The Lost Leonardo Andreas Koefoed Denmark/France, 2021 ★★★ Love me some procedurally investigated art shenanigans.

Nuestro top 4 de documentales del reciente In-Edit Festival

Un año más acudimos a la cita ineludible del otoño que es para nosotros In-Edit Festival. El certamen celebró del 26 de octubre al 5 de noviembre en Barcelona su XXI edición.

Estos han sido los documentales premiados:

Mejor documental musical internacional: Peter Doherty: Stranger In My Own Skin, de Katia De Vidas. Mención especial: Music For Black Pigeons, de Andreas Koefoed i Jørgen Leth. Mejor documental musical nacional: Revolutionary Quartet: l’enigma Gerhard, de Xavier Bosch i Josep Badell. Mención especial: Riqueni, de Paco Bech. Mejor cortometraje documental musical nacional: Dol i fa sol, de Maria Besora i Pep Garrido. Premio del Público Razzmatazz: Sempre Dharma, de Aleix Barba Perarnau.

Con el espectacular cartel de esta edición, no es de extrañar que hubiera varios sold-outs. Entre las más destacadas proyecciones, destacaban las protagonizadas por Syd Barret, The Zombies, Willy DeVille, Cyndi Lauper, Subotnik, J Dilla, Marc Bolan, C Tangana, Pete Doherty, el colectivo Hipgnosis y muchos más.

A continuación, nuestro TOP 4 de este año, sobre The Birthday Party, Earth, David Johansen y Fatboy Slim:

Teníamos muchas ganas de ver Mutiny in Heaven: The Birthday Party, de Ian White. Y las expectativas se cumplieron con creces. Unos jovencísimos Nick Cave y Mick Harvey, junto a sus compañeros Rowland S. Howard, Phill Calvert y Tracy Pew, eran una pandilla de inadaptados que trasladaron toda su rabia al escenario, despuntando rápidamente en su oriunda Australia. "La primera fila no es para los debiluchos", decía Nick Cave en uno de los shows de la banda. Razón no le faltaba. Sus directos eran explosivos y caóticos. Con fragmentos de entrevistas de los protagonistas, White construye un relato repleto de momentos irrepetibles. En Londres no acababan de cuajar y terminaron en Berlín. No sin antes liarla en sus giras por Estados Unidos o Europa. Droga, mucha droga, rivalidades y mil y un desencuentros son explicados con todo detalle, incluyendo unas animaciones muy logradas.

La razón por la que Even Hell Has Its Heroes. The Music of Earth, está en este top, además de porque nos encanta la banda, es por el elegante enfoque con el que el director, Clyde Petersen, encadena los testimonios de todos los músicos que en algún momento han pasado por la formación. Las grabaciones de diferentes emplazamientos del estado de Washington, como Olympia, Seattle o Aberdeen, el aspecto 1.33:1 del encuadre y la textura analógica de las imágenes trasladan al espectador al epicentro de la escena en la que surgió Earth en los primeros años 90. Dylan Carson ha estado respaldado de gran talento durante todos estos años. Hablan no solo los músicos, sino también los técnicos de sonido o discográficas que trabajaron con él. El fantasma de Kurt Cobain, amigo de Carson, está latente. El duelo por su pérdida y la historia difundida en su momento por algunos medios de que fue Dylan quien le consiguió el arma homicida, pesan como losas, como también su intermitente adicción a la heroína. Otro detalle interesante son las diferentes formas de rodar a los músicos que intervienen. Se presentan con sus instrumentos como una alegoría, o bien aparecen en su entorno cotidiano. Lo bueno es que el periplo de la banda todavía hoy continúa.

Un documental de Martin Scorsese no pasa desapercibido. El emblemático director, junto a David Tedeschi, es responsable de Personality Crisis: One Night Only. David Johansen, vocalista y único superviviente de los New York Dolls originales, ofrece un recital en el Café Carlyle de Nueva York en enero de 2020, la noche de su cumpleaños. Entre canción y canción se explica la historia de la banda. Johansen es un excelente contador de anécdotas. Un showman con muchas tablas que ameniza la velada para unos asistentes de lujo, entre los que se encuentran amigos y personalidades coetáneas como la mismísima Blondie. El setlist es exquisito, así como la selección de imágenes de archivo y fragmentos de entrevistas con Johansen en diferentes épocas.

Completa nuestra lista Fatboy Slim: Right Here, Right Now, de Jak Hutchcraft. El 13 de julio de 2002, Fatboy Slim y Midfield General presentaron en vivo el álbum Big Beach Boutique II en una mega rave gratuita en la playa de Brighton. Llegaron a congregar a 250.000 personas, cuando se esperaba que fueran unas 60.000. En este documental se narra lo acontecido aquel día, no sin antes dar buena cuenta de la trayectoria del legendario DJ y productor musical británico.

Music For Black Pigeons

Andreas Koefoed og Jørgen Leth søger ind til musikkens væsen og de kreative processer med den danske jazzmusiker og komponist Jakob Bro som omdrejningspunkt – sekunderet af nogle af vor tids mest indflydelsesrige jazzmusikere, inkl. Bill Frisell, Lee Konitz og Midori Takada. ’Music for Black Pigeons’ handler om at være til stede i nuet, om at spille og improvisere og om at videreføre arven fra…

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Music For Black Pigeons

Jørgen Leth og Andreas Koefoeds film søger ind til musikkens væsen og de kreative processer med den danske jazzmusiker og komponist Jakob Bro som omdrejningspunkt – sekunderet af nogle af vor tids mest indflydelsesrige jazzmusikere, heriblandt Bill Frisell, Lee Konitz og Midori Takada. Men er det overhovedet muligt at sætte ord på musikkens væsen? Filmen handler om at være til stede i nuet, om at…

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Music For Black Pigeons

🎸 FILM & MUSIK: Andreas Koefoed og Jørgen Leth søger ind til musikkens væsen og de kreative processer med den danske jazzmusiker og komponist Jakob Bro som omdrejningspunkt – sekunderet af nogle af vor tids mest indflydelsesrige jazzmusikere, inkl. Bill Frisell, Lee Konitz og Midori Takada. ’Music for Black Pigeons’ handler om at være til stede i nuet, om at spille og improvisere og om at…

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Opening Night of the 64th Nordische Filmtage Lübeck

Opening Night of the 64th Nordische Filmtage Lübeck

Lübeck, November 2, 2022. For its 64th run, the Nordische Filmtage Lübeck this evening celebrated opening night in the largest theatre of the Cinestar Stadthalle multiplex cinema. The festival showcasing Nordic and Baltic films opened with the German premiere of the Danish documentary “Music for Black Pigeons” directed by Jørgen Leth and Andreas Koefoed, who are on hand in Lübeck alongside the…

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The Lost Leonardo

The Lost Leonardo    [trailer]

The mystery surrounding the Salvator Mundi, the first painting by Leonardo da Vinci to be discovered for more than a century, which has now seemingly gone missing.

Gripping doc that almost plays like a thriller, especially for someone who hasn't followed the story before.

What stands out is the interdependency of all the parties involved. The dealers, the museums, the experts, the auction houses, the "collectors". No one wants to rock the boat. Everyone looks out for himself.

The amounts of money paid are obscene. Imagine how much good $450 Mio. could do. Or a bonfire burning that amount of money.

The current owner now keeping it private. Bought as a political power play. Just as using sports teams and sports events as an attempt to wash a reputation, to distract from the killing of dissidents and human rights abuses.

Side note, since art dealer Yves Bouvier is strongly involved in the story, the doc shines a light on freeports, recently featured in Tenet.

The Lost Leonardo - Poster

Releases August 13, 2021 (USA)

EFTERKLANG - “I dine øjne”, taken from the new album ‘Altid Sammen’, out September 20th 2019 on 4AD/ @rumraket.

Directed by: Andreas Koefoed

Filmed by: Adam Jandrup

Edited by: Jacob Schulsinger

Starring Helena Christensen and the band’s own Casper Clausen

Leonardo. Il capolavoro perduto

Leonardo. Il capolavoro perduto

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[Originally published at UnseenFilms]

It’s a simple painting, quiet and inauspicious. The figure at its center stares ahead from a void of darkness, his pale skin shining from the shadows like a beacon as his brown hair falls in delicate curls upon his blue dress. His face is calm yet inscrutable, staring calmly at the viewer as his right hand makes the sign of the cross. In his left sits a transparent crystal orb within which, it is understood, all the cosmos are contained. Those in the know label this painting a “Salvator Mundi,” a frequent motif in Renaissance-era art wherein Jesus Christ—inevitably whitened and enriched beyond his historical station as an itinerant Palestinian rabbi—is depicted as holding the Earth, and all of creation itself, in his hand. There are countless “Salvator Mundi” paintings, many by esteemed masters. But this one is different. This, it is said, is not just a “Salvator Mundi” by a master, but the “Salvator Mundi” by the master. For this is the painting believed to be painted by none other than Leonardo da Vinci himself.

That is, of course, if the painting is authentic. Assumed to have been lost a century after its creation, it was spotted by an eagle-eyed art dealer in a New Orleans auction house where it was assumed to be the work of one of da Vinci’s students. But during the restoration process it was declared to be from the hand of the master himself, sparking one of the most controversial sagas in modern art history as its price ballooned from a few thousand dollars in 2005 to nearly half a billion when it was sold at auction in 2017. In the interim, this simple, quiet, and inauspicious painting would become a cause célèbre among art collectors and a cause maudit among art critics and historians. It would change hands from shady Swiss dealers to shadier Russian billionaires to mercurial and murderous Saudi princes. This stunning history has been captured and condensed for all to see in Andreas Koefoed’s brilliant and disturbing documentary The Lost Leonardo.

Over my career as a critic, I have reviewed more documentaries about the art world and those who navigate it than I care to count or remember. But this is perhaps the only one that properly captures the sense of dread, corruption, and duplicity that lurks at its heart. The film isn’t just about the painting itself; Koefoed instead uses its story as a springboard to examine how corrupt businessmen and criminals use the art world to launder money, dodge tax laws, and rob the public of cultural masterpieces. After all, an ex-Soviet oligarch may not be able to transfer illicit funds out of Russia without raising the eyebrows of international investigators. But if that same oligarch spent hundreds of millions of dollars on paintings by Picasso or Gauguin, moved them to another country, and then resold them at wildly inflated prices with the aid of complicit auction houses happy for an eight-figure commission fee, there’s little any police force could do.

Which is exactly what happened to this alleged da Vinci. Notice the word “alleged,” for to this day there is still doubt among experts as to whether or not the painting is authentic. Not that it matters, as Koefoed explains. The film details how esteemed art museums, galleries, and auction houses seemed happy to ignore credible naysayers so long as they could sell exhibition tickets to the public or raise asking prices for sellers. After all, what’s more important: that something is authentic or that people think something is authentic? And who cares either way so long as it doesn’t hurt the bottom line?

Through it all, two figures seem to float above the madness. The first is Dianne Modestini, the woman hired for the painting’s initial restoration and who first suspected it might be an original da Vinci. Of all the people in the film, she seems to be the only one who acknowledges the painting as a work of art and appreciates it as such. She seems to care nothing for how much it’s worth or whether or not it’s truly authentic: it exists, it is beautiful, and therefore it is worthy of admiration and love.

The second is the figure of Christ himself staring out from the painting. If the film has one flaw, it’s that it misses the central irony lurking at the heart of this story: all this duplicity, all this subterfuge, all this controversy, backstabbing, and greed revolves around a painting of a man who raged against the wealthy and lionized the poor. This was a painting made to inspire religious devotion towards a savior who drove moneylenders from the temple and said the meek shall inherit the earth. Fortunes were made and lost over this image of a man who told the wealthy to sell all that they owned, give the money to the poor, and follow him. Did anyone at any point in the making of this film wonder to themselves that if Jesus could feed 500 people with five loaves and two fishes, how many more could he feed with nearly half a billion dollars? Suddenly Jesus’ face in the painting doesn’t seem so blank. Is that exasperation or resignation we read? If it isn’t, maybe it should be.

The Lost Leonardo (15)

The Lost Leonardo (15)

The Lost Leonardo (15) Director: Andreas Koefoed Runtime: 95 minutes Cast: Dianne Modestini, Yves Bouvier, Evan Beard, Robert Simon, Alexander Parish, Warren Adelson, Luke Syson, Martin Kemp, Frank Zöllner, Maria Teresa Fiorio, Jacques Franck, Kenny Schachter, Bruce Lamarche, Jerry Saltz, Robert K Wittman, Alexandra Bregman, Georgina Adam, Alison Cole, Bradley Hope, Doug Patteson, Stephane…

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"The Lost Leonardo"

“The Lost Leonardo”

The incredible true story of the Salvator Mundi, a supposed Renaissance masterpiece by Leonardo DaVinci, is a tale that’s stranger than fiction. In “The Lost Leonardo,” director Andreas Koefoed goes in-depth to expose the speculation, mystery, and legend that follows what is widely considered one of the world’s most controversial paintings. There’s so much mystery surrounding this work of art…

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