Captivity
André Gil Mata
A house in Portugal, an old woman, 91 years lived within the same walls. A quiet observation in a space where time and memories have inscribed themselves.
D
Film Archive
Captivity
Captivity is a condition of confinement, both in space and in time. The person inside the captivity is not exclusively or necessarily a prisoner, but becomes an inherent part of that space. In turn, the captivity space is not inert, rather it is characterized by who is contained there, it is also shaped by that experience.
Alzira was born, raised and lived the entire 91 years of her life in the same house: in the city of São João da Madeira, in the north of Portugal. Her life experiences are inseparable from the house’s walls and objects of intimacy. The film attempts to capture the relationship of mutual construction between this woman and this space, a construction performed by the time lived there. Time is what makes that house, that space, transcend its geometry and become the shelter of her recollections, of her memories, and of the wanderings of her mind. “Captivity” is thus a film about the time that belongs to memory, indelibly written within a space.
Alzira was born, raised and lived the entire 91 years of her life in the same house: in the city of São João da Madeira, in the north of Portugal. Her life experiences are inseparable from the house’s walls and objects of intimacy. The film attempts to capture the relationship of mutual construction between this woman and this space, a construction performed by the time lived there. Time is what makes that house, that space, transcend its geometry and become the shelter of her recollections, of her memories, and of the wanderings of her mind. “Captivity” is thus a film about the time that belongs to memory, indelibly written within a space.
Fortress
Lukáš Kokeš, Klára Tasovská
Trans-Dniestr: a living museum of Soviet-style communism on the borders of the Moldavian Republic. Propaganda, secret police, and a bizarre refuge from the dangers of modern life.
Fortress
Documentary Film
Czech Republic
2012
70 minutes
subtitles:
English
Credits
Pavla Kubečková, Tomas Hruby, nutprodukce
Lukáš Kokeš, Klára Tasovská
Lukáš Kokeš
Alexandra Gojdičová
Lukáš Kokeš, Klára Tasovská
Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic a.k.a. Trans-Dniestr. Imagine a space where time has frozen. The country, whose independence has been recognized by only a few other states, remains an isolated multi-ethnic enclave held together by an authoritarian regime. It’s a country where you are only allowed to film out of the window of a train, the locals are afraid of being denounced but are glad to live in a comfortable refuge from the hectic modern world, and songs on television celebrate the president. Time has stopped and life is stuck in a shape resembling the era of the Soviet Union. Somehow, people got used to the reign of the secret police and the fear of being spied upon. Soviet-style propaganda of the authoritative, power-based regime of President Igor Smirnov turns most of the PMR residents into simple workmen, without any will to understand how unbearable their situation is. Smirnov has been leading this non-existing country for as long as twenty years.
The film focuses on a couple of characters stuck in this geo-political gap, in between the European Union and Russia, in between the present and the past, crime and decency, decadence and hope for change. Framed by the time of the presidential elections, the film is presented as a trip to a museum of communist totalitarianism and analyzes the organization of a “non-state” and the rules of a regular life within.
The film focuses on a couple of characters stuck in this geo-political gap, in between the European Union and Russia, in between the present and the past, crime and decency, decadence and hope for change. Framed by the time of the presidential elections, the film is presented as a trip to a museum of communist totalitarianism and analyzes the organization of a “non-state” and the rules of a regular life within.
Fragment 53
Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli, Federico Lodoli
Former warlords talk about their actions in the Liberian civil war. Extremely intense, meticulously researched and formally austere study of violence and brutality.
Fragment 53
Documentary Film
Italy,
Switzerland
2015
71 minutes
subtitles:
English
Credits
Tommaso Bertani, Federica Schiavo
Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli, Federico Lodoli
Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli, Federico Lodoli
Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli, Federico Lodoli
Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli, Federico Lodoli
Extremly condensed, meticulously researched and journalistic study of Liberia’s recent history. Seven former warlords of different ranks talk in interviews about cruelties they committed on their own or following orders during the first Liberian civil war in the early 1990s. Memories of brutal orgies of violence are recited with almost bureaucratic precision, interrupted only by precisely framed shots of the beautiful landscape in which – as we gradually realise – the now invisible horror took place.
Lina Dinkla
Lina Dinkla
Gulîstan, Land of Roses
Zaynê Akyol
PKK women fighters in the mountains and deserts of Kurdistan: training for combat, celebrations, laughs, and some profound insights into their convictions, fears and grief.
Gulîstan, Land of Roses
Documentary Film
Canada,
Germany
2016
86 minutes
subtitles:
English
Credits
Zaynê Akyol follows female PKK fighters in the Kurdish territories of Iraq and Syria to take a nuanced look at the guerrilla war. In between focused preparations for their missions against Isis the women take time for personal hygiene, laugh and celebrate exuberantly with their male comrades.
The protagonists, always at the centre of the frame, talk openly about their fears and ideals. They have taken a life decision – out of conviction. But one that also brings grief.
Lina Dinkla
The protagonists, always at the centre of the frame, talk openly about their fears and ideals. They have taken a life decision – out of conviction. But one that also brings grief.
Lina Dinkla
Haunted
Liwaa yazji
Imagine a war. Where do you go? What do you take with you? People in Syria about mentally coping with the horror that can erupt any time.
Haunted
Imagine there’s a war. Where do you go? What do you take? For the people of Syria this is not just an intellectual game. Nobody wants to leave their home. They all try to stay to the last. They wonder what will be left when they leave everything behind. Perhaps the cup of coffee in the morning will be their last? Bombs are falling in the background. Images of devastated cities and interviews with people who still live there show that war is not abstract. It’s happening now.
Kim Busch
Kim Busch
Homeland (Iraq Year Zero)
Abbas Fahdel
A long-term chronicle of family life in Bagdad before and after the Iraq war. The attempt to live a normal life in war. An intimate, intense and stunning saga.
Homeland (Iraq Year Zero)
Credits
Abbas Fahdel
Abbas Fahdel
Abbas Fahdel
Abbas Fahdel
Abbas Fahdel
In 2002, a year before the U.S. invasion, Abbas Fahdel began to film his family in Bagdad. His 12-year-old nephew Haidar was sure about one thing: you don’t have to go to school in a war. Everyone seemed to be waiting, nobody knew what to expect. In 2003, a few weeks after the official end of the fighting, Fahdel returns – the joy about the U.S. invasion has given way to a strong sense of disillusionment and chaos.
An intense chronicle of ordinary life in a war without showing the war itself.
Lina Dinkla
An intense chronicle of ordinary life in a war without showing the war itself.
Lina Dinkla
In Touch
Paweł Ziemilski
A third of the inhabitants of a Polish village have emigrated to Iceland. They stay in touch via Skype. Projections of a supposedly better life on a supposedly worse life.
In Touch
Documentary Film
Iceland,
Poland
2018
61 minutes
subtitles:
English
On the road to a better life you are inevitably forced to leave many things behind. The Polish village of Stare Juchy is such a left-behind place. Since the 1980s, a third of its population emigrated to Iceland and none of them have returned to date. The relatives who stayed in Poland – usually the emigrants’ parents and grandparents – participate via Skype and Facebook in the lives of those who left. They rarely manage to visit each other. In the village, which is still getting emptier, time stands still and its inhabitants become the observers of events far from their surroundings. Their children have careers as police officers or construction managers, their grandchildren sing Icelandic pop songs, and they themselves have no choice but to report on the weather or the mushroom harvest. Every so often, a tentative missing feeling, even a menacing longing, creeps into the conversations. The hope for a reunion dies last.
Paweł Ziemilski uses sequences shot in Iceland that he projects on every imaginable surface in the Polish village. Thus polar lights shine in the living room, a grandfather plays football with his grandson’s image and a gym becomes an icy coast. This aesthetic trick emphasizes the melancholy and absurdity of a situation in which the supposedly better and the supposedly worse life are closely interlinked.
Kim Busch
Paweł Ziemilski uses sequences shot in Iceland that he projects on every imaginable surface in the Polish village. Thus polar lights shine in the living room, a grandfather plays football with his grandson’s image and a gym becomes an icy coast. This aesthetic trick emphasizes the melancholy and absurdity of a situation in which the supposedly better and the supposedly worse life are closely interlinked.
Kim Busch
Striplife
Andrea Zambelli, Valeria Testagrossa, Nicola Grignani, Alberto Mussolini, Luca Scaffidi
Gardening, sporting boys and a demonstration. Life as usual – if it wasn’t for the shots, explosions and missile fragments on the beach. Life in Gaza.
Striplife
Credits
Raffaele Aspide
Andrea Zambelli, Valeria Testagrossa, Nicola Grignani, Alberto Mussolini, Luca Scaffidi
Walter Buonanno
Andrea Zambelli, Valeria Testagrossa, Nicola Grignani, Alberto Mussolini, Luca Scaffidi
Luca Gasparini
A young man wakes up his brother. Someone works in the garden. A few boys do sports together. A photographer takes pictures of a demonstration. And if the young man wasn’t responsible for his brother because their parents are dead, if there were no shots ringing out while the man is gardening, if we didn’t see explosions behind the athletes and if the photographer was not in a wheelchair because both his legs were amputated, one might almost take this for normality. All of this takes place in Gaza, which looks like a twilight world. A world in which there are supermarkets crammed with goods, but also masses of missile fragments on the beach. The film portrays the people in Gaza and how they adapt to impossible living conditions, the inconsistencies of this region and the calm in the eye of the storm.
That Which Does Not Kill
Alexe Poukine
An unagitated, performative stocktaking of the subject of rape. Alexe Poukine recovers the offence from the dark zone and lets victims and perpetrators speak.
That Which Does Not Kill
Credits
Cyril Bibas (CVB), Cécile Lestrade, Elise Hug (Alter Ego)
Alexe Poukine
Elin Kirschfink
Agnès Bruckert
Ada Leiris
Bruno Schweisguth
Conchita Paz, Epona Guillaume, Aurore Fattier, Marijke Pinoy, Marie Préchac, Sophie Sénécaut, Anne Jacob, Tristan Lamour, Noémie Boes, Maxime Maes, Yves-Marina Gnahoua, Tiphaine Gentilleau, Séverine Degilhage, Laurence Rosier
It’s well-established that the majority of sexualised violence doesn’t take place in the public sphere but in the seemingly protected realm of family, partnership and friends. This is also true of a young woman who was raped by a good friend on a private date. Her report was the occasion and basis of this film which interprets it first performatively, then analytically by women and men playing various roles.
In addition to the act itself, it addresses its consequences and how to deal with feelings of guilt, shame, paralysis and repression – but soon the performers’ own experiences as victims of perpetrators, too. In its directness and detail, speaking out is sometimes agonising for all participants. But talking and listening are the only chance to get hold of the phantoms and demons of the past and thus heal the wounds. Alexe Poukine’s differentiated and multi-faceted approach to an issue usually discussed in sensationalist terms offers us, the audience, a chance to dispassionately re-adjust our perspective on the act of rape.
Silvia Hallensleben
In addition to the act itself, it addresses its consequences and how to deal with feelings of guilt, shame, paralysis and repression – but soon the performers’ own experiences as victims of perpetrators, too. In its directness and detail, speaking out is sometimes agonising for all participants. But talking and listening are the only chance to get hold of the phantoms and demons of the past and thus heal the wounds. Alexe Poukine’s differentiated and multi-faceted approach to an issue usually discussed in sensationalist terms offers us, the audience, a chance to dispassionately re-adjust our perspective on the act of rape.
Silvia Hallensleben
The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi, and 27 Years without Images
Eric Baudelaire
A leader of the extreme left Japanese Red Army, who spent the past 30 years in hiding in Beirut, her daughter, and a highly convoluted journey home between yesterday and today.
The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi, and 27 Years without Images
Documentary Film
France
2011
66 minutes
subtitles:
English
Who are May and Fusako Shigenobu? Fusako –leader of a small extreme left-wing group, the Japanese Red Army– has been hiding in Beirut for nigh on 30 years. May, her daughter, only discovered Japan at the age of 27. And Masao Adachi? A screenwriter and radical, activist filmmaker, committed to the armed struggle. Amongst other things, he is also the instigator of a ‘theory of landscape’ – fukeiron: through filming landscapes Adachi seeks to reveal the patterns of oppression. Anabasis? This, ever since Xenophon, has been the name given to difficult or even circuitous homeward journeys. It is this complex, dark story, always full of tension that Eric Baudelaire has chosen to evoke using the documentary format. Shot in Super 8, and in the manner of fukeiron, contemporary views of Tokyo and Beirut are blended in with archive footage, TV clips and excerpts from films to spread out the backdrop for May and Adachi’s voices and memories. They speak of everyday life, of being a little girl in hiding, of exile, politics and cinema and the fascinating relationships between them.
– Jean-Pierre Rehm (FID Marseille 2011)
– Jean-Pierre Rehm (FID Marseille 2011)
The Great Night
Petr Hátle
In praise of the night! Sadness and ecstasy, loneliness and crystal. The fates of people in Prague gradually emerge from the shadows. The pull of darkness, set to baroque arias.
The Great Night
Documentary Film
Czech Republic
2013
72 minutes
subtitles:
English
Without light there are no colours. And that’s what they look like, these people of the night – as if they had been drained of all colour. Who knows whether they became this way because their life happens at night or whether they entered the night because of its fading colours. At any rate, they are looking for surrogates of everything they left behind or that simply stayed behind in a world ruled by a certain degree of timelessness and instability. Drugs, sex, alcohol, and gambling provide help or occasions to while away the time, pass the night and perhaps avoid delving into the oppressive blackness they carry inside and around themselves. “People are exactly like a bench or metal. People are only objects. They disappear like fog and leave nothing behind”, says Zdeněk, one of the protagonists. Maybe it doesn’t matter then when the great night begins and how it ends.
The Quest of the Schooner Creoula
André Valentim Almeida
A group of scientists on Portugal’s biggest scientific expedition to date to the Ilhas Selvagens in the Atlantic Ocean. A journey of discovery, including one’s own past.
The Quest of the Schooner Creoula
In 2010, André Valentim Almeida set out on a journey of discovery. In an age when everything seems to have been explored and new land may only be found in space, perhaps a journey of discovery inevitably makes one look especially closely at and back at everything one encounters. On the schooner “Creoula” he meets a group of scientists who have embarked on Portugal’s greatest scientific expedition to the Ilhas Selvagens in the Atlantic Ocean. During the journey the filmmaker discovers connections to his uncle, a ship’s captain who used to fish in Newfoundland, Portugal’s maritime past and always himself. He looks at the past, the present and the future and discovers more than he expected from this expedition. And then, somehow, there is the World Championship and for a brief moment everyone is euphoric.
The Shebabs of Yarmouk
Axel Salvatori-Sinz
Young Palestinians in Syria, third generation refugees. Nights on the roof, discussions between loyalty and wanderlust, a group on the threshold of adulthood.
The Shebabs of Yarmouk
Documentary Film
France
2012
78 minutes
subtitles:
English
French
Ala’a Hassan, Samer, Tasneem and Waed are third-generation Palestinian refugees. They are part of “Les Chebabs”, a group they formed in their teenage years. In this spirited, staunchly humanistic film we follow these youths, living in the 50-year-old camp of Yarmouk in Syria, where rooms are left to leak and living quarters are stacked shoddily one upon the other.
With his observant camera in tow, Axel Salvatori-Sinz films these young people haunted by doubts about their future life choices, caught between loyalty to their friends and a desire to take flight, sometimes leaving the others far behind. Now on the eve of adulthood, they have a genuine thirst for life and for the absolute, while being all confronted to intricate situations.
Between the need for freedom and sticking to the group, between longing for revolt and the prospect of a well-ordered life, choices are hard to make – even more so if you’re a Palestinian refugee in the camp of Yarmouk in Syria.
With his observant camera in tow, Axel Salvatori-Sinz films these young people haunted by doubts about their future life choices, caught between loyalty to their friends and a desire to take flight, sometimes leaving the others far behind. Now on the eve of adulthood, they have a genuine thirst for life and for the absolute, while being all confronted to intricate situations.
Between the need for freedom and sticking to the group, between longing for revolt and the prospect of a well-ordered life, choices are hard to make – even more so if you’re a Palestinian refugee in the camp of Yarmouk in Syria.
The Will
Christian Sønderby Jepsen
Three brothers who inherit a fortune from their grandfather and a no-holds-barred family war. A story even Hollywood wouldn’t believe.
The Will
Henrik’s ass is in a tight corner. His girlfriend has split, drug and alcohol abuse have gotten the
upper hand, and he’s deeply in debt. When everything is most dire and his woes seem wholly insurmountable, a door to new life is
opened when Henrik’s wealthy grandfather dies, leaving behind him a huge fortune. But at the
promise of money, family war breaks out, and years of failure and betrayal are revealed.
Sometimes reality surpasses even the most incredible cock-and-bull stories. And Christian Sønderby Jepsen's tragicomic and warm film about three brothers who inherit a fortune from their grandfather is certainly stranger than fiction. Even in Hollywood, nobody would believe the story… A film which proves that blood is thicker than water, and that true happiness cannot be bought with money.
Lina Dinkla
Doc Alliance Award 2012
upper hand, and he’s deeply in debt. When everything is most dire and his woes seem wholly insurmountable, a door to new life is
opened when Henrik’s wealthy grandfather dies, leaving behind him a huge fortune. But at the
promise of money, family war breaks out, and years of failure and betrayal are revealed.
Sometimes reality surpasses even the most incredible cock-and-bull stories. And Christian Sønderby Jepsen's tragicomic and warm film about three brothers who inherit a fortune from their grandfather is certainly stranger than fiction. Even in Hollywood, nobody would believe the story… A film which proves that blood is thicker than water, and that true happiness cannot be bought with money.
Lina Dinkla
Doc Alliance Award 2012
Work Hard - Play Hard
Carmen Losmann
Brave new working world: human capital delivering task-oriented performances at non-territorial work spaces or being x-rayed at assessment centres. Reports from a reality as cold as ice.
Work Hard - Play Hard
Work: people who are no more than human capital behind shining panels where no personal coffee cup (please go to the Coffee Point for this) is left (the non-territorial workplace). Futuristic buildings in which nothing is meant to look like work and where human resources deliver task-oriented performances at meeting points, after having been informed by the management of their daily key performance indicators, adjusted to their skill set and the team code. “I agree with you completely”, says the manager trained in product stewardship commitment and discipline to the employee whose core data and talent assessment – evaluated in an assessment centre where he was screened and x-rayed down to his central cortex – are stored as charts in the company’s intranet.
It may sound like a dark science fiction vision, but it’s social reality. Carmen Losman competently illustrates a rather abstract subject with precisely chosen camera positions, in settings that look as cool and contrived as the world they describe, with a soundtrack where the permanent management speak is rarely interrupted by Industrial Electronic Sounds or occasionally turned off. You leave this film frozen to the core. But if joy had been the subject, the film would not have gotten more than a measly three on the management assessment scale.
– Grit Lemke (DOK Leipzig Catalogue 2011)
It may sound like a dark science fiction vision, but it’s social reality. Carmen Losman competently illustrates a rather abstract subject with precisely chosen camera positions, in settings that look as cool and contrived as the world they describe, with a soundtrack where the permanent management speak is rarely interrupted by Industrial Electronic Sounds or occasionally turned off. You leave this film frozen to the core. But if joy had been the subject, the film would not have gotten more than a measly three on the management assessment scale.
– Grit Lemke (DOK Leipzig Catalogue 2011)
