IDFA Journal 2 by IDFA International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam

Journal November 17/18

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submission deadline: February 1st, 2019 www.mdag.pl 5 cities 150 films 14 awards 90 events May 10th–19th, 2019

WARSAW • WROCLAW • GDYNIA • LUBLIN • BYDGOSZCZ

JOYCE DIDONATO MUSEO DEL PRADO, MADRID V IV IENNE WESTWOOD KU N ST HISTORISC HES MUSEUM, VIENNA JUL IE M EHRETU SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, NEW YORK SASHA WALTZ MUSÉE D‘ORSAY, PARIS WOLFGANG JOOP UFFIZI GALLERY, FLORENCE ERWIN OLAF RIJKSMUSEUM, AM STERDAM KATHA RINA GROSSE ALT E NAT IONALGALERIE, BERLIN KARL OV E KNAUSGÅ RD MUNC H MUSEUM, OSLO

WALKING ON WATER a film by

ANDREY M PAOUNOV

KOTVA FILMS PRESENTS IN ASSOCIATION WITH RING FILM A FILM BY ANDREY M PAOUNOV “WALKING ON WATER” EDITED BY ANDREY M PAOUNOV AND ANASTAS PETKOV MUSIC BY SAUNDER JURRIAANS AND DANNY BENSI PRODUCED BY IZABELLA TZENKOVA AND VALERIA GIAMPIETRO DIRECTED BY ANDREY M PAUNOV

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News

New CoPro chief Osnat Eden bows at IDFA The CoPro Foundation, one of Israel’s main support bodies for documentary and animation, has appointed Osnat Eden as its new director, replacing its much-loved and respected founding chief Orna Yarmut who passed away last August. Eden arrives at the CoPro Foundation from Israel’s new public broadcaster KAN, where she was Head of Acquisitions. Prior to that role, she was Head of Documentary Acquisitions for yes Docu at YES DBS Satellite Services. A respected figure within the documentary scene, Eden has previously participated in decision-maker panels at IDFA, Sheffield, DocsBarcelona, Lisbon Docs and Asian Side of the Doc documentary festivals. She makes her industry debut in her new role at this year’s edition of IDFA. “After the passing of Orna, we searched for the most qualified candidate with a vast experience in the local and international documentary market, as well as in TV and digital media. We met with a lot of suitable candidates and decided that Osnat’s experience and personality are the best match to fill Orna Yarmut’s “big shoes”, the CoPro Foundation board said in a statement. Eden says her key aims and challenges for CoPro as she takes its helm are to expand its activities and influences, locally and internationally; to fundraise and also update its programme to fit the digital age. “Thanks to Orna, CoPro is one of the most important phases of Israeli docs to become international. She was involved in all stages of production of the projects CoPro chose each

Senseless

Melanie Goodfellow talks to the new director of the CoPro Foundation about taking over from the much-missed Orna Yarmut

year. Filmmakers appreciated her tremendously, and I hope and plan to reach this level of trust and appreciation myself”, Eden says. Yarmut created the CoPro Foundation in 1999 to help producers and filmmakers of documentary and animation projects connect with international partners. Its documentary-focused efforts were centred around its annual industry meeting and project market, CoPro in Tel Aviv in the early summer, which is scheduled to take place June 2-5 in 2019. Scores of Israeli documentaries were able to find international partners thanks to support from CoPro under

Yarnat’s tenure, including Presenting Princess Shaw, The Oslo Diaries, Sound of Torture, Five Broken Cameras, The Law in These Parts and The Wonderful Kingdom of Papa Alaev. Yarmut’s untimely death at the age of 62 shocked and saddened members of the wider documentary community and a tribute is planned in her remembrance at this year’s Forum, where she was a lively and engaged participant. Her legacy lives on this year at the co-financing event which has two Israeli features in its selection – Rachel Leah Jones’s Advocate and Guy Davidi’s Senseless – previously pitched at CoPro. •

Dharma bum Masters

American Dharma

When Errol Morris presented his feature documentary American Dharma at the Venice Festival earlier this autumn, he must have felt he was the filmmaker who had kicked the hornet’s nest. Some festivalgoers were furious that he had given a platform to Steve Bannon, the right-wing strategist and media executive who masterminded President Donald Trump’s election campaign. They accused Morris of being “seduced” by his subject and of losing his critical distance when dealing with Bannon, the high priest of the xenophobic “alt-right”.

As IDFA audiences will discover when the film screens this weekend, Bannon is indeed a disarming presence on screen. He flatters Morris and speaks with an unlikely passion about films he admires, among them Henry King’s Twelve O’Clock High and Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight. Bannon reads these films against the grain and somehow even makes Welles’ carousing, dissident Falstaff fit into his right-wing philosophy. Morris hadn’t previously seen Twelve O’Clock High but had to agree it contained probably Gregory Peck’s finest performance (“much better even than To Kill a Mockingbird”) as the commander of a US air force unit. “Movies for me are like a Rorschach test. Many of these movies, as certainly became apparent in my discussions with Bannon, are subject to multiple interpretations. [Bannon] often saw movies very, very differently to me”, Morris acknowledges. The veteran documentary maker acknowledged the ethical challenges in making American Dharma – and in dealing with someone like Bannon, who shares his master Trump’s knack for manipulating the media. “But my answer is not to remain silent and not to make the movie”, Morris comments. On the contrary, he argues that it was “absolutely” worthwhile “trying to explore the nature of what he calls national populism.”

The director was probing away at what he calls Bannon’s “deep self-deception” and trying to work out whether Bannon was a true believer in the extremist right-wing ideology he espouses or whether he was “just a snake oil salesman, an opportunist using these ideas as a way of gaining power.” Is Bannon evil? Morris wouldn’t argue that he isn’t. (“My wife had mentioned to me that Bannon is a little like Lucifer in Paradise Lost. I mentioned this to him… I think that’s learning something because he embraces the idea.”) Is Bannon articulate? Yes. Is he worth making a film about? “I think it’s extraordinarily important that we all talk about it and try to come to a deeper understanding of it,” the director says of the alt-right phenomenon. “What frightens me even more is that he has been successful in Europe. What would he like to do – probably destroy the European Union, destroy the European currency and probably turn Europe back into a world of warring nation states; destroy the United Nations,” Morris sighs of the Bannon project. “It is insane!” • By Geoffrey Macnab

Sun 18 17:30 Carré; Mon 19 10:00; Tuschinski 1; Thu 22 9:55 Tuschinski 1; Thu 22 21:30 EYE Cinema 1; Fri 23 12:30 Brakke Grond Grote Zaal; Sat 24 10:00 Munt 11

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7/11/18 14:43

The Column of Truth

News

China’s Rediance makes IDFA debut

In an age defined in part by the cynical manipulation of audio-visual media, we asked leading filmmakers and critics to discuss the concept of truth; our responsibility towards it and the means of measuring it. In our second column, Eszter Hajdú, director of Feature-Length Competitor Hungary 2018, discusses how autocratic regimes try to hide the truth.

Emerging Chinese sales company Rediance is making its IDFA debut this year having clinched international rights to Afghan-Dutch filmmaker Aboozar Amini’s opening night picture Kabul, City in the Wind on the eve of the festival in the face of stiff competition from more established companies. The sales acquisition marks Rediance’s first foray into the documentary genre since its launch in June 2017. The outfit was founded by Xie Meng and Wang Zijian, co-founders of burgeoning arthouse production house Blackfin Productions, who wanted to create a sales company more culturally in-tune with Chinese filmmakers, as well as expand the international market for Chinese arthouse films. Geographical remit

Until now, the company has focused on fiction features with strong China links such as Cai Chengjie’s The Widowed Witch, which premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) this year, and Venice Queer Lion winner José by Li Cheng. “We focused on fiction at first, but actually it doesn’t matter to us whether a film is fiction or a documentary. What’s important is that it is an arthouse, director-driven film”, explains Rediance’s Paris-based festival manager Jing Xu, who is at IDFA for the first time. The Kabul, City in the Wind acquisition also signals a widening geographical remit for Rediance. “At first, we were focused on new Chinese talents based in China, but now we’re expanding into working with Chinese talents and professionals, working outside of the country with projects with strong

connections with China”, Xu says. In the case of Kabul, City in the Wind, the Chinese connection was Amsterdambased producer Jia Zhao, who produced the film and is also director Amini’s partner in production company Silk Road Film Salon. East, West

The long-time collaborators set up the company to focus on telling stories originating along the route of the ancient Silk Roads trade route, connecting East and West. Zhao said working with Rediance fulfilled a long-held ambition. “I really believe in this East, West way of doing things, to combine both. This film was supported by important funders in both the East and the West”, Zhao says of the production, which received the backing of Japan’s NHK Enterprises, the Busan International Film Fund, a South Korean DMZ Grant, the IDFA Bertha Fund, Germany’s EZEF Fund and the Netherlands Film Fund. “This is my dream and for me, it is wonderful to complete this dream by working with a Chinese sales company. It’s something I’ve always wanted to try. It’s not a coincidence that we suddenly found Rediance.” “I have been searching for the right Chinese partner for years,” she continues. “China is becoming not just an economic power, but also a cultural power. There are all these amazing Chinese filmmakers going out into the world. I thought it was about time there was an international sales company based out of China. I am so happy that Rediance liked this film.”

Eszter Hajdú

Jing Xu (left) and Jia Zhao Photo: Corinne de Korver

Beijing-based company aims to shift East-West sales paradigm, Melanie Goodfellow reports

Healthier system

Xu acknowledges that Rediance is moving into an international arthouse sales sector traditionally dominated by European sales outfits, but she is confident the company can offer the same services and support as existing sellers. “Rediance is based in Beijing and most of my colleagues are there, but I’m based in Paris where we’ve opened a branch, and we have another in Hong Kong. There is no difference between Rediance and other international sales agents”, says Xu, who cut her film sales teeth working for respected French sales agent Sara May at Alma Films, who has since departed for Netflix. “We’re building a healthier system and doing things in a better way than before and we have the backing of the Chinese industry,” she continues. “What’s different about Rediance is that it’s the first China-based international sales agent with a clearly-defined arthouse line-up. In the past, sales agents working out of China or Hong Kong have tended to mix commercial and arthouse titles. This is the first time there is an international sales agent with a clear cinephile stamp.” “It’s an important step. Europe has a very complex system. You have production, distribution and international sales – it’s very healthy. Now with China becoming the biggest market in the world, we need to complete the circuit. We didn’t have our own international arthouse sales agent, but we need one. If we don’t make this move somebody else will.” •

I come from a country where nowadays telling the truth is a giant challenge. Civil organisations, independent journalists, critical intellectuals are all demonized by the government and the media, which is controlled by the state. There are torrents of lies, circulating all around the country, and people believe these lies. Rightwing populist or far-right propaganda is based on manipulation and on creating hate and fear. Our political leaders invent enemies, e.g. refugees, Muslims, Jews, Roma, homosexuals, intellectuals, homeless and other groups. They scapegoat them, blaming them for everything, instead of speaking about the real problems in society. Hungary was a Communist country before 1989. Critical views of society, showing social problems, were not possible. Unfortunately these times are returning. These autocratic regimes, whether far left or far right, always hide the truth. Independent filmmakers have a very difficult task in such societies. If we want to break taboos and show truth, we are seen as enemies of the nation and politicians follow us, come to our premieres, circulate false propaganda about us. It is hard to find a crew because your colleagues are afraid to work on a production that is not ‘loyal’ to the goverment. They are afraid of losing other jobs, of problems from the tax authorities, and so on, and they have good reason to be afraid. In our film, Hungary 2018, the majority of our crew asked for anonymity. But if we are documentarists who feel responsibility for our fellow citizens, we have to keep on. Observing society, showing what is going on, is the best way to tell the truth. As filmmakers, we have to give a voice to those people who are oppressed by these regimes, and through their voices the truth will come out to the surface. •

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a big debate, who tells whose stories? I think that pluralism is the keyâ&#x20AC;?

A world united Inside IDFA

IDFA is upping the ante among leading film festivals in demanding more films from a broader spectrum of global filmmakers, in the process redressing the imbalance of geo-diversity, Nick Cunningham reports

Orwa Nyrabia Photo: Bert Nienhuis

There is no denying that US and Western European film industries are beautifully set up for exploitation by international film events. Communication with the regions’ filmmakers, stakeholders and representative bodies is straightforward, screeners arrive within minutes of request and you can bet your bottom dollar/Euro that the technical specs of each film will be spot-on. New era

And of course, nobody will be overly offended if yet another well-made, tasteful piece of cinema issuing from the US, France or the Netherlands fills that final festival selection slot. Or will they? Actually, yes, argues IDFA’s new artistic director Orwa Nyrabia. “The rest of the world does not lack talent, even if it may lack funding,” he points out. “And our worldview will remain very limited unless we invest the effort necessary to highlight, welcome, screen and discuss films not only from well-served film communities, but from the entire world… I believe that the world is entering a new era of recognising the post-colonial heritage, so it is a question of the people’s rights to represent themselves, the people’s rights to tell their own stories. We see this across film in general, not only in documentary, and I think it is the responsibility of an international film festival to go the extra mile on this.” International ambition

40+ 20+ 10+ 5+ 2+ 1

Which is why the IDFA programme, generally considered to be both progressive and diverse in terms of its geographical spread, seems even more so in 2018. Seventy-two countries are represented in the overall selection, including previously under-represented territories such as Sierra Leone, Paraguay and Libya. The Western European percentage share of films in selection is down to 47% (from 55% in 2014) while the US share drops to 13% from a 25% high in 2015. This has very much been to the advantage of other doc industries, such as those of Eastern Europe, whose share of IDFA selections in 2018 measures a very healthy 16%. “Still, we have few films from Africa, but then again we have more films from Africa than usual [10 this year],” Nyrabia underlines. “We have four Indian films across four competitions and of course we have the very wide representation of Eastern

European films… We are not changing the balance of the film industry, but we are acknowledging that it doesn’t stop at any borders, that it is truly global. It is an international ambition to make good films.” IDFA Bertha Fund’s Isabel Arrate agrees, but argues that there is still much to be done before satisfactory levels of representation are reached. “Basically with the IBF, we are already working in the area [of geo-diversity]. That’s the core of what we do. But I think we’re not there yet, there is still a lot to achieve… It is still a lot more difficult for documentary filmmakers and producers from smaller non-Western production countries to find their place within the industry and get the necessary exposure to find the partners and financiers that they need.” Open eye

Nyrabia further cautions both against impatience on the part of the festival sector towards what may seem like lower production standards on some non-Western films, and an arrogance in assuming that the Western cinematic aesthetic is applicable to content produced from every part of the globe. “Sometimes the films are there, but they fall foul of the selection process for technical reasons, so we have to be more patient than usual and go and watch these films again. If a film is rejected, then it is not to be rejected just because it is not made with the best camera or with perfect sound. Technicalities are not a decisive factor.” “Secondly, we are very well habituated in the West to a particular dramaturgy, and it is very easy to be impatient when we are watching a different dramaturgical approach, such as when a film is not made with a standard 3-act structure, or when it doesn’t start with the most beautiful opening scene. We are trained by mainstream film standards and structures but we have to begin to see with a more open eye.” IDFA Bertha Fund’s Arrate takes up the theme, echoing the advice she offers to recipients of her organisation’s funding support: “Filmmakers must be strong – come prepared with a dialogue to work on [the story] they are going to tell, and not have it hijacked (I know that is a strong word) by the funding bodies to make it a different narrative that suits the European idea of how a film should be told.”

Nyrabia adds: “It’s a big debate, who tells whose stories? I think that pluralism is the key, so we cannot only watch films about India, we would also like to watch Indian films by Indian filmmakers, and take a more pluralistic view of our world.” Travelling further

The incoming IDFA director notes how, in practical terms, all of this commitment towards a more diverse festival selection demands a significant ongoing change in modus operandi on the part of the festival and its programmers. Putting it bluntly, festivals such as IDFA have to go out into the world in order to discover great new filmmakers. “We are therefore developing a strategy of travelling further, and this includes developing a network of regional advisers for our festival… Discovering and bringing to the table films from parts of the world where filmmakers don’t enjoy the privilege of good promotion and a P&A budget is what we do. We have to find them and introduce them to our audience.” So how does the shift in emphasis impact the 2018 selection in qualitative terms? “I am very proud to show the film Survivors from Sierra Leone. It is a beautiful film which, when you start watching maybe feels like reportage, but if you are patient you will find a beautifully made film with a lot of sincere emotion,” Nyrabia stresses. “Another example is the monumental, outstanding film Reason by Anant Patwardhan in Feature-length Competition that tells so much about life in India today, so much more than any other film I have personally seen. These are films that do not naturally find their place in the slate of a big film festival and are not necessarily made to European broadcaster standards. They were made because filmmakers really needed to make them.” Everybody is welcome

Nyrabia concludes by offering support and solace to directors and producers attending a major film event for the first time, whose films are presented alongside against a plethora of Western product. “Filmmakers from many countries in the world feel baffled or not welcomed at big festivals. They feel that they don’t stand a chance because of where they come from. But IDFA sends out a clear message that everybody is welcome.” •

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IDD

Celebration The original version of Olivier Meyrou’s controversial feature-length doc Celebration, a delicious and provocative insight into the complex relationship between Yves Saint Laurent and his business partner Pierre Bergé, was presented at Berlinale 2007 but subsequently withdrawn from public access. Eleven years later a new version world-premieres in IDFA Luminous. Nick Cunningham reports

One could argue that it is hard to go wrong when given free reign to shoot a fly-on-the-wall documentary about (what was then considered to be) the last of the great Parisian fashion houses. In Meyrou’s film the factory floor is frenetic and filled with a loyal and lively gaggle of cutters, seamstresses and dressers. The models are beautiful and expressive and manage to exude both charm and haughtiness in equal measure. Everybody who isn’t a model is stylish, smart, talkative and idiosyncratic in one way or another. And at the core of the film is the strange and fractured relationship between the nervous, reclusive and highly vulnerable Saint Laurent and his business partner (and former lover) Bergé, presented as controlling and acerbic, and possessing of a volcanic temper. Director Meyrou shot his fascinating and highly cinematic film in situ for three years, during a time when the company was undergoing a process of existentialist angst, he stresses, adding that the subsequent documentary plays as an elegy. “Since it was the last years of Saint Laurent, there is a temporal issue [the designer died in 2008]. Somebody who is old and who is going to die soon, somehow he thinks a lot about the past… and they [the YSL company] were obsessed by the future,” Meyrou underlines. “Even for me, it was like a foreign country.

When I was filming I had the sense that it was almost the 19th or early 20th century… It was a dying world – I wanted to give the sense that it was still there when I was filming, but already in the past.” What is very touching in the film is the esteem in which the great designer is held by his employees, with one staffer stressing how “working with him is like entering a large room with 47 doors – you can pick the one you like, all are good.” Meyrou adds how presenting the shop-floor workers as key protagonists opened a window for audiences onto the exclusive and impenetrable world of haute couture. “At that time, Saint Laurent was being carried by his team,” the director stresses. “For a long time he had been giving them energy… but when I arrived in the house it was at a time when his team was carrying their creator. It was very beautiful, you had this sense of collectivity.” While the aging designer is a continual melancholy presence, invoking both pathos and sympathy, it is Bergé who dominates the film as he bellows, cajoles, organises and frets. “Saint Laurent accepted the camera which was very unusual, but my goal was not to be in contact with him because I think it would have broken something, to respect his own space… Bergé was the bridge with the outdoors, and the metteur en scène,” Meyrou points out. “He was changing [the company]… He was even more obsessed than Saint Laurent about the future.” In one scene we observe Bergé in a crane placing a YSL-branded golden tip on an obelisk on Paris’s Place de la Concorde. “All this stuff was to create a myth,” Meyrou opines. Of course, the very man who commissioned the film (Bergé himself) was the same man who curtailed its further screening and broadcast, Meyrou claims. “When Bergé offered me to do a film, I knew nothing about the fashion industry. I am not a fashion guy at all. So I think he was looking for something else. I think he was looking for a filmmaker who would be able to get the human structure of their world. I had total liberty in fact. I was

“ When Bergé offered me to do a film I knew nothing about the fashion industry. I am not a fashion guy at all.”

completely free doing the shooting. After, it got a bit ugly, but during the shooting I think that they really wanted these images to exist for the future.” The director describes the subsequent ban on the film as “atrocious… like cutting [off] your legs – but now getting older, I understand a bit also what happened. I think that the movie was telling the ending somehow… but it was not completely the ending and Bergé, I think, wanted to remain in control of how the story would be told.” Meyrou reveals how Bergé had never actually seen the original film, despite his placing a ban on it, and finally requested to watch it in November 2015, not long before he died. “Someone told me that he was really feeling bad about that censorship, so he saw the film, he liked it, and then we agreed that the film would get finished.” That said, Meyrou was determined that if the film was ever to see the light of day again, it would be on his terms and not those of Bergé. “I would not have wanted the film finished when he was alive… once he saw the film, I was ok”, Meyrou comments. The recut film was subsequently completed after Bergé’s death. Sun 18 12:45 Kleine Komedie; Mon 19 15:00; Tuschinski 2; Wed 21 16:15 Tuschinski 1; Sat 24 21:30 EYE Cinema 1; Sun 25 10:00 Tuschinski 1; Sun 25 14:30 Brakke Grond Rode Zaal

Inside IDFA

Tasty tech

Nick Cunningham delves into this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s culinary themed DocLab exploration of how media are evolving across platforms and interfaces

Ross Goodwin

“ One of the most beautiful things about text without a human author is that in a certain way the reader becomes the writer”

Since its inception in 2007, DocLab has offered up a smorgasbord of brilliance, innovation, oddness and élan as it embraced, questioned and wrestled with evolving media across myriad platforms and techno interfaces. This year, however, the event has entered the culinary stratosphere with its Humanoid Cookbook programme, a reboot of the seminal 1932 Futurist Cookbook. Culinary theme

“Cooking food was the very first technology we humans invented, and thus the thing that kickstarted our long journey towards the era of machine intelligence and parallel virtual realities we have become immersed in today,” underlines DocLab chief Caspar Sonnen. “Similar to how chefs take unknown ingredients to invent exciting new culinary experiences, interactive artists are often among the first to critically examine new and unknown technologies. Like chefs, they invent wonderful interactive and immersive experiences that challenge our understanding of reality and invite us to taste the true potential (and creepiness) of today’s technology.” He further stresses how DocLab attendance and interaction is an absolute must not just for the clued-in, cineaste and digi-literate public audiences of Amsterdam, but for everyone with a professional interest in attending IDFA, whether as a suit or a creative. This is why the culinary theme flavours all the aspects of the programme, such as the DocLab Human Cookbook exhibition, designed as a restaurant for digital art with more than 30 interactive docs, culinary performances and interactive experiments on the menu. Meanwhile, the DocLab Expo Specials offer up more performance-based interactivity, sensory experiments and conversations with the artists (sometimes food and/or plant-based).

Klasien van de Zandschulp Photos: Nichon Glerum

Speculative fictions

The Anagram team of Amy Rose and May Abdalla, whose The Collider: Chapter One installation is selected for the IDFA DocLab Competition for Immersive Non-fiction, further clarify the event’s foodie concept. Their installation is described as a machine built to decipher the mysteries of human relationships; an immersive encounter that integrates VR into a playful and emotive experience exploring power, desire and manipulation. “Talking about cooking invites the question: if each project were a recipe or a meal, what relationship is being set up between the eater and the eaten? And what tools are required to navigate this relationship? Chopsticks, perhaps. A flat LED screen. Or a huge vat, to plunge into and become immersed in,” they write. “It would be naive to imagine that these technologies don’t hold within them an implicit rulebook about how they should be used, but we can be invited to use them incorrectly. The power of the interactive and immersive works that are offered in DocLab is that they invite us all to use technologies in strange and original ways. Like the best science fiction, in a world increasingly mediated by technology, they offer speculative fictions that suggest new recipes to deal with being alive.” Chat in the kitchen

Klasien van de Zandschulp and Emilie Baltz’s Humanoid Cookbook project Eat | Tech | Kitchen (also selected for DocLab Competition for Immersive Non-fiction and a recipient of a Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant) is designed, they say, “to breathe new life into futuristic cooking.” “What if this cookbook exists today in the 21st century with the digital revolution,” explains Van de Zandschulp. “We created completely new recipes that are based on 21st century rituals and behaviours, how we consume our technologies – and we also use a tool from the 21st century, a chatbot. So you talk to this bot and it asks you questions

about your social media behaviour, for example how important it is for you to receive ‘likes’ on an image on Instagram… so basically the conversation with the bot leads to the specification of the recipe.” “It is crossing the bridge between analogue and digital, and at the same time embracing all the senses – smell, taste and touch,” she adds. “The most important point is how we combine consumption of food with technology and social behaviour. It is not only about eating, but who you share with while you eat.” Auto-writing

Meanwhile, away from matters digi-gastronomic, IDFA attendees may wonder why a Mondrian-inspired automobile is parked in front of DocLab’s spiritual home De Brakke Grond. Installation artist Ross Goodwin will be looking to replicate the experience of his 1 The Road, in which he harnessed his considerable AI skills to create a unique piece of art. Is this an accurate characterisation of the work? Not exactly. “The main thing was that I wanted to write a novel with a car”, he underlines. In 2017, Goodwin set off from New York to New Orleans (1,304.91 miles) in a Cadillac fitted with a multi-directional surveillance camera and a GPS receiver hooked up to a database of locations. Meanwhile, a microphone recorded all the chat between Goodwin and his buddies. An AI machine processed all this input into a manuscript/novel that it produced line by line and printed out on 11 cash register rolls, which gradually filled the entire back seat. Reader as writer

“Each of those data streams was a starting point for the neuromaths to marry and expand into longer sentences. You see that each line in the book begins with one of those things and then expands into something different and more poetic.” 1 The Road has recently been transformed from its original analogue iteration (cash register rolls) into the realm of the digital by French publishing house Jean Boîte Editions. Ross is available to sign copies of the book. “One of the most beautiful things about text without a human author is that in a way the reader becomes the writer, and that is something I really like about this type of text. The reader gets to determine the meaning, gets to imbue it with meaning,” Goodwin continues. “It was definitely an experience that adhered to the rules of rapid prototyping in that there really are no rules of rapid prototyping, other than get to the experience as fast as possible. It was very much an exercise in experimentation and not about making the perfect novel with a car – more of making the first novel with a car.” Goodwin can’t promise that his Mondrian car parked outside De Brakke Grond will produce a second such novel, as there will be little by way of movement. That said, a 2-channel radio inside the car will both describe what is happening outside (using a suitable robotic voice) and provide the means for Goodwin to read from the original novel, a copy of which can be viewed in the car. Diverse, authentic stories

Other features of DocLab 2018 are the IDFA Crossmedia Forum on 30 October, during which new media projects will be pitched to a broad audience of international broadcasters and top-level decision makers, and an industry session on Creating Inclusive Realities (also 30 October) which will draw hands-on inspiration from immersive storytelling to create more diverse and authentic stories. The eagerly-awaited DocLab Conference on Saturday 17 November will again bring together an array of digital pioneers, talents, artists and thinkers for a day of inspiring presentations, visions of the future and public experiments. •

Best of Fests

International Competition for Mid-Length Documentary + Docs for Sale

+ Docs for Sale

Wongar

4 Years in 10 Minutes

Serbia | 2018 | 60 min.

Serbia | 2018 | 63 min.

Mladen Kovačević

Andrijana Stojković Australian writer of Serbian origins lives a secluded life taking care of his 6 dingoes for which he believes embody the spirits of his tragically lost Aboriginal family.

Nov 17 th Nov 20th th Nov 21 Nov 23 th

18:45 11:45 17:00 13:00

Tuschinski 5 + QA Munt 13 + QA Munt 9 + QA Munt 7

Nov 15th Nov 16 th Nov 18 th Nov 20th th Nov 24

11.30 14:15 17:30 19:00 13:15

SERBIA@IDFA18

Tuschinski 3 Munt 11 + QA Munt 12 Tuschinski 3 + QA Brakke Grond Grote Zaal

IDFA OFFICIAL SELECTION

Connected by Aleksandra Maciejczyk

Film Center Serbia

A puzzling archive reveals a journey to eternal glory that didn’t culminate in a cry of the victorious, but ended in a scream of the defeated.

IDFA COMPETITION FOR MID-LENGTH DOCUMENTARY

In Touch BY PAWEŁ ZIEMILSKI Summa BY ANDREI KUTSILA IDFA COMPETITION FOR FIRST APPEARANCE

Diagnosis

BY EWA PODGÓRSKA

IDFA COMPETITION FOR SHORT DOCUMENTARY

www.polishdocs.pl

Unconditional Love

BY RAFAŁ ŁYSAK

IDFA COMPETITION FOR STUDENT DOCUMENTARY

Connected

BY ALEKSANDRA MACIEJCZYK

IDFA COMPETITION FOR KIDS&DOCS

Dancing for You

BY KATARZYNA LESISZ

LUMINOUS

Compulsory Figures BY EWA KOCHAŃSKA Struggle. The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski BY IRENEUSZ DOBROWOSKI FOCUS: ME

Father and Son BY PAWEŁ ŁOZIŃSKI Father and Son on a Journey BY MARCEL ŁOZIŃSKI TOP 10 BY HELENA TŘEŠTÍKOVÁ

The First Love

BY KRZYSZTOF KIEŚLOWSKI

BESTS OF FESTS

Home Games

BY ALISA KOVALENKO

PROJECT CO-FINANCED BY THE POLISH FILM INSTITUTE

Open Forum IDFA’s co-financing Forum event is attempting to be more inclusive this year on all fronts, Melanie Goodfellow reports

The 26th edition of the Forum kicks off on Sunday with a packed day of rough-cut screenings, showcasing seven buzzy productions including Indian female activist tale The Half Truths, Peru prostitution investigation By the Name of Tania and Advocate about leading Israeli lawyer Lea Tsemel, who has spent 50 years defending Palestinians. “We got a lot more rough-cut applications this year, which is why we’ve increased the number of screenings to seven from four”, comments Forum manager Yorinde Segal. Strong female stories

Sunday’s line-up features a number of strong female stories. The Half Truths is the latest film from Hemal Trivedi, best known for her award-winning work Among The Believers. It follows the story of Indian tribal activist Soni Sori, who was tortured and raped in police custody and then disfigured in an acid attack, but keeps fighting for her cause. By the Name of Tania is the latest collaboration between Benedicte Liénard and Mary Jiménez and explores the exploitation of young girls by prostitution gangs in the gold-mining regions of Peru. The rough-cut event is mainly targeted at acquisition agents, festival programmers and sales agents. Three of the titles have already been acquired for international sales: Advocate is handled by Tel Aviv-based Cinephil and Autlook took rights to Forget Me Not and Reunited on the eve of IDFA.

Yorinde Segal Photo: Roger Cremers

Pitch projects

In total, 51 projects from 24 different countries will be presented over the course of the four-day Forum, selected out of 766 applications. Like the rest of the festival, the co-financing market has attempted to strengthen its commitment to inclusion, both in terms of gender and geographical origin of the projects. “We’ve been trying to get more of an inclusive mix for a while. It still remains very European of course because we’re in Europe, but it’s something we will continue to work on with our team of readers and selectors”, Segal says. The core pitching events will kick off as usual on Monday with Nanfu Wang’s Untitled Cuba Project, capturing the Cuban civil rights movement through an investigation into the suspicious death of Nobel Peace Prize-nominated civil rights activist Oswaldo Paya. Tuesday’s highlights include award-winning US director Camilla Nielsson’s working-titled Democrats 2, looking at Zimbabwe’s attempts to embrace democracy following the ousting of Robert Mugabe from power. It is produced by Oscar-nominated producer Signe Byrge Sørensen at Final Cut for Real. Both projects are among a slew of projects digging deeper into stories hitting the news, including kidnapped journalist account Return to Raqqa; Turkish political activist story The Other Half; Lost Childhood, about Israel’s incarceration of young Palestinians and School Shooters, probing the phenomenon of mass shootings at US high schools. Eclectic selection

Segal emphasises, however, that it is an eclectic selection. “It’s really a mix of projects this year. Yes, are there plenty of ‘stories behind the news’ type projects, reflecting the state of the world, but there are lots that are not timely or news-related and as usual there are a lot of strong arts and culture projects”, Segal says,

highlighting Korean project Lash and feminist nuns’ tale Rebel Hearts as quirkier, timeless projects. Lash is the latest film from Korean director Yoonsuk Jung, who was at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) with Bamseom Pirates Seoul Inferno in 2017, and explores the increasingly blurring lines between men and mannequins. “It’s a visually stunning work by an emerging talented team”, says Segal. Arts and culture highlights this year include Iraqi filmmaker Mohamed Al Daradji’s Iraq’s Invisible Beauty, exploring the life and work of compatriot photographer Latif Al Ani, known as the father of Iraqi photography. This marks a return to documentary for Al Daradji after his festival hit fiction feature The Journey. Other arts and culture projects include Fred Scott’s Being A Human Person, following enigmatic filmmaker Roy Andersson as he makes what he says will be his last film About Endlessness, which will also feature testimonies from his film director fans Alejandro Inarritu, Darren Aronofsky, Lana and Lilly Wachowski, Ruben Ostlund and Mike Leigh. Cross-media

This year’s selection also includes a number of cross-media projects. In a Central Pitch, BolivianAustralian filmmaker Violeta Ayala will unveil VR project Prison X, exploring the experience of six prisoners being held in the notorious San Sebastian Prison in Cochabamba in Bolivia. Other VR projects in the selection this year include Wonder Women, exploring stories around the world about women who have fought for their rights, from Yazidi women taking up arms against ISIS in Iraq to Kenyan grandmothers learning karate to fend off rapists. It is the latest project from Celine Tricart, whose joint work with Maria Bello, Sun Ladies, was selected for Sundance and SXSW this year. In other formats, Cynthia Hill will present her confidential high-end TV series Burden of Proof, about a man probing the disappearance of his sister, which has been backed by HBO at the development stage. Hot-seat

Beyond the selection, Segal also reveals that the Forum has also attempted to open up the floor at the Central Pitches this year beyond the commissioners hailing from broadcasters and big funds, who have traditionally dominated the discussion. “We now have something we call the ‘hot-seat’ which will enable niche funders to come and sit in and comment on specific projects that might work for them. The big funds like Tribeca, Sundance and Ford have long sat on the table, but we wanted to give an opportunity to funds like Chicken and Egg, which only supports female filmmakers, or Impact Partners, which is more focused on projects with an outreach element”, Segal explains. A handful of distributors are also expected to sit in the new ‘hot-seat’ including John Von Thaden, senior vice president acquisitions at Magnolia Pictures and Dan Braun, co-president at Submarine Entertainment. A handful of big US players including Netflix, Amazon and HBO will be staying away from the Central Pitches, however, opting for one-on-one meetings instead. Referring to the ‘hot-seat’ initiative, Segal says: “The way in which documentaries are getting financed is changing, with less public money available, filmmakers are looking to other sources of finance and we wanted to reflect this at the Forum.” •

Dutch audiences flock to docs

Box-o�ice potential: Ton van Zantvoort’s Sheep Hero

Figures released today by the Netherlands Film Fund reveal that cinema attendances for docs increased by no less than 202% to November 16 this year as compared to 2017. “People [in the Netherlands] love documentaries”, Suzanne van Voorst, documentary film consultant at the Netherlands Film Fund, says of the rising figures. Older audiences may go to midweek and daytime screenings but, she says “increasingly, you see young people going to documentaries as well. You get so much superficiality on television and social media. I think it is a need for an in-depth exploration of themes.” Diversity

Van Voorst also hails the new-found diversity in the sector. “In documentary, it is going in a very good direction,” she states. There are more female directors in documentary than in the fiction sphere. “Also, it is not just white people any more… it’s great. You hear different voices.” She cites directors such as the Afghan-born but Amsterdam-based Aboozar Amini (behind IDFA’s opening film, Kabul, City in the Wind) and the Chineseborn Louis Liu (Red Kid Black Kid) as well as filmmakers from former Dutch colonies. They are shaking up a Dutch doc world which, Van Voorst acknowledges, “used not to contain such cultural diversity.” Creative experiment

Van Voorst also points to a shift in the type of films in IDFA’s Dutch competition. “It’s a bit less activist and more cinematographic,” she suggests. “We have a very visible fresh wave of young documentary makers.” “The general quality of Dutch creative

Heart of a Dog

Suzanne van Voorst Photo: Joke Schut

Dutch documentary is enjoying an upsurge at the box o�ice, Geoﬀrey Macnab reports

documentary is rising. There is more space for experiment as well”, agrees Lisa Linde Nieveld of Eye International, the promotional body for Dutch cinema, which is hosting Fresh Dutch Docs – a Preview on Saturday evening, an invitation-only event aimed at sales agents, distributors, festival programmers and international press screening trailer previews of the best new Dutch docs. Cooperation

Here at IDFA on opening night, festival director Orwa Nyrabia announced a new cooperation between the Netherlands Film Fund and the IDFA Bertha Fund to boost international co-production between Dutch producers and filmmakers from non-Western countries. The Netherlands Film Fund continues to work closely with Flemish neighbours the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF). They collaborate on 6 docs a year – 3 Dutch and 3 Flemish. One IDFA title with both Flemish and Dutch backing is Ben Asamoah’s Sakawa, produced by Peter Krüger for Inti Films and with Pieter van Huystee Film as the Dutch co-producer. Underlining the newfound appetite for co-production, Dutch outfit Baldr was one of the partners on Janus Metz and Sine Plambech’s Danish doc Heartbound, screening in Best of Fests and sold internationally by Autlook. There was also Dutch involvement in Naziha Arebi’s Best of Fests title Freedom Fields (produced by the Scottish Documentary Institute and sold by Wide House) and in two separate films with the same title, Sergei Loznitsa’s The Trial (about the Stalin trials of the 1930s) and Maria Ramos’ The Trial (about the impeachment of Brazilian president Dilma Rouseff ).

Another initiative the Fund is currently hatching is for more feature docs aimed at kids. “We think that children can watch not only 10-minute films, but can easily watch longer films as well”, Van Voorst suggests. Selective

The Fund itself remains selective. Even the biggest name documentary directors may be asked to re-submit if their proposals are not well enough written or sufficiently developed. “It is government money and it is government money for film as art”, Van Voorst says of the Fund’s emphasis on films with strong aesthetic qualities and theatrical potential. However, if docs have strong “impact campaigns”, the Fund won’t insist on these titles being given a lengthy cinema release as a pre-condition for funding them. “But you have to show that you are going to reach your audience – and not just through television, but in another way as well.” Cinematographic

Dutch docs benefit from the willingness of distributors (Cinema Delicatessen, Mokum, Periscoop, Amstel, Cinemien and various others) to release films in cinemas. The Film Fund has 2.5 million Euros a year set aside for documentary. This money supports not just the production of traditional feature docs, but development and TV films as well. The Fund looks to support projects with “cinematographic potential.” It receives around 80 applications each year for production, post-production and development funding grants and supports between 10 and 20 of these. The maximum amount it can pump into a single doc is 200,000 Euros,

but investments tend to be much smaller than that (“usually between 50,000 and 150,000 Euros”). International inroads

Van Voorst calculates that over 100 feature or mid-length documentaries are made each year in the Netherlands. Obviously, the Fund can only support a small percentage of these. Documentary has long been regarded as one of the strongest areas in Dutch film culture. Now, Dutch docs are beginning to make inroads internationally too. This is underlined by the number of Dutch-backed titles that have been picked up by international sales agents. For example at IDFA this year, Kabul, City in the Wind is handled by Rediance Films while Heddy Honigmann’s latest feature, Buddy, has been picked up by Cat & Docs. Magnetic pull

Dutch docs are also surfacing at international festivals. For example, Willem Baptist’s polaroid-themed Instant Dreams screened everywhere from Slamdance to Thessaloniki and Sofia. One or two films also surfaced in Toronto. Nonetheless, as Lisa Linde Nieveld acknowledges, the magnetic pull of IDFA is so strong that many Dutch directors can’t resist it. This is the one event that all local filmmakers want to attend. “There is a very strong connection between Dutch documentaries and IDFA. We see this tendency that almost all Dutch documentary producers aim for IDFA… we are trying to stimulate them to focus on Sundance or try Berlin rather than IDFA, but it’s hard. This is such a good festival.” •

Focus Program

Me, myself & IDFA

In an age defined in part by the cynical manipulation of audio-visual media, we asked leading filmmakers and critics to discuss the concept of truth; our responsibility towards it and the means of measuring it. In our third column, the Guardian’s head of documentaries Charlie Philips argues for a lovely melange of diﬀerent truths.

Charlie Philips

Heart of a Dog

IDFA looks inward with its programme Me, full of documentaries in which filmmakers contemplate their own lives – and point their cameras at themselves. Geoﬀrey Macnab gets the inside story from programmer Laura van Halsema

The Column of Truth

Laura van Halsema Photo: Felix Kalkman

Programmer Laura van Halsema observes that the titles chosen aren’t just narcissistic exercises “about somebody’s personal life”, but are investigative exercises in which the filmmaking itself is “really part of the process.” There is often a sense of catharsis about these documentaries too – a feeling that the filmmakers have learned something transformative about themselves in the course of their work. The films chosen are all very different from one another. Some have a political dimension. Some are nakedly autobiographical. Van Halsema is intrigued by the different means of “artistic expression” their directors use, and by their formal daring. “Really crucial” to

the programme, she suggests, will be the talks involving the filmmakers, most of whom will be in Amsterdam. These filmmakers use many strategies. For example, Sara Fattahi’s Locarno Golden Leopard winner Chaos, which explores the effect of war on three Syrian women, employs actors. Fattahi herself is portrayed on screen by an actor. Rithy Panh’s masterpiece The Missing Picture uses clay figurines to tell the story of what he and his family endured after the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh in 1975. There is little footage of the death and suffering in the labour camps and killing fields. His decision to use dolls rather than archive footage is both respectful to the victims and a matter of necessity. In Sherman’s March, meanwhile, director Ross McElwee shares insights as to what is going on in his own head as he retraces the footsteps of Union army general William T. Sherman, during the American Civil War. The ultimate goal of his journey, though, is to find himself a woman. “With each film, you really get a sense of why [the directors] tell their stories in a particular way”, Van Halsema notes. The material is often so personal that the filmmakers can’t distance themselves from it in the way they could if the films were about somebody else. The earliest film in the programme is Kazuo Hara’s Extremely Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (1974); the most recent titles are from 2018. There may be a perception that in the era of smartphones, Instagram and YouTube, more

and more self-regarding, autobiographical documentaries are being made. But Van Halsema suggests this is only part of the story. She hopes the programme will counter the preconception that documentary is becoming more of a journalistic form than an artistic one. “Within this programme, [documentary] is aesthetically a form of artistic expression,” she insists. There may be journalistic elements in some of the films, but “the way they are made is not journalistic.” They are “obviously motivated by a personal question” and are “experimental in the way they are made.” Some take a seemingly quirky approach to touch on deep and personal subject matter. For instance, Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog is partly about the artist’s grief at the loss of her much-loved pet terrier, but it’s also about dealing with the deaths of her mother and of her longterm partner, revered rock star Lou Reed. The films in Me come from Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and America. “That’s one of the interesting things […] these type of films are not just from one film culture, but from all types of film cultures”, the IDFA programmer notes. In her research, Van Halsema realised that many of the biggest-name filmmakers in fiction and documentary take time out to make at least one film about themselves. She also realised that the most personal films often have the most universal resonance – everyone can relate to the stories they tell and the emotions they explore. •

I don’t like to think too much about ‘truth’ exactly when it comes to documentary – not because I don’t think documentary can be chasing this, but because it’s too easy to get paralysed and tied in knots by whether a documentary is or isn’t pursuing some idealised idea of pure truth. That’s never going to happen – all art/journalism/creative stuff/ whatever is coming from some place of mediation, curation or creation which takes it some degree away from that perfect idea of truth. Anything else is wishful thinking. It’s just not very interesting to think or write about truth in documentary; it’s a blind alley, a chat for late night festival bars before everyone gets up the next day and tries to do the good work with the actual people. Here I am writing about truth in documentaries where I don’t believe in it – I’m wondering if I should have agreed to write this at all. Is this because I work for a news organisation where there’s a constant debate between news reporting and editorial opinion? Arguably both are partial, but the latter definitely is and that’s where documentary squarely lives. It’s someone’s truth – the filmmaker’s, the contributors’, the viewer’s – all of those and more in a lovely melange. This is just the long-term way journalism organisations and news people have always looked at the business of personal or objective truth, and I like that. Working where I do has released me from having to worry about these things. So my advice to you is to look away from the festival for a moment, cast off the shackles of documentary theory and relax in the knowledge that’s whispered in news organisations – that there’s a few different truths out there and it’s the journey not the destination that’s thrilling anyway. •

“ Maybe they are a little more poetic, maybe a little more pushing the genre, but they are really beautiful films seen from the perspective of a child.”

Inside IDFA

The kids are alright Nick Cunningham talks to IDFA’s Head of Education Meike Statema about the festival’s extensive engagement with younger audiences Kids are again in the ascendant at IDFA 2018, with a dedicated and streamlined Kids & Docs competition programme, an already sold-out IDFA Junior day and a professionals focus scheduled for November 21 during which the great and the good of the doc industry will address the finance, production and distribution of content for younger audiences. Commitment

The Kids & Docs competition presents 12 films this year (down from 16 last year), a move which reflects reduced numbers across all industry competition programmes. Another shift is the greater international range of content for kids, and hence fewer Dutch films. IDFA’s Head of Education Meike Statema is at pains to point out that this is nothing to do with lowering standards of Dutch docs for kids – far from it, as illustrated by the fact that the process of deciding on a mere four local titles was particularly arduous. It is more to do, she argues, with IDFA’s commitment to the international growth of the ‘kids’ genre.

Photo: Nichon Glerum

Joining forces

She cites the support IDFA has given to a recent Flemish children’s documentary workshop, run along the same lines as IDFA’s Kids & Docs Workshop and backed by the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF), distributor JEF and broadcaster VRT/Ketnet. “This means that Flanders will have produced five documentaries for kids by this time next year – and that means more productions coming back to IDFA. I think this is all a result of IDFA playing a leading role within the sector for years, having talks with them, advising on how they can design and construct a workshop in their country using their own means and partners.” “Because of the work we do in stimulating the international field, we wanted to underline this [internationalism] in our programme,” she adds. “It also helps a lot that the government is putting extra money into film education in the future – these things help a lot if we all join forces and lobby for the same cause.” Cinematic

The competition programme includes the short films Dulce (Angello Faccini) and Marseille, to the

Moon and Back (Benjamin Chevallier). “These are films which I don’t think the filmmaker originally thought were going to be for children necessarily. Maybe they are a little more poetic, maybe a little more pushing the genre, but they are really beautiful films seen from the perspective of a child. They also show how an IDFA documentary can also be a cinematic experience, and show the full range of what the genre can deliver.” Likewise the tragi-comic Indian doc Tungrus, about a rooster that causes mayhem in a Mumbai apartment. “For sure, the director [Rishi Chandna] never thought this was a film specifically for a young audience, but we consider it as very suitable.” Statema underlines that she expects young audiences at IDFA to exceed 12,000 in 2018 as compared to 3,000 a decade ago – with the centrepiece IDFA Junior Day programmed for November at the lavish EYE museum across the River IJ from Amsterdam’s Central Station. Media literacy

Throughout the year, IDFA’s audience of young doc enthusiasts is swelled by Docschool activities as 30,000 school kids are offered the opportunity to watch IDFA selections in their classrooms. The films are accompanied by matching educational materials that can be used to discuss the topic of the film as well as the medium of film itself, thereby increasing the degree of media literacy in the young audience. “There is always an emphasis in media literacy to focus on the means and measures the filmmaker has to hand, such as script and editing – but also manipulation of material.” Year-round

Statema therefore argues that the festival’s work throughout the year within the kids doc sector is as important as during the November event. “IDFA has a really great documentary offer and the question for me and my team is how to deliver this to young audiences. With everything we do there is a golden treasure on the shelf, the growth of future audiences – that is one of our main purposes. That’s within the festival of course, but also throughout the year within the classroom itself. The job goes on after the festival comes to an end.” •

Global society Jess Search

Jess Search Photo: Lauren Colchamiro

Geoffrey Macnab talks to Doc Society Chief-Executive about the organisation’s work, its intensive involvement with IDFA and the particular challenges of making documentaries in dangerous times

Social entrepreneurship organisation Doc Society promotes, funds and bangs the drum for documentary at every conceivable opportunity and in every way imaginable. The London and New York-based organisation will again be a near ubiquitous presence at IDFA this week. On Friday, it hosted a Good Pitch event. On Saturday, the organisation (formerly BRITDOC) is hosting IDFA’s Global Impact Producers Assembly, at which delegates from more than 20 countries worldwide will be present. It goes without saying that several Doc Society representatives will also be at the Forum. There are also several films in official selection made with Doc Society backing, among them Hungary 2018; Bellingcat – Truth in a Post-Truth World; The Trial of Ratko Mladić; Hale County This Morning, This Evening; The Silence of Others and When the War Comes. “We do a lot of things”, Doc Society Chief-Executive Jess Search says with evident understatement. Info war

One key recent initiative is ‘Safe + Secure’, which aims to prepare independent documentary makers for the risks they’re increasingly likely to encounter through their work. This looks to address everything from deaths and kidnapping to digital and legal harassment and even mental health issues. With the help of the Ford Foundation, Doc Society has now published a Safe + Secure handbook (which can be downloaded free of charge from its website). “As everyone

is well aware, it is getting a lot more dangerous for people working out in the field”, Search notes. She has chilling stories not just about threats to physical safety but about intimidatory PR tactics often used to silence or discredit filmmakers. “Not only do you need to make your film safely, where you’re physically intact and mentally intact. You also need to make sure that when your film comes out, it doesn’t get undermined by very deliberate info war tactics.” She cites the shocking example of the 2009 Channel 4 film No Fire Zone, about the final weeks of the Sri Lankan civil war, when many alleged atrocities were committed by the Sri Lankan army. “What was fascinating was that the Sri Lankan government’s response was basically to attack the journalistic credibility of the director; to say that the film had been paid for by Tamil terrorists; that the footage in the film had been faked; that Channel 4 had been journalistically sloppy and had been suckered by Tamil propaganda”, Search remembers. A proxy organisation was hired to produce a glossy and authoritative looking report which attacked the credibility of the documentary. The Sri Lankan government also engaged a “troll farm of online activists” to post attacks on the film (and on one of its supporters, rapper M.I.A) all over the internet. Safe + Secure looks to protect filmmakers from the kinds of challenges which threatened to overwhelm the team behind No Fire Zone. Prash Naik, former head of legal of Channel 4, is now General Counsel for Doc Society and will be advising on the Safe + Secure initiative. Global facing

Search highlights the role independent documentary is now play in challenging “either mainstream narrative or frankly false narrative.” At the Global Impact event here at IDFA, independent filmmakers from China, India, Turkey, Hungary and Kenya will swap notes with colleagues from Western ‘liberal democracies’ about the challenges they face in overcoming censorship. It is now more than a year since Doc Society shed its old name, BRITDOC, in July 2017. There were obvious reasons for the change of identity. In its early years, BRITDOC only funded British filmmakers. “We were very much trying to change the landscape for independent documentary filmmakers in the UK. We were part of a moment when independent documentaries, which had been a little dormant in the UK, suddenly began to flourish again”, Search recalls of the early years of the organisation. As the organisation’s footprint became more global (and as it opened an office in the US), the name BRITDOC no longer made sense. “It became the wrong name for a global facing organisation.” However, underlining its still central role in British docu-

“ because it is the world’s biggest documentary festival, IDFA is the gathering point for everybody”

mentary, Doc Society now runs the BFI Doc Society Fund. “Getting the BFI Fund for us, 15 years after we started and when we’ve now grown this big organisation, was just so right and so pleasing. We have always wanted to do more for British independent documentary filmmakers, but we just didn’t have a particular fund that enabled us to do that,” Search says. “We accepted the pot of money at the size it was with great gusto and then immediately went about speaking to the BFI about increased funding.” Doc curious

The BFI fund doesn’t just invest in the production of docs. It is also runs training and outreach programmes. One of its key priorities is to ensure that funding decisions aren’t too “weighted to London and the south-east. If we are not developing voices from the rest of the country, then we are part of the problem”, Search suggests. Execs have been travelling the UK, inviting the ‘doc curious’ to come and meet them. They’re trying to entice creative and entrepreneurial talents from other fields (whether graphics designers, or people running club nights) to explore the possibility of working in the doc field. Alongside the BFI Fund, the Doc Society also runs such other funds as the Bertha Doc Society Journalism Fund, Flex Fund, Threshold Fund and Pulse Doc Society Genesis Fund. Search and the team are also continually trying to secure further funding for documentary from other organisations. Doc Society also works closely with the BBC. “We are in the second year of a three-year relationship, which means we share editorial information with them and try to collaborate on as many films as we can.” Doc Society has offices in London and New York. It also now has a Dutch “Stichting” (foundation) and close connections with the Benelux. Search has never missed an edition since first attending IDFA more than 15 years ago. This is the one event in a crowded calendar that the globe-trotting chief exec always makes sure she attends. “As I often explain to people who are not in our field, because it is the world’s biggest documentary festival, [IDFA] is the gathering point for everybody. It truly is a global gathering”, she notes. •

Een lustrum boordevol aansprekende verhalen Documentaires behoren tot de speerpunten van de publieke omroep. NPO is er trots op dat ook dit jaar weer een aantal NPO 2Doc Primeurs in première gaat tijdens IDFA, het belangrijkste documentaire-festival ter wereld. “Deze keer zelfs met een extra feestelijk tintje, want 2Doc bestaat vijf jaar. Een lustrum boordevol aansprekende verhalen die, net als de vijf tijdens IDFA vertoonde 2Docs, in de schijnwerpers staan op NPO 2.” Gijs van Beuzekom, netmanager NPO 2.

20 november 20.25 uur 2Doc IDFA Primeur: Bellingcat – Truth in a Post-Truth World (VPRO)

20 november 23.00 uur 2Doc IDFA Primeur: Trapped in the City of a Thousand Mountains (HUMAN)

21 november 23.00 uur 2Doc IDFA Primeur: O amor é único (VPRO)

22 november 20.25 uur 2Doc IDFA Primeur: But Now Is Perfect (EO)

21 november 20.25 uur 2Doc IDFA Primeur: Sylvana, Demon or Diva (EO)

I DFA Com p et it ion Program s 2018

AMMODO × IDFA A M MOD O. ORG / I DFA

Short Competition

Luminous

Once Upon a My Name Time in Shanghai is Daniel

Azerbaijani filmmaker Leyli Gafarova makes her IDFA debut with the short Once Upon a Time in Shanghai, capturing life in a Baku slum condemned for demolition amid the capital city’s rampant urban redevelopment, through the prism of a reallife international fiction feature film shoot. Gafarova is regarded as one of the leading lights of a new generation of filmmakers to emerge in the central Asian state of Azerbaijan, a country which has undergone rapid economic, social and cultural development over the last 20 years. Born in Baku, the filmmaker grew up in the Netherlands and then studied film at the Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema and Sound in Brussels. She returned to her native city three years ago where, as well as working on her personal film projects, she also co-founded Salaam Cinema, aimed at promoting cinema culture locally. The unconventional structure of Once Upon a Time in Shanghai – combining the drama of an international film shoot with the everyday reality of slum inhabitants – grew out of the fact that Gafarova shot the material while filming a more conventional making-of for the shoot of German director Veit Helmer’s fiction feature The Bra. “I was already interested in documenting neighbourhoods that are being demolished because it’s something that happens a lot in the city. The problem is that it’s difficult to capture the process from the beginning because once you hear about it, it’s too late,” Gafarova says. “I’d also never managed to forge an emotional connection with a neighbourhood before, in the way I did with Shanghai.” Rumours started to circulate that the neighbourhood was going to be demolished as the feature

film went into production, but Gafarova thought she would have time to return to Shanghai afterwards to shoot her own material. “Sometimes it can take 10, 15 years for something to happen... but in the case of Shanghai it started happening while the feature film shoot was going on, so I needed to move fast.” In the backdrop, the production came up against protests from Shanghai residents who feared that the film – about a man trying to locate the owner of a bra he finds on a train track – would show them in a bad light, or was perhaps even “a sex movie”. Gafarova skilfully rolls all of these elements into her short work, but admits it was sometimes hard juggling her twin requirements. “Sometimes [Helmer] would ask me to stop shooting, especially when emotions were running high with the locals or officials. His movie came first.” The filmmaker wants to continue making films in Azerbaijan, but also wants to move away from a purely observational style towards something more personal. “There are many, many other topics I want to cover... I’m also interested in the idea of how is it possible to make documentaries in conditions where you have censorship and self-censorship. This is something I am researching right now.” • By Melanie Goodfellow

For his debut feature doc My Name is Daniel, screening in IDFA’s new Luminous section, Brazilian filmmaker Daniel Gonçalves is both protagonist and director of the story of his own very personal quest to find out what exactly the mysterious disability is that has affected him his whole life. “I didn’t have problems being both the director and the protagonist of this film”, Gonçalves says ahead of the doc’s International Premiere at IDFA. “During the process I worked a lot with my editor, Vinicius Nascimento, and Debora Guimarães, the other writer. They helped me with a script that guided us during shooting. As a personal documentary, the film was constructed in the editing room. Vinicius and Debora were very important in helping me to find the best shape for my text and narration.” “We decided to use the archive footage in a chronological way during the editing process”, he reveals. “I remember we had shown our first rough cut to two other editors and one of them told us it would be better to use the family archive chronologically. Looking back, this was one of the most important tips we received. The final sequence is probably the only that hasn’t changed since the first version of the script. I wrote it to annoy conservative people who use me as an example. I asked myself, ‘Would these people still like me if I were black, if I were a woman, if I were transgender?’ It’s an ending to make the viewer think.” “The film took three years to get ready,” the director says of the genesis of the initially crowdfunded project. “In 2015, I did a crowdfunding to start the project. We achieved our goal (€12,000) and, because of the campaign, Roberto Berliner from TvZERO joined us as co-producer. As a long-term director and producer, Roberto was very important in giving credibility to the film. With him, we participated in and won two public funding pitches, in 2015 and 2017.” Currently working on three other documentary projects, Gonçalves reveals that, “the next one will be a movie about sexuality and people with disabilities. We shot some great interviews two months ago, and now we are looking for partners and sponsors.” In relation to the current political situation in his homeland, Gonçalves is apprehensive. “At the moment, I think all Brazilian filmmakers’ feelings could be described in one word: uncertainty. The new president probably will close the Ministry of Culture. Culture will be incorporated into one big ministry with Education and Sports, but the major problem is the possibility of the extinction of culture incentive laws and the FSA [public money for audio-visual projects]. The ending of these two funding mechanisms would break the Brazilian film industry. But then ANCINE, the Brazilian Film Agency, has just released a media campaign to show how important the film industry is for the culture and for the country. I really hope these threats do not come true.” • By Mark Baker Sun 18 21:30 Munt 5; Tue 20 21:30 Tuschinski 4; Wed 21 19:15 Munt 9; Fri 23 16:00 Munt 7; Sun 25 16:30 Tuschinski 2

Sat 17 21:15 Munt 5; Sun 18 19:30; Munt 12; Tue 20 14:15 Tuschinski 6; Wed 21 20:30 Tuschinski 3; Fri 23 14:30 Brakke Grond Rode Zaal; Fri 23 19:30 Podium Mozaïek; Sat 24 22:30 Munt 10

Diagnosis First Appearance

In Ewa Podgórska’s lyrical and highly cinematic Diagnosis an anonymous city submits itself to intense psychological analysis.

Diagnosis was the brainchild of Polish producer Małgorzata Wabińska who, together with director Podgórska, was inspired by the Urban Psychoanalysis method that detects metropolitan neuroses and seeks to find therapeutic solutions. Podgórska also sets out to examine the theme of adulthood in the film via a cast of patients who discuss their own neuroses, and reflect on their home city, while lying on the psychoanalyst’s couch. The city itself subsequently plays as a metaphor for this theme, she underlines. “The film is a free interpretation of the Urban Psychoanalysis methods… my own artistic interpretation”, she adds. Perhaps it is understandable that the subjects undergoing psychoanalysis in the film err on the side of melancholy as

they talk about their complex adult lives. We encounter a former drug-dealing dad whose life now revolves around his teenage daughter, an aging son looking after his mother with dementia, an older woman who delights in her ongoing attractiveness to younger men and a young man ejected from the family home after intervening in a domestic dispute. But when offered the opportunity to analyse their home town in simile and metaphor, their answers are equally bleak. What type of child would the city be, one person is asked. An abused one. What type of mother? A severe one: “one who gives a lot but sucks a lot”. When another character is asked about her attachment to the city, she answers it is like “when you love your father but [at the same time] you can’t stand him.” Podgórska stresses that most native Poles will immediately recognise the city in her film but, in line with ethical medical practice, its anonymity should be respected, especially for international audiences. “The city is nameless, it could be any post-capitalistic city in the world.”

In cinematic terms, Podgórska pulls out all the stops. By day, the city is sombre and elegant and revealed in extended tracking shots. By night it is neon-cold and diametric, as drones record its architectural uniformity. When we first encounter each patient, he or she is rendered abstract within the mise-en-scene. They are talking heads, but supine as per the professional requirements of their analyst. In their real lives, they DJ in mesmeric strobe lights, scream to alleviate the pain of past maternal indifference or (metaphorically once more) jog through an urban maze, in search of an exit. The director stresses how she originally determined to use more “realistic scenes” from the lives of her participants, but decided in favour of economy. “The energy of the film was the same, however, and the emotional honesty is the same as I always planned”, she concludes. • By Nick Cunningham Sat 17 19:45 Munt 9; Sun 18 12:15 Tuschinski 5; Tue 20 21:15 Tuschinski 6; Fri 23 16:15 Munt 9; Sun 25 16:30 Brakke Grond Rode Zaal

How Big Is the Galaxy? Director Ksenia Elyan and producer Alexander Rastorguev were making an ambitious documentary project about Norilsk, an industrial city beyond the Arctic Circle, when Elyan first had the idea that would eventually turn into How Big Is the Galaxy?, a world premiere in Luminous. One day on a bus, on their way home from the industrial plant, Rastorguev told the director about nomadic schools that educate the families of reindeer herders. “But he said he wouldn’t let me go film them because I was a girl. I got terribly angry and even cried in rage on this bus”, the director remembers. As it happened, Rastorguev wasn’t able to secure the money to make the doc, so Elyan was able to take on the task herself. The film follows seven-year-old Zakhar, a precocious boy from the Dogan community in remotest Siberia, as he studies under teacher Nelly, who home-schools him and his brother at the behest of the Russian authorities. Zakhar and his family were surprisingly welcoming to the filmmakers. The children weren’t camera-shy in the slightest. Zakhar himself was intensely curious about the shooting process. “He was constantly trying to see what I was filming – he would run behind my back when I was taking out the camera.” “By the time I found myself on this trip, I had spent half a year shooting above the Arctic Circle. So I had adapted to the conditions”, she remembers. The climate was actually milder than in Norilsk, where temperatures were often -50° outside. “Such severe conditions, of course, had an impact on the visual language of the film. I couldn’t move because

Luminous

the snow would creak. This is why the film is abundant in static shots – which eventually, I think, became an advantage.” Elyan and her team shot around 100 hours. The IDFA Bertha Fund came aboard during the final stages of post-production. “It really accelerated the working process… and, of course, it brought the project into the spotlight – the IBF selection is very famous for its meticulous choice of projects.” There was a tragic post-script to the film when Rastorguev was killed in Africa during research for a new documentary. “He was a very seeing and patient person. And very lavish with advice and praise”, the director says of the producer.

German sales agent New Docs is distributing the film to TV channels, online and VoD platforms. The Institute of Documentary Film in Prague, which promotes Eastern and Central European documentaries, included the film in its East Silver Caravan selection. Elyan is already preparing a new project exploring the effect family history has on people’s lives. “It is about the Soviet repression, executioners and victims – about how dead people hold us, not letting us live our own lives.” This will be the director’s first visit to IDFA. “In March 2018, we received a “most promising project” award from IDFAcademy/IDFA Forum at East Doc Forum in Prague, and

this brought so much attention to our film. When the IDFA Bertha Fund announced their support, they started receiving even more. When, eventually, IDFA announced our participation, we received so many good offers we couldn’t even figure out what to choose. The tickets for most of our screenings sold out a week before the festival. I am also a participant at the IDFAcademy and one of the producers is in the IDFA Forum… so I hope we will be able to get the best from our participation here.” • By Geoffrey Macnab Sat 17 15:30 Munt 13; Sun 18 10:00 EYE Cinema 1; Mon 19 14:30 Tuschinski 6; Fri 23 19:30 Munt 10; Sun 25 14:15 Tuschinski 6

Competition for Feature-Length Documentary

Stones Have Laws

Dutch artistic and filmmaking duo Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan’s Stones Have Laws gives a rare insight into the world of the Maroon communities of the former Dutch colony of Surinam and their tradition of according rights to non-human entities such as stones and trees. The film grew out of research the long-time collaborators had done into colonialism, slavery and African culture for their previous 2007 work Monument of Sugar, exploring the subsidised sugar trade. The Maroon are descendants of West African slaves, who escaped Dutch plantations in 17 th and 18th centuries and built new lives in the forest alongside indigenous people, they are notoriously wary of outsiders. The filmmakers spent months negotiating the participation of members of two communities, the Okanisi and Saamaka. They eventually garnered support for the project but there were conditions attached: firstly, that it would tell the story from the Maroon point of view, and secondly, any recorded conversations would be of dialogue based on a pre-agreed script. “It became clear that they would be interested in participating in a film that conveys their ancestors’ escape from slavery, the wars against the whites, the alliance they made with the rainforest, and how their environment and way of life are nowadays threatened by large-scale extractivism,” say the filmmakers. “This is what they wanted to pass on to their descendants and tell the world. And this was actually not so far from what we wanted.” The approved conversation was mediated by three key members of the Maroon community: writer, poet and captain, or village chief Dorus Vrede; lawyer and politician Hugo Jabini; and poet and

theatre director Tolin Alexander. “Without them, we would not have been able to build trust”, say the filmmakers. They interviewed 40 members of the two communities in total and ended up with hundreds of pages of transcription which they then whittled down into an approved script. The other challenge of the film was capturing the rainforest environment to which the Maroon people felt deeply connected. “Landscape has been an important character in our previous films, too. But in this case, the point of departure was to present a world co-inhabited by stones, waters, animals and plants. They defined the audio-visual vocabulary of the film”, they say. “Recording a film in the rainforest anyway brings a whole multitude of living entities into your footage, if you want them or not. Human voices are always embedded in an intense chorus of flowing water, insects, birds and frogs. So, it was not only an artistic choice to explicitly integrate non-human protagonists, their sounds and their rhythm, but also a reality that could not be denied.” The pair who have been working together since 2002 say they have yet to set a new project, but joke: “We were surprised by all the negotiating this film required, not only with the Maroons but particularly also with the system of the film industry with its hierarchy and contracts. This might inspire a new work.” • By Melanie Goodfellow

Frontlight

Cause of Death Israeli director Ramy A. Katz’s potentially explosive documentary Cause of Death revolves around the death of a policeman, hailing from Israel’s minority Druze community, who died a hero trying to thwart a terror attack on a seafood restaurant in Tel Aviv in 2002. Official police reports on the death of Salim Barakat state he had his throat slit by the Palestinian attacker, but years later his brother Jamal, who always had doubts, is told by a former colleague that his sibling had been shot in the back by one of the restaurant guests in a case of mistaken identity. Katz came across the multi-faceted and murky tale while doing research for a potential documentary into the attack. “I wanted to make a documentary about the terror attack because I had a friend who was there that night,” explains Katz. “In the process of doing archive research, I came across four different versions of what had happened over the course of 12 hours. It sparked my curiosity.” The film took Katz seven years to make. He explains he shot one version on his own, as research, and then retraced his steps, putting Jamal in front of the camera, after he managed to connect with him, via his father-in-law who was a teacher in Jamal’s village of Yarkan. “When I first got in touch, he said, ‘I have been waiting for this call for ten years’”, Katz recounts. A study in truth and lies, the documentary follows Jamal’s journey as he tries to get to the bottom of the matter, meeting a series of experts and witnesses including the man he suspects may have been his brother’s accidental killer, Willys Hazan. “Willys is an amazing character. He had a thousand faces. Like Jamal, he was told a story and he continued to tell himself that story. They were both living a lie for ten years and then something comes along that shakes the narrative”, says Katz. Beyond the investigation, the documentary raises important questions about the treatment of Israel’s Arab-speaking Druze minority. And indeed, it has gained fresh resonance following the introduction in July of a discriminatory law declaring Israel the nation-state of the Jewish people, a move that angered Israel’s minority communities such as the Druze. “It’s amazing how art taps into the undercurrents of society. I was working for seven years on the film but it came out exactly when the nationality law was announced and the protests began”, Katz says, referring to the film’s premiere at Jerusalem International Film Festival in July, which coincided with the passing of the law and Druze protests in Tel Aviv. Katz is now gearing up for the television release on the yes Docu channel next week which will take the story into the Israeli mainstream, where it could have far-reaching consequences on a number of levels. “I hope that, after what has gone on in recent months, people will be more receptive to the message of the film and what it says about Israel’s treatment of the Druze”, says Katz. • By Melanie Goodfellow Sat 17 16:30 Tuschinski 5; Sun 18 21:15 Munt 13; Wed 21 20:45 Podium Mozaïek; Sat 24 14:30 Munt 9

Sun 18 15:15 Tuschinski 3 (P&I); Sun 19:00 EYE Cinema 1; Tue 20 21:30 Ketelhuis Zaal 1; Thu 22 18:45 Munt 11; Fri 23 12:30 EYE Cinema 1; Sat 24 16:15 EYE Cinema 2

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IDFA Celebrates the Centenary of Dziga Vertov’s Long-Lost First Film The Anniversary of the Revolution By Pamela Cohn

Distinguished Russian film scholar Nikolai Izvolov describes himself as a sort of archaeologist. The Moscow-based historian and researcher spent a great deal of time carefully restoring and piecing together fragments from other historical films found in the archives that were originally used for Dziga Vertov’s first film, The Anniversary of the Revolution, made in 1918. This November is the film’s 100th anniversary, and Amsterdam audiences will be able to view the premiere of this 120-minute film in its entirety, a full century after it was first screened in Soviet Russia. The special screening will be accompanied by a live soundscape as part of this year’s IDFA on Stage. Here, Izvolov describes his painstaking but joyful work it took to bring this epic project to life. Q: Can you describe your working methods once this list of scenes of Vertov’s film was discovered in the archives? Was it as straightforward as following the “roadmap” and piecing segments together, or did it turn out to be a much more complex task?

A: Finding a complete list of inscriptions for the film was a fantastic research success. Svetlana Ishevskaya found this list in the summer of 2017, but film historians have dreamed about it for many decades. This discovery greatly stimulated the search for the film, but the work was still very difficult. It was necessary to carefully review dozens of films related to the events of 1917-1918, and identify in them those fragments that could be part of the Vertov film. Many of the films themselves could be fragments of other films, so the task was not insignificant. The work of a film historian sometimes resembles the work of an archaeologist: one has to envision the whole from the pieces. Q: The film has an invigorating energy that almost defies the ravages of time—from the ways in which Vertov chooses the kind of portraiture we see to the spectacle of the masses of people parading in the streets. But it is also filled with the most whimsical surprises that humanize the people in the frame.

A: Dziga Vertov created the film on the editing table using the camerawork of dozens of other people. Perhaps that is why the film possesses such diverse and powerful energy. He created it over a very short period of time, investing his own irrepressible energy into it. In almost every frame you can feel the breath of real life and see the signs of genuine events. For example, there are these shots of historical figures of the Revolution filmed against the background of a wall, on which a dirty word is written in large letters. And many frames of this film already seem familiar because they were reused in other films about the history of Soviet Russia. But only here, in this film, do they appear in their true sequence and tell their own story. Q: Vertov was both an artful documentarian as well as a diligent one. The footage he chose shows astute attention to the most sensitive coverage. I’m assuming you had some kind of academic relationship with him, as you’ve spent many years immersed in his work. Did that relationship change while you were working on this film?

A: Of course when you spend a lot of time studying someone and his work, it does feel like you know him. You get used to his life, you begin to understand the innermost motives of his actions, and those actions are not always formulated in words. In this sense, work on the restoration of The Anniversary of the Revolution brought Vertov even closer to me, but it didn’t really change my attitude towards him. Q: Did you end up using what was at hand? In other words, is every bit of what was found in the new restoration used or was there any extra editing involved, that is informed from a decision you made versus what Vertov might have envisioned?

A: The task of the restorer is to handle the original work of the author with great care. But the film during its existence in the culture was bound to suffer losses. Small pieces got lost here and there, and sometimes the film itself had fragments missing when shown in theaters. Therefore, the extant copies are not always of the greatest quality. In addition, in 1918 Vertov himself needed to make copies from other films, so many scratches and other optical defects were already firmly imprinted on the material. Audiences even back then saw the film with some parts that were imperfect. Now we can sometimes find the negatives of the

original films and insert better-quality pieces. But then the question arises: Do we have the right to change the quality of the film? Time has already inflicted wounds on this film. Is our bid to improve it going to cause new injuries? This is a serious issue that requires a solid scientific base. When working on the film, I adhered to the well-known rule of physicians: “Do no harm,” and tried not to make distortions that could have an impact that would cause the original meaning of the film to change. Of course, certain questions arose. For example, are some small fragments correctly inserted into the film? But in each case, the decision was made on the basis of a large number of arguments. I wrote a special article for the journal Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema on all this, that I hope will be published by the time the film is shown in Amsterdam. Q: Is Vertov saying something with the portraits he chose? Some of the subjects in front of his camera end up looking slightly ridiculous or are filmed in a distinctly unflattering way, while others are quite noble. Do you know if these were aesthetic choices, or was he implying something more obliquely political?

A: In 1918, Vertov was still very young and his political preferences were not yet fully formed, I think. He even sympathized with the anarchists at one time. I do not think that in the film you can read his attitude to politicians. Rather, I think he thought that having a diversity of human types would make the film more alive, and in some sense convey a truer take on genuine life, since it is genuine life portrayed on the screen that would subsequently interest Vertov the most. So here we can see the beginnings of his future aesthetic. Q: What are some of the musical elements that will comprise the live soundtrack during the screening of the film?

A: We know that during the creation of his classic films such as in Man with a Movie Camera from 1929, Vertov paid great attention to the musical accompaniment of his films and created special musical scripts for them. But in 1918 things were very different. The musical accompaniment depended entirely on where the film was shown. And it could be playing not only in cinemas, but also in large open areas. So acoustics from screening to screening could be very different depending on the music, but also from the effects of all the ambient sounds, as well as the verbal responses from the audience. But for this show, we will try to choose those melodies that were the natural accompaniment to certain historical events. For example, we know that after the February Revolution in Russia, The Marseillaise was very popular. After the October Revolution, it was The International. Q: The final scenes are quite melancholy, evocative of anytime war is done and a population is faced with starting anew after so much destruction. As a preservationist and a historian, do you have some thoughts about this?

A: The modern spectator, especially a Western one, who knows what happened later in Soviet Russia wants to see in these scenes of rural life a prototype of the future “collective farms” or “camps.” In fact, these were attempts to organize new forms of social life. People tried to create a kind of commune (the word comes from the famous Paris commune) where there is no notion of private property—all of it is commonly and equally owned by each member. It is interesting that even Americans came to Russia to create these agricultural communes. So this utopic idea was quite international. In the film, we see a rare example of such an agricultural commune in 1918. We don’t even know how long it lasted. But the film has preserved this most valuable historical visual document for us. For me, as a historian, this whole film has great value. Among other things, Vertov retained the image of this amazing time, a time that so strongly influenced almost all the subsequent events that took place in the 20th century. We cannot see the chronicle of the French Revolution, but here, right before our eyes, the Russian Revolution comes to life. Then the dictatorship and other hardships will come after that. But for the people in the film, all this is not yet known. It is still a moment of romance, a time of happy expectations of future changes in human life. We already know their fate, while they themselves do not, of course. Perhaps that is why the film has such a strong emotional impact. • Anniversary of the Revolution Tue 20 20:30 Tuschinski 1

Pieter van Huystee Film in coproductie met ntr & indie Film presenteert

HET WONDER vAN LE PETIT PRINCE

een film gebaseerd op het boek Le Petit Prince – Antoine de st exupéry

g r a f i s c h o n tw e r p • s t u d i o r o n va n r o o n

een film VAn marjoleine Boonstra

HEARTBOUND VANAF 13 DECEMBER

GENESIS 2.0 VANAF 10 JANUARI

GOEDE BUREN VANAF 14 FEBRUARI

‘NU VERANDERT ER LANGZAAM IETS’ VANAF 21 MAART Regie marjoleine Boonstra • Research lies Janssen • Scenario marjoleine Boonstra, lies Janssen, pieter van Huijstee • Cinematografie marjoleine Boonstra Assistent camera stef van Wijk • Geluid Kees de Groot • Montage menno Boerema nce • Componisten Harry de Wit, mari Boine, svein schultz • Geluidsontwerp marc lizier • Kleurcorrectie michiel rummens • Postproductie Jan Jaap Kuiper • Datahandling Watse eisma • Uitvoerend producenten marty de Jong, lotte Gerding, céline Baggen • Indie Film AS carsten Aanonsen, sarah Winge-sørensen • Producent pieter van Huijstee • Productie coördinator NTR Astrid prickaerts Redactie NTR marloes Blokker, diana tromp • Eindredacteur NTR oscar van der Kroon

VANAF 7 FEBRUARI 2019 IN DE FILMTHEATERS

NU OP IDFA, STRAKS IN DE BIOSCOOP

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