DocsBarcelona Programme

Two days ago the programme of the festival part of the DocsBarcelona was published, see site below or click on the links of the following press release:

DocsBarcelona is back in full force between 2 and 6 February 2011, with extended activities that are not to be missed.

Without a doubt, the most important novelty of this year’s celebration is that DocsBarcelona is now a competitive festival. Discover the awards here.

The Festival will be opening with a screening of the powerful film by Luc Côté and Patricio Henríquez, You Don’t Like the Truth. 4 Days Inside Guantánamo (PHOTO), on Wednesday, 2 February at 7:00 pm at the Cinemes Girona. Discover the images of the Canadian police interrogations of an arrested youth in Guantánamo.

Among our other new features are two new sections: Finisterrae, with films that present new audiovisual languages, and DocsAffairs, with works that breach the borders between the documentary and investigative journalism.

These new areas have been added on to the sections that we have always offered, making for an array of 42 films, with debates and conferences of the very highest order. Particularly worthy of note is the special Le Dernier Repas, which this year is led by Peter Greenaway. Yet not to be forgotten are the first works of today’s up-and-coming filmmakers, which can be seen in Doc!Doc!Doc!, the South American creations of the D’America section, the tributes to Catalan productions in Catalan Day, the sessions for schoolchildren and youths, 7-11 and 12-16, and the more recent Panorama and Historia sections, which will open up a window to the most incredible reality.

Note: Several of the films have been reviewed or noted on this site: Armadillo, Steam of Life, Chemo, You don’t Like the Truth, Enemies of the People. Reports from the festival and the industry part of DocsBarcelona will be posted by Tue Steen Müller, who selected the Panorama section of the festival and is Head of the Pitching session.

www.docsbarcelona.com

Meghan Eckman: The Parking Lot Movie

At the end of the film a song comes up – called ”Life in a Nutshell” – which is exactly what the director of this classic observational and interview born documentary aims it to be. It takes place in Charlottesville in Virginia, and moves barely out from the lot. Only when there are interview bites with those who were there as parking lot guards and later have left for something else and more profitable. They look back at a place in the city, and a place in their lives, that had and has its own importance as free space for different characters and reflections. Some of them are so-called ”unemployable misfits”, who basically do not want to leave and if they do, they come back, and some of them are now in fine positions out there in the society.

They sit in the small booth, taking the payment from the clients, most of the time in a good chatting atmosphere, with exceptions where the guards have to run after people who try to get away without paying. After f… word debates between the driver and the guard.

… overeducated people people, they say about themselves ”with time to think about it”. It being Life, and love and fun and sorrow, as most of them come from the university nearby.

It is quite fun, and get sometimes deep with the characters, because of their quirky personalities. There are good sequences to look at, and it is an interesting microcosmos that has been caught. But it is not very interesting to look at, as goes for many American documentaries after Michael Moore. Could have been great to see some visual interpretation of the theme of Life, of waiting, of helping each other. But enjoy the fun part of it, the observations of the booth and the poems on the wall.

(A film like that makes me think how different American and European documentaries are, in general. Something went wrong, Albert Maysles, Pennebaker and Leacock – they have forgotten to SEE, they just record…)

USA, 2010, 74 mins.

http://www.theparkinglotmovie.com/

Cinéma du Réel 2011

Loyal readers of filmkommentaren will know that both bloggers have a faible for this yearly festival in Paris – next year the dates are March 24 – April 5. Today the programme was announced in overall terms and the appetite to go there came back immediately. Here is a copy of the text that tells what to expect:

International Competition / First Films / French Contre-Champs / Shorts 
A selection of some forty international and French films that have in the main never been screened, with special focus on the films’ documentary writing and ethics. Encounters and debates with their filmmakers.

Dedication and workshop : Andrei Ujica 
The Rumanian filmmaker revisits his Trilogy centred on the end of the Communist world : The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (2010) / Out of the Present (1995) / Videograms of a Revolution, with Harun Farocki (1992).

Dedication and workshop : Gianfranco Rosi 
A regular visitor to the festival (awarded the 2009 Grand Prix for his film Below Sea Level), Gianfranco Rosi

will present his three films Boatman (1993), Below Sea Level (2008) and El Sicario (2010), and discuss his past, current and future work in an exceptional workshop session.

America is Hard to See 
As early as the 1920s, a stream of politically engaged documentary films has endeavoured to portray another vision of America, the recession, the marginalised… With the first Newsreel editions, as well as films by Cartier Bresson, Paul Strand, Leo Hurwitz, Ralph Steiner, Sidney Meyers…

Exploring Documentary : the documentary poem 
The documentary poem is often associated with introspection. Here, it is a poetic journey turned to the outside world, and the critical social view proposed… a kind of civic poetry. With films by Rudy Burkhardt, Pierre Clementi, Ken Brown…

The Tool Box : thoughts about the camera 
The development of movie camera technology and its influence on documentary filmmaking.

Those Invisible : a treasured absence 
Filmmakers, critics and film historians look back on their passion and talk to us about a film that is rare, invisible, lost, legendary, imaginary, destroyed or quite simply banned. With the screening of several rare films…

Ecoute voir ! : Hors scène / Off track 
’Ecoute Voir !’ continues to explore the ties between the documentary and music, after a first edition in 2010 focusing on the relationship with the human body. This year, the theme is the offstage dimension of music, what happens outside of performances and concerts. From the writing to rehearsals, experimentation, the tour diary… as well as innovative visual research linking music and film.

Installation : The Owl’s Legacy 
Presentation, staging and screening of The Owl’s Legacy, a film composition by Chris Marker (1989), critics and film historians look back on their passion and talk to us about

>>> And also… 
Two dedications (Richard Leacock and Leo Hurwitz), news from our filmmaker friends, a plunge into the festival’s memory (20th anniversary of the Prix Marcorelles, classics), a children’s afternoon documentary party, days for professionals, school workshops, daily discussions-encounters…

http://www.cinemadureel.org/

Michael Plejdrup: Da jorden skælvede

Det handler om jordskælvet i Haiti for nøjagtigt et år siden, og det handler om to, som mirakuløst overlevede, den ene, Jens Tranum Kristensen ved sin egen ufattelige viljestyrke og held, den anden, Jørgen Leth ved sin tjeners resolutte indgriben og held. Tranum Kristensens skarptskårne beretning i én lang optagelse, som støttes af arkivbilleder og en serie rekonstruerede vignetter, er klippet sammen med Jørgen Leths rejse tilbage og hans kloge og ærlige refleksion, som ofte glider over i en slags tilføjelse til fortællerstemmen, Plejdrups må man tro. Det er elementerne.   

Som Plejdrups tidligere dokumentar er denne en omhyggeligt velordnet reportage, og den kommer oven i købet et anseligt skridt videre, vokser til et egentligt filmessay (eller tv-essay skulle man måske skrive) om det stærke menneskes møde med rædslen, det reflekterende menneskes møde med den ekstreme katastrofe. Plejdrup skildrer det usentimentalt, men følsomt, personligt og ikke spor nyfigent privat. De to berømte medvirkende er ikke fremstillet som interessante privatpersoner, faktisk heller ikke Jørgen Leth, som jo selvfølgelig fylder meget, begge er udelukkende brugt som dækkende medvirkende i en dokumentarisk overvejelse. Som er Plejdrups.

Dokumentarens afgørende styrke er disse to stærke medvirkende, som begge yder deres professioners allerbedste, embedsmanden Tranum Kristensens klare, beslutsomme rationalitet, digteren og journalisten Jørgen Leths indgribende tøven og voldsomme vrede begrundet i omfattende viden om det ulykkelige og mishandlede Haiti.

Michael Plejdrup: Da jorden skælvede, Danmark 2011. DR Dokumentar. Sendt i aftes på DR1. Genudsendes 21. januar 2011 09:30 og 3. februar 2011 23:30. Michael Plejdrup filmografi: Et liv på kanten, 2010, Da jorden skælvede, 2011. 

Sergei Loznitsa In Lisbon

Loznitsa (b.1964 in USSR (Belarus)) (photo) is one of the gurus at the European film festival circuit. Respected for his film language and for his extraordinary use of archive material. His last film is ”My Joy”, a fiction film, the first in that genre from the director.

IndieLisboa (January 13-16) offers a complete retrospective of the director’s work – apart from the fiction film, 3 feature duration and 8 short documentary films: The retrospective begins with the screening of My Joy, the first fiction and the most recent film of the director. The rest of his 11 films (3 features and 8 short films), all documentaries, produced between 1996 and 2008, will be screened during the four days: Today We Are Going to Build a House (1996), Life, Autumn (1998), The Train Stop (2000), Settlement (2001), Portrait (2002), Landscape (2003), Factory (2004), Blockade (2005), Artel (2006), Northern Light (2008), Revue (2008). The director will be in Lisbon to present and discuss his work.

To get a taste of the style and themes of Sergei Lotnitsa’s film oeuvre, and I use that word, as he is a real auteur, you can visit his own website, a small piece of art in itself. Here you also can find trailers from his work. As you can on the equally excellent site of Institute of Documentary Film (click on the titles).

My personal favourite is ”Blockade” about the 900 days siege of Leningrad during WW2. 3 of his films are available on the vod platform DocAlliance: ”Artel”, ”Landscape” and ”Portrait”.

http://www.loznitsa.com/

http://www.dokweb.net/cs/

http://docalliancefilms.com/director/718-sergej-loznica/

http://www.indielisboa.com/

http://zeroemcomportamento.org/loznitsa/

DR2: En helt almindelig ualmindelig familie

Der er allerede skrevet meget om dette tv-program. Er det rigtigt at sende det nu, hvor en valgkamp er i gang, for det vil kunne gavne statsministerens nyvundne popularitet. Osv. Osv. Her på filmkommentaren vinkles der anderledes. Vi ser ikke alene på hvad , men også på hvordan. Derfor nævner vi som regel i overskriften, hvem der har været instruktør eller tilrettelægger. Det gør vi ikke i dette tilfælde, for der var ingen instruktion eller tilrettelæggelse. Ingen. Krediteringens navn skal ikke frem. Navnebeskyttelse! Fotograferingen var slasket, arkivindslagene var tilfældige, klipningen elendig, der blev hoppet fra sted til sted. Uden idé. Uden struktur. Vi så statsministerens kone og datter blive interviewet, vi så dem rende rundt efter et par hundehvalpe, lave frikadeller, nej, jeg standser her. Det var utåleligt banalt og utåleligt banalt fortalt, klasket sammen er et bedre ord. Lad mig så lige minde om at det banale kan hæves til et kunstnerisk niveau, det har DR selv gjort igen og igen, da der var en DR-Dokumentarafdeling, der turde satse på billedet og billedfortællingen. Med inspiration bl.a. fra de herrer, der stod bag nedenfor nævnte film som ”Primary”.

Jeg har lige læst at Arne Notkin, ansvarlig for DR2, synes at det var en god historie. Jamen, har manden da helt mistet sansen for kvalitet. Eller er han uvidende om tv-dokumentaren, ser han ikke de udmærkede ”Dokumania”er, som bliver bragt på hans kanal. Mediedirektøren Mikael Kamber bør kalde sin kanalchef til kammeratlig samtale.

2011, 25 min. DR2 

Presidential Docs

The trade magazine Realscreen – that calls itself ”the best in non-fiction” – announces the American HBO’s upcoming slate of documentaries. Two interesting documentaries are to be broadcasted, made by well-known documentarians – they deal with JFK and Ronald Reagan.

Veteran Robert Drew launches ”A President to Remember: In the company of John F. Kennedy” that premieres January 20 and is based on footage, among others, from the cinema verité classics ”Primary” (1960) and ”Crisis” (1963). And younger Eugene Jarecki, who made the critical ”The Trial of Henry Kissinger” (2002) and the intelligent ”Why we Fight” (2005) which was characterised as a film about the ”anatomy of the American war machine”, has made a film with the title ”Reagan” to be aired on what would have been the late president’s birthday, February 7.

All mentioned titles are available on dvd’s. Easy to google where to find them.

http://www.drewassociates.net/index.html

http://www.realscreen.com/

http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/