Mira Jargil fik talentprisen

Mira Jargil har i aften modtaget prisen Reelt Talent. Det skete under åbningsgalla arrangementet på CPH:DOX. I sin begrundelse lagde juryen vægt på ”instruktørens indlevelsesevne og fintfølende tone og så evnen til at skildre intense emotionelle situationer uden at virke anmassende og påtrængende.” Bag talentprisen, der i aften er uddelt for anden gang, står CPH:DOX og Danske Filminstruktører.
Mira Jargil har lavet tre film:

Det sidste døgn, 2005. ”Så meget eksistentielt på færde, så lidt udstyr scenografisk, fotografisk, tekstligt, musikalsk. Mira Jargils film er et studie i, hvor lidt man kan nøjes med. Filmen er en afslutningens koreografi, en skildring af dette uafvendelige, som både dramaet og livet dynamisk, men i faldende takt – tøvende så at sige – peger hen mod…” skrev jeg i DFI’s tidskrift FILM/47.

Mod målet, 2007. ”Undersøgelser viser, at 73 procent af deltagerne får et bedre liv efter at have deltaget i turneringen. Og det er netop, hvad Mira Jargils film med humor og poesi dokumenterer: Fodbold har en fantastisk socialiserende effekt…” skrev Claus Christensen på tidsskriftet Ekkos hjemmeside 23. juli 2007.

Den tid vi har, 2011. Filmen er ”med sin tyste tilstedeværelse i det intime det mest rørende og sikre værk blandt afgangsfilmene…” skrev Katrine Hornstrup Yde i Information 13. juni 2011.

CineDoc in Athens

When noone else does anything to bring good documentaries to Athens, you have to do it yourselves! This is what three film people, all women, decided to do and if you have a look at their programme, you can only be very impressed by the actuality and phantasy that is put into the organisation. This is what they write – to give you the background of the programme that started in 2009 – as a preface to the catalogue:

CineDoc is an innovative public media initiative which screens European and international award-winning documentaries across the year. Hosted at Institut Francaus in Athens, it also travels to cinema clubs, schools and cultural organisations across Greece and Cyprus. Screenings are accompanied by special events, used to inspire community action and bring together documentary professionals. Signed Rea Apostolides, Avra Georgiou, Dimitra Kouzi.

Themes like ”7 Ways to cope with the Crisis”, ”Remembering Japan” and ”Steps and Tunes” include films like Valentin Thum’s ”Taste the Waste”, Robert Cibis and Lillian Franck’s ”Pianomania” (photo), ”El Bulli” (Gereon Wetzel), ”Kinshasa Symphony (Wischmann & Baer), ”Into Eternity” (Michael Madsen) and new Greek films – Karakepelis ”Raw Material”, Abazoglou’s ”Oriental Sweetness” and Dayandas ”Sayome”.

20 films in the season 2011-2012. Very well done, indeed.

http://www.cinedoc.gr/

Danfung Dennis: Hell and Back Again

Dokumania, DR’s flagskib for dokumentarfilm, hver tirsdag på DR2, i morgen kl. 21, viser den prisbelønnede amerikanske dokumentarfilm “Helvede tur-retur”, som har vundet flere første-priser og er med i køen til at blive Oscar-nomineret. Helt fortjent. Jeg var i juryen i Moskva i sommer på Moscow International Film Festival, hvor vi (de andre medlemmer var engelske Michael Apted (sevenUp-serien) og russeren Aleksander Gutman) gav filmen første-prisen. Her er en gentagelse af anmeldelsen, der fulgte:

”I love my pistol”, says Sergeant Nathan Harris, the protagonist of the film about an American soldier, who gets seriously wounded in combat in Afghanistan, is taken back to the US and to his wife Ashley, who helps him recover; at least she helps him getting through the day, the trauma he has from his time in Afghanistan, he does not seem to be able to fight on his own as the film tells the audience.

Many films have come out and is coming out from and about the war in Afghanistan and its consequences on heart and mind, especially on those going there as soldiers to secure changes in the country. This one is one of the best so far in its superb camera work from the battlefield, in its description, with a lot of dignity, of the Afghans who are victims of the constant search for Talibans by the Americans. They are told to leave their houses, their houses are searched, they are searched and controlled. The desperation comes from the Afghans, who don’t want to be ruled by the Talibans, but you soldiers do not really make the situation easier!

The emotional side of the film, however, lies where Nathan Harris is back home, suffering enormously from his pain, constantly taking strong medicin and – this is how the film is built – thinks back on Afghanistan where he definitely wants to be again as a killer, the word used by the doctor who examines him. As a spectator you look, with empathy, thanks to the approach of the director, at a man brought up in a society of violence, a young man sitting in a sofa at the end of the film playing with his guns… ”I love my pistol”.

US/UK, 2011, 88 mins.

Winner of 1st Documentary Competition at Moscow International Film festival 2011.

http://hellandbackagain.com/

http://www.dr.dk/dr2/dokumania#/21356

Awards at Jihlava 2011

… at the International Documentary Film Festival was given out last night. Twelve awards. The best World Documentary, Opus Bonum, given by a one person jury, James T. Hong, was ”Lost Land” by Belgian director Pierre.Yves Vandeweerd, whereas ”Bakhmaro” by Georgian Salome Jashi was the winner of the category ”Between the Seas”, the best Central and East European Documentary.

The jury motivation for ”Bakhmaro” goes like this: “With an attentive and personal approach the filmmaker transforms an ordinary microcosm into a unique narrative and playful visual experience. Through an effective and assured cinematic language this film reveals the mood and the spirit of a society struggling with its internal hopes and contradictions. For its respect, artistry and quest for surprise the award for the Best film of “The Between the Seas” Competition goes to Bakhmaro by Salome Jashi.”

Respect for characters, artistry and quest for surprise – I can only eccho that characterization of what will be Salome Jashi’s international breakthrough documentary.

http://www.dokument-festival.com/news-detail/6441|1029-awarded-films

East Silver Awards 2011

Alina Rudnitskaya is a very talented filmmaker from Saint Petersburg. Her newest 25 minutes long documentary from this year, ”I will forget this Day” (photo) has already been awarded at several festivals for its stylistically strong vision of women and their emotions when waiting to have an abortion. Rudnitskaya thinks, in the best Russian tradition, in images and it is no surprise that she now can add one more prize to her collection:

”The annual Silver Eye Award for the best documentary film of the market, which was awarded for its third time. The winners of Silver Eye Award 2011 are: Category Short documentary: I Will Forget This Day, Alina Rudnitskaya, Russia, 2011; Category Mid-length documentary: Crulic – The Path to Beyond, Anca Damian, Rumunsko, 2011; Category Feature documentary: Solar Eclipse, Martin Mareček, Česká republika, 2011.”

Which gives me the opportunity, again, to praise the work done by East Silver in the framework of the IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) in Prague. Here is some more text from their site: The aim of the prize is to support creative and exceptional documentary films from the region of the Central and Eastern Europe. The awarded films were selected by the international jury from the three main categories (short, mid-length, and feature documentary film). Not only that the films received the traditional trophy and prize money of 1 500 EUR, but will also profit from the one-year round festival service of East Silver Caravan, which will support their international distribution on film festivals and markets. For the first time this year, the winning films will be included in the online database of the unique industry VoD portal Festival Scope, which is designed directly for the festival selectors only, in order to increase their potential for the international distribution.

http://www.eastsilver.net/en/east-silver/news/silver-eye-2011-award-winners-1798/?

Shatz & Barash: The Collaborator and his Family

It is quite an achievement by the filmmakers to establish and keep a tension the whole way through a feature length film, where actually nothing happens in a classical action sense. And yet a lot happens, small banal events and problems with the law in a family cursed by the fact that the father was an informer for the Israelis in the occupied Palestinian territory, and had to flee to Israel, to the country he had helped, a country that couldn’t care less now that he is in Tel Aviv with his wife, his children, with a strong focus on the 3 sons, Mahmoud (12), Suffian (16) and Muhammad (17).

The reason that this film is so strong, is that the filmmakers – by staying with the family for a very long time – have obtained the confidence of the characters and are able to make them come out as human beings like you and me, but trapped in the hopeless, apparently unsolvable Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

They live without permit in a shabby area of Tel Aviv. Ibrahim, the father, gets arrested for violence against his wife, who has been home to Hebron endangering herself and her daughter, as they are part of a traitor’s family. He gets 8 months of house arrest, lives in a kind of tent on a roof top, sees his family occasionally, at the same time as he is a kind of caretaker, who sends his sons to collect money from the renters. The sons are in conflict with the law, they are sent to reformatory schools, they suffer from the situation of their father, their attitude towards the Israelis is clear – one talks about getting a swastika tattooed on his arm! At the same time as the Israelis try to hire them as collaborators.

It sounds very dark, and indeed it is, but the film has also a lot of fine human situations from a family life full of compassion and love. The music score, the montage and the care for details of the everyday life… this reviewer has no objections to a small drama of obvious universality.

Israel, France, USA, 84 mins., 2011

http://www.yularifilms.com/

Magnus Gertten: Harbour of Hope

One thing is that the launch of this Swedish film has been more than noticeable with constant updates on screenings and screening events, links to history, funding campaigns and much more – look at the Facebook link below –  but the film as a film how is it?

It is brilliant. With a classical approach and with a fine balance between conveying information and creating emotions, the film lets three holocaust survivors tell their story, starting from the time point where they arrive with the Red Cross buses from the camps to Malmö – going, in a fine montage, back in time to what happened before and afterwards. The three are the ones followed in the story, but overall info is given that some stayed in Sweden, got married, had children, and others left for far away countries or went back to their country of origin. 

Ewa, Irene and Joe – vivid and strong storytellers, or made-to-be excellent storytellers by the filmmakers, who have had amazing archive material as the basis for their building the drama. Beautiful black and white images from the arrival in 1945 (sometimes I thought that some of the material were Spielbergian ”made archive”!) mixed with private (colour) footage from the life after the arrival to Malmö, and (gently put, thanks for that) images from the concentration camps. And of course conversations and images of the three of today. And radio archive comes in to add to the ”flavour” of time. All stories are intriguing to listen to, and the film is simply nice to watch. (Photo: Ewa was born in the camp, here she arrives to Malmö)

We often call for something new, when writing and talking about documentaries. There is basically, on a universal level, nothing new here, but the film is so well mastered and captures your interest from start till end, a story, that must have an appeal to all grown-up history interested people. A small critical PS, yet, why a pop tune to accompany the end titles. Wrong sentimental decision, absolutely not needed!

http://www.facebook.com/HarbourOfHope?sk=events

RIDM Edition 14

RIDM… stands for Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montreal… its 14th edition takes off November 9 and runs until November 20. A small festival compared to the ones in Europe right now (Leipzig, idfa, cph:dox) and to HotDocs in Toronto, ”only” around 100 films, sectioned into a competition (long, short, Canadian), a Panorama, ”green” films, and special presentations, as they call films that have been around to loads of festivals like ”El Sicario” by Gianfranco Rosi, Helmrich’s masterpiece ”Position among the Stars”, the Portuguese wonderful ”José and Pilar” by Goncalves Mendes (José with the surname Saramago, the writer) and films by acknowledged names like Ruth Beckermann and Thomas Heise.

The overall impression is that of a festival with a classical repertory with a high quality artistic documentary programme with retrospectives of Frederick Wiseman (whose new ”Crazy Horse” (photo) opens the festival), Helena Trestikova and Jørgen Leth. And with a tribute to Richard Leacock – an interview made by Peter Wintonick in 1999.

In competiton you find films like Polish Michal Marczak’s ”At the Edge of Russia”, ”Special Flight” by Fernand Melgar, the DOK Leipzig winner from Mexico, ”The Tiniest Place” by Tatiana Huezo and ”Ramin” by Lithuanian Audrius Stonys.

Another professional festival for the audience in Canada, a country with a strong tradition for producing and showing this film genre to its citizens… National Film Board of Canada was founded in 1939!

http://www.ridm.qc.ca/en/programmation/selection-officielle

ITVS

stands for The Independent Television Service’s (ITVS). It supports documentary projects for broadcast in the US – subject-wise from all over the world. 8 films have been supported out of ITVS  International Call for 2011, where 476 submissions were received from 118 countries representing 72 languages. All of the eight projects are slated for eventual broadcast, including slots on PBS series such as Independent Lens and P.O.V., and the international series Global Voices.

“We are elated to have this new crop of projects join our growing catalog of ground-breaking documentaries, each connecting Americans to the world, and the world to Americans,” said Claire Aguilar, vice president of programming for ITVS.

8 out of 476 – tough competition, so much more there is reason to salute several very good projects that I have met in workshops and pitching fora.

Like “Avant” (photo) from Uruguay by Juan Andres Alvarez and about Julio Bocca, world dancer who takes on the job to build up a national ballet in an unfinished theatre in Montevideo… Like the Israeli “Before the Revolution” by Dan Shadur, whose family was in Tehran during the Shah period… Like films by Lixin Fan (Last Train Home) and Brian Hill (The Not Dead)…Not to forget two Danish producers, Mette Heide and Henrik Veileborg, who have received funding for their stories from Japan and Zimbabwe. The one from Japan is to be directed by talented Kaspar Astrup Schröder. “I Want to Cheer Up” is the working title of a totally crazy story that goes like this: The complexity of happiness is at the center of this story about Ryuichi, the owner of a professional stand-in company that rents out fake family members and friends. At work he can finally be the perfect husband and father that he doesn’t know how to be at home…

Read more: http://realscreen.com/2011/10/25/itvs-selects-eight-docs-for-international-call/#ixzz1bvOxu6Nm

http://itvs.org/funding/international

Phil Cox: The Bengali Detective

This documentary of Phil Cox, that has done and is still doing the international festival circuit, is the Documentary of the Month at Cinemateket, The Danish Film House in the centre of Copenhagen. The film will have six screenings, the two first with the presence of the director (November 10 at 7.15pm and November 11 at 4.45pm). Change to Danish languag

På dansk har Cinemateket givet filmen titlen ”Dansende Detektiv” og det er da også én af de mange fortælle-tråde, som Phil Cox trækker i sin underholdende film fra Calcutta: Hovedpersonen Rajesh og hans detektiver træner til en audition til en konkurrence, det er Bollywood-dans, som vi kender det, og det giver et kosteligt syn i en film, der er bedst, når vi kommer tæt på hovedpersonen i hans private tilværelse, som er præget af at hans kone er meget syg. Rajesh er en stærk karakter, han fylder godt i historien (også i bogstavelig forstand!) og selvom mange scener er sat i scene, er der en sandfærdighed i historien, som man aldrig betvivler.

Phil Cox har lavet en film til et stort publikum, der er masser af stemning fra metropolen Calcutta, de tre sager som detektivbureauet skal opklare, er appelerende lige fra Operation Tiger om falsk shampoo i omløb, til en kvinde hvis mand er hende utro, og til forsøget på at opklare et brutalt mord på tre unge på et jernbaneområde. Detektiverne arbejder, hvor politiet skulle have været men ikke er. ”We clean up the mess in society”, siger Rajesh. Musikken skubber handlingen frem, filmen er bygget op som en krimi og den sociale baggrundsbeskrivelse giver den autenticitet.

UK, 91 mins.

http://thebengalidetective.com/

www.cinemateket.dk