Jørgen Vestergaard: Spillemanden

Vestergaard tager igen simpelthen ordet og fortæller en historie. Den her gang om en stor musiker ude på landet, der hvor de bor. Han gør det på den måde, han kan og altid har gjort det på, i en dokumentarfilm, som han bare laver. Han samler pengene sammen, han samler holdet af kolleger og venner og går i gang. Optager og klipper og færdiggør og indtaler sin fortælling voice over. Det er sådan han tager ordet, og jeg bliver så glad, når jeg igen hører hans stemme fortælle om det, han nu er optaget af. Det gik sådan til, at Jacob Oschlag fra foreningen Thy Folkemusik pegede på en fortsættelse af filmene om Evald Thomsen, Evald og Ingeborg og alle de andre (1974) og om brødrene Ejnar, Hans og Karl Nielsen fra Oksbøl, Æ Tinuser (1979). Han skulle lave en film med Karl Skaarup.

Filmen er for så vidt om ham, spillemanden Karl Skaarup (1924) fra Koldby i Thy, men den er mere end det, den er en film om musik, og den er derfor især med ham som medvirkende, han fortæller skam lidt om sig selv og sit liv, men vigtigst, han forklarer fagligt og omhyggeligt om sin musik i ellers ubeskrevne detaljer, om sine forbilleder og om sin undervisning, som han sent i karrieren med succes blev lokket ud i af en ny generation af musikere. Filmen er om musik og musikalske generationsskifter uden egentlige brud, men med traditioner og videreførelser og fornyelser. Og så om den personlige faktor: det drejer sig her om Karl Skaarup. Og den loyale, klassiske tv-dokumentar udvider sig, ja, Skaarup fortæller, som han forventes, om gamle dage og missionens syn på hans fag i dans og alkohol og hans myndige dialekt slår fast: det er ikke synd. Men han bliver faglig i sin selvbiografi, holder sig til instrumenternes række, fortæller om dem, han har ejet siden barndommen. Og så kommer det interessante, musikken. Han lærte at se på de dansende, skille de dygtigste ud og spille efter dem, for dans og musik hører sammen, i hans verden i den rækkefølge. Sådan er kunsten.

Filmens kerne er mødet mellem Karl Skaarup og violinisten fra konservatoriet, Kristian Bugge, mødet mellem erfaring og begejstring. Bugge overtaler Skaarup til at tage sig som elev, og efterhånden bliver Skaarup en slags ekstern lærer ved Fyns Musikkonservatorium. Selv havde han lært af violinisten Viggo Post fra Bedsted, og han kunne så videreføre kendskabet til de lange, lange thyske turdanse i akademiske rammer, men ikke kun denne folkloreindsamling, han tilføjede og fortsætter med at tilføje sin egen kunst, det gammeldags på den autentiske, den ægte måde. Musikken er levende, variationerne udvides med improvisationer, som i opmærksomhed på dansen stadig understreger denne. Dette er Vestergaards films fornemhed, klippet følger og illustrerer konkret i dejligt lange scener uden nogen fotografisk eller klippeteknisk pynt, at Karl Skaarup samler en stil omkring sig, en musikalsk skole velsagtens, der som hovedingrediens er afhængig af og respekterer, hvad folk gør, når de danser, og af, hvad de simpelthen kan lide.

Jørgen Vestergaard har lavet en film om og en udforskning af en stor musikalsk tradition i sin værkrække, endnu en fint følt film om kunst. Direkte gribende er det at overvære den gamle musiker lytte sig opmærksomt ind i et ungt orkester, Habadekuks fremmede musik og lidt efter lidt spille sammen med dem, senere at se ham give koncert for 400 alvorligt lyttende tilhørere i Vestervig Kirke, koncert, ja! Både spillende med i stort orkester og som solist med fuldstændig stilhed omkring sig og sin harmonika.

Jørgen Vestergaard: Spillemanden – en film om Karl Skaarup, Danmark 2012, 39 min. Fotografi: Orla Nielsen, lyd: Erik Nielsen, klip: Henrik Jørgensen, musik: Karl Skaarup, Kristian Bugge og Habadekuk, idé: Jakob Oschlag, produktion: JV film & tv, salg: Forlaget Knakken orpo@thisted.dk

How to Build a Country from Scratch

… is the title of another fine Op-Doc that you can watch on New York Times website. A bit more than 9 minutes long it is a presentation, full of humour, in 12 steps/chapters of the new country, South Sudan, made by the French filmmakers Florence Martin-Kessler and Anne Poiret. A feature duration documentary entitled ”State Builders” will premiere later this year to be broadcasted on arte, the German/French cultural channel.

Again, chapeau for this initiative of New York Times, bringing the short documentary to a big audience.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/opinion/how-to-build-a-country-from-scratch.html?_r=0

Hybrid Docs at Forum Berlin

The Forum of the Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (runs until February 17) is the section, where you can be sure to find new and exciting works. Including documentaries. Here is a clip from an interview with the Forum director Christoph Terhechte, with the mentioning of four docs, below please find a link to the full text:

Is the Portuguese film Terra de ninguém (No Man’s Land) by Salomé Lamas, in which a mercenary talks about the atrocities he has committed, an example for this sort of blurring the boundaries between fiction and documentary?

It is a documentary, but at the same time a piece of fiction. At first the director asks herself whether or not it is fiction, because until the very end she cannot be sure whether the man who recounts his story is telling the truth. What is clear is that the background information is true, insofar as the actions that he mentions actually happened. But it remains unclear how much he was really involved and to what degree the story is false. Of course, the same goes for every documentary. One can never know whether people are telling the truth and there are always different versions of a story. Terra de niguém explicitly addresses the possibility of falsehood or pathological lying.

The undefined boundaries between feature and documentary film can be seen in many of this year’s films. Larger audiences are beginning to get used to these hybrid forms. The Greek documentary Sto lyko (To the Wolf) is partially staged. But you don’t know how much, because the people play themselves in the film. La plaga (The Plague) employs a feature film style of dramaturgy, in order to follow its five protagonists in today’s Catalonia. A batalha de Tabatô (The Battle of Tabatô) (photo) is a feature which has very strong documentary elements. The film takes place in Guinea-Bissau and tries to contrast African tribal traditions with the colonial history…

Link to berlinale.de 

Agnès Varda Online Festival

What a feast! And don’t say you can not afford it – it is for free! And it lasts until February 17!

I am referring to another generous offer from ”your online documentary cinema” provider DocAlliance.

17 films of Agnès Varda, voilà.

Including ”The Beaches of Agnès”, ”The Gleaners and I”, the documentary she made about her late husband Jacques Demy, ”L’univers de Jacques Demy” and several short films like ”Salut les Cubains” (photo) from 1963, that has the following description on the site of DocAlliance:

”Four years after Fidel Castro came to power, Agnès Varda brought back from Cuba 1,800 photos and used them to make an educational and amusing documentary.”

Have a nice festival and tell others about it!

http://dafilms.com/

Best Nordic Documentary/2

A short follow-up – Mika Ronkainen got his well-deserved Dragon Award Best Nordic Documentary at the Göteborg International Film festival. The jury motivated the award to ”Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart” (photo) with these words:

… a touching story of inner and outer exile, which brings out a rarely discussed trauma of the Swedish welfare state of the prosperous 60s and 70s. With great sensibility and refinement, the director describes a personal relationship between father and son and their emotional trip down memory lane in the search of a sense of belonging. Their conversations and meetings with other Swedish Finns along the way gradually unfolds the theme of rootlessness and estrangement, while intertwined live recordings of Finnish immigrant songs from the 70s poetically comment on the theme and widens the picture to encompass an entire culture.”

http://www.giff.se/us/public/article/post/the-dragon-award-winners-2013-1590.html

Magnificent7 2013/6

The 9th edition of the European Feature Documentary Film Festival ended Sunday night at the big hall of the Belgrade Sava Centre. Manuel von Stürler presented his ”Winter Nomads” followed by Helena Trestikova’s ”Private Universe”. For the first film, that the European Film Academy voted to be the Best Documentary Film of 2012, and that is this week being released in cinemas in France, around 1000 spectators attended the screening that included a small lamb entering the stage to be saluted by von Stürler and animal lover, festival director Zoran Popovic!

Trestikova’s film was watched by around 900 enthusiastic viewers, who followed the life of an ordinary Czech family over a period of more than 30 years on the background of the country’s history from 1968, Husak, Havel, EU etc.

Staying for a moment with the statistics, the festival augmented its number of viewers with around 10% from 2012 going up to about 6000 – for 7 screenings!

This monday morning the festival held masterclasses with von Stürler and Trestikova. The latter took us, in a very well prepared presentation with 11 scenes from her films, through her work of long-time observation. She showed us clips from ”Marcela”, ”Katka” and ”René” (Best European Documentary in 2008) and talked about the ethical questions connected to being so close to her characters, helping them ”outside” the film as well, to get on the right track in their lives. Trestikova said that she did not really consider herself as a filmmaker, more as a chronicler, who has new films coming up this year and has plans to continue to film René and maybe also the family in ”Private Universe”. Deep respect for Trestikova for a constant non-tabloid humanistic focus on people outside the celebrity spotlight.

Several of her films are available on the vod DocAlliance:

http://dafilms.com/director/167-helena-trestikova/

http://hivernomade.ch/en/

Daniel Dencik: Ekspeditionen til verdens ende

Jeg er, når jeg læser foromtalerne og i og med selve titlen og, da det kommer dertil, fra filmens begyndelse midt i de store arktiske ekspeditioners omfattende mytologi. I mit liv begyndte den mytologi naturligvis med Knud Rasmussens store slæderejse, og den fortsatte med min generations ekspeditionsdeltagere og deres fascinationer af de gamle (selv har jeg aldrig rejst), som da Per Kirkeby i sin tid skrev om nye biografiske bøger om ”… helte fra et af mine reservater, Mylius-Erichsen og Lauge Koch. For at mit polarrejsende-Valhalla skal være besat på de første rækker mangler nu blot J.P. Koch, Nansen, Wegener og Eigil Knuth.” Der står altså en del biografier af den slags i Kirkebys reol, og jeg har ikke svært ved at gætte en stor del af de biograferedes navne. Disse klipper af mænd var også mine helte og deres fortællinger var min udfordring. Og der troede jeg altså, at jeg kunne begynde at se Denciks film.

Eller jeg kunne begynde med Daniel Richter, som medvirker i filmen som ekspeditionsdeltager, og som sidder der på den grønlandske klippe med skitseblok og riffel, jeg kunne begynde med hans malerier, for det hedder om hans landskaber i en tekst fra en udstilling, jeg så, at de ”… forbinder sig med romantikkens landskabsmaleri og oversætter på kyndig vis det ophøjede romantiske til et tidssvarende sprog.” Disse bjerge af på én gang destruktion og evighed omkring små skikkelser af foreløbighed i undfangelsens længsel. Der så jeg i begyndelsen af Denciks film, at jeg måske kunne fortsætte i en forståelse af hans landskaber af hav og is og klippe.

Daniel Richter: 10001 Nacht (2011)

Eller jeg kunne indstille mig på en oplevelse, som jeg husker fra Werner Herzogs Encounters At The End Of The World (2008) da endelig i mit hoved på den filmfestival fokus for mig flyttedes væk fra den tabte tid, og mit vemod forvandledes til en klaustrofobi sammen med dykkerne under Antarktis’ havis og en undren over naturforskningens galgenhumor (ja, der blev leet meget i salen) til simpel angst over, at det efter dinosaurernes uddøen så pludseligt som art dengang i fortiden nu er vores tur, for det mindede Herzogs alvor uden nåde og hans tydelige billeder af vore fremtidige ruiner mig om. Denne vældige, vrede mands stemme af fast beslutsomhed og overraskende, musikalsk indsigt med en essayistisk fortællekraft som de gamle rejsendes i samtaler med disse nye polarforskere og i den kritiske beretning om dem.

Men så er der i stedet ikke langt inde i Denciks film en kortfattet kvindestemme som Katrine Warsaaes med en pludselig og løsreven bemærkning med venlig og beskedent tilbageholdt pondus af viden om arters massedød tidligere i Jordens historie, men faktisk meget sjældent, med årmillioner imellem. Nu sker det måske igen, siger hun, en art er ved at uddø, denne gang ved at destruere sig selv, vi er måske midt i det.

Daniel Dencik har lavet en ung og opsætsig film med sine helte på rejse i et sejlskib frem mod verdens ende. Nu er navnene Jonas Bergsøe, Minik Rosing, Per Bak Jensen, Jeppe Møhl, Jens Fog Jensen, Tal R, Morten Rasch, Bo Elberling, Katrine Worsaae og altså Daniel Richter. De er om bord på skibet, de er ekspeditionens medlemmer, og de er filmens medvirkende, og små bidder af det, de siger til hinanden foran det observerende kamera, bliver efterhånden til filmens essayistiske udsagn.

I begyndelsen troede jeg ikke på, at det ville lykkes, temmelig skeptisk blev jeg hængende ved filmen, men ikke fanget. Jeg blev ikke på noget tidspunkt fanget, men filmen voksede og voksede for mine øjne og jeg noterede mig brudstykkerne af en eller anden redegørelse. Fra instruktøren? Fra klipperummet? Det er i hvert fald ikke så ligetil som hos Herzog – jeg må skrive det essay selv, hvis jeg vil have det i sprog. Hvor Herzog binder sin film sammen ved sin stemmes mesmeriserende indtrængen, er det i Denciks film sådan, at sammenbindingen er overladt til klipperen og juxtapositioneringerne og i sidste ende til tilskueren selv. Det filosofiske arbejde kommer til at foregå inde i mit hoved, så godt det nu kan lade sig gøre, som forhistorien, får jeg at vide et sted, ikke er lokaliseret omkring de artefakter, som arkæologen finder derinde på bredderne af den nordgrønlandske fjord, men i arkæologens hoved. Og først bliver til forhistorie, når han taler og skriver.

Så når jeg efter 188 minutter sidder med slutteksterne og læser navnene og fagene: geolog, maler, fotograf, kaptajn, zoolog og pilot, arkæolog, marinbiolog, geograf, filmfotograf, klipper, lyddesigner, producent (men vist ikke researcher og forfatter noget sted?) er jeg forvirret og skuffet, så mange har fra så forskellige positioner sagt noget og gjort noget, men hvem har skrevet filmen? Tre navne dækker sig ind ved siden af hinanden, men hvor er autor, hvem er ansvarlig?

Og så vender jeg tilbage til Kirkeby, er han ude for det samme med bogen om Lauge Koch?: ”Sådan falder de mange citater hist og pist. Det giver en falsk fornemmelse af objektivitet, af at lade kilderne tale for sig selv. Men det duer ikke, for der er jo truffet et valg og vi kender ikke udgangspunktet. Denne ”metode” giver netop ikke noget grundlag for selv at danne sig et billede, fordi der spilles med skjulte kort, måske har forfatterne ikke for alvor turdet danne sig deres eget billede. Og så har man som læser ikke noget at reagere mod, ikke nogen væg at spille op ad. Disse evindelige citatbrudstykker, som man oftest kommer i tvivl om hvor hører til, giver blot en usikker fornemmelse af at blive forholdt noget. Havde forfatterne skrevet deres fortælling, som de var berettiget til gennem det store researcharbejde (at have ’læst alle kilderne, alle dagbøgerne i deres fulde omfang’), så havde man kunne reagere med at det her klinger rigtigt, og det her tror jeg ikke på…”

“Det er måske ikke så slemt alt sammen”, nej, det er jo nok en rigtig god film med alle papirerne i orden og mange gensyn foran sig, og i hvert fald har jeg også mine helte relativt uberørte endnu. Men jeg er anbragt tankefuld og tvivlende.

Daniel Dencik: Ekspeditionen til verdens ende, Danmark 2013, 188 min. Manuskript: Michael Haslund-Christensen, Daniel Dencik og Janus Metz. Fotografi: Martin Munch, Torben Forsberg, Adam Philp og Valdemar Cold Winge Leisner. Klip: Per Sandholt og Rebekka Lønqvist. Musik: Mads Heldtberg. Lyddesign: Per Nyeström. Produktion: Michael Haslund-Christensen / Haslund Film. Premiere på onsdag 6. februar i en række biografer: http://www.doxbio.dk/dbio/b.lasso?ll=2s 

Litt.: Per Kirkeby: Ekspeditionerne i Fisters klumme (1995). Kito Nedo, Anders Kold og Susanne Figner: 10001 Nacht, katalog til Daniel Richter udstilling, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover (2011)

Magnificent7 2013/5

Magic evening in the Sava Centre last night. 8-900 people had decided to spend their saturday night out in the company of Finnish artist Kimmo Pohjonen. It was a good choice you could hear from the reactions during and after the screening of ”Soundbreaker”, directed by Kimmo Koskela. Good choice… it was like being at a rock concert, the well deserved applause and cried out ”bravos” that was given to Pohjonen.

You might have some small reservations about the editing of the film but it has no influence at all on the overall impression that Pohjonen conveyed from the screen. What a performer, what a musician and what a sympathetic man, who has something to say to his – in this case – viewers and listeners. We enter a hole in the ice in the beginning of the film, are taken under water(!), where he is playing his 17,5 kilogram heavy accordion to concerts with other musicians like the Kronos Quartet, but first of all to himself performing in front of the camera, in constant movement, both caressing and fighting with the accordion, gentleness and brutality at the same time, with a music instrument, which, he says in the film, in Finnish can be understood as an asshole! We are also taken to England to the fascinating Earth Machine Music project filmed around farms, where he collects his sounds from tractors, pigs, tools, machines for potatoes, whatever. Some of the scenes are hilarious and conveys the obvious humanistic fundament of Pohjonen’s art.

It sounds banal but what Pohjonen comes up with is a message to all of us – find your voice inside yourself, express yourself, be creative. What an energy and what a wonderful and powerful sound-breaking and sound-making music instrument the accordion is. In the film it is, through excellent camerawork, being given a Life of its own, it moves on its own, it is strong and powerful, or small and pitiful, or some kind of nuisance that has to be smashed!

If you want to know more about Pohjonen, go to his website, there are videos to watch and listen to, and he has a blog, where he recommends documentary films that we should watch. A gentle and generous, wild man!

http://kimmopohjonen.com/

www.magnificent7festival.org

Magnificent 7 2013/4

Ilian Metev, director of ”Sofia’s Last Ambulance”, started his friday masterclass at Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade playing Bach on his violin, quite a generous gift to the workshoppers from the young Bulgarian artist, who had a career as a violinist, has studied fine art in London and ended up at the National Film School in Beaconsfield in England, where he graduated in 2008 with the very succesful film ”Goleshevo”.

Metev made the link from music to the ambulance film saying that ”I often think of films as tensions and releases, like in music”. That is indeed a perfect reference to a film that is so much linked to the cases that the three in the ambulance meet on their shifts in the Bulgarian capital. People suffering in the back of the ambulance, people talking to doctor Krassi and nurse Mila in the appartments, you never see the patients, perfect choice, always tension and then the more uplifting moments of smoking and relaxing between the cases, small talk about life and love, or getting out to get some apples from a tree…

There is no music in the film, and yet, as said Metev, ”the ambulance is like an orchestra” of sounds. He told us how the sound was recorded separately, he explained the position of the cameras in ”the cockpit” of the ambulance, and how he, in the editing was ”constantly hunting for eloquent moments”.

A lot of questions from the workshop participants were about the three wonderful people in the ambulance. How they are today, what they earn – which is nothing more than 300€ per month – that is why the driver Pramen has two other jobs – and about Metev’s frustration that the film is considered as a piece of art (indeed it is!) but far too little attention has been put on the social reality that it shows, when it has been screened in Bulgaria.

www.magnificent7festival.org

Magnificent7 2013/3

The festival in Belgrade enters into its third day, and the response from the audience has been, yes, magnificent! On the opening wednesday night the film by Swedish Malik Bendjelloul ”Searching for Sugarman” was met by great enthusiasm by the estimated close-to-2000 people, who watched the film. Some hundred less came for Jérôme le Maire’s beautiful ”Tea or Electricity”, nominated for the French-Belgian film award, named after Magritte, and to be distributed this evening in Brussels.

As usual some 30 young filmmakers/visual artists/journalists met with the director the day after the screening. As the director of the film about fabulous Rodriquez, and the whole crew around the film, are in Los Angeles preparing for the Oscars, and therefore could not be in Belgrade – Jérôme le Maire was the first one to talk to the workshoppers thursday morning, and he did that brilliantly, explaining about and showing clips from the three films that he had been making during the last decade. Amazing clips from ”Where is Love in the Palm Grove” shifted with quotes from his hybrid (documentary/fiction) ”Le Grand Tour”, two very different films in style and content. Also le Maire told about his work with ”Tea or Electricity” (photo), about how he approached the people in the mountains, being there for a long time, winning their confidence, before he started to operate the camera. And he shot for months and months, communicating with the villagers in Arabic, having problems with those of them, especially the women, who spoke in the Berber language that the director does not master. It was indeed an entertaining and well prepared two hours insight to filmmaking methods given by the Belgian director.

Thursday evening ”Sofia’s Last Ambulance” by Ilian Metev was shown. The director and his Croatian producer Sinisa Juricic were present at the screening that ended with a long lasting applause and a surprise award of 1000€ given by the private medical clinic BelMedic to the director of the film. Ilian Metev mentioned that today was the birthday – for those of you who have seen the film – of the doctor, Krassi, to whom and the two other of the ambulance team, the nurse and the driver, he would dedicate the award.

www.magnificent7festival.org