Polish Doc Film History

The Polish Film Institute runs an honorable dvd publlishing policy. Previously I have reported on very good director boxes with films by Kieslowski, Karabasz, Marcel Lozinski, Pawel Lozinski – and now, here in Krakow, at the hall of the Kino Kijow, I supplemented the collection by buying boxes with films by Wladimir Slesicki, Marek Piwowski and Maciej Drygas. His ”Hear my Cry” (photo) is on the box, a masterpiece from 1991, the title referring to the spectacular manifestation of a man, who set fire to himself in 1968 as a demonstration against the Warsaw countries invading Czekoslovakia.

All films in the boxes are with subtitles in English, French, Russian and German.

http://www.pisf.pl/en/

Short Film Studies

Richard Raskin, Aarhus University, is the short film expert and editor of “Short Film Studies”. Raskin calls for papers for volume 2 number 2. Click below, to know more about the editor and to have the presentation of the film to be written about:

We invite all students of the short film – including researchers, teachers and film-makers – to contribute to Short Film Studies Vol. 2, Number 2. Each article should focus on any one of the three works mentioned above and may not exceed 1,500 words. Any aspect of the selected work may be chosen for study, including interpretive issues, dramaturgy, camera work, editing style, sound, closure, etc. Potential contributors should begin by sending a max. 50- word abstract to the editor, Richard Raskin at raskin@imv.au.dk. A prompt response will follow, regarding the suitability of the proposed contribution. The deadline for submitting completed articles for peer-review is 1 November 2011.

http://imv.au.dk/~raskin

http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/MediaManager/File/shortfilm(CFP)2_2.pdf

Krakow Film Festival

First an introduction taken from YouTube, where the Krakow Film Foundation has posted videos and some trailers from films taking part in the 51st (!) edition of Krakow Film Festival, 23rd – 29th May 2011: KFF is one of the oldest film events dedicated to documentary, animated and short fiction films in Europe. During 7 festival days viewers have an opportunity to watch about 250 films from Poland and abroad. Films are presented in competitions and in special sections like retrospectives, thematic cycles, archive screenings. Festival is accompanied by exhibitions, concerts, open air screenings and meetings with the filmmakers. Every year KFF hosts about 750 Polish and international guests: directors, producers, film festival programmers and a numerous audience from Krakow. (Krakow Film Foundation is the main producer of the Krakow Film Festival, the Krakow Film Market and co-organizer of the Dragon Forum. Foundation also promotes Polish documentary, animated and short films abroad.)

The fine old cinema Kino Kijow, next to the communist style Hotel Cracovia, previously the festival hotel, now to be closed, was full last night at the opening ceremony. Festival director Krzysztof Gierat welcomed us all and a 3D short film produced by Ridley Scott was shown, pure technique, no content, did not get the title. After that the opening film, also produced by Ridley Scott, but directed by Kevin Macdonald, Life in a Day, was screened. The film is in the competition for international documentaries, where I am in the jury with Slovak director Dusan Hudec (whose newest film The Entire World Is a Narrow Bridge is shown at the festival), local director and cameraman Marcin Koszalka (whose The Existence I remember as a masterpiece), Kaleo la Belle (winner of main Prize at the festival 2010 with the fine film Beyond the Place) and Italian Annamaria Percavassi (director of Trieste Film Festival). 20 films are to be watched, reviews of some of the films will follow after the festival. There are also juries for short films and a national jury.

http://www.triestefilmfestival.it/

www.krakowfilmfestival.pl

Côté & Henriquez: You don’t like the Truth

The Copenhagen documentary audience gets spoilt. First the professionals were invited to watch it at the yearly Maraton Dok, organised by EDN (European Documentary Network) and now Cinemateket at the Danish Film Insttute has chosen the film as the ”documentary of the Month” in June. The film referred to is the idfa (International Film Festival Amsterdam) Special Jury Prize winner ”You don’t like the Truth – 4 Days inside Guantanamo”.

The film made by Luc Côté and Patricio Henríquez, has gone all over the world, and this coming September to be theatrically released in New York, ”has its actuality and relevance as a film that goes behind the many news bits and discussions about the camp in Cuba. To give an evidence to how one (and many more?) prisoners have gone through the most outrageous interrogation beyond any human decency… It is intense in its split-screen use of the security camera footage that catches the interrogation of a 16-year old boy. You shake your head in despair watching this investigative (many interviews with cell mates and lawyers and a psychiatrist) Canadian film about the mental torture of a Canadian citizen. For more about the content and background, click on the title in the text below or go the site of the film.” Quote from earlier posting on this site.

www.youdontlikethetruth.com

Parallel 40: Joan Gonzalez

For many of us it never goes beyond the words, when it comes to put into reality all the good intentions about the promotion of the documentaries. Few have had the strength and courage to link all the elements of the chain from production to the meeting with the audience. Joan Gonzalez has and what he has done for the genre during the 15 years of existence of his company Parallel 40, based in Barcelona, deserves respect and admiration. In Catalunya, of course, and in Europe and – read below – in South America.

Training, production, distribution, film commission administration, festivals, tv management – it is all happening or has happened under the umbrella of Parallel 40, and with a clear goal statement, here taken from the site of the company: ”Parallel 40’s mission is to contribute to society’s cultural enrichment through the audiovisual medium.”

Joan Gonzalez is a visionary, some will say a dreamer, I will add that many of his dreams have and will come through. Step by Step as his slogan is. When I met him in Granada 15 years ago for the first EDN documentary workshop in Spain, he was one of the participants and made his first documentary pitch, not very convincing. But he was thrilled about the format, and he took it all to Barcelona, and became the organiser of what is now a very well established event, DocsBarcelona (read more below). At that time he was managing a local tv station and doing a lot of training, which is still very much on his agenda. He is definitely a talent scout, his office is full of talented carefully picked young people, who get the injection of documentary enthusiasm from their director. On top of that the company has for years delivered half hour documentary programmes directed by new filmmakers to TV3 Catalunya.

A man with high ethical standards, who is not afraid to use the word ”trust”, when he describes, what he wants people to associate with his company. He has lost some battles with this attitude but he has always come back full of optimism and with new ideas. On a personal level: Joan is a dear friend, I have always enjoyed his company, I love to work with him, to watch and listen to the creative, sometimes hard but passionate discussions between him and production manager Elena Subira, to share with him our common passion FCBarcelona, to sing Jacques Brel with him in his car, and to meet his lovely family: Montse, Berta and Marti.  

http://www.parallel40.com/

Parallel 40: Documental del Mes

Documentary of the Month is a unique distribution initiative, run by Parallel 40 in more than 40 cities, not only in Catalunya and Spain, but now also in Latin America – in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. It was born out of the EU supported Cinema Net Europe but has since 2007 been an independent activity, where the documentaries are shown in its original version subtitled in Catalan (for the audience of Catalunya, Comunitat Valenciana, and Illes Balears) and subtitled in Spanish for the rest of Spain, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. Documentaries selection is decided by Parallel 40, the promotion as well – posters for each film etc. Highly professional everything is. Goal – very simple – to get documentaries closer to the people.

A high quality in the selection, for sure. Look at the titles from this year, there are no compromises: This month of May it is Sandrine Bonnaire’s beautiful film about her ill sister “Elle s’appelle Sabine”, otherwise on the programme are Michael Madsen’s “Into Eternity”, Jan Terhaven’s “Autumn Gold”, Pawel Lozinski’s “Chemo” (photo), Miki Ronkainen’s “The Screaming Men” and PeÅ Holmquist’s “Young Freud in Gaza”. In some cases the filmmaker is present to meet the audience, in others debates are arranged around the theme of the film.

Do not get surprised if the Documentary of the Month is spreading its activities to other countries, maybe first of all through the Parallel 40 Sur office in Chile, a country close to the heart of Joan Gonzalez, where young Alexandra Galvis promotes the activities of the company, primarily the distribution but also training and solid networking.

http://www.eldocumentaldelmes.com/en/portada.html?select=1

Parallel 40: Festivals

The way to the audience can go through the showing of documentaries on a regular basis as Parallel 40 has initiated with the ”Documentary of the Month”, see above. Or it can be through festivals, the more and more popular film  cultural event approach to documentaries in a time where especially young people have given up on television and prefer to go social, to the cinema, for information and experience.

After many years of the DocsBarcelona as a meeting point for professionals, who bring their projects and present them to potential buyers from television and funds from all over the world, Joan Gonzalez realised what had always been a dream for him: to make a festival. The DocsBarcelona was enlarged and the festival is now after five editions up and running on its way to establish a loyal audience in a metropole like Barcelona. The selection structure, as it is now, includes sections like ”Le Dernier Repas” (a well known filmmaker makes a selection of films that has meant something for him or her, in 2011 Peter Greenaway did so), ”History”, ”Panorama”, ”Finisterrae” (more experimental films), South American films, catalan films, current affairs and films for children and youngsters. In 2011, the festival was for the first time, competitive.

The Parallel 40 professionalism in ”making” festivals is now also being profited by Memorimage, a festival for archive based documentaries based on memories. I have been present for two years, as readers of this blog will know, and wow there have been some masterpieces to watch for people in and around Reus, the hosting town one hour south of Barcelona: Terence Davies ”Of Time and City” (Liverpool), ”A film Unfinished” by Yael Hersonski and ”Cooking History” by Peter Kerekes.

DocsBarcelona is in February, Mémorimage in November. 

http://www.memorimagefestival.org/

http://www.docsbarcelona.com/

Marcel Duchamp

Moderna Museet in Malmö, Sweden hosts an exhibition of 14 works by Marcel Duchamp. This one everybody knows, signed by Duchamp under the name of R. Mutt, from 1917. He chocked the world with this work, later to be nominated as the most important and influential of the 20th century.

This urinal is not necessarily a comment to Lars von Trier’s stupidity at the Cannes Film Festival.

The exhibition is open until September 11.

Dox-Lab 2011

It is good and bad at the same time. Bad because it reflects that international cooperation for the production of non-mainstream documentaries no longer happens between the national film funds and/or the national broadcasters, good because it reflects that festivals cooperate and are able to get something going that makes sense and stimulates the development of the documentary or – as they call it themselves – factual film genre. With the financial help of the EU MEDIA Mundus programme, not to forget. The MEDIA programme as such is indispensable for film in Europe, and now also important worldwide through Mundus.

Clip from press release of Danish festival cph:dox: DOX:LAB was started in 2009 with an aim to create a space where unauthorized cinematic forms can be explored and developed. By handpicking a group of filmmakers with very different backgrounds, narrative traditions and different access to production, CPH:DOX strives to stimulate creative international dialog.

With the cooperation of its international partners CPH:DOX hopes it can provide ideal conditions for factual filmmaking through this exclusive programme and establish solid professional relations for participants. Internationally CPH:DOX is linked with BAFICI and Buenos Aires Lab (BAL) in South America; Hong Kong Asian Financing Forum (HAF) at the Hong Kong International Film Festival in Asia and two partners in the Middle East region, Screen Institute Beirut and the Dubai Film Connection (DFC), part of the Dubai International Film Festival.

For 2011 not all directors have been selected, but the first list includes well known Slovak Peter Kerekes, Danish Andreas Koefoed (big success with ”Albert’s Winter”) and Argentinian, Brazilian, Indonesian and Hong Kong directors. The latter, 10 of them, are to be ” paired with ten European filmmakers over one year to make ten films. This year’s intake of film projects will be showcased in 2012 at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen.”

CPH:DOX director Tine Fischer: “DoxLab is truly a global meeting pot of creative ideas and visions.”

Photo: Son of God, DoxLab film by Kvahn de la Crzu and Michael Noer.

More info: anne-lill@cphdox.dk

Hommage à Omar Amiralay

The French based (in Marseilles) promotion and distribution mechanism Aflam, which has its focus on Arab cinema, pays a tribute to the late Syrian documentary film director, Omar Amiralay, who died in February this year. Amiralay was a persona non grata by the regime in Damascus and many of his films were not allowed to be screened. He was even forbidden to talk in public sessions as we witnessed at the first session of the Dox Box festival in 2008.

The tribute is one element of the fourth edition of ”Ecrans des Nouveaux Cinémas Arabes” in Marseilles May 23-31, followed by its ”Caravane en region” from July 6-12. Here is – in French – a clip from the introduction by the organisers:

“Pour la 4è édition des « Ecrans des Nouveaux Cinémas Arabes », Aflam propose un choix de films, pour l’essentiel inédits en France, qui, de la Syrie au Maroc, couvre tout l’arc des pays arabes, avec la présence de pays dont on voit peu de films : la Libye, l’Irak.

Les cinéastes arabes sont à l’écoute : un court-métrage sur la « révolution tunisienne », Dégage de Mohamed Zran, sera projeté et présenté par son auteur lors de la soirée d’ouverture.

Les cinéastes arabes ont toujours été combatifs : en point d’orgue de ce programme, nous rendons hommage au grand documentariste syrien Omar Amiralay, récemment disparu, qui eut bien des démêlées avec le régime. Preuve que le genre vit, deux documentaristes d’aujourd’hui, Mohamed Zran (Vivre ici) et Hakim Belabbès (Fragments), viendront présenter leurs films.

A l’heure où un vent de liberté souffle sur les pays arabes, cette sélection de films des années 2009 et 2010 témoigne de la force d’intervention du cinéma : nombre de ces films traitent directement des sujets politiques, et plusieurs mettent l’histoire en perspective. Le voyage à Alger, La longue nuit, Encore une fois en proposent, chacun à leur manière, une relecture qui, dans le climat de ces derniers mois, prend une dimension nouvelle.”

www.aflam.fr