Victor Kossakovsky: Architecton

Press release of today from DocsBarcelona:

Filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky will return to DocsBarcelona with Architecton, an epic and poetic meditation on architecture that at the same time offers hope for survival. With his latest film, which will have its Spanish premiere at the Barcelona International Documentary Film Festival after the Berlinale, the Russian master revisits architectural practices of the present and the past to warn of the ecological impact of cement. He thus closes the trilogy about our planet, an ode to nature that would begin with ¡Vivan las antípodas! (2011) and continue with Aquarela (2018), all of them present in the DocsBarcelona program. The DocsBarcelona 27th edition will take place May 2-12th at the CCCB and Cinemes Renoir Floridablanca. 

Starting with the project by Italian architect Michele De Lucchi, Kossakovsky reflects on the rise and fall of civilizations, capturing breathtaking images, from the rubble of the temple of Baalbek in Lebanon, dating back to 60 AD, to the recent destruction of cities in Turkey after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in early 2023. Through Kossakovsky’s inquisitive look at humanity and its precarious relationship with nature, the film poses an urgent question: How do we build and how can we build better before it is too late?
The artistic director of DocsBarcelona, Anna Petrus, emphasized that “the festival has always accompanied the films of Victor Kossakovsy, who returns with a sensorially shocking film that questions the use that human beings make of natural resources to build (and, unfortunately, also to destroy)“. According to Anna Petrus, Architecton is a documentary that “will make us travel, in every sense, and also ask relevant questions about how we treat the planet. Of course, it will not disappoint the numerous followers that the filmmaker has in our country“.  

This innovative filmmaker, winner of more than a hundred awards at national and international festivals, began his career in 1978 in Leningrad as an assistant cameraman, assistant director and editor. After studying screenwriting and directing in Moscow, in 1989 he directed his first film, Losev and, in 1992, his most famous documentary, The Belovs, recognized with the VPRO Joris Ivens Award and the Audience Award at IDFA, among others. In 2011, ¡Vivan las antípodas! was selected as the opening film of the Venice Film Festival, and Aquarela would open DocsBarcelona in 2019. Gunda, produced by Joaquin Phoenix, and Architecton have been premiered at the Berlinale.

Andreas Johnsen: Efterklang – The Makedonium Band & Concert

The perfect combination! First we watched the film “The Makedonium Band” directed by Danish Andreas Johnsen and then the musicians from the film (most of them) – Danish and (North) Macedonians – went on stage performing for a full hall at the DR Concert House Studio 2. Wonderful atmosphere, great music, lots of applause, a unique event as part of the CPH:DOX.

The film with the Efterklang trio (Mads Brauer, Casper Clausen og Rasmus Stolberg) is full of wonderful scenes or should I call it episodes, which for the most part is thanks to the local manager and musician Grga, who brings the band around to meet people, musicians who can take part in the band and join the rehearsals; this process is followed due to Johnsen’s skills to catch the not-arranged “documentary” moments as they pop up. One scene is hilarious – Grga takes the trio to visit the President of the Republic, Rasmus Stolberg har brought him a present, a pair of red socks, Casper Clausen plays a freedom song on his guitar, the President seems to be fascinated, and quite surprised. The band members are looking for members to join the Band, they walk around in the big square, put up flyers here and there, find out that the square is mostly for tourists… they are right, I was there in August in Skopje, a city full of kitch monuments.

But the Makedonium in Krusevo is not kitch, built as a memorial for freedom fights of (North) Macedonia. This is where Grga wants the concert to take place and it ends like that… he even wants pigeons to be there, the film makes it happen.

It’s great to meet the Macedonian musicians and their instruments. One comes with a theremin, she was at the concert as well and there is the man who plays the flute and the one with a tanpura – a string instrument, could also be another one. The latter is Dejan who was also performing at the concert, in the film he is visited in the countryside, where he asks the Efterklang trio to be silent, and he makes a silent festival. Listen he says, look around, don’t say anything, hilarious!

Johnsen’s film goes from (in b/w) rehearsals, also with a choir of young girls, who came to the concert as well, to situations where the trio is taken around to see and experience and find inspiration in a culture far away from the Danish searching for what the lead singer Casper Clausen calls music that cross borders. The Efterklang music has a strong spiritual element, and at the concert – with the Makedonium Band – you could experience how excellent the band is building their compositions.

The CPH:DOX catalogue says: “A charming tour of Macedonian folk music and a fascinating insight into the creative process of the Danish band Efterklang”. Indeed!

Grga, for me the protagonist of the film, is the one at the microphone.

Denmark, 81 mins. 2024

Oksana Karpovych: Intercepted

“I wanted to show the dehumanization”, the director said in an interview with Business Doc Europe. Indeed, she succeeded. The film is a masterly done narrative construction with an image side and a sound side that each works on its own. Where the images, cameraman Christopher Nunn, are taken from the front seat of a car driving through empty villages AND, mostly, almost still-life’s of ruined houses from inside and outside, places where Russian soldiers have been, leaving – an understatement – a mess with a lot of looting to be seen… and heard

… as phone calls intercepted by the Ukrainian Special Services from March-November 2022 are being used to accompany the mentioned images. Or the other way around. Looting – “It’s nice to be in civilised sneakers” and “they have awesome ice cream here”, one soldier says to his mother or wife or girlfriend, who are in the other end of the line, calling or being called. Without hesitation soldiers talk about killing civilians, mostly being applauded by their relatives back home. Later in the film, a soldier talks about eating a dog as there is not enough food, with rotting corpses around them. Another one states that there are only two ways of coming home – dead or injured!

However, the reactions from the relatives are the most shocking. “No, you don’t kill children, you kill fascists”, one is saying after a soldier states that they are told to killed whatever stands in their way. There is so much hatred in these conversations. One soldier is quite detailed, when he describes the methods of torture they are using towards their prisoners. “Barbecue them all, make kebabs of those Khokhols”, a woman responds.

The film also includes a sequence with Russia war prisoners lining up to get some food. No comments here. And observations from an underground cellar with two old women, cut to a younger woman who is preparing soup for them. Compassion. And people queuing for food, Ukrainians helping each other. Not to forget a beautiful scene, where a husband is caressing a cow, while his wife is milking it. When the bucket is full, they leave on a scooter. Life goes on… makes me think of Humphrey Jennings and his propaganda films during WW2.

A clever thought film, so well built, shocking sound pieces to images of devastation but like in Alain Resnais “Night and Fog” no corpses. The right choice. The director is a true “auteur”.

Canada, France, Ukraine, 2024, 92 mins.

Awards CPH:DOX 2024

  • DOX:AWARD: ‘The Flats’ af Alessandra Celesia (Frankrig, Storbritannien, Irland & Belgien) Verdenspremiere.
  • Jury motivation: “Our main award recognises not only creative and conceptual daring, but a filmmaker with the humility to realise when the story outgrows its framework, and the confidence to follow where it, and its fantastically vivid characters lead. We live in a world of divisions, borders and locked gates. Coming like a conversation shouted through one of those locked gates, our winning film is a collective portrait of several proud, funny, resourceful individuals, who would be willing to die for their community but who choose each day the harder, braver and more hopeful option of living for it instead. The Dox:Award goes to Alessandra Celesia for the witty, multi-layered, profound and provocative ‘The Flats’.’’
    Special Mention: ‘Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other’ af Jacob Perlmutter & Manon Ouimet (Storbritannien, Danmark & USA) Verdenspremiere
  • F:ACT AWARD: ‘Black Snow’ af Alina Simone (USA) Verdenspremiere

Special Mention: ‘G – 21 Scenes From Gottsunda’ af Loran Batti (Sverige, Danmark) Verdenspremiere

  • NEW:VISION AWARD:Preemptive Listening’ af Aura Satz (Storbritannien, Finland) Verdenspremiere
    Special Mention: ‘Lichens Are the Way’ af Ondřej Vavrečka (Tjekkiet, Slovakiet) Verdenspremiere

Special Mention: ‘My Want of You Partakes of Me’ af Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner (Storbritannien, Holland) Verdenspremiere

  • NEXT:WAVE AWARD: ‘Grand Me’ af Atiye Zare Arandi (Belgien, Iran) Verdenspremiere

Special Mention: ‘G – 21 Scenes From Gottsunda’ af Loran Batti (Sverige, Danmark) Verdenspremiere

  • HUMAN:RIGHTS AWARD: ‘Black Box Diaries’ af Shiori Ito (Japan, USA & Storbritannien) Europæisk premiere
    Special Mention: ’Marching in the Dark’ af Kinshuk Surjan (Belgien, Holland & Indien) Verdenspremiere
  • AUDIENCE:AWARD: ‘No Other Land’ af Rachel Szor, Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra & Hamdan Bilal (Palæstina)
  • INTER:ACTIVE AWARD: ‘Intangible’ af Carl Emil Carlsen (Danmark)

Ivan Sautkin: A Poem for Litlle People

I think the still photo says all about the approach and the intention of the director: In the middle of the horrible war an old woman writes and reads poems, surrounded by flowers; here in the beginning of the film and later on she reads a poem addressed to a mother from her son, a soldier in the Russian army. The poems are for the motherland Ukraine, her contribution. The other old woman the director talks about below in a quote I have taken from the press release. It’s a film that does not go with the soldiers to the front line even if the sound of war is there all the time.

Old women, otherwise, are characters, named like that at the end credits, who together with old men are evacuated by the volunteers, who drive from place to place, village to village to pick up people in areas, where they are in danger. A 91 old grandmother and her blind husband are led to the rescue car, aunt Nina with her cat the same, the woman who are worried for her paralyzed brother and “can I take my cat”, the 87 year old woman who is picked up, her son stays and comes out to the evacuaters to give them a big jar of honey, are you a bee keeper, they ask, yes is the answer, the painter, younger than the other, who has to leave his atelier…

And in a morning a group of nurses and doctors meet to pray before they go with the ambulances to meet people in shelters – to help. That it the theme, to help, in whatever religious or not interpretation you want to choose, in the name of compassion and humanity, it happens in Ukraine, in Gaza, all over, and making a film is also to help as Ivan Sautkin writes:

“At the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I, like most of my colleagues, was confused.  Everything I was doing until that moment lost its value. The world of war is radically different from everything we are used to. My first reaction was to mobilize and pick up a gun, but I made the rational decision to pick up my camera.  I started with a series of short documentaries.  With their help, I discovered a new reality for myself.  

After the de-occupation of the north of Ukraine, I went to the village where my old friend Zinaida Lukyanenko lives. I was interested in how she survived the difficult times and learned that during the occupation she did not sit idly by but helped our military.  I was struck by the courage of this woman and it was from her story that my film began. I keep in touch with my characters in the film, we also became close friends. I try to help their mission as much as I can and in the future I plan to return to the front line territory to work with them.This movie taught me many things. The most valuable experience is the ability to appreciate people regardless of their views and other things that distance us from each other.”

What can I say: This is a rich and beautiful film in the fragmented way it is made – Sautkin is the cinematographer himself I understand – with the way it embraces those who help and those who are helped. And its audience.

Ukraine and other countries, 2024, 86 mins.

Democracy Noir & Kix

Two films about/from Hungary. “Democracy Noir” by Connie Field and “Kix” by Bálint Révész & Dávid Mikulán.

The first “Democracy Noir” is primarily informative with a lot of tv archive on Victor Orban, but also material shot during demonstrations in the streets and interviews at the homes of the three courageous female protagonists “opposition politician Timea, journalist Babett and nurse Nikoletta (Niko) – who fight tirelessly to expose the lies and corruption embedded in Orbán’s government. But they face a well-funded and sophisticated opposition in Orbán’s ultra-conservative Fidesz party, which has a strong influence on voters and has already changed key democratic constitutional laws to further cement one-party rule.” We knew it all about the disgusting Orban, from newspapers and tv but credit to the ambition to make this film and its subject easy to understand and therefore – I hope – sellable to public broadcasters. Except the Hungarian, of course, as this is controlled by the dictator as he is called in one of the clips from an EU meeting.

“Kix”, yes what is this, what is happening, is it going to be, as it is said in the festival catalogue “handheld skate video” the whole way through. No, it changes, as the protagonist Sanyi changes, he is followed over 10 years and he changes. It is a powerful portrait of him and his pals, his family and their poor living conditions, social problems, a heroic mother who has three jobs to feed the family, a grandmother who can analyze why this and that happens to Sanyi, not to forget the little sister. Lot of reflections on life, poetic rapping voice off; I was totally charmed by the intelligent boy and his growing up, having a girl friend… and then there is a twist at the end of the film. There is so much energy and presence in this film. Yes, let’s use the word Authenticity. Award tonight? I guess so!   

Kateryna Gornostai: Timestamp

This film is to be made, well HAS to be made. I was not at the pitching Forum yesterday, where it was presented but I saw the trailer, which proves very much, why it got the top price at the Industry Award ceremony, announced last night. Here is from press release:

The Eurimages New Lab Award for Outreach worth €30.000 Euro went to Timestamp by Kateryna Gornostai (PHOTO), produced by Olha Beskhmelnytsina and Natalia Libet (2Brave Productions / Rinkel Film & Docs, UA & NL) presented at CPH:FORUM 2024. The Outreach Award is designed to promote public awareness of innovative and experimental projects at the end of production or in post-production.

The jury consisted of Emile Hertling Péronard (Producer, Anorak Film), Eleni Chandrinou (Audiovisual Consultant, Greece) and Patricia Finneran (Impact Fund Officer, The StoryBoard Collective).

Their citation reads: “This war movie takes place far from the frontline where soldiers, mostly men, fight for their country. It is the story of teachers, mostly women, who fight to preserve a sense of normalcy for the children going to school in bombed out buildings, underground metro stations, or on Zoom from laptops in their teacher’s backyard.

The jury is pleased to give the 30,000 Euro Outreach Award to a highly cinematic film that avoids traditional narrative structures to tell the story of a school year in a country at war, crafted by an all-women team of Ukrainian filmmakers. 

This film provides a nuanced image of life in a war-torn country, and we hope that this award will help it find broad international audiences.

Elena Mikaberidze: Blueberry Dreams

I was in the cinema Dagmar the other night to watch the Georgian film “Blueberry Dreams” produced by Elene Margvelashvili from Georgian Parachute Films and directed by Elena Mikaberidze. It is a masterpiece from a director, who has stayed long enough with her protagonists to catch, what is so important in documentary observation, MOMENTS, of the poetry of life as it is to find in a family of four, mum and dad and two wonderful boys. Here is the CPH:DOX catalogue description:

“Led by the good-hearted father Soso, a family of four starts a blueberry farm to secure their future together. But with a home in northern Georgia, their village is close to the troubled border with the Russian-backed region of Abkhazia, where new conflicts have been rumbling for 30 years. Soso is a retired engineer, but together with his wife Nino and their sons Giorgi and Lazare, he throws himself into the ‘Plant the Future’ programme set up by the Georgian authorities to stabilise the area. Nino is haunted by memories of the war and dreams of her children experiencing the world, while Soso wants to maintain their connection to the land. But Giorgi and Lazare long for a different future, immersing themselves in anime and dreaming of visiting Japan. In the midst of their daily lives, the family navigates between hardship, joy and contemplation of a different future.”

On the photo you see the youngest son Lazare, who is my darling of the film. Full of life, in constant movement, quick in conversation, normally with a hat on his head, showing his drawings of life, and one on war – what will become of him, a lot I hope, life can´t stop him.

Ileana Stanculescu from CinéDoc Tbilisi was at the premiere as well. Read her fine words:

“Yes, this was a great world premiere, in a full cinema, with an audience that was laughing and reacting at every important moment in the film and… most relevant… an audience that was touched by the story of Soso and his struggles to survive, to raise his boys and to develop his blueberry farm in West Georgia, in spite of many difficulties. Such a warm film, beautifully shot, great editing… Soso and his family will stay with us for a long time.”

Georgia and other countries, 2024, 75 mins.

CPH:DOX Forum 1 & 2

Stepping out of the Metro on Kongens Nytorv yesterday morning on my way to the Royal Theatre’s “Stærekassen”, Danish poet Peter Laugesen was steps ahead of me. It threw my thoughts back to my dear friend and co-editor of this site, Allan Berg Nielsen, who passed away some days ago. Allan loved Laugesen, made in 1989 a film with him, photographer was Lars Johansson. I was just getting the idea that Laugesen, an old beat poet, was maybe invited to read a poem at the opening of the second day of the festival’s Forum. Of course not, Laugesen passed “Stærekassen” with his dog…

It IS wonderful that the Forum can hold its 4 day Forum in a theatre like this one that has its special atmosphere of performance from the stage with an audience. There are balcony seats and seats near the ceiling, where “les enfants du paradis” can be placed. Many stairs, wooden floors, toilets for “damer” and “herrer”, the latter with pissoirs as I remember them, where you line up and can talk to your neighbour…

“Change” was the title of the first day’s Forum, presented like this by the festival: CHANGE is our development co-production training program in collaboration with IMS and EAVE, featuring documentary projects in development from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

Great initiative implemented for the second year with Georgian “Nana´s Wings” as the first project on stage, presented by director Maradia Tsaava and producer Mariam Chachia, both filmmakers previously praised on this site for their works “Water has No Borders” and “Magic Mountain”. Maradia Tsaava introduces like this: “it was a dark, cold, very windy night, when Nana arrived in a small-town Telavi. She had only one thing with her – a small brown bag… This is how the film will start, the story of my grandmother’s aspiration to fight post-war agony with art””. They presented precisely and with passion and had a trailer with a cliffhanger, i.e. do you want to know more. The project was previously presented and awarded at CinéDoc Tbilisi

6 projects were presented, a couple without allowance to write about them. Let me mention a couple more from this session: Ukrainian Pavlo Dorohoi, whose “Metro” and “89 Days” I have met before and appreciated, came with “The Ferryman” (Photo), very good trailer, promising film-to-be about 16-year-old Danylo, “who works as a ferryman in the shadow of a destroyed bridge 50 km from Kharkiv to earn money and continue his studies at a sports academy, but dreams of becoming a professional kayaker collide the reality of wartime”. And “Land of Fairy Tales and Dreams” by Denis Pavlovic is also one that could end up successfully on the screen with its stories from Transnistria, the almost unknown region in Moldova that supports Putin. Some tour guides are meant to be the guiding characters.

The format was fine, the classical one: 7 minutes presentation and 7 minutes questions from the moderator, who was American Sean Flynn, very well prepared, and the teams had been trained in beforehand, but the moderator’s tone was monotonous, it gave a dry atmosphere but luckily there were screens in both sides of the stage that brought his words as he was speaking…

… and then today the Forum for projects that are developed, many of them close to being characterized as “ready to go” but still lacking funding. I listened and watched the first six that went one after the other – after a pretty long but ok start with speeches by Kathrine Kiilgaard and Niklas Engstrøm, managing and artistic director of the festival, the new head of Industry and Training Mara Gourd-Mercado and the project manager Anna Krasztev-Kovacs. There was a tribute to late Jess Search, who was a moderator of the Forum for many years, her wife Beadie Finzi was there and a clip was shown. Respect.

And then the moderators took over, professional and experienced Karolina Lidin and Tabitha Jackson, who managed the short time in a fine way, having three commentators come on stage for presentation of themselves and questions to the teams pitching.

Let me mention two of the six projects: The Chinese/Dutch “Whispers in May” by Dongnan Chen, a film made in collaboration with the kids taking part, having Qinghua, who is 14, having her first menstruation that “sets in motion a quest for self-discovery … a road trip with her two besties to find a skirt for the menarche rite of passage”. The presentation was charming and convincing, the clip full of poetic scenes, lovely!

And then Arthur Franck, whose “The Hypnotist” I saw and loved some years ago, Finnish humour, Franck took the audience’s attention totally with his stage performance of “Showtime in Helsinki”, 1975; cold war meeting with Kissinger, Gerald Ford, Brezhnev, Honecker, Harold Wilson, Olof Palme… Maybe the most important and simultaneously the most forgotten Cold War event to take place, as they put it in the catalogue. “Horror and comedy”, Franck said.

to be continued… in Stærekassen in Copenhagen.

Allan Berg Nielsen 1940-2024

Fredag døde Allan fredfyldt i skumringstimen. Hans datter Maria var ved hans side. Lang tids sygdom sled ham op.

Det var en gave at kende Allan, som vi gjorde siden slutningen af 1970’erne. Andre kender meget mere til hans virke på Kulturhistorisk Museum, beskrevet i hans Randersbiografien, som er en forrygende flot hjemmeside, en bog, som dokumenterer Allans viden om sin by og dens bygninger, blandt andet Sct. Mortens Kirke, hvor han i mange år var en skattet formand for menighedsrådet.

I slutningen af 1970’erne startede Allan Danmarks første kortfilmbiograf på museet. 16mm ruller blev sendt til Randers og Allan betjente projektoren og viste eksperimenterende film af Kirkeby og Jørgen Leth og mange andre.

Det blev til en filmfestival i Randers og til et venskab, som startede i en fælles passion for filmen, men rakte langt videre. Til rejser i ind- og udland. Til glæden ved mad og drikke. Og bøger. Hvor Tue talte film med Allan, var det bøger, som der oftest blev talt om med Ellen. Når vi besøgte ham i Niels Brocks Gade, var han altid i gang med en to-tre bøger, danske som udenlandske. Han var ikke god til engelsk eller tysk og alligevel læste han Rainer Marie Rilke på originalsproget – og Werner Herzogs erindringer. Der blev snakket og drukket en lille whisky eller to. Eller set film. Kieslowskis franske trilogi…

Allan var ikke glad for at tale til store forsamlinger. Alligevel gjorde han det og vi var både stolte og glade, da han holdt et foredrag i Istanbul for tyrkiske dokumentarister, som var vilde med ham og kaldte ham Alan Delon! Med sin viden og sans for filmisk kvalitet var han en oplagt kandidat til juryposter og han var i Pilsen i Tjekkoslovakiet og i Spanien i jury med Pedro Costa, hvis film han forgudede. Og så var han nærmest fast jurymedlem på Balticum Film&TV Festival fra 1990 og ti år frem. Han havde sit eget faste værelse på købmandsgården i Gudhjem og faldt totalt for de baltiske film, ikke mindst Audrius Stonys korte film.

Allan var medlem af Statens Filmcentrals bestyrelse sammen med bl.a. Erik Sigsgaard og Reimer Bo Christensen, respekteret for sin viden og evne til argumentation. Og det var naturligt, at han blev filmkonsulent i Det Danske Filminstitut efter SFC blev lagt sammen med DFI. Det var hårde år for ham for alle skulle behandles ordentligt, men ikke alle var glade for hans grundighed. Der var protester fra instruktører, nogle ville have ham afsat, men DFI’s Thomas Stenderup og Henning Camre støttede ham; det samme gjorde Jørgen Leth, Anne Wivel og Jon Bang Carlsen.

I de fem år  som konsulent – 1998-2003 – boede Allan en del af tiden hos os. Når vi stod op, var han som regel allerede gået på arbejde, men om aftenen stod den tit på rødvin og røde bøffer. De sidste købte Allan hos slagter Thrane i Nansensgade – det var huslejen.

Og så – i 2007 – kom www.filmkommentaren.dk. Det var Allans idé at han og jeg ”gamle drenge” (et udtryk Allan aldrig ville have brugt!) startede den filmblog, som nu bringer hans nekrolog. Han skrev på dansk, jeg på engelsk. Jeg har ikke talt efter, men Allan har nok leveret 1000 tekster, hvoraf mange fik mig til at sige til den beskedne, kloge ven fra Randers: Det er der ingen andre, der skriver bedre end dig. Det er jo poesi! For eksempel om Anne Wivels seneste film, som fik en Bodil i går!

Allan var en sprogets mester og mange har nydt godt af det. Han elskede at skrive, førte dagbog, skrev kærlighedsbreve – og var til det sidste én af få, som holdt fast i at skrive postkort!

Åh, kære kære Allan, vi kommer til at savne dig, du fine menneske!

Foto: Allan i sin båd.

Ellen og Tue, 17.3.2024