EFA – Sergey Dvortsevoy, Documentary

Sergey Dvortsevoy thinks it is important to reflect on WHY you make documentaries, well film in general. He started late as a filmmaker, he made ”Paradise”, ”Bread Day”, ”Highway”, ”In the Dark” and now ”Tulpan”, the latter a film with actors, nominated for a Discovery Prize af the EFA last night in Copenhagen… as if this brilliant filmmaker had not been discovered before due to his excellent documentaries. There are too many superficial films, he says, you have to go deep, you must have something important to say.The camera can´t think, all starts up here, he says and points at his forehead.

I met him at the Radisson lobby, a happy man, fluent in English contrary to 10 years ago when he came to Copenhagen with ”Paradise” – but expressing the same spontaneous, almost childish joy out of the fact that his new film from Kazahkstan, that took him four years to make, is going very well on festivals, winning prizes to support the director and his family. And with the coming cinema release in several countries.

I went away from documentaries, he said, because of moral problems. I thought I could not any longer make art out of tragedies… I interrupted him, but ”Paradise” is not a tragedy… For you and me, maybe not, but the main character of this small film got a lot of problems from the authorities after the film. How can you allow someone to film a woman washing her hair without shampoo, why do you only show the bad sides of our country and so on so forth. You make us look stupid, they said… The new film with actors and a script that the director followed 20% (!) is also having problems, but they are actors and the audience knows that. Food for thought. His ”Tulpan” is not yet available on dvd.

Photo: The unique scene in “Paradise”, the child that eats.