At a moment where European documentary film festivals are gathering documentarians and a local audience in big crowds to present huge numbers of film (DOK Leipzig, cph:dox, Jihlava, DocLisboa, idfa etc.) it is wonderful to see that other smaller, but not less important initiatives are taken from other perspectives. The organisation Young Palestinian Filmmakers starts its first festival the 26th of October to be held in Ramallah, Gaza, Jerusalem Bethlehem, Nablus, Hebron and in universities like Birzeit and Al Najah. Led by filmmaker Anis Barghouti the festival shows (mostly short fiction and documentary) films from many countries like France, Turkey, Netherlands, Lebanon, Egypt, UK and of course Palestine. The website indicates that the filmmakers are from 13 (!) to 30 years of age.

The goal is like this: ”We aspire to invest collective efforts to provide youth with video tools and facilities to enable them to develop their skills to better participate in fostering a democratic healthy society”. And about the festival:

”The international Young Filmmakers Festival is the first of its kind in Palestine and it aspires to be one of the country’s premiere cultural events. It will be dedicated to supporting young filmmakers in their attempts to express themselves through the medium of film, providing them with their independent forum to present their work, discuss it, and see the works of other young people from around the world. This festival will be of special importance to Palestinian youth who are cut off from the outside world”.

Photo: Isra’ Odeh, ChewingGum Gang, Palestine – one of the films to be shown.

http://www.youngfilmmakers.ps/yfm/

Tonight the awards of the 54^th DOK Leipzig festival were announced. A new record total of 74,500 euros (!) in prize money was granted to a total of 17 awards. The total prize list follows below. The three international competition films that I highlighted in posts below were not given one single prize… well, of course all respect for a jury, also when it makes wrong decisions!

Positive it is that Wojciech Staron gets the Silver Dove for “The Argentinian Lesson” (photo). I was heading the jury in Cracow this year in June where the beautiful film got the first prize after no discussion at all. Also to be saluted is the decision of the Talent Competition Jury that had three fine films on their list, “Life in Stills” by Israeli Tamar Tal, “Phnom Penh Lullaby” by Polish Pawel Kloc and “Bakhmaro” by Georgian Salome Jashi – although the order could have been different, in my opinion. And bravo to the MDR, the local broadcaster for awarding “The Day I will forget” by Russian Alina Rudnickaja. Will they also broadcast it? Here is the list, received this evening:

The International Jury for Documentary Film awards for Documentary Films and Videos / Long Metrage (longer than 45 min) a Golden Dove along with € 10 000 granted by TELEPOOL GmbH to Tatiana Huezo (Mexico) for the film El lugar más pequeno (The Tiniest Place) and a Silver Dove along with € 3 000 to Wojciech Staroń (Poland) for the film Argentyńska lekcja (Argentinean Lesson). The International Jury for Documentary Film awards an Honorary

Mention to Aliona van der Horst (The Netherlands) for the film Water Children.

The German Jury for Documentary Film awards for Documentary Films and Videos a Golden Dove along with € 10 000 to Katharina Pethke (Germany) for the film Louisa.

The International Jury for the Young Talent Competition awards for an extraordinary documentary film talent the Talent Dove of the Media Foundation of the Sparkasse Leipzig along with € 10 000 as start-up funding for the next documentary film project to Tamar Tal (Israel) for the film Hatzalmania (Life in Stills). The International Jury for the Young Talent Competition awards for an extraordinary documentary film talent an Honorary Mention to Pawel Kloc (Poland) for the film Phnom Penh Lullaby and an Honorary Mention to Salome Jashi (Germany, Georgia) for the film Bakhmaro.

The International Jury for Documentary Film awards for Documentary Films and Videos / Short Metrage (to 45 min) a Golden Dove along with € 5 000 to Julian Schwanitz (UK) for the film Kirkcaldy Man. The International Jury for Documentary Film awards for Documentary Films and Videos / Short Metrage (to 45 min) an Honorary Mention to Alina Rudnickaja (Russia) for the film Ja zabudu etot den’ (I Will Forget This Day).

The Jury for the Healthy Workplaces Film Award awards for the best documentary film about the subject of work the Healthy Workplaces Film Award along with € 8 000 granted by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU OSHA) to Carmen Losmann (Germany) for the film Work Hard – Play Hard.

The Jury for the Stiftung Friedliche Revolution awards for the best documentary about the subject of democracy the Filmpreis “Leipziger Ring” along with € 5 000 granted by the Stiftung Friedliche Revolution to anonymous (France) for the film Fragments d’une révolution (Fragments of a Revolution).

The DEFA Foundation awards for an outstanding German documentary film the DEFA Sponsoring Prize as a grant in the amount of € 4 000 to Martin Gerner (Germany) for the film Generation Kunduz – Das Leben der Anderen (Generation Kunduz – The War of the Others).

The MDR (Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk) awards for an excellent Eastern European documentary film the MDR Film Prize along with € 3 000 to Alina Rudnickaja (Russia) for the film Ja zabudu etot den’ (I Will Forget This Day).

The Jury of the Department of Media and Arts in the Trade Union ver.di awards the Prize of the Trade Union ver.di along with € 2 500 to Tatiana Huezo (Mexico) for the film El lugar más pequeno (The Tiniest Place).

The Jury of the Goethe-Institut awards the Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize along with € 2 000 to Hannes Lang (Germany, Italy) for the film Peak

The Ecumenical Jury awards the Prize of the Ecomenical Jury comprising € 2 000 by the VCH-Hotels Germany GmbH – in the “Verband Christlicher Hoteliers e.V.” including the Hotel MICHAELIS in Leipzig to Carmen Losmann (Germany) for the film Work Hard – Play Hard.

The FIPRESCI  jury awards the Prize to Carmen Losmann (Germany) for the film Work Hard – Play Hard.

The Youth Jury of the Filmschule Leipzig e. V. awards the Prize of the Youth Jury of the Filmschule Leipzig e. V. to Iris Olsson and Ives Niyongabo (Finland) for the film Sydämeni Taakka (Burden of My Heart)

www.dok-leipzig.de

In the train for Copenhagen after 5 days at the 54th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. I had my currywurst mit scharfe sauce a while ago and am ready for the train ride home via Hamburg. Gives me time to evaluate and write som texts about the films that I have seen at the very well organised digital Market in the basement of the Art Museum, a beautiful building close to the Market Square with a lot of light coming into the big hall that hosts the festival centre and the café catered by Michaelis, the hotel where I was staying, strongly to be recommended for its good rooms, calm and superb gourmet restaurant.

Yes, the Leipzig atmosphere is nice as is the festival. Easy to find out what  happens where, and a good venue is the festival centre hall to sit and chat about the films. Enjoyable, simple.

Programme-wise the festival offered a lot – coproduction meetings, masterclasses, rough cut screenings, debates etc. in the so-called industry section, and films in competition and outside competition, retrospectives, focus on the Arab countries and Chile and so on so forth.

I was there to find films for Magnificent 7 festival in Belgrade and DOCSBarcelona – and I think I found good material for each of the festivals. Below you will find my impressions of several films, I will not call it reviews – of

course it influences your watching sitting in a basement, in a booth with headphones – with a sound that was too low.

How do you measure and characterize the profile of a festival? What is it that makes the DOKLeipzig festival programming different from other festivals? To be honest, I have no answer. Well, here there is a special category for films by new talents with a good award, there is a German competition, there are the above mentioned focus and retrospectives, but the main categories, the long and short international documentaries in competition – do not explicitly have a line, a red thread content-wise or aesthetically. Should they? Or is diversity a quality in itself. Also geographically and issue-wise. There is a huge step from socially committed Special Flight by Swiss Fernand Melgar to the visual extravagance of Vivan Las Antipodas! by Russian Viktor Kossakovsky. Not to talk about German Carmen Losmann and her issue-born ”Work Hard-Play Hard” to Marc Weymuller’s visual ”nothing-happens-here” film from the North of Portugal.

A little bit of everything from everywhere for every taste? Fair enough! Or charming or result of many voices in the selection process? What remains is an unclear programming policy.

Most beautiful experience for me: the film of Kossakovsky (photo).

www.dok-leipzig.de

Festival directors must have visions and points of view. DOK Leipzig festival director Claas Danielsen has. The following is taken from the press release of the festival after the opening of the festival:

Claas Danielsen held a very personal speech, in which he addressed the need to overcome fears and the turmoil that they bring with them – in both the political world and in the documentary film industry. Politically he was referring to the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. As part of the Focus on the Arab World in DOK Leipzig’s International Programme films from both countries can be seen that have just been completed. Danielsen compared the Arab Spring of 2011 with the fall of 1989 in East Germany, and commented that in the films he felt “the same energy as in Leipzig in 1989.”

Danielsen connected the theme of freedom in North Africa with Iran, where several oppositional filmmakers were recently arrested. The festival director phrased his demand directly: “In the name of DOK Leipzig I demand that the Iranian government release all filmmakers and critics of the regime.”

As far as the situation with documentary film in Germany, the festival director took a firm stance: “We need more support for all those films that don’t fit in to the standard funding profile, that are radical, uncomfortable, innovative, unconventional and unpredictable, that take on subjects that are no longer addressed in rate-dominated television.” Claas Danielsen called for the creation of a DOK Fond, which would promote innovative documentary and animated film projects. “With its diverse international partnerships DOK Leipzig is an ideal location for a DOK Fond to operate,” the festival director said.

www.dok-leipzig.de

Please surprise me, give me time for reflections, to smile, laugh, cry, tell me something I did not know in beforehand – or show me something that I have not seen before, or make some unpredictable montage of location connections with places, with sound and image. Surprises, please.

Viktor Kossakovsky delivers. Against all mainstream format tendencies he has made a film that has sequences that are magic, simply. Sans comparaison, this is the most impressive FILM of the international competition programme. The music score is constantly being brought to you upside-down as the tilted images are, according to the film’s concept, the antipodes of our round planet. From Argentina (or was it Bolivia?) to Shanghai, from Russia to Botswana or… I do not remember and it is not important because it all goes together without any preaching of ”halleluja, we are all the same boat”. On the contrary this is an extravagant invitation to watch our planet with all its beauty, man or nature, does not matter, the flow is there, suddenly the director allows himself, and us, to follow an eagle flying in the air for a long time, or a lion staring at you, it is a symphony of image and sound, with small human situations, scarce dialogue, mainly between the Pérez brothers talking about animal sounds and women! The camera moves against all rules, sometimes you wonder what is up and what is down.

Like we do in our life. What an adventurous and playful hymn to man and nature. And to what Film can be if you take your time and watch! Want to see it again on a big screen! And I will as it will be shown all over. Of course it will!

www.dok-leipzig.de

This is where our civilisation has brought us! Is my first thought after this heartbreaking documentation from a rich country in the middle of Europe, Switzerland. A documentary that without doubt will get award(s) at the DOK Leipzig. Deservedly. It could have been made in other countries including the one I come from, Denmark. Location: A centre for people who have been refused to stay in the country. Story: ”They” wait to be sent out of the country back home. That is to say ”home”, as expresses the man from Kosovo in the beginning of the film. He has been in Switzerland for 20 years, his wife and child are hidden in the country, somewhere, illegally. Home, where is that?

The film is one of those intimate institutional stories where the camera has unique access to the characters and those who work there – the staff that very often gets pretty close to the residents, as they are called – ”inmates” is not a nice word, even if this is what it is, a prison where doors are carefully locked and police handcuffs people when they are transported to the Special Flight that are to take them away. ”We are objects for them”, says one of those who wait, and more precisely it can not be said. Even if the staff is kind and understanding with hugs and verbal encouragement.

There are moving situations, where families come to visit – a little boy has not eaten for days because he does not know why his father is not at home. Another father writes a letter to his children, he does not want them to know where he is and that he is to be sent away. And there sequences where anger comes to you, like in the end where an incident is disclosed. A man died because of the brutal police treatment he got when he was brought to the airplane.

Shocking visualisation of how we treat ”the other”, so well made, balanced in rythm, giving information and opening for the creation of an emotional contact.

Fernand Melgar, Switzerland, 2011, 99 mins.

www.dok-leipzig.de