Alexandru Solomon Tribute

The Thessaloniki Documentary Festival is one of the best when it comes to communication – and programming. This text is taken from the website, a very well deserved tribute to Alexandru Solomon is planned for the festival, that takes place March 13-22:

Incredible stories from the past, shocking truths and lies, memory and reality: this is the work of Alexandru Solomon, one of the leading political documentary filmmakers in Romania.

Filmmaker, cinematographer and producer, Solomon was born in Bucharest in 1966. He studied in the Film and Theater Academy School and started working as a cinematographer, before he moved to documentary directing. An active producer as well, he has been developing projects since the 90s, focusing on co-productions with countries like the UK, Canada, France and Germany. He is also teaching at the Film School and within the Arts Academy in Bucharest. His films have participated in numerous festivals internationally.
Solomon’s work does not subscribe to a single, given genre, style or narrative methodology. Through either observation or detailed journalistic research, Solomon looks to the past in an exploration of history, politics and society that allows him to succinctly comment on the present.

Kapitalism: Our Improved Formula (2010) is one of his most characteristic documentaries. Driven by the idea that Ceausescu has returned to check contemporary society, Solomon interviews Romania’s millionaires, creating the portrait of a country in limbo between communism and capitalism, that has surrendered to a never-ending cycle of corruption and impunity.

“Every city has the traffic it deserves”, says Solomon and sits with Apocalypse on Wheels (2008) next to five different people who are driving daily through the streets of Bucharest – chaos and lack of human respect emerge as the protagonists of an irrational system that places Romania among the countries with the highest traffic-related death rate in Europe.
 
Cold Waves (2007) goes behind the scenes of the legendary Radio Free Europe station, which initially started out as a CIA propaganda tool back in the 50s, but later became a comforting companion to Romanians during Ceausescu’s rule – the latter famously recruited Carlos to “take care of” the situation. The past is also recalled in Clara B. (2006), where the mysterious (fictional) protagonist’s life is reconstructed by a museum archivist in a meditation on archives, memory and twentieth century history.
 
Another incredible true story is the one told in Solomon’s documentary debut The Great Communist Bank Robbery (2004). Interviews and archival material expose a hard and tragicomic side of communism: in 1959, a group of prominent members of the Romanian Communist Party organize a bank robbery, get arrested and later agree to play themselves in a film that reconstructs the crime. The film was released after their execution.

Another retro-tribute is given to Hubert Sauper.

http://www.filmfestival.gr/

MOMA Documentary Fortnight

… in NY is running now and until February 27 with many interesting titles, like ”Of Men and War” by Laurent Bécue-Renard, ”Domino Effect” (photo) by Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosołowski, and ”Around in the World in 50 Concerts”, the latest film by Heddy Honigmann awarded at idfa 2014. MOMA has its youtube channel, link below, where you can watch trailers and excerpts. And get small annotations of the 15 films on the programme.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfYVzk0sNiGHqXHhBr2gTSOy0VMXZ2So3

Away From Home…

CoExist is what it says the photo of the poster we took today in Paris, when visiting Institut du Monde Arabe. A fine statement after the events in Copenhagen – and Paris. On the wall of the building was written ”nous sommes tous Charlie”. Inside was an impressive exhibition, Le Maroc contemporain, photos, paintings, videos, carpets, dresses, sculptures, a huge effort has been done to capture culture and soul of an Arab country. The exhibition can be seen until March 1st.

We arrived in Paris sunday morning after having been watching television the whole evening and most of the night. As well as been standing at the windows of our fourth floor appartment to see and listen. In the street people were walking quickly away from the nearby Nørreport Station, the blue lights from the police cars were flashing on the other side of the park and the sound of police car sirens were constant. Horrifying!

In Paris the attack was on the front page of the newspaper Libération: Vi er danskere = nous sommes danois, the text put on a photo taken outside the synagogue, where Jewish Dan Uzan was killed. In Le Monde Danish author Jens Christian Grøndahl conveyed his impressions from the moving memorial and in Le Figaro Danish-Syrian Naser Khader, former member of the Danish parliament gave a personal interview on how he grew up in the Danish society, so much different from Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, the man believed to be behind the killing of Uzan and Finn Nørgaard, Danish filmmaker, on that black weekend in Copenhagen.

CoExist!

http://www.imarabe.org/

Vladimir Tomic: Flotel Europa

There were no Danish feature films awarded at the Berlinale but out of almost nowhere comes a Danish/Serbian documentary “Flotel Europa” and wins an award according to a press release of today from DFI, the Danish Film Institute: Vladimir Tomic’s documentary about his memories from growing up on the refugee ship “Flotel Europa,” received the Reader’s Jury Award from the Berlin-based daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel. Bravo! Background annotation of the film’s content:

“In 1992, a wave of refugees from the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina reached Denmark. With refugee camps completely full, the Red Cross pulled a giant ship into the canals of Copenhagen. The ship, Flotel Europa, became a temporary home for a thousand people waiting for decisions on their asylum applications. Among them was a young 12-year-old boy, Vladimir, who fled Sarajevo together with his mother and older brother. They spent two years in the limbo of Flotel Europa. Two decades later, Vladimir Tomic takes us on a journey of growing up on this ship filled with echoes of the war – and other things that make up an adolescence.”

I watched the film today and it is a very nice documentation – based on amateur video material – of the life on board a ship that we Copenhageners remember so well, also for the discussions on the bad conditions that were offered the refugees. Tomic story, however, is much more than that, through the personal and well written commentary that he delivers about the young kid growing up, seeing many of the grown ups going down mentally at the same time as he gets more and more aware of the girls around him, especially one called Melisa. In other words a fine small growing-up story in the middle of a sad political situation that brought Vladimir, his brother and strong mother away from Sarajevo. Interesting is also to hear about the internal ethnic conflicts among the refugees on the ship, as the kid saw it, remembered by the director more than 20 years later.

Denmark/Serbia, 2015, 70 mins.

ZagrebDox 2015

Festival director Nenad Puhovski and his ZagrebDox team has announced its programme for the 11th edition – around 150 films in 16 sections. The Croatian festival runs February 22 to March 1, take a look at the (as always) inviting, well designed website, link below.

25 films in the international competition, great films waiting for the audience like Virpi Suutari’s “Garden Lovers”, Laurent Bécue-Renard’s “Of Men and War”, Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard’s “Rules of the Game” and “Tea Time” by Maite Alberdi. Bravo that ZagrebDox takes films like Laila Pakalnina’s “Hotel and a Ball” and Viestur Kairish “Pelican in the Desert” (photo), overseen by bigger documentary festivals. The latter is a masterpiece.

The festivals also has a section for controversial documentaries that “explores and expounds political, social, religious and sexual controversies”, a section for “state of affairs” that “question some of the most important issues and controversies of today, from the current changes in Greece and the fates of prominent information freedom fighters Swartz and Snowden, to environmental and economic manipulations”, (but “Citizenfour” is not there?), and a special one titled “Discover Russia at ZagrebDox”. Here is the text from the website:

In international competition we are introduced to the ‘Russian soul’ in the documentary Sounds of the Soul by Robin Dimet, who has always been fascinated with Russian people’s skilfulness at surviving in the wild liberal system. We also meet a community living in Svalka, a landfill near Moscow. Filmmaker Hanna Polak took 14 years to make it, covering the growing up of charismatic Yula in Something Better to Come.

Survival, albeit of a different kind, is the focus of a former war reporter who reported on the Chechen war for Russian television. Thirteen years later he moved to Kamchatka, where he films daily life on the island, beautiful shots of spawning salmon and fishermen doing their jobs. He is followed by Yulia Mironova’s camera – in Kamchatka – The Cure for Hatred she recorded how hard it is to escape the demons of war, not matter how much we run. The Russian knows that well, the man who changed three names, three political systems, three wives and three religions, who turned from the son of a famous Bosnian director into a classic Russian mobster. A documentary with fiction elements, Russian, by Damir Ibrahimović and Eldar Emrić is included in the regional competition.

Another face of Russia is revealed in the Teen Dox section, in the film Long.Black.Cloud Is Coming Down by Alexandra Likhacheva, portraying young Russians with a diploma in their hands and horizons wide open. Finally, we have already announced the latest work by the 3rd ZagrebDox winner Alina Rudnitskaya, Victory Day, from the State of Affairs section, exploring a new, homophobic chapter in the history of modern Russia.

http://zagrebdox.net/en/2015/home

American POV’s Summer Season

 

Good for the Americans who love non-American documentaries that POV exists. The channel’s summer season has been launched yesterday – a quote from the announcement below taken from the website – and includes Chilean Maita Alberdi’s wonderful “Tea Time”, the Israeli “Web Junkie” by Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia, Danish Andreas Johnsen’s “Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case” and most important I think Talal Terkl’s “Return to Homs“. The quote:

“Today, we’re excited to share with you the lineup from POV’s summer season, which starts June 22. POV is American television’s longest running independent documentary series and we’re getting ready for our 28th season on PBS of acclaimed, provocative films unlike anything else on television. Highlights from the season include the Oscar-nominated “Cutie and the Boxer”, an unprecedented look behind the Syrian insurgency in “Return to Homs”, and “Point and Shoot”, a film that will mark the 10th anniversary of filmmaker Marshall Curry’s first film (of many) on POV, the Oscar-nominated Street Fight.”

http://www.pbs.org/pov/blog/2015/02/announcing-povs-2015-season-on-pbs/#.VNvFACnnJEI

Dokland: Nyt søndagsdokumentarslot på DR K

Danske tv-seere med interesse for dokumentarFilm af høj kvalitet har mange valgmuligheder. DR 2’s Dokumania genudsender i øjeblikket en perlerække af Oscar-nominerede film – i aften er det Dror Morehs “The Gatekeepers”, i går var det Talal Derks “Return to Homs” og “Five Broken Cameras” af Emad Burnat og Guy Davidi. Den første er tilgængelig i endnu 12 timer, check Dokumania’s hjemmeside, den anden er der ikke tidsbegrænsning på, endnu.

Og så den gode nyhed, citat fra en pressemeddelelse i går: ”DR K dedikerer søndag aften til de bedste dokumentarer inden for kanalens kerneområder; kultur, historie, tro og eksistens. Fra søndag d. 15. februar tager DR K seerne med på opdagelse med nye og spændende dokumentarfilm fra hele verden i vores nye dokumentarslot Dokland. Dokumentarerne vil tage udgangspunkt i den personlige historie, og giver et større perspektiv og refleksion over kulturverdenen, som vi befinder os i. Filmene har en stærk forankring i passion på indholdssiden, men også dokumentarernes formsprog og nye fortællemåder vil bidrage til en oplevelse ud over det sædvanlige. Dokumentarerne sendes hver søndag kl. 21.00 på DR K.”

Med andre ord “auteur-filmen”, den kunstneriske dokumentarfilm, “the creative documentary” – et fint supplement til Dokumania’s repertoire, som ofte er emne-orienteret og journalistisk.

Dokland præsenterer bl.a. “Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present” af Matthew Akers, Jeff Dupre (22.2), “Elena” (FOTO) af Petra Costa (1.3), “Samsara” (8.3) af Ron Fricke og Mark Magidson, for ikke at tale om de to danske produktioner, som kanalen har støttet: Joshua Oppenheimers “The Act of Killing” (19.4) og Jon Bang Carlsens “Just the Right Amount of Violence” (26.4). Og altså i prime time, klokken 21.

http://www.dr.dk/tv/soeg/dokumania

Pioneers Flaherty and Linklater

Tom Roston, film blogger with his own column, Doc Soup, on the site of American POV, writes today on Flaherty and Linklater, an elegant reflection on the two’s pioneer work with each their own genre.

Here is a quote: ”… Like Flaherty, Linklater (Boyhood) is pioneering a new form — he certainly isn’t the first, but he’s made a fictional film that hues so close to being real that it feels like real life. It’s a beautiful film. I think it’s a marvel. It was inspiring to see, even in our age, that the film medium could feel so new. It must have been somewhat like what audiences felt watching Nanook when they first watched it. So where Flaherty bent the rules of nonfiction to create a cinematic documentary, Linklater bent the rules of narrative fiction filmmaking to create realistic cinema. Bravo to both…”

http://www.pbs.org/pov/blog/docsoup/2015/02/linklater-like-flaherty-before-him/#.VNpMGSnnJEI

http://www.pbs.org/pov/blog/docsoup/#.VNpOCynnJEI

Russian Documentaries

It is very difficult to make documentaries in Russia. It is very difficult to organise film festivals in Russia. It is very difficult to touch upon controversial subjects in Russia. We know that, but we also know how important it is to support the filmmakers there and to help them bring the films to life and to an audience abroad. I have had contacts with Russian documentarians for years, some of them since the existence of the Balticum Film & TV Festival on Bornholm in the 1990’es – some of them (because of their age) for a shorter period. To this category belongs young Georgy Molodtsov, who sent me a press release yesterday promoting the Russian Film Market Guide 2015 that is strongly recommended. Here is a quote:

“Moscow Business Square, Documentary Film Center and Russian Documentary Guild issue an English-language catalogue which includes detailed information about Russian documentary market. The print catalogue is now being presented at the Berlinale-2015 and its online version is available on Russian Documentary Guild web-site: http://www.rgdoc.com/industry

Printed version of the catalogue might be downloaded from web-site as well – http://rgdoc.ru/upload/iblock/RussianFilmMarketGuide.pdf

Both catalogues include a list of leading international documentary film festivals based in Russia. There is also a list of internationally successful production companies, national distributors, industrial sites, and Russian TV-channels. Besides this, the print catalogue shares an article which covers two important things such as financing sources available in Russia and opportunities of co-production with the Russian film companies…”

The Guild also publishes a Top 20 called “National Documentary Rating (is) a project (of Russian Documentary Guild), which determines the success of Russian films in domestic and international festival, tv and theatrical distribution during the 2013 calendar year (from Jan, 1 to Dec, 31).” On the list you find fine works as “Winter, Go Away“, “Linar“, “Vivan las Antipodas“-

Magnificent 7 Belgrade Day 6 & 7

Finnish Virpi Suutari visited the festival for a very short time. She had just left the national documentary celebration DocPoint on Finland where her ”Garden Lovers” got the Jussi award as the best Finnish documentary and composer Sanna Salmenkallio received the award for the best music for that film. Knowing the general high quality of Finnish documentaries, I can only say – tough competition but the right winner, the film is a poetic masterpiece and has a universal appeal. I see it as one long visit to a Garden of Love, an hommage to people, who have lived for a long time together and care about their garden and each other. Virpi Suutari has her own style, there is unique flow in her narrative supported by the music. ”Garden Lovers” got applause for minutes, was enormously appreciated by the Belgrade audience – I know I repeat myself: the best in Europe!

In her masterclass Suutari (photo) talked about and showed her inspiration that comes from her education as a photographer (never been to film school). ”It affects your aesthetics what you have experienced in your childhood”, she said and referred to Martin Parr , Billy Brandt, Hopper and Billingham. She showed clips from ”Sin”, that she made together with Susanne Helke, a true inspiration from Swedish master Roy Andersson, and from ”White Sky”, also together with Helke, from Northern Russia, before she showed clips from ”Hilton”, made at the same time as ”Garden Lovers” in a completely different style.

The last screening at Magnificent 7 was ”Rules of the Game” by Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard, who returned to Belgrade after their ”Les Arrivants”, another political-social documentary. Shown at Magnificent 7. As with that one, Bories and Chagnard invites the audience to a direct cinema, observational documentary, a ”cinema documentary” piece, as the situation in France is like this for auteurs”: ”television does not like us, we don’t like television” and after Thierry Garrel left arte also this channel pays little attention and support to the creative documentary. ”Cinema documentaire”, the couple told the participants of the workshop, because your application process to the CNC is equal to the fictions to be supported: you write a scenario, they did so after having been on research at the ”tour”, where the youngsters are trained tools to apply for jobs. Three weeks of research, back to write the scenario, that is actually what they imagine could happen – and before the final casting has been done. The final result looked very much like the scenario written. ”Anticiper le réel” as said Claudine Bories – oh, the French are so good in talking about films, their language is better fit for definition of the creative process, I think. Right? Chagnard told us how important the sound is, the sound brought us direct cinema in the 60’es, he said, and the sound engineer has to be a dancer, when he or she records dialogues.

The film about Lolita, Kevin, Hamid – who are trained to be ”employable” – is in Parisian cinemas right now (had its premiere the day where Charlie Hebdo was attacked!) and the two directors tour the country to discuss the film and its important theme with coaches and those, who could employ young people like the three and thousands of other young unemployed. Great film, call it what you like, Werner Herzog, but the observational documentary is very much alive and kicking!

Also this year local BelMedic awarded a film – “Rules of the Game”.

made.fi/gardenloversmovie

http://www.happinessdistribution.com/catalogue/158-les-regles-du-jeu/