FOREIGN CREATORS’ PRESS CONFERENCE
Silvia Holzinger - Peter Haas, and Ileana Stanculescu gave a press conference about their films Foreign stuff and The Bridge which are being presented in the framework of the 7th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival – Images of the 21st Century.
Ileana Stanculescu: The Bridge
Ileana Stanculescu’s film is about the re-built bridge over the river Tisza that connects Sighet , the Romanian side of the city to the Ukranian side, Slatina (two sections of an ancient unified city). The bridge had been destroyed by German troops during the Second World War and was only recently rebuilt at the expense of the European Union. The film is about the way in which friends and relatives who live on opposite banks of the river are forced to live apart, in spite of the fact that after 50 years of separation the bridge is now there, without their being permitted to cross it for political reasons. The creator declared that she has a very close and personal relationship to this story as her grandmother would recount stories of her youth, according to which children used to cross the bridge back and forth to go to school: “We couldn’t understand how it was possible for them to cross the bridge to go to another country, since it is forbidden to us” she characteristically said. Her personal interest and the kind of script studies she made led her to choose this bridge as her thesis subject, and the way in which politics become the reason for the separation of a city, as well as the consequences this has on the lives of people: “when I began my thesis I did not intend to make a documentary, finally though I did so much work that this was the result. I believe I will continue to make documentaries”, she concluded.
Silvia Holzinger, Peter Haas: Foreign stuff
The film of these two creators is about a beautiful small town in Southern Italy, called Sassi di Matera, which has a long history from ancient times. As the two creators explained, their aim was not to make a travel documentary but rather to explore the way in which the natural environment affects the lives of the city’s residents: “The question that was finally posed to us was what will happen to this town? Will it be transformed into a museum of death and dead stone, or into another small living town in the future?”, Peter Haas characteristically said, while both directors stressed that a basic focus of their work is to make small productions that don’t need a great deal of financing, centering their interest on their personal style and improvisation. Their ultimate goal is to create free and innovative forms of expression: “That is exactly why the Documentary Festival is for us a chance to see different and new things and to explore the possibilities of small teams and small production companies”, he concluded.
