It’s a strong piece of observational public service documentary, Greek/French director Marco Gastine has made. “Public Service” reminding us about, what legendary Scottish John Grierson thought should be the role of documentaries: to make the audience, the civil society understand the importance of public institutions. In this case the K.A.T. hospital in Athens Greece, where a section is treating patients, who have experienced serious accidents, paraplegics. But Grierson also stressed that these documentaries, apart from having an informative goal, should be made by filmmakers with a creative and artistic interpretation.

For 108 minutes the film takes the audience to the hospital with the staff and

the patients and those, who are close to them. Parents, friends, relatives. It’s about the continuous efforts from both sides to improve the patients mobility, it’s about « try, try, and try again”, training to operate a wheelchair, to get to the next step, the walker and from there to the crutches. And it is about to be able to cope with everyday life again, with all the mental obstacles that also have to be overcome.

And it is about the staff and their meetings discussing the patients, their disagreements, their rounds to talk to (they are all male) the men, the optimistic small remarks, testing and celebrating the small steps forward…

And it is about catching the moments of joy as when the lead doctor, who has been at the hospital for 39 years goes on pension and makes a party for everyone. Or when friendships are made between the patients with remarks like “be strong, the battle is not over yet”. The film has a strong emotional impact because of these scenes.

And, five months later, a text says, Giorgis graduates in economy and comes to the stage in a wheelchair – he was the one who had his accident when diving not taking enough notice of how deep the water was. Stavros fights to learn to walk, Agis is in the swimming pool (wonderful images under water), gets out, walks to the car with crutches, pass these to his father and takes the driver’s seat in the car. Not all of them get that far in their effort to gain Independence but less is more.

Greece, France, 2019, 108 mins.

This film that I first got to watch yesterday having heard and read about it, only positive words… Here is the annotation from IDFA’s Docs for Sale:

“Benedetta (Barrese) wants to disappear. An iconic fashion model in the 1960s, she became a muse to Warhol, Dali & Penn and Avedon. As a radical feminist in the 1970s, she fought for the rights and emancipation of women. A fight against the manipulating world of images and against her son’s camera, who filmed her since he was a child, despite her resistance.”

And in the CinéDoc Festival in Tbilisi, where I was in the Caucasus jury, the international jury gave the film the main award with the following motivation:

“This film openly talks about respect, dignity, beauty and honesty. The film makes us think about how we treat privacy and who has the right to use it, which is a very important question for any documentary film. An emotional insight into a relationship between mother and son.”

And yet, why is it that I am disappointed with the film. Too high expectations? Maybe. But also because I got the impression of an insecure director, who took one path of storytelling and then went for another one and then and then… He starts by casting beautiful young women asking them to pose, having a beauty spot placed on the right chin. Which is what his mother has, his now old mother who still has a remarkable face and a charisma significant from all the great archive material in the film. BUT the film is about a mother, who wants to get away from the camera and who wants to have her son Ben to put down the camera to she can be with Ben.

As the jury in Tbilisi indirectly formulates it : she has the right to the privacy that he, the son and filmmaker, abuses constantly. Instead he has chosen to have a little bit of everything, creating her biography via archive and reconstruction of her as young – where a stronger focus on her wanting to disappear, to sum up her life, put it in boxes and be together with her son would have been much more interesting. Intimate conversations on life and opinions…

Italy, 2019, 90 mins.

https://www.thedisappearanceofmymother.com/welcome

The BFI Doc Society publishes a very good newsletter. In the one I received yesterday, there was a text about the presence of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, whose last film ”The Rest” was screened at the Sheffield Documentary Festival. He was interviewed by Jess Search, here is a bit of what he said about documentary:

“Documentary is always a challenge. it’s very close range. If it’s fighting, it’s like boxing. You have to take all those punches and you have to feel the pain… and about the medium… “You cannot hide, you expose yourself and also you have no excuse about any mistakes. So I love it because it’s so truthful and clear and direct. It’s a very honest form, as honest as it can get. So that’s why it attracts me so much. Because it requires observation, understanding and passion, it requires a lot of passion.“

His previous documentary, edited by Danish Niels Pagh Andersen, « Human Flow », was praised on this site:

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4066/

At the first session of the Ex Oriente the directors taking part were asked to write a text “I am your character” in a couple of hours. I used the two hours before meeting the directors with their texts to write about some images that stayed on my mind from what I had seen. For you readers I have made some notes below so you know just a little bit of what I am talking about. Here is my small image-poetry:

The view from my hotel window.

Three angles, the church next door, the green and more green, the man packing his car. For a Sunday drive ?

Football – Dani Alves making a great goal on my apple computer last night, they say he is 36 years, no no, he is young as ever. 1)

Football without ball. Jan Gogolas clip with the kids, who are bored of the match going on, talking about the teeth that they are losing and getting…

The intellectuals as Gogola called them in conversation about Vaclav Klaus breaking a pen somewhere far away from the stadion. 2)

… and the little boy crawling into a cupboard or whatever it is in the flat in Pilsen. Unforgettable. 3)

Cut to the people looking into the kiosk, to Ania, the mother of everyone in the Polish town, a man giving her flower, you are beautiful he says. 4)

Love

the mother in Belarus, who has a mission, she cares, she travels her country to fight the

dedovschina

magic word to say, terrible meaning 5)

and this morning the clips from Israel, the Palestinians having their eyes covered, cut to corpses, the boots of dead men and a boy who is in jail because he is addicted to the internet, gosh ! 6)

and the small Roma in Maidan, no-one wants him but for the director Olga PHOTO (by Daniel Svoren) who sits next to him, she cares, she is a hero, is he a lost soul 7)

as maybe also Jesse from Canada is, coming back to hug her mother in Romania and to meet her father,

where do I belong, here or there or everywhere 8)

everywhere,

the world is ours as Lubo and Laco visualise, let the music and the poetry take us to Manhattan and to the streets of Paris, with or without teeth 9)

all is possible, there are no limits, if you want to send a message, use the post office, if you want say something, use the image, make

a composition that is your own, put your heart into it, learn from

Rembrandt, Brueghel, Tarkovski, Truffaut, Coutard, Sokurov, Hanak!!!

Notes:

1. Copa America, Bresil – Qatar 5-0
2. Film 2-0 by Pavel Abraham, 2012
3. Project by Jaroslav Kratochvil: Comfortable Century
4. Project by Daniel Stopa: Women in Kiosk, Staron Film
5. Project by Anna Bodyako & Alexander Mihalkovich: The Mothers´Crusade
6. Israeli producer Hilla Medalia showed strong clips from “Uncensored Voices” and the Chinese internet-film
7. Project by Olga Zhurba: Roma, producers Viktoria Khomenko and Darya Bassel
8. Project by Laurentiu Garofeanu: Lost and Found
9. Film Steam on the River by Kirchhoff and Remunda, 2015