Had an interesting conversation with Polish filmmakers last night at a dinner reception held by the good and always active people from Krakow Film Foundation and Festival. Two of their compatriots, members of juries, had to leave early for an evening screening with an audience. Is that right, we discussed, should juries watch the competing films with the audience or on their own, and should juries watch films in the evening after a long day – or should they do their work in the mornings. Of course there are a lot of practicalities involved, when festival people organise a time schedule for juries, but having been in loads of juries I can only say how pleasant it has been to watch films in the mornings and early afternoons with other jury members and to have the first discussions right after the screenings. With films on a big screen, of course.

So what does the DOK Leipzig international jury decides to communicate tomorrow night at the closing ceremony.

Let me try to come up with some ideas for films that could be candidates for the awards in the ”DOK Internationaler Wettbewerb”, the feature length international competition. I have seen most of the films – in the mornings at the market – some of them only in parts, to be fair.

”11 Images of a Human” by the couple Markku Lehmuskallio and Anastasia Lapsui was disappointing compared to what they have been doing before. Heavy and over-structured it is and not at all the ”poetic reflection on cave paintings and petroglyphs” that the catalogue text says. ”Another Night on Earth”, by Spanish David Munoz, is one of many current films that let people be driven and filmed in a taxi, this time in Cairo. Conversations, sometimes entertaining but most of the time boring. I already, below, wrote about the Bangla Desh film ”Are You Listening?”, it will get a prize for sure but maybe not the Golden Dove, whereas the Chinese ”Cloudy Mountain” by Zhu Yu might candidate because of its visual strength depicting people working in asbestos mines. Swedish ”Colombianos” by Tora Mårtens is weak, ”Documentarian” (see below) will not go for main prizes, and I doubt that Peter Mettler’s essayistic ”The End of Time” can unite a jury. Polish pedophile subject film, ”Entangled”, by Lidia Duda, demonstrates how difficult it is to make a film, where you are not allowed to show faces, and Damien Ounouri’s fine ”Fidaï” about the Algerian FLN fighter going back in time and place is probably not strong enough. German ”Der Kapitän und sein Pirat”, on the contrary, is a great piece of investigative and character driven documentary, raising so many moral and ethical questions about the ship piracy, this time off the Somalian coast. Swiss Olivier Zuchuat has visited Makronisos with ”Like Stone Lions at the Gateway Into Night”, several Greek filmmakers have done the same, much better than this documentary that suffers from too much perfume.

The Chilean ”Last Station” (photo) will get a prize, one of the Doves, is my guess for its beauty in approach and cinematography, rightly characterised in the catalogue as ”picturesque dark tableaux vivants, the rythm of slowness turns into poetry”, and another one will be given to ”Sofia’s Last Ambulance” by Bulgarian Ilian Metev.

… but I might be totally wrong! (And I have not talked to any jury members!)

www.dok-leipzig.de

The festival in Leipzig also hosts several workshops, where documentary projects are being developed. Andrea Prenghyova, one of the founders of the IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) in Prague, presented for the second year, in collaboration with the festival, projects that were at rough cut stage, or at rough rough cut stage as one said to me, or finished. The session with the presentation of the projects were very well received, and it seems that the DOK.Incubator has come to stay.

Also the Mediterranean focused Storydoc programme had its final session in Leipzig. The workshop that include film proposals from Palestine, Algeria, Greece and other countries, is organised by the Greeks in collaboration with the EDN (European Documentary Network).

A film that came out of a workshop connected to Dox Box festival in Damascus had its world premiere in Leipzig. Lina Alabed, of Palestinian/Egyptian origin, presented her ”Damascus, My First Kiss”, shot in Damascus (where she no longer lives) with herself as the leading character in a courageously open and well told story about three women and their growing up in a culture where talking about your body and sexuality is a taboo.

http://dokincubator.net/

www.dok-leipzig.de

www.dox-box.org

http://www.proactionfilm.com/pkg09/index.php?page=show&dir=docs&ex=2&lang=2&ser=1&cat=168

Any films that we must see, film students and others who enter the festival centre ask me. Many, I answer, because there are many that have high quality. The problem in my answering is that many of the films I have not seen yet, as they are world or European or National premieres, but after three days at the video library, see below, I have tips to pass on. Some of these will later on have a review on this site, some will not.

A film that I keep on recommending is the masterly done ”Sofia’s Last Ambulance” (photo) by Ilian Metev, as well as ”The End of Time” that I have not seen yet, but Peter Mettler is a unique film essayist, so for that it is a must. As is the opening film of the festival that I also screened in the video library, ”Are You Listening” by Kamar Ahmad Simon from Bangla Desh, a classic humanistic, cinematically brilliant work that character-wise brings back memories of the Apu-trilogy of Satayit Ray when it comes to the film’s boy and his parents.

The Latvian ”Documentarian” by Inese Klava and Ivars Zviedris is of course a must for all who work with documentaries, it has humour and a fantastic character, who loves and hates to be filmed at the same time as she is building a friendship with the cameraman/ director who comes to see her.

Another character who is charismaric in his old, grumpy age is Pablo, a pensioned miner, whose daily life is followed by director Chico Pereira in ”Pablo’s Winter”, a warm film that perfectly catches the rythm of moving slowly around, having time to argue with the wife and teach a kid how to bicycle.

Finally, ”Tea or Electricity” by Jerome le Maire, from a village in the mountains of Morocco, just nominated for the European Award as best documentary, is a film to be enjoyed for its way of treating the theme of, yes, do we really need electricity?

www.dok-leipzig.de

Time for a small report after three days at a festival that it is always pleasant to visit in a city, that it is always pleasant to visit. Eine Kulturstadt, that has developed immensely since the days around 1990 where I attended the festival for the first time nach der Wende. Now the festival centre is in the Museum der Bildenden Künste, in the new building from 2004. This is where the very well functioning digitalised video library is situated and where your blogging correspondent for a couple of festivals have passed hours in front of the computer picking films from the big catalogue. With good image and sound. Professional it is, as most of the elements of a festival that is well visited and visible in the streets where accredited professionals and documentary film buffs walk from one place to the other with their red bags, heading for not only cinemas bul also places where discussions take place within the industry section of the festival. I counted that today thursday there are 10 seminars/workshops taking place during daytime and evening, from ”outreach and campaigning in focus” to ”cross media case studies” – to, networking is important, the daily get-together with a couple of non-hearable speeches and glasses of wine being carried around.

Food is important and the festival centre has a fine café with fine food mastered by the same people who stand behind Hotel (and restaurant) Michaëlis, where I usually stay. This year I am at Motel One, two minutes from everything, a big machine that is ok and where most of the festival guests are staying.

Photo from the best film I saw today: Thomas Riedelsheimer’s beautiful work on the Japanese artist Susumu Shingu, “a journey through the world as he follows his life-long dream-project and explores the energy of wind and water.” Title: Breathing Earth, Germany, 2012, 93 mins.

http://www.mdbk.de/

http://filmpunkt.com/projects_WInd_eng.html

www.dok-leipzig.de

The headline of the interview in Realscreen is “Mixing the real and the surreal” and the first lines go like this:

“In time for its presentation as the cph:dox (Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival)’s opening film, filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer tells realscreen about his “observational documentary of the imagination.”

The film opened the festival today tuesday evening with several screenings during the festival of the 115 mins. version as well as the 159 mins. version.

Read more: http://realscreen.com/#ixzz2ApBt0M48

Wang Bing got one more prize added to his impressive filmography through the ”Grande Prémio Cidade de Lisboa”, the first prize at the DocLisboa that ended sunday. The film in question is ”Three Sisters” (153 mins., France Hong Kong, 2012). Description taken from the site of the festival:

“Three sisters live alone in a small village family house in the high mountains of the Yunan region. They spend their days working in the fields or wandering in the village. The father returns to the village. He has come to take the girls with him to the city but he then agrees to leave the older one under the supervision of her grandfather.”

Special Jury Prize was given to “The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 years without Images” (66 mins., France, 2011) with a special mention to the film that wins wherever it goes, “Sofia’s Last Ambulance” (75 mins., Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany) by Ilian Metev from Bulgaria.

The two last mentioned are to be watched at DOK Leipzig this week, “Sofia’s Last Ambulance” competes in the International Competition category. One more award… for this excellent piece of cinema?

http://www.doclisboa.org/2012/pt/edicao/premiados/

www.dok-leipzig.de

Opening nights can be very long with speeches and introduction of juries and honorary guests. DOK Leipzig is no exception. It took looong time to get people seated so the ceremony was delayed up front, and it did not help that the master of ceremony, head of programming at the festival, Grit Lemche, not the most obvious choice for that job, improvised to make a warm atmosphere, fine enough but to much internal small talk, that took time.

Before the film from Bangla Desh, see below, Claas Danielsen (photo), festival director, made his welcoming and film political speech, where he championed filmmakers and criticized current production and working conditions. “In many areas of the film industry, there is an imbalance of power that has the potential to push entire groups within the profession to the edge of economic survival,” Danielsen said. Films often develop under exploitative conditions for writers and in conjunction with an enormous financial and personal risk for producers. The festival director criticized broadcasters, but also spoke in hopeful terms: “I envision a partnership-based approach that finally establishes a fair playing field for the work of creatives in all genres. We need filmmakers and writers who can make a living from their work.” Danielsen also appealed to politicians: “We need real copyright protection for creative professionals – and politicians who will do all they can to protect their achievements.”

At the opening festivities, the Danish film THE WILL by Christian Sonderby Jepsen was given the 2012 Doc Alliance Award. The prize is worth 5,000 euros and is handed out alternately at the six European film festivals that have formed the Doc Alliance.

Good for the Leipzig audience that they can watch a Danish documentary – otherwise idfa has taken priority to screen new Danish documentaries, 9 this year (!), which leaves out DOK Leipzig. Schade.

www.dok-leipzig.de

As a festival guest and reporter for this blog you receive loads of mails about what is to happen. Of course. The Leipzig festival sustains a good tradition for press releases that  – unlike others – refrain from saying ”we are the best in the world” but limits itself to convey information letting the enthusiasm come out in the film descriptions that are authored by members of the selection committee. Good idea but also ”dangerous” as you might run into texts that include an interpretation of what you are to watch. But that is another story. Here follows an edited version of the press release  that introduces the festival:

The 55th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film will opens Monday in the Leipzig CineStar theater complex… A keynote speech will be delivered by festival director Claas Danielsen. DOK Leipzig will open with the animated film DEMONI by Theodore Ushev and the documentary film ARE YOU LISTENING! (photo) by Kamar Ahmad Simon, the first film from Bangladesh to be shown in the International Competition at DOK Leipzig. Grit Lemke, head of the documentary programme at DOK Leipzig, will preside over the evening.

By Sunday, 360 films from 62 countries will have been screened at DOK Leipzig. The official programme includes 84 documentaries and 114 short animated films. About 200 filmmakers will be present in Leipzig, as will numerous protagonists from the various films. Alongside the 264 film screenings, DOK Leipzig will be offering a variety of master classes, workshops, case studies, roundtables and panel discussions on issues facing the industry today. The 1,400 accredited industry guests this year are evidence that DOK Leipzig has become one of the main gatherings of the documentary industry.

This year, the 5,000 euro Doc Alliance Award will be presented in Leipzig during the opening festivities. The most important prizes at DOK Leipzig are the Golden and Silver Doves and the Talent Dove of the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig, which will be awarded on the festival Saturday in Leipzig’s Central Theater. A record 79,000 euros of prize money will be awarded at this year’s festival.

www.dok-leipzig.de