Saturday 28.03

10.00

The Woman from the Bubble 

                                               

“I know you from TV,” says Khaled, a deaf Palestinian, to Lee Dan, an Israeli sign language interpreter, when he meets her at an army checkpoint. Lee laughs. She’s got this special ring to her laugh which sometimes even deaf people can pick up. Hearing people, too, know her from the small “bubble” on the TV screen, translating programs into sign language. Outside the bubble, Lee goes on interpreting for deaf people in various situations: at school, in court, in therapy, even in the delivery room. The film goes into the bubble, and tells the story of people like Lee, who live between silence and sound.

The right man at the right place

In Conakry (capital of Guinea), in the entrance hall of the People’s Palace, an imposing fresco at the effigy of Fadouba Oularé, is hanged enthroned. He is represented with his Djembe, surrounded by his people, his rifle and the feast raised. He is the incarnation of the slogan sent out by the Sékou Touré government to mobilize the Guinean population: “The right man at the right place”.  Fadouba Oularé’s music is imprinted by his environment and by history. Both a vital ritual in all local celebrations and a fundamental element of the Guinean revolution, his music also assumes a mystical dimension. As complex as his music, Fadouba Oularé is first of all an artist, but also the head of clan, a soldier, a thief hunter and a medicine man. Through Fadouba Oularé’s character both traditional Mandingue’s music, the history of a nation and the difficulties encountered by its people today are conveyed.

Cédric Dupire
Cédric Dupire was born in 1979. In 2003, he went to India to listen to traditional music of Rajasthan. From this meeting he developed his first feature-length documentary “Musafir” (Fatumbi award at the Bilan du film ethnographique, Paris, 2005). In 2006, he went to West Africa to produce the film “The right man at the right place”.

Matthieu Imbert Bouchard

Matthieu was born in Paris. He began to learn African music at the age of sixteen and for the past 10 years he visits West Africa almost yearly, in order to improve his knowledge and to learn from the masters. When he first met Fadouba Oulare on 2004, he got the idea of shooting a movie on him.

12.30

Enduring life

The Oostveen family lives in a quiet and peaceful street, in the same house where they have lived for 40 years and hope to stay for many more. The man of the house is 89 years old, his wife is two years younger and they have four sons. The eldest son, Rinus, is 57 years old and still living with his parents. Their days are planned following specific routines, in which way, for better or for worse, they entertain and take care of themselves and each other. For example, they are concerned with the preparations for their evening meal during the entire day. The elderly couple as well as their son have specific roles in the household. Outside of the house, their activities follow patterns that are also as tight as possible. All of this offers them great comfort.

Brechtje Boeke
Brechtje Boeke (26) is a Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology graduate at the university of Leiden in (the Netherlands). During her academic carrier documentary filmmaking has been her main focus, and she has specialized herself in Visual Ethnography. In 2006 she finished the first Visual Ethnography course that resulted in the film “Abdi, de kleermaker” ('Abdi, the tailor' 10 min.). The second course produced her film 'Dagelijkse kost' ('Enduring life' 37 min.). In her films she tries to find and capture the 'extraordinary' in the so-called 'ordinary'. For her master research Brechtje has started a new film project in Ghana. This is now in its post-production phase.

Today the Hawk Takes One Chick

Amidst the highest prevalence of HIV in the world and the lowest life expectancy, three grandmothers in Swaziland, a small, landlocked country in southern Africa between South Africa and Mozambique, cope in this critical moment in time. The generation between the grandmothers and their grandchildren has been severely affected by HIV.

Presented without an overt narrative structure, the film’s drama emerges from the patient accumulation of steady details that, in sum, tell a greater story of family, struggle, and the weight of an uncertain future in a world dictated by AIDS.In Swaziland, nearly 40% of people are HIV positive and life expectancy has dropped to 32-years.

The events unfold in a rural area with-in a 15-mile radius of St Phillips Health Center where one grandmother works as a nurse.

Swaziland’s gentle rural landscape and way of life, its humor, joy, and deeply held spiritual beliefs, are in stark contrast with the urgency of the everyday life: families living off World Food Program rations, a missing generation of productive young adults, children surviving without parents.

What is life when sickness and death are an everyday experience? For these grandmothers, there is no choice but to steadfastly persevere and refuse to abandon their children. As more and more insight into the women's lives is revealed, we are forced to ponder the question asked by granny Albertina: "What will happen when all the grannies are dead?"

Jane Gillooly
Jane Gillooly is a non-fiction and narrative film/video maker living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Gillooly has a background in photography, design and interdisciplinary media. A MacDowell fellow, she is currently a professor of film at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

15.30

Uncomfortable

Aisyah and Oubaïdah are two seemingly very dif­ferent Malay women. Aisyah is a young emanci­pated person who enjoys the hectic lifestyle of Kuala Lumpur. Oubaidah who has singlehandedly raised seven children, is a delegate of PAS in Kelantan.

Both women provide their insights on work, sexuality and their relationships with men. We see in their answers, contradictions that echo and reflect off each other, often raising the burning questions of the challenges, battles for identity and place in a Muslim society in the midst of transition.

Anna Salzberg
met documentary cinema during a video workshop in the jail La Santé, in Paris, in 2001. She made her first short movies in 2003. “Malaises, Uncomfortable” is her first documentary movie, co-directed with Eleonore Merlin in 2007–2008, with which they won the Rotary price for young video reporters in 2007. Anna was the director of photography of the documentary movie “Les étoiles du Grand Nord” directed by Charlotte Krebs, about an Inuit circus in the Arctic Canada, in 2006.

Seeds of Summer

“My Mom always says that my military service is to blame for everything that has happened to her little girl”

Barbie girl soldiers, toting guns almost bigger then themselves…

Seven years after completing an IDF course for female combat soldiers, the director returns to the place where, for the first time, she fell in love with a woman – her commanding officer. Over the course of 66 days and nights, the film follows the girls in one of the IDF’s most rigorous combat courses and looks at the relationships that develop between girls in an environment subject to strict military code. The film reveals the mechanism that enables the transformation of 18-year-old girls from daddy's little girls into fierce disciplined soldiers. Through the intimate relationship that develops between the director and one of the characters, questions about identity, sexuality and the discovery of femininity surface

Hen Lasker
Born 1980 in Israel, graduated in 2005 from The Film and Television School at Sapir Academic College. Hen directed a number of short films, both narrative and documentaries as part of her studies. “Seeds of Summer” is her debut film.

17.30

Where to?

A glimpse into the lives of disillusioned teenagers in the Märkisches Viertel, a neighborhood on Berlin’s outskirts: summer days revolving around beer, junk food and PlayStation. When they’re not hanging out around the local shopping mall, they mark time lounging in Kevin’s living room while his parents are gone for the summer.

Alcohol is almost always involved, and often the police or local security. Disputes with neighbors, problems with crime, violence and graffiti are frequent themes, although unlike Kevin, most of them have never been arrested. Hard up for money, they hardly leave the neighborhood – which appears to be the hub of their existence. Their prospects are rather dim. What does the future have in store for them?

Max Kerkhoff
Born in Austria in 1984 to a German father and American mother, I grew up in Berlin-Kreuzberg, one of Germany’s most ethnically diverse districts – and this made issues related to migration and integration an almost daily experience. My general interest in these topics evolved over the years into the focus of my studies in European Ethnology and Political Science at the Humboldt University (HU) and Free University (FU) in Berlin. At the same time, I became increasingly involved with film as a medium. After making several small video clips and doing some editing jobs, “Wo Lang?” (“Where to?”) was the first project in which this interest merged with my field of studies. It represents both my first steps in documentary filmmaking and the first project in which I attempt to tell a story. Begun as a field study for a seminar at the HU on the topic of integration in the Märkische Viertel, the film adopts an ethnographic approach towards capturing the day-to-day life of a group of young people in summer.

Half Past Three

How is life in Carpatho-Ukraine after the fall of Communism? People started living in the old-fashioned way again. They renewed cowsheds, started raising cows, grow potatoes on small fields. Time stopped but that doesn’t bother anyone. People accept the world as it is and enjoy it.  Dmitrij Vasiljevich Vorochta, Nikolaj Kapchuk, and the old Buzachka ladies... These are the kind of people who know that life is a gift. It is something happy and blessed, no matter what it might be like. If you don‘t have enough to buy milk you must find a cow. If your house burns down, you must build a new one. But if it’s a holiday, one must make vodka...

Tomáš Hodan
Born in Pargue. Acquired education: journalism studies at the journalist school, film studies at the Zlin Film School, Theory and History of Dramatic Arts at the University of Palacky in Olomouc. He has made several short fiction and documentary films, two of them were co produced and broadcasted by Czech television (ČT 2) He is currently finishing an animated film „Delfín“ (Dolphin). He has worked as an editor in magazine, an assistant director and as a theater lightning technician.

20.30

All the world’s a stage

We are often mistaken for Negroes… People call out to us ‘Hey, darkie! Come here.’

Settled mainly on the west coast of India, the Sidis are a small community that came from East Africa about 800 years ago. Centuries of discrimination and indifference have pushed them down the socio-economic ladder but their unique music has given them a strong sense of identity and stability.

The film weaves together the lives and aspirations of a motley group of men – shopkeepers, drivers, carpenters, masons – who make up an internationally successful performance group called the SIDI GOMA. Dreams, memories and stories criss cross with journeys to various stage shows across India and abroad.

As they climb up the popularity chart, they find themselves at a crossroads where they must modify and adapt their repertoire or else find themselves in danger of repeating themselves. Ought they to bring in girls on stage to make their performances more engaging?  Other questions arise – How does the younger generation relate to tradition? Do they belong in India, or in Africa? Should they migrate in search of better living conditions?

The film traces the struggle to survive and be respected in a world that threatens to marginalize them even more. 

Nirmal Chander Dandriyal
Nirmal Chander Dandriyal has worked for the last 10 years as an editor and associate director. His area of interest and experience is diverse. It covers sports, fiction (short and features), documentaries, and television programmes. He has worked with many well known documentary film makers in India, Nepal and Dubai (Amar Kanwar, Sanjay Kak, Dhruv Dhawan, Krishnendu Bose, Anupama Srinivasan, Ajay Noronha, Kesang Tseten, Ein Lall). Many of these documentaries have been screened at various international film festivals and have won awards.

For the last 4 years, he worked with Ten Sports, Dubai, as a Senior Promo Producer and Editor, being responsible for some of their major campaigns – various cricket series, Tour de France, Wimbledon, etc.