Open City Docs Fest
June 21 – 24, 2012, London, United Kingdom
The festival programme is structured into several thematic strands, sorted by scientific and cultural phenomenon, including Sound Waves, City Scopes, The Image of the Engineer, Artists’ Documentary or Protest Works. The 2012 East Silver Caravan supplied well the strand of documentaries presented as World Visions, with Fritz Ofner’s Austrian view on Guatemalan society in Evolution of Violence, Czech expedition through Siberia in Šimon Špidla’s Into Oblivion, or Keith Jones’s perspective on restless youth in Punk in Africa. The same selection features also Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s successful observational documentary Abendland which is, on top of that, among the 5 nominees competing for Grand Jury Award – one of the six festival awards granted at Open City Doc Fest.
In addition to that, the International Shorts selection presents the 2011 Silver Eye winner and this year’s East Silver Caravan title I Will Forget This Day by Russian director Alina Rudnitskaya. Picked for the festival were also a handful of Polish docs that participated at East Silver market either in 2011 or 2012 – We Will Be Happy One Day, Hermits, The Trip, Decrescendo, Paparazzi - the last two of which are introduces at the Open City Doc Fest as the Wajda School 10th anniversary special showcase.
East Silver Caravan titles:
Punk in Africa
Punk in Africa , Czech Republic, South Africa, 2011, 82 min, Digi Beta, HD, Arts and Culture, Music
Three chords, three countries, one revolution… Punk in Africa is the story of the multi-racial punk movement within the recent political and social upheavals experienced in three Southern African countries: South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. In these societies, the punk subculture represented a genuinely radical political impulse, playing out against a backdrop of intense political struggle, economic hardship and even civil war.
Abendland
Austria, 2011, 90 min, HD, Creative, Society
Western standard of living, civilization, and the urge to exclude others from it are the core of Geyrhalter's latest cinematic documentary essay. Entirely shot at night, Geyrhalter takes us on a very personal journey through the Western world and the structures that guarantee our "civilized" world. Sometimes darkness can help us to see things more clearly.
Evolution of Violence
Evolution der Gewalt , Austria, 2011, 77 min, 35 mm, History, Human Rights, Politics, Social Issues
Guatemala, labeled a banana republic, is one of the most violent countries in the world. In 4 episodes the film tells us the story of those, for whom violence is an everyday business: a group of crime scene journalists, a village fighting for a cemetery after a horrible massacre, and a social worker supporting women who are victims of violence. A country without security and justice, where impunity reigns. When justice fails, people are pushed to the ultimate act of violence - lynching. The film traces the roots of violence and portrays people struggling for decency in an unjust society.
Into Oblivion
Mrtvá trať , Czech Republic, 2011, 52 min, Beta, Creative, Experimental, Personal View, Social Issues
Stalin grasps a pencil in his hand as he prepares to draw a line on a map of the Soviet Union. Where the graphite touches paper, some 80,000 people - almost all of them gulag inmates - will build a railroad in the gruelling conditions of the polar taiga. It is a railway line of almost no strategic importance, built on permafrost and polar marshes, using limited technology and equipment. For four years, they will slave away, succumbing to exhaustion, illness, cruelty, and solitary confinement before, finally, the death of Stalin himself. In just a few weeks, there will be nothing left of their hectic activity except for empty camp barracks, old locomotives, bits of track, embankments, telegraph wires. All left to slowly return to the taiga…
I Will Forget This Day
Ya zabudu etot den , Russia, 2011, 25 min, 35 mm, Beta SP, Creative, Gender, Social Issues
You can forget. You have to forget. It's impossible to forget... A woman's feelings and thoughts just before having an abortion.
