A bench in Recoleta

Saturday in Buenos Aires. Sunshine. Spring has come to the wonderful city of Argentina. We (my wife and I) have just come back from some days in Chile. I met filmmakers who are going to DOKLeipzig and to idfa. The Chileans want to tell the world that they are making documentaries. For that purpose the Ministry of Culture has granted funds to send delegations to the two big festivals and markets coming up in September and November. The Chilean documentary has been and still is dealing with the atrocities committed through the Pinochet dictatorship, the shadow of a nation, but there are also other and more current issues being dealt with. I left with a bag full of dvds and projects. And with a very pleasant impression of a country that had Pablo Neruda and Salvador Allende and still has a colourful Pacific Ocean Valparaiso. With Patricio Guzman as the father of Chilean documentary. “The Battle of Chile”, a masterpiece.

Back to Buenos Aires and the sunshine and to the walking in the city on the last day before the loooong journey back to Europe, 17 hours before Copenhagen. We wanted to have lunch at the Lola restaurant where we had dined before, wonderful place in the Recoleta area. I booked a table for 2pm, and we went out and sat in the sun the two of us. I phoned Rodrigo Vila, the organiser of DOCMeeting Argentina and thanked him for his generosity, and told him that he should rest with his family and not care about us.

That proved to be totally wrong… Having finished the phone call, I got up and saw that my bag with computer, passports and expensive glasses, and calendar and notes for several films to be written about on this blog was gone!!! Stolen, simply while we were sun-enjoying. Rodrigo Vila arrived and was our saving angel – in a bit more than two hours we had made a police report, had passport photos taken and had been to the Danish embassy, where we were kind of robbed again: 1100 US dollars for two passports, price for opening the embassy on a saturday! Unfortunately Buenos Aires is going that way, said Vila, an incident like this happens every bloody day.

A day in the life of a film consultant! 

Peter Kerekes: Cooking History

The Danish audience, at least the one in Copenhagen, centralised Danish cultural policy, but that is another story, will have the possibility to watch one of the most awarded and spoken about documentaries from the recent years, “Cooking History” by Slovak Peter Kerekes. The film is number two (after “Last Train Home”) after the launching of “Documentary of the Month” by the Danish Film Institute. The film has been reviewed and “career-followed” on this site. The director will attend the opening screening in Copenhagen.

www.dfi.dk

Jakob Rosenkrands: Jagten på de røde lejesvende/3

Historien sluttede overraskende underfundigt. Jagten på de røde lejesvende lykkedes. Til sidst blev deres topbeskyttere Nissen og Knudsen smidt ud. Den nye direktion kunne fotograferes som ”gruppebillede uden dame” som en af de nye så morsomt kunne udtrykke det. De blå lejesvende havde overtaget DR, om dette slutspil handlede 3. og sidste del. Men de blå fra CBS og omegn har måske sejret ad helvede til over de røde fra RUC og omegn. Det kunne Hjort Frederiksen nøgternt ironisk notere på sin måde ved at indse, at i dag er et folkeoplysende program utænkeligt i prime time. Alt der er nu underholdning. Jakob Rosenkrands lyttede sig nysgerrigt og undrende frem til historiens morale. En dokumentarisk bedrift.

Jakob Rosenkrands: Jagten på de røde lejesvende, 3. del DR2 søndag aften. Net-tv her. 

Documental del mes

… means ”Documentary of the Month” and is a strong film-cultural initiative for the distribution of creative documentaries for the audiences in around 40 cities of Catalunya, Comunitat Valenciana, Illes Balears and other Spanish cities. Since May 2009, The Documentary of the Month crossed the Catalan and Spanish borders and started its incursion in Latin America. Thanks to MEDIA’s European Union project support, 3 theatres in Santiago de Chile opened. This is the beginning of a healthy relationship between Europe and Latin America. And this is history as I can witness here from Santiago de Chile

… where I meet the organiser of screenings that now take place in 14 theatres – 4 in Chile, 7 in Argentina and 3 in Uruguay. Her name is Alexandra Galvis and she proudly told me about the success of the screening of the poignant film by Nicolas Entel, “Sins of My Father” (Photo), that features Sebastian Marroquin, son of the gangster Pablo Escobar, in a reconciliation process with the sons of the fathers that were killed by his father. The film sold 2356 tickets in Montevideo in 4 weeks, a huge number for a documentary in the capital of Uruguay. The biggest hit in Chile so far is the film by Peter Greenaway, “Rembrandt’s j’accuse”, that still runs, also in Buenos Aires where more than 2000 has watched the British master’s work.

Documentaries selection is decided by Parallel40 in Barcelona. I work for the company that is also responsible for DOCSBarcelona.

http://www.eldocumentaldelmes.com/en/documentals.html

http://www.pecadosdemipadre.tv/english/publish/preloader.html (excellent site with clips)

http://www.petergreenaway.info/

www.docsbarcelona.com

DOK Leipzig/2

The festival has a fine offer for – taken from the presse release – ”all those who are so excited they can hardly contain themselves. They can now (re)discover outstanding, award-winning filme even before the festival is underway! From 12 to 17 October the winners of the Golden Dove for the best full-length documentary film of the last five years are available for viewing free of charge on our vod-platform”. Address below. A generosity that comes from the high-quality cooperation DocAlliance.

Last year’s winner: ”The Arrivals” by Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard, France. PHOTO

www.docalliancefilms.com

DOK Leipzig/1

Breathless is the word that characterises the feeling you get when you browse through the site of the upcoming DOK Leipzig programme that was published a couple of days ago. 12 cinemas, more than 300 films to choose from, lots of so-called industry events (debates, masterclasses (one with Sergey Dvortsevoy!), pitching of projects, a digitalised videotheque), and awards that represent 71.000€!

What can be done on this site is to mention those films that filmkommentaren.dk have already written about and/or reviewed. On the top of quality comes ”48” (PHOTO) by Portuguese Susana de Sousa Dias, that we saw at Cinema du Réel this year (Grand Prix), ”Steam of Life” by Finnish Joonas Berghäll and Mika Hotakainen, ”12 Angry Lebanese” by Zeina Daccache from Lebanon (seen at DoxBox in Damascus), Latvian ”Sounds under the Sun” by Davis Simanis and Gints Grube, ”Into Eternity” by Danish Michael Madsen (Best Nordic documentary at Nordisk Panorama a couple of days ago and several other prizes), ”All that Glitters” by Tomas Kudrna, ”Armadillo” by Janus Metz, ”Dream in Copenhagen” by Max Kestner (both Danish), ”Freetime Machos” by Finnish Mika Ronkainen, ”Something about Georgia” by Nino Kirtadze, ”The Player” by Dutch John Appel, ”Themerson & Themerson” by Polish Viktoria Szymanska and ”My Life with Carlos” by German Berger.

So… those of you who visit the festival could start reading what we wrote about these films… The festival runs from October 18-24.

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/v2/cms/en/home/page92.html

Peteris Krilovs: Deconstruction of an artist

The great art documentary film about avantgarde pioneer photomontagist and Stalinist propagandagist Gustavs Klucis, mentioned and presented on this site several times during the last couple of years, has received the first prize of the 40 year old International Film Festival of Fine Arts in Tisza, Hungary in the documentary category. The film about the Latvian artist who lived and died in the USSR, is produced by Uldis Cekulis, Vides Film Studio.

http://www.tiszamozi.hu/

Eva Stefani: The Box

Want to see, for free, one of the most charming and creative documentaries from the first decade of 2000? You can do so by very simply making a click on the website of idfa.tv. Here is the description of the film of Eva Stefani, a totally independent filmmaker from Greece:

While unearthing an icon of the Holy Madonna in her small apartment, an elderly Greek woman sighs that she is in the inevitable winter of her life. She studies a textbook of the French language, which she used to have a thorough command of, but unfortunately let slide. She hardly reads anymore, either, which she thinks rather stupid of herself. Her window on the world is her television, which she briskly comments on. The bleach-blond anchor woman is very sharp, but her favourite is newsreader Niko. She addresses him as if he were her roommate and cannot keep her hands off the screen. He excites her even more than the fighter jets, volcanic eruptions, protesters, politicians, friendly Turks and black athletes that are the items of Niko’s newscast. THE BOX is a reflection in miniature format about old age and one-way communication in our media-dominated society.

Greece, 2004, 11 mins.

http://www.idfa.nl/industry/Festival/news/latest_news/07-09-10-three-new-films-online-on-idfa-tv.aspx

Jakob Rosenkrands: Jagten på de røde lejesvende/2

Den fælde vores gamle helte, de røde lejesvende falder i, er ikke opstillet af Rosenkrands, men er mere noget i deres person, der i situationen aktiveres, skriver her til morgen en jeg kender i en sms. Vi så jo del 2 i aftes. Og ja, sådan er det nok, tænker jeg. Det er jo det dokumentarfilmen kan. Fordi den interesserer sig for mere i scenen end den medvirkendes udsagn i sætninger. Tv-journalisten plejer ellers at klippe, når sætningen er færdig uanset, hvad der sker i billedet. Filminstruktøren i sin tradition stoler derimod på sit billede og lader det stå til lige før, det mister intensitet og dør af sig selv. Rosenkrands går filmisk til det og de stærkeste momenter i aftes var to sådanne steder.

Bjørn Erichsen har engang i gamle, gamle dage undervist i historie på en højskole i Østtyskland. Danske unge politisk engagerede var elever på sommerkursus i en skole, deres organisation, DKU vistnok, havde lånt. Det var og er formodentlig helt lovligt. Men havde nogen i DDR (en statslig eller poiitisk organisation) betalt Erichsens rejse, ophold og lommepenge? Rosenkrands’ spørgsmål falder nysgerrigt, præcist og venligt. Og Erichsen forbløffes over den lille detalje: “..lommepenge, lommepenge.. jeg kan ærlig talt ikke huske det.” Og det er også lige meget. Det kan han jo ikke dømmes på. Men det dermed længe fastholdte billede skildrer ham som et menneske i denne lille tvivl. Smukt, smukt. Og lader mig ane, at sådan er dette menneske også i større tvivlsspørgsmål. Forvirret først, så undrende, prøvende i et forsøg på at være ærlig.

Tvivlen er mere klædelig end skråsikkerheden. Smilet, latteren, overbærenheden med sig selv dengang mere sund end den rigide fastholden. Ja, personligheden folder sig ud for mig under den lange filmscene, jeg ser den som levende eller som forkrampet. Og det er den eksistentelle erfaring, som hurtigt sætter det med lommepengene i skygge. Det er scenen jeg husker her, ikke oplysningen. Det er billedet som afslører: sådan ser en rød lejesvend ud, når han falder i sin personligheds fælde: ret menneskelig ser han ud. Det er godt nok et spændende teater, Rosenkrands her har iscenesat. Og så var der jo en scene mere i aftes! Den sidste. Kjeld Koplev var i stolen..

Jakob Rosenkrands: Jagten på de røde lejesvende, DR2, 2010.

DOC Meeting Argentina/3

There were 24 film projects to be pitched to the panel of tv representatives, see below. And on top of that the organisers had reserved two mornings, where another 40 projects and their producers/directors could have one-to-one meetings with tv commissioners and buyers as well as sales agents. They made it work, quite a mathematic puzzle, Rodrigo Vila and his staff. Quite impressive – and they want to make DOC Meeting the biggest and most important market meeting place for documentarians in Latin America. I can’t see why they should not succeed with their competence and energy.

Back to the projects (sorry can only mention a handful of them, check the website) which were indeed quite as diverse as the many kind of subjects for documentaries which exist. It was joyful to hear about and watch a clip with ”Violeiros du Grotoes” by Brasilian couple Mario de Aratanha and Jeanne Duarte about the 10-string guitar and its arrival to Brasil with the Portuguese, a film that first of all will be about the legends and stories linked to the instrument. Also about music, but from a social angle is the Argentinian ”The Other Colon Theatre Art and Social Transformation” by Adolfo Cabanchik, who has shot 90% of his film that gives you emotional strong portraits of children from poor areas, who got an identity and a better life because of music. The best pitch award, however, a nice bottle of champagne, was deservedly given to Eliza Capai from Brasil. For six months she had been travelling Africa, on her own, bringing back stunning moving images to make into two versions (54 and 70 mins.) for the film ”African Women”.

Original in approach is the film proposal of Agustina Macri, ”Carnacalypse”, in which she wants to investigate, in a fake-documentary style, what could happen if there was no more meat in Argentina! The director goes for a feature length documentary to be produced by Fly Films in Buenos Aires. One of the most praised proposals was the ballet film by Juan Alvarez, presented by himself and the producer Virginia Bogliolo, both from Montevideo in Uruguay. The film is about Julio Bocca, world famous dancer, who has retired and dedicates his working life to the renaissance of ”an old forgotten National Ballet theatre”. The clip that was shown demonstrated an unusual director talent. Finally time to mention the presence of Finnish Kimmo Koskela about the artist Kimmo Pohjonen and his ”Ice Bellows”. Contrary to what many thought, including this blogger, the cinematic quality and the origiality of the artist convinced several panelists that they had to get involved even if the project is as far away from main stream television as it can be.

http://www.cineviola.com.br/

http://elizacapai.com/about/mais-dela/

www.flyfilms.com.ar

http://www.koskela.tv/home_koskela_art_media_ house_production_production_service.html

http://www.docmeeting.com.ar/english.php