ArtDocFest in Moscow

I have only this source – The Moscow Times – but no surprise that the festival run by director Vitaly Mansky (photo) can create conflicts due to the programming of Mansky, who has also chosen to show controversial Russian films in Riga Latvia, where he now lives.

This time – quote from Moscow Times, article by Michele A. Berdof of December 11th: ArtDocFest, a popular Russian festival of documentary films in its tenth year, made news in Moscow this weekend — but not on the culture pages…

Ultranationalist supporters of separatists in eastern Ukraine disrupted the screening of a film about the ongoing war in Donbass and caused the auditorium to be evacuated.

Problems began on Saturday with the premiere of “Bullet’s Flight” by Beata Bubenets. The documentary about the Ukrainian Aidar battalion was filmed in a single 80-minute sequence. The battalion, accused of war crimes by Amnesty International, was disbanded by the Ukrainian government in March 2015, a year after the film was shot. A group of activists watched the film and then argued with the filmmaker. They demanded that the festival administrators remove it from the program. Vitaly Mansky, director of the film festival, refused…

Read the rest on this link:

https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/mansky-artdocfest-ukraine-film-59901

Shamira Raphaëla: Lenno and the Angelfish

Wow… I fully understand that the jury of IDFA’s Docs & Kids chose this film to be the winner of the far too often overlooked genre of short documentaries, not to talk about docs for kids, who at least until a certain age prefer animation and entertainment. But I am sure that a film like this – with the right introduction – or with grown-ups beside them – will work for kids at the same age as Lenno. And older. My wow goes for the filmic excellent interpretation that the filmmaker performs of the subject. There is the unconventional drumming music, there are the unconventional camera angles to catch Lenno on his bed, there are the beautiful moments, where he communicates with the naughty angelfish, the tense atmosphere when he is with his father, the dialogue with the brother, the mystery around the mother, who is not there but sends him drawings… at the end of the film you wish all the best for Lenno and his family! Here is the annotation text from the IDFA site:

”Ten-year-old Lenno is always getting yelled at for annoying people, but in his mind, it’s the other people who are irritating. Using an impulsive editing style that switches quickly between moments of pleasure and anger, clashes and intimacy, this impression of how Lenno experiences the world stays very close to its subject: a lively boy with a behavioral disorder and a vivid imagination. He boxes with his younger brother, cries when he hurts himself, walks away when he gets criticized and is very pleased with the great coloring books he gets from his mother. Lenno tries to express what’s going on in his head. “People think I have a problem because I get angry a lot. I think it’s stupid they say that.” In a candid moment, Lenno’s father admits that he too wasn’t exactly a model kid. A fanatical swimmer, Lenno empathizes with his angelfish—a species with a reputation for being aggressive, which Lenno thinks isn’t fair. He hopes the angelfish will make friends with the other fish.”

The Netherlands, 19 mins.

www.idfa.nl 

Bakar Cherkezishvili: Apollo Javakheti

The film was at IDFA 2017. Placed in the category Kids&Docs and Student Film Competition. Another very impressive piece of Georgian documentary: One character who has a dream and visualises it for the film. A boy who is occupied 24 hours a day, life is tough for him, from an adult’s point of view. But the film stays away from the social aspect to go with him and his plans for the future with a fast editing rythm to make the day understandable, and the location is made beautiful to watch. Here is the precise annotation from the IDFA site:

”Bandura is growing up with his single mother in the Georgian region of Javakheti. The climate is harsh, the roads are bad and the views are gray and rocky. In the rural village where he lives, time seems to have stood still. The teenager earns extra money herding sheep, helping the local cheesemaker and planting potatoes. Home at the kitchen table, his mother reads aloud from the Bible, but Bandura has other things on his mind: he wants to travel to the moon. Between his daily duties, he begins to build an actual rocket and to plan out his future. By selling sheep, he can make enough money to catch a boat to the United States, where he can start asking around about where to study to become a space traveler. Even though time appears to have come to a halt here, with a bit of fantasy—which our protagonist has plenty of—Javakheti by night really does look like the lunar landscape.” 

Georgia, 16 mins.

www.idfa.nl

Serbian Docs Positive News

What a nice publication to have in hand: Serbian Docs 2017/18. There is a spirit of optimism in the catalogue, not only from the list of the many documentaries that are already out there but also from the list of upcoming works. The catalogue editor Nenad Miloševic calls it ”a new chapter”, the director of the Film Centre Boban Jevtic stresses the substantial support from the cinemagoers, reflected in the many festivals which show documentaries… I can only confirm the interest from the audience from my experience with the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade through 13 editions. Seldom the amount of audience has been under 1500!

And the President of DOKSERBIA, the association of filmmakers and the publisher of the catalogue, Jovana Nikolic, uses the phrase ”finally united” and outlines the work DOKSERBIA does and intends to do, to make the documentary genre established as an independent art form.

Most important, however, are the figures presented in the catalogue: The Film Center Serbia allocated €307.048 for documentaries in 2014, in 2017 it was €811.350.

Reasons for optimism, indeed, of course also helped by the recent international recognition of ”On the Other Side of Everything” by Mila Turajlic and ”In Praise of Nothing” by Boris Mitic.

www.dokserbia.com

European Film Award to Polish ”Communion”

No surprise and well deserved… the Polish documentary ”Communion” by Anna Zamecka was the winner of the documentary award of EFA, European Film Academy, announced in Berlin Saturday night. I am not a member of EFA but having talked to 5 voting members, who had seen all the films and who all said that ”Communion” was the film they liked most, I could guess that it could possibly be ahead of ”Austerlitz” by Sergey Loznitsa, ”La Chana” of Lucija Stojevic, ”Stranger in Paradise” by Guido Hendrix and ”The Good Postman” by Tonislav Hristov.

The film that is produced by Anna Wydra, Anna Zamecka, Zuzanna Krol, Izabela Lopuch & Hanka Kastelicova – in this case too many cooks apparently did NOT spoil the meal – was also very well promoted on the social media, it has already received several awards and it has a very competent outreach promoter, Dimitra Kouzi from whom – to exemplify – I just received valuable press material after the decison was made to give the award to the film.

We have written about the film several times, always bringing the same photo from the film. This time it will be a photo of the director, Anna Zamecka, congratulations, and again a Polish documentary on top of it all!. All that, and the involvement of HBO, will bring the film to a large audience.  

Irving Penn at Grand Palais

Grand exhibition at Parisian Grand Palais to be strongly recommended. Irving Penn, a photographer who was a true believer of the strenght of form and arrangement, but who also had the documentary curiosity, when he travelled for the fashion magazine Vogue. Especially when he was in Peru in Cuzco. And oh his portraits of Picasso, Marlene Dietrich, Hitchcock, Francis Bacon, Spencer Tracy, Joe Louis… Light and shadow, composition, framing, elégance!

”2017 marks the centenary of the birth of Irving Penn (1917-2009), one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century. This exhibition, organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and The Réunion des musées nationaux– Grand Palais, in collaboration with The Irving Penn Foundation,is the first major retrospective of the American artist’s work in France since his death. It looks back over his seventy-year career, with more than 235 photographic prints, all produced by the artist himself, as well as a selection of his drawings and paintings. The Irving Penn exhibition offers a comprehensive vision of the range of genres he worked in: fashion, still life, portraits, nudes, beauty, cigarettes and debris. With his fine arts background, Irving Penn developed a body of visual work that is defined by its elegant simplicity, a taste for minimalism and an astonishing rigour, evident from the studio to the darkroom, where he perfected his unique photographic prints…”

From the website, link below.

The exhibition is open until January 29 2018.

http://www.grandpalais.fr/en/event/irving-penn

Oscars Shortlist Feature Documentaries

From 170 to 15 and then on January 23 down to 5 nominations. Here are the 15 films are listed below in alphabetical order by title and director:

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail” (Steve James)

“Chasing Coral” (Jeff Orlowski)

City of Ghosts” (Matthew Heineman)

Ex Libris — The New York Public Library” (Frederick Wiseman)

Faces Places” (JR & Agnès Varda)

Human Flow” (Ai WeiWei)

“Icarus” (Bryan Fogel)

“An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” (David Guggenheim)

“Jane” (Brett Morgan )

LA 92” (Daniel Lindsay & T.J. Martin)

Last Men in Aleppo” (Firas Fayyad)

Long Strange Trip” (Amir Bar-Lev)

One of Us” (Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady)

Strong Island” (Yance Ford)

Unrest” (Jennifer Brea)

http://www.indiewire.com/2017/12/oscar-documentary-features-15-shortlist-1201905181/

Astrid Bussink: Listen

”Life can seem pretty overwhelming at times, particularly when you’re growing up. And it’s not always easy to talk to your parents or friends about your problems. Fortunately, the “Kindertelefoon” (Child Helpline) in the Netherlands provides a listening ear…” That’s what this short film is about, a truly creative work, warm in its approach to the children, who call – a boy in an asylum centre, a girl whose parents are divorced, she lives with the mother and her new boyfriend but wants to live with the father, but she dares not talk to her mother about this, and a boy who is afraid to become gay…

Cats fill the image quite often, they are of course ones to talk to, when at home.

There is nothing special about the theme and there are helplines like that in many countries, and you don’t really get to know – because of the anonymity of the calls – what answers they children get. Fair enough, when you take into account how good this film will be to create a discussion with the children, who watch the film. It talks to the heart also for us, who are not kids any longer

The film got the Special Jury Award at IDFA this year, where it was in the Docs for Kids section.

www.idfa.nl

The Netherlands, 2017, 15 mins.

There is An Audience!

Of course the previous post about the financial cuts of the TV3, the Catalan public television makes you sad as you know that there is an audience for creative documentaries in Catalunya and Spain in general. Which makes me praise the Documental del Mes, Documentary of the Month, that is an initiative by DocsBarcelona, born as a CinemaNet Europe’s project, in 2004. Since 2007, the development in Spain is led exclusively by Parallel 40. This piece of fine film culture politics is ”creating” an audience!

Quality documentaries are shown in 94 places ”in its original version subtitled in Catalan (for the audience of Catalunya, Comunitat Valenciana, and Illes Balears) and subtitled in Spanish for the rest of Spain, Chile and Colombia. Latest addition is El Salvador.

I asked Laia Aubia, ”Cap de Projecte”, to give me some figures. She mentioned that the Colombian ”Amazona” by Clare Weiskopf, produced by Nicolas van Hemelryck has had 77 screenings in Spain – around 12 more to come – with 5.115 spectators with 1551 online, and more than 32.000 at Colombian screenings, whereas the Danish ”Venus” by Lea Glob and Mette Carla Albrechtsen attracted 4.300 in Spanish cinemas and 8000 online.

Take a look at the website and you will see titles like Sean McAllister’s ”A Syrian Love Story”, Maite Alberdi’s ”Tea Time”, ”The Promise” by Karin Steinberger and Marcus Vetter and 2018 starts with Rahul Jain’s masterpiece ”Machines”. Almost all films that goes for the Documentary of the Month has been at the DocsBarcelona festival. The 2018 edition of the festival will take place May 16 till 27.

https://eldocumentaldelmes.com/en/

Huge Crisis for Catalan Documentaries

Below follows a translated article from the Catalan newspaper Ara´s online version written by journalist and critic Xavi Serra, who is also covering the festival DocsBarcelona. is one of the main Catalan newspapers:

“During the feast of the candidates for the Gaudí of the Catalan Film Academy that was held Tuesday at the Old Damm Factory, not everything was smiles, kisses and hand-held people among the people of cinema.

The presentation of the films registered in the 10th edition of the Gaudí awards revealed a reality that the sector knew was already coming for months: the general decrease in Catalan audiovisual production and, in particular, the great decline in the documentary , that of the 19 candidates of 2016 this year had only 9 enrolled, almost half of titles.

A bucket of cold water for Catalan non-fiction… and all the consulted voices in the sector agree to point out one main reason: the sharp decline in the economic contribution of TV3 to the co-production of documentaries.

Televisió de Catalunya, TV3, has presumed for many years to be the engine of the Catalan documentary, but this strength has proved to be the weak point in the sector as the economic contribution has been declining. TV3, like all European televisions, is obliged to invest 6% of revenue in audiovisual productions, an amount of which is used to allocate 10% for the documentary.

Last year, support for the documentary was 647,000 euros; This year it has fallen to 245,000, 62% less. It is not surprising, then, that less documentaries were presented to Gaudí. But the worst thing is that the effects of this cut will be felt even more next year.

Why does the TV3 crisis build up especially with the documentary? The financing ecosystem of the Catalan audiovisual sector basically includes TV3, the ICEC (Catalan Institute of Cultural Companies) and the ICAA (Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts), but the support of a television is indispensable to get help from the ICEC or the ICAA. If TV3’s door is closed, fictions can be used on other channels, including private ones, but for documentaries it is more complicated. For non-fiction projects, TV3’s support is decisive; Without this cushion, most do not get to come true.

Ventura Durall, who produced the winning documentary of the last Gaudí, Mayoress, is convinced: “Without TV3 as the core of the Catalan documentary there is nothing to do. We are at historic lows of investment and the producers flee and look for life, wherever they can to survive. “

As a result of its crisis, TV3 has concentrated its scarce resources on the products with the most antenna potential, that is, journalistic documentaries and news-linked language, which have an easy connection to programs such as Sense Fiction The great damage of this policy, clarified, is done to the creative documentary with a cinematographic vocation, which Catalonia has flagged and has been an international power for the last 15 years…

Jordi Ambrós, director of documentary co-productions of TV3, acknowledges that the last commission was “very hard” in this sense, and that they could not enter into co-production of the most cinematic projects. “In the last commission we were not even able to support ”On the other side of the wall” (Pau Ortiz), which ended up winning the Hot Docs in Toronto, the world’s largest documentary festival,” says Ambrós. To the extent that there is less money, non-fiction has been primed and the creative documentaries have been unprotected. “

The worst thing is that the problem has no solution in sight. Ambrós, who is already working on the evaluation of the projects of the next commission, is not able to make sure if in 2018 there will be more funds for the documentary. “On one side there is the VAT claim made by the Treasury, and on the other, the deficit of TV3,” he said. An extra contribution was agreed with the Government, but if we are not involved nothing is safe. Now, 94 projects have been presented, but we are evaluating blindly, because we do not know how much money there will be. “

In this apocalyptic context, however, there continue to be documentaries coming up. “In spite of everything, the talent and the need for creation are unstoppable,” says Durall, who believes that only “small miracles” continue to emerge works that triumph over the world. In the last Hot Docs, ”On the Other Side of the Wall”, he took the prize for the best film. And ”La Chana” (PHOTO), one of the 9 candidates for Gaudí, won the public award 2016 IDFA in Amsterdam, the greatest European documentary festival. “The documentary is a genre more ductile than fiction and can be done with a lot less money,” Ambrós notes. We continue to receive many pieces and discover a lot of young talent. However bad, the situation is, it will not end with the creation of creators, but it jeopardizes the survival of some producers. “

Without denying the responsibility of TV3, Ambrós places the problem in the context of a system crisis in public financing. “All European televisions are in crisis, it’s not just TV3,” he said. ”Talent will survive, but moving from televisions and opening new paths like online platforms. “Producers expect the Netflix and Movistar+ investments to take into account the documentary and look forward to the interest of the private ones for crime documentaries. But the direction that the Catalan documentary could take could be if the production criteria were merely commercial. “We play the country model: that of mediocrity or that of excellence,” says Ventura Durall.

Support of TV3 to documentary
2011 1.347.500 euros
2012 353.000 euros
2013 865.000 euros
2014 812.000 euros
2015 673.000 euros
2016 647.000 euros
2017 245.000 euros

Also the producer Tono Folguera, has written about the situation for documentaries referring to the article above:

… for years, many of us have done everything possible to get the attention of our politicians, because the problem of the Catalan documentary is solely political. It is not a lack of prepared professionals, new talent, of experienced producers, of generational spare part, no, it is a problem of political will to respect us as a culture, of wanting to keep our historical memory, our point of sight, our way of doing, of seeing the world. If we do not do it, who do you think will do it? We did not need the 155, with the reluctance and disinterest of our Parliament, we have had enough. Without a strong public television, well structured and with ressources to offer quality productions, there is nothing to do. We had built a jewel that is still called Sense Fiction, which today survives as it can exclusively thanks to the talent of the professionals inside and outside TV3… Personally I am disappointed, tired and burned as a victim of political interests, of people who consciously put forward a handful of votes to save such an important entity for a country as its public television. Personally, I think we have already done it late, but as Catalans as we are, from Pro-Docs and from PROA – Federated Audiovisual Producers, we will continue to fight to try to make society and especially the new Parliament understand the unconsciousness of settling an area where We have succeeded in being an important voice in Europe.”