First the annotation as it appears on the cover of the dvd and on the site of the production company, Libra Film in Romania: “Birds Road is a creative documentary that follows the daily routine of a Russian Lipovan community struggling to survive and maintain their traditions in spite of the overwhelming intrusion of modernity. The testimonies of these Old Believers about recent transformations, dying religion and their struggle to preserve archaic traditions reveal the vulnerability and secretiveness of a traditional community.”

And then my congratulations to the directors for making a theme so far away from my urban jungle up in the Northern Europe – interesting, fascinating, warm and human. Why? Because of their obvious long stay down there close to the Danube where mostly – according to the film – old people live, close to their religion and language and rituals. The people in the film have found the filmmakers trustworthy and invited them into their houses. Here you are, this is our life.

The generous answer given to this hospitality and openness comes out in an amazing cinematography by Trencsenyi, who catches the simple life and its beauty with respect and love. Story? Not in a classical sense – one storyline, from a to z – but with many smaller stories being unfolded in a nice and quite way: About the prison for political prisoners at the the river, about tourism, about the lack of a priest chosen by the Believers themselves, about the young man they want as a priest but he has no wife (!), about funerals, and the Slavonic language that only two can read now. Empty village roads, children playing. A pleasure to watch and learn from this fine observational documentary.

Romania, 2009, 56 mins.

http://www.astrafilm.ro/en/astra-film-festival-2009-birds-way-2

http://www.esodoc.eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=73&Itemid=91

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzmUAmnuCOI

Made in Chinatown is the subtitle of this stylistically different but very fresh and well made, kaleidoskopic look at Chinese in Milano. Several – mostly young – Chinese, first or second generation, take part in a documentary that does not refrain from using cut-out animation, split-screen, a chaptered structure, small intimate situations with couples lying in bed talking about their lives in an Italian and in a Chinese culture, in one case the couple has not seen their child in China for years. The film does not – luckily, because we know it so well from everywhere – go (too) much into the prejudices that exist towards foreigners, instead it puts focus on the characters as human beings accompanied by a historical perspective as the Chinese have been in Milano for decades, of course.

The film starts with images of streets being blocked by the police as a killing apparently has taken place. These well known riots in the Chinese community in Italy (one of the biggest in the country) form the starting point of the film but the director did not want a journalistic angle, he went for the ordinary people, with all their extraordinary stories, the generation conflicts, the identity questions. A good choice and an both moving and entertaining insight to something I had not heard about before.

Italy, 2009, 75 mins.

http://www.lasarraz.com/

http://www.latestuggine.it/

Zeljko Mirkovic, Serbian documentary director-producer (his company is called Optimist Film) and occasionally a very good interviewer, has published a long conversation with Rada Sesic, a very well known documentary director and teacher and festival programmmer – and an expert in Indian cinema. The interview is to be found in its full length at the IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) site, see below. Here is a small clip, where Rada talks about Rasa, a new angle on documentaries:

Mirkovic: Documentary has seriously entered the market and it’s represented best by a large number of subgenres (archive documentary, TV documentary, docudrama, etc.) One of these stands out in the market – a creative documentary. What are the defining elements of a creative documentary?

Sesic: It is difficult to say what a creative documentary is; perhaps it is better to say what it is not. It’s not television reportage, nor superficial coverage of an event, nor a historic account of a certain epoch, landscape, or a person. Every story is acceptable, but the author has to express their personal cinematic style, their personal visual approach, their thinking about a particular content they want to film. Ultimately, film is art and we expect art to touch us, shake us, make us think, ask questions, make us come back to it, change us as reflective beings. There is a text in Hindu Veda called Natya Veda which speaks about the role of art. It contains a tract on drama that can be applied to art in general. It says that every piece of art has to contain various Bhavas (feelings, moods) which will make a viewer experience Rasa (a state of mind), a complex experience of enjoyment (the experience may also be negative in the sense that you may experience fear, sorrow, anxiety). What is important is that Rasa works in such a way that a viewer mentally and spiritually absorbes the intensive experience of art.

www.optimisticfilm.com

http://web.docuinter.net/en/net_archive.php?id=831

The producer of the Oscar nominated Polish film ”Rabbit a la Berlin”, Anna Wydra, has asked me to add the information about their new website

www.rabbitalaberlin.com

where you can read about the road to the nomination as well as watch the new trailer that can also be approached on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65uV_LnxcL0