CinéDOC Tbilisi Winners

Some days ago the award ceremony for the CinéDOC-Tbilisi took place. The young festival that by many, including me, is characterised as a ”warm festival”, with a high quality selection.

And no need to say that the winner in the international competition has high quality: ”Brothers” by Wojciech Staron, Polish master cinematographer and director. I do not keep track of the many Grand Prix this film has won, but I remember my happiness when it got first award at DOK Leipzig last year. And encouraging that the student jury also chose ”Brothers” (photo) as their favourite.

… and bravo that the audience brought ”Transit in Havana” by Daniel Abma to be winner of the maybe most important award you can get, that of the audience.

You can read about all the winners on the festival site below but I smile when mentioning that Armenian ”One, Two Three” by Arman Yeritsian, produced and promoted by Yulia Grigoryants got the first prize in the Caucasus section for their warm film about old people, who stay very much alive and kicking through dance and singing.

I met this film years ago when it had the working title “The Chosen Ones” and know how difficult is was to have not the usual 3 main characters but many more. Apparently they succeeded to find the rythm. 

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

Tue Steen Müller: The Antalya Masterclass

Dear Allan. You asked me what I told the participants at the masterclass at the Antalya Film Forum the other day. Well, I was as usual “jumping” a bit around in the past and present, showed clips, gave advice, told them that the main difference between them and me was that I have been watching documentaries since the 1970’es, having a passion become a profession during the years at the National Film Board (Statens Filmcentral), EDN (European Documentary Network) and as freelance consultant and blogger since 2005. The starting point was my recent visit to Paris to meet again Robert Frank, this magnificent documentarian, in photos and films, the working title of his “Don’t Blink”, made by Laura Israel, was “You have got Eyes”… From that to Wojciech Staron and his “Argentinian Lesson”, where the first almost 10 minutes have no words, he tells through images and he is one of my favorite director/cameraman in one person, who knows how to catch moments and convey them beautifully. As a contrast to the wordless I went to “Twilight of a Life”, Sylvain Biegeleisen’s wonderful emotional meeting with his 94 year old wise mother, here you have literally the first person documentary based on close-ups and conversation. And the third reference was to the hybrid genre with talk about “Act of Killing” and the adventure of this film, that many had already watched as well as the sequel, “The Look of Silence”. Finally, and it won’t come as a surprise for you, “Ten Minutes Older”, 1978, Herz Frank and Juris Podnieks with a declaration of love to these masters. That was all and I am happy that I got so many good reactions, and we several new readers of Filmkommentaren.

(Jeg bringer da så Tue Steen Müllers mailsvar her på vores blog og illustrerer med stills fra filmene, han viste klip fra, og forsyner dem med citater fra hans anmeldelser. Og så har jeg fundet nogle små statements på Antalya Film Forums Facebookside, hvor Müller tilsyneladende taler tyrkisk, som Facebook så venligt oversætter til engelsk. Link til facebooksiden nedenfor. ABN) 

CLIPS

Laura Israel: Don’t Blink

“Don’t Blink is an excellent introduction to the now 91 year old legendary photographer and filmmaker made by his editor and collaborator in many films, a warm and generous portrait and a look into the creative process of a lovely man, a great artist, who has suffered personal tragedies in his life, that is very much present in his work…”

Wojciech Staron: Argentinian Lesson

“This is a film with a social content, but also a love story with many levels where much emotion is to be read in the faces of the characters. Dialogue is sparse, images give the information needed, step by step there is a development and an interpretation being made with painting-kind-of-tableaux, from the location, from the small village where it all takes place, to chapter a narrative with many sensitive and metaphoric images…”

Sylvain Biegeleisen: Twilight of a Life

” In documentary workshops and film schools all over I have forbidden the participants to use the term ”poetic” talking about films. It’s banal, over-used and what does it really mean? Nevertheless this is the only word to be used for this film, here it does fit perfectly, to summarize a wonderful intimate chamber play featuring mother and son in a room, he the filmmaker, she the 94 old mother, he wants to make a film with…”

Joshua Oppenheimer: The Act of Killing

“Behind the scenes, the making of.. a film. We have seen them lots of times, following how the actors prepare for their roles, how the shooting was done, how the director directed. This is exactly what ”The Act of Killing” does, with the big difference that the film being made is, to use a kliché, ”based on a true story”. A story about the mass murder of around 1 million people in Indonesia in the 1960’es…”

Herz Frank and Juris Podnieks: Ten Minutes Older

“… I introduced the film mentioning Juris Podnieks as well, the cameraman of Herz for this film and the man who later became the Perestroika filmmaker, and who got a much shorter life than Herz: 1950-1992. After the screening I came up with the often used banality about the film: You are ten minutes older now, you have just watched the story of our lives. And it is what it is. The director himself has formulated it like this: For ten minutes, uninterruptedly, we were looking into the face of a little boy on the third row… And in the half-dark of the theatre hall we were watching the depths of the human soul as reflected in this tremulous face.”

PUNCH LINES

Tue Steen Müller: “Filminizin ne anlattığını çok iyi biliyorsanız, yapmayın daha iyi! Eskilerin dediği gibi: “Mesaj gönderecekseniz postaneyi kullanın.”

“If you know all too well what your film is about, don’t bother making it! As they say, “If you want to send a message, use the post office.”

Tue Steen Müller: ”Burada söylemek istediğim şu izlemek,hissetmek, keşfetmek…bunlar klişe ve sıkıcı gelebilir…ama bunlar hala önemlidir.”

“Watching, feeling, discovering… It may sound like a boring cliché, but these things still matter.”

Tue Steen Müller: “Son dönemde belgeseller müziğe boğuluyor. Müzik harika bir şey, ama izleyiciye ne hissedeceğini dikte etmek için kullanılmamalı.”

“Documentaries are drowning in music recently. Music is wonderful, but it shouldn’t be used to dictate to the viewer what to feel.”

https://www.facebook.com/AntalyaFilmForum/?fref=ts 

Andreas Dalsgaard og Obaidah Zytoon: The War Show

Obaidah Zytoon tager her på dette still som programvært begejstret styringen af sit radioprogram med populær musik. Det er tilbage i 2011 vel. Det er filmens første scene og det er dens ramme. Men straks efter kommer så hendes dæmpede stemme. Eftertænksom og fem år senere. Nu fra mikrofonen i filmens lydstudie begynder hun i sin voiceover at fortælle, hvad der herefter skete. Og det her er en alvorlig og intens og en god film, det er man allerede nu sikker på.

Men før filmens første scene med Zytoon i radiostudiet er der imidlertid titelskiltet The War Show og før det er der titelsekvensen, som er en forrevet, styrtende optagelse fra en gadekamp under en demonstration vil jeg tro, et kamera som falder eller tabes, et lille kamera, en telefon måske. Obaidah Zytoons medinstruktør Andreas Dalsgaard og klipperen Adam Nielsen har således med kyndigt overblik anbragt filmens ramme og dens billedmateriale i front. Dette er fortællingen og dette er fortælleren og dette er hendes position. Filmens fortællested er klipperummet før biografen og tv. Og fortællingen er beretningen om Syriens historie disse år. Fortalt på afstand, flygtningens afstand, nogen tid efter i et studie i København. De mange forrevne optagelser fra alle mulige kameraer på gaderne samles som til et vævet tæppe, et billedtæppe med historiske motiver. Et antal mere private optagelser fra de medvirkendes hjem og fra deres udflugter til bjergene og til havet bliver til en tæt forbundet venskabsgruppes historie, et tragisk kammerspil på baggrund af billedtæppet.

Filmen er dermed et epos; og den er en roman. Romanens steder er byer som er vigtige i landets historie, byer som er vigtige for nogle af personernes historie; og romanens bevægelse er rejser. Romanens temaer er opstandens ikke krigeriske men journalistiske og kunstneriske arbejde, med klædedragtens udfordring, musikkens rymer, pamfletternes tekster og grafik og så især arbejdet med den løbende dokumentation af tilstande og begivenheder med filmoptagelser og med indsamling af optagelser. Romanskrivningen er herefter at konstruere en redegørelse i en fortællings form indeholdt i denne mængde meget forskellige filmscener af først jublende glade, senere dybt skræmte menneskers vilde, urolige handlinger. Det hele holdt på plads i en slags facebookæstetik.

Det er romanens ramme, betingelse og regel. Dens syv kapitler er 1 Revolution, 2 Undertrykkelse, som er dramatiske forberedelser, så 3 Modstand, hvor vi med Obaidah Zytoon er rejst til hendes hjemby Zabadani, hvor der er kommet våben til oprørerne, som har taget kontrollen med byen, befriet den hedder det. Så følger i kapitel 4 Belejring en skildring af nytårsaften 2011 i Homs som er omringet af regeringshæren. Vi er blandt oprørerne, de løsladte og undslupne fra tilbageholdelserne viser os mærker efter mishandlindlingen, efter torturen. Der er også desertører fra regeringshæren, de har vel kamperfaring, de holder byen. Det er en belejring som vi lærte om dem i historietimerne, middelalderlige byer som sultedes til overgivelse, lægerne må operere uden bedøvelse.

Kapitel 5 Minder er en ekskurs, en parentes, et tilbageblik fra det sted hvor filmen nu er i sin fremskriden i tid, altså før begivenhederne i Homs. Gruppens glade liv var dengang udflugterne til bjergene og havet, men erindringen fortsætter i fortællingen om dødens realitet, først dræbtes Fi Fi, den lille hvide hund som flokken var fælles om. Den påkørtes af en bil. Rabea blev skudt i sin søsters bil, ingen vidste af hvem, myndighederne forbød hans begravelsesoptog. Lulus bydel blev angrebet af regeringsstyrker, hendes kæreste Hisham blev bortført af tropperne og forsvandt, få dage senere blev Argha anholdt. Så blev Huossams lejlighed stormet, han meldte derefter sig selv. 11 dage senere kunne familien hente hans lig.

Også børnene vænnes ved de voksnes instruktion til brugen af håndvåben. Vi er nu i kapitel 6 Frontlinjer i Sarageb midt i borgerkrigens verden og til roligt filmede opstillinger af væbnede grupper konkluderer Obaidah Zytoon i sin fortælling nøgternt, at det her er en krig per stedfortræder, hvis formål det er at omfordele ”mafiaens magt” i dette land og ”på krigens skueplads kan alle være med, undtaget folket”. Og afsnit 7 Ekstremisme fortæller som modtræk om en vigtig tryksag de laver til uddeling blandt de kæmpende, en fin lille bog som digterisk, religiøst, filosofisk og juridisk opregner krigens universelle regler. Vi oplever som uhyggelig kontrast en IS fortrop ankomme med deres sorte faner og får at vide at regimet nu i stort tal løslader kriminelle fra fængslerne, så de kan skabe forvirring og uro og vold. Zytoons dæmpede stemme fortæller i en smuk tekst om krigenes væsen gennem verdenshistorien. I epilogen derefter fortælles om de mange døde og om de mange flygtninge – og til slut i denne elegi fortæller hun om den lille gruppe venners egne døde og levende, om deres kærlighedshistories slutning.

Instruktørernes og klipperens klare, dybt gribende og beslutsomme greb om dette meget store og voldsomme materiale samlet over fire, fem år hæver det ud af øjeblikkenes journalistiske reportage og formidling, som det oprindeligt så ivrigt blev skabt i, og placerer det eftertænksomt i en universel, men klart nutidig episk omverdenstolkning i Homers, i Tolstojs krig og fred – tradition. The War Show er som jeg ser det netop så stor filmkunst. Den er fra nu et uundværligt og uforgængeligt værk om Syriens håb og tragedie i begyndelsen af det 21. århundrede.

Syrien / Danmark 2016. Filmkommentarens anmeldelse: 6/6. 100 min. Premiere i DOX:BIO 26. oktober 2016:

http://www.doxbio.dk/events/the-war-show/

SYNOPSIS

In March 2011, radio host Obaidah Zytoon and her circle of friends join the street protests against President Bashar al-Assad, as the Arab Spring reaches Syria. Knowing their country would be changed forever, this group of artists and activists begin filming their lives and the events around them. But as the regime’s violent response spirals the country into a bloody civil war, their hopes for a better future will be tested by violence, imprisonment and death. Obaidah leaves Damascus and journeys around the country, from her hometown of Zabadani, to the center of the rebellion in Homs, and to northern Syria where she witnesses the rise of extremism. A deeply personal road movie, the film captures the fate of Syria through the intimate lens of a small circle of friends. (DFI)

http://f-film.com/category/the-war-show/ 

Antalya Film Forum 2016

There you are in Antalya in Turkey at a cool design hotel, totally in white, mirrors all over, the weather is between 25 and 30 degrees, the hospitality is superb, it’s a royal treat and your job is to give a lecture and to be in a jury that has the job to give awards to two out of nine projects on the background of nine presentations at a documentary pitch competition.

Full house, I am in a jury with Italian producer Enrica Capra (”Thy Father’s Chair”) and Palestinian Reem Bader, who lives in Jordan and has just set up The Creative Documentary Platform for Arab documentaries. It’s an exciting project that i will write separately about later, link below.

The three of us sit on the first row watching the pitchers, who have 8 minutes for presentation followed by 5 minutes Q&A with the

jury. The introduction is given by the master of ceremony, young producer Suzan Guverte, who did a great job being (also) ”the bad cop”, who had to interrupt the filmmakers on stage when time was over. The background for the pitching – and my lecture – was to put more focus on documentaries, which is a genre that has hard conditions in the big country.

Nevertheless if just half of the 9 projects end up being made, there is something of quality to look forward to.

We had to choose two projects, which are both awarded with about 10000€ each (!) and if you look at the list on the picture, the winners were ”Ben de Buradayim” (”I’m also Here”) (Director: Kıvılcım Akay Doğan / Producer: Aslıhan Altuğ) and ”Kim Mihri” (Who is Mihri) (Director: Berna Gençalp / Producer: Berat İlk, Yonca Ertürk), the first one about a Senegalese refugee in Turkey, who is fighting to get a decent life with her daughter. The way might be her becoming a fashion model. The second one is about an artist known by nobody, but an artist who will be made alive in a docu-animation film through an innovative unpretentious narrative.

At a monumental award ceremony that also included some (not all) awards from the Antalya Film Festival, screenings parallel to the Forum, taking place at ”The Land of Legends Rixos”, monumental to say the least, Antalya showing its economic power (?), with a Disneyland touch and with water symphonies at the beginning, the awards were given to the winners – and happy to see that several festivals awards were given to documentaries.

We jurors were told that the criteria for the awards were creativity, originality, feasibility and international potential. Hoping the best for the two awarded and the other seven projects.  

http://minaa.org/

http://www.antalyaff.com/en/documentary-pitching-platform/

Jihlava International Documentary FF 20 Years

It starts the coming tuesday October 25 and runs until October 30, the documentary film festival in provincial Czech town Jihlava. I have been there many times, I have enjoyed it a lot, watching films and/or being part of the Ex Oriente workshop. I have been in the jury, I have been sleeping in a pension next to the zoo and the church with interesting wake-up sounds in the morning!

Monday this week I received the longest press release I can remember entering my mail-box. Presenting the selection of films, the variety of events connected to the festival, IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) activities, Ex Oriente, KineDok and East Silver market including the announcement of the competition for short, medium length and long documentaries with names of jury members. I am proud to be one of them, in the short category. You will hear more about that.

What can I do with such a long press text but tell you to go to the site of the festival and get information on what will happen – and that is a lot. Let me just again again promote two films that we have written about on filmkommentaren.dk – Miroslav Janek’s latest masterpiece ”Normal Autistic Film”, Salome Jashi’s ”The Dazzling Light of Sunset” and Robert Kirchhoff’s extraordinary ”A Hole in the Head” about which I wrote briefly in an email to the director, ”original in storytelling, emotional, a true Documentary.”  

The film, that was not taken by the Locarno festival and IDFA, will

just after Jihlava compete for the MDR Prize at DOK Leipzig, a quote from the catalogue description by Matthias Heeder: “A small art gallery somewhere in Serbia which exhibits only works by Roma. Is Clinton not Roma, too? The gallery owner isn’t certain. But Antonio Banderas is Roma, and Yul Brynner. They just don’t have the courage to admit it. This touching scene of cultural self-assurance is part of a narrative about the Roma Holocaust which has been almost completely erased from European memory and whose traces the director follows meticulously. A film against forgetting…”

Kirchhoff’s film has been on its way for years and is now ready to be seen due to a director, who kept fighting for this monumental film to be made. Bravo! And congratulations to Jihlava festival for 20 years of commitment to the non-main stream creative/artistic documentary.

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

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?

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