Politics. Freedom to say what you want. In films as well. The Message2Man – that had its 24^th 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!

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/

A scoop for DOKLeipzig. Read the festival’s press release: The 57th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film will open on 27 October 2014 with the long-awaited film “CITIZENFOUR” by Laura Poitras. In the last instalment of her 9/11 trilogy, the multiple award-winning director shows how the United States’ so called “War on Terror” is directed against their own citizens.

In January 2013, Poitras received a number of encrypted e-mails from an anonymous sender who identified himself as “citizen four” and claimed to have evidence of massive covert surveillance operations of the NSA and other intelligence services. In June 2013, she flew to Hong Kong with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill for the first of many meetings with the man who turned out to be Edward Snowden. She brought her camera. The resulting film is a documentary thriller in which events unfold minute by minute before our eyes.

“CITIZENFOUR is a film that leaves a lasting impression”, says festival director Claas Danielsen. “Laura Poitras succeeds in making us feel the totality of modern surveillance almost physically. At the same time, she gives

us the psychological profile of a man who lives civic courage without compromise. CITIZENFOUR is one of those rare documentaries that are not only politically explosive but also deeply impressive works of art.”

CITIZENFOUR will see its world premiere on 10 October at the New York Film Festival. After a stop at the BFI London Film Festival, the film will open the 57th DOK Leipzig Festival, where it will compete in the International Competition Documentary Film section. CITIZENFOUR will compete for the Golden Dove as well as the “Leipziger Ring”, an award donated by the Stiftung Friedliche Revolution (Peaceful Revolution Foundation) to honour civic commitment to democracy and human rights in documentary film. On 6 November, Piffl Medien will release the film in Germany. The film was produced by Laura Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy and Dirk Wilutzky (Praxis Films, Berlin).

Laura Poitras’ previous films were screened to great acclaim at festivals across the world. “My Country, My Country” (2007) was nominated for numerous awards, including an Academy Award and an Emmy Award. “The Oath” (2010) won the Sundance Cinematography Award and the Edinburgh Film Festival Documentary Jury Award. She was distinguished, amongst others, with a Peabody Award and received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012 for her work. Her first solo exhibition will be presented at the New York Whitney Museum in 2016.

Second day in St. Petersburg started with a lovely tour to Russian Museum downtown at the square where a statue of Pushkin stands, always with birds resting on his stretched-out arm. The newly renovated rooms with the Russian avant-garde I had not seen before – what a pleasure to revisit masterpieces of Malevich, Filonov, Kandinsky and Tatlin.

After that off to Velican theatre where we watched young Danish Emil Langballe’s graduation film from the National Film School in England, ”Beach Boy”, a well balanced, cinematic non-moralistic portrait of a young black man and his relationship to a middle-aged British woman in Kenya. The young man makes a phone call to his girl friend, who is pregnant but is aware of his profession. The film is light and pretty much less demonstrative than the feature of Ulrich Seidl.

And then to Gare du Nord in Paris guided by veteran director Claire Simon, whose ”Human Geography” (104 minutes) appealed strongly to me, both because it is a very well made film but also because Gare du Nord is very familar to me. I have arrived there several times at 8am in the morning after 12 hours in train from Copenhagen, I have welcomed my mother when she visited us on vacation in ”la ville des villes”, and – alas – in November last year this was the place where co-editor of filmkommentaren.dk, Allan Berg, had his computer stolen, when we got out of a taxi…

Claire Simon is behind the camera, her friend Simon, of Algerian origin, is there with her to help her ask questions to people passing by. Small stories with people before they enter a train, observations, and talks with people working on the station. It becomes a film on Life and Love, superficial, what else could it be, but small stories placed in the heads of the audience for us to work more on. The focus is on people who ended up in France coming from all over the world, happy or not happy, with fine educations from back home, but apparently useless in the European country they have arrived to. IN that way the film is also a portrait of Europe of today.