Arthur Sukiasyan: Wound

Csilla Kato, member of the Caucasus Jury at Cinédoc Tbilisi wrote this longer version of motivation for the winner:

Earthquake shakes our basic security feeling and the basic assumption, belief, that we can accommodate comfortable life on a supporting and peaceful earth.

Wound brings us into a human world where the Armenian earthquake stricken town people integrated this experience of living with open wounds of earthquake tragedy for a long run.

It is a state of being that can be spiritually rewarding, as one of the protagonists states, referring to the example of Job from Bible.The film builds up a special time world, with the slowly changing rhythm of the sequences, long takes with still images, as well as the rhythm of the movement of the people in the film. The jury appreciated the craft of minimalist cinema used by Arthur Sukiasyan, through which he succeeds to evoke the state of being of people on the edge of existence.

Armenia, 2019, 25 mins.

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

Civil Pitch Tbilisi 2019

10 projects were part of the Civil Pitch in Tbilisi, one of the activities of the Industry section of Cinédoc Tbilisi festival in the capital of Georgia.

After a couple of days of training led by Daniel Abma and Brigid O’Shea, both from the DOKLeipzig, the NGO representatives and filmmakers were ready to present their projects to a panel including representatives from IDFA Bertha Fund, Baltic Sea Docs, Current Time TV, Golden Apricot Festival in Jerevan, One World Festival in Prague, DOK Leipzig…

The idea of the Civil Pitch is great: The NGO’s bring the subjects, the filmmakers the film skills. More or less, because many of the filmmakers were quite young and unexperienced – learning by doing.

They all did a good presentation, verbally, with passion and enthusiasm, more difficult with the visuals – the trailers/teasers – as many of the projects were very young as the filmmakers. What impressed me was the quality of language skills and that the NGO’s and filmmakers matched each other in a way that I sometimes had difficulties in understanding, who is who.

For me, who had the pleasure of moderating the session, the Civil Pitch gives me a fine inside to the troubles of the country, the issues needed to be discussed – like transgender, to be a young activist, to have lost a son in the war, people with disabilities, hate groups, pollution (yes, it’s terrible on the Rustaveli Boulevard) and North Ossetia that is a melting point of different cultures, the Ossetian, the Georgian and the Russian. Not to forget a project about a silent monk worshipped by thousands of people outside the official religious circles.

The venue – as previous years – was at the Open Society Georgia Foundation. Great hosts.

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

Klip vedrørende KLIPPEARBEJDE

STANLEY KUBRICK

Let no one forget this essential fact: ”Editing is the only unique aspect of filmmaking which doesnot resemble any other art form – a point so important it cannot be overstressed… It can make or break a film.” (Glem ikke denne væsentlige kendsgerning: “Klipning er det eneste unikke ved filmproduktion, som ikke ligner nogen anden kunstart – det er så vigtigt, at det ikke kan understreges nok… den kan skabe eller ødelægge en film.”

Still ovenfor: Stanley Kubrick: Eyes Wide Shut, 1999.

HENRIK VEILEBORG

Man ved nogenlunde godt, at vi gerne vil lave en film, som undersøger embedsmandsværket, hvordan foregår det egentlig, når nogle lovprocesser i Folketinget, blam, blam, blam? Hvordan er rundgangen, hvad sker der, hvad skal der til? Det ved vi sådan nogenlunde godt. Vi laver research, vi er meget optaget af at finde ud af, hvordan kommunikationsvejene er, af hvem, der bærer hvad hvorhen. Hvad sker der? Vi har øje for personer, fordi vi tænker: hov, hov, hov, vi er jo nødt til at få fat i nogen personer til vores B-niveau. På vores niveau her skal finde nogen personer, hvor vi kan investere noget identifikation. Nogen, vi ligesom kan holde med, nogen, som vi synes er nogen helte, som har en god sag. Og så nogen, som er modstandere. Der skal foregå noget. Måske er det to embedsmænd, som begge konkurrerer lidt om blive forfremmet, om at få den samme post. Det er sgu en meget spændende historie, lad os lige holde et særligt øje med, om der sker noget der…

Altså vi har ikke rigtig nogen sådan historie, vi ved ikke rigtig, hvad det er for en proces, der eventuelt kunne bære det der. Er der noget, der stærkt nok fremdrift i, som kan sørge for, at vi kan strukturere vores film?

Og i øvrigt, når der så er det, kan vi så overhovedet på nogen som helst måde lave en konstruktion, hvor niveauerne kommer til at spille sammen på en fornuftig måde? Det hjælper ikke noget, hvis vores personhistorie må fortælles først for at give mening, og så er den afviklet, og så kan en proceshistorie starte bagefter, og så falder det hele fra hinanden. Det skal netop spille samtidig, det hele.

Og det arbejde med dokumentarfilm indebærer, at man kan researche meget med en særlig årvågenhed, man kan være nysgerrig, man kan en masse ting, men hele det manuskriptarbejde, som for fiktionsfilmen ligger ved skrivebordet, det ligger for dokumentarfilmen i klippebordet bagefter, og jeg vil sige, det er utroligt, hvad man kan i et klippebord…

Still: Ulla Boye Rasmussen, instruktør og Henrik Veileborg, producer: Thors Saga, 2011

JOAN RANG CHRISTENSEN

Den vestlige verdens historiefortælling benytter i dag næsten udelukkende den kompositionsmodel, der hedder lineær dramaturgi. (Måske har du hørt om ”Berettermodellen” og ”Hollywoodmodellen”? Det er dem, jeg mener). Det betyder, at når vi laver film og teaterstykker, sætter vi vores historier sammen efter et bestemt forløb og med på forhånd definerede funktioner for rollerne. Modellen er effektiv, men når den rykker fra fiktionen og ind i den politiske tænkning, i vores verdensforståelse, bliver det farligt…

Hele modellen er koncentreret om konflikt. En konfliktfyldt situation, hvis eneste opgave er at udvikle sig, blive værre og værre og escalere ud i det uendelige. Indtil et klimaks opløser situationen. Så er historien slut, og en ny efter samme konflikthungrende struktur kan begynde…

Uden vi rigtigt er bevidste om det, begynder vi at tænke i modstande, hvis formål først og fremmest er at være i konflikt med hinanden – i en evig konfliktdans. Vi tænker i helte- og fjendebilleder, i ondskab og godhed, og det bliver fundamentet for vores forståelse af hinanden…

Foto: Joan Bang Christensen: I nat kommer krigen hjem, Teatret ved Sorte Hest frem til 11. maj 2019  

LINKS & LITT.

American Cinema Editors (ACE) Facebook side, 28. april 2019, oversættelse TSM. Stanley Kubrick citatet.

www.facebook.com/ACEFilmEditors/ 

ACE´s Facebookside har en diskussionstråd om hvorvidt musikproduktion og lydarbejde ikke i ét og alt ligner klippearbejdet)

Michel Chion: Eyes Wide Shut, analyse af denne, Kubricks sidste film, BFI, 2002

Henrik Veileborg: Filmfortælling, foredrag om filmdramaturgi trykt i Dansk Tidsskrift for Museumsformidling nr. 27, 2007, side 84-94.

Joan Rang Christensen: Det skal være slut med Hollywood-dramaturgiens fremstilling af et ”os” og et ”dem”, kronik i Information 20. april 2019.

Nicolas Philibert in Tbilisi

After the screening of a beautiful 2018 restored copy of “Etre et Avoir”, the film by Nicolas Philibert, that he made in 2001 to be premiered in 2002, to be an amazing audience success in cinemas in France, 2 mio. spectators (!) and elsewhere – a conversation (see photo taken by Georgian film director Nino Orjonikidze) took place at the Cinédoc festival in Tbilisi between Philibert and me. One hour of talk with a master about the film just shown and about filmmaking as Philibert sees it after having been making documentaries since the mid of the 1970’es.

He is such a generous and thoughtful cinéaste which is easy to see if you know (some of) his films, let me just mention wonderful films like ”Nénette” (the orangutang who is soon celebrating her 50th birthday!), ”Every Little Thing”, ”La Maison de la Radio”, ”In the Land of the Deaf”, ”Louvre City”…

The conversation was recorded and will later be found on the site of the festival.

When my wife and I saw the film the first time, in 2003 I think is was, we were talking about the film and the method, the pedagogics of the teacher, now 15 years later we were talking mostly about the children in the film, who enter the school for the first time as do “our” grandchildren back in Copenhagen. Oh, childhood… and thanks for conveying all these magic and poetic moments of curiosity and innocence to us, monsieur Philibert!

http://www.cinedoc-tbilisi.com/ 

EDN Bylaws Violated – Action Needed

Calling all EDN members!!
It has come to our attention that dramatic changes have happened within the EDN organization – and as the members have not been notified, we hereby take it upon ourselves to point out a number of actions that are in direct violation of the EDN By Laws.

In § 6 of the EDN By Laws it is stated ‘The General Assembly annually elects the Board from candidates suggested by the sitting Board of the Association’.
The current board has not been elected by the members.

According to the EDN website the current board consists of 3 members – where 2 of them resides in Holland . 
According to the EDN By Laws, no less than 3 out of 4 members of the board must reside in DIFFERENT European countries.

The EDN office is in the process of moving from Copenhagen to Amsterdam.
In the EDN By Laws it is stated in §1 that ‘The association has its principal place of business in Copenhagen, Denmark with the right of having offices in different places elsewhere in Europe.’ To change this it needs to be brought to a vote amongst the members. Again, this has not happened.

Finally, we understand that all the EDN staff members that have worked with content at EDN, will stop during this summer.

Why have the EDN members not been informed of the abovementioned actions, and by this been stripped of our democratic rights as EDN members to vote on such essential issues? With this total lack of transparency, how can we as members trust that EDN as an organization represents the values and the needs of the members that for many years have supported the organization and its goals faithfully?

We call to action among all EDN members to make it clear to the new management of EDN, that nothing less than total transparency and democracy within a membership organization is acceptable, and violation of this should have grave consequences.

Expressing our deepest concern

Joan Gonzalez, Docs Barcelona/ Parallel 40, Claire Aguilar and Simon Kilmurry, IDA, Uldis Cekulis, VFS FILMS, Lelda Ozola, Baltic Sea Forum, Orwa Nyrabia, IDFA, Adriek van Nieuwenhuijzen, IDFATor Vadseth, Anita Reher, Gitte Hansen, Iikka Vehkalahti, Tue Steen Müller, Ivana Pauerova Milosevic, Filip Remunda and Tereza Horska IDF, Emma Davie, Scottish Documentary Institute, Diana El Jeiroudi, Cecilia Lidin

CinéDOC-Tbilisi Opened Last Night

… in the Capital of Georgia. It was an unpretentious presentation with two skilled presenters and – unlike many international festivals – it happened in both Georgian and English language. With clips from all competitive sections (for the young, the Caucasus and the international competition) and from the Red Soul section that includes films by Vitaly Mansky, Dziga Vertov, Werner Herzog and others. A small section consequently includes a Red Soul Party with vodka, beer and Soviet food! Tonight. I am happy, see the photo, to be in the Caucasus jury, with Kenan Aliyev and Csilla Kato. Aliyev works with Current Time TV, that is sponsoring 3 awards at the festival (Intl. competition, Civil Doc and New Talent presentation), the channel is truly supporting new film people here and in other parts of Eastern Europe, bravo for that. Csilla Kato is from the reputed Astra Film festival in Sibiu in Romania. Which has been written about several times on this site – here is one of the links: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4372/

The opening film was “Honeyland”, full house in the cinema for this masterpiece from North Macedonia. If you want to know more about that film, use the “search” and you will get there. Has been praised numerous times on this site.

http://www.cinedoc-tbilisi.com

Andreas Dalsgaard: Fædre & Sønner /3

Andreas Dalsgaards kloge og smukke film har tv-premiere i morgen aften  22:15 på TV2. Jeg kan bedst anbefale at se filmen nu det er muligt ved at finde min anmeldelse fra biografpremieren frem. Den kommer her:

Jeg reagerede ved visningen under CPH:DOX 2017 spontant efter filmoplevelsen ved at skrive en mail til kollegerne: ”Så, Tue og Sara, har netop set filmen om Henning Haslund-Christensen og hans to sønner og om Torgut folket og om ekspeditioner og indsamlinger og kulturdrab og tabet af hukommelse. Den er vidunderlig og Michael i den er så ægte charmerende som ude i virkeligheden. Nu vil jeg gøre hvad jeg kan for at skrive om Dalsgaards store filmiske fortælling.”

Sådan, nu havde jeg lovet det, røbet min samlede vurdering, som kun kan blive alle vore 6 penne, røbet en disposition for min tøvende, langsomme kommentar, som skal begrunde vurderingen, og jeg har det igen som Peter Plys når Grislingen siger ”Det var ikke særlig klogt sagt” og Peter Plys forklarer: ”Det var klogt, da det var inde i mit hoved, men så skete der noget på vejen ud”.

1

Den ældste af titlens fædre er berømt, jeg ved det jo godt. Det er Henning Haslund-Christensen, og Werner Jacobsen fortalte mig for mange år siden meget om ham. Det var dengang, jeg færdedes i museumsverdenen.

Jeg finder hans bog Asiatiske akkorder frem. Den er oprindelig fra 1965, min udgave er fra 1991. Werner Jacobsen har et afsnit om sine rejser i Mongoliet. Haslund, som han kalder ham, var der i forvejen, Jacobsen præsenterer ham sådan… Læs hele anmeldelsen: LINK

Time Trial as Doc of the Month

DocsBarcelona starts in 10 days. I have written about the upcoming festival, link below.

But DocsBarcelona has many other rooms. One of them is the Documentary of the Month that includes one film being shown at 75 venues in Spain and later on in countries in Latin America. In cinemas, in culture houses, in libraries… check the link below.

It is an amazing film cultural initiative.

In the month of May, it is the Scottish director Finlay Pretsell’s “Time Trial” that is offered to the audience. Here is what the site says about the film:

“The end of an athlete’s career is a race against time and a fight against an inevitable demise. The addictive need to participate defies logic and creates a mesmerising and painful spectacle. TIME TRIAL takes us into the final races of cyclist David Millar’s career, leading up to his last encounter with the Tour de France. We go inside the peloton, we’re pushed up impossible climbs and forced down rapid descents, we lie alongside him in his hotel room in post-race agony. We ride in the support car, the source of comfort, supplies and fleeting relief from the cold. And we know that every mile travelled is a mile closer to the end. TIME TRIAL gets us close to David Millar, revealing how the human spirit is driven by a force deeper than success and glory. Filmed using pioneering techniques, bespoke vehicles and on-bike cameras, and with a new score by US composer Dan Deacon…”

And my words from November 2017: …I watched the film yesterday in a smaller cinema, Munt 13 (at IDFA), and I was suffering with the protagonist David Millar on screen. My suffering was in solidarity with poor Millar, who fights to get his last Tour de France but loses – suffering very much due to the music composed by American Dan Deacon, music which is constantly surprising and sometimes a torture to take into the ears.

It has changed my view on music in documentaries, which normally is just filling in holes in weak scenes. Here it goes with the race and the situations, the sequences, the scenes. A great example of music in documentaries – here used for a film, which is so well constructed, full of funny moments, it’s not “only” the tragic fall of a hero…”

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4521/

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4089/

http://eldocumentaldelmes.com/en/

Laila Pakalnina in Paris

So well deserved an honour – Latvian Laila Pakalnina has a big retrospective of her mostly short documentaries at Centre Pompidou in Paris, to be more precise, organised by La Cinématheque du Documentaire at the Bibliothéque Publique d’Information. 20 films will be shown. 2 weeks starting tonight.

Entitled ”Laila Pakalnina, Drôle de Réel”, ” La première rétrospective consacrée à cette cinéaste lettone en France, en sa présence…”

“Si le cinéma n’existait pas, je serais devenue marchande de glace (le premier métier dont j’ai rêvé). Mais le cinéma, c’est mieux que les glaces !” On peut d’abord se féliciter du choix de carrière de Laila Pakalnina, mais aussi tenter de définir son art à partir de son propos farceur… »

I know the films of Pakalnina since the 1990’es, where her b/w – with no words – short films like The Ferry, The Postman came out. Pakalnina’s films later on are very different, one from the other but always with her own special signature and always surprising and many times full of humour. She has indeed this « drôle » look at life.

For our French reading filmkommentaren visitors there is a long fine article on the site of the Cinématheque, link below. Here is a small quote from an article on this site, caption « Fishing in the River of Time » :

– Every film for me means risk. I am not craftsman; I am not delivering certain product. I am making film and that means breathtaking balancing between shit and art. I hope for art of course. And I admire this risk. As for me this is the only way how to make film… – I call my method of work “Fishing in the river of time”. As life is extremely talented, we just put camera, set composition and wait. And life happens. So film happens. Sometimes immediately, sometimes in hours and even days…

https://www.facebook.com/events/452694762202174/

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4318/

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2435/

IDFA Forum Changes

… ”goes tailor-made, expands cross-media Market for 2019”, the festival announced yesterday, April 30, talking about pitch setups needed in a ”rapidly changing documentary industry”.

In the text, click below and read it all in details, it is stressed that the focus will be „more centered towards the specific needs of the pitching teams, paying attention to the uniqueness of each project and team, and inviting the teams to present their projects in the way that best suits their work and stage of development”. With feedback of course from financiers and THIS I LIKE VERY MUCH: ”to allow room for in-depth conversations about the artistic intentions and goals of the team.”

If I get it right there are three steps in the new pattern: Public pitch followed by feedback from a hand-picked panel and then individual meetings.

And, THIS I LIKE VERYMUCH AS WELL: ”… the Forum is adjusting to changing financing structures, while opening up to also include films with less clear-cut narratives and new ways of storytelling.” Meaning less boring formatted projects, more surprises, more experiments… hope I am right.

https://www.idfa.nl/en/