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)

Amdoc 2016: Winners of Film Fund Competition

Festival director Teddy Groyua wanted suspense, when he was to announce the winners of the Film Fund Pitch Competition. He showed three trailers, the finalists, he said, and said afterwards ”you want to know who are the winners… they are all winners!”

”United Skates” pitched by Tina Brown and Dyana Winkler will received 9000$, ”The Penny Black” by William J. Saunders will receive 7000$ and ”Becoming April March” by Craig Jackson 5000$.

Brief descriptions from the catalogue:

”Becoming April March” – A former showgirl wants to go back to the glory years of her youth. Will she be able to in spite of age and a not so enthusiastic husband?

”The Penny Black” – Someone left some very expensive items behind for safe keeping. What will the friend do if the guy never comes back?

”United Skates” – A culture exists that most of white America has no inkling about, and yet it is rooted in their own history.

http://www.unitedskatesdocumentary.com/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4574640/

www.AmericanDocumentaryFilmFestival.com

Photo taken by John Osborne, one of the members of the jury, I was there as well – five voting members.

Amdoc 2016: Pannone, Zuluhoops & Longinotto

The last day of the American Documentary Film Festival 2016 was a good day. That started quietly for me with a film on the Swiss Guard of the Vatican, ”Escerito: The World’s Smallest Army” (86 mins.) by Italian veteran director Gianfranco Pannone, a very well made informative documentary that lets its audience inside the walls of the Vatican together with some Swiss born young men, who serve there in their colourful costumes. The film, a commissioned work by the Vatican, is beautifully shot by Tarek Ben Abdallah, who knows and demonstrates that images can tell stories. Good to be reminded about that after having seen several American documentaries that are edited through words with no real attention to the visual side.

”Zuluhoops” (56 mins.), a world premiere, later that day was a warm-hearted documentary by Kristin Pichaske featuring a young sympathetic teacher Ken Mukai and his effort to teach zulu kids in a rural outpost in South Africa. Language is a problem – ”after 3 weeks I discovered that they did not understand anything of what I was saying” – and the motivation was not there until the teacher had a basketball pitch set up and started teaching them how to play, took some of them to watch a tournament and made them create a team to compete. Teambuilding. The camera catches fine moments between the teacher and the charming kids, it is a film that deserves to go to European festivals as well.

As the closing night film, festival director Teddy Grouya had made an excellent choice, Moby Longinotto’s ”The Joneses” (photo) (80 mins.), a so-called ”Sneek Peak” with this catalogue text: ” FJheri Jones, a 74 years old transgender divorcee, and her family live in Bible Belt Mississippi. Reconciled after years of estrangement and now living with two of her four sons in her trailer park home, Jheri embarks on a new path to reveal her true self to her grandchildren while her son Trevor begins a surprising journey of his own…”

The English director told the audience afterwards that he had visited the family around 100 days, had got very close to them – you can see that in a film, that is full of respect and compassion. Official premiere at the San Francisco festival May 1st.

www.zuluhoops.org

www.AmericanDocumentaryFilmFestival.com

Amdoc 2016: Thank You for Your Service

After a fine sunday 6 hour excursion that included the town of Coacherella, that hosts a music festival every year but on this sunday mostly looked like the most deserted place on earth, with some great murals like the one that illustrates this post (made by Mac in 2014), it was back to American reality with the film ”Thank You for Your Service” by Tom Donahue, 88 minutes.

”The US military faces a mental health crisis of historic proportions”, says the first sentence of the catalogue text and indeed the film is a documentation of the fact that there are 22 suicides committed by war veterans – per day. 150.000 veterans took their lives after the Vietnam war. This film deals with the veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, where 2.7 million served.

The film bombards you with information. Interview follow interview, psychiatrists, retired military generals and secretaries of

state talk, the filmmakers said afterwards that they had interviewed 240 people… The journalistic side, the collection of facts being conveyed is very well done, we get to know in details what is PTSD, but the question is whether the amount of information and the constant ”attack” of the sound score, with effects and music that makes me think of action movies, kill  the overall story of the four fine characters, whose stories are touching emotionally. It is sooo good when the filmmakers let interview scenes stand without music, let the four talk, come out as interesting human beings for whom the wounds are fatal. When the filmmakers show respect for the audience and do not tell it what to feel in this specific scene. Again and again this is what differs an American documentary from a European, is it not?

The characters: Kenny, a family father, who became another person physically and in his mind was fighting with suicidal thoughts, Phil who also left his wife, Lu who is diagnosed with the PTSD ”moral injury” but has the guts to go visit a now living in the US Iraqi family , though he was part of a combat where the family’s father and two brothers were killed and William, married four times after serving… The film shows that healing programmes can work, if done in the right way and the message of this film is clear: Something has to be done to get more personel deal with mental health problems in the army.

The website below advocates for the creation of a Behavioral Health Corps (BHC), take a look and support, I will do so even if I have many doubts about the way this film is constructed.

www.bhcnow.com

Amdoc 2016: Brother’s Keeper

There is indeed a diversity in the programming of American Documentary Film Festival 2016, the fifth edition held here in Palm Springs. Reportage, documentary films of artistic quality and also a chance to dig into film history, this time Joe Berlinger’s ”Brother’s Keeper” that he made with Bruce Sinofsky and which came out in 1992 as something new in vérité style. Berlinger (Sinofsky passed away last year) was on stage to tell about the film in an interesting session, where he remembered how it was to shoot on 16mm at a time where (in the 1980’es), as he said ”documentaries were drying out”. ”Go out and tell a human story, you don’t know what is going to happen”, was the starting point for the two directors of a film that is a classic in film history, fresh and touching to watch in 2016 as well.

”It launched our career”, Berlinger said, ”the film got the Sundance Audience Award, we set up our own company and did self-distribution for theatres, and we made a profit”.

”We spent three weeks with the brothers before we started shooting, we wanted to create a rapport with the brothers”.

For newcomers in the documentary history, here is the description of the film taken from the catalogue of Amdoc. And the film is easy to find on Amazon:

Delbert, Bill, Lyman, and Roscoe Ward are illiterate bachelor brothers who never ventured beyond their 99 acre dairy farm in central New York State. Known by their neighbors as “The Ward Boys”, they’ve shared a two-room shack with no running water or indoor toilet for as long as anyone could remember. Their quiet life was shattered June 6, 1990, when Bill was found dead in the bed he shared with Delbert. By day’s end, Delbert had confessed to suffocating the ailing Bill as an act of mercy, but the local community believed Delbert was being framed. Delbert’s subsequent retraction, the village’s fervent belief in his innocence, and the national media attention visited upon a sleepy rural community make Brother’s Keeper a real-life murder mystery that examines larger social issues such as euthanasia, the plight of the aging, rural poverty and the fairness of the American justice system.

The film provides a fascinating portrait of The Ward Brothers’ eccentric and time-warped existence as it clashes with the modern criminal justice system — from pre-trial courtroom drama to lively village fundraisers; from the initial media feeding frenzy to the explosive trial itself.

Photo: Palm Springs, Little Tuscany. Two nights ago.

www.AmericanDocumentaryFilmFestival.com

Amdoc 2016: The Silences, Abdul & Hamza, Robin Wil

Margot Nash, experienced Australian filmmaker, whom I had never heard about, gave me the best documentary of friday in Palm Springs, ”Silences” (73 mins.) and demonstrated how beautifully English can be spoken with a text of high literary quality. Her family story about mental illnesses from generation to generation, about a sister who died as 12 year old after having been institutionalised away from the parents home, she was never talked about, a mother with no ability to express feelings, a father who travelled, was never at home and suffered from depression… was extremely well built on photos, letters, diaries, conversations between the director and her sister. A very private film that talked to me, who is from the same generation and have my own family stories. The film has been in cinemas in New Zealand and Australia, bravo that Amdoc brought it, and come on European festivals! The photo shows the three sisters, the director to the left.

”Be Robin the Movie” refers to late comedian Robin Williams, who also suffered from depression and therefore – the film says –  was a man, who could understand homeless people, many of whom also suffer from depression. The main character of this reportage-like film by Kurt Weitzmann (41 minutes) is Margaret Cho, a charismatic energetic young woman, who performs with musicians and comedians in the streets of San Francisco to collect food, clothes and money for the homeless.

Would be difficult to call that a film, whereas Marko Grba Singh from Serbia with his ”Abdul & Hamza” (49 minutes) shows great visual talent with many no-purpose, sometimes symbolic and surprising sequences. And silence. Two Somalian refugees at the Serbian/Romanian border in a film that is different from all the films we see about the biggest issue in Europe right now. The film was brought by the Kosovo documentary festival DokuFest as part of the NSDN (North South Documentary Network), initiated by Amdoc director Teddy Grouya.

http://www.margotnash.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_leEt1cXQA

AmericanDocumentaryFilmFestival.com

Amdoc 2016: Pitch Competition, Berlinger & Robbins

Same procedure as last year – the festival kicked off thursday morning with a film fund pitch competition led by its festival director Teddy Grouya. A dozen of projects were presented in a more than two hour long session, free and and open to the public. As one of the jurors for the competition – ”up to $50.000 in awards ia available” – I can not highlight which projects that I will support, when we have our decision meeting. The results will be announced at the end of the festival. What I can express is my appreciation of the competition itself that gives young American independent filmmakers the chance to put forward their works, most of them ”in progress”, many at the point of final editing, and several giving the comment that they have self-financed the production and need help to get a strong editor on board to complete the film. The pitch structure is very simple – 3 minutes of trailer/teaser, the filmmaker(s) on stage, some few questions/comments from the jurors, the session moderated in a relaxed manner by Teddy Grouya. As put last year, we Europeans should learn from this pitch format.

The opening night at the Camelot theatre brought a full hall to celebrate Joe Berlinger, who received the annual ”Seeing the Bigger Picture Award”, which has been previously been given to Oliver Stone, Harvey Weinstein and Peter Bogdanovich. Berlinger was there and a retrospective of his work will be shown at the festival, including works like ”Brother’s Keeper” (1992), ”Under African Skies” (Paul Simon in South Africa 25 years after ”Graceland” was released) and ”Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger” (2014).

Last night he showed his latest work ”Tony Robbins. I am not your Guru”, an almost 2 hour long – as the Americans say – vérité documentary about the life coach and best selling author, who was there to meet the audience, that was thrilled by the charismatic man, a true performer, who was filmed by Berlinger in a six day seminar with 2500 people attending. As put by the director, this film is for him a ”feel good” film, whereas his works always have been with a sceptical documentary eye, ”feel bad” films he jokingly said. It is a fascinating, well made documentary with a sympathetic main character, who – the film demonstrates – gives hope to people to overcome traumas and live a better life full of Love. ”I am addicted to help”, said Robbins, who was welcomed to the festival as a rock star in a film that shows a sooo American phenomenon, that I can only agree with a French director, who characterised the film as being – as well – an anthropological study of an American way of dealing with how to find yourself and overcome crisis and traumas. Made with respect and appreciation of Robbins, who is an overwhelmingly convincing character.