They have just left the room, the nine students and filmmakers, who have been sharing their projects, their ideas, their visuals, five of them are from Konrad Wolf Filmuniversität, taken here by teacher and cameraperson Merle Jothe, who talked to us yesterday about two films that she has been working on, the second one the award-winning ”Berg Fidel – A School for All”, directed by Hella Wenders, wonderful kids, fine situations, would love to watch the whole film.

It’s been (so far) 4 full days, 3 more to go, and now the participants want to

make small films in Gori. Get out from the hotel to observe and film. Shooting today, editing tomorrow. Fresh air after inside days full of words and feedback. The more you hear, the closer you get to the participants – students and emerging makers – the more you will be able to help them. It’s a process and there is a lot of psychology involved… after decades of doing this, I still ask myself ”who am I to tell others what to do”. I am thinking of late great editor Menno Boerema, who died not long ago – after giving comments to projects he always said, ”forget everything I said”

Apart from the nine there are six filmmakers, who are in post-production. They have been given advice by Dana Bunescu and Albert Elings, experienced editors with quite different approach to their métier. These two have been watching hours of material, some rough cuts, shorter or longer. I have seen some of the material – Georgian Giorgi Parkosadze is working on a beautiful documentary about a mother and her son, who live in the mountains in summer time and (him) sometimes during winter, where the son is seen reflecting on his future. He wants to work with software and he wants to be married. Which is actually going to happen, to be filmed of course.

Another Georgian, Nikoloz Bezhanishvili has for years been filming in the city where we are, Gori. Stalin is the subject and the director has great footage with an old woman, who has dedicated her whole life to Gori-born Stalin, being a member of the communist party, who wants to have the statue of the great leader back in the place, where it stood. Well, actually they want it to be placed at another place, contrary to the other Communist party – here is a strong conflict between the two fractions, whose leaders do not like each other, to say the least. Absurd!

Quite charming is the project of Tatia (Tamar) Skhirtladze, whose ”Encounter” brings four previous world champions in chess playing together through archive and material shot today with the lovely women, Nona Gaprindashvili, Nana Alexandria, Maia Chiburdanidze and Nana Ioseliani, who were worshipped in Soviet Georgia and have many many childrren named after them. At this stage the film is a bit messy but with the help of a good editor, it can be a film for a big audience, not only in Georgia.

And innovative in style is ”Revolution in Armenia” by Vahan Khachatryan, who runs a documentary festival in his own country, a film buff, who for sure will see his film being screened in other countries, at other festivals. With small adjustments the film is ready.

Yes, there is so much talent – I have to mention with pleasure that film student Nina Cavalcanti from Brasil, in our group session, showed a film she made years ago with the master Gilberto Gil, a film from a record studio, full of energy, a true documentary in the style of Richard Leacock.

Finally I have to tell you about the excursion I took last night, invited by good friends, the organisers of the CinéDOC festival and the Summer School, Ileana Stanculescu and Artchil Khetagouri, who have a house in a village close to Gori, a beautiful place where organic tomatoes are grown, and a place where true neighbourhood exists. On the picture you see Zura and his wife Nana, and the two hosts. Lovely food, homemade chacha and toast after toast, as the Georgians do it and do it so well. The tomatoes were excellent!

http://www.cinedoc-tbilisi.com/

… Well, actually there is no cinema in Gori so the Cinédoc-Gori Mini Festival takes place in the big theatre that was built in 1937-38 to honour Josip Stalin, who was born in Gori… he never visited the theatre, it is being said.

BUT I did this afternoon to attend the screening of one of my darlings from the last years, Ukrainian Roman Bondarchuk’s “Dixieland”, written by Dar’ya Averchenko and produced by Latvian Ilona Bicevska. The film was screened as part of the CinéDOC MiniFestival for documentaries, this one in the section for young people. A clip from a previous post about the film written at its premiere in Kiev at the DocuDays:

“The film about jazz music performed by kids in a band in Kherson Ukraine, led by their old teacher, who founded the band just after WW2, picking up homeless children to give them the chance to develop their skills, gave them a life, simply – is a warm, so well made – Bondarchuk has indeed a documentary-eye – interpretation of a happy childhood, where kids have a good time developing their creative skills. As it is written in the catalogue: We all live once in Dixie Land – the country where politics, money and death do not exist at all. But over time this country is disappearing… yes, we are in Ukraine of today.”

I introduced the film and asked the young audience to give me comments after the film that I can forward to the Ukrainian/Latvian team.

Indeed the seven-eight commentators liked the film. They found it wonderful to see a film about real people, happy people one said, much more happy than we are here in Georgia! Others also praised the film saying that it was realistic and emotional. And one wanted to know what the director had done, I mentioned „Ukrainian Sheriffs“ and „Volcano“. It was great to feel that the audience appreciated the initiative to screen documentaries that they normally don’t have a chance to access.

I asked Anuka from the organising CinéDOC team to address a sweet looking girl to ask her if she plays an instrument. No, she said. Would you like to? Yes. Which instruments? Piano… and violin. Oh, yes, films can inspire, also when you are seven year old.

It’s too hot to be outside during the day, and the organisers of the CinéDOC Summer School know that. The brilliant team from CinéDOC has made the 15 participants (10 from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbadjan plus 5 students from Konrad Wolf Filmuniversität in Babelsberg Germany) meet 4 tutors (editors Albert Elings (Holland) and Dana Bunescu (Romania), cameraperson Merle Jothe (Germany) and myself from morning till evening, where we all go to the cinema, where the Cinédoc-Gori Mini Festival takes place. It opened last night with the sweet and charming “Transparent World” by Vakhtang Kuntsev-Gabashvili was shown. It won the Caucasus award at CinéDOC two years ago. I wrote an enthusiastic note on the film on that occasion – http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4226/ and I enjoyed to watch the film again, Beka and his father making a film. Lovely!

The film programme also includes films for children – like “Dixieland” from Ukraine – and this year’s winner at CinéDOC in Tbilisi, “The Disappearance of My Mother”. Read more about it on

http://www.cinedoc-tbilisi.com/?lang=ge

And again a salute to the CinéDOC people, who organise regional screenings all over Georgia, very well organised with regional coordinators, it’s film cultural policy!

There he goes again, the master of dealing creatively with archive, Sergei Loznitsa. His new film, to be premiered at the Venice International Film Festival (August 28 – September 7), entitled ”State Funeral” is – I have copy-pasted from Screen Daily, link below for the whole article –

… about the “grandiose, terrifying and grotesque” spectacle of the funeral of Joseph Stalin.

It will be the latest of Loznitsa’s montage films based on archive footage following Blockade, Revue, The Event and The Trial…

“I have been working with footage which was shot between March 5-8, 1953 for a film called The Great Farewell by directors including Sergei Gerasimov and Ilya Kopalin,” Loznitsa explains. “But the film was banned after people in the Soviet government saw it and so it was never released. The film only appeared during the period of perestroika in the 1990s.”

Berlin-based Loznitsa worked with 100 reels of material he found in the Russian state archive, which includes footage of the four-day event in Berlin, Warsaw and Prague as well as the major Soviet cities.

“The film will follow the chronology of the four days – from the announcement of Stalin’s death to the funeral in the Red Square,“ Loznitsa explained. “I want to present audiences with the opportunity to be inside that time and feel it.

“My generation can now start to talk about this time because for previous generations like that of my parents, there are still the painful memories,“

https://www.screendaily.com/searchresults?qkeyword=loznitsa

Review of «The Trial»: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4393/

Review of “The Event”: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4148/