Viktor Kossakovsky at DOK Leipzig

I have known him for years – since back to the days of the Bornholm festival in the 90’es. He came to Leipzig for one screening of the film and for a talk. We hugged and I told him that “Aquarela” is an ingenious film! No, no the next film is better, he said and went into the room, where the talk was to take place. Viktor Kossakovsky is not one, who answers the questions put to him, he takes his own roads of improvisation. Impossible job to be a moderator, when he is in the chair, does not matter, he is entertaining and has something important to say.

Let me quote Ukrainian Darya Bassel, who wrote on her FB: “Kossakovsky pours nectar in my ears. He sings an ode to a cinema, which doesn’t put story and character (person) in the middle of everything. A cinema which is art not storytelling.”

Yes, that’s what he keeps on saying and thanks for that in times of constant “what is your story, who are your characters”. We make movies for the cinema, the industry should know that, he said. In “Aquarela” you can´t have a shot of water that lasts 1 to 1,2 seconds. It has to be longer to give you a chance to think. When I’m editing, I’m always thinking about 10 people – one will think like this, another like that, and I try to put it together so many interpretations are possible. Why do we make films? If it is to prove our ideas, then it is not cinema! No brain first, I’m trying to use my eyes, my camera. Brain first, it is insulting!

And oh, Kossakovsky always refers to – this time – Leonardo da Vinci, Malevich – and to literature, it’s refreshing, include it in the curriculum of the film schools. (My comment!)

He talked about teaching, that he does not like, he talked about some of the sequences in “Aquarela”, about “how little we are” in this world (as is so obvious in the film), he praised his fellow cinematographer Ben Bernhard, he talked about “Tishe!” that he made while waiting for funding for his next film – a film that none of the tv commissioning editors would take when it was a project (I want to shoot a film from my window in Saint Petersburg), but all bought when it was made. Paper work is needed when you want funding for a film.

I have promised producer Aimara Reques also to watch the film in Amsterdam, at IDFA, I will, and will try to write a review of this masterpiece.

Herzog´s Missing Questions…

An understatement: They were angry my friends from Lithuania, Georgia and Ukraine. After having watched Werner Herzog and André Singer’s “Meeting Gorbachev”. Nothing, absolutely nothing about the violent Soviet attacks that took place in Vilnius, in Riga, in Georgia…

Did he ask these questions, Herzog? Did he answer, Gorbachev? Why were they not in the film?

Have to confess that I did not react immediately on this failure from the side of Herzog & Singer but was taken by the compassion and admiration that Herzog demonstrated towards the 87 year old former statesman.

Yesterday, the Lithuanian documentary by Giedre Zickyte, “How We Played the Revolution” was shown as part of the impressive documentary retrospective from the small Baltic country. In the fine film by Zickyte, based on archive, Gorbachev reacts in the Duma  towards to the tanks entering Vilnius and the brutality performed by his people at the tv station. We want them to stop (= we will make them stop) the demonstrations and then we can talk. Words to that effect. People were killed in Vilnius as they were in Riga, where the – among others – two cameramen of Juris Podnieks were shot down by Soviet soldiers. It’s all documented, Gorbachev knew what happened, he was in charge as the president, he wanted to establish more democracy in the country, he did not understand that the Baltics and Georgians and the Ukrainians wanted freedom, independence.

The film by Herzog/Singer wants to give a historical background through archive and interviews. Essential questions were not raised or touched upon.  

Werner Herzog – Ecstatic Truths

10.30 in the morning, Kupferstrasse in Leipzig. There is a line outside the Kupferhalle, where Werner Herzog is to hold his masterclass or as the DOK Leipzig organisers called it, “a conversation” with Kristina Jaspers, who knows about the director and has written a book about him, (as has Danish Kristoffer Hegnsvad). (And let me lead those who are interested to this site´s “Collected Posts on Werner Herzog”: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1940/).

Those in line waited to see if there were tickets to get. We had already been given tickets so in we (my wife and I) went with high expectations as we had heard that Herzog is a brilliant and inspiring speaker. And deep as had colleague Allan Berg experienced at the Danish Film School.

He was not deep this morning where everyone got in – festival director Leena Pasanen mentioned that we were around 500 to listen to the master. Not deep but entertaining he was from the very beginning, where he corrected Pasanen on how to set the audience microphones in the right positions! A director going in details.

Herzog followed up on yesterday’s film “Meeting Gorbachev” saying that on all three

conversation occasions Gorbachev came from and was brought back to the hospital, where he is getting treatment. They had three times 11/2 hour of conversations. And how did you prepare for the conversations, the question came, “nobody can tell you how to conduct a conversation”, Herzog said. It’s a matter of whether you connect immediately or not. He repeated from yesterday that he thought the demonization of Russia should stop.

Apart from some provocations – there are 4500 festivals in the world but only 4 good films per year! – he gave good background to “Lessons of Darkness”, one of his masterpieces, where he worked with British Paul Berriff, according to Herzog an undaunted cameraman, who could go down in the desert to film near the burning oil. He also revealed that the quote in the beginning of the film credited Blaise Pascal, was actually written by Herzog himself, Pascal could not have done it better!

A question came from the audience about his voice; he always makes the commentary himself. “As I have written the text myself, I have to read it as well. As before on many occasions – said to a young filmmaker – “there’s no excuse any longer, you can shoot on small cameras or with your cell phone, I don’t believe in film schools as they are set up, I have set up my rogue film school and it works. You can make a feature film for 10.000$, a documentary for 1000$ but you need a vision and courage.”

“I feel a big responsibility, when I am making a feature film. I want to control the cash flow every day… I want to stay under budget”. “Not possible the producer said”. “I will stay under budget”, I said, “and I made a deal that I would get a bonus if it happened. It did!”

The entertainer is also an actor and a hilarious scene with Herzog as an actor was shown after a more serious insight to a scene from my favourite Herzog documentary, “Little Dieter Needs to Fly”. Dieter wanted to talk about death, Herzog said, I told him that I could do that much better in images, and we saw the scene, where Dieter stands in front of the jellyfish aquarium.

“Lo and Behold”, we did not see a clip from that film, but Herzog declared that he has made the only competent film on the internet.

Photo by film director Andrijana Stojkovic. Thanks.

https://www.dok-leipzig.de/

DOK Leipzig 2018 Opening

Full house in Cinestar, two cinemas with people ready to watch “Meeting Gorbachev” by André Singer and Werner Herzog. Two wonderfully short and good official speeches came from representatives from the city of Leipzig and from Sachsen. A longer one from festival director Leena Pasanen, relaxed, happy she was with the goal reached of having quite as many female directors as male at the festival already now, hoping that this example of equal opportunities could inspire other cultural institutions. She thanked the funders, of course, and made a fine statement on the “premiere circus” that the festival takes part in, an issue often mentioned on this site: why is it so important to have premieres, an absurdity Pasanen said even more so in times of coproductions, where one or more festivals have national premieres, others European premieres, others world premieres. Etc. This year we have introduced “late harvest” (in German Spätlese) to secure that the audience have the chance to watch films that have been going around succesfully to other festivals.

And Werner Herzog on stage introducing the film – co-director André Singer was not there but his son was Nick Singer, who made the music for the film. Before the film the organisers had found a funny clip with the young rebellious Herzog talking about filmmaking, a bit “peinlich” Herzog said, not at all, a fine reference back to a filmmaker, who if anyone has put his mark on German and world cinema.

The film has a kind and compassionate approach. Herzog, he says so in the interview, loves Gorbachev for his silent contribution to the reunification of his Germany, for his nuclear disarmament agreements with the Americans, for his positive attitude to the Western world.

To the interviews made by Herzog are added archive material and interviews, for instance with Lech Walesa, Hungarian Németh and George Schultz who was with Reagan at the famous meeting in Iceland concerning the reduction of nuclear weapons. There are some fine anecdotes in this historical part.

In that way it is obvious that the film wants to give the audience a historical background, fair enough as the film goes on television, for me who is old enough and knows the history, the most appealing is to watch and listen to the 87 year old man, sitting there, not in good health but open to say that it was wrong to give up the USSR, expressing worries for what is happening now in his country and elsewhere. Moving is the sequence were he talks about his wife Raisa – “when she died I felt that my life was taken away from me”. A statesman yes, but also a human being suffering a loss.

https://www.dok-leipzig.de

Ingmar Bergman 100 år /13

Det er altid særligt at læse virkelig lange romaner. Uanset om den strækkes ud over mange uger eller foregår i en hektisk rus, går læsningen fra at være en oplevelse til at blive en tilstand… (Martin Bastkjær i Informations bogtillæg, 12. oktober 2018)

 

MARGARETHE VON TROTTA: HISTORY AND CINEMA / GESCHICHTE IM FILM

Inde i min optagethed af von Trottas film om Bergman må jeg, igen i en af mine ekskurser, opsøge hendes øvrige film. Især inspireret af den lille scene, hvor hun i en liste over Ingmar Bergmans yndlingsfilm finder sin egen De tyske søstre og fascineret af en scene fra den film hvor de to piger lytter til en præsts prædiken fra den høje prædikestol og ned mod dem på bænken. Som Bergman fortæller at han i sin barndom lyttede til sin far i kirken i Stockholm.

Så blev jeg opmærksom på den her filmede forelæsning, som for mig er en levende filmografis tilblivelse, som jeg trods en forfærdende teknisk kvalitet finder er en gribende fortælling om en instruktørs tumlen med stoffet, baksen tålmodig med at forvandle tekst til cinematografi, lykkes med personligt at leve sig ind til en forståelse af og der dybt indefra skildre fremragende og modige kvinder, hun har lavet biografiske film om og nu i forlæsningerne fortæller om: Rosa Luxemburg (1986), Hanna Weinstein og Lena Fischer i Rosenstrasse (2003), Hildegard von Bingen (2009) og Hannah Arendt (2012).

Von Trotta fortæller under 2017-forelæsningen charmerende og let undskyldende, men tydeligt på engelsk, trods teknikkens vanskeligheder, men for tyskkyndige vil jeg foreslå 2013-versionen hvor hun taler sit eget elegante tysk.

Tyskland 2017, 77 min. og 2013, 83 min. 

Offentliggjort den 11. feb. 2018:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H97nI-A6bow

Margarethe von Trotta at The European Graduate School / EGS. Valletta, Malta. October 24th, 2017. Public open lecture for the students of the Division of Philosophy, Art & Critical Thought. (YouTube)

Offentliggjort den 12. dec. 2013:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXsx6j_67Ck

Vortrag der Mercator-Professorin 2013 der Universität Duisburg-Essen (UDE): Margarethe von Trotta am 10. Dezember 2013. (YouTube)

http://egs.edu/faculty/margarethe-von-trotta (detaljeret biografi, engelsk)

Margarethe von Trotta fører i forelæsningen kortfattet og vigtigt linjen tilbage til sin barndom og ungdom og til sine første film Katharina Blums  tabte ære, 1975  og Christa Klages anden opvågnen, 1978. Fotografiet fra en optagelse må være fra den tid…

André Singer on Meeting Gorbachev

From variety.com I received a very informative interview with André Singer on his making of the documentary with Werner Herzog, written by Damon Wise. The film is to be shown at the Ji.hlava Festival and opens the DOK Leipzig tomorrow night. Singer talks about how he approached Gorbachev, how he included his long time partner on many films, Werner Herzog, how other interviews were conducted, how he had a structure in beforehand that was dropped after the interviews that Herzog conducted – “… The essential quality we wanted from the interview was of two intelligent and concerned men engaged in discussion – not a formal Q&A. Gorbachev never asked for questions in advance and was happy to enter into any area of questioning Werner wished to take…”.

André Singer, who explains the technical issues connected to the shooting of the three interviews, is going to Moscow beginning of November to show the film to Gorbachev, “this legendary giant of the 1980s and ’90s”.

To conclude the fine interview Singer says “…I feel strongly that the most important thing about the film is that it “humanizes” him. I found him a warm, genuine, generous man who has been neglected by history and in his current rather sad position isolated in Moscow deserves to be heard and remembered. If the film helps achieve that, I would be a happy man!”.

On the photo you see André Singer, Werner Herzog, Gorbachev and the interpreter Pavel Palazchenko.

More on André Singer, The True Documentary Gentleman, in Danish on http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3032/

https://variety.com/2018/film/festivals/mikhail-gorbachev-werner-herzog-andre-singer-1203006531/

Martina Melilli: My Home in Libya

One year ago good friend, producer Stefano Tealdi sent me a rough cut of what is now a finished film that has been screened in Locarno, Chicago and is in the programme of DOKLeipzig, that starts next week. I found my immediate email reaction from then and am happy to state that it lives up to, what it promised:

“This is going to be a great film! Really… It is original, surprising in style and it has several layers: The world of today. The world of yesterday – the grandfather is excellent as
is his parrot. And the director makes very good shots from the apartment. To be away from each other, long-distance, maybe not a love but then a true friend story. You see Tripoli as it looks today, beautiful it was and is and then you see closed doors and shops.

You can see that this is made by someone, who comes with another “visual approach”, hurra for that… “

Yes, it is different, far from mainstream, sketchy, including the search for making the film, collecting material from the past in Tripoli, family archive, notes, drawings and first of all the internet conversation with the Libyan Mahmoud, a conversation that overtakes the narration more and more; unfolding the desperate situation of the young man, who formulates sentences like “Libya is Hell” from the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. He can’t leave, she can’t go there.

But it is also history – about the Italians in Libya until Gadaffi came to power in 1969 and the grandparents and their children had to leave the country. Libya today, well what do we know, it’s ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood and militias, we hear from Mahmoud. And wonderful images from the apartment of the grandparents, memories…

“Who is (not) missing something” is a question put in the beginning of the film. For this blogger, who is taking a lot of time of reorganizing family photos and papers right now, this sentence is quite relevant – my father was born in Buenos Aires, where my grandfather etc. etc. We all have these stories…

Italy, 2018, 66 mins.

https://www.dok-leipzig.de/

Rugilé Barzdžiukaitė: Acid Forest

I have been there. On the wonderful Curonian Spit in Lithuania: The dunes, the sea, the forest, a place to relax – and a place where you find drama and at the same time are invited to reflect on our relationship to nature. I remember running like crazy away from a true Donnerwetter at the sea with my wife, and filmmaker Audrius Stonys and his son. We took refuge in the car of the filmmaker and after a while it was quiet blue sky.

Another day we went to the cormorants at Juodkranté to study this amazing phenomenon of fallen and naked pine trees caused by the acid shit of the cormorants, who live and nest there, eat fish from he water, and can do so, protected as the species is by EU and national law.

This location is where this cleverly made, cinematically brilliant documentary essay takes place. The birds are there, they are filmed from a distance sitting as shadows on the branches with the sky in the background, in daylight, at dusk, at night – or in close-ups, or like small dark spots in the amazing drone images that break the almost motionless images of the trees – and US who are in the picture most of the time.

Meaning we tourists who come to watch and talk about the cormorants. The film has caught the conversations and they are fun to follow. Tourists who are filmed from a distance standing on a platform for viewing. What we get are comments in Japanese, German, Finnish, Russian, American etc. Many comments go in the direction of “this is like a nuclear disaster”; several say that it is the fault of the EU that this shit exists; some discuss politics (Russia is just around the corner), and a young couple in love has a great conversation – she adores what she sees, he says jokingly that he will bring his gun; photographic gun he corrects after his first comments.

The film lives because of this dialogue in the nature – and your own dialogue with a film that insists on its theme, and brings us visual tourists to see and experience the paradoxical situation. The birds are watching us, we are watching – and smelling – them!

To see what comes out of continuous poop, hatching, trees that are almost falling to the ground…

Another proof of the poetic, reflective documentary tradition in Lithuania. It was at festivals in Locarno, Riga and Ji.hlava – more will come. Of course.  

Lithuania, 2018, 63 mins.

Lithuanian Cinema Travels

Here we are – watch our films, meet our filmmakers. It seems like this is the policy of the Lithuanian Film Centre this year, where the population-wise small country celebrates its centenary. According to an article in Cineuropa – link below – … Over the past four months, thanks to support from the Lithuanian Film Centre, the heavy presence of both completed films and projects was evident in almost 20 countries worldwide…

The article mentions fiction films that have travelled, going on to mention documentaries that we deal with (mostly) on this site – … Moving onto documentaries, Rugilė Barzdiukaitė’s debut, Acid Forest [+], premiered at Locarno, whereas the co-production Bridges of Time [+] by Kristīne Briede and Audrius Stonys did likewise at Karlovy Vary. Previously premiered documentaries also pressed on with their festival runs. Lithuania’s Oscar submission, Wonderful Losers: A Different World [+] by Arūnas Matelis, was at the Belfast “Pull Focus” Documentary Festival and Ulju Mountain Film Festival, where it was also awarded, and The Ancient Woods [+] by Mindaugas Survila unspooled at the Sydney Film Festival…

I am still waiting to see “Acid Forest”, the three others have been reviewed on this site.

And when it comes to the so-called “industry presence” – …  the Lithuanian Film Centre was one of the partners in the Pula Film Festival’s Matchmaking Forum (see the news), while Lithuania was featured as one of the countries participating in Locarno Pro’s Match Me! producers’ networking programme (see the news). Also, Lithuanian producers Giedrė ickytė, Dagnė Vildiūnaitė, Marija Razgutė, Paulius Juočeris and Andrius Lekavičius were included in the selection of the Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum and the Glocal Meets the Baltics section of San Sebastián…

DOK Leipzig hosts an impressive retrospective of Lithuanian documentaries from next week – read http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4368/ – and apart from the retrospective two new Lithuanian documentaries are in the “Next Masters” section at the festival: “Animus Animalis (A Story about People, Animals and Things)” by Aisté Zegulyté and “Nijole” by Sandro Bozzolo, produced by Dagnė Vildiūnaitė, experienced Lithuanian fiction and documentary producer. Several directors from the country have been invited to Leipzig.

https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/362126/

http://www.lkc.lt/en/2018/10/cinema-spreads-the-word-about-lithuania-across-the-world-four-months-four-continents-leading-festivals/

https://filmfinder.dok-leipzig.de/en/?&section=284

IDFA Press Conference

There he was, Orwa Nyrabia, the new artistic director of IDFA, to be watched through streaming yesterday afternoon. I saw the first half of his presentation and could only nod, when he started telling us press people that documentaries are not made to answer questions, no they are there to raise and trace questions. Orwa stressed that the selection has not been made according to subject – subject is not enough, there should be much more. And journalistic documentaries should accordingly be more than mere reporting. Good to be reminded of basics of the artistic documentary, or call it the creative – in other words: documentary is an Art form.

Orwa showed clips and apart from looking forward to the Vertov-film, “The Sound of Masks” by Sara de Gouvela, placed in the Luminous category, of South African and Portuguese production background, is now a Must for me. Wow, for a clip. Anyway, go to the website and study the selection for the feature-length competition, for me new names but also films by Geyerhalter, Hungarian Eszter Hajdú, Israeli Tomer Heymann, Chilean couple Bettina Perut & Iván Osnovikoff, Indian Anand Patwardhan. Read this shortened clip from the press release:  

“IDFA, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, has just announced the opening film for the festival’s 31st edition. In addition, the complete list of nominees for the Feature-Length Documentary, First Appearance and Dutch Documentary competitions can now be found online.

DocLab, IDFA’s new media program, has also published details of its competitions for Digital Storytelling and Immersive Non-Fiction. The projects participating in Spotlight, the non- competitive component of DocLab, have also been announced.

In its Serialized programme, IDFA will be focusing on the omnipresent series format. And finally, the 10 nominations for the Amsterdam Human Rights Award have also been announced today, meaning that the full IDFA program for 2018 is now complete.

Starting from 2018, IDFA is making inclusion a high priority. This means that gender parity and geographical and cultural representation across all the components of IDFA is an inherent part of the festival processes. 41% of the filmmakers selected for the program of IDFA 2018 are female, and the professionals attending the event come from 71 different countries. The next edition of IDFA takes place from the 14th through the 25th of November in Amsterdam.

IDFA opening film 2018: Kabul, City in the Wind
On Wednesday November 14th, the 31st IDFA will open in Koninklijk Theater Carré with Kabul, City in the Wind by Aboozar Amini. The film is a sobering, intimate and warm account of daily life in Kabul during the silent intervals between suicide bombings. The bombings that happened, and those that will, define life for the film’s characters; a father who works as a bus driver, and two young boys whose policeman father is away due to murder threats. “Amini introduces himself as an original uncompromising artist of film, he absorbed the work of Abbas Kiarostami and made it his very own,” Artistic director Orwa Nyrabia comments.

Aboozar Amini (Bamiyan, Afghanistan, 1985) arrived in the Netherlands as a teenager and graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 2010. Amini returned to reside in Afghanistan after his studies in the Netherlands. Kabul, City in the Wind is a co-production between Afghanistan, Japan and the Netherlands and was made with support from the IDFA Bertha Fund.

IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentary

IDFA’s main competition consists of 12 titles by established filmmakers. This year’s selection is characterised by a great diversity of styles and forms – from intense visual experiences to sobering narratives.

IDFA Competition for First Appearance

For the first time, the IDFA Competition for First Appearance consists exclusively of first films. The opening film is one of the entries in this competition. The selection demonstrates the promising future of documentary film…

www.idfa.nl