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

Prix arte – European Film Awards

The European Film Academy has announced the nominations in the category European Film Awards Documentary 2011 – Prix arte. A committee consisting of Nik Powell, director of the NFTS and deputy chairman of the EFA Board, EFA Board Member Despina Mouzaki (Greece), EFA Member Francine Brücher (Switzerland), the documentary experts Claas Danielsen (International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film, Germany), Ally Derks (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, the Netherlands), and Jacques Laurent (producer, Belgium), and ARTE-observer Martin Pieper has chosen the following three films for a nomination:

Pina, Wim Wenders, Germany

Position Among the Stars, Leonard Retel Helmrich, the Netherlands

¡Vivan Las Antipodas!, Victor Kossakovsky, Germany / the Netherlands / Argentina / Chile (photo)

The nominated documentary films will now be made available to all 2,500 members of the European Film Academy who will vote for the winner. In association with the European culture channel ARTE, the winner will be presented at the 24th European Film Awards on 3 December in Berlin.

www.europeanfilmawards.eu

www.idfa.nl

British Film Director in Syria

Journalist witnesses Syrian authorities torturing activists – this is headline of an article of today brought by Channel 4 News, accompanied by an interview with the internationally renowned film-maker Sean McAllister, who describes what he saw and heard while detained in a Syrian cell by the authorities… His account reveals an insight into how dissent is handled amid the ongoing rebellion, and he speaks of his fears for those Syrians who had assisted him – they are now targets for the regime. Sean McAllister was arrested while working undercover for the tv channel.

http://www.channel4.com/news/journalist-witnesses-syrian-authorities-torturing-activists

http://www.seanmcallister.com/

The Syrian Revolution/ 8

Unfortunately and tragically, we have to return to Syria again. Orwa Nyrabia, filmmaker and co-director of the Damascus-based Dox Box Festival, that filmkommentaren.dk has reported from the very beginning of its existence, reports daily on facebook, several times, from his country, in Arabic and English. This was posted by him 18 hours ago:

Homs is under military attack… in Baba Amro, Homs, the army is NOW threatening the people by tanks to ‘hand over’ army deserters, the people deny deserters exist in the neghborhood, but, in a historical development: children were kidnapped and tied to the tanks to make sure the people do not attack them. CHILDREN KIDNAPPED AND TIED TO THE TANKS.

At the same time as BBC has this story, quote from the beginning of the article: Patients in government-run hospitals in Syria are being tortured in an attempt to suppress dissent, an Amnesty International report alleges. The 39-page report claims patients in at least four state hospitals have been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including by medical staff. Many injured civilians consider it safer not going to hospital, it says…

Horrifying documentation clips and update can be followed on the site below.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15433916

http://www.lccsyria.org/1639

George Harrison: Living in the Material World

I don’t want talking faces, you often hear documentary filmmakers say. To be understood: it is boring television stuff. In this case, and in many other, of course, the talking faces, at least most of them, are interesting to look at and are the ones that drive the story, here about George Harrison, told in an efficient way by Martin Scorcese and based on anecdotes and personal memories about an extraordinary character, who for many, but not for this Beatles-fan, stood in the shadow of John and Paul. The film, in two parts and made for television, by HBO in the US, is informative and entertaining and emotional – and for one who has grown up with the music, a great visual and musical walk down memory lane. They are all there, lots of archive with Harrison himself, and archive shot by Harrison himself, Ringo Starr, McCartney, Clapton, Ravi Shankar, Phil Spector, George Martin – and his wife Olivia Harrison, who gets the last word in a film that for Scorcese is  about a man, who was constantly searching for meaning on his spiritual journey through life. A man with humour, charming, generous and with a lot of songs that will stay like the still weeping guitar…

Saw the film on the big screen in the Copenhagen Cinema Imperial, more than 1000 seats. Excellent atmosphere.  

Martin Scorcese, USA, 3 hours and 20 mins., 2011

http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/george-harrison-living-in-the-material-world/index.html

http://www.georgeharrison.com/

Young Filmmakers Festival in Palestine

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/

DOK Leipzig 2011 – Awards

Tonight the awards of the 54th 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

DOKLeipzig 2011 – Atmosphere and Profile

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