Festival films

An elderly couple, Imre and Piroska, charcoal-makers in the Romanian countryside, perform the same actions every day of their lives. But the world around them is changing. As almost archaic figures, they become a tourist attraction, visited by people wanting to experience the atmosphere of times past. Under the impassive gaze of the camera, a performance unfolds, worthy of the theater of the absurd.

The film tells the story of Ami Ankilewitz, a 3-D animator who lives in Israel and whose bodily motion is limited to a single finger on his left hand. At birth, Ami was diagnosed with a rare form of muscular dystrophy, later diagnosed as Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), and was predicted to survive only to the age of 6. Now, thirty years later, he leaves the woman he loves and returns to the United States to confront the doctor who predicted his early demise. Along the way, he comes to terms with a major incident from his past and pursues a lifelong dream: to ride a Harley Davidson. 39 Pounds of Love is an emotional roller coaster, a fascinating, humorous and inspirational ride through life with someone who truly embodies the motto carpe diem (seize the day)...

On a frozen field, a child tells about a felt-tip man with a beard and a bit of hair on his head. A musician lives a life without music. A prison officer collects model trains and longs for the open oceans. A Soviet cosmonaut sits in his space capsule in eternal orbit. And a guardian angel dances in the sky. In a sequence of tales, five girls and women present their pictures of a father. The notions of absence and presence, longing and dreams tie together the five stories, which emerge through staged tableaux, drawings, graphics and archive material.

The Greek intellectual Thanos Lipowatz spends one day in Paris, in Berlin and in Athens, three cities associated with his biography, and he expresses his views on psychoanalysis, on the relation between ethics and politics and on Europe and Greece in the middle of the crisis.

In 2004, the city council of Athens had the streets cleared of the strays to host the Olympic Games. Many never came back. Since then, an animal protection program has been running on public funds and Εuropean subventions. The present financial crisis, the backdrop of street violence, outrage, and public demonstrations ironically dramatizes the symbol of freedom represented by the dogs without masters who wear collars, but have no leashes, and are to be found in the forefront of all the marches.

“Harassed, attacked, deported – we lived in a permanent, cold fear!” says Laki Vasiliadis. He is one of only two Istanbul-Greeks who still has a shop on Istiklal Street, the European center of Istanbul. Before 1950, Istanbul Greeks made up half of Istiklal Street. It all began on the 6th of September 1955, with a nighttime pogrom. Thirty years later, out of 150,000 Istanbul-Greeks, only 2,000 remained. What kind of life was it – for a member of a minority – and how is it today? “The worst thing is to hide your identity,” says one of those who have remained. “Nobody was concerned about us, neither Greece nor Europe!” Many Istanbul-Greeks now live in Greece. But not all are happy there. “Istanbul is not a city, it’s a life!” says one of them. Some Istanbul-Greeks of the Diaspora still want to return to their hometown.

Kyriakos Pimenidis relates his own personal truth about the days of his childhood in his homeland. It is a shocking narration about the terrible days in the 1920s in Kavak, on the outskirts of Samsun, on Turkey’s Black Sea coast. It is also about the painful wandering of the Greek Orthodox women and children of his village in exile. A mature man (the actor Akyllas Karazisis), surrounded today by Kyriakos’ narrations, attempts to enter his lost world, to feel Kyriakos’ experiences, to understand him. “Begone! Hide yourself! Lock yourself in! Blades are being sharpened! Heads will fall! Heads did fall! And now?”

In the late 1990s, the oncologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital invited award-winning documentarians Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert to follow five children and their families navigating the ups and downs of cancer treatment. The film provides a view of life on an oncology ward, including profiles of the doctors, nurses, and staff who become champions for the children they care for. But it also ventures outside the hospital and explores the unique personal life of each child – his or her hopes, fears, and relationships with siblings and other family members. As a result, a complex portrait of each family’s individual journey emerges. An intimate look at the lives of Tim, Al, Jenny, Justin, and Alex, A Lion in the House celebrates the enormous strength and bravery of these heroic children.

Pop idols rise and fall, usually lost to the changeable tide of taste or destructive by-products of their meteoric fame. However, there is one such idol who has never slowed down – Rick Springfield. His music has globally bonded multi-generations of fans for the last 30 years. This surprising and fascinating phenomenon is examined through the lives of his diehard fans and Rick Springfield himself, demonstrating that this connection goes way deeper than the music, to the very essence of being human.

Jani Christou (1926-1970) stands among the greatest figures of 20th century avant-garde music, though to many he remains unknown. With his early death in a tragic accident, the world of contemporary music lost one of its most thrilling and provocative talents. The documentary illustrates the personality and the spirit of this great thinker of art and follows the trajectory of his short life, which was always interwoven with art and his contribution to humanity and civilization. Through the presentation of the composer’s works, rare audiovisual material and interviews with friends and collaborators, the film brings us closer to the mystery that this great artist left behind and makes us wonder about all the great moments of art that the circumstances of the times often hide in their shadows.

On a Friday in February ten years ago, filmmaker Joop van Wijk’s wife received a phone call from her brother-in-law. His wife – her sister – had disappeared and was reported missing. A month later it turned out that 11 blows with an ax had killed her. The culprit was her husband, depriving their two young children of their mother. The murderer confessed and was sentenced to 8 years in jail. He served his time and has now been released. The case is closed. But for the people involved it doesn’t feel that way. Anatomy οf a Murder is the reconstruction of the murder, its background and its consequences. The culprit, the foster mother of the children, family, friends, police and state attorney take the floor again. Not to condemn the killer one more time or to come to a final or common conclusion, but to do justice to the complexity of the emotions involved in a family tragedy like this.

Αn episode of the new series of documentaries, produced by Greek Public Television (ERT3), entitled Animated... Philosophers, which combines animation scenes with interviews with academics and presents the major philosophers of the Western tradition. These documentaries aim to introduce these philosophers to a broader audience and to show the contribution these exceptional thinkers made to western civilization, in a simple, accessible, humorous manner. Augustine focuses on the life and work of the most important philosopher of the millenium-lasting middle Ages, and his impact on the modern world.

Anna Wich was a German photographer who decided to live and work in Athens when the Greek military junta collapsed in 1974. Shunning the picturesque beauty of postcard-perfect Greece, Anna Wich chose to turn her lens onto the neglected faces of the country: daily life in the city, places and peoples, the old district of Elaionas that has turned into a disadvantaged neighbourhood, stray cats... But also onto the true relation between modern Greece and Antiquity, as well as onto the magic of the sea. However, Anna Wich’s creative identity is only an excuse for a deeper reflection. A reflection on the identity of a German woman,who was born after WWII, who was nurtured in a Europe where everything is cast into doubt and who chose to live in an introverted, almost agoraphobic Greece. It’s also a reflection on our country that didn’t succeed in embracing the ideas of progress, of emancipation from the national legend, of a creative dialogue with the Western world to which Greece chose to belong... A documentary film on loss.

The mother of a child suffering from cancer struggles to maintain a normal life for her family. Stine is thirty-seven years old and the single mother of three girls. Her daughter Cecilie, now aged eleven, has had cancer since she was two. Cecilie has spent half her life in hospital and Stine along with her. Stine is fighting an unfair battle in unbearable chaos. At the same time, she insists on maintaining some sort of life for all three children.

Fifty million people in the US – one in four children – don’t know where their next meal is coming from, despite the country having the means to provide nutritious, affordable food for all Americans. Directors Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush examine this issue through the lens of three people who are struggling with food insecurity, interwoven with insights from experts, ordinary citizens and activists. A Place at the Table shows us how hunger poses serious economic, social and cultural implications for a nation.

On April 14th 2010, the earth opened up for the second time in less than a month at Eyjafjallajokull in Southern Iceland. The volcanic eruption melted the ice cap, flooded the nearby farms and spewed 70 tons of ash into the stratosphere per second and disrupted air traffic throughout Northern Europe. It forced many flight cancellations and stranded thousands of passengers. The disruption captured the world’s attention. When the airlines resumed their normal routes and headlines started to fade, the farmers under the volcano were fighting for their livestock and livelihood, as they still are today. The film follows three farming families living under the volcano over the course of a year and chronicles the effect of the ash on their lives.

Α documentary which follows the construction of a traditional Greek sailing boat (a Symian vessel with junk sails). Apart from describing the techniques used in the construction process and the excellence of the result, this documentary focuses on the individuals involved and their way of collaborating on the project. Each one’s point of view and thoughts on the completion of the project reveal an attitude and a philosophy essential to a creative and harmonious life. Daily life and myth interact, producing values beyond the reach of time.

Autumn Gold tells the life-affirming story of five athletes as they prepare for the Track and Field World Championships. Their toughest challenge is their age: these potential world champions are between 80 and 100 years old. With ambition and plenty of humor, they accept the task. At the finishing line of their lives, and true to the motto “We can rest after we’re dead”, they seek one more ultimate challenge and give their best on the way to a gold medal in Finland. They want to stand on the podium one last time. It is a competition against age and the other hurdles of life. A story of winning and losing, of setbacks and triumphs. Autumn Gold is an homage to life as it can be: not smooth and wrinkle-free, but full of humor and determination.

India is rapidly becoming the world’s baby factory. It’s one of the few countries in the world which authorizes payment for surrogacy. For €10,000, you can undergo fertility treatment and in vitro fertilization, and then have the resulting embryos implanted in a surrogate mother. Nine months later, you return and collect your new baby. On the surface, it seems to be a win-win scenario. Infertile couples get to have a baby while impoverished women receive enough money to pay for their own children’s schooling or buy a small house. But with so many ethical issues at play, can surrogacy really be treated like any other business?

A year after the euphoria on Tahrir Square, the demonstrators’ goals have not even come close to being reached. The country is ruled with an iron fist and the “eye of the world” has moved elsewhere. How things have been in Egypt since 25 January 2011 is explained using five portraits of people from various walks of life. A young horse herdsman tells how he drove to the square to ask for the Pyramids to be opened again; he only just managed to survive that day. A taxi driver talks about his six years in prison, the torture, and how the police now behaves worse than ever. A young woman talks about intimidations and unjust arrests. The young Salwa describes how she met her first love during the demonstrations. And then the brother of Michael Nabil: a blogger who was arrested because of his Internet comments and is now on hunger strike – he is followed on Tahrir Square during the protests that still continue against the ongoing violations of human rights.

In Europe, the phenomenon of the traveling cinema existed only in the early years of cinema, when the movie theater was still a fairground attraction; soon, most cities and villages had their own cinemas, followed by video-clubs that rented out films. In India, there are still 2,000 mobile cinemas, one of which is “Battu’s Bioscope”, a colorful vehicle containing an old Soviet projector, a few white cloth sheets, and several kilometers of celluloid film. Mr. Battu drives slowly along the sun-scorched roads of India, his quarrelsome assistant Mama at his side, and the young Amit sitting on top of the truck, announcing the next show through a loudspeaker. The elderly Battu is an idealist who thinks you can change people by showing them films. Andrzej Fidyk’s team accompanies “Battu’s Bioscope” from Calcutta, through fishermen’s villages and snake hunters’ settlements, up the distant Orissa province. This is the dwelling place of primitive tribes, whose way of life hasn’t changed for thousands of years. After years of trying, Mr. Battu has finally been issued a permit to show a film to these people who do not even know cinema exists.