FIDADOC 2009

Doclisboa 2009

Herz Frank on Documentaries

Latvian Herz Frank, a master in the history of documentary, with works like "Ten Minutes Older", "There were Seven Simeons", "The Song of Songs" and "Flashback":

In front of me on my work table is the central fragment from Raphael's fresco "The School of Athens". Plato and Aristotle discuss the philosophical meaning of life. Plato is pointing upwards - the essence is the Idea! Aristotle, on the other hand, has his palm pointing down to the ground - the basis is the material! Even earlier in the Old Testament (Genesis) both views are united. In the first book of Moses the first lines states: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. Read - the spiritual and the material.

As a documentarian, I follow these principles directly. Facts have to be the basis for documentary films. And if we want to uncover the truth in them, facts have to be portrayed not only on the surface and as purely informative, but also ith sensitive, spiritual eyes. Even better if one eye is dry, and the other - damp... Life has to be filmed imaginatively, and only then will we understand its deeper meaning. There is an image hiding in every detail of each fact, in each living and inanimate thing. You only have to know how to see and record them. A documentary camera is not a video-recorder in the street...

Sourav Sarangi: Bilal 2

The film about the Indian boy Bilal has previously been reviewed on filmkommentaren.dk The idfa festival and the connected Jan Virjman Fund has followed "the carreer" of the film and has posted this small sunshine story about a film, its director and main character:

Bilal, the story of a two-and-a-half-year-old boy growing up with completely blind parents, was screened at IDFA 2008. This year the documentary travels around the world, receiving awards at film festivals from Qatar to Mexico. Bilal will even be screened at the prestigious Museum of Modern Arts (MoMA) in New York. Director Sourav Sarangi reflects on the production of Bilal, from a project supported by IDFA’s Jan Vrijman Fund to an award-winning documentary.

Last week, Sourav Sarangi received another award for his documentary Bilal, in the Horizons section of Munich’s Dok.Fest. The Jury of Dok.Fest reported: ‘The everyday life of a three-year-old boy who lives at close quarters with his blind parents and his younger brother in a poor neighbourhood of Calcutta – what would one expect from this other than misery and destitution? But Bilal is surprisingly positive, sometimes even funny, and, above all, authentic and extremely human.’

New Russian Documentary Site

Kim Longinotto: Rough Aunties

Kim Longinotto is an amazingly productive film director, who has a slate of important films in her filmography (among them masterpieces like ”Divorce Iranian Style”, ”Runaway”, ”Gaea Girls”, ”Sisters in Law”), and she is a director that with her subjects and cinematographic skills reach both a broad audience and the film buffs. A retrospective of her work runs right now at MOMA in New York, and she is a hunted teacher for whatever film school or festival masterclass all over the world. She has never put herself in the first place, it is the people who matter for her, the stories around women in need, women towards whom she is capable of building trust when she appears with the camera, whe operates herself.

No wonder that the work of Longinotto has been awarded and that festivals queue to secure that they get her films as the first ones! As was the case for ”Rough Aunties” that were at idfa in Amsterdam and at Sundance Festival, and is now touring all over. It is about the association Bobbi Bear in Durban, South Africa, and the wonderful white and black women who work there with sexually abused children, making a beautiful effort to get the victims back to a decent life – and trying to get the abusers to court and sentenced.

One heartbreaking scene follows the other. Scenes with poor children with fear in their eyes hugging their teddy bears that are used as a communication tool to make the children explain where and how the assault took place. Scenes turn into sequences, stories are being built and you can only admire these women, who with their strength and commitment and love, as it is being said, ”fight the culture of silence” around brutal violence and rape.

UK, 2008, 103 mins.

http://roughaunties.com/film

http://risefilms.com/documentary

http://www.wmm.com/

http://www.wmm.com/longinotto/

Vurdering:

Annie Sundberg & Rickie Stern: The Devil came on H

The film was reviewed in August 2007, now we repeat the review for those Danish people who watched it on DR2’s new tuesday night documentary strand ”Dokumania”. The Danish language review went like this:

Darfur. Vi har hørt om det, vi har læst om det, vi ved at mennesker bliver dræbt i hundreder af tusindvis, men derfra til at få uhyrlighederne visualiseret som i Ricki Stern og Annie Sundbergs film er et langt stykke vej. Det her er en kampagnefilm, et råb om hjælp til verdensopinionen, så gør dog noget, og gøres der noget, næh sådan ser det ikke ud. Og hvorfor ikke, storpolitik, siger vi afmægtigt til hinanden uden at vide, hvad der så ligger i det. Det forklarer filmen heller ikke, dens ærinde er humanistisk og dens fortælling er personligt leveret gennem den amerikanske militære observatør Brian, der skriver breve hjem om, hvad han set - og dokumenteret med sit kamera. Han siger sit job op og beslutter sig for at offentliggøre sit materiale. Filmen følger hans nye mission, han får kontakt med politikere, han rejser til den Haag til den internationale domstol, han belejres af medierne.

Som sådan er filmen klassisk amerikansk - én mand tager affære - både i sin historie og i sin filmiske udformning. Heldigvis er denne mand sympatisk og man kan kun håbe på at hans mission må hjælpe bare en lille bitte smule. Som tilskuer kæmper du med at se på alle disse molesterede og forkullede lig, som er blevet fotograferet på tæt hold af Brian, samtidig med at du ved, at er der noget, der hjælper, er det netop sådanne billeder - hvis en opinion skal overbevises. Måbende ser du sudanesiske regeringsrepræsentanter antyde at billederne er arrangerede og fake.

Hvem kan hjælpe? En gribende scene viser Brian Steidl i samtale med en flygtning i Chad. Flygtningen gentager igen og igen at kun USA kan hjælpe, de arabiske lande gør intet. "Selvom vi også er muslimer", siger manden, der rejser sig, går rundt om et hushjørne, fulgt af kameraet, standser op, vi ser at han tørrer øjnene, der er håbløshed i hans kropsprog.

USA, 2007, 85 mins.

www.thedevilcameonhorseback.com

http://www.dr.dk/dr2/dokumania

Vurdering:

Planete Doc Review 4

Erlend E. Mo: Sandhedsjæger

OBS til danske læsere: Se denne smukke og gribende krimidokumentar om opklaringen af to justitsmord begået mod en handicappet mand, som sad i fængsel i over 18 år for to kvindemord, han ikke havde begået. Det er en krimi med rigtige mennesker i en rigtig historie, en skamplet på det oplyste og velorganiserede norske retssamfund. Filmen vises i Cinemateket i København torsdag den 21. Maj kl. 19.

But I continue in English as the film definitely has international potential and deserves to be shown at festivals all over as a fine piece of genre-conscious storytelling that appeals to both heart and brain. Of course the filmmakers have chosen to play as much as they can according to the rules of the crime series stereotype that we can watch every night on television if we want to.

Ex-newsreporter Tore Sandberg and his friend, ex-police investigator Frode Asbjørnsen constitute a couple like good old Morse and Lewis or other modern parallels or why not Sherlock Holmes and doctor Watson. They are indeed different in temperament but they are as characters so good together, these two older gentleman who have never visited a fitness centre and like the good side of (pub)life! The scoop of the film lies with the two characters in their chase for the truth. For Tore complemented with the motivation to rehabilitate Fritz Moen, who sat in jail for more than 18 years for two murders that he had not done. The two men can argue against each other, have funny conversations and at the same time be totally dedicated to the mission.

Tore covered the case way back and feels bad he was part of the media hysteria that hurried to condem Fritz Moen as the easy guilty person. Step by step Tore collects evidence that it could not have been Fritz – through interviews he makes with Fritz himself, with people who were involved in the investigation 20 years earlier and through all the court documents. The filmmakers create a story with dramatic flow, with repetitive tableau-like images of the water where the corpses of the young women were found, of Tore driving through a tunnel with a light at the end, and with reconstructions of the crimes done in an effective, yet discreet manner. Sorry, cant find anything to complain about!  
Norway, 2009, 86 mins.

http://www.exposed.no

Vurdering:

Chaim Litewski: Citizen Boilesen

Vurdering:

Bram Van Paesschen: Pale...

The title of the film is actually ”Pale Peko Bantu Mambo Ayikosake” which in swahili means ”Where there are people there will be problems”. And problems there are in Katanga, the location of this fresh and direct film that manages what most films do not when the subject is a foreign country with a foreign culture far away from wealthy Western Europe. The director has chosen to tell the story in first person, not through his own voice but through the main character. It is a very well written text that matches the intensity of a story that has a lot of humour in a dead serious context. Here is the catalogue annotation from when the film was shown at the idfa 2008 festival:

Isaac Mbuyi, a young Congolese man from Katanga, is a 21 years old and works as a 'creuseur', or a excavator. This means that he digs up cobalt using his bare hands or just a spade, in the abandoned mines in the once flourishing town of Kolwezi. Isaac's dream is to go to university and through excavating he hopes to earn the money he needs to achieve this. But things are not that simple. The work is arduous and highly dangerous and moreover, excavators are an easy target for malafide dealers and profiteers. Isaac's motto however is 'qui ne risque rien, n'a rien' (nothing ventured nothing gained) but he doesn't realize that his story will come to a bitter end.

The film, selected for several festivals, is produced by Belgian broadcaster VRT/Canvas, a sequel by same director is on its way from Savage Film.

Belgium, 2008, 95 mins.

http://www.savagefilm.be

Vurdering:

Input 2009/svt

For readers of Swedish language there is a fine service provided from Lars Säfström, documentary head of svt Malmö. Säfström writes about what he has seen and about the discussions at the public broadcaster's yearly gathering that this year takes place in Warsaw.

Link to his diary

Still from RIP: A Remix Manifesto by Gregg Taylor

Det Danske Institut i Damaskus opretter filmotek

Rundt omkring i den store verden sidder der nogle kulturelle ildsjæle og bygger små læhegn omkring det hul, hjemlige politiske ildsjæle gør deres bedste for at begrave kulturen i.
En af disse sidder på Det Danske Institut i Damaskus (foto), han hedder Hans Christian Korsholm Nielsen, i daglig tale HC. Han gør meget for både den danske filmkultur og for at hjælpe den spirende syriske. Det konstaterede Tue Steen Müller og jeg ved selvsyn under den nye syriske dokumentarfilmfestival Dox Box, som HC i flere omgange gav uvurderlig hjælp. Og der er rigeligt at hjælpe med, når en håndfuld ihærdige syriske filmfolk sætter sig for at introducere kreativ dokumentarfilm i et land som Syrien. Derfor er mennesker som HC en repræsentant for Danmark, vi kan være glade for.
 
HC ville meget gerne have kopier af danske film stående på det lille bibliotek på Det Danske Institut, så besøgende kan se filmene under deres ophold. Det lovede vi at være behjælpelige med og henvendte os optimistiske til DFI. Men det kunne de ikke hjælpe med – jeg skal undlade at gå i detaljer med vores frustration.

Så skrev vi ud til gode kolleger i filmbranchen og på nogle få uger havde en række producenter stillet 60 DVD’ere til rådighed, som nu står i en af de smukkeste bygninger i Damaskus til inspiration for gæster og beboere.

Se det var et rigtigt eventyr – men han hedder jo også HC.

Og vil du også gerne bidrage med din film til en happy end, så kan du kontakte undertegnede

mikael@opstrup-husum.dk

www.damaskus.dk

PS. En udstilling om det smukke hus i Damaskus er åbnet i dag på Davids Samling i København.

Cinephilia!

Petr Lom: Letters to the President

Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, receives 10 million letters per year and 76% of them are answered! This is stated by an employee from the administration that takes care of this personal contact between the president and the population.

Ahmadinejad, a president, who does not like the red carpet, as it is said in the beginning of the film, by one of the people interviewed,. A man of the people. A man who constantly shouts for hate towards Israel and the US, as seen in the film. As in previous films by the film director and cameraman, same person: Petr Lom, meets the people with an open mind and the camera ready to catch what he can in a tongue-in-cheek journalistic documentary that gets much closer than the usual, normal tv-reportages shot in Iran. Due to the original letter-angle we as viewer are taken from place to place, including the birthplace of the president, to meet not only supporters and propagandists of Iranian politics, but also citizens who are critical and dare express themselves. ”He is like a gardener who plants seedlings but do not water them”, one says. Others ask repeatedly for help, and the president is filmed caressing some of his fellow-citizens and helping a woman who faints from emotion when she meets the president. ”I am your servant”, he says in this wonderfully open, non-conclusive and nuanced insight to an Iran that has its election in June 2009.

Canada/France, 2009, 74 mins. and 52 mins.

http://www.filmstransit.com/

www.letterstothepresidentmovie.com

Vurdering:

Peter Kerekes: Cooking History

For a documentary veteran viewer it is pure pleasure, when you watch a film that gives you surprises you in structure, narration and content. I knew that Slovak/Hungarian Peter Kerekes after his wonderful ”66 Seasons” was working on a big budget film on a somewhat crazy subject: How did they cook for the soldiers on the front, what did they eat, under which circumstances, war and food... but I had no real idea on how he would materialise his idea and construct his film. I must say that I am amazed how innovative and playful and funny and moving and clever and original this great film is.

Chaptered it is - the prologue refers to Chechnya, then follows WW2 battles between Germany and Russia, post-WW2, Hungary 1956, Prague 1968, Balkan wars and much more –  told through interviews, b/w archive material, and reconstructions of soldiers on the fields and the best of all: the staging of the cooks with their transportable kitchen making food for the viewers. Placed – as the example in the epilogue – in the water, or in front of a ruin, or in other situations referring to where the battles took place.

But first of all Kerekes demonstrates again his enormous talent for (old) people. He has a brilliant gallery of characters who bring out their memories in a fresh and often humorous manner. Sometimes it is comedy, sometimes it is subtle and sometimes provocative. Storytellers they are, like the woman, who made blini pancakes for the Russian soldiers, and if they did not come home the pancakes were brought to be placed on the tombstone at the cemetery. And of course Kerekes takes the old lady to this venue and asks her several times – out of camera – why? The same old lady tells us in the kitchen that during the siege of Leningrad, there was 100g bread, two thin slices per person per day. In this moment she can’t stand talking about it any longer. Cut to the German baker who is likewise moved by thinking back... The excellent editing, according to the ”open structure” that the dramaturg of the film Jan Gogola always cleverly promotes, this editing is made so the characters, often on both sides of the wars, have a kind of dialogue with each other. That’s all, watch that film, get it to the audience, it is for everybody, for heart and brain.

Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria, 2009, 88 mins.

http://www.eastsilver.net/home

http://www.jaksevaridejiny.cz/english.php#menu1

Vurdering:

Jönsson & Gertten: Long Distance Love

Osh in Kyrgyzstan. Not a place that we have heard much about. The same goes for the people who live there. Who fall in love as everyone (hopefully) does all over the world. However, the problem for the two protagonists, Alisher and Dildora, is that they need money to survive and as there is no work for Alisher in Kyrgyzstan, he leaves for Russia with the help of an agency, that turns out to cheat on him and many others. Low-paid he is and there is not a lot of money going back to Dildora and his parents. While away from home, Dildora gives birth to their child, which does not make the living conditions easier. There is but one solution for Alisher – he must go back home for the sake of mother and child, but also for the ill mother and the silent father, who drinks too much.

Banal theme, yes, but actual and presented in a very sweet way with a straight forward story (sometimes with some huge jumps in time) and told in a sympathetic non-sensational and informative tone, although one could have wished for a more creative camera approach that could have made a good film be a great film.

2008, Sweden, 88 mins.

Will be shown at Cinemateket this coming sunday 17.5 at 14.30, with q&a with Magnus Gertten.

www.edn.dk

http://www.autoimages.se/english/auto_images/

Vurdering:

Guyla Nemes: Lost World

“The life, demolition and reconstruction of the Kopaszi dam between 1998 and 2007. A mostly black & white 35mm documentary shot over ten years in a forgotten landscape in the center of Budapest. People living in houseboats and wooden houses, struggling against flood, snow and investors who want them to evict. The second part of The Dike of Transience.”

In this way the East Silver annotates the film of a young Hungarian director, who in a wonderful old fashioned way masterly plays with the picture and sound for the duration of 20 minutes. This is organic material, it is film, you can see it, it has scratches and broken sound, and intuitive editing and it witnesses the director’s imaginative skills that he lets the sound of an rehearsing orchestra accompany the images from a Christiania (yes, I am Danish) like free town, a free spirit community that is being harmonized in the name of the EU. It is seasons, its cats running around, it is glimpses of Life, it is grass being rolled out in straight lines, it is a new posh community entering what was a treasure. What a playful and thoughtful and sensitive documentary!

20mins, 2008 financed by local sources and Finnish YLE.

http://www.eastsilver.net/home

www.absolutfilm.hu

Vurdering:

Viktor Asliuk: Waltz

Vurdering:

Salome Jashi: Speechless

Georgian director. Saw one of her previous works last year, ”Their Helicopter”, written about on this site. And praised at the same time her on-going film project, ”Restaurant Bakhmaro and Those Who Work There”, that is now with the director at the Ex Oriente film project.

This 12 minutes long wordless documentary includes faces that you are invited to look at, not talking faces, because words – as the director has said – can not express the feelings that these Georgians have, having experienced the Georgian-Russian war in August 2008. It is impossible not to feel as a voyeur watching these people (an older woman, a girl, a younger woman, an old man, a mother with child, a man in battledress and more... all in front of a ”neutral” wall), you wonder why you watch the faces and feel a bit embarassed but you stay and get the written info on the people at the end of the film. Conceptual, yes, impressive, yes – a film that is part of a series called ”10 Minutes of Democracy”, more here and below.

www.docuinter.net

http://www.artefact.ge/currentproject.html

Vurdering:

Brügger og Bertelsen: Quatraro Mysteriet 2

Vurdering:

Svt Tonight : The Caviar Connection

Vurdering:

Simon El Habre: The One Man Village

Vurdering:

Boris Mitic: Goodbye, How are You? 1

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

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

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

The film is supported by arte, MDR and YLE and Serbian public sources. And you will meet it at international festivals.

Serbia, 2009, 60 mins.  

http://www.dribblingpictures.com

http://www.dokfest-muenchen.de/filme_view_web.php?fid=2844

Vurdering:

Boris Mitic: Goodbye How are You? 2

Vurdering:

Planete Doc Review 1

For the 6th time this international documentary film festival takes place in Warsaw at the Kinoteka. The programme is overwhelming in volume AND quality. No wonder that the festival two days ago received The Main Award at the Polish Film Institute Awards in the category International Film Event.

Take a look at the website of the festival that starts on the 8th of May and goes on until the 17th. And not only in Warsaw as the festival announces a ”Digital Weekend” of the festival (May 8-10) with proud and enthusiastic words like these:

The festival will be hitting 22 cinemas across Poland! Modern technology is opening up a panorama of possibilities. A whole new community is in the making – community in which films not only enrich our sensory perceptions, but make us feel at home in the global village and offer a glimpse into the complexity of the world around us. For the first time in Poland, and perhaps even the world, people will be able to come to a festival that is not confined to any one place, but staged right across the country. People will be able to view 10 of the films at this year's Planete Doc Review festival in any one of 22 cinemas at the same time before casting their votes for the winner of the Arthouse Cinemas Award. All this has been made possible by the iplex.pl online cinema and the Arthouse Cinemas Network...

Photo: Rabbit a la Berlin by Bartek Konopka, 54 mins. 2009 - to be shown at the festival with a follow-up discussion on 1989.

www.docreview.pl

Planet Doc Review 2

Honour your master... this is what four young Polish filmmakers do. They have all come out of the Andrzej Wajda Master School in Warsaw, and their names are already known outside their own countries in festival circles and as participants in international training sessions like Ex Oriente.

At the festival Thierry Paladino, Piotr Stasik, Marcin Sauter and Maciej Cuske present a film on Andrzej Wajda himself, presented at the website like this:

... the truest and most intimate portrait of the Master of Polish Cinema, the winner of the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. It shows Andrzej Wajda’s struggle on the set of his most personal film Katyñ: a story of Polish army officers murdered by the Soviets. In 2008, Katyñ was an Oscar nominee in the Best Foreign Film category... 54 minutes is the film that I look forward to watch.

www.docreview.pl

www.docuinter.net

Planete Doc Review 3

The festival includes no less than 6 competition sections with the Millenium Award as the main one. 19 films compete for the 6000€, several of them known to readers of filmkommentaren.dk. Like ”Kites” (photo) by Polish Beata Dzianowicz, ”Burma vj” by Danish Anders Østergaard, ”Another Planet” by Ferenc Moldoványi, ”The English Surgeon” by Geoffrey Smith and ”Blind Loves” by Juraj Lehotsky. And on a note basis Slovak Peter Kerekes ”Cooking History” and Polish Marcin Latallo’s cinema version of ”Our Street” – both to be reviewed here on a later occasion.

What a relief to see this festival letting go all the special regulations and demands for exclusivity and world premieres that is otherwise to be found in the festival world. The Polish audience will profit from this golden collection of new quality documentaries. And a bit older ones as well – there is a retrospective with films of Austrian Nikolaus Geyerhalter (”Our Daily Bread”, ”Elsewhere” and ”Pripyat”).

What else – allow me to put on Danish glasses and promote the fine film of Katia Forbert and Annette Mari Olsen, ”My Iranian Paradise” which is in a special programme called ”Iran Gate”. More about this film is to be found on the website of the Danish Film Institute, see below.

www.docreview.pl

http://www.dfi.dk/tidsskriftetfilm/64/frontpage.htm  (article called ”Bridgebuilding”)

Lichtpunt

Brügger & Bertelsen: Quatraro Mysteriet

Vurdering:

Hotdocs 2009

The big international documentary festival in Toronto is running now and until May 10 and they do a wonderful promotion and information work for the audience and for us who are not there. Annotations on the film, written interviews, it’s all there... Lots to pick up...

... including some, unfortunately, hopeless ”daily updates” video clips with the staff members presenting their favourites films of today. Hopeless because they are amateurishly shot and sometimes it is difficult to hear what they say because they are placed (like the artistic director Sean Farrell) in a sofa, "relaxed" with disturbing sound around them, pitching the films in a small talk way. The trailers would have been better on their own without these unprofessional intros.

Photo from Norwegian Håvard Bustnes award-winning "Big John".

http://www.hotdocs.ca/

6-2

Football is creative! When Barcelona plays like they did tonite. In Madrid, against Real. No, not creative. Artistic. Pure pleasure. As they write on the website of FC Barcelona:

Now that’s what you call football! (2-6). Barça have won at the Bernabéu with an amazing display of attacking and entertaining football. Henry (2), Puyol, Messi (2) and Piqué scored the goals in a historic victory that leaves the team just five points away from the championship title. May 2, 2009 will go down as one of the most historic days in the proud history of FC Barcelona. A day to compare with that magnificent February 14, 1974 when that legendary side led by Johan Cruyff won 5-0 at the Bernabéu. 35 years later, Barça have once again brought Madrid to their knees with a recital of football at its very best...

I watched it alone with a constant sms contact to other Barca fans and with my Barca shirt next to me. Oh, to witness magical moments like these. Look at the photo, a brilliant goalkeeper, Casillas, what could he do, nothing but face the fact that he had been an extra in a drama that was second to none.

http://www.fcbarcelona.com/eng/home-page/home/home.shtml

The Factual and the Fictive

20 Years of Democracy

1989 will be remembered in festivals and on tv. And documentaries will be a strong visual element to show the changes that took place when the Berlin Wall went down, followed by the decline of the USSR. The following text about a fine, generous offer to watch great films for free on the net is taken from the newsletter of DOK Leipzig:

The 20th anniversary of the peaceful revolution and the ensuing social changes will play a central role, even before becoming the focus of a special programme at the 52nd International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. All year round, the festival is pursuing its mission to promote documentary film and to initiate a broad discourse about socially relevant topics. It is in this sense that the online platform „20 Years of Democracy in Film”, launched in co-operation with the festivals One World Prague, One World Bratislava, Verzio Budapest and Watch Docs Warsaw, is going to present documentary and animated films by East and Central European filmmakers.

22 contributions from 1990 through to 2007 that deal with vital issues of the social and political transformation processes that have taken place over the past two decades are available as free streamings. Among them are outstanding, multiple award winning works by filmmakers as renowned as Jan Svankmajer, Maciej Janusz Drygas, Pavel Koutecky, Marko Skop (photo from his film ”Other Worlds”) and Tamas Almasi. Germany is represented by films by Gerd Kroske, Thomas Heise, Marc Bauder/ Dörte Franke and Wolfgang Ettlich.

www.dok-leipzig.de

http://www.20years.org