Magnificent7 Belgrade 2022 Zoo Lockdown

This text is written by Magnificent7 directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic:

Austria 2022 
73 minutes 
director: Andreas Horvath

This is an exciting visual adventure by an exceptional Austrian photographer and filmmaker who exclusively introduces us to the world closed behind the long-locked doors of the Salzburg Zoo, to the world like from fairy tales and dreams.

The unexpected circumstances of the lockdown during the covid 19 pandemic left permanent residents of Salzburg Zoo without daily visits and noisy presence of visitors. In addition to the very discreet staff that maintains the basic living conditions, animals are left completely alone most of the time and left to their own devices. Through a series of surprising scenes the author virtuosly transforms the architectural particularity of the garden, full of glass partitions that relieve the impression of confinement and enable communication between animals, while making the space fluid, unreal and dreamlike. The presence of animals from a solid and unquestionable existence in life and on the screen often passes into unusual states between reality and apparition. Thoughtful, precisely chosen shots, with scenes sometimes as if from another, to us unknown world, very carefully study these creatures that we often take for granted and awaken in us the awareness of the equality of all living beings, in which man doesn’t have and shouldn’t have a privileged place . The secret of creatures remain undiscovered and exciting, and even the reappearance of people, daily visitors, who in their false superiority turn this place into a so-called zoo, trivializing the world, does not manage to change that.

A remarkable cinema experience, an impressive story almost without a single word about life and living beings with whom we share the that we live on.

magnificent7 Belgrade 2022 The Treasures of Crimea

This text is written by the Magnificent7 directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic:

Netherlands 2021 
82 minutes 
director: Oeke Hoogendijk

The work of a prominent Dutch director famous for her magnificent films dealing with the world of art, which introduce us to the exclusive spaces behind the splendor and beauty that we admire.

This film brings before us one of the most controversial issues related to archaeological and artistic heritage. Impartially and always respecting the need to listen to the other side, author Oeke Hoogendijk follows, since 2014, a process full of twists and turns, the battle of lawyers, laws and regulations. The priceless archaeological and artistic treasure of Crimea presented at an exhibition in the Netherlands has suddenly become the subject of an intractable controversy – to whom it actually belongs after the political changes that took place during the exhibition. The discreet and, for many, imperceptible museum director in Amsterdam decides to become an unexpected hero by asking the question, ready to stand up for silent, wonderful objects and provide them with unlimited shelter. Before us, through a series of exciting portraits of the main participants and unexpected events the story of the incredible fate of objects of a long-lost nation is developing and becoming more and more complex. Superb camera and editing as in great feature films, with a masterful director’s work by Oeke Hoogendijk, create a saga about archaeologists and their love, about the nightmare that the Scythians unknowingly experience centuries after they disappeared in the labyrinths of history, about valuables that deserve to be preserved by those who gave them themselves in return.

An unexpected, thrilling cinematic experience that takes you from the excavations of Crimea to the cool, contemporary designed spaces of the Netherlands and back.

Magnificent7 Belgrade 2022 A Provincial Hospital

This text is written by Magnificent7 festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic:

Bulgaria, Germany 2022 
102 minutes 
directors: Ilian Metev, Ivan Chertov, Zlatina Teneva

This film begins its festival life right after its premiere at the big festival in Karlovy Vary, as a new great film by Ilian Metev, a young European author with an English documentary style. This time he is with two other young filmmakers. A documentary that amazed Europe with the magnificent courage of documentary authors to enter a dangerous place and come face to face with things that the whole world wanted to run away from.

This exceptional film stands opposite to everything we saw during the covid 19 pandemic – this is the work of three directors in a completely unexpected relationship. Metev is in isolation in London, and two young colleagues, Ivan Chertov and Zlatina Teneva, bravely enter a space that everyone was afraid of and many were horrified. They spent more than two months in the isolated covid ward of a hospital in Bulgarian city of Kyustendil. All three of them, with immeasurable creative efforts, shape a story about exceptional characters and destinies transposed into a film that throws us into the very center of humanity’s greatest battle in the XXI century. By brilliant precise focusing on charismatic heroes, through carefully established direct contacts, authors discretely convey the dramatic atmosphere of the place and events. They are empathetic observers who share devotedly doubts and anxieties of their heroes, in their numerous efforts and sufferings, as well as in their rare but astonishing feats.

This film goes beyond the study of an epidemic. With simplicity of observation and communication, it develops the story of a modest provincial hospital into a supreme parable about life, suffering and hope.

Magnificent7 Belgrade 2022 Young Plato

This text is written by Magnificent7 directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic:

Ireland, Great Britain, France, Belgium 2021 
102 minutes 
directors: Neasa Ní Chianáin and Declan McGrath

A remarkable continuation of dealing with school and growing up problems from creative and life tandem – director Neasa Ní Chianáin and producer David Rane. If you enjoyed watching their previous hit, magnificent documentary “In loco parentis”, this new one continues to reveal the beauty of direct, wonderful relationship between teacher and students. This time an experienced documentarian Declan McGrath joined them in a role of co-director.

To discover Plato in one of the most troubled areas of Belfast, in a poor area divided by religious and economic problems and conflicts, seems quite unreal. In this incredible life story, elementary school pupils and their teachers try to stop the tide of all kind of aggression and conflicts, current and those from the past; to stop or at least mitigate them with wisdom and thoughts of philosophers. The enthusiastic headmaster calls upon ancient thinkers for help, his only allies in the battle against entrenched frustrations and violence they cause. He offers his anxious and confused pupils a precious, almost magical tool – a mental distance that lifts them high above the harshness of reality. The filmmakers focus all their attention on the dynamic, witty headmaster, a fan of Elvis Presley, and his relentless struggle to establish this new perspective with pupils as an invisible but solid and salutary platform from which children can see the world as it is and see themselves in it without fear.

This is a wonderful documentary manifesto about the power of human thought and the power of speech and conversation, a documentary that bears witness to the exciting connections of past, present and future.

Magnificent7 Belgrade 2022 The Wind that Moves Us

This text is written by the festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic.

Spain 2021 
78 minutes 
director: Pere Puigbert

This film with its beauty has conquered the whole of Spain going from festival to festival. Awarded as the best Spanish film in Valladolid and winner of the Latitud selection at Doc Barcelona.

If you want to hear the wind that makes all nature tremble, you must learn to respect the silence. The young poetically inspired Catalan author testifies about that deep respect through his exceptional visual style and brings us an enchanting meditative silence as the fullness of nature’s breathing. “I am passionate about creating poetry through the camera (when I shoot) and through the assembly of images (when I edit),” says Pere Puigbert about himself, talking about the discreet yet powerful forces that move him in his work. With this film, he takes us to beautiful spaces of his native Catalonia, where we can completely surrender to the slow, soothing rhythms of nature. In changing of seasons, in carefully chosen details, we discover the fullness and intensity of life. A wise, gentle, caring grandmother who leads her great-grandson through secrets of the world, a dedicated shepherd, his flock and a dog, and a young woman pregnant with a new life will be our guides through meadows, orchards, groves and wastelands. Touching walnut shells, ripe apples, flickering leaves, sheep’s fleece, they touch the secrets with which nature pulsates and they get empowered by energies that permeate the entire planet.

A film for a magnificent cinematic experience, an unrepeatable journey into spaces of primeval beauty and energy.

 

Magnificent7 Belgrade 2022 Balcony Movie

This text is written by the festival directors of Magnificent7, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic:

Poland 2021 
101 minutes 
director: Pawel Lozinski

The work of one of the most important European filmmakers, the masterful cinéma vérité as a direct embodiment of the legendary idea of the great documentary master Dziga Vertov – “life caught suddenly”. It won the Grand Prix of Semaine de la critique in Locarno and continued its journey to all leading festivals of the world.

Within each scene of the film, precisely and strictly defined by the author’s point of view, and in a poetic way imbued with fine melancholy, we observe the world placed in a very narrow frame. And that world is surprisingly complex and rich – ranging from Shakespeare’s line “All the world’s a stage” to the provocative statement, associated with Andy Warhol, made in a world that discovered wonders of film and television: “Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” Random passers-by, close and distant neighbors, the author’s wife, a man with no money, children and dog walkers, they all pass through this micro world – some indifferent and not looking back, without any awareness of the presence of the author on the balcony above, some involved in a shorter or longer dialogues, apparently simple, but actually layered and filled with a deep sense of the meaning of their existence caught in these moments of “movie glory”. In that narrow time frame, concentrated on destinies of people who emerge from nowhere and soon disappear from our view, we become aware of the phenomenon of time and change that define it. The film was shot in more than two years and, even when we meet some familiar faces again, everything before us is in a constant change as in all truly great films.

An amazing documentary manifesto by a great master of the art of conversation and of uncompromising face to face communication with life.

 

Magnificent7 Belgrade 2022 Pawel Lozinski

I Have No Idea How Much They Loved It – but I think they did, the audience for the masterclass with Polish Pawel Lozinski. We (Lozinski and I as the moderator) enjoyed a lot what we were asked to do: Choose 7 shots/sequences from your films and talk about them. Mostly about the form, the aesthetical choices after setting up the clip with some background information on content.

”Birthday” from 1992 was the first shot, the film that won the first prize at the festival on Bornholm, Baltic Film & TV Festival. It was the first film of Pawel Lozinski, a tough one on the famous Jewish Polish writer Henryk Grynberg searching for the remains of his father, who was killed during the war. Shot on 16mm film.

Later on Lozinski made the film ”The Way It Is” from his neighbourhood (1999), ”Chemo” from 2009, which is a film he decided to do when his mother got cancer, the controversial ”Father and Son” (2013) that was meant to be a film by Marcel and Pawel together, but Marcel decided to make his own version… It did not make the conflicted relationship between them easier!

If that was the reason for Lozinski to make ”You Have No Idea…”, I asked him. Could be, he said about the film that was shown in the cinema later that same friday.

As a small gift to the audience, ”Sisters” (11 minutes) was shown, a film that Pawel Lozinski shot when he had a break in shooting ”The Way It Is”. What are you doing, the sisters asked the director when they met in the courtyard. I am making a film about interesting people in my neighbourhood, he answered. Are we interesting, they asked. See the film, Yes they are!

Magnificent7: Heddy Honigmann in Memoriam

Heddy Honigmann died May 21 this year 70 year old. Some of her films have been shown at Magnificent7. On Sunday the 18th at 6pm one of her masterpieces, “Oblivion”, from 2008 will be shown for us to remember a magnificent documentarian.

Here are some quotes about Heddy Honigmann:

In August 2007 Allan Berg and I started filmkommentaren. The first post/review of a film published was „Forever“ by Heddy Honigmann, a lovely film where the director takes the viewer to the cemetery Père Lachaise in Paris. An essayistic film about Life and Death made by the Dutch master, whose films I have followed with pleasure during decades – do you remember ”Metal and Melancholy”, ”Oblivion”, ”O Amor Natural” and the recent ones ”Buddy” and ”Around the World in 50 Concerts”? And many more. (Tue Steen Müller)

”In 1994, the director made ”Metal and Melancholy”, also from Peru, seen through the taxis and their double-job drivers. This new film from Lima is melancholic as well, and beautiful, but you also feel a well-documented anger on behalf of the people you meet who struggle every day to survive”. A humanistic, political film for a big audience. Thank you! (Tue Steen Müller)

Heddy Honigmann is a documentary filmmaker who breaks through impenetrable walls with her warm, carefully measured and dedicated communication with people in her films. This time, she decided with considerable courage to make a film about people who have already entered the second century of their lives. Contrary to the incidental news that someone anonymous until then or someone famous, celebrated his hundredth birthday, this great film directly confronts us with fascinating characters full of passion, spirit and life. This is the unique document about active life of people at the beginning of their second century, valuable because it reveals to us people that we could read about in legends, but very few people could meet them in person. Heddy Honigmann masterfully introduces viewers to the active lives of her enchanting heroes who never cease to amaze us – from a woman who, as a bewildered girl, watched one of the greatest evils in history, to a man who passionately seeks an answer that will change the destiny of humanity. A sensational drummer, sexologist, philosopher, doctor, characters whose vitality gives this film a wonderful, exciting inner rhythm. (Svetlana and Zoran Popovic about ”100 UP)

A precious documentary that reveals to us the depths of human experience and wisdom…. Could go for all her films …

On the 18th there will be a text by about “Oblivion” by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic.

http://magnificent7festival.org/en/index.php

Magnificent7 Belgrade 2022

“We haven’t seen so poetic documentary for a long long time! Beautiful shots, true beauty of the nature and people, true beauty of the documentary!”

A visit “behind the scene” is this email text from from Svetlana and Zoran Popovic to me, who had asked the festival directors to watch “The Wind that Moves Us” by Pere Puigbert from Catalonia, Spain.

Just one example of our many exchanges of comments during a selection process, this time for the 18th edition of Magnificent7 that I am proud and grateful to be part of.

I put that to tell you, dear Belgrade audience, that we who select have promised each other that we film lovers must be full of enthusiasm, joy and respect before we say “yes, we must have that film”, “yes, we must have this film for you the audience, who deserve to be treated with the best of the best”.

The camerawork of Pere Puigbert in “The Wind that Moves us” is excellent, nature and man, every image is a composition as are the ones of Austrian master Nikolaus Geyerhalter, who returns to the festival with his stunning “Matter Out of Place” about rubbish here, there, and everywhere on the planet, we live. His film is a true proof of the director’s aesthetic ambition to sometimes even turn the unattractive scenes of reality into surrealistic paintings while at the same time as he sends this message: Shame on us, what can we humans do better?

People… documentaries about us who have different lives, different opinions and who like to express them, to open up if we are asked in a gentle way. By, for instance, a man on a balcony. So happy that Pawel Lozinski will visit the festival with his awarded “Balcony Movie” that he shot over a couple of years catching moments of joy and grief pointing his camera from his balcony to those passing by asking questions about how they feel, how they live, what are their plans for the day. Crazy Poetry? Indeed! Existential and Philosophical. Absolutely!

Philosophy, Yes… “Young Plato” by Irish Declan McGrath and Neasa Ni Chianáin is a film from Belfast, a superb observational documentary, uplifting and hopeful from a city with a bloody past AND with a charismatic teacher, a fan of Elvis Presley, who take care of the kids with love. Teaching love. Oh, they know how to talk, these kids, and welcome back to Neasa Ni Chianáin and David Rane who were here with “In Loco Parentis”.

Two films are shot during the Covid pandemic: “Zoo Lockdown” by Andreas Horvath and “A Provincial Hospital” by Ilian Metev, Ivan Chertov and Zlatina Teneva.

Who has not dreamt of being in a zoo when there are no visitors? To observe the animals? Do they behave in a different way, are they happy that nobody watches them all the time or do they miss the curious tourist glances? It’s a lovely film and we hope many will bring along (bigger) kids to the cinema to watch the film, that was made when the Salzburg Zoo was closed because of Covid-19.

Ilian Metev, whose “The Last Ambulance” we enjoyed years ago at the festival, is back with his film colleagues Chertov and Teneva. Metev himself was in lockdown in London while the film was shot but the material provided again included a doctor – doctor Popov, who with humour and warmth encourage the covid patients at the ward to cheer up and decide to live on. The film is, as we have witnessed multiple times at the festival, crossing the line from reportage to become a documentary with great, caring protagonists who work under – an understatement – unbelievably hard conditions.

Going behind the news, the dry documentation facts, is “The Treasures of Crimea”, a documentary thriller, simply. With footage from court rooms, with a focus on to whom belong the treasures that came from a Crimea that while the exhibition took place in the Netherlands was annexed by Russia in 2014. Where to send back the treasures? Dutch author Oeke Hoogendijk is fantastic to make a dramatic story out of the controverse – there are tears and laughter and wonderful protagonists.

It is not enough to have interesting and fantastic stories. You have to know how to tell them, how to use the cinematic tools at your disposal – the French call it to be an “auteur”. We offer you 7 documentary authors; we hope that our excitement will be yours as well. Love is all there is!

Tue Steen Müller

Copenhagen

September 1, 2022

Baltic Sea Docs 26. edition Ukraine

Baltic Sea Docs 2022: Four films were screened made by Ukrainian directors and/or about Ukraine directly or indirectly. And at the pitching forum there were projects like “Little People” by Ivan Sautkin, “Iron Man (One Day I Wish to see You Happy)” by Maryna Nikolcheva and “The Blessed Ones” by Andrii Lysetskyi. One of the tutors was Roman Bondarchuk who was there with Darya Averchenko and their youngest child Luka, 18 months. So naturally there was a focus on the country at war, also “outside” the film event with a photo exhibition portraying Ukrainian refugees in Latvia; the mayor of Riga talked as did the Danish photographer of the portraits, the director of the Danish Cultural Institute in the Baltic countries with long speeches by the Latvian and Danish foreign ministers, all condemning the war – outside on the square facing the Russian embassy.

All three film projects named were awarded at the closing ceremony on a boat on the Daugava river, “Iron Man” through an invitation to the producer Oleksandra Kravchenko to come back to Baltic Sea Docs… She was there before with what became the amazing “Roses. Film Cabaret”.

I got a copy of “Estonian Film”, a special edition made for the Cannes Film Festival with a focus on Ukrainian Film, excellent with articles/interviews with filmmakers from the country including two important documentary voices, producer and industry head of DocuDays Darya Bassel and veteran Serhiy Bukovsky, whose last masterpiece on composer Silvestrov was reviewed on this site (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4714/)

A couple of quotes from the interviews made by Maria Ulfsak and film consultant at the Estonian Film Institute Filipp Kruusvall:

… While big businesses are leaving Russia, while governments stop buying Russian gas and coal, film festivals and other cultural events seem to be totally disconnected from reality. They say we are “above” this, culture is not politics. You know what I think about this? It’s a luxury to have the possibility to take such a position. You don’t have the luxury of being apolitical, or think that art and films exist in another universe, where we all can calmly reflect as friends on the genocide that is happening right now in front of our eyes. When it’s about your life or death, you don’t have this luxury. You know deep inside that culture is politics… (Darya Bassel)

… I guess documentaries will rocket. This genre already reacts quickly to current events in life. Also, in feature films, the theme of war becomes the main one. In many cases, this will be rather superficial, declarative. It will take decades for a deeper artistic understanding of this subject… We continue to meet with our students online. Many are filming what is happening right now. Hopefully, soon we will collect all the filmed material into one extensive war anthology… (Serhiy Bukovsky).

Slava Ukraini!