Have you ever thought about becoming a doctor or a nurse on a Bulgarian ambulance? Well, as this little marvel of a film suggests, there might be an opening or two coming up.

It’s technically an observational film, but what we observe is not the action or the events in the daily life of the three characters, but mainly the faces. Mila, Klassi and Plamen are doctor, nurse and driver of an ambulance in Sofia, and quite radically we never really see their patients or even the ambulance itself. We do get glimpses of the surroundings, but for large portions of the film we see one of them sitting in the cockpit while the other two are out of frame. But still, due to their conversation, the futile calls to their headquarter and the circumstances of their different house calls, you get a very precise sense of their struggles to make their workday tolerable in the seemingly decaying society. The humanity of the three protagonists is vividly conveyed to us and even with the somewhat erratic filming and with no music to help us feel the right things; you are drawn into their daily life. 

The film and the main characters definitely have a sense of humour, but if I still needed a bit to be completely blown away it’s because I have a feeling, that it could have been even more grotesquely funny and thus giving an even stronger sense of their absurd situation. I guess I am always looking for that last bold step where a film not just observe an irrational reality but really takes it to another level by being a real DOComedy where also the filmmaker has something at stake.

Nevertheless, it has won a number of prizes and was shown at Semaine de la Critique in Cannes and I have this sensation that it will grow in my mind over the next days or weeks.

Ilian Metev: Sofia’s Last Ambulance, Bulgaria, 75 mins. Set på CPH:DOX i Falconer Biografen.

Link to Tue Steen Müller`s post, a second opinion… (ed.) 

 

For the 13th time the French launch their Month of Documentaries all over the country. More than 1700 films, new and old, are being screened in what can only be seen as the most effective promotional tool to create interest for documentaries.

The participants – as the organizers call them – are Médiathèques, salles de cinéma, associations, établissements culturels, éducatifs, sociaux, collectivités territoriales, conseils régionaux, conseils généraux, partenaires locaux, etc.

To give an example, an “Hommage à Chris Marker” is organised in Basse-Normandie at the Bibliotheque Jacques Prévert, in Limousin and at Institut francais d’Ukraine. Volker Koepp is shown in Paris, “Five Broken Cameras” in Lyon, Stan Neumann’s wonderful “La Langue ne Ment Pas” in Strasbourg, “La Nuit Elles Dansent” (photo) in Fort-de France in Martinique and so on so forth.

Film policy, ladies and gentlemen!

http://www.moisdudoc.com/

Behind the scenes, the making of.. a film. We have seen them lots of times, following how the actors prepare for their roles, how the shooting was done, how the director directed. This is exactly what ”The Act of Killing” does, with the big difference that the film being made is, to use a kliché, ”based on a true story”. A story about the mass murder of around 1 million people in Indonesia in the 1960’es, opponents of the military regime. Communists. Chinese. The killers were saluted, and still are, as the films shows, through the paramilitary fascist group, now a political party, as I understood it, Pancasila.

Werner Herzog asked the protagonist in his masterpiece ”Little Dieter Needs to Fly” to reenact the horror actions he experienced in Vietnam, the directors of ”The Act of Killing”, an absolute masterpiece as well, have done the same with their killers – please re-constitute what you did at that time. And how you did it, we will help you to make your vision as authentic as possible. The filmmakers – = the killers, they call themselves gangsters which they say mean ”free men” – choose different ways to convey their stories. They have found their inspiration in what they call ”sadistic movies” a la Scorcese and Tarantino, they have gorgeous more reportage style shooting from the streets, where extras are found, who can play communist family members, shot in observational style and with kids involved who break down as they do not know, whether this is for real or not and they make the most astonishing tableaux that make you think about Herzog and his Fitzcarraldo period.

But first of all the film has a fantastic main charismatic personality, the leader of the gang and the director of the film in the film, Anwar Kongo. A Shakespearean character, haunted as he is by what he did. ”When I sleep it comes back to me”, ”a communist ghost”, he says, and the film is constructed around his journey from, as the cph:dox catalogue puts it, ”arrogance to regret”. Accompanied first of all by the fat man, of course his name is Herman(!), who does and has done all the atrocities he is told to do, and by the way tries to get into the Indonesian parliament(!) with Pancasila, Anwar Kongo lets his hair become black and goes from showing the most effective (= less blood) killing method to play a victim in his film, to getting sick in the end scene. Still you sit with the feeling that Anwar Kongo, the charismatic grandfather, at any time would repeat the sentence ”all this talk about human rights pisses me off”, whatever the political situation in today’s Indonesia is.

The film premiered in 60 Danish cinemas yesterday via the DoxBio.

Denmark, 2012, 115 mins.

www.cphdox.dk

The 10th Copenhagen documentary film festival runs until sunday. Filmkommentaren will review some of the films and recommend  Copenhageners and festival guests, what should be watched.

A must of course is Oppenheimer’s ”The Act of Killing”. The film still has 4 screenings at the festival (two of the 159 mins. version and two of the 115 mins. version). The cinema distribution (the 115 mins. version) kicks off on the 7th (wednesday) through the brilliant DoxBio initiative. Equally you should not miss the Brothers Taviani and their ”Caesar Must Die”, Golden Bear in Berlin. Where ”The Act of Killing” is a grandiose Shakespearean story, ”Caesar Must Die” (photo) is literally the mise-en-scène of the play ”Julius Caesar”, magnificently performed by inmates in a prison in Rome. The word magnificent is the one and only to be used about the cinematography of a third film in the main competition of cph:dox, the one that did not win at DOK Leipzig, ”The Last Station” by Chilean Catalina Vergara and Christian Soto, the latter responsible for the camera work, which brings dignity and love to the old people at the nursery home, the last station.

… and if you want to experience how light and playful filmmaking (also) can be, watch Scottish Mark Cousins wee film, ”What is this Film called Love”, shot on a mobile phone in Mexico City during three days where the director had no agenda, did some push-ups in his hotel room but ended up going around in the city communicating with a photo of Eisenstein, who never finished his Mexico-film. 18 mins. of pure pleasure!

And here is quote from the review made of the new film by Timo Novotny, ”Trains of Thoughts”: Novotny is an aesthete and his fascination of lines and forms is brilliantly conveyed through the montage of images, words and the music of the Sofa Surfers. Music that flows the whole way through and is synergetic with the image in pulse and rythm, contrary to the mainstream use of music in documentaries today, where the music is poured on like sugar to hide lack of energy in the sequences.  

And another quote from the film of Namir Abdel Messeeh, ”The Virgin, the Copts and Me”, a doc comedy: This storytelling tool, including the making of the film in the narrative, a meta plan, works in this case as the film is about a young French filmmaker who, after 15 years, goes back to his Egyptian coptic roots in a village, against the will of the mother, who in the beginning says that ”no members of the family (should be) in the film”. But the help of mum gets the film to be finished, the family members all end up in the film, which adds to the film’s light-hearted entertaining qualities at the same time as it gives a beautiful hommage to people far away from Tahrir Square, in a small village where someone once saw the apparation of Virgin Mary.

http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/a1.lasso?e=1

To be honest, I did not have high expectations. I knew that Dan Curean had worked 4 years on his film about wild horses in the Romanian Danube delta, but I had no idea that he had done so to get it all and he had transferred the material into a multilayered documentary epic on man and nature, rich on poetic observations, and on conflicts and with a great camera work.

On top of that, Curean tells his story in first person with a brilliant text performed by a brilliant voice. You trust the ”I” from the very beginning when he takes you to the horses and to the boy, Ivan, who we follow on horseback, with the horses, with his horse Viktor, who gives him lice (!), sailing in the water of the marshes, right to the end of the film, where he, years older, seems to help those who have come to catch the horses to bring them to the slaughterhouse. Avoiding the eyes of the ”I”, Ivan is, the camera, Dan Curean. Many horses go, but a public protest campaign stops what is called a massacre.

Wild horses, stray horses – the background is that ”the abandoned horses of the communist time farms were slowly being turned into wild horses like in the old times”, and now they spoil the forest, it is being said.

Dan Curean puts the story into a human context. Apart from the boy Ivan and his relation to nature (reminding this viewer about ”Louisiana Story” by Robert Flaherty and Richard Leacock), he introduces Murgur, an older bearded, wise man, who knows all about horses and their behaviour, and is a teacher for Ivan. As well as old Dochia, a woman who is said to be mad, ”a good witch” she says about herself, happy that Mugur is there as he reminds her about her (dead or disappeared?) husband. She brings fine songs to the screen. Not to talk about Taras, who is in his nineties, he kept one horse until his death.

There is a beautiful balanced blend of fairy tale and documentation, even a cowboy film feel there is, in a film, that catches all seasons, and luckily has many wordless sequences. Including images of horses, who freezed to death during the harsh winter of 2010 as well as a visual demonstration of social life in almost deserted villages, where alcoholism reigns.

The film won an award at the festival in Sibiu in the category ecological films. No offense to this genre but ”Gone Wild” will, I hope, be placed in many festivals as what it is: an excellent, creative documentary!

http://www.astrafilm.ro/astra-film-festival-2012-awards-1.aspx?theme=1

http://tifftv.ro/interviu-dan-curea-gone-wild

Romania, 2012, 87 mins. 

DOK Leipzig winners have been announced to night. For this filmkommentaren correspondent it was a surprise (see post below) that the Swedish ”Colombianos” by Tora Mårtens got the first prize, the Golden Dove, whereas the Silver Dove to Ilian Metev for ”Sofia’s Last Ambulance” was an expected winner, as well as the honorary mention to the Chinese ”Cloudy Mountains” by Zhu Yu by the jury of the main competition.

Bravo also to the fine and warm ”Pablo’s Winter” (photo) by Chico Pereira, who received an honorary mention in the Talent category – and the award for the best film about the subject Work.

The MDR (the local broadcaster) Prize went to Helena Trestikova for her ”Private Universe”.

The many awards, and the motivations, at the DOK Leipzig are listed on the website below.  

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/festival/preistraeger_2012

http://www.stocktown.com/2012/03/colombianos/