… 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

… were many and you can read whoi got what via the link below. My positive comments are that the winners also here were made by directors from or dealing with Eastern and Central Europe. Serbian Mila Turajlic’s “The Other Side of Everything”, winner at IDFA 2017, was a candidate for a prize, the Romanian “Licu” by Ana Dumitrescu, who won at DOKLeipzig 2017, was in the Romanian guest country section – and the main winners were Danish Simon Lereng Wilmont with “The Distant Barking of Dogs”, shot in Eastern Ukraine, followed by Polish Marta Prus with “Over the Limit” and Hungarian Bernadett Tuza-Ritter with her “A Woman Captured”. I have in a previous post praised the winner of the best documentary from Caucasus, “Transparent World” by Vakhtang Guntsev-Gabashvili, Georgian director, who also works in Germany.

Let me stay a while with Bernadett Tuza-Ritter and Marta Prus, who were at the festival and met the audience answering questions that they have probably heard 20 times before. Bravo for coming, taking your time to make, what a festival should be: the meeting between the film, the filmmaker and the audience. And thanks for your ethical dedication to filmmaking. Both are still in contact with their protagonists – Edith from “A Woman Captured” is living with her daughter and grand daughter, working like hell to make ends meet, Margarita from “Over the Limit” has given up the sport, wants to settle down and have a child with her husband…

For me it was especially interesting to hear Marta Prus talk about her five-years-in-the-making of a film, where the first couple of years were spent to get permission to film from the protagonists, the three women, Margarita and her coaches Amina and Irina. She got close with her brilliant cameraman Adam Suzin, ended with 210 hours of material and stayed in the editing room in one year – and took part in several European training programs. “Over the Limit” is the feature length debut of Marta Prus, who before made “Talk to Me” http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3545/ a fine work, where she showed her big talent, that will bring her to fiction film, she told us, being a true control freak, as she formulated it at the 45 minutes long Q&A.

http://www.cinedoc-tbilisi.com/?page_id=7022

“Everyone knows that I have three Motherlands. I was born in Georgia, worked in Ukraine and I’m going to die in Armenia.” A quote from an interview with Sergei Parajanov, this master of Cinema, whose life – with interviews, clips from some of his film, archive footage – is described in the Current Time TV production directed by Harry Tamrazian, feature length, informative, a good tv-documentary.

For me it was a dear re-visit of the world of Parajanov. That I wrote about five years ago when I was in Jerevan and visited the museum that is set up in his name – http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2427/

The museum is not directly part of the film but several of his collages are in the film that competently takes you through his life, his imprisonment because of the Soviet regime accusing him of homosexuality – it was mentioned that he had an affair with a KGB-officer! The best parts, however, are the citations from his films, were you can see how totally visually he was thinking, in many ways revolutionising the cinema language. “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” and “The Colour of Pomegranates” – wow – the latter from 1968 still stands out. 1968 was not “only” political rebellion and the invasion of Prague, it was also the year where outstanding cinema was made. There is wonderful archive footage in the film about Parajanov, his voice is being heard, his beautiful relationship to Tarkovsky is explained as is his horrible fate and early death 66 years old suffering from years in labour camps.

After the screening here in Tbilisi I asked younger non-Georgian professionals about Parajanov – they had never heard about him! Now they have the chance to be introduced into his world!

The festival here in Tbilisi has a country focus on Romania. One of the films selected is “Cinema, Mon Amour” by Alexandru Belc from 2015 that has gone around to festivals like IDFA and DOKLeipzig, a Romanian-Czech coproduction, an HBO production, a very charming film because of its main character Victor Purice, whose life has been dedicated to keeping Dacia Panoramic Cinema, a man who suffers because there is very little audience coming to his films, but also a man who fights to improve the cinema facilities together with his two female colleagues. But still it is cold in the cinema during winter; the three brings hot tea and blankets to the few who come.

There are memorable moments in this film like when Purice enthusiastically plays air guitar to remind himself that he still is young!

After the screening Boglarka Nagy, who is the programmer of the Elvira Popesco cinema in Bucharest, which is part of the Institut Francais, told the audience what it means to run an arthouse cinema in a country, where the amount of cinemas have decreased dramatically. Boglarka won the Best Programming Award at the Europe Cinemas Award ceremony 2017.

On the photo you see Boglarka and me at a festival reception in restaurant Dariani, a fine place. I talked to the owner, who told me that Dariani was an artist and a muse for many painters, a kind of Georgian Coco Chanel.

http://www.cinedoc-tbilisi.com/

Yes, this is how an opening night should be – presentation of the program through trailers, a speech from the Minister of Culture and Sport, some words from your correspondent and from the director of the festival, Artchil Khetagouri.

Most important, however, was the opening film, Georgian “Transparent World” by Vakhtang Kuntsev-Gabashvili. The film about young talented Beka and his father took the audience by the heart and made the opening festive and memorable. How often have you experienced 5 or more round of applauses during the film? Beka is charming and wise, many of the things that he is saying about filmmaking is spot on and you laugh and suffer with him, when he is trying to overcome the obstacles he is facing when he is trying to make the film about the old scientist and composer – and his wife, who forbids him to film in the kitchen of their home. Beka has problems, he gets angry with himself and the world around him, to be the next moment the most gentle grandson with granny, who lives with the family. On the photo you see the father and Beka, the father is amazing patient with his son, who likes his help one moment and is irritated the next moment because he does not want the father to interfere with his work as a filmmaker and photographer.

I understood completely why the director of the film dedicated the film to “all fathers”.

For those who are here in Tbilisi there are addintional screenings of the film – and I can’t see why the film could not go to other international festivals.

http://www.cinedoc-tbilisi.com/