Documentary Campus 2

Chania, Greece, the old town, very hot, should be forbidden to work in that weather, but this is what the 2009 Documentary Campus Masterchool participants have done for a week under the usual professional and warm guidance of Peter Symes, Head of Studies, and his team.

Next stop is Leipzig, pitching time, in October, so rewriting of project presentations and production of tasters are waiting for the producers and directors of the 16 projects. Some of them have experience, others are to do their first pitch in Leipzig, the mixture is one of the many advantages of the Documentary Campus Masterschool. Below is the site address where you can find short info on the projects in question. Here follows a quote from the same site, spelling out the philosophy of the programme:

As good old TV turns more and more into a diverse interactive media playground, the non-fiction genre is doing likewise. It is sometimes hard to keep track of all the shapes and sizes that stories from the real world can come in today. A vibrant factual broadcasting market has emerged beyond the traditional alliance between factual filmmakers and public broadcasters. In order to satisfy the ever-greater demand for content, young internationally operating companies often have to seek partnerships with broadcasters from all over the world as well as with traditional regional stations. The variety of expectations that audiences can have when they watch non-fiction is only topped by the variety of projects which commissioning editors have in mind when they speak of factual television. Despite being able to build on strong traditions in storytelling, a wealth of excellent filmmakers and the cultural variety of Europe, producers, authors, directors and commissioning editors from outside the USA or the UK still find it difficult to be successful in the international market. It is the aim of Documentary Campus to change that.

Photo from Chania. Could have been taken from the hotel Porto Veneziano Hotel, wonderful place to stay, peaceful and with kind professional service.
 
http://www.documentary-campus.com/v2/page/masterschool/
www.portoveneziano.gr

Jørgen Vestergaard: Kirsten Kjær og hendes museum

Tue Steen Müller har tidligere her på siden skrevet om Vestergaards Kirsten Kjær-film  og om instruktørens øvrige kunstnerfilfilm samt om hans Hanstholm- og fiskerfilm (søg også på Jørgen Vestergaard).

Jeg har nu omsider lånt dvd-udgivelsen på biblioteket og lavet min egen lille Jørgen Vestergaard-sommer bio reprise. Og får lyst til at knytte en række kommentarer til i fortsættelse af Tue Steen Müllers opmærksomme tidlige orientering. Og jeg opholder mig begejstret ved den medvirkende Harald Fuglsangs fortælling af Kirsten Kjærs biografi i ét smukt klippet, indsigtsfuldt og så sprogligt musikalsk forløb, at det fastholder og bliver til selve dette liv i dets egen dialekt. Ægte fortællekunst så ansvarsfuldt og beskedent fastholdt på film af Jørgen Vestergaard og hans faste fotograf Orla Nielsen.  

Det er godt at blive mindet om, at Jørgen Vestergård har lavet disse vigtige film, og her på dvd-en har han så med dem sammenfattet skildringen af et særegent stykke jysk kulturhistorie. Han har fastholdt Jens Søndergaards bål på Bovbjerg og stille og roligt placeret Bjerre og Lergaard i den sammenhæng. Han har bevaret Broby-Johansens suveræne fortælling om Anton Laier og omgivelsernes uforstand og brutalitet, så det skærer i hjertet. Formidlet Johannes Nielsens omhyggelige notater af Overtacis udtalelelser i de besynderligt præcise sætninger og endelig altså Fuglsangs mundtlige Kirsten Kjær biografi, som var en myte blandt museets kendere. Nu er den et tilgængeligt og autentisk værk.

Omkring disse dokumenter på det jyske sprog i det jyske sind har Vestergaard komponeret sine fire film om at være sig selv, blive sig selv. Med beskedenhed og loyalt, loyalt… Det skal han bare have tak for.  

Jørgen Vestergaard: Kirsten Kjær og hendes museum, 2008, 33 min. I DVD-udgivelse sammen med Vestrgaards tidligere kunstnerfilm, Cementkrucifikset, 1968, 17 min., Jens Søndergaard, 1995, 33 min. og Ovartaci, 1998, 24 min. Forlaget Knakken, Thisted, 2008 orpo@thisted.dk  

Foto: Kirsten Kjær: Portræt af Asta Nielsen

Documentary Campus 1

I am in Crete for a session of the Documentary (formerly Discovery) Campus. I run into Vardan Hovhannisyan with whom I have spent many fine moments around the films that he was/is producing or directing for his company in Jerevan, Armenia. With a good deal of charm and charisma, this Armenian filmmaker has established himself as a known, respected and colourful person in the documentary scene. His film “A Story about People in War and peace” went all over, won prizes – and the director travelled with the film to meet the audience and to understand the documentary market structure. I met him at Discovery Campus and again at Ex Oriente in 2007 where he with his director and colleague Inna Sahakyan presented and developed  “The Last Tightrope Dancers in Europe” that is now in post-production. This film project was pitched at the East European Forum  2007 and later at the idfa Forum, but the real strong funding came not until this year from the ITVS and NHK. At a point when 80% of the film was shot!  Here is the description of the film, that is also supported by YLE, SVT, TVP, ETV (Estonia), among others, and which is targeted for a premiere this coming autumn:

Zhora (76) and Knyaz (77) were once the most celebrated masters of tightrope dancing in Armenia. Today, they are the only surviving performers who can keep this ancient art alive against the current of contemporary society. Having been bitter rivals throughout their lives, a common objective has finally brought them together: to train the only student of tightrope dancing left in the country. Hovsep, a sixteen year old orphan boy, has to decide whether or not to accept the role of the last tightrope dancer in Armenia, in a society that has abandoned both him and the art of tightrope dancing.

http://www.barsmedia.am/under.html

Apostolos Karakasis: National Garden

It has been done before: The filming of people in a park put together in a mosaic structure as a warm hug to people, to us all, with our joys and worries, dreams and sorrows. Polish Marcel Lozinski did it with his ”Anything can Happen”, and now Greek Apostolos Karakasis does it with his wonderful film from the National Garden in Athens. Where Lozinski was hiding with his camera and sent his son to be the matchmaker, Karakasis is the friend of the people he meets. We hear his voice once in a while from behind the camera, that he operates himself in an excellent way full of movement and an eye for the moment.

And what great characters that he has found during his one year long filming in the garden: A man who is close to pension, he has been working in the garden as a gardener for 22 years. The camera is there when his colleagues says goodbye to him. A Burmese young man who is in Greece to earn money that he sends back to his family – in the beginning of the story he collects snails to be sold, later on he gets a job in a supermarket. In a strong scene, the director shows him footage from the riots in his homeland. Two jogging men, connected by a string, as one of them is blind, talking intimately about problems in their lives. An old charming man surrounded on his bench by old ladies, bringing forward memories and singing some love songs. And the one who for me is the main character – a homeless man full of dignity, living from one day to the other, with a past that he never really tells us about, humour and sadness. A real film character with a face that the camera likes.

And many other fine seasonal observations from the garden, a mini-society, a mirror of what is outside. Karakasis has done all himself, directing, camera and editing. It is an impressive and very mature work that will travel the world and stay as an important film for Greece of today.  

Greece, 72 mins., Portolanos Films (portolan@hol.gr)

Link to tdf filmfestival, Greece 

DR2: Quality Documentaries

Gode nyheder til danske dokumentar-seere:

Summer time… and the Danish television traditionally shows fine documentaries. On the only channel worth watching in Denmark nowadays: DR2.

On tuesday (7.7 8.30pm) on Dokumania, the neo-classic by Werner Herzog ”Little Dieter needs to Fly” is broadcast. On wednesday (8.7 10.50pm) the Danes are invited to watch Eva Mulvad’s ”Enemies of Happiness” (photo), the film about the courageous Malalai Joya, who is followed while she is running for parliament in a campaign that takes place behind a burka.

And on thursday (9.7 10.50pm) the newest production of the three is scheduled: ”Young Freud in Gaza” by PeÅ Holmqvist and Susanne Khardalian. Here is a quote from the review made on this site:

An excellent filmic inside look at everyday life and problems as they are met and seen primarily through the eyes of young Ayed, who is the only field psychologist in northern Gaza. What a character this young man is for a film. And how charming he is in his philanthropic mission: to help things get better for patients in an area full of hot political problems. The couple filmed during two years 2006-2008, when Gaza was isolated from the world, and the film has a harmonic and peaceful rythm that gives space for the characters to be developed for a viewer, who switches between laughter and grief. A film that will go all over…. and to be added: has even more actuality than when it was made. After the Israeli massacre.

http://www.peaholmquist.com

http://www.danishdocumentary.com

http://www.dr.dk/dr2/dokumania

Documentary in Europe

For the 13th time the small mountain town Bardonecchia in Piemonte hosts the Documentary in Europe, 4 days of market talks, case studies, film screenings, pitching, a matchmaking seminar for directors and debates around documentary matters. Dates: July 8-11.

There is for instance a meeting with two succesful producers from the Eastern part of Europe, Uldis Cekulis from Latvia and Martichka Bozhilova from Bulgaria. They are to talk about ”humour in documentaries” and indeed they are qualified to do so. Cekulis production, directed by Laila Pakalnina, ”Three Men and a Fish Pond”, is one of these tongue-in-cheek observations of silent men and their way of being together. And Bozhilova and her company Agitprop launches two of the most recognized films from the last years – both of them are surprising, non-formatted creative documentaries that show new ways for the documentary genre: Andrey Paounov’s ”The Mosquito Problem and other Stories” and Boris Despodov’s ”Corridor #8”.

Other films to be shown are beautiful ”On the Way to School” (photo) by Turkish Orhan Eskiköy and Özgür Dogan and the masterpiece ”Rabbit à la Berlin” by Bartek Konopka. I met the director in Vilnius this week and he gave me the 40 minutes version of a film that has had a long journey to completion, and I would say to high quality surprise and originality. I will review the film asap on this site where you can find more about many of the films from Bardonecchia. For one who has been to this fine summer event 10 times it is a pleasure to see that it still is very much alive with a big and interesting programme. Enjoy!

http://www.docineurope.org/

Vilnius Diary 8

Finnish filmmaker and teacher at the film school Helsinki Polytechnic, Heikki Ahola, brought some student films and a couple of his own films to the summer camp. They were, as Ahola, very Finnish if I may put it like that. Not many words, original approach, and high quality. ”Rhytm” from 2003 was presented as a new version of ”Night Mail”, ”Telakka” from 2002 was a time-lapse film shot over a year from a sluice, both of them short and with excellent  and precise editing. His own works were both with stylistical references to early film history. One was about a train arriving to the station, the other ”The Case of an Unemployed”, a short fiction on a documentary background: A man goes to park and while other feed the ducks, he catches one to bring it back for dinner!

Ahola also brought the beautiful film of Sonja Lindén, ”No Man is an Island”, a film that I have enjoyed before for its unsentimental description of a man, who lives alone on an island, does what is to be done to make the day pass in a nice way, talks to the cat, listen to jazz and Mahler – and handwrites in detail what is to be done and thought about concerning the house when he has died. It is both a bit funny and also very touching, as is first of all his morning phone conversations with his wife, who lives away from the island as she needs to be taken care of because of her MS.

Sonja Lindén: No Man is an Island. Finland, 2006. 40 mins.

www.summermediastudio.com

http://www.ses.fi/en/film.asp?id=790

Vilnius Diary 7

Jurga Ivanauskaite is a cult figure in Lithuania. Born in 1961, the writer died young in 2007 leaving behind her a strong reputation as a writer with star quality, a writer who did not only write beautiful books and poems but who was also a political activist. A controversial personality who got into trouble when she took part in demonstrations against the Chinese oppression of Tibet, the country she travelled to and lived in for a long time.

A film has been made about Jurga Ivanauskaite, whose books have been translated into several languages. A good film that combines in a fine way public and private archive material – with methaphoric imagery (the title, see below) and pieces of read poetry, in other words – this film is a fine intro to a very charismatic Lithuanian writer, who passed away far too early.

Dance in the Desert. Lithuania, 2009, 71 mins. Director: Agne Marcinkeviciute. Producer Zivile Gallego

http://www.booksfromlithuania.lt/index.php?page_id=20

http://www.fralita.com/news.html

Vilnius Diary 6

I was on a tour today. A magnificent tour. To the place of a film to come, and to the people who are characters in this work under development. It may sound like a kliché film, one of many about poor people, but what cameraman and director Mindaugas Survali has done is completely different and quite unique. For more than a year he has followed people who live in the forest next to a dumping ground, where they picked food and found metal pieces that they could sell on the market. Around 500 people were here and I am writing in past time as the dumping ground was closed March 2008, leaving very few people to stay.

Mindaugas has visited the people regularly since the closing and the 7 men and women, we met on our small excursion to the place outside Vilnius welcomed him warmly and showed generously filmmaker Audrius Stonys and me, how they lived with kitchen, living room, sleeping room, a lot of empty bottles, cats and dogs under the blue sky. With winter heating possibilities.

Earlier today we had – with filmmaker and in this case also producer Giedre  Beinoriute – seen some edited scenes from the material of the film, that has the working title, ”The Field of Magic”. Excellent situations with characters beautifully shot over all seasons, small wonderful and touching stories that show the dignity of the dump people, who have chosen or have been pushed by destiny to choose to live a life outside the so-called normality. It will be a film made with heart and cinematic skills.

www.docuinter.net

http://www.monoklis.lt/

http://www.kinas.gamtoj.com/

Vilnius Diary 5

Screening day of Lithuanian documentaries for eventual recommendation for DOKLeipzig. 5 films to watch since my visit one year ago. Public funding for film is minimal in Lithuania at this moment. So competition is strong among the established filmmakers and there is no real incentive for young people – like the Lithuanians at the Summer Film Academy that I attend – to go for a job in the documentary field.

For 20 years I have followed the documentary scene in this country and have had the great pleasure to get acquainted with a language of originality based more on imagery and less on words. Documentaries in Lithuania by Janina Lapinskaite, Rimantas Gruodis, Diana and Kornelijus Matuzevicius, Giedre Beinoriute, Audrius Stonys, Arunas Matelis and others constitute an important part of the nation’s cultural heritage and memory. To quote the documentarian Patricio Guzman: A country without documentaries is like a family without a photo album.

Even in difficult financial times: Funding action needs to be taken, otherwise something valuable in Lithuanian culture will disappear.