Ivars Seleckis and the Children

Good news indeed from Riga, where I am at the Baltic Sea Docs for the rest of the week. Arriving I read on FNE News – link below – that the Latvians have done what the Lithuanians did with Arunas Matelis film “Wonderful Losers” – they took a documentary as their Oscar candidate. Here is a copy paste:

“Veteran filmmaker Ivars Seleckis’s

documentary To Be Continued has been selected as Latvia’s official entry for the US Academy Awards in the Foreign Language Film category.

Shot over the course of two years, the film follows seven children in various parts of Latvia. They are seven children at the intersection of various historical, social and economic processes. What are the skills, values and hopes instilled into them by the legacy of the past and the reality of today?

The film was produced by Mistrus Media and it was supported by the National Film Center of Latvia.

To Be Continued is one of the most successful productions of the Latvian Films for Latvia’s Centenary programme. Its international premiere took place at the Visions du Réel International Documentary Film Festival in Nyon in 2018.”

And another copy paste from my review of the film on this site:

“Dear Ivars, dear friend, dear master. I have seen your film. I love it. As FILM and as one who has the age of a grandfather and very often are blessed with visits from kids at the same age as those in your film: 2 are 6 years old and have just started in school, 2 are 4 years old. Children are children, wherever they are and I could recognize so many ways of behaviour, so many reactions, facial expressions, clever reflections and thoughts about the world we live in. As you say in the beginning of the film: May they live in peaceful times…”

Tonight there is the national premiere of “Bridges of Time” by Kristine Briede and Audrius Stonys, that is an homage to the poetic Baltic documentary cinema. Ivars Seleckis is one of the directors, who appear in the film.

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4075/

http://filmneweurope.com

http://balticseadocs.lv/

Magnus Lindeen: The Raft

Hvorfor er det så, at jeg ikke bliver fanget af denne historie, som på papir ser spændende ud, lad mig citere fra pressematerialet, hvad ”The Raft” drejer sig om:

”I 1973 var det at deltage i et

socialt eksperiment noget helt nyt. Her handlede det på INGEN måde om at blive kendt. Det skabte kæmpe opsigt verden over, da den meksikanske antropolog Santiago Genovés besluttede sig for at blande 11 kvinder og mænd med vidt forskellig baggrund, civilstatus og nationalitet og sende dem over Atlanten i en tømmerflåde, der mindede om en form for skib. De 11 deltagere satte deres liv på spil for videnskabens skyld. De deltog i et socialt eksperiment, som skulle kaste lys over voldens ophav og dynamikken i seksuel attraktion…”

Hvorfor er det så…: Er det fordi filmen i sin konstruktion, i hvert fald i begyndelsen, er gumpetung skematisk og forudsigelig i sin præsentation af de seks kvinder og en mand, som 43 år senere mødes for at tale om de 101 dage til søs? I et studie hvor en kopi af flåden er bygget op. En efter en præsenterer de sig, de ældre damer og den japanske mand, med klip tilbage til den tid, hvor de som unge bikini-klædte bevæger sig rundt på skibet.

Hvorfor er det så…? Den fanger mig ikke, måske også fordi hovedpersonen, bortset fra et klip i start og til slut ikke er tilstede – han døde i 2013 – men (re)præsenteres af citater fra sin bog, der består af dagbogsnotater oplæst patetisk af en skuespiller.

Det er her dramaet ligger, hos antropologen, der registrerer og observerer og tager grueligt fejl, og opfører sig på bedste machomanér overfor pigerne – der er også andre mænd på båden, men de er døde så hankønnet er 43 år senere kun repræsenteret af japaneren.

Det meste ligger altså i den oplæste tekst, der er placeret ind imellem de filmede episoder fra sejladsen og interviews og samtaler med de ældre kvinder, som gør deres bedste for at huske og formulere. Den bedste til det, 43 år efter, hun leder samtalen på kopi-flåden i studiet, er den afroamerikanske kvinde, som kalder Genovés for racist og erindrer, hvordan forholdet mellem ham og de deltagende guinea pigs på et tidspunkt var så dårligt, at de planlagde at slå ham ihjel!

For hende betød turen noget, det kommer tydeligt frem, for de andre tog de bare hjem og fortsatte deres liv som før.

Hvorfor er det så…? Når nu hovedpersonen ikke kunne være med personligt i filmen, var der så nok materiale, og interessant materiale nok til en film, spørger jeg mig selv uhøfligt overfor hvad jeg har set og bliver endnu mere skeptisk, da kvinderne og japaneren til slut i filmen lytter til et bånd, hvor Genovés taler om turen. Han har ikke meget at sige, mildest talt. Han undskylder og kommer med statistik, der siger at de fleste af de deltagende mener at de er blevet mere tolerante af oplevelsen! ”I think that’s all, he says”… Og det var ikke meget!

Og dog – som den afroamerikanske kvinde siger – vi lærte hinanden at kende, vi holdt sammen – og det er der visuelt belæg for i billederne fra flåden. En lille trøster ift. en film, som jeg ikke blev fanget af!

Sverige, Danmark, 2018, 98 mins.

Filmen har premiere den 5. september i 50 biografer landet over, arrangeret af DOXBio.

Göran Hugo Olsson: That Summer

The Danish co-producer of the film, Final Cut for Real, gives this description of the film:

“”That Summer” is a feature documentary centered on the film project artist Peter Beard initiated in 1972 with Lee Radziwill about her relatives, the Beales of Grey Gardens. Lost for decades, this extraordinary footage re-emerges in a film that

focuses on Beard and his family of friends, who formed an enormously influential and vibrant creative community in Montauk, Long Island (NY) in the 1970s. Featuring Peter Beard, Lee Radziwill, Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, Edith Bouvier Beale, Andy Warhol. Including footage directed by Peter Beard, Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol and with additional cinematography by Albert Maysles and Vincent Fremont.”

It’s not only lovely to meet the Beales again in footage that was shot before the Maysles Brothers made “Grey Gardens”, it is wonderful to meet Peter Beard and Lee Radziwill; the first is introduced masterly through him scrolling in one of his photo books in the first five minutes of the film, and Radziwill – the sister of Jacqueline Kennedy – who is in the picture all the time, when the extraordinary material is shown, 4 reels with image and sound synchronized, and her voice of today stressing how important Peter Beard was for the avant-garde film scene at that time. The film shows how much love, she had for the two and how she fought for the house to stay even if the authorities wanted to discuss its demolition because of the unhealthy mess they were living in. Radziwill succeeded.

In the press material Göran Olsson is asked if he thinks the film is interesting for a new generation of filmmakers. Yes, he says, and Yes I say: The found footage with mother and daughter is filmed in the way that – with the words of Richard Leacock – you get the sense of being there. It’s creating an atmosphere of presence with full respect for the two women. There are marvelous scenes like the one, where Aunt Edie asks the cameraman to film the portrait of herself but discovers that it is more interested in Little Edie… or the one where Lee and her children (?) is looking out the window discussing with the two women how to feed the raccoons, with cakes or with hippie-food…

The film ends with Beard on knees in his studio, making one of his collages. The 80 year old artist says: I do it “to keep the pen going”!

“Parlez-moi d’amour”, aunt Edie sings. This is what the film does.

Sweden, USA, Denmark, 2017, 80 mins.

The film is shown at Cinemateket, Copenhagen tomorrow September 4th at two evening screenings. The director is present.

The photo of Edith Bouvier Beale and Lee Radziwill is taken by Peter Beard.

https://www.dfi.dk/cinemateket/biograf/alle-film/film/summer

Ingmar Bergman 100 år /8

TINA RØMER: BERGMAN OG MUSIKKEN

Radioprogram i tre dele GENUDSENDES I DAG 15 – 18 på DR P2

Her følger med min bedste anbefaling af dette fornemme radioværk mine notater fra udsendelserne tidligere denne sommer:

1

Første afsnit En kærlighed der ikke er gengældt i aften, fredag den 20. juli. Det kommer bag på mig, at udsendelsen kommer direkte nu mens jeg har P 2 kørende i mit køkken, jeg bliver glad, havde glædet mig, Tue Steen Müller havde gjort mig opmærksom på serien, jeg havde tænkt at finde den på computeren inde på skrivebordet. Nu er det direkte og så er det, at jeg opdager jeg radiokvaliteten, for at bestille den som podcast på computeren vil være noget helt andet. I min radio bevares nuet som tilstand. Jeg tror på at det er Tina Rømer, som taler til mig, som så ofte i Natsværmeren. Radio er nærvær, en stemme i min lille køkkenradio, til mig alene. Podcast er distance, det er som CD er i forhold til koncertsalen, begge muligheder er uundværlige, men næstbedst, men også altså: computeren er min chance og muligheden for at gentage det hele i den tænkte sammenhæng, som her er vigtig, da det er en rejse fra København til Bergmans Fårö og til musikken og hjem igen, som Tina Rømer foretager så naturligt personlig… Og jeg begynder med det samme at skrive notater i min lommebog, de følger her…

Tina Rømer

2

Her er en lille ekskurs: Jeg opdagede en beslægtet radiokvalitet ved P2 morgenandagterne fra domkirken i København som sendes direkte hver dag efter radioavisen klokken otte. Og det var fordi den præst som havde tjenesten den morgen – det var Steffen Ringgaard Andresen – er opmærksom på radiokvaliteten, tænkte jeg med ét, og det var nok fordi han lagde en ekstra kvalitet til, og det gør han hver gang ved jeg nu. Læg en uge han har tjenesten mærke til hans fine, fine behandling af teksterne. Jeg mærker i afdæmpetheden og i den moderne, ja, moderne! – eller tidssvarende måske og voksne udtale og stemmeføring en forståelse af radiomediet. Fra præstens tæt placerede mikrofon som fra et studie uden om det store kirkerums akustik direkte til min højttaler. En forståelse som uden videre fører til min således nu helt anderledes forståelse af teksternes arkitektur og indhold. Morgenandagten er med det ændret fra transmission til radiokunst, fra reportage til gudstjeneste.

3

Jeg kender Tina Rømer fra hendes programmer for en tilsvarende afdæmpethed og sprogbehandling og mediebevidsthed. For hende er opgaven med Bergman og musikken at komme tæt på det sted Bergman holdt så meget af, hvor han boede et halvt liv og igen sin sidste tid. En korsats fra Matthæuspassionen ledsager Tina Rømers dæmpede stemme, hun fortæller det begyndte med, at faderen tog ham med til opførelsen i kirken og henter fra Linn Ullmanns bog De urolige hans drøm om den store koncertsal – Bergmann drømmer han som dirigent træder ind i et vældigt højloftet rum hvor fugle flyver frit omkring og et kæmpestort symfoniorkester og tilsvarende kor sidder og står på gulvet, Bachs og Beethovens partiturer ligger på pulten, Ingmar Bergman er dirigenten, Rømer lader mig høre hvilke, serien er jo et musikprogram på en musikkanal, var Bergman ikke blevet teater- og filminstruktør og forfatter var det bestemt gået med ham som i drømmen.

4

Peter Schepelern fortæller i en stilfærdig parallelt løbende samtale med Rømer fra sit store lager af paratviden om både film og musik, om både Bergmans biografi og komponisternes biografier. Jeg tænker: kommer deres værker af deres liv? Hvordan det? Jeg må repetere hvordan det nu var med den biografiske metode før Wellek og Warren og deres introduktion af nykritikken og opfattelsen af værket som autonomt. Men den biografiske tilgang er bestemt også nu den klassiske dannelse på P2 og biografierne fortælles her selvfølgeligt og befriende uanstrengt, jeg kan blot sidde med en kop kaffe og bare lytte, dejligt!

Peter Schepelern

5

Rejsen fra København til Fårø er rammen. Rømer har båndoptageren med og fortæller mig alt det, jeg jeg i forvejen ved fra filmene og bøgerne, så charmerende ivrig optaget, at det bliver så nyt for mig som første gang for mange år siden. Bergman og musikken er rejsen mod Bergman, som hun nu vil lære at kende ved musikken, som er det hun kender så godt. Bergmans tidlige film Musik i mørket, 1947 hører bestemt ikke til mesterværkerne, den er ”fin og nydelig i tidens stil” siger Schepelern, mens jeg hører Erland van Kochs ”konventionelle filmmusik” og Chopins præludier, måske og Beethovens sonate med betegnelsen ”næsten som en fantasi”. Måneskinssonaten siger Tina Rømer…

INDHOLD

1) Rejsen til den fjerne svenske ø Fårö begynder, samtidig med at turen går tilbage til den første tid med klassisk musik. Film som Musik i mørke og Ved vejs ende er fulde af klassisk musik og på teatret kaster Bergman også sin kærlighed over musikken

2) Efter en dagsrejse når vi frem til Fårö, hvor Bergman træder i karakter som auteur. Bergman indspiller filmene Som i et spejl og Persona på Fårö – og han finder hjem på øen og i musikken af Bach.

3) Rejsen slutter ved Bergmans gravsted og hus ved stranden på Fårö, hvor Bergman dirigerer de sidste film uden at ryste på hånden. Med Fanny og Alexander får Bergman sit folkelige gennembrud, og musikken er der fortsat som en budbringer om en anden virkelighed.

Tilrettelæggelse: Tina Rømer (DR P2)

https://www.dr.dk/radio/p2/bergman-og-musikken/bergman-og-musikken-1

DOKLeipzig 2018 Juries

We have to wait until October 10 before the festival in Leipzig, that takes place from October 29 to November 4, announces its official selection. But the efficient press department of DOK Leipzig warms us up with news. This time about the juries – there will be 10 (!) all together – and their mix of film people and writers and visual artists. I can’t mention all – link below but here is a fragment of the press release that came out the other day:

“This year, in addition to the Next Masters Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film there will be a separate dedicated competition for short films. For this reason, the Next Masters Jury, which will preside over both competitions for up-and-coming young filmmakers, has been expanded to include two additional members. Austrian director Ruth Beckermann, who is being honoured at DOK Leipzig 2018 in the Homage section, will be teaming up here with Romanian colleague Adina Pintilie. Both filmmakers were awarded at Berlinale 2018: Beckermann for “The Waldheim Waltz” (PHOTO) and Pintilie for “Touch Me Not”. DOK Leipzig is showing Pinitilie’s debut film “Don’t Get Me Wrong” (2007) in the special programme Re-Visions. The two directors will be joining third jury member Thierry Garrel, producer and former director of the documentary film department at ARTE France. 

Internationally renowned Finnish filmmaker Mika Kaurismäki is also slated to serve as a jury member at DOK Leipzig. Joining respected Tunisian producer Dora Bouchoucha and Lithuanian author Laimonas Briedis, who visited the city previously for the 2017 Leipzig Book Fair, Kaurismäki will be rounding off the jury for the International Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film…”

https://www.dok-leipzig.de/en/festival/wettbewerbe/juries-2018

Marie-Clémence Andriamonta-Paës: Fahavalo/ 2

Enfin, someone wrote on FB, when it was announced that the film «Fahavalo» by French company Laterit had been chosen for a festival, the World Film Festival/Festival des Films du Monde in Montréal, a festival for fiction, shorts and documentaries, link below. World premiere September 1st.

I echo the “enfin” about the film and take some quote from the review I wrote months ago, The whole review is here:

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4187/

”I’ll try to tell you the story”, says the weak old man in a blue shirt with a hat

on his head. He is adressing the camera crew. ”I was 22 in 1947”, the year that is the focus of the film, the year when a rebellion took place led by the ”Fahavalo”, the enemies it means, against the French who had colonised Madagascar. An uprising against the Vazaha, the French, the Europeans. He was one of the freedom fighters and he paid his price, 8 years and 9 months in prison. The rebels were hiding in the forests and long after they were defeated, many of them were still there.

That old man is just one of the storytellers in the film. A handful of other men and women still alive are the witnesses found and involved in the film by the filmmakers. In conversations, which are conversations and not interviews – and conversations that most of the time include listeners, relatives, children and grandchildren, who want to hear and – you sense that – are proud of what they did back then…

On the photo above you see cameraman César Paes, assistant director and set photographer Tiago Paes, Berthe Raharisoa, in her white dress, a lively lady, born in 1925, who was part of the MDRM. In the film she sings the anthem of the resistance party. Lovely!

And to the right director and producer Marie Clémence Andriamonta Paes, as the name indicates she is half Malagasy, half French. It is of course a huge advantage that she speaks the language and can communicate directky with the witnesses.

All I know about Madagascar, I know from Marie-Clémence and César Paes and their films.

http://www.ffm-montreal.org/en/press-releases/195–ffm2018-documentaries-of-the-world.html

Makedox 2018

I was there last year for this gem of a festival for creatice documentaries. It is done with a very personal touch by the couple Petra Seliskar and Brand Ferro. It’s primarily an outdoor screening festival – the weather invites you to share beautiful evenings at the amazing Kurshumli An in the old city – with indoor workshops; this year they had two top names to deal with the theme “Directing Reality”: Finnish Pirjo Honkasalo and Polish Wojciech Staron.

If you google Makedox, you will see many clips from the workshops and small talks with filmmakers, who participated like Boris Mitic (In Praise of Nothing), Marta Prus (Over the Limit) (there was a fine focus on Polish documentaries) and Simon Lereng Wilmont. whose “The Distant Barking of Dogs” won the main award in the Main Selection. Not the first award for Wilmont and his film – with another multi-awarded film “Of Fathers and Sons” by Talal Derki getting a special mention from a jury that consisted of Honkasalo, Staron and Mariam Chachia, young talented director from Georgia.

There were many other sections and juries and awards, let me mention one, the best short film: Heba Khaled’s content-wise terrible, stylistically overwhelmingly strong “People of the Wasteland” that has the following description “Using  footage filmed and gathered during more than two years through a GoPro camera placed on the heads of different Syrian fighters in the enemy region, the film presents the violence, the horrors and the absurdity of war in a first-perspective point-of-view. In the chaos of war, the lines between good and evil become blurred and the location is intentionally left unclear to remind us that war affects us all, not only Syrians.”

I have seen the film, have to see it again, shocking reality!

http://makedox.mk/mk/en/

 

 

M2M – Message to Man Fest

Would have loved to be in beautiful St. Petersburg again for the festival Message to Man, that I have visited many times. The dates are September 15-22 and I am “anderswo engagiert” .

The festival has a huge program – if you are on FB with it you are bombarded with news every day – and there are many interesting films in the competitive sections, of which there are no less than 6: International Full-Length documentary Films, Short Docs, Short Fiction, Short Animated, National Competition of Docs and the In Silico Experimental Short Film Competition.

Let me mention some of the films: The controversial “The White World According to Daliborek” by Vit Klusák, the super-productive master Sergei Loznitsa has his “Victory Day” in competition, Romanian “Infinite football” (PHOTO) by Corneliu Porumboiu is there (will there be played football as in Tbilisi and other festivals thanks to tireless main character Laurentiu Ginghina?), Bernadett Tuza-Ritter’s “A Woman Captured” that is and deserves to be everywhere, Wang Bing is there with “Mrs Fang”… in the national competition I am curious to see what talented Tatyana Soboleva comes with, “Uncle Sasha, or One Flew Over Russia” is the title as well as the film by Alina Rudnitskaya (together with Sergey Vinokurov) “Fatei and the Sea”… and In Silico presents a new work by former students of Zelig Film School in Bolzano, Mark Olexa and Francesca Scalisi, “Black Line”.

https://message2man.com/en/

Baltic Sea Docs: Film Screenings

Time for tears in eyes again. Which I had at the premiere in Karlovy Vary

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4288/

and will definitely have, when “Bridges of Time” by Kristine Briede and Audrius Stonys will open the mini-festival of the Baltic Sea Docs in Riga at Cinema K.Suns wednesday September 5. Tears from Beauty, Cinematic Excellence, Wonderful Old Masters of Baltic documentary. Clips – among others – from 235.000.000 by Uldis Brauns, do you remember the dancing helicopter and the kids on the beach?

“Bridges of Time” is one of nine films selected by the Latvian organisers of the

Baltic Sea Docs, headed by Zanda Dudina-Spoge. Other films to be screened, which already have won international acclaim are Talal Derki’s “Of Father and Sons”, Marta Prus “Over the Limit”, “The Cleaners” by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewick and Håvard Bustness “Golden Dawn Girls”.

Three are new for me: To see from the trailer, lovely “Granny Project” by Hungarian Bálint Révész, who will be there to meet the audience. “Kolyma: Road of Bones”, ““Goulash?” asked the young woman, popping her head out from the hotdog stand on the icy Kolyma roadside. Director Stanisław Mucha’s question though, was about the gulag, and he was surprised that in this place, for years the location of Soviet prison and labour camps, the word would be unknown to someone…”.

And “Seed: The Untold Story” that is followed by a debate on seed diversity in Latvia. Finally – of course – a film on refugee policy, the German “Island of the Hungry Ghosts” by Gabrielle Brady that has the following description: Australia’s refugee policy calls for asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat to be detained and held in remote territories – such as Christmas Island and other offshore processing facilities thousands of kilometres away in Pacific Ocean nation-states – before being sent back home. The largest number of asylum seekers in the Christmas Island facility was almost 3,000, while the registered local population is 1,843, according to the latest data…

http://balticseadocs.lv/film-screenings/

DOCAlliance: 1968 online

 

DOCAlliance, the favourite vod of filmkommentaren, the place for creative documentaries published this press release today:

Films by Jan Němec and Karel Vachek about the revolutionary Prague Spring 1968 are online at DAFilms.com

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the armies of the Warsaw Pact in 1968, DAFilms.com presents two remarkable films focusing on the Prague Spring. The Ferrari Dino Girl by Czechoslovak New Wave classic Jan Němec and Elective Affinities by Karel Vachek include authentic scenes as well as a re-enactment of the period events.

 

The Ferrari Dino Girl (2009) by Jan Němec is a re-enactment of the events of August 21, 1968 when Němec and his small film crew shot a sixteen-minute documentary on various sites of occupied Prague and smuggled the unique witness account to Austria. His scenes from occupied Prague were broadcast by the Austrian television and subsequently seen by millions of people around the world. The film has a symbolical length of 68 minutes and includes the unique archive footage in its original form as shot by Jan Němec on August 21, 1968.

Karel Vachek’s Elective Affinities capture the atmosphere of the stormy political period of March 14 to 30, 1968 between the abdication of President Antonín Novotný and the election of General Ludvík Svoboda. Politicians Alexander Dubček, Josef Smrkovský, Oldřich Černík, Čestmír Císař, Ota Šik, František Kriegel, Gustáv Husák and others are shown as they casually talk while the resulting mosaic depicts the spirit of the era and its inner charged atmosphere.

Both films are available in Czech with English subtitles. PHOTO: From Vachek’s film.

https://dafilms.com