Morgan Neville: Under the Influence

Deftly made is this Netflix documentary by the director of the film, that won an Oscar in 2014: ”Twenty Feet from Stardom”. Is deftly the right word, took it from google translate, with other words well-crafted, predictable in its building and with charismatic Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards as the one, who explains to us where his influences lie. He smokes constantly, he laughs his tobacco-laugh, he performs some tunes on his guitar, he does not speak a lot about his conflicts with Mick Jagger, he does a bit about family – after 20 years of no contact with his father, they found each other and now the father has been travelling with his world famous son all over the world.

I have never been a big fan of the Stones and this film does not give me a lot – apart from the fantastic b/w archive material with legendary Muddy Waters, one of Keith Richards inspiration sources. I could listen to him singing for hours, but not to Richards who has very little voice to offer but in this film a lot of generosity.

USA, 92 mins.

https://www.yahoo.com/movies/s/keith-richards-talks-under-influence-toronto-world-premiere-225529311.html

Anja Dalhoff: Trafficker

Det handler om handel med unge, ofte ganske unge afrikanske kvinder som mod deres vilje ofte af deres forældre via mellemhandlere sælges til organiseret prostitution i europæiske byer for eksempel København. Anja Dalhoff griber det rent og professionelt journalistisk an, vinkler sin historie således: en del af disse kvinder bliver i branchen på den måde, at de selv bliver bordelværter, bordelbestyrere, bordelejere og kvindehandlere, og resten af tv-dokumentaren er overbevisende belæg og bevisførelse. Dokumentaren er omfattende og den er omhyggeligt lavet, og den virker på mig som den skal, fuldstændig gribende, forfærdende og oprørende.

Jeg så dokumentaren 16. september sent på aftenen på DR2, har først kunnet skrive om den nu, men jeg tror nok den kan ses på DR2 Dokumentars hjemmeside (link nedenfor) nogle dage endnu.

Anja Dalhoff har tidligere i en film fra 2007 Månen er sort behandlet emnet trafficking, og hun har arbejdet med problemstillingen siden. I 2009 kom Mærket for livet og i 2011 Mistanke om menneskehandel, begge lavet som undervisningsfilm til særlige situationer, og i 2014 kom dokumentaren Et liv efter trafficking. Det er en imponerende vedholdenhed og produktive Anja Dalhoff har endda lavet andre film i samme periode. Nu i år altså Trafficker, som samler hendes undersøgelses- og reportage indsats i en stor rystende og overbevisende dokumenteret anklage.

Jeg ved selvfølgelig godt at der for for journalistiske dokumentarer gælder særlige faglige regler og råder andre konventioner end i filmiske dokumentarer. Jeg har alligevel indvendinger. Her især til visse detaljer i dokumentarens klipning. Jeg kan generelt ikke lide opklipninger af interviews og da slet ikke, når jeg som her i en fremlæggelse af belæg for en anklage skal følge med i vidneudsagnene. Jeg vil da helst høre så meget af vidneudsagnet som det i sig selv kan bære, og helst i sin helhed eller i så store stykker som muligt. Jeg vil her kun pege på en enkelt slem, i mine øjne direkte uskøn sekvens cirka 14 minutter inde i filmen. En medvirkende handlet kvinde, Irene hedder hun, sidder i et smukt nærbillede og fortæller en lang grusom voldtægtshistorie. Hun afbrydes imidlertid hele tiden af klip til en medvirkende ekspert, Kevin Bales, hvis udsagn bestemt er lige så vigtigt, men klipperen demonterer ved sin besynderlige disposition begge udsagn både indholdsmæssigt og emotionelt, og senere i sekvensen med Irenes historie klippes der ydermere frem og tilbage til vidneudsagn fra to andre medvirkende kvinder med deres historier, som således også går i stumper og stykker.  

Jeg er ellers så glad for Anja Dalhoffs interviewscener, som jeg mærker dem fra hendes hånd. Jeg er også glad for hendes reportagescener. Jeg ser begge slags som rigtige filmscener. Imidlertid er Trafficker dokumentar konstrueret som et oplysende, agiterende foredrag med oprørende detaljer, et vigtigt vigtigt foredrag med illustrationer,  nemlig disse fine filmscener, som her bare for mine øjne bliver ligesom til fotos, til illustrationer i en trykt rapport, en vigtig rapport som sagt, men en rapport i ord. Det er altså, som det er journalistikkens konvention, en litterær metode, ikke en filmisk metode som er valgt. Og filmbilledet og filmscenen ofres. Men hvor er det dog blevet til en vigtig, til en vildt oprørende rapport. Heldigvis.

Dertil kommer det nok allervigtigste. I dokumentarens kerne, som i alle de Anja Dalhoff film jeg gennem årene har set, ligger der også i denne film en smittende omsorg for den enkelte medvirkende, især for det skrøbelige og udsatte og mishandlede menneske, en usentimental ømhed, som bliver i mig længe efter mange af de faktuelle detaljer er tonet ud.

Danmark 2015, 58 min. (Samlet vurdering 4/6)

SYNOPSIS

The devastating story of the sex trade in African women who then become the pimps of the next generation. Nigeria is a hub for human trafficking. Victims are transported to 33 countries, mostly as part of the $100 billion dollar sex trade. The documentary underlines the human costs behind the statistics. Its tender, devastating interviews, reveal an all-too-common tale: African women turned prostitutes spend years paying off their trafficking debt in Europe. Few ever escape the shackles of their nightmarish ordeals. (Danish Doc Production site)

Det er en kaleidoskopisk dokumentarfilm med kvinder fra Nigeria og Kenya, der er ofre for menneskehandel. På den anden side medvirker også kvinder, der efter at have betalt deres gæld selv bliver “Madams”. Dvs. selv begynder at handle med kvinder. Et skræmmende fænomen, som desværre ikke er ualmindeligt. (Anja Dalhoff, Facebook opdatering)

CREDITS

Anja Dalhoff: instruktion, foto og produktion. Michelle Mildwater: research, interviews og speak. Ahmad Jaladi Farahani: råklip. Johs Aarup: klip, colorgrade og grafik. Povl Kristian: musik. Hamid Hagn: lyddesign. Mette Meyer Hoffmann: DR redaktion.

FILMOGRAFI

Når Månen er sort / When the Moon is black, 2007

Mærket for livet / Affected for life 2009

Mistanke om menneskehandel / Suspicion of Human Trafficking, 2011 https://vimeo.com/24716911

Et liv efter trafficking / A Life after Trafficking, 2014

LINKS

http://www.danishdoc.dk/Danish_Doc/FilmUK.html  (Production company site)

https://www.dr.dk/tv/se/trafficker/trafficker  (DR2 streaming nogle dage endnu vil jeg tro)

Bigert/Bergström: Engaged Cool Duo from Stockholm

DocAlliance and its excellent vod initiative has for years been promoted on this website and here is (a bit late, sorry, but it’s weekend and maybe you have time…) one more copy-paste of a fine offer from “your online documentary cinema” – to watch FOR FREE works by a duo of artists from Sweden until September 20. Go for it:

Mats Bigert (1965) and Lars Bergström (1962) have formed an artistic duo since their studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. Besides documentaries, their work also includes exhibitions, conceptual art and installations in public space. In 1993, they participated in the Venice Biennale with their installation Adrenaline Dream and have exhibited their work across the world ever since. They often deal with current social and climatic issues. Discover the Swedish duo through their films for free!

During their successful career, Bigert & Bergström’s have produced a large

number of artworks. Their sculptures and installations are often based on digital technologies and intended for interaction, changing their shape or colour after being touched or according to the weather. By placing unexpected objects in public space, the artists change the context of places where people pass every day. For instance, they have placed their artwork Tomorrow’s Weather at the Stockholm Central Station. They hung giant molecules of H2O, C2 and N2 which change their colour according to the weather forecast for the following day. Another transformation of the public space called Ecco Humor consisted in placing a large curved mirror in the underground parking lot of Dunkers Culture House in Helsingborg, Sweden. The fifty-metre-wide and six-metre-high wall of super reflective stainless steel is the largest of its kind in the world.

Their latest film from the past year is entitled MOMENTS OF SILENCE. It captures moments in which the world stops and falls silent for a minute or two. The film is compiled of archive footage of minutes of silence honouring the victims of conflicts or natural disasters.

In 2002–2012, the duo made a loose trilogy about the human obsession with control. The first film entitled LIFE EXTENDED  (PHOTO) follows the desire to live forever, introducing a gerontologist who believes that humanity will be immortal soon, a monk who prepares his soul for its posthumous journey by long marathons and architects who construct spaces that slow down ageing. The middle part of the trilogy, THE MOUSE, deals with the ancient relationship between men and mice. It presents the fields in which we meet these small rodents and shows that we would have zero knowledge of genetics without laboratory texts. The third part follows climatic change and its impact. In THE WEATHER WAR, the directors travel to the US with a special machine-sculpture called Tornado Diverter whose goal is to stop tornados. The film deals with the theme of climate change and human influence on it in general.

LAST SUPPER captures the tradition of a final meal before an execution, ironically alluding to the original biblical dimension of the phrase. The protagonist is a former prison chef who used to prepare the last meal for the convicts. The film combines documentary scenes, interviews and animated sequences.

http://dafilms.com/event/223-bigert-bergstrom/ 

European Documentary Awards

A warm welcome to a new procedure from EFA (European Film Academy) that has published a shortlist of 15 European documentaries from which 5 will be nominated for the award to be given at the EFA ceremony in Berlin in December. The shortlist has been put together from lists of three films given by 10 important European documentary festivals.

I am happy to see Phie Ambo’s ”Good Things Await”, Camilla Nielsson’s ”Democrats”, Sean McAllister’s ”A Syrian Love Story”, Ivan Gergolet’s ”Dancing with Maria”, Oleksandr Techynskyi, Aleksey Solodunov and Dmitry Stoykov’s ”All Things Ablaze” (photo), Oppenheimer’s ”The Look of Silence”, Asif Kapadia’s ”Amy”, Gábor Hörcher’s ”Drifter” and ”Toto and his Sisters” by Alexander Nanau on the list, all films that I have seen and appreciate – in different levels and ways… and looking forward to watch the remaining 6, use the link below to get the titles.

And a quote from the same website:

”It is with great pleasure that the European Film Academy and EFA Productions announce the first ever EFA Documentary Selection, a list of 15 European documentaries recommended for a nomination for this year’s European Film Awards. 

The change follows a decision by the EFA Board to “acknowledge the growing importance of European documentary cinema,” says Israeli producer Marek Rozenbaum, EFA Board Member on the documentary committee, “there is a growing number of excellent documentaries which have to be seen by the members…”  

http://www.europeanfilmacademy.org/News-detail.155.0.html?&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=332&cHash=b7c7e85bfca0fa9f7bc36041d88e9e9a

Message2Man 2015/ 2

” She is nine years old, lives with her grandmother, her mother is ill and her father, she does not see a lot. This is the background that you pick up gradually as this sensitive, well-made and cleverly thought film goes along with father and daughter on a tour towards the park of Pippi Langstrømpe (Longstocking) in Sweden, a wish for the girl who wants to be strong and independent…”

The beginning of a review I made in March this year of Russian Denis Shabaev’s ”Together” that won one of the main awards at DocuDays in Kiev.

Now it is on the list of the around 25 films competing at the National Competition of Documentary Films at the upcoming Message2Man in St. Petersburg that starts September 26 and goes on until October 3.

The good thing for me, who visits the festival for the fourth time in a row, is that apart from this film and one more, it’s all new land for me – a good chance to get an idea of what happens in Russian documentary. Yes, stories from Russia of today, please.

The ”one more” is by Tatyana Soboleva, who I have met in diffferent festivals and who asked for my opinion on a rough cut of ”Siberian Floating Hospital”. A quote from a FB message I sent to her last December:

… You have made a very very fine film, that has atmosphere of warmth, wonderful people and the right rhythm that fits the waiting to get to people and for people to get on board (for medical help, ed.)… is it going to disappear, from my ignorant pov, influenced of course by your film, they are doing a great job really… Fine music, beautiful images, poetry sometimes, your film will travel! Congratulations!..

And now I am to watch the final film, which is distributed by Deckert Distribution that gives the following neutral description on their website:

When the Siberian winter releases its grip every year in May, twenty doctors, mostly women, board a special ship – a floating hospital, leaving their families behind. The ship crisscrosses the Siberian North, bringing medical care to the remotest rural outposts. Locals wait for this ship, and for the doctors it’s an adventure that alters them and that many of them have become addicted to.

http://www.message2man.com/en/

http://deckert-distribution.com/film-catalogue/siberian-floating-hospital/

In the Editing Room

It’s such a great photo, this one, taken by Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis. I stole it from his FB page, where he had this accompanying line:

“There always is The Moment when analog and digital film cut meets…”

Roman Bondarchuk is the contemplating director in the editing room, the film to finish is “Ukranian Sheriffs”, that Cekulis produces and that Bondarchuk makes with his spouse and scriptwriter Dar´ya Avershenko, a talented film couple who is part of the team behind the festival DocuDays in Kiev, who was part of the team behind “Euromaidan Rough Cut” and made one part of the “15 Young by Young” series, produced by Ilona Bicevska.

Precisely that part of the series, about kids playing jazz music and the relationship to their teacher, has been made into a feature documentary, named ”Dixieland”, that premieres in Riga tonight. I have seen a more than rough cut of the work and there is no justice if it is does not travel to festivals all over!

… back to the photo, yes, the moment of reflection, not touching the buttons, not touching the yellow note papers, thinking thinking: did I find my film, the one I wanted to make, the one I had in my head for so long, he is not the only one who has experienced that crucial moment. 

Megacities in Copenhagen

Copenhageners – it’s already tonight, sorry that i did not see it before, that Michael Glawogger’s masterpiece from 1998, ”Megacities” (photo) is shown as part of a programme called ”The Urban Planet”, organised by the active Copenhagen Architecture Festival “that has, in collaboration with curator Jacob Lillemose created four events whose starting point is to look at the consequences of cities to the World today and especially to the future. Through films, lectures and discussions the events will point attention to the urban landscape as a sensual and intellectually overwhelming totality, created in a complex and intensive interaction between people, politics and architecture.”

Click below if you want to attend, ticket reservation needed.

Sooo… Glawogger is not here any longer but his films are. When I was asked to make my “Best Documentaries Ever” by Sight & Sound, “Megacities” was an obvious choice because “Few directors have as Glawogger been travelling the world to tell stories about how people live and think and work. This is one of the works from his trilogy (the others are “Workingman’s Death” and “Whore’s Glory”), with a superb cinematography of Wolfgang Thaler, “la condition humaine” is the theme so far away from reportage as one can be.”

The same goes for the film on the programme tomorrow, “Babeldom” by Paul Bush, I don’t know the film but the first description line is inviting: “Based on Breugel’s painting the Tower of Babel from 1593, Paul Bush made a meditative, but also quite insane abstraction over the idea of a fictional future city…”

Finally, this coming thursday, Jennifer Baichwal’s “Manufactured Landscapes” from 2006 introducing the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky, will be screened.

About that Georg Boch, Zelig film school student at that time, wrote:

”It’s the most impressive dolly shot I have ever seen. Why is it so great?

Because it shows the conflict between our expectations for fictional representation of reality and the representation in documentaries/reportage.

The usual standard-pan inside the hall we would have seen in a TV-reportage would have made it easy for the viewer to swallow the image, to sort it intohis/her categories. It is through this dolly shot that we experience the full dimensions of the hall and the nature of the labour in it.

The sense of a motivated travel of the eye that the dolly usually promises is turned into a nightmarish caricature as we only see the ever-repeating landscape of people at machines.  Strangely it is the use of means from fiction-films that makes this reality more real for us again. I think this is one of the paradox documentary makers have to live with today.”

http://rising-architecture.com/event/megacities-movie-debate/

http://rising-architecture.com/event/babeldom-2012-movie-debate/

http://rising-architecture.com/event/manufactured-landscapes-2006-movie-debate/

Vilnius Documentary Film Festival 2015

September 17 until 27 it’s again documentary fest time in the capital of Lithuania, Vilnius, a fine event to visit; I was there in 2011 as a juror, with Lithuanian ”Barzakh” by Mantas Kvedaravicius as the winner.

Apart from a retrospective of the Maysles Brothers films and a Special Programme with Claude Lanzmann’s ”Shoah” and a couple of other films related to the Nazi time – I saw ”The Decent One” by Vanessa Lapa on Himmler – there is a so-called Main Programme with ”Amy” by Asif Kapadia and ”Suddenly My Thoughts Halt” by Portuguese Jorge Pelicano (presented this year at Magnificent7 in Belgrade) and a Competition Programme, for me the most interesting as it features new Baltic documentaries and indirectly is a witness of the high quality of films from the three countries.

12 films compete and it is a strong list that comes out of the website of the festival. Let me mention those that I have seen:

”The Amateurs” by Audrius Antanavicius (Lithuania), ”The Invisible City” by Viesturs Kairiss (Latvia), ”Anthill” by Vladimir Loginov (Estonia), ”Beyond the Fear” by Herz Frank and Maria Kravchenko (Latvia), ”Master and Tatyana” by Giedre Zickyté (Lithuania), ”Escaping Riga” by Davis Simanis (Latvia) and ”Gates of the Lamb” (PHOTO) by Audrius Stonys.

The latter, whose film career I have followed since we met at the Balticum Film & TV Festival on Bornholm in the beginning of the 1990’es, when he – together with Arunas Matelis – were the young talents of Lithuanian documentary, asked me some time ago what I thought of ”Gates of the Lamb” and its festival potential. These were my words:

This film, which is visual, have very few words, uses music, has no “story” as such but lets us enjoy Faces Faces Faces, mostly in profile at the right part of the image – great cinematography – and music and a solemn atmosphere with fine small humoristic sequences with children with open faces not really understanding, and yet… what is going on. You are back to a world that you master to convey.

I have no information if “Gates of the Lamb” has been to other festivals so far, but to have it here in the hometown of the director is an obvious choice.

I mentioned 7 films, among the 5 that I have not seen, are new works by Lithuanian veteran Rimantas Gruodis and Latvian Laila Pakalnina, who seems to do a couple of films per year!

http://vdff.lt/en

Message2Man 2015

The festival in St. Petersburg, that has existed for a quarter of a century, starts September 25 and runs until October 3. The selection has been announced but first some quotes from the News of the website:

”… Over 3,400 films from 83 countries entered the qualifying round of the Anniversary… 90 films from 45 countries were selected:

International Competition will present 43 pictures from 25 countries: 10 feature documentary films and 12 documentary short  films, 11 short films and 10 animated films. The largest number of applications came from France, Poland, Germany and the USA. Also directors from Bahrain, Qatar, Morocco, Taiwan, Singapore, Africa and South America sent their works. There were many interesting applications from Russia and post-Soviet countries.

For the National Competition of Documentary Films were selected 22 films, 11 of them are debuts… Russian regional film studios are reviving: the Competition includes films not only from the two capitals, but also from Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Kazan and other cities.

Finally the (my words) exciting and audience-wise popular Competition of Experimental Films ”In Silico”, which this year also celebrates its 5th anniversary, will present 25 films from 19 countries. At this section there will be three showtimes of original and unexpected copyright short films, most of which will be shown in Russia for the first time.”

I will be there for a week and look forward to watch the new Russian documentaries. That list is not available yet but at the list of long documentaries for the intl. competition I find ”Strange Particles” by Russian Denis Klebeev, that has already been (Joris Ivens Award) at Cinema du Réel in Paris and at Hot Docs in Toronto as well as Polish Krakow festival winner ”Call Me Marianna” by Karolina Bielawska. Have seen both. Otherwise I look forward to watch Daniel Sivan’s “A Hightech Soap Opera”, “Those Who Feel the Fire Burning” by Morgan Knibbe about which critic Neil Young wrote in Hollywood Reporter: Nominally a documentary, Morgan Knibbe‘s attention-grabbing if overly ambitious debut ”Those Who Feel the Fire Burning” is really a poetic boundary-blurrer that seeks to obliterate the fiction/nonfiction frontier. Not to forget ”Censored Voices” by Mor Loushy that has this description: One week after the 1967 ‘Six-Day War’, a group of young kibbutzniks, led by renowned author Amos Oz and Editor Avraham Shapira, recorded intimate conversations with soldiers returning from the battlefield. The Israeli army censored the recordings, allowing only a fragment of the conversations to be published. Censored Voices reveals these original recordings for the first time.

In the short documentary competition there is a film by Viktor Kossakovsky, ”Chicken Pox”, 26 minutes… of course not to be missed!

http://www.message2man.com/en/

Baltic Sea Docs 2015/ 4

A small PS on the audience numbers in Riga, the cinema part of the event that took place in the capital and 7 provincial towns in Latvia, let me give you the names: Cesis, Ventspils, Valmiera, Jekabpils, Rezekne, Liepaja, Roja. 9 fims were screened in Riga, three of them were selected to go to the towns:

Hubert Sauper’s ”We Come as Friends”, ”All of Me” by Arturo González Villaseñor and ”Chuck Norris vs Communism” by Ilinca Calugareanu.

The organiser of the screenings, Elina Cire, wrote this to me today:

“The total number of BalticSeaDocs2015 audience (Riga+regions) is about 3200. (Most of them (2780) attended the screenings with free tickets (pupils, students, pensioners, cinema professionals, BalticSeaDocs participants), the rest paid 3-1 euro  ticket (3 in Riga, less in regions))…. Many screenings Riga were sold out.

The most “popular” films in Riga were “A Syrian Love Story” (photo by Agnese Zeltina: Director Sean MacAllister on stage in Riga)  & “We Come As Friends”, top 1 in regions was “We Come As Friends.””

Not big numbers if you compare to big festivals but a true sign of great interest for documentaries and a cultural film policy from the side of the organisers of

http://balticseadocs.lv