ripping reality

(A room with a view at the Dubai International Film Festival.)

Anne Marie Kürstein, Festival Manager at the Danish Film Institute, hosted a few friends for drinks prior to a big  dinner tonight in Copenhagen. The restaurant was converted from stables, yet still, in that Danish way, managed to be at once very cool and cozy. I’ve known Anne-Marie for as long as I’ve been programming, ten years now. If you’ve ever wondered how a country with a population of around five million manages to consistently produce innovative, first rate film (drama and documentary), look no further than the DFI. Its the best national film institute in the world, the reason Denmark always seems to punch over its weight  in world cinema. And I don’t write that just because they’re picking up the tab for dinner tonight.

Conversation at Anne-Marie’s place turned to our travels, as it often does when film festival people get together.  Artur Liebhart and Anne-Marie had just been to Iran, and another guest from Dox Box, a documentary festival in Damascus, was, well, she was from Syria, which we were curious about. As somebody who can be ambivalent about the places I go, sometimes I feel this job is wasted on me. At times I find talking about traveling similar to weather talk, the elevator music of conversation. Yet, as a Canadian, I’m very inclined, even enjoy, discussing the weather. And traveling is an inevitable topic for film festival vagabonds, and a good way to get to know people, if not places. Recently, in effort to cure myself of my travel malaise, I read a very good book, The Art of Travel. My take away: the problem with travel is that no matter where you are, you’re still yourself.

Anyway, I mentioned an upcoming trip to Dubai, where I’m now writing this post (catching up on my European trip notes  while in the UAE) as dawn brightens the Persian Gulf, or more specifically, the Burj, which sticks out like a swollen thumb (a “seven star” swollen thumb), on the otherwise ridiculously pleasant and unreal view from my hotel window. Dubai has been, for the past five years or so, an “it” site. The Xanadu of conspicuous consumption, a gold rush town which in the past fifteen  years has gone from a dusty trading outpost to a city of cranes, embarrassingly attentive service, gilded, big, best, everything. Luxury is the city’s brand. Its the Bizarro Copenhagen. Yet, more recently people’s curiosity about the city’s ostentatious show of wealth has given way to discussion of the darker side of Dubai’s ascent: a slave labour force and the eco-nightmare wrought by rapacious development.

“Why would you go to Dubai?,” I’m asked, suspiciously, almost as an accusation.  The film festival here is now in its fifth year, and this will be be my second visit.  Like one of  the world’s first film festivals, the Venice Bienniale, the Dubai International Film Festival was founded largely around promotional goals. Where Mussolini, a film lover, saw adding cinema to the Bienniale as an effective public relations and propaganda tool, in Dubai the prospect of attracting Hollywood stars must’ve made the pitch from the event’s founders an easy sell. An over-the-top party, complete with camels, Arabian horses and, legend has it (I didn’t see this), elephants, at the Toronto Film Fest the year Dubai launched set the tone for how DIFF would be perceived within festival land. Though invited, I skipped the first few events.

More recently a changing of the upper management here has brought some focus and, I believe, tangible measures of integrity to the festival. Okay, their party budget alone could probably fund many of the festivals I attend, including Hot Docs. Yet, they’ve also added initiatives clearly directed at developing, supporting and sustaining regional filmmaking, with a particular emphasis on documentary. Last year I was here meeting with regional producers and filmmakers, giving them a sense of the international festival and co-production landscape (it really is a bubble here). This year Hot Docs has co-produced a one day conference with DIFF, with sessions on co-productions, creative documentary and case studies of films being presented in the fest programme.

As well, two years ago Dubai launched competitions for Arab features and documentaries, the  Dubai Film Connection, aimed at promoting regional projects in development to the international industry, and a substantial new fund to support Arab filmmakers. The dividends are starting to show, and this year’s Muhr Awards For Excellence In Arab Documentaries programme has fifteen features, and the quality of the programme is quite encouraging. With continued support, I expect to see stronger work from the region in the year’s ahead. So, why do I go to Dubai? Its always better to have local voices tell their own stories, and along with Africa and India, the Arab world is too often represented by foreign perspectives. I’m here to, in a very modest way, support those filmmakers in telling their own stories. And, if doing so means spending a bit of time at the pool, or sipping champagne cocktails seaside, then that’s what I’ll do.

(Michael Noer (VESTERBRO) at the World Premiere of his new film, the very funny (and somehow tender) moped road-trip flick THE WILD HEARTS….photo via Michael’s Facebook page)

Day 20 on  the Euro Doc Tour 2008  was another action packed festival day. Started with some screening in the market, then participated on a consulting panel at CPH:DOX’s Forum, then moderated a spirited panel dealing with copyright, then attended the World Premiere of The Wild Hearts (Michael Noer) and then a chatty dinner with about 100 doc folks. Phew.

Okay, despite my previous off-the-cuff rant re: pitching (its necessary, btw….just don’t think directors should get too wrapped up in it), I did participate in the CPH: Forum today, though it was structured more as a benevolent consulting session than a pitch, per se. CPH: Forum’s Tine Mosegaard has organized the event around a progressive mission (“out-of-the-box” is oft used here): to spark producers to think of  innovative, alternative distribution strategies.

Last year here I met the remarkable Artur Liebhart (Planete Doc Review/Against Gravity) at a conference panel on “21st Century Distribution”  which I moderated. It was Artur’s  first opportunity, at an international event, to speak about his Warsaw based distribution activities. I could say I was duly impressed, but actually my jaw dropped. Artur runs a very popular festival (Planet Doc Review) for feature documentaries in Warsaw. Through his distribution company, Against Gravity, he acquires rights for much of the festival programme, later coordinating theatrical releases (for some of the titles), tv sales (85% of last year’s programme was sold to various Polish broadcasters) and a branded DVD line. Its at once very obvious, and rather innovative. He thinks like a curator and acts, literally, as an entrepreneur (I suspect some of the old-school fest events in Poland, however, aren’t so thrilled with Artur’s endeavours….tough to compete with a festival that’s actually purchasing rights for the films being presented).

I expect to see the formalized melding of film festivals and various levels of distribution as a key component of whatever new models emerge following these very transitional times for the ways media find their audience. It just makes sense, and is already happening. Tribeca has started to partner with Verizon on VOD initiatives; Cinetic hired former sxsw impressario Matt Dentler (who is also at CPH: FORUM this year) for their newly formed Cinetic Rights Management arm, and Without A Box (how long before its a distributor?) did same with Christian Gaines, mostly recently of the AFI Festival.

This year at CPH’s Forum my fellow panelists are an eclectic mix of traditional distributors (Esther van Messel, First Hand Films; Jonathan Miller, Icarus Films), festivals (Gabriella Busman, Visions du Reel); newish media-ish entities ( Cay Wesnigk, Onlinefilm AG; Liz Ogilvie, Indiepix) and niche-within-a-niche distributors (Patrick Kwiatkowski, Microcinema; Cherelle Zheng, Channel Zero Media)….and many more. We offer profound, relevant, informed, witty advice on a wide variety of projects, mostly of them Scandinavian productions. And I make some lame jokes as Forum moderating superstars Jess Search and Karolina Lidin do their usual bang-up  job at creating a constructive, collegial tone. Yet, while many of the productions, most near completion, are quite compelling and will clearly be strong films with market potential, I get the sense that, well, the mood isn’t exactly bullish re: prospects. For anyone. Or maybe we’re all just jaded to the fact that the good work finds its way by invention, luck and perseverance. I mean, what do we know? Despite our keener  displays of distribution expertise (and, fuck, how did Dentler learn the distrib biz lingo so fast, tossing around words like “ancilliary” and “windows” like, well, like a distributor!), its very evident, to me, that the old show business chestnut still applies: “Nobody knows anything. Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess.” William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade.

BURMA VJ – REPORTING FROM A CLOSED COUNTRY will be a much traveled documentary on the festival circuit this year. I screened it in the market here at CPH: DOX today, and later in the week it would win the Festival’s top prize, and more recently it captured the Joris Ivens award at IDFA, and earlier this week it was announced that it’ll be in the World Documentary Competition at Sundance. (Clearly, I’m taking a Siddharthan approach to time here…or a procrastinators!) But even in a little video booth in Copenhagen a few weeks ago, prior to its quick acquisition of accolades, it is easy to see BURMA VJ is special work.

A Danish production directed by Anders Østergaard, the film  follows underground reporters in Burma. They – the Democratic Voice of Burma – are a loose association of videographers who smuggle their footage out of the country. The filmmakers had been following these activists prior to the massive protests (sometimes called the “Saffron Revolution” because of the colour of the monks’ robes) that began in August 2007 and continued through September. Obviously this became the central story of the documentary, which gives us incredible access to these events as they are unfolding. BURMA VJ is  another example of a documentary appearing well after a major event, yet still giving us new information and insight, despite the massive news coverage at the time.

The footage is gripping, reminding me of THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED in its visceral depiction of a citizen’s uprising. Beyond providing a narrative context, the first person voice-over delivered by one of the DVB reporters is also effective in giving the film a resonant emotional core. I was moved by the commitment and courage of these activists. Later, I was discussing the film with an Iranian ex-pat living in Amsterdam. He hadn’t seen the film, though was quite interested in the work of  the DVB reporters. He had been a documentary filmmaker who, due to his own reporting, is no longer welcome in Iran. “Good tactics,” he mused, when told of how the DVB smuggled footage of Burma. BURMA VJ is  a film with work to do in the world, a field guide for media revolutionaries.