Karin Westerlund: God, Smell and Her

My colleague, Allan Berg, has posted two texts in Danish about the new film by Karin Westerlund, Swedish visual artist and filmmaker, based in Denmark and Cairo, Egypt. I saw the film yesterday, it is as Allan Berg writes, quite extraordinary, a bombardment of images from all over, a film about love, about what you don’t see but sense, about culture, religion, a philosophical statement. As it has been said, the film can be categorized as poetic-political if that adds anything, probably not, as this film is hard to describe due to its richness. I watched it yesterday in a completely sold out art cinema in Copenhagen (extra screening sunday at 10am in Grand Teatret Copenhagen), and write this to make film festival people and tv buyers aware of a film that does not look like anything else, an experiment someone will say, if so let’s have more of that. Go to the website of the unique filmmaker Karin Westerlund and enjoy clips from the work, she has done, including this new one. A dvd edition for public purchase is on its way. (photo from the book of KW: It started in Cairo)

http://www.kamerakairo.com/glh.html

Karin Westerlund: Gud, lugt og hende 2

Den syriske digter Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said Asbar), (still fra filmen) er en af seværdighederne, som Gunilla Röör opsøger i filmens rejseforløb. Et monument som de store og små bygningsværker, hun også besøger. Jeg tror hans tekster er vigtige dele i filmens konstruktion. Måske en arkitektur som trappen i Varanasi ned til Ganges. Jeg ved det ikke, mærker det kun. Hvordan skal jeg dog få tag i dette geniale monstrum af en film? 

“Jeg mærker de gode vibrationer”, siger hun til den vise mand, som har vist hende om i moskeen. “Det er et billede, som du henter fra fysikken”, replicerer han. “Jeg tror, det er nærvær, du mærker”.  

“The truth is a house / without people / without neighbours / without visitors…” skriver Adonis. Et sted kommer Röor – i en drøm måske, i hvert fald i en virkelighed – til en række tomme, smukt okkerkalkede rum i en bygning, hvor jeg gerne slog mig ned. Men hun er fortvivlet. Bevæger sig omkring i angstfyldte ryk, kan intet genkende. Det er ikke, som det skulle være. Er ikke, som det måske var. Engang. Til slut ser hun fra balkonen ud over landskabet. Som ikke er der mere.

Filmens juxtapositioner (som de snakker om under seminaret i Århus) kaster mig fra side til side, frem og tilbage. Jeg må se den igen..

Karin Westerlund: Gud, lugt og hende, Danmark, 2008. 93 min. Grand biografen, København. EKSTRAFORESTILLING I GRAND SØNDAG DEN 30. AUGUST KL. 10.00 (OM FORMIDDAGEN). INSTRUKTØREN KARIN WESTERLUND ER TIL STEDE. Billetter bestilles på 33151611 eller www.grandteatret.dk

Lukas Pribyl: Forgotten Transports 1-4/ 1

What an achievement! I don’t recall, when was the last time that I witnessed so captivating a historical documentary, here told by Czech Jewish survivors of the holocaust. They were interviewed between 2000-2006 by Lukas Pribyl, the researcher, writer and director behind the four 90 minutes long films that share the same title, ”Forgotten Transports”, with the adding of where the transports went: ”to Latvia”, ”to Estonia”, ”to Belarus”, ”to Poland”. (The photo represents the “Estonian “Czech Girls”” in “to Estonia”).

Put together in a clearly edited non-sensationalistic chronological structure each of the four films takes the viewer on a journey from Czekoslovakia to the ghettos in the countries mentioned and from there to camps – concentration camps, extermination camps. Or to be more precise: the survivors take the viewer with their personal stories, told with shocking and moving details, but also with humour. Watching the film you wonder how it was possible for these people to continue living after they (most of them) lost their families and were so close to the most horrifying brutality and death in circumstances beyond description.

But the film director does so in a way that deserves all respect. All archive material – moving or still images, much of it I guess shown for the first time  – are connected to the places, events and time that the storytellers refer to. Discreetly a text is placed in the frame giving the information of name of person talking, or the place we are taken to. With the addition of private photos of the survivors as young people, as well as the killed relatives or friends, or the German SS people and camp superiors. This is not a film about the 2nd WW, there is not a single word from Hitler, there is not a single reconstruction, it is totally based on what human beings remember from their childhood and youth. Put together in four films that are different as their fates were different, some timesvery hard to watch and listen to, some times you smile. It is about Czech Jews but the stories have an universal appeal.

The musical score also deserves a mention for its high quality. Peter Ostrouchov avoids all film music klichés and pushes for sentimentality, for me his music places the viewer in a state of reflection.

www.forgottentransports.com

Lukas Pribyl: Forgotten Transports 1-4/ 2

I had an email contact with the director of ”Forgotten Transports”, Lukas Pribyl. Here follows some quotes from his side – and please do also go to the very good site of the film:

How did you make the people talk so fine and precise?” The people talk so precisely because most of them were interviewed for the very first time and did not have anyone to share their recollections with, therefore they only told me what really remembered – no second hand information. Then, the films were edited from 270 hours of interview footage, so I had a lot to choose from. I developed my own interviewing technique, which allows for some repetition and is therefore well suited for editing work.”

You refrain totally from the use of nowadays trend for reconstruction in historial documentaries?” What can be more real than reality? Why reenact and reconstruct something that can be shown through authentic photographs and footage and why speak for people who are perfectly capable of telling their story themselves? (It is their story after all…) The photos used in the film are really of the people themselves, in the places they talk about. So when the women in the film about Estonia speak about a diver in the port of Tallinn, I go to the archives, find the names of all the German divers working in the Baltics between 1941 and 1944, trace them or their families, until I find Mr. Ruehmann’s family and get the picture of the Czech Jewish women helping him onto a boat. That’s why the series took ten years to make. I don’t use any look-alike footage or photos, only time and place precise material. I have had extremely good experience with audiences – they don’t find the stories too complicated or incomprehensible and actually find them “dramatic”enough.”

And a line from the site of the film: The series of four feature length documentary films on the topic of virtually unknown concentration camps and ghettos and little known modes of survival is Pribyl’s directorial debut.

www.forgottentransports.com

Film Programme at Baltic Sea Forum

It is a high quality film programme that the organisers of the coming Baltic Sea Forum offers its local Riga audience and the visiting filmmakers and tv editors.

Under the title ”Revolution starts at Home” (and from September 2-6) you are not surprised to find ”Recipes for Disaster” by Finnish John Webster, who will visit Riga to discuss his effort to introduce an oil celibacy in his family’s daily life. Other award winning films, highly praised on this site are ”Z 32” by Avi Mograbi, ”The English Surgeon” by Geoffrey Smith, ”Cash and Marry” by Atanas Georgiev and ”Burma VJ” (photo) by Anders Østergaard, who will also be in Latvia’s capital to meet his audience. ”The Yes Men are fixing the World” by Mike Bonnano and Andy Bichlbaum is on the programme and there is a visit from neighbouring Estonia by Jaak Kilmi and Kiur Armaa, who present their new original work ”Disco and Atomic War”. A quote from the description of the film: Finnish TV was the window to a dreamland for Estonia that the Communist party leaders never managed to close. Even though Western frequencies were blocked, many homes found a way to access the forbidden fruit. This a singular view of recent history where spy-film elements co-mingle with human tragic-comedy.

http://www.mediadesk.lv/index.php?d=222

Juxtaposition

At placere to genstande ved siden af hinanden i museumssalen, at skrive to stykker efter hinanden i teksten på bordet, at montere to scener i forlængelse i klipperummet, og du er i montagens klassiske situation, i historiefortællingens basis, i den kulturelle repræsentations problemstilling og mulighed. Juxtapositionens organisation af stoffet er forudsætningen for fremstillingen af meningsbærende konstruktioner i museumsvæsen, litteratur og film.

Og netop filmens grundlæggende æstetik er det gennemgående tema i den konference om Transcultural Montage, som begynder i dag på Moesgård Museum i Århus. Med foredrag fra morgen til aften 24.-27. august.

Se programmet her:

http://www.moesmus.dk/page.asp?sideid=1246&zcs=4

Og det ses med det samme, at det, som lyder så enkelt, at sætte elementer ved siden af hinanden, er en stor og rigt facetteret problemstilling. Man kan forventningsfuld sætte sig i en af stolene i museets foredragssal og lade det ene omhyggeligt forberedte foredrag efter det andet passere gennem sin forståelse. Eller man kan vælge blandt dem ved at orientere sig i programmets fornemme samling af abstracts.

De skriver: “Med konferencen ønsker vi at undersøge, hvordan forskellige montageformer kan bruges til at udfordre og åbne nye muligheder for menneskelig erfaring og antropologisk viden. Det handler om, hvordan man kan bruge montageeffekter til at sabotere etablerede måder at opfatte verden, og om, hvordan montager af ord, billeder og lyd kan give rum til de usynlige dele af menneskelivet.”

Karin Westerlund: Gud, lugt og hende

Blandt de mange, mange originale filmmanuskripter i filminstituttets samling er det mærkværdigste, tror jeg, Karin Westerlunds første manuskript til “Gud, lugt og hende”. Det er meget, meget smukt. Det er både en tekst og en arkitekturskitse og en række dialoglister og en samling notater og overvejelser. Måske er det også en æstetisk-filosofisk opsats. Og det er mange år gammelt. Filmen har været længe undervejs. Nu har den været færdig mange måneder og har været i biografen i Stockholm, med succes, forstår jeg. I morgen har den omsider premiere i Grand i København. Og kommer forhåbentlig snart på dvd, for jeg glæder mig rigtig meget til at se den film. Er den som manuskriptet, hvad jeg håber og tror, er den det mærkværdigste, man kan se i biografen for tiden. Den er smuk, klog og tankevækkende. 

Still: Gud, lugt og hende er optaget i Irland, Indien, Spanien, Egypten og altså Island, hvor den hvidklædte skikkelse så er en prik i det vældige landskab.

http://www.kamerakairo.com/glh.html

Joris Ivens dvd-box

Det nye flotte nummer af Ekko er lige kommet ind ad døren. Jeg bladrer i første omgang forbi Paprika Steen, Quentin Tarantino, Headhunter, Grodals von Trier analyse, Nimbus storhed og fald, Johnnny Depp,Pedro Almodóvar og alle psykopaterne frem til anmeldelserne og finder omhyggelige og pålidelige Lars Movin, som i sin anmeldelse giver Joris Ivens samlede værk seks stjerner.

Det vigtigste er, at det kan lade sig gøre! At se alle de mange Ivens film nu. Samlet. Og den vigtigste sætning i Movis tekst er: “En boks , som enhver, der interesserer sig blot en smule for filmmediets og især dokumentarismens historie, roligt kan begynde at spare sammen til…” Jeg er begyndt. Prisen for tyve Ivens film, alle til seks stjerner, er 53 euro. I denne webshop: 

http://www.ivens.nl/nieuws/leesverderUK.asp?n=20249,0715393519&k=1&t=2&m=1 

Filmene er i hollandsk, fransk og engelsk version. De er alle søgt restaureret til instruktørens oprindelige version.

Still: Joris Ivens blandt terrakottakrigerne i A Tale of The Wind, 1988.

Odense Film Festival 2009

The national Danish film festival in Odense is over. Under the competent leadership of Cecilia Lidin a big competitive international programme of short fiction films supplemented the competition of new Danish short films and documentaries. The Grand Prix for the best Danish film 2008-2009 went to Christian Sønderby Jepsen for his charming and surprising “Side om Side”. Here is a repeat of the review that was brought on this site:

Around 20 minutes into this staged documentary I started to get impatient. Come on, make the story move, we got the message, the neighbours dont like each others, they dont talk, it is a silent war, where they will not fight or terrorise each other as in subjectwise similar films like the classic of Norman Maclaren. But then it takes a turn. The filmmaker asks his father, one of the neighbours, what was the biggest moment in his life. Difficult question to answer for a man, who has difficulties to express emotions, but he gives the answer. And the filmmaker goes to the neighbour to give us a positive impression of him.

We will never sit down and have coffee and pastries, says the father of the filmmaker about the conflict. More than a decade ago something happened that created a total split up between the two families. The result was that a fence grew up, a kind of no-mans land, a Berlin wall, in otherwise peaceful Western Jutland of Denmark in a town called Tarm. Where they speak a strong dialect and express a certain kind of stubbornness. Because nobody really recalls what happened, nobody knows who owes an apology.

The film is brilliant to look at, the mise-en-scène  style is carried through, a promising debut, that reminds me of the early films of Jon Bang Carlsen.

Denmark, 2008, 47 mins.

Docu Awards in Sarajevo

What a pleasant surprise and a well deserved prize from the Sarajevo Film Festival audience – to nominate ”Sevdah” by Marina Andree as the best film of the festival. I have previously introduced the film, that had its premiere in Sarajevo and that now will hopefully travel the world. Here is what the film is about:

”An intimate journey through Bosnian “blues” dedicated to the prematurely deceased Farah, a passionate fan of sevdah. Trying to confront their own loss and grief, the autors create a film about sevdah as an emotional, musical, lyrical and visual journey through the soul of Bosnia.”

The winner – another prize for this great film – of the documentary section was ”Caviar Connection” by Dragan and Jovana Nikolic, a film that has travelled the world as is ”Cash and Marry” by Atanas Georgiev, who went third in the Audience competition. Both manyfold mentioned on this site.

These three films document again the quality of documentaries from the Balkan: Originality, vision, relevance in subject, feeling and humour. I am so happy for the filmmakers and a bit proud to have been able to follow them from ZagrebDox pitching through Ex Oriente training workshop, and now they meet an audience who appreciates the work!

www.sevdahfilm.com

www.sff.ba

www.docuinter.net