Valentina Pedicini 1978-2020

Obituary for a 42 year old filmmaker. So sad. The last time I saw Valentina was at DocsBarcelona, where she won the main award for her “Faith”. The moderator of the ceremony had a short conversation with her, online, before he revealed that the jury found that her film was the best. She jumped from her chair out of joy, so happy for this recognition. One year back I had the chance to meet her at IDFA, where I attended the premiere of the film – full house, I was sitting next to the principal of the Zelig Film School, Heidi Gronauer, and we were proud of Valentina and her work. Valentina graduated from the film school in 2010, I was one of the teachers and had many fine discussions with the director-to-be. As a true artist she was always in doubt of what she did was good enough. I wrote this after the IDFA screening last year:

“To watch the film of a former Zelig student, Valentina Pedicini, “Faith”, a film that actually was already in preparation, when she was in the school in Bolzano. She made a short film at that time, 11 years ago. “I was young at that time, 11 years later I felt mature enough to go deeper, stay longer at the place-“ And she did together with cameraperson Bastian Esser and his assistent Lucia Alessi – both of them also Zelig students.

The equally 11 year older teacher, who still remembers Valentina as the obvious documentary talent during the school time, has at a distance followed the carreer of the filmmaker, who has made a couple of fiction films and the documentary “Dal Profondo” in 2013. This one, “Faith”, shows that she can go close to people, who trust her. “Were there any ethical questions during the shooting”, the moderator asked Valentina Pedicini. “Every day”, was the answer from the very dedicated director, who with the amazing camerawork by Bastian Esser depicts both the violent training scenes with the master and his pupils and the quiet sensible scenes with couples in bed. You can’t avoid to feel claustrophobia watching the film, luckily you as a viewer are let out in the light once in a while… but seldom.

Valentina, RIP.

IDFA Pitched Rough Cuts

I had the pleasure – indeed it was – to observe the online pitch of Rough Cut projects yesterday. There were five of them and the atmosphere was much more relaxed than several of the pitches, where projects were new and comments from the decision makers were included. The sessions included words from director & producer, a teaser or clips – several had 3 of them – so you could imagine how the film would be. And one-on-one were waiting for the filmmakers. I make small remarks to each of them – saying up front that they were all of quality, and as a session put well together geographically: Brazil, Israel, India, Lebanon, Sahel Africa. Here they are:

Daniel and Daniela

Pandora da Cunha Telles & Sofia Pinto Coelho

“Daniel and Daniela are father and daughter. He’s 84, she’s 12. During a road trip, we follow their ode to love and culture.“ Lot of energy in the presentation. Good clips. Charismatic father with controversial views on colonialism. Innocent thoughtful daughter.

The First 54 Years

Avi Mograbi & Serge Lalou

”How to succeed in an occupation for at least 54 years? Mograbi, director and narrator, builds the handbook of the perfect occupier based on testimonies from Israeli soldiers and archive footage.“ Great to see Avi Mograbi back in pitching. Being a big admirer of the director, with the help of colleague Allan Berg, we have on this site http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3479/, “collected posts of Avi Mograbi.” As before he is working with Serge Lalou, eminent French producer, they were presenting the project in a fine way, the film will be ready by spring 2021, Mograbi will be in the film, he was indeed in a clip that included testimonies by soldiers, who remember from their time in the army – Mograbi found them through the organisation of soldiers in „Breaking the Silence“. Another great film coming up, I am sure, from a director not only critical to the state of things in Israel but also a true auteur“. It will be a handbook for all occupiers, he said!!!

The Golden Thread

Nishtha Jain

„Outside Kolkata, jute mills crank on, virtually unchanged since the industrial revolution. How do we look at this work powered by steam and sweat, its sensory experience thereof, or the precarious lives of jute workers from our post-industrial perspective driven by obsolescence?”. The director works with Irena Taskovski on this project – the clips they showed were impressive, direct cinema, ah these crowded factories, these inhuman working conditions, these wonderful people, the girl laughing in the courtyard. Very good filmmaker!

We are Inside

Farah Kassem

”After more than a decade, Farah (31) returns to her hometown Tripoli in Lebanon only to find her city and country in crisis. Staying with her widowed aging father Mustapha (83), Farah realizes this is her last chance for a conversation. And that is only possible through poetry, his passion.” Don’t know the director, was caught by the charm of the story about these old men, who meet to read poetry of their own. The director tries to cross their chauvinism, gets into the room, read a poem… Lovely.

Witnesses from the Shadow

Ousmane Samassekou & Estelle Robin-You

«Bordering the Sahel desert stands a house, as a safe haven for African migrants on their way to Europe, or returning home. How do you prepare to face your family, when you are going home with nothing and leave your dreams behind?” The two made a superb presentation. Instead of the usual trailer/teaser they showed a long scene, where a man talks to a young woman in trouble – in the house. Sooo strong. The film project was presented at IDFA 2019 and now they are on editing. In the IDFA credits three names are mentioned that tells me that the team has searched for consultation at the RCS, Rough Cut Service – names are Don Edkins, Niels Pagh Andersen, Iikka Vehkalahti. PHOTO: From the pitch 2019 at IDFA, regret to say that I dont know who the woman to the left is. Maybe Estelle can inform me?

https://www.idfa.nl/en/info/idfa-forum 

IDFA Opens at Tuschinsky…

Two quotes from the opening of IDFA 2020, wise words from a minister and an artistic director of this unique meeting place for people in the documentary community – and for the audience, in the cinemas and online.

“Standing in an almost-abandoned Tuschinski theater in the heart of Amsterdam, looking at hundreds of empty red seats is a painful illustration of the impact of the pandemic. At the same time, I am incredibly proud and happy that IDFA is still able to go ahead this year, as are all of the professionals who worked on the many documentaries that will be shown in the coming weeks. Here, live, in dozens of Dutch cinemas, and online, in thousands of living rooms across the globe,” said Ingrid van Engelshoven, Minister of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands.

“Art is never measurable. Its value, its impact, and even its very meaning are all living creatures. They change with time, they change with place, they change us and we change them continuously. So, this edition of IDFA is a tribute to you, our filmmakers and artists, and even more to those of you whose accomplishment might not be measurable by the immediate response of the market or the media. We believe in these films and new media works, we know they will live long and they will be discovered and re-discovered again and again,” concluded Orwa Nyrabia, Artistic Director of IDFA.

Andrei Ujica: Things We Said Today

… “then I will remember things we said today”. Beatles. “The influence they had on our generation”, as said Ujica, who is from 1951, I am four years older, and also I grew up with Beatles. And enjoy very much to remember those days in the beginning of the 60’es, where I met with my friend listening to and talking about John, Paul, Ringo and George. It’s a brilliant film project that Ujica has, “A time capsule of New York between August 13-15, 1965, framed by The Beatles’ arrival in the city and their first concert at Shea Stadium, narrated from the perspectives of two teenagers.” I have never met Ujica personally, but I have met his editor and sound editor Dana Bunescu at a workshop in Gori Georgia. Already there she mentioned that she was working with Ujica on this film AND they had worked together before, a quote from the blogpost I wrote:

“Did you see it : ”The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu” (director : Andrei Ujica, editor and sound designer Dana Bunescu) from 2010, 3 hours long, a true masterpiece. You have to ! Archive the whole way through, no commentary, no explanations of where we are and when and why. Chronological.

Dana Bunescu, who is here as an editing tutor, a scoop to have her, open-minded and direct in her approach to the young filmmakers. Bunescu was working on the film for three years and what a material she had and put into a film, that is never boring but takes you in, because of its sense of rythm and use of sound, of music – Bunescu is a master in sound and it’s been an eye-opener to see her here in Gori talking about sound but also putting a recorder on the table to catch sounds that she might be able to use on another film occasion!”

At the pitch at IDFA, Ujica and his producer showed material, please show more, this is a film that will have an enormous success, I am sure, and not “only” for “our” generation. Ujica and Bunescu, archive masters!

… and to complete this hommage to the two, let me remind you that Ujica made two other films before “Ceaucescu” in his Romanian trilogy, “Videograms of a Revolution” (1992), “Out of the Present” (1995), and that Bunescu is the editor of several of the feature films of the “Romanian Wave” and also took part in the editing of the new excellent documentary “Collective” by Alexander Nanau. 

Documentary Poetry/ DunaDock

The other day I was in Budapest for the DunaDock workshop… well online of course, me sitting in Copenhagen. I was invited by the engaged Hungarian documentarians Diana Groo, Julianna Ugrin and Klára Trencsényi and their helpers. To do tutoring at the workshop and a talk, as part of the (also online, cinemas are closed in Hungary) Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. Klára Trencsényi was my host at the talk; I have known her for many years and have praised her films on this site – ”Corvin Variations” www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2162/, ”Birds Way” http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1056/, ”Train to Adulthood” http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3395/. Right now Klára Trencsényi is in the editing of ”Wardens of Memory”, shot in India and about the Cochini Jews – and much more. The film project was pitched at DocsBarcelona this year, online, by the director and Julianna Ugrin, who has a long filmography, including ”A Woman Captured” by Bernadett Tuza-Ritter.

Anyway, for the talk I chose the title ”Documentary Poetry” and the participants in the festival and in the DunaDock workshop (more about that below) got the chance to watch in beforehand ”Bridges of Time” by Kristine Briede and Audrius Stonys, produced by Lithuanian Arunas Matelis, Latvian Uldis Cekulis and Estonian Riho Västrik. There are several texts on this site about this remarkable film on poetic documentary cinema.

I had 90 minutes, where I showed clips with words in between making again a lot of reference to the Balticum Film & TV Festival that was held in the 1990’es on the island of Bornholm in the middle of the Baltic Sea. It was here during a decade that my interest in and love for the Baltic documentary filmmaking and filmmakers were born. And for Russian and Polish…

I showed a clip from ”Paradise” – the boy eating his morning porridge and falling asleep – the graduation film by Sergey Dvortsevoy, whose four documentaries I consider to be outstanding and whose second feature film ”Ayka” is equally excellent. And then I went to Audrius Stonys – clips from ”Antigravitation” and ”Uku Ukai” – before the two clips from ”Bridges of Time” with Uldis Brauns, the man behind the masterpiece ”235.000.000” from 1967, of which a director’s cut is now being restored and digitized. If you want to watch the class, there is a link below, English spoken and clips with English subtitles.

About the DunaDock workshop that was run via Zoom: five projects, three tutors (Hanka Kastelicova, HBO Europe, Noemi Schory Israeli producer, and me), and a pitch session that included Christian Popp from FIPADOC and Brigid O’Shea from DAE, Documentary Association of Europe, who awarded two of the five projects. Go to the FB of the DunaDock and read much more, link below as well. 

DunaDock is for sure one of many workshops/training sessions, where talent is found and advised on how to enter the documentary community. In this session there were – behind the five projects – participants from Moldova, Kosovo, Pakistan, Germany and Hungary. Again go to the FB page to see who were the winners.  

https://www.facebook.com/dunadock

https://www.verzio.org/hu/node/3302

Firouzeh Khosrovani: Radiograph of a Family

It’s a scoop to have the constant tableau-like returns to the room in the house in Tehran. It’s beautiful to look at – in the beginning I associated to Danish Hammerhøi and his paintings of interiors – here (except for the ending of the film) without human beings. A white room that changes as the life of the director and her parents change in Iran. A white room of memories. Like a stage where a painting of a naked woman is taken down and the double bed disappears. Where mats for praying become visible and glasses with wine are away from the table. The returns serve as pauses for reflections from the photos and archive footage that form the backbone of a family story that is told voice-off by the director and through constructed dialogues between father and mother.

They married while he was studying in Geneva and she was in Tehran. She moved to Geneva to be with him, where she as a religious person „saw sin all over“ in the happy sixties, refrained from drinking and partying as her Mousieu husband – they speak French in Geneva and she could not find the right pronunciation for Monsieur.

When Firouzeh is born, the couple moves back to Tehran, and if she felt lonely abroad, she now gradually gets involved in the revolutionary movement that led to the fall of the Shah. She became a disciple of Shariati, who was an important revolutionary sociologist. She got important educational positions in the Islamic country, whereas her father found meaning in art and music. And in being with his daughter. 

The film builds very much on photos taken by the father and archive material from Geneva but also from Iran – military training for the mother and other veiled women, riots in the streets. Look at the poster… in a scene you hear the mother tearing photos apart of herself without veil, she wants to destroy memories from her non-religious past… On the wall there is now an imaginative painting of the father holding his daughter, the director…The mother, still alive, sitting in the room asks her daughter to hand her the Quran…

Norway, Iran, 2020, 82 mins. 

IDFF Artdocfest / Riga postponed to spring 2021

In the situation of sharp increase of Covid-19 cases by the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers of Latvia an Emergency Situation is introduced for the period of November 9th – December 6th, 2020.

In this regard we are forced to announce the impossibility of holding IDFF Artdocfest/Riga which was to start at the November 26th.

We also decided not to run the online version of the festival as we claim that only the live connection between the viewers and the filmmakers,  the magic of premieres on the big screen and in-depth discussions of the industry representatives are the true meaning of phenomena we call a real film festival.

Now, 20 days before the IDFF Artdocfest /Riga we have carried out 100% of the preparations but in this situation we have been forced to make a decision to postpone the festival until the spring of 2021.

IDFF Artdocfest/Riga will be held in April, 2021.

All the films selected for both competition programs and out-of-competition screenings remain in our programs and hold the invitation to participate in the festival.

Considering Force Majeure, unfortunately, this year we cannot insist on keeping the status of Latvian premiere. However, we would be grateful if the authors refrain from screening the films in Latvia until April next year.

We are moving the Riga Documentary Symposium along with the festival to April.

We will try to keep everything as planned including the screening schedule and even the jury.

We apologize for the inconveniences caused but we will compensate this fully with great hospitality in the first & joyful spring after “the plague” at the first IDFF Artdocfest/Riga!

Vitaly Manski

The President of Artdocfest

Frelle Petersen: Onkel /2

DR 2 MANDAG 20:00 

Frelle Petersens smukke drama, ikke til at glemme var min store oplevelse i 2019. Det var længe at se i alle mulige biografer, rejste til den ene filmfestival efter den anden, også i det fjerne udland, det er måske ikke forbi endnu, modtog pris efter pris. 

Nu får Onkel sin TV-premiere, filmen er naturligvis værd at gense, og har man ikke set den, skal det være nu. Ubetinget. 

 Med ét i filmens lange dybt tilfredsstillende forløb af forunderlige scener, diskrete flytninger og tankesamlende vignetter står der uventet Onkel på lærredet! Og så kommer slutteksterne, de vigtigste først i skilte og derefter alle de andre rullende. Jeg bliver siddende i stolen. Forbløffet. Er det allerede forbi? Er hun gået? Denne vidunderlige fortælling, denne dejlige kvinde.

  I instruktørens forrige film og fortælling Hundeliv (2016) havde både de to piger og den sårede soldat i filmen og så jeg i biografen fæstnet os særligt ved kassedamen i supermarkedet. Hun var bare så sød, og både i sin rolle og i virkeligheden, så ægte livligt venligt snakkende med kunderne hun jo kendte. Her var det gode menneske.

 Nu er hun så landmand, sød og ægte. Men nu fåmælt som onklen. Hun er forældreløs forstår jeg, han er alene og hendes nærmeste. Hun har gennem skoletiden boet hos ham på hans gård med køer og græsmarker og kornmarker, og nu som ung kvinde passer hun hans hus og driver hans landbrug sammen med ham… Læs eventuelt det hele: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4655/

Vadym Jendreyko: The Woman with the 5 Elephants

It’s from start till end beautiful. It is seldom that form and content go so well together. Because the director succeeds to catch the charisma of Swetlana Geier, the translator of Dostoyevsky (and many other big Russian authors) from Russian into German. Her life story, born in Ukraine 1923, living in Freiburg in Germany from the mid 40’es until her death in 2010. Her travel to Ukraine with her granddaughter. And first of all her approach to translation and the works of Dostoyevsky. To language, read this quote from the film:

“My teacher always said: ‘Nose up in the air when you translate.’ That is to say, one doesn’t translate from left to right, following the text, but only after one has made the sentence one’s own. It first has to be internalised, taken to heart. I read a book so often that my eyes ’gouge holes’ in pages. I basically know it by heart. Then the day comes when I suddenly hear the melody of the text.”

The scenes on the first floor of the house, she lives in, are magnificent. She sits with Hannelore Hagen on each side of the table at a window that opens to a view of a tree outside. Hannelore Hagen types what Swetlana Geier dictates. And later comes in – to sit in the chair of Geier – Jürgen Klodt, who knows about language, the musicality of German language. He comes up with suggestions for change to the old lady on the other side of the table, who uses her pencil to make marks in the manuscript that Hannelore Hagen has typed. It’s wonderful. Old-fashioned. Conversations. “You could also use conjunctive!”. It has a calmness of poetic dimensions. The director pays respect to the profession – and her life. We get to know the tragic death of her son, and she speaks so touching about how she was there at his coffin. Her face, her eyes, her way of conveying fascination, you can imagine how good a teacher she must have been. Strength. Wisdom.

No more from me, the film is a must, and it is easy to get hold of it. Click the website (with excellent articles) below to see how to get hold of it.

https://5elefanten.ch/en/

Germany/Switzerland, 2009, 92 mins.

Message2Man

You might ask why there is a photo of Fellini on top of this post about the St. Petersburg festival that starts tomorrow. The answer is simple, the festival wants to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of Federico Fellini. To send that message to its audience, simply, even if the main focus is on documentaries, as usual. Good choice!

The festival is super-active on facebook posting photos and texts on the films that are in the competition and out of competition. The best you can do is to check the fine website – https://message2man.com/en/.

Nevertheless the festival – like so many of us – is depending on the google 

 

translate, if you don’t master the Russian language. I copy-pasted this piece of a FB post today, I corrected very little:

”Looking forward to the beginning of XXX ′′ Message to Man “, but in the meantime, we decided to refresh our off-competition program. So, this year we will see 7 films as part of the Panorama program. DOC “, which includes the main documentaries of the season from recognized masters and documentaries-innovators, and 7 Russian premiers in the program ′′ Super reality Movie “, which collected the most anticipated game paintings.

Two of these programs are a kind of framing for what is the main thing at any film festival – competition programs. Let’s remind that there are three of them on′′ Message to Man ′′: International Competition, National Competition and Experimental Contest In Silico. Out-of-competition programs′′ Panorama. DOC ′′ and′′ Super reality Movie ′′ that provide a rather accurate representation of the state of modern author’s cinema in all its genre diversity and numerous shades of play and non-play. This is the environment in which there are competitions of the festival.

The third of the key non-competition programs ′′ Message to Man ′′ is dedicated to the great master Federico Fellini – in the year of the 100th anniversary of his birth. Here we will have the opportunity to see on the big screen such as ′′ City of Women “, ′′ Satirikon “, ′′ Kabiriya nights ′′ and ′′ Kazanova “. Also in the framework of the program there will be a Russian premiere of the documentary dedicated to the classics, ′′ Fellini of the Spirits′′ by Anselma Dell’Olio…”

I have always loved that ”film” and ”painting” in Russian language are close to each other, so often the google translation says paintings where it should be film. My simple comment: Wish that more films were like paintings!

The festival has a Dane as head of the international jury, Anders Østergaard, whose brilliant “Winter Journey” will be shown out of competition in the above mentioned section for masters and innovators. As are “The Cave” by Feras Fayyad, “Gunda” by local hero Victor Kossakovsky and “The Kingmaker” by Laureen Greenfield.

By the way, Østergaard was – with me – part of a small Danish delegation at the festival some years ago, where he showed “1989” to a young audience. Great success. And good friend, Lithuanian Audrius Stonys is Head of the National jury. Curious to know what they like. I suppose that the two will not be able to travel to the festival. Alas, me too, would have loved to be there in the beautiful city by the Neva.