting ”sexy” and can appeal to a big audience and find a natural place surrounded by Hugh Hefner’s girls and a big article on the best football player in the world, Leo Messi. Greetings from a sunny, snow covered beautiful Belgrade. More reports to come.

Photo: "Pianomania" by Lilian Franck and Robert Cibis.

www.magnificent7festival.org

TV3 Awards

The Catalan public broadcaster TV3 has since 1990 performed a very honourable competition for reports and films that ”raise a voice against the violation of human rights. The goal is to defend the rights of individuals and democratic values such as tolerance and respect for minorities”.

I was in the jury this year together with TV3 Head of Documentaries Joan Salvat, Colombian producer Maria Pia Quiroga living in Buenos Aires,  Lebanese filmmaker and distributor Soha Saleh and Melissa Caron from Echo Bridge Entertainment. 15 films were to be seen from a total of the around 50 that had been sent in for the competition – a pre-selection had been done.

The films came from different continents, they had a diversity of themes, sometimes reportage style, sometimes more personal, and many times a mix between investigative journalism with the clear goal to inform, and more creative documentaries that go to create an emotional link to the viewer. Brain and Heart. For most of the films there was a clear commitment from the filmmaker, for many there was a lack of visual thinking. Result: storytelling based on words. All presented themes were interesting and important.

There were indeed many words in the film that the jury chose as the winner of the 10.000€ of the TV3 International Award. But they were there as part of the dramatic story, ”The Coca Cola Case”. Which is the title of the Canadian film by German Gutierrez and Carmen Garcia. It is a well crafted and well told, sometimes visually very elegant, shocking story about the more than dubious activities of the multinational giant all over the world with an emphasis on atrocities in Colombia. An annotation from the site of the producer, National Film Board of Canada: This feature length documentary presents a searing indictment of the Coca-Cola empire and its alleged kidnapping, torture and murder of union leaders trying to improve working conditions in Colombia, Guatemala and Turkey. The filmmakers follow labour rights lawyers Daniel Kovalik and Terry Collingsworth and an activist for the Stop Killer-Coke! campaign, Ray Rogers, as they attempt to hold the giant U.S. multinational beverage company accountable in this legal and human rights battle.

The film will be shown at the DocsBarcelona festival that starts February 3 where also the award ceremony for the TV3 prize will take place.

Canada, 85 mins. 2009

http://www.cinemapolitica.org/the-coca-cola-case

http://www.hour.ca/film/film.aspx?iIDArticle=19104

http://www.nfb.ca/film/coca_cola_case_trailer/

info@argusfilms.ca

www.docsbarcelona.com

Cinéma du Réel

The 32th (!) edition of the festival in Paris takes place March 18-30. Both bloggers of this site will be there to report in Danish and English. Here is an overview of what the programme includes, taken from the site of the festival, and signed by its director Javier Packer-Comyn.

The 2010 Cinéma du Réel programme: International Competition / First Films / French Panorama. Some forty international and French films that have mostly never been screened, with particular focus on the films’ documentary writing and ethics. Encounters and debates with the invited filmmakers. And this year, for the first time, the First Films section focusing exclusively on first works.The Dedication: Albert Maysles. Revisiting the works of Albert Maysles (PHOTO), a landmark figure of the 1960s’ American direct cinema and the musical documentary (with his late brother, David). This tremendously vivacious 82-year-old will propose a retrospective based on the first part of his work, as well as a master class. Both of us. Both of us plunges us into the creative process of filmmakers working in tandem, in pairs, in partnership, in couples. We take a look at how various individual films are made and try to understand how this singular, yet double, entity comes to light in their filmmaking. With films by Yervant Gianikian/Angela Ricci-Lucchi, Jean-Luc Godard/Anne-Marie Miéville, Yann Le Masson/Bénédicte Deswarte, Raymonde Carasco/Régis Hébraud.

Jarmo Jääskeläinen: Marcel Lozinski

This text about Polish master Marcel Łoziński is written by grand old man in Finnish documentary, for many years a producer, director and commissioning editor at YLE, Jarmo Jääskeläinen. The text is taken from the site of the international film festival Docpoint that takes place in Helsinki 26-31.1.2010:

If one were to look for a pair for Marcel Łoziński in developing Polish documentary, it would be Krzysztof Kieślowski. They were best friends, and both belonged to the generation of directors that in the beginning of the 1970s were no longer satisfied with what their teacher Kazimierz Karabasz had taught them in the Łódź film school. They abandoned realistic observation of the environment and began to look for deeper stories, often containing staged, fictive elements, that would critically portray the totalitarian system of power in their country.

The basic conflict in their films was created by juxtaposing the individual and an unrealistic system. Both Łoziński and Kieślowski encountered various forms of censorship. They developed special expertise in writing between the lines, in finding forms of expression that the handbook for censorship did not yet have a chapter on. A good example of this is Łoziński’s How to Live (1977), a story from an educational summer camp of the Union of Young Polish Socialists. Just a few months earlier, workers in Ursus, Radom and other parts of Poland had started to protest against the price increase of food supplies. Thousands lost their jobs and many of the protesters got unreasonable prison sentences. Meanwhile, the summer camp of Marcel Łoziński’s film is all dance and laughter, although there are individuals present who dissent. Many of his other films also cannot be fully understood until they are reflected against the social circumstances in Poland at the time.

Kieślowski’s documentaries were often built on stories about an individual or a small group, Łoziński’s on larger themes and collectives. This difference led

Nicolas Philibert: Imagination takes flight

This text is taken from the site of the Finnish documentary film festival Docpoint, that goes on 26-31.1.2010:

I never made the decision to become a documentarian, to place myself in some fixed category. I don’t even like the word "documentarian". The term is an attempt to give a strict definition to a genre known for its porosity and constantly evolving boundaries; a genre that is almost inseparable from the one it is always opposed to: fiction. After all, images are not as true to ”reality” as they are to the intentions of their creator.

Nevertheless, my first film was a documentary (His Master’s Voice, 1978) and it made me want to make another one and another one, and I'm still as excited as ever. So I have become a documentarian and, although I dislike the word, nothing has managed to quench my thirst for filming; not the efforts needed to get a project started and surmount one’s demons nor the threats that hang over the existence and circulation of one’s most personal works.

I feel the need to create a frame for each film, a starting point that I can build upon. This frame consists of the things that I find motivating and exciting when working together with the subjects of the film. When filming starts, the final destination is unknown to me and I don’t know which path I will follow. A

Forgotten Transports to Göteborg Film Festival

”What an achievement! I don’t recall, when was the last time that I witnessed so captivating a historical documentary, here told by Czech Jewish survivors of the holocaust. They were interviewed between 2000-2006 by Lukas Pribyl, the researcher, writer and director behind the four 90 minutes long films that share the same title, ”Forgotten Transports”, with the adding of where the transports went: ”to Latvia”, ”to Estonia”, ”to Belarus”, ”to Poland”.

This is a text clip from this site where Lukas Pribyl’s films were given an enthusiastic review in August 2009. I also put the film series on my list of best films 2009. Now I see with pleasure that the prestigious film festival in Göteborg, in its very exclusive documentary section, includes 3 screenings of each of the 4 films. I can only say to our Swedish readers and the Danish professionals, who visit the festival: Go and watch these impressive films.

The 178 pages big catalogue also invites to screenings of other high-quality documentaries that have been written about on this site – and will be screened next week at the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade: ”My Life With Carlos”, ”Pianomania” and ”Kill the Referee”.

The festival goes from January 29 to February 8.

http://www.giff.se/

www.forgottentransports.com

Lars von Trier in St. Petersburg

Yes, it is him on the small poster, that advertises a fine programme to be performed by The Danish Institute in St. Petersburg.

For four days a Film Festival Denmark will take place showing an excellent programme of films from the Danish National Film School. Including ”Nocturne” by von Trier from 1980. Other highlights are ”Little Man” by Peter Schønau Fog, ”The Last Round” of Thomas Vinterberg and ”Last Symphony of Woyzeck” by Nicolai Arcel. The festival opens January 21 and runs until January 24 incl. in the cinema centre Rodina. A meeting with Elizabeth Rosen from the film school will take place on the 20th at 5pm at the great venue of the Institute.

What lies at the feet of von Trier? Dead raven, sleeping cats...

www.miradox.ru

Magnificent7 Prologue 2

A quote from my welcoming words for the Magnificent7 Festival:

What is a good film festival? You will not be surprised when I answer that question by saying: Come to the 6th edition of Magnificent7! Again we – Svetlana and Zoran Popovic and I – have done our best to compose a programme that we are sure will apppeal to you. You will learn about the troublesome, yet fascinating work of a piano tuner in ”Pianomania”. You will – for the first time, I guess – get an insight to the even more troublesome profession of being the man in black in the football film ”Kill the Referee”. You will laugh and cry with the charismatic Finnish characters in ”Living Rooom of a Nation”. And maybe shake your head in despair when you see how we deal with immigration in Europe, in ”The Arrivals”. And enjoy the beauty and life simplicity up in the North of Sweden in ”Way of Nature”. Precisely the same you might feel being in the company of wonderful people who have chosen to live far away from the urban landscape, in ”Below Sea Level”. Last but not least you will be touched by the honest and intimate search for his father that the director performs in ”My Life With Carlos”.

Three of the films have been reviewed on this site – type the titles under “search”: The Living Room of a Nation, Kill the Referee, Below the Sea Level.

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/index_eng.htm

Magnificent 7 Programme Published

January 21-25 2010 are the dates for the 6th edition of Magnificent 7, the European Feature Documentary Film Festival. A unique festival with a selection of only 7 films that are shown once in the Sava Center in Belgrade, Serbia. The directors or other representatives from the creation of the films are present to meet the audience that is huge in numbers, some times 500, some times around 1500. Per (evening) screening. All visiting filmmakers do a seminar for film students and professionals during day time.

I have written about the couple behind this festival before on this site and I will do it again, as their modesty prevents them to introduce themselves properly on the website of the festival where you can find info on the selected films with comments from them and me – the trio that selected the films. Here are some words that I wrote about them at the beginning of last year’s festival:

Look at the picture. This couple, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, stands behind the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade. I have known them for years and have had the privilege to work with them for five years on the selection for the festival.

They look so serious. And they are, when it comes to bring dedication and generosity and hospitality to their festival. They run it with warmth and humour and respect for the audience. And respect for the filmmakers and for quality. They have built up a large audience that comes back year after year to look at films that will stay in their minds. And who come to meet the makers and talk to them, or hear what they have to say in q & a's that are masterly moderated by Zoran Popovic.

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/index_eng.htm

CMCA Celebrates the Documentary and Reportage

The CMCA (Mediterranean Centre for Audiovisual Communication) has finished its 14th festival edition, and the publicity around the awards, the juries (2, one for documentary, one for reportage) and the films have never been bigger. The awards were given in Marseilles and the happy winners could all go back with good money for the development of the next project, to deal with the countries and matters from South and North of the Mediterranean Sea.

Read all about it in the newsletter (in French), below.

Photo from the beautiful film by Albert Solé, ”Bucarest, la Mémoire Perdu” (2008, 89 mins.), one of 8 winners in 7 categories.

http://www.cmca-med.org/fr/newsletter/upload/medaudion82daecembre2009.pdf

Istanbul International 1001 Doc Film Festival/1

The 12th edition of a festival that has grown in volume and importance. You felt it immediately when you were with the Turkish organisers and their young group of volunteers – all together people from or linked to the Association of Documentary Filmmakers in Turkey: This festival is made out of passion and commitment. They want people to come to see the world, ”and the truth”, as they phrase their slogan. Entrance to the many screening places (7, including cultural institutes like the French and Italian) was free, and almost all of the screenings took place in the area of Taksim in Pera (Beyoglu). Many of the screenings that I attended were full and there were around 20 foreign guests invited – thanks to the Danish Embassy for helping the festival to cover my flight expenses.

Learning, this is what it was about for us guests, and for the organisers and their Turkish filmmaking colleagues. I was there 6 years ago and saw with great joy that Turkish filmmakers now also make films about current social and political issues, not to forget documentaries that deal with horrors of the past. At my previous visit I watched a majority of nice cultural films about life in Anatolia, rituals, legends, anthropological and sometimes touristic stuff, this time it was different with a more outspoken criticism of the society and a choice of controversial themes.

One film will stay in my mind, ”Prison Nr. 5: 1980-1984” (PHOTO) by Cayan Demiel, who tells about the undescridable horrors that took place in the prison of Diyarbakir following the military coup in 1980. Most of the prisoners were Kurdish accompanied by socialists and communists. ”Turkification” was the aim of the regime and torture was the means. I will later this month review this extraordinary documentation.

http://www.1001belgesel.net/en/

www.bsb-adf.org

Istanbul International 1001 Doc Film Festival/2

Learning by watching – still the key quality challenge for the documentary film maker. At the festival in Istanbul your film-journey constantly took you to places, where you could not go yourself or where you would never dream of going due to the simple fact that you did not know of the existence. You go from the cinema, from the confrontation with the magic screen, you have experienced something new, and you leave for the Istanbulian street reality, where armed policemen guard on the Taksim Square. On television at the hotel it is being reported that what was seen "live" some hours ago, was one more Kurdish demo for the improvement of living rights in the Turkish society.

Back to the cinema, where ”The Children of Adam” by Georgy Paradanov (Russia, 2007, 50 mins.) took me to the Ezids in Armenia in a classical visually impressive film language, that stressed the director’s intention to let the images speak for themselves. The key scenes in the film are from a wedding that ressembles scenes from the old master Pelechian’s film ”Four Seasons”, one of the best documentaries ever made.

As the Russian film insisted on the image and not on the word, so did the Israeli filmmaker Ada Ushpiz who brought the ”Desert Brides” (Israel, 2008, 86 mins) to the Turkish audience. A film from the Negev desert in Israel, about polygamy centered around 3 bedouin women, who live with husbands, who have several wives. The story is told in a fine cinematic language and the director has clearly been able to get very close to the women. There are wonderful conversation pieces between the women, the men are treated without the easy pointing the finger-at-them, they are there, also discussing in fine scenes full of humour. Or the camera follows in direct style scenes what goes on when the man goes from one wife to the other. The more I think about that film, the better it gets... Take a look at the photo of one of the women, who is a wedding photographer, married to a man who also has several wives!

http://www.1001belgesel.net/en/

Istanbul International 1001 Doc Film Festival/3

"VTR Film Directing Research Production" is run by director Enis Rıza and executive producer Nalân Sakızlı. Husband and wife. Around them they have young committed and skilled women – the festival director of this year, Bahriye Kabadayı, the conference director of this year Ebru Seremeti, and the producer and coordinator Selma Salman, who by the way is the partner of Sinan Sakızlı, composer and music producer, and son of Enis and Nalan. As they used to say in American soaps… are you confused?

You should not be. This film collective, behind the festival and congress, is constantly on the road both to produce new films but also to make the necessary film political moves to make  changes for the better in Turkish documentary. The word solidarity is still used in Istanbul among the documentarians.

Enis Riza (PHOTO) had a new film in the festival, “Recycling Life” (Turkey, 2009, 105 mins.),about a young man, who used to be a homeless paper collector, and a very good one, he was. The street life was close to drugs, and yet he made it out of the underground hell and set up a bookshop! The film has wonderful moments, is warm and has a charismatic main character. The scenes with him and his mother are unforgettable. However, it is far too long, and Riza advertised a cut down to one hour, which is a wise decision, also for the film’s chances to reach a European audience.

The company has a fine website with great music and a lot of info on what “Eniz and his Harem” is doing.

http://www.vtr.com.tr/main_eng.htm

Istanbul International 1001 Doc Film Festival/4

In the framework of the festival a Congress was organised on the Saturday December 12 at the Galatasaray University that is situated wonderfully at the Bosporus. The Congress, organised for the 9th time (the festival for its 12th time), had the theme of ”Documentary. An art Form?” and included invited foreign guests to speak on the first day and Turkish academics on the second.

The Congress proved that filmmakers want to talk about their own work and experience, and are not able to theorize on an academic level – generally speaking, and that goes for a blogwriting documentary promoter as me as well. Nevertheless, let me just give you some notes from the day as it ran:

Dutch film journalist Pieter van Bueren wanted to change the conference focus by putting a more important question instead of the reflection on whether documentaries are art or not: What is a good documentary?, and he answered himself by advocating exclusively for cinematic qualities and not topical. Greek veteran Manthoulis, living in Paris, who showed the audience his fine film on the Greek civil war, said that if an artist is not completely free, he is not an artist, and confessed to have done self-censorship in order to reach the audience. He rejected the notion that documentaries are made without an audience in mind and used the image of a man standing on a mountain shouting to the woman on another mountain ”I love you”, as an illustration of the relationship between director and audience!

The only director who was able to speak theoretically about her work in a fascinating way was Portuguese Susana de Sousa Dias, a unique filmmaker (and an academic who is currently writing her phd on ”the image”) working on the image, the still photo and the archive material. She made the masterpiece ”Still Life. Faces of a Dictator” in 2005 and this year premiered ”48” (PHOTO). I will review that film later this month. I am not able to summarize her intervention at the conference, but hope that she will send her text to DOX Magazine and/or this site for publication.

Many others took the floor, among them: Daniela Broitman from Brazil, whose latest activist film I will review later this month, Rigoberto Lopez Pego from Cuba who advocated for the new travelling Caribbean documentary festival, Greek Gerasimos Rigas who revealed warmly how his film ”Parvas” had come to life, Belgian Jean-Noel Gobron who complained about all the systems that you have to face as a filmmaker to get funding.

www.kintop.net

http://www.1001belgesel.net/en/

... and the Winner is

no-one, when it comes to the exclusivity rules of film festivals! There is nothing new in the fact that major festivals insist on having premieres (world, international, European or whatever they want to call it) and therefore block for screenings in other festivals before their events take place, and it has been discussed again and again whether this makes sense or not. The festivals in Berlin, Cannes and Venice do so – but also documentary festivals like idfa in Amsterdam and Visions du Réel in Nyon (a major festival?) make this point to the filmmakers, producers, distributors and sales agents.

I am writing this in anger as I have just experienced that two films that we wanted for the Magnificent7 non-competitive festival in Belgrade late January will not go there as they are eventually to be screened in Berlin a couple of weeks later! Both filmmakers, a young talented Dane and a world famous experienced French, had accepted to go to this festival that put the director in focus, but had to reject the invitation because of an eventual Berlin screening.

... and the losers are the filmmakers and the audience. Would it matter the professional visitors to the Berlin festival, not to talk about die Berliner, the films being enjoyed by an audience in Belgrade? These exclusivity rules are ridiculous, do not make sense and are contradictory to the promotion of the creative documentary to a broader audience!

Tbilisi International Film Festival/6

The premiere of a new documentary by Nino Kirtadzé, ”Something About Georgia”. High expectations after her award-winning documentaries ”The Pipeline Next Door” and ”Durakovo: Village of Fools”. And big disappointment, I have to say. Pure propaganda for the politics of the president Saakhasvili, who according to this film has no opposition in his country... Propaganda, yes, and it could be ok, of course documentaries should have a standpoint, a personal view...

(the film history is full of good propaganda films from war times, think of films by Joris Ivens, films which can have an artistic quality and declares its premise up-front, think of Humphrey Jennings and his WW2 ”Listen to Britain”, well, and why not Leni Riefenstahl and her ”Triumph des Willens”, sans comparaison)

... but this new film of Kirtadzé film is unbalanced in film style, focus and narration. The start makes the viewer think that we will get close to the president. We don’t really, we don’t get an impression of him. The film then  introduces the theme Georgia-Europe and we see loads of sequences where diplomats and politicians meet to discuss, most of it journalistic material as if we were watching the news on television. This is made to explain the political development before and during the war, and after with Europe as the one to blame for inactivity towards Russia and Russian aggression. Kirtadzé tries to involve ”the ordinary Georgian” and their reactions but in most cases it does not really work, as she wants to go back to ”big politics” and the president and his opinions. The director had the conclusion of her film in her head before filming, her narration is set up to prove her point of view. This is not the way to make documentaries.

At the very end of the film we are taken to ”the border” to South Ossetia, and here you can see why the filmmaker has been awarded for her previous films. There are some beautiful shots, symbolical for a war situation, there is a woman who talks about her homeless situation, there are soldiers and policemen who are filmed in the no man’s land and there European observers who look, and just look.

Overall, a big disappointment, I would not say ”awful” as some of the Georgians did after the film, but I wonder what the funders of the film say: arte, yle, nrk, sundance institute etc,...

http://www.tbilisifilmfestival.ge/index.php

Tbilisi International Film Festival/5

The Pitch.Doc day included 10 projects to be pitched after a couple of days of training done by Georgian filmmaker Salome Jashi and me. The public pitching panel, arranged and organized by Anna Dziapshipa, had around 10 people to react critically and constructive to projects that for most of them were in an early development stage. The mix of panelists coming from film festivals, foreign filmmakers living in Tbilisi, a representative from Georgian Television and the CEO of Georgian Film Centre turned out to be  succesful and active.

Peter Jan Smit, Dutch filmmaker, summarized the themes of the pitched projects like this at the closing award ceremony:

There was 1) a project on Moldova and the 1980 Olympics. 2) on spiritual and metallurgical purification in Los Angeles.3) on the lives of young theatre actors in Kiev. 4) an Azerbadjani view on Georgian Idp’s in Meskheti.5) the khevsuretian code of Love. 6) an Azerbadjani village with only women, the men went to town. 7) angry young people in Moldova asking for answers on the political development. 8) a story connecting the Spanish civil war, the Leningrad siege and the August war.9) the female war-generation perspective on the shortage of men in Yerevan. 10) photography capturing time in Kiev.

Yes, what a diversity of themes, most of them accompanied by visuals, moving images or stills. And a one-page - during the workshop - rewritten presentation of the project.

... and the winner of the award, 5000€ as a development grant, was Alina Abdullayeva (photo) from Azerbjadan with the intriguing story, ”Matchmaker”. She received the award from Camilla Larsson and Ulf Sigvardson from the Gothenburg Film Festival Fund. She and other pitchers will for sure be able to do well at European markets.

http://www.tbilisifilmfestival.ge/index.php

Tbilisi International Film Festival/4

The short name is ”Nationality: Human”, the long one is the South Caucasus Documentary Film Festival of Peace and Human Rights. The festival is supported by the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros) and partners and the woman running it is Helena Zajicova, czech, with connection to the One World Festival in Prague. Zajicova told about the festival and showed the most popular film from this year’s selection: Neighbours by Norman MacLaren (1952). Here is a text clip from the site of the festival:

The festival screens annually 10-12 high quality documentary films, selected by the festival board out of a number of films preselected jointly with partners from the One World Film Festival in Prague. Local organizes then choose 6 films to compose a three-day festival program with follow-up discussions. All films are dubbed in Russian and national languages. (Photo from "To See if I'm Smiling" from Israel, reviewed on this site)

Another interesting initiative was brought to the participants of the Pitch.Doc day in Tbilisi. Susanna Harutunian and Hasmik Hovhannisyan from the Golden Apricot IFF in Yerevan, Armenia (takes place yearly in July) informed about the DAB (Directors Across Borders). Again a cross-cultural get-together – here is a text clip from their 2009 website:

Summarizing the selection results for the 3rd DAB Regional Co-production forum, we are happy announce the following: more than 40 projects were submitted for both Directors Across Borders and Armenia-Turkey Cinema Platform sections. We would like to thank all the producers and directors for their interest in the forum and submitting their projects. This year the format of the event has changed a little. In particular, in the frames of co-production forum, two main events will take place - Directors Across Borders co-production workshop, which will invite 10 projects from the countries of the region (namely: Armenia, Turkey, Russia, Georgia, Ukraine and Estonia) and Armenia-Turkey Cinema Platform Documentary Development Workshop, for 6 documentary projects aimed to be co-produced between Armenia and Turkey.

http://www.ya-chelovek.caucasus.net/_team.html

http://www.gaiff.am/

http://www.tbilisifilmfestival.ge/index.php

Tbilisi International Film Festival/3

The Pitch workshop has started. 10 projects have been selected from 5 countries: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbjadan, Ukraine and Moldova. A diversity of themes were presented by filmmakers with a different background. They met each other, heard about the state of the art in Europe and pitched and got feedback from colleagues. The organiser of the workshop, Anna Dziapshipa, who works at the Georgian Film Center, and who is also working as a producer, and the director Salome Jashi (her films have reviewed on this site) did a fine case study on their work-in-progress, Bahkmaro and Those Who Work There. This film-to-be was pitched at the Baltic Sea Forum in Riga September 2008, did a year of the Ex Oriente EU MEDIA training workhop in three stages – and was very succesfully received at public pitching sessions in Leipzig and Jihlava this autumn. The film project was originally in its early development phase supported by the Gothenburg Film Festival Fund, a very honourable move from the Swedish, who are here to pick one of the 10 film proposals at the workshop to give a grant of 5000€.

The workshop takes place at the Goethe Institute in Tbilisi, and I have again to express admiration for the generous attitude of the Germans in this part of the world, where support is granted to local filmmakers, very often also as a financial help for development and production of documentary films.

Friday the 5th a public pitching session will take place within the framework of the international film festival.

Photo: Anna Dziapshipa, Tue Steen Müller and German co-producer Heino Deckert in Jihlava.

http://www.tbilisifilmfestival.ge/index.php

Tbilisi International Film Festival/2

Arrived early morning in Tbilisi coming from Copenhagen via Istanbul. Turkish Airlines, to be recommended for its service. Drove on George Bush Street to the hotel, yes, George Bush Street! Says something about in which direction Georgia wanted and wants to go. Westwards. A film title in the catalogue, ”Misha vs. Moscow: The Battle for Georgia´s Future” stresses what is the problem right now after the unlucky war between Russia and Georgia last year in August. As the annotation to the film from 2009 (by American John Philp) says: ... president Saakashvili finds himself ostracized by his Western allies facing demands to resign following a disastrous war with Russia... can he regain his crown as the darling of international politics or has the war torpedoed for good any chance for peace in the region...

But what a beautiful city, the old town with atmosphere, small shops and cafés mingle with posh shopping malls, messy pavements, (some) renovated houses from early XX century. Opening of the festival tonight.

http://www.tbilisifilmfestival.ge/index.php

Tbilisi International Film Festival

It is the 10th edition of the international film festival that starts tomorrow in Tbilisi, capital of Goegia. And goes on until the 6th of December. Mike Leigh is guest of honour and makes a masterclass and there is an Italian focus, a series on Hamsun and film, introduced by Jan-Erik Holst from the Norwegian Film Institute, Iraniian films, German and of course a national programme.

I will be there to take part in Pitch.Point, the first pitching session for documentaries Georgia, arranged by the Georgian Film Center and with 10 projects to be pitched from Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Moldova. Also there is a chance to watch new Georgian documentaries, among them a new one by award-winning director Nino Kirtadze, “Something about Georgia”.
Photo from the documentary by Salome Jashi, “Speechless”.

http://www.tbilisifilmfestival.ge/index.php

MOMA Celebrates Lithuanian Cinema

MOMA in New York needs no further introduction as the museum of modern art. Less known – at least in Europe - is it that this museum, often much more precise and professional than festivals all over, put together interesting film series for its huge audience. This time it is about “Lithuanian Cinema: 1990–2009” from December 4, 2009–December 13, 2009. Here is the fine intro text from the site of MOMA:

This is the first U.S. survey to explore the last twenty years of fiction and nonfiction feature and short films from Lithuania. Since the Baltic republic declared its independence from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Lithuanian filmmakers, unconstrained by ideology and despite limited infrastructure, have made a number of distinguished works exploring themes of identity—both personal and national—in original, passionate, and provocative ways. Some Lithuanian filmmakers have earned international reputations, including Sarunas Bartas; Arunas Matelis, who was awarded the Directors Guild of America Best Documentary Filmmaker award in 2007 for Before Flying Back to Earth; and Jonas Mekas, whose creative and organizational activity in the U.S. has been essential to American independent filmmaking. Other filmmakers like Raimundas Banionis and the team of Romas Lileikis and Stasys Motiejunas, whose films appeared early in the “liberation” of Lithuanian cinema, deserve to be better known abroad—as do Kristina Buozyte (The Collectress) and Gytis Luksas (Vortex), both of whom are enjoying their American premieres. All films are from Lithuania and in Lithuanian with English subtitles.

Readers of this site will know that Lithuanian documentaries very often have been noted or reviewed – these are the documentaries selected by MOMA:
The shorter ones are ”Ten Minutes Before the Flight of Icarus” (Arunas Matelis, 1991), ”Earth of the Blind” (Audrius Stonys, 1992), ”Spring” (Valdas Navasaitis, 1997), ”Grandpa and Grandma” (Giedre Beinoriute, 2007), and the longer ones ”Before the Flight Back to the Earth” (Arunas Matelis, 2005) and ”Man-Horse” (Audrius Mickevicius, 2008).

The small photo is from "Man-Horse". The director wrote to me these lines: "Next wednesday I will fly to NY. I am happy for my neighbour Jonas. The longest trip in his life was about 100 km, now his images will be more far away."

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1020

Idfa Volume and Main Award

From the press release of idfa, impressive numbers, yes, the interest in documentaries is huge, bravo: Although the festival runs until Sunday, we can already cautiously say that the festival has once more received more visitors than last year… If the trend continues, the number of visitors will increase from 157,500 in 2008 to 165,000. Net income rose from € 700,000 in 2008 to € 750,000 this year. The number of (inter)national guests remained approximately on a par with 2008, at 2,295. IDFA's online activities were better visited this year than ever. Since January 2009, the website has attracted some 600,000 visitors, from 210 different countries. The trailers, full films and festival reports on the documentary channel IDFA TV were viewed during the festival a total of almost 6,000 times a day (4,000 in 2008).

The VPRO IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary (consisting of a sculpture and € 12,500) went to Lixin Fan for "Last Train Home", about the heroic journey undertaken by countless Chinese workers each year from the new industrial areas to their families in the provinces. The jury stated that this is a striking, honest film about a topic that is of relevance to the entire world.

www.idfa.nl

Idfa 4/09

There you go, a real camera stylo personal essay film with an original, personal style. I was completely taken in by the beauty of the film, "The Edge of Dreaming", of Scottish filmmaker Amy Hardie. It touched me, made me reflect on my own life, my family life, my growing up, at the same time as the intensity of storytelling makes you stay in an atmosphere of listening and watching and reflecting. For me this is what a good documentary can be with many layers, a mature commentary, about Life and Death, and told in numerous stylistical lines. You can´t help fall in love with the family of Amy Hardie. They live in (Scottish) nature surroundings that a camera can only adore. And you can´t help admire the manner Hardie, using rough home video material, goes visually elegantly back in time and forward again. We get her story about her first husband, who died years ago, but who comes back to her in a dream to ”announce” that she will die when she is 48 years of age. There are dream sequences, and there are stunning images that make me think of classic Dutch paintings. It is all mixed brilliantly and without any predictability. I better stop my praise and give you the prose of the producers from the idfa catalogue:

This is the story of a rational, sceptical woman, a mother and wife, who does not remember her dreams. Except once, when she dreamt her horse was dying. She woke so scared she went outside in the night. She found him dead. The next dream told her she would die herself, when she was 48. The film explores life, dreams and death in the context of a warm, loving family whose happiness is increasingly threatened as the dream seems to be proving true. The final confrontation, returning inside the dream with a shaman, reveals a surprising twist to the tale.

Scotland, 2009, 73 mins. - and (bravo) with the support of ZDF/arte, More4 and VPRO plus of course Scottish Screen.

www.idfa.nl

Vurdering:

Idfa 3/09

I saw two films supported by the Jan Vrijman Fund. ”For Home Viewing” by Mikhail Zheleznikov is a half hour, wonderfully controlled, cinematically original and funny first person story by the director, who tells about his view from his home window, in the house in St. Petersburg where he grew up, in the USSR, and now under totally different conditions. Also with humour is the film ”The Last Tightrope Dancer in Armenia” by Inna Sahakyan that introduces two old masters of an art form that is disappearing. They tell what was once, and they say what they hope to happen – that at least one of their students will take over. A warm film that takes us to a place and a culture that we did not know anything about.

www.idfa.nl

Idfa 2/09

Second day of the Forum, better atmosphere, better projects in general and a proof that the pitching sessions in a smaller room with around 10 broadcasters and film funders around the table, that this extra-to-the-big-room-format work well and can give a good dialogue. At least for an observer like me, but maybe not for the filmmakers presenting their project who hear positive remarks and ”let’s talk more” followed by a one-to-one meeting where the editors are more outspoken and often say ”I don’t have a slot for this”.

I am afraid that this was the case for Hungarian director Guyla Nemes, a Filmmaker, who has won prizes for his cinematic works, but this time had a topic that could fit for television (”recycling”/”how do we deal with our garage”) but presented visual material that is far from what most television channels go for today.

More focused on the market is another Eastern European film project, presented by Tomas Kudrna from Czech Republic. ”All that Glitters”, on a rough cut stage, filmed in Kyrgyzstan, the story about a small village and its inhabitants, whose lives will be completely changed by the presence of a gold mine company run by the Canadians.

In the big room I attended the strong presentations by two Nordic companies. Finnish John Hakalax and his film about legendary ski jumper Matti Nykänen, ”by his own Words” was a winner through a powerful humourous trailer that teased everyone  – followed by Swedish/Armenian Suzanne Khardalian’s ”Grandma´s Tattoos”, very touching: ”my gradmother was raped in front of the eyes of her sister”. Knowing what Khardalian and her producer PeÅ Holmquist have done together, including ”Her Armenian Prince” (PHOTO), I can only say that this will be a fine film.

www.idfa.nl

Idfa 1/09

And there you are again at the world’s biggest documentary festival! You carry your festival bag to the hotel – film catalogue, catalogue for the project Forum, a so-called industry guide with photos of broadcasters and film funders, market catalogue, invitations to parties and receptions. And your badge, not to forget, that gives you access to the crowded cinemas. Idfa IS a fest, an hommage to the documentary and the mere fact that thousands of people want to go and watch documentaries and discuss them, and learn about the world that we live in, well it pleases one, who can remember when festivals were exclusive gatherings for the happy few.

On the other hand you can not help feel a bit tired when you again enter the Forum that performs its 17th edition this year. The meeting itself is important, it is amazing to see so many producers, directors and decision makers gathered in the same room – but there is a déjà vue fatigue in the room and far too much a ”homey” atmosphere around the table with meaningless sentences expressed by the broadcasters like ”he/she is a great filmmaker” instead of trying to characterize what  kind of filmmaker he/she is, or why precisely this film could be important for them. Some editors like Iikka Vehkalahti from YLE try to cheer the whole thing up, and its was also the Finnish director Pekka Lehto that brought the most promising project to the table, about Alpo Rusi, accused of being a spy for GDR, another cold war story, well presented and at a rough cut stage. More unclear at this moment, but presented by a real storyteller, South African director Dumisani Phakathi, was his project ”To Marry My Mother”, that will tell the story about an unsettled family business: His grandfather wants Dumisani to pay the outstanding dowry that his father never paid to the grandfather when he married the mother. "If I have a problem I make a film", the director said.

www.idfa.nl

Plus Cameraimage 2009

This prestigious festival that honours the art of cinematography introduces now – in its 18th edition – a competition for documentaries, feature and short. 12 films are nominated in the feature category, among them several that have been reviewed or mentioned on this site: ”Another Planet” (camera: Tibor Máthé), ”Blind Loves” (PHOTO) (Camera: Juraj Chplik), ”Burma vj” (Camera: Simon Plum) and ”Réné” (Camera: Helena Trestikova). In the short film category you find ”Rabbit à lá Berlin” (Camera: Piotr Rosolowski). The festival takes place in Lodz, Poland 28.11-5.12.

http://www.pluscamerimage.pl/

idfa: Read All About It

On the site of idfa, the world’s biggest documentary film festival, that is running right now, you can download the English version of the idfa daily, called ”the international voice of idfa”. There are articles about the films, interviews with the directors of the festival and of the films, it’s all very professionally done. Take a look.

Photo from the new film of award-winning director Gonzalo Arijon (”Stranded”): ”Eyes Wide Open”, in competition at idfa.

www.idfa.nl

Wiseman – a Living Legend

If anyone deserves to be honoured for his life long oeuvre it is Frederick Wiseman, who yesterday at the opening of idfa in Amsterdam received an award, specially created for the occasion, including €5000. An example for all documentary makers, said festival director Ally Derks in her speech, and I would add that for me Wiseman is the man who as the best American novelists has shown that there is another America than we normally meet in the media.

”Welfare”, ”Hospital”, ”Highschool”,  ”Blind”, ”Law and Order”, Manouvre”, ”Juvenile Court” and so on and so forth... look at the website, buy the films.

http://www.zipporah.com/

Maziar Bahari at idfa

Maziar Bahari, who was arrested and imprisoned in Teheran, and has recently been released will Sunday, 22 November, from 15.30 to 17.30, be present at idfa in the Escape Lounge, where he will be talking about his recent experiences and the current situation in Iran.

Bahari was one of the dozens of journalists who was detained following the election in Iran on 12 June. He was there reporting on the elections and the subsequent riots for Canadian Newsweek. Bahari spent almost four months in the Evin prison in Teheran, from where he was permitted only a few brief telephone calls home. During his detention, pressure was exerted for from various quarters to secure the release of Bahari, who has both Iranian and Canadian nationality. On 17 October, Bahari was released on bail, whereupon he travelled to England, shortly afterwards becoming a father.

Bahari has made at least 10 documentaries, as well as writing a play. His films Of Shame and Coffins (2001), about the taboos surrounding the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and And Along Came a Spider (2002), about the religiously motivated serial murder of 16 Iranian prostitutes, were made with assistance from IDFA’s Jan Vrijman Fund. Other documentaries by Bahari that have screened at IDFA include Paint! No Matter What (1999), Football, Iranian Style (2001), Mohammad and the Matchmaker (2003) Targets: Reporters in Iraq (2004) and 4 Short Films on Iraq (2007). In 2007, Bahari compiled IDFA’s Top 10 and gave a master class, during which he spoke extensively about censorship in Iran.

Idfa Visitor’s Guide

Here follows a list of films that an idfa visitor could watch on this blog writer’s recommendation. Goes without saying that I only know a few of the films that have their premieres in Amsterdam. I mention 20 titles and you can go to the site and get more information about director and content. Several of them have been reviewed or mentioned on this site. I highlight them:

Bananas! Basic Training (and other classics of Frederick Wiseman). Burma vj. The City of the Dead. Constantin and Elena. Disco and Atomic War. Garbo: The Spy. The Last Tightrope Dancer in Armenia. Let’s be Together (PHOTO). Mr. Governor. Mumbai Disconnected.   Osadne. Pianomania. Route 181. S21. The Specialist. Sugartown: The Day After. Testimonies. To See If I’m Smiling. Welcome to North Korea.

Idfa has made an interesting characterization of the films at the festival:
 * Human Interest / Social Issues (196)
 * Politics / Society (122)
 * Author's Point of View (76)
 * Art / Music / Culture (72)
 * Youth (48)
 * History (48)
 * Experimental (41)
 * Nature / Environment (31)
 * Investigative (28)
 * Science / Technology (19)

www.idfa.nl

idfa November 19-29

The biggest documentary film festival opens in a couple of days. If you attend you will have an enormous lot of choices. Here is the introduction from the organisers: From November 19, Amsterdam will once again be the focal point of the international documentary world. More than 2100 guests will attend IDFA and its Markets. For those you can’t make it to Amsterdam: talkshows, debates, master classes and much more will be streamed via IDFA TV. www.idfa.nl

Some 700 film screenings will take place, of a total of 307 exceptional films and new media projects. A broad program encompassing 77 world premières, 53 international premières and 31 European premières. Also, talkshows and debates with appealing and controversial guests. Iran filmmaker Maziar Bahari, recently released from prison, will speak about his incredible personal experiences.

150 young professionals will be participating in the IDFAcademy program, which includes a lecture by Peter Broderick on hybrid distribution, three Master Classes, panel discussions and small-scale meetings with renowned (PHOTO: FREE TIME MACHOS by Mika Ronkainen in competition at idfa)

Ferenc Moldoványi in Copenhagen

Especially for our Danish readers: The masterly done documentary ”Another Planet” by Hungarian director Ferenc Moldoványi will be presented in Copenhagen on November 20 in connection with the celebration of the 20 year birthday of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The director will show clips from his film and give an insight to how he worked with the children in the film.

More about the programme is to be found on the site below. The same goes for more about the film that has been written about on this site numerous times. Go to ”search” and write ”another planet”
 
http://www.amnesty.dk/artikel/bornekonventionen/bornekonventionen-fylder-20-og-du-er-inviteret-til-fodselsdag

http://www.another-planet.eu/moldovanyi-uk.html

http://www.unicef.org/crc/

Claas Danielsen DOKLeipzig Opening Speech

Claas Danielsen is festival director of DOKLeipzig. His opening speech of this year's festival is a high quality personal hommage to the documentary and to an audience that by public television is increasingly being treated as ignorant and unintelligent. Read his speech:

Welcome to the 52nd International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. What do you see, ladies and gentlemen? You see a large cinema, many red seats, lots of people. You see a screen and on the screen you see me. How do you see me? Small, from the distance, standing behind a speaker’s desk. And at the same time big, possibly in close-up, on the screen. I wear a suit, even a tie, to commemorate this special occasion. I seem focused, sometimes I smile. But do you really see how I feel? Those who know me a bit better may see that I am exhausted from the months of preparations for this festival.

What most of you cannot see is that I’m truly worried, worried about our colleague Matthias Heeder, a member of our selecting committee and the curator of this year’s special programme “T.I.A. – This Is Africa”. He is shooting a film in Sudan with his team and has not contacted us for days. We are waiting for a sign of life and thinking of him in the meantime.

What kind of face do I show you? What do we reveal about ourselves? My suit is, at least in Germany, appropriate for the occasion. I comply with social conventions but reveal very little of my true self. A part of me is sad. My father will celebrate his 80th birthday tomorrow and I won’t be able to be with him. Mentioning this here is really beside the point. Mentioning that I’m worried about him; that I fear he may die soon and will then regret having worked so much instead of spending more time with him, is a very private matter. I had better keep this to myself, hadn’t I?

But why, actually? I imagine that some of you may be thinking right now, “When was the last time that I went to see my father or my mother?” Or: “Why am I sitting in this cinema instead of spending time with my wife and our kids?”. Perhaps you are also thinking of the daily stress of professional life, about how time flies past and how little space you have reserved for yourself and the people that are important to you. Because life is finite. Beyond that we are faced with the question of what is essential.

During the past few weeks, many journalists have asked me what is special about documentary film. Documentary films are constantly surprising. I discover the unknown or re-discover seemingly familiar things through the filmmaker’s eyes. Documentary films often tackle uncomfortable, suppressed issues and go straight for the core.

DokLeipzig Winners

A bit post festum an extract of the awards at the DOK Leipzig 2009. Several of the winners have been mentioned or reviewed on this site:

The International Jury for Documentary Film awards: for Documentary Films and Videos / Long Metrage (longer than 45 min) a Golden Dove along with € 10.000 granted by TELEPOOL GmbH to the film “The Arrivals” by Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard (France)

The International Jury for Documentary Film awards an Honorary Mention to the film “The Living Room of the Nation” by Jukka Kärkkäinen (Finland) An Honorary Mention to the film “17 August” (PHOTO) by Aleksandr Gutman (Russia, Poland, Finland)

The Jury for the Healthy Workplaces (!) Film Award awards for the best documentary film about the subject of work the Healthy Workplaces Film Award along with € 8.000 granted by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU OSHA) to ”A Blooming Business” by Ton van Zantvoort (The Netherlands)

The Jury of the Doc Alliance awards for a film from the Doc Alliance Selection the Doc Alliance Award along with € 5.000 to “Maggie in Wonderland” by Mark Hammarberg, Ester Martin Bergsmark and Beatrice Maggie Andersson (Sweden)

The MDR (Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk) awards for an excellent Eastern European documentary film the MDR Film Prize along with € 3.000 to “Chemo” by Pawel Lozinski (Poland)

The FIPRESCI Jury (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique) awards the Prize of the Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique to the film “Cooking History” by Peter Kerekes (Austria, Slovakia, Czech Republic).

CPH:DOX 09/2

Tre års tornerosesøvn er forbi, uhyret jaget på flugt, støjen ophørt. Posthus Teatret åbnede igen i forgårs for at deltage i CPH:DOX visningerne. Københavns mærkværdigste og mest stædige biograf viser igen film, som biografdirektørerne kan lide og som de holder på plakaten lige så længe, som de kan og som de synes. De kan fortsætte deres kavalkade, genoptage deres import. Mon ikke? Vi glæder os til at have god tid til de store film i den kræsne kunstbiograf. 

http://www.posthusteatret.dk/

Memorimage 09/4

The festival in Reus ended last night. The jury chose ”Of Time and the City” by Terence Davies as the best film, honouring the personal courage of the director not to forget his personal commentary and creative use of archive material to describe Liverpool, his home town. For the best production Peter Kerekes was chosen for ”Cooking History”, an ambitious, structurally original and controversial treatment of War. Both films have been reviewed on this site.

For the research the jury gave the prize to ”Shanty Town - The Forgotten City” (PHOTO) for its excellent work to find and convey a part of Barcelona unknown to most people. Here is the catalogue description of the film:

During the post-war period, hundreds of thousands of people came to Barcelona, fleeing from poverty and political persecution. Given the lack of housing on their arrival, many of them spent years living in caves and shacks. They were workers looking to improve their quality of life, forced to live in a shantytown. When flats were finally built, they were constructed in substandard buildings and remote areas, a phenomenon known as “vertical shantytowns”. Modern Barcelona has chosen to forget a part of its history, a history that is now told through the mouths of those who endured it. Images shot by amateur filmmakers contrast with the official testimony, offering a glimpse of what that city of forgotten residents was really like.

www.memorimagefestival.org

Memorimage 09/3

Director Josep Rovira and researcher Montserrat Bailac told me that I would probably not really understand their ”Dear Dona Elena”, as there was no contextual information given in the film that makes a focus on the fifties of a Spain during the Franco regime. They were wrong, I got it all, as the film is a kitchy compilation of wonderful, archive based stories about (mostly) women who write to a Dona Elena, who either gives them an answer on radio or through letters sent to those who write because they have questions to be answered and problems to be solved.

In an elegant montage the director links the content of the letters to archive from the time, documentary material but also fiction, with close-up on the letters that were found recently, and with a sound score that conveys the atmosphere of the purist decade. You are entertained when you hear the question of whether a French kiss can make you pregnant, and you freeze a bit when you listen to the letter from a woman, who is getting beaten up by her husband, with the answer back from Dona Elena: You have to please your husband, and then all will be fine! Only for a Spanish audience, NO, the conservatism of the fifties, the supressed role of the women, the lack of sex education, the images from the homes – all that is to be found all over, I guess, at least in a Nordic country, where I come from, well the role of the church is not to be compared, but apart from that the similarities are more significant than the differences.

www.memorimagefestival.org

Memorimage 09/2

The festival invited producer and director Edmon Roch to present his ambitious docu-spy film ”Garbo – the Man who Saved the World”, which is the story about Juan Puol, the double agent who during WW2 for the Germans was Arabal and for the Allies Garbo. Roch showed half of the film within a closed master class arrangement – the film will have its international premiere at idfa in Amsterdam, where it will be in the First Apperance competition.

Roch, however, though this is his first film as a director, is not a beginner as it was obvious from the high production value of an archive based, entertaining narrative that includes clips from feature films (you see Leslie Howard, Peter Lorre, Edward G. Robinson among others), documentary archive from Barcelona and elsewhere, and interviews with knowledgeable people who have studied the life and mystery of the intelligence work of Pujol.

I don’t like reconstruction, Roch said, and if I had fictionalised the film totally with actors, noone would have believed this extraordinary story. From what I saw the audience (the film will be released in cinemas in Spain) at festivals and in television can look forward to a fascinating and playful documentary film. Huge potential. Can’t wait to see the whole film!

www.memorimagefestival.org

Memorimage 09/1

Reus, town of Gaudi in Catalonia, a couple of hours from Barcelona. For the fourth time the city hosts a film festival that deals with memories and presents films that work creatively with archives. It is a small festival with an exclusive and high quality programme. Among the films shown are Terence Davies ”Of time and the City”, Peter Kerekes ”Cooking History”, Jaak Kilmi’s ”Disco and Atomic War” – all written about on this site. I am a juror and look forward to seeing these films again as well as the other works by for instance Sergei Loznitsa, Pavel Medvedev and Katia Forbert Petersen & Annette Mari Olsen (Photo from "My Iranian Paradise").

There are production workshops, case studies – it’s all very promising, I can say after the opening screening (”The Judge and the General” by Patricio Lanfranco and Elisabeth Farnsworth) last night in the beautiful theatre Bartrina.

www.memorimagefestival.org

CPH:DOX 09/1

It’s show time in Copenhagen. The international documentary film festival starts November 6 and runs until November 15. A huge programme is set up to satisfy the local documentary addicts and the visiting professionals.

BUT they don’t get the best of the best. A close study of the programme shows that there are no films from Eastern Europe, so often praised for originality, strong human interest topics and cinematic quality on this site. Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland. Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia etc. Films from these countries, films that win awards in festivals are simply not there – Czech Republic is represented with one film, and that’s it. The festival has sections that group the best films of the year, there is an amnesty award, there is a section for ”new vision” – but there are no films by Sergei Loznitsa, Audrius Stonys, Marko Skop, Jan Gogola, Peter Kerekes (Photo from "Cooking History"), Atanas Georgiev, Pawel Lozinski, Bartek Konopka, György Nemes – all names that loyal readers of this site know, and I could have mentioned many more. Not good, actually quite insufficient programming.

www.cphdox.dk

Jihlava 09/6

Stop reading if you want to avoid a personal text that is full of emotions and warm thanks from me to the women running the IDF, Institute of Documentary Film, based in Prague with the task to promote Eastern European Documentaries. Sunday was the closing day of the Eastern European Forum where 20 exciting film projects were presented/pitched to broadcasters and film fund representatives with an audience that included sales agents and distributors from all over the world. And mind my words: excellent films are in the process of being made.

Sunday was also the last Eastern European Forum for me after years as a tutor and moderator and conductor of the Ex Oriente workshop. It has been pure pleasure and I feel both proud and humble to have been part of a promotion team that has seen one strong film after the other be developed into strong and original creative works.

Go to the website of the IDF and read all about the films coming up in a year or two. Yes, it takes time to make creative documentaries, and it takes time to raise funding for them, and many will not be able to do so, but they make the films anyway! And what a gift to the Eastern European filmmakers to have IDF. Thank you for having given me so many wonderful moments, to Andrea Prenghyova, Ivana Milosevic, Hanka Rezkova – and all the other clever and dedicated and creative people! Thanks for generosity, warmness and friendships that will last.

Photo from Jihlava taken by Bulgarian documentarian Svetoslav Draganov. Autumn and a white line leading the festivalgoers from location to location.

www.docuinter.net

Aage Rais-Nordentoft: Afvist

"Jesu budskab skal til enhver tid tale ind i vores menneskeliv. Som kirke skal vi aldrig tale partipolitik, men vi skal heller aldrig holde op med at være talerør for de svageste, hvad enten det er flygtninge, de børn og unge, der har det svært her i Århus eller helt andre grupper. Den dag, vi glemmer, at Jesu budskab også gælder i de valg, vi står i her og nu, er det jo blevet en verdensfjern kirke."

Sådan skriver præsten i Gellerup Kirke, Annette Bennedsgaard i pressemeddelelsen om premieren på Aage Rais-Nordentofts nye film om de irakiske flygtninge fra Brorsons Kirke. Filmen får premiere i hendes kirke 15. november 13:00. Bagefter er der orgelkoncert. Kirkens organist spiller. Aarhus Filmfestival står bag arrangementet. CPH:DOX arrangerer en lignende premiere 14. november i Brorsons Kirke.

Rais-Nordentoft har haft adgang til fem timer af politiets optagelser. Pressens optagelser af begivenhederne uden for kirken (fotoet for eksempel) er måske også en del af materialet. Det mest spændende er den tænksomme vurdering af billederne og deres udtrykskraft og dernæst de moralske implikationer, Rais-Nordentoft leverer i sin films konstruktion. Til nu har jeg kun set rå, forvirrede reportager brugt som billeddækning. Nu kommer en film..

Max Kestner: Drømme i København

Et par ting fra formaterialet til Kestners film drejer mine forventninger i en ganske særlig retning. Først billedet. Jeg funderer, skal det være DFI’s beskæring eller CPH:DOXs? Jeg vælger DFI. Det er vigtigt det her. Det drejer sig om Henrik Bohn Ipsens billede. Og jeg tænker jo på billedet til Nede på jorden, Esbjergs boligarkitektur og havne skyline. Mon igen dette i lodret og vandret kontrollerede kamera? Den mondrianske opbygning i Københavnnatbilledet lover mig det næsten. Og jeg glæder mig.   

Så er der sætningen i instruktørens korte synopsis: ”… and the walls upon which we have scratched our loved one’s name before it is too late.” Jeg tøver lige i den så almindelige sætning, noterer i lynluk af øjnene smertens riv ”… før det er for sent.”  

Nærværet i Esbjerg og poesien i de valgte replikker på fabrikken, i hjemmene, i bilerne – og i i Tivoli i København. Og nu måske dertil ruttmannske billedrytmer i endnu en bysymfoni.  Jeg glæder mig. Det således kontrollerede kamera og poesien. Mon den nye film har bevaret det, eller?  

Max Kestner: Drømme i København, Danmark 2009. 72 min. Produceret af Upfront Films. Manuskript: Dunja Gry Jensen og Max Kestner, fotografi: Henrik Bohn Ipsen, klip: Anne Østerud, lyd: Morten Green, musik Jóhan: Jóhannsson, produktion: Henrik Veileborg. Åbningsfilm på CPH:DOX 6. november 21:00 i Koncerthuset DR.

Ada Bligaard Søby: Complaints Choir

Ada Bligaard Søbys tidligere film hænger så tydeligt sammen, i sujet, i billedsyn, i opfindsomt konstrueret anderledeshed. De er så selvfølgeligt til stede i tiden nu. Det sted, de vælger at være til stede. Hele rækken er præget af hendes signerende blik. Nu sker der noget andet. Det personlige blik stiller hun i sin nye film til rådighed for en bunden opgave, en redegørelse for og en skildring af det internationale projekt Complaints Choirs art projekt. 

Filmen følger to finske korinstruktører, Tellervo og Oliver Kalleinen til Singapore og til Chicago, hvor de sætter Complaints Choir forestillinger op. I Chicago lykkes det at komme igennem, men i Singapore forbyder myndighederne at opføre den færdige samarbejdede klagesang offentlig.

Filmen slår således meget aktuel ind i den stadigt voksende Complaints Choirs verdensomspændende bevægelse.

Ada Bligaard Søby: Complaints Choir, Danmark 2009. 56 min. Produceret af Fine & Mellow production@finemellow.dk www.finemellow.dk Filmen bliver vist i konkurrenceprogrammet på CPH:DOX første gang 7. november 21:30 i Grand Teatret.

Jihlava 09/5

I saw the winner of the section ”Czech Joy”, ”I love my Boring Life” (PHOTO) by Jan Gogola, director, but also very much esteemed dramaturg, some call him an icon of Czech documentary, who has worked with several Czech and Slovak filmmakers like Filip Remunda (”Czech Dream”), Marko Skop(”Osadne” and Peter Kerekes (”66 Seasons” and ”Cooking History”). I will wait with my review of a fascinating and original film that was shown in a version with English version, and as the text is crucial for the experience of the film. I did not get out of it what it deserves and will wait until a German voice version of the film has been made.

But the Breathless project, German-Czech, deserves to be mentioned so I took this from the website:

Breathless, Dominance of the Moment - A collection of 5 Czech-German documentary films:

As a unique example of Czech-German cooperation are five creative documentary films presented under the common name Breathless, Dominance of the Moment. Czech-German project was established to support daring creative documentary proposals and to fund and develop outstanding documentary films from the Czech Republic and Germany. In Spring 2008,

Jihlava 09/4

The best films of the thirteenth year of the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival were announced at its closing ceremony.

In the Czech Joy category, the jury selected the film I Love my Boring Life (Mám ráda nudný život, Jan Gogola Jr., Czech Republic 2009) (PHOTO). Further on, the film Brain Fight (Souboj z mozkem, Jan Šípek, Czech Republic 2009) received a Special Mention.

The Opus Bonum award for the best documentary film of 2009 went to the film Bassidji (Tamadon Mehran, Iran - France - Switzerland 2009).

Further on, the jury of the Between the Seas section awarded the film The Border (Hranica, Jaroslav Vojtek, Slovakia 2009) as the best East European documentary film of 2009.

The award of the Fascinations section for the best experimental documentary film of 2009 went to the work with the title Workers Leaving the Factory (Dubai) (Ben Russell, USA 2008).

The Audience Award was presented by chief programming director Alena Müllerová on behalf of the Czech Television, going to the film Auto*mat (Martin Mareček, Czech Republic 2009).

www.docuinter.net

http://www.breathless-films.com/

Jihlava 09/3

Note for our Danish/Swedish/Belgian readers: The masterpiece ”Rabbit a la Berlin” by Polish director Bartek Konopka will be broadcast on Swedish television SVT1 monday November 2nd at 10pm and on Belgian channel Lichtpunt tonight sunday November 1.

The film was yesterday awarded the Silver Eye Award Medium Length here at the International Documentary Film Festival in Jihlava, Czech Republic.

www.docuinter.net

Jihlava 09/2

The small town in Czech Republic is full of people, who are here to watch films. There is a big local, young audience. There are professionals who come from all parts of the world to buy films for their tv channels, pick up films for their festivals, filmmakers with films to be presented and discussed with the audience and filmmakers with film projects to be developed and pitched for eventual financing. Documentaries all over.

I had the chance to see a film that is not yet released: ”Katka” by Helena Trestikova, who had a huge success with her previous film, ”Réné”. That will also happen with ”Katka”, which is a touching and tough drama about a young girl over a period of 10 years where she gets into a drug addiction that she is not able to leave. Railway stations, squatted totally devastated houses, meetings with social workers, tears and violence. Katka gets pregnant, her Teresa is born, she wants to keep her child but can only do so if she gets clean. The film is on its way to theatres in Czech Republic and festival goers all over the world will meet it, I am sure.

Finnish Iikka Vehkalahti from the national broadcaster YLE presented the web-doc project that he has initiated in Finland. Lönrott it is called – small stories from Finnish people inspired by the David Lynch supported, American Interview webdoc compilation that has been written about before on this site. Vehkalahti travels the festivals right now (he will also go to Sheffield and Amsterdam) to spread out his Finnish concept to become a global series.

www.docuinter.net

http://www.negativ.cz/en/films/katka/

Jihlava 09/1

Documentary festival in Jihlava. Accompanied by the East European Forum that I am part of as a tutor and moderator. There will be project development and pitching of around 20 projects during the coming weekend. To a panel of another 20 broadcast and film fund representatives. A varied film festival programme and a huge digitalised market. The competence and professionalism behind the so-called industry programme comes from IDF, Institute of Documentary Film.

The East European Forum started yesterday with 3 inspirational case studies from former participants, who finished their films successfully. All three films have been written about or reviewed on this site: ”The Deconstruction of an Artist” (PHOTO) by Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis, ”The Moon inside You” by Slovak director and producer Diana Fabianova, and ”Rabbit a la Berlin” by Polish producer Anna Wydra. 1) Cekulis talked about the immense work it was to raise funding for a film about an artist, Gustav Klucis, that very few people had ever heard about – and how he and the director Peteris Krilovs fought to find the right style and rythm of a film, that now stands out as a brilliant historical art and love story.

2) Fabianova, who came into the Ex Oriente without any experience at all in film production and with just a small documentary course on her cv, gave the participants the unbelievable story about her film on menstruation – that has now been sold to 17 countries, has a life in educational circles, will be released in theatres in several countries, and will make a profit! Not usual for a creative documentary. 3) Anna Wydra, producer and creative collaborator on the 40 minute masterpiece of Bartek Konopka, German title ”Mauerhaase”, was more than enthusiastic about the fact that the film was on the shortlist of an Oscar together with 7 American productions. The nominations will be out by February 1st for a film that had a hard time to find the perfect narrative balance between rabbits and people, between wild life and history – but it did and watch out readers for the tv programmes on November 9, the 20th year date of the fall of the wall. It could very well be on your channel.

www.docuinter.net

Documentary Campus 1

The final pitching session of the Documentary Campus Masterschool took place in Leipzig in the building of the local broadcaster MDR, on the 13th floor with a beautiful view to the city. Only to be watched in the breaks as the showing of film clips (also called trailers, teasers, tasters, demos, pilots) was not a good match to the strong autumn sunlight of this last weekend. The room was darkened when commissioning editor Claudia Schreiner welcomed her colleagues (around 30) around the table as well as the film producers and directors present, waiting to present (pitch) their documentary projects:

Our situation ressembles the one of many of you editors in this room. We have to spend the little money we have for so many documentaries as possible, she said. In this way she characterized the poor situation for European public broadcasters, who face general cut downs in staff and money.

Nevertheless, the atmosphere in the room was as always very ”homey” as the pitchings took off under the moderation of Canadian Rudy Buttignol, who did all he could to set a good mood. Without hiding that the channels who are normally financially strong for the creative documentaries have problems. The European cultural channel arte is going more and more mainstream, and France Télévisions (hosting FR2, FR3, FR4, FR5) has for a long time been in a reconstruction phase that will bring more centralisation.

Topics on the first day were – among others – a classical British social theme on youngsters in Manchester getting into criminal affairs ruining their lives, a television programme on poker-playing, a beautiful emotional story on a Japanese woman who grew up without a mother, married a Greek man and moved to the island of Crete and a cinematic story from a faraway place in Georgia: a house, a restaurant, a barking dog, waitresses. A place where time has stopped.

Photo from film project "Soldiers of the Lord" by Michael Krass, awarded the best pitch in Leipzig.

www.reelisor.com

Documentary Campus 2

The reactions from the panel of broadcasters in a pitching session, when the editors are positive, are normally ”let’s talk more”. Which the editors and the project holders then do in private meetings. Which then may result in an agreement, be it a pre-buy or a coproduction, which then again normally goes through a local producer. In other words it is seldom that a broadcaster commits him- or herself on the spot. The financial process is long but the success stories are many of international coproductions that have crossed orders for the benefit of the audience.

But something happened in Leipzig. Two projects got what I would call jackpot: One was from Serbia, ”The Battery Man” – clip from the description of the film project:

 ... about an extraordinary man who can fry a hot dog with his own hands... able to accumulate electricity and he can consciously control its power while discharging it... MDR said YES, arte said that this is a must-see film and the Sundance Channel urged the filmmakers to make a feature length film for a live audience.

The same overwhelmingly positive reception was given to ”Polish Faith”, a film project about the catholic radio station ”Radio Maryja” that is obtaining a lot of support for its anti-abortion, and to a certain degree anti-semitic propaganda that it wants also outside the Polish borders.The Berlin based channel RBB committed itself, as did Lithuanian television, the Greek Skai – and BBC4 controller Richard Klein wanted to know more.

Photo from film project "Taste the Waste" by Valentin Thurn.

www.reelisor.com

DOCLisboa 09/Prizes

Prizes were given yesterday in Lisbon and there was 15.000€ for the Chinese film ”Petition” by Zhao Liang. Here is what the film is about: Since 1996, Zhao Liang has been filming the “petitioners”, who come from all over China to file complaints about the abuses and injustices committed by the authorities. For the most part, they live in makeshift shelters for months or even years until they can obtain justice. A unique testimony about China today.

Two films that have previously been written about on this site were among the winners: Aliona Polunina’s ”The Revolution that Wasn’t”, as best investigative documentary (5000€) and ”10 min.” (PHOTO) by Jorge Léon as best short documentary (3000€).

http://www.doclisboa.org/eng/premios.php#ci

Pawel Lozinski: Chemo

The Prix Europa for the Best Documentary Television Programme 2009 goes to a Film that is also available for the participants of the DOKLeipzig – the stylistically brilliant close up on people who come to the hospital to receive chemotherapy, made by Pawel Lozinski, who is known for other very fine works, among them the short film ”Sisters”. Here is a quote from the press release about the film that hopefully will travel the world. The jury said at the prize ceremony:

"This documentary once again underlines how important it is that we continue to celebrate and commiserate the human condition in our work. The sensitivities displayed both on the other and this side of the camera should make us all in this hall proud of our commitment to documentary film making.

And yet, by the end of the film the director and his team had impressed on us the strengths, wisdom and humour of those who attempt to defeat or come to terms with this hideous and deadly disease."

http://www.prix-europa.de/en/prix_europa_2009/prizes09/tvd09/

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/v2/cms/en/home/page92.html

Jørgen Leth Meets New Obstructions

The innovative Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival in Czech Republic announces the following that will interest not only his Danish friends and fans like this blogger:

The principal guest of Jihlava IDFF will be the distinguished Danish documentary maker, writer and poet Jørgen Leth. The festival has prepared for him “five Jihlava obstructions” (a variation on the well-known film The Five Obstructions, made by Leth with the provocative director Lars von Trier): The selection of the winner of this year’s Opus Bonum, author’s reading of controversial stories from Haiti, acerbic comments on new world documentaries, Leth as an Erotic Man and in 27 scenes from the film by Amir Labaki.

The festival takes place October 27 – November 1.

http://www.docuinter.net/en/net_archive.php?id=734

DOCLisboa 09/5

What is it that makes a festival nice to visit? The atmosphere of course, which is about the venue and the people hosting you. The information given to you about the programme – website, catalogue, introduction of visiting directors – and the programme itself. Being serious about the art of documentary but in a unpretentious setting. And daring to fight for better conditions for the documentary on a national and international level.

They have it all in DOCLisboa. Thank you and please stay on this high level! I have left the festival that is still running, wish you all the best! And dear readers and professionals, there is a new festival next year.

Photo is from Reminiscenses from a Journey Back to Lithuania by Jonas Mekas, who is the guest of honour of DOCLisboa with a 25 hour retrospective of the director´s work. Several clips can be watched on the site of the festival, inclusing a new film he made on Martin Scorcese.

www.doclisboa.org

DOCLisboa 09/4

This is the start: A monkey looking into your eyes, an orangutan’s gaze into the camera. At US, those who are outside the glass. Or just looking into nothing. No sound, or very soft sound from the streets around the Parisian Jardin des Plantes, that has been the home of Nénette, since she was 3 years old. She is now 40, an usual high age for an orangutan. Alone she is, having survived three marriages. They all died, the males. She has children around her, and she gets pills so no incest happens. Because what do we actually know about monkeys and their behaviours, what they think, how they behave, if they are as sad as they look or if this is just something that we on the outside of the glass project into them as we are in need of these emotions?

Nicolas Philibert, master of documentary, celebrated on this site many times, has made this 55 minutes long documentary that never leaves Nénette and uses a voice-off very intelligently. Spontaneous comments from children vary with those from couples, and with thoughtful reflections from so-called experts, anthropologists and from a man who as been working in the Jardin des Plantes for 35 years. Music and a song to the orangutans.

Do you think Nénette understands where she is and who we are, she who has spent her life doing nothing as it is said!

I saw the film on a small computer screen, I look forward to the big screen but I can see that Philibert again has made something special with his fine humanistic, non-intellectual approach to Film and Life. Nénette was looking at him behind the camera, as if the camera was not there, an old wise creature she seems to be and you can’t help feel sorry for her at the same time as you are grateful to have met her. And for a film that brings you in an almost meditative mood.

Nénette, France, 2009, 55 mins.

www.doclisboa.org

DOCLisboa 09/3

”Kill the Referee” is a film of Belgian and Swiss nationality, directed by Yves Hiant, a film for football fans like this blog writer – as loyal readers and friends have noticed. And it is amazing because of its unique access to a handful of referees and to the back stage of the Euro08. The film crew follows the referees into the dressing room, at the internal meetings where the selection of the teams take place and through the video evaluation of the matches, and into the hotel rooms, and at the homes where parents and wives follow their heroes in action. And heroes, well this is not what the players consider them to be, it is a hell of a job that takes lot of courage. Howard Webb, English referee, was haunted by the whole Polish nation (including death threats againgst him and his family) after his performance in the match Austria against Poland. He gave a penalty to Austria in the last minute of the match – which was absolutely correct and a very brave decision – but had allowed an off side goal to Poland earlier in the match, for which he did not go to the knock-out stage of the tournament. Webb is the hero of the film but there are also fine sequences and follow-ups on a Spanish and an Italian referee. What is the most astonishing in the film is actually that you hear the communication that is done between the referee and his linesmen during the match. Wow, for this technology, and bravo UEFA for letting a film like that be made. Good publicity for the job of being a referee – which does not mean that I will not shout the next time I see an unfair decision from one of those in black!

Kill the Referee, 2009, 75 mins.

www.doclisboa.org

DOCLisboa 09/2

Opening film at the festival: ”The Fortress” (PHOTO) by Swiss director Fernand Melgar, who was not present at the screening as his documentary was released in theatres in Japan. The story, a real European one, I would say, at least it could perfectly have been Denmark as location, is told in a Wiseman-like observational style from an institution for asylum seekers. The camera is omnipresent and catches moments of despair and hope from the side of the seekers, the people who wish for a better life in another country than their own and have to go through the endless interviews that are performed to check their stories. It is very moving, but also comic-tragic when you see and hear that the seekers change their stories to get a better chance to stay in what they can only consider as Wonderland = Switzerland. The people who represent the authorities are in general very kind and take part in scenes far away from their own reality, like the white office manager who goes to a mass for black seekers and try hard to find the rythm of the music. Hilarious!

Some people try desperately to get into modern society, other leave it. The documentary of Gianfranco Rosi, ”Below Sea Level”, has already been awarded several times, so well deserved, for this big film about a series of men and women, who for different reasons have moved to the desert to live a different life in their campers or in buses turned into homes, or in tents. Whatever, the originality is proven to be of huge format, and it is a film made over such a long period, that you sense that the characters are totally confident with the presence of the camera. There is humour but also grief as their back stories are being presented. There is love and argument between them. There are great thoughts on Life. The people come out of the films as individuals and not as weird subjects being observed.

The Fortress, 2008, 100 mins.

Below Sea Level, 2008, 110 mins.

www.doclisboa.org

Jan Vrijman Fund Films at idfa

It is a very good move that the Jan Vrijman Fund supported films are to be seen at idfa. It is very often among these low budget documentaries that you find films that are made out of necessity and heart. By filmmakers who do not live in countries with strong support systems, and/or in political systems where political and social criticism is not welcomed. Here is the press release inclding the list of the films: A total of 22 films realised with support from the Jan Vrijman Fund have been selected for IDFA 2009. A variety of films representing all Southern continents and made in different styles. Films dealing with a diversity of subjects ranging from a portrait of Pablo Escobar’s Son, keeping a family together in changing China to the survival of the last tightrope dancer in Armenia.

The Jan Vrijman Fund films selected for IDFA 2009 have been programmed in the following sections:
Feature Length Competition: Last Train Home by Lixin Fan, 9 Months 9 Days by Oscar Ramírez Gonzalez 
Short Length Competition: All Restrictions End by Reza Haeri 
First Appearance Competition: Addicted in Afghanistan by Jawed Taiman, Sins of my Father by Nicolas Entel 
Reflecting Images - Panaroma: The Belgrade Phantom by Jovan Todorovic, Dead Youth by Leandro Listorti, For Home Viewing by Mikhail Zheleznikov, Gipsy in the Flower by Ju Anqi, Island Belarus by Victor Asliuk, The Last Tightrope Dancer in Armenia (PHOTO) by Inna Sahakyan and Arman Yeritsyan, NARGIS when time stopped breathing by young Burmese filmmakers, Nero's Guests by Deepa Bhatia, News by Bettina Perut and Ivan Osnovikoff, The Peddler by Adriana Yurcovich, Eduardo de la Serna and Lucas Marcheggiano, A Place called los Pereyra by Andrés Livov-Macklin, Shungu: The Resilience of a People by Saki Mafundikwa, Story of a Day by Rosana Matecki, The Tight Rope by Nuria Ibáñez, They Come for the Gold, They Come for it All by Cristian Harbaruk and Pablo d'Aló Abbá, Together by Nenad Puhovski, Women in Shroud by Farid Haerinejad and Mohammad Reza Kazemi.

www.idfa.nl

The Sound of Insects

The European Film Academy proudly announces that the award EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY DOCUMENTARY 2009 – Prix ARTE goes to the film THE SOUND OF INSECTS – Record of a Mummy by Peter Liechti, Switzerland.

The incredible story of how the mummified corpse of a 40-year-old man was discovered by a hunter in one of the most remote parts of the country. The dead man's detailed notes reveal that he actually committed suicide through self-imposed starvation only the summer before. Liechti's film is a stunning rapprochement of a fictional text, which itself is based upon a true event: a cinematic manifesto for life, challenged by the main character's radical renunciation of life itself.

2009, 88 mins.

For the nominated films, see below.

www.docuinter.net

Prizes for Deconstruction of an Artist

Latvian director Peteris Krilovs' documentary about legendary artist Gustav Klucis took several prizes at the National award ceremony in Riga a week ago: best director, best editor (Danish Julie Vinten), best script (Pauls Bankovskis) and best sound mix (Andris Barons). A big triumph for the company Vides Film Studio and its energetic leader Uldis Cekulis, who could also find joy in the fact that Maris Maskalans was given the prize as Best Cameraman for his work in "Three Men and a Fish Pond", another production of the studio.

To our Danish and Swedish readers: The film about Klucis (one hour version) was shown on Swedish television (SVT2) yesterday and will be repeated October 11 13.30 and October 14 23.05.

http://svt.se/2.109829/1.1715907/gustav_klucis 

http://www.vfs.lv/?lang=2

Best European Documentary Film

A press release from The European Film Academy announces the nominations in the category EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY DOCUMENTARY 2009 - PRIX ARTE. There is a total of ten documentary films nominated, and the jury is Nino Kirtadzé, documentary filmmaker, France/Georgia & Franz Grabner, producer / editor ORF, Austria & Viktor Kossakovsky, documentary filmmaker, Russia. Prize to be announced by December 12. The films are:

THE BEACHES OF AGNES (Les Plages d’Agnès)
Agnès Varda, France (reviewed on this site)
BELOW SEA LEVEL
Gianfranco Rosi, Italy / USA
BURMA VJ
Anders Østergaard, Denmark (reviewed on this site)
COOKING HISTORY (Ako Sa Varia Dejiny)
Peter Kerekes, Slovakia / Austria / Czech Republic (reviewed on this site) (photo)
THE DAMNED OF THE SEA (Les Damnés de la Mer)
Jawad Rhalib, Belgium
DEFAMATION
Yoav Shamir, Denmark / Austria / Israel / USA
THE HEART OF JENIN (Das Herz von Jenin)
Leon Geller & Marcus Vetter, Germany
PIANOMANIA
Lilian Franck & Robert Cibis, Germany / Austria
THE SOUND OF INSECTS - RECORD OF A MUMMY
(Das Summen der Insekten - Bericht einer Mumie)
Peter Liechti, Switzerland
THE WOMAN WITH THE 5 ELEPHANTS (Die Frau mit den 5 Elefanten)
Vadim Jendreyko, Switzerland / Germany

http://www.europeanfilmacademy.org/2009/10/08/efa-documentary-2009-prix-arte-nominations-and-jury-members/

Golden Prizes for Silver films

Sounds enigmatic the title of this blog text. It refers to a new initiative of the Institute of Documentary Film in Prague, often mentioned on this site. Organised together with the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival the East Silver ” is the first documentary market dedicated exclusively to Central and Eastern Europe. Its main goal is to provide an annual overview of new documentary releases, create a comprehensive catalogue and an open video library, accessible to a broad circle of film professionals (broadcasters, major film festivals, sales agents) throughout the year.” And it works very well, the above signed blog writer can confirm. And the new prize to be given in connection with the festival in Jihlava goes like this:

”The East Silver Market introduces the new Silver Eye Award. Silver Eye is an award presented to best short, mid-length and feature documentary films of the East Silver Market. Documentaries are selected from the 2009 East Silver Market submissions. Best films will each be awarded EUR 1500; winners will be announced October 31, 2009, during the Closing Ceremony of the 13th Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival”.

Several of the nominated films have been reviewed and reported about on this site: The Bell by Audrius Stonys, Rabbit a la Berlin by Bartek Konopka, Disco and the Atomic War by Jaak Kilmi and one of the films in the superb series by Lukas Pribyl, Forgotten Transports to Poland (Photo).

www.docuinter.net

Another Planet Awarded Again

A couple of months ago this was posted on filmkommentaren.dk: The city of Kazan in Tatarstan in Russia, around 800 km East of Moscow, hosts the 4th International festival of Muslim Cinema, ”Golden Minbar”, taking place September 30 to October 4. 14 films have been selected for the documentary competition, 3 of them have been reviewed on this site: Hungarian Ferenc Moldovanyi’s beautiful ”Another Planet” (photo top right of the site), Czech/Canadian Petr Lom’s actual Iran-film ”Letters to the President” and Polish Beata Dzianowicz film from Afghanistan, ”Kites” (photo).

Prizes were given last night, and first prize went as in many other festivals worldwide to the film of Moldovanyi, "Another Planet", whereas Beata Dzianowicz received the prize as the best director. Both films deal with the lives of children.

www.miradox.ru

Festivals: CPH:DOX

... and the still young documentary festival in Copenhagen announces some audience attractions for its coming festival, November 6-15: We are now in the final stages of programming for CPH:DOX 2009, and we will regularly be announcing selected titles and revealing what else is in store in November here on the website. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the liberalisation of visual pornography in Denmark as the first place in the world. One of this year's special series will focus on the most popular documentary genre of them all and will highlight what sex on film also is. Amongst other titles, we will screen the brand new Swedish feminist film project 'DIRTY DIARIES' by Mia Engberg, which provokes more than mere reflection.

There is also plenty political provocation in the political section of the programme, which is as strong as ever. We look forward to showing audiences the adaptation of Naomi Klein's revealing bestseller 'THE SHOCK DOCTRINE', which she has headed in collaboration with Michael Winterbottom and Matt Whitecross. We also welcome the the fearless activist duo The Yes Men and their newest film 'THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD' (photo). (See filmkommentaren.dk).

In a videocracy the image rules. In Italy all images are owned by one man. The succesful and surreal media revolution of Silvio Berlusconi is the subject of 'VIDEOCRACY', which has been selected for the year's DOX:AWARD competition. Politics and plastic boobs are part of a systematised symbiosis in the country, where Silvio Berlusconi has recently appointed one of his former TV bimbos Minister for Equality.

Director Erik Gandini of the Swedish film collective ATMO grew up in Italy himself and zaps from the hopeful karate-singer over the powerful TV agent with Mussolini on his phone to the ultra cynical pimp of the paparazzi, who blackmails celebrities with his photos. 'VIDEOCRACY' has been one of the most talked about films in the international film festivals in Venice and Toronto this autumn, and it is a frightening diagnosis of the state of democracy in a country, where the dream om fame has seduced all common sense, and where power and entertainment are two sides of the same complex matter.

http://www.cphdox.dk

Festivals: MDOX Malmö

It might interest our DANISH READERS that something very interesting for documentarians takes place on the other side of Copenhagen. Cross the bridge and you are there. This is what it is about:

MDOX (22 – 25. October) is the yearly industry meeting for the Swedish documentary scene consisting of master classes, work in progress sessions, film screenings and a pitch for Swedish broadcaster SVT. MDOX is organised by the local film fund Film i Skåne.

And this is how it is presented in Swedish: Torsdag den 22/10 startar vi M:DOX med två Work in Progress-projekt presenterade av dokumentärfilmskonsulent Tove Torbiörnsson från SFI. EDN kommer också att presentera ett seminarium kring hur man bäst samproducerar med större europeiska tv-kanaler, och Media Desk Sverige bjuder in till mingel och samtal.

Fredag den 23/10 fortsätter vi med ytterligare två Work in Progress- projekt presenterade av Tove Torbiörnsson.  Du kommer även ha möjlighet att höra producenten Arik Bernstein berätta om det dokumentära crossmediaprojektet Gaza/Sderot (ARTE), och hur man i detta projekt gick till väga både berättarmässigt och produktionsmässigt för att skapa dokumentärt innehåll för webben. Lördag den 24/10 gästas vi av den holländska regissören Coco Schrijber, som presenterar sin film "Bloody Mondays and Strawberry Pies". Efter filmen kommer Schrijber att hålla en master class i idé- och manusutveckling där hon berättar om hur man hanterar mer abstrakta teman i en dokumentärfilm.  Under lördagen kommer det också att hållas ett klippseminarium med klipparen Jesper Osmund och regissören Fredrik Gertten, där de utifrån arbetet med "Bananas!*" (foto) samtalar om de kreativa val man ställs inför som dokumentärfilmare, och vad som skiljer dokumentärfilm från journalistik.

http://www.filmiskane.se/content/view/235

http://www.edn.dk/art.lasso?-token.skip=&na=200404&ndd=1455

Festivals: DOCLisboa

”Kill the Referee” is one of the films that are included in the ”foot doc” section of the coming DOCLisboa (October 15.25). It is new, made by Yves Hinant, a Belgian/Swiss coproduction, 75 mins. long. 7 other films are there to be enjoyed by football freaks like me – Ken Loach with ”Looking for Eric” (Cantona), but also classics like the one about the legendary Brasilian magician Garrincha, made in 1962 by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade.

As previously highlighted on this site, the Portuguese festival also has a section called ”Love Stories” with ”Long Distance Love” (photo) (Elin Jönsson and Magnues Gertten) and ”Padre Nostro” (Carlo lo Giudice), both reviewed on this site. And a huge presentation of the work of Jonas Mekas, and music documentaries, and competition programmes for international as well as Portuguese documentaries. What a feast!

www.doclisboa.org

Festivals: Jihlava

You might not know it but Jihlava is in Czech Republic and hosts an international documentary festival (October 27-November 1) with an always interesting innovative selection of films, and a huge industry programme – a pitching session East European Forum, a market East Silver, masterclasses... you name it...

 A premiere is scheduled, read this press release:

October 30, 7pm, the gala premiere of five films collectively entitled Breathless, Dominance of the Moment takes place at the Dukla as part of the Jihlava IDFF. The Czech-German project dedicated to documentary film was launched in 2007 by Zipp - Czech-German Cultural Projects, the Institute of Documentary Film and DOK Leipzig.

Two Czech and three German directors who were selected by a panel of experts based on their proposals present original takes on the subject of time. Audiences may look forward to a visual rendering of diary entries of an ordinary woman (Jan Gogola ml.) (photo); a cinematic exploration of time as a physical quantity (Karel Žalud); a documentary about the performance of a John Cage composition set to last 639 years (Anca Miruna Lazarescu); a portrayal of the post-industrial stasis of a region in Montana (Rainer Komers), and a depiction of the endless moment of a car accident (Marie-Catherine Theiler, Jan Peters).

http://www.dokument-festival.cz

www.docuinter.net

Vurdering:

Festivals: IDFA Amsterdam

The biggest of them all takes place in Amsterdam (November 19-29). The programme is not yet announced, that will happen on October 15, but here is a press release that again is an evidence of the growth of the political film:

The themes of the environment and globalisation will play an important role in the festival programme at the upcoming IDFA. As in previous years, various aspects of the environment issue and globalisation will be discussed under the title Green Screen. This year, the accent will be on the exploitation of natural resources and the global food industry.

What was still a special programme at IDFA 2005, is now a recurring theme at IDFA. Each year, under the title Green Screen, documentaries are screened on all manner of aspects of the worldwide environmental issue. Last year, for example, The Age of Stupid screened at IDFA and – contrary to recent reports in the media – the film had its world première on that occasion. This year too, Green Screen documentaries of great interest have been selected, both in the competition programmes and in Reflecting Images.

A number of these Green Screen films focus on the exploitation of natural resources and pollution by large companies. In Crude, Joe Berlinger follows the court case being conducted against Texaco by 30,000 Ecuadorians, whose living environment has been destroyed by oil extraction. Oil is also the topic of Nicole Torre’s Houston We Have a Problem. The film investigates how our dependence on oil has led to the current energy crisis, and looks at clean alternatives. Another sub-theme of Green Screen is the global food industry. Colony by Ross McDonnell and Carter Gunn deals with the worrying phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), whereby colonies of bees become disoriented and disappear. Food Inc. by Carter Gunn focuses on the American food industry and investigates how the food sold in supermarkets is produced. In total, some fifteen Green Screen titles will be screened.

www.idfa.nl

DOKLeipzig Competition

Jetzt online, it says on the site of the DOKLeipzig festival that goes from the 26.10-1.11, and it is an overwhelmingly rich programme that the classic festival offers its local audience and many visitors. Read all about it, site adress below.

For this blog writer it is wonderful to see that the programmers of the festival, situated in the East of Europe, precisely has a strong look to the East and thus presents a handful of films from filmmakers from this part of the world, where – I know that I repeat myself – the originality and creativity are still alive and kicking. ”East Beats West”.

Among the films are these that you can read about on this site: August 17 (Aleksander Gutman), Altzaney (Nino Orjonikidze und Vano Arsenishvili), Cooking History (Peter Kerekes, ), The Living Room of the Nation (Jukka Kärkkäinen) (photo),

And with big expectations I look forward to seeing the new films by international documentary stars like Peter Mettler (Petropolis) and Pirjo Honkasalo (Ito – Diary of an Urban Priest) and Pawel Lozinski (Chemo).

Below some words about two other sections of the festival programme. There is much more going on – Joris Ivens retro, masterclass with Niels Pagh Andersen, 1989-thematic retro and much more.

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/v2/cms/de/home/index.html

DOKLeipzig Talent Competition

The festival introduced years ago the Generation DOK competition for young talents and it deserves credit for that. It is often there you find the innovative and original, and it brings a freshness to the festival and attracts a young audience.

Around 20 films are listed on the site and – confession time – only two of them have been written about on this site: ”Body Parts” (photo) by Maria Kravchenko and ”Side by Side” by Christian Sønderby Jepsen, very different films, one with a strong expressionistic language, the other in a low-key, tableau-like cinematographic language.

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/v2/cms/de/home/index.html

DOKLeipzig Panorama

In the festival world, at least at the big festivals like the one in Leipzig, the Panorama section always includes high quality international documentaries that either have been at other festivals, in competition, and therefore do not qualifym or did not make it in the final selection for the competition programme. Other criteria are possible. Anyway, looking at this year’s programme in Leipzig, there are wonderful films to watch for the Leipzig doc fans and the visitors to the festival.

You can read about some of them on this site:  ”A Blooming Business” (Holland), ”Burma Vj” (Denmark), ”Disco and Atomic War” (Estonia), ”Cash and Marry” (Croatia/Macedonia/Austria), ”Gaza Hospital” (Italy), ”Osadne” (Slovakia), ”See You at the Eiffel Tower” (Bulgaria). Again films from Eastern Europe are strongly represented.

Photo from ”Cash and Marry” that the festival rejected last year. Bravo, that a mistake is recognized by the programmers.

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/v2/cms/de/home/index.html

New Czech Documentary Films

The IDF, Institute of Documentary Films, based in Prague is THE promoter of new Czech documentary films. This week the IDF was part of the team that organised Panel of New Czech Documentary Films. The following twelve directors and producers attended the event to present their latest documentary projects to be released in 2009/2010: Helena Třeštíková, Karel Vachek, Jan Gogola, Karel Žalud, Jan Šikl, David Čálek, Erika Hníková, Břetislav Rychlík, Lucie Králová, Nataša Dudinski, Martin Řezníček and Thomas Feierabend. Trailers for their upcoming films are now posted on the IDF website. Some of the films will be premiered at the upcoming international festival in Jihlava (27.10-1.11) (Photo from one of the most succesful recent Czech documentaries, René by Helena Trestikova).

www.docuinter.net

http://www.dokument-festival.cz/portal_index.php

Bettina Haasen: Hotel Sahara

Mauritania, Nouadhibou, a place at the coast, a place from where Africans want to go to the promised land, Europe, and from where many boats are leaving and have left, with people on board... with many tragic drowning events as a result. Many never made it.

Extremely well shot and produced, this film takes the audience to a place and an atmosphere of Waiting and to characters, who open their hearts and reveal their dreams to the camera. It’s a film with the ambition to describe a collective, it has the structure of a collage, it gives information, there is a respect for the characters so it understandable and well deserved that the film travels so well – visit the site of the film – as a reference point of one of the most actual problems of today.

But it is also a film that some times, though not all the time, seems to have been taken over by the cameraman. The images are so well composed and constructed (stranded ship wrecks, the Sahara landscape, sequences that play with light and the ocean in several angles, purely aesthetically thought and not really serving any narrative purpose), that they once in a while kill the contents and do not involve the audience emotionally.

Germany, 2008, 52 & 85 mins. (I saw the shorter version)

www.hotelsahara.tv

Vurdering:

It’s (not) only Television

... is the obvious and banal slogan for a professional meeting in Trento, Italy that starts today and goes on in the coming three days. Buyers, tv commissioning editors, festival people, film fund representatives and some critics from around the world meet to talk about documentaries in general and first of all look at what is new in Italian documentary. Organised by the Italian documentary organisation doc.it, which launches the themes to be discussed in captions like these:

Discussion on cross-platforms, Are we serious on series, Theatrical releases for documentaries - How can we break the monopoly of theatrical distribution that banishes documentary-films?, Alternative Distribution.

The headlines illustrate clearly the necessity for the documentary community to find other funding possibilities than public broadcasters. In Italy more actual and necessary than in most other European countries... with the (almost) total monopoly of the Berlusconi entertainment channels. 

http://www.italiandocscreenings.it

IDFA Top Ten

An interesting compilation of films has been advertised for the coming idfa:

Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan (Haifa, 1964) will compile this year's Top 10 for the 22nd International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Major themes in his Top 10 include how our collective memory works, ethical issues and the representation of history. Themes that are also central to his own work. Here is the list of films:

Blind kind, Johan van der Keuken (1964), Ici et ailleurs, Jean Luc-Godard (photo) (1976), Hitler connais pas?, Bertrand Blier (1963), Ma'loul, Michel Khleifi (1985), The Memory of Justice, by Marcel Ophüls (1976), Moeder Dao, de schildpadgelijkende, Vincent Monnikendam (1995), Testimonies, Ido Sela (1993), Punishment Park, Peter Watkins (1971), Philips Radio, Joris Ivens (1931), S21, La machine de mort khmère rouge, Rithy Panh (2003).

Herz Frank Tribute

I read on miradox.ru that Herz Frank is going to head the jury of the upcoming Russian festival Flahertiana (October 15-22), previously texted about on this site. Sitting in an airport thoughts go back to the many times I have met this master of documentary, and eaten his words of wisdom - in Bornholm, in Riga, in Tel Aviv, in Leipzig, in Paris, in Amsterdam, in Stockholm. Always he was prepared to share his knowledge with colleagues and audience, many times after an illness that almost killed him. I think of the endless times that I have shown his ”Ten Minutes Older” from 1978, the film shot by Juris Podnieks, the one-shot-film of a boy watching a puppet theatre with a camera that reads the many expressions of this boy, who in his grown up life became a renowned poker player, one of those who are not supposed to express anything. Poker Face! With his intelligence Herz Frank has meant a lot for filmmakers all over, always claiming that documentaries should have a philosophical message – I have quoted him on this site several times. One of his admirers, Lithuanian Audrius Stonys joins him in the jury, among others. Bravo and thank you Herz, and please take good care of your... Heart!

http://www.tenminutesolder.com/

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/737/

http://flahertiana.perm.ru/eng/2009/

Baltic Sea Forum – Hermanis

I had never heard about him before, Alvis Hermanis, even if the Latvian film team Inese Boka and Gints Grube wrote in their file that he was famous all over Europe. They did so when we met at Ex Oriente workshop, first session, almost half a year ago, and one more confession: I did not understand their film project because I did not understand the working method of Hermanis. I do so now, and am so happy with the way that this intriguing project was received when pitched at the Baltic Sea Forum. The trailer not only explained it all but also did what a trailer should do: gave appetite for more. Luckily there was a fan and connaisseur of Hermanis in the panel, Outi Saarikoski from Finnish television YLE, who will take the project and help its further development, as will documentary veteran and expert, Russian Grigory Libergal, as one ot the three parts of the film will be shot in Moscow. Let me quote the short description of the theatre director in the catalogue, film working title is Larger than Life:

... a storyteller who claims he is able to transform any real life story into extraordinary documentary theatre. He once declared that no classic play or novel is more interesting than the life story of any real human being. Story is the only thing that makes it possible to describe and portray our world. The film tries to answer the questions: is life more interesting than its transformation in theatre, and is it possible to capture and record the secret of story creation.

www.mistrusmedia.lv

Baltic Sea Forum – Commissioning Editors

... so who were they, the people at the table who were supportive and constructively critical, well simply wanted to help and in many cases asked for meetings and to be kept updated on the development of the projects. If and when the positive reactions turn into letters of commitments and at the end into contracts that is of course another story, but for many projects this first step was also a proof of the potential of the project – and many returned home in a state of creative confusion, as the advices were different:

Cynthia Kane from ITVS in the US was as usual always warmly encouraging the pitchers and showed her passion for good social and human interest stories. Her US colleague from Sundance Institute, Cara Mertes, analysed quickly the projects’ weak and strong points, as did Alex Szalat from Arte france, who as Reinhart Lohmann from ZDF/Arte fought their best to see where the slot-linked European cultural channel par exellence with a strong tradition for creative documentaries could place the projects. Not easy... more easy for veteran forum panelist Wim van Rompaey, Lichtpunt in Belgium, who go for 52 minute documentaries that have an ethical angle to be discussed, and who never leave a forum without bringing one or two projects to his committee. Katja Wildermuth from MDR in Germany is for many an exemplary clear-talking commissioning editor as she always communicates yes, I would like to talk more, or No, this is not for me. Flora Gregory represented Al Jazeera and went for the more reporting documentaries, Charlotte Gry Madsen from DR/TV brought some optimism advertising the new historical and cultural digital channel, Austrian distributor (Autlook) Peter Jäger was looking for artistic theatrical documentaries and Russian Grigory Libergal (photo) was an excellent commentator on content and brought knowledge on Russian situation to the table. The three Baltic channels (represented by Marje Jurtshenko, Anna Rozenvalde and Tadas Patalavicius) did their job and supported their producing colleagues, and neighbouring YLE editor, Outi Saarikoski, was again wonderfully unpredictable and funny in her remarks.

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Baltic Sea Forum – Talents

As a member of the organisational staff it is indeed the ambition to promote new people, talents, up-coming documentarians with good subjects and original treatments and an ambition to make them into documentaries that are creative and surprising. Please. And preferably non-formatted than formatted for television, but if formatted then at least playing with the format. Give us, the audience what we did not expect to get. And needless to say, make something that you think is important to express.

Let me pick three examples that can be associated with these characteristics: Obvious that is the case with the cinematographically extraordinary ”Field of Magic” (people living in a forest near a dumping ground) by Mindaugas Survila from Lithuania, as it is with also Lithuanian Egle Vertelyte and her beautiful story about a Mongolian boy, who wants to be a Lama, and as it is with Polish Magdalena Szymkow, whose film on ”The Reporter’s Daughter”, the reporter being Ryszard Kapuscinski (photo), for whom the director worked in his last years (he died in 2007), is so important, I would say, for the simple reason that the name of the Polish journalist icon seemed to be unknown for a good deal of the people in the panel and among the young colleagues of Szymkow.

Baltic Sea Forum – Humour in Pitching

I can’t mention all projects that were pitched at the Baltic Sea Forum, and there is not enough space to highlight the many that did receive very positive feedback, but I will write about a couple – see above – that went very well and which some of you documentary professionals will meet on other marketplaces, and some of you members of the documentary audience will get to meet as finished works,  hopefully as artistically interesting and ambitious as they were this weekend, when presented on the top floor of Hotel Albert in Riga.

So here first some remarks on pitching in public fora: The ones which are easiest to convey are the ones that are able to provide a strong and precise verbal pitch accompanied by a - yes, it helps, but of course you can’t adapt that tone for all subjects – trailer full of humour. Estonian Kiur Aarma, who worked with Jaak Kilmi on ”Disco and Atomic War”, had this time teamed up with Hardi Volmer (”Man from Animazone” on Estonian animation artist Priit Pärn) to bring forward a project (”The Gold Spinners”) on the production of commercials in the USSR. The broadcasters queued to express their enthusiasm after a superb trailer. Experience says it takes time but it looks so obvious that this film could be made asap with international funding. It is funny, informative, personal and Aarma just showed quality with the ”Disco...” film. Similarly great director Yuri Khashchavatski from Belarus (photo, search his name on this site) with his Estonian producer Marianna Kaat stands strong with the non-humourously toned film on the political brainwashing of the Russian population with the Georgian war as the starting point. Talking about authors with own hand writing, it was a pleasure for the Forum to include Estonian Kersti Uibo (”The Dark Side of the Hill”), Russian Andrei Nekrasov (”The Golden Autumn of Socialism”), Russian Alina Rudnitskaya (”The Blood of a Stranger”) and Latvian Peteris Krilovs (”Willing Collaborationists”).   

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Baltic Sea Forum

It’s over, the 13th session of the Baltic Sea Forum, that started on the island of Bornholm in Denmark and now has its permanent place in Riga. It is very efficiently organised by the National Film Centre of Latvia that paradoxically now is heavily threatened by the political situation of cut downs due to the huge financial crisis in the country. (This has been written about earlier on this site). In this week a decision is expected to be taken whether the independent structure of the film centre will be kept or the organisation will be taken back to being an office in the Ministry of Culture.

At the Forum 24 documentary projects were presented to a panel of 14 commissioning editors, sales agents and film fund executives from France, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, Austria, Belgium, Holland and the US. For two days the pitching of the projects took place at the top floor of the Albert Hotel in the area of Riga, where Sergey Eisenstein’s father were the architect of many beautiful buildings.

Parallel to the meeting for the professionals a film festival took part open to the general audience in the Cinema K. Suns. I was there for 3 screenings and they were completely sold out. The humourous ”Disco and Atomic War” by Jaak Kilmi and Kiur Aarma, a mix of archive material and reenactments, charmed the audience due to its originality and the story about what it meant to be a child in Soviet Estonia making all kind of efforts to be able to watch Finnish television. Jaak Kilmi (photo, to the left) proves to be a fine talent for docu-comedies with a serious background. And the film will travel all over, no doubt.

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