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I was surprised when I saw that ”The Moon Inside You” by Diana Fabianova, a film and a director that has been written about several times on this blog, was selected for the Dox Box Festival here in Damascus. Surprised because I did not think that a film on menstruation would pass the censorship in Syria. It did luckily and the organisers proudly announced that the film had a full house, 500 people, and a very positive reaction. In connection with the admirable project of the organisers of the festival, to build a documentary culture in the country, the ambition is also to create a distribution initiative, a catalogue of women’s films, and ”The Moon Inside You” is of course on that list.

http://www.mooninsideyou.com

Dox Box Campus 8

Nagi Esmail from Egypt made a 9 mins. long city film during a workshop in Cairo, the title is ”171”, which refers to the steps you take from the train platform in the metropole until you are in the street. Shot in one day and edited in 3 hours, the film by the 2006 graduate from the film school in Egypt shows clearly a young filmmaker with a talent for visualising. Lina Alhafez from Syria has made a film about the Syrian band ”Kilna Sawa”, which is 42 minutes long. The film includes the dialogue between 5 of the band members and some of their supporters, created in the edit as all words come from the people sitting in or driving in a car. The story about the band that is hugely popular for transforming old songs into new interpretations, is a fine graduation work, has a fast pace, mixed with archive from their performances that are amazing to watch. They – the band members – look back on their carreer, comment on many emotional moments and stress that crticism is present in all they do. Léa Bendaly from Lebanon lives in El-Mina, north of Beirut. She has made a nice wordless film hymn to the city accompanied by music of Ludwig van Beethoven. Bendaly, as Esmail and Alhafez, took part in the Dox Box Campus that ended monday with a presentation of six film projects. Bendaly has the ambition to make ”Good Bye El-Mani”, her visit to the places and people, she remembers from her childhood and youth.

Still: Sonia Bitar from Kilna Sawa

http://www.dox-box.org/new/

Pribyl: Forgotten Transports – Poland

A film that has been reviewed and noticed several times on this site, has finally got the national recognition it deserves. Here is the posting from the IDF site – se address below:

On Saturday, March 6, Forgotten Transports to Poland by Lukáš Přibyl was announced best documentary film at the 2009 Czech Lion Awards. The film is included in Přibyl’s four-part documentary series that was released on DVD in mid-January.

Breaking down our notions about “Holocaust documentaries”, the film focuses on humanidentity and its changes. It deals with choices, people, escaping Nazi ghettos, laborand death camps in the Lublin region of Poland, had to make in order to adapt and survive in utter extremity, on the run, in hiding – with a great deal of ingenuity,much humor and tremendous optimism. This documentary tribute to the human spiritis completely devoid of commentary, contemporary and make-believe footage and employs only impeccably researched time-and-place precise materials and fascinatingwords of the witnesses. From playing a deaf-mute fool, armed resistance to a touchingtale of forbidden love, the handful of witnesses share their past, for the first time. This documentary offers a surprising picture of survival “as we don’t know it”.

A clip from the film can be watched on the site below.

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

Dox Box Damascus 7

Patricio Guzman in Damascus. The great director behind the film historical classic ”The Battle of Chile” from the beginning of the 1970’es met the audience of young wannabee filmmakers and older people, who remember the dramatic period where the government of Salvador Allende and ”la pouvoir populaire”, as the French speaking director put it, tried to unite the Left and introduce democracy in Chile. We all know how that went. A quote from the site of Guzman:

In 1973 he films “The Battle of Chile”, a 5-hour documentary on the end of Allende’s government. After the military coup, Guzmán is threatened to be executed and spends two weeks arrested inside the national stadium, unable to communicate his whereabouts to anyone. He leaves the country in November 1973. He lives in Cuba, Spain and then France, where he makes “In the Name of God” (Grand Prize, Festival of Popoli, 1987), “The Southern Cross” (Grand Prize, Festival Vue Sur les Docs, Marseille, 1992), “Chile, Obstinate Memory” (Grand Prize Festival of Tel Aviv, 1999), “The Pinochet Case” (International Critic’s Week, Cannes, 2002), and “Salvador Allende” (Official Selection, Cannes, 2004). In 2005, he makes “My Jules Verne”.

About ”The Battle of Chile” Guzman said that it is a film on words. It is a film on the quality of the politics of the people from the base – the working class. The five hour long film had an editing time of three years. Cuban film people came to watch at the edting room and said that they had never seen such a high political culture. The films deals with the period from 1970 and to the military coup and is about ”le pouvoir populaire”. Guzman referred to the East german political filmmakers, who were filming in Chile at the time, Heynowski & Scheumann, and told that their cameraman filmed the bombing of the presidential palace, whereas Pedro Chaskel, the editor of Guzman, filmed the flight over the palace. The two teams exchanged footage… for buying dvd’s of the films, consult the site of Guzman.

http://www.dox-box.org/new/

http://www.patricioguzman.com/index.php?lng=en

Dox Box Damascus 6

This is one of the highlights of Dox Box 2010, Orwa Nyrabia said as a proud and enthusiastic introduction to the masterclass with D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, moderated by idfa director Ally Derks. And it turned out to be a very pleasant couple of hours with the renowned filmmakers who made film history together with other big names like Albert Maysles, Richard Leacock and Robert Drew, the Direct Cinema/Cinéma Vérité directors. At the festival, among others, the Bob Dylan film ”Don’t Look Back” was shown and the young filmmakers had a lot of questions to that film and especially to the method connected to the filmmaking style.

The best way to reflect what was said during the masterclass is to quote Pennebaker and Hegedus for many wonderful sentences that may inspire our readers, Hegedus being the analytical and Pennebaker the one full of stories, loving the anecdote, both of them being very generous and warm in their approach to the audience:

Am I a master, ”No I was not the first person to put my foot on the beach”. Subject, how do you find them, ”We don’t, they find us, we are very depending on our friends to give us hints, people come to us”. Story?, ”You don’t know what is going to happen when we start”. Hegedus and Pennebaker is a couple privately: ”We get divorced four or five times during a film”. Where does the inspiration come from, ”Creative energy can’t be stored!”. ”A documentary is like the stories you heard as a child, once upon a time…”. Film crew?: ”The smaller the better”. Agreements? ”We go for a handshake agreement”. A fly on the wall? ”No, I can not take an invisible pill… I watch, I am like a cat, you can not see what I think”. ”The money always comes”. ”I don’t feel like a director”. Observation, Objectivity? ”No, how can one’s person’s observation be all people’s observation?”. ”We are following the action, and is very often led by the sound”. ”You are like a detective, because you don’t know what happens”. ”Style is driven by technology”. ”You are filming for an audience”. ”Look for accuracy”.

http://www.dox-box.org/new/

http://www.phfilms.com/

Dox Box Damascus 5

We have heard it for so many years, and we have seen films, fiction or documentary, that informs about or interprets the life in GDR (German Democratic Republic). But they – the Syrian young filmmakers-to-be – had not. That was very obvious from the reactions and questions at the campus of the Dox Box Festival. The local Goethe Institute had invited the GDR photographer Dieter Riemann to make an exhibition of his photos, which is running until March 25 here in Damascus, and the organisers of the festival took advantage and had Riemann come talk about his life as a photographer in a closed society where artists were not allowed to travel and where Stasi was strongly present.

Riemann told that he always worked with a conceptual format. He took photographs for book publishing, walls, windows, mentally ill people, old people etc. The basis was always humanistic, critical and trying to be as honest as possible. ”Socialdokumentarisch”, he called it. Inspiration: the Magnum photographers, Cartier-Bresson, Edward Steichen.

www.ddr-fotografie-riemann.de

On the way back to the hotel I talked with my co-tutor, the cameraman Peter Badel, who also worked in the GDR, very much with Thomas Heise (”Material”, see below, PHOTO), and we remembered great names like Sibylle and Hannes Schönemann, who were imprisoned for their critical documentaries.

http://www.dox-box.org/new/

Czech Site Moves

The excellent website of IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) has moved to a new address with a new layout (black on white) and as usual loads of information to get on Eastern European documentary matters in particular and world documentary matters in general. And with a click you can watch the editor’s choice of an actual important film. This is of course ”Rabbit a la Berlin” (PHOTO) right now, the day before the Oscar is distributed in the category in which it is nominated.

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

Sergio Basso: Giallo in Milano 2

Mail from the producer of the film of Sergio Basso, English title: “Made in Chinatown”, reviewed on this site not long ago: You can see our new web-documentary MADE IN CHINATOWN (the first in Italy on the web-site of one of the most important italian newspapers, Corriere della Serra), at the link www.corriere.it/gialloamilano. Now the English version is there! The film will also be shown at the coming Visions du Réel in Nyon, Switzerland.

Dox Box Damascus 4

4 Polish documentaries and a Syrian. And again bravo to the organisers for putting an emphasis on the short documentary which is of course well targeted in a country with limited funding possibilities – where short film can be made – and for the rest of us, who have experienced this special art form disappear from public television to become a playground-like platform for young people, who want to experiment, develop their skills and find their own voice.

”Six Weeks” is a small masterpiece by Marcin Krawczyk. In 18 minutes he tells the story about a woman, who like many others decide not to keep her child because she does not think she can offer it a decent life. Visually it is strong, it is dealing with a tough subject in a respectful way. Polish short documentaries have a flow in storytelling, they have rythm, they go directly into the story… You can see the inspiration of old masters like Kieslowski and Lozinski.

”Mother” (theme: family), ”A Woman Sought” (theme: matchmaking), ”Till it Hurts” (theme: mother and son) were the other Polish film in the programme, high quality, right to the point, made with invitations to laugh at our crazy life.

Syrian ”Women’s Talk” was a film that pleased the full cinema. It has three acts, the first one full of male chauvinistic remarks from old men, who think that women are well of now – they have electricity, it is warm in the kitchen, and we don’t beat the women any longer… the middle act responds to the first one, you see a quick edited MTV-style sequence of women working in all professions, with no dialogue. Which there is in the last sequence where women around the fireplace comment on the men. Payback! They laughed in the theatre, it was funny, but also for a foreigner a terrible comment on the position of women in modern Syria. There is along way to equality!

http://www.dox-box.org/new/  Still: 6 Weeks.

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German cameraman Peter Badel is one of the mentors of the Campus – together with Dutch producer Joan Morselt, Danish colleague Mikael Opstrup and myself. The participants in the workshop are aspiring young filmmakers, who have been grouped according to their wish to be a producer or a director – or ”I don’t know where I want to go yet”.

Badel gave a very inspiring lecture, ”The Narrative and the Image”. He told us about his close collaboration with excellent German director Thomas Heise (read about his ”Material” on this blog) and how they, as close friends, understood how the images should be – you do your job, Heise says to Badel, and I will not interfere. Technical details were given by Badel, who started with 35mm in the times of the GDR, and now works with a small digi camera. And he showed some photos, he had taken and talked about how they were composed and he gave us the stories connected. Much time was dedicated to clips from Heise’s masterpiece ”Vaterland” and to ”Heinz und Fred”, a one hour wonderful film by Mario Schneider, a composer who went to filmmaking. Fred is a handicapped old man but lives a good life with his father and all the old machines that he wants to repair. Badel showed us a great crane tour from the end of the film saying that in this case the crane was a kind of cameraman – two takes they made. 800€ for hiring the crane.

http://www.dox-box.org/new/