The 19th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival were giving out awards a couple of days ago. The Danish production ”Dream Empire” by David Borenstein got the main prize, the Golden Alexander, with a Special Jury Award for the amazing ”Machines” by Rahul Jain from India.

An Amnesty Award for the best film in the Human Rights section was given to Raoul Peck’s masterpiece ”I am not Your Negro”. And the award in the name of late documentary guru Peter Wintonick was given to Zaradasht Ahmed for his Iraq film ”Nowhere to Hide”.

As motivation for the award to ”Dream Empire”, quote from festival site, ”The president of the jury, Mr Paul Pauwels, said that “we were captivated by this documentary because the story develops in an imaginative way: from a simple situation to a compellingly insightful journey to the global dynamic of a world in progress – or maybe in crisis? We appreciated the humour, the powerful character and the aesthetic, which make the film a delight for spectators, but also make them more sensitive towards serious issues that concern us all”.  

http://tdf.filmfestival.gr/

As usual the Prague-based festival delivers precise and informative press releases. Here is the one about the winners… The juries of the 19th annual One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival granted seven awards to films that were screened in Prague from 6 ­to 15 March.

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION JURY

The Best Film award went to Nowhere to Hide (PHOTO) by director Zaradasht Ahmed (Norway, Sweden | 2016 | 85 min.), in which a male nurse in Iraq films his daily life scarred by war. Later he must flee Islamic State and himself becomes the protagonist of the story. Motivation:

“Thanks to the courage of its protagonist and the

dedication of its filmmaker who doesn’t take no for an answer, this best film award not only allowed us to witness the life of a family man and a proud professional in circumstances that none of us wishes to experience, but also gave us unique access to a country torn apart”.

The Best Director award went to Jiu-liang Wang for Plastic China (China | 2016 | 82 min.). It presents life in a Chinese family business for plastic recycling, where adults as well as children must eke out a living among the waste imported from Europe. Motivation:

“The awarded director proved some incredible talent in finding an intimate, complex and yet respectful way to document the harsh reality of social classes faced with the aftermath of an economic globalisation that has bittersweet consequences… For many of us, recycling simply means preserving nature. For many others, it is a way of surviving that might affect your health and that of your children.”

VÁCLAV HAVEL JURY

The Václav Havel Jury awards films that make an extraordinary contribution to the defence of human rights. The award went to Chasing Asylum by Australian director Eva Orner (Australia, USA | 2016 | 96 min.). The film exposes the inhumane conditions in detention camps on islands in the Pacific where Australia holds asylum seekers. Motivation:

“This is an original and shocking film that exposes the international community’s moral, legal and political failure to tackle one of the most pressing humanitarian issues that the world faces today: the flow of refugees fleeing persecution, conflict and many other perils at home… Specifically, Chasing Asylum portrays the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of the Australian government’s policy of shipping asylum seekers and migrants to offshore prison camps, to be held indefinitely as punishment for seeking refuge in Australia.”

Special Mention by the Václav Havel Jury to director Duro Gavran for his film News from Laayoune (Croatia | 2016 | 50 min.). Motivation:

“The film depicts the Sahrawi nonviolent struggle for justice,” the jury said in a statement. “While Sahrawis under occupation in the occupied territory face multiple human rights violations, Sahrawi refugees languish in the middle of the Sahara Desert awaiting a long-promised referendum on self-determination, but the UN Security Council has so far failed to implement the vote. With this special mention we urge the international community to act.”

CZECH COMPETITION JURY

The Czech Competition Jury this year for the first time selected the best film from among Czech documentary productions and co-productions. One World created this new jury in order to support the presentation of Czech documentary films at foreign festivals.

The Czech Competition Jury Award went to Miroslav Janek’s Normal Autistic Film (Czech Republic | 2016 | 88 min.). The documentary shows the rich inner lives of children with autism and the ways they cope with the world around them. In February this year the film also won the Czech Lion Award and the Czech Film Critics Award. Motivation:

“This is an exquisitely crafted and masterfully edited film with a wonderful and uplifting story about the inner lives of five exceptional children, whose hidden worlds are revealed to us in a beautiful way”.

The Czech Competition Jury gave Special Mention to Robert Kirchhoff’s documentary A Hole in the Head (Czech Republic, Slovakia | 2016 | 88 min.). The film presents rare testimony about the Roma Holocaust. Motivation:

“This is a powerful and poetic film that reminds us that we still don’t know everything about the Holocaust,” the jury said. “The director and his crew create a visual landscape for an important testimony of the Roma people and acknowledge them among the forgotten victims of the Second World War.”

STUDENT JURY

The student jury chooses the best film from a selection of films for students.

The Student Jury Award went to Death by Design by director Sue Williams (USA | 2016 | 73 min.). Motivation:

“We decided to award the film mainly because the topic touches all of us, a generation surrounded by electronic devices,” the jury said in its statement. “We believe that the public is not knowledgeable enough about the risks of production of consumer electronics and that raising awareness about environmental pollution is very important. We appreciate that the film also showed positive examples of responsible manufacturing and gently communicated the message that when it comes to the Earth’s problems we are all in it together.”

Saturday morning I attended the pitching of 18 projects and an award ceremony, including 9 awards – they will be announced on the site and/or the Facebook page of the organizing IDF, Institute of Documentary Film. As usual with a fine atmosphere at the Komedie Theatre, unpretentious professionalism, all projects were presented without any discussion afterwards, that happened later that afternoon and this morning in round table discussions with the participation of broadcasters, sales agents, distributors, festival programmers, producers…

I watched and listened to the projects and established my own point system with 10 and 9 in the top. 6 out of 18 qualified:

BUCHAREST DELTA

Romania/France, director Eva Pervolovici

First person film, cinematic trailer that gives an idea of what the film will look like. ”An abandoned land…a political prison, a natural park, a roma settlement… past and present”

PROVINCIAL TOWN OF E (PHOTO)

Russia, director Dmitry Bogolubov

Logline: Ghosts of the heroic soviet past don’t allow provincial town of E to live in the present… Trailer with excellent cinematography… if they can avoid the clichés, pay respect to the people with no pointing fingers at them… The project received 3 of the 9 awards.

MERCEDES PRINCIPLE

Russia, director Alina Rudnitskaya

Docu comedy by one of the most talented Russian directors, character-driven, women who are looking for ”a prosperous man”. Proff. Trailer.

THE SMUGGLER

Latvia, director Ivars Zviedris

The man behind ”Documentarian”, a true documentarian, director/cameraman, showed a trailer AND a small scene, hilarious, with a man being questioned by the border police. In Borderland between Russia and Latvia. Received the DocsBarcelona award.

THE LABUDOVIC FILES

Serbia/ France, director Mila Turajlic

Fine trailer and presentation, will be an interesting historical documentary, ”an archival road trip with cameraman Labudovic, Tito’s cameraman, cinemic eye of the Algerian revolution…”

GOD OVERESTIMATED ME

Bulgaria/ Sweden, director Yulian Tabakov

A hand reaching out for a cup or water on a table, an old woman’s voice, a horse and its carriage in a landscape that looks like a dump – a director’s aesthetic choice for the presentation of his film. Great.

Looking forward to seeing these films completed as well as the others of the 18, which were maybe not so interesting at a first glance. The question that comes up for me is what kind of trailers should be made – the ones that present the topic or the ones that are the film in terms of style, handwriting, l´écriture as the French call it.

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

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