Cinemateket: Den etnografiske dokumentar

Der er mulighed for søde gensyn og nyopdagelser i Cinematekets december-program. Under overskriften ”Den etnografiske dokumentar” er der Basil Wright (”Song of Ceylon”), flere gange Jean Rouch, inklusiv foredrag om ham, den fremragende Vietnamfilm af Trinh T. Minh-ha fra 1989 (”Surname Viet Given Name Nam”) og meget mere, f.eks. Pierre Perraults ”The Moontrap” (billede) fra 1963. Perrault er alt for lidt kendt i Danmark, jeg har haft det held at se hans film på Cinéma du Réel og i SFC, hvor Dola Bonfils i sin tid gjorde mig opmærksom på denne mesterlige poetiske filmskaber, som i lang tid i de hektiske Quebec libre-dage nægtede at lade sine film udgive i engelske versioner. Kryds af i kalenderen!

Allerede nu på søndag kan der være grund til at gå i Cinemateket for at møde bl.a. Janus Metz (anmeldelse her af ”Fra Thailand til Thy”) og Andreas Møl Dalsgård (anmeldelse her af ”Afghan Muscles”), der sammen med andre sætter den etnografiske film til debat under overskriften ”Os og dem – her og nu”. Ikke nogen klog titel på et arrangement, men deltagerne kan rette op på det.

In English: I mention a series of etnografic films to be shown at the Danish Cinemateket through the month of December, among those films by Jean Rouch but also the far too little appreciated Canadian film poet Pierre Perrault, whose  ”Pour la suite du monde” (”The Moontrap”) Rouch talked about in an interview: It’s about fishing for a white whale, a film where you might say [Henri] Cartier-Bresson’s camera grows out of Vertov’s brain and falls back on Flaherty to give us Man of Aran in direct sound. If it lives up to the promise of the rushes, it is absolutely fantastic, a complete success, it’s Rouquier’s Farrebique with the wonderfully participatory camera of Flaherty but at the same time this camera walks–thanks to Brault–with direct interviews, and with fantastic characters.

http://www.dfi.dk/cinemateket/Program/seriebeskrivelse.htm?pageType=&id=3988

Jørgen Vestergaard: At være sig selv

Utrættelige Jørgen Vestergaard har lavet en film om ”Kirsten Kjær og hendes museum” i Langvad ved Frøstrup. Den varer 33 minutter og lader kunstnerens nevø, Harald Fuglsang (billede), fortælle historien om en farverig og kontroversiel personlighed, hvis mange portrætmalerier kan beses på museet, eller rettere kunstcentret, som Fuglsang kalder det sted som han og vennen John Anderson har skabt, hvor der betales entré efter behag og hvor der nu også er et specielt koncerthus at finde.

Filmen giver god besked og viser rundt, og Vestergaard skal have ros for at have sat tre andre film på dvd’en – filmen om Ovartaci fra 1998, portrættet af Jens Søndergaard fra 1995 (hvori salig Flemming Madsen fra vor tv-barndom optræder) og endelig Cementkrucifikset fra 1968 om pastor Anton Laier med stemme og kommentar af vidunderlige Broby-Johansen.

4 film om kunstnere fordelt over 40 år, blot en lille del af Vestergaards omfattende filmografi – se også under ”Hanstholm-historien om en havn”.

Salg og distribution: Forlaget Knakken, 7700 Thisted. E-mail: orpo@thisted-bibliotek.dk  Tlf: 99172843. English subtitles available.

IDFA Awards

Taken from the idfa site: The VPRO Joris Ivens Award was presented to Anders Østergaard for Burma VJ – Reporting From a Closed Country. The film consists almost completely of material filmed in secret by a group of reporters during the uprising against the military dictatorship in Burma in September 2007. According to jury chair Bianca Stigter, the film is “a harrowing reminder of the power and the weakness of images.” (Anders Østergaard also took some awards at the cph:dox, click search)

The VPRO Joris Ivens Award consists of a sculpture and € 12,500.
The jury of the Joris Ivens Competition also awarded a Special Jury Award to Rick Minnich and Matthew Sweetwood for Forgetting Dad (Germany), which deals with the emotional consequences for those around him of the sudden and inexplicable loss of memory suffered by Minnich’s father.

Aliona van der Horst received the Silver Wolf Award for Boris Ryzhy (the Netherlands), about the Russian poet Boris Ryzhy, who tragically died at an early age, and Yekaterinburg, the grey industrial city that had a great deal of influence on his life and work. Jury chair Thomas White said that, “although none of the jury members had heard of the poet in advance, Van der Horst manages to immerse the viewer in his world, while at the same time giving us a glimpse of the Russian soul”. The Silver Wolf consists of € 10,000, made available by the NPS.

For the first time, the Silver Wolf jury also presented a Special Jury Award to Lady Kul el Arab (Israel) by Ibtisam Mara’ana.

The winner of the Silver Cub Competition, for documentaries up to 30 minutes, was also announced. Slaves – An Animated Documentary (Sweden/Norway/Denmark) by Hanna Heilbronn and David Aronowitsch won the Silver Cub Award, worth € 5,000.

filmkommentaren.dk has not yet, alas, had the chance to watch and review the winning films. It will happen asap.

Laura Poitras: My Country My Country

This review has been written by Georg Bocher, direction student at the Zelig Documentary film School in Bolzano:

The first two minutes leaves no doubt about the scope of this documentary. It is between the most private family life and the utterly official, namely the U.S. military administration in Iraq.
These aspects of life in Iraq today interwoven through the preparation of the upcoming first election take the audience on the personal journey of Dr. Riyadh who is medical doctor, Sunni candidate and a family father.

Slowly the viewer catches a glimpse on the dimensions and deep roots of the catastrophy in Iraq. The last word one comes in mind in this country – with no electricity and security – is democracy. Still everybody talks about it. At least about the strategic appearance of it. And this is where the film triumphs, because it is direct and intimate, it doesn’t settle for empty words, instead it shows human beings in situations of extraordinary force and culture clash:

Like when the U.S. Instructor is briefing the Iraqi policemen for the election day, saying : “ You [folks] have the front row of one of the best shows that’s gonna be in the world.” A policemen asks irritated: “Why do you say show? ”

The film is the end of an occupation in Iraq. A journey from dark kitchens to the helicopter cockpits.

USA, 2006, 90 mins.

http://www.mycountrymycountry.com/

Måns Månsson: Mr. Governor

You wonder why it is interesting to watch a man, who sits at his desk browsing through a newspaper for more than a minute. It is. There is no computer at that desk, the governor of Uppsala uses a pen and keeps total order of his busy schedule with a small black notebook. No need to be jealous of his work which is full of receptions, openings of exhibitions, lunches, speeches, visits to the capital to see the king in whatever official duty that comes up. “It is tiring but good fun”, says sympathetic Anders Björck, a perfectionist, who in the period of filming is more than involved in the celebration of the local hero, the world famous Carl Linnaeus (Carl von Linné) (1707 – 1778).

I don’t recall the last time I saw such an unsensational film about a man and his work which basically is about keeping dignity and protocol in a world that long ago has forgotten what that is. An orderly man, always in black, discreetly taking care of his county and country. Swedish politics as it can also be. Diplomacy as well – the governor has met them all, including the emperor of Japan.

The main reason for watching this film and its main character with great interest could the stylistical take that director and cameraman Måns Månsson has chosen. A quote from the site of Filmkontakt Nord: It was shot on 16mm black & white reversal film with a 12mm wide-angle lens. Jean Rouch once described the 12mm lens on a 16mm camera as the closest equivalent of the human eye in cinema, and black and white film has an unbeatable ability to communicate subjective moods and atmospheres whereas colour often simply represents ‘documentary’ reality.

If the last assumption is right, I don’t know, but the cinematography is stunning.
 
Sweden, Finland, 2008, 86′

http://www.filmkontakt.dk/fkn_site/

Dogan & Eskikoy: On the Way to School

The Kurdish in Turkey – a long and complicated story about a people being suppressed. We have seen loads of news reports and some political documentaries about a conflict full of blood, and also for that reason it is nice to see this well made (beautiful cinematography, slow insisting editing, simple structure) documentary about a teacher, who arrives to teach Kurdish children Turkish, a language that only a few of them knows about.

Young he is the teacher, but committed to his cause; he wants to establish a contact with the children, and he ”survives” that there is no running water at least in the beginning of his stay that in the film constitutes one year. There is a lot of ”Etre et Avoir” in this film, but where Philibert makes a focus on specific children and folllow them, the two Turkish directors have chosen to let the teacher  (could have been the title of the film) be at the centre, including his phone calls to his mother far far away.

”Happy is the one who says: I am a Turk”. The teacher teaches them the words of Atatürk, so of course this film also shows the propaganda machine in function. What stays with me is, however, the fine moments between teacher and school children, and the discreet warm observation scenes in the poor homes of the parents.

The Netherlands/Turkey, 80 mins. World Premiere at idfa, 2008.

http://www.perisanfilm.com/en/index.html

www.idfa.nl

IDFA Forum 1

The last day of the Forum at idfa in Amsterdam. For those who have never heard about it, let this text be the introduction, taken from the site of idfa:

”The FORUM is Europe’s largest gathering of filmmakers, television commissioning editors and independent documentary producers. Founded in 1993, the FORUM has become the first market for the international co-financing of documentaries in the world. Over the years, the FORUM has expanded and remains to be a unique opportunity to find financing for documentary films: more than 90% of all submitted projects end up being made.

The aim of the FORUM is to stimulate co-financing and co-production of new documentaries by enabling producers to pitch their project concepts to the assembled commissioning editors and other professionals, and to follow up through individual meetings. There are different options to pitch, depending on the stage in which the project currently is.”

www.idfa.nl  

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