Born in Romania, but brought up and having studied film in Germany, Alexander Nanau came back to his homeland to direct his last two documentaries, widely awarded in the past five years.<\/p>\n
With \u201dThe World According to Ion B.\u201d<\/a>, which he not only directed, but also filmed and produced, Nanau received the International Emmy Award for Arts Programming in 2010<\/strong>. The film tells the story of a 62 year-old homeless collage artist, discovered by chance by a gallery owner in the courtyard of some blocks of flats. From that moment on, Ion B\u00e2rl\u0103deanu\u2019s life changed and his work of the past 30 years \u2013 collages that tell\u00a0stories of life under the Ceau\u0219escu regime \u2013 became famous worldwide. Nanau was there to patiently film the management of the attention he suddenly received for the first time ever.<\/p>\n What he found interesting was the fact that B\u00e2rl\u0103deanu\u2019s story could talk about talent in a universal way<\/strong>. In the interviews he gave about the film, he said that almost anyone who, at some point in life was told he\u2019s not good enough for what he would have wished for himself, could identify with the man’s story. B\u00e2rl\u0103deanu also brought back memories of Nanau\u2019s grandfather, a very crafty man who also had a difficult relation to his parents and ran away to escape.<\/p>\n For his latest documentary, \u201dToto and His Sisters\u201d<\/a>, Nanau spent 14 months in a poor Roma community and told a story of struggle and survival.<\/p>\n At first, he was only interested in taking\u00a0a look<\/a>. But once he started to document the story, he was struck by the lives of kids living in very poor conditions, surrounded by drug addicts. In the end, he directed a documentary only from the younger ones\u2019 perspective. He then also made the decision to completely disappear from the film, which remains purely observational, helped by the great access obtained.<\/p>\n As the director remains silent by not offering answers, what he wishes for is that viewers can take some time to ask themselves some questions, to have the character\u2019s journey stuck in their minds for at least a few days and to think twice before judging<\/a>. To look for the story behind.<\/p>\n Nanau thinks the most successful documentaries nowadays are the ones that\u00a0change something in you, after you leave the\u00a0cinema. These may become better than fiction, storytelling wise.<\/p>\n Here are some<\/a> of Nanau\u2019s ideas on his two famous documentary films, and on telling real stories through film:<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u201dThis work is not different from that\u00a0of a director with real actors. Things happen through human relations. If you manage to establish a connection and trust<\/strong>, everything works by itself. It\u2019s like in every relationship, the best partner is the one who brings you to the point where you don\u2019t have to pretend, and you are just really yourself, and that\u2019s my role as a film director \u2014 to build trust so that people can be themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201dDocumentary film making always brings a big responsibility<\/strong> with it, because you expose the life of others and they share it with you and they give you this trust that you will not misuse what you capture.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201dWhen I decided to do this film [\u201dToto and His Sisters\u201d], I knew I would like to risk more in terms of not doing anything than, let\u2019s say, a normal documentary is made like: Interviews, voiceover. I had this idea in mind of being highly focused shooting the life of these kids \u2013 a\u00a0life of doing nothing, actually \u2013 and getting it formally into a shape that really communicates with the viewer without having the documentary in between<\/strong>. With normal docs you have the presence of the documentarian in between you as a viewer and the characters. Here, I really wanted to test the limits and become invisible for the viewer so you really interact with the characters.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201dI hope it is universal in the fact that it talks about a private story, but it is not only about a particular private life story. It stands for a lot of different stories and not only about stories of poor people that grow up miserable.\u201d<\/p>\n Book your spot<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0the fifth edition of The Power of Storytelling to meet Alexander and hear him talk about his work.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Born in Romania, but brought up and having studied film in Germany, Alexander Nanau came back to his homeland to direct his last two documentaries, widely awarded in the past five years. With \u201dThe World According to Ion B.\u201d, which he not only directed, but also filmed and produced, Nanau received the International Emmy Award … Continue reading Alexander Nanau on telling real stories through film<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1296,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24],"tags":[38,60,78],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1294"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2994,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions\/2994"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}