MandagsDokumentaren 10 år

Se, hvad turisten ser,
den navnløse by, 
strømmen, som bærer København og dens ry, 
de tusind cykelpi’er,
et brus af nikkelstyr, 
sikke pi’er, 
tag og kys dem alle fra mig!
– Poul Henningsen, Cykelsangen (1935)

Jo, det er den herlige sang fra PH’s Danmarksfilm, som er den oplagte fødselsdagsfilm for det enestående initiativ, som Ebbe Preisler satte i gang for 10 år siden med PH Caféen på Vesterbro i København som den biograf, hvor et væld af vigtige kort- og dokumentarfilm, danske og udenlandske, er blevet vist, altid med tilstedeværelse af instruktør eller anden til film eller emne knyttet person.

Danmarksfilmen, fra 1935, ofte omtalt som den første egentlige danske dokumentarfilm, bliver vist mandag den 3. September med et indledende fødselsdagsprogram, der også omfatter biografdirektør Preisler, der fylder 70.

Tillykke!

www.mandagsdokumentar.dk

Michel Wenzer: At Night I Fly /2

Jeg tror, jeg kunne lytte til ham i timevis, i dagevis. Han er indsat i Folsom fængslet i Californien. Har været der længe. Skal formodentlig være der al tid. I begyndelsen var hans velkomstgave til en ny indsat et våben lavet der af materiale for hånden, et våben at true med, at slå ihjel med. Sådan fastholdes de nye i voldskulturen det nye sted. Han er barsk nok til nu at holde sig fri af det, han slår hårdere end de andre, må jeg tro. Og nu er hans gave til de nye måske en kuglepen og et stykke papir. Poesi gør fri, det gør et barberblad monteret på skaftet til en tandbørste ikke.  

Her er han i sin celle, forvandlet til digter. En del af de indsatte mødes i en litterær café i fængslet og læser op for hinanden. Det er formidabelt, utroligt, forbavsende: “… and there are great scenes from this room where (some) inmates meet with people from other races, as they say, in a world where the white normally do not meet with the black, or the black with the latinos… music, poem reading, writing, religious meetings, they are well articulated…” som Tue Steen Müller skrev i sin imponerede anmeldelse fra april i år her på siden, og han beskev formen: “The film has a sketchy, fragmentaric structure, but the impressionistic approach slowly adds up sequence by sequence, and you get some characters, who are reflective when it comes to their own situation and to the actions they take to fill their days to make it all bearable, or you could say to make sense of it all…”  

Jeg er fuldstændig opslugt, ser i dag filmen på Filmstriben.dk i mindre bidder. Kan faktisk ikke klare mere, kan slet ikke slippe denne særegne skønhed Michel Wenzer og fotograferne Camilla Hjelm Knudsen og Eric Börjesen har bygget op i en behersket sikker ro, scene for scene.

Anders Gustafsson: Succesjægerne

Drengene øver sig i at kontakte pigerne. Det gælder om at turde, at få sagt noget, at holde en samtale med den valgte pige så mange sekunder som muligt. Det er en øvelse. De er på kursus på Speed Up Life Academy. De skal til eksamen i mod og andet om knapt fire måneder. De er lige i begyndelsen af kurset, på ryste sammen rejse til et sted i Spanien. Kameraet ser drengene. Med pigernes blik – og de er søde, ser jeg tydeligt, de ser, pigerne.

Problemet er, at drengene ikke ved at de er søde. De er usikre, skuffede, sårede, hæmmede. Det er derfor, de er på psykologikursus. Og der får de at vide, at det kan de gøre noget ved. Som kærlighedslivets kampsoldater træner de sådan tilskyndet med mange mange mavebøjninger, og de lærer at skrige sammen før slaget: Jeg er komplet ligeglad med, hvad andre tænker om mig. Og: Agressivitet er bedre end passivitet.

Gustafssons elegante tv-dokumentar er lige ved, men kun lige ved at blive en rigtig, rigtig klog film. Men den fortaber sig i sine registreringer, sine fine, fine lytninger og iagttagelser, kontrolleret nervøst filmet og flot, flot klippet i en pulserende urolighed, som aldrig bliver rod, som trods jeg hele tiden synes, jeg keder mig, holder mig fast hen over krisepunktet i nærheden af 30 minutter. Igen en film, som vokser og vokser. Imidlertid når den ikke frem til analysens sammenfatning, den siger vist nok, for mig skuffende, at den vil overlade læsningen til mig. Men jeg er ikke interesseret i drengene, jeg er interesseret i Gustavssons anliggende i feltet mellem journalistik og filmkunst, men han giver ikke noget fra sig at læse. I stedet får den charmerende direktør for akademiet det sidste ord. Hos tatovøren ligger han og får sit (og filmens?) credo printet med temmelig vandfast blæk i sin arm: “Med disciplin, målbevidsthed, ærlighed, mod og kærlighed kan du opnå alt det, du sætter dig for. Den rigtige indstilling betyder alt, og ingen vil se mig give op. Fordi jeg vil simpelthen ikke.”

Anders Gustafsson: Succesjægerne, Danmark 2011, 40 min. Manuskript: Anders Gustafsson, fotografi: Anders Gustafsson og Niels Thastum, klip: Anja Farsig og Rasmus Steensgaard Madsen, produktion: Plus Pictures, producer: Mette Heide. Sendt på TV2 maj, 2012. Set på Filmstriben.dk

Glawogger Visits Copenhagen

NY Times brought the most precise headline to an article about the films of Austrian filmmaker Michael Glawogger’s impressive work: A World of Troubled Beauty – referring to his trilogy ”Megacities”, ”Workingman’s Death” and ”Whore’s Glory”.

The latter, ”Whore’s Glory” – in the presence of the director – having met him on similar occasions I can guarantee an interesting debate and a clever insight to what filmmaking is – is screened in Copenhagen in Cinemateket August 24.

I can only say, buy yourself a ticket and if you want to know more, use the links below.

http://www.whoresglory.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/movies/a-look-inside-the-films-of-michael-glawogger.html

http://www.dfi.dk/Filmhuset/Arrangementer/Arrangementer-i-Filmhuset/2012/August-2012/Moed-Michael-Glawogger.aspx

Georges Franju

A great director, not very well known today, but for this film blogger his “Le Sang des betes” (1949, 22 mins.) from a slaughterhouse in the Parisian suburb, is a unique  masterpiece in the history of documentary films. The film can be bought through Aamazon or watched in different language version on YouTube. If you happen to be in Donostia late September, you will able to see more of Franju’s oeuvre. This is taken from the site of the festival in San Sebastian:

French filmmaker Georges Franju is to be the subject of one the retrospectives programmed for the 60th San Sebastian Festival to take place from 21-29 September 2012.

Georges Franju (12-4-1912 / 5-11-1987) was an enormously influential figure in French film culture. In 1936 he founded the Cinémathèque Française with Henri Langlois. His career as a director began in 1949 with documentaries, a field to which he contributed some of the greatest titles ever in the genre. His early works – Le Sang des bêtes, Hôtel des Invalides and En passant par la Lorraine – already demonstrated his particular talent for filming reality from unexpected angles, a trait leading in these testimonial films to a sensitivity akin to surrealism and expressionism.

Franju’s obsession with putting his finger on the inexpressible poetry of things through his lens stayed with him as he moved on to feature films with La Tête contre les murs (Head Against the Wall,1958), followed by Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face,1959), considered to be a masterpiece of fantasy film. His fascination with popular culture, with the feuilleton soap-operas and silent film serials, is clearly visible in movies like Pleins feux sur l’assassin (1960), Judex (1963) and Nuits rouges (1974), true exercises in style striving to recover the innocence of those old narrations of intrigue and mystery in an obvious vindication of film as visual, narrative pleasure. But Franju was also known for his skilful adaptations of classic literary works on which he unfailingly left his personal stamp: François Mauriac (Thérèse Desqueyroux / Therese, 1962), Émile Zola (La faute de l’Abbé Mouret / The Demise of Father Mouret, 1970), Joseph Conrad (La Ligne d’ombre, 1973) and Jean Cocteau (Thomas l’imposteur / Thomas the Imposter, 1964). Today unjustly forgotten, Franju’s work enjoyed great critical acclaim in its time and earned him the admiration of the young filmmakers of the nouvelle vague.

http://www.sansebastianfestival.com/in/

The Ambassador / Legal Actions from Liberia

It already created problems at the premiere at the idfa (Amsterdam) festival in November last year, and now Danish newspapers reveal a new controversy around the Danish documentary “The Ambassador” by Mads Brügger, who appears in his film as the diplomat, Mr. Cortzen. The website of EDN (European Documentary Network), in general a must-read site for documentary professionals, has made an excellent summary of the current case. Read it all, here is a quote:

… In his documentary The Ambassador, Mads Brügger dresses up as a neo-colonialist and sets off for the Central African Republic to impersonate the Liberian consul, a tittle he has bought himself into. Brügger sets up a match factory run by pygmies as a cover for his ambitions in diamond trafficking. But Brügger is really there to document how the power in the country is allotted and traded… The Liberian Government issued a press release on July 30, 2012 where the Government threatens to take legal actions against Mads Brügger. In the press release it is stated that:

“The Government of Liberia finds this action by Mr. Cortzen to not only be immoral but criminal and offensive to the government and people of Liberia. 

http://www.edn.dk/

Filmkommentaren First Five Years

Five years ago Allan Berg called me to pitch an idea he had: Should we make a film blog where we could express opinions and spread information on our common passion: Films. Allan (who lives in Randers in Denmark, whereas I live in Copenhagen, the two cities being 4 hours train distance from each other) organised what became filmkommentaren.dk with a local webbureau Infoserv that has the motto ”keep IT simple”. Which we have done, kept it simple: text + photo + links where our readers can find more info and clips and trailers. Ambition: an average of one text per day. All year round.

We decided that Allan should stay with Danish as his language for posted texts – I went for English, the language I use when teaching and tutoring around the world. For four years we got a generous 50-50 start and IT maintenance support from the local FOF (Denmark’s largest provider of adult liberal education) but no financial support from anyone. Well, once we applied to the DFI (Danish Film Institute) for a small help to cover the basic costs but got a no because ”there are so many film websites so that would make a precedent to support you”, words to that effect. So filmkommentaren.dk is totally con amore, and we have been happy to invite other Aficionados to post texts.

Here we are five years later, this text being blogpost/text number 2082. We have never really discussed editorial lines, we have written about what we wanted to write about: reviews, festival reports, notes, quotes from other media, comments, we have created smaller and bigger discussions. The focus has been the documentary film.

The first two texts were reviews of ”Forever” by Heddy Honigmann and ”Ghosts of Cité Soleil” by Asger Leth, that was back in August 2007, where we also wrote about Bergman and Antonioni, who died late July that year, and where we visited and covered the yearly documentary gathering of the DFI at the European Film College.

Statistics – We have had 96.521 visits in 2012 until this day, 39.351 so-called unique visitors. We are very happy for the interest. Thank you, readers!

Christian Braad Thomsen: Blues for Montmartre

Det er en rent ud bevægende film om et smultronställe, et sted at høre til. Det er en film om en personlig erindring om et sted i fortiden, som ikke er mere, men som så er her igen. Her i filmen. Redux. Og det mest bevægende er filmens bekendelse af en fejltagelse: musikeren på fotografiet, Ben Webster var dengang overvurderet af de andre, fordi han holdt fast i det fortidige, mens han, filmens fortæller, var interesseret i avant garden. Nu indser fortælleren / instruktøren, at Webster måske var den største, den vigtigste, selve indbegrebet af Copenheaven, det gamle Montmartre, det klassiske Montmartre. Og den dejlige film topper følgelig med afstnittet om ham, om Ben Webster, som spiller balladen og lige netop dette afgørende sted retter intensitetskurven op på denne blues. Tak for musikaliteten. Tak til klipperen. Tak til Grete Møldrup.  

Filmens fortæller er naturligvis Braad Thomsen selv, og han har, igen naturligvis, selv lagt stemme til. Christian Braad Thomsen skriver og læser nok en af de smukkeste fortællerstemmer i dansk film, en af de fire-fem, jeg kan tænke på i en sådan sammenligning. Jeg er så tryg, hver gang han åbner en af sine film med endnu en af sine fine fortællestemmer. Der sker undervejs somme tider det, at teksten svækkes, slår over i simpel humor, causerende afslapning eller anekdoter. Ja, det sker da også her, men det tilgiver jeg her, det gør jeg ikke andre steder. Det uforglemmelige afsnit med Webster retter også det op. Filmen får atter storhed.

For der er mange afsnit som det med den store musiker, der er dertil det ene fremragende interview efter det andet, monolitiske filminterviews som i Karen Blixen filmen, i Morten Korch filmen. De er en insisterende Braad Thomsen specialitet. Hvor er det godt, at han insisterer. Og fortsætter, fortsætter.

Christian Braad Thomsen: Blues for Montmartre, DK 2011, 83 min. Manuskript: Christian Braad Thomsen, fotografi: Steen Møller Rasmussen, klip: Grete Møldrup, produktion: Kollektiv Film, producer: Charlotte Vinter. Kan ses på Filmstriben.dk

DocsBarcelona 2013

Info to our film professional readers:

The 16th edition of DocsBarcelona will take place May 28 – June 2.

In other words, the event will be moved away from the freezingly cold weather in Barcelona in February 2012, where the 15th edition of DocsBarcelona took place, to a place in the calendar where films and film projects can be discussed in outdoor cafés – well there could even be outdoor screenings!? (And as I know from experience that many documentarians are football fans – Barca plays its last home game on Camp Nou, June 1st).

For the pitching part of DocsBarcelona the registration process will start on December 2012. The deadline to submit a project is April 4th 2013.

For the film festival part of DocsBarcelona it is important to mention that the festival does not hold an open call for entries. Each section has a programmer that makes his/her own selection. This film blogger is one of them, keep me informed!

Photo: Last year’s festival winner, ”At Night they Dance” by Canadian Isabelle Lavigne and 
Stéphane Thibault.

http://www.docsbarcelona.com/

DocLisboa 2012

The fine documentary festival in the capital of Portugal celebrates its 10th edition this year, October 18-28. There are changes in the direction, which is now a collective, and there are exciting novelties in the programme. Here is the press release from the festival sent out today:

Cinema of Urgency and Green Years are two new festival sections : Cinema of Urgency brings together films that document and witness events that challenge filmmakers to rethink cinema in terms of direct action and concrete exercise of citizenship. Green Years embraces a selection of films produced in the context of schools for video, film and audio-visual communication, as well as in post-graduate courses related to cinema and in particular to documentary film.

In its 10th edition, the doclisboa will present two retrospectives : United We Stand, Divided We Fall and Chantal Akerman.

United We Stand United We Fall, a retrospective programmed by Italian film curator Federico Rossin, will present collective films that emerged during the 1960s to 1980s and focuses on the moments in which the political and social struggle forced the reinvention of cinematic practice and the status of the author.

In partnership with the Portuguese Cinematheque – Film Museum, the doclisboa will host a full retrospective of Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, questioning documentary film and its relationship to other

cinematic and artistic practices.

The Festival includes as usual the sections International Competition, a selection of some of the best documentaries coming from all over the world, and National Competition presenting some of the best Portuguese documentaries completed during the last year.

In addition, the Festival counts with the sections Investigations (films that ask contemporary questions and explore cinema as a tool to investigate reality), New Visions (section curated by Augusto M. Seabra and projecting to challenge common categories and formats of documentary) and Heart Beat (section that proposes documentaries based on their relationship with music and the performing arts).

The complete schedule will be announced in September.

The new direction of the Festival, composed of Ana Jordão, Cinta Pelejà, Cíntia Gil and Susana de Sousa Dias (Photo), works as a collective understanding cinema as something to be shared and open to plurality, and is aware of the fact that organizing work collectively is at the same time a political statement.

http://www.doclisboa.org/2012/en/home/