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

Images from Syria

Quite a different text has to be written under this headline – compared to the one below from Egypt. From the atrocities in Syria, let us call it as it is, a massacre by the government on its own people, there are no edited images, no sequences, at least to my knowledge, no documentaries but a lot of documentation that includes amateur video footage shot on cell phones in most cases. Shot by courageous people who put their life at risk quite as the protesters they film.

”Peaceful Syrian citizens are being killed today for their demands of basic rights and liberties”, this was the first sentence in the Call from Syrian filmmakers to colleagues all over the world. They got a huge response to their petition, around 1000 names, a petition that was closed due to security reasons. There are many Syrian names on the list, filmmakers who are in the country and are doing their job, I am sure, trying to make sense out of a senseless situation. I have with Western colleagues been in Damascus for four years in a row, getting to know filmmakers, from whom I hear almost nothing in these days. They have to be careful and work underground so to say. For obvious reasons. ”Viva Syria”, one wrote to me some days ago, a filmmaker who is no longer in Syria, ”because they are asking about me”. Viva Syria, yes, but which Syria?

This morning I took a surf tour on the internet to see what I could find of clips, which – as the tv channels say – are not verified, are not signed by anyone, just posted anonymously to give the world glimpses of what is going on. Shaky, sometimes blood-filled images, people shouting, tanks approaching, whatever. I have given some addresses below, they might be good, they might be bad, we do not know, journalists from abroad are not allowed to enter the country, it is up to the Syrians themselves to record and convey the images – and to us to try to combine it with newspaper reports and more or less clever commentators and experts in politics in the region. A big frustration when you do not know how to help! 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-09/syria-protests-shocking-videos-and-photos/#

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/04/videos-from-syria-the-army-is-with-us.html

http://observers.france24.com/content/20110429-amateur-videos-syria%E2%80%99-friday-rage

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xif49k_video-of-syria-violence_news

Images from the Revolution in Egypt

I was watching the Danish news magazine Horisont (modelled after the BBC Panorama strand) last night, prime time on DR, our public service channel. They had 25 minutes on Egypt. I sat down with some expectation that was competely let down. It was as it used to be: a journalist with a microphone in hand walking on Tahrir Square with some interviewees, a little trip to the countryside to hear what a pro-Mubarak peasant have to say, and then back to the studio for further comments. Boringly put together, giving no real sense of what had happened, just a little pro et contra, information, no emotion. Pedestrian.

Earlier that same day I had seen some videos on vimeo (excellent platform for transmitting films and videos). Videos made by young people, who was there when the uprising happened, who took part and who have had the talent to put some short visuals together in a structured way, with a sense for building a story and for giving the atmosphere of being where a total change was taking place. Here is a text that is an intro to the videos you may want to watch. There are more to find, signed by one of the activist filmmakers. Jasminah Metwaly:

Intifadat Intifadat, a collective of filmmakers, won the Streaming the Revolution Award (at a festival in Cairo, ed.) for three videos they submitted. According to the jury, these videos showed an incredible sensitivity with the camera. More than merely scenes of protest, the videos convey a sense of raw emotion. The carnivalesque aesthetics show sophistication with both content and form. These videos demonstrate acute skills in depth of field, composition of shots, and creative editing.

The Downfall of Mubarak (6’23): vimeo.com/20169177 Torah (5’25): vimeo.com/21000128 Cairo Intifada (5’59): vimeo.com/19513814

http://www.storydoc.gr/

Sami Saif: Tommy

Tommy Seebach, popstjerne, vinder af det danske melodi grand prix adskillige gange, blev 53 år gammel. Han var, som det vist hedder, hård ved sig selv, knoklede for at få anerkendelse for sit talent, nåede toppen, faldt dybt, druknede sig i alkohol, holdt op igen, men var slidt ned og døde pludselig af et hjertestop.

En klassisk historie, et motiv fra showbizz-verdenen gennemspillet igen og igen i fiktionens ramme, og i utallige dokumentarer. Og i sidstnævnte ramme som regel på akkurat den tv-dokumentar-måde, som Sami Saif anvender sig af: arkiv med hovedpersonen, interviews med famile og arbejdskammerater, og masser af klip og materiale fra familiens privatarkiv. Når så Sami Saifs dokumentar er så meget bedre end gennemsnittet, er det fordi han har Tommy Seebachs enke og tre børn som hovedfortællere OG det helt unikke hjemmevideostof at trække på. Familien er totalt åbne i deres udsagn om den stadig mere alkoholiserede far og mand, der sprængte familien. Enhver der har haft alkohol i familien som barn ved hvad det betyder. Men de taler også smukt om en mand, som så gerne ville være med dem hele tiden, men ikke kunne.

Det kræver sin instruktør at kunne komme så tæt på, men Saif har opnået den tillid, som er forudsætningen for at han kan fortælle sin historie i et flot komponeret flow, i en undertiden virtuos montage der udelukker brugen af en kommentar. Det er simpelthen godt håndværk.

Tommy blev udsendt af DR1 i prime time på en lørdag aften. Jeg ved godt, at det var lige før Melodi Grand Prix finalen, så der var en tematisk sammenhæng – men tør man håbe at DR med sit aktuelt offentliggjorte fokus på ”tilbage til klassisk public service”, OGSÅ generelt genetablerer noget af den kvalitet, som den nedlagte dokumentargruppe besad? Det er helt vanvittigt, at Det Danske Filminstituts midler til kunstneriske dokumentarer skal bruges til en tv-dokumentar som denne, hvor god den så end er.

2010, 80 mins./55 mins. (jeg så den sidstnævnte), producent Peter Bech

www.tommyseebach-filmen.dk

http://www.filmstriben.dk/