And some words about the male interventions at the conference in Saint Petersburg on the second day, and some small conclusions or call it reflections.

Festival director (and film director and producer) Pavel Pechenkin from Flahertiana in Perm had just completed the 2016 edition of the old festival that carries the name of the man, who for many was the one who invented the name ”documentary” and who was also the one, who said that ”we have not achieved our goal before it is quite as easy to get access to a film as it is to a book”. Is that where we are today?

13000 visited the festival this year, Pechenkin said. His speech,

however, was more focused on the importance of involving teachers in documentaries. He mentioned that students are writing essays about documentaries they have seen, that school screenings are arranged in the cinema complex that he is responsible for, he has 6 halls. To the question if there is film education, meaning lessons on dramaturgy, how to analyse a film etc., on the curriculum of elementary schools or high schools, Pechenkin answered ”njet”. Pechenkin stressed the importance of showing film historically interesting documentaries in his cinema, where there are Film projectors in some halls, it is not all digitalized. Did you hear that Western cinema owners…

Alexey Nedviga from the Rodina cinema in the city represented the classical approach to Film, a film lover who would never think of watching a film on a computer or on a smart phone. He is programming documentaries in his cinema – come with your films to me, he said to the filmmakers present – and ”I don’t care if there are only 2 viewers in the cinema, maybe there will be 5 the next day…”

Contrary to him, very much contrary I would say, was Alexey Laifurov from the tv station 24Doc, a true film buff working for a commercial channel that shows documentaries in loops, normally with Russian dubbing – the exception, however, being the film of Laurie Anderson, because ”her voice is so important”… in the evening I saw Snowden in Laura Poitras film speaking Russian. Strange, but that’s how it is in many countries. Anyway, the channel, Laifurov said, has three legs: it’s a tv channel, it has a vod platform, it does theatrical distribution – works a lot with film festivals. Laifurov focused in his speech on what the channel does on art, planning a series/programmes on/with Louise Bourgeois and, if I got it right, Gerhard Richter. 9 million people can watch 24Doc, 55.000 followers on FB. The channel has recently done a relaunch omitting what Lairufov called ”politisized” documentaries, I think he meant films with a social and/or political angle. On the other hand he mentioned that ”Wolfpack” was shown. A social/psychological documentary? Website below.

The attendance to the conference was not big, so good that Viktor Skubey had organised that everything was filmed and put online in both an English and Russian version – the many interesting speeches deserve to be heard and seen by documentary people all over.

Reflections… the situation for documentaries in the Nordic countries and in Russia is totally different when it comes to reaching the audience. Having said so, Russia has a lot of festivals, there are film clubs and there are festivals that work all year round and have the ambition to make the triangle Film/Director/Spectator come into reality. Doker is the example, an independent grassroot festival set up and run by filmmakers, with a considerable audience. M2M here in Saint Petersburg has an audience, an international profile and there are many other. The basic question is of course how to get more of the 250 yearly supported to reach an audience, if the makers and producers want that. But, maybe very naïve, who should they not want their films to be watched?

And how can the many Nordic and European documentary initiatives give access to the Russian documentarians and documentaries. The latter is maybe not a problem, there are many excellent documentaries coming out of Russia, not only those which are in opposition to the system, ”the Putin films”… Russia is so full of stories, we want to know and understand, don’t we. At the recent Baltic Sea Forum one story after the other dealt with Russia of today and its past. But the training initiatives, the vod’s, the lounges etc. – are they also part of the sanctions ”we” Europeans perform right now? Cultural sanctions, does it make sense? Of course not!

www.24doc.ru

No discussion, the female presenters at the Saint Petersburg conference on how to reach an audience saturday/sunday September 24/25 were the best prepared, spoke good English, were used to communicate and had clear power point figures and texts, mixed with film clips. And kept the time so the polite moderators, Cecilie Bolvinkel and me, did not have to interrupt or make signs that ”time is up” as we tried, totally in vain, to do with a couple of male speakers…

Bolvinkel talked on the first day about the EDN project ”Moving Docs”, a pan-European documentary screening network that includes 9 partners. It was launched in 2015 and includes screenings and now also – text taken from the website of EDN, link below – ”… In addition to raising awareness for the ongoing refugee crisis through documentaries such as ”The Longest Run” (director Marianna Economou) and ”At Home in the World” (director Andreas Kofoed), the EDN-led Moving Docs programme recently launched a crowdfunding campaign to support the most helpless victims of today’s crises: refugee children… Bravo, and bravo also for the openness that Bolvinkel showed towards the Russian in the audience – you (film clubs?, Documentary Guild?, Doker festival) can join if you want to show European films. Unfortunately it can not go the the other way, as Moving Docs is paid by the EU.

Over the bridge to Malmø from Copenhagen based EDN. Maja Lindquist took the floor as the first one sunday morning talking about ”The Doc Lounge Experience” with the subtitle ”how to attract new and young audiences to documentaries”. Lindquist who is also programmer for the Nordisk Panorama festival has built up the Doclounge, that (wow!) during the 10 years has had 100000 visitors, has lounges in 19 cities in the Nordic countries (why only two in Denmark!), where people come to hang out, have a drink, watch a documentary, discuss it, or have a music experience afterwards. It has to be ”cool and hip” as Lindquist put it. There are great plans to expand the events with live streaming of discussions. It’s great, simply and you should read more about it, link below. And why not include a lounge or two in Saint Petersburg, there can be no technical problems, or?

The third of the four women I want to praise is Irina Shatalova, brilliant camerawoman, producer (”Linar”) and one of the filmmakers behind Doker that I have written about several times on filmkommentaren. Doker is much more than a festival, it is a film political initiative to create an audience for creative documentaries in Moscow and around in the huge country. Important screenings about important subjects, respect for the makers, long Q&A’s – no support from the Ministry of Culture, but there should be International money for this superb action for international documentaries – in 2015 40 films were shown from 32 countries. And good ones, I was in the jury, so I know. Check their website, below, and click above for previous texts on Doker.

Diana Tabakov from Czech Republic, what is she doing at a Russian-Nordic meeting? Well, organizer Viktor Skubey said to me, when we put together the program that we break the rules and include magnificent project DocAlliance in the program. We did. I will be brief as filmkommentaren has written about the high quality of DocAlliance again and again, and remember it costs €3.99 per month to subscribe and get access to film historical masterpieces as well as new films from all over, actually. And filmed masterclasses with Viktor Kossakovsky and Geoffrey Reggio and so on so forth. Tabakov did a fine show with funny pictures of a happy cat that hopes to be rich through vod and a sad grey cat after the discovery that you do not get rich from vod… But if you try all the platforms available, she said and showed an image of the possibilities. OMG, I thought, then better be poor and happy. Check the website below for that as well.

Photo: Irina Sahatalova on the Square of the Winter Palace at the M2M opening last friday.

One more final report tomorrow.

www.edn.dk

www.doclounge.se

https://filmfreeway.com/festival/MIDFF

www.dafilms.com  

Maria Muskevich, director and producer, on her way to the Warsaw International Film Festival for the European premiere of the film ”Putin Forever” (director Kirill Nenashev) – the first lines of the film’s synopsis: … ” The day before Vladimir Putin’s presidential inauguration, on 6 May 2012, a protest march took place in Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square opposite the Kremlin, demanding Putin’s resignation and honest elections in Russia. This peaceful march was brutally dispersed by the police special forces…” – talked about the film club movement in Russia. 20-30 clubs are active, not a lot in a huge country like Russia but the clubs are to be seen as tools to combine an audience and the makers. Muskevich and the Documentary Guild are looking for ways to better and enlarge the network.

Which brings us to the fact that 250 documentaries are every year supported by the Russian Ministry of Culture but a very small percentage of these reaches an audience… Critic, sales agent, teacher (Antipode Sales & Distribution) Anton Mazurov was very hard in his evaluation of the situation for Russian documentaries. He talked about ”corruption, nepotism, ideological tumors” in the

system around the Ministry of Culture support, ”nobody needs docs”, ”we don’t have money and we have brains that are sick”.

Nevertheless his company Antipode, that sells and distributes documentary films in the West – and feature films – have strong, what he called ”protest rebel” films. He showed clips from the award-winning ”My friend Boris Nemtsov”, ”Act and Punishment” (Pussy Riot), ”Grozny Blues” and the above mentioned ”Putin Forever” – all those films we see at Western European documentary festivals.

The intervention of Mazurov brought forward a lot of reactions, it seemed like many agreed with him on the lack of structure – why support 250 documentaries if there is no thoughts or plans on how to get them to the audience?

IF the atmosphere in the hall on this first day of the conference was a bit depressed after Mazurov, it all changed when Swedish producer Stina Gardell took the floor and with her charisma and enthusiasm gave us the story about how she got ”Ingrid Bergman In Her Own Words” to become a cinema box office hit in Sweden with 200.000 tickets sold. ”You think it just comes like this”, she said referring to the hard work she did to 1) remind the Swedes about who Ingrid Bergman was, she was about to be forgotten… 2) to launch the film in Cannes… A fairy tale, yes, but she managed to get the actress on stamps, she created interest within the Cannes festival and she did so together with Isabella Rossellini, the daughter of Ingrid and Roberto R., Isabella, who wanted a film to be done and had approached critic and director Stig Björkman to hear if he could and would. He then came to Gardell, who did a marvellous work. For those of you who have seen the film – it IS ”in her own words” based on her diaries and her films and photos and clips from her films as an actress. Ingrid Bergman ended up on the posters of the Cannes Film Festival 2015, a tribute to the actress 100 years after her birth.

Stina Gardell was the star of the first day of the conference, see the photo with her and Bergman and Bogart on the big screen. Gardell wanted the film to go into cinemas and she succeeded.

More reports will follow, next one on the strong female speakers Cecilie Bolvinkel, Maja Lindquist and Irina Shatalova.

http://rgdoc.ru/en/

http://www.antipode-sales.biz/

http://www.mantarayfilm.se/start/

Three Danes on stage. And a Russian technician, whose job it was, not always easy, during the whole first day of the conference, to have the computers connected to the system at Lendoc, where the conference ”How Docs Reach the Audience” with Nordic and Russian speakers takes place. While I am making the introduction to the conference, Liselotte Michelsen and Lisbeth Juhl Sibbesen from the Danish Film Institute (DFI) are getting ready to speak about the streamingsite(s) Filmcentralen that has subsites for both public viewing and one to be used in education. They did a great job inviting the audience to understand how the sites were built and they entertained with a wonderful short silent film, ”A Russian long distance swimmer in Copenhagen” in 1913. That film is one example from a fine collection that is available for everybody – and not only in Denmark. ”Denmark on Film” includes films from 1905-1965. Link below.

Another site is targeting elementary and high schools that can subscribe to get films into the class room, often with educational material available. There are 1600 films on this filmcentralen site and 614 on the site filmcentralen ”for alle” = ”for everybody”, where you can find films by documentary masters as Jørgen Leth and Jon Bang Carlsen. The latter site, the two speakers from DFI told, is right now threatened because of lack of financing. That is sad news after all these years with succesful negociations with the Danish producers to make the films reach the audience where they are, in their homes. And more so as the site is working and has an audience.

Cecilie Bolvinkel from EDN was the moderator of this first speech of the conference and had the boss of it all, St. Petersburg based producer and president of the Documentary Guild, Viktor Skubey, put questions about rights as did Mikhail Zheleznikov, programmer of the M2M festival’s In Silico section for experimental films. Misha was the one who answered my question if there was a streamingsite in Russia. There is, he said: http://www.rutracker.org/

More reports from the conference will follow.

http://filmcentralen.dk/museum/danmark-paa-film

It was a grand opening last night of the 26th edition of the Message2Man festival in Saint Petersburg. It took place on the monumental Winter Palace Square, a historical place as it was shown through archive material from 1916, as you know the year before the Russian revolution. Surprisingly short speeches, a festive atmosphere, balloons reaching the sky, we were all equipped with rain coats and saw Werner Herzog go to the stage to receive the award for his life long contribution to cinema. He thanked and told the audience that his family is half Russian as he has been married to a Russian for 21 years. That created applause as did the rock band DTD that was very strong, they are from the city. And now today the festival takes off at the Velikan cinema complex with a huge program of short films, experimental works, animation and documentaries. And the conference between Nordic and Russian filmmakers, “How Docs Reach the Audience” at the Lendoc.

Photo: Alexey Golubev.

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/ 

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/