The IDFAAcademy for young filmmakers from all over the world started yesterday. Joyful Meike Statema is the head of this important section of the Documentary Paradise that IDFA was called in the KLM flight magazine I had in my hands during the turbulent journey down from Copenhagen thursday morning.

The turbulence continued… After video introductions of the participants – full of fun – Viktor Kossakovsky and Tom Fassaert were introduced under the headline ”Master and Talent”. It became one of the most memorable sessions I have experienced. It was emotional and informational at the same time – to bring forward two words that Kossakovsky used on a stage that he conquered totally.

The original idea, I think, was that the two of them should have a conversation about filmmaking, the experienced Kossakovsky and the young Tom Fassaert, whose ”A Family Affair” was the opening film of the festival’s 28th edition.

It did not work out like that. Fassaert wanted to show his appreciation of Kossakovsky by showing a long clip from ”Belovs”. He did and it made Kossakovsky burst into tears, kneel in front of the screen, ”I am sorry I shot this”, ”this is a typical Russian person”, he was inconsolable, had to leave the room, came back, left again, came back and stayed.

Stayed, yes, I dare say, to tear apart completely the film of the talent. He

asked for a screening of two times five minutes – without sound – from ”A Family Affair”… What do you think, he asked Fassaert, is that a good cut, is that a good shot, why did you not get up a bit earlier in the morning to catch the right light, so on so forth. ”There’s no form”, ”where is your talent”, the rhytm of your film is like ”a limping chicken”, ”you don’t know how to distinguish emotion and information”, ”composition of the image, it is not there”.

OMG – Tom Fassaert took it well, I think – but ”you could have warned me in beforehand” – and Kossakovsky gave him the following home work: 1.Go and watch Rembrandt. 2.Watch contemporary art. 3.Read big books.

”You can continue to be a filmmaker if you in the next film are able to surprise yourself and me”. And to the audience: ”If you watch two films by me, which are just good, then I will quit making films”.

”There must be an aesthetical reason, if you don’t have that, don’t make the film”.

Viktor Kossakovsky is a gift to the documentary community, always inspiring, not afraid to express his emotions. An entertainer as well. All right, he ”killed” the young director but he will survive and without having seen the whole ”A family affair”, but only clips, Kossakovsky was right in his objections. What a show, thank you IDFA!    

Irina Demyanova came up to me at the Baltic Sea Forum in Riga: Tue, it is time for you to come back to Minsk. You were there 20 years ago! I would like to invite you back.

Right she is, I was in Minsk to meet filmmakers two decades ago. I travelled with Ilze Gailite, we represented the Baltic Media Centre and had meetings, that included a presentation of something new called “pitching”. That is one of the things that Yuri Goroulev remembered, when I met him in Minsk a week ago for the ²² edition of the Listapad festival.

I was there for three full days – hospitality warm, perfect organization, good programme for documentaries, which was what I was looking for and at. And – as my Russian language skills do not exist – the festival generously offered me, and other guests, a personal guide. Veronika Bondarovich, young filmmaker-to-be, took me around to films and to the lecture on documentary I made at the festival, where she and Lizaveta Bobrykava, head of the industry section, translated/interpreted my school English so well.

I had time to watch four Belarussian documentaries and meet with the

directors to talk about their new projects. They were all of good quality, most of them so-called self-financed in a country, where public funding is little and restrictions many. Daria Yurkevich, living half time France half time Belarus, has made a 13 mins. long documentary called “Easter” on outdoor church ceremonies, beautifully shot, has been to the festival in Clermont-Ferrand this year. Equally cinematically impressive is “Adam”, a portrait of a 80 year old man, 20 mins., made by Yulia Gonchar, her first documentary where she performs a wild editing, quite refreshing! Another talent is Artem Lobach, who had been to Ukraine to film the 25 minutes long story about bohemian Pavel, who left Crimea after the Russians came. Title “Road to Damascus”, Lobach wants to make a follow-up – with Pavel’s family in Crimea.

The longest one, 61 minutes, the one that was awarded as the best Belorussian documentary at the Listapad festival, was “Guests” by Andrei Kutsila, who has been to the Baltic Sea Forum several times and took part in the series “15 Young by Young” produced by Latvian Ilona Bicevska. Kutsila’s film, shot in the countryside of Belarus and in Italy, tells the story about Aliaksiej, a young man who operates his life as a disciple of Mother Teresa, having set up an asylum for poor and disabled people. Kutsila, who has done camera and editing as well, has stayed a long time at the house of Aliaksiej catching the stories of some of the inhabitants, who are being taken care of. He has found the right, slow rhythm, he lets the scenes develop, he gets close but does never lose a respectful distance in the room where 4-5 are sleeping. The work of Aliaksiej (called brother Luigi when he is in Italy) is constantly under threat from the authorities – considered to be illegal.

The jury for the international documentary competition, headed by Artchil Khetagouri, did a good job. Main award for Best Documentary (like at DOK Leipzig), “Brothers” by Polish Wojciech Staron, Sergei Loznitsa got an award for his brilliant “The Event”, Ostap Kostyuk from Ukraine got an award for “The Living Fire”, “for believing in the preservation of authentic national culture in the process of globalization”, and there was a diploma to Lithuanian Giedre ickytė for her “Master and Tatyana”. All these films have been praised on this site.

http://listapad.com/en

I have had the pleasure to follow from the sideline how Ukrainian filmmakers and friends Dar’ya Averchenko (DA), Roman Bondarchuk (RB) together with Latvian producer and friend Uldis Cekulis have developed their “Ukrainian Sheriffs” that will have its premiere at IDFA on this coming Friday, competing in the main feature duration competition.

At DOK Leipzig where I met them and their wonderful little girl Agata. And we had a conversation of one hour that is now in an edited version to read on the wensite of the film. Here is a tiny clip that also demonstrates that a romantic date can become much more in real life, a marriage and a film!

“RB: It was during one of our dates – Dasha and me – that we met each other. I took a car, we went for some driving around Kherson. There was a huge sign on the road like “Georgievska church, 19-th century, fortress, Cossacks graves” and we were interested to find them. They were touristic signs.

TSM: How many years ago?

DA: It was late 90’es.

RB: No! (Roma says) Really?

TSM: And you were not a couple at that time?

RB: No, it was just one of our first dates… and we turned to the road to nowhere, looking for all these attractions. We couldn’t find anything, so we stopped on the road to ask the way. That’s how we met a local man, a teacher of history.”

This teacher of history became the mayor of Stara Zburjivka and is one of three main characters of the film. Check the website and read the whole interview. And see the film!

www.ukrainiansheriffs.com

www.idfa.nl

The winner of the DOX:Award, a section characterised like this by the festival: ”The films nominated for DOX:AWARD reflect CPH:DOX’s selection of the best international documentary films. They stand out for their strong personal qualities and cinematic vision and deserve to be shown on the big screen. The award is kindly sponsored by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR)”.

And the winner was ‘God Bless The Child’ by Robert Machoian & Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck.

Jury motivation: “Establishing an otherworldly tone of extraordinary realism and a near magical evocation of family dynamics, the winning film reveals a mastery of observational rigor, and an uncanny willingness to expand the limits of documentary form. More simply, this is a film that immediately inspired us to spread the film as far and wide as possible, and in that spirit, we’re thrilled to present the Dox:Award to ‘God Bless The Child’, by Robert Machoian & Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck.”

The winner of the F:ACT Award, a section characterized like this by the festival: “F:ACT Award is dedicated to films on the edge between documentary and investigative journalism. Films that do not settle on a simple description of the world, but that also want to change it. The Award is kindly sponsored by The Danish Union of Journalists, TVGruppen”.

And the winner was ‘Among The Believers’ by Hemal Trivedi & Mohammed Ali Naqvi (Photo).

Jury motivation: “For its ability to show us a country with complex political situation, for unprecedented access to part of its educational system with far reaching consequences and to the dedication the filmmakers have shown in the following the story the jury has decided to give CPH:DOX F:ACT Award to “Among the believers” by Hemal Trivedi & Mohammed Ali Nagvi.

Several other awards were handed out, please check

www.cphdox.dk

Last night the first award at the closing ceremony of CPH:DOX was given to Elvira Lind. This is a copy paste from the press release of the festival, photo stolen from the FB page of producer Sara Stockmann. I was a member of the jury and on stage for the motivation together with director Klaus Kjeldsen:

The Association of Danish Film Directors and CPH:DOX hand out the Reel Talent Award to a documentary director, who has shown an exceptional cinematic vision at an early stage.

Jury statement: “On behalf of Danish Directors and CPH:DOX it is my pleasure to announce the winner of the Real Talent Award of 25.000 Dkr.

The director who is to receive this recognition has a short but impressive filmography that gives hope for future work. She – yes, it is a she – has demonstrated that she is able to get close, to deal with sensitive matters in a gentle and respectful way, to build a story so it comes out as an engaging drama that is much stronger than many feature films. I guess that many of you watched her film at CPH:DOX last year. She is in the process of making a new film that was presented recently on the Nordisk Panorama where it was very well presented and received. Also that film will have an international career. Let me give you the titles – the finished film is “Songs for Alexis”, the one coming up is “Bobby Jene”. So ladies and gentlemen, the winner, a true documentary talent – Elvira Lind. “

The jury consisted of Tue Steen Müller, freelance journalist for Filmkommentaren.dk; Fredrik Gertten, Swedish filmmaker and journalist; Klaus Kjeldsen, film director; Mette-Ann Schepelern: cand.phil, Danish director and creative producer; and Tine Fischer, festival director at CPH:DOX.

They insist on being different – they are and they are not. CPH:DOX launched its two day Forum within its Industry Section as ”Business as Unusual”, being performed in a huge tent in the Royal Garden in Copenhagen opposite the Film House where you find the accreditation desk, two cinemas, a market, a place to meet and network. Fine and unusual. And not the fault of the organisers that the November windy weather gave additional sound to the presentations and made the inside screen for the teasers sway mildly in the wind. It gave the event its special unusual flavour as did the hearable sound of the marching Royal Guard next door at the Rosenborg Castle! ”Hygge” as we say in Danish, and there was indeed a fine atmosphere in the tent – and unusual is the Forum compared to the many other pitchings around the world in dividing the selected projects into categories like ”Cinema”, F:ACT, Fictiononfiction and Art. This is part of the profile of a festival that wants to place itself between documentary and visual art and is innovative in arranging conferences, showing films in former churches, exhibitions etc. etc. To be a voice in the society. All under the umbrella of Documentary! John Grierson would have loved it!

And what concerns the panelists to comment on the pitched projects: more non-tv people than usual, many representatives from film funds and institutes,

European and American, museums, sales agents… who were brought on stage to react verbally to the presented projects, five persons per project to be followed up with individual meetings with many more across the road in the restaurant of the Film House, ”Sult” (”Hunger”) named after the film of Danish Henning Carlsen.

But also ”Business as Usual” – the format was the same, 7 minutes for presentation including a trailer/teaser and 7 minutes for the panelists in sessions moderated by Jess Search from Britdoc ( she is brilliant) and Ingrid Kopp from Tribeca Film Institute. 30 projects over two days, the usual remarks ”give them (those pitching) a round of applause”, ”amazing”, ”compelling”, ”thank you for a great pitch”, ”I am intrigued” and so on so forth. For one who has attended and taken part in pitching sessions for twenty years you get a bit tired as you lack the many critical questions that could be raised, hopefully they were at the one-to-one meetings. In this kind of public pitching it is (almost) halleluja all the way through. Another critical remark – there is no time for dialogue, debate. So as an audience the reason for being there is to listen to new projects, see the trailers, the way of presentation and sometimes also enjoy precise and competent comments from those in the panel.

Let me highlight three of the filmprojects from the first day – films I am looking forward to watch. First one ”The Camp” to be filmed and directed by master Leonard Retel Helmrich and produced by veteran Dutch Pieter van Huystee. They showed fine observational material from a refugee camp for Syrians in Lebanon and said that ”we don’t come with a story, we are there to find it”. And thank you for not pouring music to the material, for treating us as grown-ups! Second one Czech Filip Remunda, producer of ”The White World According to Daliborek” to be directed by Vit Klusak (the two of them did ”Czech Dream”) described as ”… a horror about the Czech desire for a white Europe… Remunda was powerful and engaged on stage and the trailer was indeed a scary meeting with Dalibor, who says that he was ”looking for warmth and found it in a nazi group”. Third one ”Ghost Wives” by German/British Eva Weber and Danish producer Signe Byrge Sørensen, placed in the FictionnonFiction category and contrary the two above mentioned straight forward subject-orientated documentaries with a lot of mystery around ”arranged marriages for the dead, an ancient tradition in parts of China” taking place today with a serial killer as the protagonist.

http://cphdox.dk/en/cphindustry/cphforum/projects-2015/

All right I thought after the first day – but where are the weird, ambitious, non-subject, non-linear, personal artistic projects that can only be pitched at CPH:DOX Forum. A couple came on the second day but raised for me the question whether they fit in to the pitching format that we have developed during the last 20 years? The most obvious example was ”Watermark” by iconic Lithuanian master Sharunas Bartas, a film that takes it origin from the essay of Joseph Brodsky, who for twenty years stayed in Venice during the month of December and wrote his famous essay. Bartas was not there and his producer Janja Kralj presented a trailer that was a screening of a (beautiful) text from the book plus some birds in the sky. The problem was that the panelists – apart from distributor Heino Deckert – did not know the two big artists – they could maybe have prepared a bit from home? – and that Bartas apparently did not see the purpose of making a trailer. He might be right, he does not work that way and he will start filming anyway and get the money later? And a film like that will end up at Cannes or Venice (obvious) and at CPH:DOX next edition.

The second one to be mentioned is ”Aeterna” by Swedish Jesper Kurlandsky

and Fredrik Wenzel, ”a non-verbal, audiovisual celebration of planetary diversity”, huge budget, a lot of money already confirmed, beautiful images but even if they explained that there would be chapters like ”work”, ”spare time”, that there would be a montage to ”embrace the opposite”, that they would have ”the overview experience”, I don’t think they were able to convey what they want in the standard 7 minutes.

Could the solution be: Fewer projects, more time for presentation and discussion, maybe have some panelists prepare their comments in beforehand having seen trailers…?

A big time problem came up for Canadian Peter Mettler and Scottish Emma Davie to tell us/show us what ”Becoming Animal” was to be. On paper (the Forum has made a brilliant catalogue) ”a cinematic exploration of how we perceive the natural world”, great visuals but a voice over the whole way through, difficult to grap and – Emma Davie told me afterwards – only two minutes of verbal presentation as the trailer was looong.

So, as it is now, you have to adapt to the formula, make a trailer that is both informative, gives a hint of the style of the filmmaker and plays with our emotions. Danish producer Sigrid Dyekjær knows how to do it and it helps when she has a strong director next to her: Pernille Rose Grønkjær, who again works with scientist Lone Frank, this time on ”Hunting for Hedonia” – one line from the catalogue: What if there was a place deep in the brain that can take you from pain to pleasure… on the historical background of the American Psychiatrist Robert Heath, who implanted electrodes deep within the brain of a human but – as it is written – was forgotten.

http://cphdox.dk/en/cphindustry/cphforum/projects-2015/

Don’t miss out on the last screening of Cosima Spender’s Palio at CPH:DOX on Sunday November 15th. It is a feast for the eyes!

Il Palio is the world’s oldest horserace. It takes place at the famous Piazza del Campo in the heart of Sienna twice a year opposing the 17 rivalling districts of Sienna. However, the race is only a small part of the game. Behind it lays months of negotiations, strategy, bribery and treachery and days of ceremonies, rituals and parades. It’s about power and money, a form of legalised corruption and a game whose complexity of open and hidden rules have been forged over centuries. Described as absurd and dysfunctional by locals who yet participate in it with passion.

Anglo-Italian director Spender (who grew up close to Siena) focuses on the perspective of the jockeys. Not bound to a certain district or horse, they are the front pieces in the game. They are the gladiators and the Piazza the Coliseum. As much as the horses are adored, the jockeys are viewed upon with mistrust. Seen as mercenaries, traitors or even prostitutes, the celebration of the winner is only temporarily, the looser risks to get beaten up. It’s brutal; the only race in the world where the horse can win without the rider.

Two rivals: the old master Gigi who is about to break the record of most won races and the upcoming young outsider Giovanni. Two schools of thought: “either you go for strategies… or you go for the good horse”. They race with their lives at stake, riding bareback in medieval costumes and sneakers! And you just hold your breath… The race only lasts for about 90 seconds, but it seems like forever.

Slow motions, close-ups, big music (quite a bit of Ennio Morricone, of course!), even the interviews are shot with either a nervous tension or in a divine golden light with a magnificent Tuscan landscape in the background. Sounds like it’s too much? Not at all, nothing less could have done it! Done with the right mixture of humour and seriousness and with a clear respect for the subject and the characters, it’s an intelligent description of a fascinating social and cultural drama and its actors.

“Rocky on horseback” says The New York Times. Check out the trailer and I won’t have to say no more:

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

Palio won the award for best editing at this years Tribeca Film Festival. Does it have Danish distribution? I hope so, this is made for the big screen and so much better than half the action films out there.

Palio (UK/Italy, 2015, 91 min.) Official website: www.thepalio.com

Five big pen heads from me.