ME – at IDFA

IDFA presents a main focus program, ME, about the personal and autobiographical documentary film. Me is a selection of different cinematic expressions by filmmakers whose study of themselves is both a journey into their own private history as well as an artistic exploration…

The first paragraph in a press release from IDFA, the festival taking place in November, that announces new titles every Tuesday until then and whose competition programs will be announced October 24… In other words feeding the hungry documentarians with small bites as DOKLeipzig that starts October 29 has done with their announcement taking place on Wednesday the 10th.

ME, I thought when I saw the announcement… we have had enough of that biting my tongue when I think about my constant preaching at workshops and on this site that films have to be personal, maybe not autobiographical but with a personal touch, a personal motivation and – please – a personal handwriting, a personal style…

For that reason it is wonderful to see that the festival has chosen to show both “Father and Son” by Pawel Lozinski AND “Father and Son on a Journey” by Marcel Lozinski. It was meant to be one film by son Pawel, produced by him but father Marcel broke the agreement and insisted on making his version of a fascinating, painful and humorous car trip from Warsaw to Paris. This film is personal and has found its own expression.

Happy also that Avi Mograbi (PHOTO) is there with his “Happy Birthday, Mr.Mograbi”, the most critical, both sarcastic and satirical characterization of Israel and its policy under Bibi – it is almost 20 years old but what it describes is unfortunately still actual and even more worse than in the late nineties.

It is actually a slate of wonderful chances to re-view films by Kossakovsky (“Wednesday”), Ross McElwee (“Sherman’s March”), great to have Andrés di Tella with his masterpiece “Photographs”, Rithy Panh with “The Missing Picture” – and for me to have the chance to discover Japanese Naomi Kawase and re-view Kazuo Hara’s “Extremely Private Eros: Love Song 1974”.

Many more films, it’s very inviting this selection of 20 documentaries from IDFA.

https://www.idfa.nl/en/selection/101804/me 

The Best East/Central European Documentary 2018?

The IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) based in Prague hosts a yearly so-called Silver Eye Award that has been granted annually since 2009 to the best East and Central European documentary films in two categories: short and feature documentary film with approx. 11 films in each category. There are juries and the winners will be announced at the Ji.hlava festival and of this month: “The winner in each category receives not only a unique award trophy, but also a prize money of 2 250 € and a year-long festival service of the East Silver Caravan worth of additional 2 250 €.”

With all respect to the short film genre, I will only mention the feature documentaries with links to the reviews written on this site:

Rodeo (dir. Raimo Jõerand, Kiur Aarma, Estonia, Finland, 2018) http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3692/

Are You Sleeping, Brother Jakob? (dir. Stefan Bohun, Austria, 2018)
Bruce Lee & the Outlaw (dir. Joost Vandebrug, Great Britain, Netherlands, Czech Republic, 2018)
Home Games (dir. Alisa Kovalenko, Ukraine, France, Poland, 2018)http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4258/

A Woman Captured (dir. Bernadett Tuza-Ritter, Hungary, Germany, 2017) http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4093/

The Distant Barking of Dogs (dir. Simon Lereng Wilmont, Denmark, 2017) http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4268/

Chris the Swiss (dir. Anja Kofmel, Switzerland, Germany, Croatia, Finland, 2018) http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4313/

Solving My Mother (dir. Ieva Ozolina, Latvia, 2017)
Genesis 2.0  (dir. Christian Frei, Maxim Arbugaev, Switzerland, 2018)
No Obvious Signs (dir. Alina Gorlova, Ukraine, 2018) http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4256/

When the War Comes (dir. Jan Gebert, Czech Republic, Croatia, 2018)

https://dokweb.net/activities/east-silver/2018/silver-eye-award

Orwa Nyrabia at Getting Real Conference 2018

… where he made a keynote speech introduced by the IDA’s Claire Aguilar in this way: Orwa is the Artistic Director of IDFA Amsterdam.  But unfortunately he is not here in person. He is skyping in from Amsterdam. As a Syrian national, he was not allowed into the US!! IDFA is the largest doc fest in world. Last year he was appointed art director. This Nov will be his first edition. He is a filmmaker/activist/programmer/actor.

Here is a small quote from the speech, I warmly recommend you to join the D-Word that has covered the conference extensely and where the whole speech can be found:

I spent much of my childhood with Troy and Achilles, and fight with Hannibal, and take elephant over mts. And Yemeni magical flying beast. I was a kid. My father, a political prisoner. Mother, sleepless. Expected to be imprisoned too. My experience is parallel to others. I was so afraid of reality as a kid. So I lived in mythology and then to be an actor. But I decided I didn’t want that. Documentary film felt like a outlet for my anger and my terrible reality. In the sense that in documentary film, the great works showed me that even when we make a film about the self, it can be ruthless truth and sincere and meaningful for all.

In my life conferences like this became expected, not a surprise. 15 yrs ago I was asking Jeeve where are you guys, and then I’d found d-word. It’s the best form of community I could have. Travel is difficult. We were lonelier than today but distance is different today. Today if we look at the reality of international doc filmmakers — are tortured, exiled, and killed. More than ever. Not everywhere. There is a normalization of what happens in Russia – 130 day hunger strike. But it will affect all of us, filmmakers being persecuted. Everyday in world, filmmakers face a lobbying campaign against them.

In Europe, it’s a special moment with the rise of right wing, and budgets are aggressively cut back, as the social democracy and public welfare state is being challenged. Denmark right wing voted to cut budget of public TV, and so documentaries are harmed. Denmark recently also now has a question of content. Prefer production in Danish language. A closing of the borders of country. ..

https://www.d-word.com/

DOK Neuland at DOK Leipzig

Demand the Impossible! In his essay The Ultimate Display from 1965, Ivan Sutherland formulated the almost prophetic dream of a computer display of reality that creates a perfect illusion of materiality. Films like The Matrix interpreted this as a nightmare, generating a fundamental scepticism of mediated spaces. At the same time, in 2015, hopes were raised that VR was an “empathy machine” that would make us all better human beings. Immersing yourself in other worlds via a headset, however, does not necessarily produce empathy. Today artists are exploring new aspects of immersion and leaving more space for a more complex experience of absorption.

The festival motto Demand the Impossible! serves as the guiding principle of our exhibition of interactive and VR works, too. We are transported to worlds that expand, defamiliarise, distort or temporally bend our present environment. This is where places that exist only in our imagination or in individual perceptions can be made accessible. This year, DOK Neuland focuses on works that turn their users into explorers: not like Neo in the matrix, but like Alice in wonderland.

Exhibited Works. DOK Neuland invites from 30 October to 3 November to discover and experience 12 interactive and VR works. Read more about the DOK Neuland projects: 

https://www.dok-leipzig.de/en/festival/dokneuland/projekte-2018

Helena Třeštiková: My Top 10

More documentary film history… chapeau for DOKLeipzig and IDFA that both festivals (more than before?) look back and not “only” take the temperature of what’s new in the documentary world. Here some words on the selection done by Czech documentary superstar (she will hate that I call her so!) Helena Třeštiková, who has been asked by IDFA to make her Top 10. The link below brings you to her article about the choice, she made, personal and with this wonderful quote by Věra Chytilová, whose film from 1963 “Something Different” is on the list: ““A film should have truth, aesthetics, intellect, feeling and a belief, because film should be true, exciting, necessary, beautiful and full of hope”.

 

Of course there must be a film by Milos Forman, “The Firemen’s Ball” (1967), and I loved her choice of Georges Rouquier, “Farrebique – The Four Seasons” from 1946, farmers in France; we had this gem in the catalogue of Statens Filmcentral (National Film Board of Denmark), no objection either to have “The Seine Meets Paris” (1957) by Ivens and Jacques Prévert, and Třeštiková reminds us about Havel, when she writes about “Citizen Havel”:

In 1992, I was present for the historic meeting where director Pavel Koutecký told then-president Václav Havel that he would like to follow him with a camera for 10 years. Havel agreed, thus clearing the way for one of the most noteworthy long-term film projects whose protagonist was a politician in office. Havel was extraordinary in many ways: originally a dramatist, then a dissident, prisoner, and after the revolution a president. He allows himself to be filmed in situations where other politicians would immediately shoo a filmmaker off. But he gives Koutecký and his crew his full trust. Part of the agreement was that the film would only be released five years after the president’s term in office. But the director tragically died just as the film was in its final stage, and it was completed by his colleague, Miroslav Janek, in 2007. I think that no one will ever make such an open film about a politician and his times again…

I think I have seen that film 10 times at least.

Having met Helena Třeštiková several times, including fine talks at the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade, I know how much, she cares about the protagonists, she has been filming over many years. The ethical question is raised by her in connection with her taking “First Love” (1974) by Kieślowski on her list. The Polish master follows over a year a young couple expecting a child but refrains from continuing afraid of how the filming would influence the lives of the couple. Whereas Třeštiková continued following a family for 37 years in the film that became the masterpiece “Private Universe”. OBS: If you are not going to IDFA, the films of Helena Třeštiková  can be found on

https://dafilms.com/director/167-helena-trestikova

She ends up with a very well deserved tribute to Slovak Peter Kerekes and his “66 Seasons” (2003), I agree when she writes “I consider this a beautiful example of inventiveness in filmmaking, imaginativeness in direction and walking a tight rope in editing. For me, it is something of a textbook for the opportunities of using film language in a documentary.”

 https://www.idfa.nl/en/article/101983/helena-on-her-top-10

Jonas Mekas on DocAlliance

 

I hurry to give you this news from Prague, where the excellent online cinema of DocAlliance keeps on offering film lovers high quality retrospectives into film history – to a very low price:

We present an extensive retrospective of Jonas Mekas, 95-year-old director straddled between Europe and the US, documentary and the avant-garde. Discover the work of the Lithuanian-American director, poet and visual artist often called the godfather of American avant-garde cinema and founder of the diary genre in documentary film.

The collection includes a cross-section of the works by Jonas Mekas which often follow a personal line. We present 13 films altogether, including The Brig about a Marine Corps jail in Japan. Following a day in the life of the inmates, the ultra-realistic film captures the tough treatment and shocking ways of physical and mental humiliation. The film won the Grand Prix at Venice Film Festival in 1964. This Side of Paradise follows the Kennedy family after the death of JFK. Jackie Kennedy decided to distract the children and hired Mekas as a film chronicler. The director spent several summer holidays at the house of Andy Warhol with the family, making a very personal film with a touch of home video and deep friendship which gradually emerged between him and the family. Made in diary style, Williamsburg, Brooklyn shows the neighborhood where Mekas settled after his arrival in the US; most of the scenes were shot between 1948 and 1951 and show the everyday life and little stories from the streets of New York. The film was screened at IFF Rotterdam.

https://dafilms.com/program/671-retrospective-jonas-mekas

Hampus Linder: Feministen

Politik er så forsigtig og strømlinet i dag, og Gudrun Schyman skiller sig ud. Hun er helt åben om, at hun har lavet fejl, hvilket gør hende til et menneske…

TV-KUNST

Jeg ser Hampus Linders biografiske film om den svenske politiker som et tv-program, ja, det fremtræder det faktisk som, det vil det være et interessant og seværdigt program med en kamerastil i fortællelagets reportage som i internationale tv-dokumentarer, altså ændret, distanceret siden den nærværende og intenst observerende kamerabrug fra helt tilbage til Richard Leacock mere og mere er forsvundet fra nye og unge produktioner (dog endnu bevaret hos få gamle mestre) uden egentlig at blive erstattet af en ny tv-kunst holdning. I dokumentarfilmene er samtidig dette klassiske direct cinema mere og mere afløst af et filmfotografi som henter sin erfaring fra spillefilmens omhyggeligt komponerede billede og lange forløb af arrangerede og instruerede scener. Og det derimod med en lige så omfattende filmkunstnerisk fordybelse, som jeg venter af spillefilmene.

Begge disse greb har Hampus Linder givet sig i kast med i sit arbejde med Schymanbiografien og for mig at se i kast med at definere en nutidig tv-kunst. Men jeg synes ikke det rigtigt helt er lykkedes, der er hverken spillefilmens myndige ro eller det gamle observerende kameras nærvær, dristighed, opdagelsestrang og iagttagelsesivers udvidelser af indsigten. Jeg mærker det især i reportageoptagelserne fra de mange politiske møder og demonstrationer.

Nogle scener lykkes for mig at se meget bedre i deres anderledes koncentrerede gammeldags filmambition: scenen med Gudrun Schyman og datteren i en tilbageskuende samtale, som Hampus Linder selv har fotograferet og scenerne med hendes tidligere mand, filminstruktøren Lars Westman, som er fine og tydelige klip fra to af hans film fra 1990-erne i en noget dristigere æstetik. De scener griber for alvor ned i mine følelser og rører ved smertende, men ellers ofte fortrængte erindringer. Her er Hampus Linder i sin professionelt seriøse TV-kunst ganske nær Lasse Wästmans personligt åbne filmkunst, som så smukt svarer til Gudrun Schymans undersøgelser og formuleringer, hendes enestående politiske arbejde.

MIKROPORT

Hampus Linder vil i sin nye filmambition, som vil aktualitet og samfundsdebat, bevare den gamle ambition om fordybelse, han skriver: ”Jeg mødte Gudrun Schyman, da jeg filmede hende under valgkampen i 2014, og der fødtes idéen om at lave en hel film om hende. Gudrun sagde ja til det, ’så længe du ikke er i vejen’. Det fortrolighedsforhold og den åbenhed, vi har fået fra Gudrun, har overrasket mig. Vi har fået lov til at være med hende på job, på rejser og privat. Jeg satte en trådløs mikrofon på hende om morgenen, og så glemte hun i princippet alt om mig. Jeg synes, Gudrun er en spændende karakter. Politik er så forsigtig og strømlinet i dag, og Gudrun skiller sig ud. Hun er helt åben om, at hun har lavet fejl, hvilket gør hende til et menneske og ikke en maskine. Under arbejdet med filmen ville jeg forstå, hvad der har formet og driver en person som Gudrun Schyman.”

Netop på denne glemte mikrofons indsigt bygger den usædvanlige kvinde sin gennemførte monolog, ofte i dialogform, men det er kun hende jeg hører, for her findes sammenhængen, så mit indtryk fæstnes ved noget overmåde værdifuldt og uforglemmekigt: hvilket flot og klogt og smukt menneske! Hvilken vidunderlig politisk sammenhængskraft og overbevisende nydannende styrke i en slags poetisk verdensanskuelse. Her er filmens egentlige fortælling, her er dens berettigelse som vigtigt dokument nu i det aktuelle, men især i den politiske historie langt tilbage, som Gudrun Schyman taler så smukt om, så overbevisende om.

Her er filmens alternative fortælling, her den dens berettigelse som uomgængeligt dokument at bevare i samme historie som kildeskrift, og her er dens værdi og egentlige aktualitet i de store politiske valg, udsatte menneskers flugt fra den rige verdens krige, kvinders oprør mod de dominerende mænds poliiske kultur og emtionelle brutalitet. Jeg ser tv, når jeg ser den her film, godt og seværdigt tv.

Men i det er mødet med Gudrun Schyman vigtigere for mig end filmens redegørelse er. Redegørelsen vil fortone sig i debatten nu, mødet vil fæstne sig i erindringen. Og frem for filmens danske titel Feministen vælger jeg dens originale overskrift Gudrun, ganske enkel og derfor uendelig rig til alle tider.

SYNOPSIS

En film om et feministisk ikon og et på én gang stærkt og skrøbeligt kvindeliv. Gudrun Schyman har ofte befundet sig i stormens øje. I 1993 blev hun partileder for Vänsterpartiet i Sverige, som hun sikrede det bedste valgresultat nogensinde. 10 år senere måtte hun gå af i utide under stor dramatik. Herefter dannede hun Feministisk Initiativ, som startede som en bevægelse og blev et parti, der nu har afdelinger over hele landet, søsterpartier i Danmark, Norge og Finland og en plads i Europa parlamentet.

Schyman er for længst skrevet ind i historiebøgerne og er i dag et ikon for svensk feminisme. Men vejen dertil har ikke bare været lang, men også fuld af alverdens forhindringer, hvor hendes egne dæmoner er nogle af de største. Vi får et indblik i det, der har formet Gudrun Schyman blandt andet en opvækst med en alkoholiseret far og hendes voksende problemer med at få den private person og den offentlige person til at mødes.

Filmen følger hende over 4 år i en periode (2014-2018), hvor fremgangen for Feministisk Initiativ, og Schymans appel bliver en del af det store billede af den kvindebevægelse, der vokser verden over og får sit største udtryk gennem Women’s March og #Metoo. (Lene Pia Madsen i pressematerialet)

http://doxbio.dk/movie-archive/feministen/ (Biografpremiere på onsdag 3. oktober)

Shevaun Mizrahi: Distant Constellation

You can’t see the wind a four year old family member said the other day.

Right she is. But you can hear it. And it can be part of a very excellent sound design as it is in this debut documentary film that I was happy to watch, having missed it in a couple of festivals, the last one Message2Man in St.Petersburg, where it received an award.

Music is an important part of the film of Shevaun Mizrahi. Within the walls of the house for old people, where the film is shot and where music forms a discreet background for scenes, creating atmosphere.

The atmosphere of the constant waiting the old people experience; those you can’t help loving from start till end. The old woman who comes from Armenia and remembers how her family had to change their names when they took home in Turkey. The old photographer (on the photo) who is almost blind and is repeating his sentences again and again. The charmeur who plays piano, reads an erotic text and asks the director if they should marry, “I need someone in my life”. And others.

They are on the edge of leaving Life with their memories in a dark film with bright absurd moments like the conversations in an elevator between the two old men, who go up and down talking to each other, hilarious it is, yes it reminds me of Beckett.

And outside there are construction workers, who are not from Turkey, who get out of their beds in poor container homes to go to work to earn money to send home. It looks like it is just outside the old people’s retirement home – it’s not important, for the old people it is another world than the one they lived in when younger.

A first film, a debut – bravo, a mature documentary film with many layers, visually with more interpretation than information, beautiful to watch, full of details, you see that the director, who is also the camerawoman was there for more than just a visit. Next film, please!    

Turkey, 82 mins., 2017

Guevara Namer Barcelona Photo

This is the second – and it will not be the last – time that we bring a photo taken by talented Guevara Namer. The first one was here

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3349/

from the Damascus where Guevara lived and was part of the team behind the DOXBox festival’s four editions. A couple of weeks ago I met her again. She was pitching a project in Riga together with German Antonia Kilian, very succesful pitch, read

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4342/

DOKLeipzig New Section: Late Harvest

The festival in Leipzig works apparently according to film editing rules: Don’t give all the information up front, give it piece by piece. The official programme is not announced yet but the festival introduces a new section called Late Harvest. Read all about it in the press release:

In anticipation of announcing of the complete Official Selection for DOK Leipzig 2018, we give a little taste of what you can expect at this year’s edition. In introducing the new programme section LATE HARVEST, we aim to draw attention to important films from the current season, works which have managed to capture the cinematic and political spirit of this year – by winning awards at other festivals, serving as catalysts for heated debate, or making echoing contributions to social and cinematographic discourses which complement and enhance DOK Leipzig’s themes and perspectives…

Adina Pintilie’s intimate act of transgression Touch Me Not, Golden Bear winner at this year’s Berlinale, is a prime example of the new section’s mission in action, as well as Barbara Miller’s #Female Pleasure, a film about women struggling to approach sexuality on their own terms, is also right at home here. The inaugural edition of LATE HARVEST also features Victor Kossakovsky’s most recent film Aquarela, fresh from a successful premiere in Venice. The Russian documentarian’s immersive new work is a meditation on the transformative beauty and raw power of water. Rounding off the programme for the new section is Vitaly Mansky’s revealing documentary Putin’s Witnesses that takes a look back at the dawn of the new millennium, as an ascendant Vladimir Putin was first assuming power in Russia.

The filmmakers will all attend the festival in Leipzig to present their works. Victor Kossakovsky, Romanian director Adina Pintilie and renowned Russian filmmaker Vitaly Mansky will speak about their recent films and their views on filmmaking in the new film talk series Meet the Filmmakers. Finally, Barbara Miller will take part in an extensive Q&A immediately following the screening of her film #Female Pleasure. You’ll find all screening dates and more information on the talks on 10 October on our website when the Official Selection for the 61st edition of DOK Leipzig will be announced.

https://www.dok-leipzig.de/en/dok/presse/pressemitteilungen/2018