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

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!