Still in Motion

The Last Ledge

I'm living in a country looking for help from people who don't know how to help themselves. But they're learning how. And so should I.

When you go to a deeply wounded place for self-healing, you're in for one hell of a shock. The shock of encountering how truly and utterly lost you are.

How to survive in the desert without sunblock? How to know where the desert ends and the road re-appears? The road you've moved so far from. How to know when enough's enough?

I am a helpless baby now. But unlike a real baby--a tabula rasa brand-new human (except for the fatefulness of DNA), I have lost things that are essential to my survival, namely: loss of trust in people, loss of faith, suspicion, anxiety and unending fear of a life that's gone off the rails. I'm told by some who've been through this, that this is the best part--albeit in hindsight. In the present, it feels like constant nausea and night sweats. This is the part where a tipping point is presented. One can move ever further into darkness, keep exploring, seeking, roaming. Or. . . I don't know what. Nothing good. Nothing healthy. Something like settling on the couch with a jumbo bag of chips and a big, fat boyfriend who can't climb a hill anymore without getting heart palpitations.

Did I mention the thing that's gone missing that hurts most of all, the loss of which causes me much dysfunction? That causes me to walk into walls, or get my computer chord caught on someone's shoe? It's my faith and trust in myself. This leaves me pretty fucked-up most of the time. As well, I spend a lot of energy hiding that fact, which is also exhausting.

It's time to step into the void, the one I came here to fill. I'm holding on for dear life to the last ledge.

 

Okay, So See You: How Albanians Make a Date on the Phone

"Hi. It's me, how are you?"

"Hey. I'm fine. What's up?"

"Yeah, I'm here in town for a while. What are you doing later?"

"Oh, I'll be at __________ from 21.00 on. Where are you?"

"Yeah, I'm at _________ for the next two hours and then I'm with friends; we don't know if we should move or what."

"Okay, well you know where I'll be later if you want to meet up."

"Yeah, okay. Okay, so see you."

"See you."

(When spoken in Albanian, this conversation takes ten seconds tops and mostly consists of the word hajde!.)

 

 

Anarchy and Perspective

Just as many schools of thought as there are on both the topics of anarchy and perspective, so are there as many impressions and shifts in mental acuity that happen when you travel and come back to the place that, for all intents and purposes, for better or worse, is your new home.

And not only my ability to be a bit more flexible in my daily views is the sole benefit. There is also the disturbing realization that I have been sleepwalking through most of the last couple months of my life in a fairly anarchic place and I'm still in one piece, actually more mentally healthy than I was when I first got there.

This means that people are looking out for me. I have good luck, generally, in not encountering too many assholes since my sense of smell is really keen and I move in the opposite direction post-haste. I hate bad smells.

But this surpasses mere good luck, I think, the daily encounters I make and the people that are stepping up to become my friends. For some reason, all of this sassy hoopla became clearer to me once I left Tirana for some days and switched up my environment--a privilege that never ceases to escape me, trust me, airport security fuckwads, notwithstanding.

My recent stupor is due to the bends, pure and simple. I have never lived anywhere where I feel more uncomfortable and lonely. And the longer I stay here, the more obvious it becomes to me, that these perceptions, these perspectives, lie well within my core, not anyone else's. And they lie really deeply is the other surprising thing I find. How did I learn to submerge things so much that I literally forget that they're there? It's a rude bump on the shoulder when these things surface, depending on how secure I feel at that given moment in my life. I've been feeling incredibly insecure lately.

When you're off-kilter, disoriented and really wondering what the answer might be to what the hell you're doing in a particular place, this is the time to just completely relax. Not the opposite, as I thought. Being in overdrive when you don't have a clear road map might be mysterious and exciting, but in random wandering comes the danger of encountering deep truths about yourself in an atmosphere that doesn't want to see you do particularly well. It's not a malicious thing, really, it's just ingrained modes of reaction, I guess. It exists in every culture to some extent, of course, but in the one in which I'm residing at the moment, the ways in which people keep one another down. . . well, it sucks. So we always must seek higher ground. That's all. Just climb a bit higher.

All of this comes on the day after having a new friend come over to my flat last night (the first night home in a week) and sit around and drink wine and talk. Just talk about anything that comes to us. It was so inspiring and felt so fresh and I realized during these hours that this was happening because I was ready for it.

I really want to connect to the environment around me but am intimidated and worry about what I perceive are the questions being asked about me. What does she want? What is she doing? Why is she here? Well, let me answer those questions for you right now because it won't take long: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And then the thought of, how do you know anyone even gives a shit or notices, comes fast upon the heels of that. And so on.

I'm looking forward to meeting the people that can, perhaps, help answer these questions. Maybe not just for me, but for themselves, as well.

Hi, How Are You? Jam në Shqipëri.

Clearly it's been not an insignificant amount of time since my last post here on SIM, my beloved blog of five years.  February 11 to be exact.  I've strayed, it's true.  And although once in a while I have some kind of yearning to write something here. . . well, I just haven't.  Mostly it's because I haven't thought I've had too much of interest to say, really.

I am still unequivocably and irrefutably devoted to cinemtatic nonfiction filmmaking and the experimental dark side of producing and making what appears to be a made-up story but is actually true (whatever that means) and / or what appears to be a diehard true story that turns out to be pure fiction.  It's the reason I started this damn thing in a hotel room in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina one dark and stormy night (stuck in a thunderstorm at the Hilton).  I still like this stuff very much.

So much so, in fact, that I am in the throes of making a film of this nature myself and I'm kinda scared shitless and thought this would be a good place to state that boldly so people know that I'm scared.  And the reason I'm scared is because I think this might be one of the most important things I've ever attempted in my life and the margin of error is so wide, it makes the oceans look like streams, the mountains like molehills, the highways like rickety side roads, ad nauseum.

This might be the last blog post you read for another--what was it?--six months.  Or I might be embarking on some kind of new hybrid diary / production notes / documentation of the last vestiges of my sanity, kind of thing.  Which could be interesting for some.  We'll see.

And for those of you who still think I'm living in Berlin, Germany, I'm now a resident of Tirana, Albania.  You should come and visit; it's a beautiful place.  As you'll note in the photo above, the city has even graced one of its main boulevards with the namesake of one of the most beloved presidents of the United States of Assholery in recent memory.  Those kind men are making sure that there is enough electricity for the whole city; they all just forgot to wear their uniforms that day.

Anyway, it's a potentially good place to make a movie.  And I promise to hold out doing a kickstarter campaign as long as I possibly can.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

Sound and Vision: CPH:DOX's Sound Design Workshop

The following article appears in the current issue of DOX Magazine.

 

In testing the permeability of the various borders and boundaries between fiction, nonfiction and visual art, the conversations in Copenhagen this year, as in any other, went beyond genre into the actual artistry of storytelling in film. While many filmmakers, artists, and professionals from other disciplines that feel compelled to make films, move deeply into this process in a fairly intuitive way, there are few established festivals and forums that specifically nurture, showcase and help find support for film work that falls into undefined territories.  Continuing to creatively riff upon its founding ethos nine years ago, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival pushed even further with this year’s impressively diverse and challenging program selections, as well as in the 27 projects that were chosen to pitch at this year’s CPH:FORUM.

As part of its ever-growing roster of talks and workshops, this year festival programmer, Niklas Engström, put together a wonderfully inspiring master class / roundtable of filmmakers and sound designers called Sound Design in Documentary Films. In a two-hour discussion, the panelists shared samples of work—most appearing in this year’s program—to illustrate how soundtracks and soundscapes are used as an integrated part of a film’s language, “exploiting all the countless possibilities that exist to support, expand and shape narration,” discovering a film’s identity through the exploration of sound and music in creating cinematic pieces.

I tend to concentrate on the New: Vision and New: Vision Expanded programs when I go to this festival because I know some of my deep-seated ideas about narrative structure and storytelling in film will be turned upside-down and backwards. And this was so, this year more than ever, in terms of how soundscapes not only enhance, but shape, narrative structure. Every natural (or unnatural) sound reproduced by art “colors” the space in which it is presented to the public, not of the space it is supposed to reproduce. If we hear a storm, the howling of the wind, a clap of thunder, etc. in film, we hear it in the timbre appropriate to the soundtrack, not in the timbre of an actual forest, or ocean, or voice, or whatever the scene is supposed to represent.  Every sound bears the stamp of the space in which it is actually produced, but this sound can also be created in a studio with effects, a live orchestra, creating a bespoke aural palette made specifically for a certain story.

Just as a film shot preserves the viewpoint of the camera, a sound recording orientates, as well, whether it is through abstract sound, non-sync sound, collected sound, delayed sound, or effects created in a studio using symphonic instruments. Sound, even more than vision, in film can release the fixed, immutable distance between the spectator and what is happening on screen. Not only as viewers, but as listeners, we are transferred from our seats to the space in which the events depicted on the screen are taking place.  The shapes of visible things have several sides, right, left, front and back. Sounds have no such aspect and layers of sound do not necessarily tell us from which “side” a shot was made.  Thus, using sound filters enables a visual artist to build a defined character for images that might be clichéd in some way, whether the shots are of a person speaking, a portrait of a city or place, or, perhaps, the life of a building, as in Pedro Urano and Joana Traub Csekö’s HU Enigma, which is actually more of a portrait of an idea, about as abstract as one can get in film. 

During the session, when asked about the mechanics of finding one’s way into this kind of aural portraiture, Urano said, “It comes down to being true to yourself; you create it yourself.  It’s a personal thing, organic in essence.”  Urano and Csekö’s 75-minute film from Brazil, features the crumbling structure (and eventual destruction) of a university hospital complex as its main protagonist, an exposed “body” or representation of the past. While the film’s visuals are stunning, it is the sound design that makes this piece incredibly powerful.  Through the perspective of this completely manufactured soundscape, a viewer can constantly alternate between the objective appreciation of the pure beauty of the architectural images, and a more personal relationship with not only the building itself, but the place and time in which it was built and the ghosts of the thousands of people who worked or convalesced there.

Phillippe Grandrieux’s film, It May Be That Beauty Has Strengthened Our Resolve - Masao Adachi, won the prize for the New:Vision Award.  This feature documentary, also showcased in the workshop, offers a beautiful example of how a film’s unique aural culture can be increased like any other, how composite sound enables us to “see” the dimension of space and its place in time.  The ear can distinguish more delicate nuances than the eye, and Grandrieux, as a filmmaker in love with sound, knows that there is a considerable difference between perceiving a sound and identifying its source.  He used this knowledge to great affect in his film about the criminalized and long-suffering life of Japanese director, Adachi.  (Pictured above left, Danish sound designer, Peter Albrechtsen, and filmmaker, Phillippe Gandrieux.)

We are accustomed to drawing conclusions about visual things from the sounds that accompany them.  This “defect” can be used nicely in film since the slow recognition of a sound may cause a far more profound tension than the approach of something visually unrecognizable. These possibilities for meaningful dramaturgy create a slow and gradual process of recognition, enabling the natural resistance of the consciousness to give way to a “reality” that is easily audible.  (Film still below from It May Be That Beauty.)

Danish sound designer, Peter Albrechtsen, another participant in the workshop, did the sound design for Vibeke Bryld’s short film, Bedtime Stories from the Axis of Evil, which appeared in the Amnesty Award program.  In Bryld’s film, we visit three countries, all of which are governed by authoritarian regimes.  But, they are also three countries with vastly different cultural narratives, and so Albrechtsen created three distinct and allegorical soundscapes for Baghdad, Tehran and Pyongyang, North Korea. Acoustic “close-­ups” make us perceive sounds which are mixed in with the accustomed noise of day-­to-­day life, but which we never hear as individual sounds because they are drowned in a general din of noise. If a sound can be featured in “close-­up,” such a sound immediately makes us aware of its effect; at the same time, its influence on the action is made manifest.  This appears to be Albrechtsen’s particular forte in his sound work.  After Albrechtsen recounted the director’s shocked reaction to watching her film once the sound mix was added to the fine cut, Bryld told me later that she was, indeed, speechless and immediately needed to view it again, since she was hard pressed to recognize the film she had cut together without these enhancements.

As in a silent film, or a segment of a film whose only sound is silence, film sound can be scarcely perceptible, intimate things conveyed with the secrecy of an eavesdropper. Subtle associations and interrelations of thoughts, emotional or intellectual linkages, can play a decisive dramaturgical part in building emotional resonance for the images. It could be the (authentic) sound of the song that chimes when it’s time for Japanese children to go home for dinner from the playground, as it is in a transcendent scene from Grandrieux’s film.  Or a ticking of a clock in an empty room, a slow drip from a burst pipe, the moaning of a little child in sleep. 

In a close-­up in which the surroundings are not visible, a sound that seeps into the shot sometimes impresses us as mysterious, simply because we cannot see its source. It produces the tension that arises from curiosity and expectation. This use of asynchronous sound, then, acquires considerable importance, for if the sound or voice is not matched with the picture of its source, it can, and does, grow beyond the dimensions of the latter. The creative means by which a director can convey pathos or symbolic significance is precisely to use sound asynchronously, something experimental and jazz musicians have known for decades.  (Film still from Bedtime Stories.)

It is the business of sound in film to reveal for us the acoustic environment, the aural landscape in which we live, the sounds that move beyond human speech, that speak to us in the vast conversation of life going by. Poets hear these significant sounds of life and try to describe them in words. Sound designers allow them to speak to us directly from the screen.  Sound contextualizes story and creates emotional resonance that visuals unaccompanied by sound cannot begin to tap into.  In order for a director to open him- or herself up to a story’s most profound potential in this way, he or she has to create the capacity to go deeply into the “truth” of a story.  There, the right sounds will emerge and in the words of one filmmaker, “You will hear your movie.” 

 

 

EurasiaDOC--European Producers Discover Artistic Points Unknown

The following article appears in the current issue of DOX Magazine:

Most documentary filmmakers in Europe looking for support take it for granted that they will have significant access to workshops, courses, programs and other mentorship opportunities to assist them towards their goal of making and finishing a film project.  However, this is far from the case for makers in other regions of the world. EurasiaDOC is an initiative financed by the European Union and produced and run by Ardèche Images, an association based in Lussas, France that runs its own creative documentary film festival. Based on the successful experiences of its ongoing AfricaDOC program, which began in 2003, the small Ardèche team now brings its three-week scriptwriting and editing residencies to places such as Yerevan, Armenia (in partnership with the Golden Apricot Film Festival), Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan-Mongolia, and Siberia. EurasiaDOC’s expanded three-year initiative will enable the Lussas team to continue to offer regional scriptwriting workshops and access to the international film trade where select projects will be presented to European-based producers, distributors, broadcasters and financiers.  (Pictured above, Siberian director, Valentina Varaksina.)

This past autumn, I was a member of the international jury at the XI International Documentary Film Festival Flahertiana in Perm, Russia (11 – 17 October).  There, I met Nicolas Bem, the artistic director of the Siberian Studio of Independent Cinema, and Rebecca Houzel from Ardèche.  They were there to introduce a new workshop that will take place in Perm in February as an extension of a five-year Ural-Siberian regional initiative. Bem and Houzel have been working together in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia (Bem’s hometown), and at the behest of Moscow-based filmmaker, Marina Razbezhkina, who was a tutor in Krasnoyarsk, are now expanding their program in the region in partnership with the Flahertiana.

The residencies—offered at no cost to selected applicants—host between eight to ten directors. According to past experience, more than 30 creative documentary films will find European co-producers.  Developing these projects successfully takes strong partnerships; one of the program’s bigger goals is to forge many more alliances between European producers and Eurasian filmmakers. Perm, known as the easternmost city of Europe, is a natural spot for staging workshops, and the call for applications will bring candidates from all over the Ural region.  (Three film stills from Alexander Kuznetsov's début film, Territory of Love, shot on location in Siberia.)

In 2007, Bem met Christophe Postic, the artistic director of the Festival du Film Documentaire de Lussas, who had come to Krasnoyarsk with writer, translator and filmmaker, Hélène Chatelain, who has a great interest in the area and wanted to work with some young documentary directors in the region by offering a workshop. Bem wanted to participate, but his ideas were associated only with fiction.  Excited and encouraged by Bem’s commitment, the team agreed to work with him anyway, and he ended up making his film. Six months later, Postic asked him to organize some more workshops in Krasnoyarsk, and thus, the SiberiaDOC project was created.

In 2010, Bem showed a film at the festival in Lussas and was introduced to Houzel who speaks fluent Russian.  Two months later, Houzel went to Krasnoyarsk as an instructor.  She and Postic also decided to form a co-production with Bem on a documentary film he was producing called Territory of Love by local photographer, Alexander Kuznetsov.  Kuznetsov participated in the workshop to further develop his film project.  He had been photographing the residents of a psychiatric group home for years.  Some of the residents formed a small traveling singing and dancing troupe and he wanted to make a film that used the group’s travels by bus through Siberia as a metaphor for Russia.

Bem told me, “We all know that in Russia there are very strong traditions of cinema. But within this huge territory, there are only two cities where you can get a filmmaking education, Moscow and St. Petersburg. In each region (such as Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk), there are documentary studios, which receive some funding from Moscow.  But, at this juncture, these studios do not receive sustained public support. If you are a young filmmaker living in Siberia, and you want to make a film, you have to go to Moscow because it is the only chance to train and professionally work in cinema. But maybe I don’t want to leave Siberia, and that is why these French producers became, for me, like a ‘lifeline’. To develop a cinema tradition, you need to organize local educational programs, find new authors, create an independent network of cinemas and go to the audience yourself, to organize production of films. We are trying to do all of this because the potential here is very big.”  (Pictured above, Christophe Postic and Hélène Chatelain.)

Houzel says, “The residencies are geared to the individual filmmakers; no rules, or set aesthetic, is laid out by workshop tutors.  The directors are free to express and shoot their stories the way they want or feel they need to.  We are there to assist and help shape things, offer guidance, and help the makers tackle dramaturgical and logistical challenges.” Postic reiterates these points:  “I believe real creative documentary exists—in the context of the subjects of the films and the cinematographic form the film itself will take.  It’s important for the workshops to help makers find their own artistic way into their film, their own approach.”

When I asked him how, specifically, the tutors help “pull out” this artistic expression from a filmmaker’s idea, he told me, “The main challenge is that we work with participants who have no experience watching film—they have no context, no experience in analyzing narrative. Their main exposure to documentary is what they see on TV.  One of the most important aspects of these workshops is sharing as many styles and genres as possible with the participants, supplying them with a visual vocabulary in which to express their own ideas. A documentary filmmaker must show us something complex; filming ‘reality’ is not simple, not easy. But it is essential that the storytelling be as complex as the reality it represents.”

He continues, “In the workshops, we ask many, many hard questions to drive the directors forward.  We also continue to recommend films to view, not necessarily about the same subject matter as their idea, but more to define ways in which a story can be told in a personal way. This can be discerned even in the application, this necessity of the project on the part of the filmmaker. The Russian language, in particular, is very strong since sometimes in a few sentences, one can imagine the film. They are thinking about and articulating images, sounds.  As experienced professionals, we can see the film, even if the director cannot at the beginning. It’s a very arduous process, but very useful.”

By the end of the residency, the makers should trust their own project and be committed to doing it, enough to move forward and figure out the rest.  It is this “figuring out the rest” part that has been the main impetus for the workshop leaders to become active producers on certain projects as they did for Territory of Love, and other projects they feel are strong.  They want to be able to continue to help these isolated filmmakers access the European documentary funding structure, as well as European co-production markets.

Postic feels it is imperative for the program to be able to help produce certain projects post-residency, further guiding them along into production, post-production, exhibition and distribution. “In their native places, these makers are totally alone.  With this European alliance, they can have strong partners. People of diverse backgrounds will come together because of cinema, enabling them to make both personal and complex representations of the world they live in.”

For further information on these initiatives, visit http://www.lussasdoc.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

XI International Documentary Film Festival "Flahertiana"

I recently had an opportunity to take my first trip to Russia and ended up in the small city of Perm (population just under a million), traditionally an industrial spot which is currently trying to morph into a cultural one, that sits at the foot of the Ural mountain range.  This also happens to be the place from which many, many people commenced their long walk (thousands of kilometers) to Siberia from the days of "Ivan the Terrible" onwards, a place of exile, imprisonment and death, a place where both criminal and political prisoners had been sent for more than three centuries.  Siberia makes up about 77% of Russia's territory, but has only 28% of its population.  Lots of elbow room for those looking for space and some peace and quiet.

Now, Siberia is becoming a place with a nascent documentary film tradition with the help of a new initiative called the EurasiaDOC Project run by Rebecca Houzel (France) and Nicolay Bem (Siberia), financed by the European Union.  More from me on Houzel's and Bem's work in a future issue of DOX Magazine.  The two will be running an inaugural workshop in Perm next February and were at the fesitval to introduce the initiative to interested participants who will come from all over Russia to develop their documentary film projects.  Supposedly, at some point in the future, I will be invited to Siberia to see for myself what's happening up there.  Hopefully, I will not be expected to come on foot.

In fact, I became quite appreciative of experiencing a place like Perm before having a chance to visit the bigger cultural capitals of Moscow or St. Petersburg.  And, of course, my experience was circumscribed within the context of a film festival, its namesake that of the legendary filmmaker, Robert Flaherty.  The trip was further circumscribed by the privilege of being asked to be a member of the jury of this year's international competition where we were tasked with awarding several prizes--a Grand Prix, Best Feature, and Best Short, with some special mentions, if we so chose.  A separate FIPRESCI jury was asked to award a film from the same selection.  (Photo of cosmonaut façade in Perm, courtesy Bayou Self on Flickr.)

It was a large and diverse competition, with nineteen films represented from eighteen different countries.  The films were all over the map stylistically, technically, narratively, and otherwise.  I juried with a Serb, a Frenchman and two Russians (I was the only girl), each of us as vastly different as five human beings can get.  But, somehow, we easily reached a consensus on the films we wanted to honor.

"The more your work corresponds to real life, the better it seems. . .," was said by Albrecht Dürer, a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician and theorist from Nuremberg.  These words express the major aesthetic conception of the festival, according to its website.  Keeping this in mind, as well as the legacy of Flaherty, whose film work focused on prolonged observation to realize "the naturalness of a documentary subject's behavior in front of the camera," we all voted for films that pushed beyond the boundaries of all of these various philosophies, instead choosing the ones that moved us into such profound and deep emotional territories, we could barely articulate anything about them at all after watching them.  I don't know about anyone else, but this is the place I want to reach when encountering any work of art, an encounter that illustrates and illuminates all the pain and joy of being human and leaves you temporarily speechless in its wake.  However "staged" or "natural" that encounter might be is of no import to me, whatsoever--the emotional reactions and reverberations are the same, and they're staggering.  (I usually have some kind of emotional breakdown / breakthrough during festivals and this is why I love documentary.  It's cheaper than therapy.)

For the very first time in the Flahertiana's history, the Grand Prix was awarded to a short film; also, for the very first time in the festival's history, we awarded the grand prize to a Russian film.  I would, in fact, urge the selection committee to pepper the main competition with more films from the Motherland in future, and, perhaps, stay away from much more mediocre fare from the international scene since "diversity," in concept or fact,  never ever connotes quality. 

Here are the three prize-winners (and a special mention), and our jury statements about these films: 

"The jury gives the Grand Prix to Yulia Panasenko for her radiant film, Outro.  The jury was shocked at the rawness and immediacy of Panasenko’s piece. With an exceptional balance of intimacy and distance, as well as unabashed courage in her dramaturgical choices, Panasenko gracefully navigates the ever-increasing complexity of the territory she traverses with her main protagonist. She uses her camera like the most sensitive metal detector looking for treasure on a vast and wild beach and, in that process, has achieved a highly proficient, remarkably restrained and economical construction that left us all moved beyond words."

This 45-minute piece (my latest film mantra: 45 Is the New 90) will also play at this year's IDFA as part of the mid-length documentary competition, and this is the director's third prize for this film in Russia.  I will attempt to articulate my thoughts on Outro in my next post. 

"The jury gives the Best Long Documentary prize to Marianna Kaat for her film, Pit no. 8.  Kaat grows a unique and complex relationship with her main protagonists, particularly in her portrayal of one very powerful man who still resides in the body of an adolescent boy.  We observe how he and his family try to survive under unbearable social pressures with grace, dignity, and persistent resistance against the forces that might pull them under at any given moment.  They display clarity and fortitude, as does Kaat in her filmmaking.  Pit no. 8 is an inspiring portrait of Ukraine, a country in painful transition, where there are no rules, but Kaat shows us plenty of examples of the miracle of humanity amidst inhumane conditions."

Happily, Kaat has agreed to sit for an extended interview with me in early November from her home in Tallinn, Estonia, so look for that in the near future.  The film also recently played at the International Documentary Film Festival of Mexico City (DOCSDF), will have its German premiere at the Film Festival Cottbus in November, and will exhibit at IFF Watch Docs in Warsaw in December.  More on the film's website here.

"The jury gives the Best Short Documentary prize to Piotr Stasik for his film, The Last Day of Summer.  This Polish director achieves a deep and profound penetration into a culture not his own, in the process portraying a warm, wry, and very humorous ode to the strange poetry of childhood."  More on this superb piece in a couple of days.  And, lastly:

"The jury would like to give special recognition to Andrea Roggon’s feature documentary, Soy Libre | I Am Free. Roggon has realized an impressive début, displaying a precocious mastery of formalism that utilizes an incredibly rich visual language in her documentary images of the people of contemporary Havana, Cuba."

Roggon's film was selected for IDFA in 2010, where it exhibited in competition for best student documentary.

And, FYI, the FIPRESCI prize went to another Polish director, Jakub Stozek, for his 30-minute film, Out of Reach, already a multiple award winner, and so here's one more to add to his mantle for creating the best half hour ride of your life. 

Congratulations to all the filmmakers.  And a huge personal спасибо to the beautiful and exceptional La Casa de Olya.

 

Rrugë e hapun / Open Road

Open road, speak to me of hearth and home

Vow to express your longing, loneliness,

and fevered future dreams

I am listening.

 

Rrugë e hapun, fol me mua për vatër e shtëpi

Betohu që ki me i shprehë lirshëm andjet, vetminë,

dhe andrrat plot ethe për ardhmëninë

Po ndëgjoj.

 

Image by Lindsay Isola

Translation by Sokol Ferizi

 

 

Dokufest 2011: A LETTER TO DAD

It's been exactly three days since returning to Berlin from Kosova and Albania, and as part of my massive decompression, between batting away writing deadlines, I am watching as many films as I can.  Something you would have thought I had done plenty of the last month considering I spent most of that time at a film festival.  But, I had other duties this year (which are listed handily on my Facebook page if you're at all interested).

While I did watch some films, of course, I wanted to start this first blog snog to beloved Dokufest with some thoughts on the small, but powerful, film that won this year's Balkan Dox competition, a strand with a staggering fourteen films.  The intrepid Balkan Dox jury--Alexander Nanau (whose film made in Romania, The World According to Ion B., won last year's Dokufest Balkan prize); American filmmaker, Donal Mosher (October Country), and Sara Garcia, founder and co-director of Play-Doc in northern Spain--gave Serbian, Srdjan Keca, the prize.  (As well, the jury awarded Cinema Komunisto's director, Mila Turajlic, for Best Newcomer.)  The evening the jury finished deliberations, Nanau told me that Keca's film is one that "really stays with you," and after watching it, I would have to say I agree.  The film is a highly personal and resonant film about trying to unslip the knots of a past that you lived through as a child.  Childhood, as we all know, is a time where you miss so much of what's happening around you, while simultaneously, sense memories are embedding themselves deeply enough to last a lifetime.

While this is not the 29-year-old's first film, for such a young filmmaker, he has a keen and sophisticated cinematic eye, a voice, both visual and aural, for solid storytelling.  I am a fan of the long, beautifully composed static frame in documentary; it provides a breathing space, a nonverbal contexualization in which a good director / cinematographer will indulge his audience, providing a resting spot for the eye and mind as the story unfolds.  These still lifes tell us much in their silence and poise, as much as the home movies show us that this family was one like any other--a parade of photos and moving images on fragile Super 8, filled with young love, marriage, children, birthday parties and living room shenanigans.

Marinko Keca, the filmmaker's father, has passed away from advanced stages of cancer without his family around him.  The burning question of his son, Srdjan, is why his father chose to die alone.  And while he never finds a fully satisfactory answer to that question, he does manage to piece together a powerful 45-minute film, a collaboration between generations, the younger member still here on earth and coping the best he can, the other the incorporeal manifestation of a whole generation of men and women who lost part of their souls to a war that none of them ever fully understood.

Keca's Serbian father and Croatian mother married in 1979, one year before Yugoslav leader Tito dies.  The union is considered ill-crossed--not at the time they first meet, but by 90s wartime, Keca finds himself the product of a "mixed" marriage, a relationship that founders mostly due to Marinko's intense post-traumatic stress disorder upon returning from the war.  In one scene in particular, Keca's camera work really shines: as he holds the camera steady, we see intermittent close-up images of old family photos with his mother's face a ghostly blur behind them; then, as he pulls focus, we see the pictures whisked away to reveal his mother's face clearly, grounded in the here and now.  In a very simple, understated way, Keca, in the language of cinema, traverses past and present, weaving some kind of bridge between the two with his lens.  It's a beautiful moment, filled with quiet eloquence about the internal limbo in which the young man is stuck trying to process his father's death.

There were many expert and subtle storytelling touches, particularly notable in the way in which he crafts the interviews with the three most important men in Marinko's life: his best friend, his business partner, and his brother, the filmmaker's uncle.  All of them tell Srdjan outright that they can't, and won't, talk about certain things regarding the war.  And then, to a man, they each proceed to deliver deeply emotional soliloquies about their own experiences, and those of Keca's father, a man they profoundly loved and respected.  He even gets them, in essence, to direct their own scenes:  "OK.  Now you hold the camera.  I'll start the engine, and we'll go slowly," says his father's friend as they're shooting on his boat.  And Marinko's business partner (after finger-wagging at his old mother for walking into the frame while he's being filmed) knows that with his big belly and "big Serbian soul," he will barely fit into the frame.  Knowingly, the director has already set up a pretty wide shot in anticipation, and the ebullient man fits just fine.

This is rich storytelling, and the jury prize is a well-deserved nod to a deep thinker, one that has left behind a career in theoretical physics (of all things), to pick up a camera.  Gracefully edited by Katharine Lee, Srdjan and Marinko Keca, father and son, crafted this film together in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Romania over the course of twenty-two years, almost three-quarters of the filmmaker's lifetime.  As Srdjan notes at one point, both men hide behind the camera lens, their mutual concealment perhaps bonding them in complicity, fellow travelers through the ravages of their region's past. 

At the film's end, Srdjan comments to his father's ghost:  "You know, we always blame this war.  But the war is made by people.  Don't you think so?"

 

DOKUFEST Rides Again, 10 Years Strong

The International Documentary and Short Film Festival, aka, Dokufest (23 - 31 July) is in the midst of launching its new website, and a new look, to celebrate its 10-year anniversary.  But in the meantime, you can read the daily blog by Ardit Bejko for updates and get the latest news about this year's extraordinary program, its largest ever.

Hamburg, Germany's own A Wall Is A Screen returns to the festival for the second year in a row to project fantastic shorts on the walls of lovely Prizren, Kosovo--the bank in the square, the mosque, whatever interesting surface might be available to them, as the audience walks around the town watching the program they put together.  The Stravinsky Portrait will play as a tribute to the recently deceased great Richard Leacock, one of the most influential documentary DPs in the history of the genre.  Patricio Guzmán's elegiac and deeply moving personal essay, Nostalgia de la luz will open the festival on 23 July.  Sheffield Doc / Fest's In The Nursery program will also be returning this year with an outdoor screening of Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera with live musical accompaniment at the Riverbed cinema.  Mohsen Makhmalbaf and James Longley's works will be spotlighted in special programs with both directors in attendance (pictured at top, Makhmalbaf, left, Longley, right).  There will also be an extensive Made in Switzerland program which you can read about here. 

As well, some powerful musical guests will be joining us, as English singer / songwriter, PJ Harvey (pictured middle), and Irish photographer, Seamus Murphy, present the twelve short films on which they collaborated for Harvey's recent album, Let England Shake.  The screening and a Q&A with Harvey and Murphy will follow the closing ceremonies on 30 July.  And lastly (at least for right now), The Sofa Surfers, Wolfgang Frisch and Timo Novotny, are creating a musical / visual evening especially for the fest.

I was invited by Dokufest's Artistic Director, Veton Nurkollari, to curate a strand of nonfiction films about artists, and we will be exhibiting eight fantastic films: Pietra Brettkelly's The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins; Gary Tarn's Black Sun (Tarn will be joining us in person); Jeff Malmberg's Marwencol; Jørgen Leth and Lars von Trier's The Five Obstructions (thanks, Thomas); Marie Losier's The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye; Wiktoria Szymanska's Themerson & Themerson; Zoran Solomun's Super Art Market; and, Jeff Feuerzeig's The Devil & Daniel Johnston.  More info on these and other strands will be on the site soon.

I am very excited and honored to be a part of this fabulous festival again.  I had the privilege of serving on the international jury last year, and that week in Prizren was one of the most magical experiences of my life.  And many of the same people will be returning to share the magic once again.  You can read my SIM blog posts from the fest from last year here and here and here and here. 

Viva Dokufest and përgëzime on your ten-year anniversary!

 

 

 

Interview: Alma Har'el, Director BOMBAY BEACH

 

Thinking of a series of dreams

Where the time and the tempo fly

And there's no exit in any direction

Except the one that you can't see with your eyes

Wasn't makng any great connection

Wasn't falling for any intricate scheme

Nothing that would pass inspection

Just thinking of a series of dreams.    --Bob Dylan

 

This interview originally appeared on the Hammer to Nail site.

Israeli-born filmmaker, Alma Har’el’s first feature film, Bombay Beach, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival this past winter to quiet but consistent accolades, and will have its American premiere in competition at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York today, April 22.  Shot in the surreal environs of the Salton Sea, a man-made body of water that sits in the middle of the California desert, the film itself has plenty of surreal aspects of its own.  It is, in certain respects, a recognizable vérité piece about several people who inhabit the seaside town of Bombay Beach and the nearby community of Slab City. But Har’el is also an award-winning music video director and so has collaborated with her subjects to tell part of their stories in sequences where they interpret their lives through dance, accompanied by the haunting voice and horn of Zach Condon of the band, Beirut. In an article for New York Magazine in 2006, a very young (and exceedingly stage-frightened) Condon said of his music, “It’s impossible for me to play these songs and not feel joy.”  It’s impossible to listen to them without experiencing loads of it, as well.  The film also contains some musical selections from an upstart named Bob Dylan. 

Bombay Beach is a tremendously moving piece of cinema—human scale, intimate and warm—with gorgeous cinematography by Har’el, and tender and playful dance sequences choreographed by Paula Present, a long-time collaborator of the director’s.  A couple of weeks after the film’s début in Berlin, I had a chance to speak to Har’el via Skype at her home in Los Angeles about the magical encounters she experienced in making this piece of work.  And meeting and befriending an extraordinary little boy named Benny Parrish who will be making his very first trip on a plane out of his little hometown to New York City this week.  If you're there, you should go meet this little dude because he's spectacular.

Hammer to Nail (H2N):  Without any confines of traditional documentary storytelling, you went about making this film in a very low-key way, working intuitively and almost completely on your own. What are you learning about this film from audiences who are now sharing with you what they think about this unique collaboration that took place between you and your subjects?

Alma Har’el (AH):  I find myself quieting down quite a bit and listening intently to what people have to say.  And in doing that, it’s allowing me to learn about what it was I did do exactly. Because I’m not really sure what that was. [laughter]  It brings me a bit closer to understanding the film.

H2N:  What led you to focus your efforts on these extraordinary protagonists; how did you go about establishing such intimacy and trust with them?

AH:  Several years ago, very early on in my career, I worked for National Geographic, doing an interview show for them about the Middle East. At the time I was a TV presenter, hosting a music show on Israeli television.  When the National Geographic people offered me this presentation job, I told them I would only do it if I could also direct.  And they agreed.  A man with a high position there came to talk to our crew and he said something that has really stuck with me.  He was talking, in particular, about interviewing techniques and how to talk to people for the camera.  Mostly people will just show you what they want you to see, the story that everybody sees.  If you’re good, you might get to see some of their personal lives.  And, once in a while, you might get to see their secret lives.  The way he explained all this, I got the distinct feeling from how and what he told us, that you were supposed to steal these secrets, almost without them knowing. I knew he was right, that that’s what makes it interesting. But instinctually I didn’t really relate to it at all. There was something about it that didn’t click. 

Back then, I don’t think I really knew what intimacy was, but during the making of this film, I understood that I didn’t want to steal anything from these people.  I wanted to reach a state of intimacy with them that was genuine and to be honest about what I wanted to do.  Although neither did I want to completely ruin the magic of discovering things together by explaining too much.  The trust and intimacy was a process and the friendships grew as I continued to film with them.  We would do creative things together or I would help them out with certain things.  It was really special.  But saying that reduces the process, somehow, since I’m sure most documentary filmmakers experience that in one way or another.  But I think doing those creative things together gave them insight into what I was trying to do, making me less “the enemy behind the camera” who was trying to steal things from them, and more like a collaborator.

H2N:  It seemed to me that these people, considering where and how they live, don’t have that much to occupy their time and attention, making it a ripe situation for someone like you to come in and orchestrate something extraordinary—the dance numbers on the beach, the ways in which they can express themselves verbally, storytelling about their lives.  But there’s also a huge capacity to play and invent and break out of difficult existences.  They are playful; they do dance around; they do sit around and ponder things deeply.  You tapped into something intuitively that you must have recognized, which is to say that that childlike ability to improvise and play is still very much innate, perhaps because of the lack of other things to do. The strong creative aspect is still very much on the surface and not buried under more, let’s say, “sophisticated” ways in which we entertain ourselves.

AH:  This is the very thing I picked up on when I first came to that place.  I first went there to do a music video with Beirut and Zack Condon [their video, entitled, The Concubine, was shot partly on location in Bombay Beach in 2009]. That’s Mike [Parrish] Jr., Benny’s older brother, who stars in that video.  You can also see Pamela doing the dishes and Benny and Sarah, as well, appear briefly.  It was really hard to find the time to do this video and it was getting a bit frustrating, so I decided to go do a random location scout.  A friend of mine told me about this desolate Salton Sea area. The first time we went there, I became so intrigued by the place, I had to go back the very next day. California was the place I learned to drive since I never learned in Israel.  Being a really nervous driver, I never took the freeway; it just terrified me. I couldn’t do it. But I had to learn how to drive on the freeway to get to Salton Sea.

One of the first things that impressed me was just what you were speaking about—this direct connection to childhood.  I met these kids, the Parrishes and their friends, at the beach when we shot the music video.  They invited me into their house. And even though my family and my experience is so different, there was something about the easy access of this mode you can get into when you’re a child.  Your perspective is really limited to the world in which you’re growing up.  You don’t yet have any context to who you are, your country, where you live, your social demographic, or what have you. In a way, you’re in the most accepting place in terms of your family. 

I know many children are not like that.  CeeJay [one of the film’s three main protagonists, a black teenager who moved to the area to live with his father shortly after his young cousin was gunned down in a gang-related incident in LA] is an example of that; he certainly has perspective on his family and where he comes from and he definitely has judgments about all that.  He knew he wanted something different at a very early age, wanted to be the first of his family to go to college, and definitely did not want to be part of the violence he grew up with all around him. He has a lot of criticism for his family and the way they live their lives.

Opposing that, the Parrish kids and their parents are more romantic when it comes to their feelings about family.  No matter what happens, as a family, you hold on to this cohesive unit and infuse it with love all the time, into every relationship, even if they’re not so great or they’re dysfunctional.  But there is romance about life and a focus on what they do have together. I also didn’t really want to know anything about the Salton Sea, the place itself, its history.  I wanted to feel like one of the kids, more like how Benny feels about the place, this sea he lives beside with all the dead fish.  But the beach is a fun place, a place where you go swimming, “when you want to be happy,” as he says in the film.  When we remember our childhoods—at least when I do—we forget the “in-between” stuff and only very certain specific things remain in our memories.  I wanted to experience that with them in this place that feels like it’s outside of time.

H2N:  The way in which a lot of the scenes were shot did make it seem like you were on some abandoned movie set. It felt like a place unattached to the rest of the world, a universe unto itself. In my opinion, you really could have foregone the bit of archival info we learn at the beginning of the film about this place.  While it’s interesting and the footage is delightfully kitschy, it’s really not that relevant to the stories you tell about the people living there.  The dance numbers you stage with your protagonists, however, do feel quite organic; they might spring up out of nowhere at any given moment. It’s such a lovely, non-verbal way they’re able to express their feelings for one another.  That’s one of cinema’s strengths, and, perhaps, why people love the music video format so much.

AH:  Making this film was a real process for me and that includes discovering these various story arcs. I just landed in that place and decided to make a film, not knowing what I would find.  I knew I wanted to do something magical, with dance sequences, in this place.  When I moved there, I didn’t have any subjects.  I met CeeJay once in the street and met the Parrish family while shooting the video for Zach.  So when I got there, I just called them up and started to hang out with them.  I lived in Indio [a desert community in the Coachella Valley, about one hour’s drive from Salton Sea] for four or five months and drove back and forth every day—on the freeway.

Very early on in the process, I started editing as I was shooting.  I’d edit and then I’d go back every few weeks to shoot more.  This was my process for over a year—edit, go back, edit, go back.  So even then, I was weaving the stories together as I was shooting them.  I also knew where I wanted the dance sequences to be, based on what I was shooting.  For example, there is the scene where a group of older kids are making fun of Benny, telling him he can’t participate in their games because he has “no class,” leaving him out completely. Then they went outside and played with those carts that later became a part of that dance sequence.  After editing that scene together, the choreographer, Paula Present, and I rehearsed with them at the community center and we had them wear the same clothes that they wore that day and shot it over two days at the same time of day.  So it really looks like they just stepped out to play and then started to dance.  The gazebo dance with CeeJay and his girlfriend was shot more like a real scene, although a lot of their dialogue was improvised.  I record everything with lav mics so I don’t really have to be that close to them all the time; I can just film and let them talk in a more intimate way.  We were just finding things as we were going along.

H2N:  There is a real sense of discovery.  The structure of your film has all of these interwoven story arcs where we follow different protagonists.  We intuit they know of one another, yet in the film, their lives really don’t intersect.  But, for me, the spine of this piece is Benny’s story, specifically the story of his “illness and treatment.”  You have portrayed one of this country’s many drug-addicted children in such a pure way and I connected to him so viscerally. I can honestly say that my emotional attachment to this kid stemmed mostly from his victimization from a negligent medical establishment, something that enrages me like very few other things do.  The doctors’ and caregivers’ solutions to making Benny “better” is to bombard him with more medications and higher dosages until his poor little body and mind are malfunctioning.  You documented this deterioration over the course of the time you were shooting.  Obviously, you didn’t set out to make any kind of hard-hitting social issue statement about anything, but that’s the real beauty and artistry of the film.  The way in which it’s edited, however, very much drives home certain points about what has happened and is happening to these people and how they cope.

AH:  Yes, and the solutions that they’re offered. I was very aware of all of this while it was happening.  It was, and still is, something I deal with every day—how to react to it, how to be supportive of the situation.  I try to provide as much information as I can that might help.  But that’s as much as I feel I can do.  It’s tricky as a filmmaker and it’s tricky as a human being.  The people around Benny are doing what they think is the best thing to do. Bluntly, the truth is that that area is notorious for lots of doctors that are practicing there that have, let’s say, failed elsewhere.  There are a lot of doctors and health care people in that area who are in training, just starting practices. They don’t necessarily have the right information or attitude and the “expertise” they can offer is limited in many ways.

It’s particularly enraging, because to me, Benny is not only smart, he’s probably one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met in my entire life.  His spirit and imagination I would like to think will be stronger than anything that’s happening to him physiologically.  The only hope is that he won’t be damaged by all of this forever.  These people really do play a kind of Russian roulette with these kids’ brains.  It is unbelievable that they give those drugs to kids that age.  He’s been receiving them since he was four.  The amounts increase, the medications change, and the definition of “bi-polar,” which is what he’s diagnosed with—well, you can’t say that a kid has a bi-polar disorder.  That kind of condition is only diagnosable in adults according to the DSM-IV [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders].  There’s no such thing as a bi-polar condition in children.  They impose that diagnosis because they don’t know what else to call it.  They might say, “Well, this is where we think it’s going,” and start doing drug trials.  They’re experimenting and don’t really know the outcomes.

But this film can only serve to show glimpses into some of the larger issues one can pick out from these people’s lives and the way in which they live their lives in this particular place.  All these things that can be perceived as wrong or right, or bad or good, all reside together, side by side.  This is the human experience of life and that’s what I wanted to illustrate more than anything, how things co-exist, all the wrongs and the rights together, the love and the violence, the broken dream and the persistence of dreams.  I hope the film gives a feeling of a more rounded feeling of life, not something dissected into pieces.  I don’t want to say if this certain thing or that certain thing was remedied everything would be okay.  I don’t believe in that.  Benny’s predicament is one heartbreaking element of everything else going on.  As a friend, I intend to do what I can do to educate and help with things.  But as a filmmaker, this is what I’m interested in illustrating.

My stance is not one of criticism for films that are more blatantly “social issue” films.  I watch those, too, and learn from them and think they’re so important.  But the film I made didn’t have room to supply that kind of information; that’s not what I set out to do. Going back to the context of the place itself:  up until the last minute, there was a debate on whether we should include the introduction that is there—the history of the Salton Sea and the genesis of this place.  I think the film would have been fine without that, too, because, in essence, not knowing where you are doesn’t matter.  But it does, of course, give context to this idea of the broken American dream. 

Red and CeeJay and the Parrishes all have so much to do with this kind of mythology for me.  I have only experienced this “American Dream” from afar as anyone who isn’t from this place does.  As I’ve gotten closer, I still see the “football dream,” the “success dream,” where one is lifted from your environment into a new destiny. Red is the traveler, the seeker, who worked in the oil fields.  He represents the loner with deep wisdom smattered with that deep-seated racism that has been handed down to him from older generations.  There’s Mike Parrish’s fantasy of being in the military, the obsession with guns and explosives as a form of entertainment, the love for family in a straightforward and honest way.  All of this is so evocative of America—or, this lost America, more accurately.  Even though the dream is broken, you can still see the people.  And in terms of the place itself, it’s like when you see an old woman: you know she used to be beautiful and vibrant and it gives her another dimension, not because it makes her tragic, but because it makes her heroic.  It moves her from being an object of beauty to being a subject with depth and history.  That place, for me, is redolent of that, a place sold to people as a dream.  And now it’s a place where you can meet yourself in a real way, a grounded way, and there’s beauty in that, too.  Because the only thing that’s left is the intimacy you can have with the other people who are there with you.

H2N:  Your collaboration with Condon provides a really lovely ingredient in all this, his voice and horn so evocative of something both melancholy and joyful.

AH:  That sound is how I feel when I’m honest about my life, that juxtaposition of melancholy and loneliness with the absolute enjoyment and happiness of being alive.  Ever since the first time I heard his music and his voice, it’s been such an influence and there are always wonderful surprises along the way.  I feel like that when I’m around him, when we work together.  We collaborated for three or four years doing all these music videos.  I started feeling a bit tied down to that form.  I did videos for other artists and just didn’t feel that inspiration, that spark or connection with other musicians as much as I did with him.  I wrote him an email at one point telling him I needed to do my thing, that the music video work was limiting for me at that point and that I had found something I wanted to make a film about.  I told him I would love it if he did the music.  I sent him the scene with Benny and Pamela and the pink wig at the beach, which was one of the first things I shot, and based on that scene, he started making music for the film.

H2N:  This bond, this relationship between Benny and his mom, is the absolute heart of this film.  She really is his only friend.  The parent/child relationship is so often portrayed as one of antagonism and strife these days.

AH:  I agree with you and I also deeply appreciate the deepness of their bond.  It’s a very honest, but very kind relationship.  Pamela's a mom that has energy and space left to explore the good parts of her children. She loves being a mother.  She also feels frustrated and, in a lot of ways, stuck on certain things but she wants her children to have what she doesn’t, which is also something very much a part of the American character, to make sure your children might have a different destiny than the one of the generation before.  That’s universal, of course, but the reward of that seems to be higher in people’s fantasies here.  But despite her high hopes for her kids, she’s still the one who gives Benny his medication, insists on it, making sure he takes everything the doctors give him.  Pamela does have a lot of problems dealing with his behavior and controlling it.  He takes up a lot of her time and energy.  But that’s parenting—you’re often the best thing and the worst thing to happen to your child.  But, I don’t know too many people who just do good things all the time.  The most important thing to give your child is love and acceptance because no matter what he has to deal with later, he will always have that.

H2N:  Then there’s the old man, Red, who’s totally estranged from his whole family and very much alone.  He seems like a very loving person, but he also seems like he might have been someone who was not brought up with a lot of love and acceptance.  Can you talk a bit about growing a relationship with him?  You’re a young woman “from the big city” showing up with your camera, an interloper.  What did he make of you?  I would imagine his attention and respect was hard-won.  He’s a great storyteller with a wonderful voice.  And he’s a hell of a snappy dresser.

AH:  I was hanging out at Slab City hoping to discover a great subject.  I met this guy who was a hitchhiker and filmed him for a bit.  He told me about a trip he took with a guy named Red.  He took me to see him and Red came out in a bright red shirt.  He was tanned and he worked every day in a little garden right outside his trailer.  There are very few men like him anymore.  He can sit outside in his chair and just think for hours.  He thinks deeply about things and then thinks about how to articulate those thoughts in a way that will capture people’s attention, almost as a poet would do.  He would come up to me and say, “You know, I sat outside my trailer today and was thinking about blah, blah, blah, and this is what I think . . .” and he’d be off.  He was definitely not very trusting in the beginning.  I was some girl from LA with a camera and he wanted to know what I wanted, what I was trying to get.  But he would go and sit with me on the beach and I’d ask him pretty general things, what he thought about certain things.  I was kind of trying to talk to him about things that were bothering me while I was filming the Parrishes, what he thought about love, travel, family, etc.  I was building up this Red library of beautiful things that he’d say.  So we ended up spending a lot of time together.  Initially I was thinking of using only his voice as some kind of narrator. I was touched by his life.

But he would ask me to call before I came and was angry when I’d just show up.  With the Parrishes, I’d just drop in, throw down my bags and hang out the whole day or sometimes I would stay the night on their couch.  That was my base camp.  But Red always had a very tight schedule [laughs] and would only give me an hour or so of his time, always scheduled in advance.  Once we became friends, he took me on a long trip on his dune buggy; we went on a four- or five-hour ride into the desert and you see some of this footage in the film.  It was beautiful and intense, sometimes scary.  I would think that if anything happened to him, we’d just be stuck there in the middle of the desert with no reception [laughter].  It was a real adventure.  From then on, after that trip, I was all right in his book.  He opened up to me a lot more. He was very surprised to get that attention, very taken by the fact that someone cared that much for him and was interested in what he had to say.  He definitely is lonesome and keeps certain people at a distance.  But he has a lot of friends and the ones that do get close to him love him dearly.  He has intimacy in his life; he’s not always alone.

H2N:  Circling back to this interview technique you were taught by the NatGeo guy, about how to get close to people to learn about their secret lives or intimate aspects of themselves they don’t normally share with just anyone.  Obviously, you are adept at getting people to trust you, open up to you, befriend you without stealing anything from them. It’s pretty exciting to think of other subjects with whom you can collaborate in this way.

AH:  I love a good story.  I also write and am working on a script right now.  You never know, but I have a feeling, whatever I will do, it will be wide open in terms of style or genre.  I don’t think it’s necessary to be confined to one thing or another.  Once I discover a story, I just want to feel free to use the things that I love in art in order to tell it, dance or what have you.  Film is such an incredible format to explore other arts.  I’m not a cinephile at all, one of those people that have been sitting inside a dark cinema since childhood watching every film that comes out.  I think the diversity of what inspires me will make its way into what I create. I like learning as I do something—it deepens my understanding in such a profound way.  Whatever inspires you in life can find its way into your filmmaking; it’s just a matter of feeling free enough to do it.  And you just hope that other people like it, too.

All photos courtesy Alma Har'el.

 

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!

 

2010

 

Love, sex, snow, Helsinki, heartbreak, sadness, pain, snow, movies, writing, friends, sauna, sadness, Sweden, sadness, pain,  Berlin, movies, movies, movies, writing, writing, writing, Columbia, MO, Austin, TX, NYC, madness, despair, whirling pinball, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Warsaw, movies, fun, inspiration, Herzog, laughter, NYC redux, Berlin, heat, German, friends, summer, books, writing, decisions, Kosova, joy, happiness, movies, raki, friends, movies, friends, movies, raki, writing, writing, writing, Berlin, nesting, wandering, deciding, pondering, MMX, freefall, autumn, German, German, German, friends, wein trinken, nesting, deciding, pondering, writing, writing, writing, Sheffield, Copenhagen, friends, Amsterdam, new crush, movies, movies, movies, writing, writing, writing, producing, programming, Kino Satellite, winter, sadness, loneliness, cozy flat, confusion, uncertainty, longing, friends, food, work, loneliness, food, uncertainty, cold, snow, dark, sleep, NYC, winter travel, anxiety, cleaning house, friends, Gossamer, tin rocket and robot, secret boxes, no Ski, loss of another year, anticipation of new, questions, questions, questions, questions.

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Dokufest Balkan Documentary Competition Winners, Part 2

Turkish filmmaker Doga Kilcioglu's Kamerayla Izdivac (Married to the Camera) won the much-coveted audience award at this year's Dokufest.  The award was calculated from votes cast by the general audience.  It's a very meaningful award to any director and Kilcioglu's film is certainly a crowd-pleaser. 

Made for television and commissioned, in part, by ARTE/France, the film focuses on the unknown faces that make up the audience of a hugely popular show in Turkey called "Marriage with Esra Erol."  A take on The Dating Game, the aim is to match-make in front of the camera and get people married as quickly as possible (and not always for love).  The film also follows some of the contestants, ranging in age from early 30s to 75.  In one hour's time, the filmmakers capture a rich and multi-layered world that reflects the riotous warp and weave of a very complex and complicated culture. 

What's so enjoyable about the film is that everyone on camera, both those that create the show and those that provide the Greek chorus commentary, i.e., the audience members, is willing to reveal and talk about the absolute fakery and artifice that goes into making a television show that means to take a nation by storm in a very competitive medium where everyone is gunning to out-sequin and out-spangle the other shows that rely on both staged audience participation and the cult of personality of their hosts.  Without the audience, it's an empty exercise and they are encouraged to participate, schooled by the crew in the ways in which they can become celebrities, too--and possibly find a bride or groom of their own!

In the opening scene, a restless mob of spectators stands in the hallway, having been kept waiting an exceedingly long time to get into the studio, their bags and bodies searched as if going through airport security.  One of them shouts impatiently, "Let us in!  We aren't terrorists!  We're the audience!!"  To my mind, one of the best movie lines ever.  (Pictured above, sophisticated but superstitious hostess, Esra Erol, praying backstage before the show.  Her dream is to become her country's Oprah.)

For this piece, which she co-edits, Kilcioglu (pictured) partners with her brother and producing partner, Can Kilcioglu, who does wonderful camera work; soundperson, Ögünc Hatipoglu; and co-editors Pierre Haberer and Cem Yildirim to create absolutely wonderful vérité, the camera stealthily capturing subjects in incredibly funny and unguarded moments--that is, when they're not directly engaging with the camera since most have become super savvy in the ways of entertainment.  One such unguarded moment which made me laugh out loud was when the president comes to visit a houseful of women to listen to their grievances and to "acknowledge their oppression."  One of the regular audience "plants" for the show is also a campaign worker and organizes citizen meetings with campaigning or elected officials.  (Television = Politics--one nonexistent without the other.)  The consummate politician walks through the door and someone shoves a child in his arms as flashes frantically pop away.  He grins for the media's cameras, but it is Kilcioglu's camera that lingers to capture him practically dropping the little girl to the floor when the lights go off, his smile simultaneously cascading to a frown of annoyance.  Married to the Camera is a delight from start to finish.

Romanian filmmaker Alexander Nanau's The World According to Ion B. (a co-production with HBO Romania) won best film in the Balkan Documentary Competition, the jury noting that, "the director's filmmaking skill merges seamlessly with the character he portrays, leaving no opportunity wasted in the telling of his story.  It is a deeply intimate portrait told with a grace and humor that won us over unanimously."  Nanau's portrait of late-to-the-dance art celebrity, Ion Barladeanu, is indeed, full of grace, the most graceful aspect, at least to this viewer's mind, the relationship between subject and filmmaker.  The partnership in making a personal cinematic portrait of an individual is everything in documentary, the energy exchanged between subject and filmmaker through the agency of a camera lens a mysterious and alchemical process that is either successful--or not.  When it's not, it's obvious.  When it works, it's great.  But when there is a profundity that goes deeper than merely capturing a story, it is transcendent and makes for an exhilarating journey for the viewer.  And that doesn't happen very often.  (I saw one other film at Dokufest where this is also the case which I will talk about very soon.) 

The fact that Nanau accomplishes this in just 61 minutes is remarkable, the economy of scale between meaningful dramaturgy and high emotional impact impeccably balanced--please take note all you "feature-length" filmmakers!!

In 2008, when the filmmaker discovers him, Ion B. is still living on the streets, or more precisely in the back alley of an apartment building in Bucharest, a place he's called home for over 20 years, taken in by the building manager and kept like a pet in the backyard.  Ion B. is also a drunkard and as his story unfolds, we learn little by little why he felt the need to anesthetize himself from his past.  In these alcohol-infused years, Ion has created an astounding body of work, making 900 brilliant drawings and collages dating from the 70s to the mid-90s.  In one of the most affecting opening scenes in recent memory, as Ion is addressing Nanau's camera, telling him that he'll "die where he lays in an alleyway, a drunkard and a useless piece of junk," someone from an upstairs window starts throwing their trash down onto the street, the detritus falling several stories and crashing loudly onto the ground around Ion where he lolls on his pallet.  This, we learn, is the genesis of his art, the flotsam that people discard.

Then Dan Popescu comes along, a young successful art gallery owner who recognizes the absolute goldmine in Ion's work and goes about marketing his discovery to the art world.  "We'll have a normal artist / gallery owner relationship," he tells Ion.  Yet, there is nothing "normal" about this man's life and he would never in a million years be able to insinuate himself into the art world no matter how hard Popescu tries to pull a My Fair Lady number on Mr. B, a new set of choppers notwithstanding.  There are many humorous scenes that transpire from this (seemingly) mutually beneficial relationship, but time after time, Ion is unwilling or unable to play along.  He doesn't want to understand his work in the context of Warhol and Otto Dix--he doesn't know who they are and he doesn't care.  When they read the culture section of the local newspaper together, which bestows the title of "Forefather of Pop Art" on Ion, he asks Dan what Pop Art is.  When Dan tries to explain the late-60s, early 70s art movement, he also notes that during that time, Romania was run by dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, who blocked any information from the West.  Ceausescu damaged Ion's life in many ways, as he did most of the population of his country, and the artist used the image of the dictator in his art quite a bit.  We realize that he would probably be a dead man if his art had been "above ground" at the time.  Ion's own father, a communist activist and leader and Ceausescu supporter, in fact, at one time had Ion and his brother arrested.  But instead of engaging in any direct (and exceedingly painful) discussion of his former life before coming to Bucharest, Ion rubs his bushy eyebrows and proclaims, "I really need to get a haircut today."

I won't describe the entire journey this film takes (one of the stronger sections is when Ion returns to his native village of Zapodeni after a 17-year absence to confront his past), but by the time the film finishes, Ion B. is a very famous art star, showing at the Basel Art Fair in 2009 where the word "genius" is pronounced by one pretentious art denizen; his works are exhibited in London together with works by Andy Warhol (who?) and Marcel Duchamp; and in February of this year, he had his first solo exhibition at the Anne de Villepoix gallery in Paris.  What's even more encouraging, however, is that after a decade of not making anything new, he's created 160 new collages.

As for the "normal artist / art gallery owner relationship"?  I hear there's a lawsuit brewing, big surprise. 

Dokufest Balkan Documentary Competition Winners, Part 1

Jurij Meden, the Slovenian director of 1717 Kilometrov Poletja 2009 (1717 Kilometers of Summer 2009) and Bilijana Garvanlieva, the Macedonian director of Tabakmädchen (Tobacco Girl) shared the Best Newcomer Award at this year's edition of Dokufest.  Tobacco Girl also garnered a special mention for the Human Rights Award, its jury saying that Garvanlieva's film takes the form of a "poetic confrontation of established social norms and multi-layered inequalities."

These filmmakers aren't exactly newcomers in terms of making films, but the Balkan Documentary Competition jurors (Emel Celebi from Turkey, who won the Best Balkan Documentary Award last year for her Sisters of Lilith; Michael Palmieri from the US; and Sissi Korhonen from Finland) decided that they wanted to recognize the fine work these directors presented, particularly since they work so independently, or without direct support from their own countries.  In fact, in her acceptance speech at the awards ceremony, Garvanlieva noted that she's made her films, including this one, "no thanks to my country" of Macedonia.  Recognition and support have come mainly from Germany.

Both half-hour films, in their own unique way, artfully show the traditional versus modern dilemmas and contradictions of their regions, each beautifully illustrating the speed at which life can move when one is determined to rocket through time and space.  In Meden's case, it is a physical journey by car of almost 2000 kilometers through six countries; in the young girl, Mümine's case, she traverses centuries of tradition in an attempt to land squarely in the midst of modern times.  The growing pains are intensely palpable, both for her, and for her family.

Tobacco Girl opens with a haunting song telling of the 600-year-old history of the people that inhabit the high mountain regions of Macedonia, part of the Turkish minority that resides on the land.  As a family unit--mother, father, two daughters and two sons--they do backbreaking work in the tobacco fields, the crop their only source of income.  As the tobacco is meant to be sold for survival, so are the children who work the fields, for they are just as precious a commodity to their parents as the substance they sell at market.  In her direction Garvanlieva shows, to wonderful effect, the claustrophobia of their lives, and I cannot praise highly enough cinematographer Susanne Schüle's camera work, which is absolutely exquisite.  The vibrant, multicolored traditional costumes the women wear stand out in bas-relief, not only from the dun-colored background of the village's dirt and wood, but also against the Western wear the men sport--leather jackets, T-shirts, jeans, all shades of brown, black and gray.

What is so appealing about this story is that instead of presenting some boring ethnographic treatise on these mountain people, the director tells the story from the 14-year-old girl's point of view, gossiping with her girlfriends, flirting with boys, talking incessantly about their crushes and obsessions, their dreams for the future.  But Mümine wants more.  She describes sorting tobacco with her family as pure "agony," and is determined to educate herself enough so that she can marry the person she wants to marry, so that she can move to the capital city of Skopje to go to school and do well enough to become a teacher, in the process, totally breaking "the laws of nature" her people have followed since anyone can remember.  The intimate scenes with the family are painful in their complexity--no raised voices or overly dramatic scenes, but plenty of fierce looks and reprimands, particularly from the matriarch who threatens the girl with permanent expulsion from the family if she runs away to the city. 

Yet the whole family is moving into modern times, using their earnings to buy a new house--but still compelled to sacrifice a goat in honor of their new dwelling; shopping for new appliances--but still discussing marrying off their children for the highest financial advantage, first the eldest son, then the eldest daughter, and then Mümine.  It is determined the youngest girl will fetch the highest price because she is so pretty.  However, the boy she loves is poor, and this angers her mother no end.  The camera consistently captures Mümine's universal beauty throughout the film, yet, oddly, when we do see her in modern dress at the end visiting the school in Skopje decked out in jeans, tennis shoes, hoodie, hair tied back in a ponytail, she appears to be just an ordinary, average, modern teenager.  Yet this is exactly who she wishes to be.

Jurij Meden is a freelance film writer and curator, his catalog bio consisting of this meager information:  "born in Ljubljana in 1977, film worker."  In his glorious experimental piece, 1717 Kilometers, we journey through his native Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzogovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo.  The film is a super 8mm record of summer, filmed by Meden and Vlado Skafar, "filled with idiotic excursions, false goals, prodigal waste, disappointed loves, galling personal insufficiencies, and half-witted associations."  It is a thrilling road movie on speed.  As visually stunning as the piece is, the sound design and score must be noted, as well.  Created by Paulo Raposo, a sound and media artist based in Lisbon, Portugal, the music and ambient recordings add a totally appropriate psychological element, capturing the essence of the hallucinogenic quality of a long road trip, the world flying by, hour after hour, day after day, from the confines of an automobile. 

The film's physicality reflects how much ground gets covered, geographically, emotionally and otherwise.  The road becomes an alternate universe, road weariness creating its own dreamscape, the monotony and hypnotic cast of it all, life passing by as if it's one extended mirage, image after image floating out of the emptiness that surrounds the strip of road one follows until it turns into total and utter abstraction, one image blending into another, coming in and out of focus, one moment the colors overly-saturated, then everything blurry and opaque.  The distinct world of the constant traveler is one of feeling, somehow, captured, even though the journey is through one's own auspices, the "freedom of the open road" a siren call for many, a rite of passage.  But there is a feeling of isolation that is contradictory to the freedom of movement, a feeling that there is no one else in the world that knows where you are since your physical location changes every moment, you're always somewhere different than you were just a second before.  Lost, you have the effortless freedom of a ghost and feel as if you could float on the wind and blow through solid obstacles without touching them.  It is a fantastic journey, one simply signed at its close, as if it's an art piece (which it is), JM 2010.

Eau de Vie, Or: Self-Transformation Through Raki

I don't visit too many places where I meet a third-generation carpenter carrying on the work his grandfather started refurbishing the wooden staircase that leads up to the bell tower in an Orthodox Cathedral.  This particular church is in the center of the town of Prizren, Kosova and is guarded by armed policemen.  It was badly damaged during the ethnic riots of March 2004 and is almost fully repaired, but is still not open to the public.  However, they let me in to take a look in a casual, friendly manner. 

I don't visit too many places where I, and my young, female guide, can interrupt three ancient men engrossed in conversation on a bench in the garden of a mosque (one of several in the town) to ask if they will let us inside the locked sanctuary.  (Oddly, there is a modern LED display board on the side of the building like the ones you see at train stations and airports that informs passerby of daily prayer times.)  With a slight downward tilt of his capped head, one of them shuffles to the front door and unlocks it, gesturing for us to slip off our shoes, but not concerned that our heads aren't  covered or that our arms and legs are bare.  He leaves us to take in the beautiful and peaceful interior, caustics of soft sunlight bouncing on the walls that reveal the private spaces where men meditate and pray.

I don't visit too many places where a waiter in a restaurant that I frequent becomes a friend, someone I look forward to seeing every morning.  He calls me Miss Pamela and I call him Mr. Love, not because his name is Ashkan which means "my love" in Turkish, but because he just is Mr. Love.  A small group of us adopts him as our Balkan mother and he feeds and fusses over us several times a day, only asking for a bit of sympathy when his hands go numb from carrying too many hot, heavy plates of food.  He tells us next week is Ramadan and people in the town are celebrating in a frenzy--several wedding processions pass by every day, there is much eating and drinking, and much promenading in the streets, disco music thumping everywhere.  The place pulses like Ibiza, but it is calm, calm, calm.  I have never met lovelier people.  (Pictured, Ashkan serving breakfast to grateful filmmaker, Rowland Jobson, director of the outstanding short fiction piece, A Girl Like Me, filmmaker, Michael Palmieri, who served on the Balkan jury, still sleeping behind his RayBans.  Unbeknownst to their owner, said shades fell under the table one night, but were found and returned by--you know it--Mr. Love.)

I don't visit too many places where I stay up until 6:00 a.m. every morning, the recorded call of the muezzin at a bit before 5, when the sky's black starts to turn a deep violet, announcing that a new day has begun.  We find ourselves still glued to our chairs around a table in the town square engrossed in conversation, eyes sparkling, faces smiling, nonstop laughter, the proprietor patiently bringing us glass after glass of homemade raki and, occasionally, something to eat--bread with cheese, a plate of spicy meat, pommes frites with lots of salt--nary a sign indicating that he wishes us to get the hell out of his place so he can go to bed.  Instead of stumbling off to our own beds, we slide by our hotel to grab our cameras and go exploring, no one awake in the still-sleeping town except the occasional baker pounding dough to the accompaniment of Arab pop softly playing from a small radio, or the wild pack of dogs that roam the streets, occasionally stopping so that a couple of them can hump for a few seconds before the group moves on.  We refrain from retiring just yet, not because we're that keen on taking pictures (although we are), but because we simply aren't ready to give up one another's company.  Not just yet.  It feels like the beginning of a love affair when you can't stand to be out of someone's presence for a moment. 

Okay, raki, or "rakifuel," as Miss Sonja calls it:  we're puzzled.  Normally, when one stays up all night drinking alcohol, especially something as pure and strong as this anise-flavored spirit quaffed in Turkey, Bosnia and the rest of the Balkans, also known as Lion's Milk (!), one gets completely blotto, right?  Barely able to speak, let alone climb a steep hill to the fortress overlooking the town.  (To be honest, we were a bit wobbly when we reached the top.)  But because we fortify ourselves regularly with food, a local assures us that yes, one can stay up for days drinking raki, carrying on one long, rambling conversation, a mad dialog that fuels the imagination and the soul, that makes everyone as witty as Dorothy Parker, as wise as Socrates--a regular gathering of geniuses, I tell you.  At least that's how it seemed to us.

I don't visit too many film festivals, like Dokufest, which staged its ninth iteration this year, that marry both its program and its surroundings so perfectly.  Executive director, Aliriza Arënliu, and artistic director, Veton Nurkollari, presented an amazing program of international feature and short documentary work, one of the best I've encountered.  And Samir Karahoda's short fiction program was a revelation.  Ironically, since there are no cinemas there besides the ones created specifically for the festival, you can see audiences grappling with how to watch a movie.  They, literally, don't really know how.  So there is usually a lot more going on than movie-watching.  But, somehow, because of the open air venues--on the river, up on the fortress wall, the big outdoor amphitheatre in the middle of town--it only adds to the celebratory quality of the proceedings.  The directors of Hamburg-based A Wall Is A Screen used this to glorious advantage and presented a fantastic shorts program that floated through the town one evening, projecting films on the walls of a bank, a mosque, a restaurant, a residential building, to great effect, a large crowd following along for the 90-minute program.  

It was a very special week and I can only offer up these quixotic and scattered impressions to describe the spectacular experience it truly was.  What I can offer up in a more concrete fashion (more or less) are future posts which talk about some of the films.  In my next installment, I'll start with the stand-outs in the Balkan competition program, some selections from the international competition which I was privileged to jury along with AJ Schnack, Doug Block, Sonja Henrici and Adriatik Kelmendi, and other fare that played in the five competitions, as well as in other special strands.  Stay tuned.

Dokufest!

The 2010 edition of Dokufest in the ancient city of Prizren, Kosovo, starts tomorrow, July 31, and runs through the 8th of August.  Like many small areas with nascent film industries, lucky local audiences and international guests will get a chance to partake of a program containing 156 films from 34 different countries, a truly international selection of the best of world nonfiction film.  Because of where Prizren is located, audiences will also get to take advantage of warm-weather screenings amongst the naturally beautiful terrain--a river does, indeed, run through it.  (Pictured, one of three open-air theaters at the festival, the new Fortress Cinema, installed on the highest peak of the town.)

Executive director, Aliriza Arënliu, visionary artistic director, Veton Nurkollari, short film programmer, Samir Karahoda, and their team have put together a fantastic program with five competitions, a look at the best of international cinema (out of competition), a special strand of films from Finland (have we figured out that something special is happening in Finland, yet?), a spotlight on Afghanistan, a Zelimer Zilnik retrospective, a shorts program by Philippine wunderkind, Khavan De La Cruz, Cities on Speed, and much more.  As well, there is special programming for kids, workshops, and tours of the local area.  Sean Farnel, Hot Docs' head of programming, has called Dokufest "one of the best festival experiences I've ever had."

Look for impressions, wrap-ups, and reviews here on SIM, Hammer to Nail and in DOX Magazine from the new Republic of Kosovo.

Interview: Marlo Poras, Director THE MOSUO SISTERS; RUN, GRANNY, RUN; MAI'S AMERICA

By most accounts, filmmaker Marlo Poras had reached a pinnacle of success several years ago, albeit in the very circumscribed world of New York-based feature film editing.  She had moved to New York to pursue her true calling, despite discouragement from concerned parents since they felt that filmmaking was not a viable career choice.  She quickly shot up the ladder In a very short time, from someone doing "crap PA jobs," to working beside the top feature editors in Manhattan at the time.  These days, she is on her way to completing her third feature documentary called The Mosuo Sisters.  The project has received funding from Cinereach, The Jerome Foundation and The LEF Foundation, and was also recently named as one of the recipients of a 2010 Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund grant. 

The Mosuo Sisters, which Poras is co-producing and co-directing with Yu Ying Wu Chou, is about two sisters from China's last remaining matriarchal society, the Mosuo, a very small ethnic minority of about 40,000 people.  Working in Beijing, the two young women are caught up in the worldwide economic downturn that has hit China very hard, and lose their jobs.  Jua Ma and La Tsuo head for home in a reverse exodus, just like millions of others who have come to the big cities to make their way and support families back home.  Jua Ma and La Tsuo's home is a remote village in the foothills of the Himalayas.  Having been exposed to the modern world, financial independence and the endless possibilities open to them, their views are irreparably changed in relation to their native traditions.  The filmmakers have been following the sisters for close to two years as one gives up her education to stay on the farm and help their ailing mother, while the other heads back to the city to pursue her dreams and to try her luck as an entertainer.  The story and cinematic scope of the project are a bit of a departure for Poras, director of Mai's America and Run, Granny, Run, both multiple award-winning films, the first broadcast as part of PBS' P.O.V. series in 2002, the second broadcasting on HBO in the fall of 2007.

Poras is an extremely likable, open and friendly person, a bit shy and quite modest considering her accomplishments.  And she is full of excitement and passion when talking about the craft of documentary filmmaking.  Born on a US army base in Kentucky during the Vietnam War, she graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in history.  Soon after moving to New York, she became an assistant editor to Thelma Schoonmaker and went on to assist on  several feature films. 

She and I talked a few weeks ago on a glorious spring day, sitting on a park bench in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn amidst a plethora of dogs chasing balls, kids chasing dogs, and contented picnickers sprinkled everywhere under the cherry blossoms.  With the relentless trill of a big ice cream truck parked right behind us, we talked about the perils of becoming successful (and boxed in) doing work that, ultimately, is not that meaningful, the trajectory of the career she always dreamed of having, and the joys and inspirations of mentoring young, precocious Brooklyn teens as they make their first films.

Still in Motion (SIM):  This new project is quite a departure from anything you've done in the past.  Even though, as in your other films, you're concentrating on a small-scale story, you're shooting in a culture and in a language not your own.

Marlo Poras (MP):  Yes, that's right; I speak remedial Mandarin, at best.

SIM:  Why this story?  How did it come across your radar?

MP:  I lived and worked in Vietnam for two years in the 90s, where I made a film about an exchange student from Hanoi who comes to the States to study.

SIM:  Mai's America, which is a really wonderful film.  I liked it even more the second time I watched it.  There's a lot of wonderful stuff going on there.  It's a really graceful film. 

MP:  That's so nice to hear, thank you!  During that experience, I was fascinated by the radical changes happening in Vietnam.  I thought I was going to be able to work that into Mai's story, but the film ended up becoming more about America than Vietnam, which was disappointing to me in certain ways.  When I lived in Vietnam, a friend who was working for an NGO in Hanoi helped me find work producing HIV/AIDS education videos for ethnic minority teenagers.  Working on the videos, I witnessed first-hand the complicated issues ethnic minorities face as the modern world seeps into their everyday lives.  The changes I saw happening in Vietnam were vast, but China has recently been going through a period of seismic change and I've been fascinated for years by how ethnic minorities are faring there.  After completing Run, Granny, Run, I was itching to return to Asia, China in particular, to explore making a film.  When I found out about the Mosuo, I was hooked, inspired by their matrilineal traditions, and by the fact that they think that the institution of marriage is an attack on the family.  Their traditions are so unique and go against the grain of most mainstream societies, including China's, including ours.  In a way, this film has been a return to some of the issues and themes I didn't get to explore in Mai's America.

SIM:  Did you train as a filmmaker?  Was this career intentional?

MP:  No, I didn't go to film school.  I wanted to study film in high school but there weren't any classes or programs available then.  Today, I look at these kids at Reel Works where I've been mentoring.  I'm jealous of all these incredible video programs for young people out there now! 

SIM:  The Tribeca Film Institute just implemented a major program all over New York City to get cameras into kids' hands, especially at the high school level.  They're getting to learn to express themselves and be heard in their own jargon, with their own distinct points of view.

MP:  That's great to hear.  Reel Works is exceptional because of the fantastic staff who provides a mentoring program using professionals in the field.  The program gives structure and feedback in a way that I think the kids learn so much from.

SIM:  The caliber of the mentors is pretty amazing, as well.  You've got the superstars of the documentary world going in there and dedicating their time and attention with such enthusiasm and devotion.  Lucky kids!

MP:  Rodney [Evans] is doing such an impressive job.  There was nothing even close when I was in high school.  But I was always fascinated by film and spent all my free time watching movies.  I wanted to pursue a career in film, but my parents talked me out of it.  "Not realistic."  "It's too competitive."  They didn't want that for me.  So I was a liberal arts student and studied history which is not really any more "realistic" in terms of making a living!  I'm actually very, very glad that I did study history.  I learned how to write and I learned how to research, how to listen, and those skills are invaluable.  I moved to New York after college because in my last year, I started thinking a lot more about film.  I had taken the one documentary class offered at the university which was tremendous and I had a wonderful teacher.  So I had a bit of an academic introduction, at least, to film that made me realize that it was definitely what I wanted to pursue.

After moving to New York, I had a bunch of crap PA jobs, chopping strawberries into ten pieces each for very high-maintenance commercial directors.  I started asking around about other possibilities and most people recommended that I learn a craft; I then could make a living at that craft while exploring ideas about my own films.  I kept being drawn to the edit room.  It might have been because that was the easiest transition from history and research and writing, story structure and things like that.  I was fascinated by editing.  People told me that if I wanted to do editing, it would be better for me to start in features, meaning it was easier to branch out from there to documentaries, to commercials, corporate work; it would give me more job options down the line.  I was more interested in documentary but I heeded the advice given to me.

Like most people starting out, I had a pretty pathetic resume and wondered how the hell I was going to get a job.  This was before the ease of the Internet and I, somehow, was able to find numbers and addresses of people and I would write to them or call them and offer to take them out for coffee.  I can't quite fathom how that was all possible without the Internet, but I did it!  I met mostly male editors in their 40s and 50s, all of whom hated directors and were very crotchety and tried to talk me out of it altogether.  What did they know, all those old, unhappy men?  But the one thing they did say that was useful was that I should visit The Brill Building and visit the different editing houses there, just walk around and meet people and give them my resume.  I was so nervous, so beside myself.  What did I have to offer?  I knew nothing, had no experience.  The night before I was planning on doing this, to go around knocking on doors, I didn't sleep at all.  I was a total wreck with my stack of pathetic resumes.  I get out at Times Square and I was, literally, shaking.  I was walking down the street and that block, for some reason, was totally empty.  No one was on the street.  I looked up and Christopher Reeve was walking towards me.  This was before his accident.  He saw me and looked at me and smiled at me.  And that smile coming from Christopher Reeve at that moment saved me.  It thought, if Superman can do it, so can I!  [laughing]  A highly cheesy moment, but I got my first internship that afternoon.

SIM: And you learned on the job.

MP:  Yes, and it was a great way to learn.  Interestingly, I kept getting jobs that other people who I thought were much more qualified weren't getting.

SIM:  And why do you think that was?

MP:  I was told more than once by employers that my competition were all these 21-year-old, NYU film school grads who thought they were directors already.  They came into the editing room with a lot of attitude, wanting to take direction from no one, least of all the director of the film.  I was a sieve, taking everything in, learning really quickly, having absolutely no ego about any of it.  It was such an amazing learning experience.  And I learned to edit film.  I prefer editing digitally, but I'm so glad that I had that exposure.

So I worked my way up and I finally got a job working under Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese's editor, which was pretty tremendous.

SIM:  Yeah, I would say so!

MP:  Yeah.  It was within three or four years of starting.  I got exactly where I wanted to be; it was incredible.  I got into the editing union and everything.  But after a year, I decided that I wanted out of fiction film; it wasn't the right place for me--all of the money, all of the egos, the serious workaholic syndrome, as in "no life."  It really turned me off, the ways in which this very high end fiction film world operated.  It's your whole world; you live and you breathe it all the time.  It also involved one or two all-nighters every week, working six, seven days a week and it just made me ask myself if that was really what I wanted out of life.  As an apprentice and assistant editor, I only worked on one film that I really loved, Daytrippers [1996].  I thought, in a lifetime, maybe I'd work on four or five films that I really believed in.

SIM:  It's interesting that this happens to many people--one reaches a "pinnacle" of sorts in one's career and realizes that there needs to be more.  Now what? 

MP:  It's a type-A kind of attribute, I think.  You fixate on a goal and do all you can to get there, but in the process, you ignore the warning signs because you're all about the goal.  Once you achieve it, you realize it's not the be all, end all; you want more out of life and then end up pushing in a different direction.

SIM:  I don't know too many creative people that don't go through that on a regular basis.  It's part of the deal.  It's always a bit of a traumatic moment, no doubt, because you're looking into the void again; you feel like you're starting over from scratch.

MP:  You want all that groundwork to pay off and mean something in the end.

SIM:  In essence, it does, but never in the way in which you anticipate.

MP:  Leaving the feature film world led me to documentary, so it did pay off.  Luckily, the second editor that worked under Thelma was someone I became very close with and he saw something in me that was different from other people working there.  James Kwei made it his cause over that year to talk me out of continuing in fiction film.  He ended up leaving, as well.  Jimmy had worked for Scorsese for twenty years or something like that, work most people would die for.  He ended up becoming a veterinary assistant and he's so much happier.  To this day, I'm so grateful to him.  I appreciate and actually savor the work of talented feature film editors, but it wasn't the right place for me at the time.

So then I ran away to Vietnam, very confused, and thought I was getting out of filmmaking altogether.  As I said, I'd always been fascinated by Asia.  I was born on an army base during the Vietnam War and had a particular interest in that country.  I thought I would go for a couple of weeks and ended up staying.

SIM:  How did you meet Mai?

MP:  Well, it was while I was there that these digital cameras came out for the first time, cameras that could shoot something that produced broadcast-quality material.  So after about a year of trashing film and saying I was never going to work in the industry again, reading about the Sony VX1000 pulled me back in.  I was in such a unique position in Hanoi, being exposed to North Vietnamese stories that no one was hearing about in the States.  So I went and bought a camera.  Right around that time, one of my roommates was teaching a group of exchange students from North Vietnam, all of whose parents had fought in the war against America.  These kids had such a strange attitude towards the States.  They were really cocky because they'd won the war.  I, for one, had never really thought about that vantage point, despite having studied that time in history, thinking I knew every nuance of what went on.  They did win that war against this behemoth of a country and had intense national pride about that.  But they also had this stereotypical fascination with everything American--TV, Hollywood, all things Western.  I just felt it was such a novel launching point for a project.

It took me a whole year just to get access to film the students.  I chose four girls to follow over the summer in Vietnam and then I visited each of them when they got to the States.  Luckily, David Sutherland, a wonderful documentary filmmaker, became my advisor.  [Sutherland is also executive producing The Mosuo Sisters.]  I really didn't know what I was doing.  I was in over my head in terms of trying to figure out the storytelling aspects of all of it.  It was also, economically, not feasible.  It was overly ambitious to follow four characters.  He sat me down and gently asked me all of the right questions and really pushed me in honing down the focus of the film.  It was hard because all of the girls were living in such unique and unexpected places in America, even more unique than Mai's situation.  There was one girl who was placed with this very angry Iranian woman in Oregon who thought that Monica Lewinsky was a Jewish-Israeli spy.  Another girl was with one of the few Caucasian exchange families, but they lived on a Hopi Indian reservation.  She was really racist towards all of the Native Americans when she first got there.  Ethnic minorities are very looked down on in North Vietnam.  Very complicated stuff.  So it was actually very hard to narrow it down.  But Mai was the most comfortable in front of the camera, a natural. 

SIM:  How in the world do these people qualify to accept an exchange student?  In the film, there's a lot of discomfort that this girl is just not in the right place at all and it sounds like that was the case for most of these girls.  These families seem inadequately prepared or equipped to take in a foreign exchange student!  Were there any home visits at all?  There's such a distinct lack of cultural sensitivity that it just seems like a recipe for disaster and puts these students in a very vulnerable place.

MP:  I had a lot of problems with the agency that was placing these girls and I let them know it.  That could have been a whole separate film about this exchange program and the state representative and the city representative that placed Mai.  That whole backstory is like a Montel Williams show, really.  But it made me think a lot about what America is and how we define America.  None of the girls expected America to look like the communities in which they landed.

SIM:  We get a sanitized and simplistic version of what this country is, as does the rest of the world.  In your films, you have a talent for capturing these unexpected slices of life that are America, whether we want to acknowledge that or not.  You capture that in Run, Granny, Run, as well.

MP:  I do shy away from stereotypes but when you film people--well, you just never know what to expect.  It's always surprising.  The lived life I've filmed is never anything I could have come up with on my own.  It's a thrill when things expose themselves that way, all of the complexity and strangeness.  Once I started filming these girls, once I started filming Mai, I was totally hooked.

SIM:  Talk a bit about your relationship with her, your first documentary subject?  It was very much a collaboration since she gave you so much.

MP:  We did collaborate a lot and I would tell her what I was after.  We had very long conversations to try to figure out what she was thinking.  Sometimes things would be murky for her and when she could find a way to articulate things from her own unique perspective, it was very exciting.  She enjoyed the process.  She was very alone there and so she loved being seen by the camera.  Growing up, she was always a bit of a shining star.  She appreciated being seen in a place where she was kind of invisible.

SIM:  Your treatment of her sexuality, and that topic in the film in general, is treated with a great deal of nuance.  It's never something that's discussed really overtly.  Her friendship with Chris / Christy is so fascinating, and then he does this 180 turn that's very bittersweet, both for her and for the audience.  You're right; you could not have written that.

MP:  It did turn out to be such rich material and it was completely serendipitous.  The treatment of those identity issues was oblique because it was what it was.  Mai was interesting because I don't think she really ever played around with her sexuality.  She's pretty straight, although I think when she was in Mississippi, she felt so asexual because nobody was interested in her.  I was shocked when she shaved her head.  But in certain parts of Asia, that became a trend for young girls to do that, sort of a reaction against the typical hyper-feminization that's part of the culture.  I think she found it inspiring that people here in the States played with those defined roles.  In that way, meeting Christy was very liberating for her.  I think she also connected with him deeply because, as a transvestite in the rural South, he was another outsider.  It was clear that many people in Mississippi didn't think that Mai was fully human so she connected a lot with him about that.  It was as shocking to anyone as it was to me when he "straightened" out and returned to the church as a heterosexual man.

SIM:  I actually found that incredibly sad.  My heart sank a bit.  And there was a part of it that seemed contrived on his part, even though you realize it really is a genuine desire to fit in and go back to what's familiar and comfortable, I guess.

MP:  The rural South can be so vibrant and surprisingly diverse, but it can also be very oppressive.  The gay bar where he performed was hidden down a long, narrow country road.  Chris' life was very dangerous.  Growing up, he loved being a part of the church, being part of the community, and it was crushing for him to have to leave that behind when he came out.  He wanted to be "normal," to fit in again.  I think his family was pushing him a lot, as well.  He loved his family, was a total mama's boy.  He lived with his parents but had moved out while we were filming.  I think he was so happy to be back in the church, happy to be part of that community again.  But that only lasted for about eight months.  The last time I talked to him, he was living in New Orleans and he told me that he had found someone there to sponsor a sex change operation.  His story could have been a whole separate film. 

SIM:  For your first film, landing a P.O.V. slot was awesome--a promising start to your career as a documentary filmmaker.

MP:  It was amazing.  David Sutherland also helped me along so much.  It got funded by ITVS which was extraordinary, to have that kind of faith in me for my first film.  I'm still very grateful for that.  It got a national broadcast, won some awards.  More than anything, it was my own self-styled film school and I was happy enough with it as just that.  So for it to actually have legs and the kind of life that it had was extremely gratifying.

SIM:  So you could call yourself a filmmaker after that--when did that realization hit you since this was a new transition?

MP:  I think it hit me while I was making Mai's America.  I was going full throttle, living it and breathing it and spending twenty four hours a day doing it.  I put my life on hold for the film.  By the end of it, I knew I had to pursue a career as a documentary filmmaker.  It's what I had been wanting to do all along.  Having said that, there are moments when it does feel absurd, times when I completely lose confidence and feel like I don't know what I'm doing.  My lack of formal training catches up with me and I feel like a hack.  And yet, at other times, I feel very much like an increasingly experienced filmmaker.

SIM:  Going into your second film, what was your mindset?  Did it feel like starting from scratch?

MP:  Each film experience is so different.  The main part of Run, Granny, Run was shot over the course of four months.  I was on location with Doris and the campaign ninety percent of the time.  It was a very transporting experience.  I hadn't done that before.  When I would film Mai, I would visit her depending on what was happening in her life, usually for four days to two weeks at a time.

With Doris, I loved being completely subsumed in what was happening in a concentrated way.  It was a world I never thought I would have penetrated and it was very surreal.  She and her campaign workers were living hard, pursuing a dream they were so deeply passionate about.

SIM:  Did a close bond form between the two of you right away?

MP:  I adored her right away and she was incredibly warm with me, but it took a little while for her son, Jim, and her closest advisor, Dennis, to trust me.  A lot of people had approached her wanting to do a documentary piece on her.  They had dealt with a lot of well-intentioned but slightly flaky people who would talk a good game but rarely came through in any substantive way.  They were warm and welcoming, but I didn't necessarily get the access I wanted right away.  Whenever they'd have an argument or Doris would lose her temper, Dennis would put his hand up in front of the camera and ask me to stop filming.  Everyone around her was very protective.  They didn't know what my intentions were--for all they knew, I was planning to do some kind of Granny smackdown [laughing].

Doris was 94-years-old and had dealt with the media for a long time, so was often on autopilot.  I wanted to do something a little bit different than what she normally gave the media.  She was a really dynamic, incredible woman, but after dealing with the media for that long, it was just very hard for her not to talk in sound bytes, and I was media, even though I didn't think of myself that way.  I didn't know if I was going to be able to get under her skin in a different way.  There's a scene in the film where she was going for one of her first morning walks back in New Hampshire.  Dennis was going over issues with her while she was walking, training for a bigger walk.  She'd been on the road in a van for about a year so she wasn't in the best physical shape and her emphysema was kicking in that day.  She was exhausted and he was pushing her on the issues and she lost her temper and snapped.  But he didn't put his hand up in front of the camera that time.  He trusted me from that point on, trusted that it would be a balanced piece.

I told them that I wasn't interested in hagiography.  What Doris did was so extraordinary, walking across the country at ninety, becoming the Democratic nominee to the US Senate at ninety-four.  Her feats felt almost super-human.  But I knew she fought hard to achieve those things.  She fought the liabilities of old age, the doubts of nay-sayers.  She fought the weather; she fought death.  I wanted to show her for the human being that she was.  I wanted to show that she did have moments of suffering and things were difficult for her sometimes, she did lose her temper and she did get exhausted and overwhelmed.  And yet, in spite of all these things, she was still able to live harder and accomplish more in her 90s than most of us do in a lifetime.  I wanted the film to show her trajectory, how her flinty determination to get through those challenges she faced often led her to accomplish exceptional things.  To me, those human moments, those struggles, made her achievements more heroic, and also more accessible.  [Doris "Granny D" Haddock died at the age of 100 at her home in Dublin, New Hampshire in March of this year.  Poras wrote a wonderful tribute to her on AOLNews.com.  You can read it here.]

SIM:  Well, that access, especially to a subject like that, should be hard-won.  I think that's the real secret to a successful nonfiction filmmaker, really, because that's what you need, that trusted relationship and collaboration with your subjects to really tell a substantive story.  It's not something that can be faked.  You wait for those magical moments and hope they keep coming to make a whole film.

MP:  Oh yeah, those moments are like crack.  But being able to build them together and create something that's layered, that has highs and lows, that's what does justice to the person you're documenting.  I see a lot of documentary portraits that are quite one-dimensional.

SIM:  What we're talking about is actually making me think of your work with Illeen, your Reel Works mentee.  With your help, she was able to create a piece where you can see how that kind of stuff can resonate so strongly.  I know a bit about what her original intention or idea was but this was something quite raw and, as you say, layered.  And it does have those strung together moments where she's getting these genuine reactions.  Not to mention the fact that it's ultra-personal; she took a big risk in so many ways, with camera in hand. 

MP:  Yes, her film is raw and she was very brave in making it.  She is amazing.  She had had her heart broken by this guy and sometimes she would feel victimized and get angry about him, thought he was a real asshole and would swear at his face on the screen while we were editing.  But she was touched that he agreed to be filmed and she really didn't want him to come off negatively in the piece. She wanted him to be able to see the film and still want to be friends with her.  Impressive for a 17-year-old who'd had her heart broken!  She wasn't really interested in making a revenge piece.  Her film was much more complicated and more about what it means to be in love and to then go through hard times with somebody, to give and take, and how we hopefully learn about ourselves in the process.

SIM:  Would you ever think about doing something so personal like that?

MP:  When I was younger, I very much wanted to do a film on my grandmother who had survived Nazi-occupied Germany.  I was just out of college and experimenting with a high-8 camera.  She had a hard edge to her, a unique personality.  She'd been through hell and back and had some amazing stories. But whenever I would try to interview her, she would say [affecting a thick German accent]: "Oh, that was a very hard time, very difficult.  I don't have anything to say about it!  I don't want to talk about it!"  I kept at her for a while, but she always answered the same way.  So I scrapped the film idea because I didn't think I could get anything interesting out of her.  Now, I think I could do something dynamic with that kind of material, with her insistence on not talking about tough times, on burying the past, but back then, I had no clue how to work with it.  Otherwise, I doubt I'd ever do a personal film; I'm too interested in other people's stories.

SIM:  Let's circle back to this project you're working on now, The Mosuo Sisters.  Where do things stand now?  You're almost done shooting, correct?

MP:  We are.  We've been filming Jua Ma and her younger sister, La Tsuo, and their family for the past year and a half.  The process has been much like my other films in that I could not have anticipated the unlikely twists and turns the sisters' lives have taken while we were filming.  It's been far more telling than what I initially thought might happen.  When Yu Ying and I began filming the sisters, we had no idea that the bar they worked in would soon close leaving them out of work just as the global financial crisis was hitting China.  It's been a pivotal year in both their lives, with almost too many dramatic threads to include in the final cut.

Otherwise, we're continuing to fundraise for each stage which is always difficult.  I really admire those filmmakers who can raise money with relative ease.  That's one of my next goals is to figure out how the heck to do that.  Everybody's trying to figure that out, I suppose.  I started this project using my own funds from money I had made on the DVD sales for Run, Granny, Run.  That was my start-up money.  It seems like part of the investment you have to make.

SIM:  It also makes you a self-sustaining artist and that's a huge accomplishment, to use money you've earned from other projects to keep yourself going.  It's a good business model and should be very satisfying, actually.

MP:  I was very happy I was able to do that.  It's just that it's particularly hard with the kinds of stories I tell because I never know where they're going to go at the beginning.  I can't go to a broadcaster or a funder and say that these are the themes I'm interested in exploring and this is the person through which I'll explore them.  Every time I've made a film, it ended up going somewhere radically different than where I thought it would in the beginning.  To me, as a filmmaker, that's tremendously fulfilling, but I think for funders it's nerve-wracking.  It's a little bit easier for filmmakers who are doing more issue-related films or historical films, something with a definitive story arc from the beginning.

Also, the translations for what we've been shooting have taken a long time.  The sisters speak Mandarin when they're with Chinese people, but when they're with one another or their family, they speak Mosuo which is a language only about 40,000 people speak.  We've finally found the right person for the translation job who is meticulous and has that high level of skill to find the nuances in what they're saying.

SIM:  Your co-director, Yu Ying Wu Chou, is Taiwanese.  This is the first time you've had that kind of relationship, sharing that directorial role.  Why did the collaboration take that form?

MP:  The language had a lot to do with it.  She's a native Mandarin speaker and with this kind of film, relationships and gaining trust is fifty percent of the filmmaking.  So that's what she's doing; she is the relationship with the sisters, both when we're filming and when we're not.  She talks to them regularly.  It's all about trust and communication.  She's so trustworthy and has such a beautiful relationship with them and the family.  She works mainly as an editor.  It's her first time as a filmmaker.

SIM:  Another filmmaker would not have necessarily made her a co-director or would even consider that.  She would garner more of a producer role, perhaps.  That's why I asked that question.

MP:  Well, as I said, I really do feel like the relationship with the subjects is half of it for this kind of film since without that collaboration, you really don't have much of anything.  I don't know, is that a producer's role, is that a director's role?  All those roles feel fluid for me.  She was going out on a limb as much as I was, including financially since she put some of her own money into it in the beginning.  I felt like sharing the director credit was fair.  In terms of the actual nuts and bolts directing, that's my job.  But she has a very solid sense of character development and brings good ideas to the table in that regard.  She's getting better and better as we go along, having more vision in that way.  It's a constantly-evolving partnership.

SIM:  The footage I've had an opportunity to see is really, really beautiful.

MP:  It is.  I've always shot all my own stuff, more out of financial necessity than anything.  I just never had the money to work with a DP.  And, I must say, I do really enjoy shooting.  But my shooting is solid, not elegant.  I'm able run around after people and capture important, unexpected moments, but I never felt like my images had tremendous artistry.  When we met these women and spent some time with them and decided that they would be in the film, we immersed ourselves in the bar and their world.  I just felt like there was no way I could have done it justice cinematically all on my own.  It's such a visual story, much more so than anything I've done before.

We had met this cameraman, Al Go, who works in Beijing for BBC China.  I had seen his images and he was eager to expand his shooting horizons and work on something a bit different than the news pieces he normally does.  I had seen his work, which is often exquisite.  He shot and co-produced a BBC mini-series called "White Horse Village" and after seeing that, I thought I'd be lucky to have him on board.  He's only able to join us, however, when he has time so I'm still doing most of the shooting.  I've learned a tremendous amount from him about composition, depth of field and light.  His work has really upped my game, made my shooting skills stronger.  I can do justice to the sisters' world, capture the visual complexity that's necessary for that.

SIM:  I think, as a director, it also helps you to understand the context of certain things you otherwise would not be able to given that you don't speak the language; this is a culture radically different from your own.  What are your expectations for this film?

MP:  My hope is that it will have national and international broadcasts and a solid festival run.

SIM:  And theatrically?  It's a very cinematic piece.  I would love to see it on a big screen.  But, then again, I'm a huge proponent of cinematic nonfiction and think there should be more of it, as financially unrewarding as hell it may be.  I was just wondering if you perceive this piece differently in that way from your other work.

MP:  I think about that, I do.  It would be wonderful.  It's just that it's hard to imagine that.  It feels like the theatrical world is just continuing to fall apart.  I guess I've always felt a bit ambivalent about theatrical for this kind of film, an independent documentary, because it has such a small potential release, a handful of people in New York and Los Angeles would be interested in seeing this exhibited that way, maybe a couple of other cities.  The amount of work and the financial loss is significant to say the least, and I'm always exhausted at the end of a film, deeply, deeply exhausted.  But power to those people who decide to get their films in theaters, for people who fight hard to get their theatrical exhibition.  I don't mean to demean it at all; I'm actually in awe of someone accomplishing that.  It's interesting that so many films out of China have been making me feel that theatrical can be a possibility for this one.  Up the Yangtze [directed by Yung Chang] and Last Train Home [directed by Lixin Fan] are incredibly fantastic cinematic experiences. Those films are just powerhouses.  Damn them for raising the bar so high!  Really inspiring. 

SIM:  That challenge can be worth it, you never know.  A lot depends on opportunities and the right champions with the right resources to help you realize that.  Tempering expectations is probably the best tactic at the end of the day.  What other work have you seen in the recent past that's inspired you artistically, that might inform the way in which you do future work, especially with portraiture in film?

MP:  There are specific films that I've seen that have totally transformed the way I think about making documentary.  [Pernille Rose Grønkjaer's] The Monastery rocked my world.

SIM:  Mine, as well!  I love that film so much; it's extraordinary and so is its maker.  I did a wonderful interview with her in May of 2007.  [It's on this very blog right here!]  That is one of those films that totally transcends genre--I don't care what people want to call it, it's a magnificent piece of filmmaking.  I can't wait to see what she does next.  She dedicated almost a decade of her life to that film.  An extraordinary collaboration between director and subjects.

MP:  She's one of those creative behemoths, someone that has that agility to figure out the story in a situation like that and add that level of visual poetry to it in her shooting.  It took my breath away.  I was at IDFA watching it and I was sitting directly behind her.  I leaned forward and hugged her halfway through the film!  I was so overjoyed.  Here in the States, there's such a tendency towards socially conscious-driven, activist filmmaking, a lot of which I respect.  But it's not necessarily what drives me.  To see her exploring a story that's so deceptively simple, that was not issue-driven and yet speaks to the human condition in such a profound way was so, so inspiring. 

SIM:  When did you start working on The Mosuo Sisters?

MP:  Including pre-production, almost exactly two years ago.

SIM:  So you're looking at probably another year to finish?  Three years for a big project like this is quite efficient, actually.

MP:  Sometimes it seems like a hell of a long time, but three years does seem reasonable.

SIM:  Are there other stories or subjects out there that have grabbed your attention, that are occupying your mind?

MP:  The stories I want to tell are always character-driven so it comes together when I meet that person, or persons.  There are a couple of subjects I'm currently interested in, but we'll see where it goes.  It's like falling in love--things have to click a certain way, and I'm picky. 

The important thing is to keep exploring ideas.  But I do want to do something closer to home next time.  Traveling great distances, going back and forth is exhausting.  It's thrilling, as well, but we've made eight trips to China in two years.  Just the idea of doing something in New York is so titillating.  There are so many amazing stories here and just to be able to take the subway or a taxi to a shoot would be the lap of luxury!

Indocumentales: US/Mexico Interdependent Film Series

A traveling program of films opens tonight in NYC presented by what moves you?, Cinema Tropical and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at NYU.  The documentary film series is committed to enriching the discussion on a wide variety of issues pertaining to Mexican immigration to the US.  All films are in Spanish with English subtitles and all screenings are free and open to the public. 

Indocumentales launches tonight, Cinco de Mayo, at 7:00 p.m. at the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center auditorium on the NYU campus with Al Otro Lado by Natalia Almada from 2005.  The film will be preceded by Subterraneans: Norteña Music in New York by Gaspar Orozco and Karina Escamilla.  Other films in the series are Los que se quedan/Those Who Remain by Juan Carlos Rulfo and Carlos Hagerman from 2008 which won the grand jury documentary prize at the Los Angeles Film Festival that year.  Also exhibiting: Mi vida dentro/My Life Inside by Lucía Gajá, and Farmingville by Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini.  The screening series is at various locations throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn, so be sure to check the website for locations, dates and times.

Notes from Toronto and Sneak Preview Screening of ATOMIC MOM in NYC

Just zipped up to Toronto this afternoon for the beginning of the incredible Hot Docs festival, one of my faves, never miss it.  I always come away from this event having seen some really outstanding international nonfiction work, courtesy of the superb programming team led by Mr. Sean Farnel.  I'm just trying to figure out how I'm going to see the thirty, or so, films on my must-see list before I leave and attend some conference sessions and go to all the lovely parties, including a picnic on Sunday afternoon (and many, many late nights drinking at Toronto's hottest clubs).  You can take a gander here at some of what's on tap.  Unfortunately, I will have to leave before the Toronto Documentary Forum begins (May 5 and 6), organized by the incredible Elizabeth Radshaw, but at least I got to go as an observer last year.  (Film still from Thomas Balmès' Babies.) 

I'm also thrilled to have been asked to host a panel discussion as part of the Conference & Market this year called Ripping Reality--Creativity and the New Documentary, the first conference session on Tuesday, May 4 at 11:00 a.m.  I'll be joined by filmmakers, John Appel from the Netherlands, The Player; Pawel Lozinski from Poland, Chemo; Liz Mermin from the UK, Horses; and Ken Wardrop from Ireland, His & Hers.  I highly recommend catching all of these superb films at the fest.  We will have an hour-long discussion in the beautiful Vic College chapel (including showing clips from all the films) with a 15-minute audience Q&A to follow.  Join us!

I'll also be participating in a new initiative this year called Leave the Walls at the Door, an interactive documentary think-tank workshop where roundtables of selected producers and media makers will discuss how to bring a documentary project to life interactively.  We participants will be divided into "ideation" groups, each of which will collaboratively brainstorm on, well, on something--we won't know until we get there.  (We were chosen because we are all working on interactive reality-based projects.)  The initiative is presented by the CFC Media Lab in conjunction with the Hot Docs Conference. 

I will be filing several posts here and on the newly-refreshed Hammer to Nail site in coming days.

Meanwhile, in NYC, Hibakusha Stories and the Maysles Theater will co-present "Docs on Nukes: Nuclear Narrative Through the Art of Film," on Mother's Day, May 9.  There will be a sneak preview screening of M.T. Silvia's Atomic Mom, a documentary about two mothers, one American and one Japanese, each of whom had very close encounters with the atomic bomb.  Silvia is the daughter of one of these women and the film follows her quest for the truth about the work her mother did during nuclear testing in the desert of New Mexico.  It's an incredibly moving and very personal film.  Atomic Mom was the second installment in my Projects On the Brink series--you can read it here.  (Which reminds me that I really would like to do another installment, so I'm taking suggestions of female-helmed nonfiction projects about to finish and launch into the world.) 

Accompanying Silvia's film will be Kathy Sloane's 16-minute, Witness to Hiroshima, about Keiji Tsuchiya, an artist who uses his twelve powerful watercolors to recount his experiences in Hiroshima as a 17-year-old soldier when the atomic bomb was dropped.  He relates those experiences to his subsequent life-long commitment to saving the Japanese horseshoe crab and its habitat.  You can watch the trailer here.  Silvia and Sloane, both San Francisco-based filmmakers, will be on hand for a post-screening discussion.  Go to the Maysles Cinema site for more info.

The Glass House

Educational and non-theatrical DVDs of this moving and intimate documentary by Hamid Rahmanian are now available in a limited release to coincide with No-Rooz, the celebration of the Persian new year.

The Glass House tells the story of Omid-e-Mehr, a center for girls in the heart of Tehran.  The Omid-e-Mehr Foundation was founded in Iran in 2004, in London in 2006, and in the US in 2008, by the formidable Marjaneh Halati, an Iranian-born, London-based social psychologist and psychotherapist.  Under her guidance, the workers at the center are tasked with providing a holistic (and loving) approach to helping the young women that come there in realizing self-awareness, self-determination and self-sufficiency in modern Iranian society.  These young women come from abusive homes, are motherless, have drug addictions, or just do not have the supportive resources at hand for growing up as healthy and happy members of a still quite repressive society for women.

Director Rahmanian gains deep trust and intimate access to Halati and some of her charges.  The film was an official selection at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009, opened the IRI-Continental Film Festival in South Africa, won the Human Rights Award at Dokufest in Kosovo, and was also a selection of the IDFA last year.  There are a series of community screenings set for this year that various individuals are hosting around the world.  The newly-released DVD includes scenes not included in the final cut of the film, an extended interview with Halati, and a short film called Saman.  Visit the film's website to learn more about the film and its makers, and to order the DVD.