Doc a Tunis

Documentary festivals flourish. For the 4th time ”Doc a Tunis” takes place, April 1st to 5th. A lot of films are shown from the host country, and from Marocco, Algeria and Libanon, and from Syria comes the film ”Dolls. A Woman in Damascus” by Diana el Jeiroudi, one of the organisers of the festival DoxBox in Damascus, written about on this site. The French influence is clear in the selection, focus is on the auteur tradition, nothing wrong in this, absolutely not. And another tribute to the festival for inviting Ferenc Moldovanyi to come to Tunis to present his film, ”Another Planet” which includes, among many qualities, a masterly done piece of cinematography. Moldovanyi will do a ”lecon du cinema” at the festival.

With a reference to the previous text: This festival is supported by Jan Vrijman Fund.

http://docatunis.nesselfen.org/

Jan Vrijman Fund

The Idfa based Jan Vrijman Fund, named after the late Dutch documentarian, who made several great films, including one about the COBRA painter Karel Appel, has finished the first round selection for 2009, second round deadline June 1st. The fund considered 248 projects from 42 different countries. In total, an amount of € 223.900 was granted to 21 projects. The committee selected five projects for script and project development, ten projects for production and post-production, as well as six festivals and/or workshops.  

Even if the money from a Western point of view is not a lot for the individual projects, it is without doubt one of the most important financial sources for film projects coming from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. It is very often the first funding that brings along further funding as a support from the fund is considered a quality stamp.

Photo from The Caviar Connection, by Dragan Nikolic, supported by Jan Vrijman Fund.

http://www.idfa.nl/industry/vrijman-fund/supported-projects/selection-february-2009.aspx

Vaclav Havel Award

The excellent “One World Human Rights Film Festival” in Prague is over and awards have been distributed. One of the awards not only carry the name of Vaclac Havel but when I was there years ago, I was told that the author-president himself, from a shortlist presented to him, personally decided to whom the prize should be given. What an honour for Anders Østergaard, among many other prizes, to get one in the name of Vaclav Havel! Here is the fine motivation of the jury/Vaclav Havel:

As a young boy in 1988, Joshua witnessed the Burma military junta’s brutal intervention against demonstrators, which resulted in the deaths of more than 3,000 people. He decided to fight for democracy from that time onwards. Armed with a small camera and a mobile telephone, he and three dozen other brave Burmese from the Democratic Voice of Burma organisation decided to make a detailed record of anti-government demonstrations in September 2007 and their subsequent brutal suppression. Footage of the dramatic events from the cameras of these reporters appeared in the news bulletins of all important global media outlets and for a time it was the only way in which the world could find out about the actual situation in Burma. This impressively compiled documentary offers an in-depth and extremely authentic record of the events of that time, when Burmese overcame their deeply rooted fear of government repression for the first time in 19 years and came out en masse to support Buddhist monks on the streets of Rangoon. Using the detailed evidence provided by the work of Joshua and his colleagues (who risked their lives to do it) this film illustrates the indisputable importance of independent media in the fight against totalitarian power.

Burma VJ – Reporting from a Closed Country. 2008 / 84 min.

www.oneworld.cz.

EDN Award to Nenad Puhovski

The annual EDN award for 2009 goes to Nenad Puhovski and his ZagrebDox. The motivation goes like this:

ZagrebDox is a documentary event initiated by Nenad Puhovski, consisting of a weeklong festival and a financing forum entitled ZagrebDox Pro. Within the five years ZagrebDox has existed, it has reached an amazing audience number of 21.000 and spawned a strong financing forum. At the forum, new documentary projects from the region are pitched to a panel of international financiers. Among the documentaries coming from the ZagrebDox Pro financing forum are Corridor #8, The Caviar Connection and Cash & Marry, which have all circulated international festivals with big success. What Nenad Puhovski has accomplished within the five years of ZagrebDox is quite amazing and a point of inspiration for all of us working with documentaries. Not only has he brought international film to Zagreb, he has also managed to bring documentaries from the region to an international audience through the ZagrebDox Pro financing forum. Taking into consideration that all this has been accomplished in a region which has been through struggles and internal battles, makes the achievements by Nenad Puhovski and ZagrebDox all the more admirable. For EDN it was an obvious choice for the 2009 EDN Award.

More about ZagrebDox and the 3 films mentioned, use the “search” of this site.

www.edn.dk

National Film Board 1939-2009

For 70 years, the National Film Board of Canada has been breaking ground in socially-engaged documentary, auteur animation, alternative drama and more! This is how the NFB/ONF (Office National du Film du Canada) modestly, in small letters, celebrates itself on its site, see address below. Luckily, the upcoming Hotdocs festival rightfully raises the voice and celebrates the unique importance of NFB for the world history of the documentary film.  At the festival that takes place in Toronto April 30-May 10 2009, this is done through a “special program that will bring together some special guest programmers – filmmakers, film professionals and other public figures – to select their favourite NFB documentaries of the past 70 years.”

As a true NFB fan I visited the Montréal studios in 1979 and 1989 to celebrate, and to get inspiration for new distribution and production policies. But also to watch films that would fit in our Danish non-commercial distribution. We had dozens of NFB animation films (Norman McLaren, Caroline Leaf) in the catalogue as well as wonderful important documentaries by Colin Low, Kroitor/Koenig and Michel Brault. When I was asked to pick my favourite for the Hotdocs programme, I started humming “put your hand on my shoulder”, remembering one of the many beautiful scenes from the 1962 Kroitor/Koenig cinema vérité classic with and about Paul Anka, “Lonely Boy”. There are many other “auteurs” to highlight when talking about NFB, and they are not appreciated enough in the “official” documentary history literature, that always goes American and British. One name stands out, Pierre Perrault, the film poet from Quebec.

You can buy dvd’s of NFB films, you can watch some online, it is simply a good old centralised and efficient distribution mechanism, that works.
 
http://www.hotdocs.ca/
http://www3.nfb.ca/index.php

Cinéma du Réel 10

Pier Paolo Pasolini og Chris Marker, ja, de gamle meget forskellige mestre var med. Havde hver en sag med. Pasolini en lille og en mindre og Marker en lille bitte. Vægtige på hver sin måde alle tre… 

Pasolinis rejsefilm fra 1963 (billedet), hvor han tænksomt, omhyggeligt og kritisk gennemrejser de hellige steder i Palæstina sammen med sin kirkehistoriske rådgiver pater Carraro for at finde locations til “Matthæusevangeliet”, er fascinernede og forbavsende i sin sære naivitet som dokument, men tydeligt.

En lille film, hvor han laver prøveoptagelser med unge zigøjnere uden for Rom til en film, som ikke blev til noget, er simpelthen rørende.

Chris Marker i sin “Détour Ceausescu” fra 1990 har på en chokerende ærlig måde klippet standrettens overfladiske brutalitet sammen med tv’s overfladiske forbrug af den absurde begivenhed ind i dens egen verden af æstetisk og moralsk uforståelighed.

Cinéma du Réel 9

Atelier Denis Cheerbrant, en hel dag med den flittige og koncentrede dokumentarist fra Marseille..

“La Totalité du monde”, 2009, 13 min. Grebet i den lille perle af en film er forbavsende enkelt. Et langt, grundigt, improviseret interview med en mand på en café, hvor den medvirkendes synspunkter er det, som vægtes, tages alvorligt af det iagttagende, sørgende og især lyttende kamera. Et eneste langt, langt billede, som altså er skrift og alligevel et øjebliks billede. Scenen, bykvarteret, som titlen hylder, er inde i det store billede, det lange take som en række vignetter og omgiver som stemning den intense enetale, som kun ledes ved små korte spørgsmål fra bag kameraet, altså fra Cheerbrant…

Cinéma du Réel 8

Mesteren lader en stedfortrædende mester åbne sin film. Med en gedigen og flot reference til Jørgen Leth og Dan Holmberg blander den fortællende bartender byens foretrukne drink. Udvider billedet til begyndelsen til en krønikeskrivning på film, det store essay om byen. Som Pessoas Lissabon, Magris’ Triest, Pamuks Istanbul. Her blot den bortrejste og her tilbagevendendes beskrivelse, to perspektiver altså. Byernes poetiske historie ligger der bare, ser det ud til. Lige til at samle op.

Mesteren og kronikøren er Heddy Honigmann, byen er Lima, filmen hedder “El Olvido”, og hendes greb er iagttagelsen, det at se, at se, at se, som hun sagde efter kørslen. Valget af medvirkende har været det næste, castigen af en perlerække af artistiske dygtigheder, akrobater, jonglører, tjenere, en digter og altså en bartender, som sættes – og det er det tredje greb – underholdende, ja, meget, meget morsomt i modsætning til de uduelige politikere, de latterlige præsidenter, som fremstilles i en kedsomhedens række af ens tv reportager fra edsaflæggelserne. Ægte kompetace over for falsk storhed. Der er så grimt i parlamentet. Ustandselig finder Honigmanns kamera skønheden i de ærlige ansigter, almindelige, ja, de fleste fattige, nogle meget fattige..

El Olvido var på Magnificent 7 i år. Honigmann har tidligere vavet en film om sin by Lima, “Metal og melankoli”, også et mesterværk, som man husker fra Statens Filmcentrals distribution.  ¨¨ 

Cinéma du Réel 7

Med sit kamera på skulderen er instruktøren på sentimental rejse hjem til sin molesterede by. Han møder som de første tre drenge, som præcist og bevægende nøgternt viser om i ruinerne. Her boede deres navngivne handlende, naboer, skolekammerater. De er væk nu. Nogle helt væk. Og så møder han med sit aldrig moraliserende eller sentimentale kamera – muntert, ja, muntert faktisk – sin fantastiske mor, sin flittige bror og sin solide søster.. Vi bygger bare op igen, siger de, siger man der i byen. Broderen er i gang med at plante figentræer.

Hassan Zbib har eksamen fra det libanesiske universitet, fakultetet for kunstvidenskab og i 1987 fra École Supérieure d’Études Cinématographiques i Paris. Har siden 1988 arbejdet som filmreporter for en række tv stationer. Han har produceret to kortfilm derudover. 

Hassan Zbib: “Creative Chaos: Round One”, Libanon / Irland / Frankrig 2008, 66 min. Distribution: hzbib@yahoo.com

Cinéma du Réel 6

De taler om nederlagene, som var de sejre. Disse palæstnensiske veteraner fra krigene. De bærer skaderne efter sårene som stolte minder, deres egne skæbner i slutspillet som begyndelser til en samlet stolt fortsættelse. Vreden er deres styrke – eller er det ydmygheden og accepten af resignationen, som er det?

Filmen, Sandra Madis “Thakira Mathkouba (Gennemhullet erindring)”, skildrer det vel, som det er. Den gør ikke så meget ved det. Altså stoffet, den samler ind. Den overlader vemodet og eftertanken til mig. Det er naturligvis ok. Det manglede bare.

Sandra Madi er fra Amman. Har eksamen fra det arabiske filminstitut. Hun er skuespiller og arbejder free lance som forfatter og producer ved tv, blandt andet Aljazeera.

Jordan 2008, 62 min. Red Carbon Productions sandra.madi@yahoo.com