Audrius Stonys Visits Copenhagen

“Audrius Stonys deserves much praise for his ”Ramin”, a film about an old man in Georgia, his daily life, his attachment to his late mother, his looking for a woman he knew in his youth… the story is told in stunningly beautiful images by Audrius Kemezys, the story construction is complicated, but there are magical moments (like in most of Stonys films) that you will never forget, and original ideas…” words taken from this site, which has posts about the Lithuanian filmmaker dating back to the beginning of filmkommentaren.dk

He, Audrius Stonys, visits Copenhagen this coming monday to screen his film, ”Ramin”, in the documentary cinema set up by Ebbe Preisler in the PH Cafeen in Copenhagen, check the website below – there might be documentary film fans in Copenhagen, who happen to be ignorant about the quality and commitment behind the initiative. Stonys will introduce the film and talk with the audience afterwards.

On the top of the film of Audrius Stonys, a film by Klaus Kjeldsen from 2006 is shown, shot in ”his” street, Nansensgade, about the fascinating artist Chriatian Lemmerz. The description of the film, in Danish, goes like this:

Christian Lemmerz er en tysk kunstner bosiddende i Danmark. Han er ikke mindst kendt for sine krasse skulpturer, men denne aften skal vi opleve ham skabe nogle såkaldte monotypier i et lille værksted i Nansensgade hos kunsttrykker Michael Schäfer. Der er ikke noget buller og brag i denne film, den er et roligt nærbillede af en arbejdende kunstner, kraftfuld javel, men koncentreret og humoristisk.

www.mandagsdokumentar.dk

Football in Sevilla

… well, not played in Sevilla but watched by a film blogger in a tapas bar the last two nights, both matches performed in Germany, both with German teams as the winners, in the first of two matches in the semi-finals of the Champions League.

The first match, in the bar in Sevilla, FC Barcelona against Bayern Munich, was not very well attended, apart from me I did not see any Barcelona fans, contrary to the second match, that of tonight, where you had to move your head pretty often to get viewing access to the whole screen, and where the bar was enthusiastic when Ronaldo scored to 1-1 for Real Madrid, but making a lot of customers leave when they saw that Dortmund was much more efficient = Polish Lewandowski, who had the night of his football career, scoring 4 goals!

Back to FC Barcelona… the Spanish sport newspapers this morning put it on the front page in different versions but with the same conclusions: Barca’s glorious years are over, something is wrong with the way of playing, something has to be changed, new players etc. They wrote the same after Barca’s first match against Milan, where Barca made a fantastic come back, but to be realistic, the 0-4 in Munich last night is impossible to change into a result that will make Barca reach the final of the Champions League.

Images from the match: Messi, making no successful moves at all, and at a certain moment I saw him in a position that made me think that the best player in the world was suffering from a stomach illness, was he ill? Or Gerard Piqué who had his head shaven (but kept his beard) in a way that illustrated the vulnerable defender being weak, as he could not keep Müller away from his attacks, and goal-making. The same Müller (nice name, but…) who made an obvious dirty obstruction on Jordi Alba, so he could not prevent the goal. The referee did not react. This event, as well as the clear off-side of Mario Gomez, when he scored for Bayern, made me think of the title of the film ”Kill the Referee” – to be fair there were also hands on the ball of Barca players on two occasions that could have given Bayern Munich penalties. Hungarian referee Kassai, the man in charge, will not be given more Champions League duties. Not competent.

Wrote a Barca fan after a Sevilla bar football watching! And let’s take it once more, what Gary Lineker, the English striker said: Football is about 22 players and one ball, and the Germans always win!

Tikhonova & Spritzendorfer: Elektro Moskva

Another film that premieres in Nyon (April 25 & 26) (see below), and another film that has been a long time on its way. And another film that gave high expectations that for me who has followed the film from the side, are (almost) satisfied.

Was it one of the Rolling Stones who said that ”my bass guitar gave me a reason for living”? Almost the same says Russian artist Richarda Norvila (= Benzo), one of the protagonist of the film, when he talks about his work:

”I arrive at the studio, turn on the equipment, I hear sounds and turns knobs, therefore I am…”, and he is also the one who intelligently makes the focus of the film clear, by saying: ”Let’s assume that phenomenon of Russian life is, as said Lenin, inexhaustible, as the electron, then the nature of the native Soviet synthesizers also have this quality. They translate some kind of profound lifeline, the beginning of which was laid by the great October Revolution…”.

Yes, Benzo and other contemporaries like Aleksey Iljinikh, who finds, buys, repairs and sells the synthesizers to artists like Benzo, are for me the most interesting to watch in action. When music is composed in a studio with Benzo, AND when Dominik Spritzendorfer dares to let go the image side of the film in amazing sequences where the music playfully interprets, or maybe better to say – where the image is adding to the sound to stress the quality of the latter.

The overall theme that the electrification of the Russian and Soviet society, in a belief in the future for the communism, should benefit all citizens, but failed completely, making all inventions serve the military more than the people are conveyed, with wonderful archive interviews with Theremin from 1993, introducing the space adventure as well – in other words the historical part of the film is well made but a bit monotounos and heavy in tone so the flow and the pleasure in watching the film pop up when we leave the past and go to the musicians of today with very free, almost psychedelic sequences. It is the classical dilemma of how much information is needed to give to the audience, and how much you need as background info. Nevertheless, the film is multi-faceted and quite an achievement and deserves a long and good life.

Austria, 2013, 89 mins.

http://www.elektromoskva.com/english

http://www.diagonale.at/filme-a-z?ftopic=finfo&topic=finfo&fid=5747

http://www.visionsdureel.ch/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17340257

 

Stoyanov and Rainova: The Last Black Sea Pirates

World Premiere in Nyon today of a film that was on its way for a long time. I have not yet seen the final result but clips on its way to completion give high expectations. The text below is taken from the website of IDF (Institute of Documentary Film), that also gives access to the trailer of a film, produced by Bulgarian company Agitprop and creatively written and directed by Vanya Rainova and Svetoslav Stoyanov:

It is like a fairy tale. A band of sun-dried, ganrly desperados live in a lagoon with their dreams about treasure hunting and careless living according to their own set of rules. They are six and each brings in a notable skill. Captain Jack the Whale is the leader, Trifon is the philosopher, Stoyan is the silent, Valyo is the digger, Krasyo is the driver and Nakata is the dynamite. The world of the 21st century, however, eventually locates every romantic piece of land, including pirate paradises, and pulls it down in the name of tourist luxury.


The Bulgarian seaside documentary farce The Last Black Sea Pirates was developed as the participating project of the year-round creative documentary workshop Ex Oriente Film in 2009. The authors later pitched the project to leading commissioning editors and funds at East European Forum, and took the opportunity to present the film’s rough cut to international buyers, sales and festival representatives within Doc Launch presentation in 2011. The film was finished with the assistance of DOK.Incubator workshop.

Soon after, the Agitprop- produced documentary stormed the programme lists of major international film festivals. The World premiere takes place April 23 at the Swiss-based festival Visions du réel, the North American premiere is held May 1 at Hot Docs, Canada.

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

Cinemateket maj/juni 2013

The following text in Danish is praising the Copenhagen Cinemateket, part of the Danish Film Institute, for its programme for May and June. A real treat for film lovers, film history with the giants Luchino Visconti and Satyajit Ray in front but also a tribute to Christopher Walken and new films from Egypt as well as a series of films by the Korean Chan-Wook Park – and a handful of strong documentaries.

Jo, det er den rene gavebod, som det 64 siders programhæfte fra DFI præsenterer for maj og juni – det er en god idé med det nye format, overskueligt og indbydende – og det siger jeg ikke kun fordi jeg rammes i hjertekulen, når jeg ser at 8 film af mesteren Luchino Visconti bliver vist med et løfte om at flere følger til efteråret. De står alle sammen på dvd-hylden, men at gense ”De lange knives nat”, ”Leoparden” og ”Døden i Venedig” på det store lærred i forhåbentlig flotte kopier – det er derfor vi har et filmmuseum. Og så er der den vidunderlige Apu-trilogi (foto) af Satyajit Ray, dokumentariske og vemodigt poetiske film, som det skrives så rigtigt af Jesper Andersen i introduktionen.

På dokumentar-siden: Anne Wivels grundige Kierkegaard-film med bl.a. Møllehave og Garff, Jørgen Leths ”Det gode og det onde”, og fra udlandet bl.a. Carlo Guillermo Protos gribende ”El Huaso” om faren, der ønsker at tage sit liv. Den vises i en serie med nye fransk-canadiske film.

Personligt glæder jeg mig til at gense Dariusz Jablonskis ”Fotoamator” (”Amatørfotografen”) fra 1998. Jeg var medlem af juryen ved idfa i 1998, hvor filmen fik hovedprisen i konkurrence med Sergey Dvortsevoys ”Bread Day” og Viktor Kossakovskys ”Pavel og Lalya” – jeg tror ikke festivalen har haft et stærkere felt siden da, og jeg har tit tænkt på om vi valgte den rigtige vinder. Jablonskis fremragende film bygger på lysbilleder taget af en nazistisk bogholder i den jødiske ghetto i Lodz.

http://www.dfi.dk/filmhuset/cinemateket.aspx

FIDADOC 2013

The FIDADOC festival (the only one in the country with a focus on documentaries) has announced the programme for the 5th edition to take place in Agadir, Morocco. The festival, that was set up by Nouzha Drissi, who died tragically in a car accident in 2011, privilégie les oeuvres de cinéastes émergents (1er et 2ième films), in the competition programme with the opening film being impressive “Camera/Woman” by Karima Zoubir, the premiere of the film in her home country.

There are films from Congo, Tunisia, Palestine, Germany as well as “Elena” (photo) by Petra Costa from Brazil, “I’m Breathing” by Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon from Scotland.

The festival takes place April 22-28.

http://www.fidadoc.org/

Florin Iepan: Odessa

Romanian director Florin Iepan has – according to his Facebook page with a lot of links from the press coverage – shown a rough cut version of the film ”Odessa” in Bucharest on the 8th of April. I have known the director for many years, as a fighter for better conditions for the documentary in his home country, and for his films, first of all ”Children of the Decree” from 2005.

With the Odessa film (cited from an interview with Iepan at the IDF webpage, link below) the director “would like to nudge Romanians to engage in a long-overdue public debate about the Odessa massacre and Romania’s involvement in the atrocities of WWII. In Mr Iepan’s Odessa, the Odessa massacre refers to the events of October 1941 when over 20,000 Jewish residents were murdered by Romanian and German troops in the occupied Ukrainian town of Odessa. Close to 300,000 Jews and Roma were killed in the territories controlled by Romania’s Antonescu regime during the war. Yet disapproving public reactions which the filmmaker has received suggest that some Romanians may not yet be willing to acknowledge the past, and that losing face might seem intolerable to the country’s fragile psyche. Mr Iepan doesn’t mince words about the dangers of such reactions, and about the difficulties that, for entirely different reasons, come up when he tries to win support from abroad.” Continuing like this (from the film’s facebook page):

“What happens when a documentary film breaks out of its comfort zone and openly provokes the society? To what extent my compatriots are willing to reflect on one particular episode, the reprisals in Odessa from October 1941?”

And a gentle kick to us West Europeans, who love films from Eastern Europe, what do we want to come from this part of Europe, according to Iepan the following, and there is some truth in it, for sure:

“East Europeans should only make observational films about their communities in remote or desolate areas, with a thick fog, long shots, hours of uneventful suspense, following an old person who keeps a cow, a horse or chickens. Just looking and waiting for something. So obviously when you’re trying to do something else, you are a traitor to the good documentary.”

http://www.dokweb.net/en/documentary-network/articles/traitor-to-the-dying-genre-1968/

CPH:DOX Awarded

Normally festivals award films and film directors, but festivals can also be awarded, and the Danish documentary festival CPH:DOX has received two recognitions lately, the most important (also important for future funding one can hope, sorry for being so materialistic) to be “The Cultural Event of Year” named by the organization Wonderful Copenhagen and the Municipality of Copenhagen, from the jury statement: In 2003 CPH:DOX had 12.000 visitors. Throughout the last decade this number has risen to over 50.000 admissions in 2012. In itself an impressive achievement, but the effect of CPH:DOX goes deeper than that. Today, viewing documentaries is no longer a niche activity for the selected few. It is an artform that has found a wide and dedicated audience both in cinemas and on TV, and CPH:DOX can claim a good deal of the responsibility for this turn.

The second award came from the readers of the daily newspaper Politiken, that every Friday publishes “I Byen” (a kind of weekly parallel to “What’s On”). Five cultural events were nominated with CPH:DOX as the winner and CPH:DOX got the “I Byen” prize. Politiken, by the way, has a weekly (every thursday) supplement on film, popular it is and much writing on documentaries there is and that helps the cinemas to take the chance to screen documentaries.

Politiken writes about CPH:DOX that it has made the documentary mainstream. That is not right. CPH:DOX has made an audience come to watch films which are not mainstream.

Congratulations!

http://www.cphdox.dk/d/index.lasso?e=1

Searching for Sugarman in France

A week ago the French newspaper Le Monde brought an interesting article about the national launch of the Oscar winner Searching for Sugarman theatrically. Released in cinemas by December 26 2012, the film is now running in around 70 cinemas, 75 copies and 130.000 entrées, being on the top 30 list for weeks.

But it started completely different. The film was at Sundance January 2012, the distributor saw it, they tried to get it to Cannes in May, but as it had been around already no success, it had a screening at the American film festival in Deauville, a European fim with an American theme – and a VIP screening in Paris where both film and music people were invited. When the film was over, Sixto Rodriguez entered the stage to perform. Voilà! And then of course promotion from mouth to ear parallel to the news about the many awards that the film obtained.

The film stays in the French cinemas until end of May where a dvd will be released, including the performance in Paris as bonus material on the disc and followed by concerts with Rodriguez in cities in France.

The article in Le Monde was brought April 9.

Christian Sønderby Jepsen: Testamentet i DOKUMANIA

DR2 DOKUMANIA meddeler i en pressemeddelelse, at ” ‘Testamentet’, en dansk dokumentarfilm fra 2011 af Christian Sønderby Jepsen” bliver sendt tirsdag den 16. april 2013 kl. 20.30 på DR2. 

” ‘En doku om vores kamp i livet og alle de skuffelser vores familie udsætter os for, en hudløs ærlig doku om livet med en rig familie og deres lovning om bedere liv, men blir snydt for ALT, en familie der er SÅ rådden og forloren.’ Sådan resumeer Christian Peter Ernst Steffensen filmen på sin Facebook-side. Christian er bror til 31-rige Henrik, og sammen med deres tredje bror står de i ‘Testamentet’ til at arve millioner fra deres afdøde morfar. En formue, der kan få dem ud af en tilvæelse styret af fattigdom, stoffer og alkohol i den midtjyske by, Skals.

Men, som var det en fiktionsfilm, er formuen ikke vundet uden kamp. Henrik må træffe vigtige valg og gøre op med en fortid præget af manipulation, intriger og mistro. Alt sammen for at realisere drømmen om et bedre liv. ‘Testamentet’ er en episk, men tragikomisk fortælling om penge, manipulation og frigørelse. Et dansk Hollywood-drama fra det mørke Jylland, som vi håber, både du og dine læsere vil se eller gense.” (Kimi Seerup, Dokumentargruppen på DR2)