Magnificent7 2017 13th Edition

The 13th and last post from the 13th edition of the Magnificent7 Festival in Belgrade. The photos shown are from the closing night, where ”In Loco Parentis” by Neasa Ní Chianáin and David Rane was shown to an audience of the size you can see from the photos. Before the screening the two directors behind the Irish film received an award from the local Bel Medic ”for creative emphasis of humanistic values”, a diploma accompanied by an envelope.

The photos… from the stage I asked the photographers to turn around and catch the most magnificent audience I know of, applauding the festival, the filmmakers, the staff of the Sava Center, the team behind the festival and the festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, who were on stage. Standing ovation from more than 2000 spectators, who came to watch – an estimate of the attendance during the whole week is that 7500-8000 went to watch the Magnificent7 program of 7 films. One film per day, Q&A’s for around 50 people in a packed vip room and the day after meeting of directors with around 25 young filmmakers in two hour sessions. This year the festival welcomed directors from 6 out of the 7 films: Sergei Loznitsa, Jérome le Maire, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Miroslav Janek, Audrius Stonys, Neasa Ní Chianáin and David Rane. Only Cosima Lange from the opening film ”Hello, I’m David” (Helfgott) could not come as she was not allowed to travel because of her pregnancy.

From an ”internal” perspective the hospitality was again second to none. Wonderful hotel, the Crowne Plaza, from where you can access the Sava Center cinema – and – as some Serbian filmmakers suggested as a logline for the festival guests: 7 films, 14 restaurants! With a reference to the fact that the festival team finds lunch and dinner restaurants for the 7 days.

Including me and my wife for the 13th time. HVALA!

http://magnificent7festival.org/en/

https://www.facebook.com/belmedic 

Audrius Stonys Masterclass at M7

”This is a sacred place, like a church and suddenly we hear this crazy sound. This man takes tourists to this place. He is the sign of civilisation. A sign of a new time. The reality is that these guys are coming. Something precious will disappear…”

Lithuanian Audrius Stonys is a mild man but when he talks about the end of his film his voice is full of sadness and anger. As we experienced at the masterclass with him at the VIP room at the Sava Centre. A class that turned out to be dealing with what it means to be filming at the heights of Tian Shan mountain on the border between Kazakhstan and China, where his ”Woman and the Glacier” is shot and to where his main character, Lithuanian glaciologist Ausra Revutaite, came 30 years ago.

He made four expeditions to the mountains. “It took two

expeditions to find out that she did not want to speak or take part… First she was glad to be able to speak Lithuanian and she took us around… we had to obey the rules of the mountain and she knew the weather”. But for the two last expeditions they were there to film the mountains – for the dop, Audrius Kemezys, the challenge was to make the natural beauty into a cinemaric language. Sometimes we got one shot per day!

“The lack of oxygen affects you. I felt heavy. All the time you feel like you have a big stone on the chest… and when you come down you feel like flying. I think it is called natural doping among the runners who train in thin air”.

Audrius Stonys had 20 hours of material, he started editing after the third expedition and said in the masterclass that he was looking for the soul of the place, he succeeded when a structure was found, when the images started to talk to each other. The final stage of the editing was done in 10 days, the editor was young Estonian Mirjam Jegorov. The director and editor did the job in a monastery where a film loving monk had installed an editing room!

“You can not force the landscape to change if the footage says something else…if you go closer to the glacier you see the texture. You have to be humble, you listen to what the mountains say and you use your intuition”.

… and you make your own associations when you watch this elegy. When the stones and the water flow dramatically down the mountains, I think of Artavadz Pelichian, when the camera move into the caves and one “painting” after the other reaches your eyes, surrealist artist Yves Tanguy comes to my mind, so on so forth.

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

 

 

Ní Chianáin and Rane: In Loco Parentis

“IN LOCO PARENTIS” is the first Irish documentary that premiered with great success in the main program of the world’s largest documentary film festival in Amsterdam, after which it was selected for the main program of the Sundance Film Festival. Neasa Ní Chianáin is one of Ireland’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers, and her previous documentaries have had considerable international success. David Rane is an experienced producer and director, who received one of the most important European awards, the BAFTA Award. This author and life couple has spent a full year in the school, preparing a project that took a lot of production and creative efforts to achieve its top quality.

This observational documentary follows a year in the lives of two inspiring teachers in the only elementary school with boarding facilities in Ireland. Headfort School, the school not much different in appearance from the legendary Hogwarts from Harry Potter, with its buildings from the XVIII century, with secret doors and magical forests, is the home of John and Amanda Leyden for 46 years and the background of their exceptional careers. For John, rock music is another subject to Math, English, Latin and religious education. He cherishes a special kind of youthful revolution by teaching responsibility and independence in equal respect, wrapped in heavy metal or pop, encouraging the children to play whatever they want in the school basement rock club. For Amanda, the key liaison with children is a book and she uses all ways to catch young minds. The children sit as transfixed when she leads them on magical journeys with fantastic heroes of different stories.

Besides directing, Neasa Ní Chianáin was an inspired and omnipresent cinematographer in this film, and David Rane had a difficult task to record sound discreetly following Neasa, besides his production work and directing. “We wanted to film a year in the life of the school, just to keep track and observe, no interviews, no divine voice that leads the audience… We knew that for us it means full immersion in order to gain access to the intimacy that we wanted to capture.”

Ireland, Spain, 2016, 99 mins.

http://www.inlocoparentis.ie/

http://magnificent7festival.org/en/

Miroslav Janek Masterclass at M7

No doubt, the biggest applause of the festival went for Miroslav Janek on the fifth day of the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade. His film ”Normal Autistic Film”, made with a warm heart by the Czech veteran, cameraman and director, and for many years also editor, a job he now leaves to his wife Tonicka, demonstrates how strong relations he is able to build with children. Before with ”Unseen” (1996) and ”Kha-chee-pae” (2005) and now with this work on five clever and creative children with aspergers syndrom.

I believe that the biggest part of documentary filmmaking is NOT shooting, Janek said in the masterclass the day after the screening of the film. He referred to how he dealt with the kids. ”I went to visit them and maybe I shot one hour with them during a day. The rest

of the time we were together”. Janek was shooting over a period of two years with one year of prep including talks with people/experts in aspergers syndrom. All together he spent 7-10 days with each of the five kids, with whom he is still in contact.

You get the impression that Janek very much – as a true documentarian – works according to intuition. ”I am the happiest guy if I come home with 15-20 minutes and I know there is a scene or some shots that I can use”. ”I just let it up to life”.

”With this film I stayed 5 weeks in the editing room because I liked the material so much. But then I gave it all to the editor, Tonicka, who is my wife, together with a book where everything shot has been noted and characterised. It is Tonicka, who finds the film. And then 2 ½ month passes and what happens… one day she can bring a scene and ask ”is this what you want?””.

Janek talked about making trailers. First he was sceptical but when he had done it with Tonicka a couple of times, for this film and for ”Olga”, the great film about Havel’s first wife, he found out that the process itself clarifies and leads you to the film.

Openings… so important he said and showed the one for ”Unseen”, which is excellent as well as the one for ”Kha-chee-pae”.

… and there were talks about the five kids: Lukas, Denis, Hamid, Marjam, Majda – and moderator Zoran Popovic wanted to know the favourite of the workshoppers. Seems like all of them were loved. Of course!

www.magnificent7festival.org 

Jérôme le Maire Masterclass at M7

Documentary is the art of meetings. This was the starting point of Belgian Jérôme le Maire, when he talked to young and younger filmmakers at the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade. The title of the very well prepared class could also have been ”the story of my film”. It all started with a book about the phenomenon ”burned out”. le Maire met with the author and with a psychoanalyst and a psychologist – and started a research. I became friend with the author, Pascal Chabot, and he let me meet a girl who had had the experience, as well as a ”professor in burn-out”, to whom I showed my previous film, ”Tea or Electricity”. I explained that I wanted to make the film in direct cinema style. He liked the film and the idea.

The third meeting was with Esmeralda together with the psychoanalyst and the psychologist. She worked in a consulting company and sat in an open space office – I met people there but would it be interesting to film people in front of computers? No…

The breakthrough came, when the writer Pascal was invited to the hospital to talk to members of the staff. He was invited by Marie-Christine, who was to be the main character of ”Burning Out”. This

was six months after I had read the book. It takes time to make films. Good films. I decided to film in the hospital and had to cut the link to Esmeralda, whose story had meant a lot fo me.

Then came the long procedure to get the permission to film. Where can I go and where can I not go. I went there three days a week, Came in the morning, met someone and asked if I could follow them. They found it strange with this man going around with them with a notebook – what is so interesting, they asked.

Main character became Marie-Christine, the anesthetic nurse, who was interesting because she was interested in changing the bad working situations. 2nd was the surgeon Sarfati, be careful with him, people said, but I met with him, showed him my Morocco film (”Tea or Electricity”), he became a friend, and then Sabrina, nursing assistant, who said that so far nobody had had any interest in what she was doing…

I brought the camera. Well, first I took photos and filmed with a small camera to make them feel comfortable with the situation – but after months I still did not have the authorisation, I was pushed from one to the other. It took me 3 months to get it! But at that time I already had the confidence of the characters, they trusted me and I trusted them. Why did it take so long time to get an ok – it was also because that I had to, again and again, promise not to damage the image of the hospital. I will listen to you, you will see the film before it is finished, but I have the final cut. ”Are you a fireman or a pyromaniac”, they asked! I said to the management, ”I have the message of hope”, ”I felt I had a role” and I decided to be a character, who interferes by asking questions. The audience had the right to know that there was someone behind the camera. I filmed first for half a year, and then had to get out in the sun, I started to feel traumatic and then I came back and concentrated on the characters…

Jérome le Maire ended his masterclass by giving facts: 1 ½ year of research, 1 year of shooting, and for the editing I also attended the DOKInkubator, three sessions, very helpful for me, again a meeting. The film will be broadcast on arte in November, it is being released at theatres in Belgium. It was at IDFA and then quickly after that at Magnificent7 in Belgrade.

Photo: Maja Medic.

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

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

 

 

 

Audrius Stonys: Woman and the Glacier

The master of refined style, Audrius Stonys, decided to take us on an unusual pilgrimage to the inaccessible heights of Tian Shan mountain on the border between Kazakhstan and China. In the areas of this Mountain of Heaven, which looks like an unknown and inhospitable planet, he devotes all his attention and creativity to an amazing person who has spent thirty years observing and monitoring the state of the giant glacier, so important for the science, but also for the whole planet. Through an unusual intimate portrait of a mountain captive in constant motion, Audrius Stonys masterfully poetizes relations of the heroine and the environment, nature, sky, beings with whom she shares the loneliness, the rigors of the climate and the beauty that surrounds them.

To his story in present time, meticulously woven without words, Stonys adds another important layer, a layer of long time flows. This film plunges deep into time, and in the compounds of past and present builds a brand new, poetic and timeless relations. Audrius Stonys is one of the most important European authors because of this complex weave of time in his films and amazing ability to capture and express the feeling that through spaces, people, events and phenomena converge and break all previous deep and very distant reflections of time.

The author was drawn to the fact that the woman glaciologist is his compatriot: “It is very unusual for a woman from Lithuania to explore ice on the remote Tian Shan, at the end of the world, without any connection with the rest of the world. Scientist Aushra, living high in the mountains, in a wooden house near the huge glacier, did measurements for many years, every morning and evening, summer and winter, and sent them to the control center in Almaty. She gave her whole life observing glaciers in Kazakhstan.”

Lithuania, Estonia, 2016, 56 mins.

http://www.efis.ee/en/film-categotries/movies/id/18547

www.magnificent7festival.org

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/