For international competition was selected Nikolaus Geyrhalter Abendland, visual essay on contemporary society and our night life. Short doc section introduces Rudolf Smid’s Chronicle of Oldrich S., Czech animated reconstruction of events caught in the diaries of Oldrich S., an ordinary man with an ordinary life. Within the special screenings featured Audrius Stonys‘ Ramin, portrait of an old Georgian wrestler on a quest to find a girl of his heart.
Among other Eastern European documentaries at Docaviv are Marcel Lozinski’s Tonia and Her Children (in competition) or Srdjan Keca’s new film Mirage - visual research of Dubai and the contradictory perspectives on it.
Docaviv, Israel
May 3 – 12, 2012
East Silver Caravan at Docaviv 2012:
Abendland
Director: Geyrhalter Nikolaus
Producer: Geyrhalter Nikolaus
Production company: Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion GmbH
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.
East Silver 2011 / East Silver Caravan 2012 / Silver Eye nominee 2011 / Doc Launch 2010
Chronicle of Oldřich S.
Director: Šmíd Rudolf
Producer: Halousková Marcela, Hora Jakub
Production company: AniFest - International Festival of Animated Films, Anima Production
Kronika Oldřicha S. , Czech Republic, 2011, 18 min, DVD, HD, Animated, History, Personal View, Politics, Social Issues
Mr Sedláček was writing one-sentence entries in his chronicle from 1981 to 2005. The chronicle includes everyday stories of his and his family's life (Today our Gypsy neighbour Gina broke my hand. I was taken to hospital in Mladá Boleslav), the life of the village and its surroundings (A man called Bartoš, 32 years old, killed his wife, 30, today in Příšovice and threw her body into the pond) as well as international events (L.I. Brezhnev died today). The real chronicle has more than two thousand daily notes. The authors picked two hundred and used about eighty of them for the screenplay. These eighty notes provide a concentrated overview of Mr. Sedláček's life and of our society.
East Silver 2011 / East Silver Caravan 2012 / Silver Eye nominee 2011
I Will Forget This Day
Director: Rudnitskaya Alina
Producer: Telnov Alexey
Production company: Saint-Petersburg Documentary Film Studio
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.
East Silver 2011 / East Silver Caravan 2012 / Silver Eye nominee 2011
Ramin
Director: Stonys Audrius
Producer: Cekulis Uldis
Production company: Vides Filmu Studija
Ramin , Georgia, Latvia, 2011, 58 min, Digi Beta, HD, Creative, Portrait, Society
Ramin Lomsadze, a 75-year-old Georgian wrestler who once won seven matches in 55 seconds, is getting ready for the fight with his last and most formidable opponent - loneliness. He gets on the train and sets off for a remote Georgian village to seek out the girl he loved and lost fifty years ago.
East Silver 2011 / East Silver Caravan 2012 / Silver Eye nominee 2011 Doc Launch 2010 / East European Forum 2008 / Ex Oriente Film 2008
Other Eastern European documentaries in programme:
Digging for Life
Director: Cuzuioc Pavel
Producer: Nica Aurelian
Production company: HBO Romania
Doina Groparilor , Romania, 2011, 54 min, Digi Beta, Portrait, Society
The only living inhabitants of a cemetery are the gravediggers. Be it winter, spring, summer or fall - the preoccupations of the diggers always remain the same. They dig and bury. They are immune to tears and lamentation. They seem to lack fear and sensibility. The only living "ghost" at “Doina” Cemetery is Ms. Eleonora. She's been preparing and making arrangements for her funeral for 10 years now, although she’s only 60, healthy and sober. This preoccupation is almost an obsession.
East Silver 2011
Ivan and Ivana
Director: Silva Jeff
Producer: Silva Jeff
Production company: 5 Wyatt Circle
Ivan a Ivana , Kosovo, Serbia, USA, 2011, 80 min, HD, Longitudinal, Portrait, Social Issues, Society
After the Kosovo war devastated a young couple's homeland and their dreams for a normal life, they set out unexpectedly from the Balkans, along a wild journey to rebuild their lives anew in America. Arriving in California amidst the peak of a housing boom that would soon burst, the film reveals their trials and tribulations over five years of turbulent economic, political and personal tides to reveal an unorthodox depiction of the American immigrant experience.
East Silver 2012
Mirage
Director: Keca Srdjan
Producer: Keca Srdjan
Production company: National Film and Television School
Mirage , Serbia, United Kingdom, 2011, 42 min, Digi Beta, HD, Experimental, Human Rights, Social Issues
At the edge of a city growing from the desert, a man plays alone on a golf course. Another, sleepless, sends a letter from a labour camp to his wife in Kenya. A sand storm hits a construction site, and the locals hold a strange dance ceremony.Dubai, usually seen either as miracle of development or failed gimmick, here becomes a set for a visual exploration of displacement, longing and desire. In three chapters the city, the surrounding desert and their inhabitants slowly uncover some of the darker aspects of contemporary society, while the ongoing economic meltdown spells the end of an era.
East Silver 2012
Tonia and Her Children
Director: Lozinski Marcel
Producer: Kedzierski Pawel
Production company: Kronika Film Studio
Tonia i jej dzieci , Poland, 2011, 54 min, Digi Beta, Docu drama, History, Human Rights, Portrait
11-year-old Werka and her 9-year-old brother Marcel wind up at the front door of a children's home in Wrocław. Asked who they are, Werka replies, "We are the children of communists." In return the teacher yells, "Why do they only send us Judeo communists?" It is 1949. Werka's and Marcel's mother, a pre-war communist, is arrested and charged with collaborating with American intelligence. She will do five and half years. Her children will spend these years in children's homes. A film about a brother and a sister marked by the ideological choices of their parents.
East Silver 2011 / Silver Eye nominee 2011
The Contest (Jakub Cuman, Poland, 2011)
