EBU Reaction to The Closure of ERT

From BBC News online today, link to the full article below: The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has called on the Greek government to reopen ERT. A petition signed by 51 European directors general, including the BBC’s Tony Hall, is to be handed over to the Athens government. The EBU called the government’s action “anti-democratic” and “unprofessional”.

Viewers watching the news on the main ERT TV channel saw broadcasting cease late on Tuesday evening. Journalists however refused to leave the building and online and satellite broadcasts are being maintained with the help of the EBU website. ERT, which began broadcasting in 1938, was funded by a direct payment of 4.30 euros (£3.80) added monthly to electricity bills.

It ran three domestic TV channels, four national radio stations, as well regional radio stations and an external service, Voice of Greece… Read also text on the site of EBU.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22917171#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

http://www3.ebu.ch/cms/en/sites/ebu/contents/news/2013/06/ebu-leaders-in-athens.html

Greek Documentary Association Protest

Greek documentarian and good friend Marianna Economou sent this text referring to the outrageous closure of ERT: I am sending you this letter that all of us, the Greek documentary filmmakers, wrote as a response to the sudden closure of ERT. It is very important for us to fight this dictatorial act of the government and to ensure that ERT reopens as soon as possible.

The filmmakers of the Greek Documentary Association: All together we will attempt to erase this shame.

The Greek Documentary Association – We the filmmakers, who through the public TV station, have been challenging, entertaining, or disturbing you with our documentaries by highlighting “the other side” of reality, condemn the sudden silencing of ERT based once again on «an act within legal context» which for all intents and purposes bypasses the parliamentary procedure.

This act has no historical precedent during a democracy in a time of peace! Such an act, furthermore, aligns itself with the general degradation of education and civilization, which has systematically been taking place in our country, devaluing the only investment that in the long term could lead to a better society.

With the closure of ERT, it is not only Greece that loses its voice, it is not only the employees of ERT that lose their jobs. It is:

  • The thousands of Greek artists who are condemned to being “stifled” of free speech, or subordinated to client oriented relationships.

  • The music ensembles that are silenced. The 3rd programme. The Greek emigrants that are isolated. The border areas of the country that are excluded.

  • It is the creative documentary that has constituted an important part of the public television’s program, winning international awards and distinctions as well as co productions with important foreign channels.

  • It is the millions of viewers or listeners whose only outlet for their information and entertainment will be the private channels, with all the consequences that this will have to our political and cultural life.

IT IS CIVILIZATION THAT SHRINKS

We, the creators of documentaries, united citizens and peoples, will fight for the immediate re opening of ERT, so that Greek creativity and culture reaches every house. We will fight the bill that the government announced as it continues and even strengthens the interference of the political parties and their control of public television. We will make propositions for necessary reforms in order for this voice to acquire its important educational, cultural and ethnic role, especially during these difficult times that we are traversing.

We are the only country in the world that has a black out on the public television screen and where the radio waves are silenced. Let’s fight, so that these media become the essential means, guardians and catalysts for the promotion of education and culture.

Films on Bornholm

Memories… of a festival on Bornholm, Balticum Film & TV Festival, that ran in the 1990’es in Gudhjem and Svaneke, and meant quite a lot for this blogger. (If you write Bornholm in ”Search” you will get numerous texts referring to a festival and a pitching forum that took place at this wonderful island, initiated by the Baltic Media Centre).

Nostalgia, yes, and it came back last night in Allinge, where a huge People Meeting (Folkemøde in Danish) is taking place until sunday. Politicians make speeches, all kind of  associations have tents that you can visit, debates are made in a relaxed climate where you can meet ”your” politician, and/or be enlightened in a classical Danish folk-high-school-kind-of tradition.

For that reason – and now I come to the film side of it – it is only very right that the Danish Film Institute together with the leading Danish newspaper Politiken has arranged film screenings where an introduction is made, the film is screened and then you can go and talk about the topic. Here I finally got to watch Nishtha Jain’s “Gulabi Gang”, produced by Norwegian Torstein Grude, a fine film, in my view more interesting than the one Kim Longinotto made about the same fabulous movement that was formed by Sampat Pal, according to her “not a gang in the usual sense of the term, we are a gang for justice”.

… in the mornings, in the summer house, the film screenings include “Krtek” (The Mole), the masterpice children animation film series by Czech Zdenek Miler, beautiful, funny and more than attractive for two year old Henry. The first he says when he wakes up in the morning! Zdenek Miler said in an interview: “When I draw Krtek I am drawing myself,” his creator, the Czech animator Zdenek Miler, once said. “What I mean is that Krtek is the ideal that should be me. But I can’t meet that ideal.” To my sorrow I found out that the film series is no longer available in Denmark. A cultural scandal! But if you have friends in Czech Republic (I have, thanks Veronika Liskova)…

http://www.dfi.dk/Nyheder/FILMupdate/2013/Juni/FILM-MED-KANT-PAa-FOLKEMOeDET.aspx

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gulabi-Gang-the-documentary/125738920900493

http://www.gulabigang.in/

History is What’s Happening

Have to confess that my knowledge of The Robert Flaherty Film Seminar was very limited until my former colleague from EDN Anita Reher got the job as executive director and put me on the mailing list for news. Frequently press releases arrive in my mailbox giving the impression of an active organisation that makes much more than a yearly seminar, see below. Yesterday was a good day as the executive director could announce ” that it (the Flaherty…) is the recipient of an Educational Grant from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in support of the Flaherty’s continuing efforts to foster all forms of the moving image and encourage dialogue between audiences and makers with the goal of illuminating our shared humanity.” Good that the Academy is not only about Oscars. The grant was 15.000$, Anita told me from a crowded minivan on her way to work:

Tomorrow this year’s Flaherty seminar starts. It runs until the 21st of June at the Colgate University, Hamilton, NY. The theme is History is What’s Happening. From the press release: The Seminar will examine the frame and subject of history in cinema to understand how the social and political conditions of the past are inextricably linked to the present. Pablo de Ocampo, a curator based in Toronto and the Artistic Director of The Images Festival, is the 2013 Seminar Programmer.

http://flahertyseminar.org/

Moscow International Film Festival 2013

Got an email from filmmaker Georgy Molodtsov, who is part of the team that runs the documentary programme at the upcoming MIFF in Moscow, that goes from June 20 to June 29. He informs about the selection made by the curators of the documentary competition, Sergey Miroshnichenko and Grigory Libergal. 7 films compete about the ”Silver George” that this year will be accompanied of an additional $5000 prize ” co-sponsored by the Ostrov Studio and Watching&Discussing project run by the Rossiya-Kultura Channel” and thus “aimed at an extended theatrical broadcast”.

The titles are “And Who Taught You to Drive” by German Andrea Thiele, “Holocaust – is it a Wallpaper Paste” by Russian Mumin Shakirov, “The Genius of Marian” by American Banker White and Anna Fritch, Pawel Lozinski’s “Father and Son” (photo) (awarded at the recent Krakow Film Festival together with the father Marcel’s “Father and on a Journey”), “The Condemned” by British Nick Read, award-winning Lucy Walker’s “The Crash Reel” and “The Dark Matter of Love” by British Sarah McCarthy.

The jury to find the winner is headed by Sergey Dvortsevoy, who is accompanied by DokLeipzig festival director Claas Danielsen and Dutch filmmaker Coco Schrijber. Strong team.

About the side programme for documentaries, Free Thought”, Molodtsov writes that it will include titles like The act of killing, The Gatekeepers, First Cousin once Removed, Blood Brother, Blackfish, Colombianos, Dragon Girls The Ridge, Woody Allen: a documentary, Staircase II, Stories we tell, Palme, Char…no-man’s island. Strong selection.

http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/miff34/eng/news/?id=410

Wiktoria Szymanska: The Man Who Made Angels Fly

I watched it on my MacBook and I can’t wait to see it again on a big screen. I will save some of my many superlatives for that occasion. So what you get now is a first impression of a film that touched me deeply. It is nothing less than magnificent. What a man and what an artist Michael Meschke is and what a beautiful documentary, Wiktoria Szymanska has made.

She could have gone mainstream and told us about the great puppeteer in a more traditional way, and that could have worked as an informational introduction to an artist, but she made a different choice by inviting the viewer to enter Meschke’s world and be with him, when he makes his puppets come alive in his studio, in the streets of Paris, in a house in Greece, in Stockholm, where he had his Marionetteater and where he has his storage. Yes, what becomes of that, when ”I get the final call” as he says!

Everything in this film is so precisely crafted and in harmony with Meschke’s own fascinating puppeteering craftmanship. Wojciech Staron catches all the details with his camera, close-up’s of hands and strings, and puppet faces, which express emotions, be it Don Quixote, Le Petit Prince, Antigone (impressive scenes with the actress Irène Jacob) or Baptiste, who has a special place in my heart – associations to Les Enfants du Paradis, Marcel Carné’s wonderful film, Etienne Decroux, Jean-Louis Barrault… Meschke takes Baptiste on a walk in Paris, where he (Baptiste) meets children, looks at grafitti in the streets, the word Love in many languages (cut to Meschke and his wife), or Baptiste watches the world go by from his window. As Meschke has watched the world go by in different parts of Europe, from he as Jewish was exiled to Sweden at the age of 5 till now. A long life and a long career that also includes experimental films that Szymanska brings in as quotes which are often comments on the world, we live in.

It is such a rich film, you watch it with a smile and the tear in the corner of your eye, that comes from the beauty (also very much helped by the music composed for the film) you have experienced through the eternal meeting of evil and good, life and death. As for the director she has again (last time was with ”Themerson and Themerson”) shown her unique talent for an interpretation of an artist’s world and work.

The film has been shown at the Hot Docs Festival. It will be shown on tv stations in Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands – and on numerous festivals if there is any justice. 

France, UK, Poland, 2013, 61 mins. Producers: Wiktoria Szymanska, Estelle Robin You (co-producer), Greg Davis (associated producer).

Nicolas Philibert on DocAlliance

One more generous free offer from ”your online documentary cinema”, the vod DocAlliance, starts tomorrow and runs until June 23:

7 films by Nicolas Philibert, who once wrote the following about his method:

”I feel the need to create a frame for each film, a starting point that I can build upon. This frame consists of the things that I find motivating and exciting when working together with the subjects of the film. When filming starts, the final destination is unknown to me and I don’t know which path I will follow. A lot depends on the things that emerge through work and encounters. Naturally the journey is different with each film…” (A quote from a text for the Finnish Docpoint festival).

Filmkommentaren.dk has posted several texts about the works of the French documentarian. To mention a couple of them – ”La ville Louvre”, ”La moindre des choses”, ”Nénette” and of course ”Etre et Avoir” – all of them available online for two weeks.

Make your own retrospective of films by Nicolas Philibert!

http://dafilms.com/event/125-retrospective-of-nicolas-philibert/

Tomas Leach: In No Great Hurry

In connection with the Copenhagen Photo Festival (June 6-16) The Cinematheque in Copenhagen screens a documentary on Saul Leiter, photographer and painter from New York (born 1923). Screening tuesday June 11, the director Tomas Leach will be present for a Q&A. Here follows a review of the film.

The film has the subtitle ”13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter” and is a wonderful visit to the world of an artist, who has so much to share with the viewer – his look on photography and life, his paintings, his pleasant confusion (to be explained below), himself, as he says, ”a lost, confused person that sometimes uses the camera with a touch of intelligence..”

It is joyful to be in his company due to his charisma and the way Tomas Leach chapters the film and gently introduces an artist, who has a humorous approach to life and to his own profession, a modest man, who at the same time knows what he has done and is doing. Leach lets us watch his photos from New York, the famous ones that you can  google to study further (and watch (some of them) on the website of the film, link below), and he lets us watch Leiter when he talks, that he does so well. Read this one of many quotable sentences from his mouth, about his Jewish family: ”The Leiter family is not as familiar with the notion of kindness as I believe they might have or should have been. Greatness was important…”, accompanied by photos of family members! This falls in the chapter called ”The Ways to God”.

Leiter objects to any kind of questions that starts with ”why”, he has had too many of them, he also does not want to talk about himself belonging to any kind of school – many have labelled him to be an ”abstract expressionist” – he keeps on stressing how joyful it has been and is for him to take pictures, and paint. And we see how good he is with people in the streets. What he regrets, however, is that he did not have Margit, his assistant and friend, for all these years to help him get organised. On the other side – the chapter ”pleasant confusion” make him say that ”there’s a certain kind of charm and comfort that not everyone appreciates”. During his cleaning up the mess with Margit, he shows photos of Soames, with whom he lived and cared about as she cared about him until ”she kicked the bucket”. At that moment he looks sad, changes to laughing and ”it is my fault”, ”it is all my fault”… What a lovely man, what a lovely film!

Photo of Saul Leiter by Tomas Leach

UK/USA, 75 mins. 2012

http://www.innogreathurry.com/InNoGreatHurry/Home.html

http://www.dfi.dk/Filmhuset/Cinemateket/Billetter-og-program/Film.aspx?filmID=v1017146

http://www.copenhagenphotofestival.com/program/

Jørgensen & Sønderby Jepsen: Blodets Bånd

Vi har set mange tv-programmer om børn, der er tvangsfjernede. Vi har set masser af programmer om børn, hvis opvækst blev mere eller mindre ødelagt af deres fars eller mors, eller begges alkoholisme. I de fleste tilfælde har det været programmer, hvor voksne ser tilbage på deres barndom. De fleste af os har haft alkoholikere i vor omgangskreds eller familie. Det har givet sår på sjælen.

I den forstand er ”Blodets Bånd” anderledes. Den foregår ikke i et tilbageblik, den foregår her og nu, hvor Svend Åge Hansens to døtre Christina og Michelle, og til dels sønnen Daniel, er i gang med at få et godt forhold til deres far, som de elsker på trods af en barndom i et voldeligt alkoholhelvede, hvor de blev tvangsfjernet fra faren og moren Gitte, som også spiller en væsentlig rolle i filmen. Det fjerde barn har Svend Åge og Gitte ikke kontakt med og resten af de 16 børn (!), som Svend Åge har, medvirker ikke og deres ansigter er sløret i filmens åbningssekvens, hvor en familietavle omkring Svend Åge er konstrueret.

Adskiller filmen sig så fra tv-programmerne? Egentlig ikke, for den holder ikke fortællemæssigt, hvad den lover og er i mange henseender mere et tv-program end en film. (Skuffende når man tænker på Sønderby Jepsens ”Testamentet”, der har et naturligt flow). Tidligt i filmen introduceres papkassen, sagsakterne, de mange sider, som der fra myndighedernes side er skrevet om Svend Åge og hans svigt af børnene. For hvert af børnene er der en sagsmappe, og vi ser hovedpersonen og hans døtre læse i papirerne. Det passer ikke, hvad der står, siger Svend Åge, der ikke kan

huske noget, ligesom moren til kameraet siger, at hun ikke kan huske, at han har banket hende. Papkassen og dens dokumenterende indhold introduceres altså, men den bliver ikke brugt til noget. På almindelig tv-vis bliver der gang på gang fokuseret på nogle sætninger i sagspapirerne, disse bliver læst op for vores skyld, til os seere, for de involverede bliver sætningerne aldrig læst op, vi får ikke deres kommentarer, blot konklusionerne, at børnene blev tvangsfjernet – og så ser vi plejeforældrene i et sløret billede. Jo, børnene siger, at det er ”systemets skyld” og Svend Åge mener at tvangsfjernelsen fastholdt ham i misbruget. Systemet introduceres – men der er på intet tidspunkt i filmen tale om at diskutere om der fra myndighedernes skyld er begået fejl.

Instruktørerne kæmper en kamp for at gøre Svend Åge til en sympatisk figur. De er til stede ved fødselsdage, hvor han erklærer sin kærlighed til sine børn og stiller sig op på stolen for at synge ”Kender I Svend Åge”, han er en karismatisk sjuft, men ”en flink fyr” som nogle uidentificerede stemmer på lydsiden i filmens start, Hadsund-boere er det vel, det er Svend Åge ikke, selvom han gør, hvad han kan for at give det indtryk. Scenerne med børnene har en ægthed over sig, hvorimod moren nærmest bliver skurken i fortællingen. Hun gjorde ikke noget for at standse volden, hun holdt op med at drikke, siger hun, kan intet huske, bliver nærmest ”dømt” af børnene. Og filmens instruktører giver hende heller ikke mange chancer ved demonstrativt at bringe en sekvens, hvor hun danser med en mand, der falder om på gulvet, skidefuld. Fik I den seere, hun fortsætter i samme skure!

Hun virker medicineret og omkring hendes figur, akkurat som omkring mange scener i filmen, rejser der sig et væld af etiske spørgsmål. Hvorfor lagde filmholdet ikke kameraet ned og hjalp til, da Svend Åge er ved at hamre hovedet i asfalten vaklende hjem fra værtshuset? Hvorfor skal vi se Daniel hulke hjerteskærende i scenen, hvor han ikke kan komme ind på diskoteket? Hvorfor følges der ikke op på scenen, hvor incest antydes? Hvad er meningen med den ultrakorte scene med Christina og en psykolog? Hvorfor panoreres der henover det totale rod i Christinas lejlighed, er det for at fortælle os at hun ikke har styr på sig selv og sin tilværelse?

Jeg synes, at filmen har ondt i etikken. Den går efter det sensationelle, også i sit presseoplæg, hvor filmen ”sælges” på at Svend Åge har 16 børn, hvilket i øvrigt overhovedet ikke er et tema i filmen. Tabloidpressen følger op, Ekstra Bladets forside fortæller, at Svend Åge drikker 40 øl om dagen og vær sikker på at samme type avis vil finde frem til Ivan, der ikke har kontakt med familien, eller til landbrugsministerens datter, som har et barn med ”sæddonor” Svend Åge. Eller, eller… Smæk for skillingen, godt stof. Svag film.

Danmark, 90 mins., 2013

http://www.doxbio.dk/dbio/b.lasso?ll=2s

J. Leth: Jeg taler til jer – John Kørners verden

Redaktionen (Allan Berg og undertegnede) nåede at se Jørgen Leths film om maleren John Kørner ved sidste forevisning i Grand Teatret i København før den blev pillet af plakaten. Vi kedede os bemærkelsesværdigt. Sjældent har vi set Jørgen Leth, dansk dokumentarfilms største navn, hædret på denne blog utallige gange, virke så uoplagt. I mødet med en dansk maler, som bl.a. har leveret til kongehuset.

Leth kommer i filmen ind i John Kørners atelier, siger ”det er sateme godt” eller ”fantastisk”, hjælper maleren med at flytte rundt på billederne og går ud af døren igen. Efter nogle samtaler som mest består i at maleren hurtigsnakker om sine billeder.

Hvorfor var Leths mesterfotograf Dan Holmberg ikke inviteret med? Det ville have hjulpet på filmens slappe, nærmest reportageagtige fotografering med en stærk, stram og meddigtende billedside. Nu virker det hele sjusket.

Vi mindes ikke at have set så tit på uret, som vi gjorde i Grand den sene eftermiddag.

Danmark, 2013, 60 mins.