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International
competition [go]
What is the Portuguese Documentary Like?
[go]
Focus on Spain [go]
Understanding the Middle East [go]
Special Sessions [go]
Internacional
Competition
The competitive section of the festival is made
up of 17 full-length and 12 short documentaries from all over the
world, most of which are award-winning films that have never been
seen in Portugal.
The selection brings together the most notable films produced between
2003 and 2004.
These include an outstanding collection of controversial films which
question the operation of political and judicial systems in their
countries of origin. 10th district court,
moments of trials; Prisoner of the
iron bars; Justice; Death
squadrons, the French school;
Corn in the parliament; Checkpoint;
Wall, etc. These are complemented
by a group of films which question history itself, often in an attempt
better to understand the present: Santa
Liberdade; The House of Saoud;
Grandad’s Waking Dream; In
the garden of the world…
Dailly existence and all that is most central to the documentary
are present in a most varied constellation of works: Landscape;
At School; Torn
skin; In the Dark; The
Weel; Days under; Looking
through inside; Fruitful Summer;
The City Beautiful…
Finally art has a special place, acting as it does as a mirror held
up to the world: Bright Leaves;
Ydessa,
the bears etc; Sylvia Kristel –
Paris; The little pianist...
From Europe to Asia passing through America the documentaries to
be presented in competition for Doclisboa 2004 cut across a diversity
of genres and culures.
Where the films come from:
Germany, Belgium, Belarus,, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Spain,
USA, Finland, France, Holland, India, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Russia
and Switzerland.
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What
is the Portuguese Documentary Like? The objective
of this section is to reflect and debate the production path of
the Portuguese documentary over the past few years. To this effect
doclisboa 2004 will be showing a selection of ten films, both shorts
and full-length, selected from amongst the 70 submitted to the festival.
The selection will be made to show the widest diversity of styles
and genres: from the strictly observational documentary to the intimate
portrait; from carefully set up interviews to first person narratives.
It is significant to note the presence of quality independent productions.
Despite the chronic underfunding of documentaries in Portugal, what
can be seen is a willingness to film against the trend (without
traditional subsidy) and to film with brilliance.
Also significant are the ways the frontiers of production in Portugal
are crumbling. This section features several international co-productions
and other types of partnership: a film by a Portuguese director
(Maria de Medeiros) produced by French producers; one by a German
director (Christine Reeh) and one by a British director resident
in Mozambique (Karen Botswall) produced by Portuguese producers;
a film about the village of Luz (Aldeia da Luz) by a Luso-Swiss
partnership…
The debates that take place after each screening will allow for
future meetings between Portuguese documentary producers and directors.
The doclisboa / Tóbis Award for the “best Portuguese
documentary” will be attributed by the panel to one of the
ten films in the section Where is the Portuguese documentary going?
(What is the Portuguese Documentary Like?) or to one of the two
Portuguese films being shown in the international section.
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Focus
on Spain At Culturgest the essayist, university
professor and critic of El País, Casimiro Torreiro, will
be presenting some of the many documentaries premièred over
the past few years in Spanish cinemas. Here are some extracts from
the text – Concerning a resurrection – which he wrote
for the doclisboa catalogue…
“September 2003. At the height of the San
Sebastián film festival, the most prestigious cinematographic
event in Spain, Pilar del Castillo, Minister for Education and
Culture in the then government (the centre right Popular Party)
attacked the modest, almost simplistic yet powerful, first documentary
of the highly renowned feature director Julio Medem.
The Basque ball, skin against stone
(La pelota vasca, La piel contra la piedra) is his contribution
to the debate on the complex social and political situation of
the Basque region. Earlier, the government had refused to give
the film support to international promotion or for exhibition
at the London Festival.
Though the Minister admitted she had not actually seen the film
(a not uncommon occurrence amongst would-be censors), her public
outburst symbolically marked the emergence of Spanish documentary
onto the public stage – (as did Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit
9:11, though on a vaster scale). Such a breakthrough had been
predicted by some of us in recent years, but not one with such
strong effect. It is one thing for a documentary occasionally
to make it into a commercial cinema or to be successful with a
small sector of the public (145.000 spectators for En
construcción, 2000, by José Luis Guerín);
it is quite another for a documentary to mobilize and polarize
public opinion and politicians alike, which is what has happened
with The Basque ball, skin against stone (375.000).
The next few years are uncertain, but exciting; it will certainly
be worth being a part of them. ."
Casimiro Torreiro
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Understanding
the Middle East Bringing together a collection
of 13 major films about the Arab-Israeli conflict over the past
15 years, Marie-Pierre Duhamel Müller, commissioner for this
section, intends to give some idea of the potential of the documentary
to help towards an understanding of a region in permanent conflict.
" How to give an idea, even partial, even
fleeting, about what it is that documentary cinema tells, these
days, from a part of the world which has for so long seemed like
a board game?
So what about the film-makers? They don’t recognize the
conflict as the only source of knowledge. They embark on longer
routes, less direct, which run alongside those of overworked political
discourse, ossified opinions, false evidence. Who can resist this
blinding. What can cinema make you see, unless it’s what
the powers are hiding, or the complexity of beings and situations.
A complexity which can engender empathy or criticism, but which
constantly puts the beings being filmed right beside us, others,
surprising to us, unthinkable, unknown, and even sometimes repulsive
or terrifyingly similar.
Marie-Pierre Duhamel-Müller
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Special
Screenings [go to films section]
Master Class with Nicolas Philibert
Nicolas Philibert ‘s Master Class in the Large
Auditorium at Culturgest will have a duration of two hours. The
director of the controversial Être
et Avoir (Being and Having) (a documentary about a village
school, already seem by 5 million viewers and premièred in
Portugal earlier this year) will present his work and way of working,
including a screening of excerpts from some of his films.
Nicolas Philibert will also present and talk to the public about
one of his most controversial films La
Voix de son Maître (His Master’s Voice) - not
yet seen in Portugal, co-directed with Gérard Mordillat.
Nicolas Philibert was born in 1951 in Nancy. After graduating in
Philosophy from the University of Grenoble, he started by working
as assistant director with film-makers such as René Allio,
Allain Tanner e Claude Goretta. In 1978 he directed, in partnership
with Gérard Mordillat, La Voix de
son Maître,(His Master’s Voice), a film which
interviews 15 leaders of major French industrial consortiums and
which was banned in France for political reasons for several years.
Since 1989, Nicolas Philibert has directed six documentaries that
have been screened in cinemas. His most recent work Être
et Avoir received the Louis Delluc Award.
Filmography
1978 - La Voix de son Maître (co-directed
com Gérard Mordillat)
1986 - Christophe
1987 - Trilogie pour un homme seul
1988 - Le Come-back de Baquet
1990 - La Ville Louvre
1992 - Le Pays des sourds
1994 - Un animal, des animaux
1996 - La Moindre des choses
1998 - Qui sait?
2002 - Être et avoir
Enrollments for the Master
Class are free.
They should be made by
email: nina@doclisboa.org
[including: name and contacts (telephone
and e email) of the applicant]
Most of the Portuguese and foreign films will
be presented by its directors. All the screenings are followed by
a debate with the audience, directors, producers and film critics.
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