Boris Mitic: Goodbye, How are You?

A special treat for those of us who have access to Swedish television, SVT2, that tonight at 8pm shows one of the most original Serbian documentaries from the last years. With repeats Saturday April 17 at 11.20 am, and Tuesday April 20 at 11.15 pm. This is the review that was written for this blog:

It is one of those films where you are attracted by the visual and the tone of the film and the words, in other words by the film, and still feel like you want to watch and listen again. Because you did not get it all. Being a chaptered film essay of highest originality, with funny playful captions, you can actually do your re-view by clicking your remote control. To pick the chapters. And you can visit the (also) rich website to get on your screen the aphorisms. Simply to read what you heard.

I say so because it is a difficult film for someone from outside of Serbia and ex-Yugoslavia to fully recognise and sense the constant dialogue between image and words. Much is archive from places and demonstrations, and conflict and war situations. Also from today, also from Kosovo, but also here you have to give up sometimes as you dont have the references in your visual memory. At the same time as the images and the tone and the words keep your attention the whole way through.

Nevertheless, let me skip the eternal (Nordic?) rational wish to understand everything… there is so much to discover in this ambitious journey in absurdity and subtlety where you are taken by the hand by a ”me”, the voice of an old man, who is summarising his life and talks about his friend and about the duels he would love to have. With other people and with himself. My Serbian language knowledge does not exist but the voice of the old man sets me in the mood of laughing of what is being said and what I watch. But not only laughing. There is also a sadness, a sad wisdom I would call it, from the writers and philosophers, who have inspired director Boris Mitic for making this clever satirical catalogue of image & words. It took him ”4 years of travelling 50.000 km along Balkan side roads to make 400 shots” for a story and a visualisation to which there is but one thing to say: Good Day, I am fine. I saw your film. I feel it like I do when I have seen a play of Samuel Beckett. Provoked and entertained in a creative way. Want to see it again. Bravo!

Serbia, 2009, 60 mins.  

http://www.dribblingpictures.com

Underground Films

Indiepix, American distributor of independent films, including documentaries and experimental titles, offer their films to be bought as a dvd, to be downloaded to your own computer (pc and mac) or to be viewed as a vod (video on demand). For reasonable prices. You can subscribe – for free – to their newsletter from where I have taken the following text:

In the wake of WWII, with the advent of portable cameras, the world of filmmaking exploded beyond the bounds of the moneyed Hollywood studio system. Filmmakers no longer had to seek approval – or funding – to make their visions a reality. Hell, you didn’t even need training, just a camera and a dream (dream occasionally optional). Filmmakers such as Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger and Stan Brakhage created countless films in the 1940s and 50s that tested the limits of the medium in subject matter, style and narrative continuity. In addition to garnering praise abroad from the new Wave filmmakers in France such as François Truffaut, Morris Engel’s low-fi Little Fugitive also became the first independent film to be nominated for an Oscar in 1953. In the 1960s and 70s, brothers George and Mike Kuchar added an absurdist, kitschy sense of humor to their short films showing that just becuase it’s arty, doesn’t mean it has to take itself seriously. Freed from the profit-and-loss constraints of procuring Hollywood backers, these new low-fi, no-budget filmmakers were able to take film out of the realm of entertainment and turn it into an art form. PHOTO: Jonas Mekas.

And if you’re in the New York area, the new documentary, It Came From Kuchar, is screening this week at Anthology Film Archives! Tickets are available through the IndiePix Box Office. We hope to see you there!

http://www.indiepixfilms.com/collection/underground-films?ref=NEWSLETTER

Visions du Réel Nyon 1

The important documentary film festival in Nyon, Switzerland takes off in two days, April 15 and goes on to April 21. As usual a huge programme is offered, an emphasis is put on the authored documentary, a strong collaboration with and influence from the European cultural channel arte is visible, workshops will take place, a market will be filled up with buyers, and feature length documentaries will be pitched. The festival has all the elements.

Also for creating a debate, I hope! Big surprise it is for me to see that the film of Nino Kirtadzé, “Something about Georgia” has been chosen for the international competition. I saw the film at the premiere in Tbilisi and wrote about it on this site. Here is some of my hard criticism: … big disappointment, I have to say. Pure propaganda for the politics of the president Saakhasvili, who according to this film has no opposition in his country… Propaganda, yes, and it could be ok, of course documentaries should have a standpoint, a personal view…

… but this new film of Kirtadzé film is unbalanced in film style, focus and narration. The start makes the viewer think that we will get close to the president. We don’t really, we don’t get an impression of him. The film then  introduces the theme Georgia-Europe and we see loads of sequences where diplomats and politicians meet to discuss, most of it journalistic material as if we were watching the news on television. This is made to explain the political development before and during the war, and after with Europe as the one to blame for inactivity towards Russia and Russian aggression. Kirtadzé tries to involve ”the ordinary Georgian” and their reactions, but in most cases it does not really work, as she wants to go back to ”big politics” and the president and his opinions. The director had the conclusion of her film in her head before filming, her narration is set up to prove her point of view. This is not the way to make documentaries!

To check if my understanding of the film was totally wrong, I talked to several film people in Georgia, who previously have praised Kirtadzé as a fine filmmaker. They were more than shocked over the film, and told me that even people in the entourage of the President found it too much and totally unbalanced and political naïve.

Four other films from the international competition have been reviewed or noted on this site: Volker Koepp: Berlin-Stettin (a mature, clever personal historical film), Sergio Basso: Giallo à Milano (bravo for taking this very talented impression from Italian Chinatown),  Michael Madsen: Into Eternity (the best new doc from Denmark for a long time, a clever film and surprising in its narrative), Pavel Kostomarov: Together (a brilliant cameraman turns into a fine director with this intense and original love story).

http://www.visionsdureel.ch/en

Visions du Réel Nyon 2

Festival director Jean Perrret leaves the festival after this edition. Here are his fine words of goodbye: It is comforting to feel the quietness emanated again by the films selected for this 16th edition of Visions du Réel. Not that they are slow,  oh no, some of them are very fast-moving in the way they tell stories! They convey a different experience which documentary filmmakers share with their spectators when they – filmmakers – take time to cast their gaze and focus their attention on the faces, landscapes, voices and din of the world. This film genre is comforting when the real world takes shape thus in its exciting complexity. It is exhilarating to share with the audiences these visions that reflect the extraordinary diversity of genres, scripts and viewpoints. Nearly 2,000 films have been viewed by the members of the Working Group, which is made up of specialists hired to spot the most striking films, to write the texts of the Catalogue and to moderate debates and meetings. At a time when the conditions under which films made by independent directors can assert their identity are deteriorating in terms of production and distribution,

the 2010 Programme is an exemplary illustration of fierce and stubborn resistance to run-of-the-mill audiovisual fare.

It is impressive for us to have taken the decision to step down from the Management of Visions du Réel this year when we can share in the extraordinary success that we feel entitled to claim. At the same time we know we owe that success to the filmmakers and producers and film professionals and public- and private-sector financial partners and film-goers and partners of all cultures, along with other accomplices, who have placed their trust in us for 16 years. To them we say, quite simply and with true gratitude, thank you. It is reassuring that the Nyon International Film Festival is this year opening a new film theatre for its viewers, since the future is theirs. Tomorrow a new director will be able to give these Visions the momentum they need to continue this adventure: to usher in the privileged era of a Visions du Réel entirely committed to depicting the radiant beauty and convulsive unsightliness of a world in search of authentic narratives.
Jean Perret, Director

Photo: Together by Pavel Kostomarov.

http://www.visionsdureel.ch/en

Ripping Reality

The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival (April 29 – May 9) has introduced an interesting category in this year’s festival programme: Ripping Reality. Ten films have been chosen that in each their own way have added something new to the documentary genre in the last decade. I was asked to give my point of view on this and listed 10 Eastern and Central European works that are close to my heart and demonstrates originality and innovative strength. The Hot Doc people, led by festival director Sean Farrell, has put up a website that has a lot of interesting texts on the state of the art of the documentary. Here is my text contribution for the initiative – and do visit http://www.hotdocs.ca/film/program/Ripping%20Reality

and

http://www.rippingreality.com/

Tue Steen Müller: The last decade of documentaries, a new wave or new waves… well, you can have a look at it from different angles. As a documentary workshop organizer, both in my time as director of EDN (European Documentary Network) and now as a free lancer, I see more and more upcoming talents who try to fight their ways through endless sessions of

pitching projects to public broadcasters, whose editors have been forced to go more and more mainstream. The battle is lost as it was said by ex-leader of Arte France documentary section, Thierry Garrel, and what he meant was that in the most important place for creative documentaries, Arte, the formatting has arrived and will stay. The same can be said for ”Storyville”, where Nick Fraser a decade ago could take risks, where he today is threatened by the BBC wish for higher ratings. Play safe, this is what we have to do nowadays, another Arte editor said to me the other day.

So even if we see more emerging talent, documentary festivals all over, a growing audience, to watch documentaries have become a natural thing, often in the cinemas or on the net or on dvd – at the same time as public television, and many of the bigger festivals by the way, goes for the formatting of the creative documentary. Quantity before Quality. The result is that the average television viewer gets the impression that a documentary is a film, where there is voice-off talking from start till end, a lot of interviews and quick editing.

The exceptions that I found, the originality, the personal films with a personal style or handwriting – I saw them primarily in the Eastern part of Europe, where I have been working and where the message to the young filmmakers have been quite clear: You should know about the Western European documentary market and its demands, but please please keep your own voice. The coming list includes films that I have found important from the last decade from the East of Europe:

1. CITIZEN HAVEL (Pavel Koutecky, Miroslav Janek, Czech Republic, 2008)
Yes, it is quite classical in its observational style and therefore also untypical for documentaries of today, where for instance Arte has dropped the observational documentary from its programming policy. 12 years of filming and what a character!

2. BLIND LOVES (Juraj Lehotsky, Slovakia, 2008 )
Five years of research getting to know his blind characters and then writing a script using situations and dialogues that he had heard to put together a four episode hymn to Love. A first feature length from Lehotsky!

3. THE MOSQUITO PROBLEM (Andrey Paounov, Bulgaria, 2004)
Intelligent, non-linear dramaturgy, humour, many layers, shot on Film.

4. 66 SEASONS (Peter Kerekes, Hungary/Slovakia, 2003)
Inspired by Jan Gogola, dramaturgical icon of Czech Republic, this is a way to deal with history in a constant surprising humorous way.

4. THE BELL (Audrius Stonys, Lithuania, 2007)
It starts as a piece of journalism and shifts slowly into a piece of cinematographical beauty taking the viewer by surprise. A true poet.

5. BEFORE FLYING BACK TO EARTH (Arunas Matelis, Lithuania, 2005)
A masterpiece daring to deal with hospitalised children with cancer in a lively, non-sentimental way.

6. RABBIT A LA BERLIN (Bartek Konopka, Poland, 2009 )
Well, it was nominated to an Oscar, quite unusual for a film that is playful, multi-layered, original in approach to its theme, super!

7. CZECH DREAM (Filip Remunda, Vit Klusak, Czech Republic, 2004)
Long before the Yes-men and much more cinematic, satirical on a high level, a breakthrough for new Czech documentary.

8. ANOTHER PLANET (Ferenc Moldovanyi, Hungary, 2008)
A cinematically beautiful hymn to the children of this world, Moldovanyi has his own style of passion.

9. CASH AND MARRY (Atanas Georgiev, Macedonia/Croatia, 2009)
Original in its form, very actual in its theme, European problem number One today, getting into the EU paradise!

10. CHEMO (Pawel Lozinksi, Poland, 2009)
The title says what it is about, the form is pure observation through close-ups, it is made with love and knowledge about Cinema – putting together sound and image in a personal, organic flow. (PHOTO).

I could mention many others. And these new films don’t just come out of the blue, they build on a tradition of great filmmaking, a tradition that they oppose or continue: Russian Kossakovski and Dvortsevoy, Latvian Herz Frank, Ivars Seleckis and Juris Podnieks, Polish Marcel Lozinski and Kieslowski, Czechoslovak Dusan Hanak, Estonian Mark Soosaar and many others further back in time.

Another Planet gets Another Award

There are many films the career of which we have been following with great pleasure. Another Planet by Hungarian Ferenc Moldovanyi is one of them. The film has won the Special Award from the Ukranian Helsinki Human Rights Union at the 7th International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, which took place in Kyiv from 26th March to 2nd April 2010. (See more about the festival on this site)

Another Planet has won 18 awards and been presented at 58 festivals in 43 countries on four continents and has been broadcast by various prestigious television channels. Congratulations.

Several other films like “Burma vj”, “Cash and Marry” and “The Living Room of a Nation” were also awarded at the festival in Ukraine.

www.docudays-ua

Messi Messi Messi Messi

Det er billedet af en dreng, der har fået lov til at beholde bolden. En glad dreng som slår bolden i græsset på vej ud af banen. Han smiler. Han har grund til det. Han har lige scoret fire mål og sendt sit hold videre i turneringen. Han bliver stoppet ved indgangen til tunellen, der fører ned til omlædningsrummet. Han skal interviewes. Men jeg tror ikke han kan høre spørgsmålene eller sin egen stemme. 90.000 tilskuere råber hans navn, eller nærmest stønner det ud som en tak til den lille fodboldspiller, der har leveret  underholdning af en skønhed uden lige. Han kan noget som ingen anden fodboldspiller i verden kan præstere. Han optrådte på Nou Camp den 6.april 2010. Hans navn er Messi. Lionel Messi. Profession: fodboldspiller. Ugeløn: omkring 4 mio. Dkr. Han spiller for FC Barcelona.

Det er billedet af to voksne drenge, der har overværet fodboldkampen. De har stået op ihvertfald fire gange, ved hver scoring, og råbt Messi ned til drengen, der har fået lov til at beholde bolden til minde om den kamp, som han gjorde uforglemmelig for dem. De to voksne drenge har holdt møde om den filmfestival, som afholdes i Barcelona i februar 2011. De har været spændt på kampen, håbet på det bedste og nu har de gennemlevet 90 minutters artisteri på grønsværen dernede. De har siddet på deres plasticsæder og levet med og kommet med bemærkninger om spillerne, deres bevægelsesmønster, deres afleveringer, deres fight og energi – og om drengen med bolden, der bare er i en klasse for sig. Modstanderne var fra London, Arsenal, de havde ikke en chance, selvom de indledte scoringen. Siden krøllede drengen med bolden dem allesammen og lavede fire mål. Resultat: 4-1. Og han og hans medspillere glemte ikke at bolden aldrig bliver træt. Kombination efter kombination, Hurtigt fra spiller til spiller. Mit navn er Tue Steen Müller. Bor i København, arbejder ofte i Barcelona for Joan Gonzalez og hans www.docsbarcelona.com. Ugeløn: ca. 6000 Dkr. Vi voksne drenge var på Nou Camp den 6. April 2010.

A text in Danish about soccer seen by Tue Steen Müller in Barcelona April 6 2010.

Soccer Cinema

Soccer Cinema is a real dream come true. A travelling cinema, bringing some of the world’s best soccer documentaries to 50 small towns, villages and townships, spread across all 9 South African provinces. The journey begins on 6 April 2010 in Cape Town and will end there on 2 June, followed by a Soccer Cinema Festival held at the Labia Cinema from 5 to 10 June.

Here is a clip from the press release: The FIFA Football World Cup is a unique and very special event. It has the potential to unite South Africa as few other events since democracy was established in 1994. In the months before the championship it is vital that everyone feels part of this. Unity can be built by inspiring South Africans through documentary cinema with insight into famous players, teams as well as incredible highlights and events from the beautiful game’s colourful past.  These films are new to South African audiences, and comprise a history and world-view of football that will be available to the public across the whole country. (Full film list see here)

The aim of Soccer Cinema is to better inform audiences about the

sport that will be having its World Cup in South Africa. Furthermore, it will be stirring support and excitement in the build up to the celebration. It will allow people to see, hear and learn more about some of the greatest players and teams in the world – including Brazil’s Pelé and Garrincha, the great Johan Cruijff, Maradona, Ivorian player Didier Drogba, Ghana’s Essien, Cameroon’s Eto and South Africa’s Sibusiso Zuma.

Soccer Cinema is setting up its mobile screen in small towns that will not be able to experience the World Cup live, towns with special histories. Among these towns are Boipatong, where terrible massacres between hostel dwellers took place in 1992, Sharpeville, site of the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, in Cradock where Nyameka Goniwe is lending Soccer Cinema a generous hand to organize a screening. Another significant destination is Qunu, the home of Nelson Mandela, Schmidtsdrif, where a community of 6000 San people live, Galeshewe, outside Kimberely, and Musina, the border town that has become the first port of call for Zimbabwean refugees.

Soccer Cinema will screen films on soccer heroes including Didier Drogba (Drogba Fever) and Sibusiso Zuma (Zuma the Puma), visiting Worcester and the IsiMangaliso Wetlands south of Kosi Bay, the Limpopo and Orange River, Drakensberg and the plains of the Northern Cape’s Kakamas.  

Just like on the pitch, Soccer Cinema consists of 2 teams. Two strikers in the Advance Team coordinate screenings. The Screening Team, that will score, counts four players, including accomplished film and theatre actor Mbulelo Grootboom. And there are coaches and trainers on the sidelines (STEPS Southern Africa office in Cape Town).

We hope you’ll join us for screenings somewhere along the road or follow the journey on the Soccer Cinema website: www.soccercinema.co.za

PS. This blogger has just left Camp Nou in Barcelona where he has seen a beautiful game between Arsenal and Barcelona – with Barca as the winner due to 4 goals of Messi. I hope that the films to be shown in South Africa will create the same enthusiasm for the soccer as I had for 90 intense minutes together with 90.000 other spectators!

News from Paris: Maysles

It’s the Maysles!

At this years edition of Cinéma du réel, the festival paid tribute to Albert Maysles. The Maysles Brothers: the late David on sound and Albert behind the camera, classic direct cinema.

As was the case two years ago, with the retrospective Americana showing the works of Shirley Clarke and Jim McBride (not to forget Agnès Varda’s rare and wonderful Lions Love (1969)), it is a pleasure to be able to discover or rediscover these films on the big screen.

Everything in Albert Maysles films is beautiful; from the American ballerina at the Bolshoi ballet in Anastasia (1962), Yoko Ono performing her Cut Piece (1965), a hilarious and very attractive Brando in Meet Marlon Brando (1966), the self-revealing Truman Capote in From Truman with love (1966), a bible-salesman driving his car in Salesman (1968) to the eccentric mother and daughter in Grey Gardens (1975).

Godard has called Albert Maysles the best American cameraman. The two of them worked together in the Barbet Schroeder production Paris vue par… (1965), a curious piece of film history, described by Albert here:

http://www.arte.tv/fr/Comprendre-le-monde/arte-journal/103288,CmC=3115724,CmPart=com.arte-tv.www.html

Albert Maysles sums up his approach to documentary with a quote from Grey Gardens: “ Come on in, we’re not ready!” (Little Edie in Grey Gardens).

If you can live with the English version with French subtitles, a DVD including both Salesman and Grey Gardens (ArteVidéo) is available on French Amazon http://www.amazon.fr/. Or separately in an English version as well as Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason (1967), Jim McBride’s David Holzman’s Diary (1968) on amazon.uk. You can watch Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece at:

 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3dsvy_yoko-ono-cut-piece_shortfilms.

For the French resident readers, some of the Maysles Brothers films can be seen on TV on CinéCinéma Club, on April 30 and May 7.

As for the rest, we are lucky to have retrospectives at the festivals!

I would also like to mention that, unfortunately again only for French residents, the films from the international competition and the French panorama at Cinéma du réel are available on VoD at http://www.universcine.com/promotion/cinemadureel2010 the whole month of April.

Photo: The Maysles on location, Grey Gardens (1975)

Ramallah – Documentaries from Palestine

Palestine, 4 days, end of March 2010. It’s blue sky but still a bit chilly in Ramallah, where I have been for a couple of days. Lively activity outside in the streets of a nice and calm city, 40.000 are here during night, 80.000 during day. The capital of the Palestinian Authority expresses a friendly atmosphere, and energy – waiting for a Palestinian state to be established. Yellow buses, yellow taxis, building work going on everywhere, white buildings, a hilly city with beautiful viewing spots. A city whose economy is very much depending on investments done by rich Palestinians, who have made their money in the Gulf states and return home one month per year.

I am here with some fellow tutors for a workshop including 10 documentary projects. The intentions behind the initiative are triple: 1) The filmmakers are trained for a pitching of their projects to 12-15 tv editors – that takes place late May. 2) The filmmakers are competing for a participation in the Storydoc documentary programme that has its first session in Corfu, Greece in the beginning of July. 4 of the 10 projects will be picked for that purpose. 3) The filmmakers have their projects discussed and their pitching skills improved – the writing, the verbal and the visual. They are being provided with a huge amount of information and

inspiration, hopefully, by Anne Julienne, Télévision Francaise, Kostas Spiropoulos, Skai television Greece and head of the Storydoc initiative, Jordi Ambros, TV3 Catalunya, Cecilia Lidin, EDN and me.

The learning process goes in both directions. The communication with the Palestinian filmmakers is like one long eye opening process. Their personal stories about not being able to go where they want to go, their isolation, their split-up family relations, the life in a village that is being demolished to give space for one more Israeli settlement, I could go on and on, with words that are not sufficient to describe the constant humiliation of human beings in a occupied territory. There is only one word for this: apartheid.

3 of the projects in the workshop are being dealt with through a video conference system. The Palestinian filmmakers in question are based in Gaza and can not travel to Ramallah. Weird it is to sit and watch them move around, smoke cigarettes, drink tea, small talk and listen to their colleagues discuss and present their proposals in Ramallah in the al qattan centre. It is like a film in itself, an observational documentary, they know that the camera points at them, that we in Ramallah can see them, but they forget, like we forget that they watch us!

It takes a special attitude to live in the occupied territory. Politics is on the agenda every day if you want to move from one place to the other. You have to know if and when the Israeli checkpoints are open, you have to find out whether you are allowed to/can get a permission to go from one place to the other. We asked the local organisers, film director George Khleifi and audiovisual attachée from the French Consulate in Jerusalem, Lucie Meynial, if they thought that we can get the chosen two film project holders from Gaza to Greece, they can only say – it depends on the political situation at that very moment. Planning is not easy!

How do you cope with all that… with a bitter smile, with sarchasm, with melancholy… if you have chosen to stay in Palestine. Our days in Ramallah were full of jokes that referred to the political situation.

The current political situation as it is present in people’s daily life is present in two of the film projects that will be promoted through the Storydoc. Nagham Muhanna , a young energetic woman, is looking for answers to why ”Romance in Gaza” (working title) has gone with the wind. She wants to describe the theme through three generations – from the hypothesis that the daily hard social situation does not leave space for love! Her colleague in Gaza from the media production company Target Group, Mohammed Abu Sido will join the Storydoc with ”Waiting for You” that will try to gather a divided family in a film, as they can not meet in real life: Mohammed is in Gaza, his internet girlfiend is in Ramallah, they can not meet, one of his brothers is in Ramallah as well, and the other in Dubia from where he could go home but does not want to as he is in opposition to the ruling Hamas party. His mother is in Gaza and can not assist to the coming wedding of her daughter, who is also on the West Bank!

Two Ramallah based projects of very different nature will go to the workshop in Vcorfu, Greece. ”Off Frame”, to be directed by Mohanad Yakubi, is the story about the PFU (Palestinian Film Unit) that in the sixties and seventies was not only a strong instrument in the building of a Palestinian identity but according to the filmmaker also aestetically innovative. The filmmaker want to include archive from the revolutionary times, clips from the films, interviews with icons who helped the PLO, like Jean-Luc Godard. A very promising film project. As is the one by Ghada Tirawi, who wants to make ”Palestinian Folk Tales” into an investigation of the Palestinian society. She showed the workshop participants a previous film where she demonstrates a talent for mixing animation and a person telling a story, with real life footage of a methaphoric character.

On the way to Ramallah from the airport in Tel Aviv, during night time, we passed the Kalandia checkpoint about which a very good film, ”Kalandia – a Checkpoint Story” (PHOTO)  has been made (reviewed here, search ”Kalandia”). The taxi driver, a born entertainer, told us that we would go quick through the holy checkpoint in his holy car in the holy land where they have built holy walls to separate the holy people, Arabs and Jews. In this Easter time, can one hope for a holy agreement to re-start holy negociations for peace and a two state agreement?

http://www.target.ps/

http://bostonpalestine.bside.com/2009/films