NisimazineA Magazine by NISI MASA, European Network Of Young Cinema

#4

You’ve gotta fight... for your right... na informácie. Takto presne to neznie v známej pesničke z osemde-siatych rokov, ale zámena slova ,,párty” za ,,infor-mácie” bola úmyselná. V demokratických krajinách by ste nemali bojovať za svoje práva. Mať práva by malo byť prirodzené, no nie vždy to tak je.

Globálne médiá sa prehlá-

sili za moderné orákulum. Boli všade, sú všade, vedia všetko. Ako je možné, že my nevieme všetko? Aj keď strávime denne dve hodiny sledovaním správ, v ktorých je kvantum in-formácií, stále nám chýba hlbší pohľad na danú tému. Keď som v 2009 videl správy o voľbách v Iráne, jediná vec, ktorú si pamätám bolo zvolenie Mahmúda Ahmadínežáda.

Pri sledovaní snímky Väz-nica Irán som sa dozvedel, že sa tam dialo omnoho viac a aj to víťazstvo je dis-kutabilné.

A práve preto sme sa rozhodli prísť na tento festival: aby sme sa dozve-deli to, čo nám ,,oficiálne“ médiá neposkytnú. Niečo zaujímavé, sympatické, odpudzujúce, či dokonca šokujúce. V obchode si

síce môžete kúpiť otvárač na konzervy, ale festival Jeden svet nám ponúka otvárač na oči. A bola by veľká škoda nevyužiť túto príležitosť. Aj keby mal napomôcť iba k záblesku zmýšľania vymaňujúceho sa z mainstreamového rámca. A za to nemusíme ani bojovať.

Marin Kudláč

02//12//11

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oria

lphoto and text by Lucille C

aballero

«Slovak cinema is poor and very stuck in social problems. Slovak filmmakers want to make movies as big as Hollywood productions but the only thing they have is the idea of doing it. When they realize it, it doesn’t work»

Lucie and Barbora, 20 years old1st year students in Film and TV Theory at Filmová a televízna fakulta VŠMU

Slovak Optimism

Ghost in the MachineRobert Kirchhoff, Slovakia

Every ghost is set free once in a while; by rub-bing the lamp or re-enacting the situation in which it got caught. Ghost in the Machine does the latter and gives a deep historical, as well as instructive perspective on Slovak film history. The fact that the documentary was realized at this moment in time might mark a passing of the baton to a younger generation of Slovak cineastes. Some of the pioneers who defined the national cinema are in fact long dead, like Karel Plicka, who died in 1987 and was a former founder of the FAMU film school in Prague in 1946. Plicka’s films, especially Zem spieva (The Earth Sings) from 1933, are considered by film theorist Pavel Branko as major examples from the Slovak school of filmmaking, which tended towards poetic realism.

Director Robert Kirchhoff refers to this tradition in his approach to selecting cameramen, as well as through remarks from theorists considered to be representative of the movement, such as Bazin, Kracauer, Bresson, Zapatini and Renoir. In order to get a sense of the working processes that might have taken place at that time during the actual film shoots, Kirchhoff goes to the shooting locations favoured by the respective cameramen. Two generations meet through the camera techniques – highly contrasted black and white 16mm sequences meet flat, pixella-ted colour images. The poetic realist style and its related economic precariousness are being

passed down to a generation which earns its living through commercial movies and is at the same time searching for new modes of expres-sion generated by digital devices.

The encounter reveals not only a continuity in theoretical and methodological approaches between the analogue and digital generations, but also a former, nearly forgotten Europe-wide exchange of intellectual power. In 1970, Igor Luther worked on the film Eden a Potom (L´Éden et après) directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet, earlier, Tibor Biath collaborated on Boxer a smrt (The Boxer and the Death) by Peter Solan. Imitated ca-mera movements as well as the old music evoke a search for existing memories embedded in the places visited.

At the end the film finds a nice metaphor for Slovak directors: stone layers from a river brou-ght to light by archaeologists are referred to as the former filmmakers themselves. They are peacefully united, not only in a box that conser-ves them but also in one digital image with the contemporary filmmakers.

By Johannes Bennke

Ceci n’est pas un film sur le SIDA. Ceci est un film sur l’alternative qui nous est offerte lorsque l’on est diagnostiqué séropositive. On peut choisir d’attendre que la maladie nous consomme, ou bien on peut choisir de faire attendre la maladie encore un peu plus.

Thembi est une jeune femme sud-africaine morte en 2010 à l’âge de 26 ans. Elle est atteinte par la maladie à 16 ans. Le jour où elle apprend qu’elle est séropositive, elle décide – contrairement à la plupart des gens - de raconter son histoire, et surtout, de lutter contre la peur d’en parler. Le réalisateur Jo Menel la rencontre au début des années 2000, et ensemble ils décident de faire ce documentaire, tout en voyageant à travers plusieurs pays pour partager leur expérience et soutenir la lutte contre le SIDA.

Les premières images du film montrent une souriante Thembi. Elle nous parle avec assurance de sa vie, de

son quartier. Dans la séquence suivante, on assiste à son enterrement. Paradoxalement, une musique très entrainante accompagne ses deux moments, ce qui transmet un fort sentiment de vie.

La compassion n’est pas bienvenue ici: le réalisateur souhaite illustrer la réaction de Thembi contre la maladie, mais en aucun cas ils cherchent à ce qu’on s’apitoie sur son sort. Le choix délibéré d’utiliser des dessins animés pour montrer les moments les plus durs de sa vie soutient cette volonté.

Mais à l’image d’une héroïne de dessin animé, l’importante couverture médiatique de son témoignage finit par la transformer en une sorte de pop star. Et tandis qu’elle prône les rapports protégés et la prise de médicaments contrôlée, elle arrête de prendre ses propres médicaments, et meurt. Pourquoi a-t-elle pris cette décision ? Comment peut-on réagir à cela ? Le film tente de trouver des réponses, sans succès hélas. Quoiqu’il en soit, ce film raconte l’histoire d’une femme courageuse et des choix de vie qu’elle défend.

Lydia Castellano

ThembiJo Menel, Afrique du Sud

reviews

from Blood in the M

obile

Screening time21:00 - Cinema Mladosť

Screening time17:50 - KC Dunaj

The earth giveth, the corporations taketh away:

The Curse of Rich Soil

Once upon a time, there was a fa-mily. A poor family which did not have much. However, they managed to go on with their lives and weren’t even unhappy. A stroke of luck was not far away. They did not find a gol-den fish to grant them three wishes, but a big supply of oil right under their house. Local representatives came, the ministry was interested, and more importantly the corpo-rations were interested. The supply was estimated at a high price, but the family did not know that they were the ones who were going to pay the costs. To cut a long story short, due to bureaucratic processes and their unawareness of law, they did not see one penny from the oil, and what’s more they lost their pre-cious home. As the saying goes, not all that glitters is gold.

Every now and then we hear about the repression of the rights of ordi-nary people whose needs go against the interests of big corporations. But what can we do about this? As illustrated in the example above, we cannot do anything when we are not concerned. Well, there is a rightful reason to be concerned, and some filmmakers dedicate their time and means to bringing these issues to the public and showing that, whether we are aware of it or not, we are part of this unlucky process.

We consume mass-produced goods daily, although we don’t ask many questions about their origins. In Roots – The son of the coffee farmer returns home, filmmakers Bussard, Weigl, Janoška and Manga prove that one cup of coffee has a deeper cost. We are led on an investigation: where the coffee comes from - not only its whereabouts, but more importantly how poor farmers are exploited by bigger companies in order to buy for cheap. The produ-cers are forced to submit because of the socio-political and economic situation. Aside from the pathos and sentiment felt when witnessing exploited, half-naked farmers, the statement is clear: the economy does not work in a fair way. The sad truth about capitalism is that mo-ney equals power, and in this case, the growers have neither.

A similar problem is dealt with in the documentary by Frank Poul-sen about a mineral element used in mobile phone components. The horrifically titled Blood in the Mo-bile suggests that all mobile phone users participate in the exploitation of poor miners. It’s a dreadful ima-ge: watching minors digging for mi-nerals 100 metres underground in inhumane conditions is enough to contemplate, but the intervention of armed forces around the mines and the imposition of ridiculous taxes are unthinkable. Yet, despite companies claiming their corporate responsibility, they do pretend not to know where their components are coming from and we remain in the dark.

Both films, as well as others such as The Pipe and Copper Age, show us that the price we pay in a shop is not final. The mass production of everyday goods is a far-reaching process and at its starting point the-re are aspects that we usually have no idea about. Although now after watching several of these films we understand that in the beginning, there is soil: a rich soil, full of use-ful components - until the corpora-tions arrive. The dream for a decent life is shattered, as in the tale of the poor family’s oil discovery. Now we possess both views: that of the ma-nufacturer who sells us goods, and that of the frontline producer who prepares the necessary materials for these goods.

The filmmakers illuminate us. There are people exploited in the produc-tion processes of consumer goods, just because they were born in the wrong place. It’s a big tax to pay for a decision they did not make them-selves. Even if The Pipe shows us that there are struggles still worth fighting, people dependent on their soil usually cannot afford such a luxury. However, consumers can afford the luxury of choosing their products. But will they do it when the price is the effort of investiga-ting their origins?

That’s why every product should have its own documentary.

By Martin Kudláč

focus

// NISIMAZINE BRATISLAVAFRIdAy 2 dECEMBER 2011//# 4

A magazine published by the NISI MASA in

the framework of a film journalism workshop

for young Europeans

Avec le soutien du Fonds franco-allemand en

pays tiers, de l’Institut Francais

et du Goethe Institut

EdITORIAL STAFF dIRECTOR OF PuBLICATION Matthieu Darras EdITOR-IN-ChIEF/LAyOuT Maartje Alders

EdITOR Jude Lister

VIdEO TuTOR Severine Beaudot

CONTRIBuTORS TO ThIS ISSuE

Johannes Bennke, Lucille Caballero

Lydia Castellano, Martin Kudláč

NISI MASA 99 rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis,

75010, Paris, France.

Phone: +33 (0)9 60 39 63 38

in Cannes: +33 (0) 6 32 61 70 26

europe@nisimasa.com, www.nisimasa.com

from Blood in the M

obile

Blood in the Mobile02/12 - 20:30 Cinema Lumiére K1

The Pipe02/12 - 16:30 SNG

You can read all our coverage online on

www.nisimazine.eu

Watch a video interview with Peter Kerekes, director of

Slovak Tavern here:

bit.ly/vc076O

Where do you see the border between an activist and a filmmaker?I think the line becomes very clear when you are going down into the street and get involved both as an ac-tivist and as a filmmaker. The minute violence becomes sort of the order and is against the action that you are an activist for. Then it really becomes a fight or flight instinct. You boil down even further from an activist filmma-ker to a protester to a human being who is being attacked, basically. Once bullets are flying and the tear gas is all over the place you tend to go to a more basic level. Am I going to fight these people or not?

What is your approach to expressing the relationship between history and film?The events that unfolded in January are best expressed by the mood cap-tured by mobile phones. As far as the picture as well as the camera move-ment and the noisy microphone are

concerned it captures the proximity, the rush of events and voices. No-thing transfers the information, the urgency and the feeling - whether it is panic, victory or danger - better.

How would you express your expe-riences during the revolution?The best 18 days of my life. Because of the height of every sort of emotion that is in your palette as a human being. It was a kind of self discovery being in a situation like this when you are notorious, under threat and have anticipations of the future and also this incredible hope. The euphoria and at the same time the disappoint-ment. All of these emotions in such a small amount of time made us all very high. We were experiencing some-thing that we couldn’t quite even un-derstand ourselves. And I think that’s part of the nature of a revolution. It is something that is not completely set and you can’t tell when it will be sett-led. It was like the epitome of all the

human feelings you could possibly imagine.

Do you have the impression that you changed the narrative over time?I don’t think we changed the narra-tive. I think narrative details are often changing slightly. Was it a proper revolution or was it an intifada, an uprising? Was this an uprising of the youth or was this a popular uprising? Is it even a revolution or a coup d’état? And outside of the context of the 18 days narratives are things that reveal themselves during the following months. And often they take us down one path and then another. We have to realize that the narrative is very much under construction. Yet we know it’s important to get at least a sense of it. You can’t be making a film unless you have a certain level of conviction that what you saying is true or real. I think that’s going to be the challenge for a lot of the filmmakers who are working with the elements of the revolution ri-ght now.

Which film do you find most striking when it comes to the revolution?It’s called 1/2 Revolution and is made by Omar Shargawi and Karim El Ha-kim. It’s about three filmmakers living downtown who are trying to make a film in a middle of a revolution. What I like about it is that it has a very sub-

jective nature and is not necessarily only about the events. The only thing that matters is that there was an upri-sing and three people in the middle of this trying to figure out what to do: “Am I an activist or am I a filmmaker?”

What’s your opinion about the out-come of the uprising?We just had the parliamentary elec-tions; we obviously had a second uprising begin last week. We are in a very strange period. It’s not a time of great hope, it’s tough. We are in a battle. Our main weapon is moral. Democracy wasn’t even a word we used in the first couple of days. The real quests of this revolution were bread, social justice and freedom. And by bread we mean an afforda-bility of food and subsidies. We still don’t have any of these things. They are trying to cut the revolutionaries out of the game. The revolutionaries are still in Tahrir. They didn’t go vote. The uprising will continue until these things are addressed. So there is the sense of determination even if we are exhausted and disappointed and our moral is constantly being broken. We have the upper hand because we are younger. They are going to die, they are going to go, eventually. It’s going to be ours.

By Johannes Bennke

interview

Wael Omar is an Egyptian filmmaker who studied in Boston, USA, and has lived in Cairo since 2005. He participated in the movement in Tahrir Square and is working on several projects that deal with neglected parts of Egypt’s history, as well as a film dealing with the uprising.

Wael Omar SahibEgyptian filmmaker