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

Tilde Trampedach Juul: Der hvor lyden kommer fra

Titlen kan læses som et postulat, men den holder, hvad den lover. Filmen søger, men den finder også i sin konstruktion, sin forsøgsopstilling dette sted og handler altså om hvor i hvert fald bestemte lyde, dem sangerne skaber poesi af, kommer fra. Det er klassisk som opskrift, en film finder sit sted og det steds drama og dets nætter og dage bliver filmen, og således her også sanglydens sted.

Det er manden som spørger og kvinden som finder lydens sted i sangerens krop helt ud i neglene og det er kvinden som demonstrerer det, kvinden som er sikker. Tvivlen findes hos ham, kravene er hans, det er ham som stiller reglerne op. To stærke steder i forløbet anklager hun ham for at tale nedad. Selv er hun suveræn, ved hvad hun vil, hvor målet er, hvor stedet er.

Nu ved jeg ikke om der er særlige regler for hvad en afgangsfilm skal indeholde, den er vel ikke kun afgangsprojekt for instruktøren, også for de andre på holdet, fotografen (kameraernes placering, lyssætningen), klipperen (fortællerytmen, her dagens forløb, øvelsesrækkens forløb), komponisten (musikkens lyd i forhold lyddesign og – specielt krævende her – til sangens lyd). Instruktøren har måttet administrere den enkelte medarbejders lyst til i en eksamenssituation at yde noget særligt, vise hele sit repertoire og bøje den ambition ind i sin historie.

Dertil kommer at den historie her er etableret i en flerkameraproduktion, jeg forstår det ikke i traditionel form er en film, men et kunstnerisk mere end journalistisk bud på et tv-program, en reportage godt nok fra en øvedag på den nøgne scene men også en personlig skildring, et portræt af to kendte kunstnere, begge fremragende sangere og performere, som det forudsættes tv-seerne ved noget om i forvejen og ønsker at få mere at vide om, mere end seerne er optaget af filminstruktørens / tilrettelæggerens / det tekniske holds kunstneriske, journalistiske og håndværksmæssige problemstilling. Der er meget at holde styr på, og det lykkes, filmen er helstøbt og fascinerende.

Hertil kommer de to medvirkende sangere og performere som sikkert også har en egen dagsorden, som arbejder med en forestilling, træner, øver sig, afprøver forløb på en scene foran en tom teatersal. De er også, måske i begge virkeligheder to elskende som skal være i balance i forhold til min optagethed. Men er de det? Er kvinden her ikke stærkere end manden, når der vejes af på milligramvægten? Jeg oplever en ubalance som næsten vælter forløbet, eller charmeres jeg blot af hendes udsøgt velskabte fuglekvidder, af hendes udsøgt velskabte sætninger, hvor andre måske charmeres af mandens mere realistisk dagligdags fremtoning, hans instruktør- og erfarne lærerattityde. Det gør mig usikker på om der er tilstrækkeligt stof i manuskriptet eller om der overlades vel meget til de medvirkendes improvisation, og her er hun hurtigst, mest opfindsom og tillige strengest. Hendes strengere krav samler min interesse og sympati.

SYNOPSIS

En mand og en kvinde på rejse der hvor lyden skabes. (Filmskolens program)

”Grundlæggende er det en kærlighedshistorie: Om at se hinanden eller ikke at se hinanden. Om de forestillinger, man kan have om den anden, eller om man bare ser sig selv i den anden. Og så er det en fortælling om to fantastiske mennesker.” (Instruktøren til Ekko)

CREDITS

Instruktør: Tilde Trampedach Juul, medvirkende: Mija Milovich, Michael Rexen, fotograf: Annika Aschberg, klipper: Lars Sigsgaard Berg, tonemester: Stefan Garfield Rasch Holm, production design: Bertan Comert og Bogdan Stamatin, produktion og distribution: Den danske Filmskole.

http://www.filmskolen.dk/presse/afgangsfilm/dokumentar/2015/

Michael Moore, Marlon Brando, Orhan Pamuk

Some name dropping on a tuesday evening, tabloid maybe, but I expect all three films to be of quality… Realscreen anounces today that a new film by Michael Moore is to premiere at the TIFF, the festival in Toronto that runs September 10 to 20. The title is ”Where to Invade Next”, look at the fantastic photo… The article says nothing special about the content, the festival programmer Thom Powers is quoted like this “I can say it is very funny, it’s going to be a real conversation starter. It’s a culmination of lots of ideas that Moore has been working on for several years.”

“Listen to Me Marlon” = Brando is another upcoming film by Stevan Riley, written about in Danish newspaper Politiken today, based on around 300 hours of sound tapes recorded by the actor during decades, said to be a kind of self-psychoanalysis.

Finally I found a link on facebook to Turkish Hürriyet Daily News of today that announces the premiere of a film on Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence at the Venice Film festival (September 2-12). The title of the film is “Innocence of Memories”, director is Grant Gee. Pamuk in the article: “I wrote a 30-minute long original script… The new text tells the love story in the Museum of Innocence book from the eye of a secondary character. I do not tell which character it is now, but will in Venice… The documentary is both about the Museum of Innocence and Istanbul. My other books have also taken place in the documentary,” he said. 

http://realscreen.com/2015/07/28/tiff-15-toronto-bow-for-michael-moores-where-to-invade-next/#ixzz3hDSKSCH6

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com

DocsBarcelona+Medellin

I have before on this site nominated my colleague at DocsBarcelona Joan Gonzalez as a true documentary pioneer – and he is unstoppable making quality documentaries be seen in Latin America, where he has been since June 28, doing a workshop in Valparaiso Chile, planning to build a festival there, and now he is in Medellin for the DocsBarcelona+Medellin.

A mail came in: He wants to share two news with me:

“First. We have today the Colombian premiere of Life is Sacred, directed by Andreas Dalsgaard, with the protagonist Antanas Mockus in the cinema.

Second. I have the numbers of the people attending the festival  the first 3 days. The festival runs 8 days. The average of people per screening is… 173 people. No mistake. 173!!!!

I think that it will be impossible to remain this numbers until the end of the festival but… We are very very happy!”

… as you can see on the photo. Joan Gonzalez is at the background, the boss of the festival is Juan, first row middle.

The festival, this is the third edition;  runs until July 30 with 22 long international documentaries, 12 national short films, invited directors, master classes and a marathon of interactive documentaries.

http://docsbarcelonamedellin.com/