doclisboa 2007

programme > october 20

programme day-by-day

18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28

october 20 - saturday

20 Oct. 14.30 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
24 Oct. 14.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
Three comrades [I]
Masha Novikova
99´ Holland 2006

Ruslan, Ramzan and Islam were three Chechens that led ordinary lives in Grozny in the early 1990s. When the war began, their lives were changed for ever. Ruslan was arrested in Groznyy and executed by Russian soldiers. A couple years later, Ramzan was also shot to death by a Russian plane. Islam, who worked as a doctor during the war, was framed for drug possession and fled the country. Today, he lives in the Netherlands. In “Three Comrades”, Russian director Masha Novikova incorporates impressive archival footage (often shot by Ramzan, who was a cameraman) to document how Chechnya was forced to its knees, and how much the population of this Caucasian province has suffered.

20 Oct. 16.30 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
21 Oct. 14.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
Convicções [P]
Julie Frères
55´ Portugal/France 2007

In February 2007, the Portuguese were asked to vote on a referendum about the legal status of abortion. Working its way from the daily lives of four women with opposite convictions about this issue, “Convicções” follows the referendum campaign’s backstage, and on the streets and the media.

20 Oct. 18.30 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
22 Oct. 14.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
Era preciso fazer as coisas [P]
Margarida Cardoso
52´ Portugal 2007

Some days in Fall during the rehearsals of “Chekhov’s “Uncle Vania”.The actors and the director are looking for the way to build something together. Their inner voices and their doubts confound with their characters’ own doubts and inner voices. The house, the time, old age, the frustration. Aren’t we all looking for a meaning?

20 Oct. 18.30 – Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
22 Oct. 14.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
Metamorfoses [P]
Bruno Cabral
48´ Portugal 2007

Tó and Tuxa have been a part of the Crinabel Theatre Company for 20 years. Carolina is much younger and has many ambitions. Nelson has just been selected to star the company’s next production, Kafka’s “Metamorphoses”. The bonds between the member of this unique company are very strong. Everybody has constraints and impediments of some sort. In a very warm atmosphere, the rehearsal begins…

20 Oct. 21.00 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
21 Oct. 16.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
Retour en Normandie [CI]
Nicolas Philibert
109´ France 2006

In 1975, Nicolas Philibert, who was then 24 years old, worked as assistant director in René Allio’s film “Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma soeur et mon frère…”. Shot on location in Normandy, the film adapted Michel Foucault’s book with the same title and it used almost exclusively non-professional actors, selected from the region’s inhabitants, to recreate the triple homicide that had taken place there 140 years before. Thirty years later, the director of “Être et Avoir” returned to the shooting location of his master’s film, searching for its original actors.

20 Oct. 23.00 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
22 Oct. 18.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
Santiago [CI]
João Moreira Sales
80´ Brazil 2007

“Santiago” is a documentary about the failure of a film. It was shot in 1992, but the director could not edit it at the time. In 2005 the director returned to the footage, in search of a reason for his false start. Santiago had served as butler in the house where he grew up and was a man of vast culture and a prodigious memory, whose idiosyncrasies left a profound mark on the family’s memories. Reflecting on the past time, the narrator closes in on the film’s secret. “Santiago” is a film on identity, memory, and the very nature of documentary.

20 Oct. 23.00 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
22 Oct. 18.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
The first day [CI]
Marcin Sauter
20´ Poland 2007

It's a story about one of the most important moments in everybody's life, the first day in school; the first border young people have to cross to become adults. In this case, it’s an intern school where children from the tundra, used to living in tents, and in close contact with a wild nature, move to a urban environment where they discover that they too are part of a huge multinational country, Russia, with a national anthem they learn to sing by heart, and which is led by a great president named Putin.

20 Oct. 11.00 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
Morceaux de conversation avec Jean-Luc Godard [MD]
Alan Fleischer
125´ France 2007

Shot in Rolle at the filmmaker’s home, in Fresnoy and at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, “Morceaux de conversations avec Jean-Luc Godard” features encounters between JLG and various different people such as Dominique Païni, André S. Labarthe, Jean Narboni, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. The discussions about History, politics, film, images and time, originally related to the preparation of the “Collage(s) de France, archéologie du cinéma, d'après JLG”, an aborted project designed as a partnership with the Fresnoy National Studio that would eventually result in the Pompidou Centre exhibition “Voyage(s) en utopie”, curated by Païni in 2006.

20 Oct. 14.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
The Abduction of Natacha [RE]
Marcel Hanoun
22´ France 2007

Following the striking adventure of Natacha Kampusch, the little girl who was held prisoner for eight years, the film tries to imagine and render the thoughts and affects of the abductor before his suicide. A woman speaks, reads, and interprets a text he might have written. She is sometimes interrupted by the voice off of the director. Rather than exploiting the more psychological and more sensationalist approach to such a high profile media story, a meditation on the very act of filming is offered – by comparing the power relationship between the director and its filmed subject with the other power relationship, the one between Natacha and her kidnapper

Tentative d'epuisement d'un lieu parisien [RE]

20 Oct. 14.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
Exhaustion Attempt of a Parisian Space [RE]
Jean Christian Riff
73´ France 2007

In October 1974, Georges Perec took up residence for three consecutive days on Place Saint Sulpice in Paris. He noted down what he saw in a 50-page collection of texts: people going about their daily business, vehicles, animals, clouds and the passing of time. This film adopts the same approach, showing Place Saint Sulpice today with Georges Perec’s texts read in voice-over. The viewer would appear to be hearing a description of the same place today. However, little by little, he becomes aware that this is a voice from another time. The way text and images come together only to diverge once more creates a new meditation, a different imaginary world.

20 Oct. 16.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
Sablé-sur-Sarthe, Sarthe [DF]
Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens
95´ France 2007

“A small city in the French region of Sarthe, between Le Mans, Tours and Angers, seen in the 1950’s and today. A man who spend there his childhood and teenage years goes back and remembers. He asks himself and he asks other people what it means to have been a child and then a teenager in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, in the Sarthe region.” The first film by Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens, the founder of the french publishing house P.O.L., who aided the creation of Serge Daney’s film magazine “Trafic” in 1999.

20 Oct. 18.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
23 Oct. 21.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
Nocturne [RE]
João Nisa
27´ Portugal 2007

A fragmentary description of the abandoned area of Lisbon`s Luna Park, in the period between its closing down and ultimate demolition. A set of long static takes, punctuated by small movements, depicts some of the precinct`s features (sealed or half-dilapidated façades, partially dismantled attractions), retracing a route within the premises. Intended to force the focus of perception, the film explores the links between temporal experience and the visual and aural grasp of a specific place.

20 Oct. 18.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
Posthume [RE]
Ghassan Salhab
28´ Líbano 2007

Since the Israeli aggression during the summer of 2006, fiction is for the time being swept aside by the so-called real in Beirut. Turned to stone by the sudden trail of events, it has simply lost its place. And maybe it has been swept away for good. “(Posthume)” is a video essay doubly haunted by the present absence of fiction and the omnipresence of the real. Using broadcast television footage of the 2006 Israeli attack on Beirut, plus portraits and scenes from the ravaged city’s past and present, Ghassan Salhab’s latest film raises issues around the role and power of images, their relationship to reality, and the difficult choices involved in avoiding voyeurism and spectacle.

20 Oct. 18.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
One Day in Marseille [RE]
Mauro Santini
51´ Italie 2007

After “Flòr da Baixa”, also shot in Marseille, Mauro Santini organises four “stories”, four views of the city, using ordinary people in the street as the involuntary actors of his film. Boulevard d’Athènes by night and by day, the port and La Grande Joliette, la Corniche along the sea.

20 Oct. 20.45 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
Trying to Describe Oneself [DF]
Boris Lehman
165´ Belgium/France/Canada 2005

“Trying to describe oneself” will be a movie about representation. How it is possible, through film, to describe oneself and describe others. With the camera as mirror and third eye. At first, a collage-like combination of letter-writing, investigation and journey, something between documentary and feature film. Finally, a portrait of Boris Lehman from 1989 to 1995, part II of BABEL.

24 Oct. 18.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
20 Oct. 14.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
Born to Lose: The Last Rock and Roll Movie
Lech Kowalski
100´ USA 2001

“Born to Lose” was made over years of work, with more than 400 hours of filmed material, archival footage, interviews and personal memories. It sketches a portrait of singer Johnny Thunders, a myth from the New York punk-rock scene in the 70’s and 80’s, who founded the New York Dolls and the Heartbreakers, and who was dedicated to a way of life literally lost between sex, drugs and rock and roll, which took his life of only 39 years in 1991.

22 Oct. 21.00 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
20 Oct. 16.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
Le Papier ne Peut pas Envelopper la Braise [SE]
Rithy Panh
86´ France 2006

Rithy Panh’s most recent film listens to the prostitutes living in the “white building” in downtown Phnom Penh. For the Cambodian director, the most telling sign of the social collapse of a country torn by decades of war is the way the bodies of those who have nothing are economically and politically exploited: the dead soldiers leave behind children in underpaid jobs, or worst, in prostitution. “Le Papier ne Peut pas Envelopper la Braise” doesn’t show us characters, but people. Rithy Panh makes use of film to counter the objectification of those people’s bodies and to allow their own voices to claim humanity and an individuality otherwise denied in their daily lives.

24 Oct. 14.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
20 Oct. 18.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
On Hitler's Highway
Lech Kowalski
81´ France/Poland 2002

A journey on the oldest highway in Poland built by Hitler, now a vital route to the west and were you can encounter outcasts and social destitutes fighting for their survival in a world far from the big cities. A young Bulgarian prostitute, a one legged man selling mushrooms, illegal Ukrainians hiding on a deserted Nuclear airbase, young people escaping the glare of modern society, a gypsy who remembers how he lost his father to the Holocaust…

20 Oct. 21.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
Sobre o Lado Esquerdo [SE]
Margarida Gil
50´ Portugal 2007

Carlos Oliveira literary universe is re-enacted in a studio using the writer’s personal objects and manuscripts, and with the help of Luis Miguel Cintra and Fernando Lopes. Shot with the purpose to document his work in the same way Carlos de Oliveira documented his hometown in Gândara, the film uses all the creative liberty the new digital technology allows in order to recreate the visual and sound raccords that were also present in the writer and poet’s own poetic work.

20 Oct. 23.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
Karima [SE]
Clarisse Hahn
98´ France 2003

Karima is a young woman of Algerian descent whom Clarisse Hahn filmed for a year. This documentary shows her in the intimacy of her family, with her friends or during domination sessions, the tv set permanently turned on. Karima's S&M practice has a maternal and generous streak to it. The body is in turn a source of pleasure or pain, an object of adoration or disgust, a vehicle for emotions or an impenetrable border.

20 Oct. 14.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
Beth's Diary [VN]
Kent Klich and Mikala Krogh/Beth
33´ Denmark 2006

During one year Beth has made a video diary. In detail she has recorded her daily routines; waking up in the morning after a bad dream, having breakfast with her boyfriend, talking with the fishes in the aquarium, and her great reluctance to visit her mother after many years of separation and silence. To the camera Beth tells a story of love, drug abuse and repeated sexual abuses. Throughout twenty years still photographer Kent Klich has documented Beth’s former life as a drug addict and prostitute. In a combination of animated stills and Beths own recordings the film gives a nuanced portrayal of a woman fighting to believe that she is worth loving.

18 Oct. 22.00 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
20 Oct. 14.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
Enemies of Happiness [VN]
Eva Mulvad
58´ Denmark 2006

Malalai Joya is a 28 year-old woman from Afghanistan. The film follows her parliamentary campaign to her election as a delegate in Wolesi Jirga, or National Assembly. It is the first democratic parliament election in Afghanistan in over 30 years. Surrounded by security, Malalai Joya spreads her political beliefs despite several death threats and the previous four attempts against her life. In 2003 Malalai Joya challenged former Mujahidin leaders (Warlords), who according to her, attempt to maintain power through the new system. Her comments ignited outrage among the hard-liners who demanded that she be immediately removed from the sessions. Co-directed by Anja Al-Erhayem.

19 Oct. 18.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
20 Oct. 16.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
The Monastery [VN]
Pernille Rose Gronkjaer
84´ Denmark 2006

This is a story about the 82-year-old bachelor Mr. Vig, who has never known love, and Sister Amvrosija, a young Russian nun, who by chance, or destiny, becomes part of his life. 50 years ago Jørgen Lauersen Vig bought Hesbjerg Castle, situated in the Danish country side, with the purpose of turning it into a monastery. Now, many years later, he is about to realize his dream. A group of Russian Orthodox nuns are on their way, and thus Mr. Vig’s life-long dream is about to come true. But, nuns have plans and wills of their own, and Mr. Vig must realize that the road to fulfilling his dream is very different than what he imagined.

26 Oct. 11.00 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
20 Oct. 18.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
Sin - A Documentary on Daily Offences [VN]
Virpi Suutari and Susanna Helke
36´ Finland 1996

“Sin” is based on the traditional seven deadly sins. The material for the film was gathered through campaigns in the press. Hundreds of people answered ads placed in newspapers, describing their personal experiences of sin. The people who appear in the film were selected from among the respondents. “Sin” employs the same cinematographic and documentary method used by the team Helke and Suutari in their previous documentaries. Instead of traditional interviews, the film consists of confessions made point blank to the camera. As in ther previous films, the team approaches the subject through trivialities. Their aim is not to discover grand themes, but to record the history of the common man.

26 Oct. 11.00 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
20 Oct. 18.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
The Idle Ones [VN]
Virpi Suutari and Susanna Helke
81´ Finland 2001

Covering a period of 18 months, the film follows the activities of a group of young men in their 20s who have finished their schooling and stayed in their home village - they loaf about unemployed since they can´t find any work in the remote district. The main characters are more or less idle young fellows whose stories link together and make up the film. Tinged with humour, “The Idle Ones” is a story about frustrated but vital young people in a period of transition, waiting for something to happen. For some, the waiting is becoming their life.

24 Oct. 14.30 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
20 Oct. 20.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
These Girls [CI]
Tahani Tached
66´ Egypt 2006

“These Girls” takes the viewer deep into the universe of adolescent girls living on the streets of Cairo, a universe of violence and oppression, as well as freedom. They are women and thus twice marginalised. Their existence, their lives and adopted codes defy social models. Their days are full of perils, be it the police shake downs or kidnapping by their fellow street dwellers. Whether they are women, children, mothers, or all that at the same time, they can't but live in the present. We catch a glimpse of the child within them in the dances, laughs and acrobatics, as well as in the fights that sometimes occur.

24 Oct. 14.30 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
20 Oct. 20.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
The mall [CI]
Yonatan Ben Efrat
12´ Israel 2006

Hundreds of illegal Palestinan workers live underground in the parking lot of an unfinished, abandoned shopping mall near Tel Aviv. They have no light, water or toilets, and the air is foul. By day they seek work in the “slave market” at a large intersection. Their six floors of hell enable them to live invisibly in Israel.

27 Oct. 14.30 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
20 Oct. 22.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
My Country, My country [I]
Laura Poitras
90´ USA 2006

Working alone in Iraq over eight months, Laura Poitras creates an extraordinarily intimate portrait of Iraqis living under U.S. occupation. Her principal focus is Dr. Riyadh, an Iraqi medical doctor, father of six and Sunni political candidate. An outspoken critic of the occupation, he is equally passionate about the need to establish democracy in Iraq, arguing that Sunni participation in the January 2005 elections is essential. Yet all around him, Dr. Riyadh sees only chaos, as his waiting room fills each day with patients suffering the physical and mental effects of ever-increasing violence.

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