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.

Jan Troell: Land of Dreams

On the National Day of Sweden, June 6, SVT (Swedish national public tv broadcaster) had a present for its viewers. At 8.20 in the morning a broadcast was made of the classic documentary by Jan Troell from 1988, Sagolandet (Land of Dreams). The film has a duration of more than 3 hours, is a personal essay, in which the director reflects on the state of the society, he lives in and in which his daughter is to be brought up. The film raised heavy debate when it came out, ran in cinemas for a year and is by the director reckoned as his most personal film, shot over a period of 4 years.

Troell (born 1931) expresses his (mild, often ironic) critique of his country including the American psychologist Rollo May as a questioner and commentator. Among other May talks to the prime minister Ingvar Carlsson, who says the famous sentence ”yes, I think we should have a debate about freedom every tenth year!”.

Troell has, normal for his whole oeuvre, done everything himself, direction, camera and editing. He performs an excellent montage, creating long lyrical sequences, accompanied by precisely chosen music that comments or pays hommage to man.

Troell, world known for his feature films ”Here’s your Life” and ”The Emigrants”/”The New Land”, has done many documentaries, long and short, ”A Frozen Dream” and ”Presence” (”Närvarande”), the latter about his close friend and collaborator, photographer Georg Oddner. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Troell

Sweden, 184 mins., 1988

Mana – a Film Project with Kickstarter Success

The DocsBarcelona Pitching Forum included a Greek film project, presented by Valerie Kontakos and Despina Pavlaki. The Greek women had earlier communicated their experience with a Kickstarter campaign on FB. I had read it and asked if it could go on filmkommentaren.dk as well. No problem was the answer by the two, who had raised $46.117 for their 52/80 minutes documentary-to-be, which has the following logline:

“A documentary about the fiercest girl gang in Greek Orthodox Church history.”

“And this is the synopsis: It all started in 1962, when four best girlfriends decided to run away from home and join a convent. They were dragged back home and unceremoniously locked in their bedrooms, but there was no stopping them now! They escaped a total of three times and were forced to live in hiding for a total of three years. Their parents recruited the police and even had the church forbid the girls to walk through monastery doors. They didn’t just want to become nuns. They wanted to raise other people’s children, which was the next best thing to becoming single mothers. And this was the only way they could make their dreams come true without society getting in the way.”

And the generous advice on the kickstarter experience comes here with a beginning text to be continued via the link to the website that you should read if you intend to do a campaign:

We’re now officially the first Greek feature-length documentary to crowdfund a significant portion of its budget and we couldn’t be happier!!! We want to thank everyone who donated, liked our FB Page, commented on our posts, answered our Tweets, read our newsletters, wrote about the project and told their friends and family about our Kickstarter campaign, we honestly wouldn’t have done it without you.

 In recognition of all the love you sent our way, we’d like to give something back, by releasing a guide to everything we did right and, most importantly,

everything we did wrong on Kickstarter, so you guys can do better! Feel free to contact us with questions or comments, we’re happy to help out fellow filmmakers any way we can.

Assemble a Team: Like an actual team of people who will actually work on a daily basis. If you can’t afford a paid staff, hire skilled interns or commit to paying staffers once funding is in place. You’ll need a gifted writer for newsletters, FB posts and blog updates, a popular FB/Twitter user who can send online traffic your way (crucial!), someone with organizational skills and tough skin and someone with flawless English to proof posts, translate newsletters and correct correspondence, especially if your campaign addresses a more international audience. If your “gifted writer” also happens to be a journalist, all the better so he/she can rustle up some positive press for you my calling in some favors! If you’ve already started shooting, you’ll need an editor to prepare some clips you can release over the course of the campaign and a graphic designer to create some art work. A photographer (or serial instagrammer!) for some quirky film stills or behind-the-scenes action would be nice too!

CONTINUE YOUR READING ON:

http://www.exileroom.gr/english-if-only-i-knew-a-mana-guide-to-belated-kickstarter-wisdom/?lang=en

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1290581015/mana-a-documentary-about-6-nuns-and-60-children

DocsBarcelona 2013/ 7

And the winner was… “The Act of Killing”. One of the editors of the film was Barcelona born Ariadna Fatjo-Vilas Mestre, educated at the National Film School in England. She answered like this when the question came if she could see any similarities thematically from Indonesia and Spain:

“I’m very proud to have been able to work on ‘The Act of Killing’ as one of the editors… The film affected me greatly not only in the way it deals with the portrayal of evil but also in its portrayal of a society, which hasn’t dealt with a violent past.

Although there are many differences between Spain and Indonesia, I couldn’t help thinking of all the similarities we share.

As you will see in the film, in Indonesia today the winners version of the country’s history continues to prevail. Here, in Spain, despite now living in a democracy, we also have been unable to re-evaluate our history. Instead, we created a ‘pact of forgetting’

and the divisions created by the Civil War and dictatorship continue to exist.

“Whilst I was editing this film, I watched hundreds of hours of footage about a society that doesn’t critically engage with its past. It made me realise how difficult it then becomes to have a true reconciliation between people.

“Desmond Tutu who was the Chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that dealt with the crimes committed during the Apartheid regime in South Africa said the following words:

“The only way to cleanse wounds is to open them to stop them from festering. We cannot be facile and say bygones will be bygones, because they will not be bygones and will return to haunt us. True reconciliation is never cheap, for it is based on forgiveness which is costly. Forgiveness in turn depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgement of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth. You cannot forgive what you do not know…

“This film has helped to start a debate in Indonesia about what happened during the 60s and afterwards. I wish something similar would happen in Spain. I wish we could start dealing with our past as it’s the only way to understand ourselves in the present.”

http://theactofkilling.com

DocsBarcelona 2013/ 6

As programmer for a festival it is always a good idea, I would almost say it is an obligation, to go and see the films you selected on a big screen and with an audience. It is no secret that most films are selected on the basis of a computer screening… will it work on the big screen?

I did the test on three occasions, two of them with the director or producer present.

Dan Geva’s ”Noise” (photo) did indeed and it was a big inspiration to listen to the Israeli director’s speech after the screening, where he took the subject of the film and its comedy elements to a serious reflection on what it means to be a filmmaker as well as a person in constant doubt of what it means to live, simply. A festival is there to create the meeting of a film and a filmmaker with the audience, and Geva gave us a fine insight to both the art and the craft of making documentaries. He referred to Flaherty, who set everything up, and to Grierson, who was there to send a message, as Geva does at the end of the film, where the filmmaker from his noisy location in Tel Aviv gently communicates via his outdoor loudspeakers: please a bit less noise!

Palestinian Khaled Jarrar’s ”Infiltrators” – without the presence of the director here in Barcelona – a film that I have followed from the sidelines, in workshops in Greece and in Ramallah, I can only say that this film about apartheid in Israel again made me shake my head in anger and sorrow, this is the world of today, how can we allow that human beings are being treated like this having to climb a wall or going through a tunnel of dirt or caressing the hand of your mother through a hole in the so-called separation wall. It is a film which in content and intensity is painful to watch, simply!

Producer Signe Byrge represented and presented ”The Act of Killing” in a brilliant way giving basic background information about this most talked about and praised documentary in the last year. It was the director’s cut that was shown at DocsBarcelona, 159 minutes, and seeing it on a big screen with almost 200 people makes a difference, of course. Signe Byrge talked about the screenings in Indonesia and stressed that the film is not a historical film about the killing of communists in the country in the mid 1960’es, it is a film about Indonesia today with the militant paramilitary groups still very much present and active.

http://theactofkilling.com

http://www.JMTFilms.com/

http://realscreen.com/2012/12/17/infiltrators-wins-two-at-dubai-film-fest/

Michael Glawogger at DocsBarcelona

The job given to Michael Glawogger at DocsBarcelona was very simple: find 7 clips and talk about them in your master class. He found 6 and surprised this blogger, who thought he knew the work of the Austrian filmmaker, by showing ”Haiku”, a film he made in the 1980’es, wonderful in editing and – as he said – a film that includes the theme that he was to develop a couple of decades later: work. To prove that, he showed a sequence from ”Workingman’s Death”, that has a dialogue between workers about prostitutes, the theme of the director’s latest work, ”Whore’s Glory” (photo), that is in the official selection at the festival.

Glawogger is not only an important artist, he also has the gift to be able to talk precisely about what he does, and how he approaches his characters. And he does that in a provocative way that is perfect for a master class as well as a Q&A session like the one he performed yesterday in the new Filmoteca in Barcelona. The audience wanted to know how he got the prostitutes in ”Whore’s Glory” to participate, how his research was done, if he paid them to take part (yes, of course), how much the film’s budget was (2 mio.€ the answer was), practical as well as ethical question.

Masters come to Barcelona, last year it was Viktor Kossakovsky, this year he was followed by Michael Glawogger. For sure, two of the best documentary (if not the best) artists of our time.   

http://www.glawogger.com/news_en.php

http://www.glawogger.com/htm/Kurzfilme/main_kurzfilme_en.htm

DocsBarcelona 2013/ 5

The 16th edition of the DocsBarcelona Pitching Forum ended yesterday. The level of the 25 presentations was high, the organisation was – as always – and as it should be – professional in a warm and generous atmosphere. And the panel’s reception of the pitched projects was friendly and constructive with lots of questions to be answered, primarily in follow-up meetings. There is a crisis for the financing of the film projects but there is definitely not a crisis for the creativity for documentary filmmaking, if you evaluate, what was pitched here in Barcelona.

Not surprising the issue orientated projects were the most appreciated by the tv editors around the table. The panel found Swedish Fredrik Gertten’s ”Bikes vs Cars – War Time” important. His simple logline goes like this: The bicycle, an amazing tool to change the world. Activists and cities all over the world are moving towards a new system. But will the economic powers allow it?

Also at DocsBarcelona, the more visual and personal film projects had a more difficult time as they do not fit to the way tv operates nowadays. They are maybe too slow or ”too artistic” as some editors put it. Experienced Sérgio Tréfaut presented a beautiful teaser of his work-in-progress ”Alentejo, Alentejo”, a ”journey into the Alentejo hot countryside region (South of Portugal) discovering Cante music and the life of its performers”, English Mark Aitken has 73 hours of material for ”Dead When I Got Here” (photo) from Mexico, about ”a man redeemed from 30 years of self-destruction”, shot in a mental asylum, that the man now manages, and Colombian Juan Pablo Rios showed his cinematic talent with a teaser that accompanied his ambition to tell a story called ”The Return” about a family of 9 sisters, their suffering and need to leave the town, they lived in, when the father took his own life. 45 years have passed, they return…

Awards were given at the end of the two days. The director of ”No es vigilia”, Hermes Paralluelo, from Barcelona, won the ”Best Iberian Pitch” a flight ticket, accommodation and a pass to pitch in Mexico at the Docs DF in October. The WAW Marketing Award (marketing help and consultancy) was given to ”The Challenge” about and with the controversial judge Baltasar Garzón. And access to the East European Forum in Prague next year in March was given to ”Art Killers” to be directed by Alam Raja.

http://www.docsbarcelona.com/

http://www.docsdf.org/en/

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deadwhenigothere/dead-when-i-got-here

Docs Barcelona 2013/ 4

It was indeed a grand opening night of DocsBarcelona. A proud director, Joan Gonzalez introduced all the elements – the festival, still young, and the industry section, a teenager, 16 years, with new or young components like the InterdocsBarcelona seminar on interactive documentaries and the rough cut sessions mentioned in the post below.

Around 1000 people attended the opening screening of the Belgian animation documentary “Approved for Adoption” by Jung & Laurent Boileau, the touching story about Jung, adopted from Korea by a family in Belgium, a family with several biological children already. Jung, who is an excellent draughtsman and has published a book with his drawings – his autobiography that – as he said in the cinema – had been transferred into a beautifully told cinematic story with archive material (official and the family’s home movies) plus a great variety of material from the hand of Jung, both simple animation sequences but also drawings that could work in any art exhibition. The modest director explained after the screening how his family had received the story that at many points are tough with the mother and father reacting to their Asian child, who is searching for his identity. Warm, funny, well told, straight forward it is, a perfect choice for making a good atmosphere for the DocsBarcelona. 

Hans Christian Andersen would have loved this fairy tale. 

Belgium, 2012, 75 mins.

http://www.docsbarcelona.com/