A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
It’s one of those great documentary moments. Barack Obama walks with Gordon Brown towards Downing Street. Obama stretches out his hand to say hello to the policeman in front of the building, they shake hands, Brown moves in the same direction, the policeman stretches out his hand prepared for another vip handshake but Brown regrets and the handshake never comes. Great fun!
Sorry I am British!
It is an obvious story- to go to the amusement park in Vienna, the Prater, famous also for the Harry Lime tune, Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten, but in this case it is a documentary that brings us stories about people, who work at the Prater, many of them coming from the former Yugoslavia and other Balkan countries. As do the Bulgarian and Serbian directors of this impressionistic documentary with a somewhat enigmatic title. There are some quite charismatic and colourful characters among those, the two directors have talked to, and there are some great pieces of montage in the film that follows the back stage life of Prater during a year. The two directors do not come from the classical documentary environment, but from the art scene and the documentary is best when they go for the visual bombardment, whereas some of the talks with especially the foreigners are felt repititive in the global context.
A methaphor for the society it is described to be on the site of the film, and it can be seen like this, including a dose of xenophophia and unfulfilled dreams of a good life from all those who left their countries to live in €urope.
Austria, Bulgaria, Serbia, 2005/2006, 60min
If you happen to be around Nyon in Switzerland on tuesday April 28, you should go and meet one of the few real stars in documentary cinema, Russian director Sergey Dvortsevoy. He has been invited to Visions du Réel and a retrospective is being done in his honour. If you dont happen to be at the festival in Nyon, try otherwise to get hold of the films of Dvortsevoy: Paradise (25 mins), Bread Day (55 mins), Highway (57 mins), In the Dark (41 mins), Tulpan (fiction) (100 mins.). Or start by watching the director in small interviews on the sites mentioned below.
”You have to put all your energy into the filmmaking. You have to choose, to wait and to catch”, Dvortsevoy says in the Nyon-interview, and those who have seen Paradise about the Nomad family in Kazakhstan will remember the little boy who is eating, or the cow that has its head stuck in a churn, or the woman who is combing her hair – or the blind man in In the Dark who just sits there talking to his cat from his sofa – or the women pushing the train wagon in the snow in Bread Day. Magic moments given to us by a director with a minimalistic film language, always shooting on film, made with a big heart for people, and normally on small budgets!
http://www.visionsdureel.ch/agenda/atelier-2009-sergey-dvortsevoy.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RElu_2s4Z1k
Here is a call for help from Belarussian Lyceum Headmaster and documentary director Uladzimir Kolas (see picture). Kolaz, who recently made the fine festival touring documentary ”Ada Gallery” is setting up a film education in his lyceum that is the only one in Belarus that is not controlled by Lukasjenko and his gang. For his video library Kolaz kindly asks international documentary filmmakers and institutions to donate copies of their film.
For more on the lyceum and the plan to build an education, as well as how to donate go to
Finally the succesful Danish cinema will be celebrated. By the Danes themselves. In the park next to the Film House in Copenhagen an Arc de Triomph will be raised that should be minimum 24 meter high. And have three dimensions and fit to the structure of the beautiful park and the Rosenborg Castle that neighbours the park and the Film House. The monument, financed by local private sponsors, will for sure have the same symbolic meaning as the equivalent in Paris. It will underlign the enormous succes and influence Denmark has had on the world of cinema. The building of the Arc will begin next spring, the proud director of the Danish Film Institute, Mr. Nielsen expresses in his press release of April 1st 2009.
Yves Jeanneau, well known character in French documentary, ex-television editor and ex-producer at Films d’Ici, now producer and CEO of the Sunny Side of the Docs, was interviewed by le Monde (March 29-30). One of the questions went like this:
Many producers fear that their companies will not survive after France Télévisions (FR2, FR3, FR4 and FR5) will have one documentary unit. And it is being said that France has too many and too fragile production companies. What is your comment?
Jeanneau: I have said so for 10 years. Most of these companies have had one year with one succesful film but will have to give up because of insufficient financing to do the necessary project development. It may sound provocative but talking in economical terms the French documentary production could very well be placed at 5 times less companies than the 700 that exist today.
German public channel Das Erste (”The First”) currently runs a four part series (of each 45 minutes) about and with war (WW2) children. The series made through the MDR, that is based in Leipzig, and produced by local company LE Vision, includes a huge research work that has been done to let personal stories come forward before it is too late. As the participating children are now in their late 70’es or 80’es.
I saw the 3rd part and It is moving stories that come forward about children, who lose their parents, about children who were at the front as teenage soldiers, about children who still in their old age have traumatic experiences. It is amazing that they have survived, you often think.
The archive material presented is very impressive. The voice-off commentary that takes us by the hand is very well chosen text- and tone-wise. The use of music is balanced. It is a work full of respect for the characters. In a non-sensationalistic frame, yet of course you sense a sometimes too schematic and predictable structure fit for prime time television.
The 4th part is on monday April 6, the series can be watched online for a limited period and is son to be released on dvd.
In Kolin where the 1st session of the Ex Oriente MEDIA supported training programme takes place, we had a fruitful visit of the German cameraman Lars Barthel. He showed us the new film of Helga Reidemeister, ”War and Love in Kabul” (photo), that he had shot. On 16mm and with pure beauty and thought in all scenes. The masterclass with Barthel following the screening was full of eye-opening comments from a cameraman, who in this way gave us a profile of himself.
Asked about his collaboration with directors, he stressed that the relationship on a human level is far the most important. Topic and professional matters come second. ”The good relation has to last after the film”, he said, ”it has to be like a family”. ”As a cameraman I always try to look for the truth, to see and film the moments. Every movement has a choreography in itself. You have to look into the eyes of the people. The room has to be told”, were some of the sentences I liked and picked from the meeting with Barthel, a FILM cameraman, who believes in composition.
And who also talked about lenses and light – ”I use fixed lenses, never zoom” – and who ended by showing us his beautiful personal film, ”My Death not Yours”.
The direct cinema or call it the observational is still alive and strong. I thought about that yesterday here in Kolin in Czech Republic, where director and editor Erez Laufer showed the film of Laura Poitras from 2006, ”My Country, My Country”, edited by the director and Laufer.
Laura Poitras was 8 months in Iraq and she was here, there and everywhere with her small camera. She had access to the American army, to the security people who were there in connection with the elections, she was up North with the Kurds and first and foremost she got close to the charismatic dr. Riyadh, a political candidate for the Iraqi Islamic Party, and the main character of the film.
The director’s presence and sense of situations is second-to-none. Let me just mention two scenes out of many that will stay in my mind: A woman sits in her appartment searching for a fly that is disturbing her. She is totally concentrated on this mission while we as viewers hear the sound of the city being hit by strong bombardments… A pure magic moment, says so much,,, as does the next example also where she catches a moment of Americana in a hall where an officer talks to Iraqi security people. ”We are gonna run this show, you will be on television all over the world…”, he says. ”Show”, one of the men silently remarks, ”ok, this is real life”, the American superior replies, ”yes, it is a bit different than a show”, the man ends up commenting silently. Voila, a small dialogue, that also says so much without anyone explaining to us anything. Think, please, and this is the quality of this film that the filmmakers invite us to do so. Observational documentary, this is ”being there” as Richard Leacock so often has put it.
(The film has previously been reviewed on filmkommentaren.dk by one of the Zelig film school students, Georg Bocher.)
Tue Steen Müller fortalte os under sin workshop i Randers, 7BEST om Audrius Stonys “The Bell”, som betog os alle ved sin ro, dybde og skønhed, at instruktøren “kan sin Tarkovskij forfra og bagfra”. Det får vi nu lejlighed til at se nærmere på i morgen aften, onsdag i FOF filmklubben, hvor vi skal studere “Spejlet”. Allerede ved at se klippet her, med scenen med kvinden på hegnet, på You Tube, går det op for én, hvad Müller mener. I billede efter billede ser man det, og tydeligt bliver det med den helt direkte reference til ild/vand motivet og i scenen med det brændende hus og i åbningsscenen (billedet), hvor en pludselig vind bevæger kornet og løvet og hans jakke, da han igen efter deres møde, hvor han har fortalt hende om den besjælede natur, går ned mod vejen ved busken. Alt det er med i Stonys film, hvor han så videreudvikler tankerækken efter sin Tarkovskij-læsning, lægger sit dokument ved siden af, dokument ved dokument er kunstens metode, og begge film bliver rigere for øjnene af os.
En medarbejder ved det videnskabelige akademis institut for fysik i Moskva sendte i 1975, kort tid efter premieren, Andrej Tarkovskij et notat, som havde været sat op på opslagstavlen i instituttet. Tarkovskij bringer det i sin bog om filmkunst, -æstetk og -poetik. Efter han i indledningen har citeret en række private breve og offentlige anmeldelser, som finder filmen uforståelig og elitær. Denne anonyme teoretiske fysiker ser anderledes på det:
“Visningen af Tarkovskij-filmen “Spejlet” vakte på Videnskabsakademiets fysiske institut en lige så stor interesse som tidligere overalt i Moskva. Ønsket om et personligt møde med instruktøren kunne desværre kun opfyldes for ganske få (for forfatteren til denne notits lykkedes det desværre heller ikke). Det forblev ubegribeligt for os, hvorledes Tarkovskij med filmiske midler kunne skabe et filosofisk tilbundsgående værk. Biografgængeren har i den grad vænnet sig til at forvente en fabel, en handling, forvente helte og sædvanligvis en happy end. Derfor søger man så også i Tarkovskijs film den slags elementer og går af samme grund skuffet hjem, for ingen af disse overhovedet findes deri.
Hvad handler denne film da om? Om mennesker. Naturligvis ikke om dette konkrete menneske, hvis stemme Inokentij Smoktunovskij har overtaget off. Nej, det er meget mere en film om dig selv, om din far og om din farfar. En film om de mennesker, som vil leve efter dig, men som ikke desto mindre alle er “du”. Det er en film om mennesker, som lever på denne jord, og som er en del af denne jord, som på samme måde omvendt er en del af dem, af disse mennesker. En film om dette, at mennesket må indestå med sit liv for både fortid og fremtid. Denne film må man slet og ret se, se Rerbergs billeder og lytte til Bachs musik og lytte til Arsenij Tarkovskijs digte. Og ganske vist er man nødt til at se den på samme måde, som man betragter stjernerne, havet eller et skønt landskab. Matematisk logik må man undvære her. Men til syvende og sidst forklarer denne jo heller ikke, hvad mennesket egentlig er, og hvori meningen med dets liv består.”
Andrej Tarkovskij: Spejlet, Mosfilm, Rusland 1974. 91 min. Med Margarita Terekhova. Kamera: Georgi Rerberg. Findes i DVD bokssættet Andrei Tarkovskij collection 2008. Litt.: Andrej Tarkowskij: Die versiegelte Zeit (Sapetschatljonnoje Wremja), Frankfurt/M 1984.