Nagieb Khaja: Syrien: Den Brændte Jord 1-3

Det drejer sig om borgerkrigen i Syrien. Politiken meddeler, at gennem mere end seks måneder har russiske fly bombet syriske byer. Den russiske regering har allieret Rusland med den syriske regering, som er i krig med en række oprørsgrupper og den russiske regering fastholder, at bombningerne kun er rettet mod grupperne Islamisk Stat og Jabat al-Nusra, men for Nagieb Khaja ser virkeligheden helt anderledes ud. I tre korte reportagemontager giver Nagieb Khaja et ellers uset billede af krigens rædsler, der hvor bomberne rammer i Aleppo. Nagieb Khajas modige og fortvivlede værk, hans videooptagelser uden omsvøb og hans dæmpede stemme gør det klart for mig, hvad det her drejer sig om, Nagieb Khaja er mit vidne nu, som Pablo Picasso med sin Guernica værkserie har været min fortolker, når jeg gennem mit liv prøvede at begribe borgerkrigen i Spanien.

1937

Forvandlingsskriget, idet dæmonen bliver til. Eventyrenes fjerne tordenluft har slået et et glødende lyn ned i dette billedes år, kort før den største storkrig, og det noget skriger, som forvandles.

Atter og atter dukker i Picassos kunst ansigtet frem i sin metamorfose, nu dybt sovende, her som om det stirrer ud fra et brændende hus.

Nogle står samlet neden for dette hus i trediverne, skarer.

Du og jeg er i dem.

Nu skriger hun, og glasset brister: Se det tynde hår, dæmonkammen. Hun kommer frem deroppe.

Borgerkrigen er fjern. Blot som kalenderblade på aviskiosken. Man er i tomheden.

(Ole Sarvig, fra Krisens Billedbog, 1937)

2016

Jeg kan om Nagieb Khajas rystende dokument Syrien: Den Brændte jord kun skrive en stilfærdig tak…

Danmark, 2016, 3×7 min. De tre afsnit kan streames på Politikens hjemmeside: politiken.dk/udland 

Fredrik & Magnus Gertten: Becoming Zlatan

Traitor, I said a long time ago to Jesper Osmund, who has edited the film about Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the magnificent Swedish footballer, who ”killed” the Danish ambition to qualify for the European championship. A Dane to help the Swedish brothers from Malmö (!) make a film about the young Zlatan and his first years as a professional player, going from Malmö to Amsterdam to Turin, from Malmö FF to Ajax to Juventus! A good film, a very good film actually, and as you could read in a previous post from the other day, a film that is out now, where Zlatan still, at the age of 34, does magic on the pitch and hopefully will do the same for Sweden in France in June, when the European tournament starts.

For a football fanatic the film is gold. You see where he comes from, you have interviews with him, you get a sense of (with Ajax manager Leo Beenhakker’s words) his conflicted nature, you see him being aggressive and violent in matches, you see him score goals and get booed by the audience when he does not, it’s all so very well composed going back and forth in time, there is a kind of melancholic tone in the film that is also about a young player on the top, who is a very private person at the same time as he through growing up learns how to behave, or does he? His tribute to Malmö and the quarter Rosengården, by donating a football pitch, is there and beautiful indeed it is.

For me, I did not remember that, it was especially interesting to get the description of the rivalry between Egyptian player Mido and Zlatan when in Ajax legendary Ronald Koeman was the coach and suddenly had too many strikers. An anecdotal story about a pair of scissors flying from Mido’s hands through the air in the dressing close to hit Zlatan, who then was the only one who came forward to defend his rival in the media. It is fine to hear Koeman as it is fine to hear Capello, who was Zlatan’s coach when he came to Juventus, when Ajax became too small for this fantastic football player.   

Sweden/Holland, 2016, 85 mins.

The Sheriffs, Nadia Savchenko & Zlatan

I know that the headline is mixing harsh reality and entertainment but this is actually how it is to be at EDP, East Doc Platform, here in Prague. During the days I have been giving feedback on documentary projects that deal with global problems or stories from family life, personal stories and stories of a more investigative nature. And during the evening relaxing, last night with football on television.

And I have met the “Ukrainian Sheriffs” and their mayor, who were invited by the Ukrainian filmmakers Darya Averchenko and Roman Bondarchuk and their powerhouse of a producer, Uldis Cekulis from Latvia – to attend two screenings with full houses and to give the audience answers to their questions. But they had also time to go to a demonstration in Prague! At the photo they carry signs saying “Free Nadia” with reference to the Russian Imprisonment of Ukrainian helicopter pilot Nadia Savchenko, who is now on her 45th day of hungerstrike and according to Radio Free Europe considered seriously ill. Savchenko is in jail because of Russian suspicion of her being involved in the killing of two Russian soldiers.

Photo from left sound engineer and co-editor of the film Borys Peter, senior sheriff Viktor Kryvoborodko, junior sheriff Volodymyr Rudkovsky, mayor Viktor Marunyak and director of the film Roman Bondarchuk. The sheriffs and their mayor went back to Stara Zburjivka this morning. Photo Darya Averchenko.

And a few words about last evening that was spent in a sportspub watching Paris Saint Germain beat Chelsea and qualify for the next round of the European Championship. English newspaper Guardian calls him “a superhero”, and indeed he was yesterday, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, 34 years old, the leader of the Paris team, in total control of his players and with one assist and one scored goal, the one who defined the result of the match. Amazing he is, as you can see in the film by the Brothers Gertten from Malmö, where Zlatan was born. I will review that film tomorrow. One of the brothers, Magnus, saw the film and smiled, this can only increase the sales of the film and the cinema attendance in Sweden where 55.000 have seen it so far.

http://project20406.tilda.ws/#rec3016831

Copenhagen Architecture Festival CAFx 2016

The Copenhagen Architecture Festival opens this Wednesday March 9th for the third time. The festival has grown rapidly and is now the biggest festival of its kind (I guess we like it big here in Copenhagen), focusing on architecture and film: 150 events, 90 films and 35 venues in Copenhagen, Aarhus and Aalborg.

Themes this year span from gentrification, sound and space, the life and poetics of the architect, past and future urban planning, to co-creation, Chinese megacities and transformations of Copenhagen. There will by lectures, talks, radio cinema and podcasts created for specific walks, lots of possibilities to discover unknown spots around the city and a fine program for children as well.

I won’t miss out on the screening of Chantal Akerman’s News from Home (1977), her New York tableaux accompanied by her reading letters from her mother – Cinemateket will also be showing her last film No Home Movie (2015) in March, so that’s two Akerman films in a month. I look forward to the program curated and introduced by Danish sound engineer Peter Albrechtsen, in particular Blade Runner, the 2007 final director’s cut with an optimised soundtrack. Then there is old punk portrayer Julien Temple’s collage London, The Modern Babylon (2012) and a Danish premiere of Mark Cousins’ I am Belfast (2015). Documentary directors Kaspar Astrup Schröder and Michael Madsen give us a chance to follow their current projects: Astrup Schröder by showing a work-in-progress version of Big Time, his portrait of Danish superstar architect Bjarke Ingels, and Madsen will do a talk about his next film/philosophical experiment Odyssey that involves spaceships and the future of humankind. Oh and then I have to see L’Inhumaine, Marcel L’Herbier’s 1924 French avant-garde science fiction, a silent movie masterpiece with a set design by Robert Mallet-Stevens and Fernand Léger, screened with a new electronic live soundtrack on Sunday March 20.

The opening film is the award-winning Concrete Love: The Böhm Family (2014) by Maurizius Staerkle Drux, a portrait of Germany’s most prominent architect Gottfried Böhm and his family (PHOTO). Love, art and architecture! Take a look at the trailer: https://vimeo.com/117273601

CAFx March 10-20 in Copenhagen, Aarhus and Aalborg.

Check out the program: http://cafx.dk/

The Mole, The Mayor and the Sheriffs

I am at EDP – East Doc(umentary) Platform – in Prague, that provides ”training and networking for projects, workshops, promotion, financing and awards”. It takes place at the Cervantes Institute and runs parallel to and in collaboration with the One World Festival. Lots of people are here, those with projects and those, like me, to give feedback on the projects. A fine chance to have a week in Prague and to meet friends, those who built all this, like Miriam Ryndová, Veronika Liskova, Ivana Pauerová Milosevicova, Masa Markovic, Filip Remunda and Andrea Prenghyova, the latter now responsible for the DokInkubator program.

Like on many occasions with people from Czech Republic, those of us who have children to take care of, quickly get to talk about the Krtek (the mole) series of animation films for children. What is your favourite, the film consultant from Denmark asked. ”The Mole and the Eagle”, Ivana said, we join her in that, but it could also be ”The Mole and the Rocket” as said Myriam, or ”The Mole and the City”, mentioned by Veronika, ”but it is very sad”, right she is, Zdenek Miler, the master behind these films, was a true ecologist before that word was invented.

Yesterday was the big day for the team behind the film ”Ukranian Sheriffs”, Roman Bondarchuk, Darya Averchenko and Uldis Cekulis. They had organised that the sheriffs and the mayor came to Prague to watch, for the first time, the film where they are the protagonists. It became a memorable evening with a full house in the cinema of Institut Francais, flowers to the Ukrainians on the stage, questions to them about how it was to be filmed, whether they thought that what they saw was giving a credible picture of their lives, the situation now in Ukraine, where the war of course also affects the life in the village. Reinhart Lohmann from ZDF Arte, one of the financiers, was there, and there was Czech beer and becherovka after the screening. ”Yes, this is how it is”, said one of the sheriffs, ”there is no acting in that film”.

www.dokweb.net

Avi Mograbi-Collected Posts on his Works

”… Mograbi is exactly as his films are: tense, sometimes comic, but always dealing with the embarrassing reality of the country he lives in. A frustrated artist, as he says himself, who wants to move something, raise a debate in Israel, but does not succeed, he is met with total silence, no reactions, whereas he now is an estimated artist in Western Europe!”

 

AVI MOGRABI – COLLECTED POSTS ON HIS WORKS

By Tue Steen Müller

 

Z32 (2008)

DocLisboa Diary: … Well, I saw two films yesterday… the heartbreaking observational Kim Longinotto doc ”Hold me Tight, Let me go”, what a brilliant filmmaker and fine person she is, and Avi Mograbi´s ”Z32”, a mise-en-scène film that once again shows how clever this controversial filmmaker is, in finding new ways of dealing with strong themes of the world. This time in a Brechtian musical form. (Blogppost 17-10-2008)

DocLisboa Diary: … I went directly to the videothèque to watch films from the international competition programme to prepare my article for the DOX magazine. It was a long journey through the misery of this world filmed and conveyed by committed and sometimes narratively involved directors and cameramen and –women. Made by English (”All White in Barking” by Marc Isaacs), French-Iranian (”The Faces on the Wall” by Bijan Anquetil and Paul Costes), Chinese (”The Red Race” by Chao Gan) and Israeli (”Six Floors to Hell” by Jonathan Ben Efrat). To mention the four films that impressed me mostly. Themes: xenophobia and loss of identity, the forgotten martyrs, children paced to served the state and inhumanity in the state of Israel.

In all these films there were a lot of emotions. They want us to cry or at least be moved at this festival. And think, even if nothing compares to the opening film by Avi Mograbi in that respect. And in terms of stylistical innovation, Mograbi also has no competitors so far. Classical documentary approach, yes, but on the other hand I have not yet seen a film that I thought should have stayed at home. (Blogpost 18-10-2008)

Z32

DOK Leipzig Diary: … I have previously – in my diaries from DocLisboa – mentioned the new masterpiece by Avi Mograbi, ”Z32”. It was also shown at DOK Leipzig, Avi Mograbi was there and I told him again, as in Lisbon, that his films divide people, for which reason he will never get a prize in a documentary festival, as juries tend to go for compromises. Right I was, no prize for Mograbi in Leipzig.

One of the reasons could be found in the review of the film from the Leipziger Volkszeitung, November 1st, written by Norbert Wehrstedt, who, as many others, objects to having talking faces in documentaries… he had hoped that this narrative element had died long time ago. He reduces thus the film to be a ”Hörbuch mit Bildern” that nobody needs. Words, words, words to put it in another words.

I totally disagree to this classical rejection of talking faces. It depends on who is talking, on camera angle, light, rythm and reason for using talking faces. What Avi Mograbi does, is that he innovates the documentary language by using talking masks, as his main character, the killing Israeli soldier, does not want to face the camera. Very intelligent trick that combined with his Brechtian musical element, himself singing comments to the soldier’s crime, makes the film into a universal essayistic wish for reflection.

”Z32” runs in festivals all over, look out for it and if you are in Copenhagen, you can reach it at cph:dox. (Blogpost 03-11-2008 )

A MASTER CLASS, A MASTER’S CLASS

DOCSBarcelona Diary: … Israeli director Avi Mograbi had two screenings of his latest film, ”Z32”, a film that I have praised several times on filmkommentaren.dk

On top of that the director performed a three hour masterclass for 180 people according to this concept: a director chooses 7 clips from his films, clips that he has something special to say about. Mograbi went through a substantial part of his work, and made comments that were all an investigation into the position of the filmmaker towards his character(s). From humourous situations like the one where he has eye contact with Sharon in ”How I learned to overcome my fear and love Ariel Sharon” to his confrontation with the Israeli soldiers, who will not allow Palestinian children to pass a fence and go home from school, in ”Avenge but one of my two Eyes”, to his Brechtian choice of singing his reflections in ”Z32”: ”Am I housing a murderer in my film”?

A masterclass, a master’s class, Mograbi is exactly as his films are: tense, sometimes comic, but always dealing with the embarrassing reality of the country he lives in. A frustrated artist, as he says himself, who wants to move something, raise a debate in Israel, but does not succeed, he is met with total silence, no reactions, whereas he now is an estimated artist in Western Europe! In the next issue of Cahiers du Cinema, the headline is characterising him as ”Le Grand sculpteur de notre temps”. ”Z32” will be released in French cinemas in this month. (Blogpost 06-02-2009)

JACQUES MANDELBAUM’S REVIEW

I have written several times about the new film of Avi Mograbi, and about this very important documentary filmmaker. I do it with pleasure again by quoting the review of renowned critique Jacques Mandelbaum, just published in connection with the theatrical release of the film in France. The quotes are from the beginning and the end of the text that can be read on the site of le monde:

”Voici maintenant vingt ans qu’Avi Mograbi bricole dans son coin de terre promise des films bizarres et inclassables. Ils tiennent à la fois du documentaire, de la fiction, du journal intime, de la farce brechtienne. Voici vingt ans que cet Israélien moyen, violemment opposé à la politique de son pays, s’estime personnellement comptable de l’impasse douloureuse dans laquelle l’Etat dont il est le citoyen a contribué à enfermer la région. Contre cela, il invente des dispositifs aussi subtils qu’extravagants, tient la chronique de sa vie domestique, met le feu aux check-points, mouline l’air de ses imprécations. En un mot, il boxe, avec sa caméra pour arme, jetant à chaque fois son corps de clown triste poids lourd dans un ring régulièrement déserté par l’adversaire…”

” …On l’aura compris, les questions cinématographiques que pose Z 32 sont des questions politiques. Elles évoquent notre manière de nous comporter devant le mal, celui que l’on commet comme celui que l’on subit, et la difficulté d’accéder au pardon. Autant dire que l’humanisme brûlant de ce film porte un des plus forts témoignages jamais filmés sur la nature du conflit israélo-palestinien.” (Blogpost 18-02-2009)

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ONCE I ENTERED A GARDEN (2013)

The new films of two contemporary film artists who have always gone non-mainstream with their own voice and approach. The films of Liechti and Mograbi can be watched on DocAlliance, that has picked them from the Visions du Réel section ”Etat dEsprit”. ”Father’s Garden – The Love of My Parents” is the film of Liechti (”Sound of Insects”), the description from DocAlliance: After a long absence, Peter Liechti visits his now elderly parents, ready for a close encounter. The stories of their lives and rather difficult marriage are largely presented as a puppet theatre, with the parents, from the lower middle-class, portrayed as hares wearing shirts and aprons. Via the “Punch” character, the rebellious son channels the emotions that overwhelm him in this stunning portrait.

Once I entered a Garden

The film of Avi Mograbi is called ”Once I entered a Garden” and has this text: Avi Mograbi and his long-time friend Ali embark on a journey to a land that existed before borders were created. A world that existed, even though most of the people and especially politicians pretend it never did. A world where communities were not divided along religious lines. With a light hand held camera, Mograbi continues to question the history of Israel. Everything is still possible. Last feature documentary film of Mograbi was ”Z32”, a masterpiece. (Blogpost 30-04-2013)

AN IMPORTANT PS

On Copenhagen Jewish Flm Festival 2014: … There is a good climate for documentaries in Israel. Broadcasters invest more in the genre than you experience in Western Europe, there is public funding and private funds, there are film schools, the festival DocAviv and the unique CoPro, headed by Orna Yarmut, a marketing tool for Israeli documentaries abroad. I was for years involved in the selection of projects to the yearly CoPro pitching forum in Tel Aviv, where films on the development stage are presented to potential buyers from television stations and funds from all over the world.

Several film projects that took part in CoPro sessions are now finished films and can be watched at the Jewish Film Festival in Copenhagen at the Cinemateket January 9-12. Feature films and documentaries are presented with an absolute majority of the latter. Let me recommend some of them:

”Life in Stills” by Tamar Tal is a wonderful, very funny and warm film with a 96 year old grandmother and her grandson, who keeps a photo shop alive in Tel Aviv (closed now, I am afraid). The scoop photos are from the declaration of independence of the state of Israel but the film is first and foremost about the relationship between the two.

”One Day in Peace” by Erez and Mira Laufer, a film that has been touring festivals all over the world, and been subject to endless important discussions. Here is the text about the film taken from its official website: ”Can the means used to resolve the conflict in South Africa be applied to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? As someone who experienced both conflicts firsthand, Robi Damelin wonders about this. Born in South Africa during the apartheid era, she later lost her son, who was serving with the Israeli Army reserve in the Occupied Territories. At first she attempted to initiate a dialogue with the Palestinian who killed her child. When her overtures were rejected, she embarked on a journey back to South Africa to learn more about the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s efforts in overcoming years of enmity. Robi’s thought-provoking journey leads from a place of deep personal pain to a belief that a better future is possible. Robi Damelin will be present at the screening in Copenhagen.”

The charismatic producer Arik Bernstein told me about his for years ongoing project collecting home movie footage from private citizens. The film is screened in Copenhagen and I am curious to see the final result – ”Israel: A Home Movie”, director Eliav Lilti – for sure far from the usual propaganda from the official political Israel.

The – for many – father of Israeli documentary David Perlov (from the site about him: ”The documentary cinema interests me only if I can turn it into something more poetic. Only then does cinema interest me”) is represented with the 1979 ”Memories of the Eichmann Trial”. The description of the film from the Israelfilmcenter’s site: Layers upon layers of memory are laid down in Perlov’s fillm, a unique historical and cinematic document. In interviews that Perlov conducted in his apartment seventeen years after the trial of the notorious Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann, survivors, their children and young Israelis all give their perspectives on the impact the trial had on Israeli society’s approach to the Holocaust and its survivors, as well as the manner in which it influences their personal and familial lives.

And of course there is Dror Moreh’s Oscar nominated ”Gatekeepers” the choice of Cinemateket as ”documentary of the month”. One of the gatekeepers, former ambassador to Denmark Carmi Gillon, will be present at one of the screenings. The film has been reviewed on this website.

PS

A request to the programmers of Cinemateket: Please show on some occasion the latest film by Avi Mograbi, ”Once I Entered a Garden”, a great film by the most important Israeli documentarian, probably too controversial for a Jewish Film Festival. Here is the precise description the film had when showed at the Edinburgh International Film Festival this year: A wry, playful reflection on the emotional consequences of a political situation, centred around a revealing series of intimate conversations between the Israeli filmmaker and his Palestinian ex-Arabic teacher and longtime friend. An exchange of shared and separate histories, perfectly underscored by and intercut with achingly beautiful letters to a love lost across the divide, read by a woman over evocative super 8 footage of modern-day Beirut. (Blogpost 04-01-2014)

***

IN PARIS 2015

The French love the Israeli film artist Avi Mograbi – and do so this film blogger, who has followed his carreer with great enthusiasm. From March 14 the prestigious museum Jeu de Paume has invited Mograbi to meet the audience, discuss art and politics, and show his works, oeuvre, to stay in the French cultural context. A well deserved hommage! A couple of quotations from this site:

”…he innovates the documentary language by using talking masks, as his main character, the killing Israeli soldier, does not want to face the camera. Very intelligent trick that combined with his Brechtian musical element, himself singing comments to the soldier’s crime, makes the film into a universal essayistic wish for reflection…” (about Z32)

”…A masterclass, a master’s class, Mograbi is exactly as his films are: tense, sometimes comic, but always dealing with the embarrassing reality of the country he lives in. A frustrated artist, as he says himself, who wants to move something, raise a debate in Israel, but does not succeed, he is met with total silence, no reactions, whereas he now is an estimated artist in Western Europe! In the next issue of Cahiers du Cinema, the headline is characterising him as ’Le Grand sculpteur de notre temps’ ”. (DocsBarcelona, masterclass with Avi Mograbi)

And in French, from le Monde: ”Voici maintenant vingt ans qu’Avi Mograbi bricole dans son coin de terre promise des films bizarres et inclassables. Ils tiennent à la fois du documentaire, de la fiction, du journal intime, de la farce brechtienne. Voici vingt ans que cet Israélien moyen, violemment opposé à la politique de son pays, s’estime personnellement comptable de l’impasse douloureuse dans laquelle l’Etat dont il est le citoyen a contribué à enfermer la région. Contre cela, il invente des dispositifs aussi subtils qu’extravagants, tient la chronique de sa vie domestique, met le feu aux check-points, mouline l’air de ses imprécations. En un mot, il boxe, avec sa caméra pour arme, jetant à chaque fois son corps de clown triste poids lourd dans un ring régulièrement déserté par l’adversaire…” (17.2.2009, Jacques Mandelbaum) Photo from “How I learned to overcome my fear and love Arik Sharon” (1997). (Blogpost 06-03-2015)

How I learned to overcome my fear and love Arik Sharon

***

RETROSPECTIVE IN MUNICH 2015

The 30th edition of the DOK.fest in Munich invites the audience to watch five of the Israeili documentary master Avi Mograbi’s films. Mograbi travels apparently from one (well deserved) homage to the other, last one was in Paris at the Jeu de Paume museum in March. The films – “August: A Moment before Eruption” (2002), “Happy Birthday, Mr. Mograbi” (1999), “How I Learned to Overcome my Fear and Love Arik Sharon” (1997), “Once I entered a Garden” (2012) and “Z32” (2008) – show the director’s personal style and his unique skill to convey his critical analysis of Israel in a humourous language.

Mograbi has been a frequent guest on this site, I am true admirer of him and his film essays, here are just two quotes:

…he innovates the documentary language by using talking masks, as his main character, the killing Israeli soldier, does not want to face the camera. Very intelligent trick that combined with his Brechtian musical element, himself singing comments to the soldier’s crime, makes the film into a universal essayistic wish for reflection… (about Z32)

…A masterclass, a master’s class, Mograbi is exactly as his films are: tense, sometimes comic, but always dealing with the embarrassing reality of the country he lives in. A frustrated artist, as he says himself, who wants to move something, raise a debate in Israel, but does not succeed, he is met with total silence, no reactions, whereas he now is an estimated artist in Western Europe! In the next issue of Cahiers du Cinema, the headline is characterising him as ”Le Grand sculpteur de notre temps”. (DocsBarcelona 2009, masterclass with Avi Mograbi). (Blogpost 20-04-2015)

***

RETROSPECTIVE IN COLOGNE 2015

Under the headline “Always The Trouble With Avi”, the Filmforum at the Museum Ludwig in Köln shows a retrospective of films by Israeli Avi Mograbi, introduced by this great text by the curator Rasha Salti:

“He is almost always in front of the camera, but the films are never about him at all; he films the commonplace, the everyday, even the prosaic – only to reveal with unsettling lucidity more profound and unseen truths about the paradoxes of contemporary Israeli society and ist occupation of Palestine. He seems to make films about making films that in reality are never made; he trumps documentary with fiction, performance with reality, back and forth, addling the codes of direct cinema. This is the trouble with Avi Mograbi’s cinematic and artistic practice: it is so essentially and literally subversive that it is impossible to classify. As is he: actor, sound recordist, second cameraman, singer, performer, director and citizen, he embodies all these roles dutifully, responsibly, without ambiguity or affect. And most remarkably, he never displaces himself or his body from the ailing social body he films, deconstructs, challenges or provokes.” The director is present at the screenings.

And this is what I wrote on this site, when Avi Mograbi was in Barcelona:

”…A masterclass, a master’s class, Mograbi is exactly as his films are: tense, sometimes comic, but always dealing with the embarrassing reality of the country he lives in. A frustrated artist, as he says himself, who wants to move something, raise a debate in Israel, but does not succeed, he is met with total silence, no reactions, whereas he now is an estimated artist in Western Europe! In the next issue of Cahiers du Cinema, the headline is characterising him as ”Le Grand sculpteur de notre temps”. (DocsBarcelona 2009, masterclass with Avi Mograbi). Check the website, fine introductions to all films. (Blogpost 05-10-2015)

Avenge But One of My Two Eyes (2005)

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BETWEEN FENCES (2016)

Berlin Forum 2016, diary: Israeli Avi Mograbi is one of the most remarkable “auteurs” of our time. If you want to know more you are welcome to check posts made on this site on his work – since 2008, more than 30 that includes his name. Now he is there with a new film, this text is taken from his FB page:

… My new film “Between Fences” was selected to the Berlinale’s Forum! Produced by LesFilms Dici, theater facilitator and director Chen Alon, photography by Philippe Bella Bellaiche, music by Noam Enbar:

Avi Mograbi and theater director Chen Alon meet African asylum-seekers in a detention facility in the middle of the Negev desert where they are confined by the state of Israel. Together, they question the status of the refugees in Israel using ‘Theater of the Opressed’ techniques. What leads men and women to leave everything behind and go towards the unknown? Why does Israel, land of the refugees, refuse to take into consideration the situation of the exiled, thrown onto the roads by war, genocide and persecution? Can the Israelis working with the asylum seekers put themselves in the refugee’s shoes? Can their collective unconscious be conjured up? (Blogpost 20-01-2016)

Between Fences

REVIEW

There is a lot of good mood in this new film by Avi Mograbi – as there always is in films by this great Israeli filmmaker, who in his films for decades has raised a critical voice to the way politics and human rights are dealt with in his country. They have a good time being together, the asylum- seekers from Eritrea and Sudan, who with theatre director Chen Alon, cameraman Philippe Bellaiche and Mograbi himself – doing the sound, moving around with a boomstick – perform scenes from their own lives, from where they come from and from the absurd situation they are in now. Playing the scenes, thus staging their own lives, could make them politically active as well as have them express their own frustrations and traumas. That is the philosophy.

They are near Holot, a detention centre in Israel close to the Egyptian border, they can not be sent back to their home countries, where they would be persecuted – and they can not go to Tel Aviv because the Israelis don’t want them and consider them to be ”dangerous infiltrators”, as it is stated in the synopsis of the film.

The theatre scenes in good mood, but with no optimism, are in general perfomed by a handful of detainees, in the time between the roll calls of Holot three times per day. Which makes them de facto, as they state it, live in a prison. If they are not there for the roll calls they might be transferred to Saharonim, a ”real” prison with no permission to leave.

The good mood of the theatre scenes stops with the individual talks, the monologues from some of the refugees, who tell stories of murder, torture, hunger… and about escaping into Israel from Egypt, being caught by Israeli soldiers, being sent back again, crossing the border several times. It’s crazy and humiliating and against any human right convention.

”We don’t want your country, because you don’t want us”, is one sentence. Another person talks about facing racism if you get into Tel Aviv as a black man – and when the Holot is announced to be closed, a couple of the refugees say that they will stay here anyway; there is no home to go back to, there is no future for them in Israel.

In the film Avi Mograbi is present at a strike in June 2014 by the refugees, who are confronted with Israeli military. You see him stand behind a fence having a conversation with a man inside Holot – are you fasting, he asks, are you being treated well etc. You sense the frustration by the director who, in one of the theatre scenes, regrets that he can not get into Holot to film and you have the feeling of hopelessness from not only those, who are stuck in this isolated location in the desert, but also from Mograbi himself, who with Chen Alon try to do something good but know that what they do – for very few – is a drop in an ocean of aggression and lack of humanity. As a response you can only say, like I do here, yes, but you do something, you point at an injustice, you raise your voices on behalf of people in need. And you do so through a cinematic combination of emotion and information. As a viewer you watch, listen and read the many texts on the screen, you shake your head… France/Israel, 2016, 85 mins.(Blogpost 01-03-2016)

Between Fences

***

LINKS

www.avimograbi.com (Mograbi’s site)

lemonde.fr (Jacques Mandelbaum, Le Monde, review on Z32)

dafilms.com (DocAlliance, streaming of ” Once I entered a Garden”, 2013)

www.academycologne.org (Museum Ludwig in Köln retrospektive series 2015)

Amy Berg: Sektlederen og de 90 koner

Original title: Prophets Prey. Danish DR Dokumania shows Amy Berg’s film on tuesday March 8 at 20.45, music composed cy Nick Cave. In the following Danish text there is a presentation and a short review of the film.

Første afsnit af pressemeddelelsen om filmen: ”Som i enhver saftig religiøs fortælling kan historien om profeten, Warren Jeffs, koges ned til et spørgsmål om sex, grådighed og jagten på rigdom. Da hans far døde i 2002 overtog Jeffs profettitlen i den Fundamentalistiske Sidste Dages Hellige Kirke, ikke at forveksle med mormonernes kirke, Jesu Kristi Kirke af Sidste Dages Hellige. Sekten var allerede på det tidspunkt kendt for polygami og børneægteskaber, men Warren Jeffs formåede at udvide denne praksis på hidtil usete og sadistiske måder, som ophævede grænsen mellem søstre og hustruer og legaliserede religiøst begrundede voldtægter…”

Sådan! Hvis det giver dig lyst til at se filmen så lad være at læse det næste:

Ja, det må være det saftige tema, som har fået redaktionen til at købe denne film… for det kan ikke være filmens kvalitet! Den er traditionelt lavet med speak og sødladen musik (Nick Cave dog!) “all over the place”, refererende intetsigende interviews, hele tiden konkluderende at ham Jeff var/er et svin, og det er sikkert rigtigt, men intet om hvorfor alle disse kvinder dog fandt sig i det, stort set ingen karismatiske vidner, kunne man dog ikke have fået mere ud af hovedpersonen, det er bare amerikansk tabloid-dokumentar af værste skuffe. Jeg så den til ende, det behøver I ikke, I behøver slet ikke se den, læs en god bog istedet eller Knausgårds lange artikel I dagens Politiken om hjernekirurgen Henry Marsh på arbejde I Albanien. Se, det er dokumentarisme!

DocuDays UA: The Bears Inside Us

This is the statement of the festival in Kiev (25.3-1.4) linked to the logo chosen:

“The Olympic Mishka” (Olympic bear) is the mascot of 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, one of the happiest episodes in life of the Soviet Union. You can still see those “mishkas” all over Ukraine – on the driveway to Kyiv, in parks and on the streets.

These smiling bears are stuck in our heads as a coded illusion of welfare based on double standards.

These bears in everyone of us can easily do everything we’re trying to fight: they bribe, “sort things out” and praise the soviet regime that seems to have had stability and security in future.

These bears represent Ukrainian voters, soft and fluffy, who vote for their future and sell their votes on the way with guilty smiles. Or honestly vote for those who already fooled them many times.

We have chosen the “The Olympic Mishkas” as a Docudays UA 2016 symbol to help us get over the political hypnosis and illusions, over the belief that someone is going to solve our problems for us.

Our bears are empty inside; they should finally mean that we’re saying goodbye to the past that this agonising neighbour empire is trying to drag us into. We’re saying goodbye for the new responsibilities to come, new important work to fill our lives: creating our own symbols and codes, based on our values.

http://docudays.org.ua/eng/

Ognjen Glavonić: Depth Two

The theme: The Suva Reka massacre during the Kosovo war. 1999. When Nato was bombing Yugoslavia. Kosovo Albanians were killed by Serbian police-officers. Batajnica, at the banks of the Danube, upstream Belgrade Zemun, became the hiding place where the corpses from this mass murder and from other killings, in all secrecy, were transported in refrigeration trucks. It is a well documented historical event, investigated in the courts in den Hague and Belgrade. Many involved in the atrocities have been convicted, many have been acquitted because of lack of evidence! According to one of the voices in the film, many more should be taken to court.

Voices… Serbian Ognjen Glavonić has made this impressive documentary (entitled “Depth Two”, the name given to the mission (they called it “Operation Dubina Dva”) by the Serbian leaders at that time)… through words from the trials in den Hague and from a man, who drove the corpses from Kosovo to Batajnica. Words that tell the story of how the transports took place and from a Suva Reka survivor who details, how her (Berisha) family was shot at close range, including her children. How they were taken into their own pizzeria, where bombs were thrown in. How she survived by playing dead! Words from victims, from perpetrators, from those who did the terrible transportation work.

It is a terrifying story. You are chained to the screen because the director has chosen NOT to show any corpses, NOT to have any interviews or commentary – but to let the viewer watch nature, deserted fields, villages where the sun goes down, all images of today, empty houses, comfortless, trees without leaves as accompaniment to the words. This is where it happened, you think, there was Life here, you make your own horrible visualization from the words and the often very beautiful images. It touches you, also because the rhythm and tone of the film leave space for reflection. It is done in a very decent and respectful way, at the same time as you get the documentation of what actually happened. Slow camera movements brilliantly conveys the non-sensational approach of the director, who ends his film with personal remains of the victims and documents like one signed by the President, “Operation Depth Two” with the addition: “no body, no crime”!

The film was premiered at the Berlinale in the Forum section. The synopsis attached in the catalogue and elsewhere talks about “an experimental thriller”, which is a very very wrong marketing of a film, that combines information with a high artistic competence, from a director who made the right aesthetic choice to tell an untellable story from our time.

Look at the photo of a tree without leaves but with sprouts. Life continues, when will we ever learn…

2016, Serbia, France, 80 mins.

Cinéma du Réel 2016

A classic among the many documentary festivals – and in Paris. The selection for this year’s edition, taking place March 18-27, primarily at the Centre Pompidou, has been made: there is an international competition, a French, one for First film and one for short films.

Happy to see that the international competition includes films from India, Vietnam, Chile, Syria and Mexico – and that the festival is loyal (as the filmmakers are who submit their films to this festival) to directors like Austrian Ruth Beckermann, Éric Pauwels from Belgium, Vietnamese Trin T. Ming-ha, and to – outside competition – Sergei Loznitsa (”The Event”), ”In Jackson Height” by Frederick Wiseman and ”Between Fences” by Avi Mograbi that will be the opening film.

And as a tribute to Haskell Wexler, ”Rebel Citizen” made by friend and long time collaborator Pamela Yates, whose words I quote (from the website of the festival):

For more than 30 years I’d been having conversations with Haskell about life, love, politics and cinema, and what it means to be a politically engaged documentary filmmaker. Every morning when Haskell woke up, he railed against the injustices in the world and what we have to do to end them. Earlier this year, I filmed one of our conversations over several days and turned it into a documentary called Rebel Citizen. In Rebel Citizen, he told some great stories: Did you know that in 1963 Haskell made The Bus, a film about a group of civil rights activists as they traveled overland from California to the March on Washington where Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech? This documentary has great resonance with today’s Black Lives Matter movement. He made a host of films about US intervention in Latin America, in Nicaragua and Brazil. These films profoundly affected how I chose to take artistic risks as a committed filmmaker….

By the way, Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan’s “Une Histoire de Vent” from 1988 will be the closing film at the festival. Cinéma du Réel knows how to celebrate film history! And literature – the reason for the PHOTO of Orhan Parmuk is this: “Orhan Pamuk, Turkish writer and 2006 Nobel Prize will attend Cinéma du Réel on the occasion of the special screening of the film Innocence of Memories directed by Grant Gee.

http://www.cinemadureel.org/fr