DocuDays UA Dana Bunescu and Niels Pagh Andersen

It was one of those moments he has called “The Authentic Now”, Danish editor Niels Pagh Andersen. In the Docudays online seminar the other day with Andersen and Dana Bunescu. The latter showed clips from the masterpiece she did with Andrei Ujica, “The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu” (2010) (3hours), unknown footage put together, 2 years of watching the material, 7 months of editing – a lot?, not when you have seen the film and immediately know that this film will stay in the book of world documentary history.

But back to the authentic moment that I enjoyed and which was not foreseen: Between two clips there was an unintended technical break, where editor Andersen suddenly was alone on the screen. He did not know apparently, smoking a cigarette, maybe a bit nervous, waving his hand in the air in the room of his appartment from where he was zooming. To get the smoke away from the webinar… I was looking at Andersen and associated to the Jørgen Leth film, where Andy Warhol is eating a hamburger without saying a word. He knew that he was filmed, Andersen did not. Pure documentary! Catching a man passionate with what he was doing, totally concentrated, profiting from the situation to have a cigarette.

The conversation between Bunescu and Andersen were informal and informative. They commented each other’s clips with respect and comments and questions. Bunescu: Today it seems that there is a fear of silence – a reference to the example of Andersen, “The Look of Silence”, that he did with Joshua Oppenheimer. Andersen mentioned that he was always working with hold-back, which is obviuos from the 10 minutes he showed in the webinar, the beginning of the film: “Don’t tell too much up-front, don’t kill the curiosity”. Bunescu: “In documentaries you search for the truthful, you can cheat but not lie”. Andersen: “Documentaries are today’s alternative to tik-tok, news, fiction, journalism – it’s first of all an emotional experience”.

90 minutes it lasted, the last 30 were questions from the audience. Thanks for this meeting to DocuDays. 

photo: niels pagh andersen (dfi)