Herz Frank 2011

We have posted texts about the master of documentary, Herz Frank, at least 6 times on this site. He is for this blogger the intellectual observer and interpretor of Life, where Richard Leacock (see below) was the instinctive reporter and interpretor. I met Herz Frank in Tel Aviv the other day. He, 85 years of age, is in a very good shape. We talked about the good days on the Bornholm festival (Balticum Film & TV Festival 1990-2000), about his living in Jerusalem close to one of his daughters (the other lives in Moscow), about the Latvians soon doing a retrospective celebration to him, about the Jerusalem Cinématheque having fine 35mm prints of 20 of his films. He showed me his book on his life and thoughts on documentary film making, it exists in a Russian version, and in a shorter German one, but not in an English version. Who could help with that, he asked. I had no spontaneous answer.

Another undone matter – it would be obvious to make a dvd-box collection with his films, who could help with that?

Herz Frank understands English, speaks ok German, and is fluent in Hebrew. During our small café meeting he adressed, in Hebrew, Kearn Telias, who works for the CoPro (more about that is posted elsewhere) (Kearn took the photo of Herz Frank and me) and was immediately invited to visit Herz Frank to watch works like ”Ten Minutes Older” and ”235.000.000”, the film from 1967 made by Uldis Brauns and Herz Frank to celebrate the 50 years of USSR. The film was not celebratory enough for the Soviet leaders and was put away. And has therefore not taken the place in the hall of fame for documentaries that it deserves.

New film project? Yes? What about and how? Herz Frank will send me an exposé and trailer, what I can disclose is the name of the character he wants to make a film about/with. Larissa Trimbobler. Read this text from an article I found online, to give you an idea of the context: Yigal Amir, an ultra-nationalist Jew, shot Rabin to death after a peace rally on November 4, 1995, because he opposed the prime minister’s policy of ceding West Bank land to the Palestinians. He was sentenced to life in prison. Although he is held in isolation, Amir has been permitted conjugal visits over the past year with his wife, Larissa Trimbobler, whom he married while in prison. Their son was born in 2007…

http://www.herz-frank.com/

http://www.copro.co.il/

Photo: Herz Frank and Tue Steen Müller in Tel Aviv 2011 (Kearn Telias)

Being There – Leacock

I am in Ramallah in Palestine and have just completed a three day workshop with filmmakers from the West Bank and Gaza – the ones from Gaza connected through a videoconference. I am on the 8th floor of the Red Crescent Centre just outside the city, children are still playing football down on the pitch near the school, cars are passing on the motorroad, it is getting dark and chilly after a sunny sunday, which we (20 filmmakers and 6 tutors) could only enjoy from inside out. We have seen clips during the three days and I reminded the filmmakers about the always actual sentence of Richard Leacock: It is about being there. I remember him from the few workshops I attended with him, I remember his passion and commitment, and his wonderful enthusiasm when he was telling the new generations: Go there, observe, find the details which are interesting, be present, listen and watch, and bring it back home to the editing table to make it interesting and present for the audience. Make them feel that they are there. I am sure the words were not like that, but this is what he meant, and this is what the observational documentary has brought us at its best.

And being there… well, we have seen Israeli and Palestinian documentaries about being there… at the checkpoints, at the wall when soldiers have pointed their machine guns at Palestinians who try to make their pass into Israel, or when families mourn their dead relatives, or when humiliated women tear their passing-a-checkpoint paper into pieces, or when Israeli settlers get into fights with fellow Israelis and call them “nazi capo”! I could continue and can only admire the courage of the cameramen and –women on both sides of the wall. They are there, and some have a Leacock’s eye for the human detail just next to what is obviously the main focus, which is to be recorded as well. Being There. Where something happens that is important for all of us.

Still: Louisiana Story (1948) , camera Richard Leacock

Richard Leacock 1921-2011

Sad news. Documentary pioneer Richard Leacock died this Wednesday in his home in Paris. He would have celebrated his ninetieth birthday in July. He played a crucial role in the history of documentary film, as a filmmaker and cinematographer and as a forerunner on its technological field.

Friday the 25th of March he should have presented his book-project “The Feeling of Being There – a filmmaker’s memoir” at the festival Cinéma du reel in Paris before the projection of a selection of his films (Soirée spéciale Richard Leacock: Canary Island Bananas, Primary, Happy Mother’s Day and Chiefs). The tribute the festival has chosen to pay Leacock with the program Dédicace Richard Leacock has now taken a whole other signification.

Richard Leacock had written his memoirs and was preparing the publication of the DVBook, his invention of combining text with actual film-quotes, this summer. The project was, and is, a truly independent venture. And what a life!

We should have honoured and celebrated Ricky together with him, sadly he is no longer here.

My thoughts go to his family and in particular to his beloved Valerie Lalonde.

 

Cinéma du réel, Dédicace Richard Leacock, March 25th , April 2nd and 4th:

http://www.cinemadureel.org/rubrique677.html

Read more about the book-project:

http://www.canarybananafilms.com   

 

Obituaries:

The Guardian  The Telegraph  Boston Herald  L. A. Times

Doc Fest 13

.. is the name of the newsletter of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival that also carries the name: Images of the 21st Century. A clip from the newsletter text:

The 13th Thessaloniki Documentary – Images of the 21st Century ended on Saturday, March 19, 2011. The closing ceremony was held in the packed Olympion theatre, flagship venue of the TDF. Festival Director Dimitris Eipides welcomed the audience by saying that “the Documentary Festival’s goal is always geared towards the audience. We want to see our theatres filling up, because today documentaries are more than ever a necessity. Current events are shaking us up and the Festival aims to address our worries; it constitutes a hopeful effort to move and motivate people. We believe that these goals were achieved, as attendance this year showed a 20% increase. For us, this is the biggest and most meaningful reward”.

Mr Eipides noted that during the 13th TDF, 233 films were screened, coming from 52 different countries. He took stock of the event’s most powerful moments and themes, such as the Panel Discussion of the How I Am: Challenging Perceptions tribute (on developmental and intellectual disabilities); the compelling presence of this year’s Greek documentary production; the 2 scholarships going out to immigrant children towards studying; the live streaming project that connected Thessaloniki with Corfu, Patras, Rethymno and Nicosia, where audiences were able to simultaneously enjoy films screened during the TDF, as well as the directors’ post-screening Q&As.

An award ceremony followed – check the website – a prize had already been given to the festival director himself: “The EDN Award is presented annually during Docs in Thessaloniki to an institution, group or private person for outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture. 
The EDN Award 2011 goes to Dimitri Eipides, Director of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. He receives the award for his enthusiastic and energetic work with establishing and continuously developing the documentary film festival in Thessaloniki.” Photo: The prizewinner and Hanne Skjødt from EDN.

www.edn.dk

http://www.filmfestival.gr/

POV: Cakes, Ellsberg and A World in Conflict

POV means Point of View and is the name of ” American television’s longest-running independent documentary series”, part of the PBS in the US and led by executive producer Simon Kilmurry, who is a frequent visitor to documentary events all over. From him a press release was sent to filmkommentaren.dk – here is an excerpt that gives you the idea that the American audience can watch high quality, creative documentaries. If you want to know more about POV, go to the website, that has trailers, background articles, a blog etc.:

The new season in June kicks off with Kings of Pastry. D A Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’ behind-the-scenes account of France’s greatest pastry competition, an epic, a three-day test of passion, perseverance, artistry amd nerves. In advance of the new season, on June 7, POV will present a special encore broadcast of the Oscar nominated film The Most Dangerous Man in America, in honor of the 40th anniversary of Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers, an event that changed the course of the Vietnam War and world history. POV airs on PBS on Tuesdays at 10 pm…

The season programme tells of people as different as cowboys herding sheep into Montana’s rugged mountains for the last time and aspiring teenage NASCAR drivers whirling around tracks at 70 miles per hour before they’re old enough for driver’s licenses. In addition, POV and the renowned oral-history project StoryCorps will team up for the second year to present everyday people’s intimate conversations in five imaginative and whimsical animated shorts, on television and online.

Also included are soldiers at war and at home, in Armadillo and Where Soldiers Come From; political activists who cross the line into law-breaking and authorities who may be crossing their own lines to catch them, in Better This World and If a Tree Falls; Chinese workers caught in the largest human migration in history, in Last Train Home; a Colombian librarian whose books travel on hooves through inhospitable jungles, in Biblioburro; Finnish men unburdening themselves in a most surprising fashion, in Steam of Life; Russian classmates reflecting on their country’s sweeping transformations on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union, in My Perestroika; and a cunning Cambodian journalist who elicits a startling admission about the 1970s “killing fields” from the highest-ranking surviving Khmer Rouge leader, in Enemies of the People.

www.pbs.org/pov. 

US Documentary Channel

Wish we had a documentary channel in Europe! We do not. The Americans have: The Documentary Channel, that also offers a very valauable newsletter that advertises the broadcasts of the channel AND a so-called Docstore, where films can be bought or downloaded.

Coming soon is a series of Robert Drew documentaries, including the classics ”Primary”, ”The Chair” and ”Crisis” (these films can also be bought in Europe, of course). In clips Drew gives anecdotes about the shooting of these and other films in his retrospective. Entertaining and informative doc film history.

http://www.documentarychannel.com/

Sergei Loznitsa – from Mathematics to Filmmaking

Ukranian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa is being honoured with a big retrospective of his work (11 documentaries) at Doc Fest in Thessaloniki, that runs until March 20. The festival has a fine newsletter (free subscription) from where this press text – in an edited form – has been taken:

Loznitsa talked about his sources of inspiration, the differences between fiction and documentary films and his relationship with audiences during a press conference he gave on Tuesday, March 15, 2011 in the framework of the 13th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.

His career in the documentary genre began during a very fruitful time of his life, even though he was not as yet devoted to art, but to science. He was born in 1964 in Belarus. Shortly after, his family moved to the Ukraine, were he studied applied mathematics and control systems at Kiev’s Polytechnic. The director said that he decided to change profession because of the low-quality training he received in Kiev, but he added that mathematics helped him in his transition to filmmaking. “A film is, in a way, a means to control things, and also a language used by people to communicate. Control systems are not all that different from films. In my view, anyone who wants to work in

film should start from something more abstract, like mathematics or music. From there, you can move to whatever you want and become, say, a politician or manager.

Loznitsa records simple, everyday aspects of life in the form of a historical testimony. He starts from things immediately apparent and then moves on to shed light on sensitive, hidden aspects, leaving nothing to chance. Aesthetics, form, style work latently, without making any noise. Referring to his method of work, he noted: “It is personal and I might say similar to hunting. I look for ideas all around me, like a hunter seeking out his pray. In this process, you have to let go of your mind and operate on feelings alone. Usually, when we are about to start work on a film, two or three of us gather together with a camera, sound equipment and a car. We spend two weeks traveling before shooting, with no specific idea in our minds, just looking around for something that will catch our eye“.

The “secret” of success in this process, according to the director, is this: “you have to cleanse yourself from all signs of life around you; you need to lose contact with the things that hold you back and see things more clearly. It is a mystical process“. 

The major goal of his films is to keep the viewer alert. This purpose is served by the lack of narration – the trademark of his films. “The most important thing is to allow the viewer to understand who he is. To allow him to get something from the film, to be influenced by it and be able to build on that influence”, he noted.

The director had once said that “cinema takes us back to time lost”. What is his relationship with time when making a film? “Sometimes I do realize I have to put an end to it. It is easier when we are using film, because it is bound to run out eventually”, he said jokingly, adding: “Any kind of pressure is welcome. Besides, this is the second law of Thermodynamics”. Illustrating his point, the director told a story from the time he was shooting Northern Light. The crew had to travel thousands of kilometers from Saint Petersburg to reach a remote village. “We had been shooting there for two weeks, when the local KGB came and took us in for a day and a half, in order to ascertain we weren’t spies. I took this as a sign that we should probably wrap it up”. 

Commenting on the differences between feature films and documentaries, he said they only exist “in our mind”. “If I showed you a shot of a suicide scene, it might impress you enough to ask me who this amazing actor is. But if I told you this was a documentary and that the person did actually take his life, you would be shocked. Nothing would have changed in the material per se – the difference is in our minds and reflects our ethics and norms”.

www.filmfestival.gr

The Runner

Here are words about a film project that I have been following for a couple of years. It is in production and will be a good film, I can assure you from what I have seen so far. The producers have introduced the so-called crowd funding and have collected around 3.500$. Here is a text from the site:

The Runner is the latest feature documentary from the award-winning filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky and the team at Tourist With A Typewriter. It is intended as an 80 minute theatrical release, with a 52 minute television edit, and will premiere in time for the London 2012 Olympics.

The Runner is a film about the limits of our endurance. It tells the story of a champion long-distance runner who – in one dramatic moment – became the symbol of a national liberation movement. Salah Ameidan is a man willing to risk his career, his family, his nationality and his life to run for a country that doesn’t exist: Western Sahara, officially the last colony in Africa. Virtually unknown on the world stage, Western Sahara is an area larger than the United Kingdom and has been under Moroccan occupation since 1975.

As a talented young athlete, Salah was forced to compete for Morocco, the country occupying his homeland, since the age of 14. During that time, he and his family suffered harassment, detention, arrest and torture at the hands of Moroccan police. One day in 2003, during a race in France, he made a bold

decision that changed his life forever. As he approached the end of an 8km race, he pulled out a Sahrawi flag – illegal in Morocco as a symbol of the independence movement – and waved it across the finish line. Knowing he would never be allowed safely back home, he applied for asylum in France and has been there ever since. He continues to train intensively and competes on an international level under the flag of Western Sahara, an unrecognised country. He has no nationality, having refused offers of citizenship from France and Spain.

Today, Salah is not only one of the highest profile Sahrawi activists in the world, but is seen by his people as a national liberation hero. “Running is part of my resistance. It’s the only weapon I have.”

The Runner follows Salah at a critical point in his life: his success, and the risks associated with it, are about to collide. Morocco is in the middle of a violent crackdown on Sahrawi activists, and two of his family members were recently killed by Moroccan forces. As Salah becomes a more successful athlete and more recognised as a hero, he puts himself and his family in more danger. Under such pressure, what are the limits of his endurance?

(You can read more about the film here.)

http://www.touristwithatypewriter.com/

http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Runner-film-shoot-Mission-Pyrenees-

You can still support the film through

http://www.touristwithatypewriter.com/therunner/runner_synopsis.htm

Yael Hersonski: A Film Unfinished

Fra Tue Steen Müllers private videotek: Arkivmaterialets alvor, en dokumentarisk rekonstruktion som filmisk elegi.

En gammel mand sad for længe siden i en mørk biograf i Berlin og så Berlin, Sinfonie einer Grossstadt. Skribenten, som fortæller historien, sad i nærheden, ja, det var Niels Jensen, og Jensen hørte ham mumle for sig selv: ”Anhalter Bahnhof, Anhalter Bahnhof…” op mod de stumme sort/hvide scener. Det kom fra en dyb smerte, tabet var stort. Udenfor var nu “kun brudstykket af en portal, murbrokker og græs tilbage.”

Jeg så for lidt siden omsider Yael Hersonskis berømte, Sundance-vindende film og kom til at tænke på det citat, denne korte replik, som blev ved med at gentage sig i mig, som en melodilinje, der ikke vil forsvinde. Jeg så nu disse nutidige mennesker, som var børn dengang, sidde i en moderne biograf og 65 år senere se optagelser fra Warszawas jødiske ghetto, hviske og udbryde og direkte sige sådanne ting til boomstangens mikrofon: ”Måske kommer min mor om lidt gående der på gaden…” Det er dyb smerte, tabet er værre end forfærdende, moderen blev vel kort tid efter dræbt i Treblinka som tusinde flere.

Oplevelsen i biografsalen er uafrystelig, at se ansigtet som ser. Som Anna Karinas ansigt, når hun i en mørk biograf i Paris ser Jeanne d’Arcs lidelse og død. Lidelse og død.

Jeg ved godt, at Yael Hersonskis hovedanliggende er en detektivisk kortlægning af den tyske besættelsesmagts manipulering af dokumentarfilmen. Filmen var i sin begyndelse i 1942 tænkt som propaganda. De indespærrede i ghettoen levede iscenesat en times tid som forkælede bedsteborgere. Som nu herren, som sidder og læser ved chatollet. Men så blev der i arkivet fundet en glemt filmrulle med fraklippet. Der blev fundet to dagbøger, som fortalte om optagelserne, om de tyske dokumentarfolks arrangeren alting. Den læsende herre er altså tvunget til at sidde der i ro, og det er, hvad han har tilbage, disse tre møbler, bag kameraet er stuen fyldt med resten af hans familie. I soveværelset bor en anden familie, i de andre værelser andre, én familie i hvert rum. Fraklippene på den nyfundne rulle viste kamerafolk gå ind i hinandens scener, sådant måtte jo ud. Og det måtte den åbenlyse nød, sult, brutalitet, vold og død også. Nu er det hele omhyggeligt på plads i Hersonskis uafviselige og umistelige værk. Omsider sidder jeg foran arkivmaterialets alvor: Warszawa, Warszawa..

Yael Hersonski: A Film Unfinished, Israel 2008. Tue Steen Müller har tidligere kort omtalt filmen set på Memorimage festivalen i Reus.

Eyal Sivan: Jaffa, The Orange´s Clockwork

Fra Tue Steen Müllers private videotek: et topografisk og historisk essay. Min blogkollega har generøst og givet mig eksklusivt indblik i sin blandt kendere så berømte private dvd-samling. Jeg må kvittere med et par bemærkninger om mine oplevelser af disse film, som er at se på festivaler for tiden. Så vidt jeg kan finde ud af det, vil jeg skrive, hvor filmene kan  erhverves.

Jeg ved godt, at Sivans film handler om den israelsk-palæstinensiske konflikt, at filmen delvist allegorisk er en politisk analyse. Det lod jeg ligge, da jeg så den. Jeg var med det samme og hele vejen igennem kun optaget af et overdådigt topografisk arkivmateriale, som i de smukkeste billeder skildrer en vidunderlig middelhavsby og dens opland af appelsinlunde helt tilbage fra fotografiets opfindelse i midten af 1800-tallet, fra begyndelsen af 1900-tallet selvfølgelig suppleret med filmoptagelser af samme intense skønhed. Jeg så dette lag af Sivans film som ét langt stilleben eller måske snarere et nature morte koncentreret om et vemod, som to andre lag forholder sig nutidigt levende til. Et med medvirkende intellektuelle, som besøges i deres arbejdsværelser, hvor billederne projiceres og disse udsøgt forstandige mennesker kommenterer, hvad de ser. Blot dette at være hos dem i deres rum af bogreolers, maleriers og skulpturers trygge uforgængelighed af indsigt. Og endelig et dokumentarisk lag af nye optagelser i varme farver hos kloge, besindige bønder ude blandt de tusinder appelsintræer omkring Jaffa.

Eyal Sivan: Jaffa, The Orange´s Clockwork, Israel 2009, 86 min. Tue Steen Müller har tidligere kort omtalt filmen set på Memorimage festivalen i Reus. DVD-kopi kan købes hos Eyal Sivan selv. Producent er Alma Films.