Artdocfest/Riga 2022

Press Release:

The 2nd International Documentary Film Festival Artdocfest/Riga starts this Thursday, March 3rd. As a sign of solidarity with Ukrainian colleagues and the people of Ukraine, the festival program includes a special selection of documentaries dedicated to Ukraine and telling about events since 2014.

The program dedicated to Ukraine includes 5 films. Directed by Iryna Tsilyk, The Earth is Blue as an Orange (2020) (PHOTO) tells about the efforts of a single mother and her four children living in the frontline zone of Donbass to preserve humanity by making a film about their life during the war. The film received a special award at the Artdocfest/Riga festival last year and won awards at many international festivals. The film Ukrainian Sheriffs (2016), directed by Roman Bondarchuk and co-produced by the Latvian film studio VFS Film, is a look at the recent history of Ukraine through the life of a small southern village. The program also includes the film Rodnye (Close relations) (2016) by Ukrainian-born director Vitaly Mansky. His family still lives there, and as a result of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, its members had to make a choice, as a result of which some of them became implacable enemies. The film directed by Alisa Kovalenko Alisa in Warland (2015) is a very personal story about the director’s trip to the east of Ukraine at the beginning of the war, getting into hot front points and being captured by separatists. In turn, the film by Danish director Simon Lereng Wilmont The Distant Barking of Dogs (2017) touches on the theme of war and children and tells about the life of 10-year-old Oleg in eastern Ukraine, in the war zone.

The two competition programs of Artdocfest/Riga “Baltic Focus” and “Artdocfest” also include the Ukrainian-Latvian film This Rain Will Never Stop, in which the young Ukrainian director Alina Gorlova makes a powerful, visually arresting journey through humanity’s endless cycle of war and peace.

“We were waiting for Alina in Riga, at the Latvian premiere of the film. Instead, she is now in Kyiv, experiencing the horrors of the Russian invasion and sleeping in a bomb shelter. The circle of active documentarians is relatively small, we are all well acquainted with each other, and what our friends and colleagues in Ukraine are now experiencing is incomprehensible and touches us very personally. That is why we decided to include films dedicated to Ukraine in the festival, and donate the proceeds, in cooperation with Lithuanian co-producers, to the heroes of the film The Earth is Blue as an Orange,” says festival producer Ieva Ubele about the decision made by the festival team.

Screenings of the Artdocfest/Riga festival will traditionally be held at the Splendid Palace cinema. Movie tickets can be purchased at the cinema box office or on the website www.splendidpalace.lv. The screenings will be organized in the “green mode” (upon presentation of a document certifying the fact of vaccination or previous Covid-19 disease).

The full program and detailed information about Artdocfest/Riga can be found here.

The international festival Artdocfest/Riga is supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia and many international foundations. The partners of the festival are the American TV channel Current Time TV, the German TV channel Deutsche Welle and the cinema Splendid Palace.

Tomasz Wolski: 1970

Wolski is one of the excellent documentary film directors from Poland, together with Pawel Lozinski and Wojciech Staron and many many others. I say so from having seen ”Ordinary Country” (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4759/and now ”1970”.

Poland has a long tradition for documentaries and today there is – seen from outside – what I would call ”a documentary culture” that brings forward new talents, based on film schools, festivals, training initiatives, a film institute and broadcasters. Even if I don’t know how much political influence is executed from the latter nowadays?

I watched Wolski’s ”1970” the other day and was impressed by its originality in telling the story about the incidents in December 1970, where protests were performed strongly from citizens, who went to the streets due to extraordinary rise in prices for food and other everyday necessities, or on strike as did the workers at the shipyard cities up North. As in ”Ordinary Country”, Wolski uses archive – visual and oral, here recordings of tapes, authentic conversations by high‑ranking communist officials, in some dark rooms, a crisis group put together to lead a brutal battle against the demonstrators. The scoop is that the director has invited puppet maker Robert Sowa to make micro scale figurines of the group members to accompany the recordings. It works perfectly to have the story be dramatic, told by the communists and their voices in the dark rooms, and with the archive footage being quite strong; people were killed during the few days the rebellion lasted before it was knocked down.

To read more about the film go to

https://www.krakowfilmfestival.pl/en/new-issue-of-focus-on-poland/

the magazine Focus on Poland, where you will find a well illustrated case article on the film and its use of animation of the small puppets, size 20-28 cm. On how they were made etc. etc.

Focus on Poland is published by Krakow Film Foundation and with competence edited by two fine ladies, who are everywhere to promote Polish documentaries and animation films and who of course are closely linked to Krakow Film Festival: Barbara Orlicz-Szczyputa and Katarzyna Wilk.

Poland, 70 mins., 2021

IDFA Docs for Sale – Films

I have for years (decades?) benefited of having access to the Docs for Sale catalogue of IDFA to be kept up to date on new films as a programmer and first of all as one, who writes on this site, where time and energy does not allow me to review all the good films so here is some catch-up with some titles I have enjoyed and would like to recommend:

A Jewish Life

Direction Team: Christian Krönes, Florian Weigensamer, Christian Kermer, Roland Schrotthofer. Israel, Austria, 114 mins. 2021.

Catalogue: Marko Feingold, born in 1913, grew up in a Jewish working-class neighborhood of Vienna. Fateful twists and turns helped him survive the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Neuengamme, Dachau and Buchenwald. After the War he (illegally) aided tens of thousands of survivors out of Europe to what would become Israel. At the age of 105, A Jewish Life is his story, in his own words shortly before his death. I was happy to meet this extraordinary man, who talks so well, with stunning archive in between. A true document.

The Balcony Movie

Director: Pawel Lozinski, Poland, 101 mins.

Catalogue: Can anyone be a movie hero? Can the world be locked in one film frame? Director Paweł Łoziński is watching people from his balcony as they are passing by: sad, thoughtful, glued to their phones, young and old. Neighbours, random visitors or simply passers-by. The filmmaker accosts them, asks questions, talks about how they deal with life. Standing there with his camera for over 2 years he has created a space for dialogue, a lay confessional of sorts, where everyone can stop by and tell their story. The protagonists carry secrets and mysteries, and are not easy to label. Every story is unique, and life always surpasses imagination. I saw this masterpiece for the second time on Docs For Sale, first time I had a link sent from the director – in this case I recommended the film to my colleagues at Magnificent7 Festival in Belgrade, where the film will be screened in October this year.

Brotherhood

Director: Francesco Montagner, Czech Republic, 97 mins. 2021.

Catalogue: Jabir, Usama and Useir, are three young Bosnian brothers, born into a family of shepherds. They grew up in the shadow of their father, Ibrahim, a strict, radical Islamist preacher. When Ibrahim gets sentenced to two years in prison, for war participation and terrorism, the three brothers are suddenly left on their own. The absence of their father’s demands and strict commandments, changes their lives drastically. Brotherhood is an intimate exploration of the transition from youth to manhood, the search for identity, finding love and yourself. The film has so many of those „authentic now»s that editor Niels Pagh Andersen talks about in his book «Order in Chaos». I would add the importance of being multi-layered and not flat and fingerpointing at the father.

Cuban Dancer

Director : Roberto Salinas, 98 mins. Italy, 2021.

At 15 Alexis is already a promise of the Cuban National Ballet School when he discovers his family wants to move to the United States. Determined to continue dancing, Alexis will have to leave behind his teachers, his friends and his first love to get ahead in the difficult world of North American ballet, while yet staying true to his roots. I knew this film from different workshops and was happy to see the final result, full of life reminding us that documentaries are about people and that a film becomes better if the people are full of passion and energy and joy as this Cuban family is !

Writing With Fire

Directors : Rintu Thomas, Sushmit Ghosh, India, 94 mins. 2021

In a cluttered news landscape dominated by men, emerges India’s only newspaper run by Dalit women. Armed with smartphones, Chief Reporter Meera and her journalists break traditions, be it on the frontlines of India’s biggest issues or within the confines of their homes, redefining what it means to be powerful. Oscar nominated, already awarded on several occasions, a film with protagonists you can only love for their courage and energy. 

www.idfa.nl

Magnus Gertten: Nelly & Nadine

 

“This is a film reel from April 28 1945…” beautiful material, black & white… of people arriving with the “white buses” to Malmö from German concentration camps. The third film by Swedish director Gertten digging into the 35mm footage bringing out of anonymity individuals as (title of the second one) “Every Face has a Name”. The director introduces the film with this first sentence of this paragraph. With a clear slowly put forward and precise voice. Stopping with the face of Nadine Hwang, one of the protagonists of this amazing love story about Nelly and Nadine, told by Sylvie Bianchi, the grandchild of Nelly.

That is one of the huge narrative successes of the film that Sylvie also becomes a protagonist with her own personality caught by the camera of Caroline Troedsson, who goes close to her face, when she step by step discovers the life of her beloved grandmother, whose life was never talked about at home for reasons that had to do with the love story betweeen Nelly and Nadine, two women. Sylvie’s mother did not like Nadine, it is being said.

Sylvie is such a wonderful person to have in the film. One thing is that she is the one who tells the story, another is that she is so much part of it: The camera catches her reluctance to open the big suitcase in the attic of the farm, her overcoming that obstacle, helped by her husband Christian, the farmer, her investigations in archives in Paris and Bruxelles, her listening to recordings of Nelly singing, her emotions watching the photos and the S8 films that was part of the huge written and visual inheritance from Nelly to her daughter ending up in the attic of a farm in Northern France. This farm (full of cats) and especially the fields are treated with love by the camera of Caroline Troedsson. 

Throughout the whole film the editor Jesper Osmund combines the landscape images with quotes from the diaries that Nelly wrote, full of love and poetic sentences. But also combined with b/w landscape images shot by legendary Belgian documentarian Henri Storck (”Borinage”), often connected to the diary paragraphs from the Ravensbrück camp, where Nelly and Nadine met each other one christmas, when Nadine asked Nelly to sing ”Un Bel di Vedremo” from Madame Butterfly. Just one of the many scoops late in the film: The image of the harvesting machine in the fields with Christian driving it to the music of Puccini. Marvellous.

Nadine came from the camp to Malmö without knowing if Nelly was alive, as the latter was taken from Ravensbrück to Mauthausen. They met again and settled in Caracas Venezuela, where they had a fine social life with parties according to the many photos with work in a bank and at the French embassy. This is where Nadine becomes a photographer as Nelly calls her and where they decide to put together in writing their experiences from the camps and their love to each other. They tried to have it published, in vain. (After the film, why not make a book as well, suggestion from this reviewer…). The numerous photographs taken by Nadine brings together a portrait of Nelly.

It’s an understatement to say that the film is rich. As well as saying that it is extremely well put together. Elegant montage, a true flow, you are never bored, care for the detail, taking its time, no hurry and using the old editing trick: give the necessary information but leave a lot open to be discovered as the love story unfolds. I was moved, had some tears in the eyes, when Sylvie was moved.

PS. Languages, how lovely to hear Swedish, French, Spanish and English in the same film. PLEASE PLEASE don’t make stupid dubbed versions. Respect for languages!

Sweden, 2022, 92 mins.

And links to reviews of the two previous films in the trilogy:

”Every Face Has a Name” (2015)

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3084/

“Harbour of Hope” (2011)

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1778/

Docpoint Finest Market 22

The festival in Helsinki is running until the 6th of February with a national and international competition, a Finnish and an international selection, a retrospective of the master Pirjo Honkasalo – it’s all very good in terms of films to be shown – from Kurdish-Swedish Hogir Hirori’s strong ”Sabaya”, winner of several awards, to Pawel Lozinski’s original ”Balcon Movie” and the much talked about Indian ”Writing With Fire” by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh with brave female reporters, who have started a newspaper against all gender and official power odds. The best of the best the festival have tried to collect without having any exclusive restrictions like world premiere or alike.

I am not in Helsinki but have accreditation to the FinEst Market until the 13th of February inviting me to watch Fin-nish and Est-onian completed doc features, or short films or ”Works in Progress”. Very well presented, easy to operate. Good initiative, hope many will use it.

I went to ”Works in Progress” to watch a couple of projects that I knew from other pitching sessions as this is also meant as a pitching with clips from the films to come and comments from director and producer:

„The Long War” is the upcoming film by Russian Alina Rudnitskaya produced by Finnish veteran Pertti Veijalainen. The 23 minutes material shown demonstrates Rudnitskaya’s cinematic skills having long sequences letting the patriotism come forward through youngsters and kids, who swear their loyalty to the fatherland as does the archbishop (?) at one of the stations, where the war-train with material taken back from Syria stops. Rudnitskaya has a long, very strong sequence, where soldiers visit a grave of a fallen colleague taking off their headgear, placing a rose, hugging the parents. I am sure this will be a good film.

I also have great sympathy for ”The Cello” by Kira Jääskeläinen, who travels to places where the old cello she found in a container (!) must have/could have been, tracing its origin and journey through the 20th century. Making the director come back to play the instrument as she had been doing before. It’s a long way, she wants to go finding archive that fits but she will take her time and allow surprises to come forward in a project that is very original and promising.

One more that I did not know in beforehand: Suvi West and Anssi Kömi’s ”Homecoming”, fascinating because of the women in the film, who in museums in Finland and around Europe are looking for Sami heritage. What I saw was a very fresh and emotional in tone depiction of colonialism.

https://watch.eventive.org/docpointfinestmarket2022

Hugues Le Paige & Jacques Bidou

A tour down memory lane together with important names in modern documentary history. 10 years ago – on this site – I wrote about Belgian writer, director and journalist Hugues Le Paige :

”The director of this film (Le Prince et son Image – aka Francois Mitterrand) used to be a strong and passionate commissioning editor at RTBF, the French language Belgian public broadcaster. He left when the channel decided to be less active in the commitment to the creative documentary. Le Paige then wrote articles and a book about the overall decline of the public broadcasters involvement – as a colleague said to me some days ago: he predicted the crisis as it unfolds right now. For this blogger, in the early days of the EDN (European Documentary Network), it was always a pleasure to have le Paige in a pitching panel with his commitment and critical constructive encouragement to the filmmakers to fight on for quality against mainstream sensationalistic tabloid.”

I now follow Hugues Le Paige’s blog-notes (IN FRENCH), always very interesting, his knowledge about for instance Italian politics is massive.But he also writes about his old profession, this time about a book :

A propos de l’ ouvrage «  Il était une fois la production » (Editions Hémisphère) de Jacques Bidou avec la  complicité de Marianne Dumoulin :

This is a quote from his review/presentation about Jacques Bidou, a key person in French documentary as a producer fighting especially for what is called the «militant cinema » and/or the auteur cinema. 

«Bidou, c’est d’abord la génération emblématique du cinéma qui émerge en 1968, date à laquelle il intègre la première promotion de l’INSAS à Bruxelles qui aligne alors, comme enseignants, les plus grands noms du cinéma contemporain. 68 : engagement, militance et cinéma, rencontre avec Chris Marker,  10 ans de production dans la sphère du Parti Communiste ( notamment avec Unicité). Enfin, et pour toute une vie, la création de JBA production en 1987. Jacques Bidou va d’abord être un des principaux acteurs de la renaissance du documentaire ( on regrettera qu’il ne s’y appesantisse pas  davantage dans ce livre) avec la complicité des responsables de création dans des chaînes comme Arte, ZDF, Channel 4  et quelques autres partenaires publics européens. C’est l’époque du légendaire triumvirat des Thierry Garrel, Eckart Stein et  Alan Fountain, qui, hors des « grilles » et des contraintes, fondent une télévision de sens et de création pour les réalisateurs ET les spectateurs, une télévision qui ne se conçoit pas sans l’apport déterminant de la production indépendante qui, en Europe, est largement issue de 68. Bidou en est l’un des exemples les plus accomplis. A partir des années 80, le cinéma militant a fait son temps et montré ses limites,  les nouveaux producteurs concilient engagement et écriture forte : le point de vue  s’exprime par le regard  et le langage d’un auteur. Le documentaire est à nouveau cinéma. Cette télévision basculera dans la fin des années 90 sous le rouleau compresseur de l’ultra libéralisme dominant. Mais ceci est une autre histoire.”

Longing to read the book by Bidou – for Le Paige click below if you want to follow his blog-notes.

https://leblognotesdehugueslepaige.be/bidou-defricheur-de-films/

Andreas Koefoed: The Lost Leonardo

Hun kigger dig lige ind i øjnene. Hun har lige forklaret, hvorfor hun mener at maleriet som hun restaurerer er malet af Leonardo da Vinci. Hun har peget på det sted, hvor Leonardos teknik er tydelig, på samme sted som i Mona Lisa. Hun lægger et klæde henover staffeliet i sit studio i New York, tager elevatoren ned og går ud på gaden. Dianne Modestini ringer til Robert Simon, en af de to ejere af maleriet for at videregive resultatet af undersøgelsen. 

Det er en smuk sekvens, en filmisk sekvens som gør Modestini til min hovedperson og filmens, tydeligvis, for der vendes tilbage til hende og til hendes ”lost love”, Mario Modestini, som så maleriet før sin død i 2006 og sagde at det var malet af en vigtig kunstner ”på Leonardos tid”, det vil sige omkring 1500, højrenaissancen.

Jeg tror på hende, men filmskaberne lader mig ikke blive i troen. En tysk 

museumsmand sidder i billedet og mener ikke at maleriet kan tillægges Leonardo, det er alt for tidligt at fastslå det, der er ingen proveniens og han tilføjer at værkets kvalitet skyldes Dianne Modestinis pensel og kunstneriske formåen at få det til at ligne en Leonardo. Denne uforskammethed, synes jeg, som er på den fine ældre dames side, tilbagevises helt af hendes selv. Men der kommer senere mange flere tvivlere OG der kommer udsagn, som mener som Modestini at det er mesteren og ikke en af hans elever, som har ført penslen.

Filmen bølger elegant mellem de mange meninger og vurderinger fra et hold af mere eller mindre store EGO’er fra den kommercielle kunstverden, som Modestini kalder ”tricky”; det er vist en underdrivelse! Det er meget underholdende og helt absurd at følge historien om et maleri, overmalet og med mange skader, blive købt for 1175$ for at ende med et salg på noget af et show på auktionshuset Christie for 450millioner $.

Men ind imellem kommer der så nogle smukke sekvenser med Modestini i hendes lejlighed og i det hus i Toscana, hvor hun tilbragte tid med sin nu afdøde mand, som hun fører dialog med under arbejdet med restaureringen – og med Leonardo, som hun siger det. Og Jesus, Salvator Mundi. Da hun vandrer i haven ved huset i Toscana, dukker Mario pludselig op for enden mellem nogle træer. Et øjeblik og så er han væk igen. En flot detalje! Det er en kærlighedshistorie, som bevæger og som instruktør Andreas Koefoed, fotograf Adam Tandrup og klipper Nicolas Staffolani Nørregaard har vævet flot ind i hovedhistorien. Og lad mig lige igen kippe med flaget for instruktør Koefoed, hvis efterhånden mange film, i forskellige stilarter, placerer ham stærkt i nutidig dansk dokumentarisme: ”At Home in the World”, ”The Ghost of Piramida”, ”Våbensmuglingen”, ”Albert’s Winter”… og lige nu arbejder han med Jørgen Leth på en jazz-film.

Tilbage til fortællingen om kunstverdenen, filmens hovedfokus, som skrevet en helt absurd verden, her befolket af mere eller mindre selvoptagne personligheder, som – næsten alle – nyder at tale med Koefoed og blive placeret i en visuel komposition af Adam Tandrup. Kritikeren Jerry Saltz der morsomt imiterer auktionernes showprægede forløb. Franskmanden Jacques Franck som skrev til sin præsident og frarådede at maleriet blev udstillet på Louvre. Og argumenterer for hvorfor han ikke mener det kan være en Leonardo. Sleeper Hunter (pragfuldt udtryk) Alexander Parish som fandt maleriet på en auktion i New Orleans, elsker at fortælle ”sin” historie. Og Luke Syson fra National Gallery i London hvor maleriet blev udstillet i 2011 som en Leonardo – og besøgstallet på det fine museum slog alle rekorder – Koefoed går til Syson, som med flakkende øjne undviger at svare på spørgsmålet om, hvad det betød for ham…

Og amerikanske Kenny Schachter som siger hvad vi som tilskuere oplever i filmen: Alt det her handler kun om én ting: MONEY.

Det bliver sagt endnu mere klart af Yves Bouvier som introduceres (!) af en sekvens hvor han balancerer som en cirkusartist på ét hjul. Bouvier er manden, som på en dag tjener mere end 40 millioner $ ved at købe ”Salvator Mundi” og sælge den videre til en russisk oligark, Dmitri Rybolovlev, som ikke optræder i filmen, men vi får at vide, at der nu kører retssager mod Bouvier fra den russiske billionær, som føler sig snydt. Den meget underholdende showman Bouvier siger i filmen at han opfatter sig selv som en købmand, der bare arbejder efter de almindelige markedsregler. Og et for mig ukendt fænomen introduceres, såkaldte freeports, hvor kunsthandlere og -samlere kan deponere kunstværker.

Der er også en CIA-mand, en FBI-mand, en bankmand… og journalister og andre eksperter ud i kunstens vidunderlige og vanvittigt kommercielle verden.

Dianne Modestini siger det: Nu er en Leonardo gemt væk for offentligheden indtil Mohammad bin Salman, den saudiarabiske prins og forbryder har fået lavet sit museum, hvor maleriet kan hænge. Pt. menes det at befinde sig på hans yacht! 450Millioner $ kostede det for MBS i 2013. Parish og Robert Simon købte det for 1175$ i 2005.

MBS ville dog gerne have maleriet udstillet på Louvre, fortalte han vist Macron og museet, der selvfølgelig gerne ville udstille det, fik lavet en teknisk undersøgelse af ”Salvator Mundi”, producerede en bog derom, som konkluderede som Modestini at den er god nok, det er en Leonardo… bogen blev trykt men kom ikke til offentligheden for MBS ønskede maleriet på samme væg som ”Mona Lisa” men det kunne museet ikke gå med til.

Filmen er fremragende. De mange talking faces er sat sammen så der er et flow i fortællingen, et drive der holder opmærksomheden fangen, samtidig med at der gives plads til fine visuelle detaljer og kærlighedshistorien med Modestini.

At det er et dansk produktionsselskab Elk Film med instruktør og producer Andreas Dalsgaard i spidsen, der sammen med det franske selskab Pumpernickel Films, har sat dette kolossale skib i søen, kan kun aftvinge et kæmpe BRAVO.

Danmark, Frankrig, Sverige, 2021, 96 mins.

Saeed Taji Farouky: A Thousand Fires

Let me start with a quote from a mail sent to me by good friend, excellent French producer Estelle Robin You, who has been working with the director for years to make this film meet the audience:

”A Thousand Fires” tells the story of two loving parents, working hard in the hand-drilled oil fields of central Myanmar, to give their son a better future. It is a story of the human scale of the oil industry and the marks it leaves on the body and soul. It is a story of transformation, reincarnation and generational clashes.»

Written in November 2020. In late August the film wins an important award at the festival in Locarno and the jury motivates:

“We are honoured to bestow the first award in the memory of the late Marco Zucchi. A Thousand Fires presents, through compelling audio-visual language, a poor and dignified life that is tied to the soil. Saeed Taji Farouky combines ethnographic observation with cinematographic language of pure physicality: close-ups of the hard working bodies and nearly abstract images of the natural elements: fire, smoke, oil, dirt. We enter the spiritual life of the protagonists through the associative editing, evocative sounds and expressive landscapes. A touching portrait of a family struggling and hoping for a better life so far away from the Western audience brings us closer to humanity. “

The film is right now in competition at the FIPADOC 2022 in Biarritz that starts tomorrow and runs until January 26. The international competition that includes ”A Thousand Fires” is very strong with the new films by Pawel Lozinski (Balcony Movie), Helena Trestikova’s sequel to the films about René, Danish Camilla Nielsson’s ”President”, Sergei Loznitza’s ”Babi Yar”, Andreas Koefoed´s ”The Lost Leonardo” that premieres in Denmark next week and another gem that has Estelle Robin You as producer, ”The Last Shelter” by Ousmane Zoromé Samassékou. Mentioning the 6 films of the 11 selected that I have seen.

If you are in Biarritz, go and watch “A Thousand Fires” that takes place far away from the West, as the jury states above – yet, the family is like any other family: Mum says to Dad that he again has forgotten to put his sandals on when he is going out; could have been my wife and I in our small garden house. And their care for the son, who moves to the city to become a football player, see how difficult it is for mum and dad to cut the strings to him – the grandparent’s love to their baby grandchild. Does it ring a bell. We all live on the same planet, but gosh how different the living conditions are. To be remembered as is the director’s amazingly beautiful images that correspond to his love to the family.

Vareikyte & Dejoie: I’ll Stand by You

Their full names being Virginija Vareikyte and Maximilien Dejoie, a Lithuanian and an Italian, who is also the cinematographer, which makes me start by praising the camerawork for a film that is so much subject-related:

It tells the story of two women, a psychologist and a police officer, who tried to tackle the extended problem of suicides in their hometown in Lithuania and succeeded, by creating the most successful suicide prevention program that their country has ever seen… to quote the directors.

It could have been an informative prosaic film giving the facts about the mentioned program through a voice-over and interviews; instead the directors chose to make a creative documentary that also gives the necessary background to understand that the film’s main location is Kupiškis, a small village or town in the North East of Lithuania, where the suicide rate is high.

I started praising the camerawork, as you all the time sense that there is thought about the composition of the image and about how to film the meetings of Gintaré and Valija with the clients. In full discretion. Which of course could not work if the directors were not able to bring the best out of the two wonderful wonderful lively and caring women. There is charisma on the screen! And ability to convey their calling to the many volunteers, who are connected to the program. One of them is Biruté, who herself lost a son, who took his own life. She is in the film as the one who towards the end comes to see Jonas, an old man who is followed by the directors. Always positive Gintaré talks to him in uniform and without uniform, we hear phone calls to him, he has clear plans for how he will hang himself… but there is a happy ending for him when the three women come to visit and we the audience see him.

Also bravo to the editing done by Virginija Vareikyte and Italian Francesca Scalisi. There is a fantastic key scene in the film, where you see the two ladies hugging each other in a pavillion with rain pouring down outside. I think it is after they have been noticed of a client who took his/her life. ”Are we normal”, one of them says, to what you can only answer, No, you are so extraordinary… cut to the two on their way to Jonas with images from the countryside of Lithuania, beautiful nature with the more or less dilapidated wooden houses, with serious reflections from Gintaré, shifting to a bursting into laughter the next moment. The focus on the two ladies is the right choice for the film, you get close to them and not ”only” their mission. Lovely!

Lithuania, Italy. Switzerland, 73 min. 2021

 

Laila Pakalnina: Homes

”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…”

From an interview with Laila Pakalnina in connection with the big retrospective of her films in Centre Pompidou in 2019. I have followed her film life for years, am a big admirer and the admiration grew after the masterclass at Baltic Sea Docs 2021, where she announced a new film to come up, “Homes” – MY film she said, 2 hours, black & white, no music, and the cameraman talks!

She gave me a link to the flm and I wrote this to her in mid October: “Laila, you made my morning wonderful. With a cup of coffee I watched “Homes” first thing at the computer. I now walk out in the so-called reality full of the warmth and joy that you and Gints and the Latvian families gave me.”

I wanted to see the film again at IDFA on a big screen but I got caught by another show, so here I am with a small review based on another computer watch. Sorry! But the second screening made me even more enthusiastic:

Walkie talkie communication. Go a bit to the right, too much, stand closer to each other, yes, that´s fine, now freeze for one minute as if we are taking a photo. Put the walkie talkie down out of the frame. The cameraman gives instructions.

Some times the people are closer, some times more far away, most of the time it is a family, many times it is grandparents and their grandchildren.

My favourite shot is the one with granny in the garden surrounded by two girls (twins?) being asked to stand next to the sitting old lady, it´s pure poetry. Actually there are many shots like that, so well composed, the whole film can be seen as a lecture in photography – and in how to gently make people take part in a film. Narrated by Gints Berzins.

There are comments from the people outside the windows, their windows, where we the audience has been given one minute as well to study what is in the room, where the cameraman and his camera are. In the kitchen or in the sitting room or in the sleeping room or in the kid’s room. An ash tray on the table, a pair of glasses, a painting to the left or right, a chair, some plants, a mirror, a nice chair or two, wealthy gardens, not so wealthy gardens, and a few streets. And dogs – there are so many dogs in that film, some definitely do not like the situation and run a round barking, some disappear, too boring when the adult(s) just stand still! 

No more superlatives. Laila Pakalnina is an auteur, she always surprises, also this time with an original approach, again, as with “Spoon” (review http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4695/)

choosing her composition together with Gints Berzins, the talking cameraman in this audiovisual gift to all of us, who love Cinema.

And what a big hug to Latvia and people in this country.

And here is the link to the masterclass with Pakalnina at Baltic Sea Docs 2021:

https://vimeo.com/665172130

Latvia, 2021, 120 mins.