How to follow what happens in Syria? Incoming shaken visual reports, amateur footage from amateur cameras or mobile phones, many people risk their lives to report to us and to have their clips put on youtube or on the sites of tv channels.

I went to al jazeera tonight – their start lines from todays killings by the regime go like this:

Syrian forces have killed nearly 142 people, including at least 100 when the army stormed the flashpoint protest city of Hama to crush dissent on the eve of Ramadan, activists have said. Rights groups said it was one of deadliest days in Syria since demonstrators first took to the streets on March 15, demanding democratic reforms and the downfall of the government…

On the site of avaaz, see below, you can sign a petition ” to investigate and press for an end to the disappearances of nearly 3000 innocent Syrians”.

And on lccsyria.org videos are uploaded as the massacre continues.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/spotlight/syria/

http://www.lccsyria.org/ (photo from that site)

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/

American documentary master Frederick Wiseman stays in France. After his “La Danse” the Parisian production company Ideale Audience and Wiseman’s own Zipporah Films Inc. has produced a film from one of the most well known entertainment attractions in the French capital, Crazy Horse. The film is to have a special presentation at the coming Venice Film Festival. Here is the promotion text from the site of the distributor, Celluloid Dreams:

Celebrated documentary director Frederick Wiseman spent ten weeks with his camera exploring one of the most mythic places dedicated to women, ‘CRAZY HORSE’. This legendary Parisian cabaret club, founded in 1951 by Alain Bernardin, has become, over the years the Parisian nightlife ‘must’ for any visitors, ranking alongside the Eiffel tower and the Louvre.

Wiseman’s impeccable eye allows us to enter into this intriguing international temple of the Parisian club world and to discover what makes the CRAZY HORSE tick: elegance, perfectionism and a grueling schedule (with 2 shows a night and 3 on Saturdays, 7 days a week). The film takes us to the final curtain up, and the unveiling of the brand new show. DESIR is created by the greatest French choreographer Philippe DECOUFFLE and is an artistic, modern, humorous and colorful outburst that is the pinnacle of ‘NUDE CHIC’.

http://www.zipporah.com/wiseman

http://www.celluloid-dreams.com/current_slate/2011/crazy_horse/synopsis

Still: “Crazy Horse”. From cargo-film.de

OK, I joined. I had asked a lot of people if I should. Many said yes, of course, if you can control the time-consuming. Others said no, it is dangerous, people have been misused on facebook, pictures of you may be manipulated… whatever.

I joined a week ago, and it is time-consuming so far. But also fascinating – and embarassing. The latter because so many of my friends, people with whom I am friends anyway, in the real world so to say, have expressed their surprise to see me there! Meaning, you are too old for that, 60+ is not for facebook, but welcome anyway…

Yesterday, a Danish film editor, on facebook himself, told me that after two weeks you will find your way of using it properly. It calmed me down… 62 friends I have so far, nothing compared to some of my friends who have more than a thousand, I don’t aim for that, but fascinating to see friends from all over the world, mostly because of my work of course, languages of all kind,  that in itself will limit my reading as my understanding of Arab, Finnish, Greek, Russian, Hebrew and Serbian equals zero, and the knowledge of Italian and Spanish and Catalan is pretty fragile.

Many friends have changed their photo to the Norwegian flag, many write about the tragedy much better than in the Danish newspapers, yes many write actually about important matters in the world.

I have put some family/free-time-in-connection-with-work-photos on my page, but I will basically use it to find and convey information and links that have to do with the documentary film world as well as other kinds of visual treatments and activism. Like the one that Palestinian Khaled Jarrar is doing, stamping passports in different parts of the world. The links are below. In a way he and other Palestinian filmmakers who use facebook to tell and show the world (often clips from) their films, they have not many other ways, were the ones who pushed me to join facebook.

http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=3465&ed=196&edid=196

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Live-and-work-in-Palestine/159648430766352

Produced at the Swedish film school, Dramatiska Högskolan in Stockholm, this short documentary is a warm, straightforward portrait of a strong woman, who must be a role model for the Senegalese woman in her fight for equality in a male society with many traditions. She, Boury Mbaye, drives taxi in Dakar, she has children, she is the head of a big family, she is the one the family gets advice from, she wants to be the first woman to have her own taxi company in the country, with many employees.

The story is told through voice over narration and situational sequences where Boury talks to a younger female colleague, or argues with a sceptic male who – she says – give the kind of simple chauvinistic insults that she gets all the time, or, of course, in brief conversations with passengers in the taxi.

An unpretentious, well made simple documentary reminder to us that a lot needs to be changed in countries like Senegal, where many men still have many wives, and where a woman like Boury Mbaye is one of those who can make changes happen.

http://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2011/06/theresa-traore-dahlberg-and-taxi-sister.html

There is 50 years between me and the two teenage girls; I have never heard about a German pop star called Bill from a band called Tokio Hotel; I am not sure I want to hear him play or sing, but I have no problems in remembering how it was for me at that age to go to the Beatles concert in Copenhagen or to become more than happy when I got the autograph of the world’s greatest football player, Brasilian Pélé.

So it is not difficult to understand the instant heartbroken disappointment, when the two girls, Arina and Angela, arrive at the Madame Tussaud in Berlin to discover that the wax model of their hero Bill has been taken fo Amsterdam for some months!

This very charming short documentary, which has been to festivals, including idfa 2010 and Free Thought in Moscow, and which is produced at the Swedish film school, Dramatiska Högskolan, is a very promising work by the two female directors. They demonstrate first of all the talent for creating a space full of tension and humour for the two girls to move in, they catch and construct moments of truthfulness, they mark the generation gap between the girls and their parents… “for us it’s happiness, what do you have in your life”, is one of the great lines from the girls talking about their addiction to Bill. The special dreamerish world of teenage girls is conveyed brilliantly in this film that (also) has fine camera to be happy about. 

http://www.mycelium.se/

http://www.idfa.nl/industry/tags/project.aspx?id=BE664CA9-B8F3-47FA-8EC6-637581956B51

Sweden, 2010, 28 mins.