Radmila Djurica

BELDOCS- The Documentary Film Festival 2013 in Belgrade, Serbia is a festival with greater aesthetic criteria and shocking individual world of a great film, although the shock impact of the audience wouldn’t be an aesthetic category. BELDOCS Festival tries to change attitude about the film itself, in a term of the significance and importance of a top class documentary.

One of the greatest of this festival was a retrospective of filmmaker Chris Marker, one of the greatest documentary film directors. BELDOCS festival presented the great opportunity for the younger generation to review the most important films of Marker. A retrospective consisted six films directed by Chris Marker, as an homage to his influence on film as a photographer, writer  and artist in films such as Le fond de l'air EST rouge, A bientôt, j'espère, La sixième face du Pentagon Puisqu'on vous dit que c'est possible, L'Ambassade etc., due to a new documentary style something that lasts 50 years now.

Eight films in program consist the International Program. Featured films were for instance the Israeli The Gatekeepers by Dror Moreh, the Gruzian The Machine That Makes Everything Dissappear byTanatin Gurchian, a film that won Best Documentary Directing Award at Sundance Festival. Also, a Brazilian Elena  by Peter Costa and the film about the great Russian riot -punk- is- not- dead supporters  Pussy Riot - A Punk Prayer  directed by Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkina and a wonderful controversial feminist issue film Gulabi Gang directed by Nishtha Jain. FIPRESCI Award went to a fantastic portrait of a wonderful film Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction by Sophie Huber for engaging capture and atmospheric tribute to a great power and allure of the actor Harry Dean Stanton, enlarged with an elegant visuals given in a casual tone. Given to Stanton´s brilliant performances, Huber successfully managed to give  Stanton cult status of a quiet, gentle and illuminating profile, with the skillful and simple but impressionistic style. The film features interviews of a great stars such as Blondie, David Lynch or Wim Wenders. The Best Film of the Festival Award went to The Art of Killing by Joshua Oppenheimer, a controversial and really shocking  story about the political killings in Indonesia in the 60s for a portrait of psychopathic mass murder, something to remind us on our own sociopaths from the latest civil war of ex Jugoslavia. The film director Joshua Oppenheimer was student of a world known Serb filmmaker Dusan Makavejev in US at the end of 80s and the beginning of 90s.  One of my favorite film of the festival is also Albert’s Way directed by Serbian film director Predrag Bambic and features legendary Albert Mayer 4 times Oscar Winner and constructor of the great Hollywood Panaflex Camera. The story is about life achievements of Albert Mayer, a legendary constructor of Panaflex film camera connected to Serbia in a way that Albert comes from the mixed nationalities Serbia territory Vojvodina and little village called Perlez. Mayer Senior had to emigrate from Serbia just after the II World War because communists didn’t want any German nationality on their territory: Germans from the territory of Vojvodina were cruelly prosecuted under the order of Russians and Stalin from Serbia, no matter of their political beliefs, as the retribution for the Nazi Holocaust over Serbs, Jews and everyone else during the war.  

The most interesting part of the festival were of course music documentaries. The festival  presented six music documentaries.  My favorites were  A Painkiller: the story of Mark Sandman from the band Morphine directed by Robert G. Bralver and David Ferino and of course a wonderful Autoluminescent: about Rowland.S.Howard from the early days of the band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds directed by Australian Richard Lowenstein and LynnMaree Milburn.

Many films were depicting and touching on the festival: theme of Kosovo as the subject of several Serbian documentary films for instance film Kosma/Kosma directed by Sonja Blagojevic about the hard living condition of the Serb community on Kosovo. The most popular was the historical reconstruction of ex Yugoslavia, film directed by left wing supporter Marta Popivoda Yugoslavia How Ideology Moved our Collective Body/Jugoslavija, kako je ideologija pokretala nase kolektivno telo. And of course it goes into a global, thematic range of different issues in a sense of creativity, in a term of a film language. I also quite liked film Arie/Arie directed by Branko Lazic even though I am often tired of the Holocaust stories, about Arie Livni, Jew from Serbia who survived Nazi Holocaust during II World War. The Jury of Beldocs in the national selection unanimously awarded Unplugged/Anplaged directed by Mladen Kovacevic for casualness that is due responsibility of visual richness is the result of conscious decisions, talent and skill to be something ordinary, almost anything presented as a complete universe, the recognition and affirmation skills that ordinary people can amaze and inspire in the same way as the stories of ancient heroes and heroes of our time. The jury also praised the directors of Dragan Wende/Dragan Wende-West Berlin  Dragan Petrovic and Lenny von Müller and Special Award went here to a co-director of this film Vuk Maksimovic. The Special Recognition was given to Valentina Delic and Radio-Television Serbia for Voice of Belgrade/Glas iz Beograda - a wonderful portrait of a dignified professor Ljubisa Rajic, late professor of Belgrade University and academic presenters of the Scandinavian languages and culture.