Still in Motion

My 25 + 1

This will be the lazy woman's version of Jennifer Merin's very cool Top 25 list of docs by and/or about women that she feels are must-sees.  Here, instead of a description by me, you get a link to the film's website, or to a site that says something interesting about the film--infinite numbers of worlds to choose from, that I would never deny anyone.  Writing film synopses right now, not so much. 

However, I have supplied an extra added bonus--a special mention to a special film about girls/women that was one of the first things I saw that countered every rubric about genre in one movie, and made me weep like a baby, to boot.  (Herzog's Little Dieter Needs to Fly was another one, but Werner makes man-films, so has no place in this conversation.)  Apologies to my friends on the Continent if this is still too much of a US-centric list; I tried to give it some international flava.  We white Europeans overlook lots of stuff.  In no particular order, just as they came to me:

The Gleaners and I, Agnès Varda, 2000.  (Still above of Varda's hand holding a heart-shaped potato.)

The Devil's Playground, Lucy Walker, 2002.

Flag Wars, Linda Goode Bryant and Laura Poitras, 2003.

Prodigal Sons, Kimberly Reed, 2008.

Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman, Jennifer Fox, 2006.

Protagonist, Jessica Yu, 2007.

Blue Vinyl, Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand, 2002.

A Lion in the House, Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, 2006.

The Boys of Baraka, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, 2005.

My Country, My Country, Laura Poitras, 2006.

Freeheld, Cynthia Wade, 2007.

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, Nick Broomfield, 2003.

To See If I'm Smiling, Tamar Yarom, 2007.  (Still pictured.)

The Mother, Pavel Kostomarov and Antoine Cattin, 2008.

Family Affair, Chico Colvard, 2010.

Off and Running, Nicole Opper, 2009.

3 Rooms of Melancholia, Pirjo Honkasalo, 2005.

O Amor Natural, Heddy Honigmann,1996.

The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun, Pernille Rose Grønkjaer, 2006.

La Sierra, Scott Dalton and Margarita Martinez, 2005.

Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement, Susan Muska and Gréta Olafsdóttir, 2009.

Sisters in Law, Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi, 2005.

Billy the Kid, Jennifer Venditti, 2007.

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, Jessica Oreck, 2009.

The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, Pietra Brettkelly, 2008.  (Still pictured.)

 

BONUS FILM!!  Rabbit-Proof Fence, Phillip Noyce, 2002.

I hope this helps to further generate an epidemic of lists of kick-ass women and their accomplishments--in film or in anything.  Personally, I think we should get rid of International Women's Day and just take over the world already.

 

 

 

INTERVIEW: Helena Trestiková, Director KATKA

The 13^th edition of the One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival will take place in Prague, Czech Republic next month from 8 – 17 March.  This has become one of the most important high-profile human rights film fests internationally, exhibiting over 100 films over the course of a week and a half.  It is there that I will get to re-meet Czech filmmaker, Helena Trestiková, a multiple award-winning documentarian who has been débuting her latest piece, Katka, on the international circuit this year.  Perhaps most people might not necessarily categorize Trestiková’s films under a “human rights” rubric.  She, herself, is quick to point out that she does not think of herself, necessarily, as any obvious kind of social activist.  (The filmmaker, pictured, on the ferry ride across the sea from Helsinki, Finland to Tallinn, Estonia, courtesy Evelin Kask, January 2011.)

What does distinguish this filmmaker’s work is her unique, and intense, involvement with her protagonists, most of whom she follows with a small film crew for well over a decade and her singular commitment to her subjects goes beyond filming them.  She shows us what it is like to be a particular human being in a particular set of circumstances—circumstances which are harrowing, off-putting for most, and all too real for the people acting out the passion plays of their own lives for years on end for her camera.  Katka is the most recent work in a series of films that are observational studies of people who find themselves utterly lost and cast adrift.  The first two are called René, released in 2008 and winner of the European Film Academy's Documentary of the Year Award, and Marcela, released in 2007, also a multiple award-winner. She has been following these subjects for most of the past 20 some-odd years and continues to do so today. 

When we first meet her, Katka is a gorgeous, vibrant young woman, a recovering drug addict in a halfway house, trying to relearn the basics of life as a drug-free person.  Trestiková spent the next fourteen years following her as she relies on precarious and violent relationships with two different men and embarks on misadventure after misadventure into a variety of criminal activities, including working as a street prostitute, to sustain her habit.  She never kicks it--even when awaiting the birth of a daughter.

This powerful film, like Trestiková's others, raises many complex moral and ethical issues concerning the filmmaker relationship to his or her subjects.  Nevertheless, Trestiková’s film is big box office in her native country since so far, over 100,000 Czech moviegoers have turned out to see Katka in cinemas. 

I sat with Trestiková, a very elegant and soft-spoken woman in her early 60s (hardly your average crusading, rampaging social activist) in a quiet café in the midst of the DocPoint festival in Helsinki Finland in late January. [Note to those who haven’t seen Katka yet, this interview contains “plot” spoilers.]

 

Still in Motion (SIM): As a teacher of documentary filmmaking at FAMU [Filmová a televizní Fakulta Akademie Múzickych Umení v Praze, Czech Republic's national film school], what are you seeing from young filmmakers in terms of certain philosophies or schools of thought about making this kind of vérité or direct cinema documentary?  The world moves at a particularly fast clip, for the most part, but your own films have a deliberate pace and timbre to them that requires loads of time, untold days and weeks over the course of several years.  (Trestiková pictured above with Marcela.)

Helena Trestiková (HT):  It’s true that young people look at the world and experience the world in their own ways.  And they don’t want to really imitate anyone.  They also have a very personal attitude and experience to certain topics and they want to help implement change by being active participants in their own films. They are one of the objects in their own films, directly in front of the camera.  Some of them admire someone like Michael Moore and his way of documenting his stories where he is very active in his own films; he wants to move a situation.  He wants to make the world a better place; this is a kind of social activism.  This is the main part of the young filmmakers’ activity.

Antithetically, I have an observational method.  I observe for a very long time.  And some of my students think that this is too passive of a way to make documentary films, that a filmmaker has to be active and change the world with his or her film.  My thought is that I will observe and record and the viewers of my films will think about things.  And, then, perhaps, something in their own mind will change.  It’s a much deeper reaction, I think, than watching someone crusade on behalf of others.  This other method can be problematic in many ways.  I would rather force people to think rather than to react.

SIM:  However, you are incredibly present in your films.  Your subjects interact with you in a very intimate way--they are addressing you directly in many instances.  Your lack of interference, at least on camera, speaks to giving the lion’s share of attention to your subject.  And that qualifies as social activism in a much more profound way by moving aside, allowing us to hear their voices and see their lives play out in a more authentic way—as authentic as one film can represent a whole life, that is.

HT:  No, stillness for young people is not their way.  They want to be seen and heard.

SIM:  What’s so staggering about what you show us in your long-form portraits is the persistence of your subjects in their self-destructiveness.  In the cases of René and Katka, they never reform; they never “get better,” or improve their lives in any way.  In Katka’s case in particular, things go from bad to worse quite relentlessly.  There simply is no happy ending in sight no matter how long you stay with this woman.  What is the general audience reaction to this, do you find?

HT:  Most of the viewers I’ve had contact with describe a physical, visceral reaction to my films and to the subjects.  There is an experience of physical pain.  The story is, as you said, relentlessly depressing.  But when I sat on a panel after showing the film to a group of young teens, ages 12 to 14 or 15, they said it was a good experience for them to see it.  In our generation, we had Christiane F—We Children from the Zoo Station [1981], such a personal story about someone’s relationship with drugs.  They realize, watching Katka’s portrait, the danger of beginning a relationship with drugs; there is a real fear.  But that’s only one aspect.  It shows how far a drug addict will go—the impossibility to do anything else with one’s life once the body and mind are addicted. And there is the attitude of society when encountering this kind of person since we have to understand that there is nothing anyone can do for a drug addict who does not want to be hospitalized or cured in any way.  I was asked why I didn’t take Katka to the hospital right away and I said it was impossible—a hospital is not going to take someone being brought there by force.  If it’s not his or her personal decision, then it’s impossible.  We all have free will and free will works the same way in that situation as it does in any other situation.  (Pictured above, a several months' pregnant Katka in Prague.)

What’s important about this long-term observation is that, as a viewer, you can see the whole story—it’s there for you.  But me, as the filmmaker, I don’t know at the start what I will encounter, what will happen.

SIM: I’m sure your own emotional state, your own innate hope that things will get better for this person you’ve come to care deeply for, must really be intense and quite difficult to sustain at times.

HT:  Of course, I had hope the whole time.  Especially when Katka was pregnant and told me that this was her motivation to get clean and find a home.  And I believed her, feeling that this would be a very good impulse for her stopping.  But it was probably this moment when she left her daughter in the hospital and escaped, that was the most difficult.  Because it was in this moment that I felt the greatest disappointment, the greatest doubt.

SIM:  That if she could give up her child for drugs then it was truly hopeless?

HT:  Yes.  There was just one day, just one day before she was to get her daughter back.  And she escaped.

SIM:  It is a great moment of despair because we really don’t want to believe that someone could do that.  And yet she does.  When I watched René, I had the same thoughts—can a person really do that?  Yes, he can really do those things and he does. In René’s case, there is the self-satisfaction of being so utterly irredeemable.  But this, of course, is not the case with Katka; she’s a prisoner of her own addiction and she stays chained there no matter what.  You, as an individual, must have to be capable of putting up some kind of wall at certain points between you and your subjects, just as you would have to do with anything or anyone that has a profound impact on your life in a negative way.

HT:  Yes, well, a viewer sees this film in 90 minutes.  I lived it for 15 years.  So it was not so intensive in that way because during that time, I also made other films, did other projects and so on.  But yes, also, there were moments and incidents shooting with Katka that were so horrible.  When she was a street prostitute, I discovered her there by accident; it was a chance meeting because I was shooting something else nearby.  At the time, I didn’t know she was working as a prostitute.  We were returning from a shoot and we saw her on the street.

In terms of this “wall” you mention: It’s my task to make a film.  And yes, I am a person, too.  The emotions I experience and how I handle all of it is complicated.  But I think and I hope that my position in Katka’s life is good because I want to help her.  I spent a lot of time with her without a camera.  We gave her some money or paid for her mobile phone.  One summer, she wanted to have a tent and asked me if I had one.  I didn’t but asked many friends and we got a tent for her.  For the times I filmed with her, I paid her.  But that’s my normal method.  I always give some money to my subjects, not only her.  But for her, this is the only legitimate money she’s ever made, a salary for her.  This gave her some pride.  She was contributing to the film and getting something in return.  Her only other financial resources come from stealing things in stores, prostitution and making drug deals.  Contact with me was okay for her because it was safe.  She wasn’t afraid and I always treated her with respect, asking if it was all right to film her.  I was one of the few people in her life that didn’t judge her or suspect her of doing bad things.  Her contact with me was not dangerous for her.

SIM:  The people who accompany you on your shoots do extraordinary camera and sound work and I know you always work with the same colleagues, so there is probably a very intuitive way in which you work together which is especially useful in some of the more dangerous or risky situations in which you find yourselves.  You’re not exactly shooting in very safe places most of the time since your subjects live very close to danger every day.  It’s also very obvious that they’re emotionally involved; that shows in the camera work and the way in which they capture things.  Can you speak a bit about those collaborations?  (Pictured above, Trestiková and crew filming with René.)

HT:  This is a stable of constant collaborators, yes, and so they are very intimate with the situations.  [The three DPs who worked on Katka over the years are Kristián Hynek, Vlastimil Hamernik and Martin Kubala.  The soundmen are Stanislav Hruska, Václav Hejduk and Jaroslav Jedlicka.] During filming, most of the time it is impossible for us to speak together about how to take these pictures.  But they know what is needed and they can work on their own without me.  Especially in this case of Katka and her life, it’s important because they’re not afraid of the situation.  It wasn’t always safe.  The railway station in Prague is especially not safe at night.  Katka and her friends were our friends and we were connected to them.  They were not in conflict with us, but there were some other people that didn’t want to be filmed so it could get complicated.  But nothing ever happened and we all survived.  But these cameramen always had to be ready for anything.

SIM:  I think it’s important to show how very dangerous life is for Katka every day she’s out on the streets.

HT:  Yes, we can’t close our eyes to that; such a world exists.   Life on the streets has special rules.  She never has a proper flat, anything stable or comfortable; she never owned anything except the clothes on her back.  This life on the street also requires her to always be in contact with a man.  She cannot be on her own.  It’s impossible for a woman to live alone on the streets.  If she has a conflict with her boyfriend and wants to leave him, she cannot.  (Pictured, Katka and her boyfriend, Roman.)

SIM:  Yes, she’s trapped there, too.  What’s your relationship with her now? Are you still documenting her life?

HT:  I am still filming her as I am the other protagonists from my films.  It’s a type of life for me.  I consider myself a chronicler.

SIM:  Your storytelling technique is like that of a novelist.  That’s the closest way of working creatively I can think of to describe what you’re doing in film.  Going back to someone like Michael Moore or many other documentarians working in the genre these days and the films they make “to change the world”—it’s a total contrivance, this idea that these films are made with the express purpose of creating social change.  They certainly can—some have.  But these films actually have very little to do with the protagonists and their lives.  We’re just not talking about the same level of commitment you display in the way you work.  What is so unique and beautiful about your work is that you provide absolutely no resolution where there isn’t one.  It’s a rare way to storytell.  Who do you admire in filmmaking today?

HT:  Obviously, I like highly observational films.  I think of Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard’s 2009 French film, The Arrivals, which also won the Golden Dove at DOK Leipzig the year René received the same prize there.  It was such a perfect study of the situation of immigrants and the problems and issues of the social workers and how complicated it is to help.  Frederick Wiseman’s work I admire so much.  These are some of my favorite colleagues.  Michael Moore is not my cup of tea [smiling].  In his first film, probably, yes.  But in Sicko, his portrait of the health services in Cuba is completely false.

SIM: I want to talk about this one particular scene in Katka that was deeply affecting for me.  Towards the end of the film, Katka and her boyfriend, Roman, are living in a little shed beside the railroad tracks and the police come to kick them out.  Roman is extremely frightened and because he’s also strung out, his fright borders on hysteria.  He starts calling you by name for help and he tells you how scared he is, as if to say it’s time for you to step out from behind the camera and become an active participant in what’s happening.  I love that moment so much because it’s so select.  You’re so rarely a physical presence on camera in your films but the times you choose to appear are very powerful for that reason and they speak volumes about your relationship to your subjects.  Can you talk a bit about the choice to include those moments in the film when you become an active participant, when we actually see and hear you?

HT:  The times when I am an active participant are many, much more than a viewer will ever see in the final film.  This particular situation you’re referring to was a real SOS situation.  They really thought they were going to be attacked by these policemen.  So I wanted to talk calmly to the police officers and try and allow them to stay longer in this little railway house where they were.  So we did resolve the situation and it was such a big victory since the incident happened without any attack or anything.  I always wanted to help her in any way I could but it often was very limited what I could actually do to help.  That was one situation where I could do something.

SIM:  It goes a long way towards establishing this relationship for the viewer, especially when it comes so late in the film.  I think most people do wonder what the involvement might be between Katka and you and your crew and this seems to be your answer to those questions.  Is this your solution to obliquely confront the criticisms of “merely” being an observer without any kind of interference or aid? It adds a layer of complexity at such a key moment.

HT:  There is such complexity in the relationship; it is unavoidable.  My relationships with René and Katka and the others--well, our “friendships” are obviously limited by the way in which we meet.  I am always the filmmaker.  Of course, most of the time I met with them it was without a camera but they cannot forget that I am a filmmaker and I cannot forget that they are the protagonists of my films.  It’s a persistent issue between us.  It’s the limitation of those relationships.  (Pictured, poster from the film René.)

SIM:  But those limitations serve both parties, in a sense.  You want a film; they want their stories told.

HT:  Yes, of course.  I often wonder how audiences from other countries can accept or come to my films, how they can connect with our daily realities in Czech Republic, the intricate ways these films are related to this nation and to the culture?  It’s always, somehow, surprising to me.

SIM:  Well, I can only speak to the country I come from, one that has dire immigration problems right now, social services problems.  All of it layered upon the persistent myth that the USA is still some “land of opportunity,” to which all are invited equally to partake of the riches there.  There are millions of US citizens living in abject poverty, no home, no health care, no protection from the state—in the midst of staggering wealth.  Just like life in any number of places on the planet—no different. 

It is a rare and wonderful thing to witness this kind of commitment, this kind of obligation, on the part of one human being to another.  This is what translates no matter what culture or language.  How has Katka received the film?

HT: After she saw the film, someone asked her what she thought she had managed to do in her life that she could redeem as something good, something positive. Katka replied that she had had a child.  And that she had “made this film with Helena.”  (Pictured, the director and her subject.)

 

"Trusting the Strength of Ordinary People": A Masterclass with Pirjo Honkasalo at IDFA

At this year’s 23^rd edition of the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Finnish filmmaker, Pirjo Honkasalo, was invited to make the “Top 10” selection for the festival.  These were her choices—The Earth by Aleksandr Dovzhenko (Russia, 1930); The Mad Masters by Jean Rouch (France, 1955); The Earth Trembles by Luchino Visconti (Italy, 1957); Close-Up by Abbas Kiarostami (Iran, 1990); Kyoto, My Mother's Place by Nagisa Oshima (Japan, 1991); Quince Tree of the Sun by Victor Erice (Spain, 1992); Brass Unbound by Johan van der Keuken (Netherlands, 1993); Tell Me What You Saw by Kiti Luostarinen (Finland, 1993); The Smiling Man by Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann (Germany, 1996); and Blockade by Sergei Loznitsa (Russia, 2005). 

Perhaps, ten “exercises” one can fold into one’s film school curriculum.

All of these works were selections that resonated profoundly with Honkasalo while she was just learning the craft of filmmaking in her late teens. In the two-hour masterclass she hosted, moderated by Iikka Vehkalahti, commissioning editor of Finland’s YLE, we saw clips from these films filled with images that initially inspired Honkasalo back then—not just as an artist, but as a human being.  Listening to her talk, one feels quite strongly that filmmaking was just one of the many artistic avenues she could have explored, for this 63-year-old who “feels an attraction and attachment to the logic of the dream,” and who “trusts the simple poetry of image,” can capture the revelations of deep emotional intelligence through her camera lens like very few can.  I feel this might be true if she had chosen a musical instrument, a paintbrush, a quill and parchment, or what have you.

For me, watching a work by Honkasalo is a singular experience, one not easily described in words, particularly the limited language used for critiquing a work within the context of a certain cinematic style or milieu.  Even though she has worked in documentary for much of the latter part of her career, her definition of the genre speaks foremost to the craft of image making:  “Making the image for me is the documentary; the visual aesthetic is the essential part.” When she composes her stories, like the best minimalist musicians, it is in a very circumscribed and disciplined way.  During the talk, she laughingly recalled her producer’s predicament in the initial stages of making her latest piece, Ito—Diary of an Urban Priest, about a young Buddhist man residing in Tokyo.  She had come back to Finland from an extended stay with her subject in Japan, accompanied by barely any footage.  Her producer pleaded:  “Please start shooting something!"  (Masterclass still of Honkasalo and Vehkalahti, courtesy Felix Kalkman.)

Yet what engages Honkasalo is the steady pulse, or gradual transformation, of the smaller moments, her compass set for an interior quest for the answer to something only she herself might know she is investigating.  It struck me that calling this talk with this particular filmmaker a masterclass was a misnomer, of sorts. (Especially one set up as an over-lit chat show with Honkasalo and Vehkalahti sitting, seemingly, miles away from the “live audience.”)   Like most master filmmakers who have worked for decades at their craft, her personal process is one fraught with more mystery than practical advice. In fact, most of the ways in which she works is completely antithetical to what any “film expert” these days might have to impart to a budding film director.  But then again, not too many of us can create works of art from “fresh chaos,” particularly the interior variety which she is able to glean so eloquently from her protagonists.  Providing an opportunity to choose an infinite variety of ways for a viewer to “walk through the landscapes of my films” are of greater import to her than linear story, narrative, exposition.  “I trust the audience and that enables me to create a certain style.  I leave space to think your own thoughts.  . . . Film can talk about what we cannot talk about—there is the power of silence, the beauty of stillness.”  (Still from 3 Rooms, pictured above.)

As we now all live in a world of constant “image noise” (Honkasalo’s phrase), grappling with films like hers, like Dovzhenko’s, like Visconti’s, Erice’s, et.al., is akin to learning a new language, or rather learning to re-listen, to re-look. I have seen most of her films more than once, read numerous critical essays and reviews, have listened intently to her talk about her work when I’ve had the opportunity. Still, I oftentimes feel as if I am only scratching the surface of something innately impenetrable. Yet, the inestimable rewards have been glimpses of profound beauty (Mysterion, Ito—Diary of An Urban Priest); insights into devastating psychological traumas (3 Rooms of Melancholia); the searing personal, familial and cultural pain of her 1998 drama, Fire-Eater; unflinching intimacy and a magnificent portrait of stubborn dedication in Atman.  (Still from Ito, pictured above.)

Honkasalo’s films are complex, often disorienting, providing the polar opposite of any kind of conventional narrative structures we rely upon to ease our way into strange and foreign worlds. Acquiescence, a voluntary surrender, is required on the part of the viewer.  These days, especially, there is something liberating in drifting in a sea of ambiguity, always off-center, a giving of oneself over to someone who, in the core of her being, believes that something exists beyond the reach of our five senses; this is what she sets out to discover anew with each new project. In essence, this is her life’s work.  In return, this work is based on the director’s own erasure of self, a submission to the world around her, an obeisance to the uncontrollability of life. Her expansive interior stories are odes to the accidents of everyday experience, whether they be trivial or momentous—and who is to say which is which, she always seems to ask us. Consistently, she is able to intuitively calibrate all this through the agency of her camera, and bestow extraordinary cinematic gifts on us all.  (Still from Fire-Eater, pictured above.)

Like many of the master filmmakers to whom Honkasalo paid homage in her Top 10 picks, she leaves wide swaths of room in her films for personal discovery.  “If a personal self-discovery is experienced while watching a film, it’s a success.”  This speaks to the generous nature of a filmmaker who is intent on communion with her audience, not the opposite intention, of which works like hers are often accused.  She shares the very personal spiritual journeys she embarks upon quite generously in the language in which she is most fluid—the language of pictures.  Those pictures bring collective longings, fears and questions to the forefront, prodding our collective hidden psychic terrains. In the process, she is willing to expose her own weaknesses, her own vulnerabilities, doubts, half-formed beliefs, knowing that she will likely be misinterpreted and misunderstood.  Thankfully, she doesn’t really seem to care.  (Still from Atman, pictured above.)

Externally, I may not be able to interpret and articulate all this very well, but I recognize the strength of an ordinary person when I see it portrayed in Honkasalo’s films.  It is always a welcome sight—as is the strength of this extraordinary artist.

 

Expanded Cinema: New Vision at CPH:DOX

The NEW:VISION Award is CPH:DOX’s competition for experimental, innovative, reflective documentaries and the festival presented twenty-six diverse, genre-bending pieces this year.  In managing to watch them all, I experienced profound discoveries about expressing a deeply personal aesthetic in film. In a post-festival correspondence with programmer, Mads Mikkelsen, he told me, “Part of the project here is to not think in opposite terms of ‘documentary’ and ‘fiction,’ but to think in the very basic term ‘filmmaking,’ with a reference to the real. That said, there is a strong, current interest from the art world in what could be called the documentary project: reflecting on the world we live in from perspectives that acknowledge the formal potential of filmmaking. This is, of course, especially visible in the New Vision program.”

What was common amongst the films in this category was an original interpretation of that ineffable matter within us that keeps us connected to the world of dreams. Many of these film works act as amorphous metaphors for the secret sources of our spiritual and intellectual power, creating new myths in relation to our physical selves and the ways in which we interact subliminally with the physical world around us.  And while all of this might be hot stuff to creative programmers and adventurous cinephiles, I wondered what kind of feedback the festival gets from local audiences.  Mikkelsen again:  “Well, the fun thing is that I talked to people that are not cinephiles, who had a genuine experience of change from encountering these works in a cinema. I think that is vital to the cinema-going experience: to change.”  Part of his mandate from festival director, Tine Fischer, someone who is highly informed about currents in the art / gallery world, is “the very basic act of bringing these works to the screens of Copenhagen and to the public here. I do not think that the cinema space can be elitist, but perhaps that is too optimistic."

Perspective (from the Latin perspicere, to see through) is generally defined as an approximate representation, as seen by the eye, on a flat surface of an image. In their works, the makers in this category “saw through” the more impenetrable layers of our beings, transforming their material into rich storylines that animate some aspect of daily life. It is extremely encouraging that an event calling itself a documentary festival supports this kind of work.  Documentary has a propensity to be a genre that can become stale all too easily with its own self-referential and myopic way of telling true stories. Many of these pieces were a slap in the face to all of that, and I mean that in the most complimentary way.  (Still above from John Price's Home Movie.)

As the makers of these film and video works traverse deeply personal and quixotic territory, they often instigate an unfamiliar shift in a viewer’s perspective. Whether that intention is inadvertent or not is hard to say since so much of what these pieces offer is distinctly intuitive.  But there is no doubt that when watching these films, installation pieces and other UFOs, there is a focused attention to detail and nuance, where one’s experience of a “cinematic encounter” can be redefined.  But only if one meets the work at least halfway.  For there is work involved to be sure, and according to filmmaker, Ben Russell, that is quite intentional.

Russell, last year’s New Vision Award winner, is an American artist that executes visionary work in contemporary experimental documentary.  One afternoon during the festival, he and Canadian filmmaker, John Price, hosted a masterclass moderated by Mikkelsen. Both of these artists work on the forefront of this exploratory borderland. This year, Russell’s first feature, Let Each One Go Where He May, was part of the New Vision category, along with the seventh in his Trypps series, Trypps #7 (Badlands).  John Price's latest film, Home Movie, had its European premiere at the festival and is described as “a psychedelic science fiction film with a distant relative in Tarkovsky.”  Whatever you want to call it, it's gorgeous, tactile work.  As well, these filmmakers make work intentionally both for the cinema as well as for installation.  (Still above from Russell's Trypps #7 (Badlands)).

Referencing the historical avant-garde film tradition, along with a modern interpretation of “ethnographic” filmmaking, Russell mentioned the reinvention of cinematic space offered up by Gene Youngblood in his seminal book from 1970, Expanded Cinema. Youngblood talks about the passive versus active filmgoer encountering a cinema where there is no immediately evident structure. There is a lot of space for an audience member to exist, becoming a self-reflexive experience where one participates in that experience, actively creating meaning for that experience as one watches.  Russell: “I think to ask cinema to be a representative medium is asking it to do something much less than it can do, which is to produce some other experience entirely.  That’s the ambition with [my work], to create something else than what we see.”

The New Vision Award this year went to German philosopher/author/filmmaker, Hito Steyerl, for her sharply subversive and entertaining biography of an object, In Free Fall.  Steyerl credits her contribution as the film’s “recycler,” instead of its director. The jury was impressed by the film’s innovative approach “that moves between critical, documentary and personal,” a trademark of Steyerl’s distinctive work and, indeed, a trademark of all the films in this category.  (Still from film, pictured above.) 

Israeli artist Roee Rosen’s Out (still from film, pictured below) was given a special mention by the jury, and I want to give it a special mention of my own. This staggering half-hour piece, according to the jury, “dares to employ the radical methods in the form of bodily rituals to expose the prejudices that exist within us all.”  The reflections of one of the two female protagonists are especially poignant.  She is the one asked to perform an exorcism in a psychosexual passion play of ritualized dominance and subordination, unglamorously staged in a sparsely furnished living room. The demon she must exorcise from her sub is Avigdor Lieberman, one of Israel’s most extreme right wing politicians, a man with virulent nationalist and racist ideologies.  Quite eloquently, she speaks about him in relation to something that is inherent in the nation of Israel, as a whole. I, in turn, as the active viewer, extrapolated what she had to say into a more universal message, and it moved me deeply. 

After researching Lieberman in preparation for her role as exorcist, she states, “You cannot approach an exorcism with negative feelings only; you have to be able to identify with the demon, to find empathy towards him.” As a queer feminist activist born in Israel in 1978, she and Lieberman (born 1958 in Moldova) obviously come from very different places in just about every way.  Yet, she finds some things that will tie her emotionally to him. “I must say that I prefer Lieberman over most of Israel’s political system in one sense: that he tells the truth. His truth may be terrible, but at the end of the day, it is his truth.  . . . My main problem as an exorcist is that Lieberman is a very evasive demon.  He goes out of one body and enters another.  He resides, in fact, at the heart of our collective body. Lieberman is not the demon, but only one of its incarnations.  The real demon belongs to us all.”

 

Look for my article on Harmony Korine's guest curation at CPH:DOX in the next issue of Senses of Cinema, coming next month.

 

 

 

 

Middle East Focus at Sheffield 2010

In the current issue of DOX Magazine, just released and currently available at the EFM lounge at the Berlinale marketplace, I have three articles published which I will "reprint" here on this blog.  Even though these festivals happened in the autumn of 2010, I think the themes are still pertinent enough to share now.  I hope you agree:

As part of Sheffield Doc/Fest’s extensive and impressive program this year, there was a strand that focused on the Middle East, a place rife with underground work.  While some of these films are certainly getting a bit of play at some of the larger Middle East fests, making and exhibiting independent documentary in the Arab world is a challenge in several distinct ways.  Even with new film funds developing and alternative avenues emerging for exhibition, oftentimes, there is severe political and social censorship with which filmmakers from the region have to contend. How successful the outcome of certain projects is up for debate, for quite a few pieces are unpolished, filled with the kind of “gaffes” of which most Western filmmakers (and audiences) are highly critical.  We must also remember, however, that a lot of these important and timely stories never get the appropriate professional support to help enhance their "market-readiness."  Nonetheless, it is important that these films get some play outside their own region at high-profile festivals, and in this case it was thanks to expansive programmers like Hussain Currimbhoy that they played at Sheffield.

The Middle East Focus strand at Doc/Fest 2010 showcased ten films from Turkey, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Iran and Tunisia.  There were two feature-length films that were particularly striking, but for entirely different reasons.  While Zeina Daccache’s 12 Angry Lebanese: The Documentary is exceedingly well produced and executed, Mohammad Ali Atassi’s Waiting for Abu Zayd  is not.  In fact, at its conclusion, Atassi’s film devolves into a philosophical argument between the journalist and his subject, Atassi’s a frustrated off-camera voice expressing bewilderment to Zayd about the intellectual’s refusal to return to his native Egypt after 13 years of exile.  It’s an unintentionally morbid conclusion to what amounts to the only extensive documentation of Zayd’s life.

The two films have some palpable reverberations with one another since both say a lot about the constant struggle with creating contemporary meaning out of ancient Qur’anic traditions of Islam, and the complex social morés (and severe social restrictions) of being a good and faithful Muslim today.  In both cases, the films concentrate on these principles through interaction with state “criminals,” or exiles, in Zayd's case.

Fierce and fesity theatre director, Zeina Daccache, sets up Lebanon’s first prison-based drama project in Roumieh Prison, one of the most overcrowded penitentiaries.  The facility, built for 1,500 inmates, holds almost 4,000.  Over the course of a year and half, she molds a group of 45 actors plucked from the prison population and stages an adaptation of Reginald Rose’s teleplay from 1957, 12 Angry Men.  The story takes place in the confines of a deliberation room with 12 jurors deciding the case of a boy who is being charged for murdering his father. There is one man who decides to buck the unanimous vote of “guilty” which leads to a passionate interplay between notions of innocence and guilt.  As the prisoners themselves analyze all of the motivations of their individual characters, they start to work out deeply embedded personal, familial and social issues, all guided by Daccache in a magnificent performance of her own.  She stubbornly stays with her charges through all of their injurious self-doubts, through intense resistance to commit to the rigors of rehearsal, and the intimidating exposure of performance.  We learn immediately about the crimes these men committed, but the reasons why they find themselves behind bars (some for life) always surprise.  Yes, some blame their upbringing, their parents, their surroundings, but most reveal that the foibles of their own personalities are the “culprits” that led them to lose their way, resulting in  giving each of them much agency in their attempts at self-understanding.

The film documents Daccache’s work inside the prison, spending most of its time in the rehearsal / therapy process.  Monologues and song and dance routines that detail the prisoners’ life experiences are created and added to the spine of Rose's original play. Seen by many influential people in Lebanese government, the play (and the film) helped put into action a law from 2000 that was never enforced, which offers reduced sentences for good behavior. Two months after the staging of the play in which the characters talk about the need for the law's actual implementation, Lebanon’s Justice Ministry began approving reduced sentences.  Certainly, the existing structure of the original play, the play within the play, and the structure of Daccache’s CATHARSIS program (essentially therapy through enacting drama), has enhanced the dramaturgical work of this exhilarating documentary.  But the heart of the matter resides in the ways in which the inmates interact with the camera lens, with superb shooting by Jocelyne Abi Gebrayel, and sensitive and graceful editing by Michele Tyan. It is a focused and satisfyingly contextualized effort.

Syrian journalist and human rights activist, Mohammed Ali Atassi, who followed his protagonist for six years, is not as narratively successful in his film portrait of Nasr Hamed Abu Zayd in Waiting for Abu Zayd.  A brilliant and outspoken liberal theologian and intellectual, Zayd wrote several books challenging institutionalized interpretations of the Qur’an and Islam. Zayd was the victim of a ludicrous court battle that labeled him an apostate, resulting in his exile from his native Egypt. Atassi follows Zayd as he tours, lectures and comes face to face with a tightly controlled Middle Eastern press. One television station at which he is interviewed is owned by Saudi Arabians; any criticism of Wahhabism (the country’s dominant faith, and an austere form of Islam that insists on a literal interpretation of Qur’an) is a serious breach, and Zayd is told this several times before he appears on air.  But clearly at that point in his life, he was a man with nothing more to lose.  In 1995, he had been banned from his native country, an enemy of the powers that control traditional Islamic practices and laws, and Egypt’s religious authorities forcibly divorced him from his beloved wife, Cairo University professor, Ibtihal Younes.

Subsequently, Zayd spent his time in exile writing books and raging eloquently in public debates, calling for a more humanist, modern approach to being a faithful Muslim. For the last several years of his life (he died in July of 2010, two months after the film was completed), he resided in Leyden in the Netherlands, where he continued to give conferences and public debates about his positions, which hardly appear to be so radical in any other place outside of the fundamentalist regime in which he resided.

The film is enhanced by fiery testimonials from Younes (pictured left with Zayd), and Zayd’s friend, Mohammad Hakem, a leftist political activist and student leader (who has also passed away since the film was made). But films about thinkers and intellectuals, particularly one as straightforward as this (and feature-length at that), pose enormous challenges to both the maker and the audience.  In essence, it fails as a cohesive film, broken awkwardly into aspects of a TV journalism profile, personal diary, and poetic ode to an indomitable spirit.  Atassi’s homage to Zayd captures the man’s humor and humanity but the forays into song, strange montage, and other filmic “effects” throughout the piece ultimately create distance from the subject, instead of providing valuable context.  More importantly, a greater understanding and contextualization of Zayd’s surreal journey into exile is sacrificed. 

Near the end of the film, knowing full well the propensity of the media (and, perhaps, Atassi) to lionize him in some grossly inaccurate way, Zayd states, “I need to be modest so that our leaders can learn modesty.  The intellectual who claims ownership of the Truth is the other leg of the dictator.  When an intellectual claims to own the Truth, he becomes the dictator’s servant.”

 

For more information on the Sheffield festival and market, and to keep up to date on deadlines for this year’s fest, which moves from autumn to summer (8 – 12 June 2011), visit the web site at http://sheffdocfest.com/.

 

THE GREEN WAVE: Tweets From a Revolution

This review was written for Hammer to Nail and will be posted there very soon, technical difficulties.  The store manager is a bit busy right now since he has a film in Park City, too.  However, in the interests of time since it's playing at Sundance now, here is my review of The Green Wave:

 

“Iranians, it was once said, are afflicted by a unique strain of melancholy: Those who live in Iran dream of leaving, while those who were exiled dream of going back.  . . . A country like Iran that has repeatedly been subjected to public heartbreak over the last few decades -- most notably the loss of over 200,000 native sons in the ruinous eight-year war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq -- naturally confronts the self-inflicted death of a child of privilege with mixed feelings.” 

-- On the suicide of Alireza Pahlavi, the youngest son of the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.  From “Persia’s Little Prince” by Karim Sadjadpour, published in the 7 January 2011 edition of Foreign Policy.

 

It’s all well and good for us to complain about the privacy issues we’re all risking as we compulsively, and publicly, update the mundanity of our lives.  That doesn’t seem to stop a lot of us from jamming the ionosphere with the latest posts and tweets about what we had for breakfast, how we’re feeling that day, or the latest triumphant monetary goal on Kickstarter.  But what if these tools—our blogs, tweets and posts—were the only ways in which we could communicate when we were in real trouble?  When no one from “the outside world” had any idea that the leaders whom we live under, in whom we place all of our faith and hope that our individual lives matter, had turned against us, were silencing us by cutting off our phone lines, our SMS feeds, our internet connections?  And were brutalizing and killing us in the streets.

In its last presidential elections, the citizenry of Iran experienced a profound deception.  Thus, the beginning of 2009 saw a revolution from mostly young Iranians who were placing all their hopes for change on the upcoming elections that June.  A peaceful, non-violent movement called the Green Wave was fueled by the modern modes of communication.  Journalists, lawyers, activists and students started blogs that challenged the status quo, calling for every citizen of Iran to personally participate in much-needed change by getting themselves to polling stations and casting their vote.  The groundswell of excitement was abetted by the fact that there was every indication that Mir Hossein Mousavi would garner a sure-fire victory over the incumbent, ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However, on June 12, 2009, Ahmadinejad, who has the full and public support of Iran’s spiritual leader, Ali Khameni, declared victory with a majority vote.

Ali Samadi Ahadi’s fourth film, The Green Wave, competing for the World Cinema Documentary jury prize at Sundance this year, begins as a calmly narrated, fairly traditional documentary.  The story is meticulously set up for the viewer, the omniscient narrator speaking in unaccented English in a clearly modulated voice. Through talking head interviews and slickly produced, precisely narrated animated scenes, the story of this second stolen election is revealed. The careful detail, the reliance of first-person accounts, the tone and mood of the country and the people at the time is explicitly recounted.  Which makes the onslaught of the most horrid human rights violations that follow all the more shocking and devastating, whether it’s directly from live footage or from recreated animations, and gives this documentary its urgency as a powerful testimony to a revolution solely documented by the victims of a vicious crackdown by the state militia, one fully sanctioned by Iran’s governmental and religious leaders.

As we circle back again and again to our storytellers, particularly the journalist, Mitra Khalatbari, human rights lawyer, Shadi Sadr, and blogger and journalist, Mehdi Mohseni, we realize that we are listening to Iranians in exile.  These young professionals and activists were swept up in the violence, and in (mostly) stoic fashion tell us what they experienced—from capture and imprisonment, to enforced informing, rape and torture—every human rights violation one can imagine.

Iranian authorities have often accused their own human rights lawyers and journalists of colluding with foreign governments to undermine the country’s Islamic government. Just this month, in the 10 January edition of the New York Times, William Yong reports on the Tehran sentencing of Nasrin Sotoudeh to eleven years in jail for “activities against national security” and “propaganda against the regime.” Five years of that sentence are for accusations that she was a founding member of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, an association of lawyers led by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, who left Iran in the aftermath of the disputed 2009 presidential election and subsequent crackdown on opposition figures. Ebadi, who is featured prominently in Ahadi’s film, points out, quite a few times, that human rights violations in Iran continue to be ignored by Europe and the rest of the world.  Silence is one thing, but countries like Germany (where the film’s director is based), France and the UK still sign contracts and business treaties with Iran, keeping it financially powerful on the world stage despite now very public knowledge that human rights violations continue unabated.

The Green Wave is an important addition to the growing archive of this vital documentation.  The first-hand accounts of arrests, torture, brutality, kidnappings and murders are there, irrevocable, undeniable.  They live on twitter feeds, on Facebook, on YouTube, and now in this film, messages and footage of citizens paying the price for raising their voices, by asking what happened to their votes, for ignoring the directives of their leaders to keep silent.

Towards the end of the film, former UN prosecutor, Dr. Payam Akhavan, talks about the “seismic shift, the democratic tidal wave” that occurred in Iran in 2009.  He goes on to say, “It’s very hard to imagine that this systematic, wide spread violence against thousands and thousands of protestors, this use of rape and torture against thousands and thousands of victims, is done without the acquiescence, if not the express instructions of those in positions of authority.  . . . Today, it may not be possible to bring these people to justice.  But we know from history, that those who are in power today may not be in power tomorrow.  And the leaders of Iran today have to think about the consequences of their actions.  They have to understand that their crimes are being documented, are being recorded, and a day will come when they have to answer.”

 

 

It Was Waiting for Me: A Conversation with Marie Losier

Filmmaker, artist and curator, Marie Losier, was born in France in 1972, and has been living and working in New York City for the past seventeen years. She creates singular portraits of vanguard filmmakers, musicians, composers and artists, although many of them are far from obscure.  Losier has given her distinctive filmic treatment to the likes of Mike and George Kuchar, Guy Maddin, Richard Foreman, Tony Conrad and Genesis P-Orridge, the subject of her latest piece called The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye. She also has intimate friendships with all of these talents.  Here’s what filmmaker Charles Burnett wrote to her in 2006 about her work, “I sit with a smile on my face. I wish there were more people like the characters in your films, in the world. It takes you on a ride that weaves the real and surreal.” And Maddin has dubbed her “Edith Sitwell’s inner Tinkerbell.”  

Her films have shown widely in museums, galleries, biennials and festivals all over the world, including P.S.1 in New York City, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Biennial, Rotterdam International Film Festival, La Fondation Cartier, The Tate Modern, The Wexner Art Center, Luxe Gallery, White Column Gallery, the Ismailia International Film Festival in Egypt, Anthology Film Archives (where she also curates experimental film and video shows), Ocularis, British Film Institute, the Musée d’Art Contemporain, among many others. She was recently the subject of a full retrospective at the Buenos Aires Festival of International Cinema.

Since 2000, Losier has also worked full-time as the film curator at The French Institute Alliance Française in New York City, where she presents a weekly film series and has hosted the likes of Raoul Coutard, Claire Denis, Chantal Akerman, Jane Birkin, Jeanne Moreau, Jackie Raynal, and Anouk Aimée.  As well, she has performed in films by George and Mike Kuchar, and Jackie Raynal, and in plays by Juliana Francis and Tony Torn.

Her work with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, born Neil Andrew Megson in Manchester, England in 1950, has been a seven-years-long collaboration, and has resulted in her first feature film, which will début as part of the Forum at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye is a glorious pastiche that features the story of the incredible love between Genesis and Lady Jaye. Tragically, in the midst of creating this project, Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge unexpectedly passed away at the age of 42 on October 9, 2007.

Most famous for the bands, Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, the 63-year-old Genesis  currently resides in the house in Brooklyn, New York where he lived together with Jaye.  There, Genesis reads, paints and writes.  He also tours extensively, giving lectures, talks and performances throughout the world.  As part of the Forum Expanded section, Genesis and Tony Conrad will perform an improvised violin concert together on February 19^th at Berlin’s Hebbel-am-ufer Theatre.

During a trip to New York at the very beginning of this year, I met with Marie at the charming East Village coffee and pastry palace, DeRobertis Caffe.  In walked a tiny figure, bundled up in a long coat and chapeau against the winter chill—an utterly charming and warmly-smiling gamine—to talk to me about her latest project, her unique and intimate relationship with Genesis, and the long and hard road she traveled to complete this film:

 

Still in Motion (SIM):  I think it’s always pretty easy to tell when the subject or subjects of a film have encountered the maker that’s meant to record their story.  I’ve seen wonderful examples of that several times in the last few years.  You have a distinctive way in which you do portraiture in film. Some of the first footage I saw of this piece was where you and Genesis were playing a game of hide-and-seek amongst the shelves of a gigantic home archive. It was so playful and so lovely.  And, of course, it’s an amazing and deeply moving love story.

Marie Losier (ML):  Very moving.  Gen is amazing.

SIM:  When and how did you first meet one another?

ML:  Seven years ago, I went to see a concert of Alan Vega with Suicide at the Knitting Factory [in New York City].  I was really excited because I loved his work but, unfortunately, it was a terrible concert—really bad.  However, the third part of the concert was Genesis, of whom I didn’t know anything.  It was Three Majesty, her third band.  So it was Bryan Dall, Genesis and Lady Jaye on bass, and she was reciting poems and it was so amazing, her energy and her presence were astounding.  I had no idea who they were.

The next day I went to an opening—which I never do—right in Soho.  I walked into this gallery and it was a show about music and painting.  It was packed with so many people.  I was crushed against a wall because I’m so small and I stepped on someone’s foot.  I turned around to apologize and it was Gen. She looked at me and all I saw were huge gold teeth in a big smile.  I told her that I had seen her concert the evening before, told her how beautiful I thought it was, how moved I was.  She looked at me for a couple of seconds, gave me her card and asked me to call her.  When I called, she asked me to come over.

When I got there, I was introduced to the basement where she greets people when she doesn’t know them.  I was sitting on this gigantic plastic chair shaped like an open palm. She was staring at me and then called Lady Jaye.  Jaye walked down the stairs, looked at me and asked me if I’d like a coffee.  She asked me what I did, what kinds of films I made, so I talked a little bit about my work. 

Something passed between the two of them and Jaye looked at me and said, “She’s the one. She’s the one who’s going to film our life.  We’ve been waiting for you.”  Ten days later, they took me on tour with Psychic TV. I didn’t know their music at all, but it had been a dream of mine to go on tour with a band.  It was really intense.  I jumped in.  That’s how we met.

SIM:  It sounds like you had no choice in the matter.

ML:  It was like it was waiting for me, yes.  I always wanted to be in a rock band and this was it.  And then, through the years, I learned about Gen and Lady Jaye.  I lived with them for a time.  It was then I saw the love story.  Also, filming the concerts and being on tour made me really sure I didn’t want to do a film about a rock band.  It’s very repetitive and a bit cliché.  I wanted something more.  Discovering their archives made me realize how much was there.

SIM:  The film belongs to Genesis, in essence, since he, she?  I notice you refer to Gen as “she.”

ML:  Yes.

SIM:  She’s front and center in this film.  It appeared to me that Jaye, at times, was a bit reticent about being filmed.  She could ham it up for the camera like in home movie fashion, but she seemed to almost shy away a bit once in a while.

ML:  She was more of a private person.  But also she had a very strong personality.  They would do everything together.  There was a complete energy balance with everything they did, all day long.  The pandrogyny project was as much Jaye as it was Gen. They were muses to, and for, one another.  So I saw something really balanced.  Jaye was much less comfortable being filmed.  I first did spend more time with Gen because she was so open. And then, suddenly, in 2007 Jaye died.

I thought that would be the end of the film, really, because it was so tragic, but I kept filming up until last year, 2010. I did really think that would be the end, though.  Her death was a complete shock and Gen was completely devastated.  It was the end of the band; it was the end of everything.  Gen stayed at home crying for about a year.  I spent a lot of time there and she said to me that she didn’t want me to stop.  She wanted me to keep making the film in memory of Jaye.  I had to adjust to both taking care of her and supporting her and also to keep the film going. It was just really painful and hard, so heavy.  I film alone so it’s not like I have a crew to make it a bit less intimate, so it tends to be very emotional.  You have to be careful—sometimes, you get taken into things you don’t want to and it’s very painful and, at times, very forceful.  Sometimes you see things you really don’t want to see and there’s no protection.

SIM:  One senses that vulnerability.  There is one scene where she’s sitting listening to a song and starts to weep and the camera gets put down immediately as you go to her.  There would be a lot of filmmakers that would have just sat there and kept shooting.

ML:  I’m really close to Gen; she’s a very dear friend.  We’ve been through so much and she knows me inside out.  She also knows how hard I’ve worked on this and that I’ve done it entirely by myself, including negotiating music rights, archival rights, credits, and other things where I really have no idea what I’m doing.  It’s endless—building a website, on and on.  Steve Holmgren, who came on as a producer after the film was made, is helping, but I’ve had to do everything else by myself.  Not to mention the fact that no funding for which we applied came through.  It’s been a hard film to pull out since I also work fulltime so it’s been one roll [of film] at a time.  I think the film is just too experimental for many funders, and I think Gen scares some people.

SIM:  Ironically, their story has been an inspiration for other films.  I think of Jake Yuzna’s Open, which won a Teddy at Berlin last year, for instance.  Also, the times that they lived through and the incredible people that Gen calls friends and colleagues is pretty damned impressive.  You’ve captured an important piece of literary, art and music culture in the 20^th century.

ML:  Yes, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, the list goes on and on.

SIM:  It’s possible you would have been supported more extensively if you had been making this film in Europe.

ML:  Well, it was also one of those instances where I just started filming.  There wasn’t a choice in the matter and I have never really worked with a producer before so I didn’t have one on this film either.  To then look for money three or four years into the project was difficult.  Thankfully, I had a few grants that supported me during that time. But the film was basically self-funded. I also didn’t want to bend at all in my creative vision for this piece.  When I did the IFP market, I met with a lot of people who really wanted to help but the film needed to be a bit more “commercial” for them to be able to do that, more of a traditional bio-pic, I guess.  So that made it clear that I just had to keep making my film my way.  I have so much material that is not going to be in the final film.  I’ve done many, many interviews that I’m not using and I have interviews of people who are no longer here, like Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson of Throbbing Gristle, who died a month ago, people like Gibby Haynes [of the Butthole Surfers], Peaches [Mermaid Café, The Shit].  I decided in order for me to really make it my piece, it would have to be Gen’s voice and Jaye’s voice.

SIM:  There are also these wonderful, whimsical interludes that you use where you dress Gen up in costumes and do little “passion plays” and such.  You externalize the flights of imagination she’s used throughout her career to express herself.  For anyone who knows your work, “playtime” sessions with your subjects are de rigueur.

ML:  I also live this way.  I do a lot of that playtime type of thing in my daily life with my friends.  It was great to push Gen to do it without a lot of thought; she just trusted me and dressed up and did what I asked.  She’s always portrayed as a rock icon, very posed, the whole concert/fan thing.  But I know the Gen who can be so whimsical and so out-there in another way.  I wanted to turn her into this other character.  She lives her life as a sort of fiction, anyway.  Gen fears nothing.  Yet she’s the most sensitive and emotional person, and quite shy, actually.  She loves being alone, reading books.  Everything else she releases on stage.

SIM:  Berlinale is, of course, one of the most important film festivals in the world.  Are you excited, intimidated, nervous?  You’ve exhibited films there before, but this time, Genesis is also going to perform a live show with Tony Conrad at the fest, which should be amazing.

ML:  Gen is nervous.  I introduced her to him for a scene in my film about Tony.  She saw the film [Tony Conrad DreaMinimalist, 2008] and just fell in love with him and asked me about him. She didn’t know his music or anything.  And I knew Gen’s favorite instrument is the violin.  So I set up a scene where both of them are playing the violin. I organized something more formally, since people really wanted to see this unique collaboration.  We made it into a two-day concert at ISSUE Project Room and also did an album.  They became really good friends and now are touring together.  I should be an agent [laughing].  So in Berlin, they’ll do their concert, which will be totally improvised.  (Still of Tony Conrad and Genesis in "Slap the Gondola," 2009, photo by Bernard Yenelouis.)

The curators in the Forum Expanded section are really amazing about pushing the edge, creating events for the festival. Vaginal Davis and Bruce LaBruce are always creating something really unique and special there, all these amazing artists that live in, or come through, Berlin regularly.

SIM:  What’s so delightful for me, always, is the fabulous sense of humor that accompanies all this madness. It’s great fun.  Gen, too, is a very funny person, almost like an old vaudeville performer.  The sections without synch sound are so evocative of the silent movie era

ML:  Well, the use of no synch sound in the film was a bit scary.  I worked for years without that.  I was afraid it would put a viewer too much outside the film.  But I think I found ways to bring a viewer in.  Gen’s always worked with cut-ups.  So, in a way, certain parts of the film act as kinds of cut-ups.  It works with the subject.

SIM:  Have you edited the whole film on your own, as well?  It’s beautifully edited.

ML:  Yes, essentially, but the editing started with the support and help of friend, Charlotte Mangin.  She went through all the footage with me and helped shape and build the story.  I also had invaluable help after eight months when everything was assembled, including sound.  My friend, Marc Vives, came in and helped me to move things around when I couldn’t see anymore.  The story needed some shaping and I wanted it to have more of a feature narrative storyline.  I’m not a narrative person.  And I couldn’t move the pieces anymore.  I’ve always edited my own films; it’s an essential part of the process for me.  It wouldn’t have my touch otherwise.  I had about 20 hours of 16mm film and about 60 hours of interviews on HD.  I also have non-HD video; there’s a lot.  I could make many movies [laughing].

SIM:  I would think that someone, at some point, would be very interested in the archive you’ve gathered.

ML:  Yes, I always keep an extensive archive.  Gen’s used some of the material for music videos or projections for her concerts.  You see some of that footage being projected during some of the shows—a movie within a movie.

SIM:  The way in which Genesis has recreated herself over and over again speaks to that way in which your footage will probably be manifested in several different ways. That’s the joy of making art and, to me, that’s apparent in all the film work you do.  Your pieces remind me in a way of handmade quilts, excuse the quaint analogy.  I guess what I’m saying is that no one else can weave together these elements like you can considering your emotional proximity to your subjects.

ML:  I’ve also learned so much from living next to Gen for so long.  As an artist, it opened many doors in ways of thinking about things and ways of being.  I see someone who is fearless, who doesn’t have a lot of money but lives in this uncompromising way and keeps going, really experimenting.  To me, that’s the key of life—that freedom.  It’s really hard to do it.

SIM:  How does she survive?

ML:  She sells some of her paintings.  Now it will be a bit difficult since Throbbing Gristle doesn’t exist anymore.  That was paying a good amount touring with that band.  Psychic TV also doesn’t exist.  There will be some shows here and there, but not enough to make a living.  She also lectures, sells artwork.  (Lady Jaye, second from left, and Genesis, center, in a Psychic TV publicity still.)

SIM:  Can you talk about your impressions of the pandrogyny experiment, this living art piece that Genesis and Lady Jaye created together?  It’s been called performance art.  It’s been called a lot of different things.

ML:  Well, I will say that, for me, that was not the subject of the film and not something I was interested in focusing on.  Their “credo” about all that and why they did it was not really the interesting thing for me, so much as the love it expressed.  What I saw in all that, almost exclusively, was the love story.  To do a story on two people who engaged in plastic surgery to transform themselves to look like one another as a piece of performance art wouldn’t be up my alley, frankly.  But I’ve known her for years and have an archive of rock music and so that pandrogyny was part of the cut-ups, being male and female simultaneously.  It’s part of the “performance” but it’s also so much about being Gen and Jaye and their love.  It became something else for me.  People might be disappointed because this is not a “fan” film about Throbbing Gristle or Psychic TV.  It’s a disturbing love story.

It was a bit difficult for me since I was moved by both Gen and Jaye, as people.  But I was compelled to tell this story of this unique transformation.  These are real people.  As strange as it is, when you think about what they go through, it’s just a human story.  For Gen, it’s not about becoming a woman or being transgender.

SIM:  But the “he” has become a “she.”

ML:  She likes being “she” right now.

SIM:  A way to stay close to Jaye.

ML:  Jaye is always there.  She’s unbelievably present.  Gen still uses the pronoun “we,” not “I.”  It’s both of them, all the time.  I’ve only known Gen as a “she,” so it’s pretty straightforward for me.  It’s much harder for people who’ve known Gen as a man to say “she,” the daughters, for instance.  They call her Dad.

SIM:  To me, the most important thing this portrait of a life says is that all of us are separate but equal to everyone else and we can do whatever we want with our lives. Genesis is inspiring in that way of never asking permission from anyone about how she feels she needs to realize and validate her existence.  I really hope audiences will tap into that more than anything else in your film.  That and the amazing music she creates.

ML:  Yes, the music is something that has attached me most strongly to the film.  Seeing her perform makes me remember that, how much I love the music she makes, her voice, that singing / talking voice that carries everything.  Gen’s voice, for me, is just beyond.  I want this film to be a musical ballad; this is why that word is in the title.  It’s also, of course, a love ballad.

SIM:  There must have been moments over the past several years when it all became too much for you considering this devotion you’ve had to Gen and Jaye and their story.

ML:  [She laughs, shaking her head.]  There were moments when it was really hard and I wasn’t really that strong yet.  Gen was hard on me, as was the band, at the beginning.  They were testing me.  I had to go through a lot.  And there were some really heavy times, emotionally.  I was fragile and sometimes it ate me up.  There were times I wanted to stop.  I was also making other projects and keeping up with my everyday life.  It’s hard to only be with one person for so long.  Gen also saw how stubborn I am and has discovered other things I do, all the friends I have, the life I have.  But she also knew I would never give up on her and the story and the project.

But now that the project is finished, I am looking forward to just going to a movie together with her, eating ice cream together, and not be filming everything!  But I relate to people mostly through my work, working and collaborating on something.  And our relationship is based on this creativity so I’m sure we’ll keep doing things together.  And we have several months ahead touring together with the film, of course.

SIM:  Gen’s life, post-Jaye—what does that look like?  I know from what you say, Jaye’s presence is always there, but do you think she will want to spend the rest of her life alone?

ML:  She explains it this way: Jaye was the ultimate love of her life.  She told me that in order to be with someone else—which she would love because it’s hard to be alone all the time—that person would have to love Jaye, as well, and accept that Jaye will always be there.

SIM:  That would take a pretty expansive individual. It sounds highly romantic, but difficult.

ML:  That person will be very hard to find.  Most of the time I see Gen, she’s alone and she seems to be okay with it because Jaye’s there.  And she’s also surrounded by a few, genuine, really good people who care for her deeply and have been a part of her life for a very long time.

SIM:  You chose a very open ending for this film which is, obviously, appropriate for a life far from finished.  What were some of the harder editing choices you had to make for the cut audiences will see at festivals?

ML:  There were some really, really beautiful scenes with Peaches dancing that were really great.  There were some fantastic and funny scenes with Gibby Haynes. Those kinds of things were hard for me to let go.  There were some with Sleazy.  But it became too cliché to have those scenes in the film.  They really belong to any kind of “extra” material.  Ultimately, they distracted from the main story.  There were also some beautifully shot, very whimsical scenes with Gen with great costumes and things that were hard to let go.

SIM:  What’s the distribution plan post-festival run?

ML:  The only thing I know for sure right now is that the film will be distributed by Arsenal in Germany.  Stephanie [Schulte-Strathaus, co-director of Arsenal—Institute for Film and Video Art, member of the selection committee of the Berlinale Forum, and founding director of Forum Expanded] was the first person to show my work at a major festival and has had a huge influence on my ability to exhibit my films.  I owe her a lot; she’s been an incredible mentor. 

But other than that, I don’t really know.  Steve has some ideas.  It’s so nice to have someone working with me with so much passion and excitement, someone who’s working so hard without getting paid.  It’s such a gift to have such a dedicated producer; I’m not used to that.  Also, I must mention, too, that Martin Marquet, a dear friend, is working on the producing and publicity aspect.  And Elyanna Blaser-Gould, my assistant, has my eternal gratitude.  Without her constant support, I could not have done any of it.

SIM:  I’m looking forward to meeting you and Genesis in Berlin.  People there will love the film; I know it.

ML:  We’re both so nervous and anxious, but also incredibly excited.  Yes, see you there!

 

(All photos courtesy marielosier.net, with the exception of Psychic TV still, courtesy Dan Mandell, www.danielmandell.com.)

 

 

 

The DocPoint Festival Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary in Helsinki

My first foray of the new year outside my new hometown of Berlin (two-year artist visa, bay-bee!) will be to the spot where I've "wintered" for the past two years, to attend the excellent documentary film fest there.  2011 marks the 10th year of this fest, and will also mark a changing of the guard for the festival's artistic director, as Erkko Lyytinen steps down.  The best part of any fest, besides seeing many fabulous films, is getting to see wonderful friends I don't get to see too often, and meeting today's most talented nonfiction filmmakers.  Helsinki also offers some of the most luxurious cinemas and coziest places to eat and drink, and, of course, there is the sauna, plenty of nice vodka and running naked in the snow--in that order.  (Photo courtesy Mike Palmieri, Uunisaari, January 2010.)

This year's program, January 25th to 30th, is especially expansive due to this important anniversary and an extensive list of international guests, as well as the superstars of Finnish cinema, will be on hand to celebrate.

This iteration of the festival will concentrate on stories of "single human destinies and current social
phenomena."  There will be a special program featuring the experimental documentary work of Jean Painlevé, scientist and surrealist, in cooperation with the Finnish National Audiovisual Archive and the French Cultural Centre of Finland.  The Fusion Doc selection contains eight fantastic films that combine both fictional and documentary storytelling.  Irish filmmaker, Ken Wardrop, maker of His & Hers, and Italian director, Pietro Marcello, maker of the exquisite La bocca del lupo / Mouth of the Wolf, are part of this program.  I am looking forward to seeing the delightful Mr. Wardrop again, and meeting Mr. Marcello whose film sent me over the moon.  This year's guest of honor is controversial Swedish director, Stefan Jarl, director of thirty films.  Jarl will have a retrospective, including his "mods trilody," which deals with the subculture in Stockholm and their stylish (and violent) rebellion against the petty bourgeoisie.  And Helena Trestikova from Czech Republic, whose latest film, Katka, will be screened at the festival, will be there, as well, and I am thrilled to report that I will have the privilege of interviewing this incredible filmmaker, so look for that soon.  (Still from Science Is Fiction, Jean Painlevé, this year's film for the annual silent movie concert.) 

Djo Tunda Wa Munga, the producer of the film Congo in Four Acts: After the Mine and the director of State of Mind, will be there.  Every year, DocPoint picks a "theme country" to visit through a distinctively-curated film program.  This year, there is an extensive look at the Democratic Republic of Congo which examines the present situation of the former Belgian colony featuring filmmakers that come from both Congo and its ex-colonialist countries of Belgium and the Netherlands.  German director Martin Baer, director of Kinshasa Symphony, will also attend the fest.  Other international guests include Alexander Nanau, the Romanian director of the beautiful, Emmy Award-winning film, The World According to Ion B., and Polish  director, Jerzy Sladkowski of Vodka Factory, winner of the Golden Dove for Best Documentary at last year's DOK-Leipzig.  (Still from Life of the Watermen, Ernest Genval, 1938.)

DocPoint will also, of course, be celebrating their own native constellation of award-winning films and filmmakers, showing classics, as well as introducing new voices and exciting collaborations.  One of the new Finnish films is Mantas Kvedaravicius’s début, Barzakh, produced by Aki Kaurismäki.  The film is about a Chechen city where a man disappears after the war.  As daily life goes by, those in search of him are drawn into a world where encounters with diviners and legal advisors, torturers and the tortured, secret prisons and mythical lakes, become commonplace.  When the disappeared return in dreams, it is said they come from "Barzakh," a land between the living and the dead.  (Still from the film, pictured.)

To read about other films and special programs, visit the fest's website.  Koskenkorva!

 

Animated Standard Time

At the 53rd International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Films back in October, I spent most of my time immersing myself in the wonderful animation programs, some of which I'm hoping to bring to Berlin soon for Kino Satellite with the cooperation of curator, Annegret Richter.  Here is a reprint of my article on the programs there from the newly-released Winter 2010 / 2011 issue of DOX Magazine:

 

Time works differently in the animated world.  In just five minutes’ time, we can travel through wide swaths of space, live many lifetimes, extract the essence of a complicated emotion or event, or unravel a deep human mystery.  These stories are mostly told nonverbally with sound effects, music and glorious image replacing traditional narrative styles. With abstract images, absurdist plots, and a very liberal sense of time and space, a distinctive universality emerges that transcends culture. 

At the 53^rd International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Films, the artistic and narrative diversity on display in the animation program was truly remarkable.  The International Competition consisted of four themed programs with a total of 32 films; the International Panorama showcased 27 films; there were two Animadok programs exhibiting 16 films; 22 films of Neue Deutsche Animation; 19 films in the Anima Für Kinder program; and, Pink Elephants, the best of the young international animation scene. 

In addition, there were three curated programs by Latvian-born animator, Signe Baumane, also one of the competition jurors, along with Olaf Encke from Germany and Andy Glynne from the UK. Finally, in a special encore, there was “Battle of the Sexes—Animated!,” a show that Baumane and Bill Plympton débuted at the IFC Center in New York City this past spring.  Plympton, “the king of indie animation,” was also at the fest to lead one of the master classes. It all amounted to a boatload of cartoons.

Much has been written of late about the power of animation in documentary film, specifically its ability to deal with difficult subject matter, or the ability to re-create historical events in which no recorded film footage is known to exist.  Yet, in the daily AnimaTalks held in the café next to the animation theater, all the visiting filmmakers, whether they are making fiction or nonfiction, talked about the elasticity, the freedom, to create whole worlds in accelerated time.  Animals act like humans; humans act like animals; an identifiable creature turns into something we’ve never quite seen before; a person can tell his or her story just using voice and other aural elements accompanied by illustrated abstraction. 

Or the image is quite literal, drawn in a clearly delineated style—we recognize what we are seeing because it is “life-like.”  But perhaps it is the soundtrack that is shattered into abstraction, using non-realistic interpretations of what the event sounded like as it was happening.  Real life can be intensely surreal, and there is no better cinematic tool to explore surrealism than animation.

Not all, but most of the pieces in the programs, whether they were fiction or nonfiction, were pretty brutal, exploring dark themes and difficult material.  Viewers were taken on a multitude of journeys into the subconscious minds of the creators of these stories, stories told in brooding, or outright violent palettes creating emotional dislocation, a waking dream—or nightmare.  In this vein, the films in the international competition reflected these dislocations in a myriad of ways.  In a program entitled Kein Kinderspiel (No Child’s Play), seven filmmakers explore the relationship between parents and children, and the role of children in the family from the child’s perspective. Ann Marie Fleming in her film, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors (Canada, 2010), adapts a memoir that explores the influence that a parent’s very dark past can have on his or her child.  These films dealt with divorce, the death of a parent, abuse.  A family only communicates via technology when they’re sitting around the dinner table together in Daniel Greaves’ Speechless (UK, 2009)—a story for the modern-age, to be sure. 

Yet in the program called Reiseaussichten (Chances of Traveling), other filmmakers turn to whimsy, using extremely bizarre humor to explore journeys to different worlds—from the ones taken right in our backyards to trippy travels in alternate universes.  Some of the creatures making those travels cannot even be seen by the human eye, as in Matray’s hilarious Babioles (still pictured above), which won the Silver Dove in the competition and clocked in at a cool 4 minutes 40 seconds. The coveted audience award went to another traveling animated piece, a documentary of one man’s travel diary, Bastien Dubois’ Madagascar, carnet de voyage (still pictured below), an absolutely exquisite piece of storytelling at a more satisfying 11 minutes 30 seconds.  The illustrations, the color palette, the music, the sound design of Dubois’ film, were all so thrilling, I would gladly have sat through a feature-length piece.

This brings us to the more practical aspects of making animation—the costs and the inordinate amounts of time it takes to put together a piece of animated cinema.  Bill Plympton talked a lot about this in his master class.  Even though he speaks of making animation as being “god-like, creating all these characters and creatures by hand,” he also talked a lot about the practicality of the work itself in terms of the marketplace; he’s a fan of the "short, cheap and funny."  This is the case for Signe Baumane, as well, an artist who worked for Plympton when she moved to New York from her hometown of Riga in the mid-90s .  “I like to eat and I like to fuck, so my films always are about food and sex,” she told a delighted audience at one of her late-night shows.  Ironically, both are currently working on feature-length animation films.  Baumane shared a few minutes of her work-in-progress with me called Rocks In My Pockets, an autobiographical account told in her own voice of the time she spent in a mental institution in her native Latvia.  Like a lot of the best animation, it is both riotously funny and profoundly sad.

Leipzig has a special program for animated documentaries where they screen the best new films of the genre, and explore the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction as the best doc programs these days do. In Vom Menschlichen Wert (Stories of Personal Value), curator and new head of the animation program at Leipzig, Annegret Richter (formerly the artistic director of Filmfest Dresden), showcased films “with a very personal perspective that raise fundamental political questions.”  Standouts, for me, in this program were A Kosovo Fairytale, a student film by Anna-Sofia Nylund, Mark Middlewick and Samantha Nell, which tells the story of a family torn apart by war—one parent Serbian, the other Albanian.  The filmmakers animate the family's escape from their war-torn homeland minus the youngest son, who stays back in Kosovo with his grandparents because he is too young to make the days-long journey in a dark, cold truck that carries the rest of them to a better life in Finland.  White Tape (still from film pictured), a painterly film that only lasts for two minutes, is based on five seconds of video footage from the project “shooting back,” initiated by the Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem.  The organization gives Palestinians video cameras to document life under occupation.  The extraordinarily moving and inventive film, Shall We Take a Walk?, tells the story of a blind Korean boy who takes his hospitalized older sister on an imaginary walk through a world that he’s created in miniature with his own two hands. 

The other anima-doc program called Nobody Is Perfect was “a smorgasbord of bizarre stories.”  The great Swedish animator, Jonas Odell, opened the program with his latest, Tussilago (still pictured right), a beautifully drawn film accompanied by a narrated story from a terrorist’s girlfriend, who explains in a ravaged voice how she got caught up in some bad business in 1977 which ruined the rest of her life.  Netherlands’ filmmaker, Rogier Klomp, creates an eerie atmosphere with drawings, graphics and voiceover to explain the amalgamation of the world’s media companies in his 4-minute film, This Is Propaganda: Part A—The Masters of the Media.  And Daniela Sherer from the USA interviews her 83-year-old grandmother who tells her about one night when she was a frightened 17-year-old in 1941 Krakow, Poland, and her memory of a small kindness from a stranger when she was in hiding from the Nazis.

At this juncture in our cinematic evolution, we see that animated films can go beyond stories that show things that can’t be filmed.  That’s no longer the point, really, although animation can be a creative refuge for difficult-to-relate stories, whether it is because there is, indeed, no visual record, or because of the personal trauma the subjects have experienced. Collectively, we are discovering that even though documentaries capture what appear to be spontaneous happenings, animated true stories rely solely on the artistry of a singular human creation.  The quantifiable aspects of time and space are loosed from their moorings in reality, allowing filmmakers the ability to re-chart the course of those elements so that they can be experienced in a more malleable way.  Hopefully, the debate will never stop raging about what can call itself documentary, and what cannot.  But seeing so many diverse and creative pieces of animated fiction and nonfiction only makes me believe that much more strongly in personal vision—its freshness, its immediacy, its originality, its artistry.

 

Look for my review of the partially-animated new feature documentary, the devastating and artfully-told, The Green Wave, as part of Hammer to Nail's upcoming Sundance coverage.

 

 

 

Palmieri and Mosher on the BOMB Blog

Read my latest interview with the directors of October Country here.

Interview: Jeff Malmberg, Director MARWENCOL

Upon discovering the captivating photography work of Mark Hogancamp in an issue of ESOPUS Magazine, an arts journal that is published twice a year featuring "aspects of the contemporary cultural landscape," Los Angeles based editor, Jeff Malmberg, got in touch with Hogancamp in hopes of doing a short cinematic portrait of the man and his work.  Four years later, after dozens of self-funded trips from his home on the west coast to Mark's home in upstate New York, together, Malmberg and Hogancamp came out the other side of an incredibly intense and life-changing journey for both of them.  (The director, pictured left, next to his subject, Mark Hogancamp.)

The result of their magnificent collaboration is a feature documentary--Malmberg's first--called Marwencol.  (Be sure to check out the film's fantastic website to read about Mark's story and to see his creations).  The film débuted at the South by Southwest festival in March of this past year, and walked away with the grand jury documentary prize, the first of many festival awards including the Cinematic Vision Award at Silverdocs, Der Standard Readers' Jury Award at the Vienna International Film Festival, and the Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Filmmaker Award from the International Documentary Association.  An unabashed critics' darling, as well, the film received The Boston Society of Film Critics' Best Documentary award and voted Malmberg Best New Filmmmaker of 2010.  Marwencol is currently rolling out what is proving to be a very successful theatrical release through New York-based distributor, The Cinema Guild in the US and KinoSmith in Canada.  The film and its maker have gathered a slew of nominations, including four from the Cinema Eye Honors, and Best Documentary and Truer Than Fiction noms from the Spirit Awards.

When the film played at the 2010 Sheffield Doc / Fest in the UK in November, I moderated the Q&A for one of Marwencol's screenings with Jeff and his wife and producer, Chris Shellen.  Both are engaging, open-hearted people and it was clear they were having the time of their lives (although they both had flu and Jeff had injured his arm).  The audience was deeply moved by the film and obviously charmed by Malmberg and Shellen--as was I.  Between theatrical engagements in San Francisco and Berkeley in Northern California, and the film's opening in Denver, Colorado, Jeff took some time to chat with me over Skype from his home in LA about the past five incredible years of his life. 

Still in Motion (SIM):  How’s the rock star tour going?  Does it feel like a rock star tour?

Jeff Malmberg (JM):  It does, except for the budget and no wild stories.  But other than that, it kind of does feel like that, yeah.

SIM:  And congratulations, as well, on all the nominations and critical acclaim—that must feel pretty wonderful.

JM:  It does.  But the audience reaction to the film is really the big thing.  It’s so amazing to see how Mark’s story goes over.  It’s really interesting to see.

SIM:  Has he been able to accompany you to theaters some of the time?

JM:  No, but occasionally we’ll call him so we can do a phone Q&A for a couple of minutes.  He likes doing that and the audience really likes hearing from him.  He came down to New York for the opening there [at the IFC Center].

SIM:  I would think it still must be very difficult for him to be in large public spaces with lots of people around.

JM:  Yeah, but I think it helps him to know that everyone's on his side.  He’s not comfortable flying and not comfortable with a lot of people who don’t know him.  It’s usually not really what he’s up for.  He handled the New York thing really well because I think he felt like everybody there was going to protect him.

SIM:  I’ve had the opportunity to see firsthand an audience react to the film and to Mark's story. Why do people love this film so much, do you think?  What is it tapping into, in your opinion, in terms of the zeitgeist right now?  What are people responding to?

JM:  There’s something about Mark that’s really honest—a lot more honest than probably most everyone is in the course of a normal day. A lot of us convince ourselves of certain things that maybe aren’t above board and we know it.  Mark is so incredibly honest.  He made a promise to himself that in his "second life," as he calls it, he would never lie.  In the film, for instance, when he’s explaining how Deja Thoris' time machine was built, he doesn’t necessarily want to tell you those details, but he has to, you know?  [laughing] 

The other thing I think the film taps into is the notion of alter egos, alternative creations, being another person or representing yourself with some kind of avatar, either online or what have you.  Here’s this person that’s taken that concept to the nth degree.

SIM:  My admiration for Mark is in his absolute monk-like devotion to what he’s doing, how he’s living his life, tending to his own wellbeing with everything he has. You, in turn, display that kind of attention and nurturing in the way you record him. There are lots of other—quite distracting—elements in this story.  Obviously, we want to conduct this interview without divulging any spoilers since those “surprises” are such an essential part of the human being that’s being revealed to us.

JM:  I agree.  But what we can say is that he’s one of those really special people who is just not kidding around.  Initially, it might be easy to dismiss him in one way or another.  You think you understand this guy or you can see what he’s doing as just kind of sweetly “playing with dolls,” or whatever.  But as I got to know him, and as audiences get to know him, you realize that he’s one of those people who is on a mission.  He’s using every moment in his day to try and scale this mountain, so to speak.  And it is a really beautiful thing.  Frankly, it’s just downright inspirational.  What he’s created is monumental, mentally and physically.

SIM:  The film is remarkable, too, for the way in which you juxtapose the footage to the events in the unfolding story.  It psychologically matches the relationship that developed over the course of those years you were filming, as you were growing a relationship with one another.  I think the way in which you put this piece together really speaks to that, and totally justifies the liberties you decided to take with the chronology of how things were revealed to you.  Your intuitive decision-making in that regard was really in high gear.  To me, that is the essence of a really good documentary filmmaker.  It’s so obvious to me when someone has that.  The curator from ESOPUS that discovered Mark’s work and took it public has that instinct, too.

JM:  You’re hitting on the most interesting part of the process for me and one I don’t really get a chance to talk about.  I first encountered Mark through his photos and this backstory of his that was so fascinating.  But it was one of those experiences where you really need someone who’s ready to go down that road.  Many people at Q&As ask me how Mark let me in; everyone wants to know about this access I had to this person. 

The short answer is that I met someone at a time when I really wanted to get down to it in a pretty serious way as a filmmaker.  The smart things I did, looking back, were going to see him and film him by myself for the longest time.  I never set up any lights or reflectors; most times I didn’t even take a tripod, I would just balance the camera on my knee.  So all that was helpful.  But more than that, I had encountered a person who was really ready to let it all go.  We were two people who wanted to go down that same road, a road of discovery.  We both knew certain things, but there were also other things we didn’t know, things we didn’t yet understand.  He certainly didn’t understand it all when we started.  Our quest was the same one and together we could figure it all out.

I had a lot of scenes, for instance, of us going to the courthouse, or to meet the woman who found him on the side of the road the night he got beat up, Nora Noonan, who is this really wonderful person.  We went with her to see the spot where she found him.  But somewhere along the way, I realized that these scenes weren’t necessarily really germane to the arc of the story.  It was, however, important background that we had to do together.

SIM:  Sounds like an archeological expedition.

JM:  It was totally like that!  I was filming from 2006 to 2010, six to ten years after his attack.  One thing that struck me as I was getting to know Mark during that time, and that I hope is reflected in the film, is the process he goes through as a victim of an incredibly violent incident.  He’s constantly chewing on these negative equations of this post-traumatic stress disorder.  He’d been doing that for close to a decade. It would have been better, of course, if his therapy hadn’t been cut off like it had; maybe he wouldn’t have been in this situation of having to figure things out for himself.  That being said, if you’re going to do a documentary about someone and that someone is going to open up everything to you, it’s important to make sure that he’s going to get something out of it, too.

SIM:  Well, what’s a bit ironic—and I’m sure I’m not the first to point this out—is that I don’t think any expert or therapist, or what have you, could ever have accompanied him on the journey he takes, the one you took with him with your camera in tow.  That is the most moving thing about this film for me, Mark’s self-salvation, with very little help from anybody.  We live in a society where it’s very common to look outside ourselves for help, for aid, for support.  

JM:  In order for us to show up, all the other people have to show up.

SIM:  There was no one there for Mark, and this was someone who really needed help!  His discovery of this incredible inner reserve as a newly born person is, indeed, inspiring.  There’s no other word for it.

JM:  The biggest thing I learned during this whole thing was that there is no replacement for using your heart.  A documentary from fifty years ago or a doc made today—if they’re well made, they have this overlap, this idea of kindness and appreciation.  If you look close enough at anything, it’s possible to see beauty.  I didn’t expect to find a teacher like Mark.  I thought I was making a little eight-minute short of somebody who plays with dolls in his backyard, who’s created this really rich fantasy world and photographs it.  I didn’t expect to go on this journey.  This might serve as some sort of template for me as I continue to make more films.  Go find something that fascinates in some way and jump in.  And take your camera with you.  I don’t expect all of these ideas to pay off in the way this one did.  My wife and I joke about our “doc-of-the-week” ideas.  Let’s go make that film!  And next week, it’ll be something else.  Sparks are easy.

SIM:  Short attention span cinema.

JM:  Exactly.  I think it’s best to always just think of these potential projects as short films and let it be a surprise when it turns into a feature.

SIM:  Not a bad strategy.  Let’s circle back to the onslaught of regard for this film.  As a début feature director, it’s obvious you’ve splashed big, at least in the American market which is probably the toughest market there is, particularly for documentary.  And as documentary makers, it seems the world toys with us endlessly to see if we’ve really got what it takes to make nonfiction films.  Most of the best makers I know just have this inexplicable devotion to the craft of making nonfiction and the rest seems like so much background noise as they go about their work, as you have done with this film.

JM:  I think I’d be extraordinarily lucky to meet anyone like Mark again and I was incredibly lucky in meeting him when I did.  But there’s always the next step: what do you do with this “stroke of luck,” do you know what I mean?  I always want to get inside people’s heads; it’s an interesting place to be.  It’s something you can do in documentary that you can’t do in narrative.  It happens in novels, maybe.  Mark let me inside his amazing head. 

There’s really nothing to understand about the “business” end of things in making these kinds of films.  It’s mind-boggling.  I really appreciate the response this movie is getting right now.  But you know as well as I do that on another level, this was not a “grant-able” or fundable film.  All these dynamics I encountered during this project were kind of through a side door.  What I can tell you is that now I do want to buy some new equipment [laughs].  I just bought some sound equipment and now I’m looking at cameras.  I just want to be in a place where the next time something comes across my path that I want to do, I can just go out and shoot it.

SIM: You started out with the intention, as you said, of making a short film about Mark.  When you realized you had a feature on your hands, to whom did you turn for advice besides your inner circle of producers? 

JM:  It always was only that inner group, the four producers on the film—my wife, Chris Shellen, and my friends Kevin Walsh, Tom Putnam and Matt Radecki.  And me. That was it.  We didn’t really show it to anyone at all.  We didn’t know anyone to show it to!  It’s only now after moving through this festival tour that I’ve met all these great people with whom I do want to consult and show cuts to the next time.  It would be great to have that input.  As an editor, I really thrive on that, and I need it.

SIM:  All that input can be a mixed blessing sometimes, too.

JM:  Yes, definitely, it’s got to be when you’re ready for that.  I didn’t even show anything to those four producers for the longest time.  I wanted to get lost.  At least in this case, it was appropriate to get lost.  Mark had created this world that was so vibrant, I wanted to get lost in it.  I also knew those four people would make sure I didn’t get too lost [laughing]. 

Once the film was at rough-cut stage, it was really Janet Pierson [the director of the South by Southwest Film Festival] who saw through the crummy video output to the film’s real beauty.  She could see what it was going to look like and was the first one to really champion it and program it. That was everything for us in terms of launching this film.

SIM:  Well, considering you walked away with the documentary grand jury prize, her instincts were spot-on.

JM:  It was a dream come true.  I remember calling Mark from the bathroom after it happened.  “Mark, Mark, we just won the grand jury award!”  In his mind, grand jury means something else completely.  So he goes, “Grand jury!  . . . Is that good?”

SIM:  That puts things in their proper perspective pretty darn quick, doesn’t it?  [laughter]

Do you find the festival junket and constant Q&As a surreal experience?  I’m asking this for a specific reason since I conduct a good number of Q&As with artists and filmmakers regularly.  It’s such a weird experience to present the person who made the work to an audience that just experienced something pretty intense, pretty wild.  This instant dialogue is meant to happen when people are still processing.  But there’s the expectation that there’s this amazing opportunity to talk to the maker—ask brilliant questions--go!

JM:  I know exactly what you mean.  It’s a bit unfair to an audience. Everyone’s still processing what they just saw, the lights come up and I bound up there and say, “Hi, I made the movie.  What do you want to know?!” You can kind of see a certain anxiety on a lot of people’s faces, especially if it’s not a festival environment.  Chris and I were just in San Francisco and Berkeley this past weekend and I saw that on their faces there.  This was a weeklong engagement at a Landmark theater.  There’s this weird adjustment period that can be very awkward. 

But I will say what we realized doing all these Q&As was that it’s really important to always make sure that you work on a subject that you don’t mind talking about for a solid year—or longer.  The great thing about Mark and Marwencol is that I don’t have all the answers to that; I never will.  I’m a pretty studied person on all this and, in part, can be everybody’s tour guide, but the audience actually informs me and makes me rethink things constantly.  It would be really tortuous otherwise.  We find that the questions people ask, for the most part, are very subjective in nature.

SIM:  That’s the best litmus, I think, for the success of a film. Do people take it to heart and really resonate with it in a personal way?  This guy is, or could be, any one of us.  But how many of us could self-heal like Mark does, in that particular artistic way?  And not to sound completely cheeseball about the whole thing, but you really feel the love you have for him—it’s there in every shot.  Yikes, I sound like a Hallmark card, sorry; I can hear you laughing.

JM:  I’m laughing because I’m not necessarily that person all the time.  But that kind of love and devotion was required.  I was talking to you about this at Sheffield when we were discussing how every movie should match its subject—the form of it--especially in documentary.  You don’t really know what the form of what you’re making is ultimately going to be.  You really can’t if you’re doing it with any amount of integrity.  And you really need the person you’re shooting to be on the journey with you.  You don’t really know the “genre” your film will fall into until you’re done shooting.  As I was shooting, all I really knew was that I wanted to bring it, because I just care for that guy so much.  That soaked through, I guess.  And hopefully, it’s representative of how the audience feels.  I just read a review that said, “Movies rarely let you inside someone’s head.  But this movie pops open Mark Hogancamp’s head and lets you jump in.”  That made me really happy because that’s sort of what I was going for.  What is it like to be on the other side of that crime?  So often we hear from the aggressor’s side, the prosecutor, perhaps, but the victim is always this kind of MacGuffin in that his or her situation gets the story going and then they sort of take a backseat to the "action."  But I wanted to try and show what it’s like to really be that victim, on the other side of evil.  What does it take to get the trauma ground out of you, and can you ground it out?

SIM:  Or the ways in which you just can’t.  You don’t supply any nice, happy ending, that’s for sure.  What’s so beautiful about docs is that you show one aspect, one part of a real person’s life.  The movie may end here but that life goes on.  It’s one thing to admire a fictional character, but it’s quite another to know that this person you just spent an hour and a half with is still out there somewhere just living his life, still processing what happened to him in his own distinctive way, still creating all this remarkable art work because it’s the only thing that makes it possible for him to go on. The role of artists in our society right now is a really dire one, I think.  It’s really rare to find someone that pure in the way they express themselves.

JM:  Mark brings up a lot of questions that I’ve always been interested in, particularly this idea of “outsider art.”  What exactly is that term supposed to mean?  Outside of what, exactly? He’s somebody who has to do this; he has no choice.  He’s not doing it to impress people.  He’s doing it because he wants to express something about himself, to himself.  When those people are labeled “outsider artists”—I don’t know.  It’s so incredibly ridiculous to me.  I’ve never understood that and I didn’t really want to make a movie about that.  To me, Mark is the perfect example of why that term is owned lock, stock and barrel by the commercial art world.

SIM:  It’s just one more thing to commodify.  What you just expressed really nicely articulated something I’ve been thinking about lately.  As someone who writes about art, I’m currently going through what I can only call a severe case of paralysis about writing something about anything anyone is making anymore.  It seems so pointless, such an inane exercise in many ways.  I don’t even know what I’m writing about.  A movie?  A social cause?  Some artistic phenomenon?  It’s fabulous to celebrate good work but I’m really questioning the exact value of doing that.  It’s all a self-referential nightmare after a while.  [Malmberg laughs]  Anyway, I really like what you just said.

JM:  We had some people from New York see it recently who are from the art world—you know, capital A, capital W.  Their reaction to the film was really interesting.  I don’t think they quite knew what to make of Mark.

SIM:  What were their impressions?

JM:  It was their lack of impressions.  They said, “Thank you very much,” and they left.

SIM:  Well, I suppose you can be flattered if you left people like that speechless.  That's something, I guess.

JM:  I hope it shook them a little.  I don’t know.  That’s why I always subscribe to ESOPUS.  I think a lot of what that publication does makes you question those boundaries, those lines, those rules.  Mark naturally brings up all those questions.

SIM:  But he had a taste of that gallery world and we see how confusing and, ultimately, meaningless it is for him.  It's like a Martian landing in the midst of that  world and you see the people there trying to adjust to his frequency, some willingly, some not.  But he is really not able to adjust to their frequency at all.

JM:  As much as I got along with Mark from the beginning and really felt a kinship with him, it wasn’t until we got to the art show that it really sunk in for me what this movie was going to be about.  Thank god for videotape or a card where you can just keep rolling.  You just never know.  I remember that moment very clearly when he asked me outside the gallery what in the world he was supposed to do. I could see how bewildered he was.  The whole last period of time that I’d been shooting with him, which was pretty substantial, immediately ordered itself in my mind.  I think the audience gets set up in this, as I was set up, in thinking that somehow the art world was going to solve all his problems, that we were going to go on that typical narrative journey where getting to the "big art show" was going to make him better.  We want him to be better, right?  We’re used to narrative fixing people, in books or movies, or whatever.  But in real life that’s not always really the case.  Your use of the word Martian made me think of that.  That’s what it felt like for me.

Now that the movie’s done, I can say that I feel like the time for analysis and discussion is before or after the making of a film.  But if you’re engaging in any of that during, you’re sunk.  There’s a time where the work is pure muscle; you’re just showing up every day with your camera.  Then there’s time to do the work with your heart and there’s a time to intellectualize with your mind.  I have to be very careful in these interviews to really convey that I did not know ahead of time a lot of what I discovered.  The mystery and loss of control was the wonderful thing about it, the best part, to my mind.  I would hate for some wanna-be first time filmmaker to get the wrong idea.  In a lot of interviews I do, it seems like the person interviewing and crafting the conversation is setting things up to make me look a lot smarter than I actually was about all of this.  It’s just not true.

SIM:  Were you fearful a lot of the time you were shooting with Mark?

JM:  Yes!  There were many periods where I had no idea what I was doing.  And here I am with all these wonderful prizes and nominations for my directing and editing work.  So, the next time I’m that frightened, I’ll just think, “Oh wait.  I must know what I’m doing somewhere.  The last time this happened, I got nominated for awards!”  Maybe I don’t have to be so frightened next time [laughter]. 

Seriously, the real honor is that I had a subject with whom I could get that lost and get so upside-down about.  But I hear from filmmakers all the time about how they set out to make a certain movie; it was going to take exactly one year from start to finish; and they made it, the end.  And these are mostly movies I don’t really vibe with most of the time.

SIM:  So what I hear you saying is that fear and uncertainty are good.

JM:  As long as you’re willing to work through them, they are.  You’ve got to keep pushing.  All I can say to someone considering making documentary films is that you’ve just got to have an undying, burning desire for it.  It’s really a format that can be very user-friendly if you’re willing to go for scaling the wall, for a crazy idea.  Or something that really matters.

 

 

 

Ken Jacobs at KINO SATELLITE (and Other Paraphernalia)

A quick post betwixt fests:  just coming down from Sheffield Doc/Fest and a very active marketplace--wow!  I just filed my report for DOX Magazine; look here for film reviews in the coming weeks.  Loved, loved, loved Marwencol (and felt very honored to host the Q&A at Sheff).  This was the film's UK premiere and during the Cinema Eye Roller Disco party, it was announced that the film had garnered nominations for Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking (CEH's version of "best film"), as well as nominations for outstanding achievement in direction, editing, and début feature.  The film opens this Friday the 12th at the Landmark Nuart in LA, Malmberg's hometown.  Don't miss it!

I also saw The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, a 187-minute tour de force from director, Andrei Ujica, and also a nominee for a Cinema Eye Spotlight award.  Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop was another film I was lucky enought to host with its producer, Jamie D'Cruz, and editor, Chris King.  Exit is nominated for six Cinema Eyes: best film, production (award goes to the producer), editing, international feature, début feature, and the audience award.  Quadrangle, an outstanding piece directed by Amy Grappell, was a film I saw at the last SXSW, but I had a chance to see it again at Sheffield where it played with Catfish.  (I loved Catfish so much!)  Quadrangle is one of the nominees in the CEH best short film category (which is new this year), along with Andreas Koefoed's Albert's Winter, Arsy-Versy by Miro Remo, an amazing student film that has won many awards around the world, James Blagden's Dock Ellis and the LSD No-No, and Vance Malone's The Poodle Trainer.  I also got a chance to see the world premiere of Jerry Rothwell's excellent Donor Unknown, a totally ready-for-primetime doc--that's a compliment.  Delights out of the Scottish Documentary Institute Focus strand:  Calling Home, Surpriseville and Twinset.  More coherent thoughts beyond "I loved it!" on all of these outstanding films at some undefined free moment in the future.  And to see the rest of the categories and nominees for the Cinema Eyes, taking place at The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens on January 18 (and broadcast on The Documentary Channel), visit the site here.

Early tomorrow morning, I fly to Copenhagen for CPH: DOX to spend a few days taking in their incredible program.  I've already seen quite a few pieces out of there which has just whet my growing appetite for more visionary programming.  I mentioned to a colleague recently that it's getting harder and harder for me to watch more traditional docs when I see all the innovative ways in which young filmmakers are stretching, mashing and creating new ways in which to storytell.  Very exciting stuff, indeed.  Look for articles on the New Vision category out of CPH in DOX and on the program that Harmony Korine curated for the fest this year on Senses of Cinema.  (Pictured, still from Israeli artist Roee Rosen's staggering film, Out.)

The call for entries is open for the International Women's Film Festival Dortmund | Cologne.  The theme for 2011 is NOW WHAT:  Films About Getting Out of Here.  They are looking for films by women directors that deal with topics on Quest for Meaning, Orientation, Confidence, Antagonism, Rebellion, Utopia.  There are no restrictions on genre, running time or year of production.  You can find more detailed information here.  Entry deadline is 29 November. 

There is also an International Fiction Feature Competition endowed with 25,000 Euro; that entry deadline is the 7th of January and the film must have been finished within two years of the festival date in April.  As well, there is a National Director of Photography Award endowed with a 5,000 Euro prize for fiction, and a 2,500 Euro prize for documentary.  This is an advancement award for an up-and-coming German cinematographer/DP.  They also accept films by DPs who either live and work in Germany, or finished their training here.  Entry deadline is 31 January.  Vist the web site for updates and to download entry forms.  The festival will take place in Köln, Germany 12 - 17 April 2011.  (Pictured, still from Susan Muska and Greta Olafsdottir's Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement, 2009.)

In New York, the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival opens once again at the Museum of Natural History, 11 - 14 November.  On Saturday the 13th, the festival will present the New York premiere of Human Terrain with filmmakers David and Michael Udris and their collaborating Watson Institute Research Fellow, James Der Derian, for a post-screening discussion.  In a co-presentation with the Goethe-Institut in New York, the festival's opening night will honor Veterans Day with Dustin Grella's Prayers for Peace and the New York premiere of Jens Schanze's Plug & Play, a documentary starring some of science's most famed researchers.  In another strand, the fest will celebrate The World's Children with films that address the unwavering hope of children around the globe faced with difficult circumstances.  Featured films will be Born Sweet, Shelter in Place, Jean-Pierre Duret and Andrea Santana's exquisite Because We Were Born, and one of the most moving shorts I've seen this year, Carol Salter's Unearthing the Pen.  Visit the web site for more info and on how to purchase tickets.  (Pictured, still from Unearthing the Pen, 2009.)

Lastly, but far from leastly, our second KINO SATELLITE show happens tomorrow night in Berlin with a selection of work from filmmaker, Ken Jacobs.  We're pleased to present a program of recent works by the legendary filmmaker, one of the pioneers of the New York avant-garde.  The program includes the German premiere of his most recent film, a loft, which just premiered at the 2010 Viennale (still from film, pictured).  The show will be introduced by Ekkehard Knörrer of Die Tageszeitung, Cargo and Perlentaucher.  We will show The Day Was a Scorcher (2009), 8 minutes, color, silent; an excerpt from THE SKY SOCIALIST Stratified (2009),19 minutes, color, sound, music by Olivier Messiaen and Michael Schumacher; Capitalism: Slavery (2006), 3 minutes, color, silent; Capitalism: Child Labor (2006), 14 minutes, color, sound; Ron Gonzalez, Sculptor (2009), 20 minutes, color, sound; and, a loft (2010), 16 mintues, color, silent.  I will, of course, be in Copenhagen, as mentioned above, but Andrew Grant will be on hand to welcome you to Direktorenhaus--doors and bar will open at 7:30 p.m., and the screening will start at 8:00. 

Goodnight, London.

KINO SATELLITE: Convergence

Warning:  This blog post contains inordinate amounts of shameless self-promotion.

Next Tuesday, November 2, a new screening series will launch at Berlin's Direktorenhaus in the Mitte district.  Film critic and co-director of Benten Films, Andrew Grant, and I will début our weekly series.  We've dubbed it KINO SATELLITE.  Our lovely logo was created--in record time--by filmmaker and designer, Eliane Lazzaris.  We'll be hosting shows in a newly-built micro-cinema every Tuesday evening, curating programs of new, innovative and groundbreaking work from some of today's most talented filmmakers, animators and multi-media artists.  Material will consist of original programming, as well as co-presentations, with an emphasis on the illustrative arts.

Direktorenhaus is a newly-renovated art and performance space "where a simulation of a temporary Gesamtkunstwerk, the total artwork, is explored.  Traditional methods are coupled with analogue technology and digital media, presenting an experimental directive with social resonances, breaking down the boundaries between art and design."  It also happens to be located in a super sexy spot, housed in a big mansion that sits directly on the riverbank of the Spree.

The owners of the gallery, Pascal Johanssen and Katja Kleiss, were looking to host a weekly screening series in their new space, a renovated two-floor gallery (with studio space for visiting artists).  The house was the dwelling of the director of the State Mint (thus, Das Direktorenhaus).  Clare Molloy, the invincible programs coordinator, and I had conversations about this in late summer.  A bit daunted by taking something like this on all on my own, I found the perfect producing and curating partner in Andrew Grant.  He moved here about a month after I did, and when I took him to see the space and asked him if he'd be interested in collaborating with me, he jumped out of his skin with excitment at the opportunity.  He and I believe strongly that the only way underrepresented work gets seen is through this bespoke way of creating a community of like-minded individuals--the people that make the work and the people that want to access it for a regular dose of inspiration.  The gallery's dedication and commitment to support such work makes them an ideal partner.

Opening the series on Tuesday will be Alison S.M. Kobayashi, a Japanese / Canadian multi-disciplinary artist.  She was one of the guest artists at the Flaherty Seminar in 2008 when I was there as a Fellow.  Kobayahsi will be presenting four of her distinctive video pieces.  Joining us for the second half will be Christopher Allen, creative director and founder of Brooklyn's UnionDocs documentary collaborative.  Both of them will be there in person.  In fact, Kobayashi and Allen happen to be on their European honeymoon.  Lucky for us Berlin was on their itinerary.  We're thrilled that they'll be here with us.  As well, all of the work they will be showing will be Berlin premieres.  (Pictured, Kobayashi in Dan Carter.)

Shows to come include an evening dedicated to the films of avant-garde filmmaker, Ken Jacobs; a screening of Berlin-based producer and director Zoran Solomun's wonderful feature-length doc, Super Art Market (with the director and special guests in attendance for a post-screening discussion); a co-presentation with the Warsaw-based animation and special effects production house, Platige Image, with brand-new works by some of Poland's most incredible animation artists; a co-presentation with Portland, Oregon-based distributor, A Million Movies a Minute, run by Steady Diet of Film's Erin Donovan; a show of new German animation and an AnimaDoc show fresh from the Leipzig fest; a co-presentation with Rotterdam-based film collective, WORM.kino; an evening of music, food and multiple projections of London-based artist Max Hattler's work; and more.

Right now, we are a "satellite" on Direktorenhaus' website and on their Facebook page.  That's where you can look for info on upcoming shows.  Andrew and I are also very open to receiving submissions and ideas for collaborations, particularly from Berlin-based artists.  We look forward to meeting our audiences.  (Pictured, still from Michal Socha's Chick, Poland, 2008.)

Next week, I'm off on a European tour of my own as I make my way to Sheffield in the UK, CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, a few days back in Berlin to host a show, and then off again to Amsterdam for IDFA.  It's bound to be an invigorating, sleepless, alcohol-infused joyride--pitching projects, screening films, meeting filmmakers, partying.  Rinse, repeat.  And I'm so looking foward to seeing friends I haven't seen in a while.  Wir sehen uns im Kino, meine Schätze.

Award Winners at DOK-Leipzig

First of all, apologies for all the different font sizes and styles going on for the last few posts.  Typepad has a habit of occasionally re-jiggering their templates (with no notice), so I have to settle into finding a new look and size that I like.  Helvetica never disappoints.

So I'm just back from Leipzig where I jammed my eyes and brain full of animation--it was lovely.  It was, without a doubt, one of the most superbly organized events I've ever attended and downright relaxing.  I don't experience that at too many fests.  I did manage to see a few "live-action" docs, as well, and am pleased to see that the juries picked some really outstanding films from the program on which to bestow awards, with generous award winnings totalling 71,000 euros.

The winner of the inaugural Leipziger Ring Film Award, presented by the Peaceful Revolution Foundation, went to New Zealand filmmaker, Briar March, for her film There Once Was an Island: Te Henua e Nnoho.  The jury awarded March with a 5000 euro prize for her film which tells the story of the struggle for survivial of the 400 residents that inhabit the small South Pacific island of Nukuta, a place that is disappearing due to climate change.  This prize will go a long way in helping the filmmaker with her primary goal: raising global awareness about this very specific environmental issue and highlighting the spirit of solidarity that needs to be created with the inhabitants of Nukuta to save their homeland from perishing.  (Still from film pictured.)

Here is an overview of most of the award winners:  the International Jury for Documentary Film gave the Golden Dove to Jerzey Sladkowski's Vodka Factory from Sweden (still from film, pictured); the Silver Dove went to Miesten vuoro (Steam of Life) by Joonas Berghäll and Mika Hotakainen (Finland, Sweden).  The jury also gave honorable mentions to Goodnight Nobody by Jacqueline Zünd (Switzerland, Germany), and Samir Abdallah's Gaza crève l'écran / Gaza on Air (Egypt, Palestine, France).

The German Jury for Documentary Film gave the top prize to Gereon Wetzel and Jörg Adolph for their How to Make a Book with Steidl.  Chris Wright and Stefan Kolbe received an honorary mention for their beautiful and deeply moving film, The Home / Kleinstheim, about adolescents growing up together in a group home.  (Still from The Home, pictured.)

The International Jury for the Young Talent Competition gave a prize to Brazilian filmmaker, Rodrigo Siqueira, for Terra deu, terra come / The Earth Giveth, the Earth Taketh.  The prize of 10,000 euros will go towards initial funding for his next documentary.  Prizes from this jury also went to Macarena Aguiló for El edificio los chilenos / The Chilean Building (honorable mention); Polish filmmaker, Marta Minorowicz, for Kawalek lata / A Piece of Summer (Golden Dove for mid-length); and, Anja Strelets for Natascha (honorary mention for mid-length).

The International Jury for Animated Film awarded the Golden Dove to François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain (France) for their brilliant film, Logorama.  The Silver Dove went to Matray (France) for the delightful (and way too short!) Babioles.  The best German animated film went to Felix Gönnert for his wonderful film, Apollo, definitely one of my favorites out of the 75 animated films I saw at the fest.  (Did I mention that I left Leipzig with an eye infection?  Too many cartoons?  Who knows.)  Honorary mentions for animation went to Anita Killi (Norway) for Sinna mann (Angry Man) and Vessela Dantcheva (Germany, Bulgaria) for Anna Blume.  The coveted audience award also went to an animated film.  Called "the mephisto 97.6 Publikumspreis," the award went to Bastien Dubois' Madagascar, carnet de voyage / Madagascar, A Journey Diary (another brilliant and stunningly beautiful piece that was way too short--still from film, pictured). 

Read about these films and other award winners on the festival's website here.  There are also podcasts available for downloading off the site including the master class with Sergey Dvortsevoy, the Animadoc Podium, and the DOK Podium on Crowdfunding--all well worth a listen.

For my new screening series in Berlin called Kino Satellite, co-produced and co-curated with Andrew Grant, we will be collaborating with the new head of the animation program at Leipzig, Annegret Richter, to bring our audience in Berlin some selections from the animated documentary and new German animation programs.  Look for that soon.

Also, look for more of my extensive coverage on the animation program in the next issue of DOX.  For those of you that don't subscribe (but you should), once the issue is published, I will re-print the article here on SIM.

Congrats to all the winners from Leipzig!

 

DOK Leipzig 2010

From the 18th to the 24th of this month, DOK Leipzig will be presenting its 53rd edition.  As one of the world's most established and important documentary and animation festivals and markets, this year they will present close to 350 films from 58 countries, 223 of them docs.  The festival reports that it received about 2,800 submissions (!!!) from 97 different countries.  The festival will kick off its amazing program with Patricio Guzmán's Nostalgia de la luz.

In addition to the international documentary and international animated film competitions, the German documentary competition and the International Young Talent Competition (aka, Generation DOK), for the first time there will be a competition for best short documentary film.  Also new this year, an award presented by the Peaceful Revolution Foundation, which includes a cash prize of 5,000 euro, will go to the film that artistically demonstrates "a commitment to democracy and human rights in an exemplary manner, or that was created in the face of resistance and limitations to freedom of the press and opinion due to great personal dedication and courage on the part of the director."  The award will be presented in a special ceremony at the Nikolai Church (pictured), the spot from which the Monday demonstrations were launched.  RealScreen has a list of the nominated films for the prize here.

Special programs will include:  a focus on the still roiling region of the Caucasus called "Caucasian Lessons," curated by Barbara Wurm.  As part of this special strand, there will be an appearance by filmmaker, Andrei Nekrasov (Russian Lessons, 2010).  Wurm states that Nekrasov "is not only one of the most controversial Russian documentary filmmakers, human rights activists and partisan denouncers, but also a man who will question the flippant associations of press and media images."  (Pictured, still from The Last Tightrope Dancer in Armenia by Inna Sahakyan and Arman Yeritsyan)

"Money Matters" will consist of six programs featuring 23 short and feature-length nonfiction, animated and experimental films with money as their core subject.  The section was curated by Luc-Carolin Ziemann, who states, "Hardly anyone out there understands what is now happening with money in the global network of stock exchanges and banks.  The economy appears to have become a kind of natural phenomenon over which humans exercise no influence.  Economic crises break like storms or floods over the world and tear our lives apart."  (Pictured, still from The Anarchist Banker by Jan Peter Hammer)

There will also be a significant spotlight on the brilliant work of New York-based animator, Signe Baumane ("Love, Sex & Signe Baumane").  Baumane's work will be celebrated with a comprehensive retrospective.  In her work, the artist focuses on  alternative versions of conventional images of the female.  Curator, Annegret Richter:  "Signe Baumane's animations are definitely no child's play.  Cheeky, fresh and always unconventional, the Latvian-born New Yorker focuses on the issue of sex in her cartoons.  . . . They are provocatively erotic yet don't send the audience forth blushing, as the subtle satirical elements of the stories also provide much humor."  Baumane moved to New York from Riga in 1995 where she met film director, Bill Plympton (who will be doing a masterclass at the fest), whom she worked for until 2002.  Baumane will also be presenting  "Signe's Favourites," a series of animated films that influenced her own work.  As well, she and Plympton will also be re-presenting a program they did at the IFC Center in New York (read about it here) called Battle of the Sexes: Animated!  As the New York audience had a chance to do, the audience in Leipzig will get to decide who makes animated films better--men or women.

The festival will also pay homage to 80-year-old documentary flmmaker, Klaus Wildenhahn (The Quiet Moment of Improvisation).  Festival director, Claas Danielsen:  "Wildenhahn's work is the polar opposite of Formalism, as it is the documentary content that seeks and defines the form.  In the patient observation of the unspectacular and the gestures and details of everyday life, an instinctive search for peaceful moments emerges, in which humans find themselves in front of the camera.  The 'moment of improvisation' in which the existence of a human unfolds and its inner magic becomes manifest, creates a feeling of joy--and this is the sensation that Wildenhahn's films leave behind."  (Pictured, still from What Do Pina Bausch and Her Dancers Do in Wuppertal? / Was tun Pina Bausch und ihre Tänzer in Wuppertal? by Wildenhahn)

To see the full listings for the entire film program, master classes, talks, and other special events, visit DOK Leipzig's website here.  As a budding animation curator, I will be focusing almost exclusively on the animation program since there is a wealth of riches here.  But never fear, I will be doing the Sheffield, Copenhagen, Amsterdam trifecta next month, so will have plenty of new discoveries to write about.  More from Leipzig soon.

TAFASEEL--A New Online Documentary Magazine Débuts

The first issue of TAFASEEL, a new quarterly magazine on the art and industry of documentary is now online.  The online version will be published four times a year and a free (condensed) printed version will be distributed at major film festivals around the world.  As one of the first subscribers, you can register for free on the site for a limited time.

The Damascus Syria-based publishers say that they "will provide a window to the world of documentary in Arabic, its makers, markets, opportunities, schools and culture, and a window in English for finding out more and more about the documentary in the Arab world, its makers, their films, the market, the players and the history."  I am honored to be a contributing writer to this site.  Pay a visit!

DOX BOX 2011 Call for Entries

DOX BOX has announced its call for film entries for its fourth edition, March 2 - 10, 2011 in Damascus, Homs and Tartous, Syria.  The festival is the only one in its region to showcase an international selection of documentary film.  It's mostly a non-competitive festival, however, there is an audience award. 

In addition to the official selection and sidebar programs, DOX BOX chooses two themes every year and presents what's new on the local scene in the only competitive section, Voices from Syria.  There will also be a guest master filmmaker who will be announced early next year.

Concurrent to the festival, there are opportunities for regional filmmakers to participate in programs such as CAMPUS, for filmmakers with developed projects, TAKWEEN for up-and-coming filmmakers and/or makers with projects in very early development, and TABADOL, a professional networking platform.  Keep checking the festival's website for more details and submission deadlines.

DOX BOX is a non-profit festival organized by Proaction Film, the only independent documentary production company in Syria.  They are able to put on the fest under the patronage of the National Film Organization.  Tickets to all screenings are free to spectators, and every film is subtitled into both Arabic and English.

The deadline for receiving 2010 production films is November 10th.  The deadline for receiving 2010/2011 production films is December 10th.

Herbst, Meine liebste Jahreszeit

The reason why you're seeing pink, is that every year at this time, I write a blog post in this color to focus on breast cancer awareness, adding my voice to the effort of encouraging everyone (both men and women) to pay attention and respect to their bodies before something catastrophic happens. 

Autumn is my favorite season (so says the title of this post).  I am one of the few people I know who actually looks forward to winter.  I love this time of year when one can feel a profound energy shift in the air, knowing it's time to hunker down, find a cozy spot and commune with your inner muse in a quiet but invigorating way, reflect on the past (frenetic) year, and plan what will be necessary to the soul and spirit when a new lighter season rolls around again.  (Berlin street photo courtesy Nizhal Nijamagiradhu's photostream.) 

I can't say I'm surprised to still find myself in this city since I had a feeling a more permanent stay than the month of July was in the works.  As has been my habit in the past few years, I travel extremely lightly, realizing that in my maturing years (ahem) the burden of possessions (and sometimes the burden of places and certain people) can be easily discarded, when once upon a time they meant way too much.  To most of those people, in fact, I'm sure it's as if I was never there. 

So it was with just one lousy suitcase that I landed here and felt embraced according to my expectations--which were nil.  Unlike my expectations when I moved to NYC--goodness, what a load, what a burden, of expectations!  But I realize, as well, that I wouldn't be here where I am now, doing the things I'm doing and getting the opportunities that are coming my way, if I hadn't settled there (and I use that term very loosely) for a while.  So I will continue my quest to become a "new European" in a more legitimate way, since I've found a place that feels like it could be a true home.  I would not be the first artist, and won't be the last, to experience that in this "poor but sexy" city.  As most of us know, there are very few places where poor but sexy people can survive these days with our dignity intact.

Some interesting things (at least to me) of note in NYC this month, a place that will have to serve merely as another spiritual home instead of a physical one:  Just in time for Halloween, Carnivalesque Films will release the DVD for Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher's October Country on the 19th of this month.  It's no secret to readers of this blog that I adore this film and the filmmakers (pictured right) have become precious friends.  I will be conducting an interview with them that will be published soon somewhere--we're hoping for Senses of Cinema!  However, to legitimize the proceedings, some other critics love it, too, and here's what they've written about OC:  AO Scott of the New York Times says, "Like a Joyce Carol Oates novel rendered as a documentary.  The filmmakers are as sensitive to visual nuances as they are to details of behavior."  Andrew Barker at Variety calls it "breathtaking."  And S. James Snyder of ARTFORUM calls it, "An hypnotic, impressionistic spectacle."  I just showed it here in Berlin to an extremely appreciative audience.

Filmmaker, James T. Hong, was one of the guest artists when I attended the Flaherty Film Seminar as a Fellow in 2008.  During that week, guest curator, Chi-hui Yang, showed us selections of Hong's work, all of his pieces shocking, haunting and incendiary.  He is a filmmaker who breathes fire into some of the most heinous instances of historical and modern-day revisionism and propaganda, searing away the encrusted detritus of deeply-embedded public lies to expose the truth behind carefully constructed ideologies.  It's powerful stuff.

The October Flaherty screening on the 11th at the Anthology Archives will feature Hong's and Yin-Ju Chen's Lessons of the Blood with a post-screening discussion with Hong and Yang.  In 2008, the participants of that year's Flaherty only got to see a small portion of this 106-minute film, as it was a work-in-progress then.  "Stylistically aggressive and often controversial, the films of James T. Hong tackle the things of which we'd rather not speak, in ways designed to provoke us to respond.  Focusing on the history and victims of Japanese biological warfare, Lessons of the Blood is a meditation on propaganda, historical revisionism, and the legacy of World War II in China.  This arresting film highlights how nationalism and the United States have influenced the Sino-Japanese conflict, and how governments, ideology, and propaganda affect the reception and perception of 'historical truth.'"  (You can watch the riveting trailer here.)  Hong and Yang will also be appearing at UnionDocs in Brooklyn this weekend.  Don't miss seeing this film.  I hope to show it here in Berlin soon with the cooperation of the filmmakers.

Julia Bacha's award-winning documentary, Budrus, will open in theaters this month in the US.  The Quad Cinemas in NYC will open the film on the 8th; the Music Hall in Los Angeles will open the film on the 22nd; and, on the 29th, the film will open at the West End Cinema in Washington, DC.  I saw this extraordinary film at the Berlinale this past February where the audience was treated to a wonderful post-screening discussion with the filmmakers and the amazing main protagonist, Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar.  I cried from the first frame to the last--and also through the entire Q&A.  (Look for my review coming soon on Hammer to Nail.)

The International Documentary Association will host a Doc U session with Bacha at the Tribeca Cinemas in New York City this Tuesday, the 5th.  IDA Board President, Eddie Schmidt, will be in discussion with the producer, writer, director, editor of Budrus.  You can register and buy a ticket for the event here.  (Pictured, film still of Morrar's 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, who joins her father in the fight to save their village.)

Okay, Berlin stuff:  I just posted my interview with Philippine filmmaker, writer and musician, Khavn de al Cruz on the BOMBLOG.  Please read our great conversation here!  de la Cruz will also be touring Denmark with his band, Vigo, this month.  I met de la Cruz at Dokufest in Prizren, Kosova in August where we both served on various competition juries; the festival featured a program of eight of his short film works.

Coming soon on SIM:  the third in my series, Projects on the Brink, essays featuring long-form documentary projects about to launch into the world.  I will be talking to Marie Losier about her new feature film, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye.  Frenchwoman, Losier, has made intimate film portraits of Guy Maddin and The Kuchar Brothers, theater director, Richard Foreman and composer, Tony Conrad.  Her work has been presented regularly at museums and festivals around the world, such as the Tate Modern, the Whitney Bienniel, PS1, MoMA, Centre Georges Pompidou, the Berlin Film Festival and Rotterdam.  The New York-based artist is currently the film curator at the French Institute Alliance Française.

This month, I will introduce twice-monthly film nights at my friend Giampiero's warm and intimate wine and antipasti bar, Speziale!, in my neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg.  On Thursday the 7th, we will be showing an incredible documentary from 2007 directed by Raúl de al Fuente called Nomadak TX.  Click here for more info.  Then on the 14th, courtesy of Benten Films, I will be showing Azazel Jacobs' brand new film, The GoodTimesKid.  Films will start at 8:30 but it's a good idea to come early to grab a seat since space is limited.  There will be a lovely selection of wines, beers and yummy snacks.  Join Speziale!'s Facebook page for more upcoming events, including poker nights and film screenings.  It's a great, cozy place to eat, drink and commune with international friends on chilly winter evenings. 

Benten Films' Andrew Grant (also a new Berliner) and I will launch our new weekly screening series at Das Direktorenhaus Tuesday, October 26.  Our first show will be devoted to the recent work of Ken Jacobs; most pieces will be German premieres.  Jacobs (Azazel's pop) is one of the founding fathers of the New York cinematic underground and a major figure in the world of avant-garde cinema.  So far, the program is shaping up to show the following pieces:  Nymph (2007, 2 min, silent); Sky Socialist (2007, 18 min, color, sound); Capitalism: Slavery (2006, 3 min, silent); Capitalism: Child Labor (2006, 14 min, sound); Pushcarts of Eternity Street (2006, 11 min, silent); Ron Gonzales, Sculptor (2009, 20 min, sound); The Pushcarts Leave Eternity Street (2010, 13 min, silent); and, a loft (2010 16 min, silent, 3D).  More information coming very soon on our fall/winter program! 

Another Benten acquisition, Modern Love is Automatic, will open the 5th Porn Film Festival Berlin (October 28 - 31), new friend Jürgen Brüning's celebration of all things porno.  Ambitiously, Brüning has put together a program of 134 films to exhibit over the course of four days.  He's also planning a naked smoking lounge, topless arm wrestling, and "hands-on" workshops such as "A Whore's Guide to Safer Sex for Queers" with Berlin/San Francisco-based sex worker, Sadie Lune; an introduction to Japanese bondage "including basic knots, bondage of upper and lower body, securing a suspension rope, health and safety," with Hamburg-based Matthias T.J. Grimme; and, "Porn and Feminism" with Amsterdam-based erotic film director, Jennifer Lyon.  All workshops are limited to 20 people and include a buffet.  :)  This fest I will not miss.  However, about five kilos will have to come off my body between now and then if I'm to enter the smoking lounge sans culotte. 

As for other upcoming festivals (not in Berlin):  Because I've enrolled myself in German classes full-time, like the good school kid I am, I have to wait for proper vacations to go anywhere.  However, I will be playing a bit of hooky since this is the season of many important European documentary film festivals, and I do tend to brake for documentary.  Instead of sitting here on a calm Saturday afternoon blogging, I was supposed to be at the International Hamburg Film Festival; however, one week ago I ended up at the Charité-Universitätsmedizin hospital undergoing emergency surgery.  I am recovering fine, but damn, I really was looking forward to going to Hamburg!

On a happier note, I do have a school break coming up mid-October and am deciding to go to one of three fests:  the 8th Zagreb Film Festival in Croatia (October 17 - 23), a festival that features only first and second directorial efforts; DOK Leipzig in Germany (October 18 - 24), one of the oldest and most important documentary exhibition and market events; or, the Viennale (October 21 - November 3) in Austria.  I'll keep you posted on where I end up as soon as I know--a wealth of riches, to be sure.  November will bring Sheffield in the UK, CPH:DOX in Denmark and the IDFA in the Netherlands.  And, of course, more news from sexy Berlin.  Haben Sie einen schönen Herbst!

Abu Dhabi Film Festival Announces Sanad Grants

Today, the festival in Abu Dhabi (which takes place next month from the 14th to the 23rd) announced the recipients of the recently launched Sanad (support in Arabic) Film Fund with over $500,000 in grant money for development and post-production to twenty-eight feature-length narrative and documentary films.  Established this past April, the fund has two categories of grants: development funds of up to US$20,000, and post-production funds of up to US$60,000, per project.  The selection committee noted a marked trend towards artistic innovation and unconventional cinematic styles and approaches in the inaugural round of submissions.

Peter Scarlet, executive director of the ADFF, says, "I am not sure there has been a comparable trend towards artistic independence here since the late 60s.  These filmmakers are breaking the mold and developing a new cinematic vocabulary that is unique to the Arab region.  It is our mission to provide these inspired artistic experiments with the support they need." 

This is the first film fund in the region tied to a festival so this means that these films will benefit from international exposure from festival screenings, as well as year-round publicity.  There are two open calls for applications per year; the second round of grants will be announced in February 2011.  The Abu Dhabi Film Festival (formerly the Middle East International Film Festival) was established in 2007 and is presented by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, its main goal that of nurturing the growth of the regional film industry.

The documentary project recipients for post-production grants are In My Mother's Arms by Atia and Mohamed Al-Daradji (Iraq / UK) and Mohammad Saved From the Waters by Safaa Fathy (Egypt/France).

The documentary project recipients for a development grant are Lebanese Rocket Science by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (Lebanon/France), My Jinn by Dalia Al Kury (Jordan/Germany), In Search of Oil and Sand by Philippe Laurent Dib (Egypt), As If We Were Catching a Cobra by Hala Alabdalla (Syria/France), and Seduction by Omar Amiralay (the great Syrian director, pictured above).

For more information on the festival and the Sanad grant, visit the web site.

Pirjo Honkasalo Presents Top 10 at IDFA and Ellsberg's in NYC

Not only is this the year I will finally have an opportunity to revisit one of my favorite documentary festivals, but one of my favorite contemporary artists, Finnish filmmaker Pirjo Honkasalo, will be making the selection for the Top 10 for the 23rd edition of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.  The festival was started over two decades ago by Ally Derks and is still running under her impressive leadership today.  As Honkasalo has done for nonfiction film, so has Derks done for nonfiction festivals.  In fact, in my report from the festival in 2007, I recall using the word "Mothership."

In terms of Honkasalo's work, I can hardly ever properly articulate my feelings for her films, they move me so deeply, in particular, The 3 Rooms of Melancholia (an unmitigated masterpiece), and her latest, the quietly powerful, exquisitely beautiful, Ito--A Diary of an Urban Priest.  The images from her films resonate and haunt me forever, it seems.

Honkasalo's selected films place an emphasis on cinematography, and also show off the exciting territory between fiction and nonfiction storytelling some of the best filmmakers of the 20th / 21st centuries have explored.  A retrospective of her own work will be exhibited and Honkasalo (pictured) will be holding a masterclass at the festival, as well.  The IDFA will be held from 17 to 28 November and will be staged, as it has been for the last four years, around the Rembrandtplein.

Here are Honkasalo's selections: 

The Earth by Aleksandr Dovzhenko (Russia, 1930); The Mad Masters by Jean Rouch (France, 1955); The Earth Trembles by Luchino Visconti (Italy, 1957); Close-Up by Abbas Kiarostami (Iran, 1990); Kyoto, My Mother's Place by Nagisa Oshima (Japan, 1991); Quince Tree of the Sun by Victor Erice (Spain, 1992); Brass Unbound by Johan van der Keuken (Netherlands, 1993); Tell Me What You Saw by Kiti Luostarinen (Finland, 1993); The Smiling Man by Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann (Germany, 1996); and Blockade by Sergei Loznitsa (Russia, 2005).

Also, something of note coming up In New York City:  The New York Times and P.O.V. are holding a free event.  There will be a panel discussion entitled, "The Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg and The Times," moderated by Jill Abramson, the paper's managing editor.  The panelists are Daniel Ellsberg, Adam Liptak, Supreme Court reporter, and Max Frankel, the Times' former executive director.  The event will take place on Monday, 13 September from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. at the TimesCenter (also home of the Cinema Eye Honors).  RSVP to [email protected]. 

On Tuesday, October 5, P.O.V. will broadcast the Oscar-nominated film, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith.  If you can't make it to the live event, it will be edited and broadcast along with the film next month.

A Master Class with Werner Herzog

This piece is featured in the current autumn issue of DOX Magazine (you can subscribe here):

As part of the extensive program presented by the 7th Annual Planete Doc Review Film Festival, founding director, Artur Liebhart, brought master filmmaker, Werner Herzog, to this year's event in Warsaw, Poland.  Along with Michal Chacinski, a prolific Polish translator, film critic and reporter for TVP Kultura, I had the distinct privilege of co-hosting Herzog's master class.  A handful of Herzog's films played in a special program during opening weekend, and Against Gravity, Leibhart's distribution company, released a boxed set of fifteen of Herzog's documentaries for Polish audiences (cover, pictured). 

Werner Herzog is a consummate storyteller and he held forth in front of an enraptured crowd of about 300 film students and professionals.  He needed very little prompting when talking about the craft to which he's been dedicated for over 40 years--that of making revolutionary cinema.  Whether one wants to label film works of his fiction, nonfiction, documentary, or experimental, the bottom line is that his milieu consists of a fiercely distinctive artistic vision.

There is an expansive canon of material written about the director.  Yet, what Herzog insists on emphasizing about his life's work are not the apocryphal stories of traversing erupting volcanoes or waging battles with Klaus Kinski in the middle of the jungle, but his own robust, and very personal, storytelling aesthetic.  Although he has partnered with some of the top cinematographers, editors and actors over the years, and is a crack technician himself, he does not really rely on the "crafts" of cinema to create his stories.  Instead, his inspiration always comes from the vision of the particular film itself, thus making him one of the truly "visionary" filmmakers of our day.

While we talked about his "rules" for what he will, and will not, allow on his sets, he also emphasized that what he relies upon the most from his collaborators is "a balance of physicality, intuition and perspective."  He loathes the traditional trappings of a large-scale production:  "I want to be the only one between the actors or subjects and the technical crew--camera, sound, lights.  It's my privileged position."  The antithesis of the megalomaniacal risk-taker his detractors insist on labeling him, Herzog claims he is an extremely economical director and brings intense focus to bear on the work, to the benefit of those both in front of, and behind, the camera.  As well, he insists on allowing anyone on his set, including subjects and actors, to contribute to the creative vision.  He believes this is part and parcel of a good director's job, for the director is the one who truly sets the timbre of a production, its essence and its energy.  He admits that this process is still ineffable to him to this day.  (Me, Herzog and Chacinski in Warsaw.)

"I'm thoroughly professional and quite good at assessing and evaluating risks.  Contrary to the opinion in the media, I'm not a reckless filmmaker.  But, when a risk is inevitable, face it, be professional, and go straight through it."  When I asked him about the "adventure of discovery" in making his unique kind of cinema, I got a bit of the famous Herzog heat:  "Adventure is a dangerous word to use in my presence.  I am not at all interested in understanding myself.  I do not want to go on 'adventures' or 'discover my inner boundaries.'  That's all new-age bullshit.  I just can't stand it.  As a storyteller, I immediately know there's something big, a story I have to tell no matter what.  Not 'no matter what' in risk to one's life, but to come back with a film."  He denies his films have anything to do with him personally and are not meant to be self-reflective.  "I've always tried to avoid self-portraits.  I don't want to self-analyze and I do not want to know who I am."  (Pictured, Herzog in 1982 in Peru during the filming of Fitzcarraldo.)

Although closing in on 70, Herzog has much to impart to a new generation of filmmaker.  Obviously, he has kept up with the latest trends in filmmaking and knows quite well the vagaries of sustaining a film career in the current independent marketplace.  He's been doing just that for a very long time and has always been an independent's independent.  But as only someone who has worked for most of his career on film can point out, he believes that too many nonfiction filmmakers today are profligate with their shooting, recording literally hundreds of hours of footage just because they can.  He displays very little patience for the "spendthrift" ways in which this burdens the post-production process.  "Out of tons of mediocre footage come mediocre results.  It's a dangerous way to shoot, allowing a lack of focus, a lack of discipline."  He has a consummate producer's practicality; for most of his career he has worked with very limited resources and support, financial or otherwise.  He places great value on what resources he does have, always working with great urgency whether he's writing, shooting or in the editing process, believing "this urgency gives a story its power."

Herzog's overriding mission is to pull an audience into the magic of something "very, very strange, something that looks familiar but becomes unfamiliar."  He will create this dystopia any way he sees fit, going so far as to tailor the beginnings and endings of his films with anything he wants to use from his creative arsenal--whether it's fully scripting a "nonfiction scene" as he did for the ending of Echoes From a Somber Empire (1990), or allowing the vital "documentary truth" to come through in an acting performance from Bruno S.  "Openings and endings are very important.  How do you greet your audience in the cinema; how do you dismiss your audience out into the street?  Things have to be ambiguous and stunning.  The incredible becomes natural.  You have to have that in you to make films, to leave the audience in an elevated status.  . . . I do not do these things to 'cheat' the viewer.  But my understanding of the truth is something that nothing can fully describe, not religion, not philosophy, not mathematics.  It is vague by its very nature.  Documentary is too fact-oriented, as if 'the facts' constitute the truth.  They do not.  That is my approach and I like it when other filmmakers do this.  We are not the surveillance cameras in the airports, banks, supermarkets, nor are we meant to be the proverbial 'files on the wall.'  Pick up a camera and be a filmmaker!"  (Pictured, film still from the final scene in Echoes From a Somber Empire.)

Despite these quixotic imperatives from Herzog, he is an exceedingly practical filmmaker and he talked about the importance of the producer/director relationship.  From the inception of his career, he has been the producer of most of his own films out of necessity and deeply understands the value of money and how it's spent.  "You need to understand what's going on.  You have to know the nature of money--it is cowardly and stupid.  You have to maneuver and mislead, but always deliver on budget.  The director is the one who is really responsible for that."  But when working with a producer, he says that it is vital to try and create a strong dynamic that, somehow, pushes the film itself into the foreground.  "You have to keep the momentum and you need to work with producers who bring a sane wavelength to what you're trying to do.  Otherwise, it's trouble.  This process needs a lot of perseverance."

Something that alarms Herzog greatly these days is "the lack of useful imagery" by media makers.  But instead of talking about cinema as it pertains to this particular issue, Herzog's cri de coeur is that hardly anyone reads anymore.  "More and more young people do not read, not one single book.  They can't express five coherent sentences.  This is an evolution that is very dangerous.  I want to say to those who want to make films:  read, read, read, read, read, read.  If you do not read, you will never be a good filmmaker.  This is a prerequisite to the craft more than anything else.  It's dangerous for our civilization to abandon reading at such a scale.  You lose the world watching TV or being on the Internet.  Reading books will save the world."  Herzog has created what he calls The Rogue Film School, a handful of weekend seminars led by him at varying locations.  The website claims that, "The Rogue Film School will not teach anything technical related to filmmaking.  For this purpose, please enroll at your local film school."  However, his courses do come with a hefty mandatory reading list, which might include Virgil's Georgics, 1000-year-old Icelandic poetry, and various selections from Ernest Hemingway and Rabelais.  He also includes The Warren Commission Report, the full transcript of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy.  Herzog claims it is "an incredible piece of literature, containing wild storytelling and imagination."

And with that, at my urging, Herzog read out loud, in a voice that is now imitated the world over, the prologue and epilogue from his book, Conquest of the Useless, a wild recitation of one man's fevered and unleashed imagination.

(Pictured, Herzog and Artur Liebhart, May 2010.)

The Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing

This piece is featured in the current autumn issue of DOX Magazine (you can subscribe here):

In May of this year, artistic director, Artur Liebhart, launched the seventh iteration of the Planete Doc Review Film Festival, an event that is fast becoming an essential destination for documentary makers and producers.  As a juror for the Millenium Award competition, I got to stay in Warsaw for well over a week which enabled me to pay visits to several of the city's film and arts institutions.  I was cordially invited to visit the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing, by the dynamic Joanna Skalska, the school's distribution and festivals manager.  The Wajda School is a key institute to highlight for many reasons.  At this year's 50th Krakow Film Festival, the school was awarded the Best Polish Producer for Shorts and Documentaries for the second time.  (A bit later in this post, I will also feature a French filmmaker named Thierry Paladino.  Paladino attended the Wajda School after meeting famed Polish film director and screenwriter, Marcel Lozinski, who has been instrumental in creating the documentary program.  Our jury awarded Paladino's accomplished and beautiful début feature, La machina, with an honorable mention.)

Sitting on a quiet, tidy campus in the middle of Warsaw, the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing is a postgraduate institute for film professionals working in both narrative and nonfiction.  The foundation of the curriculum is project development.  According to Adam Slesicki, head of PR and coordinator of the documentary program, the school's basic credo is "from idea to film."  Participants prepare and produce films with intense feedback from colleagues and steady mentorship by master tutors every step of the way.  In a very direct and intimate structure, exchanges happen in an intensive workshop environment where all students evaluate each other's work.  From these dynamic conversations (said to be brutally honest) and work-in-progress screenings, films are born.  This set-up is obviously not for those without the conviction and authenticity of vision they already can bring to a program like this.  Students are partnered with a tutorial staff, some of the most renowned and professionally active Polish and European filmmakers of today, enabling the school to maintain a close working relationship with the film industry.  Trained filmmakers come for the one-year courses to hone their craft, but more importantly, to make their first professional films.  Students come from disciplines as diverse as journalism, screenwriting, or the visual arts, as well as from film schools.  As with any professional school with merit, the Wajda School looks for candidates who have a certain amount of life experience.  (Pictured above, master filmmaker Andrzej Wajda at work.)

Depending on the project, the school helps with production and distribution.  According to Slesicki, for documentary projects, the trajectory could be as follows:  "A project is developed during the course.  If it is a bigger, more expensive project, we do the research and some preliminary shooting which enables the filmmaker to make a trailer with which to apply for funding.  We apply to the Polish Film Institute (PISF), or other regional film funds for support, find co-producers, and/or make presales to broadcasters.  In the case of first time directors, we can count on up to 90% of funding from PISF, the rest coming as in-kind contributions from the school.  After completion, we collaborate on a festival strategy and prepare promotional materials.  When a festival takes a film, we make sure the director makes it there.  If it is an important market, a school representative will also go to make sure all possible opportunities for international distribution are realized."  In other words, they offer substantial support, beyond theory, beyond the classroom. 

In terms of the philosophical approach the school embraces, it is one that looks for "truth and authenticity."  What specific tools these young directors use is up to them, as long as the film works emotionally, with an accompanying personal vision.  Lozinski:  "In our opinion, the point of documentary is not to describe reality, but to interpret it.  Documentary is born out of the confrontation of reality with the individual self of the author: with his [her] thoughts, intensity of perception, his [her] sensitivity and intuition.  The director's inner life is to the same degree the element of reality as the one he [she] encounters while making the film."  (Lozinski, pictured.)

Looking ahead, the school will continue to emphasize its film production activities, remaining a working studio that supports young talent from Poland, and elsewhere.  Since its foundation in 2001, the school has produced over 40 professional short documentaries and fiction films, and more than 200 student films.  Soon, the Wajda School will implement a new course for creative producers, filling an important niche in the marketplace.  "We believe that a creative producer should be a partner for a film director, not only in taking care of the financing of the movie and assisting with production design, but also in helping the director make crucial [creative] decisions," says Slesicki.

Thierry Paladino's journey to the Wajda School was a unique one.  He told me that at the Aix-en-Provence Fine Arts School where he was studying in his native France, "I didn't fit with the atmosphere, with this 'artistic way' of thinking which makes the things you say about your work more important than the work itself."  Several years ago, when Marcel Lozinski and his wife went on holiday to France, Paladino had a chance to meet the filmmaker through his Polish girlfriend's family.  They bonded over the songs of Georges Brassen, spending one whole night singing together, accompanied by Paladino's accordian.  (Paladino, pictured.)

Two years later in 2001, Lozinski got in touch with Paladino and told him that they had just created a new film school in Warsaw with Andrzej Wajda and Wojciech Marczewski.  The French minister of culture had been there for the opening ceremonies with director, Roman Polanski, and had promised a full scholarship to two French students.  "Of course he thought that nobody would come and learn such a difficult language in such a cold country," but when Lozinski asked Paladino if he would be interested, he said yes, and enrolled in 2004.  "I can say that I didn't really choose to study filmmaking, but to live a new experience in a new environment.  And it was a really good choice, because the way of teaching in this school was, for me, the best I ever had.  You make, you fail; you remake, you succeed.  You learn to confront your work, to be humble and accept criticism and develop a real understanding of the collaborative nature of filmmaking."

Paladino had a very close relationship with fellow filmmaker, Marcin Sauter.  "One day, we were talking about our childhoods, and I told him about my happy one, part of it spent with a puppet master when I was seven years old when I learned the art of making puppets; the master and I performed 'spectacles' in summer from town to town.  Marcin convinced me that this was a good idea for a documentary film and this is where this idea was born."  (To be clear, La machina was not supported, technically or financially, by the school.  They did co-produce Paladino's award-winning film, At the Dacha, while he was a student there.  I just showed this fantastically hilarious "silent" film here in Berlin to a delighted audience.  Still from film, pictured.)

Paladino ended up making the film with Sauter and Michal Marczak as his camera operators, and Jacek Naglowski and Agnieszka Janowska as his producers.  All met as students at the school.  "Marcel [Lozinski] became my artistic supervisor.  He had total trust in me and only weighed in with certain suggestions about how to portray the relationship between the puppet master and the young boy in the film.  When the first rough cut of the film was edited, I came to Wajda to show it, to take the necessary distance and work further."

Paladino created a short synopsis for La machina in 2008 so that he could  take part in the Ex Oriente program with Tue Steen Müller and Paladino's creative group developed the film over the course of the next year.  After bringing on a French producer in May of 2009, the crew went to Nice, where with the help of the puppet master, Sergio, they discovered 10-year-old Adrien.  The boy's extraordinary "performance" makes the film an absolutely transcendent experience.  La machina could easily be mistaken for a narrative film, so cinematically is it told and executed.  Paladino notes that many producers expressed a lot of concern, fearing the film would not be credible, that there might not be enough "documentary truth."  But, he says, "I didn't want to show all the negative aspects of modern society; I wanted to show how life, especially one of a little boy, could be better.  I was, therefore, very personally involved with my subjects in trying to realize that."  The film is currently applying for exhibition at various international festivals.  (Pictured, Sergio, Adrien and The Beast in a scene from La machina.)

Paladino continues to express admiration for the Polish documentary filmmaking tradition.  "At Wajda, the documentary feature is a film, the same way a fiction feature is a film.  Documentary uses the same vocabulary--strong dramaturgy, good pictures, good sound, developed scenes.  However, the film must be the point of view of the author.  He or she must have something to say, to share."

For more information on the Wajda School's programs, visit www.wajdaschool.pl.

Aa. Be. Ce. Eins. Zwei. Drei. . .

Goodness, my head is spinning.  For all kinds of reasons, but life changes particularly profoundly when you start to learn a new language.  German will be the fifth language I've learned (including English).  It doesn't get any easier.  But I like this part, when you're hearing (and seeing) double, everything through the eyes and ears of your native tongue (the one you think and dream in), and things seeping through in the way an infant starts to take in the world, naming and identifying things little by little, everything disjointed and a bit janky at first.  And then, slowly, alles becomes klar.  And your pronunciation will even improve enough so that you're actually understood when you speak!  Imagine.  Yes, it's back-to-school season and I just cracked the spine on my brand new German grammar.  Thankfully, I'm only one of two Yanks in a class of international kids (actually we're of all ages) seeking refuge in civilized Berlin.  But it's not that great, so don't even think of coming here. 

I am happy to report that fellow Yank (although he passes for British when he can--ha!) and film critic extraordinaire, Andrew Grant, aka, The Film Brain, has just moved here from New York, too, and we are in the midst of brainstorming on some interesting collaborations--more on that in a bit.  He's also here to launch the European arm of Benten Films, the discerning and distinctive distribution company he runs with fellow critic and filmmaker, Aaron Hillis.  Andrew and I are both interested in bringing the best of American and world cinema to Berlin in a series of curations at some really fantastic venues and spaces, pieces that have been grossly overlooked, or underwhelmingly exhibited in their countries of origin (or anywhere else for that matter).  My audiences, right now, consist mostly of artists--fine artists, performance artists, video artists, installation artists, writers, musicians and a few filmmakers in the crowd, as well.  Excellent group all around--open, inquisitive, patient, attentive, intelligent, engaged--a dream audience if ever there was one.  And did I mention appreciative, since they (and, frankly, no one else) would ever have a chance to see some of this remarkable work anywhere.

This month, I have three screenings booked, the first of which is this Sunday at the MMX Open Art Venue, my home away from home.  Ever since I arrived in Berlin, they have given me an opportunity to host several evenings in their micro cinema at the beautiful (and huge) space in the lovely Mitte section of the city.  This Sunday the 5th, with the cooperation of the Scottish Documentary Institute in Edinburgh, I will be exhibiting eight short films from Scotland.  The SDI was created in 2004 and is an internationally recognized documentary research center at the Edinburgh College of Art, specializing in documentary training, production and distribution.  There is a wealth of cinematic riches coming out of that place, let me tell you, and I'm really pleased that I can share some of that work with my fellow Berliners.  You can read about the MMX program (in German) here.  Then, on Sunday the 12th, I will be bringing another program to MMX.  Since I'm rabid about Danish films, I will be bringing selections from Denmark, program TBD for right now.  You can keep checking the MMX site or join their Facebook page for updated info.  (Film still from Julian Krubasik's hilarious Melissa Immaculate.)

On Thursday, September 16, I am very excited to announce that I will host my inaugural screening (hopefully, a full-blown series is in the works) at das Direktorenhaus, a brand new art venue with two floors of exhibition and event space that overlooks the River Spree.  Das Direktorenhaus is an art space that aims to combine traditional art and craft methods with analog technology and digital media.  The building that houses the venue was built as part of the German State Mint in 1935 and artworks from Berlin's state museums were protected in a secured vault there during WWII.  The doors will open at 7:30 p.m. so people can come and tour the space, order a cocktail from the bar and take in the beautiful view.  The screening will begin at 8:30.  Called "Futuristic Cinema," the program will start with a premiere of the very first film to be shot in Direktorenhaus called "Live Animals," with the artists in attendance.  Then, I will show two exceptionally beautiful (and multiple award-winning) films:  The Shutdown (2010) from the UK, and October Country (2009) from the US.  The event is free.  I'm working on some other venues and collaborations, so stay tuned.

In future posts, I will write more about my experiences in Rome this past weekend at Giona Nazzaro's Gender DocuFilm Festival, the event's maiden voyage.  It was part of the summer celebrations at Rome's Gay Village.  Kimberly Reed's Prodigal Sons won the grand prize, and Turkish filmmaker, Ismail Necmi's haunting Should I Really Do It? won the audience award.  I will post some thoughts on this film soon, as well as Israeli filmmaker and singer Zohar Wagner's Stretch Marks (pictured) which also exhibited at the fest, one of the most deeply impressive, original and honest portraits of pregnancy and new motherhood I've seen.  Congratulations to Giona, his amazing right-hand man, Filippo Ulivieri, and activist, politician and "human volcano," the aptly-named Imma Battaglia, president of Di'Gay Project, on one hell of an accomplishment, staging something like this in the midst of an appallingly conservative city and state government--and il Vaticano, as well!  They are starting small but making huge strides for equality, inclusion and a very vocal "leftist" voice in the maelstrom of modern-day fascism.  (And if an American can't recognize and relate to modern-day fascism, I don't know who can.)

Also, more news soon from my incredible friends in Damascus who run ProAction Film, the only independently-run documentary production company in Syria, and the people who launched the DOX BOX festival three years ago:  They are about to launch a new quarterly publication and website dedicated to the documentary arts.  TAFASEEL is a new trade magazine that will be débuting soon.  Planned to publish four times a year, the online version will equal about 120 pages of original articles, reviews, festival calendars, and much more.  The print version will be distributed at international festivals and markets.  Since they're starting this up with exactly zero financing, they will start to fundraise shortly after the journal's launch.  Meant to reach Arabic filmmakers all over the world, TAFASEEL will be published in both Arabic and English.  There is nothing like it that exists right now, not even close.  I will publish another post upon the official launch with links and an opportunity to subscribe and contribute.  (Pictured, ProAction Film's Orwa Nyrabia.)

Lastly, some news from Hamburg-based friends, A Wall Is A Screen:  This Friday, September 3, AWIAS will perform their 100th short film tour!  This will be in conjunction with the anniversary of their 6th performance at the Hamburg Mümmelmannsberg.  Since 2003, the small group of unpaid film curators have illuminated many walls and wandered through many cities in more than fifteen countries (including Dokufest in Kosova last month).  They are headed to Hyderabad in October and are calling for entries for short films from or about India.  All dates for upcoming shows and more info can be found on their website here.

Fürs Erste, wünsche ich Ihnen eine gute Nacht und Süssen Träume.

Gender DocuFilm Festival--Rome, Italy

This week I venture to Rome for the launch of a small new festival.  Artistic director, Giona Nazzaro, whom I met at the Thessaloniki doc fest in Greece a couple of years ago, heads up this new initiative, part of Gay Village 2010 and under the patronage of the Province of Rome's Cultural Aldermanship.  (It is, of course, encouraging to note that there is now this type of film fest, however small, in the shadow of the casa di Papa.)  The Rome Gender DocuFilm Festival's main imperative will be to explore the boundaries of self-representation by showcasing a small selection of documentary films.  (Pictured above, writer and sexual renegade, Kathy Acker, the subject of one of the films in the program.) 

The festival's notion of "documenting reality" is one of the most lucid definitions of this genre I've come across, so I will quote directly from the web site here:  "A constantly evolving force, the documentary has come to the fore in the contemporary cinematic economy in the past few decades.  A film genre traveling light, without the weights and frills linked to mass entertainment, it can therefore move extremely fast and explore the world at a low definition.  The documentary now is a complex and multifaceted reality, almost a stand-alone gender within the film system of today."  The festival's stated mission is to explore all possible worlds, particularly those in between male and female stereotypes.  (Pictured below, filmmaker Kimberly Reed, courtesy Details Magazine.)

The event will take place from the 26th through the 29th of August and the free program will include screenings of:  L'Esprit De Madjid by Ines Johnson-Spain (Germany); Should I Really Do It? by Ismail Necmi (Turkey); Ella Es El Matador by Gemma Cubero del Barrio and Celeste Carrasco (Spain); Stretch Marks by Zohar Wagner (Israel); Too Much Pussy by Émilie Jouvet (Germany); Who's Afraid of Kathy Acker? by Barbara Caspar (US); and Prodigal Sons by Kimberly Reed (US).  There will be a prize for best film and an audience choice award.  Visit the website for more information and showtimes.      

DAVID WANTS TO FLY: Enlightenment Comes with a Hefty Pricetag

It is said that you should never meet your heroes.  It's bound to be a disappointing encounter when all is said and done, your naive hopes pinned on the fantasy you've created in your mind about the outcome: an instant rapport, a mutual recognition that you are kindred spirits, the admiration and respect no longer just flowing one way, anymore--perhaps, even life-long friendship will transpire.

Young David Sieveking has just graduated from film school, another broke budding filmmaker looking for inspiration, when we first meet him in his apartment in Berlin.  His personality and demeanor are instantly appealing--sweet-faced, charming and a bit of a bumbler, he states in voice over, "I wanted to make dark films like my idol, David Lynch.  But I was lacking the darkness."  Yet the journey he takes to meet his idol in this wonderful début feature leads the wide-eyed searcher into some very dark places, indeed.

David Wants to Fly, which premiered at the 2010 Berlinale, showcases a new presence, a new voice in documentary that deserves much attention, for Sieveking has made a highly-entertaining, very funny, thought-provoking, disturbing and penetrating investigation into the inner workings of a very wealthy and powerful organization--don't let the sweet-faced, charming, bumbler fool you.  (Think Mr. M. Moore circa Roger & Me.)  I meant to write about this film after seeing it at the Doc Planete Film Festival in Warsaw, Poland in the spring where our jury gave it an honorable mention, all of us recognizing the profound accomplishment in storytelling artistry this piece contains, the artificial and, sometimes, awkward, contrivances, a constant wink and nod to his audience to stay the course with him.  And we're happy to.  It is a wild journey, slyly paying homage to Lynch while what he represents is simultaneously being stripped down to size.  (It recently played, out of competition, at Dokufest in Kosova, where I had a chance to watch it again.)

It is currently booked for wide national theatrical distribution here in Germany through the end of the year.  But since it's been on the circuit starting the early part of this year, there hasn't been much of a response from festivals in the States.  In some instances, there was great interest; yet, ultimately, it hasn't been programmed anywhere.  I can only attribute that to the fact that there is fear of a Lynch backlash (meaning: lawsuit) and festivals have just shied away from any of that madness.  I hope there's someone hardy enough to show it anyway, for it is an expertly structured, beautifully shot film that also happens to be a mighty powerful exposé into a rarely-glimpsed world.  Also, there are few docs that are as highly entertaining as this one, and methinks the genre could definitely use a lot more of that there E-word.  Please.

When David finds out from the Internet that Lynch will be in Fairfield, Iowa, to speak about the  source of his creative inspiration, he promptly scoots himself over the Atlantic, rents a car and drives himself into the American heartland.  Why Iowa?  Fairfield is where the palatial campus for the Maharishi University is located and, for the first time, Lynch will speak publicly about transcendental meditation (TM), something he's been practicing for decades.  The auditorium is packed with young people, a lot of them, we assume, budding filmmakers, there to eagerly receive pearls of wisdom from one of today's master filmmakers.  The Maharishi, old and infirm and residing in India, sends a video message to the audience:  "Go by the advice that you have received from the artist, Dr. Lynch."  Lynch extols the virtues of the Maharishi's teachings, describing it as "money in the bank."  Yes, but whose money?  And whose bank?

David is mesmerized, inspired, electrified with excitement.  He even lands a private audience with Lynch when his live-in girlfriend miraculously gets assigned an interview from a German magazine with the director.  Marie, an eccentric, whip-smart, no-bullshit girl with a distinct fashion flair, sits quietly as David takes over, grilling Lynch on TM, asking him to explain its magic.  Ignoring the dubious stance of Marie (some of the most delightful scenes in the film feature the two of them in combat), David dives right in.  Once back in Germany, he gets himself an appointment at the German TM headquarters in Hanover for his initiation into the practice; there, he will receive his own personal mantra so he can go about transforming himself from the inside out.  He is told to bring six fresh flowers, sweet fruits, a white handkerchief.  And 2,380 euros.  In cash.  But never mind that, he is swept away and becomes a valiant acolyte, meditating every day, a novice believer--the most vulnerable kind. Yet, the more he learns about the movement and its inner workings, the more puzzled and disturbed he becomes, hero worship notwithstanding.  It is great fun to watch him use his innate earnestness, his suit and tie, his spectacles and suspenders and jaunty hat, to gain the most incredible access over and over again.

On February 6, 2008, the Maharishi passes away and David takes himself to India for the funeral, camera equipment in tow.  He sees Lynch there, a VIP in the proceedings, and Lynch greets him warmly, shakes his hand, asks him how the film project is going.  This is the last time the two will share such a friendly exchange.  Based on what he's shot so far, David receives backing and funding for the project from some German producers, and it's full steam ahead--the filmmaking becoming more and more grand (gorgeous cinematography by Adrian Stähli), the rabbit hole going deeper and deeper.  In a whirlwind world tour, Sieveking's blind faith clears into razor-sharp vision, his "nice little documentary on the TM movement" becoming a hard-hitting, in-depth investigation into something really insidious.  It becomes dangerous territory, both for the filmmaker and his subjects.  As he delves deeper, his life and well-being devolve into an existential nightmare.  This is where this young man shows what he's made of; overcoming his fear and trepidation, he kicks things into high gear, pulling out all the stops, continuing to gain open access by being effervescent, polite, friendly, nodding enthusiastically, encouraging his subjects with a wide open smile to skewer themselves in front of his camera. 

The film took Sieveking five long years to make and we can visibly see him age--his hair gets peppered with gray, some wrinkles start to radiate from the corners of his clear, blue eyes, an exhausted pall pulls his boyish features down a bit as he carries on.  The surreality of the worlds he encounters have to be seen to be believed.  I, for one, am a believer in this new filmmaker's talent.