Syria and Me – The Revolution Chronicles

“Me in English… from Syria 2012, as frequent as possible. Orwa”, was the short sentence that came up on facebook yesterday from film producer and Dox Box festival in Damascus director Orwa Nyrabia, who has been reporting from Syria since the revolution started March 15 2011. Knowing Orwa since the start of the festival that I visited the four times it has taken place, I can only express admiration and gratitude for this gesture from a reliable and tireless communicator. Facebook people, go to “Syria and Me – The Revolution Chronicles” and follow what Nyrabia posts of texts and clips.

“I will do my best answering questions and helping understand the Syrian situation today if you ask me! Kindly ask through comments.”, writes Orwa Nyrabia.

On this facebook page you will also find a link to Reel Festivals, a Scottish based initiative that “believe that art and culture are the best way to break down barriers and increase communication” through events that have focused on Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan with poetry, music and film. A very interesting site, address below. Khaled Khalifa’s letter is being spread through Reel festivals, among others. I don’t know Khalifa personally, this is what Reel Festivals writes: KK is a Syrian author based in Damascus. His 2006 novel “In Praise of Hatred” was a finalist for the International Prize for Arabic fiction, and has been banned in Syria.

Back to Orwa, 47 minutes ago: Dear World, war in Syria cannot be prevented anymore… because it already started. We can hear it, then, every time one finds the courage to walk towards the sound, one does see it.

From now on, war can only be won, quickly.

http://www.reelfestivals.org/letter-from-damascus/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Syria-and-Me-The-Revolution-Chronicles/318536521531396

Khaled Khalifa: Letter From Syria

Letter From Syrian novelist Khaled Khalifa to his friends around the world:

My friends, writers and journalists from all over the world, in China and Russia, I would like to inform you that my people is being subjected to a genocide. A week ago the forces of the Syrian regime stepped up its attacks on the rebellious cities, especially in the cities of Homs, Zabadani, the suburbs of Damascus, Rastan, Madaya, Wadi Barada, Figeh, Idlib and villages of the Zawiya mountain. In the past week, up until the moment in which I am writing these lines, more than a thousand martyrs fell, many of them children, and hundreds of homes were destroyed on top of their inhabitants.

The world’s blindness encouraged the regime’s attempt to eliminate the peaceful revolution in Syria, with an unrivaled repressive force. The support of Russia, China, Iran and the silence of the world in the face of the crimes committed in broad daylight, has allowed the regime’s killing of my people for the past eleven months. But in the last week, since February 2cd, the features of the massacre were made clear. The scene of hundreds of thousands of Syrians who took to the streets of their towns and villages on the night of the massacre of Khalidiya, the night of last Friday to Saturday, raising their hands in prayer and in tears, is heartbreaking and puts the humanitarian tragedy of Syria in the center of the world. It is a clear expression of our feeling of orphanhood, resulting from our abandonment by the world, which is content to do political and economic sanctions that do not stop murderers or restrain blood bathed tanks.



My people who faced death with bear chests and songs is, in these very moments, subject to a cleansing campaign. Our rebellious cities face sieges unprecedented in the history of world revolutions, preventing medical personnel to attend to the wounded, as field hospitals are being bombed in cold blood and destroyed. The entry of help organizations is also prevented, phone lines are cut, and food and medicine are blocked to the extent that the smuggling of blood bags or Satamol tablets into the affected areas is considered a crime worthy of imprisonment in detention camps, the details of which will shock you one day.



In its modern history, the world has not yet seen valor and courage such as those displayed by the revolutionary Syrians in all our towns and villages, as the world has not yet seen such a silence, that is now considered a complicity in the murder and extermination of my people. My people is the people of peace, coffee and music, that I wish you will taste one day, roses the fragrances of which I hope you will breathe one day, so that you know that the center of the world is today exposed to a genocide, and that the whole world is an accomplice to the spilling of our blood. 

I can not say more in these difficult moments, but I hope you will take action in solidarity with my people, through whatever means you deem appropriate. I know that writing stands helpless and naked in front of the Russian guns, tanks and missiles bombing cities and civilians, but I have no wish for your silence to be an accomplice of the killings as well.



Khaled Khalifa, Damascus.

Text taken from Syrian film friend’s facebook posting.

DocsBarcelona Pitching Forum 2012

The auditorium of the CCCB, cultural Centre of Barcelona, was full of hundreds of observers to the 15th pitching forum of DocsBarcelona. They provided the enthusiastic atmosphere for the 23 projects that were to be pitched there during two days, in a hall that had 30 invited professionals to respond to the pitches, 16 of them around the table: commissioning editors from tv stations, distributors, film fund representatives. The quality of screening of the trailers and teasers was excellent, cinema hall size, so all conditions were there for the well performed forum that it turned out to be.

In the present situation of course! As pitch trainer and moderator Paul Pauwels wisely said to the pitchers at the workshop before the pitching forum:

Remember that this is not about the money, this is about putting yourself on the agenda, on the market, promoting your film and yourself”.

Promotion, yes, and that did happen for the projects and for the documentary genre as such. And for sure some creative contacts and prebuys will come out of DocsBarcelona as it has always done, and that can lead to important financing from MEDIA and/or national public funding and/or from the international funds that have come up lately around Tribeca Film Festival.

300 professionals from more than 30 countries.

www.docsbarcelona.com

DocsBarcelona Latin Forum 2012

Session after session the pitch forum organisers and participants talk about the financial crisis in the European documentary market, mostly exemplified through the cutdown in budget, staff and time slots for documentaries in the public broadcasting companies.

It was therefore quite refreshing, on a cold saturday morning in Barcelona, to sense warm winds coming from Latin America. At the second Latin Forum for documentaries held as part of the DocsBarcelona 2012. One after one the filmmakers from Argentina, Bresil, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico and Ecuador gave their brief intro to the situation for the creative documentary in the respective countries. And there was no crying! Well, you could always wish for more but the impression was definitely that things are going in the right direction when it comes to public film funding, film education, film festivals for documentaries, and also some tv stations were mentioned positively.

The 6 filmmakers presented their film projects to representatives from YLE (Finland), Lichtpunt (Belgium), WDR (Germany), idfa forum & Jan Vrijman Fund (the Netherlands), Colombian television, TV3 Catalunya.. All projects were well received as projects of a high professional and creative standard. Several were close to rough cut and/or post production, and will for sure be going for festivals and broadcast in some stations worlwide.

David Rubio has filmed brilliantly inside a university prison in Argentina where inmates and guards are equally taught as classmates, ”13 Doors” is the title. Wanadi Siso is almost ready with a fine cut of ”El Laberinto de lo posible” about the blind art photographer Sonia Soberats. Siso was given first prize for his pitch of the project at DocMeeting Argentina last year. The brothers Federico and Martin Aletta is finishing a film that brother Federico shot one year ago when the tsnunami hit the NorthEast of Japan, titled ”Ishinomaki, Rock n’Roll City”. Nuria Ibanez (photo) is also close to have ”I’m Eleven Years Old” ready for international release, the teaser she showed was a heartbreaking scene with mother and her daughter, who wanted to take her own life. Bresilian producer Luciana Freitas came with a fresh proposal called ”Lan – Box of Hopes”, referring to Lan houses, internet cafés, that take the kids away from the street corners. Finally, Nicolas Alonso took us, with excellent cinematography, to ”Monte Adentro”, to a small society of muleteers in Colombia. Watch out for these films!

www.docsbarcelona.com

DocsBarcelona Pitching Forum Projects

The opening was fun and sweet, clever, serious and thoughtful. Alessandro Negrini (photo), director from Italy living in Northern Ireland & Tor Arne Bjerke, producer from Norway, took the auditorium by heart and brain with their ”Ballad of a Ghost Town” to be released in 2013 50 years after a natural disaster, only 3 years ago declared a man-made human tragedy destroyed five towns in less than seven minutes, killing more than 2000 people. The filmmakers go back to the Italian town and to the inhabitants. Great stuff!

As was the project that closed the pitching forum, ”La fin du Monde”, presented brilliantly by local director and producer Ventura Durall i Soler, who advised that the next DocsBarcelona better be in Bugarach in France because this is the only place that will survive the catastrophy that will hit the world the 21st of December of 2012. Nanouk Films is the company, Nanouk was the first documentary in the world, maybe ”La fin du Monde” will be the last!

There were many projects that were well received, I can only mention a few here, you can see the titles of the selected projects at the website below, and google many of them for further information.

Juanjo Giménez Pena from Barcelona presented a wonderful cinematic project ”Contact Proof”, built on negatives and slides from the French photographer Pascal le Pipe, mostly Americana as I understood it. His director colleague from Barcelona, who has attended DocsBarcelona several times, Albert Solé, plans to go with charismaric Spanish science pioneer back to the Antarctica to revive ”Frozen Memories”. Polish Krzysztof Kopczynski presented the strong story, “Dybbuk”, from Uman in Ukraine, where Chassids travel to celebrate Rosh Hashanah at the grave of Rabbi Rachman, and where clashes appear between the locals and the visitors. Italian Ivan Gergolet has a wonderful 90 year old Maria Fux, who helps people find themselves in “Dancing with Maria”. Macedonian Atanas Georgiev charmed with “Funeral and Wedding Orchestra”, like his previous “Cash and Marry” full of cinematic quality, humour and atmosphere.

www.docsbarcelona.com

DocsBarcelona 2012 Messi

I can not leave Barcelona and the documentary event that – on a personal note – I have been part on since its start 15 years ago, without having another personal note on football! I am lucky that I editorially can make a link to one of the film projects, ”Ishinomaki. RocknRoll City”, the one that the brothers Aletta from Argentina are making. In one scene, shot by Federico, who was a volunteer at the camps after the tsunami one year ago in Japan, a little boy shouts with joy into the camera: ”Come here, Messi, Coooome”. It shows how much that club means to us big and small boys all over the world, how much football means, no now I am getting pathetic… anyhow it was obvious to give Barca-fan and –member, DocsBarcelona director big boy Joan Gonzalez a Barca shirt with DocsBarcelona on the back and number 15 referring to the age of the event, and it was obvious that I had to write this on my way back to Copenhagen seeing fathers and sons (some of them 5-6 years old) entering the plane after having been to Camp Nou to watch Messi!

DocsBarcelona 2012/ 2

The 15th edition of DocsBarcelona closed last night with quite a spectacular performance. After the screening of ”The Human Tower”, directed by Ram Devineni and Cano Rojas, a group went on stage to make the human tower happen in the beautiful Palau de la Musica Catalana. The small boy on the top unfolded a piece of cloth saying ”At Night, They Dance” (photo), the film that was awarded the price as the Best Film of DocsBarcelona 2012. Directed by Isabelle Lavigne and Stéphane Thibault, Canadians, the film gives a strong and warm portrait of a family of belly dancers in Cairo, shot before the revolution.

A special mention was given to Viktor Kossakovsky for his ”Vivan las Antipodas”. Kossakovsky was definitely the star of the festival with a masterclass for 300 and three sold-out screenings of his films in the Renoir Cinemas, followed by 45 minutes of Q&A. Kossakovsky is a magnificent filmmaker but also a great entertainer.

The award for best ”human rights” film was given to Michael Collins and Marty Syjuco for their impressive film ”Give Up Tomorrow” and the campaign they have led to free Paco Larrañaga, wrongly accused of rapes and murders in the Philippines, but now, due (also) to the film, and his Spanish family roots, sitting in a prison in Spain. Look at the website, below, and you will see how impressive the work these two filmmakers are doing. All over the world. And they will not stop before Paco is free.

Yuval Sagiv from Israel got the prize for being best New Talent with “How I filmed the War”, and a teenage jury awarded “Maria and I” as best film for kids.

http://www.pacodocu.com/about

www.docsbarcelona.com

Behind the Scenes. Marina Abramović

The film Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present (see below) focuses mostly on the presentation of her exhibition. In this article I would like to look deeper into Marina’s personal experiences during the whole process.

I saw Marina in Park City at least 5 times. She attended various workshops, meetings, stayed after movies to talk to other filmmakers and she was always very talkative, especially about her own exhibition.

The most important and many times repeated claim was that she would never ever go through this again. It required too much physical and mental strength from Marina; moreover she believes that it would never have the same affect on people as it did back then.

In the beginning organizers were very anxious of what would happen if nobody would dear to sit in front of Marina and the chair stayed empty? Marina herself took the decision to sit in front of an empty chair and wait for someone to come. However, this (that it was empty) never happened during the whole 3 months period.

It is interesting that no one limited the time a person could sit in front of Marina during the exhibition. In the film one can see that people changed constantly, but that was not the case. Some people sat for couple of minutes, while there were people who stayed there for hours. There was one person who sat in front of Marina just when museum opened its doors and stayed for 7 hours when he was forced to leave by security guards. Another person came three times and waited for about at least 5 hours each time to spend just moments with Marina. She later commented that she felt an unbearable sorrow coming from that person and was happy to help him to break away from it.

Journalists kept asking Marina: How is it impossible to affect strangers so much in such a short period of time? Some people would be crying, some laughing, some would be very thankful or sometimes they even wouldn’t be able to walk away and needed assistance.

It wasn’t an easy task for Marina. She believes that the main key lies within the emotional state of mind. According to her, in the absence of any kind of emotion the gaze mirrored back the initial emotions of the people, thus showing them the real inner self.

Marina was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to complete the task. The hardest issue was to be in a present time the whole time. Fridays would be almost unbearable, because it would be 10 hours of sitting instead of 7 as usual.

That needed not only mental but also physical preparation. It took Marina one year to complete this process. She went to India to clean her body and changed her diet, since she didn’t have lunch for 3 moths and that could cause serious health problems. She also trained her body not to want to go to a toilet during the whole day and to cope with gradually increasing physical pain.

People waited for hours and hours even slept outside MOMA just to get in.

Marina herself felt mostly touched by the security guards. She told that there are 65 guards at MOMA and many of them would come on their free days as regular visitors and would wait in a line just to sit in front of Marina.

It is unbelievable how many people were touched by this exhibition. They created groups on Facebook and still meet to discuss it. There was even Marina’s support team that came from New York to Sundance to tell others about their unforgettable experiences.

Report from Sundance Festival 2012

Matthew Akers: Marina Abramović

This feature-length documentary by Matthew Akers beautifully portrays Marina Abramović, an unforgettable artist who is capable of using herself as a tool for expressing modern art. Marina is Belgrade-born New Yorker and widely known for her exhibitions that exceed general norms, sometimes even physically hurting herself and others. This film is a powerful picture of Marina and her one-year’s thorough preparation for the Exhibition Artist is Present that took place in 2010 at MOMA (The Museum of Modern Art, New York).

Artist is Present is a 3 months long performance, where Marina would be sitting on a chair in a middle of an empty spacious room fully emotionless to offer a gaze to someone who would choose to sit on a chair across from her.

This performance became a huge success. People would wait more than 16 hours to get a possibility to look Marina in the eyes for couple of moments. It was the longest performance in Marina’s career and it demanded all the possible physical as well as emotional preparation from her. As she claimed herself: ‘The Hardest thing is to do something which is close to nothing’.

The film crew follows Marina for one year of preparation and 3 months of performing at MOMA. Moreover, there is also a strong romantic love side to this movie.  Marina’s long year partner German performance artist Ulay is about to reunite with Marina and perform together once more.

This film has everything what a good story entails: a strong artistic value, wisdom, dreams that did and did not come true, unforgettable love story, drama, disappointment, hard work and above it all a lot of hope and genuine emotions.

Seen at Sundance 2012.

marinafilm.com, trailer

variety.com, review

hollywoodreporter.com, review

About the exhibition:

moma.org

nytimes.com

youtube.com

Errol Morris’ film

Det er godt at være københavner lige nu. Cinemateket viser her i februar store dele af Errol Morris værk, 2.-8. februar hans Tabloid (2010) som månedens film. I morgen kan man også se The Thin Blue Line (1988). Det store Morris program omfatter endvidere i løbet af februar The Gates of Heaven (1978), A Brief History of Time (1991), The Fog of War (2003) og Standard Operating Procedure (2008). Se tidspunkter her:

http://www.dfi.dk/Filmhuset/Cinemateket/Serie.aspx?id=6997

Still: The Fog of War