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

Archidoc – Creative Archive Documentaries

Deadline on Monday, September 6, for applications for the unique European training programme Archidoc for filmmakers with archive based documentaries. I have been working with this training programme for many years and have with great pleasure seen fine films come out of it. The organisers, the French film school la fémis, tell me that they are short of sufficient applications, so this is why I want to give this small pep talk to filmmaking readers of this blog:

The workshop, in three sessions and in English language, offers you to develop your archive based documentary creatively under the supervision of the experienced international filmmaker, director and editor, Erez Laufer, and his team. You will get all the necessary market information and you will pitch the project to tv commissioning editors, but the most important is that you will get input to the creative part of the development. It is done in Paris at the film school at the second session (first session is in Leipzig during the DOKLeipzig in October) with the help of excellent editors, who help you shape your story so it passes far beyond the boring history tv documentary that we know so well. Let me mention three fine films that have profited from Archidoc:

Wiktoria Szymanska’s great tribute to the avantgarde artists ”The Themersons” (photo), Peteris Krilovs wonderful ”Klucis. The Deconstruction of an Artist” (several times written on this site) and Edmond Roch’s ”Garbo – the Man who Saved the World”, a true spy story.

http://www.edn.dk/

http://www.lafemis.fr/

Roos Award to Armadillo Cinematographer Lars Skree

In 1995 a special Danish documentary award in the name of documentary pioneer Jørgen Roos was initiated. For 2010 the award (as of tonite) was given to the cameraman Lars Skree, who together with director Janus Metz created the mega-success Armadillo (see photo). The Danish language (edited) motivation runs like this:

Det Danske Filminstituts dokumentarpris på 25.000 kr. blev lørdag den 28. august tildelt filmfotograf Lars Skree, der satte livet på spil under optagelserne til krigsdramaet "Armadillo". Prisoverrækkelsen foregik på Filmhøjskolen i Ebeltoft under det årlige branchetræf for dokumentarfilmfolk. Kollegerne i filmbranchen beskriver Lars Skree som en sammensat person med et enormt kunstnerisk overblik. Prisudvalget begrunder tildelingen med hans enorme dygtighed, venlighed og mod: Lars Skree har en enestående evne til at være 100 % til stede i nuet - som intens lytter og seer. Det ene øje er indstillet på nær - det, der sker i billedet - og det andet på det store perspektiv, det uden for billedet. Han har en 7. sans for at fornemme det, der kommer til at ske lige om lidt… og for at huske at tænde for kameraet. Lars Skree har et skarpt æstetisk blik og en vidtfavnende faglig dygtighed. Han behersker ubesværet det iscenesatte og det dokumentariske, den poetiske refleksion og det rå drama. Han er villig til at gå meget langt for at få sine billeder med hjem; han engagerer sig med livet som indsats. Lars Skree er en generøs og kreativ samarbejdspartner. Han har forståelse for filmens behov og instruktørens vision; en begavet medspiller – og modspiller. Selvom det måske ikke huer instruktøren i den konkrete situation, er der kommet bedre film ud af den insisteren. Lars Skree har en høj moral og en stor medmenneskelighed. Han får folk omkring sig til at føle sig godt tilpas og er altid kritisk bevidst om, hvad han filmer og ikke mindst hvorfor. Lars Skree er som yin og yang; hård hund og poet, kampsoldat og graciøs linjedanser.

ww.dfi.dk

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

Neuvonen: Reindeerspotting. Escape from Santaland

As of August 13 2010 this Finnish documentary had sold around 63.000 tickets in national cinemas. An amazing number for a documentary film about a drug addict, I thought, before watching it. How do you pitch that to friends... want to come along and see a film about Jani (the name of the protagonist), who is slowly killing himself!? And the number is still amazing, having watched it, for a film about a young guy, who is charming when he is clean, semi-charming when he has just made a shoot up, unbearable when he is stoned. Well, maybe not unbearable, but it makes him a bright guy with a limited view: when can I have the next fix is the only thought he has. I have never seen so many scenes with a needle to be stuck into a vein.

No, it is not a sensation-hunting film first time director Joonas Neuvonen has made. According to the site of the film he started to film the addicts when he came back to Rovaniemi (Northern Finland, ed.) in 2003 after living abroad for a couple of years. Some of them were his childhood friends, and at first he just wanted to document their present life without any particular plan or goal. Soon Jani became the main character that Joonas followed closely and intensively for several months. After Jani was imprisoned, the director moved abroad again taking distance to the material. In 2004 he started to go through the footage, and later that year editor Sadri Centincaya started the editing with him...

One man behind the camera, a friend, himself on drugs, this is what makes the film attractive contrary to hundreds of well meaning ”don’t do it” drug addict films. There is an intimacy in the relationship between the one who films and the one, who is being filmed. It is a relief when Jani is ready to leave fucking Finland to go abroad. This is where the film invites the viewer to experience tha classical journey of a young man, who wants to see and learn about the world. Free subutex drug in Paris, they are having a great time but when money is over, they have to go back and Jani ends up in prison, or as written, he ”is in and out” of prisons.

In terms of image, it looks (to use a Lars von Trier word about his new film) like shit and yet you take it all in, because it is a drama, well told in a persona and honestl way. That is why people go to watch it, that must be the answer.

Finland, 2010, 84 mins.

http://reindeerspotting.com/

Vurdering:

Gasnier & Nezan: Zanzibar Musical Club

This film insists on being a Film. From the very start. This is a story to be watched – it follows  the old mantra: don’t talk about it, show it. No commentary. No formatted tv. And oh yes, they succeed with this moderne and yet old-fashioned Film sentence. In other words it is pure seduction if you agree on the premise, that they, the filmmakers, will not give you a lot of background information to understand a context (you can search/google for that afterwards to read about Zanzibar and the taraab music tradition), they invite you to open your eyes, watch what we the filmmakers saw and heard of wonderful music. If you accept that game, basically if you want a Film like this, you will have a joyful trip, where you meet great characters and artists, who perform in an environment full of frivolity and religion (it is a muslim society) at the same time.

Fishermen, music, the following of a man to his home, a violin player he is, a brick game in the street, street shots, no story but plenty of ambiance, and yet, there are many stories and impressions given through a fabulous camera work, sometimes in tableau-like images, sometimes with a dancing camera to accompany the songs, that are being song by young and old in clubs or in the streets or at more official events. The texts of the songs most often refer to Love, impossible or difficult or just possible love, there is a lot of melancholy expressed, but also more naughty hints are in the texts. It is obvious that the listeners in the film know about the songs and it is wonderful to see the women, who get up to dance. Seduction, music unites, this is an old culture and there are stories connected that need to be remembered.

One who remembers, and who still performs is the almost 100 year old Bi Kidude, who with not many teeth in her mouth is a storyteller who knows so much and wants to convey it. She is filmed at rehearsals and at concerts. Magnificent! My overall impression - To rephrase one of the texts in a song: I am drunk with tenderness.

France & Germany, 2010, 85 & 52 mins. (I saw the long version, in the tv version there is a voice-off)

www.lesfilmsdupresent.fr

Vurdering:

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.

Amy Hardie: The Edge of Dreaming

Our American readers can watch (on PBS, 10pmEST) Amy Hardie’s great film tonite. If you live outside the U.S. you can watch it online for free from tomorrow and for the next three months. On the site mentioned below. I post the review that I wrote after the premiere at idfa 2009:

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.

http://www.pbs.org/pov/edgeofdreaming

Vurdering:

Nenad Puhovski: Together

Energetic festival director (ZagrebDOX) and producer (Factum) Nenad Puhovski is also a film director, and a very committed one. With his new film he has for years been following people who – with his words – ”were, are or wish to be emotionally engaged with others”. They are very different, but they all want to be together with another person. Their differences and communication skills are reflected in the way the film comes out stylistically. With some characters the director puts up the camera and waits for good moments to happen, with others who could be mentally challenged, he has to put questions to get answers on how Love came to them. It makes the film a bit unbalanced with an intercut editing that goes from one story to the other, and then to yet another one. There are five stories in the film, they each have their own atmosphere, one could call it ”colour” – also emphasized through the use of different music elements.

Having said so, some of the stories sit strong with the viewer. For me the story with the lesbian couple goes close and develops into a touching small drama. Here you sense an intimacy that you can only get if you as a director knows your approach and has achieved the confidence and the respect of both young women in the couple. Some other wordless scenes work fine in terms of rythm and metaphor for happiness – like the one where a couple (those on the photo) do a bed together, or the scene with the widow who are at the cemetery, or the fine scenes with the man in the wheelchair, who challenges the viewer with his direct language: We all fuck!

Truffaut said that if nine out of ten films were about Love, it was one too little. I would not mind if Puhovski goes back to one of the couples and see how it goes og does not go. We can all learn from that!

Croatia, 2009, 87 mins.

info@factumdocumentary.com

www.factumdocumentary.com

Vurdering:

Dokumania: Cities on Speed

Den danske dokumentarserie, bestående af fire film med hver deres egen stil og ”håndskrift”, bliver nu vist på DR2’s tirsdags-strand ”Dokumania” den 24. august og 31. August klokken 21.30. Jeg skrev en artikel til tidsskriftet DOX om serien, her er et redigeret udsnit, særligt om filmene fra Shanghai og Mumbai (photo), instrueret af henholdsvis Nanna Frank Møller og Camilla Nielsson/Frederik Jacobi

This is an edited text about the Danish documentary series ”Cities on Speed”, which is to be broadcasted on DR’s documentary strand ”Dokumania”:

Characters: The four films are classic in thematic appproach but they are also modern documentaries in the way that the emphasis is put on the character driven formula. Professor Shu and photographer Xu from Shanghai, migrant Yasin, civil servant Mr. Das and Ms. Veena from Mumbai, Mr. Taher in Cairo and Antanas Mockus and Enrique Penalosa from Bogota are all megacity citizens of different background and with different stories. They are all involved in, for some you could say victims of, the mega-problems of the pancake-effect as Mr. Shu in Shanghai

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.

Magdalena Pieta: Planet Kirsan

I have never heard about Kalmykia before. Have you? I checked it: An autonomous republic it is, member of the SNG, close friends to Russia with ONE leader, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who himself was a chess champion and wants to turn his country into a country for chess players, masters of the game. Around 300.000 inhabitants, and ” a nearly empty desert the size of Scotland” (according to an article in New Yorker)

Demographic and political Information is not the subject of Magdalena Pieta’s film. She goes mostly for the chess and the children. Politics is in the background shown through huge official ceremonies and parades, sometimes intercut with the chess games and preparations, that form the foreground of a film that is surprising and fascinating to watch. First of all because of the filmic qualities and the quite challenging structure of the film. It has no real classical narrative to go from, and yet there is a red thread that takes the viewer with and to a tournament for a couple of kids, who she follows and sometimes gets pretty close to. She catches dialogues, faces, emotions and she conveys the extreme competitive atmosphere. That is the hard reality for the kids. ”Only winning matters” as it is being said by one of the tough charismatic teachers of Alekhan and Amir. They win and they lose. They cry and they laugh. Intruding into this docu observation is a little girl wearing a hat as a chess brick. She is not noticed, she is visible for the viewer but not for the ones in the picture.

The sound of the film contributes to this fairy tale tone that is the aim of the director. Almost through the whole film you hear the wind of the steppes that surround the chess city, Elista is the name. Combined with the presence of the small girl and the excellent wordless close-ups of the kids, you sense the kind of fascination that has been the motivation for the director to go there. And the surrealistic feel she must have had being there. And, yes, the one responsible for the construction of this dreamerish situation, Kirsan himself is being interviewed. Or rather he talks, about chess. ”When everything else might change, chess remains”, he says with a smile. Charisma, he has.

Poland, 2010, 50 mins.

http://www.dokweb.net/en/ex-oriente-film/upcoming-films/-planet-kirsan-166/?off=30 (trailer9

Vurdering:

Zeljko Mirkovic: I will Marry the Whole Village

If you think you have read about films by Mirkovic from Serbia before, you are right! He has developed a special touch in documentary filmmaking and he chooses subjects that appeal not only to a local audience but also internationally for tv. Like this new one from the productive director and producer, an edited quote from his site:           

”The village of Matejevac, in the south of Serbia, has over 300 unmarried men (almost one third of the men living there). The village is only a ten-minute drive from the city of Niš with the population of around 400,000 citizens, but the women there do not want to live in the countryside... Peca, an unmarried accordion player, has decided to take the matter into his own hands and to carry out a great project aiming at marrying the young and old by attracting women to the village. And to get married himself in the end.”

The film is full of humour, Peca is a sympathethic character, and nice music is the element that binds the story together with a classic storyteller, who addresses the camera directly. As do the bachelors when they make their small promotion video. There is a bit of amateur comedy in the film when Peca goes around to do publicity for his mission. It is all together light-hearted and joyful to watch. They get together, the men and the women, they have fun, they sing and dance, and drink... and Peca, a text at the end says, continues to matchmake.

Serbia, 2010, 57 mins.

http://www.optimisticfilm.com/eprojekti.html

Vurdering:

Tomás Kudrna: All that Glitters

It is a very rich film that Czech director and journalist Kudrna has made from post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. From the gold mine Kumtor, co-owned by a Canadian company. The creative documentary elements are obvious. Cinematography is stunning – there is a standpoint already here: If you want to make a film about man destroying nature, you have to make it magic and beautiful to watch. It is, indeed. Characters match each other perfectly – the tractor driver/obedient worker Nurbek, the local boss/mediator to the Canadian management Kerim and the doctor/social activist Baktigul. Around them there are several important side characters, including the Canadian director of the gold mine. And the narrative line is clear – slowly Kudrna, showing his journalistic skills, gets more and more into the core of the story. By insisting and by being there for a long time, doors are opened and he can go deeper and deeper.

In the beginning he is not allowed to film at the mine. Then he is being ”given” Nurbek as the super worker, you may follow him, he was told. He does and is able to open up Nurbek, to make him a human being and not just a tool for propaganda. This happens very much by including Nurbek’s wife, who also works at the mine and who is vey much in doubt about their participation in

Vurdering:

Last Train Home i Cinemateket

The Danish Cinemateket, that is part of the Danish Film Institute, and works from the Film House in the centre of Copenhagen, shows many documentaries (at one or two screenings) in their fine monthly programme. Recently, Cinemateket, the festival cph:dox and EDN (European Documentary Network) has decided to go one step fuether to introduce a regular “Documentary of the Month", having one film run for a week with several screenings. First title is “Last Train Home” by Lixin Fang. It is shown in Cinemateket September 9-15. Here follows a repost of the Danish language review of Allan Berg on this site. Berg saw the film at Cinema du Réel this year in March:

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

EU Support for Creative Documentaries

The importance of the EU MEDIA Programme for the creative documentary can not be underestimated. Since 1990 the countries, who are members of the EU (plus now also countries like Norway, Switzerland and Croatia), have been able to achieve funding for the development of documentaries as well getting non-repayable grants through the so-called TV Broadcasting scheme, where the applying production companies can get a financing that can go up to 20% of their production budget.

A list has just been published announcing ”the winners” of the March application deadline for the mentioned TV broadcasting. 17 documentaries are on the list, only 3 feature films and 3 animation! Must say something about the international potential of documentaries as no films projects are selected if they do not have a good handful of broadcasters committed on paper to either a coproduction or a prebuy of the finished film.

It takes a lot of energy, markets and pitching sessions to get these necessary commitments, that often are only from 2-10.000€ for a pre-buy of a film project, but if you have the good handful of projects you are eligible for the MEDIA support, which is a fine addition to local film funding. Example: The Danish Film Institute has a yearly budget for creative documentaries of around 3.5 mio.€. In this round MEDIA support was given to 3 Danish companies with a total of around 400.000€ (Final Cut with 160.000€ for Freemen, Zentropa with 130.000€ for The Ambassador and Danish Documentary Production with 116.000€ for Love Addiction (director Pernille Rose Grønkjær, director of award winning ”The Monastery”)). Danish documentaries have big budgets, in other countries it is much less – great it is, on the list, to see a very promising film project, "Larger than Life" (photo) about the Latvian theatre phenomenon Alvis Hermanis to be directed by Latvian Gints Grube. He and his company Mistrus Media achieved 16.000€, which is almost 20% of their budget.

http://www.mediafrance.eu/spip.php?article137

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/

Werner Herzog films for Purchase

Herzog is – mostly due to this blog’s Allan Berg – a true admirer of the work of the German director – one of the most noticed and praised names of this site. If you write his name in the ”search”, you get 33 hits. From being an arthouse feature film director known for extravagance and his work with legendary Klaus Kinski, he is now (also) a hit among documentary lovers, even if he would not accept to be a documentarian as his many joyful ”attacks” on the direct cinema people have shown.

Anyhow, it is now not difficult to get hold of his films, dvd boxes have been published, download is possible and festivals are making retrospectives of his work. AND the director is still enormously productive. Recently the upcoming Toronto IFF announced the world premiere of a new Herzogian piece – ”Cave of forgotten Dreams”, the title of a film that offers an ”exclusive access to the Chauvet caves of southern France, capturing the oldest known pictorial creations of humankind in their astonishing natural setting. He (Herzog, ed.) puts 3-D technology to a profound use, taking us back in time over 30,000 years.”

Indiepixfilms is the one that now offers a Werner Herzog Collection for purchase. Mostly of his feature films but also including a neo-classic documentary as ”Little Dieter Needs to Fly”. (dvd - Region 1).

www.indiepixfilms.com

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

PeÅ Holmquist: Mitt Gaza

This is a special announcement for our Danish and Swedish readers concerning the broadcast of the film by PeÅ Holmquist, ”My Gaza” August 8 at SVT2 22.05. In other words, this coming sunday, with Danish subtitles for Danish viewers. For our English speaking readers who attend international festivals the name of Holmquist will be familiar for a range of politically engaged humanistic documentaries from all over the world, several made together with Suzanne Khardalian, see their website, address below.

Text from the site of Swedish television, SVT: Mitt Gaza är en personlig, politisk och poetisk dokumentärfilm av PeÅ Holmquist. Under 31 år har PeÅ Holmquist filmat i Gaza och skildrat människors öden i denna ofta grymma värld. Nu gör han en egen personlig film av det Gaza han mött, men låter oss också i nyinspelningar efter detta senaste krig i september 2008 träffa några av de palestinier vi mött i de tidigare filmerna. Här finns 62-årige Mustafa, som vid den nya filminspelningen i mars 2009 allvarligt sjuk i prostatacancer. Här finns hans dotter, 39-åriga Raida, med sin lille son som just överlevt ett tre veckors intensivt krig. Första gången PeÅ Holmquist filmade henne var hon tolv år och såg positivt på framtiden, i dag är hon bekymrad om sin fars sjukdom och om framtiden för sin son i ett osäkert och otryggt Gaza.

PeÅ Holmquist har tidigare jort ett 50-tal filmer tillsammans med sin fru Suzanne Khardalian, många av dem prisbelönade och visade över hela världen. Filmer som kan nämnas är Gaza Ghetto, Tillbaka till Ararat, Hennes Armeniske Prins, Unge Freud i Gaza och Bullshit. Foto: PeÅ Holmquist: Gaza efter kriget.

http://svt.se/2.118884/1.1802539/gaza_ar_en_vanlig_och_strapatsrik_plats

http://www.peaholmquist.com/intro.php

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/

Documentaries in France

The French CNC (Centre National du Cinéma et de l’image Animée) has published a study on the market for documentaries in France. According to the French Media Desk and their weekly newsletter no. 194 (newsletter@mediafrance.eu) the study concerns the creative documentaries.

2225 hours of documentaries have been produced in 2009, a progress of 8,1%. The contribution from television is the biggest in 20 years, 47,3%. The documentaries represented 6,5% of the market in 2009 – and with 2008 statistics the sales of tv documentary programmes were 26% of total sales.

Documentaries for cinema release: 30 films were produces for theatrical release in 2009 with almost 3 mio. Tickets sold. The duration of their prseence on the screns are longer than for fiction and animation. In general a French cinema documentary is released in 27 copies.

Crisis... where? (Photo: Agnes Varda)

For details: www.cnc.fr

Hotakainen & Joonas Berghäll: Steam of Life

Stories from Life. Stories brought to the screen by Finnish men. Stories mostly told in saunas where the men are naked. To be naked can also be a metaphor for being vulnerable. Which is exactly what the men are in this extraordinary documentary that keeps your attention from start till end. The clouds or the fog of steam that fill the screen inside or outside the saunas are like the intimate and painful words that hang in the air – or they are to be watched in stunning images from the Finnish landscape, urban or (mostly) in the countryside at the lakes, at the forests.

Sometimes it is good to talk, says one of the men, and they do talk these Finnish men, who – as another man says – normally are meant to be tough. About being a father without seeing your children. About losing job and family. About having a bear as a friend, maybe the only one, out in the wilderness! About a train driver who could not stop when someone jumped to kill himself in front of the train. And the final story about the man who heartbreakingly for 10 minutes give us the story about the death of his daughter.

There is an underlying tone of sadness throughout this film but there is also warmth and (some) humour, and there is the best film music score (Jonas Bohlin) I have heard for a long time to accompany the anxiety and bad feelings that are being sweated out in the sauna AND the tableau-like images (camera: Heikki Farm) from beautiful, melancholic Finland. Do they just sit and talk... no, the director has made them sit and talk, it is amazing what they tell us, no masks, unplugged you might say, and totally controlled in editing with a grande finale that I will not reveal for you.

Trailer(s) and background material for the film, that might be onits way to be nominated for an Oscar... google the title.

www.oktober.fi

Finland, 2010, 82 mins.

Vurdering:

Andrea Deaglio: Il futuro del mondo passa da qui/2

... the subtitle being ”city veins”. I wrote about it in June and promised to come back with a review when the film was finished. Which is now.

Angelo, Roky, Frida, Reno, Darius, Gerardo, Jasmina... names of people, who have that in common that they are characters in a film that as location has the  outskirts of Torino, where they all live outside normal urban society trying to survive. For a limited time as the area will be turned into a golf and similar kind of recreation centre, as well as it will be object to making transport out of the city easier through new roads etc.

From this description you might expect a political correct activist film like many others – it is not. On the contrary, the focus is the human. Deaglio and his cameramen follow the individuals in their daily activities: Roky gets up, goes to the lake to get washed, goes to get some drinking water... Frida goes to the drug meeting point... Reno cooks and finishes his van Gogh painting. Washing of hair. Repairing a bicycle. Doing nothing.

The images are stunning. Making the area look beautiful. They come as tableaux, chaptering the characters stories which in words are told by themselves through audio on black images. As I don’t understand Italian, for me the words appear subtitled on black with no ”disturbing” images. Which makes the effect very strong – precise small stories of situations they have experienced, facts accompnied by emotions. The director has no intention to sentimentalise or romanticize - I sense an honest, truthful and distant view, and this is why you stay linked to the screen where you also get many interesting and surprising camera angles. In other words – welcome to a non-mainstream documentary film talent.

http://cityveins.blogspot.com/

http://www.fctp.it/movie_item.php?id=751&type=2&lang=_en

http://vimeo.com/5504493

http://www.ilfuturodelmondopassadaqui.it/ (ready by August 2010)

Vurdering:

Marianna Economou: Twelve Neighbours

A street is Athens is the stage for this warm and very well made documentary. The director has come there for years, and again this confirms the simple sentence: Time is quality. If you are a good filmmaker, know your skills and has an eye for people and situations. Marianna Economou has.

A young Iraqi immigrant talks about an old woman on the other side of the street. She is afraid to go out and she only leaves when she can see him. ”I love her. Like my Mum”. In a cellar a Pakistani immigrant has made the room his home, the tv set plays his local music movies as he talks to wife and child at home. An old woman distributes funeral wheat to the people of the street – this is what is being done on ”All Soul’s Day”. The montage is like that, the director builds up the viewer’s relationship with the characters, who live and/or work there. The baker, the old man at the window, who sings for us at the end of the film, the sisters at the flowerish courtyard, it is all very stimulating to meet these ordinary, fine people. Also those who can not sustain their small businesses and have to give up. It is Life with tears and laughter. The director also visits a quite extraordinary clone of Anita Ekberg, who listens to opera and as a real drama queen imagines herself on the stage. 

The key person, however, is the café owner and host of the Alekton theatre. A creative place with poem readings, music and theatre. Costa is his name, known by them all, initiator of activities, and a man who talks to the camera about respecting ”the other”. A message film? Yes, a very nuanced and mature hommage to everyday life as it is being lived all over the world in small streets all over the world.

Greece, 52 mins., 2009

Director cv and stills from the film: http://www.idfa.nl/industry/info/profile.aspx?id=0f8eac84-e6b1-4928-a2a5-433cb44ea6ee

Vurdering:

Bingöl Elmas: My Letter to Pippa

Italian Pippa Bacca, peace activist dressed in a wedding gown, decided to travel to Jerusalem. By hitchhiking. She did not make it. In Turkey she was raped and killed. Bingöl Elmas, Turkish filmmaker, decided to finish the travel of Pippa, wearing a black wedding dress as a sign of sorrow.

What we as viewers get from this journey is a fragmented picture of Turkey today, at least as it can be read through the meetings Bingöl has with truck drivers, men and women and children in villages she passes, old people, young people, farmers and business men. She is constantly being followed by her crew colleagues, they film and she films.

The director is a good talker, she gets easy into discussions with the men, and she makes them talk. Some think that they can get a night with her, others are sceptical to her intentions and several warns her to be alone with men on the highway! Of course the camera to a certain degree excludes the most ”chauvinistic” dialogues to develop but this is luckily not the only target for the journey. The scenes where she talks to women, especially the old ladies and to families are the most interesting and authentic as they unfold in a very light and unstressed manner.

The film is part of the series ”The Other Turkey” made for arte France. On the website below the intention of the series and its context is explained.

Turkey, 60 mins., 2010

www.otherturkey.tv

www.asminfilm.com

Vurdering:

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

News from Paris : August

If you are spending time in Paris in August, here are a few ideas, which might not be in your travel guide.

The Forum des images (recently renovated and situated down in Les Halles, great cinema and great program) organises for the tenth time le Cinéma au clair de lune, open air projections of various classics (Rohmer, Godard, Renoir, Beineix…) who all has Paris as a setting, shown in different places around Paris (Montmartre, Place des Vosges, Parc Montsouris…). It runs from August 4^th to 22^nd and it’s all for free. Take a look at the program:

http://www.forumdesimages.fr/fdi/Festivals-Evenements/Cinema-au-clair-de-lune

In Milly-la-Forêt, 50 km South-East of Paris, lies the house of Jean Cocteau. It has just been opened to the public end of June this year. Cocteau bought the house in 1947 and lived there until his death in 1963. The house and the garden have been carefully restored.

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/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

Janus Metz: Armadillo/10

The Danish documentary “Armadillo”, directed by Janus Metz and filmed by Lars Skree,  about Danish  soldiers in Afghanistan has been running in Danish cinemas for 6 weeks. More than 100.000 tickets have been sold, and the film is still running. The following are text clips from the Danish press release from the distribution company

ARMADILLO er nu blevet set af over 100.000, og det er sket i løbet af bare seks uger. På trods af hård konkurrence fra bl.a. VM i Fodbold, ”Sex and The City”, ”Twilight: Eclipse” og den danske sommer, har den danske ARMADILLO præsteret over alle forventninger i de danske biografer. Allerede i åbningsweekenden trak filmen 25.000 danskere i biografen til den intense historie om danske soldater udstationeret i Afghanistans urolige Helmand-provins. I den forgangne week-end ramte publikumstallet 100.225.

ARMADILLO kører fortsat i mange biografer landet over

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j61c-d_Uo

www.dfi.dk

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

Howard Webb and Kill the Referee

The World Cup final on Sunday with Holland and Spain has English Howard Webb as the referee. For doc-foot addicts he is a very well known person as the main character in the brilliant insight to the world of referees in the following film that I saw in Lisbon last year. This is the text that I wrote, and good luck Mr. Webb!:

”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 the referees 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 decision 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., director: Yves Hinant

News from Paris: Godard – Film Socialisme

While Cannes is still waiting for Godard, we had the great pleasure in Paris to spend the evening of June 18^th in his company after a special screening of Film Socialisme in le Cinéma des Cinéastes near Place Clichy. The evening was organized by Mediapart, an important Internet news site founded in 2008 by Edwy Plenel (journalist and former managing editor of Le Monde), who hosted the event.

Film Socialisme (Vega Film, 102 min.), with the subtitle La liberté coûte cher (Freedom comes at a high price), continues in the line of collages of video, documentary archive, text, graphics, music and dialogue that Godard has been making since the late eighties, this time at the lengths of a feature film. It’s political, it’s poetic and radically experimental.

The film is “a symphony in three movements”, a triptych composed of the following three ‘tableaux’:

Des choses comme ça… (Things like that): Set on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean, different personages, including Patti Smith, the philosopher Alain Badiou and an undefined war criminal, strolls in and out of the kitsch decadence onboard the boat. Underneath lies a story of some ‘lost’ gold from the Spanish civil war and the destiny of Europe.

Notre Europe (Our Europe): A garage somewhere in rural France run by a family with two kids and a white lama. The children revolt and hold their parents to an explanation of the concepts of freedom, equality and fraternity, all filmed by a frantic television-crew.

Nos humanités (Our humanities): A visit to six legendary sites: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas (“Hell as”), Naples and Barcelona. The film ends with a beautiful sequence borrowed from a film by Agnès Varda (herself present amongst the audience that evening), showing two trapeze artists on a beach. The final words are: No comment…

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

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

The Life of Inaki

This film is in production. The filmmakers are from the Basque country and were the ones behind the beautiful music documentary Nomadak reviewed on this site. I know Igor Otxoa who fights for his projects and does it with charm and commitment. He wrote me a letter with a link to the trailer of the film, that I want to share with our readers. But first the story about a film that deals with compassion and solidarity in such a way that the coach of FC Barcelona, Guardiola, used material from the shooting to build up courage and team feeling among his players:

”On the South of Annapurna, at 7.400 metres, a man is dying. His rope companion sounds the alarm. And one of the biggest rescue attempts in the history of the Himalayas gets underway. For four days a dozen men including some of the best mountaineers in the world, from Canada, USA, UK, Switzerland, Russia, Poland, Romanis, Kazakhstan, set out to rescue Inaki Ochoa de Olza. Even beyond his peaks Inaki is an exceptional man. As exceptional as the rescue attempt itself and the men who risked their lives to save him. Exceptional because their one driving rule is to live. To live in the only way possible: with pure intensity and honesty.”

And here is the link to the trailer:

http://www.vimeo.com/12391387  

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/

Vinylmania

Italian director Paolo Campana has for years developed a film project on ”vinylmania”, i.e. on people who are addicted to the wonderful old records that many of us still have on shelves in our homes without using them in this digital age. A couple of days ago I read in a Danish newspaper that vinyl is coming back and that many musicians insist to have their music published in this retro manner. And many love to play them. Which only confirms what I was told a couple of weeks ago in Torino by the director and his producer Edoardo Fracchia from Stefilm, who said that NOW, finally, the film is financed. After years of pitching it around, all of a sudden an interest in broader circles appeared... and the film project has matured as a good wine that waits for the moment to be served!

This posting happens because the director and producer sent me the newsletter connected to the film-to-come with a reference to an entertaining interactive site that you – if a vinyl-addicted – might want to take part in. The photo is NOT representing the director but is taken from the site, that includes blogging, clips sent to the director and photos of passionate collectors.

http://www.vinylmaniafilm.com/

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

Támas Almási: Puskás Hungary

He was Ulysses and Zorbas, a traveller of the world and a man who enjoyed Life. This is the way, a Greek summarizes the legendary Ferenc Puskas in this entertaining and informative documentary about him. And the Greek loved him because of his years as coach in the club Panathanaikos, as they did love him in Madrid where he played for Real and as they always did love in his native country, at least those connected to football.

For newcomers in football history, who think that the greatest player ever is to be selected among Cruyff, Pélé and Maradona, it is a must to watch this film to get to know a player that this blogger, when a boy, had the pleasure to see in Copenhagen when he came with Alfredo di Stefano, Santamaria and Gento and the rest of the Real Madrid for friendly games. He was as magic as the others with his left foot and loads of goals.

It is impossible to give you the life of Puskas in this short text, and the film does it from birth to death, but the main thread of the biographical film is of course the link to history and the fate of the Hungarian nation in 1956. After having been the captain of the Hungarian national team, and after having won at the Olympics in Helsinki in 1952, and after the triumph of beating England 6-3 on Wembley in London, Puskas was, as all players at that level, a high-ranked major in the army. He was, contrary to some colleagues, not political active but on a trip with Honved Budapest, the club he played for, he decided to stay abroad and not go home to a country that was suppressed, or to a regime that accused him being a traitor of his country. He ends up in Madrid and becomes a superstar in Real, gets Spanish citizenship, plays a few matches for the country before he retires and starts a career as coach in multiple countries, paradoxically all of them run by the military – Spain, Chile, Greece...

The film narrative is constructed within a classical format: archive, interviews with his team mates of the Golden team, voice-off, interviews with his wife, clips from games, clips (not many) with himself being interviewed, text from his autobiography. It is all very well crafted and superbly researched, feels a bit too long sometimes (I could have done without Beckenbauer, Platini, Pélé, who dont really say anything important, and of course there must be other sides and stories about Puskas that we don't get) yet it has magnificent emotionally strong scenes as when he comes back to Budapest in 1981, after 25 years, and are greeted as the fine man, he was. Generous, warm-hearted, a character who will be remembered for his skills and for his impressive belly that he showed until 2000 in friendly games where he got alzheimer, dying in 2006.

Hungary, 2009, 116 mins.

http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/no194/22.shtml

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

Vurdering:

Attila Kékesi: The Face of the Revolution

Subtitle: In Search of a Budapest Girl... Take a look at the photo and read this text presentation of the film taken from the IDF website, address below:

“The November 10th, issue of Paris Match in 1956 featured a report on the Hungarian revolution. The special coverage opened with a photograph taken on October 30, on Budapest Múzeum Boulevard. Forty-five years later, Hungarian historian Eszter Balázs and French journalist Phil Casoar decided to trace down the young couple seen in the picture. Who are they? Have they survived the revolution? If yes, is it possible to find them after all these years? The film follows their search for answers.”

And what a life, she had the Budapest girl, who fled Hungary, went to Switzerland and Germany to end up in Melbourne, Australia – as it is unfolded by the two researchers, who are in the picture and travel the world to find and talk to photographers and people who met Yutka, (real name Julianna Sponga), and who also found out that the young man, Gyuri, died even before the photo first appeared.

A reconstruction of a Life, that is what the film is, based upon one photo with several side stories built on basically the photographers who were in Budapest in 1956. Maybe the film does not give an overall perspective on what happened – but the filmmaker makes it important because of his stubborn insisting on finding out through the two researchers, and his characters. Yutka‘s husband in Australia talks, her son talks and gets to know something he did not know about his mother, who died in 1990 and whose ashes were thrown to the ocean. She did not want to be connected to one country, she was a citizen of the world, who fought for justice, a survivor, such a fun person, says her husband to the camera.

Hungary, 2001-2006, 71 mins.

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

Vurdering:

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

Soccer Fever

This photo was sent to me two hours before World Cup in football kick-off in South Africa. By Don Edkins, producer and distributor and promoter of documentary films in Southern Africa, and a dear guest of all important film events.

He was one of the key persons behind the Steps for the Future initiative as well as the pre-world cup soccer cinema. Both have been written about on filmkommentaren.dk

Good luck South Africa, may it all happen in a peaceful, non-violent way and may the best team win!

Don Edkins is not on the photo, he probably was behind the camera catching his smiling, colourful staff.

http://steps.co.za/index.php

http://soccercinema.co.za/

Piemonte Doc Film Fund

There are many reasons why a documentary tradition grows or is being established. In the posting below you can read about some interesting people and companies. The one that produced the City Veins film is called BabyDoc and that characterises probably the situation in Piemonte – the documentary is still a baby with some grown up fathers like the companies Stefilm and Zenith, and with some good directors at hand. Anyway, the establishing of a doc film fund in 2007 has certainly helped the development as has the Torino Film festival and several training initiatives.

The Doc Film Fund had in 2009 542.000€ that resulted in 47 grants for development (22) and production (25). Not a lot of money but a starting point for trying to get more nationally and in the rest of Europe. The emphasis on development is naturally important. The CinePorto where the fund is situated in what used to be a wool factory is a great place for the fund to be and for training sessions like DocuRegio that was hosted generously by the fund leader Paolo Manera.

Photo: The Pink Gang by Enrico Bisi.

http://www.fctp.it/piemontedocfilmfund

Il futuro del mondo passa da qui

… is the beautiful Italian title of a film that is about to be completed. I saw it in Turin in connection with the first session of the DocuRegio training session and it is as beautiful visually as the title is verbally. The director is Andrea Deaglio, the English – more prosaic – subtitle is “City Veins” and this is a short promotion of a film that will be reviewed on filmkommentaren.dk when it is finished. The film is according to the director under consideration for the Locarno Film Festival, they should take it for sure, as should other festivals for creative documentaries. Short description: A river in the outskirt of an European metropolis (Torino), a no man's land where a handful of people try to survive facing a strong urban transformation. Here flows the future, bringing the worry of the unknown together with the hope for a better chance… yes it is about people, who have decided to, or have been forced to establish a life outside our so-called urban civilisation. In a very gentle and respectful way, the director, with an original storytelling and unusual image framing, takes us on a poetic journey to everyday life of citizens of the world in the 21. century. (Photo: Reno, an artist in Life)

The DocuRegio session gave the participants an interesting insight to “producing in Piemonte”. Veteran producer Edoardo Fracchia outlined the international career of Stefilm, that is run by him, Elena Filippini and Stefano Tealdi. Based at a new venue, that also houses the office of the July event “Documentary in Europe” in Bardonecchia, the company is right now doing international, informational tv series (for instance on “coffee” and ”tea”) as well as going into edit of a long time developed, fascinating retro-project, “Vinylmania”. It has a website, visit it, great fun!

From the classic production company approach to the new and modern, represented by Alessandro Borrelli and his laSarraz. He talked about his decicison to make films for theatrical release and showed a clip from the succesful documentary of Sergio Basso Giallo a Milano (reviewed on this site). At DocuRegio 2009 Borelli’s company presented “Pink Gang” by Enrico Bisi. The story about Indian Sampat Pal, political activist for women’s rights, is now going to cinemas and a one hour version has also been made that Borrelli will take to the market “Sunny Side of the Doc”.

www.docineurope.org

www.docuregio.com

www.stefilm.it

www.lasarraz.com

www.cityveins.blogspot.com

Museo Nazionale del Cinema Torino

More than a museum. Indeed it is. It can only be described as magnificent the National Film Museum of Torino. I was there for hours and want to go back as soon as possible. To visit the fine collection of Lanterna Magica, take a look at Edison and Lumiere or the light and shadow shows in the ”Archaeology of Cinema” section, or stroll around and look at the posters of all the wonderful films one remembers from a long life in the dark. Or lie down in comfortable fauteuils and watch the Gianni Amelio (”l’America”) compilations of clips from Italian films: Olmi, Fellini, Bertolucci, Visconti, Amelio himself etc. New exhibitions all the time, the cinema theatre Massimo next door. What a feast! Here is a text clip from the website of the museum that was placed at the mole in 2000 and is run by the foundation that carries the name of the woman, who initiated the museum, Maria Adriana Prolo:

”The museum is located inside the Mole Antonelliana, a bizarre and fascinating monument which is the symbol of the City of Torino. And the various areas inside the Mole Antonelliana were the starting point for the Swiss set designer François Confino who, with talent and imagination, multiplied the museum’s itineraries. He created a spectacular presentation that offers visitors continuous and unexpected visual and acoustic stimuli, just like when we watch a film that involves and moves us.” (Poster - an exhibition of photos of the two mega-stars open this month).

http://www.museonazionaledelcinema.org/museo.php

Vurdering:

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:

Jan Tenhaven: Autumn Gold

Good subject: Old (some of them veeery old) people who are still fit for life and take part in an athletic World Champions competition in Lahti, Finland. But what about the treatment of the subject, can this sustain a feature length format?

That scepticism was taken away very early in the film. The director proved to know his five athletes very well, and was able to get much more out of them than ”just” their preparation for the tournament. We get their lives, their joys and sorrows, how to live alone as the life partner, or the live partners, have passed away – and we see how and where they live and cope with the daily things that one has to take care of. Like you and me.

But what about the narrative structure – how can 5 stories be told so you are not bored or lose concentration. Also that scepticism disappeared leaving nothing but a bravo to the editing. And to  Alfred (100!), Herbert (93) (photo), Ilse (82), Jiri (82), Gabre (93) for being so open to a film team that was able to convey the charm and visdom of being old!

The film will be released in German theatres by July 8. The following television channels are credited to broadcast the film, if it does not reach your festival and the big screen: arte, RTE (Ireland), TSR (Switzerland), ERT (Greece), YLE (Finland) and MAX (India!).

Germany, 94 mins., 2010

http://www.autumngold-movie.com/

http://www.gebrueder-beetz.de/

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

News from Paris: Tarkovsky for children

In France kids have Wednesdays off from school. For those who have the possibility, it is a day to discover the multiple activities Paris has to offer children. Le centre Pompidou, Beaubourg to Parisians, holds every Wednesday of the school year the program L’Écran des enfants, an initiation to cinema for children under 13.

I went with my daughter Asta, 8 ½, to see Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Steamroller and the Violin (1960, 43 min.). This is Tarkovsky’s first longer short film and it was his graduating film from the film school in Moscow. The film tells the story of a friendship between a little boy, Sasha, who plays the violin and the worker Sergei and his (incredibly beautiful) red steamroller. The influence of Albert Lamorisse’s The Red Balloon (Le ballon rouge 1956) is very clear. The images of the film are sheer beauty, the mirrors, the reflections; the dreams are already there. Asta could not follow the story, I think because she was just taken by the visual impression. Here’s a more detailed description:

 http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2009/cteq/the-steamroller-and-the-violin/#2

A DVD is available from Facets Video (region 1) and bits can of course be seen on Youtube, but get it for your children’s film program if you have one, it has to be viewed on the big screen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRaqcxk1YtM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SNPhp6mT6I

What we particularly appreciate about Beaubourg’s program is that the curators are there themselves to present the days film. They make a small introduction and offer to read aloud the subtitles on non-French films, should the children wish so. And they also leave time for comments and questions afterwards. Asta’s comment was “the film was very good”!

Link to Centre Pompidou

Paris has many other cinematographic offers for children, I can get back to that another time, and nothing beats the event of taking an actual trip to a movie theatre and sit down in the dark. It is important and a pleasure to be able to let your child grow up with a larger view of cinematography, than what is offered by mainstream cinema today.

I quote Chris Marker, from an interview Tue Steen Müller has linked to in an earlier comment, but can easily be repeated and counts for kids as well: “Godard nailed it once and for all: at the cinema, you raise your eyes to the screen; in front of the television, you lower them. Then there is the role of the shutter. Out of the two hours you spend in a movie theater, you spend one of them in the dark. It's this nocturnal portion that stays with us, that fixes our memory of a film in a different way than the same film seen on television or on a monitor” (Chris Marker, interview Libération March 5. 2003 translated in Film Comment:

http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/5-6-2003/markerint.htm).

The film made me plunge in to Tarkovsky’s own writing, though he hardly mentions The Steamroller and the Violin. I highly recommend his reflections on the art of cinema:

Andrei Tarkovski: Le temps scellé (Petite bibliothèque des Cahiers du Cinéma 2004). English edition: Sculpting in Time (University of Texas Press 1989).

Janus Metz: Armadillo/6

The Danish documentary "Armadillo" which premiered in cinemas last friday is a huge audience success. 22.282 tickets have been sold in three days, which is absolutely unusual for a documentary in Danish theatres. Earlier this month "Armadillo" by Janus Metz was awarded the Semaine de la Critique Prize in Cannes. 

I weekenden strømmede publikum i stort tal ind i biografens mørke for at se Janus Metzs meget anmelderroste og omtalte film. Alene torsdag, fredag, lørdag og søndag solgte filmen 22.882 billetter og gik direkte ind på førstepladsen på filmhitlisten, hvor den slog Prince of Persia af pinden.

"Jeg tror, Janus Metz har ramt den gyldne mellemvej mellem debatskabende og stærkt rørende film med en masse action og følelser. Det er derfor, den får så stor succes. Men vigtigst af alt skaber filmen en debat hos alle unge som gamle uanset baggrund. Den debat har fra starten været vores drøm, så jeg er rigtigt glad for, at så mange går i biografen og ser den", udtaler producenten Ronnie Fridthjof.

EDN Online Interviews for Professionals

This is first of all information for those of our readers who are active filmmakers and producers. Given to you by someone who worked in EDN (European Documentary Network) from the beginning in 1996 until 2005, so I am totally biased when I give you this promotional text:

You should become a member of EDN and thus be able to access information that could be important in your daily work. For instance about where to go if you look for funding for your film. Eventually you could consult the EDN Financing Guide or you could take part in the excellent online interviews that are conducted by staff member Ove Rishøj Jensen and which are solely available for members. There have been sessions with Osnat Eden-Fraiman from YesDocu in Israel, Martin Pieper from ZDF/arte, Andrew Golding from SBS Australia (yesterday) - and in the beginning of June you can meet Ahmed Mahfouz Nouh from Aljazeera Documentary Channel and Simon Kilmurry from the renowned American PBS slot called POV.

Non-members can - for free - read the news brought by EDN on the site:

www.edn.dk

A Nordic ARTE?

Under the headline “Nordic ‘arte’ Channel Closer to a “Go””, the excellent newsletter FkN Newsletter, published by Filmkonakt Nord (in English, free subscription) gives hope for quality television:

The talks of establishing of a joint Nordic TV channel based on the model of the bilingual French-German channel ARTE, are getting more concrete. The plan has attracted serious attention in the Nordic countries, and a working group has been set up by the Nordic Council's Culture and Education Committee to work on a solution. The parliamentarians are inviting the Nordic film- and TV-industry and the Nordic public service TV-stations to take part in talks about a possible collaboration in the establishment of a cultural channel. Ultimately, the decision on whether to establish a Nordic Culture channel will be taken by the governments of the Nordic countries.

http://fknsite.adnuvo.com/fkn-140/#c7

All Norwegian Screens Digitised in 2011

Filmkommentaren.dk has recently written about the digital plans for documentaries in Lithuania and Denmark. Now a piece of text taken from the newsletter of Filmkontakt (see above) demonstrates that some countries also have throughts for the screening of films, at least Norway does:

In just one year, all cinemas in Norway will be ready for digital screenings and equipped with 2K or 4K projectors. As one of few countries in the world, Norway has closed deals with six major Hollywood studios for digital screenings. According to the industry organisation for Norwegian cinemas, Film & Kino, the conversion of all of Norway’s cinemas to digital will be the world’s first national non-commercial digital cinema rollout.

Since 2006, Film & Kino has supported two digital pilot projects concerning 33 cinemas all over Norway. Som cinemas and institutions have made individual investments in digital equipment, and the experience from the pilot projects has been decisive for the successful digital rollout. 30 cinemas will have a 4K Sony projector, which is the standard required by the big Hollywood studios to show their films digitally. The digitisation process will begin this June in 37 theatres in Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim and will run until April next year.

For more information, see Film & Kino's website.

http://fknsite.adnuvo.com/fkn-140/#c7

carlthdreyer.dk

Sorry, your English language blogger goes national again… but he has to tell you that from today a website on the most esteemed Danish film director ever, Carl Th. Dreyer (1889-1968), is available. Go to the site address and check it out, and you will find an enormous amount of material to study further, collected and edited by clever people at the Danish Film Museum, one of the sections of DFI, the Danish Film Institute: articles, portraits, scripts, working method, workplaces – and clips and shorts and films about the director who made 14 features and 8 shorts. The English version of the site is not yet totally completed – as it is written: “we hope to see you again in a few days for the entire experience”.

Nevertheless, visit the site as it is now. I am sure that you will agree with me – educated a librarian in the last century – that this is an amazing piece of film historical work for film buffs all over. Words, documentation, articles, clips and full films. Use it!

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

Lithuania: Classical Documentaries to be Digitized

Good news from one the most interesting countries for documentary cinema, Lithuania, whose post-independence documentaries have been and are awarded everywhere. Names like Sharunas Bartas, Audrius Stonys, Arunas Matelis, Rimantas Gruodis, Janina Lapinskaite and Giedre Beinoriute (photo from her 2005 film, Vulkanovka) do all owe their cinemaric skills to a grand tradition that now also soon may be shared by their fellow countrymen and film buffs elsewhere. Read the following:  

At the beginning of May, the Lithuanian Central State Archive started implementing a 30-month project called Lithuanian Documentaries on the Internet. The Archive has received support of approx. EUR 2.8 million from the EU. Digitization and online accessibility will help to preserve some 1000 titles that are part of Lithuanian documentary heritage.

The Lithuanian documentary heritage is not equally accessible to all Lithuanian people nor to the wider EU and world communities because few people can physically visit the Archive and use its documents. The project is oriented toward the creation, expansion and promotion of Lithuanian digital Internet content to users. During the project the Archive expects to digitize and transfer to the Internet 1000 titles of Lithuanian documentaries, created in the period 1919-1960. After the implementation of this project Lithuanian documentaries and information about them will be easily accessible. Every user would have the possibility to search digitized films and their metadata, to watch these films or to order digital film copies. Digitised Lithuanian national film heritage will be protected and preserved for current and future generations and knowledge of it will be available via the Internet for all possible users worldwide.

http://www.lfc.lt/en/

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

http://www.europeanfilmgateway.eu/news.php?area=News&pag=121

Z. Mirkovic: The Long Road Through Balkan History

... and it is a road movie that talented Zeljko Mirkovic has made. Informative and done in an unpretentious way, this tv documentary takes the viewer from Austria in the North to the border between Macedonia and Greece in the South. On the road are two writers, Miljenko Jergović from Croatia (in the driver’s seat) and Marko Vidojkovic from Serbia. They drive in a Yugo, the most popular car during the existence of Yugoslavia. Big men in a small car that breaks down a couple of times during the trip through Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia. A comedy frame to a subject-wise serious documentary.

They go to Bleiburg, where partisans in 1945 massacred thousands of fleeing ustashes – the Croatian, anti-Yugoslav fascist separatist movement. They go to Zagreb, talk to president Mesic about different issues including the eventual (impossible?) return of Serb citizens of Croatia to their homeland. They visit the birthplace of Tito as well as his mausoleum. They talk to different historians. Go to Vukovar, to witness the scars from the civil war. And to Belgrade to talk to, among others, writer and politician Vuk Draskovic to end up in Macedonia, where the population is said to be either Antic Macedonian or Slavic Macedonian.

It feels a bit too long, although it is all very lightly conveyed and informative, with short archive glimpses, and at a general level so also beginners of Balkan history will get something out of it. Must be good for education as well.

Serbia, 2010. 58 mins. (85 mins. film-version exists as well)

http://www.seetv-exchanges.com/code/navigate.php?Id=435

Vurdering:

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.

Boris Bertram: Tankograd/2

Russian stories... why are they so attractive, why do they travel so well? Is it because we still know so little about this huge country and its Soviet past? Is it because their stories, like Tankograd, are so much more interesting in their dramatic, often tragic dimension that we are drawn to them – to get away from  our own tiny wellfare problems and meaningless media focus on politicians and their (lack of) behaviour? Probably. Or is it because Russians simply are so good for the camera with all their passion and extrovert gesticulation? Or their charm as Boris Bertram depicts so well in this film through the male dancer, who looks like a young Rudolf Nuruyev. And through his female counterpart, sweet and pretty as she stands there in the kitchen with her grandmother. Yes, I know that kitchen. I have seen it so often.

It is not my job to review the film – that is done by Allan Berg, see below – but I want to express my nostalgic pleasure of being taken back to places and situations that I have enjoyed so much in Russia and in the former Soviet republics, that I have visited after 1989/1990.

The small kitchen, the generously arranged dinner tables and the hospitality you meet so often, the vodka bottles, the apple juice that you need to accompany the vodka with to prevent a hangover, the totally worn down and dirty staircases, the small appartment rooms where families find their ways of sitting, eating and sleeping, the constant smoking of cigarettes, the grey appartment blocks... the brewing of coffee at the toilet (not in the film) because this was the only place left for the coffee machine... I have seen it in Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Kiev, Minsk and St. Petersburg, and perfectly it is observed and conveyed in the film Tankograd. In many places – luckily – the living conditions have improved, in others not. But the art of survival is still performed within the warm atmosphere that I saw and recognised in Tankograd. 

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:

Danish Access to Docs and Shorts

1000 Danish documentaries and shorts will be made available for the Danish audience. The films, all from 1975-1990, will be digitalised and made accessible through the free streaming service, ”Filmstriben”, that includes all new docs and shorts supported by the Danish Film Institute (DFI). This good news stems from the fact that the Ministry of Cultural Affairs has granted the DFI an extra grant of 6mio. Dkr. (around €800.000) to bring the 16mm, 35mm  and videos to the digital format, and from there to ”Filmstriben” that today through the public libraries is available for 80% of the population. Via their library card it is possible – for free – to get to the films. At home at the computer.

This initiative is no less than an excellent piece of film politics that must be ”exportable”. I worked at the National Film Board of Denmark in the period 1975-1990 (from whose collection all the films come) and are more than happy that films of high artistic quality are brought back from the dark and forgotten, as well as precious documents of Danish history and culture.

The classical combination of film and public libraries to convey moving images to the broad audience will again prove its importance. And again thanks to the technique that has been the most important element in the history of documentaries. Both when it comes to production but even more when the films have to reach the audience. Robert Flaherty said – almost a century ago – that we, the film people, have not won before it is quite as easy to get hold of a film as it is to get a book. We are getting there... 

Photo: Jørgen Roos (1922-1998), THE Danish documentarian

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

MART

... stands for ”museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di trento e rovereto”. I went there to see the museum in the small and nice provincial town of Rovereto which is on the road between Bolzano and Verona. The museum offered the viewer a wondertful exhibition titled ”From Stage to Painting” depicting ”the magic of the theatre in 19th-century painting” with great works of David, Delacroix, Füseli, Aubrey Beardsley, Gustave Moreau and the painter I always consider as a real  documentarian long before that word was invented: Edgar Degas. There were some of his ballerinas and other paintings that demonstrated his eye for situations and moments, and his ability to make a personal interpretation of what he saw.

The magic world of theatre as seen by painters: Shakespeare and his works as the most wanted subject – Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear.

The magic world of theatre as seen by filmmakers? Many could be mentioned but one stands out: ”Les Enfants du Paradis” by Marcel Carné. Therefore the choice of poster photo for this posting. Starring Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur and Pierre Renoir.

www.mart.trento.it

Henri Cartier-Bresson

The legendary French photographer is always considered as the documentarian within the art of photography. Now, according to an article written by Richard Lacayo in Time (May 3) a focus is put on his short but remarkable surrealist period. Here is a quote from the article that can be read in its full length on the site of Time. From this article there is a link that will lead you to being able to watch a slate of his works:

With 300 or so photographs, "Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century," a new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, is, as Ed Sullivan used to say, a really big show. No doubt, nothing less would do to represent the vast scope of an artist Richard Avedon called, with just the slightest exaggeration, "the Tolstoy of photography."

But six years after his death at the magnificent age of 95, Cartier-Bresson proves that you can be one of the most famous names in photography and still be one of its greatest enigmas. For a few years in the 1930s, he was a fiercely dedicated avant-gardist, making pictures that were powerfully strange…  In 1931 Cartier-Bresson made a crucial realization: through photography, he could achieve the goals of the Surrealists he so much admired. The MoMA show, which runs through June 28 and then travels to Chicago, San Francisco and Atlanta, is a career-spanning retrospective. But while Cartier-Bresson's Surrealist phase would be just a brief moment in that career, it was a crucial one.

Photo: The master himself by an anonymous photographer.

For reasons of copyright (we can not afford to pay Magnum Photo) no Cartier-Bresson-photo will be posted, please go to the site of Time:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1983814,00.html

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

15 Young by Young

Think Big! Is what young Latvian producer and director Ilona Bicevska is doing. For a couple of years she has been pitching a project that I have praised on this site with a simple Bravo! Now the potential directors have been invited to come to Latvia, to Sigulda 50 kilometers from Riga, from where I write these words. A development workshop goes on, discussions, clips are being watched, coffee is being drunk – and harder stuff as well.

The project will consist of 15 films, each of them 15 minutes long, to be made by 15 different directors from the 15 ex-Soviet republics. They can then be put together in whatever way the broadcasters want, A representative from arte is present to listen and comment on the pitches. 5x45 minutes it could be or one long version. Or a webdoc series. Many platforms are possible. To be finished 20 years after the collapse of the USSR and/or the independence of the ex-Soviet republics. Run from the country of Juris Podnieks, Ivars Sleckis and Herz Frank. Bravo!

The photo is from a small pilot that Bicevska made for the series.

Arab Documentary Funding

The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) has announced the winners of its Documentary Film Program Grants for the year 2010.  The grant of a total of 300,000 USD was given to 15 winners, along with a series of workshops and consultations with international advisors for the following year.  In partnership with the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, the Arab Documentary Film Program is dedicated to supporting contemporary nonfiction films produced by filmmakers targeting the audience in the Arab world.

The program objectives are three-fold.  First, it aims to contribute to the development and growth of the regional industry and talents in the field of documentary filmmaking.  Second, it aims to open opportunities for Arab directors and producers to participate in key international events and to promote Arab work in major international markets.  Third, is to reinforce competitiveness of Arab audiovisual works within the framework of an open and competitive Arab market.  The winners were Ahmed Fawzy Saleh, Egypt: The Tanneries Concerto/ Akram Zaatari, Lebanon: Twenty Eight Nights and a Poem/ Amer  Al  Shomali, Palestine: The Wanted 18/ Dima Abu Ghoush, Palestine: Emwas/ Elias  Moubarak, Lebanon: My Uncle, The Terrorist/ Habib Attia / Director Kaouther Ben Hania, Tunisia: Challat, the Best a Man can Get/ Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Lebanon: Lebanese Rocket Society/ Karima Zoubir, Morocco: Woman with a Camera/ Laila Hotait Salas, Lebanon/Spain: The crayons of Askalan/ Louly Seif, Egypt: Take me Back to Sydney/ Malek  Bensmail, Algeria: Origins/ Nahed  Awwad, Palestine: The Mail/ Orwa Nyrabia / Director Omar Amiralay, Syria: Seduction/ Rania Stephan, Lebanon: The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni/ Regine Abadia, Algeria: Yasmina and Mohammed.

The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) is a non-profit organization registered in Zurich, Switzerland with its regional office in Amman, Jordan.

http://www.arabculturefund.org/

News from Paris: Godard

This years festival Cinéma du reel had a program called Nous deux – Both of us, featuring films made by filmmakers in couples or pairs. Amongst those shown where The Old Place (1998) and Reportage amateur (maquette expo) (2006) by Anne-Marie Miéville and Jean-Luc Godard, who have been partners and made films together since the 1970s. Since I could not attend to the screening, I acquired the DVD of four short films by Godard and Miéville: De l’origine du XXIe siècle (2000), The Old Place (1998), Liberté et Patrie (2002) and Je vous salue Sarajevo (1993) (ECM Cinema 2006).

I highly recommend this edition, which is the first DVD released from the renowned German record label ECM Records. The DVD-cover is actually a fine little book with beautifully reproduced stills from the films, an introduction by the German film critic Michael Althen as well as the complete dialogues. All of this in French, English and German.

Link to ECM Records

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

Dokumentärer i SVT

The following text is in Danish as it includes information on the excellent documentary service that is provided by SVT, Swedish public television, that is available for viewers in the Nordic countries. There are not many broadcasters – if any – that has such a range of time slots, often at prime time, for the screening of documentary films and programmes:

Jeg abonnerer (det er gratis) på et nyhedsbrev fra SVT. Det bringer mig til en velredigeret og indbydende website, der oplyser om kommende dokumentar-visninger på et af de følgende mange strands: ”Dokumentärfilm”, ”Dokument Inifrån”, ”Dokument Utifrån”, ”K Special” og ”Dox”. Hvor ”K Special” (fredag aften kl. 20, se nedenfor om Boris Mitics film) altid har været garant for høj kvalitet og visning af ikke-engelsk sprogede dokumentarer, er ”Dox” nyt. Her er hvad Ingemar Persson, programchef for dokumentar, siger herom:

På tisdagskvällarna sänder vi de hetaste nyproducerade dokumentärfilmerna och de odödliga klassikerna. Under rubriken Dox visar vi världens bästa filmer om verkligheten. Vi vill ge publiken tv-kvällar de inte glömmer. Dox-filmerna visas varje tisdag kl 22.00 i SVT1 och det utlovas dokumentärer från både Sverige och världen som fängslar, engagerar och provocerar.

På Twitter giver SVT besked om dokumentarnyt, på hjemmesiden er der interviews med fine svenske instruktører som PeÅ Holmquist (om hans seneste Gaza-film), Erik Gandini (om Videocracy, filmen om Berlusconi), Nina Hedenius (om den fremragende film “Naturens Gång”) og Nahid Persson (filmen om persiske Farah Diba) – og en del film kan ses på nettet. Med andre ord: SVT tager dokumentaren alvorligt. Foto: The Last Tightrope Dancers in Armenia, vist på K-Special.

http://svt.se/2.118538/dokumentar?lid=index_313009&lpos=sajt&from=innehall_ao

http://twitter.com/svtdokumentar

Boris Mitic: Goodbye, How are You?

A special treat for those of us who have access to Swedish television, SVT2, that tonight at 8pm shows one of the most original Serbian documentaries from the last years. With repeats Saturday April 17 at 11.20 am, and Tuesday April 20 at 11.15 pm. This is the review that was written for this blog:

It is one of those films where you are attracted by the visual and the tone of the film and the words, in other words by the film, and still feel like you want to watch and listen again. Because you did not get it all. Being a chaptered film essay of highest originality, with funny playful captions, you can actually do your re-view by clicking your remote control. To pick the chapters. And you can visit the (also) rich website to get on your screen the aphorisms. Simply to read what you heard.

I say so because it is a difficult film for someone from outside of Serbia and ex-Yugoslavia to fully recognise and sense the constant dialogue between image and words. Much is archive from places and demonstrations, and conflict and war situations. Also from today, also from Kosovo, but also here you have to give up sometimes as you dont have the references in your visual memory. At the same time as the images and the tone and the words keep your attention the whole way through.

Nevertheless, let me skip the eternal (Nordic?) rational wish to understand everything... there is so much to discover in this ambitious journey in absurdity and subtlety where you are taken by the hand by a ”me”, the voice of an old man, who is summarising his life and talks about his friend and about the duels he would love to have. With other people and with himself. My Serbian language knowledge does not exist but the voice of the old man sets me in the mood of laughing of what is being said and what I watch. But not only laughing. There is also a sadness, a sad wisdom I would call it, from the writers and philosophers, who have inspired director Boris Mitic for making this clever satirical catalogue of image & words. It took him ”4 years of travelling 50.000 km along Balkan side roads to make 400 shots” for a story and a visualisation to which there is but one thing to say: Good Day, I am fine. I saw your film. I feel it like I do when I have seen a play of Samuel Beckett. Provoked and entertained in a creative way. Want to see it again. Bravo!

Serbia, 2009, 60 mins.  

http://www.dribblingpictures.com

Vurdering:

Underground Films

Indiepix, American distributor of independent films, including documentaries and experimental titles, offer their films to be bought as a dvd, to be downloaded to your own computer (pc and mac) or to be viewed as a vod (video on demand). For reasonable prices. You can subscribe – for free – to their newsletter from where I have taken the following text:

In the wake of WWII, with the advent of portable cameras, the world of filmmaking exploded beyond the bounds of the moneyed Hollywood studio system. Filmmakers no longer had to seek approval – or funding – to make their visions a reality. Hell, you didn't even need training, just a camera and a dream (dream occasionally optional). Filmmakers such as Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger and Stan Brakhage created countless films in the 1940s and 50s that tested the limits of the medium in subject matter, style and narrative continuity. In addition to garnering praise abroad from the new Wave filmmakers in France such as François Truffaut, Morris Engel's low-fi Little Fugitive also became the first independent film to be nominated for an Oscar in 1953. In the 1960s and 70s, brothers George and Mike Kuchar added an absurdist, kitschy sense of humor to their short films showing that just becuase it's arty, doesn't mean it has to take itself seriously. Freed from the profit-and-loss constraints of procuring Hollywood backers, these new low-fi, no-budget filmmakers were able to take film out of the realm of entertainment and turn it into an art form. PHOTO: Jonas Mekas.

And if you're in the New York area, the new documentary, It Came From Kuchar, is screening this week at Anthology Film Archives! Tickets are available through the IndiePix Box Office. We hope to see you there!

http://www.indiepixfilms.com/collection/underground-films?ref=NEWSLETTER

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)

Ramallah – Documentaries from Palestine

Palestine, 4 days, end of March 2010. It’s blue sky but still a bit chilly in Ramallah, where I have been for a couple of days. Lively activity outside in the streets of a nice and calm city, 40.000 are here during night, 80.000 during day. The capital of the Palestinian Authority expresses a friendly atmosphere, and energy – waiting for a Palestinian state to be established. Yellow buses, yellow taxis, building work going on everywhere, white buildings, a hilly city with beautiful viewing spots. A city whose economy is very much depending on investments done by rich Palestinians, who have made their money in the Gulf states and return home one month per year.

I am here with some fellow tutors for a workshop including 10 documentary projects. The intentions behind the initiative are triple: 1) The filmmakers are trained for a pitching of their projects to 12-15 tv editors - that takes place late May. 2) The filmmakers are competing for a participation in the Storydoc documentary programme that has its first session in Corfu, Greece in the beginning of July. 4 of the 10 projects will be picked for that purpose. 3) The filmmakers have their projects discussed and their pitching skills improved – the writing, the verbal and the visual. They are being provided with a huge amount of information and

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/

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

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:

Pawel Lozinski: Chemo

It was on my list over the best 10 documentaries in 2009 – and I am not the only one, who wants to point to the film and its director. Pawel Lozinski got the prize as Best Director at the One World Festival in Prague, that ended two days ago.

Write ”Chemo” in search and you will be able to read several postings about this unique film.

http://oneworld.cz/2010/films-a-z/16778#

EDN Award 2010

EDN (European Documentary Network) has announced that The EDN Award 2010 is presented to IRDFA – Iranian Documentary Filmmakers Association. IRDFA receives the award for their outstanding contribution to the documentary culture. More text from the EDN site:

EDN has chosen to honour IRDFA to recognise the impressive work the organisation has done since it was founded in 1998. IRDFA has established a strong national organisation to unite the Iranian documentary sector and made sure that the documentary film as a genre and an art form has been recognised by public film and funding bodies. IRDFA has also worked strongly to help Iranian documentary filmmakers and their films to travel around the world as well as making documentary makers from around the world travel to Iran. EDN Network Manager Hanne Skjødt said:

The EDN Award was initiated to honour outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture. However, we have chosen to expand the geographical focus of our award a bit. We want to honour an organisation outside Europe that has done a remarkable job in uniting, structuring and promoting their national documentary sector.

The EDN Award 2010 was presented March 19 and was accepted by Mahboubeh Honarian on behalf of the whole IRDFA organisation. The award ceremony was held during the EDN workshop Docs in Thessaloniki. The workshop is held in the framework of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival – Images of the 21st Century.

Read more about this film political choice on:

www.edn.dk

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:

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/

Hichem Ben Ammar: Once Upon Our Time

A classic theme: A father invests all energy and passion into the education of the son to make him do and be, what he himself never achieved. Anas Romdhani (born 1995) is a violin virtuoso, and the father a mediocre musician, as he describes it himself in the documentary film by Hichem Ben Ammar from Tunisia. The director follows the career development of the boy, a journey full of travels to the capitals of the world, and a journey full of money seeking for the father, who wants the project to be succesful.

A fairy tale it is, and a fairy tale frame is what the director by verbal narration has put it into: Boy from poor background makes it. It is obvious that the father has wanted this film to happen as well, and the director allows himself to use a good deal of the home video material that the father has shot on their travels. It gives the film a texture extra and an intimacy, and first of all a close up of the main character in the film, who is actually not the son but the father, who is pushy like hell, but who you can’t help love for his total dedication and love to his son. ”If he fails when he is 20”, the father says, ”he will at least say that ”Dad did his Best””.

But there is not a lot in the film that makes one think that the boy will fail. Well, he sits with a Playstation game and gets out some aggression but otherwise Anas is just very sweet and wants it to happen. When he gets into the prestigious Menuhin School in the UK, from where all the good ones come, you sense that he is about to cut the string to the father, who in one of the good magical moments of the film has been caught by the camera waiting outside the examination door hoping the son to succeed. Entertaining documentary, a success story, a film for a broad audience in festivals and on tv.

hichembenammar@yahoo.fr

Tunisia, 85 mins., 2009

Vurdering:

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

Football Films in South Africa

“The idea was developed by Don Edkins, a renowned film producer, who’s involved with different social projects through Steps for the Future and Day Zero Films. Basically, we want to create awareness and a hype within different communities in South Africa that are not reached during the promotion of the World Cup. We’re going to go into rural communities and set up screenings of interesting documentaries from around the world with a football theme.” Said by Hisham Samie, a filmmaker from Cape Town.

The screenings will be for free and will help people  learn about stories, events and football players from other parts of the world in the build-up to the World Cup.

This blogger is proud to have been part of the research team for films together with Danish Mikael Opstrup, Dutch Marijke Rawie and Finnish Iikka Vehkalahti.

http://www.rnw.nl/africa/article/sarah-goes-soccer-travelling-cinemas

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/

Pribyl: Forgotten Transports – Poland

A film that has been reviewed and noticed several times on this site, has finally got the national recognition it deserves. Here is the posting from the IDF site – se address below:

On Saturday, March 6, Forgotten Transports to Poland by Lukáš Přibyl was announced best documentary film at the 2009 Czech Lion Awards. The film is included in Přibyl's four-part documentary series that was released on DVD in mid-January.

Breaking down our notions about "Holocaust documentaries", the film focuses on humanidentity and its changes. It deals with choices, people, escaping Nazi ghettos, laborand death camps in the Lublin region of Poland, had to make in order to adapt and survive in utter extremity, on the run, in hiding – with a great deal of ingenuity,much humor and tremendous optimism. This documentary tribute to the human spiritis completely devoid of commentary, contemporary and make-believe footage and employs only impeccably researched time-and-place precise materials and fascinatingwords of the witnesses. From playing a deaf-mute fool, armed resistance to a touchingtale of forbidden love, the handful of witnesses share their past, for the first time. This documentary offers a surprising picture of survival "as we don't know it".

A clip from the film can be watched on the site below.

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

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/

Czech Site Moves

The excellent website of IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) has moved to a new address with a new layout (black on white) and as usual loads of information to get on Eastern European documentary matters in particular and world documentary matters in general. And with a click you can watch the editor’s choice of an actual important film. This is of course ”Rabbit a la Berlin” (PHOTO) right now, the day before the Oscar is distributed in the category in which it is nominated.

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

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/

Jukka Kärkkäinen: Tomorrow was Yesterday

A very banal and normal story that all families have experienced: Old age hits grandmother or grandfather, or mother or father, who have started a life of forgetfullness, as is the case with Maja, the mother and grandmother of this film that due to a gifted filmmaker tells the story we all know not only in a recognisable way but also gives it a more universal, existential perspective on losing life and identity.

She is a lovely old lady but she is not able to cope with the practicalities any longer. She sits in her big bed with her doll, trying to reach the phone before it is too late, singing along with the songs of her youth coming from the radio. She is in another world. Her daughter visits her but it is too much for her to organise the life of her mother, so god bless the granddaughter who communicates with the authorities knowing that it is impossible to avoid that Maja must be moved to an old people’s home. They love her, the camera loves her and there are great moments of laughter in this film, where Jukka Kärkkäinen again (like in ”The Living Room of a Nation”) demonstrates an enormous talent for conveying contemporary life with beauty, respect and sadness.

http://www.mouka.fi/news.php?l=EN

Vurdering:

Scottish Short Documentaries

What a pleasure it is to watch short documentaries. Even more so because they have run out of slots for that classic genre on public broadcasting in Europe. The short films are still being shown in festivals all over but seldom as the main attraction. And at the short film festivals priority is given to the short fiction film. I wrote about the Bridging the Gap initiative in Edinburgh some days ago, that has a total focus on the short documentary, and not only for beginners, many of the applicants for the 7 films that mid March will be selected for production support had done short documentaries before... so I left Edinburgh with some works that deserve to be mentioned for their creative ambition and diversity in style. Talents all of them, keep an eye:

”Ma Bar” (PHOTO) features an old man, more than 70 years of age, who does bench pressing ignoring age and the youngsters around him. The film lets the protagonist comment on his passion in a film that is tense in atmosphere due to excellent cinematic close-ups and a totally balanced rythm. ”The Bees” takes the viewer to the South of Lebanon to a woman living next to the borders of Israel – I have been experiencing the war since I was a child, she says. The bees are free, they can cross without papers, the woman continues, one of the many victims of geography, presented in a warm humanistic film. Contrary to the situation in Lebanon nobody really cares when they cross ”the border” to enter the pilgrim’s road to Santiago de Compostela. ”Maria’s Way” is the title of this nice mini-portrait of a woman, who every day sets up her small table to greet the pilgrims who pass, and who maybe would want a stamp in their papers. She does that for herself – the counting of those passing by - to continue what her mother did. The camera stays behind her to watch how most of the people don’t bother, and to hear Maria’s wonderful bitter remarks about Life Today! ”Kirran and the Hatchmaker” takes us also to the countryside where a young charming boy conveys his passion and vision, breeding chickens, and planning to take them on a sea voyage. He has it all planned and written down and the way he treats the chickens is described with love. There is one scene that demonstrates an extraordinary talent for images: four chicken stand completely without moving with the boy’s feet in the picture, a beautiful Still Life and a director’s courage to let an image speak.

McDowell & Pretsell: Ma Bar, UK, 2009, 11 mins.

Rana Ayoub: The Bees, UK, 2009, 13 mins.

Anne Milne: Maria’s Way. UK, 2009, 15 mins.

Amy Rose: Kirran and the Harchmaker. UK, 2008, 19 mins.

http://www.eca.ac.uk/index.php?id=1162

http://www.docscene.org/

Ehrlich/Goldsmith: The Most Dangerous Man..

It is difficult to dislike Daniel Ellsberg, and why should you? An important name in new American history, a whistleblower, a man who was among those whose job it was to provide Robert McNamara with plans for an efficient war in Vietnam, and a man who saw how his superior lie to the American public, as did Lyndon Johnson. He changed his mind, and his life completely, by publishing the so-called Pentagon Papers – and became an example, some would say the example of non-violent civil disobedience. And he still is around when it comes to demonstrations against US in Iraq and Afghanistan – take a look at his website.

The film tells the story about a conscientiuos objector in a classical way, as the filmmakers have said it themselves: a three act character-driven drama, that uses interviews, archive material and the voice of Ellsberg to take us through his own story. He makes references back to his childhood and the tragic death of his mother and sister because the father fell asleep while they were out driving. And there is a constant love story running in the foreground through interviews with his wife Patricia, who is at his side in the numerous archive interviews with him back in 70’es. It is all very efficiently told with music and small reconstructions that help give the film a drive.

The film goes out theatrically in the US, is nominated for an Oscar 2010 (got a Special Jury Award at idfa 2009), let’s see if it will win as did Errol Morris in 2004 with his film on McNamara, ”Fog Of War”, a much more authored film than the one on Ellsberg...  interesting now to have a film on the war criminal and one on the activist and whistleblower, a very charming and charismatic character in a well crafted documentary. 

USA, 2009, 96 mins.

http://www.ellsberg.net/

http://www.mostdangerousman.org/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/feb/16/most-dangerous-man-in-america

Vurdering:

John Appel: The Player

3 stronger characters and some accompanying. Not unusual.  And three characters with the same in common: the desire to gamble; driven by an addiction that has heavily influenced their lives. One is no longer alive, the father of the filmmaker, the two others still practise in different ways, on different levels and in different areas of operation. One is in prison and talks with a low voice about what he has been doing, waiting to get out very soon. This does not happen, he has his imprisonment prolonged because he can not refrain from gambling (= swindling) from his cell via his mobile (cell!) phone. The other is a festive man full of stories and fun and lust for life. A showman, who offers the viewers a guided photo tour picturing the women with whom he has enjoyed life – for a certain period, as long as they could compete with the real love and passion of his life: Gambling. We see him as the charming bookmaker, he is, and we sense the back side of the coin, the loneliness, as he speaks.

The main character, however, is the father of the John Appel, as he is seen and described by the son. Appel approaches the character of his father in a very fine and balanced manner, where he leaves a lot of reflection to the viewer. He intertwines the story of his father with the two other addicts and maybe he was a mix of the two – the low voice prisoner and the outspoken party seeker and show man. That Appel is an experienced filmmaker and knows the rules of storytelling is evident, and again it is a pleasure to hear a well written and spoken personal commentary. Towards  the end of the film, Appel tells us that he after the death of the father often drove with his mother to the place of the horse races. This is where the father had his seat every sunday. They sit there in the big car, all is silence – one of many beautifully composed images full of the melancholy that suits this film so well.

Holland, 80 mins., 2009

http://www.cobosfilms.nl/

Vurdering:

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/#

Bridging the Gap

I was in Edinburgh this weekend to meet the 12 candidates for the 2010 Bridging the Gap production scheme, headed by SDI, Scottish Documentary Institute. Pure pleasure it was to listen to and comment on the presentation of the 12, from which 7 will be picked and supported financially. That will happen mid March. Here is a descriptive text quote from the site where you also can find films to be watched for free, from previous seasons of a great documentary short film initiative. That ought to be exported to other countries!:

“Since 2003 Bridging the Gap is the only documentary new talent initiative for cinema in the UK offering training linked to production. It is funded by Scottish Screen National Lottery fund, Skillset Film Skills Fund and supported by Edinburgh College of Art and is open to all UK-based filmmakers. Since 2008 BBC Scotland & Highlands & Islands Enterprise are also supporters of Bridging the Gap. We have an annual themed call for entries from which we select 12 project ideas for a development period in which filmmakers attend a series of training workshops and masterclasses based in Edinburgh. 7 ten-minute documentaries are then commissioned at a pitching session with a budget of 16K (8K cash, 8K in kind), intended for distribution in cinemas and international festivals.”

Bridging the Gap hosts also several masterclassses - therefore a photo of a master, Nicolas Philibert, who was in Edinburgh for Bridging the Gap.

http://www.docscene.org/

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/

Katrin Ottarsdóttir: Sporene gror ud af ord 2

Så er den trefløjede tavle færdig. Tre film med først Hans Pauli Olsen dernæst Tóroddur Poulsen, som begge blev færdige i 2008 og nu den tredje med Jóanes Nielsen, Sporene gror ud af ord, som har været vist i København to gange på Nordatlantens Brygge i onsdags. I dag vises den i Øst for Paradis i Århus.

Ebbe Iversen anmeldte den i torsdags, og han er temmelig glad, for Katrin Ottarsdóttir har i sine tre film med billedhuggeren og de to digtere ”en fornem evne til at få kunstnerne til at slappe af og tale frit foran kameraet, og hun lader loyalt bemeldte kamera underordne sig emnet og distraherer ikke med alskens stilistiske krummelurer… når man ser denne kloge og sympatiske film, får man virkelig lyst til selv at læse mandens digte. Hvad der givetvis præcis er meningen.” Iversen konkluderer med fem stjerner ud af seks.

Og Jóanes Nielsens nye samling Broer af sultne ord udkom også i dansk oversættelse i onsdags. I en lomme ligger en dvd med nogle af hans oplæsninger. Vel klip fra filmen.

Sporene gror ud af ord bliver vist i Biffen Aalborg 3. marts 17:00 og i Nicolay Biograf Kolding 9. marts 19:00. Engang næste måned kommer den på dvd, formodentlig på www.tutl.com Her kan man i forvejen købe Ingen kan lave det perfekte og En linje om dagen må være nok!   

http://www.bluebirdfilm.dk/

Klara Trencsenyi & Vlad Naumescu: Birds Way

First the annotation as it appears on the cover of the dvd and on the site of the production company, Libra Film in Romania: “Birds Road is a creative documentary that follows the daily routine of a Russian Lipovan community struggling to survive and maintain their traditions in spite of the overwhelming intrusion of modernity. The testimonies of these Old Believers about recent transformations, dying religion and their struggle to preserve archaic traditions reveal the vulnerability and secretiveness of a traditional community.”

And then my congratulations to the directors for making a theme so far away from my urban jungle up in the Northern Europe – interesting, fascinating, warm and human. Why? Because of their obvious long stay down there close to the Danube where mostly – according to the film – old people live, close to their religion and language and rituals. The people in the film have found the filmmakers trustworthy and invited them into their houses. Here you are, this is our life.

The generous answer given to this hospitality and openness comes out in an amazing cinematography by Trencsenyi, who catches the simple life and its beauty with respect and love. Story? Not in a classical sense – one storyline, from a to z – but with many smaller stories being unfolded in a nice and quite way: About the prison for political prisoners at the the river, about tourism, about the lack of a priest chosen by the Believers themselves, about the young man they want as a priest but he has no wife (!), about funerals, and the Slavonic language that only two can read now. Empty village roads, children playing. A pleasure to watch and learn from this fine observational documentary.

Romania, 2009, 56 mins.

http://www.astrafilm.ro/en/astra-film-festival-2009-birds-way-2

http://www.esodoc.eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=73&Itemid=91

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

Vurdering:

Marc Eberle: The Most Secret Place on Earth

... which was praised on this site, see below, is being screened on arte this coming wednesday 17th of February at 20.35 with a re-run on the 23rd of February at 10.25am. arte shows the 52 mins.version titled CIA-Operation Laos. Here is the review re-posted:

A brilliant piece of journalistic research combined with a very effective documentary tv language in the best sense of the word: strong characters interviewed, a precise commentary, characterizing tone-setting music, wonderful archive, and a beginning, middle and an end. In that order.

There is reason for huge respect for the work of Marc Eberle, he gets very close to his witnesses and makes them open up, and contrary to a BBC approach he does not take the official line and make politicians speak and make statements. On the contrary he goes for emotions among the so-called ordinary people, who became the victims.

It is all about another blood filled action or series of actions performed by the Americans to make Laos the place from where the Vietnam war could be led through air raids and illegal bombardements. Long Chen is the name of the air base in Laos. It had a whole community of heroin addicts among the soldiers, and it dragged hmong people in to beat the Pathet Lao, into brutality and prostitution. If today, this would have been the perfect research material for Coppola and his ”Apocalypse Now”. It is an exciting piece of modern unrevealed history from beginning till end. And it includes material never seen before.

Germany, 2008, 52 mins. and 72 mins.

www.beetz-brothers.de

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JH26Ae01.html

http://www.arte.tv/fr/programmes/242,date=17/2/2010.html

Vurdering:

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…

Sergio Basso: Giallo a Milano

Made in Chinatown is the subtitle of this stylistically different but very fresh and well made, kaleidoskopic look at Chinese in Milano. Several – mostly young – Chinese, first or second generation, take part in a documentary that does not refrain from using cut-out animation, split-screen, a chaptered structure, small intimate situations with couples lying in bed talking about their lives in an Italian and in a Chinese culture, in one case the couple has not seen their child in China for years. The film does not – luckily, because we know it so well from everywhere – go (too) much into the prejudices that exist towards foreigners, instead it puts focus on the characters as human beings accompanied by a historical perspective as the Chinese have been in Milano for decades, of course.

The film starts with images of streets being blocked by the police as a killing apparently has taken place. These well known riots in the Chinese community in Italy (one of the biggest in the country) form the starting point of the film but the director did not want a journalistic angle, he went for the ordinary people, with all their extraordinary stories, the generation conflicts, the identity questions. A good choice and an both moving and entertaining insight to something I had not heard about before.

Italy, 2009, 75 mins.

http://www.lasarraz.com/

http://www.latestuggine.it/

Vurdering:

Rada (Sesic) on Rasa

Zeljko Mirkovic, Serbian documentary director-producer (his company is called Optimist Film) and occasionally a very good interviewer, has published a long conversation with Rada Sesic, a very well known documentary director and teacher and festival programmmer – and an expert in Indian cinema. The interview is to be found in its full length at the IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) site, see below. Here is a small clip, where Rada talks about Rasa, a new angle on documentaries:

Mirkovic: Documentary has seriously entered the market and it’s represented best by a large number of subgenres (archive documentary, TV documentary, docudrama, etc.) One of these stands out in the market - a creative documentary. What are the defining elements of a creative documentary?

Sesic: It is difficult to say what a creative documentary is; perhaps it is better to say what it is not. It’s not television reportage, nor superficial coverage of an event, nor a historic account of a certain epoch, landscape, or a person. Every story is acceptable, but the author has to express their personal cinematic style, their personal visual approach, their thinking about a particular content they want to film. Ultimately, film is art and we expect art to touch us, shake us, make us think, ask questions, make us come back to it, change us as reflective beings. There is a text in Hindu Veda called Natya Veda which speaks about the role of art. It contains a tract on drama that can be applied to art in general. It says that every piece of art has to contain various Bhavas (feelings, moods) which will make a viewer experience Rasa (a state of mind), a complex experience of enjoyment (the experience may also be negative in the sense that you may experience fear, sorrow, anxiety). What is important is that Rasa works in such a way that a viewer mentally and spiritually absorbes the intensive experience of art.

www.optimisticfilm.com

http://web.docuinter.net/en/net_archive.php?id=831

Rabbit Website

The producer of the Oscar nominated Polish film ”Rabbit a la Berlin”, Anna Wydra, has asked me to add the information about their new website

www.rabbitalaberlin.com

where you can read about the road to the nomination as well as watch the new trailer that can also be approached on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65uV_LnxcL0

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

Menstruation Film Travels

Some filmmakers are (also) born public relation stars. Diana Fabionova is one. First she presents her film as a first timer, then she starts to promote and pitch it, then she raises the funding... and makes the film ”The Moon inside You” that has menstruation as subject with the subtitle ”a secret kept too well”.

Go to the website below and see how many places this film has been shown and read here the newsletter text of today, authored by the production team about where it is going in the nearest future:

Dear Moonfriends and supporters, We are happy to share with you that "The Moon Inside You" was bought by Media Education Foundation and under the name "Red Moon: Menstruation, Culture & the Politics of Gender" will be able to reach millions of young people all around USA http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=240

After been sold out  in Brighton,  more screenings and festivals are ahead. 10th of February Melbourne, back in  Europe, it will warm up the Uteruses  in UK, London on  23.2. - 8.3. it will celebrate International Women's day in Lindau cinema, Germany. 9-10.3 Chicago, USA for Sex positive series "Let's talk about sex". 12-20.3 South American premiere will be held in International  Film festival of Guadalajara, Mexico. 12-21.3 Women's film festival in Vermont, USA. 13-20.4. Serbia, International Documentary Film Festival, Belgrade.  28.4- 2.5 Norway, Norwegian Documentary Film Festival. 28.4- 5.5 Zurich Lesbian and Gay film festival Pink Apple. 28.4-3.5  Poland and Czech Republic in Český Tešín and Polish Cieszyne. 28-29.6  Paris, France National French Doulas convention. We wish you a great premenstrual, menstrual or postmenstrual days, with love from Your M team... dvd's are sold through  

http://www.mooninsideyou.com/

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

Jussi to The Living Room of a Nation

It is not only abroad that the Finnish documentary masterpiece ”The Living Room of a Nation” by Jukka Kärkkäinen is being praised (search his name on this site and you will have reviews and report on the film), it is also appreciated in its own nation. The film received the national film prize as the best documentary a week ago. The prize is called Jussi, that have been distributed since 1944 to honour the best achievements within Finnish cinema. The Finnish film professionals association, Filmiaura, gives the awards.

Cinemateket

Special service for our Danish readers – about many fine documentaries to be watched at the Film House in Copenhagen at Cinemateket, run by the Danish Film Institute:

Der er meget at komme efter i Cinemateket i februar måned, hvis man er til dokumentar. 3 af de 8 film i en tjekkisk filmserie er dokumentarer, alle sammen fyldigt omtalt eller anmeldt med links på denne blog: det klassiske observerende mesterværk ”Citizen Havel” (foto) af Pavel Koutecky og Miroslav Janek, den banebrydende/underholdende/kritisk satiriske ”Czech Dream” af Vit Klusak og Filip Remunda, og Helena Trestikovas sociale ”René”. Høj kvalitet, som jeg så ofte har skrevet på denne plads: ”East Beats West”.

”Soy Cuba” er navnet på en anden serie i anledning af 50 året for den cubanske revolution, titlen taget efter russiske Mikhail Kalatozovs fremragende film fra 1964, gå ind og se den. Og så er der film og foredrag af og om Theodor Christensen – det er ikke mere end en måned siden jeg mødte en cubansk filminstruktør i Istanbul, som fik tårer i øjnene, da jeg nævnte den danske filmpioners navn. Hans betydning er stor for cubansk dokumentarisme og Cinemateket viser ”Ella” og inviterer til foredrag med Palle Bøgelund Petterson, som har været på ”en fascinerende research-rejse i Theodors fodspor igennnem Cuba”. Og så er der mulighed for vidunderlige (gen)syn af film af Gutiérrez Alea og legenden Santiago Alvarez og hans politiske pamfletter. Spilletider, se

www.cinemateket.dk

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

DOCSBarcelona Festival

The same philosophy as always: To build a dialogue among film, audience and director. This is how Joan Gonzàlez, DOCSBarcelona director, phrases what he wants the young festival to be, he himself being very much dedicated to the introduction of the documentary genre to a young audience. This is done through the 7-11 section of a festival that otherwise is built with sections: History, Catalan Day, Doc!Doc!Doc! (for new talents who want to enter the international doc community), Le Dernier Repas (films chosen by a film personality, this year the retiring Catalan Cinematheque director Roc Villas), Kids and Teens, X-tra, Panorama and opening/closing ceremony films.

Let me mention one film that has stayed in my mind since the opening of the festival: ”Sins of My Father” by Nicolás Entel. A story told through the eyes of Sebastián Marroquin, the son of Pablo Escobar, public enemy number 1 in Colombia, a drug dealer, who became one of the richest men in the world - in an interview with the son, he is called the most notorious and brutal drug lord in the history of Colombia. Marroquin is here in Barcelona, a mild and generous man, who has had the courage to go and ask for forgiveness to the sons of prominent politicians, who were all killed by his father. The film follows that story, the process of reconciliation, as well as it is describing the life of the father, who controlled everything and made things that goes beyond any gangsterfilm ever made. At some times during the film what is being told is totally surrealistic! Escobar was (to use the phrase from The Guardian, see link below) gunned down in 1993.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/08/pablo-escobar-son-drugs-victims

www.docsbarcelona.com

Oscar Nominations 2010 – Documentaries

What a pleasure to see that two documentaries by committed and skilled documentarians - as they have been praised on this site - both of them non-American in a very American classement, have made it to the grande finale: “Burma VJ” and “Rabbit a la Berlin”! Congratulations! Check the many notes on “Burma VJ” via “search” and read a re-post of the review of “Rabbit a la Berlin” below.

Documentary (Feature)

“Burma VJ” Anders Østergaard and Lise Lense-Møller

“The Cove” Nominees to be determined

“Food, Inc.” Robert Kenner and Elise Pearlstein

“The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith

“Which Way Home” Rebecca Cammisa

Documentary (Short Subject)

“China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province” Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill

“The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner” Daniel Junge and Henry Ansbacher

“The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant” Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert

“Music by Prudence” Roger Ross Williams and Elinor Burkett

“Rabbit à la Berlin” Bartek Konopka and Anna Wydra

 http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/82/nominees.html

Bartek Konopka: Rabbit a la Berlin

Yes, this is the way to make a different film for the celebration of the 20 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Playing masterly with the film language, wanting to surprise us. To tell us the same story but in a completely new way. With music that associates a fairy tale with rabbits in the leading roles. But also as an informative commentary-born popular science film about the city lives of a threatened species. With interviews of course. Tongue-in-cheek, sometimes visually from the point of view of the rabbits, sometimes from the anonymous spectator perspective with a look at what happens and happened to the rabbits of Berlin. It is balanced, has its own satirical tone – and beauty – and brutality when you cut together an innocent rabbit and a human body being carried away by a person in uniform. It plays perfectly with the rules of the documentary subgenres: history doc, nature doc, information doc, fairy tale doc... if that did not exist, it has been invented now!

Classical montage principles have been used. Cut from a rabbit to the people putting up the Wall. With an understated suprised commentary: they behave strange these people, as was this the thought of the rabbit. But it was to protect them, the inhabitants, that the Wall was put up. And the rabbits understood this and obeyed and were not shot at as long as they did not try to run away to the other side... Rabbitland, as the film commentary (brilliant by the way, what a fine text, a great example of subtlety) calls it, however, gets more and more into the mood of passivity and apathy. Until the day when everything changed and everyone, including the rabbits, got their freedom, were no longer locked behind walls and discovered that there were people without uniforms. But freedom? Two older people standing at the broken wall staring into a new world... is this for us, do we dare enter?

Poland, Germany, 40 & 50 mins.

http://www.deckert-distribution.com/news/new_films.htm

Vurdering:

Short Film Studies – Call for Papers

Short film expert par exellence Richard Raskin, Associate Professor at the Information and Media Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark has asked us to post the following, which we do with great pleasure:

“I have been asked to start a new journal – SHORT FILM STUDIES – that will be published in the UK by Intellect Books. Could you possibly help circulate the call for papers attached here? I am hoping to include articles written by people working with short films in a variety of frameworks – at funding organizations, national film institutes, regional film centers, film festivals, etc. - in other words, not just by academics.”

More about the new journal: Short Film Studies is a new peer-reviewed journal designed to stimulate ongoing research on individual short films as a basis for a better understanding of the art form as a whole. In each issue, two or three short films will be selected for comprehensive study, with articles illuminating each film from a variety of perspectives. Occasionally an outstanding commercial or PSA will also be included… and go to the site below to know where to send your texts!

Photo: Chris Marker: La Jetée (1962)

http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=191/view,page=0/

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

Fipa

Fipa means Festival International des Programmes Audiovisuels and has been going on in Biarritz for 23 years. It is a festival for television orientated programmes, including creative documentaries, reportages & current affairs, music and performing arts programmes, short films, panoramas. The best of the best new is not here, a producer told me because that would mean that you ”burn other possibilities” = other festivals of more importance, festivals that do want national or international premieres. But films like ”Videocracy” by Erik Gandini and a new film by the Hungarian master Peter Forgacs (”Hunky Blues”) have found their ways to the casinos where most of the film screenings take place in classy surroundings.

I have been in Biarritz for many years watching the festival and the market from a distance as I have been working for the Archidoc programme (see below) and its pitching session. And I have many critical remarks to make. First of all the festival programme is published quite late, the publicity is lousy. Secondly is it a huge exaggeration to call Fipa an international event. The television people from the Nordic countries and UK and Holland and Belgium have long ago dropped Fipa, simply because the market is too weak or because they sense that this is a national gathering! From the numbers of people from arte and France Télévisions that I have seen during the years I can only agree with them. Not a place to do business but a place to watch programmes and eat oysters. And shake your head after numerous meetings with French bureaucracy.  

Photo from Forgacs film: Péter Forgács created a documentary exploring the fate of hundred thousands of Hungarian men and women who arrived to the United States between 1890 and 1921. To tell their sagas the director weaved this grand epic from the early American cinema, found footage, photographs and interviews. The film reveals the difficult moments of arrival, integration and assimilation, which eventually fed the happiness of the later generations and their fulfilment of the American dream.

http://www.fipa.tm.fr/en/

Archidoc at Fipa

10 projects were presented at the third and final session of the EU MEDIA Training Programme, Archidoc, initiated and run by the French film school la fémis. With a constantly changing, rather dramatic weather outside the Casino Bellevue in Biarritz the filmmakers from Spain, France, Romania, Russia, Poland, Latvia and Italy were getting ready to pitch their archive based documentary projects to a panel of experienced producers and some broadcasters from Belgium, Greece, France, Switzerland, Germany.

They did a good job, their trailers were of high quality due to the supervision provided by Internationally acclaimed editor Erez Laufer and his team, who had worked with the filmmakers at two previous sessions in Paris and in Jihlava in Czech Republic.

The reactions from the panelists were in general of the same depressing nature when it came to talking about the personal creative story and its chances to get a place on public television: ”We like what we saw and heard but we do not have slots for that”. Whereas more obvious themes like a film on designer Paco Rabanne and on ”sex in the USSR” seemed to fit into modern tv.... the more important it is to keep the public film funding in good shape around Europe.

http://www.lafemis.fr/index.php?rub=4&srub=12&ssrub=44

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 – Striptease

Eric Cardot is in Belgrade because of his co-direction of ”Kill the Referee”. At a session with young filmmakers from Serbia, he revealed how the film came about. It was the football association UEFA, that wanted the film and addressed the producers of the – in Belgium and France – very well known tv series Striptease. UEFA wanted human stories to be conveyed to the audience, and not necessarily a defense for the profession of being a referee.

To illustrate to the seminar participants what is Striptease, Cardot showed a 13 minute long Striptease episode about the production of kosher wine, amazingly funny because of the characters and atmosphere of presence. For the series – Cardot has made 10 of them – 800 episodes have been made starting at primetime at the RTBF, Belgian television, and developed by Marco Lamensch and Jean Libon. The series is now run by French television since 1992, in Belgium it stopped in 2002. The broadcast often ends up with scandals for the involved as Cardot himself explained and showed with a clip from a four hour long series called ”Police et Polissons”. A policeman attacks a youngster in his office, verbally and physically in a scene that resulted in the sacking of the policeman after its broadcast. Very much direct cinema style!

Striptease is out on dvd in boxes published by the distributor MK2.

http://television.telerama.fr/television/27354-rencontre_avec_marco_lamensch_et_jean_libon_les_createurs_de_strip_tease.php

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

Kalandia - a Checkpoint Story

This is one of those films that stays in your mind. Not because it is a high-quality visual experience, not at all, almost on the contrary, but because here is a filmmaker, who has committed herself to act by doing what she finds important: documenting a daily expression of intolerance and humiliation of human beings in a conflict zone. As it takes place on the road between Ramallah and East Jerusalem.

For six years the Israeli filmmaker Neta Efroney went to the Kalandia checkpoint on the West Bank, stood there, observed what happened, and created a relationship to some of the Palestinians who had to pass the checkpoint daily to go to work or to school. Children being taken through mud, looking at soldiers with machine guns and seeing their parents being searched or shouted at. What wounds will these children have when they grow up? They are taken through these kind of turning gates that stops and leaves you stuck for a moment until it is your turn to continue your journey to do the work in Jerusalem in the country Israel, where many of them they have a citizenship.

What an achievement of the filmmaker to use this method! She continues from the very first moment till the end where the wall is built that separates Palestine and Israel. (The wall that the Israelis call "the security wall"!). She talks to the people from behind her camera, also to an older soldier who claims that his young colleagues are too eager to be controllers and have forgotten that the people who want to pass are human beings, who are not necessarily terrorists. The film is never sentimental, it documents, by using the mere dates of filming as chapters in a diary format that simply by adding one date after the other makes the viewer think. The director is an active member of ”Machsom Watch” (Checkpoint Watch) that is a non-profit association of Israeli women, who observe, document and publicize what happens close to home. ”You don’t let us live”, says a man to the camera carried by the Israeli filmmaker.

How long is this inhumanity and humiliation going to last...

Israel, 2009, 60 mins.

jmtreves@012.net.il

netaef@netvision.net.il

Vurdering:

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

Zelig

… does not only refer to the fictional documentary, mockumentary, of Woody Allen, but is also the name of the film school in Bolzano in the Alto Adige region of North Italy. Documentary films are being taught and made here in an atmosphere of warmth and competence. I can say so about the school and its permanent staff having been one of the priviliged regular teachers there since 2007. Diploma films are now in production from the hands and eyes of the students, who have been there for almost three years and who this summer will leave the protected environment of the film school to enter the audiovisual jungle. With skills, knowledge and hopefully a hunger to tell stories. (Several of the students have been writing on this site, write zelig under "search").

A new three year cycle 2010-2013 lies ahead and the deadline for application is February 1^st. This is a quote from the site where YOU, upcoming documentarian can find more info:

“No more than 30 candidates will be admitted to the 2010-2013 cycle. Past experience has shown that a large number of applicants will be competing for these slots. Therefore the admissions process has been divided into two phases. 
The tri-lingual exam commission will select up to 60 candidates from all the applicants, and invite them to Bolzano for a five-day battery of admissions exams. Recommended age of applicants: 20-30 years.”

http://www.zeligfilm.it/

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

Shalva Shengeli: Unknown Soldiers

Recruit training in Georgia. From Recruit Gurchiani to Private Gurchiani. A symphathetic  young man from Upper Abkhazia is the main character in this documentary from Georgia. He is followed through some months in 2008 that leads up to the Russian-Georgian war in August the same year, in the Tskhinvali region. 186 Georgian soldiers died and 58 were injured according to the film. (The much higher civilian casualties on both sides are still not officially recognized, this is not in the film). And although the film ends with images from the graves of the fallen soldiers, thus the title, it has a different aim:

To show the tough recruit training, to let the soldier Gurchiani and a couple of sergeants talk about what they do, how it feels, and why they do it. There is an understandable patriotic atmosphere but although the soldiers-to-be have T-shirts with ”army” written on the front, the training can not compete with the one, we have seen in numerous documentaries of American origin, Frederick Wiseman’s ”Basic Training” to mention one.

It is clear that the director wants us to have good feelings about what we see, and for Gurchiani, and we do have, also softened by funny sequences about the young boys going on a leave for the first time after two months, sending hopeful gazes in the direction of young females. Brilliant observational camera work. Propaganda, yes, but ok for me.

Georgia, 61 mins., 2009

gemini@gemini.ge

Vurdering:

Georgy Parajanov: I died in my Childhood

This is the second impressive documentary that I have seen ABOUT Sergei Parajanov (1924-1990) (the first one by Vartanov is previously written about on this site), this time made by his nephew, who gave the film to me when we met in Istanbul. It is a generous introduction to the world of the director about whom, Andrei Tarkovsky said: Always with huge gratitude and pleasure I remember the films of S.P., which I love very much. His way of thinking, his paradoxical poetical ability to love the beauty and ability to be free within his own vision...

The film includes words from his letters, fragments from his last work ”Confession” and from the films ”Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors”, ”The Color of Pomegranates”, ”Surami Fortress Legend”, ”Ashik Kerib” and ”Arabesques about Pirosmani”. They are put together as a story told by the director himself about his life and work, including amazing footage of his collages and assemblages and small sculptures made in prison and while he was forbidden to work as a film director by the Soviet authorities.

Dvd’s of the Parajanov films are on sale from numerous internet sources, if you come to Yerevan, visit his museum, and on the site below much more is to be found on the master.

Russia, 2004, 52 mins.

www.parajanov.com

Dhondup Wangchen

Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen has been sentenced to six yearsʼ imprisonment. This is a press release from the site “Leaving Fear Behind” where clips from the film of the same title is to be found.

Zurich, 6. January 2010. Dhondup Wangchen, the Tibetan filmmaker who is currently in Chinese detention, has been sentenced to six years' imprisonment by the provincial court in Xining (capital of Qinghai province). His arrest in March 2008 came shortly after completion of filming for his documentary film «Leaving Fear Behind» in which Tibetans spoke out about their lives in Tibet.

The sentencing took place on 28 December 2009 but his relatives in Xining were neither informed about the trial nor the verdict. According to reliable information, Dhondup Wangchen will appeal the sentence but the appeal period will expire on Thursday, 7 January 2010. Furthermore, Dhondup Wangchen has no access to independent legal assistance. The lawyer originally hired by his family was barred from representing him by the Chinese government. His wife Lhamo Tso, who is together with her children on pilgrimage in Bodh Gaya/India, said today: «I appeal to the court in Xining to allow my husband to have a legal representative of his own choosing. My children and I feel desperate about the prospect of not being able to see him for so many years. We call on the Chinese authorities to show humanity by releasing him. My husband is not a criminal, he just tried to

Monique Mbeka Phoba: Between Cup and Elections

In two days the big football event Africa Cup of Nations 2010 will kick off. DR Congo did not qualify even if they were close to get there and do what they did in 1968, when they won the tournament, passing on to the World Cup 1974 in Germany as the first African team. Some of us, who are old enough, vaguely remember ”The Leopards”, the nick-name of the squad, who played 3 matches and lost them all, but displayed great technical skills and made a lot of headlines in the newspapers. Many of the players ended up playing in Europe, as today.

What happened to the players after their return to Zaire and their football enthusiastic president Mobuto? This is the quest of the two young student filmmakers in this film that is not at all a football nostalgic story, but rather a social one about players, who were treated like kings and then almost forgotten. A Rise and Fall narration.The two young filmmakers, male and female, were not born, when the Leopards performed and their lack of knowledge combined with a curiosity (and for the beautiful young girl a constant change of dresses) gives the film a fine, light tone of naïvity. They ask the surviving players, what happened to them, what they remember, if they felt badly treated by the leaders of the country. How the matches were ”organised”. Clips (not many, however) from the matches are shown and the title reference