Mikael Opstrup: The Uncertainty

Subitled: «A book about Developing Character driven Documentary»

”I am painfully aware that this book is risky business. I am trying to rationalize the irrational, to break down the bumpy documentary film process into conscious decisions and structures, yes even into budgets and financing plans. I plead guilty and ask for forgiveness.”

Words from Mikael Opstrup in the beginning of his book. A yes to forgiving Mikael. I have known him for at least 20 years and been working with him as a tutor and moderator in numerous documentary events – in Buenos Aires, in Damascus, in Ramallah and every year in Riga at the Baltic Sea Docs. I have a lot of respect for his skills and now that respect also includes that he has taken time and energy to write a book. You are more than forgiven Mikael having done this fine work that hopefully will find many readers, who like you and I love documentaries. Total recommendation from my side.

No pictures, no references to films, with texts divided into chapters and to be honest it is a demanding read with points I don’t agree with and/or don’t understand, but it does not matter, as it is well written and inspiring. You get your brain in action! 

As you I am addicted to a genre that has many doors to enter, one of them being the Character driven Documentary, a sub-genre, an ”art beyond control” as you put it contrary to ”the documentaries where you use interviews, archive, voice over, animation etc. (which) are to a certain extent under your artistic control.” That sub-genre is the focus.

The book is full of definitions based on reflections. Mikael raises questions and tells the reader what he means with „character”, with “driven”, with “script” followed by a super-interesting chapter in the book called “the documentary potential”. Mikael asks himself and the reader if a text written for the director him- or herself, or the film team could be called so, “the documentary potential” and reflects on that. I buy that, much better than script. 

That is for me the main quality of the book, the reflections conveyed in the essayistic style that Mikael has chosen, i.e. based on the many personal experiences that he has had during the decades, he has been in the documentary world.

And conveyed with the humour that I know you have Mikael, hope the English language catches the many fine, sometimes non-pretentious subtle sentences that call for a smile in a serious context. I knew that side of you but not the more – in a good sense – sentimental, where you write about Life and the search for Happiness, your closeness to your family that now also includes you as a grandfather! Like in the best documentaries you include yourself in the existential matters that we deal with every day. Great!

Questions raised and discussed come back in chapters called “the story”, “directing », « subtext”, “filming”, “editing”, “looking for moments”… At the end of the book Mikael turns to a more informative style writing about pitching and trailers and what you can expect at a Forum like the one here at IDFA… to end with a chapter “What’s football got to do with it?” 

“I am fascinated by football and Character driven Documentary for the same reason: it oozes of real-life drama. We do our best to control it, but we cannot. For the same reasons that we cannot control our own lives.”

We have watched many football games together and right your are, the Uncertainty is always there.

Mikael, good luck with the book and thanks for the huge effort. A gift to the Forum delegates and the rest of us, film lovers.

Denmark, Published by Mikael Opstrup, 1st edition 1000 copies, 48 pages.

Mikael says:

BUY THE BOOK
Write me for a copy: mikaelopstrup@outlook dk

Mogens Brejnholm Nielsen: Faktatjek

Alle var dette mærkelige år, et århundredes sidste, efterhånden enige om, at Randers ikke mere var, hvad byen havde været. Sådan skrev jeg 2004 til Mette Lundens og min bog Randersbiografi. Og jeg selv begyndte dengang tilmed at spekulere på, om byen var en by stadigvæk. Med Calvino i hånden kunne jeg – i det mindste over for mig selv – rejse berettiget tvivl om den by, som i dag hedder Randers, nu også er den samme, som eksisterede tidligere under det navn. Som Calvinos Maurilio kunne den have afløst en anden med det samme navn på dette samme sted, uden der var forbindelse mellem dem. Uden der nogensinde havde været forbindelse.

 MORGENMØDER

Og når Jyllands Posten en søndag tidligt i dette år 1999 kunne skrive ”God¬morgen Randers”, og så bare lade teksten handle om nogle møder, man havde tidligt på dagen mellem de øverste chefer i den kommunale administration, så vidste jeg, men accepterede ikke, at den ironiske hilsen også gjaldt mig. Jeg boede i Randers, holdt af at bo der, ville blive ved med det, men var altså i tvivl om, hvad det var for en realitet, ordet dækkede. Var jeg i en eller anden forstand omsluttet af begrebet Randers og således ansvarlig for, hvad disse mænd talte om og besluttede? Naturligvis ikke, skrev jeg til mig selv den morgen. ”Randers” var her en journalistisk forkortelse…

 BYENS ANSIGT

Som ordet også var det hos Randers Amtsavis’ journalist Jørgen Bollerup Hansen, når han den 14. februar 1999 skrev om Randers’ image, interviewede borgmesteren om hans by, som var det stadigvæk denne overskuelige, middelalderlige købstad, de talte om, og i en spalte efter artiklen listede en række punkter op: Cerberus’ handlinger, det kommunale personalekontors handlinger, Lillebjørnbestyrelsens handlinger, Brusgårdbestyrelsens handlinger, Rytterskoleledelsens handlinger, Randers Jazzfonds handlinger, Jyllands Postens hanlinger med sine artikler om Randers Kommunes ledelse og endelig en bestemt handling på Randers Kunstmuseum. Ja, der var meget de dage at føle sig ansvarlig for. Alt dette skadede Randers’ image stod der. Strukturen Randers klart opfattet som et stort kommercielt firma bærende dette navn, hvor formanden for bestyrelsen netop var blevet interviewet.

 FOTOBOG

Jeg havde næsten glemt disse møder om morgenen mellem de øverste chefer på Laksetorvet og fuldstædig fortrængt de meget voldsomme begivenheder under et ekstraordinært byrådsmøde den 10. marts 1999.

 Men så kom forleden dag Mogens Brejnholm Nielsens smukke fotobog, Faktatjek, 48 fornemt tykke sider, liggende A3 format, en lille suite sort/hvide helsides fotografier i en uklippet montage direkte fra negativstriben og en større suite fotografier i farve og som alle er omhyggeligt kontrollerede snapshots.

Mogens Brejnholm Nielsen skriver i sit forord om sin holdning til sine fotografiers objekt Randers: "Jeg holder af min by, og har hjemve så snart jeg forlader den. Har i det meste af mit voksenliv fulgt med i samfunddsdebatten og via fotografiet kommet i kontakt med mange forskellige miljøer og mennesker. min yngste datter, der bor i Århus, har er indkøbsnet, hvorpå der der står: "Alt, hvad de siger om Randers, passer"..."  

Letitia Popa: What is documentary

This essay is written by Romanian film student Letitia Popa. It follows essays written by students from Zelig Film School in Bolzano according to the same exercise described below:

What is a documentary? A few weeks ago, me and my colleagues from the Documentary Department at UNATC Bucharest, participated in a workshop with Tue Steen Müller. We had interesting discussions on what it means to make documentaries and what future prospects we might have, after graduation. He proposed a very interesting exercise; to describe what a documentary is, in only three, firsthand words. Afterwards, I was asked to write an essay reflecting on what it means for me to make documentaries, reflecting on these words. I found it very interesting that after taking a look at what we came up with, I could place these words together in 5 different piles. 

Grand Hjemmebio / Gensyn

GRAND HJEMMEBIO

Kim Foss meddelte for noget tid siden at biografen han leder, Grand Teatret i København ”udvider paletten og nu også tilbyder ’udbringning’ af film til din egen skærm.

På Grand Hjemmebio kan du fange nogle af de gode titler, du ikke nåede at se i biografen. Eller gense de bedste. Udbuddet er – som i biografen – nøje udvalgt efter, hvad vi synes, er det absolut bedste på filmfronten.

Vi tilbyder adgang til et filmkatalog med vokseværk. Vi vil løbende føje nye og spændende film til siden – med ambitionen om at blive dit foretrukne tilflugtssted, når du skal belønne dig selv med en filmoplevelse ud over det sædvanlige.

Der er flydt meget vand i åen siden Grand Teatret åbnede anden juledag 1913. Med over 100 års erfaring med kvalitetsfilm mener vi at ligge inde med nok viden og filmkærlighed til også at favne filmkigningen derhjemme.

Så derfor: Stort velkommen til Grand Hjemmebio! ”, slutter Kim Foss sin indbydelse.

EKSKLUSIVE TITLER

Disse dage Danmarkspremiere på nye eksklusive titler, stort bagkatalog af ældre udvalgte titler som nogle af os ikke fik ser i Grand Teatret dengang kan nu nås i Grand Hjemmebio:

https://www.grandhjemmebio.dk/ 

GENSYN

fælles essay af Sara Thelle, Tue Steen Müller og Allan Berg Nielsen

  Sydjysk landskab med stående kvinde og siddende mand...

7. 11. 2019: Med ét i filmens lange dybt tilfredsstillende forløb af forunderlige scener, diskrete flytninger og tankesamlende vignetter står der uventet Onkel på lærredet! Og så kommer slutteksterne, de vigtigste først i skilte og derefter alle de andre rullende. Jeg bliver siddende i stolen. Forbløffet. Er det allerede forbi? Er hun gået? Denne vidunderlige fortælling, denne dejlige kvinde.

I instruktørens forrige film og fortælling Hundeliv (2016) havde både de to piger og den sårede soldat i filmen og jeg i biografen fæstnet os særligt ved kassedamen i supermarkedet. Hun var bare så sød, og både i sin rolle og i virkeligheden, så ægte livligt venligt snakkende med kunderne hun jo kendte. Her var det gode menneske.

Nu er hun så landmand, sød og ægte. Men nu fåmælt som onklen. Hun er forældreløs forstår jeg, han er alene og hendes nærmeste. Hun har  gennem skoletiden boet hos ham på hans gård med køer og græsmarker og kornmarker, og nu som ung kvinde passer hun hans hus og driver hans landbrug sammen med ham. Begge er de tavse i dagenes arbejde og i aftenernes sagte tv-lyd fra det lille apparat oppe på skabet og aviser i stak på stolen: han. Og bøjet i den tykke krydsordsbog: hun. Han let studs, hun let indadvendt begge i en ægte jysk tavshed. Tryg og smuk. Og skildret af Frelle Petersen med kompetent indsigt…

… et drama af dage og nætter, af årstidernes gang (Flaherty / Grierson)

10.11.2019: Filmen vil ikke slippe mig, jeg noterer at den tegner døgnets tid, årets tid, kredsløbets tid med dagsrytmevignetter med solnedgange som i Hundeliv. Det er helt tydeligt. Mindre tydeligt tegnet, men ikke mindre vigtig, er den lineære tid, fortællelinjen, som manuskriptet håndfast, men personinstruktionen diskret, næsten umærkeligt tegner, udviklingen hos de medvirkende, især hos den unge kvinde som lader sig kalde Kris, som klipningen selvfølgeligt sikkert fuldfører i en dramatisk kurve af overvejelser og afprøvninger filmen igennem tilbage til den ufravigelige oprindelige situation. Og Frelle Petersen lader med hende kredsløbets tid vinde over den lineære tid, alt kommer igen, intet forsvinder, det bliver ikke væk, det er stadigvvæk et vækkeur på natbordet i Kris’ værelse som sætter dagene i gang, Kris ejer endnu ikke en mobiltelefon. Til side med dynen, blå arbejdsbukser og hvid bh på, hun ruller gardinet op ser ud i den tidlige morgen. Så arbejdsdagens storternede skjorte.

 Efter lang tid kommer musikken og streger ind og streger under. Det er høst og det er sensommer. Og som i alle rutiner er jeg bundet i årets stadig gentagne tid. Og i årenes, Kris har blidt overtaget onklens plads i førerhuset, hun ser hans kræfter svigte, glad kører hun videre, det er høstarbejdets tid.

Blikket over det storladne landskab i lavt aftenlys afslutter dagene, Kris’ blik forstår jeg...

Amy Berg: Janis: Little Girl Blue 2015 / Janis: Little Girl Blue (grandhjemmebio.dk)

...Just as with Scorsese’s Dylan portrait No Direction Home, Amy Berg owes some of Janis’ finest moments to D. A. Pennebaker. Not only with the strong scenes from his legendary concert film Monterey Pop (1968, filmed by Pennebaker, Leacock and Maysles, probably the most musical trio in film history), the film that sparked off Joplin’s route to stardom... 

  Nearly two hours in company of Janis Joplin, what’s not to like! I was so ready to just lean back and enjoy and I was… disappointed.

 Whoa, slow down, hold your horses! I’m being bombarded with talking heads at a speed so I can’t follow. Too fast a pace when all I want to do is to take my time, hear the music, feel the music and the person I’m about to discover.

 I’m disappointed because I’m sitting in the dark theatre all alert and ready to take in impressions, emotions, sound, images and Music and I’m not getting the cinematic experience I thought I would. And I’m annoyed because I think a big part of my disappointment is a question of the editing. I don’t mind a conventional portrait film, I don’t mind seeing a TV-documentary in a theatre, but I do mind the rushing.

 All the information, all the anecdotes and the archive footage lose sense if I don’t get the time it takes to “meet” the performer and her music. If there is not a moment where I hear something I haven’t heard before, suddenly discover the lyrics of a well-known song or just get to linger on a live performance…

 Having said that, award-winning American filmmaker Amy Berg (the Oscar-nominated Deliver Us from Evil, 2006, about child molestation within the Catholic Church) has made an impressively well-documented portrait of Janis Joplin. It has been a long-term project initiated by the Joplin estate who approached the director back in 2007 and behind the film lays a huge amount of work with archive research, funding and clearing rights.

 Part of Berg’s take on telling the story is a voice-over (the voice of another southern singer/musician Chan Marshall, known as Cat Power) reading Janis’ letters to her family and lovers. Dear family, she wrote continuously throughout the years, giving news to the Texan middle-class nuclear family she came from (the family letters was originally used by Joplins sister Laura in her book Love, Janis from 1992, later turned into a theatre play and a Broadway show). Joplins two younger siblings (Laura and Michael Joplin who manage their sisters estate), old friends, band mates and fellow musicians are looking back. The portrait seems less depressive and dramatic than I thought it would be, and I like that. Lots of life, fun, love and friendships, the story of a strong young woman who at 17, to her own big surprise, discovers she can sing and from then on the rise to fame, but also the beginning of a heroin and alcohol addiction that ends up causing her sudden death.

 Just as with Scorsese’s Dylan portrait No Direction Home, Berg owes some of Janis’ finest moments to D. A. Pennebaker. Not only with the strong scenes from his legendary concert film Monterey Pop (1968, filmed by Pennebaker, Leacock and Maysles, probably the most musical trio in film history), the film that sparked off Joplin’s route to stardom (Pennebaker is there himself to reveal how close Joplin was to not be in his movie!), but also with his footage of Joplin and the band Big Brother and the Holding Company in the recording studio and at concerts (material that Pennebaker and Hegedus have used in their short Joplin-film Comin’ Home from 1991, I now find out from the credits). The recently released Festival Express (2003) by Frank Cvitanovich and Bob Smeaton, documenting the 1970 tour by train through Canada gathering Joplin, Grateful Dead and The Band, is another invaluable source.

 The press material states that no one had ever explored Janis Joplin’s story on film. A quick search and I discover that Howard Alk (The Black Panther film The Murder of Fred Hampton, 1971, and editor on Dylan’s Renaldo and Clara) made the portraitJanis: The Way She was in 1974. I have to see that! I assume that old time conflicts between the estate and Alk must be the reason that the film is not quoted even though important and mostly unique scenes from it are reused in Berg’s portrait. I have promptly ordered the Howard Alk DVD, maybe a second Janis Joplin portrait film review will be coming up soon…

 I found Janis: Little Girl Blue to be out of rhythm, which is no good when we’re talking about Joplin. But please do go see for yourself, you might not agree with me…

Bridgend 2015 / Bridgend (grandhjemmebio.dk)

Vi var i biografen og så Jeppe Røndes ”Bridgend” - redaktørerne af dette site, Allan Berg og Tue Steen Müller ledsaget af sidstnævntes kone Ellen Fonnesbech-Sandberg. Hjemme i kolonihaven talte vi om filmen i timevis, læste Kim Skottes Politiken-anmeldelse og Ralf Christensens fra Information, begge meget rosende. Men noget mangler i deres vurderinger, blev vi enige om. Det kommer her fra Allan Berg:

 ”Jeg drukner i disse voldsomme store drenges uartikulerede støj, men jeg rammes til gengæld præcist af den unge kvindes gennemspillede bevægelse fra distant nysgerrighed over undrende analyse til beslutsom involvering. Jeg ser uundgåeligt, at den unge kvinde er i slægt med den unge kvinde i von Triers ”Breaking the Waves” og med den unge kvinde i hans ”Dancer in the Dark”, i slægt med Tarkovskijs unge kvinder i ”Solaris” og i ”Andrej Rubljov”. Disse kvinder griber alle ind i tilværelsen og trodser den samfundsbestemte skæbne ved at ofre sig selv. Filmene bliver således for mig elegier over denne kvindelige lidelse og offertemaet i Jeppe Røndes film samler sig om denne ene skuespiller, som også er den eneste, der skildres som helt menneske, som når hun låner sin elskede af sit liv og han styrket af dette forlader sin éndimensionelle rolle (i hans tilfælde som fardomineret kordreng), den afgrænsede rolle han og alle andre personer omhyggeligt er tildelt i Røndes overdådigt udstyrede og strengt stiliserede marionetspil...

Den unge kvinde bryder imidlertid ud af dette snoresystem, bryder alle regler og gennemfører suverænt sin rolle i det drama om en frihedskamp, som hedder kvinden og mændene, river sin mand ud af flokken, han er blevet udvalgt fordi han har sunget for hende, han er kunstner og således ægte og sanddru, og som Tarkovskijs nøgne kvinde fra det frie samfund i skoven forfulgt af massakrerende krigere går hun ud i vandet beslutsom, rank og sejrende som en Paionios’ Nike, jeg ser rygvendt. Hun vil hellere tage sit liv end underkaste sig og overgive sig til voldtægten. Hendes elskede og resten af den unge menighed følger hende. ’Hun er stærkere end alle os andre’, havde de sagt om hende.”

I Walk, 2019 / I Walk (grandhjemmebio.dk) 

Når det gælder Jørgen Leth, 2019 er det altid, og i høj grad i denne meget store og aldeles vigtige film, umuligt at skille manden fra værket. Og jeg, som i min ungdom var opdraget i det autonome værks ånd, jeg som dog trods dette har læst biografier og selvbiografier med begejstring, men vist som underholdning, ikke som nøgler til værkerne, jeg anbringer nu tryg I Walk på hylden med verdenslitteratur, de uomgængelige film og bøger: Godards framinger (Asger Leths bemærkning et sted), Herzogs vilde bjergbestigning (synopsens association et sted), Rilkes elegier og Inger Christensens sonetter (mine private tanker undervejs i mit møde med Jørgen Leths nye storværk.

Kære Jørgen, hele tiden mens jeg ser din film og hører din ustandselige, smukke og kloge stemme tænker jeg på Rembrandts tror jeg nok sene selvportrætter, hensynsløst fortvivlede, og skridt for skridt dybere erkendende det som ikke bliver væk, dette vigtige, du skriver til sidst i din seneste bog:

Det bliver ikke væk jeg har skrevet det ned det bliver / ikke væk Jeg skriver det ned så det er der / Så står det der Det behøver ikke være en blank side / Det forsvinder hele tiden / Det skal bare puttes på plads / Det må ikke blive væk / Og det er vigtigt at huske / Tankerne er gode men de forsvinder / De skal indfanges under glas, ligesom insekter / Pilles fra hinanden ligesom insekter

Nej, Jørgen. Du har ret, det bliver ikke væk, for det ligger længere fremme og venter. Din digterkollega Lea Marie Løppenthin kommer dig nemlig til undsætning: "Det var først for nylig, at jeg undersøgte etymologien for det korte, skrappe ord ”væk”: Fra middelaldertysk wech, afledt af weg ’vej’, jævnfør norrønt á veg ’på vej, bort, væk’ beslægtet med vej.

Det lykkelige ved opdagelsen sidder stadig i mig – / Det der er væk, er altså bare nede ad vejen. / Det, der er væk, er bare et andet sted end her."

Løft højre fod og tag med din vilje et skridt frem og løft venstre fod og tag med vilje et skridt frem. Du Går…

 NOTER

 JANIS

 Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015, 103 min.) Production: Disarming Films and Jigsaw Productions. Danish distribution: Camera Film in collaboration with CPH:DOX Premiering in Danish theatres all over the country October 22nd. 2015. DR2 DOKUMANIA I MORGEN AFTEN tirsdag 18. oktober 20.45 og efterfølgende på DR TV. Filmkommentaren.dk review: 4/6 pens.

 Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYizdG42THg

BRIDGEND

Danmark 2015, 99 min.

 Still: Hannah Murray som den unge kvinde

 SYNOPSIS

 A Bridgend Story (working title) is a film about a teenage girl, SARA, who arrives with her father to a small village in the welsh valleys of Bridgend County that is haunted by suicides amongst its young inhabitants. She falls dangerously in love with one of the youngsters while her dad as the new town policeman tries to solve the mystery. The film is based on true events. (IMDb)

 Kim Skottes anmeldelse: politiken.dk/filmanmeldelser

 Ralf Christensens anmeldelse: http://www.information.dk/537714 

Uldis Cekulis - Conversation

Feature length conversation with Latvian producer and cameraman Uldis Cekulis. It took place during the Baltic Sea Docs 2020 earlier this month. Clips and words about Uldis Brauns, “Bridges of Time” and “235.000.000”, about filming in Georgia, drinking chacha, the collaboration with Laila Pakalnina, about international networking, based on friendships, international coproductions, funding, pitching, Laibach and North Korea, Rossellini, Audrius Kemezys, “every film is like a child, you need to care”. 50% talk, 50% clips. Thanks to Baltic Sea Docs and Zane Balcus for letting me share this – and to Uldis Cekulis.

Photo: Gints Lvuskans

Here is the link: https://vimeo.com/463030546/dc2fa470a4

Dealing with the Past

...Subtitle: Are there Good People in Terrible Times?

In these unprecedented times, when it seems that the world we used to know will not exist in the future, truth-seeking and fact-checking are more important than ever. But the anxieties of the world we have left behind will trickle into the new order and be triggered again. If we have learnt anything over the past months, I dare say it is that our personal lives can be turned upside-down in a matter of moments. 

The DEALING WITH THE PAST programme has had a clear mission since its start: to conduct honest dialogue about our region’s recent past as a prerequisite to resolving the problems that stem from the Yugoslav Wars, which still strain our societies. Over the last five years, we have shared many gut-wrenching but inspiring stories from around the world. The lives of the protagonists of these stories have been radically altered, while our audiences have at times been rendered speechless or, perhaps more often, hungry for more information. Viewed through the lens of the current pandemic, these topics – the uncovering of personal and national traumas and the examination of reconciliation processes – might seem of secondary importance but in the long run they are essential for healthy and prosperous democratic societies...

Read on...

The Digital life of the Documentary Industry

Zane Balcus wrote this essay:

New features of something to come were felt in February during Berlinale. Then only a few people were seen on the streets in face masks, but hand disinfectants were regularly provided in the toilets of the European Film Market (and in sufficient amounts for the huge crowds of attendees). In Prague at the beginning of March, the “new reality” arrived in full force during the week of the East Doc Platform (EDP) and One World Film Festival. The festival was suspended due to the ban to gatherings over 100 people. It was painful for those filmmakers who learned only after arriving in the Czech Republic that their film would not be shown in the cinema (like it was for the team of The Earth is Blue as an Orange, who had had so successful start in Sundance, bookings to almost all spring festivals this year (and I’m sure beyond it), which have now moved online). 

Dafilms stepped in and the festival immediately switched from physical space 

Zelig: Essays on What is a Documentary/ 3

In November I was at the Zelig Film School in Bolzano to meet the new students. I organised a small game: Which three words come to your mind, when I say DOCUMENTARY.

We put the words on the whiteboard: Freedom Willing Choice Poetic Detail Glimmer Accidential Case Patience Strings Impact Storytelling Memorable Curiosity Connection Testimony Creative Chance Vessel Sensibility Instinct Relationship Perspective Feel Aesthetic Subjective Respectful Visual Empathy Recognition Heritage Job Mediation Responsibility Game Trade Cheating Time Place POV Unpretentious Free Personal Quest Passion Opinion Teamwork Observing Informing Meaning Intense Identity Summerbreeze Evidence Pursuit Intuition Honest Pure Humanity Thoughtprovoking Contact Problems Forgotten Improvisation Discovery Growth Research Portrait Listening Memory Cinema Art Microcosmos Serendipity Nuance Undermine Exposure Life Love Lagrein.

And three students agreed to write a small essay inspired by the words and our discussions during this first week of their three year stay at the school: Lucija Ilijić wrote in English, Kaspar Panizza in German and Matilde Ramini in Italian.

Here comes the essay of Matilde Ramini:

Zelig: Essays on What is a Documentary/ 2

In November I was at the Zelig Film School in Bolzano to meet the new students. I organised a small game: Which three words come to your mind, when I say DOCUMENTARY.

We put the words on the whiteboard: Freedom Willing Choice Poetic Detail Glimmer Accidential Case Patience Strings Impact Storytelling Memorable Curiosity Connection Testimony Creative Chance Vessel Sensibility Instinct Relationship Perspective Feel Aesthetic Subjective Respectful Visual Empathy Recognition Heritage Job Mediation Responsibility Game Trade Cheating Time Place POV Unpretentious Free Personal Quest Passion Opinion Teamwork Observing Informing Meaning Intense Identity Summerbreeze Evidence Pursuit Intuition Honest Pure Humanity Thoughtprovoking Contact Problems Forgotten Improvisation Discovery Growth Research Portrait Listening Memory Cinema Art Microcosmos Serendipity Nuance Undermine Exposure Life Love Lagrein.

And three students agreed to write a small essay inspired by the words and our discussions during this first week of their three year stay at the school: Lucija Ilijić wrote in English, Kaspar Panizza in German and Matilde Ramini in Italian.

Here comes the German language essay by Kaspar Panizza, quite a text:

Zelig: Essays on What is a Documentary/ 1

In November I was at the Zelig Film School in Bolzano to meet the new students. I organised a small game: Which three words come to your mind, when I say DOCUMENTARY.

We put the words on the whiteboard: Freedom Willing Choice Poetic Detail Glimmer Accidential Case Patience Strings Impact Storytelling Memorable Curiosity Connection Testimony Creative Chance Vessel Sensibility Instinct Relationship Perspective Feel Aesthetic Subjective Respectful Visual Empathy Recognition Heritage Job Mediation Responsibility Game Trade Cheating Time Place POV Unpretentious Free Personal Quest Passion Opinion Teamwork Observing Informing Meaning Intense Identity Summerbreeze Evidence Pursuit Intuition Honest Pure Humanity Thoughtprovoking Contact Problems Forgotten Improvisation Discovery Growth Research Portrait Listening Memory Cinema Art Microcosmos Serendipity Nuance Undermine Exposure Life Love Lagrein.

And three students agreed to write a small essay inspired by the words and our discussions during this first week of their three year stay at the school: Lucija Ilijić wrote in English, Kaspar Panizza in German and Matilde Ramini in Italian.

The first one by Lucija Ilijić comes here, the other two will follow Sunday and Monday.

Ingmar Bergman 100 år /8

Jeg sidder ved skrivebordet, der står midt i værelset. En rødbrun soldatertæge kravler tøvende op over bordkanten. Der står helt afgørende nogen bag min ryg, selv om døren hverken er blevet åbnet eller lukket. Der står altså nogen bag min ryg…

SKRIVEBORD

Det handler om manden i huset ved havet, og sådan begynder Bergmans manuskript til filmen om lige netop den mand:

”Første akt nr. 1. Mit navn er Andreas Winkelman. Jeg er otteogfyrre år. Jeg husker at det var en trykkende oktoberdag. Jeg sad på taget af mit medtagne hus og reparerede på bedste beskub. Efter den sidste omgang regn var det begyndt at lække for alvor. Da jeg så op fra mit arbejde stod der tre sole over havet. Ikke en vind rørte sig, alt var fuldkommen lydløst. Jeg tændte min pibe, sad længe og betragtede fænomenet. Så trak en mørk sky op vestfra og gik for solene. Det begyndte endelig at blæse. Eftermiddagen skumrede. En hund gøede. Fårene bevægede sig gravitetisk over heden. Nede på vejen kørte Daniel med et læs halm, hans gamle hest gik i luntetrav. Jeg steg ned fra mit ophøjede stade og gik ind i køkkenet for at lave kaffe. Radioavisen fortalte om forskellige mislykkede foretagender. Derimod nævnede den ikke noget om mine tre sole. Omtrent en time senere så jeg dem for første gang. De fulgte vejen langs havet. En mand og to kvinder…” (En Passion, 1968)

Teksten fastholder og gentager med fuld billeddannelse og lydetablering denne erfaring om den resignerende mand, som forsvarer sin ensomhed der på fåreøen og venter på kærligheden. De få linjer i dette anslag har siden, jeg læste dem første gang – det var før jeg så filmen – været aldeles centrale for mig, min opfattelse af at være mand og af mandens ambition: ensomheden, kysten, havet, stilheden, enkelheden – jeg stiger ned og går ind i køkkenet for at lave kaffe – og så mødet… Senere da jeg så filmen, var manuskriptets tekst og scenen naturligvis fuldstændig kongruente. Filmen var for så vidt færdig i dens manuskripts formulering. Og teksten fastholder filmens erfaring, og den har næsten mere end filmen haft enorm betydning for mig, når jeg har skullet leve mit eget liv opmærksomt.

Hos Ingmar Bergman er det muligt for mig at forfølge disse temaer, som jeg bilder mig ind er mine, finde scenerne frem, som jeg også bilder mig ind, jeg er alene med. For eksempel – jeg bladrer i hans bøger – skrivebordet i huset ved havet. Her samles alt. Det bord er hans mindste scene. Lidt større scener er dukketeateret i Fanny og Alexander, havehuset i Som i et Spejl, stuen, hjemmet… De medvirkende er børnene og forældrene og slægtningene. Manden og kvinden. Elskeren og elskerinden. De elskende… Ind imellem er der flere personer i huset ved havet:

Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /9

“…A documentary work is not intended for the esthetic connoisseur or the preoccupied consumer, but rather for people in vital need of increasing their knowledge: of transforming communicated environments, epochs, nature scenes into personal experiential substance - something with which to enrich their own inner landscapes.”

NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th

By Sune Jonsson (1978)

9

Quantity should be a part of the documentary method, a part of the documentary language of form. The 1/125th is a fraction of the historic flow. A great many 1/125ths are needed merely to illuminate one isolated situation. In the 8 years during which the FSA documentation took place, ending in 1943, over 270,000 pictures were taken. Perhaps, all together, those pictures provided a overview of the extent of the disaster and could form a basis for the nation's self-scrutiny. August Sander privately collected his panorama of the Weimar Republic's physiognomies, roles, and uniforms in 20 bulging folders. The definitive publication of this collection in book form, Menschen ohne Maske (1971) is consequently characterized by an extraordinary abundance of pictures, which we perceive as concordant with the documentary conception.

Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /8

… they had plenty of time - the ultimate documentary resource - they themselves became something of experts in geography and agriculture. They were also sensitive and capable of the profound empathy with the subject matter that transforms certain photographers into depictors of reality in a truly documentary sense. Knowledge also affords artistic freedom. Experienced and versed, the author can move within his subject matter. His depiction of reality then becomes "macro realistic" - that is, a concrete expression of an inner reality.

NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th

By Sune Jonsson (1978)

8

The reportage confrontation is a fragile method of documentary work. But even so unfavorable an assignment situation can be transformed: if the photographer is given sufficient time, if he is given time to gain a knowledge of the environment that will enable his pictures to function as documentary statements, if he has the personal qualifications to deepen his empathy, his social commitment, and his responsibility as a fellow human being. This obviously turned out to be the case with Gunnar Lundh and Sven Järlås. And young photographers like Yngve Baum and Jean Hermanson have also come far along the same road of personal deepening.

Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /7

… Knowledge also affords artistic freedom. Experienced and versed, the author can move within his subject matter. His depiction of reality then becomes "macro realistic" - that is, a concrete expression of an inner reality.

NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th

By Sune Jonsson (1978)

7

Ivar Lo-Johansson has asserted the authenticity of the self-experienced as a literary life-form and method. It is not enough for the author to have subjects: the subjects must also be part of his own self. Perhaps in this distinction we can also discern the essential difference between the author and the poet.

Knowledge also affords artistic freedom. Experienced and versed, the author can move within his subject matter. His depiction of reality then becomes "macro realistic" - that is, a concrete expression of an inner reality. The opposite method is observation from without - a "microrealism" without a deeper personal sounding board.

Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /6

… The ideal situation, of course, is that in which the photographer is his own client. Then the assignment is a vital function of the photographer himself; then his depiction of reality will occur at that point where he himself stands as a human being.

NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th

By Sune Jonsson (1978)

6

The assignment situation, upon which the photographer's personal relationship to the subject matter is ultimately dependent, is a vital part of the documentary methodology. If it is alleged that knowledge and insight should be the bases of all depiction of reality, then the assignment situation must be crucial to the genuineness of the documentation. By the way in which the assignment situation is regarded, one can also tell what status – in artistic-professional terms - the client is prepared to accord the photographer.

The ideal situation, of course, is that in which the photographer is his own client. Then the assignment is a vital function of the photographer himself; then his depiction of reality will occur at that point where he himself stands as a human being. From every viewpoint, it must be an optimal advantage to be able to seek out the subject matter that is made up of one's own internal and external landscapes. Assignment and need for expression then become synonymous. The subject matter itself then becomes the client.

Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /5

... The verbal accompaniment must create new relationships and angles of approach to the pictorial material (even laconic): … Småbrukaren och kyrkogårdsarbetaren Hjalmar Nyberg, Nyåker, gräver grav för avlidne banmästaren Henrik Carlsson (Sune Jonsson)

NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th

By Sune Jonsson (1978)

5

The consummate photo-documentation requires verbal accompaniment. This must have a clear documentary conception and ideally possess formal competence as well. There are, for example, plenty of photographs documenting log driving. The most meritorious is Stig T. Karlsson's 1957 depiction from The Little Lule River. Lacking, however,is documentary material that, from the standpoint of primary worker experience, verbalizes the content of log driving. For that reason, it is regrettable, when Stig T. Karlsson's pictures are published in book form, that documentary consistency is sacrificed, and instead, Stig Sjödin is asked to write an accompanying text that flaunts a poetic empathy with the work depicted, that is surely more literary hypothesis than adequate expression of the log driver's own experience of his toil.

Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /4

… Their documentation is a distillate of reality itself. Their pictures are freed of all ephemeral, fashionable, and sentimental trappings. They nakedly describe universal situations that are allowed to speak right into the camera. (Sune Jonsson)

NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th

By Sune Jonsson (1978)

4

One should disdain rules but must discuss principles.

I remember the 50s, when Henri Cartier-Bresson’s books began to come out and started photographers dreaming of the pure photographic image, the prettily arranged and seized 1/125th that was sufficient unto itself. Hasse Enström, Managing Editor of Tidningen Vi, went against that tide at the time, doggedly challenging the theory and requiring text commentaries of photographers offering him picture essays for sale.

Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /3

… One thereby denies that photographs can represent a pictorial manifestation of experiences and personal views, that photographs can be personal messages having aesthetic qualities of communication. (Sune Jonsson)

NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th

By Sune Jonsson (1978)

3

In the 40s and early 50s, when Walt Disney was at the peak of his documentary-film activity, he is said to have remarked that it was better to give training in cinematography to the scientists working in the subject areas of those documentaries than vice versa. He wanted thereby to emphasize how vital expertise is in all depictions of reality. Such an attitude implies, however, that the photographer is exclusively regarded as a triggerer of the camera shutter’s 1/125th, as no better than the lens’ own capability. One thereby denies that photographs can represent a pictorial manifestation of experiences and personal views, that photographs can be personal messages having esthetic qualities of communication.

Sune Jonsson: Nine Reflections /1

“The reportage confrontation is a fragile method of documentary work. But even so unfavorable an assigment situation can be transformed: if the photographer is given sufficient time, if he is given time to gain a knowledge of the environment that will enable his pictures to function as documentary statements, if he has the personal qualifications to deepen his empathy, his social commitment, and his responsibility as a fellow human being…” (Sune Jonsson, from reflection 8. Photo by Sune Jonsson: Prague, August 1968.)

NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th

By Sune Jonsson (1978)

1

It is something of a romantic characterization to describe photography as the art of the instant. It is said, for example, that the art of the camera is to see quickly and straight ahead. And for nearly half a century now, photographers have indeed been intoxicating themselves with the very ability of the 35mm camera to capture on film the most ephemeral and most unguarded of instants. This has naturally been an asset that has both enriched and characterized photography.

Til lykke med fødselsdagen JØRGEN LETH

... ønsker vi her fra Filmkommentaren. Vi gør det med et af vores yndlingsportrætter af dig, det er godt nok dit, fra  din blog, men vi tilegner os det lige, for det er et af de mest inspirerende, et af dem hvor du er på arbejde. Og så vil vi bare endnu engang henvise til det, vi gennem nogle år har skrevet om dig og dine film, mest om filmene i vores rå opsummering ”Jørgen Leth - Collected Texts on his Works”, som begynder med en lille kursiv …the Danish director, who has been an inspiration for generations of Danish filmmakers. With Lars von Trier as number one as readers will know from the film”The Five Obstructions” og så fortsætter med første post, som er et af mine mange dagbogsnotater på bloggen: “Mid wednes(day) off from Copenhagen with troubled SAS to Amsterdam to attend the 25th idfa (International Documentary Film Festival). On board is also Jørgen Leth on his way to idfa as several times before. This year to be in the main jury with (among others) Michael Glawogger, and to attend his own ”My Name is Jørgen Leth” exhibition that is part of the idfa ”Expanding Documentary” that opens at 7pm tomorrow November 15th at De Brakke Grond here in Amsterdam…” Læs eventuelt videre og så igen tillykke og hav en dejlig aften! Allan og Tue

Lars Movin versus Jørgen Leth

MOVIN MØDER LETH, Lars Movin meddeler det på sin Facebookside, og jeg skynder mig at meddele videre, især at det er NU! NU I AFTEN I ÅRHUS!

Movin skriver: ”Så er det i aften, at jeg har den ære at være med til at åbne festivalen Vild med ORD i Dokk1 i Aarhus sammen med den unge mand på billedet her. Okay, jeg ved da godt, at publikum kommer for at se Jørgen Leth – som efter vores samtale vil levere flere Spoken Words akkompagneret af de to musikere i Vi Sidder Bare Her – men ikke desto mindre skal det blive en fornøjelse at lægge endnu et kapitel til den dialog, som vi har ført gennem knap tyve interviews siden 1989. En dialog, som ikke mindst har udmøntet sig i tre bøger: “En dag forsvandt Duke Jordan i Harlem – tekster om jazz” (Bebop, 2008), “Kunsten at gå på gaden – tekster fra tresserne” (Gyldendal, 2012) og “Alt er i billedet – om Jørgen Leths film” (Gyldendal, 2013).Dagen efter (fredag) vil der være flere ord fra undertegnede, nærmere bestemt ved et arrangement klokken 14:30 (ligeledes i Dokk1), hvor jeg med udgangspunkt i bogen “Amerikansk avantgardefilm” (2016) vil fortælle om (og vise) to beat-relaterede avantgardefilm, nemlig “Pull My Daisy” (1959) af Robert Frank & Alfred Leslie og “Towers Open Fire” (1963) af William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Ian Sommerville & Antony Balch. Vild med ord, ja – men også vild med billeder, film, musik …”

Foto: lm / 2015

Tue Steen Müller: Lithuanian Docs

- collected posts by Tue Steen Müller on Lithuanian documentaries, directors, photographers and producers

Lituania is a Baltic country, the most southern, and the most exciting when it comes to documentaries.

They are mostly short and based on images - the Lithuanian documentarians compose the image and treat the spectator as an intelligent person. The information needed to understand a story or a problem or a complex thematic issue is conveyed by the combination of image and sound and montage. In other words, they make FILMS and are still relatively "innocent" when it comes to adapt to television standards.

"They" are directors like Audrius Stonys and Arunas Matelis and Oksana B. and Rimantas Gruodis. I have just been in Vilnius to watch new films to be recommended to Leipzig Film Festival to which I offer scouting services. If any reader of this would like to have contact with the Lithuanian filmmakers, you can google Stonys and Matelis, who both have their own websites and will direct you to where to get hold of dvd's. (Blogpost 12-08-2007)

Ugis Olte : Double Aliens

In early August Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis sent me a link to this co-production between Latvia and Georgia. The film won an award as best documentary at the BIAFF, the Batumi International Art-House Film Festival, it is in the Focus Caucasus competition at the upcoming CinéDOC Tbilisi, at the mid-length competition at the upcoming IDFA AND in the national selection at the upcoming Riga International Film Festival. Voilá!

Here follows a review, an edited version of the response I gave to Cekulis two months ago, but first the synopsis:

”Road maps are open, endless texts that may contain any number of stories, including the story of the traveler himself. A filmmaker from the north and a photographer from the south travel to a strange place. It is a land where people are worn out by their history, where time tends to freeze and every encounter is a distortion mirror that makes you look into familiar eyes.”

News from Paris: René Vautier 1928-2015

Grand old man and enfant terrible of French militant cinema René Vautier died Sunday January 4th in his home in Cancale, Brittany, at the age of 86. Originally from Brittany, René Vautier fought the Germans as a very young member of the French Resistance during the Second World War, at 16 he was decorated with the Croix de Guerre and honoured by de Gaulle. After the war he wanted to pursue the combat but not with arms and his friends then encourage him to take up a new weapon: the camera. His battle was to last a life long.

Vautier graduated in 1948 from the film school IDHEC in Paris. In 1949 he gets a command to make a film for the Ligue de l’enseignement about the benefits of the French educational mission in the West African colonies. The result, Afrique 50, became, on the contrary, a violent critique of the French colonial system. Vautier’s first film was also the first anticolonial film ever to be made in France and the reaction was violent in return: Vautier was faced with 13 charges and sentenced to one year of prison!

The film has an incredible story. To escape the limitations of the 1934 decree of the Minister of the Colonies Pierre Laval (forbidding any filming in the colonies without the presence of a an administration official) Vautier went on to film in secret. He almost got his film rolls confiscated for destruction in Africa but managed to get his work back to France where he finally had to illegally retrieve the reels kept under seizure by the board of censors (he got 17 of 50 reels). The film was finished in secret and stayed censured in France for over 40 years though it was awarded as one of the best documentaries of the year at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Warsaw in 1955 (with Joris Ivens as president of the jury). In 1996, a copy of the film was finally handed over to Vautier by the Foreign Ministry during the first official screening in France and only in 2003 the film was broadcasted on French television. The Cinémathèque française has recently made new copies of the film as part of their effort to safeguard the entire oeuvre of René Vautier initiated in 2007.

Afrique 50 is a short powerful outburst, a rhythmic pamphlet, swiftly edited with an attacking voice-over. Playing with the genre of educational state propaganda documentary but turning it against the government, the film pinpoints, with humour and great seriousness, the link between capitalism and racism. Film historian Nicole Brenez, specialist of avant-garde cinema at la Cinémathèque française, has called it the greatest film in the history of cinema. Go see it, it’s on YouTube!

Kosmorama: Body Language in the Moving Image

Denmark’s oldest film journal Kosmorama (first issue in 1954) presents a slate of articles (online and in English as well) that could interest the true film buffs among our readers. The articles are written by film historians and academics. The titles are ”Body Language and Media Context” (Lennard Højbjerg), ”Figures in Landscapes” (Casper Tybjerg), ”Expression Suppression” (Henry Bacon), ”Making Love Detumescently” (Mariah Larsson) and ”Movie Stars in the Flesh” (Helle Kannik Haastrup). The information about this December issue of Kosmorama I received this morning, so no time yet to read, only to browse. It is all very appealing, with good illustrations and clips from films.

The link below also refers to other articles at Kosmorama, in Danish or English.

And the photo, well you know the man in the middle: ”Occupations” by von Trier – to be found on the internet.

http://www.kosmorama.org/ServiceMenu/05-English/Articles.aspx

Does a Festival Critique Exist?

As a follow-up to the post below... here is a personal essay that I wrote for an academic book on festivals. It did not fit in, so here it is for you, a reflection on what is written on documentary festivals from outside and inside – promotion, reports but real critique on the festivals, does that exist? Hope it is interesting for you. (Photo from this year's ZagrebDox).

But first some film-biographical stuff: You need to know a bit about my background as a festival visitor, organiser and reporter/critic. Yes, I have a close relationship to the world of documentary film festivals. I have been privileged to cooperate with colleagues in Denmark to set up and conduct several national and international festivals in my own country. One of them changed my film life, the Balticum Film & TV Festival on the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. It came to life as a consequence of the fall of Soviet Union and ran from 1990-2000, when the Danish support to the independence of the Baltic countries around 1990 made it possible to start the festival with financing from our government,. Voilá, we started a festival for the countries around the Baltic Sea. Many of

Nordisk Panorama 25!

Nordisk Panorama 25! - a documentary tour down memory lane. Yes, the first one was in Grimstad, this idyllic and romantic spot on the South coast of Norway. I was there and so was she, with whom I have shared my life since then. Grimstad 1990, unforgettable, a place in my heart... I was there on behalf of Statens Filmcentral (National Film Board of Denmark) and as part of the group that was to set up Filmkontakt Nord the year after. Therefore, a thank you for asking me to write about what has happened to Nordic documentaries in the quarter of a century that has passed. I have chosen to primarily go back to focus on directors and films, which I remember and which have made an impact on the Nordic and/or the international scene. You will probably miss some, especially ”newer” ones, I can’t cover it all. You will agree that nothing is so boring as extensive name- and title-dropping. I will try to control myself. And of course it is a personal choice that I have made.

SOCIAL AND OBSERVATIONAL

There was a pretty strong line-up of documentaries in 1990. When I look at the list of films and directors in competition (there were no films from Iceland and only one from Finland!), in my view, three stand out and have indeed put their mark on Nordic documentaries.

Sigve Endresen was there with ”For your Life” (”For harde livet”), 98 minutes of strong social documentary on drug addicts, a film that reached a huge audience in the cinemas of Norway and opened the door for the director to make another critical statement on how the society treats its outsiders – ”Big Boys Don’t Cry” (”Store gutter gråter ikke”) on young prisoners taking part in a rehabilitation project. It was at Nordisk Panorama (NP) 1995, followed by ”Living Among Lions”(”Leve blandt løver”) at NP 1998, on three young people who suffer from cancer. In 2002 he took part in NP with the portrait of singerKari Iveland, named ”Weightless” (”Vektløs”). The style of his films is direct, mostly with no sentimentality.

I remember that we Danes were jealous on the Norwegians, who could get documentary films reach the cinema. And also have them used in educational contexts - here we touch upon a typical Nordic issue that I have always highlighted at workshops abroad: the non-theatrical use of films for public education and debate. 

As Jørgen Roos (also in my school time) took me to Greenland with his many films, giving me an insight to their culture and people, Ulla Boje Rasmussen is the documentarian, who has taken me and audiences around the world to her beloved Faroe Islands (Færøerne). ”1700 Metres from the Future” (”1700 meter fra fremtiden”) includes gorgeous nature sequences and fine portraits of the 16 (!) inhabitants, who get a tunnel connecting them to the rest of the world. The film is a classic in Danish documentary history with superb cinematography by Andreas Fischer-Hansen, also the producer. The two stood behind Nordfilm (right name!) that also made the follow-up ”The Light on Mykines Island” (”Tre blink mod vest”) (NP 1992), equally from the islands towards the North... I will send you to another island, said a filmconsultant years later, he happened to be me, to the director, let’s find an island in the South for a new film. Ulla chose Sardinia and out came ”Coro di Bosa” (NP 1998), which as the Faroe films had a fine international career. Boje Rasmussen has later on returned to the North making films in Greenland and Iceland, and one about the independence movement in Faroe Islands. The latter was at NP 2003, entitled ”Rugged Road to Independence” (”Færøerne.dk”).

1700 Metres from the Future

Translations

ALLAN BERG NIELSEN POSTS IN COLLECTED ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

BALTICUM FILMFESTIVAL (1999)

1990-1999. Nine years of week-long sessions of film and television in Gudhjem, and the tenth festival rapidly drawing nigh. Crème de la crème. Reminiscing: High points? Of course, but how many, and which ones? The prize winners, perhaps. But no, it's not easy to remember, the competitions never were very important at the festival. Many other factors impel one to return, an absolute necessity. For the tenth time running. The fact that the festival's old-fashioned severity and humanistic responsibility are natural elements to these serious men and women arriving in groups with rolls of films under their arms and cassettes in their bags. Each time bringing the results of their research from the past year. Statements on how far things have developed. Maybe it's still like that. The event is both a film festival and a convention of “scientists”.

Things have really been humming during these years. The political struggles, the new opening, the retrospective studies, the extent of the crimes and identity of the traitors. We also got to know each other. Personally and professionally. They saw the Western violations of intimacy and aesthetics. Like master craftsman Henrikas Sablevicius said to me one day about a Danish film that in Copenhagen had been referred to as a beacon of the new documentarism, "It hasn't even been cinematographically processed; it hasn't even been edited." and the two photographers who worked on the film were even genuine Andreas Fischer-Hansen students from the Danish Film School, the editor was one of the budding at the time talents from advertising films, today a downright renewer of cinematic dramaturgy.

In return, we saw their shyness and classic refinement. Whenever I watched the retrospective screenings, these glimpses into the wonderful film culture of a foreign country, I saw the old aesthetic virtues still being upheld. Like the architecture of their old cities, stubborn classicism. Sablevicius's own works are a good example. (Photo: Henrikas Sablevicius on the set)

In this sense, every title in the nine festival catalogues helps depict the very essence of the festival. In this sense, everything is interesting, and from a cinematic historical viewpoint, it is an extremely important collection. An imaginary museum whose pieces were intelligently and discriminatingly selected during those turbulent years.

But since I must choose, I lean back and think, In Gudhjem, was it really the grand, epic works that are foremost in my memory. Tremendous narratives which left me spiritually satiated. Filled to the brim. Enough nourishment for many days, for the next segment of my life. They live on inside, these narratives. Years later.

I select three works, hesitate, and take one more. Afterwards I discover they're not the great works after all. Even though others were longer, perhaps weightier and more typical, I love these four. One film from the West, three from the East.

(From Tue Steen Müller, ed.: Balticum Film & TV Festival 1990-99, translation  and language editing: Stuart Goodale. Baltic Media Centre, 1999) 

THE SECOND UNDERSTANDING

Pirjo Honkasalo: Mysterion, 1992.

She leaves the city and arrives in the country. She is in a dark picture with artificial light, moving toward dawn, it seems, and real light. A modern woman surrounded by technology. Plagued by trauma, she comes to the old-fashioned women, surrounded by the results of their manual labour, liberated by their insight into art and faith.

The beginning is clear, and the introduction takes a long time. I see this woman's face as she travels from her flat in the city to the convent in the country, while the monologue of my inner voice tells me that an existence so bound up in death as hers seems to seek change out of necessity. And I know the essence of the next ninety minutes in front of me. One and a half hours in the cinema confronted by great documentary images: The course of the year and some of the fates in Pyhitsa Convent in north-east Estonia.

The film is about life in this orthodox convent, home and workplace for 160 nuns. A Western director has moved into this foreign Eastern area, isolated for a long time, very unfamiliar still.

I met Pirjo Honkasalo at the third festival. Later on, I inevitably discovered she was a big name. In 1994, she participated with Tanjuska ja 7 perkelettäI (Tanjuska and the 7 Devils). In 1998, her Indian film, Atman, won the Amsterdam competition. For me, however, this series of cinematic studies into the world of faith, into the power and beauty of religious devotion started on a late May evening in 1992 at Gudhjem Kino filled with the singing of nuns. I think it's the first time they hear themselves sing, these two enthusiastic women sharing a headset. Listening to the recording made by the sound director.

The opening scenes of the film show winter farming chores, while the last shows the movement in darkness at a nun's burial ceremony with procession, song and candlelight. The cycle of seasons reflected in the changing farming tasks interweaves through the narrative line with the life story of some of the women. "Do you know how good the death of a nun can be?" is the last sentence, and I remember the long, meticulous documentation of the ordination of the young women. A life between these poles connected to acts like the slapping of grain into warm soil in spring or the shearing of sheep on a bright day in early summer. For the harvest, they are assisted by machinery and men from outside the convent, but they manage the horse-powered ploughing themselves. The tremendous high point is a windy, bitter-cold winter day when they are gathered in a group out on the ice-covered lake with sledges. They saw out blocks of ice so large as to almost defy the effort and convey the blocks back to the ice cellar at the convent.

The return to spring is linked to the film's third narrative element, which is the visit to the holy well with its miraculous powers. The series of spiritual ceremonies are juxtaposed with the physical farming tasks, the religious ceremonies are incessantly surrounded by choral singing in a comparable seasonal cadence.

In the middle of the film, the sixth of twelve elements describes a threat to the women's lives. The convent is located like an island of purity and tranquillity in a giant, polluted area. Poisoned soil, poisoned water, devoid of all life: The world of industry confronting the world of farming, machinery and manual labour. The world of men confronting that of women. Principles in opposition. Sister Naemilla tells about her sister whose husband is an alcoholic. She admonishes her sister to keep silent and endure. She herself intends to purify the world, to tidy up. No work is too sordid for her.

UPHEAVAL CONSIDERED

Marcel Lozinski: Po zwiestwie (Poland After the Victory), 1996.

"Did you see that?" asked my colleague as we sat in the video bar at the Købmandsgården pension and started to watch Marcel Lozinski's television film Efter Sejren (Poland: After the Victory) together. No, I hadn't seen the five seconds he was talking about. I had looked down for a split second to make a note. Since we were the only ones using the video machine, we rewound it to watch again: During a demonstration in Gdansk, a solitary man tries to stop a military truck by standing in front of it. It keeps going, however, and runs the man over. He disappears under the vehicle, doesn't reappear. His mutilated body must have been caught between the pairs of wheels, because a second later it falls off, appears on the street. Lies there.

Shaken, we continued watching the film about Poland's most recent history at that time. And we knew that's how things are at this festival in particular. Serious issues. We had seen the shooting of photographer Andris Slapins by Russian black berets as he filmed their attack on the Ministry of Interior in Riga. We watched a man, who we become acquainted with in the film, set fire to himself in a desperate protest against a repressive regime. The early years. Now it was our seventh time at the festival.

One of the prize winners from the year before, Polish film director Marcel Lozinski, was again attending the festival, again with a masterpiece a retrospective, critical, recapitulatory television documentary. A discipline that film professionals apparently master due to their ability to infuse everyday television journalism with some kind of personal filter and, simultaneously, a certain languid quality whose insistence is inescapable because it infects the audience with artistic strength alongside journalistic lucidity. Emotional capacity shoulder to shoulder with intellectual analysis. Lozinski's film is an overwhelming experience of the march and teachings of history that bears comparison to Juris Podnieks' End of Empire from 1991 about five years of Russian history with perestroika that ends with the five-day coup in August 1991. The two television series superbly compliment each other, both telling in spite of their various approaches the same story: These years of the dismantling of the communist regime. Both films are founded on an attitude of portent, responsibility and sadness.

I asked Katarzyna Maciejko-Kowalczyk, the film's editor, about the scene with the demonstrator who is run over and killed. She verifies its authenticity. They found the scene in the archives during their investigations. The scene dates from 1982 during the insurrection. 'Jaruzelski's War' she called it. The few seconds were intended to introduce a retrospective montage of the years dealt with by the film, from 1989 to 1995. The one-hour film is the fourth episode in a series on Poland's history following World War II made by Lozinski for La Sept ARTE. The series inevitably appeared on Polish television, creating a stir and greatly affecting many Poles. "We're still divided into two separate camps," the editor said, "The communists and 'us', as we refer to the now very divided section of the population that overthrew Wojciech Jaruzelski's regime." In her opinion, the events depicted in the film are objective enough so everyone can nod in 'Yes, that's-how-it-was' agreement. "But our observations are clearly based on 'our' left wing attitudes. We just don't refer to ourselves that way in Poland. 'The Left' is a concept, which like the past has been tainted by the communists. So we refer to ourselves as 'The Centre'."

But Lozinski sympathises with the left wing of the Solidarity movement, the circles surrounding former minister of labour Jacek Kuron, he shares their view of society. The charismatic, articulate Kuron is the film's obvious hero. He is a recurring member of the series' panel of raconteurs, all of whom are social critics whose insight makes for rewarding listening: Their candid opinions are far removed from the empty rhetoric of politics.

That year, the former communists regained momentum, and it was time to examine the state of affairs. Poland: After the Victory makes an impressive contribution to this process. It is a splendid, extremely important document, an intelligent, penetrating summary generously presented to us for an hour in the video bar in the lounge of the Gudhjem pension.

INVESTIGATING AND REVENGING THE CRIME

Herz Frank: Ebreju iela (The Jewish Street), 1993.

 The camera from high above shows me Riga. The city set in its landscape. I'm drawn closer, zooming in on roofs and individual buildings. Ending with the synagogue, the one from back then. The camera dwells on the inscription on a stone tablet: 'Forever remember our Parents, brothers, sisters and children murdered and burned by fascists in the year of 5701. Let their Souls be bound securely in the Bundle of the Living. For Jews of Riga Ghetto, the Martyrs of Faith'.

Herz Frank outlines the story. The Russian occupation, then the German. The latter called a liberation by some, but disavowed by the film. It describes new suppression. The Latvian flag was removed everywhere, the picture shows the arrests being made, and the director comments in his voice-over "Like in all Times they started with Temples". The synagogues burn. The investigation concentrates on the fate of the Jews. "I am intrigued by the secret, mysterious nature of Jewry, by its Biblical origins," he writes in the catalogue. "In the course of the millennia, this was the source of energy for our forefathers. It helped the Jews to survive many catastrophes. Perhaps that is the lesson taught by the history of the Jewish people: How one survives under catastrophic conditions. Perhaps this is the fate that has haunted the Jews an ancient symbol of the destruction of mankind..."

Above an expansive landscape of Riga's ghetto with the catholic church on one side and the evangelical church on the other, the voice tells us (which I perceive to be Herz himself) that over there near the horizon above the neighbourhood is Rumbula, Riga's Babyi Yar, as he puts it.

The Christian churches confine and guard the ghetto; the elements in Herz's analysis summarise the analysis' accusations in quiet ascertainment. No reason to shout any more; just adding these local facts to what I already know is enough. And I nod to myself in the cinema's darkness, the placement of the churches, yes, the Babyi Yar massacre, yes.

The film is a description of the director's investigation. He methodically works his way toward the appalling knowledge of what happened and toward understanding the inevitable fate of the Jewish people. I follow him from witness to witness, archive document to archive document. As the film gains insight into these shocking events, so do I.

I am witnessing the director's personal project. I see him in the picture holding the camera on his shoulder. (A big one. This is before the compact DV's were introduced and laid the foundations for the video note, the cinematic outline.) He is the one looking up facts in the stacks of books in the beautiful Jewish library in Stockholm, opening the archive cartons.

On the trip through the worn streets and dilapidated buildings of the former ghetto, we enter back courtyards and outbuildings. At one spot, a surprising artefact in the middle of this story's monuments. A suitcase is brought out from an outbuilding. I see that the suitcase's owner is Adele Sara Wolff. Her name still clearly painted on the suitcase. What happened to her? This object from the past crystallizes the recollection of this overwhelming sequence of events into one tangible moment. 'Museum pieces are memories' as Danish painter Asger Jorn once said. This festival is continually teaching me that this remembrance process is existential. This film, too. Sara Wolff was one of thousands from many countries who were brought to Riga to die.

One of the witnesses in Herz Frank's investigation is novelist and physician Bernhard Press. He wrote the book Judenmord in Lettland 1941-1945 (The Murder of Jews in Latvia, 1941-1945). I meet him together with the director and his film on this guided tour through uncluttered landscapes, but at a point in time when I have become disoriented and have entrusted everything to my guide. Press talks energetically as he stands in some kind of corridor that wanders off into darkness, and I hear his story in one of the condensed sequences of this narrative dramatisation. When Press was a young man, he escaped from Riga's ghetto before the extermination, but after the Russian's occupation of Latvia, and ended up in Gulag. He worked as a doctor in a Siberian prison camp where he met a man who had been put there because he was a nazi collaborator. The man suffered from paralysis in his legs and had given up all hope. Press, however, got him going, planned a physical training program and built a special wheelchair for him. After this the man improved. Press tells that "after a month or so he started walking with a stick. When I asked him, 'Why are you imprisoned?' he answered, 'Because I shot those hooked nosed.' He meant Jews. What does a Jewish doctor do in this situation? I kept treating him. What else could I do? I couldn't violate my Hippocratic oath, so I took revenge in a childish way. When he was released from the camp as a disabled man, he went to his relatives somewhere in the East. He asked me to give him a letter for his future doctor. I wrote something on a slip of paper and sealed it in an envelope. It said, 'Your paralysis is God's punishment for your sins.' A Jew's revenge.

THE SORROW OF REACTION

Audrius Stonys: Antigravitacija (Anti-gravitation), 1995.

 This Stonys film was made using the prize he received in 1992, the Felix Prize, for the best short film in Europe, Neregiu Zeme (World of the Blind). It was shown in Gudhjem that same year. In 1995, he returned with the result, a film about our longing to overcome what keep us on the ground.

For a long time, Stonys had wanted famous Lithuanian cinematographer Jonas Gricius to photograph a film for him. He finally succeeded. And what wonderful pictures! We are moved into the beautiful old tradition of large black-and-white 35 mm film sequences where every shot is considered down to the last detail. Stonys subsequently pursues this artistic deliberateness by putting every single scene into a perfectly harmonious context, whose authenticity I thoroughly accept. A soundless work. I have rarely experienced a film that leaves me so utterly incapable of objecting, of imagining other solutions. This film is definitively finished.

But what's it really about? Like his previous films, Stonys portrays empathy. At the 1991 festival, he brought his film from 1989 called Atverti duris ateinanciam (Open the Door to Him Who Comes). Like Neregiu Zeme, it is photographed in the same dignified and old-fashioned manner, 35 mm film, black and white, features shared by subsequent films. With Harbour from the 1998 festival, he finally brings colour into his meditation on body and water. The film's setting is public baths. Its plot is purification. It also describes a pastor in a remote parish who is visited by people, from large cities too, because of the peace of mind and answers the big questions he gives them. The other film portrayed people without sight in a world of sounds and dim contours, and changing degrees of light and darkness. Reflecting, almost wordless, states of mind. Dreaming, they yearn for existential relics. Dismal tones, will the project succeed?

Stonys' manuscript for the gravitation film demanded that the crew had to shoot sequences for at least a year, because as a matter of course the scenes jump from snow-covered landscapes to sweltering village streets in spring, from spring floods to a sleigh in crunchy frost. And the young director pulled the fine old cinematographer, who here made his first documentary, up to heights, on roof scaffolding, on high railway bridges and at the very pinnacle of church towers. Because the pictures must show us how the world looks from these man-made structures reaching to the heavens. The film's heroine is an old woman who forces her way up the longest ladder I have ever seen to the tip of the spire on the village church. At the very top she gazes out on summer landscapes. The next clip shows us, very correctly, the scene from her angle, but now it is in the bitter cold of winter. She climbs up there all year round. We don't know why, she does it out of necessity.

CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE (2017)

Three children sitting on a sofa. The girl recounts their dreadful experiences from the war in Kosovo. A Jewish doctor takes revenge on a Nazi collaborator. A six-year-old boy equipped with a wireless captures comments from people in a park. ALLAN BERG NIELSEN highlights three documentaries from Hungary, Latvia and Poland, films that reflect our world and deal with strong themes and the memory of History.

In recent years, the documentary film has grown into great classic art in my consciousness. It deals with profound themes, profound feelings. Therefore, I must apply profound words from my European background. In my opinion, this is what we have to offer the global community alongside the many calamities. So this short essay will deal with profound words. I want to link them to three films I have seen, enjoyed and thought about.

These films were made in an era when things were really humming: political upheaval, new opening to the East, retrospective studies, the extent of the crimes and the identity of the traitors. (Modern Times, ed. 2017)

THE CRIME

Ferenc Moldoványi: Deca-Fëmijët (Children, Kosovo 2000), Hungary, 2001

Children, Kosovo 2000 is the title of the film. Two years ago, a girl is making dough in a room of a rural house in Kosovo, then she puts the dough aside to rise. She walks out the door that is allowed to swing all the way open before the cut. She and her two younger brothers walk down the road through the village. In the next scene, they sit anxiously on a sofa in a damaged room. Then they tell what happened:

Interviewer (off): Do you remember that day?

Girl: Yes.

Interviewer (off): Were you with your brothers?

Girl: Yes.

Interviewer (off): Would you tell me about it?

Girl: If you ask me questions.

Interviewer (off): What were you doing at that time?

Girl: When we returned from the convoy we settled here, We were in this room. The Serb soldiers arrived. Dad was lying on his couch. We were outside. I was the only one who was outside, the others were in the house. Three people came and told me in Serbian to stop. Three times. I did not stop. My sister came over and warned me they might shoot. Then I went onto the porch. They ordered me to go in. I didn’t want to. Finally I did. My little brother (she looks at him) came in and told my father lying here, the militia were looking for him. Dad went out. I was watching. The Serb militiaman asked him if he was a terrorist. Dad said he wasn’t. ”Terrorists have lived here,” the Serb militiaman replied. Dad said he didn’t know them. ”Aren’t you one of them?” the Serb asked. Dad said he was no terrorist. ”Never mind,” the man said, ”Go over there and raise your hands.” We all left the house. Dad raised his hands, and the Serb shot him with his machine gun. Blood streamed down his legs but he was still standing. We ran away. My sister remained. Then the three men grabbed my sister and took her in here… When it was over they asked her what her father had done. She said he’d done nothing. She collapsed onto her father’s body, his blood was on her face, his body had been shot to pieces, his bowels were out. We covered him with a blanket, except for his face so we could see it…

The entire sequence of the three children on the sofa is unbroken. She is crying all the while she tells the story. Her oldest brother is also crying, while the youngest only feels dread. I see it in his eyes that he averts from the camera all the time. The scene continues after her testimony, and she cries for such a long time that I discover and understand its relief.

The most important aspect of documentary films is their presence. In a presence as great as this, I have brought it as close as possible to a point of pain in the history of our part of the world. A major event, though one of thousands. An event more important to remember than countless international conferences put together.

I see she is wearing fingernail polish when she hides her face in her hands. She is seventeen years old, she is washing clothes outside in the courtyard in the next scene. Sunshine and bird songs. Timor Szemzö’s music takes over. The solo rises above the orchestra. Elegiac. In his filmic work, Ferenc Moldoványi has mounted the children’s testimony as the central images in a triptych of landscapes and depictions of everyday life facing a sacred concert in a darkened church interior of our times. Just as medieval altarpieces focused the prayers about human suffering in front of a singing choir of believers. The filmic works are the altarpieces of our era in front of a modern, sceptical silence.

THE RETALIATION 

Herz Frank: Ebreju iela (The Jewish Street), 1993

The camera from high above shows me Riga. The city set in its landscape. I’m drawn closer, zooming in on roofs and individual buildings. Ending with the synagogue, the one from back then. The camera dwells on the inscription on a stone tablet: ‘Forever remember our Parents, brothers, sisters and children murdered and burned by fascists in the year 5701. Let their Souls be bound securely in the Bundle of the Living. For Jews of Riga Ghetto, the Martyrs of Faith’.

In The Jewish Street Herz Frank outlines the story. The Russian occupation, then the German. The latter called a liberation by some, but disavowed by the film. It describes new suppression. The Latvian flag was removed everywhere, the picture shows the arrests being made, and the director comments in his voiceover, “Like in all times they started with temples.” The synagogues burn. The investigation concentrates on the fate of the Jews.

Above an expansive landscape of Riga’s ghetto with the Catholic Church on one side and the evangelical church on the other, the voiceover tells that over near the horizon above the neighbourhood is Rumbula, Riga’s Babyi Yar, as he puts it.

The Christian churches confine and guard the ghetto; the elements of Frank’s analysis summarizing their accusations in quiet ascertainment. No reason to shout any more; just adding these local facts to what I already know is enough. And I nod to myself in the cinema darkness, the placement of the churches, yes, the Babyi Yar massacre, yes.

The film is a description of the director’s investigation. He methodically works his way towards an appalling knowledge of what happened and towards understanding the inevitable fate of the Jewish people. I follow him from witness to witness, archive document to archive document. As the film gains insight into these shocking events, so do I.

I am witnessing the director’s personal project. I see him in the picture holding the camera on his shoulder. (A big one. This is before the compact DV’s were introduced, laying the groundwork for the video note, the cinematic outline.) He is the one looking up facts in the stacks of books in the beautiful Jewish library in Stockholm, opening the archive boxes.

On the trip through the worn streets and dilapidated buildings of the former ghetto, we enter inner courtyards and outbuildings. At one spot, a surprising artefact in the middle of this story’s monuments. A suitcase is brought out from an outbuilding. I see that the suitcase’s owner is Adele Sara Wolff, her name still clearly painted on the suitcase. What happened to her? This object from the past crystallizes the recollection of this overwhelming sequence of events into one tangible moment. ‘Museum pieces are memories,’ as Danish painter Asger Jorn once said.

One of the witnesses in Herz Frank’s investigation is novelist and physician Bernhard Press. He wrote the book Judenmord in Lettland 1941-1945 (The Murder of Jews in Latvia, 1941-1945). I meet him together with the director and his film on this guided tour through uncluttered landscapes, but at a point in time when I have become disoriented and have entrusted everything to my guide. Press talks energetically as he stands in some kind of corridor that wanders off into darkness, and I hear his story in one of the condensed sequences of this narrative dramatization. When Press was a young man, he escaped from Riga’s ghetto before the extermination, but after the Russian occupation of Latvia, and ended up in Gulag. He worked as a doctor in a Siberian prison camp where he met a man who had been put there because he was a Nazi collaborator. The man suffered from paralysis in his legs and had given up all hope. Press, however, got him going, planned a physical training program and built a special wheelchair for him. After this the man improved. Press tells that “after a month or so he started walking with a stick. When I asked him, ‘Why are you imprisoned?’ he answered, ‘Because I shot those hooked nosed.’ He meant Jews. What does a Jewish doctor do in this situation? I kept treating him. What else could I do? I couldn’t violate my Hippocratic oath, so I took revenge in a childish way. When he was released from the camp as a disabled man, he went to his relatives somewhere in the East. He asked me to give him a letter for his future doctor. I wrote something on a slip of paper and sealed it in an envelope. It said, ‘Your paralysis is God’s punishment for your sins.’ A Jew’s revenge.”

EXISTENCE

Marcel Lozinski: Wszystko sie moze przytrafic (Anything Can Happen), 1995

In Anything Can Happen, Marcel Lozinski takes his six-year-old son to the park and asks him to ride around on his push scooter and occasionally stop at the benches and start talking with whomever – mainly elderly persons – is sitting there. The film crew follow him around recording the interactions from a great distance without being seen. Six-year-old Tomek is equipped with a small, wireless microphone and has received general instructions as to what he should do and what he should talk with the people about. Otherwise the boy improvises the conversations.

One smiles and laughs during these all told nineteen conversations that in their childlike wisdom wonderfully cover many serious human problems. This is first time I have ever seen the hidden camera technique used for anything but making the participants look ridiculous to the audience. This film does exactly the opposite: it reconstructs personal dignity.

It starts with a refusal. The young main character – easy to spot in his red jacket – has to give up and continue riding his push scooter along the footpaths in the park. Between every bench encounter, he is accompanied by a Strauss waltz on the soundtrack as he rushes along, giving the viewer a few seconds to think about what has just been said. The first, however, is the rejected advance.

The next person in the series lets the child talk, but does not give him seriousness and truth in return. Wants to playfully tease him instead: “My name is Don Juan,” he answers when the boy asks. This arouses wonder as it sounds French to the boy, who is unfamiliar with the famous seducer. But he accepts it as a reply. “My name is Tomek Lozinski,” he doesn’t try to conceal anything by contrast. I am who I am. The son of a famous filmmaker. Currently making a scene in his next film. This is the world of candour and reality. This is how we use films here.

The introduction continues in the fourth conversation. Though Tomek doesn’t know who Don Juan is, he is quite adept at flattering a woman: “You are very elegant,” he says to an old, well-dressed lady, and she instructs him in her technique of how to match the colours of her outfits.

The ingenious dialogue – which must have been fashioned during the editing of many metres of footage from the nine days of improvised shootings – continues embroidering in its own Socratic style. There are nineteen conversations in all on being a child and an adult, on the war, on the length of life, on love, divorce, sickness, poverty, money, sorrow and death.

In the nineteenth conversation, an old man describes the sorrow he feels over the death of his wife. And about the significance of her memory. He still feels he is together with his beloved in the rooms at home, and Tomek acknowledges that his mother felt the same way when grandfather died. And the little boy quiets Death, “If someone dies, it doesn’t mean you will never see her again. Perhaps Death will stop,” – and he explains by holding up his flat hand in a stopping gesture – “and life will return. It might happen!” Anything can happen.

(From: Film art / DOX magazine , April 1, 2002 / Modern Times, 2017)

LINKS

https://www.moderntimes.review/film-art/

https://www.moderntimes.review/author/allanb/

https://www.moderntimes.review/film-art/

https://www.moderntimes.review/jans-return-from-parisian-exile-to-prague-in-the-summer-of-2003-krusova-2003/

https://www.moderntimes.review/uku-ukai/ 

A CINEMATOGRAPHIC POETESS

Ada Bligaard Søby: American Losers, 2006

Translation into English: Nell Nielsen

I have had occasion to see Ada Bligaard Søby’s film which lasts just under one hour. I am impressed. I cannot bring to mind a more convincing début film in all the years I have been involved with documentary films.

I would like to explain why in a kind of review. It starts with the very first scene. With a glance to the camera, the main character, a woman, invites us to follow this story. Of course this is quite simple and innocent – and it works. We follow willingly. This provides an effective framework.

The next move is of a literary nature, a written sign, white capitals on a black background. Kimberle was born in Arkansas. Then a still from her box of photographs. Then the next sign: She is my best friend. Then back to her archives, then film and inserts behind the sign, illustrating quite simply: She grew up in the Bible Belt. This is how this introductory text is mounted, and then the other player is presented immediately. The director makes absolutely sure that these two are kept in perfect balance and thus we come to expect – and so it proves to be - that this balance between the two separate stories is held throughout the film. Kevin was born in California / He is also my best friend / When I met Kevin he was a bartender / and a high school drop out / He lives in the woods north of New York City / Kimberle lives in New York City / She is 37 years old / (just as the piecing together of the archive material and inserts simply and directly supports the written signs, so does the music, then at this point the vocals come in to sing, telling a story which has never been told..) / Kevin writes / he is 41 / In the fall of 2005 I decided to go make a film about them and their lives / American Losers /

This is a subtle text about two biographies in balance and about a storyteller and portrait photographer and her deliberations: this is not about winners. The montage presented before the title contains all the elements and the whole story in a way. The title gives away the conclusion. I can hardly wait. I must watch this film..

And so I concentrate. What is it about this film? The genre I define quickly, it is film documentary far removed from journalism. The attitude is artistic. The content is more difficult to pin down, it is a mixture of biography, tragedy and comedy, and it borders on a short street musical when we consider the music that comes in at crucial moments. The method is that of a travelogue, and post Chatwin conversations and interviews are added, all of this in direct cinema style but not classical. Here we have the camera as one of the players, the third character. The film is garnished with an abundance of pictorial material, personal archive material and lyrical filming supplying the inserts. The tool is often that of a collage, but as an entirety it is, for the whole hour, a melancholy personal essay about a large ruling culture and about two different and yet so similar attempts at liberation within its dominance.

And it is the story line of the film, a journey along these two lifelines over a period of weeks in the autumn of 2005 as well as a number of flashbacks in the form of statements and archives, which make up the biographies. Two very ordinary stories, so that all kinds of involvement are possible. There is no room here for inquisitiveness, here we just have touching charm and lots of opportunity to fall in love. Ada Bligaard Søby has done detailed research, worked professionally and has ended up with an extremely distinguished cast. Just as one chooses one’s friends. And she has also worked with a manuscript (on paper or in her head) which reveals so much with deep feeling – a manuscript as simple and controlled as the subtly constructed introductory text. Her camera work appears impulsive but is competent and tasteful. It leads me through exteriors and into rooms which together form a set-design I personally find worth revisiting. It is very beautiful. Those who are more knowledgeable than I will probably feel the same way about the music which in itself seems to paint a picture of the USA. Chosen according to the different musical tastes of the characters, I suppose. That would be logical in this carefully planned piece of work.

The dramaturgy is simple, keeping to the style of the introductory text once again. Two journeys in the lives of two people in New York and the nearby area, but yet conclusively outside it.. Edited as parallel stories, but with a twist! They remain separate, remain in an endless constant balance and only the third party, the camera and its voice, keeps them together and shows them to us: look, a lovely couple, aren’t they? But how will their story end? I am so worried.

Ada Bligaard Søby has, on closer inspection, created a very complex piece of film work with apparent lightness. Hard work and concentration have been required in order to ensure that we, the audience, are not forsaken for a second, but that we experience the seriousness of it all as a game of life.

And this was just the first really big film from this cinematographic poetess. We have more, many more, to look forward to! (ABN, review, Sep. 7, 2006)

THE MANIFOLD NATURE OF LOVE (2006)

Pernille Rose Grønkjær: The Monastery, 2006

Tue Steen Müller: On September 21st the awarded Danish documentary masterpiece - after having toured the world – premieres in Danish cinemas. From the DFI magazine FILM (53, November 2006) we bring this extract of an article, written by blog owner Allan Berg Nielsen:

 "Mr. Vig, Matushka brought an icon for you…"

"Oh!"

"This is an icon for you. It's our present for you. To start a monastery here."

"I like that. I like that one. I like that one very' much. Oh, it's beautiful. It's beautiful."

"You can kiss it."

"Oh, thank you very much…"

Amvrosya, a nun, and Matushka, her superior, have arrived at Jørgen Laursen Vig's castle and he reverently admires the icon they have brought him as a gift from their monastery in . He makes the sign of the cross, he praises the beauty of the artwork, he is sincerely pleased. But he does not kiss the icon. He does not submit to its holiness. He wants to transform his castle into a Russian-Orthodox monastery with Amvrosya's help, but he balks at making the final commitment.

Later in the film, when several nuns have moved in, a procession is organized. Reluctantly, he joins in. He sees that the whole castle has been redone and incorporated into the holiness he invited in but whose consequences he had not quite foreseen. They fix up the room he set aside for a chapel prior to their arrival, but now Vig says it has to be a temporary arrangement. No, Amvrosya explains, once the chapel has been consecrated it can no longer be changed.

Vig has come a long way toward holiness in the three renunciations of the monastic vow. For 86 years he has lived in chastity, he clearly leads a humble life of poverty in the ramshackle castle. But he cannot submit to obedience; devotion is his trouble.

Grønkjær's film is about this holiness.

LANDSCAPE AND CHAPEL

The Danish landscape around the castle is beautiful and the camerawork eloquently describes this beauty. Beautiful, too, is the Russian art that, first in the single icon given to Vig, then in volume, gradually fills the chapel with fragrant, coloursaturated imagery captured by the camera in long, caring shots. The iconostasis, a sacred backdrop for immersion in the readings, is depicted against the seasonal changes of the landscape as Vig continues his free life. Both are depictions of beauty, the Russian art in the chapel against the Danish countryside outside in the gardens and the fields. Nature and culture, the prayer hours and the seasons, winter scenery and the iconostasis, the nun's kitchen and Vig's library. The secular and the sacred. Grønkjær's film details two different kinds of beauty. Like Vig, it cannot choose one over the other, depicting them side by side, closely cut' together.

LOVE

Sexuality is for making babies, Vig says. For a few weeks, a few times in a lifetime. Yes, he had a love once a very long time ago, but since then that side of life has been covered by other passions, studies, books and travel, a series of projects, culminating in the foundation of the monastery. Love – he doesn't know much about it. Sure, he has had the feeling, he has loved.

The film is not content to leave it at that, however. The nature of love is multi-faceted and inclusive. Vig does not elude it in the long run. A warm relationship evolves between him and Amvrosya. He falls asleep during prayer. With the book in his lap. The book he has begged so to get, the book he labours at harder than any physical thing in the house is his entrance to the world. Now he has fallen asleep and gently she walks over and turns the page to the current place in the prayer. He wakes up and sees that he is keeping up. It is a gentleness that does not call attention to itself. With caring and respectful resolve, she serves him his meals at a table in the kitchen. He maintains his status and dignity. He is worth loving.

The third actor in the film, the filmmaker with her camera, becomes entangled in a relationship of complex fascinations. The camera gazes at the old man with increasing tenderness and, for his part, he draws the filmmaker into all his deliberations, talking to the camera as if that were the most natural thing in the world. In their long conversations, the small instrument is a prosthesis for memory that, in eagerness and engrossment, is more easily overlooked than a pad on a stenographer's knee, the black octave of note-taking.

Grønkjær's film charts the manifold nature of love.

SHOOTING

Grønkjær shot all the footage herself from the first time she met Vig in 2000. For a while, she lived in a trailer at Hesbjerg, tracking the changing light and endlessly shifting colours of the landscape as a backdrop for the old man's daily life and all his scattered attempts at maintaining his property, which had long since gone to seed. She had a camera on permanent loan from Zentropa Real, while tenaciously, though unsuccessfully, seeking funds for her film. She did not have a lot of footage to show yet. Consultants and editors told her no. Apart from the essential equipment deal, she had no backing. Still, there was a freedom in this phase. She could spontaneously pursue any inclination. Her shooting schedule had no limits. Five years passed this way, as she slowly accumulated footage. Like Vig, she was working on a project most would have abandoned. Vig understood her. He had been working even longer on his own project.

KEY SCENES

The presentation of the icon at the nuns' first visit is a key scene. Another comes later on. Vig is in front of the greenhouse, hoeing. From behind the camera, the filmmaker asks him:

"Why is it so interesting to have a monastery here?"

Vig answers: "It is an old ambition of mine to leave a legacy. That's a banal thing, of course. One would like to do something that persists – it is an ambition."

"I don't get it," the filmmaker challenges.

"Huh?"

"I don't get it," she repeats.

"You don't get it?"

"No."

He looks up from what he is doing.

"You don't want to make a film that becomes part of history, a documentary?"

"Um, yes," she admits.

"You want to make something of quality. There you go." And he continues his gardening. "There you go," he repeats and crouches to deal with a weed.

TODAY, NOW... (2018)

Viviane Candas: A Possible Algeria, 2016 

Translation into English: Sara Thelle

1.

The film is built upon the voice, the director of the film's own voice. It tells the story. I always like that, it is honest, it is literary, closer to writing. And Viviane Candas’ voice makes me feel safe and makes me listen, even though what it tells me is horrifying. Next, her film builds on the archive material, a rare collection of historical footage edited together with a private archive. I almost always like that too, at least when it is done in a poetic construction like it is here, and not as a pedantic communication of a curriculum. In Candas’ work, this material is the very connection between the history of the world, the history of Algeria, the history of France and the biography of Yves Mathieu. He was Viviane Candas' father, French as she, but deeply connected with Algeria in the country's fateful hour. The narrative of the film is embedded in the two lines of the title, A Possible Algeria: The Revolution of Yves Mathieu, and in the contrast between society/nation/people and the individual lies the existential drama and the reflection on the nature of identity. Finally, the film is built on Candas' uniquely sensitive and honest interviews with a few of the story's key figures, which in the literary spirit of the film are more searching conversations than factual question/answer scenes. The heterogeneity of this material testifies to a long-standing collection of footage for the film, and it is linked by vignettes from the research travels in a reconstruction that has a fixed visual uniformity which works as a refuge for reflection. But curiously, these vignettes do not function as the “now” of the story. The present of the film is the voice of Candas narrating, and the protagonists leading the conversation in the interview scenes, where the director's voice is usually cut out, and yet in a strange way she is still very present. The conclusion of all this results in me really meeting these people, and the encounter with an old Ahmed Ben Bella is an emotional shock. This is the present of the film, here is world history itself present in this fragile body that speaks of itself as a socialist. Today, now ...

2.

The war in Algeria was a French matter, as I remember it, and the war was the brutality of the French military. I read about Djamila Boupacha in the Danish periodical Perspektiv, a specific quote from her during the trial, her important testimony, is still locked in my memory, still shaking me, because I remember how it was with me and the knowledge of violent brutality back then. She was always Picasso's drawing, but it was not about Picasso, it was her. She, the model imprinted on the small portrait drawn after a photograph, was stronger than the artist, in a way opposite Guernica, who was always the famous painter more than the wretched city. I read Simone de Beauvoir's novel The Mandarins about the French Intellectual Left in the 1940s, on the circle of Camus and Sartre. And I read about the war and about General Jacques Massu and his paratroopers' victory in 1957 over the FLN Resistance in the capital, which he tore up with arbitrary arrests and brutal interrogations and systematic torture. It was The Battle of Algiers, which in 1966 also became a film by Gillo Pontecorvo with Jean Martin in the role of Colonel Mathieu, who is probably a portrait of General Massu, a feature film in black and white documentary style with amateurs straight in from the street in most of the other roles. The mimic documentary quality of Pontecorvo's film is so astonishing that Candas has been able to use scenes from it as part of her archive material, for example the execution scenes.

3.

The opening sequence, the first images: the bridge with the cars in the mountain landscape, the roads seen from the car, the railway station with the train on a regular day, the style of the images as a whole and their particular technical quality define the time of the film as present, right now when these images where filmed, and right now where I am experiencing it, recalling the story of Algeria's war of independence as scattered fragments bound in the films, photographs and documents from the archives, which are consistent layers in the architecture of the film: its past.

4.

The participants in the conversations are in this now, the director's voice is in this now, the scenes of the vignettes are this now, thereby framing everything with the present, also the layers of the archive footage, which through the superb editing work is writing the film's past. It is the fragile images of the memory, the fragments of the past, to which the voices add details. To all the terrifying events. But also adding clarifications, about what really happened: the guillotine in the prison yard; the execution of an Algerian resistance fighter; how an exit at a main road holds the information about the way in which Yves Mathieu in all probability was murdered, a circumstantial evidence indicating that this was possible, such as the car wreck was found. It is a film about memory based on archive material more related to Chris Marker’s Level 5 (1997) written in the present of the editing room, with its minimal and indistinct but utterly decisive archive scenes and photos; and it is related to Emile de Antonio’s Millhouse (1971), made solely on archive clips and, as I remember it, written in the past tense as a form of serious entertainment, while Chris Marker's film is a moral philosophical task in the present tense, precisely like the core of Viviane Candas' oeuvre, which is a similar obligation for me, a challenge to my thoughts, precisely what the festival Docs & Talks where the film is screened is intending.

5.

Candas's film does not document this brief but violent chapter of Algeria's history, rather her film is documenting a qualified thought about this period in history, a thought qualified by the memory of a state leader, the memory of a minister, and a daughter's remembrance of her absent father. She now needs to share their memories, in order to understand her well-ordered fragments as historical knowledge, to come to love her revolutionary father, who was far away and buried in work, understand him and love him unreservedly now, despite him having been dead for many years. She stands in the present with the plate with the grave inscriptions in her hand, considering the right lapidary summary of this person's life.

6.

The subtitle of the film is La révolution d'Yves Mathieu as I read on the screen after the title sequence. This is a couple of days ago, and I only now begin to understand the importance of the title as a whole. I am ready to watch this remarkable film again, ready to listen to Rasmus Alenius Boserup's introduction and to his conversation with Viviane Candas in Cinemateket at the Docs & Talks Film and Research Festival.

Photos: Yves Mathieu and Ahmet Ben Bella

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4151/  (Filmkommentaren, le 4.2.2018)