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. OMG, to be working there… we see the brave men once in a while but otherwise – with the words of Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw: … we can see what the humans see – and get the freaky, hallucinatory sense that we are also seeing what the fish see, what the gulls see, even what the ship sees…

We had dinner at the legendary Madera Restoran where Orson Welles, Hitchcock and De Niro have been eating, talking about the film and preparing for tonight, where “A World not Ours” by Mahdi Fleifel is to be shown. Fleifel grew up in Denmark, went to film school in the UK and has had a well deserved success with this film, that will be seen by a lot of Belgrade Palestinians, who have obtained tickets for the screening.

The 10^th edition – let me show a picture from the first edition’s first film in the festival in 2005, Thomas Riedelsheimer’s “Touch The Sound”.

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/pages/Program_eng.html 

The Magnificent 7 directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic write about the film: From the moment of it’s appearance, this film and it’s young author received great accolades: a world premiere at the Berlinale, top prizes at leading cinema festivals including Edinburgh, Yamagata and New York and two awards for the leading young talent at Copenhagen Docs and the Nordisk Panorama within the section of “New Nordic Voices”.

Mahdi Fleifel brilliantly interweaves archival images with subjectively filmed material, creating a unique chronicle that manages to highlight the warmth of it’s main protagonists and the liveliness of daily events. Diverse video recordings of events, small and big, over a period of over 20 years are basis for a complexly composed film. This chronicle is an exlusive entry into a space which foreigners are strictly barred from, and so represents a valuable window into previously unseen life inside of one of the largest Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.

Enchantingly humorous, full of life and indeliblly captured moments, this documentary carries a unique atmosphere and a delicate narrative line, revealing in a surprising light the space and people whose life is stamped with collective tragedy and trauma. In the collision of entertaining and melancholy, the surreal and the absurd, “A World Not Ours” is a testimony to a forgotten dark corner of the world, but also a vindication of life and joy.

A documentary of masterful narration, deeply honest, marked by the personal engagement of it’s maker and a rare artistic achievement – the breaking down of a wall of prejudice and ideologically colored stories about the fate of a people.

UK, Denmark, Lebanon, 2012, 93 mins.

http://nakbafilmworks.gb.net/

The festival in Belgrade opens tonight. I dare write that the hall will look very much like the photo that accompanies this text: hundreds, maybe a thousand spectators, for the opening film ”Leviathan” that the festival directors write about below, a text taken from the website of Magnificent7.

After one year of closing for renewal, we guests stay at Crowne Plaza (former Hotel Intercontinental), which has a direct access to the Sava Centre, where all screenings take place. One film per day is scheduled.

Belgrade weather is nice, cold yes, but with some sunshine this morning and a pretty view to the city covered with snow. A so-called survival kit (oranges, water, snacks, chocolate) stands in front of me at the hotel room. One of the many unique personal elements of a festival that treats its guests as kings and queens.

The coming 7 days will include a small report on filmkommentaren plus the text of the festival directors about the day’s film.

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/pages/Program_eng.html

Directors of Maginificent 7, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, write about the film that opens the festival tonight:

The first great cinematic hit of a new visual era which is taking over the world. Something you have not seen before! A visual treatment that fully meets the great expectations of a cinematic vision born in the 20th century – a camera freed from the dictates of narration, a new all-seeing eye capable of creating a whole new world from the fragments of the old! “Leviathan” is the film which harkens the new possibilities of the visual in cinema.

The film takes us to the coast of New Bradford in North America, the former world capital of whaling, which served as the inspiration for Melville’s legendary novel “Moby Dick”. Today it remains one of the largest fishing harbours, from which over 500 ships sail each month. Filmmakers Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor follow one of these fishing vessels, sailing out into the murky, black waters on a trawling expedition.

And so begins a “gothic horror documentary! A world we have never seen before! “The most spectacular film of the year!” Such praise is heaped on by film critics fascinated by the artistic achievement of two noted visual artists.

Without a single spoken world, the film creates a Biblical sea beast, the Leviathan, embodied in a gigantic metal monster that thunders by, devouring fish while beseiged by flocks of seagulls. Time and space become foreign to us. An awesome and frightening document of a parallel dark side and at the same time an inner image of our world that is devouring both itself and the planet.

France, UK, USA, 2012, 87 mins.

… while diplomats and politicians talk about Syria these days in Geneva, mentioning Homs in every sentence, news came today about the excellent film “Return to Homs”: It was Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the prestigious Sundance Festival. Bravo! That must increase the distribution of the film worldwide. Deserves to be seen all over.

The award was received by producer Orwa Nyrabia, who said:

“It was a very long journey until we were here,” he says. “This really gives us hope, us and everyone under siege in Homs and other places. It gives us hope that some day the siege will end. That some president can be ousted. And some other president in another place can do something finally.”

On YouTube you can see Orwa Nyrabia and director Talal Derki’s thank you talks.

Here I repeat the review of the film, which was on the list of “Best of 2013”:

I met Talal Derki at a workshop in Athens a couple of years ago. He showed me some footage with Basset, the young revolutionary leader – and talented football goalkeeper – from Homs, fighting Bashar and his gang. What I saw was impressive and strong. I told him to make the film quickly: It is important to see what happens. NOW. He did not follow my advice. He did right. Instead of a report

we now have a Film, a big emotional drama, a great documentary, that I saw yesterday in a crowded Tuschinski Theatre at idfa in Amsterdam.

It feels so banal to state that the film is shocking, that it makes me shake several times, when you are taken so close to watching dead people and people dying, that you want to close your eyes but do not. You sigh and move in your chair. But you watch because you are drawn into a story that you can not leave. About something that happens not very far from where I/we live.

A 9 year old boy lies dead on a floor. Blood is around him. His father cries. I am thinking – take it away from my eyes, but the filmmaker does not, the viewer is invited to stay for more moments with the dead boy and his father, who places himself up against the wall in his deep grief. He prays and mourns. Next to him a cameraman who cries as well. Was it the right decision to show this scene in this way? I think so – paradoxically for me, it is a sign of respect not to cut in a tv reportage style, at the same time as the film communicates that this is what happened in Homs between August 2011 and August 2013. Invitation to reflect, the film is made in the head of the viewer.

Basset and Ossama. The revolutionary fighter, the leader of demonstrations, singing slogans to have the crowd follow him and his friend, the cameraman, who shot a good deal of the film until he was captured (he is still detained). These charismatic characters – Basset the agitator, Ossama the soft observer – are the protagonists we as viewers live with and feel with in a film, that has the director Talal as the one telling the story. He is seen in the film and he is the one, who connects sequences with a beautiful personal commentary.

The film covers two years. From the early days where Basset sings his songs and makes the crowd join him, to Basset in fight (”we will never win if we stay peaceful”), to Basset sitting with no hope in his eyes on his way to give up, to Basset seriously hurt, ready to die, to Basset back in action. From an open (part of) Homs to a sieged city, to Basset deciding his ”Return to Homs”. It is this personal drama experienced by Basset and Ossama, commented and equally experienced by Talal, conveyed in panoramic scenes that look like Berlin 1945, as well as intimate scenes with the fighters, as well as tough reportage scenes of human beings being shot, brought to the kind of medical treatment that is possible on the front line, in a war zone, as well as a memorable tour through holes in the walls, Ossama (or is it the cameraman that took over after him?) following Basset.

Never has the word ”authenticity” fit so well as a description of a film!

Syria/Germany, 2013, 87 mins.

The Magnificent7 festival starts thursday the 30th of January in Belgrade. Opening film is “Leviathan” (photo). From thursday and the following seven days a report will be posted from the festival as well as a presentation review by festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic. For the website (link below) I wrote the following text:

Ten Years Older…
Well, I am told that the festival celebrates its 10th edition! Really? Is it true? I feel the festival more to be Ten Minutes Older, to bring in the title of the legendary short documentary by Herz Frank.

For me it is just a moment ago that we (festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, the whole festival team including me) waited down at the stage in the Sava Centre in 2005. Anxiously to see an audience enter the hall to watch ”Touch the Sound” by Thomas Riedelsheimer. The opening film of this European Feature Documentary Festival. People came, in huge numbers, and it has been like that since then. The Belgrade audience has been more than loyal to Magnificent7, simply the best that this travelling documentary observer knows. Thank you! Veliko, neizmerno hvala!

Herz Frank again: “In front of me on my work table is the central fragment from Raphael’s fresco “The School of Athens”. Plato and Aristotle discuss the philosophical meaning of life. Plato is pointing upwards – the essence is the Idea! Aristotle, on the other hand, has his palm pointing down to the ground – the basis is the material! Even earlier in the Old Testament (Genesis) both views are united. In the first book of Moses the first lines states: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. Read – the spiritual and the material.”

The spiritual and the material, facts and reflections, many narrative layers, personal interpretations that are filtered through a creative temperament, poetry and prose. The documentary is an art form. Important art stays in our minds and hearts.

I am sure that the 2014 selection will be remembered as well. Indeed it deals with the spiritual in films like ”Leviathan”, a more than magic visual tour-de-force on sea and ”Faith Connections” from India… Fasten your seat belts! Three autobiographical films are told in first person – Palestinian ”A World not Ours” from a refugee camp in Lebanon, ”Meine keine Familie” with fantastic archive material from the commune Friedrichshof, and a young Finn who decides to get rid of his daily ”My Stuff”.

The world is not at its best right now, and the documentary genre has always proved to be the best place for films that deal with protests: ”Everyday Rebellion” does so. Contrary to the tumult is the quiet and safe creative world in ”La Maison de la radio”, the French film about the beauty of words brought to the screen by the great master Nicolas Philibert.

Join the celebration of the 10th homage to the creative documentary!

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/home.html

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