Magnificent7 Festival Belgrade 3

The third 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

A FATHER’S MUSIC

The unusual father-son adventure. The film author, son of a famous conductor of East Berlin State Orchestra, Otmar Suitner, tries to relive and regain the important and missing moments of his own childhood. He invites his father on a journey through time and space. In this brilliant musical and film search, like in a symphony, all the important themes are being discussed: the successful career of a great conductor, personal view of music and family memories through a prism of irony regarding recent German history. A surprisingly open dialog between father and son reveals the unusual craft of balancing through life – between Communists and West, between personal life and career, between a wife and a mistress. Under the guidance of two great masters, the musician and the filmmaker, father and son, in the rhytm of fusion of the perfect shots and lavishing, exciting music, we enjoy in this fascinating revelation of time, people, beauty and love. The film has been screened and awarded at big festivals, such as Leipzig, Lisbon, Montreal and in Museum of Modern Arts in New York. This is the best documentary film in Germany in 2007.

www.nachdermusik.de

MY WORDS: “There is this moving family photo of a big man holding the hand of a boy walking away from the camera to somewhere. Father and son who were never really father and son, as the son lived with his mother in the West and the father lived with his wife in the East as renowned and tributed conductor of music. The film is a voyage back in time with father and son (and the two women). It’s without pretentions, full of humour and the son’s ambition to make the father conduct just one more time. Silent beauty, stylistically perfect film and wonderful music!”

More about festival and credits of film at

www.magnificent7festival.org

Paris Small Talk

Pollution out, pollution in. I am in Paris for one day passing to the fipa festival in Biarritz. I see all cafés having added an outdoor terrasse for the smokers. And I see – and experience – that it is no longer possible to have a montecristo cigar with your coffee after a wonderful meal of oysters and a crème brulèe!

A consolation… is that you now can watch television in most of the Parisian cafés! So you dont have to talk to your companion if you wish to watch fashion models doing the catwalk or football or music videos.

Congratulations to Parisian culture… that was once. Hello to Degas and Toulouse Lautrec and all your fine café paintings that we can now study in the museums. And hello to Truffaut and Godard and all the others… “Jules et Jim” and “A bout de souffle”, Moreau and Belmondo, always with a cigarette!

Magnificent7 Festival Belgrade 2

… for feature length European documentaries

For the fourth time I have had the privilege to select film for this unique festival together with the two organisers Svetlana and Zoran Popovic

THE MOSQUITO PROBLEM AND OTHER STORIES

Made in a Fellini spirit, this structurally unusual film develops before us a gallery of strange characters and even stranger stories. A little town, somewhere in Bulgaria, is under attacks of mosquito swarms and everyone is forced to defend himself in his own way. And just about when you think that their problems are huge and almost unberable, the emence “ghosts” start to emerge from the darkness like in a thriller or a horror movie. Followed by piano sounds and dishevelled narrator, near the rusty cranes, along with cheerleaders’ singing and in the shadow of a mountain big phantom nuclear power plant, through the waste island of horror, where the cows and sheep walk and the gigantic buzzing mosquitos bring with their stings the destinies of our heroes closer together. A whole little world which is currently converted by ideologies, regimes and dreams of economical prosperity.

MY WORDS: “Have you ever heard of Belene, a town in Bulgaria? No, I suppose you haven’t. And you maybe never really wanted to… Nevertheless, having seen this witty and at the same time mind-provoking film, you will say, yes I have met people from Belene, who are eccentric and charming and who share their thoughts on life in a town which suffers an almost year-round mosquito infestation. It’s not only a beauty in human approach, it is also innovative in a dramaturgical structure.”

More about the film and the festival at

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/selekcija/the_mosquito_problem.htm

Magnificent7 Festival Belgrade 1

This is the fourth edition of a unique festival of only 7 films but with a huge audience and a warm support from its visitors. It is organised by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic and their team, and I have had the privilige to select films for the festival together with the couple. During this week – up to the start of the festival January 26, I will infom about what we think are magificent films.

NOMADAK TX

Content: A film which takes us on a journey all around the planet in a fantastic rhytm of images and primary sound of a unique archaic instrument – txalaparta. Just like in fairy tales, this journey begins when two young Basque men, musicians Harkaitz Martinez and Igor Otxoa, inspire life to simple pieces of wood.

The uniqueness of txalaparta is that it has to be played by two people and the music is made through a dialog of two musicians. They expand the dialog and spread it around the world – from India to Lapland, through Mongolian plains and Africa. In search of new sounds they go through icy wastelands, Siberian mountains, burning hot deserts. During this great adventure the leading characters meet musicians of various cultures and they join their celebration of sound.

www.nomadaktx.com

My comments: “At the first glance you might think that this is just another politically correct film – and then you discover that these young, charming music talented guys are able to establish more than just a superficial contact with people from al over th world. It’s music, it’s culture clash and diversity, it’s a dream of a better world that is conveyed to us.”

More about the film and credits to be found at www.magnificent7festival.org

Wie Ich bin (How I Am)

It is one of those films that you hesitate to watch because you think that you have seen them all. So many films have been made about autistic children, young people and grown-ups. Even Dustin Hoffmann personified a grown up autist in “Rainman”.

And yet this one is different as a first person narrated documentary where we never hear the young Patrick say anything – but through a text integrated into the image we watch what he thinks and is able to formulate via a computer. He defines his own situation, he actually interprets it better than we could have done. At the same time we watch his beautiful open face and his melancholic glance into the camera as if he was wondering why this happened to him. A clever observer of the world and a young man who is able to communicate.

“The written speech is important for me because then I am not so lonely”, is one of his lines, a very concrete one, where many of the others are pure poetry.

Patrick not only observes, he is also trying to take part and it hurts to see how he sometimes stumbles around bewildered and locked into his own world – “please no pity but sympathy”, he writes on the film image in this very well crafted film school diploma work from Zelig in Bolzano.

Wie Ich bin. By Ingrid Demets, Caroline Leitner and Daniel Mazza. 48 mins. 2007 www.zeligfilm.it / http://www.zeligfilm.it/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=257&Itemid=104

Food for thought?

Following the example of last year’s festival, the international and national competitions are now open to fiction films as documentaries. We said it last year and we repeat it again today: it is not a question of creating a sterile contrast between the true and the made up, but instead of appreciating a film as a producer of meaning, of truth, of intelligence and of our world. We can never have enough of that.

Jean-Pierre Rehm

– who is the director of the festival in Marseilles: http://www.fidmarseille.org/

Janus Metz: Fra Thailand til Thy

Stedet introduceres i smukt fotografi, Lars Skree og Henrik Bohn Ipsen er fotograferne. Der er myndighed over det, et jysk landskab, som er meget mere end et vindblæst hjørne, som det så arrogant hedder på DR1 hjemmesiden. Og kvinden, det til en begyndelse handler om, introduceres tilsvarende smukt og sikkert. Og så begynder fortællingen, det er som det skal være, jeg er tryg. Fra dokumentarens begyndelse. Jeg skal bestemt nok blive ved den… Læs mere FILM # 64

English version: The location is introduced in beautiful photography by cinematographers Lars Skree and Henrik Bohn Ipsen. There is authority to these shots. A Jutlandic landscape that’s much, much more than a windswept corner of the country. A region and a people with a singular way of life, great dignity and their integrity intact. The photography conforms to my vision of the place that was shaped sometime back in the Romantic Age. Sommai is introduced with similar beauty and sureness. At first, it’s all about her. Once a stranger to these parts, she is now so integrated as anyone can be who looks different and comes from the other side of the globe. Then the story begins. All is well and good. I feel in good hands, from the beginning of the documentary, Love on Delivery. I know I’ll stick with it… Read more: FILM # 64

Janus Metz: Fra Thailand til Thy, 2007.

Lars Movin: Hae-Jin

Styrken i filmen er hovedpersonens usentimentale, værdige, kloge, gennemtænkte og dog ligefremme og spontane, velformulerede, ja, dannede fortælling direkte til kameraet, altså til seerne. Intervieweren som har været der under optagelserne må have tilsvarende kvaliteter: fortællingen er i øjenhøjde.

Det usentimentale og værdige giver fortællingen og dermed filmen en tone af kølighed, som er aldeles velgørende når den tackler disse vanskelige, emotionelt og etisk komplicerede situationer. Og hovedpersonens kompetance bringer filmen blidt, men fast og sikkert gennem følelsesladede situationer, som kunne være på sammenbruddenes rand. Især skyldfølelsen overalt hos den nye familie: vi skilte os af med hende! Den emotionelt mest udsatte bliver hver gang den, som med en diskret holdning og handling afleder lynene.

Lars Movin: Hae-Jin, 2006. http://www.dfi.dk/DfiKataloget/Instruktoerer/Filmbeskrivelse.htm?id=668 Set på DR2 i dag http://www.dr.dk/Dokumentar/tv/DR2/2007/0228090141.htm Filmen kan lånes på biblioteket.

TV 2 dok om læge og patient

Der var meget, jeg ikke var glad for i den dokumentar. Det dropper jeg fuldstædigt at komme ind på. For jeg synes først og sidst, at det er så modigt gjort af medvirkende og tilrettelægger og godt for os allesammen, at den er lavet. Og så var fokus i selve dokumentaren (mindre i i foromtalen og titlen) så indlysende vigtig: forståelseskløften mellem enhver patient og enhver læge. Den ene er syg, den anden rask, den ene i arbejdsdagens hurtigt glidende rutine, den anden i det pludselige stops ængstelige usikkerhed, den ene i en situation blandt hundreder lignende, den anden midt i noget aldeles ukendt. Dertil næsten altid kulturkløften, sprogligt og uddannelsesmæssigt, generationsmæssigt og med hensyn til social baggrund. Næsten hver gang det priviligerede menneske over for det ikke-priviligerede.

Og det lykkedes dog at få dette gjort klart, i hvert fald skitsemæssigt, i programmets løb, så begge parter for vore øjne ændrede indsigt og adfærd.

Især må jeg fremhæve castingen af den medvirkende læge. Hun kunne stå ved, hvad hun sagde og gjorde og se sine fejl i øjnene over for sin (lige så godt castede) coach og over for os. En regulær FILM ville kunne bygges på de to. Lægen og psykologen. Så kunne vi komme dybere, ville jeg tro, helt ned til lægens fagarrogance, som, om ikke udtalt hos den medvirkende, selvfølgelig mere end manglende træning i samtaleteknik er problemet. Ud over lægens nødvendige lægefaglige dygtighed (som selvfølgelig er det altafgørende) er der brug for menneskelige kvaliteter. Den medvirkende læge viste faktisk hvordan, tror jeg.

Tilrettelæggeren, Dennis Kragelund, kan være tilfreds med sit arbejde. Jeg så det i aftes på TV 2. http://programmer.tv2.dk/article.php//id-9876639.html det fremgår vist ikke, hvornår der er genudsendelse.

Menstruation – a film project

For a year I have been following a young Slovak woman, Diana Fabianova, in her struggle to finance a film on menstruation. Diana, who lives in Spain and has a Spanish producer, has done a huge work to promote her film project that has been developed – among others – through the Ex Oriente film training programme (www.docuinter.net ) in which I have a position as Head of Studies.

She has now sent this mail out about her project that is described in a very well designed site under development as well. See and read for yourself what she writes about “Moon Inside You”:

“We have a new web page for our documentary, with a new trailer and other additional material. It’s on the interactive base, we would be very happy if you gave us your feedback, and if you so desire, you can also participate on the creative base.

Soon we will start a blog with entries from the shoot in different countries, interviews with the experts and participants, and further information regarding the documentary, as well as the general issue of menstruation”.

http://www.mooninsideyou.com