Only a few days out from Sundance 2009, I'm still soaking in all the moments from film festivals of 2008, the collision of ideas and ideals. Documentary festivals have become my favorite expeditions the past couple years, where films with from social and artistic conscience are captured from inspired perspectives. And, in almost every instance, the great to half-decent filmmakers who take up even the most serious, even severe subjects, hold a wry smile toward the world. It's halfway across the world, but the pair of events that impress me the most each year are in the north of Greece, at the foot of the Balkans. Thessaloniki hosts two festivals each year, its International in November, and its now-10-year-old sibling Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, in the spring. Several years ago was the most emotional experience of my moviegoing decade, a year the festival marked as "The Year of the Child." The children on-screen suffered; the audience out in the darkness, light reflecting off upturned faces, suffered, too, eyes opened ever wider. While smaller than the fall event, TIDF programs around 100 features from around the world, under thematic umbrellas like "Views of the World," "Stories to Tell, "Recordings of Memory," "Habitat," "Music," and "Human Rights." It's an intriguing way to suggest taxonomy of the topics tackled by festivals that program from the world of nonfiction. Tributes in 2008 included Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, Canadian documentary and the ubiquitous Finnish auteur Arto Halonen (whose amused path I crossed at HotDocs and DocFest as well). Parallel events include outreach to child audiences, an exhibition of photography about Canada's role in rebuilding Afghanistan and work from twelve countries by Sotiris Danezis, called "One Second Of Silence." Best Masterclass title: "I Am Trying To Combine YouTube With Aristotle." [A complete rundown of the event can be found on
this omnibus page on the festival website.]
Yung Chang, Canadian director of
Up the Yangtze, became one of the year's most noted. He compares programs with Icelandic journalist-filmmaker Hanna Björk Valsdóttir.
Sotiris Danezis' images of reflection on the battlefields of a world at war are bold.
Tanaz Eshaghian presented her documentary about transsexuals in Iran,
Be Like Others; Simon Brook is the director of the 1968-year-zero collage film,
Generations 68.
At dusk along the waterfront of the city, across Thermaikos Bay,a pair of gulls are less than/more than landscape.
Sinofsky and Berlinger await translation of a question at their press conference.
Bergsteinn Bjorgulfsson photographs many of the features released in Iceland each year; he and Ari Alexander Ergis Magnusson (
Screaming Masterpieces) co-directed the harrowing documentary about 1950s-1960s child abuse at a school for boys in a remote part of Iceland,
At the Edge of the World.
Parties small are large are part of the scene, as in the fall.
Canadian filmmakers Peter Wintonick and Tiffany Burns at breezy sunset on the rooftop restaurant of the Elektra Palace Hotel.
Hussain Currimbhoy, programmer of Sheffield Doc/Fest, with Sandi DuBowski, producer of
A Jihad For Love, at the annual Agora restaurant "ouzo lunch."
Knowing the central city a bit allowed me to guide filmmakers post-party from the anarchist bicycle messenger bar that was unaccountably shuttered at 3 in the morning to the all-night Stoa music bar in the middle of the 1920s-built Modiano Market.
Later, just as dawn is breaking, a man takes his morning walk near the water, komboloi (worry beads) behind his back.
# posted by Ray Pride @ 1/12/2009 06:48:00 PM
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