DokuFest Prizren

The festival in Kosovo (starts August 17) has announced its impressive programme. The artistic director Veton Nurkollari welcomes the audience in this way:

“We are thrilled to present an expanded slate of competitions at DokuFest this year, with films that paint a picture of contemporary world in such a brave, provocative and honest way. Films about bees, ships, the cat name Baby, Black Sea pirates, Balkan matchmakers, punk girls in balaclavas or mass exodus are only part of eclectic selection of films in competitions and we are looking forward to share these and other films with our audience in August”.

In the international competition for long docs (10 films) you will find films like “Elena” (Petra Costa, Brazil), “The Last Station” (Christian Soto & Catalina Vergara, Chile), “Stories We Tell” (Sarah Polley,Canada, the opening film, Photo), and the new film by Polish Bartek Konopka and Piotr Rosolowski “The Art of Disappearing”, whereas another Polish film “My House Without Me” (Magdalena Szymków) is to be found in the short doc section. There are also films under the caption “human rights”, including “Salma” (Kim Longinotto, UK), and a Balkan Docs Competition with “Dragan Wende” (Lena Müller and Dragan von Petrovic, Germany/Serbia), “One Step Ahead” (Dimitris Athiridis, Greece) and “The Last Black Sea Pirates” (Stoyanov, Bulgaria)… not to forget an hommage to Chris Marker and a retrospective of films by Jay Rosenblatt.

… and many other inviting sections and workshops.

http://dokufest.com/2013/

Luke Moody on Hybrid Documentary

Have to confess that I have been using the term “hybrid”, whenever I have been talking about the new tendencies in the documentary genre. Without really being able to get closer to what it is, where it comes from, what ethical questions that are linked to it, the relationship between viewer and maker, the “self” in the film and so on so forth.

Therefore it is great that English filmmaker Luke Moody, who also works for Britdoc, has written an informative analysis of “hybrid tendencies in documentary film”. Moody takes us by the hand and gives us food for thought. He exemplifies – his starting point is “The Act of Killing” – and sets up some categories. His text and approach could be a very welcomed theme for a whole seminar on documentary filmmaking of today. We could easily skip a pitching session or two, not to forget one of the technically based transmedia gatherings.

Here are two small quotes from the long article by Moody, but please read it all (link below):

Recognition of new waves and emergent trends tend to overlook the specific ideas and patterns of filmmaking. The ‘hybrid documentary’ is not a subgenre, it is a mode of tactical filmmaking. To come to terms with these modus operandi, rather than looking upon them as a singular movement, there’s a need to trace each trajectory of complex, rich methodology…

How do we assess the ethical and aesthetic merits of a film that does not attempt to be more factual than fictional? On a spectrum of honesty-manipulation? Form-function? Responsible-irresponsible? How are the filmmakers assessing their own codes of operation? Paradoxically, the audience awareness of fact production and manipulation allows the filmmaker to negotiate a new level of trust through shared transparency: “This is how I shall produce the story, come with me on this journey.”…

The increase of audience trust permits a shift in ethical contracts between filmmaker and subject, a shared ground of risk and experiment…

Photo from Bombay Beach (Alma Har’el, 2011), one of the films mentioned.

http://11polaroids.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/act-normal-hybrid-tendencies-in-documentary-film/

DocAlliance’s Summer Gift

… to its loyal documentary lovers, hope there are many, who use this exceptional vod library that now has more than 800 titles, which can be overwhelming, where to start and where to end… which is the reason why ” our film selectors updated the Recommended section highlighting the best world documentaries by filmmakers such as Petr Kerekes, Zuzana Piussi, Nicolas Philibert, Agnes Varda, Bert Haanstra, Nikolaus Geyrhalter or Jorgen Leth.

In the newsletter from DocAlliance it is written that masterpieces from these directors and many others can be watched for free starting from today until August 4!

I tested it, clicked “recommended”, clicked “New Scenes from America” (photo) by Jørgen Leth, and there it was on my computer, so easy, such a fine initiative, modern documentary film history right there for you.

http://dafilms.com/?nl=iNSUirQm1t-2

Magdalena Szymków: My House Without Me

Sometimes, and maybe it happens more often with Polish short documentaries than with films from other countries, you sit after a fine film experience and say to yourself, ahhh it could have been longer, which is maybe the best compliment you can give a film, as the common sentence after a film is the opposite: too long, I was bored!

With Magdalena Szymków’s story – taken from the precise description on the site of the English producer – about two women, one house, an intimate story about a Pole and a German placed by war on enemy sides and their parallel lives accidentally brought together – I would have loved to have more, maybe a bigger film could be developed from this extraordinarily important theme of post-war Europe. We knew about the move of the border of Poland due to cynical big power´s politics, but it is the first time I have seen such an intelligent treatment of the subject as this one seen through the eyes of old women, whose memories are both informative and emotional.

Back to Polish short documentaries – and many of them come from the Wajda School – that often have this wonderful precise language with few words and a great impact on the visual interpretation. It’s all there in this film that also plays with double exposure of archive material to give support to the film’s memory flow.

For subscribers of the DOX Magazine – the film came with Number 96 on a dvd that also included Marcel Lozinski’s “Tonia and Her Children”.

http://www.vezfilm.org/storage/MyHouseWithoutMe_ENG_2.pdf

www.wajdastudio.pl/pl/filmografia/moj-dom

Poland, 2012, 28mins., Wajda School

Tülin Özdemir: Beyond the Ararat

When I visited the Golden Apricot Festival in Yeravan a couple of weeks ago its was obvious that every second film project launched in the so-called industry section was meant to compete for the money that is reserved by many for 2015, 100 years after the Armenian Genocide, 1 to 1,5 million people are estimated to have been killed by order of the Ottoman government.

Armenians will do films, so will Turks, and Turks and Armenians together and all public broadcasters are expected to broadcast on the theme. Some maybe through thematic evenings? There will be a lot of journalism and debates about the official Turkish current denial to call what happened a genocide.

Well, there are other approaches and tv people could start by watching young Tülin Özdemir’s fine ”Beyond the Ararat”. It is a personal film, told by the director with a beautiful text and with her as the one who takes the spectator on a journey from her home in Brussels to Istanbul and from there to the Anatolia of her family – to end up in Yerevan, Armenia. Even if the film goes beyond the theme of the genocide, it has in its focus the young director’s painful search for identity, and wish to know more about what has apparently been a silenced taboo in her family.

On her way she meets women of same age as herself, she meets a grandmother in Anatolia who grieves her Osnan, and she listens to the words of the tragic legend about Tamara and Ali, who could not have each other due to their different origin, the Christian and the Muslim. It is a film that has its own sad tone and formidable images accompanied sometimes by quotes from Zabel Essayan’s ”Dans les ruines – le massacre d’Adana 1909”.  

http://stenola.eu/en/

http://denisdonikian.blog.lemonde.fr/2011/05/05/350-%C2%AB-dans-les-ruines-%C2%BB-de-zabel-essayan/

Belgium, 2013, 55 mins. Stenola Production, coprod. Associate Directors.

Ignacio Agüero: The Other Day

Shown at Cinema du Réel in Paris this year, awarded at Chilean Fidocs festival, selected for Yamagata at the coming October, and strongly recommended by my former EDN colleague, now at the NY based Flaherty Seminar, Anita Reher, the expectations were high, when I got the chance to watch El Otro Dia (The Other Day). I was not disappointed. Ignacio Agüero is a true auteur, who with a safe hand takes you into his film, well literally into his house, where his fascination with objects are cinematically conveyed so their beauty stands out in a constant play with light and shadow. Pure nature morte motives. Memories are around him, the past is present, the focus is on a photo of his father and mother embracing each other in 1945. A brilliant personal speak includes again and again questions regarding the father, who died without experiencing the consequences of the Pinochet dictatorship. What would he have said if he had seen that his sailor mates in the marine joined forces with the dictator?

Agüero films from inside to outside insisting on sequences that follow a cat climbing the tree or a bird taking a bath – he interrupts the interior scenes with wordless archive scenes from the Arctic – and he lets himself be interrupted by people ringing the doorbell. He opens the door, films the person outside and says that he is making ”a film about people who knock on my door” with the continuation, ”may I come and film you at your place”. In a completely different conversation-based documentary language he then goes to the drug addict, to the beggar, to the cleaning lady, to the postman… – all of them live in other parts of Santiago in poorer conditions than those of the director, who carefully puts in their home addresses on the map in his house. He leaves the house to come back again for the next doorbell ringing. It’s like being waken up by reality…

The film has many layers, it is rich, it is slow and goes for details, it has a sketchy form but is a totally controlled first person story that profits from Cinema’s possibility to jump in time, to go from out to in, and from in to out, from one style to another without losing the spectator’s interest and fascination.

Chile, 2 hours. 2 mins., 2013.

http://icarusfilms.com/filmmakers/ague.html

Errol Morris on Donald Rumsfeld

Realscreen, the trade magazine on non-fiction programmes and documentaries, focused July 22nd, in its newsletter, on the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival, September 5-15) 2013 documentary highlights. With no confirmation from the festival itself, the new film by Errol Morris, ” The Unknown Known: The Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld” is said to have its premiere at the prestige filled Canadian festival, 10 years after the director made his film on Robert McNamara, “The Fog of War”. For those who have forgotten: Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defence under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2006.

Another big name American documentarian, Alex Gibney, will present an up-dated version of “Lance Armstrong: The Road Back”, with the words of realscreen, “the titular disgraced cyclist”, and the French veterans Claude Lanzmann and Marcel Ophüls are also “possibilities”, as it is put, at the festival with “The Last of the Unjust”, the 220 mins. long film featuring Benjamin Murmelstein, the last president of the Jewish Council in the Terezin ghetto – and Ophüls with his autobiographical “Ain’t Misbehavin (Un Voyageur).

Photo: Morris left, Rumsfeld right – from:

http://realscreen.com/2013/07/22/exclusive-tiff-2013-to-host-morris-gibney-baichwal/#ixzz2ZrU9oblL

Sarajevo Film Festival – Documentaries

The festival in Sarajevo is first and foremost a festival for feature films. Big names – actors and directors – have during the years visited the city’s festival that this year can celebrate its 19th edition. However, due to hard work from Rada Sesic, well-known director, programmer, critic and tutor, the festival now also, since 2006, includes a competitive documentary programme.

The 2013 programme (August 16-24) has been announced. Around 20 films have been selected by Sesic, of course from Bosnia-Hercegovina, but also from Macedonia (by the Greek called F.Y.R.O.M), Montenegro, Croatia, Serbia, Greece, Azerbaijan, Romania and Hungary.

From the many premieres, I have seen two of the films, which the festival audience can look forward to watch:

”Here… I mean there” by Laura Capatana, 73 mins., a touching story from a Romanian town about two sisters, whose parents work in Spain. Over years the director has followed the girls and their development and struggles with themselves. In the house where they live with their sweet granny.

”Regina” by Diana Groo, 63 mins. about the first female rabbi Regina Jonas, a great achievement from the side of the director, who had one photo of her main character to work from – the one you see.

Lots to look forward to, also for this blogger who has been invited to be a tutor at the so-called rough-cut-boutique, an industry event for documentary makers.

http://www.sff.ba/content.php/news/show/id/1262/culture/en

Yamagata 2013

There is something fascinating about the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, YIDFF. It takes place every second year (this year October 10-17), it has several sections like ”New Asian Currents”, ”Japanese Panorama”, a retrospective of Chris Marker, a series called ”Another Side of the ”Arab Spring”” with no further details so far, and a section that puts a focus on Ethics.

Take a look at the website, old-fashioned and pretty boringly designed many would say, but with a serious focus on Documentaries with facts and links, and with a reference to an archive with interviews and a text about the film library that is open the whole year round.

The information about the ”15 outstanding films selected from 1152 films from 117 countries and areas” is already there:

”The Act of Killing” (Joshua Oppenheimer et al.) is there, ”Stories We Tell” (Sarah Polley), ”The Punk Syndrome” (Jukka Kärkkäinen, J-P Passi), “Once I entered a Garden” (Avi Mograbi) to mention films that have all been written about on this blog, the latter not yet watched and reviewed as “Motherland or Death” by Vitaly Mansky (photo) and ”The Other Day” by Chilean Ignacio Agüero, a film that won the main award at Chilean Fidocs festival this summer.

There are also films from the hosting country, and from Korea, Taiwan, India and Thailand.

The Japanese festival has its own profile with no industry activities. It is all about documentaries as an art form. Respect!

http://www.yidff.jp/2013/program/13p1-e.html

The Art of the Essay Film

… is a very well programmed and introduced film series that takes place in London at the BFI (British Film Institute) Southbank. Yes, what is the essay film that we talk about and often connect to films that we don’t know where to categorize… This is the intro text written by Kieron Corless, taken from the site, link below:

“Sitting somewhere between documentary and fiction, the ‘essay film’ signals and probes, like no other form of cinema, the filmmaker’s personal relationship to the images on screen. Grappling with urgent political and philosophical issues of the day, the essay film is cinema at its most engaged and liberated… He continues: Nowadays most commentators agree that the essay film is neither documentary nor fiction but sits somewhere on its own, evincing characteristics of both through its staging of an encounter between a self, filmed images and the world. Could we label it a genre?…”

Anyway, it is a brilliant and very inviting programme that BFI has put together – with lectures at the end of August after all films have been screened. Film history it is, to offer the audience “A Propos de Nice” (Jean Vigo, 1930,), A Valparaiso (Joris Ivens, 1965), Madrid (Patricio Guzman, 2002), not to talk about the name always mentioned when essay films are screened – Chris Marker with his “Sans Soleil” (1983), Alain Resnais “Toute la Mémoire du Monde” (1966) and Humphrey Jennings masterpiece “Diary for Timothy” (1945) (photo).

What pleases me is to see John Burgan’s Berlin-film listed. I saw this film many years ago (the film is from 1998, title “Memory of Berlin”), it was impressive and wonderfully off-mainstream. We have met and corresponded

since then, and I know numerous young filmmakers, who have praised his teaching, when he was at The European Film College in Ebeltoft in Denmark. The film is “an autobiographical, made-for-German-TV essay film was much admired by none other than Chris Marker, but remains too little known despite that. Using the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 as his point of departure, Burgan recalls his life as an adopted child, linking his poignant awareness of his own split identity and his search for his biological mother to the historical trauma of the city’s divided state.”

A film that I have never heard about is “La Morte Rouge” from 2006, 35 mins., description like this: Víctor Erice’s elegic short essay takes as its starting point his first trip to the cinema as a young boy in post-Civil War Spain, but spins off to explore the theatre, now disappeared, in which he saw the film, childhood horrors, and the suffering of a people traumatised by the war’s losses. Erice skilfully weaves diverse elements – archive, newly shot footage, Arvo Pärt’s music – into an allusive meditation on history, memory and time’s corrosive impact.

Where can I get hold of this – not being able to come to London?

https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/essay-films