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

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.