18th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival
Images of the 21st Century
11-20 March 2016
Press Conference
A FAMILY AFFAIR / TIME SIMPLY PASSES /
THE VIRGIN OBSESSION /THE BOOK OF CONRAD
Images of the 21st Century
11-20 March 2016
Press Conference
A FAMILY AFFAIR / TIME SIMPLY PASSES /
THE VIRGIN OBSESSION /THE BOOK OF CONRAD
As part of the 18th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, directors Tom Fassaert (A Family Affair), Ty Flowers (Time Simply Passes), Guner Yasemin Balci (The Virgin Obsession), Belinda Schmid and David Cranstoun Welch (The Book of Conrad) attended a press conference on Saturday March 12th, 2016.
Tom Fassaert, who spoke first, explained how he decided to deal with A Family Affair, as his film is also titled. On his 30th birthday, the director met for the first time his 95-year-old grandmother, who lived in South Africa. At that time, the only thing he knew about her were the myths and mostly negative stories that his father had told him: “In my family, there were things that we never discussed." At some point, my father, who is a psychologist, told me that he decided to retire and wanted to write the biography of his mother. This rang a bell to me, somehow. I knew that the story of my family was problematic. In the beginning, I was very naive, but slowly I started to delve deeper into it. Eventually, my grandmother pulled me inside the story." A controversial personality, the director’s grandmother at one point during the film’s shooting states that... she is in love with him. Referring to his relationship with her, the director noted: “My grandmother is a very special person and I was not aware of that in the beginning. She was a diva, a woman who liked to dress nice and go out. Very soon, she started seeing me as a man and not as a member of her family. This happened while shooting and it makes you think how the camera’s presence is involved in this. I couldn't go back, though. I could tell her that she is insane or look at it as a moment of sensitivity, a moment of truth. I was carried away by her words and I felt that they were instinctively connected with what I wanted to say. My relationship with my grandmother eventually became a very important part of the film, moving from love to conflict. At the end of film, we see that there’s an enormous distance between us”.
The protagonist of Ty Flowers’ Time Simply Passes is James Joseph Richardson, an African-American orange picker who was wrongfully convicted of the poisoning deaths of his seven children in 1967. He remained 21 years in prison and after his release became an iconic figure of the Innocence Movement. For the past 26 years, he is making continuous efforts to receive justice from the State of Florida. Referring to the way James confronted the state by claiming his compensation, the director observed: “Anyone can go against the system. The question is what methods he/she will apply in order to do it successfully. In my film, the difficulties that James faced while claiming his compensation are contrary to the common belief that whoever is misjudged should be compensated. Moreover, the legislation is different from state to state. For various legal reasons, this legislation did not apply to James”. James’ conviction had also racist hues. “Strangely enough, the subject of racism is more serious today than it was in the 1960s", Mr. Flowers observed and added: “In the past, racism was focused in the South. James, in any case, did not present his story as a racist conviction. However, during my research, I discovered that he was indeed mistreated for such reasons. Generally speaking, Afro-Americans experience a horrible treatment by the police. Police officers can shoot someone in the street without thinking it twice and afterwards simply say that they’re sorry'”. Commenting on the political situation in the USA with regards to the forthcoming elections, Ty Flowers pointed out: “It is not clear which direction the balance will tip. The way I perceive it, the internet will play an important role, as it has enormous power. It can convince huge groups of people in favor of one or the other opinion. However, I am not optimistic. I believe that the situation will become worse in the next 15 years. The system is controlled by immensely rich players that will try to maintain their power no matter what”.
Guner Yasemin Balci’s The Virgin Obsession deals with the oppression of women's rights by Muslim beliefs, with special focus on the female sexuality. Referring to her documentary, the director explained: “For me, it was important to investigate the problems of Muslim people who live in Europe and specifically in Germany, given also the fact that this subject is usually related to countries such as Afghanistan or Iran. I grew up in a neighborhood where during the 1990s we had families of Palestinians coming as refugees and this changed our life through the years. They brought along different views on Islam and this affected my life, too. Henceforth, it was not considered normal for girls to have a boyfriend or go out whenever they wanted. Today the situation has deteriorated a lot. What happens, also demonstrated by the statistics, is that a very conservative interpretation of Islam becomes increasingly important, changing people’s daily lives at school, working place and so on. I have worked with young children from Muslim families and girls from Arabic countries that are not even allowed to choose their spouse”. According to the director, there’s hope that the young generations will discard these beliefs: “I believe that young people will change this situation. However, to do so, other things should be done beforehand, like discussing this issue openly, especially with young men. For them it will also be revolutionary to break away from these moral models and the image of what it means to be a man, according to the Muslim beliefs. Men in Islam are responsible of safeguarding the virginity of all the women in the family. If we want this belief to change, we should work a lot towards this direction”.
The protagonist of the documentary The Book of Conrad by Belinda Schmid and David Cranstoun Welch, is C.A. Conrad, a famous eccentric poet who is trying to get over the death of his companion. Referring to this special hero, Mr Welch said: “We met him accidentally. We live in New York, where grand celebrations take place in New Year's Eve. We attended a 12-hour poetry marathon in which Conrad participated and it was there that we observed he is an exceptional character. His poetry focuses on his life and relationship with his mother. While doing a research on him, we discovered that he was also homosexual. He had gone through some very unpleasant life experiences. Three of his companions had died, one of which had been killed. A major part of Conrad’s work concerned his reconciliation with pain”. Mrs. Schmid added: “What attracted us more to Conrad was a certain thing expressed in his poetry: his relationship with his mother, who was a rather mad but powerful character. Our initial aim was to investigate their relationship”. Speaking about the political and social conditions concerning LGBT rights in the USA, Mrs. Schmid observed: “Since we started shooting, same-sex marriage has been legalized in most of the states. The change of legislation will further improve the situation, despite the fact that a large part of the population maintains a different attitude”. On his part, Mr. Welch observed that “certain tendencies cannot be eliminated that fast”, adding that: “At one point of the film, Conrad’s father says: 'I'd rather see my son dead than married’. You can tell a lot about the views of the American people on this subject by their preference to Donald Trump”.
