Docudays UA: Jon Bang Carlsen

I am a landscape painter, said Jon Bang Carlsen at his masterclass at the Docudays in Kiev last night. I found it to be a perfect auto-description after having seen his ”It’s  Now or Never”, that came out in 1996, and has a camera that constantly caresses the Irish green and stony fields, where the director chose to have his story take place about the bachelor Jimmy looking for a woman.

I was film consultant at the National Film Board of Denmark (now The Danish Film Institute) in the early 1990’es and commissioned this film, when Jon Bang Carlsen (together with Jørgen Leth and Anne Wivel the Danish ”auteurs” of that time) came to me with a list of film themes/stories that he would love to make into films in his original style that he himself called ”staged documentary”. Today it is almost ”menu of the day” and called ”hybrid”.

The film is wonderfully old-fashioned, the characters are lovely, the

story totally romantic, straight forward it goes with Jimmy searching for a woman with the help of a matchmaker. Shot on film, the film became a success as a documentary in Europe, and as a fiction in Asia, the director told the audience.

Jon Bang Carlsen is excellent at a masterclass. He formulates himself in an inspiring manner, he expresses doubt about what he is doing, and he does so with the humour that you also see in his films. Of course he had to show a clip from ”Before the Guests Arrive” with the two old ladies in the pension before the season starts. Of course he expressed his fascination with the landscapes in South Africa where he lived for 10 years – clips from ”Addicted to Solitude” and ”Blinded Angel”, the latter he described as ”clumsy and wild” in its style, and yet this man who has travelled the world had – he said – to return to his roots, the Danish landscapes of Northern Jutland.

The audience asked questions. One was ”what were you looking for when you were 20 and what are you looking for now as 65…”. Another complimented him for asking questions with his films and not giving answers. ”In my last film ”Déjà Vu” that is just finished a woman gives the answer to it all…”, he said at the masterclass that had a full Blue Hall in the Cinema House in Kiev.

The film was part of a Danish “High Five” programme that I put together and the Docudays festival organised – with no help from the Danish Film Institute, to my big surprise and disappointment. But that is another story…

Arvo Pärt og Robert Wilson: Adam’s Passion /2

SYNOPSIS

Адам, отец вселенной, в раю знал сладость любви Божией, и потому, когда был изгнан из рая за грех и лишился любви Божией, горько страдал и с великим стоном рыдал на всю пустыню. Душа его терзалась от мысли: «любимого Бога я оскорбил». Не так жалел он о рае и красоте его, как о том, что лишился любви Божией, которая ненасытно каждую минуту влечет душу к Богу.

(Adam, father of all mankind, in paradise knew the sweetness of the love of God; and so when for his sin he was driven forth from the garden of Eden, and was widowed of the love of God, he suffered grievously and lamented with a great moan. And the whole desert rang with his lamentations, for his soul was racked as he thought, ‘I have distressed my beloved God’. He sorrowed less after paradise and the beauty thereof; for he sorrowed that he was bereft of the love of God, which insatiably, at every instant, draws the soul to Him.)

LÆSNING

Lad mig begynde med denne synopsis, som er indledningen til en bøn og klagesang, Adam’s Lament af den russiske digter og munk Skt. Silouan Athonite (1866–1938) fra Panteleimon klosteret i Makadonien, Grækenland. Skt. Silouan Athonites digt er tekstgrundlaget i Arvo Pärts værk for kor og orkester med samme titel, som oprindelig er fra 2009 og nu udgør anden sats i hans Adam’s Passion, og Silouans tekst er dermed formodentlig også en oprindelig synopsis for Robert Wilsons iscenesættelse og for Andy Sommers film over de tos værk. Det er godt, jeg har haft den stille uge og nu påskedagene og tid og ro, for den her film er altså stor på mange måder, den kræver forberedelser, opslag i bøger og på internet og tænkepauser, når man er så uvidende uforberedt som jeg.

Verdenspremieren på Arvo Pärts og Robert Wilsons Adam’s Passion fandt sted i Tallinn sidste sommer, og nu er denne opførelse så fastholdt i et filmværk, som på søndag eftermiddag kan ses i Cinemateket i København. Publikum vil der finde ud af, at det befinder sig midt i en enestående og stor og aktuel begivenhed. Adam’s Passion vises i Cinematekets biograf på, i den kristne kultur, ugedagen efter Påskedag som både en forudsætning for, en sammenfatning af og en konklusion på påskens gentagne drama.

Adam’s Passion er en på samme tid ganske sædvanlig og omhyggelig tv-produktion af en koncert og teaterforestilling og så endelig et aldeles mærkværdigt og enestående Gesamtkunstwerk, som vil blive husket i musikhistorien og i teaterhistorien og i kunsthistorien som installation og koncept, ja, og så også i filmhistorien: som var jeg tilhører / tilskuer i salen den dag i Tallinn nærmer kameraerne og klippet sig i langsom omhu indfølt stedet og punktet for min nysgerighed og fjerner sig igen og glider videre i en ny blikkets søgen, noterer sig og mig salens indretning over kirkebygningens skema. Scenen som altertavlen og et langt podium som midtgangen til processionen, scenens forlængelse ud i midtskibet, publikums som menighedens placering på bænkeraderne foran scenen ved podiets sider, orkesterets placering bag publikum som orglet bag i kirken og korets placering på balkoner over sideskibene som munkene og nonnerne på gallerierner over sideskibene i klosterkirkerne.

Sådan orienteres jeg af filminstruktøren og hans fotografer og billedvælgere, sådan orienterer jeg mig i Pärts og Wilsons verden organiseret i en u-bådsfabrik bygget om for en gangs skyld til kirke, og i et landskab af tåge og lys gennemspilles i det rum syndefaldet, fordrivelsen fra Paradis, fortæringen af det daglige brød i ansigtets sved, brodermordet… Det er forfærdeligt og forunderligt, jeg kan ikke rive mig løs, jeg må blive i den film. Der er mange flere årsager.

Så seks spidse penne med det samme!

Andy Sommer: Adam’s Passion. EER/WDR/Arte, Estland og Tyskland 2015, 90 min.  Før Andy Sommers film over Pärts og Wilsons Adam’s Passion bliver der vist en film af Günther Atteln The Lost Paradise, som skildrer opsætningen af Pärts og Wilsons værk. Matineen med de to film finder altså sted næste søndag, 3. april og begynder 14:15. Billetter kan købes via dette link til Cinematekets programside

http://www.dfi.dk/Filmhuset/Cinemateket/Billetter-og-program/Film.aspx?filmID=v1023950

Her er der også yderligere progaminformation om de to film.

 

SYNOPSIS 2

Adam’s Passion is the moving first collaboration between two “masters of slow motion who harmonize perfectly with each other” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). In the spectacular setting of a former submarine factory, American director and universal artist Robert Wilson creates a poetic visual world in which the mystical musical language of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt can cast its meditative spell. Three of Pärt’s major works – Adam’s Lament, Tabula rasa, and Miserere, as well as Sequentia, a new work composed especially for this production – are brought together here using light, space, and movement to create a tightly-woven Gesamtkunstwerk in which the artistic visions of these two great artists mirror each other. (Producer’s site)

http://www.adamspassion.de/

Docudays UA: The Nordic Contribution

I want to say Bravo Sweden. Our neighbouring country has for years been the main sponsor of the Docudays UA Human Rights Festival here in Kiev. From the state organisation SIDA, channelled through the Swedish embassy 4 mio. SEK (426.184 €) has been given to the festival and its travelling distribution scheme. That is indeed something to be noticed.

The Danish embassy gives nothing but we are here thanks to generosity of the organisers of the festival. Yesterday I did a Docu/Class of two hours  about the Danish documentary culture (distribution and production) and support system supplemented by clips from Ulla Boje Rasmussen’s ”1700 Metres from the Future”, Jørgen Leth’s ”Life in Denmark”, ”Traveller’s Tale” by Lars Johansson, ”Into Eternity” by Michael Madsen and Janus Metz ”Armadillo”.

In the evening the first part of a Danish mini-series that we have called ”High Five” was shown in the Blue Hall of the Cinema House – that was totally full, around 200 viewers. The films shown were ”Motion Picture” and ”66 Scenes from America” by Jørgen Leth and Ole John. Tonight it is another master of Danish documentary, Jon Bang Carlsen, who shows and discusses ”It’s Now or Never” followed by a class, where he will invite the audience to understand his way of making documentaries. Later at the festival two more neo-classics will be shown, ”Family” (Sami Saif and Phie Ambo) and ”The Monastery” (Pernille Grønkjær).

Photo from the festival opening: Three Danes in Kiev: My wife Ellen Fonnesbech-Sandberg, me and Jon Bang Carlsen.

See our collected posts on Jon Bang Carlsen:

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

www.docudays.org.ua  

Docudays UA 2016 Opening!

To say that the opening of the 13th edition of Docudays UA here in Kiev last night was joyous is an understatement. If there was any award for the visually best, most intelligent and funny opening ceremony of a documentary festival the first prize would go to the organizers of this festival.

A CCCP hypnotist emerged on the film screen and on a television set to put us the audience under the influence – with the famous bears popping up once in a while. Cameras were catching the (humorous) effect it had on faces in the audience. And there were streams and dots of light in the totally full hall of the Cinema House. As colleague and jury member Pamela Cohn writes on her FB page: ”… most psychedelic opening ceremony goes to Docudays UA”.

The festival programme was introduced, section by section with fine edited teasers for each one of them.

The opening film was Vitaly Manski’s ”Under the Sun”.

Docudays UA has started with bravour!

www.docudays.org.ua  

Docudays UA 13th Edition

The festival poster is to be seen around Kiev – the bears are there and not only ”inside us”, read elsewhere what the creative organizers want to communicate with that.

A much more direct communication is to be found in the catalogue that was given to me yesterday in the busy headquarter of the Cinema House, that hosts the opening ceremony tonight followed by Vitaly Manski’s film ”Under the Sun” from North Korea. The festival runs until 1st of April.

Here are a couple of (edited) citations from the catalogue:

Alla Tyutyunnyk, member of the Organizing Committee – ”Beyond Illusion is the topic… We selected it because, after the Maidan, the feeling that humanity is currently struggling through illusions towards some new civilizational order is getting ever stronger. The illusion of the stability in a world order that was agreed upon by strong democratic countries is collapsing. The world’s illusion of Ukraine’s weakness and inability of Ukrainians to self-organize has been dispelled. The illusions about relying on the international institutions in the UN-system, created to secure the world order without war and aggression and to protect human rights, have been dispelled…”

Carl Gershman, president of the National Endownmen for Democracy – ”I applaud the way Docudays UA has defined the basic issue confronting Ukraine as the need to move beyond false hopes and to base its future strategy on a hard-headed assessment of real threats, challenges, and opportunities…Yes, it is an illusion that Russia under Putin will ever accept a democratic and independent Ukraine. But if Ukraine can prevail against Russian aggression, it will be the end of Putin and his delusional ideas of Russian chauvinism and revanchism…”

Inna Pidluska, International Renaissance Foundation – ”For 13 years Docudays UA has been telling the stories of people, who challenged the unjust system… documentaries have given courage and the will to fight for freedom and resist evil. This is the generation of a new Ukraine that we seek… Docudays UA is a source of inspiration…”

www.docudays.org.ua

Chantal Akerman: News from Home

Chantal Akerman’s film News from Home (1977) is a collection of beautifully shot tableaux of New York (the work of the US-based French cinematographer Babette Mangolte). Because of the length of the scenes, the film has an odd photographic sense to it, capturing life in the city as it walks in and out of the camera’s steady framings, panoramas and travellings. This is a New York that no longer exists, a dirty brown worn down place, where Akerman lived for a few years in the early 1970’s.

The field of tension and the heart of the film lie in the interaction and juxtaposition of the visuals and the soundtrack. In a voice-over, Akerman reads aloud the letters she received from her mother when she lived there. She is reading the letters with probably the same enthusiasm as she received them; they are read aloud in a quick monotone diction (which does actually make it difficult to catch all the words since, in the English version, the letters are read translated into English and Akerman’s accent is quite present). The mother’s reproaching words are regularly drowned by the sound of New York: the sound of what we see, cars and subways going by, takes over almost like waves. This is why the film should be shown without subtitles, this displacement and movement of when and what we can’t, or barely can, hear is important.

The letters are filled with pain, illness, worries, anxiety, boredom, exhaustion, gossip, hypochondria, love, and occasionally, dollar bills. “Anyway, I’m not complaining” the constantly complaining mother writes, continuously demanding news from the daughter: more letters more often! The family, the binding “your mother who loves you” as the mother signs every letter, is heavy, a burden, and yet something you can’t or won’t get away from or leave completely.

You get absorbed by the film, of what you see, and are struck by – and maybe recognize – the state of loneliness, the free feeling of being anonymous, the joy of becoming a stranger or maybe even somebody else. News from Home is not a portrait of New York; it is a portrait of all these mental states and emotions, of exile, of escape.

The film has the most wonderful final scene. It is a grey day, the camera/her/we leave Manhattan by boat, the sound of the motor takes over and slowly as we sail out to sea, New York fades away in the mist. An island, an idea, a mirage…

News from Home (France/Belgium/West Germany, 1977, 85 min.) by Chantal Akerman, recently shown at the Copenhagen Architecture Festival 2016.

!! Cinemateket in Copenhagen is screening Akerman’s last film No Home Movie (2015) at 16h30 March 31.

6 pen heads!

Miroshnichenko and Chajkouskaya: Debut

… and full names: director Anastasiya Miroshnichenko and producer Volia Chajkouskaya. I met Volia C. in Minsk in connection with the Listapad festival, where she gave me a link to their previous film, “Crossroads”, reviewed on this site. About their new project, there is only to say, very talented and well presented, so wonderful news also for me that the project was awarded in Thessaloniki. Here is an edited version of a text from the EDN website:

… On the occasion of the 18th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival — Images of the 21st Century, the ERT S.A. – EDN DOC ON AIR Award was presented to the project Debut directed by Anastasiya Miroshnichenko and produced by Volia Chajkouskaya, the Belarusian documentary project pitched at the annual EDN pitching forum Docs in Thessaloniki. The award is sponsored by Greek public broadcaster ERT and honours the ambitious sociopolitical documentary with a cash prize and a broadcast on public television in Greece, when the film is finished.

Debut tells the story of Belarusian women serving their sentence in a soviet-like prison among 1500 other first time offenders. Some were pushed to crime by unbearable circumstances or momentary weakness, while others became victims of corrupt courts or miscarriages of justice. Circumstances are harsh in this strict environment but for some women, the so-called Culture Club offers a chance to escape the agony. Several times a week, a group of women prepares for their theatrical debut in the club. Under the guidance of a professional director, the inmates perform theatrical works which allows them to express themselves and experience something that could be described as therapy through art. Yet, these women are mostly concerned about how their life will be once they end their term. How will they cope with their tainted past when returning to the outside world?…

The Debut trailer is available here.

http://www.edn.dk/

Vincent Boujon: Alive!

In the series ”Documentary of the Month” the Danish Cinemateket shows the French ”Alive!”, a warm light-hearted film about five HIV positive men, who meet to train for a skydiving experience. They talk about being gay, about their first sexual experience (and the worst!), about the reactions from the world around them when they are declared and declares themselves as seropositive, and how it is to take pills in public and to be in love. The film succeeds to get close to all of them (even if my wife who watched it with me wanted more about their background, she has a point), whereas what first of all attracted me were the moments, when they got off the ground, up in the air, pale just before the jump out into being alone somewhere between earth and sky. The camera is with them, it is for someone suffering sometimes from vertigo, quite scary, you suffer with them, but you have luckily a good time with them, when they are back on ground.

I could have lived with less technical instructions, but some of them characterise the five, with the oldest Pascal as a man, who stands out with his charisma and his story about lost love and loneliness. He and Matteo, the youngest, are not flying alone, they need to hang on to an instructor – Matteo: I am afraid I will fall in love with him!

There is a lot of humour in this feel-good, informative documentary about friendship and about how it has been to be gay and be diagnosed with HIV. Lovely film.

In Cinemateket Copenhagen from March 24 to March 30.

France, 2014, 80 mins.

DocuDays Kiev: Docu/Class

”The School of Disillusionment”… is the subtitle of this year’s Docu/Class in Kiev at the festival that starts in four days and runs until April 1st. Look at the creative logo for this part of the event, (how do you interpret that?) and read this inviting introduction quote from the internet:

”The real learning – the one that never ends – is a process of constant disillusionment. Or, in other words, of going through the illusions. It is only on the ruines of someone else’s ideals and desires that you painfully sloughed off like an old skin, the most valuable knowledge about your true self arises. This year’s documentary master class program DOCU/CLASS offers series of lectures that can potentially lead you through the disillusionment circle – from the sobering to new, more mature inspiration – believes Julia Serdyukova, DOCU/CLASS and photo exhibition coordinator.

We expect a lecture by Danish film director Jon Bang Carlsen “Reality Is a Question of Faith” to be the most explosive one. Do

you still believe in the concept of “objective”, “fly on the wall”-style documentary? If you do, this lecture is for you. Are you convinced that the “reality” doesn’t exist, and this is an excuse for all kinds of manipulations with the heroes and image? Then, this lecture is definitely for you. The inventor and consistent adherent of radical ‘staged documentary’, Jon Bang Carlsen will speak about his unique approach to seeking reality by actively creating it at the point where genres intersect. His “not exactly a documentary” “It’s Now or Never” screening will take place the day before the lecture as a part of “High five from Denmark” program…”.

Yes, Jon Bang Carlsen’s film is one of five high quality films, that I have had the pleasure to select for the festival – ”66 Scenes from America” and ”Motion Picture” (by Jørgen Leth and Ole John), ”Family” by Sami Saif and Phie Ambo and ”The Monastery” by Pernille Grønkjær the other four. I am looking forward to come back to Kiev, also to do a talk on Danish documentary culture -2011 was last time, a complicated stay as the capital of Ukraine had meter-high snow.

The Docu/Class programme – a whole workshop in itself – also includes international names like Latvian Viesturs Kairiss to talk about music, critic and programmer Pamela Cohn on ”the guillotine of New American cinema”, presentation of a book and a discussion following a photo exhibition by Misha Fridman: ”The Role of Women in the new Ukrainian police force”.

http://docudays.org.ua/

Arvo Pärt og Robert Wilson: Adam’s Passion

I Tallinn sommeren 2015 var der urpremiere på Robert Wilsons opsætning af Arvo Pärts værk for kor og orkester Adam’s Passion. Det var et sjældent, ja, enestående samarbejde mellem de to fremragende enere på den internationale scene, komponisten og sceneinstruktøren. Værket består af fire selvstændige dele ’Adam’s Lament’, ’Misere’, ’Tabula Rasa’ og det nykomponerede stykke ’Sequentia’, som Pärt har tilegnet Robert Wilson som en ouverture. Det samlede værk blev opført i en tidligere ubådsfabrik – en både vovet og storslået ramme om en af de helt store begivenheder inden for klassisk musik sidste år. Filmstruktøren Andy Sommer overførte opførelsen til film, og den viser Cinemateket i København ved en Danmarkspremiere søndag, 3. april.

Før Andy Sommers film over Pärts og Wilsons Adam’s Passion bliver der vist en film af Günther Atteln: The Lost Paradise, som skildrer opsætningen af Pärts værk for kor og orkester i Wilsons kongenialt dybttænkte regi.

The Lost Paradise: Pärt, Wilson og dirigenten Tõnu Kaljuste midt blandt medarbejdere  

Matineen med de to film finder altså sted søndag, 3. april og begynder 14:15. Billetter kan købes via dette link til Cinematekets programside hvor der også yderligere progaminformation om de to film.