Elena Subira, colleague from DocsBarcelona, asked worried to my health after wednesday night’s football miracle, where Barcelona beat Paris 6-1 after having lost the first match 4-0. Heart attack…? No, but close to, amazing, 3 Barca goals in the dying minutes of a match that I watched in the good docu company of Mikael Opstrup, Iikka Vehkalahti and Peter Jäger. In a – yes! – English/Indian restaurant, lots of beer and a smell of curry. In the Stepanska street close to the Institute Cervantes, where the East Doc Platform takes place and to the Majestic Hotel, where we stay. Majestic was the football and majestic is the East Doc Platform.

And if all goes well some fine Czech documentaries are coming soon. To a festival or tv near you! Anna Kaslova from the IDF

(Institute of Documentary Film) had asked me to present five films which are in production and/or at post-production. I introduced the makers for a full hall of broadcasters, sales people, distributors, festival programmers and colleagues – each project was given 12 minutes for presentation, including visuals.

Filip Remunda, co-directing with Vit Klusak, presented ”Pepik the Czech Goes to Poland in a Quest for Love of God” with a three minutes trailer, long title, short visual, original storytelling, humour: Czech atheism vs. Polish religion! Petr Horky and Martin Juza had 10 minutes of material to show from Tolyati in Russia, the home of the Lada car factory, a huge one, where a Swedish ”supermanager” comes to make the dying factory alive again. ”A meeting of mentalities” said the two about ”The Russian Job”, that will have editing help by Miroslav Janek. ”Wilder Than Wilderness” by Marian Polak, produced by Radim Prochazka, is already finished in a Czech version, it will have a national theatrical release, beautiful scenes were selected from a film that deals with the life of animals we have in our neighbourhood. Must have potential for international distribution as well. I want to screen it to my grandchildren!

I hope that festivals also will pick up ”Meciar the Movie” (PHOTO) by Tereza Nvotova, produced by the company PubRes. Nvotova, whose ”Take it Jeasy!” I remember from when I was at Ex Oriente, and who has just premiered her first feature film in Rotterdam, got, contrary to many journalists, access to the former prime minister of Slovakia, a pretty much controversial figure, involved in scandals and now living alone in his huge house with a couple of dogs. The material she showed had amazing scenes. The same goes for another HBO supported film, ”When the War Comes” by Jan Gebert, produced by Radovan Sibrt, a more than timely insight to a group of youngsters, who have formed a paramilitary group and are marching in the streets, uniformed, with the aim of fighting for the European civilisation that is threatened by foreigners. We know the story, we shake our heads, but it happens now.

I had information from Anna Kaslova and talks with the makers about the situation for documentary films in Czech Republic. It looks good, 20 films in theatres in 2016, almost 1 mio. € state support, a good collaboration with tv (HBO is in two of the above mentioned film, Czech tv in the three others) and this year a competitive section for Czech documentaries at the One World Festival.

Want to know more – go to the site below and from there to articles etc.

https://www.dokweb.net/en/

The first names of the filmmaking couple are Petr and Corinne.

Maung Aung Pwint is according to a text at the beginning of the film the ”most famous living dissident poet” in Burma/Myanmar. He was imprisoned several times for his poetry and activism, it is said, and he says to the film crew, ”let’s make a long poem together”.

And Petr Lom, director and cinematographer, does his best to live up to that challenge. He creates stunningly framed and composed images that do simply not ”illustrate” what films with or about literature often do. Klichés are avoided. Many images include the (English) texts of poems which are being read. These are Maung Aung Pwint’s poems or poems from younger poets and – if I got it right – other poets, who have been imprisoned because of their writing and activism. In many cases you simply see the poet reading the poem.

… a long poem together, yes an elephant with a man riding on top

of it walks to the water to drink, a man walks slowly in a kind of tai-chi in a street, three dogs are barking at him and the camera I suppose, a man plowing his land, and many other situations are caught with the camera. Sequences with no purpose for the story as such.

However, the film is for me primarily a love story with Maung Aung Pwint and his wife in the leading roles. I could have stayed with them during the whole film. The smiling wife who takes care of him, who has Parkinson’s, and can not write himself any longer. So she does the writing, and is being gently corrected, when he observes a misspelling. He never talks to her about his stays in prison, she only hears about that, when he gets visits from people, who were with him behind bars. ”In jail we could write more, that’s the good thing that came out of it”, he says, and adds some wonderful sentences about how he made friends with the ants in the small cell. The wife warms his feet, holds his hand when they take a walk, takes care of everything, that is the impression you get. There is a grandchild and there are poems/lines that refer to the childhood remembered. And it is very emotional when the son comes back from Finland to visit, the father and mother have not seen him since 1996. ”I thought that my father would come back if I sat at the river and caught a fish”, the son remembers from his childhood. A key scene, poetry, and many of the poems presented in the film are fine literature.

When you have the ambition of making one long poem, you face the risk of losing the red thread once in a while. And there are some moments, where I thought why… a car race in the city, a long water festival sequence, a kite that falls down burning, a young woman saying that women are not respected in Burma, fireworks… seems like the filmmakers thought that some information had to be conveyed. Necessary? But the poet and his wife, thank you for bringing them on screen. It IS an impressive film, and let me also tribute the music score by Geir Jenssen, never too pushy just adding to the film and its images.

The film will be shown at One World Festival in Prague this week, it will have its international premiere at CPH:DOX, is the closing film at Cinema du Réel in Paris beginning of April, and will be screened at Visions du Réel in Nyon.

Netherlands, Norway, 2017, 81 mins.

http://burmastorybook.com/#book

… and many others. But very happy to see that the juries in Zagreb agreed so much with filmkommentaren.dk in its praising of the films by Salomé Jashi, Ognjen Glavonic and Jon Bang Carlsen. If you click on ”The Dazzling Light of Sunset” or ”Depth Two” or Jon Bang Carlsen you will find our words on two great films and one great film director. Here come the motivations of the juries:

The Dazzling Light of Sunset  (by Salomé Jashi) (PHOTO) paints an atmospheric and subtly humorous image of daily life in a small town in Georgia. Local events – such as weddings, shows, election discussions, captured owls, church rituals – seem like a good topic for the local TV crew whose cover stories are also in the focus of this film. All this is accompanied by a visually subtle observational detachment which shows this whole mixture of outdated tradition and new customs in both an absurd and poetically gentle light, which makes this film an extremely valuable piece.

Depth Two (by Ognjen Glavonic)… The Big Stamp Award for Best

Film in the Regional Competition Program goes to an extremely well researched and thoroughly immersive film that employs impeccable visual framing, an inescapable sound track and an effective narrative structure. At the same time it tells a horrific, yet completely unknown story that needs to be known – and should resonate with audiences around the world. At first the films seems to tell two different stories that ultimately merge into one, using chilling testimonies of victims and people who were guilty of a huge cover up. Director Ognjen Glavonic proves again great directoral vision with his impressive film Depth Two.

AND, such a good idea, the festival director Nenad Puhovski has his own award and not objections that he gave that to Danish Jon Bang Carlsen with the following motivation:

This year I give the My Generation Award to Danish director Jon Bang Carlsen for Déjà vu, a film in which he not only questions his own life and its demons with artistic prowess and courage, but also continues the lifelong creative exploration of the very nature of documentarism.

Many other awards – the Polish got three special mentions, ”21 X New York” by Piotr Stasik, ”Communion” by Anna Zamecka and ”Close Ties” by Zofia Kowalewska – and the excellent ”Starless Dreams” by Iranian Merhdad Oskouei got the Teen Dox Award.

Check the website for motivations and more awards.

http://zagrebdox.net/en/2017/news/13th_zagrebdox_winners_announced

IDF stands for Institute of Documentary Film, is based in Prague with this slogan: We support the emerging stars from Central and Eastern Europe. Link below, but let me sum up what this impressive film institution is doing: training (Ex Oriente), market (East Silver), distribution (KineDok), promotion (Czech Docs), pitching (East European Forum), transmedia (Doc Tank), networking (Project Market) and East Doc Platform, an event that starts this coming monday March 6 and goes on until March 12.

I have a warm connection to IDF and the many people, who work and have been working there. I was part of the ExOriente workshop for many years – it gave me a chance to make my addiction to documentaries and documentarians in this part of the world even deeper than it already was from around 1990, where the Empire USSR fell as did the wall in Berlin, and I travelled in the Baltic countries first of all. I got acquainted with the work of filmmakers like Miroslav Janek, Helena Trestikova, Jan Gogola, Filip Remunda, Robert Kirchhoff and many others.

Marta Obršálová, new pr manager of IDF, asked me to write about

the upcoming East Doc Platform and especially its Open Program, that starts Monday March 6 and has its final Public Presentations of the East European Forum on March 11, 4 hours, 20 feature-length documentary projects, including the ones that have been taken part in the 3 session workshop Ex Oriente. I will be there at the pitch to see which films will come to us in the coming year(s). Always exciting.

Monday, let me give you some highlights, my choices, there is an invitation from “the old boys”, Mikael Opstrup and Iikka Vehkalahti, to hear about what makes good and functional pitching trailers, followed by – the day after – a meeting with Pawel Loziński and his search “for intimacy in front of the camera”; would have loved to be there to hear more about how he made “You don’t Know How Much I Love You”. I know Arnau Gifreu Castells, expert in transmedia projects, from Barcelona, he has invited me to his session during the DocsBarcelona, I have not been able to be there, maybe in Prague on March 8? The same goes for renowned editor Joe Bini, who has a masterclass on the 9^th of March, an hour before I have the privilege to introduce “Czech Docs… Coming Soon”. There is much more, and there is a video library, East Silver Market, if you don’t manage to get to the cinema where the One World Festival goes on.

And some more name-dropping – tutors of the workshop before the final pitch, quite a strong group of people: Paweł Łoziński , American editor Joe Bini, Danish producer Helle Faber Soendergaard (Made in Copenhagen), film critic Giona Nazzaro (Visions du réel – International Documentary Film Festival Venice International Film Critics’ Week), Czech distributor Ivo Andrle (Kino Aero, Světozor, Aerofilms), film writer and editor Maya Hawke, consultant Peter Jaeger (Autlook Filmsales, Jaeger Creative) and French director and editor Stan Neumann. My comment: Neumann is a hit at every workshop. Also present at the preparatory workshop will be the Ex Oriente Film workshop lead tutors: director and dramaturg Ivana Pauerová Miloševičová (Czech television), Czech director and producer Filip Remunda (Hypermarket Film), Mikael Opstrup (EDN – European Documentary Network) and Finish producer and director Iikka Vehkalahti (Rough Cut Service).

IDF stands for quality!

https://www.dokweb.net/en/

It’s spring, 1st of March, from where I sit in Copenhagen it’s cloudy and windy but milder. I have the window open. It’s spring and the CPH:DOX festival announced its program at noon today. The festival has moved to March and the festival main venue has moved. CPH:DOX will have what they call a Festival Palace at the Charlottenborg on Kongens Nytorv next to the Royal Theatre (the classic, not the new at the harbour). Here will be cinemas, exhibitions, a five day conference, concerts and parties, café and restaurant and much much more. The headquarter in other words. In one of the central squares of Copenhagen.

The website is up and running, the programme newspaper can be downloaded, I guess there will be banners round the city if they are not there yet… and there will be screenings outside Copenhagen, more than 100 it is written in the press material.

More than 200 films with 75 world premieres.

Dates: March 16-26.

Ambition – to be ”more than a festival”, quote from the website’s ”About Us”:

”During the eleven days of the festival, CPH:DOX also presents concerts, art exhibitions, five whole days of professional seminars, a screening market, and the international financing and co-production event CPH:FORUM, as well as the film production program CPH:LAB and much more.

CPH:DOX wants to be the best film festival in and for the world. We insist on freeing the transformative potential of art and documentary films, that is the potential to have a direct impact on the social context. The appealing form of the documentary films allows for the communication of complicated problems in an intimate, reflective and profound manner. And no matter whether the topic is political, philosophical, experimental or focused on a narrow section of the world, documentary film expands and questions the viewer’s conception of the world. But CPH:DOX doesn’t just show documentary films – we anchor them in social context through debates, artist talks, events and masterclasses. In the hope of creating real social transformation, CPH:DOX establishes a space for reflection, dialogue and opinion across the population, and with that making sure that the films and the problems they pose stay with the viewers long after they leave the cinema.”

A manifesto!

https://cphdox.dk/en/

It’s very easy if you want to see what will be shown at the festival. Go to the website, link below, and you will see the many sections arranged by the programmers. The classical ones are there like Dox:Award, New:Vision Award, the F:Act Award, Nordic:Dox Award, a new section for upcoming talents called Next:Wave, docs for kids, docs about artists, docs on the actual populism, Danish docs, festival hits and so on so forth.

Let me pick some of the films that I have heard about in beforehand or that we at filmkommentaren.dk have already written about or reviewed. Or intend to…

The Danish ones in the main competition: The opening film ”Last Men in Aleppo” by Feras Fayyad, with Steen Johannessen as co-director, it won at the Sundance festival. We will review this strong film that not only brought tears to my eyes but also made me sad and angry about what happens and has happened in Syria. Talented Jeppe Rønde’s ”The John Dalli Mystery” starring the

journalists Mads Brügger and Mikael Bertelsen. The film is described like this: ”Brügger and Bertelsen uncover the plans for the murder of a former EU commissioner in a thrilling and funny detective film, where one twist follows another…” And Phie Ambo’s ”… when you look away”: ” Where are the limits of consciousness and are we connected in ways we never knew? … these big questions in a filmic experiment with surprising answers.”

Also I want to see Margreth Olin’s film from a kindergarten, ”Childhood”, Ulrich Seidl’s ”Safari”, Askold Kurov’s film on ”The State vs Oleg Sentsov”, Michal Marczak’s ”All these Sleepless Nights”. And many more if time allows.

AND YOU should see the following films that we have already praised on filmkommentaren, click and you will be taken to our texts:

Rahul Jain: ”Machines”, Torstein Grude and Niels Pagh Andersen’s ”Mogadishu Soldier”, Sergei Loznitsa’s ”Austerlitz”, Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s ”Homo Sapiens” that will be played with a musical  accompagnement, Jërome le Maire’s ”Burning Out” (PHOTO), that will have a screening at Rigshospitalet, our biggest hospital in Denmark (!), Kirsten Johnson’s ”Cameraperson”, ”I am not your Negro” by Raoul Peck…

In a couple of days you will be invited to read my review of the film by Mona Willi and Michael Glawogger, ”Untitled”, also that is of course at CPH:DOX. Glawogger died in 2014, his editor made ”his” film from the material he had shot.

https://cphdox.dk/en/programme/programme-2017/ 

”Industry”, that is what CPH:DOX, and all the other big festivals call – quoted from the site – ”the various activities offer professional development, networking, and business opportunities to filmmakers and industry professionals at all levels of experience”.

So when the audience happily goes to watch films, the producers and directors and people like me, who is curious to know what is happening at the market, or which themes the filmmakers pick or what the funders are looking for or what kind of training is offered… we miss some films but are spoilt in other ways. CPH:DOX 2017, indeed, has done a lot to give us choices and it has to be said that most of these professional activities take place during day time, where screenings of course fill the evenings.

CPH:Conference is a series of day-long thematic sessions that the festival has set up in collaboration with the training programme Discovery Campus with the support of the daily Danish newspaper Information. ”Science and Film”, ”Art, Technology & Change” and ”Serialized” are some of the points, the latter including a visit by the Oscar winner Ezra Edelmann to talk on his film on O.J.

The CPH:Forum is more than similar events at other big festivals focused on bringing in ”auteurs”, so you will find names like Hubert Sauper, Kirsten Johnson, Roberto Minervini, Sally Potter, Sophie Fiennes AND our local hero, amazing Jørgen Leth on the list of people to pitch. To whom? Quote from the site: ”This year we welcome, amongst many others, highly esteemed broadcasters such as ARTE, ZDF, NDR, BBC, DR, film funds from all over Europe, as well as Ford Foundation, Tribeca Film Institute, Fondation Cartier, Tate Modern and Sundance Institute.”

And there is a CPH:Lab and a CPH: Academy for young filmmakers and their projects to be developed, and a market for people like me, who want to see films in the videotheque.

You name it – It’s all there!

https://cphdox.dk/en/cphindustry/?i=1

… with the Docs & Talks at Cinemateket in Copenhagen. Filmkommentaren has been happy to be a so-called media supporter of a festival with a different profile than the ones we usually know and write about: Films were shown and followed by hour-long thematic talks and discussions about terrorism, Denmark’s wars, international aid programs, migration and apologies for past sins with researchers from DIIS (Danish Institute for International Studies), filmmakers and even military personnel (!) as participants.

The DIIS and Cinemateket were organisers, Danish Film Institute supported, Sara Thelle and Mira Bach Hansen selected, promoted and hosted together with Rasmus Brendstrup from Cinemateket,

There was an average of 95 in the cinema for the 11 screenings, 1055 in total, impressive when you take into consideration that many of the screenings took place weekdays in the afternoon. “Je Suis le Peuple” by Anna Roussillon was one of the best films at the festival, 117 came to watch and listen to researcher Rasmus Boserup talk about Egypt. Therefore a still from that film.

Small is Beautiful, next year with eventual evening screenings… the numbers will double.