Robert Frank: Me and My Brother

The editors of this site, Tue Steen Müller and Allan Berg, met in Randers where Berg lives. It is a tradition that we watch films together, when we meet and as Berg had a fine script publication of Robert Frank’s “Me and My Brother” including a dvd with the film, this was an obvious choice. The famous publisher Steidl is behind the publication that was given to Berg by Sara Thelle, who in 2015 wrote about the film after a retrospective of Frank’s film at the Cinemateket in Copenhagen:

Me and My Brother was a slap in my face. It opens up with a very disturbing scene that takes you right to the bottom of a deep and complex matter. Soon it is turned into a film within the film and becomes a sort of meta-reflection and investigation into the questions: how do you film other people, how do you use others in your art, how do you use yourself, what do you make money from, how does it feel to be filmed, what does it do to you, when are you yourself and when are you acting. It is a hybrid film, mixing real life with staged acting, colour with black & white, at times the characters are “played” by themselves and at other moments by actors.

Originally, Frank was set out to make a film adapting Allen Ginsberg’s poem Kaddish, written about his mentally ill mother. But over time, the project becomes a film about Ginsberg’s partner Peter Orlovsky’s brother Julius, who after having spent 15 years in a psychiatric hospital is let out and left in care of his brother. So the setting is Julius, a catatonic schizophrenic, living with Peter Orlovsky and Allen Ginsberg. The film is about how to live with and among mental illness, about how the brother Peter deals with it, and in this way – maybe – it becomes indirectly an adaption of Ginsberg’s poem. And at the same time it is a film about Frank’s doubts about filming this.

It sounds wild and it is. It is radical and most unique. Avant-garde and uncompromising, not as a stylistic or artistically experimental take, but because it is necessary for a purpose: a search for truth…

USA, 1968, 85 mins.

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3200/

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3392/

DOK Leipzig 2018

Demand the Impossible! is the motto of this year’s edition of DOK Leipzig (October 29 – November 4). In 2018, the festival’s Special Programmes will revolve around films that seek to bring about changes or depict processes of transformation, with the focus firmly on the emancipatory power of art. “We see the festival motto as a compass that helped us create our Special Programmes. The phrase Demand the Impossible! served as an inspiration to us when working on the conception of this year’s edition”, explained programmer Ralph Eue.

The motto is also a reference to this year’s Retrospective, which is dedicated to the years surrounding 1968. 50 years on, the Special Programme traces out that era’s virulent urge for aesthetic and social renewal and gathers together films from half a century that centre on 1968. “1968” is to be understood here as a symbol of pioneering events whose effect is still felt today. The Retrospective doesn’t approach these radical changes in society and aesthetics from the focal point of the protests themselves, but rather from the margins, with the idea being to consider the brittleness of existing orders in many different places at the time that eventually carried social upheaval into everyday life.

This year’s Homage honours filmmaker Ruth Beckermann (“The Dreamed Ones”), who is regarded as one of the founding members of Austria’s independent film scene and

received the Documentary Award at the Berlinale a few weeks ago for her film “The Waldheim Waltz” (PHOTO). Her formally diverse oeuvre takes in both road movies and biographical films as well as far-reaching film essays. While the focus of her attention is on the Jewish history of Austria on the one hand, the sheer breath of her political and artistic interests extends far beyond her country’s borders at the same time.

To coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Baltic republics, the Country Focus of this year’s DOK Leipzig turns its attention to Lithuania and examines the cinema of a country which defied Soviet dogma at an early stage. Frequently by drawing on subtle cinematic devices or playful approaches, Lithuanian film redefined the concept of political cinema, revealing the poetic and emancipatory power of images and questioning the political system in the process. As in previous years, DOK Leipzig also presents an Animated Film Special Programme linked to the festival motto, which shows that animation is able to make things never seen before visible and create entire new realities.

The DEFA Matinee section presents a part of the cinematography of the former East Germany that is largely unknown: early student films from the HFF “Konrad Wolf” (today the Filmuniversität Babelsberg “Konrad Wolf”), which includes early works by such renowned directors as Thomas Heise or Helke Misselwitz. One year after its big anniversary, the festival’s 61st edition is also creating a new series, whereby films previously shown at the festival provide an opportunity to look back at the history of DOK Leipzig…

https://www.dok-leipzig.de/en/dok/presse/pressemitteilungen/2018/022018

The Baltic Cinematic Miracle/ 2

Nedenfor fortælles om den store retrospektive serie, som filmfestivalen i Karlovy Vary afvikler i anledning af 100-året for de tre baltiske landes selvstændighed. Mindre kan gøre det og med vanlig sans for kvalitet arrangerer Cinemateket i København, i samarbejde med Det Danske Kulturinstitut i de baltiske lande, en mini-serie hvori også optræder to nye dokumentarer af international kvalitet: Ivars Seleckis “To Be Continued” og Arunas Matelis “Wonderful Losers – A Different World”. Begge film er i biograferne i Letland og Litauen, sidstnævnte film fra cykelsportens verden har til dato solgt 15.000 billetter i et land med et par millioner indbyggere. Jeg har fået lov til at indlede Matelis film – jeg har kendt ham siden vi mødtes på Bornholm til Balticum Film & TV Festival i 1990’erne og har fulgt hans filmiske karriere, der er fyldt med hædersbevisninger. Både til den nye film men også til “Before Flying Back to the Earth” fra børneafdelingen på et hospital, hvor hans datter var indlagt med leukæmi. 

https://www.dfi.dk/cinemateket/biograf/cinemateket-markerer-100-aret-baltisk-selvstaendighed

The Baltic Cinematic Miracle/ 1

The headline is a quote from the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival director Karel Och. The festival celebrates beautifully the 100th anniversary of independence of the three Baltic countries. The following is a copy-paste of the website text that accompanies the news from KVIFF published some days ago. The festival runs from June 29 till July 7.

The section Reflections of Time: Baltic Poetic Documentary, which will consist of six blocks of short- and medium-length films and two feature-length documentaries, represents a rare opportunity to see key works of documentary film from the Baltic countries within the context of films made in neighbouring countries. “Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia share with the former Czechoslovakia not just the year in which they declared their independence, but also an exceptionally artistic outpouring of cinematic production in the 1960s. We are glad that this year’s festival will be able to offer a unique report on the Baltic cinematic miracle,” says KVIFF’s artistic director Karel Och.

In the 1960s, Baltic documentary film underwent a narrative and

aesthetic transformation. The works of the new generation of filmmakers contrasted with the earlier approach to documentary films, and this Renaissance in Baltic documentary film reflected worldwide changes in how documentaries were made. The newly created films were characterized by a sensitivity towards the story and the chosen subjects. They were based more on the image as such, and explored the possibilities of the wide-screen format, editing, unusual combinations of sound and image, working with time and space, and sometimes also staged re-enactments. These filmmakers were inspired by the legends of documentary film such as Dziga Vertov, but also by the latest trends of cinéma-vérité or direct cinema.

Among the documentaries in the retrospective are films by Latvian directors Ivars Kraulītis (his canonical 1961 short film White Bells), Aivars Freimanis and Herz Frank (PHOTO) (the legendary 1978 film Ten Minutes Older, an intimate portrait of a boy watching a puppet theatre consisting of a single ten-minute shot). One of the early pioneers of the new cinematic style, Uldis Brauns, will be represented by his grand feature film 235,000,000 (1967), which shows the life of people and important events in the Soviet Union.

Lithuania is represented by two award-wining documentaries by Robertas Verba, the founding father of Lithuanian poetic documentary film and the country’s most distinctive documentary filmmaker. The Old Man and the Land (1965) and The Dreams of the Centenarians (1969) both immortalize the ancient inhabitants of the Lithuanian countryside. Other Lithuanian films include Henrikas Šablevičius’s A Trip Across Misty Meadows (1973), which takes the viewer on a journey across the traditional Lithuanian landscape, and Apolinaras (1973), a film about an eccentric guardian of the law who, like Verba’s old men, is far removed from Soviet reality.

Estonia’s stylistically diverse documentary cinema, whose main focus was not only on village life, but to a large extent also on the city, is represented by films by Andres Sööt (The 511 Best Photographs of Mars, 1968, which combines real and imaginary situations and experiments with a hidden camera), Ülo Tambek (Peasants, 1969, which spent 20 years locked in the vaults for its critical view of the Soviet system) and Mark Soosaar (The Woman of Kihnu, 1974, an anthropological observational documentary).

The section also presents the newest generation of filmmakers who began to work during the collapse of the Soviet Union and whose poetic style was significantly influenced by the “New Wave” of Baltic documentary film. Lithuanian documentarian Audrius Stonys will presents his film The Land of the Blind (1992), which earned him the European Film Academy’s Phoenix Award for Best Documentary Film, and also his later Anti-Gravitation (1995). We will also be showing renowned Latvian director Laila Pakalniņa’s trilogy The Linen, The Ferry and The Mail (1991–95), which launched her international film career (The Ferry and The Mail were screened as part of the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival).

The retrospective’s highlight is Bridges of Time, a remarkable metaphysical essay by renowned Lithuanian filmmaker Audrius Stonys and his Latvian colleague Kristine Briede – an untraditional look at the generation of filmmakers of the “Baltic New Wave” and a meditation on the ontology of documentary film. “Baltic poetic documentary cinema created an independent world, free from soviet ideology, lie and propaganda. It was a declaration of inner freedom. The black and white world of poetic documentary films was full of colours. Sadness was full of joy. And joy was touched by deep existential sadness. These films reminded us about the very core of cinema—to film and to enjoy the beauty of the leaves, moving in the wind.” adds Audrius Stonys. The film’s presentation at Karlovy Vary will be its world premiere.

The retrospective is made possible by the kind support from the Estonian Film Institute, the Lithuanian Film Centre and the National Film Centre of Latvia.

http://www.kviff.com/en/news/2306-karlovy-vary-festival-to-present-poetic-documentaries-from-the-baltic-region

Jørgen Vestergaard mini-festival i Aalborg

Jørgen Vestergaard har i sin karriere spændt vidt, hans filmografi er imponerende, han har om nogen indforstået og smukt skildret det Danmark, som så grimt i dag bliver kaldt for udkantsdanmark. Og han er stadig aktiv (TSM)

Jørgen Vestergaard præsenterer med KULTURKLUB FOKUS som vært på en lang søndag i Aalborg 16 dokumentarfilm, 7 dukkefilm og 2 spillefilm:

SØNDAG 29. APRIL 10-18 / SKRAAEN & KINORAMA I AALBORG

”Jørgen Vestergaard, en filmmand fra Thy. Mini filmfestival med film produceret af Jørgen Vestergaard gennem et langt filmliv. Film for børn. Film for voksne. Mange med lokalt udgangspunkt. Dukkefilm for Danmarks Radio. Benny Andersens Snøvsen i biograferne”, hedder det i programmet.

Jeg vil lige fremhæve de film i programmet, som Filmkommentaren.dk har skrevet om, og føje et lille citat til:

VAGT VED HAVET / HAVNEN / SKRÅEN store sal / 10:00

“… Lad mig nævne to af dem: “Vagt ved havet” fra 1965, produceret for Dansk Kulturfilm, vidunderligt fotograferet af Lennart Steen og “Havnen”, det 10 minutter lange øjebliksbillede fra 1967, ligeledes med Steen bag kameraet. Produceret for Kortfilmrådet. Oh, disse smukke sort-hvide billeder.” (TSM)

DENGANG JEG DROG AFSTED (1970) / SKRÅEN store sal /10:00

“… dens vigtigste tidsbundne egenskab er dens måde at være filmværk på. Den er simpelthen sin tid. Sådan lavede man film dengang. For eksempel klippede man tilbageholdt ironiserende, sådan lidt klemt. Det lille smil lige før fniset. (ABN)

ET RIGTIGT BONDELIV / SKRÅEN store sal / 10:00

“… Det første jeg hæfter mig ved, er de medvirkendes aldeles usentimentale munterhed. Dernæst ved deres vedkommende viden om tingene og nøjagtighed i hver oplysning, i hvert udsagn. 

Vestergaards værk rejser sig som monument ved sin uhyre omfattende og detaljerede research. Her er noget så sjældent som ordentlig besked om tingene, og arkivmaterialet er på plads. Det, der tales om, er det, som indklippet viser. Det er frydefuldt. Grønthøster og Ferguson. Møgspredning og roehakning. Faglig og nøgtern præcision.” (ABN)

BRØDRE / SKRÅEN store sal / 13:00

“…  Heldigvis findes der flere dages optagelser med de to brødre. Med dialog på vestjysk fra Holmsland. Der ligger i det materiale en film og venter på Jørgen Vestergaards energiske dvd-projekt, som han egenhændigt så prisværdigt fører ud i livet: samling på det samlede værk.” (ABN)

JENS SØNDERGAARD – PORTRÆT AF EN MALER / SKRÅEN store sal / 14:15

“… Vestergaard har fastholdt Jens Søndergaards bål på Bovbjerg og stille og roligt placeret Bjerre og Lergaard i den sammenhæng.” (ABN) 

KIRSTEN KJÆR OG HENDES MUSEUM / SKRÅEN store sal / 14:15

“… Og jeg opholder mig begejstret ved den medvirkende Harald Fuglsangs fortælling af Kirsten Kjærs biografi i ét smukt klippet, indsigtsfuldt og så sprogligt musikalsk forløb, at det fastholder og bliver til selve dette liv i dets egen dialekt. Ægte fortællekunst så ansvarsfuldt og beskedent fastholdt på film af Jørgen Vestergaard og hans faste fotograf Orla Nielsen.” (ABN)

CEMENTKRUCIFIKSET / SKRÅEN store sal / 15:30

“… Han har bevaret Broby-Johansens suveræne fortælling om Anton Laier og omgivelsernes uforstand og brutalitet, så det skærer i hjertet.” (ABN)

OVARTACI / SKRÅEN store sal / 15:30

“…  Vestergaard har formidlet Johannes Nielsens omhyggelige notater af Overtacis udtalelelser i de besynderligt præcise sætninger.” (ABN)

STORM P.OPFINDELSER / SKRÅEN lille sal / 15:30

“… Alt virkede! Bitte små og enkle opgaver blev løst på den mest komplicerede måde, tænkes kan. Alt i dyb, dyb alvor, med en vedvarende boblende, men al tid omhyggeligt tilbageholdt latter. Fastholdt af Henrik Koefoeds knastørre læsning af Storm P.’s tekniske forklaringer til maskinerne.” (ABN)

HØJT SKUM / SKRÅEN lille sal / 15:30

“…Og så kommer filmens højdepunkter, dens umistelige tilføjelser til Storm Petersen fortolkningen:

To højdepunkter, Nikolaj Kopernikus’ Dada-rekonstruktion af monologen ”Aakirkeby” og Jesper Asholts absurdistisk insisterende mand på parkbænken. Det er perler af nutidighed, neomoderne (hvis der var noget der hed det), store monologer, støvfri af al hengemt veneration, men resolut understreget af scenernes stiliseringer i setdesign, instruktion af statisterne og af Steen Møller Rasmussens præcise fotografering, som tindrende morsomt tager sig selv så alvorligt, at vidste jeg ikke bedre, ville jeg tro, jeg var til dilettant i vores forsamlingshus.” (ABN)

SOMMERHESTE / KINORAMA – ORLAS BIOGRAF / 10:00

“… Sommerheste fra 1964 er Vestergaards første rigtige film, som han så indforstået præcist skriver i kassettens teksthæfte. Ja, det er den fineste film pure.” (ABN) 

RITUAL

Måske er det rigtigt, måske betragter Jørgen Vestergaard sine danskere i sine danske film etnografisk / socialantropologisk, som var det et eksotisk folk, han gennem årene i sit værk er kommet udefra til og har beskrevet. I 2014 fik han i hvert fald – i sig selv prisværdigt – yderligere tre klassiske film fra den dokumentariske del af sit værk digitaliseret og udgivet på en dvd med overskriften Ritualer… (ABN)

Jørgen Vestergaard med sit hold på optagelse til Dengang jeg drog afsted (1970), en af de tre film i samlingen Ritualer.

LINK

– til program og billetsalg:

https://skraaen.dk/spillested/arrangementer/film-for-hele-familien-en-filmmand-fra-thy/

– til alle FILMKOMMENTARENS blogindlæg om Jørgen Vestergaard og hans film:

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2151/ 

Cinedoc Tbilisi 2018

The sixth edition of the documentary festival in Tbilisi takes place May 3-8. I am going there again. Why? Because I am impressed of what good people are doing to improve the conditions for the documentary in the country. Building up a culture for documentaries, in other words. The two women who got me to come to Georgia almost 10 years were Anna Dziapshipa and Salome Jashi, filmmakers and tutors and organisers of training events through their Sakdoc. This year they are doing rough cut sessions for Georgian filmmakers.

The festival itself, however, was set up by two other good friends, the filmmakers Artchil Khetagouri and Ileana Stanculescu, who again this year offer a variety of choices for the audience and the professionals, who come to wonderful Tbilisi to enjoy films and the warm hospitality by the organisers. There is an industry section, and of course an international competition with DOKLeipzig’s Leena Pasanen as one of the jury members, there is a Focus Caucasus competition with Ukrainian director Roman Bondarchuk as a jury member… and Romania is the guest country with great films as the DOKLeipzig winner ”Licu” by Ana Dumitrescu, ”Tarzan’s Testicles” by Alexandru Solomon, ”Cinema, Mon Amour” by Alexandru Belc and ”Infinite Football” (PHOTO) by Corneliu Porumbolu.

For a football freak the latter is quite interesting, introducing a man who wants to change the football rules and has quite precise plans for how this can improve the noble game. There are rumours that the festival organisers will test the proposed rules – in a match where the festival plays against the guests!

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

Sergey Dvortsevoy in Cannes

In 2010, at DOKLeipzig, I attended a masterclass with the director, whose documentaries I have always adored and still do. One of the true masters of modern documentary. I knew him from the 1990’es, where his ”Paradise” was shown on Danish television. Later on came ”Bread Day”, also shot on 35mm material, a no-budget film that he made from the negative material that he had won as awards for ”Paradise”. Ratio: 1:2,5!!! And ”Highway” and ”In the Dark”, a film about a blind man in Moscow, it was four years in production. Dvortsevoy is a director, who makes no compromises, always looking for precision.

The year before I had written an open letter to the director, a quite pathetic one, where I express my regret that he had turned to fiction with ”Tulpan”. My criticism: ” You got some of the magical documentary moments that you can not put into a script. But you also have a story and it is full of humour and warmth. It is close to the reality you know, but they act, you can see that they perform, some of them over-act. I like it but you lose something in terms of the truthfulness you have in your previous work…”

You had explained to me that one of the reasons for turning to fiction was to avoid the problems you had had with ”Paradise”, where the people who took part in the film was heavily critisized for showing the Kazakh reality as poort and miserable. Respect for that. So Dvortsevoy went for fiction, as did Kieslowski.

Years ago, when in Moscow, my wife and I met Dvortsevoy, who told us passionately about his new film project, that is now finished and taken for the main competition in Cannes next month. Original title is ”Ayka”, international title is ”My Little One”. The synopsis goes like this ” A young Kyrgyz girl – Ayka – lives and works illegally in Moscow. After giving birth to her son she leaves him in hospital. Some time later, however, her motherly yearning leads her to desperate attempts of finding the abandoned child… Dvortsevoy told us that he had done the research with a video camera, the whole film, to be sure that all would work when the real filming was to start.

So curious to see how many magical documentary moments the great director has found this time!

#abn_berg

DocsBarcelona 2018

DocsBarcelona has existed for more than 20 years. As an industry event, a market, where documentary projects are developed and pitched, where professionals meet to exchange ideas and push films further.

The DocsBarcelona as a festival, however, started small scale in 2007, getting growing to be what it is today with 40 films, competitions, an official Panorama section, a section called Latitude (”a selection of the best documentaries made in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America”), a section called ”What the Doc” for ”the most radical and innovative films of the current documentary scene..” Plus special sections and Doc-U, films made by local universities.

The selection is great, hmm – I can say so as I took part. But having films in

the Panorama section like ”Bobbi Jene” by Elvira Lind, ”Dolphin Man” by Lefteris Charitos, ”Miss Kiet’s Children” by Petra and Peter Lataster, ”Of Fathers and Sons” by Talal Derki, ”Ouga Girls” by Theresa Traore-Dahlberg, ”Over the Limit” (PHOTO) by Marta Prus, ”The Distant Barking of Dogs” by Simon Lereng Wilmont and ”Wonderful Losers” by Arunas Matelis to mention 8 of the 16 in the main competition witness not only the diversity in the program but also the high standard of European documentary today. Most of these films have had strong marks on www.filmkommentaren.dk.

BUT DocsBarcelona has also an eye for films spoken in Spanish or Catalan language. Two of the winning titles from previous editions carry the author name, Maite Alberti. This year there is a gem In the Panorama section, ”El Espanto” by Martin Benchimol and Pablo Aparo, here is a clip from the description: … In a remote village in Argentina, home-made cures replace traditional medicine. Every ailment is treated by neighbours except “El Espanto”, a rare disease that affects women and can only be cured with the mysterious abilities of a peculiar old man from the outskirts of town, whom no husband wants to see visiting their wife…

Not to forget the absolutely lovely covent film ”Hasta Manana, si Dios quiere” by Ainara Vera. There is so much love and joy in this film about Franciscan sisters and their daily life. And the film from Uruguay, ”La Flor de la Vida”, by Claudia Abend and Adriana Loeff: ”After five decades of marriage, Aldo and Gabriella are going through a crisis and begin to wonder why they continue together. Their story, narrated with humour, distance and scepticism, tender and ironic all at once, along with that of other testimonies in their eighties, compels us to face the inevitable question: is love everlasting?”

The titles mentioned are in original language, yet all films are with English subtitles.

From the ”What the Doc!” section of five films – Milo Rau’s ”The Congo Tribunal” is an amazing mix of documentary film and documentary theatre giving the audience a chance to dig into the ever complex situation in the suffering country. Portuguese Sergio Tréfaut is back in Barcelona with his aesthetically challenging ”Treblinka” shot by super cameraman Joao Ribeiro – and don’t miss the masterpiece by Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosolowski ”The Prince and the Dybbuk”.

The festival takes place from May 16 till 27.

I will be there to report, from the industry sections as well but not a word about the Champions League final, but that’s another story…

http://www.docsbarcelona.com/en/docsbarcelona-2018/festival/programacio-2018/

 

Elvira Lind: Bobbi Jene/ 2

Med mere end 50 filmfestivaler på sit cv – og flere i vente bl.a. Ciné-doc i Tbilisi og DocsBarcelona i maj måned – får den fremragende danske dokumentarfilm ”Bobbi Jene” af Elvira Lind biografpremiere i Danmark den 19. April. I dagens Politiken er der et fint baggrundsinterview med instruktøren og filmens hovedperson. Gå ind og se den film, som har energi i hver eneste scene. Det er en sjælden smuk og usædvanlig oplevelse! Et citat fra pressematerialet:

Elvira Lind: “Da jeg mødte Bobbi Jene, stod hun som kvinde og kunstner konfronteret med et dilemma, og jeg så muligheden for at fortælle historien om en kompromisløs kvindelig kunstner, der ikke var bange for at skubbe grænser. Hun var aldrig bange for at være sårbar, samtidig med at hendes styrke og uafhængighed blev opretholdt. Jeg havde selv lyst til at se en film om nogen som hende.”

Jeg så filmen i Vilnius Litauen for et halvt år siden på stort lærred og med de studerende lavede vi en anmeldelse, som jeg citerer fra:

… The love she feels for the 10 year younger Or… of course we talked about that. She is so open about it and she expresses her feelings constantly. Her smiles, her doubts, her disappointment when he does not want to stay with her in NY. I am not ready, he says and Israel is my country.

A student referred to Pina Bausch. Dancing is healing. I don’t know if the artist Bobbi Jene, who works so hard ”to get to a place where there is nothing to hide”, would formulate it like that. Her dancing is so strong and expressive, sculptural, naked both literally and as a metaphor for her search for freedom in all aspects. Her nakedness, even her voice has this fragility that you could call naked, one student said.

What a drama, what a film. I explained the students that we at filmkommentaren work with a rating system. How many pens would they give? Strong majority for 6… The best!

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4030/

Veronika Kaserer: Überall wo wir sind/ 2

Veronika Kaserer graduated from the Zelig school in Bolzano/Bozen in Italy in 2010. Since then she has done many non-film activities and some shorter works. At the Berlinale she came with the feature duration documentary that won the festival’s

Compass-Perspektive-Award. I know Veronika from teaching at Zelig, she asked me to watch the film, I did – and want to share with you the fine, reflective jury motivation for the award. So well formulated it is:

Veronika Kaserer has made a film about grief, which at the same reminds us that life is worth living. With an astonishing closeness, unconventional montage, and many surprising moments, she portrays the last weeks and days of Heiko Lekutat, a 29-year-old Berlin dance instructor, and, most notably, his wonderful, big-hearted family. Does the film cause us pain because the family’s sorrow distresses us so, or do we suffer because we feel that the great intimacy to those grieving oversteps a line and in doing so impinges on our own sense of well-being? The editing constantly flashes back and forth between “before” and “after” Heiko’s death. Is it legitimate to disrupt the process of dying in this way in order to arouse, on an abstract level, empathy for the psychological and emotional process of grieving? The fact that a film triggers fierce sentiments and debates is a fine quality. We congratulate director, producer, and camerawoman Veronika Kaserer.

I wrote to Veronika…: It’s a very emotional film, it goes very close, you use the family archive material beautifully, you give the viewer time to breathe – I am amazed that the family gave you such an access and when we meet one day I would like to hear about your relation to Heiko, what you talked about, what shooting agreements you made with him; you show a lot of respect and you really catch the feeling of what it meant for the parents and the sister to go through all this.

I think you and Kathrin Dietzel (love that you stick together – with her and with Jakob Stark as Cameraperson, both former Zelig students) have chosen a daring editing structure. To comment on the jury’s comments above, it feels right to go before and after death, but is also means, my small criticism, that towards the end it feels a bit too long and repetitive some times. It’s a detail in comparison with what you have achieved.

There must be many festivals waiting for your film.

Germany, 2018, 92 mins.