Andreas Koefoed: The Ghost of Piramida

Artur Liebhart, festival director of Planete Doc Film Festival, had planned the closing ceremony of his festival in an excellent way. Well, he could not know it but Danish director Andreas Koefoed was as the first award winner called to the stage to receive “Chopin’s Nose” for his film “The Ghost of Piramida”. He was accompanied by his three protagonists from the Danish band Efterklang, that made a great concert after the ceremony. On top of that Koefoed’s film was shown after all awards had been given out at this tenth edition of a festival that not only takes place in Warsaw but also in other Polish cities.

Back to Piramida, here is the description of the film from the hand of the director:

Accompanied by their taciturn and not visibly impressed Russian polar bear guard, the group goes on a audio treasure hunt in the empty buildings of the abandoned town, while the narrator, the former Piramida-citizen Alexander Naomkin Ivanovic, takes us back to a bygone era, when Piramida flourished and the immigrant Russian miners and their families lived in a Soviet parallel society far from the brutal reality of their homeland.


And here is my brief comment on what I saw: Koefoed has in an elegant way combined past and present in his charming presentation of a town that once was full of people and life but now is a place where a music band goes to pick up sounds for their next album. Russian Alexander provided the director with wonderful archive material and the three musicians give us good music and sound, at the same time as they are urban cowboys in a nature where even an Arctic fox could be dangerous! Not to forget that the film is beautiful to watch. This film is a small pearl and I have become a fan of Efterklang…

On the site of the Danish Film Institute – in Danish – you can read of the impressive distribution initiative taken by the band and director. 800 so-called private-public screenings in 52 countries!

Denmark, 2012, 65 mins.

http://www.dfi.dk/Nyheder/FILMupdate/2013/April/Private-Public-Screenings-af-The-Ghost-of-Piramida.aspx

http://efterklang.net/home/category/the-ghost-of-piramida/

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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