The Magnificent Seven - European feature documentary film festival

Young and Old

This years' selection of seven films was sequenced in a loosely thematic manner, with those more intimate, warm, human stories. (e.g. Blind Loves by Juraj Lehotský, The Mother by Antoine Cattin and Pavel Kostomarov). On the other hand, films such as Shake the Devil Off (by Peter Entell), All White in Barking (by Marc Isaacs) and Gideon Koppel's Sleep Furiously all in their own ways, dealt with societies put into changing times, when good old life is just not good enough


By MARIJA CVETKOVIĆ
from Belgrade, SERBIA


This has been the 5th festival so far and the organizers had a plan of declaring the documentary genre a perfect media for capturing vivid imagination. The imagination in handling the real life, its facts, events and stories, with no aversion at all, with "modern and attractive means - sound effects, animation and computer effects." These sentiments hit the nail; the interest was so great that the big auditorium of Sava Center was filled to capacity, much to astonishment of many, even the festival selector Tue Steen Müller.

This years' selection of seven films was sequenced in a loosely thematic manner, with those more intimate, warm, human stories. (e.g. Blind Loves by Juraj Lehotský, The Mother by Antoine Cattin and Pavel Kostomarov).

There is also a somewhat more modern film Vesterbro directed by Michael Noer. The film is shaped as a Myspace project, in which the protagonists use a camera to show their daily lives, as they would on their myspace profiles. By the way, a similarly conceptualised venture was previously taken by Nokia in its campaign, the only difference being the use of facebook instead of myspace site.

On the other hand, films such as Shake the Devil Off (by Peter Entell), All White in Barking (by Marc Isaacs) and Gideon Koppel's Sleep Furiously all in their own ways, dealt with societies put into changing times, when good old life is just not good enough.

Heddi Honigmann's Oblivion is a collage of the faraway, exotic nights in Lima, where the charade of the ruling infects the commoners, who start acting as if in circus, juggling and walking on a thightrope.

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Shake the Devil Off by Piter Entell

'NOW STOP THAT CRYING, HONEY DEAR
THE JACKSON SQUARE REMAINS STILL HERE
IN SUNNY NEW ORLEANS
IN LOVELY LOUISIANA…'

Entell's centre of attention lies in a dispute over what will happen to a local church in this Katrina-stricken New Orleans district. Will it be the old, charismatic Father Ledoux , or will the curch be closed by the archdiocese. The film briefly touches the intentions behind closing it - cheaply buying the land off, mostly the land of local African Americans.

The director had in mind the intense colours and distinctive smells of the mistique, voodoo New Orleande it once was; in reality, however, after the hurricane there is not much left of the scenery. As a result, the film lasted too long, as the directors wish was to film anything that would remind us of the old days of glory, and the central question is not developed, and fails to be central and important. After all, the church was neither torn down, nor closed ; only the priest is changed. As for the hurricane, there are some hints from the inhabitants and a few scenes, but all too veiled.

That is why the citizens' engagement in the dispute over the priest took a shape of something pre-directed, in a wish to actualise their worries and poverty, now that they are old news.

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'Sleep Furiously', Gideon Kopel

'Sleep Furiously' represents recordings of Welsh scenery that has a personal importance to the author and the people he grew up with. The film however is rather difficult to grasp, and the festival pamphlets mentioning Dylan Thomas, Noam Chomsky and others did not help much putting the pictures together in something with a better developed structure. Possibly it has a structure and sense only for people who have similar experience with Wales.

The spirit of all times is easily seen in old habits that did not die there. The inhabitants of this small town have a lovely ''library on wheels", which enables the elderly members to continue reading, there are sheep competitions, and so on.

Rough-cast images of countryside or oldfashioned farm activities, the people with their interests and conversations are an idealic landscape of a surrounded Arcadia which the author wishes to place into eternity, because the people and the nature have somehow bonded and preserve them from age and time, the modern times and its eventual end. However, Kopel does not want to have a harrative to his film, nor to define his work as a documentary. He declared it a lyrical film, doing himself an ill turn, because such a film would be bound to have more poetry to it and more meaning.

As it is, 'Sleep Furiously' remains his great personal moment that he tried to share but the langage he used pervented it.


(Published: 10.02.2009.)