Chainsaw Massacre on Canadian Documentary

Below there is a posting on the upcoming HotDocs documentary film festival in Toronto and the budget cutdown of legendary NFB, National Film Board. Realscreen makes a follow-up on the story that also involves the broadcaster CBC’s documentary commitment as well as the Telefilm Canada, the federaæ agency for support of Theatrical documentaries. In the Realscreen article – written by Adam Benzine – read the whole article, link below, the director John Kastner expresses the anger like this:

““Canadian documentaries are on the critical list these days, as one broadcaster after another retreats from the documentary business. What was desperately needed here was the most delicate surgery to resuscitate a great Canadian art form, one that is hemorrhaging badly. What we got was the ‘Tory Chainsaw Massacre.’

“Why should the Canadian public care? Canadians face a challenge unique in the world: the overpowering cultural influence of U.S. television and movies. Perhaps no other country’s national identity is threatened this way as we are. The danger posed by the cutbacks is not just that broadcasters will air fewer Canadian TV shows and the NFB make fewer Canadian films, it is that our children will end up behaving increasingly like Americans because American life is mostly what they will see on our TV and movie screens.”

It is kind of back to the start of the NFB that was set up to make films on Canada for the Canadians. And which brought us great works by Pierre Perrault, Michel Brault, Colin Low, Roman Kroitor and Wolf Koenig. Photo from “Lonely Boy” (about Paul Anka) by Kroitor & Koenig.

http://realscreen.com/2012/04/18/canadian-doc-makers-slam-cutbacks-we-are-dropping-like-flies/#ixzz1sPdagKOG

Marina Goldovskaja: A Bitter Taste of Freedom

“En bedre dokumentarfilm om den myrdede russiske journalist Anna Politkovskaja end den prisbelønnede ‘A Bitter Taste of Freedom’ er næppe mulig”, så håndfast begynder Vibeke Sperling sin omtale af filmen i Politiken. Det handler ikke alene om Politkovskajas afdækning af krigens rædsler ved sine berømte reportager fra Tjetjenien, ”hun viste også tilbageslaget for demokrati overalt i Rusland, efter at Putin rykkede ind i Kreml i 2000.” Marina Goldovskaja har netop kombineret disse journalistiske indsatser, hvortil kommer, at hun, da hun studerede ved filmskolen i Moskva og lavede A Taste of Freedom om Gorbatjov-tiden, havde Anna Polikovskaja og hendes mand, Sasja Politkovskij som medvirkende i filmen, og at Goldovskaja efter dette fortsatte med at følge Anna Politkovskaja med filmoptagelser til kort før, hun blev myrdet eller likvideret 7. oktober 2006. Samme dag opfordrede sønnen og datteren Marina Goldovskaja til at lave filmen om deres mor færdig.

MARINA GOLDOVSKAJA

De kendte formodentlig hinanden godt og gennem mange år, de kendte til de løbende filmoptagelser, og de vidste naturligvis, at deres mor og filminstruktøren delte synspunkter. Filmen fik premiere foråret 2011 på filmfestivalen Tempo i Stockholm, august sidste år var den bedste dokumentar på filmfestivalen i Montreal. Marina Goldovskaja (født 1941) er da også en erfaren filminstruktør, hun har mere end 30 film bag sig. En gruppe på 15 dokumentarfilm skildrer stadier i Ruslands udvikling siden Sovjetunionens opløsning. I dag lever og arbejder Goldovskaja i Los Angeles, hvor hun er lærer på en filmskole samtidig med, hun følger udviklingen i de arabiske lande, som hun ser som en parallel til den russiske, og arbejder på en dvd-udgivelse med alle sine optagelser med Anna Politkovskaja.

ANNA POLITKOVSKAJA

(1958-2006) var en systemkritisk, russisk journalist, som gentagne gange i sine artikler og bøger påpegede russiske overtrædelser af menneskerettighederne. Hun er især kendt for sin dækning af krigen i Tjetjenien , som korrespondent for avisen Novaja Gazeta. Da hun i 2004 var på vej i fly til Beslan for at følge gidseltragedien på Skole 1, blev hun tilsyneladende forgiftet. Men hun overlevede og fortsatte arbejdet på avisen, til hun en oktoberdag 2006 blev dræbt med flere pistolskud, en stadigvæk uopklaret forbrydelse.

VIGTIGE BIPERSONER

Mikhail Gorbatjov (født 1931). Sovjetunionens leder 1985-1991, altså til og med unionens opløsning. Han havde med reformprogrammet Glasnost (åbenhed) og Perestrojka (omstrukturering) søgt fundamentalt at ændre og stabilisere unionens grundlag. Modtog i 1990 Nobels Fredspris for sit udenrigspolitiske arbejde med international afspænding og afrustning.

Boris Jeltsin (1931-2007) Ruslands præsident 1991-1999. Under ham kom invasionen 1994 i Tjetjenien, begyndelsen til 1. tjetjenske krig.

Vladimir Putin(født 1952) Udpeget af Jeltsin til Ruslands midlertidige præsident i 1999. Valgt præsident i to perioder 2000- 2008, premierminister 2008-2012, præsident igen fra 2012.

VIGTIGE TEMAER

De to tjetjenske krige. Ved Sovjetunionens opløsning søgte tjetjenerne national selvstændighed. Efter en krig mellem russiske tropper og en tjetjensk oprørsbevægelse 1994-1998 blev denne 1. tjetjenske krig vundet af oprørerne og en selvstændig tjetjensk stat var en realitet. I 1999, da Vladimir Putin var premierminister, følte den russiske regering sig provokeret til at invadere Tjetjenien med stor styrke. Russerne satte sig fast, men modstanden fortsatte, og fortsætter som guerilla-krig i Tjetjenien og med terroraktioner inde i Rusland. Så egentlig er 2. tjetjenske krig ikke afsluttet.

Dubrovka er et teater i Moskva, som 23.-26. oktober 2002 blev udsat for et gidseldrama. Omkring 40 tjetjenske oprørere tog i teatret 912 personer, publikum og teaterfolk om gidsler. Efter tre døgn stormede russiske specialstyrker teatret. Alle gidseltagerne og 129 gidsler blev dræbt ved den timelange kamp. Anna Politkovskaja var blandt den række kendte personer, som under gidseltagningen prøvede at mægle.

Breslan er en by i den russiske republik Nordossetien, hvor en skole 1.-3. september 2004 blev besat af en tjetjensk ledet gruppe oprørere, der tog omkring 1200 børn og voksne som gidsler. På tredjedagen kom det til voldsom kamp mellem gidseltagerne og ossetiske og russiske sikkerhedsstyrker. 334 gidsler mistede livet, og alle gidseltagere på nær én blev dræbt. Anna Politkovskaja forsøgte som nævnt forgæves at komme til stede for at dække begivenhederne journalistisk.

Novaja Gazeta er Anna Politkovskajas avis. Hun og tre andre journalister ved avisen er i perioden 2001-2009. Avisen linje er kritisk og undersøgende journalistik. Avisens papirudgave kommer nu tre gange om ugen, den ejes af medarbejderne med 51% af aktierne, finansmanden og politikeren Alexander Lebedev har sammen med Mikhail Gorbatjov de resterende 49%.

KARISMATISK JOURNALISTIK

En medvirkende i filmen forholder sig kritisk til Politkovskaja som journalist, hun overholder ikke journalistikkens regler om objektivitet, Tøger Seidenfaden er i sit forord til Politkovskajas Russisk dagbog (2007) inde på det samme: ”… og hendes indignation, sarkasme, vrede og desperation over det hun oplevede, sprængte ikke sjældent rammerne for den i vores del af verden fremherskende, tilstræbte objektivitet i journalistikken.” Vibeke Sperling foreslår imidlertid: ”… ’A Bitter Taste of Freedom’ kan anbefales som pensum på journalistuddannelserne. For den er et gribende, men usentimentalt lærestykke i, hvad karismatisk og modig dybdeborende journalistik er som bedrevet af Anna Politkovskaja, der var rædselsslagen for alle truslerne mod hende, men bare ikke kunne lade være med at gøre sit arbejde.”

Marina Goldovskaja: A Bitter Taste of Freedom, Sverige / USA, 2011. 86 min. Producent: Dixit og Goldfilms, producer Malmcolm Dixelius. Litt.: Vibeke Sperling: Frihedens bitre eftersmag, Politiken 8. oktober 2011. Tøger Seidenfaden: Det forudsigelige martyrium, forord til den danske oversættelse af Anna Politkovskaja: Russisk dagbog (2007). En anden film om Anna Politkovskaja, Eric Bergkrauts Letter to Anna, 2008, 84 min. findes med danske undertekster og kan lånes på biblioteket.

 

Ib Bondebjerg: Virkelighedsbilleder/ 2

In Danish a late promotion for en aften med Anne Wivel og Eva Mulvad, der taler med Ib Bondebjerg i anledning af hans bog ”Virkelighedsbilleder”.

Cinemateket fortjener igen ros for at tage dette initiativ. 213 minutter – i følge programkataloget – er sat af til et fokus på portrætdokumentaren og vise Anne Wivels ”Svend” (2011) og Eva Mulvads ”Vore lykkes fjender” (2008), to meget vellykkede eksempler på film af høj kunstnerisk kvalitet.

At Anne Wivels film blev forbigået ved såvel Bodil- og Robert-prisuddelingerne, hvor Mads Brüggers ”Ambassadøren” blev kåret som årets danske dokumentar, er skammeligt for såvel kritikerne (Bodil) som kollegerne (Robert). Publikum vidste bedre, ”Svend” blev set at 35.000 i biografen, ”Ambassadøren” af 16.000.

Arrangementet finder sted i Cinemateket torsdag den 19. April kl. 19

www.dfi.dk

Herzog on Death, Danger and the End of the World

Steve Rose from The Guardian brings Saturday April 14 a very interesting article on and interview with Werner Herzog, whose ”Into the Abyss” is screened all over the world in these months. I have taken out this quote from the article that you should definitely read in its full version:

”Into The Abyss (photo) is not overtly about capital punishment. Herzog describes it more as “an American Gothic” – a survey of a Texan landscape of poverty, intoxication, incarceration and death. But he’s explicit about his opposition to the death penalty: “I was born when Nazi Germany was still around, and simply because of all the atrocities and the genocide and euthanasia, I just can’t be an advocate of capital punishment. There’s something fundamentally wrong in my opinion, but I would be the last one to tell the American people how to handle criminal justice.”

As well as the documentary, he made another four 50-minute documentaries interviewing other death row inmates. “Not interviewing,” he corrects me. “I’m not a journalist; I’m a poet. I had a discourse, an encounter with these people but I never had a list of questions.””

Into The Abyss is out on DVD and Blu-ray on 30 April.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/apr/14/werner-herzog-into-the-abyss

Humphrey Jennings: Listen to Britain

It is still pure pleasure to watch the 17 minutes long short masterly montaged documentary masterpiece by British Jennings, the first of his war-time trilogy. And bravo for the BFI (British Film Institute) for publishing the film, and other films by the director in a double dvd, where the second comes out the 23rd of April.

And also bravo for the Guardian that often brings knowledge about film historical issues to the knowledge of its readers. This is what they wrote as intro to the small clip from the film:

Humphrey Jennings’s work for the Crown Film Unit in the 1940s gives us a fascinating insight into Britain during wartime. Here, in a clip from his 1942 short film Listen to Britain, we get a glimpse of his talent for picking out the details in the lives of ordinary people that was acclaimed by the likes of Lindsay Anderson and Kevin Macdonald.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film

http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/info_20521.html

Docaviv 2012

The international documentary festival in Tel Aviv, that takes place May 3-12, opens, like the Canadian HotDocs, with Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry by Alison Klayman, and another upcoming hit, Marley by Kevin MacDonald is also offered the Israeli audience.

The festival programme includes an Israeli as well as an International and a Student Competition programme, AND a lot of good works in Special Screenings from all over the world. Films to be noticed in the international section is Petr Lom’s Back to the Square, the idfa winner Planet of Snail by Yi Seungjun and the excellent work of master Marcel Lozinski Tonia and her Children (Photo), which has not travelled as much as it deserved.

From the Israeli competition attention should be drawn to the film by Miri and Erez Laufer, One Day after Peace, a cinematic humanistic appeal, here is the catalogue description:

“Can the means used to resolve the conflict in South Africa be applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Robi Damelin, who experienced both conflicts firsthand, wonders. She was born in South Africa during the apartheid era; later on she lost her son during his service with the Israeli army reserve in the Occupied Territories. She embarked on a journey back to South Africa to learn more about the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission established to overcome years of enmity. Damelin’s thought-provoking journey is driven by deep personal pain and a strong belief that a better future is possible.”

Other films that will please the audience are Audrius Stonys Ramain, Steve James The Interrupters, Alina Rudnitskaya’s I will forget this Day and Sean MacAllister’s The Reluctant Revolutionary 

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

Petr Lom: Back to the Square

Of course the director goes back to the Tahrir Square in Cairo, the symbolic location for the Egyptian revolution but one of the many qualities of this new documentary by world travelling Petr Lom – a director who in his approach is an excellent example of how questioning journalism and observing documentary can be beautifully combined – is that he goes to the countryside, to the places that we did not see in the news reports or in the many films that have been released about Tahrir Square and what happened during the dramatic days in early 2011.

Lom gives the viewer ”five stories from the Egyptian revolution”, a revolution that did not do good for everybody, not at all, on the contrary, the film says by presenting to the audience interesting characters, who do not hesitate to speak out their frustration and anger. Not only the boy on the picture whose family almost lost their business fundament as pyramid tourist guides when their horses were kind of confiscated but also the minibus driver and the young woman, whose husband is in prison without court case – it is a film about corruption in the police and in the army, not to talk about human rights being neglected.

Two stories stand out in the film that of course, having chosen to focus on five stories, in some cases leave the characters at a moment where you would have loved to stay. One is the terrible case of a strong young woman, accused of having an affair with a man, being forced to take a virgin test, undergo torture, her family going against her, as well as the village security officer, who enters the room while filming is going on, asking all kind of questions and stating the the film crew ”could be Israelis”! At the end of that chapter she is in the car of the film crew away from provincialism. The other is the touching and painful story about a young man, whose brother is sentenced to 3 years of prison because of blogging words that the army did not improve of. The brother is on hunger strike, a later text declares that he is now released.

You might argue that it is too much for one film, and that the final film sometimes seems to get out of balance, but this is the place where it can only be repeated that Contents is King. 

Norway,Piraya Films, 2012, 83 mins.

http://www.backtothesquare.com/#/english/film/about

Svetoslav Draganov: City of Dreams

Bulgarian documentarian Svetoslav Draganov has a special touch, when it comes to catch so-called ordinary life as it is lived in his own country, very often in provincial cities. His gift is to make people and their dreams of a better life, or of fame or of success, interesting for the viewer, and he does so with an eye for situations and with a positive and warm approach to his characters, never wanting to judge or to make fun of them. Well the audience is invited to have many smiles and there is definitely a satirical tone, but it is never sarchastic.

Life is wonderful, isn’t it – was the title of a previous film of Draganov, and the people in Dimitrovgrad aim at the same, to make life wonderful. They did so when the city was meant to be a communist model city (the film has wonderful b/w propaganda archive material from the Stalinistic times), and they do so today in a city where music plays a strong role for many. It is called chalga, pop-folk Bulgarian style, most often performed by young girls in very short skirts, who do not hesitate to show their talented bodies. The focus is on sweet Simona, who moved with her parents to the city to reach the stars, fighting hard to have her first record out accompanied by a music video, supported by her boy friend and (to a certain degree) by her mum and dad. Helping her is the former rock star, who is now a music producer (the bald man on the photo) and who seems to be ”the spokesman” of the director composing a piece that brings the melancholic tone and lyrics like ”you no longer have dream… all there is back is sorrow”. Actually a pretty good earhanger.

Draganov uses a mosaic storytelling structure which gives the broader picture of then and now, past and present. He has fabulous moments with meetings of the old brigadiers who built the city, he creates a drama between a father and a son, who is opposed to the communist past, he gets close to Simona and the bald music producer and his family. And yet the danger of having a structure like that is that you often want to stay longer with one character or go deeper, but then you are brought to the next one. Sometimes – like with Simona – emotions are conveyed, other times, like with the son of the composer, you would have loved to have more. Nevertheless, respect for Draganov, happy for what he is giving the viewer, a director who has found his personal style and method of observation of human life. 

Bulgaria, 2012, 75 mins.

http://www.cine-ma.com/

http://www.eastsilver.net/en/east-silver/guests/draganov-svetoslav-6037/?aYear=2011&off=25

Hot Docs 2012 – and NFB Cuts

The Canadian International Documentary Festival that takes place April 26-May 6 and that describes itself, and its selected films, as ”outspoken and outstanding”, has launched its programme and it is indeed an amazing selection of films in variety of themes and geography. Contrary to many American festivals the Toronto-based doc fest is really going to all continents to present films from smaller regions. There are sections like ”Made in Southeastern Europe”, and there are films from the Baltic region like the Estonian fine portrait of a chimney sweep, a woman, Breath by Kular Viimne, and Lithuanian beautiful debut film ”The field of Magic” by Mindaugas Survila. To be found in sections titled ”International Spectrum” and ”World Showcase”.

And there are great films written about on this site like: Private Universe by Czech Helena Trestikova, Five Broken Cameras by Guy Davidi and Ema Burnat, and Vivan las antipodas by Viktor Kossakovsky.

And ”star” films like the one that opens the festival Ai Wei: Never Sorry (photo) by Alison Kleiman and Kevin MacDonald’s Marley.

A special tribute is given to Michel Brault, one of the pioneers of Canadian documentary. Among the shown is the classic Pour La Suite du Monde that he made with Pierre Perrault in 1963. This film, thanks to the brilliant NFB online catalogue, you can watch free of charge, link below. Sad news about the NFB (National Film Board), according to Realscreen, is ” In the wake of the Canadian federal government’s budget, released last Thursday and which called for cuts to the budgets of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), the CBC and Telefilm Canada, the NFB has unveiled several measures that will be implemented over the course of the year, including job cuts, cinema closures, and the reduction of the scope of the Filmmaker Assistance Program (FAP) and the Aide au cinéma indépendant du Canada (ACIC) program.

http://www.hotdocs.ca/

http://blog.nfb.ca/2011/04/07/pour-la-suite-du-monde-the-perrault-classic-in-english/

http://realscreen.com/2012/04/04/nfb-to-reduce-scope-of-filmmaker-assistance-program-cut-jobs-in-wake-of-budget-cuts/#ixzz1rkFO6bRv

 

Diane Weyermann

Hot Docs gives a Doc Mogul Award every year and there shall be no objection, not at all, on the contrary, to the choice of recipient this year. For this blogger, when he was at EDN (European Documentary Network), Diane Weyermann was a key person for the development of the documentary scene in a new and free Eastern Europe way back in the middle of the 1990’s. She came to many of the EDN workshops in the region and she was precise, warm and generous in her support to documentary films when she launched the Soros Documentary Fund in 1996. Personally I remember having made an interview for DOX with Diane in New York and met a committed and modest person with a big love to the creative documentary. And a woman with a working and walking pace (down the streets of Manhattan) that was quite different from the Nordic tradition! She managed to transform the Soros Documentary Fund into the Sundance Documentary Fund before she went to (taken from the HotDocs site) “Participant Media, where she has overseen such documentary projects as the Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning FOOD INC., WAITING FOR “SUPERMAN”, STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE, JIMMY CARTER MAN FROM PLAINS, DARFUR NOW, and the Academy Award-winning AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH.” In the funds and in the company, Weyermann has been involved with the production of over 300 documentary films from around the world. The most well deserved documentary recognition I could think of. Congratulations!

http://www.hotdocs.ca/