doclisboa 2007

programme > october 28

programme day-by-day

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

OCTOBER 28 - SUNDAY

prize winners screening

14h30 – Culturgest – Large Auditorium
The first day
[Prize Johnnie Walker for best short documentary film]
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.

A Father's Music
[Prize ADOBE First Film for first documentary film]
Igor Heitzmann
105´ Germany 2007

Shortly after the Wall came down, the Austrian conductor Otmar Suitner ended his long-standing career at the State Opera in East Berlin. Parkinson syndrome was causing his hands to tremble. A conductor who had achieved world fame at Bayreuth could not control the baton. Music disappeared from his daily life. But the fall of the Wall brought something new: changes to his family life. For decades Suitner had two private lives, one with his wife in East Berlin, the other one with his mistress and their son, Igor, in the west of the divided city. In “A Father's Music” Igor Heitzmann tells the story of a rapprochement: with his father, the distant conductor; with a vanished country, the German Democratic Republic; with the exceptional paths of his parents’ lives; and with music.

16h30 – Culturgest – Large Auditorium
Three comrades
[Prize RTP 2 Investigations for best investigation documentary]
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.

18h30 – Culturgest – Large Auditorium
& etc
[Prize Tobis for best short documentary film]
Cláudia Clemente
25´ Portugal 2007

Founded in 1973, “& etc” is a small publishing house with unique standards: it’s not profit oriented, it doesn’t publish commercial books and it favours unknown authors. Over the years it has become a reference in the Portuguese publishing world, where it’s both by its carefully designed squared books, and by the unique authors it has published: among many others, director João César Monteiro, and poets Adília Lopes and Alberto Pimenta. In this documentary, two of its directors, Vitor Silva Tavares and Rui Caeiro, remember some of the episodes that have marked three decades of literary adventures.

The Boater's House
[Prize Sony for first portuguese documentary film]
[Prize IPJ Schools for the best documentary film on the National Competition]
Jorge Murteira
63´ Portugal 2007

"Paulino lives in an improvised schack over the river where he stores all his belongings, where he cooks, shaves and takes cover when it rains or when it´s colder or windier. All he asks is a new and proper house. He connects the two banks of Tejo. The film joins Amieira do Tejo´s last boater for four seasons. In winter and fall, near the fire by the river, waiting for the trains that only seldom bring any customers. In spring and summer, over a table, lonely, sharing a drink or a snack with whoever passes by. Until a passenger gets of the train and asks him to cross the river. Today, there´s no more boater and the new house is yet to be built. No one can cross the river any more."

Era preciso fazer as coisas
[Grand Prize Tobis for best long Portuguese documentary film]
[Midas Award for best portuguese documentary in the festival]
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?

21h00 – Culturgest – Large Auditorium
The mall
[Special Mention for best short documentary film]
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.

These Girls
[Grand Prize of the City of Lisbon for best long film]
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.

marathonadoc

18 Oct. 19.00 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
28 Oct. 11.00 - Cinema São Jorge (Room 1)
Taxi to the Dark Side
Alex Gibney
105´ USA 2007

During the “war on terror”, 104 prisoners have died in suspicious circumstances in U.S. custody. "Taxi to the Dark Side" takes an in-depth look at one case: an Afghan taxi driver called Dilawar, who died as a direct result of beatings he sustained from guards and interrogators at Bagram Air Force Base. The documentary carefully develops the last weeks of Dilawar's life and shows how decisions taken at the pinnacle of power in the Bush Administration led directly to Dilawar's brutal death. This is the definitive exploration of the introduction of torture as an interrogation technique in U.S. facilities, and the role played by key figures of the Bush Administration in the process.

28 Oct. 14.00 - Cinema São Jorge (Room 1)
Knowledge is the Beginning:
Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra [MD]
Paul Smaczny
115´ Germany 2006

“Knowledge is the Beginning" is the story of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, where young Arabs and Jews perform and live side by side. It is a film about what music can do; the way it can transcend cultural barriers, bring people together, defeat prejudice and overcome religious and political differences. It also demonstrates the problems that crop up occasionally and how music can help people from different points of view find common ground. For Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said, the ensemble’s mentors, the orchestra is a symbol for what could be achieved in the Middle East.

28 Oct. 16.15 - Cinema São Jorge (Room 1)
The Swinging Doll [MD]
David Moncasi
76´ Spain 2005

Carmen Sanchez is an extraordinary woman. She is 85 years old. She travelled all around Europe as a trapezist until an accident changed her life. She lives alone and by the things she does no one would imagine her age. In her own daily life everything is still possible. She dreams of swinging on the trapeze again, while she hears in her mind the sound of the “Automatic restaurant”, a circus number in which she participated years ago. At the end of August the “Swinging Doll” travels to a small village in Brittany to balance accounts with her past.

28 Oct. 17.45 - Cinema São Jorge (Room 1)
Crazy Love [MD]
Burt Pagach and Linda Riss
90´ USA 2007

“Crazy Love” proves that reality is stranger than fiction. The film tells the true story of Burt and Linda’s violent and unbelievable relationship, two inimitable New Yorkers who met in the late fifties and that would eventually get married 16 years after But threw acid in Linda’s face, blinding her. The story shocked the United States in 1959 and seduced the American press for decades. Recently, the couple made the news again when Burt threatened to repeat the crime in similar circumstances. At once romantic but very disturbing, Dan Klores' Crazy Love is a multifaceted exploration of the pathology of our emotional lives.

28 Oct. 19.30 - Cinema São Jorge (Room 1)
Manufacturing Dissent: Uncovering Michael Moore [MD]
Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk
74´ Canada/Australia 2007

“Manufacturing Dissent”, a documentary that seeks to separate fact, fiction and legend, tracks Michael Moore on tour during the release of the explosive “Fahrenheit 9/11” (Palme d’Or at Cannes 2004), all the while chronicling the politically supercharged climate in America that has fuelled Moore's transition from filmmaker to icon of the political left.

28 Oct. 21.00 - Cinema São Jorge (Room 1)
Bomb It [MD]
Jon Reiss
94´ USA 2007

The most comprehensive documentary on graffiti to date, “Bomb It” is the first film to explore the movement from a truly global perspective, examining how artists around the world have taken the medium and applied it to their particular cultural and social conditions, from its modern birthplace in the slums of Philadelphia and New York City to Europe, where a dadaist/surrealist tradition produces deliberately confrontational prankstering, to Brazil, where graffiti traces its roots to the anti-fascist pichação writings of the 60s and 70s, to Japan, where anime-inspired graffiti challenges conformist societal norms, and back to Los Angeles, where graffiti has been strongly influenced by Chicano and gang culture.

28 Oct. 22.45 - Cinema São Jorge (Room 1)
Brando [MD]
Leslie Greif and Mimi Freedman
165´ USA 2007

Legendary actor, activist and eccentric Marlon Brando remains a mystery three years after his death. This fascinating new documentary intersperses interviews with friends Martin Scorsese, Johnny Depp, Al Pacino and others with unseen footage – including his “Rebel Without a Cause” screen test and home movies – to illuminate the man behind the image.

28 Oct. - Cinema São Jorge (Room 3)
1ª parte: 11.00 | 2ª parte: 13.45
Andy Warhol: a Documentary Film
Ric Burns
240' USA 2006

No artist of the second half of the twentieth century was more famous – or in the end more famously misunderstood – than Andy Warhol: at once the most accessible and enigmatic, straightforward and elusive, naive and savagely ironic artist of his time. “Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film” is a four-hour riveting and often deeply moving film portrait of the most important artist of the second half of the twentieth century, set within the turbulent and constantly changing context of his life and times. Combining penetrating on-camera interviews and never-before-seen still and archival motion picture footage with the testimony of Warhol's bewilderingly vast body of work itself, the film is the first to exploit in depth the immense Warhol archives at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

28 Oct. - Cinema São Jorge (Room 3)
1ª parte: 16.15 | 2ª parte: 18.30 | 3ª parte: 21.15
Diary
David Perlov
330' Israel 1983

“Diary” was shot over tem years and is not only the political, professional and personal journal of a filmmaker, but also a testimony about te turbulent social and political reality of Israel, a country in a permanent state of war. The six chapters of this filmed autobiography take us from Tel Aviv to Paris and from London to Brazil, where David Perlov was born and where he decided to return after a twenty-year absence. A mixture of home movie, a generational portrair and political documentary, «Diary» is an epic personal journal and a film about the threads that bind a man both to his country of citizenship and to his countries of belonging.

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