Filmkommentaren received this fresh and happy summer report from the Magnificent 7 team, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, in Belgrade – after the open air screenings at the Belgrade Fortress, July 9-11:

Dear Tue. We had three wonderful evenings with films on music in the open air. Blessed with sky full of stars.

It was fantastic hip-hop opening and we had great big screen and powerful sound that rocked! A lot of young people, of corse, but also some of people of our age, traditional M7 audience. It was crowded and a lot of people were sitting and lying on big pillows right in front of the screen. (Film: The Furious Force of Rhymes. Director: Joshua Ateh Litle).

The most beutiful evening was with Lagrimas Negras. Ay, ay ay! All we needed was you and Sonia Herman Dolz (director) and Carmen Cobos! The place was full, overcrowded with peoplesatanding around. Again a lot of them laying on big pillows under the magic screen. The screening was indeed full of magic and everyone enjoyed every minute of the film. The vivid images of Cuba, music, love and all film craft was in full power. We were under the spells of Lagrimas negras!

The third evening was dedicated to the hypnotic music of Simeon ten Holt, Canto Ostinato (director Ramon Gieling). And it enchanted Serbs as well as it did with the Dutch in the film. We had Sonia and Iva (colleagues from M7 team) with us and they both loved the film.

And to conclude, we had nice screenings starting very late, at 11pm, but there were people who loved staying with Saudade do futuro (Marie-Clémence and Cesar Paës), El sonido del bandoneon (Jiska Riskels) (photo) and Regilaul, die Lieder aus der Luft (Ulrike Koch). Going back home after the last screening, some time around 1 after midnight, we were approached by one of the most dedicated film-goers for decades and he told as that he enjoyed every film like he always did at M7!

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/pages/BelefNajava_eng.html

The festival in neighbouring country to Georgia, Armenia, started yesterday. This 9th Yerevan International Film Festival runs until July 15 and has a fine international documentary competitive section within its red carpet profile programme that has Agnieszka Holland and Alexander Sokurov as honorary guests.

No surprise that the festival has decided to show ”5 Broken Cameras”, ”Planet of Snail” and ”Special Flight”, titles that go everywhere, deservedly, but bravo that Georgian Salomé Jashi’s ”Bakhmaro” will be screened, as well as local Bars Media’s long awaited ”Donkeymentary”, Goran Radovanovic newest ”With Fidel, Whatever Happens”, Turkish Enis Riza’s ”Recycling Life – I found Dostoyevsky in the Garbage” and Marc Weymuller’s ”La vie au loin” (photo).

So-called industry activities also pop up at the Golden Apricot. As example EDN’s Mikael Opstrup holds a documentary masterclass on funding and has individual meetings with documentarians attending the festival.

http://www.gaiff.am/en

Young Georgy Molodtsov, participant at the first session of DocStories, film director graduated from VGIK 2008, took the floor on the last morning to – with great commitment and energy – introduce the work that is being done to promote the documentary around the Moscow International Film Festival, MIFF, and the connected screenings during the year on TV Kultura, that so far have included 45 films.

At the festival that like last year (where this blogger was in the jury reporting from the festival) showed 25 documentaries with 7 in competiton – the winner was ”Searching for Sugarman” (photo) by Malik Bendjelloul with “Ambassador” by Mads Brügger having the Audience Prize.

Molodtsov, who is very much involved in the work of the festival together with strong names like director Sergey Miroshnichenko and film critic and programmer Grigory Libergal, the same team that stands behind the weekly documentary slot “Watching and Discussing” on TV Kultura, explained that this programme runs Saturdays at 10 or 11pm, that there is a strong press coverage, that it is not possible to analyse exactly how many viewers it has, that experience now shows that films about post-Soviet life are the most popular with the example of Marianna Kaat’s “Pit No 8” that had more viewers than Oscar-winning “Man on Wire”. The discussions, Molodtsov said, take place in a studio with a focus on the subject. The films are not subtitled but dubbed.

He also mentioned the channel 24Doc that shows many documentaries, recently Marina Goldovskaja’s “A Bitter Taste of Freedom” on her murdered friend Anna Politkovskoja, as well as the excellent documentary website Miradox, run by Ludmila Nazaruk, who also stands behind the St. Petersburg based DoxPro training initiative.  

http://www.gnfc.ge/

http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/eng/

http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/miff34/eng/programs/?id=4151

http://www.miradox.ru/

There are often too many viewings, too many opinions which can make the directors confused trying to please everybody and thereby losing their own voice, said Menno Boerema, Dutch editor, at the first session of the DocStories Black Sea workshop in Tbilisi. The words fell before he showed the film ”Jungle Rudy” by Rob Smits that he did the final editing of after the film had suffered a crisis. According to Boerema because the editing had had ”too many cooks”

The wise words of Boerema make me think about the numerous workshops, seminars, markets and training schemes where rough cut screenings are introduced. The director of the Sunny Side of the Doc, Yves Jeanneau, said in an interview, arguing for why the market had included this element: This is the reality of the market – referring to the fact that tv commissioners most often today tell the filmmakers to come back with a rought cut…

Might be right, but do the rough cut screenings which include a small bit of the film screened in front of 50 or 25 people really serve the purpose of making the films better/ to improve the phase of the final cut coming up? No, of course not. What can work, to my opinion, is small intense sessions like the one here in Tbilisi, or like the one at DocsBarcelona where we have handpicked 5 professionals, who are used to watch rough cuts to watch versions which are almost finished, close to the final cut and comment on that WITHOUT trying to be editors as they are not.

It is a question of respect for the art of documentary, for the filmmakers – nothing wrong with showing material to others but if it is only for the sake of selling? And many people are not used to watch rough cuts, for sure, my long experience has told me.

Photo: Johan van der Keuken’s The Long Holiday, edited by Menno Boerema

http://www.gnfc.ge/

During the first session of the doc storytelling workshop DocStories Black Sea presentations were made. One was – naturally – about the Georgian National Film Center, whose director Tamara Tatishvili (photo) came up with a very clear and encouraging status of the Georgian cinema in its present situation, financially and film politically with a focus on its involvement with documentaries. The Center, that was set up in 2001, is also a member of Eurimages, from November last year and has already, Tamara Tatishvili told, got more back for coproductions than the government has given out to be a member of Eurimages. All in all the presentation gave the impression of a professionally run public institution in a small country where documentaries are given a priority.

There is 1.4 mio.€ channelled to the Center yearly, and there is 775.000€ for film from other sources. There are two competitons per year, committees decide on the allocation of the funding – for documentaries there is 120.000€ for production. 7 documentaries came out last year supported by the Center.

Tatishvili told that she on behalf of the Center had signed an agreement with the public broadcaster to have a weekly slot for documentaries starting from September this year with films supported by the Center.

Also to be noticed is the impressive publication Filmprint (in English) that the Center publishes.

7 Georgian documentarians took part in the first session in the Goethe Institute in Tbilisi. 

http://www.gnfc.ge/

The first session of the new documentary storytelling workshop DocStories with around 20 participants from the countries surrounding the Black Sea is coming to an end in wonderful Tbilisi, Georgia. Films have been screened and discussed and analysed, and the filmmakers projects – some at an early stage of development, some rough cuts – have been turned around and commented and advised upon by the colleagues and invited tutors like the filmmakers Aliona van der Horst from Holland, Alina Rudnitskaya from Russia, the editor Menno Boerema (editor of several of Johan van der Keuken’s work) and the dramaturg Dirk Willemsen, both from Holland as well – and this blogger.

The workshop has been set up by Romanian Ileana Stanculescu and Georgian Artchil Khetagouri, both directors, their last film being ”Noosfera” (photo), reviewed on this blog.

Among the films shown were Johan van der Keuken’s classic film essay, ”The Long Holiday”, his last film made after he got to know that he had prostate cancer, ”Boris Rhyzy” by van der Horst, three films by Rudnitskaya and ”Souvenirs” by Shahar Cohen and Halil Efrat.

Discussions were held around different storytelling approaches like the observational, the essayistic, the hybrid of fiction and observation as well as looking at the characteristics of the documentary road movie.

Next session takes place in October in Sibiu in Romania parallel to the Astra documentary film festival.

http://www.docstories-blacksea.com/

http://www.astrafilm.ro