Nisimazine Helsinki 2008#2

NISI MAZINE 2 Thursday, January 24, 2008

A Magazine Created By Nisi Masa, European Network Of Young Cinema

helsinki

Animal Love Trial Mikhail Sinev

In cooperation with: © Photo by Phie Ambo from «Mechanical Love» (2007) ©

Editorial

By Arianne Beauvillard

T

he documentary has been going through a real process of change since the planetary success of famous pamphletists such as Michael Moore.

But is the documentary genre threatened by these filmmakers who direct themselves ‘onstage’ in order to serve their own personal crusades? The problem undoubtedly comes from an explosion of social issues in the documentary arena. To denounce, it seems to be necessary to show more than is seen on primetime television; but denunciation cannot be an end in itself. It must be supported by a complete and rigorous argumentation. Obviously, every documentary, every film is a kind of discourse. However, the end does not always justify the means. If documentary forbids neither derision nor a sense of humour, one can’t help noting that some documentaries fall into a kind of TV-style sensationalism and drama.

It seems strange to have to twist the facts in order to make them more real and shocking. If the subjects are often essential — whether it be dictatorships, wars or social struggles — the cinematographic processes of these films result in something more like a personal montage than an honest analysis. More ‘ethical’ filmmakers do still exist however, such as Rithy Panh, and Albert and David Maysles, still more strict in their methods: allowing the witnesses to speak, simply letting the camera roll so as not to over-dramatise (making the whole thing less credible)...

Between these two sides, one can observe the fascination of the audience for ‘‘tabloid documentary’’, a passion we could compare with certain television broadcasts. Do these films threaten documentary? They have the right to exist obviously, but without taking up all the room. The answer thus would be no; as long as we stop calling these lampoons ‘‘documentaries’’.

NISIMAZINE HELSINKI

Thursday 24 January 2008 / # 2 A magazine published by the associations NISI MASA and Euphoria Borealis in cooperation with the DocPoint - Helsinki Documentary Film Festival and with the support of the ‘Europe for Citizens’ programme of the European Union.

EDITORIAL STAFF (NM) Editor-in-chief Matthieu Darras Secretary of the editorial Jude Lister Layout Emilie Padellec English corrections Jude Lister Contributors to this issue Ariane Beauvillard, Esra Demirkıran, Hanna Miranenka, Atso Pärnänen, Natasha Pavlovskaia, Itxaso E. Ramírez, Orkun Şahin, Balázs Simonyi COORDINATOR (EB) Lasse Lecklin ORGANISERS (EB) Eero Erkamo, Johanna Kinnari, Helena Mielonen, Atso Pärnänen, Kati Pietarinen Euphoria Borealis ry Vaasankatu 20 a B 35 00500 Helsinki +358 41 5251131 euphoria.borealis@welho.com www.euphoriaborealis.net NISI MASA 10 rue de l’Echiquier, 75010, Paris, France. + 33 (0)1 53 34 62 78 + 33 (0)6 32 61 70 26 europe@nisimasa.com www.nisimasa.com

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Nisimazine Helsinki ~ 24. 1. 2008 # 2

Film of the day Animal Love

By Ulrich Seidl (Austria, 1995) The fact that the word «pet» resembles the word «petting» is brought a new significance in this film. Animal love displays a radical image of humananimal relationships that go far beyond the point of obsession.

«It is not my interest to make disturbing films, but the everydayness itself and the way I see it are disturbing.» (U. Seidl) «Never have I looked so directly into hell» (W. Herzog)

A

nimal Love by Austrian film maker Ulrich Seidl offers an intimate glimpse into the world of animal lovers.

By doing so, it tells a disturbing story about interaction, partnership, love, and sexuality. Furthermore, Animal Love is a documentary on human noncommunication.

The beginning of the film is dominated by the portrait of a young man who buys a rabbit and then uses it as an excuse for his begging. This introduces the question of how people use their animals, and vice versa. After that, the film focuses more and more on partnership issues. We witness how animals are being turned into what their owners perceive as intimate friends. We see people treating their animals like a human partner, and people treating their partners like animals too. We also get to see people acting on the borders of socially accepted behaviour as their pets become a replacement for the love they have lost or never had.

Animal fetishism is one of the last postmodern taboos. Animal Love stands out as a unique effort to break this taboo.

It explores the most intimate spheres: pets and their owners are set up in bed, engaged in disturbingly sexual poses.

In fact, throughout the film there is an underlying notion of sexuality which is introduced by a woman in red walking her dog in an out-of-use industrial building. On one of the walls, a piece of graffiti reads ‘hure’ (‘whore’). This unusual undertone becomes stronger and stronger throughout, becoming a play on pornographic imagery.

Seidl believes that documentary cannot be objective. He therefore makes it obvious that his documentary has a script. This technique clearly indicates that what we see here is the result of Seidl’s perception and analysis of today’s society.

Animal Love is meant as a complex statement rather than a portrait or a display of research results. It is this statement that makes the film a startling experience.

Orkun Şahin

Review Back to Normandy

By Nicolas Philibert (France, 2006)

B

ack to Normandy recounts the story of Pierre Rivière, a young peasant who cut the throats of his mother, his sister Victoire and his brother Jules on June 3rd 1835.

Rivière explained his actions in his prison memoirs: he killed through the hand of God, because he believed that his father was being destroyed by the three other members of his family. The investigation is interspersed with extracts from the 1975 feature film (on which Philibert himself worked) based upon this true story, I am Pierre Rivière, directed by René Allio. Through a cinematographic poetics, Nicolas Philibert plunges us into the almost polar construction of his film. Philibert mixes the mystery and murder with his will to find Allio’s old crew. He recalls the sequence of fateful events in parallel with his own literary and criminological research, in a kind of self-reflexive representation of his art.

© N. Philibert

His skills are varied: he does not limit himself to assembling images to serve the topic, but is also able to show the aesthetic and intellectual advancement of each film. In an aesthetically neat documentary, he works on the sources and failings of his own research, cleverly exposing the keys to understanding its subject.

Ariane Beauvillard

Nisimazine Helsinki ~ 24. 1. 2008 # 2

Review Trial

Moslem Mansouri, 2002 (Iran/USA)

I

t is a debatable statement but sometimes true, that restrictions increase creativity. Imagine a small film crew, making 8mm fictions with no budget, in a village - Koshro, 20 km from Tehran.

The director Ali Matimi works for a brick factory on weekdays. The film was made with the support of inhabitants, from acting to serving bread for the crew.

Matimi is a writer and director who has written 110 books and made 18 films in Koshro and its neighbouring region, distributing the books from hand to hand, and screening the films on a white sheet in a square of the village. These works defy the government, as they got no permission for shooting in a country which controls very strictly, through its own agencies, the films produced within its borders.

In 1992 Matimi and his crew were arrested and were only released on the condition that they stop making movies. Trial, which gained success in some festivals, shows the last risk that the crew took, documented by fellow Iranian filmmaker Moslem Mansouri.

Matimi cuts the scenes using scissors, attaches them with scotch tape; the cameraman shoots on a person’s shoulders or on a donkey; the actresses argue with their families because they are acting in the film.

These facts all prove the passion they share, although at some points there are tensions and conflicts amongst the crew. In the final scene, when the screening of the last trial is interrupted due to a problem with the 8mm projector, children intervene with the shadows played by their hands. Children’s games are a serious matter! But which film ending is it?

Esra Demirkıran

B

> Director of “The Alpha Diaries” y arranging the footage as a film that you shot during your last five years of reserve military service, what feeling did you want to express?

I wanted the audience to feel the burden and desperation of both sides. The film actually portrays my concerns about the troubled situation in Israel. The necessity to serve in the army and in the reserve, the occupation of a society, the difficulty to find a solution that will eventually bring peace or at least some quiet. The entire world sees what happens in the region through the news, and soldiers are always portrayed very flatly. In this film I had the opportunity to show that behind the uniform there are real people with feelings.

My personal conflict is part of what I do, and it had to be part of the movie.

Did you face any problems from the authorities in Israel?

The army let me shoot the film only because it didn’t know I was doing it. In the reserve, things happen a little bit differently and you can do things like that inside your unit.

After showing my friends the film many were very angry, but especially those who are not in the movie. I guess they wanted to be shown. Some of them think I used them

?????? © Photo by Balázs Simonyi

Interview Yaniv Berman

in order to reflect my own political agenda. Others love the movie. Eventually, even those who were angry didn’t stop being my friends. After the editing we had to go to the censorship, and they let us show the film. I think they knew it was better for them not to work against us.

How does it feel to know that you will continue for another fifteen years of reserve military service?

It’s not an easy question, because the answer is strange. In some way it hurts me to think I should go to the reserve and do the terrible things we do. In the other hand, this is my duty to my country, and as long as I live there I should serve it.

And there is the company, and my friends; they are really like my other family, and every time we meet, we are very excited.

Orkun Şahin

Nisimazine Helsinki ~ 24. 1. 2008 # 2

Work in progress But the greatest one of them all is Love – and beyond

© «Billy the Kid» by Jennifer Venditti (USA, 2007)

N

in return” “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved - Eden Ahbez

ext to death, love is one of the key elements we preoccupy ourselves with most during our lives. Whether we seek love from our parents, siblings or lovers, we are all insatiably searching for that particular moment in which this need is fulfilled. Therein lays our biggest paradox. Because, the fact that everybody searches for it makes it harder to reach; we see each other through the glass of a revolving door but chances are we don’t connect on the other side, we simply don’t know how to. Thankfully, there can be gaps and so we’re still optimistic that in the end love will be found. It’s no wonder every other song and film deals with this subject.

Mechanical Love by Phie Ambo makes it evident that our will to communicate, be intimate with, and get responses from other beings is so great that it reaches beyond the human or animal form. When there’s a lack of human interaction we search for other ways to cater to our needs. But where’s the boundary? Will we one day have mechanical replacements for our family members, loved ones and pets?

In a sense this tendency has already started; people date through special sites and internet communities. Relationships develop between people who only have a virtual image of their lover (sometimes living at the other side of the globe). Or in the best case a photograph and a phone voice. Modern technologies have improved our communication possibilities, but also dehumanised them, creating the illusion of a glass door we can’t get through. This lack of physical contact makes some reach out elsewhere for what they need. People try to escape their grey and bleak realities and lack of human interaction through their love for their pets in Ulrich Seidl’s tragicomic Animal Love (see review in this issue). This, although non-sexual, goes very deep and has an almost (uncomfortable) erotic feel to it as the owners fervently talk to, kiss, stroke and cuddle their beloved furry friends. Animals give unconditional love and don’t break hearts. But even they can’t cater to all our needs.

Even so, the short relationship puts an important stamp onto this young boy’s life. Love can make an impression in a second that can last a lifetime.

It is complex and ever changing, and will continue to be so until we reach that other pinnacle of human life; death. Still, even in death lies beauty and love. Saba by Gregorio Graziosi and Thereza Menezes captures the rhythm of that moment, especially in its overwhelming silence. Love doesn’t have to be loud to make an impact.

Subtle moments, soft words, stolen glances and gentle caresses can be far more powerful than wild passion. Still, that too is another ingredient in the love spectrum. The energetic young couple in Michael Noer’s Vesterbro devour each other passionately, growing throughout their relationship as they experience difficult and painful moments. There’s no answer to the riddle of love. No way of deciphering its complexity.

Films can only showcase elements of it, give glimpses. And there’s always the Love goes further than simple affection, after all. It’s multi-layered like a cake; each possibility to partake and experience it layer reached reveals a new flavour, a new aspect that adds to the palette. Some first hand. sweet, others sour, but always tasty. The old couple in On the Way to Paradise by Suvi Andrea Helminen have had their share of hardships over the years, but their Look for it at the festival, who knows; love for each other remains stronger than ever. Even though changes are difficult you might be swept off your feet… and trying, their firm relationship carries them through, into a new chapter of their lives. Billy in Jennifer Venditti’s Billy the Kid also enters a new chapter when Itxaso Elosua Ramírez he finds love with a blind girl at a local cafe. His heart is broken just as quickly.

Nisimazine Helsinki ~ 24. 1. 2008 # 2

Young Visions Man Up

By Arturo Cabanas (USA, 2006)

I

s there a better way to approach father-son relationships than wrestling? In Man Up by Arturo Cabanas, we see a former US Special Forces Army Ranger coaching his son, a champion wrestler. The tactics and strategies, mindsets and motivations that dad has familiarised himself with in the service are now used to benefit his son on the mat. For many civilians the father’s approach could easily seem excessive, but at the same time we recognise the mixture of pride and worry as he sees his son growing up in the post 9/11 world. We are left with the reassuring words of the son, who reminds us that he still has time to think about his possible career, and that he will become a soldier if he wants to, not because someone says he should.

During the 11 minutes of its duration, Cabanas handles the look and pace of the film in a firm way that keeps the viewer both focused and entertained. It has the intensity and style of a big budget prime-time criminal series like CSI, and the editing (lots of jump-cuts - which can of course raise the question of what was left out? What did he say afterwards?) presents the situation in a style much like the punches in the ring or turns and throws on the mat. Rarely has the handheld camera style worked so well.

A man with a rifle can do a lot, and so can a young filmmaker with a camera. When you shoot you focus and aim, whether the tip of your finger is feeling a trigger or a ‘record’ button, the similarities are there.

Man Up is a film that does not lecture or judge. It does not try to be self-important or offer solutions. A rare treat nowadays.

Atso Pärnänen

PICTURE OF THE DAY

© Photo by Balázs Simonyi

Nisimazine Helsinki ~ 24. 1. 2008 # 2

Portrait

Mihail Sinev

By Hanna Miranenka

A

young, modest, smiling guy. If you met him on the street you would never think he was a serious Russian producer. But he is. In Russia, and not only there, he is known as someone whose name leads the titles of the best Russian documentary films. The name of the company he founded, Kinoteatr.doc, became an original brand. Film critics see it as a special current within Russian filmmaking, giving it the name ‘new naturalism’.

Mihail Sinev didn’t plan to become a film producer. At university he studied engineering. He entered the film industry via work in the theatre (for seven years he worked for the ‘Golden Mast Award’ and was promoted from programmer to executive manager), although he says that he never liked theatre much.

Films were always his passion. He watched many, and excitedly. Even when in Russian video rental shops there were only films like Rambo or Terminator. And when he came across a store where films of directors such as Jos Stelling, Ingmar Bergman, Friedrich Murnau and Dziga Vertov were displayed, there was no way back for him. His future could only be in cinema.

With great sorrow Mihail Sinev was observing the situation in Russian cinemas where foreign rubbish was

© Photo by Pavlovskaya

screened. In 2004, he and some fellow enthusiasts decided to organise a special project. It would be a festival where people could watch good contemporary Russian documentary films, which were usually deeply hidden from the wider public.

To their big disappointment, the festival’s organisers found out that there were not really so many of such films. With tremendous difficulty they managed to hunt out around twenty films to show. Not wanting to let this discourage them, they decided to make films themselves. There are no less than five that one can discover at DocPoint: Boys (Valeria Gai Germanika); Demon (Alexander Malinin); Exhale (Alexander Malinin); Herbarium (Natalia Meshchaninova); Moscow (Bakur Bakuradze and Dmitri Mamulia).

Today however, Kinoteatr.doc does not only produce documentaries.

They already shot two fiction features and one more is currently in preparation. Mihail Sinev jokes that they shoot more documentaries because there is no need to pay the main characters of these films.

Mihail doesn’t see himself in a director’s chair; he has more of a film critic’s streak. Although he was never educated in film theory, he has a kind of natural instinct for perceiving what is good and what is just trash.

He is able to discover new talents and find good films within the heaps of

nonsense. He is the one who decides whom to invite to Kinoteatr.doc, and the person responsible for everything that happens in the project. Mihail inspires his directors and invents rules, the main one stating that all the films shot within the Kinoteatr.doc framework are supposed to show ‘the actual reality’. But the project doesn’t have any strict conception - it changes all the time, because the participants of Kinoteatr.doc are in an interrupted development.

Mihail Sinev, together with his team, is one step ahead. In the plans of Kinoteatr.doc there is also an educational programme - screenings of rare films, seminars and meetings with filmmakers. The first one is going to take place soon in Moscow.

Despite the fact that this project is so important and useful, it still has no State support, and exists only with the private resources Mihail is able to develop and increase. One of the plans is to make a documentary video archive, another to publish a magazine on independent films. These are ambitious projects which are not easy to realise, especially without important funding. But Mihail Sinev is a strong personality, and he already did something that seemed impossible once - he changed the situation of Russian documentary.

REALITY CHECK. Parviz Kimiavi’s The Old Man and His Stone Garden 18.30 Kiasma Teatteri

Talk of the Day: Fair or Not? Today’s discussion focuses on the morality of economy and the impacts of privatization. Does a single human being have a chance to affect the global economy? Film, ethics, and economy will be discussed by the panelists, Member of the Finnish Parliament Heidi Hautala, directors Arto Halonen and Maria Lappalainen from Finland, and Florian Opitz from Germany. The panel is hosted by Mika Rönkkö from ATTAC Finland. Clips from the films Shadow of the Holy Book, Sopimus / “The Contract”, and The Big Sellout. Discussion conducted in English.

Economy and Fairness? 4 p.m.–6 p.m., Lasipalatsi Studio

Finnish Premiere: Bam Leonid Brezhnev had a dream: to build a railroad between Baikal and Amur. The BAM was the last major collective effort of the Soviet Union. Almost one hundred thousand idealism-filled youths left for Siberia in the 70’s to realise a 4300-kilometer venture. Now in their middle age, the men and women look back at the massive effort they made. Jouni Hiltunen’s Bam is a film about pioneering spirit, and people who built the future with their own hands: the human resource was the cornerstone of this Soviet vision.

Bam 19.15, Maxim 1

ATENEUM

BIO REX

17:00 Maani Petgar: CINEMA CINEMA, 70’

17:00 Ulrich Seidl: JESUS, YOU KNOW, 87’

18:30 DONNER 1: Jörn Donner: NAISENKUVIA, 90’, K-18

19:00 Thereza Menezes & Gregorio Graziosi: SABA, 15’ Phie Ambo: MECHANICAL LOVE, 80’ 21:00 Ulrich Seidl: ANIMAL LOVE, 108’, K-18

MAXIM 2

MAXIM 2

KIASMA

17:00 Moslem Mansouri: TRIAL, 43’ Massoud Bakhshi: TEHRAN HAS NO MORE POMEGRANATES!, 67’

17:00 Arturo Cabanas: MAN UP, 11’ Bruno Ulmer: WELCOME EUROPA, 90’

19:15 Jouni Hiltunen: BAM, 73’

19:00 Leonard Retel Helmrich: PROMISED PARADISE, 52’

17:00 Rostislav Aalto: METROTANSSI, 4’ LYPSYLLÄ, 5’ Annika Nykänen: MAAILMANLOPPU ALKAA OULUSTA, 52’ 19.00 Khashchavatski: KALINOVSKI SQUARE, 87’

20:30 Yaniv Berman: THE ALPHA DIARIES, 65’, K-18 Nadine Naous & Léna Rouxel: MY PALESTINE, 57’

18:30 Ebrahim Mokhtari: MULLAH KHADIJEH AND THE KIDS, 26’ Parviz Kimiavi: THE OLD MAN AND HIS STONE GARDEN, 52’

21:00 Nicolas Philibert: BACK TO NORMANDY, 113’

w w w. d ocpoint.info