Anastasion a.o.: Redemption of General Butt Naked

Quite a shocking film it is. Protagonist: A warlord who during the Liberia civil/tribal war ran around slaughtering anyone near him, yes naked he was, surrounding himself with child soldiers ”educated” through Rambo films, has now found God, preaching reconciliation, goes around to find his victims, or relatives to those who were his victims, asking for forgiveness. He is given amnesty at the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Committee), flees the country and his family because of death threats, but comes back to continue his mission.

Archive footage shows the horrible, almost unwatchable images of  massacres, he performed (he says himself that he thinks he and his gang was responsible for the death of 20.000 people!), mixed with interviews with him, observations of his preaching performances in and outside churches, building up stories about him and (one example) ”the Senegalese”, who had his legs amputated but forgives Joshua, the new name of General Butt.

He is not at all sympathetic, he seems to be a man, who could go back to killing any other moment, but he is now using his extraordinary energy in preaching. As a viewer you are fascinated by a story that is so well told with emotional attachment to some of the victims, and sympathy for his wife, who says nice things about her husband but at the end of the film admits that she is tired of being married to him!

”Modern” documentary: character driven, strong (an understatement!) narrative, but also balanced in tone letting the viewer think for him/herself.  

Part of the Free Thought documentary programme at the 33st Moscow International Film Festival Programme. 

Eric Strauss and Daniele Anastasion: “Redemption of General Butt Naked”, USA, 2011, 84 mins.

http://www.generalbuttnakedmovie.com/

Liz Garbus: Bobby Fischer against the World

Archive material, interviews and commentaries, the film has a classical build up of a story about the chess genius, American Bobby Fischer (1943-2008), whose story is one of those written out of a reality that surpasses any Hollywood fiction script. Already a grandmaster as a teenager, he grew up to play the legendary match in Iceland in 1972 against Boris Spassky, a match between sportsmen but also a match with political significance in the middle of the cold war. He became the legendary world champion, we all remember.

But something was wrong with Bobby Fischer, and this is what the film focuses on. You sense it in the brilliantly told story, where again and again you see the haunted face of the kid and the young Fischer, whose eyes do not focus and who speaks unwillingly about his childhood. His behaviour during the Iceland match was unpredictable, not to talk about his play, a man of surprises and a man who turned mad in his older years, with totally anti-american and anti-semitic comments to everything around him. He ended up in Iceland again, after having travelled the world as a nomad, being arrested in Japan, threatened to be deported to the US, granted citizenship in Iceland where he stayed until his death having verbal fights with everyone.

Who was he, Bobby Fischer, the young kid with the worried eyes and the special skills, a man who often was searching for peace and quietness, but who did not get that in his fight with inner deamons?

Shown at Free Thought documentary programme at Moscow International Film festival 2011. For our Danish readers: The film premieres at Vester VovVov, Copenhagen, August 25.

USA, 2011, 93 mins.

http://bobbyfischermovie.co.uk/

Still: filmmakers pic.

Moscow Film Diary/5

Yesterday I was interviewed for Voice of Russia in a radio programme  edited by Donna West and Julia Reysner. This is the written introduction followed by the link, if you should want to hear a Danish person speaking his best school English.

The 33rd Moscow International Film Festival is underway here in the Russian capital.  And part of what’s being shown is a selection of documentary films,  often highlighted in festivals but ignored by the mass public. Today we take a closer look at this film format along with a judge on the festival’s documentary program – Danish film critic Tue Steen Müller. 

http://english.ruvr.ru/radio_broadcast/25547106/52601577.html

Moscow Film Diary/4

”My Perestroika” is a fine documentary by Robin Hessman. It was screened the other day for an American audience on the pov – documentaries with a point of view. A trailer from the film + loads of information on the fall of the USSR can be found on the excellent website of pov. There is even a small ”Glossary of the Cold War”, interview with the director, who lived in Russia most of the 1990’s.

Here is the site’s description of the film: … is an intimate look at the last generation of Soviet children. Five classmates go from living sheltered childhoods to experiencing the hopes of Gorbachev’s reforms and the confusion of the USSR’s dissolution, to searching for their places in today’s Moscow. With candor and humor, the punk rocker, single mother, entrepreneur and married teachers paint a picture of the challenges, dreams and disappointments of those raised behind the Iron Curtain. Through first-person testimony, verité footage and vintage home movies, this beautifully crafted documentary reveals a Russia rarely seen on film.

http://www.pbs.org/pov/

http://myperestroika.com/screenings/

Moscow Film Diary/3

The question has often been asked – about the position of the Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF) in the world of festivals. In the (excellent) filmneweurope site an interview with the programme director Kirill Razalogov clarifies the situation and the ambition. The programme director presides this year over a programme “that can only be described as vast in both the number of films and its diversity. Over 400 films are being screened at this year’s festival from every category of the audiovisual spectrum. Razlogov is one of Russia’s leading film critics and cultural figures”, and he puts it like this:

The world’s top festivals are Cannes, Venice and Berlin.  In the next tier are Moscow, Karlovy Vary, Locarno, San Sebastian and Montreal.  After that after that come all the other big A category festivals in a third tier. So Moscow competes for films with the festivals in the second tier. If a film has a chance to go to a tier one festival we lose if Moscow is competing for a film against a third tier festival we win. 
Russia had over one billion USD at the box office last year. It has made a difference for us in attracting Hollywood blockbusters but not for art house films. There is almost no market for art house films in Russia. There is a market for European films in Russia, it’s not very large but there is a market. There are two French films in the competition and a remake of a Russian film. We are on the right way now with Moscow Festival. What we have to look at very carefully now is how to continue to establish a better reputation. I think we can take on Berlin Festival in future and maybe move into the third slot. Maybe not in my lifetime – but we should shoot for this goal.
 

Photo from “Hell and Back Again” by Danfung Dennis, shown in documentary competition 2011.

http://www.filmneweurope.com

http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/eng/

http://hellandbackagain.com

Wim Wenders: Pina

Saw the 3D film about legendary coreographer Pina Bausch in a totally full cinema hall during Moscow International Film Festival. It was one of those unique cinema experiences you will never forget. One after one the members of her Tanztheater, dancers from all over the world, speaking in different languages, and speaking in a way that the words do not only say something about the late (she died in 2009) Pina Bausch but also add in tone to the music of the film, the music that carries the dance scenes inspired from her work, especially from ”Café Müller”.

The dancers are of course brilliant on the stage that Wenders has established, and the imagery makes you think of great surrealist painters like Magritte, or of great filmmakers as Alain Resnais (”L’année dernière á Marienbad”) or the work of Swedish master Roy Andersson and his use of space. You do not at any moment get bored and you regret, when it is over, the 106 minutes of pleasure. And long to see it again.

Pleasure, yes, but what the dancers express, are feelings of pain and joy, sorrow and happiness, it is literally moving, they are moving, the images are moving, words are few but the movements of the dancer and their faces expressing gratitude to what Pina Bausch gave to them. It’s all about Love.

Germany, 2011, 3D, 106 mins.

http://www.pina-film.de/en/

http://www.wim-wenders.com/

http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/eng/

Still: Donata Wenders, from die-mark-online.de

Silverdocs Documentary Festival/2

The Washington based festival ended last night and awards were announced – all together $76.500 in cash and in-kind, as the festival site announces. The three main awards were given to (for best US feature) ”Our School” by Mona Nicoara and Miruna Coco-Cozma, (for best world feature) ”Family Instinct” by young Latvian Andris Gauja and (for best short film) ”Guanape Sur” by German Janos Richter.

The two latter have previously been noticed on this site – ”Family Instinct” (photo) is with the words of the festival ” a unique chronicle of family gone awry, … an unsparing exploration of a Latvian household built on the incestuous relationship between Zanda and her imprisoned brother Valdis, whose pending homecoming creates tremendous frisson.”

“Guanape Sur” is a tremendous success story for Janos Richter and his cameraman Jakob Stark. They left the Zelig film school last year and their film has been travelling the world of festivals since then. The jury at Silverdocs said: “We were won over by the stark beauty of the images, which take us into a world of extreme hardship.  The formal restraint of the filmmaking coupled with complex sound design create a poetic yet unflinching meditation on human beings’ constraint by their environment.”

http://silverdocs.com/news-links/2011/06/25/silverdocs-announces-award-winners/

Moscow Film Diary/2

Second day. Press conference in a cinema. There seems to be a huge interest in the fact that a documentary competition has been included in the MIFF (Moscow International Film Festival). I do not recall having seen so many  people attending a festival press meeting on documentary films. A good moment for stating that the documentary film genre experiences an international popularity, but also the moment to say, as did Alexander Gutman (photo) (juror together with Michael Apted and me), that the conditions for documentarians in Russia are far from being perfect. There are seldom documentaries in the cinemas, the film support system does not encourage coproductions with other countries, and apart from the tv channel Kultura Russian television has no interest in showing artistic documentaries.

The first screening of the seven films in competition took place in the evening in the multiplex cinema ”October”. Quite a big number of spectators came to watch ”Czech Peace”, the one hour version, directed by Filip Remunda and Vit Klusak.

The day ended with the celebration of Sergey Miroshnichenko’s 56 year’s birthday. As it was said, he could get no better present than seeing his dream come through on that very same day – having a documentary competition at the MIFF this year. Miroshnichenko is currently working on the completion of ”Born in the USSR – 28”, a series he started following the model of the British 7Up, directed by Michael Apted. Miroshnichenko filmed the kids, born in a country that no longer exists, when they were 7 and 14 and 21. The 28-version is planned to come out at the end of this year.

Photo: cinedoc.ru

http://www.taskovskifilms.com/film/czech-peace/

http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/eng/

Bente Milton og Mikkel Stolt: Min avatar.. på web

DFI´s Jan Fredslund skriver i dag: ”ONLINE. Søndag den 26. juni kl. 20.00 vises dokumentarfilmen Min avatar og mig i verdens første virtuelle biograf på nettet. Filmens hovedperson og medinstruktør Mikkel Stolt introducerer og besvarer efterfølgende spørgsmål fra “salen”. Constellation er efter eget udsagn verdens første online-biograf. Konceptet går ud på at broadcaste film for et globalt live-publikum, men med et begrænset antal “sæder” så gæsterne i et eksklusivt forum kan diskutere filmene med hinanden og en relevant VIP-vært.

Søndag den 26. juni kl. 20.00 er den danske dokumentarfilm Min avatar og mig sat på plakaten, og filmens hovedkarakter og medinstruktør Mikkel Stolt er VIP-vært med ansvar for introduktion og efterfølgende Q&A.

At Min avatar og mig dermed bliver første danske film i verdens første online-biograf, er ikke helt tilfældigt. Filmen, der tidligere på året havde premiere på DOX:BIO og online i Second Life, handler netop om valget mellem den digitale verden og “virkeligheden”, og den følger Mikkel Stolts egen rejse ind i den virtuelle verden, Second Life. Udflugten skildres i grænselandet mellem fiktion og dokumentar, og filmen viser med en del selvironi, hvordan hovedpersonens virtuelle succes langsomt opsluger og underminerer hans virkelige liv.

I skrivende stund er der 83 ledige pladser til visningen af Min avatar og mig, og billetterne koster ca. 26 kr. Efter den 26. juni har brugerne mulighed for selv at arrangere nye screeninger af filmen med nye gæster og værter.”

Bente Milton og Mikkel Stolt: Min Avatar og mig, søndag 26. juni 20:00 på https://www.constellation.tv/film/21 Pris: $4.99 / 26 kr.

Moscow Film Diary/1

Very close to Copenhagen is Moscow and after a long drive from the airport through heavy Moscow traffic – always like that, the driver said – we landed at one of the ”seven sisters” hotels, Stalinistic architecture, impressive, totally renovated, the Hotel Ukraina. From there to the opening ceremony of the Moscow International Film Festival, where I am honoured to be in the documentary section jury, to stay here for ten days. The ceremony was focused on Russian film stars, youngsters asking for autographs and the celebration of international names like Geraldine Chaplin, a fresh and lively president of the jury, and John Malkovich, who received a life time award for his acting career.

The ceremony was conducted by Nikita Mihalkhov (Dark Eyes (with Marcello Mastroianni), Burnt by the Sun, Urga…), who with his stature outside in the sunshine welcomed us like a character in an American mafia film, and inside on the stage was a jovial and warm master of ceremony.

Greeted and had a drink with jury colleagues, directors Michael Apted and Alexander Gutman as well as the two men behind Free Thought, the documentary section within the festival, for the first time with a competition: Sergey Miroshnichenko and Grigory Libergal.

http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/eng/