DOCPOINT May Just Be Our Favorite International Documentary Film Festival in the World!

February 6, 2023 in Helsinki, Finland with Director Annie Berman

Our International Premiere of The Faithful: The King, The Pope, The Princess at DocPoint Helsinki Documentary Film Festival was something special. Helmed by the brilliant Head of Programming filmmaker Inka Achté, and Executive Director Tape Riihimaki, and team, Docpoint Helsinki presented risk-taking films from around the world, a celebration of truly independent works of nonfiction after three long years without in-person togetherness. Throughout the festival, the chosen films showcased the many different ways to tell important stories and interpret the world through filmmaking, never avoiding difficult subjects or bold experiments. Each year, over one hundred of the best and most talked-about creative documentary films from all over the world are brought to screens in Helsinki, and we were honored to see The Faithful chosen as one of those films this year. Even more honoring was our nomination for the 2023 YLE Award for Best International Documentary Film–many thanks to all who made it possible.

It’s hard to describe the pure joy and delight of finally uniting with our closest collaborators, converging on Helsinki from Portugal, Ireland, England and Spain...to see our film projected in a beautiful theater with a thoughtful, inquisitive, gracious audience. It was a week of films, art, dinners, saunas, dancing, music and immense, gratifying joy.

Thank you Docpoint Helsinki for all of your hard work, generosity, and risk-taking programming. Thank you for bringing us all together. Thank you for introducing us to these brilliant films and filmmakers. And, thank you for showing us the beauty of Finland and its people. We will cherish these memories for a lifetime.

Together for the first time ever. Andrew Kirwan (sound designer) and fiance Diane from Dublin; Oliver David (post-producer) from London; Paulo Cunha Martins (colorist/restorationist) from Porto on the streets of downtown Helsinki. Photo by a very content Annie Berman (director).

Oliver David, Post Producer; Annie Berman, Director; Paulo Cunha Martins, Color/Restorationist at Amos Rex, Helsinki, Finland.

Such an honor to be nominated for Best International Documentary Film alongside these greats: All of our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars & Surround, Burial & Aphotic Zone, How Dare You Have Such a Rubbish Wish, Ladies Only & Virtual Voice, Manifesto, Myanmar Diaries, Périphérique Nord & True Bug, Rojek, The Last Chapter, The Pawnshop, and, While We Watched. 🏆

In the flesh. Breaking bread together at Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art. Oliver David (post-producer) and Paulo Cunha Martins (color/restoration) hold The Faithful postcards. We made a real thing together across an ocean.

Our lovely Oliver shares The Faithful to his social media.

Annie’s POV from The Faithful’s Q&A at Docpoint Helsinki with team - Matt Mankins (collaborating producer), Paulo Cunha Martins (color / restoration), Oliver David (post-producer) - who flew in from Spain, Portugal, England, respectively.

Good morning, Helsinki! Could grow very accustomed to these scrumptious Scandinavian breakfast feasts overlooking the awakening city, in good company.

Finland is known for having the most well-developed education in the world. This was undoubtedly one of the most engaged, thoughtful and inquisitive audiences yet.

What a cool venue!

Left to right: Annie Berman (director), Paulo Cunha Martins (color/restoration), Matt Mankins (Collaborating producer), Oliver David (post-producer). Andrew Kirwan (sound design/mix) had yet to arrive.

Paulo Cunha Martins presents Annie with her very own cabbage bowl, direct from Portugal. 🇵🇹

And along with our memories, lives a patch of primeval forest protected in honor of The Faithful’s international premiere! 🌲🌲🌲

Leaving this country with full hearts, warmed souls, enlarged minds, and full bellies. 🇫🇮

THE FAITHFUL: Official Selection of the 42nd San Francisco Jewish Film Festival

Thrilled to announce that The Faithful was chosen to screen at this year's San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the world’s largest and longest running Jewish Film Festival, which will present 71 films from 14 countries—narratives, documentaries, and shorts—that spotlight bold films and filmmakers that expand and evolve the Jewish story. I'll be attending and excited to finally meet (in person!) fellow filmmakers in residence of the Jewish Film Institute.

Our heartfelt gratitude to JFI and SFJFF's Lexi Leban, Jay Rosenblatt, Marcia Jarmel, Joanne Feinberg, Claudia Finkle, our gracious hosts, and to The Faithful's Faithful Producers and Collaborators Andre Valentim Almeida, Sara Theriault, Sarah Enid Hagey, Matt Mankins, Oliver David, Sound Designer and Mixer Andrew Kirwan and Colorist Paulo Cunha Martins and to all who have supported this film.

More info below, https://jfi.org/sfjff-2022

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The Faithful: The King, The Pope, The Princess

July 25 • 11:15am • Castro Theatre

Annie Berman, 2021, Documentary, USA, 90 minutes, English

Director Annie Berman (2022 JFI Filmmaker in Residence) expected to attend

Annie Berman’s essay film is a witty, frequently surreal reflection on three of the most photographed individuals—Elvis Presley, Pope John Paul II, Diana, Princess of Wales—of all time and the people who worship their images. Filmed over the course of 20 years, on numerous trips from Graceland to the Vatican to Kensington Palace and back, Berman’s fascination with documenting each icon’s adoring public soon morphs into an obsession of her own about how materialism, performance and ritual come together in the making and resurrections of each of these modern icons. Berman’s Jewish identity informs her outsider status in each setting, allowing her to approach scenes of ardent fandom and devotion to celebrity graven images as if they were forbidden fruit.

Thank you Camden International Film Festival (CIFF)!

It was like a dream to bring The Faithful to CIFF - to watch an incredible lineup of films together. The festival directors, programmers, staff, and volunteers pulled off the seemingly impossible opening its doors, feeding our souls, while managing to keep conscientious attendees safe and healthy.

Q&A following The Faithful’s World Festival Premiere, moderated by Grace Remington. Sept 19, 2021. Journey’s End, Rockland, Maine.

They even converted this boat hanger on the harbor into a proper theater with DCP projection and 5.1 surround sound!

Thank you Ben Fowlie, Sean Flynn, Jeanelle Augustin, Milton Guillen, Camille Howard, Eynar Pineda, Anna Feder, Jean & Mark Patiky! It was the premiere we dreamed of - well worth the wait.

Pope sighting by CIFF filmmaker Melissa Gira Grant the day before our screening. CIFF. Maine.

Utopia 1.0 Screens KFFK's New Aesthetic, Nov 19th, Cologne, Germany

On the web we reinvent ourselves and our avatars overcome barriers of gender, race and age. We can accept other forms of life and move our virtual body within fractions of a second from one place to another. How much we can the images that we create from us, change and fragmentation, eyelet Divide us in them, or how they are usual stereotypes and ideals of beauty subject?

In the physical world, however, the boundaries between biology and technology. To keep up with the development, are our bodies technologically upgraded, changed, improved.The dream of immortality is to spy on the horizon and the need for physical self-optimization omnipresent. In a time when the first cyborgs walk among us, in the vision of the future of human-machine has come true, has the answer to the question of what it means to be human, be always renegotiated.

Text: Johannes Duncker

ABC

IN BETWEEN IDENTITIES

THE WAVES

HEART SWING

PARAMETRIC EXPRESSION

UTOPIA 1.0: POST-NEO-FUTURIST-CAPITALISM IN 3D!

THE INSTITUTE OF ISOLATION

HEARING COLORS

THE 3D ADDITIVIST MANIFESTO

This Week, Utopia 1.0: Post-Neo-Futurist-Capitalism in 3D!'s German Premiere at the 32nd Kasseler Dokfest

IMPAKT Festival 2015 Invites Utopia 1.0: Post-Neo-Futurist-Capitalsim in 3D! to screen in Utrecht

Thrilled to announce that Utopia 1.0: Post-Neo-Futurist-Capitalism in 3D! will be part of this year's IMPAKT Media Festival in the Netherlands. This year's theme is 'The Future of the Past' which couldn't be more relevant. 

The Future of the Past (In A World Well Documented)

We live in a world in which more information has been recorded over the past decade than in all the centuries that came before. Seas of data are ever-expanding. How will this affect our memory and the perception of time? The Impakt Festival 2015 concerns the changes to our conception of personal and collective histories that this mass data collecting brings about.

Will digital technologies, social media timelines, our uploads and e-mail histories allow us to keep perfect accounts of the past? Gone will be the guessing of what someone looked like or how an event unfolded? Will advanced presentation technologies make going back in time a more real, accurate and even immersive experience – or should we, paradoxically, worry about digital amnesia? What are the economic mechanisms behind the accumulation of data; and likewise, who owns the information and who controls of the access to it?

The recording and distribution of data not only influences our perception of the past, the analysis and extrapolation of data can consequently create a different perception of the future. In The Future of the Past we will investigate the changing concepts of personal and collective memory and how the general perceptions of history and future are evolving.

The Idealistic And Classic Notions Of Documentation and Knowledge

From ancient times onwards, it has been the drive of humankind to accumulate an all-encompassing knowledge of the world. The construction of that knowledge and the effort of documenting the world can be recognised through culture’s collective attempt to develop science, categorise, to memorise and to be remembered. Now, in the Digital Age, the Internet, technology and social media have leant enormous momentum to the accumulation of this knowledge. The tools for accessing, sharing and contributing are within everyone’s reach. A wide range of platforms allow us to contribute to networks and amass information: Internet encyclopaedias are a democratic sum of the efforts of a ubiquitous critical mass and almost everything on earth is documented in some form or another. How does this influence our perception of present, past and future?

The (Im)Perfection Of Personal And Collective Data Storage

Upon the realisation that electronic images and digital data didn’t live up to their promise of eternity, a further dimension was added to the discussion on the archiving and preservation of information, books, films and audio-visual files. Not only does the medium appear imperfect, inadequacies can often arise in the processing of both personal and collective pasts. Despite mass data capture, we forget to make back-ups and entire libraries and archives are threatened and in search of new accommodation. How do we deal with the risks of digital amnesia?

Data As An Economic Factor

In our digital age we are constantly informed. News, media and friendships are closer than ever. The world is more accessible and comfortable than we’d foreseen. But most recent developments confront us with much more radical consequences of the ever increasing storage and accessibility of data. When we take and share information, navigate and accept cookies, we leave traces of our doing – information that perfectly lends itself for other purposes than the acquisition of knowledge in the idealistic sense of the word. Data is the ‘oil’ of the 21st century: our online behaviour has been rendered an economic factor. How can we ensure the safeguarding of our rights as individuals against the corporate commodification of our online footprints? How can we develop transnational legislation, if at all, and in which form would this “Digital Magna Carta” manifest?

Is Our Sense Of Past And Future Getting Less or More Perfect?

We are obsessive self-archivists. We can scroll back on our timelines forever, but what gets lost if the process of remembering is no longer based on creative reconstruction but on the click-and play of digital data? Are we forgetting to remember?How does collective memory develop in a perfectly documented world? Modern technologies allow us to retroactively sharpen the lens through which we analyse documents and artefacts from the past, unveiling new data and new perspectives. What impact will new information concerning the past have on our current assumptions regarding social equality, justice or international conflict? How do we deal with the differences between the trivial and the essential in this “Capture All” era?The Future is no longer a dark fathomless cloud, but a set of patterns and connections that can be controlled and predicted when we collect enough relevant data. Some argue that predicting the future will become more accurate now it is increasingly based on scientific calculations of probability. While we should scrutinise the accuracy of these prophetical claims, the philosophical, ethical and political consequences of these forecasts should be contemplated. It is safe to say that our perception of the future is changing because of these technological transitions.

The Dynamics Behind Contemporary Data Collection

When once archives used to be carefully curated, limited to the essential and studied to gain knowledge, contemporary data clouds adhere to a totally different dynamic. They are continuous registrations of live moments and they are mined for demographics, ideas and experiences. Automatic scans are made generating meta-information on all kinds of subjects—from the momentous to the mundane. How will we decide what to store and what to discard or will others decide this for us? How to condense or prioritise in order to avoid spending half our lives looking back on the other half? Smart data-mining apps will aid us in processing the information we have already stored, but who sets their settings and creates our memories? And will we be able to enforce a right to be forgotten in a world that by definition keeps recording all dimensions of our behaviour?

The Impakt Festival 2015 The Future of the Past will offer reflections and new ideas on the future of ‘history’ and on the future of the ‘future’, including existing and new notions of ‘memory’, the ‘past’, ‘recollection’, ‘prediction’, in the framework of the almost unlimited data recording and storage capacities that are (being) developed in the world today.

Historical, poetical, technological and philosophical approaches will be combined to discuss the question of how a digitally created and conserved memory will construct our conceptions of the past and the future?

In a world well documented, future and past will not be what they used to be.