I am hooked from the very first moment. Director John Webster puts a pillow behind the back of Jörn Donner (1933-2020) as the start of the last interview Donner did. He sits in an armchair, it’s December 2019, he has a tumor in his lungs, nothing can be done about it, he dies end of January 2020. He is visibly in pain but not more than he is able to talk to Webster behind the camera in sharp and precise sentences, interesting from start till end. There is never a dull moment in this documentary where Pirjo Honkasalo contributed with a script and the planning of this last interview…

From the armchair to a quickly edited prologue with clips and photos from the life of Jörn Donner – a writer, film director, film producer, film critic, journalist, politician, business man, and photographer. The latter forms the film as it turns out that Donner has taken photos his whole life, in Finland and round the world that he visited from, when he was quite young. Good photos also of his children, there are six of them. Two from his first marriage, two from his last and two extra-marriage children.

The film switches from the photos to clips from his films accompanied by sound interviews with some of the children and with lovely Harriet Andersson (born 1932) – Donner took some fantastic photos of her, who talks so wonderful about him and their year-long love relationship. 

Back to the armchair and the beginning of the film. The prologue is accompanied by a song, “Mr. Wonderful” from Donner’s film “69”, and right after that Donner talks about his creative life referring to himself as “the 95er”, who never committed himself totally to film or anything, but was closest to writing as he says later in the interview. “My life was phenomenal and yet a long-running failure”! A son from the last marriage characterizes his life as a performance, where he plays an arrogant, self-centrered male but also a loveable father. And we see home videos of Donner as the father with the two youngest, on a fishing tour, putting presents on a tree, in the swimming pool and on the football pitch. And building a house in the countryside for the children and his wife, 23 years younger than him. Johan Donner, his oldest son (I remember having seen a film of him at the Tampere FF way back, “En stad under huden” 1982) has quite different memories of his father, who did not want to accept him. In the interview Donner talks about his constant being away, he was 22 when Johan was born. He cut the connection to the two first children and their mother to realise his own ambitions as an artist. In archive clips Donner talks about himself, “I am an exhibitionist”; others characterise him as always being sarchastic. This is actually how I remember him the few times I heard him talk in Nordic film events, super-charismatic, provocative, a man who wants to be remembered as “swimming against the current”, as he says, a “nonconformist”. One of the sons comment on this: Yes, but the older he became, the more he became part of the establishment. That’s how it is, isn’t it? 

Jörn Donner, a globetrotter, a womaniser… talks in this last interview about how he still every day wants to plant a little flower – write something, “produce letters” as “writing is a cure to illness”, “I am a wordsmith”. And gosh how many books he ended up leaving us readers. Novels but also a handful of books on Ingmar Bergman. Yes, there he sat in the armchair answering questions, reflecting on his own life, talking beautifully on loneliness and friendships, “I did not have many”, and on how he was happy to be alone in periods… a fascinating film… an intellectual beacon in a frank conversation. But, he says, “the innermost memories I keep for myself”.

Finland, 2021, 78 mins.   

I got a mail this morning that made me sad but also made me think of many many good visits to the bar next door the Zelig Film School in Bolzano. The mail came from Stefano Lisci, here is the beginning: 

… Ciao Tue, It’s Stefano Lisci from Zelig. How are you? Here in Bolzano I am a little bit tired for the corona…but good! I write to tell you that Bar Mario had to close! Marina and Paolo had the corona virus, it was a long convalescence, especially for Paolo that was positive for 3 moths. Now they are good…

”Those who have visited the film school know what I am talking about, for those who don’t know: The Bar Mario is next door to the Zelig film school and for students, staff and teachers this is the place you go in the breaks to have a coffee, or where you drink a beer at the end of the day. And where you will meet the captain Marina, the cook Roberto and Paolo – who live there behind the door on which ”privato” is written.

Here is a quote from an article on this site written in 2016, where the film ”Bar Mario” that Stefano directed, had its premiere:

”Bar Mario” is a film that enters to the ”privato”, to the world of the three, in a chaptered, visually impressive story that takes us viewers on board a ship that has crossed mountains to be here, among mountains. The father of Marina, Mario, was a sailor and she has taken over his job to conduct the ship of life in good and harsh weather. She, and the film, does so in a warm, sweet and compassionate way. And with the fun and atmosphere that reigns in the Bar.” The film went to several festivals in Italy, well deserved, and now, as the bar is closed (and the cook Roberto has passed away last year) – and small local bars like this all over have to close due to the pandemic – I can only recommend you to watch it – Stefano had put it on line, price a bit more than 3$:

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/barmarioilfilm/499952078

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3746/

… In le Monde by Jacques Mandelbaum, film critic at the newspaper since 1995. You have to be a subscriber of le Monde to read the whole interview. I have taken the liberty to quote from the excellent meeting with the great French filmmaker:

« Nicolas Philibert, 70 ans, est une figure tutélaire du documentaire en France après quarante ans d’activité dans le domaine. A toutes fins utiles, un rappel de son parcours pour la route. Démarrage en 1978 avec La Voix de son maître, coréalisé avec Gérard Mordillat, entretien avec douze grands patrons de l’époque et chronique discrète de la mutation capitaliste en cours, pas suffisamment toutefois pour n’être pas censurée durant treize ans. »

« … Nicolas Philibert a pris la direction régulière, depuis quelques mois, du quai de la Rapée, dans le 12^earrondissement de Paris, où est accostée la péniche de l’Adamant, centre psychiatrique de jour dépendant des hôpitaux de Saint-Maurice (Val-de-Marne). »

« Filmer le désordre mental : Rien d’évident toutefois, pour beaucoup de raisons. La première, naturellement, consiste à filmer le désordre mental. Terrain instable, souffrance humaine, fragilité de tout, risque avéré du pittoresque. La seconde, non moins prégnante, est la pandémie qui sévit depuis dix mois. Nicolas Philibert, qui habite à Paris, s’estime à cet égard relativement chanceux : « Contrairement à beaucoup de mes collègues qui se sont arrêtés au milieu d’un tournage, la période du premier confinement a été pour moi celle de l’isolement nécessaire à l’écriture du projet. Je n’ai donc pas trop souffert. J’ai programmé mes journées. Une heure de marche rapide le matin, puis lecture et écriture. J’ai aussi mis à profit ce temps libre pour filmer ma mère, qui a eu 100 ans en avril 2020. Ça a été très important pour moi d’aller la voir régulièrement, même si je ne sais pas encore le devenir de ces images. » »

« Moi, je me fous de faire un film de plus. Faire un film avec de l’acquis, ça ne m’intéresse pas. Je veux être dérouté, questionné. Je veux qu’un tournage m’attire et me fasse peur. Et affronter cette peur en filmant . »

« La pandémie touche le quotidien de tout un chacun. L’activité du centre en est, pour le moment, fortement impactée. Par ailleurs, la maladie a, pour certains patients, de fortes répercussions psychiques. J’intègre naturellement ces éléments à mon écriture. »

https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2021/01/11/nicolas-philibert-je-veux-qu-un-tournage-m-attire-et-me-fasse-peur_6065920_3246.html

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1931/

Andrea Prenghyova wrote me a couple of days ago, asking if I could mention that the 10th edition of her dokincubator is coming up. Really, 10th edition (!), I thought, and I dare say that Prenghyova has managed to put the training initiative on the map of popular workshops in Europe. I don’t recall having met filmmakers, who have been critical to the content of the workshops that have high class professionals as tutors, not only editors but also a marketing specialist like Freddy Neumann and the producer Christine le Goff. But for those who want to know more than, what can be read on the website of dokincubator I have picked a quite from one of the interviews Prenghyova has made, one published today: 

In an interview with Steve Rickinson from Modern Times Review, published today, link below, Andrea Prenghyova says:

„There are two most important things that distinguish us from other training programmes and workshops. First thing is that we are the workshop which is coming quite late to the filmmakers – at the stage of the rough cut. Therefore, we are able to work with the real material and to participate in the real creative process. This is very important…

The second thing that distinguishes us is our quite special methodology, we are learning through doing – we are a very pragmatic workshop, but at the same time, we cover various aspects. On one side you get a very high quality of your creative process and on the other, you also get quite a wide perspective on your film – you test your film…”

https://www.moderntimes.review/we-are-simply-looking-for-good-films/

https://dokincubator.net/introduction-to-applications/?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=submission_deadline_January_27th_2021&utm_medium=email#.YAG56uB7nOQ