Nisimazine Helsinki 2008#1

Kalinovski SquareManufactured LandscapesUlrich Seidl

NISIMAZINEhelsinki

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

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© Photo by Edward Burtynsky; ‘‘Manufacturing #1’’, Deda Chicken Processing Plant, Dehui City, Jilin Province, 2005

In cooperation with:

A MAgAzine CreAted By nisi MAsA, europeAn network of young CineMA

NISIMAZINE HELSINKIWednesday 23 January 2008 / # 1

A magazine published by the associations NISI MASA and Euphoria Borealis ry in cooperation with the DocPoint - Helsinki Documentary Film Festival and with the support of the ‘Europe for Citizens’ programme of the European Union EDITORIAL STAFF (NM) Editor-in-chief Matthieu Darras Secretary of the editorial Jude Lister Layout Emilie Padellec English corrections Jude Lister Contributors to this issue Maartje Alders, Ariane Beauvillard, Itxaso Elosua Ramírez, Jude Lister, Hanna Mironenko, Emilie Padellec, Natasha Pavlovskaia, Balázs Simonyi COORDINATOR (EB) Lasse Lecklin ORGANISERS (EB) Eero Erkamo, Johanna Kinnari, Helena Mielonen, Atso Pärnänen, Kati Pietarinen Euphoria Borealis ry Vaasankatu 20 a B 35 00500 Helsinki; +358 41 5251131; [email protected]; www.euphoriaborealis.net NISI MASA 10 rue de l’Echiquier, 75010, Paris, France; + 33 (0)1 53 34 62 78; + 33 (0)6 32 61 70 26; [email protected]; www.nisimasa.com

Editorial The magazine you hold in your arms is unique - this is the

first issue of Nisimazine ever to be made at DocPoint. After the success of previous editions during the Torino and Cannes film festivals, it is now the turn of documentaries

to be subjected to our critical eye. Young film critics from all over Europe, from France to Belarus, have come especially to Helsinki to make this daily publication for you, the audience. So, seize the opportunity - read it from A to Z!

When preparing this issue, we noticed that many of the DocPoint opening films show a worrying view of our modern world. Dictatorship in the middle of Europe (Kalinovski Square), God ruling a former USSR country (Shadow of the Holy Book), dying environments (Manufactured Landscapes) and people suffering from a lack of essential needs (The Big Sellout). Do we really live in the 21st century? I’m not sure of what place such things have in our lives. Well, maybe not in ‘ours’, but somewhere very close…

Of course these problems are important for everyone, not only the inhabitants of the countries directly affected. Trying to construct a happy nation is difficult when you have a troubled neighbour. Especially when we are used to living in a state of blissful ignorance, with no idea about what is going on just around the corner. In modern Turkmenistan, where the internet is forbidden, people are told to believe that their President is God, and that the book he wrote is more important than the Bible is for Christians. Hard to believe maybe, but it is so.

Being a team of young journalists, we are full of energy and ready to watch as many films as possible in order to bring you the best of the fest. We recommend that you do the same - what better way to escape the freezing Helsinki streets than watching a good film in warm and cosy festival theatre? Welcome!

Hanna Mironenko

For some reason, political prisoners, state-controlled television and megalomaniacal dictators seem to

belong to a different world than jeans, cell phones, digital cameras and instant soup. Violence and injustice are harder to recognise in combination with these signs of so-called civilisation. Especially when it happens right under our European noses.

Kalinovski Square makes a bold, almost Michael Moorian, statement against the powers that be in Belarus. Commander-In-Chief Lukashenko has won the presidential elections for the third time in a row, with a staggering 80% of the votes. Not surprisingly the people

suspect that the results have been meddled with, and the film shows them starting a demonstration in October Square - renamed ‘Kalinovski’ - in Minsk. Most of them are youngsters, students in jeans, who are strong enough to hold out in the raging blizzards and icy coldness of the white Russian winter. Besides the elements, they have to fight a government which uses every possible means it can think of to, firstly break the demonstrators’ spirits, and secondly get rid of them. But Lukashenka always thinks only about the happiness of his people. “See?”, a voice says with the image of a pondering president, “He is thinking about it now”.

Review

The Big Sellout shows us the negative aspects of privatisation processes happening all over the world – from Bolivia and South Africa to Great Britain. No

matter what is ‘sold-out’ – the railways, electricity, health clinics or even water – there is always a price to be paid for it, always a sacrifice. Such as those who are left to live in the dark in South Africa or the victims of a railway catastrophe in suburban London. Director Florian Opitz has made a huge work trying to find out why so many people have to suffer whilst all they ask for are essential needs. Does anybody in the world have a right to privatise water? Even the rain? A British train driver, Simon Weller, says it like it is – that privatisation is based on selling-out to people the things they already had. Another of the film’s heroes, the Robin Hood-like Bongani, who brings the people of South Africa faith and light by reconnecting their electricity supply, says that all this privatisation is only about profit.

The private companies have found a way to make people live in fear of the loss basic necessities, and the only chance to change this situation is to fight. How? This film shows the ways.

The Big Sellout By Florian Opitz (Germany)

Film of the day Kalinovski Square By Yury Khashchavatski (Estonia/Belorussia)

Maartje Alders

Hanna Mironenko

Through Khashchavatski’s grandfatherly voice-over, we get lulled into what seems like a bedtime fairytale. It doesn’t appear to be real at first. The combination of found footage and an explanatory yet mocking narrator would have almost taken the film to the verge of fiction, had it not been that the outcome is strongly sarcastic. With that, the personal testimonies and the camera in the centre of action show that what we see actually is real.

After a while, the kindly grandfather turns into an annoying repetitive schoolmaster, who points out the same thing with an almost palpable passive-aggressiveness over and over again, leaving us feeling like little children who can’t keep up. Luckily, the balance between this voice-over, interviews and the actively co-demonstrating camera saves the film from becoming tiresome and it succeeds in making its point. To make a film like this in Belarus is a big risk for Khashchavatski. Freedom of speech does not exist and many journalists have disappeared. Kalinovski Square has been put on a black list. This only serves to underscore the general argument against a government that is unwilling to see the needs of its own people.

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Avery slow and contemplative documentary about the ecological footprint of the human race on the Earth, controlled and enlarged by individuals, governments and companies. We are living in the

new, suicidal era of globalisation and heavy urbanisation, industrialisation and reorganisation, waste and recycling; in developed countries as well as in the Third World. Engineers in China are demolishing huge sections of a town in order to build the world’s largest dam. Peasants are dismantling leaking oil tankers in a Bangladesh shipyard. Endless rows of factory labourers are busy with monotonous activities. Mines, dumps, plants with hopeless workers and a dying environment.

This expansion of consumer society and the impacts of vast projects of modern over-civilisation produce strange, artificial landscapes. The scenery changes in a very peculiar way: the observer cannot decide whether it’s beautiful or tragic.

In a 2-in-1 work of ‘pictures within a picture’, the filmmakers are shooting Canadian photographer (Edward Burtynsky), who makes panoramic landscapes of industrial areas. But we really can’t decide what’s beyond the frame, what’s in Burtynsky’s focus. Is it a mission to call people’s attention to these symptoms? Balázs Simonyi

Manufactured LandscapesBy Jennifer Baichwal (Canadia)

© “Nickel Tailings #34”: Sudbury, Ontario (Canada) Photo: Edward Burtynsky

How does being a documentary-maker affect your direction of the festival?I try to overcome my

‘prejudices’ in order to recognise interesting works, even if I don’t necessarily like them. I have to be very aware of my double position. Actually, for me directing this festival has a selfish element, because it allows me as a filmmaker to discover interesting approaches!

What are the main characteristics of the Finnish documentary scene at the moment?Recent Finnish documentaries have been extremely varied – from more classical formats to animated films, and also several Michael Moore-style works. This diversity is a positive thing, as in the past there was a certain amount of ‘formatting’. I once heard someone say “life is too short for Finnish documentaries”. There was, and still is, a certain characteristic for slow, fairly silent films. It is a good feature though, it tells something about the Finnish people and their self-ironic sense of humour.

Jude Lister

Interview Virpi Suutari > Documentary filmmaker &> Artistic Director of the DocPoint film festival

?? ? ? ? ?


Or simple aesthetics: making art images? If the latter, the German photographic artist of globalisation, Andreas Gursky, does it better.

© Photo by Balázs Simonyi

Review

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Any personal highlights of DocPoint 2008?The Austria programme, and in particular Ulrich Seidl. As a filmmaker I have been impressed by Austrian documentaries. Also the Iranian film section. Works from both countries question stylistic and fictional elements within documentary, although Iran is more poetic and Austria tends towards a more constructed, staged approach. Finally, the live ‘Nanook of the North’ concert accompanied by one of our most famous violinists will be very special.

What are your hopes and expectations for the future?The festival is 7 years old, and has grown to a good proportion, but obviously we will aim to become more well-known internationally. I hope also that we can manage to stick to an idealistic artistic approach, and avoid falling into TV documentary as many other festivals are tending to do now.

Work in progress

The Berlin Wall fell. Really? According to various documentary and fiction productions of the last few years in the countries of the ex-USSR, the old demons are not quite dead yet. In fact, they are still alive and well, in new dictatorships, in new crises and lapses

of memory. To construct memory is a way to deal with the present. DocPoint is thus presenting several films which prove, self-consciously or not, that the past has not completely gone away. The themes, however different, converge towards the same point: the impossible rebuilding of states which were under Soviet rule, and the active participation of liberal democracies in their excessive slowness to modernise.

From a social point of view, one finds — in Russia, in Turkmenistan, in Belarus — the same causes and effects: in Shadow of the Holy Book, Arto Halonen notes that whilst the country produces a significant portion of the world’s oil supply, it suffers from an unemployment rate of 60%. In Russia, alcoholism always seems to be the major cause of social problems. In Boys by Valeria Guy Germanika, the children who drink beer in the streets and destroy letter-boxes are hardly ten years old, and their parents have just given up on them. More seriously, the state itself has relinquished its mission, for example by not providing financial support or modernising infrastructures in Bam, Shadow of the Holy Book, and Kalinovski Square. People develop “their anger against life” in the present and the past as one witness says.

Throughout these documentaries, one notes that misery makes some long for the past: Bam is rather curious in this respect. Jouni Hiltunen narrates the construction of the Trans-Siberian under the USSR; without extolling Stalinist virtues, the horror of present times casts a shadow of regret on the past. «Nobody works for an ideal now», one witness says. The present does not succeed in bringing relief or preventing nostalgia. And the feeling of decline is not exclusive to the nostalgic folks: it also exists in the political field. Halonen did rather remarkable work in his report on Turkmenistan. Ruled with an iron hand by Niyazov, the country displays all trademarks of ex-USSR politics — propaganda everywhere, worship of the personality, indoctrination of the youth... the same influence as in Belarus.

Here, the director examines the electoral fraud and repression that took place during and after the presidential elections of March 2006. Each documentary-maker becomes a historian letting the opponents speak to denounce well-hidden truths.

Hidden by whom? By the ex-Soviet States themselves obviously, but the denunciation goes further: obsessed with their past, these countries do not get much help from Western democracies. The media, when they are not censored, do not say much more. Foreign companies such as Bouygues, Gazprom and Chrysler take advantage of the economic context to delocalise, thus tacitly supporting authoritarian regimes. This past returns in various forms but remains omnipresent: the filmmakers punctuate their films with interviews (pensioners in Herbarium, teenagers in Boys, hard-working immigrants in Moscow...); they can’t help but look back to the USSR. The absence of education amongst children is connected with adult illiteracy: thus the support of certain fringes of the population for the regimes is directly related to the lack of political education. The importance of these films is that they give words to those who cannot speak, and reveal political situations that Europe, in particular, tends to forget or hide. After all, isn’t cinema’s main and only purpose, that of showing?

Ariane Beauvillard

Ex-USSR Republics: did the Berlin Wall really fall?

© ‘‘Moscow’’ by B. Bakuradze & D. Mamulia

Nisimazine Helsinki ~ 23. 1. 2008 # 1 Nisimazine Helsinki ~ 23. 1. 2008 # 1

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Young Visions

Itxaso Elosua Ramírez

Aheavy and violent play is performed by adults in front of a crowd of young children at a local cultural centre, propagating their love for Palestine and their willingness to die for their far-away country.

But the young people in My Palestine are torn. Torn between what they should be thinking, and their true views. This duality expresses itself throughout this film and not only reflects their inner struggle, but also the continuous struggle of their people.

Living in a refugee camp in the south of Lebanon, where their Palestinian families were relocated in 1948 after the creation of Israel, they are supposed to believe in a triumphant return to “their Palestine”, but instead they remain realistic, aware that the possibility of that happening is slim to none. Instead they accept their situation, and aspire to be successful in a western country. Even though these hopes reach far away, they all have an awareness and analytical view of their world which shows they are no foolish dreamers. They dream, but live life as it comes, with their feet firmly on the ground, proud of their heritage and trying to make themselves stand out somehow.

Through the use of photographic backdrops of New York, Paris, Jerusalem and nature, the filmmakers entice them to reveal their inner thoughts and aspirations. These turn out to be more complex than they convey at first hand. The images might represent their dreams, but they are fully aware that in reality they are sitting in a studio in front of a piece of paper.One young man chooses a blank backdrop, explaining that it represents the Jerusalem he will never see. Then he opens up: “When I said I was happy, did you actually believe me? I’m not, and they understand why. I’m just Said, not the prophet or Jesus… Let’s not fool each other.”

By Nadine Naous & Léna Rouxel (France/Lebanon)My Palestine

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ATENEUM

19.00 Costes & Anquetil:THE FACES ON THE WALL, 65’

BIO REX

18.30 OPENING CEREMONYHalonen: IN THE SHADOW OF THE HOLY BOOK, 90’

Berkvens: JIMMY ROSEN-BERG – THE FATHER, THE SON & THE TALENT, 77’

MAXIM 2

18:45 Baichwal:MANUFACTUREDLANDSCAPES, 90’

20:30 Seidl:LOSSES TO BE EXPECTED,118’, K-18

MAXIM 2

19.00 Mathes: A MILLION IN DEBT IS NORMAL, SAYS MY GRANDFATHER, 23’, K-18Carney: THE END OF THE NEUBACHER PROJECT, 74’

21.00 Malinin: EXHALE, 26’DEMON, 55’, K-18

KIASMA17.00 STUDENT FILMS 1: Ahola: MAKE, 5’Ekblom & Eronen: NIGHTMARE 29’Lampi:THE NATURE OF REBIRTH, 15’Hirvonen: PARADISE—THREE JOURNEYS IN THIS WOLRD, 51’

19.00 Khashchavatski:KALINOVSKI SQUARE, 87’

REALITY CHECK.Arto Halonen: Shadow of the Holy Book 18.30 Bio Rex

www.docpoint.info

PICTURE OF THE DAY

© Photo by Natasha Pavlovskaia


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ATENEUM

19.00 Costes & Anquetil:THE FACES ON THE WALL, 65’

BIO REX

18.30 OPENING CEREMONYHalonen: IN THE SHADOW OF THE HOLY BOOK, 90’

Berkvens: JIMMY ROSEN-BERG – THE FATHER, THE SON & THE TALENT, 77’

MAXIM 2

18:45 Baichwal:MANUFACTUREDLANDSCAPES, 90’

20:30 Seidl:LOSSES TO BE EXPECTED,118’, K-18

MAXIM 2

19.00 Mathes: A MILLION IN DEBT IS NORMAL, SAYS MY GRANDFATHER, 23’, K-18Carney: THE END OF THE NEUBACHER PROJECT, 74’

21.00 Malinin: EXHALE, 26’DEMON, 55’, K-18

KIASMA17.00 STUDENT FILMS 1: Ahola: MAKE, 5’Ekblom & Eronen: NIGHTMARE 29’Lampi:THE NATURE OF REBIRTH, 15’Hirvonen: PARADISE—THREE JOURNEYS IN THIS WOLRD, 51’

19.00 Khashchavatski:KALINOVSKI SQUARE, 87’

DocPoint launches off!

The seventh DocPoint festival starts with the screening of a new documentary by Arto Halonen. Shadow of the Holy Book raises questions about the moral responsibility and obligations of large corporations.DocPoint awards Jörn Donner, the noted Finnish talent of cinema and a documentary film maker, with Apollo Award for his contribu-tions to Finnish documentary cinema. To celebrate the awardm DocPoint showcases a selection of Donner’s films. The Apollo Award will be handed to Donner at the opening ceremony.An avantgarde pop -style band Eleanoora Rosenholm kicks off the festival at the DocPoint Opening Party in The Old Student House.

Festival opening 18.30 Bio RexOpening Party 10.30 PM-2 AM The Old Student House (Vanha Ylioppilastalo, Mannerheimintie 3)

First Guests from Austria: Gabriele Mathes

A Million in Debt is Normal, Says My Grandfather is a film about the childhood of film maker A Million in Debt is Normal, Says My Grandfather is a film about the childhood of film maker A Million in Debt is Normal, Says My GrandfatherGabriele Mathes. Her childhood was overshadowed by bankruptcy, financial trouble and prob-lems between the parents. At the same time the family remembers the healing powers of love. The film moves forward like poetry, leaving a lot of room for subjective interpretations.Mathes is present at the screening.

A Million in Debt is Normal, Says My Grandfather 19.00 Maxim 2

REALITY CHECK.Arto Halonen: Shadow of the Holy Book 18.30 Bio Rex

www.docpoint.info


Amongst the potential previous lives of Ulrich Seidl, one can easily picture him in the skin of a museum attendant surrounded by stuffed creatures and freakish visitors. From this

imaginary past, he would have kept his fascination for ordinarily abnormal people and for animals. The title of his first feature film? Good News – Of Paperboys, Dead Dogs and Other Viennese (1989)… As a scrupulous observer of our human nature, of our passions and deviances (narcotic, religious, sexual), the Austrian director has built up an uncompromising style. Willingly sarcastic, a bit cynical, his humour can be vitriolic. Through his distant but extremely frontal camera, Ulrich Seidl knows how to drag out, with a ferocious acuteness, the lunacy of present-day Austria. Whether documentary or fiction or both – reality being often stage-managed –, his films arouse in us an unusual magnetism. Something in between nausea and fascination.

On a thematic basis, Ulrich Seidl’s films seem to be guided by a single leitmotiv : men are alienated. Even if this alienation has different faces, an oppressive statement emerges from all of them: loneliness, craziness or imbecility swallow up our individuality. In Animal Love (1995), the protagonists – separated or adulterous couples, old boys on the dole, young beggars, and even a left-alone diva – fill their boredom with a boundless adoration for their dogs, cats, rabbits, ferrets etc. What kind of “neurotic symptoms” and ‘‘claustrophobia’’ induce these lonely folks to over-discipline or fondle and lick their four-legged friends all over? Is our society so alienating that human beings forget, unconsciously or not, their “moral codes” and dignity?

In Dog Days (2001), the inhabitants of a suburban area seem to lose all sense of reason. Amongst them, Anna, a very talkative and retarded young hitchhiker, will eventually be manhandled and abused by the neighbours for an insignificant crime she probably didn’t even commit.

Either different or victims of a collective indifference, Seidl seems fond of lost sheep : the innocents, the forgotten, the fringes of society, even the dying patients of geriatric wards... The ‘enfant terrible’ of Austrian cinema is indeed far from being misanthropic. Even if Vivian, Lisa and Tanja, the blond chicks of Models (1998), shine with their super-ficiality, Ulrich Seidl takes particular care to uncover their fragility. Is this why he likes to put the camera in the place of a mirror, or in the middle of a corridor facing an (enga-ged) toilet? To glean true moments of humanity beyond any voyeurism? Probably ; the long duration of the shots, their fixity and their aesthetic rigour, confirm just that.

As if to serve his entomological approach, our adept of closed spaces (bathrooms, bedrooms, even churches in Jesus, You Know, 2003), systematically captures with a Martin Parr-like sense of photography daily intimate moments: confession, defecation, depilation, ablution, and, fornication. However indiscreet these scenes are, there is no vulgarity. By filming the unseen, he aims to lay bare the existential vulnerability that man confides or tries to hide in his everyday life.

Slim or worn, young or wrinkled, anorexic or pot bellied, ‘seidlian’ bodies are often nude, in ridiculous, touching or degrading situations. However, rather than corporal, the obscenity denounced by Seidl is definitely discursive (The Bosom Friend, 1997; Dog Days). Sometimes, as in Import/Export (2007), bodies are for sale - virtually or, further East, for real. Promised lands only reveal disappointment.

To keep our heads high when faced with all these modern fears, let’s not give up on love and old melodies, like Sepp Paur, the rejected widower of Losses To Be Expected (1992). And clearly, when it comes to being aware of the worst in life, Ulrich Seidl’s films are the best treatment...

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By Emilie Padellec

© Photo by Lukas Beck


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Nisimazine Helsinki 2008#1