IDFA Forum 2 – What´s on the Agenda?

It is without any doubt absolutely fantastic to see all these documentary professionals gather in one room to exchange ideas, catch up from the last gathering, offer new projects, comment on the last films which have been watched or broadcast – and find out what the audience wants. Ratings!

I sat there for two days, small talked in the corridors, and saw the producers run around desperately trying to catch attention from a commissioning editor, give me just five minutes please to show a taster and talk, fighting to get a small pre-buy for 5000€… It is a buyer’s market and with the decrease in funding for creative documentaries in European public broadcasting, the producers have to do hunting like this. It makes sense because if you are succesful and can do some of those so-called pre-buys, you could go for the EU MEDIA programme and compete to get 20% of the budget as a grant. But is it a tough and many times embarassing job, and some of the commissioning editors behave like small kings and queens even if they have very little to offer! Is it reasonable to ask for influence on a film with a budget of 200.000€ if you only pay 5000€?!

Atmosphere at the Forum? Friendly, family-like, sometimes much too ”cosy” with no real discussions about the projects. This is probably how it has to be in a big room with 30-40 people around the table, a show run with the help of moderators, who sometimes put themselves too much in the picture and try to find a funny remark for everything. Funny projects are precisely the ones that go best, and for sure we need documentaries with humour. ”Culture and Sex” as it was said as a comment to a very interesting and well presented project about the photographer David Bailey. Whereas a beautiful proposal by Catalan director Carles Bosch about the former mayor of Barcelona and his fight to get attention and funding for research for the disease that has hit himself, alzheimer… very nice they all said, the tv people, but we have pour own alzheimer programmes. A tabloid tv doc about Joan Collins was taken by almost all. ”Audiences would eat it up with a spoon”, right, but why is it at a pitching forum for creative documentaries?

www.idfa.nl

IDFA Forum 3 – East Beats West

I know that I am biased in the following – working for the Institute for Documentary Films (IDF) in Prague that organises the Ex Oriente Film training Programme and the East European Forum in Jihlava – but I have to share the joy of the success of 3 projects from Eastern Europe.

The one presented in the big room was almost a winner before the presentation as it had been pitched at other market events. But the taster and the pitch skills of Filip Remunda, one of the directors (the other is Vit Klusak) behind world success ”Czech Dream”, were convincing. ”Czech Peace” about the Americans setting up a military base in the Czech Republic next to a small village has the potential to be another fine film for cinema and television.

The two others were presented in the small room where first Serbian Srdjan Sarenac and French Estelle Robin-You (director and producer) got a big amount of support from the 9-10 editors around the table. They presented ”Village Without Women”, in their own words about ”three Serbian brothers attempt to seduce Albanian women in a last-ditch effort to save their remote, dilapitated village”. The taster promises a film far beyond the comedy that the subject could invite you to think it would be. Second presentation came from Poland, from Centrala film that also made ”Gugara” (reviewed here by Allan Berg). The director Thierry Paladino, who made ”At the Datcha” (reviewed here by me), is Italian-French, but lives in Poland. He wants to follow a puppet-master and his pupil on a tour in the South of France. His taster is pure Renoir in approach, a little short film in itself and it seduced for sure the people around the table. A difficult film for a market like the Forum, but thanks for reminding us that there should still be space for the personal and artistic genre of documentaries. It does not have to be social and political all of it, does it?

www.docuinter.net
www.idfa.nl

IDFA Forum. We, the Commissioning Editors

Here we come, monday morning, entering the arena in Amsterdam. Big room, round table, space for audience. They are all looking at us, when we react to the pitching. For many of us the body language communicates fatigue, another pitching session, the BIG one, lots of kisses, hello hello, how are you, family feeling, and then the personification of all the mails from producers that you have not yet answered, all those ”no thank you”s that you have not yet formulated, there they are, face to face with eyes shining of hope. Lets talk later…

At the same time as we know that we are going to react to a lot of new proposals that we will, maybe, take home to pitch to our bosses, the ones who have their eyes fixed on the daily print-outs of ratings from the night before, where our wonderful creative documentary got far too few viewers… On the other hand we are the ones in power. ”They” expect you to be positive and clever, also when we say no. Which we do not do very often. It is difficult to be critical and say no when all these people are looking at us. It is better to put a question than say its bullshit.

Ok, lets go. Some of us are very well prepared, others open the catalogue for the first time. We trust that the tasters are made so you can easily comment on them. ”We” are (to mention a few of the main commentators, ed.) Franz Grabner from Austria, a film lover who regrets that he has to play safe again and again. Iikka Vehkalahti from Finland, often mentioned on filmkommentaren.dk, a showman in the arena, sometimes raising the level of discussion. If there is any! Olaf Grunert, the tabloid guy at Arte, as he says himself, jovial, in general positive to all. Hans Robert Eisenhauer, theme evening boss at ZDF/Arte, a fighter for international cooperation with a taste for actuality docs. Katja Wildermuth, Leipzig, a fine and committed editor to have with your side, can say no in public. Ingemar Persson, Sweden, old hippie who always has a ”but” after being positive. Tore Tomter, Norway, speaks often but does he ever go international? And then the good news, Tabitha Jackson from More4 and Cynthia Kane from ITVS, both knowledgeable when it comes to film, one could feel from their comments. With limited financial possibilities… Like all of them, actually. Nick Fraser BBC and Thierry Garrel Arte were not there. The first was at Emmy Awards, the latter has stopped. In terms of level of comments, they were missed.

www.idfa.nl
www.edn.dk

Jørgen Leth: Notater om kærligheden

I morgen aften skal vi se en gammel Jørgen Leth film i min filmklub. Jeg har prøvet at forberede mig. Det kan jeg ikke, jeg farer vild, eller det mærkes som om jeg gør det. Landskaberne og opstillingerne fører tilsyneladende så mange steder hen. Som hele tiden ligner det forrige. Men jeg tager fejl, imidlertid tager jeg fejl. Der er forskydninger, små umærkelige ændringer. Det er ikke blot smukke postkort med tekst bagpå vist efter hinanden (selv om det for så vidt havde været fint nok, når fotograferne er Henning Camre og Dan Holmberg, og det er Jørgen Leth, som har skrevet de korte tekster, som hører til), nej der er en evig kadance, en stigning i intensitet, viden og overblik, små fald og stigninger undervejs (det er skam levende dette) men generelt en ubrydelig udvikling frem mod en stor tilfredsstillelse: klogskab og skønhed forenet i en fejlfri film.

I aften skal vi se en gammel Jørgen Leth film. Jeg har prøvet at forberede mig. Det kunne jeg ikke, jeg for vild, eller det mærkedes som om, jeg gjorde det, da jeg så filmen igennem. Landskaberne og opstillingerne fører tilsyneladende så mange steder hen. Som hele tiden ligner det forrige. Jeg tog fejl… Imidlertid tog jeg fejl. Der er forskydninger, små umærkelige ændringer. Det er ikke blot smukke postkort med tekst bagpå vist efter hinanden (selv om det for så vidt havde været fint nok, når fotograferne er Henning Camre og Dan Holmberg, og det er Jørgen Leth, som har skrevet de korte tekster, som hører til), nej der er en evig kadance, en stigning i intensitet, viden og overblik, små fald og stigninger undervejs (det er skam levende dette) men generelt en ubrydelig udvikling frem mod en stor tilfredsstillelse: klogskab og skønhed forenet i en fejlfri film.

Filmen, vi skal se er Notater om kærligheden fra 1989 som jeg har valgt, nu vi venter på Det erotiske menneske, som blev forsinket af al balladen. Der var også ballade for tyve år siden. Jørgen Leth var også dengang sin egen, han lavede ikke de andres film, ikke de film man ønskede, han lavede igen sin egen film, og som Lasse Ellegård bagefter skrev “…rygtet løb i forvejen. Jørgen Leth har lavet en filmatisering af sit privatliv, lød meldingerne i miljøet. Kritikken var varskoet. Og dommen faldt med forudsigelig præcision. En enig dagbladskritik var unison. Den så kun Notater om kærligheden som det endegyldige udtryk for instruktørens manierede krukkeri, hans narcissistiske selvspejling, hans patetiske privatisme.”  

Lasse Ellegaard ser noget helt andet. Han ser den antropologiske film: “… I Notater om kærligheden rendyrker han sit udtryk, som er afsøgning af overflader, signalementer af konkrete ting og handlinger. Hans udfordring har været at konkretisere en følelse, men den største følelse af alle: Kærligheden.” Ellegaard sammenfatter i sin overskrift “en mesterlig film.” Jeg er fuldstændig enig.

CITATSAMLING TIL FILMAFTENEN

Den anden uskyld  Poul Borum: Poetisk Modernisme, 1966. (Stykket har jeg ændret, så det fra at handle om tekster her handler om film): “Det trænede filmpublikums ideelle dvd-gennemsyn og arbejde med filmen bør se således ud: 1) opleve filmen umiddelbart og uhildet, 2) nærme sig filmen fra så mange sider som man kan overkomme og med så megen viden og indsigt som muligt – den eneste gyldige metode er den pluralistiske – dvs. at forstå og vurdere alle detaljer og deres sammenhænge og helheder: filmens billede og lyd, dens ord, dens locations og personer, afsnit og scener, dens motiv og holdning og genre, dens helhed – og filmens placering midt i sine kontekster, trådene ud til psykologiske, sociale, historiske, litterære og filmiske sammenhænge, alt det tidsbetingede i den tidløse enestående film. 3) Når dette er nok, da: at glemme det hele og opleve filmen igen, i dén anden uskyld som er både forståelse og oplevelse, som er kunstværkets mening og hensigt…”

(Som altid, når jeg er forvirret følger jeg strikt Borums gamle opskrift. Og her er så lidt til en begyndelse på at nærme sig filmen fra så mange sider som jeg har kunnet nå til nu…)

Malinowski er min helt  Den Store Danske Encyklopædi: “Mali’nowski, BronisHaw, [-gNCf-], 1884-1942, polsk-britisk antropolog. Under sit ophold på øgruppen Trobrianderne ved Ny Guinea under 1. Verdenskrig udviklede Malinowski feltarbejdet som antropologisk metode. Han lagde vægt på deltagerobservation, hvor forskeren i længere tidlever i det udforskede samfund og deltager i det daglige liv. Hans vigtigste værker beskriver øhavets handelssystem kula, trobriandernes seksualliv og deres havebrug. Han vendte sig mod kulturhistoriske teorier og var fortaler for funktionalismen. For ham bestod et samfund som trobriandernes af en række institutioner som fx ritualer, ægteskab og kula. Deres funktion opfattede han på to måder: Dels bidrog de til at vedligeholde samfundet som helhed, dels opfyldte de den enkeltes behov. Hans teorier inspirerer ikke længere antropologien, men hans feltmetode værdsættes stadig.”

(… i hvert fald må jeg vide lidt mere om denne Malinowski, hvis fotografier indgår, som selv er på billederne, som Jørgen Leth beundrer siden han læste antropologi på universitetet hos professor Johannes Nicolaisen)  

Leths selviscenesættelse  Søren Birkvad: Verden er leth, 1992:  “… Billederne af naturbefolkningen på New Guinea, der glimtvis dukker op som små portrætarrangementer af indfødte, der pynter og smører sig, ryger og spiser, er efter min mening lovlig tæt på den voyeuristiske overfladiskhed, man kender fra safari-serier i mondæne magasiner. I samme forbindelse virker Leths selviscenesættelse som negerinstruktør i khakifarvet Stanley-dress som en (tilsigtet?) perspektivforkortelse: det er som vanligt det han gør ved stedet, mere end stedet selv, vi fæster os ved. De mange scener med filmfolk, der filmer sig selv filme, er sigende: filmen handler om en film, der ikke kan samle sig om noget andet end sit eget forsøg på at blive til.”

(… og filmvidenskabsmanden er om muligt i sin fremstilling næsten mere perfid end anmelderne)

Institutionens funktion  Den Store Danske Encyklopædi: “Funktionalistisk antropologi. Funktionalismen har fra 1920’erne til 1950’erne især præget britisk socialantropologi. Den blev her udviklet af B. Malinowski og A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, som begge var påvirket af É. Durkheim. De fremhævede studiet af elementer i deres samtidige sammenhæng i modsætning til det historiske studium af deres oprindelse og spredning. Begge betragtede fænomener som integreret i en større helhed. For Malinowski var en institutions funktion dens bidrag til tilfredsstillelsen af menneskelige behov.”

(… Jeg tror dette er et strejflys på instruktørens teoretiske fundament, støbt på studiet før marxisterne ankom.) 

Mennesker, som jeg sætter højt  Max Kestner i Ekko 38/2007: …En anderledes tung stemning finder man i Notater om kærligheden. Jeg ved, at mennesker, som jeg sætter højt, holder meget af den film, men den er ikke øverst på min liste.

(… Leths meget yngre kollega og humorist foretrækker altså de morsomme film i dvd-boksen, Det perfekte menneske og De fem benspænd)

Se, det her kan jo fortsættes. Og så glemmer man det hele og ser filmen i en ny uskyld.

Danmark, 1989, 90 min. På dvd i bokssættet The Jørgen Leth Collection, 2007

Valentin Valchev: See you at the Eiffel tower

A Bulgarian filmmaker makes a film for a charming, warm and smiling American photographer, Marion Michelle. He met her during the research for a film to be made in the footsteps of Joris Ivens, who made his ”The First Years” about Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia just after the war. Michelle was the scriptwriter of the film and had a relationship with Ivens until 1950. She is old and will not live long, and yet – as she says to the director Valchev: you are giving me a new life in the film, thank you.

This is what he does but this is not the only element worth noting from an extensive work that brings the viewer to Poland to look for characters that took part in the film from that time, as well as to Prague, briefly in a not very important sequence, contrary to the trip to Bulgarian town Radilovo to visit families of men and women who played in the film. The construction, maybe sometimes a bit too gemacht, and there are scenes you would not miss if they were not there, makes Valchev go to meet the different places and characters, for afterwards to bring the material to be shown to Marion Michelle. There is a lot of gold in terms of moving scenes in this light hearted, unconventional documentary.

As for Ivens, clips are part of the story as are lots of stills, but he is really not an important character for Valchev, who gives his heart to his character and makes Marion Michelle grow narratively in her lovely French garden house. The film is shown at idfa festival.

Bulgaria, 2008, 95 mins.

www.idfa.nl

www.agitprop.bg

Isabel Grünwald: Brothers

Something went wrong. Difficult to say what. Anyhow, the two old brothers live together but do not communicate. Somewhere in the north of Bavaria, in the countryside, where Heiner has inherited the farm and Fritz takes care of the household. Fritz makes a wonderful cake according to the way, mother did, but Heiner comments to the camera that the one mother did was much better! ”It used to be different”. ”It started when he took away my puzzles. Yet he never solved one himself”.

There is so much unsaid in this well composed (editing, camera, music) diploma film from the Zelig Film School. The pauses are as important as the scenes where the brothers talk. You sense the soul of the mother in the rooms. The brothers are treated with love and respect, and you can’t help feel compassion when Heiner towards the end of the story shows the pictures from his youth. He was in the army during WW2 and was sent to a pow camp in England. A photo of a young woman is accompanied by Heiner’s remark that he regrets not to have learned English. Fritz is the philosopher, who lives his dreams between flowers and ripe grapes.

The film is to be found in the programme of idfa.

Italy/Germany, 2007, 50 mins.

www.idfa.nl
 
http://www.zeligfilm.it/

Ferenc Moldoványi: Another Planet

With German master director Edgar Reitz (”Heimat”) as the president of the jury, the International Film Festival of Mannheim-Heidelberg gave the Special Jury Award to ”Another Planet” (see also review, go to ”search”). Here follows the motivation:

“There are films which defy with persistence our willingness to forget quickly. “Another Planet” is such a film. It guides us, without ever striking a false note, into the depressing world of child labour and prostitution, which we never experienced before on the screen with such directness and intimacy. We admire the director Ferenc Moldoványi for his courage and his perseverance – he worked for over five years to accomplish this touching and just as much disturbing masterpiece. With its artistic forms of expression and its deep spirituality it transcends the limitations of documentary film.”

http://www.another-planet.eu/moldovanyi-uk.html

Opstrup: The documentary Narrative 4

THE DOCUMENTARY NARRATIVE (Now in an English version)

The creation of the documentary – compared to the documentary programme and the fiction film.

Mikael Opstrup

1. Fiction is defined by the story. A course of events that is written down in the script and then converted into a film. The directors work process is linear and the fiction film is from a dramaturgic point of view frictionless. Only one course of events exists. The fiction director’s endeavour is storytelling.

2. The documentary programme is defined by the subject. A course of events that the journalist reproduces as objectively as possible. All though objectivity is an…

THE DOCUMENTARY NARRATIVE

The creation of the documentary – compared to the documentary programme and the fiction film.

Mikael Opstrup

1. Fiction is defined by the story. A course of events that is written down in the script and then converted into a film. The directors work process is linear and the fiction film is from a dramaturgic point of view frictionless. Only one course of events exists. The fiction director’s endeavour is storytelling.

2. The documentary programme is defined by the subject. A course of events that the journalist reproduces as objectively as possible. All though objectivity is an impossibility and the creation of the programme thereby antagonistic, the journalist’s effort is unambiguous and the road towards the unattainable is linear as in fiction. Only one course of events exists. The journalist’s endeavour is reproduction.

3. The documentary film is defined by both a course of events and storytelling. The course of events takes place in the reality the documentary describes. The story is the director’s retelling of the event. There are two courses of events and the core of the documentary’s dramaturgy is the contradiction between the two courses of events, the factual and the narrative. The documentary director’s endeavour is retelling.

4. Both the fiction film and the documentary programme exist ideally of two clear-cut developments: In fiction to write a script and there after to transform it into film; in the documentary programme to collect facts and there after to put the events in order in a programme. The documentary film exists ideally of en endless interaction between the creation of the story, recording of the events and changing the story.

5. Hence the documentary has things in common with both the documentary programme and the fiction film. The two documentary genres have the antagonistic contradiction between reality and presentation in common; but where as the journalist’s endeavour is to minimize the contradiction the documentary director’s endeavour is to maximize it. The two film genres has the storytelling in common; but where as the fiction director creates the story’s components – the scenes – himself, the documentary director has to decide if the one or the other event is the bearer of a scene in the documentary story.

6. The documentary film’s contradiction between the factual and the narrative is antagonistic in work-related respect but complementary in artistic respect. Antagonism is the condition that two sides of an issue are inconsistent. That two contradictions exclude each other. Complementarity is the condition that two sides of an issue besides excluding one another at the same time complement one another. That two contradictions presuppose one another.

7. The creation of a documentary is an antagonistic process. On two levels. Personally for the director because the interpretation of reality only becomes interesting if it is the result of a strive for objectivity – well aware that it is in the interpretation’s encounter with the reproduction the documentary film becomes art. Work related because we have to put forward a story at a time where we do not know the course of events, the story reproduces. This is not possible. But it is done. Done by transforming the antagonistic contradiction into a complementary paradox.

8. This means to constantly modify the narrative one has created because the perception of reality constantly changes the story. The difficulty being the devotedness towards absolute aspiration, which is the essential prerequisite for a successful and released story, well aware that reality constantly will change the story. Constantly striving to organise a presentation of reality that must be corrected by reality.  Combining absolute openness with absolute resolve. Striving body and soul to achieve the unattainable. Actually finding the strength to strive because the very goal one is striving to attain is unattainable.

9. This condition is the essence of working with the documentary story. To realise the necessity of transforming the antagonistic contradiction between reality and storytelling into a creative complementary paradox is a conscious prerequisite for the creation of documentary film art. The creation of the complete by striving towards the unattainable.

10. The documentary film is released artistically, when only one layer – reality – is visible as a continual narrative. When the retelling is not harmonious, i.e. if the single elements from the course of events are not completely convergent with the single scenes in the story, this second layer – the narrative – is revealed as a postulate. Thus the actual sequence of events is reversed from representing the elements of the narrative to becoming a new and autonomous narrative. Thus the film gets two independent courses, by which the work falls apart. But when the director’s work comes together with reality it ceases its presence in time and space and exists only as dramatic clarity.

11. The ability to work creatively releasing with inconsistent contradictions is a key ability of the documentary film director.

Litt.: Mikael Opstrup: The Complementary Dramaturgi of the Documentary Film in FILM, published by Danish Film Institute #25 / 2002. (Danish: Kvanteskriptet-dokumentarfilmens komplementariske dramaturgi, KOSMORAMA #229 / 2002)

Mikael Opstrup: The documentary Narrative 3

Remark to Ib Bondebjerg by Mikael Opstrup

Thanks for Ib Bondebjergs comment on my ‘Den dokumentariske fortælling’ which I guess can be translated to ‘The documentary narrative’. However it misses my approach to the matter.

Remark to Ib Bondebjerg by Mikael Opstrup

Thanks for Ib Bondebjergs comment on my ‘Den dokumentariske fortælling’ which I guess can be translated to ‘The documentary narrative’. However it misses my approach to the matter.

First of all my view is the creators point of view, it’s an attempt to clarify the elements the documentary creator works with. It is not a genre classification. Secondly I deal with the narrative structure – not the format or the aesthetic solutions.

Making a documentary, the director needs to know whether the story is constructed by the theme or the narrative.The first one being the journalistic driven documentary program and the second the narrative driven documentary film.

By journalistic driven I mean that the next possible scene in the film is decided by the theme, the purpose being to deepen and improve the knowledge of the theme. In the narrative driven documentary the next scene is defined by the story you’re telling. Let me give an example: in ‘The Monastery’ it is just as impossible for Pernille Rose Grønkjær to include an informative scene about the roots and history of monasteries in Russia and Denmark as it is for Alistair Maclean to include a scene that describes the political role of Greece in WWII in ‘The guns of Navarone’.

The creation of this narrative documentary is what my poetic ‘The documentary narrative’ is about. A genre that is defined by the complementary conflict between re-telling reality and reconstructing it artistically.That – for the creator – contains an insoluble contradiction and it is the successful solution of the insolubleness that is the artistic core of documentary film making. And that fascinates me so much.

This point may not be so interesting from the point of view of the product – the documentary film that is finished. But from the creating point of view it is the key question.10 years as tutor at pitching workshops around Europe; 4 years as production adviser at The Danish Film Institute and 15 years as documentary producer has confronted me with an endless number of projects where the major struggle for the creators has been to find the creative narrative that is included in the actual reality the film apparently is about.This is the core of the director’s work when developing the project at the early stage and with trying to explain it to film consultants and commissioning editors.

On top of this comes HOW you choose to tell your story once you have found out WHAT the story is: do you include dramatizations; interviews; a strong narrator; poetic montage etc. But that’s another story…

Mikael Opstrup