Apted & Miroshnichenko: The Up Series

As the 56Up landmark documentary has started to roll out in US theaters past weekend, it might be just the right time to take a look at its Russian equivalent that was broadcast on ARTE in winter of 2012.

Inspired by the UK-based Granada’s World in Action documentary directed by Michael Apted,  the Russian director Sergej Miroshnichenko too dares to probe the statement by the Jesuit maxim “Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man” in his 28Up series “Born in the USSR.”

The first footage that now looks like a few generations old, was filmed in the 80’s. “Born in the USSR” is the film about a group of ordinary 7-year-old children taken from all over the expansive territory of the Soviet Union and the course of their lives in the post-Soviet era.

Alike Apted, Miroshnichenko revisits children every seven years with the gaze of an interested observer coming to their lives to ask the questions of love, marriage, success, career, class, and prejudices. Yet “Born in the USSR” goes beyond the hypothesis that lies at the heart of the original film — whatever happens by 7 sets the course. Sure, Apted never claimed to have been able to predict lives of those children but he did articulate on the idea of the core personality, that look in the eye, and the essence that one sees in the faces of 7-year-olds manifesting itself later in their adult lives. Deftly inter-cut footage from earlier films with contemporary interviews puts forth Apted’s surprising discoveries that seem to support the ruminations of the Up series.

However, I reckon, “Born in the USSR” excels in bringing to light accounts of ordinary lives in resonate with changing times. “Born in the USSR” masterfully tells the stories of very different people who were born in the empire that aimed for uniformity. They come from Russia, the Baltic states, Caucasus, and Central Asia. They witnessed the fall of the Soviet command and found themselves in the environment of transition with the prospects, values, and norms that have changed drastically. 

“Born in the USSR” is more than a film about life in the post-Soviet era. It is even more than a mere collection of biographies. Direct and unpretentious, it raises a universal question about growing up, about hopes and dreams, adult realities and their disappointments, and the big question is what life has in store in times where nothing is certain.

Dongnan & Doran: The Sound of Vision

“I wasn’t sure if I felt special or left out”, Frank Senior reflects on a moment of realization of being blind. Thought-provoking and insightful, this 8-minute documentary, conceived as part of the International Documentary Challenge, captures a glimpse of a man’s journey in the world unseen. Blind from birth, a native New Yorker walks us through the city he has never seen. Alien to light, he finds colors in sounds, voices, and music.

A beautiful short film by aspiring New York-based filmmakers Dongnan Chen and Julia Doran, that is a PBS premiere, available online on POV until September 13, 2016.

Additional information: Frank Senior works as a guide at the Dialogue in the Dark exhibition in New York City. He leads groups of people through a tour of simulated Manhattan — specially constructed dark rooms in which sound, scent, wind, temperature, and texture convey the characteristics of the environment. In the world without pictures, “it is all about combining other senses and letting them come out and play.” Over 7 million people have experienced Dialogue in the Dark in over 30 countries and 130 cities worldwide.

http://www.pbs.org/pov/soundofvision/

Per Wennick: Frits Helmuth

”Et udgangspunkt for den film, jeg gerne vil lave, den der historie, ikke? … Da vil jeg være fortælleren, som går igennem filmen og leder den videre. Hvorfor ikke være fuldstændig clean på at fortælle folk historien ud fra dit eget selv, fra mig. Sige goddag, jeg hedder Frits Helmuth, nu vil jeg gerne fortælle en historie, som ligger mig meget på sinde. Den begynder sådan her…” Dette siger Frits Helmuth i filmens titelsekvens, og det er en klar og ligetil plan. Den begyndelse er jeg vel nok med på.

Den plan saboterer Wennick imidlertid, han indlemmer Helmuths fortælling i Henrik Helsgauns enestående optagelser fra 2004 i sin fortælling uden at beslutte sig for en klar, alternativ fortælleposition, uden at formå at tilføje en kunstnerisk autoritet, som kan modsvare Frits Helmuths forførelse. Han lukker andre medvirkende ind, medvirkende, som ikke er vidner om, men som er kommentatorer til Frits Helmuths livsvalg, ofte i en selvcentreret, anklagende form, ind imellem med direkte angreb på og sladder om den oprindelige fortæller. Og det ville for så vidt kunne rummes i Wennicks film, hvis disse medvirkende havde haft eller var blevet instrueret til en intellektuel og emotionel tyngde, som vægtede Frits Helmuths. Det sker ikke på noget tidspunkt, og ikke kun Helmuths projekt, vistnok også Wennicks vælter. Man må give alt det man kan, alt det man har til publikum, siger Helmuth. Det forstår de tilsyneladende på hver sin måde, og det går galt.

Frits Helmuth fortæller henrevet om Osvald Helmuth i forståelse og beundring. Pusle Darville og Mikael Helmuth vidner resigneret bittert om Frits Helmuths svigtende forståelse og fravær som far. Kaspar Rostrup magter mærkeligt ikke afbalanceringen. Wennick lader endnu mærkeligere dem alle tre medvirke sært tilbagelænet (også i scenografi, fotografering og interviewindsats) som er de vidner ved en høring, i en retssag, som er de deltagere i et mødepanel i et tv-program. Måske er de?

Filmen indfører dertil et vidne mere, Frits Helmuths mor, som via sin efterladte dagbog tegner et bittert billede af faderen, Osvald Helmuth. Det bliver til en vigtig del af filmkonstruktionens problematiske insisteren på ”som far sådan også søn”- teorien, som der kan skrives videre på i pressemeddelelsens tale om den tunge sociale arv. Den personlige historie er konverteret til et debatprogram.

For mig er det Frits Helmuth, som er autentisk og gribende. Han er ikke flæbende, han græder, han hulker. Voldsomt og ærligt. Og sådan skal det være med skuespilkunsten – måske med kunst i det hele taget – siger han tydeligt et sted i materialet, først når jeg græder eller ler, ved jeg, at det er et ægte værk, jeg møder. Helmuths værk inde i værket er, tror jeg, på den måde stor kunst.

Men Mads Houmøller Bødker har i sit klip i overensstemmelse med dokumentarens tydelige profil, ”vi kan ligesom komme bredere ud”, valgt at være tydeliggørende og påpegende, hans klip er oftest mere illustrerende end det er præcist associerende. Frits Helmuth fortæller i en scene ved forældrenes gravsted en prægnant historie om edderkop-hannens skæbne. Den dør udsuget i nettet, som den har tjent sin familie ved omhyggeligt at genopbygge gang på gang gennem et edderkopliv. Helmuth fortæller historien fremragende og billeddannende, selvfølgelig. Alligevel klippes der til et naturfilm-billede af en edderkop et andet sted fra, der klippes væk fra Helmuths ansigt, hvor filmens oprindelige drama udspilles.

Jeg tror, der inde i Per Wennicks debatskabende tv-dokumentar ligger en stor eksistentiel film i og omkring optagelserne fra 2004. Den film er tilsyneladende tabt nu, hvor DR1 har valgt at sætte Helmuths, Helsgauns og Wennicks værk ind i en diskussion om forældresvigt generelt. Men, men, denne besynderlige offentlige samtale kan man som seer så vælge at afstå fra og for sig selv filtrere dokumentarens essens, som er en skildring af de barske og lykkelige betingelser for den livslange kunstneriske præstations dybe gråd og høje, hjertelige latter.

Per Wennick: Frits Helmuth, 2013, 59 min. Medvirkende: Frits Helmuth, Kaspar Rostrup, Pusle Helmuth Darville og Mikael Helmuth. Foto: Henrik Helsgaun. Klip: Mads Houmøller Bødker. Produktion: Ulrik Skotte, Doc Eye for DR1. Sendt i aftes.

Norwegian Documentary – a Critique

DOX editor and documentarian Truls Lie has written an article for the Norwegian Le Monde Diplomatique, in Norwegian and now also printed in the film magazine Rushprint. Lie attended a documentary meeting for the Norwegian documentary film community in December, where the main discussion point was the demand from the Norwegian Film Institute that ”Norwegian films should promote Norwegian culture, history and nature”. Which, according to Lie, means that Norwegian documentaries are almost not present on international festivals.

The article is written in Norwegian, readable for us Danes and the Swedes. The following quotes from the well writen, reflective article, are in Norwegian:

” I dag gir NFI drøye 30 millioner kroner til norsk dokumentarproduksjon og har dermed en enorm mulighet til å fremme uavhengig kvalitetsfilm. Men den særnorske «kulturtesten» hos NFI virker hemmende for internasjonal dokumentarfilm: Forskriftene krever at norsk dokumentar skal ha et manus skrevet på norsk/samisk, hovedtema være knyttet til norsk historie, kultur eller samfunnsforhold, samt at handling og opphavsmenn/kunstnere hovedsakelig skal være fra Norge, et annet EØS-land eller Sveits…”

“…Norge henger dessverre etter internasjonalt. Mikael Opstrup fra European Documentary Network (EDN) i København nevner at ingen av de danske, svenske eller finske filminstituttene har nasjonen med i deres formålsparagrafer. I Sverige skal støtten «fremme høy kvalitet, skape kontinuitet og fornyelse». Dansk støtte gis for at det samlede utbud av dokumentar «skal ha kunstnerisk kvalitet». Mens her i Norge dreier paragrafen seg om å sikre kontinuerlig og kostnadseffektiv produksjon, samt ha med norsk og samisk kultur og samfunnsforhold å gjøre. Hva er bakgrunnen for denne særnorske vektleggingen av nasjonen?..”

Something is rotten in …. and discussions will lead to a change?

BUT there are exceptions, photo from Margaret Olin’s documentary about the official asylum politics in Norway, “De andre” (Nowhere Home). a film that was shown at idfa 2012.

http://rushprint.no/2013/1/kvaliteten-som-uteble/

Big Boys Gone Bananas

They are proud, and they, the filmmakers, have all reason to be. Both because the Swedish film around the banana company Dole trying to block the US showing of Bananas (reviewed and praised here in Danish by Allan Berg), a film about the right to express your opinion, it has the subtitle ”about free speech in documentary film”, has gained an enormous international attention and won awards, has gone all over the world, check the webwite of the production company, BUT also because the film has been selected to be part of the ”documental del mes” initiative, grown out of and run by the Barcelona company Parallel 40.

In the coming week the film by Fredrik Gertten will be shown in around 30 venues not only in Catalunia and Spain but also in Chile and Argentina.

Film policy, ladies and gentlemen, get the films out to the audience!

PS. In the next month ”Planet of Snails” by Korean Seun-Jun Yi will have the same film great treatment.

http://www.wgfilm.com/english/home/

http://www.eldocumentaldelmes.com/en/documentals/salas.html

Elías Léon Siminiani: Mapa

I had seen ”Mapa” pitched in DocsBarcelona and at idfa. With verbal passion and with a teaser that was totally out-of-the-box for how trailers should be according to us ”pitch doctors”.

A Film-Film teaser, a brilliant piece of montage with a very low level of information about What and How. BUT it was a teaser that seduced selectors (including me) to invite the director to come and present his film project that was to be a totally personal documentary about a man, whose girlfriend had left him and who needed to find himself, and wanted try to do so by leaving his normal safe life in Madrid to go to India. Pretty banal, and the first thought is of course – will he be able to make it into the planned feature length creative documentary?

He made it! The result is a Film full of surprises, a ”romantic documentary” he calls it, fresh in tone and cut, with a big love to film language and history, to montage, to the play with sound and image, and with his voice all the way through, wall to wall, excellent in tone, catching your attention and interest in how it will go for director Elias in big India.

He introduces another level, a ”the other”, a part of himself, who always objects. When he is emotional, the rational side complains and makes him film architecture in India, when he films too much rational stuff, the emotional side urges him to connect to people, death and poverty. He makes a parallel to the voyage to India made by the emotional Pasolini and the rational Moravia in 1960. But a woman travelled with them, Elsa Morante, and here he is, Elias, without any companion, most of the time with no woman on his side.. He longs for love, he is actually longing for the one who dropped him, Luna, and he sees images of a child in India, who looks like her. Later on he has to erase those memories, but how? El Rito del Olvido?

Content is King, we are often taught, the issue/theme is the most important, the form is only the carrier, but what a pleasure with ”Mapa” to watch a playful and joyful film that has a cinéphile approach that brings memories of Godard and Truffaut, an essayistic reflection on love, lost love, longing, that goes elegantly from past to present and uses a wonderful Matthew Sweet song to glue some of the sequences. Not to forget fine observations from India accompanied by ethical questions.

Spain, 2012, 85 mins.

Sugar Man

More Sugar Man (this is what they call the film in France), where  a twitter on Le Blog Documentaire calls it a ”véritable scandale du cinema” that the film is released in only 3 ”salles”!

On the same Blog there is a fine, long analysis of the narrative structure chosen by its director Malik Bendjelloul, written by Benjamin Genissel. You should read it all, but here are two quotes for our French readers:

…Pendant 45 minutes donc, on entend parler de cet homme et on finit par se demander : Mais existe t-il vraiment ? Quand vais-je moi aussi le rencontrer ? Faire sa connaissance ? La curiosité monte, monte, ne cesse de monter. Comme le suspense selon Hitchcock. Le spectateur salive d’envie, de désir : Mais qui est donc cet homme?…

… Et ce qui est vraiment réussi dans Sugar man, c’est que notre attente de spectateur ne s’avère nullement déçue. 45 minutes environ à faire grimper en nous le thermomètre de la curiosité et du désir, toute une construction qui offre une stature incroyable à cet excellent chanteur injustement méconnu, à nous faire sentir à quel point son parcours est hors du commun pour un artiste d’un aussi grand talent, avec le risque que ça finisse en dégringolade… Et non…

Le Blog Documentaire is an excellent web-magazine on documentaries, check it out, if you can read French.

http://cinemadocumentaire.wordpress.com/

Danish and Swedish Award Nominations

The last couple of days the nominations for the Danish Bodil (named after the legendary actresses Ipsen and Kjer) and the Swedish Guldbaggen (the Golden Beetle) have been announced. Documentaries are very much present.

The international best known of the Danish documentaries on the list is ”Putins Kys” (Putin’s Kiss) but also Kaspar Astrup Schrøder’s ”Lej en familie” (Rent a Family) and Camilla Magid ”White Black Boy” have been on festivals abroad. The latter is on the 2012 Talent list of this site.

The two remaining films on the list are Andreas Johnsen’s Kidd Life and Ballerina by Maja Friis.

For Guldbaggen two documentaries stand out: Palme by Kristina Lindström and Maud Nycander and Searching for Sugarman by Malik Bendjelloul. Palme is nominated in 3 categories, Best Documentary/ Best Editing/ Best Music (composed by ABBA’s Benny Andersson), whereas the film about Rodriguez has 6 nominations, including Best Film and – of course – Best Music. ”Hej, vad vi dokudominerar” was one of the Swedish comments to the 2013 Guldbaggen – meaning that this is a Documentary Year in Swedish film.

PS. Breaking News – the two Swedish films are both selected for the Belgrade based Magnificent7 (only 7 films but ”magnificent” they have to be) festival that starts January 30 with ”Searching for Sugarman” (photo) as the opening film to be screened for an estimated audience of around 1500!

PPS. Some of the links refer to Danish or Swedish language texts.

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1866/

http://guldbaggen.se/nominerade/

DOX Winter 2012/13

Beginning of January, no markets or festivals or workshops. Time to read the European Documentary Film Magazine, number 96. And time for a review of a magazine that has a strong and good focus on reviewing documentaries (critiques it is called) ”surrounded” by reports from festivals and industry related material, relevant as the publisher is EDN (European Documenary Network) and the majority of readers are film professionals, who are members of this organisation. (The membership includes a subscription the magazine).

First the positive and then the But…

Two great gifts for the reader. Buying the issue you receive a dvd with the film ”Tonia and her Children” (photo) by Polish master Marcel Lozinski, and if you go to the end of the magazine you will find an excellent essay by BBC’s Nick Fraser, a chapter from his book ”Why Documentaries Matter”, wonderfully, eloquently written and with clever observations on the approach to documentary filmmaking by Godard, Lanzmann, Ophuls and Maysles – with the 60’es and cinema vérité as the starting point.

There is a good article about war cameramen, an overview of new films about ”female muslim identity”, festival reports from Mumbai and Oulu, issue-led articles from workshops, an hommage to Sundance Institute, legal matters to be observed in the US, a photo section from Greece, it is all ok, maybe a bit more classical and predictable compared to other DOX magazines edited by Truls Lie, who previously has pleased this reader with interesting reflections in an essay format.

But… the main focus of the Winter issue is ”Pitching. What makes it a must for filmmakers”. 7 pages. The editor has got the idea that it would be good to have a database for pitches, he writes about that and he tests it by asking different involved ”players” if that is a good idea. Most of them say – surprise, surprise – that it is very important to meet each other before making any arrangements for financial commitment. At the same time as some say that the EDN online pitch on specific subjects like art and history is a good idea. Of course it is and of course the pitching for coproduction today, as we see it at the MEDIA-funded events in Europe and elsewhere, is more a promotion tool for projects than a realistic meeting point for picking up money. And of course the pre-pitch workshops are of value for the development of the projects. The 7 pages on pitching are too much vox-pop – x thinks this, y thinks that but x disagrees – where a much more deep journalistic investigation based on facts and/or case studies would have been the right way to go for a quarterly magazine. Who profits from the pitching sessions? How many and where? Which kind of films are pitchable? Are real coproductions totally away from the pitching landscape? Etc. etc.

www.dox.dk

www.edn.dk

http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/publications/risj-challenges/why-documentaries-matter.html

2012 Documentaries

Yes, it was again a good year for the documentaries. New forms, hybrid, personal, came up with the classical engaged and committed Film still going strong in times of crisis. Yes, Film with a capital F. Yes, most of the festivals reported about an increase of audience, who went to watch the films on the big screen. Yes, there were more documentaries released in the cinemas than before, at least in many countries that I know about. Yes, it is generally easier to get to watch good documentaries online via vod’s like the DOCAlliance. The eternal question ”but where can I see these documentaries” is easier to answer, again at least in many countries I know about. Where good people do a great job to promote and arrange screenings and debates. Of course the festivals do so but ”outside” festival time there are (often weekly or monthly) initiatives to be noticed, like in Catalunuya, Scotland, Sweden, Denmark… 

No, the public broadcasters did not increase their budgets for the creative documentaries. It is much more difficult to obtain finances from them than before but television is still the most important ”window” for documentaries, in many countries. No, there is not yet a European or World Fund for the Creative Documentary – but there are many smaller funds, bravo for that, and for the consistent support from the EUMedia Programme, and on a smaller scale wonderful that Jan Vrijman Fund continues with a new name, IDFA Bertha Fund, not the most poetic one by the way! No, as far as I know, it is still not possible to make a living as a documentary director unless you are one of the few, but important names, who make contracts with the anglo-saxon broadcasters. I have earned my money on teaching, not on making films, said legendary Richard Leacock, whose memoirs ”The Feeling of Being There” is the best film book that has come out for years.

Below, you find what I found to be the best documentaries of 2012, in alphabetical order, followed by a list of talented, upcoming directors works, which have impressed me greatly, and from whom you hope for more to come. For both categories,these are films that I have seen at festivals or online – thank you to IDFA Docs for Sale, Filmkontakt Nord, DOCAlliance and East Silver. Several of the films I have known since they existed as projects.

Happy New Year!

Photo: El Huaso, by Carlo Guillermo Proto