One of the many good things at the DOK Leipzig is the market, where you go with your 300 page catalogue to choose between 272 films from 66 countries! You have your code, you find a film, put on your headphones and you watch a film in good quality on the monitor. All films screened in the festival cinemas are there but you can also find small pearls that did not make it to the competition like ”Country of Women” from Belarus, by young Aliaksei Paluyan, who lives in Germany and in Belarus.

Look at the photo, she is one of the four women in the film, who are introduced one after the other, tell about their lives, sing a song or two, while they take the viewer around in their houses. She lived 56 years together with her husband, ”a peaceful life together”, she is full of life as are the other three, although two of them had a tougher life. One has been a widow for decades, the other says ”I suffered with him for 40 years” – alcohol. It’s memories, it’s survival and it’s put together in a simple montage with shots from the landscape surrounding the village and storks who reside on the houses. And the singing is wonderful.

Go to the website, link below, look at the photos and the trailer; fine film by the director, who prepares a new one, ”People from the Moor”. He asked me if it was a good idea to take it to the training programme Ex Oriente. Indeed! That’s where talents can grow.

Belarus, 26 mins., 2017

http://www.countryofwomen.com/

Festival director of DOK Leipzig Leena Pasanen regrets the lack of female directors in the German competition for long documentaries. She wants to do something about it, read this from the opening of the festival monday night:

“Women in film business have been in the headlines over the last weeks, but once again not for the reasons they should be there, as celebrated directors.

Unfortunately, our news are not good either. In the German competition for long films, we only have one female director as a co-director.  After a strong year in 2016, we are again in this situation.

We have checked our statistics and we can see, that every second or third year, there is a lack of female directors in German competition for long documentaries. This is the case even when the number of submitted films and the selection criteria stay the same. What is wrong?

It would be easy to blame others, say that we are just the receiving end, and the problem is in funding and production. There surely are structural issues, and we need a proper research to look into the problem. But it is also our duty as one of the leading festivals to push for the change. For the film selection of 2018 and 2019 the head of the selection committee Ralph Eue and I have decided to put a quota in our German Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film for female filmmakers. I’m well aware that there will be strong voices against this quota, also from women filmmakers, but I can only say, sometimes you need strong decisions to break the tradition and push for a change.  We cannot have another year, without female voices in German competition.”

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/en/

At the Jihlava Intl. FF they have a fine tradition that has been picked up by other festivals: to have a one man/woman jury for one of the competitive sections, the Opus Bonum.

Legendary filmmaker from Latvia Laila Pakalnina was the one to choose this year according to this rule (quote from the festival site): … an outstanding documentary film of the year from a diverse collection representing tendencies in world documentary; since all of the films are significant, the festival suggest the following game; a single juror picks a single film, a “brilliant” work…

The Best World Documentary Film 2017 was – according to Pakalnina: ”The Wall” by Dmitry Bogolubov. Motivation: ”For using the film language to express the inexpressible. For Film”.

The synopsis goes like this: ”The Stalin Cult is once again gaining

in strength in Russia. Every December 21st, the former Communist leader’s admirers gather to honor him on Red Square, at the site of his grave in the Kremlin Wall. In this observational documentary, the Russian director introduces the principle of “walking heads” – the majority of the footage consists of long takes showing the faces of the people waiting in line to place flowers and pay homage in front of a bust of Stalin. Accompanied by the sound of shuffling feet, a representative sample of various human types parades in front of our eyes, their faces reflecting almost a sacred reverence for a man who was responsible for the murder of several millions of their fellow citizens.”

And the director’s note to his film: “Imagine thousands of Jews praying to Hitler’s grave. Impossible? How people can worship the one who annihilated them? In modern Russia we can witness a similar paradox.”

Does it work this observation of people, who come with flowers to the mass murderer? In 43 minutes, no commentary, pure observation of faces, old people mostly, close-ups, only once a young man addresses one single person, who protests against the hommage: ”… those who do not respect Stalin, should die…”

I felt a bit like when I watched ”Austerlitz” by Loznitsa (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3840/). It is challenging aesthetic approach, you have to ”get into it” before it works for you, these ”walking heads”. And you think why and who are they, what are their stories, why are so much linked to the past, what does that say about the present Russian society, now this year, 100 years after the revolution? And I think about what I read in Svetlana Alexievich’s documentary books (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3976/) about ”Homo Sovjeticus”.

I could identify one person in the crowd, Gennady Zuganov, who has been the general secretary of the Communist Party since 1993.

The British journalist Nick Holdsworth has written a fine review of the film, link below, on DOK Revue, one af many fine initiatives of the Czech festival. He praises the camera work of Vladimir Kuleshov, I agree totally.

http://www.dokrevue.cz/en/clanky/the-wall

http://www.ji-hlava.com/

https://www.feelingreality.com/wall

Russia, 2017, 43 mins.

For the fourth time the Antalya Film Forum took place. I was here last year as well and can say that the always smiling and positive Zeynep Atakan and her young female team has established an event that has grown and is run with professional generosity.

The documentary has found a place at the Forum – it is still a little brother but one that is taken care of and recognised. The six selected projects were all interesting one way or the other and I had the privilege to get to know the people behind the films to be. Through training and meetings.

The two jurors Sevdije Kastrati from Kosovo and Dennis Wheatley

from the UK chose the two winners, who both of them will get a development grant of 8000$. Not bad!

On the photo you see Kastrati handing over the award to Tayfur Aydin for his ”12 Years Later…”. The film is a kind of ”7UP” story. In the clip Aydin showed, kids, all Kurdish, attend a summer camp in 2007 and express what they want to be when they grow up. The location of the camp is in South-East of Turkey, in the region Batman close to the Syrian border. Some of the kids, now around 20 years of age have been to war. The place of the camp is today a ruin. The director wants to find some of the kids to see where they are in their lives. Did some of their dreams come through?

Also awarded was the charming ”Mimaroglu” to be directed by Serdar Kökceoglu with Dilek Aydin as one of the producers. Dilek Aydin was involved in two other projects that were awarded. She is one of those natural born pitchers, who can sell sand in Sahara! The project is a love story about Ilhan and Güngōr Mimaroglu, he being a man who developed the electronic music scene, she being politically active and several times emprisoned for her taking part in demonstrations in New York, where they lived. He became famous when he made music for Fellini’s ”Satyricon”.

There were two fine projects dealing with Cyprus. One, to be directed by Sevinc Baloglu with her daughter Su as the producer and one of the characters in a film, that has three other women taking part, two photographers and the 99 year old woman, who lives in the middle zone, also called the buffer zone. The other Cyprus film-to-be is ”Beats-N-Pieces” by Ekin Calisir, targeting a young audience, again a film about the absurd situation on the island, that has been divided since 1974.

Experienced film couple Orhan (the director) and Nurdan Tekeoglu (producer) took part with a film with a moving story, ”Time to Leave” about a father, whose son – living in Germany – turned ill and wanted to come back and live with the father in a cottage in a mountain area. The father prepares his return, but the son dies and the father regrets that he had no contact with the son, when he was in prison because of drugs.

Finally Alp Kamber presented ”The Quest”, which has 58 year old Yusuf, psychologist, as the main character. He was born in Kashmir, but left for Istanbul with his father; the mother stayed in the war zone. Yusuf has no idea if his mother is alive or dead. One day a phone call from the Indian embassy in Istanbul tells him that his mother might be alive. He decides to go to Kashmir to look for her, the film crew comes along.

www.antalyaff.com  

 

The pitching of 6 Turkish documentary projects took place wednesday mid-day with a good audience and two competent jury members Sevdije Kastrati from Kosovo and Dennis Wheatley from the UK. Slightly different from what we are used to in European pitch sessions, the Antalya Film Forum has chosen to give 8 minutes for presentation, including clip plus 5 minutes for the jurors to ask questions and/or give comments. Tomorrow night the two winners of each 8000$ for development will be announced and I will write a bit more about the projects, two of them connected to Cyprus and one dealing indirectly with the Kurds.

And the day ended with the screening of Ai WeiWei’s ”Human Flow”. After the festival had managed to get hold of a copy that was not damaged. The cancellation of the first screening raised a lot of speculations about censorship – the film touches upon the Turkish-Kurdish relationship – which is totally nonsense. There is no reason NOT to believe what is detailed described in the statement of the festival that I referred to in the previous blogpost.

The film is brilliant, an extraordinarily rich 140 minutes long documentation of the world we live in. There are texts on the screen, facts from places full of refugeees and migrants, poetic sentences from writers, a film full of different styles, Ai WeiWei in the picture, reportage style, some fantastic almost surrealistic sequences, stunning images (PHOTO), interviews with many UNHCR representatives, small warm scenes, children children children, it’s masterly put together. It deserves a longer review and that will come the next time I see it on a big screen.

www.antalyaff.com

For the second time I am at the Antalya Film Forum in Turkey that is the industry event connected to the festival that celebrates its 54th edition. Last year I was in a documentary jury that gave awards to two Turkish projects, and did a pep talk on documentaries with clips – http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3728/ – this year I have been part of the committee that selected the projects to be pitched this year. There are 6 of them, two will be awarded with $ 8000, each.

I had the pleasure of making a training session for the filmmakers behind the 6 projects that will be pitched on wednesday. With follow-up meetings like the one on the PHOTO, where I am looking at a trailer for a film called ”Ada” (The Island). To the left the director Sevinc Baloglu, to the right the producer Su Baloglu, mother and daughter, who are making a film from Cyprus from a personal point of view and including a 99 year old woman, who is living in the buffer zone in the divided island. She just published a book called ”My First Hundred Years”!

This morning I went to watch AiWeiWei’s ”Human Flow” at 9. But

the screening was cancelled because the DCP was not ok… The festival has issued a long statement explaining why the screening last night had to be stopped and the screenings today cancelled. The management calls the incident ”painful beyond belief” and ”we are currently in discussions to confirm a screening venue and slot, to allow the public to watch in full Wei Wei’s extraordinary film. It would seem we are all owed an apology from Deluxe technicolour in London, but at this stage apologies, apportioning of blame, and pursuit of the guilty would seem to be irrelevant. It is our sole aim and goal to get the jury to see the film in the best possible conditions and to arrange a supplementary screening and deal with all the concomitant advertising and ticketing issues.”

Back to The Forum that takes place in a pyramid building with meeting rooms and whatever is needed to make the visitors network and have informal meetings. It is in the middle of an amusement park so there are kids running around in the sunshine and there were crowds of kids queuing up to watch youth films. It is said to be part of the new concept of the festival, to reach a young audience. No objections.

There was a pitching of short films – works in progress – this afternoon, 8 of them, awards will be announced on thursday. I was not impressed of what I saw, I have to confess.

But I was happy to listen to the panel on women in the audiovisual industry including strong optimistic speakers with good information like Francine Raveney from Eurimages and Debra Zimmermann from Women Make Movies… Harvey Weinstein was not talked about, just mentioned. Thanks!

www.antalyaff.com