Pirjo Honkasalo: The 3 Rooms of Melancholia

Filmen skal handle om lovens bud du må ikke vidne falsk mod din næste, sagde Iikka Vehkalahti, da han bad Honkasalo lave den, og hun brugte i sin synopsis den endnu tydeligere engelske formulering Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour, det er den konkrete nabo, det handler om, der i ørkenen, der i bjergene, og hun kom med sit vældige filmværk til at fundere over fjendebilledets opståen. ”Det er en skønhedsmættet meditation over mennesket fanget i voldelig konflikt uden ende og uden nåde. Et rekviem over de levende og de døde” skrev Stephen Holden i New York Times efter premieren i Film Forum i South Village.

Rekviets tre satser skildrer som tre led, Longing, Breathing og Remembering i denne dødsmesse først livet blandt 9 til 14 årige drenge på det russiske militærakademi på Kronstadt, dernæst i illegale optagelser fra det sønderskudte Grosnij, en kvindes uselviske arbejde med på helt eget initiativ at redde så mange børn som muligt ud af husenes og familiernes ruiner og endelig blandt hende og børnene i asyl i en af Ingusjiens flygtningelejre, hvor Kronstadt-elevernes kommende fjender dannes i deres anderledes kultur med modsatrettede billeder af fjenden. Der fældes ingen domme i dette filmværk, hændelserne betragtes med opmærksomhed, undren og vemod. 

Vi så filmen i aftes på Den Skandinaviske Designskole, og vi indså, at da filmen jo er optaget i 2002-2003, vil de medvirkende bløde og klarøjede russiske og tjetjenske drenge, vi har lært at kende i filmen, i dag måske være i hård og blind krig med hinanden. Som i Dubrovka teateret i Moskva dengang, i den internationale lufthavn forleden, i Grosnij snart igen. Måske, sandsynligvis.. Falske vidnesbyrd, gengældelse, hævn.

Vi lyttede til Pirja Honkasalos egensindigt langsomme, insisterende og uafrystelige filmværk, som bestemt er et rekviem. Det hørte vi måske tydeligst i komponistens (Sanna Salmenkallios) og den kongeniale kontratenors fortolkning af en lille række digte, som en af Kronstadt-kadetterne har skrevet. Ja, sådan forstod vi det. Og vi blev i den kirkelige kunsts store figurer, vi talte om, at billederne, scenerne, forløbene med sikre hænder (Niels Pagh Andersens og Honkasalos) er anbragt som tre messeled, i de tre rum, titlen taler om, og de fremtræder i én ubrudt fremadskriden i en trefløjet altertavles, i et triptykons form. Originaltitlen er jo netop The 3 Rooms of Melancholia, og filmrummene, svarende til de middelalderlige altertavlers malede og billedskårne felter eller fløje, dukker op ved siden af hinanden som tre samtidige fremstillinger med overskrifterne Kronstadt (Longing), Grozny (Breathing) og Ingushetia (Remembering). Tre vigtige steder og tre store følelser.

Pirjo Honkasalo: The 3 Rooms of Melancholia, Finland 2004. Manuskript og kamera: Pirjo Honkasalo. Klip: Niels Pagh Andersen og Pirjo Honkasalo. Lyd: Mart Otsa m. fl. Lyddesign: Martti Turunen. Musik: Sanna Salmenkallio. Produktion: Millennium Film, Kristiina Pervilä. Honkasalos filmografi (danske udgivelser): Mysterion, 1991. Tanjuska og de 7 djævle, 1993, kan lånes på biblioteket. Atman, 1996, kan lånes på biblioteket. Melancholia, 2004. Kan lånes på biblioteket eller ses på www.filmstriben.dk

Yoav Shamir: Defamation/2

Det kan som nævnt i Ekko og her på siden være vanskeligt at komme til at se Shamirs vigtige film. I dag er det muligt. 22:00 sendes den på svensk tv. SVT1 i aften klokken ti.

Senere (2. februar): Nå, jeg blev jo fanget af TV2 News lange aften om det ægyptiske drama og regnede med at se Defamation på SVT’s hjemmeside her til morgen. Men nej! Jeg bor ikke i Sverige, og de har kun købt de svenske rettigheder, ser det ud til. Streamingen blev blokeret. Men jeg håber at finde en løsning. Nu VIL jeg se den film.. 

Igen lidt senere: .. nå, hvor svært kan det være.. her kan den åbenbart ses.. på netavisen P77.

Cinema Komunisto Closes Magnificent7

It was one of those evenings that you will never forget – and that Mila Turajlic will never forget. A totally packed Sava Centre in Belgrade gave her a minute long applause for her great work on making the 100 minutes long documentary on Yugoslav film history, ”Cinema Komunisto”, a film that in this and shorter versions will travel the world, to festivals and television companies. It is an enjoyable and informative voyage the young director takes, in film history and in history – back to a country that no longer exists. And with Tito as the main character, a man who loved films, watched film every night, and also wanted to have films made about himself and his greatness in fights against the Germans during WW2. The greatest man, as Orson Welles says in an archive clip from his visit to the country. Hundreds of partisan films were made, we see clips from them and from loads of other Yugoslav films, matched with documentary archive material and interviews and situations from today. All done in a way that is so excellent that it is hard to believe that this was done by a young filmmaker and a young editor (Aleksandra Milovanovic) with many others who were not alive or were kids. But they had the courage, the patience and the skills to research and produce, and the maturity to make a film of that size. Bravo!… and go to their website where a lot is to be learned as I did last night in Belgrade at a magnificent screening for a couple of thousand people:

http://www.cinemakomunisto.com

Mark Cousins: The First Film

”Look at this landscape, it makes you want to film it”, he says, Mark Cousins, film historian and writer and with ”The First Film” also a brilliant essayistic filmmaker. With his wonderful Scottish accent, or is it Northern Irish, that is where he comes from, a Belfast boy he calls himself, he takes the audience on a journey to Kurdistan in Iraq, to Goptopa, where atrocities happened in the 80’es, but this is not what makes Cousins go there, no, he wants to meet children, challenge their imagination and have them express themselves. Verbally and through small cameras that he brought along.

Cousins, his text (hello film teachers, this is how a voice-off text should be) and his visual embracement of a beautiful, yet haunted place on earth, is enjoyable to watch and also to listen to, as Cousins also dares to put on music that comes from the classical repertory and not from the more obvious, and because of that maybe kliché-filled local Kurdish. He is constantly fighting the clichès, he wants to take this film – this hymn to childhood and imagination and to the power of film – as far away as possible from what we normally associate when the name of the country is mentioned.

”There is magic everywhere”, Cousins says and proves with his camera. We meet the children, we see them watch films that the film crew brought along, we see the clips they made, all these wonderful wee boys and girls from Goptopa. It is one long hug with pauses in text and dialogue, where you are invited to enjoy.

Scotland, 76 mins. Producer Gil Parry, 2009

Seen in Belgrade at Magnificent7, clips from the film are available online.

www.magnificent7festival.org

48 at Magnificent7

If you click 48 on this site, you will have numerous hits. The film of Susana de Sousa Dias has been given many postings for its innovative, artistic exploration of the documentary language. It was one of the first films to be reserved for the 7th edition of the Magnificent7 festival here in Belgrade. It had to be shown at a festival that carries the name ”magnificent”.

At a masterclass for young filmmakers and art students the filmmaker brilliantly analysed her work of making the film during many years. She had met some of the characters in connection with her previous film, Still Life, also about the dark years of the Salazar regime, a film without words, where 48 (the number of years that the dictatorship existed) is based on words, i.e. the touching verbal memories of the tortured in Portugal and in the Portuguese colonies in Africa.

de Sousa Dias constantly used the expression ”to get inside the shot” through the use of reframing, slow motion of the images, and fade-out’s and fade-in’s. The faces change via the use of tiny camera movements when the filming is done. She explained how she had done the interviews with the prisoners, and had spent hours and weeks in the editing of the words to find the liniarity and homogene tone that makes the film so extraordinary. In many cases she is keeping small sighs as sound accompanied by the original background sound from when the interviews were made. Her brother, a composer, helped her create the space, including the silences, that made the film a FILM.

For professional gatherings and film schools who want to have a fascinating look into the world of filmmaking, I can only recommend you to book Susana de Sousa Dias and her films for exciting lecturing and brilliant films. 

www.magnificent7festival.org

News from Paris: Armadillo in France/2

Janus Metz’s Armadillo has now been running in theatres in France for over 6 weeks and can still be seen on the big screen around the country until mid-March. So far, the film (originally put out in 26 copies December 15th) has had an audience of 12.570.

According to Distrib Films, the French distributor, who has been very pleased with working with the film, the number of entries does not quite give justice to the success of the film. The film has been showed in important cinemas all over France, is still out there circulating and there has been a lot of positive feedback. The press coverage has been very good, most of the reviews concerned with the moral ambiguity of the film in connection with form, style and content.

Distrib Films is preparing a DVD and Blue-ray release in France for the end of April.

Here are some of the reactions from the French press (my translations and mostly my italics):

Eric Libio, L’Express, December 15th 2010:

“ (…) Armadillo left a deeper impression than imagined at first. […] Fiction or reality? It wasn’t clear to me at the time and this uncertainty added to the slight vagueness, obviously intentional from the director’s part, that positions the viewer not only at the heart of a conflict –literally speaking- but also confronts him or her with the force of the true but nevertheless dramatized images, drawing Armadillo towards a hybrid genre that seeks to replace television reportage, having become unreal – a war, it’s far away and it’s the others – with a documentary sufficiently romanesque [novelistic] to provoke a powerful effect of reality.

I saw Armadillo for the second time, well knowing that it is really a documentary filmed as cinema. Still just as impressive. Because in three layers, it tells the world of today and of all times: war stirs up bestial instincts; the overflow of images transforms reality in to role plays; the imaginary is not virtual and allows us, contrary to the commonly held idea, to confront reality.”

http://www.lexpress.fr/culture/cinema/armadillo-du-lard-ou-de-la-guerre_945208.html

 

Vincent Malausa, Les Cahiers du Cinéma, December issue 2010:

“… by reducing everything to a matter of style and efficiency (video-game aesthetics, grandiose music, elliptical editing), Metz completely loses the grip on his subject when things really gets out of control, reaching from the given opportunity to question his role as filmmaker – at the time of  a battle that turns into a butchery, followed by a debriefing, giddy, racist and triumphantly the same evening– only a relatively nauseating compromise.

[…] this little fantasy of a docu-fiction can be mercilessly dismissed to the compartment of patriotic propaganda spots. Metz probably held here his Redacted [Brian De Palma, 2007], he has accomplished nothing more than a dubious remake of Black Hawk Down [Ridley Scott, 2001] only with real bullets.”

www.cahiersducinema.com (article available on the web only with subscription)

Romain Genissel, Criticat, December 14th 2010:

 ““For you, it’s a movie, for them it’s reality” says the poster for Armadillo. So blatantly reversible, the catch line wholly determines what is at stake in a film that follows a Danish regiment’s immersion on the Afghan front. Extremely manipulating, Armadillo suggests a form of documentary that through its abstract and concrete depiction allows us to question the relation between soldiers and war, between its images and us. And if one is able to distance oneself from the bias, false at times, of this documenteur [mockumentary], it is intriguing here to assert that the end may justify the means.

[…]

In this way Armadillo constantly questions the place of the spectator by facing him with his own contradictions. The mise en scène of the film is no longer to be understood as just a simple effect of manipulation, but rather it is a way of bringing us, sooner or later, into a position of discomfort and reflexivity. Provided that one is aware of being misled, one realizes that the effects of this mise en scène help to problematize and enrich what a distant and no doubt more ethically acceptable documentary could ever capture.

[…]

The power of Armadillo is to give concrete expression to this inexpressible process and to thus show itself as a fascinating war experience, well beyond geopolitical stakes and any moral ambiguity, probably not quite frankly taken on but very rightly questioned.”

http://www.critikat.com/Armadillo,4482.html

Thomas Sotinel, Le Monde, December 14th 2010:

“… this slightly flashy, testosterone-filled film, is a document of a disconcerting ingenuousness in which military greatness and bondage find their place.”

http://www.lemonde.fr/cinema/article/2010/12/14/armadillo-grandeurs-et-servitudes-du-maintien-de-l-ordre-en-afghanistan_1452941_3476.html

François Forestier, Le Nouvel Observateur, December 2010:

“ “I want you to come out of this film without any certainties”, says Janus Metz. The goal has been reached with accuracy and talent.”

Pierre Murat, Télérama, December 18th 2010:

“The strength of the film comes from this (false) impassiveness. The filmmaker actually revives the art of maieutics, this ancient philosophy – alas, no longer in fashion – that consists of posing the questions without ever imposing the answers.”

http://www.telerama.fr/cinema/films/armadillo,411992,critique.php

Gael Golhen, Première, December 2010:

“The power of Armadillo is exactly to confuse the issue. […] Instead of raw “documentarian” images, Metz has chosen imagery to enter the mind of the soldier and track down the fantasies of man in war. As a result, you’re no longer looking at the conflict, you’re looking at the film the soldiers themselves are making of it and from this point of view, Armadillo is a true bomb!”

http://www.premiere.fr/film/Armadillo/%28affichage%29/press

Cinema Komunisto Awarded

Cinema Komunisto, the documentary about Yugoslav film history, made by young Serbian film director Mila Turajlic, had its international premiere at idfa in Amsterdam a couple of months ago – and will have its national premiere on sunday at the Sava Centre in Belgrade as part of the Magnificent7 festival.

The director can meet her national audience – more than a thousand people are expected to come – with the confidence given to her yesterday where the film was awarded as Best Documentary at the Trieste Film Festival.

 http://www.triestefilmfestival.it/

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/home.html

Nicholas Philibert at Magnificent7

The festival opened with an image of Nénette, the more than 40 years old orangutang that since the age of 3 has been living in a zoo in Paris. A close up of someone looking at you and another beautiful film by Nicholas Philibert, whose name here in Serbia is written as it is pronounced: Filiber.

Who is a director who talks wonderfully and inspiringly about his métier, in this case about a film that started as a short film of around 20 minutes but ended up as a feature length documentary that has been released theatrically in several countries and is soon published on dvd.

”I had totally free hands”, Filiber said in a masterclass for young filmmakers, ”I had no money for the filming, so there was no pressure on me… it is a film about face to face, about our voyerism, about ”the other”. Nénette is a metaphor for ”the other”. We can’t help comparing with her.”

Filiber had some principles that he followed. Sound and image were separated. The camera stays on Nénette and her fellow apes, and are accompanied by 3 types of voices: visitors (several children), keepers and friends, who reflect on several aspects of our relationship to the ape. The sound is important for the film, Filiber said, ”and the silence speaks for her solitude”. He had 10 days of shooting (Nénette wakes up at 8.30am and goes to sleep at 6pm at night), and ”I started with the editing of the sound.” Filiber showed clips from his previous films, ”Le moindre des choses” (photo) and ”La ville Louvre” and mentioned several times how important it is for him to keep his ignorance and work from curiosity and questions. ”I dont want to know anything in beforehand, if I do, then why make the film? All is built on encounters and I only film what people give to me”.

The films of Nicholas Philibert are available on dvd. He has been written about on this blog numerous times.

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/home.html

Nina Hedenius: Naturens gång

For mig findes begrebet dokumentarfilm ikke. Jeg oplever selv, at jeg laver film om, hvordan tingene skulle kunne tænkes at være, ikke om hvordan de er… (Nina Hedenius)

I FOF filmklubben i aften skal vi se Naturens gång af Nina Hedenius. Det bliver en usædvanlig oplevelse, en udfordring for nogen af os, en ren befrielse for andre. ”Naturens gång”, det kan ikke helt siges på dansk. Det er vist en mellemting mellem ”livets gang” og ”naturens orden”. Og i hvert fald dækker det filmens indhold, mærker man, selv om man er uden for det svenske sprog. Det er en film om liv og tid og bevægelse, en tænksom, ordløs overvejelse i billeder.

Det handler også om natur og kultur. Kort inde i filmen er der en uforglemmelig scene, et interiør fra den gamle gård, som er filmens centrale location, man hører en nyhedsudsendelse i radioen, erindres om, at der er en verden uden for middagssøvn og fred i bondens hyggelige stue. Under en workshop for unge filmfolk i Beograd for et årstid siden viste Nina Hedenius citat-klip fra sine tidligere film og røbede, at dette radiouddrag i den nye film fra 2009 med en rapport om israelske bombardementer i det sydlige Libanon er nøjagtigt det samme som et radiouddrag monteret tilsvarende i hendes film Vintersaga fra engang i 1970’erne. ”Ingen overhovedet har reageret, sagde Hedenius, som i sine film fuldstændigt afholder sig fra sociale og politiske temaer, således at man kun kan forstå dette tyve år gamle lydklip som en spidsfindig kommentar til udenrigspolitik som sådan!”  

Det er Tue Steen Müller, som fortæller denne historie. Det er ham, som har gjort opmærksom på filmen, som han ikke tøver med at kalde et mesterværk. Han har skaffet dvd-kopien til os fra den serbiske filmfestival sidste vinter, hvor Naturens Gång blev modtaget med begejstring.

En begejstring så stor som de svenske seeres, som fik filmen sendt første gang 1. juledag 2008. Leif Furhammar skrev i sin yderst positive anmeldelse i Dagens Nyheter, at det var ”…julhelgens märkvärdigaste satsning… Filmen er den enda av dette årets julfilmer som skulle komma att gå til tevehistorien.”

Selv siger Hedenius om sin film: ”Konflikten mellan det goda mänskliga inom var och en av oss och hur det krockar med samhällsmaskineriet, har alltid förundrat mig. Hur kommer det sig att vi i detta välfärdssamhälle känner så starkt att något har gått snett på vägen? Vi tycks ha tappat förmågan att vörda och vårda det viktiga i livet; naturen och hela det känsliga ekosystemet.”

Nina Hedenius: Naturens Gång, Sverige 2008, 108 min. Manuskript, fotografi og klip: Nina Hedenius. Produktion Nina Hedenius for SVT2. Filmografi, de mest berømte titler: Det speglar i mitt öga, 1992, Gubben i Stugan, 1996, Från Sverige i tiden, 2000, Konsten att städa, 2003, Naturens Gång, 2008. I hvert fald Gubben i stugan og Naturens gång kan købes over nettet.

Magnificent7 Starts Tonight

It is below zero but sunny here in snow-white Belgrade where the 7th edition of the Magnificent 7 European feature length documentary festival kicks off tonight with two opening films on the programme: ”Nenette” (Photo) by French veteran master Nicholas Philibert and ”Blood in the Mobile” by Danish Frank Piasecki Poulsen. The organisers, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, filmmakers themselves and teachers at their own film school Kvadrat, are welcoming the guests and the audience in the usual atmosphere of warm hospitality and generosity that is also conveyed by their young staff of filmmakers. As part of the selection team I was interviewed yesterday and asked why the audience seems to be growing from year to year. Yes, why, well first of all because of the reputation of the festival to bring quality to the audience – and because of the (overall?) interest in the creative documentary that is also evident here. It is cool to watch documentaries and to talk about them.

And it even more cool to meet people who have attended all editions of the festival and who remember a film shown 5-6-7 years ago.

Must be a sign of quality of the film in question. For that reason and to celebrate the 7th edition the organisers made a competition where Magnificent7 afficionados could vote for which film they would like to have screened again. The three winners – to be screened this coming sunday – were ”Pianomania” by Lilian Frank and Robert Gibis, Anna Bucchetti’s ”Dreaming by Numbers” and ”Black Sun” by Gary Tarn.

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/pages/Gosti_eng.html