Bram Van Paesschen: Pale…

The title of the film is actually ”Pale Peko Bantu Mambo Ayikosake” which in swahili means ”Where there are people there will be problems”. And problems there are in Katanga, the location of this fresh and direct film that manages what most films do not when the subject is a foreign country with a foreign culture far away from wealthy Western Europe. The director has chosen to tell the story in first person, not through his own voice but through the main character. It is a very well written text that matches the intensity of a story that has a lot of humour in a dead serious context. Here is the catalogue annotation from when the film was shown at the idfa 2008 festival:

Isaac Mbuyi, a young Congolese man from Katanga, is a 21 years old and works as a ‘creuseur’, or a excavator. This means that he digs up cobalt using his bare hands or just a spade, in the abandoned mines in the once flourishing town of Kolwezi. Isaac’s dream is to go to university and through excavating he hopes to earn the money he needs to achieve this. But things are not that simple. The work is arduous and highly dangerous and moreover, excavators are an easy target for malafide dealers and profiteers. Isaac’s motto however is ‘qui ne risque rien, n’a rien’ (nothing ventured nothing gained) but he doesn’t realize that his story will come to a bitter end.

The film, selected for several festivals, is produced by Belgian broadcaster VRT/Canvas, a sequel by same director is on its way from Savage Film.

Belgium, 2008, 95 mins.

http://www.savagefilm.be

Input 2009/svt

For readers of Swedish language there is a fine service provided from Lars Säfström, documentary head of svt Malmö. Säfström writes about what he has seen and about the discussions at the public broadcaster’s yearly gathering that this year takes place in Warsaw.

Link to his diary

Still from RIP: A Remix Manifesto by Gregg Taylor

 

 

 

Det Danske Institut i Damaskus opretter filmotek

Rundt omkring i den store verden sidder der nogle kulturelle ildsjæle og bygger små læhegn omkring det hul, hjemlige politiske ildsjæle gør deres bedste for at begrave kulturen i.
En af disse sidder på Det Danske Institut i Damaskus (foto), han hedder Hans Christian Korsholm Nielsen, i daglig tale HC. Han gør meget for både den danske filmkultur og for at hjælpe den spirende syriske. Det konstaterede Tue Steen Müller og jeg ved selvsyn under den nye syriske dokumentarfilmfestival Dox Box, som HC i flere omgange gav uvurderlig hjælp. Og der er rigeligt at hjælpe med, når en håndfuld ihærdige syriske filmfolk sætter sig for at introducere kreativ dokumentarfilm i et land som Syrien. Derfor er mennesker som HC en repræsentant for Danmark, vi kan være glade for.
 
HC ville meget gerne have kopier af danske film stående på det lille bibliotek på Det Danske Institut, så besøgende kan se filmene under deres ophold. Det lovede vi at være behjælpelige med og henvendte os optimistiske til DFI. Men det kunne de ikke hjælpe med – jeg skal undlade at gå i detaljer med vores frustration.

Så skrev vi ud til gode kolleger i filmbranchen og på nogle få uger havde en række producenter stillet 60 DVD’ere til rådighed, som nu står i en af de smukkeste bygninger i Damaskus til inspiration for gæster og beboere.

Se det var et rigtigt eventyr – men han hedder jo også HC.

Og vil du også gerne bidrage med din film til en happy end, så kan du kontakte undertegnede

mikael@opstrup-husum.dk

www.damaskus.dk

PS. En udstilling om det smukke hus i Damaskus er åbnet i dag på Davids Samling i København.

Cinephilia!

Film History – The Finnish film critic and historian Peter von Bagh is the artistic director of this exciting week in June:

Il Cinema Ritrovato, the festival sponsored by the Mostra Internazionale del Cinema Libero and the Cineteca del Comune di Bologna, invites film lovers from around the world to Bologna from Saturday June 27th through Saturday July 4th, 2009. Eight days and evenings of cinephilic joy to be experienced in various locations: the twin screens of the Cineteca’s Lumière cinemas, one dedicated just to silent cinema, the other to sound; the Bologna Opera House and the Arlecchino Cinema (where we can experience the miracle of big screen projection as films were meant to be seen, but almost never are these days)…

… The underlying theme of this all is again cinephilia, the absolute love of cinema. Several programs will be dedicated to this theme: films on notable personalities (Bernard Chardère, Henri Langlois’s television interviews), the unsurpassed Cinéastes de notre temps programs by André S. Labarthe.

Photo: Henri Langlois.

http://www.cinetecadibologna.it/cinemaritrovato2009/ev/intro

Petr Lom: Letters to the President

Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, receives 10 million letters per year and 76% of them are answered! This is stated by an employee from the administration that takes care of this personal contact between the president and the population.

Ahmadinejad, a president, who does not like the red carpet, as it is said in the beginning of the film, by one of the people interviewed,. A man of the people. A man who constantly shouts for hate towards Israel and the US, as seen in the film. As in previous films by the film director and cameraman, same person: Petr Lom, meets the people with an open mind and the camera ready to catch what he can in a tongue-in-cheek journalistic documentary that gets much closer than the usual, normal tv-reportages shot in Iran. Due to the original letter-angle we as viewer are taken from place to place, including the birthplace of the president, to meet not only supporters and propagandists of Iranian politics, but also citizens who are critical and dare express themselves. ”He is like a gardener who plants seedlings but do not water them”, one says. Others ask repeatedly for help, and the president is filmed caressing some of his fellow-citizens and helping a woman who faints from emotion when she meets the president. ”I am your servant”, he says in this wonderfully open, non-conclusive and nuanced insight to an Iran that has its election in June 2009.

Canada/France, 2009, 74 mins. and 52 mins.

http://www.filmstransit.com/

www.letterstothepresidentmovie.com

Peter Kerekes: Cooking History

For a documentary veteran viewer it is pure pleasure, when you watch a film that gives you surprises you in structure, narration and content. I knew that Slovak/Hungarian Peter Kerekes after his wonderful ”66 Seasons” was working on a big budget film on a somewhat crazy subject: How did they cook for the soldiers on the front, what did they eat, under which circumstances, war and food… but I had no real idea on how he would materialise his idea and construct his film. I must say that I am amazed how innovative and playful and funny and moving and clever and original this great film is.

Chaptered it is – the prologue refers to Chechnya, then follows WW2 battles between Germany and Russia, post-WW2, Hungary 1956, Prague 1968, Balkan wars and much more –  told through interviews, b/w archive material, and reconstructions of soldiers on the fields and the best of all: the staging of the cooks with their transportable kitchen making food for the viewers. Placed – as the example in the epilogue – in the water, or in front of a ruin, or in other situations referring to where the battles took place.

But first of all Kerekes demonstrates again his enormous talent for (old) people. He has a brilliant gallery of characters who bring out their memories in a fresh and often humorous manner. Sometimes it is comedy, sometimes it is subtle and sometimes provocative. Storytellers they are, like the woman, who made blini pancakes for the Russian soldiers, and if they did not come home the pancakes were brought to be placed on the tombstone at the cemetery. And of course Kerekes takes the old lady to this venue and asks her several times – out of camera – why? The same old lady tells us in the kitchen that during the siege of Leningrad, there was 100g bread, two thin slices per person per day. In this moment she can’t stand talking about it any longer. Cut to the German baker who is likewise moved by thinking back… The excellent editing, according to the ”open structure” that the dramaturg of the film Jan Gogola always cleverly promotes, this editing is made so the characters, often on both sides of the wars, have a kind of dialogue with each other. That’s all, watch that film, get it to the audience, it is for everybody, for heart and brain.

Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria, 2009, 88 mins.

http://www.eastsilver.net/home

http://www.jaksevaridejiny.cz/english.php#menu1

Jönsson & Gertten: Long Distance Love

Osh in Kyrgyzstan. Not a place that we have heard much about. The same goes for the people who live there. Who fall in love as everyone (hopefully) does all over the world. However, the problem for the two protagonists, Alisher and Dildora, is that they need money to survive and as there is no work for Alisher in Kyrgyzstan, he leaves for Russia with the help of an agency, that turns out to cheat on him and many others. Low-paid he is and there is not a lot of money going back to Dildora and his parents. While away from home, Dildora gives birth to their child, which does not make the living conditions easier. There is but one solution for Alisher – he must go back home for the sake of mother and child, but also for the ill mother and the silent father, who drinks too much.

Banal theme, yes, but actual and presented in a very sweet way with a straight forward story (sometimes with some huge jumps in time) and told in a sympathetic non-sensational and informative tone, although one could have wished for a more creative camera approach that could have made a good film be a great film.

2008, Sweden, 88 mins.

Will be shown at Cinemateket this coming sunday 17.5 at 14.30, with q&a with Magnus Gertten.

www.edn.dk

http://www.autoimages.se/english/auto_images/

Guyla Nemes: Lost World

“The life, demolition and reconstruction of the Kopaszi dam between 1998 and 2007. A mostly black & white 35mm documentary shot over ten years in a forgotten landscape in the center of Budapest. People living in houseboats and wooden houses, struggling against flood, snow and investors who want them to evict. The second part of The Dike of Transience.”

In this way the East Silver annotates the film of a young Hungarian director, who in a wonderful old fashioned way masterly plays with the picture and sound for the duration of 20 minutes. This is organic material, it is film, you can see it, it has scratches and broken sound, and intuitive editing and it witnesses the director’s imaginative skills that he lets the sound of an rehearsing orchestra accompany the images from a Christiania (yes, I am Danish) like free town, a free spirit community that is being harmonized in the name of the EU. It is seasons, its cats running around, it is glimpses of Life, it is grass being rolled out in straight lines, it is a new posh community entering what was a treasure. What a playful and thoughtful and sensitive documentary!

20mins, 2008 financed by local sources and Finnish YLE.

http://www.eastsilver.net/home

www.absolutfilm.hu

Viktor Asliuk: Waltz

I have known the works of Viktor Asliuk for many years, small universal stories about people and what they do in their lives, conveyed with a lot of warmth, with ”We are Living on the edge” as a masterpiece that has gone all over.

For that reason I can not help to be a bit disappointed with his new film about a doctor who goes around to help lonely and forgotten people in the countryside of Belarus. It is far too short, the character should have been more developed, it starts, it has some sweet moments but does not really get close and does not capture emotions, and then it is over.

Belarus, 20 mins., 2008

http://www.eastsilver.net/home

Salome Jashi: Speechless

Georgian director. Saw one of her previous works last year, ”Their Helicopter”, written about on this site. And praised at the same time her on-going film project, ”Restaurant Bakhmaro and Those Who Work There”, that is now with the director at the Ex Oriente film project.

This 12 minutes long wordless documentary includes faces that you are invited to look at, not talking faces, because words – as the director has said – can not express the feelings that these Georgians have, having experienced the Georgian-Russian war in August 2008. It is impossible not to feel as a voyeur watching these people (an older woman, a girl, a younger woman, an old man, a mother with child, a man in battledress and more… all in front of a ”neutral” wall), you wonder why you watch the faces and feel a bit embarassed but you stay and get the written info on the people at the end of the film. Conceptual, yes, impressive, yes – a film that is part of a series called ”10 Minutes of Democracy”, more here and below.

www.docuinter.net

http://www.artefact.ge/currentproject.html