Festivals DOKUARTS 11 - BEYOND FORMAT: 4-21 OCTOBER 2018
A look at some of the highlights of this year’s exceptional program
In its eleventh season and the first in two years, Dokuarts returned with a varied program of documentary films titled ‘Beyond Format’ at its usual location, the Cinema of the German History Museum. This year’s program focused on unformatted artistic documentary films that have eluded convenient sub-generic categorization. Independent documentaries were a regular feature of the German TV channels such as ZDF in the 1970s and 80s, but have since virtually disappeared from today’s German television programs due to commercial regulations imposed in the 1990s in many countries, including the Franco-German Arte channel. The paradox of more TV channels and potential for broadcast in the digital age has in fact only been subservient to commercial and mainstream demands, the outcome being that much of these innovative new works have been relegated in profile to ever decreasing art cinemas, niche film festivals and the internet. ‘Dokuarts 11 – Beyond Format’ has at least tried to redress this weighting a little by showcasing such films and their significance in the current artistic and political climate. All films were shown in Berlin for the first time, most a German premier, and with most filmmakers present to introduce their films and conduct a Q&A afterwards.
The season opened with the first Berlin screening of the documentary Bergman – A Year in a Life which looks at a single year, 1957, a year which was somewhat pivotal in the long career of the legendary Swedish film and theatre director Ingmar Bergman when he released two of his most acclaimed features (The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries), made a TV film and directed four plays for theatre (including Peer Gynt). In what is in 2018 the 100th anniversary of Bergman’s birth, Swedish filmmaker Jane Magnusson has amassed a wealth of rich archive footage and miraculous finds, alongside clips from his career and contemporary interviews, to create a new angle on the charming and temperamental genius that many consider the best film director ever and certainly the most famous export of Swedish cinema. The result is a fresh and exhilarating new take on the master and also a digestible introduction for neophytes.
The first full day of this year’s festival was dominated by the International Symposium ‘Beyond Format’, which took place in cooperation with the European Documentary Network. Guest speakers and presentations discussed various but inter-related topics which looked at the historical and contemporary formatting of media and culture as well as the interrelations between conditions of production, aesthetics, and politics in the context of films on art; and also the future prospects for the currently marginalized unformatted documentary film.
After a welcome address by Andreas Lewin, Artistic Director of Dokuarts, there was an opening keynote presentation (in German) on ‘The External Reality: Notes/Thoughts on the Relationship between Photography and Documentary Film’ by Bernd Stiegler, Professor of German Literature and Media History at the University of Konstanz. Other speakers and their presentations were:
Sabine Rollberg, Academy of Media Arts Cologne: ‘Format, Form and Power in German Public Television’; documentary director Tony Zierra: ‘Filmmaker’s Rights - A Kubrick Case Study’;
Paul Pauwels, Director for the European Documentary Network: ‘Perspectives for Documentaries Beyond Format’; and Barbara Visser, artist and filmmaker: ‘The Private is still Political!’ Finally, there was a panel discussion with the speakers from the conference that was moderated by Jörg Taszman, the German film critic of Deutschland Radio Kultur, Die Welt, and epd Film.
Immediately afterwards there was a live essay and screening of the new digital restoration of Bruce Connor’s landmark film Crossroads (1976) under the title ‘Crossroads and The Exploding Digital Inevitable’, a nod to Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable multi-media events. In its German premiere, the restoration and performance is the work of Ross Lipman, Filmmaker, Restorationist and Film Scholar in Los Angeles. Originally made for the intention of being released for the 200 year anniversary of American independence, Bruce Conner’s meditative montage from original footage of the first nuclear weapon testing at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, in 1946, was presented in a newly restored digital version. This ‘live-essay’ was a two part performance happening using interviews and archive material, with Lipman meticulously but sensitively updating the production of the film. Therefore, it is no less powerful and shocking today as it must have been in 1976.
The Dokuarts 11 documentary season weighted towards visual art and photography but also strongly represented music and film as well as architecture and poetry. The season took place simultaneously with the European Month of Photography (28 September - 31 October) so many films featured the art of photography, with European and German premieres and the presence of photographers such as Daniel Schwartz and Harry Gruyaert with their films Beyond the Obvious – Daniel Schwartz: Photographer and Harry Gruyaert - Photographer respectively. Director Vadim Jendreyko travelled four continents to film his Swiss subject Daniel Schwartz (who is also a writer and an artist) in what becomes an autobiography of Schwartz’s relentless photo research on glacier melt and climate change. Gerrit Messiaen’s portrait of Magnum (international photographic cooperative) photographer Harry Gruyaert gives an extensive insight into his tireless journeys across time periods, cultures, and continents. For Black Mother, Khalik Allah looks at African-Americans on the fringes of society and turns to his Jamaican roots to draw attention to stereotypes that dominates so many social reportages. In Raghu Rai – An Unframed Portrait, director Avani Rai shows beautifully how her father’s pictures have documented India far beyond memory and the collective imagination in a portrait of another Magnum photographer who was lauded not least by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable is a portrait of an American photographer now revered as a 20th century photo-poet. Though highly regarded as a street photographer he was also accused of sexism in his work so filmmaker Sasha Waters Freyer takes a feminist perspective for her documentary on the influential but at times controversial photographer. Joel-Peter and Jerome Witkin are identical twins and respectively provocative, often grotesque photo photographer versus socio-political figurative painter and, in Witkin & Witkin, director Trisha Ziff reunites them on the big screen to illustrate their identities and differences.
Numerous films about art and the art of living were omnipresent in this year’s Dokuarts festival. The Ghanaian coffin artist Paa Joe is a unique sculptor in that he honors the lives of the deceased with his extravagant coffins, mostly based on the lives of his subjects, work that soon disappears six feet under. Over a period of six years British director Benjamin Wigley took his camera back and forth from the UK to Ghana and the result was Paa Joe & the Lion, an essay film looking at cultural relations between Europe and Africa. In 2016 Paa Joe and his apprentice son were invited to Nottinghamshire to become artist in residence in a tent for a month at a bucolic palace garden, observed by curious spectators, while the two artists sculpted a lion-shaped coffin. The film follows their journey to this new land and is both an attentive and charming account of the experience.
In the parts of Hong Kong that are off the tourist trails resides painter (author, musician, set designer, photographer and activist) Yank Wong. Taking place amongst hidden alleys, living rooms, bars, restaurants and gardens, I’ve Got the Blues showcases the life of this unique character by his friend, filmmaker Angie Chen. It becomes a portrait of two strong personalities and how he tries to sabotage her film about him, but the unpredictable outcome shows her determination and not least the warmth of their friendship against a backdrop of art, philosophy, wine and an individual view on the world that makes for fun and compelling viewing.
Other ways of living taken to further extremes are found in the Spanish film Lots of Kids, a Monkey and a Castle. Actor and director Gustavo Salmerón underlines this with a captivating film about his mother, Julita and her life expressed as art. When she was young, her wish was to have children, a monkey and a castle (and a cat), and the film follows how she achieved these wishes but also (particularly in the case of the castle) the reality and debt that followed. Despite it all, Julita comes through as a content old lady who looks back on her life as art and the art of living with little regret. More than a personal family portrait, this film also looks at individualism as a basic human need as well as telling the story of 20th century Spain from an alternative angle.
Filmmaker Paula Rodríguez Sickert’s portrait of the Chilean installation artist Alfredo Jaar wondered if it is possible to be a pessimistic artist while, at the same time, be driven by tenacious optimism in one’s own artistic practice. Jaar, Lament of the Images becomes an almost therapeutic meditation on the artist’s socio-politically motivated installations, which not only examines the humanistic attitude behind the work and public interventions of this world-renowned photographer and artist, but constantly reflects the role and meaning of art. The result is a depiction of a warm and caring individual and his standpoint in the present-day world.
The philosophical notion that everything in life has a price is scrutinized in The Price of Everything. Contemporary works of art from the likes of Jeff Koons and Damien Hurst are auctioned for seven-digit sums but at the same time have become nothing but trophies for the super-rich, sitting on walls of apartments in places like New York, London and Shanghai. The consequence of this is that museums can no longer afford to buy them and so the public no longer get to view them. In Nathaniel Kahn’s well-researched and clinically presented documentary, the rich collectors talk of the philosophy behind their purchases which is in tandem with the artists they purchase from in an age where aesthetic art has been replaced by hyper investment, not least in the contemporary art world.
Two films looked at legendary film directors from very different viewpoints. Using clips from his films, audio interviews and other rare footage, director Amy Scott follows the early and golden years of legendary 1970s indie director Hal Ashby in HAL. Beginning with his early life and to Hollywood where he worked as an editor, Hal was nominated for an Oscar twice, winning for the Norman Jewison-directed In the Heat of the Night (1967), which was to be his only Oscar. As director, he began with the very brave (for the time) interracial romance film The Landlord (1970), then his golden period followed with cult film Harold and Maude (1971) and ending with Being There (1979), as well as memorable anti-war dramas such as The Last Detail (1973) and Coming Home (1978) in between. Scott’s documentary includes in-depth interviews with collaborators, critics and biographers to show the relentless workaholic who was a perfectionist but also much loved.
Filmworker (2017) is director Tony Zierra’s documentary on Stanley Kubrick’s loyal actor-turned-assistant Leon Vitali. Since acting in Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975), Vitali was the loyal assistant to Kubrick, practically giving up his acting career and personal life in the process to work tirelessly for the legendary director. Zierra met Leon Vitali in 1999 when he was making a documentary on what turned out to be Kubrick’s last film Eyes Wide Shut. What struck the director was Vitali’s story so he decided to do the documentary on him instead. The jury is out on whether Kubrick exploited his loyal assistant even though Vitali has no regrets, but sentiments from those he worked with gives the unsung hero of Kubrick’s film his long overdue recognition.
For his displacement film essay Stay Alive – A Method: A Feel Good Movie about Suffering, Erik Lieshout also looks at two rather different people: Michel Houellebecq, the bad boy of French literature, and Iggy Pop, “Godfather of Punk”, with the text of the former being read by the latter because he saw a mirror of himself in it. Houellebecq’s “survival-handbook” for artists is read by Pop in combination with recitatives, performance sequences, concert recordings, and interviews. Three otherwise unknown artists and their struggle with demons is also seamlessly interplayed into the text and visuals, making this a film that portrays the famous and struggling artists with equal measure and sympathy.
Steven Yates
Text fragments from:
https://www.dhm.de/en/zeughauskino/
http://doku-arts.com/en/2018/programm
