Golden Apricot/Parajanov

Sergey Parajanov (1924-1990) experienced that a museum was being built in his honour. ”I must be the only one who is alive when a museum is set up”, he is said to have joked.

The museum is there, in Yerevan, you enter a courtyard, from where you go to a two-floor house full of the artist’s wonderful collages, where he is using all kind of available material, which he actually had to as he spent 10 years of his life in Soviet prisons. (He critised the regime and ”they” did not like his homosexuality! Scrubbers and brooms, he was regularly given the cleaning job in these locations, are among others requisites often seen.

There is no end to the stories that Parajanov gives the visitor with his collages and assemblages (his leather suitcases transformed into the sculpture of an elephant!, dolls, drawings, (ladies) hats – all very unsentimental as are the photos (with funny comments) of his family. Joyful. Playful.

There are reconstructions of a couple of rooms from his home in Tbilisi Georgia, with walls full of art works, colourful they are as his work as a filmmaker – at the museum there are clips from his films and costumes and drafts for scenography.

I bought three of his films, hopefully good quality, to substitute the old vhs copies in poor condition. First in line: The Colour of Pomegranates (1968) (Photo).

www.parajanovmuseum.am

Per Kirkeby: Geologi er det egentlig videnskab?

Titlens provokation har siddet fast i mig siden jeg så filmen ved dens fremkomst. Det er for mig at gribe tilbage i mit liv og se begyndelsen til den kunstopfattelse, den videnskabsforståelse, som jeg orienterer mig med nu. Per Kirkeby er geolog med istiden som speciale tror jeg nok, og så er det da en udfordring, når han et sted i filmen, stilfærdigt siger, at istiden er en antagelse, en omvæltning for en skolelærer og nybegyndt museumsmand, som kom lige fra geografilokalet og Axel Schous Danske Atlas, et vidunderligt værk, som i imponerende kort og smukke rekonstruktionstegninger forklarer sammenhængen mellem isrande, tunneldale og hovedstilstandslinje og det danske landskab med bakkeøer, moræner og tunneldale. Og jeg troede at dette alt sammen var fakta og bare skulle læres. En antagelse siger han så, kvartærgeologen! Jorden gyngede, måske var der helt andre forklaringer, geologi var ikke længere noget, der var dernede eller dengang, men inde i hovedet på en videnskabsmand, en tanker, muligheder blandt flere, måtte jeg tro. Jeg var dog forberedt. Det begyndte for mig med Flyvende Blade, som jeg nok læste fire-fem år tidligere. Jeg havde først været forundret, blev så fascineret og hurtigt optaget af denne særegne meget personlige blanding af dagbog, notater, breve, biografiske studier, erindringsfragmenter. En essayistik ud over alle de litterære grænser, jeg til da havde mødt. Sådan var også filmene, grænseløse, ustyrlige og skarptskårne med en fast hånd.

Per Kirkeby skriver om nogle af dem i 1995 i en tekst om kunstnere på film, han har lavet film om Asger Jorn og Wilhelm Freddie, dem skriver han om, Jornfilmen er fiktion i instruktørens liv, og Freddiefilmen er en film med den medvirkende malers egen fiktion, og så om den her film: ”… ’Geologi – er det egentlig videnskab?’ er en stump selvbiografi. Det kan man naturligvis i en vis forstand sige om alle en kunstners film, men i denne film er det et direkte motiv. Filmen opsøger et landskab og forsøger at genskabe et miljø i videste forstand, som var afgørende for kunstneren som ungt menneske. Men fiktionen er jo at det drejer sig om en undervisningsfilm. Og hvad så?” Jeg prøver at læse ”opdigtet” i stedet for ”fiktion” og tror, jeg forstår det lidt bedre.

Hurra, Per Kirkebys filmarbejde kan nu delvist, efterhånden vel komplet, ses på Filmstriben. Herefter kan jeg vende tilbage til basis, her til én af søjlefødderne for min langsomme forståelse af, hvad film egentlig er for noget.

Danmark 1980, 41 min. Manuskript: Per Kirkeby, fotografi: Teit Jørgensen, klip: Grete Møldrup, musik: Henning Christiansen, fortællerstemme: Per Kirkeby, produktion: Vibeke Windeløv / Kraka Film, distribution: Filmstriben. Litt.: Per Kirkeby: Hvad skal man egentlig med kunstnere på film? i Fisters klumme, 1995 og Flyvende Blade, 1974.

Magnificent7 Summer Screenings

The tireless organisers of the Belgrade European Feature Documentary Film Festival, Magnificent7, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, and their many helpers, all of them filmmakers themselves, have put together a summer programme, 3 directors, who have already visited the festival (10th edition in 2014), represented with each two films: To be screened July 10, 11 and 12.

This is a clip from the announcement: Selection for this year`s Belef is a great opportunity to acknowledge the constant presence of these authors, and to create special authors’ nights with the goal of familiarizing ourselves with their themed circles and sensibilities. We have selected three representatives from leading documentary fields – Thomas Riedelsheimer from Germany (Breathing Earth and Touch the Sound (PHOTO)), Mika Ronkainen from Finland (Screaming Men and Finnish Blood Swedish Heart), and Marc Isaacs from Great Britain (All White in Barking and The Road-A Story of Life and Death). They are, before all, linked by the fact that with their films they created modern European documentary filmmaking, and some of the works we will see have earned cult status and marked their further development. 

Thomas Riedelsheimer is dedicated to the phenomenon of art and the rhythms of creation, creative pulsating of the artist’s breathing in conjunction with the work and space in which it is conceived. Mika Ronkainen reexamines the rhythms of silence, and of communication throughout different, surprising forms, from articulated to unarticulated. Marc Isaacs is, from a psycho-social standpoint, focused on the pulsating of people in England’s urban environments, rhythms of their presence and absence, acceptance and rejection. Finally, these authors` nights give us an opportunity to personally experience the rhythms of the authors’ evolvement from one film to the other. 


The Popovics say: BELEF is Belgrade Summer Art Festival with a concept, developed last year, to be the festival of (Belgrade) festivals. So, this is actually special promotion of M7 within BELEF. As a summer festival they insist on outdoor events and we love the idea because it’s a rare possibility to create ad hoc open air cinema in the very center of the town. There will be special, quite big screen and we’ll use big and mighty video projector to get high quality picture, full HD.

We asked producers,, distributors and authors to send us the best quality screening prints as digital files. Exclusively for this summer edition Thomas Riedelsheimer made for the first time special HD master (to be used for Blue-Ray) of his legendary “Touch the Sound”, since it is originally made on 35mm and only DVD was produced until now.

This is the second year that we promote M7 in the summer and documentary fans are eagerly waiting for new excitments.

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

Manski gets Main Documentary Award in Karlovy Vary

Veteran documentary director Vitaly Mansky won the main documentary prize at the festival in Karlovy Vary. This is the catalogue description of the film that had its international premiere at the festival:

According to a claim made by Vladimir Putin, half of Russia’s state budget comes from the oil and gas industry. In the case of natural gas, construction of the Trans-Siberian pipeline became a fundamental milestone when, in 1983, it connected supplies of natural gas in Western Siberia with European consumers. Renowned Ukrainian documentarist Vitaly Manskiy sets off along the route of the pipeline to find out what it’s like for ordinary people living in its vicinity. The catch from a frozen Siberian river full of dead fish, a wedding in a dilapidated prefab building in Khabarovsk, an Orthodox mass in a disused train car, a discarded washing machine used as a doghouse, and the invocation of communist ideals due to dissatisfaction with contemporary conditions and the fear of an uncertain future – all this eloquently illustrates the often absurd banality of contemporary Russia. This visually refined road movie is an unsettling portrait of the legendary Trans-Siberian gas pipeline on which most of Europe is still reliant.

The film (116 mins.) is coproduced with Saxonia Entertainment (Simone Baumann) (Germany), Hypermarket Film (Filip Remunda) (Czech Republic) and Czech Television. Deckert Distribution handles sales.

Best documentary film under 30 minutes was “Beach Boy” by Emil Langballe, 27 mins., a film from the National Film School in England.

The FEDEORA Award of the Federation of Film Critics of Europe and the Mediterranean of Film went to a film screened in the East of the West Section, the Slovak-Czech-Croatian “Velvet Terrorist “ for an innovative approach to portraying communist past with humor and creative balance between the film’s scripted scenes and documentary sections.

http://www.kviff.com/en/films/film-detail/4135-pipeline/

http://www.kviff.com/en/news/2543-first-award-winners-announced-/

Diana Groó’s New Film Shown in Jerusalem

Hungarian director Diana Groó is in Jerusalem these days presenting her new film, called ”Regina” (63 mins). I have followed the talented director for years, and saw a rough cut, that impressed me. How to make a film about a woman, where there is only one existing photo…

The now finished film is taken for screening at the Jerusalem Film Festival that runs until July 13 including (apart from feature films) two documentary sections (one of them competitive) and a section named Jewish Experience, where ”Regina” is placed.

Here comes the fine description of the film in the catalogue of the festival in Jerusalem:

”Diana Groó’s documentary tells the story of Regina Jonas (1902-1944), a strong woman who made history by becoming the first properly ordained woman rabbi in the world. The daughter of an Orthodox Jewish peddler, Jonas grew up in Berlin’s Scheunenviertel, studied at the liberal Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (College for the Scientific Study of Judaism) beginning in 1924, and was ordained in 1935. During the Nazi era and the War, her sermons and her unparalleled dedication brought encouragement to the persecuted German Jews. Regina Jonas was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944. The only surviving photo of Jonas serves as a leitmotif for the film, showing a determined young woman gazing at the camera with self-confidence.

Through graceful and poetic use of archival footage, Diana Groo brings us a

story of a person whose image is known though one photograph alone. Scenes from Jewish life in Berlin during the early twentieth century come to life: synagogues, Jewish schools, parks, streets, and newsreels permeate the film, while a gentle voiceover handled expertly by Dánel Böhm and Daniel Kardos tell us this unique story. What may have seemed a challenge for a filmmaker, turns into the film’s greatest creative trait.”

An excellent interview with Diana Groó is to be found at the online magazine “Midnight East”, Ayelet Dekel is the writer. In the interview Groó talks about the difficulties in getting funding for the film in Hungary, “a Nazi country”, she calls it. “So it was very difficult to find producers,” Groó recalled, “then, like a miracle, a friend of mine appeared from London – George Weisz, he’s actually the father of Rachel Weisz the actress. George has Hungarian roots, he left Hungary in 1938,  luckily, they left for London, so they survived. He’s a good friend of mine and he liked my previous films. He liked this topic and this story, and he supported the film with his foundation, and later German co-producers also joined the production.”

http://www.midnighteast.com/mag/?p=26893

http://www.jff.org.il/?CategoryID=1085

https://www.facebook.com/ReginaTheStoryOfTheWorldsFirstWomanRabbi

Impressions from Sheffield Doc Fest

Dagnė Vildiūnaitė is the producer behind the Lithuanian production company Just a Moment. She has for years had an international focus, and her films have had both national and international success. “Father” by Marat Sargsyan were this year awarded in the festivals in Nyon and Krakow, “How the Revolution Played” by Giedrė ickytė got the award as the best film at the 9th Vilnius International Documentary of 2012, whereas ”Igrushki” by Lina Luzyte still waits for the international breakthrough, it deserves. Wake up festival people, here is a creative documentary film shot in Belarus that does NOT take the usual ”easy” path with Lukashenko in picture in every other moment!

Dagne sent me a mail a couple of days ago after travels to Moscow and Sheffield. It is always a pleasure to read what she has to tell, she has opinions that go way beyond, what more mainstream producers come up with in the numerous workshops of marketplaces for documentaires around the year. She gave me an ok to post her impressions from the visit to the Sheffield Doc Fest:

… and, yes, before that I was in Sheffield. I thought a lot about what made me feel so “not in place” there. And I made certain conclusions. Almost the entire festival program is consisting of the films talking about our “bad and unfair our world is, full of social problems and heroes who give their lives to change it”. I’m totally ok with it and I like many human rights documentaries.

But just next door they are organizing the market that has a strong focus on cross-media, online platforms, teaching that the audience has to be able to choose the content that they want and even influence the story of the film… and of course we also have to make our documentaries shorter and easier for the audience to “swallow”, while they are googling the entire world on their computers. And then my question comes – isn’t it our job to try to capture the audience that has less and less interest in the world around them? And isn’t it that audience that we are making our films about/for in the end? So why not challenge them and bring them back to cinemas to watch films that make them think. Instead of teaching them to push button “stop”, when they are not comfortable with the image they see?

But I’m so happy that I have attended one the best lectures in recent years – the masterclass by Walter Murch (it made my trip worth it). After it I suddenly realized one simple thing. There has always been a real interaction between audience and filmmakers. But it was on an intellectual level where the filmmaker raises the question, and an audience leaves the cinema with a gift – a new question, a new understanding, a new inspiration… Now it seems they talk about interactive elements in a purely physical way – audience pushes the button and feels satisfaction of being part of a creative process. We support a lazy audience locked in their rooms by their own choice, not willing to know smth more. And after that we talk with serious faces how bad it is that people end up living in the streets and vote for populists to become their presidents?…

I left Sheffield really scared. The town itself is full of people living in supermarkets and people living on social security payments (or what you call it). So the market and festival in this surrounding was even more symbolic.. But maybe I’m digging too deep?

http://www.justamoment.lt/en/

Slovak Documentary Revisited

Filmkommentaren.dk has brought reviews of three new documentaries from Slovakia during the last two weeks: New Life of a Family Album, Velvet Terrorists and Normalization (scroll down and you will find them). All fine and original works from a small country with 5.5 mio. inhabitants. With different approaches all three films deals with serious subjects, always with the use of a tone that includes humour or satire or sarchasm. And with a social or political commitment. All three with a look back from today.

It makes me take a memory tour back to my pleasant meetings with Slovak filmmakers – in this century! Much happened due to the excellent training programme Ex Oriente that I was part of for many years. Several filmmakers came to the sessions with their documentary projects. Here I met Marko Skop and Robert Kirchhoff (see post below), among others. In Bratislava they introduced me to their teacher, Boris Hochel (who died 2009), a strong figure at the Slovak film school and active in the promotion of the documentary in Slovakia. If I remember right Hochel worked with Dusan Hanak’s masterpiece ”Pictures of the Old World” from 1972.

By Marko Skop I remember two fine films, mild in tone with a subtle humour, ”Other Worlds” (photo) (2006) and ”Osadné” (2009), both about how the ordinary Slovaks can place themselves in the global village and the EU without losing their own identity. Robert Kirchhoff made in 2002 the strong ”Hey,You Slovaks” which, to quote the DocAlliance vod, where it is available for 1€!, is about ” Homeless people, single mothers, TV contest heroes, Czech underground philosopher, panel neighborhood, trains, pubs, empty factories, that’s Slovakia.” Skop also worked as producer for the unique “Blind Loves” by Juraj Lehotsky – who (I read that on their website) now has premiered his fiction film, “Miracle”, in Karlovy Vary.

And then of course Peter Kerekes with “66 Seasons” (2003) and “Cooking History (2009), with his own handwriting, an international name but there is also the fine “Sonia and her Family” (2006) by Daniela Rusnoková, the excellent editor Marek Sulik, the crazy short film “Arsy-Versy” (2009) by Miro Remo…   

If you go to the DocAlliance website

http://dafilms.com/search/?q=slovakia

you find links to a lot of Slovak documentary films, enjoy!

Robert Kirchhoff: Normalization (Cernanova Case)

It is not only in Denmark but also in Slovakia that something is rotten… That is the impression you sit with having watched the new film by Robert Kirchhoff, an impressive work both in terms of the research the director has done during the 8 years, it has been under production but also because of its fresh and never dull storytelling. The film is full of anger but also of well placed sarchasm, as well as funny moments. It is called a documentary tragedy, and it is indeed when it comes to content, but there is no need for kleenex help during the watching, rather you mumble to yourself: Nooo, this can’t be right! Content below..

but first the title: Normalization (as I googled it) is ” In the history of Czechoslovakia… a name commonly given to the period 1969 to about 1987. It was characterized by the restoration of the conditions prevailing before the Prague Spring and the work to maintain the status quo.” Gustav Husak was the one in charge after the mentioned reform period led by Dubcek – a period that ended dramatically in 1968, when Soviet forces occupied the country.

The Cernanova Case refers to the tragic event in 1976, where Ludmila Cernanova, a 19 year old student died. Her body was found in a river and (quote from the site of the film) “although there were no traces of violence found on her body, yet the police claimed she had been raped… it was a case that was paraded in the communist mass-media at the end of which seven men (5 years later!) were found guilty… They are the same individuals who today proclaim their innocence and claim that they were caught up in the middle of a grand-scale political-judiciary conspiracy”.

… and were given long prison sentences.

Take a look at the still photo of two older coroners, who stand on each side of a professor of a younger age. The director has brought them together and

behind the camera you hear the director shout to the two, who were involved in the case: Was she raped or not? They do not want to talk about the case, and end up walking out of the room…

Yes, something was totally wrong with the way the 7 people was treated – and had most of their lives destroyed, if not all – and Kirchhoff acts in their defence by step by step (it took him 8 years to make the film) finding witnesses, who talk about how the police forced them to talk against the suspects. A script was already written by the system. A fabrication of stories had been made in other words.

Kirchhoff refrains cleverly from bringing in the family of the murdered woman to the film. It is not difficult to imagine how they feel the loss and to understand the traumatization due to the unsolved case 37 years after it happened. What he does, is, in the best investigative journalistic tradition, to confront people involved at that time and to uncover a story about a corrupt, communist legal system – and to bring us viewers to the fact that the case, that was raised again, in 2004 had a surprising and shameful continuation. The court repeated the first decision, with an extension of the conviction from 1982!

In an interview Robert Kirchhoff puts it like this: But in the end I found that the more recent ruling of the Supreme Court [2006] is more monstrous by far. I understand that in the 1980s it was probably about some order from above, the people were servile to their superiors, they feared not only for their jobs but also for their children, their families. They were hostages of the regime. But what happened in 2004 and in 2006 was that the Supreme Court judges were aware of the newly-discovered evidence, and they refused to hear witnesses and learn about the new circumstances in the case.

Kirchhoff insinuates an Arab link and performs a hilarious interview with a secret agent, Ali, who says nothing about the case but comes up with the following sentence: He who tells the truth will never be happy… nobody likes the truth”! The director, in picture, is speechless and can only nod with a confused open mouth face.

The most watched documentary in cinemas in Slovakia so far, FilmNewEurope writes – after a month 5400 admissions, 20.000€ in box office.

A not normal figure for a film about a Normalization that apparently is still going on in the EU country Slovakia. It is in the media but noone wants to talk about it, the president says no, the top people from the legal system says no… Shocking and scandalous, one thinks after the film.

PS. The 7 have taken the case to the European Court for Human Rights. Still waiting for an answer.

Slovakia, 2013, 100 mins.

http://www.kauzacervanova.com./film_en.php

http://spectator.sme.sk/articles/view/50320/2/cervanova_case_film_judiciary_in_a_new_light.html

www.filmneweurope.com

http://www.filmsk.sk/pdf/filmsk-en-2013.pdf

Ostrochovsky, Pekarcik, Kerekes: Velvet Terrorists

Yesterday a new Slovak documentary had its world premiere in Karlovy Vary. It will have a long life on festivals around the world. If you say to someone that they are going to watch a film about people, who fought against the Communist regime in Czekoslovakia, their first thought would probably be that here comes another black & white film, probably with a lot of interviews and a commentary, and for sure with Havel as one of the heroes.

What you get with “Velvet Terrorists” is completely different. It is a hybrid documentary, hilarious in tone, full of playful surprises in storytelling, and Historytelling, you sense immediately that Peter Kerekes is one of the three directors and the main producer, who continues his “retro” work from “Cooking History” and “66 Seasons”

Stano, Fero and Vladimír are the three characters – very different and with very different, more or less quirky stories of resistance against the Communist regime. Stano wanted to blow a first-of-May-parade-platform into pieces, Fero had bigger ambitions as he wished to kill the country’s leader, Husak, and Vladimir performed, among other things, explosions of propaganda billboards. They all served prison sentences.

The film has definitely a touch of comedy, also in its staged scenes. Stano is single and his story – the three characters come one after the other – goes mainly from him dating several girls to him with his MCP (male chauvinist pig) pals in a car discussing women’s look, to him on his bed checking his blood

pressure. He is the least sympathethic encounter in the film but the filmmakers do what they can to make also him “a romantic hero”, when they place him and the girl friend at a lake at sunset…

Fero is married with two kids, and the story about him must have been easy to shoot as he creates a fine atmosphere around him and has a talent for acting. As when he teaches one of the sons how to escape safely in a car in a James Bond-like scene. He planned the big coup with a girl friend, who he tries to get in contact with, without success, and the assassination attempt on Husak failed as Fero did not get in contact with a foreign secret service!

The third, and in the film also the last, terrorist in the story is Vladimir, and he is serious business! With no wife, tired of him getting in and out of prison, he keeps himself in very fit shape, which is used by the filmmakers to make him do a casting – among young girls – to find a girl, who can continue his resistance against the ones in power. He finds one and he trains her to be as fit as him, and in shooting and in how to make explosions that work, and how to “cheat” a lie detector.

This is a great twist to our times where there is so much to protest against. Good to know that Vladimir’s student is ready for resistance at the end of an original, intelligent and humurous documentary that is a pleasure to watch.

Slovakia, 2013, 87 mins.

http://www.kviff.com/en/films/film-detail/4173-velvet-terrorists/

Karlovy Vary – and EU Budget Cuts

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival started a couple of days ago and the documentary has a good position with an international competititon and a panorama. In the latter section you find ”Stories We Tell” by Sara Polley, ”Father’s Garden – The Love of My Parents” (photo) by Peter Liechti and ”The Expedition to the End of the World” by Danish Daniel Dencik, who also has his bicycle film ”Moon Rider” in the Czech festival, in the competition category. Here you also find Wiktoria Szymanska’s ”The Man who Made Angels Fly”.

During the festival there is of course a so-called industry section and alarming news came out of a meeeting with the EU Parliament member Silvia Costa. According to an article in FilmNewEurope (link below, written by Cathy Mells, there are ” proposed draconian cuts to the cultural budget. “Culture and creativity are really very endangered,” she said.”

“The MEDIA Programme will come under the umbrella of the seven year Creative Europe (starting from 2014, ed.), which Costa said will make it more connected with other aspects of the programme”, but as the overall budget for all programmes will face cuts of only 4%, the European Commission has suggested a cut from 1,8b € to 1,3b€. Costa said at the meeting that she will fight for (she is “rapporteur” for the Creative Europe (what a stupid name, by the way/ed.)) a 1,5b€ budget that would be closer to a 15% cut.

Costa reassured that the much talked about “cultural exception” in the EU will continue – film professionals had argued that the Americans would take over the European film industry if this exception was not kept.

About Creative Europe it was mentioned that “Creative Europe will see more support for non-profit activities, and will be more open to the inclusion of non-member countries and potential EU candidates such as Serbia, along with an emphasis on transnational projects and activities that connect the private and public sectors. Goals of the programme include greater movement of workers and works of art, strengthening cooperation, supporting film coproductions and distribution in cinemas, dubbing and subtitling of films, audience building (through film education), digitalisation, new models of distribution of a transnational nature, and marketing activities through presence on international markets and innovative sales strategies.”

http://www.filmneweurope.com/news/czech/105804-creative-europe-fights-eu-budget-cuts/menu-id-150

http://www.kviff.com/en/news/