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

15 Young by Young

Think Big! Is what young producer and director Ilona Bicevska has done throughout a year of participation in the Ex Oriente 2008. The award was given sunday at the East European Forum in Jihlava. Katja Wildermuth from MDR in Germany loved the Latvian project which is called ”15 Young by Young” and promised to help it to realisation – as did several other in the panel.

The project will consist of 15 films, each of them 15 minutes long, to be made by 15 different directors from the 15 ex-Soviet republics. They can then be put together in whatever way the broadcasters want, 5×45 minutes or into one long version. Ilona Bicevska has a very well thought and wonderfully ambitious plan on how to pick the directors and the themes at editorial workshops, among them with the participation of the Danish Film School that has promised to help with editing suites and supervision.

To be finished 20 years after the collapse of the USSR and/or the independence of the ex-Soviet republics. From the country of Juris Podnieks, Ivars Sleckis and Herz Frank. Bravo!  

Ex Oriente Film

Another season of Ex Oriente Film is over. For a year – in 3 sessions – I have had the privilege to follow and tutor a group of documentary makers, a few already experienced, most of them upcoming talent from Eastern Europe. I was rushing out of the door to get to the next station, where I am now, Discovery Campus Masterschool, so for those of you Ex Oriente people who read this: Thank you so much for a great year full of fun and creativity – and please make some good films!

… that will take time, of course, and the projects, all pitched at the East European Forum, will be at other presentation venues like here in Leipzig or at the idfa Forum. Like the one on the picture:

Thierry Paladino´s ”Puppets” to be produced by Centrala Film Warsaw.

The projects are listed on:

http://web.docuinter.net/en/activities.php?kategorie=2&id=91&sid=198&rok=2008

ITVS in Jihlava

Two representatives from the San Francisco based ITVS (Independent Television Service), Cynthia Kane and Lois Vossen, attended the East European Forum. They made a very good impression expressing enthusiasm in their going for the creative and artistic documentary. They were at the right place!

In a morning session clips were shown from two films that they had supported, both of them on their way to international success:

“Cash and Marry” by Atanas Georgiev, produced by Nukleus, Sinisha Juricic, Croatia. And “The Caviar Connection”, produced and directed by Jovana and Dragan Nikolic, Serbia. The latter will be premiered at IDFA this year.

Here are some words from the site of ITVS:

Welcome to television’s independent voice. Innovative. Provocative. Real. ITVS funds, presents and promotes award-winning documentaries and dramas on public television and cable, innovative new media projects on the Web and the Emmy Award-winning weekly series Independent Lens Tuesday nights at 10:00 PM on PBS… ITVS programs take creative risks, explore complex issues, and express points of view seldom seen on commercial or public television. ITVS programming reflects voices and visions of underrepresented communities and addresses the needs of underserved audiences, particularly minorities and children.

Still: The Caviar Connection.

http://www.itvs.org/index.htm

Jon Bang Carlsen: Addicted To Solitude

Det er et privilegium at åbne en DVD boks som denne.. Så smuk den er, personlige grafiske løsninger.. indeni den nye film, som vi har skrevet om og så de tre ældre., alle mere personlige film end ellers.. også mere personlige end jeg husker dem.

Hvad vil nu det sige? Jo, instruktøren er til stede i det hele, fra yderst tilmeget langt ind, til lige netop der, hvor de medvirkende tager over. Hans malererfaring og hans håndskrift møder jeg på boksen og indeni på kassetterne på DVD omslagene, og med det samme i teksterne, som ikke er tekstforfatterens, men hans.

Jon Bang Carlsen omgiver sine film med ord, også denne, så værket består af en film og en mængde forklaringer, kommentarer og refleksioner, som ude i virkeligheden fortsætter i interviews, artikler og bøger. Så jeg må se alt og læse alt, hvis jeg vil gøre mit publikumarbejde færdigt. Men hurtigt flytter ordene ind i billederne, teksten ind i scenerne, butikken og kirkegården, farmen og landskabet. Og bliver de medvirkendes tillige. Og filmen vokser ud af skitsen, den begyndte med til mesterværket, den er.

Jon Bang Carlsen: My African trilogy plus one, 2008, containing Addicted To Solitude, Portrait of God, Blinded Angels and Purity Beats Everything,  C&C Production, distribution: Danish Filminstitute bookshop@dfi.dk  

Super 16 no. 04 premiere

Syv producere og syv instruktører er færdige med deres uddannelse på Super 16 og de afleverede  i dag efter planen deres afgangsfilm  i Dagmar biografen. Samtidig med premieren er de syv film tilgængelige på en DVD med titlen SUPER16 NO.04 Det er så flot. Den har jeg kigget nærmere på. 

Filmene, seks fiktioner og én dokumentar, er:

Black Man, Kræsten Kusk / Julie Sophie Vang, 40 min. (Trekanthandel, dansk slavehandel og brutalitet, musealisering, udenrigspolitiske undskyldninger og andre velkendte emner overraskende pædagogiseret som stand-up tragedie. Det er nyt for mig – afgørende er, om skuespilleren, alene og energisk, holder til hele sin tour de force..) 

Cathrine, Mads Matthessen / Jonas Bagger, 25 min. (Cathrines karakter udvikles så fascinerende, jeg slipper hende ikke undervejs, hun bliver heller ikke let at glemme – vigtigt er om familien holder så tæt på det karikeredes distance..)

Kaktus, Anna Treiman / Mads Damsbo (ekstern), 30 min. (Imponeret over instruktørens mod og udholdenhed til igen i udsøgt scenografi og på smukke, smukke locations at skildre dette forbrugte og derfor dobbelt vanskelige emne – tænker også: er det en gang på stedet?)

The Matjulskis, Mikkel Blaabjerg Poulsen, 27 min. (Jamen, jeg falder da for denne omhyggelige parafrase på en række scener, jeg mener at have set andre steder, røres over den sentimentale historie om poesien og musikken og over den tavse hovedpersons udtryksfulde spil – så det er sært, det ikke er min yndlingsfilm i buketten)

Nowhere Man, Sune Lykke Albinus / Line Hvidtfeldt, 22 min. (Livlig skildring af en ung mand i problemer i nattelivet og i legene med vennen og i deres  fællesskab med en pige på bagagebæreren. “Er du faret vild, Andreas?”, spørger vennen, og det er mere end konstatering end et spørgsmål – og for mig kunne det gælde filmen, som trods mange meget smukke scener ikke når frem..)

Panser, Roni Ezra / Lars Valentin, 27 min. (To patruljebetjente, en erfaren og en begynder. Den erfarne oplærer begynderen i håndværket, og han skal nok lære det –  filmen er lærlingens svendestykke, den vil håndværket, og det klarer den..)  

Black Heart, Ada Bligaard Søby / Morten Kjems Juhl, 23 min. (Tre unge skæbner i New York og med New York som medspiller, de holdes skarpt adskilte i filmstil, ja, på alle måder, i en sjælden balance – og i mit hoved griber historierne hen over de markerede grænser i ét væk ind i hinanden i det musikalske væv af betydninger, så de tre personer bliver hinandens historie. De er jo i samme film..)

http://www.super16.dk/