IDFA Daily #5 2017 (English) by IDFA International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam

Winners’ podium: winners in IDF A’s

competition programmes take a

many

bow at the

awards ceremony in the Stadssc houwbu

International Section 24-26 nov 2017

ON: #IDFA2017

FOLLOW THE DISCUSSI

Staying in orbit Barbara Visser talks about her year as artistic director of IDFA By Geoffrey Macnab

In the festival offices three days before IDFA ends, ‘interim’ artistic director Barbara Visser is in cheerful and relaxed mood as her first (and last) experience at the helm of the world’s biggest documentary festival nears its end. Energy “It has been better than I expected,” she says of the stress levels over the last few days. “I thought it would be exhausting, but you get a lot of energy from seeing the audience so enthusiastic; seeing the filmmakers; speaking to the filmmakers and seeing what IDFA means to them.” It helps, too, that she has a very efficient assistant. “One thing I was a bit afraid of was the schedule. You want to be in all places at the same time. I asked for a PA who could help with that puzzle – and that has been very helpful. I’ve been almost everywhere on time and well prepared!” One of her minor frustrations is with her title, ‘interim’ artistic director. “I hate that word, I hate that word. It’s an awful word!” she says. There will soon be an application process for a longer-term artistic director, but Visser has revealed she won’t be a candidate. “Although I have tremendously enjoyed it, I decided not to apply,” she says. As an artist and filmmaker, she feels the festival “may need someone who has more experience in managing.” Part of her wanted to stay. “But you also need to think what is good for IDFA, not just what is good for me. With pain in my heart, I decided that.” Intimacy This year, Visser has been overseeing the 30th anniversary of the festival in the presence of IDFA’s co-founder and moving Photo: Felix Kalkman

spirit, Ally Derks. Visser believes that the “intimacy” characterising the festival in the early years, when it was housed in De Balie, still remains. The event may now be huge but filmmakers and industry delegates alike still feel as welcome as ever. “That has to do with the human interaction we put at the foreground and the individual attention we give to all visitors, even if there are 3,000 visitors from the industry. They get a personal letter, they get a personal phone call.”

Reach As for the rebellious spirit that has always characterised IDFA, Visser suggests that this still remains, but is now taking a different form. “I think it will change. The way you have to operate to change things is different because the media landscape is different. It requires different actions to reach people who do not yet agree with you. Of course, you can preach to the converted, but to reach audiences who don’t already know about IDFA, you need to use different strategies.” Sometimes, she elaborates, “aesthetics or surprise” can draw people in just as effectively as activism and demagoguery. “It is important not to create oppositions but to reach out…” Like Derks, Visser believes in the importance of IDFA securing premieres. “For the general audience, that doesn’t matter because they don’t go to other festivals, but we are an industry festival, with a lot of industry guests. They want to see new things they haven’t seen in other places. Of course, we look for world premieres and we go actively after them but if it’s a European premiere and it’s a great film, we’ll take it.” Interact One of her personal highlights this week was the industry talk given by visionary filmmaker and internet artist, Jonathan Harris. “It was a full Tuschinski 1, so a very beautiful setting, and

everybody there left somewhat changed. He is so eloquent and manages so well to talk about things that are very hard to talk about. He builds up a story of his own career and his life. He’s very personal. You get a sense of how a career develops, of the choices he makes and of how the digital world doesn’t satisfy him … he had this beautiful insight that our bodies are already “Virtual Reality”. You don’t need tools for Virtual Reality. We are the tool! The web and the computer are all great but are extensions of that great tool we have, which is our eyes and our perception and the way we interact with the world.” Curiosity As a contrast to Harris, Visser also relished hosting so many “Masters” in the Visual Voice programme celebrating IDFA’s 30th anniversary. Guests here included D.A. Pennebaker (now in his 90s) and Fred Wiseman, who is well into his 80s. How do they keep going so long? “I think curiosity is the key to getting old happily. Whether it’s Wiseman or Pennebaker, if you talk to them, they are curious. They are open. Often, old people kind of shut down, think they’ve seen it, done it and are out of society. But they are engaged with life.” Orbit Audience figures overall are at roughly the same level as last year, but record numbers of school children have attended IDFA screenings this week. (Around 15,000 kids have visited the festival, often seeing movies like Lenno & The Angelfish.) Visser will stay on at IDFA for “a few months” after the festival ends. She’ll be here to tie up loose ends and help in the evaluation of this year’s edition. When she does step down, she is determined to stay in the IDFA orbit. “One thing I know is that I am so fond of the documentary world that I would really like to remain in that field rather than say goodbye and go back to the visual arts where I was operating before.”

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Rise and fall told by the people who experienced the miracle and faced the destruction

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Festivals: The Finnish Film Foundation Marja Pallassalo, marja.pallassalo@ses.fi Illume Oy: Jenny Timonen jenny.timonen@illume.fi

Armchair reflections

Jessie van Vreden and Anke Teunissen talk about learning to work with 360-degree VR storytelling and hiring Dutch actor Rutger Hauer for their joint work The Last Chair.

Anke Teunissen and Jessie van Vreden Photo: Joke Schut By Melanie Goodfellow

Dutch actor Rutger Hauer is not a name usually associated with the world of documentary, but in a rare foray into the world of non-fiction the Bladerunner star recorded the dialogue for the English-language version of Anke Teunissen and Jessie van Vreden’s joint work The Last Chair. The two-part, 360-degree virtual reality documentary capturing two ageing men approaching the end of their lives as they reflect on their past and present from the comfort of their favourite chair is premiering in DocLab this year. The subjects both live alone in rural locations, but their lives could not be more different. Childless bachelor Egbert is a farmer in his nineties inhabiting a farm in the northeast of the Netherlands, where he was born. He recounts his life as he goes about his daily routine: salting herrings, slaughtering and plucking a hen or taking the car out. Time has stood still in the dilapidated property, which contains a century’s worth of family memorabilia.

Fred is a former hippy in his seventies and father of three who has withdrawn from his old life in the Netherlands to a converted farmhouse in France. He knows his days are numbered, but seems unable to make peace with himself, deeming himself a failure for the paths he took in life. Teunissen and Van Vreden reveal the joint project grew out of a conversation while they were holidaying together some three years ago. “I mentioned I wanted do something on the subject of elderly people and their favourite chair, around photography or film,” explains Teunissen. “One of Jessie’s friends suggested it would be a perfect subject for the Oculus Rift, but at the time I had no idea what he was talking about.” Van Vreden immediately saw the potential of the idea as a VR piece. “I had seen one or two pieces at that point. I thought it was a really powerful image, the chair which life concentrates around. I also liked the fact it unfolded in the living room, in an intimate space.” The pair were both “really inexperienced in VR” but began attending workshops

around the subject, including sessions at the IDFAcademy in 2014. They also managed to secure development money from the Netherlands Film Fund, and to get prolific feature-length producer Pieter Van Huystee on board. The project’s progress slowed as they grappled with completing the funding, getting to grips with the technology and finding the right VR partners to help them shoot the piece. They eventually decided to work with Belgian VR specialist Fisheye, having connected with the company at the IDFAcademy. “It was pioneering. We had to find our workflow with Van Huystee and Fisheye. It was not like working on a traditional documentary”, says Van Vreden. Teunissen says the fact both filmmakers knew their subjects helped with the finished work. “That was good for VR, because you feel like you’re meeting an acquaintance”, she says. Hauer’s involvement in the project came about after the pair realised it would be impossible to get the subjects to self-dub themselves for the English language, international version. Teunissen was not put off by people who told her getting Hauer was a long-shot. “I sent him a nice email and he replied pretty rapidly, asking for a link. I think it was Egbert who clinched it,” she recounts. “Hauer was shooting but said he wanted do it. He described the work as ‘a pearl’ and said of it ‘I can only feel love for this project in my heart’.” She credits translator and writer Mark Baker for getting the tone right in his translation of the Dutch dialogue. The filmmakers are now trying to raise the post-production for a final film in the trilogy about an elderly woman called Annie who lost her family in World War II, but made it her life’s work to fill it with family and experiences. “We’ve shot the footage and are now looking for a final €15,000 to €20,000 to finish the post-production”, says Van Vreden.

Kids on the Silk Road wins Best Roundtable Pitch The documentary series Kids on the Silk Road, produced by Maria Stevnbak Westergren for Danish production house Toolbox Film, has won the Best Roundtable Pitch at the IDFA Forum 2017. The series’ first five episodes, directed by Jens Pedersen, have just been completed, with three of them premiering at IDFA this year. During the pitch, the next 10 episodes were introduced to an audience of potential financiers and co-producers. Kids on the Silk Road tell the unique stories of the extraordinary lives of young children along the colourful Silk Road route from China to Venice; each 20-minute episode is set in a different country. In the upcoming episodes, director Jens Pedersen will be supported by his Danish colleagues Simon Lereng Wilmont, who won the IDFA Award for Best First Appearance 2017 for his feature debut The Distant Barking of Dogs and Kaspar Astrup Schröder, whose Big Time screens in Panorama. Andy’s Promise

Tornatore to shoot Morricone doc Wide House Pick-up Bruce Springsteen, Quincy Jones, Clint Eastwood, Oliver Stone and Martin Scorsese are all to feature in Giuseppe Tornatore’s ambitious new feature documentary on the legendary Italian composer ‘Maestro’ Ennio Morricone (whose scores include Once Upon a Time in America and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). Metallica band members, ex-Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters and Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler and Celine Dion are also set to appear. The feature doc is being produced by Gianni Russo and Gabriele Costa of Italian production company Piano B in collaboration with Dutch producer San Fu Maltha and Peter De Maegd of Belgian production company Potemkino. It was one of the projects presented at the IDFA Forum earlier this week and is already provoking huge interest among both theatrical distributors and broadcasters. Oscar-winning director Tornatore has worked many times with Morricone, on films from Cinema Paradiso to The Legend of 1900 and Malena (which made a star of Monica Bellucci). Tornatore

has already filmed extensive interview material of more than 14 hours with the composer and has spoken with many of his Italian contemporaries, Bernardo Bertolucci, Dario Argento, and Marco Bellocchio among them. Springsteen was interviewed in Rome. One of Morricone’s concerts was also shot. What remains is to speak to Morricone’s international collaborators and admirers and also to shoot the fictional reconstructions of Morricone’s childhood and of his friendship with Sergio Leone, king of the spaghetti westerns. Last week, Morricone celebrated his 89th birthday. The filmmakers are striving to complete the film in time for his 90th birthday, which falls on 10 November 2018, and are hoping to have it ready for next year’s Venice Film Festival. Maestro Morricone is being put together as an Italian-Belgian co-production. The international interviews are due to be shot in February and the fictional elements will be filmed in Berlin in the spring. Distributors already aboard include Periscoop (Benelux), Lucky Red (Italy) and NonStop (Scandinavia.) San Fu Maltha reported strong interest from British broadcasters. A sales agent is expected to be appointed shortly. By Geoffrey Macnab

Jan Rofekamp Photo: Bram Belloni

Permanent revolution Dutch-born Jan Rofekamp first started coming to IDFA in the early 1990s after he decided to re-focus his Montreal-based sales company Films Transit on feature documentaries. “The only other person doing this at the time was Jane Balfour,” he says, referring to the London-based sales agent who was also a force in the market in the late 1990s. It was not the first time Rofekamp had been involved in finding homes for documentaries. In the 1970s he was one of the founders of alternative Dutch distributor Fugitive Cinema, which focused on importing 16mm works from political action groups from around the world. “We’d find homes for their films with advocacy groups here”, he explains. Rofekamp, who is now based mainly in Greece, moved to Montreal in 1982 and set up Films Transit shortly afterwards. After the company transitioned to focusing on documentary only, it quickly became a driving force in the international documentary market, with early titles including Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick’s Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s The Celluloid Closet. The company was also the place where Catherine La Clef, who later founded Paris-based Cat &Docs, VPRO’s head of documentary Barbara Truyen and most recently Diana Holtzberg began working in the business. Looking over his career selling features, Rofekamp says he has lived through “three revolution movements” that have shaken the industry. “In the 1970s, the birth of video which completely changed the market from both a technology and content point of view. Then in the 1980s, the birth of cable and satellite stations like National Geographic and Discovery,” he says. “They were far more commercial and created a very different type of language for documentary. They also created a lot of employment for filmmakers. In the early days, I sold them a stack of films, although today they mainly produce and rarely buy.” The final revolution has been the “unfathomable mountain of the internet”, he says. One of the biggest consequences of which is the rise of players like Netflix and Amazon, who are snapping up creative documentaries that once went to the big broadcasters. “The key broadcast buyers in Europe who used to go to places like Sundance to pick up the top documentaries from the US, are coming home empty-handed because they can’t match the prices of the big US digital platforms,” says Rofekamp. “When Netflix gives Tom Fassaert $200,000 for his film [A Family Affair], VPRO can’t match that,” he adds. “It’s setting the parameters for what is happening now at places like IDFA.” (Read a longer version of this story at idfa.nl, English) By Melanie Goodfellow

French sales company Wide House has signed its first European deal on Alexandre Mourot’s Let the Child Be the Guide, exploring the merits of the Montessori education system in the 21st century through a portrait of young children attending France’s oldest school using the method. Milan-based documentary specialist Wanted has acquired the film for Italy. Other upcoming titles on the distributor’s slate include Kaspar Astrup Schröder’s Big Time and Steven Cantor’s bio-doc Dancer, about Russian ballerina Sergei Polunin. It follows deals to Taiwan (Joint Entertainment) and Korea on the eve of the market. The film was self-released by Mourot in France this autumn where it drew 40,000 spectators. MG

SVOD market gains pace Digital rights market guru Wendy Bernfeld told filmmakers and producers they need to start looking beyond the big players of Netflix and Amazon when trying to secure SVOD deals for their work at an IDFA industry session on the digital rights market and VR this week. “VOD is the Holy Grail. It’s what everyone is searching for right now but there’s a tendency to focus on the big five: Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Xbox, PlayStation, Hulu,” she explained. “Ironically, it’s a different time for Netflix and Amazon. They’re less focused on individual indie films and docs and they are more into original production just when the industry starts to embrace them.” Bernfeld said doc producers and sales agents needed instead to take into account the growing numbers of local players who were now giving the US SVOD giants a run for their money. “Maxdome in Germany now competes head on against Amazon or Netflix. It doesn’t have a global reach but in Germany it’s big.” MG

The naked ape Brett Morgen reacts a little testily to the idea that his new film, Jane (screening in Masters) is a radical departure from his earlier documentaries, such as The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002) about Hollywood mogul Robert Evans, or Crossfire Hurricane (2012), about the Rolling Stones. The new film (commissioned by National Geographic) tells the story of how Jane Goodall, a young English woman who went to Africa in her mid-20s to study chimpanzees, became a legendary figure in the worlds of conservation and anthropology. “Listen, she is an icon who has lived life by her own rules,” Morgen declares. “She has defined and re-defined her vocation. In that sense, I think she is very similar to Bob Evans, Kurt Cobain or the Stones.” Goodall tends to bewitch those who work with her. This was certainly the case with composer Philip Glass. “When I first heard Philip’s initial cues and themes, it was quite clear that he was enamoured by Jane. When I spoke to him after he submitted the first cues, he said, ‘I am not sure if you’ve noticed but I think I am falling in love with Jane.’ I said: ‘Yes, but I think it is good for the film, Philip, carry on!’”

Time Trial

Professional rivalry Scottish cyclist David Millar, subject of IDFA feature-length competition entry Time Trial, has an unlikely connection with fashion designer, Paul Smith. The duo encountered one another in 2004, when Millar was banned for doping offences. “I had to go to court and I needed a suit. He said I’ll sort you out with a suit,” Millar recalls. The designer was a passionate cycling fan long “before it was cool,” and had had to abandon his own cycling career due to injury. He and Millar struck up an immediate rapport. “From then on, we always crossed paths. We get on really well. Our lives went in different directions. He wanted to be a professional cyclist and got cut short. I was going to go to art college, but became a professional cyclist. We both love what the other one is doing.” The link between Millar and Smith was underlined when, during IDFA earlier this week, Millar came to the Amsterdam branch of Paul Smith to sign posters and give interviews.

Millar is very happy with the insight Time Trial gives into the day-to-day life of the athletes during the Tour de France. He was mic’d up and cameras followed his every move during the race. “It’s quite paradoxical in a way. Although it feels [to the viewer] like a ‘reveal’ and intimate, in the peloton nothing is private. You’ve got helicopters overhead. You’ve got people by the side of the road … we have already signed off our privacy. Whatever you say, you know is in the public domain somehow or other.” Time Trial offers a very different vision of professional cycling from that found in recent films like Stephen Frears’ The Trial or Alex Gibney’s The Armstrong Lie. It is not about skulduggery, doping and EPO behind the scenes. Nor is it a talking heads-style account of Millar’s life and career. Instead, it captures the exhilaration, tedium and physical grind of road racing, as well as the camaraderie among the riders.

Morgen had access to over 160 hours of rare 16mm colour footage of Goodall living and working in the jungles of Tanzania. This was shot by her Dutch husband, Hugo van Lawick, a legendary figure in wildlife photography, at the Gombe National Park where she first went in 1960. “The footage was originally shot for a 1965 documentary that was heavily narrated; one that Jane and Hugo completely rejected, both for inaccuracies and for its presentation”, the director explains of why this material had lain unseen for so long.

“This is what bike racing is about,” Millar suggests. “It’s about the beauty of it … we got into it because we loved the thrill of it, the weirdness, the cult nature of it and just how spectacular it all is. We’re a circus performance, travelling from town to town. It’s exactly the same sport it was 80 years ago. It hasn’t really changed. The hotels are a bit better but we still share rooms.” It is one sport where you “can have the champions go by and touch them if you want.” The riders may be in teams, but Millar believes they’re all individuals at heart. “It’s the ultimate paradox. Almost every professional cyclist was a loner at school. That’s the reason they got into it. It’s not a school sport. It’s not a peer pressure sport. It is something you do for individualism, for escape, because you are fundamentally a loner … the really good guys, if they turn professional, enter a super team sport. So you’ve got this bunch of hyper-loners that have to operate at one of the highest levels of team operation you have in any sport in the world!” By Geoffrey Macnab

Morgen interviewed Goodall over a period of two days. “When you are interviewing someone who has told her story so many times, there is an inherent challenge”, the director says. She may have been a tough interviewee, but she was articulate and frank. He describes his work with her as very similar to Goodall’s work tracking and studying the chimpanzees. There is a fable-like element to Goodall’s story. “I wanted to come as close to talking to animals as I could, to be like Dr Doolittle,” Goodall, now 83, tells the director. “Since I was 8 years old, I had dreamed of living in Africa. I found myself living in my dream.” She wanted to “do things men did and women didn’t.” At first, it seemed that Goodall had indeed found her Eden. Then, darkness intruded. Her marriage ended. She learned about the brutality with which the apes sometimes behaved. “The movie is an emotional rollercoaster,” Morgen says. It deals both with the upheavals in Jane’s own life and heart-breaking events in the lives of the chimps. “There are parts of this film where you almost feel you are watching a Jungle Book or Disney film. You forget these are wild chimpanzees … you forget these animals could have killed Jane and Hugo at any given second.” By Geoffrey Macnab Photo: Bader Taleb

Eye on film

As the packed South Africa industry programme came to an end on Wednesday, board member of the Documentary Filmmakers Association of South Africa Sylvia Vollenhoven, spoke about ongoing collaboration with the festival.

The detailed programme, organised for the second year by Esther Van Driesum for 20+ South African documentarians, consisted of industry talks and sessions, a day observing the Forum in action, and a trip to EYE. Core to the experience was a series of Doc Dialogues during which filmmakers with a documentary in development could discuss their projects in one-to-one meetings with established colleagues from the industry. The aim of these Doc Dialogues was to explore the creative and strategic ideas around the films. “You get to talk to people one-on-one, not as a pressurised pitch … but just to explore and to have a different eye on your film”, explained Vollenhoven. “The relationship between South African filmmakers and IDFA goes back a long time,” she continued. “What is interesting is that, although South Africa’s film history is old – we have had a film industry since film began basically

– the documentary film history is very new, and has been developed basically since the start of democracy in 1994 by government grants and initiatives, and by different relationships between the public broadcaster and the independent filmmakers. So as a result there are new and interesting things coming up, which we are hoping IDFA and platforms like this can help develop and support.” “What we are beginning to discuss as a result of what Esther has done is how we can make IDFA work even better for us in a way that is innovative,” Vollenhoven added. “How do we, in parallel with IDFA, continue this very good initiative and take it to the next level?” The South African documentary Strike a Rock, directed by Aliki Saragas, was selected for IDFA Panorama. This film charts the grim conflict between women from a mining community and the mine owners. Meanwhile, while Simon Wood and Meghna Singh’s Container was selected for Forum. The project is described as a “multi-sensory journey positioned at the intersection of virtual reality and installation art. In a surreal maze of shipping containers, you witness the truth behind the ‘invisibilized’.” By Nick Cunningham

Strike a Rock

LISTEN “I remember calling the child helpline myself when I was about eight”, filmmaker Astrid Bussink says of the genesis of her short doc (winner of the IDFA Special Jury Award for Children’s Documentary) L I S T E N. “It was about something really futile – I was in a ‘relationship’ with two boys and I couldn’t choose between them. I was really surprised that they actually listened to the problem. And asked questions, they weren’t just telling you what to do, like most adults. I was curious whether these helplines still exist. They do, and they’re now more popular than ever.” By Mark Baker cried – I didn’t ask her to. I don’t even know why. Something in the ‘story’ resonated with her.” Children are also responsible for all the visuals in L I S T E N, Bussink reveals. “All of the images – apart from the cats and the guinea-pigs, which we filmed in the studio – are made by children. For example, we asked another girl who is in an asylum-seekers’ centre to shoot what she sees through the window, to reflect how she’s feeling.”

Realising there would be huge privacy issues involved in making a documentary on this subject, Bussink approached the ‘Kindertelefoon’ (the Dutch children’s telephone helpline) to see what was possible. “They were interested in doing something, but of course quite limited in what they could offer us because of the privacy issues. It’s illegal to eavesdrop on these conversations.” The solution she came up with to make the film without compromising the children’s privacy was as ingenious as it is effective. “We spoke to loads of helpline volunteers, and to many, many children who had contacted the child helpline. Then we created a new narrative using topics that came up a lot in our conversations with them, or that appealed to me, or that were funny – like what I call the ‘pizza phone calls’ [prank calls by children ordering food from the helpline]”, Bussink says. “I wanted to have at least one of those in the film.” The children supplying their stories were guara nteed complete anonymity.

Having carried out this research and identified the issues she wanted to cover in the film, Bussink then approached another group of children to ‘act out’ these problems (or ‘stories’) in calls to the helpline (with the helpline’s knowledge and cooperation). “We found other children and gave them a ‘problem’. For instance, in the case of the boy who’s in the asylumseekers’ centre – he was voiced by another boy who is actually in an asylum-seekers’ centre. We just said, call the line and tell them what you’re feeling. On the other end of the line was an actual child line volunteer. They might know we were recording them, but they treated ‘our’ children just like they would regular calls.” The child ‘actors’ really warmed to their roles, the director recalls. “Something just happened with these children when they made the phone calls. I had expected them to fall out of their role or giggle or whatever, but they took it so seriously. They really went for it – I think in part because they related to the stories. For instance, one girl actually

The film’s soundtrack was not made by children, however. Of the original music (by Yvo van Gemert and Bartho Waeyen), Bussink says: “At first, Yvo made something and it didn’t work. Then he sent us some other pieces of his work, saying, ‘it’s a bit out of the box, a bit strange, there’s one song with my vocal on it’ – and it was absolutely perfect. It feels melodramatic, which really suits the puberty thing, then it moves into hip-hop, which is lighter.” This perfectly complements sequences of a kid hurtling along on a skateboard. “I think the boy who did that visual for us is like the number one skateboard guy in the Netherlands”, she adds. Speaking between sessions at the Forum, which she is also attending in her new capacity as head of youth documentary for Dutch broadcaster VPRO, Bussink reveals that she now has plans for a feature-length, international version of L I S T E N, and is currently looking for funding. “There are obviously so many more stories – this short version had to be age-appropriate, for kids aged eight to twelve years. What we miss in this version is issues like sexuality, gender, love, and all of that. We also heard so many deeply horrible stories during the research, which we chose not to use in this version, but I would really love to elaborate on that too. It will be a big job – we already spoke with about 150 children for the first version – we would have to partially start over again, with this different age group – fifteen to eighteen-yearolds – in mind. It’s a different perspective.”

By Geoffrey Macnab

Clive Davis was an unlikely figure to be in the music business at all. “The emphasis in Jewish

families who did not have any money is that you’ve gotta be a lawyer or you’ve gotta be a doctor”, the bespectacled Davis recalls early on in Chris Perkel’s film about him. His mother died when his second year at college was beginning. His father died the following year. He was left an orphan but, after Harvard, landed a job at one of New York’s top law firms. A white collar career seemed to be opening up to him. The transformative moment came when, as a lawyer working for Columbia, Davis went to the Monterey Festival and encountered ‘60s counter-culture at first hand. During this period, Columbia shunned rock music and had a roster of middle-of-the-road artists.

By Nick Cunningham

Mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter Marloes Coenen has had an illustrious career but, in her midthirties, age is catching up with her, and she wants to have a child. In The Last Fight, an existentialist tale, we follow Coenen as she prepares to bow out – hopefully as world champion. “[Marloes is] a great person and a great subject to engage with the viewer. And her story is amazing. When I first met her, I saw that sense of obsession and panic in her eyes, and then I thought ok, this is a film”, says director Victor Vroegindeweij. According to Vroegindeweij, the Dutch really shouldn’t be all that good at MMA in the first place, being a race who thrive on compromise, he stresses. “In Holland, we always debate and then we find a way where everybody loses a little bit, in politics and in business, and we are quite successful at it. That we are the best at this extremely violent sport is strange. In MMA there is no middle ground. No consensus. Winner takes all.”

IDFA Competition for Kids & Docs

Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives He is the man with the “golden ear”, the New York lawyer turned record company executive who, first at Columbia and then at Arista, signed up and worked with artists from Janis Joplin to Bruce Springsteen, from Whitney Houston to Barry Manilow, Patti Smith, Alicia Keys and The Grateful Dead. Over a 50-year period, he has (as Sean “Puffy” Combs puts it) “made the soundtrack for our lives.”

The Last Fight

“I was blown away. I had never seen any hint of the cultural, social revolution coming out of Haight-Ashbury”, Davis recalled. He was there wearing slacks and a tennis sweater. When Janis Joplin came on stage, he felt his “arms tingle” and his “spine vibrate,” and was overcome with emotion. He realised that there wasn’t just a social revolution underway, but a musical one as well. Joplin was the first artist he ever signed. “Clive had written a very successful autobiography a few years back and the property ended up at Ridley Scott’s production company to adapt into a film,” Perkel explains of the circumstances that led to his directing the documentary, which includes 58 interviews and 130 music cues. “I happened to be talking to them about another project at the time and have a background in music docs, having done work for great filmmakers like Cameron Crowe and Morgan Neville, as well as work with the Coachella festival. So when they began considering directors, they asked if I were interested, and of course I jumped at the chance to throw my hat in the ring. I’m thrilled it worked out the way it did, to say the least.” Davis, the buttoned-up executive from a legal background, was equally at home with R&B and pop artists, country singers, rappers, hip-hop stars and soul singers. They all seem to trust him implicitly. They all knew, too, his reputation for spotting talent and turning out hit after hit. As for Davis, having experienced bereavement (first his parents when he was young and then, more recently, Whitney Houston) and professional humiliation, he has never taken his success for granted. That is why he is still as driven now to find new artists, re-package older stars, and to keep on trying to sell records in their millions. Music Documentary

The set-up in the Coenen camp is complex, with a triumvirate of characters pulling her from pillar to post. Head trainer Martijn has always run a tight ship and is determined to keep it that way. Coenen’s gentle boyfriend Roemer, also a fighter, suggests other training methods, but he is too conciliatory and his approach seems to lack the necessary rigour. Another character, Leon the mind-coach, reassures her with Tarot card readings. Vroegindeweij was looking to add a narrated commentary to reflect on the pure essence of combat, but needed somebody with gravitas to deliver it. “I could try to find a voice at one of the voice agencies, but they often lack character. So I thought, what about a genuine American gritty voice like Bruce Dern?,” the director says. So he contacted Dern’s agent who replied that the actor was interested, but he needed a firm offer. When Vroegindeweij stressed that there was no money left and that he would be paying out of his own pocket, Dern settled on 90 minutes of recording time. The subsequent narration packs a powerful punch to the film. “I wanted to add a layer of philosophical depth that can hang above the story and can comment from a place of experience. This film talks to many cultures. The voiceover emphasises that, and makes it more accessible to an Anglo-Saxon audience as well”, Vroegindeweij concludes. IDFA Competition for Dutch Documentary

ATTIC ROOM TO FULL HOUSE From the archives: an interview with IDFA founders Ally Derks, Adriek van Nieuwenhuijzen and Willemien van Aalst in the last issue of the 1990 IDFA Daily (By Jan Pieter Ekker, translated from the Dutch by Mark Baker)

In the last daily, an interview with the Festival Top 3: Ally Derks (director), Willemien van Aalst (head of production) and Adriek van Nieuwenhuijzen (programme coordination). First off, the classic question: How did you come to the festival? AD: I was an intern at Festicon, a festival for film and video. I saw some beautiful documentaries there, but the cinemas were empty. I thought, we have to have a documentary festival. So we applied for some funds to the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Culture, and the festival was born. At that time, Sonja de Leeuw was heavily involved with documentaries at Festicon, and she said, ‘I know these two great women, do you have any internships?’ That was Willemien and Adriek. WvA: We started out in an attic in Hilversum, with a typewriter and a telephone. AD: We had to have an advisory committee. We had a list of filmmakers and producers, and we just started calling them. WvA: Ringing up [Dutch film journalist and screenwriter] Jan Blokker, in a cold sweat… AD: And him with his deep voice: ‘But young lady…’ Now when Adriek and Willemien call, they get put straight through to the boss. How is the festival going? Are you happy? WvA: Very happy. This has been the busiest and best festival yet.

Strike a Rock

WvA: There were a lot more visitors than last year. AD: After the weekend I thought, that was it – but it stayed busy. What do you think about the criticisms up to now? WvA: What criticisms? The discussion about the place of video alongside film. AD: We have been showing video for three years now, but the projection doesn’t yet have sufficient quality that we can show a lot of them. I do think we will have a video selection. And the requirements for the competition programme? AD: This festival doesn’t aim to show everything. That’s what the Dutch Film Days is for. AvN: If you talk to the guests, two things always come out: the high quality of the programme and the opportunity to meet other filmmakers. What will happen next year? AD: We want to become an A-list festival, and that means premieres. AvN: And then your prints have to be subtitled. We don’t have the money for that at the moment. AD: It’s especially important for the foreign guests that the Dutch films are also subtitled. WvA: We might be able to get a subsidy for the subtitling. AD: The main thing is to find out if we can continue on this financial footing. AvN: Everything is low-budget, and everything has to be cheap. AD: We would love to pay a lot more people. At the moment, only Willemien, Adriek and I are paid, everyone else is a volunteer and they still cost 60 to 70 guilders a day and there are about 70 volunteers working here. Speaking of volunteers: what do you think of the Daily? AvN: It’s getting better and better – the first one was a bit boring. WvA: Last year it was just one A4 with programme changes.

AD: Next year, we will have to have information in English. There are some foreign guests who can’t quite keep up with it all, and miss the nominations, for example. AvN: You get the award for the best team, that’s for sure. When will you start working on next year? AD: We’ve been working on next year for three weeks now. Why do you do it, actually? AD: For the kick! WvA: And to see the full houses, and the people coming out, impressed. AD: Three years ago, the cinemas were empty, and now sometimes people can’t get in. The emotions on the faces of the people coming out: I’ve seen them laughing, and I’ve seen them cry…

Ally circa 1990, surrounded by Betty ‘Willemien’ Davis & Marilyn ‘Adriek’ Monroe

Back to the Taj Mahal Hotel By Melanie Goodfellow

Dutch director Carina Molier’s Back To The Taj Mahal Hotel revisits the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai through the accounts of five survivors who were all guests at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, which was the epicentre of the killing. A total of 164 people died and hundreds more were injured in the attacks at several locations across the city, taking place over three days. Molier’s documentary is not a reconstruction, however, but rather an exploration of fear and how people react to fear through the example of people caught up in the Taj Mahal Hotel attack. It was an idea that grew out of childhood memories that resurfaced as Molier watched TV news reports on the attacks back in the Netherlands. The filmmaker had lived briefly as a child in the hotel, when her father had been posted to India as an expat worker in the petrochemical industry. “As I watched on the news, I could see all the places where I had once lived and played,” she recalls. Beyond spotting her old haunts, Molier also started recalling how her mother had always been fearful while they were living there. “This idea of fear has been in my life since an early age and I’ve always been in interested in how fear drives people,” Molier says. “I started to read philosophers on the topic. I thought it would be interesting to make a film reflecting on what fear means and how it is affecting our world.”

The interviewees include a German woman whose partner died from his injuries when he tried to escape through an upper floor window ; a British copywriter; a journalist, who had been attending a wedding party; a security advisor and an Australian cameraman. Each talks about how they dealt with their fear that night. The German survivor recalls how she kept falling asleep while her partner got increasingly agitated; the UK producer describes how he and his girlfriend hatched a plan to disarm a gunman if he entered the room, while the Australian photographer describes the excruciating wait for something to happen as shooting advanced up the hall outside. “I think people agreed to participate because they understood I wanted to make more than a journalistic item about the attack,” says Molier. “The idea was always to make a film with extra layers, reflective layers.” She combines the interviews with images of the restored hotel today, as well as terrifying footage of the gunmen marauding through the hotel’s corridors. “I didn’t want to make people more fearful by watching the film,” she explains. “I want them to get into a meditative mood, to think about fear. I think when viewers see how the people develop in the film, they’ll get a sense that, while their experiences that night didn’t exactly free them, they transformed and liberated their thinking.” IDFA Competition for Mid-Length Documentary IDFA Competition for Dutch Documentary

Shooting soldiers: Director Manuel Abramovich (left) discusses the cinematography in his doc Soldier with programmer Eric Hynes at the Camera in Focus Doc Talk on Thursday, 16 November in EYE.

Talking pictures: cinematographer and DOP Ed Lachman (right) makes a point at the IDFA Industry Talk: Master Class Ed Lachman (co-hosted by Arri Academy, moderated by Henning Rädlein, left) on Tuesday 21 November in De Brakke Grond.

Cutting edge: Dutch editor Menno Boerema (left, The Silence of Mark Rothko; The World According to Monsieur Khiar) discusses the editor’s craft with Joe renowned cutter Joe Bini (right, Little Dieter Needs to Fly; Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired) at the IDFA Industry Talk: Master Class Joe Bini, hosted by the Netherlands Association of Cinema Editors.

Friends reunited: former IDFA artistic director Ally Derks surrounded by documentary luminaries at the Visual Voice lunch on Saturday, 18 November in De Balie.

Fever pitch: the Forum’s Central Pitching sessions in full swing in the Grote Zaal of the Compagnietheater. Meeting of minds: Filmmaker Coco Schrijber (left, First Kill; Bloody Mondays and Strawberry Pies; How to Meet a Mermaid, IDFA 2016) joins renowned Danish cinematographer Lars Skree (Armadillo; The Look of Silence; Putin’s Kiss; How to Meet a Mermaid) at his IDFA Industry Talk: Master Class Lars Skree, co-hosted by the Netherlands Society of Cinematographers on Tuesday 21 November in De Brakke Grond.

Fighting talk: Director Mohamad Soueid talks about his film Civil War at the Doc Talk on Saturday November 18 in the Kleine Komedie.

Partners of IDFA th Premium Premium Partner Partner of of the the 30 30th International International Documentary Documentary Film Film Festival Festival Amsterdam Amsterdam

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3 3

RECHT verbeeld in

KRITERION In samenwerking met

ACQUISITIE ACQUISITIE Daily Productions Productions Daily DRUK DRUK Rodi Rodi Media Media

17/11

Eye in the Sky

15/12 12/1

Fuoccamare

A Civil Action (35mm)

FILMTHEATER KRITERION 18

WOENSDAG VRIJDAG 24 NOVEMBER 15 NOVEMBER

PROGRAM FRIDAY 24 NOVEMBER DE MUNT

g 0

12:15

Taste of Cement

Compilation program put up by main partner VPRO. For tickets see www.vpro.nl/ evenementen.

João Moreira Salles Masters, 127’

17:00

18:00

Pueblo Textil Ouaga Girls

Theresa Traore Dahlberg Best of Fests, 83’

20:30

Nokia Mobile – We Were Connecting People Arto Koskinen Panorama, 92’

The Jewish Underground

A Skin so Soft

15:15

Denis Côté

Muhi – Generally 15:30

Masters, 94’

Temporary The Family Rina Castelnuovo-

Rok Bicek Tamir Elterman Hollander,

Demons in Paradise

Panorama, 77’

The Stranger

Best of Fests, 71’

Eric Caravaca

Best of Fests, 67’ 18:15

TV5MONDE, the FrenchDead Donkeys speaking television Fear Nocultural Hyenas channel,Demmer with documentaries Joakim subtitled Dutch. Best of Festsin , 80’

18:45

Cocaine Prison

Shevaun Mizrahi Best of Fests, 82’

20:45

The Holy Mountain

21:00 Best of Fests, 94’

Alejandro Jodorowsky

Docs Around the Clock

21:00

TV5MONDE Dag: Faces Places

Distant Constellation Kristoffer Borgli

DEDE MUNT MUNT1312

Jonathan Harris’ Top 10, 114’

A documentary marathon featuring the highest rated films for the IDFA Audience Award. Until 9am, with breakfast for the diehards.

Stian Indrevoll Panorama, 82’

12:15

Taste of Cement

12:00

Panorama, 88’

Extra screening of a festival hit. Check www.idfa.nl

EYE TUSCHINSKI CINEMA

4 2

11:00

In the Intense Now João Moreira Salles

João Moreira Salles Masters, 127’

15:00

17:30

Denis JessicaCôté Beshir

14:00

Our Skin

Pueblo Textil

Best of Fests, 83’

19:45

Barbara Kopple

A Murder in Mansfield Masters, 84’ 20:30

Nokia Mobile – We Were Connecting People Arto Koskinen Panorama, 92’

Agustina Comedi Masters, The Visual Voice, 108’ Panorama, 75’

Yony Leyser

Music Documentary, 83’

Best of Fests, 89’

15:15

Spielberg This Is Everything: Susan Lacy Gigi Gorgeous

17:15 Mendoza Rubén

Best Fests, 90’ TheofVenerable W.