2011 Silver Eye winner Solar Eclipse (dir. Martin Marecek) and Motherland or Death (dir. Vitalij Mansky) were nominated in the feature-length documentary competition and the charmingly animated doc Chronicle of Oldrich S. (dir. Rudolf Smid) was selected for the short film competition.
Apart from the International competition, the Krakow Film Festival will bring a fresh selection of new Polish documentaries, the National competition presents 24 recently finished films, including We Will Be Happy One Day by Paweł Wysoczański or Dad Went Fishing by Grzegorz Pacek.
The full list of nominees is here.
52nd Krakow Film Festival, Poland
May 28 – June 3, 2012
INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Feature-length documentaries:
Motherland or Death
Director: Manskiy Vitaly
Producer: Kostrov Gennadiy, Manskaya Natalya
Production company: Vertov. Real cinema, Genfilm
Patria o Muerte , Russia, 2011, 99 min, DVD, HD, Human Rights, Politics, Social Issues, Society
What does a person imagine when they hear about Cuba? Especially those who have never been to this sea-locked state in the Caribbean basin. They probably think of cabriolets driven by glowing fair-haired men in colorful shirts, drinking cocktails and dancing with mulatto ladies, the endless ocean reflected in their eyes. In reality there only exists the endless ocean that cuts the island from the rest of the world. It is hard to find any other country where the discrepancy between its image and reality is as huge as on Cuba. For more than 50 years the state has been following the battle cry of the winning revolution - “Patria o Muerte”. For more than 50 years the battle cry has been a daily dilemma for several Cuban generations. Our movie is about people who were born before the revolution and now are coming closer to the end of their lives when it becomes clear that for them “Motherland” equals “Death”.
East Silver 2011 / East Silver Caravan 2012 / Silver Eye nominee 2011
Solar Eclipse
Director: Mareček Martin
Producer: Horská Tereza
Production company: Hypermarket Film
Pod sluncem tma , Czech Republic, 2011, 81 min, DV, Creative, Current Affairs, Portrait, Social Issues
In 2006, Milan and Tomas electrified a school campus and a hospital in a detached Zambian village. After four years, they return for the last time to find out about their system's failures, repair it and hand it over at last. The film follows them through chaotic days as well as pitch black nights and provides a fresh insight into the pitfalls of humanitarian development projects. Short circuits of all sorts, blending and dissolving of different worlds, rituals of gratitude and concepts of solutions. With no attempts to declare or evaluate anything, Solar Eclipse becomes a situation probe examining various forms of light and darkness. Will the two Czech linkboys succeed in lighting up the Zambian bushland?
East Silver 2011 / East Silver Caravan 2012 / Silver Eye winner 2011
INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM COMPETITION
Documentary:
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
