Great to see that documentary festivals not only grow in Europe. For the second time an international documentary festival will take place in Agadir in Marocco November 10-14. For long documentaries, i.e. film that are longer than 52 minutes produced in 2008-2009.

A glance at the site of the festival reveals a high quality programme with two films as winners that have both been reviewed/written about on filmkommentaren.dk:

”The Mother” by Antoine Cattin and Pavel Kostomarov, and ”A Road to Mecca” by George Misch.

With a generous offer of films from countries that normally have difficulties in reaching European festivals.

www.fidadoc.org

The film about the Indian boy Bilal has previously been reviewed on filmkommentaren.dk The idfa festival and the connected Jan Virjman Fund has followed “the carreer” of the film and has posted this small sunshine story about a film, its director and main character:

Bilal, the story of a two-and-a-half-year-old boy growing up with completely blind parents, was screened at IDFA 2008. This year the documentary travels around the world, receiving awards at film festivals from Qatar to Mexico. Bilal will even be screened at the prestigious Museum of Modern Arts (MoMA) in New York. Director Sourav Sarangi reflects on the production of Bilal, from a project supported by IDFA’s Jan Vrijman Fund to an award-winning documentary.

Last week, Sourav Sarangi received another award for his documentary Bilal, in the Horizons section of Munich’s Dok.Fest. The Jury of Dok.Fest reported: ‘The everyday life of a three-year-old boy who lives at close quarters with his blind parents and his younger brother in a poor neighbourhood of Calcutta – what would one expect from this other than misery and destitution? But Bilal is surprisingly positive, sometimes even funny, and, above all, authentic and extremely human.’

Earlier this year, Bilal won the Aljazeera Golden Award at the Aljazeera International Documentary Festival, the Award for Best Documentary at Festival de cine de pobre Humberto Solas in Cuba, the Silver Palm at the Mexican Film Festival and the Silver Ace Award at the Las Vegas International Film Festival. The biggest award for Sarangi, however, remains a Christmas gift for little Bilal and his brother from an elderly couple, following the film’s first screening in Amsterdam.

Prior to the world premiere at IDFA and last month’s traveling around the world to present his heartfelt, intimate documentary, Sarangi spent a lot of time in the family’s small living space, and later on in the editing room. He followed Bilal’s daily life over the course of a year: ‘Working on the film Bilal has been an extremely rewarding experience. The small kid was like a human window to me. Always ushering in freshness, illuminations and challenges to explore and capture. Before shooting, I had a strategy, a plan how to shoot this kid in his normal surroundings; but he made all that futile by his charming unpredictability. So I had to improvise and react to the very moment and use my instincts: it was a great learning experience.’ While staying with the family, Sarangi got a double role: firstly as a friend – Bilal calls him uncle, interacting and sharing at a human level. And secondly, as a filmmaker with a job to do. The best moments came when Sarangi failed to distinguish between the two.

Even more time was needed in the editing room: ‘Editing took a very long time, since I shot a lot in a candid manner and there was no clear-cut formula to make a structure out of apparently disconnected moments of real life, which hardly had a story in this case. Slowly the structure emerged; I could see the connections between such moments of fleeting reality, often separated by months in essence time and space. There, I tried my experience with cinema and enjoyed doing that. Although it can be frustrating because it is an experimental process and sometimes you have to throw away nicely edited scenes.’

The Jan Vrijman Fund supported Sarangi with funding for the production process. ‘While making the film, I received fantastic support from the JVF team, IDFA and my Finnish partners, as well as from my small unit and family. In IDFA’s Docs for Sale, the film also found a world distributor (Mercury Media International), which is a difficult proposition in India.’ A few weeks ago, Sarangi also received support from the IDFA Fund, a fund which offers small-scale, concrete assistance to people who have been the subject of documentaries shown during IDFA. This support will benefit Bilal and his family in their hard struggle for a livelihood.

At the moment, Sarangi is concentrating on his next film, about a river and a boy called Rubel who lives by the river and meets Bilal – of course.

For more information about Bilal, see: www.bilal.in The trailer for Bilal can be found on the website of Mercury Media International Ltd and on the IDFA website. For distribution in the Benelux, please contact the Jan Vrijman Fund.
Publication Date: 22 May 2009
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The festival in Warsaw is over and the many prizes have been awarded. The following films awarded at Planete Doc Review are to be found reviewed or noted on filmkommentaren.dk:

Geoffrey Smith: The English Surgeon. Anders Østergaard: Burma VJ. Peter Kerekes: Cooking History. Bartek Konopka: Rabbit a la Berlin. Magnus Gertten & Elin Jönsson: Long Distance Love. Georg Misch: A Road to Mecca-the Journey of Mohammad Asad.

Crisis in the world of documentary films? No, on the contrary. If you have seen the 6 films mentioned, you will discover how it goes from classical documentary story telling like in ”The English Surgeon” to innovative narratives like in ”Cooking History” and ”Burma vj”.

http://www.docreview.pl/

Danish born Henning Albert Boilesen was a succesful businessman during the military dictatorship in Brazil in the 60’es. He went to the top, had close contact to the rulers of the country, and as many other industrialists in Sao Paulo, he contributed financially to the operation of the OBAN that was set up by the government to fight the subversive revolutionary groups in the country. But not only was he contributing to the fight against the communists, he was said to hate, but he also, it is stated by several of the interviewed people in the documentary, personally witnessed or took part in the torture that was performed by the OBAN. In April 1971 he was brutally machine-gunned to death in the streets of Sao Paulo.

In this very well researched story, the narrative elements are constituted by interviews with former military people and historians, journalists, ex-militants – and people from his childhood community in Denmark, by clips from feature films, by an enormous amount of official and family photos and by archive material from the time where a climate of fear must have reigned in Brazil. In other words, an impressive piece of journalism. Serious stuff put in contrast to light (kind-of) bar music and quick, often playful editing. This is where I have my doubts and criticism of the otherwise convincing and maybe especially for a Dane interesting story about Boilesen, one of many who were on the side of the oppressors. Could another take on the story, some times during the story, have provoked more drama, more intensity through breaks in the format, through a different rythm and different sound design instead of having the same storytelling flow regardless the themes in the film? In order to show and not only tell that Boilesen had a dualism in his character – a sadist and a charming positive person as well. I can see the danger of making a story like this into something heavy and over-serious, but I also sense a touch of tabloid in the choice. (Like I saw in the recent film on Baader-Meinhof). Having said so, thanks for bringing this story to a Dane, who had never heard about Boilesen and his torture pianola sending electric shocks through the prisoners! And thanks for reminding us of the traumatic recent past of Brazil.    

2009, Brazil, 93 mins.
Winner 1st Prize National competition at It’s All True 2009

http://www.etudoverdade.com.br/2009/home.asp?lng=I