Happy Birthday / Tillykke

www.filmkommentaren.dk has today been alive and kicking for one year. What started as an idea in the head of Allan, has now become a regular “con amore” passion for the two of us. We are proud and happy to have experienced that after a year and without any substantial promotion, we now have between 450 and 550 computers that hit us every day.

We don´t know (most of) you but we hope you like the texts we offer you. In a year it has been around 300 – and we continue with the ambition to have one new text every day. Be it a review of a new or old (classic), be it reports from different parts of the world, be it the film political discussions we have tried to initiate in Danish. Big or small, personal or informative, we try to do what the newspapers and magazines don´t do. With a clear focus on documentaries.

Remember that you are welcome to take part in debates, comment on what we are writing or come up with texts to be published. In Danish or English.

Photo: TSM in his element, here a Zagreb masterclass..

Georg Misch: A Road to Mecca

… with the subtitle, The Journey of Muhammad Asad. Who was originally Leopold Weiss, Jewish, born in Austria, but converted to islam in the 1920’s and became, as said by a Palestinian on the West Bank, ”an enlightened Islamic thinker, a great scholar”, still today worshipped for his contribution to a modern understanding of the Quran, that he late in his life (he died in 1992) translated and interpreted in a way that made his version banned in many places.

The title of the film refers to his book about islam – and the subtitle to a book he wrote and to the structure of a film, that takes the viewer to the places where the cosmopolite Asad went: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan (he became the first UN representative of the country), USA, Morocco, Spain. The film crew meets people who knows about Asad or have met him, they interpret his importance, what he has meant for them, at the same time as the story of his life is told. He rode the camel, he lived with the bedouins, he helped the constitution of Pakistan to come to life, he talked against extremism, and had quite a different, non-militant interpretation of jihad.

A lot of respect for this well made thought provoking, rich and multi-layered film that must be a very useful and intelligent visual tool for debate in the world of today.

Austria, 2008, 92 mins.

www.mischief-films.com

Bazzoli/Lelong:Amour,Sexe & Mobylette

What a charming film, full of Life and Love! Taking place in a small town in Burkina Faso, it is built as a film for cinema release with several parallel stories circling around the St. Valentine´s Day. Old people´s love, young people´s love, a young man who suffers because she is far away – and a lot of opinions on love and sex, on polygamy, and on aids and circumcision.

These opinions are conveyed through local radio journalists and a photographer, who walks the town to ask questions about love and sex on behalf of the filmmakers. Who also follow heated discussions among the young ones or let childen present their love drawings in a school class.

If they are playing themselves or have been given a role in the film, or both – is not important as the whole tone of the film has an authentic feel of honest lightness and the characters come out to be open-hearted and minded. There is a respect for the subject and for the characters, that is very much represented in the old man, Jean-Marie, the fisherman, who opens the film and sets the action. Charisma and dignity. Not to forget to mention the music composed by the local master Yoni.

France/Germany, 2008, 92 mins.  

www.amoursexeetmobylette.com

www.cinedoc.fr

Lithuanian Classics

I write this in a summer house on Bornholm. On this island I met – for ten consecutive years – Henrikas Sablevicius, the godfather of the so-called poetic Lithuanian documentary. I never spoke directly to him (no English from his side, no Russian or Lithuanian from mine) but he was always there to defend the non-propagandistic documentary and his influence was enormous on the young filmmakers.

When in Vilnius a week ago I was given a dvd with four films, one of them by Sablevicius ”Trip throught a Brume Meadow” (1973, 10 mins.), an earlier one by R. Verba ”A hundred-Year-Old-Desires” (1969, 20 mins.) and two by the students of Sablevicius – ”Ten Minutes before the Flight of Ikaros” by Arunas Matelis (1990, 10  mins.) and ”World of the Blind” by Audrius Stonys (1992, 24 mins).

The two first films include some text that is not translated, the film of Matelis has subtitles, Stonys film is (almost) wordless.

All four films describe – in stunning 35 images and with composed music and with masterly use of sound – people and landscapes in that spiritual language that is Lithuanian documentary.

Sablevicius died a couple of years ago. He also introduced me to 999. Thanks.

www.documentary.lt Photo: Henrikas Sablevicius.

Masterpieces with Children

3 new photos on the title page of www.filmkommentaren.dk. All with children, all from masterpieces that have been written about:

From left “Ten Minutes Older” by Herz Frank (USSR/Latvia), “Before Flying Back to the Earth” by Arunas Matelis (Lithuania) and “Three Rooms of Melancholia” by Pirjo Honkasalo (Finland).  

Svetoslav Draganov: Tell me What is the Universe

A short piece of observation that was done by one of Bulgaria´s most talented young documentary directors – in connection with the shooting of a feature film by Stephan Komandarev.

The characters are extras from the film, the village is Sokolitsa in Bulgaria, where live also gypsies and people full of charismatic pocket philosophical wisdom. And faces that can suit any film, fiction or documentary.

There is casting, there is shooting of a scene in a camp, there is kissing and drinking, there is shooting of a scene with a white bearded priest, who the director catches up with to let him be the one that asks the fundamental question that became the title of this small, unpretentious fine film that should tour all festivals that look for films about people.

Bulgaria, 28 mins., 2007

www.cine-ma.com

HYPE The Obama Effect

Some documentaries get a lot of publicity even before they are ready to be seen. Not surprisingly a film about Barack Obama made by a producer, who is characterised as the direct opposite of Michael Moore, is talked about on the media right now. See for yourself the clips on the web site. The film comes out September 1. There are other kinds of documentaries than the creative, author driven that we normally write about on this blog…

http://www.hypemovie.com/index.html

Radovan Karadzic and BBC

Just a brief note on this day where Karadzic has been flown to the Hague Tribunal. Actually just a link to the BBC website where you can see not only yesterday’s images from the Belgrade protests against the catch of Karadzic, or the joy in the streets of Sarajevo, but also a brilliant small report from a BBC journalist from Sarajevo in 1992 or an interview with Karadzic from 1995.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7532281.stm  

Baltic Tour: Lithuania

I have just left Vilnius, this beautiful spiritual capital of Lithuania. I had two nights at the Shakespeare Hotel, which I would like to (an exception on this blog) recommend to everyone.

Anyway, I can report to you that the Lithuanians keep their artistic quality. I have several times on this blog (use search on the site) mentioned the names of Arunas Matelis and Audrius Stonys, manyfold awarded in their own country and filmmakers who are very much esteemed internationally.

IF Lithuania still lacks a healthy and internationally open structure for funding of documentaries, and IF Lithuania has much less money available for production than the two other Baltic countries, the fact that I have recommended the selection committee at DOK Leipzig to watch 6 out of the 9 films that I saw, talks for itself. It is a country that salutes the auteur, the originality, the trust in images to tell the stories and the many layered documentaries that is what makes a creative documentary.

My host in Lithuania, a name I mention with much respect and admiration is Audrius Stonys, who makes one film per year, always related to the culture and traditions of his native country, always challenging to watch, born out of humanistic thinking. This time the title is “Four Steps”, made out of a deep fascination of super-8 mm wedding films, shot in 1961, 1972, 1983 and 2007. And of course it is not “only” about wedding traditions, it is also philosophy and literature and songs and music. I look forward to see this film for the third time!

Now I break the rule of one name per country and salute Arunas Matelis as well. He is not only the master behind “Before the flight Back to the Earth” and a series of films that we saw at the Balticum Film & TV Festival in the 90’es, but has also taken the responsability to help the completion of Audrius Mickevicius long awaited and internationally supported (YLE, Finland and MDR, Germany) film about a man and his horse, “The Year of the Horse”. A real Baltic documentary. Slooow, image born, no commentary, humour, a hymn to a life far away from the noisy metropoles. And far away from mainstream journalistic docs.

Do you read this, consultants at the Danish Film Institute? 

http://www.shakespeare.lt/ http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/default.asp?page_id=2  http://www.stonys.lt/index.asp?DL=E  Photo: Audrius Stonys

Baltic Tour: Latvia

Riga, the city where came to life so many great documentaries during Soviet times and around the fall of the empire. I was invited to teach at the Discovery Campus session that was held at the coast, 40 minutes from Riga, and did the night before a small one hour retro session where also participants from another MEDIA training programme, Esodoc, took part.

I showed, among others, a clip from Juris Podnieks masterpiece from 1991, “Homeland”, and the 1978, 30 year young film that Podnieks photographed for his master Herz Frank. Very few of (their youth excuses them) the participants knew anything about this important part of world documentary history and as always all of them were enthusiastic about “Ten Minutes Older”. The title of Frank’s film. Podnieks died in 1992, but his studio continues in his spirit under the competent leadership of his editor, Antra Cilinska, now both director and producer.

But Herz Frank is still around and I saw his new film,”Perpetual Rehearsal”, where he warm-hearted and intelligently invites the viewer into the magic world of theatre. 10 years of video diaries has been put together by Frank from his meeting with the charismatic theatre director Yevgenij Arye from the Gesher Theatre in Tel Aviv.

If Latvia still lacks directors to fully reach the quality level that had the tradition of Podnieks, Frank and Ivars Seleckis, there is much reason to praise the activities of many people around the well functioning National Film Centre and its MEDIA Desk, Lelda Ozola, the person behind the Baltic Sea Forum that now takes place every year in September in Riga.

The current most internationally active documentary name in Latvia is Uldis Cekulis. With his company, Vides Film Studio, he presented this year a handful of films of fine quality. Personally I expect most from the film about Klucis, “Deconstruction of an Artist”, that has been written about earlier on this blog, see below. But Cekulis has also a wonderful follow-up to “Dream Land” in his catalogue, one more film in the tradtition of the company – man and nature –  made by Maris Maskalans and Laila Pakalnina. “Three Men and a Fish Pond”. The first paints with the camera, the latter puts in humour and sense of situation. A happy working marriage.

http://www.vfs.lv/ http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/default.asp?page_id=2  http://www.esodoc.eu/  http://www.discovery-campus.de/v2 /Photo: Herz Frank.