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.

From Georgian producer, filmmaker, photographer, workshop organizer and promoter of documentaries Anna Dziapshipa I received a “please sign this petition” request, I did so via change.org – the issue was a protest against a radical date change of submitting projects to the Georgian National Film Centre, that could mean “that production in 2016 for many documentary films might fail”, as it is written in the clear text below from the Georgian filmmakers. Read it and sign in solidarity with colleagues from a country that in recent years in numerous films have demonstrated their talent for making creative documentaries that can travel all over.  

Due to the fact that the Georgian National Film Center postponed the competition for the production of documentary films from spring to September 2016, Georgian filmmakers face problems of financing their documentary projects. Moving the documentary film production competition from spring to autumn means that production in 2016 for many documentary films might fail. The projects that were developed earlier in 2015 and were financed by the film center will not find any source of funding for their production this year.

Each moment is very precious for documentary filmmakers. We deal

with ongoing processes, people, social and political contexts, that might radically change so that filmmakers would not be able to depict them because of lack of finances. Changing the date of the competition, without informing the Georgian documentary filmmakers in beforehand, means huge difficulties for their financing strategies. Most of the international funds open for local projects have fixed deadlines. The fact that we do not have a possibility to get national financing means that we are automatically excluded to apply to different international funds, which is a huge challenge for the production and post production of the projects.

We, Georgian documentary filmmakers think that the competition of the film center should have an annual, fixed deadline in order to support financial planning of the projects. This competition should be treated with the same attention as the competitions for fiction and short length films. Besides that, there must be a strategy to support the documentary film culture and industry by supporting documentary festivals and workshops in Georgia. The selection commissions for documentary projects should include professionals that are acquainted with the tendencies and priorities of the international documentary film industry.

Therefore we request:

1. To announce the competition for 2016 in spring 2016 and to organise the competition for documentary films on an annual basis, at fixed dates.

2. To invite documentary professionals to be part of the selection commissions; documentary professionals who are acquainted with international tendencies and developments.

3. To revise the strategy of financial support for the financing of documentary film related events. To increase and revise the budget for documentary film festivals and workshops. To fund those industry events and festivals that have continuity and have established themselves over the years rather than funding too many different events of a small scale.

4. Increase the importance of documentary film on the same level as fiction film, if it is impossible to make it with local resources inside the film center, to create a local and international commission to work on the documentary film policy.

We are open for a detailed discussion of the content of the letter, to attend a consultancy meeting with the film center. We think that decisions like these should not be taken without considering the opinion or without informing the very rich and active Georgian documentary film sector.

Respectfully

Documentary Filmmakers

To sign, click below and when you get to the page, click on the photo “DOC”.

https://www.change.org/organizations/georgian_film_community

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

I know the French director Catherine Bernstein from the Paris-based European training programme Archidoc and from several of her awarded documentaries. She is a master in dealing with archive material, which is so brilliantly demonstrated in this film that will be broadcast in France (FR3) tomorrow monday February 29.

I received a vimeo link fra Catherine Bernstein, watched the film and wrote some notes to her: ”Dear Catherine. I saw the film. It is based on an impressive research, it tells a terrible story that I had never heard before, it raises the eternal question about “guilt” (“did you examine your conscious”, you ask the doctor), yes, you tell it addressing the scientist who “knew nothing”, I was “hooked” from the start – and it is a scoop to have childrenreading/translating the texts and figures. Bravo – and hope you get a good audience Monday!

I have copy-pasted the promotion texts of the film, an English and a French version – they are different:

Entre 1939 et 1945, le docteur Julius Hallervorden a contribué à l’assassinat des malades mentaux ordonné par Hitler. Le médecin a récupéré 690 cerveaux de victimes pour ses recherches sur les pathologies mentales. Malgré cela, Julius Hallervorden a poursuivi une brillante carrière après guerre, sans jamais être inquiété.

Le documentaire suit, pas à pas, la carrière de ce neurologue réputé qui, au nom de la science, participa à un meurtre de masse afin d’accélérer ses recherches médicales personnelles. Le parcours de ce médecin est intimement lié à celui de l’opération dite «T4», consistant à éliminer les handicapés physiques et mentaux et les personnes considérées comme inutiles et «asociales» par le régime nazi.

(The synopsis of FR3 that distributes monday February 29 at 22.25)

This documentary recounts his story and through the man’s story,that of the so-called “Action T4”, which consisted of eliminating physical and mental disabilities and those people considered by the Nazi regime to be useless or “asocial”. Doctor Julius Hallervorden, a major name in the science of brain pathology, first benefited from, then contributed to the systematic assassination ordered by Hitler of German mentally ill persons, by recovering the brains of 690 victims. He nevertheless pursued a brilliant post-war career, in all impunity, and died covered in honours. Between 1939 and 1945, at least 200,000 ill people were assassinated

(From the catalogue of the sales company, arte tv.)

France, 2014, 53 mins.