Kaspars Goba: Inga Can Hear

Jeg har kendt Kaspars Goba i mere end et årti. Måske før, måske mødte vi, da hans fremragende ”Seda. People of the Marsh ”(2004) kom ud. Senere havde jeg fornøjelsen at følge “Homo @ lv” fra 2015, hvor hans partner Ieva Goba var producent.

Fra hjemmesiden:… Kaspars Goba arbejdede på denne film i fem år. De omfattende optagelser, der er indsamlet gennem årene, giver tilskuerne mulighed for at få en ekstraordinær dyb indsigt i individers meninger og livshistorier på både ‘Pride’ og ‘NoPride’ fronterne. Den forbløffende afsløring af stolthed i Riga som vist i Kaspars Gobas arbejde, der startede fra starten i 2005 og frem til meddelelsen om, at Pride ikke blev afholdt i Riga i 2010, gør det muligt for seeren at overveje disse begivenheder fra et andet perspektiv. Det får en til at overveje den rolle, politikerne spiller i at manipulere folks idealer, og spørge: hvad er prisen for demokrati i Letland? … Ikke “kun” en dokumentar, men lige så meget en dokumentation af et kontroversielt emne i det baltiske land.

Jeg mødte Ieva Goba i sidste uge i Sarajevo, og vi talte om det kommende

 

Baltic Sea Docs in Riga, where the two’s new film project, “The Price of Meat”, will be presented. It has this short synopsis: A very personal story of the dilemmas faced by a vegetarian film director who after 19 years spent in documentary filmmaking and photography returns to his childhood farm and starts cattle farming… By the way Kaspars Goba is a brilliant photographer.

Long story to get to positive words about «Inga Can Hear» that was finished in 2018. A story about Inga, a girl living with her deaf parents in the countryside of Latvia, being the couple’s (and a brother) help in getting contact with life. With authorities. As and interpreter.

Goba has followed her for years, as we viewers do, seeing a girl becoming mature wanting step by step to get her own life. She is “inside” when needed, she is “outside”, when the deaf stand in a circle communicating with hands. It is very well interpreted by the camera.

“Will I achieve something in/with my life – I’m thinking about that when I get home and see all the problems I have been living with…“. She wants to study, the mother is against, the father supports her, she gets from the village primary school to the secondary school, she develops, she gets into troubles with classmates, who ,according to her, call her „a lesbian slut“, she is expelled from school and gets a job the same place where her mother works – as a seamstress.

Inga opretter en YouTube-kanal, hun vil skabe sin egen verden, udtrykke sig, hun har en stærk personlighed, hun vil være fri … hun ser ud til at have opnået en vis frihed, som filmen viser mod slutningen og alligevel forældrene er der stadig der regner med hende …

Det er en social dokumentar, en positiv, der altid følger Inga og hendes energi og aldrig bor ved tristhed og fattigdom. Tak for det! Og held og lykke til Inga og hendes kæreste!

Gå til hjemmesiden herunder, så finder du gratis vimeo-adgang til de film, der er nævnt ovenfor, “Seda …” og “Homo @ lv”. En generøs deling!

Letland, 2018, 60 minutter.

http://elmmedia.lv/en/

European Film Academy Documentary Shortlist

… was announced today with 12 candidates to compete for the final 5 seats, from where the winner of the Documentary Award will be chosen and published on December 7.

“Aquarela” (Viktor Kossakovsky) is there, “Honeyland” (Tamara Kotevska & Ljubomir Stefanov), “Putin’s Witnesses” (Vitaly Mansky), “Advocate” (Rachel Leah Jones, Philippe Bellaiche), “Push” (Fredrik Gertten), “The Disappearence of My Mother” (Beniamino Barrese) – all films that have been noted/reviewed on this site.

“Heimat is a Space in Time” by Thomas Heise and “For Sama” by Waad al-Kateab, Edward Watts will be watched and reviewed in the near future – I have always been fond of Thomas Heise’s work, I am extremely curious to see his almost four hour long film, that have gained several awards already.

The ones I have never heard about are “Delphine and Carole” (Callisto Mc Nulty), ”M” (Yolande Zauberman), ”Scheme Birds” (Ellen Fiske, Ellinor Hallin) and “Selfie” (Agostino Ferrente).

https://europeanfilmawards.eu/en_EN/selection-documentation-current?fbclid=IwAR2zDaly00tgUb56pPJgkvtldvxL6WdH9l11fIyVzI-tHEqsV472bCWPCs0

Photo from “Advocate” – http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4553/

Message2Man Festival in Saint Petersburg

By this time, end of August, I am always pleasantly bombarded on FB with Messages from the (sorry!) Message2Man festival (September 14-21) in Saint Petersburg, a festival that I have attended so many times, enjoying the city and the rich programme. This year it is the edition number 29 and the FB information bombardment is a daily professionally presented – title by title – presentation of the films in the International Competititon of full-length documentaries, the short documentaries, short fiction, short animation, the National Competition of documentary films and the unique „In Silico Experimental Short Film Competition“. Contrary to much other communication through Google Translate, or do the Russians use better translation tools?, maybe translators?, the English text that follows the Russian is ok and the Danish thereafter is understandable contrary to the google translate’s often nonsense translation.

The three curators of the programme, all people with a strong film knowledge, also of what happens outside the big country are Alexei Medvedev, Mikhail Zheleznikov and Eugenia Marchenko.

To mention some films I know from the Intl.section, again again „Honeyland“ by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov, lovely „Los Reyes“ by Chilean directors Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff and impressive Polish The Wind. A Documentary Thriller by Michał Bielawski.

… and two films in the National section, both of them I saw at IDFA in Amsterdam: „The Potato Eaters“ by Dina Barinova, a tough social document and „How Big Is the Galaxy?“ by director Ksenia Yelyan, a charming film on kids in Arctic Siberia. There are twelve films in this section, I count on friends at the festival to tell me if there are titles I should watch.

The President of the festival is director Alexei Uchitel, the founder is wonderful “Misha”, Mikhail Litvyakov, who of course is always at the festival, although not totally involved but enthusiastic and warm in his approach to cinema and people of cinema.

I have many fine memories from the festival, I will not be there this year but as before: Respect and good luck!

https://message2man.com/en/news/xxix-kinofestival-poslanie-k-cheloveku-objavil-konkursnuju-programmu/

Photo from one of the opening ceremonies of M2M at the Winter Palace!

 

SFF Awards for Documentaries

A CopyPaste from the website of the Sarajevo Film Festival, click the titles of the winners and you will get the description/synopsis:

HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM

WHEN THE PERSIMMONS GREW / XURMALAR YETIŞƏN VAXT

Azerbaijan, Austria

Director: Hilal Baydarov

Award in the amount of 3,000 €, sponsored by Government of Switzerland.

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE

STACK OF MATERIAL / GOMILA MATERIJALA

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Director: Sajra Subašić

Financial award in the amount of 2,500 €.

HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD

THE EUPHORIA OF BEING / A LÉTEZÉS EUFÓRIÁJA

Hungary

Director: Réka Szabó

Best film of the Competition Programme – Documentary Film dealing with the subject of human rights. Award in the amount of 3,000 €, sponsored by Kingdom of the Netherlands.

https://www.sff.ba/en/news/11227/25th-sarajevo-film-festival-awards

At the Cineuropa publication that came out today, Tina Poglajen writes a very positive review of the main award winner, here is a quote: When the Persimmons Grew is a beautiful film, in more than one sense of the word. The past tense used in the title is not coincidental: in this countryside, in this house, the present seems to come only once a year. The rest is just remembering the past, lost in one’s thoughts, looking at old photos, reminiscing melancholically about the times that once were or, perhaps, counting the ticks of the clock on the wall, waiting for a new persimmon season to come around – one which, in the end, will also have inevitably passed… For the whole review:

https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/376863/

The jury consisted of three festival directors: Nenad Puhovski, ZagrebDox & Orwa Nyrabia, IDFA together with Emilie Bujes from Visions du Réel in Nyon. At the Swiss festival “When the Persimmons Grew” received two awards.

The audience, however, voted differently giving 4.85 points out of 5 to the most awarded documentary of this year, “Honeyland”, by Tamara Korevska and Ljubomir Stefanov – the audience award for a documentary at the festival.

Top Docs to be Screened in Riga

Or you could say the best of the best of current international documentaries will be screened in the mini-festival that per tradition runs parallel to the Baltic Sea Docs development and pitching workshop.

8 films, Riga, Cinema K-Suns, from September 3-8.

The ones I have already seen and written above are Dutch master Heddy Honigmann’s ”Buddy” that for sure must appeal to dog lovers in the Latvian capital. Far from that in style is Danish journalist and documentarian Mads

Brügger’s controversial ”Cold Case Hammarskjöld”, where the director and the Swedish private investigator Göran Björkdahl look for what actually happened, when the plane with the Swedish secretary general Dag H. crashed mysteriously in 1961, when the anti-colonialist Dag H. was on his way to Congo. Reetta Huhtanen’s ”Gods of Molenbeek” about the two boys from different cultures and Ljubomir Stefanov & Tamara Kotevska’s ”Honeyland” are poetic films that go everywhere to be awarded and praised, both hoping for European Film Academy nomination. Not to forget Bernadett Tuza-Ritter’s ”A Woman Captured”, slavery in a European country, Hungary, in the 21st century!

Indeed, crème de la crème…

So for me personally I look forward to see the remaining 3, with descriptions :

« The Greenaway Alphabet » – « Peter Greenaway’s name in the world of film and contemporary art has a recognised value. The Greenaway’s Alphabet is his partner’s, artist Saskia Boddeke’s, essay on creativity, film history, relationships, parents, children and everything else Peter calls life.  Unexpectedly revealing are a father’s (Greenaway) talks with his teenage daughter, whose penetrating questions break down barriers and allow for a sense the human side of the art and the experiment. The Greenaway Alphabet – artistically formulated milestones in the director’s universe that bring us closer to his abundantly creative life and also his eccentric and dynamic personality… » Will probably be entertaining !

« For Sama » – Waad al-Kateab & Edward Watts Channel4 production – « For Sama is a new mother’s love letter to her infant daughter – a personal and emotional missive from experiences in Aleppo, Syria. In 2011, the film’s director Waad al-Kateab is an emerging journalist who begins to film the increasing unrest. The camera becomes her ally, recording the siege on the city, and the selfless actions of her husband and many other Syrians, who stayed in the besieged city and kept the hospital running in order to help the victims of the attacks. At the same time she is also a mother, who has to face a decision – leave Syria to save her child’s life, or continue to fight for the freedom for which so much has already been sacrificed. » I read about it, only highly praising words, an emotional doc masterpiece !

« One Child Nation“ – Nanfu Wang, Jialing Zhang – „In place of the “one-child policy” Chinese propaganda is now proclaiming a “two-child plan”. What is hiding behind this type of policy implementation machinery, and what is the effect of this enormous system on citizens’ lives? Under what circumstances have those generations grown up in – those without whose manufactured goods we could not imagine living, but about whom we know next to nothing? While examining the fates of her immediate family, director Nanfu Wang explores one of the most ghastly social experiments in human history. And the viewer is invited to take a direct look into what is perhaps the most refined modern-day propaganda regime. » Never heard about it… sounds interesting.

And here are the links to the five documentaries mentioned above:

Buddy – http://www.magnificent7festival.org/en/prijatelj.php

Cold Case Hammarskjöld – http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4457/

Gods of Molenbeek – http://www.magnificent7festival.org/en/atos_i_amin.php

Honeyland – http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4449/

A Woman Captured – http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4093/

http://balticseadocs.lv/film-screenings/films-2019/

Sarajevo FF: True Stories

Here we are after the presentation of 4 stories that take its start in the past: From Left Nataša Damnjanovic (tutor and editor of visuals), Ishak Jalimam (organiser), me (tutor), the four storytellers Mirna Buljugic, Senija Jakupovic, Iva Radic and Aleksandar Zolja, Robert Zuber (tutor and moderator). Staša Bajac (tutor) and the mother of the Dealing with the Past project at the festival Maša Markovic were missing.

After… 90 minutes of emotionally strong stories presented in a full house Atrium in Hotel Europe: festival participants, filmmakers, who might be interested in picking up the stories and develop them into films.

For four days we were together talking about the stories and about how to

present them in a way that is understandable. A pitch you could call it or stories that need to be brought to a wider audience by people, who are close to them and/or have lived them. Survivors who talk about those who did not survive. Stories from the past seen through the present.

Aleksandar Zolja told about the ”living library” project, where, through the organisation Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, he is one of those who organisers that survivors of the war in Bosnia meet with young people, for instance high school students. They talk about their (horrible) experiences, the aim is to get rid of prejudices among the young ones, or call it aim for reconciliation. Zolja told the story of Fikret Bacic, who returned from working in Germany to see that his whole family had been executed. Bacic, one of the living books, was in the audience being welcomed with a big applause.

Senija Jakupovic was the next presenter, a true charismatic storyteller, whose own story is of great interest, with a Danish angle, as she left for Denmark after her husband was taken to a camp. In Denmark, in Stubbekøbing, she was continuing her job as a teacher for a couple of years, returning to Bosnia, where she met Selma Cengic, the protagonist of a story that could be turned into a documentary film or a feature. Cengic, present in the audience, was in Germany, when she decided to return to fight in the Bosnian army as the only woman. Her experience in the army, meeting a Serbian Bosnian, who had been in the Bosnian army right from the beginning, made her leave hatred and work for reconciliation.

In this writing I am simplifying and I can’t show you the visuals that accompanied the presentations, so well put together by Serbian Nataša Damnjanovic and Staša Bajac.

Much of the visual material come from the archive collected by Birn, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, whose Mirna Buljugic took us to a story about a man, who was next in line during a massacre at the Koricani Cliffs. The man, now living in Norway, decided “to jump into life”, down the cliffs where he woke up later surrounded by hundreds of dead bodies. Incredible story, the man became one of the main witnesses at the Tribunal in Hague, where perpetrators like Radovan Karadzic were convicted.

Finally Iva Radic told her own story “Iva Radic, who is still searching for the remains of her father killed in Vukovar”… in a passionate heartbreaking way.

I will quote from the catalogue: “…Iva Radić has spent the past twenty-eight years searching for her father. Radić was born to a Serb mother and a Croat father, who did not fight in the Croatian War of Independence. When the war reached Vukovar, the Radić family fled. “My father Mijo had relatives in Split, who told him they would welcome him and me, but neither my mother nor the children from her first marriage. After that, we all went to Serbia, but soon we decided to return to our hometown. Upon our return to Vukovar, soldiers of the Yugoslav Peoples’ Army stopped our car not far from the Velepromet storage facility, which had been converted into a makeshift prison camp. They ordered my mother, my sister – who had just reached legal age – my physically disabled father, who suffered from muscular dystrophy, and me out of the car, and took us to be interrogated. They separated my father from the rest of us, and took him to be questioned in nearby Negoslavci. That was the last time we saw him. After ten days, they put my mother, my sister and me on a bus to Serbia,” recalls Radic, citing events from November of 1991, when she was eight years old…”

In the accompanying visuals you saw Iva Radic confronting a man, who according to her was the one who drove the father away. Quite dramatic scenes – for me first of all a love story between a daughter and her father, ”my guardian angle”, ahh she spoke so beautifully about him, the daughter who now lives in Belgrade and has a 15 year old son and a mother, who is worried for the daughter and her mission.

Thank you Maša Markovic for including me, coming from outside the region, in this important initiative, that is supported by Robert Bosch Stiftung. Unforgettable.

www.sff.ba

Sarajevo FF: Pawlikowski and Documentaries

It’s not every day that one Oscar-winner takes a photo of another Oscar-winner. It happened the other day, where my friend, photographer and filmmaker Georg Zeller sat behind Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Birdman, The Revenant), who was in the first row in a totally packed Meeting Point cinema in Sarajevo, where the audience had enjoyed the four documentaries Pawel Pawlikowski made in the 1990’es: FROM MOSCOW TO PIETUSHKI: A JOURNEY WITH BENEDICT YEROFEYEV (1990), DOSTOEVSKY’S TRAVELS (1991), SERBIAN EPICS (1992) and TRIPPING WITH ZHIRINOVSKY (1995). I was the lucky one to be the moderator of the 40 minutes long Q&A in a room full of energy and interest. There was no fatigue even if the audience had been there for four hours watching the programme!

The four films were made for BBC, Pawlikowski praised the commissioning editor Nigel Williams, who gave him free hands to make the films within the strand “Bookmark” – so the films had to deal with literature one way or the other. The documentary about Benedict Yerofeyev, the first he made, is fabulous, I had never heard about the writer before – Pawlikowski had, sharing his novel with his father, a film made with no script, “I made these films by observing, filming (on 16mm), going to the editing room seeing what I was missing, and then back to filming”. For the two last films, the director had the renowned Polish cinematographer, Bogdan Dziworski, to help him.

Of course there were several questions to “Serbian Epics” that was, at that time, during the war, accused of being propaganda for Serbian nationalism, which people in the audience said they could not see today. On the question on how he felt filming Karadzic up in the mountains during the bombing of Sarajevo, the director answered that these were terrible moments in his life that he will never be able to forget.

“For you, what are the characteristics of a good documentary”, the moderator asked the director… “I have no idea”… but mentioning our common hero, Russian Sergey Dvortsevoy, he responded anyway, did he not?

https://www.sff.ba/novost/11156/honorary-heart-of-sarajevo-award-to-pawel-pawlikowski

Current Time TV – Also at Sarajevo Film Festival

Note the little ”also”… because when it comes to Current Time TV, they have been here, there and everywhere in Central and Eastern Europe, a great new player in the documentary community, in pitching panels, active and enthusiastic. I have met them in Riga, in Tbilisi, in Kiev, in Prague and now they are also here in Sarajevo being part of the Docu Talent presentation that takes place tomorrow at Sarajevo’s Hotel Europe, quote from the organisers, the Jihlava Film Festival:

”The most promising project will receive the Docu Talent Award in cooperation with Current Time TV. The award is accompanied by a financial prize in the amount of 5,000 USD.”

But what is it, Current Time TV that is far from being « a normal public broadcaster”. I asked Natalia Arshavskaya, who together with her boss Kenan Aliyev and colleague Sergei Trofimov run the documentary department of  ”Current Time, known locally as Настоящее Время, (that) is the digital and TV Russian-language news and features network of U.S. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). It is a leading broadcaster of independent documentary films for Russian speaking audiences…”

OK, American propaganda you might think… not at all when you look at the films Current Time TV has commissioned. I went back to Natalia Arshavskaya to get some facts and personal comments:    

”Thank you for your keeping your interest in (spreading the word about) Current Time, I’m happy to send you the titles that we have commissioned recently – but also in our whole history, since Current Time exists for not so long (2,5 years on air) and we’ve been commissioning only since late 2017…

Let me start with an audience favourite, Home Games by Ukrainian Alisa Kovalenko – this one literally was the first supported and completed film, so we love them a lot. Alisa is a talented director and her access to the protagonists was incredible and she’s just a very brave girl so we’re glad we could be of help to this project…

Another Ukrainian is Heat Singers by Nadia Parfan (at Baltic Sea Docs, Riga last year, ed.) – I guess we not only got charmed by the director’s energy, but also by the daring subject itself. Communal services is another taboo in post-Soviet space, and the guys did great creating a chanting world of heat workers…

Not to forget How Big Is The Galaxy by Ksenia Elyan – I guess it’s mainly our contribution to spreading the knowledge about life of the indigenous people of far north of Russia (on the edge of extinction), but also support of the talented promising director from Russia…”

And not a big surprise that Current Time TV has supported the two masters Sergey Loznitsa and Vitaly Manski. Loznitsa premieres in Venice with another ambitious archive work, State Funeral – a 100% archival film on 7 days of mourning of Stalin upon his death. And Vitaly Manski, who has helped the station a lot in promotion, has had support for ”Putin’s Witnesses” 

I can only praise, what I have experienced from the station. Also on a personal level – I was in a jury with Kenan in Tbilisi, where we also had time to talk football. And Natasha is such a competent doc viewer that she has been invited to be a tutor in the upcoming Baltic Sea Docs.

Last word to her:

”Yet to complete is Hey, Teachers (former Teacher’s day) by Yulia Vishnevetskaya – it was pitched in Riga in 2017 and became practically our first film to commission. It’s importance for us is in fact that it will be the first ever documentary on school system in Russia – which is a hugely important subject, always silenced by authorities.”

Sarajevo: Docs Go Big!

Documentaries at the Sarajevo FF is Rada Sesic. She selects the competition program, she runs the Docu Rough Boutique (together with Martichka Bozhilova), the DocuCorner, running from place to place… And she is semper ardens as you can read in the special catalogue/poster, she has made for the documentaries in order to avoid the genre to be hidden in all the feature films that fill the catalogues here.

Full of superlatives she presents the films under the headline ”Women Shine on the Documentary Scene in Our Region ». She explains that ”out of 16 films (in the competition section), 10 are directed or co-directed by women. Hooray for the strong talented She directors from the region”. Voila!

The competition program opens today with – of course – ”Honeyland” by Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska, the Bosnian premiere of a film that also opened Magnificent7 in Belgrade, CinéDoc in Georgia and won man yawards including the main award at DocsBarcelona. Definitely – together with Kossakovsky’s ”Aquarela” – the documentary of 2019.

Also I want to mention the wonderful Greek film by Marianna Economou, ”When Tomatoes Met Wagner” and the 13 minutes long ”In Between” by Samir Karahoda from Kosovo. To be mentioned for sure is Rada Sesic passion for the short film.

The majority of the jury for the competition, however, is male: Nenad Puhovski, ZagrebDox & Orwa Nyrabia, IDFA together with Emilie Bujes from Visions du Réel in Nyon.

Lots to watch, lost of magical documentary moments.

www.sff.ba

Sarajevo Mon Amour

Well, I have not yet been through all the catalogues to find out, why the festival speaks French! But indeed it sounds and looks nice!

I am here again at the big festival for features and documentaries and shorts with a very strong industry section. It opens tonight and goes on until August 23. Competition programmes, a Human Rights Day, Honorary Hearts to Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, Isabelle Huppert and Pawel Pawlikowski.

For the latter I have been asked to moderate a Q&A with the Polish director, who in the 90’es lived in England and made films for the BBC. At a time where the broadcaster apparently still were open to non-formatted documentaries. To be prepared I enjoyed the four documentary films that will be screened here in Sarajevo tomorrow Saturday: Dostoevsky’s Travels, From Moscow to Pietushi: A Journey with Benedict Yerofeyev, Tripping With Zhirinovski, and Serbian Epics. Films that are still interesting to watch today because of their humour, the often satirical approach and playfulness. Far away from the fictional masterpieces the director made in Poland, Ida and Cold War, that will also be screened at the festival as well as other feature films by the director.

The Pawlikowski documentaries are part of the ”Dealing With the Past” program that also includes films like ”Meeting Gorbachev” by André Singer and Werner Herzog and ”Privacy of Wounds” by Dalia Kury. AND a section, the True Stories Market, where a handful of stories from the Yugoslav Wars will be presented to filmmakers, who are invited ”to execute a project inspired by one of the selected stories”, as Maša Markovic, the manager of the program says in the catalogue. I have been invited to take part in the project preparation for preparation, we had the first meeting today, amazing stories – I will tell you about them later but my first impression is like the one I had last year:

” Back in Copenhagen. Thinking of the many documentary adventures I take with me from the Sarajevo Film Festival. To be part of the training team of representatives from ngo’s and human rights organizations was the experience for me. Engaged, committed people who every day deal with human beings who suffer from the consequences of the wars in the 1990’es – and try to help them. Respect!”. Written in August 2018.

Will report more from this inviting and well organised festival.

www.sff.ba