Salomé Jashi: The Dazzling Light of Sunset

A magic sense of piousness is what Georgian Salomé Jashi creates at the beginning in her new documentary film, that has its world premiere at the Visions du Réel in Nyon this coming Wednesday April 20. A traveling shot from above in a run-down theatre building is accompanied by the performance of a passionate melancholic love song. The sequence ends with the four singers on a stage followed by the title of the film; voilà, the journey into the small society of the Tsalerijikha region of Georgia can start with the local tv journalist, anchor- and camerawoman Dariko Beria as the character, who is present at the events which are filmed by her – and by Salomé Jashi.

From the small tv studio with the wallpaper photo of trees and sea, paradise on the wall in a working place that otherwise communicates no luxury, to youngsters preparing catwalk for a fashion show or is it a beauty contest, villagers performing on stage, as the politicians do at the meetings before the local elections in the town hall or when they are on television interviewed by Dariko Beria, the name of the journalist, who is full of life and finds the right mood, when she is to read obituaries and chose music that fits. She hurries out when a giant owl has been found, to film and interview, and she is present, when the importance of going to church is discussed, and at the ceremony in the church building.

Tradition meets modern life in this film with many layers, old and

young people, sad landscapes with ruins and a modern conference centre, the threat of survival for the small tv station in a digital media landscape. A visual interpretation is provided full of empathy and respect, and humour without making fun of the characters performing in funny situations. Godard it was, who said that every camera angle is a question of moral.

Salomé Jashi, whose work we have followed on this site (“Their Helicopter”, “Speechless”, “The Leader is always Right” and “Bahkmaro”) demonstrates again her big talent for composition. Every image is a like a nature morte that invites you to discover details and colours, that play a significant role as they also did in “Bahkmaro”. It seems like Jashi thinks in colours. Scenes like the ones around the wedding preparations and the filled up tables with food, bottles and people in different stage of soberness, bring me to think about Brueghel.

At the end Dariko Beria and her colleague Kakha Kvaratskhelia express to Salomé Jashi their hope for what the film will show and to what effect. For someone far away from the region and with big admiration for the cinematic skills of the director, my answer would be: This is a beautiful vision du reel from our common, universal “Theatre of Life”.

Georgia, Germany, 2016, 74 mins.

Peter Greenaway: A Medium for Visual Intelligence

Always provoking, always exaggerating as part of the provocation, and yet there is always some truth in what he says – Peter Greenaway, this time as part of his getting a BAFTA recognition for his work at an event in London. I take a couple of citations from the article in Guardian of today:

… “I always think, and this is probably a very unpopular thing to say, that all film writers should be shot. We do not need a text-based cinema … we need an image-based cinema…”

Greenaway said text has so many opportunities. “For 8,000 years we’ve had lyric poetry, for 400 years we’ve had the novel, theatre hands its meaning down in text. Let’s find a medium whosetotal, sole responsibility is the world as seen as a form of visual intelligence. Surely, surely, surely the cinema should be that phenomenon…”

… “I believe that cinema died on the 31 September 1983 when the zapper or the remote control was introduced into the living rooms of the world. “Bang! Cinema ceases to be passive and becomesactive, you the audience are now in some senses in charge of the filmmaking process. You have all got mobile phones, you have all got cam recorders, and you’ve all got laptops, so you’re all filmmakers…”

Read the whole article on The Guardian: link

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/14/film-director-calls-for-image-based-cinema?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Film+Today+-+automated+vB+most+recent&utm_term=167178&subid=14913340&CMP=ema_861a

Sine Skibsholt: Dem vi var

Manden og kvinden forsøger i en træt tilgivelse at nå hinanden. Han er under rekonvalecens efter en voldsom hjerneblødning, hun er i forvejen overarbejdet i et samliv, hvor hun alene tager sig af de to børn og husholdningen og et lønarbejde. Han har til den frygtelige dag han falder om passet sin karriere, sit firma og familiens ekstraordinære økonomiske grundlag i et stort nyrenoveret hus. Den dag, hun fortvivlet ringer efter hjælp, begynder Dem vi var.

Filmen er bygget over mandens genoptræningsforløbs på alle måder vanskelige måneder i velordnede afsnit med en række øjebliksskildringer af iscenesatte begivenheder som møder med læger og plejepersonale og så særligt: samtaler mellem de to. Der kan være enkelte scener, som hviler på observerende kamera, men både han og hun er beundringsværdigt disciplinerede og medskabende i deres ekstemporerede gennemspil af den langvarige konfliktudviklings fine nuancer i replikker og bevægelser og stemningsskift. Den tekst kan de i hvert fald udenad. Et vigtigt andet lag i konstruktionen er en række steder, ofte i slutningen af en scene, hvor dialogen forsvinder, ikke altid fordi de to bliver tavse, men fordi Sine Skibsholt simpelthen fader dialogfilen ud mens musikken og vel lyddesignet i øvrigt fortsætter eller tager over. De gribende samtaler mellem ham og hende udvikler sig til de forsvinder i en fortvivlelsens magtkamp i en ulykkelig kurve, som bliver filmens storyline, en helt enkel fortælling om et ægteskab i almindelig krise…

Hjerneblødningen og den uhelbredelige hjerneskade er en stor og omfattende kendsgerning, der selvfølgelig danner en særlig og dominerende baggrund, men alligevel er det altså et ægteskab i en almindelig krise. Forskellen til andre ægteskaber i opløsning er at disse ægteskabers mænd og kvinder føler og handler på baggrunde uden denne dominerende enkeltsituation, som er sygdommen, de (det vil således sige vi, der ser filmen) har kriser, hvis årsager blot ikke er tydelige, som regel ikke erkendes. ”Det er ikke ham, det er hans hjerneskade, som siger sådan”, sådan trøster en sygeplejerske kvinden efter en af mandens brutalt sårende replikker. Som månederne går, som filmen skrider frem, som mandens førlighed bliver bedre og de glider længere og længere fra hinanden, tvivler jeg på at sygeplejersken har ret.

Kvinden er på et afgørende tidspunkt nødt til at sige til manden, at hun ikke vil have, at han kysser hende på munden. Hun elsker ham ikke mere. Men jeg venter på et mirakel, på et kærlighedens, på et erotikkens uventede gennembrud på ny. Men det sker ikke. Tilværelsens dramaturgi er en serie points of no return, filmen er én lang elegi i ét langt decrescendo. Det er et ægteskabs forsvindende dialog, som slutter i tavse scener i to adskilte boliger under indretning i to adskilte nye begyndelser. Men jeg leder ved de sidste scener endnu efter et ikke sygdomsforårsaget, et ikke psykologisk udredt grundlag for det gensidige kærlighedstab, finder det måske, når fremstillingen opgiver rationaliseringerne, når replikudvekslingen tones ud og jeg i de smukke tavse scener får mulighed for at tænke mit over filmens sådan var vi. Hvordan var de, da de var dem, de var? Hvordan var vi? Hvordan var jeg? Jeg er en mand uden hjerneskade, men er mit kærlighedsliv lykkedes?

Dem vi var er som socialrealistisk skildring i min læsning mere end en særlig fortælling om en hjerneskades indvirkning på et kærlighedsforhold, den er som en første begyndelse til en meget nutidig filmisk undersøgelse af ægteskabets, samlivets, , samlivets, forelskelsens, erotikkens, altså kærlighedens almindelige forvandlingsformer i moderne tid. Sådan tager jeg den i hvert fald til mig, og det gør ondt at se den film.

Sine Skibsholt: Dem vi var, Danmark 2016, 81 min. Filmen får DOXBIO premiere 20. april 2016 i 50 biografer landet over:

http://www.doxbio.dk/kob-billet/

Jeg giver den solide film 3 penne og én mere for mandens og kvindens beundringsværdige personlige dobbelte indsats, så i alt 4.

SYNOPSIS

Their life looks like that of so many others: Kristian and Mette Line met 12 years ago. They fell in love, travelled, and focused on their careers. Later ”you and me” became a family when they had their children, Celeste and Cyron. Two years ago they bought their dream house outside Copenhagen where they were supposed to live out their many dreams and ideas about life. But one day, 39-year-old Kristian collapses from a blood clot that destroys one third of his brain. The damage is irreversible, and life as they know it comes to an abrupt end.

 Kristian spends the first year in intense rehabilitation so he can move back home. Mette Line supports him, remodels the house to accommodate Kristian’s new needs, takes care of the children and goes to work. At the same time, she struggles to recognise the man she married, because the brain damage has changed Kristian. And who are “we” when one of us is no longer there?

WHO WE WERE follows the young family during the first year after the fateful accident and is a portrait of love in the face of catastrophe. (Made In Copenhagen site)

http://www.madeincopenhagen.dk/en/content/who-we-were

Don Edkins – EDN Interview

We have had several posts including Don Edkins, described in one of them as ”…a true gentleman in the world documentary community, and a man who in his work in a true Griersonian way seeks to combine the documentary art form, campaign and information…”

Edkins is member of the month of EDN, that presents a fine informative interview with him. Here is a taster (on his background) and a link to where you can find the whole talk:

I became interested in photography during my high school years and used it to document whatever situation I was facing in my life. Having to leave South Africa because of refusing to fight in the Angolan war in 1975, I ended up photographing life in Guatemala during the military dictatorship, an LSD conference in Santa Cruz, California, the effect migrant labour had on families in Lesotho, and refugees from the Rwandan genocide. I was a member of Afrapix, a collective of South African photographers documenting life under apartheid, and then moved to Germany in 1988 where I joined a media collective, the Medienwerkstatt Freiburg. That is where I started working in documentary film, and the first two films I made – Goldwidows and The Colour of Gold – were about migrant labour in South Africa and Lesotho. Affordable video projectors became available in the early ‘90s, and so we took these films to show in rural communities in Lesotho: the experience of the incredible discussions that took place after the screenings has influenced much of my work since then. The mobile cinema we started in Lesotho has now been runningcontinuously for more than twenty years.

www.filmkommentaren.dk

www.edn.dk

Visions du Réel – Barisone, Stonys, Greenaway

… takes place in Nyon Switzerland from April 14 to 23 and presents as usual – under the direction of Luciano Barisone – a strong program with the emphasis on the artistic documentary.. Barisone was interviewed by cineuropa (by Muriel Del Don) and here is a citation of what he said:

“The idea of the act of resistance is part of human nature, with which it develops. We resist, physically and spiritually, trying to maintain internal continuity. For me, the mission of art is to throw up questions, to make human beings constantly call things into question. Film exists as testimony to the resistance of human beings, to draw it out of them. It’s not a question of ideology, it’s a question of fighting for humanity. When we put the programme for the Festival together, we choose films based on their aesthetic value. Every year we try to bring together two types of audiences and viewers: a wider audience interested in the narrative, and another, more intellectual audience, that’s drawn in by what we could call the “movement of thought”. Visions du Réel always tries to create a line of contact, of communication and a strong link between the films, the filmmakers and the viewers… We tend to associate the term ‘resistance’ with armed struggle (which is one manifestation), but resistance is an internal movement of the spirit, the conscience…”

And some take-outs from the program that is divided into several

international competitive categories (short, medium, long), new vision, grand angle… and with a focus on two – very different – masters:

Audrius Stonys, 18 of his films will be screened in Nyon, he is presented with these words on the site of the festival: ”The work of Audrius Stonys takes the form of a quest opening onto an imagination composed of fragility and poetry. Heaven and earth, above and below, the immanent and the transcendent inhabit his filmmaking.”

The festival will also pay tribute to Peter Greenaway (photo), ”filmmaker of the system and of excess”, who has made over 60 films. His latest film ”Eisenstein in Guanajuato” (2015) will be screened.

A quick look at the competitive categories makes me notice a new film by Peter Entell, ”Like Dew in the Sun”, shot in Ukraine. And the one by Serge Tréfaut, ”Treblinka”, cinematography by Joao Ribeiro, the Norwegian ”Brothers” by Aslaug Holm, and the new film by Salomé Jashi, ”The Dazzling Light of Sunset” in the ”Regard Neuf” section.

https://www.visionsdureel.ch/en

http://cineuropa.org/it.aspx?t=interview&l=en&did=307311 

50 Documentaries You Need to See…

… according to Joshua Oppenheimer, Lucy Walker, Alex Gibney, James Marsh, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Franny Armstrong, Khalo Matabane, Molly Dineen, Angus Macqueen and Kim Longinotto, is a good read from The Guardian end of March. I have taken three statements from three of the mentioned directors, but click the link and check more:

Molly Dineen: I saw this when I was on a jury at a documentary festival in Nyon, and it was really unexpected. It’s about Finland burying its nuclear waste in a deep, deep cavern, with two diggers silently burrowing into the bedrock. That’s intercut with interviews with scientists talking about how you can leave a signal for future civilisations not to go into this burial chamber. This stuff is so toxic for 100,000 years, so we’re not talking about any sort of signposting we will understand; there may be whole different ways of communication. There was something really affecting about that. And the interviews are fabulous, because they’re very unpromising – just straight-on head-and-shoulders shots of scientists – but they’re humorous and warm and compassionate. (Into Eternity, Michael Madsen, 2010)

Lucy Walker: I’m fascinated by longitudinal film-making and this series, which has followed the lives of 14 British children since 1964, when they were seven years old, showed me what the medium was capable of. This series is head and shoulders above any other attempt to record dramatically a whole human life. And because it’s a whole group of people, you learn not just about the individual but also about the system in which they’re living. I can’t think of any other artefact in our culture that can tell us so much about Britain in our lifetime and how society is evolving as this body of work. It’s illuminating and fascinating and it’s one of the things that inspired me to do my work… (SevenUp, Michael Apted, 1964)

James Marsh: In this film, Watkins takes a possible scenario – a nuclear attack on London – and shows you very carefully, each step of the way, what is likely to happen…This was in the middle of the cold war and at the time there were dozens of warheads pointing at us. It’s like a documentary made by Brecht – you’re staging something to flush out a reaction in the audience, and that reaction is one of utter horror. Some people would say this is not a documentary because everything was staged, but it’s a speculative documentary – the director is saying: “This is how it could be and I’m going to show you this in a way that’s very truthful.” It’s very responsible, even if the imagery is very disturbing: you’re seeing bobbies firing at people in the street, people with their clothes burned off. His information is sourced directly from the government and based on scientific fact, so the bed of it is factual, and people responded to it as if it were a real documentary.

It’s a brilliant and bold piece of film-making. He’s reinventing the documentary and subverting it. In my view there should be no rules and no boundaries to film-making, and the impact this film had shows you how much he got right. (Wargame, Peter Watkins, 1965)

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/27/50-best-documentaries-alex-gibney-joshua-oppenheimer-james-marsh

Photo: Peter Watkins instruerer La Commune (Paris, 1871), 2000.

Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami: Sonita

It comes with Audience Awards at the Sundance Festival, at IDFA and at the One World 2016. It is going to be the opening film at the DocsBarcelona end of May and will be included in the Documentary of the Month distribution of the Barcelona festival – and it will be shown at the Danish Cinematheque from the 14th of April as – again – ”the Documentary of the Month”.

No need for a real review here, this is a film for the big audience, full of emotions and information about what it takes to break out of strong cultural and societal traditions. Here is the description of the film taken from the site of the distributor:  

Sonita is an 18-year-old female, an undocumented Afghan illegal immigrant living in the poor suburbs of Tehran. She is a feisty, spirited, young woman who fights to live the way she wants, as an artist, singer, and musician in spite of all her obstacles she confronts in Iran and her conservative patriarchal family. In harsh contrast to her goal is the plan of her family – strongly advanced by her mother – to make her a bride and sell her to a new family. The price right now is about US$ 9.000.

What’s more, women aren’t allowed to sing in Iran. How can Sonita still succeed in making her dreams come true? Director Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami ends up personally involved in answering that question, reigniting the discussion as to how documentary makers should relate to their subjects. This is just one of the many unexpected twists in an exciting journey replete with the setbacks and successes of a young women looking for her own path. The film’s core consists of Sonita artistically arguing against the disastrous forced marriage practices that obstruct her freedom in an impressive, dramatic rap video.

Germany, Switzerland, Iran, 2015, 91 mins.

http://www.catndocs.com/index.php/categories/music/700-sonita

www.docsbarcelona.com

IDA – Magazine & Essential Doc Reads

After the death of the DOX magazine there is a lack of longer and deeper articles about the documentary genre as an art form – where to find reflections on aesthetics and ethics, historical articles, interviews with important directors and cameramen etc.?

OK, you can find a lot of valuable material in festival catalogues and sites, and we try at filmkommentaren to direct you to that through links. But it is here and there and everywhere…

BUT there is some help to be found through the sister organisation of the EDN (European Documentary Network), the Los Angeles based IDA (International Documentary Association), that publishes the quarterly Documentary Magazine that has its main focus on American documentaries and documentarians and has a fine weekly service, read this:

Essential Doc Reads is a weekly feature in which the IDA staff

recommends recent pieces about the documentary form and its processes. Here we feature think pieces and important news items from around the Internet, and articles from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy!”

I do and let me give you a couple of examples of citations from articles that you by a click can read in full:

The New Yorker‘s Richard Brody examines Frederick Wiseman 1970 film Hospital – For all his intellectual power of abstraction and analysis, Wiseman is a sensualist, who is also in love with tones and gestures, vocal inflections and bodies in motion. It’s precisely because he finds them both so alluring and so distracting that he finds the ideas they embody. He doesn’t look past or through them; he simply sees them clearly and conveys his own delight in doing so…

AND from the archives, Spring 2011, “Do You Swear to Re-enact the Truth? Dramatized Testimony in Documentary Film” – The use of re-enactment in documentary is as old as the form itself, yet it remains persistently controversial, and there is nothing else that better illustrates the ontological knottiness of our relationship with the media. To label a film a “documentary” is in one sense to burden it with the responsibility of veracity. The movie in question is graced with an unsubtle aura of verisimilitude, and what we see and hear is taken to be, if not quite truth, then in truth’s tortuous pursuit. The documentarian’s challenge is thus not only one of communicating actuality through images and sound, but of anticipating an audience that will assume authenticity, unless told otherwise. (Week of March 7)

The photo of Dylan from Pennebaker’s ”Don’t Look Back” is from an article of the winter Documentary Magazine, to be read for free.

http://www.documentary.org/ 

Full Frame Doc Fest

One festival after the other, and it’s fine that festivals like Amdoc in Palm Springs that I have been reporting from and now also the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (that I will just drop this about) introduce non-American films to the American audience.

The festival in Durham, that starts today and runs for four days, shows fine European documentaries like the Danish ”At Home in the World” (photo) by Andreas Koefoed, Polish ”Call me Marianna” by Karolina Bielawska, Israeli ”Mr. Gaga” by Tomer Heymann, Nicole N. Horanyi’s Danish ”Motley’s Law”, the Iranian world success ”Sonita” by Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami and another Polish, ”All these Sleepless Nights” by Michal Marczak.

… and there is a world premiere of ”Dixie Land” by Ukrainian Roman Bondarchuk, whose ”Ukrainian Sheriffs” is already touring several festivals as well. The charming ”Dixie Land” with a lovely old teacher and band leader and equally lovely band members, who grow up to find a place in life, will be presented in Durham by the producer, Latvian Ilona Bicevsks.

From the Amdoc program I recognise ”God Knows Where I Am” by Todd and Jedd Wider as well as Joe Berlinger’s ”Tony Robbins: I am not Your Guru” – and happy I am to see that Laura Israel’s ”Don’t Blink-Robert Frank” is offered.

Most happy, however, I am to see that the festival honours ”Cameraperson” (the title of her new film) Kirsten Johnson with a selected handful of her works as a cinematographer, including ”The Oath” (Laura Poitras) and the portrait of ”Derrida” (Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering). Johnson will do a masterclass under the title ”To See and be Seen”.  

http://www.fullframefest.org/

Moskeerne bag sløret /1

Martin Jensen og Irene Sørensen: Moskeerne bag sløret, 2016, TV2 / Dokumentar

Dette still taget ud af en optagelse med skjult kamera vokser sig i disse dage ind i landets politiske historie i en stor diskussion om sindelagskontrol. Manden bag kateteret hedder Abu Bilal Ismail og er imam ved Grimhøj Moskeen, og i en af sine lukkede studiekredse i muslimsk hermeneutik underviser han indbudte troende muslimske kvinder fra denne Århusbydel i Koranens tekster, om dens love og dens fastsættelse af staffe for overtrædelser. Bør en lærer i teologi på grund af diskutable tekstlige udlægninger (meget folkelige, i høj grad diskutable udlægninger på lavt videnskabeligt niveau vil jeg tro), bør en sådan lærer i fremtiden kunne anklages og dømmes for disse fortolkninger? Jeg tror filmens budskab er et ja, og dens journalistiske vinkling peger fra begyndelsen i den retning.

Tilrettelæggeren Martin Jensen forklarerede kort efter udsendelsen 1. marts af dette første afsnit i et interview på Det Danske Filminstituts hjemmeside, hvad dette undersøgelses / afsløringsprojekt skulle gå ud på, at hans vidner fra en årelang research ikke turde stå frem til citat, så deres anklager kunne få belæg, så han kunne løfte bevisbyrden. Men, besluttede han, metoden med skjult kamera var en mulighed: ”… På det tidspunkt var det i vid udstrækning påstand mod påstand. Jeg havde de her mennesker, som sagde én ting, men når jeg spurgte i de religiøse miljøer, som de pegede på, fik jeg et helt andet svar. Der fik jeg at vide, at sådan er det ikke; de arbejder for integration og samvær med den almindelige danske befolkning. På tv var der den ekstra mulighed for at skaffe dokumentation for, hvem der havde ret ved at bruge skjult kamera. Vi kunne se, at der var en betydelig integrationsudfordring for samfundet, som tallene viser, ikke løser sig selv. Nogle mennesker pegede på en delårsag, og andre benægtede. Vi ville prøve at finde ud af, hvad var op og ned, og hvem, der havde ret.” (Link til hele interviewet nedenfor)

Så straks i filmens begyndelse fortæller den gennemgående stemme (det kunne vel være Irene Sørensens) roligt og nøgternt: ”Vi er gået undercover for med skjult kamera i en del af det muslimske miljø at undersøge om moskeerne modvirker eller medvirker til integationen.” Vinklingen er således klar, men når jeg ser filmen, er jeg også med det samme sporet ind på dens budskab: moskeerne modvirker integrationen og det vil vise sig at være værre end det. Det er en anklage, der er tale om, og nu skal bevismaterialet skaffes frem.

Det begynder i et hemmeligt og stærkt beskyttet krisecenter for unge fra hjem med muslimsk opdragelseskultur, unge som er løbet hjemmefra efter forældres voldsomme undertrykkelse og direkte brutale vold. Lederen for centret, Anita Johnsen fortæller om det, to anonyme beboere, en stor pige og en stor dreng, fortæller deres oprørende historier.

Næste sted er bydelen Askerødparken syd for København, hvor forfatteren Ahmed Mahmoud, der er vokset op der, men ikke bor der mere, men nu har skrevet en bog om dette tilsyneladende muslimske parallelsamfund med daglig undertrykkelse og vold i hjemmene og social kontrol overalt. Han fortæller at imamerne svigter integrationen og i stedet fremholder de muslimske værdier og der lyttes til imamerne, de har folkelig gennemslagskraft.

Fortællestemmen meddeler herefter at de, Martin Jensen, Irene Sørensen og holdet vil undersøge otte arabiske (en pludselig vigtig sproggruppe præcision…) samfunds moskeer. Fire af dem er samarbejdsvillige og vil stille op til interview ved en medarbejder: Imran Shad fra Islamisk Trossamfund i København, som med det samme slår fast, at medlemmerne skal vedgå at leve i det her danske samfund, de skal kalde sig danske muslimer. Den imødekommende holdning fortsætter hos Radwan Mansour, som er imam ved Fredens Moske i Århus, hos Oussama El-Saad, som er formand for Grimhøj Moskeen også i Århus, og hos talsmanden fra Stormoskeen i København, Mohamad Mansour.

Næste byggesten i dokumentaren stilles tilsvarende systematisk op, der gøres nu rede for enkeltelementerne i undersøgelsen af integrationens status: holdningen til at tage et arbejde, respekten for dansk lov og danske myndigheder, ligestillingen mellem kønnene. Sådan kan de tre holdninger måske være indikatorer for hele tilstanden. Måske, vil jeg mene. Og så kommer redegørelsen for metoden:

Et ungt par skal i tre måneder leve under dække i miljøerne som undersøges, filmholdet vil følge dem diskret. De to kender ikke hinanden på forhånd, kommer fra forskellige lande, er dybt fortrolige med muslimsk kultur og dagligdag der og som rejsende generelt i verden. De får taget et bryllupsbillede som kan stå i lejligheden de flytter ind i, de får lavet konstruerede levnedsløb, som de lærer udenad, de får tilknyttet en rådgiver, en belgisk journalist, som selv har levet under dække i Molenbeck og skrevet en bog om kulturen der, og de får endelig syet kameraer ind i tøj og taske. Og så er de klar til den centrale del af optagelserne til Moskerne bag sløret.

De flytter ind i en lejlighed i Gellerup i Århus og begynder at involvere sig i kvarteret. Hun får sit første gode råd i bazaren, et råd, som nærmere er et socialt krav: hun skal købe en dragt, som dækker mere end hendes nuværende, hvis hun vil færdes i dette kvarter. De begynder herefter at komme, ad hver sin indgang, i Grimhøjmoskeen, som de har fået anbefalet som den bedste, og hun opnår ret hurtigt at blive inviteret med i en af de lukkede studiekredse, en hvor netop imamen Abu Bilal Ismail underviser.

Nu indskydes et interessant og tydeligt afsnit med den frafaldne muslim, den tidligere landskendte imam Akmed Akkari, som har måttet gemme sig i Grønland, som også har skrevet en bog og som medvirker under politibeskyttelse. Han fortæller omhyggeligt og roligt om sit tidligere arbejde.

Hans udgangsreplik, som jeg husker bedst: ”… imamerne taler med to tunger” leder over til den centrale scene i Abu Bilals studiekreds, hvor han er kommet til emnerne med de faste påbud og de tilhørende straffe som øje for øje og stening for hor. Den sidste grusomme henrettelsesmåde beskriver han omhyggeligt og længe i detaljer. Alt er optaget med det skjulte kamera i tasken.

På dette sted i fremstillingen medvirker Tina Maagaard, som forsker og underviser i religionsvidenskab. Hun forklarer om det, jeg lige har set og hørt, at imamen ikke fortolker teksten, han fortæller blot for eksempel historien om steningen af kvinden, men det bliver så med den gribende fortælling i Koranen til lov for disse muslimske kvinder i moskeens undervisningslokale. På samme måde med imamens undervisning i, hvordan man rettelig opdrager børn med slag mod skuldre, som er det han konkret anbefaler. Han rådgiver efter Koranen, men glemmer, at det efter dansk lov er forbudt at slå børn. Så vidt Tina Maagaard.

Dokumentaren forklarer og fortolker imidlertid hele tiden de medvirkendes udsagn. Og den forklarer og fortolker sig selv som journalistisk dokumentation. Det sker i såvel fortællestemmen som i klippet, der gennemgående er illustrerende, ikke medfortællende. Vinklingen ligger fast hele tiden og den følges nøjagtigt. Jeg slipper her i seriens første afsnit ikke for en stærk fornemmelse af, at Martin Jensen og Irene Sørensen med deres undersøgende journalistik ikke kun ser og hører, hvad de forventede efter researchen, men også er tæt på at se og høre hvad de vil se og høre. Den for mig så værdifulde tøven mærker jeg kun hos den vigtige medvirkende Tina Maagaard, som i sine egne undersøgelser har anvendt religionsvidenskabens mere kølige metoder. Det er så godt, hun er blevet indplaceret så fyldigt i filmens fremstilling, det er i hvert fald i dette første afsnit dokumentarseriens afgørende kant.

Det gør at jeg trods mine indvendinger kan forsvare de 3 penne.

Martin Jensen og Irene Sørensen: Moskeerne bag sløret, del 1. Danmark, 58 min. Produktion: TV2 / dokumentar. Set på TV2 / Play.

http://www.dfi.dk/Nyheder/FILMupdate/2016/Marts/Moskeerne-bag-sloeret.aspx (Freja Dam: Interview med Martin Jensen)