Magnificent

My Danish writing blog colleague writes above, under the caption “Oscar kritik”, linking to a group of festival people, who object to the selection of films nominated for this years documentary Oscar. He proudly mentions that two Danish films are mentioned in the alternative list that the festival people have set up: Asger Leth’s “Ghosts of Cité Soleil” and Pernille Rose Grønkjær´s “The Monastery”.

This gives me the chance to round up the festival “Magnificent7” in Belgrade that ended with the screening of “The Monastery” at the Sava Centre in Belgrade.

1500 people saw the film, Pernille was there, and this old doc-blogger got tears in his eyes experiencing that a film about an old man and his dream, Mr. Vig, captures the hearts of everyone.

“The Monastery” is the best that has happened to Danish documentary for years.

… and the “Magnificent7 Festival” is unique and Magnificent! Organised and spirited by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic. 

Photo: Pernille Rose Grønkjær (Erik Molberg Hansen)

Thierry Garrel & Alain Cavalier

If you happen to be in Barcelona tomorrow, 1st of February, you could visit Institut Francais at 17.30 to meet two French masters in documentaries – at a masterclass open to the audience. Thierry Garrel is Head of the Documentary Unit of Arte France and Alain Cavalier is the director who after a long and strong fiction filmography (among other the masterpiece “Thérèse”) now makes his own “Portraits”.

Garrel, in Barcelona for the DOCSBarcelona festival, has chosen four favourite films for his section in the festival, called “Le Dernier Repas”. About Cavalier he writes:

Alain Cavalier is a pedestrian in Paris. He loves the city. Unexpectedly on his walks, with his eyes and his ears always wide open, he has come across a woman who makes mattresses, a woman who works in a dry-cleaner’s, the owner of a bistro, a woman who makes thread… and decided to film these women.

For more about Arte, go to http://www.artefrance.fr/

Asger Leths Haiti-film

Vi så Ghosts of Cité Soleil i FOF-filmklubben i aftes. En lille bevæget, imponeret og også noget trykket flok. Hvilken film! Og vi noterede, at Leth og filmen for et par dage siden havde modtaget de nordamerikanske filminstruktørers pris, DGA-Award, som vi fornemmer, han sætter mere pris på end en Oscar. Det er jo mine læremestres og forbilleders anerkendelse, som han fortalte Ritzau. Prisen gives for “outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary”.

Ja, den er fremragende. Den er den mest sete dokumentarfilm i danske biografer det seneste års tid. Men den er vist ikke på programmet noget sted mere. Nu venter vi spændt på DVD-distributionen her i landet.

I aftes så vi som forfilm de første 15 minutter af Jørgen Leths Haitifilm, som er præcist 10 år ældre. Det viste sig at være storslået. En række sammenligninger mulige: generationsmæssige, historiske, æstetiske, moralske. Og de to film omspænder dertil ti afgørende år i Haitis politiske udvikling, Aristides æra. Men først og sidst, to filmmonumenter, det ene ikke større end det andet. Så forskellige og dog så ens.. Et fyrtårn i hvert sit årti.

Asger Leth: Ghosts of Cité Soleil, 2006. Nordisk Film, i biografdistribution. en amerikansk DVD kan købes i “Laserdisken”. Jørgen Leth: Haiti-uden titel, 1996. DFI/DBC distribution. Kan lånes på biblioteket.    

DOCSBarcelona

For four days Barcelona hosts the documentary film festival DOCSBarcelona. This second edition takes place in the Alexandra cinema situated in one of the ramblas of the beautiful city. I am writing this from my hotel room preparing for the screenings tonight. The festival has asked me to put together the Panorama section, which is 8 feature length films and 3 short films. Here they come, you can find more info on the films on http://www.docsbarcelona.com/

“Hoy el dia se repite diferente”, Spain, 2007 – www.hoyeldiaserepitediferente.com

“Kalinovski Square”, Estonia, 2007

“La isla de la Juventud”, Mexico, 2007

“Oltre la paura: Bruno contro la Mafia”, Italy, 2007 (plus short film)

“Ser Isla”, Mexico, 2007

“Someone Like You”, Denmark, 2007 – www.barokfilm.dk  (plus short film)

“Stone Silence”, Poland, 2007 – www.eurekamedia.info  (plus short film)

“The Way of a Warrior”, Germany/Switzerland/Italy, 2007 – www.filmtank.de  

Oscar kritik

En række festivalledere har i frustration over Academy Awards udvælgelsen / nomineringen af dokumentarfilm, de finder – skal jeg kalde det “ikke-tidssvarende” – på et weekendmøde lavet deres egen liste over årets 15 bedste film. To danske film er på den liste, og disse to og en række af de øvrige har været anmeldt her i filmkommentaren.dk. Se selv efter:

http://www.indiewire.com/biz/2008/01/15_documentarie.html 

Efter fremlæggelsen af listen findes en interessant blog-diskussion om ved festivalbedømmelser og prisuddelinger at inddrage andet end filmenes indhold, hele det kunstneriske arbejde med fotografi, klip, lyddesign..

Magnificent7 has begun

… and the festival that we have been writing about on this blog every day for a week has had a magnificent start. On saturday the opening Basque film “Nomadak tx” gathered more than 600 people, accompanied by full house (around 450 seats) to also Bulgarian film “Mosquito Problem and other Stories” and German film “Nach der Musik”. The audience shows again this year enthusiasm and the filmmakers offer their knowledge to young filmmakers and students on the following day with intense discussions on what is a documentary.

Yes, what is a documentary?

Magnificent7 Festival Belgrade 7

On this blog we have many times written about the Danish manyfold awarded film by Pernille Rose Grønkjær, “The Monastery”. You can click on the title and read all about it.

Now it is to be the closing film at the festival in Belgrade – and it is indeed a magnificent film. This is what I wrote when Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, and I took it for presentation with a reference to the site of the film:

www.themonasterymovie.com  

SELECTOR‘S WORD: “This film has received all the prizes it deserves because it has all the qualities you can ask for in a documentary. It is about a man and his dreams, that he wishes to fulfill at this point where he is close to the end. But it is also a film about love between a nun and the old man, and between the director – who is also the camerawoman of the film – and a unique character for a film. A man she has followed for seven years. You cry, you laugh, you sense drama and conflict. What an artistic achievement!”

TV and Creative Documentaries

I have just left Biarritz after the final session of the archive based documentary training programme Archidoc, where 11 projects from all over Europe (5 of them from Eastern part of Europe) were presented to broadcasters from  Belgium, France, Germany and Ireland. This was another chance to see where public broadcasting and television are going…. downhill. Late night screenings, more formatting, narration from wall to wall, all of them should sound and look alike, few tv slots for the more creative approach. Its not getting easier was the message from the assembled commissioning editors, who had difficulties to see where to place the many talented projects presented to them. More documentary time but also more formatting was the message from Arte, still considered as the most important channel in Europe for documentaries.

This situation and an many other matters will be discussed at a conference arranged by ETMA’s Paul Pauwels in Brussels in the beginning of March. More information soon to be found at http://www.europeanmediaevent.com/

Magnificent7 Festival Belgrade 6

The sixth film to be shown at the unique festival in Belgrade, starting tomorrow saturday, under the subtitle “European feature documentaries”, organised by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic and their team, and with me taking part in the selection is    

THE BELL

According to the old stories, written about 300 years ago, during the Lithuanian – Swedish war, the bell from the bell tower of Plateliai Church has been removed and taken off. It was carried away across the frozen lake, but the ice cracked near the Kastel island and the bell sank. One hundred years later a snorkeling expedition went on a search for the bell. It has been told that they found it, but for inexplicable reasons, they let it sink again. It has been told that the sound of a submerged bell can be heard from the lake’s depth. In the Summer of 2006, the film crew, along with a snorkeling team, went on a search for the legendary bell. This diving into the still water of the mythical lake was a motive for the search through the time dimension and through shady silhouettes of memory and ancient tales. Audrius Stonys penetrates behind the surface of reality and tries to transform simple actions into fantastic sights allowing us to take a glimpse into the methaphysical world.

MY WORDS: “Audrius Stonys has always remained faithful to himself and to his unique conception of cinema and a poetical interpretation of the world. He has probably won all the prizes worth winning, including the European Oscar, the Felix, but it has not made him less uncompromising in his film language. Or maybe it is better to call it film paintings! Watch ”The Bell” that can be seen as the director’s hymn to legends and irrationality. Or to the beauty of human creativity.”

More about film and credits on http://www.magnificent7festival.org/

Magnificent7 Festival Belgrade 5

The fifth film to be shown at the unique festival in Belgrade, starting this coming saturday, under the subtitle “European feature documentaries”, organised by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic and their team, and with me taking part in the selection is    

SEPTEMBERS

Every September, behind bars of the “Soto de Real” prison in Madrid, the Festival of Song which is an extremly popular karaoke contest, takes place. The festival participants are prisoners who come from different jails in Spain. They are the protagonists of this film. The festival is the starting point from which we enter the prisoner’s life of four men and four women and the intimate world of their relationships. Love or lack of love, the universal alomodovarian eruption of emotion, lets us come closer to the penitentiary drama from an aspect we can all understand. There, the year’s length is being measured from September to September, from the last to the next festival – this film describes true, deep, exciting love stories – how they develop and how they fall apart.

www.bausanfilms.com

MY WORDS “If 9 out of 10 films deal with love, its one too little, said Francois Truffaut and right it is. This film about love behind the bars is built like a romantic drama, it has everything, tears for crying, tears for laughing, happy moments, sorrow. Some of the inmates leave the prison waiting for the one and only they met inside. And in between there are song contests with songs that are about… yes, Love. Carlos Bosch, nominated for an Oscar for his “Balseros”, knows how to build a story. It’s a film for all of us, with wonderful characters.”