Niels Pagh about Ai WeiWei & Human Flow

Documentary director Fredrik Gertten (the two Bananas films, Bikes vs. Cars, Zlatan) left his editing room in Malmø last night to go and see Ai WeiWei’s ”Human Flow” at a preview screening – the film premieres tomorrow theatrically in Sweden. Fredrik was so kind after the screening to take a photo of the editor of the film, Niels Pagh Andersen, together with me, who talked with Niels.

We had more than an hour to have Niels give background to why he was working with the world famous artist, how that work was organised, the aesthetic choices, the message that the Chinese artist wanted to send and much more.

Let me mention a couple of the things that came up:

When Niels accepted the job as the chief editor of the film, there was 1000 hours of material so he had to put on the role of being the employer to hire people, to set up an editing process with 4 junior chosen editors, with two senior editors and himself on top of the cake. To get the process organised. With not much help up front from Ai WeiWei, who had had film crews on many locations telling them to do master shots and not close up shots. That was the aesthetic choice done and that stressed the global perspective of the film: No individual characters to follow. But many countries, many situations, camp after camp for refugees, Iraq, Italy, Greece, Tyrkey, Germany, France etc.

Ai WeiWei had from the very beginning put total trust in the Danish editor, who worked 60 hours per week (one day off per week) in 9 months! And they had together solved the issue: how to convey information to the audience. Niels told that they had tried with Ai WeiWei’s voice and a female voice, but they dropped it and ended up with text quotes from news media and from poets, dead or alive. As the film also includes interviews, it is actually stylistically quite a messy one, but the ”flow”, the movements of the people gives it harmony and – we asked – there was noone, who thought the film was too long (2 hours 20 minutes).

Niels said that they wanted to make a film about hope. Not another refugee misery film. Respect for the human being, for human dignity, let’s show them as human beings and not as numbers, telling that we know what must be done, but also a criticism of the position of the EU, the hypocrisy – ”we” give loads of money to Turkey and then please keep them away from us!

We don’t want you to pity them, Niels said, I understood what he said but I have to say that I pitied them for 2 hours and 20 minutes looking at one (fantastic drone images) refugee camp after the other, and an average of 26 years for the refugees. Twentysixyears! On the other hand there are so many scenes with energy like the one from the beach in Gaza with the young girls, who with big smiles explain how it is to live a prison-like life.

It took almost 3 months to get the music (Danish composer Karsten Fundal) in place after castings. Ai WeiWei was often asking for less sound level and there is a fantastic image towards the end where the sound it totally taken away with a man walking near fire in Mosul, if I got it right.

Niels and I sat down for the more than one hour of the conversation we had. It was the moderator’s decision that we should sit down even if I know that Niels prefers to stand. Or rather, as I have seen him on numeorus occasions, move around with a microphone in hand. What would that mean for the moderator, I asked him? Would be great exercise for you!!!

PS. Fredrik Gertten expressed his worry for the audience numbers in Malmø as Nordisk Film, the distributor, had chosen to show the film in its own cinemas, where an art house audience does not come. I said that the same was the case in Copenhagen. Stupid decisions!

Chris Marker: Level 5 /2

Jeg bruger disse sene efterårsuger al min opmærksomme tid, som næsten alle dage er pinagtig sparsom, til at læse bøger, den ene efter den anden, fra begyndelse til slutning. I går kunne jeg mere end forventningsfuld hente Julie Mendels Relikvie. Og jeg begyndte langsomt forfra, og på side 5 stod der som det eneste et citat i kursiv: ” ‘A prayer slipped quietly into life without interrupting it’ – Fra filmen ‘Sans Soleil’ af Chris Marker”.

Jeg fik en tydelig dårlig samvittighed, jeg har jo disse mange, mange dage svigtet Chris Markers film, som jeg havde været i gang med at se på min langsomme måde og lige så tøvende lave notater til. Jeg var midt i hans Level 5 og havde derefter tænkt at gå i gang med netop Sans Soleil. Nu må jeg lade Relikvie ligge til jeg er færdig med Level 5 og i det mindste har genset Sans Soleil.

Så det blev således ikke ”om lidt” jeg skrev videre. Det bliver måske nu, som er noget senere, meget senere, jeg skriver. Jeg var sidst midt i titelsekvensen og jeg havde forstået, der i kvindens store indledende monolog ved siden af den essayistiske overvejelse om internettets virkelighed befinder sig en kærlighedshistorie. Kvinden siger videre i sin monolog i det samme billede, en collage af storbyoptagelser ved nat og lysende punkter og linjer i en computerskærm:

”… On that image we Neanderthals grafted our own visions our pitiful scraps of information. But none of us knows what a city is.” Så klippes der til Laura, og jeg ser, det er hende der taler, som bærer denne fortællestemme, denne lange replik. Hun fortsætter:

”This is the stuff you used to write…” Her kommer den hun taler til ind, et “you”, som er i handlingen, men som jo også kan være et skrivende publikum som identificerer sig, finder en at holde med. I handlingen er det hendes mand, hendes kollega og kæreste, tænker jeg, hendes stemmes blide og fortrolige tone får mig til at tænke det. Det er her kærlighedshedshistorien begynder.

”You wrote at night, late, sitting at the computer before you logged out. I’d find it in the morning when I logged in. You had been working at your game, I was about to work on my book. Computer at night, bar howls’ delight, computer in the morning in the morning, tomcat’s warning. We took it in turns, a shift for you, a shift for me, a shift for us both…”

Det var titelsekvensen. Nu klippes der til titelskiltet: “Catherine Belkhodja dans Level 5”. Nu ved jeg hvad kvinden hedder uden for filmen, og selvfølgelig får jeg lyst til at undersøge hvem hun er, finde ud af om hun havde relation til instruktøren, også uden for filmen. Og det styrkes af, at hun efter sin første undersøgelse af sin mands efterladte computerspil meddeler: ”… Jeg vil give Chris alt dette materiale”, og instruktøren kommer så her ind i filmen, på fotroligt fornavn, og herefter har jeg også instruktørens beretning som en del af fortællestemmen, og i min forsvinden i filmen, i min henrivelse, tænker jeg ikke på at instruktøren jo også har skrevet Belkhodjas del, at han tillige har konstrueret computerspillet.

Chris Marker lægger en i sit væsen nøgtern politisk, antropologisk, psykologisk og moralfilosofisk kommentar til det materiale, Catherine Belkhodjas mand har efterladt, som hun har fundet til ham og det udgør herefter et lag ved siden af Belkhodjas følsomme, naive, charmerende, ja, i hendes fremstilling aldeles gribende kærlighedserindring, en filmisk virkelighed, hvor hun hedder Laura får jeg på et tidspunkt at vide. Lauras eget lag og erkendelsesarbejde er at lære level 5 at kende, hun og hendes mand havde i en fortrolighedsleg inden hans død defineret level 1 og 2: ”In conversation, I still mention the levels we’d give people when someone came in and said I’m Catholic, Communist or Anarchist or some other bigotry we said ”Level One” and lough. When they were funnier or wittier we’d say ”Level Two”, but we never went higher…” Level 3-5 undersøger Laura herefter i dramaet, i scener som disse, som kunne hedde ”Papegøjens metode (efterligning), ”Parken med fuglene” (sprog) (FOTO), ”Selvmorderens opringning” (handling)”.

… ja, dette er og bliver føljeton, så jeg må nu skrive ”fortsættes”… læs eventuelt tidligere blogindlæg her: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3946/ 

Simon Lereng Wilmont: The Distant Barking of Dogs

The location is Hnutove, Eastern Ukraine, war zone for years. A village from where – for the very same reason – many Ukrainian families have moved away. But not grandmother Alexandra and 10 year old Oleg, the main characters of this remarkable, multi-layered film. Grandmother insists on staying. In the best Danish documentary I have seen this year. A film about Childhood, about Fear, about survival, about Love. Made with love. And cinematic skills on how to build a story, compose the images and put them together with a soundtrack that stresses the atmosphere of the scenes, without killing them.

Oleg and his cousin Yarik are like kids everywhere. They do pillow fights, they fight as kids do, they are crawling around wherever

there is space to crawl, they go swimming in the river, suntanned, they jump in the beds, they wear football shirts… but their outdoor playground is different. Ruins with cartridges, mortars, unexploded mines… in sometimes a constant sound carpet of bombs and the sight of war as flashes of light on the sky. It’s an understatement to say that this constitutes a fragile childhood for the kids.

The grandmother IS love and the director, who is also the cameraman, knows how to convey that to the viewers: Oleg and grandmother walking in the snow in the beginning of the film, to visit the graveyard of Oleg’s mother. The two boys caressing granny in her bed, when she falls ill, Granny ”educating” Oleg when he comes home having shot a frog with the gun of the elder Kostya.

But granny has her worries about what will come out of this living in a war zone. There is an exceptional shot showing this, made from the room next door. She sits alone at her kitchen table looking into the air. No words, the house cat walks in. As viewer we know that the boys have been put to bed by her.  

The film is full of scenes like that – so well composed, and hurra for letting the scenes stand long to be developed, editor’s name is Michael Aaglund – that are full of childhood and scenes full of ”this is warzone”. The latter of course heartbreaking. The granny is being treated for panic attacks, Oleg expresses his fear of the war verbally, whereas the smaller Yarik reacts physically. The war is close by, but the war is also on television, they sit and watch.  

The film is shot during a year with the grandmother as the narrator – few voice-off’s compared to dialogue caught in scenes – with some ”highlights” in the story: Yarik leaves with his mother, who has fallen in love with a soldier, but comes back to grandmother… Grandmother gets ill, the kids eat sandwiches with chocolate… Oleg gets a hole in his foot…

With the help of Kostya they decide to put up new wallpaper in the corridor – the motif is a very green forest! Nice to look at, like the river near their house, the sky where you could hope the rain would come from… Real rain and not rain of bombs.

Denmark, 2017, 90 mins.

 

Machines and Communion

The Copenhagen audience will next week be treated with the best of the best of documentaries next week. “Machines” by Rahul Jain will have a two week run from wednesday in Empire Bio. My review, highest marks, can be read on http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3772/

Here is a quote: …here is one more film that gives us evidence that you can tell in images…mentioning Michael Glawogger.

And the Polish film “Communion” by Anna Zamecka, nominated for the documentary award of EFA (European Film Award), will have a screening in Grand Teatret on wednesday as well, 21.15, the director will be there. Joshua Oppenheimer has said this about the film that “…(it) took my breath away, brought me to tears, left me contemplating mysteries of family…”

Sérgio Tréfaut: Treblinka

The portuguese director Sérgio Tréfaut/ Serge Tréfaut (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3388/) was back in Copenhagen with the film Treblinka. The screening took place at the Cinématheque at the Film House.
The Cinématheque that we so often have praised on this site for its excellent programming  and that I (Allan Berg lives in Randers hours away from Copenhagen) visit far too little even if it is only 10 minutes walk from home. Well, not totally right, we often go with the grandchildren to watch the morning screenings of mainly animation films.
Back to Tréfaut saturday night 7pm. Almost full house, a majority invited through the culturally active Portuguese embassy. Jesper Andersen.
programmer, who like me admires Tréfaut and his work, had chosen “Treblinka” knowing that the director also is a great speaker, which he
demonstrated before and after the 61 minutes long film.
About the background for the film he told the audience that he had had long conversations with the French director and writer AND holocaust
survivor Marceline Loridan-Ivens (born 1928); her last name refers to her long life with legendary documentarian Joris Ivens. He was impressed
by her will to life – “this small woman is like a bomb” – and had read her memoirs and heard her talk about her relations to trains. She is still
scared to enter a train… the trains to the camps…
That was one of the reasons why Tréfaut chose to let his film take place in trains passing though foggy or snowy Eastern European landscapes, with images that are most often doubled, with naked men and women sitting in the trains, some of them reciting the text, with the constant train sound. The images, composed by João Ribeiro, and the editing, create a dreamerish atmosphere, something horrible that happened in the past, the ghosts are still there for the survivors whatever they do to enjoy the Life.
The film essay, yes that’s what it is, is based on the memoirs of Chil Rajchman (Treblinka: A Survivor’s Memory), a Polish Jew, who was arrested
with his younger sister in 1942 and sent to Treblinka – a death camp where more than 750,000 were murdered before it was abandoned by German soldiers.
It took Tréfaut only weeks to film in the trains but a year to edit the work, that has been to festivals in 20 countries.
I had seen the film before on my computer, I can not recommend that. Was happy to watch it on a big screen with the brilliant aesthetic choice of
image and sound to convey an almost unbearable theme. No more holocaust films, it has been said many times especially at pitching sessions. Nonsense, you think, when you see Sérgio Tréfaut’s masterly done piece of Cinema.
 
Portugal, 2016, 61 mins.

IDFA Winners 2017

Happy to congratulate Mila and Srbijanka Turajlic, filmmaking daughter and main character of “The Other Side of Everything” with the IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary. As well as the many others around the film – the producer Carine Chichkowsky and the executive producers Iva Plemic Divjak for Dribbling Pictures and Hanka Kastelicovà for HBO Europe. The jury had the following motivation:

“An apartment becomes a metaphor for both the former Yugoslavia and the current political climate in the region. In a space where past and present are in constant dialogue, we discover an inspiring character. Through the filmmaker’s lens we are introduced to her mother – an enlightened woman who has dedicated her life to political activism. Poetically structured, the beauty of this character resonates. For its textured cinematic language that artfully blends the historical with the personal, the jury awards the IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary to The Other Side of Everything by Mila Turajlic.”

The Special Jury Prize went to “The Deminer” by Hogir Hirori and Shinwar Kamal with the motivation “Around the world there are many unsung heroes. This enthralling film about a man who puts the lives and safety of others before his own portrays one of these – while at the same time forces us to question our idea of “hero”. An experiential, universal and global film, it portrays and reflects a part of the world that we rarely encounter in the cinema while capturing the tenacity of a single man confronting impossible odds. For it’s melding of cinematic genre and thematic urgency, the jury awards the IDFA Special Jury Award for Feature-Length Documentary to The Deminer by Hogir Hirori and Shinwar Kamal.

And of course there had to be a prize for Leonard Helmrich and his “The Long Season” – awarded as the best Dutch film:

“The Beeld en Geluid IDFA Award for Dutch Documentary goes to a documentary with a pressing theme that is reported on in every news medium. Yet this work manages to provide new and much needed insights, not in the least by choosing the perspective of women. Even though the jury had some reservations about certain formal aspects of the film, it has chosen to honour: The Long Season by Leonard Retel Helmrich. (I wonder what the reservations are, I have none to this masterpiece!)

The IDFA Special Jury Award for Dutch Documentary goes to a film in which again we witness a person caught in a situation involuntarily. Like her, we never really get to understand exactly why. And like her, we desperately want to find a solution – to get her out. The jury was moved and affected by this very well-made film, and hopes it will help bring about awareness and change. The jury has chosen to honour: Alicia by Maasja Ooms.

Let me also include the awards in the First Appearance category where the jury chose a Latvian and a Danish film as winners with these motivation words:

“Two prizes were not enough to appreciate the original ideas, storylines, and craftsmanship in this year’s selection. All films in the program had incredible access, demonstrating strong intimacy with the main characters. But what we were really impressed by, were the choices of the side characters! Especially the Grandmothers! There were many wonderful grandmothers in this year’s program. The films took us to magical environments, with incredible sounds and visuals, as well as remote geographical locations that were introduced in their political, natural and social complexities. The films in the program showed admirable investment in unpredictable moments, offering layered scenes unfolding in surprising directions. 

IDFA Special Jury Award for First Appearance We could not shake this film off. It kept coming back into our thoughts, persisting throughout the festival. The unique, intimate world of the film resisted explanation and took directions that were impressive, unpredictable and troubling, as well as humorous. The exceptional characters kept the camera under their spell. 

Our special jury award goes to Solving My Mother by Ieva Ozolina.  

IDFA Award for Best First Appearance Vulnerable lives of mesmerizing characters in the fringes of a warzone. We were at a place most of us would never go, unless the filmmaker invited us there. Natural scenes communicate a heartwarming bond between grandmother and her grandsons. Moments that the characters take us to were trusted and unfolded. The craftsmanship came together in this film, it is not an easy task. 

The award goes to The Distant Barking of Dogs by Simon Wilmont.

Many other awards, please check www.idfa.nl

IDFA Notes on Four More Films

I have given high marks for 7 of the 15 films at the IDFA competition for long documentaries. There are four films that I have not seen and four I have seen but nor written about. Here follows the mini-reviews/notes for those four in order of preference:

Zhigi Pan: 24TH STREET. Chinese film about a man in trouble. In the…

beginning of the film, he is full of energy and plans, but nothing works out. The new China does not allow illegal work and after having shifted place a couple of times, he – and his wife/girl friend Qin – goes back to where he comes from, where he meets a shitstorm from wife number one and eldest daughter, because he has not taken any responsibility for their education. A broken man.. It’s a drama and it is amazing how close the director has been able to come to the strong arguments they have, espacially when home. 

China, 2017, 88 mins.

Jessica Gorter: THE RED SOUL. Nothing new but always interesting to meet people who remember and talk about the Stalinist time, the terror years, the deportations, the forests where people come to remember their relatives, who were the victims, and all those who are still sure that Soviet Union was the right place and time to be in. Wonderful ending scene with the two sisters, whose mother was picked up one day or night and was away for a decade. The two ask the filmmaker at the end of the film, whether the film will damage them as they have told so much in details…Good question!

The Netherlands, 2017, 90 mins. 

Håvard Bustnes: GOLDEN DAWN. If I should be a bit inpolite… Håvard Bustnes as Nick Broomfield, sympathetic man asking questions to the women surrounding the men from the scandalous Greek party, who are in prison or were to prove – that’s what he says to them – that they are normal people and no nazis or neo-nazis. Broomfield would have tried to go to the head or some of those, who are close to ”der führer”, so what comes out of it – nothing really. A journalistic analysis would have been better… right?

Norway, 2017, 95 mins.

Hirori & Kamal: THE DEMINER. It’s a well made film but I had big problems with it as I was waiting for the moment, where it goes wrong for the brave man. It’s a bit cynical of the filmmakers to put the viewer in that position! Sweden, 2017, 83 mins.

Hope to get to watch the 4 I miss at a later occasion.

www.idfa.nl

Talal Derki: Of Fathers and Sons

It stands out. I can not avoid superlatives. And I can not express in words, in a language that is not mine, how I feel after having seen Talal Derki’s new film. Or how I felt while watching it. It is a film that hurts and makes you depressed, sad is too weak a word; it goes to the heart and to the stomach; two boys and a father who loses a foot – it’s all destined by the prophet, he says – the upbringing to Jihad, to kill the enemy, i.e. us, a film that is so well made, with a camera that caresses the face of Osama, the kid, who turns to the camera before he is transported to the sharia school. It’s an unbearable scene, he hugs his brother Ayman, who stays to go to school. The film shows, how hate is built up and also how love always looks like between a father and his sons. I stop here full of admiration for a filmmaker, who formulates his ambition in a text taken from the film’s website:

After my film RETURN TO HOMS, which was about the young rebel Basit Sarout and his comrades, I wanted to go deeper. I wanted to penetrate the psychology and the emotions of this war, understand what made people radicalize and what drives them to live under the strict rules of an Islamic state. In the media, war is often portrayed as a chess game and Islam is labeled as evil. If we see the images of war, we get the feeling that it is a unreal parallel world. In OF FATHERS AND SONS, I want to establish a direct relationship between the protagonists and the audience. I would like to take my audience with me on my journey and communicate with them through my camera.

The main characters of my film are Abu Osama (45), one of the founders of Al-Nusra, the Syrian arm of Al-Qaeda, and his two eldest sons Osama (13) and Ayman (12). I have been living with them over the period of 2.5 years and became a part of their family. Although I am an atheist, I prayed with them every day and led the life of a good Muslim to find out, what is happening in my country. Abu Osama is not only a loving father, but also a specialist for car bomb attacks and the disposal of mines. He deeply believes in an Islamic society under the laws of the Shari’ah, the Caliphate, and therefore he also places his children at its service.

I follow Osama and Ayman to a training camp for young fighters and start to understand how the children are affected, as they really do not have a chance to choose freely. How will I become who I am? Where is hope? What will the future look like? What choices do we have? The children are those who enable us to emotionally experience and understand the complex tragedy of Syria. Often, they are the ones who can look through all the madness, and in their own childlike way, they can save the hope.

OF FATHERS AND SONS is my personal journey through a devastated country and a troubled society, looking for answers to my desperate questions about the future of my country and the future of my family who had to flee into exile.

Talal Derki

Germany, Syria, Lebanon, 2017, 98 mins.

https://www.offathersandsons.com

Bernadett Tuza-Ritter: A Woman Captured

Unbelievable. Modern slavery. In a country that is a member of the European Union. Shocking. It will be an audience favourite. At the begining of the film I thought “but what is the position of the filmmaker, why does she allow this to happen”. She gives me the answers and the story is also about the filmmaker and Marish getting closer to each other. I have to confess that I also thought in the beginning that Marish was a bit disturbed in her head. Not at all. When she gets away from the domestic prison… what a relief for her, and the audience. She, Marish = Edith, is weak and strong, like the rest of us, well formulated, no visible psychological problems, but still: how could this last 10 years…?

And what a debate one can hope for in Hungary! A phone call that Edith makes asking for help reveals that – as it is not within her own family – the society can do nothing.

I was informed by the brave director Bernadett Tuza-Ritter that Edith and her daughter is now at IDFA for the premiere… This film will be the most talked about at IDFA and it will be a very obvious contender for the Audience Award.

www.idfa.nl

Leonard Helmrich: The Long Season

Helmrich is using the Single Shot Cinema technique, a style he developed and perfected himself. He chooses to actively engage with his subject rather than remaining a neutral outsider – a position that typifies Direct Cinema. He aims to record events from the inside, not observe from a distance. To achieve this, he created the Steadywing, a construction that allows the filmmaker to move the camera continually in an exceptionally fluid and intuitive way…

These were words we used when Helmrich’s “Position of the Stars” won the first prize at IDFA in 2010. He might very well win again this year with “The Long Season”, that creates this same “feeling of being there” that Leacock was talking about. Constant in movement, being here and there and everywhere… These were my spontaneous notes after having watched the film:

… a formidable insight to a small community, a refugee camp for Syrian refugees, especially from Raqqa, where ISIS was. He gets very close to the people, you see conflicts between women, between man and woman, between kids and grown-ups, they evolve and develop, and you see love, a marriage and happy children run around like they do everywhere. So easy the kids can adjust to the life in a camp full of hard living conditions, mud all over, and so sad that human beings, who are like you and me have a life like that.

The Netherlands, 2017, 115 mins.

www.idfa.nl