Nordisk Panorama website
NORDIC BUREAUCRACY AND HOTEL ROOM EXPERIENCES
The flight from Mexico City to Copenhagen is a long one, but I'm so tired that I sleep successfully for most of the trip. From Copenhagen Airport one can get easily and effortlessly to Malmö by train.
Nordisk Panorama, the festival spanning five Nordic countries, tours around every year in a different northern location. Last year the event took place in Oulu, and now it's the turn of Sweden and Malmö. The empty streets of a Sunday afternoon, the cleanliness and order, stick out in the Malmö streets after lively Mexico.
Filmkontakt Nord is the event's umbrella organisation. Every year, the festival selects and screens the short films and documentaries it deems the best of the Nordic countries' output. The organisation is homespun but at the same time somehow arrogant: just like a family unit, into which, in principle, all the Nordic filmmakers belong to (most of which through forced adoption). In addition to film screenings, the Nordic finance forum, panel discussions and Master Class events form an important part of the festival. The leader of the Master Class, from outside the Nordic countries, is Kim Longinotto.
Even though the festival offers the so-called best of Nordic short and documentary films, it feels as though the films and their makers are the event's cross to bear. The Panorama's sideline activities and especially the running of the finance forum have developed into the central core of the event. Succesfully executed project presentations, i.e. pitches, at the forum are hyped up, which raises the spirit of the project and its crew. The most vital part of the pitches made for the financiers is a vivid and sexy presentation, which manipulates the situation and the general energy into a positive one for the project. The financiers, high on the positive energy, will then finance the project more easily and hope that the "hype" will maintain itself until the end of the process. A Nordic producer colleague of mine brushes off the "content/lack of content issue" in a way typical of our time: "if the project's well-made presentation manages to bring out laughs and to wake up the financiers, the project is bound to have levels of depth. Even if only on a hidden level." Exactly.
The finance forums have spread all over, and their behavioural rules and modes of action have met with amused approval. The filmmakers, financiers and organisers are aware that playing with manipulation skills is what it's all about. Real discussions about content are often secondary, and the show and the atmosphere it creates are more important. From the financiers' side it's of course important to get a good overall image of the project, as rich in content as possible. And there aren't many options on offer.
A Swedish producer colleague invites me to a meeting at the location of the Forum, but because I haven't bought a so-called spectator pass for the event, I am harshly shut out of the venue. After a long wait, the colleague and I find each other, and are not allowed to have a discussion in the venue. In the end, we have our meeting a few metres away from it.
Elsewhere, some American financier colleagues visiting the Panorama, representatives of ITVS, ask me along to a financier's dinner, but again the event organisers are watchful and send me back from the door of the restaurant. Here, the filmmaker has its place.
That place is found safely at the cinema, at the screening of my own film. Shadow of the Holy Book has two screenings, in fact. The first has 25 people present, and the second only 9. The second smallest audience in our festival history. I watch the crowd, and can't find a single so-called native who has dared to turn up. The audience appears to consist purely of film industry people accredited at the festival.
One problem with activating the local audience is that when a festival changes its location every year, it's difficult to creat a culture and a relationship between the audience and the event. Another reason might be that most of the organisers' energy is focused on the Forum and other sideline events, not so much on the screenings and their marketing. This so-called audience problem can be seen at Nordisk Panorama every year. And when it's about a so-called quality product, after all, "the best Nordic films", then why doesn't the organisation ask for consulting help from the organisers of, for example, Docpoint and/or the CPH-Dox in Copenhagen, who have succesfully managed to get big audiences for documentary films. But maybe this is not so important here. Maybe the internal communication within the family unit is more significant here than flirting with outsiders.
Well, in any case, the organisers and those responsible for the Malmö event this year are nice and active people, albeit trapped inside a recurring event, hands tied and modes of action programmed into their minds beforehand. In my opinion, the event needs some shaking up and revitalisation - no more formulaic bureaucracy. The festival's closing party, however, is very nice - the filmmakers can, after all, meet each other and exchange methods. That's always productive. It's also productive to have short fiction and animation as well as documentary filmmakers around, giving the communication a wider scope.
A bunch of DVDs have been delivered to my hotel from Iceland for me to watch. I am going to the Reykjavik International Film Festival, and have promised to join the Jury there to judge feature-length fiction films. As I will only be spending a few days in Iceland, I have received the "pre-assignment" in Malmö. On the table of my hotel room lie 14 films, each nearly 2 hours long. I won't have a lack of things to do then, even if the doors are closed to the Panorama events.
So I'm sitting in my hotel room for hours - sometimes "freshening up" in near-empty cinemas. When coming out of one film screening, tens of riot police are waiting outside with their horses and shields. What?! I am astonished. Has Nordisk Panorama or one of the films ignited some movement in people, a real mass movement? Of course not. Football fans from Malmö have started a rampage in a nearby bar. A football match is coming up, after all. Here, it is football that raises emotions. Not Nordic films.
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