The opening night at the beautiful Royal Theatre in Amsterdam, Carré, was very well put together. As an homage to D.A. Pennebaker, who died this year, 94 years old, his five minutes long jazzy (Duke Ellington) ”Daybreak Express” from 1953 was shown. Lovely, reminded me of his colleague Richard Leacock’s ”Jazz Dance” that came out the year after. Both full of ambition, full of enthusiasm for their medium, full of desire to find their voice as documentary directors, curious, loving life. Pennebaker was 28, young, at the beginning of a long carreer. A founding father and an important filmmaker in the history of IDFA.

As said Orwa Nyrabia, the artistic director of the festival, who enters the

stage, presents himself – big applause – and without looking at a script talks long and beautifully about the festival and its impressive program that he and his colleagues have put together for the Amsterdam audience and for the many of us visiting the festival. Nyrabia is sweet, charming, positive, clever… as Cecilia Lidin and I whispered to each other on the balcony.

Film history, Nyrabia, said referring to Pennebaker, and there is a lot of that in the program, thank you, but we can not only look back, he said and invited the youngest filmmaker of IDFA 2019 on the stage, Carol Nguyen, Canadian-Vietnamese, whose 16 mins. “No Crying at the Dinner Table” is at the Student Film comptition. With the help of the press release, here is a quote from her speech:

“If you ask me, today is the best day to be a woman in film. Within the last few years alone, we have seen a rise of diverse representation in mainstream media. Society and our audiences are more conscious than ever about the lack of gender and racial parity in film. Film festivals have even set gender parity goals for themselves. We are all demanding it. Because of this, I am optimistic”.

Orwa Nyrabia back on stage, quote from press release again:

”In his speech, Nyrabia emphasized the important role of documentary films in today’s turbulent times.

“In such times, when standing against racism, exclusion, injustice, oppression or global warming might be called “elitist,” when state subsidies for arts and culture are being cut down in various parts of the world, allowing populist approaches and discourses to take over—it feels like we don’t have much choice. We can choose to escape reality by watching a fun romantic comedy in order to forget. We can choose to lose sleep, fall into the trap of continuous draining panic, and watch a sensationalist commercial documentary. But, in fact, we do have a third way: we can protect our sanity, our balance, and our integrity while we face such a reality. This is where good cinema comes in”.

And then the screening of “Sunless Shadows” by Mehrdad Oskouei, the Iranian documentarian, who again showed his masterly documentary skills. Touching, thought-provoking it is, I will come back to it in a separate post.

IDFA has started. Today thursday will be a day full of visits to the cinema plus a couple of link screenings.

www.idfa.nl

When 300+ films are to be screened, how do you decide where to go. This is the situation for those going to Amsterdam very soon. IDFA is a big festival and you/I need help. And help is given.

The festival does a lot to help editorially through making thematic sections like “Life in Europe”, “People and Planet”, “iWorld”, “It’s a Woman’s World”, “Profession Journalist”, “Believe me”… or “Best Of… Audience Favourites, “Must-Sees”, “Award-Winners” and broadcasters and newspapers get the chance to give advice.

I take the liberty to join the group of advisers on films that you could go and see. Some of them I have not seen myself yet, but as the Germans say,  vonhörensagen is also a way.

I pick 10 from the first 5 days, that’s enough on a blogpost:

Maryam Zaree: Born in Evin: Personal. Touching. Director was born in an Iranian prison… Saw it in Sarajevo.

Dina Naser: Tiny Souls: Was at DocsBarcelona. Syrian children in a refugee camp in Jordan. Followed over several years. Excellent.

Patricio Guzmán: The Cordillera of Dreams: IDFA’s Guest of Honour – his newest work. Must-see for me.

Andres Veiel: Black Box BRD: It’s from 2001, want to see it again. History. Germany. RAF.

Alan Berliner: Letter to the Editor: Berliner is one of the most original documentarians of today, here with a love letter to the newspaper.

Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer: The son about his father, it’s lovely and it’s for us many Tarkovsky fans. Clips from films, archive clips with him. Lot of Phatos!

Feras Fayyad: The Cave: Saw it in Copenhagen! Shocking. Syria again. Main protagonist Dr Amani is a true hero with colleagues in the underground hospital in Ghouta. Masterly done.

Jørgen Leth: I Walk: Have of course been an admirer of our Danish icon since I met him and his films decades ago. He is a phenomen in Danish cultural life and internationally among cinéphiles. Again autobiographical… have not seen it yet… (PHOTO)

Andrés di Tella: Private Fiction: Argentina is close to my heart, I have had many fine moments with Andrés, and have enjoyed his original truly authored films, veeery curious about this new one, indeed!

Chris Marker: La Jetée (1962) & Pia Andell: V in Vyborg (2005): Two films picked by Patricio Guzman in his Top 10. The one of Marker is a classic that I can see again and again, the one of Andell I have heard about and now is the chance to see it…

For that and for all films mentioned, go to www.idfa.nl to find more. An Amazing program it is.

It started at 7pm and ended at 10.30pm with half an hour break. 90 minutes talk with Stephen and Timothy Quay followed by the screening of their live action film (105 minutes) ”Institute Benjamenta”. (PHOTO)

It was an entertaining night with the two famous world artists – only 50 people came! You can do better than that Dok Leipzig! Was it because you

had placed the event, for me the scoop of the festival, at Schaubühne which is not in the centre, where the other screenings took place? Was it because you asked us accredited guests for 12€ as an entrance fee that many hesitated? Or is it simply because a younger audience in general does not know their magnificent pieces of art? Or had not read the great article written by the Brothers for the festival catalogue? Or did not appreciate the trailers, 3 of them, made specifically for the festival. Another grumpy remark: the sound is terrible at Schaubühne.

Anyway for those who missed it and would like to catch up, go to Youtube and find a lot of films made by the Brothers. And a 8 minutes long documentary look into their studio made by Christopher Nolan.

So there they were telling the story of how they entered the world of puppet animation as their contribution to visual art at the highest level. They had gone to the art college, they had made illustrations and book covers, they were in London and in Philadelphia, where they were dish washing hoping that someone would notice their talent. A man from Channel4 did and gave them a budget – it was the time when C4 took risks commissioning without having any guarantee that the final result would be good. Also documentaries by the way.

Why puppets, asked the fine moderator André Eckart… Answer: we had seen the Salzburg Marionette Theatre that came to Philadelphia in the late 70’es and 80’es.

So once we were funded, we went on making mini-biographies on the composers Janacek and Stravinsky, the latter for us being the one between Maijakovsky and Jean Cocteau.

We always start with music, music is our secret scenario, talking about this – the funders always ask us to deliver a scenario, why should we, the Brothers said, they did not ask Pina Bausch for a scenario! But we deliver a text and once we start building the puppets, we throw away the eventual script.

Later on they worked for BBC, who told them that “we choose the composers and you make the films with that as a starting point”. We loved that. Music is the most powerful for us.

We shot on 16mm in the beginning, then we went (with the better funding we got) for 35mm for 15 years before we went digital. And now we are back to 35mm thanks to support from Nolan.

Back then we did not know what a decent budget was… and answering the question about why they always move the camera, Timothy answered “if we move the camera, nobody will notice the poor animation…”.

Timothy was the one, who performed humour, often with irony, when answering questions, whereas Stephen gave the more reflective and factual considerations. And yet… they are this strange couple, identical twins, who for months, that’s what you feel, lock themselves into the studio, with helpers of course, for one purpose: Creation!

The creative process – we are longing for the unexpected, it is for us a process of discovery, it’s very organic; as identical twins you lose your Ego, you have to know how to take the spontaneity into something real. Every day is an improvisation, we have the privilege of being our own masters.

We do a lot of homework, research and we collect material until we have the first décor, the first puppet. One day Stephen is behind the camera and Timothy with the puppet, vice versa.

Stephen said that he did not like the word ”improvise“, he would prefer “explore” which is understandable when you think about the preparation research and the inspiration and interpretation of the literary works they take into the creative process.

Like the film of the night, ”Institute Benjamenta”, that is based on a novel and some other literary sources of the writer Robert Walser. With this film it was completely different for the Brothers: We had to work with 44 people and we had to explain to the actors, what we were aiming for. New for us, as puppets don’t talk back as you know!

The film was shown, ”Institute Benjamenta”, enigmatic, mysterious, magic, black comedy(?), existential drama and for a film freak like me, I was thinking of silent films from the 1920’es, of vampire films, of Carl Th. Dreyer, with his equally virtuose use of light and shadow, consequently of Lars von Trier’s early films, of surrealist works like “Le Chien Andalou” by Buñuel and Dali, the inner and not the outer… and in literature I was thinking of Perec and his “things”.

The film has a subtitle: This Dream People Call Human Life.

To quote an article on this site written more than 10 years ago :

”Influenced by a tradition of Eastern European animation, the Quays display a passion for detail, a breathtaking command of color and texture, and an uncanny use of focus and camera movement that make their films unique and instantly recognizable…”

www.dokleipzig-de.de