News from Paris: Cinéma du réel 2012

This years Cinéma du réel (March 22nd till April 3rd) is already more than half way through, however here is a quick overview of what the festival has to offer this year. Along with the films in competition (four categories: International, First Films, Short Films and French Films) the festival is rich, as usual, with an accompanying programme of retrospectives and tributes, news from, themes, special screenings, workshops, debates and meetings among professionals.

This involves the program Exploring documentary, curated by Nicole Brenez (specialized in avant-garde cinema and in charge of the programing, of experimental film at la Cinémathèque française) showing the works of filmmakers participating in the fighting on liberation fronts in different parts of the world over the past 50 years; A look into Italian political documentaries in the 1970ies through the program À nous la vie!; Tributes to Susana de Sousa Dias, John Gianvito, Dick Fontaine, Mario Ruspoli and Raúl Ruiz; The film historian Adriano Aprà is presenting a rare film; Workshops on sound in documentary films and much more…

The festival also launches a new special program: Arrested cinema, dedicated to news from filmmakers, experienced or not, who has filmed the political upheavals in their countries in risk of getting arrested, confined to residence, imprisoned or killed. This year the focus will be on Syria in presence of the Syrian filmmakers Hala Alabdalla and Oussama Mohammed (Saturday March 31, 21h).

The keyword this year is resistance, also in a broader sense, the focus is on committed cinema, le cinema engagé.

http://www.cinemadureel.org/fr

http://blog.cinemadureel.org/

Michael Christoffersen, alle tekster om hans film

De fire film set under ét udgør en samlet journalistisk og dokumentarisk erfaring om international ret lagt ned i ét vældigt værk, som filmet på location disse tidlige år vil bevare sin enestående status som skildring af denne ambition om et samlet retssystem…

 

 

LAW OF THE JUNGLE

af Allan Berg Nielsen

Den flotte unge indianerhøvding José Fachin Ruiz er den seneste i rækken af Christoffersens helte, alle jurister på arbejde for et internationalt retssystem. Han her er i en central scene i filmen på vej fra en demonstration langt inde i Perus jungle, værdig, stolt og rank, men, opdager vi, lige nu arresteret og på vej til bank og måneders fængsel og flere mishandlinger, inidlertid også på vej til en erkendelse af, at undertrykkelsen og volden og torturen, forsvindingerne og henrettelserne må bekæmpes i seje og tålmodige juridiske argumentationer i internationalt overvågede retssager på et stadigt udbygget og sikret grundlag af international ret, i hans tilfælde internationale rettigheder for oprindelige folk. Han er jæger og familiefar og leder af en gruppe unge indianere, som har sat sig op mod olieselskabet Pluspetrols metodiske ødelæggelse af deres land. Han hedder José Facin Ruiz, og han læser i dag jura på universitetet i Lima. Den kendsgerning er den lykkelige udgang på Michael Christoffersens film om de forfærdelige forbrydelser i Perus Amazonland under Pluspetrols regime.

Som jeg prøvede at forklare, da jeg i sin tid skrev om Christoffersens Saving Saddam, har jeg det sådan med hans film, at dengang the crime of crimes og det historisk set nye internationale retssystem om disse sager og nu et spirende internationalt juridisk system omkring oprindelige folks krav på ret til jord og søer og vandløb og naturressourcer i de nu fire film er og bliver selve emnet og kernen. I hver film vokser fortællingen og en karismatisk hovedperson sammen med forståelsen af denne jura, denne etik, som altså effektivt kropsliggøres i en smuk bue fra den blide og tænksomme Aspegren i Genocide, over den

barske og effektive Geoffrey Nice i Milosevic on Trial, den frustrerede Wilay i Saving Saddam og nu i Law of the Jungle den forbitret argumenterende Jorge Tacuri (indianergruppens advokat og filmens egentlige hovedperson) og hans klient og protegé, den med imponerende værdighed determinerede indianerleder José Fachin Ruiz, en måske kommende folkeretsspecialist.

De fire værker set under ét udgør en samlet journalistisk og dokumentarisk erfaring om international ret lagt ned i ét vældigt værk, som filmet på location disse tidlige år vil bevare sin enestående status som skildring af denne ambition om et samlet retssystem. Denne tidlige historie er hermed skrevet og tydeligt formuleret af de bevægende medvirkende, Michael Christoffersens advokathelte.

Operatøren i BioCity Randers kom ind i salen i aftes, tydelig glad og stolt over at være med i Dox-On-Wheels fornemme næsten simultane visning i 20 biografer i 19 byer, altså også i min. Operatøren var skuffet over et beskedent fremmøde, men jeg kan nu bagefter forsikre ham om, at Law of the Jungle var langt den vigtigste film blandt dem, han kørte i aftes, og at det var stort at se en intellektuelt uomgængelig dokumentar i en næsten ny og RIGTIG biografsal med perfekt videoprojektion og smuk lyd.

Michael Christoffersen: Law of the Jungle, Danmark 2011, 83 min., klip: Niels Ostenfeldt, produceret af Radiator Film, Stefan Frost og ABC Film. Filmografi (Michael Christoffersen): Saving Saddam, 2008, sammen med Esteban Uyarra, produktion: Team Productions, Mette Heide, Milosevic on Trial, 2007, produktion: Team Productions, Mette Heide, Genocide: The Judgement, 1999, Michael Christoffersen for BBC og SVT. (ABN, blogpost på filmkommentaren.dk 29. november 2011)

 

THE CRIME OF CRIMES

af Allan Berg Nielsen

Det måtte slutte der på forhøjningen med trappen op. Har nogen mon talt trinene? Bødlen med sort hætte lægger et sort tørklæde om Saddams hals, og derefter løkken, som netop ser sådan ud. Man ser det alt sammen på mobiltelefon-optagelsen. Det er ikke noget smukt billede. Det er forfærdende den grimme videooptagelse fra retssagen mod Elena og Nicolae Ceausescu. Billedet af dem i overtøj. De sidder i den kolde skolestue, hvor standretten finder sted. Summarisk rettergang.

Denne films hovedperson, Bill Wilay vil forhindre, at noget sådant gentages. Han vil en retfærdig rettergang efter internationalt anerkendte regler, han vil, at drabene hører op, vil afskaffe dødsstraffen som første skridt. Filmen hedder Saving Saddam, og denne tabte mulighed handler filmen om. Filmen åbner med at fortælle det vi ved, at det er mislykkedes for ham. Telefonen ringer, han tager den, vi ser ham. Han fortæller, at han har været i Bagdad, i hvor mange måneder er det nu? Han tænker sig om, 19 måneder. Han har villet redde Saddam Hussein. Det lykkedes ikke. Vi ved det fra filmens begyndelse, at det projekt, den beskriver, ikke vil lykkes. Så den kan slutte med nøjagtig samme scene, denne telefonsamtale.

I mellemtiden er vi så af Bill Wilays erfaringer fra disse måneder blevet meget klogere. De erfaringer udgør filmens storyline. Ambition, håb, slid, modstand, overvindelse, stædighed, en sejr trods alt lige før nederlaget og endelig skuffelsen. Saddam Hussein bliver hængt, det ved vi. Men vinder på en måde kampen. Bill Wilay stiger tilbage i Canada ud af flyet og udbryder: ”I’m alive!” Men han har tabt. Filmen fortæller hvordan og hvorfor.

I begyndelsen stiller han det sådan op, at han som rådgiver vil arbejde for, at Saddam Hussein får en fair trial. De nye magthavere blandt irakerne derimod vil hævn, det vil demonstranterne på gaden også, det vil politikerne, det vil anklagemyndigheden. Ja, det vil dommerne lige fra begyndelsen, tyder meget på. Hvad Saddam og hans forsvarergruppe vil, er mere usikkert. Teamet er styret af Saddams familie i Amman. Forsvarsadvokaten Dr. Najeeb fra Qatar, filmens anden hovedperson kommer hurtigt i modsætningsforhold til dette teams uprofessionalisme. Han vil et upolitisk, gedigent juridisk forsvar. Han og Bill Wilay, forskellige som dag og nat, kommer i voksende forståelse for hinanden.

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW

Wilay er forankret i international criminal law. ”My job, my moral duty”, siger han, ”is to try and save the life of any man whose life is in peril without respect to his goodness or lack thereof so if it turns out in the judgement that I´ve succeeded, at least in this one case I will be very, very satisfied…”

Bill Wilay er jurist. Han har i Canada arbejdet en årrække med international straffelov som speciale. Han kommer til Irak direkte fra Congo, hvor han har arbejdet for FN organisationen ICC (The International Criminal Court), som er en forholdsvis nyoprettet permanent domstol, der kan tage sager op. Blandt andet har organisationen arresteret en militsleder og stillet ham for retten. Wilay arbejdede som investigator, men han holdt op, fordi sikkerheden var for ringe, flere FN folk blev dræbt. Han kommer til Irak, nu ansat af FN til at overvåge retssagerne imod Saddam Hussein og hans følge og forsøge at sikre, at de får en fair rettergang. Han er altså UN observer, når sagen imod Saddam begynder i Iraq Special Tribunal, som er en irakisk domstol. Han kan som udenlandsk jurist ikke optræde i selve retten, men han være rådgiver uden for retssalen.

Domstolen er oprettet og finansieret af den amerikanske regering igennem et organ, som har fået navnet RCLO (Regime Crimes Liaison Office), og amerikanerne støtter med penge og logistik. Da RCLO altså amerikanerne hurtigt kan se, at Saddams forsvar sejler, ansætter de undervejs i forløbet Bill Wilay som rådgiver for forsvarsteamet, men det sker uden forsvarernes samtykke. Wilay får dog etableret kontakt med dem og rådgiver dem også, men den sidehistorie udvikler sig mere og mere kaotisk… Altså, vores hovedperson kommer ind i historien i Irak som neutral observatør for FN, men han skifter rolle og bliver ansat af amerikanerne til at sørge for at Saddam får et forsvar, der lever op til international standart, ja, som højdepunkt skriver han Saddam Husseins closing document! Den afsluttende forsvarstale, som ikke afværger dødsdommen. Som han siger et sted: ”Maybe we were naive….”

VOKSENDE ERKENDELSE

Ja, tænker man undervejs, filmen handler om denne mærkelige naivitet. At visse vestlige politiske institutioner har så svært ved at sætte sig i andres sted, så svært ved at forstå, disse, de andre ikke uden videre accepterer det vestlige demokratibegreb, den vestlige retsopfattelse. Bill Wilay er delt i dette, han har sin lange juridiske skoling, sit omfattende videngrundlag. Og han forstår et sted Saddam Husseins vægring ved at acceptere hans deltagelse i forsvaret.

Denne voksende erkendelse, hvis fremtrædelses form er en mere og mere omfattende frustration, er klippet frem som en uafvendelig udvikling i hovedpersonen. Han kastes i sine overvejelser hele tiden mellem sin idealisme og sin forståelse af realiteten. I den proces påvirkes han af den aldeles desillusionerede og intelligensmæssige ligemand, forsvarsteamets leder, af og til, Najeeb Al-Naumi. Det er filmens karakter nummer to, en dybt interessant person og i filmens plot virkningsfuldt spændt op mod Wilay. Ironisk desillusion mod naiv idealisme. Najeeb driver et advokatkontor i Qatar, her er han født og her har han har været justitsminister.

I princippet har ellers ingen udlændinge adgang til selve retslokalet. Men da Saddam og hans datter skulle vælge forsvarere valgte de blandt andre Najeeb fra Qatar og USA´s tidligere statsanklager Ramsey Clark – han har sin egen politiske mission, blandt andet støttede han Slobodan Milosevic – en egyptisk advokat plus nogle irakiske advokater. Tribunalet bøjede reglerne og tillod disse udenlandske advokater.

Forsvarerne udgør således en meget uhomogen gruppe. Nogle gange er de tilstede i Bagdad, nogle gange mødes de i Amman, hvor Saddams datter opholder sig og nogle gange i Damaskus. Najeeb arbejder mest fra sit Qatar kontor og isolerer sige mere og mere efterhånden som han begynder at fornemme, at de andre har en helt andet agenda. Det bliver til indholdet i en nøglescene, en fortrolig telefonsamtale mellem ham og Wilay, filmen ridser retssagens komplicerede frontstilling op: Saddam Hussein over for hævnen, som han for så vidt anerkender. Saddam Hussein over for en ny spinkel international ret, som han ikke anerkender.

TRE FILM, ÉT VÆRK

Filmen er instrueret af Estaban Uyarra, som med War Feels Like War fra 2004 om invasionen i Irak slog sit navn fast som modig dokumentarist og Michael Christoffersen, som tidligere har lavet to film om internationale krigsforbrydertribunaler Milosevic on Trial, 2007 om tribunalet i Haag 2002-2006, historiens længste og Genoside, the Judgement, 1999 om tribunalet i Arusha, Tanzania, 1994, hvor borgmesteren fra Taba i Rwanda blev dømt for en række alvorlige forbrydelser under massakrerne der. Som filmens hovedperson, den svenske dommer Lennart Aspegren udtrykker det, var det FN tribunal som det første human rights trial siden Nürnberg et eksperiment med den internationale rets muligheder over for the crime of crimes , drab af civile, folkemord og andre forbrydelser med menneskeheden.

The crime of crimes og det historisk nye internationale retssystem om disse sager bliver i de tre film emnet, og i hver film vokser fortællingen og en karismatisk hovedperson sammen med forståelsen af denne jura, denne etik, som altså effektivt kropsliggøres i en smuk bue fra den blide og tænksomme Aspegren i Genocide, over den barske og effektive Geoffrey Nice i Milosevic on Trial til den frustrerede Wilay i Saving Saddam. Men han får det foreløbigt sidste ord, ikke alene anklagen skal rejses, forsvaret skal også sikres.

Michael Christoffersen siger nu efter sin tredje erfaring: ” Man kan mene meget om tribunalet og Saddamsagen, men den var og er faktisk et forsøg på at gennemføre et retsopgør efter internationale principper – for første gang i regionen. Men sådanne sager har jo altid en politisk dimension, ikke mindst denne, og de blev en alt for afgørende faktor i sidste ende. Men at afskrive sagen som unfair politisk makværk er efter min bedste overbevisning alt for forenklet.”

De tre værker set under ét udgør en samlet journalistisk og dokumentarisk erfaring om international ret lagt ned i ét vældigt værk, som filmet på location disse tidlige år vil bevare sin enestående status som skildring af denne ambition om et samlet retssystem. Denne tidlige historie er hermed skrevet og tydeligt formuleret af de bevægende medvirkende, trilogiens helte, svenskeren Lennart Aspergren, briten Geoffrey Nice og canadieren Bill Wilay, selv om begivenhederne vil blive husket på de anklagedes navne Jean Akayesu, Slobodan Milocevic og Saddam Hussein og på forbrydelsernes steder, Tabu i Rwanda, Screbrenica i Bosnien og Dujail i Irak.

Saving Saddam, 2008, Esteban Uyarra og Michael Christoffersen. Produktion: Team Productions, Mette Heide. Milosevic on Trial, 2007. Michael Christoffersen. Produktion: Team Productions, Mette Heide. Genocide: The Judgement, 1999, Michael Christoffersen for BBC og SVT. (Manus 30. september 2008 til DFI’s magasin Film, hvor artiklen blev trykt i engelsk oversættelse)

Ib Bondebjerg: Virkelighedsbilleder

For our non-Danish readers. This is an announcement of a screening with debate being set up by Danish Cinemateket to introduce the new book of Ib Bondebjerg, Danish documentary academic, about the modern Danish documentary. Bondebjerg talks to Jytte Rex and Anders Østergaard about their portraits of Danish writer Inger Christensen and Swedish jazz composer and pianist Jan Johansson. At Cinemateket on thursday the 29th. The films will be screened. This is the intro text, in Danish, from Jesper Andersen from Cinemateket:  I anledning af udgivelsen af Ib Bondebjergs bog ‘Virkelighedsbilleder. Den moderne danske dokumentarfilm’, inviterer Cinemateket til samtaler mellem Ib Bondebjerg og seks centrale danske dokumentarfilmsinstruktører om dokumentarismen som genre og om instruktørernes kunstneriske strategier, og vi viser seks klassiske portrætfilm.

I det første af tre arrangementer præsenterer vi ’Inger Christensen – cikaderne findes’ (1998) (Photo), instrueret af Jytte Rex og ‘Troldkarlen’ (1999) af Anders Østergaard. Jytte Rex hører til blandt vores poetisk-symbolske dokumentarister, og i hendes portrætter spiller kunstnerens sprog sammen med hendes eget dokumentariske sprog. Det gælder i høj grad for Inger Christensen – cikaderne findes (1998), hvor Rex blander tonen i Christensens lyriske univers med diskrete, men magiske billeder.

Anders Østergaards portrætter er styret af en mental og poetisk tilgang, et forsøg på at anskueliggøre et kunstnerisk univers. Det gør han prægnant i aftenens film ’Troldkarlen’ (1999), der trænger langt ind i Jan Johanssons musikalske univers, samtidig med at det bliver en poetisk blues og en hyldest til en afdød.

www.cinemateket.dk

Khaled Jarrar

He had just arrived from Paris, from his first solo-show in a gallery in the French gallery. He had exhibited the Palestinian Free State motive stamps from different countries that he had let produce, another piece of art happening from the side of the Palestinian artist, who is making himself a name outside his country in art circles. Talking about Paris, he also renamed Place de la République to Place de Hana Shalabi, to make us aware of the case of the Palestinian woman, who has hungerstriked for 38 days against the occupying country that has denied a courtcase to her and other Palestinians who were released as an exchange (!) for the Israeli soldier, Gilat Shalit, who was in Hamas custody for five years. The actions of visual artist activist Jarrar can be googled and there are lots og YouTube clips to find.

We met at the office of Idiomfilms in Ramallah to see a first draft of Jarrar’s first documentary, previously written about here. We watched a 75 mins. cut of a film that with its non-aggressive approach gives the viewer a unique account of the climbers, big and small, old and young, who go to Jerusalem illegally. To work first of all. It uses a non-linear structure, it has many angles and stylistical elements that wonderfully surprise you as a viewer, who is used to strong films in all genres, aggressive against the Israeli occupation. You have sometimes a clear laugh when you see the different ways of climbing, sometimes you laugh because of the absurdity, and sometimes you are moved and feel angry: this can not be true, this is not civilisation 2012! But it is.

The film is in post-production, money lacks for that part, applications have been sent to Sundance Documentary Fund and Tribeca… Festival people who read this, watch out for a fine film, well a more than a fine film is coming up this year by an amazing artist. Refreshing with that inspiration.

 

Khaled Jarrar: The Infiltrators (working title). Palestine, 2012. In post-production.

 

Tutoring at CoPro and Storydoc

Below, in the previous posting, you get text and links to discover what is CoPro, Ramallah.doc and Storydoc. This posting is more a kind of mix of info and gonzo/gossip. First about the CoPro training in Tel Aviv, where a tutor slot was 40 minutes. To get an impression of the Israeli filmmakers who you meet and with whom you discuss their written exposés and eventual visual material, which can be a trailer/teaser or edited scenes or rough footage. Of course it is limited how deep you can go with that time, but as there were three tutors doing the job, the filmmakers hopefully got a lot of input to take home for the next phase, which is the preparation for the real pitch at the CoPro at the end of May.

Editor and director Erez Laufer, who also runs the Archidoc in Paris as main tutor, Iikka Vehkalahti, visiting professor at Tampere University for almost a year (he goes back to YLE in August) and I were the ones to comment on the projects. Vehkalahti was next door to me at the Goethe Institute in Tel Aviv, and told me that – true or not, it is a good story – he started his session by asking the filmmakers, which animal they were, and which animal they would like to be!!! My response when they came to my session was often, ”ah, you have already been to the Zoo”. The days in Tel Aviv were organised perfectly by CoPro founder and manager, Orna Yarmut, assisted by Mia Webb

The same Vehkalahti came up with a great idea in the workshop in Ramallah: Why not make a festival of films shot in Ramallah, starting from 60’es? The population living here has not yet seen these films, and they should of course! The idea is now in development through Storydoc President Kostas Spiropoulos in collaboration with local filmmakers.

Thursday afternoon in the streets of Ramallah. A man who looks totally like Arafat stops EDN’s Mikael Opstrup: Hello, you look like Jimmy Carter. For documentation a photo is taken by filmmaker and professor Emma Davie from Scotland, with whom I had the pleasure to tutor group sessions in Ramallah. The programme in Ramallah lasted three days, including most of the time group work on the film projects presented and on presentation. The opening day including a lecture by Mikael Jimmy Carter Opstrup on Pitching, a presentation of arte by Elisabeth Hultén from arte France, and an intervention by Vehkalahti on what it means to be a commissioning editor. All held together by Palestinian filmmaker George Khleifi.

Photo will come documenting the moment of Jimmy Carter and Arafat meeting each other in a street in Ramallah.

http://copro.co.il/

http://www.storydoc.gr/

Copro & Storydoc. Tel Aviv and Ramallah

Israeli and Palestinian film projects in development. I am in the airport in Tel Aviv waiting to go home after a week in Tel Aviv and Ramallah. Last year I was full of anger when I arrived to the airport because of checkpoint stops and constant humiliating questioning from the Israeli soldiers and security people at the checkpoints and in the airport. This year no problems at all, no stops, no questions. It depends on their mood and how you greet them, said the smiling driver, who took us from Ramallah to Ben Gurion airport. Through green areas (for the Israelis) and occupied rocky dry landscapes (for the Palestinians)!

In terms of the film projects they are basically of the same nature – with different approaches of course – from both sides. Character driven stories, television duration, most of them, dealing with conflicts and injustice, intolerance and racism. Creative documentaries in different stages of development, research, production and one or two in post-production. Needless to say that the financial conditions for the Israeli filmmakers are so much better than for the Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank or Gaza.

The around 20 projects from Israel will be presented to potential buyers and commissioning editors late May during the Israeli Documentary Screen Market May 29-June 3.

The 12-14 Palestinian projects will be pitched to buyers and editors, who go from the CoPro in Tel Aviv to Ramallah.doc, the day after the event in Tel Aviv. Out of the collection of Palestinian projects 4 projects were picked to participate in the Storydoc 2012, that consists of two sessions, first one in Athens, second in Leipzig, with an extra to be held with more Mediterranean projects in Egypt beginning of July.

In Tel Aviv as well as in Ramallah, the filmmakers were tutored by filmmakers, tv editors for documentaries and film consultants. Photo from Sho’qostak (What’s Your Story?), shown at Jerusalem Film Festival, by Pauline Carbonnier and Jamal Khalaile, one of the Storydoc selected projects in Ramallah. The two want to make a philosophical sequel to this film in a conceptual manner. The link below gives a description of the first film.

http://copro.co.il/

http://www.storydoc.gr/

http://www.jff.org.il/?CategoryID=753&ArticleID=1126

Nicolas Philibert, Collected Postings on his Works

I can not think of any European documentarist who has this sense of making beauty out of everyday life as it is being lived by us ordinary people… (Tue Steen Müller)

 

 

 

LA VILLE DE LOUVRE (1989)

by Tue Steen Müller

Produced 20 years ago, this masterpiece of Nicolas Philibert is as fresh as on the day of release. It is a fascinating look at what happens behind the scene at the magnificent museum in Paris. At the end of the film Philibert summarises what was his intention, by showing a long sequence of faces of some of the people, the viewer meets in the film. Yes, he is after people and what people do in an adventurous and sometimes mysterious place like Louvre where he (also) takes us underground to all the art works that wait to be exhibited or never reaches the exhibition area. It is transport, cleaning, restoring and conserving, and guarding, and playing boule on Rue de Rivoli next to the museum, measuring, planning the placement of the paintings in a room before the opening. And so on and so forth, several magical moments, lots of humour, all born by a fascination from the side of the film team. And you sense the director’s écriture right away, as you know it from La Moindre des Choses, Le pays des sourds, Etre et Avoir…

Philibert wast originally only hired to film one of the complicated transports, but stayed in the museum for another 3 weeks filming without any permission before getting this, and a producer and financing… I wanted to avoid bureaucracy, Philibert says in the bonus interview on the dvd (Éditions Montparnasse). Nobody actually had problems with us hanging around, as they already knew us. The film is a beauty because of the constant thinking in images, and the total concentration, as he also says is needed, to be ready to catch important moments, and film small stories that in the final film is cut in the way that you leave a theme and some people to come back to them later.

The film will be shown saturday April 25 on ARTE in connection with the Theme Day dedicated to the 20 years of the Louvre pyramid. (Blogpost April 23 2009)

 

LA MOINDRE DES CHOSES (1997)

by Tue Steen Müller

Nicholas Philibert is here. Three films have been shown, Le Pays des Sourds, Retour en Normandie and La moindre des choses. Last year the Syrian audience could enjoy Être et Avoir. Philibert did a master class, denied to be called a master, talked for two hours with a lot of charm and commitment, especially about “La moindre des choses”, which is for sure a Master’s Piece. Shot in 1995, the director went to the psychiatric clinic called la Borde, filmed the people in the institution, staff and patients, and followed the rehearsals and staging of a theatre piece by Polish Witold Gombrowicz. What comes out of it is a beautiful hymn to life

and to us, the actors on the big stage of life. Wonderful characters with whom Philibert made a film, as he said, the film is not about but with. A director’s vision and what I admire in this film is the almost caressing rythm of the montage, with which Philibert slowly introduces his gallery of characters.

Constantly looking for beauty… my work consists of creating the conditions for something to happen, he said, this great filmmaker, who masters the art of listnening to the other. I am a documentarian and not a fiction filmmaker, I do not want people to play roles. Maybe I ask them to repeat something or ask if I can be present on a special occasion but they are themselves. (Posting from the festival DoxBox5 Damascus March 9 2009)

 

EVERY LITTLE THING / La moindre des choses (1997)

by Sevara Pan

Here, the first right is the right to roam. Nicolas Philibert, the acclaimed French documentary filmmaker, largely known for capturing the trivia of the closed worlds (i.e. In the Land of the Deaf, Animals – see MoMA series on his films: “Nicolas Philibert: The Extraordinary Ordinary”), this time pushed the gate of the progressive psychiatric clinic La Borde. Nestled in the vicinity of the sunlit Loire Valley, the film, succintly dubbed as Every Little Thing, portrays the every day life at La Borde, its trivial goings-on, loneliness and feebleness. Yet, there is room for moments of joy and laughter. Set over the summer of 1995, Every Little Thing follows the residents and staff of the La Borde psychiatric clinic as they set out to stage, what has now become a tradition, a fête production of a theatrical play. This year, they mount Witold Gombrowicz’s absurdist classic ‘Operette’.

The film opens with the scene of a woman, alone in a wide shot, singing a piece from the opera ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’, “Mortal silence. Vain hope. What a torment. […] I succumb to my suffering,” she sings apropos as if Christoph Gluck himself had composed it for her. This immediate, somewhat disorienting immersion into the world of La Borde, takes place without an introduction or a context. The slow pacing seems especially fitting for this milieu. Its natural-lit outdoor cinematography appears idyllic and even a tad utopian.

In the following scene, we see a series of alienated body plans wandering in the green space. As we watch them roam, we are suspended in a state of unease and discomfort. Captives of their own bodies, their movements are rowdy and uncoordinated – they are unbridled misfits, displaced, repressed of drive, and rendered to vacillating and haphazard convulsions. Master at finding the right balance between sound and silence in all of his films, in Every Little Thing Philibert too deftly employs silence to signal the storytelling tone. Given the environment, the long silent takes now seem to be rather disturbing than peaceful. Agitated by the wind and trees, the life of its own nature seems to have found a

relief to the agony of the troubled souls. Yet, they do not stagnate, they grow freely, at their own pace and in all directions.

“[…] Scattered, lost. […] But who can tell? Who can tell what? […] Bizarre forms, demented shapes. I don’t know, I don’t understand, I don’t comprehend. Motionless, dazed, confused. […]” As the patients recite the lines from the ‘Operette’ with vigor and anxiety, this Polish absurdist comedy from the mid-60s and its distortive dreamwork seem ideal for La Borde. Caught in the nervous tics and disrupted diction, Michel, one of the long-term patients who regularly stays at the clinic since 1969, alike his fellows, chooses the temporary safety of the art world. He feels protected by the narrow confines of the fictional world of the ‘Operette’, where “the totally illogical lines comfort him.” Embraced by the tranquil woods of the Loire Valley, the La Borde asylum alleges art as a sanctuary and repose, serving both as an act of catharsis and that of defiance.

Above and beyond the theater, Philibert pursues no spectacular shots bestowing the folklore of madness. Neither does he try to encrust the film with new twists and turns. In fact, the film is constructed within a rather basic narrative pattern that eschews an adherence to any complexity of a latent plot or drama. Nevertheless, the timeline tracing the preparation for the play, the final performance, and the aftermath lends itself a narrative cohesion. Obstinately true to his style, the legato unhurried pace gives time to be attentive to the protagonists and their everyday doings. Once we embrace the slow rhythm and gradually get comfortable with it, we find ourselves immersed in these micro-moments that otherwise would have gotten lost in the momentum of the every day life. As the simple atcs unfold in a non-narrated manner, we see people reveal themselves in unpredictable ways. The scattered mosaic of moments is poetically undercut in a complexity of patches – all rendered with a lucent beauty. Yet, when that beauty slips in, it is almost always broken.

Be it, in the garden of La Borde, where a haggard patient strives to walk up to a shrub, rubbing his forehead as if to mollify the unbearable thought that hit his head; or at the art club, where a patient tries to draw the face of another patient, pauses in a moment of panic with words, “I am afraid to miss…” but finally cedes into a grin, overwhelming her suffering – behind these small moments, there is a lot at stake. It is riveting how little can say a lot about people: a stare, a gesture, a sigh, even a smile. Such moments of intimacy resonates with the viewer eminently. It uncovers something essential and profound about the human existence. Yet, what exactly it uncovers is up to the viewer. The film does not contain much commentary, laying itself wide open to the reading. Philibert’s ambition of being “a bit of an anti-Michael Moore” shows its vestiges here as he avoids to give any answers or to “think for the viewer”. Instead, he gives the viewer something to think about.

True to his style, Philibert is not voyeuristic in approaching his subjects. He says, “this film is not about people, but with and because of them.” Throughout the film, it becomes evident that the protagonists are well aware of being filmed. It can be seen through their verbal interventions or gazes directed to the camera. But these scenes don’t end up on the floor of the cutting room. Philibert says, “It doesn’t bother me that they look directly toward the camera. I don’t try to make them forget my presence. It is a matter of making myself accepted, not forgotten.”

As Philibert makes himself accepted in the La Bodre asylum, so do we. Indeed, as we voluntarily immerse ourselves in their world, we become almost as them – mad, too. By gradually taking us into the impenetrable madness, this cinematic vigil makes us re-work our view on madness and extend the degree of ambivalence toward the notion of normality. The film is very shrewd in bringing to focus the fluidity and dynamics of the borderline between madness and sanity. In Every Little Thing, anxiety and fragility are never far behind the laughter, spontaneity, and liveliness. “You are laughing at the rubbish I say. Aren’t you? You are totally crazy,” one of the patients utters. Different expressions race back and forth over his face. His smiles come in succession like waves breaking on the surface of a little lake. “You are nuts, you are completely nuts! […] That poor nurse is crazy. The staff need care. That could happen, you know. […] True, if we get care, no one will look after you.”

Indeed, as all visible differences between the patients and the care-givers are removed and patients are liberated to actively participate in running the facility, it seems hard to distinguish between those who need care. The care-givers do not wear white coats and doors have handles on both sides. Who manages the switchboard, who answers the phone calls, who prepares the meals – each one, notwithstanding their mental status, is a member of the La Borde little community, a microcosm of the society riven by differences and tension. All are in the same boat. Within this closed community, Philibert manages to create intense feelings of both community energy and extreme solitude. He observes the patients both when they are collaborating and when they are alone, estranged and off in their own universe.

As we hear tragic arias, soul-baring confessions, and moving recollections, the film without a condescending pity or soaring valorization, brings an illuminating account of a world that is outside of most of our daily experiences. Philibert approaches his subjects with a deep but unforced empathy that does not exoticize or disown them. In this radical otherness, we see our pallid reflection, we find part of ourselves. The film does not offer an antiodite for our fear of otherness, the otherness would still keep leaking into our psyche. Profoundly disturbing and intensely personal, the last sentence of the long-term patient Michel both moves and terrifies us, “We are here among ourselves. And you are among us, too, now.” France, 1997, 105 mins. (Post June, 27 2013)

 

ÊTRE ET AVOIR (2002)

af Allan Berg Nielsen

Stedet for dramaet er en lun skolestue med lys og alle tingene på plads, der er hjertet i tilværelsens vinter. Den venter på børnene, og her kan læreren, mens de er hjemme, sidde og rette opgaverne. Åbningen skildrer snevejret (årstiden), vi er på landet (stedet), skolebussen henter børnene (personerne kommer ind). Med ét er vi inde midt i handlingen og inde midt i filmens emne: undervisningen. Vi kommer ikke derfra igen. Dramaet er det banale, som her på stedet er det egentlige. En skildpadde på gulvet, en globus. Livets hastighed i verden. Dag og nat på denne årstid. Tilværelsen universelt. Eksistens er blevet et banalt ord, men her dækker det med ét.

Filmens kerne, dens inderste emne er en grundlæggende opfattelse af sproget som bærer af den franske kultur, som således er essensen af lærerens virksomhed, sådan som filmen tegner den. Filmens eneste interview, en samtale, han har med instruktøren, røber med efternavnet Lopez lærerens spanske baggrund. Faderen kom til Frankrig som ung. Måden, optagelserne blev til på er værd at huske. Der er et filmhold til stede i skolestuen hos børnene. Mikrofonen hænger lige over deres hoveder, og de hvisker følgelig, generte og høflige. Det bliver til filmens meget stilfærdige samvær. Optagelserne strakte sig over 60 optagedage fra december 2000 til juni 2001.

Klippet er konstrueret af lange scener, som alene i deres rækkefølge etablerer dramaet, og filmens billeder illustrerer ikke, de udgør handlingen, fortællerstemmen er fraværende, men tydelig, Philiberts écriture. Hovedinddelingen er årstidernes firedeling, men begivenhederne, som er almindelige, banale og vitalt sitrende, hober sig op før struktureringen. Filmens konstruktion finder vej for os i mylderet. Hurtigt efter åbningen vælges en lille dreng som hovedperson. Han hedder Johann, men i skolen her er han bare Jojo. Hans forhold til læreren og lærerens til ham bliver et bærende motiv filmen igennem. Det er et dramaturgisk greb, det er karakterudvikling. Jojo er den første, som får navn. Læreren nævner hans navn: ”Begynd her, Jojo…” Filmen er i gang, første replik. Det er allerede i filmens åbning. Den første samtale følger kort efter. Det her bliver om Jojo og læreren, lover filmen os i åbningens kontrakt.

En lang optageperiode, en lang tilstedeværelse på skolen, 10 uger fordelt over et halvt år førte Philibert til en yderst personlig opfattelse af det sete, og denne sin indre verden gjorde han til en konstruktion. Sådan er det filmværk, som fremstiller Philiberts skolestue ved hjælp af Jojos. Sådan er Philiberts Être et avoir, som kunne hedde Vivre sa vie, var den filmtitel ikke allerede benyttet. (Filmintroduktion i FOF Filmklub)

 

BACK TO NORMANDY (2007)

by Tue Steen Müller

It’s countryside again. This time Nicholas Philibert heads forNormandy, where he 30 years ago was the direction assistant of René Allio on the film “Moi, Pierre Rivière”, a “based on a true” story about a young man who in 1835 killed his mother, sister and brother.Pierreleft his memoirs that were studied and written about by French philosopher Michel Foucault – the inspiration for Allio.

Philibert goes back to see the people, who played the roles in the film. Allio wanted people from the region, so called real people, and Philibert was to find them. As he re-finds them now due to his absolutely masterly discreet, warm and interested way of making them feel confident in front of the camera.

I can not think of any European documentarist who has this sense of making beauty out of everyday life as it is being lived by us ordinary people.

What we as an audience get is therefore a multi-layered documentary essay, a reflection on Life and Death as it was interpreted so stylistically perfect in the film of René Allio, from which we see a lot of excerpts AND as it is performed and told about by the people in this countryside today.

Of course there is also a lot of wonderful film memories that are brought forward by those, who played the mother, the father, the sister, the lover – and the son, who has left the region but is found by Philibert and enters the film in the end.

A completely different film from the hands of the man behind “Etre et Avoir”, and yet it is with the same signature, from a director who believes in the image and in looking at life as a gift to be cared about. (October 29 2007 posting from CPH:DOX festival)

 

NÉNETTE (2009)

by Tue Steen Müller

This is the start: A monkey looking into your eyes, an orangutan’s gaze into the camera. At US, those who are outside the glass. Or just looking into nothing. No sound, or very soft sound from the streets around the Parisian Jardin des Plantes, that has been the home of Nénette, since she was 3 years old. She is now 40, an usual high age for an orangutan. Alone she is, having survived three marriages. They all died, the males. She has children around her, and she gets pills so no incest happens. Because what do we actually know about monkeys and their behaviours, what they think, how they behave, if they are as sad as they look or if this is just something that we on the outside of the glass project into them as we are in need of these emotions?

Nicolas Philibert, master of documentary, celebrated on this site many times, has made this 55 minutes long documentary that never leaves Nénette and uses a voice-off very intelligently. Spontaneous comments from children vary with those from couples, and with thoughtful reflections from so-called experts, anthropologists and from a man who as been working in the Jardin des Plantes for 35 years. Music and a song to the orangutans.

Do you think Nénette understands where she is and who we are, she who has spent her life doing nothing as it is said!

I saw the film on a small computer screen, I look forward to the big screen but I can see that Philibert again has made something special with his fine humanistic, non-intellectual approach to Film and Life. Nénette was looking at him behind the camera, as if the camera was not there, an old wise creature she seems to be and you can’t help feel sorry for her at the same time as you are grateful to have met her. And for a film that brings you in an almost meditative mood. (October 19, 2009 posting from festival DOCLisboa 2009)

 

NICOLAS PHILIBERT AT MAGNIFICENT7

by Tue Steen Müller

The festival opened with an image of Nénette, the more than 40 years old orangutang that since the age of 3 has been living in a zoo inParis. A close up of someone looking at you and another beautiful film by Nicholas Philibert, whose name here in Serbia is written as it is pronounced: Filiber. Who is a director who talks wonderfully and inspiringly about his métier, in this case about a film that started as a short film of around 20 minutes but ended up as a feature length documentary that has been released theatrically in several countries and is soon published on dvd.

”I had totally free hands”, Fhilibert said in a masterclass for young filmmakers,  ”I had no money for the filming, so there was no pressure on me… it is a film about face to face, about our voyerism, about ”the other”. Nénette is a metaphor for ”the other”. We can’t help comparing with her.”

Filiber had some principles that he followed. Sound and image were separated. The camera stays on Nénette and her fellow apes, and are accompanied by 3 types of voices: visitors (several children), keepers and friends, who reflect on several aspects of our relationship to the ape. The sound is important for the film, Filiber said, ”and the silence speaks for her solitude”. He had 10 days of shooting (Nénette wakes up at 8.30am and goes to sleep at 6pm at night), and ”I started with the editing of the sound.” Filiber showed clips from his previous films, ”Le moindre des choses” (photo) and ”La ville Louvre” and mentioned several times how important it is for him to keep his ignorance and work from curiosity and questions. ”I dont want to know anything in beforehand, if I do, then why make the film? All is built on encounters and I only film what people give to me”. (Posting from theBeogradfestival January 27, 2011)

 

IMAGINATION TAKES FLIGHT

by Nicolas Philibert

I never made the decision to become a documentarian, to place myself in some fixed category. I don’t even like the word “documentarian”. The term is an attempt to give a strict definition to a genre known for its porosity and constantly evolving boundaries; a genre that is almost inseparable from the one it is always opposed to: fiction. After all, images are not as true to ”reality” as they are to the intentions of their creator.

Nevertheless, my first film was a documentary (His Master’s Voice, 1978) and it made me want to make another one and another one, and I’m still as excited as ever. So I have become a documentarian and, although I dislike the word, nothing has managed to quench my thirst for filming; not the efforts needed to get a project started and surmount one’s demons nor the threats that hang over the existence and circulation of one’s most personal works.

I feel the need to create a frame for each film, a starting point that I can build upon. This frame consists of the things that I find motivating and exciting when working together with the subjects of the film. When filming starts, the final destination is unknown to me and I don’t know which path I will follow. A lot depends on the things that emerge through work and encounters. Naturally the journey is different with each film.

Movies always tell something else than what was expected of them and maybe it’s better that way. When I started filming Every Little Thing at La Borde psychiatric clinic, I would have had great difficulty defining the subject of the film. Actually, I still don’t quite know what it is. It is not so much a film about La Borde than a film made because ofLa Borde. I hesitated before starting to make it… When you are holding a camera, you have power over others. It is essential to know how not to abuse this power. When I decided to make this film, it was to confront my fears and hesitations, all these things that were holding me back. Thus the subject in itself is not as important as the questions that the film evokes in me.

When I start making a film, I inform myself as little as possible. The less I know, the better it goes. Besides, if I know too much about a subject, I’m no longer interested in making a film about it. The idea of making a film from an omniscient point of view is completely foreign to me. I prefer to build upon not knowing.LouvreCityis a good example of this: there is not a word of commentary in the film, although the co-producers wanted to add it. When making In the Land of the Deaf, I had decided to dive straight into the oddity of sign language, without an interpreter or other outside help. At first, I felt lost… However, I had decided not to consult experts or doctors or educators. If I had approached the subject that way, the deaf would have felt they were being filmed as research subjects.

Movies must hold their secrets and leave questions unanswered. Shady areas, words left unsaid, the interplay between what is shown and what is not, what is told and what is left to be assumed, invisible parts, reluctant characters; all this moves the viewer and shakes up his or her thoughts and prejudices, allowing imagination to take flight. When everything is smooth, familiar, transparent, tame, soothing and without any roughness or obstacles, there is no story to be told, only stagnation. (Nicolas Philibert: Imagination takes flight. This text is taken from the site of the Finnish documentary film festival Docpoint, 2010. Translation by Heini Lilja. Posted here on filmkommentaren.dk January 16, 2010 by TSM)

 

LA MAISON DE LA RADIO (2013)

by Tue Steen Müller

For this blogger Nicolas Philibert is one of the most important documentary directors of out time. Filmkommentaren has written about his films frequently, below you have a link that will take you to ”collected posts” about the French director, who in the 5th edition of the Damascus DoxBox festival in 2009 was reported to have said the following at a master class:

”Constantly looking for beauty… my work consists of creating the conditions for something to happen, he said, this great filmmaker, who masters the art of listnening to the other. I am a documentarian and not a fiction filmmaker, I do not want people to play roles. Maybe I ask them to repeat something or ask if I can be present on a special occasion but they are themselves.”

There is a new film by Philibert at the Berlinale Panorama section. It is presented like this:

”La maison de la radio by Nicolas Philibert, France/Japan.

Creator of images Nicolas Philibert has always been fascinated by the “blind” medium of radio and its ability to fire the imagination. Millions share this passion. For many, radio lends life a rhythm and structure, bringing – between kitchen and bathroom – the world to their homes. With this work, Philibert pays tribute to its diligent makers by bringing the invisible to the screen. And so achieves what every filmmaker seeks.”

The film will be released in April in France. Below also a link to an interview (in French) with the director.

 

REVIEW

by Tue Steen Müller

Voices, yes voices it will be, communicates Philibert right from the start, before the titles appear on the screen. An hommage to the human voice as it is performed in the public radio of France. Quick sound montage, titles, the building that houses the radio from outside, people walking into it, a working day starts. Voilà, simple, classical.

And then faces, yes, faces it will be, very often close-ups of faces, people who are alone in a studio with the microphone very close to their lips, or faces concentrated on listening to voices which are being recorded. Can be literature, news, talk or quiz shows with people who call the radio, or we, the audience, are invited to attend an editorial meeting, what is important, which choices do we make.

Philibert chooses his characters and situations, he goes from one to the next but he comes back and thus give us the illusion of getting to know the characters better. We do and we experience the development they make in the music recording studio with the opera singer or with the beautiful young singer you see on the poster. Yes, Philibert falls in love with his characters, he has always done so, be it an orangutang (Nenette) or a human being. He is basically an observational documentarian but his presence and influence on the scene he is shooting, mixed with his ambition to make us viewers have ”the feeling of being there” (to quote master Leacock again again again…) makes it impossible to resist the joyful tone that he offers.

He leaves the radio building once in while. He goes with the nerd who records sounds in the nature, and he lets us see and hear the studio recording of the sound of peeling a potato(!) or be with a man, who plays a home-made sound machine, experimental music you might argue, but an artist in action, indeed.

You are in constant good company with this film and for one who enjoys listening to clever people with good language and beautiful voices in the radio (we have that in Denmark as well, in a country where television mostly is tabloid blablabla) during summer time (in the allotment garden), you appreciate the film even more. Having said so, this is not another highlight from Philibert, is does not have many layers but joyful and playful it is, masterly montaged and photographed, that’s quite a lot! You sense that he has enjoyed having been behind the walls of sound!

France, 2013, 100 mins. (Posted May 27, 2013) 

http://www.filmsdulosange.fr/en/

http://www.filmsdulosange.fr/en/film/13/la-maison-de-la-radio

http://www.telerama.fr/cinema/nicolas-philibert-realise-un-documentaire-sur-la-maison-de-la-radio,71515.php

Janina Lapinskaite in Copenhagen

On this site you will find lots of texts that introduce, review and report on documentaries from Lithuania. Another one comes here to tell our Danish readers that Janina Lapinskaite will show some of her films at the Danish Cinemateket tonight thursday 22nd of March and on sunday 24th of March.

I write this having a lot of sweet memories in mind. Lapinskaite was one of the filmmakers who most often visited the Balticum Film & TV Festival on the island of Bornholm, in the middle of the Baltic Sea. The festival that took place 1990-2000 and took back some prizes. ”From the Life of the Elves” (1996) (photo with director) is a fairy tale documentary presenting three grown up dwarfs living in the countryside in their own little world guarded by an old lady. The film that later was bought for distribution at the National Film Board of Denmark (at that time Statens Filmcentral, now the Danish Film Institute) and for Danish DR/TV introduces the special style of Lapinskaite, who later made films like ”Venus with a Cat” (1997) that reconstructs the painting of Manet, ”The Luncheon on the Grass” and ” The Life of Venecijus and the Death of Caesar” (2002) about a man and his pig, not to forget the 2009 work ”The Train stops for Five Minutes”.

Lapinskaite, who is principal of the Lithuanian film school, The Academy of Music, and has acted in fiction films of her husband, Aligimantas Puipa, is as her colleagues Audrius Stonys and Arunas Matelis, a true representative of what has been called the Lithuanian school of poetic documentary, with a focus on outsiders, artists of life you could say, in her country.

www.cinemateket.dk

It’s All True 2012

The Brasilian documentary film festival starts March 22 and runs until April 1. Amir Labaki, director of the festival, film critic and cigar connaisseur, has again put together a programme of high quality, with competition sections and retrospectives. Among the 16 films in the international competition, you find titles like Five Broken Cameras (Bornat and Davidi) and ½ Revolution (Shargawi and el Hakim), both with themes from the Middle East, the Polish master Marcel Lozinski’s Tonia and Her Children, the idfa winner Planet of Snails (Seung-Jung Yi) and Putin’s Kiss by Danish Lise Birk Pedersen.

Retrospectives are dedicated to Argentinian Andrés di Tella and Brazilian master Eduardo Coutinho, and out of competition the Brazilian audience in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo will be spoilt with films like Vivan las Antipodas (Kossakovsky) (Photo), Crazy Horse (Wiseman), Into the Abyss, A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life (Herzog) and Duch, The Ironmaster from Hell (Rithy Panh).

In a Latin American Showcase it is great to see El Huaso by Carlo Guillermo Proto, that had its European premiere at DocsBarcelona.

http://www.itsalltrue.com.br/2012/index.asp

EDN Award 2012 to Dox Box

Taken from the website of EDN: The EDN Award is presented to the DOX BOX initiators a day after the DOX BOX Global Day, an initiative made in response to the current political and human situation in Syria. Current conditions make it impossible to implement this year’s festival, which would have been the 5th edition. Instead the festival organizers set up DOX BOX Global Day, where Syrian documentaries were screened in 38 cities around the world on March 15; a date marking one year of Syrian uprising. 

Upon presenting the EDN Award Hanne Skjødt, Director of EDN says:

Originally The EDN Award was initiated to honour outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture. However, there are times and circumstances where we have to look beyond our own borders and recognise people fighting harder than we could ever imagine doing within our own continent. 

Therefore we have chosen to expand the geographical focus of our award. We want to honour a group of courageous people with a great vision and outstanding will-power. People who keep fighting despite conditions seeming close to impossible. A team, who at hard times does not give up but fight the cruel violence of a heartless dictator by being innovative and showing great spirit. Instead of having their festival stopped by the current situation, they came up with a solution to keep the spirit of their festival alive and create a worldwide recognition for their cause.

It is our great honour to present The EDN Award 2012 to Diana El Jeiroudi, Orwa Nyrabia and The DOX BOX Team.

Photo: Diana el Jeiroudi, Orwa Nyrabia and Hanne Skjødt at the ceremony at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, yesterday.