Idfa – Weijun Chen

Breakfast meetings in the hotel. This morning I was lucky to meet Chinese Weijun Chen, the director behind the international successes “I Will Vote for You” (photo) and “The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World”. He was in Amsterdam to meet his producer Don Edkins, the man behind the big series “Steps for the Future” and “Why Democracy”. Now he has entered and launched another mega project “Why Poverty”, see details on the site below.

Weijun Chen stands behind one of 8 long films in the series that has Nick Fraser from BBC and Mette Hoffmann from DR/TV as editors. More than 40 broadcasters around the world have joined the series that will have its premiere in one year and will also provide a website connected, plus several short films.

Here is a text clip from the site describing the film of Weijun Chen, quite a controversial film for China I guess:

In ancient times in China, education was the only way out of poverty – in recent times it has been the best way. But just over ten years ago, when higher education was commercialised by order of the government, the start of a major change in China’s society took place. The equality that once existed for all students has been destroyed, and for the millions of college graduates who come onto the job market each year, the future is bleak. Chinese Dream is a film that charts a societal shift that will have an impact on the future economic progress of China.

http://whypoverty.net/contact/

Idfa 2011

It is a bombardment of impressions to be at the biggest documentary film festival in the world. Films, meetings, receptions, ”hello, how are you”, ”nice to see you again”, people with badges walking in the streets around Rembrandtsplein, the square with the huge documentary tent where you can go and get your accreditation papers, catalogues and tickets. It is a fest for the documentary genre, indeed it is. Wonderful. Screenings are sold out so many professionals (programmers from other festivals, buyers from television, distributors) go to the Docs for Sale building to watch the films, or sit at the hotel rooms to get the films online. Rembrandtsplein, the statue of the master stands in a position as was he overlooking what is happening with all these documentaries and documentarians. Logistically it seems to work perfectly, artistically, the state of the art, the level of quality of the documentary today and tomorrow…

Yes, how about that? Monday morning, I paid a short visit to the 19th edition of the Forum for International Co-financing of Documentaries down one of the canals at the beautiful Compagnietheater. It was the start of the festival, the hall was full, good atmosphere, very little money around the table due to the general crisis and to the crisis for the creative documentary in public television. But again the number of project applications to come and pitch was huge, 500 it was, 10% made it to the table so to say, or tables as the Forum today does have several options for the pitching – in a big hall in the mornings, and in smaller halls in the afternoons.

Same procedure as last years, I have to say, the female moderation team, Karolina Lidin and Jess Search, works better than the male, Rudy Buttignol and Axel Arnö, that is not well prepared when it comes to knowing the broadcasters, the first one seems to be more interested in having people in the hall hugging each other to create atmosphere. Continuing in this my slightly grumpy evaluation, it is for me, who has attended all 19 years (!), fine to listen to the project presentations, whereas the comments from the broadcasters are pretty predictable and mostly like ”we will talk more later”. The only one who is really challenging the ones pitching with questions and comments is Nick Fraser from BBC. I listened to 7 presentations, most of them (boring) mainstream investigative, interview based television programmes, two of them with Film potential: ”Tea Time” from Chile to be directed by Maite Alberdi (who has a film in competition, ”The Lifeguard”, ”Map” by Spanish director Léon Siminiani, a personal film that I knew from the DocsBarcelona 2011, plus Justin Webster’s, as it was said from a panelist, damn good story ”I will be Murdered” from Guatemala, supported by BBC and TV3 Catalunya. Webster places himself strongly between the journalistic and the creative documentary.

Financing possibilities are small these days, when it comes to television, are there other options coming up? This was discussed at a meeting on video-on-demand, called ”revenues-on-demand”, you can read about in an article, click below. And do not get confused, I was not at the meeting as the photo (from Edinburgh!) indicates, sorry Peter Jäger from Autlook Films in Austria, not my fault – Peter is much younger than me and he does not smoke cigars! 

www.idfa.nl

http://idfa.nl/industry/Festival/latest-news/idfa-daily-2011/news-and-background/21-11-11-revenue-on-demand.aspx

Wajda Studio celebrates 10 Year

The Polish tradition for high quality documentaries is very much kept alive by the Wajda Studio, which formerly was called The Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing. Especially the short documentary has had and has a strong home at the school, now studio. The film ”Paparazzi” (33 mins.) is in competition at this years’s idfa, there is a new film by Maciej Drygas screened, “Tonia and her Children” by Marcel Lozinski, teacher at the school, is at Docs for Sale, as is “Argentinian Lessons” by Wojciech Staron. (For the subscribers of DOX magazine a dvd with 3 short films has been made available with the last issue). At idfa the birthday was celebrated at a reception where also representatives from the Krakow Film Festival and the Krakow Film Foundation were present.

From the site of the Studio a small historical outline:

The Wajda Studio (formerly The Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing) was founded in 2001 by two directors, some of the most acclaimed Polish artists – Andrzej Wajda, winner of an Oscar for lifetime achievement, and Wojciech Marczewski, an outstanding director and educator.

The Wajda Studio continues the Wajda School’s mission and supports auteur film projects. We are looking for feature, documentary films, and short films on contemporary subjects.

The Studio focuses on international co-operation and co-productions. The Studio makes a difference through artistic supervision from the best Polish and European artists, and by playing an emphasis on project development. It offers script doctoring and the production of short fictions and documentaries under the “30 minutes” program and „First Documentary” program. The Studio runs the EKRAN (link) – International Program for Film Professionals.

The Studio pays special attention to the promotion and distribution of its projects.

Among the achievements of the Wajda Studio there are more than 50 documentary and feature films, and over 200 shorts. In addition, our films have been screened and awarded at major festivals including Berlinale, San Sebastian, Karlovy Vary, Hot Docs, IDFA and DOK Leipzig. The Studio (formerly known as the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing) has twice been awarded the Best Documentary and Short Films Producer prize at the Krakow Film Festival, in 2008 and 2010.
 

Photo: Wajda in the film about him: Let’s Shoot, made by graduated students, who have all made great documentaries: Maciej Cuske, Thierry Paladino, Marcin Sauter and Piotr Stasik.

http://www.wajdastudio.com/en

Anonymous: The Weather Balloon

What constitutes a documentary film? When is a documentary most trustworthy and/or true to actual facts? Can we depict reality without interfering? Do we WANT to depict reality without interfering? We will never stop argue about these things, but allow yourself four minutes with this excellent video which some will just call “footage” but which I will call a work of self-made art.

A weather balloon was sent up from somewhere in Denmark, equipped with an HD-camera and a microphone. The balloon went up to an altitude of 31 km (and a temperature of 71 degrees below). Upon landing the GPS system failed, so it took some time to find it in the water. Then somebody made these extracts and edited them together. The film is both self-reflective and avant-garde and is also raising implicit questions of a both humanistic and scientific nature. But above all it’s just breathtakingly beautiful.

Watch it here: http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Vejret/2011/11/18/074723.htm and please tell me if I have lost my marbles.

IDFA – Watch Films for Free

The 24th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) started two days ago and runs until November 27th. If you are not there, you have the chance to watch a fine selection of films, primarily from previous editions, offered for free by the festival. ”For Viewers Worldwide” is the headline, and you will find masterpieces like Johan van der Keuken’s monumental 245 mins. ”Amsterdam Global Village” (1996), as well as the Basque music film ”Nömadak Tx” (2006), several films by the many times mentioned on this site, Syrian Omar Amiralay, Florin Iepan’s ”Children of the Decree” from the time of Ceaucescu in Romania, Heddy Honigmann’s unique Paris work ”The Underground Orchestra” (1997). A lot of important film history is to find.

Bizarre, it will be to watch ”Beauty Will Save the World” from 2004 with Colonel Khadafi in a prominent role. Here is the synopsis from the site of idfa:

Tragic and hilarious account of the first Miss Net World beauty contest. In 2002, a Libyan has the brilliant idea to hold the first beauty contest for the most gorgeous Internet model in Libya. The preliminary national rounds, held on the Net, produce a busload of models who proudly set out for Libya, and vaguely remember that once upon a time something was wrong with this country. But what? Only four years ago, Colonel Khadafi was a tyrant from the Axis of Evil, but meanwhile he has been rehabilitated after making a few noncommittal promises. Khadafi niftily plays his trumps: he makes the models, and the journalists, wait for days before going to meet them. And since they have to wait, they might as well take a tour of his bombed house. Result: sobbing models cursing the war and the evil in mankind. BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD is a fly-on-the-wall documentary of the beauty contest for which, it seems, the filmmakers just had to film events from a distance. The absurd spectacle unfolds right before their eyes. They follow the nineteen-year-old American candidate Teca Zendik, who later became the first US honorary consul in Libya in twenty years.  

http://www.idfa.nl/industry/idfa-tv/films-and-trailers/Free-Documentaries-A-Z/worldwide.aspx

A New Wave for Arab Cinema?

17th floor of the Hotel Africa in the capital of Tunisia. Early morning, the city prepares for a new day. Sunshine. To the right the beautiful clock with the sea behind it, to the left a look down the Avenue Bourguiba, that leads to the medina and the kasbah square, which was a main location for the uprising almost a year ago. The avenue is impressive with its trees and accompanying bird concert. It is full of outside cafés and what could be better for a man from the North of Europe to sit here, in the month of November, with a café crème and a warm croissant au beurre, watching life passing by. And the men (not many women at the cafés!) chatting, cigarette smoking.

Inside the hotel the Euromed Audiovisual III, an EU funded programme, hosts a conference for a couple of hundred people, which one way or the other deals with the theme ”Towards a New Mediterranean Cinema?”. The organisers have decided to practise the classical panel format for the conference. Thus one group of people after the other takes the floor to express opinions and convey information. The problem with that format is that you need strong moderation to avoid the time schedule to fall apart. The conference organisation lacked that skill so there was a constant delay and time pressure. At the same time as many speakers seemed to have prepared a half an hour powerpoint presentation, and were given 10 minutes to deliver that. And your prejudice about French speaking people needing more time to make their points was not shot down. Not at all!

Themes – data collecting, statistics about production and distribution, promotion, cinemas, film funds and commissions, the role of television. All on the background of the Arab Spring and the hope for a better and more free cinema, be it fiction or documentary. In the room were film people from Arab speaking countries – Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya (!), Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria. The clearest optimism was to find in the hosting country. ”You know what”, said the director Ferid Boughedir (”Halfaouine”, 1995, wonderful feature film), ” we were called from the Ministry of Culture. Please rewrite your film project with no  self-censorship”!

The main question, however, that came up in all panels, was the lack of Sud-Sud collaboration and whether the Arab spring could spark a new era in that respect. Each country has a close look on own problems – lack of funding, bad television, few cinema halls, dependency of financing from the North (=

Europe), no or few film schools etc. There was a lot of complaining but also some positive examples like young Tunisian filmmakers, who are organising themselves and have concrete plans for creating a public interest in films, be it documentaries or feature films. Or in Jordan where they have a (Royal) Film Commission and a new film fund, or in Palestine where the organisation Shashat has a focus on women working with films and an audience target towards children. In terms of festivals, the FidaDoc, run by Nezha Drissi, stands out as a strong documentary film festival based in Morocco.

On behalf of EDN (European Documentary Network) I asked the question whether an Arab Documentary Network was an idea. In a pre-meeting fellow panelists thought it could be a goal, but in the panel all stuck to their own situation, at the same time as all agreed that a Sud-Sud action should happen. The question about archive came up, extremely important it is of course to keep the images from the revolutions in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia – and the ongoing one in Syria. Representatives from the Cineteca in Bologna, Italy talked about restoration of films (35mm) and declared that ”restoration of films is like an act of love”, which easily could be transferred to the current (post-) revolutionary situation.

A bombardment of information, sometimes inspiring, sometimes far too predictable and boring comments, sometimes passionate and angry outbursts from producers – as a conference which was the first regional one, organised by Euromed, probably has to be.

Some quotes from the two days at Hotel Africa in Tunis:

”… recording the revolution, yes, but we must be able to understand what is happening. We must create Arab cooperation. We must preserve the memory and pass on from the period of YouTube clips”

”The Arab spring will bring us together in order to understand each other better”.

”In the era of the Arab Spring it is a golden opportunity for all of us to make stories that talk about the silent majority, their feelings, small stories from their lives”.

The two Libyan representatives asked the participants to think about the 50-80.000 martyrs from the revolution and continued to state that ”we have not been making films for 20 years, we have to start from scratch. We need collaboration. With other Southern countries”. ”Can we get rid of self-censorship?”

Several stated that ”we have to aim for self-financing”, and then at the next stage go to the North for help.

A new wave of Arab cinema?

PS. Surprisingly, there was not a lot of discussion of the political situation and it eventual impact on the development of a free and independent cinema. In general people told me that the succesful result of the islamist party in Tunisia would probably not mean anything. Anyway, there had been problems and – to say the least – there are problems in Egypt and Syria, and what will happen in Libya and so on so forth. Here is a Tunisian case from this summer: ”A Salafi group was linked to a 26 June attack on a cinema in Tunis that had advertised a film publicly titled in French “Ni Dieu, Ni Maitre” (No God, No Master) by Tunisian-French director Nadia El-Fani, an outspoken critic of political Islam. In the week before the election, police used tear gas and arrested dozen of self-proclaimed Islamists, who attacked a Tunisian TV station that screened the film “Persepolis”.” (Source Open Democracy) 

http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/kristine-goulding/tunisia-arab-spring-islamist-summer

For the activities of the Euromed, visit

www.euromedaudiovisuel.net

Vinylmania – They Made It!

Filmkommentaren.dk has followed the ”kickstarter V for Vinylmania” initiative, where Turin-based film company Stefilm called for help through a crowdfunding campaign and succeeded to collect $37.173 from 395 backers. The money will be used to make an international version by clearing the necessary music rights.

The film will have its national premiere on sunday, November 20th in Rome. This is what the film is about, according to the makers:

A trip into the grooves, Vinylmania is a 75 minute feature length documentary about an object that has never lost its soul: the vinyl record. An epic love story, the film is filled with fascinating characters and internationally recognized artists including PHILIPPE COHEN SOLAL (Gotan Project), WINSTON SMITH (Dead Kennedys, Green Day record sleeve artist), PETER SAVILLE (Joy Division, New Order record sleeve artist) and DJ KENTARO (2002 DMC World DJ Champion).
 Devotion, ecstasy, infatuation, agony – all feelings that the director of the film, Paolo Campana, has experienced from childhood and shares with like-minded record collectors, Djs, musicians and artists (the said vinylmaniacs) in the documentary. Set in 11 different cities worldwide, the director sets out on a global road trip to find out what role vinyl records play in the 21st century!

http://www.vinylmaniafilm.com/

Rasmus Dinesen: Verdens bedste kok

Selvfølgelig er det fascinerende, men præcist hvad er det, som er så fascinerende? Filmen går ud fra, at det er en selvfølge, og der tager instruktøren fejl. Og fejltagelsen er fatal for hans film, for han bruger den derfor ikke til at finde ud af det der med fascination. Og derfor er det overhovedet ikke en egentlig fascinerende film, det er nemlig ikke en klog film. Det er en tilsyneladende fascinerende film. Og det bliver den ved at efterligne det, den skildrer, først og fremmest hovedpersonen, kokken Rasmus Kofoeds virtuositet. Helt tydeligt derved at klipperen Per K. Kirkegaard og hans hold i klipperummet ligesom gentager Kofoeds og hans holds suveræne præstation, blot altså i deres fag. Se det er en hyldest. Og det holder filmen igennem. Næsten. Jeg tror ikke den tour de force havde holdt mange sekunder længere end de fem minutter over 40 minutters muren. Det var der slet ikke stof til. Men flot, flot klippet.

Ikke stof nok? Ja, filmens kerne er jo selve fascinationen. Fascinationen af træningen, logistikken, roen, overblikket, kraftudfoldelsen på de rigtige tidspunkter. Men der er ikke mere, ikke flere lag, og efter variationerne over fascinationens rent ydre fremtrædelsesform ligesom er udtømt, er der for mig at se ikke mere tilbage i filmen.

Ikke i interviewuddragene hvor sympatisk end Rasmus Kofoed er, ikke i den speak, som med foragt næsten (gætter jeg på) er udeladt, ikke i scenerne fra sportslivet uden for køkkenet.. Ingen eftertanke, slet ikke nogen tvivl, disse elementer, som ellers kan give bastonen. Filmen er glad, begejstret og fascineret for og af sig selv. Lukker sig om fascinationen, kan, hvad den har villet. For så vidt og ikke længere. Den når sit publikum, vil jeg tro, skuffer det ikke, anfægter det heller ikke.

Rasmus Dinesen: Verdens bedste kok (The World’s Finest Chef), Danmark 2011, 45 min. Fotografi: Aske Foss, Niels Thastum, Rune Backs og Rasmus Dinesen, klip: Per K. Kirkegaard, Frederik Strunk Hjorth Nielsen og Klaus Heinecke, lyddesign: Bobby Hess, musik: Rune Funch og Jakob Dinesen, producer: Monica Hellström, produktion: Final Cut for Real Sendt på DR2 Dokumania i aftes. Genudsendes 19. november. Rasmus Dinesen filmografi: United Colours of Football (1998), The Forbidden Team (2003), Diplomacy (2008)

Werner Herzog: Cave of Forgotten Dreams

What does a cave being enclosed for thousands of years sound like? Or smell like? This film actually tries to tell us, but first of all it shows us what it looks like. Or to be more precise, it shows us what the 30.000 years old cave paintings look like. And let me tell you right away, that despite being a 3D sceptic I was really flabbergasted by the effect that this format gives you; a unique sense on how the ancient artists used the curves and hollows of the cave walls to create effects that are right down spectacular. Even from today’s perspective this is world class art!

The paintings do take up a lot of time in this film and you actually get the strange sensation that even Herzog himself was overwhelmed by the art in these caves and thus has made a slightly more conventional documentary. We do get a lot of his trademarks, though: The philosophical narration, the “leading” questions to interviewees and the oddball characters, for instance the “perfumerist” who is skilled in finding hidden caves using his nostrils. Also, a typical Herzog-moment comes when his voice narrates that the footprints of a wolf and an 8-year-old boy were found next to each other. Did the wolf stalk the boy, did they walk together as companions or were the footprints sat 10.000 years apart? “We will never know”. Herzog also wants to put art, music and the understanding of human evolvement into perspective and it really does work. But first and last are the paintings themselves of paramount interest to him. Even when we almost think the film is over, we get the best seven or eight minutes of them all: the camera dwelling on the walls with very simple lighting effects and some really beautiful music – an original score by Ernst Reijseger as far as I can detect.

However, a few “buts” arose in my mind. At an early point in the film, one of the scientists asks the crew to be silent so we can hear the sounds of the cave. Herzog can’t stand that silence more than 10 seconds but soon adds a heartbeat and then music, and shortly it gives you an uneasy feeling about the director’s choices. And apart from when we see the paintings themselves; the 3D format is interesting at best and somewhat annoying and distracting at worst.

But in the end the film is just wonderful and Herzog does the unthinkable: he lets us feel that he put the matter of the film in a predominant position because he didn’t have a choice. These paintings are essential to mankind, the film says, and I agree.

Documenting the Revolution/ 1

The cph:dox festival deserves credit for (also) putting a focus on the changes in the Arab world. With the support of IMS (International Media Support, Danish state supported organisation), no less than a dozen screenings and debates, entitled ”Free Radical”, were on the agenda of the festival, with many invited guests from the countries involved. I attended a handful of them as well as a very well visited seminar held by Danish newspaper Politiken, also a supporter of cph:dox, under the headline ”The Arab Spring and the new Media”, referring to the role of social media like Facebook and Twitter during the revolutions. This meeting included a panel of experts, university people of Arab origin living outside the region, plus Danish professor Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen who made a fine introduction to Syria and the website activity going on – the main source for information from a country closed for foreign press, many times linked on this site under ”The Syrian Revolution“.

I mention this because of the clear distinction in terminology and access between that – academic – panel and the bloggers, activists and filmmakers who took part in the festival. No, I am not saying that one is better than the other, only that you feel so strongly the difference between an inside and an outside look on the current affairs. Jon Alterman from Washington thought that the social media’s impact was quite overestimated, television’s role had been crucial for the changes in Tunisia and Egypt, Skovgaard-Petersen did not have the word ”revolution” on his power point presentation, he talked about ”the uprising” etc.

Orwa Nyrabia, however, Syrian film producer and co-organiser of the Dox Box festival, that has been running for four years in Damascus, unlikely of course to happen next year, did not hesitate to call the uprising ”a revolution”, and gave the audience a good intro to the situation in his country on two meeting occasions. One in connection with the screening of ”Life in a Syrian Village” by late master Omar Amiralay, and another when one of the dox:lab films were to be screened. Danish performance artist Lillibeth Cuenca was meant to be joined by her co-director, Syrian filmmaker Nidal Hassan, who did not arrive to Copenhagen as he was arrested in Damascus when he was about to get his travel documents cleared. The work-in-progress of the two was screened – it was less than promising from a film quality point of view. Nyrabia took the floor and informed with a lot of humour and sarchasm that there is nothing new in Syrian filmmakers being put into prison by the regime, that Nidal Hassan and others are grown up people, who know about the risk they are taking saying what they are saying against Assad and his dictatorship. There is no reason to feel guilty, he said to the Danish performer and others from the festival organisation, keep on inviting us so we can come and tell you what we know and see. Said Nyrabia, a very good friend, who I keep on naming ”the first minister of culture” in a new and free Syria!

The best session, however, was called ”Documenting the Revolution”. Clips, photos, film quoted were shown and the panelists helped each other to give a broad picture to the audience. In the panel were documentary filmmaker Elyes Baccar (Tunisia) (PHOTO from his Rouge Parole), journalist.

Thameur Mekki (Tunisia), film director and activist Lara Baladi (Egypt), and photographer and blogger Maggie Osama (Egypt). The two hour meeting started with the images from Cairo January 28, ”the Day of Anger”, where the police was attacking the people with guns and water canons on the bridge over the Nile. Enormously touching material that also shows praying people in the middle of the demonstration, with the crowd slowly winning the battle – at a certain moment the police tanks turn around and the walk to Tahir Square starts. These YouTube clips will get the same status as the man in front of the tank on Tiananmenh Square in Beijing in 1989. Go to YouTube.. 

The Tunisian filmmaker Elyes Baccar gave us the story of the Tunisian revolution that started with the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi in Sidi-Bouzid, an event that was filmed and uploaded on the internet by his cousin Ali, later to be broadcast on al Jazeera, link to the YouTube version.. 

It sparked the revolution, uprisings in other cities of the country began, putting an end to the dictatorship of Ben Ali, who stepped down January 14, a month after the incident in Sidi-Bouzid. In the beginning, the director said, I was not a director, but a citizen, but gradually I felt that I had to film ”to feel that it was real”. He did and the very good result was shown at the festival in Copenhagen, ”Rouge Parole”, see review below.

Documenting the Revolution… as it was said in the panel, we have to go further than the news ”that is taking all humanity away”. We have ”to bring back basic things”, give a name to this person who is not just a number, said Elyes Baccar.

The Egyptian panelists added that we have to ”document before we forget”. Maggie Osama showed some of her strong photographs from Tahrir Square, and Lara Baladi informed about the group ”Tahrir Cinema” that was formed during the days of revolution. But now we see a counter-revolution, she said and reminded us about the massacre three weeks ago. ”The revolution is on the edge of being hi-jacked”, she said, ”it is a revolution in making, a work-in-progress”. Remember also that after the revolution there are still 12.000 people in prison.

The role of the media – we have to keep an eye on the development, said the Tunisians. We have now 101 political parties in the country and 60% of the television coverage in connection with the election was pro the islamists, said journalist Thameur Mekki, who also spoke about the complex role of the broadcaster al Jazeera in the region. Yes, they were promoting the islamists, but they were also the first that said yes to broadcast from Tunisia in December 2011 when it all started.

www.cphdox.dk