MIFF Documentary Competition

It is a strong line-up of international documentaries that compete in Moscow. 7 films are on the list: From Europe comes ”Czech peace” by the succesful team behind ”Czech Dream”, Filip Remunda and Vit Klusak, Austrian master director Nikolaus Geyerhalter comes with ”Abendland”, Lithuanian poet Audrius Stonys is represented with ”Ramin”, ”Marathon Boy” by Gemma Atwal is from UK/India, ”Hell and back Again” by Danfung Dennis comes from UK/USA, Werner Herzog and Dmitry Vasyukov are co-directors on ”Happy People: A year in the Tayga” and talk-of-the-town ”Senna” (photo) about the late Argentinian formula One racing driver is made by Asif Kapadia with three countries involved in the production: France, UK and USA.

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

Still: Senna. From filmbook.com.

MIFF Out of Competetion

The non-competitive programme has several interesting films to offer the audience in Moscow, many of them have been written about on this blog, all have been to imporant festivals often to be awarded:

”Position among the Stars” by Leonard Retel Helmrich. ”Into Eternity” by Michael Madsen. ”Katka” by Helena Trestikova. ”Phnom Penh Lullaby” (photo) by Pawel Kloc. ”12 Angry Lebanese” by Zeina Daccache.

I am looking forward to watch the highly praised ”Pina” (Bausch) by Wim Wenders, the polish shorts ”Declaration of Immortality” by Marcin Koszalka and ”A Piece of Summer” by Marta Minorowicz, and the story about the chess genius ”Bob Fischer against the World” by American Liz Garbus. And of course Werner Herzog’s ”Caves of Forgotten Dreams” which is included in his masterclass.

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

Still: Pawel Kloc: Phnom Penh Lullaby. From dokweb.net.

MIFF Free Thought Documentary Programme

I asked Georgy Molodtsov, a young filmmaker, who I met at the DoxPro in St. Petersburg, and who is working for the Documentary section at MIFF – to give some background on the festival’s documentary development. Here are clips from his text:

“Free thought” was created by Sergey Miroshnichenko (director of the excellent 7UP Russian version project called “Born in the USSR” (photo)) together with producer, programmer and promoter Grigory Libergal in 2006. Their idea (which was reflected in their catalogue foreword from that year) was that modern documentaries might be compared with serious literature and philosophical publications. But the author should not lose his thoughts and ideas, carried away by the freedom of form. 

For the selection: “The aim of our noncompetitive program is to present a selection of outstanding documentaries from the last year – winners of prestigious film festivals as long as films with good box-office revenue.”  Overloaded halls in all editions on almost every screening gave us a chance to develop our program.

Last year public the TV-Channel “Kultura” (Rossia-K) invited the two to make a weekly talk-show “Watch and Discuss” with a screening of best feature documentaries, mostly those which were presented in “Free thought” program. Every Saturday evening 4 experts, group of young film critics, bloggers and filmmakers and prominent Russian film director Vladimir Khotinenko watch and discuss full-length creative documentaries. Last season we`ve screened only 18 films, but we hope that from the next season there will be more. At the moment that is the only strand on Russian terrestrial TV dedicated to creative documentaries and, as we see from the ratings, it has its regular and wide audience.

Our 2011 competition program (see above) is based on the idea of audience orientation. We wanted to show the selection of the films, which are aimed on audience and might have good box-office in their countries or around the world. 

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

Still: Sergey Miroshnichenko: Born in the USSR. From dutchdocaward.nl.

Pavel Koutecky Award/2

The winner of the award that carries the name of late Czech director, the man behind ”Citizen Havel”, is Linda Jablonska (photo), who previously (on this blog) is known for her ”Welcome to North Korea”. This text is taken from the IDF site:

“Earthlings, Who Are You Voting for?”, a documentary film by Linda Jablonská and a group of filmmakers with learning disabilities, is the recipient of the 2011 Pavel Koutecky Award. Selected out of 7 nominees and beating 100 submissions, the film also won the Audience Award at last year’s Jihlava IDFF.

And the description of the film: “Conquering Public Space – Documentalities” is a documentary project made by people who find it hard to get oriented in the world and who probably never were A students. To put it politically correct, they are mentally handicapped. That, however, does not prevent them from having an original perspective, sensitivity, curiosity and courage – all one needs to become a documentarist. During a six month documentary workshop of the civic association Inventura, a film was made under the supervision of documentarist Linda Jablonská, trying to prove that mentally handicapped people, too, can get oriented in the public space and have a political opinion of their own. We were following a phenomenon concerning all of us – the Czech parliamentary election. The documentality crew took part in the pre-election meetings, filming public inquiries with both citizens and politicians, discussing themes that would be considered “unusual” in other media. External cameras recorded all the events, such as the reactions of the bodyguards, supporters and opponents of the political parties. We were trying to find out whether political correctness and pre-election promises are but empty slogans, exploring the Czech society twenty years after the Velvet Revolution and the degree of its prejudice against anything that is not “completely normal”.

http://www.dokweb.net/en/documentary-network/articles/pavel-koutecky-award-goes-to-earthlings-1617/

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.