Oeke Hoogendijk: The Treasures of Crimea

I have a lot of respect and admiration for the work of Oeke Hoogendijk. In 2020 we played “My Rembrandt” in Belgrade at the Magnificent7 Festival and five years earlier her “The New Rijksmuseum” opened the same festival. Hoogendijk has found her niche, documentaries on art and the art world, and she manages to make drama out of what happens behind the doors, where money talks.

This time the locations are primarily court rooms, where a very actual battle is being performed: In 2014 the Allard Pierson Museum hosted a beautiful exhibition “Treasures of Crimea” with artworks from the peninsula chosen by Valentina, who had walked from llocal museum to local museum to pick the best of the best for the Amsterdam museum… In 2014 Crimea was annexed by Russia, so to whom should the exhibition’s artworks be returned? The director of the museum chooses to take the issue to court – To Ukraine as Crimea belongs to that country or to the annexed Crimea, to the museums, that gave permission to the loan.

It is actually quite exciting to follow the lawyers representing both sides making their arguments – but it would have been dry and boring if the film had not included the true protagonists, the women from Crimea primarily, from the small museums that they have dedicated their life to. But also the lady from Kyiv, who wants the artworks be sent to the capital of Ukraine. They express motions, especially Valentina, who feels guilty that she convinced her colleagues to give the loan. But (my comment) how could she know what would happen to Crimea?

The court room sessions take time, years (with appeals after appeals) while the exhibition’s artworks stand in a storage waiting for a judicial decision to be made. At the time when the film was finished no final decision was taken – in October 2021 the Dutch court decided that the 300 pieces of art should be returned to Ukraine. 5 years after the exhibition…

Netherlands, 2021, 82 mins.

Antoine Cattin: Holidays

I know Antoine Cattin from his “The Mother» and other films he made with Pavel Kostomarov. I don’t know if the Swiss director still lives in St. Petersburg but the film that he presents at CPH:DOX takes place in the wonderful city. Here is the precise catalogue description of the festival:

”Russia is one of the countries in the world that celebrates the most public holidays. Across a selection of them, the lively and marvelously detailed ‘Holidays’ lets us in to the lives of ordinary people on the streets of the great, inscrutable country of the East about which we hear so much and know so little. All at an upbeat balalaika pace and with a liberating dose of black humour. We are in St Petersburg: Here we meet a poor Kazakh immigrant living in a room full of cockroaches and bedbugs. There is the tough, female head of municipal affairs who works her employees to the bone. There’s the xenophobic tram driver. And then there’s the young urban climber who climbs the city’s towers and roofs. Parts of the film are shot by the subjects themselves, and we are everywhere at once without a loss of detail or nuance. Antoine Cattan’s cinematic mosaic also tells of national divisions, xenophobia, class differences, religion, gender attitudes and the next war, which in Russia is always luring in the shadows.”

Yes, it is up and down Nevsky Prospekt – and it is up on the roofs and it is on the square of the Winter Palace, but it is also with Kazakhs in small komunalka appartments and in the office of the lady, who is taken around to check if the snow is removed and who sits with flowers and left-over pizza boxes talking about sex with a colleague on March 8, the women’s day. One of several gem scenes of a film that otherwise suffers from wanting to have too much, making me ”talk” to the film: Take it easy, let the scenes develop! Old age reaction, maybe.

Switzerland, 2022, 87 mins.

Olha Zhurba: Outside

… She has been following Roma from meeting him on Maidan in 2014 until today, where the boy has grown to be a teenager turning 18 very soon. He was living on Maidan, he was in an orphanage, he has problems in reading, he had teachers in Maidan, he has teachers in the orphanage, he has done stupid things and risks to be put in jail if he repeats it…

That’s what I wrote in 2019 after an emotionally strong presentation in Kyiv by Olha Zhurba of her documentary project ”Roma” that now premieres at CPH:DOX. After a long period of editing with the participation of Danish Niels Pagh Andersen and succesful fundraising that brought Danish and Dutch companies in as co-producers with an Ukrainian company and thus guaranteed that the film will have a considerable distribution not only to these countries but to festivals all over. And hopefully to broadcasters. In Kyiv in 2019 Olha Zhurba had followed Roma on her own with no financial help and she said she was not sure if there was a film…

Later on she wrote to me: (Actually) I always believed that there will be a film, even when I was losing Roma or he kicked me off; deep in my heart I had that filmmakers’ confidence and strong believe that this film will be because people must see it!  I didn’t know when it will be and if it will be good but each day I felt gratefulness to the process that were changing me in a better way. It was my power to move further…

…people must see it, she writes, yes absolutely. The end result is great, shifting from now and then, having (excellent narrative solution) the ”now” being phone calls from the director to Roma, who is ”outside” as he has been through his whole young life. From his locked-in position, due to robbery, he is asked to remember and he does so making the audience ready to piece together his role at Maidan in 2014, his stay with brother Kolya, who has been in jail several times, his relation to his mother, his stay at the orphanage, his fun with girls, his meeting with an American woman (OMG!), who has adopted his two sisters, his drug abuse…

Roma is a clever and charming boy/young man. He can reflect on his own situation, he can verbalise – already when he was a school boy – what he wants, when he gets older, what could ”have saved” him from all the shit he gets into.

Roma, declared ”useless” by some of the Maidan fighters, is seen looking for his mother on Maidan. He finds her briefly, she is in a bad state – and he finds together with Kolya her grave in one of the many fine scenes of a film that was finished before the Russian invasion – one can’t help thinking about that when the Maidan Square comes up every night on television right now. And when I read that Olha Zhurba is in Kyiv filming.

Did I say that this is a Must-See at CPH:DOX.

Roy Andersson

Yesterday afternoon my wife and I visited Cinemateket in Copenhagen to watch “Being a Human Person”, a portrait of Roy Andersson (made by F. Scott, 2020, 90 mins.). We have been fans of the Swedish auteur (here the French word fits perfectly) since his short films came out, especially “World of Glory” (in Danish “Dejlig er Jorden”), a stylistical prologue one can say to the four feature films, scenes that do not necessarily “continue”, scenes of fantastic precision, with locations built up in his studio in Stockholm, Studio 24, the building where Andersson lives and works with his dedicated staff. The film takes the viewer to the studio, there are clips from his films, conversations with the master himself and his colleagues, shot during the time where Andersson is finishing his “About Endlessness” – with many delays due to the director’s health that is heavlly influenced by his alcoholism. He is going to a rehab but leaves after 10 days. Money is running out but the film is finished and he wins (again) the main award in Venice.

It is a very honest film in that respect and you feel priviliged to have been invited inside to see the studio and meet the people. Andersson is as vulnerable as many of his protagonists, he is nervous, he is generous and he keeps coming back to the importance of art, the importance of making films that interprets what it means to be a human being. You can’t help admire and love this man!

I remember that Roy Andersson gave me a book that he published and edited with texts, photos, reproductions of painting. All growing out of his humanistic approach to the world and its inhabitants. The idea was that all school children in Stockholm should be given a copy of it, I don’t know if it ever happened.

The films of Roy Andersson are timeless poetic reflections. You laugh and cry. And are stunned by the artistic creations of every scene, in the film portrait you see how they are set up.

Lina Lužytė: Blue/Red/Deport – Picnic in Mori

The point of view of the director, Lithuanian Lina Luytė, is clear from the very beginning. A boat with refugees is approaching the coast of Lesbos, the island where the infamous refugee camp Moria is situated. The one that burned down in 2020 with a new one being built that is as bad as the first one, reports say. The boat gets closer to the coast where people stand shouting “get away”. “Don´t come near”. Disgusting… 

Here is the catalogue text for the strongly recommended film that has been shown at the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival and will be shown in Copenhagen at the CPH:DOX, link below for when and where. 

“Afghan filmmaker Talib Shah Hossaini wants to make a film about everyday life in Europe’s largest refugee camp, Moria. This is where he lives with his small family while they wait for the authorities about whether they can stay in Greece. Meanwhile, he casts his wife, their daughters and his friends as actors in his homemade no-budget film. Despite the inhumane conditions in the chaotic camp and a myriad of obstacles along the way, the deeply sympathetic Talib maintains his composure. Meanwhile, the line between reality and film-within-a-film is blurred when Talib and his wife are instructed on how to conduct themselves in the asylum interview that awaits them. Comic and tragic moments lead up to an incredible scene when Talib’s film is finally shown to the camp’s other residents…”

The title of Talib Shah’s flm is ”Picnic”, the title of Lina Luytė’s film is ”Blue/Red/Deport”, that refers to the three possibilities of the refugees in the camp, with a smile explained by one of the daughters of Talib Shah, who is – as the catalogue text says – ”deeply sympathetic” but also a man who shows his desparate situation to the Lithuanian director, who goes around with him, films the camp, how it looks, how the family lives, how they get water, how they cook, how the kids manage to overcome, how his wife conveys the situation – and how the filming takes place with sometimes many takes of a scene, especially the one where uncle Norullah, who has been in the camp for a year has again been rejected asylum. Or the tough one, where Talib Shah gets totally upset with his children as they don´t perform well falling in the water. There is a fine flow from the film being made by Talib Shah and the respectful observation of Lina Luytė. 

And the end – the screening of “Picnic”, a fiction taken out of reality, the audience looking at the film, children, children, children, their faces, what do they think, what do they take from their stay in this horrible place… and the reactions from some of spectators after the screening. This is how it is.

Germany, 2022, 81 mins.

https://cphdox.dk/film/blue-red-deport/

 

 

 

Myanmar Film Collective: Myanmar Diaries

From the website of the film (link below): A hybrid film about life under the regime of terror in Myanmar in the aftermath of its military coup of February 1st 2021, told through personal stories by a group of anonymous young Burmese filmmakers.The film is built up of short films by ten young anonymous Burmese filmmakers.

I don’t want to echo all the superlatives that have already been attached to this at the Berlinale awarded and praised film. I agree. I sit here with my MacBook after having watched the film twice and want to characterize ”Myanmar Diaries” as beautiful! Is that the right word to a film that has the goal to raise awareness about the horror regime and the courageous Civil Disobedience Movement, that wants to spread knowledge about the violence, the killings, the arrests in a dictatorship led by General Min Aung Hlaing.

Yes, it is beautiful even if I sit remembering scenes, where I was shouting to the computer images ”no, don’t do that”, when a soldier raises his club to beat a person, who is lying in the street, or when I with one in a room am looking at what happens on the other side of the street, where a person has been hit by a sniper. Or when a woman takes a razor blade to the artery of her hand. ”No, don’t do that!”.

The scoop of this film is that it – as a hybrid – mixes documentary and fiction so well, having a sequence – you could also say one of the 10 films – upfront with a beautiful female voice whispering that she wants to have a butterfly tattoo made, when ”all this is over” – words to that effect. When the caterpillar becomes a butterfly. It’s a wish, a vision and a theme that visually comes back in the narrative, also as a small animation… and then later a cut to a street scene reality, where a grandmother talks in the street to the soldiers in their military cars. The editing of the film is like that: it goes from scenes that tell about nightmares, losses of a dear one to scenes like the one I still have in my ear, a kid constantly shouting to the soldiers ”don’t touch my mum”. The camera is directed to the entrance of the house,where a group of soldiers are about to enter to pick the mother up. The scene ends when a soldier discovers the filming.

A girl who lives with her mother discovers that she is pregnant. She wants to tell the boyfriend but he has also something to tell her. He wants to go to the jungle, join the guerilla, it’s too dangerous to stay in the city. She never gets to tell him, he goes, we see guerilla training, and armed young people walking in the mountains. “Do You Hear Us?”

Beautiful – as a statement, a cry for help and as a Film. Composition, framing, rythm, music, it’s all put so well together by filmmakers who hopefully survive to come back with Butterfly-Films. Watch the film, I am going to reveal the start of the film. Beautiful!

Production : ZINDOC. Creative producer Petr Lom, producer Corinne van Egeraat.

The Netherlands, Norway, 70 mi

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Kostas Spiropoulos: Arcadia, Champagne d’Orient

A film about wine and greed… is the subtitle of this film that in many ways is closer to a fiction film than to a documentary. It is grandiose in its set-up and although it’s not always succesful in mixing the (much of it wonderful) archive with reenacted scenes , there is a drive in the narration based on diaries and documents of the time that made me enjoy the conflicts in the family with father Spyridon, the sons Nikos and Vasilis and the poor mother. They searched for fame, they got it, they were stubborn but had to deal with politics and politicians which had drastic consequences. With the wine as the loser, alas. In a good meaning: a fascinating old-fashioned documentary drama to be enjoyed.

And when I write old-fashioned I have to continue with some flowers to Kostas Spiropoulos: I can see how much he has enjoyed to make the film, to tell this story, how much effort and care he has put into the research to find the great archive material and turn some of the new scenes into b/w sequences. Is that old-fashioned, I am afraid so, when I think about the fast, non-aesthetic use of news material of today. Also chapeau for some of the composition of landscape images and interiors, there is thought about colours and framing. Paintings.

Une coupe de champagne, voilà!

Greece, 2022, 80 mins.

Read more here, also about the screening times in Thessaloniki.

https://www.filmfestival.gr/en/section-tdf/movie/1228/14248

Ivars Zviedris: See You Never Ever

I am a big fan of Ivars Zviedris, Latvian director and cinematographer. His «Documentarian» and «Latvian Coyote» are films that I think high of and now there is his new work that was awarded at the National Cinema Ceremony, where Zviedris received the Best Documentary Director – the lielaja-kristapa – award.

Ivars Zviedris is in a way a classical documentarian – I have the impression that he graps his camera to go to film trusting his intuition and eye for situations. And People. It is obvious that he has no problems in getting in contact with those he wants to film, those whose stories he wants to convey. He is curious and pretty far from having an academic approach. He listens.

I have chosen to bring to you the synopsis of the film by copying it from the catalogue of the Riga FF. It is precise and thank you for calling the people in the film «protagonists» and not characters…:

The film begins with the closing of the oldest prison in Latvia – the Brasa Prison was built in 1905 and cannot ensure normal functioning. Inmates are leaving the place that has long been their only home. 

Our protagonists reside in Ward 207. They have really inhabited it – there is even a fish tank in the ward! They are not from a different planet. Humanity of the inmates may contrast with their records of committed crimes. All have their small pleasures and big plans. All are longing for changes and being afraid of them. Likewise, the term of imprisonment is running out for several of our protagonists. They are getting ready for life at large. They know how to survive in extreme circumstances but are unprepared for living a normal life. One’s return to the big world is one of the most accentuated marginal situations. 

Latvia, 2021, 80 mins.

The 24th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival

There are many excellent documentary film festivals in Europe. The one in Thessaloniki is one of them. It runs until March 20 with a very rich program including tributes to Latvian director Laila Pakalnina and Finnish Virpi Suutari. Voices from the North to be screened at the Mediterranean Sea. Bravo!

It’s not the first time Pakalnina has been dedicated a retrospective. When she had one in Paris at Centre Pompidou, she was quoted to say “”I call my method of work “Fishing in the river of time”. As life is extremely talented, we just put camera, set composition and wait. And life happens. So film happens…” Well this ”just” means quite sme preparation and her work with her DOP Gints Berzins is second to none as you will see in “Spoon” and “Homes”, for me both wonderful personal films. 19 films from Pakalnina will be shown in Thessaloniki.

A tribute is given to Virpi Suutari, 6 films are shown, also the one about “Aalto”, the world famous architect and his wife. It was shown – among many places – in Belgrade at the Magnificent7 and I wrote on this site: “Suutari’s personal style is one of élegance, the film is simply a pleasure to watch and again composer – although not mentioned on the festival website – Sanna Salmenkallio must be praised for her extraordinary film music.” As Pakalnina Suutari is a true auteur.

The festival also – of course – has competition programs and I am happy to find there the Danish/Ukranian new film Simon Lereng Wilmont “A House Made of Splinters”, the director’s second film from Ukraine, the first one being “The Distant Barking of Dogs”. And in a side program called “Top Docs” I find a film that I will see one day on a big screen, “Republic of Silence”, by Syrian Diana El Jeiroudi, a dear friend who has been working on this film for 12 years, the duration is more than 3 hours, a dark cinema hall is needed for the projection, hoping for a screening in Copenhagen one day.

And there is so much more to enjoy in Thessaloniki, below some links for you to study, high quality.

https://www.filmfestival.gr/en/section-tdf/section/1223 (Pakalnina)

https://www.filmfestival.gr/en/section-tdf/section/1233 (Suutari)

https://www.filmfestival.gr/en/section-tdf/section/1222 (Intl. Competition)

https://www.filmfestival.gr/en/section-tdf/section/1232 (Top Docs)

Docudays UA at the Krakow Film Festival

08.03.2022news

The Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival is the largest documentary film festival in Ukraine. This year’s edition was to begin on 25 March in Kyiv. It’s no longer possible due to Russia’s brutal attack and the ongoing war. The organizers of the Krakow Film Festival decided to support their friends, stand up to cruel fate, and hold a part of the Ukrainian festival in Kraków’s… Kijów (Kyiv) cinema. 

From the very first moments of the Russian invasion on Ukraine, our friends behind the eastern border have been in our thoughts. The relationships with festival organisers and filmmakers have long gone beyond the professional area. – says Barbara Orlicz-Szczypuła, Head of KFF’s Programme Department – We quickly decided to invite the Docudays UA festival to Kraków – and in a completely different role than before.

The latest Ukrainian documentary films – qualified for Docudays UA’s prestigious national competition – will be presented during the Krakow Film Festival at the turn of May and June. In addition, to the extent possible, KFF will invite the organisers of Docudays UA and the filmmakers behind competing films, which will be judged by an international jury, while the awards will be presented during the final gala. The films screened in Kraków will be treated as domestic (Ukrainian) premieres, allowing them to maintain the status of international premieres and provide creators with an open path to apply to other prestigious film events.

For the past several days, we have been in constant contact with the organisers of Docudays UA who – unfortunately – remain in the most vulnerable regions of Ukraine. Just a few hours ago, we were relieved to learn that several of them managed to safely get to Poland. – adds Barbara Orlicz-Szczypuła. 

  • Mizh nebom ta horamy (Mountains and heaven in between), dir. Dmytro Hreshko
  • Neskinchennistʹ za Florianom
    B (Infinity According to Florian), dir. Oleksiy Radynski
  • Plai (Плай Plai. A Mountain Path), dir. Eva Dzhyshyashvili
  • Privoz ( Привоз), dir. Eva Neymann

Traditionally national competition is the first program we announce. This year it was announced one day before Russia invaded Ukraine. – says Darya Bassel, programmer and head of industry at Docudays UA – In my introduction to the programme that was published on Docudays UA website I said: “This small, but extraordinarily powerful programme brings together the authors who see reality deeply, poignantly, with humour and love. And their work fills me with faith not only in the great future of our documentary filmmaking, but in the future in general.” And it still is.I am happy that these films will meet their audience on a big screen in Kijow cinema. I hope by the time of the screening our country will be free from Russian terrorists and we all can celebrate together and praise love, courage and freedom. I am extremely thankful to our colleagues from Krakow Film Festival for their support. 

I spent several hours watching these films with a heavy heart – concludes Krzysztof Gierat, director of the Krakow Film Festival. – They show Ukraine from before this criminal aggression, but the echoes of the war in Crimea are present there, and the threat to the entire country becomes increasingly real. It’s very painful when I try to imagine these places and these people now. I believe that we will show these films together with our friends from Kyiv and talk to their creators after the screenings. The presence of films, projects, and guests from Ukraine will be an expression of the Polish and international film community’s solidarity with our neighbours.

In addition, the latest Ukrainian documentary projects – which were to be presented to international industry representatives during Docudays UA in Kyiv – will be invited to participate in KFF Industry (event program for the film industry) and CEDOC Market (co-production market for Central and Eastern Europe organised by the Władysław Ślesicki Foundation).

Whole ticket sales income will be donated to the Docudays UA festival.