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

Doucet: Afghanistan-The Unknown Country

Two weeks ago after reviewing the documentary on Afghanistan by Murphy and MediaStorm, I came across a film on the subject matter, which exposes yet another face of this wonderful country. Therefore this review:

For over a decade, Afghanistan has been a frequent guest of the global news coverage. But what do we really know about this country? In the 1-hour BBC documentary “Afghanistan: The Unknown Country” Lyse Doucet takes us on a journey through the parts of the vast Afghan land and its diverse culture to reveal another face of the country beyond the war – the country of ancient traditions and its beautiful people, who despite all its hardship and heartache, are still proud to call it home.

“Afghanistan: The Unknown Country” is neither artistic nor political. More than anything, it falls well under the format of a travel documentary. Unlike a typical protagonist of the classic travel documentary, however, Doucet, does not come in the shoes of a mere curious observer or a world traveller who likes to take a peek into the exotic or the foreign. BBC’s chief international correspondent, Doucet invites us to join her on the

journey through the country she has learned over the decades and has grown to love through its darkest times.

In the country where much has been lost, the sense of hope is found by holding on to the traditions. Starting off from the far north, Doucet onsets her journey in Mazar-e Sharif by welcoming Nawroz, a pre-Islamic festival. An Islamic banner Janda lifted by strong local men symbolically heralds the beginning of spring and the start of the new year. If lifted in one smooth motion, it is considered to be a good omen for a new year to come.

By stepping back in time, Afghans seem to find a path for inner peace and hope for a brighter future. Across the ancient Afghan city of Herat, Doucet discovered “the oldest of human desires to rise above daily cares to see what is beautiful and sweet and to celebrate what it means to be Afghan.” In the western city of Herat, the pearl of Afghan culture, poetry is cherished as a vital element of Afghan life. Afghan stories are told in verse and accompanied by the traditional herati music. Every Thursday, no matter age and gender – men, women, children, and elderly gather to share the verse, listen to music, and enjoy the sweet tea deep into the night.

Doucet too finds a sense of shared humanity in the small village Paicotal, which will never make the news. It is hard to fathom for a Westerner what a life under the poverty line looks like and how one could endure such arduous conditions – no running water, no electricity, and no roads. Nevertheless, for all the distance between the lives of local women and the one of Doucet, there still seems to be space for them to share moments of laugh and joy.

Courteous and ebullient, it was a pleasure to witness the journey of Doucet through the fascinating land of Afghanistan, a crossroad of cultures where East met West for thousands of years.

2011, BBC, 60 mins.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012g0dl

Best Nordic Documentary?

Guest writer at filmkommentaren, Danish Mikkel Stolt watched Finnish Mika Ronkainen’s latest work ”Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart” (photo) at the Nordisk Panorama in September. The original, non-mainstream hybrid documentary made a big impression on Stolt, who concluded – referring to a John Cage sentence – ”I will have to give it full six pens – simply because it made such a profound impression by moving me and not pushing me.”

The film got no award at the Nordisk Panorama but has now the chance to win the ”Dragon Award Best Nordic Documentary” at the Gothenburg International Film Festival that runs now, and until February 4. The winner will be presented on February 2, 8 films are nominated, apart from Ronkainen, you find strong names like Margreth Olin from Norway, Stefan Jarl and Mia Engberg from Sweden as well as talented Danish Camilla Magid with ”Black White Boy”

http://www.giff.se/se/start/festivalen/dragon-awards/best-nordic-documentary.html

Dragan Wende West Berlin

Two important prizes for a film by Lena Müller and Dragan von Petrovic, co-directed and filmed by Vuk Maksimovic, whose uncle is the protagonist of a film that the team itself – on the site of the film – calls tragicomical. A quote from the synopsis: … the young cameraman Vuk from Belgrade embarks on the trail of his eccentric uncle Dragan Wende who, 30 years earlier, became the street king of West-Berlin’s 1970s hedonistic disco scene. Earning easy money in Berlin’s most famous nightclubs, work and play went hand in hand… 20 years later, Vuk’s uncle is an aged alcoholic who lives off social welfare and memories of his youth…

The film has other charismatic characters, is playful and entertaining, with “absurd and sit-comic situations”.

The film was appreciated on two occasions during the last few days. It got the prestigious Max Ophüls Prize and it received first prize for best documentary at the Trieste Film Festival. The motivation from the German prize looks like this:

“Ein Stück irrwitzige Weltgeschichte, erzählt aus der Küche eines abgehalfterten Bordell-Türstehers. Ein Stück berührende Familiengeschichte, erzählt in der historischen Dimension des kalten Krieges. Ein Stück derbe Männergeschichte, erzählt mit Pfiff und Ironie dank sicherer Montage – halbseiden, blockfrei und humorvoll. Das hat die Jury begeistert und darum vergibt sie den Dokumentarfilmpreis Max Ophüls an den Film„Dragan Wende – West Berlin“.”

OBS. The producer Lena Müller has made an excellent website for the film that goes far beyond normal mainstrem promotion, check it and watch trailer and teaser and listen to the soundtrack.

88 mins., 2012, Serbia/Germany

http://www.von-muller-film.com/home.html

http://www.triestefilmfestival.it/en/comunicati/si-chiude-la-24a-edizione-i-vincitori/

Op-Docs

The New York Times runs a series of short documentaries that are quite interesting. OP stands for Opinion and here is how the newspaper (you can get a monthly online subscription for 1$) presents its strand:

”Op-Docs is The New York Times editorial department’s forum for short, opinionated documentaries, produced with wide creative latitude and a range of artistic styles, covering current affairs, contemporary life and historical subjects.

Op-Docs videos are produced by both renowned and emerging filmmakers who express their views in the first person, through their subjects or more subtly through an artistic approach to a topic. Each is accompanied by a director’s statement.

In December 2012, we started a new Op-Docs feature: Scenes. This is a platform for very short work — snippets of street life, brief observations and interviews, clips from experimental and artistic nonfiction videos — that follow less traditional documentary narrative conventions.”

Highly recommended to be seen is the 9 minute long, very tense, touching, cinematic piece by Laura Poitras,

called ”Death of a Prisoner” (photo). It starts with Obama and his promises about closing the Guantanamo camp, continues by, four years later, following a coffin on a truck driving in mountain landscapes, you know that inside is the corpse of a man, whose identity is revealed in the next sequence, where an American lawyer years before talks to the brother of the Adnan Lafti, who by that time had started a hunger strike. He is now, in December 2012, Poitras was there, being brought home to his family in Yeman, including his son, a boy. In-between texts convey information about his imprisonment and the non-evidence against him. The film ends with the text that 166 are still at the prison in Guantanamo, most of them without any charges against them.

Op-doc also has a fine, small observational short from Times Square N.Y., ”The Public Square”, where a man talks about the dangereous and evil muslims, being met with youngsters who sing ”All You Need is Love”. As well as another observation of a piano in a street, just standing where people pass by trying to play a bit.

Errol Morris is also to be found on Op-doc, one film is about a man, who competes in food consuming contests, the other one is the enigmatic ”Umbrella Man”, who was present in Dallas on the sunny day where JFK was shot. With his umbrella unfolded.

Keep an eye on this fine newspaper quality initiative. For free it is. And short docs is a genre coming back with the help of the internet. Laura Poitras film gets 6 pens for a very strong and well told tragic story with a point of view – in 9 mins. Must be an inspiration for many filmmakers: Yes, you can say a lot in few minutes.

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/about-op-docs.html

Sundance Shows Living Room Documentaries

A very interesting critique of (some of) the selected documentaries for the Sundance Film Festival comes from Anthony Kaufmann, who has written for NY Times, Village Voice, Variety among others.

I dare to make a long quote from the beginning of his article that can be read in full length by clicking the link below:

This year the Sundance Film Festival captured the zeitgeist. Films that premiered this past week in Park City investigated, explored and exposed the biggest issues of the day, from abortion (After Tiller) to immigration (Who is Dayani Crystal?), from economic unfairness (99%, Citizen Koch, Inequality for All) to information in the digital age (We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, Google and the World Brain), from covert wars (Dirty Wars, Manhunt) to other political and social injustices (Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, God Loves Uganda, Blackfish, etc).

But no matter how incisive, exhaustive, convincingly argued or shrewdly structured, most of the films employed tried-and-true formal elements. As far as I saw, there was no Catfish or Exit Through the Gift Shop (photo), no Imposter or Man on Wire, no radical mixes of documentary and fiction—in short, very little stylistic experimentation. Watching the docs at Sundance was like being holed up in your living room and held captive by HBO, besieged by hours upon hours of solid reportage.

Not all of Sundance’s docs were created equally, but they were made in mostly the same mold: some TV-ready combination of first-person interviews, verité observations, archival footage and informational text. Whether it’s the tyranny of broadcast television executives or the conventional training of most documentary filmmakers, Sundance was awash in issues, not artistry…

Link to blog.sundancenow.com

Nicolas Philibert with Film on Radio France

For this blogger Nicolas Philibert is one of the most important documentary directors of out time. Filmkommentaren has written about his films frequently, below you have a link that will take you to ”collected posts” about the French director, who in the 5th edition of the Damascus DoxBox festival in 2009 was reported to have said the following at a master class:

”Constantly looking for beauty… my work consists of creating the conditions for something to happen, he said, this great filmmaker, who masters the art of listnening to the other. I am a documentarian and not a fiction filmmaker, I do not want people to play roles. Maybe I ask them to repeat something or ask if I can be present on a special occasion but they are themselves.”

There is a new film by Philibert at the Berlinale Panorama section. It is presented like this:

”La maison de la radio by Nicolas Philibert, France/Japan.
Creator of images Nicolas Philibert has always been fascinated by the “blind” medium of radio and its ability to fire the imagination. Millions share this passion. For many, radio lends life a rhythm and structure, bringing – between kitchen and bathroom – the world to their homes. With this work, Philibert pays tribute to its diligent makers by bringing the invisible to the screen. And so achieves what every filmmaker seeks.”

The film will be released in April in France. Below also a link to an interview (in French) with the director.

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1931/

http://www.filmsdulosange.fr/en/film/13/la-maison-de-la-radio

http://www.telerama.fr/cinema/nicolas-philibert-realise-un-documentaire-sur-la-maison-de-la-radio,71515.php

Godard, Pennebaker & Leacock

… and 7 wonderful minutes with Jefferson Airplane performing from a roof in New York Midtown in 1968. Yes, it is film and music history at its best as Richard Brody, cinema editor at The New Yorker, wrote yesterday urging the locals to run to the Film Forum to get acquainted with ”One P.M.”, shot in the revolutionary year, but never completed.

The article is a must-read for all lovers of Godard AND legendary documentarians D.A. Pennebaker (photo) and Richard Leacock. An excerpt from the article by Brody (who wrote ”Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard):

… a rare, obscure, and fragmentary—yet exemplary, fascinating, and even intermittently iconic—film, “One P.M.,” … It was, in the event, edited by the great documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker… Pennebaker and another great documentary filmmaker, Richard Leacock, were the film’s producers and its principal cinematographers. Godard had intended to call it “One A.M.” (“One American Movie”); Pennebaker called his cut of the footage “One Parallel Movie,” but the initials, as Godard noted, could also stand for “One Pennebaker Movie.” And, in this form, it’s one of the most extraordinary time capsules of the era…

Yes, it is politics, as you will see in the clip with Grace Slick and her band but it also reminds you about what the nervous always present direct cinema camera work was. Great.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2013/01/one-pm-all-day.html#ixzz2ImqAxHVu

Magnificent7 2013/2

On Wednesday January 30 at 7pm the opening of the 9th edition of the European
Feature Documentary Film Festival, Magnificent7 will be announced
by the lady, who represents the festival venue, the biggest theatre in the region, the Sava Center in Belgrade. Ms Nevena Djonlic will be followed by Mr Popovic and Mr Müller, who will introduce the selection of films for the 9th edition of the European Feature Documentary Film Festival, Magnificent7. The festival runs until February the 3rd.

The opening film is the international hit, nominated for an Oscar, Searching for Sugar Man (photo) by Malik Bendjelloul. The 6 other films in the programme have equally received awards and been world wide honoured for their quality. That goes for Tea or Electricity by Jérôme le Maire, Ilian Metev’s Sofia’s Last Ambulance, Kimmo Koskela’s Soundbreaker, Helena Trestikova’s Private Universe and Manuel von Stürler’s Winter Nomads.

Tonight the 7th film in the festival, Swedish Palme, directed by Kristina Lindström and Maud Nycander, is nominated in three categories at the Swedish award ceremony Guldbaggen.

The audience will be spoilt with good films in the evening with an additional workshop programme during day time for, quoted from the website: “young film authors and film students as well as students in related art disciplines, but also towards all those who feel the need for a different kind of “film food”; film professionals and professional amateurs are also the suitable candidates for our workshop.”

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/home.html