DOK Leipzig 2016 Program

… was announced yesterday with an extensive press release for the 59th (!) edition of the documentary and animation film festival that runs October 31 till November 6. Let me, who will be there, as usual, for some days, enjoying the professionalism and hospitality of the festival, and the city of Leipzig, give you what the festival wants us press people to put a focus on, through a quote from the headlines:

“DOK Leipzig sets record for premieres. Official Selection 2016: Big names, promising talent, and a greater number of female directors. This year 100 films are celebrating their world and international premieres at DOK Leipzig. With 34 more than last year, the number has risen to set a new record. A total of 179 films and 6 interactive projects have made it into the Official Selection…”

OK, let’s take it step by step. “Big Names”, yes and at least two remarkable films that I have already seen: Mira Janek’s beautiful homage to creativity in

“Normal Autistic Film” (photo) and Vitaly Mansky’s timely, personal family essay “Rodnye: Close Relations”. And productive Sergei Loznitsa is back (last year he was there with magnificent “The Event”) with “Austerlitz”, “in which he observes visitors to a concentration camp with their selfie sticks: an eery scenery set in black & white tableaux.” Ukranian Sergey Buhovsky is there with “The Leading Role” and from good friend, producer Nenad Puhovski I heard that “Dum Spiro Spero” by Pero Kvesic should be something very special. Program director Grit Lemke writes, a quote: “…Dum spiro spero, to quote Cicero: while I breathe, I hope. But breathing can be a bit tricky when you have only twenty percent lung volume left, like Pero Kvesić. With a declining trend. The basic sound of this film (besides Kvesić’s Jew’s harp) is his wheezing as he moves through his shrinking universe, camera at the ready…”

Yes, for someone who thinks that “East Beats West” when it comes to original, artistic documentaries, DOK Leipzig has a lot to offer.

Next step. “a greater number of female directors”. Leena Pasanen, festival director: “We are very glad about the increased number of female directors in the competitions for feature-length films,” “Our team is making efforts to strengthen women in the film industry and we wish that more women are in a position to realise their film projects successfully. As one example, that’s why we have introduced a new prize this year for the best female-driven film project.” And make a retrospective with Russian director, producer and educator Marina Razbezhkina, who is also to be the one and only juror of the Next Master section of the festival.

And the special programmes… an exciting country focus on Turkey put together by Õzge Calafato and a wonderful  retrospective of Polish documentaries with director names like Lozinski (Marcel and Pawel), Maciej Drygas, Kieślowski, Dziworski, Jerzy Bossak, Karabasz, Koszalska, Pacek, Palka… And “Disobedient Images”, a collection of animation films, remember that the slogan of this year’s festival is Disobedience. And much, much more.

A total of 309 films and interactive works will be shown during the festival week… OMG!

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/en 

Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /8

… they had plenty of time – the ultimate documentary resource – they themselves became something of experts in geography and agriculture. They were also sensitive and capable of the profound empathy with the subject matter that transforms certain photographers into depictors of reality in a truly documentary sense. Knowledge also affords artistic freedom. Experienced and versed, the author can move within his subject matter. His depiction of reality then becomes “macro realistic” – that is, a concrete expression of an inner reality.

NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th

By Sune Jonsson (1978)

8

The reportage confrontation is a fragile method of documentary work. But even so unfavorable an assignment situation can be transformed: if the photographer is given sufficient time, if he is given time to gain a knowledge of the environment that will enable his pictures to function as documentary statements, if he has the personal qualifications to deepen his empathy, his social commitment, and his responsibility as a fellow human being. This obviously turned out to be the case with Gunnar Lundh and Sven Järlås. And young photographers like Yngve Baum and Jean Hermanson have also come far along the same road of personal deepening.

How the subject matter can eventually assume the role of client can be sensed when one reads in the writing of Kurt Bergengren that C. G. Rosenberg became so intensely captivated by the image world of the stone sculptures of the churches of the Baltic Swedish island of Gotland that he felt the need to convert to Catholicism, that Lennart af Petersens suddenly experienced Christ as a personal presence while he was working on documenting the triptych in Strängnäs Cathedral.

As Gunnar Lundh and Sven Järlås worked with a specialist, so too did the renowned FSA photographers work with specialists from the US Department of Agriculture and under the whip of the tough Roy Stryker. Because they had plenty of time – the ultimate documentary resource – they themselves became something of experts in geography and agriculture. They were also sensitive and capable of the profound empathy with the subject matter that transforms certain photographers into depictors of reality in a truly documentary sense. (To be continued on Filmkommentaren with one more reflection…)

FOTO

Sune Jonsson: Helmer Jonsson med hästen Frank och flakvagn på väg för at lada hö under slättern, 1960. Det hedder videre i billedteksten i bogen Sune Jonsson: Album – fotografier fem decennier, 2000, hvor fotografiet er hentet: ”En af skrindbalkarna på flaket har lagts ner för att ge plats åt Edvin, Helen och Berta. På de slagna vallarna står stolparna tätt från de redan tømda trådhässjorna, i bakgrunden skymtar tre fyllda, ännu torkande, höhässjor.”

https://randersbiografien.wordpress.com/museum-samling/ (ABN om Sune Jonsson)

Magnificent7 Doc Xtra

I have to confess that I was a bit worried, when I saw that Belgrade friends Svetlana and Zoran Popovic and their team launched a documentary retrospective of films that we had selected and screened during the years of the festival – next year late January it is the 13th time that 7 European feature length documentaries will be shown at the Sava Centre in the Serbian capital. For these screenings there are normally between 1000 and 1500 spectators. Would new people come, would many come to see the films for the second time?  

No need to worry, not at all. I want to repeat that the audience for documentaries in Belgrade is loyal to the M7, as we call it. Some quotes from the Popovic couple:

“The audience was very nice for “Un Tango Más” (by German Kral, who was present), 700-800 people, plus the man from Argentinian Embassy and the Israeli ambassador (who wanted to enjoy Tango)! For “The Monastery” (by Pernille Rose Grønkjær) we had about 500-600 people, plus the chief of the

Danish diplomatic mission in Belgrade and an eminent professor of theology!”

These numbers are amazing for a retrospective… nevertheless the Popovic couple was not that happy with the attendance to Gianfranco Rosi’s “Below Sea Level” – there was 300-400 people. “Mostly because the screening was from 5pm.”  My comment: Come on… that many people for a film that is not new. We could not get that in Copenhagen, I think!

For “Twilight of a Light” by Sylvain Biegeleisen there were  600-700 people: “When they sat, the light went up on the stage, where Sylvain sat with the guitar and Zoran was standing next to him. Sylvain started playing and singing, then a short announcement and another chanson de Jacques Brel. After the screening the audience was so overwhelmed with feelings that they stood and applaude very long to Sylvain who was in front of the stage.”

“Before the film of Michael Glawogger, “Whores’ Glory”, we screened the brilliant piece he made here during the festival workshop – where he recites two verses from Goethe’s Faustus in German. “Nothing is inside, nothing is outside…” The audience for the homage to the deceased master was 500-600.

Very encouraging numbers for repeat screenings of great European documentaries!

http://magnificent7festival.org/bioskop_program.php

Monika Pawluczuk: End of the World

They keep on coming these strong philosophical cinematic essays from Poland. This time one from 2015 that I had not seen, a film that after touring at several American festivals with success has the chance to end up on the Oscar Nomination List for short documentaries. It deserves to be on that list!

On the photo you see one of the faces of the film. One of the faces that react to phone calls from men and women, who want to talk, who seek comfort and understanding of their problems, which normally simply come from loneliness. They call the gentle radio man Kuba. The other face is one of another young man, who takes calls from people in need of immediate medical help. He tries to find out what is wrong, gives advice to those calling on what to do until the ambulance arrives. It is sometimes a more than urgent situation or maybe it is already too late, and sometimes also he gets calls from lonely people. Help needed for the mind and the body.

It sounds very banal and it is on print, but interpreted into a film, within the frame that ”the end of the world” arrives very soon according to the Maya calendar, shot during night time, with dark images with the light coming from inside flats in appartment buildings, mixed in a brilliant montage with images taken from surveillance cameras, images of mostly empty streets, of ”lonely” cars or shot from the ambulance with the radio sound – yes, interpreted into a film that has a tone, and an atmosphere, it becomes an extraordinary documentary about the ordinary. A reflection on ”la condition humaine”.

It sounds very dark but there is also humour and light like when a woman wants to cancel the end of the world as she has experienced love – or the man who wants it to come, to have a new world arrive, where his dogs do not suffer from the noise of the world.

Poland, 2015, 38 mins.

Lisbon Docs and Words from Paul Pauwels

It’s number 17, the workshop and pitching session in Lisbon, the Lisbon Docs 2016, organised by EDN (European Documentary Network) and Apordoc. Running parallel to the DocLisboa festival. Happy to see that the event is still alive and kicking after all these years. Remember how producer Pedro Martins and directors like Sergio Trefaut and Catarina Mouráo and many more set up the Apordoc in 1998 to be an active documentary organisation that among others had the MEDIA Programme supported Lisbon Docs as one of the activities as well as Docs Kingdom. As the EDN representative at meetings in Bruxelles in those years with the MEDIA executives there was always scepticism raised if the Portuguese event was worth keeping (as one of four EDN activities in Southern Europe) – it was obviously, and EDN director Paul Pauwels (photo), in a interview with Cineuropa, explains clearly why and puts words on the profile of the workshop of 2016 (October 16-22):

”It is always important to continue to learn and adapt to new realities. We have realised that even the most experienced of professionals can still find new elements that don’t only help them to present their project in a better way, but also make them think more deeply about it. When you have a lot of experience, it is easy to get caught up in a kind of routine. That makes things tricky, because you might not be thinking enough about storytelling or the market. So we try to provide a service that not only gives documentary professionals tools to develop their stories in the best possible way, but also to think about what the decision makers need and are expecting… Today, the event is much more of a “meeting point”. I believe that the whole process has become much more personal and much more professional. That’s why I think people still make the effort to come to these events – to see what’s going on. And, in the case of Lisbon Docs, I think they also get a very good idea of what is happening in Europe – a Europe that we would like to see united, even though we know that isn’t happening!…”

Link below to more about Lisbon Docs and the whole interview with Pauwels. It is fine to see a list of tutors, who know what a creative documentary is – director Lithuanian Audrius Stonys, local Graca Castanheira (one of the pioneers 17 years ago), Spanish Marta Andreu, Edda Baumann-von Broen, all round doc expert Peter Jäger and producer Christian Popp, previously commissioner at arte.

… and projects, more than 20, happy to see that Lithuanian producer Dagne Vildziunaite is there, as well as Shorena Tevzadze from Georgia, local Jorge Pelicano (director) and Romanian Alex Brendea and Irina Malcea, to whose project ”Teacher” I have high expectations.

List of panelists, read

http://www.lisbondocs.org/lisbondocs2016/en/

Message2Man Winners

The festival that ended last week has finally published the list of awards of the 26th Message to Man festival – in English, the Russian version was on the site right after the festival had ended.

Having delivered this a bit grumpy remark to a festival that otherwise is very professionally organised and is growing in audience – an estimate says that 25.000 tickets were sold and 20.000 attended the grand opening at the Palace Square – I can only greet the decisions taken by the international jury, for the main awards.

Which went to Serbian Ognjen Glavonic and his courageous ”Depth Two”. He got the ”Golden Centaur” and 3000$ for the best film of the festival – and to Iranian Mehrdad Oskouei for ”Starless Dreams”, 1000$, for the best full-length documentary, an observational documentary with a strong emotional impact – and to Lithuanian Giedre Zickyte and Chilean Maite Alberdi for ”I´m not from Here”, best short documentary, wonderful warm film that seems to take prizes everywhere…

There were many other awards given by the international jury… at the national competition, the main award was divided between ”My Friend Boris Nemtsov” by Zosia Radkevich and ”Fire” by Nadya Zakharova (30000 Rubles) and there were awards given in the experimental section In Silico as well as a Diploma for Vitaly Mansky for his ”Under the Sun” given by the Press jury AND another diploma from the Fipresci Jury (I thought that was also a press jury…). The young ones in the Student Jury found ”Mallory” by Helena Trestikova the best film and the grand old man of the festival, now the Honorary President, Mikhail Litviakov, awarded the film on Joseph Brodsky, ”Josefs Land”, by Pavel Medvedev. I have a link for that film and will review asap.

Read the whole list on

http://www.message2man.com/en/news/10093-the-xxvi-message-to-man-announces-the-winners/

Americans in Paris

To be honest we lost our way at the big Cimetière Montparnasse. We had been talking about paying a visit to Sartre & Beauvoir or why not Gainsbourg, but suddenly my wife points and says, look, here is Joris Ivens. And many warm thoughts fill my head. His classic from Borinage (1936), his series from China that we bought for distribution at Statens Filmcentral (National Film Board of Denmark) and his last, the non-political film ”Une Histoire de vent” that I saw in Centre Pompidou with the presence of the director. I remember him sitting in his wheelchair with his beautiful white hair – as you see him in the film in the desert trying to tame the wind with his camera, as he hat put it. He lived from 1898 to 1989, google his filmography, an amazing oeuvre, a man of the world.

But this small personal report from a sunny Paris has its focus elsewhere. On the Americans in Paris. Not Gershwin or Minelli or Hemingway, not the burgers that are now available in almost every café but (first) on the Beat Generation and the exhibition about Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Ferlinghetti, Cassidy and so on at Centre Pompidou. We got there on the last day it was open and I had high expectations after all the clever observations our Danish Beat Generation expert par excellence Lars Movin had formulated. No disappointment – photographs, films, drawings, collages, paintings, politics, provocations, poetry, long interview with Ginsberg, who mentions Ezra Pound and Céline as inspirators among many others for the Generation, that I first learned about through Danish author and journalist Erik Thygesen, who back in the 60’es published translations of Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti and others in the book ”San Francisco Renaissancen”. Have it at home. Must read Ginsberg’s ”Howl” again in Danish language…

… and then a meeting – again – with still alive photographer Robert Frank, some of his photos from the monumental ”The Americans” and his film ”Me and my Brother” (1968) that I need to get and can get – through the publication of the publisher Steidl, here is a quote from the Steidl site:

”…It celebrates the return of the poetic essay as assemblage, the affirmation of the underground as a wild cinematic analysis in the form of a collage, and skillfully weaves together opposites, plays counterfeits against the authentic, pornography against poetry,acting against being, Beat cynicism against hippie romanticism, monochrome against colored…”

Sara Thelle called – in her text about Robert Frank on Filmkommentaren – ”Me and my Brother” ”a slap in my face”.

Look at the photo of Robert Frank, a reframed snapshot taken by me and my i-phone, Frank in New York around 1947, a photo taken by Louis Faurer, whose exhibition we visited at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson. Some words about HCB’s house first: A three floor building in a nice area near rue Daguerre, adresse 2, impasse Lebouis, a private fondation with great exhibitions and ”conversations autour de la photographie”. Strongly recommended.. No photos of HCB but a wonderful book to enjoy, when you have done the three floors.

Louis Faurer, name looks French, no, he is an American in Paris, for the moment his photos are exhibited at the HCB fondation. Born in Philadelphia in 1916, he took pictures there and in New York, where Robert Frank invited him to stay at his place so he did not have to return to Philadelphia after work. People and situations in NY, very often around Times Square, a lot of love towards the ones he photographed, a fine sense of framing, praised by Frank vice versa, ”we never criticised each other”, Faurer has said. Faurer could afford his art, as he like many other creative photographers earned his money through fashion photography. Steidl, the publisher, again, a book about Faurer and the exhibition has been published.

… you don’t believe it, while writing this piece of text, a band is playing dixieland jazz in the street. America in Paris!

https://steidl.de/flycms/Books/Me-and-My-Brother-0409414457.html

www.henricartierbresson.org

Salomé Jashi on Information and Form

The fine website of IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) also – besides concrete info on workshops and festivals – includes small interviews. Today one is published with Salomé Jashi, whose “Bakhmaro” and “The Dazzling Light of Sunset” have been written about on filmkommentaren. Jashi is to give a masterclass at the festival in Jihlava and will be a tutor for the Ex Oriente workshop. Here is a quote dealing with one of the eternal questions for documentarians, read the rest via the link below. She says:

Some years ago, when I visited IDFA for the first time, I observed that most of the films had very strong stories and characters but artistically I found them weak. But these films conveyed information, rose awareness, made me think and worry. I was asking myself whether it made sense to focus on style and form in documentaries, in the way I did, when information was so much more important in the world. This question has two sides and it’s a decision we make as filmmakers– is the issue more important or is it the artistic and aesthetic way we deal with our surroundings and create content. Even though I struggle in coming up with the answer, in fact I am still for the latter.

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

Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /7

… Knowledge also affords artistic freedom. Experienced and versed, the author can move within his subject matter. His depiction of reality then becomes “macro realistic” – that is, a concrete expression of an inner reality.

NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th

By Sune Jonsson (1978)

7

Ivar Lo-Johansson has asserted the authenticity of the self-experienced as a literary life-form and method. It is not enough for the author to have subjects: the subjects must also be part of his own self. Perhaps in this distinction we can also discern the essential difference between the author and the poet.

Knowledge also affords artistic freedom. Experienced and versed, the author can move within his subject matter. His depiction of reality then becomes “macro realistic” – that is, a concrete expression of an inner reality. The opposite method is observation from without – a “microrealism” without a deeper personal sounding board.

In the “social photo-picture books”, Ivar Lo-Johansson was the photographers’ client. This proved to entail a methodological conflict. “They constantly had to pass up the artistically attractive subjects they would have preferred taking and instead stick to subjects that, to them, seemed unartistic.” The client’s total experience of the subject matter arrayed against the outsider-photographer’s comparatively superficial experience. Ivar Lo Johansson tells of something that happened during his collaboration with Gunnar Lundh that well illustrates the importance of the assignment situation. On page 68 of Statarna i bild (Tenant farmers in Pictures) , there is a photograph of a chest of drawers and a simple bookshelf of meagre content. The photographer walked past the bookshelf three times without “noticing” it – that is, without perceiving it as testifying to a salient reality in the tenant-farmer environment. To Ivar Lo-Johansson, however, it represented – in a tangible and painful manner – the cultural lag of the farmworker class, something that in his program essays, polemical pamphlets, indeed in all his writings, he had described as the dilemma of the entire class: poverty and physical exhaustion as the gravediggers of the soul and of any longing for beauty. Do we understand Ivar Lo-Johansson correctly when we presume that Lundh and Jarlas – at least in the initial phase of the project were prisoners of the 1/125th convention: that they “as modern photographers wanted ‘action’ in their pictures, even where the people they were photographing sat paralyzed and where the paralysis itself should have been allowed to speak”? One is spontaneously reminded of Lo-Johansson ‘s words that true form “should be the subject matter’s form”. (To be continued on Filmkommentaren with three two more reflections…)

FOTO

Sune Jonsson: Sune Jonsson: Set Ramstedt, født 1885. Golisen, Västra Nästansjö, Vilhemina. August 1961. Efter et kringflackade, olycksdrabbat liv, var Set Ramstedt sedan 1930 innehavare av ett skogshemman. Han Bodde ensam i en enkel stuga. Sune Jonsson skriver i billedteksten i sin bog Album – fotografier fem decennier, 2000, hvorfra billedet er hentet: ”Han satt vid sin spis lila luttrad som en gång Oidipus vid källan, men ännu med liv i blicken. Han stekte kallpotatis i fläskflott. Sedan spelade han munspel.”

https://randersbiografien.wordpress.com/museum-samling/ (Om Sune Jonsson)

Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /6

… The ideal situation, of course, is that in which the photographer is his own client. Then the assignment is a vital function of the photographer himself; then his depiction of reality will occur at that point where he himself stands as a human being.

NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th

By Sune Jonsson (1978)

6

The assignment situation, upon which the photographer’s personal relationship to the subject matter is ultimately dependent, is a vital part of the documentary methodology. If it is alleged that knowledge and insight should be the bases of all depiction of reality, then the assignment situation must be crucial to the genuineness of the documentation. By the way in which the assignment situation is regarded, one can also tell what status – in artistic-professional terms – the client is prepared to accord the photographer.

The ideal situation, of course, is that in which the photographer is his own client. Then the assignment is a vital function of the photographer himself; then his depiction of reality will occur at that point where he himself stands as a human being. From every viewpoint, it must be an optimal advantage to be able to seek out the subject matter that is made up of one’s own internal and external landscapes. Assignment and need for expression then become synonymous. The subject matter itself then becomes the client.

Paris at the beginning of the century: broad stairways, grotesquely bulging bourgeois homes, rear courtyards, the poor people of the streets, show windows, the aura of light over the parks and the Seine. A strange photo-tapestry, Atget‘s own unreal world, something very near and living, an objectivized vision of an existential experience. Jacques Henri Lartigue‘s diary pictures from the 20th century: a life affirming and humorous penetration of the games of the upper class, a situation report on the photographer’s own place in life, life-feeling portrayed. Sweden’s Larka-Karl filling his pictures of the lives and manners of the common people with the ego’s serious local patriotism and eminent knowledge of environment and tradition. A slightly misanthropic Patrik Johnson photographically registring with gentle satire and distinct documentary intuition the petit bourgeoisie of Falkenberg, a stranger seeking via his pictures to establish concrete social relations with his surroundings, to assuage the solitude of his heart. All this self-assumed yet at the same time compelled by the subject matter itself.

And the working hypothesis concerning 20thcentury man pursues August Sander through the decades. In picture after picture, he seriously isolates the human myths of German class society, photographically depicting the professional categories and all social attitudes of the Weimar Republic. Generalization is his artistic method. In his case, it is based on a sort of inherited and definitive knowledge of appraisals, traditions, manipulations, and roles – those things that constitute the concretion of society’s inner life. His Deutschenspiegel is a self-assignment, and through it he gives us a universal atlas of man’s eternal role-playing. (To be continued on Filmkommentaren with three more reflections…)

FOTO

Sune Jonsson: Småbrukarparet Tea och Albert Johansson, Väst om sjön, Nyåker, Nordmaling,1956. Sune Jonsson skriver i billedteksten i sin bog Album – fotografier fem decennier, 2000, hvorfra billedet er hentet: ”Albert Johansson hade arbetat med pottaskebränning och salpetersjudning, han var jägare och fiskare, hade deltagit i bäckflottningen i Leduån. Varannan dag rodde han med en mjölkkruka över sjön för transport till mejeriet i Nordmaling.”

https://randersbiografien.wordpress.com/museum-samling/ (ABN om Sune Jonsson)

Finn Larsen: Eugène Atget vignet, 2016