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Programme doclisboa 2008
 
  T F S S M T W T F S S M T W
Programme day by day 16 17 18  19  20 21 22 23  24  25 26 27 28 29
 

October 19 – sunday

19 OCT. 11.00 – Culturgest (small auditorium) | 26 OCT. 21.00 - Londres (room 2)
Aspen  RW 
Frederick Wiseman
146´ USA 1991
A movie where Wiseman drives straight into Aspen’s dichotomous heart and focus himself on the soul of one of the main tourist attractions in the United States. Aspen is a film about a town that was famous in the 19th century for silver mining and is now known for its scenic splendor, mountains, skiing, hiking, music, intellectual activity and fashionable people. A documentary that portrays the contemporary concept of leisure.

19 OCT. 14.15 – Culturgest (small auditorium) | 21 OCT. 16.00 - Londres (room 2) | 23 OCT. 21.30 - Museu do Oriente
In Public  MC 
Jia Zhang-Ke
32´ China 2007
A documentary that synthesizes Jia Zhan-Ke’s usual aesthetic concerns, showing us how different people can live in different places. Somewhere between a suspension of time and dimension, or light and shadow, we are transported through several settings: train stations, bus stops, and karaoke or disco places. Shot in Shanxi, one of the country’s oldest provinces, the spectator shares the same feeling of loneliness with the film’s characters that catch a train or take a bus in a landscape of work, uniforms and silence, while they still wait for a new day to come.
Dong  MC 
Jia Zhang-Ke
70´ China 2005

Filmed by Jia Zhang-Ke while making Still Life, Dong takes us to Fengjie, an old city at the Three Gorges Region that is going to be submerged by the waters of the world’s greatest dam. Demolition works contrast with the work of painter Liu Xiadong, who chooses eleven workers for a painting that he will include in his own new canvas collection. Captivated by the region and the worker’s reality, the artist feels the agony of a world that is ending. He moves on to Thailand, where he continues his painting. Still, under a blazing sun and violent daylight, the artist doesn’t seem to understand the language or the local habits. A portrait of the human condition in two distinct situations with Asia’s image in its common background.

19 OCT. 14.30 – Culturgest (large auditorium) | 25 OCT. 20.30 - Londres (room 1)
A Tale of the Wind (Une Histoire du Vent)  DF 
Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan
80´ France 1988
Joris Iven’s last film, directed with Marceline Lorrigan. After Pour Le Mistral (1966), Ivens tries once again to capture the “invisible”: the wind. Going back to China, Une Histoire du Vent pursues this element not only as natural phenomenon, but also as an illustration and metaphor for the changes in Society and Culture. A film where the poetic farewell of an author finds a feeling of hope in the vast landscapes of Gobi’s desert and in the reflection on the importance of art and culture.

19 OCT. 15.00 - Londres (room 1) | 22 OCT. 22.45 – Culturgest (small auditorium)
Videoletter  DF 
Shuntaro Tanikawa and Shuji Tereyama
74´ Japan 1983

Video-letter is a remarkable compilation that follows an exchange of video-letters that took place between Shuji Terayama and Shuntaro Tanikawa in the months immediately preceding Terayama's death. It can be seen as a home video produced by two prominent poets that is interlaid with highly abstract philosophizing, slightly aberrant behavior and occasionally flamboyant visuals, sometimes touching, sometimes extravagant, where two artists reflect about death, talent and wisdom.


19 OCT. 15.00 – São Jorge (room 3)
For Them (Por Mis Hijos)  NF, NI  
Aymée Cruzalegui
16’ Spain 2007

What is a woman willing to do to improve her children’s life? Norma, a Latin American immigrant in Barcelona, fights loneliness and the barriers of the life of a family that longs for her.
The Flower Bridge  NF, NI  
Thomas Ciulei
87’ Romania 2008

A film on the daily life of a rural family in Moldavia. After the mother immigrated to Italy in order to find work, the father has to carry out several duties: work in the fields, organize the house and take care of his children. He ends up establishing a semi-military regime that does not exclude tenderness or humour. The Flower Bridge mingles fiction and documentary techniques.


18 OCT. 15.30 – São Jorge (room 1) | 19 OCT. 15.30 – São Jorge (room 1) | 25 OCT. 15.30 – São Jorge (room 3)
 Docs 4 Kids 
The Red Race
Chao Gan
70´Germany/China 2008

- Special workshop for children at the São Jorge Cinema Theatre
Following every day of a group of Chinese children from impoverished rural provinces that have the dream of becoming gold medalists, The Red Race shows us the physical and emotional aspects of competition at his highest level. After the media and sports hegemony revealed by the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, we take an insight on the other side of success.
Age: from 8 to 12 years old
Coordinator: Maria Remédio; limited registrations
Information and registration:
+351 96 327 12 55 mail: escolas@doclisboa.org

19 OCT. 16.00 - Londres (room 2) | 17 OCT. 16.30 – Culturgest (large auditorium) | 25 OCT. 21.30 - Museu do Oriente
Mum (Mama)  MC 
de Zhang Yuan
90´ China 1990

Zhang Yuan’s first feature film is also the first Chinese independent film since 1949, financed at the time with the support of some business friends and revealing the filmmaker’s appetite for controversial subjects in Chinese society. A movie which focuses on a mother’s relationship with her 11 year old handicapped son.

19 OCT. 16.15 – Culturgest (small auditorium) | 20 OCT. 21.30 - Museu do Oriente
Crazy English  MC 
Zhang Yuan
50´ China 1999
Li Yang is a teacher who believes in the virtues of English studies in China. Since 1998, he has produced hundreds of events promoting English language in public places around his country, such as the Forbidden City, the Great Wall of China or Marco Polo Bridge. Li made public appearances for more than 13 million people and has promoted English studies as a patriotic mission and a way to self-improvement. Conducting his audiences with propaganda slogans, Crazy English portrays a true self-made man, seen as a pop star or as a charismatic political dictator.

19 OCT. 16.30 – Culturgest (large auditorium) | 26 OCT. 20.30 - Londres (room 1)
Missile  RW
Frederick Wiseman
115´ USA 1987
A movie that documents every step of the training of men and women who control the U.S. nuclear arsenal by only using their fingers. Missile follows the 4315th Training Squadron of the Strategic Air Command at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where Air Force officers are trained for the Launch Control Centers of Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. The film includes the discussion of moral and military issues of nuclear war; the arming, targeting and launching of the missile; codes; communications; protection against terrorist attacks; emergency procedures; staff meetings and tutorial sessions.

19 OCT. 17.00 – São Jorge (room 3)
Photographs (Fotografias)  NF, NI  
Andrés di Tella
110´ Argentina 2007
Son of an Argentine sociologist and a noble Indian, Andrés di Tella shows an interest in knowing more about his Indian side after his mother’s death. Until then, he had never seen himself as an Indian, even feeling shame of that identity. From old letters, pictures and images that belonged to his mother, the director drives his wife and son in a spiritual journey that allows him to understand and accept his cultural identity.

19 OCT. 17.30 – Londres (room 1) | 16 OCT. 22.45 – Culturgest (small auditorium)
Uncle Rithy  SE 
Jean-Marie Barbe
97´ France 2008
In Sihanoukville, during the shooting of his film The Sea Wall, the Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh looks back on his own work in the past twenty years, from Site 2 to The Burnt Theatre, not forgetting the film that is symbolic of his whole work, S21 – The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine. Between a cinema lesson and thoughts about the documentary genre, this film outlines the moral and ethical limits of filmmaking.

19 OCT. 18.00 - Londres (room 2) | 24 OCT. 23.15 – Culturgest (large auditorium)
Tokyo Porto 9 hours (Tóquio Porto 9 horas)  CN  
João Nuno Brochado
8´ Portugal 2008
A new day rises in Tokyo. In Porto, it will rise only after another 9 hours. The differences and similarities between two places not only geographically distant.
0=6 Homeoestética  CN  
Bruno de Almeida
60´ Portugal 2008
A documentary about Homeostética, an art movement born in Lisbon in the early 80’s by Fernando Brito, Ivo, Pedro Portugal, Pedro Proença, Manuel João Vieira and Xana. Using humour in order to distance themselves from the art world, Homeostética cultivated an outsider attitude with strong dada influences, producing an intense body of work that included exhibitions, texts, manifestos, films, rock concerts and other collective performances.

19 OCT. 18.15 – Culturgest (small auditorium) | 22 OCT. 15.00 - Londres (room 1)
In the Land of the Cranes  SE 
Lisa Hagstrand
29´ Sweden 2008
During a voyage to Shangai, China, director Lisa Hangstrand discovered that a bridge was being built in the Island of Chongming, where one of the most important nature reserves of the world is located. The local inhabitants and the workers in the reserve don’t know what the future of the island will bring. Complex environmental questions are at stake.
The Lie of the Land  I 
Molly Dineen
74´ UK 2007
The Lie of the Land portrays the perversion of England’s contemporary food production system. Squeezed by the price politics imposed by the great supermarkets and the increasing number of laws and legislation in their field, many farmers question themselves about how they can sustain their way of life. The Lie of the Land looks closely into the possible disappearance of traditional British rural world.

19 OCT. 18.45 – Culturgest (large auditorium) | 22 OCT. 17.30 - Londres (room 1)
Novela na Santa Casa  CI 
Cathie Levy
121´ France/Brasil 2007
Novela na Santa Casa is a film about the dreams of women who attend Enfermaria 38 at Santa Casa da Misericórdia, the address of Professor Ivo Pitanguy’s Plastic Surgery Service, accessible to all social classes. For 5 months, French filmmaker Cathie Levy followed seven charismatic characters that were looking for the joy of rebirth.

19 OCT. 20.30 - Londres (room 1) | 22 OCT. 14.15 – Culturgest (small auditorium)
Polish Shorts  CP 
Krzysztof Kieslowski
Bricklayer, 1973, 18’
Hospital, 1976, 22’
From a Night Porter’s Point of View, 1978, 17’
Seven Women of Different Ages, 1978, 16’
Railway Station, 1980, 14’
Talking Heads, 1980, 16’

19 OCT. 20.45 – Culturgest (small auditorium) | 21 OCT. 20.30 - Londres (room 1)
A Day in Palestine (Un Jour en Palestine)  CI 
Mary Ellen Davis, José Garcia-Lozano and Will Eizlini
6´ Canada 2007
A disturbing and fascinating collection of Super-8 images about everyday life of Palestinians in occupied territories which contrasts itself with a series of homemade videos filmed in the sixties.
Merely a Smell  CI 
Maher Abi Samra
10´ Lebanon/Italy 2007
In Beirut, a city struck by war, a boat proceeds to the evacuation of foreign citizens. Under the ruins of destroyed buildings, the rescue teams remove dead bodies. Between lights and shadows, life and its finitude, the corpses draw frontiers with others, covered by the smell of death.
Six Floors to Hell  CI 
de Jonathan Ben Efrat
52´ Israel 2007
This film, the development ofshort feature film The Mall, awarded in 2007 at doclisboa, follows a group of clandestine Palestinian workers in Tel-Aviv and their ways of survival while looking for work and a place to sleep. Such is the case of Jalal, one of the many Arabians who live during the day of occasional jobs and sleep at night in an unfinished shopping mall basement, six grounds under the floor, with the dream of getting enough money for his wedding.

19 OCT. 21.00 – Culturgest (large auditorium) | 26 OCT. 14.30 - Londres (room 2)
Basic Training  RW 
Frederick Wiseman
89´ USA 1971
Basic Training follows a company of draftees and enlisted men through the nine weeks of their basic training cycle. The varieties of training techniques used by the army in converting civilians to soldiers are illustrated in scenes of drills, in the use of M-16’s and bayonets, a gas chamber, mines, night crawls, an infiltration course and many forms of ideological training.

19 OCT. 21.00 - Londres (room 2) | 24 OCT. 18.30 – Culturgest (large auditorium)
Anna, Seven Years on the Frontline  I  
Masha Novikova
78´ Netherlands 2008
The director of Three Comrades (the winner of Investigations at doclisboa 2007) knew well Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian reporter murdered in October 7th, 2006. The filmmaker and the reporter dedicated years of theirs lives to the Chechnya conflict, unraveling the atrocities that the Kremlin authorities don’t want to recognize. With exclusive images and interviews, this portrait of Politkovskaya reconstitutes the last years of her career and her lonely struggle for the truth. Unfortunately this movie couldn’t be screened in Russia.

19 OCT. 21.30 – São Jorge (room 3) | 20 OCT. 24.00 – São Jorge (room 1)
Old Man Bebo  HB 
Carlos Carcas
111´ Spain 2007
The movie of a resurrection: Cuban pianist Bebo Valdês, a symbol of the golden age of Cuban music and one of the most influential musicians that combined jazz and afro-cuban rhythms with mambo, bolero and more recently flamenco. In an extraordinary portrait about the man and the artist, Spanish director Carlos Carcas establishes the sight of a unique career with evocative footage and photos of Havana in the 40’s, from the communist revolution to his exile in Sweden, where Valdés married and raised a family, and the time where he fell in oblivion and became a cab driver, until his recent artistic comeback.

19 OCT. 21.30 - Museu do Oriente | 18 OCT. 18.45 – Culturgest (large auditorium) | 21 OCT. 15.00 - Londres (room 1)
We (Wo Men)  CI 
Huang Wenhai
102’ Switzerland/China 2008
The voices in this film are all of conscious citizens doing their utmost to improve the state of their nation. Their ethos is: “Where affairs of state are concerned, we cannot stand by and watch.” And yet, the reward for their concern is a lifetime spent in political turmoil and years of constant intimidation and surveillance. We is a documentary that illustrates the perils of seeking freedom in a time of darkness.

19 OCT. 22.00 – São Jorge (room 1) | 20 OCT. 23.30 – São Jorge (room 3)
Let’s Get Lost  HB 
Bruce Weber
120´ USA 1989
When Bruce Weber, a renowned fashion photographer, finally caught up with his idol Chet Baker, one of world’s best trumpeters in the history of jazz, the musician’s life was already a decadent world aroused by alcoholism and drug addiction. Let’s Get Lost sets itself as a voyage of contrasts between two distinct ages in an artists’ career: from the beginning of his early days in the 1950’s to his downfall in 1980’s last years. A movie that offers rare footage of his first public appearances and interviews with friends, family, associates and lovers.

19 OCT. 22.30 - Londres (room 1) | 21 OCT. 20.45 – Culturgest (small auditorium)
My Kabul  CI 
de Whahid Nazir
22´ Afghanistan/France 2007
As a result from a Varan school workshop in Kabul, this film draws a picture of its own town, following Jamal, a taxi driver that talks constantly to his passengers. His memories of war come across with his intense present.
Faces on the Wall  CI 

Bijan Anquetil and Paul Costes
64´ Iran/France 2007
All three Dastvaré brothers were killed during the Iran-Iraq War. They were 19, 22 and 27 years old. In 1985, the Islamic Republic of Iran had a mural painted in memory of these three martyrs brothers. The history of the painting is the conducting wire that allows us to question a people’s values, described by the Iranian regime as “united by their martyrs blood”.

19 OCT. 22.45 – Culturgest (small auditorium) | 23 OCT. 15.00 - Londres (room 1)
L’Heure Exquise  DF 
René Allio
60´ France 1981
A movie where French filmmaker René Allio remembers the city of Marseille by making a personal journey through his own family memories between the 1920’s and the 1950’s. The director described this project as a kind of “sentimental exploration” of his hometown while tracing his family history. René Allio recalls Marseille with emotion, filming all its places and shapes, and traveling the same roads and paths of his childhood in what could be considered his most nostalgic work..
The Loved One (L’Aimée)  DF 
Arnauld Desplechin
70´ France 2007
The idea of filming The Loved One came on the day French filmmaker Arnauld Despléchin knew his father’s decision of selling the family house in Roubaix, Northern France. If this turned out to be a pretext to bring the camera into the different corridors and divisions of that same place, browsing through old photos and opening old drawers and closets full of memories, it’s his father history and the one his own mother Thérèse (the director’s grandmother), who passed away when he was only 18 months old, that become the heart of this deeply nostalgic and personal narrative.

19 OCT. 23.00 – Culturgest (large auditorium) | 23 OCT. 18.00 - Londres (room 2)
Territórios de passagem
- Culturgest, Casa de Cima, Outra Memória
 CN 
Solveig Nordlund
25´ Portugal 2008
José Pedro Croft was born in 1957 in Porto and has developed a work that has made him one of the most outstanding Portuguese artists in the last twenty five years. As a sculptor who transforms reality by dislocating and adding new elements to it, his work tries to renew the experience that is offered by sculpture. Director Solveig Nordlund followed his work in 2008.
That Which Lives Close to the Origin
Leaves the Place With Difficulty
(Dificilmente O Que Habita Perto da Origem
Abandona o Lugar)
 CN 
Olga Ramos and Catarina Rosendo
60´ Portugal 2008
A film about Alberto Carneiro, a sculptor who was born in São Mamede do Coronado, a rural area in northern Portugal, and who became one of the most influential artists of his generation. His work has developed alongside nature, living today in the place of its birth. A homecoming that is also a return to the physical and affective places that have influenced his work.

19 OCT. 23.00 - Londres (room 2) | 18 OCT. 14.15 – Culturgest (small auditorium)
Strange Culture  R&E 
Lynn Hershman Leeson
75´ USA 2008
Strange Culture documents the ongoing and precedent-setting legal battle of Steve Kurtz, an Associate Professor of Art at SUNY Buffalo and a founding member of the internationally acclaimed art and theatre group Critical Art Ensemble. Kurtz was working on an exhibition for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. He was detained as a suspected “bio terrorist” and is currently part of an ongoing federal trial. As Kurtz cannot legally talk freely about the case, Leeson enlists actors to interpret his story. Dramatic re-enactments are woven together through animation, news footage, testimonials and interviews. The resulting film investigates the risk artists face when they question government policies in a contemporary post-9/11 climate..

19 OCT. 23.30 – São Jorge (room 3) | 21 OCT. 24.00 – São Jorge (room 1)
When Carnival Comes
(Quando o Carnaval Chegar)
(fiction)  HB 
Cacá Diegues
with: Chico Buarque, Maria Bethânia, Nara Leão
90´ Brasil 1972
A fictional movie that became an historical document throughout the years. Chico Buarque, Maria Bethânia and Nara Leão are Paulo, Mimi and Rosa – a group of anonymous artists that travel in a bus around Brazil trying to make a living. Written, directed and produced by Carlos Diegues, Quando o Carnaval Chegar is a tribute to the old tradition of the “chanchadas” (Brazilian popular shows known for is naïf and burlesque humour) with Chico Buarque’s original music.

19 OCT. 24.00 – São Jorge (room 1) | 21 OCT. 23.30 – São Jorge (room 3)
Shake the Devil Off   HB 
Peter Entell
99´ Switzerland 2007
Six months after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Father Ledoux struggles to keep his parish alive at St. Augustine Church, a symbol of music, faith and religion in the city. Many say this is where jazz was born, and the place where slaves, free black people and whites sat side by side for the first time to pray to God, where we can find the Tomb of the Unknown Slave. But the ecclesiastical authorities (the catholic episcopacy) insist in its closure. The community protests and decides to take matters into their own hands, defending the parish priest and the church, in what became one of the most emblematic episodes post-Katrina.

Sections
International Competition  CI  | Investigations  I  |National Competition  CN  |Special Sessions  SE  |
Frederick Wiseman Retrospective  RW 
  |New Vision  R&E  |Filmed Diaries and Portraits  DF  |
New Families, New Identities  NF, NI  | Made in China  MC  |Heart Beat (Musical Program)  HB  |
Mozambique!  M  | Polish Shorts   CP | Maratonadoc  MD  | The state of Portuguese documentaries |
Docfestas São Jorge