In a way it’s an old fashioned film. In storytelling. And I mean that as a compliment. The director plays with the film medium, jumps around in time, gives references to slapstick movies, Buster Keaton and others, in the search for giving evidence on behalf of the protagonist, the Dutch adventurer, who wanted to cross the Atlantic, which he did or did not, he never came back. Giving evidence that there is no gravity. There is a lot of mystery about his disappearance – did he disappear, did he actually exist, is the whole film a fake, is it the director’s own search for something, for some meaning, could be, I don’t know, what I know is that the film is fascinating and playful using the wonderful tools of filmmaking that is far too often forgotten in nowadays documentary making. Old fashioned – a lot reminds me of films from 1968 where all was allowed and tried out. A documentary, well the sequences with an old lady, the girl friend way back when he left, points in that direction as well as photos of a young man with curly hair.

The film won the IDFA Special Jury Award for Best Children’s Film. The jury said: “A film that choose a non obvious subject for children, one that tickles their imagination, raising philosophical questions, and approaches children as little adults. Through intelligent editing, this film challenges the usual way of storytelling in the children’s documentary genre..”

Indeed “special”, maybe more for youngsters or for adults, who like films with layers, surprising films in storytelling, bringing laughter and a serious theme together in a brilliant way. Lovely!

The first name of the director is Martijn.

Holland, 2018, 28 mins.

www.idfa.nl

I was in Amsterdam from Monday till Friday. 4 nights at NH Carlton Hotel, the festival centre close to everything and the place where you meet old and dear friends. Including the busy artistic director Orwa Nyrabia, whose first edition it was. I have not seen films enough to evaluate the film selection, you always leave IDFA frustrated that there were films you did not manage to watch, will catch up later at other festivals. The same goes for the great initiative of publishing videos from the DOC Talks after the film, 4-5 minutes it says, but when you click you can get half an hour with Sergei Loznitsa or the award winning Anand Patwardhan or with Polish master Marcel Lozinski or Nikolaus Geyerhalter… more to come, IDFA writes on the website. Not to forget the podcasts with Avi Mograbi and Audrius Stonys, they are long, going deep I am sure – and subject orientated Industry Talk about “Ethical Ways of Co-Producing”, theatrical distribution and so on, so forth. Lots of possibilities, also full films if you are a subscriber to the Docs for Sale.

I saw many good films as loyal readers of this site will know. On top, however, were two film experiences that will stay in my mind: Dziga Vertov’s “Anniversary of the Revolution”, a brilliant night at the Tuschinski with music, breathtaking singing from the stage and from the gallery, a choir! Read my impressions on http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4402/

And a film made 100 year later by Viktor Kossakovsky, “Aquarela”,

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

shown with the intended sound on a big screen in Pathé Munt 3, magnificent.

IDFA is also the Forum, I was not there, I am sure many promising projects were pitched and that the Forum will go on, maybe in new shapes, as Orwa Nyrabia has said, to give the best treat of new talent.

www.idfa.nl

… which all deserve to be mentioned and noticed by other festivals.

“How Big is the Galaxy” (Photo) by Ksenia Elyan (Russia, Estonia, 72 mins.), with Max Tuula and Maria Gavrilova as producers as well as late Alexander Rastorguev for Black and White Cinema, is a gem, with two charming kids Zakhar, 7 years old and the older brother Prokopy. They live far up in North of Siberia with their parents, as – taken from the IDFA website – “belonging to the Dolgan community, one of the last indigenous peoples pursuing their traditional nomadic life in the extreme north of Siberia.” It’s an observational documentary, you follow everyday life with a special focus on the kids, who go to school next door, allowed to have homeschooling. Out of the warmth in the wagon-like house, where the family lives, out in the freezing cold to the next door house that serves as a school with a school teacher and books etc. Zakhar has an eye for the director/cameraman asking her “you take photos”, “is that a job”. Lovely.

“The Potato Eaters” by Dina Barinova (Russia, 51 mins.) from Marina Razbezhkina Studio, a tough social documentation of a village life in awful poor conditions, also featuring two children, who live and play as kids do, jumping in water puddles. They live with their grandparents Svetlana and Victor, the latter deeply alcoholised, Svetlana being the one, who has to take care of everything – without any money. It’s as bad as it could be. Depressing and shocking to watch if not for the kids and Sergei, who is the son of Svetlana and Victor, and the one who moves a bit around and plays vinyl records.

“Dorotchka” by Olga Delane (Russia, 20 mins), who made the fine “Siberian Love”, where she met the 80 year old woman and decided to dedicate a film to her. The IDFA website text is excellent so I quote: “The beautiful, static images of Dorotchka in and around her wooden house, against the backdrop of a relentless landscape in which there’s constant hard work to be done, are reminiscent of 19th-century paintings of romanticized agricultural life. Wringing her hands at the kitchen table, Dorotchka speaks in short sentences peppered with expletives, making it clear that even women like her have their hearts broken. Stylized shots of rural life are combined with comical black-and-white footage of Russian country weddings, folk dancing and singing: a promise of opportunities in a bygone era.” “Siberian Love” is reviewed here: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3930/

www.idfa.nl

I was very happy to know that the new film by Belorussian director Andreu Kutsila received – in the midlength category – the main award at IDFA for “Summa”, a Belorussian/Polish coproduction with Miroslaw Dembinski as the Polish partner.

In 2015 Kutsila won the main national award with “Guests” at the Listapad festival in Minsk (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3370/)

3 years before he was the Belorussian director, who took part in “15 Young by Young”, the documentary short film series initiated and produced by Latvian producer Ilona Bicevska. Some words from the brief review of “Guests” I wrote 3 years ago: “He has found the right, slow rhythm, he lets the scenes develop, he gets close but does never lose a respectful distance…”. Which are words that fit perfectly on “Summa”.

Andrzej Strumillo is an elderly Polish painter, around 90 years old,  Maryia is a young artist from Belarus. She leaves Belarus to come to visit lonely Strumillo, who is happy to have her around. He lives in a spacious house, he breeds horses, the house is close to a lake where he goes, they sit and talk at the table, eat, mostly it is the old man who talks, and she listens if she is not interrupted by calls from her boyfriend/husband, who seems to be jealous – she wants and decides to stay longer, you can understand that – the director who is also the cinematographer understands you see clearly – Kutsila caresses the characters, he has taken his time to compose images of the beauty of the quiet place, he creates a meditative atmosphere. Graceful it is. “It’s sad life is so short”, Strumillo says, at the same time as he remembers the life he had with his wife, who died in 2011, their travels, their being together.

His paintings are shown, they are dark, impressive, religious maybe, at least mysterious; and yet the film is not a portrait of an artist and his work, it is a meeting between youth and wisdom, beautifully interpreted by a director with a vision.

Poland/Belarus, 2018, 51 mins.

Normally when I go to an art exhibition, I walk around alone, stop in front of the paintings, it’s silent, maybe I talk with the one who are with me, but I love this chance of stepping into a world that does not move. When watching Kossakovsky’s flow of aquarelas, WATERcolors in constant movement, there is no silence, on the contrary – it’s a bombardment of image and sound, an aesthetic composition, it’s expressionistic, surrealistic, abstract, figurative, a journey through art directions and genres. And a magnificent piece of Cinema. That also has a dramaturgy.

As the director put it before the screening at the Pathé Munt 3 cinema in

Amsterdam at IDFA, the only cinema in Amsterdam that can play atmos dolby sound: Be prepared for a cold shower in the beginning, it will be warmer later on in the film. I agree with the first, I am not sure about the second.

Any way the overall theme is there right up front: You see ice and you see people moving around. From a respectful distance there is a focus on a man kneeling. He is looking for something in the water under the ice. Kneeling. The reference to praying is obvious. The sound from the ice is like a thunder, it’s bumps and bangs, a bit scary.

They are moving around, the men in their orange work suits, we spectators don’t know why, but we are told after the introduction of a burning house (PHOTO) with a mind blowing beautiful surrealistic layered image with a burning house: it’s about pulling up a car from under the ice! Shocking to watch, not because of the car but because the men fall on the ass one after the other, we fear it at the same time as we hope for it – and because of the sound of the film – a shock effect is sought for. The power of nature. We humans don’t stand a chance! A man was in a car, he seems to have drowned. Drama; a friend is crying out “he has drowned”.

A cold shower, indeed. And thanks for some calm moments under water, abstractions, and then suddenly a cute small goldfish comes into the picture. Before that strong heavy metal music, “I look at the world and I notice it’s turning. While my guitar gently weeps…” I was thinking of George Harrison afterwards, and then again a shock with a clip from a boat surrounded by meter high waves. Gosh!

The first part of the film with the crazy moments of cars underwater to be taken up is shot in Kamtjatka Russia, a Russian friend told me, the boat is sailing in the Atlantic Ocean. In other words, the film is far from informational National Geographic, it moves from place to place, from continent to continent. From painting to painting.

I love the sequences, where you rest your eye and can enjoy aquarelas, where the paint is thinned by the water, where it’s surrealism giving associations to Yves Tanguy or expressionism in the direction of Kandinsky or more wild like Jackson Pollock. These sequences have no purpose, they are invitations to contemplate the colors that suddenly turn to a black canvas; it’s a film with constant surprises.

For a Dane it felt calming to come to Greenland, to hear but not see the howling dogs, to see a boat go out with men on their way for hunting, I know about this from lots of films by late Danish director Jørgen Roos – and then back to the boat and the heavy metal music and the amazing images of two sailors steering safely – after the screening there was a question to Kossakovsky on how filming was on the boat: “we were lying fixed on the deck and it took us hours to get the tripod from one side of the ship to the other”.

Underwater again, we see a horse walking, not the head, it is above water. You smile, shake your head, it’s amazing what this director and cameraman gives you, what an image. Dali is of course associated to in my head and up we go to see herons walking in a cemetery, it’s a place where there is flood, we leave the icebergs for a moment to see water, it’s calm but interrupted it is by scary hurricane images from Florida (?), to waterfalls and sides of mountains – and Faces full of emotions “hidden” behind the waterfalls, close-ups, the only ones in a film, that is to be concluded by a rainbow and cello music. There is death in this film but also life and hope. An essay about the human condition. Faces held for a long time on the screen like in a film by Sokurov, to whom Kossakovsky has dedicated the film.

Wow!

UK, Germany, Denmark, 2018, 90 mins.

I went to the Eye that everyone has praised during its few years of existence. And it is really something. I crossed the water with the ferry next to the Central Station, 2 mins. it took to get to the other side together with a lot of people, bikes and scooters, and then another couple of minutes of walk to the Eye that I saw in daylight and later – in the evening – with a view to an illuminated Amsterdam. The big open hall has a restaurant that I visited between the two films I saw – I had half an hour, they managed to serve a fine soup and a glass of wine in no time – and an exhibition area. I got a free ticket to see an exhibition of Japanese Ryoji Ikeda, Datamatics it is called and is accompanied by electronic music. I had to leave quickly, no appeal to me, actually I was afraid of having an epileptic seizure…

Instead I rushed to the cinema to watch “Los Reyes” by Chilean Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff. I had forgotten my badge but with the help of Argentinian director Andrés Di Tella and Bettina Perut, who I knew from visits to the two countries I got in to sit at the best place in the very fine cinema hall Eye 1.

And I saw one more film, “Hungary 2018”, by Eszter Hajdú with Sandor Mester as producer, and with superb Menno Boerema as one of the editors. Both films were followed by talks. More about films and talks below.

The film was screened and there was a half hour talk afterwards. These IDFA talks, I understood, are formatted to have no questions from the audience. I sensed a disappointment in the hall, probably many would have loved to get more from the sympathetic two directors. But they were surrounded outside for further talks in the corridor after the screening. It was my impression that the audience loved the film about “the kings”, why this title – here is a quote from the IDFA website: “Los Reyes is the oldest skatepark in the Chilean

capital of Santiago. But in its literal sense, “the kings” in the title of this film can equally refer to Chola and Football, the two stray dogs that have made their home in this open space full of hurtling skateboards and rowdy teenagers. The energetic female Chola loves to play with the balls she finds lying around. She positions them at the edge of the bowls, where the skaters show off their tricks, and tries to catch them just before they fall down. The older dog, Football, looks on impatiently and barks at Chola until she finally drops the ball…”

A simplification of course in a film that is rich in observations and small stories and that delivers sound bite dialogues between youngsters, who come here to escape problems at home, to smoke all kind of stuff, to talk about the life they lead, in other words. You never see the young people, you see the dogs listening to them, most of the time with something in the mouth, an empty bottle or a ball. It’s hard for Chola and Football to survive in the heat but they find their shady places and profits from the showering of the lawns at the park. And they are barking at horses and donkeys – get out of here, this is our place. Playing, sleeping or resting but attentive to sounds, and if one of them gets up to move to another place, the other follows.

OK, you might think, a film about two dogs, so what? Yes, a lot of the answer to the “what” is connected to the way the film is built and to the extraordinary camerawork by Pablo Valdés, who also worked with the couple on “Surire”, reviewed on http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3397/ and who has been filming with Maite Alberti (“I’m not from Here” and “The Grown-Ups”). His close-ups are second to none, on the insects that are taking rest in the dog’s fur, on the paws of the dogs, on the tennis balls; it looks like paintings, nature morte and it is followed by amazing images of the skatepark, when the sun goes down.

The hairy Football is the oldest one of the two and you see from the start that he is not at his best, when he is limping around in the park. And you understand that he is no longer there, when Chola is howling, alone with her grief.

At the fine talk after the screening Bettina Perut told – in tears – that she was there when Football died. And that she and Iván Osnovikoff have adopted Chola. Football was alive when the editing progressed. Actually finishing the editing helped them to get over the grieving. We went to the dogs three times per week for the 8 months the shooting took, they said, and informed the audience that the film project originally was to deal with the kids hanging out at the skatepark, where Iván went to skate. But we did not get the feel of the film until the dogs became the protagonists.

The film got the Special Jury Award at IDFA 2018 for “for the creative and beautiful way it displaces the viewer gaze by associating a sensible look at non-human wonderful characters and the soundtrack that connects daily lives of animal and human stray dogs”. No objections from a Danish dog lover.

www.idfa.nl