15 Young by Young Finished

”Think Big! Is what young producer and director Ilona Bicevska has done throughout a year of participation in the Ex Oriente 2008.” This was the text posted here in October 2008. Two years later another text was posted: ” Think Big! Is what Ilona Bicevska is doing. For a couple of years she has been pitching a project that I have praised on this site with a simple Bravo! Now the potential directors have been invited to come to Latvia, to Sigulda 50 kilometers from Riga, from where I write these words. A development workshop goes on, discussions, clips are being watched, coffee is being drunk – and harder stuff as well.”

Now the series is finished, has its industry screening at the Berlinale and is being screened on arte February 6-24 at 10.30pm, 15 films around 15 minutes long, from the 15 ex-Soviet republics about young people and their lives. In her long journey Bicevska succeeded – among many other funders in Latvia and abroad, including the MEDIA Programme –  to get arte on board with Serge Godrey from Alegria as co-producer.

I remember talking to many experienced producers during this process . They all said that this is not possible, this is too difficult, but the energy of Ilona Bicevska was second-to-none as were the attitude of the young directors, who now get the chance to have their works and their talent exposed on the international scene. You will see these films on festivals and tv in the coming years, as a whole series or individually – and a 90 minutes version is being made as well.

I repeat my Bravo and Congratulations to all 15 young filmmakers, who are going to have a 12 (why not 15?) hour party at the Berlinale! Enjoy!

http://www.15youngbyyoung.com/

http://www.arte.tv/fr/15-vies-a-l-Est—tous-les-films/6341372,CmC=6339420.html

Errol Morris: Tabloid

Joyce McKinney was hot stuff in the British tabloids back in the 1970’es and the case known as the “Mormon sex in chains case” started out when McKinney allegedly kidnapped her Mormon husband-to-be and forced him to have a good time with her – if you get my drift. The story has it all; a former beauty queen challenging a cult church, sex pictures, clever escapes from the authorities, a relentless press and a shocked public. No need not to make a documentary about it.

Errol Morris is a giant in the documentary field but I quite quickly got this uneasy feeling that something was wrong. In this film he has most of the characters in a studio – including McKinney – where they all take us back to the days and each telling their side of the story. I grant that Morris has a certain skill to arrange his material in a clever way, but the whole thing just gets too clever or too arrogant even. His other visual aids are old still photos, collages/animations and archive footage from fiction films and this style very often comes across as strangely old-fashioned and tiresome, even when the intent was clearly to be comical. For instance when a character says in a talking-head shot; “…and then the phone rang”. Cut to footage of an old-style telephone which rings in some obscure fiction film. Cut back to someone talking about what that phone call implied.

At that point I began to feel that Morris was pulling my leg or even mocking us. Or worse, mocking the people IN the film. Quite often you hear Morris react sarcastically as the interviewer or he takes a word from an interview and puts it in capital letters directly on the screen. He’s not too shy to use supposedly funny sound effect either and the whole thing led me to believe he’s not really interested in this story. He’s interested in the telling of a story and that is when it could have gotten really interesting in my view. Who do we believe and why do we believe them? Can we believe the storyteller – can we believe Morris?

This could – with a different and more humble approach – have been a very clever and self-ironic piece of self-mockery which would have been quite becoming for the filmmaker. Instead, it’s a film which doesn’t seem to take its story, its characters or the audience seriously. Why would I take this film seriously then? I really can’t but I would like to be proven wrong, scolded or told off. Hit me!

Watched at Cinemateket, Copenhagen.

USA, 2010, 87 mins.

Heineman & Froemke – ESCAPE FIRE

This film is about American healthcare system and its severe problems. Americans spend around 300 billion U.S. dollars a year on pharmaceutical drugs. That is almost as much as the rest of the world combined. Healthcare throughout years became a huge business in America and unfortunately almost every player in this industry is highly interested in keeping Americans ill.

The majority of patients are coming to their doctors repeatedly because they are not being cured after their first visit. Moreover, about 75% of the healthcare costs are spent for diseases that are easily preventable. In the film a number of doctors explain how American healthcare system forces them to send their patients from one specialist to another, unfortunately usually with no luck to get better.

ESCAPE FIRE offers a lot of facts and tries to focus on many issues. First of all it is focusing on rapidly growing obesity in America. The filmmakers claim that at the moment around 65% of America’s population is overweight. The issues are hidden not only behind Americans’ general inactivity but also affordability of eating right.

Another issue that is presented concerns the quality of care in the U.S. military. The film offers shocking numbers of soldier deaths as well as suicides that are caused by

overdosed drugs during their missions. One soldier is followed on his uneasy trip to withdraw the outrageous amount of prescribed medication.

Going deeper into the medication issue in the United States, the filmmakers outline the famous Avandia case, the hot-selling diabetes drug whose manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline ignored an increased risk of heart attack among trial patients. After a trial GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay 3 billion U.S. dollars to settle United States government civil and criminal investigations. However, this company has never been sentenced of being guilty for many deaths that were directly or indirectly caused by their drugs.

Lastly this film tries to introduce the viewer to the whole healthcare industry system and its mechanism. Starting from a general practitioner and ending with executives at pharmaceutical companies it gives an overall picture of a system that has missed its main task, namely to help people.

I understand why it was hard to get tickets to this movie. There are no doubts that this topic is very sensitive and painful for many Americans. However, this matter seems to be overexposed recently and therefore feels somewhat exhausted. There is focus on too many issues at once and therefore it felt unfocused overall. But most of all it seemed to be overdramatic. Some moments it reminded of a bad Hollywood movie: ‘We’re in a deep trouble today, but we’re Americans therefore we’re going to make it! Already tomorrow we will start eating salad instead of junk food and everything will be fine again…’

Matthew Heinemann & Susan Froemke: Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare, USA, 99 mins,, 2011. Seen at Sundance 2012.

http://www.escapefiremovie.com/

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