Nisimazine Helsinki 2008#4

Saturday, January 26, 2008

NISI MAZINE 4 A Magazine Created By Nisi Masa, European Network Of Young Cinema

helsinki

In cooperation with:

Dust Out of Time Iris Olsson

© From ‘‘Tuholaiset’’ by Katja Lautamatti & Mina Laamo (Finland, 2007)

Editorial

NISIMAZINE HELSINKI Saturday 26 January 2008/ # 4

By Lasse Lecklin

T

o see or not to see?

In 506 Windows, a Finnish song played by an old group called Miljoonasade, a window cleaner has the job of washing a big building with 506 windows, and gets to peek into different people’s lives as he is brightening their view. The point of the story is, evidently, that when you finish something you always have to restart it, as life goes on around you no matter how big your efforts to affect some things.

If you wash away the dust gathered on the window screen, the picture becomes clearer. In Dust, by Hartmut Bitomsky, we get to explore the world of next-to-invisible particles in all their different forms. And amazingly enough, they are everywhere.

There is a saying about the Dutch; that they don’t have curtains, but do lock their doors. This says something about both society and the nature of human beings.

We are all in some way curious and exhibitionist, but at the same time reserved.

We prefer to keep the windows clean for a better view, but still feel the need for these screens to separate us from the objects of our observation – to keep them for observing, rather than for encountering.

Surprisingly, the screen only becomes visible when a layer of dust covers it – and so, in a way, reveals it.

As climate change has entered our collective consciences, and society now perceives its constant presence, particles in the air have become an important (yet invisible) matter for discussion. So minor, so unseen, yet still something that can turn all of us into dust again. So maybe it’s a bright idea to take a closer look and try to observe the invisible.

And the invisible is not only in the air: have you ever thought about the stories of women who end up exposing their bodies on computer screens, whilst remaining anonymous to society? In Import Export (Ulrich Seidl) these tragic destinies, amongst others, are revealed.

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 EU 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 Maartje Alders, Ariane Beauvillard, Emilija Dimic, Zsuzsanna Kiràly, Lasse Lecklin, Atso Pärnänen, Natasha Pavlovskaia, 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)6 32 61 70 26 europe@nisimasa.com www.nisimasa.com

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Nisimazine Helsinki ~ 26. 01. 2008 # 4

Film of the day Dust

© Deckert Distribution GmbH

By Hartmut Bitomsky (“Staub”; Germany/Switzerland, 2007)

G

rime, filth, soot, earth, soil, powder, dirt. Dust comes in many forms. It can be small, big, light, yellow, white, grey, orange, wet, sticky, heavy, fluffy, clustered, toxic. It’s present in clouds, houses, machines, vacuum cleaners, art, stars and our bodies. You could say everything starts as dust, or becomes it, eventually.

Humans have an ambiguous relationship with dust. This relationship is considered in Dust, from the first connotation most people have with it, the stuff lying around the house, up to the birth of stars: from the ordinary to the very origins of life. One woman

is obsessed with the dust invading her personal space. She spends most of her time trying to fight it and after having cleaned every corner she can think of, even inside her TV, she starts all over again. A man who assembles vacuum cleaners says: “We have to get rid of dust, that’s decisive.” Not everybody seems so hostile. A young artist is obsessed with dust, sees them as little pieces of art, collects them, reforms them and sticks them onto a canvas. Scientists discover that certain forms of dust getting into our blood system can cause death, and cleaners try to get rid of every last particle in a microchip laboratory, but turn out to be the main contaminators themselves.

Bitomsky tries to open our eyes to a world we don’t really consider our own. Dust simply exists; it’s an alien matter without a clear source.

It turns out that some reddish sand left by the rain on your windscreen is actually from the Sahara. But is sand also dust? And pieces of uranium from the impact of a bombshell, is that dust? The exact definition does not become clear and the film seems to be dealing more with particles in general. It’s not the most exciting and fast-paced movie you’ll ever see, the interviews sometimes resemble a home shopping channel demonstration in which they take you by the hand through every single step of a very complicated scientific process. The rhythm of the movie is somehow too slow for the nicely composed images, accompanied by a monotonous voice-over.

Still, the movie touches on some interesting existential questions.

What do we really understand about the physicality of our own bodies?

Do we consider ourselves to be outside the physical world? Where does matter come from? Where do we come from?

You will never look at clouds in the same way.

Maartje Alders

Review

Out of Time

By Harald Friedl (“Aus der Zeit”; Austria, 2006)

‘‘

If I can become 100 years old, I could run the shop even longer.”, says Mr Jentsch, the devoted owner of a leather goods store. Mr Kienesberger is walking around his chemist’s shop talking to himself about his past, his dead wife and the business he has run since he was a young boy. The butcher’s shop owned by the Fritzes, a married couple, is a place popular in the 14th district for its good quality and familiar atmosphere. Fee Frimmel is not proud of her well-known shop the “button king”. Fate hasn’t been generous with her and she wants to move on, without the shop. These traditional shops represent specialised handcrafts in a time when big shopping malls and design objects are preferred.

The documentary by Harald Friedl draws a charming portrait of four elderly shopkeepers in Vienna. In a discrete and caring way the camera captures their personalities and their typical old-fashioned Viennese style of talking and serving

© www.haraldfriedl.com

costumers. All in all a beautiful, melancholic film that will make you search for a similar shop in your neighborhood.

Zsuzsanna Kiràly

Nisimazine Helsinki ~ 26. 01. 2008 # 4

Reviews Three Scenes With Ingmar Bergman

By Jörn Donner (‘‘Tre scener med Ingmar Bergman’’; Finland, 1976)

I

n Jörn Donner’s Three Scenes With Ingmar Bergman (1976 ) we get closer to the mind and work, the private and personal side of the great director who passed away last summer. The documentary focuses on Bergman answering questions by Donner and talking about his relationship with his parents, religion and filmmaking.

Donner and Bergman repeated this same kind of interview approach in 1998 in Donner’s Ingmar Bergman on Life and Work. For those to whom Bergman represents the ultimate Scandinavian gloom and darkness, these documentaries might actually broaden their perspective. Many books and films have been made about Bergman, but since Donner shared a special relationship with him, being not only a producer of Fanny and Alexander but also in his youth the one who had the guts to rebel against the master, his films and his book (Djävulens Ansikte/The personal vision of Ingmar Bergman) remain among the most interesting examinations of the director whom many hail as the most important of our times.

Atso Pärnänen

A Story of People In War and Peace

By Vardan Hovhannisyan (Armenia, 2006)

I

n a Story of People in War and Peace, the tension between self-defence and obligation towards one’s motherland is admirably shown.

The director, Vardan Hovhannisyan, was a soldier and a journalist. The war happened in Armenia in 1994, against Azerbaijan. Here the director mixes war sequences and contemporary scenes, showing on one hand the reality of war, and on the other what becomes of war memories in the present, and how they change mentalities. People were fighting willingly, fighting simultaneously for the war and to stop it. Nurses, teachers and postmen, neglecting their modest daily lives, went into the battle.

The main interest remains the question of memory. When the war on the battlefield is over, the consequences will always stay in people’s minds, whether they like it or not. Bodies and minds have memories: amongst the old soldiers, some are in psychiatric hospitals, others are getting prepared for another war, and the last ones are trying to prevent new mistakes, such as the director himself. As a matter of fact, each war, each conflict, ends with negotiations. The spirit of revenge can be dangerous after an armistice... and love, as much as hate, is transmitted from one generation to another. Inevitably, war is still present.

War wants players and players don’t want to forget their achievements.

Nobody can explain the war better than them. We can only watch from the sidelines and try to understand what these people feel. The director obviously wants us to know that war doesn’t select by name, nationality, or money, and to make his country’s political issues - which rarely make the headlines of prime-time news bulletins - known. The film is thus a commemoration of the dead and a lesson for the future. This is probably why Vardan Hovhannisyan dedicated his film to his newly born son as a symbol of hope.

Emilija Dimic & Ariane Beauvillard

Nisimazine Helsinki ~ 26. 01. 2008 # 4

Work in progress Through the looking-glass, and what we found there...

T

he current trend in documentary is for kaleidoscopic narratives: reality seems to be divided into fractions that directors show one by one for a better, more complete comprehension of the world.

With regards to fiction, the choral film itself is currently a somewhat over-used format; it consists of telling several stories in parallel, before making them meet (or not). DocPoint is offering us a certain number of documentary examples also built on parallelisms: Import Export by Ulrich Seidl, The Big Sellout from Florian Opitz, and Manufactured Landscapes by Jennifer Baichwal use the same process of multiplying testimonies, images and spaces in order to establish a general report of world-wide crises. The methods and the effect they have on the spectator are however very different.

Firstly, it’s undoubtedly this idea of a mixture between personal problems and global issues which can be disconcerting: how to analyse with precision a fact as complex as privatisation in little © «Shipbreaking # 4», Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2000. Photo: Edward Burtynsky more than an hour? The method of Florian Opitz was simple: he collected negative testimonies about privatisations launched by the To demonstrate the uniformity of Without a gripping rhythm or IMF (International Monetary Fund) social problems in the world and of emotional suspense, Seidl succeeds in across four continents. Here the human the industrial landscapes, Baichwal, as describing, with terrifying realism, a side is always chosen over intellectual Opitz, plays the card of diversity, or a compartmentalised life between two analysis. The various facets of one multiplication of examples supposed nervous breakdowns and despairs. topic are not even always connected to to confirm a thesis. The possible One central idea that is shared with one another: the only common point problem of this constant attention to an Manufactured Landscapes is to show between an English railwayman and a anecdotal vision is to make real analysis the industrialisation of our ways of life.

Philippine mother is thus their suffering very difficult.

Unlike the two other aforementioned because of privatisation. Moreover, the directors, Seidl - although he is the only choral documentary is supported only On the contrary and undoubtedly in one making pure fiction - is marked by by these testimonies. The emotional a more subversive way, Ulrich Seidl a strong and impressive form of realism. dimension is present everywhere in builds parallelisms not primarily with He never hides a pessimistic speech Opitz’s film; the director has often used the purpose to move, but to create for the sake of a beautiful shot - which the processes of fiction films in order a reflection: in Import Export, Seidl does not mean that he is a bad director. to convince audiences: the editing into follows the fates of a young Austrian He succeeds in capturing reality in an multiple sequences gives a rhythm (a in the Ukraine and a young Ukrainian atmosphere, in the movement of a body, factitious one?) almost like that of a living in Austria. the empty glance of a girl. detective movie. One waits for the end, Lengthening a fixed plan seems for avid to know if the mother will be able him to be the best way to represent All of these documentaries, or ‘realistic to save her child. contemporary loneliness and the fictions’, have undoubtedly flowered inability to communicate. The Austrian because of the lack of accurate television Manufactured Landscapes develops director/observer works on repetition reports on these subjects. Cinema according to the same criteria: constant and the non-sensational. What seems thus took over from TV and became a cutting between China and the commonplace then becomes more and special mirror of reality - sometimes a conferences of photographer Burtynsky. more shocking. deforming one.

Ariane Beauvillard

Nisimazine Helsinki ~ 26. 01. 2008 # 4

Young Visions Vesterbro

By Michael Noer (Denmark)

C

inema continually explores the hazards of intimacy.

The principal topic of Vesterbro is to underline the paradox between the need for open-mindedness, of change, and the brick wall of private life. The film is constructed as the diary of Julie, a woman who’s waiting for something. She doesn’t find it at home, in the empty and anonymous streets. Julie and Martin; friends, lovers, almost like brother and sister, decide to wander around the world not to discover truth but, in a simple way, to have a purpose, even if it’s a totally meaningless one. Many scenes are filmed like an interview from Julie to herself, compartmentalising her own way of self expression. In the foreground, always Julie or Martin, as if the camera was the only “person” able to transcribe a situation, a sensation, a sexual or metaphysic fear, as if only images were able to find a road to understanding.

Youth could seem to be utterly lost: alcohol and cigarettes describe the blur of their lives in a moralist society. Playing with the framing and the instability of the camera, Michael Noer gives us an almost anthropological point of view, observing these human beings like animals endowed with understanding.

Each question, each doubt, each suffering is universal: Julie wants a child when she has an abortion; Martin wants to go

© Photo: Jon Nyholm

home when he’s in Mexico. The temporal dimension is also blurred by breaks in time: an unawareness of the importance of different stages in live drives Julie and Martin towards a turning point. The tension is in the moving frame, in the discovery of the fragility of love and friendship in a crisis. As a representation of modern introspection, Vesterbro says that young people must search outside of themselves - changing their material and inner spaces through travelling - to find it.

Ariane Beauvillard

Picture of the day

PICTURE OF THE DAY

© Photo by Balázs Simonyi

Nisimazine Helsinki ~ 26. 01. 2008 # 4

Portrait

Iris Olsson

Orkun Şahin

A

member of the Board of DocPoint, Iris Olsson is not exactly the kind of person you expect to find in such an honoured position.

She’s actually a young Finnish documentary filmmaker who has not yet finished her studies. It is thanks to the profound and lovely Summerchild (Kesän lapsi) that we have come to be familiar with her. Her second student film, it is already a success story. It all started with a first screening at the University of Art and Design.

The Finnish national broadcasting company YLE then rapidly decided to buy the film, and Iris’ voice has since been spread nationwide. Now the 60-minute long documentary is on a festival tour and news of the young director is spreading throughout the world…

Also a freelancer in the media industry, Iris has been working on various jobs, such as scriptwriter, editor and assistant director for films and TV commercials. She is also keen on working in other fields.

“It’s about widening my perspective on life and crossing new lives”, she says. As a daughter of a film producer father and an art teacher mother, Iris was introduced to art and films from her childhood days.

She even appeared as an extra in some of her father’s productions.

© Photo by Pavlovskaya At the age of six Iris discovered the video shop next to the family’s apartment and visited it daily until she had watched all the movies available there. Her comment on this memory: “It was simply exciting to see them.”

At thirteen she joined a theatre group, but being onstage was too much pressure for her, so she decided to remain backstage. The year after, she took a video class and began to make her first shootings. She realised quite quickly that her videos were not looking at all like the movies she had been seen, but more like life itself. As a pupil at an art-based high school, she got closer to film because her teacher was a documentary filmmaker.

Alongside her passion for moving images, Iris has also developed a strong interest in psychology. When entering university, she needed to make a very quick decision to study either cinema or psychology, because both schools had their exams on the same day. She decided on filmmaking and made it to the University of Art and Design.

But as Iris defines documentary filmmaking as ‘‘understanding and interpreting human beings’’, she is actually doing both. She declares: ‘‘We shall respect the coincidences’’ and continues by telling the story of the creation of Summerchild.

Actually she says that it was not a story she created but one that came to her. While she was in Eastern Finland on a research trip for a documentary project concerning social aspects of the people living in that area, she met a doctor who was organising a charity program for Russian orphans welcomed by Finnish families during their summer vacation.

As a director she aims to raise questions instead of simply telling things in her films, and has a sensitive code of ethics. ‘‘The question that I wanted to raise in Summerchild was: how wise is it to take a kid from the orphanage, introduce her to the material world, and take her back’’.

She immediately adds that she tried to fix the effects of being filmed on her protagonist (Sveta) and the other kids at orphanage by talking to them in an honest way. For Iris, this is a responsibility even though it can be a struggle sometimes. Nowadays she is preparing for her Masters Graduation project and travelling around festivals with Summerchild. Recently she received the main prize of the Tromsø International Film Festival.

I have a feeling that we will be seeing a lot more of Iris Olsson the creative documentary maker in the future….

REALITY CHECK. Finnish premiere Sopimus (The Contract) depicts a current Finnish labour dispute and a proposed nurses’ strike, a crisis averted at the last minute. 8 pm Bio Rex.

DocPoint Club today @ Gloria On Saturday Night, Op:l Bastards, Rubik, Mikko Torvisen Viihdeorkesteri and Radio Helsinki DJ’s will take the stage in Gloria Cultural Arena. The rioting gigs by the Op:l Bastards are definitely rare treats not to be missed. Rubik has quickly convinced the Finnish music scene after their debut album Bad Conscience Patrol, which was a huge critical and commercial success entering top sales list.

Mikko Torvisen Viihdeorkesteri, cult favourites who just released their self-titled debut album, is one of the most interesting acts of the coming year and a definite got-to-see at the DocPoint Club. Tickets 10 eur. K-18.

DocPoint Club 9pm- 4am Gloria Cultural Arena (Pieni Roobertinkatu 12-14)

American Night: A Tribute to the Maysles Brothers The American Night – A Tribute to the Maysles Brothers is a night screening of rare Albert and David Maysles classics from the 1960s. In Meet Marlon Brando, the audience will meet the young and charismatic Marlon Brando who is interviewed by a group of eager journalists. With Love from Truman tells about author and king of socialites, Truman Capote, who has just finished his novel In Cold Blood. The Maysles brothers also witnessed The Beatles arriving to the United States for the first time in the film What’s Happening! The Beatles in the USA. American Night - A Tribute to Maysles Brothers 10pm Bio Rex

ATENEUM 13:00 SUOMEN SISÄLLISSODAN KUVAT (A seminar in Finnish only) 13–1630pm, opening film: Seppo Rustanius: UHRIT 16:45 DONNER 3: Jörn Donner: TRE SCENER MED INGMAR BERGMAN, 89’

BIO REX 13:00 Hartmut Bitomsky: DUST, 90’ 15:00 Jennifer Venditti: BILLY THE KID, 84’ 17:00 Ulrich Seidl: IMPORT EXPORT, 135’, K-18

MAXIM 1 13:00 Marjut Rimminen & Päivi Takala: LEARNED BY HEART, 29’ Tuija Halttunen: IN THE DEPTHS OF THE MIND, 82’ 15:00 Florian Opitz: THE BIG SELLOUT, 94’

20:00 Kauko Lindfors: 16:45 Samira Makhmalbaf: 1–7=72=0, 11’ THE APPLE, 85’ Sopimus-iskuryhmä: SOPIMUS (THE CONTRACT), 60’ 19:00 Anastasia Lapsui & Markku Lehmuskallio: 22:00 THE AMERICAN NIGHT: TRAVELLING/NEDARMA, 77’ Albert & David Maysles: MEET MARLON BRANDO, 29’ 21:00 Michael Noer: WITH LOVE FROM TRUMAN, 29’ VESTERBRO, 78’, K-18 WHAT´S HAPPENING! THE BEATLES IN THE USA, 84’

w w w. d o cp o i n t . i n fo

MAXIM 2

KIASMA

13:00 Ulrich Seidl: DOG DAYS, 121’, K-18

13:00 Vardan Hovhannisyan: A STORY OF PEOPLE IN WAR AND PEACE, 69’

15:15 Aliona van der Horst & Maasja Ooms: VOICES OF BAM, 90’

15:00 KARPON SUOMI 2: Hannu Karpo: RYYSYRANTA, 24’ POKAN ALMAN ITSENÄISYYSJUHLAT, 26’ KYLÄHULLUT: ÖLJYSHEIKKI, 20’ VAIENNUT VIULU, 29’

17:00 Svetlana Fedorova: IT´S NOT SCARY, 29’ Valeria Gui Germanica: BOYS, 36’ Bakur Bakuradze & Dmitry Mamulia: MOSCOW, 35’ 19:00 Harald Friedl: OUT OF TIME, 80’ 20:45 Andrea Tonacci: THE HILLS OF DISORDER, 135’, K-18

17:00 Juan Diego Spoerer & Håkan Engström: DON ROBERTO´S SHADOW, 29’ Hosup Lee: AND THEREAFTER II, 56’, K-18 19:00 Forugh Farrokhzad: THE HOUSE IS BLACK, 22’ Ebrahim Golestan: CROWN JEWELS, 15’ Kamran Shirdel: THE NIGHT IT RAINED, 35’