Geyerhalter: Too Many Cheap tv Documentaries

This year’s Top 10 at the coming IDFA festival in Amsterdam is put together by Austrian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter. He has chosen films that have impressed him and that have played a role in his own development. Here is a clip from his motivation, where he praises Pirjo Honkasalo and her last big documentary:

”The 3 rooms of Melancholia” rescued a festival for me, which I would otherwise have left in frustration – I saw a lot of films there, most of which were very interesting in terms of their content, but formally lacked any kind of vision. It increasingly seems to me that people pay hardly any attention any more to the style of their film, as long as they have found a strong subject. At many documentary FILM festivals, I see films that hardly even reach the artistic – and often also technical – level of a cheap television documentary. Exceptional content is not enough to make a film into a good film. And I must also confess that I am not sure, that the film world has really been enriched by the democratisation that has been brought about by the advent of small cameras. True, this has resulted in greater output, particularly in the documentary field, and it is possible to make a documentary on a small budget, but the number of really great works seems to be in inverse proportion to the number of films being made. One of the few really great works of recent times is ”The 3 rooms of Melancholia”, which uniquely rises head and shoulders above the swamp of many small-scale documentaries, which call themselves films.

Still: The 3 Rooms of Melancholia

http://www.idfa.nl/industry/news/background/top-10-geyrhalter.aspx

Clips

Danish Short Docs online… What a brilliant initiative taken by the Danish Film Institute and the newspaper Politiken: 12 films with a duration between 3 and 5 minutes are now available on the web edition of the newspaper. One new per day. I have seen the 6 first which are very different but all try to adapt to this distribution medium and all try something new. Janus Metz and Sine Plambech invite us to experience a joyful break in the work of thai prostitute girls (thai dialogue, Danish subtitles). Veteran Jon Bang Carlsen reflects in a wordy and strong montage on the destruction of nature somewhere in England (Danish commentary). Malene Ravn and Vibeke Winding have visited a wonderful man from Christiania, whose small house is on the authorities list to be taken down (Danish dialogue). Malene Choi gives us a small dreamerish visual taster for a longer film. Christian Vium invites us to meet Brian Mphahlele who was in prison and got heavily tortured during the apartheid period (English langugage). And finally Christian Braad Thomsen and Bente Petersen introduce ”Mink in Love”, tough action and gentle caress (No dialogue, English intertitles).

So if you non-Danish speaking people want to get all out of it, start with the two last mentioned. I will be back later with mentions on the remaining six.

Still from Nybegynder by Janus Metz and Sine Plambech.

Danske læsere og festivalbesøgende får her en fin prolog til cph:dox.  

http://politiken.tv/clips/
http://www.dfi.dk/aktuelt/Nyheder/filmkunst_paa_netavis.htm

Discovery Campus in Leipzig

In Leipzig, at the same time as the festival, the final session of the Discovery Campus Masterschool took place with training of the participants for two concluding mornings with the pitching of projects that have been developed during the year with the help of producers and commissioning editors.

From stories about tourism, women in Afghanistan or in Morocco or in Brazil to Eastern European contemporary stories about a Bulgarian town without the women, who have all gone to Italy to work, or about Dimitrovgrad where socialism and capitalism meet, or to a big theatrical epic about the men who started Greenpeace way back, to a sweet story about long play records, to a couple who experience love through pain, to people in LA who get into trouble and store their dearest belongings, many of them to end up on an auction… to a Swedish project about men in their 40’es who join a swimming club to get away from the meaningless of Life! Hopefully these films will be ready within the next couple of years. They deserve it. Some got funding at the pitching, some have to develop further.

Lots of joy, very good visual tasters, losers and winners – losers, not necessarily their fault but because of the market limitations that were obvious during the two mornings where around 40 television people and a few film fund representatives were seated to respond to the pitching. Discovery Campus is an excellent training programme, very much because of the staff and the head of studies, filmmaker Peter Symes from the UK. And the Discovery Campus also is behind the new online meeting point Reelisor. Have a look at that.

Still from The Solitary Life of Cranes by Eva Weber, who took part in DC with the project LA Storage.

http://www.discovery-campus.de/v2/
http://www.reelisor.com/

DOK Leipzig 2008/ 3

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

DOK Leipzig 2008/2

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

DOK Leipzig 2008/1

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

Terence Davies: Of time and the City/on Narration

I can´t help thinking about this new film by Terence Davies, a masterpiece, I wrote about it a couple of weeks ago. October 28 the Guardian had an excellent interview with him. A constant flow of wise words on filmmaking. Here is a clip. Interviewer was Jason Wood:

JW: The film shows you a Liverpool beyond The Beatles and football, which is what people tend to think about when they think about the city. Your narration is very significant. It lends character because it is so impassioned.

TD: What was odd was that I was writing this commentary as I was doing it and recording it as a rough guide. We got someone to do part of the narration but it just didn’t work and the producers said, “No, you must do it.” I was worried that when you hear your own voice it can sound a bit like the Queen Mother after she died. I said, “Are you sure?” We recorded it in a day. I do feel impassioned about it. One thing I did notice was my breath control is such that I would become terribly asthmatic. I’m very conscious of that. It’s strange because you can’t hear yourself and it is always a shock to hear yourself. Do I really sound like that? All my films have strong Liverpool accents. It always makes me feel a bit embarrassed because I wonder where it came from? At one point they asked me to put in how I lost my accent and I said, “You can’t be serious? You really can’t be serious? I’m not doing that.” I was worried and I was staying with my sister Maisie and I said, “When did I lose my accent?” and she said, “You never had one.” What was wonderful is that part of the narration would come when I would see something that I thought was odd. I’ve got to put that in. I’ve got to say something there – something’s that elliptical. And sometimes you don’t know where it has come from. I don’t know why you see three images and you think, “I’ve got to say that.” But I was writing it as I was doing it and that was incredibly exciting I must say.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/oct/28/1

Arte: GAZA SDEROT

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/

Razvan Georgescu: Testimony 2

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.

East European Forum 2008

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