No English translation available.
Sweetgrass
Sheep – as far as the eye can see. The anthropologists and filmmakers Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash spent three summers documenting sheep farming at one of the last family-owned ranches in the Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains. A sheep eats, and we see and hear it chew and the tinkle of the bell around its neck. Then it discovers the camera and fixes its eyes on us, freezing the image. Now all we hear is the wind. Original sound of this kind helps lend precision to every shot. During shearing we can actually feel the physical exertion of the shepherds and the dazed state of the sheep. The order of the gaze in space analyzes the relationship of a newborn lamb to the herd, to its mother, and to the shepherd. Then a thousand sheep push through a gate or follow the trail of grass left by a feeding machine, and it has the effect of a crowd scene in an epic film. By the time we have reached the top of the mountain and the herder calls his mother complaining of knee pain, our image of the lonely shepherd has been replaced by that of the cowboy. In scenes like this and in the coarse humor of the ranchers as they handle the animals during branding lies the story of free-range sheep farming in the American West, a story that began in the nineteenth century and is now slowly coming to an end.
Moving is a Blessing
“After having lived in the Netherlands for over 20 years, my parents, Gulzar and Shwan, decided to move back to Kurdistan. Escaping the Iraqi regime as refugees in the early ‘90s, Iraqi Kurdistan has recently developed into a regional safe-haven. However, with current tensions around the threat of the Islamic State (IS), the social and political landscape is changing drastically. In MOVING IS A BLESSING I follow my parents’ return to their homeland whilst addressing notions of belonging, transnationalism, temporality and (re)imagining future horizons.” (Lana Askari)
Iraqi Odyssey
The lives of the members of Samir’s Iraqi family – protagonists in a veritable odyssey now living in the diaspora – provide the filmmaker with an opportunity to explore the history of the Arab world beyond the clichés. The director introduces us to representatives of several generations of a secularised, also religious, but always progressive bourgeoisie and reveals a whole Arab universe that would seem to have been forgotten. We revisit the Ottoman era, the years of the British Mandate established by the League of Nations, the bid for independence, the takeover by the Baath Party and the country’s radicalisation under Saddam Hussein, as well as the West’s shared responsibility in the collapse of large parts of this world. Samir’s relatives are scattered all over the planet. They miss their home deeply. Samir’s father, who decided to return to Iraq, was killed during the Iran-Iraq War. The film’s director has developed a critical if ambivalent regard for Switzerland where he grew up; he now sees his home as an example of the more or less tolerant co-existence of very different people and cultures. (Berlinale)
Films: u.a. MORLOVE -ODE AN HEISENBERG (1986), FILOU (1988), ALWAYS & FOREVER (1991), BABYLON 2 (1993), FORGET BAGHDAD (2002), SNOW WHITE (2005).
İQué viva México!
Sergei Eisenstein planned to make an opus magnum about Mexico and its culture. He wanted to capture the spirit of Mexico in a film with a prologue, four episodes, and an epilogue, portraying the driving forces that have shaped its history – life vs. death, beauty vs. corruption, freedom vs. oppression, and heathen cultures vs. Christianity. However, he was unable to finish his project due to problems with his American sponsors, who finally stopped production after Eisenstein, Grigori Alexandrov and the cameraman Eduard Tissé had worked for one year without pay.
The already filmed episodes became the basis for many film versions that were later made. Grigori Alexandrov made his own expanded and montaged version, which offers “a glimpse of what could have been. Qué viva México! is not a timeless film, it is a movie very much of its time (think Zapatista). Its title could also be Long Live the Revolution!”(Filmmuseum Wien)
Gbanga Tita
The Baka pygmies live in the rain forest of southern Cameroon. Lengé is the storyteller of his tribe. For seven minutes, the camera films the old man’s slightly swaying body and face from a perspective that seems weightless and maintains a respectful, involved distance. Lengé knows the stories about the world’s beginning, the monotonous songs about Tibala the white elephant, the legendary turtle, and the bird Fofolo, whom he saw chasing sunbeams. With his face and voice, Lengé conjures up the ancient god of the calabashes, Gbanga Tita. At the end of the film, we are told that Lengé died shortly after filming. He was the last storyteller in this part of the forest.
The laundry room
In a Lausanne housing block with 80 tenants who have multi-lingual names that the mailman will never be able to remember, the renters from many different nations share four washing machines and dryers. Each housing unit is allowed to do laundry once a week for two hours. This may sound simple, but it does not work well. Despite the schedule on the wall, the new washing woman Claudina is continuously bombarded with all sorts of complaints, and not only regarding the laundry. As the machines whirl and spin, people’s frustrations boil over.
Virtually the entire film, the camera stays in the narrow hallway, where the miniscule washroom is wedged between the entrance and the elevator (not in the basement, as one would expect, because that is where several prostitutes live). It is right in the middle of constant coming and going. This tight space becomes the stage where tensions build up. The film team is also drawn into the drama. The key to the washroom may not be the key to the world, but it unlocks the door to a highly topical film about everyday life in Europe, not just on society’s margins.
“Frédéric Florey and Floriane Devigne take us on a static journey of discovery into a rarely seen world inside Switzerland: the world of the socially excluded people. It is a rather black comedy set inside the laundry room of a Lausanne apartment block. The foundations of society itself are sketched out or perceived in this microcosm where dirty laundry is almost aired in public.” (www.visionsdureel.ch)
Scent of revolution
Four people recounting their experiences in Egypt: The owner of the largest collection of photo negatives in the country, a Coptic political activist, an elderly socialist writer, and a younger cyberspace designer. The first two have been living in Luxor for decades. They talk about how corruption has destroyed the city little by little, leaving it a domicile with no space for its actual people. The other two live in Cairo – but the writer is a man living in a different time, and the designer a woman living in another world. Back in the 1980s, he wrote about his disenchantment with the 1952 revolution, comparing past and present. She has developed a space of virtual possibility in Second Life, where she invites a Salafist to meet her as an avatar at Tahrir Square. The scent of revolution is bewitching and can be found all over the place, it is intangible and ephemeral. A fresh scent can remind you of something from the past. A revolution is usually associated with a place and a year, yet it is precisely this sort of restriction that usually brings about it its failure. ARIJ generates space and time in all directions, thus giving the revolution room to breathe.
Soote Payan
Niki Karimi plays a documentary filmmaker, who in order to make ends meet, also makes commercial TV series. During the course of her latest project she and her husband Saman discover that a young actress they employ is living a nightmare. She tries to sell a kidney because her mother is charged with murder and sentenced to hang; she can’t afford the blood money that would free her under sharia law. Sahar is desperate to help, but the men in her life are reluctant at best - and distracted by following the World Cup on TV. Karimi poignantly contrasts the artifice of the film business with real-life adversity; the roving handheld camera skillfully frames the grim story against the colourful, bustling streets of Tehran. FINAL WHISTLE tackles a few controversial subjects of Iranian society all crammed into one film.
The Virgin, the Copts and Me
Namir’s mother is a Coptic Christian. She is convinced that she can see an apparition of the Virgin Mary on a video tape originating from her home in Egypt. Her son, who has been raised in a secular environment in France, decides to make a film about the phenomenon and travels to Egypt to visit his relatives. Hoping to understand the connection between appearances of the Virgin to the Copt minority and recent events in Egyptian history he soon discovers plenty of obstacles. Firstly there are his parents who interfere in the film and criticise his ideas; then there’s his French producer who wants to change the film every few weeks and finally, the inhabitants of his family’s Coptic village. Desperate, Namir decides to create his own version of the Virgin Mary’s appearance. To realise his plan he will need to enlist the aid of the villagers and his mother; the latter soon joins him in Egypt and proves to be remarkably capable.
A humorous fictional documentary and family-drama-cum-culture-clash about religion in the diaspora, the art of cinema and the boundless creativity of the filmmakers. Making good use of his mother as the film’s wonderful main protagonist, this directorial debut charmingly and wittily exposes the manipulative aspects of documentary filmmaking.