(29 October – 04 November 2007)
Wow! The 50th DOKfestival– short for Leipzig International Festival
for Documentary and Animation Films, aka Leipzig Dok Festival and Dok
Industry – surpassed even the most optimistic of anniversary
predictions. Furthermore, statistics alone underscore its importance
as a key player on the festival circuit. For DOK 50 (29 October – 04
November 2007), the fourth under the committed Claas Danielson, broke
its own attendance record by an eye-catching 30% increase. Last year,
when festival attendance climbed to 22,500 (up from 20,000 in 2005),
the increase was thanks mostly to a young crowd in this university
city. This year, when attendance rose again to 31,000 – with crowds
lining up in advance for choice screenings of 315 films booked from 60
countries (a staffer reckoned total festival running time at 14 days)
– the increase was thanks mostly to the interest generated among
average moviegoers in Leipzig. What's more, the leapfrog to nearly
10,000 more spectators over last year prompted a teasing question at
the closing press conference: where will the festival find additional
venues in 2008? "I am very pleased about the enormous increase in
audience attendance," stated Claas Danielsen with justified pride.
"Particularly young specatators stormed the venues, and the
retrospective drew enthusiastic audiences. Often, the cinemas were
filled to the last seat.
And documentary professionals from abroad
praised the quality of this year's program. Thus, DOK Leipzig now
stands in the forefront of international documentary film festivals."
Claas Danielsen could also take pride in the festival's flourishing
DOK Market Digital innovation. Thanks to a software program developed
last year by the local Computer Leipzig team, documentary enthusiasts
could view circa 300 films invited to this year's DOKfestival, as well
as 150 more produced during 2006 and 2007. With two dozen computer
stations at DOK Digital recording 7,400 viewing sessions, the 1,450
accredited industry participants (in comparison with 1,150 in 2006)
could even vote online for favorite screenings. Thus, for many
professionals, Leipzig stands tall on the international festival scene
due to this unique documentary largesse alone. Back on 1 November
2006, when DOK Digital was officially opened by a Saxon State
Minister, the innovation was viewed as promising, though questionable.
This year, however, the computer stations in the basement of the
Museum der bildende Künste (Museum of Visual Arts), the festival
headquarters, were booked out a day in advance. And it heralds the day
when digital transmission might be the norm for market screenings at
international film events. According to a reliable report, the
Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA) requested
permission to introduce the Computer Leipzig software into its own
market at the end of this November.
Talk to the local Leipzig public about the reasons for heightened
festival interest, and much of the credit is given to an
information-packed 250-page catalogue printed in German and English,
accompanied by tips in a bilingual 68 page program booklet. Not only
is the DOKfest team well informed, but many staffers also do
double-duty by leading discussions as both translators with a
comprehensive knowledge of theme and content. With the German media
also taking a greater interest in promoting the festival's anniversary
celebration, the list of sponsors now include Zweitausendeins (a major
DVD outlet of art films), Telepool, Arthaus, Discovery Channel,
Kinowelt, MDR Leipzig, RBB Berlin-Brandenburg, ZDF, 3Sat, Arte, and
local media and newspapers. No wonder crowds sometimes turned out in
droves!
As befits an open-ended documentary film festival, the sidebars
proved to be as attractive as the four competitive sections –
International, German, Generation (young filmmakers), and Animation –
with the awarded "Doves" in the International Competition handed out
separately to Long and Short Documentaries. Indeed, the Special
Screening of Barbara and Winfried Junge's Und wenn sie nicht gestorben
sind… Die Kinder von Golzow (And If they Haven't Passed Away… The
Children of Golzow) (Germany) was one of the highlights of the
festival. From an historical viewpoint, the Leipzig DOKfestival had
served as a launching-pad for this "longest running documentary in the
history of cinema". Shortly after Winfried Junge, a DEFA student of
Karl Gass, filmed the children of Golzow at their first day of school
in 1961, the second film in the series, Nach einem Jahr (After a Year)
(GDR) was awarded a Silver Dove at the 1962 Leipzig festival. As for
the latest episode in the Golzow epic, it chronicles the adult life of
three women in the original class, together with their first-grade
teacher, and scores as one of the best in the entire series. Shortly,
the proposed finale – tentatively titled …dann leben sie immer noch
(…Then They are Living Happily Ever After) and chronicling the paths
of life of male children in the class – is reported to be close to
completion. Bravo, Barbara and Winfried Junge – perhaps The Children
of Golzow, now 46 years in the making, will turn 50!
Another Special Screening honored DEFA documentarist Karl Gass. To
commemorate the filmmaker's 90th birthday, the German Film Archive
programmed his compilation documentary about Das Jahr 1945 (The Year
1945) (GDR, 1984). But just as important was the screening of his
previously shelved Asse (Aces) (GDR, 1965) in the Retrospective
Program. A straight-forward chronicle of the working-man's world,
Aces, filmed over a period of months at a Schwedt construction site in
East Germany, set high standards for documentary truth. Upon
completion, however, the film was shelved by Party officials,
apparently due of its true-to-life, down-to-earth, realistic
sequences. Thus Aces had to wait until Leipzig 50 to draw the critical
praise it deserves. Karl Gass also deserves recognition as the
founder, back in 1955, of the Leipziger Dokumentar- und Kurzfilmwoche,
the forerunner of today's DOKfestival.
This year's International Competition was noteworthy for challenging
the limits of the documentary portfolio. Andreas Tonacci's Serra da
Desordem (The Hills of Disorder) (Brazil) is as much fiction as it is
documentary in recording the fate of an Indio in the Amazon jungle.
Markku Lehmuskallio and Anastasia Lapsui's Matka (Travelling)
(Finland) is to its core an ethnographic and anthropological
documentary about the life style of nomadic Laps in the tundra.
Programmed as a double-bill, Franceso Uboldi's Jean Paul (Italy),
about a man in the Cameroon left to starve to death by being chained
to a tree without food or water, and Paul Watson's Rain in My Heart
(UK), an account of alcoholics fighting and losing their withdrawal
from drink, border on the voyeuristic and question how far a filmmaker
can go as a responsible documentarist. The same is pretty much true of
Adina Pintilie's Nu te supara, dar... (Don't Get Me Wrong) (Romania),
awarded the Golden Dove for Best Long Documentary. A film that sparked
as much critique as it did applause, Don't Get Me Wrong depicts in
unadulterated terms the daily routine of schizophrenics over a few
days in the Calugareni Neuropsychiatric Centre in Romania. Whether or
not one is intrigued or depressed by the choice of subject is beside
the point. This 50-minute documentary, a debut film shot on Beta SP,
would have fared better with the audience had it be entered in the
Generation Competition.
For my taste, Barbet Schroeder's L'avocat de la terreur (The Terror's
Advocate) (France), previously screened at Cannes, scored as the best
documentary presented in the International Competition. The story of
Jacques Vergès, a French defence attorney whose stellar success record
began as a court lawyer for native terrorists during the Algerian War
and carried all the way up to the Klaus Barbie trial that unearthed
French collaboration during the German Occupation, The Terror's
Advocate draws its power from some fascinating interviews with Jacques
Vergès and people who know him intimately. Whether you like the man or
not, you cannot help but be impressed by his legal methods of
defending people who openly espouse the principles of terror.
Along the same lines, Alexandru Solomon's deftly researched Cold Waves
(Romania/Germany/Luxembourg), presented in the International Program
also drew a packed house for its news-and-interviews documentary
approach. In Cold Waves – read: "radio waves during the Cold War" –
the focus is on the fumbling efforts of the Ceausescu regime to halt
the Radio Free Europe broadcasts from Munich by prominent Romanian
dissidents, who had daily delivered news on timely Romanian (and
international) political and social affairs. Their broadcasts so
unnerved Ceausescu that he ordered his State Security Police to
organize an "airwaves" offensive to snuff out the voices of Noel
Bernard, Vlad Georgescu, and Monica Lovinescu by whichever means
possible. Indeed, the mysterious deaths of Bernard and Georgescu hint
that the "Securitatea Statului" did, in fact, succeed in their high
priority mission. New evidence provided by the Alexander Litvinenko
case points to the possibility of radiation poisoning.
For more information on the 50th anniversary edition of the Leipzig
International Festival for Documentary and Animation Films, click
www.dok leipzig.de. Or catch up on the past two years when you attend
DOK Digital at 51st DOKfestival, scheduled 27 October to 02 November
2008.
AWARDS
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
Golden Dove, Long Documentary
Nu te supara, dar... (Don't Get Me Wrong) (Romania), dir Adina Pintilie
Special Mention
Surya (Surya – From Eloquence to Dawn) (Belgium), dir Laurent Van Lancker
Silver Dove, Long Documentary
Kinder. Wie die Zeit vergeht (Children – As Time Flies) (Germany), dir
Thomas Heise
Golden Dove, Short Documentary
Moujarad raiha (Merely a Smell) (Libanon), dir Maher Abi Samra
Special Mentions
Doel leeft (Doel Is Alive) (Belgium), dir Tom Fassaert
Dirty Pictures (Hotel Diaries 7) (UK), dir John Smith
GERMAN COMPETITION
Zweitausendeins Film Prize
Nach der Musik (A Father's Music), dir Igor Heitzmann
GENERATION COMPETITION
Talent Dove – Medienstiftung der Sparkasse Leipzig
Someone Like You (Denmark), dir Nanna Frank Møller
Special Mentions
One Day (Denmark), dir Ditte Haarlev Johnsen
Ugolnaya pyl (Coal Dust) (Russia), dir Maria Miro
INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION COMPETITION
Golden Dove
Életvonal (Life Line) (Hungary), Tomek Ducki
Silver Dove
Kafka Inaka Isha (Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor) (Japan), dir Koji
Yamamura Special Mentions
Le Pont (The Bridge) (Belgium/France), dir Vincent Bierrewaerts
OTHER AWARDS
MDR (Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk) Film Prize for Eastern European Film
La Mère (The Mother) (Switzerland/France/Russia), dir Antoine Cattin,
Pavel Kostomarov
DEFA Grant Prize
Heinz und Fred (Heinz and Fred) (Germany), Mario Schneider
ver.di (Media Trade Union) Prize
Rain in My Heart (UK), dir Paul Watson
FIPRESCI (International Critics) Award
Juizo (Behave) (Brazil), dir Maria Augusta Ramos
Ecumenical Jury
Kamienna cisza (Stone Silence) (Poland), dir Krzysztof Kopczynski
Leipzig Youth Jury Prize
Draussen bleiben (Run Out) (Germany), dir Alexander Riedel
Discovery Channel Audience Prize
Sportsfreund Lötzsch (Sportsman Lötzsch) (Germany), Sandra Prechtel,
Sascha Hilpert
Mephisto-97.6 Audience Prize
Ubornaya Istoriya – Lyubovnaya Istorya (Lavatory – Lovestory)
(Russia), Mikhail Adashin, Oleg Uzhinov – Animation