Filming the gutter
The festival honors Stefan Jarl, the Robin Hood of Swedish film

Stefan Jarl (left) and Lukas Moodyson

In 1968, fresh from studies at the Swedish Institute of Film, a young man named Stefan Jarl made a feature documentary with fellow student Jan Lindqvist about two Stockholm "Mod" hippies. "They Call Us Misfits" was intended to allow teenagers to see themselves. The film not only succeeded in that, but – after some trouble with censors over sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll – it become a reference point for Scandinavian film.

Jarl went on to make two more films about misfits Kenta and Stoffe in 1979 and 1993. In the sequels, restlessness and pot smoking give way to family trouble and heroin overdoses – plus the paradox of yuppie offspring. The films bare the unattractive underbelly of the Swedish welfare state.

From Gothenburg to Thessaloniki
More than three decades later, Jarl remains a documentary warrior, whether focusing on the imperiled reindeer hunters of the north ("Threat"), or those arrested at the 2001 Gothenburg protests. Jarl co-directed the latter film, "Terrorists: The Kids They Sentenced", with talented newcomer Lukas Moodysson ("Lilya 4-Ever"). The two directors say of the film: "Two years ago there was a EU summit meeting in Gothenburg. We've done a film about some of those who were there, some of those who were sentenced to prison afterwards. We wanted to hear their voices, see their faces. We wanted to take part in their version of what happened in Gothenburg. We wanted to hear their thoughts." They interview some of the 60 imprisoned protestors.

They Call Us Misfits

Jarl will attend the 2004 Thessaloniki Documentary Festival-Images of the 21st Century, which will present him an award and screen nearly a dozen of his films. Included are several of Jarl’s environmental films, such as bleak modern farming tale "Nature’s Revenge" (1983) and recent biography "The Bricklayer" (2002), about well-known Swedish actor Thommy Berggren.

Being Robin Hood
Jarl was born in southern Sweden’s Skara in 1941. Luckily his father was a photography buff who shot 16mm films. Jarl picked up a camera and did the same at age 12, often inspired by nature. Much later, he mastered the craft by working with filmmakers Arne Sucksdorff and Bo Widerberg.

A documentary filmmaker today needs to be like Robin Hood, explains Jarl in his inspiring essay "Manifest on the Subject of Documentaries". He suggests that filmmakers trick those with the money – especially government agencies- into funding films. A respectable filmmaker never makes the film they promised to produce, but instead films something criticizing the hand that feeds her or him. The only way to not end up in jail, Jarl notes, is to make a very good film.

It’s for the best of causes. Jarl writes that filmmakers must use their wily ways to bring those who are ignored and silenced to the big screen. It’s a waste of celluloid, in his opinion, to make films that mirror "the values and hierarchies of the powers that be". Only the fearless need apply. "It’s a blessing," he writes in the essay, that documentaries have been relegated "to the gutter", as the "lumpenproletariat of the art of film." That’s where documentaries belong, he feels.

"Terrorists: The Kids They Sentenced"

Jarl feels that documentarians must find stories in places others avoid: "dirty factories, retirement homes, Sarajevo, mining galleries... the homes of the hungry and the unemployed, with vagrants and the outcasts, in the dark passages and neighborhoods, on the park benches, in prisons, with the downtrodden and the oppressed, the abused, the unjustly rewarded, and with those whom we have deprived of everything and alongside people without a voice - the unseen and the unheard. In short, documentaries should cover the backyard of society, the home of the guttersnipe."

But filmmakers shouldn’t fool themselves, writes Jarl, about getting at some accurate reality. They are always looking at things from their perspective and manipulating audiences. There is nothing wrong with either, according to him. Jarl is frank about his intentions: "I make movies because I want to influence others". He wants viewers to see what he sees.

Good allies are vital to the Robin Hood business. "A good documentary is only as good as the rapport between the people in front of the camera and the people behind it," Jarl believes. Finding like-minded colleagues is just as important. In the 1970’s Jarl and his "band of thieves" set up a filmmakers’ union, a non-profit distribution company called FilmCentrum, a commercial chain of theatres known as Folkets Bio and a magazine.

Jarl competes with Hollywood escapist images by using 35mm film and Dolby Stereo sound, by diverting "the rules" yet always sticking to his own laws.

Angelike Contis

Links:
http://www.city.yamagata.yamagata.jp/yidff/docbox/18/box18-2-e.html
(Environmental Filmmaker: A look at the films of Stefan Jarl)

http://www.sfi.se/
Swedish Film Institute

http://www.filmfestival.org/filmfestival/info/home.icp?locale=7
Goteborg Film Festival

http://www.folketsbio.se/
Folkets Bio