IDFA Awards

Taken from the idfa site: The VPRO Joris Ivens Award was presented to Anders Østergaard for Burma VJ – Reporting From a Closed Country. The film consists almost completely of material filmed in secret by a group of reporters during the uprising against the military dictatorship in Burma in September 2007. According to jury chair Bianca Stigter, the film is “a harrowing reminder of the power and the weakness of images." (Anders Østergaard also took some awards at the cph:dox, click search)

The VPRO Joris Ivens Award consists of a sculpture and € 12,500.
The jury of the Joris Ivens Competition also awarded a Special Jury Award to Rick Minnich and Matthew Sweetwood for Forgetting Dad (Germany), which deals with the emotional consequences for those around him of the sudden and inexplicable loss of memory suffered by Minnich’s father.

Aliona van der Horst received the Silver Wolf Award for Boris Ryzhy (the Netherlands), about the Russian poet Boris Ryzhy, who tragically died at an early age, and Yekaterinburg, the grey industrial city that had a great deal of influence on his life and work. Jury chair Thomas White said that, “although none of the jury members had heard of the poet in advance, Van der Horst manages to immerse the viewer in his world, while at the same time giving us a glimpse of the Russian soul”. The Silver Wolf consists of € 10,000, made available by the NPS.

For the first time, the Silver Wolf jury also presented a Special Jury Award to Lady Kul el Arab (Israel) by Ibtisam Mara'ana.

The winner of the Silver Cub Competition, for documentaries up to 30 minutes, was also announced. Slaves – An Animated Documentary (Sweden/Norway/Denmark) by Hanna Heilbronn and David Aronowitsch won the Silver Cub Award, worth € 5,000.

filmkommentaren.dk has not yet, alas, had the chance to watch and review the winning films. It will happen asap.

Laura Poitras: My Country My Country

Vurdering:

Måns Månsson: Mr. Governor

Vurdering:

Dogan & Eskikoy: On the Way to School

The Kurdish in Turkey – a long and complicated story about a people being suppressed. We have seen loads of news reports and some political documentaries about a conflict full of blood, and also for that reason it is nice to see this well made (beautiful cinematography, slow insisting editing, simple structure) documentary about a teacher, who arrives to teach Kurdish children Turkish, a language that only a few of them knows about.

Young he is the teacher, but committed to his cause; he wants to establish a contact with the children, and he ”survives” that there is no running water at least in the beginning of his stay that in the film constitutes one year. There is a lot of ”Etre et Avoir” in this film, but where Philibert makes a focus on specific children and folllow them, the two Turkish directors have chosen to let the teacher  (could have been the title of the film) be at the centre, including his phone calls to his mother far far away.

”Happy is the one who says: I am a Turk”. The teacher teaches them the words of Atatürk, so of course this film also shows the propaganda machine in function. What stays with me is, however, the fine moments between teacher and school children, and the discreet warm observation scenes in the poor homes of the parents.

The Netherlands/Turkey, 80 mins. World Premiere at idfa, 2008.

http://www.perisanfilm.com/en/index.html

www.idfa.nl

Vurdering:

IDFA Forum 1

IDFA Forum 2 – What´s on the Agenda?

IDFA Forum 3 – East Beats West

I know that I am biased in the following – working for the Institute for Documentary Films (IDF) in Prague that organises the Ex Oriente Film training Programme and the East European Forum in Jihlava – but I have to share the joy of the success of 3 projects from Eastern Europe.

The one presented in the big room was almost a winner before the presentation as it had been pitched at other market events. But the taster and the pitch skills of Filip Remunda, one of the directors (the other is Vit Klusak) behind world success ”Czech Dream”, were convincing. ”Czech Peace” about the Americans setting up a military base in the Czech Republic next to a small village has the potential to be another fine film for cinema and television.

The two others were presented in the small room where first Serbian Srdjan Sarenac and French Estelle Robin-You (director and producer) got a big amount of support from the 9-10 editors around the table. They presented ”Village Without Women”, in their own words about ”three Serbian brothers attempt to seduce Albanian women in a last-ditch effort to save their remote, dilapitated village”. The taster promises a film far beyond the comedy that the subject could invite you to think it would be. Second presentation came from Poland, from Centrala film that also made ”Gugara” (reviewed here by Allan Berg). The director Thierry Paladino, who made ”At the Datcha” (reviewed here by me), is Italian-French, but lives in Poland. He wants to follow a puppet-master and his pupil on a tour in the South of France. His taster is pure Renoir in approach, a little short film in itself and it seduced for sure the people around the table. A difficult film for a market like the Forum, but thanks for reminding us that there should still be space for the personal and artistic genre of documentaries. It does not have to be social and political all of it, does it?

www.docuinter.net
www.idfa.nl

IDFA Forum. We, the Commissioning Editors

Jørgen Leth: Notater om kærligheden

I morgen aften skal vi se en gammel Jørgen Leth film i min filmklub. Jeg har prøvet at forberede mig. Det kan jeg ikke, jeg farer vild, eller det mærkes som om jeg gør det. Landskaberne og opstillingerne fører tilsyneladende så mange steder hen. Som hele tiden ligner det forrige. Men jeg tager fejl, imidlertid tager jeg fejl. Der er forskydninger, små umærkelige ændringer. Det er ikke blot smukke postkort med tekst bagpå vist efter hinanden (selv om det for så vidt havde været fint nok, når fotograferne er Henning Camre og Dan Holmberg, og det er Jørgen Leth, som har skrevet de korte tekster, som hører til), nej der er en evig kadance, en stigning i intensitet, viden og overblik, små fald og stigninger undervejs (det er skam levende dette) men generelt en ubrydelig udvikling frem mod en stor tilfredsstillelse: klogskab og skønhed forenet i en fejlfri film.

Vurdering:

Valentin Valchev: See you at the Eiffel tower

Vurdering:

Isabel Grünwald: Brothers

Vurdering:

Ferenc Moldoványi: Another Planet

Opstrup: The documentary Narrative 4

THE DOCUMENTARY NARRATIVE (Now in an English version)

The creation of the documentary - compared to the documentary programme and the fiction film.

Mikael Opstrup

1. Fiction is defined by the story. A course of events that is written down in the script and then converted into a film. The directors work process is linear and the fiction film is from a dramaturgic point of view frictionless. Only one course of events exists. The fiction director's endeavour is storytelling.

2. The documentary programme is defined by the subject. A course of events that the journalist reproduces as objectively as possible. All though objectivity is an...

Mikael Opstrup: The documentary Narrative 3

Remark to Ib Bondebjerg by Mikael Opstrup

Thanks for Ib Bondebjergs comment on my 'Den dokumentariske fortælling' which I guess can be translated to 'The documentary narrative'. However it misses my approach to the matter.

Andreas Johnsen: Natasja

Jørgen Leth: Portrætfilmene

The Jørgen Leth Collection, Portrætfilmene: Klaus Rifbjerg (1974), Peter Martins - en danser (1978), At danse Bournonville (1979), Kalule (1979), Step on Silence (1981), Dansk litteratur (1989), Michael Laudrup - en fodboldspiller (1993), Jeg er levende - Søren Ulrik Thomsen, digter (1999) + bonus, Leth om Laudrup (2007). Det Danske Filminstitut 2008 http://www.dfi.dk/boghandel/videoshop.htm

Still: Peter Martins - en danser

Ib Bondebjerg: A Poetics for the Documentary

A poetics for the Documentary - basic genres and formats

Ib Bondebjerg

I think it is a very valuable endeavour Opstrup (ed.: Mikael Opstrup: "The documentary Narrative / Den dokumentariske fortælling", 9.10.08 on this site, written in Danish and English. Search on "opstrup" at the left column) has embarked on trying to define what is specific for a documentary narrative and comparing it with documentary (TV)programs and the fiction film narrative. To see the documentary project as a working with contradictions between reality and narrating reality is certainly an aspect worth noting...

Photo: Ib Bondejerg right.. Henning Camre left

Seth Gordon: The King of Kong

Vurdering:

Møder/CPH:DOX 21

Det går sjældent som planlagt, når jeg er på festival. Billetter kan ikke fås, visninger ikke nås, titler ikke til stede i on-line samlingen på markedet. Men, men så er der til gengæld store overraskelser, nye opdagelser, uventede møder. Det begyndte i det planlagte, jeg måtte med det samme jeg kom se filmen om mordet på Anna Politkovskaya.

Eric Bergkraut: Letter to Anna (Det viste sig at være en velordnet, klar og uhyre vigtig journalistisk materialesamling til forståelse af dette usædvanlige menneske, vigtigst er interviewet med Politkovskayas redaktør)

Jonathan Cauette: Tarnation (.. og så løb jeg ind i en række film, som alle er lavet på privatlivsarkiver. Først et forrygende levet og klippet familiedrama. En kvindes opvækst i et helvede - påført eller selvforskyldt, faktisk eller digtet - det holder filmen svævende i sin musikfortælling, men hendes smerte er autentisk)

Michel Auder: The Feature (.. 184 minutters samvær med et menneskeliv i avant garde kunstens centrum, i udkanten af det, vi kalder det almindelige, men i så utildækket ærlighed, at jeg kan overføre selv det mest eksotiske til den historie jeg burde kende bedst - og herefter kender bedre. Mødet med Auder blev mit vigtigste, hans film min allerstørste oplevelse) 

Morgan Dews: Must Read After My Death (.. og så til den nok mest tunge, 73 minutter med det mest ordinære private smalfilmmateriale kombineret med noget så ualmindeligt som en dagbog på bånd, alt gemt som et testamente af denne ualmindeligt almindelige kvinde, hvis fortælling, Dews uhyre langsomt, men konsekvent lader vokse ud af kedsommeligheden ind i den klassiske tragedie)

Agnès Varda: Les Plages d'Agnès (.. herefter til den letteste, mest opfindsomt farverigt dansende film: Varda har ombygget sit vidunderlige privatarkiv og sine erindringer til en komedie, så jeg ler, så tårerne triller og opdager at de kommer af vemod og sorg over det tabte, og kun den energiske evige skabelse af scenernes kunstværker tager kampen op mod forgængeligheden, og den elskedes grav overstrøs med to slags røde blomster, hans og hendes, endnu friske) 

Amir Labaki: 27 Scenes About Jørgen Leth (.. dette arkiv administreres hengivent af en åbenlys beundrer, de præcist valgte citater fra filmene tegner deres billede af et værk, der hænger sammen i en forskning, som endnu en gang imponerer i omfang og konsistens)

Werner Herzog: Encounters At The End Of The World (.. og endelig flyttedes fokus for mig væk fra den tabte tid, og vemodet forvandledes til klaustrofobi med dykkerne under Antarktis havis og undren over naturforskningens galgenhumor, ja, der blev leet meget i salen, til simpel angst, at det efter dinosaurernes uddøen så pludseligt som art dengang i fortiden nu er vores tur, for det minder Herzogs alvor uden nåde og hans tydelige billeder af vore fremtidige ruiner mig om. Og dette møde bliver nok det uafrystelige)   

Awards/CPH:DOX 20

2008 CPH:DOX awards have been given out at the CPH:DOX Galla.

DOX:AWARD 2008: went to Anders Østergaard for "Burma VJ", with a Special Mention to Mark Hammersberg, Ester Martin Bergsmark and Beatrice Maggie Andersson for "Maggie in Wonderland" (see review).

DANISH DOX AWARD 2008: The award for best Danish documentary was given out for the first time this year, and was split between Nikolaj Viborg's "69" and Tina Katinka Jensen for "Solange on Love" (see review), with a Special Mention to Janus Metz for "From Thy to Thailand" (see review) and Christian Sønderby for "Side by Side" (see review).

AMNESTY AWARD 2008: This year's Amnesty Award goes to Anders Østergaard for "Burma VJ", with a Special Mention to Joseph Bullman for the courageous and provocative "Dynamiters, Assassins, Fiends".

NEW VISION AWARD 2008: goes to Michel Auder for "The Feature", with a Special Mention to Apichatpong Weerasethakul for "Morakot".

SOUND AND VISION AWARD 2008: The Award for best music documentary goes to Sacha Gervasi for "Anvil! The Story of Anvil", with a Special Mention to Margarita Jimeno for her debut film "Gogol Bordello Non-Stop".

DOC ALLIANCE AWARD 2008: This year's special Doc Alliance Award goes to Pavel Koutecky and Miroslav Janek for "Citizen Havel" (see review).

Politikens Publikumspris: has been chosen by the readers of Politiken, and goes to Nikolaj Viborg for "69".

Still: Burma VJ

DOX Forum/CPH:DOX 19

DOX Forum/CPH:DOX 18

A learning lab. This is what Tine Mosegaard, the organiser, called the DOX-Forum in the catalogue intro for the 3 day industry event, an integrated part of the film festival. A programme consisting of pitching sessions and seminars like the one reported about below.

And it was actually a learning lab for me, who is involved in 4-5 pitching sessions per year, where broadcasters react to projects that are normally still in the development phase. Here it was a different set up. The projects were almost all of them at the end of shooting and those project holders who were best prepared, profited from the presence of skilled people from classical distribution agencies or new online and digital platforms. The possibilities for a variety of distribution outlets seem to be growing at the same pace as the decrease of financial investment from broadcasters into creative documentaries. For more information, go to some of the web sites below.

14 projects were pitched, and as an experienced pitch trainer, it hurt me to experience several of them stumbling blindly through their presentation. The result was naturally that the panelists spent all time asking to the project content and therefore did not get to the distribution advice for their soon-to-be-released film. With exceptions, of course, read about those at  text 19.

Picture from Documentary of the Month-film

”Welcome to the New World of Distribution” is an article by Peter Broderick that you can read on

www.peterbroderick.com
www.cineticmedia.com
www.eldocumentaldelmes.com
www.indiepixfilms.com
www.icarusfilms.com
www.microcinema.com
www.widemanagement.com
 

DOX:Forum/CPH:DOX:17

Nomally panel discussions are boring with a lot of repetitions. This one was different. The panelists complemented each other and were open in their sharing information and points of views on the involvement of the art museums in distributing films.

Jytte Jensen from MOMA New York told that the museum is pretty active in that field, showing documentaries regularly and keeping a film on the agenda for a week. The latter provokes a review in the NY Times. Without paying rental fee, as it is great promotion for the film and filmmaker to be at MOMA! However, when the museum buys a print for its collection, they pay 2,5 times the print prize. Or money is given through handling fees. She mentioned ”Dinner with the President” (= Musharraf), updated version, as a current example. Director: Sahiba Sumar.

ICA in London was represented by Mark Adams, who takes care of the film activities of this Institute of Contemporary Arts. He stressed that their documentary involvement had grown, both in terms of their screenings and with the, primarily 35mm, distribution they operate. Re payment ICA operates as every other art cinema distributor.

Andrea Picard from Cinematheque Ontario, curator of Wavelengths at the Toronto Film Festival, was the one who underligned that there are more and more visual artists who move into making films, but she also stressed that there is actually nothing new in this: dada, fluxus, surrealism, Dali, Man Ray etc. But there is also a move in the other direction, from the film world to the art world. The names of Chantal Akerman and Pedro Costa. This move seems also to have a financial reason, if I understood it correctly – more funding available in the art scene. Crossover is the key word, as it is for the cph:dox programme policy.

http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

Christian Sønderby Jepsen: Side by Side/CPH:DOX 16

Around 20 minutes into this staged documentary I started to get impatient. Come on, make the story move, we got the message, the neighbours dont like each others, they dont talk, it is a silent war, where they will not fight or terrorise each other as in subjectwise similar films like the classic of Norman Maclaren. But then it takes a turn. The filmmaker asks his father, one of the neighbours, what was the biggest moment in his life. Difficult question to answer for a man, who has difficulties to express emotions, but he gives the answer. And the filmmaker goes to the neighbour to give us a positive impression of him.

We will never sit down and have coffee and pastries, says the father of the filmmaker about the conflict. More than a decade ago something happened that created a total split up between the two families. The result was that a fence grew up, a kind of no-mans land, a Berlin wall, in otherwise peaceful Western Jutland of Denmark in a town called Tarm. Where they speak a strong dialect and express a certain kind of stubbornness. Because nobody really recalls what happened, nobody knows who owes an apology.

The film is brilliant to look at, the mise-en-scène  style is carried through, a promising debut, that reminds me of the early films of Jon Bang Carlsen.

Denmark, 2008, 47 mins.

http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

Vurdering:

Århus Filmfestival 2

Så er filmvisningerne i gang i Århus. Man skulle kunne være to steder nu. Må jeg her lige pege på de film i programmet, som Tue Steen Müller har anmeldt her på siden:

Timo Novotny: Life in Loops (8. april  2008: "... one of the most important documentaries from the last years." 6 penne.)

Avi Folman: Waltz with Bashir (11. november 2008: "... It is all so well made, perfect craftmanship, it is beatiful to watch, it is packed with emotional music, full of effects, sometimes as an actionfilm.. and yet, or maybe therefore, I dont care about their stories." 3 penne.)

John Webster: Recipes for Disaster (6. juni 2008: "... but slowly the wonderful film character Anu expresses her disagreement with the behaviour of - as she says - the "bossy" husband who wants to send a message to the world and.. 5 penne.)

Miroslav Janec og Pavel Koutecky: Citizen Havel (26. september 2007: "... a film full of humour about a gentle man who - as he says himself - is unwilling to conform to the stereotypes. A man who listens and thinks before he talks.")

http://www.aarhusfilmfestival.dk/index.html

Gideon Koppel: Sleep Furiously/CPH:DOX 15

Vurdering:

Ferenc Moldoványi: Another Planet/CPH:DOX 14

Vurdering:

L. Mik-Meyer:The Arabic Initiative/CPH:DOX 13

Jakob Skovgaard Petersen, his wife and their two children  were in Cairo for some years. Petersen was appointed Head of the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute and he was there during the cartoon crisis. A brilliant and knowledgeable man, not only a man with diplomatic skills and strong in dialogue but also a man, who was able oppose prominent religious and political leaders. The man is fine and is awarded when he gets home. The director decided to make a point out of this as the film starts and ends with Petersen being greeted by Her Majesty the Queen. That was a wrong decision, it is completely irrelevant for a film that could have focused much more on the dialogue and not on the family side of Petersen’s stay in Cairo. The wife plays tennis and feels insecure about the children in such a big city. They have parties, take Danish ministers around to meetings, and yes, a little bit of this and a little bit of that, no focus, superficial. There is, however, one very good scene in the film where Petersen sits in a soukh, drinks tea and discusses with some journalists from al-ahram. More of that could have made it interesting.

Denmark, 2008, 60 mins.

http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso ’

Vurdering:

Jan Troell/CPH:DOX 12

I was at the Film House tonight to meet Jan Troell, the 77 year old Swedish master, who right now experiences big international success with his latest feature, ”Maria Larssons evige Øjeblik”. English title is ”Everlasting Moments”. A whole evening programme was set up with Troell and his wife Agneta Ulfsäter Troell, from whose family the story about Maria comes. I was there for the first part of the evening, a well structured meeting with the director.

This first part opened with the film about Troell, ”Troell's magic mirror” by Swedish Thomas Danielsson. Sympathetic it is - even if it sometimes feels a bit messy as it wants to have too much information conveyed within the hour it lasts. But you love every little word Troell says, this modest lyrical observer of the world we live in. Troell talked afterwards about his work, with many references to his old, late friend and inspiration source, the photographer Georg Oddner, that he made a brilliant documentary about, ”Presence”.

Playful Troell showed four of his small homemade films to the audience after ”Reflexion 2001” from the NY twin towers, a filmic requiem with music of Arvo Pärt. Joyful were the short film about ladybirds having sex and the one about a snail on a lunch table. Satirical was a film about animals getting a yellow tag according to EU rules. The absolute climax, however, came with a short film about some older men and women with rackets in their hands, but without any tennis balls, caught in their more or less silly movements and interesting facial expressions by the camera of Troell, their documenting tennis partner!

http://www.dfi.dk/english/Danish+films/Directors/DirectorFact.htm?DirID=9917
http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

Århus Filmfestival 1/CPH:DOX 11

Nu kan vi der bor vestligere selv se efter, er Ari Folmans Waltz with Bashir vildt flot,men kold og tom? Kollega Tue Steen Müller gik frustreret fra visningen i København læser vi lige nedenfor. Og har den erfarne mand dårlige fornemmelser med det kunstneriske under det fremragende håndværk - ja, så er der noget at kigge efter, ved jeg. Nu har vi de to flotte stills for os - vi må bestemt ind og finde ud af det med den film. Frustreres med forberedelse eller spontant væltes, måske.. Den vises i Øst for Paradis på lørdag 19:00

Århus Filmfestival, som de kommende dage sekunderer CPH:DOX med vigtige og fremragende dokumentarfilm valgt efter en ny skarp profil, har også en lille afdeling på tre film, som den københavnske festival har valgt til dem. Så filmene supplerer det de vil i Århus med dokumentarfilmsektionen.

http://www.aarhusfilmfestival.dk/index.html

Ari Folman: Waltz with Bashir/CPH:DOX 10

Vurdering:

Hammarberg m. fl.: Maggie../CPH:DOX 9

Hammarsberg, Bergmark & Andersson: "Maggie In Wonderland". Andersson is Maggie, credited as co-director in this moving documentary about herself, a Kenyan woman, who lives in Malmö on the 15th floor with a balcony full of pigeons.

"It's me telling you about my life", Maggie says behind the camera when she points around in her flat that has the look of loneliness and trouble. How did she end up in Sweden - this is not told, what we get to know, we get from the scenes with Maggie behind the camera, or Maggie followed and observed by a cameraperson. She tells us that she suffers from not seeing her son, who is in Kenya. She tells us that she was with a man in this appartment, he was violent and got out. We see her in conversation with a not very understanding school teacher who tells her to stop school because she missed too many lessons. And in a late night street scene, she films while being attacked by someone. She repeats several times that many take her, a black woman, for a prostitute.

It is a film that goes in many directions and I cannot help asking if she has not been offered psychological help. I dont want to think the Swedish public system is so bad that nothing has been done to get out of the trauma. The film indicates nothing of that sort... The ending shows Maggie cleaning up, ready for a new start, a new year. Wishful thinking from the filmmakers side?

Sweden, 2008, 72 mins.

http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

Vurdering:

Andreas Johnsen: Natasja/CPH:DOX 8

Vurdering:

Nanna Frank Møller: Let’s Be Together/CPH:DOX 7

That Nanna Frank Møller is an excellent editor has been proved many times, primarily in her collaboration with Danish director Max Kestner. That she has a talent for directing herself became obvious with the film about the circus sisters, ”Someone Like You”. Here she is with another proof: a film about 14 year old Hairon, who has Brasilian parents but lives in Denmark with his mother and her Danish husband, one more dad for Hairon.

”Let´s Be Together”, however, is the story about son and (Brasilian) dad, told in an intimate and gentle film language, full of respect for the drama that lies in a teenager, who loves to dress like girls and women do.

Hairon wants to be Cleopatra for his birthday and this forms the structural frame of the film. Mother and Hairon go to Brasil to see Brasilian father and to have the Cleopatra costume prepared. Strong conversations are unfolded, interpreted brilliantly in rythm and music and in an editing that have wonderful pauses that are full of information and emotion. ”You must know to control your life a bit”, the father says in one of the many scenes with the two together. Would be wrong of me to reveal the end scene of the film, it is so fine and impressive and well thought and performed by a big talent in new Danish documentary.

Denmark, 2008, 82 mins.

http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso  

Vurdering:

Darlings/CPH:DOX 6

Nu har festivalens medarbejdere offentliggjort deres personlige top 10 blandt festivalens film. Jamen så laver jeg da også min helt egen ønskeseddel, som består af gensyn og titler, som jeg ikke kender, bare har lyst til eller brug for (hvis det ikke er det samme?)

Black Heart (jeg MÅ se det smukke, smukke super8 fotografi på stort lærred)

Letter to Anna (jeg går fuldstændig i stå, når jeg tænker på den kvinde)

27 Scenes About Jørgen Leth (titlen er krukket, men Leth fylder nok filmen, og han er det ALDRIG)

Z32 (det siger sig selv, læs blot her på siden, hvad Tue Steen Müller har skrevet)

Citizen Havel (jeg er stille, når jeg tænker på den mand)

De vilde hjerter (Noers Vesterbro er en smuk erindring, nu er her så næste film)

Jesus Christ Saviour (den vildt berømte forestilling håber jeg finde i en eller anden videobar, det er jo i dag sidste dag..)

Encounters at the End of the World (den når jeg i hvert fald med Kinski og grislybjørnen og den ultimative poetik i tanken)

Fragments of Conversations with Jean-Luc Godard (Posthus Teatret især, men da også Grand er et fint sted at sidde og overvære disse samtaler, som næppe udgør en film, men det er jeg så ligeglad med..)

Les plages d'Agnès (selvfølgelig.. ren forelskelse)

http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/fa.lasso?n=908#anchor2203

Janus Metz:Fra Thy til Thailand/CPH:DOX 5

Hen mod første films (Fra Thailand til Thy) slutning forstår jeg, at det på det formelle plan er et etnografisk projekt, et case study. Om det omhyggeligt arrangerede ægteskab. Men fortællingen inden i dette stykke videnskabeligt feltarbejde hentes omhyggeligt frem af klipperen Marion Tour, og den vokser i intensitet i overensstemt takt med følelsernes forvandling hos de to. Det bliver bare smukkere og smukkere. Og selvfølgelig rives jeg med... Titlen på dokumentarfilmen er da også inde i mit hoved Historien om da Kae fik Kjeld... Læse mere:

http://www.filmupdate.dk/?p=2710 (præsentationsartikel i FILM's Amsterdamnummer)

In English: Toward the end of the first film, I realise that, formally, this is an ethnographic project, a case study of carefully arranged marriages. But inside this piece of scientific fieldwork, Mette Esmark, the editor, delicately teases out a story that grows in intensity as the couple's feelings change. It simply keeps getting more beautiful. And of course, I'm riveted, the documentary's title nudging my mind, The Story of How Kae Met Kjeld... Read more:

http://www.dfi.dk/tidsskriftetfilm/64/thailandthy.htm

(From: FILM # 64, nov. 08, Danish Film Institute)

Janus Metz: Fra Thy til Thailand, 2008. Produktion: Cosmo Doc http://www.cosmo.dk/ Filmen vises på CPH:DOX 11. november 13:30 ved et seminar om journalistik i Cinemateket. Den har premiere i Grand 12. november 21:30.  

Gulddok 2008/CPH:DOX 4

Danish Producers Association distributed documentary prizes at the opening of CPH:DOX 2008. 3 films took the five prizes. All three films have been reviewed at filmkommentaren.dk In Danish. All three films have very local themes.

Årets GuldDok/Grand Prix
Instruktør Ulla Boyes "Kun med hjertet", der handler om hverdagen på Kofoeds Skole i København.
Koncern TV- og Filmproduktion

Bedste lange dokumentar/Best feature length doc
Instruktør Mads Kamp Thulstrup og Carsten Søsted "…Og det var Danmark!", filmen om det danske landsholds udvikling fra 70'erne til EM-triumfen i 1992 .
SF Film Production

Bedste korte dokumentar/Best short doc
Instruktør Janus Metz "Fra Thailand til Thy", om thailandske kvinder, der søger lykken i det nordlige Danmark. Research: Sine Plambech
Cosmo Doc

Bedste foto/Best Camerawork
Lars Skree og Henrik Bohn Ipsen for "Fra Thailand til Thy".

Bedste klip/Best montage
Janus Billeskov Jansen, Stig Bilde og Mette Esmark for "Kun med hjertet".

Foto: Ulla Boye, som har instrueret grand prix gulddokumentarfilmen

Ari Folman: Waltz With Bashir/CPH:DOX 3

If you like me are waiting with great expectations on one of the most talked about and praised documentaries from this year, since the premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, the Israeli film Waltz With Bashir, you can warm up with a radio interview from the Guardian Film Weekly.

This animated documentary covers the 1982 massacre of three thousand Palestinians by Christian militia in Beirut.

And why not visit the site of the film (or YouTube) to watch some trailers before the screening at CPH:DOX.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/audio/2008/nov/05/animation-sheffield-doc-fest
http://waltzwithbashir.com/
http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

CPH:DOX 2

In the previous text you can find a review of one of the many documentaries, the one about Patti Smith, that Copenhagen offers its documentary audience from Friday November 7-16. We will follow the amazing festival  programme with reviews, reports and notes.

Several of the films have already been written about or reviewed on filmkommentaren.dk Go to the box “søg” and write the title of the films if you wish to have our opinion. Here are the films listed randomly:

Everything is Relative. Citizen Havel. Dolls. Gonzo. Man on Wire. Standard Operating Procedure. Stranded. Z32. The English Surgeon. Black Heart. Solange on Love.

And here is a clip from the site of CPH:DOX, in their own words:

“CPH:DOX, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, is the largest documentary film festival in Scandinavia. Each year the festival fills the Copenhagen cinemas with a selection of more than 150 documentary films from around the world. During the ten festival days, CPH:DOX also presents five whole days of professional seminars and provides an international forum and meeting place with the newly founded DOX:FORUM. Acknowledging the rapidly growing interest in documentary film, CPH:DOX was founded in 2003 as an off-spring of Natfilm Festivalen, the biggest film festival in Copenhagen. Supported by film professionals as well as the national press, CPH:DOX grew from 14.000 admissions in its first year to an impressive 26.000 in 2007. In 2008 CPH:DOX runs from 7-16 Nov.”

http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

Still: Z32

Steven Sebring:Patti Smith–Dream of Life/CPH:DOX 1

The film is a bombardment of words. From start till end Patti Smith reads texts of her own or by the many poets she has been inspired of in her multifacetted career as singer, painter, photographer, writer and visual artist. Actually, it is wrong to say that she reads the texts, she recites them as were they music, and this is what gives this film a flow and a rythm and a structure that is like a visual collage in very different styles and moods.

She goes to the places where were Arthur Rimbaud, she reads Allen Ginsberg to us, she travels the world, she takes notes, she takes pictures. And yet the most emotional parts are filmed in her big NY room, where she sits alone in the corner and comments on and shows her ”Objects in Life”.

She puts all her heart into this film that has been made over a period of 12 years, from the point when Patti Smith decided to get back to the music after having been living a family life out of the spotlight. There is a lot of concert sequences, there are photos that serve to take us back to Chelsea Hotel and Burroughs and Mapplethorpe, there are sequences with her and her children, there is a small jam session with Sam Shepard... it is a very rich film that you can only love for a 16mm (sometimes b/w, sometimes colour, sometimes direct cinema, sometimes interviews and staged scenes) camera work with nerve.

It premiered at the Sundance Festival, was at the Berlinale and will for sure come to a cinema or festival near you. I watched it on arte. AND NOW IT IS AT CPH:DOX AS IS PATTI SMITH HERSELF!

US, 2008, 108 mins

Photo: Patti Smith performing in Helsinki 2007

 http://www.dreamoflifethemovie.com/
http://www.pattismith.net/
http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

Vurdering:

Geyerhalter: Too Many Cheap tv Documentaries

This year’s Top 10 at the coming IDFA festival in Amsterdam is put together by Austrian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter. He has chosen films that have impressed him and that have played a role in his own development. Here is a clip from his motivation, where he praises Pirjo Honkasalo and her last big documentary:

”The 3 rooms of Melancholia” rescued a festival for me, which I would otherwise have left in frustration – I saw a lot of films there, most of which were very interesting in terms of their content, but formally lacked any kind of vision. It increasingly seems to me that people pay hardly any attention any more to the style of their film, as long as they have found a strong subject. At many documentary FILM festivals, I see films that hardly even reach the artistic – and often also technical – level of a cheap television documentary. Exceptional content is not enough to make a film into a good film. And I must also confess that I am not sure, that the film world has really been enriched by the democratisation that has been brought about by the advent of small cameras. True, this has resulted in greater output, particularly in the documentary field, and it is possible to make a documentary on a small budget, but the number of really great works seems to be in inverse proportion to the number of films being made. One of the few really great works of recent times is ”The 3 rooms of Melancholia”, which uniquely rises head and shoulders above the swamp of many small-scale documentaries, which call themselves films.

Still: The 3 Rooms of Melancholia

http://www.idfa.nl/industry/news/background/top-10-geyrhalter.aspx

Clips

Danish Short Docs online... What a brilliant initiative taken by the Danish Film Institute and the newspaper Politiken: 12 films with a duration between 3 and 5 minutes are now available on the web edition of the newspaper. One new per day. I have seen the 6 first which are very different but all try to adapt to this distribution medium and all try something new. Janus Metz and Sine Plambech invite us to experience a joyful break in the work of thai prostitute girls (thai dialogue, Danish subtitles). Veteran Jon Bang Carlsen reflects in a wordy and strong montage on the destruction of nature somewhere in England (Danish commentary). Malene Ravn and Vibeke Winding have visited a wonderful man from Christiania, whose small house is on the authorities list to be taken down (Danish dialogue). Malene Choi gives us a small dreamerish visual taster for a longer film. Christian Vium invites us to meet Brian Mphahlele who was in prison and got heavily tortured during the apartheid period (English langugage). And finally Christian Braad Thomsen and Bente Petersen introduce ”Mink in Love”, tough action and gentle caress (No dialogue, English intertitles).

So if you non-Danish speaking people want to get all out of it, start with the two last mentioned. I will be back later with mentions on the remaining six.

Still from Nybegynder by Janus Metz and Sine Plambech.

Danske læsere og festivalbesøgende får her en fin prolog til cph:dox.  

http://politiken.tv/clips/
http://www.dfi.dk/aktuelt/Nyheder/filmkunst_paa_netavis.htm

Discovery Campus in Leipzig

In Leipzig, at the same time as the festival, the final session of the Discovery Campus Masterschool took place with training of the participants for two concluding mornings with the pitching of projects that have been developed during the year with the help of producers and commissioning editors.

From stories about tourism, women in Afghanistan or in Morocco or in Brazil to Eastern European contemporary stories about a Bulgarian town without the women, who have all gone to Italy to work, or about Dimitrovgrad where socialism and capitalism meet, or to a big theatrical epic about the men who started Greenpeace way back, to a sweet story about long play records, to a couple who experience love through pain, to people in LA who get into trouble and store their dearest belongings, many of them to end up on an auction... to a Swedish project about men in their 40’es who join a swimming club to get away from the meaningless of Life! Hopefully these films will be ready within the next couple of years. They deserve it. Some got funding at the pitching, some have to develop further.

Lots of joy, very good visual tasters, losers and winners – losers, not necessarily their fault but because of the market limitations that were obvious during the two mornings where around 40 television people and a few film fund representatives were seated to respond to the pitching. Discovery Campus is an excellent training programme, very much because of the staff and the head of studies, filmmaker Peter Symes from the UK. And the Discovery Campus also is behind the new online meeting point Reelisor. Have a look at that.

Still from The Solitary Life of Cranes by Eva Weber, who took part in DC with the project LA Storage.

http://www.discovery-campus.de/v2/
http://www.reelisor.com/

DOK Leipzig 2008/ 3

The awards in Leipzig... Helena Trestikova won another first prize for her ”Réne”, which will be play here in Copenhagen at cph:dox. I did not see it yet but I am sure it deserves a prize, based on what I have seen before from her hand.

Second prize, plus two others, went to wonderful ”Oblivion” by Heddy Honigmann, a director whose work I have followed for many years, always with pleasure and admiration. I wrote a review of the film in the new DOX (Issue 79, November 2008), let me give you a small quote:

”In 1994, the director made ”Metal and Melancholy”, also from Peru, seen through the taxis and their double-job drivers. This new film from Lima is melancholic as well, and beautiful, but you also feel a well-documented anger on behalf of the people you meet who struggle every day to survive”. A humanistic, political film for a big audience. Thank you!

In the same DOX issue you will find a review of Z32, written by editor Ulla Jacobsen.

Still from Oblivion by Heddy Honigmann.

www.edn.dk
http://www.heddy-honigmann.nl/hhonigmann/
http://www.dok-leipzig.de/v2/cms/en/home/index.html

DOK Leipzig 2008/2

DOK Leipzig 2008/1

Of course, you have to be careful when you take a quote from the press office of a festival. Especially as you have not been able to follow the festival intensely because of other obligations. But I went to the festival centre at the new museum every day, met directors and other guests who I knew and they had a good time and were generally happy with the programme. As were the expected-to-be-critical students of the Zelig documentary school in Bolzano. So here comes the quote:

”Crowded cinemas, many international filmmakers and industry guests, lively discussions and a fantastic atmosphere all over the place were characteristical for the 51st edition of the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. ... Festival director Claas Danielsen anticipates a slight decline of audience numbers compared with last year's 50th anniversary of DOK Leipzig (31.000 viewers). Happily, the number of German and international industry visitors has proved to be stable: Altogether, 1.400 accredited visitors from 49 countries (1.450 in 2007) have come to Leipzig in order to make use of both the manifold film programme and the DOK Industry offers.”

It is amazing what my younger friend Claas Danielsen has achieved in the few years he has been director of the festival. He has changed the festival from being sleeping nach der Wende to a modern international meeting point of high quality. Even if I had suggested Baltic and other films to him and his selection group, and they were wrong in not taking more from my list (!), I was not disappointed with the films I had time to watch in the superb digital video library.

Photo: Claas Danielsen with Al Maysles (left)

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