Jakob Skovgaard Petersen, his wife and their two children  were in Cairo for some years. Petersen was appointed Head of the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute and he was there during the cartoon crisis. A brilliant and knowledgeable man, not only a man with diplomatic skills and strong in dialogue but also a man, who was able oppose prominent religious and political leaders. The man is fine and is awarded when he gets home. The director decided to make a point out of this as the film starts and ends with Petersen being greeted by Her Majesty the Queen. That was a wrong decision, it is completely irrelevant for a film that could have focused much more on the dialogue and not on the family side of Petersen’s stay in Cairo. The wife plays tennis and feels insecure about the children in such a big city. They have parties, take Danish ministers around to meetings, and yes, a little bit of this and a little bit of that, no focus, superficial. There is, however, one very good scene in the film where Petersen sits in a soukh, drinks tea and discusses with some journalists from al-ahram. More of that could have made it interesting.

Denmark, 2008, 60 mins.

http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso ’

I was at the Film House tonight to meet Jan Troell, the 77 year old Swedish master, who right now experiences big international success with his latest feature, ”Maria Larssons evige Øjeblik”. English title is ”Everlasting Moments”. A whole evening programme was set up with Troell and his wife Agneta Ulfsäter Troell, from whose family the story about Maria comes. I was there for the first part of the evening, a well structured meeting with the director.

This first part opened with the film about Troell, ”Troell’s magic mirror” by Swedish Thomas Danielsson. Sympathetic it is – even if it sometimes feels a bit messy as it wants to have too much information conveyed within the hour it lasts. But you love every little word Troell says, this modest lyrical observer of the world we live in. Troell talked afterwards about his work, with many references to his old, late friend and inspiration source, the photographer Georg Oddner, that he made a brilliant documentary about, ”Presence”.

Playful Troell showed four of his small homemade films to the audience after ”Reflexion 2001” from the NY twin towers, a filmic requiem with music of Arvo Pärt. Joyful were the short film about ladybirds having sex and the one about a snail on a lunch table. Satirical was a film about animals getting a yellow tag according to EU rules. The absolute climax, however, came with a short film about some older men and women with rackets in their hands, but without any tennis balls, caught in their more or less silly movements and interesting facial expressions by the camera of Troell, their documenting tennis partner!

http://www.dfi.dk/english/Danish+films/Directors/DirectorFact.htm?DirID=9917
http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

I have been thinking a lot – why does this film not involve me? Why do I stay in a careless mood? I had high expectations, I had read about it, seen the overall praise it has got and I know that audiences have queued to buy cinema tickets. And I see that the state of Israel wants the film to be the country’s Oscar award contribution!

Is it because it is an animation film based on real conversations between the director and his fellow soldier comrades from way back when they went to the Beirut hell that ended up in the massacre on civilians in Sabra and Shatila. A story about memories. That for some of them have turned into traumas.

It is all so well made, perfect craftmanship, it is beautiful to watch, it is packed with emotional music, full of effects, sometimes as an action film… and yet, or maybe therefore, I dont care about their stories. The superbly manufactured animation makes an emotional blockade until the last couple of minutes where the director leaves the animation and invites us to watch horrible archive images of the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers and children in deep shock and screaming grief over a massacre observed and thus accepted by Sharon and his soldiers. I have seen these sequences before. This is the story about Sabra and Shatila.

http://waltzwithbashir.com/home.html
http://www.aarhusfilmfestival.dk/index.html
http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

Hammarsberg, Bergmark & Andersson: “Maggie In Wonderland”. Andersson is Maggie, credited as co-director in this moving documentary about herself, a Kenyan woman, who lives in Malmö on the 15th floor with a balcony full of pigeons.

“It’s me telling you about my life”, Maggie says behind the camera when she points around in her flat that has the look of loneliness and trouble. How did she end up in Sweden – this is not told, what we get to know, we get from the scenes with Maggie behind the camera, or Maggie followed and observed by a cameraperson. She tells us that she suffers from not seeing her son, who is in Kenya. She tells us that she was with a man in this appartment, he was violent and got out. We see her in conversation with a not very understanding school teacher who tells her to stop school because she missed too many lessons. And in a late night street scene, she films while being attacked by someone. She repeats several times that many take her, a black woman, for a prostitute.

It is a film that goes in many directions and I cannot help asking if she has not been offered psychological help. I dont want to think the Swedish public system is so bad that nothing has been done to get out of the trauma. The film indicates nothing of that sort… The ending shows Maggie cleaning up, ready for a new start, a new year. Wishful thinking from the filmmakers side?

Sweden, 2008, 72 mins.

http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

Have to confess that I had never heard about Natasja before her death in a car accident on Jamaica summer 2007. 60+ was not her target group! But this fine documentary, that avoids to take the sentimental approach and thus succeeds in giving me proof of and reason for her artistic skills and popularity –  shows her enormous energy and appetite for Life. She was made for camera appearance as the many recordings by her friend Karen Mukupa demonstrate.

The film jumps back and forth from Denmark to Jamaica, no chronology, nothing exotic about Reggae-land, it is mostly her directly addressing the camera or an audience with her music and lyrics, written by herself. High quality all over. What a loss of a winner, who by the way was also a master jockey on a horseback.

Denmark, 2008, 60 mins.

http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

That Nanna Frank Møller is an excellent editor has been proved many times, primarily in her collaboration with Danish director Max Kestner. That she has a talent for directing herself became obvious with the film about the circus sisters, ”Someone Like You”. Here she is with another proof: a film about 14 year old Hairon, who has Brasilian parents but lives in Denmark with his mother and her Danish husband, one more dad for Hairon.

”Let´s Be Together”, however, is the story about son and (Brasilian) dad, told in an intimate and gentle film language, full of respect for the drama that lies in a teenager, who loves to dress like girls and women do.

Hairon wants to be Cleopatra for his birthday and this forms the structural frame of the film. Mother and Hairon go to Brasil to see Brasilian father and to have the Cleopatra costume prepared. Strong conversations are unfolded, interpreted brilliantly in rythm and music and in an editing that have wonderful pauses that are full of information and emotion. ”You must know to control your life a bit”, the father says in one of the many scenes with the two together. Would be wrong of me to reveal the end scene of the film, it is so fine and impressive and well thought and performed by a big talent in new Danish documentary.

Denmark, 2008, 82 mins.

http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso