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/

DocsBarcelona 2013/ 3

Ventura Durall is the director of a film that will travel the world. I write ”will travel the world” as the film is not premiered yet. It was screened in a very-close-to-final-cut version yesterday at DocsBarcelona. As in previous two years three rough cut sessions took place with Durall’s ”Casa”, working title, as one of them. The feature length documentary about street kids in Ethiopia took the invited panel by the heart because of its high cinematic quality and sensitivity. The director succeeds to get close to the kids in a story that have great authenticity. You will meet this film in a festival, that is for sure.

The panel invited for the sessions included sales agent Melissa Caron from Echo Bridge Entertainment, Mexican festival director Inti Cordera from Docs DF, Osnat Eden-Fraiman from the active YES TV in Israel, Cynthia Lopez from award winning POV in USA and local Head of Documentaries and Joan Salvat from TVC. Have to say that the panel gave a lot of competent, creative feedback on the films presented.

On a rough cut stage was ”Contact Proof” by Juano Gimenez, a personal documentary about the photographer Pascal le Pipe, a French photographer and a close friend of the director. Gimenez is an ”auteur” and his personal style came through in this version that will be amended and for me will turn out to be a fine film.

In a rough-rough stage was the third film presented, by Brazilian team from Plano 3 Filmes. Directed by Paula Gomes, the film deals with a kid from a circus family, who performs in the backyard of his grandma’s house, in the summer time, slowly losing the possibility of performing his skills as he grows into the serious grown-up world. ”The last summer” the film could be called, working title now is ”Jonas and the Circus Without Tent”.

http://www.docsbarcelona.com/

http://www.nanouk.tv/Projects

Alan Berliner: First Cousin Once Removed /2

I was lucky this year (December 2012) at idfa. The first film I saw, was the one that got the award for being the best film of that year’s festival. And it deserved to be, it did stand out, no other film could compete. This is the beginning of the review on this blog written just after the screening:

”Famous for his film about his father, ”Nobody’s Business”, clever and funny with an excellent, playful montage, it was simply great to watch the newest documentary by Alan Berliner, also with a family member as main protagonist, also with a playful montage and also a tribute to Life even if it deals with Edward Honig, who has Alzheimer’s disease, sits in his chair through the whole film, with family archive material flasbacks here and there and everywhere, shot over five years, a wonderful experience, because Edward Honig was wonderful to meet, a poet and a translator of poetry, among others Portuguese Pessao, a man on his way away from the Life he had been praising again and again, sitting in this room full of books and papers not knowing why and where and what and who…”

Alan Berliner comes back to Europe these weeks. He goes in persona to Istanbul to the Documentarist festival (June 1-6) invited by Emel Celebi, the festival director, semper ardent, who has organised a retrospective of Berliner’s work. In Istanbul the director holds a masterclass, which is introduced in this inspiring way:

Alan Berliner will take us on a guided tour through the sounds, images, themes, and storytelling strategies that have helped define his filmmaking career for more than three decades. Berliner will show examples from his films that help us understand both the risks and rewards of using one’s own life as a “living laboratory,” and how and why he’s devoted his life to exploring the personal, familial, and cultural dimensions of identity, memory, aging, love, family relationships, and the fragility of the human condition. Berliner’s master class will also focus on the process of editing, using clips from his films to illustrate how he creates compellingly dynamic montages from the compilation, collage, and counterpoint of a wide variety of personal, poetic, historical, archival, and musical sources — and how he creates films in which the way a story is told can be as interesting as the story he is telling.

 You can’t be in two places at the same time, but his film can, therefore the Barcelona audience can watch First Cousin…. at the upcoming DocsBarcelona, where it will be screened 3 times. Check the site and go and watch, doc people in Barcelonaa – and Istanbul.

http://www.docsbarcelona.com/

http://www.documentarist.org/2013/fest/eng/home.html

Nicolas Philibert: Maison de la Radio

Voices, yes voices it will be, communicates Philibert right from the start, before the titles appear on the screen. An hommage to the human voice as it is performed in the public radio of France. Quick sound montage, titles, the building that houses the radio from outside, people walking into it, a working day starts. Voilà, simple, classical.

And then faces, yes, faces it will be, very often close-ups of faces, people who are alone in a studio with the microphone very close to their lips, or faces concentrated on listening to voices which are being recorded. Can be literature, news, talk or quiz shows with people who call the radio, or we, the audience, are invited to attend an editorial meeting, what is important, which choices do we make.

Philibert chooses his characters and situations, he goes from one to the next but he comes back and thus give us the illusion of getting to know the characters better. We do and we experience the development they make in

the music recording studio with the opera singer or with the beautiful young singer you see on the poster. Yes, Philibert falls in love with his characters, he has always done so, be it an orangutang (Nenette) or a human being. He is basically an observational documentarian but his presence and influence on the scene he is shooting, mixed with his ambition to make us viewers have ”the feeling of being there” (to quote master Leacock again again again…) makes it impossible to resist the joyful tone that he offers.

He leaves the radio building once in while. He goes with the nerd who records sounds in the nature, and he lets us see and hear the studio recording of the sound of peeling a potato(!) or be with a man, who plays a home-made sound machine, experimental music you might argue, but an artist in action, indeed.

You are in constant good company with this film and for one who enjoys listening to clever people with good language and beautiful voices in the radio (we have that in Denmark as well, in a country where television mostly is tabloid blablabla) during summer time (in the allotment garden), you appreciate the film even more. Having said so, this is not another highlight from Philibert, is does not have many layers but joyful and playful it is, masterly montaged and photographed, that’s quite a lot! You sense that he has enjoyed having been behind the walls of sound!

France, 2013, 100 mins.

http://www.filmsdulosange.fr/en/