It has so many layers this Israeli documentary about a man, who lives in the middle of Tel Aviv and suffers from the noisy surroundings, to the point where he goes bananas, and into an action with surveillance cameras and loudspeakers to identify and scare the noise-makers. He is a filmmaker, this man, he has a family with kids, he has a wife, who tells the story to us in a third-person manner, until she objects to his total obsession and sort of “enters” the narrative.

The point of view is his. He is the one, who shouts to groups of people passing by, or has the police come and ask a homeless person to move from his resting place outside the window of the appartment of the director “with the hyper-acoustic sensittivity” (from the publicity material). He is the one, who goes to the neighbours to ask them to calm down, and he is the one who constantly has a row with drivers, who park their cars in “his” street.

All this forms the fun part of the story, but the film also takes you to hear about how the nazi used sound as a torture instrument, as do many armies and police forces nowadays. The story progresses from the daily, banal noise damage on an individual – that you can easily identify with – to become a small Orwellian metaphor for a society where measures are taken to control communication and movements. It is a style that also another Israeli filmmaker, Avi Mograbi, has been using in several of his critical, political comedies. “Noise” carries succesfully the same tense, funny, critical reflection on a society full of noise on several levels.  

Israel, 72/59 mins.

http://www.docaviv.co.il/en/2012/films/1537

http://www.JMTFilms.com/

Filmmaker and DoxBox Campus organiser Diana el Jeiroudi posted this text on facebook one hour ago:

“I lost a dear friend and colleague. Syria lost Syrian Filmmaker Bassel Shihadeh who was killed by a mortar grenade in Homs  this evening. My condolences to humanity .. at large..”

At DoxBox last year in Damascus Bassel was one of the filmmakers, who developed and presented “Brakes” at the pitch session at the Danish Institute. His film project was awarded as the best by the international panelists present. Bassel, Dox Box Campus alumni, was full of energy and charm and talent.

Really touching to see how his Syrian friends and colleagues one after the other change their facebook profile photos to the one you see. Condolences.

Redaktionen gik på udstilling i den københavnske kunstforenings fine lokaler. Allan Berg, den udstillingskyndige, blev bedt om sin vurdering. Den er generøs for nu at bruge ét af Jørgen Leths egne yndlingsudtryk, sagde Berg, da vi spiste fiskefrikadeller på Diamanten lige ved siden af med udsigt til store fotostater på et plankeværk foran kanalen: Andy Warhol der spiser en burger i ”66 Scener fra Amerika”, Leth selv foran det store lærred i Bombay i ”De fem benspænd”, Bud Powell, et sort/hvid billede fra ”Stopforbud”, det tidlige jazz-værk, han skabte sammen med Ole John.

Det er jo det hele, det næsten samlede værk, fortsatte Berg, digtene, filmene, Moleskinnotesbøgerne, teksterne på plancher, Leths stemme og hans flotte samling af malerier og skulpturer fra Haiti. Det er materialer, og ikke biografi, og det er et rigtigt valg. Et højdepunkt er den lille kulisse, hvor man kan sætte sig ned og se Lene Adler Petersen i ”Ofelias blomster”, en lille ofte overset perle. Et andet er optagelserne fra castingen af unge kvinder til ”Det erotiske menneske”, indimellem hylende morsomt.

En enkelt lille indvending mod den manglende sammenhæng mellem lyd og billede i et rum, hvor der på væggen vises klip fra Leths favoritøjeblikke i hans elskede Tour de France, samtidig med at han taler om disse øjeblikke. Det følges bare ikke ad.

Hvis jeg havde mulighed for det, sagde Berg, der bor i Randers, ville jeg gå ind og se alle filmene én gang til. Det får man lyst til og det kan man nemlig på udstillingen med den nu 75-årige mesters herlige oeuvre.

Åben til 12. august.

http://www.glstrand.dk/udstillinger_aktuel.htm

… with the subtitle: A Cinematographic Journey with Victor Kossakovsky, and indeed it is, a true pleasure to travel with the director while he is shooting his masterpiece ”Vivan las Antipodas”. The Chilean director frames the film with his own observations and longing for Patagonia, he observes Kossakovsky in action dealing with his crew, organising the shoot, changing a bit on the nature he wants in the picture, communicating with the protagonists, and puts some clever questions to him at the editing, and in breaks of the shooting, or in a car. There is some arguing between the man in front of the camera and the man behind, Kossakovsky can get pissed, you see and hear that, and Klein catches that as well, but the film is first of all a very well made, warm and intriguing meeting with a director at work, and secondly a dialogue between two filmmakers.

Oh, to see Kossakovsky film the scene with the Siberian women singing. The camera stays on the profile of the director at his camera during the whole song, totally overwhelmed emotionally he is by the beauty of the situation and the song. Kossakovsky appears as a director with the ambition to give us, the viewers, something to remember, and feel. ”I just want people to be happy when they watch it”, ”who created this endless beauty” (that he shows us in the film), always in his limited charming English, ”the film is about planet, cows, stones, you just have to open your eyes, and it is all there”, ”I want people to be happy that such people exist”… and so on, so forth.

But also about problems as when music is to be composed… ”in every film I lost a friend”, he sighs, ”we need helicopter”, he says in Shanghai, while the production people make the outrageous budget calculation. Next clip, Shanghai from above! You can keep on quoting Kossakovsky, the emotional bear who jumps around hugging people, expressing his enthusiasm over life and its beauty to everyone at the same time, as he seems to know exactly what he wants. The strong bear who in other scenes appears like a sad, spoilt baby. Thanks to Klein for giving us all this and thanks also for giving us a film that is a must for all professionals and film students, who want to see how passion and commitment look like. As an invitation to discuss documentary filmmaking, it is a must.

Switzerland/Germany/Chile, 2012,  90 mins.

www.wherethecondorsfly.com 

Documentation from Syria taken from FB: Since the beginning of the Annan Initiative, 1,401 martyrs have been documented by the Local Coordinating Committees of Syria (LCCS) in cooperation with the Violations and Documentation Center (VDC). Since the beginning of the ambiguous Annan’s deadline, 1,401 martyrs are documented, including 101 children (83 males, 18 females), 70 women, and 41 martyrs died under torture in the difference Security Branches. The distributions are as follows: Homs paid the heaviest price with 499 martyrs, 243 in Idlib, 176 in Hama,135 in Damascus Suburbs,86 in Daraa, 86 in Aleppo, 77 in Deir Ezzor, and 73 in Damascus.

Regime forces continued to violate the initiative by bombing various cities and towns endangering the lives of the UN international observers. In addition to the widespread torture campaigns, destruction of private property, and torching of homes, regime forces escalated the violence by firing live ammunition on peaceful student demonstrations on University Campuses across Syria