Herzog møder Oppenheimer

Det er et besøg af fineste slags, meddeler Grand Teatret i København, når Werner Herzog og Joshua Oppenheimer gæster biografen fredag den 9. januar, hvor de i forlængelse af en særvisning af Oppenheimers seneste mesterstykke “The Look of Silence” kl. 19 vil diskutere dokumentarfilm, metode, moral og meget mere, hvad de jo på Den Danske Filmskole har været i gang med fredag og fortsætter med lørdag.

Billetter: http://www.grandteatret.dk/nyheder/nyhed/?newsid=4&newsid=444

Filmskolen: http://efu.filmskolen.dk/kurser/werner-herzog-and-joshua-oppenheimer-in-a-2-days-conversation-about-life-humanity-and

Fotomontage: http://www.doxmagazine.com/a-film-like-this/  

Miroslav Janek’s ”Olga” on DocAlliance

DocAlliance starts its new year with a present to its (hopefully) many viewers:

”Olga” by Miroslav Janek is available for free viewing until January 11.

It is a film that was on my Best of 2014 – here is a quote from the review:

Many words are taken from her memoirs and Janek found a woman, who knew Olga, and had the kind of voice she had to read pages about her upbringing in communist Czechoslovakia. Editor Tonicka Jankova and director Miroslav Janek have done a great work to make this archive film fresh to watch. The montage is brilliant. Janek has said that he – in ”Citizen Havel” – could feel ”her persona”. Director and editor has succeeded to offer the audience the same. You never get really close to Olga, she wanted to keep her integrity and dignity, the filmmakers respect that dignity, her unsentimentality and humour – it is a film full of admiration for the protagonist, playful, informative, what more could you ask for…?

http://dafilms.com/event/195-olga/

Pasolini in Rome in Berlin

On the way to the Zelig film school in Bolzano a stop was made in Berlin for some days. Apart from enjoying oysters in KaDeWee or la Fayette the city’s many good restaurants often have Kalbsleber in its classic version on the menu. And with Berlin with January weather you find it right to go to exhibitions. Three were visited, the RAF (Rote Armée Fraktion) in Deutsches Historisches Museum (until March 3), the West:Berlin in Ephrahim Palast and Pier Paolo Pasolini in Martin Gropius-Bau. As exhibitions the level of quality were in the same order.

The RAF was very interesting with lots of visuals (clips from the enormous amount of Dokumentation that has been made from the demonstrations, the fights in the streets, the story chronologically presented – but the elements had been given far too little space, it felt packed and klaustrophobic. So what do you do – you buy the catalogue! The approach of the exhibition organisers, a quote from the website can illustrate that: …In the 1970s the attacks took place primarily in southwest Germany. The Red Army Faction set their sights above all on the office of the Federal Prosecutor in Karlsruhe and the headquarters of the US Army in Heidelberg. The state reacted to the assassinations with the most extensive search and surveillance actions since the end of the Second World War. The escalation during the “German Autumn” of 1977 spread fear and a feeling of powerlessness among the people. Many citizens called for the death penalty for the terrorists… Sorry for not being more accurate but I could not see the exhibition for other visitors blocking the view!

West:Berlin with the subtitle ”an Island in Search of the Mainland” in three floors at Ephraim Palast with the beautiful staircase was a detailed presentation of daily life, culture, politics, ”die Mauer” of course, ”die Luftbrücke”, the division of territories between the four big ”allied powers” etc. The phonetics of Kennedy’s famous ”Ich bin ein Berliner” = ”bearleener”. On the third floor I sat down and listened to ”Berlin” by Lou Reed, ”Heroes” by David Bowie, ”Bahnhof Zoo” by Nina Hagen – all three tracks connected to the time and the city. An official exhibition by the Stadtmuseum that was well made, informative and with entertaining elements. In ”Berliner Zeitung” the reviewer, born and raised in the East, acknowledged the exhibition and called for an equivalent seen from the East Berlin pov!

And then 3 hours with Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-75) (PPP) in Martin Gropius-Bau, the last day of the amazing exhibition that takes the viewer from 1950, when PPP arrived in Rome till 1975 and his tragic death. Film by film, scandal by scandal, his homosexuality, his love stories and first and foremost his artistic development as a writer, screenwriter, film director, visual artist, philosopher, political commentator… What a creative force! For me who saw ”Accatone” and ”Mama Roma” as a teenage film freak in art cinemas in Copenhagen back in the 1960’es, it was a joyful visit to film history making you want to run for the best possible dvd box of the director’s films from these two to ”Salo” from 1976. There were his hand-written scripts, there was a fabulous audio-clip where Pasolini discusses a scene from ”Mama Roma” with Anna Magnani – well, there are several interviews with PPP and even a clip from a football match between the film crew of Bertolucci’s ”1900” and Pasolini’s ”Mama Roma” (or was it another film?). ”1900” won 5-2 and the actress Laura Betti, always close to PPP, proudly carries the trophy. One film I have never seen, ”Ricotta” (part of Ro.Go.Pag), with Orson Welles, a film that sentenced PPP to prison for blasphemy. The exhibition includes clips from the film and one with the judge, who decided to sentence the director. Great exhibition, have no idea where it goes from Berlin, as it has been at the three locations/organisations that have created it: Cinemathèque Francaise, Palazzo delle Esposizione in Rome, the CCCB in Barcelona and Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin. Wheredoes an exhibition like this with all its brilliant elements end up, when it has taken its (first hopefully) tour to Paris, Barcelona, Rome and Berlin? Thanks to the curators Alain Bergala, Jordi Balló and Gianni Borgna for their work! There is a fine 10 minutes video intro on the website of the CCCB, see below.

https://www.dhm.de/ausstellungen/raf.html

http://west.berlin/exhibition

http://www.cccb.org/en/exposicio-pasolini_roma-43159

 

 

Joshua Oppenheimer: The Act of Killing

På filmskolen i København på fredag og lørdag skal jeg så blandt meget andet formodentlig høre Werner Herzog uddybe sin meget citerede udtalelse om ”… Oppenheimer’s depiction of power and violence: ’I have not seen a film as powerful, surreal, and frightening in at least a decade… unprecedented in the history of cinema.’ ” De ord fangede mig virkelig dengang, og så fulgte Errol Morris lige efter: ”… he praises Oppenheimer’s portrayal of violence and cinematic imagination: ’Like all great documentaries, ‘The Act of Killing’ demands another way of looking at reality. It starts as a dreamscape, an attempt to allow the perpetrators to reenact what they did, and then something truly amazing happens. The dream dissolves into nightmare and then into bitter reality. An amazing and impressive film.’ ” (blogs.indiewire.com)

Når Herzog og Morris siger sådan, bliver jeg mere end interesseret. Og fra jeg som det første så traileren på Vimeo var jeg rystet, helt bogstaveligt rystet, selv om jeg forstod, det var rekonstruktioner, jeg så. Men det var heller ikke fiktion, nej, det var omhyggelige genskabelser af erindringsbilleder og ikke af blotlagte fortrængninger, men iscenesættelser af de mest forfærdende hændelser og gerninger, disse medvirkende lever med som deres liv. Som noget selvfølgeligt, forstod jeg? Jeg skulle se den film om de indonesiske dødspatrulje-gangstere, som myrdede kommunister for magthaverne midt i 60’erne. Jeg ville egentlig ikke. Og nu skal jeg så høre Hezog og Oppenheimer tale om sådanne spørgsmål i to dage i træk! Det bliver sindsoprivende.

Read more / Læs mere: Joshua Oppenheimer  

Read more / Læs mere: Werner Herzog 

Werner Herzog: Lessons of Darkness

Året begynder for mig med en begivenhed. På filmskolen skal jeg fredag og lørdag lytte til forelæsninger af Werner Herzog og Joshua Oppenheimer. Lidt om Herzog først, Oppenheimer senere:

Mit første møde med Herzogs film var sent. Det var på Tue Steen Müllers arbejdsværelse hjemme hos ham og Ellen Fonnesbech-Sandberg i Nørre Farimagsgade. Jeg var gæst, boede der (jeg kan finde på at blive længe), jeg var omgivet af hans kæmpesamling filmkopier, det var morgen, han skulle på arbejde på EDN, fruen skulle på DR, også arbejde, jeg havde fri, så han gav mig lektier for: du skal se den her og derefter er du forandret. Og det blev jo stort. Jeg har kun et notat i min lommebog bevaret:

”Rekviem for en ubeboelig planet” hedder filmen på dansk. Vi både ved og ved ikke, vi er i Kuwait, efter Golfkrigen -> rekviem, dødemesse, elegi, klagesang, smerte, sorg. Er det ikke tankerækken? Hvem var fjenden? Filmen angiver ingen politisk adresse. Værket interesserer sig alene for sorgen og så derefter handlingen (oliebrandene slukkes). Ikke moralsk som et samfundsmæssigt alternativ, men amoralsk som den kunstneriske modvægt til klagen. Altså KLAGE og HANDLING som et æstetisk balancesystem. Det er fravær af budskab og meddelelse, nærvær af konstruktion og værk. Det er messe i kirken. Det er statuarisk på torvet.

Siden har jeg ikke sluppet Herzog. Siden har jeg beundret ham i ét og alt. Min fascination af manden blev låst fast, da jeg på filmskolen i 2006 deltog i et seminar, en mesterklasse eller hvad det var (blot vidunderligt). Jeg skrev også de dage noget om den film ned i lommebogen, ikke noget jeg tænkte, denne gang noget, Herzog fortalte:

Det var i anekdotens form (Herzog fortæller i anekdotens form); han brugte anekdoten som en foredragsholder bruger powerpoint fotoet, men langt dybere end en sådan illustration. Herzogs anekdoter fæstner sig i forelæsningens løb som kapitler i hans film. Disse skrev jeg ned:

1) I ”Lessons of Darkness” findes ikke én scene, ikke én optagelse, ikke ét eneste billede af et stykke jord bevaret uskadet. Det indledende Pascal citat forklarer det, men Pascal har ikke skrevet den tekst, kunne ikke have skrevet den. Herzog har skrevet den selv, og han har, ja, det sagde han, gjort det for at nå en dybere sandhed. ”Pascal kunne ikke have skrevet det bedre”, siger han leende.

2) Cinéma vérité hører 60’erne til. ”Depict on Reality” kræver nu (i 2006) ganske andre greb. Herzog ved, han er oppe mod både dinosaurer og redskaber som photoshop og manipuleret reality, og han synes kendsgerninger (facts) er uinteressante, kedelige.

3) ”Lessons of Darkness”er ”highly stylized”, den er mytiske landskaber, iscenesatte landskaber. Kuwait nævnes ikke, Saddam Hussein nævnes ikke, tilbagetoget nævnes ikke og sådan videre. “Satan skaber en illusion for os, olien, som er flydt ud overalt, ligner vand.” 

Det her er blot lidt fra mine notater. Lars Movin derimod skrev en omhyggelig artikel om Werner Herzogs æstetik, “Bogholdersandhed versus poetisk sandhed”, hvor han blandt andet refererer Herzog seminaret i 2006. Det var i Kosmorama 242/2008; link nedenfor. 

“Lessons of Darkness” (Lektionen in Finsternis), Tyskland 1992, 52 min.

http://www.wernerherzog.com/113.html 

http://www.kosmorama.org/Arkiv/242/Artikel2.aspx 

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