JUST TALKING 17/3
The first “Just Talking” session of the 15th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival took place on Sunday, March 17 2013 with directors John Appel (Wrong Time Wrong Place), Juan Ignacio Fernandez Hoppe (The Flowers of my Family), Eviroula Dourou (Camino Musical: 9 Days of Galician Music), Panayiotis Evangelidis (They Glow In The Dark), Rob Fruchtman (Sweet Dreams), Margreth Olin (Nowhere Home), and Andreas Siadimas (Music Village). Festival director Dimitri Eipides attended the discussion, which was moderated by director, producer and this year’s FIPRESCI Jury president Peter Wintonick.
Opening the discussion, John Appel talked about the theme of his documentary Wrong Time Wrong Place: “My film is about the 2011 Norway bombing attacks and the cold-blooded executions at the island of Utoya. They may seem distant, but in reality these events are very recent. My film is about the unexpected, about the things you cannot control, the fragility of life and that crucial moment separating life from death. In life, you are sometimes lucky, and sometimes unlucky. You can be in the right place at the right time, or in the wrong place at the wrong time”. The director also discussed the concept of luck in relation to his previous work, The Player: “This was a personal film about my father, who was a gambler and lost the biggest bet of all: his life. When I am filming, I am very open; naturally, there is a script, but I do not want my film to revolve around things I already know. When I started filming The Player, I had no idea who the characters would be -I only had a broad idea and built on it. I did the same with Wrong Place Wrong Time. Perhaps chance and coincidence will play an even bigger role in my next film.”
Norwegian director Margreth Olin talked about her film Nowhere Home. “I started filming in 2009, when new legislation was introduced in Norway, to discourage the arrival of asylum seekers. Victims of this policy where parentless children from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Ethiopia, who had lost their families. Asylum status granted to orphans means you are sent back when you reach 18, even if you have nothing and no one to return to. This dreadful situation is the reason I made the film”. The director added: “During the premiere of my documentary in Norway, I told the story of my two protagonists, who are two brothers from Afghanistan, to a prominent journalist. Thanks to the publicity, one of them was given permanent residence status and his brother a one-year permit. The documentary inspired a debate in Norway, and the two brothers are now allowed to live and go to school together. This is positive, but does not solve the wider problem. My film helped those boys, but not all refugees can have their own documentary” .
Thematically different, but also human-centered and touching is the story told by Panayiotis Evangelidis in his documentary They Glow In The Dark. The film takes place in New Orleans, after the disaster of hurricane Katrina. “My characters are also immigrants - just domestic ones. Jim and Michael are a homosexual middle aged (platonic) couple with AIDS. I spent a month with them and became part of their daily routine, following them with my camera. Their story is a story of survival, of struggle against poverty, their disease, and the government”. The director added: “They live with their memories, which are often painful, but keep them alive. Despite their differences and frequent fights, Jim says in the end that only death will do them part. The documentary captures a moment in their life. I believe this is what the documentary genre is all about, capturing moments”.
Rob Fruchtman takes us to an entirely different place with Sweet Dreams, co-directed with his sister, Lisa. “This is the story of two amazing women from Rwanda, who learned how to play the percussion, and even formed their very own band, defying prohibitions. My sister and I were keen to know how a country can heal its wounds after a genocide, especially when perpetrators and survivors live next to each other as is the case with Rwanda”. These women took the initiative to establish the first Rwandan ice cream business. As Fruchtman explained, “one of them met two young girls from Brooklyn and asked them to travel to Rwanda and help the locals in this venture. This is about the importance of new ideas and having the strength to carry them out, not about ice cream per se”.
Peter Wintonick then commented on the magical aspect of Hoppe’s film The Flowers of my Family. Commenting on the concept of fate, the director explained: “The film focuses on my then 90-year old grandmother and my 64-year old mother, who lived together until my mother met a man and decided to move out and live with him. Both have to deal with this separation. As my grandmother tries to send away some pigeons from her garden, she “sees” the Holy Spirit in one of them. I decided to develop this story with the pigeons. When my mother told us that perhaps that pigeon is searching to build a nest and lay eggs, I decided to present this as the Holy Spirit that had come to make the separation easier. While I was visiting a church in Spain, I got a call from my grandmother who told me that the pigeon had made a nest and laid her eggs already. Obviously, I returned to film the eggs -the risk I had taken. I believe fate and destiny play an important role”.
The discussion then turned to music, which is the focus of the film Camino Musical: 9 Days of Galician music, by Eviroula Dourou. What started out as a university final project, developed into an 80- minute feature. As the director said: “I was an Erasmus student in Santiago de Compostela. I came to contact with the locals and listened to Galician music, which I loved. When I returned and had to do my final project, I kept listening to that music and decided with my fellow students that it would make an ideal theme: a 10-day trip, where we meet the locals, eat and drink and celebrate their everyday lives”. She added that the word “morina”, mentioned in the film, means nostalgia, what she felt upon returning for the first time.
Talking about his film, Music Village, Andreas Siadimas said: “I was not all that interested in making a music documentary. My main interest was the village of Saint Lavrentios in Pelio, where a big music community is formed every year. I visited the village to shoot something different, and was impressed by what I saw that night. I met with the organizers and returned for filming the next year. We won the trust of our characters by showing them our footage. That film was a fascinating experience and I feel that we shall be returning there every year, because we feel part of what is happening”.
The films are part of the 15th TDF program, which is financed by the European Union’s Regional Development Fund for Central Macedonia, 2007-2013.
