Ingmar Bergman 100 år /3

Ingmar has a great feeling for the unique situation of the actor… (Erland Josephson)

 

SKUESPILLER

Torben Skjødt Jensen havde 4. juli et opslag på sin facebookside om Erland Josephson. Jeg blev interesseret ved hans første begejstring for Ingmar Bergmans film, meget interesseret i hans og Ulf Peter Hallbergs film om Erland Josephsen fra 2006, Spelar du i Kväll, en film jeg til nu intet havde hørt om, og jeg blev dybt er dybt fascineret af det Bergmanafsnit, den monolog, næsten, af Josephsen, som Skjødt Jensen præsenterer i sit opslag ved et link til et You Tube klip, som sidder ved. Klik endelig og se under alle omstændigheder det hele. Link til Facebooksiden længere nede, hvor Torben Skjødt Jensen beretter:

”Den 14.Juli er det 100 års fødselsdag for Ingmar Bergman, og der kommer bla. en ny dokumentar om han op, også her i Danmark, som jeg glæder mig rigtigt meget til at se – jeg blev for alvor smittet af begejstring for Bergmans film da jeg lærte Hans Henrik Lerfeldt at kende tilbage i 1987 (og hans begejstring for den svenske mester havde jo sit eget personlige afsæt i Fanny og Alexander serien/filmen), men tættest på ham kom jeg jo nok da jeg i årene 2003 – 2006 sammen med Ulf Peter Hallberg over en årrække indspillede filmen “Spelar du ikväll?/Are you playing tonight” om Erland Josephson og hele hans liv i skuespilkunstens tjeneste, med udgangspunkt i hans 50 som skuespiller på Dramaten i Stockholm, men også hans samarbejde med store instruktører som netop Ingmar og Tarkovsky.

Filmen blev til på den helt ekseptionelle måde at Peter og jeg over en årrække besøgte Erland i Stockholm og så enten samtalede Peter og Erland eller de havde skrevet en scene med Erland og andre skuespillere som jeg så teknisk instruererede og fotograferede og efterfølgende klippede til vores næste tur: som var vi på en lang og intensiv workshop – og flere gange undervejs oplevede vi når vi kom i hjemmet hos Erland så sad han i sin ugentlige samtale med Ingmar og vendte livet og kunstens væsen – og grinede meget og højlydt. Det havde vi meget morskab ud af.

Filmen havde verdenspremiere i Stockholm i 2006 netop som en del af fejringen af Erlands 50 års jubilæum og var efterfølgende på svensk bio, og TV i Sverige, Norge og Finland, samt en del filmfestivaler i hele verden. Og Danmark ? Næ næ … kom ikke her min ven! Her er filmen aldrig blevet vist!

I 2014 klippede jeg er nyt “Directors cut” af filmen og udvidede bla. hele sekvensen om Erlands relation til Bergman så den både indeholdt en refleksion om forskellen mellem Bergman og Tarkovsky og noget om Erlands relation med Bergman både på teater og film.

Peter brugte senere samtalerne fra filmen som udgangspunkt i den samtalebog “Livets mening og andre bekymringer” som udkom på dansk i 2012 på Batzer & co. samme år som vi desværre også mistede Erland. Men her er Bergman sekvensen fra vores film – til minde om 2 store kunstnere i livet:”

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=717078205

og om Spelar du ikväll?/Are you playing tonight:

https://www.folketsbio.se/regissor/ulf-peter-hallberg/

 

Claude Lanzmann 1925 – 2018

Even if I lived a hundred lives, I still wouldn’t be exhausted…

 

MURMELSTEIN

The Guardian published a very interesting article Tuesday, May 14th 2013, Agnès Poirier had seen the new film by legendary Claude Lanzmann about Benjamin Murmelstein, who collaborated with the Nazis as the last Jewish Council President in Theresienstadt. Poirier talks to Lanzmann about Murmelstein and the film that will be shown in Cannes tomorrow (May, 18 2013). I have taken some quotes from the long article:

… There are two men on a balcony looking out at the panorama of Rome. It is the summer of 1975. “Are you happy in Rome?” says one. “As happy as an exiled Jew can be,” says the other. The man asking the question is Claude Lanzmann. He has just started work on what will take him 10 years to finish: Shoah, the ground-breaking, nine-and-a-half-hour film about the Holocaust, composed of first-hand testimony and eschewing historical footage…

Still: Lanzmann and Murmelstein, Rome 1975, “The Last of the Unjust” (2013)

Lanzmann never included Murmelstein in ”Shoah”, now he gets ”his own film”… Murmelstein, who called himself “the last of the unjust”, perfectly represented (those) contradictions…

His testimony raises a trail of questions, all painfully complex. Indeed, his extraordinary presence, blunt sincerity, acerbic wit and erudition would shake anyone who has inherited history’s prejudices against those Jews who worked with the Nazis. Lanzmann has endeavoured to rehabilitate them. In the preamble to his new film “The Last of the Unjust”, which will screen at the Cannes film festival on Saturday, May 18th, he writes that Murmelstein’s revelations never ceased to haunt him, and that the time had come to share them. “Murmelstein was brilliantly intelligent and extraordinarily courageous,” Lanzmann says. “During the week I spent with him, I grew to love him. He does not lie: he is as harsh with others as with himself”… (Blogpost 17-05-2013 by Tue Steen Müller)

THE LAST OF THE UNJUST

The film of Lanzmann is extraordinary in all aspects: The story about how the film was made and why it did not come out before now has been dealt with in numerous interviews with the author, journalist and film director – you should read them as well as his praised ”The Patagonian Hare”, his written memoirs, from where this statement comes: “Even if I lived a hundred lives, I still wouldn’t be exhausted.” Indeed, this film is a strong evidence of the energy and power of a man, who was born in 1925.

The main character is extraordinary: Benjamin Murmelstein, Jewish Elder in Theresienstadt, interviewed by Lanzmann in Rome in 1975, a controversial person, strongly accused for his collaboration with the Nazis. ”The last of the unjust”, as he called himself, is rehabilitated by Lanzmann, and others, for his saving of 120.000 Jews from Vienna before the war (a number mentioned by Lanzmann in an interview in Le Monde 13/11/13) as well as his keeping Theresienstadt running as the working place it was supposed to be, planned by Eichmann as the ”model camp”, a gift to der Führer. As you see in the propaganda film, that Lanzmann shows clips from, the only archive from the camp, otherwise he uses drawings made by survivors.

Murmelstein is fascinating to watch and listen to in the interview, that Lanzmann did not manage to include in ”Shoah”, that came out 10 years later. But now it is there and stands on its own as a unique film contribution to an eventual rewriting of history. It calls back and questions the view upon Eichmann put forward by Hannah Arendt, who followed the process against him in Jerusalem, and characterised Eichmann as a man who worked according to what a system asked him to do. In the film, however, Eichmann, by Murmelstein, is characterised as ”a demon”, who was very much involved in the ”Crystal Night” in November 1938, and from the very beginning, before any talk about ”Endlösung”, planned and followed the mission to get all Jews out of ”Der dritte Reich”.

But is he the main character? No, Claude Lanzmann is, the chainsmoking interviewer you see in 1975 on a balcony in Rome with Murmelstein, filmed extraordinarily by the late French cameraman William Lubtchansky in 1975, and by Caroline Champetier, who went with Lanzmann to search for cinematic solutions for the narrative, he wants to convey.

And they are wonderfully out of mainstream: Lanzmann has chosen to start the film by taking the viewer to the train station Bohusvice, where he with manuscript in hand introduces the ghetto nearby, Theresienstadt, where he later in the film consequently also performs reading with papers in hand. You could argue that this is totally unfilmic, if there is such a thing (!), but it works here because of the charisma of Lanzmann, his commitment, his powerful husky voice that gives the viewer the information about what happened in the camp.

Still: Lanzmann, train station Bohusvice, “The Last of the Unjust” (2013)

Champetier makes stunning images from Theresienstadt, moving through the empty streets, she has filmed streets of Vienna, where Murmelstein was working as a rabbi and for Eichmann, she films in Jerusalem and in Prague, where some of the most moving and beautiful sequences are to be found:

Lanzmann is walking in the Golem synagogue, the camera is not close to him (filming prohibited), it is almost candid when you see and hear him reflecting/commenting for himself, when he recognises names on the wall from Theresienstadt. There is a change in his mood, a sadness that goes with him to the next scene in the camp, where he is at a ”lieu mort” that he describes also to be a ”lieu de mort”, a ”sinister place with an unforgettable beauty” – abandoned and devastated it looks – and in comes the song of a Rabbi, introduced earlier on in the film. Lanzmann is a master of written and verbal language and it is fascinating to see how a man in his late 80’es walks to and fro talking to the audience, stopping to sit at the gallows in Theresienstadt, giving both facts about when and how it happened at the same time as you can see how he totally understands and lives what happened.

Back to 1975, to the interview in Rome, to a 40 year younger Lanzmann, who talks to Murmelstein, 70 years old. Lanzmann’s German is far from perfect and you can see, and hear, that he misses a lot of what says Murmelstein, who talks quickly and often in methaphors. It is actually sometimes funny to see how Lanzmann insists on getting the time correct from Murmelstein (”when was this, when was that”) and it takes a long time (around two hours into the film) before Lanzmann directs the obvious question to Murmelstein about how he felt being at a place, where death was present every day. That scene is a two-shot with both of them in the picture – you are invited to read the faces. Lanzmann and Lubtchansky knew apparently precisely what they wanted to get from Murmelstein in that scene.

I saw the film in Paris (in a, projection-wise, good UGC-cinema in the ugly surroundings of les Halles). The version was vo = Lanzmann speaks in French, he and Murmelstein German with French subtitles. My French is far from perfect so I did not get it all… 220 minutes, no break, not needed for this extraordinary film. To be seen again and again. (Blogpost 16-11-2013 by Tue Steen Müller)

SHOAH

November 27th 2015 Claude Lanzmann could celebrate his 90 year birthday. It gave me the inspiration to celebrate him by visiting youtube, where you can find a lot of clips from from Shoah and other of his films plus a long, very fine filmed masterclass with him from IDFA 2013, where his ”The Last of the Unjust” (220 mins.) was shown. In his written memoirs, “The Patagonian Hare”, comes this statement: “Even if I lived a hundred lives, I still wouldn’t be exhausted.” Indeed, and he repeats this in the conversation parts of the new film with him, ”Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah”, directed by Adam Benzine, 40 mins. with BBC, ZDF/arte, DR and HBO as ”involved tv channels” as it is put on the IDFA Docs for Sale, the excellent service from the festival.

Lanzmann says that he still is full of ”vitalité”. As usual it is fascinating to watch and listen to him, while the film apart from those sequences does not really add anything (except for some unknown footage from his interview with a high rank Nazi and the trouble it gave Lanzmann). Anyway, for those who have NOT yet seen ”Shoah”, watching ”Spectres of the Shoah” afterwards makes sense. Here is the description from the IDFA website:

In 1973, Claude Lanzmann started shooting Shoah, a nearly 10-hour film that many regard as the most important ever made about the Holocaust. The Frenchman worked for a full 12 years on the documentary, which was commissioned by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But making Shoah left its mark on Lanzmann. He filmed 200 hours of material in 14 countries, before spending five years editing it. And then there was the infamous confrontation with a former Nazi and his henchmen. The director described his documentary as “a film about death, not about surviving.”

DE BEAUVOIR AND SARTRE

He explains in “Spectres of the Shoah” how it wore him out and almost deprived him of his will to live. Lanzmann experienced the completion of “Shoah” as a death, and it took a long time for him to recover from it. The now almost 90-year-old filmmaker discusses his warm friendship with Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, and his teenage years in the French resistance during the Second World War. The film also features unseen material from his magnum opus. (Blogpost 29-11-2015 by Tue Steen Müller)

Photo: Lanzmann, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir 1964

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/may/14/claude-lanzmann-last-unjust

Ingmar Bergman 100 år /2

I Marie Nyreröds tv-serie Ingmar Bergman på Fårö, 2003 som denne tid genudsendes på SVT Play og som bestemt skal ses igen, er der i sidste afsnit et sted, hvor Bergman fortæller om sin daglige gåtur. Det er det første han gør om morgenen. Det er fordi dæmonerne ikke kan lide den friske luft, siger han. Så er de væk, når han efter en halv time til tre kvarter vender tilbage og sætter sig ved skrivebordet og hver dag skriver tre timer før frokost.

 

LOMMEBOG

1

Den 29. juni. Jeg begynder og umiddelbart tror jeg det er Bergmans film, at han er dens forfatter og dens instruktør. Men tænker jeg mig om, ved jeg også, ser jeg det også, at det er Marie Nyreröd. Bergman er jo iscenesat og udspurgt. (Fortællepositonen er så afgørende for mig, og de to driller mig…)

2

Jeg ser Nyreröds film, men det er Bergman jeg lytter til, som meningen også er. Hele tiden. Er tv-dokumentaren så Nyreröds eller Bergmans – den er naturligvis Bergmans. Hans instruktøroverblik og -vilje kommer helt klar frem.

3

Skuespillernes altafgørende betydning i al Bergmans arbejde… (for Nyreröd og mig optræder han ind imellem så muntert, ellers bare er han, hele tiden på i scenen, altså skuespiller)

*

Bergmans beslutsomme brug af tv-interviewets mulighed (som fjernsyn engang)

4

Film, teater og tv. Teater er det vigtigste.

5

Det berømte hus på Fårö er rammen om samtalen, filmen, serien.

6

Serien er ét eneste interview, i afsnit opdelt af stederne, hvor der filmes.

7

Biografisk tv-serie på 3 x 57 min.

8

De 2. juli. Jamen, Bergmans samtlige spillefilm kan sådan på denne bestemte måde ses som en lang række dokumentariske film eller blot én eneste lang og stor dokumentarfilm om en gruppe skuespillere, som arbejder med i filmromanform (filmdrama, spillefilm) at undersøge Bergmans liv og tænkning og erkendelser og dæmoner.

9

Dæmonerne – sedlen – morgenturen.

10

Det første jeg skrev på min første dag på Filmkommentaren (6. august 2007) var en Bergman nekrolog. Samme dag skrev jeg en Antonioni nekrolog og en anmeldelse af Asger Leths da helt nye film Ghosts of Cité Soleil. Ghosts…

11

Den 4. juli. Jeg er så bange for at jeg ikke kan skrive. Jeg er bange for jeg er gået i stå med Marie Nyreröds tv-serie fra 2003 om Ingmar Bergman, som nu så passende i 100-året kan ses på SVT Play. Den blev således lavet få år før hans død og står i dag som en lysende klar og humørfyldt testamentarisk begivenhed, som Bergman sammen med Nyreröd skænker tv-mediet, som han opregner ved siden af de to andre kunstformer han arbejdede med: filmen (cinematografien) og teatret (scenekunsten). Af dem er for Bergman teatret det største.

12

Imidlertid hviler de alle tre på skrivekunsten som dels førte til mesterværket, erindringsbogen Laterna magica, 1987 og til den lige så uundværlige Bilder, 1990, men også til en række bøger med manuskripterne til spillefilmene. Skrivebordet var den vigtigste scene tror jeg, det var jeg inde på i mit første blogindlæg her på filmkommentaren.dk

13

Men Ingmar Bergman elskede teaterscenen mest (måske fordi han der stod med en andens tekst) dog han fører os, også med sine egne smalfilmoptagelser fra dengang, imidlertid også til en række locations for centrale filmoptagelser: jordbærstedet i Smultronstället, kyststrækningen på Fårö i Persona og arbejdsværelset med skrivebordet i hjemmet på denne ø, som bliver den egentlige rammescene for Liv Ullmanns Trolösa (2000) som han selv skrev manuskriptet til.

14

Marie Nyreröd har i sin tv-serie et andet højdepunkt, en lille håndskrevet liste som Bergman fumlende og rørende tager frem og folder ud og kameraet og jeg ser den, det er listen over dæmonerne, som her konkretiseres. Disse dæmoner, som har spillet deres roller i vist nok samtlige Bergmans film.

15

Kun Bergman interviewes? Én lang fortælling? Fortællestemmen? Arkivstoffet? Citater og belæg? (Spørgsmål til nyt gennemsyn…)

Marie Nyreröd: Ingmar Bergman på Fårö, Sverige, 2003, 3×57 min. Distribution nu: SVT Play

https://www.svt.se/ingmar-bergman/ (SVT Play’s gratis streaming)

Ingmar Bergman 100 år /1

Det må så blive manden selv, som alene i huset ved havet ved skrivebordet i arbejdsværelsen tager et sidste opgør med sig selv. Det er i Trolösa, 2000, som Liv Ullmann instruerer på Bergmans manuskript. Bordet står midt på gulvet. Bag det reoler med bøger og plader, tekster og musik og den indbyggede bænk i nichen med det store vindue med havet lige udenfor. Igen bordet midt på gulvet, hvor manuskript efter manuskript er blevet afsluttet med ”Fårö…” og så datoen. Som gør, at jeg fornemmer vejret den dag, han var færdig.

Jeg ser igen ivrigt efter i Marie Nyreröds dokumentarserie Ingmar Bergman på Fårö, 2003, som SVT Play genudsender disse dage. Jo, det er intakt, det rum. Det er en fast kulisse. Filmenes billeder står alvorlige og rolige omkring teksterne herfra. Vi ser huset og havet. Personerne kommer ind på scenen. I begyndelsen er bænken ved vinduet tom. Bergman begynder manuskriptet sådan:

”En mild forsommerdag. Vinduet står åbent. Havet og fyrretræerne bruser. Jeg sidder ved skrivebordet, der står midt i værelset. En rødbrun soldatertæge kravler tøvende op over bordkanten. Der står helt afgørende nogen bag min ryg, selv om døren hverken er blevet åbnet eller lukket. Der står altså nogen bag min ryg, men det er ikke Døden…” (Trolösa, 2000)

Det er kvinden, skuespillerinden, som endnu en gang dukker op der i erindringsarbejdet, i selvangivelsen før døden. Han havde tilsagt hende, men glemt det…

https://www.svt.se/ingmar-bergman/ (SVT Plays gratis streaming af Marie Nyreröds tv-serie i 3 afsnit Ingmar Bergman på Fårö.)

Godard Makes Festival Spot

87 year old Jean-Luc Godard  has made a festival spot for the 22nd Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival. It was released here in Karlovy Vary yesterday. I have copy pasted fragments from the press release published with quotes from festival director Marek Hovorka:

“And even if nothing turned out how we’d hoped, it would not have changed what we’d hoped for,” says Godard in the festival spot. “This year’s festival spot created by Jean-Luc Godard follows in the line of outstanding works made for the festival by such figures as Godfrey Reggio, Jan Němec and Jóhann Jóhannsson. The festival spot comes in the format of a short film, an intimate haiku. Even within the framework of this minute-long minimalist format, Jean-Luc Godard remained loyal to his signature method of layering meanings and references. Each new viewing opens up new interpretations,” says Marek Hovorka, the director of the Ji.hlava IDFF. 

“Godard sets filmmaking in the context of the history of arts, works with references to popular works of fine arts. At the same time, it shows how inseparable the work is from the author and how important role inner authenticity plays in terms of authorship. Flipping through photos in Godard’s cell phone, the history of arts spontaneously alternates with his own memories, selfies and the perspective of a dog that gives the human position a different angle,” adds Hovorka.

Watch the official spot of the 22nd Ji.hlava IDFF

Premiere of Bridges of Time

I write this the day after the premiere of the film by Kristine Briede and Audrius Stonys at the festival in Karlovy Vary. Warm applause after the screening of a film with many layers, an auteur film but first of all an homage to the masters of the Baltic New Wave: Herz Frank, Uldis Brauns, Ivars Seleckis, Andres Sööt, Robertas Verba, Henrikas Sablevicius, Arvis Freimanis, Mark Soosaar. The three of them still very much alive and kicking were there, see photo, Soosaar, Sööt and Seleckis.

The festival, that I have never visited before, has set up screenings of short films made by the directors in the 60’es and 70’es during the period of Soviet Union. We hope that “Bridges of Time” will make you want to go and see the films we quote from – around 20 are screened in four programmes, that also include films by Audrius Stonys himself and Laila Pakalnina.

The two were in focus this morning in a “Meet the filmmakers” session of the festival. Audrius

Stonys showed a beautifully restored copy of his “Antigravitation” from 1995, Laila Pakalnina came with “The Linen”, shot by Gints Berzins, a fantastic cameraperson with whom Pakalnina has been working on many of her films. We went at film school together, he in camera section, me in direction. Berzins is shooting Pakalnina’s new film, working title “The Spoon”.

Also on stage in the “Meet the filmmakers”, that was moderated in a very competent way by Latvian Zane Balcus, were Soosaar, Sööt and Seleckis – the films shown were “The Coast” by Arvis Freimanis with Seleckis doing the camera., “511 Best Photographs of Mars” by Andres Sööt and a fragment of “Woman from Kihnu” by Soosaar. I had not seen Sööt’s film before, it’s shot with hidden camera in a café with classical and Beatles music, yes it was in 1963 that I heard Beatles from morning till night. Sööt said in his humorous way that “we could use Beatles music as the USSR did not make contracts”!

The man behind getting a Baltic delegation to Karlovy Vary, Uldis Cekulis, a generous man with an impressive energy brought along a 8 page newspaper Baltic New Wave, a collection of articles on the filmmakers in “Bridges of Time”, a small gift for all those, who love documentaries.

Happy people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – and proud ones, who have deserved the great attention they get at this super-professional festival for feature and documentary films.

Photo from right to left: The three masters from the film Estonians Mark Soosaar and Andres Sööt, Latvian Ivars Seleckis, the director of the film Kristine Briede, Estonian producer Riho Västrik, Lithuanian producers Alge and Arunas Matelis, Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis, me and Audrius Stonys, the interpreter and two festival programmers.

Stonys & Briede: Bridges of Time

Wow, it’s tomorrow at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival that Bridges of Time has its premiere. The film, a co-production between the three Baltic countries, is introduced like this by the festival: “Kristīne Briede and Audrius Stonys’s meditative documentary essay portrays the less-remembered generation of cinema poets of the Baltic New Wave. With finesse, they push beyond the barriers of the common historiographic investigation in order to achieve a consummate poetic treatment of the ontology of documentary creation.”

A fine intro, however, I would make it a bit longer with these words: “This is a film for all cinema lovers. It tells about the Baltic poetic documentary cinema that was created during the Soviet Union. In opposition to the USSR propaganda films. It was a wave of a personal free visual language that celebrated life and humanity. Together with Latvian Kristine Briede, Lithuanian director Audrius Stonys, who in his own work continues the tradition for a poetic look at reality, has picked magical moments from unique long and short documentaries to let them meet the old masters as they look today or when they were in front of the camera decades ago. The directors in the film about this special artistic phenomenon in film history are Herz Frank, Uldis Brauns, Ivars Seleckis, Andres Sööt, Robertas Verba, Henrikas Sablevicius, Arvis Freimanis, Mark Soosaar.”

I have been invited to come for the premiere in Karlovy Vary, which I do with great pleasure as someone whose professional life changed completely in the 1990’es, where I discovered the Baltic documentary on the island of Bornholm where a festival, Balticum Film & TV Festival took place until 2000. Today it is my joy to go to Riga every year to take part in the Baltic Sea Docs that is a continuation of the adventure on Bornholm, as is the collaboration of the three Baltic countries cinema-wise with this celebration os something very special – the film will be followed by a superb retrospective of the primarily short documentaries made by the masters in the documentary. More will come from this event. Photo of the poster of the film. 

DocAlliance Puts Focus on Vitaly Mansky

Today starts the festival in Karlovy Vary, Kviff, and tomorrow is the first (of three) screening of Vitaly Mansky’s “Putin’s Witnesses”, that has its premiere at the festival. To celebrate this and the director, DocAlliance, www.dafilms.com launches a curated programme with the title “A Probe into the (Not Only) Russian Soul”, in all respects an impressive offer from the VOD.

I copy-paste the presentation text from DocAlliance:

The renowned Ukrainian documentary filmmaker has been mapping the phenomenon of contemporary Russia in an original way for several decades. In his films, he meets his protagonists in big cities and remote territories, following politicians as well as the everyday lives of common people. Mansky’s latest film “Putin’s Witnesses” will be premiered in the documentary competition at the upcoming Karlovy Vary IFF. The director’s current retrospective at DAFilms includes an exclusive preview from the film.

In “Red Tsars. Presidents of Russia”, Mansky follows three statesmen over the course of one year: Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. The result is both an insider’s account of politics in Russia and an intimate portrait of the three “Red Tsars”.

Different aspects of human existence were explored in Mansky’s “Virginity” where three young women try to find a way to the world of fame, popularity and money by what they see as a desired commodity for sale: their virginity.

“Broadway. Black Sea” from 2002 is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a Black Sea resort in the course of one holiday season. Mansky revisits the Black Sea once again in Wild, Wild Beach where he composes a unique portrait of several protagonists bearing witness to the state of our world.

The question of what is more important – life or home? – is explored in “Gagarin’s Pioneers” where Mansky questions his former schoolmates who were members of the Young Pioneers just like he was and who swore allegiance to their then homeland – the Soviet Union. The motif of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin also appears in “Private Chronicles. Monologue” where Mansky processes 5 000 hours of footage to weave a fictional biography of the common life of a generation of those who were born when Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space and whose youth ended when the Soviet Union collapsed.

“I became a Russian citizen simply because I happened to live in Moscow when the Soviet Union broke apart,” says Mansky to explain the origin of his film “Close Relations”. A few decades later his family in Ukraine face the dramatic consequences of further turbulent change, and their fresh experience of the revolution shows us that the media presentation of the country’s East-West dichotomy is deeply flawed.

Aleksandar Reljic: Enkel

Enkel is German for grandson – and that is what Rainer Höß is. His grandfather was Rudolf Höß, commandant in the Auschwitz concentration camp for three and a half year from 1940. He was the one behind the expansion of the camp to be divided into three areas and for the development of the most efficient – gas and burning – way for the mass murders. At the Nürnberg trials Höß expressed:

“I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943, and estimate that at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and disease, making a total of about 3,000,000 dead…”

Another holocaust story… I thought, when executive producer of the film

Vanja Kranjac talked to me about “Enkel”, as we met in Belgrade a couple of weeks ago. I watched it and yes this production of RTV, the public broadcaster of Vojvodina, is shocking and important even for one, who has watched holocaust survivor stories again and again for decades. Shocking and important because it is so well made, and because of its two protagonists, whose stories the film is built on.

Rainer Höß is the one, who leads the story. He never met his grandfather, who was hanged in 1947, but he cut the links to and left the Höß family, when he was 15 and made it his mission to tell about the horrors committed in Auschwitz and the “normal” family life led in the villa next door – separated by a wall – to the camp. He even has a conversation with the woman, who with her husband lives in the house today. He has written a book, he has been interviewed all over, he takes part in peace marches, he makes tours in Auschwitz…

The film makes Rainer Höß meet the holocaust survivor Eva Mozes Kor, who was 10, when she and her twin sister were in the camp, kept alive to be subject to experiments performed by the infamous doctor Mengele. She – who has been part of several documentaries – is a fantastic storyteller, when she recalls in details the time in the camp, where the twin’s parents and big sisters were killed. It is obvious that this 84 year old charismatic Romanian by origin, now living in the USA, has told her story numerous times, she has the sense for a dramaturgy that leads to her personal forgiveness towards the Nazis and their crimes.

Less convincing in that respect maybe, is Rainer Höß, whose message is clear, to the world we live in now: “Never Again”! But it is not easy to stand up against Eva Mozes Kor, who was there, who suffered and survived, and who accepts when younger Rainer asks her to be his granma!

The director manages to keep the viewer’s attention, maybe the parallel editing between the two stories is a bit too mechanic until they meet, but it never disturbs the overall strong impression of a documentary that combines a journalistic archive research with fine documentary language.

Serbia, 2018, 82 mins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tal Amiran: Sand Men

We met at Amdocs festival in Palm Springs, where the English director showed his fine short documentary “Seven Days a Week” about a man, who sells newspapers in a street of London.

Now the director is back in the streets with “Sand Men”, a touching social documentary with three Romanian men, who have left their country, where no job was available for them, ending up on knees on the pavement skillfully making their sand dog, in all kind of weather, collecting coins from people passing by – money to be sent back to their families, to provide for them. One of them has his family with him, he and his wife and their child sleep in a car.

“I suffer for a good cause”, one of them says, “the family”.

The director has made interviews with the three; voices are put over images that follow their artistic work. It’s precisely edited, this slice of reality from a Europe 2018.

The documentary has been at more than 30 festivals with several awards.

UK, 14 mins., 2017

http://talamiran.com/