Magnificent7 Arrival

There we are, my wife and I, back in Belgrade to take part in the 14th European Feature Documentary Film Festival, Magnificent7 – seven films, one per night, starting tomorrow on the 8th with the Polish masterpiece, “The Prince and the Dybbuk” by Piotr Rosolowski and Elvira Niewiera, who will be present at the screening that is said to be sold out – there is space for 1300 spectators!

From heatwave in Copenhagen to the same in Belgrade with a warm welcome in the airport by Nevena Donlic, program coordinator and Nebosja, driver for the festival through many many years. In to our home for the next week, the Belgrade Excelsior Hotel on Kneza Miloša close to the Parliament and the new venue of the festival Kombank Dvorana. Mr and Mrs. Festival, Zoran and Svetlana Popovic were waiting for us, we got the room and we carried luggage and survival kits up the stairs. Survival kits… for years one of the many jobs at the festival that is carried out by brilliant camerawoman Jelena Stankovic… she buys snacks, chocolate, water, juice, wet wipes, tissues, much needed and one of many specialities of the hospitality, we have enjoyed during all the years. It is an understatement that guests are taken well care of at this festival!

Off to lunch outside in the restaurant Jovac, me starting with my classic rakija, the Losa, it’s from Montenegro, the Serbian waiter said – and followed by salad and schnitzel. From there to a fabulous coffee place ZRNO, means the grain, in the part of the city called Vracar, cafés and restaurants on each corner. Nevena Donlic takes her coffee there – understandable!

14th edition… thinking back on the many films and directors, whose films (91 films) and company we have enjoyed through the years, let me just mention some of them – I go to the facebook page of the festival and look at photos: Audrius Stonys, Miroslav Janek, Nicolas Philibert, Sergei Loznitsa, Sylvain Biegeleisen, Helena Trestikova, Pernille Grønkjær, Wojciech Staron, Jerzy Sladkowski, German Kral, Frank Piasecki Poulsen, Gianfranco Rosi, Marie-Clémence and César Paës, Mika Ronkainen… and late Michael Glawogger (PHOTO). In the coming week Magnificent7 welcomes European documentary cinema makers to Belgrade.

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/en/index.php

Alisa Kovalenko: Home Games

Alina, 20 year old, Ukrainian, likes football. She plays herself and she is good. In the beginning of the film she is making a collage to hang on the wall, from pictures of famous football players. She cuts off the head of Messi, says sorry to him, and puts her own head on the body of the best football player in the world. At the end of the film Alina is on the football pitch, she is knocked down, gets a free kick, which she kicks herself into the goal just like Messi has done so many times!

A perfect dramaturgical circle (!) for a film, where football is important but that is first of all a warm, heartbreaking social documentary, where Alina is in focus from start till end.

The family includes the granny, the mother, the father, Alina and her two siblings, Renat and Regina, 6 and 7 years old. Plus Alina’s helping girlfriend Nadya. The mother dies, the father is a useless drunkard, the granny is old and not so mobile – so the responsibility for bringing up the two kids lies with Alina, who has games on the football pitch but first and foremost has Home Games to fight. She takes the kids along for a summer training camp, she has to prepare them for the school, she is short of money – the father gets the public support for the kids, he never helps the children – so she and Nadya goes to the street to sell shoes, cell phones, whatever to get some money. She goes with granny and Nadya to have the legal right for the children transferred from the father to her. They are positively received – without this being really followed up in the film except for a text at the end, where it is being said that the father is out of the flat – and you see the two young girls starting a new life refurnishing the apartment. “We want to live like normal people now”.

The film lives from its ability to create a feeling of presence in the situations with Alina and the kids. Here there are fine, often poetic moments in the claustrophobia of the small flat. On the football pitch, it is not poetry that reigns, when the coach states to the girls that they have “to die on the pitch”, a sentence which will probably be used many times the next month in a neighbouring country.

Ukraine/ France/ Poland, 2018, 86 mins.

https://sheffdocfest.com/films/6545

Andreas Dalsgaard: Fædre & Sønner /2

Der er bografpremiere i morgen 6. juni og jeg knytter lige et par kommentarer yderligere til denne film, som optager mig en del: 

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Etnografen Henning Haslund-Christensen står på fotografiet midt på højslettens vældige tomme flade med bjergene i dis langt, langt borte. Fotografiet er fra en af hans mange rejser i Mongoliet.

Filmen begynder imidlertid ikke med ham, dens tid er ikke hans tid. Den begynder med Søren Haslund-Christensen og Michael Haslund-Christensen, hans søn og sønnesøn. I den allerførste scene er de i gang med et af deres talrige projekter, i filmens nutid at finde arkivstof til dens realisering. Søren står op ad en dørkarm i hjemmet: ”Skulle du ikke på loftet?” Kort pause. ”Det bliver måske først i morgen?” Den lille ironi er så velkendt, at den næsten overhøres, i klippet peger den direkte ind i familiehistorien, det første af filmens fortællelag. Michaels lette charme er svaret, han fortsætter leende med sit, der er ligevægt mellem de to, som charmen er en del af dem begge, den er en arv fra Henning, ligesom Sørens ironiske kommandotone vel måtte findes hos Henning dengang, han havde ledelsesfunktioner, og nu hos Michael som travl filmproducent. Hans beundring for faderen må underdrives til gang på gang at fremhæve, at faderen kan bevæge ørerne. Her på et still fra filmen er de på netop den mongolske steppe, hvor Henning var på sine ekspeditioner dengang. Snart vil de få brug for tricket at vippe med ørerne.

Deres rejse til Mongoliet i fortællingens nutid er en filmekspedition, som skal være rammen i Andreas Dalsgaards film, et fortællelag, som med udgangspunkt i familiehistorien linker til Henning Haslunds ekspeditionshistorie, til en historie om kulturtab og til en særligt bevægende skildring af et hukommelsestab i vente. I alt er der således fire, fem fortællelag, måske et par stykker mere, sindrigt elegant vævet til et billedtæppe med dialog, lyd og forunderligt nærværende musik, et filmessay over et århundredes ekspeditionsvidenskabelighed og mytologi.

Familiehistorien er ligesom helt Dalsgaards egen fortælling, jeg oplever den fra hans fortrolige position. Han bygger den på et stort og rigt familiearkiv af fotos og smalfilm og så på sit observerende kameras fortælling i filmens nutid. Her er fortællepositionen også, når der interviewes med andet kamera og i anden kamerastil. Optagelserne af samvær og interviews, altså begge slags er på helt samme måde intense og nærværende. Dertil er interviewene er klogt udførte i en diskret, men dyb empati. 

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Da jeg så filmen, var jeg i første omgang selv mest oplagt til det ekspeditionsmytologiske essay. Jeg kom lige fra arbejdet med Per Kirkebys film, hans rejser, hans forståelse af ekspeditionens væsen. Kirkeby fortæller, at han nu, han er i gang med den her film (Ekspeditionen, 1988) må erklære, at han har mistet lysten til det filmiske, at han vil fortælle om denne personligt skelsættende begivenhed, ekspeditionen i sit liv, som i hans sind vokser som drøm og forestilling og gennemtænkning til hele mytologien om ekspeditionerne i dette grønlandske landskab, hvor døden får sin ikke fortrængte plads, så livet bliver til fylde. Det vil han fortælle om i en lysbilledserie.

Og jeg forstår, at Teit Jørgensen er sat til at filme lysbillederne, mens Kirkeby viser dem med sit lysbilledapparat på lærredet og ind imellem med sin finger peger på en bestemt linje i det viste landskab, noget, han vil pointere, som han derefter i sit store værk, akvarellerne og malerierne atter og atter har pointeret. Film er for den rejsende Kirkeby først og sidst billeder.

Sådanne mytologiske billeddannelser var tidligere i mit liv tekster af Lennart Edelberg (Nuristan) og Klaus Ferdinand (Afghanistan) og Geoffrey Bibby og P.V. Glob (Bahrain) og Werner Jacobsen (Mongoliet) og af mine egne kolleger Torkil Funder (Ceylon, Oman) og Jens Vellev (Oman) og Bo Madsen (Israel og Irak). De fortalte og fortalte om etnografiske, arkæologiske og geografiske feltarbejder på arabiske og endnu fjernere asiatiske destinationer.

Selv har jeg aldrig rejst, kun i bøgernes digt, i Rider Haggards Afrika og i andre bøgers farverige nøgternhed som alle de polarrejsendes. Sidst var denne oplistning af navne og deres associationer ved at opleve Daniel Dencics rejse ind den kortvarigt isfrie nordgrønlandske fjord i hans film Ekspeditionen til verdens ende, 2013, som Michael Haslund skrev sammen med ham og producerede og som må være blandt forudsætningerne for Haslunds og Dalsgaards arbejde med Fædre & sønner, for en vigtig del af fremstillingen, nemlig den digteriske behandling af ekspeditionsmyten. Jeg bemærkede dengang jeg så Dencics film, at der et sted ikke langt inde, at døden i en stor rejses sammenhæng har mistet sin fortrængte plads. En kortfattet kvindestemme, Katrine Warsaaes høres med en pludselig og løsreven bemærkning med venlig og beskedent tilbageholdt pondus af viden om arters massedød tidligere i Jordens historie, men faktisk meget sjældent, med årmillioner imellem. Nu sker det måske igen, siger hun, en art er ved at uddø, denne gang ved at destruere sig selv, vi er måske midt i det.

Haslund og Dencik havde lavet en ung og opsætsig film med deres helte på rejse i et sejlskib frem mod verdens ende. Nu er navnene Jonas Bergsøe, Minik Rosing, Per Bak Jensen, Jeppe Møhl, Jens Fog Jensen, Tal R, Morten Rasch, Bo Elberling, Katrine Worsaae og Daniel Richter. De er om bord på skibet, de er ekspeditionens medlemmer, og de er filmens medvirkende, og små bidder af det, de siger til hinanden foran det observerende kamera, bliver efterhånden til filmens essayistiske udsagn.

Sådan forberedt ser jeg, at i Fædre & sønner etableres den videnskabeligt / kunstneriske / eventyrlige oplevelse i første omgang en del enklere ved at introducere en smuk empire kommode og dens indhold af hemmelighed og ved at give afgørende plads til blot to medvirkende vidner og researchere af fascinerende kvalitet, en dansk antropolog og en britisk historiker. Deres vildt spændende små bidder af viden og fortolkning vokser i et centralt detektivisk forløb til en regulær thriller om spionage og kontraspionage og våbensalg og våbentransport.

Og med det er filmen slet ikke færdig! Der er jo flere handlingstråde, som skal færdiggøres og knyttes. Man kan glæde sig: Der er DOXBIO biografpremiere i morgen, 6. juni 2018:

http://doxbio.dk/kob-billet/ (billetter i mere end 50 biografer)

http://doxbio.dk/movie-archive/faedre-og-soenner/ (trailer, synopsis, instruktørbiografi)

LITTERATUR

https://www.dfi.dk/viden-om-film/filmdatabasen/film/faedre-og-sonner-0 (synopsis og creditliste)

http://www.nordiskfilmogtvfond.com/news/interview/the-great-games-creators-on-letting-the-past-define-the-present (interview med Andreas Dalsgaard og Michael Haslund-Christensen)

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3358/ (om Per Kirkebys film)

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2282/ (anmeldelse af Daniel Dencic: Ekspeditionen til verdens ende)

Alina Gorvola: No Obvious Signs

Oksana Yakobava, major in the Ukrainian army, was at war from 2014-17. Her job was to report on the dead soldiers: identity, how death occurred, how many bullets in the body, was there any torture, any obvious signs, contact and information to family. Tough task, to say it with an understatement.

We viewers meet her, when she is trying to recover from the war experiences. She has had a breakdown, she is being treated for a couple of months with physical training and by a psychotherapist. She is wounded, she is trying to wash away images that stay in her head. As she has been close to atrocities. Warm baths, massage, conversations, will it go away?

The film team has been with her and they go with her, when she returns to the war zone to resign from her position, and they follow her on a tour in the metro one month later. She still suffers, she listens to prayers from her cell phone, it seems like hell for her to be in the street as well.

It is a hard story, it is well made, the film team has the confidence of the protagonist, it makes an impression, it is truthful in all its sadness.

Ukraine, 2017, 64 mins.

Krakow Film Festival: The Winners

Sometimes it´s jackpot! I had voted for – in my post yesterday – four films and they were all awarded: Talal Derki for his “Of Fathers and Sons” (The Golden Horn and the Fipresci), Marta Prus for her “Over the Limit” (The Silver Horn, The Silver Hobby-Horse (National Competition), The Audience Award – and awards to her editor Adam Suzin, and to her producers Anna Kepinska and Maciej Kubicki), Pablo Aparo and Martin Benchimol for “El Espanto” (The Silver Horn for Best Medium Length Documentary) and Stephen Nomura Schible for “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda” (Best film in the DocFilmMusic Competition and Student Jury’s Award).

On top of that a well deserved special mention to Belarussian Anastasiya Miroshnichenko for her “Debut”, a fine film, that I knew from watching a rough cut in autumn 2017, a touching portrait of women in prison and their kids.

It was more than 30 awards – list, click below –  that were handed out in the big Kijew Centrum cinema last night. Always a pleasure to be at Krakow Film Festival with a badge saying “media”, which means I was there to watch films. I did!

Photo: Happy winners from “Over the Limit”, producer Maciej Kubicki and director Marta Prus.

www.krakowfilmfestival.pl

http://www.krakowfilmfestival.pl/en/full-list-of-winners-of-the-58th-kff/

Martin Benchimol, Pablo Aparo: El Espanto

It’s slow, it has no music if I remember correctly, the images are amazing, from countryside of Argentina, the characters are wonderful, full of humour and originality – and mystery because in El Dorado the inhabitants tell good stories and when it comes to illnesses, they can cure them themselves, they don’t need doctors to come around. The filmmakers mostly place the people in front of the camera, they talk, very much about the only disease they can´t cure by themselves but there is one, who can, Jorge (PHOTO), who lives on the other side of the bridge, el espanto is the name of the illness, whatever that is, it is said that it is something that especially women get, but what it is…

The filmmakers give us a glimpse of Jorge, who confirms that he can heal, also citizens from El Dorado come to me, he says, even if they – on camera – deny it. As they deny that there should be any homosexuality in the small society. Jorge refuses to have one more visit by the filmmakers and focus shifts to an accident on the bridge, did someone die, apparently, but many theories come up, they ARE storytellers. And the filmmakers listen and go with them, also to create an atmosphere of comedy like when a wedding takes place, where the groom looks absent and far from happy, while the bride in her wedding dress dances for herself. Yes, love is a theme in this film, you listen to the couples and their comments on this theme, they have a good time – but Jorge does not take part, there is light in his house, but he turns it off and the film, a lovely one, is over.

Argentina, 2017, 65 mins.

Marcin Sauter: I Grew Up as You Slept

An ordinary story told in an extraordinary way. Because Marcin Sauter is not “only” a skilled director, he is a cinematographer who knows about composition and framing of images. This film has no boring moments, it is intense and full of emotions and beauty. And the music reflects the atmosphere of melancholy surrounding the granny and the granddaughter, when they meet in the countryside of Belarus, the country Karalina (who, according to credits at the end of the film, bears the same surname as the director) has chosen to leave to have more opportunities to develop her music career. In a scene with two friends, also from the music school, it is obvious that she is not the only one, who has left or wants to leave their home country… an ordinary story.

The film operates in present and past. Black and white images constitute the childhood, when berries were picked in the garden, cut to today, where the same action in colour takes place with wonderful granny and red-dressed granddaughter in the picture. The director has made his aesthetic choice. Scene after scene, situation after situation are a pleasure to watch.

An award for this poetic film tonight at the Krakow Film Festival closure?  

For me no objections!

Poland, 2018, 50 mins.

Music!

He was a musician, he says, Ryūichi Sakamoto, in the portrait film “Coda” about him. He talks about Andrey Tarkovsky and in the film a clip from “Solaris” is shown, a close-up on drops of water bringing nature’s sounds to the screen. It’s a wonderful film that again makes me think that music is the most interesting art form, where film is so much more concrete, concluding and interpreting. With music you can create your own images – and yet Sakamoto, the master of film music (Oshima’s “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” (1983), “The Last Emperor” (1987) and “The Sheltering Sky” (1990), “The Revenant” (2015) by Alejandro G. Iñárritu…) states that he tries to think “cinematically”, when he in his studio in New York and on his journeys to the North Pole and Africa collects sounds to be used in his composing. The film by Stephen Nomura Schible gets very close to the composer, who reveals that he is fighting against a cancer illness; it is in itself a piece of film history with clips from the films mentioned above plus archive material that shows Sakamoto in his psychedelic period and as an activist against nuclear plants to be rebuilt after the Fukushima catastrophe. To be linked to his “Opera” from 1999, where he summarizes the state of our civilization with continuing quotes from the man who “invented” the atom bomb, Oppenheimer.

After having seen all films in the documentary competition, I “took the day off” to let me be

seduced by music documentaries. Apart from the Sakamoto film I was entertained and charmed by “Concerto for Two” by Polish Tomasz Drozdowicz with composer and conductor Jerzy Maksymiuk, and his wife Ewa.

The film is a tribute to a man, born in 1936, who is full of energy, loves life, who is always active, who is generous in his teaching young, upcoming conductors – and pretty much depending on his wife, who takes care of him, to say the least. She is always there close to him, she is a guarantee for him looking ok with his wild white hair. As well as smelling good – she “deodorants” him!

But for me the main quality with “Concerto for Two” is the inspiration Maksymiuk passes on in the film. He makes me want to listen more to music than I normally do. Always with the baton in hand, even when he is chilling out on a hotel bed somewhere on one of his many, he talks about music, composes, praises Piazzola, Prokofiev, Beethoven, Chopin.

When writing this text on the two films I managed to watch yesterday, two films that are in the festival’s DocFilmMusic competitive section, I have been humming Sakamoto’s music from the David Bowie film “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” and the ballet music for “Romeo and Juliet” by Prokofiev, that plays a strong part in the film with Maksymiuk.

Thank you for the music, the songs I’m singing
Thanks for all the joy they’re bringing… 

Over the Limit

In November last year I wrote this on filmkommentaren.dk about Marta Prus “Over the Limit”: An (almost) perfect film. Plays with the classical dramaturgical rules in terms of characters and rythm – positive mood and development, crisis, winning, losing, crisis as a gymnast, crisis because of her father’s illness, music that fits, brilliant camerawork, it’s like an opera or a ballet, great pleasure to look at this film with its universal appeal: Trust yourself, find yourself, the tough and direct coach is (maybe) right in much of what she is saying… Another masterly done Polish documentary!

The festival referred to above was IDFA in Amsterdam and now – after numerous festivals – the film has its national premiere! As an invited journalist I am giving it top points as you can see on the rating scheme. I do so after having recently seen the film two times more, in Tbilisi Georgia and in Barcelona. I have put parenthesis around the word almost as I have no objections to the film, none at all. It fills so well the big screen. And happy to say that the audience at both festivals reacted with enthusiasm.

Apart from that let me express a lot of admiration for Marta Prus after three

times Q&A (Question and Answer) sessions with her at the mentioned festivals. Thank you for watching my films, she always said… well, it might sound like a natural thing to say so, but I have met quite a lot of arrogance and irritation from filmmakers, who did not appreciate to meet the audience and answer all quite of questions. She told how she got the permission to shoot after having followed the gymnasts and the coaches for a couple of years, how she shot the film for one year, how she was editing for a year and how she took part in different training and pitching sessions. There were of course several questions regarding how the Russian gymnast Rita and the two coaches Amina and Irina reacted to the final result! Especially Irina comes out as quite a controversial character with her constant scolding the gymnast, whereas Amina is more a mother/big sister to Rita.

The answer to that from Marta Prus, who learned Russian before the shooting, was that she showed the film to them before it was released and there were no comments. If there was something they did not like, I would have taken it out, she said. “It’s true, the film”, said Irina, according to Prus, who invited the trio to the screening at IDFA.

I was a gymnast myself, Marta Prus said, but not on this level. Which brings me to the impossible labelling of the film. Is it a film on the tough reality of being a sportswoman on the top? Is it a film about the love/hate relationship between three women – with a fourth one on the side, the director, who at the Q&A sessions said that she often felt a bit lonely on the set, “they did not notice me”, good you can say now, it gives the film a truthfulness. Or is it a film about Russia as a Latvian friend suggested, and not a very favourable one. Maybe all, for sure much more. Curious to see the reaction in Poland!

To Be in a Jury/ To be Awarded

My countryman Lars von Trier’s last film “The House that Jack Built” was not in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. In an interview he was asked, if he was sorry about that. No, he said, I don’t believe in competition within art – words to that effect. Well, of course he is right, how to compare an apple with a pear, on the other hand I am sure that he was not sorry to receive all the awards he had for previous films before he became a “persona non grata” at the festival! Who does not appreciate that your film is evaluated as price-worthy? “For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?” to quote W.H. Auden’s poem written for the classic British documentary “Night Mail”.

Here in Krakow there are many awards. I have seen all films in the main competition and let’s see whether the critics points match those of the jury! It’s not always the case, luckily.

Does it mean anything for the filmmakers to be awarded? Of course – Apart

from the appreciation there is often money attached to the award, which can be important for the filmmaker. Let me give you a piece of memory:

20 years ago I was in the jury of IDFA in Amsterdam and we had three very strong films in the final round, and we had two awards to hand out – the main award and a special jury award. The films were “Pavel and Lyala” by Viktor Kossakovski, “Fotoamator” by Dariusz Jablonski and “Bread Day” by Sergey Dvortsevoy. We decided to give the Jury award to Kossakovski and the main award to Jablonski – and nothing to Dvortsevoy. Ahhh, he was actually the one, who needed the money most as he had done “Bread Day” without any funding. He had made the film from the award he got from his first film “Happiness”: rolls of negative film material for shooting. I knew that but it is not what a juror should be influenced by. But I still remember the disappointment I could read in his eyes.

The same goes for the arguments I have experienced in other juries: No, this film has already had so many awards so it does not need one more… The answer to this: It can only be the best film that can win…

But how do you find the best film? Is it the cinematic qualities you put highest on your evaluation list? The camera work, the editing, the storytelling, the sound? The director’s personal touch, style, “handwriting”. Or is it the theme, the importance and the relevance of the subject, the visual treatment, the nationality of the director, a young talent to be honored? And how much does your personal taste influence the decision?

The answer to this is Yes… it is most often a mix of all these elements, isn’t it?

I see with pleasure that here in Krakow most awards go to directors – and not to producers/ production companies. It is the directors, who have had the film in their heads for years, it is the directors who have the final say in a film, it is an appreciation of the “auteur” tradition. And if money awards are involved, they land in a dry place, as the directors are often those who suffer most when a film goes over time, and the budget is spent.

May the great films be awarded!