Flahertiana 2007

"Tolya" by Rodeon Brodsky

The documentary film festival "Flahertiana" was founded in 1995 by a group of film makers from the Perm region in Russia. Since 2006, it takes place annually as an international event. It specializes, but not in a dogmatic sense, in films whose "main hero lives a part of his/her life on the screen, directed according to the laws of dramatic art". The reference to Robert Flaherty and his Nanook of the North signals a deliberate alternative to the claim of authenticity as formulated by Russia's generally accepted saint of documentary filming Aleksandr Dovzhenko.
   The festival, directed by Pavel Pechenkin, offers, apart from the representative competition, a good overview over the work of regional filmmakers as well as a series of workshops. A FIPRESCI jury was present for the first time. The festival provided 3000 US$ to make the FIPRESCI prize even more attractive. Flahertiana belongs to the smaller festivals where atmosphere and friendly communication play a bigger part then stars and galas.  (Thomas Rothschild)

The FIPRESCI Prize went to Tolya by Israeli filmmaker Rodeon Brodsky. Details
International Documentary Film Festival "Flahertiana", Perm, September 7-13, 2007, www.flahertiana.ru

Reports
Imagining Reality. Thomas Rothschild recognises in Tolya, a 10-minute film by Rodeon Brodsky, that a short film can be just as good as a feature and that artistic quality overrides the purists' view of documentary films, that nothing must be staged.
Robert Flaherty's Children. Anna Geréb, a specialist in Russian films, was most interested in the various films that reflected life in the region, finding a great deal to praise.
The Savage Innocents. Vica Smirnova is not convinced by Yaptik-Hasse, Edgar Bartenev's ethnographic document which, though poetic, lacks a historical and political perspective in its Utopian portrait of 'an almost extinct nation'.

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