Nordisk Panorama Forum 2016/ 2

The second day of the Nordic documentary meeting had a lighter atmosphere at the table with decision makers from the region, the rest of Europe and North America. There was still the usual ”thank you for the pitch” remarks but there were more creative comments on the projects, which could be useful for those pitching and interesting for us in the audience. A better flow than at the first day one could say, very much due to the well prepared moderators Mikael Opstrup and Gitte Hansen.

As at the first day a guest project was invited to the table, this time from Estonia, represented by producer Kiur Aarma and Raimo

Jõerand, experienced people who pitched a historical film based on archive and interviews with Mart Laar, who was elected prime minister in 1992, when the country had gained its independence. The clip was full of humour and got good response from YLE’s Erkko Lyytinen and his colleagues from the Finnish Film Foundation and AVEK. ”A unique political thriller” said Kaarel Kuurmaa from the Estonian Film Institute and it helped when the pitchers pointed at the fact that 2017 is 25 years ago. Reinhart Lohmann from ZDF/arte, who always comes up with good and constructive comments, was thinking of building a thematic evening around the 100 years celebration of the Baltic countries in 2018. ”Rodeo” could fit in there.

A Swedish film taking place in Scotland, directors Ellen Fiske and Ellinor Hallin, got a positive reaction from many because of the well-made teaser showing the young girl and her grandfather in ”a world of violence and pigeons”, where the latter tries to get the girl out of the social vicious circle, a difficult task as she now has a child with a young man, who goes in and out of prison.

Equally talented was ”The Mercurius of Molenbeek” from Finnish Reetta Huhtanen with a clip that was wonderful to look at with a mix of set-up scenes and scenes with a classical documentary approach and with 6 year old boy at the center. Cecilia Lidin from DFI Denmark referred rightly to Marcel Lozinski’s ”Anything can Happen”, Alex Szalat from arte liked it as well but said that for a tv audience it would be necessary to put Molenbeek into a context.

We have so many young voices this year at the Forum, Karolina Lidin from Nordic Film/TV Fund said with enthusiasm, when Lea Glob presented her ”Apolonia, Apolonia” about the young charismatic artist’s journey in life on her way towards an international breakthrough as a painter. Glob has followed her for 8 years in a life of ”chaos and decadence”. It’s a very promising film project, indeed. To be produced by Danish Documentary that also presented ”Hunting for Hedonia” to be directed by Pernille Rose Grønkjær, who after ”Genetic Me” continues her collaboration with scientist Lone Frank. ”What can take you from pain to pleasure”, said Grønkjær, ”what if  tiny pulsing electrodes in your head could change your mind…”. It’s a science documentary and it’s a FILM the excellent teaser demonstrated.

A Finnish film project ”Hockey Dreams” was fun to watch and listen to – Koreans learning ice hockey, not an easy task for coaches from abroad, when the Koreans have been told not to tackle players, who are older than themselves! Closing the Forum 2016 was another project, where my immediate note was ”want to see”, ”What’s Eating Tiny Tim”, Swedish director Johan von Sydow, who has been investigating the showman’s life and career, ”rise and fall”. The teaser was wonderfully put together and as Daniel Pynnõnen from SVT’s K-Special said, ”it breaks the model of biopic”.

The family gathering was over, thank you’s were distributed and a minute long applause was saluting NRK’s Tore Tomter, who retires next year – Tomter has been at all versions of the Nordisk Panorama Forum, this was his last one.

http://nordiskpanorama.com/en/industry/ 

 

 

 

 

 

Nordisk Panorama Forum 2016/ 1

The family has gathered again. The Nordic documentary community, whose members know each other so well, and who help each other. And who often do coproductions. The family had invited friends from other European broadcasting and sales companies, well some had even crossed the Atlantic Ocean to take part. Look at the photo, there are many around the table, and what you don’t see is the audience on all three sides listening to the pitching teams, applauding after the teaser is shown, after the end of the verbal pitch and after the Q&A. It’s quite Pavlovian. The set-up works, the technique works, there is just a little overtime from those pitching. It’s in the hands of experienced moderators, this year again the Danes Mikael Opstrup and Gitte Hansen, who lives and works in Zürich and told me that she now also has a Swiss citizenship.

Yes, that’s the way it is, you hug and kiss and catch up with good

friends in an atmosphere that is friendly. But also result-orientated as Nordisk Panorama director Søren Poulsen said in his welcome speech. With this 23rd edition 677 projects had passed the Forum, there had been 4100 participants and a success rate indicated that 70% had profited one way ot the other financially from taking part in a Forum session.

First on stage was Danish producer Jesper Jack and director Marie Skovgaard with ”Femimam” about Sherin Khankan who – ”with other progressive muslims”, as the catalogue says – has opened a mosque in Copenhagen run by women with a future ambition to have female imams. It is still very new but Skovgaard  has got very close to Khankan, who has a name internationally as well. She will travel with her, catch moments where she gets into trouble, her project is met with death threats in the community. Jesper Jack told that 40% of the financing is in place, SVT with Charlotte Gry Madsen seemed interested if ”there’s a tie to Malmö”. It was definitely something new and well presented, maybe not so much through the trailer as the verbal presentation by the committed director. It would surprise me if they do not pick up some funding at the individual meetings that followed in the afternoon. These are again professionally administered by the Forum staff, there are no papers distributed, just a meeting schedule on a screen, airport system, check your gate, please.

I can not mention all projects. Several were dealing with subjects I would think could fit tv-slots and have a good audience when broadcasted. Like local company WG Film’s project on surrogate mothers, like the Norwegian ”16” with gay teenagers and their problems to talk about it, like the Finnish ”Typhoon Mama” about the director’s stepmother, who sends back the money she earns as a cleaning lady to the family, who thinks she lives in Paradise. And maybe also the touching Icelandic story ”Love Always” that is about ”loss, love and life” circling around the choreographer Helena Jonsdottir, whose husband Thorvaldur Thorsteinsson suddenly died in 2013. As Karolina Lidin from the Nordic Film/TV Fund said the trailer communicated ”a meditative atmosphere”.

Talking about the civilised atmosphere I have to say that it is boring again and again to hear polite members of the jury at the table saying ”thank you for a great pitch” or ”nice pitch” etc. etc. It’s not necessary, go right to the point, please. In many cases no more words come out, well maybe a ”let’s talk later”. If you sit at a table like this and your job is to respond, you are expected to be able to build some sentences of criticism or praise, some arguments, some questions. To be fair, some can do it like Alex Szalat from arte France who always can formulate what he thinks in few sentences. The same goes for his colleague in Germany Reinhart Lohmann. And ok, also Axel Arnö from SVT, who this time demonstrated how busy he must be telling the audience behind the Czech project ”The Russian Job”, ”I am in, am I not?”. The same reaction came from Finnish YLE representative Erkko Lyytinen. Both of them had met the project before but could apparently not remember if they made any promises.

Which made DFI documentary consultant Cecilia Lidin give the audience a chance to have a good laugh: ”Well, these tv guys travel so much that they don’t remember what they have promised. It’s a great project”.

It was wonderful to have this break of a sometimes pretty monotonous show. Because it is a show, whether you like it or not. You have to draw attention and make the audience interested, and for me first of all show that you are a filmmaker. Norwegian Sofia Haugan did that with her personal ”My Heart Belongs to Daddy”, where she wants to reconnect with her father, ”a notorious criminal addicted to amphetamine”. There are many father/daughter films around but not many with such a strong film language as this one. Charlotte Gry Madsen fra SVT said ”intriguing” and that is the right word for a film that is shot over 3 years, shows the emotional moves between father and daughter, very promising indeed.

Words are important but it is through the visuals that you can seduce the audience and that was what Danish director Simon Lereng Wilmont did with ”The Distant Barking of Dogs”, shot over half a year with five visits to Eastern Ukraine and with a lovely boy Oleg as the child, whose growing up is influenced by the war going on. What marks does it leave on a child? Oleg lives with his grandmother, it will be a touching and cinematic piece of work. Half of the film is shot, production lies in the hands of Final Cut for Real, known for ”The Act for Killing” and many other films, including other by Lereng Wilmont, who has an eye for children.

Last project presented was ”Last Men in Aleppo” with Søren Steen Jespersen as producer and Feras and Steen Johannesen as directors. ”I’m speechless”, said Dutch Nathalie Windhorst after the presentation with a teaser that showed members of the group The White Helmets digging out body parts from the ruins of the city… and dead children and… unbearable to watch, reportage material from the Aleppo Media Centre, Axel Arnö from SVT ”I’m in”, a couple of other Nordic broadcasters said the same, Karolina Lidin from the Nordic Film/TV Fund urged them to be quick with their LOC’s. After these horrifying images the members of the Nordic documentary community went for lunch… 

http://nordiskpanorama.com/en/industry/

Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /3

… One thereby denies that photographs can represent a pictorial manifestation of experiences and personal views, that photographs can be personal messages having aesthetic qualities of communication. (Sune Jonsson)

NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th

By Sune Jonsson (1978)

3

In the 40s and early 50s, when Walt Disney was at the peak of his documentary-film activity, he is said to have remarked that it was better to give training in cinematography to the scientists working in the subject areas of those documentaries than vice versa. He wanted thereby to emphasize how vital expertise is in all depictions of reality. Such an attitude implies, however, that the photographer is exclusively regarded as a triggerer of the camera shutter’s 1/125th, as no better than the lens’ own capability. One thereby denies that photographs can represent a pictorial manifestation of experiences and personal views, that photographs can be personal messages having esthetic qualities of communication.

The enthusiasm that surrounded the documentary image in the 50s and 60s now seems to be metamorphosing into scepticism, despite the fact that the words “document” and “documentation” have never been so popular as they are now – but also never before employed in so confused a manner. As a result of the widespread epigonery, and because the photographers’ own standards for their photography are far too low, that photography is now being met with ennui. Some 10 years ago, Rune Hassner, in a notorious article was already speaking about “unpleasantly grimy and vaguely socially critical so-called documentary photography”. So, even then, it was already obvious how fuzzy the photographic nomenclature had become, what a confusion of concepts prevailed. It had also become apparent that the penetrating investigation and the comprehensive pictorial description founded on extraordinary expertise and clearly formulated in its purpose (Gunnar Lundh’s Statarna i bild, Sven Järlås’ Ålderdom) had begun to give way to photographic stereotypes, a sort of esthetic formula-language that is more an expression of conventions of visual depiction than of depicted knowledge, personal luminosity, and documentary conception.

Perhaps one can already speak of a manifest reaction against these photographic stereotypes, a sort of total ruthlessness toward the photographic medium resulting in the individual picture’s virtually becoming unpretty and without content. But, taken together with all the other pictures in the project, it subordinates itself to a documentary intent and is transformed into one detail in a visionary and utterly subjectve method. With such photographers as Denmark’s Jacob Holdt (Amerikanske Billeder. En personlig rejse gennem det sorte Amerika, 1977) and Morten Bo (Lyset slukkes kl. 22.00. En fotografisk rapport fra tvangsanstalter og nødhjem), or Sweden’s Christer Strömholm (Poste restante, 1967), Cartier-Bresson’s method – the individual picture’s synthetic 1/125th and the esthetically utilized 35 mm frame – has untergone a transition into its antithesis. (To be continued on Filmkommentaren with six more reflections…)

PHOTOS

Sune Jonsson: Småbrukaren Helmer Jonson, Baggård, Nordmaling. Tilsammans med sin hustru Berta en sommerdag 1960 vid köksbordet efter morgonmjölkningen. Sune Jonsson skriver i billedteksten i sin bog Album – fotografier fem decennier, 2000, hvorfra billedet er hentet: ”… Helmer Jonsson var kusin till min far. Under uppväkståren brukade vi cykla de två och en halv milen från Nyåker för att besöka Helmers och för at fiska i Sunnansj¨n vid Baggård. När jag kom tillbaka till dem 1959 kände jag att deras miljö och livsform var på väg in i historien. Och greps av ambitionen att skildra det som då fanns kvar, allt som jag mindes från barnsben av deras arbete och liv, kände ett sorts ansvar för släktskabets skull. Mit dokumentära intresse vaknade helt ekelt på allvar.”

Gunnar Lundh, fra bogen Statarna i bild.

Sven Järlås, fra bogen Ålderdom.

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3598/

http://goldendaysfestival.dk/event/når-asfalten-gynger

https://randersbiografien.wordpress.com/museum-samling/ 

DOK.Incubator 2016 Preview

It proved to be a lucky first round of cooperation between the Nordisk Panorama and DOK.Incubator, the rough cut workshop for documentaries. The Nordisk Panorama is a festival that through its industry activity, the Forum, was able to gather a big amount of broadcasters, sales agents and festival programmers for a sunday morning presentation of 8 films, which are on their way to be completed and/or do already have reached the point, where the picture is locked. It was full house in the cinema Panora here in Malmø yesterday and what the viewers experienced was Quality. It can be said as simple as that. DOK.Incubator is a workshop that goes for developing creative documentaries, in some cases I would say documentaries of fine artistic quality.

”Work Hard, Fly High!”, it was written on the poster on the

stage, where one project after the other was presented in this way: I.e., first a small presentation by one of the tutors of the team behind the upcoming film, then a brief talk by one of the filmmakers, then a trailer/teaser, then more talk and then the showing of one/two/three scenes from the film. The latter is a scoop (which of course can only be done because it is a rough-cut workshop, where the films are almost completed) because you ”see” the filmmaker, or let me put it in another way, you see who is a filmmaker… and you see the help the filmmakers have had from experienced editors. That is probably what is the most important element of the DOK.Incubator programme, that also includes information on the market (Peter Jäger was one of the tutors), marketing (Freddy Neumann), production (Ulla Simonen and Sigrid Dyekjær) and many, many others.

Where many of the trailers were formatted to be informative, mostly through images, texts that can be questions and lots of music – the scenes gave a sense of the aesthetic choice of the director, the famous ”handwriting”.

If you go to the link below, you can check the visual material, together with text about the films. I think all projects presented can end up being good films and at least two will fly high and be more than good. Excellent maybe. Masterpieces maybe. They are ”The Good Postman” by Bulgarian director Tonislav Hristov, produced by Finnish Kaarle Aho – in a village in Bulgaria near the Turkish border, the postman wants to run for mayor with the intention to welcome refugees into the small society. ”Burning out” was for me the other highlight of the morning, probably the highlight by Belgian Jérôme le Maire (”Tea or Electricity”), an observational documentary from a hospital, where impossible working conditions create tensions and conflicts in the staff – and a stress that can be fatal. And bravo DOK.Incubator for taking in a film like ”Guidance Through the Black Hole”, that is partly a black & white, partly a colour sketchy documentary with a buddhist bohémian Yugoslav, an artist in life, who has been drinking and smoking for decades, living the life in London’s Portobello. I have no idea of where the film directors Zlatko Pranjic and Aleksandar Nikolic will take me but I am willing to be brought along.

Andrea Prenghyova and her DOK.Incubator team are proud of what they are doing. They have all the reason in the world to be so!     

http://dokincubator.net/preview-2016/

www.dokinkubator.net

Ivar Murd: Ash Mountains

Yes, we have seen many documentaries from Eastern part of Europe and from Russia about industrial cities that were active, because there was work and now there is no longer work, the cities are dead and have no plan for the future. They can be pretty predictable, and you know it all after five minutes – if you don’t feel passion and originality in the way you are taken to and around.

Estonian director Ivar Mund’s first feature length, produced by Margus Õunapuu, has passion and originality, with a personal starting point, a very good commentary in first person, and some interesting characters. He is – so important for a first film – able to create atmosphere, the film has its own tone and it has several layers.

It starts with an ultra fast montage of private photos that

communicates that this is a film from a place wherefrom the director comes. That’s how I interpret it before I get to see a panoramic image of huge appartment buildings with factories in the background – here we are at Ash Mountains. At the North East part of Estonia near the Russian border.

The director’s voice says: What else is there to do but to sing and dance and walk in Ash Mountains. And the film takes off with dancing Estonian folk dances, one of the red threads in the film around the woman Maret, who dances and organises that a group can go and take part in tournaments. A boy talks, he wants to sing, he has won awards, he lives in an orphanage, we follow him through the film, he represents the future, where Maret is the past. Said in a simplified manner. The director does it much better in his commentary that often has a lyrical tone, like when he explains that in school he was told the meaning of the colours in the Estonian flag as this: Blue is the sky, Black the Ash Mountains, White the snow.

Well into the film there is magnificent archive material, black & white, brought without any explanations. An invitation to look at the miners faces. We don’t need any words here. This sequence is followed by an equally silent tour to beautiful places and buildings of today, with splendour from the past. Dekadence and misery at the same time.

Silent… No, there is a strong sound scrore and the music composed to the film goes well with the essayistic, philosophical tone of a film that definitely brings a new talent to Estonian documentary.

Estonia, 2016, 71 mins., Tower Film

Jon Bang Carlsen: Premiere/ Retrospektiv/ Samtaler

Det er flot og fortjent og ret og rimeligt at Det Danske Filminstituts fremragende Cinematek hylder Jon Bang Carlsen fra i morgen og frem til den 2. Oktober. Med sædvanlig redaktionel opfindsomhed har Cinematekets folk sat tre samtaler op med den danske auteur, som han bliver kaldt i omtalen af serien. I morgen skal Carlsen tale med Joshua Oppenheimer om ”Hotel of the Stars”, som instruktøren af ”The Look of Silence” mm. er helt vild med. Han er ikke den eneste. Og så vises ”Før gæsterne kommer” som udgangspunkt for en snak om ”dagligliv i Jylland” mellem Søren Ryge Petersen og Bang Carlsen. ”To af landets luneste og skarpeste menneskebetragtere”, står der som introduktion. Og så er Lars Movin selvfølgelig inviteret, ”Blinde engle” er filmen, det kunne have været andre for Movins mobbedreng af en bog om Bang Carlsens film er den man skal orientere sig i, hvis man vil bag om de mange film og rejser, som Bang Carlsen har foretaget.

A Man of the World, hvad vi også her på filmkommentaren har haft blikket rettet imod siden vi startede for snart ti år siden. Vi har skrevet et væld af tekster om Jon Bang Carlsen. Og der kommer én til snart om hans nyeste værk, ”Déjà Vu”, som har premiere i Cinemateket den 22. September.

Her er programmet:

Søndag den 18. september kl. 19:00 ‘Hotel of the Stars’ + Joshua Oppenheimer i samtale med Jon Bang Carlsen

Tirsdag den 20. september kl. 19:30 ‘Før gæsterne kommer’ + Søren Ryge Petersen i samtale med Jon Bang Carlsen

Tirsdag den 20. september kl. 21:15 ‘Ofelia kommer til byen’ – med introduktion ved instruktøren

Torsdag den 22. september kl. 16:30 ‘Blinde Engle’ + Lars Movin i samtale med Jon Bang Carlsen

Torsdag den 22. september-onsdag den 28. september: Daglige visninger af ‘Déjà vu’ – den første med introduktion af instruktøren.

Onsdag den 12. oktober kl. 16:45 ‘Ofelia kommer til byen’ (Jon Bang Carlsen, 1985)

Alt sammen i Cinemateket, Gothersgade 55, Kbh K, 33743412

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2569/

Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /2

NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th

By Sune Jonsson (1978)

 

2

An action, a façade, a room in someone’s home, a face – any of these is always a sum. This sum can be described, if one wishes, as heritage, environment, tradition, everything that with the consistency of natural law marks people and societies. If the camera’s 1/125th, with its particular slice of new describes that sum with knowledge and empathy, one can speak of genuine documentary photography, of personal and well informed messages that concern us because they broaden our horizon and enlarge our experience.

Lennart af Petersens is one of Sweden’s finest documentary photographers. When Kurt Bergengren describes his accomplishments, he expresses himself with characteristic pithiness, speaking of a Petersens’s “ability to photograph Stockholm from a distance of several centuries” or of documentary photography as being, I his case, an “exciting occupation for an educated man”.

Documentary photography is an art form that describes the world from the viewpoint of a personal vision that is based on profound knowledge and vigorous empathy. One can even claim that knowledge has to be the basis of all documentary-photography methodology. Since the photographic image is a fragment of reality, that fragment – if it claims to convey anything of general truth – must exhibit a representative portion of a long tradition, contain in it slice of now a large measure of analysis and summation, be irrefutably environment-specific. This demands, in addition to knowledge, that the photographer be capable of conforming to an empathy that, ideally, becomes synonymous with his identifying with the subject matter he is depicting. One magnum opus having such qualities is C. G. Rosenberg’s austerely constructed landscape syntheses, which now, one photographer generation later, stand out as monumental testimony concerning transformations of the Swedish landscape at the hands of a man. (To be continued on Filmkommentaren with seven more reflections…)

PHOTOS

Sune Jonsson: Mannen i det blå huset, 1957. Sune Jonsson skriver i billedteksten i sin bog Album – fotografier fem decennier, 2000, hvorfra billedet er hentet: ”… esperantisten Joan Engman, Djupsjönäs, Nyåker, med sin Dürerbiografi på esperanto… Ett 40-talslandskab som fortsætter at avlägsna sig, samtidigt som det bygger ett ålderdomshem inne i mig.”

Lennart af Petersens: Stockholm, Gamla Stan. Prästgatan / Kåkbrinken, 1940’erne.

C. G. Rosenberg: Svensk landskab, 1920’erne.

Publisher of the newspaper catalogue including Sune Jonsson’s essay: Finn Larsen info@finnlarsen.se  Read more in Tue Steen Müllers review:

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3598/ 

Om Sune Jonsson og hans metode i Allan Berg Nielsens præsentation af hans essay:

https://randersbiografien.wordpress.com/museum-samling/ (Scroll til overskriften Feltetnolog)

http://goldendaysfestival.dk/event/når-asfalten-gynger

Sune Jonsson: Nine Reflections /1

“The reportage confrontation is a fragile method of documentary work. But even so unfavorable an assigment 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…” (Sune Jonsson, from reflection 8. Photo by Sune Jonsson: Prague, August 1968.)

 

NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th

By Sune Jonsson (1978)

1

It is something of a romantic characterization to describe photography as the art of the instant. It is said, for example, that the art of the camera is to see quickly and straight ahead. And for nearly half a century now, photographers have indeed been intoxicating themselves with the very ability of the 35mm camera to capture on film the most ephemeral and most unguarded of instants. This has naturally been an asset that has both enriched and characterized photography.

In 1/125th of a second, Henri Cartier-Bresson coordinates “eye, intellect, and feeling” and speaks philosophically of the instant of exposure as “the decisive moment”. He feels that only a tiny portion of the overall photographic process can be described as creative: to wit, that moment in which the photographer makes his decision. Cartier-Bresson is an artist whom only the photographic medium and its special avenues of communication could have created: the stroller-through-the-world, in whose cosmorama environments and cultures become one historic flow, a constantly changeable sum of a large number of parts that suddenly arrange themselves in that decisive 1/125th of a second in which the photographer sums up his experience of reality. Reportage confrontations can thus become, as happens in Cartier-Bresson’s pictures from the Europe of the 30s, more profound, richer in content – in short: documentary photography. (To be continued on Filmkommentaren with eight more reflections…)

Henri Cartier-Bresson: Fish market

 

EXHIBITION NEWSPAPER CATALOGUE

Sune Jonsson’s essay was noticed by Tue Steen Müller on the photo exhibition Youth in Randers 1978-1979 seen by Finn Larsen and Lars Johansson, at Øksnehallen in Copenhagen and now shown as When the asphalt sways in Copenhagen Main Library, and Müller wrote “… curated by Finn Larsen and Hans Grundsø, with an exhibition newspaper catalogue of almost 100 pages that is in Danish AND English language and includes photos from the exhibition about how young people looked like, what they did in their free time, how they met the opposite sex, cigarettes, beer, mopeds – there is also a section on a rocker group – ordinary life interpreted in an extraordinary manner, a close-up of a generation in the sixth biggest city in Denmark some four hours away from the capital, where the exhibition now is to watch.

Yes, a classical documentary approach by two skilled photographers Lars Johansson and Finn Larsen, who later on have developed their own careers in film and literature and visual art – reminding us how important it is to have time to go deep and to catch the moment. Larsen, editor of the impressive newspaper catalogue, has been so generous to publish a great reflective article by Swedish legendary documentary photographer and filmmaker Sune Jonsson. Here is a quote:

‘The reportage confrontation is a fragile method of documentary work. But even so unfavorable an assigment 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…’

A must-read article for documentarians as the exhibition is an inspiration. It is all about the Gaze as Albert Maysles would have put it.

http://goldendaysfestival.dk/event/når-asfalten-gynger

Publisher of the newspaper catalogue: Finn Larsen info@finnlarsen.se  

PHOTO

Sune Jonsson: Prag, augusti 1968. Jonsson skriver i billedteksten i sin bog Album – fotografier fem decennier, 2000, hvorfra billedet er hentet: ”Örjan Wallqvist var redaktör för veckotidningen VI och inbjöd mig att tillsammans med journalisten Dag Lindberg göra en resa till Tjeckoslovakien och Prag. Uppdraget innebar att beskriva den så kallade Prag-våren med dess spirandeförsta löfte om demokratisering av en kommunistisk öststat under Alexander Dubceks ledning. Vi var der den dramatiska dagen 21 augusti, närden ryska invasionen kom. Jag försökte inrikta mig på att spegla konfrontationen mellan de förhoppningsfulla, men nu grundbesvikna pragborna och de oförstående ryska soldaterna…”

Teksten er hentet fra udstillingsavisen / kataloget til denne udstilling:

http://goldendaysfestival.dk/event/når-asfalten-gynger

How to Reach the Audience

… is the title of a two-day documentary film conference that takes place September 24-25 in Saint Petersburg within the frames of the documentary festival Message2Man. It is a Nordic-Russian look at documentaries in cinemas, festivals, vod’s, self-distribution, screenings at cultural houses where filmmakers meet the audience. Nordic Council of Ministers is supporting the conference that is a classic: Interesting speeches followed by discussions moderated by me and Cecilie Bolvinkel from EDN (European Documentary Network).

The man behind the conference is the Russian producer Viktor Skubey, who is President of the Russian Guild of Documentary Film and TV and who stood behind the DoxPro program in Saint Petersburg together with Ludmila Nazaruk. The production of the conference is in the hands of experienced producer Anastasia Lobanova.

Let me mention some of the points of the conference. First the

Nordic: From Denmark’s Danish Film Institute Liselotte Michelsen and Lisbeth Juhl Sibbesen will talk about their streamingsite ”Filmcentralen”, accessible for all citizens in the Kingdom. Mentioned Cecilie Bolvinkel will introduce ”Moving Docs”, an initiative of EDN with pan-European screenings. Swedish Stina Gardell speaks about ”How to Create an audience” with her own examples of self-distribution. The director of the Doc Lounge in the Nordic countries Maja Lindquist will introduce this exciting tool to attract a new audience to see documentaries. Lindquist is also the program manager of the festival Nordisk Panorama.

And the Russians: I am especially happy that I am going to see Irina Shatalova again, cameraperson and one of the filmmakers behind DOKer, an innovative film festival and screening initiative. Also a speech about the ”National Film Clubs Network” by Maria Muskevich looks inviting as does an intervention by film critic and distributor Anton Mazurov, ”Distribution of creative docs in Russia”.

From broadcasting side there will be a speech on the tv channel 24 DOC by Maria Miroshnichenko and Alexey Laifurov, and as the last intervention – crossing the borders of the Nordic and Russian – Diana Tabakov from exceptional DocAlliance will speak.

The conference takes place at Lendok – cultural space. Kryukov kanal, 12 in Saint Petersburg with nearest metro stations to be SennayaSadovayaSpasskaya (then 15 minutes by walk or take a minibus to Mariiskiy theatre).

To take part is free, but please be there 15 minutes before it starts the 24th at 10 in the morning – for registration.

Baltic Docs – Flying Back in Time

It’s 9.45am June 13th 1997. The location is the old Kino Gudhjem on Bornholm, the island in the middle of the Baltic Sea. The first Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries is to take off, there is a panel of commissioning editors waiting to listen to words from those pitching and to watch a trailer.

25 projects were lined-up, and a long day lay ahead of us. 15 minutes were given to each project according to the rules that had been set up years before at the Forum in Amsterdam. Those same rules that are still used at the many documentary fora all over the world.

The panel was strong. Makes me smile with nostalgia, when I think of experienced people like Björn Arvas from Swedish SVT, Flemming Grenz from Danish DR and Eila Werning from YLE in Finland. They have all, 20 editions later, retired now, but again and again this trio came back to support the filmmakers from the region. As did – in the first years of the Forum – Nick Fraser from BBC and Mette Hoffmann Meyer from TV2 Denmark. Not to forget Karolina Lidin from National Film Board of Denmark (Statens Filmcentral), who was already involved in the festival, that had been running on Bornholm since 1990, founded by TV2 Bornholm’s Bent Nørby Bonde, who then set up BMC, Baltic Media Centre.

Russian Avant-Garde

A key person in this Bornholmian film adventure – as it was for me and many others – was Sonja Vesterholt and as we moderators (John Marshall and I) knew that Sonja was a superb pitcher, she was the one selected to start the show that morning in Gudhjem. She did so together with Alexander Krivonos, director from St. Petersburg, the hometown of Sonja, with a project called Searching of the Russian Avant-garde Artists; it was also pitched in Amsterdam at IDFA. Russian Avant-Garde became a great film due to Krivonos cinematic skills with Sonja as the perfect producer. A classic on this theme.

There were two catalogues on the table. One included the projects developed at a week- long workshop preceding the pitching that took place on the last day of the festival. The other catalogue consisted of projects that most often came from filmmakers, who attended the festival with their films. This first edition featured the Lithuanian poetic school of documentaries, represented by the now well-known artists Audrius Stonys, Arunas Matelis and Valdas Navasaitis.

Guardian Angels

The Forum remained on Bornholm for its first four editions, produced by Latvians – Lelda Ozola, the first three, and Ilze Gailite Holmberg, number four. These two names, guardian angels of the Forum, will pop up several times in this text celebrating the 20 years of a Forum that has travelled to different locations with the aim of getting Eastern European documentaries and documentarians known and shown in the Western part of the world.

1998 and 1999 were years where the panels also included people like Iikka Vehkalahti from Finnish YLE, Diane Weyermann from Soros Documentary Fund and IDFA director and founder Ally Derks, who represented the Jan Vrijman Fund. They were all very positive to Latvian veteran Ivars Seleckis, when he presented his second film on the Riga Crossroad Street, which turned out as successful as expected – the surprise, however, was the overall (mainly from female editors around the table) support to the pitch of Latvian producer Guntis Trekteris and director Una Celma’s Egg Lady, a short documentary about a woman, who as her job breaks 20.000 eggs per day. Shot on 35mm, 26 mins., nothing really happens but the egg-breaking, a minimalistic masterpiece, a kind of film that would not stand a chance today, 20 years later.

Going South

With BMC as the locomotive and Bent Nørby Bonde and Simon Drewsen Holmberg as conductors something had to change, when the Danish state no longer wanted to support the festival = cultural activities to develop the Baltic countries. BMC (and the Danish state’s focus) had started to be on the Balkan region and it was thus natural to think that a collaboration could be established between the Baltic and the Balkan region. In 2000 filmmakers from the South came to the festival and the Forum and a co-production meeting between East and West was set up. The idea was a simple consequence of how films are financed – if you wish to access funding in another country than your own, you need to have an alliance with a co-producing company in that country. So experienced producers from the East met with their counterparts to share and see if chemistry worked.

In 2001 the festival and the Forum took place in beautiful Dubrovnik, under the name ”5th Baltic & SEE Forum for Documentaries”. As one of those who went to Dubrovnik for preparation of the festival and the Forum, it would be wrong to say that it was easy, very much – in retrospect – because of us Northerners ignoring Southern way of life. How could we make film screenings at 2pm, siesta time, in June in the South…. No one came! They were all on the beach!

Anyway, thanks to local collaborators and the logistical and technical skills of event producer Ilze Gailite Holmberg and Andreas Steinmann, a key person at the festival on Bornholm and now here, a Forum was performed that included the presentation of what became a masterpiece like Arunas Matelis Before the Flight to the Earth (when finished it won first prizes in both Leipzig and Amsterdam), Bulgarian Adela Peeva’s This is not My Song, Romanian Florin Lepan’s film on Tarzan aka Johnny Weissmuller. Furthermore the father of Croatian documentary, Nenad Puhovski pitched on this occasion as did Hungarian Diana Groó.

Back to the North

At the 6th edition it was back to the North. It was not possible to develop the festival and Forum in the South, but the link to the South was kept. Four of the 24 projects were invited from SEE, South East Europe, where the BMC kept on being active through workshops and consultancy in the audio-visual sector. But alas, NO MORE festival, when will it come back…

Back to the North, to Riga, with the involvement of the Latvian Producers Association and with Guntis Trekteris as producer of the 2001 and 2002 event at the Hotel Riga. That hosted an impressive panel of people from TV stations like arte, zdf, YLE, NDR, RTBF, ORF (wonderful Franz Grabner, RIP), DR, TV2. The Baltic broadcasters started to send representatives. Marje Jurtshenko from Estonian Television to mention the one, who has influenced the atmosphere of the discussions so often and still does.

Let me drop some titles from these two years: Romeo and Juliet by Viesturs Kairiss, Dreamland by Laila Pakalnina, Philosopher Escaped by Robert Vinovskis, My Husband Andrei Sakharov by Inara Kolmane, Seda, the Marsh Country by Kaspars Goba – all Latvian – and Countdown by Lithuanian Audrius Stonys.

It was also in Riga that we first welcomed a pitch by Ukrainian Svetlana Zinovyeva and one by the Belorussian master Yuri Khashchevatsky, a man not liked by Lukashenko! To express an understatement!

Hans Christian Andersen…

On the financial side, as of 2003, the Forum has been generously supported by the EU MEDIA programme with EDN (European Documentary Network) as the applicant partner until 2006 and the National Film Centre of Latvia as of 2007.

In 2004 the Forum landed in Tallinn to be produced by director and producer Riho Västrik, who is still a strong supporter of the Forum bringing his students from the Baltic Film and Media School to attend as observers. 2004 was the year when the Baltic countries entered the EU, became part of the family as many phrased it. Simon Drewsen Holmberg, managing director of the BMC, brought in Hans Christian Andersen in his preface of the Forum catalogue:

“As any other commercial market it is the intersection where interested sellers and buyers meet. It is hence very promising to see that today this market is not just a place where “Eastern” Producers meets “Western” buyers. It is also a place where “East” meets “East” and in the future we may also present “Western” projects for eager “Eastern” Com. eds. We may finally conclude that the Baltic Forum is becoming in even more ways a beautiful Swan. But then not too much I hope — because if you are into film-production — you have to thrive with starting off as an Ugly Duckling each time…. “.

Two Estonian directors – who now have a fine reputation internationally – pitched in the capital of their country. Jaak Kilmi was there with his “Art of Selling” and Marianna Kaat presented “The Last Phantoms“, what became her beautiful film on the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.

The swan flew to Vilnius in 2005 to be caressed by producer Rasa Miskinyte and her staff, who set up a film screening programme parallel to the Forum, a tradition that has been continued since then. When in Vilnius I had to write this in the preface to the catalogue:

“…Allow me to think back to the key person in Lithuanian documentary, Henrikas Sableviciaus, who was a teacher, organiser, dramaturg and director himself. Henrikas attended all festivals on Bornholm, shared his enormous generosity with everyone. Always enthusiastic about the documentary genre. Henrikas died last year. Let us pay tribute to his memory!”.

What was visible at that year’s Forum was the increase of projects from Ukraine and Belarus – and about Belarus, remembering the fine work of Polish Miroslaw Dembinski, Belarusian Lesson.

The Forum Finds a Permanent Base

10 years old the Forum was looking for a permanent home and Riga welcomed it with a location on the top floor of Hotel Albert named after Einstein and near the streets, where Sergei Eisenstein grew up and where his architect father Michael Eisenstein built the famous houses. This is where we have been, year after year, with the warm professionalism of Zelda = Zanda Dudina and Lelda Ozola as the fundament and with a parallel excellent film programme, for years initiated by Ilze Gailite Holmberg, as director of the organizer, the National Film Centre of Latvia. These names keep on coming back: Ilze, Lelda…

And in 2006 the 10th Forum was supported by fine words by the Latvian Minister of Culture Helena Demakova: “…The greatest documentary film professionalism is hidden in the ability to indirectly reflect something of one’s own life through the life of others. Documentary film on very rare occasions asks the question: what is happening. Documentary film asks: how does it happen. And perhaps also – why does it happen that way. At the same time, it’s in the viewer’s competence to see where it’s leading. And the viewer is the third most important element in creating documentary film. Right after the doer and the observer…” Demakova, by the way, pitched in the role of a scriptwriter at the very first Forum in Svaneke 1997 as did Ilze Gailite Holmberg as a producer…

One more quote from Demakova, who was also Minister of Culture in 2007 and wrote this: “…The organisers of the Forum have added a film programme entitled Documentaries that Shook the World, among them a documentary on Alexander Litvinenko by his friend and film author Andrei Nekrasov, a documentary Kalinovsky Square (by Yuri Khashchevatsky) on fight of the political opposition in Belarus and documentaries on September 11, 2001…”

Catalogues and Decision Makers

The catalogue is now in four colour great design, two pages per pitched film project, overview of the film programme running parallel, seminars for pitching participants and local professionals, cv’s of panelists and tutors… it’s all there, professional and inviting, one of those catalogues that you keep on your shelf, not to be thrown away for 11 years created by the corporate designer of the Baltic Sea Forum – a Latvian Arnis Grinbergs.

At the 10th edition in 2006 the Georgians arrived… sure they did! One of the Georgians, Besarion Giorgobiani (Beso) with a project called “The Dancer”, shocked the decision makers by – yes, of course – dancing his pitch!

Note that I wrote “decision makers”. Because of one of the important changes in the panels this last decade: sales agents from companies like Autlook, Taskovski Films, Deckert Distribution, First Hand Films, Rise and Shine… have been invited to sit in as their role as go-betweens to the commissioning editors have grown enormously, at the same speed (no reason to hide that) as the financial importance of the commissioning editors have decreased. There is not that much money available at the public TV stations for creative documentaries as before, at the same time as new smaller markets have emerged, like the non-theatrical, like the VOD, like – not to be underestimated, the festivals. Festival money is not money that you get up-front for your production budget but with the right distributor and the right good-for-festivals film, you can easily get a good income – multiply as an example 50 festival fees with €300, some pay €500.

Films that Will Travel

Back to the impressive list of films that have passed the Baltic Sea Docs during the 10 editions at Albert Hotel, on the top floor with two days of pitching of 24 film projects, preceded by a workshop of three days, where the projects have been analysed and commented by so-called experts and colleagues via intense discussion from morning till night. It is not to be underestimated, what these meetings have created in terms of collaboration across the borders. Developing the projects in a few days often with the help of TV commissioning editors, who love to take part in a creative process.

The list – Man-Horse by Lithuanian Audrius Mickevius with the most crazy trailer ever. Antra Cilinska’s Is it Easy to be – After 20 Years, a film historical follow-up to Juris Podnieks perestroika film that Cilinska edited. Salomé Jashi’s Bakhmaro, Pakalnina’s Snow-Crazy, the amazing compilation film 15 Young by Young by tornado producer Ilona Bicevska, Russian Alina Rudnitskaya’s Blood of the stranger, Mindaugas Survila’s Field of Magic, Giedre Zickyte’s film about Luckus, the Russian Tatyana Soboleva’s film about the Siberian floating hospital, Davis Simanis film on the national library… I could go on… political ”hot” film as The Term with Estonian Max Tuula as producer and Beyond Fear by Herz Frank, his last film that he did not finish. Maria Kravchenko and producer Guntis Trekteris did so. In 2015 courageous Russian director Askold Kurov pitched ”Release Oleg Sentsov”, still not finished.

And the Next Project…

Have to close this celebration text on the Baltic Sea Forum during 20 years. Thanks for letting me be part of the furniture. Thanks for letting me into a world of documentaries that I have become totally addicted to: documentaries from the East of Europe. From Tallinn and St. Petersburg to Belgrade and Kosova.

When Mikael Opstrup from EDN and I again-again, as the old boys, moderators of this event, welcome a panel of decision makers and first of all a group of filmmakers from many countries to present their film project, we do so proudly knowing that it has meant something to have this yearly 20 year old gathering for people, who work with a film genre, that has definitely grown in importance during these 20 years. We all know that there is an audience out there on all the platforms available. An audience that deserves the best that you can offer, you creative artists…

 … and the next project comes from… you have 15 minutes for your pitch, half of the time for your words and your visuals, half of the time for reactions, questions and answers. Action!

IMPORTANT: YOU CAN HAVE THE 40 PAGES BRILLIANTLY ILLUSTRATED PUBLICATION SENT TO YOU FOR FREE BY CONTACTING balticforum@nkc.gov.lv

Photo: Ten Minutes Older, Herz Frank, Juris Podnieks (Camera), 1978.

Tue Steen Müller