International seminar „Contours of Sound“ brings together anthropology, film and sound studies.

Next slot of the seminar will present a series of sound walks produced in a collaboration between members of MoKS (Centre of Art and Social Practices) and students and staff of the Social & Cultural Anthropology of Tallinn University. The theme of the sound walks focus on the theme of “listening” and seeks to bring up questions relating to understanding the sonic potentials of the city of Tallinn and to understand these potentials on their own terms.

Thirdly, the seminar will unfold in the format of an interactive workshop that will feature the soundtracks of documentaries from previous editionsof the Worldfilm Festival as well as classics of the ethnographic film genre. The purpose of this exercise is to listen to the documentaries and consider the sonic qualities of the documentary's narrative.

The last event in the programme is a round table discussion with filmmakers that will discuss the role that sound plays in the filmmaking craft.  Moderators of this session and the round table “Sonic Design in Contemporary Ethnographic Cinema” are Patrick Mcginley (aka Murmer) and dr. Carlo Cubero (University of Tallinn)

The language of the seminar is English. Seminar is organized jointly by the Estonian National Museum in cooperation with the Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory (EU, Regional Development Fund).

The documentary film “Anna the Flyer” shows the Latvian Easter-time custom of “tying the hawk”. This tradition belongs to the spring cycle of traditions ensuring protection, fertility, and success for the coming year. The hawk is symbolically tied up in the forest so that it won't kill chickens in the summer. The hawk must be tied up every year before sunrise on Good Friday. The hero of the film, Anna Dintere, agreed to allow another person assist her in the execution of the ritual, although according to tradition it must be done with no one watching, otherwise the ritual will not provide protection.

This is the first time this particular tradition has been documented on film; until now the ritual had been recorded only as a folk belief that had once been practised but then died out. For three years (2007, 2009, 2010) researchers filmed the same person, in the same place, performing this ritual before sunrise on Good Friday.

Filmography:

„Anna the Flyer“, 2010, director;„Latvian language in diaspora. Belorussia“, 2007, director and cameraman; „Vera and Janis Lacis”, 2007, director and cameraman; „Timofejyevka. Siberia”, 2004, director and cameraman.

Biography:

- Doctoral studies of Folkloristic in Univesrity of Latvia, since 2007;
- Univesrsity of Latvia, Institute or Literature, Folklore and Art, Research Assistant since 2005

Birds Way is a magical realist story, an Eastern European fairy tale - a creative documentary that follows the daily routine of an Old Believer community struggling to survive and maintain their traditions in spite of the overwhelming intrusion of modernity. The story takes place in the picturesque, isolated scenery of the Danube Delta, Romania. The protagonist is a Russian Lipovan community chased away from Russia three hundred years ago for not accepting the religious reforms of 1666. They found refuge in the Delta where they kept their language, rituals ever since... up to now. Today they have to face new problems: the absence of a religious leader, the migration of the youth, the intrusion of new colonizers… Their last 'reader' and storyteller, 75-year-old Artiom tells us the destiny of Old Believers as laid out in the Book.

The testimonies of these Old Believers about recent transformations, dying religion and their struggle to preserve archaic traditions reveal the vulnerability of a traditional community – with poetry and humour.

Klara Trencsenyi (34) is a freelance director and cinematographer doing creative and social documentaries. In 2005 she graduated from the Hungarian Film Academy, Budapest as Director of Photography. She directed two mid-length documentaries and has worked in various international productions as cinematographer (e.g. the IDFA awarded The Angelmakers, dir. Astrid Bussink, 2005). She has done extensive social and voluntary work with Roma, Irish travelers, and a photography course for Romanian orphans. She participated in A Sunday in the Country in 2008, Berlinale Talent Campus 2008 and EsoDoc 2006. Currently she is working on her fourth creative documentary.

Vlad Naumescu (32) is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Central European University, Hungary. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Ukraine and Romania and recently started fieldwork in India. His research focuses on religion and cultural transmission, on which he published two books and various articles. He teaches visual anthropology at CEU and worked as consultant for a feature-length documentary Csangos (2007) and an anthropological short, Time for Mary (2005). Birds Way is his first documentary co-directed with Klara Trencsenyi.

Born 1970 in Lucerne, Switzerland. Studied Social Anthropology, Religious Studies and History at the University of Zurich. Currently he is working on his PhD-thesis in Religious Studies with means of Ethnographic Film and teaches at the same time at the University of Zurich. Further he is a board member of the Audio-visual Commission of the Swiss Ethnological Society.

Bunong Guu Oh – Bunong’s Birth Practices Between Tradition and Change. Documentary, tigertoda productions 2010. 50 min. Arukihenro – Walking Pilgrims. Documentary, tigertoda productions 2006. 73 min.

Piotr Złotorowicz was born on May 22nd, 1982 in Dębno Lubuskie. At 2001, he startrd to study at the Electrical Engineering Faculty at Szczecin University of Technology. In the year 2007 he graduated from the University and obtained M.Sc. degree. Over the years 2001-2006 he was shooting his first amateur films. In 2006, Piotr began studying film directing at Polish National Film School in Łódź.

Selected Filmography:
2005 Live trough Szczecin
2006 Memory is the Cemetery
2006 Piece of eternity
2007 Chris
2007 Garsoniera
2008 Łódź - From Dusk Till Dawn
2010 Charcoal Burners

Elena Demidova was born in 1964. She graduated from MSTU n.a. N.E. Bauman in 1987. Director’s education: “Internews”, educational project “Real Time” (workshop of M.A.Razbejkina, 2006). Now She is working as a director in different documentary films and projects.

Selected filmography:
Live water, 2006
Holly Week, 2006
Ark, 2007
The multiplication table, 2007
Its time to go home, 2008
Mohicans, 2008, 39 min
Cranberry Island, 2010, 65 min.

„Architecture of Home” was filmed in 2007, a year of excess in all spheres of Icelandic society, which suffered a total economic collapse a year later. One attribute of this period was an almost avid and very egocentric attitude towards space which became apparent in Reykjavik’s center, where contractors interests governed all other aspects of city planing. The apartments portrayed in the film belong to “the old Union blocks” in Reykjavik, built in the depression during the late 1920’s and 1930’s for workers and designed by the architect of many of Iceland’s most significant official buildings. Today, all the apartments are private-owned, but still The Peoples Housing Society co-op is an active association, honoring its socialist roots in the neoliberal society of Iceland 2007.

These blocks soar like walls in the middle class neighbourhood they stand in, like protecting values that got lost somewhere on the way to prosperity in the Icelandic society. Behind these walls the inhabitants celebrate the small space and its functional nature, sheltered from the chaotic excess outside the walls. By focusing on details in the everyday life the film reveals what we always have in front of our eyes but never pay attention to. If you look close enough, the most ordinary things become extraordinary.

Thorunn Hafstad (b. 1978) graduated with M.A. in Visual Anthropology from Goldsmiths University of London 2007. She is a founder an co-editor of the DVD magazine Rafskinna, for which she has made various short films on music and art for the past years. She is also a founder of the artist bookstore and publishing Útúrdúr in Reykjavik. Architecture of Home is her first documentary.

Filmography
- Architecture of Home (Íslensk alþýða) - 2009
A documentary on a beautiful friendship between a building and its people (30 min)

Aurélien Foucault is a photographer and a filmmaker. Born in 1979, he has left France at an early age to discover other ways of living and thinking. Along the years, he has been living in Sweden, Italy, Scotland, Russia and China. His work in the fields of photography has been exhibited in France and China. He is currently working on an ethnographic documentary film in Siberia.

Cédric Quennesson was born in 1979, he is a singer, musician and filmaker. He played in various bands in France and in China and directed a few videos for french corporations in China, where he spent 4 years teaching French. He is currently working as a french teacher and a translator.

Jonas Parienté is a documentary filmmaker. His films explore questions and stories related to migration, identity and urbanization. Jonas studied in Paris (BA in Sociology, summa cum laude) and New York (MFA in Integrated Media Arts) – where he directed his first two short documentaries. In the first one we meet 75 year-old Richard, who has been living for half a century in a young men’s hostel. The next one, Bodies & Soul, is a portrait of his then-neighbor Joe, whose life incarnates the transformations of the Lower East Side, from the self-destructive punk era to the more gentrified current period. After his first hour-long documentary Next year in Bombay, he directed a webdocumentary for French public TV on Mumbai’s urbanization from the eyes and experience of a rickshaw driver (A rickshaw in the city, www.France5.fr).

Mathias Mangin was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and grew up in Paris. He graduated in finance from Edhec Business School, and later studied photography in Sao Paulo and filmmaking in New York. His short fiction film The Chance was selected in festivals in Paris and Toronto. He also directed Paris, Adeus, a short video art piece showed during the “Year of France in Brazil” and on TV Cultura. Mathias is actually part of a screenwriting workshop at the Fémis School of Cinéma in Paris. (www.mathiasmangin.com)

Villalba is a small village in the center of Sicily that is a typical reality of the Sicilian hinterland. It is characterised by physical and economical isolation, abandoned structures and where people live only on an old age pension.

It's a village that is going to disappear because of the large migration to Albenga, a city in Liguria that is home to a large Villalba community.

Once it was a special place because of its position being Calogero Vizzini's kingdom. He was the boss of the old feudal mafia that had now changed and moved from the centre to the coast.

This film tells, through the inhabitants' words, the story of the village and the current situation and the status of women and life in the main square. Through the nature of the sicilian people, we discover in this remote location it holds all the problems and peculiarities of the whole nation of Italy.

FILM www.cinemaitaliano.info/noncepiuunamajoretteavillalba

Giuliano Ricci was born in Milan in 1980. After his University degree at DAMS Cinema in Bologna, he attended Scuola Civica di Cinema in Milan. He worked as a director, scriptwriter and editor for shortfilms and documentaries as “La Comanda” (Filmmaker/doc 2007), an experimental film about the manipulation of food.

In 2009 he directed the film “La Piccola A” which won the second prize at Bergamo Film Meeting 2010.

The Westphalian provincial town Hamm-Uentrop has become the capital of Tamil exile Hinduism. Here, the biggest Tamil Hindu temple in Europe was inaugurated in 2002 amidst industrial plants. Since then, colourful and sonorous ceremonies honour the goddess in the land of the down-to-earth Westphalians. In the centre of the vivid temple life stands the tireless priest Sri Paskaran. With deep faith and healthy pragmatism he faces his religious and profane duties as well as the new homeland's customs. The film accompanies the priest in his busy life and also follows his arrangements to the annual temple festival – the height of the festival calendar. 20.000 people are expected again. In the neighbourhood, the locals cultivate their own traditions during the fair featuring shooting matches. Irene sells fast-food sausages in the local snack-bar and farmer meanwhile Exsternbrink has got a holy cow in this barn. An encounter and coexistence of two universes full of contrast.

Melanie Liebheit born in Westphalia, Germany. Studies of Social Anthropology in Munich and Manchester. 1998 M.A. in Manchester. Currently studying in the department of documentary filmmaking and television journalism at the film academy Munich. Since 2001 temporarily working for Documentary Campus. Since 2007 co-organising the documentary film festival in Bad Aibling, Germany "nonfiktionale".

2000 LINE 19 – AN EVERYDAY JOURNEY, short documentary, 12 min.
2005 „THE SINGLE IMAGE IS NOTHING“ – A PORTRAIT OF THE CAMERAMAN THOMAS
MAUCH, documentary, 39 min. (Co-director)
2005 NIHAD, documentary, 39 min.
2008 REBORN IN WESTPHALIA, documentary, 88 min.

A film about mobility, human creativity, and technology in a Sudanese truck community. The English Bedford-Lorry was introduced to Sudan in the late 1960ies. Since then, local craftsmen technically modify the truck into an ideal vehicle, adequate for traveling off-road and for performing customers’ expectations. The craftsmen and drivers call the lorry “Sifinja” because it is soft and comfortable like the plastic slippers it is named after. In different places in Sudan the carpenters and blacksmiths not only create a shiny iron bride, but they change the whole structure of the lorry through a highly unorthodox performance. Following closely the daily work, art and history of truck-modding on the Nile, a fascinating way of African creativity dealing with global commodities – the automobiles - is opened up. The documentary weaves the original sound of hammering and sawing, drilling and riveting, into a rhythmic, exhilarating audio-visual adventure.

Born in 1975 near Munich, Germany
2001 to 2006: Studies in Social Anthropology, Visual Anthropology, and African Studies, University of Munich, Germany.
2006 to 2008: Research Assistant at the University of Bayreuth, Chair of Anthropology, in a research project on the creativity of local truck mechanics in Northern Sudan, using the camera as method and tool for research.
2007: Teaching Visual Anthropology at University of Bayreuth.
2008/2009: 12 months of field research, including a film project, in Northern Sudan.
Since Spring 2008: PhD-Candidate at BIGSAS - Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies.

Filmography:
2004 Ramadan Karim, Hi 8, 34 Min.
2006 Manasirland - Development Refugees, DV, 22 Min.
2007 Sharia Debates in Africa, DV, 7:47 Min.
2009 Sifinja – The Iron Bride, DV, 70 Min.

“One day I realised it no longer made sense to make things to hang on walls...my canvas is too big to be exposed in a museum room, and sometimes so small that nobody can see it" Lourdes Castro became known as the artist "who took care of shadows". Throughout her international career as an artist Lourdes developed the concept of shadow, giving it different forms and finally reducing it to the minimum and dematerializing it. Today, with 80 years old she lives alone in an isolated house in Madeira island. Her art has become so minimalistic that it is hard to separate it from the gestures of her daily life. Lourdes worships every moment of her life, the trick is to keep breathing, she says.

Catarina Mourao studied Music, Law and Film (MA Bristol University). Founder of AporDOC, Portuguese Documentary Ass., teaches Film and Documentary since 2000. Together with Catarina Alves Costa starts Laranja Azul, a independent production company for creative documentary. Filmography: Fora de Água (1997); A Dama de Chandor (1998); Next Stop (2001) 15 min, Restless (2002) 75 min; Love me, love me not (2004), 60 min; My village doesn’t live here anymore, 58 min; À Flor da Pele” (“On Edge”), 64 min; Pelas Sombras (“Through Shadows”), 83 min

Architects from Europe, America and China are invited to a Chinese provincial town. Within several months, they are to construct a park in Jinhua, intended to form the centre of a new district of that town. Where green fields now flourish and farmers plough the land, investors will soon flock, followed by new inhabitants and political reforms. But the project ends up being drawn out over years. The euphoria of the early stages runs up against a reality in which torn-open earth and the ambitious hopes of politicians, workers and locals are the only manifest features. The film documents the changes leading to the Jinhua Architecture Park – from the laying of the foundation stone to its final opening. In giving all participants in this process an opportunity to comment, one central question proved to be a common concern: What is there for individuals to contribute, when the world around them is changing at such a rapid pace?

Born 1964, grew up in Chur, 1988 - 1992 Trained as director and received diploma at the Ecole Cantonale d’Art in Lausanne, DAVI/Ecal Cinéma. 2002 co-founder of Mira Film GmbH with Vadim Jendreyko, author, director and producer of documentary films and international co-productions.

2010 “The House in the Park”, 86 min.
2004 “The Code”, short feature film, 17 min.
2001 “Onoma”
2000 “Not Vital - half man, half animal”, 55 min
1997 “Without Television”, 25 min., TV documentary
“Luvrers dil glatsch”, 11 Min., TV documentary
1995 “Lettre d‘une ville inconnue”, 9 min. documentary
1994 “Wild Hunger”, short feature film, 18 min

Vladoaia Stan, aged 80, is the last broommaker in the village of Dobra, Romania. Despite his age, he hardly works to earn his living, doing what he has done his whole life: domestic brooms.

Graduated as film &TV director – Academy of Film & Theatre, Bucharest, 1995. Film & Tv producing workshop – AMSU , Amsterdam, 1996. Member of Romanian Filmmakers Union since 1994 filmmaking since 1985

video documentary: “Calusarii”, “At fair”, “A potter”, “nea Radu”, “The broommaker”

Films:
“Ostinato” doc. 16mm, “Before breakfast” fict. 35mm, “Minuet” fict. 35mm
“Gratitude” anim. 16mm

What could connect a poet, a Pakistani immigrant and two 80 year old sisters dispensing funeral offerings? What is the association between Cacoyiannis directing Lysistrata, the woman who dances in the dry cleaners and the old man who watches life go by from his open window? In an underdeveloped inner city street of Athens, culturally, ethnically and socially different people merge and diverge as they live their big and small events of their daily lives. A film about the value of being different and still sharing universal human needs, hopes and fears.

Studies: Anthropology Bsc, University College London, Photojournalism, London College of Printing Video production Dip, South Thames College, London.

1999-2000- Filmmaker in the series EUtopia (BBC & ARTE): 'Greek and Pleasant land' 28’, 'Home is where the heart is' 28’, 'United States of Europe'. 2001 - “The school” (58’). 2001 - Co-directed with Amalia Zepou: “The landowner’s son” (58’). 2002 - “Rockmunkit” (58’), YLE 2003 - “Faith is rock” (58’), 2006 - “My place in the dance”, 52’; 2006 -“Mathimata- Pathimata”, 12x45’ documentary series on education; 2008- “Please listen to me”, 52’, “Bells, Threads & Miracles” 52’; 2009 – “Research Institutes in Greece” 50’; 2009 – “Twelve Neighbors” 52’; Co Director for the TV series “Missing Route” (in development) – 12 episodes – 52’ (Greece/Finland)

Peru is in the midst a gastronomic revolution. Its army: thousands of culinary students. Its leader: the Peruvian chef Gastón Acurio. Its weapons: centuries of ethnic fusion. Can an entire nation be represented by its cuisine? This documentary journeys to the kitchens of Peru’s coast, highlands and jungle, as well as Peruvian expat communities in Paris, London, Amsterdam and New York for answers.

From the most humble family kitchens to the poshest restaurants, from stories of pioneering Peruvian chefs abroad to those who preserve ancient recipes at home, we find that Peru’s cuisine is deliciously integrating for its people, who have historically been divided by ethnic and economic differences. This documentary isn't just about food. This documentary is about integration, challenges, culture, poverty and wealth. We’ll discover the origin of Peru's ubiquitous national dish – cebiche – the anticuchos of beef hearts or the annual meal mourners share at the graves of their dead relatives.Famed chefs such as Spain's Ferran Adrià, as well as Peru's Gastón Acurio share their views and experiences with Peru’s cuisine alongside the thousands of unsung chefs, who also dream of Peru’s cuisine as a motor of development.

Ernesto Cabellos was born in Lima in 1968. In 1994, he founded Guarango, a non-profit association production house for development-oriented audio-visual projects. Director and producer of feature-length documentaries on to environmental conflicts in his country, such as the internationally-lauded “Choropampa: The Price of Gold” (2002) and “ Tambogrande: Mangos, Murder and Mining” (2007). Cabellos now presents “Cooking Up Dreams” (2009), his third feature documentary, a film that explores a point of convergence in his home country: Peruvian cuisine. Cabellos is also working on a series of documentary shorts on the political violence in Peru from 1980-2000 in which close to 70 000 people were killed.

December of 1991.
A political decision closes half of a centenary railroad in Tua, between Braganca e Mirandela in Portugal. Fifteen years later, the train's whistle only sounds in the memory of the habitants of Tras-os Montes. This sentence has impeded the road to development and has increased the differences between the Portuguese coastline and the Interior, thus transforming Portugal into the most centralized country of Western Europe. The elders resist and live in the desert villages, without any children. The lack of working opportunities and life in the countryside makes the younger ones in the villages to go out and look for better opportunities in other places. Now, the train that still chugs among parts of the beautiful valley of Tua, is being threatened by a dam that will drown what is considered to be one of the top three most beautiful railroads of Europe.

“Stop, Listen, Look” is a voyage through a deeply forgotten Portugal, conducted by the sovereign voice of an outraged community, the greatest victim of broken promises by those who swore to defend the Land. Those left with the train, unpunished. The community stayed, isolated, in the only district of the country that does not even have one kilometer of a highway.

Jorge Pelicano, 32 years old, was born in Figueira da Foz, Portugal in 1977. He´s graduated in Comunication and public relations. At the moment he´s doing a master in journalism in University do Coimbra, Portugal. He´s a cameraman in SIC Television, a private Portuguese channel of news.

Awards
“Best Feature Portuguese Documentary” in DocLisboa 2009, Portugal
“Best Editing”, in DocLisboa 2009, Portugal
“Schools Award for best film of the Portuguese Competition”, in DocLisboa 2009, Portugal
“Environment Grand Prize”, in Cine Eco 2009, Seia, Portugal
“Best Portuguese Language Film” in Cine Eco 2009, Seia, Portugal
“Youth Award” in Cine Eco 2009, Seia, Portugal

When given two options in 20s: submitting to an arranged marriage or taking a vow of celibacy for life, three Chinese women Lian, Yi and Fen preferred the latter. Instead of serving their husbands and children at home, they earned their living in spinning factories and moved in a nursing home after retirement. Now in 90s, they tell their stories with pride and loneliness, but no regret: „It was the fashion.” It's a story about choices, independence and loneliness, but no regret: “It was the fashion.”

Luo Yi was born in 1981. She worked as a journalist and editor for four years in south China, studied documentary from 2009-2010 in London.

Author's page in the Facebook.

Filmography: 2010 “Living Without Men”

Located in a slave-descendant community named Itamatatiua, the film follows the life of Ariana, a little girl in foster care, during a period of three years. “Stone, fish, river” reconstructs Ariana´s life based on real life situations in a highly visual style. A crucial bond binds Ariana, her foster mother Eloisa and filmmaker Iban together; the three of them have lost their mothers in one way or the other. Beyond cultural difference, the film affirms change, friendship and invention as ways of facing human loss. Filmmaker Iban gets involved in the life of Ariana and Eloisa to such extent that he will be called on to make crucial decisions on Ariana´s future.

Iban Ayesta Aldanondo is an anthropologist and filmmaker living in the city of San Sebastian. At the age of eighteen he left his hometown to study anthropology, art and cinema in Reno, Lueneburg, London, Oslo and Berlin. After completing his master dissertation on the anthropology of art (Film and Architecture in Berlin), he began his first long term fieldwork in Berlin (1999-2002) focused on the anthropology of the body. In 2003, Iban Ayesta completed his PhD thesis in anthropology at the University College of London (UCL). Parallel to his academic trajectory, he had also been involved in artistic projects. In 2004 the Basque Government granted Iban Ayesta a post-doctoral scholarship to undertake ethnographic research on slave-descendent communities in the north-east of Brasil.

Sirens, screams, laughter, singing, bartering: these are the sounds sweeping into the rooms of Downtown Los Angeles' old forgotten hotels. Their inhabitants' stories tell of lives lived on the margins. Some residents stay for a few months. Others have lived there for as long as 40 years. According to Charlie, the desk clerk at the King Edward Hotel, “you can be anything you want; you can do anything you want - and nobody gives a damn!” After all, we’re on America’s most notorious skid row, also known to old-timers as the Nickel.

Director Alina Skrzeszewska also lived in one of the hotels for a year and a half, while shooting the film. The result is a strikingly intimate portrait of people living in this largely invisible community. Their lives speak of both desperation and beauty, while subtly resisting the encroaching gentrification. A layered image of America’s diverse urban landscape unfolds, with all its fractures and traumas, as well as its potential.

Alina Skrzeszewska was born in Wroclaw/Poland. During the politically charged years after the outbreak of the Solidarity movement her family emigrated to West Germany and Alina grew up in Munich. She studied Stage Design and Art&Media at the University of the Arts in Berlin and received an MFA in Film&Video from the California Institute of the Arts. Alina's work meanders between essayistic and documentary forms. Her films often talk about fringes, borders, boundaries: be they spaces that carry borders within them, or people whose lives are somehow fractured. Songs from the Nickel (2010) is her first documentary feature.

The first households in Nieuwland in Schiedam have seen their neighbourhood change. They are now the white minority, many of them older than 80. After them came the immigrants for whom Nieuwland became again a new land. For over a year, in 2009- 2010, Steef Meyknecht followed four stories out of the neighborhood of Nieuwland, Schiedam, The Netherlands: The sixth form of the Islamic primary school Ababil, Riet's Rummikub club, Uli's tobacco store and Ferry, the local policeman. Together the stories form a meaningful portrait of this deprived urban area.

Social and political issues take on a human face. Ms Kevser Ŏzen prepares her class for the entrance exam. The Dutch language is a big hindrance. Tobacco shop owner Uli Schenkers is trying to make his dream come true: his own tobacco shop. Kids like to hang out at Uli's and elderly people feel at home in the shop. At Riet's Rummikub club, the elderly ladies talk about their lives and the changes in their neighbourhood. Local policeman Ferry Lockhorst can be seen anywhere: visiting lonely people, discovering well-hidden weed plantations and visiting Uli, the tobacconist, mot only when there are complaints but also because he cannot give up smoking.

Steef Meyknecht is an independent documentary filmmaker. His work has been screened by different Dutch public senders. The documentaries have been selected for a variety of festivals, such as: Cinéma du Reél, Paris; festival di Populi, Florence; Moscow documentary film festival, RAI film festival, Manchester. As a freelance photographer Steef Meyknecht realizes assignments for the Dutch administration and various institutions. He has a part-time position at the department of Cultural Anthropology, University of Leiden, the Netherlands. As a Social Anthropologist with professional experience in photography and filmmaking, he is teaching Visual Ethnography. The observational documentary cinema is over here his main focus of interest.

Don Letts narrates us through the story of a crew of Rastafarians evacuated to London in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption in Montserrat. Living in exile in inner city East London, the friends reinvent themselves as “rude-boy” rappers and small time hustlers on the nightclub circuit. Will their dreams of celebrity be realised before the law catches up with them? Can these ‘mighty-lions-of-Judah’remain true to their spiritual identity?

“Fire Burn Babylon” blends the point of view of three charismatic Rasta men, the elders that guide them and the women who love them as they pitch between enjoying the thrills of the city and committing to Rastafari ideals.

Sarita Siegel has been filmmaking for 9 years in America, New Zealand and England. Sarita Siegel created Alchemy Films with Taggart Siegel. Alchemy Films has made award-winning cross-cultural films and natural history subjects with an awareness of conservation. Alchemy Films documentaries have been broadcast on National Geographic Channels, US PBS, ARTE, and France Channel 5. Titles include The Split Horn (2001), The Disenchanted Forest (2002), Destroying Angel (1995) and The Beloved (1997).

The Mboum people, who live in northern Cameroon (Adamaoua province) are practice male circumcision for decades. Until the middle of the last century, male circumcision was highly regarded as a period of initiation leading to a man’s status. Once a year, children from ten to fifteen years old were sent to the bush for the initiation. During this, cultural codes and knowledge of the community are taught to them. Nowadays, this mode of knowledge communication has phased, leading to a misunderstandings and conflicts between younger and older generations, especially those who were born and raised far from their community. By following a group of five children during their period of initiation, I show in this film how nowadays, how circumcision is practiced and regarded inside the community. In spite of social changes and external pressures (urbanization, modernity, HIV issues...), the effort and the will are there to make stable a social order resulting from this practice.

I’m Mohamadou Saliou, Cameroonian, from Ngaoundere in the Adamawa province. I grew up and spent my childhood in the far north of Cameroon where my father worked as a civil servant. After 12 years spent in this part of Cameroon, I came back to Ngaoundere, my hometown, where I got my general certificate advance level. To learn more about the history and culture of my community I decided to study history when I reached the university in 1997. In 2000 I got a Bachelor and a Master degree in history. Since 2008 I am a master student in Visual Cultural Studies at the University of Tromsø. “Juarké – boys made men in Mboun society” is my first film.

Kihnu naine (A Woman of Kihnu) 1973, 50 min

Kihnu Kristjan (Kristjan from Kihnu) 1992, 28 min

Emavene (Grandma of Boats) 1993, 65 min

Isa, Poeg ja Püha Toorum (Father, Son and Holy Torum) 1997, 90 min

Liblikate kodu (Home for Butterflies) 2004, 28 min

Mark Soosaar is a film director and cameraman, one of the most outstanding documentary filmmakers in Estonia today.

Ruslan is an Ukrainian musician, who met an Estonian girl Terje five years ago on Viljandi Folk Music Festival. For the sake of love Ruslan left behind his home country and the well-known Ukrainian folk-rock band Haydamaky and came to live in Estonia. In five years he has learned Estonian, created a family and a band playing Estonian-Ukrainian folk music - Svjata Vatra. If until then the five other members of the band knew Ukraine only through Ruslan’s storys, then on the summer of 2009 the band departed on a roadtrip to the Carpathians - a musical expedition, in order to discover and devour Ukrainian temperament and the beauty of the mountains and music there.

Svjata (in Ukrainian) – holiness, awe, respect, in other words - celebration in one’s soul.

Vatra (in Ukrainian) – a ritual bonfire, that is only lit in the mountains on special occasions; also the spark of life in the soul, that makes a person take action continuously in order to make the world around us more beautiful, to rejoice, love, make music – so as to share it all with others.

Erik Norkroos: 1985–1995 worked in a film studio as a camera-mechanic and a photographer. 1989-1993 appeared in group and personal exhibitions as an artist. Has graduated from the film faculty of Tallinn Pedagogical University (now Tallinn University) in camerawork under A. Iho. Currently the director of the film studio Rühm Pluss Null OÜ, member of the board of Umberto & Co and the producer and cameraman of films and televison shows.

Travelogue and ethnography meet in this whimsical ghost story about a foreigner in the midst of a culture where “the dead are not dead”. Village by village, locals take him on a road trip through Cameroon’s most joyous funeral celebrations. Along the way, he befriends his guides and becomes increasingly haunted by memories of his own ancestors.

Matthew Lancit was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. He left for New York to study filmmaking at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and the liberal arts at Sarah Lawrence College. Since graduating, his shorter works have been invited to screen at Chasma and the Film Anthology Archives in New York, the art department at the University of California, Los Angeles, and on the Saatchi Gallery website. As well as making film and video art, he has written highly personalized essays on a wide range of topics, from bibliotherapy to cartography, for publications like The Highlights and newspapers like The National Post. He currently divides his time between Toronto and Paris.

„Guests of Space“ explores the first encounter between the Nukak Maku people and the white man in 1988. “We were afraid of the white men because we thought that they were cannibals,” says Kirari, the tribe’s oldest man. Known as the last nomads to be contacted in South America, the Nukak Maku have lived a nomadic existence in the tropical forests of Southern Colombia for centuries. But today the Amazon lands that sustain the tribe are being overrun by Colombia’s drug war and the Nukak have been forced to relocate outside their territory. This film observes the collision of two alien worlds where settlers, missionaries, armed groups and Colombia’s drug war unexpectedly meet and confront.

Alba Mora Roca is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and recently graduated student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She was awarded with the 2008 “La Caixa” fellowship to study in the U.S. and has worked four years as a freelance producer in Barcelona. She directed two documentaries in India and Cameroon that have been aired in Spanish TV, screened an won awards at film festivals across Europe. She helped develop and produce the award-winning films “Utopia 79” and “El Perdón” and served as a multimedia shooter for Nanouk Films. Born and raised in Girona, Spain, Alba Mora Roca studied Audiovisual Communication at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. She was an intern of Mediastorm.org in New York City during the summer 2009 and recently has been awarded with the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation Documentary Internship.

In 2004, 75 Roma people in de Romanian town of Miercurea Ciuc were forced to leave their homes. The metal cabins put at their disposal in Primaverii Street were said to be temporary. Six years later, however, the Roma still live in these makeshift houses, under dire circumstances. This short documentary shows street life through the innocent eyes of carefree boy Gyuri, whose favorite pastime is playing in the street with his friends.
From the Amnesty International Slum Stories series.

Andrei started as a raadio DJ in his hometown during his teenager years. He then moved to Bucharest to study Sound and Editing at the Film University. At the samet ime he worked as a freelance editor and sound engineer for BBC Romania and on many films, including Francis Ford Coppola’s „Youth Without Youth“, as the assistent of the legendary editor Walter Munch. He produced and directed the aarded short feature „Fly“, then made his documentary debut with „Constantin and Elena“.

K23.03.2011 / 22.00 + / 5€

Muuilmamuusika & Maailmafilm esitlevad:

Kontsert-pidu ja Maailmafilmi aftekas:
MAAILMAMUSTRID

Szymon Zaleski runs after the life. From doctor's offices to the shamans of the Amazonia, its quest is the one of a treatment against the cancer which gains him. At once funny, ironic, curious, introspective, a movement at the level of man with its heroes, its myths, its disappointments, its fears… but also a singular glance on the sense of his life.

Szymon Zaleski was born in Lodz, Poland, at 1952. Actor, film director. Studied film at à l’INSAS (Bruxelles) (1974) and TNS (Strasbourg) en 1978, worked for different TV-channels.

Breathing and souls are connected. So connected that when breathing in the same rhythm with somebody, you may meet their soul when you are lucky. For such an encounter, a trusting bridge is needed, which connects a soul to another. If trust is broken, separation follows, first from another person, then from the humanity as a whole.

Francesko is the only female chimney sweeper in Estonia. Being a chimney sweeper, she also helps others for their lives to be safe and for their houses to „breathe“. Despite everything, Francesko is a woman taking a special path, trying to find solutions her own way.

While the film focuses on the chimney sweeper Francesko, we also get a glimpse of some other characters, whose souls are otherwise unnoticed in the everyday race of life.

Kullar Viimne was born in 1980 in Võru, Estonia. After finishing his studies in social work he went on studying film at the Baltic Film and Media School.  In 2006 and 2007 he studied at the FAMU International Filmschool in Prague, Czech Republic. In the same year he spent three months in Uganda shooting the documentary film “Innocent” together with Sophie Haarhaus. He has worked as a cinematographer and director in several Estonian and international film projects.

Filmography
2011 “Breath”
2009 “No Finish Line”
2008 “Laws of Love”
2006 “Final days”; “Travelling light”
2004 “Godspeed”
2003 “Quo Vadis?”

Lumina amintirii explores evocations of memory in post-socialist Bucharest, twenty years after the fall of Romanian communism.
The film is shot in Cismigiu Gardens, one of the oldest public parks in Bucharest. This park is a central space attracting people from all walks of life, a place for social interaction and solitary reflection.
Interweaving voices that recollect the past with glimpses of present-day scenes from the park, the film constructs a montage of stillness and motion, images and voices, landscapes and people.

Alyssa Grossman is currently a postdoctoral research fellow in Heritage Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She has a PhD in Social Anthropology with Visual Media from the University of Manchester. Her film Lumina amintirii (2010) was part of her doctoral thesis on everyday sites and practices of remembrance work in post-socialist Bucharest, Romania. She also has an MA in Visual Anthropology from the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology (2005). Her previous film, Into the Field (2005), received awards at the Astra International Film Festival (2006), the Göttingen International Film Festival (2006), and the Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Video Festival (2006).

The Film is observation for behaviour athletic fanatic, reflection about the Game in life of the person.

Vladimir Golovnev was born in Omsk city in 1982. In 2004 he graduated historical faculty of Omsk State University. In 2005 he received the diplom of Independent School of cinema and TV INTERNEWS (Moscow).

Filmography of Vladimir Golovnev:
2005 – «4+», short, fiction.
2006 – «The ship goes on, the coast stays behind», short, documentary. Prize for the best debut of International anthropologist filmfestival (Salekhard, Russia). Gold prize of filmfestival «Provincial daybook» (Moscow, Russia).
2008 – «Unworldly…», short, documentary.
2008 - “The curtain”
2010 – “The Game”

Alba and Nuria are two young blind women who wage a daily battle against the limitations imposed upon them by their inability to see, and who want only to lead a normal life.  Their generosity and persistence enable them to do amazing things like dedicating their time to helping others. Not merely satisfied with acceptance in the seeing world, Alba and Nuria accomplish feats considered exceptional even for the average person.

Alien to conformity and eager to explore all the possibilites that life offers, they travel to the Vincent Ferrer Foundation in India to help educate blind children. The experiences gained there will blaze them a pathway for living out their dreams.

Fakir is a religious scholar who repairs bicycles for a living. He works along side the street over an old bridge in Kabul. Through him, we encounter the humble and the poor of Kabul. He fixes their bicycles and entertains them with various talents and a great sense of humor.

Hamid Ayubi participated in a documentary filmmaking workshop organised by Ateliers Varan (France) in Afganistan.

Sleeping on a mattress beside the main highway into Tel Aviv, rising at nightfall to collect bottles for recycling, Patrick has known better times. Once he was a promising sous chef in a popular restaurant. Now, his life is ruled by alcohol and heroin in a world enthralled with superficial glamor and success, and blind to its casualties. Follow behind the camera’s eye, through a circus of the absurd, a society consumed with self, all narrated by one who has seen both sides. With a winter thunderstorm approaching, Patrick, with childish candor, shares with us the dream that keeps him going ― to journey to America to become a hurricane hunter. His hope is his salvation.

Born in Kibbutz Naan, Israel at 1974.
2008-2010 MFA Studies, Film & TV Dept. Tel Aviv University
1998-2002 B.Des, Dept. of Visual Communication Bezalel - Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem

Haidar, a taxi driver, dreams of going to India to see the Taj Mahal. The choice doesn’t seem strange for a man who believes that “Love is everything”. The only problem is he lives in Pakistan! Why is Haidar's dream so impossible to achieve? Is it because he is a Pakistani, a Muslim, seen by the Indian government as a potential spy or a terrorist? Or is it because he is a common man with no strings to pull? India and Pakistan have a long-standing relationship of suspicion and hostility. They have been to war four times and continuing terrorist attacks in India make Haidar’s quest for a visa look almost impossible. To see how Haidar's dream can be given a voice, and what it means for all of us, I travel from India to Pakistan.

Haidar's solution for peace is simple. If ordinary citizens of both countries are allowed to interact with each other, they will realise not only are they historically and culturally close but they also have similar problems - from potholed roads to corrupt politicians.

But can his dream come true?

A former garbage dump, transformed two decades ago by the government in gardens is threatened today by construction project. An association composed of residents and occupants of gardens struggle to preserve the site. To saving place, gardeners had to appropriate the discourse of the Institution.

This domestication of the world, this any way to organize classes leads us to drift into the maze of trails, brambles, and the unique stories of each. 

Christophe Van Collie was born in 1969 in Belgium. He studied painting, photography and two years of philosophy before working in photography first and then in the performing arts. He has directed three films produced by AJC!, and some other experiments, as self-produced films or collectives films:

2001 "Cissé 1X ce n'est pas moi,(Cissé)² c'est moi- même
2003 " Déjà Jadis!"
2010 NFNH / "News From Nowhere"

Tsarang, a small village in the Himalayan highlands. Like every morning the villagers entrust their cattle to the village's shepherd. Tsering, an old trader, attends a prayer of good luck performed by Lekshey and her fellow Buddhist nuns. Then he sets off for the next village to buy rice for the community. Tashi, owner of the only tractor in the village, gets ready to transport mud. In a region that seems to extend into immenseness, where nothing but the wind interrupts the silence, man and nature meet at the rhythm of an archaic life. Starting from simple actions of daily routine, the three main characters talk about dreams, traditions and difficulties of a people that is about to change. A road in construction will soon connect a remote mountain region to the more modern Nepal. With their stories, the main characters create a fascinating picture of an unknown corner of the world in which individual voices portray the village itself, the silent protagonist.

Trailer: http://ethicalproject.blip.tv

Giuseppe Tedeschi Born in 1976 (Merano, I). 2004-2007 ZeLIG school for documentary, television & new media (Bolzano, I), major: directing & project development. Filmography: Eurotel (2007)

Caroline Leitner Born in 1980 (Sterzing, I). 2003 Bachelor in communication science in Siena (I). 2004 Master in music communication (Pescara, I). 2004-2007 ZeLIG school for documentary, television & new media (Bolzano, I), major: editing and post production. Filmography: How I am (2007), Nairobi Love Story (2009).

Daniel Mazza Born in 1980 (Merano, I). 2000-2001multimedia course of European Social Fund. 2001-2003 School of Audio Engineering (Berlin). 2004-2007 ZeLIG school for documentary, television & new media (Bolzano, I), major: camera. Filmography How I am (2007), Eurotel (2007).

In a country where love is not left to chance, but a carefully calculated choice, we share the humorous yet humbling journey of Divya and Neha, internationally educated, beautiful Indian women, who prefer taking the arranged marriage route despite being daughters of love marriages. This is particularly ironical as both girls are daughters of strong-willed mothers who choose love marriages and prefer the same for their daughters. Divya is India’s leading wedding planner and Neha a creative business woman; unable to meet prospective grooms at bars or BBQs. Realizing the parochial mindset on dating, they elect to meet matchmakers, download grooms, even tolerate being primed and positioned as commodities paraded before suitors.

Arjun and Abishek are ‘suitable boys’, confident and successful Indian men providing the male point counter point of view. Their ‘arranged meetings’ adds magical mayhem effortlessly. Commonalities are struck, friendships forged hope blossoms amidst a conundrum of color and culture. Just as things seem to go a notch higher, rejection and rebuke reveals contradictions in modern mindsets and values raise gender issues, question diktats of marriage in a country where girls are rejected based on horoscopes or skin color. This exploration questioning why Indian women walk this cultural tightrope whilst revealing what courage it takes to keep their identity and dignity in a country where marriage seems like a Russian Roulette.

Soniya Kirpalani realizing her passion for syncopating sensitivities of Asia, Arabia and Africa, Soniya gives visual and voice to emerging eastern stories, through documentaries. A trained psychologist, Soniya got her initial media training through Trinity College’s external program. Commencing her career, essaying a lead role in two Bollywood movies, she is now a leading lifestyle and fashion editor and a convergence consultant who designs 360 Degree projects for Sony Entertainment Television - TeleLife, “FACES”, winning accolades for India-Pakistan’s first cross cultural, cross media, cross border production ‘Henna On My Hands’ with Geo TV & Times of India.