All posts by Dimitra Kouzi

EFA awards, EN, Interviews, People

21 ✕ Questions on 21 ✕ New York

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21 ✕ Questions to the Polish director Piotr Stasik on his EFA-nominated feature-length documentary film 21 ✕ New York

  1. What is your favourite interview question?
    I don’t have such a question.
  1. Why New York? What does it mean to you? Why 21?
    I chose New York because it’s like a laboratory of the future, of how our life will look like in the future. I thought it’s a city where you can feel free and where you can make your dreams come true. This is one of the myths of this city that attracts people who are outsiders, who look for something more. In New York, these people seek home and others that are similar to them. A whole world comes to this place – to live, work, express themselves creatively. It is the capital of the world.
    The number 21 occurs in the film a few times. We’ve got 21 characters – people I met in the NYC Subway. The age of the main protagonist is 21 – as is the century we live in.
    I chose 21 characters because it’s a number of people that offers a chance to show a cross-section of a society. I’m a sociologist by education. In the beginning, this film was more of a scientific research, participatory observation.

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  1. You refer to yourself as "a harmless vampire documentalist". How did you choose your interview subjects? 
    Vampire – because we documentary filmmakers suck in other people’s emotions and stories like blood. We thrive on them and create our films with them. Harmless – because when we do it right, we act ethically, we do not harm our protagonists – on the contrary. Often, their participation in the film is for them a moment of joint creation, and watching themselves on the screen can be an opportunity for self-analysis, to find something about themselves, even therapy.
    My research included collecting different stories. These were not interviews; rather, more like conversations where the topic came out naturally. I told them my story, and then asked them about the most important things and events in their lives. The most common topics were relationships, loneliness and being lost, confused. They came up in almost all conversations. Of course, I somehow asked for it too by intuitively choosing such protagonists and by taking the conversations in certain directions. However, to what extent I interfered and to what extent it was a reflection of a real situation – this I wouldn’t know. Loneliness is the disease not only of big cities but also of our times. Comfort and prosperity, combined with the abundance of stimuli and possibilities, create a situation where we either meticulously direct and stage our life, making it predictable and, eventually, boring, or, on the other hand, we spread ourselves thin, we can’t focus on anything, we cannot work for a longer period of time on ourselves, on relations with other people. One of my female protagonists told me that there’s no use working on the relationship with her boyfriend when new, more attractive men are already lining up just behind the corner, or in an app. In the more extreme situations, people check their tinder in bed, when having sex. Maybe it’s just how our brain functions. When we achieve something, we get used to it and we want something else. Sebastian, a newcomer in New York like myself, observes what’s going on and talks about what is at the end of this spiral. He is my alter ego.

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  1. How does it feel to be inside the heads of your characters?
    I wanted the viewers to feel as if they could, or that they did, enter my characters’ minds for a while. Hence, the form. It’s like becoming a God for a moment – to know the thoughts of people passed by in the subway.
  1. Did you have a clear idea of what the film would look like before filming?
    It was like an experiment, like anthropological research with a camera. I go underground like an anthropologist, like Bronislaw Malinowski on Trobriand Islands but, instead of in a notebook, I make my notes in the camera. Sometimes, I felt as if I were making a new version of “The Sexual Lives of Savages”. I didn’t know how the film would end but I knew its structure and form from the beginning. I had a script, with probable dialogues even.
  1. Which photographers inspire you?
    I look at photographs of many authors – mostly Cartier-Bresson or Michael Ackerman. I’m addicted to browsing through photography albums in bookstores. It was with photography that I started my adventure with image and film when, as a 15-year-old boy, I photographed kitschy compositions with metal junk.
  1. What did your instinct help you to do while you were shooting? My instinct helps me to choose potential protagonists for my film from thousands of people I pass by. Instinct combined with experience helps me to decide where to put the camera, when to press the record button, what to ask, how to shake reality in order for something interesting to happen right in front of the lens. My master, Marcel Łoziński, says that reality is like an aquarium – the fish swim lazily and only at scarce moments does something happen. So as to make that ‘something’ happen exactly when we want it, we need to interfere somehow. That’s what documentary directing is about. With small gestures, energy, or just using body language, we can stimulate the characters to open themselves, to take actions.
  1. Tell me of “magical” moments.
    When one of my characters introduced himself with the words, “I am you”. I got shivers down my spine. Also, I often feel very moved during editing, and I can only hope that my viewers would feel moved as well. That is why it is so important for me to achieve a certain level of focus. One of such methods is the rite of passage that allows you to transcend your own self. In the case of this film it was total exhaustion. This allowed me to immerse in the city, melt into it and become one with it. Recording the footage felt like swimming, or like a long, day-and-night dance with the inhabitants of New York.
  1. The camera work in combination with the sound/music creates a certain feeling in the viewer; it keeps them captivated while witnessing from up close life through the subjects. Tell us about your method of cinematography.
    I wanted the viewer to be like in a state of trance, to contemplate the world, to travel into the thoughts and lives of other people. We switch from one character to the other as if we were changing channels on TV. On the surface, nothing connects the protagonists apart from the place. I recorded the film with an unscrewed lens. By doing that, I stained the immaculate clarity of the digital image. It became more emotional, more subjective. The camera set I put together is very small and relatively quick and easy to use. Thanks to this, it does not feel intrusive during conversations, during my ‘dancing’. I don’t have to be only a filmmaker, I become the participant of events without harming the quality of the recording.

21xny_pat10. Why do you do documentaries?
It is to me a way of looking for the answer how to live and what to live for. A way of living in a more curious and more emotional way. The camera gives me a chance to visit places and ask questions I normally wouldn’t, out of lack of courage.

  1. Do you “flirt” with fiction?
    Of course. One of my characters is almost completely invented. I won’t tell which one. The world changes; our sensitivity changes with it. The film language has to change too. We look for new tricks but the truth is we’ve been telling the same tales for thousands of years. We need to surprise our audience with new things that make them forget about reality but at the same time allow them to feel it’s about them.
  1. Do you have an obsession?
    My obsession is the constant fight for time. Not wasting it on useless, petty issues like checking news on the Internet. Our lives are more and more dependent on some kind of a logarithm. After all, Facebook’s aim is not to nurture our friendships, or love, at all. These social media guys sit there and think how to make us buy their tricks.
    Big money and most talented people work now on how to suck in the biggest amount of people for the longest period of time and make us addicted to “using”. We – and our kids, too – are helpless and bound to be defeated.
  1. What do you have against conventions?
    Conventions enable us to make decisions faster, but at the same time they work as internal shackles. Imprinted within us, they don’t allow us to see our real needs, to live in the truth and in agreement with ourselves.
  1. What do all your films have in common?
    My films are a constant journey and contemplation of the world. It’s a geographic journey as well as an inward journey into human existence – into the mind and, hopefully, into the soul.
  1. What do you mean when you say “we live in a bubble”?
    Did I say that? Maybe I meant the Internet. We move part of our consciousness into the Internet, into a virtual world, believing it’s real. We don’t have to remember many things, because we can check them instantly, we don’t have time to meet with our real friends but at the same time we maintain superficial relations with 200 or even 1000 friends on Facebook.
  1. Did having a family change your attitude towards your art? Life?
    I don’t understand the question.

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  1. Why do you say that we have no clue about what is going on around us?
    The Internet changes our everyday behaviour; it influences our relations; it seduces us, making us addicted. We don’t know what its influence on our lives will be in the long run – on our emotions, selection of partners – ultimately, on our souls.
  1. How can someone be happy?
    Happiness is an overrated and abused term. Everybody wants to be happy on a daily basis. This is impossible. This compulsive aim to be happy directs the attention towards us; it’s the basis for everything else.
    However, as imperfect creatures, we are bound to suffer, to feel discontent; we are destined to build imperfect institutions and countries; our body switches off the older we become. Only if we accept this, can we reach an agreement with ourselves and achieve balance – maybe this is the state we should call happiness?
  1. What makes you happy?
    In general, giving to others. I experience that especially when I teach. This is all about giving your energy to other people, who then disappear from your sight and then suddenly sometime someday you hear that you’ve changed someone’s life.
  1. Tell us about the project you work on now in Poland?
    An opera about Poland. It’s a combination of a documentary film and contemporary opera. The libretto consists mainly of small ads from local newspapers and Internet blogs. It’s an attempt to describe the spiritual state of Poles, the release of some behaviours and habits that are related to choices we make in our private and public lives. I thought I was making a film about Poland, but at foreign screenings people say that it’s also a story about their own emotions towards their countries – something between being pissed off and being sentimental.
  1. Where will you put the EFA award?
    I don’t believe I’ll get it.

 

Doc-making, EN, Festivals, Interviews, People

Interview La Chana, IDFA’s Audience Award 2016

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La Chana is the portrait of the self-taught Gypsy dancer, Antonia Santiago Amado, an amazing flamenco dancer and with it the personal story of a now elderly woman. Excellent editing with archival dance scenes and highlights of her career (here with Peter Sellers in The Bobo). Full of humour and passion, a great scene where she talks about Dali, how he attended her performances bringing along his “cat”, his leopard, which was upset by her tap-dancing and roared!

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Lucija Stotevic the director and producer of the film originally comes from Croatia, but moved to Austria when she was 6. While studying architecture in Edinburgh, she discovered she loved film more, so she moved to the Czech Republic to study film for one very intensive year. After that, she moved to Barcelona, Spain, and started to work for production companies and independently doing video journalism for newspapers like The Guardian. La Chana was the reason why she set up her own production company. She produced and directed this feature-length documentary against all the financial obstacles for a newcomer. The film has participated in a series of workshops, such as EsoDoc and Rough Cut Boutique. Four years later, La Chana was premiering at Idfa Panorama and was also nominated for the best female-directed film. While this interview was taking place in her co-working space in Barcelona, her seven-month-old daughter was one floor above, playing in the baby facility provided by this co-working space.

Is it common in Spain to have a baby facility if you are a working woman? No, it’s a completely new thing; we are pioneers and trying it out. I was like, “This is perfect” because, she is depending on me, but I need to work. My poor baby is seven months old and has been to five countries in seven months.

So, you were pregnant while doing the film? During the editing process, my belly was just growing. So, I was thinking, if she doesn't have a sense of rhythm, I will be surprised. She is getting so much flamenco, she’d better have a good sense of rhythm.

_mg_9526Do you think your background in architecture influences this way of reacting and thinking? This structure you have, is it coming from there? There are overlaps between film and architecture. For example, in the working process, in both film and architecture, you work on different aspects and still always have an overall picture the whole time, too. It’s also a echnical and creative mix, and I think there are a lot of crossovers, which is actually why I got into film. I did my final project on editing theory in film and architecture and was looking at how these two things can influence each other in the creative process, in the way you think about montage and architecture and construction, and the way you think about montage and constructing through sequences in storytelling. There is similarity. During that period, I became much more interested in film than architecture, so my boyfriend at the time told me, ‘You seem so much more into the film aspect, why don't you just go to film school?’ and I thought that actually was not such a bad idea.

_mg_0760How did you meet La Chana?
I met her through my teacher, Beatriz del Pozo. La Chana is her ‘maestro’. Beatriz always talks about La Chana, about her rhythms, about her beats, about how she had fallen into the shadows and she shouldn't have because she is an amazing, wonderful artist and does things nobody else had done. She put some videos on for me when I was at her house, of La Chana dancing and I was just dumbstruck. I think the one that really struck me was the one where La Chana was dancing in The Bobo [the Peter Sellers film], where she is nineteen years old and looks like she is forty – the passion and the pain and the suffering – she was like a sorceress!
Beatriz suggested that we meet so we went to her home, and she prepared an amazing paella for us. She was very open with me from the beginning in terms of what happened to her, she just told me everything. There was so much story here, and this character was amazing. She could carry a film as an individual character – nothing else was necessary. I proposed we start working together, and the first thing she told me was, ‘OK, come to the party on Saturday. I am having my whole family here, but only you can come, you can’t bring any men with you, no camera guys, and if my family ask you, tell them that you are a student of mine.’ She was very careful, and what worried her the most was her own environment, and how they were going to react if they knew she was doing this film. But then, little by little, she became much more open about this.

It does come across in the film that she has this worry about how others will think of things and that she was always between these two things, what do others think and what is my own soul telling me. Exactly, very much so. It has always been a struggle for her, this combination of ‘this is me, this is what I want, what I am feeling and this is what I am supposed to be doing.

How did you deal with all these layers of her character, all these directions the film could take?
There were many directions the film could have taken, as there were many elements to deal with: her art, the social circumstances, the abuse. But I think going into general topics would have been a mistake. So, it was very important that we just stick to the core, and let her lead it, and just look more how these different things influenced her, rather than what they are. And La Chana’s core is her dance, her art. That’s why there is a narrative told through the transformation of the way you perceive her dance in the film. When you watch the early part of the film and you discover who she was, you see her dancing and you think, ‘Wow, amazing dancer,’ but it’s only when you find out those different obstacles that she had, that her dances take on other meanings, other layers. You understand all that emotional charge then. That was very important to me, that we go to where her core is – her music, her rhythm, her dance – and to do that we should understand her pain and her suffering and her environment, and her tragedy, and stay close to that.

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I could see the passion of La Chana but I could also feel your passion in doing this film. I am sure you had difficulties in many ways to make it. How did you balance these two roles – director and producer?
I think the way the documentary world is today, if I look at it from the producers’ perspective, most people would have just put this film into the drawer looking at it in terms of financing and what was possible to raise, unfortunately. That was one of my worries initially, because we started this film exactly when the crisis hit, so we had the problem that the arts were the first thing to get cut – production companies were closing left, right and centre. Everybody was telling me, ‘We love the film, we love the idea but we don't know if we are going to survive one more year, and it will be very difficult to get funding for your film.’ We had a lot of interest also at the international level, but this was complicated, because of the fact that it is character-driven, a human-interest story, but of a character who is not so well-known outside of Spain – I mean she is not so well known inside of Spain either, except to the older generation. Only Spanish is spoken, and it was very hard to find co-producers who could do anything. In the end, I established a production company in order to be able to produce it, and then we eventually started getting interest from a direct audience. We ended up raising a huge part, more than 50% of our budget, from individuals. Otherwise, it would have been impossible. It was funded by women mostly. Women wanted to watch this film.

4-17In a film like La Chana it is important that you are a woman. Do you think that the fact that you were a woman filmmaker made her trust you and open up to tell her story? Was it important that you were a woman?
I think so. She grew up in such a macho society that I think there are certain things that she would certainly not share with a man. It made it easier for her to relate to me and open up to me. Initially, one of the things I was worried about is that I am a foreigner and I think that played as an advantage for me because, especially in the beginning, she didn't feel threatened by me. She thought ‘the girl with the funny accent’, you know (laughing). That, in some way, helped her to relax.

You are not only stubborn, but very smart, too. I wanted to ask you a bit more about flamenco?
I am interested from an intellectual point of view but you can’t be shy and perform in flamenco. I absolutely adore it and I loved learning it, but I wouldn't describe myself as a flamenco dancer. In order to be really good, you need to be really raw and really let everything come out; show everything that you are. In flamenco for it to work you have to let all that fall, and I am too private of a person to do that.

In the film, you talk about the aging process, the loss of acceptance, but also the reinvention. You manage to do this very smoothly. I wanted to hear more about that coming from you, what are your thoughts about aging and reinvention?
What La Chana shows us in a very nice way is that you have to accept the passing of time and that you can do something with it; you don’t have to just sit there and do nothing anymore. She demonstrates it so beautifully, that you can’t let your passions die even if you are physically getting older. You have to find a way to change them into a format that you can still enjoy.

Through the film, you helped her do this also, to go back.
We kind of inspired her to go back on stage, which she loves; she loves the attention, she loves the audience, but she also loves being filmed. She is living with memories but quite isolated. Now, I think we won’t be able to stop her anymore (laughing) – she wants to go everywhere and is going to be the great diva again, and she will do anything.

_mg_0048What was her reaction when she saw the film?
She always said she prayed for us (the film team), but when I showed her the film in January she told me she stopped praying for me. Over a nine-month period.

Why?
She hated it; she had a really hard time with it, which was normal. I mean, I was expecting her to react, but she reacted very strongly. It might sound sadistic and horrible, but i thought, ‘OK, this is a good sign’. Because if she loved it from the beginning, it means we didn’t really go under the surface. It had to affect her; it wouldn't be normal if it didn’t affect her because it’s her life. There is a psychological process she never went through. It was extremely difficult, and she was very angry at me, but by the time we showed her a final version, after many months had passed, she had had time to process it and now stands behind it.

This is the films Trailer. The film won the audience award at IDFA 2016. Shoot in Barcelona, here is the video message to accept the award.

 

 

EN, Festivals, Interviews, People

Interview with Zaradasht Ahmed, dir. Nowhere to Hide

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Interview by Zaradasht Ahmed, director Nowhere to Hide IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary, to Dimitra Kouzi.

How did you get involved with this story?
Zaradasht Ahmed: The idea started in Afghanistan, back in 2008. The mainstream media was not telling the whole truth about the American and Coalition invasion of Afghanistan and its fight against Al-Qaeda and Taliban, so together with Dr. Husum (a human rights activist and war surgeon), we worked to recruit local medics and journalists to document first-hand information from areas where most of the media did not have access. We initially wanted to make a film on this “new war”. We called the project “the new war machine”. We focused on exploring the type of war: what it is; is it different; is it between countries (a frontal war); or is it transborder warfare without fronts. Two years later, in 2010, we moved the concept to Iraq. I was sure that this “new war” would emerge in cities there. That was our main intention. We started with that idea, but gradually we ended up with a character-based, very intense film about Nori. In this case, it was the situation that drove me to change the direction of the film, and not the other way round.

How did you meet Nori?
Nori was one of the twelve medics we trained in Iraq. He singled himself out by being very interested in documenting and filming in the areas called “no-go zones”; places organisations, doctors and journalists do not have access to. He did not know much about filming to start with, but he was interested, and he had the will. That is how it started. Nori comes from one of these “no-go zones” – a town called Jalawla, in Diayala Province in central Iraq.

Your origin is Kurdish and you live in Norway. How did you get there?
We eventually moved our “base” to Sulaymaniyah in Northern Iraq, where I originally come from. Diyala Province is three and a half hours from where I lived, and it is my mother’s home town. The medical organisation led by Dr. Husum and the local Kurdish doctor, Dr. Modhafar, was based in Sulaymaniyah, so it was natural that we ended up there. In addition, Sulaymaniyah is a safe base to work from.

You don't live in Sulaymaniyah anymore. How many years have you been living in Norway?
I have lived in Norway for 22 years.

Do you feel privileged because of that, or do you feel in as if you are still in exile? What is your relation to your home country?
After getting Norwegian citizenship I can move freely, and that makes me feel privileged. I have been living in exile since the early 1990s, soon to be 26 years now, so it is difficult to compare my situation to Nori’s. Nori has been forced to leave his home and has been placed in an IDP camp (a camp for Internally Displaced People), and it is important not to mix the terms “Internally Displaced People” with “people in exile”. I chose to leave because of the political situation in my country; Nori was forced. Therefore, my interest in following Nori’s story is not due to our similarities, to be honest. My other film, Fata Morgana, was about exile and the desire to seek a better life elsewhere.

You worked on this film for five long years.
I like long-term documentaries. I like to spend years on my films, on my subjects, on my characters because I believe that film is storytelling. It is also about some unique moments that we call the moments of truth. These moments won’t happen unless you spend a lot of time with your characters, you have to get behind many layers to reach the heart of what the feeling is; and the truth is often found under all these layers.

How much is your original footage in the film, and how much is Nori’s footage? When it comes to the footage, the entire shooting of the film has been a complicated process spanning over five years. We started with collecting material from several sources. Following the dramaturgy of the film, you could break it up simply like this: The first act is shot mainly by me, but when Nori starts to be trapped in Jalawla, he is on his own, and the first-hand accounts from the fall of the town, the collapse of the hospital through the fleeing all the way to the IDP camp was shot by Nori. Towards the end of the film, the scenes of returning to the hospital and the entire final act are mainly shot by me again.

How much material did you have? 300–400 hours.

How did you manage to make this storyline emerge out of all this material?
It is really difficult to answer that question. It is the result of team work. By being open to the changes, allowing me to go further, to focus more on Nori and his personal point of view. We went from a story with questions such as: “Is it possible to live in a war without fronts, without a visible army of only faceless solders?” to a personal story of one man and his family trying to survive a highly brutal warfare, told in a dramatic film. That was a major change for us. One of the toughest challenges making the film was not the material itself, but the need to pursue that material further, because once you start following a character you have to put all your effort into him, and you need to build the scenes that will enable you to create that storyline. In the middle of this process, Nori’s town became a living hell; suddenly ISIS came and the hospital was being bombed, he was targeted and had to flee with his family. At this point we could not leave him there, we had to keep following. I found myself sitting for days and nights in Iraq because I had no access into the area, as it was controlled by ISIS. So I was calling, directing, helping, cheering him up and constantly talking to him, because he felt really down during that phase.

To read the complete interview in PDF format click HERE
EN, Festivals, Interviews

Siberia is for lovers

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After a sold out premiere at IDFA read an interview with Olga Delane, the director of Siberian Love on love and marriage

Click to Watch the trailer 

What was your motivation to make this film?
I was immediately interested in Ljuba. I noticed that although she had a hard life she never complained. She did not struggle to change that and at the same time she seemed very happy and satisfied with her life. I was fascinated in her attitude towards life. She can do so many things, she is so talented. She can weave, saw, embroider; She sings, dances, bakes, cooks; she is as wise as in the Thousand and One Nights. It was clear to me while observing her that her power did not lie in ‘equality’ as we know it in the West, but in the fact that she was the complementary element in a relationship. So, I became interested in her relationship, and I started the film with her.
Then I decided to observe these people in the village, to get answers. Are they right? How do they go about things? How are they shaped by the traditional social conditions in their environment? How do they live and love? How do the interpret ‘happiness’?

What are the general characteristics of a Russian woman?
A Russian woman loves to show herself, to be feminine, to be adored by men, to be a woman is very important. Dressed luxuriously, in trim. A woman always has a fascinating secret. The ‘classical’ role. A Russian woman can’t deal easily with the ‘feminine’ side of man. I love to be a Russian in Germany. As a Russian woman I will always be excused. ‘She is foreign, a Russian, and on top of that an artist.’

And men?
Russian men are protectors. They will do anything to please their women. In Russia, a man takes full responsibility for the happiness of a woman. He will offer you everything. Will even replace your worn shoelaces. He will travel 800 km a day to buy fresh fruit and vegetables for you. On the other hand, they are not so courteous, and generally do not speak so much.

What misconceptions are there between East and West – Russians and Europeans?
How can we have an opinion without knowing each other 100%?

In your opinion, why are there so many people nowadays who are alone, unwilling to make a commitment?
It is because of too much freedom and too many choices. At 30, we are still ‘children’, unable to be responsible for ourselves. We cannot take the responsibility for somebody else, for a relationship. We are eager to stay in our comfort zone in every way. And we grow unused to dealing with the difficulties in a real-life relationship. You can’t expect your partner to be there just to make you happy.

What about feminism? Why are you about to answer immediately, ‘No, I am not a feminist!’
Because I am not! I was born in today’s Russia. There, there are specified roles, starting when you are at Kindergarten. I love to be a woman. I love to cook for my man, to wash his socks and sometimes even to iron. I love it when I feel the man’s power in a relationship, and when a man takes it upon himself to make me happy, while that makes him self-confident. This to me is a healthy relationship. In no way am I dependent on a man, or stripped off of my rights as a woman. On the contrary, I evolve as a woman, and my happiness is also transmitted to him. Yet, I can be happy by myself; I can fend for myself. Is there anything more beautiful? God has made us so different for a reason. I’m sure he had something in mind, and I do not underestimate that in any way.

Do you believe in love?
Of course I do! Without love there is no life!

What about marriage?
It is a magical ritual. But you do not have to believe in that. What we need today is spiritual power. Tradition provides roots for a harmonious coexistence.

What is the biggest cliché about women directors?
Once, I heard this comment when I went to a shooting wearing a tight cigarette skirt. A German woman told me, ‘Olga, you can’t go on a set dressed like this. You are a filmmaker now!’ That is perhaps a cliché.

Would you have any special advice to give to female directors?Actually, no. I know one thing. Women have great power in them. If they activate this power, they can make a fantastic experience. I wish that many women have this experience. The world will immediately change – everybody stands to benefit, especially women directors.

Name your favourite woman-directed film and why you love it.
For a few years now, I have been observing the highly talented Ekaterina Eremenko. I am a friend of hers, and that is why I speak about her. She has intensity and power that can seldom be found in a man. At work, she is like a tank, and at the same time she is a lady, a mother. That’s a beautiful combination for a modern woman, who always stays feminine.

 

EN, Festivals, Interviews, People, Press Kit, Screenings-Events

From Siberia with love

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Olga Delane, Interview to Dimitra Kouzi About her documentary Siberian LOVE official idfa selection 2016

What does a woman need to be happy and fulfilled? After 20 years of living in Berlin, the film director Olga goes back to her roots in a small Siberian village, where she is confronted with traditional views of relationships, life and love.

Dimitra Kouzi: Olga, where are you from?
Olga Delane: People consider me a Russian in Germany and a German in Russia. My great great grandmother’s name was Wilhelmine; she moved from Germany to Russia 200 years ago. The fact is that I am a German-Russian who moved back to Germany 20 years ago. I grew up under the Soviet culture, so I am a ‘Soviet’, too, even though the USSR is no longer. I was lucky to move to Germany with my parents when I was only 16 years old. Ultimately, I can feel at home everywhere. This is a great privilege.

What is your film about?
On the one hand, it is an opportunity for viewers to discover a place such as Siberia, which for most people is a remote, extreme and exotic place. How do people live in Siberia? You can experience that in the film. Viewers can feel very close to the people who live there. Get to know them. On the other hand, this is a film about relationships – human relationships between men and women, family relationships. This is the basic storyline for the film. I live in a country (Germany) in which there are many opportunities in all aspects of life. As a free person, I am tempted to try them all, to experience, to evolve. On the other hand, the pace of life prevents us from experiencing all that we want, and to evolve as human beings, to taste this life and learn from our choices. In this incredible and inexhaustible freedom, there is less and less room for family, relationships, children. We are a generation that cannot develop relationships.

How did you find the village?
A few years ago, in 2009, my father took me to the village and introduced me to relatives and friends. It is a Cossack village; once there lived 700 families, now there are only 50, mainly working on land and animal-farming. It’s a small scale. Here, people can dream that they will win one million, but they cannot ‘conceive’ a sum of one billion. When I first visited, word got around that I was an American journalist. If you carry a camera, you are a journalist for them.

Would you ‘survive’ in that village?
I haven’t tried. I know I need to be in constant motion: do projects, have plans; I have to do something all the time. I guess I would be very anxious, sooner or later, or even aggressive. I have the feeling that people there do not develop. Everything stays the same. Undoubtedly, when you arrive at a place like that, a village where time has stopped, devoid of big-city ‘temptations’, there is no pressure to have a ‘career; there is no advertising, no internet – there is no telephone line sometimes. You are then forced to deal with the inhabitants of this place, and with your own, Western lifestyle.

olga-schonWhat about the women?
The basis of a woman’s life in the village is caring, working and children. She is safe. We in our world are far away from that. We have much higher expectations, but in the meantime we lost track in dealing with this freedom.

What was your biggest challenge (technically and/or emotionally)?My first shock was when one of my leading characters refused to be in the film. A German woman who got married to a Siberian hunter. I had to travel two days by train and two days by boat to reach her. I lived in her village (population 57) for two weeks because there was no boat for me to leave. On the other hand, this enabled me to work very well. One month after filming, she decided she did not wish to participate in the film and prohibited me from using the material.
What was even harder was when, one night before leaving for Siberia, something happened to our cameraman and he had to cancel his trip. We only had 10 hours to find a replacement. It could not be someone from Germany, as we would have to get them a visa, and we could not afford new extra-expensive tickets to Siberia. A thriller. In the end, we found a solution. We found a young talented and motivated cameraman in Siberia who, in addition, had his own equipment. There were emotional difficulties, too. When one of my leading characters died.

Did this experience change you?
Yes, for me my protagonists are a symbol of endurance and strength. Despite their hard life they manage not to complain, but go through life as it comes. When I have problems, I immediately think of them and calm down. And what was for me only a suspicion before filming, that we need to keep our egos outside of a relationship, was confirmed. Yet, this is a huge process of working with ourselves.

Take us into your editing room. What decisions did you have to make while editing the film?
First of all, to decide to start editing! I have not been to film school. And I had only one prior experience. But for that previous film there were no financiers who had requirements. We just did what we liked. For Siberian Love, everybody had expectations already about where the story should go. And we had tons of material after four years of shooting. We had filmed using three different cameras in different qualities, and we had six families as protagonists. My editor, Phillip Gromov, with his passion, helped me a lot to manage all this enormous work. It is not important what you prefer, but how you will make a good film.

Click to Watch the trailer 

 

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I’m Not from Here Electronic Press Kit (EPK)

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Electronic Press Kit including interview with both Directors:
Press Kit

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The Director Maite Alberti (Chile)

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The Director Giedrė Žickytė (Lithuania)

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LA CHANA ELECTRONIC PRESS KIT (EPK)

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For Electronic Press Kit please click here:
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INTERVIEW
Interview with Lucija Stojevic (La Chana) by Dimitra Kouzi

STILLS
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EN, Interviews, People

Alberti & Žickytė about women directors and their film before the EFA awards

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maite-alberdiHow did you collaborate? What was it like working together? Maite: Through research we knew that, in the first stages of Alzheimer, early childhood is remembered. Based on theory, we imagined what would happen to an immigrant with Alzheimer. We hired a journalist who went to all nursing houses in Santiago and sent us a description of some 50 characters. Josebe was one of those. Her memory worked as we imagined, but it was an intense character, with a unique personality, which we would never have written, not even for fiction. She was our guide, which made this co-directing exercise flow with her.

Giedrė: Before coming to Chile I already knew, not only what Josebe looked like but also her likes and dislikes, where she lives, her daily routine, how she reacts, and this extensive research helped me and Maite to predict certain moments and when was a good time to turn the camera on and wait for a miracle to happen.
In the beginning, we considered re-creating the character’s past in fiction. When we started filming, we realised that reality gives us more and is far stronger than fiction!

Watch the trailer  vimeo.com/146804030

What is the message that you want to get across with this documentary?
Maite: We want to explore how the past determines us, even when we are unable to remember what happened yesterday. Alzheimer’s erases the present, but often our lives’ milestones remain alive in our minds. This is an exploration of how the past coexists with the present, creating a new reality from daily observations, a different, lucid portrait of mental illness, with humour and joy.

How did dealing with the issue of ageing, memory loss, Alzheimer’s disease and vulnerability affect you?
Maite: I think it posed a constant question for me, what I am going to remember if I lost my memory, where I am going to live in my mind. In fact, I have already lived the first part of my life, so I will probably not remember anything from here to my old age. That is weird, how we are determined by our childhood and adolescence: for example, during research it was amazing for me to see how people with Alzheimer who got married twice, think that the person that is taking care of them is their first wife/husband. Working with these issues gave rise to questions in my mind that I did not have before; it is not a concern for me – it is more a reflection on what I am going to remember.

Did this experience change you?
Giedrė: If you don't change while making your film, then there is no purpose in doing it – it shapes your life completely. Making this film, I asked myself, what is the most important thing in life? Another interesting thing is that it was for me a new environment, a new country and language, and what helped me to identify I think was Maite, and this was a very nice experience.

How do you get your film(s) funded? (Is it a studio film, a crowdsourced film, something in between?) Share some insights into how you got the film made.
Maite: The first stage of the film (research, development and shooting) was financed by CPH:DOX. All editing and post-production was financed by the Chilean national film fund and the Lithuanian Film Centre.

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The co-director of I'm not from Here Giedrė Žickytė (Lithuania)

What is the biggest cliché about women directors?
Maite: That women directors speak about women’s topics.

Would you have any special advice to give to female directors?Maite: When a man asks, who do you leave your family with when you are working (shooting, or traveling for work), ask him the same question.  Nobody asks men this questions. Why can’t we have a normal life and work in the cinema business at the same time?

How do you get your film(s) funded? (Is it a studio film, a crowdsourced film, something in between?) Share some insights into how you got the film made.
Maite: The first stage of the film (research, development and shooting) was financed by CPH:DOX. All editing and post-production was financed by the Chilean national film fund and the Lithuanian Film Centre.

Which is your favourite woman-directed film and why?
Maite: The Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel, because she was my inspiration when I was a student. For me, she is the only director that works with fiction and it really seems as if it were reality. I usually feel the fake in fiction, but with her I totally believe in her world.

Giedrė: Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. Because of its intelligence, subtlety and director’s trust in the audience. She is a brave director, and, what is most important, she explains by mood, gaze, atmosphere, touches, rather than words. From the avalanche of the current film industry, this movie is distinguished by its non-banal and ambiguous story until the very end, as we never hear what Bob whispers to Charlotte in the end. Indeed, it declines to polish all the details. This film I could watch again and again from whichever part of it. Sometimes, I deliberately start watching it from the middle. But, every time, watching it I feel catharsis, and this word I use very rarely, to be honest.

On the featured image: From left to right Producer Pato R. Gajardo, together with one of the two directors, the Chilean Maite Alberti, the editor Juan Eduardo Murillo and the Director of Photography Pablo Valdés.

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Siberian Love – Electronic Press Kit (EPK)

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Interview with Olga Delane, director, Siberian Love, to Dimitra Kouzi

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Olga Delane, Director Siberian Love
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EFA awards, EN, Interviews, People

CPH:DOX matchmake leads to an EFA-nominated short

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Interview with Maite Alberti and Giedrė Žickytė, directors of the EFA-nominated short film I am not from here, by Dimitra Kouzi

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Maite Alberti, Director

I am not from here is the result of an experiment: the two directors where matched by the CPH:DOX festival to co-direct a film in the course of one year. The two directors were especially interested in capturing the feeling of alienation inherent to immigration – and also, perhaps, to living in a nursing home: the feeling of not truly being at home. They decided to make their film in Chile, a country that saw an influx of immigration in the 20th century, and searched there for immigrants afflicted with Alzheimer’s. The short film is the portrait of Josebe, a woman from the Basque country living in a nursing home in Chile.  I am not from here, is not only multi-awarded it is now nominated for the EFA 2016.

Watch the trailer  vimeo.com/146804030

infh-gif-1What was your experience of CPH:DOX Lab?
Maite: I did not have so many expectations when I came to the CPH:DOX Lab, but it was a great experience. Αs it was not a traditional project – that you have been working on for a long time, with co-producers and involving international funds – I felt more free to experiment, a freedom I did not have in my other projects, and I worked on an idea that I was developing for a long time.
We had never met with Giedre before, so it was like a blind date, where we had to work and find common ground. We were both interested in working with memory from an alternative viewpoint: what you remember when all is forgotten.
Giedrė: Quite an experiment on the part of the Danish doc festival to match two different words – the post-Eastern-European socialist camp and post-Pinochet Chile. Both countries with a post-totalitarian trauma, as well as with vibrant cultural spheres. Filming in Chile was a completely different experience from my previous ones, because I do not speak the language. Therefore, I started to follow my intuition more strongly – body language, and other direct and indirect senses.

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Giedrė Žickytė, Director

What drew you to this story?
Giedrė: The fragility of passing time constantly concerns me. I come back to this theme in all my films, and it’s so sensitive that I can be moved to tears when I look at an old photograph, or listen to memories. Losing memory is something I fear for myself, so I tried to cope with this fear by searching for moments of light and hope in the story. My grandmother briefly suffered from dementia before she passed away. I was a child then and I have intermittent reminiscences, though some distinct moments haunt me, such as how weird I felt when we went to visit her and she didn’t recognise me.  But my strongest memory is how she felt unhappy and not herself when she had to leave her home. My father’s sister took care of my grandmother and after the stroke she needed to go to a sanatorium to recover. We visited her there; it was a sunny day, a garden with lot of trees and a house full of elderly people. I don’t remember what we did but I remember the ravishing feeling of absolute loneliness and emptiness there. I was afraid to be there. It was the first time in my life I experienced fear of getting old. Making this film, I missed my grandmother – I imagined her in Josebe’s place.

Maite: In 2010, I wrote and directed a theatre play about Alzheimer disease and I made a lot of research for that; I learnt a lot about that. I think Josebe is like one of my play characters, only better, because reality is always better than fiction. In fiction you cannot put too much crazy situations because they are unbelievable; in a documentary, this kind of situations are a gift from reality. All the stories that we can make up already exist – we just have to find them. For me, films are like a factory of experiences for the spectator.
After I wrote my play, I really wanted to find some of these characters in reality, and that was my goal with this story: to find a character with Alzheimer’s that really remembered her early stage of life in another place, but not to remember the present. So, at a certain moment you can feel she is completely in her right mind because she can remember everything; yet, little by little you realise that she is lost in the present. So, that is the question: What is reality? Sometimes reality is in your own mind – you can live in your memories, which keep you alive.

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How did you manage to achieve a cinematic feeling while filming everyday scenes in a natural environment?
Giedrė: I strongly believe that it is very important, not only what story the film is telling but how it is telling it. Before filming there, we researched the spaces in the house and the residents’ daily rituals there. Our task was to find a good position for the camera in each space, to frame a shot and wait for situations to happen, which we could guess about from our research. The film’s cinematographer, Pablo Valdes, who is a gifted and intuitive DOP, could instantly feel from our gazes if we wanted to move the frame or change the position. We needed our camera to be stationary, observational, so as not to destroy nor intrude into the fragile beauty and magic of the reality unfolding in front of our eyes.

Maite: I usually work in this style in documentaries. The documentary genre has sought to pursue great historical events as the narrative axis; however, politics and idiosyncratic social portraits can also be displayed based on the microcosm. Small situations from daily life that become exceptional can be more moving than explicit politics. In observational documentaries the question is, how to make extraordinary reality happen in front of the camera? I like to talk about “scheduling chance”. I am convinced that reality is cyclical, and those things that I observed during the research that were unique, happen again. For this to happen we need to be constant, patient and wait. For me, documentaries are an exercise in patience – waiting for things to happen in reality, without hurrying or pushing them, trusting that if one chooses the places and situations well, these will provide you with what you need. Each story and each character have their own way of being told and their own language. That is what we search for; the question is, what style does my character need to convey their subject and viewpoint.

What was your biggest challenge (technically and/or emotionally)?Giedrė: Before, I used to spend a lot of time with my protagonists and establish a relationship before I started shooting. Here, we had a totally different situation: Our protagonist, Josebe, did not recognise us. Every single day, we were like new persons to her. Secondly, I had to shoot a film in another language about a woman who feels she lives in another country. I was also the only one from abroad in that particular space, as was Josebe. I felt how the perception of the situations we were filming was under a totally new light due to not speaking the language.

Maite: I usually carry out extensive research, and I have a close relationship with my characters so as to prepare them for the shooting of the observational documentaries. I spend a long time with them before turning on the camera. In this case, I could not have that relationship, and it was weird for me. Every day was the first day – that was my challenge, in both research and while shooting; every day I had to explain to her who I was and what I was doing. At a certain point, we decided to put on nursery uniforms so that we could be part of her environment.

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Let us into your editing room. What decisions did you have to make while editing the film?
Giedrė: The raw material was already very strong, and our greatest challenge was how not to destroy this fragile magic of life by the editing.  Everything had to be very simple and accurate. Most decisions were made during editing; regarding the form, that was the moment where we discussed the most, rather than during filming.

Maite: The big decision in the editing room was to make a short film, rather than a feature documentary. Because there is a lot of time that nothing happened in that space, so for me it was not powerful enough material to do a feature-length. I think, with this kind of small stories, you must be prepared to decide during editing what kind of film it is. And it is better to make a good short film than a bad feature-length documentary. The other challenge was how to construct the character, show her not only as someone who does not remember, but also as a character that remembers her past. Because that was the interest thing about her: to not realise in the very beginning that she has Alzheimer’s, because when I met her, I did not realise it during my first approach. So I wanted to replicate that same experience with the audience.

Did you have a lot of contact with the characters (behind the scenes)? If so, what was your experience of that?
Giedrė: It was a very different and challenging experience for both of us, as we couldn’t establish a close relationship with our main character as what we were used to in our previous films.  Every day, we had to introduce ourselves to our protagonist, Josebe, and she didn’t remember that we had met and filmed the day before. We had to be very attentive to her mood changes, and pay attention that our presence did not disturb her. We couldn’t control her – where to go, where to sit, even what clothes to wear. For instance, one day she decided to put on a very different jacket, which was contrasting with the ones we had filmed her in before, but she refused to change. However, we could control where to place the camera, as Josebe and other elderlies had the same daily routine, the same rituals and we could prepare for that.

What do you think are the most serious problems that elderly people face nowadays?
Giedrė: There is a widespread perception that we live in the era of an elderly world. With a low birth-rate, aging population is a common phenomenon in many countries. Also in Lithuania, my native country. One would think that with the aging population, there would be more elderly people everywhere – public spaces, restaurants, streets. However, that is not the case. I feel that is due to the remains of post-soviet heritage, as in European countries I see elderly people being truly part of the society. On the other hand, in Western Europe I note another tendency: there are less strong family bonds, and the phenomenon of elderly people’s houses is much more common than in Eastern Europe.

Maite: I think there are completely different ways to live in our old age now. For example, in my previous film, Tea Time, it was completely the opposite of I’m not from here, even if the protagonists are in the same age. In Tea Time, they were enjoying their lives, in spite of the fact that they were old, too. Today, we can speak about the third and fourth age; we live longer and have more options when we are old. But if you are ill, I think the big problem is that now society is used to the retirement homes. A few years back, at least in Latin America, families lived together with the old people, now everybody decides to send the older people to retirement homes. I think it is not a good solution for all cases.

still-7What is Josebe (the main character) like now?
Maite: Six months after the original shooting, I went by myself to film some new takes, and it was impossible – Josebe was a new person