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

Baltic Sea Docs Riga/ 3

I have mentioned so many times the old masters like Herz Frank, Ivars Seleckis, Mark Soosaar, Henrikas Sablevicius, Uldis Brauns and their younger students like Audrius Stonys, Arunas Matelis (who are no longer the young generation but masters who belong to the Baltic poetic tradition), but there are always directors, who sing with their own voice, in this case with many voices like Laila Pakalnina, who has made long and short documentaries, and feature films, conceptual and not conceptual, provoking in subject and style(s). Always surprising.

… and always a gift for a moderator at a pitching session, like me at the Baltic Sea Docs this year. I had no idea what Pakalnina wanted to say or how she wanted to present her project called ”Spoon”, and I was wonderfully amused as was the audience and the panel of decision makers, who were asked to get active. But first the catalogue text for the film:

”Men can drill very deep, down to where oil is. Large groups of qualified men equipped with machines can extract oil and make it travel far, to a place where other qualified men can transform oil into useful plastic. The plastic is then moved away to a factory, where more men can turn it into spoons, which will be even further transported to all sorts of eateries, and, likely, will be available free of charge. This meaningful life will last for one unceremonious meal.This film is going to be about a plastic spoon, society, and society’s progress. About the steps that must be taken so that people can end the spoon’s journey and throw it into the bin…”.

And it was at this point the panelists became actors in a documentary film pitched to them:

The last scene of the film, the throwing of plastic spoons into a bin was shot yesterday, sunday morning on the 11th floor of the Hotel Albert. Where the 20th edition of the Baltic Sea Docs 2016 took place. Take a look at the photo – From the left to the right: Arte’s Valérie Theobalt, MDR’s Heribert Schneiders, Estonian Television’s Marje Jurtshenko, IKON (The Netherlands) Margje de Koning and DR/TV’s Jan Daae.

The film is to be shot in black and white by Gints Berzins, who had been on the hotel location to decide, where the camera should be placed and whose few super aesthetic panoramic shots were shown on the screen while the discussion of the film took place.

Pakalnina was accompanied on stage by Lithuanian producer Dagne Vildiunaite, not present was the Estonian producer Kaspar Kallas. With Pakalnina being Latvian this is going to be a true Baltic coproduction supported by the film institutions, I guess, and maybe some of the spoon throwing decision makers from the photo. From my side thanks for the show and mind my words, there is no risk in supporting Laila Pakalnina. You will get quality, whether you like the style she chooses for storytelling or not. 

Photos: Photo: Agnese Zeltina… thanks!

http://balticseadocs.lv

Steve Hoover: Almost Holy

A week ago I was in Mariupol with Lithuanian director Mantas Kvedaravicius, whose ”Mariupolis” made a big impression on me. And now I have returned to the city in Ukraine with American director Steve Hooper, who is here in Riga and with whom I have tutored filmmakers for the Baltic Sea Docs 2016. His film had an equally strong impact on me. And it has been a pleasure to meet the young director from Pittsburgh.

Full house in the K-Suns cinema in Riga, a long Q&A after the screening of a film, that has already had a long festival career and has been theatrically released in the USA and in the UK.

It’s an action film in the best American sense: Gennadiy Mokhnenko, a pastor in Ukraine who rehabilitates homeless children at his center, Pilgrim Republic, is a charismatic character, who is taking matters in his own hands. Who does what the authorities should do but do not do, or are not able to do because of lack of resources. He picks up kids in the streets, takes them to his place, works on getting them out of their drug addictions – or try to get them back to a normal life and/or reunited with their parents. If they are alive or if they are capable of being parents.

It is amazing how close Hoover and his crew have been able to come to the kids and youngsters. You see tragic fates, you follow some of them along the film, where Gennadiy is almost constantly in the picture. Yes, he is a hero, an amazing man, a documentary version of Bruce Willis, full of love for the victims of the social reality in this part of Ukraine that is close to the war, actually part of the war as the film demonstrates. There are touching scenes, there are scenes where you want to close your eyes, there are scenes where Gennadyi talks directly to the camera, there are images that you will not forget at the end of the film, where Gennadyi swims in the sea with the steel factory behind him, and on shore, as the director put it in the discussion after the film, makes ”a pillow” for himself in the sand.

Small objections from a critic who likes the film a lot – it is a bit too long, I felt some repetitions. It has – mostly in the beginning – a ”nervousness” in the editing and camerawork, which might have to do with the fact that Hoover jumps in time from beginning of 2000 forward and back again. Was that necessary? And the sound score, did it have to be so strong, could there have been more silent sequences? And yet, it is an action film…  

USA, 100 mins., 2015.

http://www.almostholyfilm.com/

Baltic Sea Docs Riga/ 2

The first day of pitching at the 20th edition of the Baltic Sea Forum ended with the presentation of the project ”Baltic New Wave”. The initiator and co-director of the film-to-be Kristine Briede was the presenter in front of four mature men, Arunas Matelis from Lithuania, Riho Västrik from Estonian, Uldis Cekulis from Latvia and Lithuanian co-director Audrius Stonys. The project had been developed for a long time, the financing is of course more depending on contribution from the three Baltic film institutions and the tv stations in the countries than on international financing… and yet as Sari Volanen from Finnish YLE said, it could be a theme evening with the film and some of the (short) films that will be cited from. To give you more information, here is the synopsis from the catalogue:

”A story about the Baltic School of Poetic Documentary and its creators – filmmakers who broke the propaganda documentary tradition in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. The story is told by two filmmakers – contemporary director Audrius Stonys (LT), and Herz Frank (LV / ISR), his late friend and mentor, who is guiding Audrius according to the Map of Ptolemy – a cinematographic code-book suggesting new discoveries both in poetic filmmaking and its meaning. Frank’s personal archives, uncovered by Audrius in Frank’s home in Israel, are a key to the timeless questions raised by every generation.”

The filmmakers presented in the film will be Andres Sööt and Mark Soosaar from Estonia, Henrikas Sablevicius and Robertas Verbas from Lithuania,  Ivars Seleckis, Aivars Freimanis and Uldis Brauns from Latvia… and maybe more of that generation.

Allow me to be emotional: The films of the mentioned masters as well the films of Stonys and Matelis were films I got to know on the island of Bornholm during the 1990’es. I am a true lover of the Baltic documentary tradition.

Photo: Agnese Zeltina… thanks!

http://balticseadocs.lv/

Dalsgaard og Zytoon: The War Show /6

The War Show vandt Venice Days award ved dette års Venedig Film Festival, den blev i går af den officielle jury valgt som dette års vinderfilm. Juryen lagde i sin bedømmelse vægt på, at “The War Show er en film, som giver et stærkt menneskeligt indblik i den komplekse krig i Syrien. Endvidere at det er en film, som alle burde se”.

JURYENS MOTIVATION

“The War Show provoked an impassioned response from the jury. We were immediately struck by the political and social significance and urgency of the film, while also appreciating its daring and innovative approach to filmmaking. We deliberated on whether or not this harrowing documentary should be included alongside the rest of the Venice Days lineup, which was comprised of narrative fiction features. However, we came to the conclusion that the film worked on its own merits as an outstandingly crafted piece of cinema, not simply one that appealed to our moral conscience. The War Show is also an incredibly topical film that sheds light on an ongoing conflict that is too often ignored or misrepresented by the media. We believe it is a film that each and every one of us should see.”

De udenlandske anmeldere har også taget godt imod den danske filminstuktør Andreas Dalsgaards og den syriske filminstruktør og radio-dj Obaidah Zytoons dokumentarfilm. Screen Daily skriver: “…doesn’t just hit home, it does so with devastating force”, Varity skriver: “Essential… Highly personal yet universally affecting”, Hollywood Reporter skriver: “… the film manages to capture the hopes and fears of an entire generation…”, Huffington Post skriver: “A personal, insightful, entertaining, terrifying, melancholic, and brave journey inside Syria from the days of the revolution of 2011 to modern times…”

The Arab Times skriver: “Highly personal yet universally affecting… From the euphoria of protest to complete despair in the face of the unthinkable… While a number of documentaries from Syria discuss how the Assad regime specifically targets anyone holding a camera or filming with their phone… few apart from the The War Show specifically address how the camera changes the battles themselves… The War Show captures the scope of the tragedy while making the participants real.”

Filmen er nu på Toronto filmfestival, TIFF og vil senere blive vist i danske biografer, lover Line Bilenberg i sit nyhedbrev for producenten Fridthjof Film.

http://www.venice-days.com/NEWS.asp?id=1&id_dettaglio=817&lang=eng

Baltic Sea Docs Riga

I had to have a photo of the grand old man in Latvian documentary Ivars Seleckis (born September 22 1934) and me just before the pitch rehearsal at the 20th edition of the Forum for documentaries being held in Riga these days. Seleckis will together with producer Antra Gaile close the pitching sessions on Sunday with the presentation of a project called ”To be Continued” that features 7 children, who are 7 years old and thus have just begun to go to school. It is the company Mistrus Media that produces this film that will picture Latvia of today thorugh the eyes of kids, who have grown up in a free Latvia.

Seleckis showed a beautiful trailer to his film that so far is supported by the National Film Centre of Latvia.

25 projects will be pitched tomorrow saturday and sunday to a panel of 17 so-called decision makers – distributors, sales agents, broadcasters.

Some name-dropping of well-known filmmakers who will pitch – Seleckis already mentioned, Victor Asliuk from Belarus, Audrius Stonys from Lithuania, Giedre Zickyte from that same country, Laila Pakalnina from Latvia, Arkko Okk from Estonia, Martichka Bozhilova from Bulgaria, Sami Paul-Anders Simma…

Parallel to the training of those who are to pitch, there are film screenings going on in the K-Suns cinema in Riga – and the cinema is full every night. Last night it was the masterly ”Don Juan” by Jerzy Sladkowski that was shown.

More reports will follow, until then check http://balticseadocs.lv/