Putin Talks, Stone Listens…

… the best he can, to Putin and the third man, who is next to Oliver Stone all the time interpreting the words of the President to the film director. In itself a difficult situation, I found myself suffering a bit with Oliver Stone, who obviously has problems in understanding right away what Putin says. And if he does, he most of the time does not know how to react. At least when it is serious stuff, world politics, Ukraine, Crimea… ”The Putin Interviews” are not critical interviews.

I watched episodes 2&3 and the reason I have changed the caption is the very simple that the entertainment part has got limited space. In my head. Well, there is still Putin as superman, playing hockey on ice, learning that sport when he was 60, Putin telling about his training and swimming every day, Putin revealing that he has two daughters and is a grandfather, I could almost see him being moved… but otherwise he does not lose control and Stone – as he promised – lets him talk. The beginning of the second episode deals with the American withdrawal from the ABM in 2002 after 30 years, the ABM being the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Putin expresses his disappointment with that decision and worry for ”the balance” if NATO continues to put missiles around the borders to Russia. Meaning that ”we have to respond”. Stone invites him to watch ”Dr. Strangelove”, the film crew films him while watching, no reactions, while the interpreter is having a good time with Peter Sellers. Putin speaks long and committed about ”the balance” problem.

Who started in Georgia, who stood behind the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, it was the population in Crimea that decided to be part of the Russian Federation, we did not want Assad to have the same ”treatment” as Sadam Hussein and Gadaffi, that´s why we do what we do with a focus on fighting ISIS etc. etc. It’s all well known, what the Russian president thinks about these issues. He talks, he performs as Oliver Stone wanted him to do, he is well formulated, OMG compare him to Mr. T. In the White House! Locations for the talks differ, a tour in Kremlin, his palace 20 mins. from Kreml, Sotji and as said the hockey stadium, where he greets Oliver Stone’s wife and tells her to visit St. Petersburg. On this point I agree with him.

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3968/   

The last part of the Putin Interviews is by far the best of the four. It is shot after Trump was elected as President in the US and the first half hour of the conversation deals with that issue: Did Russia influence the American election, did Putin know about it, did he order the hacking etc. Stone seems now much better prepared and puts direct questions that leads to Putin – to a certain degree – analysing the American election and the victory of Trump. With archive clips put in from American media (Hillary Clinton, Obama, Biden, McCain etc.). From there the conversation goes to cyberwar, the American use of the stuxnet computer worm in Iran, the fear of a world war, of another Hiroshima and Nagasaki…

”It’s not possible to give fear to the Russian people”, says Putin, who reflects on all the questions put to him.

The last part also works better because the first half hour is set up like on a stage: Two chairs in front of each other in a big room. Next to Oliver Stone the indispensable interpreter Sergei Churdinov on one side, on the other side the dop Anthony Dod Mantle pointing his small camera towards Putin – and around them standing or sitting on chairs along the walls, security people, many more camera and sound people, producers I guess, it’s all visible, they are all part of a play, and now I accept the dramatising editing that I felt confused about in the first part. Maybe I just got used to it? After this Stone goes to the Red Square, without Putin, he visits the grave of John Reed, he says with a smile ”where is Trotsky”, it’s a part that fills the gap before the final meeting, where Stone questions Stalin, asks about Putin’s parents, characterises him as one of the wealthiest men in the world, Putin denies he has bank accounts all over, and finally of course: If you are elected in 2018 you have been in power, in 2024, in more than 20 years… Putin seems a little irritated, the only time during the four interview parts, about the theme (my words, Stone is more polite) ”power corrupts”… The interview sessions are over, Oliver and Vladimir hug each other, Putin says to Stone that he, Stone, will get in problems for this documentary program, advises again Stone’s wife to go to St. Petersburg during the White Nights and off he leaves with all his people through the pompous halls. The show is over. The actors leave the stage.

 

Vurdering:

  

Oliver and Vladimir on Television

”The Putin Interviews” is the title of the four part series made by Oliver Stone with Vladimir Putin in the leading role. Long awaited and with some expectations as Stone had visited the President a dozen times and had this approach to the meetings, formulated in one of the many interviews he has given:

”I’m here to get Putin to talk. Let him talk. If I can encourage him to talk by having an empathetic ear, that is the reporter’s way. I’m also a dramatist. I’m encouraging my actors to be better. To say more. To give me a performance..”

Fair enough. And Putin does talk as I witnessed it last night, where DR2 broadcast the first part of the series.

And Stone puts questions, which are kind and respectful without any attempt to go deeper in Soviet or post-Soviet history. Or in Putin’s profession as a KGB man. Or… Stone asks ”what do you think about Jeltsin and his alcohol problem” or ”why did you not say hello to Gorbatjev at the May 9 celebration ceremony”. Or ”so

you sleep only 6-7 hours per night”. Putin smiles the whole way through, they are having a good time together, they seem to like each other, there are no aggressions, no confrontations, pure politeness from the side of Putin, who as the perfect host shows Stone around in his luxurious surroundings.

The style of the series, at least in the first part that I saw last night, corresponds to the superficiality of Stone’s questions in the interviews: Quick editing, weird angles, camerapeople in the picture in many sequences, close-up of presidential hands and of Stone’s face that sometimes looks like too many vodkas the night before, shaky… Hate to say that the dop is one of my heroes, Anthony Dod Mantle.

Yes, I am going to see the next three episodes. I know it has nothing to do with good journalism. It is pure entertainment. And promotion. Comments on Ukraine and Krim and Russian hacking the Democratic party will come, I am sure. With no further questions, I suppose, from Stone. But maybe not on the treatment of or situation for the politicians in opposition, whether they are in prison or not. Boris Nemtsov, Oleg Sentsov, the demonstrations, Syria, the television propaganda, Georgia, World Cup 2018. There is no response or discussion from the side of Stone to be expected, ”let him talk”. A hygge tv program to use the Danish word that has now been taken into the English language! A performance as he wanted, Stone.

Laura Poitras: Risk

The right to fail… which is, I am afraid, what Laura Poitras does in her newest film ”Risk” that was released in theatres in the US early May. Actually she showed a version of the film at the Cannes Film Festival 2016, but changed it after the US Elections, one reason with Wikileaks and eventual Russian hacking into the Democratic party files and because (she says so in the film): “This is not the film I thought I was making. The hardest dilemma was the decision I had to make after the screening at Cannes. I had two choices: either walk away from the film and not release it or to address the [rape] allegations.”

Which she does in what is her most personal film after the fine works ”The Oath”, ”My Country, My Country” and of course the Oscar-winner ”Citizenfour” with Edward Snowden as the main character.

In ”Risk” it is Wikileak founder, the iconic Julian Assange, who is in

focus, surrounded by Sarah Harrison (the one who got Snowden from Hong Kong to Moscow) and Jacob Appelbaum, who in the film (as Assange) is accused of sexual abuse within the Wikileak organisation.

Poitras fails to put – as she formulates it herself – ”the contradictions” together in a film with a flow and she does not avoid to jump from one event to the other as she does with the material she has filmed with Assange since 2011.

It gets superficial, is it about the impressive effort for freedom of the speech launched by Assange with the leaks or is it about him as a person, who indeed does appear as a male chauvinist p.. in some sequences and in others as an arrogant leader of the gang that operates within very little space in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Then there is a bit about Manning, then Applebaum strongly accusing Egyptian internet operators of closing access according to the government’s wish, then Lady Gaga ”interviewing” Assange, funny as she wants to know if he ever cries, if he has feelings etc. – and then, and it does not work, Poitras own comments ”notes from my production journals”.

Here she opens for some important conflicts she has had with Assange, ”I don’t trust him”, and – if I got that right – an affair she had with Applebaum that she and he did not want to have in the film, a dream she has… it just comes audio here and there.

I do appreciate and respect Poitras honesty but these hints are not developed and you sit there disappointed when you see that she wants too much, gets too little in a fragmented structure.

Photo: Sarah Harrison and Assange.

USA, 2017, 92 mins. (The film is available on Amazon, i-tunes etc.)    

http://riskfilm.org/

http://nofilmschool.com/2017/05/risk-laura-poitras-review-interview

Gadefotografi 1917-2017 /2

Jeg ser på fotografiet at man i Øksnehallen i København er ved at lægge sidste hånd på den store fotografiske udstilling som åbner 28. juni og kan ses juli måned ud. Jeg har tidligere skrevet om udstillingens indhold og om fotografen Finn Larsen, som sammen med Morten Brohammer har redigeret udstillingen på den måde at den ”ser gadefotografiet som et bredt begreb dækkende fotografi, der skildrer hverdagen, som den udfolder sig i offentlige rum over hele verden. Gadefotografi 1917 – 2017 viser både historisk og samtidigt gadefotografi og tilbyder et unikt perspektiv på genren og dens forskellige retninger… omfatter fotografer fra hele verden med vægt på Skandinavien.”

Fotografen Vivian Maier er imidlertid udstillingens hovednavn, hun er repræsenteret ved en udstilling i udstillingen Vivian Maier – In Her Own Hands.


Blandt de mange udstillede værker ville jeg i første omgang var jeg i København gå efter at se hendes fotografiske livsværk, derefter fotografier af Steen Møller Rasmussen, som jeg har et vist kendskab til og fascineres af, ligesom af Christian Braad Thomsen og Søren Ulrik Thomsen, som overraskende deltager og så mere selvfølgeligt Robert Frank, Diane Arbus og den meget tidlige gadefotograf Eugene Atget.

Gadefotografi 1917-2017, Øksnehallen, København. 28. juni – 1. august, hver dag 10.00 – 20.00, fredag og lørdag 10.00 – 22.00.

www.dgi-byen.dk/oeksnehallen/ 

Moscow IFF Documentaries

The documentary film competition at the Moscow International Film Festival (June 22-29) includes 6 films:

”A Hellish Chaos” by Sergey Debizhev, that refers to ” the 100th Anniversary of the revolution in Russia. Film researches the reasons of the “Russian revolution”, First World War, external and internal conspiracies, which led to the collapse of the monarchy and traditional world order. Narration is build of quotes, memoirs and inferences of eyewitnesses. The facts are told based on the views of the authors of the film…” Curious to see how this historical period in interpreted by Russians of today.

”Devil’s Freedom” by Mexican Everado Gonzalez, is an investigation into ”the phenomenon of violence (that) has emerged

as a tragic feature of the country’s life and subconscious”, the Japanese/American ”The Departure” by Lana Wilson, ” A punk-rocker-turned-Buddhist-priest in Japan has made a career out of helping suicidal people find reasons to live”, Russian Ulia Bobkova’s portrait of Oleg Karavaichuk, ”eccentric musical genius and famous St. Petersburg composer”, a man I have heard so much about when in the city, title ”The Last Waltz”, French Jean-Stéphane Bron’s ”The Paris Opéra”…

and two films I saw at the Krakow Film Festival, Chilean Lisette Orozco with her ”Adriana’s Pact” (Photo), winner in the Polish festival, well-deserved because of its strong family story, and Swiss Jacqueline Zünd’s aesthetically strong ”Almost There” about three old men = males.

As usual the festival also has a panorama section called ”Free Thought”, where you find Raoul Peck’s masterpiece ”I am not your Negro”, Laura Poitras controversial Assange-film ”Risk” and late Michael Glawogger and Monika Wille’s ”Untitled”.

http://39.moscowfilmfestival.ru/miff39/eng/programs/?id=4272

 

Happy Birthday Messi

We have had many posts on this site about the magician on a football pitch, Leo Messi, who today can celebrate his 30th birthday. Congratulations! We picked one text to celebrate. The one about Alex de la Iglesia’s film ”Messi” Here it comes:

Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, directors of the Magnificent7 Festival in Belgrade present ”Messi” that will be screened February 1st (2015) at the festival. The text also includes words from the director:

When one of the most important Spanish directors, Alex de la Iglesia was asked to make a documentary about world famous footballer Lionel Messi, he decided not to make the film about the sport but to look for the mistery behind it, for what he calls the “rosebud” moment. De la Iglesia was fascinated by the way that

Messi polarises opinion in spite of his astonishing ability. “Half of the world loves Messi. The other half hates Messi. There is not something in the middle.” If he searched hard enough, De la Iglesia was certain, he could discover just why Messi had pushed himself to become one of the greatest footballers of his age. When he was making the film De la Iglesia was thinking all the time about the legendary Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane”, about the boy with the sledge who grows up to become the all-powerful media magnate.

Thus he created extremely dynamic and fascinating docufiction puzzle consisting of the dinner scene with some of the iconic football figures and Messi’s closest friends and people from his youth and childhood, archive materials and specially directed fiction scenes based on true events. The idea of the dinner came to him from Woody Allen’s film “Broadway Danny Rose” in which a group of old-time comedians reminisce about a person called Danny Rose – and he comes alive in their anecdotes.

The film was premiered at the Venice Festival as one of the best made documentaries in the past year – charismatic participants, excellent directing, camera and sound. Masterly edited!

Director’s Word: What I’ve done is made a film that shows a story, but I also wanted to make a film that explains why Messi is the way he is. Why is he so shy? So reserved? What happened to him in childhood to make him that way? He is one of the most celebrated people in world, along with Cristiano Ronaldo, with some of the greatest opportunities to open himself up to the world. And yet he shuts himself off in his town with his family. This is a film in which we wanted to mark the life and biography of a personality. It’s made for people to enjoy, along with Messi, and for people who care about him as a personality.

Spain, 2014, 97 mins.

Docu Talents in Karlovy Vary

It’s such a fine idea and it works: Docu Talents from the East, the 13th edition, to take place during the festival in Karlovy Vary, July 4 14.00-16.00, organised by the always innovative people from the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival that I have had the pleasure of visiting a couple of times.

The concept is well-known: Director/producer behind 12 selected projects get 8 minutes to present their projects, all of them to have premiere late 2017 or in the first half of 2018. In other words a great opportunity for festival representatives, sales agents, broadcasters etc. to check out what is coming up from Eastern and Central Europe.

There are films from Kazakhstan, several from Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Slovakia, Serbia, Ukraine/Luxembourg/Estonia, Lithuania.

I know of some of them so these are the ones I will mention, read about all of them on the site, link below.

”D is for Division”, in post-production, is directed by Davis Simanis

from Latvia, praised on this site many times. Documentary and feature film director. I am very curious to see where this film ”had landed” – I know it from pitchings in Riga and Prague where it has created a lot of discussion. A quote from the description: ” A Latvian woman named Hermine Purina is shown in an archival photograph: she became the first victim of the Soviet invasion of Latvia in 1940 whilst trying to save her son, Voldemärs, with her body. It becomes an inspiration for contemplating film’s boundaries – both geographical and metaphorical. Russians and Latvians sense the import of historical realities in a completely different way. One side associates it with liberation; for the other side, it means the loss of freedom.” Production is in good hands: Latvian Guntis Trekteris and Czech Radim Procházka.

History is indeed also the theme of “Occupation 1968”, which has well-known director Peter Kerekes as producer. Description: “Occupation as occupants see it. Five countries from the Warsaw Pact occupied Czechoslovakia in 1968. Fifty years later, five directors from those countries will shoot short films about the invasion from the point of view of people who took part in it.

To get the most diverse views on this complicated topic, we chose one director from each of the former Warsaw Pact countries that participated in the occupation of Czechoslovakia – Russia, Poland, Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria. The result will be five 26-minute documentaries – five different view from inside the five countries. Mosaic subjective portraits will form a documentary series of five 26 minutes episodes for television, and a 130-minute documentary feature for distribution.” So interested to see what the directors Evdokia Moskvina, Magdalena Szymkov, Stefan Komandarev, Linda Dombrovszky, Marie Elisa Scheidt will come up with!

One more, directed by the eternal talent, Latvian Laila Pakalnina, pitched in Riga at the Baltic Sea Forum in 2016, “Spoon” is the title, super cinematographer Gints Berzins is behind the camera and Lithuanian Dagnė Vildziūnaitė is co-producer. Description: “Men can drill very deep, down to where the oil is. Large groups of qualified men equipped with machines can extract oil and transport it far away, to a place where other qualified men can transform it into plastic. The plastic is then taken to a factory, where still more men can turn it into spoons, which will be transported even further to all sorts of eateries and, likely, will be available free of charge. This meaningful life will last for one unceremonious meal. The film examines what society invests into the creation of a plastic spoon that effortlessly can be thrown out.” Yes, it will be different, surprising and that’s the kind of films we want, right?!

Photo from a previous Docu Talent session in Karlovy Vary.

http://www.dokument-festival.com/industry/docu-talents/2017#dt2017

Tamar Tal: Shalom Italia

The director name seemed familiar, Tamar Tal, and looking back at the posts on the site I found this on the wonderful one hour film that I saw at DOK Leipzig in 2011:

”Life in Stills” by Tamar Tal from Israel … is a very funny and warm film with a 96 year old grandmother and her grandson, who keep a photo shop alive in Tel Aviv. The scoop photos are from the declaration of independence of the state of Israel…

Now her newest film is Documentary of the Month at the Danish Cinematheque from June 22-June 28. I saw the trailer, link below, you should do the same, it will make you want to go and watch ”Shalom Italia”. Here is the synopsis of the film:

Three Italian Jewish brothers set off on a journey through Tuscany, in search of a cave where they hid as children to escape the Nazis. Their quest, full of humor, food and Tuscan landscapes, straddles the boundary between history and myth, both of which really, truly happened.

In Danish: Tre jødisk-italienske brødre på 73, 82 og 84 sætter hinanden stævne i Toscana. Som børn måtte de under 2. verdenskrig flygte fra nazisterne fra Firenze ud i en toscansk skov, hvor de skjulte sig i et helt år med deres familie i en hjemmebygget hule blandt nogle klippesten. Nu har de sat sig for at finde stedet i skoven, hvor de i frygt og stilhed levede et helt år og på den måde overlevede krigen. Der er masser af humor og varme imellem de tre brødre, der husker deres fortid meget forskelligt.

Israel, 2016, 70 mins.

http://tamartal.com/shalom-italia/

www.dfi.dk/Filmhuset/Cinemateket/Billetter-og-program 

Celebrating Syria – a Festival of Arts and Culture

… in Manchester, July 10-23, organised by Rethink Rebuild Society: ”A fortnight of exhibition, films, theatre, live music, talks by writers, panel discussions and interactive art workshops exploring Syrian arts and culture before and after 2011.The first of its kind in the UK, this festival is a celebration of a hopeful, inspiring and imaginative face of Syria and the Syrian people and their rich contribution to the collective history of human expression.”

And it is indeed an inspiring program that is offered. CHECK THE WEBSITE, LINK BELOW. When it comes to films there are three works to be screened:

The masterpiece “Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait” from 2014 by Wiam Simav Bedirxan and Ossama Mohammed. The latter will be in Manchester for a masterclass.

“La Dolce Siria: A Short Film Trilogy” by Ammar Al-Beik”. The wonderful photo is from “La Dolce Siria” (2014), that has this description from the site of the event: A satirical response to Federico Fellini’s 1960 comedy-drama La Dolce Vita, this film unfolds as a poignant narrative of the dramatic events affecting Syria and leading to the extinction of love and happiness, which Fellini’s protagonist Marcello Rubini was unsuccessfully looking for decades ago. “Vita’ is not ‘dolce’ in Syria Federico! No fireworks around the tent Federico. Scud and bombs are the fireworks that we recognise, my friend. No one can tame the lion here in this tent. It’s smashing everything and everyone. I forgot to tell this earlier: Lion in Arabic means Assad’.

And finally “Tadmor” by Monika Borgmann and Lokman Slimvia, feature length: Tadmor is the Arabic name for the Syrian city Palmyra, home of one of the most magnificent ancient cities dating back to the 3rd century BC.  Palmyra became the centre of an empire, headed by Queen Zenobia, which took over most of the Roman East, including Egypt.

Tadmor is also associated in the Syrian people’s collective consciousness with one of the most notorious political prisons in recent history, where prisoners, often detained for many years without trial, have been subjected to the most horrendous forms of systematic torture…In the film, 8 former Lebanese detainees (yes, people from all over the world were detained there, not just Syrians) decide to break their silence about the years they spent in Tadmor prison and to tell their story. They rebuild Tadmor in an abandoned school near Beirut so that they can re-enact their experience, overcome it and move on…

https://celebratingsyria.org

Vit Klusák: The White World According to Daliborek

It is a great film that will evoke a lot of reactions and maybe legal questions: Are you in Czech Republic allowed to express, in public, racism as he does?

… Dalibor’s view on the world is bad – at the same time as he is (no irony) a poor guy who lives at home with mum and her boyfriend, who are also racists. Dalibor wants to get out of his boring life, so he puts himself into some roles, singing, recording… and he does not seem to have luck with the girlfriend, to say the least!

These were my short email-comments from months ago when I was asked whether there are festivals for this strong, pretty controversial documentary, Vit Klusák’s “The White World According to Daliborek”, that will have its world premiere at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival that takes place June 30-July 8.

And will go around to lots of festivals is my estimate. Here follows the intro text to the film from the catalogue of the festival, written by Martin Horyna:

Industrial painter Dalibor K. is approaching 40 but he still lives with his mother Věra. He makes amateur horror movies and writes angry songs; he likes PlayStation and Facebook. And he admires Adolf Hitler. His search for a full-fledged relationship with a woman hasn’t yet panned out, but at least Jana, a new acquaintance from the neighborhood, brings him a little joy. Czech documentarist Vít Klusák has come out with a stylized portrait of a gentle neo-Nazi from Prostějov, Czechia. And despite the fact that he’s yet to attack anyone, he can’t stand many things: his job, Jews, Roma, refugees, homosexuals, Angela Merkel, spiders, and dentists. His mother’s new boyfriend Vladimír also irritates him despite dropping choice nuggets such as “I’d turn gypsies into asphalt” in order to ingratiate himself with the young man. The upshot is that Dalibor hates his life, but he doesn’t know what to change. Corrosively absurd and starkly chilling in equal measure, this tragicomedy investigates the radical worldview of “decent, ordinary people.” And just when it seems that its message can’t get any more urgent, the film culminates in a totally uncompromising way.

The IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) brings a very interesting interview with Klusák on its site, made by Mark Pickering. Link below.

Czech Republic, 2017, 105 mins.

http://www.kviff.com/en/programme/film/4823691-the-white-world-according-todaliborek/

https://dokweb.net/articles/detail/332/interview-vit-klusak-about-his-latest-film-the-white-world-according-to-daliborek