News from Paris: Richard Leacock: The Feeling…

Documentary pioneer Richard Leacock will be celebrating his 90th birthday June 18th of this year. He has been working on his memoirs for several years and now the book is finally ready to be published.

The Feeling of Being There – a filmmaker’s memoir is not only the story of Leacock’s own life; it is also a journey through almost the entire history of documentary cinema seen from the inside. Richard Leacock made his first film, Canary Bananas, in 1935 at the age of 14 and finishished his last film, A Musical adventure in Siberia, in 2000.

Leacock was the first person ever to film the Galapagos Islands; participated in the second world war and filmed the battle for Burma and the Japanese surrender at Nanking; he was a cinematographer for Flaherty (Louisiana Story); a pioneer of Direct cinema; made together with Drew Associates (Drew, Pennebaker, Maysles…) the first document following a campaign filming the primary elections opposing J. F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in Primary (1960) and again, following closely the confrontation of Alabama governor George Wallace versus John F. and Robert Kennedy, caught a key moment of the implementation of civil rights in America in Crisis (1963); he has made amazing portraits of musical geniuses (Stravinsky, Bernstein…); Leacock-Pennebaker produced Happy Mother’s Day, Monterey Pop and Don’t Look Back and had a chaotic collaboration with Godard (1 A.M., to become 1 P.M.); Leacock developed and taught at the documentary film department at M.I.T. from 1968 to 1989 and made highly innovative projects with the M.I.T. Media Lab; had an intimate encounter with Louise Brooks resulting in Lulu in Berlin (1984) and so much more…

It is fascinating to read and as Leacock has always been on the forefront of innovative media, his book is not just to read, it includes over a hundred film quotes functioning as visual footnotes, because, as he states in the introduction, “writing about film has much in common with writing about wine: you can’t taste the wine by reading. Well, I think you have a similar problem when you write about films: you can’t see the movies on the printed page. So it occurred to me that if I embed excerpts, and often entire films, within the book, then you, the reader, could actually experience what I am talking about” (excerpt from the introduction).

Leacock lives in France with Valerie Lalonde with whom he has made films with since 1989. The Feeling of Being There – a filmmakers memoir will be published this summer by the non-profit association Canary Banana Films and the French publisher Semeïon Editions.

You can read more about the book and how to contribute to the project here:

http://www.canarybananafilms.com/memoir.html

More about Richard Leacock here:

http://www.richardleacock.com/#14862/About-Richard-Leacock

Dox Box 2011

Fourth edition of a festival – without Omar Amarilay, see below – that deserves a lot of respect for its ambition to show creative documentaries from all over the world to an audience that normally has no chance at all to get to watch them. For a bit more than a week Diana El Jeiroudi and Orwa Nyrabia, the founders and leaders of the festival, together with their team, offer the Damascus audience diversity and quality – at the same time as they develop their so-called industry section that includes a week of project development of documentary projects from countries like Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon, Egypt and Algeria. Danish Mikael Opstrup from EDN (European Documentary Network), American cinematographer Kirsten Jonsen, American editor Amanda Laws, Dutch/Croatian director and teacher Rada Sesic and this blogger are the tutors for a programme that also involves a pitching session to a panel of funds and tv channels, as well as a retrospective and a masterclass with documentary world star Kim Longinotto.

These films in the programme – I will write about the Syrian and Middle East films when I get to watch them – have been reviewed or noted on filmkommentaren.dk:

Last Train Home, The Arrivals, Chemo (photo), Steam of Life, Katka, Nenette, Village Without Women, Armadillo, Warsaw Available and Men Who Swim.

Boxing Gym by Frederick Wiseman opens at this festival before it goes to cinemas in Paris… just to make you understand the sense for actuality that also characterises the festival in Damascus.

www.dox-box.org

Omar Amiralay

It can only be a very sad opening of the fourth edition of the Syrian documentary film festival Dox Box, that runs from March 2nd to 10th in Damascus. The reason is that the festival will be without THE Syrian documentary filmmaker, Omar Amiralay, who passed away in the beginning of February. Omar was always at the festival, he supported it and he was a leading figure, when initiatives were to be taken to better the documentary environment in the region. He was several times in Denmark, he was often used a juror at international festivals, last time at idfa in Amsterdam, and his own films were shown all over the world. An important name in modern documentary history, a dedicated author, and a mild and generous gentleman, who made films that were and are still not publicly available in his own country. The organisers of Dox Box write this about him:

On the fifth of February, 2011, we missed a friend, a mentor and a partner. Omar Amiralay was the pioneer who planted the seed we are cherishing today. A seed of appreciation and respect to the great art of documentary cinema.

Omar made more than 20 films between 1970 and 2004, he made films in Syria, Lebanon, France, Egypt, Pakistan, Yemen and Kuwait. His films constitute an outstanding record of life in Syria and the Lebanese civil war, among other vital topics.

Omar’s role in developing the documentary industry in the Arab world was exceptional, he was a co-founder and the president of the Arab Institute of Film, he closely advised and supported countless young filmmakers around the region, and he was a close and important advisor to DOX BOX since its very beginning. 

With his absence, we miss him, and we continue the journey. 

“Three Films by Amiralay” are in the program of DOX BOX 2011.

www.dox-box.org

Henry Miller – An Observer

Place Clichy, Paris. Montmartre. Where Truffaut shot ”Les Quatre Cents Coups” and Bertrand Blier ”Préparez vos Mouchoirs”. And where Henry Miller found his inspiration for ”Quiet Days in Clichy”, a scandalous success novel. At the restaurant Wepler, to be recommended for its sea food, the menu gives the floor to Miller, for our French readers:

”Je m´y suis assis à la terrasse et à l’intérieur, par tous les temps et à toutes les heures du jour et de la nuit. C’était pour moi un livre ouvert. Tous les visages des garcons, des gérants, des caissières, des putains, de la clientèle et même des dames de lavabos sont gravés dans ma mémoire comme les images dùn livre que j’aurais feuilleté tous les jours”.

Henry Miller, literary documentarian!

Café Wepler, Paris

Gainsbourg Forever

Tomorrow, 2nd of March, it is twenty years ago that the French artist icon, Serge Gainsbourg, died. This is being celebrated by the French. Yesterday the daily newspaper ”Libération” brought a black & white poster photo with ”Gainsbourg nu”, at least almost naked, staging himself in a position in his bed, smoking a cigarette. The eternal cigarette of the singer, who also brought it to the stage when performing.

The French-German European cultural channel, Arte, of course, dedicated a whole theme evening to Gainsbourg, entitled ”Gainsbourg Forever”, including a quite well done documentary voiced by Jane Birkin, based on the holiday films and videos she made when the two of them lived together. You see the singer being a clown in front of the camera, with his dog, and playing with the daughter of Jane Birkin, Kate, and later with their child Charlotte, destined to be an actress herself. It sounds banal and the images are private from the places they went, always to Venice by the way, but Jane Birkin gives it emotions with her voice-off, full of reactions to what she remembers from when they were together. Unsnobbish, loveable.

Mes images privées de Serge, 2011, 40 mins.

http://www.arte.tv/fr/Echappees-culturelles/Gainsbourg-forever/3712996.html

Archidoc in Paris

The EU MEDIA programme supported training programme Archidoc, organised by the French film school la fémis had its third and final session February 22-25. At this session the 9 participants, who had been tutored by a team led by Israeli director and editor Erez Laufer, pitched their archive based, creative documentaries to a panel of 16 commissioning editors, distributors and international producers. Contrary to other training programmes, Archidoc takes a focus on the directorial development of projects to be ready to meet the demands of a market.

Archidoc has since 2004 been involved in several strong documentaries that have made their way to festivals and a broader audience in the television landscape. Let me mention the recent huge success of Mila Tutajlic, ”Cinema Komunisto” (photo), which is superbly using archive material from Yugoslav feature films, Latvian Peteris Krilovs ”Gustav Klucis. A Deconstruction of an Artist”, which has been shown all over Europe, Catalan Edmond Roch’s entertaining docufiction ”Garbo, the Spy” and ”Metrobranding” by Romanian Ana Vlad and Adi Voicu.

Filmmakers with projects that need a creative development to reach an international audience should check out the programme that will advertise its 2011/2012 edition on the site of la fémis:

www.lafemis.fr

Archidoc. Romain Gary, Walter Benjamin and Fedya

Romain Gary (photo, long after Sofia), also known as Emila Ajar, a legendary French writer, right now subject of a photo exhibition in Paris, was in 1946 sent to Sofia in Bulgaria as a member of the French diplomacy delegation. He was there for two years with his wife Lesley Blanch, had several female relations like one with his Bulgarian secretary, who might have been a spy or just wanted to get help to get out of the country. ”The Bookseller” was the pseudonym given to Gary by the Bulgarian secret service which was following Gary’s life in the Bulgarian capital. The film, to be produced and directed by Assen Vladimirov, veteran in Bulgarian cinema, will be based on the files of the Service, on the memories of Gary, who as a writer was characterised as ”mediocre” by the Service! Vladimirov presented the project in a very entertaining way that fits to the ”funny yet serious” story about a meeting between West and East just after WW2.

Before the war another well known writer and philosopher, Walter Benjamin, was forced into exile in 1933 because of the start of the Nazi hunt on Jews. Benjamin goes to Ibiza, where he stays for one year. While hard times pass in Berlin, Benjamin thinks back on his childhood in the metropol, and starts writing about it. His life on Ibiza and his retro-thinking will be the basis of a film by Andreas Strasser, German director, who has been living in Spain, and who seeks to make the film on the basis of Benjamin’s prose, archive material from the island and from Berlin, as well as archive material made by the director to make Benjamin come alive.

Latvian director Kristine Zelve, however, intends to make a film about a totally unknown Finnish director, Teuvo Tulio, who was born in Latvia and had the nickname Fedya, that will also be the name of the film. Tulio’s name is on a stone monument in his native village, where the inhabitants do not know who he was. A master of melodramatic films, Tulio made his last film in 1972, ”Sensuela”, which was censored as being too erotic, for which reason Tulio withdrew from public life, never made any more films or interviews. In these years he is being taken back to have the recognition he, in the view of many film people, deserves.

Here is only space to mention 3 of the nine projects that were pitched in Paris at the final session of Archidoc. A catalogue can be acquired through:

www.lafemis.fr

Jean-Luc Godard og Anne-Marie Miéville: Korte film

I FOF-Randers’ filmklub skal vi i aften se de fire korte film af Jean-Luc Godard og Anne-Marie Miéville, som ECM Records for nogen tid siden udsendte på dvd indlagt i en smuk lille bog. I vores præsentation af filmene tager jeg udgangspunkt i sidste billede i sidste film, en sidevendt skikkelse med ansigtet skjult af et langt hår og bøjet tæt mod et spejl (måske?):

Slutbilledet i den sidste film i serien, den hedder Je vous salue, Sarajevo, er gådefuldt. Hvad er det for en skikkelse, hvad ser denne skikkelse? Fortælleren eller rettere essayisten siger: ”Når det er tid at lukke bogen, vil jeg ikke have flere klager. Jeg har set så mange mennesker leve så ondt, og så mange dø så godt.” Før det billede, før den scene har filmen omhyggeligt undersøgt et enkelt fotografi fra krigen, fra kampen om Sarajevo. To stående soldater (det er vist serbere, men det er lige meget her) mishandler tre liggende personer. De dækker deres hoveder med armene. Omhyggeligt undersøges fotografiet detalje for detalje. En soldat har en cigaret mellem fingrene, mens han samtidigt hæver sin fod for at sparke, sparke kvinden på jorden. Essayisten (Godards stemme) siger: ” I en vis forstand er angsten Guds datter, forløst Langfredag nat. Hun er ikke smuk, hun er spottet, forbandet og fornægtet af alle. Men få ikke galt fat på det. Hun overvåger al dødelig lidelse, hun går i forbøn for menneskeheden. For der er en regel og en undtagelse. Kulturen er reglen, kunsten er undtagelsen. Alle taler reglen: cigaret, computer, t-shirt, tv, turisme, krig. Ingen taler undtagelsen. Den er ikke talt, den er skrevet: Flaubert, Dostojevskij. Den er komponeret: Gershwin, Mozart. Den er malet: Cézanne, Vermeer. Den er filmet: Antonioni, Vigo. Eller den er levet, og så er den livets kunst: Srebrenica, Mostar, Sarajevo. Reglen er at ønske undtagelsen død. Så reglen for Kultureuropa er at organisere døden for den livets kunst, som stadig blomstrer.”

Langt inde i The Old Place, den anden film i kvartetten, kommer et høstbillede med bønder som led i den uafbrydelige strøm af lån og påmindelser fra museets sale og samlinger, som Godard og Miéville kommenterer i deres fortsatte samtale. ”JLG: Når Jean-Francois Millet maler to bønder som beder på en mark og kalder det ’Angelus’ svarer titlen til realiteten. AMM: Når Francis Picabia tegner en bolt og kalder det ’Portræt af en amerikansk pige i nøgenheden’ svarer titlen ikke længere til realiteten. JLG: ’Det er lige meget for mig’, siger Picabia. Efter Duchamp og før Warhol, fuldstændig som caféejeren, når han rækker dig dessertmenuen. Og det var den afgørende vending i malerkunsten. Den anden. Den første var da malerne besluttede at male jordiske kvinder. Det skete næsten fra begyndelsen, men det gjorde ikke Jomfru Maria noget…” Men senere blev det værre og værre og Godard fortsætter sin bekymrede replik med en overvejelse over kunstens kommercialisering. Som slet ikke er en uskyldig sag. Og filmen er en bestilling fra Museum of Modern Art i New York, som ikke får nogen éntydig analyse endsige en hyldest. Men en tankevækkende, foruroligende og måske sorgfuld omvisning i salene.

Jean-Luc Godard og Anne-Marie Miéville lever og arbejder sammen. Laver den ene film efter den anden. Dybe, personlige, radikale, internationale og særegne. Disse fire små film blev altså i 2006 yderst forbavsende gjort alment tilgængelige af Manfred Eichers ECM Records. Sidste år fulgte på Wild Side Video det store værk Film Socialisme, som Godard signerede alene. Miéville laver selvfølgelig også sine egne ting.

Jean-Luc Godard og Anne-Marie Miéville: De l’origine du XXIe siècle, The Old Place, Liberté et patrie og Je vous salue, Sarajevo, Frankrig / Schweiz 1993-2002. 16+46+21+2 min. Bog med dvd, ECM Records 2006. 

Zelig Student Films Travel

Readers will know that I teach at Zelig Documentary Film School in Bolzano. 3 of the new students, who are in their first year of study, have recently written reviews of films on this blog and I am happy to update you on the success of several of the graduation films of students who were at the school 2007-2010 and now are out in ”real life”.

Benoit Felici’s ”Unfinished Italy” go to Rome Independent Film Festival in March, to the International Short Film Festival in Barcelona in April and to Indie Lisboa in May.

“Laas-Revuca (Jahrein-Jahraus)” has been nominated for the “Women DoP Award” of Dortmund-Köln’s International Women Film Festival (Germany, 12-17 april). Martin Fliri’s documentary has been shot by Nina Högg on Kodak 16mm stock. Here is a short annotation of the film: “The South Tyrolean apple business is highly developed and dependent on foreign workers. Mostly male, middle-aged and from one of the new European Union countries, they work several periods throughout the year in local orchards. A documentary film about guest workers and hosts. About homesickness and wanderlust.” The film is 42 mins. long.

Finally, Georg Boch can see his ”Facebook’s ”Adorno Changed My Life”” (photo) advertised on the site of the strong American distributor Icarus Films – together with other new titles like Nicholas Geyerhalter’s ”Elsewhere”, Patricio Guzman’s ”Nostalgia for the Light”, not to forget the classic masterpiece of Marcelæ Ophüls: ”Hotel Terminus”! Not bad for a beginner!

http://www.zeligfilm.it/

http://icarusfilms.com

http://www.unfinished-italy.com/

Good Docu News from Czech Republic

On this blog you have often met the sentence ”East Beats West” referring to this blogger´s enthusiasm for original documentaries from Eastern Europe. The central point for spreading knowledge about the situation, and for stimulating the sector through festivals, workshops, training sessions and brilliant website is the IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) in Prague. IDF has released this press release about ”Czech Documentary Film in 2010. It includes an overview of viewer numbers for Czech Television, cinema attendance, festival awards, funding suppport from the State Fund for the Support and Development of Czech Cinematography, and Czech TV. But also some well argumented worries for the future. I think documentarians in many other countries will nod affirmingly when you read the pro’s and con’s:

Czech documentary film in 2010:

  • 16 Czech documentaries released in cinemas
  • Highest cinema attendance for documentary film: Katka – 117,000 filmgoers
  • Documentary funding from the State Fund for the Support and Development of Czech Cinematography: CZK 33 million granted to 39 projects
  • Czech Television allocated CZK 157 million in external and internal costs to 786 projects
  • Highest viewer numbers for documentary programme on Czech Television’s channel 1, ČT1: 13. komnata Kateřiny Kornové – 1,250,000 viewers
  • Highest viewer numbers for documentary programme on Czech Television’s channel 2, ČT2: Marital Etudes 20 Years Later – Mirka and Antonín – 504,000 viewers

Prague, February 9, 2011 – Czech documentary film did fairly well in 2010. As in the previous year, sixteen documentaries were released in cinemas, yet according to the Association of Film Distributors, documentary films attracted over 160,000 filmgoers, i.e., nearly three times as many compared to 2009.

With 117,000 filmgoers, Katka (photo) by Helena Třeštíková was by far the most successful documentary film, miles ahead of Olga Špátová’s The Eye Over Prague (21,000) and Filip Remunda and Vít Klusák’s Czech Peace (7,000). “Along with the success of Czech documentaries abroad, this positive trend is a cause for optimism for the coming years,” says Hana Rezková of the Institute of Documentary Film, a training and resource centre that has since 2001 been closely following documentary developments in Central and Eastern Europe.

Helena Třeštíková’s documentary feature Katka posted exceptional results in cinemas (117,000 filmgoers), which would be considered high even for a feature film. “People knew the first part of Katka’s story from my documentary film that ran on Czech Tv several years ago and they wanted to find out more. Drugs still are a very current topic. Katka and both men in her life were able to be very open about it and the film generates a lot of debate,” suggests filmmaker Helena Třeštíková who already had a great audience success with her 2008 film René. Last month, Katka also received the Czech Film Critics Award for Best Documentary Film of 2010. 

Czech Documentary Films at International Festivals

In addition to its local success, Helena Třeštíková’s Katka was awarded at the 2010 RIDM, Montreal International Documentary Festival. Czech Peace received an award at DMZ-DOCS in South Korea; The Eye Over Prague was recognized at the Warsaw Film Festival, and All That Glitters at DOK Leipzig. Czech documentaries were also screened at other international festivals. “Czech documentary tradition is very diverse, and it includes a lot of interesting people with very different styles and approaches in both form and content. That’s what I really like about documentary film. I feel that all doors are still wide open,” adds Helena Třeštíková who remains optimistic about the future. “I believe that the golden era of documentary film still lies ahead. Interest in documentaries is on the rise around the world, which makes them all the more interesting for producers and distributors.”

State Fund for the Support and Development of Czech Cinematography
Funding provided by the State Fund confirms the growing quality of Czech documentaries. Although the total amount of money available in the Fund decreased in 2010, documentary films received CZK 6 million more than in 2009. Documentaries were granted a total of CZK 33 million, i.e., 15% of the total grant budget. “Out of 63 documentary applications, the Board of the State Fund approved funding for 39 projects, while only one half of feature projects received support. These figures suggest that the quality of documentary films is high and it should also be emphasized that the Board gives preference to creative projects over made-for-TV programmes,” explains Kateřina Ondřejková, the Board’s spokeswoman.

Documentary Films and Czech Television in 2010
Czech Television remains a key institution for local documentaries. In 2010, Czech TV spent more than CZK 107 million in external and over CZK 50 million in internal costs on 786 documentary projects – acquisitions, production, co-production and commissions. Moreover, Czech TV introduced a new programming and organizational structure this year: “Czech TV’s channel 2 also plans to establish a platform for communication with filmmakers at meetings, seminars and programming debates, as well as for inspiration over creative proposals. The results of these changes will be really apparent in our programming sometime at the end of 2011 and in 2012,” commissioning editors Jana Kopecká and Zdeněk A. Tichý outline the plans.

What changes have already taken effect? The commissioning editors add that “compelling society subjects returned to prime time, there will be one-hour culture programmes, and a number of short documentary series on history and culture subjects.” Czech documentary films that are broadcast on Thursday evenings will now be part of theme nights.

As in 2009, Czech TV’s viewer figures overwhelmingly favour documentary programmes dedicated to celebrities – 13. komnata (The 13th Chamber); Příběhy slavných (Lives of the Famous). Their dominance was broken only by Helena Třeštíková’s Marital Etudes 20 Years Later on Czech TV’s channel 2. Kopecká and Tichý list a few factors that influence viewership: “It is about the subject, approach, credit of the filmmakers but also a few other things. Strong Czech documentaries that meet most of these conditions and generate good word of mouth post very good numbers.”

Czech Documentary Film in 2011
According to Hana Rezková of the Institute of Documentary Film, despite the good news, 2011 will not be all smooth sailing. “An entirely new mode of communication between filmmakers and television will be required for the new commissioning system introduced by Czech TV. Any soft spots that might appear will have to resolved on the go.” And despite the benefits of digital theatrical distribution, another challenge will be to find more space for documentaries in cinema programming. “Given the current economic situation, we cannot possibly expect any increase in public funding. We still believe, though, that Czech documentaries will continue to draw viewers at home and abroad as the most inspiring and engaging films Czech cinema has to offer,” concludes Hana Rezková.

http://www.dokweb.net/en/