DOX 90

What do you do when you sit in an airplane, don’t want to read any more newspapers or have done enough mails for today? Well, I was lucky to have received the new DOX magazine, summer 2011, the 90th edition of the ”European Documentary Film Magazine”. It kept my attention for the a bit more than two hours it takes to go from Frankfurt to Sofia. I was informed and entertained – and simply happy to read about all the good documentaries which are being made.

I have previously saluted the editor, Truls Lie, for his own texts, and will do so again. I liked his worried editorial about ”aestheticizing” a theme like refugees, making them objects ”at the risk of somehow reducing their significant humanity” and he delivers a fine report from the Cinema for Peace ”circus” in Berlin with Sean Penn in the leading role. ”Sustaining Credibility” is the title of an informative and thoughtful article from German Bettina Rehmann, who refers to the many examples of branding within the modern documentary. Some, like the people around the Britdoc Foundation in the UK, live well with and support this development, others are worried that the independence of the documentary will go away.

DOX puts its emphasis on documentaries that are creative and relate to the world we live in. A good choice it is to have an article about ”Into Eternity” after Fukushima, and of course a report from a seminar in Berlin about docs on war has its tragic relevance. But for an old cat like me it is also nice to read an article on art films, where the name Luciano Emmer pops up, the master in this genre. There is also a historical element in the exemplary festival article on the festival Punto de Vista, where the memory of the masterpiece ”Les Statues meurent aussi” (1953) by Alain Resnais is brought back. Exemplary, I write, contrary to many articles in the magazine, because again the editor faces the problem on how to write festivals articles in a different way than by name-dropping of titles. Like Sverre V. Sand does so well. I know it is not easy… but also the critiques could be more precise in analysis, and less content descriptive. Yask Desai reviews Mark Isaacs ”Men of the City” first of all from a formal perspective. Well written and bringing new views.

I have still more to read in this important, high quality film magazine.

DOX, 58 pages, 10€, subscription: 28€, or membership of EDN. Photo from All that Glitters, reviewed in this issue, directed by Tomas Kudrna.

www.dox.dk

www.edn.dk

Rudolf Ming about Himself

Zanda Dudina from the National Film Centre in Latvia read my text about the film on Rudolf Ming, see below. She tells me that Rudolf – 13 at the time of the film, 16 today – now have a real camera and continues to make films. He also has a website where works of him can be watched. From publicity material for the HotDocs screenings, here is an edited text by filmmaking talent Rudolf himself:

Parallel to my regular studies I also attend music and art school, a folk dancing group and choir rehearsals, and train for the biathlon.

It all started when I went to see a movie “by myself” for the first time. By myself. I guess it was the right film at the right moment – Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. This film really spoke to me, and after I watched it I firmly decided that I too will be part of the film world.

The first challenge I needed to solve was how to shape my ideas into a form that others would be able to watch. Because (small problem) – I didn’t have one bit of technology that I could use to make a real film. After thinking about it for a long time I came up with the idea to make paper films – drawing my film plots on strips of paper that I then put into an old projector that my Mother had used to show us Russian folk stories. I was around 11 years-old at the time.  The pseudonym Rūdolf Ming came from the paper film period when I

wanted everything to be like in American cinema. I couldn’t figure out how to write my name. I didn’t know English so I made-up a special language because it seemed to me that everything in real film should be written in a foreign language.

As someone who makes films I of course have the overpowering desire to some day work in my own studio. When this plan came about it was clear that the name is very important. I had these small plastic letters meant for little kids to make play stamps. Of course most of them were lost, and the only reasonable word I could come up with was Muris 89.

How do I make films? In the classic American manner, of course. For example: Universal Studios, Warner Bros., New Line Cinema, Icon Productions, Imagine Entertainment etc. Each film has a title, poster and advertising, also created on paper strips. I used this technique until the moment I understood that what I’m lacking is a large editing studio and real American actors. Around that time I received a digital camera and started making films in video format. The first of these is about some pathetic drug-user, played by my little brother. …I’m not as into watching films anymore. I’ve become interested in European films. American films are all the same! I watch the trailers online. Even the credits are the same. All the same! Even animation. That’s how they hope to get audiences interested …

My whole class came to the premiere of Kā Tev klājas, Rūdolf Ming? in Riga. I was abnormally nervous, almost shaking. So many people have come, and they’re going to be watching me … But the film was well received.

I am 16 years old now and everything is bloody simple. The main principle for me is that each film has to be better than the previous one. For example, the name of my first film is Legend of the Forest Witch, but my latest – All or Nothing. Get it? Exactly!

http://www.rudolfsmings.lv/

Sophia Tzavella: Paradise Hotel

It seems to be in the middle of nowhere, and isolated it is, what was meant to be (25 years ago) a place to live, in noble decency, planned to house the Romas by the socialist government. Today block 20 is a pigpen with no water and often no electricity, with garbage all over, people throwing their swill from the balconies, and doing shit anywhere, rats all over. Disgusting living conditions.

The director has chosen a complicated, yet interesting structure. Upfront and towards the last part of the film, she goes with hardcore social documentation: Inside and outside the appartments, talking faces, stories about the unbelievable poverty and why they choose to stay here (what could the alternative be?). In some cases she goes close, in others she stays with a distance. There is a dynamic pace in the narrative, no sentimentalism, this is how it is, carried by a strong musical score. In between there are some staged sequences, for instance with an albino, whose enigmatic silent role in the film I never really understood.

… and then documentation is taken over by Fellini! A marriage is going to be, and colourful and entertaining it becomes with the young couple’s appartment being painted, everyone getting dressed up, music, dance, food, happiness, and a sign saying ”Paradise Hotel”. The director makes a point, dreams of a better world with her protagonists for whom you can only have empathy.

The market is full of films about romas and the living conditions, this is one of the better ones.

Bulgaria, 2010, 54 mins., HBO Central Europe & Agitprop

http://www.agitprop.bg/#/info/home

http://www.taskovskifilms.com/

Roberts Rubins: How are you doing Rudolf Ming?

Good news it is that this Latvian documentary, produced by the studio that carries the name of documentary legend Juris Podnieks, has made it to the Hot Docs festival (see below) and will have three screenings in Toronto in the coming week. It is one of those stories that at first glance seems simple, but actually is multi-layered and leaves you a bit puzzled. There is much more than you see in the straight forward narration about Rudolf Ming and his obsessive talent for making films, or rather drawing films on parchment paper and let it pass through a projector. There is more in Rudolf, anger maybe, a dark side, unwillingness to adapt to normality, even if he seems to be surrounded by a nice family, he is an outsider and the drawing and the piano playing is his escape to the phantasy world. Why is there so much blood in your (horror) film, is the comment of the kind priest, who has discovered Rudolf’s talent and asks him to make a (religious motive) film to be screened in the church. The conversations between priest and Rudolf are the red thread of the film. At one point Rudolf says, I hate films about love… one day that will be a theme for him, of course it will, if he continues to make films. Now he is presented in Canada, a country with a tradition for drawn films, Norman McLaren in memoriam. Not bad, not bad at all!

Latvia, 60 mins., 2010

Festival contacts: National Film Centre of Latvia,: zanda.dudina@nfc.gov.lv

http://www.hotdocs.ca/film/title/how_are_you_doing_rudolf_ming

Helmrich: Position Among The Stars

Good news for the documentary interested audience in Copenhagen, Denmark. The Monthly Documentary in May at the Film House is Leonard Retel Helmrich’ masterpiece “Position Among the Stars” that runs every day from Thursday May 5 till Wednesday May 11. First a clip from the intro of the Film House, in Danish, and then quotes from what we wrote after the film won the first prize at idfa 2010. Go and watch the film:

“Leonard Retel Helmichs hjertevarme og sorthumoristiske portræt af en indonesisk familie i et slumkvarter i Jakarta vandt hovedprisen på verdens største dokumentarfilmfestival (IDFA) og på Sundance-festivalen. Via portrættet af Shamsuddin-familien demonstrerer Retel Helmrich, hvordan globaliseringsbølgens krusninger brydes med lokale sociale omvæltninger i det moderne Indonesien, herunder begyndende demokrati, generationskonflikter, voksende indkomstforskelle og opblomstringen af militant islamisme.”

”Position among the Stars” is third part of a trilogy about a family in Indonesia. 6 years after his second film about the family Sjamsuddin, three generations, the director Helmrich presents one more big humanistic epic that can be compared to Satayit Ray’s Apu-trilogy. Helmrich goes or rather flies from situation to situation, his camera is constant moving, there is an outstanding flow in the narrative, and he is met with open arms and minds by his characters. You sense that they like him, like he likes them, but empathy is of course not enough to make an exceptional film like this – the director knows his stoytelling dramaturgy, he knows to play with contrasts: countryside/big city, young/old, old world/modern life, and he does it through scenes with the warm and loving grandmother, her sometimes desperate son, who is a representative for the local community, split as he is between his mother’s generation and his niece, the teenage girl, the hope of the family, who is the one who must have an education, the first one in the family. There is a development of the characters in the film. There is laughter and tears.

Hemrich is using the Single Shot Cinema technique, a style he developed and perfected himself. He chooses to actively engage with his subject rather than remaining a neutral outsider – a position that typifies Direct Cinema. He aims to record events from the inside, not observe from a distance. To achieve this, he created the Steadywing, a construction that allows the filmmaker to move the camera continually in an exceptionally fluid and intuitive way – as he did among the family members featured in his trilogy. Helmrich’s invention has proved to be an inspiration for an entire generation of young filmmakers.

www.singleshotcinema.com

http://www.idfa.nl/nl/idfatv/idfa-2010/on-demand/masterclass-leonard-retel-helmrich.aspx

Hot Docs: Made in Italy

Conversations with documentary filmmakers from Italy is always full of head shaking over the situation in Italian television, which is basically run by the main character in Italian documentary of today: Silvio Berlusconi. There are public funding mechanisms, and they do what they can for very limited budgets, and there are production companies, who know the international market possibilities, out of necessity! But still documentary filmmaking, in terms of financing, in Italy, compared to other Mediterranean countries, is more a nightmare than a profession!

Nevertheless, it is very positive to see that there is talent around that deserves attention – as you can see at the ”Made in Italy” section at the Hot Docs festival that are about to start in Toronto. There are films by established names like Gianfranco Rosi (”El Sicario”, photo) and Sabina Guzzanti (”Draquila – Italy Trembles”), but also two Zelig film school graduation films, ”Guanape Sur” by Janos Richter, and ”Heart-Quake” by Mark Olexa.

http://www.hotdocs.ca/film/search/search&film_programcategories=%22Made%20In%20Italy%22

Hot Docs Festival 2011

If idfa in Amsterdam is the biggest in Europe, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is North America’s largest documentary festival, conference and market. It returns for its 18th annual edition from April 28 to May 8, 2011. Showcasing the best Canadian and international documentaries, Hot Docs is set to welcome delegates, filmmakers and audiences to Toronto for this 11-day event. This year, Hot Docs will screen over 199 documentaries from 43 countries on 16 different screens across Toronto. More from the press release:

“This year is something of a game-changer for Hot Docs,” says executive director Chris McDonald. “We are expanding the number of film presentations by one third, we are screening in new neighbourhoods across the city, and we will be providing more direct financial support to filmmakers. The doc-making marketplace has changed dramatically, and so has our role within it. We are not just screening great work, we are helping to finance and distribute films in a meaningful way. Stay tuned for the announcement of a major new international initiative in the coming weeks. Until then, we look forward to sharing a staggering array of quality docs with our unbeatable Toronto audiences at this year’s Festival.”

The 2011 Festival will feature 199 official selections and retrospective titles in ten programs, as well as eight films by young filmmakers aged 14 to 18 screening in this year’s Doc It! showcase, and films selected as finalists in the International Documentary Challenge. In addition to screenings, international buyers and industry professionals will attend the Festival to participate in a full slate of conference and market events. These events include the world-renowned Hot Docs Forum and a vast number of other market and networking opportunities.

“Every year we start with the goal of showing everything documentary can do,” says director of programming Sean Farnel. “Yet, more so than ever, what documentary is doing is re-inventing itself, expanding our notions of its capacity to communicate contemporary stories and ideas. So let’s call 2011 the year that docs broke wide open.”

Photo:  Dennis Danfung: Helle and Back Again, UK/USA, 88 mins. – to be shown in one of the many categories, International Spectrum.

http://www.hotdocs.ca

SVT and Documentaries

Well, it is first and foremost for us Northeners, who can read Swedish… but I write this text in English anyway to praise the documentary profile, quality and volume of the SVT, Swedish public broadcaster, that publishes a very good newsletter on the documentaries that is broadcasted on the different slots on SVT1 and 2. You can subscribe on the newsletter for free through the address below.

Coming up in the coming week is Frederick Wiseman’s ”La Danse” (photo) (tuesday 10pm) from the Parisian ballet and a film on Jörgen Persson, great cameraman for Bo Widerberg, Roy Andersson and Bille August (monday 09.50 am). During Easter many other Swedish subject and international documentaries have been on the schedule.

dokumentarfilm@svt.se

Marcel Lozinski on DocAlliance

The excellent vod (video on demand) portal DocAlliance, set up by five European film festivals, makes a generous offer: to watch five films by Polish documentary master Marcel Lozinzki. The five films, including the masterpiece ”Anything can Happen”. Here is the text for the free streaming of the first three documentaries:

”From April 18 to 25, three of Łoziński’s films made in the 1990s will be introduced. These will include the short film 89 mm od Europy (89 mm from Europe, 1993), which received an Academy Award nomination and a number of other prestigious awards. Situated on the border between Poland and Belorussia, at a train station in Brest where the European narrow-gauged railway ends, the black-and-white impression muses on where Europe and the world of Western Christianity end. Two years later, Łoziński boosted his international renown by his film Wszystko się może przytrafić (Anything Can Happen, 1995). The film protagonist is the director’s son Tomek who has already had an essential role in 89 mm from Europe. This time, the six-year-old boy meets retired people in a park in Warsaw, asking them rather “mature” questions about life. The confrontation of his notion of the future and the vision of people who don’t have much time left results in a gentle reflection on life and death. The last of the presented films made in the 1990s is Żeby nie bolało (So It Does Not Hurt, 1998). A follow-up to the film Wyzita as seen from the distance of twenty four years, the film follows the encounter of farmer Urszula Flis, a press photographer and a journalist from the “Gazeta Wyborcza” daily, dealing with loneliness, life’s victories and losses, as well as with the borders of Urszula’s privacy, which have already been overstepped by the media in the past and which are again challenged by the film crew in the present.”

Again – go to DocAlliance, watch these films and pay for many others. It is cheap and high quality!

http://docalliancefilms.com/