DOK Leipzig Opens with new Film by Thomas Riedelsheimer

“We all think we know what light is. But if we take a closer look, we realise that we don’t,” the film “Tracing Light” tells us. DOK Leipzig will open at the CineStar in Leipzig on 28 October with the world premiere of this latest film by Thomas Riedelsheimer (“Rivers and Tides”). This renowned German filmmaker previously opened the Leipzig festival in 2004 with his film “Touch the Sound”.

In “Tracing Light”, co-produced by ZDF/3sat, Riedelsheimer now explores the phenomenon of light, creating a dialogue between two disciplines – art and physics – that approach it in different ways.

From the Outer Hebrides in Scotland to the Advanced Research Centre at the University of Glasgow to the Max Planck Institute in Erlangen, the film accompanies leading scientists and such internationally prominent artists as Ruth Jarman, Joe Gerhardt, Julie Brook, Johannes Brunner and Raimund Ritz. Between super slow motion, laser table football, “firestacks” and quantum theory, they aim to find out: What kind of a material is light? How do photons behave? How do we perceive the world around us – and through what means?

“Thomas Riedelsheimer’s documentaries are a delightful celebration of light and sound,” says festival director Christoph Terhechte. “They sharpen our senses. Twenty years after opening our festival with ‘Touch the Sound’, we’re proud to be doing it again with ‘Tracing Light’.”

Thomas Riedelsheimer has received multiple awards, including the German Film Award and the Adolf-Grimme-Preis, for his work as a director and cinematographer. In 2008, he co-founded the production company Filmpunkt GmbH with Stefan Tolz, after having been a partner in the production platform Filmquadrat for several years. He is a member of the German and European Film Academies and has been a lecturer at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg since October 2006. Since 2018, Riedelsheimer has overseen “dok.art”, a programme he devised to develop content for documentaries by first-time directors. He will discuss the programme in a public DOK Talk.

Riedelsheimer will also hold a master class at the Ex Oriente Workshop at DOK Leipzig.

“Tracing Light” website: sonjahenrici.com/films/tracinglight/

Verzio 2024: Reality Uncovered

The 21st Verzió program has been curated by a new programming team. Running from November 6-13, it offers both award-winning films and hidden gems. This year, Verzió will dedicate special sections to the themes of decolonization and disinformation, and will also showcase Armenian, Ukrainian, and British selections. The festival’s opening film will be the Hungarian-French-Croatian co-production KIX, a film about skateboarder kids, making its Hungarian debut.

Verzió helps us uncover the problems that are often hidden behind false surfaces, bringing us closer to reality. All the films are concerned with breaking down the mainstream narratives and unpacking critical issues, which is why this year’s key visual is built around the slogan “Reality Uncovered.”

This year’s program was curated by a renewed programming team. The 21st Verzió Film Festival will feature 60 films across four competition categories and eight thematic sections. The curation team aimed to include films that have toured major festivals and won numerous awards, as well as lesser-known works—films that audiences are unlikely to encounter elsewhere. “In selecting the films, the goal was to showcase diverse perspectives on current social, political, human rights, and environmental issues, while also ensuring that we find outstanding films that offer a true cinematic experience,” says Program Director Fanni Somlyai.

Additionally, the festival aims to represent a wide variety of themes, ranging from Japanese #MeToo stories to the war in Ukraine. “The films range from global issues to the most personal stories, with a variety of tones and styles,” adds Festival Director Enikő Gyureskó. The curatorial team selected the program from over 750 submissions.

The festival’s opening film is KIX, directed by Bálint Révész and Dávid Mikulán. It follows 12 years in the life of a young boy from Budapest, Sanyi, as he grows from a rambunctious child into an adult labelled a public enemy. The documentary offers a snapshot of urban poverty and social marginalisation. Its world premiere took place at CPH:DOX, Europe’s most prestigious documentary festival, and it has since been featured at international festivals from the U.S. to Taiwan. The film’s Hungarian premiere will be at the Verzió opening ceremony at Trafó, with tickets already available.

Restoring identity and cultural heritage and addressing historical injustices are pressing issues worldwide. Discussions surrounding these topics shed new light on the past and help shape a more just future. This year, Verzió dedicates a special section to the complex issue of decolonization. This thematic block includes the Golden Bear-winning Dahomey by Mati Diop, which follows the heated debates surrounding the return of artefacts from Paris to present-day Benin.

Verzió also highlights Ukrainian films this year. The decade-long war and Russian aggression in Ukraine have caused unimaginable destruction, yet the Ukrainian documentary community has shown remarkable resilience and creativity. One standout in this focus is Intercepted, a film that juxtaposes intercepted phone calls between Russian soldiers and their families with the grim realities of war.

A prominent entry in the Hungarian competition is Your Life Without Me by Anna Rubi, which premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival and won the Human Rights Award for documentaries. The film touches on the necessity of care, the situation of people with disabilities, and the omnipotence of maternal love. Rubi’s first feature-length documentary follows mothers involved in the home-care case led by the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ) and their severely disabled children. The film’s Hungarian streaming debut will be on RTL+.

A compelling entry in the international competition is Favoriten, a film by Austrian director Ruth Beckermann. A frequent participant at Verzió, Beckermann’s latest film follows a primary school class in Vienna over three years, where more than 60% of the students are non-native German speakers. The result is an unexpectedly cheerful portrait of an unusual community. 

This year’s Verzió also features a British documentary focus, with films like Black Box Diaries by Shiori Ito, which covers the famous Japanese #MeToo case, and Celluloid Underground by Iranian-born director Ehsan Khoshbakht.

For the first time, Verzió will dedicate a section to Armenian films, offering perspectives on the tragedy of the Nagorno-Karabakh war. In 1489, one of the highlights, a young woman documents a the search for his missing brother. The film won Best Film and the FIPRESCI Prize at the most recent IDFA festival.

Disinformation in the digital age is a particularly important issue, as false news can spread quickly through social media, eroding public trust and causing deep societal divides. Verzió dedicates a special block to this theme, including the film Black Snow, in which a civil investigation into a Soviet-era mine fire becomes the target of a massive government disinformation campaign.

The full program of the documentary film festival will be available in early October, and tickets for the opening film are already on sale: https://trafo.jegy.hu/search?q=Verzio 

The curators for the competition and thematic sections are Zsuzsa Debre, Asia Dér, Péter Horányi, Szabolcs Szirony, Enikő Gyureskó, and Fanni Somlyai. The Viewfinder section was curated by Oksana Sarkisova, while the queer competition was curated by Czech expert Kristýna Genttnerová.

Festival screenings and events will take place at Toldi and Művész Cinemas, Trafó, CEU Budapest, and Adaptér. After the cinema screenings, films will also be available online from November 14-24 on Verzió’s streaming platform Verziótéka: https://festival.verzio.org/.

Key supporters of the festival include the Háttér Society, the U.S. Embassy, the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, the British Council, the Dutch Human Rights Fund, and UNHCR Central Europe. The Verzió Film Festival is organized by the nonprofit Verzió Film Foundation and the Blinken OSA  Archivum, with primary support from the Creative Europe MEDIA program.

Nordisk Panorama 2024: City of Malmö’s Audience Award to Balomania

by Sissel Morell Dargis, 94 min, Denmark, Spain, 2024.
Synopsis:
In the heart of Brazil’s favelas a secret society of hot air balloon-makers risk arrest to create and fly their illegal masterpieces, painting the sky with colour. Condemned by the authorities as dangerous delinquents, the ’baloeiros’ are outlaw street artists operating in secrecy, evading government reprisal and bounty hunters, and bringing joy to communities.

About the director:
Sissel Morell Dargis (b. 1992, Denmark) has a background in painting graffiti, which led her to photography, and eventually documentary. As a teenager she lived in Brazil where she through graffiti became part of the secret balloon world. This would become the setting of her first feature film Balomanía. She is a graduate of the Cuban film school EICTV, where she directed several shorts that screened across the world. Later on she went into games studying at The National Film School of Denmark. Here she developed the indie game Cai Cai Balão, which was nominated at the Independent Games Festival, Indiecade and exhibited at the Smithsonian Arts Museum, Museum da Favela and won Games for Change Latin America for Best Game, and Game of Impact. Cai Cai Balão is set in the same world as Balomania and is a crossover of characters and situations between the film and game. 

About the award:
To receive the City of Malmö’s Audience Award at Nordisk Panorama Film Festival is among the finest appreciations a filmmaker can get. The audience can vote for any of the Nordic short films and documentaries competing in the main competition programmes. The award goes to the director(s) of the winning film.

Prize:
The cash award of 2.500€ is sponsored by the City of Malmö.

Nordisk Panorama Forum 23-24.9 2024

This was the 21st edition of the classic Nordic meeting for documentary directors and producers held parallelly to the Nordisk Panorama festival here in Malmö, where it has had its home for years after – as in the beginning – having moved around to cities in other Nordic countries. I remember having been to Bergen, Reykjavik, Kiruna, Helsinki… and having been in the panel representing the National Film Board of Denmark (Statens Filmcentral) and when in EDN as moderator for some years invited by Heidi Elise Christensen, who is now back after 15 years as the director of Nordisk Panorama after Anita Reher.

It´s all professional, invited are Nordic decision makers and several broadcasters from Europe and the US to sit in the panel with the selected projects coming from both experienced filmmakers and newcomers. Talents. Which is good even if I thought – attending the pitches – that maybe some projects would have profited from waiting a year or two. To mature.

The tone is polite, the moderators are kind and well prepared. Thank you for the pitch the panelists say, we can talk further in a meeting – which is of course not so good for the show, for us, who are watching and listening to the presentations. But that´s how it is, new decision makers hesitate to ask critical questions, contrary to a veteran like Sabine Bubeck from ZDF/Arte from whom you can always expect a reflection that the pitching filmmakers can profit from. Like in the case of one of my favourites, presented this morning, “Orsoq” to be directed by Inuk Silis Høegh, producer Emile Hertling Péronard, a film on “the exploration of man’s longing for solitude” with, in the trailer, gorgeous shots from Greenland. Beware of the difference between solitude and loneliness, said Bubeck.

Another of my favourites is from Scotland, which was a visiting country. Finlay Pretsell (Photo from film on Millar) who I know from way back and whose film on David Millar, legendary bicycle racer, I loved a lot. Pretsell was back with another bicycle film, or at least one that takes its start in bicycling, in Colombia, where so many excellent racers come from like Rigoberto Uran. “Cyclovia”. “The bicycle is embedded deeply in Colombia’s culture, the catalogue says. They had a great dynamic trailer. Danish Jørgen Leth will love this film…

The Icelandic “Midgardakirkja – Portrait of an Island”, in Iceland with English Nikolai Galitzine as director was also one of those films I want to see – a church burns down and the 30 (!) residents decide to go together to have it rebuilt, the trailer was very inviting as was the director’s talk. With the same geographical angle, but in Norway, the director Håvard Fossum with “Facts About a Distant Valley” wants to depict the differences among a small population in the North of Norway, where some do not wish to adapt to modern city life. Maybe nothing new but the visuals were compelling as the characters were charismatic.

The company Story founded by – among others – Göran Hugo Olsson – see https://filmkommentaren.dk/goran-hugo-olsson-reframing-documentary-a-talk-at-nordisk-panorama/ came up with a shocking trailer for “Fear Fokol” to be directed by Tuva Björk, from Johannesburg, where the filthy rich employ private security guards to protect them. In the clip one of these guards tells the director about the different “weapons” to be used towards the intruders… “Fear Fokol” is the title of the film which the company wants to release in a 15 minutes version, later it could be longer.

Summing up: I had a good time watching the pitches, as said professional, no technical problems. The makers sit or stand up, they all have papers to read from, surprising for me, I though “we” had taught them to speak without looking down, anyway…

Ivars Seleckis 90 Years/ 2

Lovely to have a correspondent who was at the celebration of legendary master of Latvian documentary Ivars Seleckis at his Birthday feast and the premiere of “To be Continued. Teenhood”. I wrote words to Ivars here https://filmkommentaren.dk/ivars-seleckis-90-years-old/

In that text I mention Lelda Ozola several times as one who has known Ivars for decades so she was the right one for me to ask to give her impressions. As she does below and in an accompanying letter she writes: “… Of course, all evening I was thinking of the moment I got to know Ivars more personally – back in 1997 during the first Baltic Sea Docs edition when he was pitching “New Times at Crossroad Street” and could not get the video (VHS!) to play … Time flies…” Indeed, it was on Bornholm, where it all began…

Dearest Tue,

“The evening went very well – Ivars is amazing – in super good form mentally, physically and verbally. It’s really enviable – his energy seems not to shrink at all!!! We are all very happy about him and also very proud of him. He told he has had a very intense week prior to the premiere and now he felt that everything had ended. We told him that everything just starts with the film’s journey to the audience. And he agreed 😊 And then he said that he feels huge responsibility towards his heroes and that maybe some of them feel that they haven’t been depicted as they thought they will or that they have much less screen time than they thought – but also that is only natural. However his awareness of this and compassion was admirable.

I hope he has a good rest today (yesterday) and can reflect on the stormy yesterday and be in absolute bliss. It was a really festive feeling – the whole audience of Splendid Palace (the cinema in Riga) singing a birthday song to him…”

Thank you so much Lelda and to all those, who arranged the birthday party for the grand old man – Mistrus Media, Elina, Gints, Inese, Darta… On their FB – https://www.facebook.com/MistrusMedia – you can find a lot of photos from the event in Splendid Palace, the birthday celebration and the premiere of the film that Ivars did in collaboration with Armands Zacs.

The photo – Lelda Ozola hugging Ivars Seleckis on the 22nd of September 2024.

Göran Hugo Olsson: Reframing Documentary. A Talk at Nordisk Panorama

90 minutes at the Nordisk Panorama yesterday afternoon. With a great filmmaker, Swedish Göran Hugo Olsson, who together with Cecilia Lidin gave the audience an excellent introduction to his working method, and who characterised himself as a documentarian of existing footage and was very well prepared taking – with charm and humor – the audience through 10 points related to the definition of what is a documentary.

He started with a photo of himself and David Aronowitsch from 1989. They were in Lodz, Poland, after – if I got it right or is it a joke – having been offered to make a new version of Bergman’s “Tystnaden”… They found out that they did not like Bergman, “I was much more into Godard”. They stayed in Poland searching for Romas to make a film about the Roma holocaust researching in that and many other Eastern European countries. Olsson jumped to the current situation, where his Israel-Palestine on Swedish TV 1958–1989 had its world premiere a couple of weeks ago at the Venice Film Festival. “I am very sad”, he said referring to the war in the region, and in Ukraine and in Syria. One can only agree. Looking so much fwd. to seeing the film.

The documentary process is not a genre, Olsson said, it is a method, and brilliantly he exemplified how he worked, especially with the film “Concerning Violence”, based on Frantz Fanon’s book “The Wretched of the Earth” and on archival footage from numerous Swedish sources. I have not been filming for 15 years, Olsson said, and showed us a photo of small pieces of paper in different colors, with text transcripts from Fanon’s book, texts that were to read by Lauryn Hill, American rapper and singer. He told that Hill had problems in finding the right rythm when recording, she was too fast. She argued that we can as in a record studio make one more take, but we can’t do that in a film or with a book, viewers and readers go for “one take”, Olsson said, words to that effect. Anyway – we are many who have it the same way – to have the texts in front of him and not in his head…

Going back to “Documentary” he argued, and so right he is, that documentaries are expensive – the funders don’t get it that if you are filming a character you have to stay close to him/her before, during and after the shooting, for two years as an example.

I have to catch up to watch more of Olsson’s films but in my mind stands clearly “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975” based on material shot by Swedish journalists in the 1960’es and 1970’es. I think I have seen it 3 times, also because Olsson – as he stressed at the seminar – is so dedicated to make the audience understand where and when we are. He is often using chaptering. I learned a lot from watching this film.

Olsson: Audience… I actually dreamed of working for television. I still do but they don´t want me. “They” have the audience. On the other hand that’s also wat he has, when you see that his films have had broadcast all over the world.

Olsson ended his talk, excellently structured by Cecilia Lidin, by stressing with capital letters film is COLLABORATION. His company Story – go their website – is an important and big production company and many of Olsson’s films can be rented for small money using the website.

Ivars Seleckis 90 Years Old

Dear Ivars. Paldies for your extraordinary life-long documentary work and congratulations on this birthday! If anyone, you have introduced me to your country, its history and culture and its citizens, in all ages. Much appreciated that you with “To Be Continued” number one and now two (together with Armands Začs) have included the children… With warmth and passion and great skills. Poetry!

I have been thinking about the many many occasions, where we have met. On Bornholm in the 1990és for the Baltic Film & TV Festival. You were there year after year with films. And in your country when you took my wife and me for a trip to the countryside drinking champagne at a lake together with Romualds Pipars! And when we visited the location of “Crossroad Street” together with scriptwriter Tālivaldis Margēvičs and said hello to Horseradish Peter and his wife from the film. Of course this is one of your masterpieces that you continued 10 and 20 years later. Latvian history writing.

I am looking at your filmography and see that you were cameraman for your Poetic School of Baltic Documentaries colleagues Uldis Brauns, Herz Frank and Aivars Freimanis, all of them like you protagonists in the film “Bridges of Time” by Audrius Stonys and Kristine Briede. Kristine and Uldis Cekulis invited me to take part in a research trip for that film. It was a wonderful experience and exhausting for me as you have always been in a much better shape than me (I am13 years younger); it was simply difficult to follow you around. It was on this occasion that we were photographed together in a photo booth. Uldis “commemorated” this at the Baltic Sea Docs this year!

And we were abroad together at ZagrebDox, where we both were awarded by festival director Nenad Puhovski. You for “To Be Continued”, me for having been at the festival, when it started. Lelda Ozola was with you and the three of us had a fine time together, including (my idea) that we should watch a football match together. We did and your documentary curiosity unfolded completely. You “read” the game as if you had been a connaisseur for ages.

And and… the opening of the symposium where we participants climbed to the top of Elizabeth Church in Riga to celebrate the opening with a glass of champagne. By the way thanks for introducing me to different kind of Latvian Schnaps, you had always a small bottle in your pocket.

Last time we met was at the reception after the opening of the film screenings of the Baltic Sea Docs. You were there, had a glass or two and were surrounded by your many admirers, including me. You showed us a photo of yourself as a young man. Beautiful. And you had some comments to the cinematography of the opening Georgian film, kind and generous remarks. As so often Lelda was next to us translating when needed.

A day after I met Davis Simanis jr. who said that you were the last of a generation of classical observational humanistic documentarians. He was worried, who will take over. I hope he is not right, and I am sure that you are already working on your next film. It’s in your blood!

Happy Birthday to a master!

Virpi Suutari: Once Upon a Time in the Forest

One of the most important European authors, one of the pioneers of modern documentary, Virpi Suutari creates a film in her own unique style, creating scenes in which we perceive reality as dreamlike and surreal. But this time she contrasts it with directly captured scenes of events of dynamic actions of young dedicated fighters for nature conservation.

Finnish forests, together with Swedish ones, are the lungs of Europe. Now the ominous shadow of over-logging due to newly proclaimed development and profit is looming over them. The celebrated director decides to join the young Finnish environmental activists who are fighting to protect beauty and life against the worrying ideas of politicians and reckless aspirations of corporations. She creates extremely poetic scenes of the forest where we meet the main characters, Minka and Ida, gentle and compassionate, uncompromising and combative! Together with a group of comrades, they reveal to us how to enjoy the touch of plants, encounter with birds, surrender to primal clean waters. Loud monstrous machines and huge trucks mercilessly invade those spaces of untouched nature, heralding devastation of immeasurable proportions. In exciting cinematic collisions of beauty and drama, this film raises some of the most important questions of the modern world – how to preserve nature and save the planet? Virpi Suutari devotedly follows her heroines who bravely, without hesitation, oppose ever-superior opponents and the police. The struggle continues again and again with activists aware that the fate of their generation will be determined by their commitment to nature. The film pulsates brilliantly with an exciting rhythm of alternating actions and constant reminders of the immeasurable values for which our heroines give up a simple and safe existence and raise their voices with concern and pride!

The exquisite work of a true master of documentary film-making as an important cinematic experience that alerts us and invites us to join in!

Finland 2024 
93 minutes 

Nicolas Philibert: Nénette

The film of one of the world’s most significant documentary filmmakers, Nicolas Philibert, screened at the Berlin Film Festival as a distinctive, masterfully made, auteur documentary. Nénette is a charming orangutan, an unusual and irresistible being. She is the oldest inhabitant of the oldest zoo in the world, located within Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Throughout her long life in captivity, she has been exposed to gazes and overwhelmed by comments and compliments of curious and exhilarated observers. To a majority of them, these are amusing moments in which they bond with a marvelous presence of exotic nature. Nicolas Philibert does not center his film around these short, dazzling moments; he rather focuses on the eternal, unchanging state of the captured star. This time, we do not leave Nénette, and we directly experience the permanence of her confinement. “Nénette is captured twofold — by the cage and by the camera.” Radically focused on the charming star, this documentary is for the author himself a metaphor for the voyeuristic nature of film. “I don’t like telling the audience what to think, I just like to reveal what’s in front of me,” says Philibert. Through the mastery of the exquisite cineaste, Nénette becomes the mirror in which we all see ourselves as spectators.

France, 2009 
70 minutes

Petr Lom: I am the River, the River is me

The Whanganui River in New Zealand is the first river in the world to be given the legal status of a person, a living and indivisible being. This happened in 2017 and confirmed the belief and philosophy of the Maoris who perceive nature as their ancestor, believing that it is our duty to take care of it while we are on Earth, and that further care is taken over by our descendants. It is inadmissible to treat nature as private property, nor to exploit it for gaining profit.

This film, which celebrates the Whanganui River and affirms its status, is shaped as a travelogue in which, a group of river guests sail canoes on a five-day indulgence in the pleasure of being carried by its currents and residing on its banks led by the river’s keeper, a Maori community leader. The film introduces us to the almost hypnotic water flows on which the canoes slide and the passengers, amazed by this adventure, sail in them. The camera reveals the beauty of wooded shores, of creatures from land and water, who move together with film heroes through the paradise preserved here. We enjoy the symphony of nature’s sounds, as well as the gathering of devotees who will be able to express their thoughts and wishes under the auspices of the great and powerful Wanganui, to talk about their dreams of preserving nature as an invaluable treasure of our planet.

We also get to know the spiritual being of the Maori people through the music of composer Puoro Jerome, a two-time winner of the Grammy Award, an artist who has given concerts all over the world from Carnegie Hall to the Sydney Opera House, known for performing his compositions on traditional Maori instruments. On the banks of the Whanganui River, we also see him, surrendering to the nature that surrounds him, playing while composing the music for this film.

Fifteen years dedicated to the topics of human rights, and now to the rights of nature, producer Corinne van Egeraat and director Petr Lom, lead us to the end of the world with a film that they believe has the power to change us, “to expand our hearts and inspire us to embody our better selves.”

Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand 2023. 
89 minutes