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

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