Jacob Jørgensen og Henrik Lundø: Olafur Eliasson

Jacob Jørgensen og Henrik Lundø laver beundrende, imponerede og loyale film om ophøjede personligheder som Erik Reitzel, Dronning Margrethe, H. C. Andersen, Henning Larsen og mange, mange flere. Og nu altså Olafur Eliasson. Og det skal de gøre, og det skal de blive ved med. Deres film glæder mange. Rigtig mange.

Jeg blev imidlertid skuffet over Eliasson filmen. Og kom til at tænke, at også inden for Jørgensens og Lundøs koncept, eller plan, eller smag, inden for deres ambition må der være nogle overordnede krav til emnets fokus, til indsigtens dybde, til karakterens udvikling, til klippets musikalitet og egenfortælling.

Jeg blev så skuffet, fordi filmens fokus, som for eksempel kunne være blevet ved Hudsonflodens vandfald og deres fortælling, flakker til andre af Eliassons mange projekter, til lidt antydet biografi og til noget sentimentalt privatlivs indblik. Skuffet, fordi dybden i hans gennemgående monolog og samtaler konstant svigtes til fordel for en omklamrende forklaren og forklaren tilsat lidt moraliserende didaktik. Skuffet, fordi den berømte hovedperson, skønt hele tiden aktivt tænkende kunstner, i filmens story line står fuldstændig stille i et låst ikke-karisma. Lidt træt, faktisk. Jeg blev skuffet, fordi klipningen uden retning flakker fra dit til dat og fortaber sig i gentagelse og limen sig pinagtig fast til scener, som forlængst har tabt indhold og gnist, en klipning, som i filmens sidste tredjedel bare tynder ud og tynder ud, uden jeg mærker det som konstruktionsbestemt diminuendo.

Men er man i forvejen optaget af Ofafur Eliassons person, arbejde og shows, skal man bestemt se Jørgensens og Lundøs film. Den er sympatisk, venlig, høflig og loyal. Og den er formodenlig blevet fuldstændig, som de ville have den. De er dygtige og meget, meget erfarne, de to. 

http://www.jjfilm.dk/index.php?lang_id=1

EDN Online Interviews for Professionals

This is first of all information for those of our readers who are active filmmakers and producers. Given to you by someone who worked in EDN (European Documentary Network) from the beginning in 1996 until 2005, so I am totally biased when I give you this promotional text:

You should become a member of EDN and thus be able to access information that could be important in your daily work. For instance about where to go if you look for funding for your film. Eventually you could consult the EDN Financing Guide or you could take part in the excellent online interviews that are conducted by staff member Ove Rishøj Jensen and which are solely available for members. There have been sessions with Osnat Eden-Fraiman from YesDocu in Israel, Martin Pieper from ZDF/arte, Andrew Golding from SBS Australia (yesterday) – and in the beginning of June you can meet Ahmed Mahfouz Nouh from Aljazeera Documentary Channel and Simon Kilmurry from the renowned American PBS slot called POV.

Non-members can – for free – read the news brought by EDN on the site:

www.edn.dk

A Nordic ARTE?

Under the headline “Nordic ‘arte’ Channel Closer to a “Go””, the excellent newsletter FkN Newsletter, published by Filmkonakt Nord (in English, free subscription) gives hope for quality television:

The talks of establishing of a joint Nordic TV channel based on the model of the bilingual French-German channel ARTE, are getting more concrete. The plan has attracted serious attention in the Nordic countries, and a working group has been set up by the Nordic Council’s Culture and Education Committee to work on a solution. The parliamentarians are inviting the Nordic film- and TV-industry and the Nordic public service TV-stations to take part in talks about a possible collaboration in the establishment of a cultural channel. Ultimately, the decision on whether to establish a Nordic Culture channel will be taken by the governments of the Nordic countries.

http://fknsite.adnuvo.com/fkn-140/#c7

All Norwegian Screens Digitised in 2011

Filmkommentaren.dk has recently written about the digital plans for documentaries in Lithuania and Denmark. Now a piece of text taken from the newsletter of Filmkontakt (see above) demonstrates that some countries also have throughts for the screening of films, at least Norway does:

In just one year, all cinemas in Norway will be ready for digital screenings and equipped with 2K or 4K projectors. As one of few countries in the world, Norway has closed deals with six major Hollywood studios for digital screenings. According to the industry organisation for Norwegian cinemas, Film & Kino, the conversion of all of Norway’s cinemas to digital will be the world’s first national non-commercial digital cinema rollout.

Since 2006, Film & Kino has supported two digital pilot projects concerning 33 cinemas all over Norway. Som cinemas and institutions have made individual investments in digital equipment, and the experience from the pilot projects has been decisive for the successful digital rollout. 30 cinemas will have a 4K Sony projector, which is the standard required by the big Hollywood studios to show their films digitally. The digitisation process will begin this June in 37 theatres in Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim and will run until April next year.

For more information, see Film & Kino’s website.

http://fknsite.adnuvo.com/fkn-140/#c7

carlthdreyer.dk

Sorry, your English language blogger goes national again… but he has to tell you that from today a website on the most esteemed Danish film director ever, Carl Th. Dreyer (1889-1968), is available. Go to the site address and check it out, and you will find an enormous amount of material to study further, collected and edited by clever people at the Danish Film Museum, one of the sections of DFI, the Danish Film Institute: articles, portraits, scripts, working method, workplaces – and clips and shorts and films about the director who made 14 features and 8 shorts. The English version of the site is not yet totally completed – as it is written: “we hope to see you again in a few days for the entire experience”.

Nevertheless, visit the site as it is now. I am sure that you will agree with me – educated a librarian in the last century – that this is an amazing piece of film historical work for film buffs all over. Words, documentation, articles, clips and full films. Use it!

Waiting for Godard

Our Paris correspondent has previously (search Godard) dedicated a posting to the one and only JLG, Jean-Luc Godard, whose ”Film Socialisme” was screened in Cannes. I found this clip from an overall festival article by Jason Solomons, The Observer, May 23:

The real gem wasn’t in competition but in the more experimental (and this year, dull) Un Certain Regard selection and it came from the grand master of the filmic game, Jean-Luc Godard, or JLG as he’s now known, like some kind of perfume (a whiff of bitterness, with top notes of genius).

Helped with production by fashionista Agnes B and using words (“textos”) credited to J Derrida, W Benjamin, S Beckett and W Shakespeare, among others, 79-year-old JLG’s avowed final work Film Socialisme was the freshest, coolest thing I saw, bursting with a new wave of anger and vitality, retooling once again the visual language of cinema.

Shot in astounding, crisp HD, it’s a fragmented collage of ideas and thoughts, beautifully pure graphics, scratched Dolby sounds and twisted images. He even plays with the convention of subtitles, merely placing English words along the bottom of the frame: “smile dismiss universe” or “destructive constructive”. At one point, a girl at a petrol station refuses “to talk to anyone who uses the verb to be”. Then a llama appears behind her. You want story? Forget it, but there’s plenty of meaning here as Godard swipes at European history, Palestine, Jews, bankers and the futility of language and the strictures of time. As the final credits simply say: NO COMMENT – and the old man didn’t show up for his Cannes press conference.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/may/23/cannes-godard-frears-loach

Lithuania: Classical Documentaries to be Digitized

Good news from one the most interesting countries for documentary cinema, Lithuania, whose post-independence documentaries have been and are awarded everywhere. Names like Sharunas Bartas, Audrius Stonys, Arunas Matelis, Rimantas Gruodis, Janina Lapinskaite and Giedre Beinoriute (photo from her 2005 film, Vulkanovka) do all owe their cinemaric skills to a grand tradition that now also soon may be shared by their fellow countrymen and film buffs elsewhere. Read the following:  

At the beginning of May, the Lithuanian Central State Archive started implementing a 30-month project called Lithuanian Documentaries on the Internet. The Archive has received support of approx. EUR 2.8 million from the EU. Digitization and online accessibility will help to preserve some 1000 titles that are part of Lithuanian documentary heritage.

The Lithuanian documentary heritage is not equally accessible to all Lithuanian people nor to the wider EU and world communities because few people can physically visit the Archive and use its documents. The project is oriented toward the creation, expansion and promotion of Lithuanian digital Internet content to users. During the project the Archive expects to digitize and transfer to the Internet 1000 titles of Lithuanian documentaries, created in the period 1919-1960. After the implementation of this project Lithuanian documentaries and information about them will be easily accessible. Every user would have the possibility to search digitized films and their metadata, to watch these films or to order digital film copies. Digitised Lithuanian national film heritage will be protected and preserved for current and future generations and knowledge of it will be available via the Internet for all possible users worldwide.

http://www.lfc.lt/en/

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

http://www.europeanfilmgateway.eu/news.php?area=News&pag=121

Z. Mirkovic: The Long Road Through Balkan History

… and it is a road movie that talented Zeljko Mirkovic has made. Informative and done in an unpretentious way, this tv documentary takes the viewer from Austria in the North to the border between Macedonia and Greece in the South. On the road are two writers, Miljenko Jergović from Croatia (in the driver’s seat) and Marko Vidojkovic from Serbia. They drive in a Yugo, the most popular car during the existence of Yugoslavia. Big men in a small car that breaks down a couple of times during the trip through Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia. A comedy frame to a subject-wise serious documentary.

They go to Bleiburg, where partisans in 1945 massacred thousands of fleeing ustashes – the Croatian, anti-Yugoslav fascist separatist movement. They go to Zagreb, talk to president Mesic about different issues including the eventual (impossible?) return of Serb citizens of Croatia to their homeland. They visit the birthplace of Tito as well as his mausoleum. They talk to different historians. Go to Vukovar, to witness the scars from the civil war. And to Belgrade to talk to, among others, writer and politician Vuk Draskovic to end up in Macedonia, where the population is said to be either Antic Macedonian or Slavic Macedonian.

It feels a bit too long, although it is all very lightly conveyed and informative, with short archive glimpses, and at a general level so also beginners of Balkan history will get something out of it. Must be good for education as well.

Serbia, 2010. 58 mins. (85 mins. film-version exists as well)

http://www.seetv-exchanges.com/code/navigate.php?Id=435

Janus Metz: Armadillo/5

The news agency AFP reports tonight from CANNES: A controversial Danish movie set in Afghanistan and a first feature from a Vietnamese director on Thursday scooped awards in Cannes’ Critics Week section…

“Armadillo”, about the growing cynicism and adrenaline addiction of young soldiers in the battlefield, won the top prize for Janus Metz. Shot on the Afghan front, it is the first documentary ever chosen to compete for the Critics’ Week prize. Described as a journey into soldiers’ minds, the movie made wars on the home front this week after showing Danish troops claiming to have “liquidated” Taleban fighters wounded in combat. The army has called for an inquiry after parliamentarians who saw it this week dubbed it “Denmark’s Vietnam.”

Janus Metz: Armadillo/4

Sund fornuft sejrede: ARMADILLO FÅR PREMIERE DEN 27. MAJ – 6 UGER FØR PLANLAGT. Klip fra pressemeddelelse: Siden den overvældende modtagelse ved verdenspremieren på filmfestivalen i Cannes har Armadillo været omtalt massivt i både danske og internationale medier. Filmen har fået omfattende ros og har sat gang i en ny debat om krigen i Afghanistan, men endnu er det kun danske pressefolk og udvalgte politikere der rent faktisk har set filmen. “Efter den massive mediedækning skylder vi danskerne, at de også selv får mulighed for at tage stilling til filmen – og ikke blot få andres holdning præsenteret gennem medierne. Derfor har vi valgt at sende filmen i biografen så hurtigt som muligt”, udtaler instruktør Janus Metz.

Filmkommentaren.dk (see below), and many others, found it stupid that the film Armadilo was set to premiere by July 8 at a moment where the Danish and foreign media praised the film and debated the Danish involvement in the war in Afghanistan. That has now been changed, of course, so the Danes can see the film. Premiere in a week, May 27.