A bit into the beginning of the film I said to myself: OMG, is this a film where they are going to talk the whole way through! Of course I understood that the filmmakers had to make the viewer agree to ”where” and ”why” and ”who”. Who the characters are, their relationship, their mission in Uganda – in other words to give information necessary for the further development of a story that grows smoothly and slowly as the rythm of life does in the country where it takes place. But that much talking?

I have often thought about openings of a creative non-journalistic documentary film like this as a take-off in a flight. Sometimes you feel it takes ages before you are up there, where there is a flow,  waiting for the turbulences (the conflicts) to come, where you can move on.

The turbulences arrive in ”Leaving Africa”, the talking goes on and I arrive to love what I see and hear from two lovely women, Riitta Kujala from Finland and Catherine Othieno, called Kata, from Uganda. And I get to love to stay with them at the main location of the film, their veranda outside the house, where they talk and where Kata dances while Riitta smokes her cigarettes, coughs and reads. And where they have been living together since 1993.

Riitta is about to retire and return to Finland after 27 years on mission in Uganda. Ugandan Catherine is the executive director of the Finnish ngo supported organisation Cofcawe that does family planning for grown ups and health and sex education for children. She is the one to carry on with the work. If she is allowed to do so – problems appear from the authorities: the two are accused of promoting lesbianism and homosexuality and their permission to go on with Cofcawe is taken away.

But before that happens you have seen them in action in classes where both women and men take part. You hear comments from some of the students and you meet wonderful Catholic Daizy, who is 34 years old and has 8 children! (She is the one on the photo together with Catherine in a radio programme, where she tells that she has started to use birth control thanks to Cofcawe).

Our aim is ”to help women come out of poverty”, says Riitta, who also nails the problems of fertile and ressource rich Uganda down to be a ”gender based poverty”.

Built up in a classic way the conflict is introduced, the efforts are made to get back the permission to operate in moments that are – as they express it – of ”constant uncertainty” and ”emotional stress”. They get it back and Riitta can prepare to leave for her retirement in snowy Finland.

The relationship between the two is beautifully described through the many situational scenes around the house and when they work ”on location”. The story of Catherine who was abused as a child and later on raped, told through her voice-off, a bit heavy and especially in the beginning used solution, probably the only one possible, is very strong as is her emotional gratitude towards Riitta, who got to know her back in 1986.

Riitta, well, I have met so many of these no-bullshit Finnish women, she is one of them, clear in speech, chain-smoking and totally committed to what she is doing in a homophobic country. You can only love her!

Objections? Could there have been more with fabulous looking Daizy, the mother of 8, who in a scene teaches her daughters what it is to have periods? Could the filmmakers have used less music, which sometimes works well but also in some sequences are what I normally characterise as ”putting too much sugar on” – a desease in modern documentary. There are so much emotional power in many scenes between the two that music is not needed. And there is one small tear too much for me in the film, whereas the emotional outburst of Kata in the office after the permission to carry on has been given is astonishing and unique describing her reaction so much different to the Nordic usual hugging of Riitta. Cultural differences and yet a beautiful friendship full of love and understanding. 

Finland, 2015, 84 mins.

www.guerillafilms.fi

So, there it is, the film about the Lithuanian photographer Vitas Luckus (1943-1987), his life, his art and first of all his love story with muse and wife, Tatyana. It is made by Giedre Zickyte, who has been working on it for years. I heard about it five (maybe more) years ago, when she was pitching the film at the Baltic Sea Forum, and since then I have had the pleasure to watch sequences and rough versions. Yes, pleasure, because Giedre Zickyte has kept the passion for her film the whole way through, and pleasure because you can see Quality, high Quality in the final film. For me it’s brilliant, nothing less.

As I don’t come ”innocent” to the film, I can not give it marks, others will do so, and lucky Krakow Film Festival that they will have the international premiere at the end of this month.

”A man of exceptional gentleness” says one of the handful of friends, who met and worked with Luckus. The friends are all clearly emotional, when they talk about him and the time, where they were together in a bohemian life, a small group of independent artists, who tried to be independent to make art in the USSR, where censorship was normal and Luckus artistic photos were rarely exhibited.

His photos, shown generously in the film, are wide-ranging, black & white, social, (almost) always with people as the motive, many from travels are presented in many different ways narratively. Through a magnifying glass on contact sheets in a fine visual flow or photo by photo on the screen fading in and out with time to watch and discover. Or through camera movements from photo to photo…. Has to be said that Luckus, together with Tatyana, made good money on making advertisement campaigns.

But – as the title indicates – the film is first of all a love story told primarily through the photos of Vitas and Tatyana, a love story that is so obvious, when you watch how he composes the portraits of Tatyana, how the camera is constantly caressing the beautiful woman, with or without clothes. Her face is so full of expressions and you can see that he has caught her in true observational documentarian style as well as in arranged situations.

Their relationship was not always easy. Luckus was a classical bohemian artist, who had (as one of the friends says) alcohol as his demon, who was away from home in periods – another friend said that they were on the edge of divorce several times, but found out that ”we could not live without each other”, as Tatyana says from her home in the USA, where she has been living since she felt she had to leave Vilnius after Luckus took his own life after having taken another person’s life.

These tragic events frame the story of the life of Vitas Luckus but – in his spirit – with gentleness, reflecting what you can see in his world class photos – sensuality. Luckus jumped out of the window – ”our whole life went out of that window”, says Tatyana. One of the friends pick a photo taken by Luckus: A photo of their sitting room with footprints on the ceiling leading to an open window… Magic!

Tatyana, who has kept his archive with her all the time, returns to Vilnius in an epilogue in the film to open an exhibition with his works, including some large series of close-ups of faces. Magnificent! She carries the love story in a non-sentimental way, saying little in the film but enough, charisma!

For me this must give an international carreer for a film that has Audrius Kezemys to give amazing cinematography that corresponds to the photographer, Danielius Kokanauskis and the director herselt to give the intensity and the flow of narration and Dagnė Vildiūnaitė and her company Just a Moment to produce.

Yes, I love that film.

Lithuania, 84 mins., 2014

I have to go to words from literature, as we normally do when writing about films. This Ukrainian documentary is prose and poetry and essay at the same time. It is informative and emotional. You learn from it as you always do, when a skilled film crew takes you to a place, where you have not been before and that you know nothing about – and it does not limit itself to an anthropological or etnographic approach but succeeds in conveying an amazingly beautiful (in image, sound and characters) artistic interpretation of a tradition that is disappearing. And it invites you to reflect as does an essay.

The location is the Ukrainian Carphatian Mountains and as for content, here is a quote from a text brought on screen in the beginning of the film: … (they) leave their villages for 4 months to graze their flocks on highland pastures… only a few remain to carry on the craft of their ancestors…

That’s actually what it is about, past and present, and what you need to know before you are taken into the lives of the three protagonists, who push the narrative ahead. They are from three generations: Ivan the 9 year old boy, Vasyl 39 years old and Ivan 82 year old, the trio who are step by step characterised through words and wordless sequences, via cuts from one to the other, to end up having all three of them together in a shack in the mountains, in one of many memorable moments.

Mostly thanks to the old Ivan, who is the one who can tell about how it was before, what he remembers from the sheep herding tradition, at the same time as the film gives us his sadness and grief. His wife died a couple of years ago and now he is preparing for his own departure from the earth: He has built his own coffin, he shows to the camera what he will wear when in the coffin and he regrets having been away for so long from his wife, when working in the mountains. So does the wife of Vasyl in a short sequence, with tears in her eyes, she says: I’ve been alone for 15 summers now.

Ivan, the boy, goes to school, you see him sleepy and grumpy in cold weather outside a shack, you see him as a shepherd caring about a sheep with a bad leg, you see him lying in the grass laughing. The latter in a scene that has no explanation as such, typical for the film that includes several scenes of moments that can express emotions (here maybe freedom and innocence of childhood) and has no informational or structural importance. Thus ”Living Fire” goes wonderfully beyond traditional narrative to become visual poetry. Equally there are some stunningly wonderful sequences of Cinema Pur mixing the sound of lambs being born and music in a congenial montage.

The camerawork (Oleksandr Pozdnyakov, Mykyta Kuzmenko) contributes strongly to create the spiritual dimension of the film as does the music score composed by Alla Zahaikevych. It is much more than a support to the image, it has its own life and beauty bringing the story to a reflective level.

A piece of reference and guidance: I was thinking of Pelechian and his ”Seasons” when watching, as well as Latvian Viesturs Kairiss film ”Pelican in the Desert”. Two other great works, like this of a superb lyrical quality.

The film was given a Special Jury Prize at the recent Hot Docs Festival in Toronto.

Ukraine, 2014, 77 mins.

www.zhyvavatra.com.ua