DAFilms Portal Celebrates 10 Years

… and you will, as one of the presents from this excellent ”online documentary cinema” vod, be able to watch 5 films for free, three of them by directors Peter Liechti, Viktor Kossakovsky and Sergei Loznitsa… until January 31. More generous offers like this will follow, it is announced on the site.

Also it is interesting to read a short interview with the manager of the vod, Nina Numankadić, here is a quote:

“Today, online distribution is a common thing, but in the beginnings, we were trying to set the rules and see how festival echoes would work, for instance. We were wondering whether presenting films online could endanger the festival or not, whether festival visitors would come anyway or stay athome with their computers, or how the viewers would react if the film was released online before it was released in regular theatrical distribution. However, in the course of time, even those filmmakers who first refused to put their films online, such as Russian director Victor Kossakovsky and Czech director Jana Ševčíková, dispelled their fears and their films are available on our portal today. What was important for us from the very beginning was the quality of the selected films; we were never after quantity…”

Clever words – and test it yourself, browse the list of directors whose works are available: Peter Kerekes, Helena Trestikova, Miroslav Janek… to mention some of the Central European auteurs, but also Kossakovsky, Jørgen Leth, Loznitsa…

Congratulations!

http://dafilms.com/event/236-quiz-10-years/

Mark Cousins: Dear John (Grierson)

 I love Mark Cousins, his passion for film and his constant pointing at the fact that film history is so much more than American and French and British. That goes for documentary as well. Read this text of his and see his rough cut sketch of a train trip to great films – together with John Grierson…, click below. If you click on the names, you will be taken to info about:

Sight & Sound asked me to make a short film about the wrongs of the documentary canon – which, as I argue in the September 2014 issue, has been essentially Atlanticist for generations now, lacking the bridge-builders between East and West who helped stretch the fiction film canon from the 1950s onwards. When we began cutting the movie, I realised we were going to need a bigger boat, so I am now hoping to turn it into a perhaps three-hour postscript to my 15-hour The Story of Film: An Odyssey.

This postscript will not be a straight history of documentary film, taking us through the Atlantic canon. I love those films, but have decided to leap-frog that canon to get to the rarer treasures. In order to show that my film isn’t a history of documentary, I’m calling it Dear John Grierson, and am imagining that I’m travelling the world on a train with Grierson, one of the founding fathers of the idea of documentary, to see the great films that we don’t, and should, know.

The result, I hope, will be a micro-budget Snowpiercer, in which, as we look out the window, we see masterpieces by people with names like Peleshian, Honkasalo, Tsuchimoto, Kaul, Kötting, Leduc, Perlov, Łoziński… Names that are not household, but perhaps could be, if we loved movies more.

Photo of the cover of the BFI issue with the documentary canon that Cousins thinks is too narrow. Right he is!

http://www.bfi.org.uk/explore-film-tv/sight-sound-magazine/video/dear-john-grierson-postscript-story-film-rough-cut

ARTE Europe – a New Initiative

… that you can only welcome because it brings – for free – some arte programmes, including documentaries, to you with English subtitles (or Spanish), not to all regions but to many. Not bad at all even if you have to live with the fact that many of the programmes are subtitled but also synchronized in German or French. If you want to avoid that irritation, find some documentaries which by origin are German and French so you get the original with the English subtitles – or Spanish. Here is a description of ARTE Europe from the site of ARTE:

“ARTE Europe is a project that ARTE is running with financial support from the European Union. It involves broadcasting a selection of ARTE programmes, with English and Spanish subtitles – as well as the channel’s legacy languages (French and German) – on the Internet.This selection will be available free of charge throughout Europe and, whenever possible, the world. It will comprise 600 hours of programmes in total, which will gradually become available from November 2015 to November 2016. ARTE in English and ARTE en español feature the channel’s flagship magazine shows, including ARTE Reportage and Tracks, with new shows going online each week. Documentaries, reports, and live recordings of performances also enhance the online offering. These different programmes showcase ARTE’s cultural and European identity, and the quality of its content. As linguistic diversity is part of Europe’s cultural richness, this ARTE Europe initiative is aimed at bringing Europe’s citizens a larger choice of high-quality TV programmes. ARTE Europe is an experiment in international broadcasting that bringscontent packed with cultural value to the continent.

ARTE is rebroadcast beyond France and Germany on many satellite and cable networks in Europe and worldwide. In total, over 165 million households can watch ARTE in Europe.

A large portion (56%) of the channel’s programmes is also available in Europe and around the world (depending on distribution rights) on the ARTE+7 catch-up platform.

ARTE programmes with English and Spanish subtitles are also available on a number of other media, inter alia including the ARTE application for connected television sets.”

Photo from available “Killing Time” that won award at Cinema du Réel in 2015, according to Hollywood Reporter “an observant and formally arresting non-fiction feature from Belgian director Lydie Wisshaupt-Claudel.”

http://www.arte.tv/guide/en/?zone=europe

 

Iikka Vehkalahti: A Good Documentary is

Thanks to our own archive at www.filmkommentaren.dk I am able to bring forward clever words from Iikka Vehkalahti, who – it has been announced – is to receive an award at the upcoming Hot Docs Festival in Toronto. Here they are, first time published by the IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) in 2008:

…something which on one level is very private to the individual. Something that touches my life, but which also has something very universal – universal. A great film is when the private goes through the heavy block of politics/ economics/ media and reaches the universal, is in dialogue with it. Every action a person takes reflects his/her values. There are things which are common to all of us in the world: basic values (like justice), basic emotions (like fear and joy) and experiences (like pain or falling in love) and a good documentary has this universal nature that makes it so dear to so many. Don’t try to make international films. Make films which are more near to you. The most local films are sometimes the most international, because they are universal.

In a good documentary the director and his camera see things, go deeper than just showing things or events in front of the camera. For several reasons I have really started to miss camerawork where the camera really sees. An example: very often now a director makes a documentary following the story of the protagonist in such a way, that the narrative story (will he survive the sickness? will he divorce? etc…) means that it is not so important how the whole film has been shot at all.
A good documentary needs a story, but the story can be something more than just a flat “story”, it can be associative, emotional, fact-based, philosophical. Life is richer than Hollywood describes.

And finally a good documentary will live in time: it has a timeless character. A good documentary is something that you will look at after 10 years and after 50 years its value is still higher.
The film goes deeper and deeper. There must be a moral and philosophical element too.

Flaherty Seminar 2016

The 62nd Robert Flaherty Film Seminar… an institution, have only heard good about it, and not only from my former EDN colleague Anita Reher, who is head of the Flaherty, has something in common with the Danish folk high school tradition, films are watched and discussed from morning till night. You all stay the same place, eat and drink together. If you sign up, you do so without knowing which films are to be screened, but looking at the cv of the programmer, I don’t think you take a risk. His name is David Pendleton and

“he curates many of (and oversees all of) the screenings that make up the Harvard Archive’s ongoing cinematheque programming for the public. He has organized wide-ranging retrospectives of such varied filmmakers as Alfred Hitchcock, John Akomfrah and Warren Sonbert and has taught courses on 20th century film history and on the representation of masculinity in contemporary cinema…” His inviting well written promotion text for the seminar, love it, here it is:

A cinema at play is a cinema that breathes — a cinema open to the shifting rhythms of the world. Play implies looseness, experimentation, chance, a suspension of judgment in favor of a child’s open-ended curiosity. Play allows cinema to be a vital, living thing, one that faces the world with innocence, hoping to experience rather than persuade.

If spectacle demands a taut cinema, with no time for digression, the 2016 Flaherty Seminar is dedicated to a cinema of wandering, of curiosity and wonder. The filmmakers featured use the camera to encounter the world in all of its unpredictable glory and horror. The forms taken by these encounters are equally unexpected in their poetic depth and political range: visual sonnets, alternative histories, and diary films. As these films show, cinema at play is not aimless or fanciful but open-the kind of open — endedness that exists in any system with room for variation, like an image whose meaning is not fixed, a country caught between colonial past and capitalist present, or simply an individual who feels the tug of history.”

All details can be found on:

http://flahertyseminar.org

Tabitha Jackson – Interview

A couple of days ago the trade magazine Indiewire brought an interview (by Chris O’Falt) with Tabitha Jackson, the director of the Sundance Documentary Film Program. Jackson who, when she was working for Channel4 in England, was a very much wanted panelist when I was working for EDN, because of her always interesting, constructive and analytical comments to the filmmakers and their projects, here she talks like this:

“When we look at how documentaries are discussed, too often it’s a focus on what they are about and whether the main character is sympathetic,” Jackson told Indiewire in a recent interview. “I’d just like the conversation around nonfiction film to be as exciting as the form itself. When we think about literature, poetry, fiction, or music, it’s not about what is being said, it’s about how it is being said and who is saying it, that’s what makes things last and that’s what makes things have cultural value.”

Yes, Yes, Yes… agree, the eternal ”what is it about” and ”who and how are the main characters” should be dedicated less attention in the tons of pitching sessions that we organise.

Read the whole interview that gives an idea about what the Sundance Program is supporting. Jackson also mentions the new Polish film that premieres at the Sundance Festival, ”All these Sleepless Nights” by Michal Marczak: “The texture of the film reads like Godard as the filmmaker’s capturing the lives of 20-year-olds in Warsaw who are asleep all day and awake all night with such an intensity — that 20-year-old intensity — it’s really interesting. It’s not about something, but then again it’s about everything: Life, death and love.”

Photo: Sundance Institute.

https://www.sundance.org/

http://www.indiewire.com/article/why-sundances-tabitha-jackson-wants-audiences-to-look-at-documentary-films-in-a-very-new-way-20160118

Avi Mograbi in Berlin Forum

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?

Nicole N. Horanyi: Motley’s Law

Den rygvendte kvinde på Henrik Bohn Ipsens stramme still er den amerikanske forsvarsadvokat Kimberley Motley energisk velforberedt velordnet på vej til en juridisk opgave i et afghansk fængsel hvor hun skal møde en sydafrikansk mand, som foreløbigt har været fængslet i seks år. Hun arbejder på hans løsladelse, det er dagligt arbejde for hende og det er en af historierne i Nicole Horanyis film, som har premiere den 27. januar i de danske biografer efter den jo har været vist på en række festivals, også på CPH:DOX i november.

Kimberley Motley er den eneste udenlandske advokat, som har licens til at procedere i de afghanske retssale, hvor i hvert fald hun professionelt forsøger at få retssystemet til at fungere i overensstemmelse med den nye forfatning og de nye anderledes love. Både de gode honorarer og adskillige prestigefyldte menneskerettighedssager har fået hende til i de fem år arbejde langt væk fra fra familien, en indforstået mand og tre børn for hvem det bare må være sådan det er og moderen er dog hjemme i perioder. Men nu har trusler og landets usikre tilstand gjort det sværere og sværere for Kimberley Motley at fortsætte sit arbejde.

Nicole Horanyi har sammen med fotografen Henrik Bohn Ipsen fulgt Kimberley Motley gennem knapt to år og skildret et delvist nyt afghansk retssystem under udvikling, fraværet af en stor del af kvinders rettigheder og en massiv korruption, som har vakt en utilsigtet lyst i Motley til at arbejde med de usædvanligt komplicerede retssager i Afghanistan.

Der er forpremiere 26. januar 19:00 i Grand Teatret i København og der vil efter filmen være Q and A med Kimberley Motley og Nicole Horanyi, og endnu en premiere i samme biograf 27. januar 21:30 med paneldebat, hvor der sættes fokus på Afghanistan her 15 år efter at de vestlige styrker gik ind i landet. I panelet sidder Kimberley Motley, Nagieb Khaja og Martin Lidegaard.

Motley’s Law, Danmark 2015, 85 min.

SYNOPSIS

38-year-old Kimberley Motley left her husband and three kids in the US to work as a defence lawyer in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the only foreign lawyer, and the only woman, who has a license to work in Afghan courts. With her Afghan assistant, Kimberley defends Western and Afghan clients accused of criminal acts. To begin with, Kimberley came for the money. But then it became something else. Kimberley, who had never before left the US, saw how poorly the legal system in Afghanistan was run and how this part of the Afghan society had been neglected by the international community. For five years now, human rights cases and troubled expats have motivated her to stay, but personal threats and the general condition in the country make it hard for Kimberley to continue her work. (DFI fakta)

LINKS

http://www.dfi-film.dk/motleys-law-3  (DFI-FILM, english)

http://www.dfi.dk/faktaomfilm/film/en/87921.aspx?id=87921#awards (DFI fakta, english)

https://vimeo.com/150903449  (Trailer)

Sylvain Biegeleisen – Interview

A true artist, presented in the interview as ”film director and producer, writer, painter and video artist, photographer and musician, group moderator and singer…”. Sylvain Biegeleisen is interviewed by EDN, that does monthly conversations with members, this one being very informative about the director of the wonderful ”Twilight of a Life” that is one of the Magnificent Seven festival in Belgrade choices.

Here are some quotes from the interview on the site of EDN, read it all, it is uplifting reading, optimistic words from a man who shares his time and work between Belgium, Israel and Switzerland:

“Cinema, for me, can be an important tool to help populations at risk to re-integrate into society and become constructive members, instead of using violence to express their disappointments of life and their personal frustrations. Every group is creating their own film based on issues that are important for the participants. With the help of professionals, they learn to cooperate, become creative, disciplined and at the end, the result is a “broadcast quality film” they can be proud of. That’s the power of these Social Cinema Projects and that’s the reason why I created the Lahav NGO.

Today, with Twilight of a Life, I meet audiences after the screenings in the cinema theatres and engage in a dialogue with them around the theme of “ageing”. People are so happy they can talk about this important issue. Old age is a big challenge for the future of our society…

… I never thought a documentary could have such a positive impact on people! To the ones who think old age is not a “sexy” item, my answer is: “Look at this 95 years lady, isn’t she “sexy”? In Israel, in less than one month, thousands of people saw the film. It climbed to the first place in the Box Office of the Film Critics, the only documentary among the 10 best films shown in Theatres in 2015, even before Star Wars!!! Again a proof that documentary films have the power to challenge big features with their millions of dollars.

So Twilight of a Life is like a good wine. With time passing, it conquers the heart of more and more audiences. We shall overcome!”

More about and from Sylvain Biegeleisen – when the Magnificent 7 festival takes off later this month.

http://www.edn.dk/

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/home.html

Miroslav Janek – Interview

As a follow-up on our ”collected posts” on Czech documentary maker Miroslav Janek here are some quotes from an interview made a month ago by Doc Alliance, below is a link to the whole interview, absolutely to be recommended.

Janek on editing: As an editor, I have been successfully driving directors away from the editing room. Now I drive myself away without much effort. After endless talks with editor Tonička (the wife of Janek, ed.), I delegate all of the material to her and I let her look for new connections and ties yet unrevealed by me, hoping that she will find them. I only enter the editing room when the film shape has been roughly sculpted. However, this active involvement in the editorial process is impossible without a thorough knowledge of the shot material. Before I entrust the material to Tonička’s hands, or rather her mind and soul, I map it carefully, I choose the things I consider substantial and later I gradually “taste” the material, drawing various meaningless and sometimes even meaningful partial ideas on paper…

Janek: I still see film as a visual medium, not a radio one. Although I do not underestimate the sound dramaturgy of the film in any way; quite on the contrary. However, if there is to be at least some space for sound dramaturgy, one has to cut the cackle. I really admire those documentaries (and I envy them terribly) in which nothing is said for like ten minutes and yet the viewers are breathless, the poetic suspense and mystery are growing and the screen… I’m speaking too much again…

http://dafilms.com/news/2015/12/14/miroslav_janek_interview