DOComedy Now

I forrige uge havde Politiken en  klumme af Dennis Nørmark , som jeg skrev en kommentar til. Bladet har dog netop afvist mit debatindlæg, og det sjove er, at man heller ikke på nettet kan kommentere, da det netop er en såkaldt "klumme". Indtil videre har jeg desuden kun set et enkelt læserbrev i avisen om hans indlæg, og det var vist mest opbakkende. Men I, kære læsere, skal selvfølgelig ikke snydes for det, så det kommer her nedenfor, for jeg synes faktisk, at det er lidt vigtigt. (Lidt snydt bliver I dog, for det er i virkeligheden en sammenskrivning og et opkog af nogle stykker af mine tidligere indlæg herinde). Er humor for alvorligt til at overlade til komikere – og antropologer? I husker naturligvis Umberto Eco’s ”Rosens Navn”, men kan I huske plottets omdrejningspunkt? Munken Jorge ville holde indholdet af Aristoteles’ bog, Den Anden Poetik om komediens natur, hemmelig, og det kostede en del skrammer og akut blodtab for hans fjender. I virkeligheden er bogen...

Me and Docs – we are having some trouble; our 20-some years’ romance has halted a bit lately. I fell in love with documentaries around 1994, but … you know how it is… sometimes things just cool off. We’ve been through the usual: “it’s not you, it’s me” (even though we both know it’s not me) and we’ve tried not seeing each other. But you just realize you are in love deep down when you see the other party hobnobbing with all sorts of people and you feel that sting of jealousy … knowing that the others are not good for your loved one. And when you see someone taking advantage of the situation and suggesting all sorts of indecent things, you just want to go punch them in the face (and maybe film it simultaneous). So we went into therapy… and I bought a 188€ accreditation pass for CPH:DOX (with discount from Danish Film Directors, otherwise it would have been 235€ - but hey, therapy is always expensive) so I could go see if I - if WE - can re-find the affection and to expl...

(Alt for l ange) b etragtninger om humorens vilkår i Danmark (in Danish). Humor er liv, humor er uhøjtidelighed, og humor er en god måde at påpege urimeligheder på. Men det er svært at have med at gøre. Prøv at gå ind i en propfuld bagerbutik en søndag formiddag, og når ekspedienten spørger ud i rummet ”Hvis tur er det?”, så sig fra din plads allerbagest i køen med så ærligt et pokerfjæs du kan: ”Jeg tror, det er mig nu.” Det kan være en hel ubetalelig oplevelse, for reaktionen er prompte og sur, for det kan umuligt være min tur, jeg er jo lige kommet ind osv. Men hurtigt går det op for de fleste, at det jo må have været for sjov, at jeg sagde det, og nogle begynder ligefrem at se det satiriske i situationen. Men det er ikke noget, man skal gøre hver søndag – så bliver det gammelt. Humor kan også være ond og ødelæggende.   Eller kan det? For er det så ikke bare mobning og ikke humor? Men hvor går grænsen, og er vi bange for at udfordre den grænse? Hvem må vi gøre grin...

In the latest edition of DOX Magazine there’s an interesting essay by Swedish filmmaker PeÅ Holmquist. He feels that he always has to answer all but ONE question to commissioning editors and other people whom he wants to invest in or buy his films: what is the film’s STORY? And Holmquist is tired of it. And rightfully so, I might add. Well, of course I could tease him by asking what the hell he had expected from a BBC slot called “Storyville”, with the crucial word up there in the name, but I would rather tease the one who chose the name, because why would you name your TV slot after a part of New Orleans? But never mind, the thing in question is why commissioning editors are so interested in “story”, even in documentaries? The answer is probably that they are interested in stories because they think that their audience is. And most likely they are right. And most likely, even us who fight against the numbing reign of story and the dramaturgical "quasi-fascism" enjoy to...

A film course in 5-6 easy steps 1. FIND THE TOPIC Either in a very, very private or a very, very dangerous place 2. FILM THE TOPIC Either very, very handheld or very, very still 3. EDIT THE FILMING OF THE TOPIC Either very, very fast paced or very, very slow 4A. DO A VOICE-OVER Either yourself in English with bad/exotic accent or by famous actor with bad/exotic accent and/or 4B. PUT ON MUSIC Either by a virtually unknown but hip musician-friend of yours or by some classical composer dude. The fifth step runs along the other four and is so obvious I can hardly make myself write it down: 5. TALK TO/LAUGH AT JOKES BY/COMPLIMENT CHILDREN OF/DRINK OR DO DRUGS WITH/KISS ASS OF/GO TO BED WITH etc.: COMMISSIONING EDITORS/TV EXECUTIVES/FILM FESTIVAL DIRECTORS/JURY MEMBERS/FINANCING FORUM ARRANGERS/INFLUENTIAL DIRECTORS/BLOG WRITERS etc. And oh; I almost forgot: 6. MAKE IT A CROSS/TRANS/MULTI MEDIA PROJECT FOR NO APPARENT REASON PS. I must her...

Bente Milton’s and my own film, ”My Avatar and Me” (2010/11), has now been showed at quite a few TV stations and at a number of festivals of which I’ve had the privilege to attend most of them. It is really a pleasure getting to show the film to people and discuss it with local audiences and colleagues from around the world. As Hans Christian Andersen once said: “At rejse er at leve” (“To travel is to live”) and as a film maker I just have to live... so I can experience something to make films about… J At the latest of the festivals – the small and lovely Guth Gafa International Documentary Film Festival in the north-western part of Ireland – a member of the audience first said she really enjoyed the film but then asked how the film could ever be selected for a documentary festival. Of course I couldn’t answer on behalf of the festival, but I completely agree that the film has many fictional aspects. And the reason for that was that we as filmmakers chose to blend different modes of ...

(I hope my international reader(s) will excuse me for posting this in Danish) I en af de fraklippede sekvenser i “Min Avatar og Mig” går jeg og min sidekick Rob på bar for at slappe lidt af. Ideen med sekvensen (som er en fri rekonstruktion af autentiske begivenheder) var dels at vise vores spirende venskab, dels at konsolidere mig eller min figur som en ufrivilligt komisk, drikfældig skørtejæger (som i hvert fald delvist er i overensstemmelse med virkeligheden) og dels for at lave noget sanddruelig (dvs. ikke-ædruelig) dialog vedrørende filmens tema om følelser mellem mennesker og avatarer. Vi instruktører besluttede så, at jeg og Rob skulle drikke os langsomt men sikkert berusede under optagelserne. Det lykkedes rigtigt godt, og bortset fra at jeg næsten ikke kan holde ud at se det (bl.a. er der en scene, hvor jeg tiltvinger mig adgang til barens klaver for at spille et nummer, jeg har skrevet til den kvindelige avatar-hovedperson, Helena, og hvor bassisten i det band, der lige ...

… is a man in trouble ”, Jerry Lewis is supposed to have said. If that is true, isn’t it a paradox that comedy and documentary films not more often go hand in hand? Because a lot of documentaries are surely about somebody in trouble: about someone mistreated by society, some pariah or outcast who stands up against someone or something. So there should be plenty of possibilities to make that funny to look at. How come it so seldom is – funny to look at, I mean? How come we often avoid using humour in any form to get our message or communication across? Well, in the Lewis-quote it is kind of inherent that we laugh at the man in trouble and we as filmmakers surely don’t want to have people laughing at our main characters. But why not? In his book, “Comedy is a Man in Trouble”, Alan S. Dale writes something like (quoted from memory): “ Slapstick humour doesn’t feel very profound but yet very truthful to our own experiences in life.” I immediately link the second part of that sentenc...

Until I get around to write something clever again(?), here are short docomedies. One is about the royal wedding in Denmark in 2004 (and I admit it's a bit hard to follow the subtitles with the speed of the VO and the editing) and the other is a paranoic view out my windows. "The Royal Wedding" was made on a grant from Danish Film Directors and shows how the director tries to convince his cameraman that he should be invited to the wedding of the Danish Crown Prince. This is the film that made me think up the phrase "docomedy" which depicts a true event in a satirical and self-reflective and/or self-ironic way: "Is This Really Legal?" is also somewhat of a docomedy and was made for a web-tv project called CLIPS where ten directors made a small film. Funded by Danish Film Institute and daily newspaper Politiken:

Remark in July 2014: I really feel I should update these definitions as soon as I have a moment. Not that I am really fond of strict rules and definitions (it seems a bit anal, right?) but because once crap is up on the internet, you need to make it stick!

A causerie from a holiday If you have seen mine and Bente Milton’s film, ”My Avatar and Me” (2010, 91 min.,), you’d probably say: “What the heck does he know about the nature of documentaries”. I can’t blame you for thinking that, considering the freedom with which we undertook the task of making a “documentary” from the virtual world Second Life. Well, in our defense I can say that we didn’t set out to make a traditional documentary and that the film went through a lot of changes and discussions during the production due to various changes in the financing conditions (of course) and therefore maybe ended as a more fictional piece of work than what at least I myself had set out to make. But as our commissioning editor from ZDF/Arte came up with the term “a documentary fantasy” to describe the film, I was more or less satisfied. Nevertheless, as the production went on, so did the internal discussions on our team, and as I also appear in the film as myself, I surely had some stro...