Boris B. Bertram: The War Campaign

Boris B. Bertrams “The War Campaign” har den danske titel “Krigskampagnen” og den har premiere på DR2 Dokumania på tirsdag 19. marts 20:30. De skriver “Bush, Blair og Fogh” som overtitel. Og det er ikke urimeligt, det var deres krig.

Det er en flot række vidner Bertram har samlet, udsøgt smukt fotograferet og intelligent og indfølt intrtviewet, ser det ud til, ja, der ville være nok tilbage og helheden meget stærk og overbevisende, vil jeg tro, hvis de svageste, Frank Grevil og Per Stig Møller ikke havde forstyrret det samlede billede. Nu må jeg med det samme notere, at jeg foreløbig har set filmen i en arbejdskopi, meget vil ske / er sket før tv-visningen på tirsdag.

Men hvad er det nu for noget, Bertram har lavet? Dorte R. Stidsing kalder det på DFI’s FILMupdate “en dokumentarisk politisk thriller”, og ja, det er da spændende at få repeteret begivenhderne for årtiet siden, men jeg vidste det jo godt. Nu har Boris Bertram snakket med alle disse kloge velformulerede folk som er med i filmen og flere til og læst alle artiklerne, alle rapporterne og alle bøgerne og så gør han alligevel det, at han i sin kommentar nøjes med et handlingsreferat. Nu må du selv bedømme, mærker jeg, han siger bag det, og den nødvendige analyse og samlende overvejelse lægger han fra sig, essayet overlader han til mig at skrive selv…

Thessaloniki Doc Fest 15

The 15th edition of the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival started two days ago and runs until the 24th of March. The programme is as always impressive – as is the communication from the festival that in a classical journaistic form reports on debates, speeches, meetings with the directors present, for us who are not able to attend… The section titles give a clear hint to what the visitors will be able to watch: “Greek Panorama”, “Music and Dance”, “Human Rights”, “Habitat”, “Portraits: Human Journeys”, “Recordings of Memory”, “Stories to Tell”, “Views of the World”. The director and selector for the festival, been there from the very beginning, Dimitri Eipides has put together a tribute to celebrate the 15 years. Here is his introduction and a link to the list of 36 films, in alphabetical order, (PHOTO) “Gaea Girls” by Kim Longinotto:

A retrospective marking the 15 years of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival can only be in the form of a summary. For how can one fit so many films, so many conferences and masterclasses, so many guests, so many parties – so many memories, in other words – in just a few lines? Each one of the Festival’s editions stands alone, as a living, breathing life collage, rich with emotions, experiences, social and existential questions, empathy and spiritual elation. Our tribute entitled “A Fascinating Journey” does not refer to the Festival’s best editions or best moments. In our hearts, each Festival is the best one. Our aim was rather to seek out and bring to mind of some of the documentaries that were especially discussed and loved by audiences; documentaries that followed developments or revaled hidden aspects of our daily lives; documentaries that caused a reaction; documentaries that moved or inspired us. This is a selection of films which we have been unable to been unable to forget; films which drew the public to the Festival; films which gave shape to the Festival’s character, ethos and role. It would not be an exaggeration to say that these documentaries are responsible for the boom of the documentary genre, its renewal, its release from past constraints and its elevation as the main form of expression of the human experience. One could say, then, that this 36-film tribute is our own summary of the fascinating journey the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival has been taking us on all these years. We hope you enjoy the view!

http://tdf.filmfestival.gr/default.aspx?lang=en-US&page=1110

Ulla Boye, samlede tekster om hendes film

Fulde af trodsalthumør behandler hendes film alvorlige sager og konstruerer verdener, hvor udveje og lyssyn overalt er til stede som konkret iagttaget realitet – og den vamle sentimentalitet og organiserede bedreviden helt ukendte størrelser…

 

 

 

 

 

Ulla Boye er månedens instruktør i FILMKLUB FOF i Randers. Vi skal se ”Kun med hjertet” og før den klip fra andre af hendes film. Og bagefter diskutere det hele.

LEENDE FILM

Lattermilde Ulla Boye laver leende film. Også om tunge emner. Fulde af trodsalthumør behandler hendes film alvorlige sager og konstruerer verdener, hvor udveje og lyssyn overalt er til stede som konkret iagttaget realitet – og den vamle sentimentalitet og organiserede bedreviden helt ukendte størrelser.

“Ludvig og lidenskaben” fra 1999 er om en enlig mand og hans gennemorganiserede dagligdag, “To må man være” fra 2001 var en folkelig succes på tv vistnok uden lige blandt dokumentarfilm. Det er en række ti minutters film med par, som har været gift i mere end et par årtier og stadig er forelskede. Og fulde af mild latter. “Rêverie”, 2002 er korte sansninger i en græsk landsby, et forelsket smil med kant af smerte og “Dage med Kathrine”, 2003 er en hjerteknuser af en biografi over en kvinde, som sandelig ikke har haft det let, ikke har det let, det forstår man i hendes overdådighed af begavet og selvironisk fortællekunst, som Ulla Boye har lokket ud af hende. Ja, så det forstås gennem tårer og – ved latter. (Blogindlæg 09-01-2009) 

TO MÅ MAN VÆRE (2001)

Portrættet er en vanskelig kunst. Den som portrætteres skal sidde længe. For han skal iagttages af maleren, som skal finde alle overensstemmelser og uoverensstemmelser. Alle ligheder med sig selv og alle forskelligheder. Fra sig selv. Så dette menneske foran ham skiller sig ud fra ham og bringes i kontakt med ham. På én gang. 

Dobbeltportrættet er endnu vanskeligere. Her går forbindelseslinjerne, disse elektriske impulser, vi benævner udstråling, nærvær, forståelse ikke alene mellem maler og modeller, men også mellem de to.

Når de to i dobbeltportrættet så kender hinanden gennem mere end tyve år i ægteskab, er med ét – ud over alt det nævnte – alle disse forbindelsestråde mellem dem det mest mærkbare, og det bliver det som skal skildres først og fremmest. Mellem de to i rammen findes det gnistgab af nerveender tæt på hinanden, som Paulus vier det største af alle ord. 

Det er den opgave Ulla Boye og filmholdet stillede sig. De prøvede først én gang. Anbragte kameraet foran to, en kvinde og en mand, som instruktøren havde lært at kende gennem researchens lange samtale. En mand og en kvinde i en båd, hvor de bor. Der i kahytten sidder de og fortæller. Og underet sker: de åbner sig og indvier os i hemmeligheden. Sådan lykkes det at blive sammen og elske hinanden.

Denne muntert og musikalsk klippede bagatel havde premiere på Odense Festival sidste år. Man kunne bestemt lide den. Det var ikke til at tage fejl af, når man sad i salen. Ulla Boye og Lasse Jensen ville så gerne videre med syv mere. Ulla Boye tog rundt i landet og fandt de medvirkende par. De skulle kunne det der, de skulle komme fra forskellige egne, fra forskellige kulturer, fra land som by. Der fandtes flere. Og det forunderlige kunne gentages. Nu foreligger resultatet.

Hvordan gik det til? Jeg tror det er instruktørens særlige evne som søger og lytter, der gjorde det. Der skulle ses og høres efter og vælges midt i nærværet. Men det skulle også bringes sammen i fotografens ramme, som her blev så afgørende, fordi den ikke siden ændredes. Og så måtte fotografen og tonemesteren opmærksomt registrere disse samvær, skabe det forråd af erindring i computerens harddisk Der skulle uafbrudt ses og lyttes og vælges.

Bagefter sad klipperen og instruktøren i klipperummet med dette potentielle erindringsmateriale. Igen skulle der ses og lyttes og vælges: en bevægelse af en hånd, et kast med hovedet, et særligt blik, en bestemt formulering udgjorde erindringen om samværene. Og valgene blev monteret med små sorte mellemrum i disse billedrækker vi kalder film. Her blev dobbeltportrætterne til. I atter et nærvær. Tro mod de første.

Når vi erindrer et andet menneske, husker to sammen, to elskende, vi mødte og iagttog, samler vi et billede af øjeblikke. Klip i vores hukommelse så at sige. Theodor Christensen sagde vistnok, at hver gang to scener lagdes sammen i klippebordet, var det som når kirurgen forbandt hundredvis af nervetråde. I klipperummet ovre på Easy Film talte vi meget om den sorte markering af de der klip, om det at montagen derved blev synlig, fordi man ser sytrådene.

I Ulla Boyes, Jørgen Johanssons, Kasper Munks, Gregers Kjars, Mette Esmarks, Marie Louise Bordinggaards, Mette Zeruneiths og Lasse Jensens otte dobbeltportrætter ser vi således nu om et øjeblik, hvordan billedet af selve kærligheden, måske – er syet sammen. Rigtig god fornøjelse. (28. september 2001, tale ved premieren)

RÊVERIE (2002)

Hun lægger sig til at sove, og dagens billedrester i øjnene passerer hjernen. Lige før hun falder i den dybe søvn. Dette fjerlette drømmeri er for det drømmende kamera, som ellers nærmest havde fri. Næsten af sig selv (og selvfølgelig er det ikke sådan) optager det tydelige billeder af stedets farver og rum og ting – af havet, marken, dyrene, menneskene, køkkenet, kirken. Så jeg ved jeg er i en lille græsk landsby ved havet. Det er enkle, selvfølgelige billeder. Det er akademisk fotografi, at scenen er drømmen før søvnen gør dem ikke eksperimenterende eller noget. Det er præcis og opmærksom impressionisme.

På mange måder er disse anderledes optagelser anderledes på den måde, som jeg ser i Søborgs optagelser til ”Under New York” (1996). De to film er i slægt med hinanden. Det er vidt forskellige steder, det er en lille film og en stor film, ok, men fotografernes dristige følsomhed ligner hinanden også deri, at den konkluderer, at tingene hænger sammen, at tiden findes. Og et tiårs karakter skrives i hvert sit kamera.

Fotografen Jørgen Johansson er med ”Rêverie” på en lille koncentreret ferie fra rækken af store spillefilmopgaver. Imidlertid har Johansson for Ulla Boye også fotograferet den gennemførte tv-succes “To må man være” (2001) og den prægnante og lige så ægte folkelige og opmærksomt iagttagne “Kun med hjertet” (2008) (Fra ”Billedets skriven” i Dirk Brüel m. fl., red.: ”Fotografens Øje”, 2009)

DAGE MED KATHRINE (2003)

Den skotske dokumentarist John Grierson har til sit fag en mærkelig bemærkning, som jeg igen og igen vender tilbage til. Det gælder om for dokumentarfilmen at finde sit sted, at gøre dette steds drama til filmens drama og med filmen bygge stammens værdighed op. Sted og drama. Værdighed. Her står vi ved en central bestemmelse for den klassiske dokumentarfilm: det gælder om at bygge op, ikke rive ned. Når dokumentarfilminstruktøren beskrev livet på stillehavsøen, i landsbyen i bjergene, i fiskerbyen ved Atlanterhavet.

Ulla Boye skildrede for nogen tid siden den danske stamme. I en række korte film, hvor ægteparrene, som stammen består af, omgivet af den særlige sproglige fortrolighed, vi kalder lune, fortæller om hinanden og snakker med hinanden. Og Boye demonstrerer i denne filmrække, hvad den griersonske værdighed kan være limet sammen af. Elementerne er indlevelse og humor. DR viser stadigvæk de film. Stammen har brug for den opbygning. Måske især på tv, hvor en anden, mindst lige så vigtig dokumentarisk tradition, den journalistiske, har så travlt med at afdække, travlt med at rive ned. Det er en anden opgave. Lige så vigtig, altså. Sådan holder eksistentielle elementer hinanden i balance i en indsigtens arbejdsdeling.

I dag skal vi se en film om menneskelig værdighed, hvor mennesket er helt alene. Det er Kathrine Jacobsen, der som medvirkende så generøst og, vil vi indse, modigt byder os indenfor i sit hjem, i sin erfaring.

I den film er det menneskets værdighed, som bygges op. Ikke Kathrine Jacobsens alene, ikke stammens alene, men hele den gudsskabte eksistens.

Som Gud berøver Job alt, ejendom, formue, familie, helbred, berøver Kathrine Jacobsen sig selv alt. Men som Job bevarer sin tro, bevarer hun sin, som er troen på det humane, på livet, på sig selv. Og hun giver sin tro navnet friheden. Når Kathrine Jacobsen drikker med vilje, er hun stadigvæk fri, fortæller hun os.

Og vi forstår hende i det samvær, vi aldrig havde etableret alene, et samvær, som Ulla Boye forærer os med dette dokumentariske arbejde. Ulla Boye har været til stede (og stedet er dette andet Griersonbegreb), hun har talt og spurgt og lyttet. Registreret og samlet ind. Så hensynsfuldt og nænsomt. Så antastelsen blev mindst mulig. Så fortroligheden dukkede op, og humoren og lunen. Skønheden i umistelige glimt og autenticiteten hele tiden.

Mette Esmark har så siddet med materialet og instruktøren i klipperummet og lyttet og lyttet og kigget og kigget. Og valgt ud og lagt væk og flyttet om. I dage og uger. Hvor jeg dog beundrer hende og hendes håndværk. Som på et maleri af Hammershøi vender på filmens plakat den rygvendte kvinde sig om. I skønhed og værdighed. Sådan er portrættets øjeblik. Med filmens forløb opbygger Esmark det drama (det sidste af Griersonordene), dramaet af smerte og glæde, et sådant øjeblik vokser ud af.

Kære Ulla Boye og Mette Esmark, det skal I have tak for. Tak for endnu en film. Kære Kathrine Jacobsen. Du har modigt vist os din tillid. Vi lover dig at tage vare på den og bruge den. Filmen handler om dig – og om os. Må jeg ønske publikum en god filmkørsel. Tak. (12. september 2003, tale ved premieren)

GULDDOK 2008/CPH:DOX 4

Danish Producers Association distributed documentary prizes at the opening of CPH:DOX 2008. 3 films took the five prizes. All three films have been reviewed at filmkommentaren.dk In Danish. All three films have very local themes.

Årets GuldDok/Grand Prix: Instruktøren Ulla Boyes “Kun med hjertet”, der handler om hverdagen på Kofoeds Skole i København. Koncern TV- og Filmproduktion.

Bedste lange dokumentar/Best feature length doc: Instruktørerne Mads Kamp Thulstrups og Carsten Søsteds “…Og det var Danmark!”, filmen om det danske landsholds udvikling fra 70’erne til EM-triumfen i 1992. SF Film Production.

Bedste korte dokumentar/Best short doc: Instruktøren Janus Metz’ “Fra Thailand til Thy”, om thailandske kvinder, der søger lykken i det nordlige Danmark. Research: Sine Plambech. Cosmo Doc.

Bedste foto/Best Camerawork: Lars Skree og Henrik Bohn Ipsen for “Fra Thailand til Thy”.

Bedste klip/Best montage: Janus Billeskov Jansen, Stig Bilde og Mette Esmark for “Kun med hjertet”. (Tue Steen Müller, Blogindlæg 07-11-2008)

KUN MED HJERTET KAN MAN RIGTIGT SE (2008)

På Odense festivalen kan man så se kronen på værket, instruktørens nye film. Den har vi ventet længe på. Og den er værd at vente på. Den kan vist alt det Ulla Boye kan. Og det er en del. Selvfølgelig åbner den i en set scene, set så tydeligt med hjertet, netop som Saint-Exupérys tamgjorte ræv i titlens citat pointerer over for den lille prins. Øjet alene ville ikke se det, Boye og fotografen Jørgen Johansson ser til os. Det væsentlige er usynligt for øjet, tilføjer jo ræven. Og scenen er så også lyttet af de tre klippere, den er balanceret, den er lang, og alt muligt andet. Den er en lattermild dialog mellem hende og ham i kantinen på Kofoeds Skole. Og det fortsætter bare. Det er en vidunderlig film, en ægte dokumentarisk komedie. Glæd jer!

Ulla Boye: “Kun med hjertet kan man rigtigt se”, 2008. Kamera: Jørgen Johansson, klip: Mette Esmark, Stig Bilde og Janus Billeskov Jansen, produktion: Koncern www.koncern.dk  Distribueres på Filmstriben www.filmstriben.dk (Blogindlæg 16-08-2008)

Ken Loach: The Spirit of 45

A new film by Ken Loach, this time a documentary. The director (born 1936) looks into ”the spirit of 45” in England, the post-war time where a welfare state was built on social and human values which are difficult to discover today. The film opens tomorrow, March 15, with a ”satellite Q&A nationwide” in 40+ cinemas with Loach and other guests. There is an interview available on the Guardian website, and a trailer and a lot of info on the site of the film, see below. Here is a text from that site:

An impassioned documentary about how the spirit of unity which buoyed Britain during the war years carried through to create a vision of a fairer, united society.

1945 was a pivotal year in British history. The unity that carried Britain through the war allied to the bitter memories of the inter-war years led to a vision of a better society. The spirit of the age was to be our brother’s and our sister’s keeper. Director Ken Loach has used film from Britain’s regional and national archives, alongside sound recordings and contemporary interviews, to create a rich political and social narrative. The Spirit of ’45 hopes to illuminate and celebrate a period of unprecedented community spirit in the UK, the impact of which endured for many years and which may yet be rediscovered today.

Ken Loach: “The achievements of the ’45 Labour government have largely been written out of our history.  From near economic collapse we took leading industries into public ownership and established the Welfare State.  Generosity, mutual support and co-operation were the watch words of the age.  It is time to remember the determination of those who were intent on building a better world.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2013/mar/13/ken-loach-spirit-45-video

http://www.thespiritof45.com/About-The-Film/Satellite-Q-A

Films for Free from East and Central Europe

We have previously praised the work of the vod DocAlliance, its special collaboration with the IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) in Prague and what this institution is doing to promote films from Central and Eastern Europe. Today a mail came in with the following (edited) text and useful links:

In the week from March 11 to 17, VOD portal DAFilms presents a selection of films from the new collection of recently finished documentaries from Central and Eastern Europe which have been included in the East Silver market.

What is Love (dir. Mader Ruth, Austria, 2012, 81 min.)

We Will Be Happy One Day (dir. Pawel Wysoczański, Poland, 2011, 42 min.)

The Black Box (dir. Krzysztof Kowalski, Poland, 2013, 76 min.) (photo)

New Life (dir. Adam, Czech Republic, Slovakia, 2012, 80 min.)

Out of the original 268 films from the 9th edition of the market, presented in October 2012 in Jihlava, East Silver catalogue has expanded by 75 brand new films introduced at the East Silver Videolibrary within East Doc Platform held in March 2013. DAFilms portal now provides the unique opportunity to watch three of these films for free.

The Black Box is presented like this: Tomasz Tomaszewski (*1953 in Warsaw) is a famous photographer who was working for many Polish newspapers, documenting historical events in Poland (such as Lech Wałęsa and Gdańsk Shipyard, Solidarity, protests in Warsaw). Since December 1981, during the Martial law, using his camera hidden in a glove, he managed to capture the warfare: tanks on the streets of Warsaw, soldiers suppressing manifestations and many more. Those photos were smuggled abroad by diplomats and published in foregin press. He also took some unique photos by smuggling camera in a jamjar with the instructions how to use it to Polish prisons. The most important and famous picture from this action was a photo of imprisoned Lech Wałęsa. It was published in newspapers all over the world.

http://dafilms.com/event/112-east-european-caravan-online/

http://www.dokweb.net/en/

Jon Bang Carlsen – The Inventor of Reality

Danish master Jon Bang Carlsen is in Bucharest these days. He has been invited to present a retrospective of his works at the International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, One World Romania, that runs until March 17, like the one in Prague, ”in memory of Vaclav Havel”. With a reference to his films shot in Ireland, ”It’s Now or Never” and ”How to Invent Reality” the Romanian organizers presents Bang Carlsen as ”the inventor of Reality”. Here is a clip from the text:

This year One World Romania organizes a retrospective dedicated to the Danish documentary filmmaker Jon Bang Carlsen. Fairly unknown in Romania, but considered a legendary director who reinvented documentary film, Carlsen will be… a special guest of the festival. Between the 11th and the 17th of March, the audience will have the chance to see more than half of his works, produced between the 1970s and 2013, and to participate in debates with the director.

In his work, Jon Bang Carlsen has always explored the land between fact and fiction. From 1977 onward, mise-en-scene with real characters plays a very important part in his productions, and this method is detailed in his meta-film, How to Invent Reality (1996) – which will also be screened in Bucharest. His documentaries are often visually and symbolically powerful staged portraits of marginal figures and milieus that involve compelling stories…

There are many other films at the festival, ”Shoah” in its full duration and ”Act of Killing” just to mention two masterpieces.

http://oneworld.ro/2013/l/en/news/103/jon-bang-carlsen-at-owr-the-inventor-of-reality-in-bucharest/

Archidoc 2012/13

On the International Women’s Day, March 8, the third session of the EU MEDIA Programme supported training and development scheme Archidoc took place in Prague as part of the East Doc Platform. It was thus very appropiate, that most of the 10 projects pitched to broadcasters and distributors at the director orientated workshop were presented by women.

And some had women as their main characters. Finnish/Estonian Tiina Madisson wants to make an animated archive documentary about Vera Zasulich, who in 1878 shot General Trepov in St. Petersburg in pre-revolutionary Russia, became an icon for the masses and was written about by Dostojevsky and Oscar Wilde – an appealing story about a woman, who has been called Russia’s first notorious terrorist, who became a killer and a martyr and a socialist hero. Title: The Truth about Vera.

More close to our time, and at a more developed stage, is Belgian Ellen Vermeulen’s The Double Life of Marie-Louise, who left her husband and children to realise her ambition to climb the top of Himalaya – and travel the world as an adventurer. The time was in the 1950’es and Marie-Louise, whose husband was mayor of the town, hit the front pages and was subject to public gossip – to leave the family for six months of the year! Vermuelen has brilliant archive material from Marie-Louise’s adventures, family member’s memories, and artistically strong ideas on how to visualise the story.

Portuguese Catarina Mourao (photo) has in the last 15 years with several films demonstrated her talent as a documentarian. The first person project she

pitched in Prague started off from these lines from the catalogue: In the 1950’es my grandfater was committed to a psychiatric hospital, my uncle became a prisoner, and my mother aged 11 was sent to a boarding school… Based on the background of Salazar’s dictatorship a true drama unfolds in a split family. Mourao wants to ”unravel secrets and mysteries” 38 years after the 1974 revolution. The film, if it can keep the level of the teaser, has definitely a theatrical potential.

Most of the projects at the Archidoc programme, run perfectly by Helena Fantl on behalf of la fémis, the French film school, were at an early development stage and more cinema than television as the reactions showed from the 12-headed panel of commissioning editors from YLE, SVT, ORF, Channel4, Rai, Lichpunt Belgium, FR3 France, Wide Management Paris, CBA Wallonie, idfa forum and Doc Educational Ressources.

The Swedish I have Bathed in Broads and Champagne about Johny Bode, however, will be a hit on television, for sure. Director Bo Sjökvist wants to make an entertaining film about this ”jolly good fellow”, who were chasing women and money all over Europe in the 1950’es and 60’es, composing music, and pornographic songs, was in and out of mental institutions, got sterilised… and died as a lonely man. A Citizen Kane story as one of the tutors said. Swedish television supports, German ma.ja.de will co-produce the film that – due to Bode’s travels, stays and troublemaking all over – is a true European project.

Also French Dorothée Lachaud came up with fine television material. She presented ”Correspondances”, a series, that had a great teaser to give us an idea of how good it could be to have a collection of letters visually interpreted – between Roosevelt and Churchill, Virginia Woolf and her lover, Sigmund Freud and his daughter… High quality ambition, 26 minutes per episode, must have an audience appeal on the public broadcaster’s cultural channels.

For the remaining 5 projects – not to make this too long – I will just mention director and titles: Stéphanie Fortunato’s The Open City from Chile, Lorenzo Giordano’s Maritime Memories of Riva Trigoso (near Italian Cinque Terre), Julien Lahmi’s Cut Cut Bang Bang, a playful work on four hours of found footage, Isabelle Putod’s Exiled from Time about French Michel Siffre’s time experiment going down in a cave for two months to check the feeling of Time, the inner clock one could say, and Cathal O Cuaig’s Welcome to Connemara about the directors’ great granduncle and his fight for Irish independence and the Gaelic language. Was it worth the effort, seen from today?

The three sessions were with warmth, passion and competence tutored by French director Catherine Bernstein and former documentary head of arte France, Thierry Felix Garrel. My job was to train the filmmakers for the pitch in Prague.

www.lafemis.fr

Iris Olsson: Between Dreams

As the third edition of Cinetrain arrived at its finish line a few weeks ago, it might be just the right time to have a look at one of the first films produced within this unique creative documentary project, which took up the original idea of the Soviet documentary filmmaker Medvedkin, who in the  1930’s pulled a film studio off its stone foundations and reset it inside the train carriage to chronicle lives of his people and open up realms often unattainable in a fixed film studio.

“You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? […]”  “Second to the right and then straight on till morning”, Between Dreams too seems to have found its own Neverland. A short documentary conceived as part of the first edition of Cinetrain 2008, the films draws upon the parallel between the dreaming and waking worlds. “A cryptic, puzzling, yet ultimately satisfying vignette of our most peaceful and vulnerable state”, the film explores the unsettling dreams of those who share the sojourn of a train on the 9, 500 km ride from Moscow to Vladivostok.

Perched on the dingy wagon beds, fellow travellers recline as the night approaches falling into the arms of Morpheus. Everything around them is enraptured with drowsiness: the objects, the neighbours, the entire décor reads sleep. The jolting noise of a train sluggishly come in sync with the sound of sleep creating a somewhat hypnotic pacing. This beautifully crafted short documentary attempts to unfetter the dark secrets of passengers through the stories of their dreams. Some stories that are given voice are left anonymous, faceless. “I am sitting on a white bench in a white room,” a woman tells. “My sister’s husband enters the room. He has a gun in his hand. I see a bullet fires out in a slow motion towards me. Not long after that dream, he got killed.”

Taking dreams as “part of the adversary’s game” more often than as a harbinger of a good fortune, this 11-minute film hauntingly revisits the characters’ night time foregone experiences that are recurrently resisted in the light of a day.

There is a degree of shadow felt in a film that gives it a certain dark mood evincing the relatively abstruse and little known phenomenon.

Gorged by the land of dreams, the train as if having passed through the sweet circles of Morpheus eventually meets the purple sunrise with a love story of a young woman with a little son by her side who tells how she met the father of her son in a dream a few years back…

2008, Olsson, 11 minutes.

http://www.cinetrain.net/russian_winter/betweendreams.html

 

Herz Frank – Collected Posts on his Works

 

Always with a camera at hand, be it to catch a moment in life…

 

THE JEWISH STREET (1992)

by Allan Berg Nielsen

The camera from high above shows me Riga. The city set in its landscape. I’m drawn closer, zooming in on roofs and individual buildings. Ending with the synagogue, the one from back then. The camera dwells on the inscription on a stone tablet: ‘Forever remember our Parents, brothers, sisters and children murdered and burned by fascists in the year of 5701. Let their Souls be bound securely in the Bundle of the Living. For Jews of Riga Ghetto, the Martyrs of Faith’.

Herz Frank outlines the story. The Russian occupation, then the German. The latter called a liberation by some, but disavowed by the film. It describes new suppression. The Latvian flag was removed everywhere, the picture shows the arrests being made, and the director comments in his voice-over “Like in all Times they started with Temples”. The synagogues burn. The investigation concentrates on the fate of the Jews. “I am intrigued by the secret, mysterious nature of Jewry, by its Biblical origins,” he writes in the catalogue. “In the course of the millennia, this was the source of energy for our forefathers. It helped the Jews to survive many catastrophes. Perhaps that is the lesson taught by the history of the Jewish people: How one survives under catastrophic conditions. Perhaps this is the fate that has haunted the Jews an ancient symbol of the destruction of mankind…”

Above an expansive landscape of Riga’s ghetto with the catholic church on one side and the evangelical church on the other, the voice tells us (which I perceive to be Herz himself) that over there near the horizon above the neighbourhood is Rumbula, Riga’s Babyi Yar, as he puts it.

The Christian churches confine and guard the ghetto; the elements in Herz’s analysis summarise the analysis’ accusations in quiet ascertainment. No reason to shout any more; just adding these local facts to what I already know is enough. And I nod to myself in the cinema’s darkness, the placement of the churches, yes, the Babyi Yar massacre, yes.

The film is a description of the director’s investigation. He methodically works his way toward the appalling knowledge of what happened and toward understanding the inevitable fate of the Jewish people. I follow him from witness to witness, archive document to archive document. As the film gains insight into these shocking events, so do I.

I am witnessing the director’s personal project. I see him in the picture holding the camera on his shoulder. (A big one. This is before the compact DV’s were introduced and laid the foundations for the video note, the cinematic outline.) He is the one looking up facts in the stacks of books in the beautiful Jewish library in Stockholm, opening the archive cartons.

On the trip through the worn streets and dilapidated buildings of the former ghetto, we enter back courtyards and outbuildings. At one spot, a surprising artefact in the middle of this story’s monuments. A suitcase is brought out from an outbuilding. I see that the suitcase’s owner is Adele Sara Wolff. Her name still clearly painted on the suitcase. What happened to her? This object from the past crystallizes the recollection of this overwhelming sequence of events into one tangible moment. ‘Museum pieces are memories’ as Danish painter Asger Jorn once said. This festival is continually teaching me that this remembrance process is existential. This film, too. Sara Wolff was one of thousands from many countries who were brought to Riga to die.

One of the witnesses in Herz Frank’s investigation is novelist and physician Bernhard Press. He wrote the book Judenmord in Lettland 1941-1945 (The Murder of Jews in Latvia, 1941-1945). I meet him together with the director and his film on this guided tour through uncluttered landscapes, but at a point in time when I have become disoriented and have entrusted everything to my guide. Press talks energetically as he stands in some kind of corridor that wanders off into darkness, and I hear his story in one of the condensed sequences of this narrative dramatisation. When Press was a young man, he escaped from Riga’s ghetto before the extermination, but after the Russian’s occupation of Latvia, and ended up in Gulag. He worked as a doctor in a Siberian prison camp where he met a man who had been put there because he was a nazi collaborator. The man suffered from paralysis in his legs and had given up all hope. Press, however, got him going, planned a physical training program and built a special wheelchair for him. After this the man improved. Press tells that “after a month or so he started walking with a stick. When I asked him, ‘Why are you imprisoned?’ he answered, ‘Because I shot those hooked nosed.’ He meant Jews. What does a Jewish doctor do in this situation? I kept treating him. What else could I do? I couldn’t violate my Hippocratic oath, so I took revenge in a childish way. When he was released from the camp as a disabled man, he went to his relatives somewhere in the East. He asked me to give him a letter for his future doctor. I wrote something on a slip of paper and sealed it in an envelope. It said, ‘Your paralysis is God’s punishment for your sins.’ A Jew’s revenge.

 

BALTIC TOUR 2008: LATVIA

by Tue Steen Müller

Riga, the city where came to life so many great documentaries during Soviet times and around the fall of the empire. I was invited to teach at the Discovery Campus session that was held at the coast, 40 minutes from Riga, and did the night before a small one hour retro session where also participants from another MEDIA training programme, Esodoc, took part.

I showed, among others, a clip from Juris Podnieks masterpiece from 1991, “Homeland”, and the 1978, 30 year young film that Podnieks photographed for his master Herz Frank. Very few of (their youth excuses them) the participants knew anything about this important part of world documentary history and as always all of them were enthusiastic about “Ten Minutes Older”. The title of Frank’s film. Podnieks died in 1992, but his studio continues in his spirit under the competent leadership of his editor, Antra Cilinska, now both director and producer.

But Herz Frank is still around and I saw his new film,”Perpetual Rehearsal”, where he warm-hearted and intelligently invites the viewer into the magic world of theatre. 10 years of video diaries has been put together by Frank from his meeting with the charismatic theatre director Yevgenij Arye from the Gesher Theatre in Tel Aviv.

If Latvia still lacks directors to fully reach the quality level that had the tradition of Podnieks, Frank and Ivars Seleckis, there is much reason to praise the activities of many people around the well functioning National Film Centre and its MEDIA Desk, Lelda Ozola, the person behind the Baltic Sea Forum that now takes place every year in September in Riga.

The current most internationally active documentary name in Latvia is Uldis Cekulis. With his company, Vides Film Studio, he presented this year a handful of films of fine quality. Personally I expect most from the film about Klucis, “Deconstruction of an Artist”, that has been written about earlier on this blog, see below. But Cekulis has also a wonderful follow-up to “Dream Land” in his catalogue, one more film in the tradtition of the company – man and nature – made by Maris Maskalans and Laila Pakalnina. “Three Men and a Fish Pond”. The first paints with the camera, the latter puts in humour and sense of situation. A happy working marriage. (29-07-2008 post by Tue Steen Müller)

 

DOCPOINT 2009

The Finnish documentary festival celebrates Broomfield and Leacock. It points in the direction of a selection policy that respects the old masters, which is furthermore stressed by the latest news from festival director Erkko Lyytinen on the dokblog of YLE. 3 strong Eastern European films by masters have been taken for screening in Helsinki January 20-25: ”Holunderblüte” by Volker Koepp, ”Perpetual Rehearsal” by Herz Frank and ”Low Level Flight” by Jan Sikl… I saw the film of Herz Frank this summer, recommended it to the Leipzig Festival that did not take it. 4 lines about this film: “… the director warm-hearted and intelligently invites the viewer into the magic world of theatre. 10 years of video diaries has been put together by Frank from his meeting with the charismatic theatre director Yevgenij Arye from the Gesher Theatre in Tel Aviv.” (05-01-2009 from posts by Tue Steen Müller)

 

30 YEARS OLDER (Cooper’s remake 2008)

Lars Gehrmann, film student at Zelig in Bolzano, has, on his blog, made the following reference from a new short film “Immersion”, produced by the New York Times, to a documentary classic:

“1978 Latvian film maker Herz Frank did a short documentary about children in a cinema. “Ten minutes older” is simple, beautiful and for sure one of the must-sees in (documentary) film history. If you don’t know it; YouTube is your friend: 10 minutes older.

30 years later NYT Photographer Robbie Cooper did his remake of the Herz Frank film. Time has passed and for todays kids gaming is more important than going to the movies or watching TV. This may be the reason why his four minute film shows kids playing video games.
But this is the only thing that changed in 30 years. Like the “original” he limits his camerawork to showing only the mimic and expressions on the kids faces. And like 30 years ago it’s simply fun to watch.” (24-04-2009 post by Tue Steen Müller)

www.LarsGehrmann.eu

 

HERZ FRANK TRIBUTE 2009

I read on miradox.ru that Herz Frank is going to head the jury of the upcoming Russian festival Flahertiana (October 15-22-2009). Sitting in an airport thoughts go back to the many times I have met this master of documentary, and eaten his words of wisdom – in Bornholm, in Riga, in Tel Aviv, in Leipzig, in Paris, in Amsterdam, in Stockholm. Always he was prepared to share his knowledge with colleagues and audience, many times after an illness that almost killed him. I think of the endless times that I have shown his ”Ten Minutes Older” from 1978, the film shot by Juris Podnieks, the one-shot-film of a boy watching a puppet theatre with a camera that reads the many expressions of this boy, who in his grown up life became a renowned poker player, one of those who are not supposed to express anything. Poker Face! With his intelligence Herz Frank has meant a lot for filmmakers all over, always claiming that documentaries should have a philosophical message – I have quoted him on this site several times. One of his admirers, Lithuanian Audrius Stonys joins him in the jury, among others. Bravo and thank you Herz, and please take good care of your… Heart! (11-09-2009 post by Tue Steen Müller)

www.tenminutesolder.com

 

HERZ FRANK ON DOCUMENTARIES (Post from 2009)

Latvian Herz Frank, a master in the history of documentary, with works like “Ten Minutes Older”, “There were Seven Simeons”, “The Song of Songs” and “Flashback”: “In front of me on my work table is the central fragment from Raphael’s fresco “The School of Athens”. Plato and Aristotle discuss the philosophical meaning of life. Plato is pointing upwards – the essence is the Idea! Aristotle, on the other hand, has his palm pointing down to the ground – the basis is the material! Even earlier in the Old Testament (Genesis) both views are united. In the first book of Moses the first lines states: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. Read – the spiritual and the material.

As a documentarian, I follow these principles directly. Facts have to be the basis for documentary films. And if we want to uncover the truth in them, facts have to be portrayed not only on the surface and as purely informative, but also with sensitive, spiritual eyes. Even better if one eye is dry, and the other – damp… Life has to be filmed imaginatively, and only then will we understand its deeper meaning. There is an image hiding in every detail of each fact, in each living and inanimate thing. You only have to know how to see and record them. A documentary camera is not a video-recorder in the street…” (26-05-2009 post by Tue Steen Müller)

 

LEARN FROM LEACOCK AND FRANK

…some stories have to go out now but actuality and little time mean less creative thinking, and less sense for the detail and for eventual other layers that can be taken out from a story. To say it in a less polite way – we can not keep on watching Israeli soldiers beating the shit out of Palestinians. Or keep on watching victims of suicide bombers. We need distance to the events, analysis, breathing, other approaches. The camera leaves often far too early a face instead of staying and wait for more from a scene, to interpret the pauses, to let a narrative breathe. Learn from Leacock and his magic moments. Learn from Herz Frank and his emotional analysis. (29-03-2011 from a post by Tue Steen Müller)

 

MEETING HERZ FRANK IN TEL AVIV 2011

by Tue Steen Müller

We have posted texts about the master of documentary, Herz Frank, at least 6 times on this site. He is for this blogger the intellectual observer and interpretor of Life, where Richard Leacock was the instinctive reporter and interpretor. I met Herz Frank in Tel Aviv the other day. He, 85 years of age, is in a very good shape. We talked about the good days on the Bornholm festival (Balticum Film & TV Festival 1990-2000), about his living in Jerusalem close to one of his daughters (the other lives in Moscow), about the Latvians soon doing a retrospective celebration to him, about the Jerusalem Cinématheque having fine 35mm prints of 20 of his films. He showed me his book on his life and thoughts on documentary film making, it exists in a Russian version, and in a shorter German one, but not in an English version. Who could help with that, he asked. I had no spontaneous answer.

Herz Frank and Tue Steen Müller, Tel Aviv, spring 2011

Another undone matter – it would be obvious to make a dvd-box collection with his films, who could help with that?

Herz Frank understands English, speaks ok German, and is fluent in Hebrew. During our small café meeting he adressed, in Hebrew, Kearn Telias, who works for the CoPro (more about that is posted elsewhere) (Kearn took the photo of Herz Frank and me) and was immediately invited to visit Herz Frank to watch works like ”Ten Minutes Older” and ”235.000.000”, the film from 1967 made by Uldis Brauns and Herz Frank to celebrate the 50 years of USSR. The film was not celebratory enough for the Soviet leaders and was put away. And has therefore not taken the place in the hall of fame for documentaries that it deserves.

Ten minutes older (1978)

New film project? Yes? What about and how? Herz Frank will send me an exposé and trailer, what I can disclose is the name of the character he wants to make a film about/with. Larissa Trimbobler. Read this text from an article I found online, to give you an idea of the context: Yigal Amir, an ultra-nationalist Jew, shot Rabin to death after a peace rally on November 4, 1995, because he opposed the prime minister’s policy of ceding West Bank land to the Palestinians. He was sentenced to life in prison. Although he is held in isolation, Amir has been permitted conjugal visits over the past year with his wife, Larissa Trimbobler, whom he married while in prison. Their son was born in 2007… (28-03-2011 post by Tue Steen Müller)

www.herz-frank.com

www.copro.co.il

 

BALTIC SEA FORUM RIGA 2011

Not only young talents pitched in Riga – 85 years old Herz Frank went on stage with his exciting story about Larissa, who has married the murderer of Rabin, and have a child with him.

It was the 15th edition of the Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries that ended in Riga yesterday with the presentation of a new project by Herz Frank, ”Without Fear”, to be co-directed by the master himself and Maria Kravchenko, with Guntis Trekteris, Ego Media, as the producer. The catalogue annotation goes like this: ”In 2004 Larissa Trembovler, philosophy professor and mother of four, leaves her husband and marries Yigal Amir – the assasin of Yitzhak Rabin. Three years later she gives birth to their son.” The film is in its early production stage and will definitely receive international support when more material is watchable. (14-09-2011 from a post by Tue Steen Müller)

 

HERZ FRANK IN RIGA 2012

The exhibition space is limited but the content is excellent. The film museum in Riga, situated in the same building as the National Film Centre of Latvia, in the old town of the Latvian capital, hosts a presentation of the life and work of Herz Frank, a filmmaker so often written about on this site.

Frank himself took part in the construction of the exhibition that includes photos and texts and clips from his work, plus the possibility to see in full duration ”Ten Minutes Older” (1978) and ”Flashback” (2002), just two of the master’s documentaries. The exhibition, I was told, is running at least until this autumn. (17-05-2012 blogpost by Tue Steen Müller)

www.kinomuzejs.lv

 

HERZ FRANK 1926 – 2013

by Tue Steen Müller

Last sunday morning I showed Ten Minutes Older to filmmakers from Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Algeria and Morocco. They had not seen Herz Frank’s masterpiece from 1978 before, they loved it and lined up to make a copy so they can show it to colleagues back home.

This sunday morning I learned from friends in Riga that the old master had passed away the night before. 87 years old.

In Beirut last sunday I introduced the film mentioning Juris Podnieks as well, the cameraman of Herz for this film and the man who later became the Perestroika filmmaker, and who got a much shorter life than Herz: 1950-1992. After the screening I came up with the often used banality about the film: You are ten minutes older now, you have just watched the story of our lives. And it is what it is. The director himself has formulated it like this: For ten minutes, uninterruptedly, we were looking into the face of a little boy on the third row… And in the half-dark of the theatre hall we were watching the depths of the human soul as reflected in this tremulous face.

Herz Frank has died. One of the most important documentary directors ever has died.

Personally I had the privilege to meet Herz Frank many times in the last 20 years, and every meeting left me inspired by his charisma, the way he talked about films and his total commitment to what was his profession. Always with a camera at hand, be it to catch a moment in life or in his own film life, like the wonderful group photo on my wall, from Bornholm in 1999 with him in the middle wearing his beret.

Bornholm because of Balticum Film/TV Festival that went on 1990-2000. Herz Frank was there two or three times and slowly you discovered an oeuvre of great importance and significance. Film people in the USSR knew of course how important he was, and you had seen some of his films in Leipzig or in other Eastern European festivals. But our Western European knowledge of documentary films from the East was pretty limited before the fall of the empire.

The festival on Bornholm, not only in connection with Herz Frank, but very much with him as a central character, opened the eyes for a documentary film tradition far from mainstream rationality. And Riga was in the 60’es the place for poetic originality and innovation in documentaries.

The Film Museum in Riga had until October last year a fine, precise exhibiton named “Herz Frank Code”, to which the director himself contributed with photos and texts. The organisers wrote the following on the site of the museum:

Herz Frank is the prophet of documentary cinema – a philosopher, moralist, researcher, having explored the secrets of the joy and the tragic of being, an artist whose works allow the truth to gleam with a thrill of revelation. His films encompass the human life from the sacred moment of birth to the mystery of death and enable to look into the abyss between the good and the evil, the truth and the lie. It is really stunning how fragile the human heart is in front of the look of the camera of Herz Frank.

Before and after 1990, big difference. Herz Frank and others had been employed at the Riga Film Studios during Soviet times, but after Latvia got its independence he had to find his way to funding through production companies. Where all his previous films had been shot on 35mm films, with skilled camera operators, he started to shoot on his own with small video cameras. In 1993 he went to live in Israel, made a couple of films there, gave his films prints to the Jerusalem Cinematheque, had some retrospectives but was never really recognised as he was in his home country Latvia.

Herz Frank’s filmography is full of great titles. Let me mention the 1967 film 235.000.000, a film he wrote, the director was Uldis Brauns, for the 50 year celebration of the 1917 revolution, a beautiful modern “nouvelle vague” cinematic work, totally non-propagandistic, and probably therefore put on the shelf by the authorities before it got its rightful circulation. And the 1989 Once there Were Seven Simeons about the jazz family, which hijacked a plane to escape the USSR.

“Flashback”, however, from 2002, stands out as a superb autobiographical documentary, essaystic, reflective, touching. Herz Frank had with Guntis Trekteris met a producer, who found the necessary funding for the big film to which, let’s be proud of that, also the Danish Film Institute gave a bit of money, when my filmkommentaren colleague Allan Berg was film consultant there. Herz Frank writes about the film:

This is a confession in film. I have dedicated it to all the cameramen whom I had the honor of working with, and whose one eye was dry and the other one – in tears. Every single shot out of 400 shots this film consists of is a true document. Altogether, they form an imaginative weave of a dramatic plot, unique philosophy, personal world perception, and certainly, visual culture. All the rest – words, music, noises, silence, all having their own voice – have grown together with the images dwelling in this film… A person’s inner life, personality, and the eternal problems – love, birth, death, and destiny – are what have always attracted me as a documentary filmmaker… And I have always doubted if we, documentary filmmakers, have the right to expose other people’s life? I was doubtful, still I went on filming.

The original idea behind the film was to go and find the boy from 10 Minutes Older, and Herz did so, but the film took another road as his wife passed away and he himself had a herz operation performed, which by the way is filmed close up! He turned the camera to himself.

In 2012 Herz taught at the Zelig documentary film school, and in March he re-pitched his newest film project that he worked on for years and told me about, when we met in Tel Aviv in March 2011. In September same year he presented the film in Riga, here is the catalogue text: ”In 2004 Larissa Trembovler, philosophy professor and mother of four, leaves her husband and marries Yigal Amir – the assasin of Yitzhak Rabin. Three years later she gives birth to their son.” Lot of footage has been filmed and when I talked to Guntis Trekteris this morning, he said that the film definitely will be finished by co-director Maria Kravchenko and himself.

Link to: kinomuzejs.lv

Link to: latfilma.lv

 

HERZ FRANK IS ON THE LIST FOR THE 20th CENTURY

by Tue Steen Müller

Many words today to honour Herz Frank. Russian director Vitaly Manski put it like this: “Years will go by, and only 2-3 documentary film-makers will be remembered from each century.” But even today it is clear – Herz Frank is on that list for the 20th century!

Mansky did so on the site of the Russian – yes, long name – Documentary Film and Television Guild (that) is the only professional organization in Russia that unites filmmakers and television workers specializing in documentary and popular science films, documentary TV programs and coverage.

Georgy Molodtsov from the Guild asked filmkommentaren to point at the unfinished documentary of Herz Frank, being co-directed by Maria Kravchenko, entitled “Edge of Fear”. The Guild has put wonderful photos of Herz Frank made during the shooting of this film, take a look, link below. This is what the film is about, from a pitch catalogue: ”In 2004 Larissa Trembovler, philosophy professor and mother of four, leaves her husband and marries Yigal Amir – the assasin of Yitzhak Rabin. Three years later she gives birth to their son.”

… and this is a quote from the site of the Documentary Guild texted by Molodtsov and co-director Maria Kravchenko: «Edge of Fear» is a story told by the author, intertwined with unique archival footage, news reports and real life observations that were filmed over the course of ten years. The film is based on intimate dialogs and observations of the most important aspect of life – the relationship between a man and a woman. The viewer is connected with the characters of the films through the Narrator (Herz Frank himself), who becomes one of the characters in the film. He is present at all of the most important parts of the film shoots, comments on the events and discusses them not only with the viewer but with the director. Together they attempt to find the essence of this illogical and devoid of reason story…

Herz began work on this epic documentary drama over 10 years ago. Three years ago he was joined by Maria Kravchenko, who became co-director on the project. The film is currently at the shooting stage. For many years Herz looked for financial support to finish shooting and complete the film, personally attending international pitchings and forums to gain interest for the project among international producers, even though he was already in poor health. At the moment Latvian Film Center is in the project after Guntis Trekteris has joined the project (he also produced Herz Frank “Flashback”).

Maria Kravchenko, director:

«Herz worked on this film up until the last days of his life. His one phrase, one shot were able to embrace the universe in one swift move. Herz Frank is the universe’s great painter. When you see the material he’s shot – it’s simple, without any particular beauty or gimmicks – but there is so much life in it, such a concentration of feeling and thought, that you end up wondering – how did he do that?! During one of our last meetings Herz said to me – «You know what this film is really about? It’s about Life being unpredictable!». This is what attracted Herz to documentary film – lack of predictability, a desire to touch this enernal mystery of the existence of man, beginning with the creation of the world. He never ceased to wonder at life, like a child who runs out on a sunlit porch and sees his own, new and immense world for the first time. That is how I knew him to be – the Man, the Artist, the Teacher, the Colleague – Herz Frank. May God rest his soul. I will continue working on the film he wanted to make. I promised him that we would finish our film. Definitely. And I hope, that, finally, there would be brave people, who could help us finish this film, which was started by Herz”.

So. film and tv people with access to funding, support/pre-buy/buy this film. Why hesitate? Generosity, please. Photo: Maria Kravchenko, co-director with Herz Frank during the shooting of “Edge of Fear”.

Link to: rgdoc.ru/en/news/

 

PLAQUE (2014)

I like this tradition so much – the plaques that are put on the walls of the houses, where great artists have been living and working. To honour them and remember. They do so a lot in the Baltic countries and it is only just that a plaque of Herz Frank was unveiled some days ago in Riga at Lacplesa Street 29. In the presence of his two daughters and friends.

Guntis Trekteris, who produced ”Flashback” and is now finishing ”Edge of Fear” together with Frank’s co-director, sent me the photo. If you can not read the text, which is in Latvian and English, it goes like this:

”Prominent Latvian documentary film maker HERZ FRANK 1926-2013 lived and worked here from 1960 to 1993”. (30-06-2014 blogpost by Tue Steen Müller)

 

HE IS ON THAT LIST

I am in Riga – again – to take part in a “Baltic Sea Region Documentary Film Research Seminar” arranged by LAC Riga Film Museum. It starts today and my job is to give a brief introduction to the Danish documentary fllm history. More about that in the coming days.

Last night I met with producer Guntis Trekteris to catch up on the theme: When is the premiere of ”Beyond The Fear”, the last film of Herz Frank, made in collaboration with Maria Kravchenko, who finished the work after the death of Frank.

Trekteris told me that idfa had rejected the film so the premiere will be in Riga as the opening film of the new Riga International Film Festival on the 2nd of December. The festival runs until the 12th of December and includes the European Film Academy Awards Ceremony. Also the film will be the opening film of the ArtDocFest in Moscow (December 9), run by renowned director Vitaly Mansky. It was Mansky, who said the following about Herz Frank: “Years will go by, and only 2-3 documentary film-makers will be remembered from each century.” But even today it is clear – Herz Frank is on that list for the 20th century!”

… and the photo is me in front of the beautiful plaque of Herz Frank in Lacplesa Street 29, Riga. Photo taken by Lelda Ozola early September when we still had “indian summer”! (TSM, posted 17-10-2014)

 

TABITHA JACKSON

Sundance Documentary Film Program director Tabitha Jackson talked at the DOC NYC, the documentary film festival that runs in new York right now, until the 20th of November. Jackson who used to work at Channel 4 in London, and was one of those commissioning editors that I always loved to have at a panel in EDN workshops, because she was able to formulate constructive criticism and not just say ”yes” or ”no”, presented the profile and policy of the Sundance Documentary Film Program saying that “The lingua franca of non-fiction filmmaking should be the language of cinema and not the language of grant applications.”

There is a fine report on Jackson’s keynote speech at the festival in the “Filmmaker” – what I loved to read – a quote – was this:

… she found a rallying cry for sensitive and artistically compelling documentary practice in the work and words of Latvian filmmaker Herz Frank, whose ”10 Minutes Older”, an excerpt of which she screened, contained for Jackson “every emotion you might experience in an entire lifetime” in the single shot of a child watching a puppet show.

She quoted from Frank’s writings: “The first rule of the documentary filmmaker is, have the patience to observe life. If you are observant, if you look not only with your eyes but also with your heart, then life for sure will present you with some particular discovery. And then the reality recorded by you will gain an artistic point of view, become inline with art and always excite people. The facts and events will become old — they become history — but the feelings we felt regarding those events stay with us. Therefore, art is the only living bridge between people of various generations and time periods.” (TSM posted 18-11-2014)

http://filmmakermagazine.com

 

BEYOND THE FEAR (2015), A REVIEW

By Tue Steen Müller

This article is brought now because the film has its international premiere at HotDocs in Toronto , tomorrow, April 25.

A long prologue: On this site Herz Frank (1926 – 2013) has an iconic status. Co-editor Allan Berg and I met the director at the Balticum Film & TV Festival on Bornholm in the 1990’es, later on in Riga, where we contributed verbally and (a bit) financially (Allan as consultant for The Danish Film Institute) to “Flashback”. Personally I have had the pleasure to have met Herz (Frank) in Tel Aviv on a couple of occasions. He has been a huge inspiration for me in my understanding of what documentaries are and can be.

Allow me to quote Herz: In front of me on my work table is the central fragment from Raphael’s fresco “The School of Athens”. Plato and Aristotle discuss the philosophical meaning of life. Plato is pointing upwards – the essence is the Idea! Aristotle, on the other hand, has his palm pointing down to the ground – the basis is the material! Even earlier in the Old Testament (Genesis) both views are united. In the first book of Moses the first lines states: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. Read – the spiritual and the material.

As a documentarian, I follow these principles directly. Facts have to be the basis for documentary films. And if we want to uncover the truth in them, facts have to be portrayed not only on the surface and as purely informative, but also through sensitive, spiritual eyes. Even better if one eye is dry, and the other – damp… Life has to be filmed imaginatively, and only then will we understand its deeper meaning. There is an image hiding in every detail of each fact, in each living and inanimate thing. You only have to know how to see and record them. A documentary camera is not a video-recorder in the street…

The deeper meaning… is what Herz Frank was seeking in his entire oeuvre. With a constant doubt in his search. Like for this film project that became his last film, made together with Maria Kravchenko, who finished their work in a brilliant way as co-director and editor. Half way through the film Herz Frank formulates the following linked to the film, the two are makingand to the work of a documentarian:

Was it necessary to intrude with the camera into the complexity of life? Will our inclinations result in something heartbreaking, moving and artistic? But it is beyond me to give it up! Do you get me? To give it up mean to say that I am not alive anymore…

A short prologue IN the film: You hear the voice of Maria Kravchenko to an image of Herz Frank telling us the audience that Herz started shooting this film about ten years ago; and that she joined him later to finish the film after his death. Cut to three persons on their way to a prison, a grown up Larisa and two children. Cut to archive material of November 1995, Rabin was shot. Cut to the murderer, Yigal Amir. Cut to a phone conversation between a small boy Yinon and his father Yigal. This opening of a film should be obligatory to watch for all documentary professionals.

These five minutes before the title “Beyond the Fear” appears on the screen, presents the story lines that are followed. Here is the synopsis, cited from a press release I received from the producer Guntis Trekteris, EgoMedia Riga :

Decisions made by the protagonists of the film change their life irreversibly. Yigal Amir at the age of 26 assassins the Israeli Prime Minister. He is sentenced to life imprisonment and becomes the most hated criminal of the state. Larisa, an émigré from Russia, a mother of four, divorces her husband to marry the assassin and give birth to his son. In the course of many years the authors of the film are trying to understand this complicated story until one of them – Herz Frank – does not live to see his film finished, remaining on the threshold of the eternal secret of life, death and love…

It’s a precise text that avoids any tabloid approach or sensational sales talk but conveys that the ambition of this dramatic, psychological film essay is to get closer “to understand”. Contrary to how the media in Israel covered the story (a crazy woman, a fanatic murderer, the fall of a nation, a marriage, a child is born…) this is presented as the eternal fight between Good and Evil, the subtitle of Herz Frank’s film from 1978, “Ten Minutes Older”.

Which is about children watching a puppet show with all their innocence readable in their faces. “Beyond the Fear” cleverly also takes us down that alley. Slowly the focus is put on the small child of Larisa and Yagil. What will his future be, the son of a murderer, who sits for life. The mother Larisa expresses her worry about having drawn her children into moments, where they are cursed in daily situations and knows that Yinon one day will experience that his father is in prison because… where she in the beginning told him that his father was away for work. Yinon learns why. The dramaturgical stroke of genius, actually what binds the film, the red thread in a way, that gives the emotional impact that Herz Frank wanted, is the phone calls between Yinon and his father- They have to be short, according to prison rules, but Yagil tells Yinon stories from the Bible – about Good and Evil and what God can do and has done. And Yinon asks questions as children do it. As the film grows he is taking more and more space. “Heartbreaking and moving” to think about his future.

That was two of the Herz words, the third is “artistic”. Yes, this film has a high artistic quality, even if (as Allan Berg noted the first time we saw it together) you lack the voice off commentary of Herz Frank, this quiet voice of reflection on “la condition humaine”. I could also have done without the predictable vox-pop reporting from the streets, where most people condemn Yagil and Larisa in short rude bites of aggression. On the other side Kravchenko has fully succeeded to give the film space for beautiful wordless sequences and a montage that is superb. I want to re-use the phrase “stroke of genius” to describe how the visual information of the death of Herz is connected to Yinon’s trying to understand what death is.

Do we get to a deeper understanding of the relationship between Larisa and Yagil? No, we get to know them, to have sympathy for them and their constant being in the media, but first of all we get to know that Life is a mystery, never to be solved but to be lived and experienced and interpreted by great artists.

A short epilogue: The film had its national premieres in Riga in December 2014 at the new Riga International Film Festival and in Moscow at the prestigious Russian documentary film festival, “Artdocfest”, famous for its free spirit and open turning against the official state policy.

According to the producer Guntis Trekteris “it is a huge success in Russia, where we got two main professional awards – Laureal Breach (the National Prize for documentary and TV films, ed.) and Russian Film Critics guild prize for the best documentary.” And now Canada and consequently many other festivals, I guess.

Herz Frank & Maria Kravchenko: ”Beyond the Fear”, Latvia, Russia, Israel, 2014, 80 mins. (Posted 24-04-2015)

 

TARKOVSKY AWARD 2015

To receive an award at a festival that carries the name of Andrey Tarkovsky… Ego Media’s Guntis Trekteris proudly announces that: “ ’Beyond The Fear’ by Herz Frank and Maria Kravchenko (photo of the two) got Documentary Grand Prix in Andrey Tarkovsky International Film Festival “Zerkalo” (Mirror). Congratulations to director Maria Kravchenko, our co-producer Vitaly Mansky and the team!”

And to Trekteris himself, indeed, I can add. The synopsis of the film: Decisions made by the protagonists of the film change their life irreversibly. Yigal Amir at the age of 26 assassins the Israeli Prime Minister. He is sentenced to life imprisonment and becomes the most hated criminal of the state. Larisa, an émigré from Russia, a mother of four, divorces her husband to marry the assassin and give birth to his son. In the course of many years the authors of the film are trying to understand this complicated story until one of them – Herz Frank – does not live to see his film finished, remaining on the threshold of the eternal secret of life, death and love… (TSM, posted 15-06-2015)

 

”BEYOND THE FEAR” IN JERUSALEM

By Tue Steen Müller

1

Years ago, when in Israel as a tutor for the documentary CoPro event organised by Orna Yarmut, I visited the Jerusalem Cinematheque. I was there with Herz Frank, whose favourite cinema of his home town it was. Herz was proud that 35mm prints of his films were in the prestigious collection. We met the charismatic founder and leader of the Cinematheque Lia van Leer, who died 90 years old this year, always praised as a true supporter of the art of film. She talked warmly about Herz Frank and his films.

Her name has come up in connection with the controversy around the film of Herz Frank and Maria Kravchenko, ”Beyond the Fear”, that has been selected for the upcoming Jerusalem Film Festival, July 9-19. According to i24News (link below) the Israeli Minister of Culture Miri Regev has threatened to withdraw funding for the festival if the film is screened at the festival, making film critic Gidi Orsher write on his FB page: “Had Lia van Leer still been with us, she’d tell Regev where to go…” and many have suggested that filmmakers with films at the festival withdraw their films.

The festival has taken the film out of the festival programme to make it be screened the day before, July 8, according to the website of the festival it is still in the documentary competition! So it seems that it will be screened even if the Minister “calls on the public to stay away from watching the film even when it’s screened outside of the festival…” And, yes, Shimon Peres, has called upon a stop of the screening! Both Peres and Minister Regev have not seen the film, you understand by their comments that the film should be glorifying Yigal Amir, the man who killed Rabin. In all existing reviews of the film seen at international festival and on this site it is stressed that the film is a complex interpretation of a love relationship between mother (Larisa, photo), father and son.

The controversy about the film has been covered internationally by several media, see links below, like Variety: “…In response to her remarks, several hundred artists and filmmakers held an emergency meeting to discuss the threat of censorship and signed a petition that declared, “We hope with all our hearts that Israel will not deteriorate into a country where artists who express their views are blacklisted.”

Much more explicit in tone are opinions by columnists in the newspaper Haaretz like Carolina Landsmann, who has this headline for her article: “Censoring of documentary on Rabin’s murderer shows entire nation lost its marbles”, not to mention an article by Gideon Levy (Headline: Fascism is Bubbling in Israel, and that’s good News… The right-wing is attacking because it is afraid, and it is afraid because it is unsure if it’s right…)

Here is a small quote from his interesting analysis: “How is it that an obscure play put on by an obscure theater in an obscure language, which few people have seen or will see, has raised a storm that refuses to abate? Or that one word in the speech of an aging theater director became a national scandal? Or a documentary that nobody has seen, set to be screened at a film festival, also became a scandal? How is it that artists – most of whom have no impact whatsoever – were the target of such frenzied attacks? Behind all this is the feeling of inferiority complexes and, mainly, insecurities about the rightness of their path. The purpose of turning each and every incident into a scandal is to divert attention from the real problems and incite the masses. Under the surface, however, are explanations from the realm of psychology.”

Also writer Amos Oz has contributed – headline “Why are Israelis so afraid of a culture War – stating that the film that many have opinions about without having seen it could be one that is trying to go deep behind the sensations, maybe with “an Shakespearean approach”? Herz Frank would have loved that!

Sooo… in a country where a government seems to favour cultural censorship, it still stands as a fact that “Beyond the Fear” will be shown July 8 in a cinema in Jerusalem and still in the competition of the Jerusalem Film Festival. And according to the Latvian producer Guntis Trekteris, who has fed me with links, thank you, with the face of the boy blurred. A right decision. (Post 28-06-2015)

http://jff.org.il/?pg=screenings&CategoryID=226

http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/culture/75181-150617-film-on-rabin-s-assassin-partly-pulled-from-festival

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4669125,00.html

http://m.screendaily.com/5089554.article

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-33148290

http://variety.com/2015/biz/news/israel-culture-minister-threatens-cutting-funding-1201520573/

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.661980

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.662998

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.662210

A comment to the post: Peå Holmquist wrote 29-06-2015 09:42:40: ”There is a war in Israel in the cultural sector – The new minister of culture is very conservative and has threatened to close down several theatres Where Jews and Palestinians Are Working together.”

2

Still waiting for Israeli film critics having watched and evaluated the film by Herz Frank and Maria Kravchenko – that is to be screened in Jerusalem July 8, the day before the Jerusalem Film Festival officially starts but still as part of the documentary competition – here is a clip from a competent review from Hollywood Reporter, read the whole, link below:

“…the filmmakers are less concerned with political context than with Tremblover, an Orthodox Jew and Russian émigré to Israel who fell in love with Amir, fought for years to marry him in prison, and is now mother to his young son. Though muddled and elusive at times, ’Beyond the Fear’ is an absorbing meditation on the emotional and psychological aftershocks of violent political events. With Mideast tensions constantly in the news, further festival play seems guaranteed, possibly leading to niche distribution and small-screen interest…” (Posted 02-07-2015)

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/beyond-fear-jerusalem-review-805964

3

The film by Herz Frank and Maria Kravchenko was shown on the 8th of July, the day before the official opening of the Jerusalem Film Festival, whose leaders felt they had to play according to the rules of the Israeli Minister of Culture, who had told them that the funding for the festival would not happen if the film was shown as part of the festival. The Times of Israel (link below) put it like this: (The film was shown) in the small auditorium of Jerusalem’s Mishkenot Sha’ananim center. The screenings were held at the nearby arts center to avoid unnecessary publicity and to abide by the agreement with Regev to keep the film separate from the partially state-funded Cinematheque. There were no protesters in sight… Both screenings were sold out.

I have been in contact with Guntis Trekteris, main producer of the film, who was there with Maria Kravchenko and Israeli co-producer Sagy Tsirkin (photo Trekteris to the left). Trekteris reported that he publicly thanked the Minister of Culture for making this the third time the film opened a festival (the others were in Riga and Moscow) – the film is, even if not shown at the festival venue, the Cinematheque, still part of the official documentary competition!

Trekteris: Yesterday was an alternative (outdoor) screening in the Jerusalem Park opposite to the Old city Park organized by Israeli filmmakers during the official opening of the festival. Very special atmosphere. Many said to us that its a very important film for Israel… Chapeau for the Israeli filmmakers, who made this act of solidarity! (Posted 11-07-2015)

http://www.timesofisrael.com/an-assassins-tale-through-the-eyes-of-the-family-he-started-in-prison/

4

Finally an Israeli competent, reflective review of the film by Herz Frank and Maria Kravchenko, written by Nirit Anderman in ”Haaretz” yesterday July 12th. The introduction goes like this:

“If you hoped to find out why a married mother of four fell in love with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin, the film ‘Beyond the Fear’ will not leave you any wiser. But the controversial documentary about Amir, his wife and son, has other lessons…”

The extensive review (read it all) has this paragraph that for me is spot on: “The important thing that this film does manage to do, however, and the reason the title the filmmakers chose is successful is this: It reflects and emphasizes the extent to which the public’s attitude toward Amir and Trimbobler is colored by a prism of hatred and fear, and the extent to which this prism has made the discussion shallow. Nearly 20 years after the despicable murder Amir committed, the film helps viewers see how the newspaper headlines relate to him and his wife in demonic terms and how politicians and citizens propose denying them basic rights. This is also what was done in recent weeks by Miri Regev, opposition leader MK Isaac Herzog and former president Shimon Peres, who wanted to shelve the film and thereby preserve the demonic image of Amir and Trimbobler instead of grappling with the fact that they are flesh and blood people who also have softer and gentler sides…” (Posted 13-07-2015)

http://www.haaretz.com/life/movies-television/.premium-1.665571?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook

5

One more addition to the slate of posts on the premiere of ”Beyond the Fear” by Herz Frank and Maria Kravchenko, again from the Haaretz and again by Nirit Anderman, who wrote a competent review of the film.

This time Anderman launches the story that world famous director Herz Frank was a legend in the documentary community, ”but not in Israel”, where he lived from 1993. Anderman outlines his film carreer in broad terms (should however have mentioned the for many forgotten masterpiece ”235.000.000” that he made with Uldis Brauns) and declares that ”Beyond the Fear” is ”a natural continuation of his former work”, that is described like this “a curiosity to understand the human soul in a non-judgemental way, a readiness to expose himself to an audience and a strict maintenance of the visual language and quality filmmaking were always the cornerstones of Herz Frank’s movies.”

The article of course refers to the debate about the film in Israel and there is a critique expressed, that “the film’s producers kept their movie close to their chests in recent weeks, not showing it to anyone, refusing to let us see it in preparation for this story. The inevitable result was that the endless discussions around it often missed the truth…”

And it has some clever words from influential director Nurit Kedar, who was part of the team that recommended adding the movie to the Jerusalem Film Festival’s competition. “Frank accompanied her (Larissa, who married Amir, ed.) for a long period, perhaps six or seven years, trying to establish why she fell in love with him, how it happened. I didn’t feel any sympathy towards Amir while watching the film. All his images are known from media stories, and the only new thing is his voice during the conversations with his son.” (Posted 22-07-2015)

http://www.haaretz.com/life/movies-television/.premium-1.666722?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook

 

ULDIS BRAUNS

By Tue Steen Müller

During the many years that I have followed Latvian documentary cinema, the name Uldis Brauns has always been like a magic enigma. Who is he, where is he, what is he doing? The master, that is how he is characterised by many, including his late close colleague Herz Frank. The man who directed ”235.000.000” (1967), a work that far too few know about, that story comes later. I did not see him at the Riga symposia organised by another big name Ivars Seleckis et co. and when I asked around, I was told that he lives in the countryside and is not involved any longer. A loner, he was said to be.

Finally I had my curiosity saturated. Sunday after the Baltic Sea Docs Uldis Cekulis, Arvids Celmalis, Kristine Briede and I drove to his place ”Upeskalni” near the nice town Kuldiga (often pronounced Cool Diga!) in the Kurzeme district of Latvia. 90 minutes from Riga you turn down a dirt road and drive twenty minutes to reach a house standing alone (2,5 kilometer to nearest neighbour) in what you can only describe as a paradisiacal garden with tall trees, chickens and geese walking and running around, a greenhouse for tomatoes, rows of vegetables and a river down at the bottom of all the green. Silence! Not to forget an old chevrolet and a tractor, and a cottage where Uldis Brauns took us for a traditional Latvian welcome – homemade beer.

From the first moment Uldis Brauns proved to be a storyteller, first when passing trees that had been planted in memory of his and his wife Dainuvite’s parents. We communicated with translation help of Kristine Briede, who has been visiting Brauns many times and has his confidence. We talked about ”235.000.000”, and I got the story about the film (working title USSR 1966) that was first rejected on a project basis, when Brauns and his colleagues turned up in Moscow with a very precise budget, but on the way out from the meeting, they were called back and had an ”ok, go ahead”. Which they did to make the film that was shown in Leipzig. With consequences. Brauns was called to Moscow and was told that he should cut from the moment where the GDR high representatives left the cinema (!), no further explanation, plus some other moments including a scene from the official welcoming of de Gaulle to Moscow. Brauns was not in Leipzig, he did not know that the film would be shown there! The film exists in three versions, 70 minutes, 110 minutes and 140 minutes. The latter, the director’s cut, lies on the floor in the Riga flat of the director and needs to be restored – on the way back our small group decided to address the National Film Centre of Latvia to ask for help to have this happen.

Brauns and his wife hosted us wonderfully, we saw a painting he had made, ”Boy with Red Balloon”, a fine work, that made us talk about Albert Lamorisse’s film from 1956 and he had great anecdotes about his meeting with Jacques Demy and Agnès Varda on an international festival.

(Before the visit I had seen a dvd ”Comeback” issued by Society European Documentary Symposium with 5 of Brauns many short films, including the beautiful ”White Bell” that he shot, Herz Frank script wrote and Ivars Kraulitis directed. One of the films, directed and shot by Brauns, is ”Summer” that is made in Kuldiga. We did not have time to talk about them).

Photo: The last couple of hours of the visit took place in the sleeping room in the house. From left you see Uldis Brauns’ wife Dainuvite, Kristine Briede, Müller with number 10, that´s me, Uldis Brauns and Arvids Celmalis doing sound and the dog Voucher being carressed.

We were looking at sequences of ”235.000.000” – with big difficulties because of dvd machine treating the dvd in a strange way – sabotage, Brauns said – but we had no problem in seeing how magnificent the film is. And how actual it is: many scenes deal with ”departure” and ”love” and ”waiting” for the soldier to come home. The camera work is the whole way through amazing, Brauns told us how he had prepared the camera people in beforehand in a film that have now words and when you see it today, is an homage to Life and to the joyful co-existence of people from the many republics of USSR. The reason for putting aside the film can only be found in the advanced poetic storytelling and the focus on ordinary people and their lives in grief and happiness.

Uldis Brauns, a man of 81, walking with a stick, slow but fresh in mind and generous and mild. He has been living in the house in the countryside since 1971, nature surroundings shape people… (TSM, post 09-09-2014)

Herz Frank 1926-2013/2

Many words today to honour Herz Frank. Russian director Vitaly Manski put it like this: “Years will go by, and only 2-3 documentary film-makers will be remembered from each century.” But even today it is clear – Herz Frank is on that list for the 20th century!

Mansky did so on the site of the Russian – yes, long name – Documentary Film and Television Guild (that) is the only professional organization in Russia that unites filmmakers and television workers specializing in documentary and popular science films, documentary TV programs and coverage.

Georgy Molodtsov from the Guild asked filmkommentaren to point at the unfinished documentary of Herz Frank, being co-directed by Maria Kravchenko, entitled “Edge of Fear”. The Guild has put wonderful photos of Herz Frank made during the shooting of this film, take a look, link below. This is what the film is about, from a pitch catalogue: ”In 2004 Larissa Trembovler, philosophy professor and mother of four, leaves her husband and marries Yigal Amir – the assasin of Yitzhak Rabin. Three years later she gives birth to their son.”

… and this is a quote from the site of the Documentary Guild texted by Molodtsov and co-director Maria Kravchenko: «Edge of Fear» is a story told by the author, intertwined with unique archival footage, news reports and real life observations that were filmed over the course of ten years. The film is based on intimate dialogs and observations of the most important aspect of life – the relationship between a man and a woman. The viewer is connected with the characters of the films through the Narrator (Herz Frank himself), who becomes one of the characters in the film. He is present at all of the most

important parts of the film shoots, comments on the events and discusses them not only with the viewer but with the director. Together they attempt to find the essence of this illogical and devoid of reason story…

Herz began work on this epic documentary drama over 10 years ago. Three years ago he was joined by Maria Kravchenko, who became co-director on the project. The film is currently at the shooting stage. For many years Herz looked for financial support to finish shooting and complete the film, personally attending international pitchings and forums to gain interest for the project among international producers, even though he was already in poor health. At the moment Latvian Film Center is in the project after Guntis Trekteris has joined the project (he also produced Herz Frank “Flashback”).

Maria Kravchenko, director:

«Herz worked on this film up until the last days of his life. His one phrase, one shot were able to embrace the universe in one swift move. Herz Frank is the universe’s great painter. When you see the material he’s shot – it’s simple, without any particular beauty or gimmicks – but there is so much life in it, such a concentration of feeling and thought, that you end up wondering – how did he do that?! During one of our last meetings Herz said to me – «You know what this film is really about? It’s about Life being unpredictable!». This is what attracted Herz to documentary film – lack of predictability, a desire to touch this enernal mystery of the existence of man, beginning with the creation of the world. He never ceased to wonder at life, like a child who runs out on a sunlit porch and sees his own, new and immense world for the first time. That is how I knew him to be – the Man, the Artist, the Teacher, the Colleague – Herz Frank. May God rest his soul. I will continue working on the film he wanted to make. I promised him that we would finish our film. Definitely. And I hope, that, finally, there would be brave people, who could help us finish this film, which was started by Herz”.

So. film and tv people with access to funding, support/pre-buy/buy this film. Why hesitate? Generosity, please. Photo: Maria Kravchenko, co-director with Herz Frank during the shooting of “Edge of Fear”.

http://rgdoc.ru/en/news/herz-frank-has-passed-away/