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

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

Shocking reading, taken from the Indiewire Newsletter: This weekend, in a post on his popular political blog, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald posted a story about the ways that the Department of Homeland Security has routinely intimidated and violated the fourth amendment rights of documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras (photo), who is currently at work on the third of her three post-9/11 documentaries (following the Oscar-nominated “My Country, My Country” and the critically acclaimed “The Oath“).  According to Greenwald, “Poitras is now forced to take extreme steps — ones that hamper her ability to do her work — to ensure that she can engage in her journalism and produce her films without the U.S. Government intruding into everything she is doing. She now avoids traveling with any electronic devices.”

From the Cinema Eye organization an open letter has been released to the Obama administration:

As members of the nonfiction filmmaking community, we want to express our outrage over the ongoing harassment of our colleague Laura Poitras by the US government and the Department of Homeland Security. We call on the Obama administration to investigate this abuse of power and to bring an end to this persistent violation of

America’s bedrock principle of a free press.

Laura Poitras is one of America’s most important nonfiction filmmakers, the recipient of the 2011 Cinema Eye Honor for Outstanding Achievement in Direction for her landmark film, The Oath, and the chair of our Filmmaker Advisory Board. She was nominated for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar and twice has been nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her work. Her long list of credits, awards and impeccable credentials would be easy for anyone to verify.

Over the course of the last several years, as Laura has been working to chronicle the post-9/11 world and the effect of American policies here and abroad, she has been repeatedly harassed, detained, interrogated and has had her cameras and computers seized by Homeland Security officials as she attempts to re-enter her home country.

Not once in more than three dozen detentions and interrogations has Homeland Security found anything to justify this chronic abuse of power.

Within the last week, as Laura was returning from a recent trip abroad, she was once again detained. This time, however, she was also threatened with being handcuffed for attempting to take notes during her interrogation.

Nonfiction filmmakers perform a vital role in a democratic society, serving as observers and investigators of the world around us. It is unacceptable for any American nonfiction filmmaker or journalist to be treated in this manner. They must be able to return to their own country without fear of arrest or fear that their work product will be seized, solely because they are investigating or chronicling subject matter that may be sensitive or controversial.

We ask other members of the nonfiction film and journalism communities to protest this affront to a free press and we reiterate our call on the Obama administration to end these draconian and un-American policies once and for all.

Sincerely,

Sean Farnel, Andrea Meditch, Esther Robinson, AJ Schnack and Nathan Truesdell

Cinema Eye Honors Executive Board

http://www.indiewire.com/

Midnight East, the Israeli online magazine “dedicated to obsessive involvement with the Israeli cultural scene”, has published a long, precise and informative article by Ayelet Dekel based on interviews with three mentors, two from the North of Europe and one from Israel. Here is the beginning of the article, go to the link and read the rest:

“I have read 102 Israeli projects, 20 of them have been selected for Copro and these are the people we are talking to here,” said Tue Steen Müller, one of three mentors in the Master Class for Israeli documentary filmmakers that took place from March 18 – 20, “That’s a lot. Reading these 102, and looking at the clips, it’s like looking at the soul of a nation.”

Promoting the making of Israeli documentaries as an independent marketing channel for the past 13 years, CoPro’s main event is the Israeli Documentary Screen Market which will take place from May 29 – June 3, 2012. In preparation for pitching their projects to an international panel of television network executives and other industry professionals, the filmmakers selected to participate had the benefit of individual consultations with three mentors: Tue Steen Müller, Iikka Vehkalahti and Erez Laufer. Midnight East had the privilege of conversing with all three consultants individually, between their sessions with the filmmakers…. Continue on… midnighteast.com

Photo: The Collaborator and his family by Ruthie Shatz and Adi Barash.