Questions to Festival Programmers

It happens quite often. Mails arrive with sad news – ”they” did not take my film, nobody likes it, what should I do? Filmmakers are disappointed, the film that took them a couple of years to make are rejected by festival after festival. Why, is there something wrong with the film. The mail often deals with a film that I have seen and maybe even written positively about on filmkommentaren. I mostly choose the easy answer, which in most cases also is the right one: don’t worry, you have made a good film, it will find its festival(s). And there are a lot of festivals and if you are not taken for idfa or DOKLeipzig or cph:dox or Sundance, there are other quite as good for your film. And there are so many good festivals nowadays, in Europe and in other parts of the world.

Nevertheless, the question remains whether we know enough about the festival’s profiles and if the selection process is open to everyone. How many are involved in the first selection process before you reach those programming, the programmer(s) or curators as they are called today. Do those who screen as the first see the whole film or just the first 10 minutes…

Indiewire has made an article (link below) on this issue – ”5 questions you always wanted to ask a documentary festival programmer” – it deals with American festivals and is very informative, but the same questions could be directed to European festival programmers.

I have been invited to ask questions to festival people at the upcoming Jihlava International Film Festival (photo) – hope to get wiser on the role and way of working of different festivals.

http://www.indiewire.com/article/5-questions-you-always-wanted-to-ask-a-documentary-festival-programmer-20141002

http://www.dokument-festival.com/about.us

Arthur Sukiasyan: Our Atlantis

It’s an inviting start: Beautiful Istanbul, boats on Bosphorus, people fishing on the bridge, a man in a car, a man doing dummies for clothes, a woman taking out her photo album and more people getting ready to tell what they remember… Back to the man in the car. He is on his way to the place, where he was decades ago, in the 1960’es, to an Armenian camp in Istanbul. “I spent my childhood here”, he says emotionally affected upon arrival to the abandoned building.

Cut to the next storyteller and the next and the next. Slowly the mosaic is put together. There was an Armenian school, there was a charismatic leader of the school, Hrant Gyuzelyan, who did not allow the children to speak Turkish, hard discipline at that time, and according to one of the characters he was the one who insisted on the camp to be built. Otherwise the children would go back to Anatolia, to their villages and forget about the Armenian language and culture they had learned in the school. Some lived at the camp for months, some for years.

Gyuzelyan is the hero of the film, many recall how he went from village to village in Anatolia to find Armenian culture still alive after 1915, where those

who survived the genocide were scattered all over Turkey. Without being demonstrative the director succeeds to make the memories come out in a gentle manner, sometimes in magical sequences as one in the countryside with an old couple, who was in the camp, that was built by the kids. Hard work they say, but also fun as documented by the many archive photos that have been at the disposal of the director. The food they ate, the smells of certain dishes, the tours to the sea. The good things remembered.

Half way through the film, the mood changes from recalling memories to answers to the question – why was the camp closed, why was Gyuzelyan arrested, and what about the Armenians in Turkey today. The arrest – apparently because the Turkish government accused him to kind of “kidnap” children, bring them to the camp and make them terrorists. He was quickly released but left the country, the camp was closed – and the Armenians in the film discuss how it could be possible to get the property back according to public law…

The tension grows in the last part of the film. The most outspoken of the Armenians is Karapet, who claims that between 60-65.000 Armenians are living in Istanbul today, whereas 5.5 million Armenians “were converted to islam”, “living with a Turkish identity”. He argues that the majority dares not to raise their voice against the Turkish government. His attitude towards muslims is not very positive, rather pejorative – and “an Armenian can only live with an Armenian”.

The films ends with a party in the abandoned camp, it’s both joyful and sad.

As is the film the whole way through, character-driven, showing human beings who are victims of history. When broadcasters plan their repertory for 2015 with the Armenian genocide as the theme this important documentary is an obvious choice. The film has not yet had its international premiere. Come on festivals!

France, Armenia, Turkey, 2014, 83 mins.

Jon Bang Carlsen Retrospective in Leipzig

DOKLeipzig 2014 presents an ”homage to Jon Bang Carlsen”. A long text from the festival site follows below. The director is also to make a masterclass at the festival. To be recommended. Masterclasses with Bang Carlsen are always lively and entertaining and fine invitations to enter his world. We two editors of filmkommentaren.dk – Allan Berg and Tue Steen Müller – have followed the work of the director for decades, as film consultants who have supported on behalf of the Danish Film Board and Film Institute, and in writing. Allan Berg has made – primarily in Danish – a ”Jon Bang Carlsen. Collected Posts on His Work” (in Danish and English), it will take you a good amount of time to read about the many films of Bang Carlsen, and you will enjoy it.

A retrospective in 2014 – I attended the first international retrospective of the director in 1988 in Montecatini in Italy, quite an honour it was, the same year as Nagisa Oshima was there with his feature film series. Two years later, in 1990, Jon Bang Carlsen was in Montecatini again, where he with ”Baby Doll” won the ”Airone d’oro”, the golden heron, symbol of the city. I was there on both occasions and remember that Jon asked me in a press release to change the heron into a swan, sounds better he said, as ”hejre” in Danish at that time was a not very nice chauvinistic reference to women.

Back to Leipzig retrospective, here is the text from the site:

How authentic can a documentary be? Jon Bang Carlsen of Denmark delves into this question in his films. His work is deliberately perched on the

boundary between documentary and fiction. DOK Leipzig pays tribute to the master of this mixed form this year with an homage and offers insight into his sensational documentary method.

Bang Carlsen takes the approach that there is no objective reality in the documentary, but that the presence of the camera alone changes the daily life of the protagonists. “For me documentaries are no more real than fiction and fiction films no more invented than documentaries,” the filmmaker says of his approach, which he consistently developed since graduating from the National Film School of Denmark in the mid-1970s.

“Staged documentaries” are what he calls his films, in which he has real people play story lines he conceives. The facts are not crucial for Bang Carlsen, just the story. The Dane takes the lives of his protagonists as a basis and writes a screenplay for them in their own everyday language. The script is based on thorough research of the locations and a study of the protagonists before filming begins. In implementing, Bang Carlsen then works with the techniques of narrative film – including rehearsals, directing actors, lighting and camera.

In his 1996 cinematic essay “How to Invent Reality”, he provides a blueprint for his method. Using the example of the film “It’s Now or Never” from the same year, Bang Carlsen shows how he constructed the story of an elderly Irish bachelor looking for a wife and how he selected the venues. But the protagonist Jimmy is “real” – the words that Bang Carlsen puts in his mouth could have been his own, and his life could have followed the course that the director laid out in the script.

In this way, the “staged documentaries” ran counter to everything that corresponded to traditional ideas of documentary cinema. Today, as staging plays an increasingly important role in the documentary, Bang Carlsen can be regarded as the definitive expert on this form of hybrid documentary. As before, the films evoke controversial reactions, while at the same time they have tremendous public appeal. Jon Bang Carlsen invites his audience to look closely. What do we see? The truth? Or reality? (Whose? The protagonist’s, the filmmaker’s or our own?)

He also thematically negotiates the game between fiction and reality in every film anew. “It’s Now or Never” shows the single life on the Irish coast; “Before the Guests Arrive” (1986) is a chamber drama about two women in a hotel. Also located in a hotel is the comedy “Hotel of the Stars” (1981), about the big screen dreams of two extras in Hollywood. “Purity Beats Everything” (2007) follows the story of two Holocaust survivors.

To accompany the homage curated by Matthias Heeder, Jon Bang Carlsen will present his documentary method in a master class and also bring his new book, which will celebrate its world premiere in Leipzig.

Wim Wenders i København

Han talte engelsk, og det var da forkert, ikke? Burde han ikke være interviewet på tysk? Han er jo tysk filminstruktør, dobbelt W og W i i hans navn skal udtales som dansk enkelt v, ikke? Det var i Kunstforeningen, Gammel Strand i lørdags, og det var stort. Bestemt også på engelsk. Der sad han lige foran mig og talte engelsk blødt og roligt og klogt – og direkte om sin fotografiske og filmiske poetik lige med det samme. Han fortalte, at han har boet i USA i en lang årrække, og det ved jeg selvfølgelig er en del af selve kernen i hans værk, et vigtigt element i ”Der Amerikanische Freund”, ”Paris, Texas”, ”Land of Plenty” ja, selv i ”Der Himmel über Berlin”, hvor Peter Falk så afgørende dukker op ved siden af englene og luftakrobaten.

Jeg sad og tænkte på en enkelt gang for længe siden, jeg havde været med til noget tilsvarende stort. Werner Herzog en hel dag på filmskolen. Og han havde også talt engelsk. Men det var ikke mærkeligt for mig. Jeg var vant til hans stemmes smukke tysk-engelske accent i filmenes uomgængelige kommentarer. Den accent var og er integreret i Herzog og i hans værk. Wenders og engelsk skal jeg vænne mig til, det udvider ham imidlertid for mig. Han er herefter ikke længere kun tysk. Hans film er tyske udforskninger af det amerikanske, som har fascineret, slået ham med undrende nysgerrighed siden han i Düsseldorf som barn oplevede alt det amerikanske som det fremmede, ikke skræmmende, nej dragende.

Men i stolen der i Kunstforeningens spejlsal så han sig som europæer, når han selv skulle sige det. Han sagde, at han ser sin æstetik som europæisk, ser det som hovedgrebet i sine film, som forbliver steddrevne, ikke som i den amerikanske æstetik plotdrevne. Det var dette med stedet, som var emnet på mødet i Kunstforeningen, hvor fotografen Wim Wenders værker var udstillet, kæmpestore forstørrelser af nogle af hans tusinder optagelser af steders betydninger. Optagelser foretaget på talrige rejser, altid alene. Optaget med panoramakamera eller med det lille Leica. På rigtig film – ”jeg har alle lommer fyldt med filmruller” – og fremkaldt og forstørret i et mørkekammer, han kender godt. Det er også en vigtig historie…

http://foto-poesie.de/Licht/Leica.php  (se den lille reklamefilm for Leica og hør: Wenders taler engelsk så kærligt om det tyske kamera…)

http://www.ekkofilm.dk/artikler/wenders-landskaber-taler-til-os/  (læs i hvert fald Lars Movins omhyggelige og detaljerede interview under weekendens mindeværdige begivenhed)

Kurt Jacobsen & Warren Leming: American Road

As one who does not have English as native language this film demands attention and concentration. You have to get used to the constant bombardment of words, archive photos and films, interviews but if you succeed to do so, it really pays off. This rich film gives you so much American cultural history that you feel deeply informed – and entertained. Because it is not – as many films full of words – a boring film, it has a light tone led by co-producer Warren Leming’s wonderful, relaxed voice-off commentary that is miles away from an usual authoritarian television speak.

The starting point of the film is this poem by Walt Whitman:  Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road. Healthy, free, the world before me. The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose. (Song of the Open Road).

From this the film travels through literature and music and politics and philosophy having Mark Twain, Woody Guthrie (close-ups on his guitar text label: this machine kills fascists!) and Jack Kerouac of course, with his iconic inspiration Neil Cassady, as strong characters of the story that again and again refers back to Whitman. Not to forget Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan. It’s social history, it takes us to the horrible images from the Vietnam war and some veterans appear in the film. A gallery of people are interviewed, asked

to remember and analyse how and why. Sometimes this stops the flow of the story as ”experts” are not equally interesting to listen to. Anyway, the film as such is a work that you can only admire for its richness and ability to put the many Americana elements that we know about into a personal, intelligent perspective.

Here follows an edited quote from the fine site of the film:

The American road ‐ from the frontier iconography of John Ford’s films through rent‐a‐car cross country itineraries of the US – has inspired poetry, art, folk music, novelists and playwrights. In Hollywood the road
film is a major genre. The thematic touchstone is the egalitarian ideal of the “open road” first expressed by 
poet Walt Whitman. Whitman clearly inspired Woody Guthrie through the hard traveling times of the 1930s, 
the purposeful meanderings of Jack Kerouac and his scruffy associates through the early post‐war years, 
and the adventures and misadventures of much of the 1960s generation and its successors. Whitman’s 
open road, said D. H. Lawrence, was “the bravest doctrine man ever proposed to himself.’ American Road 
is an exploration of that doctrine in action. The road also is a metaphor for personal and national 
transformation. The documentary ultimately explores what it means to be an American, not just 
a wayfarer…

USA, 1h.45 mins (in two parts), 2013

If you wish to see the fim there is contact info on the site

http://www.americanroad.jigsy.com

Cinedoc-Tbilisi Second Edition

The Georgian international documentary film festival has launched its programme for its second edition (October 14-19), well thought and competent, with competitive sections and side bars like ”Ukranian Voices”.

Here you find ”Euromaidan” put together by Darya Averchenko and Roman Bondarchuk, “Cornered” (photo) by Dmitro Tyazhlov, “Sickfuckpeople” by Juri Rechinsky – all praised on filmkommentaren – and “Ukraine Voices” from 2014 that I don’t know. Bravo, I wonder how many other festivals have a section like this, a tribute to the brave filmmakers in the haunted country.

In the main competition with 9 films you find good works as “Life Almost Wonderful” by Svetoslav Draganov from Bulgaria – Draganov has developed a special style, also used in his previous film “City of Dreams” – the warm human portraits in “Ne me Quitte Pas” by Sabine Lubbe Bakker & Niels van Koevorden and the impressive “Judgement in Hungary” by Eszter Hajdu.

In the “Focus Caucasus” only three out of ten films are known to me, all fine films: Emel Celebi’s cinematic homage to cleaning ladies in Turkey, “Ain’t No Cinderellas”, Georgian Ana Tsimintia’s brilliant “Biblioteka” and Alina Rudnitskaya’s “Blood” that was awarded some days ago at the Message2Man festival in St. Petersburg. Rudnitskaya is for me the chronicler of social Russia today. Again – to have a focus on films from Caucasus (including Russia and Turkey) is the right move for the festival in Tbilisi that hopefully will have as good an audience as I experienced last year at the first edition.

Read all about it on the website:

http://www.cinedoc-tbilisi.com/

Nordisk Panorama 25!

Nordisk Panorama 25! – a documentary tour down memory lane. Yes, the first one was in Grimstad, this idyllic and romantic spot on the South coast of Norway. I was there and so was she, with whom I have shared my life since then. Grimstad 1990, unforgettable, a place in my heart… I was there on behalf of Statens Filmcentral (National Film Board of Denmark) and as part of the group that was to set up Filmkontakt Nord the year after. Therefore, a thank you for asking me to write about what has happened to Nordic documentaries in the quarter of a century that has passed. I have chosen to primarily go back to focus on directors and films, which I remember and which have made an impact on the Nordic and/or the international scene. You will probably miss some, especially ”newer” ones, I can’t cover it all. You will agree that nothing is so boring as extensive name- and title-dropping. I will try to control myself. And of course it is a personal choice that I have made.

SOCIAL AND OBSERVATIONAL

There was a pretty strong line-up of documentaries in 1990. When I look at the list of films and directors in competition (there were no films from Iceland and only one from Finland!), in my view, three stand out and have indeed put their mark on Nordic documentaries.

Sigve Endresen was there with ”For your Life” (”For harde livet”), 98 minutes of strong social documentary on drug addicts, a film that reached a huge audience in the cinemas of Norway and opened the door for the director to make another critical statement on how the society treats its outsiders – ”Big Boys Don’t Cry” (”Store gutter gråter ikke”) on young prisoners taking part in a rehabilitation project. It was at Nordisk Panorama (NP) 1995, followed by ”Living Among Lions”(”Leve blandt løver”) at NP 1998, on three young people who suffer from cancer. In 2002 he took part in NP with the portrait of singerKari Iveland, named ”Weightless” (”Vektløs”). The style of his films is direct, mostly with no sentimentality.

I remember that we Danes were jealous on the Norwegians, who could get documentary films reach the cinema. And also have them used in educational contexts – here we touch upon a typical Nordic issue that I have always highlighted at workshops abroad: the non-theatrical use of films for public education and debate. 

As Jørgen Roos (also in my school time) took me to Greenland with his many films, giving me an insight to their culture and people, Ulla Boje Rasmussen is the documentarian, who has taken me and audiences around the world to her beloved Faroe Islands (Færøerne). ”1700 Metres from the Future” (”1700 meter fra fremtiden”) includes gorgeous nature sequences and fine portraits of the 16 (!) inhabitants, who get a tunnel connecting them to the rest of the world. The film is a classic in Danish documentary history with superb cinematography by Andreas Fischer-Hansen, also the producer. The two stood behind Nordfilm (right name!) that also made the follow-up ”The Light on Mykines Island” (”Tre blink mod vest”) (NP 1992), equally from the islands towards the North… I will send you to another island, said a filmconsultant years later, he happened to be me, to the director, let’s find an island in the South for a new film. Ulla chose Sardinia and out came ”Coro di Bosa” (NP 1998), which as the Faroe films had a fine international career. Boje Rasmussen has later on returned to the North making films in Greenland and Iceland, and one about the independence movement in Faroe Islands. The latter was at NP 2003, entitled ”Rugged Road to Independence” (”Færøerne.dk”).

1700 Metres from the Future

FILM AND VIDEO

Most of the films from 1990 were shot on 16 or 35mm film. One can reflect a lot on what has happened with the documentary going from film to video. Quality in cinematography has gone radically down, many say. There is a lack of focus, many think they will ”just” organize it all in the editing room and as most of the films end up on a tv screen anyway, why care so much about the image quality, others say. This discussion is of course aimless today, in 2014, where all is shot with cameras that can produce images with sense of Cinema, in times wheremore and more documentary films end up on the big screens throughfestivals like NP and/or state supported distribution initiatives.

Why are documentaries today more popular than ever? Is it (also) because they are able to get very close to theme and characters? Where before the presence of a whole film crew would create a distance? Look at all the family-films that come forward shot and recorded by one person. In the doc history every new technical development has created a new aesthetic = a new documentary style. As now the hybrid of 2014. What the documentary has lost in aesthetics and image quality, it has gained in closeness to theme and characters. Camera comme stylo.

A CHAMPION

Back to 1990 and to one of the most aesthetically dedicated documentarians of the Nordic countries, Swedish Jan Röed, who I have met so many times at the NP festivals. ”Tong Tana” 1 (NP 1990) & 2 (2001) , ”Betrayal” (NP 1994), ”The Atlantic” (”Atlanten”) (NP 1995), ”Bongo Beat” (NP 1997), ”The Lighthouse” (”Fyren”) (NP 1999), ”Tokyo Noise” (2002), ”The Planet” (2006) … Jan Röed has an amazing filmography as director of several of the films as well as producer through the company Charon. The films from the company has often had a team spirit character with Röed, Björn Cederholm, Fredrik von Krustenstjerna, Kristian Petri and Johan Söderberg in close creative collaboration. I asked editor Niels Pagh, who has worked with Röed on several films to give me some characterising words: ”Janne is the champion of the mastershot. I’ve never worked with a photographer, who as him can capture the grandeur, beauty and horror of nature. Nature images have a tendency to be romantizising and sentimental, postcards for the urban human’s desires. Janne has a strict composition and he waits patiently for the right light for his totals of nature”.

THE SHORT FILMS

Very much significant already in 1991 is the tradition for short films in the Nordic countries. It was a sensation back then, nothing less, to watch ”A Year along the Abandoned Road” (”Året gjennom Børfjord”), ”one year in 12 minutes and 70mm”! Morten Skallerud, the director, has written a great text (http://www.cameramagica.no/About_Year.htm) from where here is a quote:

”Making this film had been a dream for many years, ever since January 1980 when I first came to this deserted, isolated, weather-beaten small village in Finnmark, located in northernmost Norway. Then the dream slowly turned into reality after we found a reliable method of doing extended tracking shots over rugged terrain, frame by frame. Thestory of the making of “A Year along the Abandoned Road” contains a lot of technical innovation. It also contains a different film language, and five Norwegians who fought sub-Arctic nature in order to turn a “crazy” idea into a 12-minute, 70mm film…”

A Year along the Abandoned Road

The same year a fascinating Finnish short documentary was presented, 4 minutes, 35mm, ”Darkness” (”Pimeys”) by Marja Pensala – blind female masseuse with black client – sounds banal but has so many layers in all its shortness. One of those films that you remember clearly, when you go online to watch a still. More than 20 years later.

PIRJO

Let’s stay in Finland. On the list from 1992 is ”Mysterion” by Pirjo Honkasalo, a world class documentarian, director and camerawoman and aunique inspirator for young filmmakers. A master of the personal, authored film. In 1993 she made ”Tanjuska and the seven Devils” and in 1997 ”Atman”, the three of them forming a trilogy called “The Trilogy of the Sacred and the Satanic”. Her true international breakthrough,however, came with ”The 3 Rooms of Melancholia” (”Melancholian 3 huonetta”) (NP 2004) that is praised wherever I go. Was the absence of ”Tanjuska…” and ”Atman” at NP because idfa (the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam) requires world premieres? I have never understood this stupid thought of exclusivity. Anyway, ”Atman” won the Joris Ivens Award at idfa.

A small Nordic anecdote about Pirjo Honkasalo, who is absolutely against pitching, which she finds barbaric (my word). However,producer Kristina Pervilä and some of us fans of the director convinced her to pitch at a Nordisk Forum in Aarhus. She did so showing still photos of her characters for the ”Melancholia” film, talking passionately about them and the theme of the film. In the middle of her pitch the light went out in the room and Honkasalo said ”there you see, it does not work with me and pitching”! The light came back, she continued and the producer left Aarhus with around 1.5 mio. DKK!

3 Rooms of Melancholia

FAMILIES

A decade later, in 2002, I experienced a year of significance in terms of storytelling and themes. The selection had three strong films, all with focus on the family. Swedish Erik Bäfving’s ”Boogie Woogie Daddy” (”Boogie Woogie Pappa”) is built on photos taken by the father of the director. It is very seldom you meet such an emotionally balanced poetic short documentary that appeals to all of us, who have lived with alcoholic fathers.

Boogie Woogie Daddy

Norwegian Even Bennestad presented ”All About My Father” (”Alt om min far”), an equally painful but also warm interpretation by the director. What does it mean to have a father, who is a man but sees himself as a woman. The third to mention is the Danish ”Family” by Sami Saif and Phie Ambo, a milestone for a new Danish generation of documentarians, followed five years later by another masterpiece, ”The Monastery” by Pernille Rose Grønkjær (NP 2007).

 

The Monastery

EARLY HYBRID DOCUMENTARY

As a football freak I enjoyed ”Africa United” at NP 2005 and the year after I admired the energy and playfulness of the Icelandic director Olafur Johanneson (later on Olaf de Fleur) with his ”Act Normal”, about the Buddhist monk and his dramatic life. Quite an achievement, shot over many years, quick, fresh editing that was also demonstrated in those years by Erik Gandini and his ”Videocracy” (NP 2009) starring Silvio Berlusconi, and Anders Østergaard with ”Burma vj” (NP 2009) that went the whole way to an Oscar nomination. Yes, we have something special in the Nordic countries… a

DOCUMENTARY CULTURE

which is quite exceptional in terms of structure and has been able to initiate and nurture a tradition that includes strong film schools, film festivals, rich national film institutions, financing collaboration through Nordisk Film/TV Fond, national distribution systems with theatrical and non-theatrical schemes. A system like that has been bringing forward auteurs like Norwegian Margreth Olin and Erlend E. Mo, Swedish Stefan Jarl, Mia Engberg, Fredrik and Magnus Gertten and PeÅ Holmquist, Danish Jon Bang Carlsen, Jørgen Leth and Anne Wivel and Finnish John Webster and Jukka Kärkkäinen. Who, as the ones I gave space in the article, have been given space to develop their own style and cinematic approach to subjects from all over the world.

There is a long way from Ulla Boje Rasmussen and her true Nordic voice to Mia Engberg and her wonderful ”selfie-documentary” ”Belleville Baby”. What a richness in expression and artistic quality that lies in those 25 years. Did I forget anyone… Absolutely!

Nick Read: The Condemned

Filmen vises i morgen tirsdag den 30. september på DR2’s Dokumania kl. 20.45. Den kan stærkt anbefales. Den danske titel er forklarende, ”Ruslands værste fængsel”, en direkte oversættelse af originaltitlen ville være ”De fordømte”. Her følger en kort anmeldelse på engelsk, da filmen har haft og vil have et bredt internationalt liv.

You can choose to make a film about life in a Russian prison by picking one character as did Alexander Gutman years ago with his ”17 August”, a masterpiece, or you can do like Nick Read, director and cameraman – put the focus on a gallery of inmates (and one guard) and have them talk about what it means to be locked up, for most of them, for lifetime for the murders they have committed. (In 1996 death penalty was  not practised any longer).

The cinematography and editing of the film creates a tense, claustrophobic atmosphere with a strong sound score of doors being locked, keys put into the keyhole, with voice-off’s of Maxim, Vladimir, Temirov, Albert, Sergei – whatever their names are. They talk well, they regret, not all of them, they put words on what it means to be in a 5m2 cell and very rarely see the light of the day. They are given the opportunity to express themselves.

The film is informative. It tells about the difference in the prison – in sitting alone and being with others. It lets the man who has been locked up for 40 years of his 62 year life describe the rules that the older inmates set up to avoid trouble and fighting. The hierarchy is outlined, those lowest are the rapist and pedophiles.

Two times the film leaves the prison (260 men, 800 murders, situated far away from everything in a forest big as Germany…) to accompany the wife and son of one of the inmates, as well as a mother for the short visits (3-4 hours) they are allowed to have. They meet their husband/father/son and the camera catches some small emotional moments before it retracts to let them have privacy.

An honest work, away from the many tabloid prison films that are just looking for trouble. A quote: It’s not hard to kill a man, it’s hard to live with it.

UK/Russia, 80 mins., 2013

http://www.nickread.org

http://www.thecondemneddoc.com/

Message2Man St. Petersburg/ 4

Politics. Freedom to say what you want. In films as well. The Message2Man – that had its 24th edition this year – and its organisers are of course backing this basis for any film festival. Nevertheless the festival cancelled a screening of ”Pussy against Putin”, made by the anonymous group called Gogol’s Wives. Without any explanation I was told. The festival jury – read by the member Philip Gröning (”Into Great Silence”) – presented a statement raising this question but it was unfortunately wrapped into enigmatic and metaphoric language so the protest message did not come through. Why not say it directly that this is wrong… Even if the minister of culture and his entourage was present? Was it wrapped to protect the festival?

I talked to a jury member of the national competition and asked if he had found any critical or controversial films in the selection. Not really, he said, even if (my words) you can indeed say that the winner of the national competition deals with politics. The title says it all, ”Cardiopolitika” (photo) by Svetlana Strelnikova, who has a skilled surgeon as main character, who enters politics hoping it will help his profession to have better facilities. (See below).

We talked politics in St. Petersburg. Of course. At a moment where there is a war going on

in Ukraine. And at a moment where sanctions are made from Russian and American/European side against each other.

We were at a dacha yesterday with a family of mum and dad, son and his wife, daughter and her husband – and the son’s two lovely children of 3 and 5, who did not mention anything about Putin… But the grown up part of the family did, indeed. When I referred to Baltic film friends being scared that the past could become the present (= Russian invasion), the whole family said that they could understand that. And when I referred that they (the Baltics) mentioned that the Russian propaganda was like the one of Goebbels, they said – ”even worse”. When can this change, I asked. When economics get worse. It’s about living standard and oil prices, nothing else, and of course about ”him” wanting to have a Greater Russia built up. He is clever, the son said, and the people from the opposition are not at the same level. There are none who can compete, but there will be when the time for change comes. All family members are indeed anti-Putin but have different opinions about when and how change can/should happen.

I was at M2M for the fourth time in a row. The new Velican Centre where most of the screenings take place is a shopping mall with cinemas, as we have them in Western Europe. It is a pretty noisy venue in the middle of a park but with halls that have superb projection quality. Out of five cinema halls the festival goes on in four and that provokes a cannibalism = some screenings suffer because others ”eat” the audience. The Danish documentaries suffered, I regret to say, should have had a bigger audience, but the Danish directors present Andreas Johnsen, Anders Østergaard and Andreas Koefoed did a great job in Q&A’s and at well attended masterclasses for film students at film schools/universities. In two hour sessions the three of them showed clips from their films and gave the hungry-for-knowledge youngsters inspiration and answers to questions. Østergaard and Koefoed were also at the fine Danish Cultural Institute on the Mojka Embankment, which has previously supported Danish/Russian documentary meetings. The director Finn Andersen welcomed us generously.

About the cannibalism – I wonder if the festival should decrease its number of films? Actually the programme is huge and very competent when it comes to the retrospectives, the experimental section, the international competitions, whereas I can not judge the national programme – many told me that most of the films in that section had been supported by the Ministry of Culture… in other words, had been given an official stamp.

St. Petersburg. Noisy – the amount of cars seems to be increasing from year to year. Lots of traffic jam and taxis that gave up to go to Petrogradskaya island. St. Petersburg. Beautiful. You can’t stop admiring the architecture, the canals, the museums, to be reminded about the history, to eat the borsch and the pelmeni. And the vodka, not to forget, to be enjoyed with the many friends in the city. Spasibo bolshoi!

Message2Man St. Petersburg/ 3

It was a Swedish documentary that got the Grand Prix at the Message2Man 2014 festival: Forest of the Dancing Spirits (photo), directed by Linda Västrik (104 min. | 2013 | Sweden, Canada).

I copy-pasted a description of the film from a festival catalogue: In the deep jungle of the Congo, untouched by civilisation, live the Aka, a tribe of pygmies. Linda Västrik lived among the Aka from 2005 to 2012, and captured the fascinating life of this hunter-gatherer tribe. It is a life governed by magical rituals, myths and traditions just as it was centuries ago. Against the background of the personal story of couple Akaya and Kengole, whose greatest desire is to have children of their own, is a depiction of the harmony of human coexistence with the jungle, the source of all life and death. But thanks to the plans of the state forestry company, this coexistence will probably be short-lived.

In the short film category two films shared the award: the documentary Beach Boy by Danish Emil Langballe (28 min. | 2013 | UK, Denmark) and the short fiction Sunny by Barbara Ott (30 min. | 2013 | Germany)

In the national competition the winner was Cardiopolitika by Svetlana Strelnikova (64 mins., 2014). At a press conference in connection with the

MIFF (Moscow International Film Festival) the director said, and I am sure she speaks for many Russian documentarians in her words about the situation for the filmmakers (edited version):

… the film was being shot almost without any financial support. The government of Perm partly provided the project with some money and the Ministry of Culture’s attention was drawn to the film when it was already being finally edited. The film was first released in Europe where, in Svetlana Strelnikova’s opinion, they pay much more attention to such films than in Russia. 

The main character of the film is a Perm cardiac surgeon Sergey Sukhanov , an unchallenged authority for many people in his region but Strelnikova had no intention of showing him only from a positive side. “He is not a super hero for me”, – she said. The film shows his work during the election campaign in 2012. This episode of his life had become a part of the film occasionally, the film makers assured. As Svetlana Strelnikova said, one could notice that Sukhanov was changing during the shooting getting involved in political games and becoming more and more irritable.

It was not easy to follow the artistic idea of the film-maker because Sergey Sukhanov is an authoritative independent person who doesn’t have time for special shooting. “There is one staged scene in the film: I asked him to come out to the balcony and start smoking”, explained the film maker. As for the rest, the famous surgeon trusted the process that allowed the film crew to use a camera almost everywhere including the cardiac surgery department and the campaign office. “He said we can film and that means that nobody can disobey, that’s why I felt free to do everything I need”, noted Strelnikova.

For annotations of the films, please go to

http://message2man.com/