Until the next resurrection

Berlin. 17th-24th of October. Prix Europa 2009. Around 40 delegates have watched and judged 33 tv documentary films, in a room without windows, during 6 days, from 9 am to 7pm.

While outside it was mostly sunny.

Edoardo (my producer) and I are amongst them. We are in charge to award the Best Television Documentary Programme of the Year 2009 (PRIX EUROPA) and the Best Regional, Local or Low-Budget 
Television Documentary of the Year 2009 (SPECIAL PRIX EUROPA). Almost the all of us have a film in one of the two competitions. We come from all Europe: Germany, Italy, Bulgary, Belarus, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Denmark, Ukraina, Lithuania, Belgium, Switzerland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia.  The discussions are lead by “the master” Paul Watson, pluri-awarded filmaker from England.

We took our job so seriously that after 2 days we’ve had the first victim. The Ukrainian team didn’t appreciate the bloody criticism on their film and they left the festival. This was good for me and for people who had to screen their films in the following days, because discussions became softer and more peacefull. But expectations were higher and higher everyday and there was some feeling of unbearableness  when the umpteenth little boat opened the umpteenth almost silent eastern film shot in the wild countryside of the former CCCP.

To cut the story short, the winner is:

Chemo by Pawel Lozinsk (PRIX EUROPA) POLAND

Until the Next Resurrection by  Oleg Morozov (SPECIAL PRIX EUROPA) RUSSIA

Chemo.It’s an one hour film built on a strong concept. A chain of close ups on people having their chemo treatments in a Day Hospital ward. Young and old people sharing their humanity and talking about everyday’s life. We smile while a young boy tells about his  wedding, but the smile goes away when we know that he can’t buy his suit untill he doesn’t stop loosing weight. We laugh when two oldies discuss if the comunistic era was good times or bad times. Is it better to be free and starve or have no freedom but have food and job? Chemo is a portrait of Poland seen from a Day Hospital ward. Irony, humanity and beauty. But death is around the corner and laughs have a bitter taste. There’s an oniric dimension that is broken by the last frame, a wide shot, the only one, on the corridor that leads outside. And suddenly we realize that we might meet them everyday on the train, on the metro or in a bar. Life seems so fragile and death is so real.

Paul Watson and Pawel Lozinsk

Until the Next Resurrection. Some countrymen from some forgotten russian countryside are talking in a hut. Drinking, smoking and talking. I wrote on my notebook: ”I don’t understand anything!!!”. Then the camera goes closer and we are in a car with 2 young and beautiful girls on drugs; then in a sauna with a naked old man and a  naked young woman. They’re having fun. Watching tv, smoking, talking, drinking.  We got to know their bodies well. They’re lovers or maybe she’s a prostitute or it could be that they’re a couple because he’s very gentle and protective with her. There’s nothing morbid.  A couple of captions say that the guy lost his son and the girl his husband. There’s death behind every story. But there’s no sorrow on their face. Fragments of everyday’s life on the edge between death and life in the russian Kaliningrad.  After the first 20 minutes Morozov took me to an unknown state of mind and then I wrote “Fucking powerfull!”. I was totally lost. Apparently, the story has no logical sense but I felt confortably lost and free. Free from the Kingdom of the “storyline”, the apollinean golden cage of sense. Morozov taught me how to tell a life that has no sense. He’s not afraid of a narration which is not logical. Morozov makes of the magnetism of  his characters the glue of the film. We first see the humans and, by the way ,they are prostitutes or drug addicted. They don’t complain, they don’t fight, they don’t leave, they don’t wish anything…maybe to quit taking drugs, but the idea flies away in the bat of an eye. T.S. Eliott might clap on this film. The broken reality reflects itself into the broken film, but everything is fluent like a clear thought. Morozov has total access and takes us into people’s life, into their toilet, while they’re naked and stoned in the sauna or having sex watching outside the window. Every frame is so magnetic and powerful. A masterpiece. Thanks Mr. Morozov wherever you are.

What about Mostar United? We didn’t win anything, but the reactions were great. Our colleagues were very kind and supportive, but also professionally critical. In the short version we screened, they missed the struggle in the everyday’s life, but I think the problem is not there in the long version. And somebody complained that the brutality of nationalism comes too late and it takes 40 minutes to see how hard it could be to live in Mostar. I have to think about it.

What does it mean if Chemo and Until the next resurrection win the PRIX EUROPA, an award for tv programs? In my opinion, it means a lot. It means that the discussion between what is a film for tv and what is a film for the theatre is a sterile discussion. We all want to watch beautiful films, inspiring ones, both when we go to the movie theatre and when we watch tv at home.  Everything which is beautiful is also entertaining, but entertainment can’t be the aim, the goal to achieve. Too sterile, too empty. How can “How many times and how often people go to the toilet or to the fridge to pick up a beer?” be of any inspiration to build a film? Tv is just an empty box. How can it set the rules for storytelling? Let’s fill it up also with masterpieces.

Thanks dear collegues of mine! It was great to get to know you all and watch your films.