JUST TALKING 14-3-2010
The first “Just Talking”, which took place on Sunday, March 14, 2010 at the Excelsior room of the Electra Palace hotel focused on the voyage of the documentary maker as a process of creative discovery full of the unexpected, difficulties and magical moments, as well as the common thematic axis and connective link among documentary films.
Participating in the conversation were the directors Nathalie Borgers (Winds Of Sand, Women Of Rock – African Stories section), Antonio Jose Guzman (The Day We Surrender To The Air– Hybrid Docs), N.C. Heiken (Kimjongilia – Docs on North Korea) and Fridolin Schonwiese (The Five Cardinal Points –Human Rights). The conversation was coordinated by festival colleague Toby Lee.
Nathalie Borgers began the conversation. She spoke about the women of the Tubu tribe, whose heroic journey was recorded in her film Winds Of Sand, Women Of Rock. These women make a peculiar journey full of challenges, crossing the Sahara desert once a year in order to sell dates, something that gives them financial independence and self confidence in a male dominated environment. The director described the difficulties that came during shooting: “It’s not easy to work with people from a culture so different from your own. However, when you see exactly what they do, it helps you to also see the strength they show under harsh conditions. Personally, I had never had the experience shooting people with whom I didn’t even share a common language, but I discovered that this was not the biggest problem. Worst of all was that we constantly had to chase time, since these women crossing the desert wouldn’t stop for any reason, to the point that they were almost faster than us, and we had cars. So we couldn’t re-shoot some scenes exactly as we would have liked, nor could we be prepared for the harsh conditions we faced in regards to lighting or the incredibly high temperatures. One more problem, rather unexpected, was the translation of what our leading characters were saying. We had five translators at our disposal – some in Nigeria and others in France – but the translations were different, sine the perceptions of the translators that belonged to our culture was different from that of their colleagues who lived in Africa”. Speaking about the value of the voyage, Nathalie Borgers explained that she believes in the teaching power of constant moving around: “We must all take trips, otherwise we’ll die in our own little nest. And perhaps these women traveled because financial need and their emotional balance demand it, but I believe that to be shut up in oneself has negative consequences not just on a personal, but on a political level as well”.
Antonio Jose Guzman, in his film The Day We Surrender To The Air makes a journey for personal reasons. Seeking his roots and his descent, he focused on the similarities uniting people and tribes of the world, saying: “Sometimes it was even difficult for me to explain my plan, which I recorded in this documentary. But there were definitely some things that spoke directly to my heart… For instance, shooting in Africa, from which I am partly descended, I felt particularly moved, especially knowing that fundamentally we are all descended from East Africa. On the other hand, the lonely journey of a special artist living in Los Angeles deeply influenced me. Misunderstood in his native land, this person decided to cross the Atlantic ocean in a small boat, reaching the German Friesland Islands, from which he was descended. The truth is I never heard of him again. However, it’s exactly this existential issue that I wanted to approach in my film. In any case, descent is, for me, a very important thing, which I face on an almost daily basis. It is different to have this color skin and live in New York, than to live in Greece or Italy”.
American N.C. Heiken’s Kimjongilia denounces the inhuman totalitarian regime of North Korea, however, as the director explained, her film includes vivid elements of the voyage: “Escapees and immigrants from North Korea speak in the film, there are people who escaped from the concentration camps operating in that country. These people give us a clear picture of what is going on in that much talked about country, of which the only things we usually know are the strange and almost funny habits and beliefs of its leader, Kim Jong Il. Nancy Heiken also referred to the tragic story of a former concentration camp inmate whose testimony is contained in the film: “The word ‘voyage’ is a mild word. But in the case of these people, it is a matter of life and death, as they themselves tell the camera. One of them, who had been born in a concentration camp, didn’t know anything other than that. He didn’t even know about his country’s dictator, he didn’t know what freedom meant. He had never tasted any food other than rice, corn or a soup with water and salt which he ate as long as he lived in that horrible place. Imagine his surprise then, when after escaping he met people wearing different clothes, and his love of the different tastes he learned about, which he couldn’t even have imagined existed. This person, now 28, is trying to stand on his feet in America and to live as normal a life as possible”. The director concluded: “The fact that the film was positively received in South Korea, where it premiered at the Pusan Festival is very touching. This is where I discovered that many people don’t know that all these things were happening in North Korea, while others asked me how I knew these things were true… To these latter I answered that I am an artist and not an historian, and I can’t understand why someone would want to lie to me about such a tragic story. But the documentary has already found distribution and will screen at ten theaters in Seoul and elsewhere”.
The Austrian director Fridolin Schonwiese, in his film The Five Cardinal Points, focuses on the issue of immigration, approaching Mexicans moving to the USA to look for work, with the ultimate goal of living the Mexican dream in their country. The director spoke of his attempt to avoid cliches on the subject of immigration: “This is a subject that has been dealt with in thousands of fiction films and documentaries. There are even Mexican television crews which follow the illegal journeys of the immigrants in order to show the ‘pathways’ and when they get arrested by American officials they claim that they’re from television and the subject is dropped. So I didn’t see the point of documenting how one gets from point A to point B, I didn’t want to show the hardships of these people’s journey. What was really important was to show that these people, living a double life, became estranged from their families in Mexico, and when they returned, they were essentially no longer a part of that family. These immigrants miss their country when they are away from it, on the other side of the border, but really this feeling is mental nostalgia, since when they return they don’t know what to do”. The director likened the 3,000 klm wall that separates Mexico from the USA to the Berlin wall, and added: “What the Mexicans are seeking is in part the American dream. But surely we mustn’t fail to notice that they and other people in similar circumstances are immigrants who don’t really want to be where they’ve gone, but would have rather stayed at home”.
