yearbook 2004/05 - The European Film College

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What is with docs? By Litsa Boudalika & Lise Lense-Møller Lise Lense-Møller Magic Hours’ Dialectics (Based on A Pro’s Thesis) FROM THE TEACHERS Based in Copenhagen, Danish producer Lise Lense-Møller is a European expert in Film producing and production and also a distinguished lecturer, consultant, project coordinator, script-writer, translator, publisher. Besides production, Lise’s educational background includes Anthropology and English Language studies. Founder and managing director of Magic Hour Films, she has been working with Jan Troell, Morten Henriksen, Dola Bonfils, Klaus Kjeldsen, and Michael W. Horsten - just to mention some familiar names among talented Scandinavian directors. Whether she produces for children or grown-ups, whether she refers to Art, History, Science, Psychology or Philosophy, a subtle gaze on the world sounds like a continuous thread in her documentary productions. In the context of this publication, I wish to call magic hours those meaningful moments generated by an activity in which time seems suspended; it can be our dentist’s waiting room but also the simple fact of driving, reading, listening, writing, watching, editing a film or …an article. Such an emotional and cognitive process occurred to me before and after having received Lise’s anatomies of thoughts. Why anatomy, why thought and why do I apply a plural? Similar to a biological cell condemned to divide in two - or more - Anatomy of thoughts stands |1| for a 85 minutes Magic Hour Films documentary production on brain research (and more besides) directed by Dola Bonfils in 1997, |2| a close to one magic hour and a half of precise documentaristic transversality, a film bridging different fields of science and society. Or |3|, a ’jocund’ Dola-Lise joint venture accompanied by mostly male brain ’workers’. Time indeed becomes magic when the brain takes its unpredictable paths to the most satisfactory synapses while looking for a title or a structure. Since ‘Anatomy of Thoughts’ and the obvious connectivity of this expression to notions close to ‘dialectics’ in Philosophy, or ‘continuity’ - in films, as much as in human experience – ‘Anatomy of Thoughts’ could have been a suitable title for Lise’s plain text of 1385 words before editing... But this is a title almost interchangeable with some others from her filmography! Why not ‘The Living Word’, ‘Confronting Otherness’ or ‘I remember’’? Remember when Karen Littauer presented her ‘Tales from Greenland’ in Big Bear? That was also a Magic Hour Films production. {Thesis’ division or postulate} Well, let us, first, opt for the structure and then for the title. But what if the title coincided with the conclusion? Why not? Now, back to the structure choice: just imagine some other continuity than the well known hegelian dia-
FROM THE TEACHERS lectic process of ‘thesis, antithesis, synthesis’. In the context of this publication, I restructured Lise’s thoughts according to, let’s say, an ‘anatomic’ disorder consisting of lexical intrusions (prepositional to be precise) to the word ‘thesis’, intended here as a synonym of ‘thought.’ Introducing a ‘pro’ like her, who also happened to be my teacher, becomes, once more, a magic moment of …educational and lexical heuristics. {pro * thesis } * pro or pro, stands for before, in front of, just as in “programme” It was this selfish hunger for knowledge and insight that in the beginning influenced my choice of projects. I was (is) also often motivated by a strange urge to run in the opposite direction of everybody else, so while all others were striving to develop infotainment series or docu-soaps I threw myself onto the difficult one-offs, (but of course that is a very delicate balance, if you want to survive as a company). So at some point I had to develop a clearer strategy. My selection became based on subject and/or story, talent (director) and talent development, viability, variety of projects and project demands, and on my ability to bring something substantial to the project - to make a difference. {anti * thesis } *anti or anti, stands for against, as in “antitrust” The distinction between fiction and documentary is not as clear as it once was, since there is a strong demand for catching the audience’s attention, that often forces filmmakers to use “fiction” tools in documentary making. However, documentary is such a wide genre that includes everything from the educational video, over company presentations and reality shows (like Robinson), to feature docs for cinema. Some of these documentaries have very little in common with fiction, whereas others have a lot. I think especially the docu-soap/reality type projects are mostly built on fiction skeletons and structures, where you create goals and obstacles, protagonists and antagonists in the process of filming and editing, even if they are not there “in reality”. This, however, has had an effect even on classical documentary making, I believe. Even in documentaries with a fly-on-the-wall approach, it has become much more permissible in the last decade to interfere in the events, you are documenting, and to create and direct scenes, which would not otherwise have happened. You can shape reality to underline your point of view - but it demands an awful lot of the ethical judgement exerted by the producer and the director. Earlier this year there was a scandal on Denmarks Radio where a programme was edited to make it look as if a day-care woman was slapping a child, when in fact that was not happening. I don’t have any inside knowledge about this, but just for the sake of the example - she did express the opinion, that it was OK to discipline children in this way, and the filmmakers may even have seen her do it off-camera. Maybe they were tempted to “create” what they did not manage to get on camera for the sake of the story and the argument, but did that make it OK? In this case, no it did not. The woman in question was exposed on public television doing something that she never did and this had very – I assume – wide ranging effects on her life and job. It became a scandal in the media and those accountable in DR were removed from their positions. Clearly here, somebody crossed a line, but it is a very thin line. Had it been a different and less “sensational” action that the filmmakers wanted, but did not have on camera, or had they been able to persuade her to “act” this in front of the cam0era, it would most likely have
Page 1 and 2: The Yearbook of the European Film C
Page 3 and 4: The Yearbook of the European Film C
Page 5 and 6: Executive Board og the European Fil
Page 7 and 8: Life after the EFC By Jens Rykær I
Page 9 and 10: Creating the documentary on Don Rob
Page 11 and 12: was to make extreme efforts to show
Page 13 and 14: The New Student Lounge Cleaning Dut
Page 15 and 16: stone. Now she has made a feature-l
Page 17 and 18: Photo: Jens Rykær The summer that
Page 19 and 20: SUMMER 2003 Irm Hermann Morten Arnf
Page 21 and 22: SUMMER 2003 Harriet Knitter and the
Page 23 and 24: SUMMER 2003 “For example”, cont
Page 25 and 26: Diary 2003-04 By Jens Rykær SUMMER
Page 27 and 28: SUMMER 2003 Chr. Brand Thomsen & Ho
Page 29 and 30: Photo: Jens Rykær Christopher Wint
Page 31 and 32: SUMMER 2003 0
Page 33 and 34: Jubilee Celebrations By Mark Le Fan
Page 35 and 36: During the weekend, guests from abr
Page 37 and 38: Ebeltoft Lecture By Mark Le Fanu EV
Page 39 and 40: EVENTS spent a wonderful summer wor
Page 41 and 42: EVENTS ly. Peter left school early
Page 43 and 44: Photo: Jean Leander News Year’s C
Page 45 and 46: at the school we began the behind-t
Page 47 and 48: FROM THE TEACHERS Visiting the Film
Page 49 and 50: Ghosts of EFC By James Fernald FROM
Page 51: Why Seek Globally... By Esben Høil
Page 55 and 56: FROM THE TEACHERS Having said that
Page 57 and 58: FROM THE STUDENTS At a slight angle
Page 59 and 60: Present State of Art and some Recom
Page 61 and 62: FROM THE STUDENTS [The] artists wer
Page 63 and 64: The Greeks at the EFC By Persefone
Page 65 and 66: A step on the journey By Nahed Awwa
Page 67 and 68: Framing the Subjective By Laurent Z
Page 69 and 70: The Duellists By Bue B. Petersen Em
Page 71 and 72: FROM THE STUDENTS Feraud walks from
Page 73 and 74: The Berlinale Experience By Kjetil
Page 75 and 76: My left foot AWAY FROM THE EFC Rott
Page 77 and 78: AWAY FROM THE EFC
Page 79 and 80: Are you bored? LET’S GO TO THE MO
Page 81 and 82: Photo: Jens Rykær LET’S GO TO TH
Page 83 and 84: This also meant that all teachers a
Page 85 and 86: Staff News By Jens Rykær WHO’s W
Page 87 and 88: Principal and teachers: Jens Rykær
Page 89 and 90: to the “script”: preliminary re
Page 91 and 92: Guess who’s coming to dinner The
Page 93 and 94: Richard Martin: Teachers’ assista
Page 95 and 96: education as a kitchen assistant in
Page 97: Students 2003-2004 Adler, Sonny Ana

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