Barbara Cros, Lisbeth Lyngse: Kvinder i forandring

De er så omhyggelige med deres tøj, de tre kvinder, det handler om. De er så omhyggelige med det danske sprog, som de taler forbilledligt. De er så ordentlige og sympatiske og tydelige. Deres fortællinger er detaljerede, uden dramatik. Pletfri. De medvirker i en undervisningsfilm. Den har brug for forbilleder. Det kan jeg godt forstå. Det er ærlig snak. 

Det handler om danske uddannelsers betydning for herboende kvinder fra fremmede kulturer. Det lyder bestemt ikke spændende. Men sådan en opgave kan reddes…

… af de medvirkende. Det sker her. Der er tre og de er søde, en kvinde med pakistansk baggrund, en med tyrkisk og en fra Malawi. Tre livshistorier (så langt de unge liv er kommet) fastholdt som cases på mere end nydelige filmbilleder. Man lytter gerne til dem. Og det skal man også. Fremstillingen er båret af deres fortællinger og af omvisninger til deres steder. Og så er der illustrerende reportagescener. Det er det.  

Selvfølgelig er det ikke en film. Det er en dokumentation af tre gode kvinders frigørelse og selvstændiggørelse fastholdt på film. Der er ikke noget værk uden om de tre beretninger. Så efterhånden kniber det med dynamikken. Det går i stå efter 20 minutter, men så har konstruktionen alligevel lidt mere i posen: en kvinde agiterer sympatisk for fagforeningens nødvendighed, en demonstrerer sin daglige faglighed som kirurg og en endnu forankret i familien og familiens færdigret-butik, men hendes hensynsfulde distance til det hjemlige lader os forstå at selvstændig og sygeplejerske er og bliver hun.  

Filmen er så passende til de velskabte tre yderst korrekt arbejde, dette er hvad, der bør menes. Jeg bliver næsten skræmt af al den renhed. Der er ingen tvivl, ingen kant heller. Der er intet at indvende. Uden måske netop dette.

Barbara Cros og Lisbeth Lyngse: Kvinder i forandring, Danmark 2009, 41 min. Manuskript: Barbara Cros, fotografi: Henrik Kloch og Lisbeth Lyngse, klip: Lisbeth Lyngse. Produceret af Manden Med Cameraet www.mandenmedcameraet.dk , dvd-salg: DBC www.dbc.dk  Filmen kan ses på Filmstriben.dk via det lokale biblioteks hjemmeside.

Markku Heikkinen: All Boys

Det er en tv-rettet knapt én time lang real-kommentarbåret reportage med filmede illustrationer og vekslende interviews fra to nutidige pornografiske produktionsmiljøer med små forskelle, som skal gøre en sammenligning interessant. Det lykkes ikke.

Det er en bornert nysgerrig sammenlignende sociologi-interesseret skildring af af to små professionelle selskaber, som fremstiller den slags film og magasiner. Et i Prag og et i Berlin med hver deres chef, som begge forsøger at leve op til rollerne som farverige og karismatiske ledere…

… De er det efter min smag langtfra. De er i og for sig ikke usympatiske, de er bare kedelige. Filmen påstås i filminstituttets ”Fakta om film” og i Filmstribens introdukion at være karakterdreven, så måske er det derfor, den står den stille lige fra begyndelsen. Det er en tydelig kamp at komme videre efter de første 20 minutter. Også for publikum.

I sidste del forsøger fortællingen sig som fortælling om et ulykkeligt kærlighedsorhold mellem den unge model og den ældre producent. Modellen er trofast i kærlighed, producenten er ikke. Samtidig rammes deres branche af nedtur, producenten ender i resignation og forretningsmæssige omstillingsforsøg, modellen i desperation og systematisk øldrikning. De sidste scener er moraliserende, ikke gennemarbejdede forsøg på ”ak, hvor forandret” gennemspil, men de griber ikke, de lykkes ikke, det er for sent, karakterudviklingen fandt sted bag ryggen på filmen, så den findes faktisk ikke.

Markku Heikkinen: All Boys, Finland 2009, 52 min. Manuskript: Markku Heikkinen, fotografi: Hannu Vitikainen og Markku Heikkinen, klip: Joona Louhivuori og hannele Majaniemi, musik: Tobias Wilner, lyd: Olli Huhtanen, produktion: Cilla Werming. Produceret af Bullitt Film, København og Kinotar, Helsinki. Kan ses via bibliotekets hjemmeside på www.filmstriben.dk

http://www.dfi.dk/faktaomfilm/DFI-kataloget/dkfilm.aspx?id=20377

Filmstriben.dk

.. og danskerne kan nu se streamede film, også dokumentarfilm, hjemme hos sig selv via deres lokale biblioteks hjemmeside. Det har været i gang længe, nu er jeg gået i gang med at prøve muligheden af.

Først har jeg kigget på dokumentar nyheder. Og det falder i øjnene, at den internationale succes Waltz with Bashir af Ari Folman fra 2008 er tilgængelig. Det lover godt! Importerede dokumentarfilm på bibliotekernes hylder er igen omsider en mulighed, efter filminstituttet for mange år siden lukkede af for den vitale luksus. Folmans film har været anmeldt og flere gange omtalt her på bloggen.

Men nu de nye film. Der er endnu ikke film fra i år, men listen over film fra 2009 er en lille begyndelse…

…All Boys af Markku Heikkinen, Burma VJ af Anders Østergård, En feminin dreng af Nanna Frank Møller, Kvinder i forandring af Barbara Clos og Lisbeth Lyngse, Nobody Passes Perfectly af Saskia Bisp og Usynlige piger af Sidse Stausholm. Østergaards og Frank Møllers film er begge anmeldt her på siden af Tue Steen Müller. De øvrige vil jeg så se og skrive om.

Heldigvis går Filmstribens udvalg også tilbage i årene. Der er fine film, højt værdsat her på Filmkommentaren. Som for eksempel: Purity Beats Everything af Jon Bang Carlsen, 2007, Slobodan Milosevic on Trial af Michael Christoffersen, 2007, Fra Thailand til Thy af Janus Metz, 2007, Fotografi af Steen Møller Rasmussen, 2006 og længere tilbage en perle som Nattegn af Tom Elling, 1997 og en herlighed som Et rigtigt bondeliv af Jørgen Vestergaard, 1994.

Efter sigende er der omkring 300 dokumentarfilm i denne generøse distribution. Og tallet skulle støt vokse, loves det og filminstitutdirektøren Claus Ladegaard forsikrede for nylig på DOK-mødet, at alle dokumentarfilm med institutstøtte automatisk vil blive lagt i Filmstribens distribution, så snart, de er færdige. Sandelig nye tider…

www.filmstriben.dk  Still: Waltz with Bashir.    

Doc Alliance: Free films

More free viewing for documentary addicts. A generous offer is given by the Doc Alliance (the four festivals in Nyon, Leipzig, Jihlava, Warsaw and Copenhagen). Below is their promotion text, and the films are available from April 21-25. When you visit the site, notice also all the very fine titles available for screening for a very small amount of €’s:

To celebrate the upcoming 2010 edition of Visions du Reel Nyon (April 15 – 21), DocAllianceFilms.com will offer free streaming of the five documentaries from the Doc Alliance Selection 2009,

“Maggie in Wonderland” by Ester Martin Bergsmark, Beatrice “Maggie” Andersson und Mark Hammarberg (Sweden, Finland 2008, 72 min) Maggie, a young woman from Kenya, films her world in the Swedish city of Malmö. A creative portrayal of the meaning of social isolation. “

Auto*Mat” by Martin Mareček (Czech Republic 2009, 90 min). Martin Marecek invents a militant, jubilatory action to combat the automatisms generated by Prague’s automobile culture. “

Big John” by Håvard Bustnes (Norway 2008, 86 min) The rise and fall of a young boxer coached by his father ‘Big John’ – who was also his trainer, impresario and agent. ”Hotel Sahara” by Bettina Haasen (Germany 2008, 85 min) Nouhadibou in Mauritania: a melting pot of dreams, hopes and the terminus of countless young African emigrants who end up here. “

Survival Song by Yu Guangyi” (China 2008, 94 min) A family of Chinese peasants is condemned to poverty and broken apart in the name of modernity. A deeply moving and sublime social tale.

www.docalliancefilms.com

idfa: for Viewers Worldwide

8 excellent documentaries can be watched for free on the net, made available for screening by idfa, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Let me just mention three of them – Florin Iepan’s Romanian ”Children of the Decree” about the atrocities during Ceaucescu, Heddy Honigmann’s ”Underground Orchestra” set in Paris and as always with this great director dealing with people, and Danish Jørgen Leth’s masterpiece ”Haïti Untitled” from 1995, his declaration of love to the country where he lived until the earthquake this year forced him to leave his totally destroyed home. Photo: Jørgen Leth.

http://www.idfa.nl/industry/idfa-tv/films/worldwide.aspx

Dokumentärer i SVT

The following text is in Danish as it includes information on the excellent documentary service that is provided by SVT, Swedish public television, that is available for viewers in the Nordic countries. There are not many broadcasters – if any – that has such a range of time slots, often at prime time, for the screening of documentary films and programmes:

Jeg abonnerer (det er gratis) på et nyhedsbrev fra SVT. Det bringer mig til en velredigeret og indbydende website, der oplyser om kommende dokumentar-visninger på et af de følgende mange strands: ”Dokumentärfilm”, ”Dokument Inifrån”, ”Dokument Utifrån”, ”K Special” og ”Dox”. Hvor ”K Special” (fredag aften kl. 20, se nedenfor om Boris Mitics film) altid har været garant for høj kvalitet og visning af ikke-engelsk sprogede dokumentarer, er ”Dox” nyt. Her er hvad Ingemar Persson, programchef for dokumentar, siger herom:

På tisdagskvällarna sänder vi de hetaste nyproducerade dokumentärfilmerna och de odödliga klassikerna. Under rubriken Dox visar vi världens bästa filmer om verkligheten. Vi vill ge publiken tv-kvällar de inte glömmer. Dox-filmerna visas varje tisdag kl 22.00 i SVT1 och det utlovas dokumentärer från både Sverige och världen som fängslar, engagerar och provocerar.

På Twitter giver SVT besked om dokumentarnyt, på hjemmesiden er der interviews med fine svenske instruktører som PeÅ Holmquist (om hans seneste Gaza-film), Erik Gandini (om Videocracy, filmen om Berlusconi), Nina Hedenius (om den fremragende film “Naturens Gång”) og Nahid Persson (filmen om persiske Farah Diba) – og en del film kan ses på nettet. Med andre ord: SVT tager dokumentaren alvorligt. Foto: The Last Tightrope Dancers in Armenia, vist på K-Special.

http://svt.se/2.118538/dokumentar?lid=index_313009&lpos=sajt&from=innehall_ao

http://twitter.com/svtdokumentar

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