Nordisk Panorama Forum 2016/ 2
The second day of the Nordic documentary meeting had a lighter atmosphere at the table with decision makers from the region, the rest of Europe and North America. There was still the usual ”thank you for the pitch” remarks but there were more creative comments on the projects, which could be useful for those pitching and interesting for us in the audience. A better flow than at the first day one could say, very much due to the well prepared moderators Mikael Opstrup and Gitte Hansen.
As at the first day a guest project was invited to the table, this time from Estonia, represented by producer Kiur Aarma and Raimo
Jõerand, experienced people who pitched a historical film based on archive and interviews with Mart Laar, who was elected prime minister in 1992, when the country had gained its independence. The clip was full of humour and got good response from YLE’s Erkko Lyytinen and his colleagues from the Finnish Film Foundation and AVEK. ”A unique political thriller” said Kaarel Kuurmaa from the Estonian Film Institute and it helped when the pitchers pointed at the fact that 2017 is 25 years ago. Reinhart Lohmann from ZDF/arte, who always comes up with good and constructive comments, was thinking of building a thematic evening around the 100 years celebration of the Baltic countries in 2018. ”Rodeo” could fit in there.
A Swedish film taking place in Scotland, directors Ellen Fiske and Ellinor Hallin, got a positive reaction from many because of the well-made teaser showing the young girl and her grandfather in ”a world of violence and pigeons”, where the latter tries to get the girl out of the social vicious circle, a difficult task as she now has a child with a young man, who goes in and out of prison.
Equally talented was ”The Mercurius of Molenbeek” from Finnish Reetta Huhtanen with a clip that was wonderful to look at with a mix of set-up scenes and scenes with a classical documentary approach and with 6 year old boy at the center. Cecilia Lidin from DFI Denmark referred rightly to Marcel Lozinski’s ”Anything can Happen”, Alex Szalat from arte liked it as well but said that for a tv audience it would be necessary to put Molenbeek into a context.
We have so many young voices this year at the Forum, Karolina Lidin from Nordic Film/TV Fund said with enthusiasm, when Lea Glob presented her ”Apolonia, Apolonia” about the young charismatic artist’s journey in life on her way towards an international breakthrough as a painter. Glob has followed her for 8 years in a life of ”chaos and decadence”. It’s a very promising film project, indeed. To be produced by Danish Documentary that also presented ”Hunting for Hedonia” to be directed by Pernille Rose Grønkjær, who after ”Genetic Me” continues her collaboration with scientist Lone Frank. ”What can take you from pain to pleasure”, said Grønkjær, ”what if tiny pulsing electrodes in your head could change your mind…”. It’s a science documentary and it’s a FILM the excellent teaser demonstrated.
A Finnish film project ”Hockey Dreams” was fun to watch and listen to – Koreans learning ice hockey, not an easy task for coaches from abroad, when the Koreans have been told not to tackle players, who are older than themselves! Closing the Forum 2016 was another project, where my immediate note was ”want to see”, ”What’s Eating Tiny Tim”, Swedish director Johan von Sydow, who has been investigating the showman’s life and career, ”rise and fall”. The teaser was wonderfully put together and as Daniel Pynnõnen from SVT’s K-Special said, ”it breaks the model of biopic”.
The family gathering was over, thank you’s were distributed and a minute long applause was saluting NRK’s Tore Tomter, who retires next year – Tomter has been at all versions of the Nordisk Panorama Forum, this was his last one.
http://nordiskpanorama.com/en/industry/
