The awards in Leipzig… Helena Trestikova won another first prize for her ”Réne”, which will be play here in Copenhagen at cph:dox. I did not see it yet but I am sure it deserves a prize, based on what I have seen before from her hand.

Second prize, plus two others, went to wonderful ”Oblivion” by Heddy Honigmann, a director whose work I have followed for many years, always with pleasure and admiration. I wrote a review of the film in the new DOX (Issue 79, November 2008), let me give you a small quote:

”In 1994, the director made ”Metal and Melancholy”, also from Peru, seen through the taxis and their double-job drivers. This new film from Lima is melancholic as well, and beautiful, but you also feel a well-documented anger on behalf of the people you meet who struggle every day to survive”. A humanistic, political film for a big audience. Thank you!

In the same DOX issue you will find a review of Z32, written by editor Ulla Jacobsen.

Still from Oblivion by Heddy Honigmann.

www.edn.dk
http://www.heddy-honigmann.nl/hhonigmann/
http://www.dok-leipzig.de/v2/cms/en/home/index.html

I have previously – in my diaries from DocLisboa – mentioned the new masterpiece by Avi Mograbi, Z32. It was also shown at DOK Leipzig, Avi Mograbi was there and I told him again, as in Lisbon, that his films divide people, for which reason he will never get a prize in a documentary festival, as juries tend to go for compromises. Right I was, no prize for Mograbi in Leipzig.

One of the reasons could be found in the review of the film from the Leipziger Volkszeitung, November 1st, written by Norbert Wehrstedt, who, as many others, objects to having talking faces in documentaries… he had hoped that this narrative element had died long time ago. He reduces thus the film to be a ”Hörbuch mit Bildern” that nobody needs. Words, words, words to put it in another words.

I totally disagree to this classical rejection of talking faces. It depends on who is talking, on camera angle, light, rythm and reason for using talking faces. What Avi Mograbi does, is that he innovates the documentary language by using talking masks, as his main character, the killing Israeli soldier, does not want to face the camera. Very intelligent trick that combined with his Brechtian musical element, himself singing comments to the soldier’s crime, makes the film into a universal essayistic wish for reflection.

Z32 runs in festivals all over, look out for it and if you are in Copenhagen, you can reach it at cph:dox.

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/v2/cms/en/home/index.html
http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

Of course, you have to be careful when you take a quote from the press office of a festival. Especially as you have not been able to follow the festival intensely because of other obligations. But I went to the festival centre at the new museum every day, met directors and other guests who I knew and they had a good time and were generally happy with the programme. As were the expected-to-be-critical students of the Zelig documentary school in Bolzano. So here comes the quote:

”Crowded cinemas, many international filmmakers and industry guests, lively discussions and a fantastic atmosphere all over the place were characteristical for the 51st edition of the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. … Festival director Claas Danielsen anticipates a slight decline of audience numbers compared with last year’s 50th anniversary of DOK Leipzig (31.000 viewers). Happily, the number of German and international industry visitors has proved to be stable: Altogether, 1.400 accredited visitors from 49 countries (1.450 in 2007) have come to Leipzig in order to make use of both the manifold film programme and the DOK Industry offers.”

It is amazing what my younger friend Claas Danielsen has achieved in the few years he has been director of the festival. He has changed the festival from being sleeping nach der Wende to a modern international meeting point of high quality. Even if I had suggested Baltic and other films to him and his selection group, and they were wrong in not taking more from my list (!), I was not disappointed with the films I had time to watch in the superb digital video library.

Photo: Claas Danielsen with Al Maysles (left)

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/v2/cms/en/home/index.html

This monday the first documentary commissioned for the internet by Arte France starts its broadcast. ”Gaza Sdetor – Life in Spite of Everything” is an experimental 60 day interactive project by French documentary production company Bo Travail with Arte France and its web team.

Each day two short 2-minute films will be shown – one from Gaza (Palestine), one from Sderot (Israel), two neighbouring towns but divided by just a few kilometers and a border. The short films will be about life as experienced by the people who live in the separated towns and their daily survival. Under difficult living conditions and the threat of air attacks and bombings, people keep on working, loving and dreaming. Life in spite of everything.
The Palestinian team Ramattan Studios and the Israeli team Alma Films/Trabelsi Productions shoot and edit the two minute pieces each day and FTP them to Paris where subtitling and any final editing takes place. The films are then uploaded for broadcast each morning. Text written by Don Edkins, edited from

http://blogit.yle.fi/dokblog
http://gaza-sderot.arte.tv/

Good news about a film written about on this blog more than 7 months ago:

TV Documentary: PRIX EUROPA Best Television Documentary Programme of the Year goes to Testimony by Razvan Georgescu (author/director), Stefan Grandinetti, Hans Zimmermann (camera). Produced by Starcrest Media GmbH, co-produced by Pelegrin Films s.r.l. & YLE, Finland.

And a small quote from the first text on this blog: The director was – in his own words – given a second chance after a brain tumor operation. The doctors gave him three years more to live and he has used these three years to – his own words again – enter this film journey between life and death, where he visits artists who are in the same terminal illness situation or who in other ways have been inspired by challenging their mortality.

Congratulations Razvan… who is by the way to be here in Leipzig where the film is (also) screened.

Saturday and Sunday 24 projects were pitched at the East European Forum at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival in Czech Republic. It is always difficult to measure what is a success but of course positive reactions/commitments from broadcasters count. In my experience – that for pitching sessions go more than 10 years back – 25% of the projects presented do normally get some finances from these events.

In Jihlava this year my guess is that at least 6 will be supported at this stage. Many others are still in development and received advice for further development. And the sentence: ”come back to me”. And others were told that this is too local, which does not mean that the film to be made could not turn into high quality. Remember ”Czech Dream” – who had thought that this film would tour the world? The IDF team (see picture) that stood behind this 8th edition of the East European Forum, had again turned the session into something warm and creative in a design under the motto ”Recycle Life – Make Documentaries”. The panel of broadcasters was this year around 20 people, including representatives from the Sundance Institute and ITVS from the the US. In an atmosphere of slight depression for the public broadcasters in Europe the participation of the funds was real good news!  

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

Think Big! Is what young producer and director Ilona Bicevska has done throughout a year of participation in the Ex Oriente 2008. The award was given sunday at the East European Forum in Jihlava. Katja Wildermuth from MDR in Germany loved the Latvian project which is called ”15 Young by Young” and promised to help it to realisation – as did several other in the panel.

The project will consist of 15 films, each of them 15 minutes long, to be made by 15 different directors from the 15 ex-Soviet republics. They can then be put together in whatever way the broadcasters want, 5×45 minutes or into one long version. Ilona Bicevska has a very well thought and wonderfully ambitious plan on how to pick the directors and the themes at editorial workshops, among them with the participation of the Danish Film School that has promised to help with editing suites and supervision.

To be finished 20 years after the collapse of the USSR and/or the independence of the ex-Soviet republics. From the country of Juris Podnieks, Ivars Sleckis and Herz Frank. Bravo!  

Another season of Ex Oriente Film is over. For a year – in 3 sessions – I have had the privilege to follow and tutor a group of documentary makers, a few already experienced, most of them upcoming talent from Eastern Europe. I was rushing out of the door to get to the next station, where I am now, Discovery Campus Masterschool, so for those of you Ex Oriente people who read this: Thank you so much for a great year full of fun and creativity – and please make some good films!

… that will take time, of course, and the projects, all pitched at the East European Forum, will be at other presentation venues like here in Leipzig or at the idfa Forum. Like the one on the picture:

Thierry Paladino´s ”Puppets” to be produced by Centrala Film Warsaw.

The projects are listed on:

http://web.docuinter.net/en/activities.php?kategorie=2&id=91&sid=198&rok=2008

Two representatives from the San Francisco based ITVS (Independent Television Service), Cynthia Kane and Lois Vossen, attended the East European Forum. They made a very good impression expressing enthusiasm in their going for the creative and artistic documentary. They were at the right place!

In a morning session clips were shown from two films that they had supported, both of them on their way to international success:

“Cash and Marry” by Atanas Georgiev, produced by Nukleus, Sinisha Juricic, Croatia. And “The Caviar Connection”, produced and directed by Jovana and Dragan Nikolic, Serbia. The latter will be premiered at IDFA this year.

Here are some words from the site of ITVS:

Welcome to television’s independent voice. Innovative. Provocative. Real. ITVS funds, presents and promotes award-winning documentaries and dramas on public television and cable, innovative new media projects on the Web and the Emmy Award-winning weekly series Independent Lens Tuesday nights at 10:00 PM on PBS… ITVS programs take creative risks, explore complex issues, and express points of view seldom seen on commercial or public television. ITVS programming reflects voices and visions of underrepresented communities and addresses the needs of underserved audiences, particularly minorities and children.

Still: The Caviar Connection.

http://www.itvs.org/index.htm