Denis Shabaev: Together

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.

They both have a camera and they film each other inside the car, in the hotel rooms where they stay, the landscape, playgrounds along the road and Pippi’s park – and out comes this wonderful portrait of a girl, who is able to reflect on her own life, formulate what she thinks and hopes for, and at the same time be the little girl, who sits with a toy horse on her lap, misses her grandmother and talks with her father on whether they shall turn around and go back to Moscow – or continue to Pippi Land.

A small conflict in a film that has a lovely sketchy non-formatted character with shaky camera movements, warm moments between the two, a playful journey that is interrupted by the ring of father’s cell phone, and her father asking: Would you like to live with me instead of with grandmother. The film has a wonderful b/w opening – ”you can’t run away from yourself” – and an ending with the girl anticipating/imitating the everyday world she has to go back to. A film with a universal appeal.

Russia, 2014, 52 mins.

Winner of Main Prize at DocuDays UA 2015 in the Docu/Life Category.

Denis Klebeev: Strange Particles

I have to confess that I have no idea of what the young physicist Konstantin talks about to himself, when he sits writing his equations in his datcha or when he tries to make his students interested in physics at the summer camp, where he is one of the teachers and where he has no success in making the students do their homework or have the same enthusiastic ambition as he has – to find out how the world is built. He is, as I understand it from his continous awards mentioned, a scientist of high quality. And a totally lonely wolf.

And yet I follow the film in great concentration because it is a very fine piece of vérité filmmaking, where the director, who is also the cameraman, who is also the editor, ”simply” follow the protagonist, who often communicates directly to him. At least he, the director, is interested in him, the physicist, who sees himself as ”a fish out of water”.

You can’t help feel sorry for him in most of the situations – totally absurd it is when he tries to teach on the beach on a lovely night at the same time as another group of students are having a lesson in how to dance chacha.

Is he one of these classical Russian characters we know from drama and literature, who does not fit in and gets no inspiration to develop their creativity, as he says at the end to the director behind the camera? One who finds his joy in listening to music that he ”feels”.

Russia, 2014, 51 mins.

The film won the Joris Ivens Award at the Cinema du Réel Paris,2015 and will be shown at Hot Docs in the coming days.

Beata Bubenec: God’s Will

This is the kind of portrait documentary, where you learn a lot. In this case you watch the film with open mouth whispering to yourself, ”this can’t be true” even if you know from other media that this kind of fanatic intolerance and hatred exists in today’s Russia and that a youth organisation leader as Dmitry Enteo is welcomed to meet high ranked representatives from the church as well as politicians and people from the legal administration. I googled ”Dmitry Enteo” after my screening and saw that he has the opinion that the murdered Charlie Hebdo journalists were the real terrorists and deserved the punishment for blasphemy – and that he thinks that Putin might be God!

Much credit to the film team for inviting the viewer to get close to Dmitry Enteo in his home, to hear him recite poems, to see him with his girl friend , to see him in the streets with his colleagues from the organisation God’s Will. There’s a lot of street clashes caught on camera, maybe too many, and yet there are moments that stand out like one with a young woman crying because a friend of hers, a former friend, now is on the aggressive anti-gay side, including his beating up of innocent demonstrators.

Some might say, why make a film about such a fanatic, some might say idiot, who advocates violence. I would say precisely therefore, we have to know what goes on in the heads of rethorically competent, seducing youth leaders like him, don’t we?

To have empathy with him if that has been the ambition, sorry No.

Russia, 2014, 55 mins.

The film won the Main Prize at the DocuDays UA 2015 in the category Docu/Right

Kateryna Gornostai: Maidan Everywhere

Synopsis from director: This film tells the story of the previous year, that for me began, when Maidan had started and maybe didn’t end yet. The whole year we have lived in the atmosphere of revolution, then war. Whatever you did – you saw this things on the background, you always mean them, although you live not even on a border of war, but deep in the rear. I want to remember this year, I want to keep the memory of all the people who surrounded me. The year of Maidan, the year marked by war and peace…

And the director does so in a film that is impressionistic in style, a bit difficult to grap when it comes to montage principles, but it lives through its obvious presence in situations, through the joy and enthusiasm that comes from the screen. A fine framed location is the Red Square in Moscow: the young woman unfolds at the end of the film the Ukranian flag, has to pack it away, when the police arrives, she does so with a smile and whispers “Maidan is Everywhere”, as she said in the beginning as well… There are some great scenes from private appartments, where the youngsters live, and from the countryside, I would have loved to have more of that. Maybe a small fatigue is coming to me now after many Maidan-films.

Ukraine, 2015, 36 mins.

The film won the Andriy Matrosov Award from the DocuDays Organization Committee at the DocuDays UA 2015. Motivation: For the victorious spirit of freedom.

PS. Words about Andriy Matrosov from the website of the festival: Andriy Matrosov was an unusual person. Everything he did, he did with much creation and love. In his incomplete 42 years of life, Andriy had time to become photoartist, cameraman, journalist, human rights activist, the head of journalist association “South”, film producer and producer of Docudays UA festival. And the main thing – he was a man who lived with an open heart, who put all his forces into good and useful deeds.

Doc Alliance (Also) Gives an Award

A press release came in this morning from Andrea Pruchová, Doc Alliance. As usual well written and precise in information. Easy to quote from. As a true fan of Doc Alliance I hurry to bring you the newest from the Prague based documentary promoter:

”Discovering new film talents has become an inherent part of the brand of the European Doc Alliance Selection Award. (The) seven key European documentary festivals (see below) have chosen seven remarkable films and filmmakers, one of whom will become the eighth holder of the award this year…

The financial contribution of 500 euro and the Doc Alliance Selection Award 2015; such is the reward waiting for the future eighth winner of the documentary award. Awarded since 2008 by CPH:DOX, Docs Against Gravity FF, Doclisboa, DOK Leipzig, FID Marseille, Jihlava IDFF and Visions du Réel, the award represents a key project of the Alliance (along with the documentary portal DAFilms.com) whose goals include collaboration between film festivals, support of quality documentary projects as well as looking for new solutions of their public presentation.

“Our main goal is primarily to promote quality documentary films rather than the brands of the individual festivals. Joining forces for the purpose of supporting new filmmakers and projects; that is where we see the sense of our common activities,” says project manager Nina Numankadić…

Each of the participating festivals has nominated one film that they consider worthy of notice. The selection of seven competition films focuses primarily on film debuts by emerging filmmakers whose work should definitely not be overlooked.

”The very fact that they have been nominated represents a great benefit to the filmmakers. All of the Doc Alliance festivals have agreed to screen three of the films nominated in the given year and to make the rest of the films accessible in their video library,” says Nina Numankadić…”

And the nominated films are:

Homeland (Iraq Year Zero); Abbas Fahdel (IQ, 2015, 334´) nominated by Visions du Réel (photo, the film was the winner of the 2015 festival)

Walking Under Water; Eliza Kubarska (UK/PL/DE, 2014, 90´) nominated by Docs Against Gravity FF

Stranded in Canton; Måns Månsson (SE/DK/CN, 2014, 72´) nominated by CPH:DOX

Illusion; Sofia Marques (PT, 2014, 115´) nominated by Doclisboa

I Am the People; Anna Roussillon (FR, 2014, 110´) nominated by Jihlava IDFF

Haunted; Liwaa Yazji (DE/SY, 2014, 113´) nominated by FID Marseille

All Things Ablaze; Oleksandr Techynskyi, Aleksey Solodunov, Dmitry Stoykov (UA, 2014, 90´) nominated by DOK Leipzig

Happy to say (!) that I have only seen the last one which is a strong visit to the turbulent times in Ukraine – much waits to be seen, especially I look forward to find 334 minutes for the film from Iraq, here is the catalogue text from Visions du Réel:

”Two years in the life of an Iraqi family, before and after the American intervention. This powerful collective novel gives life to a saga that flows as slowly as the river that crosses Baghdad. The tragedy and the dignity of the Iraqi people come to life on the screen in the most intense moments. A reference work for the understanding of the Middle East in the past and the present.”

www.dafilms.com

Magnus Gertten: Every Face has a Name /2

På tirsdag 28. april kl. 17.00 vises Magnus Gerttens film Every Face has a Name i Grand biografen i København under et arrangement Dansk Røde Kors, Grand og Auto Images er gået sammen om: Flygtninge i Europa dengang og nu – De Hvide Busser 70 år efter.

Ove Rishøj Jensen fra Auto Images skriver i sin pressemeddelelse: ”Det er en film om flygtninge i Europa dengang og nu, en film der desværre er blevet højaktuel efter de seneste ugers begivenheder i Middelhavet. Røde Kors’ Hvide Busser transporterede i de sidste uger af Anden Verdenskrig over 15.000 krigsfanger fra de tyske koncentrationslejre til Danmark og Sverige. Den 28. april er det præcis 70 år siden at en kameramand filmede hundredevis af disse fangers ankomst til havnen i Malmö og dermed deres tilbagevenden til et nyt liv. I filmen fortæller 10 af de overlevende fanger om konsekvenserne af at kunne leve frit og om deres taknemmelighed for at blive hjulpet tilbage til livet igen. Parallelt med overlevernes fortællinger inkluderer filmen et link til de flygtningestrømme, vi ser komme til Europa i dag. ”

Her på Filmkommentaren har jeg skrevet sådan om filmen: ” Den 28. april 1945 kom 1948 flygtninge med skib til Malmö, jeg ser det i en smuk newsreel beregnet til biograferne næste dag. Eller rettere, jeg ser det i en hensynsfuldt og dygtigt bearbejdet version af optagelserne fra den dag. En fortællerstemme af den slags, jeg altid bliver tryg ved, tager over, tager ved hånden, fortæller roligt, hvad det er, jeg ser. Det er befriede fanger fra de efterhånden erobrede tyske koncentrationslejre, mange af dem jøder i sidste øjeblik reddet fra udryddelsen, polske unge, nogle mødre med børn, franske modstandsfolk og britiske efterretningsfolk og også dem, som var forfærdende uheldige på et bestemt sted et bestemt tidspunkt. Roligt vises deres ansigter, mange er nu glade og smilende, andre forholder sig afventende, vil jeg tro, i en smertende ro. Alt i denne film er ro, bliver jeg lovet, fra begyndelsen til slutningen. Det giver mig tid til at tænke mig om, til at huske selv, til at associere. Til at udvide filmen i en egentlig tilegnelse…” (Link til hele anmeldelsen)

Facebook events: www.facebook.com/events

Filmens trailer: vimeo.com/119082619

Filmens hjemmeside: http://everyfacehasaname.com/

Filmens Facebookside: https://www.facebook.com/EveryFaceHasAName

Herz Frank & Maria Kravchenko: Beyond the Fear

This article is brought now because the film has its international premiere at HotDocs in Toronto , tomorrow, April 25.

A long prologue: On this site Herz Frank (1926 – 2013) has an iconic status. Co-editor Allan Berg and I met the director at the Balticum Film & TV Festival on Bornholm in the 1990’es, later on in Riga, where we contributed verbally and (a bit) financially (Allan as consultant for The Danish Film Institute) to “Flashback”. Personally I have had the pleasure to have met Herz (Frank) in Tel Aviv on a couple of occasions. He has been a huge inspiration for me in my understanding of what documentaries are and can be.

Allow me to quote Herz: In front of me on my work table is the central fragment from Raphael’s fresco “The School of Athens”. Plato and Aristotle discuss the philosophical meaning of life. Plato is pointing upwards – the essence is the Idea! Aristotle, on the other hand, has his palm pointing down to the ground – the basis is the material! Even earlier in the Old Testament (Genesis) both views are united. In the first book of Moses the first lines states: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. Read – the spiritual and the material.

As a documentarian, I follow these principles directly. Facts have to be the basis for documentary films. And if we want to uncover the truth in them, facts have to be portrayed not only on the surface and as purely informative, but also through sensitive, spiritual eyes. Even better if one eye is dry, and the other – damp… Life has to be filmed imaginatively, and only then will we understand its deeper meaning. There is an image hiding in every detail of each fact, in each living and inanimate thing. You only have to know how to see and record them. A documentary camera is not a video-recorder in the street…

The deeper meaning… is what Herz Frank was seeking in his entire oeuvre. With a constant doubt in his search. Like for this film project that became his last film, made together with Maria Kravchenko, who finished their work in a brilliant way as co-director and editor. Half way through the film Herz Frank formulates the following linked to the film, the two are making and to the work of a documentarian:

Was it necessary to intrude with the camera into the complexity of life? Will our inclinations result in something heartbreaking, moving and artistic? But it is beyond me to give it up! Do you get me? To give it up mean to say that I am not alive anymore…

A short prologue IN the film: You hear the voice of Maria Kravchenko to an image of Herz Frank telling us the audience that Herz started shooting this film about ten years ago; and that she joined him later to finish the film after his death. Cut to three persons on their way to a prison, a grown up Larisa and two children. Cut to archive material of November 1995, Rabin was shot. Cut to the murderer, Yigal Amir. Cut to a phone conversation between a small boy Yinon and his father Yigal. This opening of a film should be obligatory to watch for all documentary professionals.

These five minutes before the title “Beyond the Fear” appears on the screen, presents the story lines that are followed. Here is the synopsis, cited from a press release I received from the producer Guntis Trekteris, EgoMedia Riga :

Decisions made by the protagonists of the film change their life irreversibly. Yigal Amir at the age of 26 assassins the Israeli Prime Minister. He is sentenced to life imprisonment and becomes the most hated criminal of the state. Larisa, an émigré from Russia, a mother of four, divorces her husband to marry the assassin and give birth to his son. In the course of many years the authors of the film are trying to understand this complicated story until one of them – Herz Frank – does not live to see his film finished, remaining on the threshold of the eternal secret of life, death and love…

It’s a precise text that avoids any tabloid approach or sensational sales talk but conveys that the ambition of this dramatic, psychological film essay is to get closer “to understand”. Contrary to how the media in Israel covered the story (a crazy woman, a fanatic murderer, the fall of a nation, a marriage, a child is born…) this is presented as the eternal fight between Good and Evil, the subtitle of Herz Frank’s film from 1978, “Ten Minutes Older”.

Which is about children watching a puppet show with all their innocence readable in their faces. “Beyond the Fear” cleverly also takes us down that alley. Slowly the focus is put on the small child of Larisa and Yagil. What will his future be, the son of a murderer, who sits for life. The mother Larisa expresses her worry about having drawn her children into moments, where they are cursed in daily situations and knows that Yinon one day will experience that his father is in prison because… where she in the beginning told him that his father was away for work. Yinon learns why. The dramaturgical stroke of genius, actually what binds the film, the red thread in a way, that gives the emotional impact that Herz Frank wanted, is the phone calls between Yinon and his father- They have to be short, according to prison rules, but Yagil tells Yinon stories from the Bible – about Good and Evil and what God can do and has done. And Yinon asks questions as children do it. As the film grows he is taking more and more space. “Heartbreaking and moving” to think about his future.

That was two of the Herz words, the third is “artistic”. Yes, this film has a high artistic quality, even if (as Allan Berg noted the first time we saw it together) you lack the voice off commentary of Herz Frank, this quiet voice of reflection on “la condition humaine”. I could also have done without the predictable vox-pop reporting from the streets, where most people condemn Yagil and Larisa in short rude bites of aggression. On the other side Kravchenko has fully succeeded to give the film space for beautiful wordless sequences and a montage that is superb. I want to re-use the phrase “stroke of genius” to describe how the visual information of the death of Herz is connected to Yinon’s trying to understand what death is.

Do we get to a deeper understanding of the relationship between Larisa and Yagil? No, we get to know them, to have sympathy for them and their constant being in the media, but first of all we get to know that Life is a mystery, never to be solved but to be lived and experienced and interpreted by great artists.

A short epilogue: The film had its national premieres in Riga in December 2014 at the new Riga International Film Festival and in Moscow at the prestigious Russian documentary film festival, “Artdocfest”, famous for its free spirit and open turning against the official state policy.

According to the producer Guntis Trekteris “it is a huge success in Russia, where we got two main professional awards – Laureal Breach (the National Prize for documentary and TV films, ed.) and Russian Film Critics guild prize for the best documentary.”

And now Canada and consequently many other festivals, I guess.

Latvia, Russia, Israel, 2014, 80 mins.

Play.Doc Festival in Galician City Tui

Thanks to a Cineuropa website (very actual, well written and edited, covering also a lot of documentary events and films) and a link from the article, I got to know about the Play-Doc 2015 festival (Festival Internacional de Documentals) that runs now and until April 26, the 11th edition, with welcoming words from Mexican director Nicolás Pereda, I have taken a clip:

“In a world in which people communicate with each other by phone and computer, in which artistic collectives are becoming ever thinner on the ground and cultural events are becoming more and more impersonal, Playdoc is a breath of fresh air, a model for other festivals across the world to follow.

Playdoc is a festival made in the same way as the films which it screens. For those filmmakers working outside the industry, events of this type are essential. The festival gives attendees time and space to reflect on the films…”

The program proves he is right. There is a competition where I recognise films like Göran Olsson’s “Concerning Violence” (photo), Fernand Melgar’s “The Shelter” but most interesting is that the festivals hosts a seminar on criticism, a series of workshops led by super-competent Marta Andreu from Barcelona, who has written fine articles for the website and is talking about the project “Docs in Progress” on a video that introduces what the festival does, again a clip from a text by Andreu:

… In December 2010, Play-Doc initiated the first edition of Docs in Progress. For two weeks eight film-makers lived in a rural guest-house, in the vicinity of Tui, in order to share the process of working on their documentaries at the editing stage. Throughout the encounter, the exchange of viewings, trials, experiences and creative concerns generated a space for reflection, and for creative questioning, in order to come closer to the very best version of each of the works selected. Film-makers coming from distinct parts of the world (Uruguay, Spain, Germany, Iceland, Argentina, Brazil and Galicia) have, in this way, made available to others their own creation; putting it at the service of dialogue; asking the images themselves what film lies buried within them; whilst exposing the images to the gaze of others, so as to realise its birth…

And of course there is a retrospective – with Claire Simon.

Unpretentious and serious, like it!

http://cineuropa.org/nw.aspx?t=newsdetail&l=en&did=290091

http://www.play-doc.com/web2015/en/index.html

Luciano Barisone Interview

The 46th (!) edition of Visions du Réel is going on with still a couple of days left. Before the festival Doc Alliance brought an interview with the festival director for some years, Luciano Barisone, a man who is not afraid of bringing non-tabloid, non-journalistic artistic documentaries to his festival. I have copy-pasted from the interview a couple of interesting sequences:

Barisone: The “vision” is in the name of the festival together with the word “réel”. It’s a gaze upon human evolution, a tight connection between reality and imagination, a meeting between a state of mind and a state of the world. We deal with creative documentaries and we think of creativity as Robert Bresson did: “To create is not to distort or invent people and things. It is to weave people and things who exist and as they exist into a new relationship.”

This year’s edition of the festival has been strongly linked with the personality and the work of Barbet Schroeder, a Swiss-born director playing an important role in the French Nouvelle Vague movement as well as working with famous Hollywood stars. Why have you decided to focus on Schroeder’s work? Your decision has also affected the visual style of the 46th edition…

Barisone: Last year we decided to create an award named Maître du Réel, in order to honour a major filmmaker who has been working in documentary and narrative features, following the path of a realistic representation of world history and human events. Barbet Schroeder completely embodies this for his career as a whole and for his way of approaching reality.

http://dafilms.dk/news/2015/4/6/Interview_LucianoBarisone

http://www.visionsdureel.ch

Alex Gibney: Going Clear /2

Going Clear (”Scientologys religiøse fængsel”) vises i DR2 Dokumania i dag 21. april klokken 20.35. Senere på aftenen, klokken 23.00 bringes et interview, som Clement Kjersgaard lavede med Alex Gibney i forbindelse med at filmen blev vist på Sundance Film Festival.

Jeg kan bestemt godt se Alex Gibneys film som en storstilet ambition om underholdende formidling af en journalistisk undersøgelse af en række biografiske, organisationshistoriske, juridiske og især moralske forhold inden for Scientology, en undersøgelse, som resulterer i en række afsløringer af skjulte metoder og sammenhænge. Men det lykkedes ikke for mig at være underholdt af Gibneys arbejde, og det lykkedes heller ikke for mig ved et enkelt gennemsyn egentlig at fatte historien, så han han havde heller ikke i formidlingen held i forhold til mig.

Det er formen, han anvender, som er i vejen, som kommer imellem værket og mig, kommer mellem dets vigtige optagelser af samtaler med tidligere medlemmer af Scientology, mellem dets omfattende arkivmateriale og min oplevelse. Det er et imponerende materiale, og jeg tror heller ikke det i og for sig er udygtigt anvendt i filmen; det er brugt nøjagtigt som man gør i den slags film, ikke bedre, ikke ringere. Men jeg er træt af formen og har egentlig aldrig accepteret den. Der er en filmisk kulturkløft mellem den slags tv-dokumentar og mig.

Det drejer sig især om anvendelsen af scenerne med de medvirkende (som på fotografiet). De er alle smukt fotograferet, de er de eneste scener i filmen, jeg ville kunne falde til ro ved, resten af billederne er så frygteligt grimme. De medvirkende er alle stærke personer, som gør stort indtryk på mig. Men scenernes samvær brydes op, for Gibney er alene interesseret i enkeltsætninger og disse enkeltsætningers faktuelle indhold, for af det bygger han sin historie. Så disse scener oplever jeg i stumper og stykker og resten af billedsiden filmen igennem er reduceret til konventionel billeddækning og illustration, fyld altså.

Og så drejer min frustration sig netop om behandlingen af den del af dette materiale, som er arkivstof. Det interessanteste er filmoptagelser, som knytter sig til Scientology-stifterens biografi. Meget af det er faktisk fine gamle optagelser. Der værnes blot ikke i behandlingen af dem om billedernes egne tavse udsagn, der er simpelthen ikke blik for den kvalitet. De lægges for mig at se blot ind som illustrationer, fyld, mens lydsiden stykket sammen af de medvirkendes fortællinger er alene om at udgøre Gibneys historie uden at komme i nærheden af en sammenfatning ensige en essayistik, jeg kan tage ind som interesseret og opmærksomt publikum. Resten af arkivstoffet er klip fra især tv-shows. Det er bare så larmende og grimt og regulært kedeligt. Ind imellem lyser nogle smukt filmede rekonstruktioner op, rekonstuktioner af organisationens helt særlige psykoanalysepraksis. Det er imidlertid blot vignetter i fremstillingen, men det er interessant, det er et mix af Freuds erindringsmetode og politiets løgnedetektor metode. Men jo slet ikke nok til at redde Gibneys film. Til mig, som forbliver skuffet.

USA 2015, 114 min.

SYNOPSIS

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief is a 2015 documentary film about Scientology directed by Alex Gibney, based on Lawrence Wright’s 2013 book, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prnisoof Belief. Peroduced by HBO, the film premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. It received widespread praise from critics for its deconstruction of the church’s claims through a combination of presenting a condensed history of Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, how celebrities interact with the church, the stories of a number of ex-members and the abuse and exploitation that they described seeing and experiencing. (Wikipedia)

FILMOGRAFI

Taxi to the dark side, 2007

Gonzo:Life and Work of Hunter Thompson, 2008

LINK

www.dr.dk/tv/se/dokumania/dokumania-scientologys-religioese-faengsel (Filmen i DOKUMANIAS udgave med danske undertekster)

https://www.dr.dk/tv/se/bag-om-scientology/bag-om-scientology#!/ (Clement Kjersgaards begavede interview (IN ENGLISH) med en imødekommende Alex Gibney, som sætter sin film i sammenhæng med sit samlede filmværk og røber sit filmiske forbillede, filmen, som satte ham i gang som instruktør. Det er tankevækkende!)