IDFA Awards for Feature-Length Docs

 

 

Copy-Paste from idfa.nl: This year the jury of the Feature-Length Competition watched the nominated submissions from their homes, and we met over the internet to discuss and deliberate on the films. Although we felt it went well, we knew watching the films in Amsterdam in the cinema and being able to converse passionately about what we saw during lunch, dinner, or drinks would have enhanced the experience. This year’s nominees seem to meditate on the feeling of loss, maybe not so surprising in a year which COVID-19 has made us acutely aware of the vulnerabilities of our lives and of cinema. What has been lost seems to be the core of humanity with its ability to find solace in telling what is remembered. 

With the four selected films our jury chose, we celebrate world cinema that explores the layers of time and space to uncover hidden truths by understanding our humanity in all its vulnerability with exceptional cinematic talent. Here they are:

IDFA Award for Best Editing 

In 2019, a democratic protest movement raises the youth of Hong Kong. Responding to this legitimate demand for freedom, the political regime uses force. 

A collective of anonymous directors filmed the headquarters of the Polytechnic University for a month. A camera always at the right distance and tight editing puts us at the heart of the tension of these dark days. Through the quality of its writing and editing, this film becomes a universal story about the bravery of the small in the face of the strength of the powerful. 

The IDFA Award for Best Editing in the IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentary, worth €2,500, goes to the film Inside the Red Brick Wallby a collective of Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers. 

IDFA Award for Best Cinematography 

Rarely does the eye of the camera become so intrinsic to the story you’re telling. The observations of the filmmaker through his camera, becomes our story in a visually lyrical and poetic essay that exposes and elucidates the social and political context of a Zurich train station that’s being torn down for a police and prison complex. Through the filmmaker’s window over seven years, we see his view of the train station being transformed… once connecting trains to Zurich from the outside world, but now becoming a prison that will close off the world with the unseen disembodied voices of future refugees. 

The IDFA Award for Best Cinematography worth €2,500 goes to cinematographer and director Thomas Imbach for his film Nemesis. 

IDFA Award for Best Director 

This intimate portrait of a great man in decline is distinguished by an outstanding directorial hand, whether that is evidenced by the artistic decisions surrounding the portrayal and framing of the USSR’s last leader alone and vulnerable in his diminished surroundings, or in the interrogation of the witness as to his recollection of the events that define him and the world. All these choices lead to a vivid picture of a man who changed the world, which at times is tender, at others even humorous. 

The IDFA Award for Best Directing, worth € 5,000, in the IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentary goes to Vitaly Mansky for his film Gorbachev. Heaven. 

IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary 

Radiography of a family is literally an x-ray of a family. As discontent grows with politics, many people experience their families divided on ideological lines. Through masterful storytelling, Firouzeh shows how history and revolution brought about the political and personal divorce of her parents, a secular father and increasingly conservative mother. The family space changes over time due to forces of the outside world. It’s the great accomplishment of the filmmaker that she so subtly and poetically shows how divided politics can divide a room and change it forever. The fractured body of family life is told through images, photos, and enactments in such a way that the viewer, too, feels the loss. 

The IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary, worth € 20,000 in prize money, in the IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentary goes to Radiograph of a Family by Firouzeh Khosrovani.

IDFA Awards Today!

Yes, IDFA awards today. Many, really many and bravo for also giving awards to editing, directing, cinematography… Here is the list of awards to be given in two of the main catagories:

In the Competition for Feature-Length Film, four awards will be presented: IDFA Award for Best Cinematography, the IDFA Award for Best Editing, the IDFA Award for Best Directing and IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary. In the Competition for First Appearance, two awards will be presented: the IDFA Award for Best First Appearance and the FIPRESCI Award in First Appearance.

Luckily there are still many days for me to watch films… I had hoped to be able to “have done” the 10 in the Feature-Length category. I have watched these 5:

Renzo Martens “White Cube”, Claire Simon’s “The Grocer’s Son…”, “Inside the Red Brick Wall” by the Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers, “Nothing but the Sun” by Arami Ullón, “Radiograph of a Family” by Firouzeh Khosrovani… All films of good/high quality, some for the content, some for the treatment, for the aesthetic solution. So far I have not said to myself “why is this film selected?”.  

For the First Apperance I have – so far – seen “This Rain will Never Stop” by Ukrainian Alina Gorlova. She just received an award at the Festival dei Popoli in Florence, the film is amazing in content and form, I must be a favourite!

In the archive section I have seen: “The Foundation Pit” by Andrey Gryazev, “Irradiated” by master Rithy Panh, “Paris Caligrammes” by Ulrike Ottinger, “Radiograph of a Family” by Firouzeh Khosrovani… Of course Rithy Panh’s horror story is unique in creative treatment of archive but it is so hard to watch, unbearable. Readers of this blog will know how much I loved Ottinger’s film as well as “Radiograph of a Family”.

In mid-length I saw only “Anny” and Helena Trestikova is one of the best documentarians of our time.

www.idfa.nl

Ulrike Ottinger: Paris Calligrammes

Loved that match. Watching the film, more than two hours from Paris. Images of today, images from the city in the sixties, accompanied by Ottinger’s voice unfolding her personal memoirs. AND then one hour talk – with a couple of clips – with the director (born 1942) and film critic Pamela Cohn analysing and asking questions. „It’s the most difficult film, I’ve ever done“, Ottinger said, „here I had to be direct personal, contrary to my many other films“. For the film Ottinger made a huge research in archives, public and private, she mentioned, she had seen 400 films (!) and spent two years in the editing room with Anette Fleming – „my wonderful editor“.

Ulrike Ottinger had a great time (1962-69) in Paris, were she met painters, 

 

sculptors, writers, intellectuals – and made her lovely pop art, comic strips as she calls them, and many other artistic expressions. It was the time of the Algier war, there were demonstrations, there were discussions in the cafés, it made a big impression on the young artist – and it is very much present in the film. At a point, she says in the talk with Pamela Cohn, I had a 3 hours cut only with the Algier war as the topic.

The film starts and ends on Place de Furstenberg (rue de Furstemberg). There is a sound I remember from Paris, Ottinger says, and she invites us to see and hear three street sweepers with their brooms cleaning the square with the water coming from underground. Yes, that is Paris! As is her taking the viewer around in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, her first location, and where she met the – first of all – the dadaist artists at the bookshop „Calligrammes“ of Fritz Picard, who built up an antiquariat in Rue du Dragon. The guest book of Picard is full of greetings and drawings (Arp,Tristan Tzara, Braque came there) – and she comes back to that through the film. In Calligrammes (Apollinaire) there were readings; photos and archive clips demonstrate the creative environment. She was also a regular visitor to the gallery of Friedländer, she stayed for some time at his place and she learned to do etchings from him. It’s all wonderfully documented in the film.

The Calligrammes bookshop is no longer there but Ottinger got the permission of the new owner to decorate the window as she wanted with books and a head statue of Picard.

And there is life in the cafés. Au Deux Magots, Brasserie Lipp… reading of newspapers, smoking, writing, discussing… Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, Camus, Eddie Constantine and so on, we know it, we know them and to see them again… as well as the cafés on Montparnasse, Café Select, Café le Dome – of course this brings my memoirs back from numerous trips to Paris.

As does the clip from (the best film ever, my comment) “les Enfants du paradis », one of the scenes with Arletty, and archive with Henri Langlois and Malraux/Pompidou, when la Cinématheque opened in 1963. And Jean Rouch, of course.

Ottinger’s interest in the colonial past of France covers a good deal of the film. There is a strong and touching clip from Jacques Panijel’s “Octobre à Paris » from 1961, and there are material from the turmoil around a play of Jean Genet. I have borrowed this from the internet: … Four years after the end of the Algerian war, Les Paravents was perceived by nationalist movements as an infringement of the virile figure of colonial France. Thus, following the first representations at the Odeon, brutal demonstrations were led by the extreme right and by former fighters in the Algerian war or Indochina war, in front of the Odeon but also inside. Protesters even went to throw dead rats and tear gas on stage to ask for the end of representations…

Ottinger shows us and talks about these riots, which led to Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud – if I get it right – leaving Odéon. But she also visits an African hairdresser saloon in the Northern part of rue Saint Denis, the lively quarter close to the flat, where I have been staying with friends several times in the last decade. A long fascinating clip by a fascinated director. Of today.

Ottinger as an observer of today, also at the Musée Gustave Moreau that she visited and was often the only one, she says. Moreau became an inspiration for one of her films. And the colonial museums in and outside Paris – and Ottinger as the reflector. There is a brilliant clip chosen by Pamela Cohn, with images from Hotel Drouot, the enormous auction house, where gems from the colonial times are being sold and bought, often by descendants from Vietnam or other countries, where the French have been. 

I have to stop, will watch the film again maybe on a big screen in Copenhagen? It’s a big work Ulrike Ottinger has made, premiered at the Berlinale and waiting for its theatrical release. It is full of love to a city, of indignation to politics – it is personal, it is long but easy to follow, it is playful and makes you want to go back to a non-pandemic Paris!

Germany/France, 2020, 130 mins.

www.idfa.nl

Gianfranco Rosi at IDFA

It was here that it started, Gianfranco Rosi said looking at the almost empty Tuschinsky Theatre, where his very interesting and inspiring talk with artistic director of IDFA Orwa Nyrabia took place. I attended the first part of it and took notes but had to leave to raise a glass for and cry a bit for Valentina Pedicini, who passed away the same morning as the talk took place; it was Rosi, who told Nyrabia, who then communicated the tragic loss to the viewers in the theatre and online.

Going back to Rosi, who claimed that the key words for him as a filmmaker is Time Trust and Encounters. It was here that it started – my first film „Boatman“ (1993) was shown here. It was through making that film that I learned about documentary filmmaking. I graduated from the New York University Film School, went to India, visited the Ganges, met Gopal, the boatman, was there for two months without filming, took my camera for a one-day tourist trip with Gopal, saw the material and discovered that it was not good enough for a film. Went away and came back again and again to shoot with Gopal. I just went, there was no telephone contact, but he was always there on the river.

At that point of the talk Orwa Nyrabia showed a clip from the 50 mins. long – yes it is – magnificent film, shot on 16mm, lovely format (my comment), a clip where Gopal talks about the foreigners, who always come with their “why, why, why, why” related to – that we see – corpses wrapped in white cloth being dropped in the same water, where people take their baths.

I was asking questions, said Rosi, you can see that in the beginning of the film, but I stopped and have since then NOT put any questions from behind the camera. The film actually became an emotional reconstruction of that day, where I was a tourist. With this film I learned what it is about: waiting for the right moment. And Time Trust and Encounters.

Rosi is a classical observational poetic filmmaker. He is at IDFA as a guest of honour with his 6 films and he has put together his Top Ten. For accredited guests you can watch Boatman online – and/or you can go to the DocAlliance vod, where you can stream it for very little Money: https://dafilms.com/film/8918-boatman

Photo from his last masterpiece “Notturno”

www.idfa.nl

Arami Ullón: Nothing But The Sun

It does not take long in this fine film that you connect to Mateo, the man on the photo, who (from IDFA catalogue) “started recording Ayoreo conversations, stories, and songs in the 1970s, and is still traveling to Ayoreo communities with his now-antique cassette recorder to interview them and collect their voices for his audio archive. Occasionally the device eats a tape, which he fixes with patient fiddling. The conversations express uncertainty about the loss of identity. Is it a problem that a culture disappears in order to adapt to another?”

It’s in Paraguay and the Ayoreo community has suffered since the White people came. A culture is about to disappear. They used, some still do, to live in the forest, a good life as one of Mateo’s interviewes is saying, no illnesses, we could provide for ourselves. But the missionaries came. Mateo is a documentarian, he wants to keep on tape stories, songs and testimonies. And there are some lovely chamanistic scenes in the film. It’s an oral culture, as said Arami Ullón in the conversation with Orwa Nyrabia, artistic director of IDFA. But Mateo is not only collecting memories from his fellow Ayoreos, he also allows himself to start the tape recorder, when he close to his wife asks her, when it was that she fell in love with him… Won’t give you the answer, she gives, watch the film. There are many of these magic moments in the film that lives from its slow rythm and the conversations. «We were shooting blind, we did not understand what was happening », Ullón said in the conversations. “I did not have a plan, the construction happened when we were there”. I was thinking of what Lithuanian director Audrius Stonys once said: “We are making films to keep people alive”, and that is what Ullón does with the help of Mateo.

Making of course also a film about religious oppression, about colonialism, about what happens in a small country like Paraguay – and all over the world.

Paraguay/Switzerland, 2020, 75 mins.    

Valentina Pedicini 1978-2020

Obituary for a 42 year old filmmaker. So sad. The last time I saw Valentina was at DocsBarcelona, where she won the main award for her “Faith”. The moderator of the ceremony had a short conversation with her, online, before he revealed that the jury found that her film was the best. She jumped from her chair out of joy, so happy for this recognition. One year back I had the chance to meet her at IDFA, where I attended the premiere of the film – full house, I was sitting next to the principal of the Zelig Film School, Heidi Gronauer, and we were proud of Valentina and her work. Valentina graduated from the film school in 2010, I was one of the teachers and had many fine discussions with the director-to-be. As a true artist she was always in doubt of what she did was good enough. I wrote this after the IDFA screening last year:

“To watch the film of a former Zelig student, Valentina Pedicini, “Faith”, a film that actually was already in preparation, when she was in the school in Bolzano. She made a short film at that time, 11 years ago. “I was young at that time, 11 years later I felt mature enough to go deeper, stay longer at the place-“ And she did together with cameraperson Bastian Esser and his assistent Lucia Alessi – both of them also Zelig students.

The equally 11 year older teacher, who still remembers Valentina as the obvious documentary talent during the school time, has at a distance followed the carreer of the filmmaker, who has made a couple of fiction films and the documentary “Dal Profondo” in 2013. This one, “Faith”, shows that she can go close to people, who trust her. “Were there any ethical questions during the shooting”, the moderator asked Valentina Pedicini. “Every day”, was the answer from the very dedicated director, who with the amazing camerawork by Bastian Esser depicts both the violent training scenes with the master and his pupils and the quiet sensible scenes with couples in bed. You can’t avoid to feel claustrophobia watching the film, luckily you as a viewer are let out in the light once in a while… but seldom.

Valentina, RIP.

IDFA Pitched Rough Cuts

I had the pleasure – indeed it was – to observe the online pitch of Rough Cut projects yesterday. There were five of them and the atmosphere was much more relaxed than several of the pitches, where projects were new and comments from the decision makers were included. The sessions included words from director & producer, a teaser or clips – several had 3 of them – so you could imagine how the film would be. And one-on-one were waiting for the filmmakers. I make small remarks to each of them – saying up front that they were all of quality, and as a session put well together geographically: Brazil, Israel, India, Lebanon, Sahel Africa. Here they are:

Daniel and Daniela

Pandora da Cunha Telles & Sofia Pinto Coelho

“Daniel and Daniela are father and daughter. He’s 84, she’s 12. During a road trip, we follow their ode to love and culture.“ Lot of energy in the presentation. Good clips. Charismatic father with controversial views on colonialism. Innocent thoughtful daughter.

The First 54 Years

Avi Mograbi & Serge Lalou

”How to succeed in an occupation for at least 54 years? Mograbi, director and narrator, builds the handbook of the perfect occupier based on testimonies from Israeli soldiers and archive footage.“ Great to see Avi Mograbi back in pitching. Being a big admirer of the director, with the help of colleague Allan Berg, we have on this site http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3479/, “collected posts of Avi Mograbi.” As before he is working with Serge Lalou, eminent French producer, they were presenting the project in a fine way, the film will be ready by spring 2021, Mograbi will be in the film, he was indeed in a clip that included testimonies by soldiers, who remember from their time in the army – Mograbi found them through the organisation of soldiers in „Breaking the Silence“. Another great film coming up, I am sure, from a director not only critical to the state of things in Israel but also a true auteur“. It will be a handbook for all occupiers, he said!!!

The Golden Thread

Nishtha Jain

„Outside Kolkata, jute mills crank on, virtually unchanged since the industrial revolution. How do we look at this work powered by steam and sweat, its sensory experience thereof, or the precarious lives of jute workers from our post-industrial perspective driven by obsolescence?”. The director works with Irena Taskovski on this project – the clips they showed were impressive, direct cinema, ah these crowded factories, these inhuman working conditions, these wonderful people, the girl laughing in the courtyard. Very good filmmaker!

We are Inside

Farah Kassem

”After more than a decade, Farah (31) returns to her hometown Tripoli in Lebanon only to find her city and country in crisis. Staying with her widowed aging father Mustapha (83), Farah realizes this is her last chance for a conversation. And that is only possible through poetry, his passion.” Don’t know the director, was caught by the charm of the story about these old men, who meet to read poetry of their own. The director tries to cross their chauvinism, gets into the room, read a poem… Lovely.

Witnesses from the Shadow

Ousmane Samassekou & Estelle Robin-You

«Bordering the Sahel desert stands a house, as a safe haven for African migrants on their way to Europe, or returning home. How do you prepare to face your family, when you are going home with nothing and leave your dreams behind?” The two made a superb presentation. Instead of the usual trailer/teaser they showed a long scene, where a man talks to a young woman in trouble – in the house. Sooo strong. The film project was presented at IDFA 2019 and now they are on editing. In the IDFA credits three names are mentioned that tells me that the team has searched for consultation at the RCS, Rough Cut Service – names are Don Edkins, Niels Pagh Andersen, Iikka Vehkalahti. PHOTO: From the pitch 2019 at IDFA, regret to say that I dont know who the woman to the left is. Maybe Estelle can inform me?

https://www.idfa.nl/en/info/idfa-forum 

IDFA Opens at Tuschinsky…

Two quotes from the opening of IDFA 2020, wise words from a minister and an artistic director of this unique meeting place for people in the documentary community – and for the audience, in the cinemas and online.

“Standing in an almost-abandoned Tuschinski theater in the heart of Amsterdam, looking at hundreds of empty red seats is a painful illustration of the impact of the pandemic. At the same time, I am incredibly proud and happy that IDFA is still able to go ahead this year, as are all of the professionals who worked on the many documentaries that will be shown in the coming weeks. Here, live, in dozens of Dutch cinemas, and online, in thousands of living rooms across the globe,” said Ingrid van Engelshoven, Minister of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands.

“Art is never measurable. Its value, its impact, and even its very meaning are all living creatures. They change with time, they change with place, they change us and we change them continuously. So, this edition of IDFA is a tribute to you, our filmmakers and artists, and even more to those of you whose accomplishment might not be measurable by the immediate response of the market or the media. We believe in these films and new media works, we know they will live long and they will be discovered and re-discovered again and again,” concluded Orwa Nyrabia, Artistic Director of IDFA.

Andrei Ujica: Things We Said Today

… “then I will remember things we said today”. Beatles. “The influence they had on our generation”, as said Ujica, who is from 1951, I am four years older, and also I grew up with Beatles. And enjoy very much to remember those days in the beginning of the 60’es, where I met with my friend listening to and talking about John, Paul, Ringo and George. It’s a brilliant film project that Ujica has, “A time capsule of New York between August 13-15, 1965, framed by The Beatles’ arrival in the city and their first concert at Shea Stadium, narrated from the perspectives of two teenagers.” I have never met Ujica personally, but I have met his editor and sound editor Dana Bunescu at a workshop in Gori Georgia. Already there she mentioned that she was working with Ujica on this film AND they had worked together before, a quote from the blogpost I wrote:

“Did you see it : ”The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu” (director : Andrei Ujica, editor and sound designer Dana Bunescu) from 2010, 3 hours long, a true masterpiece. You have to ! Archive the whole way through, no commentary, no explanations of where we are and when and why. Chronological.

Dana Bunescu, who is here as an editing tutor, a scoop to have her, open-minded and direct in her approach to the young filmmakers. Bunescu was working on the film for three years and what a material she had and put into a film, that is never boring but takes you in, because of its sense of rythm and use of sound, of music – Bunescu is a master in sound and it’s been an eye-opener to see her here in Gori talking about sound but also putting a recorder on the table to catch sounds that she might be able to use on another film occasion!”

At the pitch at IDFA, Ujica and his producer showed material, please show more, this is a film that will have an enormous success, I am sure, and not “only” for “our” generation. Ujica and Bunescu, archive masters!

… and to complete this hommage to the two, let me remind you that Ujica made two other films before “Ceaucescu” in his Romanian trilogy, “Videograms of a Revolution” (1992), “Out of the Present” (1995), and that Bunescu is the editor of several of the feature films of the “Romanian Wave” and also took part in the editing of the new excellent documentary “Collective” by Alexander Nanau. 

Documentary Poetry/ DunaDock

The other day I was in Budapest for the DunaDock workshop… well online of course, me sitting in Copenhagen. I was invited by the engaged Hungarian documentarians Diana Groo, Julianna Ugrin and Klára Trencsényi and their helpers. To do tutoring at the workshop and a talk, as part of the (also online, cinemas are closed in Hungary) Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. Klára Trencsényi was my host at the talk; I have known her for many years and have praised her films on this site – ”Corvin Variations” www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2162/, ”Birds Way” http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1056/, ”Train to Adulthood” http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3395/. Right now Klára Trencsényi is in the editing of ”Wardens of Memory”, shot in India and about the Cochini Jews – and much more. The film project was pitched at DocsBarcelona this year, online, by the director and Julianna Ugrin, who has a long filmography, including ”A Woman Captured” by Bernadett Tuza-Ritter.

Anyway, for the talk I chose the title ”Documentary Poetry” and the participants in the festival and in the DunaDock workshop (more about that below) got the chance to watch in beforehand ”Bridges of Time” by Kristine Briede and Audrius Stonys, produced by Lithuanian Arunas Matelis, Latvian Uldis Cekulis and Estonian Riho Västrik. There are several texts on this site about this remarkable film on poetic documentary cinema.

I had 90 minutes, where I showed clips with words in between making again a lot of reference to the Balticum Film & TV Festival that was held in the 1990’es on the island of Bornholm in the middle of the Baltic Sea. It was here during a decade that my interest in and love for the Baltic documentary filmmaking and filmmakers were born. And for Russian and Polish…

I showed a clip from ”Paradise” – the boy eating his morning porridge and falling asleep – the graduation film by Sergey Dvortsevoy, whose four documentaries I consider to be outstanding and whose second feature film ”Ayka” is equally excellent. And then I went to Audrius Stonys – clips from ”Antigravitation” and ”Uku Ukai” – before the two clips from ”Bridges of Time” with Uldis Brauns, the man behind the masterpiece ”235.000.000” from 1967, of which a director’s cut is now being restored and digitized. If you want to watch the class, there is a link below, English spoken and clips with English subtitles.

About the DunaDock workshop that was run via Zoom: five projects, three tutors (Hanka Kastelicova, HBO Europe, Noemi Schory Israeli producer, and me), and a pitch session that included Christian Popp from FIPADOC and Brigid O’Shea from DAE, Documentary Association of Europe, who awarded two of the five projects. Go to the FB of the DunaDock and read much more, link below as well. 

DunaDock is for sure one of many workshops/training sessions, where talent is found and advised on how to enter the documentary community. In this session there were – behind the five projects – participants from Moldova, Kosovo, Pakistan, Germany and Hungary. Again go to the FB page to see who were the winners.  

https://www.facebook.com/dunadock

https://www.verzio.org/hu/node/3302