Godard Makes Festival Spot

87 year old Jean-Luc Godard  has made a festival spot for the 22nd Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival. It was released here in Karlovy Vary yesterday. I have copy pasted fragments from the press release published with quotes from festival director Marek Hovorka:

“And even if nothing turned out how we’d hoped, it would not have changed what we’d hoped for,” says Godard in the festival spot. “This year’s festival spot created by Jean-Luc Godard follows in the line of outstanding works made for the festival by such figures as Godfrey Reggio, Jan Němec and Jóhann Jóhannsson. The festival spot comes in the format of a short film, an intimate haiku. Even within the framework of this minute-long minimalist format, Jean-Luc Godard remained loyal to his signature method of layering meanings and references. Each new viewing opens up new interpretations,” says Marek Hovorka, the director of the Ji.hlava IDFF. 

“Godard sets filmmaking in the context of the history of arts, works with references to popular works of fine arts. At the same time, it shows how inseparable the work is from the author and how important role inner authenticity plays in terms of authorship. Flipping through photos in Godard’s cell phone, the history of arts spontaneously alternates with his own memories, selfies and the perspective of a dog that gives the human position a different angle,” adds Hovorka.

Watch the official spot of the 22nd Ji.hlava IDFF

Premiere of Bridges of Time

I write this the day after the premiere of the film by Kristine Briede and Audrius Stonys at the festival in Karlovy Vary. Warm applause after the screening of a film with many layers, an auteur film but first of all an homage to the masters of the Baltic New Wave: Herz Frank, Uldis Brauns, Ivars Seleckis, Andres Sööt, Robertas Verba, Henrikas Sablevicius, Arvis Freimanis, Mark Soosaar. The three of them still very much alive and kicking were there, see photo, Soosaar, Sööt and Seleckis.

The festival, that I have never visited before, has set up screenings of short films made by the directors in the 60’es and 70’es during the period of Soviet Union. We hope that “Bridges of Time” will make you want to go and see the films we quote from – around 20 are screened in four programmes, that also include films by Audrius Stonys himself and Laila Pakalnina.

The two were in focus this morning in a “Meet the filmmakers” session of the festival. Audrius

Stonys showed a beautifully restored copy of his “Antigravitation” from 1995, Laila Pakalnina came with “The Linen”, shot by Gints Berzins, a fantastic cameraperson with whom Pakalnina has been working on many of her films. We went at film school together, he in camera section, me in direction. Berzins is shooting Pakalnina’s new film, working title “The Spoon”.

Also on stage in the “Meet the filmmakers”, that was moderated in a very competent way by Latvian Zane Balcus, were Soosaar, Sööt and Seleckis – the films shown were “The Coast” by Arvis Freimanis with Seleckis doing the camera., “511 Best Photographs of Mars” by Andres Sööt and a fragment of “Woman from Kihnu” by Soosaar. I had not seen Sööt’s film before, it’s shot with hidden camera in a café with classical and Beatles music, yes it was in 1963 that I heard Beatles from morning till night. Sööt said in his humorous way that “we could use Beatles music as the USSR did not make contracts”!

The man behind getting a Baltic delegation to Karlovy Vary, Uldis Cekulis, a generous man with an impressive energy brought along a 8 page newspaper Baltic New Wave, a collection of articles on the filmmakers in “Bridges of Time”, a small gift for all those, who love documentaries.

Happy people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – and proud ones, who have deserved the great attention they get at this super-professional festival for feature and documentary films.

Photo from right to left: The three masters from the film Estonians Mark Soosaar and Andres Sööt, Latvian Ivars Seleckis, the director of the film Kristine Briede, Estonian producer Riho Västrik, Lithuanian producers Alge and Arunas Matelis, Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis, me and Audrius Stonys, the interpreter and two festival programmers.

Stonys & Briede: Bridges of Time

Wow, it’s tomorrow at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival that Bridges of Time has its premiere. The film, a co-production between the three Baltic countries, is introduced like this by the festival: “Kristīne Briede and Audrius Stonys’s meditative documentary essay portrays the less-remembered generation of cinema poets of the Baltic New Wave. With finesse, they push beyond the barriers of the common historiographic investigation in order to achieve a consummate poetic treatment of the ontology of documentary creation.”

A fine intro, however, I would make it a bit longer with these words: “This is a film for all cinema lovers. It tells about the Baltic poetic documentary cinema that was created during the Soviet Union. In opposition to the USSR propaganda films. It was a wave of a personal free visual language that celebrated life and humanity. Together with Latvian Kristine Briede, Lithuanian director Audrius Stonys, who in his own work continues the tradition for a poetic look at reality, has picked magical moments from unique long and short documentaries to let them meet the old masters as they look today or when they were in front of the camera decades ago. The directors in the film about this special artistic phenomenon in film history are Herz Frank, Uldis Brauns, Ivars Seleckis, Andres Sööt, Robertas Verba, Henrikas Sablevicius, Arvis Freimanis, Mark Soosaar.”

I have been invited to come for the premiere in Karlovy Vary, which I do with great pleasure as someone whose professional life changed completely in the 1990’es, where I discovered the Baltic documentary on the island of Bornholm where a festival, Balticum Film & TV Festival took place until 2000. Today it is my joy to go to Riga every year to take part in the Baltic Sea Docs that is a continuation of the adventure on Bornholm, as is the collaboration of the three Baltic countries cinema-wise with this celebration os something very special – the film will be followed by a superb retrospective of the primarily short documentaries made by the masters in the documentary. More will come from this event. Photo of the poster of the film. 

DocAlliance Puts Focus on Vitaly Mansky

Today starts the festival in Karlovy Vary, Kviff, and tomorrow is the first (of three) screening of Vitaly Mansky’s “Putin’s Witnesses”, that has its premiere at the festival. To celebrate this and the director, DocAlliance, www.dafilms.com launches a curated programme with the title “A Probe into the (Not Only) Russian Soul”, in all respects an impressive offer from the VOD.

I copy-paste the presentation text from DocAlliance:

The renowned Ukrainian documentary filmmaker has been mapping the phenomenon of contemporary Russia in an original way for several decades. In his films, he meets his protagonists in big cities and remote territories, following politicians as well as the everyday lives of common people. Mansky’s latest film “Putin’s Witnesses” will be premiered in the documentary competition at the upcoming Karlovy Vary IFF. The director’s current retrospective at DAFilms includes an exclusive preview from the film.

In “Red Tsars. Presidents of Russia”, Mansky follows three statesmen over the course of one year: Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. The result is both an insider’s account of politics in Russia and an intimate portrait of the three “Red Tsars”.

Different aspects of human existence were explored in Mansky’s “Virginity” where three young women try to find a way to the world of fame, popularity and money by what they see as a desired commodity for sale: their virginity.

“Broadway. Black Sea” from 2002 is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a Black Sea resort in the course of one holiday season. Mansky revisits the Black Sea once again in Wild, Wild Beach where he composes a unique portrait of several protagonists bearing witness to the state of our world.

The question of what is more important – life or home? – is explored in “Gagarin’s Pioneers” where Mansky questions his former schoolmates who were members of the Young Pioneers just like he was and who swore allegiance to their then homeland – the Soviet Union. The motif of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin also appears in “Private Chronicles. Monologue” where Mansky processes 5 000 hours of footage to weave a fictional biography of the common life of a generation of those who were born when Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space and whose youth ended when the Soviet Union collapsed.

“I became a Russian citizen simply because I happened to live in Moscow when the Soviet Union broke apart,” says Mansky to explain the origin of his film “Close Relations”. A few decades later his family in Ukraine face the dramatic consequences of further turbulent change, and their fresh experience of the revolution shows us that the media presentation of the country’s East-West dichotomy is deeply flawed.

Aleksandar Reljic: Enkel

Enkel is German for grandson – and that is what Rainer Höß is. His grandfather was Rudolf Höß, commandant in the Auschwitz concentration camp for three and a half year from 1940. He was the one behind the expansion of the camp to be divided into three areas and for the development of the most efficient – gas and burning – way for the mass murders. At the Nürnberg trials Höß expressed:

“I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943, and estimate that at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and disease, making a total of about 3,000,000 dead…”

Another holocaust story… I thought, when executive producer of the film

Vanja Kranjac talked to me about “Enkel”, as we met in Belgrade a couple of weeks ago. I watched it and yes this production of RTV, the public broadcaster of Vojvodina, is shocking and important even for one, who has watched holocaust survivor stories again and again for decades. Shocking and important because it is so well made, and because of its two protagonists, whose stories the film is built on.

Rainer Höß is the one, who leads the story. He never met his grandfather, who was hanged in 1947, but he cut the links to and left the Höß family, when he was 15 and made it his mission to tell about the horrors committed in Auschwitz and the “normal” family life led in the villa next door – separated by a wall – to the camp. He even has a conversation with the woman, who with her husband lives in the house today. He has written a book, he has been interviewed all over, he takes part in peace marches, he makes tours in Auschwitz…

The film makes Rainer Höß meet the holocaust survivor Eva Mozes Kor, who was 10, when she and her twin sister were in the camp, kept alive to be subject to experiments performed by the infamous doctor Mengele. She – who has been part of several documentaries – is a fantastic storyteller, when she recalls in details the time in the camp, where the twin’s parents and big sisters were killed. It is obvious that this 84 year old charismatic Romanian by origin, now living in the USA, has told her story numerous times, she has the sense for a dramaturgy that leads to her personal forgiveness towards the Nazis and their crimes.

Less convincing in that respect maybe, is Rainer Höß, whose message is clear, to the world we live in now: “Never Again”! But it is not easy to stand up against Eva Mozes Kor, who was there, who suffered and survived, and who accepts when younger Rainer asks her to be his granma!

The director manages to keep the viewer’s attention, maybe the parallel editing between the two stories is a bit too mechanic until they meet, but it never disturbs the overall strong impression of a documentary that combines a journalistic archive research with fine documentary language.

Serbia, 2018, 82 mins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tal Amiran: Sand Men

We met at Amdocs festival in Palm Springs, where the English director showed his fine short documentary “Seven Days a Week” about a man, who sells newspapers in a street of London.

Now the director is back in the streets with “Sand Men”, a touching social documentary with three Romanian men, who have left their country, where no job was available for them, ending up on knees on the pavement skillfully making their sand dog, in all kind of weather, collecting coins from people passing by – money to be sent back to their families, to provide for them. One of them has his family with him, he and his wife and their child sleep in a car.

“I suffer for a good cause”, one of them says, “the family”.

The director has made interviews with the three; voices are put over images that follow their artistic work. It’s precisely edited, this slice of reality from a Europe 2018.

The documentary has been at more than 30 festivals with several awards.

UK, 14 mins., 2017

http://talamiran.com/

Ji.hlava IDFF 22: Memory as Theme

Yesterday festival director of Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival in Czech Republic announced the theme of the 22nd festival, that takes place October 25-30: Memory.

“Numerous documentary filmmakers focus on historical events, record testimonies, creating a map of personal memory. Actually, anything that is captured by camera lenses will be preserved for future generations, only the recording media are always new and different. Places and things have their own memory, too,” said Hovorka in connection with a presentation of the festival’s visual design, see the poster above.

The artist behind the poster is Slovak Juraj Horváth, who has written this poem:

I don’t collect, I just find
Used, 
Bleached, 
Cracked, 
Worn, 
Dusty, 
Broken, 
Decayed…
Objects.
I place them next to each other, on top of each other.
I slightly shape them, 
Combine and complete their stories.
Soft documentation.
Story seemingly falling into place,
But I also lay traps, false tracks.
I exaggerate, steal others’ memories.
To get rid of my enemy,
To train my imagination.

Furthermore, exciting, what will come out from his hands and eyes: Jean-Luc Godard has agreed to make the festival spot for the festival. Will be premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival on July 2. His latest work, “Le Livre d’Image” will be screened in Jihlava.

http://www.dokument-festival.com/news-detail/41890%7CMemory-Godard-Jihlava%2521

Stig Guldberg: De originale

De originale skiller sig ud fra de normale, sådan vil jeg tro det skal forstås. Men da det handler en del om kunstværker, billeder og bøger og musik har ordet original en fin drejning, da det modsatte jo så er kopi eller efterligning eller plagiat, og så er en original et forbillede og efterfølgelsesværdig.

Som jeg i Tomas Espedals roman Bergeners, 2013 er i en vennegruppe, en kunsnergruppe i Bergen, er jeg her i en lignende gruppe i Aarhus. De to værker minder for mig meget om hinanden, fuldstændig i tidsbillede og en del i tonen af alvorlig munterhed. Men hvor Espedal i romanen klart er den som iagttager og resonnerer og fortæller, er jeg her i Guldbergs film mere usikker på, hvorfra historien berettes, fra hvilket punkt i filmen eller uden for filmen forståelsen etableres, kernen af indsigt, for eksempel i tilværelsens gåde, for eksempel i kunstens væsen, for eksempel i venskabets fysiognomi?

Hovedpersonen Lars Morell erobrer autorrollen, det oplever jeg fra begyndelsen, og filmen bygges op omkring hans analyse og oplevelse af tingenes tilstand. Og filmen skal ses for Morells skyld, han spiller ikke blot en skribent i kunsthistorie, i kunstfilosofi, som jeg iagttager. Han er en forfatter og en foredragsholder og en samtalens mester, som Stig Guldberg har stillet i eget sted som filmens forfatter og fortæller.

Det minder lidt om Flemming Lyngses biografiske film Rukov, 2004, hvor jeg dog husker Mogens Rukov gives plads til at sige lidt mere, og lidt dybere tror jeg det er, end Morell her, som jeg ikke synes får tilsvarende plads i Guldbergs film, i iscenesættelsen, i personinstruktionen, ved klippet af det tilsyneladende spontant, kameraobserverende filmværk, som dog er en lille spillefilm, omhyggeligt konstrueret i dokumentarstil af Stig Guldberg og Mads Kamp Thulstrup. Konstruret så jeg også kan se den som en dokumentar om en forfatter, en anarkist og en maler som spiller sig selv i disse roller. Hver for sig professionelle i deres arbejde uden for filmen, her amatører, dygtige amatører i skuespilfaget. Så når Morell falder ud eller overspiller, hvad han af og til gør, bliver det af sig selv vigtige detaljer i lystspiltonens tydeligt valgte bredde og folkelighed. Det er også i den vinkel en munter film i en menneskeligt dybt alvorlig ramme.

Nu vil jeg så i morgen aften hvor filmen har tv-premiere på TV2 se ordentlig efter nøglebegreberne iscenesættelsen, er den gennemgående? Og dialogen, er den skrevet? Og skrevet uden kloge replikker? For det er da bestemt en af årets mest overrumplende danske dokumentarer, som det konstateres i pressemeddelelsen. Og jeg anbefaler meget, at man anbringer sig i det hyggelige og venlige og sjove selskab med de fire kunstnervenner på deres locations i Århus, gennem en række år optaget af at leve og indspille scener til De originale.

SYNOPSIS

The author Lars Morell and his three friends Boje, Anders and Veigaard share in common that they are out of synch with their times and surrounding society – and now and again also with themselves and each other. They don’t give a hoot about today’s prevailing norms and what others might think of them. And they are also attracted by all things weird, chaotic and cheerfully mad about each other. ‘The Originals’ took over seven years to make, and follows the friends through ups and downs with difficult emotions. It is a life on the edge, between light and dark, the cheerful and the horrible, between order and chaos. What from the outside might look like ‘losers’ turn out, upon closer inspection, to be loveable originals, who represent other values than the norm. Why should the majority decide what is normal? Stig Guldberg’s film pays tribute to friendship, in good times and bad, and through its unusual antiheroes it asks: what can we learn from originals and what would we do without friendship? (CPH:DOX programme 2018)

Danmark 2017, 58 min. Vises på TV2 21. juni 2018. Manuskript og instruktion: Stig Guldberg og Mads Kamp Thulstrup, produktion: Klassefilm http://klassefilm.dk/en/ producer: Lise Saxtrup.

https://www.dfi.dk/viden-om-film/filmdatabasen/film/de-originale 

Magnificent7 Closing/ Sanna Salmenkallio

The closing film of the 2018 edition of the Magnificent7 Festival for European documentaries in Belgrade was Finnish “Entrepreneur” by Virpi Suutari with music composed by Sanna Salmenkallio, who was there to introduce the film that had the highest amount of spectators of the seven magnificent films shown, 876, in the new venue of the festival, Kombank Dvorana at the centre of Belgrade on the Nikola Passic Square – Pasic (1846-1926) was prime minister of Serbia and Yugoslavia and mayor of Belgrade.

Sanna Salmenkallio talked briefly about the film, received on behalf of the director Virpi Suutari the traditional BelMedic Award, a diploma and money, and was welcomed by a local violinist, who played a piece from the film´s music score.

And I – with the 875 other spectators – sat down to enjoy the film with a

special ear for the music. I am very often disappointed with music in documentaries but in this case I loved the way the composer added to the mostly staged scenes in a film that is sooo Finnish, meaning surprising in its mix of lovable and absurd scenes.

In the two hour workshop the next morning Sanna Salmenkallio told how she got into composing after having played violin. “I started with violin, had two children, got divorced and had no time to go out to play violin. So I turned to composing”, she said with a smile. “And then came Virpi Suutari and it became very natural with film after dance theatre and opera”. “The first we did together was “White Sky” and after that “The Idle Ones” (both together with Susanna Helke). “You have to be a kind of midwife”, she said, “and I am very nerdy…”. “If I am to make music for a film about Chechnya, I read all I can get hold of, topic is crucial for me”. “If I don’t believe in a topic, I say no to a job offer”.

There were many words on the collaboration with Pirjo Honkasalo on “The Three Rooms of Melancholia”. “Pirjo is my film school”, she said, and explained how the two of them came to use a contratenor voice for the film. “Now I understand that the contratenor is the main character of the film”, Pirjo Honksalo said after the film was finished.

“Garden Lovers”, that was shown at Magnificent7 festival in 2015, has a funny background story. “Virpi called me and said she wanted to use bossanova music in the film. She wanted to buy some but it was far to expensive, so could I compose some…”. “I did but quite a challenge it was as I come from classical music!”

Sanna Salmenkallio showed clips at the workshop. One was from a film, “Elegance”, that came between “Garden lovers” and “Entrepreneur”. It is about rich men who goes hunting, among them a top executive from Nokia. There was money for three instruments, we went for baroque music – and the scenes we saw were both scary (the act of killing) and satirical in the way the rich men’s world were depicted in image and music.

“I’m looking for the tone of the film and when that is found/has been chosen I can move forward “, she said. “The opening is the most complicated and therefore often the last to be decided upon”. “I’m composing for the movement” was another interesting comment from Salmenkallio.

Sanna Salmenkallio, who is a big fan of Bernard Hermann, the composer of Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”, whose partiture she has studied in detail, did the recording of the music for “Entrepreneur” with a symphony orchestra in Bratislava, “it was possible because I had the notes and because I was producing while the recording took place. Virpi was with me, it was very intense and I had to ask her not to talk…”. “Of course it is totally unfair to a director, who has ben working for a couple of years on her film, for a composer to come in and record the music in 4 hours!” “But I think we succeeded, the film has an inner soul”.

Sanna Salmenkallio, who is now busy working with prisoners doing “documentary theatre” and is composing music for “Hamlet”, ended up showing us a 7 minutes short from 2017, “Nocturne. Ali and Sanna”, shot by Pirjo Honkasalo, Ali sings, Sanna plays violin, wonderful. “I’m studying Arabic music”, she said.

Brilliant meeting with a brilliant artist.

www.magnificent7org.com

Photo from left taken at the closing night, the festival team, almost all of them present: Ana and Nenad Popovic, the parents of the small boy Bogdan, who is playing with the stick of his grandfather, Tue Stin Milleric, Ema Teokarevic, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, Milica Novkovic, Aleksandar Mitrovic, Nevena Djonlic and Lea Vahrušev.

Magnificent7 Workshop with the Swedes

… Malla Grapengiesser, Per Bifrost and Alexander Rynéus, the trio behind “Giants and the Morning After”, was what we in Danish call “hyggelig” with Zoran Popovic as “hyggeonkel” (uncle), asking questions about Ydre, the small society 300 km south of Stockholm towards Malmø. Malla, who is from Ydre, and who was the director and producer, with the two young men doing the camera, had in the beginning the idea to make a series, she showed the material shot to film consultant Cecilia Lidin at the Swedish Film Institute, who was not able to support a series. “We did a lot of interviews in the beginning but ended up not using them”, she said. “It was basically a wide and broad idea and we wanted to capture the mood of a place, where life goes on with all its contrasts”. “We were there to shoot 19 times and ended up with 200 hours of material”. “We aimed at creating a fairy tale atmosphere in the film”.

“Through Folkets Bio we had 30 screenings in different small places in Sweden and the screenings

were followed by good discussions in the small communities, who had the same challenges as we saw in Ydre”.

The characters, the main ones, even if the film luckily does not follow the international rules about “strong characters, strong story”, are wonderful. The mayor is this “hyggelige” old bearded man, who goes around with gifts to the families, who increase the size of the population and ask the families to get more babies… and the owner of the sawmill factory Bengt and his wife. The two has a sweet – and hilarious – scene where they have been asked to talk about if they should give up or continue the factory, which has been in the hands of Bengt’s family for decades. I thought immediately about Roy Andersson and his Swedish stories. Malla told me that they did the sound mix at Roy Andersson’s studio but they had not had the chance to show the film to him. Do so!

As one can see in the film Ydre is a pearl of beautiful nature;: woods, a valley, lakes and it was the intention of the filmmakers to catch all seasons. But there was no snow and a chase of snowflakes turned out to be unsuccessful… To come back to Andersson there is a wonderful bus trip scene of fine absurdity. where muslim women are being introduced to the wonders of Ydre. And they take part in the traditional Midsummer celebration that the Swedes are so good at. As Malla said the new people coming from war zones need the calmness that Ydre offers.

The photo shows from left: Zoran Popovic, Malla Grapengiesser, Alexander Rynéus and Per Bifrost.

Definition of “hygge”: the practice of creating cosy and congenial environments that promote emotional wellbeing. (Collins)