It is not the first time a film about a village with unmarried singles is being made these years. Seems to be a trend! And as the Greek one (”Sugartown”) and the Serbian one (”Village Without Women”) this one from Czech Republic, taking place in Slovakia, is warm and sweet to experience. At the same time as it is describing a provincial community, where daughters often stay with their mums and sons with their mothers as well. The older generation claims that they would love to see their children married, at the same time as they want the grown-up kids to stay at home, simply for their own sake, to avoid loneliness. The mayor, a former general, does what he can, but is not very succesful neither with his attempt to matchmake through a party planned for months, nor with his speeches that reaches the population via loudspeakers on every street corner.  

The director’s voice is heard, when she goes around to make first hand research. She asks questions on our behalf, she enjoys the confidence of the characters and gets good material to bring home. Something happens to the characters during the film, we get closer to them, but real close, no, there are still a natural lot of shyness when it comes to Love. And there should be, this blogger thinks. Zemplinske Hamre is the name of the village, probably the one and only time you hear about it!

80 mins., Czech Republic & Slovak Republic.

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

His name was originally Stephen Apostolof, but having fled communist Bulgaria, entering the American Film Dream factory, Hollywood, he changed to an artist name, A.C. Stephen, which is not and will not become a big name in film history, apart from being a part of the sexploitation period, the softcore one before the hard core ”Deep Throat”, a short period that also included Ed Wood, the man who always gets the credit for having made the world’s worst movie… maybe that nomination should have gone to A.C. Stephen for his ”Orgy of the Dead”, where half naked women were dancing on the graves of the dead, swinging their breasts around while also trying to make original ballet steps! Quite something!

The story about A.C. is told by critics and professionals who worked with him, and first and foremost his children and last (out of 3) wives, with numerous clips from the kitsch films, quite entertainingly made and fun to watch because of its quick editing and the many anecdotes connected to the one and only A.C. Stephen, whose career suffered a lot in his last years when there was no more space for the soft pornography.

The filmmaker makes the youngest kid of A.C. take the ashes of his father – kept in a cigar humidor (!), a very appropiate reference to film producing and film producers in Hollywood with big cigars in mouth – into a car to drive him to be buried at a proper place for a man, who made the American dream come through and then fell from the heights.

Bulgaria, 2011, 58 mins.

http://www.autlookfilms.com/en/films/dad-made-dirty-movie/

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

It is almost as minimalistic as it can be, this 9 minutes long documentary by Polish Pawel Lozinski, who goes directly in medias res to convey faces and hands, that lift a stone in a forest to start cleaning it so the inscription can be read. Which contains a poem and a name, a tombstone it is, and as a text the information is given that ”the Registers of the Jewish Cemetary in Warsaw was burned during WW II and that 200.000 names have not as yet been recovered”. That’s all, think for yourself when you have finished this very short, as always with Lozinski, aesthetically perfect journey into a moment of tension.

Poland, 9 mins., 2010.

It is a graduation film from a film school, The Sam Spiegel in Jerusalem, it is strictly personal, it is filmed by the young woman, who is the main character of the film, it is very private, and yet it is also personal and universal, because it is so well made, both light in tone and style, and because Orion Barki is like a character in a Eric Rohmer film, une demoiselle, who goes to the beach with her dog, to the disco with her friends, talking with them about sex (”I think that I am the only virgin student at the film school”) and about male relationships, she gets one, it was not good, she has another orientation, she rides her bike in the streets, she buries her dead dog, she is enthusiastic about being in the snow, she has to phone her father to tell, there is this sense for the detail and for the-not-important, which turns out to be important, she finds someone, a girl, for whom she dances like Anna Karina did for Jean-Luc Godard in ”Vivre sa Vie”. Big talent, I met her in Tel Aviv, she wants to make a sequel, please do!

The film is from 2007, plays 26 mins. and has been broadcast by Israeli channel YesDocu.

It was a nuisance to leave Israel as I did this monday morning. It made me sad and angry. Upon arrival on a sunday night a week ago I went straight through the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, got my passport stamp, was picked up and arrived quickly at the Cinema Hotel (see below). Easy. I had a wonderful time in both Tel Aviv and Ramallah. Meeting interesting documentary people and projects.

This morning it was a different story. I left from Ramallah, Palestine. I got picked up at the Red Crescent Hotel at 11am, my flight was at 3pm, should be enough time. The taxi driver from Jerusalem, Arabic origin, chose not to pass through the Kalandia checkpoint, too complicated, too much waiting time, he said, so we took a different itinerary with a view to Israeli settlements and Arab villages. We took a bad road classified as an A road, exclusively for Palestinians, to be followed by a good C road, for everybody, an Israeli built road. The taxi driver told me his story – he lives in Jerusalem and works from there, although he has a house in Ramallah. If he lives in Ramallah permanently, has his address there, he will lose his ID and working permit in Jerusalem. They do everything to make life difficult for us, he said, while we were passing a village where muslims and christians live together without problems, he said. He was right about the difficult-statement. When getting closer to the airport, he asked me whether I wanted to say that we come from Jerusalem or whether I would say Ramallah, the truth, which probably would mean more checking and waiting time at the security point outside the airport. I chose the truth, which meant 30 minutes of check of me and the driver. That

means check of the driver, the car and my passport. The driver had to go to a separate room to half-undress and get checked, I waited outside watching the young guys with machine guns. They are not soldiers, they work for a private security service company. Some of them has watched too many American action films, in attitude and way of talking to people!

My turn for verbal check, contrary to his body check, came later. Two hours of waiting in the airport. Loooong lines, questions about what I was doing in Ramallah and Tel Aviv, who hired me, if I had any presents. I said I had received some dvd’s for my work, I got a green label on my luggage for further check later on. Made by a young girl who talked to me as if I was a criminal. Around 10 people going to Vienna, including me with a transit in the Austrian airport, were taken to another floor as it was getting close to boarding the plane, even if I was there 3 hours before departure!

Yes, I do understand the need for checking for explosives in Israel, of course and I have no sympathy for bombs killing people in Jerusalem, like happened when I was there, but I do not understand why the security people have to be inpolite youngsters, who see this job like were they characters in a bad American B-movie – arrogant, wanting to be tough in approach and look. And why does the airport not have more personnel and equipment for the checking procedure? To avoid the long queues? My small insignificant story, however, is nothing compared to the daily humiliation of my taxi driver and the Palestinian people on the West Bank. I repeat the conclusion from last year’s reporting: this is Apartheid! No other word can cover the situation.

Photo from leading Israeli documentarian Avi Mograbi’s “Detail” (2004).

To make a follow-up on the text above, it goes without saying that this reality, well not for a traveller like me, but for a Palestinian like the taxi driver, for someone who lives in the West Bank, for someone who has no permission to travel freely in Israel, not to talk about the conditions for those who live in a Gaza that is completely isolated – that this is – with a very stupid German expression – gefundenes Fressen for any committed documentarian, Israeli or Palestinian. There were strong human stories from both sides, there were character driven stories, conflict after conflict, a lot of tension in the verbal, written and visual pitches, rough material to be shown. In the workshop in Ramallah and at the individual meetings in Tel Aviv.

But maybe not so many original approaches, call it creative treatments. There is, one feels, a now-or-never feeling of impatience connected to many stories. Many filmmakers or filmmakers-to-be, both Israelis and Palestinians. come from the News. They are used to the saying – we have to get it out NOW, and think less about the aesthetics. Fair enough, some stories have to go out now but actuality and little time mean less creative thinking, and less sense for the detail and for eventual other layers that can be taken out from a story. To say it in a less polite way – we can not keep on watching Israeli soldiers beating the shit out of Palestinians. Or keep on watching victims of suicide bombers. We need distance to the events, analysis, breathing, other approaches. The camera leaves often far too early a face instead of staying and wait for more from a scene, to interpret the pauses, to let a narrative breathe.

Learn from Leacock and his magic moments. Learn from Herz Frank and his emotional analysis.

Both workshops, the CoPro and the Storydoc, are described below and through their websites.

Photo: Nagham Mohanna, who last year presented “Romance in Gaza” at ramallah.doc and took part in the Storydoc sessions. She and her project are now at the Documentary Campus 2011.

www.storydoc.gr