An interview with Marc Bauder, the director of Master of the Universe and creator of the Lichtgrenze (meaning border made out of light), the 8,000 glowing balloons that marked the former route of the Berlin Wall on the 25th anniversary of its Fall on Sunday 9/11/2014. Light artist Christopher Bauder and his filmmaker brother Marc began working on the concept for Lichtgrenze seven years ago, before the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall.
Light artist Christopher Bauder and his filmmaker brother Marc Bauder (Master of the Universe)
I talked with Marc Bauder about Lichtgrenze in Berlin 25 years after the Berlin Wall fell down and the premiere of his latest documentary Master of the Universe (distributed by CineDoc), which premiers in Greece and four other countries (France, the Netherlands, Poland and Italy) and was recently nominated for the European Film Award 2014.
You can listen to my questions and his replies in the interview below:
1. From Concrete to Baloons, Berlin after 25 years. What's the difference?
2. What made you think about the Baloons, and what was the challenge about this project?
3. Greece is in a very bad financial situation. Many Greeks feel that it is mainly the Germans who set the rules in their country (financially and in politics). What is your opinion?
4. Do you have a special message for the Greek premiere of Master of the Universe and your Greek audience?
5. You are very interested in financial stories - what is your next project about?
"Our film was shoot from 2012 to August 2013. The situation is now much worse." Syria - Faces of War was chosen for its "serious, crucial and honest" view of real war. The film is based on the photographs of Finnish photographer Niklas Meltio, and is directed by Yle's Vesa Toijonen and Ari Lehikoinen (left).
This is the second year running that a Prix Europa award has gone to a Finnish production - last year the documentary The Punk Syndrome scooped the best TV documentary prize for its colorful portrayal of a rock band suffering from learning disabilities.
This year it was a Finnish documentary who has won the Prix Europa award for Best European TV current affairs programme in Berlin!
Prix Europa 2014, at the Haus des Rundfunks
Syria - Faces of War was chosen for its "serious, crucial and honest" view of real war. The film is based on the photographs of Finnish photographer Niklas Meltio, and is directed by Yle's Vesa Toijonen and Ari Lehikoinen. Accepting his award, director Ari Lehikoinen dedicated the win to all the journalists killed during the Syrian conflict. And here is the interview with both the directors Vesa Toijonen and Ari Lehikoinen.
How would you describe the world that we live today to someone who does not know anything about it?
The world is a mess. There are an awful lot of things going on that need understanding and explanation. Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.
What was your personal experience in Syria? VESA: It was not as bad as I expected - after following the media coverage. I compared the situation with my experience in Sarajevo during the war. In Aleppo there was electricity and running water even in the front line. We had tea and there was a possibility to use toilet before filming the fighters. In Sarajevo this was out of question!
There seemed to be food and medicine available - unlike, again. in Sarajevo. And of course Aleppo was not besieged like Sarajevo - nobody stopped us from driving into the city. No way in Sarajevo.
The city of Aleppo was destroyed but less than one could expect according to news reports. Buildings in the front lines, yes, but a couple of blocks behind the lines the life continued quite normally. But the life was not normal, that is sure.
ARI: Wars have to be portrayed authentically, although many seem to think it doesn’t really go with your morning coffee. Wars are often sugar-coated in the media. We try to avoid that. Our film was shoot from 2012 to August 2013. The situation is now much worse.
What were the difficulties that you have to overcome while shooting and editing the film? In Aleppo and in Syria we faced the normal difficulties: snipers, risk of shelling and air-bombing. We took a lot of time to avoid the troops that had started kidnapping visiting foreigners. Yet, we managed to have lunch in a same restaurant with al-Nusra fighters.
In the desert between Iraq and Syria the most difficult was to balance between the desperate refugees and your own feelings to help them. And yet you can not - we are there to film their escape, not to distribute water or food. Some people understand, not everyone.
When we start cut the film the editor said; “What a hell, so much stills, don’t you know that we should make a movie!”
Did you try to make an objective film? VESA: We always do, but personally I learned a very important lesson in Sarajevo when I tried to explain the concept of objectivism in Western journalism. "So you mean that we should all be treated equally, also the sniper who is trying to kill me when I carry water buckets and can not escape", my landlady asked me one cold morning. We waited a "safe" moment to fill the water tanks in her apartment. Since that discussion I think that there is a difference between a sniper and a victim and objectivity is not always the main purpose.
ARI: There is such fine line between the objective documentary and biased one. It’s quite hard to find a documentary which I would consider to be truly objective, but I do think that it’s possible to objectively capture reality in some documentaries.
The only way to give face to this war, was to be on the ground with the men, women and children who are central to it.
Please describe your film in 2-3 lines.
It is a true story.
War is ugly. True faces of the war; raw, grotesque and full of tears and pain.
What can't we see in the film? The most horrified pictures .
We were also very careful choosing images of patients in a psychiatric hospital in Aleppo. People were left alone in a makeshift hospital, without medication. We wanted to respect these people and left out most of the pictures.
What is your next film about? ARI: My film is “Skeleton in the closet”. It’s totally different film than “Faces of war”. It’s one man’s story. We all have secrets: the ones we keep, and the ones that are kept from us. VESA: One carries working title "Frozen war". It is about the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. the war has stopped - but only for a moment and there are speculations that Russian politicians would like to freeze the situation as it is now - to control it better.
People living in war torn villages do not care about speculations. They would like to get their houses warm before winter comes. Refugees would like to go back but they can not. They suffer between war and peace. We also show how a real "frozen war" looks like. Refugees in Nagorno-Karabakh have waited 20 years that one way or another the confict could be solved and they could return to their houses. But the houses do not exist any more. Only ruins are left. - so is this also the future for Ukraine?
It seams to me that a lot of people in Europe have forgotten or care less about what is still happening in Syria. Why? We have a nice word for this: we "war-fatigue". We grow tired when there is no progress. Actually we all grow tired, not only journalists and our audiences, but politicians who try to find solutions, aid workers, even fighters become apathetic or desperate. And local people, both those who decided to stay and refugees in camps all over Middle East.
For the online category the Jury members, after watching and discussing the projects, vote on:
Concept
Innovation
Public value
Production Quality
Overall appeal
They can give 1-10 points, meaning: weak, okay, good, very good, exceptional. It is a very democratic system to choose the winners!
Silvia Costeloe from the BBC ("Using new technologies effectively to tell the stories has always been the heart of my work”), Coordinator at Prix Europa of the Online Jury Group, here with Jo Raknes, creative officer in the content development department at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, also Coordinator of the Online Jury at Prix EuropaBeing so inspired can be exhausting!
Tips:
Have a look at ARTE's Type : Ryder a game-documentary about the history of typography.
The Online category will be completed on October 23,so do not miss Synaps a great online interactive experience. You can choose from a collection of Super 8 film clips spanning from the 1940s to date. They are drawn from the film When I will be a Dictator by Yael Andre.
Once again it's time for this year's Prix Europa in Berlin! Although I'm personally involved in the festival since 2011, I can't help but recommend it as a showcase for Europe’s best television, radio and online productions.
A total of 13 PRIX EUROPA Trophies will be awarded. This year's competition includes 210 entries handpicked from more than 650 projects by 294 organizations from 35 countries.
Media professionals from all over the continent flock to Berlin in October 18-24 to watch the films, listen to radio projects, surf through websites and vigorously debate the nominated productions. There are no juries like in other festivals. The juries in Prix Europa categories are the nominees themselves! Starting Monday October 20 2014 they will watch all the nominated projects in their respective categories; every afternoon they will discuss and vote, and on Friday the winners will be announced.
Listen to an interview with the directors of the fantastic Meet the Fokkens, TV Documentary 2012 winners.
The festival is open to visitors. If you are involved in the media business, a director, producer in TV or Radio, a journalist, or a student, it's totally worth it to visit Berlin's Haus des Rundfunks, next to the broadcasting headquarters of the Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg. It is a great opportunity for networking and inspiration! Check out this year's exciting entries in the programme.
PRIX EUROPA is organized by a coalition of 28 major European broadcasters and institutions, including the European Broadcasting Union.
How about a look back at the 2013 winners to relieve the tension?
The Talent Dove of the Sparkasse Leipzig Media Foundation, the top prize in the Young Cinema Competition, went to Kaveh Bakhtiari for the Swiss-French production L’Escale (Stop-Over). The prize money of €10,000 is intended to serve as seed funding for the Iranian-born director’s next documentary project. You can immediately feel the Iranian realism, and that is strange because this time it's a documentary.
When I saw the documentary at DOK Leipzig I had the feeling that I discovered something very special. A film set in Athens, showing what is going on with irregular immigrants. It gives a human face to what we normally regard as mere statistics.
Kaveh Bakhtiari spends a year in a flat shared by irregular immigrants in Athens. Along with him are his cousin and others who are stuck in Athens, hoping to find a way to move on to Germany, Norway, or any other European country where they can find a job and survive. The filmmaker follows them in Athens and the result is a poignant, poetic film.
Greece's geographical location and extensive, island-fringed coastlines have long made it a natural stopping-point for people from the Middle East seeking better opportunities elsewhere, with consequences that have become a major domestic political concern in the country over the last few years. This wider picture isn't part of Bakhtiari's remit - instead, his reportage examines the human cost of the situation. Sequences in Amir's unofficial guest-house alternate with external footage in which Bakhtiari accompanies Mohsen and company on their forays into the city, where they're in constant fear of attracting official attention. Through the film you get to know another face of Athens.
Claas Danielsen, DOK Leipzig director, described the film in his opening talk last week in Leipzig:
"And those who see the young Iranians in Kaveh Bakhtiari's film Stop-Over while they desperately risk their lives to arrive in the West, next time they see images of irregular immigrants in the high-security borders of Europe they won't be able to look indifferently the other way."
I myself will never forget the curtain of this small apartment. This image haunts me every time I pass by a basement in Athens.
The film is this year's CineDoc premiere on October 8 2014, 20.00 at the French Institute in Athens (31, Sina Str.).
The film will be followed by a discussion led by journalist Maria Psara, a Migrant Kitchen event by Culinary Backstreets Athens and Give Hope Charity Foundation, and live music from the Eastern-Mediterranean region by Michalis Klapakis and his group Ta Daktyla tis Ekatis.
If you are located in the Balkans or have a project related to the area and you want to develop your film with the best assistance and care, here is where you should apply. The first session was in Sofia Bulgaria in May and the second starts 21/8 in Prizren.
Luigi Pepe (Executive Producer) and the Director and Editor Silvia Poeta from Italy working in one by one meetings with the Bulgarian director Ilian Metev (Sofia's Last Ambulance, a feature-length observational documentary film co-production of Germany, Bulgaria, and Croatia) in Sofia in May 2014
EDN (European Documentary Network) Director Paul Pauwels and the Producer and CEO of the BDC Martichka Bozhilova
The BDC Team !
The Serbian Director Boris Mitic about financing documentaries and C.E.archetypes !
BALKAN DOCUMENTARY CENTER WORKSHOP
BDC Discoveries 2014 is a project development workshop, aimed at uniting professionals with documentary projects with an international potential. Module Prizren is focused on training sessions related to packaging the projects for the international market. A final pitch in front of a jury consisting of experts will give the participants feedback about their work and the much needed experience.
Place: DokuKino Conference Room
Open to participants only
Date: 20 – 24 August
In between screenings and late night parties, DokuFest in Prizren (16-24/8) will continue the tradition of hosting a variety of panels.
DEALING WITH THE PAST (August 18, 17:30h)
Debate and open discussion about experiences in peace building, tolerance and dealing with the past in protracted social conflicts.
Moderator: Adriatik Kelmendi
Panelists: Enver Robelli, Reuf Bajrovic. Predrag Bambic
Place: Mullini, Marash Park
COMPLEX CITIES (19 August, 17:30 h)
A conversation between architects, urban planners and anthropologist on public space and the collective memory of city life.
Panelists: Rozafa Basha, Gezim Pacarizi, Dukagjin Hasimja, Nita Luci and Astrit Hajrullahu
Place: Mullini, Marash Park
The Danish Film Institute (DFI) has minor-coproduction schemes for feature fiction and animation films with three deadlines a year, and for short and documentary films with two deadlines a year. DFI may support 6-9 minor co-productions in feature films and 4-6 minors in short and documentary films a year.Read more: http://www.dfi-film.dk/how-to-co-produce-with-denmark-feature
The person you have to contact is Noemi Ferrer Schwenk. She coordinates the Danish Film Institute’s work with international co-productions and is one of the key figures in the Film Institute’s overall international activities.
Let's get personal was the motto of this year's DOK INCUBATOR at the Leipziger Pfefermühle. And the presentation was full with people who came to see the nine selected documentaries. A fine initiate witch started by Andrea Prenghyova, the creator of the DOK.Incubator in collaboration with DOK Leipzig three years ago..
Dok Incubator is a course that runs for three weeks, during half a year, where you apply with a rough cut.
They work with the teams of director, editor and Producer, with their films, to improve their film and work with the producers and teams to learn how to do international financing and distribution. They also work with the films to make them more international as well. Director and editor has cooperation with big european editors to improve the films. The course is held in different European cities. It is a media supported program like EAVE, but just for documentaries in post production.
Claas Danielsen, the DOK Leipzig Director, together with Andrea Prenghyova – creator of the DOK.Incubator, journalist, film maker, documentary film producer and founder of Institute of Documentary Prague, and Ilo von Seckendorff.
There are some people everybody in the documentary business should know. So that's why I will start to introduce you to some of the doc legends! I will start with Tue Steen Müller my Danish friend and mentor. Its not a coincidence that he was given the EDN award this year in Thessaloniki at the doc festival for an outstanding contribution to the European documentary culture.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you do not know him already let me introduce you to Tue Steen Müller.
He is the one who encouraged and inspired me to get involved in this lovely field, and for that I owe him a lot! Thank you Tue!
Born 1947. Danish. He worked with short and documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board - as press secretary, head of distribution and information and as a commissioning editor. He's co-founder of Balticum Film and TVFestival, Filmkontakt Nord and Documentary of the EU. He has travelled to European short and documentary festivals often to be seated as a jury member. He has given documentary courses and seminars in more than 30 countries. In 2004 he was awarded the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. In 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. From 1996 until 2005 he was director of EDN (European Documentary Network). He has written articles for national and international newspapers and magazines. From 2006 he has been a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. From September 2007-2013 he taught at the Zelig Documentary Film School, Bolzano, Italy. He writes (almost) daily about documentaries in English on www.filmkommentaren.dk
