WHAT IS DOCUMENTARY FILM?

FIRST PERSON | Peter Broderick: 'Welcome To The New World of Distribution,' Part 1

2009-11-15T21:44:00.000+09:00

FIRST PERSON | Peter Broderick: 'Welcome To The New World of Distribution,' Part 1

"Daughter of Chorolque" is going to be distributed by Docalliancefilms

2009-11-08T12:47:00.008+09:00

My film 'Daughter of Chorolque' is going to be distributed by Docalliancefilms which is new online platform for distribution of documentary films and experimental films, and associates five European film festivals, CPH:DOX Copenhagen, Doc Planete Review Warsaw, IDFF Jihlava, DOK Leipzig, Vision du Reel Nyon.

"Cinema Verite : A Moment in History" - Sylvain L'Esperance

2009-08-29T16:38:00.004+09:00

Cinema Verite - The Fly on the wall

; Sylvain L'Esperance - Cinema Verite : A Moment in History
"Documentary is a space, a practice that allows for all forms of subjective expression. It's a form of art unto itself", says Montreal -based director and producer Sylvain L'Esperance. He addresses social issues with formal rigour in films like Uncertain Springtimes, on the declining fortunes of a working-class neighbours, and two films about globalization - Pendant que fombent les arbres and Le Temps qu'il fait. His 2006 film The River Where We Live provides a vivid account of rural life along the Niger River making effective use of sound and the spoken word. He brings a formatoin in Fine Arts to his work

"At the start of Direct Cinema people talked about "Truth Cinema" But many filmmakers quickly stepped back from this notion. The term exists to name a moment in the history of documentary, but this so-called "cinema of truth" is anything but truth. What it shows is the truth of a subjective relationship, maybe. But certainly not an objective truth. We learned, with these first steps in direct cinema, the extent to which the films being produced were eminently personal. You can't separate the reality that Pierre Perrault filmed, or Arthur Lamothe or Gilles Groulx filmed from the personality of the filmmaker who made those films. For me there is a truth, that of the filmmaker and the authenticity of his relationship with the people he's filming"

"Sound Meets image" - Machel Brault

2009-08-29T14:27:00.005+09:00

Cinema Verite : The Fly on the Wall

; Michel Brault - Sound meets image
Michel Brault is a Quebec cinematographer, cameraman, film director, screenwriter and film producer. He is a leading figure of Direct Cinema and cinéma vérité which were characteristic of the French half of the National Film Board of Canada in the 1960s. Brault was a pioneer of the hand-held camera aesthetic. [1]
In the 1960s, Brault collaborated with the French Nouvelle Vague, notably with Jean Rouch, and introduced the cinéma vérité techniques in Europe. He directed his first documentary short film for the National Film Board, the influential Les Raquetteurs in 1958.[2] He was the cinematographer for a number of the most famous of the NFB documentaries in the 1960s, including Pierre Perrault's Pour la suite du monde, which Brault co-directed, and for key Canadian films of the 1970's such as Claude Jutra's Kamouraska and Mon Oncle Antoine and Francis Mankiewicz's Les Bons débarras.
In 1974, Brault directed Les Ordres, about the 1970 October crisis and won the 1975 Cannes Film Festival award for best director.

"You can't tell the truth:you can reveal," says Quebec filmmaker Michel Brault, addressing the implicit claims of cimema verite. He prefers the term cinema direct, a style he helped define at the National film Board in the late '50s. In collaboration with such figures as Claude Jutra, Gilles Groulx, Pierre Perrault and Marcel Carriere, Brault broke new ground with handheld camera. He was cinematographer on The Snowshoers amd co-directed Pour lasuite du monde - seminal cinema direcr titles - and did the camera for Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin's Chronicle of a Summer, often cited as the first European cinema direct documentary. He's also shot features, including Kamouraska and the landmark Mononcle Antoine. He earned a Best Director Award at Cannes for Orders (1974). He was an important public figure in Quebec's Quiet Revolution, and much of his work is concerned with Quebec culture and politics.

"For The Snowshoers, in 1958 there were do hand-held cameras, I'm talking a lot about technique, but that was...As I said, style works hand-in-hand with technique. We paid attention to technique because we had to. So I head out to film a piece, on this gathering of snowshoers and I have a 35mm camera because the film is slated to screen in movie theaters so it's 35mm. A big camera but portable, an Arriflex. It's Sunday morning, I'm filming the keys ceremony. they are silent shots. All of sudden Marcel Carriere arrives. I see him come in-in the frame-with a Mayhak, a spring-wound tape recorder, we see him recording the sound. So, I filmed my first shot in cinema direct. these keys welcoming you, Mr. President of the American Union of Snowshoers. Well, we didn't realize at first...Gilles Groulx, the editor, realized he could re-sync the sound and picture just for the little speech by the mayor to those Americans. It was great. We had our first synched shot! The rest of The Snowshoers was music and sound effects done in studio because that's how it was done at the time. And we were against that. What was really great was that the film was invited to the Santa Babara Festival by Mrs Flaherty, who organized the Flaherty Seminars. Jean Rouche was the special guest, and so I decided to go, and we met. The next year, he invited me to Paris. That's it. That was the start of a great adventure...the story of direct cinema"

"It's Not a Friendship" - Eduardo Coutinho

2009-08-29T12:25:00.004+09:00

Casting From Real Life

; Eduardo Coutinho - It's Not a Friendship
"I make films about the act of filming. It's always about that," says Eduardo Coutinho the accomplished Brazilian documentarian renowned for his minimalist style and remarkable interviews. Countinho's unadorned documentaries create striking portaits of ordinary people. His work has been an ongoing and deeping mediation on the act of listening and the act of filming, focusing on the unique moment, the word, that is born of the exchange between subject and filmmaker. Coutinho started his career in fiction (he was the screenwriter in Dona flor and Her Two Husband), worked many years as a journalist and dedicated himself to docuementary since the 1980s. He was the 2007 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Gramado Film Festival.

"I don't have romantic illusions of becoming friends of with my subjects. It's a lie. I never see them again. I spend an hour with them, a year later I call them for a pre-screening and never see them again. If I run into them, I say "Hi" But It's over. Why stay friends? Why? I don't want their daily routine. Routine is awful. Documentary is a lie. Documentary is a summing up. The most wonderful people I've filmed with, if I spent 48 hours with them, I'd go crazy. It's pure romanticism, this idea. Some people are saint. Flaherty spent 20 years in Siberia...in Canada also. An anthropologist might spend 7 years somewhere. Not me. I do some research. I have an hour of contact, I invite them to the film. "Like it?" Ciao. I'm enormously grateful to them, but it would be a lie if we continued to be friends."

"Inventing Oneself for the camera" - Eduardo Coutinho

2009-08-29T12:22:00.005+09:00

Casting From Real Life

; Eduardo Coutinho - Inventing Oneself for the camera
"I make films about the act of filming. It's always about that," says Eduardo Coutinho the accomplished Brazilian documentarian renowned for his minimalist style and remarkable interviews. Countinho's unadorned documentaries create striking portaits of ordinary people. His work has been an ongoing and deeping mediation on the act of listening and the act of filming, focusing on the unique moment, the word, that is born of the exchange between subject and filmmaker. Coutinho started his career in fiction (he was the screenwriter in Dona flor and Her Two Husband), worked many years as a journalist and dedicated himself to docuementary since the 1980s. He was the 2007 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Gramado Film Festival.

"What is a character? A character is a person who invents himself before the camera. He talks about the past through memory. Memory is false and true, which is what interests me. I'm not fact-checking. I'm not asking him about historical facts, but about his life, his free to invent his life story. If he invents well it's good, if he invents badly.... There are good and bad exhibitionist. It depends"

"Even the first doc was Fiction" - Peter Wintonick

2009-08-29T12:12:00.004+09:00

What is documentary film?

; Peter Wintonick - Even the first doc was Fiction!
Peter Wintonick (born 1953, Trenton, Canada) is an independent documentary filmmaker based in Montreal, Canada. A winner of the 2006 Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts, former Thinker in Residence for the Premier of South Australia, prolific award winning filmmaker, he is one of Canada's best known international documentarians. He currently runs Necessary Illusions Productions along with his partner Francis Miquet. Wintonick is one of the founders of DocAgora, an event inserted into various film festivals showcasing cutting-edge digital strategies.

"I visited the Lumiere Factory in Lion, France where reportedly the first documentary was ever made, which was the workers from the Lumiere photographic factory coming out of the factory doors. So when.. with my daughter to the factory doors and started thinking about what a documentary was.
In fact the first documentary wasn't a documentary, it was a...had a camera set up outside the factory doors but the workers coming out of the Lumiere Factory have been told to go home to change into better clothing. So for me, that sort of puts it into the rim of fiction, and they had... went through, I think, three or four takes coming out of the door to get the perfect shots...again the first documentary was a fiction, and I think since then it's been a really difficult journey to really figure out what a documentary is and let alone what a good documentary is"

"Making sense of the world" - Jean-Daniel Lafond

2009-08-29T11:53:00.018+09:00

What is documentary film?

; Jean-Daniel Lafond - Making sense of the world
Lafond was born in France during the liberation of Paris from the Nazis. He subsequently taught philosophy from 1971 "while pursuing research in audio-visual training and communications". In 1974 Lafond left France for Quebec and became a Canadian citizen in 1984. After teaching at the Université de Montréal he left the university to focus on film-making, radio and writing.
From his first marriage Lafond has two daughters Estelle and Élise, as well as two grandchildren. With his current wife Governor General Michaëlle Jean he has daughter Marie-Éden (born 98 or 99), adopted from Haiti.

"Documentary's role is to try to build a dam to hold back the waters a while and try to understand what's going on, assess it.
But to do this while the current is running.
Life doesn't stop for it.
So we try to create a tiny bit of meaning.
With documentary I think, and maybe in art in general
It's maybe in this sense that documentary is a work of art when it tries to humanize, just a bit more, humanity"

"Form and Content : An intimate relationship" - Sylvain L'Esperance

2009-08-23T21:49:00.009+09:00

What is documentary film?

Sylvain L'Esperance - Form and Content : An intimate relationship
"Documentary is a space, a practice that allows for all forms of subjective expression. It's a form of art unto itself", says Montreal -based director and producer Sylvain L'Esperance. He addresses social issues with formal rigour in films like Uncertain Springtimes, on the declining fortunes of a working-class neighbours, and two films about globalization - Pendant que fombent les arbres and Le Temps qu'il fait. His 2006 film The River Where We Live provides a vivid account of rural life along the Niger River making effective use of sound and the spoken word. He brings a formatoin in Fine Arts to his work

Red Eye Prize

2009-08-23T21:08:00.002+09:00

The Red Eye Prize awarded by Bolivian Human Rights Film Festival

Screening of 'Daughter of Chorolque'

2009-08-22T23:45:00.004+09:00

부산국제영화제 [월드 프리미어] 상영 2007
Pusan International Film Festival

스위스 블랙무비 영화제 초청 2008
Black Movie Film Festival
http://www.blackmovie.ch/en/film.php?id=17

제3회 여성인권영화제 초청 2008
http://www.fiwom.org/program/s3_chorolque.php

뮌헨 국제 다큐멘터리 영화제 초청 2008
DOK.FEST Munich
http://www.dokfest-muenchen.de/filme_view_web.php?fid=1912

체코 원월드 국제 인권 영화제 초청 2008
ONE WORLD International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival

슬로바키아 원월드 국제 인권 영화제 초청 2008
The 9th International documentary film festival ONE WORLD
http://www.jedensvet.sk/index.php?ID=245

베를린 원월드 국제 인권 영화제 초청 2008
ONE WORLD Berlin 2008
http://www.oneworld-berlin.de/programm/timetable/termin/381/eventdata/daughter-of-chorolque/

볼리비아 인권 영화제 초청 2008
Bolivia Human Rights Film Festival / RED EYE 상 수상

델리 국제민족학 영화제 초청 2008
Delhi International Ethnographic Film Festival

이란 국제 다큐멘터리 영화제 '시네마 베리테' 섹션 초청 2008
Iran International Documentary Film Festival
http://inte.irandocfest.ir/Irandocfest/nc_mirror.html

대만 국제 다큐멘터리 영화제 'AND' 섹션 초청 2008
Taiwan International Documentary Festival
http://www.tidf.org.tw/2008/en/programone.php?uid=98&fcid=7

호주 아들레이드 영화제 초청 2009
Bigpond Adelaide Film Festival
http://aff09.katalyst.com.au/program/show/53

이태리 티렌토 영화제 초청 2009
57th Trento Film Festival

에스토니아 파누 국제 다큐멘터리 & 인류학 영화제 2009
Parnu International Documentary and Anthropology Film Festival
http://www.chaplin.ee/filmfestival/program-public.htm

"Our Own Take reality" - Patricio Guzman

2009-08-22T13:36:00.011+09:00

What is documentary film?

; Patricio Guzman - Our Own Take reality
Patricio Guzmán is born in 1941 in Santiago, Chile.
He attends the Official Cinematography School in Madrid, where he dedicates his studies to documentary film. His films are regularly selected and awarded prizes at international festivals. In 1973 he films “The Battle of Chile”, a 5-hour documentary on the end of Allende’s government. The magazine CINEASTE nominates it as “one of the ten best political films in the world”. After the military coup, Guzmán is threatened to be executed and spends two weeks arrested inside the national stadium, unable to communicate his whereabouts to anyone. He leaves the country in November 1973. He lives in Cuba, Spain and then France, where he makes “In the Name of God” (Grand Prize, Festival of Popoli, 1987), “The Southern Cross” (Grand Prize, Festival Vue Sur les Docs, Marseille, 1992), “Chile, Obstinate Memory” (Grand Prize Festival of Tel Aviv, 1999), “The Pinochet Case” (International Critic’s Week, Cannes, 2002), and “Salvador Allende” (Official Selection, Cannes, 2004). In 2005, he makes “My Jules Verne”. He teaches documentary film classes in Europe and Latin America. He is founder and director of the International Documentary Festival of Santiago (FIDOCS). He lives in France.

"I think documentary has always been subjective from its inception until today. It's the discourse of an author who sees reality from his point of view and expresses what he sees.
Documentary has never been objective.
It's like asking a painter to use equal amount of blue, yellow and red
It's completely absurd.
We choose whichever colors we like to depict reality.
Reality is perception we each see our own version of it.
It's something subjective, authored, personal, intimate.
It's a projection of a personality"

Daughter of Chorolque

2007-11-11T17:55:00.004+09:00

Directed by Mi-Sun Park

Traditionally, women of mining villages in Bolivia have only picked off small amounts of ore from stones thrown away outside the mines. But in Chorolque, a South American mining village 5600m above sea level that produces tin, women are permitted to work inside the mines. There are about 20 female miners working among 1000 male mine workers. The first woman to work inside a mine was Pasquala, 18 years ago. Andrea, Carmela, and Carmela’s daughter Rosa now follow in her footsteps. Daughter of Chorolque is a story about how, in the absence of a father, three female miners in Bolivia and their daughters lead hard, painful, but beautiful lives. The women live and work hard, carrying the weight of life, against a backdrop of dazzling beautiful scenery. The camera captures these women’s everyday lives in calm but intense shorts. (HONG Hyosook) 2007 PIFF (Pusan International Film Festival)

Audience Award IDFA 2006

2006-12-12T01:05:00.000+09:00

We Are Together (Thina simunye)
Paul Taylor

"Singing makes me think of my home, because that was where I learnt to sing". Slindile is 12 years old. She lives at the Agape Orphanage in South Africa, a home for children, many of whom have lost their parents to AIDS. The children form a choir which becomes a great source of comfort and hope. Meanwhile Slindile makes regular visits to her former home, where her parents taught her to sing as a child, and where her brother Sifiso is now unwell. It's unclear what is wrong with him, but Slindile's worst fears are confirmed by the hospice. He has HIV. Sifiso must face the inevitable, but the family still have the strength to sing. Back at the orphanage, despite the hardship the children have been through, they too continue to sing, which takes them on a journey they could only dream of.

http://www.wearetogetherfilm.com

UK, 2006
colour, video, 83 min
Director: Paul Taylor
Production: Teddy Leifer & Paul Taylor for Rise Films
Photography: Paul Taylor
Editing: Masahiro Hirakubo; Ollie Huddleston
Music: Dario Marianelli
Narration: Slindile Moya
Narrator: Slindile Moya
Involved TV Channel: Channel 4
Screening copy: Rise Films

Joris Ivens Award 2006

2006-12-08T21:43:00.000+09:00

The Monastery - Mr. Vig & the Nun
Pernille Rose Grønkjær

The eccentric looking Mr. Vig walks through rooms and ponders what nuns need. Ashtrays? No, nuns don't smoke. Are the blankets thick enough? They're used to roughing it, right? The rooms belong to the Danish castle Hesbjerg, which Mr. Vig bought once upon a time with the idea of establishing a monastery there. Since 1950, he's been dreaming of this, and his dream would appear to be nearing realisation, now that an orthodox community in Russia has declared itself willing to send nuns and priests who can start the monastery and help with its development. The delegation is lead by Sister Amvrosija, who has her own ideas about how a Russian orthodox monastery should look and be run. Documentary filmmaker Pernille Rose Grønkjær follows Mr. Vig in his preparations for the nuns' arrival and throughout the monastery's first year. During the film shoot, he often asks her for advice and even physical help, and she interviews him casually, about his childhood, his views on love, religion, his dream and Sister Amvrosija. The clashes between the stubborn nun and the equally obstinate Mr. Vig make for delightful scenes, and the beautiful location of the dilapidated estate allows for some really nice cinematography.

Denmark, 2006
colour, 35mm, 84 min
Director: Pernille Rose Grønkjær
Production: Sigrid Dyekjær for Tju Bang Film
Photography: Pernille Rose Grønkjær
Editing: Pernille Bech Christensen
Sound: Kristian Eidnes Andersen
Music: Johan Söderqvist
Involved TV Channel: DR TV; YLE
World Sales: First Hand Films
Screening copy: Danish Film Institute

Women in Chorolque

2006-10-20T01:45:00.000+09:00

photo by Peter Lowe
시놉시스

갱 속은 다른 세상이다. 바람도 없고 공기도 없다. 때로는 돌이 떨어져 죽기도 하고 가스에 질식해 죽기도 한다. 그래서 갱에 들어가기 전 그녀들은 언제나 십자가를 긋는다. 해발 5,600미터에 있는 이곳은 하늘 아래 첫 광산 도시인 초롤케. 그리고 그 곳에 '여성광부'라 불리는 강인한 생명력을 지닌 여성들이 살고 있다.

제11회 부산국제영화제 AND펀드 수상

2006-10-18T00:24:00.000+09:00