In the 1970’es my friend Kjell Væring and I went to see Luchino Visconti’s ”Ludwig” about King Ludwig II of Bavaria, 235 mins.(!). A masterpiece that we watched in a big cinema on Champs Élysées in Paris. We wrote about the film for a Danish newspaper and our admiration for the master director was made bigger with that film as with those that followed – ”The Damned” and ”The Conversation Piece”. Very much because of the unique acting by Helmut Berger, the companion of Visconti.

So I expected that Andreas Horvath’s film on Berger from 2015, decades after the films mentioned, would be about how it was to live with and act in films by Visconti. The life of an actor, what is acting… I am sure that was also what Horvath intended to do. It never happened. Well he cuts some times to a signed photo of Visconti on the wall in the flat in Salzburg, where most of the film takes place.

Instead Horvath has made an amazing (and for us who remember the handsome young Berger) shocking film about a man around 70 years old, who lives in a total mess, an alcoholic, a man who has his sofa table full of pills to take away his depressions and nightmares and insomnia, a man who does not approve to be filmed at one moment and says yes at the next, a man in dissolution, who calls the director at night urging him to ”write a book about me”, and then ”I am tired of all these interviews”, actually there has been none, as the director says to him, ”we have not started yet”, ”go to bed, you bore me”, says Berger, who moments later turns to the director saying ”I love you, I can feel it growing like a tumor…”.

Look at the photo, taken just after another conflict between the two, where Berger attacks Horvath and his camera and the latter (finally) loses his temper and calls him ”you are an asshole and much more words to that effect”. Berger, on the photo, says ”and so what”!

If there is such a thing, it is a scoop that Horvath has filmed wonderful Viola Stecht, who comes to take care of Berger, i.e. wash his clothes, clean up the mess, bring some food that he can warm up. She talks about him and through her we get around the flat to see objects from his acting past. A guardian angel, who does not hide that Berger is difficult but also mentions that he has been nice and generous to her.

Most of the film is shot inside the flat in Salzburg and in hotel rooms in France and Italy. But luckily the director has some emotional sequences, sceneries from mountain areas around Salzburg I guess, with Wagner music. Yes Horvath is a Visconti/Ludwig connaisseur and it is good to get away from Berger for some moments before going back to the misery and the insults. Is it a directed film. Yes by the two with an actor, who knows exactly, what he is doing on this stage of life. Do we get to know who he really is? Yes, he is like that and he wants the director to film him masturbating, which has become the end scene of the film.

The film is being shown at the Jihlava festival very soon.

Photo: Andreas Horvath.   

Austria, 2015, 90 mins.

Yes, political films, films on political issues, film history. DOK Leipzig offers at its 60th edition 24 short and longer documentaries under the title ”commanders, chairmen, general secretaries”. Which refers to an event at the festival. Catalogue text by Ralph Eue goes like this:

”An experimental application of the thesis of many early theorists of cinematography according to which cinema is less an illusion machine to transport ready-made narratives than a machine to pioneer a new type of thought and narrative. Alexander Kluge gave his nine-hour audiovisual investigation of Eisenstein’s plan to adapt Marx’s “Capital” on film the title: “News from Ideological Antiquity. Marx – Eisenstein – Das Kapital” (2008). Intelligent work on a monument has turned into a monument itself by now. Let us address it by making this appeal: Re-Think!

The media scholar Christian Schulte, co-editor of the “Alexander Kluge-Jahrbuch”, and the publicist Jörg Becker invite us to a joint reading of some passages of this mammoth project (and other, thematically related films, contributions and broadcasts by the director). What is the purpose of this reading? Recovering from ideological antiquity a few clues, even though they may be only fragments, that will help us to better understand the future.”

Otherwise I am tempted to watch and rewatch ”Black Panthers” by Agnés Varda, ”My Brother Fidel” by Santiago Alvarez, ”A Day at the Grave of Karl Marx” by Finnish Peter von Bagh, ”The Missing Picture” by Rithy Panh and ”The Moscow Trials” by Milo Rau.

Rau also has a film in the international competition, ”The Congo Tribunal” (PHOTO) , 2017, 100 mins. Go to the site of the festival to watch the impressive, strong trailer. And check the website of the tribunal and the comments of the director.

https://filmfinder.dok-leipzig.de/en/?&section=236

http://www.the-congo-tribunal.com/film.html#statement

Leena Pasanen, director of DOK Leipzig, wrote this to me yesterday:

Dear Tue, bad news from Poland indeed. This is the text i had written for our catalogue to introduce our Polish special programme. Had no idea at that time, that Sroka would be fired a week later:

“It took a decade of constant development, hard work and financial effort to bring Polish films back to their former fame, but it paid off. Today Polish filmmakers are again familiar faces at award ceremonies all over the world and respected and wanted co-producing partners.

How long will it take to vitiate this success, if the shadow of right-wing populism reaches the filmmaking community and puts in danger the current support system? How long will it take, before the market is full of pretty little films of Polish history, if the decision makers are selected by political and not by professional merits? This little programme is to show how much we love these films and how very unfortunately it would be for the whole filmmaking world, if these films would not exist.”

Photo: Communion by Anna Zamecka, part of the programme

… and has put together a special program, ”a declaration of Love to Polish docs”, for the festival. Readers of this site will know that Polish documentaries are highly valued through reports from the Krakow festival, lots of positive reviews (last one being ”The Prince and the Dybbuk” some days ago) and below you will find a link to an article called ”Why I love Polish Documentaires”, a love story that has lasted more than 25 years…

More about the Leipzig program later, first some sad news that makes one wonder if the good period for Polish films is over with the increasing involvement of the government, that through their minister of culture has made the move to dismiss the director of the Polish Film Institute, Magdalena Sroka. You can read all about it on the site of Film New Europe, link below, but here comes some quotes:

Polish film organisations sent an open letter to Piotr Gliński Minister of Culture and National Heritage on 12 October 2017 to voice their concern about the dismissal of Magdalena Sroka as Director of the Polish Film Institute. The letter was signed by 427 representatives of the Polish Film Industry.

They call the dismissal ”unlawful”…” As the Board of PISF pointed out in their official resolution, none of the circumstances, named in the Cinematography Bill as reasons to dismiss the Director before their term ends, have taken place…” and continue that ” Your decision to dismiss Director Sroka is especially alarming, when we keep in mind that PISF is not an institution funded from the public budget, but from private income financed by the participants of the Polish audiovisual sector. Those payers are half of the Board of PISF and to omit their unified opinion is to undermine the rules that govern current Polish cinematography.”

The protest was followed by a support letter from the President of European Film Awards, Wim Wenders, who writes (a quote): ”Instead of being proud of the achievements of Polish cinema which belongs to the most successful film cultures in Europe, instead of protecting and watering the beautiful plant that is growing in your garden, you are cutting the water – despite the protest of the board of the Polish Institute and ignoring the many voices from the Polish film community that are asking you to reconsider your decision.

Perpetrating this act on the anniversary of the death of the great Andrzej Wajda (PHOTO) not only adds insult to injury, it is a desecration of the memory of Poland’s greatest filmmaker…”

DOK Leipzig Program

12 films are being shown at the Polnisches Institut on the main square in Leipzig. Gems like ”Brothers” by Wojciech Staron, ”Communion” by Anna Zamecka who just won the main prize at the Yamagata Festival in Japan, Pawel Lozinski’s ”Father and Son” (Marcel and Pawel), ”Deep Love” by Jan P. Matuszynski, ”Diary of a Journey” by Piotr Stasik – to mention 5 of them, all written about on this site.

Why are Polish documentaries so good? Could it be because Polish filmmakers always have an aesthetic choice before shooting starts. They think about form before content, they think about the style of storytelling that could fit this or that theme. They look for a method. They think in images that can carry emotion and information without words.

That is of course not the only explanation. The country has a rich culture for documentaries – good festivals, many and good film schools, strong publicity and promotion, also abroad – and until now a well functioning Polish Film Institute with an ok funding. Don’t cut the water as says Wenders above! Keep the politicians away!

https://www.europeanfilmacademy.org/

https://www.filmneweurope.com/

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

https://filmfinder.dok-leipzig.de/en/?&section=266

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3580/