CPH:DOX '22 Archives - Business Doc Europe

Marché du Film: Piano Dreams by Gary Lennon

Geoffrey Macnab — Fri, 20 May 2022 06:00:21 +0000

It’s a mind boggling number. China, as Gary Lennon’s new film Piano Dreams reveals, has 40 million piano students. They practice for 10 hours a day or more – and they nearly all dream of emulating the success of China’s global superstar, Lang Lang.

Lennon, who made the film through his company Gambit Pictures, first stumbled across China’s young piano prodigies in unlikely circumstances. Early in his professional career, he lived in Shanghai, working as a writer and a publisher.

“I lived next door to the Shanghai music conservatory,” the Irish filmmaker recalls. In this period, in the early 2000s, there weren’t many Irish people based in the city. Those who were there stuck together. Whenever there was a diplomatic or cultural event involving the Irish, they would always be invited. At one musical soirée, he had a chance encounter with the head of the Irish Film School, and told her that every time he opened his window, he heard sublime piano music.

“They [the students} practise all day, every day and they sound absolutely fantastic,” Lennon observed. “How good are they?”

“Oh,” the Irish music expert blithely replied, “they’re the best I’ve heard.” She knew young Russian, German and French would-be maestros – but none matched the Chinese.

“That planted the seed [of the documentary],” Lennon remembers.

Having secured support from Creative Europe and Screen Ireland, Lennon made “a couple of research trips” back to China. He met the head of the Shanghai conservatory and to one of the top professors at the institution. Through them, he met the young students from whom he chose his subjects.

The director makes some pointed observations about the way westerners stereotype and patronise the Chinese. Many regard the musicians as if they are robots learning by rote who lack the cultural depth, passion and flair of their European counterparts. Lennon hopes his documentary scotches that idea for good.

What can’t be denied, though, is the competitive nature of the Chinese classical music world. Only a tiny fraction of the piano players have any chance of making the grade as professionals. Nonetheless, Chinese parents (or at least those who can afford it) will invest small fortunes in tuition for their children. They’re desperate for their kids to succeed.

“Many people will be surprised by the overt emotionalism that our characters have,” Lennon suggests.

The tutors can be very hard-driving. In an early scene captured by Lennon, one coach tells his pupil that he’d like to hit him and is only refraining from doing so because the boy’s grandfather is present. Lennon argues that the scene needs to be seen in context. This isn’t just another example of the Soviet-style coach trying to bully and beat a young talent into excellence. The teacher in question is actually devoted to his young student and will go to extreme lengths to help him.

“He [the teacher] is like a member of the family…he goes to the house for dinner all the time and travels with them,” Lennon points out. If you didn’t know better, you would think the tutor was a sports coach, not a piano teacher. He is very energetic and physical in his approach to his job. He thinks his young apprentice is a genius and that is why he pushes him so hard.

The film was produced by Raymond McCormack for Gambit Pictures who successfully pitched the project at Leipzig to Vesna Cudic, then head of sales at MetFilm Sales, before later presenting it at the MeetMarket at Sheffield.

Covid delayed the production but financiers and distributors were clearly intrigued by the story. Deals have already been concluded with NDR Arte (France and Germany), NRK (Norway), SVT (Sweden), NTR (The Netherlands), Vendetta Films (Australia/New Zealand) and YLE (Finland).

Lennon hopes that the young pianists featured in the doc will be able to travel outside China to support the film. “We were really big fans of them as people as well as characters.” With the country still under lockdown, going to foreign festivals isn’t easy but the documentary makers will do what they can to get them invitations to wherever the film is shown.

The piano students tend to come from China’s middle and upper middle classes. They’re passionate about the music. They may dream of success but even if they don’t achieve it, they will continue to take the same immense pleasure out of their piano playing.

Why do so many Chinese have keyboard dreams?

“There’s a couple of things that have aligned…you’ve got people from a certain background with food on the table and a roof over their heads. They’re looking for a cultural experience. And two other things have happened. Lang Lang is a cultural hero of China – Michael Jordan, Bill Gates and Muhammad Ali wrapped in one…he has inspired so many people. And it [piano playing] is being actively supported by the Chinese government. They’re using classical music as soft power, building an awful lot of conservatories. And China has had an incredibly turbulent 100 years…piano allows a little bit of peace and beauty into their lives.”

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Visions du Réel/Movies That Matter interview: No Place For You In Our Town by Nikolay Stefanov

Geoffrey Macnab — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 11:37:28 +0000

It’s not the greatest football team in Bulgaria. FC Minyor is now in the second tier of Bulgarian football. Its declining fortunes are mirrored by those of the inhabitants in the town, Pernik, in western Bulgaria. This is a mining community, the “town of the black gold” as it was once called, but now the community is struggling. Where once the team would attract 15-20,000 supporters to the ‘Stadium Of Peace,’ now average gates are likely to be 1000 or even less.

In his feature documentary, No Place for You in Our Town (screening in the Latitudes section at Visions du Réel and presenting at Movies That Matter following its world premiere at CPH:DOX), director Nikolay Stefanov looks at the lives of some of the football club’s most die-hard supporters.

“I’ve had the idea for this film for more than 10 years. It’s my symbolic return to my hometown. I knew that going back to Pernik, I’d find a lot of stories to tell. When you mention the name Pernik in Bulgaria, everybody knows what you’re talking about. There are a lot of jokes about the aggressive and macho attitude of my fellow citizens,” the director reflects.

Stefanov was determined to go beyond the clichés and lazy stereotypes that exist about Pernik. “I decided to do this in an observational form and to offer the process that I went through myself to the viewer. At the stadium, all emotions and tendencies are a hundred times stronger. By looking at them, one can explore important trends in our societies which otherwise wouldn’t be so visible.”

The filmmaker also had his own nagging questions about his hometown which he hoped making the documentary would help him to answer. He was born and grew up there – and knows the community from the inside. Some of the main characters in the documentary have been his acquaintances for more than 30 years.

“If I was an outsider, it wouldn’t have been possible to tell this story. Some litres of beer that we shared helped too, as well as the time I spent with the people without turning on the camera. I think it’s important that the filmmaker has a deep understanding of the topic that they’re tackling.”

On the one hand, Stefanov was very much an insider. On the other, he had been living away from Pernik for many years and so could look in on life there with an objective eye. He was striving to see his subjects “beyond their political views” and not to pigeonhole or stereotype them.

Stefanov pays tribute to his film team – producer and writer Ralitsa Golemanova, the writer Mariana Sabeva, and the editor Stoyan Velinov – for helping him strike a consistent tone.

In his determination not to come to “easy and superficial conclusions,” the director spent two years with the hardcore fans.

It was at the football stadium that he first met Tsetso, the fervent supporter who would become one of the documentary’s main protagonists. Their first encounter was a little tense. The director was wearing an ‘Anarchy’ badge which Tsetso “didn’t appreciate.” Nonetheless, the two men formed a bond. “He turned out to be my main character, and I’m grateful he let me into his personal space.”

When Tsetso and the other supporters join in chants together, they make an intimidating force. They’re always ready to take on opposition fans. Nonetheless, the director makes it very clear that not everyone who goes to the stadium is a hooligan. There are plenty of normal supporters. Nor is there necessarily anything sinister in fathers passing on the words of their chants to their kids, he maintains.

One point the director makes is that in places like Pernik, “countercultures mix because there aren’t enough people to create separate ones. This may lead to people who have very different convictions to get together just because they’re against — against the established order, social inequality, and so on. I think it’s a form of protest.”

Stefanov believes that subcultures and countercultures were suppressed during the communist period in Bulgaria. “The end of the totalitarian regime unleashed them, but also brought the closing of the mines and factories in industrial cities like Pernik. The link is apparent and unavoidable.”

The film will soon be shown in Pernik itself. After the premiere in Bulgaria, some screenings are planned in the town. (The main protagonists have already seen the documentary as Stefanov felt that was “only fair” given the trust they showed to him).

No Place For You In Our Town is also likely to be enjoyed far further afield. Hanka Kastelicová, Executive Producer of Documentaries for HBO Europe and one of the execs behind the phenomenal success of Alexander Nanau’s Collective, was an early champion of the project.

“We’re happy to have a big partner like them on board, allowing the film to reach a vast audience,” the director says of HBO.

Now, the film’s festival life is taking off. It will have its Dutch premiere at t Movies That Matter in The Hague on April 11. After that comes the Krakow Film Festival and HBO MAX will release the film in the autumn.

The director’s work shooting the documentary may now be complete but Stefanov is still following the scores of FC Minyor and going to matches at the Stadium Of Peace whenever he can. He remains in touch with the other fans. The team may not be in the top division but the fans’ passion for following the players remains as fervent as ever. As Stefanov puts it, “both the city and the football club have had some rough years. But for the film’s characters, the club is the biggest in the world. Actually, the only one…”

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BDE interview: Sierra Pettengill on Riotsville USA

Geoffrey Macnab — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 22:47:29 +0000

When she speaks to Business Doc Europe, US filmmaker Sierra Pettengill is in Zagreb for this week’s screenings of her documentary Riotsville, USA at ZagrebDox. She has come to town straight from CPH:DOX in Copenhagen. The festival dates are racking up for the film (sold by Dogwoof) which premiered in Sundance but is also due to screen at Hot Docs, at the Seattle International FF and in New Directors New Films in New York.

Riotsville USA is the second project by Pettengill, following on from 2017’s The Reagan Show (co-directed by Pacho Velez) which is entirely archive-based. The title refers to the fake towns set up by the Government in the late 1960s where the cops and the National Guard could practice their riot management skills, better to deal with the urban riots happening across the country in the late 1960s.

The director spent six years making the film. During that period, she directed two shorts, also archive-based, Graven Image (2017), about a Confederate monument outside Atlanta, and The Rifleman (2020), about the links between the National Rifle Association and the US Border Patrol.

“I’ve been working through various ways of looking at white supremacism in the United States,” the director says of her documentaries over the last decade. “I think I’m really interested in trying to use visual material authored by various factions of the right wing, broadly speaking.”

On one level, the films are “bizarre art projects” but there is nothing frivolous about them. “It can be difficult to visually represent structural racism and that is what I am trying to do.”

During the period that Pettengill was making Riotsville USA, the Black Lives Matter movement, started in 2013, began to expand dramatically. The murder of George Floyd in 2020 provoked huge protests. “I’ve found with the last several films I’ve made, every film about American history, you inevitably come back to deep structural racism,” the director says of how her investigations into the past chime with what is happening in US cities today.

The inspiration for Riotsville USA came when Pettengill read historian Rick Perlstein’s book ‘Nixonland’.

“I think we approach our work in similar ways, which is trying to survey the detritus of American history to pull these narratives together,” Pettengill says of Perlstein. Like the historian, she looks for “unexpected sources.” She will focus on seemingly banal but often very revealing details in the archival material she scours, for example the way people dress, how they move in their seats, what kinds of cameras are recording them and even what their kitchens look like.

“When I was reading ‘Nixonland’, he mentioned, in a kind of laundry list almost, programmes being developed in 1978 as a way of summarising this increasing craze toward law and order.”

Riotsville was one of those programmes. It sounded so surreal that the director half-felt it might have made up. When she looked online, there was very little about it. However, she began to search the archives and eventually found the footage that features in the film.

“It was this spectacle of mostly white young men, the Vietnam era, the type you think might be anti-war protesters [who] said they were soldiers dressed up as hippies. There was this pageantry that was both quite funny…and really dark and disturbing,” Pettengill remembers of the first footage she watched. There was little contextual information about how, where and why the material was shot. She used her “follow the money” instincts to work out its provenance. She discovered that the ideas came out of the Kerner Commission Report investigating the causes of the riots that were happening across the country. The report, published in 1968, was part of “this explosion in funding for militarising the police.”

This wasn’t a programme that the government hid from the public. “For me, what was so infuriating about this story is that this was all public knowledge. Riotsville wasn’t a secret. It wasn’t classified.”

The filmmakers set themselves a “hard and fast” rule that they would only use footage that had been aired by broadcasters or shot by the military. The Kerner Commission report was a bestseller. The TV stations were openly showing footage of the Riotsville experiment. It “was a public history that we have chosen to forget…We are on this loop again and we can’t pretend that we didn’t know better.”

Pettengill also realised that her film “needed to tackle a much larger set of questions.” She set out both to explore the Riotsville story on its own and to explore it “on a metaphorical level,” looking at what it revealed about racism and violence in America.

The director pays extensive tribute to her main collaborators: editor Nels Bangerter, writer Tobi Haslett, composer Jace Clayton and producers Sara Archambault and Jamila Wignot.

“I don’t think of myself as an ‘auteur’ and I struggle with that framing,” Pettengill dismisses the idea that she alone takes the key creative decisions. “Filmmaking for me is a deeply collaborative process…I’ve worked as a producer of documentaries; I’ve worked as an archival researcher; I am executive producing other people’s films. I show up where I am needed and I think that has given me a really different perspective on what it means to direct.”

Pettengill is close friends with her fellow archival researcher Rosemary Rotondi, who worked for Traci Curry and Stanley Nelson on their recent prison riot documentary Attica, which used material shot by broadcasters and the State of New York to tell the horrific story of government-sanctioned violence against the Attica inmates.

Both films are doing “dot connecting.” Pettengill wants viewers of Riotsville USA to “feel close” to the archive material. “We let things run long. We are very, very clear about what sources are [and] there is not much mish-mashing of different archival pieces. There’s a lot of text on screen. We give a lot of facts…I hope that approach allows people to feel they have licence to find their way in and make sense of it on their own. The voice-over feels very important for that reason. It continually asks those questions which are important to ask of a historical film – what do we do with this, what does this mean and what are we seeing?”

Riotsville USA “will certainly get a theatrical release” in the US. (A distributor is expected to be confirmed in the coming weeks.) In the meantime, its director is turning her focus toward the Mediterranean. She is coming together with fellow filmmakers Iva Radivojević and Amber Bemak to create a filmmaking collective on a Greek island, a space that, as she puts it, “encourages creativity…The idea is to try to carve out a space for filmmaking and creativity that is outside of the market and outside of the industry.”

The post BDE interview: Sierra Pettengill on Riotsville USA appeared first on Business Doc Europe.

CPH:DOX interview: Kathryn Ferguson on Nothing Compares

Geoffrey Macnab — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 22:17:40 +0000

Northern Irish director Kathryn Ferguson’s feature documentary Nothing Compares has its subject, Sinéad O’Connor, as its narrator. ‘Powerful’ and ‘heartrending’ are among the terms that reviewers have used to describe the film, which premiered at Sundance and which screened at CPH:DOX last week.

The archive-driven doc covers O’Connor’s difficult and traumatic childhood, her rise to fame as a pop star in the 1990s and the vicious backlash against her. The film (recently acquired by Showtime) will be given a theatrical release in the UK later this year. Below, the director explains to Business Doc Europe how and why she was drawn to the life and work of the mercurial and very brilliant Irish singer-songwriter.

BDE: When did you first become aware of Sinead O’Connor’s music?

Ferguson: I first became aware of Sinéad’s music through my father. I was still very young, only five in fact when her album ‘The Lion and The Cobra’ was released, but he was a huge fan and I remember many a rainy car journey driving around Northern Ireland in the late eighties with songs like ‘Troy’ and ‘Jackie’ providing the soundtrack. This was obviously very influential on me later as a teenager and at that point I became a bona fide fan of both her music and her as a person.

What did she mean to you when you were growing up?

A lot. I grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the 1980s and 90s. It was a very divided country to grow up in with the ongoing violent conflict in the North and the Catholic Church still very influential in Southern Ireland. Women and their rights, particularly their reproductive rights, were very low down the pecking order. When Sinéad burst into my consciousness, it felt like a door had been kicked open. Here was a bold Irish woman who said the things others didn’t feel they could say and she said them loudly. Both her and her music were galvanising.

Which song or songs of hers mean the most to you? What led you to make the film?

‘Troy’ made a huge impression early on, it still does. Initially, of course I had not really understood fully what it was abou,t but the storytelling within the lyrics and the intensity alone firmly rooted it as one of the tracks that made the most impression on me. The accompanying music video by John Maybury also really influenced my own filmmaking when I first began creating music videos and short films many years later.

As a teenager and by then a huge fan of her music, I was deeply saddened and confused by how she was treated for putting her head above the parapet, it felt very demoralising and something that has stuck with me my entire adult life. When I began making films in my twenties, my instinct was to focus on telling women’s stories and Sinéad was always at the forefront of my mind. It’s been a long and complex process to get to this stage. I’m still pinching myself that we’ve managed to make this film and that it’s currently being shared with festival audiences. I hope I’ve done her and this part of her powerful story justice.

Could you say something about the voice over?

It was extremely important to us that we had Sinéad tell the story in her own words. We did one interview conducted over a couple of days and used every last drop of it in the film.

Why do you feel the media was often so cruel to Sinéad?

I think some media outlets enjoy building people up very quickly and, when they don’t play ball, they tear them down just as quickly. We’ve seen it happen repeatedly over the years and are quite used to it now. What makes Sinéad’s experience quite exceptional is that she was one of the first superstars to essentially be cancelled and this was in an era without social media. She was outspoken and often talked loudly about subject matters that were unpalatable at that point in history, and it became easier to mock her and reduce her than actually take in what she was communicating. It’s a trope that has happened to many women over the years and still happens today. Hence why we felt an urgency in getting Sinéad’s story out there.

Was it sexism?

Sinéad definitely endured an element of sexism throughout her entire career. She pushed back on all forms of sexism and control at every opportunity and that made her less and less popular with the mainstream as time went on. Essentially, the overarching feeling was that she should just “shut up and sing” and the more she stood up and spoke out about subjects she felt needed attention the more she appeared to be ridiculed.

What does Sinéad mean to younger audiences in Ireland and abroad today?

She is finally being recognised for her huge contribution to music, culture and activism. Ireland as a country has seen tectonic shifts occur particularly with regards to the relaxation of control the church held over the country, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights etc and Sinéad personifies the struggle that’s been going on in the country for years. What’s really blown my mind is the response at both Sundance and CPH:DOX. Many younger viewers have told me it’s left them feeling emboldened and more determined than ever to speak out for change. That’s certainly how she inspired me when I was young so it’s heartening to see that she still has that effect on the younger demographic today.

Could you say something about the archival research for the film. How straightforward was that?

It was an intensive deep dive that lasted years. We worked with a fantastic archive producer called Jo Stones who went the extra mile in finding unexpected sources of archive. It was essential to the visual tapestry we had aimed to create and made up 70% of the film itself so really it was the rushes we had to play with. What made it complex is that, unlike normal rushes, ours kept arriving right up until we locked so there was a constant reshuffling in order to include them.

What about the poetic and abstract footage that runs alongside some of the voice over?

From the off I wanted the film to be completely immersive. As our archive only really existed from Sinéad’s arrival in London onwards, we had to work out a device to visually represent the earlier years. So I went about creating a visual style that echoed the aesthetics of the rest of the film to keep the viewer immersed in the storytelling. I wanted to create footage that blended in and even could pass as archive but also subtly nodded to the iconic visual language used in John Maybury’s many music videos for Sinéad.

How easy is it for you as a filmmaker to balance your more personal projects with your commercial work for brands?

I have lived and breathed this film for the past four years so there hasn’t been a balancing act as I gave it everything.

What are Showtime’s plans for the documentary?

We’re currently on the international festival circuit with the film. Following that, Showtime is planning a theatrical release later this year in the US, UK and Ireland, ahead of a premiere on Showtime in the US and its international streaming-platform partners.

The post CPH:DOX interview: Kathryn Ferguson on Nothing Compares appeared first on Business Doc Europe.

CPH:DOX review: This Stolen Country of Mine by Marc Wiese

Mark Adams — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 18:10:44 +0000

The spectacular mountains of Ecuador provide a vibrant backdrop for this epic and often brutal story of the battle between locals (and eco-guerrillas) and a government that is beholden to China, having sold off mining contracts for millions of dollars, resulting in both loss of land and loss of political sovereignty to a foreign government.

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CPH:DOX review: A French Revolution by Emmanuel Gras

Mark Adams — Sun, 03 Apr 2022 22:37:56 +0000

The iconic luminous yellow sleeveless jackets sported by French protestors helped define the country’s recent grass roots uprising. With elections looming this summer, and France (along with the rest of the world) assailed by financial hardship, this examination of a modern protest movement as seen from the inside makes for timely viewing as it exposes the methods, aims and inner contradictions of the Gilets Jaunes.

On November 17 2018 in France, hundreds of thousands demonstrated against a new ‘eco’ tax on fuel. Very soon the dramatically widening protest proved to be the expression of a much deeper anger. Across France, roundabouts were occupied by people known as the Yellow Jackets…‘les Gilets Jaunes’…a new-born movement made up of a multitude of groups.

This film tells the story of the Yellow Jackets within one particular French town. Over six months, filmmaker Emmanuel Gras (Makala, 2017) embedded with the Yellow Jackets in the northern provincial city of Chartres to try and understand this modern popular uprising of folk who felt neglected by the state and who were determined to bring matters into their own hands – and show that social change can come from below.

Speaking to an enthusiastic and determined group in the middle of their roundabout back at home, leader Benoit Le Cam says: “Your fervour and solidarity keeps growing, and that’s great…and I see we’re really united. There’s more to do. It’s not over…all of you can be proud of your struggle and for standing up to this oppressive system. What do we want? Justice…that’s all.”

In a self-consciously ironic camera movement, as Benoit points out that “not all know” about the struggle, Gras pans to a well-lit gym across the road from the roundabout where people keenly work-out on running machines, seemingly unaware of what is happening in front of them.

Gras then follows hard-core members of the Chartres movement as they dismantle a barrier at a toll station and tape over a camera, telling motorists it is free to use; sit in a cafe to discuss their upcoming plans and the structure of their organisation; worry about whether they might be dismissed as “lazy losers’ who simply hand out at roundabouts, and eventually head to Paris to join other Gilets Jaunes from around the country for a registered march that descends into scuffles with riot police.

Over the six months of filming, Gras sees himself both in the midst of riots and police-orchestrated tear-gas attacks in Paris as well as detailing the very real worries and hardships that have driven ordinary people to finally take a stand. As the months draw on, some people drift away and later when he films an unsanctioned protest in Paris, it is clear that internal divisions have had an impact on the underlying support for the movement.

Toward the end Gras presents an overhead shot of the Chartres roundabout, now empty of Yellow Jackets, the grass scorched in places from when group bonfires were lit. At the brightly illuminated Basic Fit gym across from the roundabout the runners still run on their treadmill, still oblivious to the protests that have been taking place.

But with the French presidential elections just around the corner, look out for the Yellow Jackets to start assembling again. In many parts of the country these very French protests are likely to return, as the poor, the elderly and the disenfranchised are hit more and more by rising costs. In France, the widespread protests of the Yellow Jackets have, since 2017, evoked memories of the country’s proud revolutionary history.

France, 2022, 104 mins

Dir: Emmanuel Gras

Production: Les Films Velvet

International sales: Best Friend Forever

Producer: Frederic Jouve

Cinematography: Emmanuel Gras

Editor: Karen Benainous

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CPH:DOX review: All That Remains To Be Seen by Julie Bezerra Madsen

Mark Adams — Sun, 03 Apr 2022 21:43:56 +0000

A warm-hearted and delightfully moving mother-and-son story, All That Remains To Be Seen (Mod de blindes verden) manages to be both informative and gently uplifting as it details the story of a blind mother and her seven year-old son whose own vision slowly starts to fade, a new and challenging life opening up before him.

Director Julie Bezerra Madsen tenderly engages with the blind Christina Nahnsen as she reaches a challenging point in her life. The film opens with her at a dance where she is at ease on the dancefloor with various dance partners. Later, out on the street, she seems equally at ease navigating her route with the use of an illuminated cane.

She is not completely blind, but her eyesight is extremely minimal. And the eyesight of her seven-year-old son Silas is also diminishing. He is a boy full of energy and enthusiasm, happy to playfully help guide her through bustling streets (“oops” he says as he almost leads her into a wall) and keen to defend her from other children who mock her.

Tearfully she says to a friend: “I just don’t want him to feel abnormal. We were the same age, Silas and I, when we were diagnosed…I was ousted and bullied…and no one wanted to hang out with me anymore.”

The film follows this delightfully connected mother and son as he takes his medicals tests, has fun with friends and does his best at school. The pair talk to other children and parents and he explains: ”So it’s kinda like there’s a murderer inside my eye, killing that thing called the retina piece by piece. And when it’s all dead, everything is black.” Kids then wear darkened goggles to have a sense of what life is like for Silas.

The film asks plenty of questions. Christina wants to do everything she can to help her young son in his gradual transition towards sightlessness – but how? And how do you create a good life for yourself in spite of visual impairment? She has tried it herself, and chooses from experience to give him as many unforgettable experiences as possible while he can still see.

Together they learn from each other how to navigate a world of people, obstacles and roadblocks. But there’s also a lot of emotional work ahead of them as Silas’ vision fades. And so she tries to prepare him for a new life in which he will have to rely on his other senses, but which is still a life of dance and travel and love.

Together they go on trips. Whether it is whale-watching (she advises him to stay near other adults with children as they will point out when a whale emerges) or wandering by waterfalls, where the sound and spray offer a tangible sense of the natural beauty.

She is naturally proud of his development and ability to adapt. Medicine and social awareness has changed and he seems able to adjust more to his changing situation more easily than she did years before. He is delightfully self-contained – playing with other children on a climbing frame he explains why things may be harder for him. “I have a visual impairment,” he calls out.

Julie Bezerra Madsen’s sensitive and poignant film is about a very special kind of mother-son relationship as this pair are uniquely bonded together. As he calls out to his mother as they walk along a pathway together: ”Rule number one…fuck what they think!” She warm-heartedly repeats: ”Rule number one…fuck what they think!”

The film is elegantly and compassionately made by Madsen, and special credit should go to Janne Laine for her sound design work. In the credit block there is a special mention for Silas’s classmates…where engagingly one Heidi Halgred Jensen gets two hearts next to her name.

Denmark-Finland, 2022, 71mins

Dir: Julie Bezerra Madsen

Production: Good Company Pictures, Avanton Productions

International sales: DR International Sales

Producers: Sonja Lindén, Katrine Sahlstrøm

Cinematography: Julie Bezerra Madsen, Mads Kongerskov

Editor: Signe Rebekka Kaufmann

Music: Laurits Hyllested

With: Christina Nahnsen, Silas Holm Sorensen

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CPH:DOX interview: Ben Rivers

Geoffrey Macnab — Sun, 03 Apr 2022 21:02:52 +0000

Picture courtesy of CPH:DOX

British filmmaker Ben Rivers and French musician and artist Félicia Atkinson are yet to meet in person – but audiences at CPH:DOX last week enjoyed an unusual collaboration between the duo. Atkinson provided new voice-over and musical accompaniments for two of Rivers’ films, Urth (2016) and Look Then Below (2019). The soundtracks were performed ‘live.’ Rivers was too busy with other work to travel to Copenhagen but he made time to speak to Business Doc Europe.

Rivers, an award winner at CPH:DOX in 2011 with his film Two Years at Sea, explains that he and Atkinson have long admired each other’s work. “I’ve listened to her music a lot and apparently she has seen my films before.”

Rivers had actually approached Atkinson when he was making Look Then Below which was shot in the catacombs of Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset. “I got in touch with her with the idea that she would make the soundtrack, the music for the film,” he remembers. “But at the time, she was extremely busy, working on a new album and various other things I think. So she couldn’t do it, but she suggested her friend, Christina Vantzou, who ended up making the soundtrack.”

Even so, Rivers and Atkinson stayed in touch. They continued discussing doing a live soundtrack to one of Rivers’ films, eventually choosing Urth and Look Then Below which were part of a trilogy of “speculative films” named ‘Urthworks’, which the filmmaker had made with American sci-fi writer, Mark von Schlegell. (The other film in the cycle is 2010’s Slow Action).

“It was a really nice way to involve her [Atkinson] in a project that she couldn’t do in the first instance – and to re-think these soundtracks. Voice is so important a part of her work.”

With Urth, Rivers gave Atkinson full licence to completely “re-do the soundtrack, including the words.” He presented her with the film file without any sound, trusting in her skills and judgement. “She has this very nice French accent, speaking English in these quite whispery tones. They [the words] really merge with the musical sounds.”

In Look Then Below, there were a few more restrictions. This had been a challenging film to shoot for the obvious reason that the caves are very dark. Rivers was working on 16mm film with very sensitive shots and very slow frame rates.

“It [Wookey Hall] also has these very fun colours which I thought I would use, reds and blues and green,” the director remembers. He also tried to shoot some footage in an ice cave in Austria. “It was amazing for the eye but impossible to film,” he says of those murky surroundings. “I went back home a little empty-handed…all the ice shots in the film, they’re all actually shot in my fridge. The freezer was broken and so it kept on growing these amazing ice forms.”

Rivers made a new mix of the film for Atkinson, getting rid of all the music and most of the layers of sound but kept certain elements including poems that had been performed by a choir in the Somerset caves. “And then Felicia had that soundtrack which she would work with and add on top as she saw fit…in practical terms, I was really happy to give over to Felicia and let her do her thing.”

Rivers is hoping to bring the ‘live’ versions of the films with the Atkinson soundtracks to the UK.

The director’s experimental films blur the lines between fiction and documentary – one reason why they turn up both at doc events like CPH and at festivals like Locarno and London.

“I am happy to show it [the work] in documentary festivals…I’ve done so for years,” Rivers reflects. “[But] for me, I make films. Other people put them in their relevant boxes. It’s quite nice if you can straddle different worlds because then it helps the films move around and opens up these questions of what is documentary. I’ve always been in that school of thinking that everything is a documentary – and everything is a fiction.”

He cites an old quote (which he thinks may come from Jean-Luc Godard) that a “fiction is a documentary of a film being made.” Rivers also points out that documentary was defined in the days of Scottish documentary guru John Grierson as “the creative use of reality.” In other words, he doesn’t feel burdened with a responsibility to represent reality in a slavishly naturalistic way.

Rivers’ work is handled in the UK both by distributors like Anti-Worlds and by art institutions. His films are supported by international arts agency LUX.

Now, the director is working on a loose follow up to Two Years At Sea, which was about Scottish hermit Jake Williams, who has been living on his own in the middle of Clashindarroch Forest for well-nigh four decades. “I’ve stayed friends with Jake…we’ve talked about making another film for years. Then 10 years came around [since the original] and we thought it was a good idea.”

The project, which is in the process of being financed and which has the working title ‘Bogancloch’ (taken from the name of where Jake now lives), was a Kodak-Silverway prize winner at FIDLab Marseilles last year.

Rivers also has another film planned, Mare’s Nest, about a group of kids living in Menorca. “And there are no adults left living in the world, just anarchic children performing avant-garde plays…” he explains a project he has written and which has a flavour of Lord Of The Flies.

The post CPH:DOX interview: Ben Rivers appeared first on Business Doc Europe.

CPH:DOX review: They Made Us The Night by Antonio Hernández

Mark Adams — Sat, 02 Apr 2022 10:49:54 +0000

There is a striking unworldly quality to They Made Us the Night (DOX:Award Competition), which trades on folk myths and supernatural visions despite its core story being about the challenges faced by the inhabitants of a small Mexican town that, according to the maps, does not even exist. Playful, elusive and engrossing the film allows its protagonists to tell their own story even if that means heading into the realm of magical realism at times.

The film signals its intent right from the start as mood music and a cacophony of animal sounds builds against a black screen prior to the opening credits. The music and sounds become vaguely oppressive, but when images emerge they are underwater, beneath a canoe before a we hear a voice calling voice for one of the film’s protagonist, Adonis, to wake up.

Adonis is the youngest member of the Salinas Tello family, and the one still with a youthful energy as he heads into the surf or gleefully plays around with farm animals. The family – replete with an ageing matriarch at its core – live in the aftermath of Cyclone Dolores which hit Mexico in 1974, flooding the town of Charco Redondo, and forcing its inhabitants to move away to found the town of San Marquitos, which still does not exist on any map.

In the run-up to the celebration of the town’s patron saint, the family matriarch provides for her children and grandchildren by praying for others at weddings and funerals. When she returns home, she tells her people’s original myths while trying to keep the spiritual connection to the nature that swallowed their town but which also now keeps them alive.

Despite the fact that San Marquitos isn’t supposed to exist in a region historically overlooked by various government authorities, it is still a coastal community full of life and idiosyncratic energy and a place where modern-day worries are set against ancient traditions and beliefs.

Mexican filmmaker Antonio Hernández allows non-fiction and fiction to blur with everyday rituals narrated by the locals, and the film includes moments of street festival joy, religious fervour and old-fashioned drinking in a ramshackle bar. The end result is a remarkable and engrossing portrait of a group of people living in a strange and unusual place. As the Salinas Tello family prepare for the upcoming patronal festivities the film offers an instructive and at times playful observation of a community juggling old ways with contemporary lifestyles and indulgences.

While the family’s youngest son Adonis would rather surf, mess around and eat pizza than dance the traditional devil’s dance, They Made Us the Night offers up a visceral and often dreamy delve into a world juggling its sense of its own reality. The sound design and Luis Ortega’s impressive score add much to the sense of mystery and beauty and offers up a rare immersive quality that helps make it a unique piece of cinema.

Mexico, 2022, 76mins

Dir/scr: Antonio Hernández

Production: Tangram Films, Detona, Ambulante

Producer: Fernando Delgado

Cinematography: Alonso Maranon

Editors: Fernando Felgado, Ximena Pineda, Martha Uc

Music: Luis Ortega

With: Adonis Salinas Tello, Fabian Salinas Tello, Humberto Salinas Tello, Placido Salinas Tello, Humberto Salinas Valencia, Romualda Tella Lopez

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CPH:DOX Forum pitch: The Gospel According to Matthew by Renzo Martens

Nick Cunningham — Sat, 02 Apr 2022 07:52:45 +0000

Dutch firebrand iconoclast Renzo Martens is taking on Jesus in his next project, which he pitched at CPH:FORUM. Part fiction/part documentary, the film resembles Milo Rau’s The New Gospel in many respects, but a key driver for Martens is to enable the Congolese cast and crew, led by Matthieu Kasiama (who plays Jesus), to buy back the land stolen from them over 100 years ago, using their participation fees paid up front.

The other project pitchers in Copenhagen were Danish producer Sigrid Dyekjær (Real Lava) and German producer Heino Deckert (Ma.ja.de). The main producer is Dutch Frans van Gestel of Topkapi Films.

The film, currently in development, is budgeted is 1.2 million euros, and the cost of the land purchase will be 100,000 dollars, Martens told the Forum assembly. (A similar concept was devised and executed in Martens’ White Cube [2018] in which Congolese plantation owners use the profits from an exhibition of their artwork in a New York art gallery to buy back the land confiscated from them by Unilever.)

For the new film, “the Gospel that was brought by the missionaries and used to steal his [Matthieu’s] land, he wants to use that very same Gospel to buy back the land again,” underlined Martens of the concept.

In the fictionalised part of the film, Jesus arrives as a Black plantation worker in 1921. Calling out the hypocrites, preaching equality and liberation from oppression, Jesus says: “Black men will be white, and white men will be Black.” The narrative is based on prophecies of the Congolese prophetess Kimpa Vita, and closely follows the life and death of prophet Simon Kimbangu.

But once the land is bought, there is a debt to be paid, at which point the film’s central question arises (equally at which point I refer to the project notes for accuracy). “Who will benefit from a crucifixion of a new Black Jesus? The plantation workers? Will the plantation company that confiscated these lands benefit from newfound inclusivity? Audiences in Europe who have been fed by this plantation? The film industry? Or Renzo Martens, the director, who wants to make The Gospel, and take on the guilt of colonialism, but then also throw it off. Matthieu Kasiama puts the crucifixion – and therefore the entire production – at stake. He refuses to be pressured by the financiers and suggests a solution: a dice game will determine whether or not he will be crucified.”

During his pitch, Martens asked the question again forthrightly to the Copenhagen audience? “Does anybody want to step in? And is anybody willing to hang on that cross?”

Co-producer Sigrid Dyekjær of Real Lava commented: “What I love about Renzo’s work is he’s an artist and he’s a filmmaker. And when you embark on a story with him, you kind of have an idea of where you start, but you are not always sure where exactly you are going, but you know it’s gonna be goddamn exciting.”

Panellist Barbara Truyen, Head of Docs and Commissioning Editor for Dutch Public Broadcaster VPRO, was equally effusive as she picked up Dyekjær’s point. “I don’t have a clue where you’re going to. I don’t know when it will be done,” she said to Martens. “Because that’s what we know with White Cube, that it will take five more years than we expect – but that’s all fine because now we know that’s how you work.”

Then, addressing the audience: “So if you come on this journey, and I think everyone should come on this journey, you’ll have a fantastic time. You won’t know where you’re ending up. It could be a brilliant failure, but I don’t think it will be. I love it.”

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