It’s one of those documentaries that makes you smile through the whole film, Ouaga Girls by Swedish Theresa Traore Dahlberg. It was shown yesterday at DocsBarcelona at the Aribau Club cinema followed by a Q&A with the French coproducer Estelle Robin You, who is also involved in the production of “Dolphin Man” by Lefteris Charitos, that plays in the competitive Panorama section of the festival here in Barcelona.

The smile… because of the life energy of the girls from Burkina Faso, who study to become auto mechanics in a male society and enjoy the company of their sisters in the school, where they learn, are introduced to adult life and where they have fun, and share the good and the bad experiences they have and have had in their lives. They all come from a tough social background, which is conveyed to the viewer in tense interview situations with a psychologist. A brilliant cinematic solution where the action – the slate of joyful, lively scenes from the auto workshop and from the classroom and from parties and concerts in the city – is stopped to give close-ups and time for reflection.

Estelle Robin-You told us that the film has been running in cinemas in France – and Sweden of course – that the music score is composed by the father of the director Seydou Richard Traoré – that French editor Alexandra Strauss was called for to help finalising the film; Strauss who has edited “I’m not Your Negro” and has worked for master Roy Andersson.

How can we get a women empowering film like this shown in rural areas, a woman in the audience asked. There must be Ngo’s, who can use the film. Of course.   

http://momentofilm.se/films/ouaga-girls/

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Aribau Club Cinemas in Barcelona. Two cinema halls, one bigger than the other. The home of DocsBarcelona for four days, yesterday the first where I had the privilege to introduce and moderate three films in the competitive Panorama section. With Pol Roig as responsible for the running of the screenings.

First Polish “Over the Limit” by Marta Prus (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4091/) with half an hour talk afterwards, where the young director told, how she found her characters, how she got permission to shoot, how she filmed for one year and edited for one year, how she wanted the film to look like a feature film, how she as director had to make production decisions as well and of course many words about the trio of women in the film, Margarita the gymnast and the two coaches Irina and Amina.

Second Syrian “Of Fathers and Sons” by Talal Derki (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4094/) the director who was back in Barcelona, where he was in 2014 with “Return to Homs”, that got the first prize at the festival. I asked him how it was to be “playing the role of a war photographer”, an observer, who comes into this mad world of jihadism and refrains from discussing the issues being brought up by the militant father. He explained his relationship to Osama, one of the sons, Ayman, being the other. The reception of the film, measured by the applause, was considerable, an understatement…

Third Greek “The Dolphin Man” by Lefteris Charitos, a film about the legendary Jacques Mayol, his life, his record breaking diving down to 100 meters, his glamorous life with many women in his life, and yet his loneliness, told through archive material, interviews with his daughter and son and amazing underwater camerawork by Stelios Apostolopoulos, in a film that is multilayered and dealing with philosophical and existential questions. Charitos answered all kind of questions from the audience, including those about his suicide in his house on the island of Elba.

All three films had a good audience, the photo shows the line of people waiting to get in to watch “The Dolphin Man”.

And all three films have a second run.

www.docsbarcelona.com

It’s become an institution, the rough cut sessions of DocsBarcelona and I am proud to be the one, who has chosen the projects and the one playing the ball to the panelists, who sit in comfortable sofas in a living room-set-up watching and commenting. Panelists this year were – among others – veteran Jordi Ambros from TV3, Mandy Chang from BBC, Aleksandar Govedarica from sales agent company Syndicado, Yoshihiko Ichiya from NHK, Lelda Ozola from National Film Centre of Latvia, filmmaker Canan Turan living in Catalunya of Turkish origin… The sessions last 2 hours including the full rough cut, feedback and comments. 

The three projects selected this year were “Operation Globe” from Rolling Basis Films, director Ariadna Seuba Serra, “Pariah Dog” by Jesse Alk and “Colis Suspect” by Sofia Català and Rosa Pérez.

www.docsbarcelona.com

On the way back to Vilnius after two succesful screenings of “Wonderful Losers” at DocsBarcelona, Lithuanian Arunas and Alge Matelis met Joan Gonzalez, director of the festival who was happy to tell them that 210 students in Granollers, a city at 30 km from Barcelona, one of the 9 cities where people can see some of the docs of DocsBarcelona, had seen their film.

Likewise I was happy yesterday to attend the screening of Hendrick Dusollier’s “Last Days in Shibati” (Photo) with a full house at the CCCB Auditorium. As a selector for the Panorama and What the Doc! of the festival, I do not review films in these sections but great to experience that the reception from the audience was overwhelmingly positive. The film’s theme – the demolition of an old Chinese quarter to make space for a new China – is interesting as is the form and method the director has chosen; he comes back to the quarter, makes friends with a trio of people, and he comes the first time with almost no knowledge of the language, the second (6 months later) and third time (6 months later) it is better with the language and he is accompanied by local people, who speak the language. He just goes there to visit… and he knows what he is looking for. Authenticity in the situational sequences.

The same, achieving an authenticity, goes for “Hasta mañana, si Dios Quiere”, which will be shown later in the festival. The film – quote from the catalogue – is “A joyful story about how seventeen women live in a convent of Franciscan octogenarian sisters…” but where the film from China lives from improvisations, Ainara Vera, the director, has very carefully chosen a style, made an aesthetic choice, that makes the film beautiful to watch.

The Documentary genre has many faces! Hurrah for that!

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… with the subtitle ”Barcelona in Two Acts” was premiered yesterday at the CCCB theatre in Barcelona within the DocsBarcelona festival. Full house for a film about the architectural gem of the city, the Pavilion set up by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich in 1929 at the world exhibition to be removed 8 months later and reconstructed in 1986. A work that – quote from the synopsis – changed the History of architecture forever… its image was always alive in the minds of generations of architects around the world…

It’s not easy to make a film about architecture but I enjoyed and appreciated the cinematic solutions the two directors have chosen. They have thought about composition and framing, and there is a fine balance between the images and the information and interpretative comments from the many people from the world of architecture in Barcelona and in New York, where the archive of van der Rohe is at MOMA.

And the directors do not refrain from anecdotes and letting the speakers be passionate like the wonderful German architect Fritz Neumeyer, who on location expresses his love to the building. Also great to have Oriol Bohigas in picture, the man who was a driving force behind the reconstruction of the Pavilion, that stands there waiting to be visited by anyone, who is fond of beauty!

In the press material the directors write about the building that they have been filming for the last nine years for different purposes:

The Pavilion is a scenario of endless perspectives, lights and reflections, a living building that changes at every hour of the day and at any season of the year. Each time you record it, the Pavilion surprises you with a new reflection or a new visual composition, and you discover that fourth dimension that Mies created with the game of materials and perspectives. A universe where the composition of each frame easily becomes art within art because the Pavilion generates and multiplies beauty.

Catalunya, 2018, 58 mins.

http://www.miesonscene.com/

DocsBarcelona 2018: Lovely film by Claudia Abend and Adriana Loeff, who in promotion of the film use this phrase as a logline, so precise it is: What happens when Life lasts longer than Love?

Take a look at the photo, Aldo and Gabriella in the airport of Montevideo waving goodbye to their daughter Leila, who lives in another country – as do all their children. The old couple do not live together any longer, they separated after 48 years, spending a lot of their active time in Venezuela, where Aldo was working in the construction business, and where the family life was pure happiness as shown in the huge amount of great family film footage that are shown skillfully.

But the film starts in present time. Old people enter a theatre stage to sit in a

chair and talk about their lives. Aldo is one of them. He does not hide that he is fond of himself, “I’m very charming”, “I will be good for the film”, he has Italian roots, he often speaks in Italian, as does his wife Gabriella. They were a remarkable couple, she a beauty, he very handsome – but something went wrong, when Aldo reached his fifties. He started to meet other women and the marriage was not as glorious as it used to be, of course. Gabriella tells that story and why she decided that they should separate before “it became hatred”. And she says, and you sense the pain she must have had, that she does always remember the bad moments and not the happy ones.

The film makes its focus on the couple Aldo and Gabriella, the other old people play the important role as a kind of Greek choir. With impressive faces that reminds us that there is nothing wrong with talking faces.

And there he is, Aldo, the old man, who you in the beginning of the film take a distance to, he is just too much, but gradually you start to have great empathy for him, who is alone and who has his good moments, when he meets Gabriella, when the kids visit or when he invites her out to a restaurant, buys roses, hope for her appreciation. He reflects so fine on his situation, with humour and self-irony.

What he does appreciate is the visit of the two female filmmakers. There is a wonderful scene, where he asks them, when the film will be finished, the answer is “in one and a half year or two” – do you know the Italian neo-realistic film directors, he says, they finished their films in 3-4 years! He is disappointed that no-one cares about the sculptures that he does. He goes to the gym, he goes to a café, sits there with his computer, as he does at home, where he closes his eyes and listens to Beethoven. Dreaming about, remembering what was once in his loneliness.

The directors have found brilliant cinematic solutions to portray old age and love that was and is no longer. It is a film for all of us – with a message, nurture your relationship, keep Love alive write

… a man who is 70 with a 65 year old wife, we have been together for only 27 years!

Uruguay, 2017, 86 mins.

http://www.laflordelavida-film.com/

www.docsbarcelona.com

… and it did so with a full cinema of spectators, who expressed their enthusiasm over the sweet film about the sweeet and charismatic man on the screen and in the cinema, where he got standing ovations. The film is a very entertaining portrait of a man, who is ill and often has to get oxygen to go on as he has a dream… from the catalogue:

“Petitet is a Catalan gypsy pursuing a dream. Former musician and son of one of the “palmeros” (hand-clapping performers) of the mythical Peret, he suffers from a rare chronic disease that causes acute muscle weakness. In his fifties, he wants to fulfil the promise he made to his mother before she died: to take Catalan rumba to the stage of a great theatre. The dream begins to

come true when a band of gypsy musicians (talented but undisciplined) gather together to try and play alongside a great symphony orchestra at the Gran Teatre del Liceu!”.

DocsBarcelona is an international documentary film festival but the opening night was performed totally in Catalan language with a tribute to the Catalan rumba and a man, who is living from being a scrap collector, whose heart beats for music. 

The international part of the festival takes off today with two films at the CCCB Theatre: “Wonderful Losers” by Arunas Matelis and “Experimento Stuka” by Pepe Andreu and Rafa Molés. The film by Lithuanian Matelis – http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4048/ – will be shown not only in Barcelona but also around Catalunya.

http://www.docsbarcelona.com