JUST TALKING 18/3
The “Just Talking” section of the 15th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival continued on Monday, March 18, 2013. Participating were directors Simon Brook (Indian Summer), Marta Cunningham (Valentine Road), Anna Giralt Gris (Europe - Trap), Menios Karayiannis (Skapeta), Beatrix Schwehm (Hungry Minds), Chryssa Tzelepi (The Chronicle of an Extermination, co-directed by Akis Kersanidis) and producer Jonathan Berguig (Recollections, directed by Nathanael Carton).
These documentaries differ from each other in terms of subject matter, but they share a common characteristic: their protagonists are struggling against all odds. This is what the directors focused on when presenting their films.
Anna Giralt Gris’ documentary Europe - Trap is about a 55-year-old woman from Afghanistan, who became a refugee in Europe along with her son. “Reaching Greece along this hard road, the two were separated and her son was imprisoned. My heroine found herself in Spain through luck, thinking she was travelling to Germany. I met her by accident in Barcelona and I wanted to tell the story of the refugees through her eyes. I wanted to focus on their psychological profile more, go beyond their thoughts, to the deeper pain they feel”, the director noted.
Jonathan Berguig, producer of the film Recollections by Nathanael Carton, said that the film presents a community of survivors of the tsunami that struck Japan in 2011. These people are trying to keep their memories alive through photographs salvaged from the ruins. “It was very moving. Even though they lost everything, they took courage to rebuild their lives thanks to these photographs”, Mr. Berguig said.
Valentine Road by Marta Cunningham refers to a painful incident. It tells the story of a high school senior, Brandon McInerney, who shot his classmate Larry King at point blank range. “The film focuses on both boys, their families and their schoolmates, who lived through the murder. It highlights issues of racism, and looks at the attitudes of the trial and the media about the subject”, the director said.
The film The Chronicle of an Extermination refers to the Hortiatis massacre in Greece. “This is a tragic piece of Greek history, perhaps that of European, or world history as well. At the end of World War II, the Germans, leaving the area of Thessaloniki, together with their Greek collaborators, burned 174 people in Hortiatis alive. We record the experience of four survivors. We want to see history through the eyes of people who were witnesses to the events, because some things are not recorded in official history”, the director commented.
The film Indian Summer by Simon Brook takes place in a different corner of the world. He follows the story of a woman who was cured of cancer by following the traditional healing practice of Ayurveda. “Her doctor is with her in the film, an internationally known oncologist who seemed angry that his patient was cured not because of him, but because of a method he didn’t understand”,
Beatrix Schwehm’s Hungry Minds takes us to India, Mongolia and Africa. The film presents the stories of three mobile libraries operating in these places. “It is a slow film, much like reading a book”, the director noted, adding that the film deals with different cultures and ways of life, as well as the hopes and dreams of the people who live there.
Consciously cut off from the rest of the world is the protagonist of Menios Karayiannis’ documentary Skapeta. “It is a slow film. I enter into the life of my protagonist who lives so close to civilization but at the same time so far from it. Contemporary society reaches him through the garbage washed up by the sea”, the director stated.
Aside from their protagonists, the directors themselves faced difficulties and challenges in order to complete their films.
“Each time you begin a documentary you struggle with yourself about what you want to say and how you want to say it”, Anna Giralt Gris observed. “When I met my protagonist, the challenge was for her to understand the goal of the documentary because it was important. I had many difficulties with the language, because she speaks only Farsi and I had to have an interpreter. There were also cultural issues – it is a large step for an Afghan woman to allow you to photograph her”, the director noted
For producer Jonathan Berguig and director Nathanael Carton there wasn’t only a film challenge, but actual danger. “I didn’t know what we would encounter getting so close to the site of the nuclear explosion. The information the government gave out on the danger to the population was meager, so the areas at this distance had not been evacuated”, Mr. Berguig said. He added: “Because of the large amount of press present, the only way the locals would trust us was for us to volunteer to help them gather photographs”.
Marta Cunningham lived through something similar during the film Valentine Road. After the murder reporters inundated the town. “The Hispanics who lived there felt they were being judged. I felt as though they were telling me ‘who are you, coming from Los Angeles in your fancy car?’ Some were racist toward non-whites. We had an African-American camera operator and two Russian-Jewish editors in our crew. We faced animosity until we were accepted”, the director stated.
The challenge for Chryssa Tzelepi and Akis Kersanidis in The Chronicle of an Extermination, was “to deal with Greece's contemporary history”, the director said. She added: “We had to open a dialogue on a difficult subject and we decided to record the stories of those who lived through the events, their own version of history. It was a documentary which made us deal with emotions and the challenge was how to use them in the film”.
On the other hand, the basic problem for Simon Brook was financing. He had been trying to make Indian Summer since 2004. “However, all the rich financers turned me down, the institutions, the networks, the yoga centers. Everyone told me I was crazy. As a matter of fact, one doctor told me that what I was doing was unethical and dangerous. Then a producer from ARTE got excited, but then he had a heart attack and his priorities changed. Even though I’m not superstitious, I thought that I had never faced such problems before. Finally I made it, “the director said.
The difficulty Beatrix Schwehm faced in Hungry Minds was that it was not possible to focus on the personal story of one person. “I tried to record the feelings of the readers through the books, not through their private lives. The biggest challenge was to create an atmosphere during shooting and through editing”, she said.
For Menios Karayiannis, the lack of financing was the reason he abandoned cinema for many years. “Essentially, Skapeta is a one man production. I met the protagonist five-six years ago, and took me time to get to know him and get him to open up, because he was isolated from society and very shy. I could have had better sound, but I had to find technical solutions that would allow me to make the film by myself, because my protagonist would not accept anyone else, only me. I worked without water, without electricity, just like him”, the director noted.
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.
