Svetlana Strelnikova: Cardiopolitika

Sergey Sukhanov is the hero of this film. When in Eastern European countries for workshops I very often ask the filmmakers to say or write ”main character” or ”protagonist” instead of hero. But in this case Sukhanov is a hero. He is totally dedicated to his job, to be a cardio surgeon doing open heart operations and he has saved thousands of lives. It is a call for him, who is tough but fair when he discusses with his staff – or complains that they are not competent or attentive enough: I will deduct from your salary! He wants his colleagues to have the same dedication as himself: Being sick here is uncool! Tough but fair, well also heroes have unpleasant sides of their personality.

The chain-smoking surgeon (!) has problems with the local authorities. A new cardiac centre seems to be ready but there are still budget matters to be solved before it can open. He walks the empty corridors, checks the facilities, but when? An offer to head the presidential campaign for Putin locally is presented to the popular man, who, although doubtful, can see an advantage for his new centre, supported by Putin, and the population in the region of Perm.

This is the main theme of the film – a doctor, until then, far away from politics, decides to play the game of politics, not for personal gain but from an altruistic reason. The director of the film puts it

forward in an excellent observational way. The camera is there always, it seems, it catches the stress of the surgeon in his office, when he has meetings with the staff, when operating – in one scary (from a patient’s point of view) scene he is operating and doing a press interview at the same time! His constant stress comes out, when he gets irritable over small things like when his operating clothes have been laced too tight!

I’m not going to be involved in politics, he says, and talks about dishonesty and corruption. Nevertheless, he gets involved going around to meetings arguing for Putin as the best – who else, he says. Is the moral of the film that if you want to achieve a result like Sukhanov’s new centre, you have no choice but to go with the rulers of the game? Pragmatism and populism?

We often call for development of characters in film workshops. In this case Svetlana Strelnikova succeeds very well to depict how a charismatic character changes under pressure from outside to his integrity. The film has a rythm, an intensity in tone, to use – again – good old Leacock’s words, you have to convey the illusion of ”being there”. Strelnikova does so.

Russia, 2014, 65 mins.

The film got the main award in the National competition of the St. Petersburg festival:

http://message2man.com/en/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CPH:DOX 2014 /1989

1989 

CPH:DOX begynder nu at fortælle om programmet for festivalen i år. Åbningsfilm bliver verdenspremieren på “1989” af Anders Østergaard, der ikke blot bliver vist til festivalens åbning i DR Koncerthuset, men også samtidig i en del favoriserede biografer andre steder i landet og i 15 forskellige biografer i europæiske byer. ”Dermed bliver åbningsfilmen på CPH:DOX, for første gang i festivalens historie, ikke blot en københavnsk begivenhed – men noget hele Danmark og resten af Europa kan deltage i…” skriver de i pressemeddelelsen. Videre hedder det:

”’1989’ er et storpolitisk drama om Jerntæppets fald. Den unge, ukendte teknokrat Miklós Németh blev udpeget til Ungarns nye premierminister for at genoprette landets vaklende økonomi, og Neméth beslutter sig hurtigt for at opgive Ungarns omfattende og dyre grænsekontrol – jerntæppet mod vest. Det er en beslutning, der skaffer ham mægtige fjender blandt de ungarske betonkommunister og hos statslederne i Østblokken. Et ungt østtysk par hører som tusindvis af andre østtyskere om Némeths beslutning og drager afsted i håb om at kunne undslippe til Vesten gennem Ungarn, hvor grænsen kortvarigt åbnes helt. Men parret bliver fanget i det politiske magtspil, der foregår bag lukkede døre i Østblokken. Da de når grænsen, er den igen lukket, og den unge mand bliver skudt og dør. Den tragiske begivenhed får Németh til at åbne grænsen permanent, og kort efter falder Berlinmuren. I ’1989’ genskaber Anders Østergaard begivenhederne fra Jerntæppets fald og fører publikum dybt ind i de hemmelige mødelokaler. Det sker med en blanding af vidnesbyrd, arkivmateriale og rekonstruerede scener og dialoger, der er synkroniseret til eksisterende arkivmateriale med de politiske hovedpersoner i filmen.”

Still: Miklós Németh

CPH:DOX 2014. 6. – 16. november. Hele programmet bliver offentliggjort på mandag på cphdox.dk.

1989 Trailer Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/108357327

1989 Trailer Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4KR2cvcZNE&feature=youtu.be 

Anna Yanovskaya: Ten Centimeters of Life

First an explanation of the title of the film, enigmatic and fascinating it is: It refers to the ten centimeters of space below the ceiling where there was no water…  the space that saved lives at the unbelievable dramatic flood tragedy in the Krasnodar region near the Black Sea in Russia, in July 2012, an event that killed up to 200 people and left thousands homeless.

However, it is not statistics that interests the debutant director Anna Yanovskaya, it is the human dimension. She is using some archive material from 2012 – some shot via a cell phone from a roof top – to frame the visits she made to the city of Krymsk, where people more than one year after remember it all, while trying to rebuild their lives. The director uses a first person narrative, she is sometimes in the picture, ”I was in the epicenter of grief”, yes this is what it is about in a film that includes moving scenes of deep deep pain but also demonstrates the human being’s will to go on…

A grandmother is in focus. Her grandson comes home from military service, the family gathers around the table, singing and drinking, drinking and singing, a wonderful typical Russian gathering, there is a tone and an atmosphere in these scenes – but the conversations keep on going back to what happened in July 2012. There is a lot of anger towards the authorities, ”they did nothing”, we see a mother holding a picture of her small son, a picture taken two hours before he disappeared, unbearable, as is the archive footage showing a man swimming, trying to grap a pipe, ”hold on”, they scream to him, but he can not, he is taken by the water and we are told that he did not make it, he drowned. A young man from the municipality (I guess) goes around to visit to see how the reconstruction is progressing. His meetings with old couples are caught by the camera, sweet bitterness.

Grandma is sitting outside her house, you read her face, grief but also survival will… a fine  work, this is, personal, terrifying theme, maybe sometimes a bit messy in structure, still, the most important is that the director brings the viewer into the souls and minds of those who suffered and still do so.

Russia, 2014, 66 mins. 

The film was in the national competition at the

http://message2man.com/en/

Jihlava Festival Announces its Programme

The day after DOKLeipzig (below), the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival (IDFF) announces its programme schedule, October 23-28. The newsletter from the Czech festival does also, as DOKLeipzig, focus on statistics in its first paragraph. After headline ”57 world, international or European premieres at this year’s Jihlava IDFF”, it goes like this ” This year, the traditional competition sections will offer a unique blend of auteur documentaries, most of which as world, international or European premieres. In the competition of world documentaries Opus Bonum the IDFF Jihlava will present 5 world premieres, 5 international premieres and 1 European premiere. In Between the Seas, the competition of Central and East European documentary film, there will be 4 world premieres, 2 international and 2 European premieres. The Czech Joy competition will present 10 world premieres.”

All right, let’s go to content, the films, where I can only salute that there are films from Guinea-Bissau, Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, Philippines, Japan and – I know I am repeating myself – “Euromaidan. Rough Cut” from Ukraine.

I will be in Jihlava 3 full days and apart from taking part in a couple of industry activities, I am looking forward to watch films and why not dig into the section “Czech Joy”, where there are films by Veronika Liskova, Miroslav Janek (photo) and Jan Gogola. I am a big admirer of Janek, whose films on Vaclav Havel and on Olga Havlova have been praised on filmkommentaren.

I have been to Jihlava several times, mostly for the workshop of Ex Oriente, but also for the festival, once in the jury, and a compliment to the film selection: it is always surprising and out-of-mainstream festival profiles.

http://www.dokument-festival.com/news-detail/17304

DOKLeipzig Programme Announced

Today DOKLeipzig announced its programme for the festival, that runs from October 27 to November 2. Whether you like to highlight it or not, the press release stresses that the festival offers 41 world premieres – 29 documentary and 12 animation films. And there are several international premieres and all 80 films in competition are for the first time to be seen in Germany!

All right, duty done, statistics and ambition/rules of the game mentioned, yes I know that it is a competitive environment for a big festival like DOKLeipzig – what is more important is the content, the films that the festival has chosen and there is indeed a clear profile this year: Laura Poitras film on Snowden opens the festival, there are several films from and about Ukraine, there are Syrian filmmakers in the programme, films from South America, Asia, from Arab countries and Africa. The world is at its worst, documentaries are describing the situation, that’s how it should be, DOKLeipzig lives up to its reputation and tradition. In the officlal programme 198 films are being shown, in the “Sonderreihen” another 170 are listed, we have mentioned the retrospective of Jon Bang Carlsen as just one of them. He is one of very few Nordic documentarians to visit Leipzig, from the Baltic countries there are no documentaries. Seems like the Nordic go to cph:dox and idfa, the Baltics to Visions du Réel.

I have booked myself in to 5 full days in Leipzig during the festival, lot of watching, meeting people and saying goodbye to Claas Danielsen (photo), who stops as festival director with this edition. Some title-dropping from the feature length documentary competition: Sergei Loznitsa with “Maidan”, Ulrich Seidl with “Im Keller”, the French Bories and Chagnard who made the fine “The Arrivals” (winner in Leipzig in 2012) is back with “Rules of the Game”, Fernand Melgar who was in Leipzig in 2011 with “Vol Spécial” is there with “The Shelter” and Alexander Nanau (“The world According to Ion B.”) presents his “Toto and his Sisters”.

By clicking at the bottom of the link below you can get a pdf of the official programme of the festival.

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/festival/festival-news?start:int=0 

Olga Lvoff: When People Die They Sing Songs

Sonia, the daughter, sits down at the computer to write the headline “My Family’s European Genocide Story”… one of many stories, where a majority of a family ended up in Auschwitz, but in her case she is lucky to have her 93 year old mother Regina next to her, to tell her what happened. And it has to be told now while Regina is still able to remember. She is on her way to dementia.

It’s a warm and moving life story that the two of them unfold in the flat in New York, and the director succeeds to have their personalities come out. Regina is wonderful, you sense how strong she must have been, a survivor and a fighter to give her daughter a good life. Sonia indicates that the mother stays alive because she is afraid that she – Sonia – can not manage it – the life – herself! That is one of the beautiful scenes in the film. Sonia comes out a bit pushy sometimes, talking down to her mother – like we do to relatives, who are getting old, don’t we? But she is also the one to tell the story of her ill father, who when she was a child, was taken to an asylum, where she came to visit him. She saw him for twenty minutes, then he left.

Regina likes to sing, in Jiddisch, and a music teacher comes with his guitar to sing with them. These are not the most succesful scenes in the film. It sounds maybe paradoxical but I feel that the young man is an intruder to the scenes of intimacy that the director is able to establish between a mother and a daughter, who wants to know her family’s story before it is too late. This is something we can all relate to, why did we not ask mother and father when they were there…

Having said so, and also having some reservations towards some small visual dramatizations that I don’t find necessary: the documentary is a fine example of how close you can get and how respectfully and sensitive the director has dealt with the mother and daughter relationship.

Russia, USA, 47 mins., 2014

http://whenpeoplediefilm.com/about

Loparev & Kurov: Children 404

It’s one of those films, that had to be made and that you hope will be shown everywhere to pass the information about the absurd and inhuman condition that the LGBT community lives under in Russia after a law was set up that forbids “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations to minors”.

… and to pass the information that brave people do something for the teenagers, who meet anger and violence, insults and intimidation from parents and school mates. “People like you should be burned” is one of the remarks that are brought forward in the film, that gives space for statements by mostly anonymous children, who contact the network/ internet group 404, named after the message we often get on the internet, “404-error, not found”. Many of them have tried to take their own lives.

Elena Klimova is the young woman behind the initiative and one of the two main characters. She talks well and the scenes with her and her partner Zhenya in their kitchen have a warm and intimate conversation atmosphere. They left their journalistic jobs or rather were pushed out because of their homosexuality and have taken on this mission to help – 22.000 joined the group, 1364 shared their stories the first year. The other main character is a young man – with open-minded parents and wonderful grandparents – who has decided to leave the country for Canada.

It affects you a lot this fine documentation that has a simple humanistic non-sensational approach to a theme, where you want to shout: Shame on you Putin et co.!

Russia, 2014, 76 mins.

http://www.riseandshine-berlin.de/portfolio_page/children-404/

Askold Kurov: Leninland

They have some verbal battles in the office, Natalya and Eugenia. They get on each other’s nerves. They both work at the museum, have done so for a long time, but where one is for the material side of the life (Natalya), the other (Eugenia) is heading for the spiritual values.

The scenes with the two are among the finest in a film that in an observational style catches the museum for Lenin, that was set up in 1987, had a great time in the beginning and now is trying to regain a visiting audience. Natalya does her best – are you filming Askold, she says to the director, she obviously sees the film as a chance to promote the museum – and shows us around in the rooms in Gorki, where Lenin died 90 years ago. Come and have an ”Soviet-era experience”, says Natalya, who brings school kids to the place where they pay respect to the great leader in finest pioneer style.

Otherwise, they take it easy at the museum, the rythm is slow, the stairs are cleaned as is the statue, but at the meetings of the board, the voices are raised, and a new director is brought in. Who cancels one plan for modernisation to bring in a Chinese opera show – and belly dance could maybe also bring more visitors. Alas! By the way, indicates the film, next to the museum a church is being built…

It would have been easy for Askold Kurov to make fun of the museum. He does not. He brings forward the institution, lets the viewer see it, meet the ones, who work there and let them take the floor. A fine choice.

Russia, 2013, 52 mins.

http://deckert-distribution.com/film-catalogue/leninland/

Does a Festival Critique Exist?

As a follow-up to the post below… here is a personal essay that I wrote for an academic book on festivals. It did not fit in, so here it is for you, a reflection on what is written on documentary festivals from outside and inside – promotion, reports but real critique on the festivals, does that exist? Hope it is interesting for you. (Photo from this year’s ZagrebDox).

But first some film-biographical stuff: You need to know a bit about my background as a festival visitor, organiser and reporter/critic. Yes, I have a close relationship to the world of documentary film festivals. I have been privileged to cooperate with colleagues in Denmark to set up and conduct several national and international festivals in my own country. One of them changed my film life, the Balticum Film & TV Festival on the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. It came to life as a consequence of the fall of Soviet Union and ran from 1990-2000, when the Danish support to the independence of the Baltic countries around 1990 made it possible to start the festival with financing from our government,. Voilá, we started a festival for the countries around the Baltic Sea. Many of

the filmmakers from the Baltic countries travelled for the first time abroad to meet colleagues from the West – and Russian colleagues as well. It created a forum for debate on film language and issues to be dealt with. A new way of talking about documentary films. A stream of new stories were presented to us. Stories that could not be told during the USSR.

… the festival was very well received by the Danish press, and I dare say that several of the Danish critics got their documentary ”education” through this festival, including myself, who saw films by Herz Frank, Juris Podnieks, Mark Soosaar, Audrius Stonys, Arunas Matelis, Sergey Dvortsevoy, Viktor Kossakovski, all from the Baltic countries and Russia, as well as films by Swedish and Finnish masters like Roy Andersson, Jan Troell and Pirjo Honkasalo. It was a big inspiration to try to communicate about documentary films differently. It meant a lot for the level of writing about documentaries. For many it moved the way of looking at documentaries away from the understanding of the genre as ”just” a kind of journalism.

It also gave me the chance to meet brilliant critics from Russia. I was at the Riga Documentary Symposium where Soviet educated academic critics had quite different, impressive analytical skills, when it came to debate the films shown. At that time in the big empire, at least, there were film magazines, which were supported by the state and which published longer and deeper articles from festivals or meetings like the one in Latvia.

Later on I have been co-programming the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade (7 films, high informational/promotional level) for 10 years, I have been advising the Message2Man in St. Petersburg and I am a programmer for the DocsBarcelona. My work has brought me to the two big festivals for documentaries, idfa in Amsterdam and DOKLeipzig for the last couple of decades.

I have been writing for Danish newspapers, for the DOX Magazine and now, for seven years, www.filmkommentaren.dk has been my, almost daily documentary writing ”location”, in different styles. Most of the time in the journalistic genre, sometimes also longer and deeper, if I may say so myself!

Festival Reporting or Critique

This is a classical question that all editors and reporters have put to themselves: How to cover a festival? I have written dozens of texts from festivals and I have always been doubtful on which road to take. Have to admit that I have frequently ended up making reports that are full of title-dropping and on-the-spot anecdotes because you expect that the reader wants to have the full picture to know about the repertory. They want words about the films chosen by the festival. The intention has been to be able to make an overall evaluation of the festival and its programming competence. The result however has quite often been a text that is very compact and boring to read…

… because you can’t give all films the same treatment so the compromise is that you highlight some films, the winners or those you think should have won, and then you list the rest with one or two words attached.

This is normal film journalism that you can find in newspapers or in film magazines or on websites/blogs.

When it comes to going-deeper film critique you very seldom see that in connection with festivals, and festival critique is an even more rarely genre to find.

A popular genre of reporting from a festival is the more personal, anecdotal more or less, born out of new journalism, where the reporter writes in first person and tries to convey an atmosphere. I have done that again and again especially in connection with the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade that this year celebrated its 10th edition. Here is an example from that edition:

”The morning after the opening of the 10th edition of Magnificent 7 Festival in Belgrade. The sky is clear but the wind outside is close to become a hurricane. A constant sound of wind enters the hotel room and is mixed in my head with the sound of ”Leviathan”, the first film of the 2014 selection, a film that brought an almost physical experience to many of us, who felt like ”being there” (as Richard Leacock always said was his ambition with his films) in this case on board a boat where fish of all kind end their lives, a drama it is, conveyed in a visual language that sometimes takes your mind away from the boat into surrealistic paintings and back again with a sound track that sits in you the whole way through this interpretation of Death.” (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2624/)

In other words: Kilroy was here, he had an experience to share with the reader.

Festival Criticism

Back to festival criticism = a look upon and an assessment of the anatomy of a festival The way it is constructed, the focus, the awards, the jury system if any, the uniqueness compared to other festivals. Let me give an example from a festival that launches itself pretty much with superlatives, Sheffield Doc/Fest. I looked at their programme for the festival (2011) part and wrote this:

”Stunning film programme? I checked the film list, and if you hope for a wide spread of quality documentaries from all over the world, you will get disappointed. There are no films from Latin America, there are no films from a leading European documentary country like Austria, there is one 10 minutes film from Russia, some insignificant films from Denmark, nothing from Czech Republic… but if you search for UK and US films you will have loads to choose from. Maysles, Barbara Kopple, Broomfield, Eugene Jarecki, Steve James. Stunning, no, international, no, if the organisers think so, one can only say that the selection is lousy, the festival is still totally dominated by English/American language films. Fair enough but do not market it differently!”

(http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1613/)

I could by the way write the same for the 2014 edition, again I checked the countries represented and saw one film from Poland, one film from Hungary, one from Russia, the rest of Eastern Europe is not in the programme… It’s basically anglo-saxon, Martin Scorcese and the rest of the gang. Why do they call it ”international”?

This is an area to be much more looked into. Festivals are growing like mushrooms, and documentary ones even more as the documentary film experiences a golden age in terms of innovation and interest from an audience. For those writing and those editing there is a responsibility to evaluate the selection and get the most interesting festivals up front.

If you – as many – consider a film festival as an exhibition of that special art as is the documentary film, it would be natural that it is reviewed as such which is much more the case for visual art exhibitions than for film festivals.

The question in that respect is of course if your point of view comes from you as a critic (focus on film selection, competition programmes etc.), or you put yourself in as a visitor, who expects to be serviced – information about the films, tickets available, prices, quality of Q&A, sectioning of the films… etc.

Visitor’s Criticism

Professional or not, it is not easy to go to the big festivals. What to choose? I do not remember a festival visit during the last 10 years, where I did not meet friends, who said: Please, give me some tips, what should I see? Veeery difficult question to answer, there is a lot of vonhörensagen that I can pass on, there are directors whose work I know, there are film descriptions that appeal to me… but how to advice if there are 100 or 200 or 300 films offered? Plunge into the ocean of titles and hope for a good swim!

The festivals recognise the problem and have started on their sites to have the staff – or others – come up with some recommendations, and another ”modern” tool is being used: If you have seen this film, you could also watch… Is that the right service ot should the festival rather limit their number of films to be shown?

For the documentary film festivals right now, and they are really many, if you talk about an international programme selection, I would mention idfa Amsterdam, DOKLeipzig, Visions du Réel Nyon, Cinéma du Réel, cph:dox – all of these come up with new films, well they mostly demand world premieres, whereas many other fine festivals like ZagrebDox, DocLisboa, Thessaloniki Documentary Festival visit the above mentioned to pick the best for their profile to have a selection to be praised for the focus on Quality.

All of them have websites which are informative, some more than others – I have for years been impressed by the way the press-conferences in Thessaloniki are covered, long in-depth summaries of what was said by the directors. Very giving, if you are not able to be there yourself.

Festival Journalism and Critique

The festivals do a lot themselves for their audiences to add to what the visitor/viewer/spectator can find in the catalogue or on the website of the festival. The publishing of video interviews from Q&A-sessions are more and more done, and is good to learn from. Furthermore it creates a culture of film enthusiasm and seriousness around the festival, the same goes for the ”journal of the day” as we see it at idfa, just to mention one example.

Another one is the one published by Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, in many ways a festival with its own, original profile created by the director Marek Hovorka. Their DOKRevue

(http://www.dokrevue.cz/en

aims at being of high-quality with theoretical articles, deeper interview, reviews, mostly with a focus on Czech and Slovak works.

However, apart from the mentioned DOKRevue, you have to remember that these journalistic texts and videos are made by journalists, who are employed by the festival so the aim is to give valuable, intelligent background material to the reader before/after he/she has seen the film in question. The starting point, in other words, is promotion. Not critique.

To sum up I am afraid it is not really possible to say that an independent film festival critique exists. The one that comes from ”inside” = the festivals themselves is more promotion than critique but can absolutely be of fine informational quality like those written by the journalistic staff of idfa, always with a signature. The DOX magazine that I had the privilege to be one of the founders of, has published its number 100, and refrains from having too many festival reports. Rather the tendency is that films that have been seen at bigger festivals are being reviewed in DOX. No objections to that.

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