Pitching… Some Thoughts After Baltic Sea Docs

Pitching … has come to stay. Many say that there are too many pitching sessions. And there are many! There should be less is a sentence ofte heard. But more and more are organised. Also on a national basis, where film funds and institutes invite filmmakers to present their ideas in a public forum. Before decisions on funding are being made.

I write this after the 23rd session of the Baltic Sea Docs… A succesful one, I think, I am biased as I am a proud part of a team and has been that from the beginning. Part of the furniture, some will say.

As one who has attended, I guess, almost a hundred of pitching sessions, I also sometimes feel a fatigue but always end up, like in Riga,  having a positive reaction: GOOD. When an old cat like me, who experienced the first big IDFA Forum in Amsterdam and have been responsible for the set up of sessions all over, during my time at the EDN and elsewhere: the moment when I see filmmakers express passion and ambition, I am hooked. They agree to try to present their project within the internationalised time standard of public pitching – 7 minutes for the presenter/the filmmaker(s) with the same time for the reactions from broadcasters, sales agents and distributors.

That’s how it was in Riga last friday and saturday with a panel of 19 men and women to respond, coming from quite different parts of the world. From Tokyo and Qatar, from Helsinki and London, from Vilnius and Amsterdam. Some of the people at the table had experience, some were there for the first time. Some were able to express their opinion within the limited time, ask questions, give advice – others had problems in doing so. That’s how it is.

Pitching: Of course it is absurd – how can you present a film project, that you have worked on for many months or even years, in 7 minutes! Therefore the pitches are normally followed by individual meetings, where more deep conversations can take place. And I think that everyone will agree, that no financing come up immediately after the pitch has been made. It is a dialogue that you start between the filmmakers and their eventual funders. Where you expect respect from both sides – the funders towards the filmmakers and  vice versa.

Except for one or two all 24 film projects, that were on stage in Riga at the Baltic Sea Docs, had attended a couple of days of discussion with colleagues and trainers to be ready to do their presentations. During these days trailers and teasers had been worked on. To follow the words from (in most cases) director and producer. For many of the projects from this Eastern European pitch session, the filmmakers had been at other workshops, for instance at the B2B (https://www.b2bdoc.se/news) or at festivals like Cinédoc (http://www.cinedoc-tbilisi.com/) and DocuDays UA (http://docudays.ua/eng/). And several will for sure bring their “babies” to other events. It’s about creating interest, finding partners, networking. The colleagual atmosphere at events like the one in Riga is wonderful to experience. Thank you filmmakers, broadcasters and sales agents for this approach.

http://balticseadocs.lv   

Baltic Sea Docs Pitching

Yesterday where the news broke that Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov is free and back in Kiev, the pitching of the 23rd Baltic Sea Docs ended. The photo (taken by Latvian producer Guntis Trekteris) shows three smiling Ukrainian filmmakers around the time, where the information went viral; at lunch time when they had finished their succesful project presentation. From left the director Olga Zhurba of ”Roma” and one of her producers Darya Bassel and to the right the producer of ”Roses. Film Cabaret”, Oleksandra Kravchenko. Both film projects were met with applause by the panel and I am sure with contacts to broadcasters and sales agents that can further the development of the films.

I knew both film projects from March this year, where the „Ukrainian Doc Preview“ took place at the DocuDays in Kiev, http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4492/; Olga Zhurba did yesterday the most touching presentation of the two days of pitching talking

about her relation to the boy Roma from meeting him on Maidan in 2014 until today, where he is 18. ”There is no happy ending, but there is hope”, she said.

… and Kravchenko presented a clip from ”Roses”: dynamic, energetic, feminist approach, 7 women „from the freak cabaret Dakh Daughters Band“, poetry, music, provocative and enjoyable from start till end. It’s gonna be a hit!

Two Russian projects also stood out, „How to Save a Dead Friend” by Marusya Syroechkovskaya with Ksenia Gapchenko as producer, and Gayane Petrosyan’s ”The Transition”. The latter tells the story about the director’s daughter, who goes from being Evgenia to Evgeny, a nice young man with a beard who is now married, living in a country that is not really welcoming a gender transition. Petrosyan stressed that it is ”the story of my family”, I would add with many layers.

Hate to use that word but „How to Save a Dead Friend” is sensational – Marusya S. filming Kimi from 2005-2016, where he fades away due to overdosing on meds and hard drugs in a state of total self-destruction. It’s a love story, ”about a feeling when you know disaster is coming but there’s nothing you can do, just sit and wait for it, it’s about a total internal freeze in the face of a catastrophe ».

I have mentioned 4 out of 24 projects – they will go international for sure and as many of the projects from Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Latvia and Lithuania they are cinematic, and brought forward because they are important for those behind the camera. Because it was necessary to express something from the heart.

Read more about all the projects on

http://balticseadocs.lv/industry/selected-projects-2019/

Baltic Sea Docs 2019

Two days into the workshop and mini-festival in Riga – the 23rd edition of a forum that starts with preparation of 24 documentary projects for pitching Friday and Saturday with a parallel screening of films. September 1st the BSD opened in the cinema K-Suns with the film « The Greenaway Alphabet”, directed by his partner, artist Saskia Boddeke, and with his teenage daughter as the one who asks the 75 year old father questions, that, as the film goes forward, more and more deals with death. Greenaway is, as film critic and professor Viktors Freibergs said before the film, surprisingly frank and less self-centered than in his latest films, obviously because of the daughter, who knows how to « tackle » him…

The film is joyful and playful, and makes you want to re-watch some of his works, like « Drowning  by Numbers », « Draughtman’s Contract » or « Pillow Book » or (the best of his films ?) « The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and Her Lover ». Clips from these films are in this Alphabet-work, as is his wonderful sentence “Cinema is far too important to be left to storytellers”. Yes!

The film program is excellent, tonight “Gods of Molenbeek” by Reeta Huhtanen is on, followed by “A Woman Captured” by Bernadett Tuza-Ritter, who will be there to talk to the audience.

It would be wrong of me to – at this point before the pitching – highlight some of the projects that will be pitched Friday and Saturday to a panel of 19 decision-makers – broadcasters, sales agents, distributors, film funds.

Instead I can stress how strong the MEDIA afternoon program was with Danish Ove Rishøj Jensen and Aleksandar Govedarica from the Canadian sales and production company Syndicado.

Ove Rishøj Jensen, a former colleague from EDN, is now working free-lance as an all-round consultant in the documentary world, being also a producer at the Swedish company Auto Images. Here in Riga he talked about outreach campaigns – “enlarging audiences for your documentaries”, was the headline. Jensen has started his own company Paradiddle Pictures, (http://www.paradiddlepictures.com/

where he offers » Documentary Training, Guidance, Content and Partnership”. He had two examples of outreach campaigns for the audience, the American “The Invisible War » with a production budget: 450.000$ and a campaign budget: 450.000$!!! And the one he took part in, through Auto Images, a campaign for the beautiful « Every Face Has a Name » that followed « Harbour of Hope” in 2015. The production budget was 320.000€ and the campaign was covered via in house working hours!

A third film is being made on the basis of the amazing footage of holocaust survivors coming to Malmø Sweden in 1945. My colleague Allan Berg has written about „Every Face Has a Name” (in Danish): http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3084/.

And it was a pleasure to listen to the conversation between Aleksandar Govedarica and Latvian producer Gints Grube, who had not forgotten his background as a talk show interviewer at Latvian television. It was entertaining and informational to hear about how a sales agent works, how he selects films, what festivals are the best etc. Govedarica you meet everywhere, he is a film lover doing a good job as I see it.

http://balticseadocs.lv/

Tarkovsky on Tarkovsky

The always up-to-date Cineuropa brought yesterday a review of «Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer, written by Marta Bałaga. Here is the intro, a quote, click below and read the whole review plus an interview with the director, the son:

Andrei A Tarkovsky, as in the son of a certain Andrey Tarkovsky, as in the son of a certain Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky, as in I promise to stop now, arrived on the Lido with a curious little documentary this year. In “Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer” [+], shown in Venice Classics at the Venice Film Festival, he doesn’t do “talking heads”, nor does he invite an endless parade of experts and aficionados to talk about his father’s films. Instead, he just allows him to speak for himself, courtesy of hours and hours of recordings in which he analyses his own work. So thoroughly does he do this, that it would undoubtedly bring any college student to tears and numerous dissertations on the subject to an untimely, violent end…

https://cineuropa.org/en/film/376940/

Emil Langballe: Q’s Barbershop – Vollsmose Forever

I had only seen one of Emil Langballe’s previous films, his graduation film from the National Film School in England, ”Beach Boy”, a well balanced, cinematic non-moralistic portrait of a young black man and his relationship to a middle-aged British woman in Kenya.

His film from Vollsmose – quote from Wikipedia – ”… Its (Vollmose’s) many social issues cause it to be officially classified as a ghetto by Danish authorities…” – is full of warmth and joy and humour in its description of the barbershop, where Somalian Qasim is the one, who meets kids and youngsters and grown-up’s from the Somalian community, who come to have the hair cut and to have a talk with the smiling, mild man, who gives advice on how to behave and also talks about – alas – how we Danes meet him with scepticism and prejudices. Many of that kind of stories are brought to the barbershop by his clients, who are met by him as if they belong to one big family.

It’s – like the one mentioned above – a well balanced film, you can’t help love Q for his human qualities, he is a role model as one of the clients say, who is far away from his roots – I would love to go back and live by the sea, he says. The Danish approach to ”the ghetto” is conveyed through the radio, that communicates that buildings in Vollsmose are to be taken down. But the director refrains from involving the film and its characters directly in that discussion, he gives no answers but raises indirectly questions to the ongoing discussion about the Danish immigration policy…

The film was recently shown on Danish television and is the opening film of Nordisk Panorama in Malmö mid September. A good choice!

MakeDox Awards

At the 10th edition of the MakeDox festival in Skopje in North Macedonia the awards were given in a non-competitive festive atmosphere as you have been able to witness through the huge photo coverage the festival has given its FB friends, including me, who was at the festival a couple of years ago, and it IS like that: warm in temperature and hospitality, and focused on bringing the best of the best to the audience. That is from my point of view conveyed perfectly in the jury choices:

• Onion Award- best film in the Main program
Jury: Ann Georgette, Ineke Smiths, Victor Edde
Solo- Artemio Benki
Special mention (City of the Dead- Miguel Eeek)

• Young Onion Award- for the best newcomer’s film two awards
Jury: Vincent Deutre, Viola Stephan, Gjorche Stavreski
Honeyland (Ljubomir Stefanov, Tamara Kotevska)
Gods of Molenbeek- (Reeta Huhtanen)

• Sliced Onion- for the best short film
Jury: Ondrej Kamenicky, Martin Ivanov, Anca Paunescu
Our Song to War- Juanita Rodriguez Onzaga

• Onion Seed Award- for the best student film
Jury: Jasmin Basic, Martina Valentina Baumgartner, Illeana Stanculescu
La Bestia- Train of the Unknowns- Manuel Inacker
Special mention ( Hey, bro!- Aleksandar Elkan)

• Best Moral Approach Award
Jury: Vivan Storlund, Risto Solunchev, John Parish
The Gods of Molenbeek- Reeta Huhtanen

And look at the photo (taken by the festival): Director Artemio Benki calls the protagonist of the film, Martìn Perino, to tell him that their film has won the main award! Long distance call, I guess Martin Perino was in Buenos Aires. The award is given to a film that took me totally by the heart, when I saw it in May this year, here is a bit of my text on this site: …

Now it is my turn to put down, what I feel and think after having watched ”Solo” – for the second time. I feel that I have been given the gift of getting very close to a man with an extraordinary musical talent. For playing and composing. A very generous move from a fragile man, who spent 3 years at el Borda, the psychiatric hospital in Buenos Aires, gets out from there but is still under treatment. He lets me suffer with him, be happy and enjoy, when he is at the piano. And a very – towards him – respectful and compassionate move from the filmmakers to convey, what they got from Martìn Perino… if you want to read the whole review:

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4542/

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.