Nagieb Khaja: De hvide hjelme i Aleppo

Han laver mad til kollegerne på redningsholdet, den lille enhed af civilforsvaret i Syriens oprørskontrollerede bydele sammensat af unge frivillige mænd, denne lille enhed, som Nagieb Khaja over nogle dage med sin film skildrer, har sit kvarter et sted i Aleppo. Meget af tiden går med at være parat og så vente, hvile, snakke, spise. For at rykke ud når bomberne falder og spærrer folk inde i deres huse, levende, sårede og døde. Mændene med de hvide hjælme er ”dem som leder efter livet under dødens ruiner”, som en eller anden har skrevet med spray på en gademur mur et sted i kvarteret.

Først er der i et afsnit spejderen, udkigsposten, som konstant afsøger himmelrummet for fly og melder til kollegerne i mandskabsrummene, når et bombeangreb er på vej. Han kan ikke selv deltage i rdningsarbejdet direkte. Han fortæller kort og mandigt, hvordan han kom i klemme under en militær træfning og som redningsarbejder blev isoleret blandt en snes bevæbnede mænd, hvordan han blev voldsomt mishandlet. De går direkte efter redningsarbejdere. Så er der holdets leder, som forklarer at De hvide hjelme er et humanitært og absolut ikke militært foretagende støttet af en række internationale organisationer. De er mænd fra alle fag, mennesker som ikke vil flygte, de mener det er deres by og de vil som civilforsvarsgruppe være forrest, når dette er overstået og Syrien skal genopbygges.

Et russisk flyangreb afbryder samtalerne, redderne kommer under voldsomt bombardement, da de når frem til de ramte huse, og et efterfølgende fly i samme akse i en velkendt taktik kaster sine bomber netop mod redningsfolkene som under deres arbejde er uden dækning, og en af dem bliver såret. Filmen følger ambulancen til hospitalet som nødvendigvis er hemmeligt. Flyene sigter mod alt redningsarbejde. Efter angrebet fortsætter livet i byen som normalt, det gør det hver dag trods bombeanfald. Sådan var det i august under optagelserne, men siden er bombningerne af Aleppo blevet værre oplyser et skilt. Og redderen Shaaban er blevet dræbt. Filmen tilegnes ham.

Det er en god film. Ærligt, reelt, uden at lægge til og uden at trække fra, tror jeg, rapporterer Nagieb Khaja som han har vænnet os til gennem sine tidligere dokumentarer, sine mange artikler og utallige Facebookopslag med iagtagelser fra rejserne, som han har foretaget modigt og erfarent. Han og hans dokumentar er i sit sprog præget af redningsfolkenes sande rolige enkle folkelighed, her er hverken følelser eller synspunkter eller situationsbedømmelse ude af kontrol. Ikke et øjeblik.

Danmark, 2016. 25 min. Produceret af Nagieb Khaja / Tom Greenwood for Al Jazeera. Filmkommentaren anmeldelse: 4 af 6 penne. Sendt på DR2 i aftes 18. oktober 2016. Kan nogle dage ses på DR TV:

https://www.dr.dk/tv/se/annulleret/de-hvide-hjelme-i-aleppo#!/

SYNOPSIS

Nagieb Khaja is an award-winning Danish journalist and filmmaker who covered the wars in Afghanistan and Syria. His report and synopsis A day in the life of Aleppo’s White Helmets is written 14 Aug 2016 when he spent 12 days with a team of rescue workers. In war, he witnessed their special bond:

Aleppo, Syria – It’s around midnight and two rescue workers are engulfed in smoke, hosing down a fire in a burned out shop in Hanano district. Close to the frontline in the rebel-held eastern part of Aleppo, Hanano is often exposed to artillery fire and aerial bombings.

The body of an old man who was killed by flying shrapnel, lies on the pavement outside.

“It was a Russian aircraft,” says a passer-by. “The poor guy was crossing the street when the bomb hit.”

An ambulance arrives and tells the rescue workers that they will take care of the body. The White Helmets rescue team is desperate to get moving, yelling at their colleagues to hurry up and get in the truck.

The plane had returned after the first responders arrived and bombed the area a second time. Their colleague Ahmed Badr was hit, and the team now heads to the hospital, anxious to find out what has happened to him.

I lived and filmed with a group of rescuers from the Syrian Civil Defence, better known as the White Helmets, for 10 days last December.

The White Helmets began in 2013 as an ad hoc group of local volunteers in Hanano who would head to bombed places to try to save people.

But extracting survivors is a complicated and difficult task and in the beginning, despite their best efforts, they lacked expertise, which resulted in victims dying under the rubble. The first White Helmets received training in southern Turkey from Turkish earthquake rescuers, before heading back to Syria with equipment and uniforms, including their namesake white helmets.

They now work out of 119 centres in the liberated areas of eight western provinces (Aleppo, Idlib, Hama, Latakia, Homs, Daraa, Damascus and Damascus countryside) and have around 3,000 volunteers, including two teams of women. To date, these volunteers have saved over 60,000 lives.

The men on the Hanano team are aged between 19 and 33. Their routine is relatively simple. They have a “spotter” who communicates with the team by radio – when a place is hit, the team is alerted and guided to the right location.

Their work is psychologically gruelling; they witness death and risk their own lives almost daily. But the team is close, bonded by humour and their constant ribbing of one another… Read more:

www.aljazeera.com: link (with a link to the film, ENGLISH version)

MORE LINKS

http://www.dfi.dk/faktaomfilm/person/da/177130.aspx?id=177130 (DANSK biografi)

http://www.dfi.dk/faktaomfilm/person/en/177130.aspx?id=177130 (ENGLISH biography)

http://politiken.dk/udland/fokus_int/borgerkrigenisyrien/

https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/udland/de-hvide-hjelme  

Pavel Medvedev: Joseph’s Land

Let me start with a synopsis that precisely communicates the unpretentious tone of the film:

”This story could only take place in one city in Russia – St. Petersburg. Here communal poverty rubs shoulders with the palatial luxury of the former imperial capital. Only here could a special type of Soviet person be born. Only here could tremendous resources be spent on opening a museum just for one day – to honor a poet, a Nobel Prize laureate who was exiled from his motherland, in a story saturated with grotesquery and buffoonery. The spirit of the exiled poet, who was put on the pedestal of…”

I don’t know why the sentence stops precisely there, I could continue with ”world literature”, Joseph Brodsky, a unique poet and esayist, who was thrown out of his city Leningrad and country USSR.

To stay with the facts: Joseph Brodsky (born 1940) was put on trial

in 1964, accused of ”social parasitism”, sent to working camp, came back to Leningrad for some years until he was expelled in 1972, went to America and lived there until his death in 1996.

About the film that – as indicated above – deals with the ambition to make a museum for Brodsky in the house, where he lived 1940-1972. A fund behind the legacy of the writer works hard to have the museum ready for his birthday May 24. The workers who renovate, the architect who oversees and controls the process, visitors who knew the poet and had been in the flat, the funders behind – they are all there with a film’s focus on the complicated ever-lasting repair, with small visits outside the house, where guides inform Brodsky-interested young and old people about him and read aloud from his poems. Slowly you see the rooms being filled with portrait busts of Brodsky, photos of him, several floating in the bathtub that his father, a photographer, used when he developed his negatives. And poems are being written on the walls, readings are arranged, also recordings with Brodsky’s own mesmerizing voice. Magic.

BUT the main – alive – character of the film is 80 year old Nina Vasilievna, who lives in the komunalka, the communal residence and who suffers from all the building activities going on around her. She is definitely against a museum close to her in the appartment, ”it’s against the law”, she says, who occupies a room of this special Russian phenomenon, the mentioned komunalka. She suffers yes, but in a way she also seems to enjoy to have all these working men around her, to whom she can communicate her dissatisfaction. Which she does the whole way through, until the day where the ”museum” opens for one day and people queue to get in and see. Nina, ”the granny” as some of the young people call her, lived there when the Brodsky family was next door and she ”helps” the museum people in some cases to point out where the table was standing… and of course she is more than curious, when she is told that the red-haired, English speaking young girl downstairs in the courtyard at the cocktail of the opening is the younger daughter of Brodsky.

You are so much amused when watching this film with dedicated, passionate people who are there to do a craftman’s job or to  argue with Nina, the difficult old woman, who apparently has fascinated the director, maybe a bit too much for us viewers, who could also have done with less renovation to make the sequences, where the poetry come more into the core of the narration. But for sure the film has magical sequences and makes one want to read more Brodsky – and to visit the komunalka, where he lives for 32 years… if that is possible…

The photo, nor from the film, could not find any stills, shows ”Brodsky teaching at University of Michigan” about 1972.

The film had its world premiere at Message to Man festival.

Russia, 2016, 150 mins.

Amy Berg: Janis: Little Girl Blue

…Just as with Scorsese’s Dylan portrait No Direction Home, Berg owes some of Janis’ finest moments to D. A. Pennebaker. Not only with the strong scenes from his legendary concert film Monterey Pop (1968, filmed by Pennebaker, Leacock and Maysles, probably the most musical trio in film history), the film that sparked off Joplin’s route to stardom… (Sara Thelle)

(Red.: NB Janis: Little Girl Blue bliver vist på DR2 DOKUMANIA i morgen tirsdag 18. oktober 20.45 og efterfølgende på DR TV. Her på FILMKOMMENTAREN har vi derfor taget Sara Thelles anmeldelse fra premieren på CPH:DOX sidste år frem på forsiden igen.)

REVIEW

by Sara Thelle

Nearly two hours in company of Janis Joplin, what’s not to like! I was so ready to just lean back and enjoy and I was… disappointed.

Whoa, slow down, hold your horses! I’m being bombarded with talking heads at a speed so I can’t follow. Too fast a pace when all I want to do is to take my time, hear the music, feel the music and the person I’m about to discover.

I’m disappointed because I’m sitting in the dark theatre all alert and ready to take in impressions, emotions, sound, images and Music and I’m not getting the cinematic experience I thought I would. And I’m annoyed because I think a big part of my disappointment is a question of the editing. I don’t mind a conventional portrait film, I don’t mind seeing a TV-documentary in a theatre, but I do mind the rushing.

All the information, all the anecdotes and the archive footage lose sense if I don’t get the time it takes to “meet” the performer and her music. If there is not a moment where I hear something I haven’t heard before, suddenly discover the lyrics of a well-known song or just get to linger on a live performance…

Having said that, award-winning American filmmaker Amy Berg (the Oscar-nominated Deliver Us from Evil, 2006, about child molestation within the Catholic Church) has made an impressively well-documented portrait of Janis Joplin. It has been a long-term project initiated by the Joplin estate who approached the director back in 2007 and behind the film lays a huge amount of work with archive research, funding and clearing rights.

Part of Berg’s take on telling the story is a voice-over (the voice of another southern singer/musician Chan Marshall, known as Cat Power) reading Janis’ letters to her family and lovers. Dear family, she wrote continuously throughout the years, giving news to the Texan middle-class nuclear family she came from (the family letters was originally used by Joplins sister Laura in her book Love, Janis from 1992, later turned into a theatre play and a Broadway show). Joplins two younger siblings (Laura and Michael Joplin who manage their sisters estate), old friends, band mates and fellow musicians are looking back. The portrait seems less depressive and dramatic than I thought it would be, and I like that. Lots of life, fun, love and friendships, the story of a strong young woman who at 17, to her own big surprise, discovers she can sing and from then on the rise to fame, but also the beginning of a heroin and alcohol addiction that ends up causing her sudden death.

Just as with Scorsese’s Dylan portrait No Direction Home, Berg owes some of Janis’ finest moments to D. A. Pennebaker. Not only with the strong scenes from his legendary concert film Monterey Pop (1968, filmed by Pennebaker, Leacock and Maysles, probably the most musical trio in film history), the film that sparked off Joplin’s route to stardom (Pennebaker is there himself to reveal how close Joplin was to not be in his movie!), but also with his footage of Joplin and the band Big Brother and the Holding Company in the recording studio and at concerts (material that Pennebaker and Hegedus have used in their short Joplin-film Comin’ Home from 1991, I now find out from the credits). The recently released Festival Express (2003) by Frank Cvitanovich and Bob Smeaton, documenting the 1970 tour by train through Canada gathering Joplin, Grateful Dead and The Band, is another invaluable source.

The press material states that no one had ever explored Janis Joplin’s story on film. A quick search and I discover that Howard Alk (The Black Panther film The Murder of Fred Hampton, 1971, and editor on Dylan’s Renaldo and Clara) made the portraitJanis: The Way She was in 1974. I have to see that! I assume that old time conflicts between the estate and Alk must be the reason that the film is not quoted even though important and mostly unique scenes from it are reused in Berg’s portrait. I have promptly ordered the Howard Alk DVD, maybe a second Janis Joplin portrait film review will be coming up soon…

I found Janis: Little Girl Blue to be out of rhythm, which is no good when we’re talking about Joplin. But please do go see for yourself, you might not agree with me…

Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015, 103 min.) Production: Disarming Films and Jigsaw Productions. Danish distribution: Camera Film in collaboration with CPH:DOX Premiering in Danish theatres all over the country October 22nd. 2015. DR2 DOKUMANIA I MORGEN AFTEN tirsdag 18. oktober 20.45 og efterfølgende på DR TV. Filmkommentaren.dk review: 4/6 pens.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYizdG42THg 

Andrej Nekrasov: The Magnitsky Act /2

But slowly disappears the drama documentary and the film director Nekrasov becomes the investigative journalist, who goes from place to place, from Moscow to London to New York, searching for the truth, discovering that Magnitsky was called upon as a witness in the financial fraud case and not as someone accused, and that he never mentioned the name(s) of the policemen in the first official report…

Her er Tue Steen Müllers anmeldelse fra 4. juli 2016 af The Magnitsky Act endnu en gang, for filmen blev denne uge aktuel da tidsskriftet Ekko inviterede i biografen, i Empire i København i tirsdags: ”Mød Mads Brügger i samtale med Andrei Nekrasov om hans The Magnitsky Act. Dokumentaren stempler ’Putins fjende nr. 1’ som svindler.

Han er kendt som en af Putins skarpeste modstandere. Og historien om systemkritikeren Sergei Magnitsky, der blev tortureret til døde i fængslet, lå lige til højrebenet. Men da den russiske instruktør Andrei Nekrasov graver dybere i sagen, begynder historien langsomt at smuldre. Systemkritikeren blev ikke tortureret, og sagen handler ikke om russisk korruption, men om en amerikansk mangemillionær, William Browder, der angiveligt har berøvet Rusland for 230 millioner dollars og dækker sig bag ’kampen’ for menneskerettighederne i landet…” (Frida Marquard, Ekko, 5. oktober 2016)

Dorte Hygum Sørensen var til stede i Empire biografen i tirsdags og skrev i sin reportage til Politiken: ”… Nekrasovs film er så kontroversiel, at stort set ingen vil vise den. Visningen i Empire er en af de første i verden. Europaparlamentet har afvist at se den, den tyske tv-kanal Arte har aflyst at vise den, og Andrej Nekrasovs omdømme som troværdig, Putin-kritisk instruktør er p.t. i fare for fuldstændig at smuldre, efter at han i manges øjne med ’The Magnitsky Act’ forsvarer dele af det russiske system. Efter visningen interviewes Andrej Nekrasov foran publikum af dokumentarist og journalist Mads Brügger, der spørger, hvad der nu skal ske med den russiske instruktørs film. ‘Det ved jeg ikke’, lyder den korte version af et af Andrej Nekrasovs meget lange svar.

Andrej Nekrasov virker både oprigtigt lettet over muligheden for at vise sit værk for et publikum og også rystet over de mange negative reaktioner, filmen mødes med rundt omkring i verden. Tidligere har han lavet film om forgiftningen af Putin-kritikeren Aleksandr Litvinenko. Med ’The Magnitsky Act’ har han skabt en film, der forsvarer en konkret russisk politimand samt dele af russisk lovgivning og kritiserer en amerikaner, der er kendt for sit engagement i menneskerettigheder i Rusland. Det er så kontroversielt, at Nekrasov risikerer at miste alt, han har bygget op, siden han debuterede i slutningen af 80’erne. Efter liveinterviewet spørger jeg Mads Brügger, hvad han synes om Nekrasovs film: ’Jeg vil sige, at en mand med hans historik kunne ikke have lavet en mere modig film’.” (Dorte Hygum Sørensen, Politiken, 15. oktober 2016)

http://www.ekkofilm.dk/artikler/magnitsky-act-ekko-viser-filmen-kun-fa-tor-vise/

http://politiken.dk/kultur/filmogtv/ECE3427474/putin-kritisk-instruktoer-kunne-ikke-have-lavet-en-mere-modig-film/

(ABN)

REVIEW

by Tue Steen Müller

The Magnitsky Act has the subtitle ”Behind the Scenes” and indeed this is what it does, or rather where he takes us, Andrei Nekrasov, known for his controversial film on the poisoning of Litvinenko, for his ”Russian Lessons” that deals with the Russian-Georgian war and for his tv series ”Farewell Comrades”. In other words Nekrasov is an experienced, professional director behind big international films. His new film digs into what actually happened to Sergey Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow prison in 2009, where he had been sitting for 380 days, arrested by the police after having reported a financial tax fraud of considerable size. To the authorities.

Magnitsky, a young lawyer, was hired by American lawyer and investor, based in London, William Browder, who has been insisting, since then, on Magnitsky being tortured to death, and has made himself a human rights activist and a ”Public Enemy no. 1” of Putin’s Russia.

Browder went to the US Congress, had an Magnitsky Act passed and signed by President Obama, an act that made Russian officials involved in human rights conflicts banned to enter the US.

About the overall narrative of the film: Step by step, Nekrasov gets closer to people and documents around the case, an insight that makes him question, whether Magnitsky was actually beaten with death as the consequence or whether he died a natural death… and whether this whole story was set up by Browder to clean himself for being involved in the fraud.

I read about the film being taken off the program at the Norwegian Film Festival in Grimstad – the festival was threatened to be sued by Browder and his lawyers – and I read that it was not shown at a planned screening at the European Council because Browder presented papers stating that the film was full of wrong statements and conclusions – for the same reason broadcaster arte/ZDF has put the film on hold to investigate… The film, however, was screened on the initiative of the producer Piraya Films, in Oslo, in Washington at a closed session and at the Moscow International Film Festival some days ago. At the two latter mentioned events raising upheated debates.

A ”hot” film in other words. Thanks to brave Norwegian Torstein Grude from the production company Piraya in Stavanger Norway for letting me watch the film AS A FILM and not as a piece of investigative journalism even if it is also what it is…

So here comes an attempt to make a film review of a film that with its narrative structure includes several film styles, several angles.

This is what makes it interesting, the richness in approaches with three main personalities, Magnitsky, Browder and Nekrasov.

It starts with Nekrasov, who hears about the Magnitsky case and wants to make it into a film. He contacts Browder, who since 2009 has told the story again and again, is a good storyteller, who seems convincing when he talks in between the dramatized sequences of Magnitsky being beaten up in the prison, as Browder says, Magnitsky being arrested in his home by the policemen in front of his wife and two children, the corrupt policemen having meetings with mafia guys in night clubs, the involved mysteriously being killed one after the other, the interrogation by the policemen – ”if you sign here that you did not tell the truth when you reported the crime, you can go home…”. So here Nekrasov presents Browder’s version of the truth. Classical drama with the voice of Browder taking us through the story.

Even if these sequences are sometimes a bit too cliché-filled in the décor, they ”survive” because of the good actors playing Magnitsky and the police officer Karpov. The drama-documentary set-up has music ”from wall to wall” (apparently this is what stories like this must have, it is beyond my understanding that it is necessary), anyway the drama parts are not only interrupted by interviews but also by tv news clips that communicate how the media treated the case.

But slowly disappears the drama documentary and the film director Nekrasov becomes the investigative journalist, who goes from place to place, from Moscow to London to New York, searching for the truth, discovering that Magnitsky was called upon as a witness in the financial fraud case and not as someone accused, and that he never mentioned the name(s) of the policemen in the first official report. Karpov from the police, one of those criminalised by Browder, suddenly comes into the film in a scene, where Nekrasov asks the actor who plays him to be present at the meeting, where Karpov tells Nekrasov his version of the case and why he sued Browder in London, a case that the English court did not want to deal with. Nekrasov often includes the making of the film in  the film by letting the viewer see the actors being directed, the cameraman with the camera and himself and the editor in the editing room. It is done without stopping the flow of the film.   

It is towards the last third of the film that my notes say ”now it is too complicated”, at least for me, I could not follow the story, when Nekrasov compares documents in Russian and English translation (he calls it manipulation) and explains how Browder and his company performed their creative money game. I get that Nekrasov wants to to prove that Browder lies and manipulates to whitewash his actions and make himself a name, but I don’t get the detailed arguments. Therefore I turned my attention to watching a more and more engaged, almost obsessed investigator Nekrasov, who goes deeper and deeper and who also – and here we are far from the ”heroic” journalist kliché – is in doubt. Is it right what I am doing? Me who has always been critical to my country Russia and to the politics of Putin, me who had to flee the same country because of my criticism… I am now being accused of supporting the same regime.  

Even if I have to say that there are doubting scenes/sequences that I find over the top: Nekrasov in chairs contemplating, Nekrasov standing at the window thinking etc. etc. Storytelling clichés… Even so I never doubt the honesty of Nekrasov and his feelings: This is a drama documentary and an investigative documentary and a first person film essay rich in content and form, and courageous in its approach…

… is he right or not – I can not say, let me ”hide” behind the former CIA intelligence officer Philip Giraldi, who – according to the FB of producer Torstein Grude – as one of the first saw the film, and wrote about it, link below:   

”To be sure, Browder and his international legal team have presented documents in the case that contradict much of what Nekrasov has presented in his film. But in my experience as an intelligence officer I have learned that documents are easily forged, altered, or destroyed so considerable care must be exercised in discovering the provenance and authenticity of the evidence being provided. It is not clear that that has been the case. It might be that Browder and Magnitsky have been the victims of a corrupt and venal state, but it just might be the other way around. In my experience perceived wisdom on any given subject usually turns out to be incorrect…”

Below there are also links to newspaper articles, American and Russian orientated, about this “scandalous” film that Washington Post called “agitprop”… Torstein Grude says, that he plans to make a follow-up on the media and how they treat(ed) the film. He is going to have a lot of material to draw from!

But first, let this film be shown all over, let debates be held. They will be one-sided first of all, but please bring in nuances as well. From my side: Respect!

Norway, 2016, 145 mins. Filmkommentaren review: 5/6 pens.

http://www.unz.com/article/the-magnitsky-hoax/

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/world/europe/sergei-magnitsky-russia-vladimir-putin.html?_r=0

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/russian-agitprop-lands-in-washington/2016/06/19/784805ec-33dc-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html

https://www.rt.com/news/346642-magnitsky-film-shown-washington/

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russian-film-challenges-story-behind-us-human-rights-223526531–politics.html

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/behind-the-scenes-of-the-magnitsky-act-op-ed/573943.html

http://www.rferl.org/content/magnitsky-film-on-hold-european-tv-channel-arte/27704772.html 

Hutchison m.fl.: Requiem for an American Dream

Her sidder Noam Chomsky endnu en gang foran et kamera og en mikrofon. Endnu en gang fremstiller dette menneske sin bekymrede analyse af verdenssamfundets tilstand, denne gang i en afsluttende sammenfatning, en forelæsning, en historielektion denne gang med rolig, dæmpet stemme.

Jeg hører stemmen tale om de supervelhavendes samfundsorden som har afløst demokratiets periode og ophævet kapitalismens mekanismer. Den repeterer for mine ører Adam Smith og Aristoteles og jeg lytter intenst, for det er svært stof det her, men ansigtet jeg ser, gør mig tryg og ivrig, det her, den mand vil jeg så gerne forstå. Det er en historietime, et lysbilledforedrag og det afhænger derfor af foredragsholderen, mindre af lysbillederne. Men foredragsholderen Noam Chomskys rolige, smukke stemme er dæmpet og tydelig, det er som den barndommens historielærer jeg aldrig glemmer, for med den stemme fra dengang for så længe siden husker jeg verdens historie som en fortælling. Problematiseringerne kom senere til, i andre skoler.

Lysbillederne, de grafisk flotte powerpoints og filmarkivklippene anbringes af og til som vignetter på en skærm i skærmen, men skærmene er nu elegant anbragte af arkitekter i en indtryksfuld række smukt fotograferede, sikkert meget berømte, men her mennesketomme sale til foredrag, møder og konferencer for vigtige beslutningstagere fra magthaverklassen og det er tankevækkende. Der har Noam Chomsky nok aldrig talt før, aldrig når stolene var besat. Desværre.

Noam Chomskys foredrag er selvfølgelig med forbillede i Errol Morris’ The Fog Of War’s syv læresætninger delt op i strikte afsnit, i ti principper som i deres overskrifter i sig selv er talende som en lille katekismus, som et ordnende overblik over forskerens og tænkerens desillusionerde omverdenstolkning. Morris’ film er en skildring McNamara’s selvopgør, her er filmens kunstneriske styrke forankret. Peter D. Hutchison, Kelly Nyks, Jared P. Scott’s film står kunstnerisk svagere i og med den ret modsat Morris’ sindrige afdækning af tvivl og fortrydelser er en skildring af et menneskes opfattelse, en forskers sammenfatning som ligger fast, et videnskabeligt/politisk testamente som er en urokkelig analyse integreret i en urokkelig personlighed, her findes tvivlen ikke, en lærer er ikke i tvivl og Requiem for an American Dream er én lang grundig historietime på højt niveau og det er en vidunderlig historielærer som fortæller.

Peter D. Hutchison, Kelly Nyks, Jared P. Scott: Requiem for an American Dream, USA 2015, 73 min. Filmkommentarens vurdering: 4 af 6 penne. Premiere i CINEMATEKET, København 20. oktober 2016:

http://www.dfi.dk/Filmhuset/Cinemateket/Billetter-og-program/Serie.aspx?serieID=13086 

http://www.dfi.dk/Filmhuset/Nyheder-fra-Cinemateket/2016/Oktober-2016/USA-ifoelge-Chomsky—Dokumentarfilmen-der-ikke-er-helt-almindelig.aspx?

utm_source=Nyheder+fra+Cinemateket&utm_campaign=b532677a20-Cinemateket_uge_42_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_532ed08716-b532677a20-156125025

Mihajlo Jevtic: Four Passports

For someone who for 15 years regularly have been visiting Belgrade, and who have been traveling Serbia South and North with local friends, it is upfront very interesting to see a film made by and about a man, film director Mihajlo Jevtic, who in first person and in a unpretentious, both humourous and sad, typically Serbian, I would say, of course a total simplification, tells the story of his young life in several countries as the title says, and yet at the same place, a place he is to leave to live in another country, where the working and thus material living conditions are better. I have met these considerations among younger Serbians again and again, so nothing new thematically for me.

So – contrary to the text of the serious and depressive synopsis on the website and on facebook, link below – I was happy to watch a film, on the background of the history of a country Yugoslavia that fell apart, full of warm feelings, a family film, whose members (love the father of the director) remember and reflect and get happy when grandchildren (from the side of the sister) arrive.

The film lives best, when father and son are together, playing with the camera, looking at s-8 material from their holidays in Rovinj, Croatia, a place the director Mihajlo goes back to – to bring back moving images to his family. In between the film brings some animation, which does not really bring extra value to a personal documentary that was nice and sweet to watch.

Serbia, Croatia, Germany, 2016, 83 mins.

www.fourpassports.com

Docs All Over – Is that Good?

Are there too many documentary film festivals? NO – those who complain are professionals, who say they can not be in two places at the same time. Understandable argument if you want to attend all so-called industry events with pitching and development workshops, that run parallel to the screenings of films. On the other hand most broadcasters or sales companies include more than one person… AND the documentary film festivals are first of all there for the audience. For films to be screened to regular citizens, doc lovers, cinema goers. Right? AND there is an audience. In most of the below mentioned festivals that I have attended the halls are full – hmm, and the ones who come are mostly pretty much younger than me. Bravo, there is an interest for documentaries among the 20-35 years old.

But are there too many documentary film festivals at this time of the year? Do they cannibalise each other, when it comes to getting the films. In terms of

getting the best of the best it is no secret that festivals for publicity reasons want premieres and that might mean that one festival blocks films for another festival. There is a competition and filmmakers have to make choices.

Let me make a line-up of the important festivals coming up in this month and into November – I have probably forgotten some:

Cinédoc in Tbilisi presents its fourth edition October 21-25, Jihlava International Documentary Film festival takes place October 25-30, 20th edition (!), DocLisboa dates are October 20-30, 14th edition. In principle the dates could make it possible for a doc addict to go from one to the other, and then proceed to DOK Leipzig (October 31 – November 6) and take a break before IDFA (November 16-27). Kamikaze!

Back to the competition question, let’s turn it around: Do the festivals collaborate? Honestly, I don’t know. And if not, you can argue that with the huge amount of quality documentaries which are made world-wide, combined with the many festivals, there should always be a place for the good documentary, so no collaboration needed… and there are more than those selected: During the years I have said to many filmmakers, whose film(s) have been rejected: don’t worry: There is nothing wrong with your film, it will find a festival. Normally I have been right.

Back to the two big festivals. DOK Leipzig presents 309 films, IDFA 297. DOK Leipzig has 100 world and international premieres, IDFA 102 world premieres. Overlapping, yes for some titles and that is good news for the audience: Sergey Loznitsa with ”Austerlitz” is in competition in Leipzig, the film is also shown in Amsterdam where the director is responsible for ”The 10 Best According to…”, and there is a retrospective of his work. Danish ”The War Show” is shown in both cities, as is the new film of Vitaly Manski – and several others I am sure. Both festivals have panorama sections where films that did not make it to competitions are shown. It is actually impressive and amazing so many quality documentaries that are made – and now I am only looking at film lists from this autumn. 2017 and the spring festivals are coming. Soooo…

keep smiling – it’s good times for the creative documentary.

Photo from Loznitsa’s ”Austerlitz”, in competition at DOK Leipzig and part of his retrospective at IDFA.

http://www.cinedoc-tbilisi.com/

http://www.dokument-festival.com/

http://www.doclisboa.org/2016/

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/

https://www.idfa.nl/industry.aspx

Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /9

“…A documentary work is not intended for the esthetic connoisseur or the preoccupied consumer, but rather for people in vital need of increasing their knowledge: of transforming communicated environments, epochs, nature scenes into personal experiential substance – something with which to enrich their own inner landscapes.”

NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th

By Sune Jonsson (1978)

9

Quantity should be a part of the documentary method, a part of the documentary language of form. The 1/125th is a fraction of the historic flow. A great many 1/125ths are needed merely to illuminate one isolated situation. In the 8 years during which the FSA documentation took place, ending in 1943, over 270,000 pictures were taken. Perhaps, all together, those pictures provided a overview of the extent of the disaster and could form a basis for the nation’s self-scrutiny. August Sander privately collected his panorama of the Weimar Republic’s physiognomies, roles, and uniforms in 20 bulging folders. The definitive publication of this collection in book form, Menschen ohne Maske (1971) is consequently characterized by an extraordinary abundance of pictures, which we perceive as concordant with the documentary conception.

Merely casting light on so simple a thing as the seasonal metamorphoses of the farmlands of West Bothnia showing in pictures the effects of various implements, methods, or political decisions – requires a large number of pictures. Even though quanta cannot be contained by rational rules, there does exist for any documentary project a picture minimum that one cannot fall short of and still satisfy a documentary intent, reflect an environment or a social context fairly exhaustively. Oftentimes, one culls from documentary material for financial reasons, or to strengthen an esthetic effect, or to avoid repetition. This clashes with the nature of the documentary report. A documentary work is not intended for the esthetic connoisseur or the preoccupied consumer, but rather for people in vital need of increasing their knowledge: of transforming communicated environments, epochs, nature scenes into personal experiential substance – something with which to enrich their own inner landscapes.

FOTOS

Sune Jonsson: Småbrukaren Helmer Jonsson med familj, Baggård, Nordmaling. Dokumentarisk arbejde, 1960, et meget lille udvalg af fotografierne i bøgerne Timotejvägen, 1961 og Tiden viskar, 1991.

https://randersbiografien.wordpress.com/museum-samling/ (Allan Berg Nielsen: Feltetnolog, 2016, lidt om Sune Jonssons fotografi og film)

IDFA 2016 Program

From IDFA Industry & Press on FB two days ago: ”The complete line-up for IDFA 2016 has been announced! The program contains 297 titles (from 3,495 submissions), of which 102 documentaries will have their world premieres during the festival… with the text addition that “full details on all films and programme information will be announced November 3””.

And then you click your way into “the full line-up” and are happy, when you see films and names that you know about, filmmakers who have worked for years to finish their documentary, like – I know it is an extreme case – Norwegian Torstein Grude’s “Mogadishu Soldier” (photo), that has been in the making for many years, 10 has been mentioned, now completed with the help of Danish editor Niels Pagh Andersen. It is in the main competition as is the masterpiece of Pawel Lozinski “You have No Idea How Much I Love You”, that I saw in connection with the Krakow festival.

And the two promising documentaries that I saw clips from in Malmö, where DokInkubator presented their workshop results: Jérôme le Maire’s observational work from a hospital where the staff is “Burning Out” and Tonislav Hristov’s timely refugee doc “The Good Postman”. And, in the mid length competition, Lithuanian master Audrius Stonys premieres with “Woman and the Glacier”.

IDFA, the biggest documentary film festival in Europe – still also in the world in terms of audience? – has 7 competition programs, 5 non-competitive like “Masters”, “Best of Fests”, “Panorama”, “Paradocs” and “Music Documentary”. In the latter section I am very curious to see how “Liberation Day” by Morten Traavik and Ugis Olte will be received, a film that has been produced by Latvian Uldis Cekulis, shot in North Korea with the Slovenian avant-garde music band Laibach on a visit… A great and clever film say I, who have seen it.

And then the special programs, one called “Assembling Reality” on editing with Kirsten Johnson and her editor Nels Bangerten, Frederick Wiseman, Niels Pagh Andersen and other editors, another “The Quiet Eye”, a section that is IDFA’s first themed program dedicated to ‘slow documentary’, also known as ‘Contemporary Contemplative Cinema’. The Quiet Eye program consists of nine documentary films that exude a remarkable calm and reflective quality, as programmer Martijn te Pas puts it. The films in the program show the beauty – or the bitterness – of the small or the everyday… happy to see a film that I supported as film consultant way back, Swedish Mikael Kristersson’s “Light Year”, shot in his garden for years.

It is often through the editing of special programmes that you can see the creativity of the programmers of a festival… Welcomed here is also “Shifting Perspectives” that as theme has the “the centuries-old historical relationships between Africa, Europe and the United States and how these still influence relations in our world today – both between countries and continents and between people within societies. Central to the program is the role of opinion-shaping in the way we look at and think about race and identity and the perspectives from which we do so. The program consists of new and classic documentaries which show how the history of colonialism, the slave trade and slavery, as well as racial segregation, continue to influence our social, cultural, economic and political relations today.” Yes, among them of course “O.J.: Made in America”.

https://www.idfa.nl/industry.aspx 

 

 

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