James Erskine: The Accidental Death of a Cyclist

I watched some of the mountain stages at the Tour de France this year, they were boring as nobody really tried anything. Froome was in total control. It was not like that when Marco Pantani was riding, when he reached the top of Alpe d’Huez, when he – ”Il Pirata” – said goodbye to the rest of the cyclists and rode on his own in his very special style, becoming the darling of not only fans from his own country but of all who loved Tour de France and Giro d’Italia and the stars of the show.

These magnificent performances are all well documented in this film that also has quite many interviews with Pantani (1970-2004) himself, with family, with Greg Lemond and Bradley Wiggins, former winners of the Tour, and others close to him. All to build the story of a great talent 10 years after his death, the man who became ”an instrument of a sporting system”, it is being said, part of an unhealthy culture.

The film digs into the scandals of the Festina Team and all that followed doping-wise, repeats again and again close-ups of needles, injections, blood and have reconstructed scenes of a doctor entering the door to Pantani’s hotel room to take those tests, that kicked him out of the Giro d’Italia in 1999, the year after he had won both this race and the Tour de France, still the only one to have done that.

This constant noisy hunt for effect and sensation ruins the film totally, cliché after cliché are presented, stupid split screens, are brought to the viewer with no respect for the  legend, who died so tragically.

I watched the film on Netflix.

UK, 2014, 94 mins.

http://www.pantanifilm.com

Sean McAllister: A Syrian Love Story

He is on his own, McAllister, alone with his camera, which is constantly moving to be able to catch what is going on. I have to confess that this shaky style with little aesthetic consideration irritated me in the beginning as did the director’s many words of introduction to make us (Western) viewers understand what to expect.

Having said so, there are few documentarians who like McAllister, goes from the journalistic point of view and the anynomous reportage, to be a true storyteller who captures your attention fully because of the closeness to the characters he can create, because he always involves himself – he is in this case an intruder into the lives and destinies of a refugee family that he met in 2009 and kept a close relation to until this year, 2015. His presence simply changed their lives: McAllister was caught by the regime’s people in 2011, he was put in prison for five days, and had his camera and tapes confiscated. For that reason Amer and Raghda and their four kids had to flee to Lebanon, not to be taken…

And it is in Lebanon the family starts to fall apart. Both Amer and Raghda had been in prison because of oppositional activities, they actually met there to move together to make a family in Yarmouk, the Palestinian camp near Damascus – where we meet them when Raghda is released from prison. The photo shows Amer and Bob talking to the mother – when do you come home, mother – that same Bob becomes the darling of the film and McAllister, he is the one who reacts most explicit to all the shit that happens.

For Raghda it provokes ”an empty feeling to be in Lebanon” and the move to France, where they can get political asylum because of her being on the list as a haunted political activist (or whatever way the regime phrases it) does not make that feeling disappear.

In France a conflict between the two evolves, Amer gets a girlfriend, Raghda gets more and more depressed, tries to take her own life, they shout at each other and drink too much, ”you don’t love me”, ”you never say you love me” – the atmosphere is violent, McAllister goes from one to the other, interfers, talks, discusses, tries to analyse the situation. ”I am a loser”, says Raghba.

These scenes from a marriage (yes, you can’t help think of Bergman) are terrible to watch, to say the least – you get a sense of how it must be to be away from your home, to experience the horrors going on there without being able to do anything but to open your computer and have the killings of friends documented! The kids grow up, Amer is the one taking care of them, the camera of McAllister stays very often on his face, lets the viewer try to read his face, whereas you do not have to go close to the vulnerable Raghda to see her changing moods and despair.

Happy Ending? Well, Amer stands in his garden/courtyard cutting leaves with chicken around him – the children have a future, he says, that is the most important. And Raghda, with a happy face, gets up from a chair to hug Sean somewhere in Turkey near the Syrian border, where she can again be active within the political opposition. She looks a completely different person to the one, we met in France.

Needless to say that this is an important film (completely different from the ones made by Syrians, ”Return to Homs” and ”Silvered Water”, both personal masterpieces) with a different angle: an outsider who comes to a war zone to find out what it could mean for those who live there in opposition, gets involved himself with his big heart and persistent non-sentimental compassion.

UK, 2015, 75 mins.

http://seanmcallister.com/

Catarina Mouráo: The Wolf’s Lair

Portuguese film director Catarina Mouráo pitched the film as a project back in Prague March 2013 at the Archidoc workshop with a brilliant trailer. I was there to moderate the session. I knew Catarina from workshops in Lisbon, she was one of the founders of the Apordoc documentary association and I had watched several of her films (among them ”The Lady from Chandor” from 1999) that always had a fine sense of aesthetics, helped by the unique cinematographer Joáo Ribeiro.

The project started off from these lines from the Apordoc catalogue: ”In the 1950’es my grandfather was committed to a psychiatric hospital, my uncle became a prisoner, and my mother aged 11 was sent to a boarding school… Based on the background of Salazar’s dictatorship a true drama unfolds in a split family. Mouráo wants to ”unravel secrets and mysteries” 38 years after the 1974 revolution.” The film, I wrote back then, if it can keep the level of the teaser, has definitely a theatrical/festival potential. I saw it this morning and it keeps its promise.

Take a look at the photo – the director caressing a pipe pouche, a

bag for a pipe, in this case from the well known company Stanwell. From smoking experience I remember these bags, that the grandfather collected. As something special. In a clip from Portuguese television the grandfather, the writer Tomaz de Figueiredo (1902-1970) shows his collection, stating the limited possibilities of film compared to what the brain is able to do… the clip is b/w, you don’t see the colours and you are not able to smell the remains of the tobacco that has been in the pipe that has been in the bag.

These pipe pouches lie in the house in Casares of the grandfather, where his daughter is living protecting his legacy and letting no access allowed for the younger sister, the mother of the director, who tries to get access. Without success. On the television clip – quite moving – the author says that he hopes that one day one of his granddaughter or his great granddaughters, even if they have never met him, will find use of the pipe pouches… and remember him.

Catarina Mouráo has made a fascinating film using family archive of photos, tv clips with the grandfather, b/w film material to catch atmosphere of the time of the Salazar dictatorship – as she step by step with her own voice tells the story and reflects on why she wants to know about the grandfather and his hard destiny in the psychiatric hospital and is suffering, when his son is being imprisoned for being – as it is said – ”a contra”. Mouráo visits the archives of the secret police and of the hospital and she has many conversations with her mother. These scenes are very moving, you see how difficult it is for the mother, who had no real contact with her father but – a strong introductory sequence – has had dreams about him, holding his hand, and there is a photo with that motive.

It’s a very personal film, on the importance (so say it in a banal way) of finding out where you come from and do so while there are still someone around who can help you do so. But you need to be a good filmmaker to make it interesting for others. Mouráo has found a quiet, un-bombastic, subtle way to get us interested.

2015, Portugal, 102 mins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.scottishdocinstitute.com/films/the-wolfs-lair-a-toca-do-lobo/

Ron Mann: Altman

One more well made film historical biography, this time on Robert Altman (1925-2006), interestingly made and enjoyable to watch. The director, Canadian Ron Mann, got the great idea to chapter the film by asking people who have worked with Altman to state shortly what ”Altmanesque” is for them. Robin Williams (who played in the director’s ”Popeye”) says ”Expecting the Unexpected”, Bruce Willis says ”Kicking Hollywood’s Ass”, Julianne Moore says ”he shows how vulnerable we are”. Many others take part in this clever game of characterisation of the director, who gave us ”Nashville”, ”M.A.S.H”, ”Gosford Park”, ”McCabe and Mrs. Miller” and ”Short Cuts”, to mention a few classics from the enormous filmography.

His widow Kathryn – they met in each other in 1959 – tells the story about her husband as do his children, very often they were part of the film crews, and does he himself through interviews made for other purposes. We get the whole career, how he got into filmmaking through industrial films, how he became, as he says himself, ”one of the top tv directors”, his constant fight with the Hollywood companies (so clearly depicted in ”The Player”), his admiration for the actors, his way of working with the crew that was invited to watch the dailies together with him, his period as a theatre director, his fame in Europe – he lived in Paris for years – and awards in Cannes, his drinking too much, when he stopped he said to his wife ”what I miss by no drinking, is the alcohol”, his new heart… the film is full of fine home movie material, clips from the films, and yes you want to watch them again.

To be found on itunes and dvd etc. Photo from 1983.

http://www.sphinxproductions.com/films/altman/

USA, 2014, 95 mins.

Lea Hjort Mathiesen: Øde Ø

Først kommer jeg til at tænke på tidlige Jytte Rex film, og det er selvfølgelig hædrende for det, jeg ser. Jeg er hele tiden optaget af kunstneriske traditioner og skoler, både fortsættelser, udvidelser, opgør og brud, læser det som vibrerende liv. Og jeg ser konstant films slægtskaber med den foregående filmlitteratur eller til tider altså som fjernelser fra slægtskaber. Sådan orienterer jeg mig, det har jeg i sin tid lært, og det er brugbart for mig.

Denne film, Lea Hjort Mathiesens Øde Ø, vedkender sig filmhistorien, den er i en smuk tradition tekst lagt ved tekst. Claus Christensen er i sin anmeldelse i Ekko (link nedenfor) inde på, at den som de øvrige afgangsfilm udgør bekræftelse på og fortsættelse af en kunstnerisk skole, nemlig Arne Bros arbejde gennem årtier med et poetisk dokumentarisk filmsprog som modsætning til det journalistiske filmsprog. Det er nok rigtigt, men linjen går meget længere tilbage, også Bro er inde i en tradition.

Jeg bliver efter få øjeblikke opmærksom, tvunget af filmen, jeg ser. Det her er klart ikke Jytte Rex og dog, det er i slægt med en forudgående filmkunst som Rex’, det er et filmdigt, et selvbiografisk digt, en lapidarisk tekst ledsaget af en række filmbilleder, hvoraf nogle er antydede scener og hvori alt er i skitsens form. Men en fasthed samler sig, en overvejet beslutsomhed. Gentagelserne af oplysninger i dialogen, gentagelserne af stumper af scener undrer mig godt nok, men jeg er jo nu klar over, de er bevidste, at de er anbragt i et system.

Kvinden i filmen gentager disse sætninger, de tryghedserindrende: ”Min mor har flettet mit hår i en hestehale” og ” min far har lært mig at cykle, han var min balance.” Og den traumatiske, den frygteligste af disse: ”Mærket af min fars hænder på min hals.” Det er traumerne som bliver til gentagelser, gentagelserne, som i begyndelsen undrede mig til jeg så, der er et mønster, en rytme, en struktur. Det er traumerne som dukker op og forstyrrer erindringens fremadskridende fortælling som de i virkeligheden, biografien dækker, har forstyrret frigørelsesprocessen, forstyrret helingen.

Kvinden siger: ”Verden er en øde ø og her har jeg bygget mig et hjem. Jeg er herre i eget hus. Jeg bilder mig ind at jeg har magt. Når vi dør kommer fluerne. De tiltrækkes af dødens lugt. De ligger der sært i kroppens vådområder. Fluerne er herrer over vores liv. Men nu lever det. Du overlevede. Og selv på den ødeste ø bliver det hverdag.”

Hvad der overvinder traumerne er at etablere en hverdag, indrette sin egen bolig og erobre den, sidde let påklædt i vindueskarmen og ryge for åbent vindue i sin egen lejlighed, a room of one’s own. Scenerne er altså interiører: en vindueskarm i en karnap og et soveværelse op til et badeværelse, i en anden lejlighed et køkken og en stue med bord og to stole foran en gardinsløret udsigt til andre boligblokke. Og eksteriører: en flugtvignet, kamerarush forbi træer, andre vignetter en birkeskov, en høj klint, en kyst og så havet. Og scenerne er kvindens samvær, med instruktøren (tror jeg) i vindueskarmen, med datteren, som digter historier, med kæresten, som er tavs, men som holder om hende i et kærtegn, mens hun klipper ham. Jeg sammensætter min oplevelse af disse elementer, jeg er hjulpet af klippet, som lader filmen begynde med en udsathed, en nøgenhed, som også er den medvirkende kvindes fysiske letpåklædthed, den fortsætter med denne nøgenhed i variation og slutter med en fuldstændig nøgenhed i en langsom nydende tryghed, en lang scene med de rolige, plejende handlinger, olie, parfume, creme efter det rensende bad, omsider at kunne, at turde blotte sig for at kunne være sammen, ikke reguleret af streng og detaljeret konvention, men fri. Den lille film er således en poetisk biografisk skildring i skitseform af en personlig, ja, privat frigørelsesproces. Øde Ø er et filmdigt om dette både skræmmende og lokkende territorium, jeg ankommer til, når alle broerne er brudt, et digt om frisættelse, en film, som blot er en antydning, et strejf, som jeg tænker – havde der været tid nok – næsten af sig selv i sin selvfølgelige lethed kunne fortsætte som en fuldendt poetisk biografi.

Danmark 2015, 36 min.

SYNOPSIS

Verden er en øde ø, siger hun. Hvordan landede du der, spørger jeg hende. Hvad ville du gøre, hvis du landede på en øde ø, spørger hun mig. Hvordan er landskabet, spørger jeg hende. (Filmskolens program)

CREDITS

Instruktør: Lea Hjort Mathiesen, medvirkende: Ayse Dudu Tepe, Lea Hjort Mathiesen, Aida Tepe Mattson, Daniel Hjort, fotograf: Sebastian Danneborn, klipper: Carla Luffe og Sofie Marie Kristensen, tonemester: Sigrid DPA Jensen, komponister: Mikkel Juul Jensen og Søren Stenager, producer: Jakob Langkjær, produktion og distribution: Den Danske Filmskole.

FILMOGRAFI

Nattevagt (2012), Malek Means Angel (2014)

LITT. / LINKS

http://www.filmskolen.dk/presse/afgangsfilm/dokumentar/2015/  (Filmskolens katalog, afgangsfilm)

http://www.dfi.dk/faktaomfilm/person/da/225554.aspx?id=225554  (om Lea Hjort Mathiesen)

https://www.facebook.com/mydesertisland  (filmens Facebookside)

http://www.ekkofilm.dk/anmeldelser/filmskolen-dokumentar-argang-2015/  (Claus Christensens anmeldelse)

Flaherty NYC Season at Anthology Film Archives

It’s nice when a text is free of conventional promotion clichés, is well written and has an interesting point of view and an inviting programme. As the one below, copy-pasted from the Flaherty Newsletter, with Sukhdev Sandhu (more about him via the link below) as the programmer for a series called “The Infinite Child”, starting Monday Oct. 5 and running every other Monday. Programme details to be found later, check the website of the very active film cultural The Flaherty, that is headed by Danish Anita Reher, with whom I worked for many years at the EDN (European Documentary Network). Actually Anita was the first one employed in August 1996, when it started – I came in one month later. Memories, but back to Flaherty and the fine text: 

To be a child is to be a member of a social minority to which everyone has belonged. And yet, far from this endowing them with hallowed status, children today are increasingly under attack: they are enclosed and spatially squeezed; relentlessly tested at school; targeted by capitalism; patronized as technology-obsessed brats. THE INFINITE CHILD tells a different story: it highlights filmmakers – avant -garde, activist, Direct Cinema legends – who have explored the freedom, defiance, illegibility, inner strength and radicalism of children. These artists – sometimes lyrical, sometimes wonderfully maniacal – not only treat children as experimental spaces and with a tenderness that is lacking in more generic representations; they search for the enduring and liberating spirit of childhood on stage and in institutions such as art schools.

Artists include: Nicolas Philibert, D.A. Pennebaker, Narimane Mari, Redmond Entwhistle, Patricia Holland, Leslie Thornton, Guy Sherwin, Katie Halper, Anna Lucas, John McManus.

 http://flahertyseminar.org

Steve James: Life Itself

”It would be a major lapse to have a documentary that doesn’t contain the full reality. I wouldn’t want to be associated. This is not only your film”, legendary film critic Roger Ebert e-mails to Steve James during his making of the film that carries the title of Ebert’s memoirs and is shot during the last months of his life.

Indeed, the film contains the full reality – in an interview at Indiewire, James says: ” With that first shot you see of him in the present part of the story – I purposedly wanted to use a shot where he’s asleep and you can see through his jaw, through the bandage, and it’s kind of a sobering shot”. It is quite shocking to watch before you get Ebert’s incredible appetite on Life, his work on the MacBook with a voice synthesizer, his conversations with his wife Chaz, his efforts to rehabilitate, on the background of the many operations he has gone through due to his cancer.

James has made a very rich film. It includes the biography of Ebert, his way into film criticism, his loyalty to his newspaper Chicago Sun-Times after he received many attractive offers when  receiving the Pulitzer Prize – with quotes from his book as the narrative backbone and with many interviews with close friends and with filmmakers, who adores him like Scorcese, Morris and Werner Herzog, who with his special accent calls him ”a soldier of Cinema”!

What I enjoyed mostly, however, was the story of the love/hate relationship between the two critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel (PHOTO), who ran a tv show together, firstly ”Sneak Preview” and later ”At the Movies”. The clips from the show and the rehearsals are hilarious, Siskel being the one who was part of the jet-set around Hugh Hefner, far away from the social environment of Ebert. The clips show often an Ebert getting more and more irritated over Siskel’s approach and judgements. Wonderful sequences from a tv show that in the beginning was only for Chicago but became a huge success in all USA. Ebert was called a mainstream reviewer (contrary to the intellectual Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris) but the truth is that if anyone he brought non-Hollywood independent films, including documentaries, to the attention of the audience – pleases me, as an example, to see his enthusiasm of the 7Up-series after he had watched the 56Up part at the hospital, if I got it right.

I saw the film on Netflix with Danish subtitles, you can find dvd’s and blueray’s – and IMPORTANT you can read reviews by Ebert (from 1967!) on the website that carries his name, link below.  

USA, 2014, 2 hours

http://www.ebertmovie.com/

http://www.rogerebert.com/

http://www.indiewire.com/article/life-itself-director-steve-james-explains-why-roger-ebert-deserved-a-documentary-20140705

 

 

Cinemateket August-September 2015

Jeg skrev om Helmut Berger, som Luchino Visconti gjorde til stjerne med ”Ludwig”, skuespilleren som blev kaldt for verdens smukkeste mand. Og så åbner jeg det danske Cinematekets katalog for august og september og ser en anden Visconti-skuespiller på forsiden, Alain Delon, som er født i 1935, bliver 80 i november måned! ”Leoparden” (1963, 185 minutter)… dansen med Claudia Cardinale, spillet med Burt Lancaster, et af Viscontis mange mesterværker, for glem ikke også at se ”Rocco og hans brødre” (1961, 177 minutter), hvor han spiller overfor Annie Girardot og med Renato Salvatori i rollen som broren, som går i hundene i norditalienske Milano, hvortil den sicilianske familie er flyttet fra fattigdommen.

… to af 10 film med Delon, to andre der lige skal nævnes er Jean-Pierre Melvilles stilsikre, elegante ”Ekspert i Drab” (1967) og samme instruktørs ”Den røde cirkel” (1970), hvor også stilsikre og elegante Yves Montand deltager i det store kup.

Det er den rene fryd at bladre i Cinematekets indbydende 64 sider store katalog, kuglepennen kommer frem, der bliver sat krydser, diskuteret med den bedre halvdel, vel vidende at vi alligevel ikke får tid til alt det vi gerne vil se eller gense.

For det er hvad kataloget byder på – retrospektive serier (Delon, Bogdanovich, Hasse og Tage, Rifbjerg på film…) og nye film, som aldrig vil kunne ses i biograferne. Lad mig nævne ”Arabian Nights”, som udover den berømmede dokumentarfilm ”The Square” af Jehane Noujaim (2013) også viser ”Mother of the Unborn” (2014) af ægyptiske Nadine Salib, som fik en Jury Special Award i First Appearance afdelingen ved IDFA 2014. Jeg havde fornøjelsen at være en af hendes konsulenter ved en workshop i Cairo for et par år siden, hun brændte for sin film, som hun i et interview i forbindelse med IDFA beskrev således:

“I was intrigued by the Egyptian ancient tradition of naming infertile women ‘Mother of the Unborn’, or ‘Um Ghayeb’ in Arabic,..
I’d heard this term used a lot in Upper Egypt and decided to investigate the issue. These women are often stigmatised, even sometimes accused of bringing bad luck.I wanted to make a film about the Mother of the Unborn, but I didn’t exactly know what it would be about. Deep in me, I wanted to meditate on why it was so important for the women in the region to have a baby and why the women in the region were so keen to carry on living in such a harsh environment.”

Og for at blive i regionen… I går havde vi besøg af min kones bror, som bor i New York og spurgte ham om han havde set nogle gode film for nylig. Han nævnte en palæstinensisk film fra Vestbredden om 18 køer, som de israelske myndigheder havde fundet farlige for sikkerheden… og voilá, her er den i kataloget i forbindelse med Salaam Filmfestival, ”The Wanted 18” er titlen og instruktøren Amer Shomali er til stede ved forevisningen af filmen, som svogeren fandt morsom og flot lavet.

Jeg kunne blive ved – foreløbig har vi booket os ind til Richard Linklaters Before-trilogi, et marathon-arrangement med pauser og middag. Og de gratis børnefilm, vi kommer med den fire-årige! Han kalder det for ”Bedstes Biograf”.

http://www.dfi.dk/Filmhuset/Cinemateket.aspx

 

 

Listen to Me Marlon/ Reviews

The film opened theatrically in New York, but had its premiere beginning of this year at the Sundance Festival. Reviews below, click and get them in full length. Many superlatives but if you read the full review from NY Times, you will find several reservations made. Anyway, looking fwd to watch this one about (one of?) the greatest screen actors, a story more or less told by himself through the sound tapes he recorded.

Sure to hold surprises for even those obsessives whove absorbed every Brando performance and factoid.

Dennis Harvey·Variety

It’s a blast to hear Marlon Brando talking about his life in “Listen to Me Marlon,” which is almost entirely narrated by the actor, largely through snippets of audio recordings he made over decades.

Manohla Dargis·New York Times

The man himself is endlessly fascinating, so it’s hard to fault a movie that ditches anything extraneous (especially talking-head testimonials) in order to let him tell his own story in his own words.

Mike D’Angelo·A.V. Club

Although movies about celebrities are often fatuous and superfluous, that’s anything but the case with Stevan Riley’s “Listen to Me Marlon.”

Joe Morgenstern·Wall Street Journal

Stevan Riley’s Listen to Me Marlon is the greatest, most searching documentary of an actor ever put on film, and it’s no coincidence that it’s about film’s greatest and most searching actor.

David Edelstein·Vulture

It’s as if Marlon Brando knew someday someone would go through the tape archive to try to discover what made him tick.

Jordan Hoffman·New York Daily News

Photo from ”A Streetcar Named Desire”, Elia Kazan, 1951.

Wiseman, Janis Joplin, Helmut Berger

To continue some name dropping after receiving today’s realscreen newsletter that announces ”the slate of docs” to be screened at the Venice International Film Festival, edition 72nd!

World class name Frederick Wiseman presents ”In Jackson Heights”, which was pitched at the Hot Docs accompanied by a Kickstarter campaign! Amy Berg has made a film on ”Janis” (photo) – oh when will I run into that!

And I discover that Austrian Andreas Horvath has made a film on Helmut Berger, 71 years old, once called the most beautiful man in the world, whose career is closely connected to the master, the fantastic director Luchino Visconti, especially with the film ”Ludwig” from 1972, 4 hours long, a film that I saw with my friend Kjell Væring in a cinema on Champs Elysées. We went back to Copenhagen and wrote an enthusiastic article to the Danish newspaper Politiken… memories.

Apart from the three mentioned there are documentaries by Gianfranco Pannone, by Sergei Loznitsa and one on Brian de Palma – the festival runs September 2 to 12.

http://realscreen.com