It was much appreciated and welcomed that the main winner yesterday, after the East Doc Forum at the East Doc Platform, was the Serbian/Croatian project “Museum of the Revolution” that has Srdan Keca as director and Vanja Jambrovic as producer. I met the project at ZagrebDox, where it also won an award given by HBO Europe. It is very inviting, the material I have seen, and that Keca is a documentary director with an eye, you can see immediately. In Prague director and producer told me about the plans of building a museum of the revolution in 1961, in Belgrade, it failed because of funding, if I got it right; the architect Richter from Croatia had ambitious construction drawings – in 1978 the idea was put forward again, the foundation of the building was constructed but two years later Tito died and everything about the museum for revolutions around the world collapsed. Keca has filmed at the place, where the museum should have been.

The girl on the photo is Milica, she often lives there with an old woman Mara,

and with her mother Vera, a drug addict. Keca has the idea to follow the three around a Belgrade, that is changing, making it impossible for the three to have a place to stay. So the film will be about the past, the museum, the people and Belgrade today that with money from the gulf states are going in a direction that many find totally wrong.

It is indeed a very promising film project that also got an invitation to go to IDFA 2019.

Below you find the awards, I would also draw your attention to the projects that is invited to DocsBarcelona, the Ukrainian „Fragile Memory” by Ihor Ivanko. I have taken a quote from the description, must please all film buffs:

„A famous soviet cinematographer Leonid Burlaka, who worked at Odessa Film Studio since 60’s and shot iconic soviet films such as “The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed”, suddenly gets diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

At the same time Ihor, his grandson and emerging Ukrainian cinematographer, accidentally finds a hidden and heavily damaged part of grandpa’s photo archive: film rolls of masterpiece pictures portray the life of Soviet youth in the early 1960’s Moscow. The portrayal is highly subjective and informal – in a contrast with the known state-produced archives of that time…”

East Doc Platform Award
Museum of the Revolution – Srdjan Keča (Serbia/Croatia)
Production companies: UZROK, Restart

Honourable Mention
Wolves on the Borders! – Martin Páv (Czech Republic)
Production company: Frame Films

HBO Europe Development Award
The New Imperium – Anna Shishova-Bogolubova (Russia)
Production company: Ethnofund

Czech TV Co-production Award
A Marriage – Kateřina Hager, Asad Faruqi (Czech Republic/USA)
Production company: Bohemian Productions 

Golden Funnel Award
Olympic Halftime – Haruna Honcoop (Czech Republic/Slovakia/France)
Production companies: D1film, VIRUSfilm, Grab the Cat

Current Time TV Award
Untitled Rastorguev Project – Susanna Baranzhieva (Russia/Estonia)
Production companies: TVINDIE, Marx Film

IDFA Forum Award
Museum of the Revolution – Srdjan Keča

DOK Leipzig Co-production Meeting Award
The Pit – Nikolay Bem (Russia)
Production company: Siberian Studio of Independent Cinema

DOK Leipzig Preview Award
Bottlemen – Nemanja Vojinović (Serbia)
Production company: Rt dobre nade

Sunny Side of the Doc Award
Olympic Halftime – Haruna Honcoop

Docs Barcelona Award
Fragile Memory – Ihor Ivanko (Ukraine)
Production company: Babylon ’13

Sheffield Doc/Fest Award
Kiruna 2.0 – Greta Stocklassa (Czech Republic)
Production company: Analog Vision

More about all the projects to be found on:

dokweb.net/database/films 

„Bringing the Past to Life“ was the theme of a masterclass with Stan Neumann and Mila Turajlic, directors I have known for years and whose works I have seen and appreciated. Both work with archive as the title of the class indicate, and both had interesting reflections to convey to the audience, with clips of course.

Some quotes: „We don’t work with archivists, it diminishes the possibility for coincidence, for finding something unexpected that you can use“. Turajlic gave an example – she was at an archive and saw that there was material about „picking tangerines“. As she knew that Tito was fond of tangerines, she looked at it, and there he was – for her „Cinema Komunisto“.

„There is nothing true in an image“. „I want the documentary archive material to work narratively, to tell my truth, not as an illustration“. „The eye on the archive must be new“. „The first thing is to destroy the archive, break it down and make it your own“.

Clips were shown from „Austerlitz“, „Cinema Komunisto“, „On the Other Side of Everything“, Neumann’s film on the Russian revolution, his film on Klemperer and totalitarian language… and more.

Below you find links to know more about the two directors. On filmkommentaren Mila Turajlic was mentioned the first time in 2008, Neumann in 2009.

Mila Turajlic

Links: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4096/ http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4090/

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1346/

Stan Neumann

Links: about “Language Does Not Lie” (Klemperer); about the importance of form; about “The Surrealistic Photo”

I had the pleasure of introducing 7 new Czech documentaries at the Institut Francais Tuesday afternoon. The last in line was legendary Karel Vachek, teacher at the FAMU film school, a man who was exiled after 1968, by some called the eternal dissident. 25 years he has been at the film school, he has made several interesting- and-difficult-to-grab documentary essays, and it was a film like that he presented helped by his producers Mikulás Novotny and Radim Procházka. ”Communism” is the title as you can see from the photo taken by Filip Remunda. 9 minutes was shown from the upcoming film that will be 5 hours divided into four parts. Looking forward!

Remunda presented his own film that has already premiered at the One World Festival, ”Czech Journal: The Okamura Brothers”, three siblings of Japanese origin with one of them being an extreme right wing politician.

Greta Stocklassa, half Swedish half Czech, has made a film from up North, ”Kiruna 2.0”, that follows the moving of the city because of the mining. A film – taken from the clip shown – with a tone and interesting characters and amazing images of reindeer. It’s her first film and it has been taken for the Visions du Réel.

The same goes for Johana Ozvold and her ”The Sound Is Innocent”, first film, selected for Visions du Réel – ” The music is a game, a playground. And for creating the electronic music the main tool and toy is an instrument, a device, a machine…”.

”Dálava” by Martin Marecek is in good hands with the HBO’s Hanka ​Kastelicová – and judging from the three clips/scenes shown (clever way of presentation) the film with a father and his son will be full of atmosphere.

The same with ”Another Chance“ by Eva Tomanova. You fall for Monika, who is one of many, who has been the victim of Mirek, a marriage swindler – they get a child together, he is in prison, he gets out, how will it develop?

… and Karolina Peroutková, a Famu student of Miroslav Janek, presented “The Call of the Wild” and her relationship to the main character, a young boy, who is breaking the rules of the society: “Michael is twelve years old. He has seven siblings and lives with his parents in a small house in a small town. Michal often hangs around the streets of the small town, where I (the director, ed.) live. “He is a rascal and a rogue,” say the locals…

https://dokweb.net/database/films/synopsis/95428715-e22e-46e1-b761-164373370dac/communism

EDP (East Doc Platform) characterises itself as the largest industry platform for Central and Eastern European documentaries. From my experience touring documentary meetings in the vast region, I agree. And can add that with the parallel running huge One World Festival, the documentary festival in Jihlava, the vod DocAlliance, the East Silver and a succesful initiative like dok.incubator the Czech Republic is a place, where a lot of good is done for the documentary. With the EDP organised by the IDF, Institute of Documentary Film.

At the EDP filmmakers run from room to room in the Spanish Cultural Institute, Cervantes, to have meetings with experienced filmmakers or sales agents or distributors – to relax once in a while by listening to interesting lectures in the so-called Open Programme.

I was there yesterday to hear what an old friend from the Baltic Sea Forum, Phil Jandaly, had to say about his profession. Editing. Called « From Pre-

production to Post-Production Magic » he did an excellent 90 minutes talk with clips and reflections. Pedagogical and charming it was. Canadian Jandaly , who lives in Sweden, has edited fiction films, but prefers documentaries. In fiction, you have a script in front of you… « I don’t like to listen to/read about intentions of a film, I want to listen to the material, what is in it, is there a film… »

To illustrate that, he showed an 8 minutes long pilot called « Nelly and Nadine», which was extremely interesting to watch, coming from the material that Swedish director Magnus Gertten already has made two strong films out of, « Harbour of Hope » and « Every Face has a Name ». The unique material shows liberated concentration camp survivors coming to Malmø in 1945. One of the prisoners, an Asiatic looking woman, had been in the mind of the director for years, who is she, what is her story. At a screening in France the director was approached – I think I can help you, a viewer said – and what came out of this was an amazing, fascinating story about two women, who fell in love with each other in Ravensbrück. Archive photo from the lives of the two in France was found, an interview made with the grandchild of Nelly, who sits with her diaries, which were kept away while the mother, i.e. the daughter of Nelly, was alive. It was painful reading for her, to know about her mother’s love story. Is there a film, Jandaly asked himself, and has asked the director Magnus Gertten, oh let’s hope for that!

Jandaly, who has been the trailer expert for years at the Baltic Sea Forum, took us to the editing room and showed us the wall full of poster notes in different colours – the building of a film. He talked about a Kenyan documentary on what it means to be homosexual in the African country. The director and editor Jandaly communicated often in front of the poster notes… what happens with that scene if you move this from here to there etc. He showed two different openings of the film, his own and the director’s, quite different, which led to his reflections on how much information you should give the audience from the beginning and how much you should leave for discovery. Obvious that Jandaly goes for holding back information and that he had a different interpretation of the material than the director. It is for sure going to be a very strong and courageous documentary about what it means to be gay in Kenya. Ouff!

Phil Jandaly told me after the lecture that he is working on a Russian film that was presented at the EDP 2017, “Provincial Town of E”, directed by Dmitry Bogolubov and produced by Vlad Ketkovich. The editing of the film takes place in Prague as the Czech company Hypermarket is a co-producer. To give you an idea of the content, I quote from the IDF’s dokweb site:

Elnya is one of thousands of small provincial Russian towns. The only remarkable about Elnya is that it was the first Russian town freed from German forces during World War II. Since then Elnya freezes in time. There is nothing happens in here except endless military celebrations of heroic soviet past. Military propaganda becomes regular background of everyday life in Elnya. Most people still believe in chimeras of Soviet past what is very handy for modern authorities. Unable to provide decent social perspectives, authorities manipulate on patriotic feelings of the common people, cultivating a loyal electorate. They create an image of an enemy, who becomes a good reason of declining living standards. Propaganda infiltrates into all areas of life of an everyman from his childhood to his private adult life. Filming Elnya for several years we catch this process…

www.Dokweb.net    

Here comes a list of films from this year´s CPH:DOX that has already been reviewed on filmkommentaren.dk. As the policy for our independent and self-funded blog-site is that we only review and comment (almost) positively, you can consider these links as recommendations:

An Evening with Ai WeiWei

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

Victor Kossakovsky: Aquarela

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4408/

Emir Kusturica: El Pepe

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4441/

Eszter Hajdú: Hungary 2018

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4405/

Aboozar Amini: City in the Wind

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4398/

Bettina Perut & Iván Osnovikoff : Los Reyes

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4406/

Herzog & Singer: Meeting Gorbachev

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4386/

Vitaly Mansky: Putin’s Witnesses

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4390/

Kim Longinotto: Shooting the Mafia

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4463/

Nicolas Geyerhalter: The Border Fence

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4437/

Anna Eborn: Transnistra

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4475/

https://cphdox.dk/en/programme/program-a-z/

It is indeed overwhelming the program of CPH:DOX. Films, now also with a section for fiction films, concerts, the CPH:Forum with 33 projects, including well-known directors being present like Petra Costa, Victor Kossakovsky, Guido Hendrickx, Mila Turajlic, Shaul Schwarz and Ben Rivers… focus on art and innovation in form… the extra-ordinary.

But let me stay with the film program: 200 films, five international competitions, ”Among this year’s new initiatives and highlights are a major theme on Europe including films, talks and an exhibition, a new programme dedicated to fiction films, and guest stars such as Ai Weiwei and Pamela Anderson!”

We will review many of the films, but let me draw your attention to 3 films and filmmakers risking to drown in the big ocean of titles:

Lithuanian ”Animus Animalis” by young Aiste Zegulyte, original in form and theme: People, Animals and Things. Palestinian Lina Alabed’s ”Ibrahim”, ”a cinematic letter to her father, who disappeared during a political mission in 1987 and never returned”. I have heard about that film for a long time, made with Danish help. Russian wonderful director Alina Rudnitskaya’s Danish production “School of Seduction”.

Talking about Denmark – and it is a Dane who writes this – it is good to see many new Danish films announced after a bit meager 2018. There are films by Phie Ambo, Pernille Rose Grønkjær, Eva Mulvad, Andreas Johnsen and new names as Marie Skovgård and Sun Hee Engelstoft.

https://cphdox.dk/

Yes. Documentary is Cinema. Where the best directors know what they are doing. Have chosen a form for what they want to tell. Before shooting. This is what Swedish Anna Eborn has done with this gem of a documentary film. She is working with video and with 16mm film, she has created a superb sound design and used music so it matches the sequences. The critic has no objections!

Actually this is a quote from my review of Eborn’s previous film ”Lida” from Ukraine but it fits perfectly for the one, she presents now, ”Transnistra”, shot by Virginie Surdej.

The film stands out, it is far away from main stream documentary, let me just point at some of the magic this film delivers:

The opening summer scenes of the youngsters at the river with Tanya in the middle surrounded by, well they are boys, all of them pretty much interested in Tanya, she talking about love all the time – the filmmaker stays long with them creating an atmosphere of waiting and searching. You can see it is shot on film material, it gives a beauty to the image, nothing to do with the often sterile video image.

The river is the point of return in a film that also goes to the poor place, where Tanya lives and to the abandoned houses, where the youngsters hang out, smoking, talking about everything and nothing, being together in a social context that can be only characterised as poverty. They have no education, they have dreams of getting away as many in this part of the world.

And yet, important to stress, this is not a social report, it is a close look at youngsters/teenagers and how they love and don’t love each other, how they create their own little space of life in Transnistria, ”the breakaway republic largely unrecognized internationally, sitting between Moldova and Ukraine, which seems determined to maintain a Soviet lifestyle”.

… and the closing scene with Tanya and Tolya, touching… maybe a farewell moment, Tolya thinks, while Tanya is recording him singing. On her cell phone. Wow, here is a young director who catches a moment of life and love, Truffaut will clap in his hands whereever he is.

The film will be shown at the Tempo Festival in Stockholm, at Docville in Belgium and at CPH:DOX: https://cphdox.dk/en/programme/film/?id=1187 and will be released in Danish theatres in June. And at many other festivals I am sure.

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4027/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Transnistria

Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, 93 mins., 2019

Last night the winners were announced in  Zagreb, here comes some of them, click below and you will get the whole list:

Nebojša Slijepčević Tue Steen Müller elimir ilnik, Jury International Competition

BIG STAMP FOR BEST FILM IN INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
UP THE MOUNTAIN (Photo)
Yang Zhang, China – The film captivates with its visual beauty and directing skills, introduces us into the life of a remote community, depicting celebrations, grief, birth and death, spectacular parties and intimate conversations. We can rightfully say that each shot in this film is like a painting, a glorious meditation about true values in life.

SPECIAL MENTION – INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

MINDING THE GAP
Bing Liu, USA- A painfully honest film in which the director fully discloses himself and his friends, a universal tale of the scars left by domestic violence.

SPECIAL MENTION – INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
MY UNKNOWN SOLDIER Anna Kryvenko Czech Republic, Latvia, Slovakia – The author bravely reveals hidden family history before the camera and manages to find an original approach to historical events about which we seemed to already know everything.

Nedad Begović, Melanie Iredale, Igor Mirković, Regional Jury

BIG STAMP FOR BEST FILM
UNA PRIMAVERA
Valentina Primavera Austria, Italy, Germany – Our winning film is a very personal insight in to domestic abuse, and a great example of a filmmaker turning their camera on their own dysfunctional family to produce a work so intimate and warm whilst making a bigger statement about the systemic issue of patriarchal violence and coercion. The documentary’s central character is a 60-year-old woman who after 40 years of marriage, is not afraid to boldly start her life all over again, and her daughter’s filmmaking is just as bold. The award goes to Una Primavera – an Austrian, German & Italian co-production from Valentina Primavera.

SPECIAL MENTION – REGIONAL COMPETITION
IN THE NAME OF THE REPUBLIC OF CROATIA Goran Dević Croatia – Special mention goes to the film which tells the centuries old and everlasting story of an individual fighting for his political ideas and the establishment which tries to silence him, without asking too many questions. The film itself opens these important questions again, without imposing the answers, led by the hand of a talented and skilful filmmaker Goran Dević in his film In the Name of Republic of Croatia.

SPECIAL MENTION – REGIONAL COMPETITION
4 YEARS IN 10 MINUTES Mladen Kovačević Serbia – Special mention goes to the film 4 Years in 10 Minutes. With willpower and perseverance, the author climbed Mount Everest and made a dramatic and exciting film whose drama doesn’t stop once the goal is met. Motivation and understanding of this film will definitely arise in those living at sea level, too. And those in between.

YOUNG JURY
Christian Sønderby Jepsen, Zorko Sirotić, Marko Grba Singh, Young Jury

LITTLE STAMP FOR BEST FILM OF A YOUNG AUTHOR UP TO 35 YEARS OF AGE
STILL RECORDING Saeed Al Batal, Ghiath Ayoub Lebanon, Syria, France, Qatar, Germany – The main award the Little Stamp goes to an honest inside story from hell. With camera as a weapon, film’s protagonists overcome fear and send out the truth while maintaining friendship and unity in the midst of the ruins of Syria.

SPECIAL MENTION – YOUNG JURY
EASY LESSONS Dorottya Zurbó Hungary – Special mention goes to a simple and cinematic, well developed portrait of an impressive Somalian girl trying to fit in a new society, despite the echoes of her past.

SPECIAL MENTION – YOUNG JURY
TAURUNUM BOY Jelena Maksimović, Dušan Grubin Serbia – Special mention goes to a well composed coming of age journey, cleverly shifting from one character to another in a successful and descreet observation of marginalized kids in the suburbs of Belgrade.

zagrebdox.net/en/2019/news

Her name is Anastasija, she is one of the children in “To Be Continued” by Latvian documentary master Ivars Seleckis, who is here at ZagrebDox, where his film was shown last night. Tonight Seleckis (who will be 85 this year) will receive an award given by Nenad Puhovski, ZagrebDox festival director, who himself at each edtion of the festival chooses a film to be awarded. A ”My Generation” award. I have known Seleckis for more than 20 years, this time I have had time to pass time with him at dinner and breakfasts, together with a dear friend Lelda Ozola from the National Film Centre of Latvia. This morning I learned why the director/cameraman always wears a beret… ask him when you meet him, good story.

Another master at the festival was Sergei Loznitsa, who in a totally crowded cinema performed a masterclass with the title ”Use of Archive Footage Between the Authentic and Constructed”. He had only time to show clips from three of his many archive-based films. Although it is always interesting to listen to Loznitsa – and I loved to have ”Blokada” (2005) on screen, the fantastic film about the siege of Leningrad, as well as ”The Event” from 2015, also archive, from 1991, the coup and the call for freedom shot in Leningrad/St.Petersburg – he should have been given more time, and maybe he should have focused on one film and gone deeper with, for instance, the last archive work, the amazing ”The Trial”. Also shown at the festival.

Orwa Nyrabia, artistic director of IDFA, was at the festival invited and interviewed by Nenad Puhovski – he was as always precise, open for questions, promised that there will be changes at the Forum, which has renewed itself but needs more changes following the changes in the media landscape, where broadcasters are not influential on the development of documentaries any longer, at least in funding terms. The question about why no central and Eastern documentary projects were chosen for the Forum 2018 was raised again, Orwa Nyrabia referred to the answer he gave through filmkommentaren, link below. Re the meeting: It can only be a simplification from the one hour with Nyrabia but the message could be: less mainstream films and projects, more ambitious creative documentaries and projects. Wish him all the best luck with this!

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4376/