Leonard Helmrich: The Long Season
Helmrich is using the Single Shot Cinema technique, a style he developed and perfected himself. He chooses to actively engage with his subject rather than remaining a neutral outsider – a position that typifies Direct Cinema. He aims to record events from the inside, not observe from a distance. To achieve this, he created the Steadywing, a construction that allows the filmmaker to move the camera continually in an exceptionally fluid and intuitive way…
These were words we used when Helmrich’s “Position of the Stars” won the first prize at IDFA in 2010. He might very well win again this year with “The Long Season”, that creates this same “feeling of being there” that Leacock was talking about. Constant in movement, being here and there and everywhere… These were my spontaneous notes after having watched the film:
… a formidable insight to a small community, a refugee camp for Syrian refugees, especially from Raqqa, where ISIS was. He gets very close to the people, you see conflicts between women, between man and woman, between kids and grown-ups, they evolve and develop, and you see love, a marriage and happy children run around like they do everywhere. So easy the kids can adjust to the life in a camp full of hard living conditions, mud all over, and so sad that human beings, who are like you and me have a life like that.
The Netherlands, 2017, 115 mins.
