Ruslan Fedotow: Where are We Headed

The winner of the IDFA Award for Best First Film and the IDFA Award for Best Cinematography. No objection from my side. Observational documentary cinema with a location so well known, the Moscow Metro. And yet a film with several layers because the filmmaker demonstrates his skills in choosing the people he and his camera met in the Moscow Metro. Choosing and making decisions on whom to stay longer and on whom to stay short in the montage.

Where are we headed, a long and fun sequence with two drunk men in the train, to your house, one says, to my home, the other sasys but where is it, pure Samuel Beckett… and the red-haired woman who stares at the dog sculpture  – one of the many in the Moscow metro – and caresses it again and again. Why?… and the man who is violently put down on ground by police or guards… the same who tells a man in xmas clothes that he can not play between 5 and 8… and the many songs that are related to Russia and Russian culture as the film is (also) about the Russia far away from Kremlin and politics, Putin, however, is on the television screen in the metro, it’s him the man on the FB link is looking at New Year’s Eve.

The director’s point of view – or better tone or better wish or even better love towards the people, he has been filming, comes clearly at the end of the film: There is sunshine of the faces in the train and there is a long sequence shot of an elderly couple in love. His hand caressing her chin, she takes it away with a flirting smile. Lovely ending scene. In sunshine.

Belarus, Russia, 2021, 63 mins.

www.idfa.nl

IDFA Winners 2021

Mr. Landsbergis wins IDFA Award for Best Film in the International Competition and Octopus wins IDFA Award for Best Film in the Envision Competition

Last night, IDFA announced the winners of the competition programs during the IDFA 2021 Awards Ceremony. The ceremony took place in Amsterdam’s Compagnietheater, in addition to being live-streamed.

The 34th edition of IDFA has run as an in-person event, with twelve special online screenings for audiences, and an extensive library of films, talks, and consultancies available to online guests around the world. To date, IDFA has received over 100,000 cinema visits.

… and the winners were:

 

 

International Competition

Mr. Landsbergis (Lithuania, Netherlands) by Sergei Loznitsa is the winner of the IDFA Award for Best Film (€15,000).

“It is not easy to bring history to life. It is even more difficult to make it thrilling, urgent, and totally enriching, to make it feel like we are living through it as it happens. On every level of craft, the winning film represents a monumental achievement that fully explores the role one man, one nation, and one historical moment can play in the still-unfolding story of the global struggle for freedom and self-determination. The 2021 IDFA Award for Best Film in the International Competition goes to Sergei Loznitsa’s stunningly complete and gripping Mr. Landsbergis,” the jury reported.

The IDFA Award for Best Directing (€5,000) in the International Competition went to Diem Ha Le for Children of the Mist (Vietnam).

The IDFA Award for Best Editing (€2,500) went to Danielius Kokanauskis for Mr. Landsbergis (Lithuania, Netherlands), and the IDFA Award for Best Cinematography (€2,500) went to Where Are We Headed (Belarus, Russia), filmed and directed by Ruslan Fedotow.

The jury members for the International Competition were ​Arne Birkenstock, Claire Diao, ​Elena Fortes, ​Jessica Kiang, and ​Ryan Krivoshey.

Envision Competition

Karim Kassem won the IDFA Award for Best Film in Envision Competition (€15,000) for Octopus (Lebanon, Qatar, United States).

“This film develops its own imagistic language: a language of mystery and loss in the aftermath of a tragedy. It was made with great respect toward the subject matter and it felt like a story told from the inside. There are no answers presented, just the questions of life in the face of a disaster,” the jury reported.

The Award for Best Directing (€5,000) in the Envision Competition went to Pim Zwier for O, Collecting Eggs Despite the Times (Netherlands), and the Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution (€2,500) went to Lindiwe Matshikiza for One Take Grace (South Africa).

The jury for the Envision Competition decided to award a special mention to Skin (Brazil) by Marcos Pimentel.

The jury members for the Envision Competition were Andrea Arnold, ​Joe Bini, ​Charlotte Serrand, and Akram Zaatari.

IDFA DocLab Competition for Immersive Non-Fiction

Sacha Wares and John Pring won the IDFA DocLab Award for Immersive Non-Fiction (€5,000) for Museum of Austerity (United Kingdom).

The Special Jury Award for Creative Technology (€2,500) went to Marcel van Brakel and Mark Meeuwenoord for Symbiosis (Netherlands).

The jury members for the IDFA DocLab Competition for Immersive Non-Fiction were ​Myriam Achard, Avinash Changa, and ​Eleanor (Nell) Whitley.

IDFA DocLab Competition for Digital Storytelling

Tamara Shogaolu won the IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling (€5,000) with Un(re)solved (United States, Netherlands).

The Special Jury Award for Creative Technology (€2,500) went to Ravi and Emma (Australia) by Kylie Boltin, Ella Rubeli, Ravi Vasavan, and Emma Anderson.

The jury members for the IDFA DocLab Competition for Digital Storytelling were Marie Blondiaux, ​Arnold van Bruggen, and Sanne De Wilde.

IDFA Competition for Short Documentary

Handbook (Germany, Belarus) by Pavel Mozhar won the IDFA Award for Best Short Documentary (€5,000).

A special mention in the IDFA Competition for Short Documentary went to

Wolf Whispers (France) by Chloé Belloc.

The jury members for the IDFA Competition for Short Documentary were ​Eliane Esther Bots, ​Pamela  Cohn, and Sara Ishaq.

IDFA Competition for Youth Documentary

The IDFA Award for Best Youth Film (€5,000) went to Shamira Raphaëla for Shabu (Netherlands, Belgium).

A special mention in the IDFA Competition for Youth Documentary went to Water, Wind, Dust, Bread (Iran) by Mahdi Zamanpoor Kiasari.

The jury members for the IDFA Competition Youth Documentary were Ulla Haestrup, Eef Hilgers, and Edwin Mingard.

IDFA 2021 cross-section awards

This edition was the first to present four cross-section awards. From the International Competition, Envision Competition, Luminous, and Frontlight selections, three international juries chose the winners of the IDFA Award for Best First Feature, the IDFA Award for Best Dutch Film, and the FIPRESCI Award. From across the program, an international jury chose the winner of the Beeld en Geluid IDFA ReFrame Award for Best Creative Use of Archive.

From the nominated films, the IDFA Award for Best First Feature (€5,000) went to Where Are We Headed (Belarus, Russia), directed by Ruslan Fedotow.

The jury also awarded a special mention to Children of the Mist (Vietnam) by Diem Ha Le.

The jury members were Mahdi Fleifel, Daniella Shreir, and Jacqueline Zünd. 

From the nominated films, the IDFA Award for Best Dutch Film (€7,500) went to Maasja Ooms for Jason (Netherlands).

A special mention was awarded to Housewitz (Netherlands) by Oeke Hoogendijk.

The jury members were ​Susanne Guggenberger, ​Sacha Polak, and ​Farahnaz Sharifi. 

The FIPRESCI Award (€5,000) was given to Jafar Najafi for Makeup Artist (Iran).

The FIPRESCI jury members were Nino Kovačić, ​Steffen Moestrup, and ​Elena Rubashevska. 

From the nominated films, the Beeld en Geluid IDFA ReFrame Award for Best Creative Use of Archive (€5,000) went to Robin Hunzinger for Ultraviolette and the Blood-Spitters Gang (France).

A special mention was awarded to Sergei Loznitsa for Babi Yar. Context (Netherlands, Ukraine).

The jury members were ​Pascal Capitolin, ​Maciej J. Drygas, and ​Giovanna Fossati. 

IDFA Forum Awards

Yesterday, the IDFA Forum Awards were announced at the Compagnietheater. Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff’s project La Casa won the IDFA Forum Award for Best Pitch, Anna Shishova-Bogolubova’s The New Greatness picked up the IDFA Forum Award for Best Rough Cut, while the DocLab Forum Award went to Continuum VR by Daniela Maldonado, Tomas Espinosa, and Paula Gempeler. Each award includes a cash prize of €1,500. Read more about the IDFA Forum Awards here.

IDFA 2021 facts & figures

IDFA 2021 still has three more days to go. With approximately 3,000 guests in Amsterdam and online, extensive health and safety measures such as reduced venue capacity were in place to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all present. The measures taken have proven effective for the public, international guests, and staff; no outbreaks have occurred. To date, IDFA has received over 100,000 cinema visits.

The International Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) continues until Sunday, November 28.

De Sousa Dias & Schaefer: Journey to the Sun

… their first names are Susana and Ansgar, well known by

the editors of this site due to their films “Still Life“ and „48“, (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1938/).

This new film by the Portuguese couple demonstrates again how perfectly they know how to combine aesthetics and history with sound that include stories told by now old Austrians „who were sent to stay with host families in Portugal to recuperate after the Second World War“, when they were 6 or 8 or 10 years old.

You don’t get their names but your hear their voices and you are slowly taken into their experience. What they remember from the early post-war journey to the sun. It was for most of them a positive stay in rich homes, where they got close to families and maids and cats and dogs, in houses like palaces unlike the bombed Austria that they had left – there were 5000 who went. Memories for life.

The journey is told from beginning till end after 10 months stay. The boat trip, the arrival where families picked their kids, the language barriers, the joy of being there with a couple of testimonies, that tell another side of the stay. „I was locked up for 10 months“, says a man, who stayed with a priest. But others say „I never felt homesick“, „there was caressing and hugging that I did not know from home“. They wrote letters to home, they were sent after being censored as the letters arriving – astonishing!

Some remember how important religion was for the families, they took part in ceremonies, and one remembers to have met poverty – a barefooted boy who lives in a cave! In contrast to the one, who had met Salazar, who sent 6 pineapples to the kids every year for christmas or new year. 

And then the touching Goodbye´s, back to Austria, hard for many of the kids. One tells that when she came home, she spoke only Portuguese and could not recognise her mother.

The film is as excellent as their previous archive based works mentioned above. The two have their very special way of storytelling, where scratched images from chronicles bring witness of the time as does lovely family photos and films from the wealthy families archive. If you can say so – “small” sounds accompany sometimes the images, there is never a direct illustration of the words, except when the Austrian “kids” say that here is my mother, or grandmother, or talk about “the doctor” who always wore a suit even on the beach – the fotos of the girls stay long, you are invited to look at them, “enter them” as Sousa has put it and think your own story or your family´s – for instance on how you looked at that age, and for me as well how my two meter tall uncle from Argentina was also always in an ironed white shirt and perfect suit. Or my father standing on a boat in 1931 going from Buenos Aires to Southampton.

This is what the emotional “Journey to the Sun” does. It broadens out its theme through the montage and brings childhood memories into a historical context that could be of today, where kids are taken away from their roots. In this case they come home to Austria to find themselves and create an identity.   

Portugal, 2021,107 mins.

www.idfa.nl

IDFA: Kapanadze & van der Horst

A debutant and a veteran director, two very good films, award candidates I guess, I watched them, I give you some brief texts about them. Recommendations: Ketevan Kapanadze’s ”How the Room Felt” and Aliona van der Horst ”Turn Your Body to the Sun”.

An informative quote from the site text of the Georgian film: In the Georgian city of Kutaisi, a local women’s football team constitutes the heart of a group of female and non-binary queer people, who get together regularly to hang out, to party, to hug each other, and to discuss existential issues…

I had a smile on my face during the whole film because it is full of warmth and atmosphere, I loved watching and listening to the young women/girls, seeing them drink, dance, SMOKE (OMG!), expressing their feelings towards each other, being happy, being sad – hanging out as said above. Of course the film relates ”to a society that’s not known for embracing its LGBTQ+ community” but the film is far from being a campaign film or a journalistic report, it is an observational film about individuals to whom you get close – Lara (or is it Lana), Anuka, Anano, Sopo… and it is amazing to know that this is a first film, when you see the many tableau-like scenes, where nothing happens, and scenes full of poetry, so well set up and told. Talented film language.

The debutant is in the International Competition as is Dutch Aliona van der Horst with her touching, aesthetically superb «Turn Your Body to the Sun». An informative quote from the site text: The incredible life story of a Soviet soldier of Tatar descent who was captured by the Nazis during WWII. Today, his daughter Sana is tracing the path of her silent father, trying to understand what made him the man she knew as a child, through his diaries, as well as various personal and public archives and registries…

The daughter and her sister are on the train to Siberia, where the father was in a camp for 14 years! An incredible story, as written above and a Film that masters the many layers, giving the audience the necessary information to follow a man, who was in the Soviet and German army ending up in the American around D-Day. When he came back from the camp, where he was sent punished for being a traitor, he suddenly said ”I saw Notre Dame”. One of the beautiful moments that stand out in a narrative, where van der Horst succeeds brilliantly to make the fabulous archive alive, colouring those pieces that were b/w, and making the letters and diary fragments fine pieces of literature… they arrive to the camp in  Siberia in a poetic film that I feel happy to have seen. 

How the Room Felt, Georgia, 2021, 74 mins.

Turn Your Body to the Sun, Netherlands, 2021, 93 mins.

www.idfa.nl

Niels Pagh Andersen: Order in Chaos Launch

I have already posted (on FB) advertising texts about Danish editor Niels Pagh Andersen and his book launch at IDFA sunday morning through a debate with IDFA director Orwa Nyrabia. The launch was set up as a masterclass with the two as part of the IDFAcademy with access by accredited guests. 90 minutes followed by sales of the book in the foyer of the big hall in the Compagnietheater – outside you can see one of the canals in a sunshine that makes the beauty of the city significant.

Andersen… impossible to make „a normal“ report of his live performance so I have chosen to quote the editor, who was nicely dressed up for his „book birth“ and started asking Nyrabia if he could walk while talking. Permission given. And here goes some sentences I put down on my paper:

I started with a kind of unofficial mentorship with Danish star editor Christian Hartkopp. I did everything. „The Pathfinder“ was my real debut, fiction, it was Oscar nominated. After that I did all kind of things but I was losing my dream. And myself.

Second life… I learned something with documentaries. You need to be humble when you are moving in the real world with ordinary people.

From analog to digital… brought a lot of bad habits. «They» are postponing the decisions and end up with too much to choose from. We need structure and we need chaos.

I am helping making the director’s film… to find the director’s tone…

Sometimes it helps to take a walk together. The creative dialogue. Ambition: «We can dance».

I want to work with something I don’t understand. Life is a learning process. (The Pirjo Honkasalo experience ”Three Rooms of Melancholia” as an example). I am curious and not afraid. We can always go to the shrink and have our narrative adjusted!

… Niels was talking about ”the authentic now” that I find difficult to write short about, it is so well described in the book as is what he means by ”subtext”…

Why? The longing to see the world. The film tempo has gone down. More slow films. 

My audience is more intelligent than me. 

Screenings… the worst screeners are directors. They only see how they would have made the film.

… and you know what, you should buy the book!

 https://orderinchaosbook.com 

Mikael Opstrup: The Uncertainty

Subitled: «A book about Developing Character driven Documentary»

”I am painfully aware that this book is risky business. I am trying to rationalize the irrational, to break down the bumpy documentary film process into conscious decisions and structures, yes even into budgets and financing plans. I plead guilty and ask for forgiveness.”

Words from Mikael Opstrup in the beginning of his book. A yes to forgiving Mikael. I have known him for at least 20 years and been working with him as a tutor and moderator in numerous documentary events – in Buenos Aires, in Damascus, in Ramallah and every year in Riga at the Baltic Sea Docs. I have a lot of respect for his skills and now that respect also includes that he has taken time and energy to write a book. You are more than forgiven Mikael having done this fine work that hopefully will find many readers, who like you and I love documentaries. Total recommendation from my side.

No pictures, no references to films, with texts divided into chapters and to be honest it is a demanding read with points I don’t agree with and/or don’t understand, but it does not matter, as it is well written and inspiring. You get your brain in action! 

As you I am addicted to a genre that has many doors to enter, one of them being the Character driven Documentary, a sub-genre, an ”art beyond control” as you put it contrary to ”the documentaries where you use interviews, archive, voice over, animation etc. (which) are to a certain extent under your artistic control.” That sub-genre is the focus.

The book is full of definitions based on reflections. Mikael raises questions and tells the reader what he means with „character”, with “driven”, with “script” followed by a super-interesting chapter in the book called “the documentary potential”. Mikael asks himself and the reader if a text written for the director him- or herself, or the film team could be called so, “the documentary potential” and reflects on that. I buy that, much better than script. 

That is for me the main quality of the book, the reflections conveyed in the essayistic style that Mikael has chosen, i.e. based on the many personal experiences that he has had during the decades, he has been in the documentary world.

And conveyed with the humour that I know you have Mikael, hope the English language catches the many fine, sometimes non-pretentious subtle sentences that call for a smile in a serious context. I knew that side of you but not the more – in a good sense – sentimental, where you write about Life and the search for Happiness, your closeness to your family that now also includes you as a grandfather! Like in the best documentaries you include yourself in the existential matters that we deal with every day. Great!

Questions raised and discussed come back in chapters called “the story”, “directing », « subtext”, “filming”, “editing”, “looking for moments”… At the end of the book Mikael turns to a more informative style writing about pitching and trailers and what you can expect at a Forum like the one here at IDFA… to end with a chapter “What’s football got to do with it?” 

“I am fascinated by football and Character driven Documentary for the same reason: it oozes of real-life drama. We do our best to control it, but we cannot. For the same reasons that we cannot control our own lives.”

We have watched many football games together and right your are, the Uncertainty is always there.

Mikael, good luck with the book and thanks for the huge effort. A gift to the Forum delegates and the rest of us, film lovers.

Denmark, Published by Mikael Opstrup, 1st edition 1000 copies, 48 pages.

Mikael says:

BUY THE BOOK
Write me for a copy: mikaelopstrup@outlook dk

IDFA: Amsterdam Global Village

Full house at beautiful Tuschinski last night – for a 25 year old film, a classic in world documentary history, Johan van der Keuken’s Amsterdam Global Village. 4 hours (!) plus one hour with the film’s producer Pieter van Huystee, Nosh van der Lely, the partner of van der Keuken, who took the sound and did a lot more, in a conversation with Carlo Chatrian from the Berlinale, accompanied on the stage by Bolivian Roberto, one of the key persons in the film who came with his son, who is ”being born” in the film, now he is a good looking 25 year old man.

With Roberto who left Bolivia to come to Holland, fell in love with a Dutch woman – the film crew went back to his village in the mountains to meet his mother in one of the many beautiful sequences in the film. The mother, who is still alive, Roberto said last night, cries and cries as she misses her son, it’s very emotional as it is in the sequence from Chechnya, where – sorry forgot his name – the charismatic Chechnyan living in Holland goes back to meet his family and do some humanitarian aid helped by Dutch organisations. The mother & son theme is there again – and there are awful images of corpses from what was the first Chechnyan war.

Amsterdam – the movements of the camera catching the city, its buildings and its people. The pizza courier, Khalid, on his moped plays a major role, he goes around, he buys hash in a coffee shop, he sees beautiful naked women at the photographer, for whom he delivers photos when developed… the red-haired woman and her son going back to the house, where she lived before she – Jewish – went into hiding for years during the war, and to the house, where her son was hiding. She tells her story sooo captivating… and the female dj at work, van der Keuken goes constantly close caressing the protagonists with an editing, done by late Barbara Hin, that gives a constant surprise of innovative solutions that goes with the flow through the canals and out to the outskirts, the industrial areas of the big city – not to forget as Pieter van Huystee said after the five hours that I (and my back and my bum!) survived.

Documentaries – all about people, yes, but it depends on how close you can get to them and on your cinematic skills. I was not bored for 4 hours. Shot on film, you see it. 

Thank you IDFA for this choice – to revisit a grand film.  

IDFA Starts Tomorrow

… the 34th edition and this is what the IDFA staff luckily communicated the other day:

”IDFA is delighted to share that the festival continues in person next week, and cinemas remain open. Following the measures laid out by the Dutch government in tonight’s national press conference, which largely support the cultural sector, the festival can confidently announce that from November 17 to 28, all films, talks, and performances will go on in full, with the utmost health and safety measures in effect.

“We highly appreciate the acknowledgement of culture’s importance in the new regulations, and it makes us believe in our responsibility even more: to organize a safe festival, as we keep on serving the resilience of the international film community, and the cultural life of Dutch society through such trying times,” said Orwa Nyrabia, Artistic Director.”

Surfing the IDFA website I took time to read the paper ”Policy Plan 2021-2024, a good read, not that long. I picked a paragraph from the ”Manifesto” that actually reflects my choice for the 3 full days I will be at IDFA, from Thursday till Monday, with mask and corona pass:

”IDFA is also proof that an ever-growing number of people are looking for high-quality, artistic sourc- es of information and reflection. This is why, now more than ever, IDFA stands for documentary film as an art form, for aesthetics, beauty, imagination and inspiration. It also stands for documentaries with a different visual language and structures, for films that depict unknown cultures or are filmed from a non-Western perspective, and for interactive documentaries that are innovative and pioneering…”

The link to the Policy Plan: 

https://d25cyov38w4k50.cloudfront.net/downloads/Policy-Plan-def.pdf

 

 

Sérgio Tréfaut: Paraiso

White plastic chairs are being arranged in a circle in front of a palace. A show is to begin. A show with lovely people – with a twist from the Beatles text: “All the lovely people where did they all belong, all the lovely people…”. Came to my mind watching Sérgio Tréfaut’s film shot in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, where the director is born, the country he left when a teenager, the country that he has returned to live in. 40 years later. And even if the film is not a political film, as Tréfaut wrote to me, many of the lovely old people singing and dancing have passed away during the pandemic, the film being shot just before covid took over. Read how the director introduces his documentary:

”Elderly people gather every day in the romantic gardens of Catete Palace, the former official residence of the presidents of Brazil from 1867 to 1960, and presently the site of the Museu da República. After sunset, they would tell each other the meaning of life, singing love songs. This film was suddenly interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic and became a tribute to a decimated generation.”’

This is of course the aftermath, the tragedy but also the strength of a film, when you see it now, a documentation of a before-Bolsonaro-wonderful-life through songs, performed by people with heart, passion and moving hips, being together on the plastic chairs with the director following some of them to their homes, up the stairs, through many doors and gates to unlock. I read that the singer are called “serestas”, coming from serenades. 

I wrote «documentation», wrong, it is a documentary film, “a little film” Tréfaut wrote to me, maybe for him but for me primarily a warm film, a big tribute to Life and Love that all the songs circle around, made with a big heart. CORAZON is the word; in all the songs you hear that word. 

Portugal, Brazil, France, 74 mins., 2021

Srdan Keca: Museum of the Revolution

To safeguard the truth about us, were the words architect Richter used, when he presented his plan for a Museum of the Revolution to be built in Belgrade in 1961… Director Srdan Keca takes this – with great propaganda archive material – as the starting point for his version of the truth as he sees it in a film that is quite as unconventional as Richter wanted the museum to be. Keca works with several layers surrounding three people, who live in and around the basement of the museum, that is what was left of a vision, conveyed in magic luminous sequences of light coming in to the place, light spots of hope, where Milica and her mother Vera stays together with the old woman Mara, who has no contact to her daughter, who she “gave away” to the social system. In the darkness of poverty they are. Kecha stresses this with compassion, when his camera caresses them, often by taking away the sound staying long on their faces. 

The love relationship between Milica and her mother is beautiful, their life is a constant struggle to survive as polishers of car windows to earn some money to send to the father, who is in prison. The architectural point of view stays in the picture: Modern conventional ugly buildings are constructed now in Belgrade along the river of Sava. Keca paints with his camera in a film that asks the question: Is this what we want to safeguard?

Serbia, Croatia, Czech Republic, 2021, 91 mins.

The film competes in the Luminous section of IDFA with five screenings.

Below a link to a „Creative Dialogue” about the film organised by the IDF (Institute of Documentary Film). Takes place this coming Wednesday 10/11 at 5 pm.

https://dokweb.net/activities/online/2021/upcoming