Cineuropa

The publicly funded film site Cineuropa – published in English, French, Spanish and Italian – for free – brings every day news about films in Europe. But not only news, also longer interviews, festival reports and you can watch trailers from new films. The focus is on the fiction films but a week ago the site brought in the documentary with good and useful information, see link below. This info has been collected with the help of the training programmes Documentary Campus and Eurodoc. This is a text clip from the intention behind the Cineuropa initiative:

The European Cinema Portal is a site dedicated to European cinema, films, actors, filmmakers, professionals, producers, distributors, sales agents, scriptwriters, film finance and the film industry as a whole… Cineuropa provides up-to-date information and other services essential to know one another better to cinephiles from all over the world interested in knowing more about European films, as well as to film and television professionals.

http://cineuropa.org/dossier.aspx?lang=en&treeID=1703&documentID=90814

Jukka Kärkkäinen: The Living Room of the Nation

Could it be everywhere? Yes, the film has many layers and thus a universal appeal. Is it very Finnish? Yes, it has this special feel of Finnish humour and treats its theme with both tough directness and tenderness. Is it good? Yes, more than that, it is excellent. Why? Because the director has something on his mind and has thought of form and thus avoided to make just another poverty story about poor people with poor lives and too much alcohol.

People and their stories. A classical documentary theme. Ordinary people of different age, from different places in Finland. They are in their living rooms the whole film through (apart from the very ending, not to be revealed), they sit, they lie, they talk about their life, their parents, their children, or to each other, or fight with each other or cry together, of joy or out of sadness.

This minimalistic approach is underligned by the way the camera is placed without any movement recording what happens within the frame. Or one could say on the stage of Life. It gives a distance, it gives you respect for the people you are watching, and, the more you get into the film, also compassion for their destinies. The main character is the young man, who becomes a father – you never see the mother – and knows that a new life must begin, without alcohol. Towards the end of the film you hear him say that he can only see his child once a week. He is indeed a tragic character, as is the big man who moves from one apartment to another, a smaller one, where he gets his arm chair placed at the point for watching television. The filmmakers must have been with the characters for a very long time. It all seems so truthful what we are invited to watch, most of the time with a sad feeling but as in a play of Samuel Beckett or a film of Roy Andersson, the interpretation of meaningless goes well with humour. And bravo for an editing that elegantly takes us from one situation and character to the next and the next… and back again.

Finland, 2009, 79 mins.
http://www.thelivingroomofthenation.com/
http://www.deckert-distribution.com/films/deckert_268.htm
http://www.mouka.fi/english/productions/kansakunnan-olohuone.html

Christian Braad Thomsen: Hjemstavnsfilm

DVD-sættet består af en god film, en modig film og en fremragende film. Den sidste et mesterværk og absolut klassiker i dansk filmhistorie. Morten Korch – solskin kan man altid finde fra 1999 er simpelthen en god film, som sætter mandens forfatterskab på plads. Hvor mindets blomster gror fra 1991 er en solid biografisk film, på mange måder i slægt med den fremragende Karen Blixen film og en minimalistisk elegi over den tabte kultur modigt konstrueret af bare to lydelementer, Kraftwerks musik og fortællerstemmens drama samt to billedelementer, en bilrejses monotoni og en række familiebilleders almindelighed, dristigt insisterende på at komme mig ved, hvilket naturligvis i den grad lykkes. Og så Herfra min verden går fra 1976, som er hovedværket, igen en elegi, denne gang i det på alle måder store format. En sådan film var ikke set før dengang, en sådan film er ikke set siden. Den er oprørende og uforglemmelig.  

Det afgørende vigtige ved disse film er i dag, tror jeg, det, som Braad Thomsen skriver i dvd-udgivelsens ledsagetekst om sproget. Ja, som med Jørgen Vestergaards på de fleste andre måder fuldstændig anderledes film har det først og sidst noget med sproget at gøre. Det bliver jeg nødt til lige at tænke videre over… men jeg er dog klar over, at Braad Thomsen ikke havde kunnet lave dem på københavnsk eller engelsk (det har han gjort med andre), for de integrerer et særligt sind, som alene findes på den egn, på disse egne… Filmene lever i det jyske sprog, ja, også den om Morten Korch, for hans historie foregår i biografen i Skanderborg og iagttages fra den kant. Som fynsk og eksotisk. 

Braad Thomsen ser i sin tekst de tre film som personlige sejre, jeg ser dem som kulturelle monumenter over det land. De film har jo ikke en skid med kopis i den thomsenske stald at gøre, i hvert fald ikke længere. De har med mit Jylland at gøre. Al tid.   

Christian Braad Thomsen: Hjemstavsfilm, 50 + 50 + 80 min., 2009. Another World Entertainment.

Jan Vrijman Fund on Tour

Another (see below for Sundance Institute) very important supporter of the non-mainstream, non-anglosaxon documentary production and distribution is the idfa-associated Jan Vrijman Fund. Bravo for a new initiative from JVF:

”Starting the end of July, ten JVF films will tour through Latin America. Besides the screening of beautiful documentaries from the continent itself, the fund subtitled films from Iran, South Africa, India, Bulgaria and Russia into Spanish for the Latin American audience. Moving stories varying from the unfulfilled election promises to Indian women in Six Yards to Democracy, a strikingly visualized portrait of three blind singing sisters from Brazil in Born to be Blind and not to forget Victor Kossakovsky’s Tishe! in which he filmed the repairs on a St. Petersburg street for one year from his apartment window. So far the tour is going to the Festidoc in Paraguay, the International Documentary Encounters in Colombia, Ícaro in Guatemala and to DocuPeru. Photo: Viktor Kossakovsky.

http://www.idfa.nl/industry/vrijman-fund/latestnews.aspx

Sundance Documentary Film Program

OSI stands for Open Society Institute, that was founded by George Soros and has – among many other things – been very important for the documentary sector all over the world. In the mid 90’es and up till 2002 a lot of documentaries from the Eastern part of Europe received a support that enabled the producers to make their films in the hard transition period after the fall of the empire USSR. In 2002 American Diane Weyermann who was the clever administrator of the funding for the documentaries succeeded in getting the fund (accompanied by 4.6mio.$ from Soros) transferred to the Sundance Institute, and now the good news is that OSI has granted $5 million grant for its Documentary Film Program to continue its mission and to help raise awareness on human rights through support for documentaries.

”As a dollar-for-dollar matching grant, Sundance Institute aims to raise $10 million over the next five years to support documentaries on significant, contemporary issues. This critical funding at a very fragile time is a significant commitment to supporting the belief that documentary storytelling has a meaningful role in the international work toward justice and equity across a range of issues,” says Cara Mertes, Director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program.

Since its inception in 1996, the OSI and the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund has awarded grants to more than 450 films in 54 countries, from the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, China, India, Africa, North America and elsewhere. Photo: Turkish documentary On the Way to School, supported by Sundance.

http://sundance.org/

www.edn.dk

Pavel Stingl: The Baluty Ghetto

I owe Pavel Stingl an apology. I never believed that it would be possible to combine his moving story about the Czech Jews who were deported to the Lodz ghetto with the story about the people who live there today in, yes, you could also call it a ghetto with another, of course completely different, meaning of the word.

But he has succeeded to do so with the help of cameraman/director Miroslav Janek and the careful and never-going-for-the-easy-solution editing work of Tonicka Jankova. Out comes a big and important film, a historical as well as an actual interpretation of lives lived, and lives lost.

The part about the Czech Jews Stingl is narrated through close-up interviews with the survivors, who convey their horror stories about how their dear ones were sent off to Auschwitz or died right in front of them, of starvation or illness. These stories are carried by the photos from the Baluity Ghetto taken by Henryk Ross, who could move freely around and documented the ghetto life with more than thousand photos. In the part about the Poles today – who live where the Jews used to live – the camera catches interiors of incredible poverty and situations with people, who for some are old enough to remember that the Jews lived there, and situations with young people who perform antisemitic graffitti on the walls. Misery and aggression. Lack of education and knowledge about the past.

Czech Republic/Poland, 2008, 83 mins.    

http://www.baluty-film.com/

Bartek Konopka: Rabbit a la Berlin

Yes, this is the way to make a different film for the celebration of the 20 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Playing masterly with the film language, wanting to surprise us. To tell us the same story but in a completely new way. With music that associates a fairy tale with rabbits in the leading roles. But also as an informative commentary-born popular science film about the city lives of a threatened species. With interviews of course. Tongue-in-cheek, sometimes visually from the point of view of the rabbits, sometimes from the anonymous spectator perspective with a look at what happens and happened to the rabbits of Berlin. It is balanced, has its own satirical tone – and beauty – and brutality when you cut together an innocent rabbit and a human body being carried away by a person in uniform. It plays perfectly with the rules of the documentary subgenres: history doc, nature doc, information doc, fairy tale doc… if that did not exist, it has been invented now!

Classical montage principles have been used. Cut from a rabbit to the people putting up the Wall. With an understated suprised commentary: they behave strange these people, as was this the thought of the rabbit. But it was to protect them, the inhabitants, that the Wall was put up. And the rabbits understood this and obeyed and were not shot at as long as they did not try to run away to the other side… Rabbitland, as the film commentary (brilliant by the way, what a fine text, a great example of subtlety) calls it, however, gets more and more into the mood of passivity and apathy. Until the day when everything changed and everyone, including the rabbits, got their freedom, were no longer locked behind walls and discovered that there were people without uniforms. But freedom? Two older people standing at the broken wall staring into a new world… is this for us, do we dare enter?

Poland, Germany, 40 & 50 mins.

http://www.deckert-distribution.com/news/new_films.htm

11 Short Documentaries/1

Is it possible to make 11 short documentaries in two weeks? By film crew members from several European countries, from Spain and Bulgaria in the South to Latvia and Lithuania in the North. Young people who had never seen each other before?

It was possible as proved through the Summer Media Studio 2009 in Vilnius, Lithuania, a so-called European Film Student Workshop coordinated by the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre and with support from partner institutions and the EU MEDIA Programme. From this side a very good investment in the future, indeed.

Conditions: the film should be about Vilnius, European Capital of Europe 2009. 10 minutes long, maximum.

Result: 11 films of different temperament and style and professional quality, of course. The right to fail is a privilige for film students, actually I think they must, but there is also the obligation to do your best, try something new and be committed. And have fun and learn from working in teams.

See the films: Go to this site http://www.summermediastudio.com/  and take a look and read my small review-like comments in the text below.

11 Short Documentaries/2

I advocated for fun and the upcoming European filmmakers in Vilnius had fun as you can see in the film about the workshop, ”2 Weeks in 10 Minutes”, that is full of ideas and playfulness in storytelling.

Time was limited and it would be wrong not to say that several of the films would have profited from some more time in the editing. Nevertheless, I will not hesitate to give the link below to anyone who wants to visit the beautiful city of Vilnius. The 10 films about the capital of Vilnius bring you around and give you a feeling of buildings, atmosphere and people. And a bit of social and historical background. A very welcomed supplement to many official, promotional tourist guides.

People, yes, how easy it is to see when a person is good for the camera and can act as a strong character: ”The Wizard” (photo) is about a charismatic English teacher and tourist guide (and his dog), whose long monologue is accompanied/interpreted by well chosen images that gives the film portrait a second layer. ”Upside Down” is a wonderful observational camera tour-de-force with a girl, who plays in a modern universe but comes from the old. What energy this uncontrollable girl communicates, ”everything is all right”, she says to comfort the cameraman in the finishing merry-go-around scene. A gift to a film is also the foreign minister of the independent republic of Uzupis when he shows around in this special part of Vilnius in ”Le Bonheur est sur le Guidon”, as is the fine old nobleman, the sculptor ”Konstantinas”,  who in his film shows how he works and gives a warm verbal tribute to Vilnius.

The film about the female trolley-driver, ”Through the Windshield”, could have stayed more focused on her – for my taste there were too many distractions, as in the film about the crisis, ”Empty Rooms”, that have many fine sequences and ambitions but needs another round of cutting. On the contrary, a salute to the film ”Lenino Pr.40” for being so conscious about the form in the story about the building that was the prison for (political) troublemakers in Soviet times. ”Three Garages Man” had great camerawork but the story about the young artist-to-be wanted too much for 10 minutes. I had expected much more from ”Saint Vilnius”, which has a fine female character but disappointing images, whereas ”Deported” about the old people’s home had brilliant moments and faces but failed to make an element of received and written letters work in a harmonious way.

But, wow, 11 films in two weeks, lots of talent, keep on, please!

http://www.summermediastudio.com/

Audrius Mickevicius: Man-Horse

In the best Lithuanian slow-pace, spiritual documentary tradition this is a film that puts total trust to the image. And to the fact that an old man and his horse living in the countryside is a story that includes sufficient drama. It certainly does for a creative director like Mickevicius. There is enough of both story and drama, and of time for reflection if you believe in a film to be made when it meets its spectator. Taking that the film is a chain of sequences of carefully framed nature tableaux, one of life’s many stages, the narrative takes place within these, following the seasons: the old man dragging the horse to a place where he bolts it, the horse easily unbolting to be free again, yet never leaving the man, the horse being attacked by flies and bees, the old man preparing a spray to be put on the horse for protection…  it is a hell of a tough job for the old farmer but he continues his daily fight against the weather, scolding the horse at the same time as he gives it care. Where the wind is blowing, the devil goes, he says in a film that suddenly includes another small drama with a frog as the main character almost being wiped out by mud from the shovel of the man. It is a film full of moments, sometimes hard and rational (what a life he has), sometimes almost biblical scenes that communicates much more than you actually see.

It took the director many years to make this film about his neighbour. He has made several versions. This one is a television hour and a big hurra again for the contribution of Finnish channel YLE, and German MDR. Respect for the audience.

Nevertheless, film festivals all over, pay attention: This is a film for the big screen. Something very special. Beauty.

Lithuania, 2008, 52 mins.