This is gonna be a bit longer blog text than usual. Simply because this is an extraordinary film that calls for more than an ordinary review. My co-blogger Allan Berg wrote – in Danish and after having seen 30 minutes of the film – that this would probably be the film experience of his festival viewing. It was definitely what it became for me. My hope is that the following will inspire festivals to introduce a totally different approach to writing history. To deal with memories. To seek a new minimalistic film language. And work with music and sound in a new way.

First an introduction to the team behind the film; the info is taken from their website: The director Susana de Sousa Dias – completed a thesis in Aesthetics and Art Philosophy and holds University degrees both in Painting (Lisbon University) and Cinema (National School of Theatre and Cinema). She studied music at the National Conservatory of Music and is currently preparing a PhD in Aesthetics, Art Science and Technology (University Paris 8). The producer Ansgar Schaefer – graduated in German Language and Literature and Political Science. Works as a historian and university professor. The sound designer António de Sousa Dias – composer, Ph.D. in Musicology (Paris VIII) sponsored by the Portuguese Scientific Foundation FCT. Is currently developing a research work on CAC – Université Paris VIII / MSH Paris Nord in the field of music creation and virtual environments.

An academic film team would normally make me, a documentary addict, shiver with fear for the outcome of “48”, in this case no, for that simple reason

that I had seen the team’s previous film that perfectly combined the background of aesthetics, philosophy, history and music with a creative intention.

And with a sense for image and sound, and the putting the two together. To convey with “Still Life. Faces of a Dictatorship” (2005) the traumatic past of Portugal under Salazar. The film is 77 mins. long without any narration, built on archive from the 48 years between 1926 and till 1974, when the carnation revolution happened. The archive includes news, war footage from the colonies, propaganda films and photos of political prisoners. The musical score for this film, by António de Sousa Dias, is exceptional, first you wonder why but then you see what it does to the images, making a reflective distance and opens for a new both intellectual and emotional interpretation.

The same is the case in “48” where the sound design is made to make space around the voices of the political prisoners. But not only what they say come to the ear, also sounds of them being in a room to be interviewed and other sounds, as far as I could hear(!) that are made to match with the image and create the tense atmosphere.

Image after image, the prison ID´s, en face, profile left, profile right, faces of people looking at you, and looking at the photographer, who in many cases took part in the infamous torture conduct, described by the human beings behind the faces. They express anger and dignity, how could they be like that? It is terrible to watch what they say, in your head you make your own images. And then suddenly come voices that go for some absurd anecdotes from the prison life. Relief and a little smile. There is a work with details in very refined ways: A tiny light change in the photo is suddenly made, a fine almost imperceptible camera movement, the face comes closer or moves away.

One woman has suffered a lot because she smiles on her photo. How stupid of me to laugh! In the film context, the smile becomes one of defiance. In many cases there are more than one photo of the same person imprisoned more than once. They normally remember the photographic session. They remember the atrocities. They visualise them. In a way the film builds one long monologue changing visually at the end with some shots from Mocambique, a barbed wire fence, a tree, a camp – the prisoners talking did not have the photos any longer.

Let me end with the words of Allan Berg, translated and edited from Danish: “The portraits of the Secret Police appear calm and clarified for a long time on the screen. The ugly operation has lent the beauty, dignity and authenticity of the models… the images are carefully worked on so their aura become visible. The naked sound of the voices from the conversations are treated like was it delicate music. So it becomes delicate music. It is about the political crime of the Portuguese dictatorship… it is so horrifying and wild, and it is conveyed with such a beautiful and calm clarification”.

Portugal, 2009, 93 mins.

www.cinereel.org

http://blog.cinemadureel.org/

http://www.kintop.net/

Painters have done it for centuries – chosen their motif literally close to themselves. ”View from my window”. Not many filmmakers have done the same. Kossakovsky did it with Tische! He looked out of the window from his appartment in St. Peterburg. And Now Anat Even, Israeli director, has done the same and made an extraordinary clever and personal film essay. From her window.

With a tone of melancholy, mature, in first person, the director tells about the loss of her brother who lived in the yard, had his workshop for pottery and sculptures there, always within reach, working there if he was not taking a break to go outside to sweep the pavement. While talking about him the view from the window gives the viewer trees or people going to and fro, or a child being bathed. Or clips from films with the brother.

Gradually a demolition takes place in front of our eyes. A skyscraper is to be built near the house, and the courtyard is getting a house that will block the view from the window. Palestinian workers are building a wall next to the appartment building of the director! Closure is the English title of the film, of course, what else could it be, but does it sound too definitive and simple in words, I can not stress enough the multilayered generosity that Anat Even brings forward, when she constantly shows and talks about the place as having historically a strong multicultural importance. Those days are over. 

www.cinereel.org

Israel, 2009, 50 mins.

Asliuk is a veteran at Cinéma du Réel. He has won prizes at the festival for his lyrical short documentaries from the countryside of Belarus. It is therefore only natural that he is invited back with his new one-hour long documentary, English title ”Island Belarus”.

But it is painful to experience that Asliuk does not master the long format at all. He goes from one more inauguration of the president Lukashenko to an old man in his garden in the countryside where he has placed small sculptures that illustrates the agricultural life as it was. Which is a theme for the film – the disappearance of traditional agriculture and values in the countryside, while people are demonstrating against the dictator in the capital Minsk. Being brutally beaten by the gorillas of Lukashenko.

Two different worlds, yes, a divided country, yes, an elegy for a culture and a nation, yes maybe, but it is not enough to just go from A to B and back again, where is the director? Asliuk has chosen a genre, a political statement that is not the right one for him.

The film is shown at Cinema du Réel friday the 26th and saturday the 27th.

Belarus, 2009, 52 mins.

www.cinereel.org

In his Danish language texts from this year’s Cinema du Réel, my co-blogger Allan Berg reveals avec plaisir that his prejudice about the festival being for the pure observational documentary maybe is wrong. It is indeed, both because the development of the creative documentary in general draws away from the observation including much more fictional or personal reflective essayistic elements in the narrative, and because the festival selection this year (this is my gut feeling as I did not get to watch it all) appears more daring than usual when it comes to breaking the classical dramaturgy.

Which is the case for one more (the other being ”la paura”, see below) Italian film that confused and surprised me with its ability to create an intense, mostly visually dominated atmosphere by presenting an abrupt, disharmonic structure that points in many directions. The place is Genova, never seen as beautiful as here with these brownish harbour images; archive with scratches as has the character of the film, Enzo, a former gangster, now a person in a film that lets him sort-of-play himself, going around in film-noir sequences, in old worn down factory buildings, in small streets full of prostitutes and transvestites, accompanied by local songs. It is all very textual, scratches, old film material being used in a new way, a reconstruction of a past, but there are also wonderful observational improvisations like one in a bar where a client and a barman perform a dance – and then suddenly there is a long interview with the companion of Enzo through 2o years, a transsexual, a beautiful love monologue it is. What a fine mess of a film! Title translated: The Mouth of the Wolf.

The film runs at Cinema du Réel the 26th and 27th of March.

Italy, 2009, 68 mins.

www.cinereel.org

http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/forum/program/

It is such a good story carried by a charismatic old man, who is full of humour and charm. You are simply entertained contrary to what you thought when reading that this was one more holocaust survivor documentary:

Elie Buzyn had his concentration camp number removed from his arm in 1956 – in a way that he could keep the removed tattooed skin, and the number, with him. He did so, he wanted this to be a heritage for his children to remember not only that he was in a camp, but also that on that day where the tattoo was made, his parents, their grandparents lived their last day.

So far the background, what happens is that Elie loses the piece of his skin that he had in his jacket that was stolen in a gym! So the evidence of his being in a camp, an evidence that he wanted to live without in his life, was away… he starts to wonder what to do and up comes the idea to have the number tattooed again and removed again, ready to be given to his children! He has a photo of the skin with the number but is that enough?

Not a cinematic film, this thought provoking film lives because it is full of life, of warm and intimate family meetings, of reflections on life now and then, of how important it is to live NOW.

France, 2010, 69 mins.

sarah@agatfilms.com

www.cinereel.org

A graduation work from the film school HFF in Potsdam. Respect for the ambition: to describe the Vietnamese countryside life through a family that fights to build a new home in an area where the flood has spoilt their old house, an area where de-mining after the wars is still an issue. 

The director has a wonderful boy, Quynh, as the key character, you feel the strong connection between the two, through many sweet scenes with him, collecting frogs or talking about his future, but overall the film suffers from being far too detailed and repetitive in its description of the relocation and what that takes. It goes in circles where a strong focus on the boy would have made it much more engaging.

www.cinereel.org

Germany, 2009, 72 mins

The director has made two films before but is more known in Italy as an actor and theatre director. The French Forum des Images gave him a mobile phone with camera and said to him: do what you want.

He chose – yes – to be mobile, went on a journey and the result is a fragmented very cinematic documentary essay about what he sees and gets involved in, in his country, Italy, most of the time accompanied by music and by text, which sometimes refers to the Divina Commedia of Dante.

Shop windows, perfect slim women, tv about fat children, a gym, filming his own stomach trying to make the camera catch his penis as well… other chapters with homeless people, intercut with tv commercials, xenophobic grafitti on the walls, ”someone should know what is going on this shitty country”, a racist murder, he goes to the funeral, which is also a demonstration (a policeman watches him constantly, photo), returning several times to a camp for romas with their vans, it is built like a music piece, and suddenly there is a classic film scene: a person in a car by the sea, it is raining cats and dogs outside, melancholy, but towards the end of the film mostly anger and paura, fear, conveyed with sarchasm when a long tv sequence lets a man perform animal sounds… cut to a man in a sofa, who is not able to talk, a man in an asylum, Bobo is his name, he has been there for 50 years, free from the outside Italian world.

Will be screened at Cinéma du Réel on the 27th and 29th of March. First long film, shot with a mobile phone, that I have seen. Director found the aesthetic limits and possibilities.

Italy, 2009, 66 mins.

www.cinereel.org

http://www.lesfilmsdici.fr