Sometimes you have high expectations and get disappointed. Sometimes your expectations are fulfilled. Sometimes you get much much more than you expected even if you had high expectations.

Terence Davies. Are you old enough to remember his “Distant Voices, Still Lives” from 1988? If not, you will search for it when you have seen this new masterpiece of his, made for the celebration of his native Liverpool: If Liverpool did not exist, it had to be invented.

That is what he says, in the most brilliant film text that I have heard for years. Quoting poetry, bringing in himself, in first person, remembering, calling for, bringing forward his childhood, the times that were, accompanied by visual archive material, by gorgeous shootings from today, from above, from the streets, from inside the church and with music, not the Beatles, not at all, sarchastic he is about “the yeah yeah yeah”, no he turns to – among others – Mahler, Brahms and Händel. But there are also long wordless sequences of houses, people and weather. He lets the images talk for themselves, no working class sentimentality, but an interpretation of the life we live, the search for a good life, the longings, the sorrow, life and death. Stream of consciousness. James Joyce on film. A sequence of children from today. They have just learned to walk. There must be a future.

I was breathless after the screening. I want to see it again as quick as possible! Check the site and get a taste of this masterpiece.

http://www.hanwayfilms.com/

http://www.oftimeandthecity.com/

During the doc festival and market season – which is now and lasts until December – your bed waits for you in a hotel, normally booked and paid for by the organisers of the event. Some people hate hotels, can not sleep properly, noise or temperature bother them or the bed is too soft or too hard. I normally don´t mind, I even like it most of the times. For my extensive travelling, I like to be surprised, I like hotels that are different from the big boxes, where you know the whole organisation before you enter the room.

I have just left a wonderful place in Lisbon. Downtown, around 30 rooms, all of them different from the other, classic dark furniture, quiet, bad breakfast (Southern Europe!), free internet access, charming ambiance, fine servic. Site below.

And in Jihlava, my next destination for 4 nights, I know what to expect. Pension Jakuba. Simple, clean, relatively quiet as well (read below), several German channels on the tv (if that is something!), all accompanied by a sound design from two sources. The church bells 50 meters from your bed, and the zoo. The first year I was there, I thought the animal sounds came from inter-human joyful moments in one of the other rooms!

After Jihlava, I am off to Leipzig to the one and only Hotel Michaelis, sooo clean and accurate in all details. Each night you can find a couple of biscuits in cellophane on your pillow, and you have the bible within reach. But no… dont think you can´t sin there. The hotel has a superb restaurant with seasonal dishes and a great variety of French and Italian wines. And a selection of Cuban cigars. Difficult temptation for a person who stopped smoking two months ago!

www.casadesaomamede.com
http://www.penzionjakub.ji.cz/
http://www.hotel-michaelis.de/michaelis/cms/index.php

”A sermon has to be like a woman´s dress. It should long enough to cover the subject but short enough to be interesting”. These wise words (by the way try to change ”sermon” with film) come from the mouth of Father LeDoux, the 76 year old charismatic main character of ”Shake the Devil Off” by Peter Entell, a wonderful warm film about a small New Orleans community fighting to keep their parish and their Father – half a year after the hurricane Katrina put everything into chaos. The Father is their hope but the catholic administration wants to get rid of him.

In tone and approach this is a film that grows out of a European tradition for documentaries, leaving space for the audience to think and feel, whereas the latest film by Errol Morris, ”Standard Operationg Procedure”, is a constant bombardment of noise for every cut, music (that functions like muzak) all over, making every attempt to simplify with a strong graphic design from start till end. One-dimensional. A film playing according to main stream American dramaturgy… what is it about, well it tells about some American soldiers, or rather it lets American soldiers tell what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Accompanied by the photos we have seen so often. But why Morris made the film, what his point is… is totally hidden by style and graphics and sound design.

I am off to Jihlava in Czech Republic. A long journey. It has been a pleasure to be here in Lisbon for a festival with a big audience, a well chosen film programme and a warm hospitality.  

www.doclisboa.org

Sunday morning in Lisbon. Sunshine and empty streets. Perfect for a walk before going to sit in front of the video monitor and all the fine films of this festival. Strolled down (literally down) the streets to several great viewpoints and to the capturing of sounds and the observation of a city awakening. The smell of garlic to be used for the bacalau was already in the air as the +60 people, we had it all for ourselves. The cafés, the newspaper stands and the view and sound of the Lisbon trams, going slow through the city as if nothing had changed for the last decades. Could one live here, could one breathe here in the post-Salazar atmosphere of pleasant inactivity surrounded by beauty and melancholy?

Back to documentary festival reality. I ran into Nina Ramos, the producer of the festival, enjoying a cigarette outside the festival venue Culturgest, a rather ugly building but efficient  as location for the festival. We enjoyed the enormous development of a festival during 6 years: From 13.000 spectators at the first edition to 33.000 last year, and for this year, edition number 6, it will be even more. From 60 to 170 films. The typical festival viewer, Nina could not say, but agreed to my observation: students, yes many students. 3.50€ for a ticket, reduction for groups of students. Directors are invited with the full treatment: flight and accomodation. Budget: 900.000€ including a lot of in-kind contribution.

www.doclisboa.org

Talking faces. Normally you associate this stylistical element to journalistic programmes on television. And not to creative documentaries. The Israeli documentary, “To See if I’m Smiling” by Tamar Yaron, builds its whole narrative on talking faces. Young women who have served in IDF, the Israeli army, on the West Bank, look back on incidents of death and violence in which they have taken part. Interrupted by mostly home video material from the “happy” days in the army. Out comes a shocking documentary so well edited that you are nailed to the screen.

As you are with another masterpiece by another great documentarian from the UK, Molly Dineen. I have for years used her “Heart of the Angel” (1989) from the tube in London, whenever the talk was about bringing in several layers to your story. Now, almost 20 years later, she makes “The Lie of the Land”, a report from the British countryside where the farmers have their healthy mostly male animals shot because they are without any value on the market. This is the starting point for a human tragedy for people who have built their life on breeding animals, and who so far have been able to live from that. Molly Dineen is behind the camera constantly asking questions to the people whose confidence she has gained and she does so with all that curiosity, interest and yes compassion that a documentary director should have.

Wow, it’s a festival with strong stories I thought after another long day at the videothèque.

Still: To See if I’m Smiling by Tamar Yaron

www.doclisboa.org     

First full day at a festival in the South that does only schedule one film in the morning, the neo-classic ”The Long Holiday” by Johan van der Keuken. The hall was full of young people taken there by their cinéphile teachers from film school and university.

I went directly to the videothèque to watch films from the international competition programme to prepare my article for the DOX magazine. It was a long journey through the misery of this world filmed and conveyed by committed and sometimes narratively involved directors and cameramen and –women. Made by English (”All White in Barking” by Marc Isaacs), French-Iranian (”The Faces on the Wall” by Bijan Anquetil and Paul Costes), Chinese (”The Red Race” by Chao Gan) and Israeli (”Six Floors to Hell” by Jonathan Ben Efrat). To mention the four films that impressed me mostly. Themes: xenophobia and loss of identity, the forgotten martyrs, children paced to served the state and inhumanity in the state of Israel.

In all these films there were a lot of emotions. They want us to cry or at least be moved at this festival. And think, even if nothing compares to the opening film by Avi Mograbi in that respect. And in terms of stylistical innovation, Mograbi also has no competitors so far. Classical documentary approach, yes, but on the other hand I have not yet seen a film that I thought should have stayed at home.

Still: All White in Barking by Marc Isaacs.

www.doclisboa.org