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.

Kirsten Johnson: Cameraperson

I have not seen the film yet, but I will, with high expectations because I have heard about it for several years from the maker and have had the privilege to tutor with Kirsten Johnson a couple of times, in Beirut and Jeddah, enjoying her enthusiasm and commitment; she is one who gives to younger colleagues, and now she brings young and old her film about being a travelling documentary cameraperson.

In the realscreen newsletter I received yesterday, Kevin Ritchie has made an interview with Kirsten Johnson, to be strongly recommended, ethical questions are seldom raised, and this is not only for camerapersons. Here is a quote:

… we used to be able to control where the image went and we can’t do it any more. That has different implications to the people we film and even to us as filmmakers. It sent me back into thinking about other situations in which there have been questions around permission and complicity, or where time has changed the meaning of things, so it started bringing up memories of things I had filmed, where we had question marks about choices we’d made. That’s when I reached out to different directors and asked to look at footage to see how far was the space between what I remembered and what was actually in the footage…

Read more: http://realscreen.com/2016/03/18/sxsw-16-cameraperson-turns-lens-on-cinematographer/#ixzz43HtDrdaz

Greek Tribute to Mark Cousins

Along with Jon Bang Carlsen the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival pays a tribute to Mark Cousins, also an original filmmaker, loved by this site, a man who knows his film history (buy the 930 minutes long dvd compilation he made with wonderful clips commented by Cousins! He is by the way now making one on documentaries, 3 hours it should be), he is/has been an excellent film critic AND is a film director – in Thessaloniki ”A Story of Children and Film”, ”Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise”, ”I am Belfast” and ”The First Movie”.

Today a press conference was held with Cousins, here is a quote, bur read it all, clever words from the scotsman born in Belfast:

Asked by the audience about his relationship with children, the director referred to his childhood, noting that he grew up with his twin brother in Belfast, in a loving Protestant family. Although he did not want to have children, he finds something charming about them. “When children want something, they usually want it right now. Even in places where the reality is tragic, children recover almost in no time. While growing up, I saw people in their 20s getting dressed in suits, becoming dull, hiding their desires and feelings. In English we say that we don’t stop playing because we grow up, but we grow up because we stop playing. I wanted to hold on to this playful spirit. This feeling of magic is easy to lose and when you start facing life scared and wary, you lose a lot out of it”, Mark Cousins stressed. And to prove his words, he put on a gorilla suit glove, which he always keeps with him, as he said, as his nephew encouraged him to put it on as a game each time he presents his film A Story of Children and Film.

http://tdf.filmfestival.gr/default.aspx?lang=en-US&page=1323&newsid=224 

Greek Tribute to Jon Bang Carlsen

The 18th edition of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival includes a retrospective of films by Danish director Jon Bang Carlsen, indeed not the first time this director has been, much deserved, presented as one of the most interesting documentary directors of our time. A man who went “hybrid” long before this word came into the documentary vocabulary, read what he said at a masterclass in Thessaloniki:

“I have a special approach towards documentaries. I don’t exactly know what a documentary is. When I graduated from Film School – it might as well be… a hundred years ago – I wanted to look into the harmony offered by life in the countryside and so I started doing research on this story I had chosen. When I attempted to put together the shreds of the reality that I was trying to depict, I did so using free associations, but when we started shooting I got the feeling that I had destroyed the beauty of my character’s life. I came to realize that the only way to depict this story would involve a reconstruction of reality. What prevailed was the need to approach my heroine’s reality in the most honest way and as accurately as possible. From the start, I was taught by my teachers that documentaries are related to the truth, that you have to follow life through the camera and show the truth. This was not directly related to what I sought to do. Also, because I also make fiction films, I don’t see such a big difference when I make documentaries. I believe that my documentaries are similar to the way someone paints a landscape. I don’t want to shoot inside a studio, but to look outside for shreds of reality and use them to narrate the story”.

The films shown from the huge filmography of Jon Bang Carlsen was “Addicted to Solitude”, “Cats in Riga”, “Déjà Vu”, “Hotel of the Stars”, “Phoenix Bird” and “Portrait of God”.

At the upcoming DocuDays festival in Kiev, Ukraine, Jon Bang Carlsen will be present to present “It’s Now or Never”.

http://tdf.filmfestival.gr/default.aspx?lang=en-US&page=1323&newsid=2233

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

Hyoe Yamamoto: Samurai and Idiots /2

Det er en historie om denne mand, Michael Woodford, administrerende direktør for japanske Olympus og om hans afsløring af et stort bedrageri i firmaets umiddelbare fortid, et afsløring, han etablerer i samarbejde med en journalist, en oversætter, en redaktør og en tidligere direktør. Filmens styrke ligger i dens interviews med disse levende interessante mennesker, vidneudsagn som er smukt filmet som enkle filmscener med intense talking heads, intense i deres eget indhold, intense fordi de holdes i lange afsnit, som først klippes lige før scenen taber sin kraft. Og disse interviews bringes i en klog og rolig klipning sammen i en intensitet tæt på det klassiske kammerspils, altså næsten som var de medvirkende fortællere og vidner til stede i samme rum, altså i et klippets set-design. Dette er det afgørende vigtige lag i en forrygende fortælling om et enormt bedrageri og et dybt interessant møde mellem britisk og japansk firmakultur. Det kunne være blevet herved og have været en helstøbt dokumentarfilm.

Men journalisten Yamamoto stoler ikke på filmkunstneren Yamamoto, journalisten har tilsyneladende vurderet, at bedrageriernes økonomiske og forretningsmæssige teknik ikke er tydelig nok i interviewmaterialet, så han tilføjer et stort og i og for sig flot foredragslag i tv-grafik, som midt i filmen helt kvæler de medvirkendes lavmælte intensitet i kammerspillet, som mod slutningen efterhånden går i opløsning.

Til denne æstetikændring af filmen til tv-dokumentar bidrager også en samtidig tilføjelse af et historisk lag klippet på tv-arkiv materiale suppleret med mere end rigeligt dækbilledmateriale overdådigt fotograferede bybilleder som var det ikke en analyse af Olympus Corporation men en elegant glat reklamefilm for firmaets kamerateknik og berømte linser. Værst er at tv-reportagerne i tilfældig fotografisk kvalitet og stil er meget uheldige for klippets karakterudvikling af hovedpersonen Michael Woodford, som da han klarer sig dårligt i gadeinterviews og tv-shows for mine øjne ændrer sig fra et helstøbt, intens og pålideligt menneske til en usikker, i kanterne flosset, forhenværende industrileder i nedtur. Havde lige netop det været fortællingens hensigt med skildringen af sin hovedperson, ville det måske være vellykket. Men jeg kan ikke tro det, for Yamamoto siger jo til Fraser i deres Q&A: ”Wherever you find an intriguing character, I think a story always follows. I don’t think it works the other way around.” Jeg skuffes altså over min helt, jeg mister hans i et slutskilts triste lapidariske tekst.

Japan 2015, 75 min. DR2 Dokumania 15. marts 2016. Filmen er produceret for BBC Storyville i coproduktion med blandt andre DR. Kan for tiden ses på DR2’s hjemmeside: dr.dk/tv/se/dokumania

SYNOPSIS

In October 2011, Olympus Corporation, a multibillion dollar Japanese optical company, dismissed its president and CEO, British-born Michael Woodford, over cultural differences in management style. Japanese media dutifully reported the dismissal with minimum coverage, another foreign CEO failing to adapt to the Japanese way. But international media reported a brewing scandal where Japanese board members of the company unanimously voted to dismiss Woodford for blowing the whistle on a 1.7 billion dollar fraud that the 93-year-old Japanese company had kept secret for more than two decades. Film-maker Hyoe Yamamoto unravels the events that led to one of the most mystifying corporate scandals in the world.

LINKS / LITTERATUR

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b054f7qp (Nick Fraser: Q&A med Hyoe Yamamoto in English)

Hyoe Yamamoto anbefaler i sine sluttekster disse bøger:

Exposure, Portfolio Penguin

Yoshimasa Yamaguchi: Samurai and Idiots, Kindansha

TeamFacta: The Olympus Syndrome, Heibonsha

 

East Doc Platform 2016

I left Prague yesterday after 7 fine days with the East Doc Platform and its professional and personal touch. I was happy that my hand luggage was not being weighed at the airport, my IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) catalogue (close to 200 pages with postcard-like colour photos of projects) would have been sent to check-in of luggage. I wanted it for the cabin. The heaviness has given me a small pain in the shoulder! – but you have to suffer for the art…

And chapeau for the art of organising a huge event like this with so many elements. I was not part of it all but I have heard no objections from any visitors to the hospitality and already mentioned professionalism.

Below I will post comments on projects which were part of the East European Forum. 21 were pitched, I can not get the whole way around and my categorisation is of course a simplification. I will also mention the film projects, which were awarded and those awarded at the One World Festival, the parallel event. Have to mention as well that the event included meetings for projects for individual meetings (the so-called ”Project Market”) and a presentation of new Czech Docs. For the latter master Miroslav Janek presented clips from his upcoming ”Normal Autistic Film” saying that it will hopefully show ”the Beauty of Mental Diversity” – for me the clip already pointed in that direction. Robert Kirchhoff, another name that advocates quality, is working to finish his ”Through the Forest”, which could end up being the film on the Roma Holocaust. The material shown was promising.

www.dokweb.net

East Doc Platform Award Winners 2016

East Doc Platform Development Award:

WHEN THE WAR COMES

(dir. Jan Gebert, prod. R. Síbrt, V. Hozzová; Czech Republic)

Photo Viktoriá Hozzová receiving the award from Luke Moody, Britdoc.

Czech TV Postproduction Award:

RUSSIAN VIEWFINDERS

(dir. Alexander Abarutov, prod. O. Mille; France)

HBO Europe Co-Production Award:

PRISONERS WITHOUT PRISON

(dir. Verjana Abazaj, prod. Artan Malaj; Albania)

The Golden Funnel Award:

FOR MOTHER’S SAKE?

(dir. Nikola Ilić, C. Schwingruber Ilić; prod. F. Sonder; Switzerland)

IDFA Forum Award:

PLANETA PETRILA

(dir. Andrei Dăscălescu, prod. A. Antoci; Romania)

DocsBarcelona Award:

OCCUPIED CINEMA

(dir. Senka Domanovic, prod. Snezana Penev; Serbia, Croatia)

DOK Leipzig Co-Production Market+ DOK Preview Awards:

AVTOVAZ

(dir. Petr Horký, prod. Martin Jůza; Czech Rep.)

and

OVER THE LIMIT

(dir. Marta Prus, prod. Maciej Kubicki; Poland, Germany)

id w | interactive documentary workshop Award:

THE FUTURE OF FOREVER

(dir. Ana Brzezinska, prod. Lukasz Borzecki, Poland)

www.webdok.net