10th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival –
Images of the 21st Century
March 7-16, 2008
PRESS RELEASE
PRESS CONFERENCE
GENERATION 68 – MR. BIG
A JIHAD FOR LOVE – TO FIND TIGER KIM
A press conference took place on Thursday, March 13 at the Olympion’s “Green Room”, in the context of the 10th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. The participants were Simon Brook, director of the film Generation 68, Tiffany Burns, director of the film Mr. Big, Parvez Sharma, director of the film A Jihad for love and Bon-Hwak Koo, director of the film To find tiger Kim.
Tiffany Burns, speaking about her film Mr. Big – which is about a method invented and perfected by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police where criminals can be convicted through entrapment – said: “I first spoke with lawyers and specialists in making innocent people seem guilty, and left the personal element for last. I refer to my brother Sebastian, who became a target of this method and has been in prison for 13 years”. She then spoke about the difficulties she had with the film’s material, due to her emotional involvement, since she was the director and Sebastian’s sister at the same time. “I don’t know if I can describe how difficult it was for me to make this film, especially when I realized that it wasn’t only my brother who had been trapped with this method, but other Canadians as well. I thought I should keep a distance, not make a personal story, but finally that was impossible”, noted Tiffany Burns.
Bon-Hwak Koo, director of the film To find tiger Kim, spoke. This is also a personal story, about a relative of his who is an important figure close to the president of Korea, Tiger Kim. He said: “The hardest thing for me was that I had to present personal information, to film very private, family moments such as the death of my grandfather”. Commenting on his family’s reaction and the reactions of his fellow countrymen to the screening of the film, he declared: “My family had seen the film earlier, and didn’t say anything. My grandmother saw it more recently, but her reaction was not as dramatic as I had expected. The Korean audience that saw the documentary said that it was original but weird, because it makes many personal things public”.
Parvez Sharma – whose film A Jihad for love explores the complicated relationship between Islam and homosexuality all over the world, noted: “It took a lot of effort, a lot of work and six years for me to complete the film. I chose the particular subject after I had developed strong relationships with all the people who finally appeared in the film. When one touches taboo subjects, such as being Muslim and gay, having personal ties with the people appearing in the film is particularly helpful”. Then Parvez Sharma explained that the subject of homosexuality is still taboo even in the Western world. “I observed that even here in Greece, the subject of homosexuality for example is not discussed publicly, even though Greeks had a particularly open position on the matter thousands of years ago”, Parvez Sharma noted.
Finally, Simon Brook, director of the film Generation 68 - which focuses on the cultural revolution brought about by the events in May of ’68 – said: “What led to my making the film was one of the last presidential elections in France, where after a statement by the French president I realized that many people didn’t know about the cultural revolution of 1968. Also, the only reason people protest today is for an increase in salary. I am outraged by the obvious violation of human rights in Iraq, but no one is protesting about that.” When asked about the attitudes the leaders of the ’68 generation have today on what is happening globally these days he answered: “I don’t think these people have been defeated, they just developed. They had children, went through other stages. It is natural for things to change”.
