Tafaseel-mag.net

A new, very interesting, well edited documentary web magazine, tafaseel-mag.net, published by Syrian filmmakers and festival organisers of Dox Box has been launched. No.1 includes a lot of interesting articles and comments and reviews and news, that I am looking forward to read further, as it opens to Middle Eastern and Arabic documentary matters, not very well known.

Here is the editorial of the magazine written by director and producer and festival organiser Orwa Nyrabia (PHOTO):

It is easy and predictable to romanticize the launch of a magazine for the documentary in a region where circa 350M people live, and make a smaller number of films a year than the 5M living in a small country like Denmark. Some of the world’s richest countries are part of this region, hundreds; if not thousands; of television channels are targeting it, yet, local/regional production is limited to soap operas, and most of the time satisfied enough with dubbing international productions and making regional hits out of them.

TAFASEEL is about trying to understand this odd situation, in details…

… and pushing against such a dim status quo.

In our region today, thoughts of ‘Survival of the fittest’ are the trend, and many cultural bodies and operators are defending the ‘Diplomacy of Culture’ where what is courageous and daring becomes a risk, where a tender and sleek kind of culture is encouraged, all that in a region where ‘capital’ and ‘conservatism’ are growing up together, leaving the ‘non-conservative’ no matter of what kind, out of the financing circles.

Doc-makers, and their subjects, are not the fittest, they are the enemies of diplomacy, they are the ones who cannot be politically-correct, the ones who know that ‘correctness’ is nothing but a tool of oppression and formatting, and they are certainly not conservative. It would be enough to see the ‘documentary’ conservatives are making to know that they come from another reality, with different ethics and remote perceptions.

Documentary Films get made because of an intriguing, and sometimes painful, blend of love and hate, to one’s own life, society, country, world… and for that, it is an art of bravery, even when it seems to be different from that.

TAFASEEL comes today to defend the documentary, as a cultural critical attitude towards the world, as an art, a free form of self expression and also as a possible industry. Defending documentary involves promoting it, but does not involve being diplomatic. It is about development of an art and an industry, a development we believe is crucial to a wider development: that of the human condition.

TAFASEEL will try to keep a ‘different’ style of writing and reporting, which is that of a filmmaker. The articles of TAFASEEL will be written for a filmmaker reader, a director, producer, cinematographer, editor… whether experienced or aspiring.

TAFASEEL will try to present the world of documentary in Arabic, and the documentary in the Arab world in English, and will also build an Arab world filmmaker’s angle towards what is happening in the world of documentary.

TAFASEEL will never be a complete work, it is naturally a continuous work in progress, open to suggestions, to opinions, and to development, with every new issue.

Please be generous with your critique of it, as that is the only way to make it better.

DocLisboa

… is one the best progrqmmed festivals in Europe. The 2010 edition goes from October 14-24 and has several interesting film historical highlights parallel to the international and Portuguese sections. The directors who are presented to the local and international audience are Joris Ivens, Marcel Ophuls and Joergen Leth. Which means that films like “Histoire du vent” (Ivens), “Le chagrin et la pitié” (Ophuls) and “66 Scenes from America” (Leth) will be made available. The widow of Ivens, Marceline Loridan, and Leth will attend the festival to give masterclasses. Also to be noticed is a tribute to Swiss documentaries that includes the masterpiece of Peter Mettler, “Gambling, Gods and LSD” (PHOTO).

www.doclisboa.org

MK2 + la Cinematheque

Our Paris correspondent, Sara Thelle, has already written about Film Socialisme by Jean Luc Godard, and her article was one of the reasons that I, with great expectations and huge pleasure, went to see the film in MK2 Beaubourg, where it still runs at one of those fine late morning screenings, once per week, that is practised by the chain of cinemas of Marin Karmitz (MK). My friend and I left the cinema in complete agreement on the quality and playfulness of the latest work of the old man, who has not stopped challenging the film language in a film that has many layers and reflections, and is serious and full of humour at the same time.

At such a good mood we left the Beaubourg quartier heading for Bercy, to la Cinematheque Francaise, to watch the exhibition “Brune et Blonde” that has just opened and runs in the French capital until January 6 2011. Film history, the stars and their hair, clips from films back to the silent movie, brilliantly edited and displayed, supplemented by paintings by, among others, Paul Delvaux, and photos by, among others, Man Ray. But the main attraction was, without any doubt, the clip scenes, where many evoked wonderful memories like Silvana Mangano in the classic “Rice Girl” (PHOTO), in her sensual, seducing dance. Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, her sister Francoise Dorleac, Ingrid Bergman, Julia Andrews, Penelope Cruz… For the exhibition a series of short films had been made; the one of Abbas Kiarostami with a little girl, who is asked to let her hair be cut, she thinks about it, hesitates for a moment, but says no, and hesitates again when she is asked to cut the hair of her friend – a master’s work, go and watch it, well go and take an hour or two in the exhibition to have your film history evoked, open for blonds and brunettes.

DOK Leipzig: Caucasian Lessons

The upcoming festival in Leipzig (October 18-24) has an interesting retrospective with films from the conflict zone in Caucasia. Here is the site introduction text:

“Eight programmes with some twenty films will give you sufficient opportunity to deal with a transit and conflict zone between Europe and Asia, between the old world order and a new region. Political stories from Georgia, the clash of traditional and post-modern lifestyles in Armenia, archaic culture and crazy poets from Azerbaijan. The focus is also on the battle in the media around the events in Southern Ossetia, the search for terrorists in Dagestan as well as the war-torn countryside in Nagorno-Karabakh, where the effects of the conflict are still felt. And finally: Figures of loss – the disintegration is omnipresent.”

A couple of the films have been reviewed or noted here: Georgian Salome Jashi’s ‘The Leader is always Right‘ , Nino Kartidze’s propaganda piece ‘Something about Georgia‘ , ‘The Last Tightrope Dancer‘ by Inna Sahakyan and ‘A Story about People in War and Peace‘ by Vardan Hovhannisyan – the two latter from Armenia. Not written about, but seen at Baltic Sea Forum is the shocking film by Andrei Nekrasov, ‘Russian Lessons‘ (PHOTO), that I would need to watch again before writing about a film that is more controversial than the rest of the programme. Nekrasov, Russian, has been threatened to death for this film, in Russia, whereas he is said to be a hero in Georgia in his description of the recent war.

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