I have organised this together with Martina Rogers from DocsBarcelona for years and I enjoy it very much. From the picture (from last year) you might see that in nice sofas there is seated an exclusive panel of people from different sides of the documentary community. The goal is to generate creative and constructive discussions that will favour the further development of the projects, i.e. the story building, the character development, the editing quality.

We were again fortunate to have a fine panel: filmmaker, teacher and programmer at the festival Daniel Jariod, festival director Inti Cordera from Mexico, Jordi Ambros from TV3 Catalunya (for one session), Rada Sesic from Sarajevo FF, where she is head of documentaries, at DocsBarcelona she is president of the main jury, Debra Zimmermann from Women Make Movies in New York, Hanka Kastelicová from HBO Europe, Esther van Messel from First Hand Films in Switzerland (for two sessions) and Chris Hastings from PBS – World Channel.

And most important the filmmakers, who received valuable positive and constructive criticism from the panel:

Marlén Viñayo from El Salvador with ”Cachada” about wonderful women, who gather to talk about ”the circles of violence” they have experienced and who end up, with the help of a theatre director, making a play about these issues. Director Roberto Salinas and choreographer Laura Domingo from Italy/Nicaragua and Cuba with ”Cuban Dancer”, the story of the enormous talented ballet dancer, 15 year old Alexis, who with his parents move to Florida. How will he be able to continue his career after having been at the Cuba Ballet School? Director Sebastian Saam with ”Tatap” about super star, one-armed guitarist Andrés Godoy from Chile, his life in that country, the family, the Allende period, the accident where he lost an arm and his Asian concert tour.

www.docsbarcelona.com

We had the traditional sunday dinner invited by festival director Joan Gonzalez. His wife and my wife were there, Joan and his son Marti, with whom I always talk football. Barca – FC Barcelona – first of all, on the situation now for the club that ended up being number 2 and is out of the Champions League. What remains is to win Copa del Rey. Which players will be sold and who will come for the next season…

And then the magical moment happened – reminding us of the time when Barca won it all: Into the restaurant comes Xavi Hernandez, the maestro, with his family, the playmaker, the man who gave the play a flow, a humble and total loyal man to the club, 600 matches. He is now playing in Qatar, 37 years old.

… and now back to the festival, where I saw three films. Chilean Maite Alberdi’s ”Los Niños” (”The Grown Ups”) featuring adults

with Down syndrome at the same school, a love story, a moving, humorous and sweet one, but also a sad one as Ricardo has to leave Anita because his sisters no longer want to support his stay. The film does not have the level of her previous ”Tea Time” but still Alberdi is a true auteur and knows how to create atmosphere.

I am happy we selected ”Born in Deir Yassin” by Israeli Neta Shoshani. I had never heard about the massacre in the Arab city, which since 1951 hosts a hospital for mentally ill. This was set up three years after the massacre in 1948. Young Shoshani has managed to do interviews with several old men (many of the are now dead), who were there as killers or photographers or had the task to move away or bury the burnt corpses! It’s a story that is not well known in Israel and it was not possible for the director – with the help of a lawyer – to get access and publish the photos taken. Forbidden by the High Court, to publish them could disturb the national security, it was stated. Parallel to this horror story, another shameful event in Israeli history, the director places the story of a mother, who was at the hospital for decades. She gave birth to a boy at the place, Dror, who was taken away from her. The letters she wrote to him are being read and Dror is there in the ghost town Deir Yassin. During the Q&A Neta Shoshani told us that the film has not yet been screened in Israel. The plan is that it should go on television and premiere at Jerusalem Film Festival this summer. But you never know if the very active minister of culture will intervene and forbid it.

And then a film that made me have a smile on the face the whole way through the 79 minutes it lasted, ”Siberian Love” (photo) by Russian Olga Delane, who lives in Berlin but goes back to her village in Siberia to find out how it goes with love between Sascha and Ira, Oleg and Lyuba and many others, many of them her relatives. She went there seven times and you can see that in the film, she is able to get close to them, especially the women, not so much the men, who – yes, it is not a kliché – drink a lot. Quite a lot! There are funny and tender moments and moments with children, where you fear, what will become of them. It’s a hard life they conduct, farming and family, as one says. Quarrels and peace in the family. They have not really thought about this thing called love… Olga Delane was there for the screening at the CCCB, where we had the longest Q&A session so far, more than half an hour. Goood!

www.docsbarcelona.com

http://siberian-love.com/ 

… and Son, and Jens Soering. I saw four films yesterday i.e. saturday here at the DocsBarcelona 20th edition. Let me start with a wonderful moment at the Q&A after the film ”All Governments Lie”. A 12 year old girl asked in fine English (not that common in Catalonia!) the director, Canadian Alfred Peabody, ”do you think that my generation can change the world”! Apparently she was inspired by the film and its timely subject, a free and independent press. The director told her ”why don’t you become a journalist” as was the man, who inspired Peabody to make the film, legendary journalist I.F. Stone. I am old enough to remember him and his direct criticism of the Americans being at Vietnam. There is great archive with Stone but the film also introduces people who have been inspired by him: Michael Moore, who of course praises Stone’s humour, Glenn Greenwald who worked on Laura Poitras’ Snowden film and set up The Intercept together with her and Jeremy Scahill. Greenwald says that had Stone been alive today, he would probably have been a blogger. Below a link to the website of the film, where you find all the journalists in the film and their comments on the mass media manipulated world we live in.

Before that film I had seen Catalan Roser Corella’s ”Grab and Run”, that introduces and discusses the Kirgisz tradition for kidnapping of women for marriage. An anthropological study that also includes a shocking ending, where the filmmakers follow a kidnapping of a woman. I did not follow the discussion in Catalan but I guess the ethics of filming this incident was raised. The photo pictures the couple, the photo was chosen by the festival to be the poster.

And then I had fun with father and son in ”Deux Cancres” by French Ludovic Vieuille (who will be present for the second screening May 26 20.15, COME!). It is an excellent piece of documentary, full of embarrassing moments when the two fight with the French grammar, the boy being impatient, the father trying his best, having to give up again and again because he does not understand the questions raised in the books the boy brings home. Shot over a long period, the camera registers their mood and lets us have a bitter-sweet laugh. Why does he have to go through all this stupidity in the French education system. OMG! It is a clever film, and emotional!

Where ”Deux Cancres” is minimalistic in tone and scope, Marcus Vetter’s ”The Promise” is a brilliant piece of journalism that is taken to the level of a Shakespearean drama, a love story, a demonstration of the crazy American judicial system, and first of all the meeting with German Jens Soering, who has been in jail for more than 30 years for something that he has not done; that is the conclusion you make having seen the film and listened to him. Vetter got permission to make an interview with him for four hours. I watched the television version, 3 hours, on Danish television and enjoyed to see it here in Barcelona on a big screen with Marcus Vetter present to answer questions at a screening that lasted till just after midnight.   

https://allgovernmentslie.com/film

http://promise-movie.com/the-movie/

www.docsbarcelona.com

It was the third time that I saw ”Untitled” by Michael Glawogger and Monika Willi. Glawogger was here in Barcelona in 2014 to show his ”Whore’s Glory” and do a masterclass. Some months later the same year he passed away. His editor Monika Willi made ”Untitled”, interpreting what Glawogger would have done with the material and adding her own interpretation. I discover new moments every time. There were 25 spectators for the screening at 4pm at the Aribau Club Cinema, there will hopefully be more for the next screening this coming wednesday. There are great films and there are films that are more than that, that stand out – I was happy to watch ”Three Rooms of Melancholia” by Pirjo Hinkasalo in Tbilisi and I am happy to have met Glawogger and seen also this last film by him, and the trilogy he left to us, ”Whore’s Glory”, ”Workingman’s Death” and ”Megacities”. Honkasalo and Glawogger: Film History. I will try to write a review of ”Untitled” later on. Maybe I should watch it for the fourth time.

It was also the third time I was with John and Amanda, wonderful teachers, who are the main characters in ”In Loco Parentis” by Irish Neasa Ni Chianáin and David Rane, who were at the screening yesterday (see photo) to meet the audience for a short Q&A session. The film is a fine success all over and is now going to theatres in the US with the distribution company Magnolia taking care of it. Watching the film always makes me think back to my own school time and the teachers, yes, there were some fine ones who cared.

The selection for DocsBarcelona of course has a special eye for Spanish language documentaries and I enjoyed to be taught about the peace process in Colombia in ”El Silencio de los Fusiles” by Natalia Orozco, who has done interviews with the government and its representatives as well as with several comandante’s from FARC. Amazing she could get that access to make an interesting journalistic work!

Tough evening in Aribau Club 1, thematically – the last film to be shown was ”Last Men in Aleppo” by Feras Fayyad, we have written about that touching tragic and human film that wins awards at many festivals. Is it a candidate here as well?

www.docsbarcelona.com

So there we were last night for the opening of the 20th edition of DocsBarcelona in the Aribau Multicines. Full house and fine atmosphere. The audience got up to sing the Beatles ”All you need is love”, changed to ”All you need is Docs”! I was asked to come to the stage together with dear friend Aurora Moreno to receive flowers as the two of us together with Joan Gonzalez, director of the festival, were there 20 years ago, when the event was started after one year of prologue in Granada. What has happened during these 20 years is the theme of a Catalan round table later in the festival, that this year has extended its duration so it goes on for 11 years.

Joan Gonzalez made a welcome speech in Catalan, so I can not tell you what he said but for his welcoming Clare Weiskopf, whose film ”Amazona” as previously reported on this site was shown in the presence of the director, her husband, producer and cameraperson Nicolas van Hemelryck and little Noa, who is at the beautiful end image of the film about mother and daughter: Val and Clare.

The film was from my hearing of the applause very well received, for me a fine opening film, also because Clare and Nico pitched the film at DocsBarcelona and was at the rough cut session.

… and it goes well deservedly to festivals all over the world.

www.docsbarcelona.com

No objections to the choice of the jury at CinéDOC 2017, who gave the main award to ”You Have No Idea How Much I love You” by Polish Pawel Lozinski. With a special mention to Miroslav Janek’s ”Normal Autistic Film”. Ulli Pfau, spokesperson for a jury that also included Ukrainian Gennady Koffmann and Lithuanian Giedre Beinoriute, said that they would have loved to share the award between the two but that was not possible. For me Audrius Stonys ”Woman and the Glacier” and Helena Trestikova’s ”A Marriage Story” could also have qualified.

Lozinski can be double happy as he was also the favourite of the audience and received the so-called Audience Award. In other words: the jurors from the documentary world and the audience agreed.

The ceremony at the beautiful building on the Rustaveli Avenue – in Soviet times it was the venue for the pioneers, festival director Artchil Khetagouri told me, ”I came here as a child” – ended with a skype thank you from Pawel Lozinski, who had returned to Poland after having spent a couple of days at the festival with well attended Q&A sessions.

The beginning was equally exciting. The Youth Jury was on stage

and told the audience that the winner in this category was the film by Giedre Beinoriute, ”Conversations on Serious Topics”, a film that as the one of Lozinski has a form of its own, and a film that as the one of Miroslav Janek demonstrates the director’s strong sensibility, when it comes to working with children. ”Love is a feeling” says the little boy in the clip that followed the announcement of the award.

Love… which gives me the bridge to mention that the Danish film ”Venus” was given a special mention in the CivilDoc competition. Two of the protagonists had been to the festival introducing the popular ”let’s talk about sex” documentary. The CivilDOC winner was the Catalan documentary ”Ada for Mayor” by Pau Faus about the election of Ada Colau in Barcelona last year. The observational documentary film will serve as a starting point for discussions on politics in Tbilisi. An inspiration for the activists in Georgia.

Here follows a copy paste of the award list and the motivations:

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

Main Award: You Have No Idea How Much I Love You (directed by Pawel Lozinski)

“You have no idea how much I love you” presents the story of a painful relationship between a mother and a daughter in a most advanced and artistic way of filmmaking: reduced to the maximum, we follow a triangle between mother, daughter and a therapist which takes us take us to a series of extremely intense sessions of ways to learn to accept yourself.

Special Jury Mention: Normal Autistic Film (directed by Miroslav Janek)

“Normal Autistic Film” is anything but normal. It takes you into the world of children and teenagers with Asperger Syndrome. In a most gripping way the film follows their different and totally real ways of trying to express themselves with body language, music and poetry.

CIVIL DOC COMPETITION

Main Award: Ada for Mayor (directed by Pau Faus)

The Film shows an activist Ada Colau who starts a remarkable journey to become the mayor of Barcelona The genuine energy of the community-based movement behind her brings hope and can encourage many people to participate in public life. It shows that it is possible to accomplish something by a democratic process, even for those without wealth and without resources.  Sí se puede!

Special Jury Mention: Venus (directed by Lea Glob and Mette Carla Albrechtsen)

Young women talking so honestly and openly about their sexuality proves to be liberating for both the protagonists and the audience. The authors managed to create a safe space for the protagonists and we can see how beautiful results safety and sincerity can bring about. We could only imagine what the world would look like if there were more such spaces. We believe this film may open a discussion about a topic that is really close to all of us.

FOCUS CAUCASUS COMPETITION

Main Award: Didube, the Last Stop (Directed by Shorena Tevzadze)

The jury unanimously decided to award a film which stands out for its ability to tell very personal human stories. We, the viewers, are immersed into the minute details of life of the protagonists which would have stayed unnoticed otherwise.  This very personal story is touching, humorous, philosophical, contemplative, and empathic. It achieves to paint complex characters with precise details. The director succeeds to grasp the very special flow of time by letting us share a part of life with the protagonists. The seasons and politicians change but the main human values remain the same. It’s film about a small bus stop portrayed as a universe. The winner is Didube, the Last Stop  by Shorena Tevzadze.

Special Jury Mention: Bonfires and Stars (directed by Sasha Voronov)

The Jury would like to give a special mention to Bonfires and Stars by Sasha Voronov, the film that introduces us to the characters on a personal journey to create a new musical language that unities tradition and modernity.

STUDENT JURY AWARD

Stranger in Paradise (directed by Guido Hendrikx)

AUDIENCE AWARD

You Have No Idea How Much I Love You (directed by Pawel Lozinski)

CinéDOC-Young AWARD

Conversations on Serious Topics (directed by Giedre Beinoriute)

And the awards from the CivilPitch competition:

Development awards from the Open Society Georgia Foundation:

1. Under the clouds – Tanadgoma and Maurillo Mangano – 3000 USD
2. Under the Rainbow – For Better Future and Beso Gvenetadze – 2500 USD
3. Village development – Studio Re – Mamuka Kuparadze and Lali Kiknavelidze – 2500 USD 

Production awards from the East-west Management Institute (Access Program)

1. Level 2 – CRRC Georgia – Mariam Kobaladze and Giorgi Parkosadze – 7500 USD
2. Five meters of Rock – Urban Lab – Giorgi Babunashvili – 7500 USD

+ Additional awards:

2 passes to DokLeipzig from Brigid O’Shea – Under the rainbow (For better future and Beso Gvenetadze)

1000 Gel – from Sakdoc and one jury member –for Village development  (Studio Re and Lali Kiknavelidze)

http://www.cinedoc-tbilisi.com/ 

 

Sooo, what is that. I was curious and happy to be invited to see if that can work – the match of ngo’s and filmmakers. Such a good idea, a challenge for the filmmakers and for the ngo’s. Supported and hosted by Open Society Georgia Foundation. 11 projects had been selected after a call that included both ngo’s and filmmakers, who had met before at a meeting, where the matching was established.

The festival direction: We want ”to link civil society organisations with filmmakers, media professionals and donors. Together we can transform CivilPitch into an important annual event that inspires, provokes and ultimately proves to be invaluable to civil society as well as to donors and media professionals. CivilPitch is a central platform where professionals representing different fields can merge their skills and experiences in order to create a valuable film product that can appeal to a wider audience, transcending the limited number of interest groups that may usually follow these topics.”

I attended a training session and was asked to moderate the pitching of the 11 projects yesterday. The training had been led by two young filmmakers, Dutch/German Daniel Abma and Georgian Ana Tsimintia and the 10 panelists were representatives from ngo’s with the addition of a couple of film people.

It was fun and it was informative for a foreigner as the projects mirrored key problems in the Georgian society: Urban planning, everybody told me that there is no such thing, discrimination of muslim citizens, integration of so-called New Georgians, drug abuse and rehab, activism and demonstrations, forgotten villages, to be gay in Georgia, to be mentally ill in Georgia, women empowerment. Voilà!

Only problems… Luckily several of the projects were presented from a positive angle, but with this message: This is wrong, something has to be done! The projects at the CivilPitch were at very different angles, some ngo’s and filmmakers had just met, others had had the chance to film some research material, some had taken photos to illustrate the theme.

And awards are to be given. More about that after the prize ceremony tonight, where the festival winners will also be announced.

http://www.cinedoc-tbilisi.com/?page_id=2034

”3 Rooms on Melancholia” by Pirjo Honkasalo: The film is from 2004. I had not seen it for many years and it was a different experience today. The film was the same but I had changed. There are children in my life today, grandchildren, small children like the ones in the film. Who suffer because of the war in Chechnya. Who have no parents and/or come from socially hard backgrounds, alcohol, sexual abuse, illnesses. Looking at the kids and their faces and their tears. Heartbreaking.

When was the last time you saw the film, I asked Pirjo Honkasalo at the masterclass that followed just after the screening for a full hall in the Amirani Cinema. I have not seen it since it was premiered, she said. I make the film and give it to the audience to make their film in their heads.

The two hour masterclass with the legendary director, who was the special guest of the festival, could have lasted much longer. Honkasalo gave the audience the story of the film from a to z talking about how to gain trust with the characters, how her ratio (this time 6:1) was much more than usual (!), how she and her producer Kristina Pervilä got the permission to film at the military academy in Kronstadt, how she does not like to pitch, how she does not make scripts, the writing she does is to get the money, ”but of course it helps to write, makes things clearer for yourself as well”, how she had decided on the form before filming, the triptych that the film works from – with the headlines ”longing”, ”breathing” and ”remembering”. And how she insists on having the final cut. No compromises!

Today ”Tanjuska” is being screened. We did not have time to talk about that film or ”Mysterion” or ”Atman” – but Pirjo Honkasalo touched upon the ethical questions connected to Tanjuska and to the Atman-film.

A pleasure to be with a great film director. The audience was inspired, I am sure.

With Lithuania as the guest country here at CineDOC Tbilisi festival, it was natural to have Giedre Zickyte visiting. The director, who has had a big success with the film ”Master and Tatyana” with and about the brilliant photographer Vitas Luckus and his widow – and with the film she made with Chilean Maite Alberti, ”I’m not from here”, was giving a masterclass on the way she has used archives in ”Master and Tatyana” and in her ”How We Played the Revolution”. It was a very much alive, energetic and passionate Zickyte, who showed clips and told the audience how she kept on looking for material that could be used, sometimes (with the revolution film) it could take weeks to find the right material as she did, when she discovered a wonderful scene, where two children discuss – around 1990 – what the street demonstration was for. Hilarious! And she demonstrated how she integrated archive footage into the narrative flow. And how she used the photos of Luckus in two ways: to tell the dramatic story of his life and to show how fantastic a photographer he is.

Zickyte is now working on ”The Jump” that was pitched last year at the IDFA festival in Amsterdam. Logline: ”A breath-taking jump over the icy ocean propels a sailor from a Soviet boat to an American vessel. But is it enough to fulfil his dream of freedom?”

The film will have amazing archive material and Zickyte told us that she will travel back to the US, Florida with the protagonist Simas Kudirka as she after one and a half year now has the permission to film on the American ship. She showed the trailer of ”The jump” that Simas took in 1970. There is a very promising film coming up.