N. C. Heikin: Sound of Redemption

Saxofonisten hedder Grace Kelly, hun spiller i et lille orkester som i en lille sal i San Quentin fængslet afholder en mindekoncert for saxofonisten Frank Morgan som mange år af sit liv som indsat der spillede i fængslets jazzband som består af fremragende musikere. Mange af dem er stadigvæk eller igen i San Quentin og de er her nu blandt det publikum som Kelly og hendes band spiller for. Vi er i filmen ved hendes store solo Somewhere over the rainbow som også er filmens store øjeblik, vi er i begyndelsen af filmens vist nok eneste egentlige filmscene. Den er meget smuk, hun i sin røde jakke og i sin ungdom, de mange mænd på så mange måder voksne lytter og begejstres ved hendes spil som de oplever fungere, musikken virker, filmfortællingen bevæger. Virker tilbagevirkende på det vi har set og nu forstår og virker som min oplevelses point of no return, det her kan ikke gå galt, sådan lyder det når livsfølelse betales tilbage.

Det er altså en Frank Morgan mindekoncert og den begivenhed er filmens ramme. En af musikerne fortæller mellem numrene Morgans biografi. Han begyndte som barn at spille, Charlie  Parkers spil greb ham om hjertet, han mødte Parker som imponeredes af drengens følsomhed og evner, tog sig af ham, blev hans mentor. Fortællelinjen er strengt kronologisk, det er en filmbiografi i form af en forrygende collage på arkivoptagelser. Heroinen introduceres, vi får en lyrisk solo i en lang sekvens, et gribende sted i filmen, som ellers ikke har lange filmiske sekvenser eller filmscener. Der fortælles så om familien, om kriminalitet for at skaffe penge til heroinen, om turene ind og ud af fængslet… Det er en svag part af fortællingen, mærkes som en slags pligtstof, det er jo musikken biografien gælder. Men så dukker rammen op, fortælleren er en god fortæller, en lettelse. Men bliver det til en jazzfilm, en musikerbiografi, nej det synes jeg egentlig ikke.

En malerbiografi er da kunst analyse/beskrivelse/læsning skildret i et liv, en politikerbiografi må da være en politikkens liv, en forfatterbiografi et forfatterskabs liv i en skribent som Olof Lagerkrantz’ vidunderlige Strindbergbog, som jeg nu kommer til at tænke på som en arkitektur af værkerne i manden gennem årene. En række Frank Morgan indspilninger i citater med ordentlige titelskilte fungerer fint som vignetter billedmæssigt, lydmæssigt, stemningskonkluderende, men det er vignetter, ikke byggesten i en biografisk bygningskrop. Og en særlig indforståethed med jazz, med amerikansk kultur bliver mærkbar og nødvendig, men netop når det sker, lige på dette sted, kommer rammen til syne igen. Vi er ved højdepunktet med Grace Kelly, lytter i filmscenen til hendes omhyggelige introduktion, at hendes bedstefar i musikken, hendes mentor var Frank Morgan, som Charlie Parker var Frank Morgans mentor. Hun samler det i to forlangender, som Morgan samlede sin undervisning i: spil med hjertet og lad fingrene blive på knapperne, ”on the pearls” og scenen fortsætter med hendes lange solo og dernæst hele nummeret med alle musikerne og alle afsnittene uden klip og så stående ovationer. Sådan lyder en tilbagebetaling! Filmen har ligesom selv omhyggeligt tilrettelagt sit højdepunkt via manus, instruktion, optagelse, klip. Alt er lykkedes og blevet film dette smukke sted.

Hvis jeg som har sparsomme forudsætninger skulle i gang med at se jazzfilm ved denne festival er dette en god begyndelse, en smuk forelæsning, et musikforedrag, engageret og pesonligt. Jeg læser filmen som yderst velforberedt og vildt raffineret fængselskoncert og -foredrag hvor jeg sidder blandt de indsatte begejstret med dem, og for mine øjne, i min erindrings billeder og på lærredet med arkivstoffet ser jeg nu gjort en smule indforstået, lidt som det indforståede og højtkvalificerede publikum, ser og hører med dem i deres nu fremkaldte erindring. Det er sandelig en musiklektion på højt plan, en belæring.

USA 2014, 84 min. Filmkommentarens penne: 4 af 6. Vises i Cinemateket, København torsdag 9. februar 21:45.

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

SYNOPSIS

Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story recreates the life of legendary alto sax player and Charlie Parker protégé Frank Morgan in a one-night-only, all-star musical tribute performed live at San Quentin, tracing his progress from teenaged musical prodigy to longtime junkie and, finally, to achieving one of the music world’s most remarkable comebacks.

http://ncheikin.com/documentaries 

 

Miroslav Janek: Normal Autistic Film

Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, festival directors of Magnificent7 in Belgrade, writes this presentation of Miroslav Janek’s awarded film that will be shown at the Sava Center tonight:

This dynamic and playful documentary is the work of one of the most important European authors when it comes to children, especially children who don’t blend in and who are different from the majority. Miroslav Janek has gained worldwide fame for his collage films, made with a free camera, with a mixture of styles and with encouraging the participants to interactively influence the course, look and style of the film. The author discreetly and gradually involves every protagonist to think in front of the camera about the scene, the theme and the film that is being born, and from these instructions, ideas and riots creates stylistically different courses, precisely customized for every hero, it seems. The stories are about them, they are both their stories and Janek’s stories, and all together, with great editing intermingling, that becomes a disheveled explosive film which ranges from a whisper to a roar, from gentle intimate situations to noisy, rhythmic episodes and entertaining short films within the film.

Direct and sensitive, Luka has a distinct sense of humor; he loves films and writes scripts. Piano virtuoso Denis is capable of playing complex classical compositions; he is incredibly intelligent and well read. Majda loves to rap and she is not shy about it; her brave verses reveal her environment with disarming accuracy. Marjamka can tell long stories in English, and her tireless brother Ahmed is unusually friendly. Five exceptional children that society has permanently and not at all flattering termed as “autistic”. With his unique vision the famous Czech documentarist challenges us to once and for all stop to look at autism as a medical diagnosis and to try to understand it as a fascinating way of thinking which is sometimes extremely difficult to decipher. For who is the one who determines what is normal – to live in a constant rush, ignoring the absurdity of modern life or sadly looking for order, peace and tranquility in the world?

Miroslav Janek is an author who emphasizes the importance of a long process in which his brilliant dialogue and interactive documentaries were created: “They got used to me and unconsciously they were offering to me a lot of interesting situations… I focused on the magic and on mysterious way the autistic persons are thinking.”

Czech Republic, 2016, 90 minutes.

http://www.cineuropa.org/f.aspx?t=film&l=en&did=310421

http://magnificent7festival.org/en/normalni_autisticni_film.php

Obaidah Zytoon og Andreas Dalsgaard: The War Show

This year’s Dragon Award, Göteborg Film Festival, for best documentary went to Obaidah Zytoon and Andreas Dalsgaard for The War Show. The prize is worth SEK 100,000 and is presented by the Swedish Union of Tenants (Hyresgästföreningen).

In The War Show the radio journalist Obaidah Zytoon personally and engagingly relates how the Arab Spring and the war in Syria have affected her and her friends.

The jury’s motivation: The award goes to a monumental and uncompromising film that combines extremely strong mate-rial with a unique and persistent voice of a generation. This overwhelming audiovisual experience holds us in a tight emotional grip as we live through the lives of an extraordinary woman and her friends, experience their lust for life, love and freedom, pitched against a devastating war. This film is a punch in the face to all of us. A reminder of our co-existence.

This year’s jury consisted of Iris Olsson, artistic director at DocPoint, Olivia Neergaard-Holm, director and Fredrik Egerstrand, director.

http://www.giff.se/en/artikel/here-are-dragon-award-winners (festival site) 

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3727/ (review)

Nikolaus Geyrhalter: Homo Sapiens

“HOMO SAPIENS” is disturbing and fascinating fresco of the planet, an authentic futuristic vision of one of the great masters. Nikolaus Geyrhalter is one of the pioneers of modern documentary, who introduced documentaries into the sphere of post-apocalyptic visions with his early masterfully work “Pripyat”, and created one of the most impressive views of the world as a whole in his richly developed film “Elsewhere”. “HOMO SAPIENS” combines these essential topics and with the approach of a mature master introduces us to a purified essay of a superb style. Fully visual, without a word, with almost composed sound interventions, “HOMO SAPIENS” reveals on the big screen highly aestheticized scenes, which deeply engrave in the minds of viewers.

“HOMO SAPIENS” is a film about the fragility of human existence and the end of the industrial age, and about what it means to be a human being. What will be the traces of the species we call Homo sapiens, and to which we belong? Empty spaces, ruins, cities increasingly overgrown with vegetation, dilapidated asphalt: spaces that we currently inhabit, when people are not in them anymore. Now abandoned and in decay, gradually taken by nature, from which they were taken not long ago. “HOMO SAPIENS” is an ode to humanity seen through a possible scenario for the future.

About this great work Geyrhalter says: “This is not the first film in which I construct the narrative only through images. This is only the first in which there are no people. “HOMO SAPIENS” is perhaps the most photographic of all my films… For me it is a vision much closer to fiction.”

Austria, 2016, 94 mins.

http://www.geyrhalterfilm.com/en/homo_sapiens

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/en/

Sergei Loznitsa at M7

He was adressing the audience in the Sava Center and said that this amount of people at one screening is the same as we have had in one month in theatres in Germany! Where the film was released mid December. The reviews have been great in Germany but it seems to be difficult to attract the audience for a film like ”Austerlitz” directed by Ukrainian Sergei Loznitsa. I can only say that the Belgrade audience deserves a big Bravo to come and appreciate a film like this that is challenging. Well I know that many found it long and boring, but also that many left the cinema having experienced a piece of cinematic art.

There was a full house for the Q&A in the VIP room afterwards for a one hour session, where the director explained how he came to have an interest in holocaust tourism and how he made it into a film. Equally interesting was a friday morning where he was with young and younger filmmakers for a couple of hours showing examples from previous films.

As one of the trio of selectors (Svetlana and Zoran Popovic being the other two) I have been happy to present ”Austerlitz” at the Magnificent7 festival. With me it is a film that almost works physically. Loznitsa´s construction of the sound score is a superb

alliance to the black & white images, where there is no camera movement and where every frame is precise and full of meaning in its composition. Back to the sound… it goes on my nerves when I am confronted with the sound of steps of all the tourists, who are visiting the camps – after visiting several, Loznitsa decided to concentrate on Dachau and Sachsenhausen – in their almost naked summer dress with their smart phones clicking all the time, their audioguides linked to the ear, and their selfie-photo-taking.

There IS so much disrespect in the behaviour of the tourists, Loznitsa is not pointing at that, it is my interpretation based on his aesthetic somewhat pure approach. But you are not only shaking your head when watching: Suddenly he introduces a sequence of faces, who look concentrated at, well what it is, we don’t see it, but we read the faces and the emotions, and after some faces Loznitsa lets church bells ring… and I remember what he said at the workshop: you have to let the unexpected in because that’s what we as viewers actually expect. In other words it was exactly what I needed from the director, this gentle comment to the faces and their feelings.

40 shooting days, I never hide the camera, precise information on use of lenses, I don’t like people looking into the camera, lot of discussion on the quick cutting at the end of the film contrary to the long shots otherwise used. Loznitsa was generous in his explanations, a mild man, precise as the mathematician he is by education, an education he took before he entered the Moscow film school VGIK and made his first fine work, “Together we are going to build a house” (28 mins.) from 1995. I remember I had seen it before, maybe also awarded it at a festival, anyway it was fine to hear him talk about the film sequence by sequence, and if anyone thinks that Loznitsa is dry and clinical in some of his films, they might be right but here there is a lot of humour that he conveys in the way that he looks at people.

And constructs the film. Because a film is a construction, it is being built, as Loznitsa – and colleague Allan Berg – says again and again. This film was made on 35mm, 20 reels, 2 months of editing, no narration, just an idea, he said, structured like a reportage, “one day in the life of…” these people building the house, and to tell the audience that it was shot over some time, he let a sequence with a dog on the building site be repeated three times!

Cinema for me lies only in the pictures with the use of sound in a creative way.

How to… for every film I make there is a set of rules of “yes” and “no”. And after an editing Loznitsa produces a graph, where he can see how a film flow is with rhythm, where there is most energy – amazing, must be his mathematic background!

At the workshop Loznitsa also showed a clip from the short film he made in Riga from the Jewish cemetery and from “Landscapes” (2003, 60 mins.), part of “Riga Force Majeure”.

Sergei Loznitsa is a director who operates with fiction, documentaries and archive films. As for the latter, I can only recommend those of our readers, who are historically interested to watch “Blockade” (2005) on the siege of Leningrad, “Maidan” (2014) and “The Event” (2015). Loznitsa told me in Belgrade that he now prepares an archive film based on material from Stalin’s processes. He has the footage, it’s amazing he said, he looks forward to the editing process, were he normally includes Lithuanian Danielius Kokanauskis.

Several of Loznitsa’s film are available on DocAlliance, link below.

Photo: Loznitsa being interviewed by director Andrijana Stojkovic.

http://loznitsa.com/

http://dafilms.fr/search/?q=sergei+loznitsa 

 

Jérôme le Maire: Burning Out

The film tonight at the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade deals with a topic that touches all of us, who one way or the other have tried to be exhausted to a degree that you can call it a ”burn-out” Svetlana and Zoran Popovic have written this text about the film, taken from the festival’s catalogue/website:

Great documentary undertaking! Jérôme le Maire is an author who enters with camera the places that are completely inaccessible and forbidden, and he records there the traditional battles, but also discovers for us completely modern, unexpected and astonishing ones. With discreet presence and careful observation the author develops a fascinating study of the contemporary world in which disappear havens for the weak and sick, in which disappear empathy, caring and the power of healing.

“BURNING OUT” is literally a drama of life and death. For two years, the Belgian director Jérôme le Maire followed the members of a surgical unit in one of the biggest hospitals in Paris. Constantly exposed to severe stress, with a lack of staff and with strict budget cuts, employees are fighting among themselves for resources, while the management imposes increasingly stringent criteria of efficiency and profitability. All over Europe ‘burnout’ has reached epidemic proportions among employees in the public and private sectors. Will we end up killing ourselves? Or will we be able to find meaning and joy in the work?

“Our modern world has turned the hospitals into health factories and patients into objects”, testifies Jérôme le Maire. “Efficiency, productivity, performance – this has become a mantra for managers. We knew for decades what happens if we expose the animals to stress: they will eventually eat each other. But what happens when you expose people to great stress?”

Belgium, France, Switzerland, 2016, 85 minutes

http://www.burning-out-film.com/

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/en/index.php

Sergei Loznitsa: Austerlitz

This is the text written by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic about Loznitsa’s film that will be screened at the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade tonight:

Premiered at the Venice Film Festival, “AUSTERLITZ” is another distinct documentary made by Sergei Loznitsa, who is currently one of the most significant European authors. Made in the form of classical black-and-white film, without many words, without any comment or explanation, with distinctive style in which his previous documentaries were made, this film is a complex and surprising anthropological study of collective behavior and consciousness. With the precise distance, which he determines and then never passes, Loznitsa reveals a phenomenon that intrigues us and provokes, equally as much it confuses us. This is a film in which the author, with the means of exquisite photography, camera, editing and directing, creates an exciting essay filled with tension, which turns the viewer into the silent interested witness and questioning participant.

There are places in Europe that keep the painful memories of the past – factories where people were turned into ashes. These places are now memorial complexes open to visitors and receive thousands of tourists every year. The name of the film is taken from the novel of one of the most important contemporary writers from the end of XX and the beginning of the XXI century, W.G. Sebald, which is dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust.

Loznitsa wrote: “What am I doing here? What are all these people doing here, moving in groups from one object to another? The reason that brings thousands of people to spend their summer weekends in former concentration camps is one of the mysteries of these memorial complexes.” The film is an attempt to deliberate these mysteries.

Germany, 2016, 94 mins.

http://www.loznitsa.eu/

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/en/

Cosima Lange: ”Hello I am David”

This is the website and catalogue text written by Magnificent7 directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic on the opening film of the 2017 festival:

The brilliant success of the film “Shine,” winning an Oscar and masterfully acting performance of Geoffrey Rush, have brought the story of a remarkable life path of the pianist David Helfgott closer to the wide audience, and the real hero of the film has gained worldwide fame as a unique artistic personality.

“HELLO I AM DAVID!” is the first documentary about this extraordinary pianist, a child prodigy whose career seemed finished after the dramatic nervous breakdown. And then, through the healing power of music and a great love for his wife Gillian, David Helfgott has found a way to return to normal life and to the concert stage. This masterfully made film, with superb cinematography, sound and editing, assures us in the irresistibly infectious passion and impulsiveness of David Helfgott. As a pianist, he plays only what he feels, and as a person he speaks without reservation what he thinks and touches people in the literal sense of the word.

Purified and straightforward, both in scenes of playing and in situations where the character is manifested, courageous to let life and the hero to directly create the most exciting, most funny and most unexpected scenes – this touching, inspirational film gives us a penetrating insight into the personality and musical life of David Helfgott. Finally, “HELLO I AM DAVID!” is a film about love: love of life, love of music – and deeply pervasive love between two people who are equally enchanting as they are different.

Germany 2015, 90 minutes

http://www.helloiamdavid.de/der-film.php

http://magnificent7festival.org/en

Belgrade City of Culture

Last night full house at the Sava Centre. Valery Gergiev, the man at the top of the St. Petersburg Mariinsky Opera, and chief conductor in Munich, and previuosly at the London Symphony Orchestra, was there with his Mariinsky orchestra. I attended the concert after the break happy to enjoy Mahler’s 5th symphony – and I closed my eyes when it came to Part 3 and the music that Luchino Visconti used in his masterpiece ”Death in Venice” with Dirk Bogarde.

I missed the first part as I was taken to state television for an interview about the festival – 4 minutes at a quarter past midnight… well festival director Zoran Popovic said that this program is being watched by ”our” audience, with a laugh: People who read books and suffer from insomnia…

We have been in Belgrade since saturday and have been treated, as always, with warm hospitality, Nevena Djonlic being one of the key performers in that respect. I was with her for another television interview at the cable and internet station Kopernikus (Photo), we got more than 4 minutes, quite relaxed… Oh, they are flooded with tv stations in this city.

Monday night we were at the cinema Art Bioskop Kolarac, where Nevena is the programmer. That night the cinema was hosting what is called a Meta-festival with – as guest – 88 year old professor and filmmaker Vlada Petric, who for decades was at Harvard University, the one who founded the film archive of the famous university. We could not understand the seasoned man’s Serbian lecture but watched his elegant 10 mins. short ”Symphony of Hands” that includes close-ups of hands from paintings and photographs accompanied by Purcell and Charles Mingus, among others. He also showed a film essay with his reflections on the NATO bombing in 1999 based exclusively on television material. Hard to watch, reminded me of films by Cuban Santiago Alvarez or East German Heynowski and Scheumann. That kind of tough satirical/sarcastic style.  

Dokumania Back on Danish Television

A warm welcome back to the strand Dokumania on DR2 prime time every tuesday. We were a bit worried that it had disappeared after ”the mother” of it all, Mette Hoffmann, had left DR. It did not.

So here we go again with a strong start, the American doc hit ”The Wolfpack” that was on my Best of 2015 List and about which I wrote after DOKLeipzig 2015:

””The Wolfpack” is an amazing story about six brothers being raised in an apartment on Manhattan with their mother teaching them, and their father securing that they do not leave home, where they stay and as said in the catalogue ”liberate themselves through the power of cinema”: they watch and they make their own movies. Until one day, where one of them gets out…”.

The Danes can watch it February 7th.