I have quit my job, suspended my studies at KU, left my apartment in Copenhagen and moved away to USA for 8 months to do what I enjoy the most – to watch documentary films.

I learned that watching film is only a little part of the whole experience what can be obtained if you actually go to a film festival and meet filmmakers and producers, participate in Q and A sessions, go to the after parties etc.

My task is to visit at least 10 Documentary film festivals in USA and Canada and to present you a bunch of movies that are selected for festivals’ main competitions.

I will offer you film reviews, pictures, external links and ‘Behind the Scenes’ articles that will be based on Q and A sessions, filmmakers’ / producers’ interviews and more. Furthermore, I have already been to Sundance and it is amazing how much this film festival differs from the ones in Europe. Therefore I also decided to write about each film festival as such.

Lastly, I am a long-winded supporter of a two-way communication. Therefore I kindly ask you to participate in my journey. Do not hesitate to contact me with requests of all kinds, comment on my articles and please criticize me if you feel so.

Here is the list of Film Festivals I will cover:

1. Sundance Film Festival (January 19-29)

http://www.sundance.org/festival/

2. The Thin Line Film Festival (February 10-20)

http://2012.thinlinefilmfest.com/

3. True False Film Festival (March 1-4)

http://truefalse.org/

4. SXSW Film Festival (March 9-18)

http://sxsw.com/

5. American Documentary Film Festival (March 29-April 5)

http://americandocumentaryfilmfestival.com/

6. Full Frame Film Festival (April 12-15)

http://www.fullframefest.org/

7. Tribeca Film Festival (April 18-29)

http://www.tribecafilm.com/festival/

8. Hot Docs Film Festival (April 26- May 6)

http://www.hotdocs.ca/

9. Doxa Film Festival (May 4- 13)

http://www.doxafestival.ca/

10. Los Angeles Film Festival (June 14-24)

http://www.lafilmfest.com/

11. Silverdocs Film Festival (June 18-24)

http://silverdocs.com/event/about-silverdocs/

I hope that you will follow my adventures and that you are excited at least half as much as I am.

Photo: Geneve Animation Festival, October 2011, ready for the audience (Juste)

The festival is over. The closing film sunday night January 29 was Whores’ Glory by Michael Glawogger, one of the most important documentarians of our time. There was almost a full house in the Sava Centre Cinema Hall, which means around 1500 people, who gave the director a warm applause for his, in own words, reflective representation of ”la condition humaine” as he put it in the 90 minutes Q&A after the film.

Glawogger can be strongly recommended to any kind of workshop or masterclass. He is not only a fine filmmaker in a classical way, he is also very articulated in his way of expressing, what he does. I am a filmmaker, not someone who is supposed to tell you whether I think prostitution is good or not, he said in Belgrade, stressing his non-moralistic approach. What I am offering you is a work of art, a unique insight to a world that few of us knows about. He brought up the topic that has been discussed in connection with other of his films – yes, I pay the people for what they are doing, and of course it is even more obvious to do so, when you deal with prostitutes for whom an interview should be paid for just as you pay for a blowjob.

How do you collaborate with your cameraman? We look for a story. The place we shoot must have a story in itself. We must give the room a clear definition and then develop a visual line.

I start filming when I sense that nothing is exotic any longer. But common. Not before.

Just a few examples of interesting pieces of food for thought from one of the directors who visited Magnificent7 in Belgrade 2012. When I left this morning the festival directors told me that the audience attendance had gone up again, as it has every year! Magnificent!

www.magnificent7festival.org

www.whoresglory.com

Fernand Melgar, director and Elise Schuss, assistant director and executive producer, represented ”Vol Spécial”, and hosted an extremely interesting session about how their strong social documentary came to life. And after-life: 1 year of editing, 160 hours of material, more than 400 articles about the film and its issue in Swiss newspapers, succesful cinema release, after some fight with authorities screenings for students in schools, in a couple of months synchronised broadcast of the film on arte and Swiss tv channels followed by debate, the set-up of a webdocumentary version, also for arte, with interviews and texts AND the couple is right now following several of those characters, who were put on a direct flight back to their homeland because of the swiss law of them being illegal workers. That is to be a sequel to ”Vol Spécial”. Respect for that work and that commitment!

”I am a witness”, said Melgar, who also called himself ”a silent collaborator”. The film crew established a strong connection of trust to both the staff and the inmates at the detention centre. They actually got the keys to what is a prison so they could go in and out as they wanted. They had to stay neutral, of course, with their observational style, which for instance meant that they knew the day before who would be taken for the special flight. An information they were not able to pass on to those who had to leave. But they knew who was to be filmed. Every day, after the shooting, the crew sent the recorded material back to the editor, who watched it and gave feedback.

Does a film like this change something? Of course a difficult question to answer but ”Vol Spécial” has raised debate and in one case, where you see a man in the film being released, the filmmakers were sure that this was because of the filming of an interview performed by a policeman. The released man is now going with the filmmakers to screenings to put even more focus on this not-only-Swiss-situation where people, who have committed no crime, but work illegally,sometimes for years, are locked up in a detention centre (the filmmakers mentioned there were 350 camps in Europe, with 40.000 detainees).

Now it’s time for some sports, says the nice sympathetic guard whenever there are emotional outbursts among the detainees…

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/home.html

www.volspecial.ch

Your batteries get charged at these workshops. You get to know how the filmmakers perform their craft. It is as simple as that. Some filmmakers have pedagogical skills, others need help, and indeed they receive that through Zoran Popovic, who is together with his wife director of the festival and teachers at their own film school Kvadrat in Belgrade. Popovic is a master in interviewing the filmmakers about their work and – when needed – he is a perfect interpreter who brings the English language into Serbian word-by-word.

It is the choice of the directors to find the focus for their workshop session. Gary Tarn, ”The Prophet”, had brought his camera and talked about how he looks like a tourist, walking around with his plastic bag with a camera looking to catch moments that he could use in ”the Prophet” or in his previous work ”Black Sun”, shown at the festival in 2006. Tarn, who composes the music for his films himself, explained how he found the right rythm for the voice of Thandie Newton, who reads the Khalil Gibran text. ”Her voice is scored”.

Audrius Stonys, Lithuanian film poet, took the workshoppers on a filmographic journey of his own work. He showed clips from ”Antigravitation”, ”Flying over Blue Fields” and ”Alone” as a prologue to a talk about ”Ramin” (photo), a talk that had an interesting production story added by the producer of the film, Latvian Uldis Cekulis.

Gereon Wetzel, director of ”El Bulli” brought along film openings for discussion, among them he made a comparison between the opening of the film version (108 mins) and of the tv version (90 mins.). Wetzel mentioned that he and his crew used to be ”hanging around creativity”, waiting for the right moments and filming according to the American ”direct cinema” rules: never ask anyone to do anything.

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/home.html

Edition 8 of the Belgrade based feature length European documentary festival. The opening was last night and the audience was there again, hundreds, maybe almost 1000 spectators for each of the two films that were screened in the big hall of the Sava Centre. Zoran Popovic, who is the mastermind behind the festival together with his wife Svetlana, the two people with whom I since the beginning of the festival have been working on the selection of the 7, and it is only 7, magnificent films, made a beautiful speech including the mention of the sad news about the tragic death of Greek and European director Theo Angelopoulos, a source of inspiration for all filmmakers and art film lovers.

British director Gary Tarn was back in Belgrade with his ”The Prophet” that includes material that he shot when he was in Belgrade in 2007 to show ”Black Sun”. Again he puts you as a spectator in a wonderful meditative mood with his flow of images that you can dive into and that juxtaposes with the text, that he has chosen from cult author Khalil Gibran (1883-1931), whose classic ”The Prophet” he wrote in 1923.

The second film at the opening evening was Portuguese director Miguel Mendes ”José and Pilar” (photo), featuring nobel prize winner José Saramago and his wife, journalist Pilar del Rio. The film has many layers. It is a love story. It is a story about an old man, an extremely charming old man and his fight against Time. It is a story about a journalist who dedicates all her time to her husband, managing his legacy in a very efficient and caring manner. It is a light film, with a lot of humour, and it works so well because of the details Mendes has caught during the four years that he was following the couple. They ”adopted” me, said the director in the Q&A after the film.

Today, thursday, there is one film on the agenda: ”Ramin” by Audrius Stonys from Lithuania. Stonys is here as is his Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis.

From a Belgrade full of snow, and handball fans and supporters. Why are sport journalists so fat, said my wife this morning at Hotel Continental, at the breakfast the morning after Denmark qualified for the semifinals against all odds after the first matches.    

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/home.html