A text about Film by Christopher Pavsek

It is not everyday you see such an interesting thoughtprovoking text about film as the one I saw when visiting the site of Christopher Pavsek, that accompanies his film: To Those Born After (idfa 2005)

I firmly believe that film can be intellectually engaging and emotionally moving at the same time. Flms which demand serious effort on the part of their viewers can also be enjoyable. Brecht taught us that to think and learn does not of necessity exclude the possibility of pleasure. That is, I believe, a utopian element of my film. You have to work at it when you watch, but hopefully the work provides joy and is worthwhile. Not all work, after all, has to be toil done merely to earn a wage.

It is also utopian that something beautiful can be cobbled together from so much that is ugly. It proves that there is hope. This is important to remember for people like me who are constitutionally bleak-minded; it is also good to recall for my friends who tell me that my film depresses them. I think it is the world that is depressing them and my film makes them realize this a little.

If that were all that my film did I would not consider it a success. It also seems to offer a bit of an experience of beauty. That experience is disconcerting because you do not generally expect something like beauty to emerge in an artwork where you see human beings murdered and literally blown to pieces. But it is also intellectually reassuring in that it shows a way forward.

A critic once wrote something about my film that I cherish. He said the film “shows us how to cross the world several times with the minimum of means — with no more than a pilgrim’s staff.” I take this to mean a couple things. “To Those Born After” is a piece of what is called “appropriate” or “sustainable technology” in the arid language of economics. The only difference is that it so far has profited no one. But it is also a comment on the possibilities of minimalism, a minimalism whose goal is not to reduce art to pure aesthetic gestures but to propel art outward into the world and to allow the world into art. The simple signs and symbols have always been the best. My favorites: a camera and an eye; a hammer and a sickle.

There are two images that I believe should be shown on film or video only with the greatest care or perhaps not at all. One is the image of the World Trade Center burning and collapsing. It turns your mind off to see that; the response is Pavlovian. The other is any image of George W. Bush speaking with synchronous sound. The ban on graven images that Adorno and Benjamin so cherished was misplaced. Images of god or utopia are not the problem. It is images of people like Bush that are dangerous because the images grant a particular substance to him when he literally has none, aside from his crude corporal materiality. Godard once said that the original mission of cinema was to show us that the world was there. But then it became the mission of cinema to make us believe in the world on the screen. The last thing we should do is believe in a human being who has no thoughts of his own and who says nothing that is true.

My eldest daughter is the child in the images at the end of the film. She is a remarkable human being worth believing in. From very early on she disliked having her picture taken and that’s why so many pictures of her that we do have are stolen images. Not quite “life caught unawares” but more like “life caught with its guard down.” I don’t bother her much with the video camera now. The few video bits we do have of Sophie often end with her snarling at the camera or turning away as she realizes she’s been caught, as she does at the end of this film. It is a good reminder that we should be careful of what we demand from those born after. We don’t, after all, want them to turn away as well.

http://www.sfu.ca/~cpavsek

… and there are more clever words from this director to read on the site of D Word that right now discusses the report Honest Truths: Documentary Filmmakers on Ethical Challenges in Their Work published by Pat Aufderheide on September 8th.

http://www.d-word.com

IDFA Top Ten

An interesting compilation of films has been advertised for the coming idfa:

Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan (Haifa, 1964) will compile this year’s Top 10 for the 22nd International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Major themes in his Top 10 include how our collective memory works, ethical issues and the representation of history. Themes that are also central to his own work. Here is the list of films:

Blind kind, Johan van der Keuken (1964), Ici et ailleurs, Jean Luc-Godard (photo) (1976), Hitler connais pas?, Bertrand Blier (1963), Ma’loul, Michel Khleifi (1985), The Memory of Justice, by Marcel Ophüls (1976), Moeder Dao, de schildpadgelijkende, Vincent Monnikendam (1995), Testimonies, Ido Sela (1993), Punishment Park, Peter Watkins (1971), Philips Radio, Joris Ivens (1931), S21, La machine de mort khmère rouge, Rithy Panh (2003).

Independence saved for Latvian Film Centre

On this site the development in the critical situation around the survival of the National Film Centre in Latvia has been followed closely. And it seems like the independence of the Film Centre is saved. I wrote an email to Ilze Galite Holmberg, the director of the Centre to congratulate her on the succesful Baltic Sea Forum and to hear if things were clearer now. This is a clip from the answer from her:

There was a Cabinet of Ministers Committee meeting – and that supported the independence of NFC, with reforms, smaller budget etc, etc. This has to be officially confirmed by the Cabinet of
Ministers meeting, but we are told that normally it happens that in 99% cases the latter confirms what the former has adopted. So we have great hopes, but of course the reorganization will bring unpleasant things too…

… photo from Latvian classic “The Minutes Older”, director Herz Frank, camera Juris Podnieks.

BANANAS!* strike back at Dole

Swedish director Fredrik Gertten fights back against Dole… the case that we have written about earlier on this site – go to “search” and write bananas to get the background Here comes today’s: From the press release:

LOS ANGELES, Calif. (September 10, 2009) — In response to a defamation lawsuit brought by Dole Food Company, Inc. against the makers of the documentary film BANANAS!*, attorneys for filmmakers Fredrik Gertten, Margarete Jangård and WG Film AB today filed a Motion to Strike Dole’s Complaint under California’s Anti-SLAPP statute, which allows the court to dismiss meritless lawsuits filed for the purpose of stifling protected speech.  Lathrop & Gage attorney Lincoln Bandlow serves as lead attorney in this matter.

As set forth in the motion, the film Bananas!* provides a balanced account of issues surrounding the treatment of banana workers and covers one of the many lawsuits filed by Nicaraguan banana workers against Dole and other companies regarding the adverse health effects suffered by workers as a result of the use of the pesticide DBCP in banana fields.  Dole’s lawsuit, as set forth in the motion, simply seeks to “poison the fountain of free speech” by intimidating anyone who speaks out on this important issue of public concern who does not comport with Dole’s “spin” on recent events pertaining to DBCP litigation. 

In addition to filing an Anti-SLAPP Motion, WG Film AB also filed a Cross-Complaint against Dole, seeking to recover damages for Dole’s improper tactics in interfering with the film’s premiere and its participation in the Los Angeles Film Festival.  As set forth in the Cross-Complaint, by “recklessly and falsely attack[ing] WG Film’s integrity and competency as a documentary film maker to the heads of corporate sponsors of the Festival” and making “similar false and defamatory statements to the General Consul and Ambassador from Sweden,” Dole caused the film to be removed from competition and clouded the film’s world premiere, causing the filmmakers substantial damage.

“We are very pleased that the truth about our film will finally be known and that the public will see that this lawsuit was simply an effort by Dole to silence the public discussion of important issues,” said Gertten, the director of the film.

Mr. Bandlow added that “if there ever was a lawsuit that cried out for the speech-protecting mechanism of California’s Anti-SLAPP statute, it is Dole’s absurd defamation action.  We are confident that once the Court sees the actual film, rather than Dole’s patently false description of it in the complaint, this action will be summarily dismissed, my clients can proceed with the film’s distribution and seek to recover the damages suffered by Dole’s censorship-by-intimidation tactics.”

An electronic version of WG Film’s brief with links to relevant clips from the film and other material can be found at:
files.me.com/jshaeffer/pt6ujd (file size: 880 MB). A copy can be made available upon request.

Excerpts from the motion (PDF):

The Anti-SLAPP motion »

Director Fredrik Gertten’s declaration »

Producer Margarete Jangård’s declaration »

About Lathrop & Gage: A full-service law firm, Lathrop & Gage LLP has almost 300 attorneys in 11 offices nationwide – from Los Angeles to New York. In 2009, Chambers USA ranked Lathrop & Gage’s corporate, environmental, intellectual property, litigation, real estate and labor and employment teams among the best in the Midwest. For more information, visit www.lathropgage.com or www.beentherewonthat.com.

For information and press enquiries, please contact:

Lathrop & Gage LLP Art Menke
Phone: +01 816 286 6385
amenke@lathropgage.com

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Phone: +01 213 624 7827
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Support BANANAS!* – join the Free Speech Campaign »

Pavel Kostomarov: Together

A house in the middle of nowhere. Or maybe a house in the centre of the universe. A couple lives there. They are artists, they do paintings and wooden sculptures. The sculptures have their own home in the house, a room for themselves where they stand in a circle, in harmony, in a room that is visited by the artists with lamps in their hands, pointing at them, making them come alive. It is a phantasy world with a couple – the man, who is talking in philosophical terms moving his arm around, a bit of a pretentious performance, but charming and with humour, if he is not throwing rude language at the woman, calling her dumb at one moment, and praising her as Mother Earth in the next. She looks strong, moves around as a powerful independent character, but she has her views on the relationship between man and woman: ”If she dominates it’s over”. Well, from the 48 minutes that I was invited to share with her and her husband, I did not get the impression of a suppressed woman.

And that is not at all what brilliant cameraman and director Kostomarov is after. He goes for beauty. The light playing in the face of the woman. Their hands cutting the sculpture figures. Their hugging and caressing, their letting the outside world be rude and cruel – they are murdering us, the man says peeping out of the window after a sequence with cranes and cars destroying something that we dont get to know what is. Not important, what is important is what we see inside, what Kostomarov (cameraman and co-director of ”Mother” and previously cameraman for Loznitsa) catches of Life and Love between two people who have been together for a lifetime. The name of the couple is Vladimir and Ludmila Loboda, and to summarize: This is such a wonderful intimate close-up of a Russian artist couple, an observation, yes, but what makes it extraordinary is the interpretative layer that the director adds, or should I say paints with his camera. There are superb sequences playing with light and shadow, where you see objects in the house or art pieces in compositions that stays in your mind. Taking the risk to have King Crimson music as an accompagnement!

Russia, 2009, 48 mins.

Herz Frank Tribute

I read on miradox.ru that Herz Frank is going to head the jury of the upcoming Russian festival Flahertiana (October 15-22), previously texted about on this site. Sitting in an airport thoughts go back to the many times I have met this master of documentary, and eaten his words of wisdom – in Bornholm, in Riga, in Tel Aviv, in Leipzig, in Paris, in Amsterdam, in Stockholm. Always he was prepared to share his knowledge with colleagues and audience, many times after an illness that almost killed him. I think of the endless times that I have shown his ”Ten Minutes Older” from 1978, the film shot by Juris Podnieks, the one-shot-film of a boy watching a puppet theatre with a camera that reads the many expressions of this boy, who in his grown up life became a renowned poker player, one of those who are not supposed to express anything. Poker Face! With his intelligence Herz Frank has meant a lot for filmmakers all over, always claiming that documentaries should have a philosophical message – I have quoted him on this site several times. One of his admirers, Lithuanian Audrius Stonys joins him in the jury, among others. Bravo and thank you Herz, and please take good care of your… Heart!

http://www.tenminutesolder.com/

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/737/

http://flahertiana.perm.ru/eng/2009/

Baltic Sea Forum – Hermanis

I had never heard about him before, Alvis Hermanis, even if the Latvian film team Inese Boka and Gints Grube wrote in their file that he was famous all over Europe. They did so when we met at Ex Oriente workshop, first session, almost half a year ago, and one more confession: I did not understand their film project because I did not understand the working method of Hermanis. I do so now, and am so happy with the way that this intriguing project was received when pitched at the Baltic Sea Forum. The trailer not only explained it all but also did what a trailer should do: gave appetite for more. Luckily there was a fan and connaisseur of Hermanis in the panel, Outi Saarikoski from Finnish television YLE, who will take the project and help its further development, as will documentary veteran and expert, Russian Grigory Libergal, as one ot the three parts of the film will be shot in Moscow. Let me quote the short description of the theatre director in the catalogue, film working title is Larger than Life:

… a storyteller who claims he is able to transform any real life story into extraordinary documentary theatre. He once declared that no classic play or novel is more interesting than the life story of any real human being. Story is the only thing that makes it possible to describe and portray our world. The film tries to answer the questions: is life more interesting than its transformation in theatre, and is it possible to capture and record the secret of story creation.

www.mistrusmedia.lv

Baltic Sea Forum – Commissioning Editors

… so who were they, the people at the table who were supportive and constructively critical, well simply wanted to help and in many cases asked for meetings and to be kept updated on the development of the projects. If and when the positive reactions turn into letters of commitments and at the end into contracts that is of course another story, but for many projects this first step was also a proof of the potential of the project – and many returned home in a state of creative confusion, as the advices were different:

Cynthia Kane from ITVS in the US was as usual always warmly encouraging the pitchers and showed her passion for good social and human interest stories. Her US colleague from Sundance Institute, Cara Mertes, analysed quickly the projects’ weak and strong points, as did Alex Szalat from Arte france, who as Reinhart Lohmann from ZDF/Arte fought their best to see where the slot-linked European cultural channel par exellence with a strong tradition for creative documentaries could place the projects. Not easy… more easy for veteran forum panelist Wim van Rompaey, Lichtpunt in Belgium, who go for 52 minute documentaries that have an ethical angle to be discussed, and who never leave a forum without bringing one or two projects to his committee. Katja Wildermuth from MDR in Germany is for many an exemplary clear-talking commissioning editor as she always communicates yes, I would like to talk more, or No, this is not for me. Flora Gregory represented Al Jazeera and went for the more reporting documentaries, Charlotte Gry Madsen from DR/TV brought some optimism advertising the new historical and cultural digital channel, Austrian distributor (Autlook) Peter Jäger was looking for artistic theatrical documentaries and Russian Grigory Libergal (photo) was an excellent commentator on content and brought knowledge on Russian situation to the table. The three Baltic channels (represented by Marje Jurtshenko, Anna Rozenvalde and Tadas Patalavicius) did their job and supported their producing colleagues, and neighbouring YLE editor, Outi Saarikoski, was again wonderfully unpredictable and funny in her remarks.

www.nfc.lv

Baltic Sea Forum – Talents

As a member of the organisational staff it is indeed the ambition to promote new people, talents, up-coming documentarians with good subjects and original treatments and an ambition to make them into documentaries that are creative and surprising. Please. And preferably non-formatted than formatted for television, but if formatted then at least playing with the format. Give us, the audience what we did not expect to get. And needless to say, make something that you think is important to express.

Let me pick three examples that can be associated with these characteristics: Obvious that is the case with the cinematographically extraordinary ”Field of Magic” (people living in a forest near a dumping ground) by Mindaugas Survila from Lithuania, as it is with also Lithuanian Egle Vertelyte and her beautiful story about a Mongolian boy, who wants to be a Lama, and as it is with Polish Magdalena Szymkow, whose film on ”The Reporter’s Daughter”, the reporter being Ryszard Kapuscinski (photo), for whom the director worked in his last years (he died in 2007), is so important, I would say, for the simple reason that the name of the Polish journalist icon seemed to be unknown for a good deal of the people in the panel and among the young colleagues of Szymkow.

Baltic Sea Forum – Humour in Pitching

I can’t mention all projects that were pitched at the Baltic Sea Forum, and there is not enough space to highlight the many that did receive very positive feedback, but I will write about a couple – see above – that went very well and which some of you documentary professionals will meet on other marketplaces, and some of you members of the documentary audience will get to meet as finished works,  hopefully as artistically interesting and ambitious as they were this weekend, when presented on the top floor of Hotel Albert in Riga.

So here first some remarks on pitching in public fora: The ones which are easiest to convey are the ones that are able to provide a strong and precise verbal pitch accompanied by a – yes, it helps, but of course you can’t adapt that tone for all subjects – trailer full of humour. Estonian Kiur Aarma, who worked with Jaak Kilmi on ”Disco and Atomic War”, had this time teamed up with Hardi Volmer (”Man from Animazone” on Estonian animation artist Priit Pärn) to bring forward a project (”The Gold Spinners”) on the production of commercials in the USSR. The broadcasters queued to express their enthusiasm after a superb trailer. Experience says it takes time but it looks so obvious that this film could be made asap with international funding. It is funny, informative, personal and Aarma just showed quality with the ”Disco…” film. Similarly great director Yuri Khashchavatski from Belarus (photo, search his name on this site) with his Estonian producer Marianna Kaat stands strong with the non-humourously toned film on the political brainwashing of the Russian population with the Georgian war as the starting point. Talking about authors with own hand writing, it was a pleasure for the Forum to include Estonian Kersti Uibo (”The Dark Side of the Hill”), Russian Andrei Nekrasov (”The Golden Autumn of Socialism”), Russian Alina Rudnitskaya (”The Blood of a Stranger”) and Latvian Peteris Krilovs (”Willing Collaborationists”).   

www.nfc.lv