Seth Gordon: The King of Kong

János Richter, direction student at the Zelig Documentary Film School in Bolzano has written this review:

Billy Mitchell has a carefully styled mullet haircut and wears patriotic ties. His whole appearance communicates his conception of perfection. He is the owner of a hot sauce company and the world record holder in the arcade game Donkey Kong. „There is a level of difference between people that translates into games“, Mitchell states in an interview. On high score lists he appears as „USA“.

Throughout his childhood Steve Wiebe’s mother suspected him of being a little autistic. Wiebe works as a science teacher and is an obssesive drummer and a would-be composer. He started off with lots of different things, but nothing came up to his expectations. His biggest dream is to establish a new world record in Donkey Kong.

The film follows Wiebe who seems to neglect his family while trying to gain immortality in the world of arcade games. On the contrary, Mitchell is never shown playing the game in the film, though he states the importance of playing in public. He rather exercises himself in psychological warfare by setting people on Wiebe during his attempts to set a new record. At a tournament in Mitchell’s hometown Wiebe desperately waits to play against Mitchell who eventually shows up, but refuses to play. When Wiebe finally breaks the record, Mitchell responds by sending a vhs tape which shows him gaining a higher score than Wiebe just did. Nonetheless Wiebe is convinced that Mitchell made him a better person.

The flim is made in a conventional way – lots of interviews, lots of music, clear storyline -, but succeeds to entertain. One of the few stylistic exceptions is a montage in which we watch and hear Wiebe playing drums. It is intercut with images showing traumatic experiences from Wiebe’s youth and him playing Donkey Kong. The men’s efforts aren’t really being questioned, although there is a scene in which Wiebe’s daughter remarks that some people „sort of ruin their lifes“ while trying to establish records. It would have been interesting to find out more about the men’s motivations.

USA, 2007, 77 min.

http://billyvssteve.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_king_of_kong

Møder/CPH:DOX 21

Det går sjældent som planlagt, når jeg er på festival. Billetter kan ikke fås, visninger ikke nås, titler ikke til stede i on-line samlingen på markedet. Men, men så er der til gengæld store overraskelser, nye opdagelser, uventede møder. Det begyndte i det planlagte, jeg måtte med det samme jeg kom se filmen om mordet på Anna Politkovskaya.

Eric Bergkraut: Letter to Anna (Det viste sig at være en velordnet, klar og uhyre vigtig journalistisk materialesamling til forståelse af dette usædvanlige menneske, vigtigst er interviewet med Politkovskayas redaktør)

Jonathan Cauette: Tarnation (.. og så løb jeg ind i en række film, som alle er lavet på privatlivsarkiver. Først et forrygende levet og klippet familiedrama. En kvindes opvækst i et helvede – påført eller selvforskyldt, faktisk eller digtet – det holder filmen svævende i sin musikfortælling, men hendes smerte er autentisk)

Michel Auder: The Feature (.. 184 minutters samvær med et menneskeliv i avant garde kunstens centrum, i udkanten af det, vi kalder det almindelige, men i så utildækket ærlighed, at jeg kan overføre selv det mest eksotiske til den historie jeg burde kende bedst – og herefter kender bedre. Mødet med Auder blev mit vigtigste, hans film min allerstørste oplevelse) 

Morgan Dews: Must Read After My Death (.. og så til den nok mest tunge, 73 minutter med det mest ordinære private smalfilmmateriale kombineret med noget så ualmindeligt som en dagbog på bånd, alt gemt som et testamente af denne ualmindeligt almindelige kvinde, hvis fortælling, Dews uhyre langsomt, men konsekvent lader vokse ud af kedsommeligheden ind i den klassiske tragedie)

Agnès Varda: Les Plages d’Agnès (.. herefter til den letteste, mest opfindsomt farverigt dansende film: Varda har ombygget sit vidunderlige privatarkiv og sine erindringer til en komedie, så jeg ler, så tårerne triller og opdager at de kommer af vemod og sorg over det tabte, og kun den energiske evige skabelse af scenernes kunstværker tager kampen op mod forgængeligheden, og den elskedes grav overstrøs med to slags røde blomster, hans og hendes, endnu friske) 

Amir Labaki: 27 Scenes About Jørgen Leth (.. dette arkiv administreres hengivent af en åbenlys beundrer, de præcist valgte citater fra filmene tegner deres billede af et værk, der hænger sammen i en forskning, som endnu en gang imponerer i omfang og konsistens)

Werner Herzog: Encounters At The End Of The World (.. og endelig flyttedes fokus for mig væk fra den tabte tid, og vemodet forvandledes til klaustrofobi med dykkerne under Antarktis havis og undren over naturforskningens galgenhumor, ja, der blev leet meget i salen, til simpel angst, at det efter dinosaurernes uddøen så pludseligt som art dengang i fortiden nu er vores tur, for det minder Herzogs alvor uden nåde og hans tydelige billeder af vore fremtidige ruiner mig om. Og dette møde bliver nok det uafrystelige)   

Awards/CPH:DOX 20

2008 CPH:DOX awards have been given out at the CPH:DOX Galla.

DOX:AWARD 2008: went to Anders Østergaard for “Burma VJ”, with a Special Mention to Mark Hammersberg, Ester Martin Bergsmark and Beatrice Maggie Andersson for “Maggie in Wonderland” (see review).

DANISH DOX AWARD 2008: The award for best Danish documentary was given out for the first time this year, and was split between Nikolaj Viborg’s “69” and Tina Katinka Jensen for “Solange on Love” (see review), with a Special Mention to Janus Metz for “From Thy to Thailand” (see review) and Christian Sønderby for “Side by Side” (see review).

AMNESTY AWARD 2008: This year’s Amnesty Award goes to Anders Østergaard for “Burma VJ”, with a Special Mention to Joseph Bullman for the courageous and provocative “Dynamiters, Assassins, Fiends”.

NEW VISION AWARD 2008: goes to Michel Auder for “The Feature”, with a Special Mention to Apichatpong Weerasethakul for “Morakot”.

SOUND AND VISION AWARD 2008: The Award for best music documentary goes to Sacha Gervasi for “Anvil! The Story of Anvil”, with a Special Mention to Margarita Jimeno for her debut film “Gogol Bordello Non-Stop”.

DOC ALLIANCE AWARD 2008: This year’s special Doc Alliance Award goes to Pavel Koutecky and Miroslav Janek for “Citizen Havel” (see review).

Politikens Publikumspris: has been chosen by the readers of Politiken, and goes to Nikolaj Viborg for “69”.

Still: Burma VJ

DOX Forum/CPH:DOX 19

From the very well organised industry part of the the festival, I would like to highlight 3 of the projects that I am looking forward to see as finished film:

”Into Eternity” from Danish Michael Madsen and his producer Lise Lense-Møller. A project about nuclear waste and where it is put with a Finnish underground storage as the example, but a story also with a lot of scientific and philosophical questions to be raised by a young director with his very own voice.

”Hunting Down Memory” from Norwegian Thomas Lien and Petter Vennerød about a 27 year old Norwegian who lost his memory in a Chinese train. The film goes with him back to explore his own forgotten journey. Fascinating clip. (see photo)

”Complaints Choir” by Danish Ada Bligaard Søby and Morten Kjems Juhl, a great film project – quote from the catalogue: … a funny and intimate film about the phenomenon of complaining, set in the heartland of positive thinking and with thought provoking jumps to choirs in other countries and to the Finnish island where it all started.

www.finemellow.dk
www.merkur.no
www.magichourfilms.dk
http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

DOX Forum/CPH:DOX 18

A learning lab. This is what Tine Mosegaard, the organiser, called the DOX-Forum in the catalogue intro for the 3 day industry event, an integrated part of the film festival. A programme consisting of pitching sessions and seminars like the one reported about below.

And it was actually a learning lab for me, who is involved in 4-5 pitching sessions per year, where broadcasters react to projects that are normally still in the development phase. Here it was a different set up. The projects were almost all of them at the end of shooting and those project holders who were best prepared, profited from the presence of skilled people from classical distribution agencies or new online and digital platforms. The possibilities for a variety of distribution outlets seem to be growing at the same pace as the decrease of financial investment from broadcasters into creative documentaries. For more information, go to some of the web sites below.

14 projects were pitched, and as an experienced pitch trainer, it hurt me to experience several of them stumbling blindly through their presentation. The result was naturally that the panelists spent all time asking to the project content and therefore did not get to the distribution advice for their soon-to-be-released film. With exceptions, of course, read about those at  text 19.

Picture from Documentary of the Month-film

”Welcome to the New World of Distribution” is an article by Peter Broderick that you can read on

www.peterbroderick.com
www.cineticmedia.com
www.eldocumentaldelmes.com
www.indiepixfilms.com
www.icarusfilms.com
www.microcinema.com
www.widemanagement.com
 

DOX:Forum/CPH:DOX:17

Nomally panel discussions are boring with a lot of repetitions. This one was different. The panelists complemented each other and were open in their sharing information and points of views on the involvement of the art museums in distributing films.

Jytte Jensen from MOMA New York told that the museum is pretty active in that field, showing documentaries regularly and keeping a film on the agenda for a week. The latter provokes a review in the NY Times. Without paying rental fee, as it is great promotion for the film and filmmaker to be at MOMA! However, when the museum buys a print for its collection, they pay 2,5 times the print prize. Or money is given through handling fees. She mentioned ”Dinner with the President” (= Musharraf), updated version, as a current example. Director: Sahiba Sumar.

ICA in London was represented by Mark Adams, who takes care of the film activities of this Institute of Contemporary Arts. He stressed that their documentary involvement had grown, both in terms of their screenings and with the, primarily 35mm, distribution they operate. Re payment ICA operates as every other art cinema distributor.

Andrea Picard from Cinematheque Ontario, curator of Wavelengths at the Toronto Film Festival, was the one who underligned that there are more and more visual artists who move into making films, but she also stressed that there is actually nothing new in this: dada, fluxus, surrealism, Dali, Man Ray etc. But there is also a move in the other direction, from the film world to the art world. The names of Chantal Akerman and Pedro Costa. This move seems also to have a financial reason, if I understood it correctly – more funding available in the art scene. Crossover is the key word, as it is for the cph:dox programme policy.

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

Christian Sønderby Jepsen: Side by Side/CPH:DOX 16

Around 20 minutes into this staged documentary I started to get impatient. Come on, make the story move, we got the message, the neighbours dont like each others, they dont talk, it is a silent war, where they will not fight or terrorise each other as in subjectwise similar films like the classic of Norman Maclaren. But then it takes a turn. The filmmaker asks his father, one of the neighbours, what was the biggest moment in his life. Difficult question to answer for a man, who has difficulties to express emotions, but he gives the answer. And the filmmaker goes to the neighbour to give us a positive impression of him.

We will never sit down and have coffee and pastries, says the father of the filmmaker about the conflict. More than a decade ago something happened that created a total split up between the two families. The result was that a fence grew up, a kind of no-mans land, a Berlin wall, in otherwise peaceful Western Jutland of Denmark in a town called Tarm. Where they speak a strong dialect and express a certain kind of stubbornness. Because nobody really recalls what happened, nobody knows who owes an apology.

The film is brilliant to look at, the mise-en-scène  style is carried through, a promising debut, that reminds me of the early films of Jon Bang Carlsen.

Denmark, 2008, 47 mins.

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

Århus Filmfestival 2

Så er filmvisningerne i gang i Århus. Man skulle kunne være to steder nu. Må jeg her lige pege på de film i programmet, som Tue Steen Müller har anmeldt her på siden:

 

 

 

Timo Novotny: Life in Loops (8. april  2008: “… one of the most important documentaries from the last years.” 6 penne.)

Avi Folman: Waltz with Bashir (11. november 2008: “… It is all so well made, perfect craftmanship, it is beatiful to watch, it is packed with emotional music, full of effects, sometimes as an actionfilm.. and yet, or maybe therefore, I dont care about their stories.” 3 penne.)

John Webster: Recipes for Disaster (6. juni 2008: “… but slowly the wonderful film character Anu expresses her disagreement with the behaviour of – as she says – the “bossy” husband who wants to send a message to the world and.. 5 penne.)

Miroslav Janec og Pavel Koutecky: Citizen Havel (26. september 2007: “… a film full of humour about a gentle man who – as he says himself – is unwilling to conform to the stereotypes. A man who listens and thinks before he talks.”)

http://www.aarhusfilmfestival.dk/index.html

Gideon Koppel: Sleep Furiously/CPH:DOX 15

Trefeurig is the name of a small village community in Wales. This is where director and cameraman Gideon Koppel takes us – on a stunningly beautiful, wonderfully slow, and editing-like surprising voyage that I have difficulties in forgetting after two viewings at the markets at DOCLisboa and now at cph:dox.

I long to watch it on a big screen, I want to dwelve into the landscape paintings, to a rythm of Life that is disappearing. But it is also a documentary about the people, who live there and as a librarian educated in the last century, it creates a sweet memory in me to see a library bus arrive and the old people come to get their books and have a chat with the librarian. Who worries because ”they” want him to install a computer to make his work easier! ”How are you”, ”keeping going” is a dialogue often performed in the film. Many, many banal daily life scenes, but in the film lifted up to something different, a confirmation of the value of Life.

It is season after season, it is gorgeous when you see a whole image full of a scenery with sheep going down slooowly, absolutely outstanding, episodical, f… all modern claims for ”story”, nostalgic, yes, a hymn to nature, with a precise sound design and music by Aphex Twin. A quote at the end of the film, dont know from whom: It´s only when I see the end of things, I get the courage to speak, the courage, but not the words.

Wales, 2007, 94 mins.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A39788239

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/2007/12/03/library-van-inspires-film-of-changing-community-91466-20194101/

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

Ferenc Moldoványi: Another Planet/CPH:DOX 14

We met him years ago, this Hungarian director, who stood behind the much discussed, but great film ”Children of Kosovo”. We, meaning colleague Allan Berg and I, who defended the director’s right to use extremely aesthetical cinematographic means to describe the tragedy in Kosovo.

His focus was the children, as it is in this new film where Moldoványi has filmed in four continents, again with a stunning visual result, where you sometimes end up in a breathless state, at the same time as you look at and listen to the stories from children, who are suffering in their daily life. No commentary, no information about where we are, it is not what I want, the uncompromising director seems to say. I want you to come with me on a tour round this wonderful world, where many children live in total misery. The child soldier, the shoeshine boy, the child prostitute who was raped when she was 8 (!), the girl who sells chewing gum in the street, the scavenger. And so on. They give us their dreams. They give us their daily life. We watch it, feel ashamed, depressed, at the same time as we feel that we must believe that a change could happen. If the energy of these fine children could be transformed into something positive. If…

The title comes from Aldous Huxley: Maybe this world is another planet’s Hell. Moldoványi, one of the most ambitious documentary directors that I know about, has made another unique film.

Hungary, 2008, 95 mins.

http://www.engram.hu/Main.nof?nyelvid=2

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

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