Venice 26

The Soviet Union is revealed in all its contradictions in Sergei Loznitsa’s sprawling new archive-based documentary Imperium (screening this week in Venice Open - Out of Competition). The footage he uses was shot by Italian filmmakers in the early 1970s. They travelled to every corner of the Soviet empire, from major cities like Moscow and St Petersburg to far flung towns in central Asia; from Ukraine to the Baltics, from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan. The Ukrainian director talks to Business Doc Europe.

Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller’s 25-minute ‘horror’ film, which started shooting in January this year, shows ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents terrorising the residents of Minneapolis. “We knew it had to be filmed then,” Poitras tells BDE. “It [the US] is a country that has violence at its core; it has empire at its core, and it is engaging in violence [all the time],” she adds.

In Luke Lorentzen’s sublime meditation both on community and competence, we meet some of the workers at the 60-strong Brooklin boatyard who, over four seasons, are tasked with building a 56-foot luxury sailboat. It is a film populated almost exclusively by men. “I think it just emerged...how they treat one another, and how they are men who are both very strong and very sensitive,” Lorentzen tells BDE. “They just have a spirit to them that I really enjoyed being with, and that felt different from the [male] ego or power or dominance that we often see in our culture.”

Citizen Osama Al-Ashi is an internationally recognised journalist and war photographer in Gaza. He isn’t reckless but he is very courageous, and many times we see him walking towards the tanks, towards the frontline, towards the billowing clouds of smoke, while everyone else is walking or running in the opposite direction. Because that’s his job. And his job is important. Citizen Osama is not an art film. Its style is basic, its storytelling straightforward. But these images have come to us at a very high cost. And we should not look away.

In Bibiana Rojas Gómez and Juan David Cárdenas’ hybrid doc world-premiering in Venice, Salomé sifts through five decades of Cardenas family footage in search of the reasons behind her mother’s depression. Co-director Gómez was able to bring a detached eye to over 70 hours of family footage that was so personal for Cárdenas. “I am so close to it that I am not seeing the creative possibilities, because I am seeing mainly my family,” Cárdenas recalls the dilemma that his partner was able to solve.

As Derek Jarman was shooting his acclaimed 1991 feature Edward II, young cinematographer Seamus McGarvey was chronicling the whole production process verité-style. Thirty years on, the footage that McGarvey shot forms the spine of Queer Edward II, UK director Theo Rollason’s feature documentary which has been screening to acclaim this week in Venice. Rollason discusses his new work - as well as the late, great Jarman - with BDE.

Julia Loktev’s new film begins just two days after its predecessor (My Undesirable Friends: Part I - Last Air in Moscow) ended, the point at which the last remaining independent media outfits in Russia were shut down. Some of the journalists head to Istanbul, others to Israel or Georgia. Some ended up in Prague or Vienna. “History happened and I kept shooting directly, when everybody fled Russia. I followed them and I just kept shooting,” Loktev tells BDE. “I had this incredible opportunity to capture this historic moment as it was happening.”

With precious little source material to work with – a mere 5 seconds of footage, a few photos and a handful of letters – how do you make a documentary about a woman who headed up one of Italy’s leading galleries, had a towering intellect and displayed uncommon wartime bravery, and whose influence over the culture and politics of post-WW2 Italy was substantial? Filmmakers Francesco Clerici and Mattia Colombo, whose Anatomy of a Portrait world-premieres at Venice FF, explain how to BDE.

Erik Shirai unveils the secretive world of sumo in his new feature documentary, world-premiering in Venice and opening the festival’s Spotlight section. The film is, in equal parts, refined, elegiac and minimalist. “Two men on a dirt ring trying to fight each other, half naked. There's nothing more minimal or simpler than that.” Shirai tells Business Doc Europe.

Ryan Holliger dreams of making a film about his chaotic life, one in which he served 4 years in prison and fathered six kids with five women. Fellow school dad Robert Greene decides to help him in this quest as he feels a special kinship with Ryan, both having grown up in broken homes in working-class areas. “But the difference between he and I is he likes to fight, so he punched someone in the face a bunch of times and went to prison. I don't like to fight. I like to write poetry and make paintings and eventually I made movies, and that's where our lives diverged,” Greene tells BDE.