Guth Gafa Documentary Festival 2008

Screen Training Ireland Masterclass

Arts and Music Documentary Beyond the Mainstream
From ‘Documenting the Arts’ and ‘Arts Lives’ on televison to the creative feature length arts and music documentary with international audience appeal.

Rationale
The Arts and Music documentary genre has always been well represented on television. In Ireland there are specific strands and funding schemes for arts portraits, such as Documenting the Arts (Arts Council) and Arts Lives (RTE) and Splanc (TG4) and it’s clear that there is an interest or desire for these kind of projects. But examples of successful feature length documentaries in the arts and music genre, which transcend the mere “portrait of an artist”, are rare gems. Irish documentary filmmakers drawing on their own rich cultural heritage have played their part in this genre with companies and individual directors making powerful films with great international potential. The new generation of young Irish filmmakers, graduating from the many media courses around Ireland are choosing more and more to make films about Music and Arts and want them to appeal to a wide international audience. Many of this new generation of filmmakers are eager to learn from the ‘masters’ of this style of filmmaking. As part of our Irish program, at Guth Gafa this year we are showing two Irish writer portraits films (Patrick McCabe and Padraic Ó Conaire), and 3 short film pieces that are a visual representation of 3 Irish poets (‘The Wren’s Nest). On the international side, we are screening a personal film about a daughter who tries to understand her long gone painter father. And of course, “Jimmy Rosenberg-The Father, the Son and the Talent”.

The Masterclass will take the form of a case study by Jeroen Berkvens of two of his most prominent films (the multi-awarded and critically acclaimed ‘A Skin too Few - the days of Nick Drake’ and ‘Jimmy Rosenberg - The Father, the Son and the Talent’- synopses below), and it will go on to discussing other more general issues and challenges that directors face when trying to make a film about an artist/musician: capturing abstract things like imagination, and creativity, how to select and how to show their works, whilst capturing the essence of their art, how to differentiate between the person and public persona, how to achieve a deep and intimate understanding of both, how to explore personal, intimate and emotional background and baggage, and how that inspires or inform their work; the differences between making a film about someone who’s dead and someone who’s alive, and the difficulties and challenges in both cases. How to find a particular angle and approach, or a personal and specific vision or voice.

Participant Profile
The ideal participant profile for this Masterclass will be Irish documentary directors who have an interest in, or specialise in films about artists, musiciand, writers, etc, and who have had some success with their films with Irish broadcasters and on the Irish Festival circuit, but who would now like to be making their films work for a larger international audience. The directors should preferably have made at least one film that has been broadcast on RTE or TG4 in the past 3 years, or shown at an Irish Festival, and should preferably also have at least one project that is in an advanced stage of development i.e. a film that they could discuss in the Masterclass.

Tutor Profile (full biog below)
The filmmaker giving the Masterclass is Dutch documentary director Jeroen Berkvens. Jeroen has made a number of documentaries, amongst them 3 internationally successful arts portrait films that have been shown in numerous film festivals around the world, as well as having received many awards along the way. He also has extensive experience in teaching at the Dutch Film Academy, and speaks fluent English. Jeroen has demonstrated amazing talent and a uniqueness of style in portraying musicians such as Nick Drake, Jimmy Rosenberg and Sly Stone.

Synopses for 2 Case Study Films

A Skin Too Few - The Days of Nick Drake (Screening time to be confirmed)
"I always said that Nick was born with a skin too few", says actress Gabrielle about her brother, the English singer-songwriter Nick Drake (1948-1974). This documentary approaches the silent landscapes, locations, people and music in the life of this unorthodox loner.
Nick Drake is one of rock’s most tragically romantic figures. He died when he was 26: an age that for many would be far too young to develop a talent, or realise an ambition or dream. It took 20 posthumous years for his music to gain recognition.
One autumn morning in 1974, Nick’s parents were unable to wake him. Nick Drake died silently and unobtrusively, and to this day it's not clear whether his death was self-determined. The significance of his three albums was only discovered two decades later. Now his music is more popular than ever and appears in big film productions and television commercials.
This late success is surprising and tragic, considering Nick Drake's tortured existence. Except for boarding school and university (Cambridge) he seldom left his parents' home. Contact with others became a tremendous effort. His sensitivity was the basis for this talent but at the same time made him unable to face an audience. Caught in this spiral, he became increasingly embittered by his lack of success and gradually isolated himself.

Jimmy Rosenberg - the Father, the Son and the Talent (Screening Saturday 17th, 9:00pm)
This film revolves around the dramatic story of Gypsy guitarist Jimmy Rosenberg. When he was only 12 years old, it was already expected that Jimmy would take up the legacy of guitar legend Django Reinhardt. Soon after he played alongside famous musicians. But as Jimmy, only a teenager, performed internationally and signed a huge contract with Sony Classics in New York, things started to go wrong.
Jimmy Rosenberg – the Father, the Son & the Talent takes up the story again some ten years later. Jimmy, now 26 years old, has no fixed home. Most of the time he stays with his mother and his two confused brothers on a remote farm. Meanwhile his notorious drug addiction has dragged a trail of destruction through his life. He hasn’t seen his three small children for years because neither of the two mothers will allow him to come near them. On top of that his father has been sent to prison and now is being released for the first time after 8 years, desperate to help his prodigal son. But will Jimmy Rosenberg, for whom the most famous guitarists bought front row tickets to see him play at Carnegie Hall, succeed and reclaim the title he was given as a kid: ‘Django’s legacy’? In spite of his destructive lifestyle his skills to play guitar at amazing speeds and precision only grew. But will this gift be enough to escape from his own past? ‘Jimmy Rosenberg – the father, the son & the talent’ documents Jimmy’s struggle to fight the demons within him.

Jeroen Berkvens: BIOGRAPHY/FILMOGRAPHY
JEROEN BERKVENS (1968) studied for 5 years at the Dutch Academy of Arts in Breda. He graduated in 1993 with LET ME HAVE IT ALL, a road-movie-like documentary search for the legendary pioneer in soul music Sly Stone. It was awarded by ARTE for best European student film, and broadcast in several countries. Among his documentaries is the internationally acclaimed A Skin too Few - The Days of Nick Drake, a film that “beautifully evokes the enduring appeal of English singer-songwriter Nick Drake” according to Variety. It picked up several international awards and nominations, and was described "a cinematic tone poem as much as a biography” by the NY Times when it got a theatrical release in the USA. Besides Mirror of Time, a series on the non-narrative ex-Soviet documentary, Jeroen directed films like A Lawyer's Story in which a criminal lawyer reshapes his life after a bomb attack.