Subtitle: ”Reda and her 3 daughters”, a very well told human story from the crowded Cairo, about women who earn their money as belly dancers in more or less obscure locations for entertainment, dominated by and set up for men. Reda has 7 children and is most of the film sitting on the floor, smoking cigarettes, taking care of her children, Bussy, Amira and Hind, who have different ages and different problems, with men, with drugs, with a male society, that wants them to dress up and perform, at the same time as they should stay decent (virgins) to be married in an early age. Reda with her mobile phone sitting on the floor, is the situation you will remember from the film.

There is drama in the film, there is presence created in the scenes, you sense that you are there, as Leacock would have said it and you get close because the filmmakers let scenes develop. Taking a break once in a while, time for reflection like when you watch a kite blowing in the wind or a pair of hands moving in the air.

The most intriguing, however, is the constant change of the faces of the women. A change made to please – and earn a living. If you are old enough. Hind is 16, she lives away from Reda, who calls her a whore, because she is in love with a married man. She stays with the father, who seems to be kind but does not have courage (or money?) enough to pay the money asked for to get Hind out of the arrest she has fallen into during one night on her way back from work. She gets out because a man has paid what was needed. A man who wants to marry her. You can easily guess what that will lead to.

Isabelle Lavigne & Stephane Thibault, Canada, 2011, 90 mins.

www.dok-leipzig.de

Above I write about films that impressed me mostly, but there were others that deserve mention for the good or for the bad. So here comes some name dropping. Finnish Anu Kuivalainen’s ”Aranda” about people and research on board the reserach ship with that name is beautifully mastered in camera and music, and lives up to the kliché about Finnish people not saying a lot, but when they talk… German ”Bad Weather” by Giovanni Giommi is strong in subject and visuals but the story about the brothel island in Bangla Desh goes in too many direction and loses intensity…. the anonymous ”Fragments of a Revolution, produced by Gilles Padvani from France, is interesting in its compilation of images and archive from the Iranian riots around the election in 2009… ”Italy: Love it or Leave it” by Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi, is an attempt to make a docu-comedy, they fail totally… ”Life in Stills” by Tamar Tal from Israel, on the contrary, is a very funny and warm film with a 96 year old grandmother and her grandson, who keep a photo shop alive in Tel Aviv. The scoop photos are from the declaration of independence of the state of Israel… Extremely beautiful is the French film ”La vie à loin” (photo) by Marc Weymuller, from the North of Portugal, from an area where time has stopped and memories are present… ”War Matador” from the borderline of Israel and Gaza is a superb observation (by Israeli directors Avner Faingulent and Macabit Abramson) of people who live near the border and people who come to enjoy the bombardments of Gaza. Unfortunately the directors have decided to include a metaphor (the raving bull in an arena and the matador that smells blood and wants to kill), that is for me far too much an unnecessary construction… and finally a film that I stopped after 20 minutes, ”Water Children” by Dutch/Russain Aliona van der Horst. It should be about being a woman, many women at the festival praised it, I did not, for me it was ”unmusikalisch” (the voice of the director” and ”arty” in its approach. You should have stayed, it becomes much better, said the festival director to me. Maybe!

www.dok-leipzig.de

Obvious to make a series of films from the Arab countries – Arabien as the organisers called it, and it sounds much nicer in German. I saw a couple of them, ”Tahrir 2011”, ”I am in the Square” and ”No more Fear”, made quickly in the aftermath of the revolution in Egypt and Tunisia, both pretty disappointing from a filmic point of view. Which is not a surprise as they were/had to be built on news and youtube clips, combined with people telling us, the audience, where they were and what happened when and where.

Documentaries need time to be made, other angles have to be found, to be put into a narrative that brings us deeper into the content and closer to understanding.

”Forbidden”, made by Amal Ramsis, was shot before the revolution and proved to be an amusing – and yet serious – investigation into all that is not allowed in the Egyptian society, and is done anyway. Including a lot interesting material about Egyptian films put on the shelf by the state censorship.

Forbidden, Amal Ramsis, Egypt, 2011, 67 mins.

www.dok-leipzig.de

It is impossible – with a short text – to introduce the programme of the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival. It is overwhelming to sit with the newspaper catalogue in your hands, putting small X’es for what you want to see, knowing already now that this is not possible. Not realistic. I have found some clips from the website text made by the festival people themselves to help you understand what this – in many ways original and innovative – festival (also) is about. If it appeals to you, make your own surfing on the site:

”CPH:DOX, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, is the largest documentary film festival in Scandinavia. Each year the festival fills the Copenhagen cinemas with a selection of more than 200 documentary films from around the world. CPH:DOX is devoted to supporting independent and innovative film and presents the latest tendencies in non-fiction, art cinema and experimental film. CPH:DOX also presents art exhibitions, concerts, five whole days of professional seminars, a screening market and an international financing and co-production event CPH:FORUM.”

”Featured across the international competition programmes are new work by artists and auteurs such as Rirkrit Tiravanija, Michael Palm, Jesper Just, Petra Bauer, and Philippe Grandrieux (Artist in Focus at CPH:DOX 2009), as well as the World Premieres of Esperando el Tsunami by Vincent Moon (also Artist in Focus at CPH:DOX 2009) and Gary Tarn’s The Prophet, the European Premiere of Gary Hustwit’s Urbanized – and many more.

Guest Curators are Nan Goldin and Ben Rivers & Ben Russell
Last year we invited special guest curators Harmony Korine and Animal Collective feat. Danny Perez to present selected films. This year we are pleased to the present I’ll Be Your Mirror curated by Nan Goldin, and A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness curated by Ben Rivers and Ben Russell.

Artists in Focus: Charles Atlas and Raphaël Siboni & Fabien Giraud
Charles Atlas is premiering the work-in-progress of his and Antony’s Turning at CPH:DOX. We celebrate by screening a selection of his earlier work in a special Artist in Focus programme.”

And then of course Kossakovski, Herzog, Wenders, Glawogger… and Scorcese with his new film on George Harrison (photo).

http://www.cphdox.dk/d/a1.lasso?e=1

A couple of months ago filmkommentaren posted three texts about the prestigious Japanese film festival (link 1, link 2, link 3). One text started like this:

”Facing reality, what is to be done?” is the headline of the introductory text of the site of the bi-annual, reputed documentary film festival in Yamagata, Japan. In March this year the earth quake in Japan followed by the Fukushima nuclear power accident became top stories all over the world as well as its tragic consequences. Yamagata is a couple of hundred kilometers away from the epicenter of the earth quake. Respect!”

The festival stops tomorrow but the award recipients have already been announced. The Grand Prize given by a jury headed by Canadian director Atom Egoyan – the so-called Robert and Frances Flaherty Prize – was given to Israeli director couple Ruthie Shatz and Adi Barash for their ”The Collaborator and His Family” (will be reviewed on filmkommentaren in some days). The Mayor’s Prize went to Patricio Guzman for his masterpiece ”Nostalgia for the Light”. The film by Vadim Jendreyko, ”The Woman with the 5 Elephants” had two prizes, one being a Citizen Prize, which was also given to ”Iranian Cookbook” by Mohammad Shirvani.

In the Asian category ”Yuguo and His Mother” by Chinese Gu Tao received the main prize. Several other Asian films were awarded – regret to say that I do not know them, but read about them on the site below.

http://www.yidff.jp/home-e.html

http://www.yidff.jp/2011/2011-e.html#award