Online is Great/Don’t Forget the Quality DVD

First text of 2015. Happy New Year to all our readers! I sit in the armchair of my room, the place to be when football is to be watched on the small tv screen, or documentaries on the computer via links sent to me or books or magazines to be read. Including the DOX Magazine that we have advocated for to stay in (at least once per year) a printed version. Let it happen in 2015.

Books are on the wall to the left, dvd’s are on the wall that separates my room to the one of my wife. It’s been like that for years, the bookcase is full of dvd films. There used to be a lack of space at the time of vhs, but I threw them all out, except for some crown jewels that I knew would never be available on dvd.

And now I very seldom receive dvd’s. It is much easier to send vimeo links of new films and with the great idfa docs for sale, the east silver library, the new DOKLeipzig online initiative, the formidable DocAlliance, the festival scope, the Filmkontakt Nord online catalogue – I can easily do my job as festival consultant and selector, and reviewer on filmkommentaren.dk, combined with visits to some big cinema screens, when I am present at festivals or go to press screenings in Copenhagen.

So from a practical point of view a fine development – you can get what you want to see quickly and the quality is ok, yet of course it can not compete with the big screen. Back to the dvd’s. A couple of days I received a gift from Lithuanian Giedrė Beinoriūtė, who had managed to have her “Conversations on Serious Topics” published in a fine dvd with the film itself, chaptered so you can choose what you want to see, extras with material (conversations with kids) that did not make it to the final film, “from the shootings”, all very nicely put together in a box that I am happy to have in a room where there are also books and dvd boxes – one with films by Chris Marker, the fine series with films by Jørgen Leth, one with Jon Bang Carlsen films (there should be more), Marcel Lozinski, Kieslowski, Johan van der Keuken… Yes, more dvd boxes please in 2015, more quality presentations of finished films that should stay as  – let’s be a bit French – oeuvres in film history. For documentaries there will definitely be a need for financial to make this digitization happen. An obligation for the film institutes and maybe a project for the Creative Europe of the EU? 

Danish Documentaries 2014

It was almost ”business as usual”, when the DFI (Danish Film Institute) proudly could announce that 15 Danish documentaries were selected to be screened at IDFA, for most documentarians the festival for films that have been categorized to be a ”documentary”, today the name is a quality mark for a genre that is in constant development enlarging its own narrative potential at the same time (”hybrid” is a buzz word) as the classical observational documentary is very much still alive and doing well. IDFA likes Danish documentaries, as does the cph:dox, of course…

I had 3 Danish documentaries on my ”2014 – Best of…” – Joshua Oppenheimer’s ”The look of Silence”, Anders Østergaard and Erzsebet Racz ”1989” and Camilla Nielsson’s ”Democrats”, all of them films that deal with themes that are not Danish. All three have managed to get international financing for films that travel the world to festivals, win awards and – sorry for the cliché – make a difference. ”The Look of Silence” and ”Act of Killing” are being shown in Indonesia and have broken the public silence about the atrocities. ”1989” puts new light on the year, 25 years ago, where the world changed totally. ”Democrats” brings hope that something will change in Zimbabwe…

The two first films have been to Danish cinemas – superb reviews but no success at all (1368 and 1559 tickets sold). Let us not forget that the golden days of Danish documentaries do not include that they make an audience go to the cinema. The films are watched at festivals world wide and on television world wide. And online via vod’s.

And yet two Danish documentaries did – for documentaries – ok in cinemas with 12.356 tickets sold for ”Ekstra Bladet uden for citat” by Mikala Krogh (Engl. Title: ”The Newsroom – off the Record”) (praised here by colleague Allan Berg) and ”Så meget godt i vente” (Engl. Title: ”Good Things Await”) with 11.309 tickets sold. The latter made me think back on my work at Statens Filmcentral (National Film Board of Denmark), where high-quality documentaries due to their subject were often screened all over Denmark in connection with debate arrangements. Phie Ambo’s film has done and is doing the same.

As does ”Mission Rape – A Tool of War” by Katia Forbert Petersen and Annette Mari Olsen, a film that takes a closer look at a dilemma in international law – how the healing process is affected when rapists are not prosecuted and convicted for the crimes they have committed – instead they have been punished for Crime against Humanity or other serious war crimes.

Another Danish documentary that takes place in Denmark is ”Cirkusdynastiet” (Engl. title: ”The Circus Dynasty”) by Anders Riis-Hansen, a warm & fine insight to a circus environment where two families, the Casselly and the Berdino, hope that young Merrylou and Patrick will get together and run Circus Arena. It does not go that way. The drama between the two youngsters did not really keep my attention, whereas the parent’s generation and their stories and charisma and their caravans, and the many great scenes from the performances, the acrobats, the elephants etc. make a film that must appeal to an audience, who wants adventure.

And then the film that won the IDFA Jury’s Prize, ”Something Better to Come” by Hanna Polak, who has been following homeless children in Moscow for 14 years. Is the film Danish or Polish? Well, the director is Polish, but (bravo!) Danish producer Sigrid Dyekjær met Polak, raised the money to have the film completed and there it is, absolutely moving, a humanistic document and yet I ask myself having seen material by Hanna Polak during the years: Should the film have been longer, could it (also) have been made into a mini-series, have there been too many cooks in the editing process. Sorry to say so but there is a disturbing abruptness in the way the film has been structured.

That’s all about Danish documentaries 2014. Many films have not been mentioned, I have focused on the so-called ”creative documentaries”, I have not digged into documentaries for children and youngsters. As well as the many more tv-orientated documentaries.

http://www.dfi.dk/service/english/news-and-publications/news/october-2014/idfa-lineup.aspx

http://www.dfi.dk/Tal-og-fakta/Billetsalg/Aktuelt-billetsalg-for-danske-film.aspx

Michael Haneke

Back to film blogging after holidays. Michael Haneke is the right one for a comeback. In the Paris Review winter 2014 issue there is a small excerpt from an interview with the director – if you want to read the whole interview, you can purchase the issue, 20€. Interviewer Luisa Zielinski.

I take a clip from the text from the director, who has said ” “A strict form such as mine cannot be achieved through improvisation.”:

“I’ve never seen good results from people trying to speak about things they don’t know firsthand. They will talk about Afghanistan, about children in Africa, but in the end they only know what they’ve seen on TV or read in the newspaper. And yet they pretend—even to themselves—that they know what they’re saying. But that’s bullshit. I’m quite convinced that I don’t know anything except for what is going on around me, what I can see and perceive every day, and what I have experienced in my life so far. These are the only things I can rely on. Anything else is merely the pretense of knowledge with no depth. Of course, I don’t just write about things precisely as they have happened to me—some have and some haven’t. But at least I try to invent stories with which I can personally identify…”. Food for thought.

Photo by Polfoto – Haneke received the Danish Sonning Prize 2014.

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6354/the-art-of-screenwriting-no-5-michael-haneke

2014 – Best Documentaries Intro

Here we go again. A year has passed. I have seen films at festivals and in cinemas around Europe and in the US. I have seen films at home via links sent to me, thanks to many for their generosity. 2014 was a great year for the creative documentary, the one where there is an artistic ambition and a personal interpretation of the world we live in. I know it is “normal” in games like this to go by 10 or 25, but when I had my list of 16 I found it impossible to cut away, so you get 16 from me, below in alphabetical order, and in most cases you can click and get to a review. Photos have been chosen from films that I have not written about – here 20,000 Days on Earth by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, UK.

2014 – Best Documentaries

Alphabetical order:

1989 by Anders Østergaard and Erzsebet Racz, Denmark/Hungary

20,000 Days on Earth by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, UK

Alentejo Alentejo by Sergio Tréfaut, Portugal

Citizen Four by Laura Poitras, Germany/US

Democrats by Camilla Nielsson, Denmark

Garden Lovers by Virpi Suutari, Finland

Judgement in Hungary by Eszter Hajdu, Hungary

Les Règles du Jeu by Claudine Bories and Patrick Chagnard, France

Mitch by Damir Cucic & Misel Skoric, Croatia

Of Men and War by Laurent Bécue-Renard, France

Olga by Miroslav Janek, Czech Republic

Pelican in the Desert by Viesturs Kairiss, Latvia

Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait by Wiam Simav Bedirxan & Ossama Mohammed, Syria

Teatime by Maite Alberti, Chile (photo)

The Look of Silence by Joshua Oppenheimer, Denmark

The Salt of the Earth by Wim Wenders & Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, France

Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait/ 2

Shame on me that I in my turbulence after the screening did not remember the beautiful review that Sara Thelle wrote when she had watched the film in connection with cph:dox. I repeat two paragraphs here:

… I (Sara Thelle) wish I had never seen Silvered Water. Images will haunt me for the rest of my life, scenes in my head will never go away. Horror. Hell. And yet I strongly recommend you to go see the film… First, because it is Syria, there is so little access to information about life there and, of course, we have to see what the two directors Ossama Mohammed and Wiam Simav Bedirxan want to show us. But also because this is an exceptional film, I wouldn’t hesitate to call it a masterpiece. It is poetry, in the dialogues, in the images, in the editing.

You get to understand the pain and the guilt of the exiled. Mohammed expresses his agony in a strong cinematographic language of metaphors, he is the one who has lost his freedom, his life has stopped. In the first part of the film, we see horrible scenes of torture and executions that are unbearable to watch. Raw images captured with mobile phones by the torturers, the security forces of the regime, and put out on the Internet. You can only try to imagine what pain Mohammed have inflicted on himself in working with these images, seeing them over and over again when doing the editing. And we understand that, strangely enough, the besieged Bedirxan is the one who is the most free and alive. The courageous woman, who has turned cinematographer to survive the in the midst of the civil war, becomes his eyes and his hope. The title, Silvered Water, is the signification of her Kurdish name Simav.

The original music, beautiful and devastating, is composed and performed by Mohammed’s wife, the renowned Syrian singer Noma Omran, originally from Homs…

Sara Thelle had the courage and skills to put words on what she saw.

Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait

by Wiam Simav Bedirxan & Ossama Mohammed.

It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and has been to major festivals like Toronto, cph:dox and idfa. Two days ago it had a theatrical release in 30 cinemas in France, where the exiled Syrian director Ossama Mohammed lives. The reception in France… le Monde writes ”chef d’oeuvre”, masterpiece.

And what could I write but the same, after for months having hesitated to watch because I knew what horrifying images were waiting for me. I do not recall, when was the last time I have been so strongly affected by a film. To an extent that I find it meaningless to line up words to describe what I saw and felt. It would be reviewer clichés after clichés. I can not do so. So you get three brief comments followed by more laconic synopses:

Wiam Simav Bedirxan’s filming in Syria is courageous and heroic. Ossama Mohammed has treated the unique material in an outstanding and personal way. The two have made true Cinema!

“In Syria, everyday, civilians film and are killed while others kill and then film. Safe in Paris, but driven by his inexhaustible love for Syria, Ossama Mohammed finds that he can only film the sky and edit footage posted on YouTube. A chance encounter seems to offer a kind of resolution to the tension between Ossama’s estrangement from his country and the revolution that is raging without him. A young Kurdish woman from Homs sends him an email, asking: ‘If your camera were here, in Homs, what would you be filming?”. Silvered Water is the story of that encounter.” (Proaction Site)

“While in political exile in Paris, the Syrian filmmaker Ossama Mohammed received an extraordinary Facebook message from the Kurdish teacher and activist Wiam Simav Bedirxan from Homs. “If you were here with your camera, what would you film?” Mohammed edited the material Simav shot herself in the besieged city together with excerpts from “1001” cell phone videos of heavy shelling and aerial bombardments. Blood flows – a great deal of blood. Citizens are tortured and executed, and no one can turn a blind eye any longer. But this is more than just a devastating documentary about the tribulations of ordinary Syrians. The reflective commentary also demonstrates what cinema can mean in the face of war. No matter how oppressive the atmosphere, it doesn’t affect Simav’s enthusiasm as she films. The film is dedicated to a little boy named Omar whom she also follows with her camera: a symbol for the future of the country. He skips through the shot, dodging snipers to lay a flower at his father’s grave. “Mom, take a look at how deep this one is,” he exclaims in wonder upon seeing a freshly excavated grave. Meanwhile, back in Paris, Mohammed is struggling with his impotent position as an outsider – yet another reason that these images must be shown.” (idfa site)

There is a great text by Ossama Mohammed on the site of the distributor Doc and Film International, link below. Here is a taster:

“All my life I’ve tried to protect and defend cinema, according to my notion of the medium. For me, it is a particular language, where images and sound can come up with a new take on life, on art and on language. Since the beginning of the Syrian revolution, it’s been a revolution of images. I’ve seen thousands and thousands of images. And it’s like the dailies of one big film.

I believed that the images sent by Simav could tell a story. When she appeared in my life, I thought she was the embodiment of a new generation of filmmakers. What I like is when there are different levels of narratives, story upon story. I wanted to respect the people who shot those images as filmmakers, and that’s why it’s a film made by “thousands of Syrians”. The moment I realized that their images were telling a story, I thought I was on the right track.

At the beginning, I rejected the use of voiceover. But as I became a part of this undertaking, of this community of dead poets that are behind the footage, I started accepting the notion of voiceover because it became a multi-layered story, and because I felt it was not explanatory.”

Go also to the facebook page of the film, you will find links to interviews, reviews etc. Previous review on Filmkommentaren.dk by Sara Thelle.

http://www.proactionfilm.com/category/films/

4B09-87A4-3B930E6109BE&tab=-http://www.idfa.nl/industry/tags/project.aspx?id=4B54A279-CD20-

http://www.docandfilm.com/pdf_press/2014_05_SilveredWaterDPforInternet.pdf

Syria, 2014, 92 mins.

Zdeněk Miler: Krtek

I love them all, the three year old grandchild Henry said, referring to the Krtek films made by Czech Zdeněk Miler. Even if he runs around saying Ninja Turtle all the time, his best moments are those with the animation films featuring the mole and his friends. Which one do you want to see, we ask him. The answer is ”the one with the bulldozers”. A couple of days ago he saw ”Krtek ve městě” (The mole in the city) (1982, 29 mins.) 3 times. He knows every cut, he asks us grown-up’s to be totally quiet so he can listen to the sound – nobody says anything, no dialogue, but the sound score of this and other Krtek films is excellent.

Why do you like that one so much? I just do, is the answer. So why do I, grown-up documentary fanatic love it. Let me try and let me guess why he, the three year old likes it, as does his cousin Thomas, half a year younger.

It starts dramatically. The mole and his friends (the mouse and the hedgehog) lose their homes as trees are felled and bulldozers move out to plow the land to make it ready for buildings for human beings. The bureaucrats arrive wearing their high hats and hearing the crying of the three small ones, one of them decides to give them an official paper that states that whereever they come, they are to be helped. They have to leave the forest that is no longer there, they arrive in the city after succesfully passing police and military authorities due to the signed document, they get an appartment, decorated as the piece of nature they left, but in plastic, they experience the noise and pollution of the city until one day they have had enough and when they get the chance it’s back to nature flying on the backs of swans…

Civilisation criticism, we grown-ups would say, made in the best adventurous way possible. Yes, this must be what the 3 year old kids like – the adventure aspect. The three animals, who can not stay in their homes, wherefore they have to fight their way in the city, where they do not belong. You feel with them, you have fun with them, you don’t understand the behaviour of the human beings in the film – you are emotionally involved.

Very banal because what catches the kids is (also) the way the story is told. The many colours, the movements of the three, often with small funny expressions, the mentioned sound score, the mole with the famous ”hallo”, the liberating laughter, the music that underlines and creates an atmosphere…

In other words a masterly done film as are many of the 60 Krtek films that I have seen thanks to friends in Prague, who got them for me – and to the boys who insist on watching. What an artist he was, Zdeněk Miler!

Photo: Cousin Thomas prepares a screening of Krtek in a garden house in Copenhagen.

Measom og Weinstein: An Honest Liar /2

Så har jeg set filmen, men jeg blev hverken underholdt eller fornøjet, som DOKUMANIA havde lovet. Jeg kedede mig faktisk. Og det til trods for tre gode historier 1) en biografi, James Randis liv og værk som udbryderkonge, tryllekunstner og samfundskritiker, hans livslange samarbejde med maleren José Alvarez og 2) deres kærlighedshistorie, som vist nok i virkeligheden også er livslang, og endelig 3) en opklaringshistorie, et forsøg på en thriller, hvor en række tv-stjerner af Uri Gellers tvivlsomme karat får deres svindelnumre afsløret af Randi, og det i stor tv-stil. Jeg kedede mig til trods for en rigtig god hovedperson, James Randi selv og adskillige interessante og i og for sig velvalgte og velfungerende bipersoner, hvor José Alvarez desværre svigtes, fordi han ikke rigtigt interesserer instruktørerne.

Measom og Weinstein er nemlig tv-folk, de vil producere bredt fangende programmer, de interesserer sig ikke for at komme i dybden med Alvarez’ livsprojekt, selv om det er her, en af de dokumentariske opgaver ligger. De kan nøjes med et forsøg på at give ham lidt sentimental sympati omkring Randis fødselsdag og omkring slutningens ægteskabsindgåelse.

Jeg kedede mig, fordi Measom og Winstein sjusker med fotograferingen af interviewscenerne med de veloplagte medvirkende, og derved kommer disse scener i filmens nutid ikke til i noget omfang med rolig skønhed at afbalancere arkivmaterialets mængder og mængder af klip fra tv-shows med en urolig grimhed i både billede og lyd. Denne volsomme støj holder tv-folk vist af. Jeg oplever, at det slører, faktisk destruerer detektivhistorierne.

Værst for deres film er det, at det ikke på nogen som helst måde lykkes for dem i filmens klipning at få de tre historier til at hænge sammen. De belyser ikke hinanden, de påvirker ikke hinanden, de tre historier er blot til stede i samme film de samme 90 minutter. Og naturligvis er detektivhistorierne under disse omstændigheder stærkest, de formodes at underholde og fornøje, men netop derfor kedede jeg mig. (At der ligger tre dokumentarfilm gemt i materialet er en anden sag, men ingen af dem er fremkaldt.)

USA 2014, 83 min. Sendt på DR2 Dokumania i aftes. Filmen kan ses på Dokumanias hjemmeside nogen tid endnu:

http://www.dr.dk/tv/se/dokumania/dokumania-en-aerlig-loegner

Site with synopsis in English:

http://anhonestliar.com/wp/

Stephen Smith & Julia Szucs: Vanishing Point

Stephen Smith, one of the directors of “Vanishing Point”, wrote to me a couple of months ago. He asked if I would care to watch his film, produced by the National Film Board of Canada. Apart from a very fine recommendation by late Peter Wintonick, there had been no real attention, he wrote, even if the film – see website, link below – has been going around to mostly Canadian festivals. I got the dvd and started to watch and was immediately brought back down memory lane – Greenland and the many Danish documentaries made from there, especially by Jørgen Roos (1922-1998), who for decades returned to adventurous Greenland to film the hunting culture and the conflicts between traditional way of living and what we Danes has taken with us to Greenland. If anyone Roos has visualised inuit in Greenland. My vision of the island comes from him.

Roos would have loved “Vanishing Point” that is a very well told and beautifully filmed story, non-sensational in a calm rhythm and with a charismatic leading Navarana K’Avigak Sørensen – more Danish can a surname not be! Navarana is the one who tells the story in first person tracking her own family roots back to Qitdlarssuaq, a shaman, who in the 1860’es migrated with a small community of Inuits from Baffin Island to the North of Greenland. Navarana is the descendant, who takes the viewer by the hand to show and reflect on the Inuit culture of today up there near Uummannaq, where her family used to live until they were displaced due to the building of the American Thule base (Jørgen Roos has made a film about this Danish-American scandal).

Naduk is the daughter of Navarana or did I get that wrong… doesn’t matter, Navarana goes with her family (Naduk’s husband is Ole… again more Danish

can a first name not be) out hunting, it’s in May and the ice used to be thick, but now there is danger that the dogsled will sink into the water. The camera catches the beauty of the nature and the equally beauty of the faces of three generations on hunting. One sequence is amazing: No words behind the images of the auk seabirds, who in hundreds (thousands?) fill the sky going to and fro or rather trying to escape the nets brought to catch the birds. Totally non-dramatic you watch the catch, the strangling and the putting the dead birds into sealskin bags that are to rest some month under rocks – and then the delicious kiviaq dish can be served, Navarana and her family say.

The last long part of the film takes Navarana to where Qitdlarssuaq came from, the Bassin Island. She discovers that the culture there has developed in quite another direction – “here life runs on gasoline and and sugar”. She goes hunting a narwhal, that is shot from a motor boat, whereas – to be seen later when she is back in Greenland – where she comes from the whale is first harpooned from a kayak and then shot. Mattak is a delicatesse and Navarana enjoys.

The text of Navarana that is conveyed voice-off, or to the camera is good – like when she is to sum up the situation of the inuits of today: “The World is Melting Under Our Feet” – but maybe also too demonstratively pointing at the theme, letting her repeat sentences like “what do we get when we go to our places” and “what do we lose when we leave”. On the other hand you trust Navarana’s unsentimental approach, an inuit elder she is described being in the synopsis of the film, well she is definitely not old in mind, perfect as a film character. “Qitdlarssuaq is in my blood”. Thanks for updating my vision of inuit culture in Greenland seen (also) on the background of the culture in Canada.

Canada, 2012, 82 mins.

http://www.meltwatermedia.ca/site/Vanishing-Point-movie.html

https://www.nfb.ca/film/vanishing_point/