The Oscars – From 124 to 14

Luckily, they are not all American, the 14 which are now left for later to be taken down to 5 in January… but the new Michael Moore is there, “Where to Invade Next” as well as Alex Gibney’s Scientology-film and the fascinating “Listen to Me Marlon” by English director Stevan Riley, and ”Amy” by Asif Kapadia, not to forget Danish company Final Cut for Real’s ”The Look of Silence” by Joshua Oppenheimer. Are these the five to be nominated? Anyway, here is a copy-paste of the list:

Below is the complete list of pics that will vie for nominations for the 88th Academy Awards, whittled down from 124 entries. Noms will be announced January 14, and the trophy will be handed out during the Oscarcast on February 28 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

Amy, On the Corner Films and Universal Music

Best Of Enemies, Sandbar

Cartel Land, Our Time Projects and The Documentary Group

Going Clear: Scientology And The Prison Of Belief, Jigsaw Productions

He Named Me Malala, Parkes-MacDonald and Little Room

Heart Of A Dog, Canal Street Communications

The Hunting Ground, Chain Camera Pictures

Listen To Me Marlon, Passion Pictures

The Look Of Silence, Final Cut for Real (photo)

Meru, Little Monster Films

3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets, The Filmmaker Fund, Motto Pictures, Lakehouse Films, Actual

Films, JustFilms, MacArthur Foundation and Bertha BRITDOC

We Come As Friends, Adelante Films

What Happened, Miss Simone?, RadicalMedia and Moxie Firecracker

Where To Invade Next, Dog Eat Dog Productions

Winter On Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom, Pray for Ukraine Productions

http://deadline.com/2015/12/oscars-documentart-feature-going-clear-amy-where-to-invade-next-among-1-1201648214/

Anastasiya Miroshnichenko: Crossroads

When in Minsk for the Listapad film festival, I met with several filmmakers, who presented their projects to me to seek advice. One of them was Volia Chajkouskaya, who provided me with a link to “Crossroads”, the winner of the 2014 Belarussian National Documentary Competition, a film in which she was the assistant director. She sent this text to me about the theme and its main character:

“The film “Crossroads” was conceived as a charity project to help the homeless artist Valery Liashkevich. It became a discovery to me that a person deprived of basic comforts of life can strive to his goal so persistently, remain a philosopher, be thoughtful about his actions, preserve kindness to others. I was not alone in this discovery. The character charmed all members of the crew. No one questioned investing time and their own money (the documentary was created without financial support of any organization) into the production. Art historians joined our work. The National Art Museum of Belarus organized an exhibition of Valery Liashkevich’s works; it lasted three weeks and became a huge success. Another exhibition was held in Gomel, the native city of our character. “Crossroads” became a project, which continues even after the work on the documentary is complete. I hope that the life of the character is changing to the better with our help. The proceeds of the sale of his paintings went on to his bank account and we hope that in the very near future Valery Lyashkevich will have a place he can call HOME…”.

So, call that a commitment! I watched the film and can only second, what is written above. Valery Liashkevich is a sweet, modest man, a fine artist, who sells his works in the streets and tells people that they can get them cheaper if they wish! You see him at the railway station in Gomel during winter and spring, he works and sleeps there, you see him in St. Petersburg (photo) on Nevsky Prospekt, you see how he finds a place to sleep at night, you listen to his wise words and watch him fall asleep among his works. He is weak, I am getting older he says. A small film with a big heart!

Belarus, 2014, 62 mins.

Claude Lanzmann

Yesterday Claude Lanzmann could celebrate his 90 year birthday. It gave me the inspiration to celebrate him by visiting youtube, where you can find a lot of clips from from Shoah and other of his films plus a long, very fine filmed masterclass with him from IDFA 2013, where his ”The Last of the Unjust” (220 mins.) was shown. In his written memoirs, “The Patagonian Hare”, comes this statement: “Even if I lived a hundred lives, I still wouldn’t be exhausted.” Indeed, and he repeats this in the conversation parts of the new film with him, ”Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah”, directed by Adam Benzine, 40 mins. with BBC, ZDF/arte, DR and HBO as ”involved tv channels” as it is put on the IDFA Docs for Sale, the excellent service from the festival. Lanzmann says that he still is full of ”vitalité”. As usual it is fascinating to watch and listen to him, while the film apart from those sequences does not really add anything (except for some unknown footage from his interview with a high rank Nazi and the trouble it gave Lanzmann). Anyway, for those who have NOT yet seen ”Shoah”, watching ”Spectres of the Shoah” afterwards makes sense. Here is the description from the IDFA website:  

In 1973, Claude Lanzmann started shooting Shoah, a nearly 10-hour film that many regard as the most important ever made about the Holocaust. The Frenchman worked for a full 12 years on the documentary, which was commissioned by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But making Shoah left its mark on Lanzmann. He filmed 200 hours of material in 14 countries, before spending five years editing it. And then there was the infamous confrontation with a former Nazi and his henchmen. The director described his documentary as “a film about death, not about surviving.” He explains in Spectres of the Shoah how it wore him out and almost deprived him of his will to live. Lanzmann experienced the completion of Shoah as a death, and it took a long time for him to recover from it. The now almost 90-year-old filmmaker discusses his warm friendship with Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, and his teenage years in the French resistance during the Second World War. The film also features unseen material from his magnum opus.

www.idfa.nl

In a post on FILMKOMMENTAREN Tue Steen Müller comments an interview with him in The Guardian.

Julia Margaret Cameron: Portræt

Dette fotografi er plakatmotiv til en udstilling i Musée de l’Orangerie i Paris. Ansigtet er standset i slutpunktet af en bevægelse, måske afvisende, måske reserveret, en bevægelse mod venstre, standset i en profil. En profil som jeg kender i en kendt litterær sammenhæng. Fotografen er Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), hun er blandt de tidligste af dem hvis fotografiske værker i skøn overdådig mængde er ophængt på den store og vigtige udstilling på Orangeriet, Qui a peur des femmes photographes? Optagelsen er fra 12. april 1867, modellen er Mrs. Herbert Duckworth, som levede med sin britiske familie i Sri Lanka. Aftrykket er på albuminpapir efter et negativ af kollodium på våd glasplade og har hjemme på Bibliothèque nationale de France. Cameron er, indrømmer jeg den eneste af fotograferne på udstillingen jeg kendte i forvejen. Nu har jeg til min forbavselse og glæde set fotografier af Mary Dillwyn, Lady Frances Jocelyn, Alice Austen, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Gertrude Kasebier…

De mange fotografier på udstillingen demonstrerer uden om redaktørernes ophængningsdispositioner og fortolkende tekster at det særlige kvindelige blik findes, at så snart kvinderne midt i 1800-tallet gik i gang med at fotografere opstod i fotografiet en særlig følsomhed for scenen, en vemodig tone af en særegen skønhed uanset tema og genre, en fotografisk fastholdelse af visse øjeblikke i iscenesættelser af tilstande og oplevelser i det kvindelige univers. Til de fastslåede Barthes’ske bestemmelser studium og punctum måtte jeg med ét, der i udstillingssalen for mig selv tilføje denne ekstra: scene som så er den imaginære begivenhed før lukkerens forevigelse, et næsten levende billede før det levende billede, en filmscene før filmscenen.  

Udstillingen er redigeret af to kunsthistorikere. Begge mænd. De har lagt stor omhu i arbejdet. Men det var fotografierne, der er fra årene 1839-1919, som optog mig og gennem deres omstændelige kemiske og materialemæssige fremgangsmåder så rørende talte til mig med dæmpede stemmer.

PS

Udstillingens plakat udtrykker sig tydeligt med et nutidigt blik under mandlig dominans om kunstformidlingens markedsføring. Julia Margaret Camerons fotografiske portræt af Mrs. Herbert Duckworth fra 1867 er som det ses her ikke kun retoucheret (detaljerne i motivet, lys/mørke balancen, modellens lodrette midtakse i forhold til billedrammen som igen er ændret til oval) det er også ved udstillingens titel manipuleret med en påført association til Virginia Woolf, som selvfølgelig kendte Camerons fotografi, da hun var datter af Mrs. Herbert Duckworth i dennes senere ægteskab og ligheden mellem de to er så slående, at man let tager fejl, og det er når man jævnfører med udstillingens titel selvfølgelig også meningen. Men at få stillet sin berømmelse i vejen for Camerons kunst i et sentimentalt øjemed ville Virginia Woolf næppe have syntes om. Slet ikke at stille sin egen berømte profil foran sin mors tilsvarende skønhed. For en vits’ skyld.

http://www.musee-orangerie.fr/fr/oeuvre/julia-margaret-cameron-1815-calcutta-inde-1879-kalutara-ceylan

http://www.information.dk/557009 

http://www.svd.se/har-korrigeras-den-kvinnofientliga-fotohistorien

Litt.: Roland Barthes: Det lyse kammer, 1980. 

IDFA Forum and Eastern Europe

Hanka Kastelicová from HBO Europe posted a photo and a text on FB that caught my attention: Miha Čelar and Nenad Puhovski just pitching at IDFA. Good luck, guys, you are only pitchers from Eastern Europe at IDFA Forum this year, we are very proud of your achievement, I wish you to find the right partners in Amsterdam.

I can only support the wish for success for this Slovenian/Croatian project.

But the only one from Eastern Europe… It made me go through the list of projects for the Forum and I found one more from the region, the Polish “The Prince and the Dybbuk” by the couple behind “Domino Effect”, Elwira Niewiera, Piotr Rosolowski.

But only two! Why? Is the simple reason that the selection committee did not find more of good quality for the Forum? Is it because the Eastern European producers and filmmakers did not apply because they prefer to go to Prague for the East Doc Platform in March, or to some of the smaller pitching sessions like the ones at ZagrebDox or Baltic Sea Forum in Riga or the one connected to the Krakow festival?

Is it because the difference in budgets for Eastern and Western European documentary films are so big that – without any bad thoughts – both the selectors and those selecting think that it does not make any sense to have a project with a budget of 100.000€ at the Forum? Where the normal is around 250.000€.

… IDFA announced its winners yesterday. There was a Polish/Swedish, a Latvian/Ukrainian, a Georgian, a Scottish/Georgian.

https://www.idfa.nl/industry/forum.aspx

IDFA Awards 2015

The festival in Amsterdam is still going on – until November 29. The awards, however, were presented yesterday, For the first time ever, two prizes were awarded per competition: a prize for the best film and a special jury prize.

For the Feature-Length Documentary Competition it was a Polish/Ukrainian triumph. Jerzy Sladkowski got the main award for his ”Don Juan” – a quote from the jury report: “This tender, bittersweet tragicomedy about role-playing within both therapeutic theatre games and family dramas, and the interplay between them, is both subtle and aggressive, speaking volumes about the definitions of normality, abnormality and the dynamics of power and love”. A fine choice by the jury to give a prize to the Polish veteran, who has been living in Sweden since 1982, and who for this film had engaged the master of camera, Wojciech Staron. The Special Jury Award went to Roman Bondarchuk and Darya Averchenko for their first feature length documentary, ”Ukrainian Sheriffs”, produced by Latvian Uldis Cekulis – and many times written about on this site. So well deserved!

From my point of view the jury for IDFA Award for Best Mid-Length Documentary made a beautiful choice giving the main award to Danish Andreas Koefoed for his ”At Home in the World” (photo), a quote from the jury report: ”a film that manages to humanize the issues we are so concerned about today. With great sensitivity and compassion for its characters the director gives a face to the most vulnerable of refugees, children bravely coping with a new world. We were deeply moved by a film that provides people everywhere a slight ray of hope.” The Special Jury Award was given to ”The Fog of Srebrenica” by Samir Mehanovic.

The IDFA Award for First Appearance went to Georgian ”When the Earth Seems to be Light” by Salome Machaidze, Tamuna Karumidze and David Meskhi, a quote from the jury report: ”A particular city, a flickering moment in life, and a specific time in history are viewed through the eyes of youth who drift, almost invisibly, through a landscape of crumbling architecture and political protest. Cinema contains many portraits of young masculinity, but our experimential, expertly-crafted… film sees its outsider subjects differently. It finds within their apathy the visions of a different and better life.” The Special Jury Award in memory of Peter Wintonick went to Hassen Ferhani’s Roundabout in My Head (Algeria/France/Lebanon/Qatar).

There were more prizes given, read the titles and motivations by clicking below.

https://www.idfa.nl/industry/press/25-november-don-juan-wins-vpro-idfa-award-for-best-feature-length-documentary.aspx

Breaking News: CPH:DOX Moves from November

While IDFA is running, CPH:DOX communicates that it will move from November to March. Festival director Tine Fischer puts it like this:

“This year’s festival has been outstanding. We have once again had great response from our audiences, and the interest from the international film industry is now so significant that we have decided to move the festival to March to give ourselves the space it takes to develop the international ambitions of the festival further. CPH:DOX has taken place in the week before IDFA since the very beginning without too many overlaps and complications, but with the latest year’s growth in international industry attendance we need more space around us.”

According to the press release, link below, the producers and the Film Institute are very happy with this decision, using words like ”unique” and ”a leading platform” about the festival, that in the same text – most important from this blogger’s point of view – stresses that…

… the mission of the festival continues to be to present challenging and critical works of documentary cinema – and other arts – in an original and intelligent context. CPH:DOX aims to set a high cultural standard and to stimulate critical thinking, while insisting on documentary as an art form across different practices…

By the way the 2015 version finished with a new audience record: 91.400 (in 2011 it was 47.000).

Next festival March 16-26 2017.

Photo by Amanda Obitz

http://cphdoxnews.dk/d/nyhedsbrev.lasso?n=1023

Russian Documentary Survey

Extensive and valuable information was sent to me by Russian Georgy Molodtsov, energetic filmmaker and promoter of documentaries from his country – together with Sergei Kachkin, Alisa Stolyarova and Vlad Ketkovich, contact persons for Moscow Business Square, Documentary Film Center and the Russian Documentary Guild.

43 pages, editor-in-chief Konstantin Nafikov, captions: Festivals, Cinemas, Producers, Distributors, Sales Agents, tv channels.

There is a detailed description of how to get support from the Ministry of Culture through obtaining a status of ”National Film”, there is a statistic of how many admissions foreign films have made in Russian cinemas with ”Citizen Four” (Laura Poitras) and ”Amy” (Asif Kapadia) in the top with 33.000 and 24.000. A list of production companies, of international film festivals, tv channels, and first and foremost the films with credits, links to trailers, information on where to watch the full films – many of the are right now at IDFA’s Docs for Sale and at East Silver run by IDF in Prague. Director names – Alina Rudnitskaya, Tatiana Soboleva, Denis Klebeev (photo from his succesful ”Strange Particles”), Viktor Kossakovsky, Ivan Tverdovsky, Vitaly Mansky, Sergei Miroshnichenko… to mention a few.

At this very moment where the IDFA Forum is running and where projects are presented that have budgets around 250.000€ or more, it is interesting to read the budgets of the Russian documentaries, very few of them exceed 100.000€.

Thanks for doing this big work, I say as one who is always interested in what happens in the big country – and thanks for including the controversial films as well, which are ”only” shown outside Russia.

http://rgdoc.ru/en/

Becoming Zlatan…

… or how I could not get rid of the football player, whose last name is Ibrahimovic, the man who with two goals last week made sure that we Danes do not have a team at the upcoming European Championship. I watched the match with good friend, true documentarian, Scottish Doug Aubrey and his Danish Film Institute commissioner wife Marie Olesen, a football connaisseur, at their place, we survived the Danish defeat thanks to good whisky and a recognition of the fact that Denmark lost to a great player.

I thought the defeat was out of my mind but at IDFA some days later I met Fredrik Gertten, a football idiot like myself, always AGAINST Messi and FOR Zlatan. With a smile he gave me a postcard invitation to the world premiere of the film he and his brother Magnus have made, “Becoming Zlatan”, Danish editor (traitor!) Jesper Osmund.

My luck was that I could not be in Amsterdam for the screening but it was not possible to get rid of Zlatan… On French television, this evening, here in Paris, there was a long focus on Zlatan, Ibra as they call him here, who in this weekend’s French league, for his PSG club, was the leader, and was praised for his football skills. The two

goals were shown, which brought Zlatan and Sweden to Paris in June. Painful!

Back to the film which I long to watch, here is the description from the IDFA site:

The decisive years of Swedish soccer player Zlatan Ibrahimović, told through rare archive footage in which a young Zlatan speaks openly about his life and challenges. The film closely follows him, from his debut with the Malmö FF team in 1999 through his conflict-ridden years with Ajax Amsterdam, and up to his final breakthrough with Juventus in 2005. Becoming Zlatan is a coming-of-age film that captures the complicated journey of this young, talented and troubled player as he becomes a superstar in the international football world. It’s a story about a young talent living under constant pressure: from teammates in Malmö who think he’s too egoistical and only plays for himself; from the tough managers at Ajax who send him to the bench, where he loses his self-confidence; and from his father, who tells the 18-year-old Zlatan: “You’re nothing. You’re nothing special until you’ve succeeded internationally.” Throughout his journey, Zlatan stays true to himself. When he finally succeeds in Italy, he also becomes much more private. Soccer superstar Zlatan Ibrahimović is an enigma, but in this story from his breakthrough years, he gives us a glimpse at who he really is – if even just for a moment.

Sweden, 2015, 110 mins.

Photo from the premiere: Magnus Gertten, editor (Danish!!!) Jesper Osmund, Fredrik Gertten. Jävla Svenskere!

Robert Frank, Ukrainian Sheriffs and Kossakovsky

If you read the post below, ”Viktor Kossakovsky at IDFA”, you will discover his insisting on the form, on the composing of the image, on the aesthetics. If you want to see how this can be done, please go and see Laura Israel’s film ”Don’t Blink: Robert Frank” (Photo) here at IDFA. It was screened at the Stedelijk Museum thursday night and is an excellent introduction to the now 91 year old legendary photographer and filmmaker made by his editor and collaborator in many films, a warm and generous portrait and a look into the creative process of a lovely man, a great artist, who has suffered personal tragedies in his life, that is very much present in his work, but who has also demonstrated how to catch moments in the lives of ”The Americans”, the title of his masterpiece. There was a retrospective of his work – and there is right now at IDFA, including his Rolling Stones film, ”Cocksucker Blues” – in Copenhagen, Sara Thelle wrote about it on this site.

And then last night at the Munt 11 cinema with around 400 seats, full house to the world premiere of ”Ukrainian Sheriffs” by Roman Bondarchuk and Darya Averchenko, which I have had the pleasure to follow from the sideline and with a biased look: it is an excellent film that demonstrates fully the talent of Bondarchuk, also present in his ”Dixieland” that will premiere next year. A breakthrough on the international scene. The film has wisely been taken fo the main international competition by the IDFA, where it still has 6-7 screenings.

Finally, there has been quite some discussions here at IDFA about the Viktor Kossakovsky session the other day. I wrote about it and this morning I got an email from VK, who wrote to me something important, I have to correct from my previous text: … one thing: I was saying Sorry, because Russians or prorussians shot the airplane MH17. And when I was watching The Belovs I just realized that you can see in the film the main element of russian mentality: unpredictable aggression – when we talk about Patriotism and meaning of life…

www.idfa.nl