The nominations have been done. At least three of the films deal with current political conflicts (these ones):

“The Act of Killing”, Cutie and the Boxer, The Square, Dirty Wars and 20 Feet from Stardom compete for the Best Documentary Feature prize at the 86th Academy Awards on March 2…”

I have seen them all (see below) except for “20 Feet from Stardom” (Photo). “The film has this synopsis description on the Oscar site (link below): Background singers heard on many of the 20th century’s greatest songs have made a crucial contribution to the world of pop music while remaining unknown to listeners. The singers take center stage for an in-depth look at their role as supporting figures in the complex process involved in creating the finished recordings.” From watching Youtube clips and the trailer it is obvious that this is a film with wonderful music and women, based on interviews with them and people like Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger and Betty Midler. A classic tv language film.

So… who are my favourites having seen all five, one in excerpts? “The Act of Killing” and “The Square” stand out. No doubt about that. In film language, actuality and storytelling. Important films they are. If it comes to approach to theme, innovation and originality “The Act of Killing” is unique. It would get my vote if I was a member of the Academy. I am not.

If you want to read more about what is considered to be the two favourites, not only by me, go to the websites of the films, links below. Or get hold of the magazine DOX 100, where Joshua Oppenheimer and Werner Herzog talk “The Act of Killing” and Jehane Noujaim is interviewed by BBC-editor Nick Fraser about “The Square”. Fraser, who has called “The Act of Killing” “porn for liberals” thinks that “The Square” is “the best film I have seen this year”.    

http://oscar.go.com/nominees

http://theactofkilling.com/

http://thesquarefilm.com/

http://www.edn.dk/news/news-story/article/dox-100-anniversary-issue-dox-in-dialogue-1/?tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=111

I watched this film online (on the fine festivalscope, link below, subscription-based) after it had been announced as one of the five nominees for the Oscar award in the feature documentary category.

The film has this synopsis description on the Oscar site (link below): “The events that have shaken Egypt since 2011 have taken the country from a revolution aimed at ending political oppression to the overthrow of the new president, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. At the center of the story is Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the gathering place for protesters and the site of many of the period’s most dramatic moments.”

… and drama there is, indeed, in this film that stays close to young revolutionaries for more than 2 years, catching the atmosphere of optimism after the fall of Mubarak, slogans, speeches in Tahrir Square, concerts, something’s gonna change – to the disillusion when the army has taken over and attacks the protesters, to more disillusion, when the Muslim Brotherhood negociates with the army, wins the election and appoints Morsi, who from the eyes of the young revolutionaries turns out to be worse than Mubarak. It’s observational reportage style footage that is the fundament of the film: People gathering. People in their tents. People being beaten up. People killed in the demonstrations, the mourning of their relatives, it’s terrible to follow. Some optimism returns to the face of Ahmed, when Morsi is taken away from power and the military is back. Yes, Ahmed (photo) is the character cleverly chosen by the director to bring in the emotional part – the young revolutionary, who is at the square discussing with people, who comments on what happens and how it influences him as time and events pass by. He is filmed in the streets, or through interviews. We read his face. The first, the direct works best, the latter feels a bit too staged. A scoop for the film, however, is that another central character is Magdy, who in an interview with the director is described as “a foot soldier” for the Muslim Brotherhood. His discussions with Ahmed, their friendship, stress that the director – although she follows the revolutionaries, who have also provided her with footage – does not want to condemn the Brotherhood as terrorists (as the military government does right now). Discussions like that as well as the actor Khalid’s skype conversations with his exiled wise father take the film take a step away from the constant bombardment of reportage material, whereas short interviews with military people made me confused – they can’t be as stupid as these ones all of them! 

USA, 2013, 1 hour 44 mins.

http://oscar.go.com/nominees

https://www.festivalscope.com/

I watched this film online (on the excellent idfa “docs for sale”) today after it had been announced as one of the nominees for the Oscar award in the feature documentary category.

The film has this synopsis description on the Oscar site (link below): “One of the least-known components in the war on terror, the Joint Special Operations Command conducts its work in secret and seemingly without limitations. With no existing record of their actions or personnel, the JSOC carries out strikes against those deemed a threat to U.S. security while remaining entirely outside the scope of public knowledge.”

… which is actually not really how the film appears. Its is much more a film that has taken all its storytelling tools from fiction, a thriller, a detective story with journalist Jeremy Scahill in the leading role as himself, the reporter who with his notebook never gives up in his year-long search to reveal American war crimes in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia with some looking back at Iraq. He finds out the existence of the JSOC before it goes public, having success in finding and killing Osama bin Laden. It is a well-made film and no doubt that Scahill is a good journalist, but also a writing journalist, a man who works with words and has published praised books on his journeys into the secret world of the US fight against terrorism, a fight that with JSOC, as the film shows, has cost many lives of civilians. It is a formatted film with the journalist always at work, always on a case, seriously interviewing Afghans (the Gardez case where innocent, pregnant women were killed) and Yemenits about what really happened, when their dear ones were killed by the counterterrorist JSOC, accompanied by strong images of corpses, and clips from American television shows where his investigations were made into stupid entertainment. Scahill is serious but also a man, who constantly talks in first person (I decided to go but could not etc.) and only at the end when he meets the father of Anwar al-Awlaki, American citizen, who was killed because of his role in al-Qaeda, with the consequent killing of his 16 year old son, what did he do other than being the son of… you sense that the journalist – portrayed as a hero – has some feelings for what he is doing.

USA, 2012, 87 mins.

http://dirtywars.org/

http://oscar.go.com/nominees

I watched this film online (on the excellent idfa “docs for sale”) today after it had been announced as one of the nominees for the Oscar award in the feature documentary category.

The film that runs theatrically in the US now, has this description on the Oscar site (link below): ”The 40-year marriage of painter Ushio Shinohara, known for his boxing paintings, and his wife, Noriko, who gave up her own career as an artist to focus on her husband, has become the subject of a series of comic strips drawn by Noriko. As the 80-year-old Ushio finds his own artistic reputation fading, Noriko’s fame continues to grow.”

… and it is a very good film, a charming and touching visit to the home and studios of the two, Ushio who is 80 years old and Noriko, who is around 20 years younger, and who is the one who has been suffering from her husband’s heavy alchoholism, documented through strongly archive material and excellently through the mentioned comic strips. The narration leads up to an exhibition, where she gets her own space and decorates the walls with the story about Cutie = herself (photo). The location is New York, there is a lot of presence in the film with the now (for several years says Noriko) sober Ushio, who thinks high of himself and ”need” Noriko, who says sweetly that ”Cutie love Bullie” so much.

On the Dogwoof site, where you can also buy the film, the director writes brilliantly about the background of the film. (Link below).

US, 2013, 78 mins.

http://oscar.go.com/nominees

http://cutieandtheboxer.co.uk/

Yes, it does, ”goes political”, it is to be said after the nomination has been done. At least three of the films deal with current political conflicts (these ones). My source – Realscreen news, this came into my mail box a while ago:

“The Act of Killing, Cutie and the Boxer, The Square (photo), Dirty Wars and 20 Feet from Stardom will battle it out for the Best Documentary Feature prize at the 86th Academy Awards on March 2…

In addition, Rithy Panh’s Cambodian documentary “The Missing Picture” is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, alongside four narrative dramas…”

I had wished for three great films I had seen: “My hope is that three films will make it to the nomination for their originality in storytelling and unique interpretation of human existence: “First Cousin Once Removed,” by Alan Berliner, “The Act of Killing,” by Joshua Oppenheimer and “Stories We Tell,” by Sarah Polley. They have all more than a current political or mainstream family focus. They are extra-ordinary.”

The ”political” made it, the two others, both touching on the family and both with an original storytelling, did not make it.

Bravo for the nomination of Rithy Panh’s masterpiece!

http://realscreen.com/2014/01/16/killing-square-20-feet-among-2014-oscar-nominees/#ixzz2qZR0pKfu

http://oscar.go.com/nominees

Liv Ullmann is a true film star and one of those, who can catch your attention, when she performs ”outside” the films in interviews. Her autobiographical book ”Changing” (1977) is highly praised among others by legendary American critic Roger Ebert (link below). In that she writes about her life and work with Ingmar Bergman, with whom she made a dozen films.

Indian director Dheeraj Akolkar has made a film, produced in Norway, about the two, told by Liv Ullmann and based on ”Changing”, love letters from Ingmar to Liv and (a bit) on his ”Laterna Magica”. Ullmann sits in and outside the house on Fårö, the island where Bergman and she lived together for five years and where several of his films are shot. Chaptered with words like Love, Loneliness, Rage, Longing, Friendship the film tells about ”the painful connection” between Liv & Ingmar, words expressed by the latter.

Unfortunately the director has decided to combine/connect her narration to clips from films like ”Persona”, ”Scenes from a Marriage”, ”Skammen” (Shame), ”Saraband” etc. So when she talks about their many tough confrontations, you see Erland Josephson and Ullmann in a scene, or Max von Sydow and Ullmann or… it makes it all sooo banal and tabloid, sentimentalising and reducing an extraordinary director’s extraordinary work with extraordinary actors to something one-dimensional. On top of that music is poured on the images like sugar on a cake, and love letters from Ingmar to Liv are read (by Samuel Fröler) in a tone that is unbearable.

Is it a puristic Nordic comment to a film that obviously is made for an American market? Maybe, luckily there are for other purists several great films about Bergman and his actors and actresses, including wonderful Liv Ullmann, about whom Bergman said, ”you are my Stradivarius”.

Norway, 2012, 85 mins.

http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/liv-ullmann-face-to-face

They are bent, they have crooked legs, they live in the Pindos mountains up NorthWest in Greece, far away from everything. Most of these old people have passed their lives here for decades.

And for decades Nikos Anastasiou, his wife Sophia and (for some of the time) their sons Kostas and Thimios have packed their van once per week in Trikala city to bring vegetables to the inhabitants of these mostly abandoned villages. Winter, spring, summer, autumn they come putting on classical Greek folk music on the loudspeakers so the customers have time to reach the road and get their goods. And have a conversation, an argument with others, a laugh or a short dance to the music from the van. 75 km.

Dimitris Koutsiabasakos followed the van through all seasons. With stops at places where they always stop meeting the characters. He catches the situations by fine observation, he sometimes follows the old women (indirectly the film confirms that women live longer than men, the old women are

In absolute majority) to their houses. Once it is sweet Fotoula together with one of the Anastasiou sons, who transport the Kosan gas and installs it in her small kitchen. Winter is hard, there is high snow, many have gone to the cities, few stay, like the man Aristides, with 20 cats, or the man who always talks about the weather: I am a shepherd but also a weatherman, he declares. And a woman who talks about sex all the time. Another woman who has her blood pressure measured by Sophia. The grocer family members put a little extra in the bag and always care about health and children and grandchildren. The surrounding world is only vaguely indicated – a dam project that will threaten the mountain culture, the crisis that means that the retired inhabitants do not get their pension…

It is a film full of life, with some beautiful arranged posing to the camera, a sense of details and camera angles. They are true heroes, they are close to people says a priest, and you can only agree. As most people will agree that this is a very good film.

Greece, 2013, 81 mins.

www.koutsiabasakos.gr