the purified danish film institute special issue new scenes from

DANISH FILM INSTITUTE
SPECIAL ISSUE
NEW SCENES FROM AMERICA
THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS
The DFI’s special IDFA Amsterdam issue on new Danish
documentaries / New Scenes from America selected
for SILVER WOLF COMPETITION / The Purified &
Growing up in a Day in REFLECTING IMAGES / Two
films to be pitched at FORUM / Six films in DOCS FOR
SALE / Three films in KIDS & DOCS.
Leth’s New Scenes from America is selected for SILVER
WOLF competition / IDFA 2002. His next film, The Five
Obstructions, will be a ‘remake’ of The Perfect Human
(1967) with in-built obstructions by Lars von Trier.”
“We have yet to make an authentic Dogme film,” says
Lars von Trier in Jesper Jargil’s documentary, The Purified,
in which the four Brethren of Dogme, Thomas Vinterberg,
Lars von Trier, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen and Kristian Levring,
discuss Dogme.
PAGE 2-4
PAGE 5
l1l
THE PURIFIED
#25
FILM IS PUBLISHED BY THE DANISH FILM INSTITUTE / NOVEMBER 2002
PAGE 2 / FILM#25
/ SPECIAL IDFA ISSUE
#25
l1l
NOVEMBER 2002
PUBLISHED BY
EDITORIAL TEAM
EDITORIAL
CONSULTANTS
TRANSLATIONS
SUBSCRIPTIONS
ART DIRECTORS
DESIGN
TYPE
PAPER
PRINTED BY
CIRCULATION
ISSN
COVER
FILM is published by the Danish Film
Institute. There are 8 issues per year. On
the occasion of the IDFA Amsterdam
International Film Festival 2002 the DFI
have produced #25 in English.
DANISH FILM INSTITUTE
Gothersgade 55
DK-1123 Copenhagen K, Denmark
t +45 3374 3400
[email protected] / [email protected]
Danish Film Institute
Agnete Dorph Stjernfelt
Susanna Neimann
Lars Fiil-Jensen
Vicki Synnott
CONTENTS FILM #25
NEW DANISH DOCUMENTARIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-15
New Scenes from America SILVER WOLF COMPETITION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
The Five Obstructions (in progress) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-4
The Purified REFLECTING IMAGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
The Star Dreamer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-7
New films on Greenland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-9
Kim Foss
Rumle Hammerich
Loke Havn
Tue Steen Müller
Jonathan Sydenham
Stuart Goodale
Nina Caroc
Pernille Volder Lund
Anne Hemp
Koch & Täckman
Cendia (e©)
Millton (e©)
Underton (e©)
Munken Lynx 100 gr.
Holbæk Center Tryk A/S
10,000
1399-2813
New Scenes from America
Photo: Dan Holmberg
The Danish Film Institute is the national
agency responsible for supporting and
encouraging film and cinema culture.
The Institute’s operations extend from
participation in the development and
production of feature films, shorts and
documentaries, over distribution and
marketing, to managing the national film
archive and the cinematheque. The total
budget of the DFI is DKK 363,8m / Euro
49m.
FILM #25 er et engelsk særnummer i anledning af den internationale dokumentarfilmfestival, IDFA, i Amsterdam. Deadline for #27: Primo januar 2003.
Growing Up in a Day REFLECTING IMAGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
When the War is Over SILVER WOLF COMPETITION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Docs for Kids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10-15
Miga’s Journey KIDS & DOCS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10-11
Little Hands KIDS & DOCS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
See My World KIDS & DOCS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Tidy Up! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Zuma the Puma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
State of Docs by Tue Steen Müller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16-23
Scripting the Documentary by Mikael Opstrup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24-27
Dogumentary by Jakob Høgel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28-29
Milosovic on Trial (in progress) by Frederik Stjernfelt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30-31
FORUM The Jerusalem Syndrome / Holmboe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Filmkontakt Nord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
NEW SCENES FROM AMERICA
SELECTED FOR THE SILVER WOLF COMPETITION, IDFA 2002
FESTIVAL STAFF DFI
Every year some 200 Danish short films and documentaries are
screened at film festivals worldwide. The Danish Film Institute is
continually developing new initiatives to strengthen the presence
of Danish documentaries and short films abroad.
Photo: Kirsten Bille
Photo: Kirsten Bille
ANNE MARIE KÜRSTEIN
International Relations / Shorts & Documentaries
Phone
+45 3374 3609
Fax
+45 3374 3445
Mobile
+45 4041 4697
[email protected]
ANNETTE LØNVANG
International Relations / Shorts & Documentaries
Phone
+45 3374 3556
Fax
+45 3374 3445
Mobile
+45 2148 8522
[email protected]
New Scenes had its world premiere in
September in New York.
On September 11th John Anderson
wrote in Newsday:
“It may be that the best film related
to Sept. 11 … was made by a Danish
poet, filmmaker and bicycle-racing
enthusiast, spends a good deal of its
time in Hollywood and New Mexico,
and never mentions Sept. 11 … Shot in
the tableaux fashion of the previous
film and employing a wistful, mythic
John Cale score, New Scenes is a
subjective, New York-centric, eccentric,
35-minutes snapshot tour of the
United States that … doesn’t need to
please, doesn’t strive to, but simply
goes about its business (or art) … Leth’s
film has an offhand grandeur and treats
the entire country not as a victim or
target but as an idea – one of unity,
expressed in individuality.”
See: FILM #SPECIAL ISSUE/LETH
(Published by The Danish Film
Institute)
NEW SCENES FROM AMERICA / NYE
SCENER FRA AMERIKA / 43 min. 35 mm. &
video DIRECTOR/SCREENPLAY Jørgen Leth
Assistant director Asger Leth DIRECTOR OF
PHOTOGRAPHY Dan Holmberg PRODUCTION
COORDINATOR Claus Willadsen PRODUCER
Marianne Christensen, Mette Heide
PRODUCTION Bech Film & Angel Film
RELEASE September 2002
THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS / IN PROGRESS / FILM#25 / PAGE 3
The Five Obstructions. Photo: Dan Holmberg
JØRGEN LETH
‘ACTION-HERO’
IN BOMBAY
PAGE 4 / FILM#25
/ IN PROGRESS / THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS
JØRGEN LETH
‘ACTION-HERO’
IN BOMBAY
BY AMRIT GANGAR
A filmmaker, not only revisiting, but also recreating
(not in a conventional sense) one of his first films.
The filmmaker: Jørgen Leth. The film: The Perfect
Human, 1968. The new avatar: The Five Obstructions
(working title). Creator of the obstructions: Lars
von Trier. Obstruction types: physical, metaphysical
morale, concrete, abstract. Condition: Something
that the filmmaker dislikes.
While organizing a retrospective of Leth’s films in Bombay six
years ago, I, along with many a cineaste here, found his work
immensely interesting and stimulating. He imbued his images
with a certain tentativeness that sprung surprises. There was
an element of chance, a kind of unpredictability – a human
predicament. And as Leth has maintained from early on: he
‘invites chance to join the game’. Leth keeps inventing rules
and he expects those very rules to make ‘allowance for a
strong element of chance’. But, for him, chance is not just an
‘undesigned occurrence’ as the lexicon explains.
In 1996, I had the opportunity of taking Leth to some darker
alleys of Bombay just to familiarize him with its traumatic
face. I never thought Leth would have such a photographic
memory that he would still remember some of the images
of a street years after. In April 2002, he wrote to me (first
communication in six years): “I have been thinking about the
horrible street in Mumbai (Bombay) where the whores are
waiting behind bars. A nightmarish set. That’s where I can
imagine setting up a scene in front of those cages. That would
be tough morally, just as Lars wants it to be.” The cages are very
dark, dingy, dirty cubicles where extremely poor young girls
(most adolescent) stand soliciting customers. The incidence of
AIDS is alarmingly high here.
Months passed by, and Leth wrote again: “I am ready to do
the next segment of my collaboration with Lars von Trier,
entitled Five Obstructions. As I’ve told you, it’s based on The
Perfect Human which Lars admires – and will be a number of
remakes shot and edited by me, with some in-built obstructions
by Lars. ” By this time, Leth had already finished the first segment,
shot in Cuba. He wanted to know from me whether I’d be able
to make the necessary arrangements for shooting in Bombay.
Obviously, it was a tough task but I grabbed the challenge – as
a chance.
August 20, 2002: Leth and his team arrive in Bombay and
the same afternoon they scout the area and find one of the many
seedy streets ideal for a set that would be comprised of a dining
table, chairs, a big serving dish with fish, a bowl of coriander
chutney (instead of Hollandaise sauce), a plate, knife and fork;
and a bottle of Chablis white wine. Eating fish was one of the
major scenes Leth wanted to recreate – and this time he was to
face the camera himself. All alone. No Maiken Algren, no
Claus Nissen (the actors in The Perfect Human). Lars von Trier
wanted Leth himself to act in this ‘obstructed’ version.
Leth’s cinematographer Dan Holmberg had come out with
a brilliant idea of placing a huge wooden frame with a semitransparent white plastic sheet as a backdrop; two men on either
side held this frame. And scores of local people stood behind it
– young and old, men and women, and little children. My preplanning seemed to work as the crowd wasn’t unfriendly.
When, in a scene, Leth jumped up and down, a woman asked
me: Is this man crazy? I told her in Hindi that he was a crazy
filmmaker who was also a great actor. The woman responded:
woh to dikhta hi hai (i.e. that is very much evident).
Even to the naked eye, the reality behind the semi-transparent
plastic looked like a mirage, an illusion, a flesh-and-blood fiction!
But when Dan photographed the two men who were holding
the ‘frame’ within his camera frame, the fiction vanished in a
moment – what a Brechtian site, and what a minimal cinema,
but what about the ‘obstruction’? I could see something strange
emerging on the actor’s face and in the surrounding milieu. A
strange obstruction from within while sipping white wine! Wasn’t
it morally distasteful? I don’t know who was asking this question
and to whom – but it loomed large in the air and behind the
mirage-like veil, the plastic sheet. Was it a film within a film?
Was Dan shooting the cinema screen itself ? Was it the cinema
itself that was being questioned? These were the questions I
was asking myself silently in the 11th Lane of Kamathipura,
looking at Leth acting. Then the atmosphere turned hostile for
some mysterious reason.
Later Leth told me that after watching the first cut of Leth’s
Bombay obstruction in Copenhagen, Lars von Trier had
commented: Jørgen, you are my action hero!
Amrit Gangar is a Mumbai-based film critic, writer, curator and
consultant.
THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS / DE FEM BENSPÆND / 70-80 min. / video /
35mm IDEA Lars von Trier / DIRECTOR Jørgen Leth, Lars von Trier
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Dan Holmberg, Kim Hattesen PRODUCTION
Zentropa Real / Filmbyen / Avedøre Tværvej 10 / DK-2650 Hvidovre / tel +45
3678 0055 / fax +45 3678 0077 / e-mail [email protected] /
www.zentropa-film.com / PRODUCER Carsten Holst/ e-mail:
[email protected] EXPECTED RELEASE April 2003
LARS VON TRIER Born 1956. Of the Danish directors whose works have
been applauded internationally, Trier has had the greatest impact not least
because of his central role in Dogme*95. His cinematic work ranges from
avant-garde films to innovative explorations of some of the classical film genres.
JØRGEN LETH Born 1937. Leth is a significant figure amongst documentary
filmmakers in Denmark as well as abroad. The poetic and visual qualities in his
films have given viewers an awareness for sport as a classical drama. The Five
Obstructions is a ‘remake’ of Leth’s film The Perfect Human / Det perfekte
menneske (1968), a document of life in Denmark, containing the familiar Leth
idiosyncracies.
THE PURIFIED / REFLECTING IMAGES / FILM#25 / PAGE 5
Part three of Danish director Jesper Jargil’s ‘Trier-logy’: The Kingdom
of Credibility. Previous parts: The Humiliated and The Exhibited
THE PURIFIED
“We have yet to make an
authentic Dogme film,” says
Lars von Trier in Jesper Jargil’s
documentary, The Purified, in
which the four Brethren of
Dogme – Thomas Vinterberg,
Lars von Trier, Søren KraghJacobsen and Kristian Levring –
discuss what has become of the
Dogme Manifesto that Lars von
Trier handed out on red flyers
to the general public at the
centenary of film in Paris in
1995. “But the big question is
whether Dogme is even possible,”
believes Jargil, whose camera
followed the making of the first
four films.
FILM has selected some
statements about the film by
Jesper Jargil. Photo: Jan Buus
the director Jesper Jargil from
an interview in Weekendavisen,
9 -15 August 2002.
“They realise that they may not have
succeeded in following the rules as
strictly as they should have. This is
where they get caught, because they
each have their own temperament
with four different ways of evading
the rules: four boys comparing Dogme
willies.”
“Truth is sought through art. My trilogy
is called The Kingdom of Credibility
because in my opinion credibility is the
supreme achievement of a work of art.”
“Documentary filmmakers never know
what will happen in the next moment,
but are just there – hoping something
will happen so they can crowd in and
take part. Around 1990, something
started affecting our perceptions of
pictures: a good picture stopped being
synonymous with a crystal clear,
beautifully lighted image. Sometimes
a rough, disturbed, awkward image is
much more interesting and provides a
better expression of what is happening.
It all depends on the story you’re
telling.”
“My formal training taught me to
respect aesthetics down to the last detail,
and in former days, I would never
have dreamt of bringing along my own
camera. But then again I have always
harboured a secret envy of the
photographer.”
“I don’t apply for support until I have
the material. It’s a sort of humility, I
The Purified. Framegrab
suppose, because I’m in the middle an
application process where I don’t know
the result beforehand. Documentary
filmmaking is an expensive hobby for
me!”
Further information in the reverse
section.
JESPER JARGIL Born 1945. A veteran director,
scriptwriter, cameraman and producer who has
won numerous international awards, including the
Lion d’Or at Cannes. His film Per Kirkeby Winter’s
Tale / Per Kirkeby Vinterbillede won the Danish
Film Academy Award for best documentary in
1996 and the Jury’s Special Prize at the Biennale
Int. du Film sur l’Art in Paris in 1995. His two
feature-length documentaries – The Humiliated /
De Ydmygede (1998), about the production of
Lars von Trier’s Dogme film The Idiots / Idioterne,
and The Exhibited / De udstillede (2000), about
Lars von Trier’s media happening Psychomobile
#1 The World Clock – are the first two parts of
Jargil’s trilogy on Lars von Trier.
PAGE 6 / FILM#25
/ NEW RELEASE / STAR DREAMER
ROAD TO THE STARS
At the centre of this remarkable scenario is a Russian
filmmaker named Pavel Klushantsev (1910-1999),
a visual wizard whose fantastic discoveries and
extraterrestrial visions not only set the standard for
the science-fiction genre, but also suggested how life
on other planets might look. Quite remarkably – the
American perception of the Soviet Union’s space
programme was for years influenced by Klushantsev’s
feature films.
Klushantsev was so skilled at his trade that when
US anchorman Walter Cronkite aired a clip from the
ambitious Road to the Stars (1957) on the CBS Evening
News in the late fifties, it confirmed the fears of US
politicians and space scientists that their space efforts
were lagging behind the Soviet Union’s Sputnik
programme. And when Klushantsev released The
Moon in 1965, a film in which cosmonauts appear
to be cavorting about on the surface of the moon in
a graceful, weightless ballet, Paris Match magazine
headlined its story “The Russians have lied! They
have walked on the Moon.”
a creative bond between East and West.
The Star Dreamer includes clips of an interview with
Pavel Klushantsev that was videotaped by a Russian
film school student in 1995. Vesterholt herself did
not meet Klushantsev until 1999, only five months
before he died.
“I finally got in touch with his family who told me
I was welcome to visit him. But they discouraged me
from getting my hopes up because he was a blind, old
man of 89, who was totally inert and withdrawn.
When I arrived, he did look rather pitiful sitting there,
but when I started talking with him, he livened up and
said, ‘Please excuse my difficulty in speaking; it’s
because I have no one to talk to!’ I was very moved
by that statement, and I started thinking about making
a film right then and there.
“I essentially viewed Klushantsev as a man whose
destiny had allowed him to experience almost the
entire twentieth century. Yet his fate symbolised that
of many people in the Soviet Union at the same time.
And even though I have only lived half as long as
Klushantev did, I was able to identify with many
aspects of his life history – especially his dream about
outer space. When I was living in the Soviet Union,
leaving the country was inconceivable to everyone.
It was easier to imagine a journey to Mars than a trip
to Paris. I was preoccupied by science fiction as a child,
too, and I remember reading a popular science novel
about a girl from Mars. What fascinated me the most
about the story, though, was not the fact that she came
from Mars, but that she had her own bedroom. As I
lived with my parents in a one-room flat of twelve
square metres until I turned eighteen, a Martian girl
with her own bedroom was true science fiction!”
Like most of the others who grew up in post-war
Soviet Union, director Sonja Vesterholt remembers
having seen Pavel Klushantsev’s films as a child.
“When I heard about Pavel Klushantsev in the late
nineties through my dear Russian colleague and coproducer Victor Bocharov, I remembered that I had
seen at least one of these fantastic science fiction films
when I was a girl. I couldn’t remember the director’s
name or the title of the film, but certain scenes and
images in the film made such a big impression on
me that they’ve been with me ever since. Later on, I
realised it must have been Road to the Stars.”
Sonja Vesterholt was born and grew up in the Soviet
Union. After completing her Master’s Degree in
Russian Language and Literature at the University
of Leningrad, she moved to Denmark in 1970, where
she initially worked as a brewery hand for Carlsberg.
Later she got a teaching job at the University of
Copenhagen and managed two poster-art galleries
for two years until she was admitted to the Danish
Film School in 1985. In 1990, she made her directing
debut and has been involved in many films as a director
or producer ever since. Several of these films deal with
the situation in the former Soviet Union, and in 1998,
Sonja Vesterholt founded a production company,
Vesterholt Film & TV, for the very purpose of forming
While Pavel Klushantsev was struggling to invent new
special effects for his films, he was blissfully ignorant
of his films’ international political effects on the
Western World. As a pioneering filmmaker, he had
his hands full just manoeuvring within a political
system whose fundamental objectives were entirely
at odds with his own. Klushantsev started his career
in the 1920s by making training and propaganda films
for the Red Army and realised early on that an artist’s
road to survival during the Stalin Era was paved with
anonymity.
In 1923, he noted in his secret diary – at the risk of
his own life: “Does anyone know what is going on
here in the Soviet Union? Will it change things for
the better – or merely result in total chaos? (...) The
cynicism of our leaders sinks to new depths as Stalin
declares to a nation of 150 million hungry, forlorn
people that working conditions have actually
improved! I finally realise: the situation is so acute
that guilt is no longer a prerequisite for punishment.
(...) The damage to society is enormous.”
In spite of the harsh political climate following the
Second World War, Klushantsev got an opportunity
to continue his film trick experiments that not only
included imaginative scenery, but also shots that gave
a lifelike illusion of people moving about underwater
BY LARS MOVIN
One of film history’s well-kept secrets has
been unearthed by director Sonja Vesterholt
and journalist Mads Baastrup in the
documentary portrait The Star Dreamer.
In addition to reflecting developments in
the Soviet Union throughout most of the
twentieth century, the story touches a raw
nerve of the Cold War manifested in the
superpowers’ Race to Space.
or in a weightless condition – unheard of feats at the
time. Thus, Road to the Stars includes the first realistic
depictions in film history of weightless characters,
and the film anticipated several elements of Stanley
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – made eleven
years later. Yet even though the Communist Party
continued to be interested in films on raising potatoes
and beetroots, Klushantsev succeeded in financing
his space fantasies all the way up to the mid-1960s,
including Planet of Storms (1961), about an expedition
to Venus – fully equipped with a convincing robot
and a flying car (the film was sold to 28 countries and
subjected to ‘Americanisation’ on several occasions).
On the home front, however, Klushantsev’s
fortunes waned during the early 1960s. The Soviet
Minister of Culture objected to a scene from Planet of
Storms in which a female cosmonaut shows weakness
by shedding tears. So even though Klushantsev
astonished the Americans with his film The Moon,
which used highly authentic scenography to depict a
moon landing, his directing days were numbered four
years later when the Americans outdid their Soviet
competitors by landing on the moon in real life. When
Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon’s surface, it was
not only “a giant step for humankind” – but a step
that directly triggered Klushantsev’s dismissal.
Forced to retire, Pavel Klushantsev lived in obscurity
until he was contacted in 1990 by one of Hollywood’s
leading special effects experts, Oscar-winner Robert
Skotak, a lifelong admirer of Klushantsev’s films who
had tracked down his old idol after the dissolution of
the Soviet Union. Thanks to Skotak, Klushantsev lived
to see a renaissance of his work in his last years, and
The Star Dreamer includes plenty of fascinating
archive footage in addition to interviews with Skotak
and several of Klushantsev’s colleagues.
The film’s concept was initially pitched in Amsterdam
in late 1999, but it took three years to finish the
project because the financing had to be pieced together
from about ten different sources.
“An international co-production of this dimension
is an enormous task. Although some of the financial
supporters committed themselves in Amsterdam back
in 1999, many did not join the project until further
down the road. For example, we got Dutch AVRO to
back us in Amsterdam. But we could only apply to
the CoBO Foundation in the Netherlands if our project
involved Dutch-German co-operation, so we were
forced to find a German television station, too. About
a year later, we got Bayerischer Rundfunk to make a
commitment, after which AVRO contacted the CoBO
Foundation. We also had to make a big effort to get
the Russian Ministry of Culture involved, because they
were in the process of reorganising their film subsidy
programmes at the time. Our Russian partner – Film
Company Miris – didn’t receive support from the
Russian Ministry of Culture until eighteen months later.”
“In a way it’s sad that the entire process ‘only’
resulted in a 52-minute film, because it should have
been a giant book. We were allowed to read all of
STAR DREAMER / NEW RELEASE / FILM#25 / PAGE 7
For Russian science-fiction pioneer Pavel Klushantsev, outer space dreams were an appealing alternative to the reality of communism. When Pavel Klushantsev died in 1999 at the age of 89, his films and their innovative special
effects had been virtually forgotten for decades. Sonja Vesterholt and her co-director Mads Baastrup hope to reawaken interest in Klushantsev’s work through their film, The Star Dreamer.
Klushantev’s diaries – his daughter had them, but no
one knew they even existed until he died. And we
have done research in all the relevant archives. Some
of the working papers were filed in the Russian State
Archive of Literature and Art in St. Petersburg. We
found the technical papers about the history of space
research in the Russian State Archive for Scientific
Technical Documentation in Moscow. There were
also different film archives and private archives.
Russian archives are quite difficult to deal with. It
requires a fundamental understanding of the Russian
mentality. For example, we arrived at an archive in
St. Petersburg with our laptop ready to take notes. ‘No
laptops are allowed in the archives.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘They’re
just not allowed!’ In return, they are wonderful, helpful
people. To start with, everything is forbidden. But like
typical Russians, they gradually loosen up and are
willing to do almost anything to help you.”
– What is your ultimate purpose in making The Star
Dreamer?
“I once read a story by Mark Twain that I’ve
remembered all my life. It’s called Captain Stormfield’s
Visit to Heaven and is about a man who dies and goes
to heaven. One day a great fuss occurs in Heaven:
people are rushing about building grandstands, all
the patriarchs are coming and millions of visitors fill
the grandstands. Captain Stormfield doesn’t
understand what’s happening, so he asks an angel
running by: ‘What’s going on?’ And the angel replies,
‘We are expecting a man from earth to arrive. He
may have been only a humble shoemaker from a
small, remote village, but he was actually the greatest,
most brilliant military commander who ever lived on
Earth. He just didn’t know it himself!’ I am very
fascinated by the notion that our life’s work is seen
and heard. I don’t know whether Kubrick was familiar
with Klushantsev’s work, but Robert Skotak was. And
maybe our film will make his work accessible to even
more people. I think it’s touching that this little man of
humble means could discover all these things before
anyone else, but never really achieve the recognition
he deserved because he happened to be born in the
Soviet Union. Just imagine if he had been born in the
US! That’s why I intend to keep making this sort of
film. We are a collective memory.”
The Star Dreamer is an extraordinary story that
turned up out of the blue and took me by surprise.
It’s one of those odd little films you never dreamed
you would become interested in, but which ends up
riveting your attention from start to finish
Further information in the reverse section.
THE STAR DREAMER / DIRECTOR Sonja Vesterholt and Mads
Baastrup RELEASE 2002 RUNNING TIME 55 min. PRODUCTION
Vesterholt Film & TV DISTRIBUTION DR TV FESTIVAL
DISTRIBUTION Danish Film Institute
PAGE 8 / FILM#25
/ NEW FILMS ON GREENLAND
I remember... Stories from Greenland. Photo: Karen Littauer
GREENLANDIC
LOCATIONS
Allan Berg Nielsen, film consultant at the
Danish Film Institute, about new films on
Greenland supported by DFI.
“Greenland is Denmark’s guilty conscience,” states a
journalist in his press coverage of a new documentary
film, while a film director in a presentation of her new
film based on these locations writes, “All Danes who
know Greenland have a soft spot for the country.”
Perhaps the intention of these two different
conclusions is the same. Perhaps they are only
separated – quite strikingly – by their professional
approaches. In any case, there have been innumerable
Danish documentaries on Greenlandic subjects and
all have made use of an entire spectrum of professional
angles and methods – anthropological, sociological,
journalistic and artistic. They have all shared the
documentary image.
SOFT SPOT
When Danish director Anne Wivel said she wanted
to make a film about Greenland almost four years
ago, my realisation was instantaneous. “Yes,” I said.
“Of course.” Almost taking it for granted. Before I
had even heard her reasons, before I had read her
proposal.
“And that’s because,” I thought,” Jette Bang is no
more, and because Jørgen Roos is also dead.” (Danish
film professionals who made documentaries about
Greenland in the 1950s and 1960s, and who played
an important role in establishing the way we view the
country. Now the times are different, neither better
nor worse. There are still film professionals out there
who are fond of the reality underlying the beautiful
name for the country. Nervous, insightful people with
a lyrical approach who can continue making films in
this tradition. A tradition that has become our duty,
because Greenland is connected to an important part
of our destiny in Denmark. Anne Wivel is one of them.
She is now shooting her film. She is currently in the
Inuk Woman City Blues. Framegrab
process of “defining the position of the soft spot,” as
she puts it.
Many films of this new generation are completed.
So let us take a look at them. What has changed over
the years? What is the significance? The fact that
both Greenlanders and Danes are filming? It would
be natural to imagine films pointing an accusatory
finger at the colonial power next to films shaded by
Danish repent. Political journalism juxtaposed with
lyrical exoticism. Young defiance next to the
convention of elders. This is not the situation at first
glance.
LIFE AS A STORY
Karen Littauer is Danish, but half of her, at least, is
Greenlandic. Her new film I remember ... Stories from
Greenland / Jeg husker ... fortællinger fra Grønland
emerges as a fascination, an overwhelming enthusiasm
for her discovery that the oral storytelling tradition
in the easternmost and westernmost regions of
Greenland extends back as a matter of course not
only to the pre-industrial culture, to the society of
hunters and fishermen, but all the way back to a preChristian perception of the world, to an Inuit universe
that must be very close to what we call a primordial
culture. Survival characterised by an apparent
constancy over the centuries, a fundamental stability
that is now lost. The storytellers in the film are the
last ones who can say: I remember. In this sense of
the word.
The bold approach of the film is to isolate every
single story and its storyteller in one long scene to
form its own images. The film insists and relies on
these imaginary scenes, which evolve into a large,
dreamlike tapestry of images we have never seen
before. Objectively speaking, we see only characters
who hurtle us from an empty stage into an immense,
submerged universe, and we return to the surface with
artefacts in remembrance. But we realise that the world
where the lyrical artefact originates is interwoven in
thousands of dreams that are gradually evaporating,
perhaps seeping into our common subconscious.
The film respectfully withdraws leaving the creation
of imagery up to the story itself. Director of
photography Peter Østlund contributes wonderful
vignettes. He has merely insisted on the storyteller in
the story. Afterwards I am convinced, however, that I
have seen the pictures: the father telling stories to his
children lying on plank beds till they fall asleep, the
young woman fishing for trout at the special spot, and
three times hearing the painful cry of the mountain
wanderer, beautiful Nicoline who was in love with
both the father and his son. The fourteen-year-old
boy in the kayak who harpooned his first whale with
expert assistance from adult hunters, and the cultural
transition embodied in a single narrative: the
christening of an adult male. Yet the spirits of his
former faith resist, bringing pain to his body and he
lives with these two, internal struggling systems for
the rest of his life.
NOSTALGIA
Greenlandic director Laila Hansen opens her Inuit
Woman City Blues with scenes of places we have seen
so often before on the evening news. A close-up of a
pub, an air photo of Copenhagen, a panorama of
Copenhagen’s Vesterbro district. But I soon realise that
this prelude has a different errand. The staging of the
dialogue, the music, the imagery is lyrical. I see an
elegy clothed in a documentary. Aspiring to be a
documentary poem.
The film involves a group of Greenlandic women
who gather at Vesterbro Square. Or rather, the film
deals with nostalgia, the enormous feeling of loss
from leaving the Greenlandic community in small
settlements in the middle of an immense landscape
with berry-picking and trout-fishing spots and arriving
in the asphalt jungle of Copenhagen, a self-contained
artificial landscape, where the only wide vista left is
the sky.
The longing to return blends with many painful
displacements. From nature to culture, from native soil
to a new, strange country, from rural surroundings
to an urban environment, from native tongue to
foreign language, from childhood to adulthood. The
film presents these shifts on two levels of imagery, i.e.,
archive shots from Greenlandic locations, many of
them private footage of the women’s childhoods
juxtaposed with restless, contemporary shots of
Copenhagen. The film is not an impressionistic study. It
is an expressive manifesto in the dirge tradition.
All the women in the film are alcoholics; one has
completely shaken the habit, another accepts it as her
fate and is determined to be happy. How she chooses
to live her life is no one else’s business. The rest dream
of stopping “next summer”. The stories individualise
the poetic anthropology of the main theme interposed
with a social accusation. The stories involve unhappy
childhoods, foster homes, alcohol and families, social
inheritance and sexual assault. Arguing in favour of
NEW FILMS ON GREENLAND / FILM#25 / PAGE 9
Arctic Crime and Punishment. Photo: Sasha Snow
causal relations in social events, political and private.
Unsuccessful housing, social legacies and vicious circles.
Since its release, the film has filled the cinemas at
Greenland House and the DFI-Cinematheque.
Afterwards it was screened at a Vesterbro cinema
drawing ‘home’ audiences, who discover a
Greenlandic identity in Laila Hansen’s cinematic
poem. A controlled artistic expression of poems, songs
and music praising the unhappy women and depicting
them with a dignity that is inherent and not added, a
dignity they have kept – and recognise there in the
cinema, as they are moved to tears by this Inuk
woman city blues.
THE AMATEURS
With straightforward poignancy another film starts
by presenting a young woman’s story of how she
murdered her husband. Stabbed him in the kitchen.
She describes the act with subdued precision. The
murder has an underlying explanation, of course. It
will be explained later on. Next, we see a man on a
fishing trip. He looks very professional in the white
wasteland dealing with the problem at hand. Voiceover.
A short while ago, the men were fishermen, hunters
and trappers. Out in the settlements. Now they are
wage earners who live in town. This transition in ‘no
time’ has not been painless.
This is how British director Sasha Snow opens his
journalistic documentary Arctic Crime and
Punishment / Forbrydelse & straf i Grønland. The
voiceover bluntly states that we are in a Danish colony,
far to the north in the village of Illulissat. The crime
rate here is eighteen times higher than in Denmark.
And this sober account continues. The woman who
has notoriously murdered her husband, but whose
manner strangely wins us over to her side, then tells
the beginning of this horrible event at home in her
kitchen. The chief of police contributes other details.
As do friends and neighbours. They, as well as the
film, believe in cause and effect. The environment at
the pub, where the slain husband worked, had
affected him. And alcohol played its part. She had
started drinking with him. He beat her.
And the police officer draws a profile of an assailant:
early thirties, under the influence like the victim,
whom he knew. There is another character in the
film. He is also such a man. He assaulted his wife.
Beat her to a pulp, but she survived. The reason:
infidelity, jealousy and alcohol.
The setting for many other events like these is a
Andala and Sofiannguaq. Photo: Inuk Silis
town with no professional lawyers or judges, where
everyone who is responsible for running the court
system is an amateur. We have arrived at the film’s
message: this is exemplary. The Illulissat court has
decided to place a higher priority on the
perpetrator’s situation than on the nature of the
crime. This community is so small, and so many of
them overstep the law. In moments of crazed passion.
Getting rid of them is no solution. Everyone must
continue together in this close-knit community.
Knowing the things they know about each other.
The punishment is meted out accordingly. Light
sentences, thinks the rest of the world. He is a trapper
who must not miss his training, otherwise he will
lose his means of survival later on. As a result, he
regularly goes hunting while serving his sentence.
She is fortunate, she is not sent to a psychiatric
hospital in Denmark. She was declared normal, so
she can serve her sentence near her home. Close to
her children. She must continue her life as the
mother of her children. The amateurs have ruled
– thereby living up to the true meaning of the word.
POPULATED LANDSCAPE
Films almost always deal with unusual, sensational
themes or events. It is unusual, almost provoking, to
encounter a film that depicts ordinary and trivial
aspects of life. Ivars Silis, a film director from South
Greenland, presents just such a contrast in his latest
film Andala and Sofiannguaq. He shows us a man
with a horse in a landscape. The man drinks from
the stream. The way he drinks is deeply moving. The
associations take me far and wide through
anthropology and film history. Explaining how
would take a while. And it would be superfluous.
Because the picture just showed us. It is that simple.
Quite ordinary. The man is just drinking. Editor
Anders Villadsen shows me the man’s thoughts, the
sound of an animal rivets his attention. The camera
captures his expression.
And Ivars Silis shows us a woman. She is milking,
deep in thought. The camera captures her expression.
The editing reveals to us her thoughts. The man on
the horse... It’s that simple. The opening scene is
over.
The most important feature for me was her
apparent absence – tensely absorbing intimacy
without arrogance. She is not performing, in our
normal, jaded-by-TV sense of the word. She is not
on. She is present in a film, just as she is present with
her family, in her kitchen, her landscape. She takes
newly dug potatoes and pours them from a red
plastic bowl into the steel sink. This moves me just as
deeply as the man drinking. It is very beautiful.
Ordinary, commonplace, trivial events are
transformed into existence right before my eyes.
The touch of Ivars Silis. Emanating the trust of the
man and woman in him. The tranquillity they could
allow each other. Which becomes a pervading
gentleness accentuated by the film’s music. Their
subdued voices, her subdued singing, the subdued
instrument.
At one point in the film, she tells us of her concern
for the children. Does she and her husband stimulate
them enough? And the film takes us into town by
motor boat. To large man-made structures, to more
action, more complicated actions, to more words,
longer sentences and louder sounds. It feels alien in
the film, difficult, even if it is a festive experience with
fancy clothes and ceremonious speeches.
So she is concerned. Does their home give them
enough impressions and knowledge? But I’m not
concerned. These children see lambs being born,
watch them being fed, being let out to pasture and
brought in. Watch them being slaughtered. They see
the plough being repaired and watch the potato stew
as it cooks.
They see the sunset on the mountainside, see the
waterfall and the brook and the Northern Lights. They
feel the bustle of spring and summer, the winding
down of autumn and the tranquillity of winter.
They learn to live this ordinary life that I knew
existed somewhere. Perhaps in my childhood. Now
I’m here in the middle of a big city, in a room filled
with technological sophistication, in my suit and tie
– wanting this other life. But I’m not clever enough.
I haven’t learned what they know, what the children
are in the process of learning. To live the life that
Ivars Silis and his crew are showing me. The film
shows us the people in its landscape; no, the opposite.
The landscape with its people – man is merely a dot
GREENLAND / GRØNLAND (in progress) / DIRECTOR Anne Wivel
I REMEMBER...STORIES FROM GREENLAND / JEG HUSKER…
FORTÆLLINGER FRA GRØNLAND (2002) / DIRECTOR Karen
Littauer INUK WOMAN CITY BLUES (2002) / DIRECTOR Laila
Hansen ARCTIC CRIME & PUNISHMENT / FORBRYDELSE &
STRAF I GRØNLAND (2002) / DIRECTOR Sasha Snow ANDALA
AND SOFIANNGUAQ (2002) / DIRECTOR Ivars Silis
PAGE 10 / FILM#25
/ REFLECTING IMAGES / SILVER WOLF / KIDS & DOCS
GROWING UP IN A DAY
INSISTING ON DIALOGUE WITH DIGNITY
Phie Ambo, who together with Sami Saif won the Joris Ivens Award 2002 for Family,
is participating this year with the film Growing Up in A Day in Reflecting Images.
Growing Up in a Day is about growing up in a very sudden and relentless way in the Zambia of today.
The story takes place in the 24 intense hours where John and his sister Angelina bury their father and
are adopted by their uncle.
The film is one of a series of nine documentary films from developing countries established in
cooperation with Danida / Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the TV education programme of the
Danish Film School. The purpose of the project is to tell personal, compelling stories about the complex
relationships represented by the statistics, reports and analyses of aid to developing countries published
by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In February 2002, nine documentarists – armed with a simple DV camera – set forth from Denmark
to study the world. Phie Ambo, whose striking camerawork also made Family a visual pleasure, tells
about the encounter with alien cultures:
“I have never carted a dying family member to hospital in a wheelbarrow. I haven’t spent my
childhood in a cardboard box in the street, either, or lost my virginity at the age of ten to an AIDSinfected lorry driver. I’m just a passer-by, a sort of tourist amongst poverty trying to find a focus for my
camera. I can’t stand seeing all the squalor – it’s ugly – bloody stinking ugly. I would rather make a
beautiful nature film, cultivate the divine aspect of the African light reflected on the water and ignore
the fact that people are dying like flies. But this also seems meaningless and deceitful. I’m looking for a
beautiful main character whom I can move into my dream universe. I want my main character to be
unblemished and pure. The day I met John, he sat in silence dreaming with his little sister and looking
at some men building a coffin. I realised here was my main character.”
This year, Phie Ambo is also a member of the jury that will be conferring the Joris Ivens Award.
MIGA’S
JOURNEY
RE-TELLING
REALITY
A film is only good if we can identify with its
characters and their dilemmas and actions. We do
not let ourselves get carried away until we recognise
our own thoughts and feelings are mirrored in them.
A documentary film director faces a dilemma
whenever he/she wants to depict the global reality
and its disparities. How should the harsh reality
being experienced by many children in developing
countries be retold to a privileged, European
audience of children?
BY DIRECTOR RENÉ BO HANSEN
Growing up in a Day, 28 min., Denmark 2002
WHEN THE WAR IS OVER
REVEALING THE SCARS
Danish -South African coproduction in Silver Wolf Competition
When the War is Over is a 52-minute documentary by South African filmmaker François Verster, edited
by Danish Per K. Kirkegaard and co-produced by Undercurrent Film & Television and Tju-Bang Film.
When the War is Over looks at South Africa’s “lost generation” of teenage anti-Apartheid activists one
decade after the Struggle, focusing intimately on the personal lives of a gang member and an army captain.
We meet gangsters, drug addicts, down-and-outs, but also encounter the flame of hope for the
future. When the War is oOver is gritty yet beautiful, visually innovative yet hard-hittingly realistic. The
film takes us on an intense emotional and visual journey into world which ‘the powers that be’ seem
to have forgotten about.
The film was funded by DACST, the CWCI Fund, the Soros Open Society Documentary Fund, the
Danish Film Institute and the Sundance Documentary Fund, and has been sold for broadcast to
SABC1, RTBF, DR and YLE.
BRIEF BACKGROUND
Twelve years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union,
Mongolia is still marked by the difficult transition to a market
economy and democracy. Despite the opening to the
surrounding world, poverty, unemployment and social
collapse have become increasingly widespread, particularly in
urban areas. At the same time, the thousand-year-old nomadic
culture is facing fundamental changes. In just a very few years,
the nomadic population has been cut in half, and people have
moved to the city. The Mongolian society has absolutely no
experience in dealing with this new range of social problems
and is particularly marked by the fact that 50% of Mongolia’s
current population is less than twenty years old.
CHILDREN OF THE STEPPE – UNDERGROUND
“I spent a month in 1998 among street children in
Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. Many of the children I
found were living in the deep sewers and heating pipe ducts
where they had taken refuge from the winter. Night-time
August temperatures were minus ten degrees Celsius and
during the course of the winter they fell to minus forty
degrees (winter lasts eight months). The children stayed warm
by peeling off the asbestos insulation from the heating pipes,
which provoked itching and coughing.
When I revisited Mongolia in 2001, I initially experienced a
harsh reunion with the reality of the street. Many of the
children whom I had met had either disappeared without a
trace, were dead or were behind bars. Yet a new generation
had taken their place.
Four of the new children stood out: Bulgan and her little
KIDS & DOCS / FILM#25 / PAGE 11
Director René Bo Hansen. Photo: René Bo Hansen
Photo: Art work from video cover
two-year-old brother who had been earning a living by street
singing for more than a year; the seasoned, taciturn street boy
Idebur, who apparently knew all the tricks and boasted that he
had slept at most of the stations on the Trans-Siberian Railway;
and the more simple-minded Miga who was afraid of
returning to his family because he believed he was responsible
for his father’s accident.
community of which they were now members together with
the other street children. But after I had established the
narrative framework (Miga’s attempt in the film to find his big
sister), we could reveal some of the feelings and dilemmas
caused by want. Thereby establishing concordance between
the film and its reality. An opportunity for me to expose
feelings without leaving open wounds behind.
Secondly, I knew from the outset that if I wanted to shoot a
film about Mongolian street children, I would have to
effectively control the actual filming situations to keep the
children safe. Because during the outdoor shootings we were
constantly subjected to verbal and physical assaults. The adults
clearly felt exposed and humiliated when focus was brought
to bear on the living conditions of street children. For this
reason, I could only get away with filming by planning the
entire process like a commando raid – including interpreter,
driver and assistant dressed in military uniforms. In Mongolia,
many adults still believe the rest of the world resembles the
commercials they see on television.
Thirdly, I based my choice on the prospects of establishing a
meaningful identity. Making films about the life’s harsh
realities for children is in my opinion only legitimate if
children can make use of the experience by understanding
their own realities, their own lives. Thereby enhancing the
vision with meaning and turning it into a tangible,
understandable approach. Not only in the direct message
(depicted and told), but also in the story behind the story – the
beloved question ‘Why’? Thus, a positive ending can also be
an ending that gives food for thought.
The mixture of fiction and documentarism can be a good
tool, as identity and narrative intimacy provide an opportunity
to function on several levels. But it is a difficult form, and far
too many drama-docs are filled with postulated stories. That
being said, I suppose that Miga’s Journey has taught me that
insight into reality is strengthened by applying fictive
elements to present material that is otherwise documentary by
nature. As long as one bears in mind that film is a ‘story in
pictures’ and not ‘pictures of a story’
A FILM OF FRIENDSHIP AND LOSS
Together, the children and I created the story of Miga’s
Journey. As we had no money, I was the production crew and
established the framework – while the children brought the
scenes to life. In the no man’s land between fiction and
documentary, we made a story that was very harsh yet heartwarming at the same time. A film about friendship under
impossible circumstances.
So while we were busy creating our own little story, cruel
reality was aggressively insistent, which not only changed our
story, but also gave rise to new questions. Should I complete
the scene in which 12-year-old Cubana is arrested by the
police, well knowing that Cubana was actually dead? If it was it
morally appropriate, I could justify it in terms of the reality I
was visiting. Or what about the sequence involving an older
street boy who is arrested for killing another street boy –
should this scene be part of the film? And for what purpose in
terms of my audience – Danish and European children? Would
it make my film more realistic? Or would I lose them instead?
SELECTING THE NARRATIVE FORM
Before starting the project, I realised that the reporting form
was not an effective instrument for creating a story to bridge
the gap between reality’s harsh facts of life and the potential
for Western children to identify with these facts. i.e.
something they could use in their own reality. Equally
important, that my story was based on the same premises of
quality and drama as if it had been filmed back home.
The potential danger of the reporting form was that it
would be far too easy for me to lose my way in superficial
dramas – violence, drunkenness and debasement – without
necessarily communicating the essence of the situation. I
realised that I had to draw on fiction if I wanted to bring focus
to bear on the essential drama of the situation: life without a
family. An issue that is also identifiable by a discriminating
audience of European children.
The reason I chose the highly abused drama-doc genre had
several explanations.
First of all, the street children had no desire to include their
families in my film. Or their own detailed histories, for that
matter, which was also impossible since they still had no idea
what their histories consisted of. For my purposes, these
histories were also too vulnerable – for themselves and for the
Further information in the reverse section.
RENÉ BO HANSEN Born 1952. Film director. Teacher at The Short and
Documantary Film School. His works include: Zena / Zena (2001), Variety or
Chaos / Mangfoldighed eller kaos (2000), The Silent Shout / Det tavse råb
(1999), From the Phillipines to Hong Kong / Fra Fillipinerne til Hong Kong
(1999), Children of the West Wind / Børn af vestenvinden (1998), In the
Shadow of Genocide / I skyggen af et folkemord (1998).
PAGE 12 / FILM#25
/ KIDS & DOCS
Director Katrine Talks. Photo: Kirsten Bille
Framegrab
Little Hands shows a glimpse into the lives of deaf children – their games and controversies and experiences
in the world of the deaf. A world where they can communicate without barriers in their own language –
Sign Language. Little Hands is the first documentary from 25-years-old director, Katrine Talks.
INSIGHT INTO A HIDDEN WORLD
LITTLE HANDS
BY DIRECTOR KATRINE TALKS
“My sister is only a year and half younger than me. She’s deaf
and the deaf world has always been very special to me. We
grew up together speaking Sign Language – a language we
could have secret conversations in, one where we could
comment on people standing right next to us without them
knowing, one that allowed my sister to put an end to our
arguments by simply closing her eyes – and there was never
any sense of loss or restriction, but, on the contrary, it was
something extra, an addition to our lives, membership to a
different culture instead of a disability. I had always wanted to
share this unique culture and show the way deaf people
experience their world, and also the way in which I, as a
hearing Sign Language speaker, experience it myself.
The deaf world is a world that is quite removed from any
experience the great majority of people have, and one that is
difficult to access at first. It is easy to form an idea of it based
on vague notions and preconceptions as a somehow restricted
and handicapped world, perhaps a ‘silent world’. This is a view
that has little to do with reality or with the experiences of deaf
people and of those that, like myself, are close to them. I felt
the need to make these experiences more accessible, even if it
was only at a personal level. It was not, however, until I,
together with my sister, had the opportunity of working with
a group of deaf children, that I considered the possibility of
making a documentary on the subject. The children we
worked with were so vivacious and articulate, and I hope that
what first impressed me about these kids has come through in
the finished film, and that Little Hands offers some insight into
what it is like to grow up as a deaf child.
Growing up in an environment where you share the language
and culture with those around you is something
that most of us would take for granted. It is throughout our
childhood that we learn to communicate and become
integrated in the culture that surrounds us. If you are a deaf
child, however, this effortless and simple part of childhood
can be very lonely and trying. Chances are that you will not
share your first language, Sign Language, with the members of
your family, and if any of them do speak it, it is likely that they
will still be struggling with it. Communication with the people
closest to you will be basic, slow and tiresome, far from the
carefree exchange of information that those of us who grow
up as hearing children in a hearing culture experience.
Most of the children in this film come from backgrounds
where Sign Language is not spoken as a first language, and in
some cases, not at all. For them, deaf schools are the only
place where they can express themselves freely – where they
can play, fight and argue just like any other children. Little
Hands follows a group of deaf children at an after-school
recreation centre. We follow the children as they celebrate
birthdays, sing songs, play and argue with each other, cheat at
games, fight and make up. We learn a bit about their likes and
dislikes, about how they perceive the world and solve their
problems, and also about their frustration at not being able to
communicate with hearing people as well as they would like
to. At the recreation centre they do not seem limited or
restricted by their deafness (apart from the fact that one can’t
secretly whisper in Sign Language when a camera is pointing
at you or carry something with two hands and speak at the
same time). At the recreation centre their deafness ceases to be
a disability and becomes part of the vibrant and lively culture
to which they belong”
Further information in the reverse section.
KATRINE TALKS Born in Copenhagen, 1977. Brought up in Denmark and English
speaking countries. BA in Animation in the UK. Presently studying MA in
Communication and French at Roskilde University. 1997-2001: Freelance Sign
Language Interpreter. A Life in the Day of a Dog (2000) is her graduation film
from The Surrey Institute of Art and Design, United Kingdom.
KIDS & DOCS / FILM#25 / PAGE 13
Director Jens Bangskjær. Photo: FinoFilm
Photo: Peter Östlund
RECOGNITION IS A
CHILD’S BEST FRIEND
SEE MY WORLD
BY DIRECTOR JENS BANGSKJÆR
I have a six-year-old son who one evening inadvertently watched
a report on the television news about fighting among football
fans in the streets of Copenhagen. The scenes were filled with
violence. Just as he was about to fall asleep, his little head was
brimming with questions: why were they fighting? Who was
fighting and why did the policemen hit them? Didn’t anybody
like them?
Today’s children grow up with globalisation and its
consequences as a fact of life. They meet the ‘unknown’, ‘danger’,
and ‘otherness’ on television, the front page of the newspaper
and the computer.
Children rarely have enough insight or experience to digest
the numerous and often violent, incomprehensible impressions.
Even though I tried my best that evening to tell my son just a
little about the hows and whys – he couldn’t shake the feeling
that a wall had crumbled. A protective bubble surrounding his
life had disappeared because the world had become so very,
very big. And he felt so very, very tiny.
The experience inspired me to make this series of children’s
portraits from all over the world. We follow a seven-year-old
child through an entire day – an unadulterated view of daily
life. The films are shot at child’s height and demonstrate the
diversity and variety around the world.
In the films, we experience other children getting up in the
morning, being with their families, attending school, playing
with their friends and going to bed at night. We become
onlookers of things and events which look very different but
do not feel alien.
The purpose is to strengthen an understanding of other
cultures, races and nationalities, thereby providing some security
in children’s lives.
Compared to the fragmentary coverage of world events
presented by mass media, documentary films offer children an
opportunity to form a more diversified picture that defuses the
‘unknown’ and the ‘danger’ lurking outside.
I have worked as a sound director in the Danish film industry
for fifteen years, primarily in the field of documentary films.
As this is the first time I am personally responsible for a
documentary film for and about children, I had to do a lot of
research to discover what captures children’s imagination in
this genre.
It suddenly occurred to me that whenever we speak of culture
for children, what we are really talking about is what adults think
children are interested in. This entails a great risk of missing
the mark, and many films are saturated with action, special
effects and drama. I discovered that the opposite approach is
also important to how children experience the world, based
on important catchwords like simplicity and recognition.
Through my work I realised that the most effective methods
of reaching this target group involve making films with as few
subsidiary characters and stories as at all possible, making the
story’s excitement curve as flat as possible and telling as little
about the main character as possible. All of which are effects
that enable the viewers to get very close to and familiarise
themselves with the main character in the film.
To avoid unnecessary static during the experience, I use
voiceovers by the child who is being portrayed. Language is
the most important characteristic of a people. Therefore it is
crucial that the films are versioned for every single language.
“I get hungry from doing my math lessons for two hours, but
I’m not allowed to eat during class. That seems a bit odd to me, because
I can’t work out the formulas when I’m hungry. I have to wait till
the break to eat a little sandwich.” Asta in See My World
Further information in the reverse section.
JENS BANGSKJÆR Born 1963. Worked as sound engineer since 1976.
Directorial debut in 2002 with See My World / Se min verden.
PAGE 14 / FILM#25
/ DOCS FOR KIDS
Framegrab
Director Klaus Kjeldsen
In recent years, Klaus Kjeldsen has made a name for
himself through a series of documentary films for
children about everyday phenomena, such as loose
teeth, lunch packets, locker rooms and saying
goodbye. In these tightly edited film studies, some
larger existential themes are always at play. Kjeldsen’s
latest film is about ‘tidying up’. “Mess is something
that just comes”, Helena says, but she has a plan
to avoid it. Children are tidying up their rooms,
telling what mess and order are.
study with innocence. Take a completely different approach to
common issues, to phenomena that constantly surround us.
The clash between order and chaos surrounds us, we’re in
the midst of it. Some people feel everything is messy, while
others see nothing but order. It’s just important to make up
your own mind. ‘Keeping things in order is easier than tidying
up,’ is the motto Jens Kristian learned from his father.
Tidy up is a collection of rooms: chaotic and ordered. A
catalogue of different views on the true meaning of tidiness.
Everyday stories about disorder, order and the necessity of
tidying up. We all have a messy corner somewhere in our lives.
TIDY UP YOUR THINGS! No! I don’t feel like it! I hate it. I hate
picking up. And so on and so forth for the rest of your life.
Though it’s a charade of sorts, issues like liberation, tonguelashings and family identity are just below the surface. The
film does not moralise however. I don’t think it will motivate
teenagers to tidy their rooms. It hasn’t improved my own
children’s ability to do so at least. All that has happened is that
I am better at turning a blind eye and letting them be
themselves”
BY DIRECTOR KLAUS KJELDSEN
“Tidy up. TIDY UP YOUR THINGS NOW! Children hear this
all the time. This was where I got the idea for the film. The film
settings are children’s rooms. I was frustrated by my own
children’s messy rooms. They are old enough to decide for
themselves by now. As I stand in the doorway looking at
them, trying to convince them with my constant ‘Straighten
things up in here!’ I feel impossible and ridiculous. That was
my starting point, my motivation for making this film. My
absurd need to control others.
The reason I make films for and about children is not because
I have vivid memories of my childhood. I have all but forgotten
my own experiences, and I’m not trying to search for memories
by making these films either. I’m just curious and want to know
more about what they’re so preoccupied with. They know
something I want to know more about. Study passionately, yet
Further information in the reverse section.
KLAUS KJELDSEN Born 1950. Film director. Graduate of the National Film
School of Denmark, 1991. Director of various works for the stage and cofounder of Aarhus Theatre Academy. The Loose Tooth / Rokketanden (1994),
School Sandwich / Madpakken – en hilsen hjemmefra (1995), Calle &
Kristoffer / Calle & Kristoffer (1998), A Moment / Et øjeblik (1999), In Ama´r
/ På Ama´r (2001), The Locker Room / Omklædningsrummet (2001).
A LOOK AT TRIVIAL
EVERYDAY PHENOMENA
TIDY UP!
DOCS FOR KIDS / FILM#25 / PAGE 15
Director Jon Bang Carlsen. Photo: Rigmor Mydtskov
Framegrab
ZUMA
THE PUMA
ENJOYING THE BEAUTY OF THE GAME
Snow is lovely on tv but cold when you're in it, as
African football player Sibusiso Zuma realized when
he left his country to play for FC Copenhagen. Zuma
the Puma is the story of sports stardom as a way
out of the ghetto, and of the problems and loneliness
associated with being black in a white world. It is
only on the pitch, absorbed for a moment by the
game, that Zuma is able to forget his pain and his
past.
BY DIRECTOR JON BANG CARLSEN
“Zuma the Puma takes place in a footballer’s world but is not
necessarily a film about soccer, maybe more a film painting
the story of a man’s life on the canvas of a soccer pitch. “The
beautiful game” (Péle) has always intrigued me. Mostly because
of the passion it evokes, a passion that seems totally out of
proportion to an outsider. What is it about that little leather ball
being kicked around on the rectangular green stage that causes
even my usually rather muted Scandinavian compatriots to
scream their heads off as if they were giving birth in public?
Why do the entire tv-united world literally come to a stand still
during the finals of the world cup? How come that the English
and the German troops during the first world war occasionally
left their blooddrenched trenches to play soccer against each
other in the no-man’s-land dividing their misery before returning
to the trenches to shoot each others brains out? Why would
anyone call a modest man like David Beckham for God?
Maybe because soccer to an even higher degree than other
games reminds the fans about the society they live and die in
– transformed into a purified and condensed form. As in a well
functioning society soccer has its hard working middleclass, its
often egocentric but necessary loners, its loosers and its winners.
In our society some are more equal than others. Likewise the
film’s South African hero Sibusiso Zuma experiences man’s need
to exclude others, the very moment he enters the film’s stage
and frantic booing fills the huge soccer stadium. The Lazio fans
dislike his color. But our hero is a wise hero and transforms their
negativity into an even stronger urge to succeed in the soccer
society, to score the goal, that will make the Lazio fan’s
boisterous hate seem pitiful even in their own ears, and finally
set the black man free to enjoy the beauty of his game,
without being chained by white men’s contempt.
A soccer match is an abstract, rectangular, green portrait of
our society with restless dots of other colors franticly trying to
find their final spot on the canvas, but they will never succeed.
In the end they will all have to leave and the canvas will yet
again be all green like nothing really had happened”
Further information in the reverse section.
JON BANG CARLSEN Born 1950. Film director. Graduate of the National Film
School of Denmark, 1976. Bang Carlsen has written and directed more than
thirty documentary, short and feature films. His work includes the feature films
Next Stop Paradise (1980), Ophelia – Comes to Town (1985), Time Out (1988)
and Carmen & Babyface (1995). His documetary First I Wanted to Find the Truth
(1987) won silver at Chicago Film Festival and It’s Now or Never (1996) won
the Gijon Film Festival. Addicted to Solitude (1999) won the First Prize at
Nordisk Panorama.
PAGE 16 / FILM#25
/ STATE OF DOCS
REALITY PICS
IN EUROPEAN
Production starts with distribution. State of
the arts.
BY TUE STEEN MÜLLER
Denmark would not have enjoyed the documentary
culture of which we are so proud had the National
Film Board of Denmark (Statens Filmcentral), now
part of the Danish Film Institute, not existed. By its
foundation in 1939 farsighted educationists created
a link between the production and distribution of
documentary films. A considerable audience resulted,
and once the NFB had purchased a documentary (or
from the 1972 Film Act onwards, subsidized its
production) the film was certain to be distributed
to the general public rather than remain on a shelf.
Initially prints went out to cinemas in 35 mm, and
later on to an extensive network of schools, libraries,
societies, kindergartens and nursery schools on 16
mm. Today, too, reaching an audience is of vital
significance to the existence of the Danish
documentary.
This publicly funded politically determined link
between supplier and customer, seller and buyer, may
sound like a matter of course, but in most European
countries this link exists exclusively via television.
Television looks for programmes, and is the dominating
factor as regards audiovisual documentary production
and distribution alike, as well as being the medium
with the greatest influence on the development of
the documentary genre in the last ten to fifteen years.
Unfortunately there exists no up-to-date statistics for
documentaries but an idea of the figures ten years
ago may be gleaned from The European Documentary
Sector (Documentary, Copenhagen 1994, page 18):
Taken together estimates of transmitted and nontransmitted independent documentary production, the
total for EU and former EFTA countries is approximately
3,500 hours annually.
To these we must add in-house productions. The
figure has probably doubled by now as perceptions
of the documentary concept have expanded. This
aspect is discussed below.
PRODUCTION BEGINS WITH DISTRIBUTION
Writers generally approach the documentary film
from an aesthetic or a technical angle. New directors
and schools are referred to and often emerge from
new technology. This article will address the European
documentary (dropping the “film” suffix as most
documentaries are now shot electronically) as it has
appeared and evolved since the end of the 1980s
when vital decisions in the television industry pulled
the genre from the darkness into the light. I say that
the documentary genre has never been as strong as
it is today in terms of visibility and international
activities. This strength is in terms of volume and
variety. Without the powerful influence of television
and a strong commitment from the EU, the genre
would have remained a matter for educationists and
cinephile festival visitors in France and its environs,
including Denmark, where we have always (with
some justification) given ourselves airs because we
have a documentary culture associated with general
educational activities, albeit communicated with and
without the help of television.
Production always starts with distribution. The
audience is considered from stage one. This
connexion is the central point of this article, which
will take its readers on a tour of most of Europe in
order to describe the general features, dominating
styles and most important directors of the current
documentary climate.
THE MEDIA PROGRAMME
The starting point was the turbulent years around
1990 when Europe experienced a transformation
following the fall of the Berlin Wall. At this time the
EU set up its MEDIA Programme as an audiovisual
initiative aimed at strengthening the European film
industry in the face of US domination. In that regard
the MEDIA Programme has not been of significance
for the feature film; US imports continue to dominate
the market. However, for the documentary the
programme proved a vital catalyst for the
Europeanization of the industry that has taken place.
Not that the Americans have ever been able to compete
with European documentaries, for the simple reason
that the documentary is devoid of commercial
potential. Even giants like Frederik Wiseman had to
come to Europe for funding; after all, Americans are
not exactly enthusiastic about public support for films.
From its initial status as a provider of loans the MEDIA
Programme has now built up several platforms by
which it is possible to obtain subsidies proper for the
development and production of documentary projects
(see DOX 39, 5 on MEDIA Plus), and nowadays the
exponents of the sector, primarily producers and
commissioning editors, meet all year round to pitch and
bid for one another’s projects. This activity takes place
at markets and festivals supported by MEDIA Plus, as
the third round of the programme is known.
(http://europa.eu.int/comm/avpolicy/media/index_e
n.html)
As a result there is now a documentary milieu
STATE OF DOCS / FILM#25 / PAGE 17
A NEW GOLDEN ERA
DOCUMENTARISM
transcending European borders. For better or for worse
more productions and co-productions are being
launched and the need for information and networks
is increasing. In 1996 the EDN (European Documentary
Network) was set up. It is based in Copenhagen and
has some 700 members, primarily on the production
side, who receive assistance in navigating the jungle
of the ever-growing number of television stations that
are the potential buyers of concepts or completed
documentaries.
In some countries the current state and politics
of the television market are what determine the
documentaries to be supported. In others (such as
Scandinavia) the documentary is part of government
arts policy.
STANDARDIZATION
There is a downside to this. The history of the
European documentary in the last decade may be that
of a genre rescued by television, but at the same time
it has seen the introduction of a standardization that
has made it more difficult for artistic documentaries
to find a voice. The final cut, i.e. the right to put the
finishing touch before a film is declared complete no
longer belongs unequivocally to the director. Today
this right may belong to the producer or
commissioning editor by dint of the contract or simply
because he or she assumes it.
The history of the European documentary is also
the history of a genre that left the classroom and the
circles of 1968 intellectuals to be given more
popularity than ever before. Docu soaps have become
part of the regular TV diet and although this subspecies
of the documentary is not within the scope of this
article it is obvious that its emergence has made the
image of the documentary genre public property and
enabled many suppliers – the indies – to survive on a
commercial basis.
Finally, the history of the European documentary
also includes the way documentaries have regained
their place in the cinema repertoire in many
countries. The feature-length documentary has
become more and more common, and the good news
is that television stations seem to be more in favour
of it, too, as they propagate rapidly via the process of
digitization that is bringing thematic channels to
viewers. The public service broadcasters are going
digital, repeating and making room for more
specialized genres such as the documentary film.
Financially, however, this development does not
seem to have meant more money for the producers.
There will continue to be a need for public subsidy
schemes, national and European, if the genre is to
survive artistically. However, it is clear that films will
go on being produced outside television, without
government subsidies, and on very small budgets,
sometimes without any real cool cash and occasionally
of a quality that wins their makers awards at festivals
all over the world. The possibilities enabled by new
technology – small digital cameras and cheap editing
on the computer – have brought the cost of
documentary production way down.
Kai Krüger, from Germany, describes the situation
from the point of view of the producer and director
succinctly: “... while broadcasters believe in regionalization
and sensationalization to push ratings, there’s a growing
number of young auteurs, producers and sales persons
who are reaching beyond borders to establish European
production and sales platforms for true documentary
work.” (DOX, 37, 4)
THE BREAKTHROUGH
It was in 1994 that Tales from a Hard City marked an
upheaval in European documentary. The film came
about through a partnership between the French
channel la Sept Arte and British Channel 4. It concerns
young jobless in Sheffield. It is 80 minutes long and
made for television and theatrical release. It contains
scenes that are quite obviously staged, it is light in
tone, and provokes both laughter and thought. On its
release it was hailed as a sorely needed model for
new documentaries. Its British producer was Alex
Usborne, and it is a vital aspect of the production
history of the film that it’s financing was established
through the pitching sessions the MEDIA Programme
also funds. The biggest of them, the Forum for Coproduction and Co-financing, takes place in Amsterdam
every December, and all the important television
stations are represented (www.idfa.nl).
In 1993 Usborne pitched his film about Sheffield
youth and met a fantastic response – plus an
experienced French producer, Jacques Bidou, to help
with the next stages. Bidou got la Sept Arte to cofinance the film, which became a prestige project for
the French and the British television stations alike.
A director, Kim Flitcroft, was employed to bring the
producer’s concept to life, and he did so skilfully and
effectively enough to win Tales of a Hard City first prize
at the Vue sur les Docs-festival, Marseilles, 1994.
CHANNEL 4
The story of Channel 4 is a more or less familiar one.
It was set up to support new television, including
experimental documentaries produced outside the
television station by a large number of indies. It
created a huge stir in the ponderous traditional
PAGE 18 / FILM#25
/ STATE OF DOCS
Nico Icon. Framegrab
Cool & Crazy
Betrayal
Their frozen dream
television establishment where everyone knew what
BBC documentaries meant in terms of quality when
it came to research and classic, straightforward
narrative. Enormous quantities of creativity were
unleashed and an astonished television industry
saw that experiments were also capable of attracting
audiences. Channel 4 under Jeremy Isaacs became a
playground for independents that wanted something
other than what the familiar BBC recipe could provide.
The model of subsidizing productions made by
producers and directors from outside the television
station in co-operation with a commissioning editor
was copied in many countries; as was the case in
Denmark, with the setting up of national public
service broadcaster TV 2/Danmark.
Channel 4 went on to become the victim of its own
success. It had started by funding its productions
from advertising revenue from the commercial ITV
network but government decided that the station
would henceforth have to raise its own finance from
its own commercials. This meant a change in policy,
with experimental programmes giving way to safe
ones and large-scale interesting films from every nook
and cranny of the globe being replaced by films on
British subjects certain of high ratings (DOX 35,
interview with Jacques Bidou).
establishment of Arte with the documentary as one
of its pivots had the same effect in France as the
starting of Channel 4 in Britain. Production companies
started up and there were lots of ways of obtaining
funds from Arte la Sept, now called Arte France
which is part of the German-French European cultural
channel Arte, which has retained documentary
production as one of its top priorities.
The thematic strands provide an excellent
illustration of the many different ways in which the
television station treats the documentary: On Monday
evenings it’s the Grand Format, feature length
documentaries with a personal angle. Wednesday
evening is Mercredis de l’Histoire, comprising a onehourhistory documentary. Friday sees La Vie en Face,
featuring a one-hour documentary on society and
economics. Saturday provides both L’Aventure
Humaine, open to long documentaries on
expeditions, foreign cultures and rituals, and La
Lucarne, home of the artistic experiment around
midnight. The latter may show films of any length, a
rarity in European television today. In addition to
these slots there are thematic evenings, Arte’s
speciality, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays,
containing documentaries appropriate to the subject
chosen. Most of these documentaries are produced
with funding from Arte, which is currently extending
its empire via production agreements with countries
such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland,
Poland and Spain. Its European vision is obvious.
The French system is built up around Arte and the
national public service stations assembled under
Television Française (France2, France3 and France5)
whose commitment to support a production or its
ARTE
If la Sept Arte had not started in 1986 the French
documentary would have quite simply died away.
There might have been room for personalities like
Chris Marker, but otherwise the amount the French
public service broadcasters could invest in artistic,
free documentaries would have been limited. The
distribution is enough for registered production
companies to obtain automatic subsidies from CNC,
the French film institute. A statement of commitment
by the huge undergrowth of cable and satellite
stations gives similar access to CNC funds.
Tales from a Hard City heralded a new era for the
European documentary. It was a large-scale, expensive
co-production between two leading television stations.
It was entertaining, featured strong characters and
possessed narrative drive, partly due to the fictitious
components incorporated into the narrative structure.
It aimed for television and cinema as its two windows.
It was followed by Nico-Icon by Susanne Ofteringer
from Germany about the cult singer, and Betrayal
(Förräderi) by Frederik von Krusenstjerna from
Sweden, a Swedish/Danish/British co-production
about Stasi agent Sascha Anderson. The influence
of Channel 4 on this film was considerable.
SCANDINAVIA
Small countries need to protect their languages and
arts. In Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and
Sweden the documentary has benefited greatly from
government subsidies, and continues to do so. This
money is usually channelled through the film
institutes via a system of commissioning editors, in
Nordic legislation most often called ‘film consultants’.
These countries also cooperate in the documentary
field and work together in European forums. The
Nordic Film & Television Fund is to them what the
MEDIA Programme is to Europe. The fund subsidizes
Nordic documentaries with completion funding if at
least two television stations or film institutes commit
to them. The documentary makers from these
STATE OF DOCS / FILM#25 / PAGE 19
In the House of Angels. Photo: xx
Tanjuska and the Seven Devils
Atman. Framegrab
Mysterion
countries meet every year in conjunction with the
Nordisk Panorama festival and the associated Nordisk
Forum, where many documentary producers raise
finance via the pitching system.
Finland is the leading Nordic country, artistically
speaking. This is because of the very favourable
climate for documentaries and the enormous profile
developed by the national television station, YLE – this
profile was developed by commissioning editors
Jarmo Jäskalainen, Eila Werning and Iikka Vehkalahti
who have the room (though not enormous sums of
money) to place and co-finance major documentary
films requiring considerable resources. They have
looked for obvious talent, nurtured it and presented it
internationally, while acquiring major foreign
documentaries for screening on YLE. Many Danish
documentaries have benefited from Finnish support,
which also comes from AVEK, a fund based on tariffs
on unrecorded tapes, and via the Finnish film
foundation.
The prominent names in Finnish documentary are
Pirjo Honkasalo and Markku Lehmuskallio. Honkasalo’s
trilogy on good and evil – Mysterion, Tanjuska and the
Seven Devils (Tanjuska Ja 7 Perkelettä), and Atman – is
internationally renowned for its intense interpretation
of man’s relationship to faith. The films are featurelength narratives cinematographed by Honkasalo
herself. Honkasalo is a true believer in the auteur
tradition and the personal imprint (DOX 39, pp 8 and 9).
Lehmuskallio has received awards for his
anthropological accounts from Siberia. His The Mothers
of Life (Elämän äidit ), the last he made, was premiered
at the new international documentary festival in
Helsinki in February 2002. In vast panoramic images
it portrays the Nenet in a sequence of chapters that
are masterpieces of photography.
Among the younger generation of Finnish
documentary makers Susanna Helke and Virpi Suutari
have made a particular impact. The two women have
made three remarkable films, Sin (Synti), White Sky
(Valkoinen taivas)and The Idle Ones (Joutilat). They
are among the few capable of telling a story in pictures.
The latter portrays three youths in a small Finnish
town, a hole in the ground from which the three
would like to escape.
The Swedes have their eternal enfant terrible,
Stefan Jarl, who has demonstrated new aspects of his
enormous talent in the last couple of years following
his great They Call Us Misfits (Dom kallar os mods)
trilogy and a whole series of eco-films on man and
nature. His films about Bo Widerberg (Life at Any Cost)
and the latter’s star Tommy Berggren, (Muraren/The
Bricklayer), are both magnificent portraits, whereas
Beauty Will Save the World, about Jarls’ personal source
of inspiration, the director Arne Sucksdorff, suffered
by being shot too close to Sucksdorff´s death. The
great nature documentarist who left Sweden and
settled in Brazil where he created the masterpiece
My Home is Copacabana (Mitt hem i Copacabana) was
too ill to be filmed.
Jan Troell is another prominent name in Swedish
documentary today. In recent years he has released
lyrical films like Their frozen dream (En Frusen Dröm),
in which he elegantly uses material from his feature
The Flight of the Eagle (Ingenjör Andrés luftfärd) as
documentation for his story about the man who
wanted to conquer new territory to the north. The
Dance (Dansen) and The Light of the Province
(Provinsens ljus) are two other pieces of testimony to
Troell’s ability to deliver a powerful human message
in short film form.
In Norway the documentary has achieved strength
through its widespread distribution via local municipal
cinemas. Not only has Knut-Erik Jensen’s success story
about a male voice choir, Cool & Crazy (Heftig &
begeistret) pulled in viewers in numbers none of the
other Nordic countries can boast of. But artistically
more convincing works such as Margret Ohlin’s
empathetic portrayal of elderly people at a nursing
home, In the House of Angels (De Mjuke Hænderne)
and young Even Benestad’s portrait of his transsexual
father, All About My Father (Alt om min far), have also
attracted audiences. Swedish and Danish documentary
makers are strong in the television documentary
field in regard to social issues, the Norwegians less,
due to lack of interest from NRK, the Norwegian
national broadcaster.
There is also a great deal astir in Iceland with its
diminutive population, where no fewer than eight
documentary films have been released in the cinema
in the last year. They are shown electronically as the
country cannot afford film prints. Whether this boom
will have an artistic effect it is too soon to tell.
From Denmark Jørgen Leth and Jon Bang Carlsen
continue to enjoy most prominence abroad. Jørgen
Leth’s Haïti Untitled (Haïti. Uden titel) has had its
controversial triumphs at many festivals;
controversial because of the style the director made
his young editor, Jakob Thuesen, develop in order to
create his personal picture of the Caribbean island that
has been Leth’s starting point for a decade now. Jon
Bang Carlsen’s Addicted to Solitude received the same
PAGE 20 / FILM#25
/ STATE OF DOCS
How to Invent Reality. Photo: Jon Bang Carlsen
The Dance
Haïti. Untitled. Photo: Chantal Regnault/Henrik Saxgren
Addicted to Solitude. Photo: Jon Bang Carlsen
attention abroad. It was shot in South Africa, which
seems to be the director’s preferred subject following
his films on Ireland (It’s Now or Never and How to
Invent Reality). A new generation may be emerging
following the deservedly huge success of Family at
IDFA (the world’s largest documentary festival) in
Amsterdam in December 2001. Sami Saif and Phie
Ambro clearly possess exceptional talent, and if the
other young filmmakers from the National Film
School of Denmark live up to the promise of their
graduation films, prospects are bright. With increased
funding from the DFI augmented by the modest
contributions made by Danish television stations the
chances are certainly there.
shared by Viktor Kossakovsky for Pavel and Lalya
(Pavel i Lyalya) and Sergei Dvortsevoy for Bread Day
(Khlebny Den’), both artistically convincing films
produced from widely differing starting points.
Kossakovsky allied himself with a strong German
producer to make his portrait of documentary
makers Ludmila Stanukinas and her dying husband
Pavel Kogan, whereas Dvortsevoy’s film was literally
a no-budget one, produced by him on stock which
he had received as an award for his previous film,
Paradise (Scastje).
In Russia public subsidies for film are practically
non-existent, so like many other filmmakers from
Eastern Europe, Russians depend on television and
western charity. The Soros Documentary Fund has
been of incalculable importance for the production
of films on human rights trampled underfoot in
countries on the other side of the iron curtain. Ten
years after, the multi-billionaire George Soros has
now passed on his fund to Robert Redford’s Sundance
Film Festival, which is continuing its activities under
the name Sundance Documentary Fund.
In the Baltic republics the situation is somewhat
more favourable. As their economies have grown
over the last ten years conditions for filmmaking
have also improved. The television stations still seem
paralysed by old communist bureaucracy, but Latvia
has managed to establish public film support via a
film institute along Nordic lines. As a result an
internationally respected veteran like Ivars Seleckis
has been able to obtain basic funding from his own
country for his sequel to Crossroad Street,
appropriately titled New Times at Crossroad Street –
an epic tale of what has happened to living conditions
EASTERN EUROPE
The Wall came down and with it the huge state
subsidised documentary studios of Eastern Europe.
From salaried employment, directors had to enter the
free marketplace to find money for their films, and
at the same time the profession of producer in the
western sense had to be developed. A number of
production companies were formed in the former
communist states, typically one man-outfits struggling
from film to film. It has been – and still is – a huge
task for these countries to re-establish the
documentary tradition familiar to us for decades.
Yet films from Eastern Europe are often the ones
that enjoy the most success at award presentations.
When I was on the jury at the 1998 festival in
Amsterdam the three top awards went to directors
from Eastern Europe. The main prize went to
Photographer (Fotoamator) Dariusz Jablonksi’s shocking
documentary from the Lodz ghetto, second prize was
in the ten years since the country gained its
independence. He obtained the rest of the finance
from Soros and European sources, aided by the Baltic
Media Centre from Denmark. Another giant of the
celebrated Latvian poetic documentary school of the
1970s and 1980s, Herz Frank, chose to emmigrate to
Israel, but he is still active: he is currently completing
his filmic testament, Flashback, to be released this year.
In Lithuania the younger generation has pursued
the short film, often wordless, often symbolic, and
often observational. Audrius Stonys is the most
established, with films such as World of the Blind,
Antigravitation, Flying over Blue Fields, and Alone.
Here is an auteur with an uncompromising, personal
film idiom who makes films on the little support he
can raise from his own ministry of the arts,
augmented by western funds (from the Danish Film
Institute, for example). The other side of the coin is
all too obvious. Films from Stonys’ hand would gain
screenings on very few European television stations,
and be taken up by the alternative distribution
systems such as that in Denmark.
In Poland the great name is Marcel Lozinski, for
decades Wajda’s documentary counterpart. His greatest
film from the 1990s was Anything Can Happen, based
on a very simple idea moving from micro to macro:
the location is a Warsaw park but it could be anywhere.
The participants are old people sitting on park benches
the way old people do, talking to one another and
watching whatever takes place. Lozinski inserts his
eight-year-old son into this world, armed with a couple
of microports on his clothing. The boy strikes up
conversations with the elderly asking about their age,
dress, marital status, whether God exists, war and death
STATE OF DOCS / FILM#25 / PAGE 21
It’s Now or Never. Photo: Jon Bang Carlsen
Antigravitation. Framegrab
Photographer. Art work from poster
Family. Photo: Phie Ambo-Nielsen
and much more besides. With a child’s wonderfully
charming naïveté the boy becomes intimately
acquainted with the old people, and as an audience
we are given a universally comprehensible reflection
on human existence, filmed by Marcel Lozinski and
his unit from their hiding places behind various bushes.
Lozinski emphasises that life is beautiful by using a
Strauss waltz as the recurring element of musical
interpretation.
Poland has had to adjust to new times, too, but has
found it much easier to maintain its important
documentary tradition, partly because of the powerful
film school in Lodz and partly because Polish
television, TP, has given documentaries high priority
for a number of years, with film director Andrejz
Fidyk as its commissioning editor. Anything Can
Happen, shot on film, was fully financed by Polish
television.
The Balkans means war and destruction, and there
are few artistic signals from the many new republics
of former Yugoslavia, or from Romania and Bulgaria.
Now films are emerging not only about Serb atrocities
but also the crimes committed by the Croats. Putting
across such viewpoints is not without its dangers, as
producer Nehad Puhovski has discovered. He has
received several threats to his life when his Zagreb
film company Factum looked critically at the
behaviour of the Croat army during the war. Factum’s
production The Boy Who Rushed, directed by Biljana
Cakic-Veselic, shared first prize at the first SEEDoc
festival, Dubrovnik, in June 2001. It is the moving tale
of a sister – the director – who tries to find out how
and where her brother disappeared during the civil war.
She shared first prize with Ferenc Moldovanyi from
Hungary. His Children of Kosovo is a work on Muslim
children who saw their parents and siblings being
murdered by the Serbs. The film ignited violent debate
in international documentary circles (DOX, 38, pp 913). Many think that the director was unethical in
putting the children into a traumatizing situation in
which they had to relive the horrors they’d seen. In
Hungary the privatisation of film production, sparked
off a crisis for documentary makers, whose only
option was to seek western support as Moldovanyi did
and as Péter Forgács has also done for the production
of hiss poetic, archive-based tales from Hungarian
history, in which he uses private footage to create
dramatic personal accounts, the best of which are The
Unknown War and The Danube Exodus.
GERMANY AND THE UNITED KINGDOM
Of course the documentary is strong in Germany and
Britain, and of course major, important films are being
made that will take their place in history, such as A
Cry from the Grave, by Leslie Woodhead, about
Srebrenica. The film is now being used in the
courtroom at the international war crimes tribunal
in The Hague, and it demonstrates clearly why the
Netherlands government rightly decided to resign in
April this year, seven years after the massacre, because
of the way the Dutch UN troops remained passive as
General Mladic prepared his massacre.
From Germany Black Box Germany by Andres Veil
should be mentioned: it delves into the painful past
by posthumously portraying the murdered bank
director Alfred Herrhausen and the RAF terrorist
Wolfgang Grams, drawing on family members as
witnesses.
Both films testify to why countries should produce
documentaries about their own history. However,
both films (which saw theatrical release) are also
influenced by the narrative dominance of the television
interview in the contemporary documentary.
In the case of Britain this is not surprising.
Documentarism is inextricably bound to the BBC and
Channel 4, both of which have formatted programme
policy to perfection in the last decade. Any history
programme, such as the superb documentaries made
by Brian Lapping (The Death of Yugoslavia is one of
the many series on political topics), is created on the
basis of the traditions of British journalism, which
seldom allow a director to put his own signature to
his film. British documentary is far from the auteur
tradition today, often in direct contrast to French
individualism, as Nicolas Fraser, the influential BBC
documentary editor and the man behind the only
real British international documentary strand, Storyville,
bemoans:
“The European Subsidy Utopia is of course located in
France. Who would wish to vote against any measure
destined to preserve French culture from the ravages of
“globalisation”? But the drift towards subsidized
aestheticism in French culture is depressing for the rest
of us. It seems to prove that good intentions are not enough,
and that, left to themselves and without some sort of
contact with the impatience of viewers, documentaries
will become a remote province, preserved through
countless colloquies, festivals, awards and pitches – but
largely unheeded.” (DOX 37, p.9).
The British believe in direct cinema and the
combination of good journalism and good film
handcraft, but in reality Fraser could make good use
PAGE 22 / FILM#25
/ STATE OF DOCS
Anything Can Happen. Framegrab
Children of Kosovo. Photo: © Engram Film
World of the Blind. Photo: xx
Heart of the Angel. Framegrab
of some of the public subsidies he mocks the French
for applying incestuously. It is just not there for him
today.
So it is not incorrect to say that British documentary
is in an artistic crisis. It is hard to tell where renewal
is to come from as long as television sets the agenda
and streamlines the required documentary look. There
are exceptions, and hats must be raised to Molly
Dineen and Kim Longinotto, who directly carry on
the cinema tradition in splendid style. Dineen does
so using local topics (The Arch from London Zoo and
Heart of the Angel about an underground station, both
films highlighting the human cost of working for
public institutions) as her top priority, while
Longinotto takes up women’s themes far from
London, her most recent films being Divorce Iranian
Style and Runaway from Iran, until recently
hermetically sealed. Nick Broomfield also deserves a
mention, though his latest films have disappointed
greatly, not least with his story of the death of rock
musician Kurt Cobain and his relationship with
Courtney Love (Kurt and Courtney), which was a
commercial success but by no means possessed the
high quality of his previous films, which were made
in cooperation with Joan Churchill.
The case of Germany is similar. It is hard to see
where innovation is to come from. Many mainstream
quality films see the light of day by means of
television finance (Arte is important to German
documentarism) and the relatively wealthy film
bodies of the various Länder, but without Werner
Herzog as a figurehead the artistically original part
of the landscape would look pretty barren. On the
other hand international documentary making
should be thrilled to have prized Herzog away from
features to make his extravagant tales unfold in the
documentary genre. I’m in no doubt that Little Dieter
Needs to Fly is a film that will last as an example of
the way a documentary can seemingly captivate its
audience with such lightness and elegance by seeing
once again how Dieter wanted to be a pilot as a boy
during the Second World War, realized his dream in
the USA, was sent to Vietnam, got shot down, suffered
all kinds of torments in the jungle, and finally escaped
to freedom and a traumatic life of US west coast
luxury. Herzog’s ingenious trick is quite simply to
take Dieter back to the locations, to get him to talk,
and occasionally reconstruct what actually happened.
Herzog, like Jon Bang Carlsen from Denmark, is a
documentary stager, and has breathed fresh air into
a genre which has otherwise sworn blind (and often
used it as a mantra) that the eye of the camera will
find the magic moments without such help. “It is there
if only you wait long enough”, as one of the great
names of direct cinema, Albert Maysles (the man
behind the masterpiece Salesman, with his late
brother) says.
Perhaps some readers wonder why Buena Vista
Social Club by Wim Wenders has not been mentioned
yet. It gave the German director a brand new, very
large audience. The film about the Cuban musicians
has meant nothing in an artistic sense, but such a huge
audience for a documentary in cinemas all over the
world was of course a boost for the genre as such.
has been le Roi at the head of l’Unité Documentaire,
which has clearly set the style for how documentaries
should appear. A dominating genre is the essay
where a topic is weighed and measured in the first
person singular – even though Garrel also thinks that
the auteur concept is used by French filmmakers in
self-defence when they lack the ability for precision
and to tackle their subject directly. Garrel often talks
about the triumvirate director-producer-director as
being the prerequisite if creativity is to lead to artistic
achievement (DOX 35, interview with Thierry Garrel).
Claire Simon is one of the best names French
documentary has to offer. Her At All Costs (Coûte que
Coûte) is a splendid example of how important humour
can be in the way a documentary tackles a dull subject
like work. Lightly and elegantly she describes the way
the staff and boss of a small catering firm struggle
through everyday life under the constant threat of
bankruptcy. Of course things go wrong, but new
adventures await the staff in Nice, where the sun
shines from a cloudless sky.
Nicholas Philibert has also made his mark. His Every
Little Thing (La Moindre des Choses) joins the ranks of
great films about people with mental illnesses, just as
Agnès Varda proved that she is a master of the small
camera with her fine film The Gleaners and I (Les
Glaneurs et la Glaneuse). Veterans Raymond Depardon
and Chris Marker are still active; the former received
much praise for his film Profils Paysans, about French
farmers.
FRANCE
I have already mentioned the excellence of the French
system. Arte is the pivot and since 1986 Thierry Garrel
THE NETHERLANDS
It is surely a well-known fact that small countries are
relatively stronger in the documentary field than big
STATE OF DOCS / FILM#25 / PAGE 23
Skilsmisse på iransk. Framegrab
Paradis. Framegrab
Metal and Melancholy. Framegrab
ones. It is certainly obvious that not only the Nordic
countries but also the Netherlands (and the Frenchspeaking part of Belgium) have built up a documentary
culture based on an arts policy that means government
and television subsidies. In Amsterdam they started
what has become the biggest documentary festival in
the world, backed by the television stations. The
Netherlands has several funds encouraging producers
to work with television to ensure widespread
distribution, and the country is the first to start an ecinema project, DocuZone, in which ten cinemas put
documentaries on the schedule, screened from DVDs.
Johan van der Keuken, the great Dutch
documentarist who died in January 2001, left an
extensive, fascinating canon. His experiments did not
always succeed and there was often a touch of dry
intellectualism to his films, but he will indisputably
remain as a searching documentarist forever exploring
existence. His last film, The Long Voyage, was a splendid
personal account of a curious, cancer-stricken man’s
search for means that might ensure his survival.
Many of his films will endure, particularly Face Value
and his four hours Amsterdam Amsterdam.
Heddy Honigmann is another major figure in Dutch
documentary. She has made several feature-length
tales, mostly from distant climes. Metal and Melancholy
(Metal Y Melancolia) is a superb descent into Lima, the
wretched capital of Peru, where two jobs is the norm
for the educated as well as the unskilled if they want to
make ends meet. Honigmann has the ability so vital
to a documentary maker of being able to probe
people’s deepest opinions and emotions. She used it in
O Amor Naturel, too, in which she moves around Brazil
to take the temperature of love.
SOUTHERN EUROPE
Southern Europe is weak in the documentary field.
This is strange, as there are plenty of stories to tackle
and which indeed are tackled to excess by
documentary makers from the rest of Europe, and
besides Italy possesses a neorealist film tradition
which is very much documentary in character.
Nevertheless Italy has trouble with descriptions of
reality and has had it for a long time, also prior to
Berlusconi, who has emphatically put television (not
only his own stations but also public service
broadcaster RAI) in
a position where it is impossible to finance and
distribute the critical documentary. Of course there
are exceptions, such as Gianfranco Pannone, who
has depicted the past and present profiles of fascism
in a couple of films, L’America a Roma and Littoria a
Provincial City. Pannone raises finance outside Italy,
and again it is Arte that is aware of his talent.
In Greece they are still struggling to create an image
of documentary as something more than expedition
films and the flood of films about the cradle of
democracy. There is talent, but not as much as in
Portugal, where a number of young documentary
makers have made a major impact in recent years.
In Natal 71, for example, Margarida Cardoso attains
international levels with her fine, personal depiction
of her father’s activities in Mozambique at the end
of the brutal Portuguese colonial rule. Even more
powerful is Pedro Costa’s In Vanda’s Room (No quarto
da Vanda), a three hours encirclement of the nature
of drug addiction, and one of the most controversial
works of recent years. (DOX, 38, p.9 et seq.)
PUBLIC SERVICE
There has been a lot of talk about a boom for
documentaries, and indeed the genre has flourished
on television in the broadest sense. Nevertheless some
people are sounding the alarm: one of them is
commissioning editor Hugues LePaige from RTBF,
the French-Belgian broadcaster, who has emphasised
in several of his books that it is the public service
stations who are responsible for the continued survival
of the documentary as a well-researched, personally
shaped commentary on life and times in the face of
the commercialisation of television that is taking place
via the growing number of global broadcasters such
as Discovery and National Geographic.
LePaige’s point is that modern democracies need
the documentary as a constantly searching genre that
not only communicates information journalism-style
but also provides background, insight, perception and
interpretation. He is absolutely right in this classical
definition of the essence of documentarism. That it is
television, i.e. the public service broadcasters, that must
shoulder this responsibility, is undeniable. Ghettoization
will be the result if many stations emulate the BBC,
which has moved special-interest documentaries to
the digital BBC4
Tue Steen Müller is head of the EDN (European
Documentary Network), the activities of which include
the publication of DOX. The EDN is based in Copenhagen.
www.edn.dk
PAGE 24 / FILM#25
Illustration: Søren Mosdal
/ SCRIPTING THE DOCUMENTARY
SCRIPTING THE DOCUMENTARY / FILM#25 / PAGE 25
THE COMPLEMENTARY
DRAMATURGY
OF THE
DOCUMENTARY FILM
Danish producer Mikael Opstrup reflects on
the dramaturgy of documentarism inspired
by the kvantum theory of the Danish
scientist Niels Bohr.
BY MIKAEL OPSTRUP
If a documentary is a film and a film is a story, why
do so many excellent documentarists categorically
refuse to write a screenplay, i.e., to work with the
narrative in a dramaturgical context?
Could it be because they are right!? Right in thinking
that if they decide on a narrative form before
confronting the reality, which they intend to mould
into a story, they would be incapable of making a
documentary. Right in thinking that the documentary
will become a feature film if they are not receptive
to reality – and who can be receptive if everything
has been predetermined?
I just happen to think they’re wrong.
CONCEPTS
In my opinion, the lack of a common vocabulary to
describe the tools we use in shaping the documentary
film’s dramaturgy precisely illustrates the miserable
state of the current discussion. For all intents and
purposes there is no discussion, and even when it
rarely and cautiously makes a peep, the discussion is
often along the lines of “You can’t write a screenplay
for a documentary film if you don’t know what is
going to happen.” What a crippling starting point.
To shake off the paralysis, we have to disentangle
ourselves from the screenplay concept taken over
from the world of fiction. The Concise Oxford
Compendium defines the word screenplay as “The
script of a film, with acting instructions, scene
directions, etc.”. Perhaps one of the requirements for
inspiring a discussion about dramaturgical preparation
of a documentary film is that we should establish our
own concepts.
At the moment we only have the concepts that are
carefully defined in the world of fiction:
Pitch: the shortest possible presentation of a story,
a ninety-minute film condensed to just five lines
including the start, ending and main plot.
Synopsis: explains the plot, introduces the
characters, describes the plot’s progression and
mentions the prelude, the presentation and the
primary elements of the plot.
Treatment: description of the film from beginning
to end, but without dialogue, ten or fifteen pages.
Screenplay: the entire plot and dialogue printed
with scene directions, interior or exterior, time and
place, roughly one page per final-film minute.
Documentarists use these terms indiscriminately
and at complete random. A review of the material
underpinning the 62 Danish documentaries that
received production support from the Danish Film
Institute in 2001 doesn’t help. ‘Screenplay’ covers
everything from thematic review, character
descriptions, production process and aesthetic
considerations to an actual screenplay. And the use
of words like screenplay, treatment, synopsis,
introduction, research report, background description,
etc., is also haphazard.
We are unable to agree on the tools that are
necessary for making a documentary. And we are
unable to agree on what to call the ‘what’, about which
we disagree. No wonder confusion reigns supreme.
DOCUMENTARY GENRE
Does the documentary have its own dramaturgy?
No, I don’t think it does.
Not if we define the documentary as: “a story whose
object is an event that has actually occurred.”
This definition consequently excludes a
documentary presentation whose object is a thematic
presentation. It is excluded because of the word story,
i.e., the essential word of the definition: A story is a
series of events, and an element in the story cannot
be based on a thematic clarification beyond the series
of events.
Another dramaturgical approach to the documentary
film concept is to limit the concept in relation to other
genres.
PAGE 26 / FILM#25
/ SCRIPTING THE DOCUMENTARY
The first demarcation is in relation to the feature film
genre. A documentary film describes an actual,
undirected series of events recorded where the events
took place and including the people who participated
in the events. Thus the film’s narrative elements are
real places and real people.
The second demarcation is in relation to journalism.
The story is the leading element and is decisive for
how the action progresses, but is not the theme. The
documentary is not explanatory, but descriptive. A
scene cannot be included purely for the sake of
thematic clarity; narrative necessity is also required.
I use the words narrative and story to designate a
sequence of events that occur, when scenes with
pictures and sounds are compiled into a sequence.
Therefore, I merely use the words to describe the
fact that the juxtaposition of details creates a
progression. A documentary film is a story whether
we like it or not. It does not have to rely on words
and can merely consist of sounds and images. It can
adhere to classic, Western dramaturgy or other
narrative tradition; it can be visible or invisible to the
audience; it can be complex or quite simple. But it
is there. And every story has dramaturgy.
Although documentary film does not have an
independent dramaturgy, it has a unique dramaturgical
problem. Whereas feature films involve one story,
documentary films have two: the actual event and the
director’s presentation of it. This is a ‘practical’ problem,
however – it doesn’t mean that an independent
dramaturgy exists at a theoretical level.
DRAMATURGICAL NECESSITY
One explanation of the dramaturgical level of the
documentary film is found in its lack of necessity. The
simple reason a feature film’s narrative is so
conceptually well defined and fully described in ninety
pages before the shootings ever begin is necessity.
Without the script there is no story. Together with the
storyboard, the screenplay is the director’s translation
for the film crew, actors and actresses. ‘A structure
seeking another structure’ as Mogens Rukov (leader
of the National Film School of Denmark’s screenplay
study programme) so beautifully puts it. A feature
film cannot be filmed without describing the fiction.
The documentary film is not driven by the same
necessity. The story is already there and we can film
it. The locations and players are right outside the door.
Naturally, the director knows that he or she must
retell it, and that some dramaturgical choices have to
be made at one point. The director’s version of
reality’s story, i.e. Story One meets Story Two. But the
meeting can be postponed. It doesn’t have to happen
before the shootings; it doesn’t even have to happen
during the shootings for that matter. It can wait until
the cutting room. Whereas a feature film’s editor is
utterly decisive in creating the film that is visibly
available during the shootings, the documentary
film’s editor is often decisive for bringing out the film
that is hidden during the shootings. Often, the
documentary film director’s narrative does not
emerge until the cutting room. Yet the prospects of
ensuring the narrative quality in this situation are
directly proportional to the director’s dramaturgical
awareness at any given time during the creative
process, because this awareness is obviously decisive
in determining which sequences are to be shot and
how the sequences are to be shot.
Since the cutting room is frequently the narrative’s
birthplace, it is unconditionally the most interesting
place to be during the production of a documentary
film, in my opinion. But if the editing process is too
much of an overt rescue operation, its fascination
pales. Depending on how much the narrative
structure changes or actually originates in the cutting
room, the director and editor can fret over
everything, ranging from scenes that should have
been shot a little differently to scenes they simply
don’t have. In disastrous situations, the ‘second best’
film has to be made because the potential story
inherent in many of the sequences cannot be
completed.
So the question is not whether it is better to have
the most well-prepared and dramaturgically structured
sequences possible when you arrive in the cutting
room. The question is: how much can you prepare in
advance and how ought you prepare.
FOUR CATEGORIES
First, ‘can’: this primarily depends on the type of
documentary film involved. If measured by the
potential story, then the documentary film is divided
into four categories:
1. The historical film in which the entire sequence of
events is known and virtually all the elements
(archives, interviews, voiceovers and the like) can
be clarified before the start of the shootings.
2. Prearranged films in which the director plans many
of the sequences (see Jørgen Leth’s New Scenes from
America whose primary elements are landscapes
and organized tableaux of Americans).
3. The familiar framework in which time and place
are given, whereas the progression of events within
this framework is unknown.
4. The unknown sequence of events in which a person,
a place, an event have been selected, but in which
neither the sequence of events nor lapse of time
are known.
was not allowed to run in the second race as intended.
There we were in the midst of shooting a children’s
documentary with an educational climax saying that
everything goes wrong in the end if you train hard
enough!
This wasn’t what we had imagined – and certainly
not what the four funding Nordic film institutes and
television stations had expected for their 300.000
EURO. We were forced to discuss the dramaturgical
situation with little time left. We couldn’t and wouldn’t
do anything about the ‘reality’ of the situation, neither
the ‘reality’ registered on our forty rolls of raw film
nor the one in front of us. Whatever we filmed over
the next two days – on the last four rolls of raw film
– would be our ending: An ending that inevitably
had to be connected to the story hidden in the seven
weeks of shootings – the focus of which had been
chosen in anticipation of a different ending.
This is precisely what fascinates all of us about the
genre, of course – no prearranged storylines, but highly
dramatic, unpredictable reality: The encounter between
dramatic reality and the extract selected by the director
to tell his/her version of the story.
It is a situation that every documentary director is
therefore familiar with. Different varieties of frustration:
a story that changes along the way, or worse, a story
that vanishes: “When I started filming two months
ago – or when I started fundraising two years ago – I
was fascinated by some people and some locations.
Many unpredictable – or contrary to expectation, many
dreadfully predictable – events have occurred in the
meantime. Is my story even interesting and how shall
I deal with it?”
For our purposes, the films in categories three and
four are obviously the most interesting because their
very definition entails an unknown progression of
events. Yet establishing time and place under category
three helps a lot, of course. The films in category four
represent ultimate uncertainty. This type of film –
which represents the very essence, so to speak, of
the documentary film – has many familiar names
(observational cinema, cinéma-vérité, direct cinema,
et al.), and they all belong to this category.
Therefore, a good documentary film director’s
foremost quality is his or her gift for choosing the
right time and place. The knack for seeing that if I
wait right here with my camera, an interesting story
will unfold and reality will be ensnared by my
camera. (Jean Rouch (France) and the Maysle brothers
(USA) – representatives of cinéma vérité and direct
cinema as it is called on the respective shores of the
Atlantic – deserve mention as some of the most
distinguished bearers of this essential talent.) But it is
not enough. Because even in the wonderful
situations in which an important story unfolds in a
well-chosen situation, the choices must be made as
consciously as possible, and for this reason they need
a foundation on which to rest.
This foundation can only be the story, the film’s
dramaturgical structure.
An example from a film with an unknown progression
of events – that I will never forget: a hot summer day
in ’97 director Andra Lasmanis, sound director Iben
Haahr Andersen and I – interrupted only by sporadic
arguments – sat gazing across the windblown
steppes of Mongolia. For seven weeks we had been
following the life and personal struggles of nineyear-old Aligermaa as she trained for the big annual
horse race. To our great delight, Aligermaa was given
permission to ride a white horse owned by Sodnom,
a famous horse trainer, in the first race. She rode it
with beauty and power forgetting everything else but
the whistle of the wind and the pound of galloping
hooves – until the stallion ran out of steam and she
sheepishly ambled across the finish line in 42nd place.
Sodnom was furious, Aligermaa was crushed and she
DOCUMENTARY RECEPTIVENESS
This brings me to the subject of how we ought to
prepare ourselves for a documentary film, so we are
fully receptive to the real story being retold by the
film. To prevent us from making a rash, narrowminded encounter with an unpredictable reality full
of wonderful stories unrivalled by the armchair fiction
of our imagination.
In my opinion, a director’s receptiveness is directly
proportional to the number of screenplay decisions
the director has made. A qualified choice is only
possible during the hectic, confusing shooting phase
if the director knows what he or she is rejecting, i.e.
which narrative element of the director’s story is
being replaced by an unforeseen event in reality’s
story. Or more precisely: which story the director
SCRIPTING THE DOCUMENTARY / FILM#25 / PAGE 27
should use to replace the planned story. The screenplay
is not merely the condition for making decisions on
what to shoot. It is also the basis of the ultimate choice,
i.e., to change the story along the way.
ON THE SILVER SCREEN
I see no objective reason why documentary stories
cannot fill cinemas as well as feature films can. In my
opinion, a good documentary film provides the same
entertainment and emotional value as a feature film
does. The potential for depth, humour, excitement,
identification and seductive narrative elements are not
among the many historical reasons as to why cinemas
are totally dominated by feature films and virtually
off-limits to documentaries. Yet the documentary film
can only move in earnest from the educational sector
to the entertainment industry if a far more goaloriented effort is expended on the narrative element.
Let me provide a couple of examples, well aware
that my summary is very superficial (my apologies):
Torben Skjødt Jensen who made the interesting
portrait film Carl Th. Dreyer, My Métier. Reality’s story
is about Dreyer’s life, of course. Skjødt’s story is about
the unappreciated artist’s struggle to be accepted by
his contemporaries. The narrative problem with My
Métier is that Skjødt’s story culminates halfway through
the film when Dreyer achieves recognition for The
Word. Dreyer’s life – and thus the film – continues, of
course, but in a dramaturgical anti-climax.
My apologies also to Jon Bang Carlsen: The first half
of his film Portrait of God consists of Carlsen’s search
for God, and the second half depicts the search for God
by mother killers and child molesters in one of South
Africa’s roughest prisons. Both narrative segments
are extremely interesting, but two different films
nonetheless.
These two examples show that if reality’s story fails
to merge with the director’s story, the soul of the
documentary film – and in my opinion the very source
of the genre’s appeal – is lost.
The way I see it, this lack of dramaturgical
meticulousness in documentary film has two sources.
The first is laziness. By saying this, I risk insulting
the directors who are indeed a hard-working,
underpaid lot. Yet I’m referring to the ‘law on the
inverse proportionality of necessity and laziness’. The
pressure of necessity is the condition for getting us to
do our best. Because writing a screenplay can be hell
as everyone knows. It is a difficult, lonely process
involving an endless series of rejections and rewrites.
If a film can be made without this exhausting work,
then why write more than is necessary?
This is obviously not the most important consideration,
however. The most important reason is that the product
written by the documentary screenwriter will
undoubtedly be changed. The documentarist must
stake energy, creativity and imagination on a product
that will invariably be discarded, which is a task so
close to impossible that it is not a question of technical
expertise but an existential realisation. This is an
impossible demand, I think, if the screenplay and the
documentary film are perceived as antagonistic
antitheses – an inextricable antagonism in which one
or the other must be chosen – and not as contrasting
elements that are mutually interdependent.
It is called complementarity. A relationship in which
two sides of an issue not only complement each other
but also exclude each other. A situation involving two
contrasting elements that are mutually interdependent.
COMPLEMENTARITY AND DOCUMENTARISM
Some of the contrasting elements are contained in
the very definition of the genre and are therefore so
familiar that we hardly have the strength to deal with
them. Yet because they are the life-giving force of
the genre at the same time, it is more a question of
renewing the discussion than dropping it all together.
Documentary filmmaking is based on the paradox
associated with the old discussion about objectivity.
If two facts can be presented, why can’t the world be
objectively described? Because it can’t! We can present
a number of facts, but we cannot make that final leap
from the presentation of facts to the definitive fact
itself. For this reason, documentarism is not validated
by the facts, but by the way in which they are ordered,
i.e., the story. The facts must be ordered according to
the validity of the story, because the story cannot be
structured according to the validity of the facts.
However, if the story is not structured in respect of
the facts, then it is not documentarism.
This means that documentarism is defined by a
complementary paradox. If it does not stick to
presenting reality in a form whereby reality appears
to be objectively recognisable to the onlooker, then
it ceases to be documentarism. If only the director’s
story is apparent, then the film is fiction. When this
contrast is treated antagonistically, the requirement
of objectivity is annulled by its own impossibility and
the director’s presentation has free rein. Aesthetic
considerations for the participants are the only
remaining reason that the director should maintain a
description of reality. But that is another discussion
altogether! (A discussion that is probably more relevant
in leading commercial television-station staff
newsletters than among film-industry documentarists
whose hallmark is a high ethical standard.)
Complementarity is thus the fulcrum of the
documentary film. The expressions of the
complementary relationships are reality and the
screenplay. Although it is true that the documentary
film apparently consists of two stories in time and
space, in a well-functioning documentary film, only
one of the layers – reality – visibly functions as a
continuous story. Only when the story does not
function harmoniously is the second layer revealed –
the story. Or rather its artistic mechanisms are revealed.
I have always been very exasperated if, after a
documentary manages to arouse my interest in the
fate of the main character, the director intrudes with
personal participation in the story. But when the
director’s story merges with reality’s story, it ceases to
exist in time and space becoming mere dramaturgical
clarity.
The reason a true description of reality is impossible,
however, is not because we lack the capability to
describe it, but because it is much too complicated.
Not only in its entirety but also in its individual
components. Only the smallest part of existence –
‘the event’ – contains objectivity incarnate. But as this
is merely a theoretical description of the smallest
component of existence, truth cannot be used as a
structural tool, only clarity. And clarity is a subjective
choice.
Craftsmanship becomes filmic art when technical
proficiency is exposed to the artist’s subjective choice.
Documentary film art is based on the director’s
dramaturgical choices.
STRIVING FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE
Furthermore, the chaos of reality will continuously
lead to modifications in the dramaturgical choices
that establish this process, because otherwise the story
would conflict with reality instead of interpret it.
By so doing, interference (mutual effect) is created.
It is not possible – nor therefore desirable – to
determine whether the story is responsible for
establishing the presentation of reality or reality for
establishing the story.
The creation of a documentary film occurs in a
leap generated by the transfer of energy from reality
to the story: From one stationary condition –
acknowledging reality – to making a decision about
the story. Which leads to an acknowledgement of a
different reality that changes the story.
The difficult element of this process consists of
abandoning oneself to an absolute striving for both
conditions while simultaneously acknowledging the
fact that one of the conditions is continuously being
replaced by the other. The constant need to modify
the dramaturgy one has created because the perception
of reality – if one is sufficiently receptive to it – will
constantly change the story: Striving body and soul
to achieve the unattainable! Actually finding the
strength to strive because the very goal one is striving
to attain is unattainable. Constantly striving to organise
a presentation of reality that must be corrected by
reality. Combining absolute openness with absolute
resolve.
It is an indisputable fact that the art of film is created
in just as many different ways as there are artists. The
history of film shows with no uncertain clarity that
there are an infinite number of ways to make a
masterpiece.
Writing the story from start to finish during the
screenwriting phase is also appealing because this is
when one’s imagination has free rein – when it is
unhindered by production-related considerations.
They interfere later on, of course, but at this early
stage, they can be reduced to technically and
financially possible solutions to the licentiousness
of one’s free imagination – instead of the opposite.
Due to the proliferation of inexpensive DV cameras
the future documentary script is perhaps visual instead
of written. This is particularly relevant to directors
who write like hacks.
This might be the next step: what does the
documentary script look like?
PS: Sodnom took pity on Aligermaa and let her ride
his brown filly in the final race where she finished
fourth. The out-of-tune orchestra played on, Sodnom
got his certificate, the spectators clapped and Aligermaa
and her mother rode off proudly into the sunset.
Not an eye was dry...
(This article is an abridged and translated version of
“Kvanteskriptet – Dokumentarfilmens komplementariske
dramaturgi” (published in the Danish film journal
KOSMORAMA #229, summer 2002), which can be found
in extenso on www.dfi.dk>English>Articles&Publications
PAGE 28 / FILM#25
/ DOGUMENTARY
’DOGUMENTARY’
We are searching for something that is between fact and fiction. As fiction is limited by
our imagination and facts by our insight, the part of the world that we portray cannot
be contained by a “story”, neither can it be perceived from a “point of view”.
What we are looking for can be found in the real world, from where the creators of
fiction draw their inspiration, the reality journalists attempt to describe but cannot.
They cannot show us true reality as they are blinded by their technology. Neither do
they want to, as technology has become a goal unto itself, content has become
secondary.
From Lars von Trier’s documentary manifesto, March 2000
Dogumentarism relives the pure, the objective and the credible. It brings us back
to the core, back to the essence of our existence. The documentary and television
reality which has become more and more manipulated and filtered by camera
people, editors and directors, must now be buried.
This takes place with the following documentarist content guarantee:
The goal and content of all Dogma documentary projects must be supported and
recommended in writing by at least seven people, companies or organizations
who are relevant and vital. It is content and context which plays the primary role
in Dogumentarism, format and expression are secondary to this process.
Dogumentarism will restore the public’s faith as a whole as well as the
individual’s. It will show the world raw, in focus and in “defocus”.
Dogumentarism is a choice. You can choose to believe in what you see on film
and television or you can choose Dogumentarism.
Zentropa Real 2001
THE DOCUMENTARIST CODE FOR ‘DOGUMENTARISM’
1. All the locations in the film must be revealed. (This is to be done by text being
inserted in the image. This constitutes an exception of rule number 5. All the
text must be legible.)
2. The beginning of the film must outline the goals and ideas of the director.
(This must be shown to the film’s participants and technicians before filming
begins.)
3. The end of the film must consist of two minutes of free speaking time by the
film’s ”victim”. This “victim” alone shall advise regarding the content and must
approve this part of the finished film. If there is no opposition by any of the
collaborators, there will be no “victim” or “victims”. To explain this, there will
be text inserted at the end of the film.
4. All clips must be marked with 6-12 frames black. (Unless they are a clip in real
time, that is a direct clip in a multi-camera filming situation.)
5. Manipulation of the sound and/or images must not take place. Filtering,
creative lighting and/or optical effects are strictly forbidden.
6. The sound must never be produced exclusive of the original filming or vice
versa. That is, extra soundtracks like music or dialogue must not be mixed in
later.
7. Reconstruction of the concept or the directing of the actors is not acceptable.
Adding elements as with scenography are forbidden.
8. All use of hidden cameras is forbidden.
9. Archived images or footage that has been produced for other programs must
never be used.
Lars von Trier, Zentropa Real, May 2001
DECENCY, DEBATE
AND DOGUMENTARY
BY FILM CONSULTANT JAKOB HØGEL, DFI
One may think that documentary filmmakers are
already overburdened with ethical dilemmas, worried
about how characters are treated and meticulous in
establishing the veracity of scenes in their films. No,
says Lars von Trier. On the contrary, for him most
documentaries are too wound up in telling dramatic
stories that are thought out before shooting. Thus the
filmmakers are blinded by the technological and
dramaturgical possibilities at hand in shooting and
editing and cannot sense the real content of what
they are dealing with. As a consequence Lars von Trier
has proposed a set of dogmas for documentaries visà-vis the related set of rules for fiction known as
Dogma95.
Some of the rules mirror similar rules in Dogma95
other rules are close to what the first Direct Cinema
practicioners were adhering to in the early 60s. Rule
4 demanding that all cuts are marked with black frames
is inspired by the practice of a Danish television journalist,
Lis Møller, who used black between cuts in interview
programmes of the 60s and 70s. When asked about
the higher aim of these rules, Lars von Trier eschews
notions of objectivity or truth and prefers to talk of
dogumentaries as “decent documentaries”.
record of his travels in Afghanistan with a Swedish
pop musician.
STRONG METHODOLOGIES
Six Scandinavian documentaries are in production
under the auspices of Lars von Trier and Dogumentary.
The directors have been selected on the grounds of
having developed strong individual methodologies
in their previous work, albeit from different traditions.
Danish Sami Saif, co-director of 2001 Joris Ivens
award-winner, Family, and Norwegian Margreth Olin,
whose latest film, My Body, is in this year’s Silver Wolf
competition, both work within a tradition of
cinematic documentaries. Klaus Birch and Michael
Klint are two of Denmark’s most prolific and thorough
directors of primetime, journalistic television
documentaries. Danish Bente Milton has worked in
both ‘camps’, Children of Gaia and Allisons Baby being
her internationally best known documentaries. Pål
Hollender from Sweden has a background in visual
arts and has produced the most controversial Nordic
films in recent years, exploring issues of sexual and
national politics in Pelle Polis and Bye, bye beauty. His
film is the only one that has already been shot. It is a
BEYOND PRIMITIVE DEBATES
As a film consultant at the Danish Film Institute I have
supported these six dogumentaries in co-operation
with the other film institutes and national broadcasters
in Scandinavia. It is my hope that Dogumentary will
engender a discussion of documentary methods and
ethics not only among directors and producers, but
more so with audiences at large. Public discussions of
documentaries have at least in Denmark often been
unnecessarily primitive, being limited to arguments
of truthfulness versus lying and often hinging on legal
battles and not on moral or political stands. What
Dogumentary does is to suggest a new contract
between filmmakers and their audiences. At the
beginning of a Dogumentary viewers will be promised
that this film complies with a certain standard of
production articulated in the nine rules. Pål Hollender
compares Dogumentary to organic eggs in that
consumers/viewers will have a sense of ethical
guidelines having been followed in the making of the
product.
DOGUMENTARY / FILM#25 / PAGE 29
Lars von Trier at the flashy announcement of Dogumentary. Press conference in Copenhagen 31th October 2002. Photo: Jan Buus
DRAMATURGICAL SET-UPS
AND EXPECTATIONS OF OBJECTIVITY
Whether Lars von Trier admits it or not the set of rules
echo earlier days’ belief in objectivity, in cameras
having unmediated access to reality. And this is still
how many viewers ideally perceive the role of
documentaries: in a media world seen to be
increasingly fraught with manipulation and hidden
agendas, documentaries are latched on to as the last
safe haven of objective depiction. Documentarists in
turn have become increasingly interested in
dramaturgical set-ups, casting of characters and miseen-scene to the point where this creates schizophrenia.
There is a gulf of difference between how
documentarists describe their methods at professional
gatherings and how they describe it to lay audiences.
Whereas storyline and casting are criteria of quality
in the former, promises of “that is how it happened”
are commonplace in the latter. Subjectivity is the
order of the day in documentary production, but
somebody forgot to tell the audience.
SOUL-SEARCHING DIRECTORS
My personal view is that the rules in themselves are
in no way groundbreaking. They do not promise more
than a very minimal adherence to decency. But I do
believe that one should not underestimate the
importance of reopening debates about modes of
making and watching documentaries and the soulsearching it may engender in the minds of directors.
In this respect the casting of directors and the level
of debate in the group of six is of utmost importance.
It may well be that Lars von Trier’s dogmas can lessen
the above-mentioned schizophrenia at least during
the making of the films. In other words, enable the
directors to feel that through their vow of chastity
they are communicating more truthfully and directly
to their audiences. This will make for reflexive and
watch-worthy films, I hope.
THE IMPACT OF DOGUMENTARY
As to audience reactions, the first question is whether
the Dogumentary will have any visibility or impact.
Unlike fiction, documentaries are generally presented
on television as authorless, factory-made programmes.
One can hope that Lars von Trier’s interest in
documentaries can change this (Lars von Trier is also
involved in a joint production with Jørgen Leth (see
p. 3) and at a recent press conference he said that
directing a documentary himself “would be the decent
thing to do”). As to audiences and critics buying into
the ethos of Dogumentary, we may see a repetition
of history. As mentioned, Dogumentary has a lot in
common with Direct Cinema of the 60s, one major
difference being that Direct Cinema subscribed to
scientific notions of the camera’s infallibility and
objective records, whereas Lars von Trier’s preferred
language is religious and his insistence on decency
should be understood accordingly. Nöel Carroll
describes the fate of Direct Cinema’s dogmas: No sooner
was the idea abroad than critics and viewers turned the
polemics of direct cinema against direct cinema. Direct
Cinema opened a can of worms and then got eaten by
them. Dogumentary may suffer the same fate, but
hopefully leave some excellent work and purifying
discussions in the wake
PAGE 30 / FILM#25
/ IN PROGRESS / MILOSOVIC ON TRIAL
THE TRIAL
Photo: Polfoto/AFP
MILOSOVIC ON TRIAL / IN PROGRESS / FILM#25 / PAGE 31
OF THE 21 CENTURY
ST
A comprehensive Danish documentary
project on the trial of Slobodan Milosevic
BY FREDERIK STJERNFELT
The producer Mette Heide and director Michael
Christoffersen have obtained privileged access to
cover Case IT-02-54 Milosevic S, Courtroom 1, as it is
laconically referred to at the ICTY (International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) in the
Hague. It refers to the trial of the Serbian leader
Slobodan Milosevic who is accused of war crimes,
crimes against humanity and genocide – the most
serious war crime of all. This means that Mette Heide
has the right to film the dramatic trial of Slobodan
Milosevic in the Hague ‘behind the scenes’ and
interview the various persons involved in the trial –
with the exception, however, of the trial’s focal point,
Slobodan Milosevic. The film will indirectly document
Milosevic as a person, depicted through the persons
around him during the trial document the workings
of the Hague Tribunal.
Mette Heide, who has an MA in political science
and film & media, has organised the project in
cooperation with TV 2/Denmark, BBC, ZDF, and
other major international broadcasters in the market.
So the project has every opportunity to result in a
film document that will not only be shown on most
public service stations all over the world, but also
shed light on the most decisive trial before the ICTY.
The film crew will follow the trial chronologically
in the neutral role of the observer. The footage will
include extensive coverage of the actual trial
proceedings. They will also go behind the scenes,
focusing on Principal Trial Attorney Geoffrey Nice
and Milosevic’s closest advisor from Belgrade,
Dragoslav Ognjanovic, who visits Milosevic in The
Hague. Interviews will be undertaken at all decisive
events and turns in the trial.
The British lawyer Geoffrey Nice has a reputation
for being a thorough and eloquent legal expert, which
was clearly demonstrated from the outset when he
opened the trial by connecting Milosevic to the
atrocities committed in former Yugoslavia. One of
Milosevic’s primary tactics has been to refuse to
recognise the Tribunal on the grounds that it is
primarily staffed with lawyers from NATO countries.
To counter this assertion, Nice has maintained that
in an international tribunal as this, the participating
lawyers must put aside national prejudices of any
kind. “If they take pride in their work, they must
abandon their national identities and simply become
judges at the International Tribunal.”
Dragoslav Ognjanovic is a young lawyer from
Belgrade who, like many Serbs, feels that Serbia itself
is on trial before the court. Although he appears as
Milosevic’s ‘advisor’, Ognjanovic cannot speak on
Milosevic’s behalf in court, as Milosevic has no official
defence. Ognjanovic travels with Mira Markovic,
Milosevic’s wife, who will also be interviewed in the
film. He has opposed Milosevic in the past as the
leader of an opposition party named ‘Justice’.
The amici curiae (friends of the court) constitute an
independent group of originally three persons who
are summoned to monitor the justice of the
proceedings at the ICTY (even though Milosevic
opposed their appointments). They often ask the
witnesses supplementary questions on Milosevic’s
behalf. In October the world-renowned, human rights
lawyer from The Netherlands, Misha Wladimiroff,
has been suspended after having been quoted in both
a Dutch and a Bulgarian newspaper for statements
which could be interpreted as being against Milosevic.
In the group remains Steven Kay, a brilliant,
straightforward British lawyer, also a friend of
Wladimiroff; and the Serb Branislav Tapuskovic.
In addition to this is the constant flow of witnesses,
from farmers who accidentally happened to see
massacres, to public officials who can reveal the
nature of the interrelationships between Serbian
leaders, war crimes, and international negotiators
who were centrally positioned in the attempts to
stop the violence.
This dramatic trial is well underway, and the
Milosevic case is very prestigious to the tribunal. It is
obviously the ICTY’s most important case as
judgement shall, be passed not on the actions of a
blood-stained player from the field, but on the
complicity of a political ‘string puller’, the latter of
which is obviously much more difficult. After the
bloody years in Croatia and Bosnia (1991-1995) and
in Kosova up through the 1990s, culminating in 1999,
Milosevic has had more than enough time to get rid
of any compromising files or documents –and the
ICTY does not even have access to Serbian archives.
In addition to this are the strange, dramatic
developments of the trial itself. Milosevic’s refusal to
let himself be represented by legal counsel has
unexpectedly given him a leading role in the actual
court proceedings: now he has the right to crossexamine witnesses himself, which he does – wellprepared by Serbian supporters – with skill, insinuation
and deceit, often diminishing the effect of frightened
witnesses, ordinary people still marked by the
catastrophe and unaccustomed to articulating their
thoughts. The recent, sudden, and unexpected
admission of guilt to crimes against humanity by one
of the Bosnian Serbian leaders, biologist Biljana Plavsic,
has clearly put additional pressure on Milosevic. For
the time being, however, Milosevic has done
surprisingly well – still appearing to many Serbs as
an eloquent, sarcastic and intelligent defender of
Serbia against Western imperialism, greatly assisted
by Serbian television transmissions that broadcast
Milosevic’s pleadings in their entirety, while largely
eliminating scenes of prosecutors and witnesses. The
documentary will also deal with this special aspect
of the trial as a constantly running reality TV show,
particularly in Serbia.
The latest developments in the discussion of a
permanent international tribunal for war crimes –
from which the USA under Bush has withdrawn its
support – has suddenly endangered the legitimacy
and status of The Hague tribunal. On the one hand,
the economic pressure applied by the US to force the
extradition of war criminals from the former
Yugoslavia is quite reasonable. Yet this oddly contrasts
with US resistance to the mere idea of having its own
soldiers obey the very same set of international rules.
This makes the Milosevic case decisive in more than
one sense: by enabling the former Yugoslavia to settle
the differences of the past two decades with some
degree of fairness, but also by determining the degree
to which the principles embodied by the ICTY will
play a part in the century ahead. In a certain sense,
essential Western values are being tested at the
Tribunal – the result of which also has the potential
to affect the increasingly brittle relations between
the US and Europe.
The wars in the former Yugoslavia have already
produced a powerful candidate to be one of the top
ten documentary films of all time: Silber and Little’s
BBC production The Death of Yugoslavia. This fivepart, four-hour documentary charts the Yugoslavian
crisis from its beginnings in the 1980s up to mid-1995
– by including incredible footage from the archives
of Yugoslavian television, as well as astonishing
voiceover comments of all the main figures in the
events – like being a fly on the wall during Hitler’s
seizure of power in Berlin. So the current project will
naturally be measured by top international standards.
A documentary project of this scope is obviously not
a commonplace occurrence. Similarly, its potential to
result in a film that will not only be an important
document but also indirectly influence important
political discussions far exceeds what most
documentary projects dare to hope for. The project
must await the ruling of the tribunal as well as the
appeal case that everyone expects to be the next phase
of the proceedings. So whether the film will end up
as a 90-minute or 120-minute version is still unclear.
As a result, hardly anyone may expect to see a final
result before 2005, at the earliest, yet there is every
indication that it will be worth waiting for
FREDERIK STJERNFELT is a lecturer at the University of
Copenhagen. His latest book, co-authored with Jens-Martin Eriksen,
is The Anatomy of Hate: Travels in Bosnia and Serbia after the War
(Hadets anatomi. Rejser i Bosnien og Serbien efter krigen). To be
published January 2003.
MILOSEVIC ON TRIAL Technical data Digi Beta, DV-Cam. 90 min.
English dialogue and speak RELEASE immediately after the final
judgement in the trial of Milosevic DIRECTOR Michael
Christoffersen DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Will Jacob Editor
Chris Gill PRODUCTION TEAM Production ApS, Denmark in coproduction with Moonbeam Films Ltd, UK. INTERNATIONAL
SALES Mette Hoffmann Meyer, TV 2/Denmark
MICHAEL CHRISTOFFERSEN has worked in the film industry for
more than 20 years and has directed or produced documentaries
for TV 2/Denmark, DR TV, BBC, SVT, YLE, NRK and NHK. His work
includes Genocide: The Judgement, a documentary for the BBC and
SVT about the trial of the first person to be sentenced for the
crime of genocide. It took place at the International Criminal Tribunal
for Rwanda.
PAGE 32 / FILM#25
/ FORUM 2002
DANISH
DOCUMENTARIES
AT FORUM 2002
The Jerusalem Syndrome
From Sunday 24 to Tuesday 26 November the tenth edition of
FORUM will take place in the Amsterdam Paradiso. Two Danish
projects have been selected for Europe’s largest gathering of
television commissioning editors and independent documentary
producers. These projects speak for themselves.
THE JERUSALEM SYNDROME
About the uncompromising
nature of faith in Jerusalem and
an investigation of the nature of
faith itself.
Here you’ll also have to reassess your
own (lack of) faith in relation to the
world around you. You will have to
reposition your own self in relation to
a greater religious we
Director Jeppe Rønde describes his
project as follows:
“The film’s two tracks follow on ‘the
outer’ the prophets and their daily role
in Jerusalem’s violence, whilst ‘the inner’
follows my more existential search to
discover what faith consists of.
To investigate the city’s foundation
on the outer track, I will meet with a
representative from each of the three
monotheistic religions based in the city.
My time in Jerusalem has led to a
number of the prophets taking me into
their confidence. In the film I will talk
to them, actively participating from
behind the camera, questioning, and
using myself in any way possible to
ensure that they tell me everything
they possibly can.
At the same time, on the film’s inner
track, I have – to explain to myself, to
reach myself and the city’s
uncompromising nature, and to grasp
that atmosphere and pass it on – chosen
to undergo hypnosis.
This approach has allowed for an
intimate yet open therapeutic dialogue
between the hypnotist and me. We have
discussed the framework in which he
is to operate, and as such he has been
able to get behind my conscious self,
and make me unconsciously talk about
my relationship to Jerusalem and my
faith.
This dialogue will be used in the film
and function as the film’s narrative
focus along the way. This is the ‘little
story’ that mirrors certain aspects of
Jerusalem’s ‘big story’.
In the space created by the tension
between the film’s two tracks it should
only ever be possible to sense the
violent nature of Jerusalem. Rather
than being given an explicit role in the
film, the violence functions more as a
backdrop for it”.
DIRECTOR Jeppe Rønde PRODUCTION Cosmo
Film PRODUCER Rasmus Thorsen
To see The Jerusalem Syndrome is to
experience the conflict’s ‘other core’, to
experience the impossible city,
Jerusalem’s atmosphere and feel its
uncompromising nature, its power and
spirituality. These experiences become
your cipher, if you come with me into
the film. Here you will be in doubt: do
prophets exist? Does God exist?
Holmboe
HOLMBOE
A documentary about the
“Danish Lawrence of Arabia”,
adventurer and idealist Knud
Holmboe.
In 1931 the 29-year old Danish
journalist Knud Holmboe disappears in
the North African desert on his way to
Mecca, the pious Muslim making his
once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to the
sacred monument in the holy city.
At the time Holmboe was regarded a
hero among the Arabs for his support
of their liberation war against the
European colonial powers. His
disappearance in the desert is linked to
his political activities among the Arabs
at a time when Ibn Saud was fighting
for an Arab state in the face of strong
opposition from Britain, Italy and
Germany.
The Swedish journalist Willy Falkman
investigated Holmboe’s mysterious
disappearance in 1932. He wrote the
book ‘In the tracks of Knud Holmboe’
(1932) in which he argues that his
death was accidental. Later
investigations have presented
circumstantial evidence that Holmboe
was murdered on the initiative of
German and Italian intelligence.
Knud Holmboe’s engagement in the
struggle of the Arab people was without
compromise. In 1930 Holmboe
accomplished a dangerous journey
from Tanger in the east – through the
desert – to Derna in the west.
Based on his dramatic experiences
Holmboe wrote his famous book Desert
Encounter (1931) in which he describes
the beauty of the desert, alternating
with impressions of the cruelty inflicted
on the natives by the Europeans. This
documentary on Knud Holmboe will
attempt to trace his fate and answer
questions that remain unanswered: who
exterminated him and why?
DIRECTOR Frode Højer Pedersen PRODUCTION
Final Cut Production PRODUCER Thomas
Stenderup
FILMKONTAKT NORD / GATEWAY TO THE NORTH / FILM#25 / PAGE 33
FILMKONTAKT NORD: GATEWAY TO THE
NORDIC INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY
& SHORT FILM COMMUNITY
BY KAROLINA LIDIN
HEAD OF FILMKONTAKT NORD
Filmkontakt Nord, since its
establishment in 1991 by the
independent Nordic short film and
documentary community, has been
dedicated to the advancement and
promotion of Nordic short films and
documentaries. Filmkontakt Nord assists
international festivals, television buyers,
distributors and journalists as well as
Nordic film professionals.
Filmkontakt Nord’s main objective is
to serve as a common Nordic platform
for a stronger production and
distribution network and a visible united
exposure internationally, combining a
strong cultural profile with a marketoriented perspective.
During its more than 10 years of
activity, Filmkontakt Nord has
established itself as a central source
of information and expertise for the
Nordic as well as the international
short film and documentary
community.
Here is what we have to offer:
FKN VIDEO LIBRARY & FILM
DATABASE: 2400 NORDIC
DOCUMENTARIES AND
SHORT FILMS
Filmkontakt Nord’s video library
consists of close to 2400 titles –
increasing by more than 200 titles
every year – and serves as a unique
collection of both new titles and recent
classics. The video library is open to
festival programmers, television buyers
and other professionals who are
looking for new titles and/or
assembling Nordic retrospectives.
FKN NORDIC PORTAL WEBSITE
Early 2003, Filmkontakt Nord will
launch its new website:
www.filmkontakt.com with access to
Filmkontakt Nord’s film database
offering key information on the 2400
films in FkN’s video library, categorized
by genre, format, target audience etc.
As a new feature, the Nordic Portal
website will introduce an extensive
contact database with addresses and
links to professionals within all fields
of the Nordic short film and
documentary community.
FKN NEWS: CATEGORIZED
EMAIL NEWS CATERING
TO DIVERSIFIED DEMANDS
In conjunction with the launch of FkN’s
Nordic Portal, Filmkontakt Nord can
offer Nordic and international
professionals a specified email service.
In addition to quarterly general info,
all subscribers will be able to choose
among monthly news categories such
as: New Nordic Films, Funding, Festivals,
Markets and Seminars.
FKN PROMOTION: SALES
REPRESENTATION AND
PRODUCERS’ PLATFORMS
To ensure the widest possible exposure
and distribution of Nordic short films
and documentaries, Filmkontakt Nord
is present at international film and
television markets, either marketing
films on behalf of the producers or as
an umbrella for a group of small or
medium-sized producers. During the
markets, FkN organizes info-meetings
and social events as meeting fora for
producers, commissioning editors and
buyers, and generally functions as a
matchmaker and facilitator, offering
expertise on co-production, marketing,
distribution and sales, thus paving the
way for Nordic producers to enter into
the international market.
NORDISK PANORAMA
– 5 CITIES FILM FESTIVAL
Nordisk Panorama – 5 Cities Film
Festival, the main Nordic event for
short films and documentaries takes
place annually during the last week of
September. The Festival ambulates
between the Nordisk Panorama Host
Cities of the 5 Nordic countries, Malmö
(2003), Reykjavik (2004), Bergen (2005),
Århus (2006) and Oulu (2007), adding
the colours of local and regional filmmaking to the vast landscape of Nordic
short films and documentaries.
The main showcase of Nordisk
Panorama is the competition
programme consisting of more than
50 new short film and documentary
titles, the majority of which for the
first time are presented to an
international audience.
Every year, Nordisk Panorama
welcomes 350-400 filmmakers, buyers,
festival representatives, journalists and
other professionals to screen films,
participate in seminars, hold meetings,
exchange information – and socialize.
NORDISK PANORAMA MARKET
In connection with the annual Nordisk
Panorama, Filmkontakt Nord offers
market screenings of ca. 200 films
produced within the last year, aimed at
television buyers, festival programmers,
journalists and other film professionals.
Nordisk Panorama 2002 was
attended by an all time high of 42
festival programmers, buyers and
distributors from the Nordic countries
Karolina Lidin. Photo: Kenneth Rimm
Katrine Kiilgaard
and the rest of Europe – amounting to
more than 800 screenings on the 10
fully booked monitors – next year we
promise more video booths!
NORDISK FORUM
FOR CO-FINANCING
OF DOCUMENTARIES
Nordisk Forum has become the most
important meeting place for
independent producers, commissioning
editors and film consultants from the
Nordic countries. 24 new projects are
pitched to the 35 attending financiers,
and results show that ca. 70% of the
projects pitched secure funding through
Nordisk Forum. This year, five Nordisk
Forum projects will continue their
financing on a European level at the
Amsterdam FORUM.
CONTACT FILMKONTAKT NORD
All questions and requests concerning
Nordic short films and documentaries
can be directed to Filmkontakt Nord’s
Director, Karolina Lidin
([email protected]), and
Promotion & Information Officer,
Katrine Kiilgaard
([email protected]).
NEWS SUBSCRIPTION
All short film and documentary
professionals are welcome to subscribe
to the FkN e-newsservice by sending
an email including company name,
personal name, address, tel/fax and
specification of your field of business
to: [email protected].
VIDEO LIBRARY BOOKING
Festival programmers and television
buyers are invited to book screenings
in the Video Library by sending an
email with information concerning the
festival and preferred screening dates
to: [email protected].
Filmkontakt Nord
Skindergade 29A
DK-1159 Copenhagen K
tel +45 3311 5152 / fax +45 3311 2152
[email protected]
www.filmkontakt.dk