Mikkel Stolt: Docomedy Now

Mike Proud’s (My Avatar and Me) and Mikkel Stolt’s “random thoughts on documentary films and humour” on the blog Docomedy Now: “(Lack Of) Authenticity? … the reason for that was that we as filmmakers chose to blend different modes of filmmaking since the film takes place in different realms of reality. Personally, I don’t believe in a “documentary truth” – only a “cinematic truth” – since all films are subjective regardless of how much just a fly-on-the-wall you want to be. Also, I really want to push the boundaries of so-called documentary films…” 

Underfundigt underholdende og distanceret nær behandler Mikkel Stolt sine frustrationer fra samarbejdet om Min Avatar og Mig med medinstruktøren Bente Milton, konsulenterne Jacob Høgel og Kim Leona samt sin kompagnon i selskabet, Jeppe Raasthøj og konkluderer med et helt lille poetik-manifest: “… jeg savnede også den løbende, æstetiske diskussion, for til sidst kom det som så ofte før med film til at handle alt, alt for meget om afviklingen af historien og hvordan handligen blev formidlet. For mig er film bare meget mere end handling; det er også et stykke musik, en skulptur, en digression hist, et indfald pist – alt sammen uden at være højpandet, men underholdende.”

Edinburgh Documentary Pitch/1

There is a lot of film political commitment and competence in the activities of the SDI (Scottish Documentary Institute). The small staff (Noë Mendelle, Sonja Henrici, Flore Cosquer, Amy Hardie and Finlay Pretsell) stands behind the talent development production scheme Bridging the Gap, several masterclasses with great filmmakers from all around the world, they publish a well written and edited newsletter, they have their office in the ECA (Edinburgh College of Art), where students are studying to become filmmakers under the leadership of filmmakers Emma Davie and Noë Mendelle.

I was there for the Edinburgh Pitch, for the two first days to tutor and moderate the pitching session that had a panel of 14 commissioning editors and distributors representing Autlook from Austria, BBC Scotland, Storyville BBC4, True Stories More4, CBC Canada, Lichpunt Belgium, DR Sales Denmark, YLE Finland, Creative Scotland (previously Scottish Screen), POV USA, Cat & Docs France, ZDF/arte, VoDo UK, Al Jazeera.

There was quite an international choice of projects, including one from Uruguay, one from Brazil, one from Israel, two from Finland, an Australian/Norwegian, an Irish, a French, and some Scottish and English.

SDI is on twitter, go to the site and join the conversation.

www.scottishdocinstitute.com

Edinburgh Documentary Pitch/2

It is a public secret that most public broadcasters do not have a young audience. ”Young people do not watch television”, it is being said again and again when television people meet. They watch films, including documentaries, online, or they go to festivals or they download films. Some tv stations, like German/French arte, produce webdocs to reach the young, or they make interactive productions. Remains to be seen what results will come out of this at a longer perspective.

It was therefore refreshing to hear Catherine Olsen from CBC Canada inform the audience (a full auditorium, great to see) that the channel had an audience from 25-40. Less refreshing, however, it was to hear that the channel dubs all their programmes because the audience can not read subtitles. Well, they can, but they don’t do because they send text messages while watching/listening to the programmes. Multi-tasking!

I met a Scottish filmmaker later that day, who said ”I don’t want people to send text messages while my film is on television…”

The language issue, well, the ususal pattern: the channels that do subtitles and thus respect the work of the sound engineer on a film are the European. We are not Barbarians, said Wim van Rompaey from Lichtpunt in Belgium.  

Photo from Scottish Amy Hardie´s “Edge of Dreaming”.

Edinburgh Documentary Pitch/3

YLE and arte, television channels – for many years leading in creative documentaries when it comes to international orientation, involved in coproductions and acquisitions of documentaries from all over the world. As an organiser of meetings where producers come to present their projects, you always have to be sure that there are representatives from arte and YLE. Otherwise you can be sure to have complaints from the producers who come hoping for support.

For arte it is simply an obligatory matter of policy being the European cultural channel with many tv slots for documentaries. They have to show us viewers the world as it is right now politically, socially and culturally. The question is whether they do so through journalistic programmes or through creative documentaries. In the last many years journalism has won strongly in what should not be a battle but is – the loser in arte is the artistic documentary, the authored, the one with the personal signature, ”a film by…”.

Where arte goes for next year is difficult to say – according to commissioning editor Doris Hepp, for many years a guardian angel for the different documentary, the one that would surprise you. Hepp was in Edinburgh not able to tell about the 2012 structure for documentary slots, the only message she could give was that her slot La Lucarne for the creative documentary would be positioned at 1o’clock at night!

For YLE it has – to my knowledge – never been written anywhere that the Finnish channel should be international orientated and feed the Finnish viewers with the best of the best of documentaries from the world. But they have done so, the commissioning editors of YLE, for many years, parallel to the high quality of the Finnish documentaries that is also supported by YLE. Jenny Westergaard from YLE told us in Edinburgh that changes have been done, cuts have been made, slots have been cancelled – for the documentaries. Other Finnish people told me that the filmmakers are fighting to make adjustments to the negative development within one of most significant documentary channels in the world. Is YLE and documentaries going down as one of the commissioning editors have said it, will it no longer be the channel to be held forward as the example? What a pity, if so!

Photo: Photo from Steam of Life, Finnish doc going worldwide.

Edinburgh Documentary Pitch/4

”Make Docs Happen” is the slogan of the Edinburgh Pitch. If that will be the case for the 2011 pitched projects, that they will be made, will happen, remains to be seen. For sure it is that the positive comment in the auditorium will be followed by meetings one-to-one, broadcaster and filmmaker, and then will follow eventual negociations, rough cut screenings, contracts, delivery etc. etc. It takes time and you have to be committed and have something to say, to be in that business. If you can call it a business!

Many good films will come up, many of the presented film projects were actually close to post-production and wanted funding to be spent on the editing and final finish. So money from the Edinburgh Pitch or not, they will be made.

The winner of the audience prize as the best project, and maybe also the best presentation came from Finland, ”The Punk Syndrom”, producer Sami Jahnukainen, director Jukka Kärkkäinen and J-P. Rossi, the team behind the masterpiece ”Living Room of a Nation” (photo). For one year and 4 months they have followed the 5 man band ”Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät” whose members are mentally disabled but play very strong music. There is only high expectations to be connected to this original upcoming film.

Many other presentations were positively received by the panel, more by the non-UK channels than by the representatives from BBC and C4. Uruguyan ”Avant” with former world ballet dancer Julio Roca as the main character, by Juan Alvarez Nema, has a strong supporter in Simon Kilmurry from POV in the US. Brazilian Guy Castor’s ”Matilda, Adolfo and Alicia” tested the courage of the broadcaster with his long silent, ”nothing is happening” shots of the three old people. ”Despite the Gods” by Penelope Vozniak with the charismatic Jennifer Lynch (daughter of David) in the main role as a director caught between Hollywood and Bollywood was entertaining and promising to watch. Irish Chris Kelly presented great material from Cambodia, about people in big trouble because of the new hard economical policy in the country. Titled ”The Cause of Progress” it is  a film that is more than promising, as is Eva Weber’s film from Guinea, ”Black Out”, a moving intro to a world where electricity is something you might not have all the time, wherefore the airport of Conakry it the place where students and others go to write and read.

www.scottishdocinstitute.com

Kim Bodnia: Albertis monolog

Midt i den nye udstilling på Horsens Museum er bygget en nøjagtig rekonstruktion af den celle i tugthuset, hvor P. A. Alberti sad fængslet de første to år af de otte, straffen var. Lige før jul 1910 begyndte han afsoningen.

Det særlige ved den opstilling i udstillingen er, at en 3D hologram projektion bringer et stykke dramatisk dokumentar ind. Alberti bringes til stede fremstillet af Kim Bodnia, som i en intens improviseret monolog på tre minutter giver et bud på, hvordan Albertis første nytårsaften alene med sin skæbne kan have været 180 sekunder i begyndelsen af denne nye tilværelse præget af chokket ved forandringen fra arrestens midlertidighed til tugthusets evighed og den enorme udmattelse efter den toårige retssag, hvor han havde hele forsvaret selv.

Fange nr. 75, Alberti og fængslet i Horsens. Udstilling på Horsens Museum, åbnes 22. juni. I udstillingen indgår et 3D hologram af Ole Samsøe med en monolog af Kim Bodnia. Produktion af hologram: Greentea / Homerun.      

Crowdfunding of Documentaries

If you come, as I do, from a country where documentary film as an art form is part of a film culture, publicly supported and included in a film law, of course you are sceptical to the new phenomenon where filmmakers raise funding for their films through websites for individuals and institutions. But it works as acknowledged director Jennifer Fox experienced and conveys in an article in the trade magazine Realscreen, see link below.

In 90 days the director raised more than $150.000 for her documentary My Reincarnation, backwards so to say –after the film was finished and after it has and still is going around to festivals. A coproducer dropped out and she was in minus with around $100.000 when she decided to go for crowdfunding.

The film contains a good story, yet a bit clumsily told, with a lot of time jumps, shot over a period of 20 years, about ”the renowned reincarnate Tibetan spiritual master, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, as he struggles to save his spiritual tradition, and his Italian born son, yeshi, who stubbornly refuses to follow in his father´s footsteps”.

http://realscreen.com/2011/06/03/jennifer-foxs-reincarnation-gets-resurrected-via-kickstarter/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=jennifer-foxs-reincarnation-gets-resurrected-via-kickstarter

http://myreincarnationfilm.com/

Torkil Funder: Tiden i Ribe/2

Disse fotografier og tekster, dette poetisk-dokumentariske udstillingsessay, som har levet usædvanligt længe uden at være trykt som bog, hvad det mere end meget fortjener, kan heldigvis hele denne sommer til 25. september ses på Sønderborg Slot i sit eget store værelse i en snorlige række og med et vældigt indfald af lys, som bortset fra stilheden og på nær de besøgendes ofte fjerne skridt er eneste andet liv i rummene.

Torkil Funder: Tiden i Ribe, fotografier og tekster. Sønderborg Slot 18. maj – 25. september 2011.

 

 

 

Silverdocs Documentary Festival

Where the impression of the Sheffield DocFest film selection is one of British provinsialism (see below), there is reason to say bravo to the American Silverdocs, that offers its viewers a quality programme. The Discovery Channel supports the festival but it is not really Discovery-like films that are being shown, on the contrary. (Silverdocs takes place in and around downtown Silver Spring, Maryland – just minutes from downtown Washington, DC – at the AFI Silver Theatre, the flagship theatre of the AFI, one of the premier film exhibition spaces in the country, and the top art house cinema in the region.) June 20-26 are the dates of the festival.

At the Sterling World Competition category of the festival, you find films like the Polish At the Edge of Russia, the Latvian Family Instinct, the Scottish The First Film, the Belgian Grande Hotel, the Dutch Position among the Stars and the Georgian Bakhmaro (photo) by Salome Jashi, a film that starts its world tour at Silverdocs. Here is the description of the film taken from the site of Deckert Distribution – producer of the film is German Heino Deckert. dvd copy of the film may be bought through the site:

“A journey into a lively but rotting building – a microcosm intruded by the constant anticipation of change. A three-story brick building in a provincial Georgian town. At the center of the building is a restaurant whose walls are covered with bright green and orange plastic foam and where tables are set, waiting for customers – who rarely come. Just like customers, change also comes rarely here. Just like the others in the building waitress Nana and her boss are waiting… This building, which resembles Noah’s Ark, is a microcosm, a model of this troubled country with its endless demonstrations and opposition rallies. On the backdrop of political events, somehow, all of life is here.”

Salome Jashi’s previous films  from the first Their Helicopter have been reviewed on this site

http://deckert-distribution.com/

http://silverdocs.com/

Sheffield Doc/Fest

… starts tomorrow. The festival and its industry activity used to be a couple of weeks in November before the idfa in Amsterdam. Now it has moved to June, presumably to have more new films without having to compete with the Dutch. Here is a quote from the site:

“Sheffield Doc/Fest brings the international documentary family together to celebrate the art and business of documentary making for five intense days in June. Sheffield is fast becoming known as one of the top places in the world for people from the documentary and digital industries to get together – to meet, to screen their work, share knowledge, do business, make new contacts and discuss innovations and challenges they are facing in the ever changing media landscape. Over the past four years Sheffield Doc/Fest has massively expanded its marketplace activity, as well as its cross platform, interactive and digital programme. These developments and the stunning film programme and often controversial conference sessions are what attract nearly 2000 delegates from around the globe and thousands of general public.”

Stunning film programme? I checked the film list, and if you hope for a wide spread of quality documentaries from all over the world, you will get disappointed. There are no films from Latin America, there are no films from a leading European documentary country like Austria, there is one 10 minutes film from Russia, some insignificant films from Denmark, nothing from Czech Republic… but if you search for UK and US films you will have loads to choose from. Maysles, Barbara Kopple, Broomfield, Eugene Jarecki, Steve James. Stunning, no, international, no, if the organisers think so, one can only say that the selection is lousy, the festival is still totally dominated by English/American language films. Fair enough but do not market it differently!

The winner of idfa 2010 is there, “Position Among the Stars“, photo.

https://sheffdocfest.com/