Syrian Guevara Namer, who I have known from the Damascus DOXBOX festival, and who now lives in Berlin, sent me a link and a text asking us to share, which we do through this. First the text, then the link to sign a petition:

Raise you voice to save the ones who are left inside Syria.
Aleppo has been subject to all kinds of violations of International Humanitarian laws for four months now, all the laws and norms aiming to protect civilians during armed conflict were massively violated by the Syrian government supported with it’s allied Russian armed forces on Syrian soil along with Iranian, Iraqi and Lebanese militias.
The city saw thousands of air‐raids, explosive barrels, mortars, cluster bombs, Clonic bombs bunker buster and bombs fueled with chlorine gas.
No hospitals, schools , nor civil society centers were spared from shelling.
Four months of total absence of public services or infrastructure, where civilians are trapped and the world is standing still with no trace of reaction.
During the last few hours, as the regime and its militias advanced towards the Eastern side of the city, news and reports about field executions, random killings of unarmed civilians and burning of their properties in groups massacres of those who are left in the city.
As per the civil society defense in Aleppo, no reports available regarding the number of victims since Monday, bodies are filling the streets and the shelling is still on.
For six years now we have been informing the world that we are being slaughtered with hundreds, nevertheless thousands of massacres against Syrian civilians, hundreds of petitions, statements and pleas to countries all over the world and to public opinion to stop the genocide and bring criminals to justice, but the way events are happening now, it can’t be further uglier than the way it is today.
Now at these hours we put the world accountable for what is happening in Aleppo.
Away from feelings of anger and disappointment of Syrians, this level of violence will only contributes to growing extremism at an international level, it will shake the very base of societies core value of social justice.
Therefore The international community should announce clearly its commitment to supporting Syrians, to neutralize civilians away from armed conflict, and to bring to justice criminals of mass killing and extermination.
We as Syrian, European and international civil society activists we demand action from the International Community and the United Nations.
For them to stand with more than just words of condemnation, to save those who are left in Syria and lift the injustice towards innocent people.
Our position today is built on historical and human necessity and our duty forces us to raise loud voices of rejection to negative political discourse that we consider scandalous as it stands still and silently facing this amount of wasted precious innocent blood, today in the 21st century.
And we claim the following actions :
‐ Ceasing all military operations immediately.
‐ Holding Russia responsible for the result of failure in allowing civilians to leave Eastern Aleppo.
‐ Criminalizing the actions of the regime and militias in Syria classified around the world as terrorists such as Hezbollah and others.
The petition was initially launched on Avaaz website under the following link:
https://secure.avaaz.org/ar/petition/

USE THIS LINK TO SIGN THE PETITION:

https://www.change.org/ 

You are 12-13 minutes into the film before someone is saying something. Before that the camera operated by Mexican Rodrigo Trejo Villanueva takes you into a huge textiles factory in Gujarat, India to – with the words of Richard Leacock – give us viewers the feeling of being there. A more than succesful ambition; you go with the workers carrying bundles of cloth, putting them where they are to be before they go for drying and being colored; it is a long and complicated process and as the first worker talking says, ”sometimes you just need to push a button, sometimes you need strength and brain”. You go with the cameraperson, who goes with the workers, there is a constant movement and an eye for the detail and for faces and for giving information about what is being produced. Yes, here is one more film that gives us evidence that you can tell in images, if you know the possibilities of the cinematic language. I was thinking of late master Glawogger and his masterpieces ”Megacities” and ”Workingman’s Death”. This debut film (!) has the same visual qualities.

The visual flow stops once in a while to let workers speak. One tells how he has to loan money to come here to work and tells the director that he is not exploited. There is a moving interview with a child and later on a magnificent sequence, where a child worker struggles not to fall asleep. He is yawning several times, the eyes are almost closing… they work in 12 hour shifts, they are under-paid, there is no efficient union that could change the 12 hours to more human 8 hours working hours. And there is an interview with the director, who is not satisfied with the workers, who – I think that is what the assh… finds that the workers now just want to fill their stomach and don’t even send money back to their family.

A different stylistical take is introduced towards the end. From the observational mixed with some interviews an image comes up with a handful of workers standing outside dressed in some of the textiles they have produced, a beautiful picture but why I thought, followed by a flight over the factories and then down to a crowd of people, who have a speaker, who says ”why do you come here to have us tell about our working condition and our poverty, why don’t you help us, why don’t you tell us what to do…” The question goes to the ones behind the camera and to us, who have watched a unique film from our world. Enjoying the aesthetical choice and enraged by the content.  

India, Germany, Finland, 2016, 70 mins.

Lucky punch! We had lunch with producer and director of the Robert Frank film ”Don’t Blink”, Melinda Shopsin and Laura Israel, who recommended us to visit a new cinema in downtown New York, Metrograph, a very nice venue, European art house style with restaurant, small bookshop, a bar and NO commercials before the film – it reminded us of Danish Cinemateket with film historical retrospectives and a ”special preview arrangement” of the already several times awarded ”I Am Not Your Negro” by Raoul Peck, nominated for the IDA Awards and on the shortlist of 15 running for the Documentary Oscar.

Peck’s film is a masterpiece, simply. Well crafted, well told, coming from the genius idea to make James Baldwin’s unfinished book (30 pages) ”Remember This House” into a film based on Baldwin’s words from the book (read beautifully by actor Samuel L. Jackson) plus great archive material with Baldwin himself, who was an excellent speaker, with clips from feature films, reportage material and footage of today and references till today’s racism in USA, for that is what the film is about, and his unfinished book: the racial discrimination and the murder of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr – who lost their lives because they wanted to change the situation for the negros, as it is formulated by Baldwin with passion. You sit and watch events and people that you know about already and yet you are amazed by how much it still affects you, because the director puts the story so strongly together. There is and is not a chronology, the present is there, black people killed by white people in this century, black lives matter. This film helps as a film – far from the tv reportage – to put history in a perspective of today.

In an interview Raoul Peck says: “James Baldwin has clearly become intellectually and politically unsurpassable — in fact, a visionary”. “Ironically and tragically, he is becoming more so by the day. It is truly a pleasure to partner with such a great team to re-introduce James Baldwin to the American audience.”

Yes, the one who writes this, educated librarian, wants to check out James Baldwin again. And to watch this great film work again.

http://metrograph.com/

It was ”O.J.: Made in America” by Ezra Edelmann that got the ”Best Feature Award” at the IDA (International Documentary Organization) ceremony in Los Angeles friday night. There was nothing for excellent films as ”Cameraperson” by Kirsten Johnson or ”I Am Not Your Negro” by Raoul Peck, a film I saw today at a new cinema in New York. Separate post on that film. Nothing for Gianfranco Rosi either for his ”Fire at Sea” but he could return to Europe to receive the EFA (European Film Award) to night in Wroclaw, Poland for best documentary.

The Netflix production from Syria ”The White Helmets” by Orlando Einsiedel won the ”Best Short Award” and we Danes should be proud that the ”Best Curated Series Award” went to Dokumania from public broadcaster DR2, a series that we have followed closely on this site – with Mette Hoffmann Meyer as the editor in charge. She has done a fine work bringing especially anglo-saxon documentaries to a Danish audience. One can only hope that Dokumania continues with high quality after Hoffmann Meyer has left DR.

For many other awards, including the one for Ally Derks for her pioneer work at IDFA, see

http://www.documentary.org/awards2016/nominees

IDA, The International Documentary Association, is awarding documentary filmmakers and films this coming friday at a ceremony in Los Angeles. It is now ”award season” as they say in the US film circles and the IDA event is one of those events that come before the Oscars and which is considered to say something about/predict, who will compete at the Academy Awards. IDA is an association that on its website  has this fine sentence: Documentary storytelling expands our understanding of shared human experience, fostering an informed, compassionate, and connected world.

For those who miss the DOX Magazine you should know that IDA publishes the Documentary Magazine – it’s all on the website, see below.

For readers of this site you should know that four of the nominated six films for the Best Feature Award have been reviewed or reported on: ”O.J.: Made in America” by Ezra Edelman, ”Cameraperson” (PHOTO) by Kirsten Johnson, ”Weiner” by Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg, and the only non-American film on the list, ”Fire at Sea” by Gianfranco Rosi. Johnson is also nominated in the short category for ”The Above” and for Best Editing (Nels Bangerter). Rosi is also on the list for ”Fire at Sea”.

There are many other awards – I have absolutely no objection to a Pioneer Award to Ally Derks, who steps down as director of IDFA after having started the whole thing more than twenty years ago, a festival that this year had 280.000 tickets sold or given out. And bravo to those administering the Pare Lorentz Award to give that to beautiful ”Starless Dreams” by Iranian Mehrdad Oskouei.

http://www.documentary.org/awards2016