First I have to make a confession, I didn’t make it to the end of the 5 hours long film! Not because I was bored, I just had a painful neck. But I did see about 240 minutes and I will be writing about those.

92 years old Jonas Mekas’ latest film Scenes from the life of Raimund Abraham is a portrait of his friend, the Austrian architect Raimund Abraham (1933-2010), who lived and worked in New York for more than four decades. Abraham was a radical and consistent architect and an important figure at the Cooper Union, a renowned progressive architecture school in New York.

Mekas generously sent the film to the Copenhagen Architecture Festival at his own initiative with a handwritten note saying that he thought this would fit in well with the festival. And it certainly did.

The film is not an integrated oeuvre in the sense of As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief glimpses of Beauty (2000), which is a true work of poetry. No, Scenes from the Life of Raimund Abraham is more of a footnote to the latter, a thread to be followed where the caption could be “Friendship”. And within the friendship lies the admiration for the work of the architect. The method is the same, an interweaving of old and new material, the new material filmed with a small handheld DV-camera (with the image and sound that goes with it), recordings of life as it happens around Mekas. A lot of cooking and eating meals, drinking wine in bars, gatherings of family and friends, discussions between friends about work, art or just this and that. But we also meet Abraham at work, the hectic end to the restoration of the Anthology Film Archive, Mekas’ lifework, and the construction of the Austrian Cultural Forum, designed by Abraham down to the smallest detail, which we follow until the opening in 2002. A crazy 26-floor building squished in on a tiny stamp-sized site on the crowded eastside of Manhattan, an impressive and beautiful piece of architecture.

The portrait is thus made up of a succession of scenes, all of them with the Mekas signature: filming of life as it really is, an exercise in how to capture the atmosphere. In his own words: «With video, my editing became choosing those moments where I succeeded in catching unique moments of real life » (interview in The Brooklyn Rail, 2010) 

This is what makes it worth it staying for hours in the good company of Mekas and friends. You get very close to something real. It means that you get so much information from a scene like f. ex. where a mutual friend (who happens to be Peter Kubelka, the Austrian experimental filmmaker) has brought sausages from Austria and the treat is being shared late at night in the kitchen, or when Mekas climbs down a ladder with the running camera around his neck in to the hole that is to become Abrahams building, or when you get to sit through an entire lecture on architecture at Cooper Union. Glimpses of life that adds up to a portrait were you get something else than from a more traditional narrative.

Mekas’ method, his filming philosophy, becomes a sort of “cinema vérité” and maybe here is the antithesis to Joshua Oppenheimer’s (and Herzog’s) statement that all documentaries are performances. There is no fly on the wall, the camera is so integrated with the man that holds it, that we end up seeing with his eyes.

Jonas Mekas: Scenes from the Life of Raimund Abraham, 2015. 300 min.

You can visit The Austrian Cultural Forum New York on 11 East 52nd Street, Manhattan.

Interviews with Jonas Mekas:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhx6oe_dicussion-avec-jonas-mekas_shortfilms

https://vimeo.com/55519339

Marseille. The city of Zinedine Zidane. A multicultural melting pot with areas/quartiers, where violence is a daily menu with gangs operating, murders and huge social problems. If Zidane is an icon for football fans, Yvan Sorel is it for practioners of MMA (Mixed Martial Arts). He is the character of this impressive piece of observational documentary at its best – camera Joseph Areddy.

Yvan Sorel – whose face reminds me of Karim Benzema, full of aggression and vulnerable at the same time – has his ”Team Sorel”, where he and other fighters teach kids and teenagers the sport and how have to behave in the world. He is a father figure for them, being tough if they have not attended school or having lied or other matters that do not fit into good manners. Contrary to the teachers I had in school, Yvan Sorel does this by swearing the worst in the French vocabulary and/or promising them ”to beat the hell out of them”. In French!

The camera follows Sorel, when he is with his girl friend at home – she is a nurse and sees the damages of violence closely – or when he is with his family or friends smoking the shisha or at a tournament in Liverpool. Most of the film, however, circles around him at the training place interacting with his students. The camera has caught  extraordinary moments with kids – the boy on the photo with Sorel was given the homework to write down twenty words that communicate the positive sides of Life. He did so! And his mother was shocked with joy. ”I’ll call your mother”, is a phrase often used by Sorel, the fathers are not there, many are in prison, we were told by the director in the Q&A after the screening at the American Documentary Film Festival. Many scenes with the kids are beautiful like the one where he gives 1€ to each of his sister’s kids if they can answer what is 3+7, and what is biggest 200 or 300? They made it!

Another issue of the film is the constant struggle by Sorel and his team to get a gym where he can have his training. The mayor of the arrondissement in Marseille visits Sorel, says that she will do all she can but nothing happens but a medal being given to the fighter. He is quite frustrated by this.

Back to the camera work and the editing that a couple of times lifts the observations to pure poetry, where the fighters movements are being set in slow motion. Like a ballet.

The film was given the first Robert Drew Verité Award at the Mystery Screening of the closing ceremony monday night at the festival. 

Switzerland/France, 2014, 80 mins.

http://www.americandocumentaryfilmfestival.com

Esther’s father married and divorced 5 times. Why? And how might that influence my life, the director wants to find out and makes a film that ends with footage from her own marriage, where she is walking the aisle with her grandfather – the father would not come to Toulouse for the wedding. To be said, Esther is French/American.

The father is the main protagonist, who does not want to be in the film. Well, he is in the many archive clips that his daughter uses for the film and we see him being married for the sixth time and on several other occasions. But he is never in a conversation with the daughter behind the camera. So the answer to the Why, we don’t get from him.

It does not matter, ”Out of Love” is a thrilling personal film based on family archive material, luckily full of humour and life. Thanks to the mother Hélène and to the second wife Cathy, who had a child with the father and at times took care of his two girls, Esther and Sarah. Their presence gives the film a light tone. They were both very much in love with the charming American, ”love is never lost” as the mother says as she is taken to the church, where they married and talks with her daughter, the one behind the camera, who asks all the questions… that’s what documentarians are supposed to do! The same with Cathy, no regrets, beautiful memories, she never remarried (Esther’s mother did, she has been married to Mathieu for 20 years). Cathy’s home videos are as all personal archive material gently integrated in the narrative.

Back to the men. The most impressive and emotional moment in the film is the conversation Esther has with her grandfather. He and grandmother, who suffers from alzheimers, have been married for 50 years – what is the secret Esther asks? He talks so well, the grandfather, about respect and sensuality. And in the next scene you see him carressing his ill wife.

The father… at the Q&A after the screening at Palm Springs a man expressed that he ”was sort of mad at him”, and indeed why-the-hell could he not come to his daughter’s wedding. On the other hand his daughter, the director, makes a fine, respectful effort to let him remain the male, who never grew up and is not able to show emotions. Therefore it is well placed that we see him shoveling snow at his house at the same time as the wedding happens. No, not mad but sad!

It is not easy to make a personal film – when does the private become interesting and thought-provoking for the rest of us? It needs cinematic skills and a good story and strong characters. This film covers all three elements.

Watched at American Documentary Film Festival, March 2015.

www.outoflovemovie.com

Peter Bogdanovich joked about himself, ”I master the namedrop”, he said, referring to his enormous knowledge of films and film stars, actors and directors. What I am about to do now is precisely the same, namedropping, films and directors, which I have seen during the 5 day festival here in Palm Springs. Some films will in the coming days get their own longer review.

Taking them in the order that I watched them: ”On Beauty” (31 mins., Joanna Rudnick) was a fresh tv-portrait of fashion photographer Rick Guidotti, who left the celebrities and top models

to take photos of handicapped people, re-interpreting what is beauty. There are some stunning photos of young girls with albinism. I had expected much more from ”Kismet” (66 mins., Nina Marie Paschalidou) which I knew from pitch sessions in Europe but was disappointed with the catalogue-like structure of this film on Turkish soap operas and their popularity. ”Big Voice” (83 mins., Varda Bar-Kar) is a good film about a high school choir director Huls and his way of teaching and ineracting with the students. He is charismatic, he talks well (but gosh American docs and interviews!), it is a joyful film, full of music, unfortunately a film that is edited according to the interviews/the words and not according to what could become a visual flow. I did not understand everything said in the poetic commentary that followed the ”One Hundred Mules Walking the Los Angeles Aqueduct”, an artist project commenting the dramatic situation the city is in when it comes to water, but the film brought the most beautiful images thinkable to the screen, John Ford would have loved them, and for that the jury (Veton Nurkollari from Dokufest, Kosovo and I) gave the film an Honourable Mention in the American documentary category.

Many American documentaries were statements that had no cinematic qualities. Important stories, bad visual treatment. Interviews, interviews, interviews. Music from wall to wall. I have nothing against talking faces, but it depends on who is talking and what they talk about and how it is filmed. Jody David Armour (photo) is a university professor, a writer and activist, a charismatic man, who talks so well and precise in ”Nigga Theory” (21 mins., Khinmay Lwin van der Mee) about the good black man and the bad black man judged very often by their looks. When I looked like Obama everyone accepted me, now with my Afro-American look, I sense suspicion around me, he says.

Another characteristic of many American documentaries is well illustrated in ”Help us Find Sunil Tripathi” (75 mins., Neal Broffmann), a very strong story about a young man, who disappears, the family can not find him, someone sees photos from the Boston Marathon bombing and thinks one of the two suspects look like Sunil – and suddenly he is suspect number 2. From a facebook comment his story goes the whole way to the big broadcasting companies that intrudes into the family life of Sunil’s parents and siblings. The characteristic… the film seems to never end, every little detail is repeated again and again leaving no space for the viewer to have his/her own assessment. Or feelings, the film dictates through music and editing what you are supposed to feel. I felt like standing up in the cinema shouting stop, don’t treat me like an imbecile!

Mexican ”Conversations of a Marriage” (25 mins, Gil Gonzalez) gave us a good laugh, you never say you love me, the woman says. I do, the man replies, a man who does not talk a lot, she is the one who talks. Whereas ”Garnet’s Gold” (76 mins., Edward Perkins), a film from famous BBC’s Storyville strand, had great moments in its story about a man, 58 year’s old, searching for gold (and a meaning of life) in Scottish mountains, the problem however is that he is not that interesting, at least not as his mother, old and frail, who is loved by the camera. As is the protagonist of ”Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall” (40 mins., Chris Lavelle), an HBO documentary, professionally made, touching to watch, goes right to the last breath – raises an ethical question, I think.

http://www.americandocumentaryfilmfestival.com

A morning seminar moderated by English film critic Neil Young. Subject: International Film Festivals. What to remember if you go to them as an American documentarian. 20 people listening, asking questions. Basic information was given, especially from Neil Young, who visited 26 (!) film festivals during 2014. Yes, twentysix…

Tips from Young: Things you have to check out before or when you arrive to the festival: Find a cheap laundrette in the neighbourhood, it is far too expensive to use the service offered by the hotel. Remember to bring business cards and to make notes on those you receive and write a ”thank you for the meeting we had etc.” If the festival offers you three nights at a nice hotel, check the cheap and crappy hotels – and ask the festival if they will accept a change so you can stay for more nights for the same price. The quality of the hotel is not important as you are only there to sleep…

Veton Nurkollari, artistic director of the Dokufest in Prizren, Kosovo, told that at his festival – and at many other, like the one here in Palm Springs  – you can stay with families. In Prizren there is also a camping possibility to use for almost no money. And why not share rooms, Young said, who has been with colleagues in twin rooms many times. By the way, he added, remember to break away from the festival industry and go visit the most horrible bars – if someone tells you not to go to that bar, go! The panel that also included Manolo Sarmiento from Ecuador, filmmaker and festival director of e-doc, also discussed the prices of a festival pass, provoked by the amount asked by the Sundance festival – 150$ was mentioned – and if you have to travel from Europe it is another 150$ and if you have to stay at a hotel… Sarmiento mentioned that 26$ gives you access to all events, Nurkollari said that people should not be shy to ask for a free pass. Idfa was mentioned many times as the place to go with or without a film, and go to the many receptions and you can easily reduce your costs for food.

http://www.americandocumentaryfilmfestival.com