2. International Competition Lineup The deadline for the International Competition was closed on April 15, and the 15 films below were chosen from the 950 entries out of 94 countries and regions in the International Competition program.
_About a Farm_ _Hiljainen tila_ FINLAND / 2005 / Finnish / Color / Video / 54 min Director: Mervi Junkkonen The director's parents who run a farm in a small town in Finland decide to sell off all their cattle and shut it down. They go on to sell their remaining fields after the father suffers an injury. One daughter becomes sick just as she is on the verge of graduating from high school, and the mother can only watch over her worriedly. Both daughters including the director have chosen a life in the city over taking on management of the farm. Images depicting the surging waves of modernity and the everyday lives of one family are blended with 8mm footage taken by the father to form a single work telling the story of one family. This self-documentary is up-and-coming Finnish filmmaker Junkkonen's first feature length work.
_Africa United_ ICELAND / 2005 / Icelandic, English, other / Color / Video / 82 min Director: Olafur Johannesson "Africa United" is an amateur football club in Iceland managed by Zico, a failed Moroccan businessman. This multinational team, made up of migrant workers and students from Africa, and Icelanders, is united by one considerable characteristic: they are all awful players. Overcoming their financial difficulties, they practice on snowbound pitches, repeatedly fight amongst themselves, and play as far afield as Morocco and Serbia, but will their love for soccer remain in inverse proportion to their victories? There is no secret or formula to their feebleness, but these men hold fast to their pride. A record of the glorious battles of these persevering characters.
_Before the Flood_ CHINA / 2004 / Chinese / Color / Video / 143 min Director: Li Yifan, Yan Yu The Three Gorges Dam, the largest in the world, is scheduled for completion in 2009. Hundreds and thousands of people will lose their homes, and numerous towns will disappear beneath the surface of the reservoir. The camera's gaze is turned upon the city Fengjie, Sichuan Province, of famous poet Li Bai. Beloved houses are simply destroyed with dynamite, and the people of these submerged towns are forced to move elsewhere, causing a widespread effusion of instability and uncertainty about their futures. Epic history and the feelings of these people are sinking beneath the water. A resonant masterwork that evokes currents of time that have not yet taken shape, insightfully capturing the transition of an era.
_Cinema Invisible - The Book_ _Cinema Invisible - Het Boek_ THE NETHERLANDS / 2005 / Dutch / Color, B&W / Video / 73 min Director: Kees Hin Our navigator is a woman who visits a bookshop in search of a collection of unfilmed screenplays, "Anthologie du Cinema Invisible," that was published to celebrate the first centenary of cinema. From these 100 unrealized works, the essence of ten projects are selected to be presented in this film. Excerpts from Chaplin and Clouzot, _Zazie Dans Le Metro_, _Battleship Potemkin_ and more are combined to create this fantasy documentary film with an infectious playful spirit. A work that pays homage to all cinema.
_Darwin's Nightmare_ AUSTRIA, BELGIUM, FRANCE / 2004 / English, Russian, Swahili Color /35mm / 107 min Director: Hubert Sauper The Nile Perch, a freshwater fish experimentally introduced into Tanzania's Lake Victoria (Africa's largest) in the 1960s, has since devoured over 200 indigenous species to become the master of the lake. In today's Tanzania, the ecosystem has been transformed and a huge fishing industry has emerged. The local people driving this one-sided prosperity barely eke out a living and lead desperate existences. AIDS is rife, many women become prostitutes, and street children wander the night. Are rickety Russian-made cargo planes that carried export whitefish mainly to the markets of Europe and Japan transporting arms back to Africa for use in civil wars? The camera addresses this hellish reality borne of an artificially created food chain.
_Final Solution_ INDIA / 2004 / Hindi, Gujarati, English / Color / Video / 149 min Director: Rakesh Sharma A consideration of hostility between Hindus and Muslims in India, as seen through an investigation of a massacre of Muslims in the western state of Gujarat in 2002. The Hindu political party, which advocates an orthodox India, clashes with and oppresses the Muslim population. Through the testimonies of both Hindus and Muslims, the origins and amplification of the animosities are painstaking depicted. The director's sincere approach, as he attempts to discover the beginnings of a solution amidst the mechanics of this seemingly insolvable conflict, is deeply moving.
_Foreland_ _Voorland_ THE NETHERLANDS / 2005 / Dutch / Color, B&W / 35mm / 70 min Director: Albert Elings, Eugenie Jansen A pastoral farming village in The Netherlands. This work completely forgoes commentary to etch into film seven years of scenes from this village, where people and animals, trees exist and rivers flow in abundance and in their own time. At times the river becomes engorged and threatens the livelihoods of the people. Even here, where nothing seems to change, signs of development and change emerge. The forest is harvested, the ruins of the brick factory that was once the center of local industry are knocked down, an underground railway tunnel is opened, and this quiet village becomes enveloped in activity and ceremonies.
_In the Shadow of the Palms - Iraq_ AUSTRALIA / 2005 / Arabic, English / Color, B&W / Video / 90 min Director: Wayne Coles-Janess Spring of 2003, four weeks prior to the assault on Iraq. The people of Baghdad go about their everyday realities, despite the knowledge that an American offensive is just around the corner. A former Olympic athlete who now manages a parking lot passionately teaches wrestling to children; elderly men engage in lively conversation at a cafe a shoe shop proprietor; a university professor; and a male Palestinian interpreter... Their thinking and stances toward Iraq and the world may differ, but their otherwise cheerful demeanor changes drastically when the bombing begins. As the world is engluted in a storm of propaganda, the director shows us the Iraq he saw with his own eyes.
_Justice_ THE NETHERLANDS, BRAZIL / 2004 / Portuguese / Color / 35mm / 100 min Director: Maria Ramos A new work by Maria Ramos, director of YIDFF' 95 New Asian Currents _I Think What I Want to Say Is..._Turning our attention to the inner workings of Rio de Janeiro's courts and prisons, it portrays the perimeter of "justice" while weaving through the lives of the people who choose to be part of it, and those who have no other choice. The undeniable gulf in economic circumstances and differences in home environment between the judges and the judged; the air at the core of the severely overcrowded prisons; and the pain of families bound to kin who have been labelled criminals. The unflinching gaze of the camera captures the state of affairs created when we 'pass judgement' in the name of justice.
_Moving Adult Cats_ _Att Flytta vuxna Katter_ SWEDEN / 2004 / Swedish / Color / Video / 58 min Director: Johan Lundborg A traveling salesvan makes a stop once a week in a small rural village in Sweden. The camera follows the daily lives of two of its solitary elderly inhabitants: Greta, 90 who has decided to take up residence in a rest home as her final abode, and Albert, 79 who lives with his three cats in a rundown house surrounded by weeds. Both of them, who strive to live true to themselves as they look back on their lives, deal with their own subtle anxieties before reaching natural decisions. Through the filmmaker's attentive observation, the issues of old age that we all must face are delicately delineated.
_The People of Angkor_ _Le gens d'Angkor_ FRANCE / 2003 / Cambodian / Color / Video / 90 min Director: Rithy Panh In Angkor Wat, we follow a boy and his relationships with the people who live there, the ruins, and the tourists. The legends and magical stories depicted on the stones of the temple remains overlap with the reality of modern Cambodia. The lingering pain left by years of civil war, the gap between conditions in the cities and the countryside, and the thoughts of the boy who has lost sight of the future are conveyed at a leisurely rhythm with beautiful imagery that gently evokes emotion in the viewer. Previously at the YIDFF we have witnessed the despair of _The Land of the Wandering Souls_, the horrors of _S21, the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine_, and now we learn of the hope of _The People of Angkor_. This director continues to portray Cambodia, face to face.
_Rehearsals_ _Repetitioner_ SWEDEN / 2004 / Swedish / Color / 35mm / 96 min Director: Michal Leszczylowski Three prisoners serving their sentences appear in a public theatrical project known as "7:3." A single story emerges from three alternating streams of footage: the process of the project's director who visits the prison to continue rehearsals; the testimonies of the prisoners, some of whom are Neo-Nazis; and the performance itself. What is real, and what is scripted? The borders between reality and fiction are traversed freely, repeatedly deceiving the viewer. This project, which prompted fierce debate in the Swedish media, heads toward an unexpected destination.
_Route 181 - Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel_ BELGIUM, FRANCE, UNITED KINGDOM / 2003 / Arabic, Hebrew Color, B&W / Video / 270 min Director: Michel Khleifi, Eyal Sivan In summer of 2002, Israeli Eyal Sivan and Palestinian Michel Khleifi spent two months traveling their homeland together from north to south along what they called "Route 181." Wandering the border defined by United Nations Resolution 181, implemented on November 29th 1947 to create the partition of Palestine, they met Israelis and Palestinians of diverse backgrounds residing in the regions it touches. While capturing the everyday lives of these people on film, the directors skillfully elicit from their tales of the past and present that have amassed on "Route 181." Pulsing with a comprehensive concern for the future, this work illuminates issues facing not only Israel and Palestine, but also the world at large: nationhood, ethnicity, discrimination and immigration.
_The 3 Rooms of Melancholia_ _Melancholian 3 huonetta_ FINLAND, GERMANY, DENMARK, SWEDEN / 2004 Russian, Chechen, Arabic, Finnish / Color, B&W / 35mm / 106 min Director: Pirjo Honkasalo An examination of children's lives amidst the war in Chechnya from three different perspectives. At an armed forces academy in St. Petersburg in the Russian Federation's northwest, young children devote themselves to military training. In Grozny, the ruin-strewn capital of the Chechen Republic, the lives of parents and children have been torn asunder; and refugee camps in the neighboring Ingush Republic are home to young boys and girls who have come to dread the sound of air raids. The camera's tender and watchful gaze captures the faces of these children living under tragic circumstances who have lost sight of a future to which they are entitled.
_The Virgin of Palermo_ _Die Jungfrau Von Palermo_ GERMANY, ITALY / 2005 / Italian / B&W / 35mm / 82 min Director: Antonio Guidi Palermo, a city located in northwestern Sicily in Italy, is home to people of various cultures and religions. July's Santa Rosalia fiesta is a popular celebration of the town's patron saint, who is said to have saved Palermo from plague during the 17th century. Faith and tradition run deep throughout the city, and are passed on to this day. Filmed in black and white, the cityscape is refine, the citizens jolly, and music gentle to the ear. Be fascinated by the richness and openness of the local culture at the heart of this vibrant festival.
The deadline for the International Competition was closed on April 15,
and the 15 films below were chosen from the 950 entries out of 94
countries and regions in the International Competition program.
_About a Farm_
_Hiljainen tila_
FINLAND / 2005 / Finnish / Color / Video / 54 min
Director: Mervi Junkkonen
The director's parents who run a farm in a small town in Finland
decide to sell off all their cattle and shut it down. They go on to
sell their remaining fields after the father suffers an injury. One
daughter becomes sick just as she is on the verge of graduating from
high school, and the mother can only watch over her worriedly. Both
daughters including the director have chosen a life in the city over
taking on management of the farm. Images depicting the surging waves
of modernity and the everyday lives of one family are blended with
8mm footage taken by the father to form a single work telling the
story of one family. This self-documentary is up-and-coming Finnish
filmmaker Junkkonen's first feature length work.
_Africa United_
ICELAND / 2005 / Icelandic, English, other / Color / Video / 82 min
Director: Olafur Johannesson
"Africa United" is an amateur football club in Iceland managed by
Zico, a failed Moroccan businessman. This multinational team, made up
of migrant workers and students from Africa, and Icelanders,
is united by one considerable characteristic: they are all awful
players.
Overcoming their financial difficulties, they practice on snowbound
pitches, repeatedly fight amongst themselves, and play as far afield
as Morocco and Serbia, but will their love for soccer remain in
inverse proportion to their victories? There is no secret or formula
to their feebleness, but these men hold fast to their pride. A record
of the glorious battles of these persevering characters.
_Before the Flood_
CHINA / 2004 / Chinese / Color / Video / 143 min
Director: Li Yifan, Yan Yu
The Three Gorges Dam, the largest in the world, is scheduled for
completion in 2009. Hundreds and thousands of people will lose their
homes, and numerous towns will disappear beneath the surface of the
reservoir. The camera's gaze is turned upon the city Fengjie, Sichuan
Province, of famous poet Li Bai. Beloved houses are simply destroyed
with dynamite, and the people of these submerged towns are forced to
move elsewhere, causing a widespread effusion of instability and
uncertainty about their futures. Epic history and the feelings of
these people are sinking beneath the water. A resonant masterwork
that evokes currents of time that have not yet taken shape,
insightfully capturing the transition of an era.
_Cinema Invisible - The Book_
_Cinema Invisible - Het Boek_
THE NETHERLANDS / 2005 / Dutch / Color, B&W / Video / 73 min
Director: Kees Hin
Our navigator is a woman who visits a bookshop in search of a
collection of unfilmed screenplays, "Anthologie du Cinema Invisible,"
that was published to celebrate the first centenary of cinema. From
these 100 unrealized works, the essence of ten projects are selected
to be presented in this film. Excerpts from Chaplin and Clouzot,
_Zazie Dans Le Metro_, _Battleship Potemkin_ and more are combined to
create this fantasy documentary film with an infectious playful
spirit. A work that pays homage to all cinema.
_Darwin's Nightmare_
AUSTRIA, BELGIUM, FRANCE / 2004 / English, Russian, Swahili
Color /35mm / 107 min
Director: Hubert Sauper
The Nile Perch, a freshwater fish experimentally introduced into
Tanzania's Lake Victoria (Africa's largest) in the 1960s, has since
devoured over 200 indigenous species to become the master of the lake.
In today's Tanzania, the ecosystem has been transformed and a huge
fishing industry has emerged. The local people driving this one-sided
prosperity barely eke out a living and lead desperate existences.
AIDS is rife, many women become prostitutes, and street children
wander the night. Are rickety Russian-made cargo planes that carried
export whitefish mainly to the markets of Europe and Japan
transporting arms back to Africa for use in civil wars?
The camera addresses this hellish reality borne of an artificially
created food chain.
_Final Solution_
INDIA / 2004 / Hindi, Gujarati, English / Color / Video / 149 min
Director: Rakesh Sharma
A consideration of hostility between Hindus and Muslims in India, as
seen through an investigation of a massacre of Muslims in the western
state of Gujarat in 2002. The Hindu political party, which advocates
an orthodox India, clashes with and oppresses the Muslim population.
Through the testimonies of both Hindus and Muslims, the origins and
amplification of the animosities are painstaking depicted.
The director's sincere approach, as he attempts to discover the
beginnings of a solution amidst the mechanics of this seemingly
insolvable conflict, is deeply moving.
_Foreland_
_Voorland_
THE NETHERLANDS / 2005 / Dutch / Color, B&W / 35mm / 70 min
Director: Albert Elings, Eugenie Jansen
A pastoral farming village in The Netherlands. This work completely
forgoes commentary to etch into film seven years of scenes from this
village, where people and animals, trees exist and rivers flow in
abundance and in their own time. At times the river becomes engorged
and threatens the livelihoods of the people. Even here, where nothing
seems to change, signs of development and change emerge. The forest
is harvested, the ruins of the brick factory that was once the center
of local industry are knocked down, an underground railway tunnel is
opened, and this quiet village becomes enveloped in activity and
ceremonies.
_In the Shadow of the Palms - Iraq_
AUSTRALIA / 2005 / Arabic, English / Color, B&W / Video / 90 min
Director: Wayne Coles-Janess
Spring of 2003, four weeks prior to the assault on Iraq. The people
of Baghdad go about their everyday realities, despite the knowledge
that an American offensive is just around the corner. A former
Olympic athlete who now manages a parking lot passionately teaches
wrestling to children; elderly men engage in lively conversation at a
cafe a shoe shop proprietor; a university professor; and a male
Palestinian interpreter... Their thinking and stances toward Iraq and
the world may differ, but their otherwise cheerful demeanor changes
drastically when the bombing begins. As the world is engluted in a
storm of propaganda, the director shows us the Iraq he saw with his
own eyes.
_Justice_
THE NETHERLANDS, BRAZIL / 2004 / Portuguese / Color / 35mm / 100 min
Director: Maria Ramos
A new work by Maria Ramos, director of YIDFF' 95 New Asian Currents
_I Think What I Want to Say Is..._Turning our attention to the inner
workings of Rio de Janeiro's courts and prisons, it portrays the
perimeter of "justice" while weaving through the lives of the people
who choose to be part of it, and those who have no other choice. The
undeniable gulf in economic circumstances and differences in home
environment between the judges and the judged; the air at the core of
the severely overcrowded prisons; and the pain of families bound to
kin who have been labelled criminals. The unflinching gaze of the
camera captures the state of affairs created when we 'pass judgement'
in the name of justice.
_Moving Adult Cats_
_Att Flytta vuxna Katter_
SWEDEN / 2004 / Swedish / Color / Video / 58 min
Director: Johan Lundborg
A traveling salesvan makes a stop once a week in a small rural
village in Sweden. The camera follows the daily lives of two of its
solitary elderly inhabitants: Greta, 90 who has decided to take up
residence in a rest home as her final abode, and Albert, 79 who lives
with his three cats in a rundown house surrounded by weeds.
Both of them, who strive to live true to themselves as they look back
on their lives, deal with their own subtle anxieties before reaching
natural decisions. Through the filmmaker's attentive observation,
the issues of old age that we all must face are delicately delineated.
_The People of Angkor_
_Le gens d'Angkor_
FRANCE / 2003 / Cambodian / Color / Video / 90 min
Director: Rithy Panh
In Angkor Wat, we follow a boy and his relationships with the people
who live there, the ruins, and the tourists. The legends and magical
stories depicted on the stones of the temple remains overlap with the
reality of modern Cambodia. The lingering pain left by years of civil
war, the gap between conditions in the cities and the countryside,
and the thoughts of the boy who has lost sight of the future are
conveyed at a leisurely rhythm with beautiful imagery that gently
evokes emotion in the viewer. Previously at the YIDFF we have
witnessed the despair of _The Land of the Wandering Souls_,
the horrors of _S21, the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine_, and now we
learn of the hope of _The People of Angkor_. This director continues
to portray Cambodia, face to face.
_Rehearsals_
_Repetitioner_
SWEDEN / 2004 / Swedish / Color / 35mm / 96 min
Director: Michal Leszczylowski
Three prisoners serving their sentences appear in a public theatrical
project known as "7:3." A single story emerges from three alternating
streams of footage: the process of the project's director who visits
the prison to continue rehearsals; the testimonies of the prisoners,
some of whom are Neo-Nazis; and the performance itself. What is real,
and what is scripted? The borders between reality and fiction are
traversed freely, repeatedly deceiving the viewer. This project,
which prompted fierce debate in the Swedish media, heads toward an
unexpected destination.
_Route 181 - Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel_
BELGIUM, FRANCE, UNITED KINGDOM / 2003 / Arabic, Hebrew
Color, B&W / Video / 270 min
Director: Michel Khleifi, Eyal Sivan
In summer of 2002, Israeli Eyal Sivan and Palestinian Michel Khleifi
spent two months traveling their homeland together from north to
south along what they called "Route 181." Wandering the border
defined by United Nations Resolution 181, implemented on November
29th 1947 to create the partition of Palestine, they met Israelis and
Palestinians of diverse backgrounds residing in the regions it
touches. While capturing the everyday lives of these people on film,
the directors skillfully elicit from their tales of the past and
present that have amassed on "Route 181."
Pulsing with a comprehensive concern for the future, this work
illuminates issues facing not only Israel and Palestine,
but also the world at large: nationhood, ethnicity,
discrimination and immigration.
_The 3 Rooms of Melancholia_
_Melancholian 3 huonetta_
FINLAND, GERMANY, DENMARK, SWEDEN / 2004
Russian, Chechen, Arabic, Finnish / Color, B&W / 35mm / 106 min
Director: Pirjo Honkasalo
An examination of children's lives amidst the war in Chechnya from
three different perspectives. At an armed forces academy in St.
Petersburg in the Russian Federation's northwest, young children
devote themselves to military training. In Grozny, the ruin-strewn
capital of the Chechen Republic, the lives of parents and children
have been torn asunder; and refugee camps in the neighboring Ingush
Republic are home to young boys and girls who have come to dread the
sound of air raids. The camera's tender and watchful gaze captures
the faces of these children living under tragic circumstances who
have lost sight of a future to which they are entitled.
_The Virgin of Palermo_
_Die Jungfrau Von Palermo_
GERMANY, ITALY / 2005 / Italian / B&W / 35mm / 82 min
Director: Antonio Guidi
Palermo, a city located in northwestern Sicily in Italy, is home to
people of various cultures and religions. July's Santa Rosalia fiesta
is a popular celebration of the town's patron saint, who is said to
have saved Palermo from plague during the 17th century. Faith and
tradition run deep throughout the city, and are passed on to this day.
Filmed in black and white, the cityscape is refine, the citizens
jolly, and music gentle to the ear. Be fascinated by the richness and
openness of the local culture at the heart of this vibrant festival.