10th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival –
Images of the 21st Century
March 7-16, 2008
PRESS RELEASE
JUST TALKING 14/3
The directors Astrid Bussink (The lost colony), Udo Maurer (About Water: People and yellow cans), Catherine Van Campen (Eternal Mash), Gerassimos Rigas (Parvas), the producer of the film Eternal Mash, Joost Seelen and Debra Zimmermann, executive director of the distribution company “Women Make Movies” took part in Just Talking, which took place on Friday, March 14, at the Excelsior room of the Electra Palace hotel. The discussion revolved around the time it takes to make a documentary, budgets and finding financing, and the aesthetics of documentary films.
Gerassimos Rigas (Parvas) said that his film is about the daily life of a family living on a Greek island and mainly takes place during the last six months of the central character’s life. “I pay particular attention to aesthetics, because I am interested in having a more cinematic than journalistic look in the documentary,”, the Greek director said. “I pay particular attention to the dilemmas faced by filmmakers when they have to leave behind the people with whom they bond during shooting.
Astrid Bussink (The lost colony) read a newspaper article about the “opening” of a KGB file. This file concerned experiments made by Stalin in order to cross humans with apes in his effort to create a new, sturdier “human kind”, as he said. This article stimulated her to make a film about the oldest laboratory for experiments on apes, which was totally destroyed during the former soviet republic of Abkhazia’s struggle for independence. It records the attempts by its employees to restore it to its former glory. “From the first moment I got there, I was enchanted by the landscape, in spite of the difficulties I had getting in to the country because of the political situation”, the director said. She stressed the importance of gaining the trust of the film’s “heroes”, as well as the respect that must be shown to them because, “in some way we are exploiting them in order to make our films”, she said. She commented that there is a fine line regarding payment made by the film maker to the characters that take part in his work. She revealed that she herself did this in a scene, which she also included in the film, but she never stopped asking herself “if this is the right thing to do”.
Udo Maurer, after working in television for about 20 years, decided to make the film About Water: People and yellow cans. The film is about those people who struggle daily to have access to clean drinking water. “In Nairobi, women walk up to 6 hours a day to find water”, the director stressed. He explained that women make up most of the characters in his film, because they are the ones who take care of everyday problems such as providing water for the family. Referring to documentary aesthetics, Udo Maurer said that this is a deciding factor for him, and that “the images must match the film”. Honesty toward the leading characters and responsibility are elements that for him, as he stressed, should distinguish filmmakers.
Catherine Van Campen (Eternal Mash), through her film wanted to speak about the environment and plant species that are becoming extinct due to human interventions. It took a year for the film to be completed, the deadline given to her by her producer Joost Seelen, however, as she said, it was enough time for her to get the desired result. About the importance of aesthetics in a documentary, C. Van Campen noted: “I like to create beautiful images, because you can impress the audience this way”. Joost Seelen, producer of the film, answering a question about how the final result of a film is influenced by the time a director has at his disposal, said: “Speaking as a producer, I have to say that I don’t give a great deal of time. I believe it is better for a director to prepare by thorough research and being aware of his choices before he starts shooting, saving the time that would have been wasted on needless shooting.”
Debra Zimmermann, distributor, said about the aesthetics of documentaries, that it doesn’t have to do with the beauty of the image, but rather mainly with how clear the central idea of the film is. “Images should be able to tell the story without words”, she commented.
