POV: Best Documentaries of 2013

The nomination games continue as the year gets closer to its end. American POV is the next (after Cinema Eye, see below) and this is how they introduce their list of Best 10:

“From Sundance to the Oscars — and every festival, critics list and industry awards show we can find in between — we’re continually updating our list of lists of the “best” documentaries.

November 6, 2013: The Act of Killing has taken an early lead. Below is our first Top 10, which gives the most weight to what we know already, including film festival winners from Sundance, Hot Docs and Sheffield, nominees for awards such as the IDA Awards and Cinema Eye Honors (announced moment ago…), a handful of critics’ “best so far” lists and some box-office numbers. We’re waiting on a few more lists to come in before we update this post and publish the “The big chart,” and we’ll explain the ranking methodology in a future post. Do you think The Act of Killing will be able to keep the top spot?”

To that question there can only be one answer: Yes it will… On the list is also Sarah Polley’s “Stories We Tell” and  (great to see) “The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear” by Georgian Tinatin Gurchiani.

POV stands for Documentaries with a Point of View. Check the impressive list of films, 2013 POV Season, where you find titles like “5 Broken Cameras”, “56 Up”, “Special Flight”, not to forget “Last Train Home”. Respect!

http://www.pbs.org/pov/blog/2013/11/the-best-documentaries-of-2013/#.Un0GQyirN2S

http://www.pbs.org/pov/discover/#.Un0KwSirN2Q

Cinema Eye Nominations Announced

It’s a rather complicated nomination system that the Cinema Eye works with, but the people involved (taken from the website that explains all in details, link below) are all names that guarantee for quality. But what is Cinema Eye:

“The Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking were founded in late 2007 to recognize and honor exemplary craft and innovation in nonfiction film.  Cinema Eye’s mission is to advocate for, recognize and promote the highest commitment to rigor and artistry in the nonfiction field.”

There are nominations in a wide range of categories, from Best Film, of course, to Graphic Design to Original Score – and there are awards to be given (this all happen in January) to Production and Editing and Cinematography.

So, which films are nominated… well “The Act of Killing” is nominated in 5 categories, including Best film and Direction. In both cases it has strong competition from (other) masterpieces like “Stories We Tell” and “Leviathan”. In the direction category (but not in Best Film, why not?) you also find “First Cousin Once Removed”, which is also up for, and must be the favourite of that category, Best Editing.

5 films in each category, and there are several that I have not seen, and there are several that could have been there but did not live up to the regulations. So the following personal choices are with all kind of reservations, Best Film “Stories We Tell” or “The Act of Killing”, Best Direction “First Cousin Once Removed”, Best Production “The Act of Killing”, Best Cinematography “Leviathan”, Best Ediitng “First Cousin Once Removed” (photo)…

Anyway, this is a good initiative that celebrates the documentary genre.

http://www.cinemaeyehonors.com/

Marina Razbezhkina: Optical Axis

Well, it did get no awards at the DOK Leipzig. The jury chose the docudrama/neo-realistic/hybrid ”Stop the Pounding Heart”, another art house film from the US. Beautifully made, but not very original as is this work of Razbezhkina, known for her own work and for her film and theatre school, that stood behind the fine ”Winter, Go Away”. Where her students dealt with opposition politics in Russia, Razbezhkina went to Nizhniy Novgorod (according to wikepedia the fourth biggest city in Russia, 400 km East of Moscow) to make a film with ordinary people, who look at themselves and their life and working conditions facing life-sized photos of those, who were at the same place with the same work (or no work) 100 years ago. This trick from the side of the director gives the film a light tone at the same time as you get to meet charismatic characters with their own look at the world.

Take for instance the old man who for the film and his younger student simply makes a wooden spoon. The camera stays with him during the whole production, we see the many instruments he uses to cut and carve, and hear his comments to the process and to the wonderful photo of a group of people performing the craft a hundred years ago. It’s marvellous as is the long sequence where you see the homeless and poor get out of their beds at their communal residence to get ready to be transported to the place where their equals stood when photographed. They communicate with the photo, find ”themselves”, their alter ego’s, and reflect on their hard lives and how they ended up without their own home. And so on so forth, nurses and doctors, visitors and priests at the local church (PHOTO) and at the end a small visit to the bank, where a different class present itself.

It’s people, faces, it’s made with warmth and intelligence, no finger-pointing, no easy anti-Putin declaration, but a clear, original starting point with a consequent tribute to the photographer, who took all these great photos, Maxim Dmitriev, who – says a text at the end of the film – ”was in love with reality”. As is Marina Razbezhkina.

Russia, 2013, 90 mins.

www.razbeg.org

Ken Loach: The Spirit of 45

We have previously written about the documentary of Ken Loach and its impressive distribution in the UK, as well as the film’s excellent website that is a fine example of how you can interact with your audience and learn about politics in a country that stood together during the war and took initiatives to stand together also in times of peace. Through a labour party with a socialist policy, led by Attlee and with Bevan as the man who introduced the NHS, the National Health Service.

Loach has chosen to tell his story in a traditional way – interviews with those who remember the social conditions that were awful in the 30’es and the enthusiasm after the war, and the energy that exploded to build another just country with a decent health system, a good housing policy, secure working conditions, a society of welfare and equality.

Black & white archive material accompany the stories remembered by miners, nurses, politicians, mothers and children, also brought to the screen in black & white – and the music that comes as sweet memories also for one born just after the war: Kiss me Once, Kiss me twice, Kiss me once again…

Loach conveys the history brilliantly, whereas the link to the present is short and bitter: Margaret Thatcher of course who put the capitalism and the individualism in focus and reflections on today, the Occupy movement in photos, the bank people behind their glass temples…

You can only have respect for the master Loach for creating a debate with this film, even if the story is not much more than a warm hymn of solidarity to what some people did once and not so much more – and I have to confess that I looked at the watch a couple of times towards the end.

UK, 2013, 98 mins.

http://www.thespiritof45.com/

Scanorama Lithuania Premieres 4 New Documentaries

Four new Lithuanian documentaries will be screened at the Scanorama Festival that runs from November 7 till 24 in the cities Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipeda and Siaiulia. As the name of the festival indicates it has its roots in the North with references to Bergman and von Trier – as is mentioned on the site of the festival – but now it claims to cover the whole of Europe.

Filmneweurope.com – that has a good eye for documentaries – writes this today:

Four Lithuanian documentaries, including one Lithuanian/German coproduction, will have their premieres during the Scanorama film festival, which takes place 7- 24 November 2013 in four cities across Lithuania.

The films include the long-awaited film from Audrius Stonys, Cenotaph (Studio Uljana Kim) (photo), the story of a grave holding three unknown soldiers – two Russians and a German – and the present-day quest to explore it.

J. Jackie Baier will return to Scanorama two years after the festival screened her documentary film House of Shame with Julia, a film about a transsexual runaway Lithuanian girl who ends up in Germany working as a prostitute before returning to her home town years later. The Lithuanian-German film was screened at Venice.

Ričardas Marcinkus will introduce the documentary film Final Destination, selected for a program at Amsterdam Documentary Film festival (IDFA) about 55 year old man released from prison with nowhere to go and caught up in drugs.

The latest film by a poet, singer and theatre and cinema director Vytautas V. Landsbergis is Tricolour (A. Propos Studija), a portrait of the freedom fighters, twelve former partisans and postal workers, and their journey from home to battle to post-war life….

http://www.scanorama.lt/en/

http://www.filmneweurope.com/

Awards DOK Leipzig 2013

This is the press release from the festival:

The 56th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film, DOK Leipzig, culminated on Saturday night with a festive closing ceremony. Seventeen prizes totalling €69,500 were presented at the awards ceremony in the Schauspiel Leipzig. It was already apparent on the penultimate day of the festival that with 1,705 accreditations and huge crowds in the cinemas, DOK Leipzig was set to reach new records for the number of industry guests and visitors.

The winners: “Stop the Pounding Heart” (photo) (USA, Belgium, Italy) by Roberto Minervini was honoured with the prestigious Golden Dove in the International Competition Documentary Film. The award comes with €10,000 and is sponsored by MITTELDEUTSCHER RUNDFUNK. The top prize was presented by MDR Director Karola Wille for the first time.

The Golden Dove for Best Animated Film, which comes with a cash prize of €5,000, was given to the Slovenian entry “Boles” by Špela Čade. The Silver Dove in the Animated Film category, which comes with a €2,000 cash award, went to Academy Award-winner Chris Landreth from Canada for his film “Subconscious Password”.

The €10,000 Golden Dove in the German Competition Documentary Film went to Carlo Zoratti for his film “The Special Need”.

The Talent Dove of the Media Foundation of the Sparkasse Leipzig, the top prize in the Young Cinema Competition, went to Kaveh Bakhtiari for the Swiss-French production “L’Escale” (“Stop-Over”). The prize money of €10,000 is intended to serve as seed funding for the Iranian-born director’s next documentary project.

In the International Short Documentary Competition, the Indian entry “Distance” was honoured with a Golden Dove. Ekta Mittal and Yashaswini Raghunandan will receive a cash prize of €3,000 from TELEPOOL GmbH.

The first-ever Golden Dove for Best Animated Documentary went to Daniela De Felice for the French production “Casa”. The first-of-its-kind award for the animation-documentary hybrid form comes with €3,000.

The €8,000 Healthy Workplaces Film Award from the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) was awarded to the Brazilian filmmaker Aly Muritiba for his film “A gente” (“C(us)todians”). The MDR Film Prize for an outstanding East European documentary film, with a cash award of €3,000, went to “Die Trasse” (“Pipeline”) by the Russian filmmaker Vitaly Mansky. The DEFA Sponsorship Award for an outstanding German documentary, which comes with a stipend of €4,000, was received by Yael Reuveny (Germany, Israel) for her film “Schnee von gestern” (“Farewell, Herr Schwarz”).

The Documentary Film Prize of the Goethe Institute, with a cash award of €2,000, went to Judith Keil and Antje Kruska for their film “Land in Sicht” (“Land in Sight”). The Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, which comes with a €2,000 cash award and is given by the VCH-Hotels Germany GmbH – a part of the Association of Christian Hoteliers – including the Michaelis Hotel in Leipzig, was given to Robert Kirchhoff (Slovakia) for “Kauza Cervanová” (“Normalization”).

The FIPRESCI Jury awarded its prize to Gang Zhao (China) for “A Folk Troupe”. For “Hilton! – Täällä ollaan elämä” (“Hilton! – Here For Life”), Virpi Suutari was honoured with the Prize of the Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft ver.di, which comes with €2,500 in award money. The Prize of the Youth Jury of the Leipzig Film School was presented to Aneta Kopacz for her film “Joanna”. The mephisto 97.6 Audience Award was determined by public vote. It went to Robert Löbel for his animated film “Wind”.

The “Leipziger Ring” film award from the Stiftung Friedliche Revolution, with a cash prize of €5,000, was awarded on Friday in Leipzig’s St. Nicholas Church, which in autumn 1989 was the starting point for the large Monday Demonstrations. The award went to the iranian documentary filmmaker Nahid Persson Sarvestani, who lives in Norway, for her film “Min stulna revolution” (“My Stolen Revolution”). One of the protagonists of the film, Monireh Baradaran, accepted the award at the ceremony on behalf of the director.

It was already apparent on the penultimate day of the festival that the number of visitors last year (37,600) was easily surpassed and could reach the 40,000 mark. The number of accredited industry guests also reached an all-time high of 1,705 (1,526 last year).

DOK Leipzig

Well, I have to confess that I was not at the cinema this year at DOK Leipzig! Shame on you, many will think and right they are. There is nothing but sitting in a big cinema with big screen with a big audience sharing an experience. But I have for three days from 9am in the morning seen a lot of films at the DOK Markt scouting for other festivals, to get updated on what goes on and to forward my impressions through this website.

The DOK Markt is wonderfully organised. You go there, you have made your reservation in beforehand, 415 films from 71 countries are available, digitalised, so you give your benutzername and password number, find your title, click, and there you have the film on a fine screen with good quality in a hall where the temperature makes you stay fresh – the air condition in the Museum für Bildende Kunst, where the video library is placed, is pretty effective! After you have screened the film, you can send an email to the contact person of the film if you wish to have the film for your tv station or festival or greet the maker with nice words.

No objections in other words, the same goes for the meeting place downstairs in the lobby of the museum: accreditation and information desk, a café, meeting area in corners, easy to find people and to be found. Relaxed. And close to everything in cosy Leipzig.

And the place to have a quick talk with an old friend Claas Danielsen, who is festival director in his 10th year, announcing that 2014 will be his last one. Danielsen has done a great work to make DOK Leipzig what it is today, a meeting place with strong competitive programmes, a strong many faceted industry programme without forgetting film history and masterclasses with important directors and a look at other continents and countries like India, Brazil, Chile…

One of the best films I saw, maybe the best was Russian “Optical Axis” by Marina Razbezhkina, (photo).

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/

Polish Documentaries

It is a tradition, and a good tradition: The Polish delegation invites for a dinner that includes an aperitif of clips from the films that take part in the DOK Leipzig (this year 12 docs and animation films) and a lot of films to come. Two of the films, ”A Diary of a Journey” and ”Joanna” have already been reviewed and highly appreciated on this site and I have seen two more of the twelve: ”Deep Love” by Jan P. Matuszynski and ”Father and Son” by Pawel Lozinski.

”Deep Love” is a multi-layered story. It is about a man, whose life first of all consists of a passion for diving, a passion that had severe consequences for him when his head hit a rock, making him a handicapped man, who understands what the people near him says to him but can not talk himself and has a paralysed arm and leg. Nevertheless, he wants to get into the sea again and go deeper, encouraged by his close friend and co-diver, yet discouraged by his girl friend, who is afraid of what could happen to him if he realises his wish to go 100 meter down. Here lies the core of the film, the relationship between them, the love story with her in the centre, with her constant care and anxiety. A very strong story but for my taste a bit too dramatic and disturbingly set up with music and sound.

The film of Pawel Lozinski is wonderful. It has this unique idea of the two of them going together on a tour to Paris to talk about and to each other, carrying along the conflicts they have had and the problems they never really got close to. There is love between them but also a hesitation to get to the core of it all, that goes back to the time when Marcel, the father, divorced Pawel’s mother and according to Pawel did not care about him any longer. And to the fact that they are both filmmakers, Marcel the Polish documentarian, and Pawel (my comment) quite on his level in many films, but does he sense that himself? The film has tenderness and anger and funny situations as well as scenes where Marcel does not want to continue the talk. They polish their glasses from Warsaw to Paris but if it makes them see clearer into the past and the present… the aftermath to the production of the film says no and has to be mentioned: It was from the beginning meant to be a film ”by Pawel and Marcel Lonzinski” but when it was finished, father Marcel decided to make his own version (could be seen in the Dok Leipzig Markt) which at some points is different from the one signed by Pawel, but apart from film freak analysts I wonder who can really see the reason for having two films. The conclusion is that the conflict between the two continues as when before the film idea came up. Father and son do not shake hands when they win prizes. As in Krakow this year.

Anyway, long live the Polish documentary, with its strong characters and creative directors it is definitely and artistically among the best in Europe! And thanks for a nice dinner to the organisers:

www.polishdocs.pl

www.wajdaschool.pl

American Documentary Film Festival

You meet colleagues in Leipzig. Of course, a banality. But when do you meet a man with the first name Teddy from California, who starts to speak good Danish to you… We had been in contact before and he had sent some phrases in my language, well anyone can do so with a bit of using the google translate. But the reason for his Danish is that Teddy Grouya decades ago was a student in Denmark. He is now a filmmaker and programmer of the American Documentary Film Festival, whose site I took this text from: In addition to the annual Film Festival (last year, ed.), which featured more than 100 documentary features, shorts and animated films on four screens in  both Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage in 2013, we are proud to share the American Documentary Film Fund with independent American filmmakers, who will participate and compete for financing for new projects, as well as projects currently in progress.

The festival takes place in Palm Springs California March 27-31 next year, and this is what Teddy Grouya asked me to post, which I do with pleasure:

We are getting down to crunch time, and our 2014 Festival is rapidly approaching! Our Call for Entries continues, but the regular submission deadline for filmmakers is December 5th. Full details are available on our web site at

http://www.americandocumentaryfilmfestival.com/

Cinedoc Greece and Dimitra Kouzi

I was lucky to meet Greek Dimitra Kouzi again at DOK Leipzig. She is a journalist, former ERT, now in various jobs where her skills can be used, and they are many. Her love for documentaries is evident and if you go to her blog, link below, you will find, as an example, a very useful coverage of a session on festivals made here in Leipzig as part of the industry section. ”Are you looking for a festival” is the headline of one of her postings – there is a need for information – countless are the questions that I have had during these Leipzig days from young filmmakers, who stand with their dvd in hand and have no clue to which festivals they should send it.

Back to Dimitra Kouzi, who was the presentator at the succesful Greek Day on arte on August 15 this year, where several strong documentaries were shown, and back in Athens, if she is not doing work in Germany, she is one of the three, who stand behind the impressive Cinedoc documentary festival, the other two are producer Rea Apostolides and director Avra Georgiu.

In her blog Kouzi introduces the 2013-14 season like this: This year, the CineDoc documentary festival opens with the award-winning documentary The Cleaners (photo) by Konstantinos Georgoussis.
In June 2012, the far-right Greek political party Golden Dawn came from nowhere to win seven percent of the parliamentary vote. Without commentary, the film follows a number of party members during primary elections in central Athens. In disturbing and overtly radical terms, the men air their grievances about the scapegoat for all ills: the growing number of immigrants. In cafés and squares, they enter into discussion with supporters and opponents, keeping a sharp eye on migrant passersby.
Konstantinos Georgoussis, a graduate of the National Film and Television School of the UK, has directed and produced the film in a unique way…

As for the festival programme, please check the site below.

http://www.cinedoc.gr/

dimitrakouzi.files.wordpress.com