Hotdocs 2009

The big international documentary festival in Toronto is running now and until May 10 and they do a wonderful promotion and information work for the audience and for us who are not there. Annotations on the film, written interviews, it’s all there… Lots to pick up…

… including some, unfortunately, hopeless ”daily updates” video clips with the staff members presenting their favourites films of today. Hopeless because they are amateurishly shot and sometimes it is difficult to hear what they say because they are placed (like the artistic director Sean Farrell) in a sofa, “relaxed” with disturbing sound around them, pitching the films in a small talk way. The trailers would have been better on their own without these unprofessional intros.

Photo from Norwegian Håvard Bustnes award-winning “Big John”.

http://www.hotdocs.ca/

6-2

Football is creative! When Barcelona plays like they did tonite. In Madrid, against Real. No, not creative. Artistic. Pure pleasure. As they write on the website of FC Barcelona:

Now that’s what you call football! (2-6). Barça have won at the Bernabéu with an amazing display of attacking and entertaining football. Henry (2), Puyol, Messi (2) and Piqué scored the goals in a historic victory that leaves the team just five points away from the championship title. May 2, 2009 will go down as one of the most historic days in the proud history of FC Barcelona. A day to compare with that magnificent February 14, 1974 when that legendary side led by Johan Cruyff won 5-0 at the Bernabéu. 35 years later, Barça have once again brought Madrid to their knees with a recital of football at its very best…

I watched it alone with a constant sms contact to other Barca fans and with my Barca shirt next to me. Oh, to witness magical moments like these. Look at the photo, a brilliant goalkeeper, Casillas, what could he do, nothing but face the fact that he had been an extra in a drama that was second to none.

http://www.fcbarcelona.com/eng/home-page/home/home.shtml

The Factual and the Fictive

The Documentary Film Centre at the University of Westminster in London arranges in May 5 screenings and filmmaking discussions under the headline: The Factual and the Fictive: A series of screenings/talks exploring hybrid fiction/documentary film-making.

One session is dedicated to Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, another to Austrian Ulrich Seidl, one to Portuguese master Pedro Costa and his “In Vanda’s Room”, one to Werner Herzog led by his British coproducer and former commissioning editor André Singer, and finally a whole day is dedicated to pioneer political filmmaker Peter Watkins from “The War Game” (photo) to “La Commune”. With an understatement: a programme that is not bad at all.

http://www.wmin.ac.uk/mad/page-2067

20 Years of Democracy

1989 will be remembered in festivals and on tv. And documentaries will be a strong visual element to show the changes that took place when the Berlin Wall went down, followed by the decline of the USSR. The following text about a fine, generous offer to watch great films for free on the net is taken from the newsletter of DOK Leipzig:

The 20th anniversary of the peaceful revolution and the ensuing social changes will play a central role, even before becoming the focus of a special programme at the 52nd International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. All year round, the festival is pursuing its mission to promote documentary film and to initiate a broad discourse about socially relevant topics. It is in this sense that the online platform „20 Years of Democracy in Film”, launched in co-operation with the festivals One World Prague, One World Bratislava, Verzio Budapest and Watch Docs Warsaw, is going to present documentary and animated films by East and Central European filmmakers.

22 contributions from 1990 through to 2007 that deal with vital issues of the social and political transformation processes that have taken place over the past two decades are available as free streamings. Among them are outstanding, multiple award winning works by filmmakers as renowned as Jan Svankmajer, Maciej Janusz Drygas, Pavel Koutecky, Marko Skop (photo from his film ”Other Worlds”) and Tamas Almasi. Germany is represented by films by Gerd Kroske, Thomas Heise, Marc Bauder/ Dörte Franke and Wolfgang Ettlich.

www.dok-leipzig.de

http://www.20years.org

International Film Guide 2009

472 pages. Full of illustrations – still from films, photos from award ceremonies at festivals all over the world, the 45th edition of the International Film Guide is available. With ”Directors of the Year”, a ”World Survey”, info/reports/highlights country by country from Afghanistan to Vietnam, a festival focus (this year on Sundance), statistics, the best dvd-publishers and the best new boxes, a festival calendar – and advertisements all over that are full of info on how to get more information. And of course the Guide is now also online, see below.

I have followed this publication from way back, when the founding editor Peter Cowie travelled around and was a regular visitor to Denmark, where he was so kind to ask me to write a small text about Danish shorts and documentaries. I did and Statens Filmcentral (National Film Board of Denmark), where I worked for 20 years, bought an advertisement in the book! Fair enough and this is still how this yearbook is financed, I guess. It makes the texts very different depending on who is writing. Some texts are pure promotion, others are fine reporting and some analytical. For me the mix is actually quite charming and wonderfully entertaining to sit with as a book.

Talking about documentaries, which we primarily do on filmkommentaren.dk, it is significant to see how much space this genre gets in the book. Another indirect evidence that it is the Golden Age of the creative documentary. Therefore, let me end by referring to a fine article by British Chris Darke on a FILMmaker of all genres: Agnès Varda.

www.internationalfilmguide.com

www.wallflowerpress.co.uk

Atanas Georgiev: Cash and Marry

Wow, they deserve it! Atanas Georgiev, director and his team, who can add one more acknowledgement to the one they got at ZagrebDox some months ago at the world premiere: Last night they were awarded the ”Regards Neufs Prize” at Visions du Réel in Nyon. 5000 Chf donated by the Canton Vaud. This is what I wrote about this remarkable and innovative film earlier in a report from Zagreb:

“It took some time for director Atanas Georgiev (Macedonia), his producer Sinisha Juricic (Croatia) and coproducer Ralph Wieser (Austria) to make and finish ”Cash and Marry”, which will be a hit at festivals in the coming year. As it very rightfully was at the world premiere at ZagrebDOX where it was pitched as project 3 years before. Totally full house, people standing in the corridor, a super audience for this film’s first screening.

But it was worth waiting for. It is a provocative, stylistically sometimes messy and anarchistic, charming, funny, clever, touching and so very much actual document about Europe today exemplified by the hunt for a bride in Vienna that performs the director himself – for the film and for a passport that can make him stay in the European Union.”

And the Nyon jury’s motivation goes like this: For having succeeded in treating a fundamental political subject in an original, refreshing and unpretentious manner, and for its unusual narrative structure, its sense of humour, honesty and boldness.

http://web.docuinter.net/en/index.php  

DOK Day

The Danish Film Institute invited national documentarians to take part in a one day meeting at the Danish Film House. This yearly meeting took place monday this week and served to create a forum for a dialogue between the film institute executives and consultants (commissioning editors), and the filmmakers. Information was given and works-in-progress were presented for open debate. More than 200 professionals attended the well programmed, generous agenda in an openminded atmosphere. There were discussions on new media, on the return and importance of the word in the documentary film, on films on mobile phones and on reconstruction in documentaries. Plus all the important catch-up small talks that happen during a day like this. Very useful for everybody.

Photo: Danish doc masterpiece: The Monastery by Pernille Rose Grønkjær… Below I write some content comments on the event in Danish language.

www.dfi.dk

India 2009

More than 700 million people are voting in India from April 16 till May 13. The vote goes for the election of members to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament of India. The French-German cultural channel has a lot of background info on the election on their site, including a reportage web series that started today and will go daily with a duration of around 2 minutes, where Olivier Courtois goes around looking for answers to the question: What remains of the thoughts and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi 60 years after his death.

http://www.arte.tv/fr/Comprendre-le-monde/INDE-2009/2593676.html

Photo: Nehru and Ghandi

Dok Dag 1

Jakob Høgel, leder af New Danish Screen, havde inviteret til møde om ordenes genkomst i dokumentarfilmen. Jeg havde på invitationen forstået at temaet, som skrevet i indbydelsen, var kommentarens genkomst men kun én af filmene levede op til denne overskrift nemlig et filmprojekt af svensk-finske Olavi Linna, som viste et klip fra sin film-på-vej og talte om hvorfor og hvordan han havde arbejdet med sin første-persons tekst. Det så spændende ud og lød spændende med denne nok en historie fra en lille finsk provinsby.

JH indledte med at sige at kommentaren i mange år havde været væk fra dokumentarfilmen, det havde nærmest været et princip at ville lade billederne ”tale for sig selv”, kommentar det er tv og talking-faces kan vi ikke lide. JH har ret i at det har været og stadig er en holdning, der er udbredt og jeg ville have elsket at have hørt og set flere eksempler på hvordan den personlige kommentar kan laves eller hvordan den mere anonyme og informative kommentar kan udformes. Nå, men vi har jo stadig fremragende eksempler at holde os til: Jørgen Leth og Jon Bang Carlsen. Sidsnævnte har i sine sidste film bestandigt kæmpet for at finde den rette tone og balance, og han gør det for mig blændende i ”Purity Beats Everything”. Men apropos den fine serie i Cinemateket i maj måned, hvor er den film som f.eks. tager digtet ind som i ”Night Mail” fra 1936.  

To andre eksempler blev præsenteret med ordet i centrum. Simon Lereng Wilmont viste nogle klip fra en film-på-vej om en ung forfatterspire i bar overkrop med øldåser stillet op bag sig. Det fik jeg ikke noget ud af. Til gengæld vakte Birgitte Stærmose debat, da hun præsenterede sit filmprojekt ”Ønskebørn” fra Kosovo. Hendes film kommer til at bygge på tekster som gadebørn i Kovoso fremsiger, tekster der har været igennem forfatteren Peter Asmussens redigering. Stærmose pitchede desværre sit projekt ved at vise castingsekvenser og ved at fortælle om alt det, hun ikke ville, ”jeg er ikke dokumentarist, jeg vil gerne kontrollere”, hvor hun jo bare lige ud ad landevejen kunne have fortalt om sin metode, som der ikke er noget specielt ved, hun lægger ord i munden på børnene for forhåbentlig at opnå en klarhed, som den observerende dokumentar ikke kan ramme. Pointen er at ordene sådan set stadig er børnenes og stammer fra de interviews hun har lavet. Med lidt pitch-træning kunne debattten have været meget mere interessant.

Foto fra ”Side om Side”, vist på Dok Dag, instruktion: Christian Sønderby Jepsen, New Danish Screen.

Dok Dag 2

Og så var der igen debat om rekonstruktion i dokumentarfilmen. Man gaber lidt for vi har jo hørt derom i mange år. Og i internationale sammenhænge er debatten for længst overstået. Det virker derfor lidt out-dated, når Claus Ladegård, institut-direktør for produktion og udvikling, som oplægsholder deklamerer at det er i orden med rekonstruktion, at det kan man og må man, men… hvor langt kan man gå. Det havde været mere interessant, hvis Anders Østergaard og Anders Riis Hansen havde fået tid til at fortælle forsamlingen, hvordan de havde taget fat på rekonstruktionerne, og hvorfor lige der og med hvilke dramaturgiske konsekvenser.

Anyway, der blev vist interessante klip og det var fint for mig at sammenligne de to fortællemåder, der var valgt i henholdsvis ”Burma vj” og ”Blekingegadebanden”. Hvor den første har et elegant flow i sin fortælling og en mesterlig personlig kommentar, som Jakob Høgel (se nedenfor) kunne have brugt i sin seance om ordenes genkomst, virker ”Blekingegadebanden” meget mere klassisk journalistisk i sin fremgangsmåde: arkivstillbilleder, interviews, arkivlyd, rekonstruktioner osv. osv. En velkendt og i bedste forstand folkelig forståelig måde at gribe fat, hvor ”Burma vj” arbejder meget mere med billedet.

Og så blev lidt statistik præsenteret: Det danske Filminstitut modtog 278 dokumentaransøgninger i 2008, 37 fik støtte. 844.00 DKK var den gennemsnitlige støtte. 3 mio. DKK var det højeste støttebeløb. 48.000 DKK det laveste. Gennemsnitligt produktionsbudget: 2.6 mio. DKK. For undertegnede der har sine arbejdspladser udenfor DK og kan sammmenligne med andre landes betingelser: Dokumentaren har det økonomisk godt i DK