Aistė Stonytė: The Mammoth Hunt

All right, let’s have the synopsis (Scanorama Festival Kaunas 2023) first: ““The Mammoth Hunt” is a story about a film reel that for many years has been thought to be lost. On the reel, under conspiracy conditions, an abolished anti-Soviet theatre performance had been documented nearly 50 years ago – a play that served as a cross-section of the period revealing the universal subjects of courage, conformation, loyalty and betrayal.” Directed by Jonas Jurašas (1936), who left Soviet Lithuania in 1974 with his wife Ausra and came back, when the country achieved its independence. Jurašas is the main protagonist in the film, his cv from his time as “senior director” of the Kaunas Drama Theatre is impressive.

I have seen the film twice. As I normally do, when I find something that is of great interest content-wise and as a Film. On top of that, a personal motivation: the film deals with the world of theatre – my father was an actor, Aistė Stonytė’s father is an actor and I sense immediately that the film has a loving atmosphere and cares about its protagonists.

I loved to be there in the theatre world with all these old charismatic people digging into a past that was both enjoyable and not so pleasant. They did something together, “The Mammoth Hunt” was a great audience success, and when banned by Moscow, the play was filmed secretly but where is the film…

There are many strong protagonists, the writer/critic, Audronė Girdzijauskaitė, who was banned for her writing, the sculptor, Marija Vildžiūnienė, who was hiding Jonas and his wife Ausra, the latter strong as well, she was described as “furia” in the KGB archive. The 96 year old actor Antanas Tarasevicius, who remembers that the filming (in 1970!) took place; he was also secretary of the party, but that was just a personal security matter for him, he says… And not to forget the cameraman Donatas Pečiūra, who passed away last year, an old man who climbs the stairs to his attic to look for the film as he shot on 16mm, on material provided for the shooting by the Amateur Film Society, whose chair at that time was Rimgaudas Eilunavicius, who as the others are interviewed by Stonyté. No one seems to know, where the film is but luckily the sound tapes are there and play an important role for the viewer to imagine, often together with photos taken, what a controversial play it must have been. Well told, good cinematography by Kristina Sereikaite, two genres that go well together – the investigation and a psychological drama. Great archive! And great music from the film!

Many layers there are. It’s also a film about remembrance. The cameraman of the play Donatas Pečiūra goes to the attic and is actually more interested in showing some photos from way back than searching for the lost film. Look and he shows a photo of a cat! Marija Vildžiūnienė, a lovely protagonist, shot a lot of b/w material, thus she is able to remember those days, where Jonas Jurašas and his wife were living at her place; there is a freshness in this material, a feeling of freedom.

Should he have stayed? Audronė Girdzijauskaitė, the critic and author, reflects on this. He could have been a legend but he left and came back as a hero… who could no longer connect to the country. Masterly conveyed by Stonyté, who follows the theatre director with the beautiful white hair walking around, visiting the theatre AND sitting at the beach, alone like the last scene with Dirk Bogarde in Visconti’s “Death in Venice”. A heron walks in the foreground, magic!

This building of the film is so intelligent. I was until a certain point sure that I would be given an answer to the missing film but the shift to have the focus solely on the aging Jonas Jurašas and his fate being away from his country, coming back as a stranger is very moving. Thank you for not refraining from pathos, for filming his embrace of THEATRE.

Lithuania, 2023, 94 mins.

Finn Larsen: Hække og Stativer

… English title Hedges and Stands… Larsen’s first topographic project, photographed in Randers in the late 1980’s, as it is said on the cover of the impressive book, one of three, two more with focus on Greenland, will come back to them, all published in 2023 with very positive reviews in Danish newspapers Weekendavisen and Politiken. I know Larsen for several years thanks to colleague at www.filmkommentaren.dk, i.e. this site, Allan Berg Nielsen, who has written several articles on Larsen – you can find them via the search logo above.

Larsen is from Randers, Allan Berg lives there, I have visited him again and again during the years of our nice “con amore” project, which is now in its 17th year, and before that, Randers was the destination due to Berg’s work at the museum, where also Larsen worked as a photographer.

It’s such a pleasure to sit with the book and browse through pages of photos of landscapes, trees in a forest, hedges and stands, nice apartment blocks, townhouses, wild bushes, well-trimmed hedges as we, my wife and I, try to have them in the allotment, blue skies, it’s all very neat and organized; Larsen has put his camera to document the ordinary, as it is said in the extra-ordinary fine text written by (in Danish and English) Sarah Giersing, where you can also find an introduction to the topographic photographic tradition that I know very little about. Do you?

Larsen puts his camera and documents. Does that mean that he has no opinion about what the motif is presented? Of course not, he knows about composition – and he knows that the photographs put together in a book create a new meaning. A meaning that not necessarily is the one that the viewer gets with the book in hand.

If you browse quickly through the book, it’s like a film that for me brings back memories. I did/do not see, what Larsen saw, when I was/am in Randers, I see people, supermarkets, small streets etc. A provincial city. At a larger scale I saw/see the same city life in Copenhagen, where I have lived most of my life, or Aarhus, and yet: Letting my mind move a bit out of the capital the photos take me back to the 70’es and 80’es, where I worked and often came to Taastrup or Hedehusene outside Copenhagen. The same as in Randers: People living behind the hedges, stands were standing waiting for laundry to be hung up, or for kids to play football using the stands as football goals, or the playgrounds to be occupied by kids full of energy and sounds of joy. This was the organized welfare society with, very often, the empty roads waiting for humans, who liked to stay behind the hedges. The proper life. Often, as Larsen documents, it is nature that takes over the empty spaces, trees and bushes kind of protest the neatness and let a viewer like me wonder, what dramas take place in the houses in the background. The book and its photographs – you see that Larsen likes what he has seen and documented – are very inviting; it’s what I remember from Taastrup and Hedehusene, but also from Aarhus’ residential small roads next to Randersvej, 30 minutes from Randers. It might not be that explicit but Larsen – with his precise aesthetic approach – interprets – and lets me interpret.

Film the ordinary but do it in an extraordinary way, take photographs of the ordinary and convey the content in an extraordinary way. This is what Finn Larsen does with his book, a photo book far from coffee table glamour, thank you! But a book that will be a book that will be leafed through, when placed on a table. Photos page by page with a Danish and English introduction in the middle of the book! Love that. Also fine poems by legendary Sven Dalsgaard… from Randers, great artist.

Finn Larsen: Hække og Stativer. 172 sider. The Architectural Publisher B

If you want to buy the book: mail@finnlarsen.se

Carl Th. Dreyer Prisen til Lea Glob

Filminstituttet inviterer alle interesserede til reception og fejring af Lea Glob, når hun modtager dette års Dreyer Prisen.

Lea Glob er uddannet dokumentarfilminstruktør fra Den Danske Filmskole i 2011. Hun blev Robert-nomineret for afgangsfilmen ‘Mødet med min far Kasper Højhat’ og lavede i 2014 sammen med Petra Costa ‘Olmo and the Seagull’, der både vandt Nordic:Dox Award på CPH:DOX og ungdomsjuryens pris for bedste film på Locarno Film Festival. Sammen med Mette Carla Albrechtsen instruerede hun i 2016 ‘Venus’ om, hvordan en ny generation af yngre kvinder opfatter sig selv som seksuelle væsener. Filmen blev udtaget til konkurrence på verdens vigtigste dokumentarfilmfestival, IDFA i Amsterdam. Netop hovedkonkurrencen på IDFA vandt Lea Glob så på imponerende vis i 2022 med kunstnerportrættet ‘Apolonia, Apolonia’, hvor hun i over 13 år har fulgt den polsk-dansk-franske kunstner Apolonias udvikling fra ungt talent til den etablerede kunstscene.

Carl Th. Dreyers Mindefond

Carl Th. Dreyer Prisen uddeles af Carl Th. Dreyers Mindefond og gives til “fortrinsvis yngre filminstruktører eller andre kunstnere inden for filmbranchen som anerkendelse af en fremragende kunstnerisk indsats”. Med prisen følger 50.000 kroner.

Mindefondens indtægter er baseret på en gave fra Dreyers datter, Gunni Dreyer, og en procentdel af indtægterne for Dreyers hovedværk ‘Jeanne d’Arcs Lidelse og Død’, som ifølge en juridisk aftale med distributionsselskabet Gaumont tilgår Mindefonden.

Fondens bestyrelse består af Johannes Riis, lektor på Institut for Medier, Erkendelse og Formidling, Københavns Universitet, Eva Novrup Redvall, lektor samme sted, samt Jakob Buhl Vestergaard, vicedirektør, Det Danske Filminstitut.

Kom og vær med til at fejre Lea Glob i restaurant SULT.

Tid: Mandag den 5. februar 2024 kl. 15.00-17.00.
Sted: Cinemateket / Restaurant SULT, Gothersgade 55, 1123 København K.

Netflix: Captains of the World

2012. Hotel Prezident in Sremski Karlovci in Serbia, style Louis XVI, cherubines in the background. It is late sunday evening and our only way to watch el classico Barcelona against Real Madrid was to go online via some unauthorized links on the computer… To the right Zoran Popovic, co-director of the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade, photo taken by his wife Svetlana, with whom he directs a festival that this year can celebrate its 20th edition, I have been on board as selector from the very beginning.

Zoran Popovic was the one, who told me about the Netflix series, 6 parts around 45 mins. each, made in collaboration with FIFA. I watched it as the football idiot I am, spending hours in front of the screen, I can´t see Messi any longer as he plays in Miami but my loyalty to FC Barcelona is untouched; I appreciate the coach Xavi’s attempt to bring the young players back to the level that he and Leo delivered also in 2012. Another quote from the 2012 experience in Serbia: … take a look at analytical Popovic and his finger explaining to the Dane that Messi’s first goal was a good one, and not par hasard as Xavi cleverly blocked a Real player to get near to Messi… Yes, Xavi was a great player, indeed!

The Netflix series – watch it, as a film it is not good with its constant quick cuts between the games but you are sent back to the 2022 World Cup with a focus on the captains of the teams. They are primarily interviewed after the event in Qatar, looking back on the success and/or failure of their team, with a lot of clips from the matches, interviews with legends like Gary Lineker and Peter Schmeichel, and much material from archive and from reactions “back home”, of course especially from Buenos Aires when Argentina and Leo became the well deserved champions. The cuts from one match to the other, to compare, does not work, for me it is more disturbing than taking you into the drama. You are not given time to enjoy the art of football! Oh, if there had been a director to make longer sequences… and not all captains are interesting to watch and listen. Some are like wonderful Brazilian Thiago Silva, who knows that this is/was his last World Cup, without getting to the final. Asked if he would go home after the defeat to Croatia, no he says, and he (39 years now) still plays in the Premier League. Croatia’s captain Luka Modric is not so interesting in interviews but a cameraman has caught a conversation between him and the Croatian goalkeeper Livakovic, Modric putting a lot of “trust yourself” into the goalkeeper, who became a hero at the World Cup taking several penalties. Candid camera…

For the Danes: Great to meet Danish captain Simon Kjær in his home in Milan with his family and follow the reactions of his wife and child to the bad performance of Denmark. Losing against Australia!!! But without the captain on the pitch. The sympathetic Kjær talks in a fine way, also about the incident with Christian Eriksen, where he was a true hero, and quotes with a smile what his son said after the defeat in Qatar: There is one good thing about this: You will come home earlier, Dad! Not to forget when Kjær at the stadium goes to his father, who is always there to support. Consolation!

Viesturs Kairiss: January

It was a fine night at Danish Cinemateket. As the opening film of a min-festival “Latvia Before and Now”, the award winning film of Viesturs Kairiss, “January”, was shown to an almost full cinema hall. Jesper Andersen from Cinemateket introduced the screening, gave the floor to the Latvian ambassador Inga Skujiņa, a film lover, who is a regular visitor to screenings at the Film House in Gothersgade Copenhagen, who welcomed Dita Rietuma, who is a film critic and historian, AND, as she said, “a bureaucrat”, the Head of the National Film Centre of Latvia. Rietuma made an introduction to “January”, saying what January 1991 meant to the country, the beginning of a new period free of Soviet Union. She also mentioned that the local audience loves historical films, that “January” had quite some attendance in the cinemas. The interest for Latvian historical films outside the country, however, is quite limited, “January”, however, was awarded at the Tribeca Festival in New York and took part in many festivals after that.

The film is about a young man, film student, who is trying to find his identity in the month, where Latvians revolted against the Soviet regime. He, Jaziz, falls in love with Anna, dreams about being a new Tarkovsky, whereas Anna has made a music video. They show their films to legendary Juris Podnieks, who hires Anna as his assistant, making Jaziz jealous, breaking up with her “you make stupid music videos”, regrets his remark and goes to turbulent Vilnius to apologize, no success, goes back and is at the barricades and at the tragic events, where the Soviet special police OMON kills Podnieks cameraman Andris Slapins January 20 and injures Gvido Zvaigzne, also cameraman, who dies of his wounds beginning of February. This event is reconstructed in the film that also includes fine humorous sequences illustrating life in the family of Jaziz, where mum is against sending her son to the (Soviet) army and dad is a communist. And his love to grandma. And a fantastic dance scene where Jaziz expresses his desperate “Sturm und Drang”. It is said that there is a lot of autobiography in the film!

The film is shot on 16mm, 8mm and there are VHS and Betamax material as well, masterly put together by Polish Wojciech Staron – it’s a Polish-Lithuanian-Latvian coproduction – with magnificent poetic scenes of Latvian landscape.

If you go to the website of cinemateket.dk you can read about the whole series that also has “Is it Easy to be Young” (1986) by Juris Podnieks on the program.

At Cinemateket until the end of this month you can also see an exhibition of remarkable photos by Danish Stig Stasig, who was in Riga in January 1991.

2023 Online Meetings

Of course the best is to meet face to face onsite but I have got used to online meetings via zoom. To say good morning “how are you” or “where are you”. I prefer the mornings and I also like to comment on the location, if there is something to comment, as many have a white wall behind them, others are in their kitchen or welcome you in their study or sitting room with books behind them. If you look at the photo attached to this article you see me hanging on the wall (!), which made one of the tutor colleagues, Danish Jesper Jack (black sweater), say “big brother is watching you”, with good friend Michael Seeber (second to the right), from many documentary sessions, nodding; I am used to talk to Michael, when online, with books behind, as I have. For Danes: Jesper Jack noticed that I have a series of “Hvem Hvad Hvor”; I got them every year as a kid and young man for christmas… Now I have reached the age, where the grown-ups don´t give each other presents for christmas any longer… And “HvemHvadHvor” does not exist any longer.

The reason I was hanging on the wall in a university in Budapest: I did no dare to travel a couple of weeks, after a hip replacement operation, for the Verzio DocLab that I attended and loved the year before. Peter Becz, the organiser, invited me to attend online and I enjoyed it, almost full time as there were some internet problems.

Good morning, can you hear me, was my first greeting for the many online meetings I had with Chingiz Samudin uulu from Kyrgyzstan, a brilliant photographer, who was selected for the CinéDoc Mentoring Program with his first creative documentary. We are still in contact after half a year, where three of the months were part of the program. He came with an idea, that became a film proposal, that became a film, “Doctor”, I love it and I do hope that the film in all its minimalism will find a festival programmer that falls in love with it as I did. I think we had around 25 zoom meetings, he was outside with his mobile or inside at the computer depending on the weather. Much of the time I was the one who asked questions, I wanted to know all about Chingiz, this kind and modest family man. And I want to go and visit him when/if possible.

This is of course what these online meetings can lead to – friendships. And I have been happy to make bonds to many filmmakers – from Georgia especially – will come back to that – also due to the mentioned Filmmaking Program operated by CinéDoc Tbilisi, i.e. Ileana Stanculescu and Artchil Khetagouri, who are some of the most professional and caring documentary people I know. (I am too old to work with non-professional organizers…). As with Ukrainian film couple Ella Styka and Dmytro Tiazhlov, whose project “Eros and Thanatos” I am looking fwd. to see finished. I have seen hours of material that looks magnificent but it needs to be put together and they need funding and time… which is difficult with a husband teaching and living in Kyiv and wife in Warsaw with her (football interested) son starting in school. And I stay in contact with Turkan Huseyn and Alemdar Faiq from Azerbadjan, I have had fine zoom meetings with these talents.

Georgia… and the DOCA, meaning Documentary Association of Georgia, has published its first year report, 20 pages of proof of an organisation that fights against the ministry of Culture, actually the Minister who has changed the organisation of National Film Centre so there is no film competence there any longer, proclaiming also that a new law will be made so prevent films like “Taming the Garden” (Salomé Jashi) and “Magic Mountain” (Maryam Chachia amd Nik Voigt) to be made as they go against government policy. Censorship in other words towards films that are winning awards around the world in a country that have so many talented filmmakers, many I have met over the years, some of them also through the Film Mentoring Program. Keep up the energy and keep also the film cultural profile you have set up with a film club and meetings with experts like one with the Danish Film Institute director Claus Ladegaard.

“Magic Mountain” won the main award at the DocsBarcelona 2023, I was happy to be part of the jury. And that I had the job at DocsBarcelona to select rough cut projects and introduce the online Artistic Consultancies, 13 of them there were, from all over the world. I am impressed how good these conversations can be, when the filmmakers are open to constructive criticism conveyed through questions AND the consultants are super well prepared as were Robert Goodman, Gitte Hansen, Martijn te Pajs, Cecilia Lidin, Marc Isaacs and Michael Seeber. This year there will be 3 tutors, the two first mentioned plus Emma Davie taking 3 projects each.

2023 – On the Road Again

Every day of the Christmas/New Year holidays, my wife and I enjoy a wonderful book “Solisterne” by Joakim Garff, where the author brings our Danish literary heroes, Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen together on a trip down Europe with Rome as the final destination. ”A travel Adventure” is the subtitle and indeed it is fun to follow the two’s journey with train and diligence, clever thoughts, dialogues, comments on what they see and experience. I remember that legendary Danish documentarian Jørgen Roos, who made several films on Andersen, always said that the author, had he lived today, would have been a documentary film director with his sense for observation and interpretation of reality.

The holidays gave me time to look back at my travels in 2023, the travels themselves, contrary to Andersen and Kierkegaard, often a nightmare with delays, lost luggage, little space for legs in the planes, so on so forth. You know it all. Take the train, you might say, yes but the time it takes and cancellations… I sound like a grumpy old sport, I know…

Having arrived to be with colleagues/friends at festivals or workshops has again given me such great pleasure. To share what it means to observe and convey through film. To give some help. To experience how skilled and talented filmmakers search and interpret, trying to build and construct their stories and put a personal mark.

This being written in a bitterly cold Copenhagen making thoughts go back to warm visits to Sarajevo, Skopje and Belgrade, having the chance to sit outside to enjoy the weather and the hospitality of the festivals. It was great, in Sarajevo, to do Q&A’s with Aleksandar Reljic and his “Mamula All Inclusive” and with Mila Turajlic with her film on cinematographer Labudovic and his contribution to the Algerian fight for independence. And again, I think it was the fourth time, to be part of the team of the “Dealing With the Past” and the “True Stories” presentation.

In Skopje I was with Danish super-editor Jesper Osmund for some days working with four projects that had been selected to get advice on how to proceed with their work. I learned a lot from Osmund and met new talent as well as old, if you can say so about good friend Svetoslav Draganov, who was there with his “family film” on Snescha and Franz, that will be finished this year.

In Belgrade, for the 19th edition of “Magnificent7” (!) under the leadership of Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, always a pleasure to be part of a small team including  wonderful Ema Teokarević, same procedure as previous years with a walk to the cinema, 10 minutes from the hotel, screening on a big screen, Q&A with the director and dinner in one of the restaurants picked by cinematographer Jelena Stojkovic, who has been part of the festival team since the beginning and who is the one behind the “survival kits” with goodies for those of us, who starve (!) at a festival where you also have a fine lunch with the visiting directors. Talking about the M7l hospitality I always say that it is a festival that invites to 7 films and 14 restaurants. This year I was happy to have, among the 7, Robert Kirchhoff there, an old friend, with his film on Dubcek and Danish Michael Graversen with his “Mr. Graversen” that totally took the audience by the heart. “Local is Global”.

Beginning of September means Baltic Sea Docs in Riga, equally a well-organized classic documentary event with a project developing workshop, pitching and a mini-festival, it was number 27 and again it is all about people, both those who work to make everything comfortable for the visitors, those who come with projects and those who come to tutor. Headed by Zane Balcus assisted by Margarita Rimkus and Evita Kļaviņa, and many others in the team with Lelda Ozola, running the Creative Europe Office and one of the founders of what started as Baltic Sea Forum – I had the pleasure to be tutoring with great colleagues Mikael Opstrup, Emma Davie, Phil Jandaly, Salomé Jashi, Alisa Kovalenko and Uldis Cekulis. Not to forget that Baltic Sea Docs has the best photographer one can think of: Agnese Zeltina.

This year was different as the workshop took place outside Riga, in Liepupe, a pleasure with an outdoor screening of Salomé Jashi’s masterpiece “Taming the Garden”. In Liepupe Latvian filmmaker Ivars Zviedris lives and has made a cinema in the middle of the forest, more or less. Fantastic initiative. Wish him luck!

Jumping back in time to a trip to Bucharest, a workshop in March for Romanian filmmakers with projects in late development stage, together with Dana Bunescu, enjoyed it a lot and it was a test of my skills, being alone talking to filmmakers trying to understand, what they want, asking questions again and again, giving feedback, never trying to suggest changes in the editing as I am not – unlike Dana Bunescu – an editor. I am always in doubt after sessions like this. Was it helpful?

One project, however, Ioana Grigore’s film “Leo Records”, I had met before at the film school, invited by Ana Vlad. I had a couple of nice days in this school, likewise at the workshop, where wonderful Laura Capatana came from Brasov to say hello. I know Laura from way back when she made “Here… I Mean There”, edited by Dana Bunescu and produced by Alecu Solomon, head of One World Festival for years and the one who invited me to Bucharest. Thanks for the trust.

One more, the last one before I stopped travelling, a sunny weekend in Athens invited by the local documentary association, a week before a hip replacement operation. Two talks, one – as a case study – with talented Ukrainian/Greek Vera Iona Papadopoulou and her work-in-progress “Nova Opera – The Art of War” AND the second day a presentation of the narrative diversity of the documentary genre of today showing clips from Denmark, Sweden, Eastern Europe including Georgia. Again, meeting old filmmaker friends like Anneta Papathanasiou, whose ”Laughing in Afghanistan” I have reviewed on this site, Maria Leonida, very active with children and film and Marianna Economou, who took me to the hills for a night drink with a view to Akropolis – and told me about her upcoming documentary. With a flashback to her visit to Copenhagen and Christiania with her boys, who are now grown up men!

The icing on the cake, however, was going to Batumi in Georgia, at the Black Sea. CinéDoc Tbilisi had arranged a workshop for school teachers to improve their skills in dealing with “film in schools”. As one element in the program I showed some films and talked with the teachers, but actually it was more Ellen, my wife, who talked, more competent as a school teacher and former editor of a tv strand showing films with written material for the teachers. There was a pitching session, where kids formed a jury with grown-up experts, it was fresh and encouraging for the pitching teams with precise analyses of the projects. Great fun and easy for me to be the moderator! A Georgian documentary competition took place in the cinema within the Batumi FF; I had the job to do Q&A with Anna Dziapsh-ipa after her “Self-Portrait Along the Border”. Anna, a very dear friend, also has the task to find a barbershop for me, when we meet, this time in Batumi. There were a lunch excursion to the sea, lovely. This adventurous journey to Batumi came about due to CinéDoc Tbilisi’s Ileana Stanculescu and Artchil Khetagouri, whose film cultural and educational work in Georgia is second to none. More about that in the second part of this 2023

Andersen and Kierkegaard would have loved it! Also the outdoor screening of “Taming The Garden” by Salomé Jashi in Liepupe Latvia, photo by Agnese Zeltina.

 

Cinemateket 2024

Programmet for det danske Cinemateket i København er på gaden og det er som vanligt med appel til alle filminteresserede, også dem (som os her på flmkommentaren.dk), der sværger til den dokumentariske film eller noget i den retning i en tid, hvor genrerne opfører sig hybridt… Et godt eksempel på det hybride er lettiske Viesturs Kairiss fremragende “Januar”, som henviser til tiden omkring 1991, hvor instruktøren “genskaber (på 8- og 16 mm) de turbulente dage i januar 1991, hvor Letland kæmpede for uafhængighed af det sammenstyrtede Sovjetunionen. Filmen er centreret om den unge Jaziz, der går på filmskolen i Riga og forsøger at finde fodfæste midt i de store samfundsomvæltninger…”. En ung kvinde Anna betages af Jaziz, men hun kommer også i kontakt med periodens store instruktør Juris Podnieks, hvis legendariske “Er det let at være ung?” fra 1986 ligeledes er en del af den fine serie “Letland før og nu”, som Cinemateket præsenterer. Det var den film, som Gorbatjov så og erkendte at der var noget galt i måden unge blev behandlet på i Sovjetunionen.

I forbindelse med hans nylige død – i oktober 2023 – har Cinemateket sammensat en fin retrospektiv serie af Terence Davies film, hvoraf to står stærkt frem for undertegnede: “Fjerne stemmer, Stille liv” (1988) og “Of Time and the City” (2008), begge med instruktørens hjemby Liverpool som hovedperson. Glæder mig til gensynet – og der er andre film af mesteren på programmet.

“Docs & Talks” – serien fortsætter og jeg noterer med glæde at Ukrainske “Butterfly Vision” (FOTO) er på programmet. Instruktøren er Maksym Nakonechnyi, som skrev filmen sammen med Iryna Tsilyk (“The Earth is Blue as an Orange”) og som er med i flere dokumentarer, som er på vej, bl.a, i samarbejde med Alina Gorlova (“This Rain Will Never Stop”).

Og så promoverer jeg med glæde et nyt initiativ taget af Carsten Olsen, bibliotekernes mand på Det Danske Filminstitut. Jeg giver ham ordet: Under brandet ’CinemaDok’ sætter vi ekstra fokus på dokumentarfilm som biografoplevelse. Hver måned præsenterer vi en nyere dokumentar, som vil gøre os nysgerrige og klogere på livet. Efter filmen har vi inviteret instruktørerne til en samtale om filmens tilblivelse og om de temaer den omhandler. Første CinemaDok-event bliver 16. januar 2023, hvor vi viser den iranske “Silent House” og har inviteret Farnaz og Muhammad Jurabchian til en samtale med vores egen Rasmus Brendstrup: https://www.dfi.dk/cinemateket/biograf/events/event/1051536. Derefter er næste CinemaDok-event 27. februar 2024 med visning af ‘The Golden Thread’. Nishta Jain (tidl. bl.a. ‘Gulabi Gang’ og ‘Lakshmi and me’) har lavet denne fantastiske film og interviewes af Cecilia Lidin: https://www.dfi.dk/cinemateket/biograf/events/event/1051538. Sådan!!!

Olga Semak: Demiurge

The beautiful landscape in Volyn in the NorthWest of Ukraine is beautifully (!) captured by the fascinated documentary filmmakers, who are Ukrainians – with director Olga educated at the Deutsche Akademie and this being her first feature documentary. Impressive it is in catching the village(s), where the protagonists live, I would say, AND act in their own lives and in the life that Petro Panchuk, the professional actor from Kyiv, wants them to live in: the wonderful world of theater, well the difficult world of theater as the film shows so well with Petro as the one, who interrupts the villagers in the rehearsals in the local culture house to have them say their lines in the right way with the right intonation. It is very nicely conveyed and sometimes very funny, like when Petro sits with lovely Sveta and asks her to react to two lines: Have you ever been in love? Have you ever had an orgasm?

Petro has returned to his village, one understands, to find peace and tranquility, and he has established a family with a younger wife Lyuda and three children, one of them learning to play recorder. Petro is close to Andryi, with whom he has a strong argument and who is the one who takes care of the culture house, that also serves as a disco place for youngsters. And there is Sascha who plays the accordion and sings so well and the mentioned Sveta, who in a fine sequence outlines how her day is organised and who is grateful to Petro for having given her roles to play. We are invited to follow the rehearsals Petro leads with his enthusiasm and commitment. There are many plays that rehearsed but at the end it is one by Chekov that is performed – with Petro, his wife and Andryi on stage. And a full house audience again brilliantly filmed – faces from villages in the area, caught by the camera half a year before February 24 2022 and the Russian full scale invasion.

Petro is a man of sadness. All my teachers have gone, and thus the true tradition for amateur theater as well, he says and that many from the region go to Poland to earn money, he does not like that. People don’t really work any longer, and now what is the situation now, my comment, soon it is two years after the war started? One thinks at the same time as I am happy to have been to the – mostly – sunny region of Ukraine, experiencing culture and church life as well. And people like you and me. A rich film.

Ukraine/Germany, 2023, 94 mins.

The Best Docs I saw in 2023

What I did was to take a look at this site – www.filmkommentaren.dk – and pick the films I thought could go for being “the best”. They are listed here in a random order:

Apolonia Apolonia, Lea Glob, Denmark/Poland, 116 mins.

On the Adamant, Nicolas Philibert, France, 109 mins.

20 Days in Mariupol, Mstyslav Chernov, Ukraine, 95 mins.

Magic Mountain, Mariam Chachia & Nik Voigt, Georgia, 74 mins.

Peter Mettler, While the Green Grass Grows, Canada/Switzerland, 166 mins.

Agniia Galdanova, Queendom, USA/France, 98 mins.

Olya Chernykh: A Picture To Remember, Ukraine/France/Germany, 72 mins.

Veronika Lišková: The Visitors, Czech Republic, 83 mins.

Marc Isaacs: This Blessed Plot, UK, 75 mins.

Alisa Kovalenko: We will not fade away, Ukraine, 100 mins.

Robert Kirchhoff: All Mn Become Brothers, Slovakia/Czech Republic, 116 mins.

Lucie Králová: Kapr Code, Czech Republic, 91 mins.

Maite Alberdi: The Eternal Memory, Chile, 85 mins. (PHOTO)