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

… a good question, put by Koen Suidgeest, who has been extremely busy in the promotion of his important humanistic documentary, “Karla’s Arrival”, that right now also is launched through a kickstarter campaign to collect money to get the film to classrooms. Suidgeest sent us this text, he and and filmkommentaren invite others to join a discussion on the question put above. Here is his text

Karla’s Arrival is a documentary which, for the first time in my career, has allowed me to really experience the international festival circuit first hand. Since its world premiere in March of this year at OneWorld (Prague), the film has been selected in some 30 international fests, big and small. It has been a humbling experience which has involved a huge learning curve and many airmiles. At the same time, it has also made me think of why I am so eager to attend some of these festivals in the first place. What do directors get out of festivals? In light of my already very busy schedule, including two new projects, should I really be going?

Wanting to attend the fests upon finishing the film has been an automatism. Given the opportunity, I was certain I’d try to go to as many as possible. I very much looked at it as a trophy for years of hard work. But this view has now changed and more and more, I am starting to question the invested time, money, loss of productivity and endless days away from my children. What added value is there really? Let’s run through a few possibilities.

One benefit of the festivals is being in direct contact with your audience. I always say: if you want to make money, you have to sell to broadcasters. But if you want personal satisfaction, you should go to festivals. Downside is that Q&A’s rarely last longer than 15-20 minutes and audiences are often small. For two or three screenings, we travel long hours, stick around for 3-4 days and, whether the fest pays all or part of it, there are always additional expenses. Can I live without this ego-boost? And is the viewing experience of the audience less valuable without the director being present?

Another benefit of going is making new contacts in the industry. Yet at many fests there is very little industry. Docudays in Kiev for instance is a wonderful festival, but in terms of meeting people who could mean something for your career, it’s very meager. Of course there are the occasional surprises, when you are in the right place at the right time to meet that one person you’ve always wanted to have a beer and relaxing chat with. But the price of these types of coincidences is high. You can’t count on them.

A third benefit of visiting festivals is being able to do press. Yet in reality, I haven’t had that much. Often there are so many films programmed that only a handful receive media attention and we’re not always part of that selection.

And fourth, on a personal level, I sometimes take an invitation to a festival when it’s in a place I have good friends I haven’t seen for a while. The Montreal World Film Festival was like that for me, this past August. But it does feel like cheating.

In reality, since the festival arena is quite anarchistic, it’s sometimes hard to gauge what one will be like. Of course we all know what professional opportunities IDFA holds within its complex and unabridged dynamic. But for example, what about the AFI Latin American Film Festival in Silver Spring (yep, very same location as Silverdocs)? I went and it didn’t turn out to be a traditional festival but rather a film series which only runs in evenings. Surprise.

So I sometimes sit at festivals and wonder why I am there. And then I think of the underlying core question: can our films, like grown children, vouch for themselves in this world? Or do we need to take them by the hand?

Koen Suidgeest is a Dutch filmmaker based in Madrid. Karla’s Arrival (www.karlasarrival.com) is his first feature-length documentary.

From the press release of IDFA today: The 24th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) will open on November 16 in Pathé Tuschinski with The Ambassador by Danish filmmaker and journalist Mads Brügger Cortzen. In this documentary, Brügger Cortzen exposes the trade in diplomatic passports in Africa – a trade in which Westerners play a major role. The film also competes in the IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentary.

Mads Brügger Cortzen (1972) previously made films such as The Red Chapel, with which he won a Jury Award at the Sundance film festival in 2010. He is also known in Denmark as a presenter of various television programmes.

The Ambassador, shot largely using a hidden camera, reveals another side of Africa: an underworld that cannot be recorded in any other way. Dressed in a neo-colonist style, director Mads Brügger Cortzen goes to the Central African Republic to become an ambassador for Liberia. Once there, he sets up a match factory, run by Pygmies, as a cover for his ambitions in the diamond trade. What Brügger is actually trying to do, however, is reveal the relations of power – and commerce – in that country.

The Ambassador is competing for the VPRO IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary. On Friday, 25 November, the winners of the various IDFA competition programmes will be announced at the closing ceremony in Tuschinski 1. IDFA will take place from 16 to 27 November on and around Amsterdam’s Rembrandtplein square.

www.idfa.nl

The small film festival with the fine programme of international documentaries ends today sunday October 2. The awards for the Baltic Documentary Competition were given out last night. 12 films were in the programme, three received awards – diplomas and money.

Latvian films took the second and third prize. Second was ”How are you doing, Rudolf Ming”, shown at many festivals internationally, directed by Roberts Rubins, who received the recognition for his fine portrait of a Latvian boy, who is crazy about making films. Especially films in the horror genre. He hates love stories and draws his stories on paper to be shown on a slide projector with his own voice providing the sound. The intelligent and sensitive boy develops a fine relation with the local priest, who asks him to make a film for the service. Which he does, with big success! The director told the audience at the prize ceremony that Rudolf Ming now has a real camera… an upcoming filmmaker!

”Family Instinct”, third prize, by Andris Gauja is travelling the world right now, to festivals first of all, winning awards for its intimate description of a totally devastated family of a mother of two, the father – the brother of the mother – being in jail for the incest. It is a shocking film to watch, there are constant violent conflicts combined with a constant alcohol consumption. We are visiting a Dostojevskian hell. Nevertheless, the director succeeds strongly in conveying empathy for the characters and their living conditions. The film has raised big debate in its home country, for its content of course, is this (also) Latvia of today, and among film people also ethical questions are raised, which are relevant. The main point, however, for this blogger, member of the jury together with Georgian Nino Kirtadze and Bosnian Irena Taskovski, was that the film comes out as an honest piece of observational documentary.

Outstanding was the winner, Barzakh (photo), by Lithuanian Mantas Kvedaravicius, a courageous film from Chechnya, superbly shot and edited, a touching visit to families, who have had members missing for years, searching for the answer – what happened, where are they, are they alive? The narrative also included the story of a man who has had his ear cut off. A longer text is to be found on this blog about this beautiful documentary made by a man over a period of three years, a man who is a researcher and is finishing a book on pain – the subject of the film.

www.vdff.lt