Victor Asliuk: Vostrau Belarus

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

Pietro Marcello: La Bocca del lupo

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/

Sophie Bredier: Elie et Nous

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

Andreas Hartmann: Tage des Regens

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

Pippo Delbono: La Paura

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

Eric Pauwels: Les Films rêvés

Man begynder med at filme sin hund. Måske. Eller man begynder med et afsnit med Jean Rouchs første film om rejsen på floden. Eller man begynder med den smukkeste og værdigste strip-tease, man altid har ønsket at filme. Til begyndelsen af Beethovens klaversonate Quasi una fantasia. Sådan begynder man som filminstruktør, hvis man vil lave alle sine drømte film på én gang, i én film. Eric Pauwels har gjort det. Jeg så den på Ciinéma du réel i går. Det tog 180 minutter, del 1 og del 2 i én køre. Det var den rigtige måde at se det værk på. Og jeg så ikke noget overflødigt minut. Og fortællerens stemme var inde voice-over fra først til sidst. Det blev ikke for meget. Det må være fordi Pauels filmdrømme ikke er private i alt dette meget personlige. De kan generøst deles ud. Og de er vedkommende – mærkede jeg også på reaktionerne i den voksne del af salen.

Festvalen har interessant nok fundet plads til dette lyriske filmessay i konkurrenceprogrammet. Det er altså min rene fordom kun at vente klassisk dokumentar her… cinéma vérite, samfundskritisk realisme og etnografiske undersøgelser.   

Kasper Torsting: Krigsministeren 2

Filmen og dens opfølgende arbejde er voldsomt debatteret. Højdepunktet i troløse udtryk er Ekko-anmeldelsens bemærkning om instruktøren som “en nyttig idiot”. Kasper Torsting har forleden dag svaret med en kronik i Berlingske Tidende, hvor han skviver om den observerende dokumentarfilm som en stolt tradition med æstetisk – og etisk måske også – front mod en del journalistik. Her er et link til kronikken og et link til Ekkos anmeldelse:

http://www.berlingske.dk/kronikker/en-nyttig-idiots-bekendelser

http://www.ekkofilm.dk/?id=865&allowbreak=Nej

De to film er emnet for en filmaften i FOF-Randers’ filmklub onsdag 24.marts 19:00:

http://www.infof.dk/alt/default.asp?enhed_id=13&rekl=1

Susana de Sousa Dias: 48

Det hemmelige politis portrætter – forfra og fra siden, så vi ser afstandsstøtten i nakken – står helt roligt afklarede i lang tid på lærredet. Det hæslige forehavende har lånt modellernes skønhed, værdighed og autenticitet. De erindrende interviews lånt dem kendsgerningernes andre billeder, oprivende og brutale. Og mærkeligt også lysende humor. I tidsafstandens nødvendige distance. Billederne er nænsomt bearbejdet, så deres aura yderligere bliver synlig. Faktisk. Og den nøgne lyd af stemmerne fra samtalerne må være bearbejdet, som var det sart musik. Så den bliver til sart musik.

Det handler om det portugisiske diktaturs politiske forbrydelse. Overgrebene mod styrets modstandere. Om anholdelserne, ydmygelserne, torturen, fængselsopholdene. Det er så frygteligt og vildt, og det er fremstillet så smukt og roligt afklaret. 

Filmkunsten her er usædvanlig dristig i sin minimalisme. En montage af ganske ensartede arkivbilleder og interviewenes lydbåndoptagelser. Ikke mere. Og netop derfor måske så meget. Jeg måtte gå fra filmen efter de første cirka 30 minutter (festivaljag..). Jeg havde set en torso. Men jeg har på fornemmelsen, at de 30 minutter bliver min vigtigste oplevelse på årets Cinéma du réel.

Tue Steen Müller har lovet at skrive en anmeldelse af Susana de Sousa Dias’ film.   

Susana de Sousa Dias: 48, Portugal 2009, 93 min. Manuskript, klip og lyd: Susana de Sousa Dias, fotografi: Octávio Espiritu Santo. Produceret af Kintop info@kintop.net

EDN Award 2010

EDN (European Documentary Network) has announced that The EDN Award 2010 is presented to IRDFA – Iranian Documentary Filmmakers Association. IRDFA receives the award for their outstanding contribution to the documentary culture. More text from the EDN site:

EDN has chosen to honour IRDFA to recognise the impressive work the organisation has done since it was founded in 1998. IRDFA has established a strong national organisation to unite the Iranian documentary sector and made sure that the documentary film as a genre and an art form has been recognised by public film and funding bodies. IRDFA has also worked strongly to help Iranian documentary filmmakers and their films to travel around the world as well as making documentary makers from around the world travel to Iran. EDN Network Manager Hanne Skjødt said:

The EDN Award was initiated to honour outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture. However, we have chosen to expand the geographical focus of our award a bit. We want to honour an organisation outside Europe that has done a remarkable job in uniting, structuring and promoting their national documentary sector.

The EDN Award 2010 was presented March 19 and was accepted by Mahboubeh Honarian on behalf of the whole IRDFA organisation. The award ceremony was held during the EDN workshop Docs in Thessaloniki. The workshop is held in the framework of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival – Images of the 21st Century.

Read more about this film political choice on:

www.edn.dk